Halloween Goods

I ordered my Halloween costume last night. And like about 89.4% of young women out there, I chose something sexy. Why? Because I suppose I like to indulge that side of myself once a year. Most of the time I dress very modestly. I sometimes channel my inner sexy secretary-- who is also very covered up. Floofy skirts make me happy and I don't have cleavage. Those two things create a bit of a look.

I do wear the odd short dress or skirt to show off ye olde legs, which I do think are quite nice, but then invariably I have to get on the TTC, which means very little between me and the seat when I sit down. I don't care for that.

The costume in question is a bee. It's not scary, it's not original, but I'm hoping I'll look as cute as a bug in a rug, pardon the pun. Past years of adulthood have included a nurse and Rainbow Brite. I think I was a cat once, but I can't remember.

I was definitely a cat when I was still in school. I was also a vampire, Cleopatra, an angel, a princess, a fairy princess (I was economical that year, to my mom's relief, and merged the princess and angel wings together), a French maid (this was in grade one and the dress hit me mid-calve), a cheap doll (using various things from around the house. Most people didn't get it), an '80s girl (older people thought that look was still contemporary and didn't want to give me candy), a pilot (a friend and I wore her dad's old pilot uniforms, which were waaaaay too big and tromped around the neighbourhood), and when I was wee, I was a clown and then a witch.

Last year the Dude and I carved a pumpkin and he took photos of it. Before him, I think I let Halloween slide a lot. This year we're going to McPal's Halloween/birthday party. I've fallen in love with the holiday all over again. It makes me feel like a kid, only a big kid who's going to show off the goods.

Somehow, though, this will look only cute on me and not sexy.

I have a way of doing that.

Monty Python in real life

I'm off today, which is out of the norm for a Saturday. Normally I'd still be in my robe, sitting at my cramped desk, sipping cold tea and plugging away at some assignment. Not today. It's like a real proper weekend, the likes of which I've rarely seen since 2004.

So how does one spend a Saturday? A child would get up at the buttcrack of dawn and watch cartoons. A teenager would sleep in until 1:00 pm. A college student would nurse their hangover with fried breakfast.

Me? Well, I did have a hangover-- which I will get to later because Sweet Jeebs, was last night something else-- but nurse it I did not, pardon the Yoda talk. The Dude and I decided to go to the markets to purchase ingredients for a new meal he wants to make for our friend who's coming over tonight. And it made me very happy.

We went to a fruit market, a butcher and a bakery/deli. For the first time grocery shopping was fun. All this time I thought I hated it. But no. What I hate is supermarkets. Fiesta Farms was the best grocery store I've ever been to and I miss it, but even when I lived nearby, making myself go was a struggle in maturity ("I should go. *Whine* But I don't want to. But we're out of food... but I can order in! Yeah, I'm not going today. Fuck the grocery store.")

I'm soooo looking forward to tonight's meal.

Now, as to why I'm hungover, last evening I went out for dinner with a friend of mine, one of the men who so wonderfully helped me find my new couch. As he put it last night, we're in each other's top 10 friends (Not on Myspace or anything, just in our heads.)

We had some Thai food at my favourite Thai restaurant downtown and one of his friends joined us. My goodness, was this man a trip and a half. I find it too overwhelming to chronicle the evening, so I'll detail the night in point form:

• When he arrived he insisted he would not buy any food. He'd bicycled 7 km in about 4^oC and said if he saved $10 on a meal, he could give more to his charitable cause.
• My friend, whom I shall refer to as McPal, and I badgered him to eat, to eat at least from our meals, which were served family style. Finally he ordered his own tofu dish, claiming to be a new vegetarian. At which point he discussed our brutal choices of duck and chicken.
• He was the devil's advocate for every conversation topic. When I pointed out to him he was contrary, he said he was not. Then he realized the irony. And then I won a small point of satisfaction.
• He claimed to be a communist. I told him he'd get along with a quirky friend of a friend of mine named Stefan. He then made a Family Matters reference about Steve Urkel's cool machine.
• They asked me to come out for a drink and so I thought why not. We went to a pub and McPal wanted to split a pitcher with his friend. I ordered wine. The friend vetoed all the beers McPal wanted on the basis that he may not like these brands. He was wooed into going for it when it was argued that a pitcher was very economical. He said he was a fan of economics.
• He brought up sexual orientation out of the blue and suggested everyone was inherently bisexual. I said I didn't think so and that if you couldn't bear to put your face near the junk of the same or opposite sex, you were pretty well on one side of the fence. He said it was all conditioning. I then observed he was most likely a bisexual if he really thought all people could go either way. This was on my second glass of wine.
• At various points in the evening he mentioned "females" instead of girls or women. He said in his age group, they were neither one nor the other. He's 24.
• He silly-walked down the street like a Monty Python skit. Being 6'4", it was very John Cleese-esque. He then stopped to stretch against a tree.
  

Truly he was the strangest character I've ever met, and I know some weird-ass people. I liked him, but kind of the way I like egg nog. Really touch and go, that drink, and you have to be in the mood for it. I stayed for the second glass of wine purely out of fascination.

No Hostess with mostess

The Dude and I are throwing a housewarming party. Sort of. It's a small gathering of people in the city who've expressed an interest in seeing the new place. I'm not even sure why I wanted to throw an actual party. I really get a type of performance anxiety about throwing them. Back in the day it would be easy: beer. Pizza. Done. If you're between the ages of 18 to 23, your interests include getting drunk and taking pictures of being drunk. These days it goes one step further of posting it all on the internet. It's crude, but hells bells if they're not easy to please. Beer = fun.

But the youngest person at this party will be 25, 26? The oldest somewhere in the 30s. So I'm pretty sure it needs to be a bit more entertaining.

There will be beer and pizza at the party, but what else? There's going be people who've never met before. The more I think about it, the more I'm wondering how they will all mesh. I'm not too sure why I do this to myself. I'm a low-key kind of person. I don't do concerts, bar hopping, big house parties, etc. A party hostess, I am not. I'm the anti-Mrs. Dalloway (which for the record I just read and I didn't like it. Virginia Woolf, man, WTF.)

Blarghghgh.

Now, I have no idea who reads this puppy. If anyone who does happen to read wants to toss me some suggestions on how to make a housewarming party good, I'll gladly hear it.

The stomach growls, the body shivers

Putting off buying groceries means finding creative ways to eat. The Dude and I haven't gone grocery shopping since we moved... 13 days ago. Yeah. 13.

We've done the old run to the store for a handful of things, ordering in, grabbing takeout, eating snacks, filling up on popcorn at the movies, eating at other people's houses and so on. We need to go today. It's getting ludicrous. It came to a head for me when I went to go make some toast and found the bread was mouldy. So I ate what was left of a bag of BBQ ruffled chips for lunch. I feel like a slug.

I crave vegetables. I've been dreaming about them again, making meals with zucchini and carrots and peppers. Then I wake up and it's a godforsaken tease and I go scrounging in the kitchen for scraps of something, old takeout, forgotten leftovers, something, anything.

This needs to stop. I did this all the time when I was 22. I'd say nuts to groceries, as I was a bad cook and often didn't bother, and I'd just run out and grab a sub, or a pita. Problem solved. Now the thought of doing so depresses me. I want a homemade meal. I've gotten accustomed to eating like a real person. The thought of more pizza makes me feel like retching.

In other off-skilter-tilter type news, the Dude is downstairs talking to the neighbours about the heat. It was 14 degrees in here last night. We share the heat controls and they're about five degrees warmer than us. I hear a pleasant conversation taking place. That's encouraging. Last night we clung to each other and shivered ourselves to sleep. Apartment growing pains, they keep a comin'.

Later

Home again, home again, jiggity jig.
I went to London and ate like a pig.
Now I am back, the cats gave no flack
And the Dude's toothache is big.

Heh.

Yes, the Dude has a toothache. He's soaking in the tub with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, absorbing some codeine and generally feeling miserable. Poor soul.

Our Thanksgiving at his brother's house was nice. They made a large dinner and it was great. I ate a quarter of a Mississippi mud pie. I didn't realize it was a whole quarter because I was drunk on wine.

They have a toddler, and one on the way. The little girl is a sweetpea and the Dude loves her to bits. She was sick and a little grumpy, but a good child all the same. And as I get whenever I've spent time with small children, I question whether or not I want them. I still don't know. But I do know the Dude does. That becomes more and more apparent all the time, particularly after he's hung out with his nieces and nephews.

I still want to go to Italy. I want to write and learn things. I'm not naive. Having a child would put almost everything on hold for years. Especially since I'm a type B sort of lump. I'm not a high-energy person. I'm neither efficient or terribly productive most days. I also don't drive. I'd be a TTC mom.

So the internal dialogue goes on. I'm 27 soon. It's not an urgent question, but no longer one I can wave off until an indeterminable "later". It's funny. My clock started ticking last year, and now it's quiet again. How odd.

Are you afraid of the dark?

Something I've never been able to grow out of is my need to stay up as late as possible, even if it's to my detriment. Getting up at 7:00 am? Going to bed before 1:00 would be a sacrifice, but I could try. After all, I gotta be responsible.

It's about seven minutes to 2:00 am to be exact and I'm still up (not typing in my sleep or anything. Dear me, no.) I have every reason in the world to get some shut eye, and yet here I am. The cats, I can tell, want me to go to bed. They sleep with me at night, and they're both bookending me, getting all in my business.

Here's the thing, though. I'm kinda sorta afraid of the dark and stuff. The Dude is in London (Ontario, not England) with his brother and brother's family. I'm going in the morning, where we'll be doing ye olde Thanksgiving dinner. He went a day early because he could. I've enjoyed having the place to myself to do such wild things as eat leftovers, wash the dishes and read my book. But I'm not looking forward to sleeping alone here for the first time.

I've never been a fan of that, really. As a kid I hated being alone in the dark in my own room. I didn't like it as a teenager, I didn't like it when I lived alone, I didn't like it nights away from whatever boyfriend I had, I didn't like it between boyfriends and I don't much care for it now.

Lucky for me, the Dude only makes these sort of jaunts once in awhile. They're planned in advance and I always know how long I have to suck it up.

You'd think being an adult, I would be able to just get over these silly feelings. It would be so sensible and orderly of me to go to bed at 11:00, and I do love me some sensible and orderly behaviour. I really do.

Well, it's 2:02 am now. I suppose I ought to scoop up Smokey and drag my sorry ass (and his) into bed. Having him there with me will actually be a comfort. No one is alone who has a cat. Or a small dog. Or a larger dog that doesn't hog the bed. Or a parrot that keeps you company during the day, but knows its place and lets you get some sleep. But not fish. They're not much for companionship, not with you. They just don't give a damn.

Goodnight.

Three Years of the Dude

Today marks three years that the Dude and I have been together. Three years. Well, it's kind of been three years, but the important thing is today was the beginning of what would become this whole deal, this whole relationship thingamagiggy. And I had no idea it would become what it has.

I've been a serial monogamist my whole adult life. Every relationship I've had has started out with me going, okay, this is just for fun. This is probably not going to last that long. Something about that particular attitude has resulted in three relatively long-term boyfriends. And none of it ever started out as a date. I've been on dates. I have a couple good bad-date stories. But the significant men who've been in my life have not come to me through traditional means.

And I like that. The Dude and I evolved as a couple very slowly. If you consider that we met in high school, liked each other then, and neither of us said a word about it till six years later, that's slower than grass growing. If you consider that from October 9, 2006, it took over half a year for us to become a committed item, that's pretty damn leisurely.

And here we are, living together in sin and such, for almost two years. See, the living together came on all sudden-like. That part was fast, unexpected, supposedly temporary. But when something works better than what you were doing before, you keep doing it.

In every major relationship you have it's natural to think about the future, mostly, is there one? In the others, there was always some sort of obstacle. There was doubt. There was too much compromise or not a good enough fit.

With the Dude, there's no doubt. It just works. There's no fireworks in my head or parades in my heart or butterflies in my stomach about it either, like what I thought would signal real love when I was a younger lass. No, it's a calm sense of knowing I'm going to grow old with this mofo, he's going to drive me crazy until I die, and I'm going to love him for it.

As I get older I'm defining love in more practical ways. When I was having a meltdown on the phone with Rogers and switched to Bell for 1.56 minutes, the Dude set it up for me while I composed myself. When I was stressed about the move and all the things I had to do, he sent me off to a party to unwind while he painted the new apartment. When we get heated over decorating issues, he concedes because it'll make me happy.

There's also the acceptance. I'm not easy to live with. I can cause offense. I say weird shit. I'm constantly hypocritical about the small things in life. I rant sometimes. I spontaneously quit paying attention and something in my brain slams the door on who I'm trying to talk to. These are all very agitating qualities. And he goes with it, doesn't try and change it, and even sometimes finds it endearing.

That's my kind of love. Sometimes it feels like we're an old couple. We argue like one. And who knew that's what I would need to be happy? But it is, and I am.