I have to remember to buy coffee

If I don't remember to buy coffee, I'll miss out on that ritual excuse to take an hour in the morning to sort my thoughts. My worries become too involved with each other and when I miss my morning sort, they produce spore-like offspring that periodically infect portions of my day.

And I hate it when that happens.

Already today I awoke to a text message from a friend, which surely I took the wrong way. I felt patronized, frustrated. Thankfully, I was busy contemplating the method of my morning brew to immediately respond. Coffee made me wise enough to pause before responding. It was, as the French say, a veritable pause-café.

This morning, my coffee with vanilla soy has an aromatic, nostalgic quality. I recall walking along 8th Avenue one sunny morning, seeking out an ice cold regular coffee from the shameful, yet addictive coffee-provider: Starbucks. But, now is not the time to discuss Starbuck's ethics, besides, that's all that is really available near 42nd Street. It also reminds me of my recent visit to Halifax where I visited one of my hardiest best friends. She is an entirely different person than she was when we were in high school, but I like this version as much. Her house was filthy and chaotic. Her strange belongings were strewn all over the floor, but no apologies were made. She was in the process of moving. No explanation was given for the silver goblet or chains in her bedroom, or the pink bunny and hatchet pattern of her bed sheets. From her, I don't need one.

What worries me, is that her health is in question. We'll find out today if things will go from iffy to worse. I need to compartmentalize this or it will synergize with all my other worries. She's in a province away from mine, but I'm psychically in her presence. I can't wait for the call to tell me that I can stop being consumed by this nervous uncertainty.

Now that I have that thought sorted, I find myself with only two sips remaining in my tea cup of coffee. I hope it's enough to get me through the sorting of a letter I received from the tax office yesterday informing me that I have ten days to provide them with more than $5000. Now, I'm not sure who they think they are dealing with, but a full-time student needs a tad more time than that to come up with a chunk like this. So it goes.

Phew! There's still enough in the French press for another cup. I'm just not sure my stomach can handle it today.

*Real* opportunity cost

My last entry was less of a whine about my current positions in life, and more of a comparative analogy to recent events that inspired me to step back and reconsider the feeling of vulnerability I know so many of us have.

I was not whining, I was feeling rather reassured.

Quite a few people I know these days, of all ages and locations, are faced with career, marriage and citizenship choices. They all know what they want: happiness, reasonable freedom and above all fulfillment. This translates loosely into: success. I am not talking about the American dream. As far as I can tell, the American dream has been appropriated by the media and it's less of a dream and more of a military mandate as of late, so I will just talk about something more new-agey. I am talking about how hard it is, once we know what we want, to develop the best way to get there. We feel as though, if we mess something major up along the way, the destination just won't quite be all we'd imagined if we find it at all. That scares the hell out of most of us, which is why we developed mottos like: If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. We remind ourselves, that we have to enjoy the journey. We do *have* to enjoy the journey when we can, but I'm saying it's very OK to be scared sometimes.

I found myself walking along Rue St. Catherine, the shopping district, taking another unplanned day off work due to visitors from out of town. I was thinking of my opportunity cost. I felt I should have been working, or at least learning how to make video clips on my computer or something. Justifying my day off by thinking of it as an investment in my long term future proved effective, though. These were no run-of-the-mill visitors; these were potential in-laws. I plan to like my potential in-laws and have them like *me* dammit!! Since my plan seems to be working, I allowed myself to feel productive, and therefore, happy.

As we walked along in this bustling busy wave of shoppers, I noticed an unhappy little girl crossing the street with the pack of people we'd joined. She was on the heels of her mother, a cold looking woman in a business suit, and I felt sad for her. She looked as though her mother was very angry. The little girl was wringing her hands and her bottom lip trembled. The woman was so angry she didn't even look back to see if the little girl was ok.

My god, I thought, how can anyone be irresponsible enough to allow a child to walk through a crowd like this without holding her hand. The girl was in a slow run, keeping up with this woman. I was very concerned so I hurried my pace to keep up with them. At this point, I really looked at the dirty t-shirt the little girl was wearing, how her curls hadn't been brushed, that her sneakers were muddy and thought this prim and spotless mother and muddy sneaker-wearing daughter match was an unlikely pair. I fought through the crowd to get closer to the girl and asked her, "Are you lost?"

She nodded and took my hand. It almost broke my heart. It *did* upset my stomach.

I told her she was OK and I was going to help her. We walked nearer to the buildings and I became fearful that she would get lost in the crowd again. Someone had already lost her! She looked so vulnerable in this crowd, I wouldn't be able to bear knowing it happened to her again. I felt it was very important to tell her exactly what the game plan was for getting her back to her parents. We would go to a store and ask to use their phone, so we could call the police and tell them that she has lost her daddy. The police would call her daddy and tell him not to worry, they would get Sonia to him as soon as possible.

But, I wasn't thinking clearly. My boyfriend was with me and I had forgotten he had a cell phone. We could have called right there. In any case, he took care of the police report while I entertained this little girl. She was a darling 8 years old with a quivering lip that almost made me cry. Instead, I joked around with her, asked her questions about her dad, what she did that day and all the while I was thinking: I am still a stranger to her. I wanted nothing more than for her to know she was absolutely safe. This was more than I could ask.

We were instructed to bring her to a specific street corner where we would meet the police. It was a long 10 minutes of waiting once we got there, but this little girl was so brave. She had tears in her eyes, and looked as though if she started she wouldn't stop. Sonia held them back. I told her it was OK to feel scared, that it could happen to anyone, that her dad surely had already spoken with the police and that in a few minutes they would come. I think I talked too much, but it stopped her from crying.

The officer parked across the street and we waved him down. I introduced Sonia, and said in a light silly voice, "She's lost her daddy." The officer answered saying, "Well Sonia, we just *found* your daddy!" He thanked us, too, and I felt like gushing a "you're welcome." But, I feared if I started *I* might not stop. Besides, there was no one really to thank here, we all just did what was necessary.

At that age, kids often still have the impression that policemen are altruists, that their job is to help people...and I could see the relief in her face. Finally she felt completely safe. Midway through the crosswalk, she turned and yelled, "Thank you." My heart broke for the second time that day. I didn't want to let her go, I was still worried for her.

In the same way I have felt a major soft spot with doctors who have helped me or my family in a time of need, I loved this little girl immediately.

The event has taken me a while to get over. I was so relieved that *I* was the one to find her. It is scary enough having children walking with you on a busy street, knowing the frightening variety of people there...especially in that part of town, but thinking that she was ALONE just makes me ill. Now, I am not giving myself credit as the only person who would have helped her. There were so many other people around and they saw her, too. It just scared me that I was the first one to step in. The point, though, is that I did. I will never see her again, I will never meet her father...but for all three of us, it turned out OK.

It's OK to be scared, we just can't lose hope.

Frenchstration

Having lived in Montreal for six years and holding a bilingual high school diploma after completing several long years of immersion you'd think I'd be fluent by now. Maybe we can liken it to the same phenomenon that has illiterates graduating from universities. There's always a way.

I actually knew more French before I moved from my anglophone province. At least there, I was forced to speak French with my teachers in order to pass my chemistry and math classes. Oh yes, I can talk about math in French and am royally lost when it comes to deciphering any chemistry in English (though to be fair, chemistry baffles me in any language). The university I attended in Quebec catered to the anglo population, and after six years of studying "grammaire" and "verbes" and "sexes" in high school, I was more than happy to shun my second language and concentrate on Spanish instead. I continued with the trend of half-assed studying, so I now succeed in confusing people in two languages other than English. Does that count as trilingual?

I thought moving to Vancouver would lift the burden of for my mostly unilingual self, until I saw that Cantonese was an asset. Thinking French is undoubtedly easier, I drove thousands of miles back to it. Today, however, really demonstrated what I've gotten myself into, and how much left there is to learn. I am afraid I can't just brush up on my French. I have a heckuva lot to learn. Does my Nova Scotian dialect count as a second language? "Eh, you gowanna uptah dah wahrft fer a smook is ya? Ayma comin with. I'll be rate oahva. Aya latah." Surely it counts.

My afternoon was spent planting flowers in front of my building in this mixed language neighborhood I call home. It just so happens that my friend and neighbour is actually trilingual, the kind of trilingual I would like to be. The kind that doesn't confuse people. In fact, she can carry a friendly conversation with almost anyone, and she can tell people not to "faire pee-pee" in the park regardless of their mother tongue. I am hugely impressed with this power. Next to her, I am rendered impotent, flacid when it comes to multilingual intercourse.

Now the annoying part is that I understand most of what people say in French, but I can't respond in a way that will make them want to stay and talk to me. While we planted our flowers, passers-by who live in the neighborhood would stop to comment on our admirable efforts to beautify the urban landscape. People apologized for their enormous dogs running through the newly planted flowers. Elderly women educated us on the names and needs of the flowers we'd chosen. All I did was listen and smile. My friend was able to actually speak easily with them, so I turned on my lazy-language mode and let her do all the talking. This, is precisely how I've managed living here over the past six years. You just have to know the right people.

I was getting cozy with this idea until I went grocery shopping a few hours later. A very, very overweight and very, very short exclusively French-speaking woman commented on my having chosen butter instead of margarine. She suggested that margarine was better for me and then asked me if I would mind getting her a tub of it from the top shelf because she wasn't able to reach it. I listened, smiled, passed her the margarine and expected to continue my shopping. The woman had other plans for me.

Perhaps she felt she had to justify her choice of spread. Perhaps she was crazy. She stepped closer to me and told me that I can eat butter if I want because I am obviously active, but that she prefers to watch TV so she must choose the healthier option. I smiled. Her husband is very good-looking. I know this because she told me several times, (each of which I smiled regardless of the statement's apparent irrelevancy). I don't know if I would trust her taste in men though, considering that her taste in clothes left her looking like a Polish grandmother. It was also at this point that I realized she was missing several of her teeth. Immediately afterward, I began to suspect that the teeth in question were actually floating around in her mouth, the partial plate having become dislodged. You can imagine what this did for her pronunciation.

The rest of the story became a sort of "Choose Your Own Adventure", as I could only understand half of what she was saying and had obviously missed some important details. What was disturbing for me was not only her spittle, but the fact that what I was understanding was the sort of story you ethically must report to the police.

Apparently, her husband has a new girlfriend. I smiled because she smiled. She was supposedly very pretty and the woman didn't mind that he has this girlfriend. She's seventeen and he's about fifty. I didn't smile. What was really crazy, suggested the lady, was that she got pregnant and didn't even tell him! I'm not so sure that's really the craziest part, though. She became more animated and began talking louder and with more spittle and I completely missed the next thing she said, so, feeling the need to clarify the situation I said, "pardon?" and was completely ignored. She began talking faster and faster; her tongue working full-time to keep the dislodged teeth in her mouth.

Then, she said something about an affair and a fourteen-year-old.

Now, the conversation might have been completely misunderstood by me, but when I asked for clarification she wouldn't acknowledge that I'd spoken. She simply continued to spew out this crazy story and I didn't know what to do. I was scared she was talking about what I thought she was talking about, so I did what a person is supposed to do when faced with a mammal that's frothing at the mouth. I backed away slowly.

As I increased the space between us, she over-compensated by talking louder. Step-by-backward-step I rounded the corner of the aisle, slipping out of her view. Only when she could no longer see me did she pause in her story and call out, "OK, bye-bye." She stayed there between the margarine and butter, surely awaiting her next victim. I think the "I-can't-reach-the-margarine" routine was a trap.

I rushed to the cash, afraid she'd decide to follow. While nervously pushing my goods through the checkout, I thought about how if I could only speak French fluently I would be able to cut off conversations more quickly. I mean, I can't just run away from francophones, even if they're nuts. I have to tell them I am going to first.

Educational games

I love playing games. I learned most of my math skills while sitting on my Dad's lap during cribbage games as a little girl. When I was old enough to remember all the rules, I got to play against him. It was my chance to prove myself to him, I had to be able to not only count my own points, but to double check his...just in case he tested me, to see if I was playing *seriously*. I am 25 now, and just last year he finally did it. I had been nervously checking his points for 15 years before the time had come. He takes his time.

Games are obviously associated with good times, but there are very special memories attached to them for me. I played different games with different people. My grandmother taught me how to play Rummy. This always seemed a little out of character for her as the pacifist, naturalist sage she was, but then again, over the years a lot about my grandmother surprised me. I enjoyed every tidbit. Scrabble was always a big event at her house. I would try my best to get as many points as possible, but being the most highly educated person in our family (both formally and informally), it was just understood that no one would ever beat her. When I started winning, it was very distressing.

My mother's side of the family is Polish and proud of it (in a very self-deprecating fashion). It was always hard for me to understand their penchant for Polish jokes, but I suppose the older third generation Canadian, I'm really quite removed from all that (except for what my family subjects me to). Most of my extended family lives a 25-hour drive from where I grew up, so when we all get together, it's a very special event. They're all very witty and cheerful and all-in-all the gatherings are refreshing reunions where alcoholism is thinly veiled under the guise of "Polish tradition". We're talking about people who'll drink Cæsers for breakfast because they're healthy. Na zdrowie!

This ubiquitous alcoholism makes for entertaining game playing. Usually we play cards for money. Any game will do really, as long as it's for money. I have fond memories of being very young and winning my first bowl full of dimes. I proudly hoarded my loot for a day or two and then lost it all playing Thirty-one. One rule that applies to all card games is: no mercy for anyone over the age of five. I think it was a valuable learning experience.

I hear that in Poland, when a guest arrives the house bottle of vodka is brought out and consecutive shots are poured for everyone present until the bottle is emptied. And then the drinking begins. That's just the toast. Again, na zdrowie!

But now that I am grown and living in a province sandwiched between my immediate and extended family, there seems to be a shortage of people willing to play card games with me. No one wants to lose their money, and no one wants to put up with the heckling involved in a rowdy game. Every now and then I can convince my boyfriend to play Shithead with me. While there is no betting involved, the amount of possible heckling makes up for it. But more often than not, I am left to play my own games. Today I developed a new one.

My home is positioned in one of those city areas where men sense a quiet corner and immediately get the urge to mark their territory. This drives my neighbor crazy and several times she's called the police to ward off the extremely common species we've come to call: The Urinators. There are different kinds: a) the high rollers who will whip down their drawers in the middle of the park because they just don't give a damn b) the elderly c) raving drunkards who've already been warned.

Today, I witnessed a "C" type approaching the quiet corner. He looked over his shoulder to see if anyone was behind him. He looked toward my neighbor's house to see if she was watching. He took the pre-pee stance (legs apart and ready to unzip)...and at precisely this moment I banged on my window really loudly. I saw him panic and try to determine where the noise was coming from. Then he ran away. He was gone for a full hour before he came back to the park to pass out.

One point for me, zero for The Urinators.
I'm in the lead.

Let's get physical, physical!

I've recently learned how to go to the gym. All my life I have avoided physical activity, going so far as to be a real pain in the ass about it in elementary school. My poor teachers must've cursed my parents for telling me not to let adults make me do anything I didn't want to do. I reinterpreted that lesson to work in my favour during Phys Ed. When forced to play soccer at the tender age of nine, I protested by running away from the ball. I'm not sure if I was upset because I was picked last for the team, or if the team picked me last because of that. In any case, I found the whole matter to be entirely unfair. Again, I pity the underpaid teachers.

I did try intramural soccer once more in high school, but I snapped my wrist during the first game and ended up in a cast, forbidden to play again by my doctor. I would have a cast for 8 weeks...and it was exactly 8 weeks until the prom. I took that as a sign from the PE powers that be. I wouldn't tempt them again.

While growing up, I was told over and over (by chubby people and chubby people's mothers) that I was "too skinny." By the time I reached junior high, I developed a complex. I started eating twice as much and most of that would be just before bedtime, partly in fear that I'd accidentally burn some calories if I stayed awake and partly to taunt my metabolically challenged friends. I was convinced that if I could just gain a little weight, my breasts would grow. I was wrong. I'm still playing for the A-Team.

I did reach a whomping 125 lbs. My all-time high. And when I got there, I realized I didn't want to be there. Now it's not that I think 125 lbs is a lot...but it looks weird when it is only on your belly and you *still* have skinny arms and legs. I didn't want to be a chicken lady. I just wanted some boobs.

In any case, at some point during university, I decided that maybe...since boobs aren't in the stars for me, I might as well get other cooler body stuff, like muscles!!! Then I realized that would involved physical activity. I thought maybe I could start slow...maybe I would join a contemporary dance class. I thought that was a great idea! It wasn't.

After the first class of "freeing my body" and "letting it speak" and "being a tree" and "walking without bones" I felt too degraded to go on. If *that* was what physical activity was all about I wanted none of it! I decided the muscle idea could get nice and comfy on the back burner.

A few *years* later a combination of things motivated me to actually commit to "training", but mostly it was instinctive competition...you know, survival of the fittest. Buying the $600 membership was the clamp on the dumbell. But after weeks of doing 50 minutes of cardio and an hour of weights...I still find that my self perception is totally screwy. It all depends on my mood. I have no idea what I *really* look like. I don't even own a scale...and after visiting someone who *does* own a scale, I'm happy not to. I learned something about myself by stepping on it several times in a 24 hour period: I weigh 115 lbs pre-buffet and 120 lbs post-buffet. I am not joking. No really.

Dress to kill

Those were the instructions on an invitation I received for a fashion mag launch party. How the hell did that phrase come about? Who am I supposed to kill? Isn't there enough death and destruction these days?

Dress to kill. That is hard to do when you've recently emigrated from Vancouver where you dress to survive. If only it was a polar fleece/gortex theme party; I'd be a hit!

I noticed, however, that some of our young and hip have residents really are dressing to kill. They adorn themselves with camouflage accessories and nouveaux cargo pants. There is even a window display, in downtown Montreal, that flaunts exclusively army-inspired couture. Talk about capitalizing on the misfortunes of others! There are also anti-war placards among the mannequins...I suppose to make it obvious that the reference is ironic. Somehow the spin doctors have figured out how to market camouflage clothing as a stand for peace. The Whitehouse should hire these people; they are geniuses.

I discovered this shop when I was on my mission to find my murderously hot ensemble.

I chose things I would never normally wear. I thought that was appropriate seeing as I would never normally want to kill people either. But the shoes...the shoes are truly a weapon. They are so pointy, in fact, that I am quite sure they would be confiscated in airport security.

Tonight I am dressing to kill, for peace.