How do you return to your dear blog after so much time has passed? A new template and an update ought to do it.

The past two years have been a heck of a ride. Here’s a few updates in the world of me:

My niece, last depicted here at two weeks old, came to life as a real little person. Then her sister Emma arrived almost exactly two years later. I’ve become the kind of Auntie I always wanted to be. Yesterday I read Jordyn Where the Wild Things Are … eight times … on the way up to my Uncle’s Farm where we played with baby animals all morning. Not ready for my own, but I definitely love kids.

This post, which was also my last post, was written when I had first started working as an editor for a Toronto-based marketing agency. This was my new job at a workplace that I still was getting to know, a job I understood at surface level and the entry-level timidity that makes you lose sleep over missing day’s work. 

I'd started Want Cookies, my fledgling cookie business that is very dear to my heart. I’ve got a cookie portfolio somewhere. Later I’ll talk about Want. I haven’t decided if I’ll join the ranks of the many talented food bloggers out there. I may already have. Remember the Red Fork? How young I was.

I worked at the aforementioned agency for just over two years. I got to be part of really, really cool ideation and brainstorming sessions. I took planes out of town on business trips -- twice! It was the pace and the pressure job that I needed to feel pride and responsibility in my work. But the stress, the sleepless nights, the stakes – and I wasn’t even high up on the food chain. It got to me. It was the best move I'd ever made, and it was time for a change.

I now work at RBC Dominion Securities as a writer and editor. At first I found myself apologizing for it – like the 60- and 70-hour workweeks were kind of professional atonement I’d skipped out on. Work is fulfilling. I have a great team. I don’t mean to sound smug, but this was also the best move I’ve ever made, given the circumstances.

I’ve done a lot of traveling in the past three years: Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Norway, the U.S. South (some of it), Portugal and most recently Amsterdam. All of it backpacking on my alone, except the South trip that I road-tripped with my boyfriend David. Travel is my fitness. The only exercise I like is hiking. You can’t get me into a gym anymore. But you can get me to the climb to the top of a mountain -- and I'll race you to the top. In Switzerland I tasted the freshest air in the world at the top of some ‘horn or another. In Norway I was stampeded by reindeers at the top of a mountain fjord. I went to Ä, a town on the southern edge of the Arctic circle, and hiked foggy mountains that looked like obsidian. The sun did not set the entire time I was there. I hated Portugal. So I went to Amsterdam instead.

There’s an aforementioned boyfriend in there. David and I met about a year ago. We cook and watch stuff and shop and steal horses together. He’s pretty super. Neither one of us drives. So we walk.

Yep, I still can’t freaking drive. Not legally. I’m a good driver, I think – if it wasn’t for the nerves. I’m considering moving to Montreal for a month so I can get through the Quebec licensing system and transfer it here. Scooters don’t count, however. Vespa was on my client list at the previous job, and partly because of that I took the prez’s scooter out for a supervised spin. I promptly crashed it and flew to Norway that night with a knee the size of a basketball.

People, I can’t promise to post often. But I can promise to post honestly. Reading through the post archives makes me think, what got me so crabby? I definitely needed to work on the complainey-pants theme that coursed through this blog’s veins. 

And that said, it’s going to be time for a name change. Still thinking about it. Suggestions are welcome.

I missed you all. Glad to be back in the world of ‘blog.

Ever get the feeling your city went under siege and no one told you? It’s one of those days that seems to happen every six to eight months in southern Ontario with the Toronto as the epicenter of the inconvenience-panic. Reasons include but are not limited to:

blackout
snowstorm
shortage
pollution
traffic
disease?

Yesterday we had quite the snow-and-ice storm/blackout combo compounded by a gas shortage, major gridlock, and pollution but only because Toronto in the winter is gross. This morning I showered in a mirror-y bathroom using a series of flashlights that make blackout showering fun(!). I was ready to go to work by six-thirty. Then, even if the Mayor hadn’t told everyone to stay off the roads (front-page news after all), I found that my garage was quite literally frozen shut.

I was beginning to get pissed off. Last night’s 3.5 hour commute home was a pain in the ass for everyone. But no one else on my street had a frozen garage door.

Nevermind the fact that even if I made it downtown, there might not be enough gas in the city to get home. Something is quite wrong right now and I know when my city is on the threshold of panic. City hall is sure going to have some meetings about this one.

In the meantime, the folks at my new job are being very understanding. I should mention that I’ve got quite a great new job and this is the first Friday of my first week*. I’d rather be productive right now than sit in my house with no heat and blog. I feel pretty sheepish, sitting here like this but I guess that’s just how I roll.

Well my laptop battery will die soon and who knows when the power will be back on. By then I’ll be in a much less crabby mood I promise.

Notes:
*my first week: That's right, I and book publishing are no more. I'm sickly happy about the new gig. Besides the work, which is engaging and fast-paced, it's a friendly environment and I dig my coworkers. Perhaps most exciting of all is that I'm downtown again.

He's here!

After months of anticipation, Jaime and Adam had a boy. The little fella's name is Jory David Larry--Jory being the old Cornish saying of George, meaning "farmer" and otherwise a pretty cute one for a boy.

My gigantic family has already used up so many boys' names that, as new boys are born, we have to keep coming up with unique boy names. (Bad luck to name after the living when you're a J-O-O.) Lots of congratulations and Mazel Tovs to the new mummy and daddy!*



Notes
*the new daddy: If anyone went to Camp Solelim in Sudbury ON, that's your former counsellor there. Adam was also voted Nicest Guy at Camp Shalom once.

Last night I dreamed I was eating fire. There I was, just having a cigarette and feeling guilt-free about it. It was lovely. No wailing that it’s been three smoke-free years down the drain, just a quiet contemplation that, hey, I’m finally havin’ it again! And I’m not going to have thirty more!

I am of the school of thought* that says your dreams at night are the waste product of your thoughts from the day**. Or something. And the not-smoking has been in my thoughts several times over the past few weeks. Here, see:

1) I’m currently looking for jobs. (Or, as the Swedish say, jobs.)*** When I am asked in an interview how I cope in times of extreme stress, I say something like, “well I used to smoke—I don’t smoke anymore but I used to—and I know the value of taking five minutes, stepping away, and thinking, ‘how am I going to deal with these next five or seven or thirty tasks so that everything is done correctly and on time?’ The interviewer asks, “how long have you been a non-smoker?” and I answer, “nearly three years.” It gets a positive reaction. And I have reason to believe it gets me an offer. Is this a dirty interview tactic?

2) An article in The Toronto Star on the weekend asked, after an Irish want-ad stated that “smokers need not apply”****, whether smokers are the new deviant class. Now maybe I’m just cynical because I’ve been waiting three years for a cigarette, but people have always smoked and, let’s face it, people will always smoke. And if the time comes that no one smokes anymore, anywhere, ever, then there’ll be cokes all around. Though by then I’m sure caffeine drinkers will be the new deviants. Or fast-food eaters (if they aren’t already).

3) I just finished reading The Hungry Years by William Leith. It’s his memoir on food addiction and obesity, but the most interesting parts are those on consumption (and the addiction thereof) as social phenomenon. In a society devoted to abundance, the options become depressing since we still can’t find what we want. So in order to be satisfied with consuming we must be convinced that we are unhappy with what we already have. Neat. Also he revisits this old adage: if you are trying to kick an addiction, it still owns you if you never return to it. Your thoughts are still paralysed by never having as opposed to always and only having. You have only truly kicked an addiction if you can enjoy and moderate your use of cigarettes, alcohol, etc.

So call me owned. Even a drag and it’s all over.


Notes:
*school of thought: I like this expression. A lot. I feel like I belong at conferences and things when I say it.

**dreams at night are the waste product of your thoughts from the day: Unless they are sexy dreams. Because I do believe there is subconscious influence with those.

*** looking for jobs: Still employed, for the record, and not concerned about blogging the fact since no one at work even knows that I write, and my full name does not appear anywhere here. Google be damned. But thanks for sponsoring Help! Bats! Everywhere!


****“smokers need not apply”: The gentleman posting the ad found that smokers are exempt from any anti-discrimination sanctions imposed by the U.N. or any body in Ireland. Smokers, he explained, are quite simply too stupid to work at his call center. With so many sources for information why smoking is, broadly-put, bad and so many resources available to help a smoker quit, to deliberately continue to smoke is, well, stupid. I disagree, for the record.

More wonderful news! On Thursday August 10* my cousin Janna gave birth to twin boys--nine pounds between the two of them. They're so very tiny, and so very hooked up and wired and the one who's only four pounds is in neo-natal intensive care--but everyone is okay. I'd post pictures but babies on monitors and twins separated makes me pretty sad.

I can reveal their names too.** Baby A, weighing in at an intimidating 5 pounds is Koby Parker Press. Baby B, our ferocious underdog, is Devon Cameron Press.

Infinite mazel tovs to Janna and Neil, the newest parents on the block, and Neil's parents Rachel and Saul and my auntie Hiala and uncle Charlie--the newest bubbi and zaide in town.

Notes:
*August 10: Incidentally that's Becky & Jeff's 3-year wedding anniversary, or as Jeff says, "the day before we went to Hawaii!"

**reveal their names: Often, but not always, the name of a Jewish boy isn't announced until the bris eight days after they're born. It's likely, since they were born so tiny, that they'll be in hospital a little while longer, and the bris will be postponed. Janna and Neil are usually quite superstitious with Jewish custom so that explains the break in tradition by announcing their names--via Blackberry no less. Baby A and Baby B is what they were called in their ultrasound photos.

Hoo boy. Did I ever need the fun I had last night. Fake Prom was the most fun I've had in a very very long time--particularly since I didn't exactly ever have a real prom.

Allow me to explain. I graduated from Inglenook Community School*. Inglenook isn't really a "prom" school and by the time my grade got its act together to make a prom committee and throw an Ingleprom, most of us had graduated. We went anyway to a party in a loft where lots of goth kids were owning the dance floor and everyone else was smoking outside**. Since Inglenook had never ever had a prom at that point, they opened it up to everyone who in past 30 years had ever been to Inglenook, and it was also a kind of alumni party. Most of the alumni still hung around the school all the time anyway so even that wasn't out of the ordinary.

Suffice it to say that Fake Prom was a great crowd dressed in its ironic bestest and jumping like crazy to "Summer of 69" before slow-dancing to "November Rain." I guess you had to be there to really get the fun-and-finally of it all. An actual high school party--without being in high school or having to hide your booze in a water bottle! We retired at 5 a.m.--another thing I haven't done since high school--and until Fake Prom next year my only regret will be that I didn't show up with a protest sign saying DONNA MARTIN GRADUATES.

Pictures to come via my prom date. You wanna see the fun, go harass him!

Notes:
*Inglenook: Note the use of Comic Sans.

**went anyway: Remember the creep at prom who was still hanging out a year after she should have left? That was me.

Easy now, deadbeat blogger ...Eeeasy ... Don't startle yourself or anyone else with any big, sudden movements or gimmicks ... You haven't posted in a long while so this is just going to get your feet wet before you get, ahem, back in the game.

There. I feel better already. I was in danger(again) of becoming one of those deadbeat bloggers who never ever posts, and whose rare posts are to apologize for not posting.

Okay, I promise promise promise to go easy on the baby photos from here on out. But how can you hate a blogger for posting these? I mean, are you dead inside??