ottawa fun

This morning I went for a run along the river, and saw two of my favourite birds.

First though, I ran through the flocks of Canada geese, which generally I don't much love. But the goslings are half-growed now, gangly teenagers in fluffy dirty gold coats. The birds are so used to humans down there by the river that they sit on the path, two birds here, three there, one loner a little ways down, 8 goslings all in a clump. Every once in a while, one may turn its beady eye on you and give you a little hiss, but otherwise you're darting from right to left around them and timing your steps to miss their shit.

To get my sleepy body warmed up, I walked a few more minutes than I normally do, taking me a little further than I normally go. Instead of turning at the first tree past the sign for Parkdale Ave, I rounded the corner past the tree, you know that one, the one where the river widens and spreads out in front of you? It's the seagull apocalypse there right now, all screeching and wheeling and diving for mayflies like it's the end of the world.

I turned around, and the graceful dipping neck of a great blue heron caught my eye.

There are three birds that remind me of my grandparents' house: hawks, kildeer, and great blue herons. They have a special place in my heart, all of them, imbued with happy family memories.

So I stopped, jogged in place a few moments, watched the bird pick its way down to a rock right in the water as it stalked something below the river's surface. I was hoping to watch it make the kill, because it is always impressive to watch beings do what they do best. But the prey must have disappeared, doing what it does best, and the heron turned its back on me, the white and black v slick down the back of its head, opened its grand wings to their widest and awkwardly flapped back up onto land.

I kept on moving home, through the already unbearable humidity.

Twenty seconds from the end of my playlist, a kildeer cut a jagged swath across the path, up over the stone wall to my right and down to the creek that comes out of nowhere and goes someplace else.

Life is just a good place to be right now, these past few days. I think I've managed to convince a certain cute Californian that he needs to visit Canada's capital this summer. I got a Mysterious Package from a Mysterious Person that rendered me speechless and hungry. Saw some good rock and roll with a good group of people last night. Lolled on the grass in Westboro to watch a great reading by Jennifer. Had a satisfying chat with Shelley, wherein we commiserated about how being in between houses sucked and how we couldn't wait to live together.

Now I’m half naked under the fan, the bath water slowly evaporating. J. and I are going for sushi, and I’m going to have wakame, which for me is the kale of Japanese food. After that, J. and I will get foxified, hit the Babylon Club, drink some beer and tipsy-traipse our way home. Maybe it will be raining and we’ll get wet. We probably won’t care.

Phew.

My slot at the 160 Workshops went well. Really well. I can see where I did okay, and where I could have done better, both in terms of planning and presenting. But all in all, I'm satisfied I did a decent job. I didn't make a fool of myself, and no one got hurt.

I also attended Heal Thyself, a workshop on herbal remedies, where I met quite a few people interested in foraging. Foraging for food is something I've become a little obsessed with lately, and hopefully I'll get around to posting about why sometime.

The energy swirling around the place was just amazing. For those of you not yet lucky enough to know, the 160 Workshops are put on by the Yes People.

Who are these mysterious people, you ask? The Yes People are the people who say yes! to sharing their knowledge, who say yes! your knowledge is worth sharing too, who say yes! to opening their home and their kitchen and their warm warm hearts to friends, acquaintances and strangers.

And one of the Yes People is the Smokin' Hot Mae Callen, with whom I managed to steal a snuggle at the end of the day.

Before that though, before even my meltdown on Saturday, Andrea and her BH came over to take a gander at my apartment, and decided that they would really like to take it. Not that it's mine to give, of course, but what landlord wants to go looking for someone when a tenant he's really liked for 2.5 years hands him one on a silver platter? Not my landlord, it would seem.

That was another thing stressing me out that I didn't realize was stressing me out. I finally got up the nerve and called him to tell him that I'd be breaking my lease and moving out. Even though it's illegal and I knew I could get out of it, my lease runs yearly, ending September 30. I've always really liked my landlord, who is an efficient, kindly, paternal Frenchman with a wife about 20 years younger than he is.

I didn't want him to be mad at me. I didn't want to cause trouble.

But you can't waver on buying a house because someone you only speak to when there's water in the basement might be upset. And you can't carry a mortgage and rent for that reason either. So I dialed. He answered. Fuck.

"'Allo?"
"Mr. [Redacted]?"
"Oui? Megan?"
"Yes, it's Megan. How are you?"
"Oh, very well, thank you. Very well. And yourself?"
"Good, thanks. In fact. Umm. Well. I've bought a house."

My shoulders were up around my ears, and it wasn't until he responded that I realized I'd bitten my lip.

"Oh! You have! Oh my! Congratulations! You know, for young people, with a steady income, it is the smart thing to do. Many people, they cannot do it, maybe with their background, or some hardship, you know. But if it is possible, it is really the best idea. Such good news!"

And we talked details and everything was fine, and I felt just a little more tension drain out of my back.

In other home front news, I've started going through my books and cds to figure out what to sell, made plans to hang out with the Smokin' Hot Girl who's moving to Montreal on Wednesday, have almost finished the book I'm reviewing for the Venus Envy Newsletter, updated my financial spreadsheets and paid my April bills, I've had a good chat with Jennifer, a good long chat with Shelley. Now all I need to do is write a story and get caught up with the k,g,r,f, and I'll be sorted out completely.

When I walked out of the Herb and saw her, for some reason I felt compelled to lower my voice and scratch out a slow gravelly "rodenhizer".

It took a couple more steps for Rodenhizer, the assistant manager at your favourite local sex store, to clock that her name had been called: then her shoulders tightened, a hiccough in her stride. She looked up, a little scared and a lot confused. I stepped forward. She looked back. The worried look broke into a grin.

"Oh, it's you!"

"Yep, not god, you're safe."

"Hell, this is way better."

Though people have called god in my presence, it's the first time I've been called better than god.

"You know, I was worried there for a second. There was a nun in the store yesterday, and she got totally pissed at me."

"Really? In the store? What was she doing?"

Not that I doubt nuns are sexual or anything. It's just an unusual occurrence.

"She wanted me to buy a calendar. And when I said no, she gave me a one hundred per cent scowl. So I thought I was maybe in trouble with god."

"She came into the store to sell you a calendar?"

"I know. She asked and I just thought, 'Lady, there are cocks on the wall. You think I want a Jesus calendar?'"

Though, come to think of it, that might make a nice tableau.

For those of you who read Jennifer's blog, I'll try to write this so it's not just a rehash. See, we've been spending a lot of time together, which she has documented, both amusingly and well.

Our time as neighbours is drawing to a close. Not any time soon, but it's out there. Eventually I'll get around to posting about one of the reasons. For now, you just have to trust me that it's no bad reason. But I'm sad about it.

++One

Last night we hopped all around the town. First dinner, Adam and J. and me. After, on our walk over to the Aloha, Jennifer said she'd been trying to come up with a team name for us. "I love that you were trying to do that," Adam said. "Yeah," J. said, "but all I came up with was Team Air Freshener Orphanage." And Adam made the sound of the air freshener that has become the metonymic touchpoint for our whole Osheaga trip. It was hilarious to us, but why it was wouldn't make much sense to anyone else. It was that kind of dinner.

After the Aloha was the RocknRoll Pizza Party, with a great band that gave Jennifer hope for a pop/punk scene in Ottawa. Today I ran into Luke Nuclear, RRPP mastermind, and he said the band had so much fun that their other band, music in the same vein, Statues, might just make us a visit. You will likely find us at that show.

This gave me enough time and bars to consume the appropriate amount of beer for seeing one's fairly recent ex-boyfriend; that is to say, enough to take the edge off the nervous, but not enough to hit weepy. I ran into James while the imbibing was taking place. He looked surprised when I mentioned going to a party at Eric's. "Yeah," I said. "I'm not sure if that's crazy or stupid." "A bit of both, maybe," he responded. True dat, but it felt like the right thing to do.

When people split up, it's easy to lose the other person, and all the friends you made through them, permanently. Sometimes, that's the right thing. I have exes I will never talk to again, sometimes because they treated me so badly they don't deserve it, sometimes because the connection was tenuous to begin with. Eric falls into neither of those categories, and I hope that someday we can be actual friends. Maybe not close friends, but real friends.

There was never any way around the fact that our first actual conversation was going to be hard. I figured a party, with lots of distractions, with lots of people I hadn't seen in a while, with the ability to make that beer a quick one, well, it was probably a pretty good start. I figured right. Almost everyone seemed happy to see me, Mark was pleased as punch with his birthday cookies, and Eric liked the map I gave him as much as I thought he would.

When J. and I got home, I did some late-night wind-down tidying in the kitchen. I could hear her doing the same: the cupboard doors opening and closing, some rattling around. The way I can hear the radio on for Shy Dog, the ghost of the CBC playing on my radio too. Or the way the laughter signals that Lesley or Adam or Michael is over for dinner. From anyone else those noises would be wallpaper at best, an annoyance at worst. Coming from Jennifer, they're insanely comforting.

++Two

Wednesday night's reading at Octopus, the inaugural evening of the Female First Fiction reading series, was fucking great.

For one, Jennifer read from her new novel-in-progress, about a 10 year old girl. If the excerpt is anything to go by, I'm gonna like it even more than Grrrl, which is saying something.

For two, Jessica Westhead read from Pulpy & Midge, a novel about a cowed office worker and his bully boss. It was a good reading and sounds like a good book. Even last night Adam and I were pretending to be Dan the Bully, punching our thighs and saying "Boys night!", trying to get the same combination of triumph and ferocity with which Westhead managed to infuse those words.

Afterwards, there was an impromptu panel during which our JWs talked about the process of getting published. It was adorable. So much nerdy girl excitement! Though I must admit, I was a little jealous. Not in a bad way, an eats-away-at-you way, but in an "I want to be up there talking about that, and I am going to have to reorganize my life and get off my ass and make that happen." kind of way. An inspired by wicked awesome ladies sort of way.

++Three

Tonight we're off to Zaphod's to see Immaculate Machine and Ladyhawk. I love the keyboardy pop of IM, and Ladyhawk is the right kind of dark fuzzy rock and roll. I expect it to be loud, I expect it to be fun.

The Smoking Hot Girl may be joining us in our indie rock adventure. Who knows what will happen after the show, but I will keep a neighbourly thought in mind about the ease with which sound travels from one kitchen to another.

Shannon, who works at the Herb, is a really really nice person. She's got a lovely smile and employs it generously. But every time I see her, I feel a twinge of guilt.

See, ages, I mean years and years, ago, I promised her my recipe for pizza dough.

"It's easy!" I said. "Only a few ingredients!" I said. "I can rattle it off right now!" And then proceeded to, but got mucked up over how many cups of flour. Wisely, she said, "Terrific! How 'bout you check and write it down and bring it in sometime?"

Oh, oh of course. I would love to.

I actually mentioned my guilt to her about a year ago. We ended up in the same crowd of people drinking beer, and I sheepishly admitted I'd been feeling badly about dropping the baton on the recipe. Surprisingly, she had not been pining away, secretly hating me for not giving her the golden key to Doughville. She, in fact, had forgotten, but would still be happy to have it.

"I'll write it down! I'll bring it in! For real this time! I promise!"

If I ever promise to write something down and bring it to you, or mail it to you, look me right in the eye and say "Thanks sweetie, but you're a liar." Because I will not do it. I will want to do it. I will think about doing it many many times for the next several years. I will feel bad that I seem incapable of doing it. None of this will prod me into actually doing it.

Tonight, doing my weekend shopping early, me and every fucking other body in the city, because of the Weather,* I ended up in Shannon's line. We chatted, pleasant small talk, nice smiles.

"So have you been writing much lately?"
"Well, blogging, mostly. Not much else, honestly."
"Really, a blog. What do you write about?
That rather stumped me. Brownies and g-spots? Eating giant fungus? Cute people?
"Enh, whatever happens."

++

Simple Pizza Dough

2.5 cups your favourite flour
1 tsp sugar
1 pkg active dry yeast
.5 tsp salt
1 c minus 2 tbsp hot tap water

In a medium bowl, combine flour, sugar, yeast and salt with a wooden spoon. Stir to mix, then add hot tap water (not too hot or it will kill the yeast!) and stir well. Use your hands when dough gets too stiff to stir with the spoon. Fold and flatten dough repeatedly, adding flour if mixture gets sticky. When dough is smooth, form it into a ball and place it in the bowl. Lightly oil it with a pastry brush to prevent sticking and cracking. Set the bowl in a sink containing 2 inches of hottest tap water. It can stay there as little as 10 mins and for up to 1 hour.

- reprinted, with commentary, from Vegetarian Express Lane Cookbook

*Okay. Motherfucker. Number Two bus, fuck you. Cabbies who waved back as you drove by, fuck you. And sorry to you, guy, who mistakenly but honestly tried to shark the cab that finally stopped after I'd given up on cabs, waited for 20 minutes for said Bus 2 with 15 other people and our 20 bags of big bulky groceries, and then gone back to trying to find a cab, to you, guy, my apologies for more firmly and often than was necessary saying "No, this is my cab. No, this is MY cab. No, this is MY CAB."

So I heard this woman on the radio this morning, an inn owner in Sandy Hill, and she made my blood fucking boil. She was an uptight fuckwit who was mad that people were doing drugs in her neighbourhood.

I can see not wanting people to do crack in your neighbourhood. Drug dealing and doing can spawn a whole lot of trouble.

But she blamed the drug doing on the programs provided to people "downtown." Encourages those nasty addicts, you know, all those services.

I can't do her inanity justice, but the announcer didn't sound so hot on her either.

Anyway, this article just popped up in my RSS reader. Already today I've been feeling a little flat, for no particular reason. This article just took the rest of the air out of my tube.

Ottawa council scraps crack pipe program

Thursday:

Jennifer is said "weekly guest" this Thursday.

Friday:

Saturday: