Dress rehearsal is tonight for Jitters, then we have a four-day run. I am looking forward to it! I really missed doing theatre in the years between university and now. I play a pissed-off sarcastic punk stage manager who sometimes wears a tool belt. This is very different from how I actually am, the only thing I am is sarcastic. It's fun pretending to be someone else! I get to yell the line "I resent being made an ogre!" which is really a funny thing to say. It's all coming together nicely. The transformations in the cast are amazing: there's lots of wig wearing and hair dyeing and men changing their longtime facial hairstyles for the play, which will add to the humour for the people who know the cast. And since this is a small town most people do.

It makes me sad that poetry is pretty much completely irrelevant in modern English-speaking society. This is at least partly because I like to write poetry and it is a useless skill, really.
I don't think poetry is necessarily irrelevant. When I was studying 20th century Russian poetry, I learned poetry was very relevant in that time and place. When a lot of writing was suppressed, poets wrote poems that the state felt were dangerous and ended up in exile or prison or on the execution block. Novelists did the same, but the poets I think were more influential because poems are shorter, easier to memorize or pass around in manuscript form.

Anna Akhmatova wrote at the beginning of her poem Requiem:

"In the dreadful years of the Yezhov terror I spent seventeen months in prison queues in Leningrad. One day someone ‘identified’ me. Then a woman standing behind me, blue with cold, who of course had never heard my name, woke from that trance characteristic of us all and asked in my ear (there, everyone spoke in whispers):
- Ah, can you describe this?

And I said:

I can.

Then something like a tormented smile passed over what had once been her face."

I've spent most of the past two weeks staying with my parents and my sisters, doing Christmas things and watching lots of tv (A Bit of Fry and Laurie! North and South! Gavin and Stacey! Jonathan Creek!) I got snowshoes but haven't been able to use them yet as it's been mild and raining. We ate a lot of omelettes. There were holiday editions of the paper but they weren't very news-filled and so it was very like vacation.

This year I challenged myself to only buy presents locally. This was much easier than I thought it might be, because there were a ton of craft fairs to hit up. Even though buying crafts for my family is like bringing coals to Newcastle.

Anyway, I went to The Bear Paw in Inverness to look for books by local authors, such as A Forest for Calum and The Rabbits' Race.

I also got jewellry from Gayle Bird, crafty things from Bellemeade Farm Shoppe, something from Anne Schroeder Studios, prints from local artist Virginia McCoy and jewellry from Tears of Glass.

Last week I went to an event in an Acadien community and then to a little reception afterwards. I grabbed a slice of fresh baguette and spread on some pate. "That's head cheese! It's homemade!" chirped a woman brightly. "Oh," I said, vaguely recalling that head cheese is made from actual animal heads. I tried it and it was tasty.

According to wikipedia, which I know is not the world's best source but, hey, it is the world's most ubiquitous source, "head cheese is not a cheese, but meat pieces from the head of a calf or pig (sometimes a sheep or cow), in aspic, with onion, black pepper, allspice, bayleaf, salt and/or vinegar. It may also include meat from the feet, tongue and heart. It is usually eaten cold or at room temperature as a luncheon meat."

Mmmm yeah.

If there's one thing I have an uncanny knack for, it's winning door prizes and draws. Oh, not big things like 50 pounds of lobster or a trip to Barbados or a new car, but little things, here and there. Here and there and everywhere.

For example, in roughly the last two months, I have won:

- two tickets to a $50-a-head dinner and dance
- a set of aqua globes (those glass bulb things for watering plants)
- a basket of fruit
- two bottles of a special fabric shampoo for natural fibres (at an event where I was happy not to have won the grand prize of $800 worth of muskox fibre, that's about half a pound because muskox fibre is hella expensive, ready for spinning into muskox yarn)
- a figgy pudding with hard sauce

So. Now, possibly it's because I go to more events than most people and therefore have more chances to win, but it does feel a bit uncanny.

My sister lent me season one of Paranormal State and I’ve been watching it. And let me tell you, I am terrified.
It’s not the creepy happenings or the editing to make things more dramatic and scarier, it’s the fact that there appear to be dozens of people who believe they are haunted by ghosts, and the right thing to do is turn to a bunch of smug college students who think they have psychic powers and hunt demons. I mean, really? That wouldn’t be my first choice of investigators if freaky weird stuff started happening to me.

I know there’s millions of people who live in a slightly alternate universe from me, but this show is driving it home. Personally, I don’t believe in ghosts - because I don’t actually believe in souls that can separate from bodies.

So Paranormal State is about a bunch of college students at Penn State and their ghost busting club, the Paranormal Research Society. The leader, Ryan, reminds me of some of the more arrogant guys in clubs I belonged to in college - totally convinced he was the centre of attention, or should be, all the time. For this reason, Paranormal State makes me glad to be long-graduated and old. Ryan also seems to be modelling himself on Angel. Or maybe Constantine. Somebody who fights demons in a long black coat, anyway. Which, really. Do I have to explain why this is bad?

There’s some token nods to skepticism. Sometimes there’s a psychic they doubt, or some phenomena they find a real-world explanation for. This gets glossed over pretty quickly. In the episode The Knickerbocker, there’s an explanation for why people feel like there’s someone behind them on the steps! I don’t actually know what it is though, because it gets said once, not very audibly, and then never mentioned again. It was something to do with the size and angle of the steps?

I find the show frustrating. See, I don’t believe in ghosts or alien abductions or stuff, but I also don’t think people are always lying or imagining this stuff either. I just don’t think they’re processing their experiences correctly. So, what’s really going on? There’s a lot about how the brain works that we do not understand. It can do a lot of really weird stuff. And I have this theory that a lot of paranormal stuff comes from that.

On Paranormal State, I pretty much give up hope of a serious investigation whenever they call in a medium or psychic. Those people are total believers. You know they’re going to find ghosts, energy, spirits, demons, whatever.

A lot of what happens in Paranormal State in clearly faked. I think it could even work as is, if there was maybe a website where you went after the episode and they revealed how they gotcha - the fake cold readings, the amped up sound effects. Hey, I’m a dreamer.

Oh, one thing that strikes me as funny is they repeatedly call in a woman named Lorraine Warren and tout her as an “expert demonologist” who worked on the Amityville Horror case. Even I, who does not watch horror movies if I can help it, thought, “Wait, isn’t that widely known as a complete hoax? Did he just brag about that?”

Yesterday I ran into the mother of someone I went to high school with at the grocery store. She clearly is out of the gossip loop as she was very surprised to see me. She seemed kind of shocked, actually, and kept saying how she could not get over how much I haven't changed since high school.

This is a statement I feel conflicted about. I think it's true, but I kind of wish it wasn't. I'd like to look better than I did in high school. But most of the time I am the same badly dressed make-up-less slob with frizzy hair that I was then. Huh. But it's true that I haven't gone grey or started balding or gained a lot of weight, like some of my classmates have. Not that those things are bad! Just obvious signs of aging.

On the other hand, a couple of people asked me, when I was out with my sisters this summer, if I was their mother. To which my response was basically JESUS CHRIST. I mean, I was NINE when the YOUNGEST was born. And I'm pretty sure it was about how my body is read as matronly because I'm fat and they're all thin, when I just take after one side of the family and they take after the other.

I am making this post from the comfort and privacy of my own home! Hello 21st century! It only took me almost ten years to catch up to you.

So, what are the NSFW sites/ fan fiction / videos / whatever things I should be looking at right now?

ETA: Oh, and I forgot the obvious question: what TV shows should I be downloading?

I am presently waiting for the Olympic torch to arrive.

So, I have decided to celebrate my new financial status by finally getting the internet in my house. I know some of you have had home internet for at least ten years, but I have never! I am excited! My installation kit will apparently arrive in the mail next week!

Today I paid off the last of the money I owed.

I am debt-free for the first time in my adult life.

NO MORE STUDENT LOAN!

I feel like I finally pushed the fucking boulder all the way to the top of the fucking hill. And the view from up here, it is heady.

Ah, let`s see. On Wednesday, after two days of sneezing/coughing/watery eyes/runny nose/general feeling like crap, I coughed up some phlegm with streaks of blood in it. Oddly this didn`t scare me because the thought I can go to the hospital now Was very reassuring. I was the only one in the emergency room (rural hospital yes) and I had a chest xray and saw a doctor and got put on a ventilator and given a presciption for an antibiotic and a puffer and sent home (all in less than two hours.) So I am off work until this clears up. It is scary. No one has told me it is bacterial pneumonia as a complication of H1N1, nor could they as they didn`t take a swab, but after reading up on the medications (docs must hate the internet) I feel pretty convinced. It is such bad timing too. I mean, Halloween? My favourite holiday? When I already had two awesome costumes made for two masquerade dances? Oh well.

Okay, I think I've mentioned before about how when my parents moved home to Cape Breton in 1984, they rented a place in Skye Glen, and a local character by the name of Dan Norman Cummings made them this wonderful tape and sent it to them by way of a neighbour. He had written a song about the death of my dad's aunt and uncle in a car accident in the 60s and wanted to share it with the family. We came across the tape a few years ago and we LOVE it. There's yodelling. There's humour, original songs and, well, I feel like I know him, even though I never met him.

So. Recently we discovered that there must have been a copy of the tape, and it ended up in the hands of a Gillis family in Sydney. And they also loved it. And made sure it was posted on the internet for all to share.

Go. Listen.

My sister Joanne is finally making her art available for sale online! Check it out!

For someone who doesn't wear makeup most of the time, I sure love the stuff. Recently I figured out how to make small purchases online, and ordered some makeup samples. Last week I got my shipment from Fyrinnae and I am so happy with their sparkly shades. So much pretty! My choices were a little gothy, but so far I love the way everything looks. 9 eyeshadows, 2 lipsticks and a bamboo brush for about $20, and free shipping! It got here in less than 2 weeks, too.
Today I got my order from The Body Needs 2, which contains sample sizes of Mac cosmetics. I've only had a chance to peek at it, but it looks good.
Makeup samples are perfect for me, because I get tired of shades long before using them up. The samples appear to have enough for at least a dozen wears each.

Last week, in the parking lot of a mall in an actual small town, I parked next to a running car, with the keys in the ignition, the doors unlocked and an unattended baby in the backseat.

Yep.

Shopping in the country is different from in the city. On-line shopping isn't an option for me right now, so everything's very limited. I am happy to be able to buy groceries locally at the Co-op, but clothes are another story. There are a couple of good used clothing places, but for new clothes it's pretty much drive 70 km to shop at Walmart, Reitmans or Additionelle. Not good. Especially not good this week because it's finally time to retire some of my old bras. Last time I bought new bras (about three years ago) I got measured and found I, like many women, was wearing the wrong bra size. I needed a 38F.
I know the fact is that no one is terribly well served by clothing manufacturers, but can I take a moment to complain about being curvy? And not curvy as a euphemism for fat, either. I mean, I am fat and that's fine. But I'm talking about women with a considerable difference between waist and bust or waist and hip measurements. Everyone knows clothes don't "hang right" on women with curves, right? That's why models look the way they do, right? Right, and design choices have nothing to do with it. Riiiight.
I am not saying "real women have curves" because, true as that is, real women also do not have curves. All women are real women. And I would like it if the clothing industry acknowledged that and actually made clothes for different kinds of bodies.
Anyway, bra shopping. I went into the mall and tried the two bra shopping options (Walmart and Additionelle) and was frustrated to find that Walmart went up to 38DD and Additionelle started at 40A. I was especially cross with Additionelle for not carrying any cup sizes above DD.
So I was thinking I'd have to keep wearing my ratty three-year-old bras until I could swing a trip to Halifax. Then I remembered there is an independent lingerie store in Port Hawkesbury called Marlene's so I stopped in there. I was excited to find that not only were there bras in my size, there were bras in my size in a variety of styles and colours! Whoo! That's like finding a unicorn, you guys. And from looking through the racks I can say there were bras in even harder to find sizes, like 34F or 46A. Plus I feel confident that the owner would be willing to order something in for a customer who couldn't find anything in her size.
Now I have three cute new bras. In colours, even!

The leaves have just begun to turn red on the earliest-changing trees. One sister went back to Toronto on Saturday and another is on her way to Springhill, NS, today. The third is planning on sticking around for a few more months, until Christmas, and then wants to take off on some kind of adventure. For the past two weeks we have all been home and it was awesome. When we're together we are a force to be reckoned with. They let me know that, now that I am in Cape Breton, we will eventually all live in the same place again, as they all intend on returning and considered me to be the only hold-out (as I thought myself that I'd never live in CB again.)
I am about to spend my first fall and winter here since I was sixteen. I don't know quite what to expect. Snowstorms, power outages, isolation? Snowshoeing, card playing, sleigh rides? Probably all of that will happen.

Temperatures have been in the low to mid thities all week, several degrees higher in my apartment. Modesty and inhibitions have melted. I would happily take to to the streets in nothing at all, if I thought that would actually be more comfortable than clothing. Which I don't, actually. Galen spends most of his time rolled on his back with as much surface area as possible exposed to the air.
I'm not complaining, though, not really. This is summer and a damn nice one, too. I am going out for ice cream, though.