I had an unexpectedly quiet day today. I had, in my head, held part of the day open for a meeting that wound up being deferred. So, I had only one concrete reason to leave my house – a scheduled visit to donate blood.
Blood donation is a social behaviour I can get quite evangelical about. The downsides, as far as I can see, are tolerable. It does take time out of one’s day, but only once every 56 days. The interrogation process, designed to root out all manner of possible blood-borne cooties, is tedious, irritatingly repetitive, short-sighted and lesbophobic. Or certainly lesbo-blind. One steels oneself to be asked peculiar details about one’s sexual history by a stranger, the RN. Today, when the particularly nervous RN started what felt like her 10th question that began with “Have you had sex with a man who has … ” I interrupted her, as I am wont to do, with “All my sexual partners, for the last 24 years, have been women.” She glanced up from the page momentarily and stammered, “I really DON’T need to know that,” and continued with her questioning about whether or not I’ve recently had sex with a man who has handled monkey fluids. They also want to know if I’ve paid, or been paid, in exchange for sex. I wanted to respond “With or without monkey fluids?” but I held my tongue. We had a bit of a tussle, as we always do, about the details regarding Liberia as a nation in Africa and my unfortunate need to be honest about having had a relationship with a woman who was born there. Many years ago. I can’t help it ~ they ask and I answer. They don’t really seem to care about Liberia, per se, but are very keen to know if she lived “anywhere else” in Africa. This is asked with an edge of mystery to it. Not only did she not live anywhere else in Africa, she wasn’t sexuality active for the period of time she WAS in Africa. But this seems of less interest.
I am aware of Canadian Blood Services’ (CBS) equally blindered policy regarding not allowing gay men to donate but I think my outrage at this stance is a poor reason not to donate when, as the slogan says, I have it in me to do so. We only have one blood service and they need our raw material. I will, and do, find other ways to educate on this matter.
It hurts a bit when the needle goes in, and also when it comes out.
That’s it for downsides, as far as I can see. Time, bizarre scrutiny, an efficient but tunnel-visioned organization, and a needle ouchie. For this, you get an update on your blood iron, accurate blood pressure and heart rate readings between check-ups, samples of your blood get tested for the afore-mentioned cooties, and you get all the peach juice and Dad’s Oatmeal cookies you can eat afterwards. Today, though, they had a tray of yummy day-old treats from Starbucks, which was a special bonus. It is like a temporary licence to eat sugar.
Oh, and your blood goes to help someone somewhere, once it passes muster. S’all good.
So, with no other business to attend to outside my abode today, I schlepped over to the clinic in my schlepping around the house clothing. Jeans, grey t-shirt with a sort of swirly applique on it (dubbed the tattoo t-shirt by my “personal trainer”), blue flannel shirt (open), and my cool new hockey hat, a sort of skull cap black toque, pulled down over my ears. Blundstone boots. I’m not sure what I looked like but, if asked, the nurses would not have immediately shouted out, “Professor of Business and Technology!” or “Business Consultant!” if they were lined up, Family Feud style, and quizzed about my supposed line of work. I was “in cognito” or, more accurately, I let my schlep-self come out for some fresh air.
The signals were mixed, though. Blundstones aren’t cheap, although mine are quite “distressed”. I had both a Blackberry and an iPod. My coat gives me away as a non-vegetarian, monied kinda gal. But my coat was in the coat cupboard for most of my visit and I think I came off as an articulate unemployed person with a technology addiction and extraordinary good luck at Goodwill.
While sipping my peach juice in the little lounge area after donating, I was joined by a friendly young man who had just finished donating a few minutes after me. He was seeking some juice and a cookie or two. I directed him to the tray of Starbucks goodies and his eyes lit up. One of the efficient nurse/phlebotomists, Lucy by her name tag, offered to fetch him his juice of choice. She bustled off to pour his juice when he responded “orange”. Lucy bustled, that is the only way to describe her movement. She was a bustler, all around the clinic it seemed. But then, suddenly, all her make-work movements stilled and she came and sat down with us. Friendly Man asked her how long she had to train to become an RPN. Lucy replied, in an pronounced Chinese accent, “Eight months at private college. But at public college, takes two years.” She nodded wisely. “But … back in China, I am doctor. So I did private college. Could do it fast.” Friendly Man and I looked at each other with a mixture of sorrow, resignation and embarassment. “I’ve just been served peach juice by a highly skilled, underutilized, and underpaid medical professional,” was all I could think for several minutes.
Lucy went on to tell more bits of her story, gently prodded from time to time by Friendly Man. I quietly nibbled my cookies and drank my juice like a little kid in jammies being told a story at bedtime. Lucy shrugs off and accepts the inability of the Canadian govenment to “spend the money” it needs to if foreign-trained professionals are to get certification here. She shrugs and says, “I knew this … my decision to come anyway.” She is actually a fully trained gynecologist and her husband is a hemotologist. In China, you go directly from high school to medical school. “I do not understand … why four years undergraduate here before med school? Waste of time! You smart, you go to med school right away! Get training early. No need for literature or politics before medical school. Waste of time.” This speech was accompanied by many hand gestures. She then explained that, of eight years in medical school, two years are spent studying Chinese traditional medicine. “This is mandatory, must have both traditional Chinese and Western medicine in China.” So, now, her husband practices Chinese medicine from their home and has clients from all over the province and New York State, some of whom drive hours to see him. Lucy shrugged and smiled and chewed her gum, “It is better here anyway. It works out.”
There was silence for a while and I drained my second cup of peach juice. This caused the “bustle” switch to be thrown in Lucy and she jumped up. “You want more peach juice?”
“No,” I smiled almost apologetically, “No, this is fine. I should be on my way.” Lucy smiled and thanked me, and Friendly Man, for donating. We both mumbled something. What does one say?
Clearly, I wasn’t the only person in that clinic who was “in cognito” this morning. The difference, as far as I can see, is that I had a choice about which element of myself I would present to the world this morning. Lucy was robbed of some pretty significant options when she arrived here. She claims she came “by choice” but, of course, one wonders how bad it has to be in the country of origin for a person to willingly give up their trained professional qualifications for a new life in a foreign land. The inner peace it must take to be happy with bustling around a blood donor clinic instead of practicing medicine, even when the need is great in many areas of this country, is humbling. And I am reminded that we are all, in some way, each day, in cognito. We choose what we reveal, who we are, in each moment and, in the reality of our complexities as human beings, we highlight different things in different moments, letting other elements fade to shadow, even if only briefly. We can’t possibly reveal all, each moment and in each interaction. Those who try are quickly dismissed as “socially inept”. So we learn what, and how much, to reveal to whom. I can’t help wishing, for Lucy, that she had as much choice as I did this morning about who she could be. I think we’d all be better served by such freedom for her.
I received the following by e-mail from a Handbasket lurker, a.k.a. Katje’s Auntie:
I am forever amazed at the items that reveal themselves as the snow melts. This week has been a particularly rich experience since the snow melted so quickly that the volume of exposed materials was far greater than usual. Anyway, as we were walking (and sidestepping) I spotted a lemon timidly protruding from a snowbank at about the 3 foot level (can we time deposits like archaeologists?). It was bright enough to catch my attention. Fully 2/3 exposed, I had to have a closer look. The lemon was intact, blemish free, pleasantly plump. I couldn’t help but wonder how it got there. It was too far from the garbage can area of the lawn. It hardly seems the type of thing to jump out of someone’s grocery bag. And I can’t imagine one of the local kids losing it from their lunchbag. (maybe it’s something to do with global warming?)
So, I’m curious as to what’s the strangest thing you or your audience have come across this past week as the snow temporarily recedes? I remember the shoes/food items you photographed last year and can only wait to hear what treasures are discovered this week.
Temporarily recedes? Pshaw! This is spring, my friend!!! 
A quick snow melt does reveal lots and and we dog-walkers are front-line witnesses. I can’t say that what Freddie and I have been discovering is always pleasant. For example, there is now clear evidence that other dog owners are not nearly as diligent as some of us are about picking up poo. I don’t know how many times this week I’ve rescued Freddie’s, er, output while staring at many months worth of similar output in the same vicinity. One wonders in these moments if such diligence is worth the effort.
One of my hockey buddies commented the other day about a bicycle that is being slowly revealed from under a massive pile of snow on a street corner. The bike was chained to a street sign and then buried under months of actual fallen snow, topped by snow removal snow. As the snow has started to fade, the bicycle has emerged. It is one of these gorgeous new but old-fashioned “sit up and beg” style bikes with big fat white-walled tires, no gears and a snazzy orange paint job. My friend, a bike-lover, railed against the absentee owner of the bike. “Who would abandon such a beautiful bike to the elements? How irresponsible! If I could pick locks, I’d snag that bike, take it home, clean it up and love it like it deserves to be loved!” I’m thinking about taking bolt cutters to our next game in that neighbourhood.
A fellow walker and I were discussing the mysteries of buried snow treasures in the park the other day. She offered up a story about some winter camping she did a few years ago. A sudden thaw happened mid-trip. The campers decided to go for a hike around a lake on foot/snow-shoe. As they rounded a turn in the path and looked out at a secluded bay, they saw an antler protruding up out of the now-slushy ice surface. A moose had gotten trapped, and subsequently frozen, into the ice at the beginning of the winter.
Personally, I find these early thaws to offer some of the uglier times to live in downtown Toronto. Months worth of discarded wrappers, the aforementioned output, and cigarette butts suddenly appear and I find it almost embarrassing. Especially the cigarette butts which I find distasteful and disturbing at the best of times. I rounded a corner the other day to be confronted with literally thousands of butts on the ground in front of a men’s hostel. That is what it feels like to me, a confrontation. Or, more accurately, an affront. A visual assault. Blech.
What I remember, and what is missing from the urban experience of a quick thaw, is the smell of the earth thawing out. A soft warm breeze that carried the oddly comforting smell of old leaves, now almost humus, and that unmistakeable scent of the earth waking up. It is probably too soon for that now anyway, in spite of my enthusiasm for this thaw.
What I have been enjoying is the enthusiasm of our feathered friends for this weather. Birdsong is everywhere, including in the parking lot on campus. Given that the parking lot is my least favourite location at my place of employment, it is particularly lovely to be welcomed by happy active birds, chasing each other from tree to tree.
They should probably get all the activity in that they can muster … we still have most of February and all of March to weather. So to speak.
The People of the North have at least 42 different words to describe snow, or so I’m told. In communications-speak, we’d describe that as a “low context culture” that uses language rather than contextual clues to transmit detailed and precise meaning. Something that, in this case anyway, the People of the North have in common with the Germanic cultures.
At this moment, I’m mulling over the possibility that I could come up with 42 different words for tired. The good news is that my exhaustion hits me in the evening after a very full day and it is almost entirely physical. My brain continues to zoom along but my body, some days, just can’t keep up. I’m prepared to express this exhaustion momentarily in a high context, non-linguistic manner as I fling myself across my bed and close my eyes.
… pooped … wiped … bagged …
This is one of those damp wintery evenings in Toronto that chills a person right down to the core, even though the actual temperature hovers around freezing. It really isn’t that cold. The precipitation vacillates between wet heavy snow and cold penetrating rain. The walk back to my car after post-hockey pub was short but by the time I got into my car I was not only tired, I was shivering. Every heating device in the vehicle – defroster, heater, seat warmer – was immediately turned up to high and remained so for the short trip home. Even now, as I sip hot water and lemon and have the fireplace, I am still thawing out.
… tuckered out … spent … fatigued …
On the short walk back to my car, I caught a whiff of a fireplace in use, that lovely rich wood-smoke smell that makes you want to curl up like a cat and sleep forever. My mind wandered back to the time I bought this condo, from plans, and the stroke of inspiration that led me to ask them to put my fireplace in. Of course, I don’t have the good-smelling kind – I have the warm but kinda fake kind. No matter – the visual of having an actual “fire” to look at does as much psychological warming as the actual heat the thing throws out.
… drowsy … drained … drooping …
I bought this place in May 2002, when a trailer stood on this vacant lot. It was a confluence of amazing events that culminated in that day. From that moment onward, I drove by the site several times a week, bugged the construction guys to let me see my unit, plying them with coffee, and generally obsessed about moving in.
… dog-tired … done in … fagged …
Here are some photos taken in July 2002 by my Danish visitor, Zara. Clearly, not much had happened, construction-wise, at this point. I’m grateful that these pics don’t show, in great detail, the Worst Haircut Of My Life. I actually wound up with hockey hair … an almost mullet. This happened three days before Zara arrived and I was mortified but unable to describe to the hair-dresser – who seemed very excited about this cut – what I actually wanted her to do.
Lookit! Here is where I am going to live someday!
My BMI was a tad higher in July 2002, methinks. 
The building was completed, only a few months over schedule, in July 2004. Well, “completed” is a loose, non-legal term. It was ready for people to move in. The first four months were hell – 57 things on the list of “incomplete” or “needs attention” elements that the builder had to fix, including the absence of sinks in either bathroom. My beloved couch arrived from almost three years in storage shot through with mildew. Emotionally, I was not handling being alone very well. My fantasy of living alone in my own space didn’t get off on the right foot at all.
… haggard … sleepy … worn out …
Something shifted somewhere around the fifth or sixth month. There was a settling in, a critical mass of things getting fixed or upgraded, routines getting established, things starting to feel like they were going my way for a bit. I’ve been very very happy here ever since. I have one of the only condos in Toronto that has a gigantic tree outside the window. In the summer, my neighbours call my place “The TreeHouse”.
… done rambling … signing off … anymore words for tired out there …?
Earlier today, I ventured out with my friend Veronica to the St. Lawrence Market. I will say again the same phrase that I’ve said many many times: the St. Lawrence Market is my favourite place in Toronto.
Sure, the Brickworks Organic Market is charming, aloof, unregulated, rough-around-the-edges. Great burritos. Great vibe. Love it. Today is opening day for a new market near Wychwood Park, so must check that out. Kensington Market has its fervent and vocal supporters.
I’m a St. Lawrence Market kinda gal, though. It is in my blood. I’ve been going there for 15 years now and I know it like the back of my hand which is comforting. I know where to find the cheapest yet best olive oil in the city, the best granola in the city and which puveyors of cheese excel at specific cheeses. (Don’t get me started on cheeses, especially since I can’t eat many cheeses right now!)
Oddly, I never seem to enjoy it as much alone as when I can go with a friend, so I was pleased when Veronica said she’d be into making the trip.
The St. Lawrence Market has the Eggplant Sandwich to end all eggplant sandwiches. No, no … not the one in the basement slathered in tomato sauce and fried green peppers, served on foccacia. No. Blech.
The “death row” Eggplant Sandwich is available only here. At Future Bakery, upstairs, smack dab in the middle of the market. It is near and dear to my heart, this sandwich. My friend Amy and I have been eating this sandwich, and waxing rhapsodic over it, since we worked together on Front St. in 1993. 15 years I’ve been eating this sandwich and, remarkably, it hasn’t changed.
... yes, lots of olives please.
Getting the cut just right
Voila!
This sandwich is on a fresh Italian roll, buttered, slathered in Dijon mustard, delicately garnished with roasted red peppers, hot banana peppers, lettuce and tomatos. And olives. Lots and lots of olives. Hold the cucumbers. The eggplant itself is heated and has melted swiss cheese on it by the time it makes it into the sandwich.
I have been known to call ahead to Future Bakery to suggest (demand?) that they have eggplant on hand if I know ahead of time that I’m going to be there on a Saturday. Sometimes, you see, they run out. And this is bad. Very very bad.
So, in case I haven’t made myself clear, if I manage to wind up on death row someday and require a last meal, it is this sandwich, exactly as I have just described. Hold the cucumbers. Cucumbers would be bad. Very very bad.
Next weekend, November 28-29-30, my friend Amy, the original eggplant sandwich sharer, is coming into town and we are having our now annual “girls’ cottage weekend in the city”. We put the fireplace on, drink wine, eat good food and read books. We listen to music and gossip. We go to St. Lawrence Market. We attend the annual Women In Blues Revue. We eat some more. (uh oh) We pretend we are cut off from the rest of the world … but we might go shopping. It is a pre-Christmas distraction for both of us.
I see another eggplant sandwich in my near future (bakery). Yum .
I’m only just getting around to off-loading some pics from my camera. These were from mid-October, when I had my dog, Freddie, for a fair chunk of time. These are of her favourite park – well, MY favourite park really. It is in Rosedale, a few blocks north of where I live.
Notice her stealth technique.
Gotta admire a tree with flare.
This is like the big finish.
