What's he on about now?

In case the articles, essays and opinions throughtout this site just weren't enough for you, here's my online diary (a.k.a. 'blog'). It's as close as you'll come to the inside of my head, so don't say I didn't warn you
(and remember, you can always e-mail me if you love or loathe anything you're about to read)...


   Wednesday, March 22, 2006

   THE WINTER'S TALE

Hello and Happy New Year!

Yeah, I know, nearly three months late, and a very long time since my last confession...er...posting. Where the hell have I been?

Well, to say I've been busy is, of course, the standard cop-out but truthfully, I haven't had this much on my plate in a very, very long time. Here's what been distracting me, one alibi at a time...

Excuse number one:
NEW ADVENTURES IN POOP

This is the big one.

On December 3rd, my boss called me at work and told me to get in a cab and meet her down at the Humane Society. "You have GOT to get down here NOW!" she said. While walking her dog near the pound, Janet had been approached by a man bringing in a four-month-old Jack Russell/Italian greyhound mix. His girlfriend had demanded this because the puppy had chewed up an antique doll ("Who leaves antique dolls lying around where a puppy can get them?" Janet and I later asked in disbelief). He was near tears and couldn't bring himself to go in, asking instead if Janet would take the dog, but she convinced him that the pound would give the puppy the best care and find the best home, then called me straight away. Janet had long been pushing for me to get a dog because anyone who knows me sees how much happier I am around them.

True to form, I rode down to the pound with a determination to refuse. I don't make a lot of money. I'm not home many nights. How can I care for a dog when everything's so chaotic in my life right now? I had over a dozen concrete reasons why I should not take this puppy and every one of them evaporated like mist when I looked into her tiny brown eyes. She scrambled into my arms, licked my face with mad zeal, then leaned back against my chest and calmly looked around the room at everyone else. She was home and I knew then I'd never let go of her.

So began an absolutely insane month of sleepness nights, ridiculous spending and a complete change in lifestyle. For one thing, I have been brutally, unwillingly transformed into a Morning Person -- standing on the front lawn at seven in the morning, waiting for the puppy to pee.

I let her sleep in my bed at first, though she yelped and squealed in her sleep as if suffering from puppy nightmares. I did everything I could to ease her separation anxiety while busily acclimatizing her to other people, dogs, children, cars -- anything to build her confidence (though now I worry that I've done my job too well!). The previous owner had named the dog 'Asia' which suggested either an eastern land mass or a pole-dancing porn star. I decided on 'Tegan', an old Celtic name I liked and (yes I admit it) the name of a 'Doctor Who' character -- a bossy Australian woman who famously described herself as "a mouth on legs!" Seemed appropriate.

There's a new book called "Marley and Me" that's on the NYT bestsellers list. The author spent 13 years with "the worst dog ever" and his story is apparently hilarious. I believe I may one day write the sequel. As a terrier, Tegan is a willful little creature, constantly testing the limits of my authority. She tugs on the leash, jumps up on the off-limits furniture and only obeys commands the second or third time I say them. It's a constant struggle for me to stay firm with her, since she knows she's almost cute enough to get away with it!

The worst moment occurred right after her first obediance class. She was stubborn but smart enough to grasp the introductory commands and she behaved beautifully on the walk home. She trotted along beside me and stopped and sat at each crosswalk. I beamed with pride as we got home and I removed her leash. I hung my coat on the stand and turned around to see Tegan standing on the armrest of the sofa (where she's not allowed to go), her head up proud and happy as she hosed my sofa with pee.

I think I've only felt that kind of angry despair twice before in my life: when my house was robbed in 1990 and when George W. Bush was re-elected in 2004. It's a kind of blinding white light, a cold heat that tears through you. It was all I could do to keep from snapping her neck like a twig. Instead, I screamed, mashed her face into the puddle, snapped the leash on her and whisked her out onto the front lawn, where she calmly resumed the last of her emptying. She then got lavish praise and a cookie, even though I wanted her dead.

Even the standard housebreaking has been a painfully slow and irritating process. Nothing is more aggravating than someone breaking my 'don't crap in my living room' rule (guests, be told!) and she's done it often and enthusiastically. I'm SO glad I don't have carpeting. Adjusting to the 'poop and scoop' routine was difficult -- nothing in life can quite prepare one for the ghastly sight of poop steaming in the winter air (steaming!). Even that nightmare was quickly eclipsed by a treat experiment with peanut butter that led to two days of diarrea, a horror I shall not describe now or ever. Yes, I've been in the trenches...and they're filled with poop.

Fortunately, it hasn't all been urine and death wishes. Despite it all, I love the dog completely and totally. She's a fantastic little thing -- happy, friendly with strangers, relatively quiet, whip-smart and always ready to play. Just watching her curled up on her chair, gnawing on a chew toy, makes me smile. It's a paradox but once I understood that I have to be totally firm with her at all times (alpha-dog!), we've had a more relaxed and harmonious relationship.

Now if only I could still bring the dog to work (more on that coming up). I hate leaving her in a crate all day but she's adjusted well by becoming nocturnal(!) -- once we spent lazy evenings on the sofa with a book or movie, now I get home after a long day and she's there with tug rope in mouth, jumping up and down, silently squealing, "Let's PLAAAAAY!!! For nine hours!!" My every last nerve is worked but I still wouldn't want it any other way.

Excuse number two:
MAD ABOUT THE BOY

They say third time's the charm, right? That's why Darcy and I are back together.

Again.

I love him. He loves me. We're utterly wrong for one another. Sigh.

James once suggested that some part of me must love "the drama" of it all. Oh no. Build-ups of unnecessary drama are what's kept us apart on a semi-regular basis. Ultimately, though, he makes me happy more often than not and most of our time apart after breaking up has been spent pining for one another. Life's too short for that so I'm willing to hang on and see what happens. At the end of the day, he makes me laugh and I like that a lot.

One thing I have learned is that the longer I spend with him, the more I see that his issues that have often upset me to the point of walking out are usually just
a) unfortunate echoes from his past that I can understand once we talk about it
b) misunderstandings due to our very different operating styles
c) random bits of idiocy that I can freely ignore
And if Darcy had a blog, I'm sure he'd be writing the same thing (only with less 'Doctor Who' and more NASCAR).

He's moped in the past that I never write about him on this blog (apparently not realizing that I've been protecting him from myself!) and seems dismayed that he's not the most important thing in my life. I don't know what to say about that. How do you juggle your many interests and obligations to career, friends, family while simultaneously letting your loved ones know how very much smaller and emptier your life would be without them? Maybe that's why Valentine's Day was created -- one day to stop and say all that out loud. I like to think I've never been shy with my affections to Darcy but sometimes it's as though he just doesn't believe me. And I can't tell if that's a), b) or c).

Excuse number three:
POUNDING THE PAVEMENT

Working at CORE Feature Animation was the best job I ever had. Not answering the phones and whatnot -- that was crap -- but the environment, the people, the puppies roaming free, the whole 'let's put on a show' making-a-movie vibe, it was all fantastic. A Disney-lawyer-approved confidentiality agreement kept me from discussing most of it but now I can freely plug away: Walt Disney's The Wild is the first feature-length animated movie made entirely in Canada and, though the plot was handily ripped off for Dreamworks' "Madagascar" last year, CORE's work looks a thousand times better. Though the movie is aimed squarely at kids and lacks the emotional resonance of the superior Pixar films, there are shots in this movie that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end and an occasional line that made me laugh out loud. It opens April 14th and everyone should take their favourite kids to see it.

There. Now I can bitch. Disney worked with CORE because Michael Eisner -- who was to Disney what George W. Bush is to America -- totally alienated the creative talent at Pixar. Disney needed new engines for its machine -- hence CORE -- but their board of directors finally got wise and voted Eisner out, leaving the new CEO free to renegotiate with Pixar and woo them back.

What does all that have to do with me? I means that CORE Feature Animation then had no new features to animate and, with virtually everyone's contract up, we were all sadly shown the door. It was especially difficult after the New Year, as groups of people left on a weekly basis and I slowly became part of a skeleton crew. The part that really chafed was that I had only just started to work on press releases, a company overview and actual PR writing but, as I've endured from previous jobs (I'm looking at you, Britnell family!), the rug was pulled out from under me right when I thought I was getting somewhere.

As always though, I bounced back fairly quickly. The only perk of being near the bottom in the Grand Scheme of Things is that you don't have far to fall (some people I worked with had to give up their condos and whatnot -- ouch). After more fruitless searching than I'd have liked, my friend Trevor recommended me for a receptionist gig at an architecture firm and, after four(!!) interviews, I was hired -- same kind of job, same Spadina neighbourhood, slightly better pay.

It's been a stressful transition. Coming off of the rough-and-tumble pace of a film studio, the calm, polite, professional environment of a small architecture film has been...well...eerie. Stan, my old boss at the record store, chimed in with one of his usually-brilliant analogies: "You're like one of those kids who's been raised by wolves and now you've been cleaned up, set at the dinner table and you don't know which fork to use. You'll be fine!" Thanks, Stan! (I think)

Excuse number four:
MISCELLANEOUS THINGS -- LITERALLY

So aside from the dog, the boyfriend, the new job, what could be keeping me away from my blog writing? Writing where I get paid. After a few years away, I'm back in the warm busom of fab magazine after the new editor called me out of the blue and asked if I could be persuaded to take on the dreaded "Misc. Things" column.

Every two weeks, fab reaches into its box of odd products sent to us by corporations hungry for press and we find a gay community personality to try it out. The nice thing about it (aside from the adorable little paycheck) is that I don't have to plug anything that's crap -- if the product sucks, we say so -- and that I get to interview interesting, offbeat people. In the last three months, the column has featured
-- a martini lounge bartender testing a 'smoothie' blender
-- an Ontario tourism lobbyist testing an online spa booking service
-- a 'sexological bodyworker' testing an oil-based lubricant
-- "Enza Supermodel" testing a fabric refresher
-- a pair of drag kings testing Nivea Aftershave Balm for Men
-- a sleep-deprived writer/actor testing an ergonomic pillow

It's been mostly fun and has happily allowed me to build up the kind of writer-editor relationship I've longed for. Steven trusts my ideas, throws new ones back at me, tells me when my work is junk and praises me when it's clicking. It's a terrific back-and-forth thing we've got going and it's leading to bigger, non-product-shilling pieces (like the Catholic priest one -- more on that later). fab is often dismissed as a pointless little gay rag but it's MY pointless little gay rag, dammit! Let's see what this baby can do...

Excuse number zero:
KEEPING UP WITH THE JAMESES

And there you have it -- over 2000 words that I could've typed in four: I'm a lazy ass. But really, I've only written about 700 words for each month which is nothing, right? Now that I'm in back in a groove, I've got to get back at this -- not only have I lost my two fans but Darrell has nearly given up on me, Josh is concerned that I let the death of Don Knotts pass without comment (Janet had dinner with him a few years ago and says he was one of the sweetest people she'd met) and James simply went off and started his own blog! Dainty Bastard looks great and thrillingly captures my friend's wild, brilliant and slightly terrifying personality. He's raised the bar (Dainty Bastard, indeed!) so it looks like I'm back on the job!

Labels: Canada, Doctor Who, fab, friends, George W Bush, oh l'amour, Tegan the Jack Russell Terrorist