The Grocery Store War
Current mood: well-lit
Category: well-lit Life

The grocery store next to our house is renovating, expanding. This should be a good thing, as grocery stores in general are a good thing, and I lived in an area of the city without one for long enough to know that. Renovations are also a good thing - after all, we humans have gotten somewhat accustomed to acquiring our food in clean, functional and well-maintained buildings.

So, there never should have been a grocery store war to begin with, but there was, and this is its story.

It all began when the foremen decided to start construction every day at 6:15am. I'm not going to tell you what tearing down walls sounds like, but I will tell you that the crashing of stone, metal and glass caused me to bolt upright in bed more than once, convinced that the sky was falling. And I will tell you that when you work a job that keeps you at the office till ten or eleven o'clock at night (during production at least), that the last thing you want to be is dragged out of your slumber at sunrise by what sounds like an apocalypse just footsteps away from your bedroom window.

Luckily, our landlords and their four-month-old baby, who live directly above us, didn't think so much of our neighbourhood's new alarm clock either, and thus began a series of bylaw violation complaints to the city.

Then came the spotlights of doom. Between our house and the grocery store lies an alleyway. The alley has always been lit by those overhead street lamps you see along the side of the street, the kind that shine downwards in a soft flood. However, it appears these lights were no longer good enough for the "new-and-improved" grocery store: hence the installation of "the spotlights." The spotlights don't really shine down so much as out... right at the side of our house. You know that episode of The X-Files where Fox recalls his sister's abduction and the insanely bright UFO lights are shining in through the window? Well, it's just like that in our kitchen every night now. It's like Samantha's fucking abduction with the spotlight of burning death firing 500 watts o' halogen directly into the heart of our home.

Actually, truth be told, we've been robbed of night all together. Here in the Castle of No Straight Edges, we have "day" and what's slowly becoming known as "halogen day." Because, you see, they didn't just put up one of those massive spotlights of doom in the alleyway, they put up three. You can walk out into our backyard day or night and it's like fucking high noon. You could have midnight game of lawn darts with no patio lanterns needed. Hell, you could sit out on the back porch and read a novel at three in the morning, it's that bright. Imagine if someone erected a house in the middle of a brightly lit parking lot and you may start to get an inkling of our misery.

Naturally, we complained to the landlords, the landlords complained to store management, and now, apparently, the spotlights of doom are getting "hats" - but I'll believe that when I see it. However, we still await that day feverishly here in the New Land of Forever Day.

And the grocery store war continues...

7:08 PM - 0 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Poems, Floods, and Sea Creatures
Current mood: sleepy
Category: Life

At roughly 1:30am, I awoke to the sound of thunder and lightning... and water hitting the kitchen floor. Even in my groggy, half-asleep state I was able to surmise that this simply couldn't be a good thing. So I hopped out of bed and stumbled into the kitchen where I see water pouring out of the air conditioner as if it were a waterfall. Cue frantic scrambling and the tossing of many towels onto it and onto the floor beneath it. If I weren't such a light sleeper, we might have awoken to an ocean. I'm a bit tired this morning as a result, but at least it inspired a new poem: "The Storm." And this is one I actually can add to the manuscript. Who knew wacky weather would be so great for the old muse.

10:20 AM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Personal Evolution of Verse
Current mood: calm
Category: Writing and Poetry

I used to use poetry to work through things - love, passion, betrayal. It was personal stuff rooted in the profoundly personal human experience of being young, alive and confused; searching for oneself, if you will.

As I've grown older, the things I wish to explore in verse have changed. Poetry is still a excavation, a quest for personal understanding, but now it is also a meditation on that which is around me, of that which makes up our collective social history. The "me" in the equation is now more observer than subject or guinea pig.

I love the idea of poetry as an investigative tool, as a way to render facts differently (both clearer and more obtuse), to infer and surmise, to ask and imagine. It is here that poetry as meditation really finds its meaning.

I've been working on a new series about a true crime of 1930s. I'm not sure where this will fit. The current manuscript? The next? A stand-alone chapbook? Something else? Not so strangely, I'm as unconcerned as I always am about eventual publication, the importance, it seems, remains in the creation, as it always has. Which actually goes a long way towards explaining why I'm such shite at sending out submissions.

Frankly, I'm in it for the discovery. The rest is icing.

8:29 AM - 1 Comments - 1 Kudos - Add Comment

Unpopular Opinions
Current mood: working
Category: Web, HTML, Tech

1 - LOLcats (and their variants) are not funny. Never have been funny. Never will be funny.

2 - Twittering is the equivalent of short-attention-spam theatre (and in case you are wondering, that typo is indeed intentional). If you want to communicate with/to me, I need substance and depth. Reading twitter posts is like watching Robot Chicken minus the clever humour and pop culture references. It's like eating plain rice cakes, boring as all fuck and not satisfying at all.

3 - I don't care how many times you try to make me add it, I'm not interested in pointless, time-suck "hatch an egg," "grow a garden," "buy a friend," "be a vampire/zombie/pirate," "which Care Bear are you" Facebook applications. I'm too busy having a real life, I highly recommend trying it.

Monica out.

2:18 PM - 3 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

How Do We Live?
Current mood: calm
Category: Life

B's taking boxing classes and I've been working on my singing. It should be stated that I can't sing, but I enjoy the hell out of it regardless, and really do like the idea of improving. We're also working on our first ever collaborative project - the writing of a comic book. It's easy to forget when everything goes sideways that being creative does actually make you feel better. I like to keep busy, after all, keeps the mind from wandering to all those places I'd prefer it not to go. Now if only this impending migraine would take the hint and get lost...

Oh, and I may have a very freakin' cool announcement in a month or so. Fingers crossed.

9:11 AM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

The Spring of My Discontent
Current mood: numb
Category: Life

I'm editing, this is saying something. I'm a bit behind on editing. Problem is the universe seems to think that the last month has been Kick Monica Month. Let me just say there's only so much bullshit I can take before I need some serious hibernation in order to recover and become productive again. Last Friday's hit-and-run, and subsequent complete fuck you from both the cops and the insurance company sent me to that place. I shut down. I'm good at coping, but I'm human too, and that was just insult to injury. So I hibernated. I played games, read books, made love to my husband and did my very best to forget that there was anyone else but the two of us on planet Earth. By Monday, the depression, hopelessness and complete lack of faith in humanity had abated a bit.

That said, we have not found the asswipe who creamed our car, meaning we're still on the hook for the repairs. And what neither B or I has said outloud, but what I think each of us knows deep down, is that this latest car casuality clusterfuck is going to result in us having to delay our honeymoon another year. I wonder if it can still be called a honeymoon if you can't afford to take it until after your third wedding anniversary? At any rate, this car thing is going to eat up all the money we've been squirrelling away for it. That's depressing in itself, I guess, but whatever, we'll live.

Thing is, I'm not really feeling very social these days. I feel terrible about this because I owe people coffees and dinners and emails, but I'm happier just doing my own thing at the moment - not having transportation, of course, doesn't help and I've never been a public transit kinda gal, call it a wierd hang-up. So if I owe you one of the above, I ask that you give me time, the shitty people in this world have burned me out and my cave is my castle at the moment. I probably wouldn't be great company right now anyway. I still love you all though, I just can't be there.

But like I said, I'm editing, and getting back into my routine, and that's a damned fine start to getting things feeling normal again. And, no, don't worry, I'm not so much depressed anymore as frustrated by a whole generation of human beings who've been raised to think "it's always someone's fault/problem."

You know what would impress the pants off me (okay, maybe not literally): fuck up, then own up to it. Be the first one to make personal responsibility hip again. I dare you. Believe me when I say if you managed to accomplish this, you'd have a fan for life.

7:56 PM - 4 Comments - 6 Kudos - Add Comment

Fame
Current mood: working
Category: Goals, Plans, Hopes

I've been doing a lot of press lately, the kind that sees me on the other side of the questions. In at least two of these recent interviews I've been asked if I want to be famous. Both times I answered that question with a resounding, "Hell no!"

Funny, because had anyone asked me that ten years ago – and maybe they did – I would have given a very different answer. Problem is, I didn't know what fame was back then, I thought it would be some sort of validation of personal worth after years of being teased, ridiculed and worse. Fame, you see, would be a way to prove them all wrong. I now understand how naïve I was. If I had been able to fill up the void with fame, it would only have grown into an even more beastly creature.

Why? Because fame is the ultimate sacrifice. With notoriety, you lose your individual freedom, you open yourself up to be criticized and critiqued by anyone with a mouth, keyboard or notepad. Essentially, your life stops being your own – and if you somehow manage to become really famous, your life will likely be hijacked entirely by the modern pop culture media machine. Just look at Britney Spears.

I've never liked Britney's fluffy pop music, but these days I find myself full of sympathy for her – for more than one reason. First, my own mother fell victim to mental illness when I was just a little girl (and if I'm to believe the media, a very similar mental illness at that), and you know what? She did a plenty fine job of acting crazy and irrational, and eventually self-destructing without dozens of cameras in her face and the whole world looking in. I can only imagine what it must be like to go through that while living in a fishbowl.

What's more, how many of us could honestly claim we wouldn't totally crack in a similar situation? If I had an opportunistic entourage of 20-50 photographers tailing me at all times, I would probably do a lot worse than beat on a car with an umbrella and run over some feet. I think it is safe to say I WOULD LOSE MY FUCKING SHIT. I adore the fact that I can go to the grocery store on a Sunday morning in sweatpants, glasses and a baseball cap, ditto that for the video store, espresso bar and everywhere else in my 'hood I like to frequent. Sure, she's rich and famous, and could have her "people" do these kinds of errands for her, but then your life really has been hijacked, hasn't it?

This woman can't leave her home without someone commenting on her skin, her weight, her hair, her clothes, you name it – imagine the pressure of having to "look perfect" every single time you opened your front door. Honestly, no fucking wonder she started acting out. Sometimes I think the only thing you can do in a crazy situation is try to be even crazier than it – I mean even if you aren't, rumours will continue to buzz around like hungry mosquitoes. Why? Because as a society we like to build people up just so we can watch them fall. And as a whole, we don't realize how sick this is.

I'm not famous (despite what my cousins in Germany think), but I've seen this happen locally too, albeit on a much smaller scale. And I've heard all manner of crazy stories from successful friends about just what kind of bullshit fame drags along with it. And you know, knowing what I know now, I'm not so interested.

That said, I still have goals, and I still work a job that puts me somewhat in the public eye (and I enjoy my work), but do I want FAME? Hell, no. If some comes as a side effect of working towards my goals and achieving things, I'll deal with it the best I can (and hopefully not lose myself in process). But as far as actively seeking it out, that's something better left behind in my teens and early 20s, when I still wore rose-coloured lenses about everything Hollywood and celebrity, because the reality of it, from what I've seen, looks about as much fun as a root canal.

5:10 AM - 7 Comments - 10 Kudos - Add Comment

Flattery gets you nowhere, but makes me smile.
Current mood: chipper
Category: Life

Since B left for Edmonton, I've been working on the house.  This is a good arrangement.  If I can be as messy as I want in my cleaning up, I get a lot done - don't ask me to explain it, but it does work.  

I took my rings off yesterday during the aforementioned clean-fest so I wouldn't damage them, and  I forgot to put them back on later as I was taking Gunn to dogpark.  Not that I typically dress up to go to dogpark but I usually always wear my wedding, engagement and family bands.  

Anyways, while at dogpark I ran into this guy in his 30s walking his 9-month-old puppy. We get to chatting as our pups do the puppy thing and at some point I start thinking, is this guy hitting on me?!? So I glanced down and sure enough, I realized that I wasn't wearing my wedding ring - oops!  So I made a polite but speedy retreat.  

At any rate, I'm not someone who gets hit on very often, so it was pretty flattering, even if it was forever destined to go nowhere.

I guess what they say is true, getting a dog IS a really great way to meet/pick-up people, now if only I'd known that when I was still looking.  *laughs*

11:54 AM - 1 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

"Life is but a stage and I'm forgetting my role."
Current mood: tense
Category: tense Writing and Poetry

There's a strange tension in the air - I feel it bleeding from within and with-out myself. I feel it hovering like humidity, threatening to break out into the violence of lightning or a torrential downpour. I don't know its name or its language but I feel it there - exerting its pressure, making me uneasy, over-sensitive to those around me. I acknowledge it despite not understanding its root or form.

And I walk, with my iPod cranked so loud that each beat echoes through my body. I walk until my feet blister, then bleed. I walk. Because when tension gets in, this is how I think.

And I feel the words coming, growing from a tight little knot in my stomach to an all out frontal assault. I feel my fingers itch, aching to pound out those words onto the screen, so the demons they bind can be free. And I remember why I write - not that magazine stuff - but the poetry, the fiction. It's that ache, that strange anxious feeling of language needing to spill out from some unidentifiable place within myself. The ache that sends me walking, soul-searching, looking for a means to harness its sheer force.

It started quietly last night with a poem, gathered enough momentum today to get me walking and now I feel them coming. The muse is about to starting dreaming, scheming, SCREAMING again... and I look forward to the ride, even though I don't know when or how its gonna stop.

Tonight I walked until my feet blistered and bled. The words will come next. They always do - I've never had any control over that and that's why I write.

7:43 PM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

The 14-year-old I once was just exploded...
Current mood: cheerful
Category: Jobs, Work, Careers

Here's a pair of pictures from Friday's night Stephen King Gala. We got to spend a few minutes with the guests of honour backstage in the green room before the big event began.

David Armstrong, Me, Clive Barker and Jovanka Vuckovic


Jovanka Vuckovic, Stephen King, Clive Barker and Me

4:07 PM - 2 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment