A Rat After My Own Heart

You have to love the ornateness of the rat depicted on this year's Canadian stamp to honour Chinese New Year. I personally appreciate that it is carrying both a little purse and a parasol.

Here, too, is Canada Post's own photo of the new stamp.
Note to self: buy more accessories!

Deuil

It has always seemed a little strange to me to think of mourning the loss of something that is not actually dead. I have found myself doing that on so many occasions over the last ten years of living with AIDS that you would think I would be getting used to it by now. No such luck.

After a whole lot of time, energy and even money invested in getting there, I resigned from the Bar in 2001. That was one of the most difficult decisions I have ever made, but it was really the only choice I had at the time. I was working where I am now, in a community organization, not earning a whole lot of money and not particularly using my status as a member of the Bar in my work. In my previous community job, I had at least needed the status for one of my tasks — teaching people how to prepare their own non-contested divorces — and even did some of that for people as clients. But when I got to where I am now, I was not even doing that, and it became difficult to swallow the cost of remaining a member of the bar (up to $1,000 in fees each year, and always the possibility that the compulsory insurance would again resume costing that much as well). I resigned in order to preserve the possibility that I could regain the status, but I know it is really gone.

Imagine being in your early forties and being unable to open one of the paper clips pictured above because of the severity of the arthritis in your hands. According to a neurologist I consulted recently (regarding carpal tunnel syndrome), there's a strange confluence of factors at work. If my HIV meds weren't working, I wouldn't have such a problem with my psoriatic arthritis, which contributes to the effect of the carpal tunnel syndrome. Ah, what to mourn?

A few years ago, another such confluence of factors, combined with a degree of vanity and some harshness and self-doubt on my part, contributed to the loss of most of my social life (and my sex life). Factors? Quit smoking, got less active, aged (slowing my metabolism) and arrived at the end of more than seven years of taking a combination of HIV medications that people don't tend to prescribe anymore. Result? Gained about 60 pounds, became extremely self-conscious and unhappy about my body and began isolating myself rather than braving the reactions of others (or my perceptions of them).

A few weeks ago, the nipple I had pierced many years ago, and in which I have always had either a ring or a bar, became seriously infected. This to the point where I became worried about the long-term impact of the infection. So I did that thing that I hadn't pictured myself doing: removed the ring and decided to let go of the piercing. That might seem trivial in relation to some of the other things I have given up, but it was as much a part of my whole identity as many other things. It had been a part of me for a good fifteen years. And now it's gone.

This brings me to my latest loss. I had been trying to work on some problems with the help of a psychologist, trying to get past how I feel about myself and trying to get past what has been stopping me from doing something about it (the content of this is probably enough for its own post, so I won't elaborate much here). My plans went off the rails and I found myself unable to even meet the minimal goals I had set for myself. The pressure I was putting on myself and my own disappointment in not reaching goals I set for myself was becoming more of a problem for me, bringing me down rather than helping me solve problems. I decided that I wasn't ready for this counselling and ended it, at least for now.

Now my challenge will be to see whether I can move forward on my own, or get to the place where I'm ready for some help.

Highbrow

I'm not sure that I have mentioned this before, but I entered a contest online last fall and actually won season tickets to the Opéra de Montréal. This has been a very lovely prize to win — something that I would probably not have been able to experience without this windfall. (Just to reassure the Opéra de Montréal, I should add that I have so enjoyed myself to date that I am very likely to go next year even without free tickets!)


This past Saturday was the Barber of Seville. It was certainly interesting to go to an opera having been familiarized with the music by that unforgettable episode of Bugs Bunny, "The Rabbit of Seville." In fact, every moment of the overture was familiar, and the section where Bugs and Elmer Fudd chase each other back and forth with ever larger knives and axes was found further into the production.

Now I should point out, for the uninitiated, that the Bugs Bunny storyline doesn't follow the original at all. I guess that will not be much of a surprise. What will be a surprise is that I found the opera to be way funnier than the cartoon. The whole audience was killing itself laughing at all the appropriate moments and the cast had excellent comic timing throughout. If I didn't know better, I would have sworn that the part of Bartolo's manservant had been played by Tim Conway.

I'm very much looking forward to my remaining two experiences this season.

Year of the Rat

Happy Chinese New Year! We are now entering the Year of the Rat — Earth Rat, if my sources are correct.

In honour of this occasion, and a pot luck dinner meeting between my Board and Staff at work, I made my contributions thematic and I must say that I am most pleased with them indeed.

Whole Wheat French Rat Bread, pre-cooking view

Black Russian Rat Bread, pre-cooking view

All the rat breads fresh from the oven

The Rat-er-torte (a sachertorte)

And, to top it all off, Rat happens to be my sign. I guess that makes me…twenty-four! ;-)

Friday en français : la rage

Urgence de santé publique à Toronto, parce qu'un chiot acheté dans un marché aux puces est mort de la rage. Une vingtaine de personnes qui auraient pu avoir contact avec les chiots doivent contacter la santé publique pour évaluer s'ils devraient se faire vacciner contre la rage.

L'histoire se lit en anglais ici.

Je n'ai qu'une seule question : qui achète un CHIOT dans un marché aux PUCES?

A Little Shuffle

I thought I would take some time to rearrange my links today (and to draw attention to them, I suppose). I've noticed that this is often something that people don't talk about in their blogs, but I think it's worth a word or two.

I have removed a couple of links for blogs that have stopped posting, or post so little so seldom that even I get frustrated going to them and seeing the same stuff come up … again! Not that I am the King of the posters, but I do expect more content in the stuff I go to see regularly than a random photo of a cute boy every six or eight weeks. Label me exigeant.

But speaking of the cute boy pictures, I thought I would make a whole other section for links to places I like to go to window shop. Maybe just to prove to myself that, yes, I still have my membership card, even if I haven't been digging it out of my wallet lately. That's what Pretty Things is all about. (One of these will stand out as having more content than just the pretty things, but he has also announced that he won't be posting for a while. It's still worth looking back through the older posts for some breathtaking photos, and some lovely scenery, too.)

Back to the main list, I have also included a few links to blogs posting gay cinema (no, not that kind of cinema — those links are still confined to my favourites and not listed here), usually in multiple parts needing to be reassembled after downloading. Being a recovering lawyer (like alcoholism, it really never leaves one's system), I would surely never advocate any kind of blatant or surreptitious copyright violation — it's just a lovely sampler to help people figure out what they need to purchase from original sources.

One of the ways I have discovered new blogs is by clicking on the "Next Blog" button at the top of Blogger blogs. All kinds of kooky random stuff comes up, which, for a person without a personal life like me, is very rewarding. Another way has been to explore the links from the blogs I like to read, so I hope my little list will lead you (eventually) to some other things that you might not have discovered otherwise.

Last but not least, I would ask you to recall that song "New York New York" put out by Nina Hagen decades ago. I read an interview with her once in which she explained how she arrived at the list of nightclubs mentioned in the song — they were all the places that let her in for free. So my other source of blogs I link to is from those who have ever left comments on my blog. And lest we think that is shallow, I would add that these are also triaged to include those whose content also responds to my other expectations: funny, interesting, and/or messages and experiences that are worth sharing.

An Eventful Trip: Mum & Dad's House

Okay, not like the falling-down shed at the end of the previous post. This is a little glimpse at my parents' house, which my Dad built over the course of several years, lots of this alone and much of it by hand.

First from the outside, the view coming up the driveway:


…and the view at the back of the house:

We also like to tease Dad that he has enough wood for the heaters and stoves to last until 2010 (this is only one woodpile area; there are at least two that I know of):

It is a lovely log house on three levels (DON'T call it a cabin: it is quite large!). The basement is at ground level in the front and the next floor is at ground level in the back. From the basement through the roof is a giant chimney that accommodates two fireplaces, a wood heater (in the basement) and a wood stove (in the kitchen). Dad built this chimney carrying rocks (collected from all over the place) and mortar on his back up a ladder. Here is a view of the chimney and another of the wood stove (actually a heater) in the kitchen:

Dad lifted the logs into place using a hand winch, lifting them up the hill and into place atop the basement. I only took a few pictures from different perspectives, so here is the living room (with my sister Syd in pain on the couch — see the Exploding Appendix entry — and my sister-in-law Linda in the chair):

On the other side of the chimney on that level are the kitchen and dining room (with my brother Mike at the table):

…and the same rooms seen from above, from the loft-style bedroom upstairs:

Off of the loft is a little plant room featuring a stained glass window made by my little sister Syd and also showing one of the five skylights (the others: two in the living room, one in the kitchen, one in the dining room):

And how does one navigate the space between floors? On this lovely two-storey spiral staircase welded by my brother-in-law John:

Isn't it lovely?!