Pet peeve of the day

Not being able to think of anything to complain about. SO unlike me. But my bedroom is cool, my bicycle seat has dehydrated, my passport photo will only be seen by customs officials -- a fitting revenge -- and I'm heading off for a reunion this weekend with the women I travelled with in Asia. Life is good. For now...

Pet peeve of the day

Cold fronts that move as slowly as Sunday drivers. The other night it was 38 degrees Celsius in my bedroom. The past few days I've felt like I'm back in Tokyo, where in the summers one would sometimes have to step around a crumpled blue suit lying in a pool of protoplasm, all that remained of a once industrious Japanese businessman.

Pet peeve of the day

Passport photos. In my passport that just expired, I look like a snarling terrorist. I didn’t think it was possible to have a worse picture taken. As it turns out, anything really is possible. Even the photographer grimaced and gave me a sympathetic smile.

Pet peeve of the day

My bicycle seat which, in typical premenstrual fashion, is retaining water. I tried to explain to it the other day that I was sick of getting to work and having to walk around with a wet ass and endure the whispers and raised eyebrows, but it snapped at me. I've decided to let the matter be for the moment.

Oh mon Dieu...

... can it be so? Café culture in France is dying? Apparently fewer and fewer citoyens are going to cafés because smoking in public places has been banned and drunk driving laws are becoming stricter. While I don’t support the repealing of either of these measures, trying to save France’s cafés is a cause I could embrace (and kiss on both cheeks). It’s not just because I love coffee and have dreams of spending hours at the cafés in Montmartre trolling for potential piscine boys and equally delectable patisserie. It’s because I’m beginning to feel that one day nobody will go out anymore. We do our banking and pay our bills from home (I approve). We socialize without ever meeting other people face to face (I approve, particularly on bad hair days (= most days)). We shop from home (I conditionally approve). We buy big screen TVs (I approve) and no longer go to movie theatres (I disapprove). We tend virtual garden plots (I DISAPPROVE) and keep our fingernails clean (I approve).We create gods of tv personalities (I disapprove) and abandon places of worship (I abstain from approving or disapproving). We buy Krups Dolce Gusto coffee makers (I approve) and the local café closes (I disapprove).

I realize that that last sentence bears no logical relation to the opening lines of the paragraph. I'm not even sure that the last part of that sentence bears any logical relation to the first part of it. I probably need some caffeine. Do I have a Krups Dolce Gusto coffee maker? Sadly, no. Am I going to go and sit in a cafe somewhere? Mais non. I'm going to pull out my French press.

The story of my name

Last week, a friend and I talked about doing a yoga retreat at a place where we used to go every year but that, in perhaps the same manner that the white calf was forgotten by Mali, imperceptibly slipped from our awareness. Now we both seem to be re-visiting our past (in fact, I jokingly asked my friend if she is in a twelve-step program, for she called to apologize for what she perceived as not having been there for me when my father died seventeen years ago) and looking to revive certain traditions that in their time were treasured and whose time, like that of wrap-around verandahs and milk in glass bottles, perhaps should come again.

At the end of the first yoga class of the retreat the instructor asks everyone to sit in a circle. Each person then tells the others how they got their first name. It's a good way of committing names to memory and some people have interesting tales to relate. I am not one of them. I was named Helen Elizabeth after my great grandmother Elizabeth Helen, who died on the same day and month I was born but twenty years earlier. This year I've decided to embellish the story somewhat. I'm going to say that because my mother wanted to call me Clytemnestra and my father had his heart set on Hippolyte and neither was willing to compromise, they didn't have a name for me when I was born. As my legal status remained in limbo, my mother held me up to the window of her room at Montreal General Hospital overlooking the St. Lawrence River. At that moment, one thousand ships hoisted sails of a colour that could best be described as a happy shade of yellow and set off for a land where white calves roam; where chocolate-coated Aphrodites and Adonises play; where discouraging words lodge in the entrails of the speaker, causing severe discomfort and possibly a full-blown case of gastroenteritis; and where the skies are not not cloudy all day.