My publisher asked me to opine on the topic of “What to give your man for the holidays.” I’m very good at giving unsolicited advice, so I made you this video.
holidays
Happy Easter, Chicklets!
Lily writes:
When is Easter? Why am I always the last to know? Why can’t they make it the same every year like Xmas or Vday? That way I’ll know when the candy is on deep discount.
Happy New Year, Chicklets!
Here’s to coming home from a Christmas vacation. You leave behind excess and uproariousness that was good while it lasted but was almost becoming too much and your house is cool and silent and the local pub is just up the street and you can have a quick dinner and go home and slip into your new cotton pajamas and sink into your duvet and when you wake up it will be snowing big fluffy movie set snow and it will be the last day of the year and you can putter through it knowing that the next time you wake up it will be 2006 and the world will start again.
Christmas greetings from Lily
I went to the Radio City Christmas Spectacular, which, A) wasn’t all that spectacular and, B) was topped off by the so-awful-I blocked-its-existence-from-my-memory living nativity, where people in the audience took flash pictures as if it was the real thing, and a brief but insanely glossy edition of the story of Christ rolled over it in projection (you know, minus the millions killed in his name, and etc.). The payoff came when I exited the building along with throngs of tourists and families to enter the subway station, where, at the entrance, were two of possibly the hottest boys I have ever seen in my life making out at the top of the stairs. So now I know that prayers are answered.
Merry Christmas, all!
Happy Thanksgiving and avoid the puke loaf
“Yeek! Happy Thanksgiving!” writes Lily. “Frankly, I just can’t get as excited about it without the puke loaf,” she said, referring to my unfortunate attempt, last year when we were together for the holiday, to make a vegetarian meat loaf that actually resembled meat (versus the kind with all the twigs and pebbles in it). Sadly, what it bore an uncanny resemblance to was actually vomit, hence the name.
“I wish U were here! Mercifully (4other people), I’m not dragging anyone 2 the parade this year, so U R not required 2 watch NBC 4 a glimpse of me waiting excitedly 4 the new Humpty Dumpty balloon and carrying a sign that says ‘Doctor J,’ like at the airport.
“I wanted 2 send U a hand turkey, but I only had makeup 2 color it with.” Love, Lily
Happy American Thanksgiving, Chicklets, and stay away from the puke loaf.
Hop for your life
Walking near my house this evening in the early “fall-back” darkness, I came upon a hand-drawn hopscotch court on the sidewalk. Remember how you used to draw these with coloured chalk on long summer nights? One square followed by two squares side by side, then back to one square and so on—stacked so you alternate hopping on one foot, then on two, then on one, like this.
The squares are numbered and there’s a big bubble at the top, which we always left blank, but sometimes it was labeled “Heaven” and the first square was labeled “Earth.” You know, just to inject a little mortal fear into the hearts of babes. You threw your stone on the allotted number, hopped through, flipped around at the top, and came back down.
This court looked like the ones I remembered, carefully if lopsidedly drawn in a child’s hand—except I noticed that the bottom was labeled “Hop for your life.” Wow, I thought, creative! I hopped. And Chicklets, guess what? The top square was labeled, still in the shaky child’s hand? DEATH. Oooh! Happy Hallowe’en!
Happy Yom Kippur
Lulu likes to act like her whole purpose in life is to get the hell out of Toronto and get back to the Maritimes, where there’s no smog, people are nice to each other for no reason, and no one shoves each other on the subway (there’s no subway, I say, but that is beside the point, I am told). Being a Midwestern girl myself, I sympathize, but I do like to make a special effort to point out the advantages to big-city life, just to bug her. Because really, the world is our oyster, we just don’t notice—until someone shoves us on the subway.
Today is Yom Kippur, the day of atonement. I took a late lunch to run some errands in Kensington Market. Lulu and I often stroll Kensington at lunch—though I was alone today—and I like to point out how lucky we are to have a little microcosm of the world at our doorstep. A Jewish centre in the early part of the century, Kensington retains its identity today as an ethic market, even as its original population has long since moved out. As the city’s immigrant population has exploded, so has retail variety in Kensington. You can buy 27 different kinds of hot sauce at a Jamaican store; Chinese seven-herb tea, which they make for you with a pestle and mortar in front of your very eyes; an entire goat at a tiny little storefront that’s been there for decades; homemade chocolate and cayenne organic ice cream; and on and on. But this world-in-five-blocks also plays host to not a few head shops and socialist bookstores, which always makes for an interesting tableaux in terms of street life.
Today my lunchtime shopping list was full of homeopathic remedies and fruit and real bagels. They’re all in Kensington, so I had my efficient “speedwalking-with-backpack- and-shopping list” personality on. I hung a right on St. Andrew Street just as the congregation of an old synagogue there was being discharged. Knowing a bit about the history of the area, it was amazing to see the scores of people in Orthodox dress being dispersed from this old temple in this neighbourhood that hadn’t been home for several generations. They filled the street as well as the stores I went into. But the best part is that not an eyelash was batted. It’s the highest holy day, yes, but it’s also just another day in the life of Kensington Market. The students, the Rastafarians, the Portuguese fishmongers, the Doctors of Traditional Chinese Medicine, they are not alarmed. They have seen it all; they have seen everyone from every possible place with every possible belief.
It was a lovely little slice of Toronto multculi heaven. I thought about how there are lots of things to atone for in this world, but this place isn’t one of them.
(Canadian) Thanksgiving greetings from Lily
Happy Canadian Thanksgiving! I hope you are getting up to no good. If they don’t have Pilgrims up there, what is the focus? Is it the French? Fur Trade? Bryan Adams? Please advise.