Wheels

How is it that when I drive the modest, sweetly blue, compact-sized car about the city of Toronto, I get honked at, shoved out of place in the line, pushed aside, ignored and practically run off the highway? There isn't a day I drive that car when at least five drivers wave angrily, shout, honk or try to run me over. And the same was true when I drove the little red car with its Farmers Feed Cities sticker in the back window.

I used to wonder if it was my grey hair, but then I remembered that I drove the candy-apple car when my hair was still black (or at least looked that way), with all sorts of happy-faced teenagers and a sweet dog staring out upon the world. And still the onslaught came. Who can possibly say why?

My daughter, on the other hand, drives a steely-grey vehicle bigger than three small islands put together. Her SUV -- euphemistically referred to as 'the truck' -- stands taller than our last apartment building, and you can comfortably house seven large families inside. On the back window, instead of a relatively benign farmer reminder, an angry red-and-black Sens Army sticker blazes its name and way across the back window. Army? I ask myself. And then I sigh.

So why is it that, whenever I hoist myself up into the driver's seat of my daughter's gas guzz-- no...I must mean truck -- everyone and his brother moves out of the way for me?

Yesterday, so many people stopped to let me in, I thought that it must be Good Samaritan Day. I heard not one honk, saw no fingers, and in fact, couldn't count as high as the number of lane-changing signals I blinked at (causing me to wonder if my retinas were over-active).

In fact, when I made that illegal right-hand turn from Bloor Street (Mary said, when I dropped her off two minutes before, "Take the first right") and the policeman pulled me over, instead of the typical $110.00 fine + two demerit points, he handed me a ticket for $18.75 and smiled.

I don't get it. There seems to be no logic to it, no sense in the equation. But in the end I do know this: if I ever decide to drive to Florida, I know which vehicle I am taking.

Go, Sens, go!!

Cars are cars, all over the world...
Paul Simon

Yin and Yang

It's probably because I'm tired and haven't had sleep for a thousand hours, but today I am worn out by

~selfish men (especially of the gay variety, who typically see women as mother or hand servant) (which amounts to about the same thing)

~cold neighbours (who used to be friendly until one of the husbands was too friendly with my pretty daughter)(and his wife wasn't pleased)

~lack of editing work (which is true right across the board for everyone I know who edits)

~patronizing people in general (if Danny had taken any more time to explain audio levels to me we would have run smack into 2010)

~sons who take light years to answer their email (BIG sigh...)

~high-caloric, fatty food (of which I eat too much and too often)

So it is with great pleasure that I recount a few small phrases from my three-year-old granddaughter, all spoken today:

"I love you grammie."

"I am going to clean the floor so hard for gramps."

"You are a squishy bologna sandwich, grammie."

"Can I have a treat? Is it okay?"

"I love you grammie."

"Oh, sorry grammie. I got in the way."

"The cow jumped right over the moon!"

"I don't like tomatoes. They have seeds. I don't like seeds."

"I love you grammie."

The best part in all of this, of course, is that she, Lainey, is not a selfish man, a chilly neighbour, an ex-employer, a tardy son, or patronizing. And while she might just be the sweetest thing on earth, she doesn't add a calorie to my body, although I wouldn't care -- and she wouldn't notice, because she thinks I'm beautiful -- if she did.

~

Post script: the next day, when I opened my email, I had nine messages from gay men. Not one or two or three, but NINE. All the messages were either funny or warm or completely kind, or all three, and two were invitations. Somebody shoot me.

Update

I've had more people reading my blog since I've been unable to write it than I had before when I was unable to shut up. Very funny.

Not that anyone is waiting with baited breath, or with any kind of breath, really (other than the kind that keeps a person alive), but I am going to come back to this blog after my big trip to Chicago. ("Where you think you ees? Chee-ca-go?!?")

Right now, however, I am so done in from our (highly, highly...did I say HIGHLY?) successful fundraiser, that I need to put my feet up and bask in the architecture of an American city.

Mind you, when I do come back, I aim to write about the incredible help we had from so many women it makes my head spin. Not that the men didn't do some or all of their parts, but oh...the moaning and griping and questioning and quibbling...

Okay, so maybe it wasn't that bad, but by comparison, the women spoiled us rotten.
We had a wonderful event, and a fantastic experience leading up to that event. But oh my God, if people think that women in our society don't do the bulk of the work (still...), and that men aren't more interested in taking credit...

GUESS AGAIN!

On Passing The new Menin Gate

Who will remember, passing through this Gate,
The unheroic Dead who fed the guns?
Who shall absolve the foulness of their fate,
Those doomed, conscripted, unvictorious ones?
Crudely renewed, the Salient holds its own.
Paid are its dim defenders by this pomp;
Paid, with a pile of peace-complacent stone,
The armies who endured the sullen swamp.

Here was the world's worst wound. And here with pride
'Their name liveth for ever,' the gateway claims.
Was ever such an immolation so belied
As these intolerably nameless names?
Well might the Dead who struggled in the slime
Rise and deride this sepulchre of crime.

Siegfried Sassoon
1928

Klondyke Gays

November 14, 2009
St. Lawrence Hall, Toronto
Doors Open at 5:30

Returning for a third year in Toronto, the CLGA's third annual Fowl Supper is a casual and accessible community event. The evening features a traditional fowl feast with all the trimmings (vegetarians, don't despair, we have something for everyone!), great entertainment, a Best Dressed of the West contest, a cash bar, a silent auction, karaoke and dancing, and, most important, an opportunity to interact and socialize. Our host is the wonderful Deb Pearce of Proud FM.

For more information about the CLGA, to learn more about the event, or to find out how to get tickets (tickets are $50.00. Advance tickets only), please visit our website at www.clga.ca.

Bring your spare change and move to the front of the chow line!

Join us! Tickets are going, going...

Yihaa!

Here's the Scoop!

There's the scoop! Everywhere a scoop, scoop!

And who haven't I asked?

I have had so much help -- thank you mareseatoats, Juanita, Marg, Sarah C, Diana, Mary T, Michelle, Elizabeth, the other Sarah C (my Sarah C), and anyone else I might have forgotten.

Here's the problem, however, and let me state that in the plural.

First off, it took some doing ascertaining from the caterers (whose potatoes we need this scoop for) the exact measurement in ounces. It is no longer enough to say I need a #4 scoop, a #6 scoop, a #4002 scoop. (The numbers refer to size, something else I did not know in this exact way until this week.) Depending on the store, manufacturer, city and weather, a scoop can have any number it wishes (if you don't believe me, spend an hour on the Internet researching, the way I did) and at the same time bear no consistency with its sister scoops. In fact, most of them just say Made in China and let it go at that.

In the meantime, how many leads have I followed? Fifteen? Twenty? Thirty-five? I think if you add all of those numbers together and divide by two you'll be close to the answer I'm looking for, but no closer to the 6 ounce scoop.

I have been to or telephoned Fortune, Dinetz (two recommendations for this place, but they had no interest in answering their phone or in calling me back, despite the message they asked me to leave and their promise of a return call), Metro, Kitchen Stuff Plus, Chinatown on Dundas West, IQ Living -- where they have measuring scoops, transfer scoops, ice cream scoops, melon ball scoops, cookie dough scoops, hemispherical, cylindrical and shovel-shaped scoops, and where their staff couldn't be more helpful -- Loblaws, four Dollar (but not four dollar) stores -- one of them twice -- Benix & Co., Zellers, Home Depot (well, you never know), even standing longingly outside a Danforth Street ice cream parlour (thinking they could give me advice), until my lactose-intolerant gall bladder sent me reeling.

The long and the short of it is -- I guess I should say, the real scoop of it is -- to hell with 6 ounce scoops and 3/4 dry cup measuring containers (do they even make such a thing?). We are not standing over a chafing dish serving 200 guests 1/4 + 1/2 cups of potatoes using small spatulas. No. Instead, tomorrow (or the first free night that we have, which at this point is Friday), we will be making mashed potatoes here in our home, and testing their weight against our measuring cups and our scoops, and going from there.

In the meantime, if we run out of mashed potatoes at our annual fundraiser, look at it this way: you can have turkey, dressing, gravy, biscuits, peas, squash, homemade cherry or apple pie, and, however hefty, one scoopful of mashed potatoes. And if that isn't enough, there's a bar.

Still, it seems rather comical to me that after all these months of preparation finding volunteers, caterers, liquor, entertainment, sponsors, donors, decorations, a stage, appropriate lighting, a sound system, and the thousand other accouterments that make up a fundraiser of this proportion, the greatest chunk of my time has been dedicated to finding a #8 scoop...whatever that used to mean and clearly now doesn't.

Notice

For you kind and patient readers, and for those of you (for example, Miss Marjorie) who, like many of us, might have a prurient edge and therefore want all of the juicy side bits (which is making me hungry) (wait! there are meatballs in the refrigerator!), I plan on submitting an entry within the next day or so. This fundraiser is keeping me busier than the bejesus, but I have several tamped-down opinions just crying for release, which I aim to spew all over the Internet just as fast as I can. And oh, were it not for these long fingernails...oy.