uuummm, May flowers? hello?

It's Saturday, 8am and I couldn't sleep.  So I grabbed Daws, her leash, poop bags and money and went for a jaunt in the 'hood.  After buying a coffee and letting her romp for a bit in the park at the end of the street, I grabbed a Now Magazine and headed back to the front porch. It's the best thing to do early on a weekend morn - coffee, porch, paper and Daws.  On the way back up the street, the sky looked black at one end and you could hear thunder in the distance. Lately, I've been taking my camera with me everywhere I go because I've been capturing precious things that tend to be a unique moment in time.  And I was glad it was in my pocket because this rain and hail storm came on strong and fast.  

For approx 30 mins, we sat there and watched.  It's start mild, bright and hazy and ended in darkness and hail.  Ironically it was incredibly peaceful. 

Now the birds are chirping and the sun is out for the day.

the beginning...rain.

(in a matter of minutes)

the end...hail.

somewhere over the rainbow

Further to yesterday’s blog post, I just have to say that there is nothing that will give a clean slate to a nasty bout of PMS like two amazing gay men. My beloved friends, Todd & Matt, invited me out to dinner and drinks with them last night when I got home from work. The goal was to cheer Matt up, so you think we would spend the bulk of the evening telling him how awesome he is and saying shit like, "turn that frown upside down". Nope, we didn't change our behaviour one bit in order to lift his mood. The usual gig ensued... Todd and I mocking each other relentlessly, while Matt sits there and has to put up with our diva-like insecurities and paranoia. After 3 hours of laughing, talking, eating, drinking and crying all I can say is that I sure as hell felt better than I did earlier in the day. Not really the goal of the evening, I know. Buuutttt we did solidify plans to see Kylie Minogue in Chicago in October. So given that Kylie is Matt's idol, I'm hoping something good came out of the evening for him.

Today, well...Todd and I were back to our old selves via text. And after our snatchy little banter it ended like this:

Todd: God, I cunt wait for your period to be over.
Cheryl: Um, it hasn’t even started. This is just PMS baby!
Todd: Well…however all that works down there.

Matt, I hope we cheered you up in some way. You should, at the very least, feel good knowing you’re better than the two of us…in every way.

Love you both.
Xo

it's not easy being green

As a woman, one would think that I would be able to detect the onset of PMS due to a simple calendar, or even by how many pills are left in my child-prevention kit. Nope, I never really consciously pay attention to it. I know when PMS has arrived on my doorstep because I welcome it with tears. Oh boy do I cry and sometimes for days. It can be something simple like finding out I don’t have any peanut butter left in the cupboard for toast or something even more serious, like realizing I didn’t walk Dawson two mornings in a row.

Well, not this month. Why hello there rage, where the hell did you come from? It started Tuesday and has built up to the point of me literally yelling on the phone, in my cubicle at work, to the ignorant, hill-billy that runs my parking spot at work (yes, even typing that felt good). It feels like everything this week is going wrong and is completely senseless (legal disclaimer: this blog entry might be swayed by dramatization). Don’t worry, I have enough self-awareness to know that, yes, in the grand scheme of things in life, most of the shit I’ve been dealing with this week is peanuts. And I agree, the thickness of my PMS goggles just might be distorting the colours coming through the lenses. I totally get that it’s temporary and will work itself out. But when you’re in the middle of it and pre-menstral hormones are oozing through your veins it’s plain ugly. I’m mad and feeling mean.

Thankfully, I feel that the rage may have just climaxed moments ago to an all time high, which oddly enough I’ve resolved by breaking down in tears.

OK, now I’m done. Moving on to next month…

make what yer mama gave you

Often when you find a teeny gem in the media or online you want to be the first to share it with your friends.  C'mon we all wanna be that one to stumble upon 'something' that sparks a feeling and great emotion within us (whether it's a baby laughing, stupid dog tricks or giant karaoke events).   But then again, what sparks for me may not spark for you, mostly because I'm a huge cheeseball.  And this is where Clara comes in...

What I want to share with you, hopefully for the first time, is sweet Clara.  I first heard of Clara about 3 weeks ago when I was driving in my car listening to Q on CBC.  Jian Ghomeshi was interviewing Clara, a 93-year-old grandmother and her grandson, Chris.  Basically, Chris made Clara famous by posting videos on YouTube of her cooking her "Great Depression" recipes. These are cheap-as-hell recipes that her mother made for her large family in an incredibly tough time.  While these meals may completely feel like they are out of the 1920s (because they are so basic in nature) they are timeless.  They are so similar to what me ma was putting on our dinner table 20 years ago.  

After listening to Clara's endearing, little cracklin' voice coming through my radio that morning, I instantly grabbed a pen and my notebook (on the passenger seat) and wrote down a reminder to look her up on YouTube.  Sssooooooo the reason this might be ancient news to you is because when I googled "Clara great depression" -  a million (slight exaggeration) links came up where various media have covered Clara and Chris' story.  Now, she has her own website, blog and DVD.  Clara has become an internet sensation because her grandson saw something special in her - her personality, her youthfulness and her simple cooking.  And after doing a bit of 'research', the thing I found most intriguing is that her grandson had been posting these snippets of her cooking since 2007....well before our own economic crash.  How timely that everything old really does become new (and topical) again.          

Clara and Chris really impacted me; their special bond and relationship.  I lost all four of my grandparents before the age of thirteen - they were all in their sixties. There have been many, many moments in my life when I wished so desperately that they were by my side.   My niece Samantha is turning thirteen this summer and I look at how young she is and how there is so much more living that she can hopefully share with her remaining three grandparents. 

Aside from sharing this with you so that you can make cheap and easy recipes (take it from me cheap is super cool now and I love it).  I hope you spend time with your grandparents and parents, loving them for their quirks and their sweet nuances, because those are the memories that will make you smile years from now.  (note: I did warn you that I'm a cheeseball, no?)

Heck, Clara isn't even my grandma and she makes me smile like crazy.

Meet the Jetsons

This past weekend I read an article about a design competition where the goal was to create an architectural solution that would be a temporary home for residents of NYC in the event of a catastrophe.   The featured designer (and I believe winner of the competition) was created by Studio Lindfors, it was called Cloud City.

Because of its population density and concentrated infrastructure, the City is not well suited for traditional post-disaster housing, such as mobile homes. CLOUD CITY is literally an uplifting experience that will allow communities to remain intact as they pull themselves out of the rubble. The homes can be rapidly deployed with minimal site preparation. They are intended to ‘plug in’ to existing utility services, and can be deployed by a team of four workers in roughly an hour. Once airborne, the floating homes allow construction crews below to work unimpeded, speeding up the recovery effort. This in turn reduces cost overruns and unnecessary delays.

I was moved by this so much so that I was thinking about it most of the weekend. I honestly think these types of designs for the way we live are just around the corner.  I remember as a kid thinking how fun it would be to live like the Jetsons, but really only believing that possibility in my lifetime was about as tangible as ‘magic’.  With the rapid pace of technology and human intelligence being used for creations that were once deemed to live only within the walls of our imagination, I can’t help but wonder how many people are noticing the current life around us. Are we taking the time to notice the small things in each day that are breathe-taking and euphoric in simplicity alone?  We’re all running to a distance ahead of us, racing to create a better future – chasing goals and dreams, but in this race to beat our own ‘personal best’ we need to stop, pace ourselves to live the moments that get us there.

So if we move to our Cloud City will we lose the energy and information that exists everywhere in nature? You know that rush and adrenaline you get from waking up super early to watch a sunrise, or to just sit on the beach with a coffee with an old fashioned newspaper, like I did this morning.  I felt so incredibly happy in that moment and again later when I went for a run.   It’s moments like this when I notice my breathing, my abilities, the sky and the skyline and just how lucky I am to have my feet on this earth, and not having my head in the clouds.

While it might be nice to live next door to George and Jane, I’m happy to be grounded right here.

I am Liz Lemon

OK, so this entry is a little off topic of the overall blog theme, but I had to share this latest discovery in my life.  For those of you that don't know me, it will help you to 'get to know me'. And for my beloved friends and family, I hope you pee your pants laughing at some (ok 99.9%) of the similarities.

So, to begin, I absolutely love Tina Fey.  I'm talking massive girl crush here.  It began the first time I saw her on Weekend Update.  But now, I just might be a bigger fan of 'Liz Lemon'.   I've just recently been introduced to 30 Rock and I'm wrapping up my addiction to season one and two before getting caught up in the current season on air now.  I think you'll agree, it's like looking into a mirror.  Well, me looking into a mirror, not you...errr... looking into a mirror. 

Damnit. I so wanted to be Carrie Bradshaw. 

the sky is falling

I never thought I'd say this, but I miss Octomom. I find myself wondering how she's coping at home now with her 14 little seedlings. And I worry about how she's to make a living now that the swine flu has taken over our hearts and minds? The good news about bad news is that it passes quickly. The bad news about bad news is that it is typically replaced with the next 'new' tragedy.

This story of swine is crazy and it's spreading faster than the strain of the virus itself. What's most astonishing is how it is blanketing every ounce of our media right now, and depending on how and what media vehicles you follow it's overwhelming. It's on TV, online videos, newsprint, twitter, facebook groups, blogs, etc. My problem with this news is that when everyone is screaming about it on their respective media channels, as consumers of information, we're not listening to the words themselves instead we're focusing on how it's being said. And all I can hear is tremendous fear and shock. In fact, I wonder how many people on the street today actually even know what swine flu is? This time last week I was shooting a commercial on location, without access to a TV or the internet for 48 hours (now that's shocking in and of itself). When I woke up on Saturday morning it was the first time I heard of the swine flu and I couldn't escape it. I'm not going to lie, it took me a solid 4 days into the frenzy before I even knew what the hell it was. And I'm not trying to discredit the importance of it, but it's hard to know how serious we should be taking this news, especially when 36,000 people die of....how shall I say this...the 'regular' flu in a given year. And there are 15 cases of it in Canada today? And some people that caught it were cured? So, what's a girl to do.

From a pig farm in Mexico to the kitchen sink at my office, the virus and the news of it have spread globally in 7 short days.

Makes you wonder, what's more powerful - our voice or a strain of the influenza virus in pigs.