your beauty must be rubbing off.

Crawling Out of My Blogging Coma

Comas can last anywhere from days, to weeks, to months and sometimes even years. Lucky for you smitten kittens, mine only lasted three weeks. After an excessive amount of the un-bloggable happening in the 416 over the past little while, I figured it was time today to crawl out of my coma just in time for my holy return to the 204. Warn the Venetian Snares & Burton Cummings, my weekend is filling up quickly. It will be a refreshing change to get back to my friends in Winnipeg who are more Birkenstock than brunch. 

Recovery from a coma, if you ever come out of it, is gradual. Be it brain damage or heart damage, sometimes the surgery doesn't work the wonders we wish it would. Growing up, we learn that a happy ending isn't always inevitable and sometimes you just have to pull the plug. Whether you're grieving the death of a loved one, or the death of a certain love, there is no standard way to treat the pain. No miracle cure, no miracle pill, and there's often nothing you can say or do to make it better. The New Death Etiquette is actually, well, no etiquette at all. We're all grieving someone, something, somewhere and we all recover in our own way. In our own time. Just because things worked out better for Person A rather than Person B in the end doesn't necessarily mean all the hurt and pain caused is forgiven or forgotten.

After a rather hellish couple months on the home front, the seas are finally calm in the city leaving me free & happy to visit my boyfriend in Halifax next weekend. I love a good seat sale, and my Haligonian mother will be just as happy to see me. Between the Titanic Graveyard with the Simple Ontario Boy & my grandmother's gravesite with Mama Wilton, I've got alot to do in four days in Halifax & Hubbards and I simply can't wait. With mid-terms & break-ups in my hindsight, I've certainly been in no vegetative state recently. "Doctors" say I've made a miraculous recovery from the drama I've nonethless undergone the past few months and they say there's no better way to recover than get outside and breathe the fresh salt-soaked ocean air. 

And I didn't even need a lollipop at the end of it all.

a young man with an eye, and friends up a tree.

Please allow me to introduce to you my new could-be-to-be roommate starting, well, sometime in April until... Well. Who the hell knows. He's can be as unpredictable as they come and his Coca-Cola addiction rivals any coke addiction on Intervention. 

Ladies & Gentleman, Richard Bars!

easy money (the good times are killing me).

Under the Boardwalk, We'll be Havin' Some Fun

If you can't find me at Ella's Uncle with a coffee, my living room with a bottle of whiskey, or, well, anywhere with a bottle of wine, you'll soon be able to find me on Beatrice Street exclusively playing board games with Laura-Louise. Monopoly will now be monopolizing most of my time. You can't take Pennsylvania, Baltic, or Virginia Avenue to get to our own little private Park Place, but you'll probably be able to find us by the pungent smell of cigarette smoke & cointreau breath from floating all the way down Dundas West. 

Under the boardwalk, down by the sea. On a blanket with my baby is where I will be.

luck let a gentleman see (just how nice a dame you can be).

Luck Be a Lady Tonight

Although I've been a little down on my luck the past few weeks, be it with my job or the gentlemen in my life, I was a very lucky lady to be treated to dinner at Oddfellow's the other night. I'd been looking forward to dinner there for months, read review after review (and eschewed the bad ones from my memory), and looked in with jealousy every time I passed the corner of Queen & Shaw on my way to some other Toronto institution.

As Now & Eye Weekly have both reported, the food wasn't perfect. My photog friend & I had been looking forward to the lamb-stew-for-two all week and it didn't exactly live up to my expectations. The ambience, however, was a perfect 10. The bring-your-own-bottle policy allowed me to pick up a nice Chianti Ruffino at the local liquor shoppe, and lucky for me, he picked up the check for everything else. 

Although our quasi-pseudo-non-relationship-friendship status to me is sometimes more controversial than Frank Sinatra's switch from the Democratic to the Republican party, I had the most fun I'd had in, well, days, but the company was just lovely. And, having dinner out instead of in my apartment as usual gave me an excuse to wear my new (amazing! life-changing! head-turning!) black vintage dress, and make whiskey sours (my new specialty) for my old friend. 

One day, we may reunite as lovers-or-whatever; a revival more epic than that of Sinatra, Davis & Martin's in '87 (You know, the 'Together Again' tour?), but for now I am oh-so-happy that I have such a good friend in the city. A man who doesn't mind when I eye-ball other men down Oddfellows' famed communal table, or drool over my dream woman, Pamelia Kurstin, on YouTube because, to be honest, most of the time he's right there droolin' over her next to me. 

It's his MacBook Pro we're watching all those YouTube videos on.

this modern love.

Staying Healthy in a Sick Economy

I'm sick. Really, really not feeling well. I've found that whenever I get the slightest bit depressed these days, my immune system totally & completely shuts down. 

I like to do really nice things for my friends when I'm sick. I always make 'care packages' for boyfriends/lovers/gentleman friends when they're sick, and I usually buy (or pick, depending on the season) flowers for ladyfriends. You know, make homemade soup. Buy magazines or the newspaper, depending on the person. 

Today I was feeling just awful, physically and mentally. I'd sort of lost some of my faith in humanity recently, or, you know.. most of my faith. I ran out of episodes of Law & Order on my PVR. I was too exhausted and sickly to make my own chicken stock to make soup, and even if I wasn't, the idea of food really disgusted me. All I wanted was someone to care, or pretend to care, and that didn't seem to be happening anytime soon. I actually changed out of my pretty lacy nightgown this afternoon into sweatpants and anyone that really knows me knows that's a sign that I truly couldn't give a shit/am actually ill. With one of my best friends in Victoria, BC and the other in good ol' Winnipeg, MB I surely was not (..could not be) expecting any VIP treatment. No one to bring make me tea, feed me soup and orange juice, or watch bad TV with me.

...Until a good friend of mine showed up at my door around six pm. With coffee. And flowers. He may not have stuck around (thank god, I'd like to forget that anyone saw me in sweatpants... let alone someone I've slept with), but I don't remember the time someone bought me flowers. I don't even own a vase (see photo above for my alternative). My faith was renewed. I had a smile on my face. I changed out of my sweatpants. I drank my (free) coffee.

Life is okay after all.

anything you want (not that).

Thanks to a new haircut, a love note in my inbox, and some insightful advice that really has put things into perspective... I'm now temporarily sitting at a 7.3 in terms of mood. Actually, I'm enjoying a scone & a coffee at Ella's Uncle, so I'm more like at a 9.5. Although, I'm sure as soon as I step foot back out in the snow and back into my apartment that is in absolute desperate need of a tidy-slash-overhaul, I'll ignore the dishes and wine stains on the hardwood and crawl right back into bed.

I'm feeling pretty positively about my bob. I have Jesse at the Grateful Head to thank for that.

And thank you to Richard for the kind-hearted note this morning, If you weren't gay, or in Winnipeg, I'd kiss you right on the lips.

**EDIT: I'm still under a five. The 9.5 was an illusion after three large coffees and a goat cheese scone. I feel awful and horrible, but I still feel great about my short hair.

holding on to that teenage feeling.

The Russian Judge says...




Today I feel approximately like a 2.4. Partly because of a hangover, and partly because I was hung out to dry, I'm trying to muster up the energy and luster to tell myself "It'll all be okay"!

It will all be okay, for I am one resilient spring chicken that will bounce back. And with a great new haircut, at that.

Fuck me, I have to be miserable sometime.

Soon, I'm going to get over myself & walk in the boots with the holes in them over to Loverboy's with a tupperware container full of chicken noodle, with new broth that I fashioned myself in half an hour with and isn't awful.

I'm a good cook. My hair is nice. I'm a good girlfriend. I'm a good non-girlfriend. I use unbleached paper towel. I don't have a soul; I am a soul, I have a body. I'm pretty thoughtful at times. I appreciate when my friends do nice things for one another. I tell girls when I like their dresses and it makes them happy. I don't like kareoke, but I appreciate that others do AND THAT'S OKAY. I'm a good person. My job is lucky to have me and I am lucky to have them.

It's all gonna be okay!

born to live with heartache.

May I present to you ladies & gentleman of the world wide internet, my lifeblood & reason for living; Katie Kidder. Girl inspires more heartfelt love songs than anyone I know. She also enjoys Law & Order:SVU almost as much as I do. What a catch.

girl in trouble.

I want this all the time, it's just too bad that the glasses in this picture aren't full; be it of champagne (as shown here) or the Wine Rack's finest red (or the bottle furthest from the finest).

Tuesday brought an interesting twist into my life which prompted a heavy bout of enjoyable early evening drinking on Wednesday... Thursday... Friday. I've slowly graduated from boxed wine to bottles, and the company has been different, albeit enjoyable, every evening and there's no point in stopping now. My hostel is back open for business and I have an enjoyable young New Zealander-soon-cum-Winnipegger crashing on my couch tonight. Being a sort-of-pseudo newly-single-ish girl in the big city has not proven to be as awful as I originally predicted, but only because I've had friends to keep my feet (and heart) warm at all times.

At least I have for the past three days.

And hey, at least if I run out of friends, I'll always have the cute lesbian at the friendly neighborhood coffee shoppe. God knows even if I didn't really want this break to happen in our sort-of-pseudo-friendship-cum-relationship, my cell phone's text messaging bill could sure use it.

what's wrong with groovin'.

Text Message of the Night:



"Try N to sleep. Can u keep the screaming to min thx."
-Miranda, Your Friendly Neighborhood Mostly-Lesbian Downstairs Neighbor 11:44pm

And no, I don't care to explain, because nothing (or plenty) good can come of it. It's just funnier sans explanation.

where is the sun?

Even in times of sorrow, my new & improved internet obsession already makes me feel better about myself.

Via Twitter, I came home to this tonight:



"aggiepanda @karmaelektra omg im so glad youre here. <3
about 5 hours ago from web in reply to karmaelektra"

Thank you, Aggie. You are almost as bejeweled as Aretha Franklin's hat.

oh, you delicate heart.

wondering where the lions are says: (4:44:03 PM)
i think it's hilarious. especially since the 'search for people' option is down so i'm just twittering to myself.
heather says: (4:44:59 PM)
BAHAHAHAHHAA

Give me a break, I gotta do SOMETHING with my afternoon besides switching back & forth between The American President & The First Wives Club.

kissing girls (you shouldn't kiss).

I didn't think I missed Winnipeg all that much before I went home for four days between Christmas & New Year's Eve. So much Winnipeg has been sleeping on my couch that I felt like I was getting alot of the good and none of the bad- all I needed was a king can and a parka, and nothing really would've changed. In Toronto, I still go to potlucks, I still drink more hard liquor than a girl of any stature should be drinking (especially on weeknights), and I was still being mostly innapropriate but in different ways than before. Several friends were shocked when they'd heard that I was being mostly monogamous. I never thought I was thaaat bad, but I guess I was.

I was wrong when I thought I didn't miss Winnipeg. As soon as my size six feet stepped foot on what I believe's gotta be the only place with permafrost South of the soil of the North West Territories, I knew I was in for a real treat. I knew that it was going to be a welcomed vacation from.. well, a two month vacation.



It was. Shown here, Maddy (and I) were Queens for a Day when a dinner was thrown in our honor at the Hector home of six (soon to be seven) of Winnipeg's kindest boys. Not one of our most planned out potlucks, this thrown-together fete was celebrating great cause for celebration- the return of two pretty great girls from their new pretty great lives now elsewhere. Also, Tom's hair is looking great these days, and that's definitely another cause for celebration.



Stefan, beauty shown above, was a daily thing for me in Winnipeg. Mostly by accident, seeing Stefan always reminds me of summer. Camping? Probably. I don't know when the last time he had a shower was (I'm guessing it was before Burning Man 2008), but I think that's fabulous.. You know, for him.

There are a couple things I really missed about Toronto, though, that really made it worth coming back home. It didn't hurt that I brought a little Winnipeg back with me in the form of Kate Kidder & Jane Harrington. But I did miss a couple things liiiiiiiiiiike....



Coffee the morning-after-the-night-before at Ella's Uncle down the street (and breakfast at various hip-hot-spots across the way).



Spending the night before with new friends. I spent New Year's at a gallery space by the guy who's famous for throwing up on famous paintings with Laura-Louise & Alicia. I spent Christmas Day doing some throwing up of my own after a party thrown by the aforementioned. I've seen Russ Martin a couple times too, who (and whose hair) just gets better every time we see eachother.

Oh yeah...



Him too.

Seperated for seven days felt more like seventeen after spending much of the month of December with my new photog friend. Distance is good, though, I've since decided. He's good from both near and far, and the free camera lessons don't hurt either.

Kidding, sort of...

winnipeg is a boiling pot of cranberries.

My hair may look unwashed & untousled in this picture, and I may be hiding the food in my mouth with my hand instead of a big giant smile, but I must say that my first trip back to Winnipeg was a successful one. The first day back really set the tone for the trip; breakfast at the nook with some ladyfriends, my brother, and his ladyfriend followed by a bottle of B&B in Richardson park while sprawled out on a picnic-quilt, followed by mid-afternoon homemade wine & a gigantic joint at the 70's mixing bowl coloured apartment of some dear friends. Typical Winnipeg.




Luckily I escaped all my family's neuroses and craziness on Real Christmas by staying put in Toronto and celebrating with some newfound friends instead. I discovered that Santa really isn't real because all of my presents seemed to have appeared under my mom's tree in Winnipeg. That, or he got confused and thought I still lived there because I still have a Manitoba Driver's License. Santa, or mom & pop, really spoiled a girl this year. My suitcase is coming back much heavier and not just because of all the Value Village finds and Winnipeg beer I'm carting back for friends (....myself). Shout out to my dad for the new MacBook, my mom for the my wallet full of heavy cash, and my brother for the beautiful coffee table book on Polaroids. You guys rule.



And a clear & loud shout out to all the friends that called me, surprised me, made time for me, bought me drinks, gave me kisses, complimented my hair, had breakfast with me, and generally celebrated my first return home to the city. I forgot that I missed you so much. I don't think I'll be pulling a Homer Simpson & coming back to Winnipeg anytime soon, so it was good to see all of you. Much love. I'll be listening to the Venetian Snare's concept album about my hometown on repeat for the next few days, but maybe skipping over track #5, "Die Winnipeg Die Die Die Fuckers Die". I can't have nobody talkin' shit about my boyfriend.

one great city.

Typical Winnipeg.



The apartment was too hot to wear all of our clothes, but not hot enough for Stefan to take his long-johns off.