The Seated View

I'm cutting it a little bit closer this month, aren't I? It's moments away from being February, so I'd better get on with it if I want to squeak this by while I still have the chance. I have been a bad, bad blogfriend. Honestly, I'd fully intended to post this much sooner, but I appear to have misplaced my brain for much of the past month. Diane came to Toronto to see the Rockettes and we met for a chat at the St. Lawrence Market. Outside. It was lovely, but also very weird to sit at a picnic table in December and not be cold. She brought me a number of yummy goodies, most of them homemade and I would love to show you pictures of them but... erm... They've been consumed. However! She also brought a present for Mojo - the loveliest little catnip pockets. For the first 10 years of her life, Mojo has been rather uninterested and unaffected by catnip, but it turns out that it was just a matter of a) presentation and b) getting primo stuff. She ...

I dream of other places. Maybe that villa in Tuscany that I wrote about so long ago, thick walls cooling the inside of the house, while the heat of the sun caresses the gardens and the fields of sunflowers beyond. Or, staying on this side of the pond, a cabin somewhere, almost in the wilderness. Sampa’s log cabin in Big Eden , with its rich, woodsy colours, surrounded by tall pines reaching for the never-ending sky and with a view of the lake framed by distant mountains. It's a toss-up between that and the other log cabin in my imagination. The other one is in Montana, too, big sky country, but in a place less forested, a place of open vistas and rolling hills. There are many horses here and one of them grazes in the corral next to the house. I go for long solitary rides, far into the quiet of the wilderness, the only sounds the soft clop of hooves, the creak of the saddle and towards sunset, the far-off howl of wolves. Or one last maybe, this one a weatherbeaten ho...

I have to stop paying quite so much attention to the news. For medicinal reasons. The following is a short list of fairly recent news stories that I can't get out of my head: 2006 was declared the hottest year in Britain since 1659. One of the six ancient ice shelves remaining in the Canadian Arctic (this one was 41 mi.², containing ice that was 3000 years old) broke off. A pig farmer in British Columbia is charged with 6 murders, because that's all the remains that were found. He allegedly claims to have killed 49 women. And dismembered. Don't forget about the dismembering. The Middle East is more destabilized than it has been in living memory. The doomsday clock has been beset. It was seven minutes to midnight, now it's five. Every 30 seconds, a child dies from malaria. These are preventable deaths - all you need is mosquito netting and aids programs are cutting back. Stephen Harper is the Prime Minister of Canada and he’s leaving his mark. Ashley was b...

I'm going to repeat myself today, probably at great length and hopefully in a way that is just different enough that I don't bore you senseless. Today, prompted by this entry on Go Fug Yourself, I'm going to rail against the thin (rail... thin… oh, ha-ha!). I, too, watched the Golden Globe's awards on Monday - so much more fun than the Oscars - and couldn't help but notice that there seems to be a very slight move away from the superthin (except for Angelina Jolie, who used to be slim, but healthy-looking and now just looks... well, like she very much needs a sandwich). Or maybe it was that the focus for once was more on substance than style, actors there for reasons to do with ability and talent first and foremost such as America Ferrera, Meryl Streep (was she beyond fabulous or what?) and Helen Mirren. Maybe it's yet again living through a prevailing female body image that glorifies dangerously thin as supposed to be beautiful - I'm old enough...

I never thought I'd say this but… I miss winter. And now I will be considerate and have a brief pause before moving on, in order to allow for those among you who have known me for a while and who are undoubtedly gobsmacked at the moment, to catch your breath and pinch yourself. Imagine Muzak. Better? Ok, then. Normally, January in Toronto is a month that tries my sanity. It is usually -20, with a windchill of -40, my windows are frozen shut preventing any fresh air from entering my apartment for weeks on end, but that's okay, since when you brave the outdoors, the frigidity of said 'fresh air' is enough to freeze your lungs shut. Staying out for longer than a few minutes means that even if you are wearing handknit socks (and from January to March, I normally wear nothing but and consider myself a very lucky woman), you'll soon feel as if your toes have turned into little icicles and at times will seriously consider whether not that clinking noi...

I don't know about you, but I need an antidote. Something light and fluffy and superficial. So I'm going to follow up on a post I wrote at the beginning of the television season and delight (?) you yet again with my TV opinions Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip . I'm still watching, I'm still liking. It is a bit smug at times, but the excellence of the writing and acting more than make up for it (besides, every now and again, I like indulging my own smugness). Bones . Love it, love it, love it. In the beginning of the season, I wasn't sure about the new character of Cam - I cared deeply about Dr. Goodman and don't want to see him replaced - but she's added a certain something that has gradually won me over (I still want Dr. Goodman back, though). And thinking of the episode where Brennan and Hodgins were buried alive still gives me chills. Criminal Minds . In the fall, I put the show on notice that unless it smartened up, I'd be gone. ...

Just before Christmas, I wrote about how excited I was in to find an online community of people with disabilities that reflected the spectrum of what real people are like. I also talked about how I was going to be reading and catching up with what was going on out there and how much I was looking forward to this. I quite enjoyed being challenged, laughing, commiserating, feeling angry and then, on Friday, I read a story that has made me think seriously about running screaming for the hills, into Ostrich Land where I can pretend that life is all kittens and rainbow-coloured bubbles. Have you seen this ? Have. You. Seen. This? I mean, really, HAVE YOU SEEN THIS??? (I'm not quite sure how to convey in writing a banshee scream of rage, please use your imagination) I found this post on the Women in Media News blog via Ragged Edge , read the story over breakfast, which caused me to almost throw up on the spot and then I spent quite some time trying not to cry. To summarize...

One of my favorite things about the holidays is celebrating by getting together with people I love, especially the people of the younger persuasion. This week, I have had meals with three outstanding members of my chosen family who, despite being of different ages and having different life experiences, have one startlingly brilliant quality in common: they are completely fearless each in their own way. Amanda, who has known Mojo since she was a brand new baby and who is the reason that my cat adores children, knows no trepidation when it comes to trying new foods and therefore eats things normally not associated with children's menus. Her and I (and her lovely parents Daniel and Sue) had dinner at a local steakhouse and Amanda was bursting with excitement at the thought of having snails. She happily munched away, at times being careful to nibble off the wee antennae first. Scott, the youngest of my friend Michele's boys, is a highly energetic and incredibly funny almo...

Between ages of 11 and 16, I was hospitalized more often than I was home and although I did read many, many books, in the later years of my "sentence", I devoured romance novels. If you’ve ever been in the hospital, you know why: it's impossible to concentrate in such a place and what little focus I did have, I used on my school work. I remember once sharing a room with a girl whose horrified parents brought in books by Francis Bacon in the fervent hope that it would provide an antidote from the magazines and books she was borrowing from me. I'm still not sure why they thought two teenaged girls would have the remotest interest in serious literature when they could dive into torrid tales about damsels in distress and true love, complete with heaving bosoms and tall dark and handsomes. At the time, I think it served a multitude of purposes: they passed the time, were an outlet for newly rampant hormones and served as an escape from a reality that was at best in...