So, it is the season for tights now. It really is fall. I bought two pairs to start off with, grey and black. I plan to rock the short skirt and tights look for the winter – well the part of the winter that is amenable to that. And by short skirt, I mean three inches above the knee. As you can tell, the Montreal whoredom has not gotten to me…yet. When it is ridiculously cold, I’ll put the pants on.

In high school I wore tights daily, as is the lot of girls in the Catholic board in winter. Being a late bloomer, I didn’t have, what you’d call, admirers. In fact I am not so sure I actually existed as a girl between the ages of 14 and 18. The incident that defines my high school sexual experience was a strange occurrence on a sunny afternoon in late March in 1992.

For some reason we were all sent back to our homerooms during last period, there was probably an assembly or mass or something. We all went back to our respective homeroom classrooms. I was the first back to the portable that served as my homeroom. Wanting to stand in the sun I stepped outside on the small porch that sat outside the portable door. The field and parking lot was littered with puddles formed by melting snow. The first clear day in weeks, I was looking at the sky. Then I noticed that at the bottom of the four steps in front of me stood Warren Archer.

Now, I don’t care what anyone says, Warren Archer and I had chemistry. He was so nice looking. He was also a little bit bad, skipping school a lot and ignoring what teachers told him. Hmm he was so cute. Perhaps the ‘chemistry’ was the way my heart jumped a little when he made his rare appearance in school. Or the way I’d cling to any word from him that floated in my direction. Or the way I would want to bring my knees to my chin, curling up into a tight ball if he looked in my direction (the clock was on the wall a few feet behind me). He’d sit, aloof and silent clearly disinterested in everything in the aisle beside me, just one desk up. I was the girl who would spin around in my seat whenever the portable door opened to see if Warren would come walking through the threshold. We didn’t have one class together. Homeroom was my only chance.

Anyway, that sexually charged afternoon I stood at the top of the steps looking down at him. And he looked up at me. In one of those teenage spastic moments (I was 16) for some reason, instead of saying “Hey Warren” I swung my right leg out toward him. He stepped up one step and grabbed my ankle. Then he climbed up the last three while sliding his hand along the navy blue tights that covered my calf. When he stopped in front of me he had a firm grasp of my leg, his thumb pointing up my thigh, his fingers on three spots at the back of my bent knee. My whole body heated up as I looked in his face for an eternity in 30 seconds.

He dropped my leg and hopped into the portable. He said nothing to me. I froze there waiting for the room to fill up with more students. I sat at my desk my head stuck on the portable’s porch for the remainder of the afternoon, Warren didn’t look at me once. He just leaned back in his seat, cleared his throat and waited patiently for the bell to signal the end of the day. And with my every breath, I waited with him.
- posted by Debbie @ 3:04 PM |

 
So, I’m munching on a Cortland apple. Delicious. It may replace the “Royal Gala” as my apple of choice. The gala is sweet to be sure, but the Cortland is a little bit tart, like me. This apple is really pretty too. The skin is red but with yellow and greenish streaks, but the meat of it – the flesh – is paper white. That’s good snacking.

I’ve now been in Montreal for three and a half months. Working in publishing, I always assumed that my career will, at some point, take me home to Toronto. I’ve been here with a self-imposed indefinite deadline. Maybe 1 year, maybe 2, maybe 5. But this morning I was standing in front of the hand drier in one of the dodgy bathrooms that fill up my office building and a thought just leapt into my head. What if I don’t move back home? What if I just decide that this is where I am going to live?

It was a really strange moment. I was looking down at the stainless steel nozzle. I could see my reflection it in. But I was distorted due to the shape of the nozzle, my torso look small, but my breasts looked MASSIVE and my head was also small. I was laughing out loud at the way I looked. I even shook the girls around to see how it would look, yes, it was funny. Then I just stopped laughing, and I thought, ‘This is it. I’ll just live here.’

People make the decision to settle in a particular place all the time. But do they do so while shaking their tits in a public bathroom? Is this a sign that I am loosing my mind? If so, should I trust my instinct to settle in Montreal? Was that last question just a disclaimer to avoid making a definite statement about a decision I may have made with my heart, rather than my head?

These are all good questions.
- posted by Debbie @ 3:16 PM |

 
So, I’ve been sick all weekend. It’s not so bad, the weather is crap. Now I am sitting on the floor of my apartment typing out my blog with a cup of coffee wondering if I should make it into work tomorrow.

Today is clearly sneeze day, for me and for the atmosphere. I am sneezing and spreading my germs all over the apartment in tiny spikes of spit shooting out of my mouth. I imagine they land on the ground or on a wall in the same way powder residue sprays out of a gun barrel when fired as illustrated by CSI. Outside there is rain being shot out of clouds, all sharp and sparse. It is the kind of rain that makes the tic tic tic sound rather than the sounds that plump raindrops make. That’s more of a plap plap plap. Tic tic tic, Plap plap plap, tic tic tic, I’m losing my mind.

My light to moderate cold, the howling wind and the tic tic tic rain are convincing me to stay inside all day, but there is a problem with that. I am running out of coffee and today I used my last coffee filter. If I am too sick to make it into the office tomorrow, I will need coffee and filters for tomorrow morning.

My brain is at an impasse. Should I haul it to the market to get the coffee and filters, and oh yeah, enough food make lunch and dinner. Or should I stay home and watch “Les Invasions Barbares”* while I finish the scarf I am making.

If I go to the market I can also pop by the yarn store and pick up the pattern and the yarn for a matching hat I want to make. I realize that I will have to wear a hat during the Montreal winter but I know that I will not be able to buy one that will adequately protect my head without maiming my hair. So, I have decided to make one.

OK, I gotta leave the house.

*“Les Invasions Barbares” is on my mind because Maximizer just saw it and she feels that you would miss some nuances of the film if you haven’t seen “Le Declin de L’Empire Americain”, made some 17 years before. I don’t know if I agree with that, but whatever. I wasn’t big on “Le Declin de Le’Empire Americain.” As Vijay says ‘There may well be people like that in the world, but I don’t want to get to know them.’ I think “Les Invasions Barbares” stands on it’s own, and if you can protect yourself from Arcand’s immense masterbatory ego, it is probably best to do so (If I have offended any die-hard Denys Arcand fans, I don't care).
- posted by Debbie @ 12:32 PM |