GC and I went to the World AIDS Day Gala the other night. We had to buy clothes and get haircuts and everything. I even wore makeup, which was professionally applied by a makeup artist since I don’t know how to do that yet.
I may not be good at dressing up, but I do have some pretty good resources at my disposal.
First thing I did was solicit GC’s help. His job was to accompany me on shopping trips, and tell me what looked good and what didn’t, and to be brutally honest about it.
I emailed my big sister, the one who knows how to dress up. On the whole, my family embraces comfort over style and we tend to like “the natural look” and “windswept hair.” In other words, we are a little unkempt. Except for my big sister, who likes to shop and wear nice things, and even knows how to accessorize. She says things like “Why not get a classic little black dress? You can dress it up or dress it down, depending on the occasion.” (But she doesn’t just say it…she actually knows how to do it.) Sometimes we laugh at her, like the time we went to Florida for a week and she packed nine pairs of shoes, but when there’s a gala on our calendar, she’s the one we call.
We live in different cities, so she had to dress me up from a distance. She talked me through the process and sent me to Bayshore. GC and I shopped, and he gave the first three dresses the brutally honest thumbs down. Then we got lucky and the next two were both good. We had a hard time deciding between them, so we let the salesperson decide. By the time we were done, we had a dress and three accessories.
I sent my sister a picture of the dress, and she said it was gorgeous.
“I wouldn’t wear black hose if I were you,” she wrote. “Get sheer instead.”
“What is hose and where does one buy it?” I wrote back.
“Pantyhose,” she said. “You can get it at the drug store. Be prepared, though – it’s $8 now.”
Ohhhh. Pantyhose. I thought everybody stopped wearing pantyhose in the 70s, but maybe that was just me. My sister says you can get away with bare legs in the summer, but pantyhose is mandatory at this time of year. (I don’t know if that’s an aesthetic thing, or a weather thing.)
I went to the drug store and found the pantyhose aisle. There were racks and racks of it. I figured out the sizing, and then I hunted until I found a sheer in my size. I gave them a twenty dollar bill and got a five and some change back.
On the day of the gala, I dressed in the hotel room. I took the pantyhose out of the package and looked at it. It was black. That’s when I noticed that the package said “Sheer Black.” It crossed my mind that maybe it turns sheer when you put it on, so I put it on. Unfortunately, as I was pulling them on, I touched them incorrectly and got a run from my ankle up my calf, so I had to throw them away. Just like that, poof! No more pantyhose! Bare legs.
I put on the shoes I got from Value Village a few months ago, the ones I wear for job interviews. They’re not very comfortable, but they’re better than most grown-up lady shoes. At least I can walk in them.
And off I went to the gala, where I drank fancy cocktails with star-shaped fruit in them, rubbed shoulders with influential people, and nibbled on gourmet chocolates. Nobody could tell I don’t know how to dress up, unless they happened to notice my bare legs.
Posted by Zoom! on November 26, 2012, at 8:00 am |
I’ve set up a google alert for ‘transgender’ so I can keep abreast of transgender news and activity on the internet, since my favourite part of my new job is about transgender stuff.
So, on my first day with the new Google alert, I was google-alerted that Ivan Coyote and Rae Spoon were playing a FREE concert at Carleton U that very night. I’ve gone to a few Ivan Coyote events, and I’ve read most of her books, and she’s on my top five favourite Canadian celebrities list. She’s a storyteller, a writer, a teacher, a glockenspiel player, and she’s one of the Top Ten Hottest Butches in North America.
I was never really sure if she was transgender or not, since she seems a little elusive when it comes to labels. You can’t quite pin her down that way. She dresses like a guy and gets her hair cut by a barber and I think she drives a pickup truck and has her own tool belt and she’s got a hot wife and she does a couple of things anatomically to make herself look and feel more masculine. On the other hand, she refers to herself with female pronouns, doesn’t take hormones (although, as she points out, we’re ALL on hormones), and hasn’t had any sex realignment surgery…yet.
She and Rae Spoon, a singer-songwriter from Calgary (Rae uses the “their” pronoun as opposed to he or she), teamed up to create a show called Gender Failure, which is about their failure to fit into the binary gender system. (Or maybe it’s about the binary gender system’s failure to accommodate them.)
There’s a whole spectrum of gender possibilities out there, and this show is about that. About what it means to be neither male nor female, or to be both, or to be the one that you’re not ‘supposed’ to be. It’s about the struggles of these two people, and of trans people in general, to live authentically and be themselves. It’s about growing up different, and the accompanying stigma, bullying, shame, pain, sadness, courage, friendship, humour, self-discovery and self-acceptance.
This is a powerful piece of performance art, with music, deeply personal stories and liberal amounts of humour. I love the way Ivan and Rae challenge each other to step beyond their own comfort zones and try new things. Ivan was singing and playing the guitar and Rae was telling stories…it was great. The whole show was entertaining and enlightening…I laughed really hard about Ivan’s breasts, and I cried about Rosie, who is probably dead.
If you get a chance to see Gender Failure, I can’t recommend it highly enough. They’ve played everywhere from New York City to Maynooth, Ontario, of all places. They’re in Toronto tonight. (Special note to Mudmama: they’re doing a house concert in Wolfville on December 5. Get tickets!)
Posted by Zoom! on November 19, 2012, at 7:59 am |
This was a busy weekend – we went to a friend’s for dinner on Friday, then breakfast club and a vet appointment for Duncan on Saturday, and the vintage clothing sale and the Ottawa Parrot Club birdie garage sale on Sunday. Plus, you know, the not-so-much-fun things like laundry, grocery shopping, meals and housework (ha ha, I’m kidding about the housework).
I’m still getting used to working full-time, and I’ve been coming home exhausted every evening, and usually with a migraine. I can’t figure out how those of you with full-time jobs and kids manage to keep your lives together. What’s your secret?
I saw the neurologist last Monday evening about the aliens living in my left calf. She says it’s probably caused by nerve damage from my back surgery. Plus, you know how your leg jumps when the doctor taps your knee with a hammer? My left leg doesn’t, so I have to have an MRI. But the good news is that it’s probably nothing awful since it’s not accompanied by muscle weakness. The other good news is that she put me on a migraine prevention medicine which costs $11 a month, compared to the migraine treatment medicine which costs $17 a headache. And I’ve been going through a LOT of migraine treatment medication lately. So yay.
What else? Clipping Simon’s wings was a good idea. He can still fly, but not well enough to be a menace. He’s no longer acting like a tyrant and the rest of us are no longer cowering under the coffee table whenever he’s out of his cage.
Duncan went to the vet on Saturday, and the news was all good. He’s doing well. He has gained some more weight and the vet and I are both very happy about that. She said even his teeth look healthier. He got lots of treats and a pedicure while we were there.
Rosie has started humping Duncan every night during supper. GC and I think it’s a little odd to see a female dog humping a male cat at the dinner table, but Rosie’s gentle and Duncan doesn’t seem to mind, so we just politely avert our eyes and make small talk until they’re done.
We got to meet sweet baby Milo last weekend. You might know him as the It Ain’t Meat Babe baby, or perhaps the Baby of Science. He’s very wonderful. GC and I both got to hold him. Jennifer demonstrated 21st century diaper technology for us. Cloth diapers have come a long way since the 70s when I used to diaper my siblings. Back then diapers were rectangular cotton which you folded, and fastened with giant safety pins. All the babies were routinely punctured in the hip area with the safety pins. (Today’s diapers are fitted and have snaps and cute little covers instead of rubber pants.)
I made Milo an outfit. When I was almost finished, it occurred to me that maybe it was a politically incorrect outfit. It’s got cowboys and Indians and little Mexican dancing girls. But it’s very cute and a progressive baby like Milo could probably make it look ironically politically incorrect.
I also made him some booties. This was a very challenging project. Sometimes you need to use your own judgement when interpreting a pattern, but this was not one of those times. This was one of those times when you need to do exactly what the instructions say, even if they make absolutely no sense. These are lined booties, made with two different fabrics. When the instructions say to sew the sole onto the top of the almost-complete bootie, that’s apparently what you’re supposed to do. Then, by some magic which I still don’t understand, when you turn the bootie inside-out, the sole ends up where it’s supposed to be.
Posted by Zoom! on November 13, 2012, at 8:36 am |
We took Simon to see the avian vet yesterday, to consult about his behaviour problems. She thinks he’s got too much freedom and he’s taking advantage of it. He has overthrown the rulers and seized power! I need to rein him back in, start some daily training and convince him – gently – that I’m the leader of the flock.
She also gave him a full physical exam, including a CBC and a vent swab. And, with my permission, she trimmed his wings, which will bring him down a peg or two by making him more dependent on us. I feel kind of bad about that – flight is so integral to being a bird, it seems cruel to take it away from them. But I keep telling myself it’s just a temporary measure, and he can still fly, just not as well. He had two crash landings this morning, but he’ll soon figure out his limitations. Poor guy. He’s pretty subdued.
On the bright side, it was a pretty calm morning around here without Simon terrorizing everybody. I love him dearly, but he was starting to scare me.
Today is the second anniversary of the day we got Kazoo, the Double Yellow Headed Amazon parrot. She’s such a wonderful bird. She’s so gentle and sweet, and I don’t think there’s been a day in the last two years that she hasn’t made me laugh. Her vocabulary isn’t extensive – mostly just “Hello Coco,” but she also quacks like a duck and laughs like a human being and makes other assorted noises. And she says “Hello Coco” in so many different ways – everything from an enthusiastic yell to a sultry drawl.
I’ve got an appointment with a neurologist this afternoon. About six months ago, my left calf started looking and feeling like it was pregnant with aliens. The muscles ripple and roll and it looks like the alien baby is rolling around and kicking. It’s like that all the time, except when me leg is busy doing something else, like walking. According to Dr. Google it could be anything from nothing to ALS. It’s probably nothing, but we won’t know for sure until the neurologist rules out everything else.
Posted by Zoom! on November 11, 2012, at 2:34 pm |
So far at my new job I’ve been immersing myself in reports and files and getting up to speed on the subject matter and my projects. The subject matter is fascinating but the projects are a little intimidating because there are so many, and some of them require skills I’m not sure I have, like facilitation, and some of them require a prescription for Ativan, like public speaking.
But I love reading the literature. It’s all about social determinants of health and how they influence the vulnerability of particular groups of people to HIV/AIDS. My portfolio is women and trans people, so gender is an integral part of the analysis. I’m looking at trans women, Aboriginal women, intravenous drug users, incarcerated women, women from countries where HIV/AIDS is endemic, sex workers…and considering the influence of poverty, violence, power dynamics, sexism, stigma, discrimination, marginalization, criminalization, inequity, mental illness, homelessness, etc. As most of you know, these are some of my favourite subjects to think about and write about, but I’ll be going a step further to actually doing stuff.
In addition to spending 8 hours working, I’ve been walking to and from work, which takes two and a half hours. GC and Rosie walk part of the way with me. On Thursday we were walking along the path beside the O-Train tracks, and I saw some little birds trying to get a drink of water from a frozen puddle, so I broke the ice for them. Then I broke all the ice on all the puddles for all the birds along the path. The last puddle was tough. I had to jump on it, and then suddenly I was up to my ankle in ice water. That woke me up!
Speaking of waking up, I think my birds woke up the whole neighbourhood this morning.
I always let them out of their houses for an hour or so before breakfast. Simon has been going through a difficult stage, and this morning was worse than usual – he was being unusually aggressive to all of us, and then he attacked Kazoo and made her scream long and loud, from pain and trauma. I think he bit her tongue or beak or stabbed her in the throat or something – I witnessed it but it all happened so quickly. The screaming went on long after the attack ended. There was no blood but she was retching and her beak was opening and closing and she was crying. Even though Simon created the situation, it traumatized him, too, and he was very upset and scared. He wasn’t even interested in his breakfast half an hour later, which is very unusual for him.
Everybody seems to be okay now, except me. I’m worried about Simon’s aggression, and wondering what I need to do about it. It was bad enough when he was just biting me, but I can’t let him bully the other animals. (The experts say to let the birds work it out between themselves and establish their pecking order, and I was going along with that…but you should have heard the blood-curdling screams that came out of Kazoo.)
The other day Simone was sitting on my knee and Rosie came over to see me. He bit Rosie’s ear. She didn’t know it was him; she just looked shocked, and then went upstairs to find GC . This morning Simon and Duncan had a rare close-up encounter on the couch, and frankly I was more concerned about Duncan’s safety than Simon’s. He’s one scary bird when he wants to be.
I think I’m going to talk to the avian vet and see if she can recommend an avian psychologist or a bird behaviourist or something. African Greys are notoriously sensitive, empathic and neurotic, but I fear Simon’s becoming intermittently psychotic.
Posted by Zoom! on November 4, 2012, at 10:29 am |
I had the interview on Friday afternoon, and then on Saturday, when I was at Duncan’s vet’s office, I got the call offering me the job. I announced to a waiting room full of strangers “I got the job!” and they all cheered.
It’s not just any job, either – it’s a good job! It’s with a non-profit organization that is aligned with my personal and political values, and I like the people I’ve met who work there. I’m going to be doing community development work with transgender people and women with HIV/AIDS, so the work itself will be interesting. For the first time in three and a half years, I’m going to have health and dental benefits, which I am very happy about. And the dress code is casual, which is a major perk for me.
I always liked the location of my last permanent job, the one I worked at for 18 years. It was about an hour’s walk from home and it was downtown so there was interesting stuff to do at lunchtime. My new job is not only downtown, it’s on the same street, in the same building, in the exact same office as my old job! This organization just moved into that space a few months ago.
I have to admit, I was getting pretty demoralized about the job search. Not being bilingual is a huge impediment to getting hired in Ottawa, and not being young doesn’t help, nor does being a generalist in an increasingly specialized world. If giving up had been an option, I’d have given up by now. But the mortgage won’t pay itself, so I kept looking.
Here’s an interesting thing. My friend Donna is a Buddhist, and about a month ago, over breakfast, she suggested that I make a list of everything I wanted in a job, set a deadline, and start chanting every day for it to happen. So I figured okay, it might not work but it couldn’t hurt. I made my list, set a deadline of November 1st, and everyday I chanted “Nam myoho renge kyo” for 20 or 30 minutes while thinking about the job I wanted. Maybe it’s just a coincidence, but this job has everything that was on my list, and it came in almost exactly on schedule.
Posted by Zoom! on October 31, 2012, at 10:08 am |
It’s that time of year again – nanowrimo, or National Novel Writing Month. Thousands of people are devoting the entire month of November to writing 50,000-word novels.
I don’t actually have a plan this year, or even an idea of what my novel will be about. I’m just going to fly by the seat of my pants…if I even decide to do it.
I have to decide now, because it starts tomorrow, and I can’t be late getting out of the gate.
But…
I was invited to join a writing group a couple of months ago, and it has been really good for me. It nudged me out of my writing rut (which was a bad habit of never finishing anything I start writing) and it also got me to show some of my unfinished writing to other people. As an added bonus, I like the people in my writing group, and I like reading their unfinished writing and the cooperative approach to working out our writing problems.
I still haven’t finished writing anything, but I’m working on a story called Chameleon and I haven’t abandoned it yet. I keep plugging away at it. I’m trying to devote an hour a day to it, though I haven’t actually worked on it since last week. (I have excuses.)
I don’t want to work on Chameleon for nanowrimo, for two reasons. One is that I’ve already started Chameleon, and the rules of nanowrimo state that you can’t start writing until November 1st. And the second reason is that in order to produce 50,000 words in a month, you don’t have time to think or re-read or edit as you write. Chameleon is a more thoughtful story than that. I want to think and re-read and edit as I write.
But if I start something completely different for nanowrimo, than I’ll have to put Chameleon on the shelf for a month because there won’t be time to do both. And if I put Chameleon on the shelf for a month, I might abandon it altogether.
What to do, what to do?
I read something the other day that expresses why I write. I stumbled across it in my Flipboard and it had been quoted and requoted and I think it lost its original author along the way. I’m copying it here, but if anybody knows who wrote it, please let me know.
“Doesn’t it ever alarm you to think about how there are billions of people existing out there right now, right this moment, and they’re all the creators of so many thoughts and ideas whizzing about? At this very moment in time there are people making love and having babies and putting their dogs to sleep. There are husbands leaving their wives and wives leaving their husbands and drunken binges and religious fanatics converting former doubters. There are children dying and being recruited as soldiers, people being evicted from their homes, people falling in love for the first time or maybe even the very last time. There are wallets being stolen and girls crying and boys trying to win back their lost loves and people starving themselves and schemes being plotted. There are sinners and saints and phone-calls home and irreparable damages being made to family living room carpets because there are one too many who showed up at the party and everyone’s a little too drunk. Someone is thinking about you and they may not even know you yet, and someone loves you, and someone probably hates you with a passion as well, but it’s just what happens, there’s nothing you can do. Doesn’t it boggle you?! People finding god, and renouncing their faith, baptisms and pagan rituals and house shows and songs being written. There are boys discovering pornography and girls bleaching their hair white-blond and famous pictures being taken and someone’s mom is dying right now, but someone else’s is having the greatest day of all time. Proposals and love poems and death threats scrawled on walls and stomachs being pumped and people dropping all of their groceries in the 5th isle down from the deli. There are people hoping on planes for the first time, and people finding out about terminal illnesses and and and, doesn’t it blow your mind clear out?! There are books being written—right this moment—and one of them is going to be your favorite; it’s going to mean the world to you. Maybe it’s just me, maybe I just let my brain get so ahead of me, but it’s comforting to know that anything can happen and right now everything is happening, and it’s amazing and beautiful and and and. It’s all just happening right now.”
Posted by Zoom! on October 29, 2012, at 11:42 am |
GC and I were in Montreal for the weekend, for his cousin’s daughter’s wedding. It was my first Jewish wedding and I have to say it was a lot livelier than your average Protestant wedding. They sing and dance and break glasses on purpose! At the reception they do this crazy thing called the Hora, where the bride and groom sit on chairs which are then hoisted up by the guests, over their heads, and danced up and down while everybody dances in a circle around them. It’s all very exciting. And then they do it to the parents of the bride and groom!
A video is worth at least a thousand words, so here you go. This isn’t from the wedding we were at; I just grabbed a random hora video off youtube.
Another thing – you’ll never starve at a Jewish wedding. You eat constantly – the day before the wedding, immediately before the wedding, after the wedding…endless feasting! It never stops!
(I’m feeling mildly hungover and significantly fatter today.)
We didn’t just eat and drink. We also walked 20 km on Sunday – up to St. Joseph’s Oratory (where we climbed 279 steps) and back to GC’s parents’ house…then we went to the cemetery to visit his ancestors’ graves…then we took a subway downtown and walked all over downtown and Old Montreal. (I love subways. I wish we had one here in Ottawa. They’re so fast and easy, plus if the weather’s bad, you’re somewhat protected from it.)
We got home about 1:30 this morning.
It’s hard for us to get away for a weekend because of all the animals. My son looked after Duncan, Simon, Kazoo and Oboe. GC’s son looked after Rosie, Billie and Lester. The animals were very happy to see us. Simon and Oboe stuck to me like glue for the first hour of the day.
But it’s all good preparation for next summer, when we go to Newfoundland! The creatures need to have some experience with us going away and coming back so they don’t go into mourning when we disappear for a week. (Me too. I need to practice for that.)
Posted by Zoom! on October 26, 2012, at 10:56 am |
Simon has a new word. It’s a little word, and it’s not the most exciting thing a parrot has ever said. But there’s just something about the way he says it…
The word is “Hi.” He says it in the sweetest, friendliest, most enticing voice I’ve ever heard. You can’t hear that kind of hi without saying it back. So now we’re saying Hi to each other about a hundred times a day. Except when I’m trying to get it on video…then he either clams right up, or makes his rusty hinge noise.
It’s really interesting how he says different words in different voices. Everything from a sweet little girl voice to a possessed little girl voice.
His English is still pretty rudimentary, but a typical conversation goes something like this:
Simon: “Hi.”
Me: “Hi.”
Simon: “Hi.”
Me: “Hi.”
Simon: “Peekaboo.”
Me: “Peekaboo.”
Simon: “Peekaboo.”
Me: “I love you.”
Simon: “Wow.”
Me: “I love you.”
Simon: Makes loud kissing noises.
There are lots of whistles and clucks and squeaky door noises and dog whimpers and meows, too.
He’s definitely the most difficult bird of the three of them these days. He’s going through the Terrible Twos and he’s constantly looking for trouble. He feels much more secure in his powers of flight now, and he has expanded his territory to include the furniture. He has no qualms about taking whatever he wants from wherever he wants. His newest favourite thing is the iPad. He just wants to bite that neoprene cover but parrots have incredibly powerful beaks and I can’t let him bite anything that I don’t want broken.
Except my fingers. Apparently it’s perfectly normal for African Greys to go through a biting stage at this age, and the only way to cure them of it is to ignore the biting. I’m supposed to pretend I don’t even notice when he’s chomping down on my finger. Frankly, I don’t understand why ignoring it is supposed to work. To me it sounds like advice given by somebody who has tried everything and finally given up and resigned themselves to the fact that their bird is always going to bite them. But most authoritative parrot sources seem to agree on this advice, so I’m trying to do it. It’s getting easier.
Posted by Zoom! on October 24, 2012, at 11:14 am |
GC made an apple pie a couple of weeks ago, and being the clever guy he is, he went gadget-shopping first. Then we prepared our very own infomercial, complete with cameo appearances by some of our animal friends. (My favourite part is the last five seconds.)
Incidentally, since making this video we’ve discovered that you can buy this amazing cast iron gadget at Lee Valley Tools for $28. Or, like GC, you can buy it at Benix (a kitchen shop in Carlingwood Mall) for $14.99. We’ve also discovered it works on potatoes, too.
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