realia

it was a slaughter

Gusty, rainy, windy. Tree carnage. Mass umbrella slaughter.  I won't even talk about what happened to the CN Tower.

I guess this is the spot where you present the umbrella carcasses back to the city. Maybe it's where the magic cleaning up faeries come and send them off to umbrella heaven.

Disappearing tower. From Windsor Street near Front Street, Toronto

Continuing to disappear. CN Tower, from Queens Quay at Rees, Toronto

purple mockers

I love these purple pom pom flowers, how they float above gardens like colourful little clouds.  Apros pos because I found these ones at Cloud Garden off Temperance Street.  I really loved these ones sitting atop this brick wall.  They way they lean over it's as if they're looking over the wall at the parade of humans going by below them; mocking us for our Monday drudgery and wondering why we don't have the sense to hang about in a sunny garden instead of going back to the office after lunch.

 

priorities

Sitting on my building's roof in the brand new camp chairs, looking at the lake, the boats, the planes, and nothing in general after a good walk in the city.

Jen: I'm just thinking about what I'm going to make us for supper.

Ceri: What is it?

Jen: (coy) I'm not telling.

Ceri: What the hell?

Jen: It'll be good.

Ceri: Does it involve onions?

Jen: Of course.

Ceri:AH HA!  I KNEW IT! .

same dinner two nights running

Roasted tomatoes with parmesan and oregano and drizzled with olive oil, and toasted triscuit crackers with cheese, onion and pepper.  Glass of red wine.  

After the excess of the holiday season, I've been craving simple, and turned to the same dinner the past two nights running.

I know you're jealous.

This is a Visual Realia post.

caught...

...lurking about in the wee hours.  An advanced visit, presumably to inspect my non-traditional Christmas Tree, under which he was standing.  I think he approved because there are some gifts.

in which bankers fly like nannies

This morning it’s deeply overcast; one of those rainy mornings when you wish it was Saturday but it’s really Thursday and so you drag yourself out of bed, late, and don’t care about what the clock says because everybody is late on a rainy day.

The atmosphere has an indigo-charcoal cast and soft, smoky clouds are obscuring the tops of the buildings.  It’s warmer than usual and it’s raining lightly but it seems like the rain is coming down hard because of the thrusting winds.  

I walk outside and one of those winds sweeps up smacks me wet in the face and so I look at the streetcars approaching the stops outside my building.  One going east to Union Station would be a relatively fast ride, and then I could navigate my way through the station and walk the underground malls all the way to my office.  I’m gauging the favourableness of that as opposed to the 25 minute blustery rainy walk when I get a look at the steamy windows of the streetcars and I think about the vacant, rude, blackberry punching humanity crammed inside, and that times a hundred teeming through Union Station, and I open up my polka dotted umbrella and tilt it into the wind and walk up into Spadina Avenue for my journey north-east to work.

Right away I smell the rain on the city and I’m glad I’ve chosen the walk, even though gusts blow up one side of me and down the other and I’m hanging on to my umbrella wrestling it back to its job.  I get up to Front Street and other people are wrestling their umbrellas too and some are crouched up tight in their hoods and scarves.  On King Street the streetcars are glistening behind the swishing windshield wipers and the streets are shining under the rain and the clouds seemed to have sunk down to encompass the coffee shops too. 

I get close to Bay Street amidst all the suits and black umbrellas and while I’m waiting for a light I imagine all of those bankerly types suddenly swooping up into the air like the would-be nannies in Mary Poppins, high heels flying off and scarves fluttering; and I imagine them flipping and whirling, getting smaller as they move off past the cloud draped buildings and over the lake toward Niagara Falls.

I get to my office with mashed up hair and a runny nose and I prop my dripping umbrella next to my desk and get myself a cup of jasmine flavoured tea and know that my wet ankles will dry before long.

tiny beacons

Walking down to Sugar Beach today we came upon these tiny mushrooms.  Aren't they the loveliest things?  Don't you just want to escape into this tiny netherworld?  I do.  But then I'm inclined to think the faery world isn't affected by concerns like politics, angry drivers with horns, deadlines, retirement savings plans and fluffy pop stars. 

But who knows?  I could be wrong.  I haven't escaped into that netherworld. 

Yet.

 

 Tiny mushroom netherworld - beautiful thing number fifty-three.

in which the seven-year saga of the hair concludes

When I first moved to the Toronto area in 2004, the quest to find a hair stylist just did not end.  It's a seemingly silly predicament, and I realise it might make me sound like a bit of a princess.  Like one of those horrid women on those horrid “reality” shows they advertise on the Cosmo channel.  You’d think in a great big metropolis it would be easy, right?  There are thousands and thousands to choose from.

My tresses are fine, thin and lifeless, and so must have the right cut, or they flop pathetically.  I can’t won’t  don’t spend a lot of time doing my hair, and so I need to have a cut that I can make me look gorgeous presentable without a lot of effort.

A hair stylist has to have an understanding of you.  S/he needs to be able to have a conversation with you.  Or not – I’m not a natural chatterbox, and am quite happy to sit and zone out of life for awhile, and so my hair stylist has to be comfortable with silence.  And when we do talk we need to find some mutual ground.  Surface chatter makes me squirrelly, I simply cannot participate in it.

I can afford to pay for quality, but I’ve learned that it’s not about how much a stylist or salon charges.  I went to a senior guy at prominent Toronto salon once and got the worst haircut I’ve ever got, along with not a little snotty attitude about my lack of budget to afford a colour job that day. 

A stylist has got to have skills AND intuition, she has to have an understanding of you.  He has to get your personality and your needs.  I don’t think my needs are overly complex: I’m fifty, but I need something modern; up-to-date but not trendy; something that makes my lifeless locks a little interesting but not coiffed; easy to do and looks like it; something that says my life is not encompassed in the Bay Street office world. 

My ideal hair stylist is someone I can trust to do what s/he wants, knowing I will like it.  Back home, me and my hair had it good.  My lifelong bestie Lynn was my exclusive hair doer forever.  Through the 80s perm years and into the embracing straight and adding blonde years.  She always did a good job with the blonde – it was natural looking and the couple of hours we had together were happy time to catch up on each other’s news. 

Lynn lived a good thirty minutes drive from me, and over the years built up a large and faithful clientele so disorganised me could never get in at the last minute, and so for the less urgent colour appointments and catching up times I continued with Lynn and thanks to a serendipitous and timely walking in to a neighbourhood salon for an overdue cut I found Tricia who became my cutter.  She was young and inexpensive, but intuitive – she *got* me and I would go in and not even ask her for anything.  She just did, and I always loved.

Then I get to the Toronto area in 2004 and the vaster numbers of people make for too bloody many trials and errors.  It was like dating - I couldn't find THAT person.  During the period of my last job I finally found a girl near my office whose work I liked, but she was not always easy to get in to, and the conversation/non-conversation was stilted.  Another gal in the same place did my colour, but didn’t always do just what I wanted.  When I got the new job downtown, there was not enough reason to travel that far for my hair needs, so it was time to look again.

Just before the new job started, I used a gift certificate my cousin gave me for a full-service spa to get colour.  The change in jobs meant I was going to miss a paycheque over the transition and the gift certificate ensured I could get through with good hair, at least.  Sarah rocked my colour.  It was perfect, and for two months I loved it.  

Friday, having a sudden hair failure, I call the spa and as luck would have it, Sarah is available for Saturday.  She rocks both colour and cut.  More importantly, she gets me, suggesting things I’ve had to beg out of other stylists.  She is comfortable in the silences, and in the chatty times we talk about books and stories and get to know a little about each other.  She misses her husband who she married offshore and is awaiting paperwork to allow him into the country.  Against the advice of her family, who thinks she should continue to save her money for setting up house with him, she is going to visit him in September.  I tell her that I believe practicality is only practical when it serves you, and there are times when the soul should take precedence. 

She’s unpretentious, relaxed and easy.  And for the first time since 2004, me and my hair are at one.  In the lovely atmosphere of a spa. Later as I’m finishing off “me time” with a pedicure I’m feeling pretty damned pleased with myself.  Because as we all know, having a good hair day makes everything just that much easier.

Finding the right hair stylist who gets you - beautiful thing number fifty-two.

these city walls

I came across this video which has scenes I can identify with my every day.  These scenes ARE my every day - they're of Toronto, the city I write about all the time. 

And it's funny because I could link this song's theme to a conversation I had only just last night about my experience in having been here five years now; about choosing a city and not finding a home; about not giving up on the city but quitting looking for the home.

I might be more enthusiastic about finding this video treatment of this particular song.  But I have laryngitis today.  I don't even know how to deal with this song when I have laryngitis.

 

a suitable theme song

... for getting back into the dating world. 

I'm thinking it should be a reminder - that maybe I should play it before every date.  In other words - "stay down here on the planet Jennifer."

(Oh, and well, how had I gone for so long without thinking about Paul Hyde and the Payolas?)