February 20th, 2009

Dulce de leche

#1–(describes delicious dulce de leche filled pastry he bought once in a store)

Me–I once saw a recipe for that where you just take a can of sweetened condensed milk and boil it in a pan of water for hours. That’s it! So simple.

#1–Hmmm…interesting.

#2–You know, a lot of pressure can build up in that can, and sometimes they can explode. You have to time it really carefully. How long do you boil it for?

Me–Dunno. But I’m sure it said in the recipe.

#3–Maybe you should open the can a little bit, so that steam can escape?

#2–No, it has to be in the sealed can for it to work. But then if it explodes there’s all this busted metal coated with boiling sticky milk flying around. You could get really hurt.

Me–I’m sure that mostly doesn’t happen. In general.

#2–I’m worried about you specifically doing this.

Me–I wasn’t going to do it. I just mentioned it cause *he* said–

#3–I don’t want you to do this, Rebecca. You can buy dulce de leche in a can.

#4–A can that doesn’t need to be cooked.

Me–Guys, guys, I’m not going to try to make anything that involves boiling syrup under pressure. I know my limits. Last night I was talking on the phone and I fell off the couch.

#2–That’s a relief.

#3–Good!

#1–You failed at sitting!

Me–Yes, I suppose I did. Thanks for phrasing it just that way.

February 4th, 2009

Fair & Balanced Reporting

Though I try to show a positive viewpoint of life on Toronto transit, I have to admit that today a man did spit in my hair. Then I went and sat at the other end of the bus (etiquette tip: the *only* right thing to do when someone spits in your hair is go somewhere else; that is not an opening for dialogue). In my new seat, I told myself firmly that I hadn’t been done any harm and it didn’t matter, but I was feeling slightly shaken, as if the naysayers about public life might have scored a point somewhere (and, perhaps, they did).

At the next stop, a man got on and sat down one seat over from me.

(beat)
Man: I gotta say, I really like your stockings.
Me: Oh. Thank you.
Man: I got a three-year-old daughter who loves flowers, and, man, if she saw those, she would say, beautiful.

The score is at least even, I’d say.

May you could spare her
RR

February 1st, 2009

En-flu’d

So you live in an apartment for ages, get used to all the tricks of the door locks and the shower faucet, keep your shorts available during the winter because you know the heat is unpredictable, realize there is a tiny bloodstain on a floortile here or there and don’t worry about it because it’s probably yours, tape things to every available surface, install splitters on the phone jack and a power bar on the electrical jack and generally just assume that the place is your domain and you know it cold.

And then, one day you get the flu. And you spend that day, and subsequent ones, in a semi-coherent haze on your couch, unable to tolerate food or music or conversation or even text most of the time. Supine on your couch, you simply try to keep as silent and still as possible (sometimes motion-sickness can be triggered by the motion of a footstep, or even rolling over too quickly). And during one of your more lucid, conscious periods, you suddenly realize:

Everything in this apartment makes a tiny tiny noise.

Aside from the resounding *thunk* of the refrigerator switching off, it has a steady, low-tenor hum at all times, it seems. Hours after the DVD has ended and the TV set been turned off, it still makes static-y little clicks. The laptop’s motor whirs at random hours for no reason at all (yes, the laptop is always on, “just in case”), and I can hear the elevator cable down the hall making horrible squeaking noise each time it ascends (this does not increase my desire to ride the elevator). Also, the west-wall neighbour takes a lot of showers and I think their shower is directly behind my stove. The north-wall neighbour is passionate and vocal about hockey. And the ceiling neighbour has a deeply confusing erotic life that I still haven’t figured out.

I know so much now, way too much. I’m pleased to be sitting up today for extended periods (I was doing quite will on a 15-minutes work/45-minutes nap schedule there for a while) and I hope to keep the stereo on throughout. If I owe you an email or a phone call, you’ll get it soon, and if you’ve already received one that read or sounded like a fever dream–well, it probably was. Sorry. I hope I didn’t mention the rattle in the heating ducts.

She runs guns / everyone wants guns
RR

January 30th, 2009

25 Random Things about Me

1. I’ve known this meme was going around for a while and was worried it would come to me.
2. I’m pretty boring and I already talk too much about myself, in person and via blog. There may not be much more I’m willing to tell that most interested parties don’t already know.
3. But a poet, Troy Jollimore,, is the one who tagged me, and I always want to do what the poets are doing (The Tragically Hip were tragically misguided with their insolence towards poet-peer-pressure).
4. I still like the Tragically Hip.
5. Due to confusing circumstances, I once saw the Hip play a stadium show for $7.
6. That and The Concert for Toronto are the only stadium shows I’ve ever seen.
7. I don’t get out much (that’s not news; everyone knows that).
8. Also not news: I hate having eyebrows, and it’s only social conformity that keeps me from shaving them off. Instead, I talk about hating eyebrows all the time–hence the not-news-ness.
9. From ages 7 to 10, I skipped rope on a competitive team. I was nowhere near good enough to keep on with that, but to this day, I’m a better skipper than most adults who have never skipped competitively.
10. I can’t shuffle cards, whistle, ski, ice-skate, snap the fingers on my left hand, rollerblade, dive, or do a cartwheel. Whew. That’s a weight off my shoulders, confessing that.
11. I didn’t drink coffee until I was 23.
12. As a child, I was obsessed with ants (oh my god, I was right; this is so boring).
13. If I really like a song or album, I listen to it dozens of times in a row, until I either hate it or have to go to bed. I think it’s a similar instinct to really liking a piece of cake, so you sort of want to eat the whole cake. It’s an aural binge.
14. I can get my bra off without removing my blouse–a leftover from being a self-conscious kid in high-school gym. I’m now a self-conscious adult at the commerical gym, so it still helps.
15. I have never met a famous person who wasn’t famous for writing.
16. I am related to a spy (now dead, but I probably still shouldn’t elaborate on that).
17. I have small titanium screws in the bones in my jaw, right in front of each ear.
18. I have been hit by cars three times in three cities, never with any damage.
19. I was the one who chose the pull quote (“The alarm bell had been ringing for years”) on the Canadian paperback of Jonathan Franzen’s *The Corrections*. I’ve been dying to tell that for ages!!
20. I’m just too boring to come up with five more, I’m so sorry.

You said you didn’t give a f*ck about hockey / and I’d never heard someone say that before
RR

January 16th, 2009

The guardian of gates and hallways

Obviously, it’s better if your life just doesn’t suck at all, but that can be a tall order in January (if you’ve got it down, and it’s not “move south,” I want to hear your solutions). Sooner or later, spring will arrive and/or we’ll all have to address the actual issues in our lives. Meantime, though, here are some pennyante stop-gap solutions–

–Leave the house. You might well have a good time (Pivot of the last post was even more awesome than expected, as was the birthday dinner and both [gah]) movies I saw this week). Even if you don’t, you get the smugness of saying to people, “It’s minus *twenty*, but y’know, it’s not *that* bad.” Makes you feel tough.
–Go to the movies. Nothing like other people’s problems to make you forget your own. Even (especially?) if their problems are stupid.
–Do the thing you’ve been trying to get out of. Misery has economies of scale, I find. It’s far easier to agree to do something unfun on a day I already hate–I guess I figure things probably can’t get worse, and someone might as well get what they want. Occasionally, this will bloom into getting thanked profusely, which is nice, but don’t count on it; it is January.
–Learn something new: I thought the term “Janus” was a fancy way of calling someone a liar, ’cause he’s the two-faced Roman god, but it turns out that he’s two-faced because he’s looking both forwards and back. Janus is the god of hallways and doors and gates, portals and new beginnings. Which his namesake month, January, allegedly is. We’ll see.
–Whatever you do, don’t wear two pairs of tights of profoundly different waist-levels–the higher one will somehow push the lower one down (and down and down), and you will spend the entire day trying to reach unobtrusively under your skirt to recalibrate things. This final point, which I am currently living out, will probably discourage anyone from taking any of my other advice. So be it.

Your English is good
RR

January 14th, 2009

Woes

Woes are not what Rose-coloured is about, so I’ll spare you (no, I won’t: my eyelashes froze this morning; inadequate communication; excessive communication; I saw someone on the subway reading a blank duotang for 13 stops). *Anyway,* all will be mitigated when I go to Pivot at the Press Club tonight and see Kyle Buckley, Rocco de Giamcomo and Jessica Westhead be awesome.

Right? Right.

I guess I changed my mind
RR

January 5th, 2009

Resolving, finally

Arigatou gozaimasu.

Ah-ree-gah-toe go-zy-ee-mass

Thank you very much (if you take out the “gozaimasu”, it means the same thing, but more informally. There is no one in Japan that I am on informal terms with, however, so I’m not dwelling on that option too much.

In 2009, I have resolved to learn one word/phrase a week in Japanese, at least until I actually go there. I have no hope of learning grammatical constructions, and less of learning how to read any of their alphabets (they have three, apparently). The best I can hope for is enough nouns and polite expressions to stay out of trouble. We’ll see how it goes.

That’s my only Specific, Measureable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely goal. Normally I make a lot of these (what? HR training courses can be used for good as well as evil), but my helpful friends have been particularly forthright lately in pointing out that many of my SMART goals are in fact, stupid (not an acronym). Maybe I could achieve them, but they say, to no particular purpose.

And then there are the things that are too important to make into resolutions, things that would frighten me to try to push into 2009 if in fact they turn out to feel like more 2010 type things. So I’m not resolving those either.

So far, the only goal other than the Japanese resolution that has received universal approval is one that meets none of the SMART criteria, which is to be braver. Obviously, this is something I need to work on (or I wouldn’t be so fretful about something as trivial as new year’s resolutions), but I have no idea how I’ll know when/if I get there.

Learn Japanese and be brave. Sure. No problem.

2009, you are a very daunting-looking year.

Say goodbye to grace and virtue
RR

January 1st, 2009

2008, I liked you

These 365-day units do not necessarily break off at useful points–I’m having trouble encapsulating the past year or imagining the next one because I’m in the *middle* of so many things. I can’t find a period to put at the end of the sentence that was 2008, to make it seem like an event rather than just a space of time that included a lot of beginnings and a few endings. And there’s not really a capital letter for 2009, either. The year seems not a blank page but an unfinished manuscript–metaphorically and literarily. I will get around to resolving somethings later, but for now, I’m stuck in the past.

An ending, even an artificial one like December 31, does summon up all the sadness of what’s undone, who and what’s been lost, mistakes made…but even end-of-day regret cannot obscure the fact that I had a wonderful wonderful 2008. And today is really the day to celebrate all that, and remember all that outweighs regrets, which is so much.

2008:
Lucky pastries
Rock-climbing
Impromptu yoga
Getting better
Free bad movies
Hugs
My first car accident
Effortless poetry
Rivers I’d never heard of
Facebook
Books in the rain
Books in bookstores
Wedding music
Every day sunrise
So much gossip
Cats, kittens, dogs, fish
Long-distance phone calls
Singing songs in Spanish restaurants
Reading aloud
Reading in bed
Babies
Beautiful funeral
Mail
Pie
Affirmation and respect
Music videos
TTC
Barack Obama
Streetcorner kisses
New words
Never wanting to be “good enough”
Roses
This blog
Smoked salmon
Uncertainty
Friends
Friends
Friends

We’ve only got this moment and it’s good
RR

November 25th, 2008

Journals, Diaries, Logs, and Blogs

I’ve always been rather worked up over journals. As a bookish kid, I was forever being given pretty little notebooks in which to record my deep thoughts, and thus was perpetually disappointed that I didn’t have any. So many adorable diaries, fabric-covered or pleather-covered, some with little tiny keys, and only the first dozen pages filled. Even when I managed to keep one for a few months, it was deadly dull going–a routine litany of school, piano and arguing with my brother. And months-long absenses, followed by passionate exclamations of self-disgust, and resolutions to be more faithful. The most interesting material in those old journals is all rather meta-journal.

And yet, the absolute worst thing imaginable was my journal falling into the hands of a parent, sibling, school frenemy or, horror of horrors, a stranger. Who knows, I don’t actually remember now, but I think I was actually keeping those books as a record of my *artistic progress*, or possibly as notes for my autobiography. Oh dear.

Good thing the internet came along and allowed me to be a bit more focussed in my journalling. Of course, as an adult, I can make a better effort at the interest factor–I no longer play the piano nor argue with my brother (much), and I definitely don’t feel bound to keep anything so dull as a *record of what actually happens to me*.

Because, you know, who cares? Of the 1000s of actions anyone takes in a given day (“make microwave oatmeal,” “have 3-minute conversation about insects with neighbour,” “get hit by door on way off bus”) only a few are even vaguely interesting, and even fewer are relevant to people who aren’t going to be eating that oatmeal (or plagued by those insects).

Rose-coloured is mainly a public space for me-as-a-writer–what I’m writing, what I’m reading, what’s being said about my work, what I’m saying about other writers. I try to keep interesting. For more boring matters, I do keep an everyday workbook, on paper, wherein I describe the work that I managed that day on whatever story I am absorbed in. Those entries are quitte regular and quite painless, being mainly a sentence or two each. And then I keep a reading log, where I write don’t titles and authors and, again, a sentence or two about what I thought.

I guess I *am* a record-keeping type, after all, in my way. Making this blog was my reward for finishing my Master’s thesis, and I’ve rarely so enjoyed a self-given gift. I like to write through my ideas to know what I think, and I like to know what others think, too. It definitely makes my day when someone responds to something I’ve written, be it in print or on-line.

So, if you’ve read this far, thanks for reading, and thanks for thinking about stuff I think about. I guess I natter a lot, but I do enjoy it.

Something underground / gonna come up and carry me
RR

September 13th, 2008

Upshots

Thanks for all your advice, guys–I really appreciate it. In case you were wondering how it all turned out:

1) I couldn’t get the book Fred recommended from the library, but the search brought up something similar sounded, which I have ordered. I’m sure whatever I end up with will be disturbing, as it should be, but maybe I’m hoping for…manageable disturbance? So I can still fall asleep?

2) I love the booklet that Kerry lent me on recycling. You *can* mix paper and plastic and metal. You should put cut tin lids *in* the tins and then pinch them shut so the recycling collectors don’t stabbed. You can recycle those round cardboard canisters that cocoa and disinfectant come in, but not the plastic lids. Amazing. There’s even a picture. The booklet provides a link which leads to a much more confusing bunch of information. Try to get the booklet if you can.

3) Since the age of my olives was indeterminate but at least 8 months, I took the advice of Naya and Scott and almost everybody and tossed them. I miss them, they were a part of my life for so long that I notice the blank spot when I open the fridge. I miss them even though I don’t actually like olives all that much, which is what cause of the problem in the first.

4) I bought a knee-length, non-black, non-constrictive new dress yesterday, but it is only good for a specific season (fall) and since we seem to be having all of them in alternation, I’m still not sure what I’ll actually be wearing on Monday. But I am excited. And to get into waaayy too much information, the trial run on my hair didn’t go so well. I now must take the bus looking like I’ve just received a mild electrical shock. Learning, learning.

As cool as I am / I thought you knew that already
RR