Your Saturday was way Lamer than Mine

Have you ever been to The Communist’s Daughter?

It’s a tiny bar in Toronto, near Dundas and Ossington.  There’s not much to be said about the place; I mean it has a lovely atmosphere, and the prices are reasonable, but there isn’t a lot that stands out about it.  It’s small, and often full of attractive hipsters.  That’s it.

Except for this past Saturday.  What the fuck?!?

I went with a friend, and we had only been there for a few minutes when all of a sudden three young men (one of them might have been a lesbian, truth be told) stood up and started singing something Eastern European.

And once they were finished, one of them pulled out a xylophone and plunked it on the counter.  I have no idea where he was storing this instrument, but someone else found a mandolin, another guy pulled out an accordion and some other dude whipped out his marching band drum.

And of course they started playing a bunch of rowdy gypsy punk.

It was fucking surreal.  And then some other guy started barfing along to the music.  Every time he barfed, the bartender would come out with a mop and bucket and clean up the vomit, but then as soon as the bartender was finished, the guy would barf again.  Over and over, this endless puking and cleaning.

It was ridiculous, and obviously the band played on through.

So fucking awesome.

Bach to the Future

Last night, I had a really magical dream about a song.

Well, the dream itself wasn’t exactly magical; I was with a friend, and we were trying to get on the College streetcar, but they refused to stop for us, so my friend decided to whip up some roast beef with horseradish, right there on the sidewalk.  I guess it was supposed to be an act of protest against the TTC, I don’t know, you can do a lot of things with roast beef.

But anyway, as my friend was cooking the roast beef, he started playing this beautiful song from his stereo, which was not only with us at the streetcar stop, but also plugged in to an electric outlet.

And the song was glorious.

When I woke up, and still kept the melody in my memory (usually my beautiful song dreams disintegrate as soon as I wake), I wished I’d had a musical instrument so that I could keep the song around a bit longer.  But, as it turns out, I don’t have to get an instrument, because someone already recorded my song for me.

Granny Envy

There are duelling perspectives at play inside my mind and body these days.

All of my life I’ve had issues with fat and the accumulation thereof upon my frame.  This has led to many years of self-criticism, a panic induced 20-Minute Workout session at the age of five, a mild bout of anorexia in grade nine, and a yo-yoing body size throughout my twenties.

I’ve been relatively happy with my size for the past three years.  Having dropped some weight after the demise of my last serious relationship, I was able to maintain a size that I hadn’t seen since high school, and it pleased me greatly.  I thought that was the end of my weight obsession.

But then I quit smoking five months ago.

Just the act of quitting smoking slows down a person’s metabolism, causing them to gain weight.  I knew this when I quit, so I took the necessary/possibly excessive measures to combat weight gain.  I started working out three or four times a week for 30-45 minutes a pop, and I started walking to work, as well.  Four more 45 minute walks in a week.

Made little difference, I still gained five pounds, went up one clothing size, and am now a Large instead of a Medium.  My muffin top has become a spare tire, I bounce when I walk fast, and I now understand the definition of ’saddlebags.’

However, I now sport a fantastic ass (something I had lost in that break up three years ago), some killer curves, a sunny white smile, and softened features.  And whenever I leave the house unescorted, I get harassed by men, more often than before (I counted).

So it could be argued that I am now even cuter than ever before, weight gain notwithstanding.  I still try to lose those five pounds, and continue to exercise like crazy, out of fear of more weight gain.  But sometimes, I just like to imagine letting go and eating whatever I want, whenever I want.  I’d billow out like a gigantic meat balloon, and I’d spend my days making quilts, baking sweet treats and watching daytime television.

Just the Tiniest Nudge

I’m going back to school today.

Again.

I wish I weren’t so hungover, maybe then I’d actually be looking forward to starting a new course.  All I want to do with my day  is eat refined carbs and masturbate furiously.

Gotta psych myself up; yay pockets and linings!

Ugh, how wrong is it to blow off the first day?

Old Men

It’s funny how some men will slip through my life with little notice, while others get stuck in my subconscious and hold fast, sometimes for years.  Years!!

I’ve been involved with a lot of men; I am familiar with how they function, and I like it.  I like to talk to them, and touch them and fuck them and kiss them and stare at their asses, and rub their hairy bellies while wishing for more wishes.

However, there are very few men who have had any sort of lasting emotional impact in my life.  Most of them just pass on through, like hobos riding the rails.  Roughly twenty percent of the men with whom I’ve been involved were able to catch my emotional attention.  Of those twenty percent, only half have ended favourably, with regular post-contact contact.  The others torture me in reconciliation dreams.

Fuckers.

What am I supposed to do with this?  How do I make these stupid dreams stop?  They’re embarrassing, for one thing; and they never end the way they did in real life – with me walking the hell away.

Stupid messy men, get out of my head and stop making me feel sad when I wake up.

I Did, However, Burn a Pan of Cookies While Writing This

As a self taught artist, there’s a strange occurrence that I experience once in awhile.  I’m not sure if this is something that happens to all artists, or to all self taught artists, or simply to lucky old me.  And I don’t really care either, but I have a feeling it’s pretty rare.

I will spend a large period of time not producing anything, just sitting on my ass watching Little House on the Prairie and gorging myself on home made cookies.

Status quo, right?

This will go on for months, sometimes even a year or longer.

And then I will take this unprecedented evolutionary leap and will suddenly be able to teach myself a new and complicated procedure all in one day.

Today I made a jacket with an asymmetrical zipper closure, a mandarin collar and little round pockets.

Guess how long it took to photoshop the background?

And this picture has a fancy border, isn't that delightful?

I couldn’t do that yesterday.

Banana Bread, Bastardized

I made a banana bread yesterday, and I fucked it up.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s still delicious, I just made a few ridiculous mistakes that I will pass along to you with the hopes that you (and I) will learn from them.

Here’s the original recipe, from ‘Eating Light and Loving it!  Simple Recipes for Good Health’:

1 1/4 cup flour

1tsp baking soda

1/2tsp baking powder

1 cup sugar

1/4 cup oil

1/4 cup fat free yogurt

1tsp vanilla

1 egg

2 egg whites

2 ripe bananas, mashed

You mix up the first three ingredients and set them aside.  In a separate bowl, you mix up the oil, yogurt, egg, egg whites, vanilla and sugar.  Beat well.  Stir in the bananas and mix well.Pour batter into greased 9″x5″ loaf pan and bake at 350C for an hour.

What I did differently, was:

1)I substituted 1/4 cup applesauce for the oil because I really wanted to see what the taste difference would be using applesauce as the “fat.”

2)But then I poured out too much applesauce, so I only used about 2 tbsp of the yogurt to make up for my folly.

3)Also, the yogurt wasn’t fat free, it was 1% and peach flavour, which wasn’t obvious in the end product.

4)I used 1 generous cup of packed brown sugar instead of white.

5)And I added in three handfuls of chocolate chips.

The problem in my adaptation of the recipe did not lie in these alterations, but rather in the fact that I used four bananas instead of two, and I did not allow these bananas to thaw out properly from their time in the freezer.  So the bananas chilled the rest of the batter, and made the cooking time a lot longer.

I ended up baking the bread for an hour and twenty minutes, which both darkened and toughened the loaf.  Fortunately, the addition of the chocolate and extra banana battled the dryness, making the loaf an accidental delight.

notice the sad, empty cookie jars in the background

Quilting

And these are the quilts that I completed last month:

This Pain

I asked my friend for a cigarette last night.

She said no – that’s what friends do after all – but not smoking does not cancel out the attempt.

It was a bad fucking night.  My romantic failures were holding me hostage (they’ve been doing that a lot lately; it’s this one area of my life that needs improving but is completely out of my control – I can’t force a quality man to appear and date me.  Fuck, I can’t even force a crappy man to appear and date me.  Christ, I don’t need to travel back down this road again, it’s where my thoughts keep heading, and it only makes me want to punch and cry).  Of course, running into the last man I’d dated (one who dumped me like a sack of potatoes) did nothing for my already volatile perspective, and was probably the reason for the cigarette request in the first place.

I just don’t know what to do with myself any more.

Sweet Candy Heat Wave

For the past week or so, we in Toronto have been suffering through a very seasonable heat wave.

It’s like living in a giant armpit.  And I can’t do anything that I normally do in my alone time (bake, move my body), so I’ve been coming up with other pastimes.

For example, I bought a candy cook book recently and have been trying out some of the recipes.  Unlike cookies, candy does not require any baking, only stove top cooking.  And it stays nice and fresh in the fridge.

This is the old fashioned fudge I made last week:

cooking in the pot

end product, with peanut butter marbling, which you can't see

Also, I tried out a recipe for something called toffee crunch, which is basically a gigantic (13″x9″) Skor chocolate bar.

I have no pictures for that.