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I've been putting in a concerted effort at writing a dissertation chapter recently, and it is my sad duty to inform you that the more schooling you have, the more training you have in the teaching and doing of writing, the slower your writing becomes. It takes a ridiculously long time for me to produce a single page these days. I know that it's because of higher standards -- whereas, as an undergrad, I could unfurl a perfectly lovely paper in a single late-night sitting the night before the due date, I know that my adviser wouldn't be so keen on whatever would result from a similar strategy these days -- and also the general brain clutter that results from having to simultaneously mentally integrate piles of primary sources, secondary sources, and outlines, but still.
The byproduct of all of this laborious wordsmithing is that I become much more circumspect about the expenditure of words in all other facets of my life. Can't write on Jejune! I need to save those words! Can't respond to email! I might lose some words! Don't want to talk now! Need to cling to my words! Perhaps uncoincidentally, I've been taking a fair number of photos (for me) and updating my Flickr account pretty regularly with pictures of... well, stuff around me, stuff that forms some kind of context for my life besides sitting at my desk in front of the computer. Do you think it would be the other way around if I were in art school?
In other news, I've finally discovered my superpower. I could call myself Demagneto. Because so far, I've managed to demagnetize my Metro card every single month, despite taking utmost care to store it away from magnets, electronic devices, and so on. It's not so much of a problem on the Metro -- I could get a replacement, or just do what I've been doing and smile brightly while waving the nonfunctional card at the employee in the ticket kiosk -- but I'll admit to being a little concerned because I'll be cat-sitting for the next week for friends who live in a magnetic-card-controlled apartment building. Superpowers, deactivate!
Under the picture of this week's sale shampoo and conditioner, the drug store circular has thoughtfully translated its copy into English.
"VIVE LES CHEVEUX!"
"VIVA LA HAIR!"
Nope. It's just not the same.
So after a full week of almost complete inactivity, my knee made a remarkable recovery over the weekend (to the point where I now have a full range of motion, albeit a slightly uncomfortable one). To make the most of my newfound "I want to bike! And run! And lift weights! And take over the world!" enthusiasm at the return of this mobility, Pete and I wandered down to check out the neighborhood Y and sign up for that membership I promised I'd give myself.
Seeing that I left the "Employment" part of the sign-up form blank, the nice young lady at the desk asked, "Oh, are you a student?"
"Well, yes, but part-time," I explained. "I'm a grad student."
"Oh, but if you're a grad student, that counts as full-time!" she exclaimed.
"Really? Because I'm enrolled part-time in the States."
"Right, but here, we consider being a grad student a full-time thing. Because it's so much work, and you're constantly working on your studies, so it's like a full-time job, yeah?" she replied.
It was the most unexpectedly generous and kind assessment I've had for a long time of the largely tedious, often intermittent, and seemingly unproductive enterprise that I've embarked upon since graduating from college oh so many years ago.
And I got a discounted gym membership out of it. Oh, Canada!
Lest ye think, after reading the preceding post, that my life is genuinely dismal, I should note that I got dressed up real nice and took a very slow stroll around a couple of blocks to the drugstore and grocery store this evening. The weather was gorgeous, I slowly stretched out the offending knee tendon, and -- in this land of $6.50 pints of Ben and Jerry's (which only comes in like three flavors), after drooling over the N. C. Double Scoop all morning -- pints of Smarties ice cream were on sale for $0.99 each. It was truly a wonderful day.
I've been relatively quiet during the past week, and that's because... well, not much is up. I've strained a tendon in my knee -- something I've done, stupidly, in exactly the same way on several occasions in the past -- and really the only thing that can be done about it is to limp slowly around the apartment and wait for it to heal. Perversely, the weather has finally become absolutely gorgeous during the past few days, and my bike keeps taunting me from the rack in the lobby of our building, and I keep coming across blog posts rhapsodizing about the beauties of late summer, which all make me huff indignantly and look longingly out of the office window at the little patch of trees topped by puffy clouds visible past the rooftop next door.
Also, I'd been gearing up to finally join the YMCA (something I'd put off because, after not paying anything for a gym thanks to my affiliation with various universities, an extra $80+ monthly is a tough pill to swallow), but that's not going to happen until I'm all healed up. As a result, I've been acting like the most devoted gym-goer to have ever been forcibly separated from the cardio room. Forget the fact that I've put off joining for the past two months, and -- as previously discussed -- the weather and traffic make riding one's bike quickly difficult. No, now that I've been sidelined, revisionary history is in full effect and I, in my own mind, am an absolute fitness freak. We'll see how well that resolve holds out once I'm fully mobile again.
Because my recent travels have been minimal and restricted to about a three-block radius, and my days are mostly filled with working intermittently on my dissertation, crafting, and watching the Olympics, the things that qualify as "interesting" in my mind probably wouldn't qualify as such within the general consciousness. For example, I've been unreasonably distressed at the inferior quality of Canadian clumping cat litter. Which sounds inane, but I've found nothing that clumps as solidly or squelches odor as well as my Stateside standard of Scoop-Away. Because my quasi-scientific try-out process ensures that I can only test one brand of unimpressive litter at a time, progress is slow and frustrating.
Moreover, I was standing a couple of feet away from the litter box yesterday and realized that the room smelled like cat pee. This, in my personal cosmos, is sacrilege. One thing that I pride myself on is that our apartments have never -- to my nose, but also confirmed by others -- Smelled Like Cat, and I try hard to keep it that way. My imagination has crafted this into a slippery slope argument, which dictates that further decline is inevitable and that soon, oh God, I'll be spending all my days alone in sweatpants in my cat-pee-smelling apartment, and why did we move to Montreal and what am I doing with my life?! -- which leads me to think about the indistinguishable and unfamiliar brands of cat litter at the local pet store with greater and greater degrees of wild-eyed panic.
Given that women's cosmetics companies love to promote the idea that we all have special needs -- you know, that my womanly sweat demands a deodorant specially formulated for my gender, that my brown hair needs a shampoo made just for brunettes, or that I need a moisturizer that responds to the unique demands of my age -- you'd think that litter manufacturers would have picked up on this. I mean, cat people like myself are already pretty obsessed with the minor activities of their pets; for example, my cats have individual profiles on Catbook, and I like to maintain the polite fiction that somewhere, in a parallel universe, the house-bound kitties of me and my friends would all totally be buddies. So I hereby suggesting the next litter marketing campaign to sweep the continent: "Because Your Cat's Urine is a Special Flower." You know it'll find an audience.
When your cat regurgitates incredible quantities of barely-macerated cat food and cat treats all over a chair cushion, and it soaks in for a good eight hours before you return, here's what you can use to get the stink out if you have access to neither sunlight, nor a steam cleaner, nor a laundromat with a high-capacity washer, nor enzymatic pet-mess products:
- A very strong, cold vinegar soak for the cushion cover, followed by rolling it up in several dry towels to remove excess water (or in the spin cycle of a washer, if you can do that), and hanging immediately to dry, followed by sprinkles of baking soda if any residue lingers;
- A bath in a hot detergent-y bathtub for the cushion, using feet to smash the bubbles through the batting and foam, followed by a couple of thorough rinses (using the same method) and draining (ditto) and finally propping the remarkably heavy, sodden cushion up on its narrowest end overnight in the tub with a large fan blasting directly at it.
The cushion needs to be completely dry before re-covering, so it's going to spend another day or so being fanned while suspended horizontally above the tub on a broomstick. But so far? It's completely stain- and stink-free. And let it not be said that we don't know how to party on a Friday night.
My parents are up visiting this week, bearing with them a significant portion of suitcase real estate dedicated to the miscellaneous mail and packages that I've somehow justified sending their way during the past month in exchange for my boundless enthusiasm and know-it-all airs about our newly adopted city. One of the items was a mystery issue of Vanity Fair, a magazine that I do not subscribe to but which appeared at my forwarding address at my parents' house nonetheless. Interrogating some likely sources about its origins ("Um, did you give me a gift several months after my birthday, not tell me about it, and then send it someplace where I don't actually live?") turned up no clues, so I accepted the mystery magazine. It's better than the inexplicable subscription to Maxim that I acquired a few years ago, I figured. "And, hey!" I said excitedly to Pete, "this month's issue is the one with Carla Bruni on the cover! I want to read that!" Which then sent me into a completely inadequate explanation of a) who Bruni-Sarkozy is, and b) why the French care so much, but that's beyond the point.
Then my parents showed up today, and -- amidst the random books and DVDs and forwarded notices and eBayed vintage belt and fabric linings that I just had to buy from Stateside sources -- there was a plastic-wrapped Vanity Fair. Which turned out to actually be an advertisement on the verso of my one last un-forwarded magazine, Bon Appetit. And really, I was shocked by the depths of my disappointment about this. Apparently I had been very much looking forward to this magazine, or at least Carla Bruni-Sarkozy. Maybe even enough to take them up on the $15 / year subscription offer.
... which is only available in the US, because it's $38 plus GST Canadian. Maybe enough, anyway, to subscribe at my parents' address in the states, and then have them forward it up to me irregularly? Or, more likely, just wait until we start accumulating catalogues at this address, so I have reading material suitable for occasionally spilling my dinner on.
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