August 31, 2004

It's been while, I have been busy working on the estate - not doing much else. Death is really a beaurocratic exercise.

Here is a list of odd things that I found in my mothers apartment;

- A mechanical peacock toy with a real feathered tail that swooshed back and forth when you turned a switch (in the bathroom)

- The Story of O (in the bedroom in a cupboard by the bed)

- A giant bag of yarn and crochet hooks. All the yarn was for baby blankets she had started makiing when my older cousins started having babies. We also found a box with her most recent blanket and an unsigned card. Which my brother and I kept for our babies when we have them. I am sure somewhere somehow that is wrong. But at the moment I don't care.

- A folder full of letters and cards about her commencement (she recieved a phd in educational psych in 1992)

I started this entry on my last day in Toronto. Now I am home, and I have distributed some of the things that are part of my mothers legacy around my home. I tried listening to her Laura Nyro cd. I remember liking Laura Nyro when I was younger and we would listen to her tape in the car.

Now I can't really stand it.

Some of the stuff I have taken home is really just practical, large bottles of unused expensive shampoo which I normally can't afford. A great matte corkscrew (the irony in that does not escape my notice).

August 13, 2004

I am having trouble adjusting to living in my bro's apartment.

Take for example this morning. I had finished the book by the crazy toronto jew/girl (Mini review: It was less entertaining to read about a life suspiciously like my own than I thought it would be. Instead of imagining the characters surroundings I kept replacing them with my own. Up to and including the point where she and her beau go to Switzers deli-stand at the Ex for a sandwich. Candice Switzer are you out there? What happened to you? Does your dad still run the deli stand or has he retired? The weird palimpsest of my memories on top of the authors meant I didn't really read the book, I was living my own life on top of the book..)

It just occurred to me, that it would be nice if I could have granular categorization in my posts, ie the above paragraph belongs in my seriously underpopulated book reviews section and this paragraph is a technology idea etc..

Maybe not everyone is in such a schizoid topic-frenzy as I.

Anyways before meandering back to my original topic, I just wanted to mention that I had a really nice beer with my friend Jeff last night and I wanted to post his site for all to see.

It's really good to go out for a beer with someone and be feeling kind of crappy and down, and through the precise application of cold beer and really caring conversation as opposed to the kind that 's about gadgetry or impressing each other, find that I am going home yes, mildly intoxicated, but also genuinely comforted. So that's my little extolling of the power of friendship.

Okay back to the topic of being a room-mate again after 5 years.

August 11, 2004

I can't decide if I should file this under the d&d category or under whatever. It's both.

I hate Toronto, except I just found a book called "then again" by Elyse Friedman about a girl who goes to a blast from the past party at her suburban toronto home, only to find two look-alikes portraying her dead parents.

which;

a/ makes me think thank g-d my dads not dead.

and,

b/ only in toronto could I find a book by a girl jew from toronto about dead parents after spending ten minutes at a used bookstore.

About that last comment, I do feel very much like my past is here with me as I try to work through my mothers records and deal with my family, not just in terms of family histories and narratives that formerly only involved me as an observer ( the child of..) and now involve me as a subject (sort of executor) but also in terms of trying to understand what kind of dynamics I have inherited from my mom. I.e why should I get along with this branch of the family and not this, why should I be reluctant to accept help etc.. These are all conjectures of course, I am trying to weed out from my own thoughts, positions I unknowingly inherited from my mother and which may not serve me too well in the coming weeks.

On a more personal level, I am lonely and I miss my home. I would like to make the embarrasing admission that I just googled mike ( again {cringe}- I googled him first when I was crushing on him, and wanted to find out his " specs" ) so I could look at a BSDcan picture of him in a red tee-shirt. I was actually pissed because I know there are other pictures out there.. but I can't find them. How lonely/pathetic can you get? (don't answer that - I don't really want to know if it gets any worse.)

Pity me, send me pictures/aftershave samples/old socks, I live in a room with a towel for a curtain and a Raggedy Andy lamp next to the bed.

Final point, and I know I should have gone on to "the read the rest of this article" but I don't want you kids getting bored and running away just yet..

Why are people in Toronto such sucky fashonistas? 3 million people thinking payless shoes, action pants and a stripey shirt are "good looking enough" is driving me crazy.

The people here are ugly, they walk funny, dress funny, and are full of this sort of normative ennui I can't even describe. And by no means do they drink enough.

GAAAHH!!!... Next time I go drinking I am bringing the Raggedy Andy** lamp that has become my new bed-time buddy. At least I know he won't beg off at ten-thirty before any decent conversation has started.

** for my friendswho are possibly at a cultural disadvantage here is a picture of Raggedy Andy.

sigh.

August 8, 2004

I thought I would add a category for things related to my moms death, more so that I will have a single place to find all the entries I end up writing in one place - some time later on.

It's a week since she died. Actually she died at approximately 7pm last sunday and today the hour passed and I didn't even notice.

I thought that was weird, but than I thought , probably I haven't even begun to understand what it means to be dead.

I was reading eris's latest about her binary roots and it got me to think about the fact that certain of my own roots have definitely undergone either a shift in the soil or perhaps a transplanting.