Thursday, August 20, 2009

Guest Blog by my Twin - Tara

On The Bus Today

Loud
Non-stop-talking A-hole
Taking up all airwaves
Until
Wait
Competition appears
In the form of
Loud
Cell-phone-using baby-talker
One on my left
One on my right
Airwave A-holes in stereo
Someone call the noise police

Thanks Sis! Understand and appreciate the theme! Love the idea of guest blogging. Guess I need to do a little better at keeping up. The verbal embellishment I received of this little poem was also priceless. It's good to be back in my city, despite all the work involved.

Sunday, August 16, 2009

The Heat is On, and Moving On

Instead of a frenzied week of preparation for moving back to Toronto, it's been more of a slow motion roller coaster - our air conditioning broke - and for a variety of reasons it won't be fixed before I leave Texas tomorrow. Texas in August with no A/C - I wouldn't wish it on a mortal enemy. And personally, I don't stay cool easily, I run a little hot even in winter. So, I'm taking it worse than most. I have been spending lots of time either at the frosty library, or submerged in water up to my neck. I can't remember if I mentioned the example of a can of fruit exploding in our cupboard on this blog, but that gives an indication of how hot it is inside the house.

In some ways, it's been good. I haven't had the energy to worry so much about my year finally being over, and having to leave my husband behind again. Instead, I have been more focused on channeling the memory of this kind of heat back into my writing on Tokyo, where I first experienced this degree of torpid temperature bludgeoning. I've also spent time saying good byes to the friends I've made here, ones that I wouldn't have expected, but who made my cultural exchange so much richer.

So, I'm moving again, but this time, back into a house we already own that's full of our belongings, so really, I'm just packing up clothes and books. Still, there's always too much, so I've got the scale out now. Airlines only accept medium sized suitcases these days and I'm capped at 50 lbs each - so big red will stay in the closet down here.

I am worried about having to set an alarm. I haven't done that more than 3 times this year, and only then to catch flights, not to get up for work. And I'm worried about the challenge of continuing to write with a very full time work schedule. I don't want the hundreds of pages I finished this year to be the end of it. But I'm excited about getting home. I love city life, walking everywhere, the constant external stimuli. Friends and family you share history and geography with. Being in this suburb, as much as it has been a learning experience, has also sometimes felt like a trap. There's only so far you can walk in this temperature without expiring. Maybe I'll have to work on those driving lessons some more.

Friday, August 7, 2009

John Hughes & Teenage Me

I haven't thought about John Hughes since my much younger brother and sister bought my twin and I that Brat Pack collection for Christmas a couple years ago. But there were movies in there that I have to admit defined us at the time, and music that provided the soundtrack to our daily dramas. Today there are RIP John Hughes blogs and tweets and quizzes galore, and in between writing 15 new pages, I've read a few of them.

In response to which Hughes character was I, it's probably a mix. I'm sure my exes and my husband would all see a troubling resemblance to Ally Sheedy's Allison in Breakfast Club, whereas I always identified with Watts in Some Kind of Wonderful and Sam in 16 Candles. And in dreamland, wished I could be as cool as Sloane Peterson from Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

I was lucky because high school was great. Sure it was huge and there were different groups and even conflict occasionally, but it wasn't intimidating. Usually it was pretty open and interesting. I was able to be an Air Cadet, a Yearbook Editor and a Cheerleading Captain. I could spend half my time with my nose in a book and the other half dancing up a storm. I could be geeky and cool and no one minded. It was Grade 6 that was fraught with daily peril from the cool kids. High school drama was all self-induced. John Hughes really captured that, and the time. And I loved hearing excerpts from his letters to his 'penpal' @abfdc on twitter. He was real.