Walking with a Ghost

What a Week!

Ever had one of those weeks where disaster only follows disaster? Where everything you touch seems to break ( in my case, it falls… just call me butterfingers) Where even the most common mishap, say a burnt out lightbulb, is enough to drive you to tears? Well, welcome to me week. The days were not counted by nights of blissful rest but of intervals of black space between disasters and awkwardness and hardships.

These are my struggles.

A half reno-ed house that has become overcome with woodbugs. Woodbugs! We spent thousands of dollars on fancy laminate floors to be overthrown by armies of weird silver bugs that curl up into balls and frolick about MY place like they own it? No. I don’t think so. An annoying bout of butterfingers-itis that has caused me to drop a big tub of laundry detergent on my patio; a bottle of body lotion on my kitchen floor; a water bottle on my living room floor; a cellphone more times than I care to admit; and a really sharp kitchen knife which inexplicably "fell" into my leg twice in the last two weeks! An insurable case of dementia which has caused me no small amount of grief as I thought I had lost my mp3 player; my gym membership card; my passport; my gym lock; my hammer and yes, car ( which can happen a lot more often than you think when you usually park you car in front of your house but then one night you have to park it a block away and then when you leave for work the next morning your car is nowhere to be seen.. well, I guess it could be seen if I walked like two steps; but still it’s enough to give a girl a grey hair when it happens at 8 in the morning before I’ve had my morning coffee).

What else has happened?

I almost died from gas poisoning when I tried to bake a pizza in my gas oven. My illegal cable was cut leaving me TV-less on Wednesday night, ( Yes, I know, LOST and ANTM night!! So bad!!). Also, I had planned on getting shaw digital phone so I could call all my peeps whenever I want but then since I had illegal cable I decided to get a telus phone and now I have to get cable so I should have gotten Shaw digital phone in the first place!!! Oy vae!! It’s enough to make my head spin.

Then there is the bathroom saga.

Well, the saga that there is no bathroom. That everytime you sit on the toliet the back jiggles. That there is no door to the bathroom. That there is no floor. That the place is a disaster and I have been living there since March 10! Not fun! Going upstairs to have shower really early every morning! Not fun!

Then there is work.

Work is a saga unto itself. I worked overtime today. Overtime! I came in to work at 7:30 am. (Course now I am wasting that extra hour by blabbing on in my blog; so whatevs, it all comes out in the wash, right? I am starting to feel the pressure, deadlines, ungrateful bosses; know-it-all clients, unhappy co-workers. I swear If I develop a furrowed brow or a single grey hair from this job; I am out of here. Starbucks, here I come.

Then on top of all these struggles, there is the main struggle,

I am lonely.

I have not many friends here. All by myself! (please start singing that Celine Dion classic to yourself, as you read the rest of this entry). Nobody to watch TV with me. Nobody to talk to on the phone with. Nobody! No fair! I miss being busy with fun things to do and great, exciting plans. I want summer and fun and excitement. Not boring, raining winter with it’s no fun gloom and dust.

Yes, these are my struggles. It is a hard road, I've toiled, and it's always darkest before dawn and maybe I am just sleepy and have PMS...

Promise of a New Day

"And so time over time
What will change the world
No one knows
So the only promise
Is a day to live, to give
And share with one another"

-Paula Abdul Promise of a New Day

For some reason, this New Years feels a bit different. Now, granted listening to the black sheep of my CD collection that has been left to fester in my parents' basement since 1998 could have something to with my curious mood and my tendancy to quote obscure Paula Abdul lyrics ( is there really any other kind?); but really I think it is more than that.

For the first time in a long time, I find myself looking forward to the upcoming year. I'm not looking back thinking of everything that was not accomplished in 2006. I'm not feeling particluarly old, pathetic, and unmotivated ( which is kind of weird considering I am jobless and living in my parents' basement).

I don't really want to jinx myself or anything but I have a feeling 2007 will be pretty great!
I will be going to Glastonbury; some of my closest friends are getting married; I will be living in my very own grown-up place, and I'm sure lots of other cool things will happen as well!

So here's to a year full of promise and excitement and changes that for once, I am NOT dreading!

Welcome to 2007!!!!!

Get away from me Lil Jinx!

Have you met my recent companion, Lil Jinx? She has been with me for almost a week and I believe she has overstayed her welcome. She is crimping my style not to mention endangering my life!
I want her out! Keep her away from me! I have hosted her long enough! She has caused enough disasters to last me a lifetime.
Everyday since her unexpected arrival last Thursday, has been a swift race against Death.
Thursday she tickled me under the arms on teh bus and caused me to drop a gallon of paint on my foot, my left foot. That was her idea of a welcome wagon.
On Friday she scared me by jumping out from behind a chair and caused me to somehow break a huge glass frame and then get a million tiny bits of glass in my knee, which I had to pick out with tweezers, tweezers.
On Saturday, she entered my body and caused my lungs to almost collapse due to over inhalation of paint fumes.
On Sunday she slicked the stairs at the Club Monaco on Robson and made my fall flat on my bum and cause a huge scene in the store.
On Monday she got my finger trapped in the closet door.
Yesterday, she gave me indigestion ( if you know what I mean) from smelly alcohol-filled cheese dip at SIP.
Well, enough is enough.
Lil JINX get away from me!!!
GO HOME!!

Christmas, New Year's, My Birthday! Oh My!

Sometimes, I wish time would stand still; or better yet: REWIND! I am not ready for today to be December 6th!
That means only 15 more sleeps until Christmas! That means only 20 more sleeps until New Year's Eve! That means only 26 more sleeps until my birthday ( cue death march here)

****Note: please do not render this rare inclusion of numbers as an invitation to remark on my lack of mathematical skils. I'm makinga point, here!

Where did November go?
Where did time to pack and move go?
Where did time to say Bye to all my Vancouver peeps, go?

So promise to still love me even if it seems like I've dropped off the face of the Earth for a while. I promise, I love you long time!

Things that go Bump in the Night

I'm not usually a scaredy cat. Usually I like having the place to myself. But sometimes. Sometimes, like right now when I should be sleeping in until a glorious 11 am or noon, sometimes, tiny noises wake me up with a start and automatically make my heart start racing and tears spring to my eyes.

Lately, I have been super paranoid that someone is going to steal my TV. Maybe it's because the TV is the only thing that is really mine in the living room. This week alone, I have run out to the living room three times in the middle of the night with cell phone in hand ready to dial 911 to keep cracked-out theives from stealing my prized possesion. There really is no logic to my logic in teh middle of the night.

At least today I managed to get like 4 hours sleep. At least I have refrained from phoning any of my friends crying hysterically about how the winds and the sounds of the rain and the noisy way the people upstairs walk can be misconstrued as a burgular.

Hey You! Stop picking on me!

Ever feel like the world is against you? Sure you have. We all have. But for me it's true! I Swear. Prospective bosses have told me I am unprofessional; unsuitable; unable; underqualified; unimaginative; undereducated, un-human basically. I hate it! Stop being so MEAN! I am a nice girl. Can't NICE thing happen to me? If I don't have the job, fine. So be it. But at least, at least leave me with my dignity. Don't "harsh on my mellow when i'm already on my way down, dude" as Dexter Reed said so eloquently in the classic flick, Good Burger.
I already have bruises from my fall from grace, please don't kick me anymore!
And while I'm at it, hello random walkers with umbrellas; Don't go under the awning and make me walk in the rain when I don't even have a hood on. That's MEAN!
And don't bump my bag so hard that it falls off my shoulder and I stumble. I have a big bag, yes. I know. But you have two eyes with which you, as an able-bodied human being, should be able to gage how much space is needed to walk by me and my bag without touching me. Don't Touch me! And if you do, Say Sorry!
And if I know you, Be Nice to Me. I am sick. And sensitive. Think about me. Love me. I love you. I promise. As long as you Stop being so Mean!

The End is Nigh

Finally! After almost two full weeks of gagging on 12 gargatuan pills a day. It's almost over. I am officially only 12 huge pills away from the end. I have ALMOST completed my Wild Rose Cleanse. And it was really not as hard as I thought. Although I did slip on the weekend, ( damn you Smartpop PopCorn!) and maybe had a little too much from the protein column due to my addiction to coffee ( yeah, go figure! Wild Rose counts coffee in the protein column) I think I did pretty good. I lost some weight. I don't feel as sleepy as usual. My skin is a bit less splotchy. And most importantly, I've learned some very important lessons:

1) My Body is a temple.

2) Eating is not an activity. It should be boring and take a long time to make for it to be really healthy.

3) Peanut butter is not a good alternative to potatoe chips.

4) Chicken caesar salad is not a real salad.

5) Vegetables go rotten if you don't eat them.

6) If something says "No drinking alcohol," they probably also mean no smoking and no taking drugs also.

7) When you have eaten so many carrots that your fingers smell like soap and your computer screen has an orange ting to it, it's time to switch to cucumbers.

8) When all you've talked about for the lat 12 days is what you've eaten and your many and varied bowel movements, it's time for the cleanse to be OVER!

Winds of Change

I've felt it inside of me, rumbling for the last three months or so. I felt it before, too. It's just become a part of life. That rush, that urge, the impulse to fuck everything and everyone. But then it passes. Then my Capricorn-ness comes back. I have become far too practical. But I still make bad decisions. Come on, that's part of what makes me preety. But in my old age, these changes are few and far between. I don't like hassle. I don't like conflict. Well, at least not anymore. But, i also don't like the thought of waking up one morning and going: "Oh shit, I am 30 years old and I haven't done shit." So hassle, heartache, regret and (even more) self-doubt: Here I come!

EDGY

Guess what is the number one, that's right, I said NUMBER ONE, Google ( not MSN, tee hee) result when you search for tres edgy.....

Go ahead, guess:

Your favourite!

I just want to thank my mom and dad, my sister, my fourth grade teacher Mr. Tomlinson.......

woot! Woot! Google says I am tres EDGY!!!!!

No Sugar and no Caffeine make Preety something something

No Sugar and no caffeine make Preety something something.

No Sugar and no caffeine make Preety something something.

No Sugar and no caffeine make Preety something something.

No Sugar and no caffeine make Preety something something.

go crazy?

Don't mind if I Do!!!


Note to self: it is not the best idea to start a no sugar and no caffeine cleanse when you are cold and sleepy. Decaf coffee tastes like poop. Sugar-free granola bars taste like poop. Feeling sleepy all day tastes like poop.

This cleanse is making me pre-occupied with poop.

The Lost Art of Storytelling

I used to be one of them, you know. I was the life of the party. The go-to story-teller. Everyone gathered around, laughing, intently hanging on to my every word. Reliving life’s most amusing moments in a colourful anecdote that people remembered for years to come. People were always saying Tell Janice that story about the time you met Snow! Let’s hear the one about when you got stranded at the Chinese cemetery on Halloween Night! Tell that one about how you got hit with ricocheted bird poop at the Hippie Market again! That was my thing; my niche. I am an English Major for gosh sakes! I DO consider myself an Authoress. I am looking for a profession that allows me to tell stories for a living. But for the life of me, I can’t remember how.

I’m not sure why, how or when. But I’ve lost my mojo. It’s vanished quicker than a line of coke at the casa de Lohan. My stories have gone from producing howling hysterics to plodding, blubbering and the occasional awkwardly-long “Huh?” Remember that time I had that S & M twin? No? Well, yeah I had this twin and she was always wearing leather and people always mistook me for her. Great story huh? You know what this reminds me of? You know what this is totally like? Remember that episode of Family Guy where the baby was like being mean of something and then something totally random happened? Uh… yeah…..

I don’t know how to get it back. Mojo, Mojo where art thou, Mojo? Blame it on drugs. Blame it on my self-imposed isolation. But the real culprit is harder to shake than any of those vices. The real culprit behind by social stigmatism, my verbal retardation, I believe is my job.

S4L has done this to me. S4L has punctured my socializing and replaced my storytelling with the re-hashing of celebrity blogger news and images of New York indie kids being edgy. Here’s the thing about S4L. I don’t speak. Ever. I mean I say, “hey” “how’s it going?” “Good,” and “I’m going for lunch” a few times a day; but beyond that, it’s just me, my computer, my music and my Internet.

Slowly the repetition of keyboard strokes; the humming of my monitor and the buzzing of the florescent lights have captured my soul. The humdrum-osity of my office environment has captured my soul and that part of my brain that made me interesting; that made me an interesting and vivid storyteller. They stole that part of me so that I would be forever chained to this dungeon. Mute and dumb to the array of possibilities the world is offering me.

Well no more! I have been a social midget too long. It’s time to grow tall! Take back my personality! Take back my conversation skills! Take back my life!

Merci Montreal; Vous m'avez tres tres EDGY...

Oh Montreal. You have won me over. Seriously you cocky Quebecois with your self-assured, shoe-gazing style and effeminate posturing. That's edgy. I love it. I love it even though everytime I tell you that I am from Vanocuver you spend the next 20 minutes trying to tell me why Montreal is sooo much better than Vancouver. (Yes, It's true Adri, I told them I was FROM Vancouver, my sister even said i could!)

The trip was awesome! Awesome despite a few roadblocks including being charged $230 to spend like 40 minutes in a hostel that was basically this weird hippie chicks' house; in a room with a mattress on the floor; no sheets and a comforter that smelled like puke! SO being the divas that we are we high-tailed it outta there and cabbed it to the Holiday Inn. YOu know how we do:)

The next day we went to H&M and it was everything I'd ever imagined. And there were having a sale and there was their fall and summer stuff there. It was sooo awesome. i was in heaven. I think we spent at least 3 hours there. That night we went to this circus called Ola Kala and this one guy bailed like 6 times right in front of us. There was an opera singer and a wind tunnel and everyone was sitting on these recliners. It was very European......

The next day we went to teh big gay festival and met some gay olympians and had random dudes teaching how to dance like'sexy' gay guys and try to hit on us and chilled out to House music and watched a crazy drag show with an Edwards Scissorhands-esque Marilyn Manson drag queen doing Sweet Dream and a big black and fabulous drag queen stripping down everything and writhing on teh floor after her top accidently started falling off!

We did a lot of touristy things like we went to the Biodome and saw the cutest penguins and we went to the Museum of Contemporary Art and saw these cool exhibits about the evolution of teh music video and some Brian Jungen sneaker Native Masks.. SO cool. We took a morning boat ride along the St. Lawrence River and wandered through Old Montreal, Little Italy, The Village, the Latin Quarter; St. Laurent Boulevard... Did I mention my feet hurt?

All in all it was soo fun. I didn't get into TOOO much trouble; my sister and I didn't get on each nerves too much we didn't put ourselves into too much debt. And this trip really re-opened my love for vacations. Everyone should take vacations. All the time! screw working!


A building in Old Montreal. I could whip out my guidebook and telll you which one it is but I won't just look at it and saw it's old andf pretty....
these penguins look so fake, right? well theya re not! Stuffed penguins and reall penguins look surprising similar! but stilll soooo cute:)

The Biodome as seen from a yacht on teh St. Lawrence River. Okay , okay probably not a yacht. maybe it was more of a boat. But definetly closer to a yacht than a dingy!
Did I mention that everyone loves teh Gays in Montreal? They do. They even but huge medals on their banks for teh Gays. I even let some people think I was a lesbian to just fit in with teh gays!! How's that for a ROLE REVERSAL???
Me and my sister are such bad-ass hommies. Especially my sister. She's right out of East L.A. Look at her pipes!!!
Oh Mon dieu! Ou es la magasin H&M si vous plait? Merci, Merci . Mais, Nous n'avons pas d'argent maintenant!!!!

Au revoir Vancouver, Bonjour Montreal!!!!

Au revoir mes amis..... J'ai aller etre EDGY. Vous entendez nous avons tres chic. oui. oui. oui.

Je t'aime entendu heures!!!
Bye!!! See y'all in a week:)

The Randomness

Today I coulda died,ya know. Coulda died for my love of music, for my need for noise, for my lazyiness, for my inability to keep my mixed CDs from getting totally scratched. It's true. I had a flash. A flash like how people who hve a near-death experience talk about having a flash of their whole life run before them in fast-forward. Kinda. My flash was not my life. It was a memory. A memory that I share with many, of a young girl named Alice whose life was taken too early in the epic conclusion of Christopher Pike's Final Friends. Okay so maybe my near-death experience was not totally similiar to the fate of dear Alice. If memory serves correct, Alice was in the bath and kind of drunk and depressed when her boyfriend (?) came in and threw a toaster or a curling iron in the tub and she was electrocuted and died. I was in the bath as well. I too, was a little out of it having been jolted out of bed by the agonizing screams of Italian soccer fans who were cursing the French for drawing first blood and just being generally disoriented from my cold medicine and unrestful sleep. But no questionable boyfriend came and shocked me. I did it all by myself. See it all goes back to a lack of dollar-store AAA batteries to put inour shaower radio. Since that's not working, we have to use our little portable stereo which has a CD player on it. So I decided to listen to a CD, my Taking back Sunday mix because I had a weird dreamlast night where the singer Adam was in my bathroom and wouldn't comeout until I made him perfect samosas from scratch. However, my taking Back Sunday mix Cd is totally scratched so I had to move the CD player so then it woul start to skip, I would be able to skip the offending song. So I moved it to on top of the toliet and the cord was stretched across the bathroom. It was fine until I got out of the bath and my hair was dripping on the cord right where it enters the stereo and I was also standing on teh bathmat so I got this weird shock and kinda saw a spark. It was weird. But I am alive and, although I am still hacking and maybe have a fever, I will say well.

I have no idea what the point of this entry was. I guess I just really wanted to mention that I loved Christopher Pike and that his Final Friends books are what inspired me to be a writer. I know, I know, I should have something more lofty to say, like the first time I read Dostevesky, I knew I was meant to write, or the first time I read Shakespeare or something very high-brow, but ya know how we do. I keeps it reals.