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happy 28th birthday to me.

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A funny thing happened to me while I was getting my new SIN card today. I went to Service Canada and filled out the forms and whatnot and then the SIN card replacer lady said “so, we have you listed as living at 1438 Blackbrant Rd., Parksville, BC.

Wha?

I haven’t lived at 1438 Blackbrant Rd. Parksville, BC for 10 years. I’ve had 9 different addresses since that time. I’ve lived in Victoria, Toronto, Wolfville and now Ottawa. I’ve filed taxes, and replaced id, and paid bills in each of these places. How on earth do these people have that address? But what was most interesting to me was how, according to Service Canada, I went from living in Parksville with my folks to living in Ottawa with A.. It’s interesting and refreshing somehow. It’s as if all that garbage – the crap apartments and crappier boy/girlfriends, the awful jobs, the big life mistakes – never happened. And I know what you’re thinking: “but those are the things that make you who you are today, ezmy” and you are correct. But whatever. Service Canada saw the gawky, excessively neurotic 13 3/4 year old ezmy when she applied for her SIN card and has now seen the wonderful, only slightly less neurotic 27 and 3/4 year old ezmy with no knowledge of the in between and that, for some strange reason, makes me feel lovely.

>So I was the girl with the paper wings, standing on the edge of reason and looking over into the effing madness. Was. Now I’m falling through it. And the funny thing about falling is that, depending on how far the fall, it can at times feel as though you are flying. I suspect people have jumped off of tall buildings or bridges and had brief seconds to consider the sensation of flying rather than falling. Very freeing. But it’s an illusion of course. In the end you are just falling.

ezmy

>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-IrhRSwF9U

i am an angry, angry girl.

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In an effort to release creative juices, I am trying to post regularly again. Posting regularly, I’ve decided, will benefit my thesis, my work generally, and will help jump start that lovely personal writing project I affectionately refer to as “that crap book that just won’t finish itself.” So here goes.

Forgetting that it was Friday, I went to my local sbux this morning in search of a place to read about environmental discourse analysis that wouldn’t allow me to fall asleep. First, let me just say “I feel your pain” to all of those sbux employees out there who are now forced to make breakfast sandwiches and bagels as well as frappachinos because of a bunch of douchebags up in sbux headquarters who desperately want in on the Tim Horton’s market. Let me also say “keep dreaming” to those executives who think they have a snowball’s chance in hell of nabbing the TH crowd by asking $3 for a bagel.

Anyways.

I ordered my coffee et bagel and sat in my favourite seat by the window and started reading about discourse analysis techniques (yawn). Within a couple of minutes, I was surrounded. In babies, but more disturbingly in baby mothers. And not just any baby mothers. GLEBE baby mothers. And because I was sitting in my favourite seat near the window, there was no escape (see, it’s my favourite seat because it’s in the corner but it is also blocked by several large tables so it’s nice on days when you want to hide in a crowd…on Fridays, not so much).

Friday is Glebe baby day. My ovaries love Glebe baby day because well, my ovaries love babies. And on any other day, in any other social situation, my ovaries, screaming bitches that they are, would have been just blasting messages to my brain: “Let’s make some babies!! Do it!! Fuck the PhD! Who the hell needs those letters anyways? Did Theresa Bloomingdale need those letters? No, she did not because she had ten babies” and my brain, lazy bitch that she is, would have listened. My ovaries cannot even be shut up by thoughts of the birthing process, you know dilation, blood, bursting whatevers, stretch marks, excruciating pain and the like. But Glebe baby day is special because with Glebe babies come Glebe mothers and Glebe mothers make my brain want to vomit and, with attention on vomiting, my ovaries are harder to hear.

Glebe mothers, you see, are a special breed of mum. Average mums pay extraordinary amounts of attention to their babies and can, on occasion, become somewhat obsessed with them. This is only fair given that most mums have to spend an exorbitant amount of time with said babies and generally have no one else to talk to. Child-rearing doesn’t exactly lend itself to crazy amounts of adult social time (or so I’m told). So the average mum can be slightly irritating since all she can talk about is her child. But Glebe mothers take this to a whole. new. level. Glebe mums are each completely convinced that they have given birth to the next Einstein/Mozart/Hawkings/Picasso and just can’t wait to brag (loudly) to their Glebe mother friends (and anyone else who was unfortunate enough not to bring headphones with them) about the crazy advanced thing that their little genius just did.

Glebe mum #1: so you’ll never guess what little Jimmy did today? He signed “I want to go potty”! Isn’t that amazing? I mean he’s only two days old! He is very bright though. Takes after his super smart daddy Jimmy does” (oh yes, they also brag about the poor sap they drugged into marrying them).

Glebe mum #2: oh you’re doing the sign language thing? Huh I heard that stunts their growth. My little Mackenzie doesn’t need sign language. She writes notes to me. She’s been writing since the day she left my womb. The doctors said they had to pry the pen out of her hand so that they could take her measurements. You know, we almost named her Sylvia but thought that might be weird.

Glebe mum #3: Well, my little Tag doesn’t need any of those things. He was talking to me during the whole labour. He starts MIT next fall. He’ll be two.

And the whole lot of them invade my starbucks every single Friday. With their SUV size strollers, and their baby einstein video games, and their matching lululemon outfits. And, of course, their poor unfortunate children who will inevitably become toxic teens and even more toxic adults and the cycle will be complete. Sigh.

-ezmy

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So a little while ago, I decided to register for a womyn’s studies class called “Midwifery: the Politics of Birth.” Stop laughing. I was actually really excited to take this class for a number of reasons:
1) A lot of my research lately has been about care ethics and care work so I thought this class might help to round that out a bit.
2) I have developed an unhealthy obsession with birthing practices and, well, babies and child-raising in general that I thought I would make worse.
3) I thought that I would try and break down another stereotype about how all womyn’s studies classes are wanky girl classes full of talk about chakras, vaginas, and sisterhood.

Well. Let’s just say that the stereotype in 3) is alive and well and in no mood to be transcended. Fack me. This class was unbearably bad. Really, really quite bad.

(Ezmy walks into classroom)

Silly womyn’s studies class girl #1: …so yeah, I was like, on my way here and I saw these little flowers and I remembered how like, when I was little I used to make daisy chains with my mum and I was like, wow I need to make daisy chains now so I did and it really helped to unleash my spirit and made me a better person and really, the whole world could be made better by daisy chains and unicorns and pixies.

Silly womyn’s studies class girl #2: yeah, totally eh? I know, daisy chains are like, so deep.

Ezmy: *vomit*

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Right, so a little while ago, I received an email from an old friend in TO, letting me know that an ex of mine was getting married. I was with said ex for almost three years and let’s just say that the old friend might as well have told me that said ex was flying to the moon to eat cheese with john lennon and I would have been only slightly more surprised. Anyways, said ex got married this weekend. Lovely.

Has anyone ever seen When Harry met Sally? Of course you have. Because it’s one of the best romantic comedies of all time. Well. Do you remember the scene when Sally finds out that Joe is getting married and she’s all upset, but not because she wants to marry Joe because she doesn’t…indeed she doesn’t even like him anymore…but because when they were together, the reason they split up was because she wanted to get married and have kids and he said he didn’t. It just wasn’t for him. So they broke up and since that time, she had been telling herself that it wasn’t her, but that it had been the most he could give and that he didn’t want to marry anyone. Except she had been lying to herself. He just didn’t want to marry her.

Said ex is my Joe.

Because I don’t miss this person (beyond the odd passing thought of ‘I wonder what so and so is up to these days’), and I certainly don’t want to be with him. Good god I mean we broke up years ago, I’ve since been in two long term relationships – one absolute crap, the other still going and beautifully I might add – and really, the relationship with this person wasn’t exactly splendid. But at the time, it seemed like all that mattered in the world was having someone say that I was the one they wanted to come home to for…well not ever, because let’s be realistic but at least the foreseeable future. But said ex said to me, one thanksgiving after begging me to come see him in TO, that he just wasn’t the committing type, that he never would be, that he thought I was great but that he just could never settle. So I said I couldn’t really do this anymore and he said alrighty then and after a long drawn out mess, we stopped the whole thing. And I said to myself, well that was the most he could give.

So this past Saturday, he went and got married. To a nice girl who is everything to him and he to her. And that’s just wonderful. But I’m not going to lie. It’s irritating. I’m not sad like Meg Ryan. I have nothing to be sad about – as I say, I have A. and school and zoe and great friends etc. and honestly, I have never been happier in my whole short 27 and a bit years.

But it’s irritating.

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Today is what I like to call “fresh start day.” I’ve officially completed the first round of classes for my MA and I feel like I have the whole summer in front of me to do great things. What kind of great things? I don’t know. But I know it’s going to involve a hellaofalotof reading. First book: Foucault’s “Discipline and Punish.” I’ve been trying to read this for ages but it’s not really the kind of book you can just pick up and put down five minutes later. It needs a bag of pistachios, a tall glass of water, and a patio. I’m setting up the deck furniture as we speak.

So here we go. Fresh start day. I’m going to make vegan brownies to celebrate.

-ezmy

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quick, someone remind me why i’m in grad school. because right now i could so go for a little 1950s housewifery. Or a little hairdressing. Or perhaps some trailerparking? Anything that will allow me to a) go to bed before 6am and b) not feel like an incompetent fool. Right, so scratch the hairdressing. But still.

Fack I’m tired. And yet, I really, really love what I’m doing. Which kinda makes me wonder about my mental state.

Off to write some more about gender/environment/postmodernism…

-ezmy