Tough Love

First thing is first – watch this.

It hurts, doesn’t it? Mostly the cat. That damn cat.

But here’s the thing, I think I need that cat. I mean, I really miss my cat back home, and wish desperately that I could claim my flat is constantly dirty because I have an animal to look after (which might seem like a stretch, but my cat used to steal my jewelry and hide it in corners of the basement along with bits of his supper – disgusting. He also has a great fondness for getting his paws wet with toilet water and then running to the nearest window to ‘clean’ it). Moreover, cats have attitude. Major attitude. Grumpy cat anyone?

This is the face I need to see first thing in the morning as it paws at my own, annoyed that I’m not feeding it. Annoyed that I’ve hit snooze on my alarm five times already. Annoyed that I’ve already decide I’m not going to go to the doctor today… for the fourth day in a row. Annoyed that I’m going to spend my day off reading articles on Buzzfeed and watching The Voice online (but can I be blamed? Usher, why so beautiful?). Annoyed that I continually complain about working in a café full-time and continually do nothing to change my situation. Annoyed that I’m always tired. Exhausted.

While I miss the comfort of a furball, what I really need is the tough love.

And since my lease clearly states that I’m not allowed to have pets – I’m going to have to give it to myself.

So if we ignore the glaringly obvious masturbation joke, we can get to the root of the problem.

Change.

Change is one of those things we talk about a lot – good, bad, necessary. It’s not something we tend to do a whole lot of though. Not by choice.

People tend to be creatures of habit. For all we fancy epic stories about warriors on great quests and heroes saving the world – we’re a lot more like hobbits. And not the awesome Baggins-type either. More the sad, frumpy, extra hairy feet-kind that smoke too much and break chairs with our robust rear ends. The ones that wouldn’t make up stories about giant, impulsive humans – not because they couldn’t, but rather they couldn’t be bothered.

But I’m bothered.

We avoid change like a ninth grade gym class dodges flying red balls. People love stability, yet we also desperately crave chance. The sheer potential, the unpredictability, the hope.

Maybe this is the winning lotto ticket. Maybe tonight is my night. Maybe this time he’ll stay.

In my experience, chance is when a pigeon flies into the café you work at and lands on you shoulder like you summoned it with your newfound skills as the Queen of winged rats (cheers, Kim).

So why do we waste our time pretending?

For instance, take the single person mantra, “If you stop looking, love will come to you.” It makes perfect sense. Actively ignore any means to acquire what you want and hope it’ll magically appear. People, after all, are wizards at heart. Sadly, it doesn’t seem to be working with my taxes, and despite what some smug couple might tell you – it’s generally not the case. At least, I haven’t had much luck Beyoncé walking down the street ‘for myself’ (can we take a moment to appreciate that Beyoncé autocorrects with an accent).

Is it change or is it the potential for rejection – love or otherwise – that we really fear?

We lock ourselves away in safe little bubbles – behind computer screens, at jobs we don’t like, studying subjects we’re not interested in but may result in future employability – because the idea of that bubble bursting is far more terrifying than spending one more week inside it. And that week quickly can turn into months, years, decades. One day, maybe, you can try to think of a safe way to exit the bubble without causing it too much damage. Because you never know, you might have to return to it one day. No sense in burning bridges.

But that’s the whole point, isn’t it? Burning bridges? Not in the pyromaniac sense, of course. Though scorched earth policy – that shit works, just ask the Russians. I think it would just be a lot easier for people if the only path we could choose was forward – Russian winters be damned.

Because that choice, as blaringly obvious as it may seem from the outside, is somehow an impossibly difficult one. Tough calls are tough for a reason. We all curse out the referee watching out favorite teams, but when it comes to our own lives – we watch passively from the sideline. Refuse to get our heads in the game. And yes, I did just make a High School Musical reference. Worse, I didn’t even mean it ironically.

Obviously, the best places to get advice from are adolescent television musicals and Youtube videos with pictures of animals, right?

I thought as much.

Zefron, rabbit – I won’t let you down.

Writing internship applications, here I come.

You Can’t Stop the Beat

My Hairspray tickets came in the mail today.

I repeat, my Hairspray tickets came in the mail today.

On September 4th at 7:30pm I will be at the Edinburgh Playhouse checking off one of the musicals from my ‘must see before I die’ list. And sure, it’s about seven months away… but some of us have to buy our tickets a little extra, extra in advance in order to afford them. It’s one of the parallels of being a twenty-one year old (alarming close to being twenty-two) writer who works in a cafe on the other side of the world.

But no matter, you can’t stop the beat ever since they made student discounts and put tickets on sale obscenely early so that poor people might buy them… Bit of a stretch?

So I guess this is probably the part where I confess that I’m a bit of a musical theater nerd.

And I know what you’re thinking…

But Kaycee, you didn’t even like Les Miserable that much, and that’s an Oscar nominated musical! You said it was too long, and there were far too many close-ups. You even dared to say they could have afforded a little more talking as opposed to watching Russell Crowe awkwardly sing-talk at Hugh Jackman again. Plus, you haven’t quite recovered from the death of that wee boy because if you ever have a child, you would want him to be an adorable, revolutionary singer too. And when are you going to stop referring to yourself in third person? It’s getting kind of weird…

So it might shock you to find out that I actually have the Les Mis soundtrack on my iPod right now. And sometimes I walk to work at six in the morning listening to ‘ABC Cafe / Red and Black’ and pretending I live in revolutionary France. Moreover, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with making a sandwich to ‘On My Own’ because it’s a much more rewarding, unrequited love kind of sandwich for it. What I’m trying to saying is, I love random outbursts of emotion that people sing and dance to even if it comes in a slightly underwhelming (but still beautiful) movie adaptation.

I just love musical theater, okay? There. I said it. It’s done.

Normally, this would be a less embarrassing confession but in recent years things like Glee have happened. To Glee‘s credit, the first five or six episodes of the first season were new, offbeat and genuinely entertaining. So I’m not quite sure how they are in season four or why it feels like there has actually been a million and one seasons. Also, please don’t put Darren Criss on the show in an attempt to make me stick it out a little longer, because I inevitably will and then I will hate myself for it…

Proudly Glee clean for over a year now. The sky is blue again. I mean, not actually but that has more to do with living in Scotland. And probably air pollution.

But we have been fighting back against this black mark with things like Pitch Perfect, which was both awful and brilliant in the same sort of way that makes Bring It On timeless – the ‘I will never not watch it on TV even if I don’t go out of my way to watch it’ kind of timeless. Self aware comedy with obscenely catchy musical numbers – that’s my style. And if we’re going to keep adding to the record, I will also admit to having a deep love for cover songs (even a capella – okay, especially a capella) on Youtube. And since you’re going to lock me up and throw away the key anyway, I recognized Aaron Tveit in Les Mis because he was also on Gossip Girl (which I also stopped watching, like I do any show where a female character’s choices become subservient. Plus, most ill-conceived ‘plot-twist’ ever?). To be fair, Tveit’s also been in a lot of great Broadway shows like Hairspray, which brings me back to my original point.

I love the theater. It doesn’t necessarily have to be of the musical nature either, though there is something about a big musical number that really speaks to my inner child. I was very fortunate to go to a high school that was renowned for its theater program, and its gorgeous theater facilities. In fact, the first musical I ever watched was on that very stage and for a twelve-year old even a high-school level performance of Grease was very much the word. I was in – hook, line and sinker. So much so that having my first drama class in grade nine with a bunch of people who had to take it because they needed one art credit and were being forced to run around the stage as ‘anger’ still felt exciting. Because even a bunch of hormonal teenagers brutally massacring Shakespeare classics has something that no movie ever will – it’s live. Live performance art.

That’s what I love about theater. It can be unpredictable. Every show can be different from the last. For better of for worst. Forgetting a line on a stage can be traumatic, but ad-libbing an entire conversation to salvage the scene is also a thrilling challenge. You have to stay on your toes. Think quick. The audience isn’t sitting in a cinema millions of miles away from you or on the couch in the privacy of their own home – they’re right there. Right in front of you. You can hear their laughter or their heckling. It’s their energy that you’re feeding off of.

Sitting in the audience watching the one-act play that I wrote and directed was terrifying, but the most rewarding thing I could have done as an inspiring writer. I could gauge the audience’s physical reaction – what worked and what didn’t during the performance, and then we could modify things for the next night. We could play up certain bit for bigger laughs, or tone down parts that weren’t going over as well. Adjust lighting. Cues. And the best part was that even after all that tweaking, no audience is ever the same. No performance ever perfect but each perfectly unique.

And to be honest, I miss it. I miss it a lot.

So even if I have to buy my tickets half a year early in order to afford them – you can’t keep me from the theater. You especially can’t keep me from a 60s era feel-good musical that features a performance in drag, a lot of twisting and jiving, and amazing hair.

So. Bloody. Excited.

Oh, and in case you thought I was ignoring you, internet – the answer is probably never. Cause I love third person, damn it! It might be a bit weird in a blog format, but I can’t be tamed!

Put that in a song.

Not by Miley Cyrus…

Cheese

Remember that time I jokingly suggested I was going to write about cheese? And you all thought, sure you will Kaycee – you know absolutely nothing about cooking so how on earth could you write about cheese? You couldn’t even name a dozen cheeses, let alone write at length about the different aromas, rinds, textures and tastes of them.

And you would be right internet, you would be right.

But I’ve got cheese on my mind. So get ready.

Why cheese?

Well, for starters – I smell like cheese. This is not a metaphor. I actually smell like cheese. That is my current aroma. Cheese by Dairy Product.

Now how does one go about bottling this scent?

First, you go to Switzerland and you eat raclette. The raclette will be good, the smell will be less so. Second, you will not shower the day after raclette because you are getting on a plane and will want to shower when you get home anyway. Third, you will not shower when you get home because you are too tired and tell yourself you will shower in the morning. Fourth, you won’t be able to shower in the morning because for some inexplicable reason your hot water isn’t working. Finally, you will be forced to go to work only 36 hours removed from the cheese soaking process.

On the one hand, I like smelling like cheese.

For one, it reminds me of Switzerland. It reminds me of taking a cable car to the top of a mountain and looking across Zurich’s skyline. It reminds me of eating marroni with my friends who are going back to Canada. It reminds me of sharing smiles with a beautiful, blond Swiss boy in Old Town. It also just makes me happy to think that when the rest of the world was presented with a grill – they threw meat on it. The Swiss? They thought of another way to make cheese a meal.

On the other hand, smelling like cheese is the worst.

On a hygienic level – not the best. Thankfully, I work in a cafe so the scent of cheese isn’t exactly out of place though certainly no more cleanly. But mostly smelling like cheese reminds me that there is no heat in my flat again because life is cruel. Or at least Edinburgh plumbing is shit. Regardless, holidays are great for exploring but less so for sleep. So waking up at 5:30am to an ice-cold shower where you can only stand to shampoo your hair is not awesome. In fact, it tends to lead to irrational anger. And that irrational anger leads to the kind of thoughts where you start to wonder what on earth you are doing with your life…

Again.

So logically this existential crisis that comes in the wee hours of morning on the cold, rainy walk to work smelling like fermented milk and recycled airplane air can only be solved by one thing – more cheese.

More specifically, brown cheese. The cheese that your friends brought back for you at Christmas from Norway. It will make you feel both happy and sad. And then you’ll come home and sit in a vortex of happy and sad while you eat and smell of cheese. And you’ll wonder how every relationship you’ve ever had seems to get so complicated – even one with cheese.

Then inevitably you’ll start to feel a bit crazy and wonder why you are both romanticizing and being weirdly sensitive about cheese, when really being lazy has simply backfired in your face…

But ultimately less crazy than you will feel sitting in a one-quarter full bathtub of boiling kettle water that took over an hour to fill but will be lukewarm before you even get in.

And this has been a blog about cheese.

You’re welcome.

Words I Hate: ‘Virgin’ Edition

There are many words in the English language that I simply despise.

For one – moist. Moist has to be one of the most thoroughly disgusting words in the English language for two reasons:

1) It’s probably the most efficient descriptor of one of the more unpleasant states of being. As a result, there is simply no way you can stop yourself from immediately imagining said object in that particular state. This picture is not typically a pretty one, and one you often wish you could take back.
2) The pronunciation of ‘moist’ is equally, if not even more unbearable. There is no way to keep ‘moist’ short. For a five letter word, it has an incredible ability to turn into a twenty-minute sound. People have to drag it out. Whether it’s the ‘mmmm’ or the ‘ooooiii’ and especially the ‘ssssssst’ – it’s a wide open invitation for an especially saliva prone speaker to take aim at your face. Wet at best, excruciating at worst.

Another word I hate: ‘virgin.’

This one has less to do with pronunciation nor is it an attack on astrology, but it certainly has to do with associated imagery. Using ‘virgin’ as a descriptor tends to lead to several immediate associations: pure, chaste, naive, or honourable. The word ‘virgin’ can create a character in and of itself. It’s a convenient vice, but how any of these associations relate to an individual who has yet to engage in sexual intercourse is beyond me.

In fact, I find it incomprehensible.

On one level, I find the word lazy.

To assume that an individual’s entire personality can or is changed by the act of sexual penetration of some nature is ridiculous. Of course, that is not to say that an individual’s own personal experience might not affect them more than another’s. But for someone to assume that the simple act of me allowing a man’s genitalia to enter my lady cavern is going to change me as a person seems to reek of patriarchy. There isn’t any all-encompassing word for any other form of penetration. I’m assuming life before and after being stabbed in the chest is a pretty starkly different one, and yet we don’t classify people as ‘stab-free, pure and happy’ or ‘scarred, sad and daunted by medical bills.’

Moreover, the idea of ‘losing’ your virginity or being ‘de-flowered’ suggests that such an act of intimacy not only changes you, but somehow makes you less than before. However, unless you are having a particularly kinky session with your partner where some bits of you might physically get left behind, these overused terminologies are meaningless words on the page. Somehow I’m more inclined to believe that nineteen years of life experience are going to outweigh two minutes of potentially awkward thrusting. Most people have sex and keep all their limbs. Vaginas cannot be found in your garden, unless you are some kind of serial killer, which is an entirely different issue.

On another level, I find the word misleading.

The word itself comes from Old French ‘virgine’ that literally means ‘maiden.’ And back then a ‘maiden’ was a sexually intact young woman. This is not to say that males or people who don’t identify exclusively as either gender are not also described as virgins, but the history of the word is inherently rooted in what it meant to be female in society. Moreover, it was (and is sometimes still considered) a woman’s greatest virtue. It therefore seems absurd to continue to use a word that was meant to monitor and control a woman’s sexuality as a legitimate personality construct. ‘Virgin’ cannot be separated from a supposed morality that is as ancient as Bob Barker’s spray tan. As a literary choice, the word is weighed down by moral and religious judgements that should be irrelevant in a supposedly sexually liberated, secular society.

Most importantly, if the most vital piece of information you need to describe a character or a person is as a ‘penetration free’ then maybe you should work on becoming a better writer. People are a lot more complex than sexual objects that may or may not have been penetrated.

A person can be naive or gentle of spirit, and wild or carefree, but those qualities are in no way related to the sexual exploration of their holes.

And please, please, please don’t write anything about a moist virgin.

I beg of you.

My New Obsession

So it turns out the key to getting a lot of writing done is to become morbidly ill and not leave the house. I mean, I wouldn’t recommend the nose of lava snot, or the bark-like coughs where you can’t be one hundred percent sure if you are coughing out mucus or part of yours lung (though, my voice is extra sultry). But as far as productivity seems to go (and by productivity, I mean writing on my laptop in between catching up on Game of Thrones) it’s turned out to be very worthwhile. Or as worthwhile as having your first weekend off in a quarter century and feeling so repulsive you can’t leave your own bed can be.

I’m not even sure ‘morbidly ill’ makes sense – but it’s dramatic and I feel that.

Anyway, in the interest of keeping up with my promises – I have come bearing gifts of mountains and colourful houses. Or in other words – Norway. One of the most expensive and beautiful countries I have ever been. And I mean beautiful in terms of both the scenery and the people. Seriously, Norwegians – good work with those genetics.

We went and visited my friends in Bodø, which is a pretty small city/town (I’m not sure how many people are needed to qualify for that) up in Norway – literally the last stop on the Norwegian rail line. Now, I have a weird thing where small towns tend to freak me out because I feel like everybody knows everybody, and there’s no room to hide. However, it just so happens that this small town is surrounded my epic mountains, and has a port – and did I mention the beautiful people? Sure, the sunset by mid-afternoon and it was much colder than Edinburgh (I feel Scotland has ruined my innate Canadian resilience to the cold), and by the time I left I decided it was a stunning place but not somewhere I could live…

But after being home for a week or so now, I kind of feel like I miss it.

Now this may be in part due to the fact two of my favorite people are studying there right now and I miss the hell out of them. It could also be missing that feeling standing at the bottom of a mountain where you feel so small but somehow so at peace with the world. And there is no doubt that my sensory system is missing the constant stream of beautiful people. Or maybe I’m more of a nature girl then I give myself credit for?

Whatever it is, I think I’d like to go back. Sooner rather than later.

Unfortunately I have a little more self-respect than to take picture of random Norwegians on the street, but I promise the scenery is just as nice…

More or Less

I want it noted for the sake of clarification that I said I would write everyday. Not necessarily blog, but write. Microsoft Word can attest to the fact that I have been doing that…

Almost everyday.

Almost.

Which is not awesome, but better than once in a blue moon? Though, ‘close but no cigar’ usually isn’t a positive thing…

I’m going to blame work. Can you really blame me if all I want to do after my shift is stuff my face with chili lime flavoured corn nuts from the East Indian grocery store by my flat? And we can’t ignore the fact that somehow Blake Shelton has become extremely attractive and hilarious to me AKA I must watch every episode of The Voice online. I also can’t not watch the X Factor when Britney Spears has essentially become a walking Tumblr gif propelled by deep fried chicken and her father’s love for money. I certainly can’t turn my back on all my other television shows either just because I’m across the ocean. I mean, how unpatriotic would that be?

Granted, most of the shows I watch are American but they are sometimes filmed in Canada with Canadian cast and crew. I can’t let the Scottish rid me of my Canadian-ness completely. First there’s bobbing for bananas and carving turnips, but what next? I start wearing sweatpants all the time, shouting at 3am in an unintelligible accent and going to work drunk! I mean, most of those things have already happened – but I can’t be making a habit out of them! Especially the sweatpants, I can’t stand when people wear sweatpants in public. I’m also not so sure ‘sweatpants’ translates seamlessly into British as now I’m just imaging everyone else thinking I’m talking about damp underwear…

What I am trying to put across here is that… food and television consumption trumps artistic integrity, right?

Le sigh.

I mean, I have been writing more. More is less than I wanted, but I’ve been working a lot more too. Of course, I wish I could work less. But bills are more, and if I work less than I have less money. And when my bank account is less than my bills then I am more destitute and less likely to have anything to write with. So what I am trying to say is that I’m writing less than I want to, but more than I was. So in this instance, more is just more instead of less is more. Or maybe less is more still works because I am writing less than the original more I intended – but in the good way like when you don’t leave the house looking like a clown because less makeup is usually more appealing. Though, I’m not entirely sure that isn’t just more sexist as opposed to feminist…

Regardless, I am trying (writing, not looking like a clown). I even considered doing NaNoWriMo, but since I leave for Norway on Wednesday – that seems unlikely. Sometimes I set myself up for failure, but on the occasion I am at least semi-self aware. Less so spatially aware, as I sliced open my finger at work yesterday (and I’m still typing a finger down, that’s dedication, non?) but I know I will be too busy stuffing my face with lefse and staring at my friends who I haven’t seen in months to lug along my laptop. Plus, we’re going on a very cheap airline and I’m trying to get away just bringing a backpack with jeans and a camera. So really, I’m being practical not lazy.

On the other hand, I’ll post some nice pictures from Norway and pretend like writing fun captions underneath counts as my writing for the day…

So in the end we all win, right?

More or less.

Kaycee, meet Exhaustion.

Has one hour madness already turned into ‘oh shit, what the fuck am I going to write about?’ already?

Or might it have less to do with pure creativity and more to do with ‘Kaycee hasn’t slept properly in a few days, worked nine hours and just wants to watch Supernatural.’

More importantly, is Kaycee really referring to Kaycee in third person?

I mean… really, Kaycee. Who the hell do you think you are? What have you done? You get an arts degree and you suddenly think you’ve won something? You think you can misquote lines from Remember the Titans and pass it off as clever or witty?

Please.

You know the type of people who are recognized by a single name? Eccentric musicians and multibillionaires.

And sometimes random basketball players.

That’s who.

Are you one of the richest woman in the world with your OWN television network? Have you been a music icon for three decades but only look a few years older than your daughter? Have you somehow seamlessly transferred from being in a wheelchair on Canadian teen drama into a rap superstar? Do you wear sunglasses whenever you want because you’re the lead singer of the biggest band to have come out of Ireland? Did you marry someone who also goes by their first name and your child together is already so awesome that everyone can look past the fact that you named them after a colour? Voltaire was anagramming his name way before Tom Riddle. I mean, try becoming a latin sensation or winning an armful of Grammies by the time you’re twenty-one.

Oh wait. You can’t. Cause you’re already almost twenty-two and you live in a tiny apartment that hasn’t been cleaned in weeks and you are pretending like it doesn’t smell.

Spoiler: it does.

Plus, you keep calling it an apartment and making an idiot out of yourself in front of all the lovely Scottish people. Then again, that’s better than shouting about wanting high-waisted pants in every department store in Edinburgh when you actually want trousers. Trousers. Not bloody granny panties. Unless you do want those, which would not surprise either of us because you always buy the control top pantyhose.

And now the internet knows you like the security of old lady undergarments.

Smooth.

How did things go so wrong so quickly?

Why are you still awake?

Because you made a promise? A promise to write for an hour a day – no matter what.

Well, here am I. Typing. Occasionally producing reasonably logical and borderline grammatically correct sentences for an entire hour…

Small victories.