blogthecat

Breaking news

The toilet seat has fallen right off. Yep, it slid right over and let go. While I was on it. THE END.

Down the drain

Because I know you are dying to know, our toilet saga continues, with a few new developments. Our landlord came over with the plumber last week, and this time, Craig was home—good because I can’t speak to the landlord just now. This is because she called me a few days ago to (a) ban me from painting green accents I had had my heart set on in the LD's alcove (interfering mightily with my nesting impulses), and (b) ask me whether I thought our friend who visited us last month had savaged the toilet during his stay. Okay, she didn’t say “savaged” but it was close. The call came in the middle of a work meeting, too. Cartoonish smoke spirals and swear words streamed out my ears, and it was all I could do to remain professional.

So I shut myself in my office when she came over with the plumber. Craig stood guard while they dismantled the toilet. After a few minutes, I heard some commotion—they had evidently found the source of the evils. Good, I thought—proof that there WAS something wrong with the GD pipes. The door to the office opened. Craig stepped in with a sort of sick, green expression on his face, and asked quietly, “Have you dropped a necklace down the toilet recently?”

As anyone who has ever been pregnant knows, there is a lot of peeing that goes on at night. A. Lot. Especially in the first trimester. You are peeing so often that when you rise in the morning, you feel like your night has been spent as much on the pot as much as in bed. So about four months ago, during pee #22, at about 4 a.m., I hardly blinked when I felt my chain and pendant slide off my neck, down my body, and into the dark abyss of the toilet water. Sitting there with no light on, tired as tired can be, it took me but a moment’s contemplation before I flushed the toilet and hoped for the best.

Was it wrong? It was. In my defense, it was the first trimester. Enough said.

I met Craig’s eyes and nodded. “Yes, I did drop a necklace down there. Have they found it?”

“Yes.”

“Did you recognize it as mine?”

“Yes.”

“Did you tell them you recognized it?”

“No. If it had had a big K-I-L-E-Y pendant hanging off it, I wouldn’t have claimed it,” he said. “Not with the looks I was getting in there.”

He bravely made his way out of the office, back into the bathroom to thank the landlord and plumber for their mysterious discovery. They left with the necklace.

It is now five days later. The toilet makes more noise than ever.

One of those days

We have a screwy toilet. It’ll be fine for a couple of months, dormant really, and then like a monster it wakes up, grumpy as all hell. It been up for a couple of weeks now and making threatening noises, gurgling and choking during the last throes of the flush. We’ve taken to standing over it—transfixed in a mixture of fear and morbid curiosity—to see if it will make good on its promises and really explode.

Only today did we snap out of it and call the landlord. By the time she could come over, I was alone; Craig was on his way to the airport for a ski trip. It was up to me to explain our way to better plumbing.

We faced the toilet. I articulated the problem. She flushed it. Hardly a sound. Cool, clear water filled up gently and quickly to the necessary level. I laughed nervously, and mumbled the age-old truism about bringing a broken car to the mechanic only to have it purr like new in the shop. She ignored me, and flushed again. If possible, it was quieter. I didn’t say anything. “Again?” she asked, darting a smug look over at me. “Why not?” I said, and endured the third perfectly normal, obedient flush.

We backed out of the bathroom, but I couldn’t leave it there. I was feeling dumb and vengeful (a horrible combination) and needing to assert my tenant’s rights somehow. I led her to the bedroom, where there’s a light fixture near the end of one of our alcoves (the one that will become the baby’s room) that we’ve never been able to turn on. I suggested it might be faulty wiring. Over she marched to the light. Reached her hand up to the back of it, grasped a little chain, and pulled it softly. On went the light.

She left. We didn’t exchange many pleasantries. I went to take a pee. Flushed the toilet. Listened stonefaced as the water struggled noisily though the dirty rotten pipes.   

Branders, shmanders

Some of the work Craig and I do is what’s called branding and positioning: we help clients identify and communicate their most compelling strengths and stories and make a positive impression in the marketplace. It can be neat work, because part of it involves activating the sincere values and beliefs at the core of a company. It's not just a matter of pretty language and graphics. Good brands tap into the personality—and people—of a company.

When we brainstormed our own company website, we definitely wanted to practice what we preach. We wanted a website that conveyed both our professional offerings and a sense of who we are—since our brand is not just about “strategy, marketing, communications” but also Kiley and Craig. For the most part, we’re happy with the result. But for one glaring problem—which we just discovered.

We plopped a quote we thought was pretty cool and representative of our brand up on our homepage:

The value of an idea lies in the using of it.
Thomas Edison

In other words, hire us to help you develop your ideas and turn them into real things—don’t waste them.

So far so good on the branding front. Thank you, Thomas Edison.

Craig broke bad news to me tonight at dinner. He was listening to CBC radio today and it came up that Edison’s brilliance came at a cost. Seems he routinely sent bored schoolchildren into the neighbourhood to gather up cats (and dogs) that he would then electrocute in a public square to prove the deadliness of a competitor’s electrical invention.

As you know, I am close to insane in my adoration of cats. Like, there's-going-to-be-something-on-my-tombstone-about-cats kind of adoration. Okay, not that bad, but really close.

So the cat-electrocuting Edison in the place of honour on our homepage? Ungood. Distinctly ungood.

I would fire us.

Time for a new quote.

p.s. Edison didn't stop at cats, as you'll see from the link above.
p.p.s. Did you know about this? Craig's Uncle Wayne sent us an email about it a few months back, but we thought he was just quipping (he's a witty guy) and we didn't look into it. A mistake.

Husband gone wrong (or, not all films with women in them are chick flicks)

I am about to beat my husband to an unrecognizable pulp, and then blow him to smithereens. Okay, I’m not, but I would if I acted on my emotions the way people do in the action movies he so loves. Craig’s fatal flaw today is lumping any movie with a prominent female character in it and a narrative touching on love or relationships into the unfortunate category “chick flick.”

If I ignore its terrible misuse of the adjective “stereotypical,” I mostly agree with Wikipedia’s definition of chick flick as “slang for a movie, usually a romantic, contrived comedy, that appeals to the stereotypical tastes of the female gender.” In other words, chick flicks are generally bad movies. I don’t like bad movies. I do like movies that explore realistic problems in fresh, well-constructed narratives, whether they’re led by male or female protagonists. If there’s some emotion along the way, I can deal—it doesn’t feel mushy to me unless it’s ham-handedly done.

Hugh Dancy, one of the male actors in this season’s “The Jane Austen Book Club,” responded as follows to the accusation of his involvement in a chick flick: “A ‘chick flick’ implies a kind of frothiness, a surface quality and not really, in a way, related to life. These [‘Book Club’ characters] are people living real lives and facing real challenges. I don’t think of the film that way. I think about it as a script and a story.”

Couldn't agree more.

The film’s female director, Robin Swicord, asserts, "I think that it's only women who are told that their movies are in a separate category, as if the other categories of film were the real categories."

I wouldn’t go so far as Swicord: I wouldn’t dispute that there is a category appropriately called “chick flicks.” I simply say that the category should be considered much smaller than it is by my dumb-dumb husband and others of his ilk. It should be limited to films like “The Holiday” or “The Wedding Planner” or most Sandra Bullock films. Chick flicks should be thought of as “bad films directed at women.”

What are not chick flicks?

•    Dirty Dancing
•    Ghost
•    Pretty Woman
•    Thelma and Louise
•    and yes, Terms of Endearment

Why? Because they are great films that only neanderthalesque men should be incapable of enjoying. They are rich, beautiful films with smart dialogue and great acting that make us think about life and all its complications and wonders. Tell me, men, what is so icky about that?

Do you not feel?

Do you not love?

So many questions I could ask, but I must go down to the living room and bounce on Craig's head in all my pregnant heaviness until he agrees to watch “Evening” with me. And like it.

The L-Spot

Into all our lives fall days of reckoning. Today was one of them for me. Scrambling out the door on my way to a doctor’s appointment, I chanced a glance down upon my outfit, and what I saw I could not quite believe. Toe to neck: Merrill slipper-like pullons, meant only for indoor, private use; pale pink Calvin Klein socks; six-year-old stretchy low-rise Levis made before they realized the back HAS to be higher than the front; a seven-year-old Club Monaco t-shirt with a little hole covered by a pale yellow, cabled v-neck pullover of same origin date by Tommy Hillfiger (you can see its sleeve in the picture).

You might be most offended by the sloppiness of my ensemble. Or by the ubiquitous brands or age of each item. Not I. It's the pale pink socks with the pale yellow sweater. Easter egg colours. Coordinated pastels. I am only 36. I have entered Loserville.

Did I change my outfit? No. I did not have time. I went out like that. To my appointment, to the vet, and even to a lunch on trendy Fourth Avenue where I might have bumped into anyone from my past or present.

I was really, really rushed. Still, there should be some innate instinct that steers your hand clear of choosing pale pink and pale yellow simultaneously. My fashion sense has never been strong, but today I stepped into another realm altogether. All I can say is I recognize the problem. And that's supposed to be the first step, right?

Last week I watched TV on a Friday night for the first time in about twenty years. I caught Friday Night Lights, a football drama I liked very much. I vowed to catch it this week. And next week, too. I made a plan to be a regular Friday-night-TV-watcher. But now, steeped in the shame of today's outfit selection, I know I must not be that person. Not yet. I cannot schedule a TV show on a Friday night as if it were a party. It's a slippery slope, a slippery, slippery slope.

Bitter green

What'€™s wrong with this picture? Oh, I know, it's what's in it. Frisée. Whenever I come across it, frisée never fails to sour my mood.

I come across it a lot, which might be the whole problem. I might be less incensed if it were treated it as it should be: GARNISH. It is not meant to be a full-fledged, deserving bite of salad. But this is exactly what happens when you buy the hideously environmentally damaging boxes of pre-made salad mixes I do too often. Frisée is the star component in such medleys, and if you don't use it you're left with a third of the lettuce you agreed to pay for.

Which leads me to my conspiracy theory. Frisée, because of its wild, craggy branches, takes up enough room in the salad box that it creates the illusion of fullness and value. Frisée is a big RIP-JOB.

Still, it continues to make its sinister way into my life since I am guiltily, but totally, addicted to my salad boxes. And so when preparing dinner, I have little option but to dump a frizzy mass of greens onto my plate, gritting my teeth as the frisée claims centre stage instead of retreating to the edge of the plate where it belongs. Given an inch, it'll take a mile.

As it does, it grabs every bit of dressing available. Dressing clusters in pearls along its spindly tentacles, leaving the other, decent lettuce in the mix dry and wilted—ignored. From that point on, it's disaster, unless you don't mind wanton branches of frisée delightedly penetrating your nostrils as you try to cram them into your gaping mouth, smearing your lipstick all over your face, spraying your clothes and any fellow diners unlucky enough to be present with flecks of oil.

Down with frisée, I say, DOWN with it!