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.
[Cross-posted from Vox.]
I live in a city where people make good use of bicycles. Granted, this is Toronto, not Copenhagen or Amsterdam or Bejing where the bicycle rules. But, on the scale of things in North America, Toronto is one of
the more bike-friendly cities. There is a bike culture … and I have longed to be a small part of it. I cannot give up my four wheels, especially now since my work takes me out of the city easily three times a week. But I have watched cyclists with envy, quietly going about the city in an independent, self-sufficient and often graceful manner.
As a kid, I practically lived on my bike. It was my major mode of transport from about the age of eight until I left home for university. My friends lived up and down the road of the farming community I grew up in, and there was a conservation area with a pool that we all congregated at daily – this was about a 20 minute bike ride from home. Who knows what my Mom thought of me taking off for hours at a time. My friends and I also rode our bikes for play, pretending they were horses, and trying to get them to be mountain bikes or
cross-country bikes before such things really existed. So much of my childhood involved taking my bike entirely for granted.
My ex and I bought bikes – this is about 10 years ago. They looked good, these bikes, or at least mine did. It was green (of course) and it had a basket on the front. It was the MOST uncomfortable bike on the
planet. I would stare at it, in frustration and pain, knowing that just lowering my butt onto the seat would cause me to wince. Being in such utter pain in my nether regions caused me to be paranoid about all the
other things I need to pay attention to in the big city … motorists, car doors opening, motorists, pedestrians, children, motorists, car doors, dogs, motorists … the paranoia came from having so much of my attention focused on the pain that I feared that I wasn’t paying enough attention to the stuff that could actually kill me. I think I rode that bike no more than three or four times before retiring the idea completely. I convinced myself that my body just wasn’t built for biking.
T bought a bike a few weeks ago. This was HUGE for her. She didn’t learn to ride as a child and is teaching herself as an adult. I admire her chutzpah. There is so much we take for granted about bike riding as just knowledge one has acquired along the way … how to move the pedal so you can put your foot on it to start out … how to balance … how to steer …how to stand up going over bumps … how to speed to get through uncertain bits of the road. For T, this is like learning Swahili at age 50 – it all feels very counter-intuitive to her. She had originally thought she’d buy a trike – one of those contraptions that has three wheels and a basket sort of thing out back but the man in the store convinced her that she was too young for that and that she could indeed learn to ride a decent bike. He sold her a sturdy bike with training wheels. And a helmet. The training wheels are VERY loud and she is getting pretty tired of them, I think, but she is also not quite sure she is ready to have them raised. The whole balance thing is a mystery to her. She slows down before speed bumps, which makes pedaling over them harder. She starts to yell out, and slow down,when she sees that she is coming up on a hill or a turn, uncertain of what to do or how to trust the machine beneath her. However, in the moments between being scared and uncertain, she admits that she really likes riding her bike. In some place within, she is having fun. With practice, this will all get easier for her, I think.
I watch all this in admiration and think to myself … maybe I could do this again if I had the right bike. So, I did it – I bought a bike! It was on a whim and a tad reckless, really – but the moon and stars must have been in alignment because I bought exactly the perfect bike for me. I’m totally smitten. T and I went out for four hours – my first lengthy bike ride since I was about 17, I think. My butt hurt a little bit by the end, I admit, but absolutely nothing like it once did. I was ready to go out for another four hours the next day, which is a
complete switch from how things were 10 years ago. We started in the Beaches, on the bike path, heading west to Ashbridge’s, then carried on to the Leslie St. Spit where we stopped to eat the lunch we packed.
Then we headed back. This would normally have taken about, oh, an hour maybe? But with T in learning mode … the pace proceeds much more slowly. This is actually fine with me as I was on my own learning
curve, getting re-acquainted with the brakes, gears, bike etiquette, traffic protocols, etc.
I loved being out on a bike. LOVED it. Didn’t matter to me in the slightest that we were going slow. I just loved the feeling of it again. T tells me I look like I was born to be on a bicycle, which says to me that my body remembers what it once knew so well. I really do think it is like learning a language – that there is a window of time when we learn things monumentally easily as children and then that window closes before we are about 10, I think. One of the reasons I hesitated to buy a bike has to do with my weight. I said I’d do it when I’d lost a bit more and that maybe it wouldn’t hurt so much. I’m glad I didn’t wait, and I’ve proved to myself that my body is capable of more than I give it credit for. Yesterday, T bought a bike rack for the back of her car so we can take our bikes to a wider range of bike paths. For now, we are looking for paths that are flat-ish and not too busy, although T did admirably well navigating the Beaches path with all the long-weekend pedestrian traffic. We are open to suggestions from those with more cycling experience in this city!
