Today I donated some money to the CBC Turkey Drive. They're collecting turkeys downtown but since I am lazy and it's cold, I just sent them some money via the website.
This is a good cause, but what would make it better is if they had a turkey who could drive. You know? A turkey drive?
I saw a number of Facebook posts yesterday and today related to the fact that at one point over the weekend, Edmonton was allegedly the second-coldest place in the world. I was like, that's ludicrous! What a ridiculous claim! But it turns out it's true--coldest place in North America, and I think only a weather station in Siberia recorded colder temperatures. [Also: if you read the news story linked above it soon veers off into a cute story about a kitten, so that's good.] -58 with the windchill. That is -72 Fahrenheit. How cold is that? Cold enough that I am wearing leggings under my pants. Also my dog has booties.
James and I were in Las Vegas last weekend with some friends to celebrate a year of 30th birthdays (not mine!). I was there once before, last December, and I enjoyed it in a surreal sort of way, but this time the city left me feeling really cold.
It's hard to put my finger on what gave me this skeezed-out feeling, but one night we were walking along the strip from one hotel to another, past a construction zone, so the pedestrian path was created with huge plastic barriers. There are all these people standing next to the barriers handing out shiny cards with pictures of prostitutes on them, and these cards are being dropped and carried in the wind and they are swept up against the plastic barriers like snow and getting ground underfoot. I know I have always probably seemed like the type of person who would enjoy having "GIRLS!" delivered to their room in 20 minutes, but I was shocked to find out that I am, in fact, not. The whole experience gave me this overwhelming sense of sadness. I get this feeling sometimes that I am experiencing my life in a meta-way, as if I were watching a film of my experiences and having the reaction an audience member would have. As Meta-Jocelyn watched Real-Jocelyn walk through the drifts of hooker cards, the song playing would be Just Like Honey by the Jesus and Mary Chain, or maybe something by Air. You know? Not a happy moment. My life is not something I really want to get away from, and if I did want to get away from it, Vegas is not the place I would choose. Everyone else's problems seem much closer there, this maudlin sense of loneliness--or perhaps this is just what the voiceover would say.
Plus the whole city seemed to smell like cigarette smoke and there were these pretentious bars everywhere and I think both James and I felt like it would be nice to be able to order a reasonably-priced drink in a normal bar not full of 97-pound silicone-pumped women in tiny cocktail dresses, teetering on 6-inch heels and being flirted with by guys in backwards baseball hats. (Before the silicone they presumably weighed 94 pounds, for the record.) The bar in our hotel, for example, featured this band that played an extraordinary medley of only the hooks from Top-40 pop songs, and as a result I walked around with the Beyonce song "Single Ladies" in my head for 5 days afterward, and the Long Island Iced Tea I ordered was $14. The whole experience was bizarre.
We went to see the famous fountains at the Bellagio and the song they were synchronized to, on this particular night, was Proud to Be An American. On any other occasion this might have seemed funny, but maybe the hooker cards had left a bad taste in my mouth--because the six of us stood there feeling, I don't think it's an exaggeration to say, profoundly uncomfortable. The reason why is a topic for another blog entry (and also something I can't say I understand completely myself), but suffice it to say that this added to the surreal sense of the whole day. Afterwards we were contemplating how much we would have appreciated, say, some Beethoven or Vivaldi, under the circumstances.
Oh, and then on Saturday I became very ill, with a viral cocktail of some or all of the following elements: exhaustion, sunstroke, flu. And I spent that night in a kind of panic because I had terrible pain in my left arm, like the normal kind of muscle pain you get from the flu only magnified and only in one part of my body and also in a hotel room, with only Tylenol obtained from the store in the lobby (and soup from room service) to make me feel better. It was scary the way mystery illnesses are always scary, but with an extra side-serving of scariness due to being in a foreign country and our flight home being scheduled for the next day and I was thinking thoughts like, how am I going to carry my luggage? and what if I have to go to the hospital? (Ironically, Canadians also fear American hospitals. I think it must be the absence of death panels, it makes us feel uncomfortable. Or perhaps we're afraid of having to pay for something, you suckers.) And we were on the 16th floor and the wind whistling by our room sounded like a wind tunnel. (It was very strange! At one point a security guard came to tell us to close our window, and it wasn't even open. Such was the noise. It felt like the end of the world--in fact, much like the last time we were in Vegas.) So anyway, it wasn't a pleasant night and I woke up feeling exhausted and ready to leave Las Vegas and never come back.
Whenever I come back to the Edmonton airport, the free luggage carts erase all misgivings I might have had about coming home. Edmonton is not a glamorous city. It's not sexy. Its appeals are substantial but not obvious. And of course the weather is a disaster. (Approximately half the Facebook and Twitter updates I've read today from Edmonton are observations about last night's snowfall.) As a beginning gardener, few things depress me more than Zone 3A. I think when most Edmontonians go away they probably feel some version of this panic on return, the sense that now I am going to be stuck here again. But in spite of all that, being able to take my luggage to the car without swiping a credit card inevitably warms my heart. I may not "know I'm free," but I know the effin luggage carts are free-- and I'll probably take option b, actually, thanks.
So, since finishing Animal, Vegetable, Miracle I've been complaning to anyone who will listen about the difficulty of finding locally grown food in Edmonton, where the growing season is short and the interest in healthy eating is, uh, minimal. Then I discovered that an Edmonton couple is trying to live on a 100-mile diet and blogging about it! Hooray! There's hope for me yet.
James and I watched The Office Special (the Christmas episodes) tonight. I have now watched the whole British Office and I am ready to start on the American version--fortunately, since my ignorance about this show is alienating me from my peers. As such, I am humming "Freelove Freeway" until further notice. (This is the song David Brent plays on his guitar in one of the most excrutiatingly embarrassing episodes of The Office. It goes, "Free love on the freelove freeway, where the love is free and the freeway's long." And then it gets better.)
It's Canadian Finals Rodeo week (weeks?) here in Edmonton. This is such a weird time of year because there are people in cowboy hats EVERYWHERE, and as James pointed out, "not in an ironic way." I kind of like this, however. It reminds me that where I live is only one of several Albertas. I don't really like visiting the others, let alone living there, but I like being reminded of their existence. It's refreshing to remember that others construct reality differently from us. Also, I think if I pay $5 to the United Way, I get to wear jeans to work for the whole week.
Just around the corner from me is a beautiful old school building that was built back when Edmonton was a wee city in arms. It's one of those utterly charming, traditional red brick schools that looks like somewhere you would go to learn about The War, or get caned. People book weddings and/or wedding photos there all the time, and yesterday as I was walking home from lunch on the South side, a whole bridal party was standing outside the side door, smoking, even the bride in her white dress and a scarlet cape. I loved the juxtaposition of formal attire and informal standing-around-smoking and had to remind myself to keep moving so as not to appear weird.
So, I wrote this extremely funny blog entry at 3:40 this morning, in my head. I was awoken by what sounded like one or more people stomping up and down the street in front of my apartment building, banging tin trash can lids together and shouting a "aaaah-ah!" song. This really happened, and if I had been more awake it might have seemed more weird. The blog entry was about civic responsibility and stewardship, but it was also very funny, and I think it had a STOMP joke in it. (Something to do with the guy being on the waiting list for STOMP, like Tobias and Blue Man group on Arrested Development, which I think is where my sleepy brain got the idea.) I think it might have also had a Nazi-related curfew joke as well. In that tired, 3:40 AM way, I thought, "That was hilarious, I have to remember that in the morning," and then I went to sleep. So. Just pretend you just read a hilarious blog entry, ok? Ha ha!
List: Sound elements for a downtown-Edmonton themed STOMP-type performance*
Remember when I moved here, Edmonton, when I was 13? We liked each other instantly. I loved your dramatic river valley, your festivals, your funky secret neighbourhoods. I liked the friendly people who lived here. You seemed perfect for me, the unpretentious prairies of my rosy childhood. My whole family was recovering from a horrible, underfunded foray East, and you seemed like the antidote.
As years went by my affection for you deepened. I liked the great university, improv at the Varscona, the Shakespeare festival, the Indian restaurants in Mill Woods. I even liked West Edmonton Mall, in a weird, masochistic way, and I still go there to buy things one can certainly buy other places than West Edmonton Mall. I loved taking my dog (remember Toby?) down to the river valley in the summer and sitting, baking, on the clay shores of the river, and being able to believe that I was in the wilderness--and yet a fifteen minute walk away from squishees. I liked the LRT system. When I got a bit older and moved to Old Strathcona, I loved the Chinese takeaway and the local library and the alternative video stores and the farmer's market. Even the drunken frat boys didn't bother me much--they seemed so good-natured, like they loved you, too. I loved voting for an NDP candidate in the provincial elections--and having him WIN. I liked riding my bike to school in the bike-only lanes. I liked your new radio station, for awhile.
I still love all those things, Edmonton, but recently I get the feeling you are trying to drive me away. Call me, OK? Don't let this be our last communication. We can talk this through. But you will have to change your behaviour. We can't have an adult relationship based on your misplaced desire to test me. Also, fix those stupid potholes. And maybe try to do something about all the stabbings.
Love,
Jocelyn
(PS. Yes, I did just write "the unpretentious prairies of my rosy childhood." That, as James would say, just happened.)
