Category Archives: True Stories

Anecdotes from my past and present.

Cat Bags

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I bought the bag covered in cat butts in Rome, at the Torre Argentina Cat Sanctuary.

Cat bags 1&2

I bought it mostly to give money to the worthy cause of kibble, veterinary care and spaying for the cats of Rome, but it turned out that bag was not only the lightest, best-organized, all-around handiest purse-like object I’ve ever owned, but it got compliments wherever it went. Seriously. Women with fashion knowledge were all, like, “OMG, that bag!”

Had I known, I’d have bought five more and spread the kibble love.

Anyway. It’s been two years, just about, since Rome and the bag is dying. I contemplated calling Rome and having a pointless conversation in my appalling Italian: Avete … um, do you still have this bag? Would you consider shipping this bag? Does any of you cat-loving women know from Paypal? And then I got over myself and went to Kelly’s new fave bag store in the PATH.

There I found one bag that had the same double strap, of the same length, and virtually the same pockets. (It’s heavier, which is not a plus, but what can you do?) And what the heck, peeps? It too is covered in cats.

Will it garner the praise of its predecessor? Hard to say.

Toronto, day 138 – Macaron Madness

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photo by Kelly Robson

photo by Kelly Robson

A new bakery has opened in the neighborhood, by which I mean across the street.”https://www.facebook.com/Delysees”>Delysees is its name, and they have lovely-looking light french breads and wee little $4 sandwiches.

I have been questing after a Toronto macaron as good as the ones at The Bel Cafe in Vancouver, with no joy yet. They’re either too sugary or too stale-chewy or the flavor isn’t subtle enough. But Delysees has a promising entry in the dark chocolate category, velvety and rich, and not overly sweet. I have only failed to award the trophy because they don’t yet have a proper cooler for the things, so the meringue wasn’t crunchy on their opening day. And I’ve only tried the one flavor.

Toronto, Day 124

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It’s been quite chilly in the mornings for a couple now, on the order of six or seven degrees when we leave the house at 7:30. Breezy, too. It’s easy to forget how windy Vancouver isn’t. I’ve broken out the tights and sweaters and am happy to see them. Summer having been so much warmer here, it feels like a long time since I saw the stuff.

Tonight we are headed to a book launch with Michelle; she’s got a friend named Priscilla Uppal who has a book out, Projection: Encounters With My Runaway Mother. It’s at a bar called No One Writes to the Colonel, which somehow sounds like a place where they check your cool at the door before deciding whether to let you in. Though I see it’s also a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novella.

Toronto Day 119 – Running around, buckling down

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I was out and about quite a bit this week, and often away from the Internet. Most of it was mentoring gig business–gearing up, essentially, to get back to my usual two days a week on that front. So there hasn’t been much in the way of pictures or posting.

We did go to the monthly ChiSeries reading on Wednesday; our friend Caitlin Sweet was reading from her new book, which is a) awesome; b) YA; c) about Ariadne and the Minotaur. As usual, Kari Maaren performed some new filky works between sets. Here’s her take on Disney princesses and the identity of the true princess of Star Wars.

Cinewitterings: the enduring legacy of Unbreakable

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imageIn my home it is taken as a given (or, possibly, holy writ) that Ghostbusters is the most quotable movie ever. But yesterday I was grabbing a couple bites of grilled chicken for breakfast and I found myself saying, “I gotta get some chicken in me.”

Which is from Unbreakable. A movie I liked well enough to see several times when it was fairly new, but not enough to have watched again for years. The movie’s no longer a fave, and yet the line remains: a few times a year when we’re having or about to have chicken, or we’re hungry, one or the other of us will say it.

Media products do this: they fill your mind with heavily contextualized bookmarks, scraps of verbiage that come out when a certain situational trigger is pulled. Sometimes they’re universally recognizable; other times, they only make sense to you. Does anyone else have that chicken line embedded in their mental operating system? I doubt it. But many of you probably know and possibly use “Nuke the site from orbit!” or “They just keep pulling me back in!” or, more recently, “May the odds be ever in your favor,” to form connections with the people we’re talking to by drawing on our shared cultural experiences.

This morning when I was changing the sheets, Kelly asked if I needed help. “I have help,” I replied, which was my way of making a joke of the fact that Rumble had embedded himself in the process. He looooves to play with bed linens. He climbs under the fitted sheet and tries to see through it and bat at everything that passes overhead.

As I said this I thought, as I always do when someone’s being unhelpfully helpful: Good Smeagol always helps.

Thanks, Gollum.

So. “Gotta get some chicken in me,” is the bit of Unbreakable that I carry around. If Bruce Willis’s character hadn’t been so taciturn, maybe I’d have something more memorable.