Category Archives: Not your average writing

That’s the kind of phone I have. And it lives up to its name. Life is good. This morning I woke up late, at ten to eight. Instead of panicking, I took a nice, hot shower, made my lunch, walked to the bank, took out a hundred bucks, and ordered a cab to work. I dialed pound TAXI on my LG phone, and one arrived almost immediately. It took me twenty minutes from Granville and 12th to get to the office on North Fraser Way in Burnaby, and it normally takes me an hour an a half by bus. If it weren’t for global warming, and my lack of money, I’d buy a car in a second. By the way, the cab cost thirty bucks, not a hundred. I definitely can not afford to wake up late. But it was so nice to sail by my regular buses in a nice, warm car and a quiet taxi driver who knew exactly where he was going. I pictured my myself waiting at the bus stop, shivering in the cold with my sore throat and congested cough. The thought of going down the steep cement stairs by the bridge where I normally get off that take me to a busy highway full of huge, rumbling trucks that splash and sway me as they rush by made me snuggle into the plush padded seats. I closed my eyes with content as my chauffeur sped me to work.

I thought of the sun that was rising out of a clear blue sky when I left my building. Puffy white clouds scattered the sky’s face. Finally, a bright day instead of the onslaught of rain and dreariness. The crisp cold air was a nice change from the shivery, bone-chilling damp kind we’ve been having over the past few months. I don’t remember the last sunny day we’ve had. It was also nice to see the mountains afresh with a dusting of snow against the backdrop of pink sky that shadowed them perfectly. The snow always reminds me of icing sugar being sifted over the evergreen trees that attach their roots to their rocky base.

Now I’m here at the warm office, just in time, coffee brewing, nothing to do except listen to my iPod and write. What a little sliver of heaven. Sarah McLachlan soothes me with her angelic voice. Okay, enough of this sappy gooey talk.

I miss my honey. I would give anything to see him walk through that door right now. We work together too. I miss him at home and the office. I miss his gentle voice, his wavy brown hair, his smile, his big brown soft eyes that remind me of deep, still ponds that you can see your reflection in, occasionally rippled by a compassionate soft breeze, and you want to plunge into them but you don’t want to ruin their perfect calm.

Awww, how poetic and sweet. I miss his silly laughter while watching that Japanese Extreme Challenge show. The contestants make fools of themselves wearing goofy costumes while tripping over fake rolling logs and twisty, moving bridges, landing face first in the muddy water below, all to the tune of witty commentators bearing fake Japanese accents. He laughs so hard he cries. I get more of a kick laughing at him than the show. It’s just not the same without him. *sigh* I even miss him talking loudly in French in his sleep while he shoves his knee into my back and steals the covers.

Oh, the pains of being a furniture designer for a Chinese company whose busiest time is Christmas, which they do not celebrate over there in factory-land. Work, work, work. I picture him surrounded by a whole bunch of green Grinches with humped backs and scrunched, wrinkled faces, lashing him with their whips held by scrawny hands and long, curled fingernails, yelling,”NO! We don’t know what we want, but that design will not work!” Okay, that is NOT an accurate picture. They actually have a large, beautiful factory and they treat their workers very well, except for the fact they don’t celebrate Christmas. I’m just bitter they took him away at Christmas time, the time when I want to be with him and my family the most.

At lunch, all the workers including the managers eat really fast, and then run home (their homes are on the factory grounds) and take a nap. Serge goes home, makes his lunch,and enjoys time to himself. He has purchased many DVDs to keep himself entertained. He says he lives in a golden cage, since he is not allowed out of the factory grounds on his own. I guess they’re worried he may get mugged since he is the only white person there. When he goes to malls, he draws crowds that just want to stare at him, especially children. He is also considered management, the big designer guy from North America, and in China, the regular workers do not talk to or even look at managers as a sign of respect. So, in addition to not knowing the language, hardly anyone even makes eye contact with him. It’s very lonely for him. He occasions several barbecues and dinners that he is invited to, and the people try to speak English for him, but often the conversations collapse into Chinese and he is left smiling and nodding, his eyes growing distant with homesickness.

So, friends, let us pray for him all the way out in the Orient. HAH! Doesn’t that sound nice and pious of me? No, really, but you can do so if you really believe in prayer, or just think of him and send him your warmest thoughts, especially on New Year’s Day. He needs it.

Well, again, I am guilty of not posting for a long time. As a writer, there is just no excuse, except for the plague of homework I’ve suffered over the past four months. Now I’m done for the semester, and am facing the onslaught of Christmas retail. Not just shopping, but working it. I get to sell sweaters at a mall kiosk on the busiest shopping day of the year – Christmas Eve! Fun fun fun!

Somehow, I manage to get sucked into these crappy jobs because I’m used to torture and abuse; they’re all I know and understand, and I always end up working for the kind of managers that make you feel guilty for asking for a day off, even if the shift is only for three hours on the last Friday evening before Christmas day and is the only Christmas party you’ve been invited to. Make you feel guilty for not wanting to work a crappy job where venue is in the middle of a busy mall hall, where there are no walls to hide from customers and they can see your butt when you bend over to open the cupboard below to get at your purse, where you work a shift alone with no breaks, where you have to ask another store employee to watch the kiosk when you need to use the washroom, and you still feel guilty just for leaving it cuz he gave you a dirty look when you returned to his surprise visit.

And you feel guilty cuz he yelled at you for accepting a returned sweater that had a hole in it, telling you that the return policy was explained “in the manual” (but never verbally), and now he’s out ninety bucks. The customer who returned the damaged sweater said it was like that when she bought it, and didn’t notice it until she got home. What am I supposed to say? “Sorry, lady, you’re lying, and you ripped it. We can’t take it back.” What kind of customer service is that? I’ve never worked at any retail store or even a hotel where they did not provide a refund or compensation to an unhappy customer, and I’ve worked for ten years combined in each industry. Hm. I guess my standards are too high.

And even if you manage to get a better job, he won’t let you quit because you’ve left him “high and dry,” and he can’t find anyone else to work Christmas Eve and the night prior to Christmas Eve, both which he expects you to work with glee. He wants me to work the crappy job so he doesn’t have to lose his dignity like I do – furiously hand-writing receipts for impatient customers and counting checkmarks to add up all the sales. So I have to close this Saturday night, and I won’t get home until 11 pm because the buses don’t run very often from North Vancouver, and then get up at 6 am to get ready for my shift the next morning at 9 am.

Closing isn’t just locking the door when I leave. It means tarping seven sections of sweaters with bungee cords, awkward wire bike locks, cheap padlocks, fifteen teeny, tiny keys, and massive, royal-blue plastic sheets. You know when you arrive late at night to a campsite, and you’re cold, tired, and hungry, but you have to put up the tent first? That’s what it’s like, with dozens of people watching and laughing at you while you drape the sheets across the floor and stretch them over the racks with all your meager strength, and you still need to balance the cash float and credit card slips. You need to tarp up first, or else people see the sweaters while you’re trying to balance and want to buy them after closing time. And then when you open the next morning, while half-asleep, you have to unlock all these sweater tents, barely held together by the bike locks and padlocks, with the teeny, tiny keys that keep slipping from your carpal-tunnel induced hands.

The Christmas Eve shift will be so busy I won’t have time to pee, and there will be no one to cover for me if I need to pee cuz the other stores will be super busy too. What will I do? And if I ask for help, he looks at me like I’m a useless, lazy slacker who is asking way too much for a measly ten bucks an hour. It’s almost as if he expects me to pay him just for the incredible opportunity to advance my sweater career.

I always find myself surrounded by these types, who when you describe the situation to people that know them socially say, “Oh, but he seems like such a nice guy! I’d never have guessed,” like you’re making the whole thing up. Typical? Maybe now that I’ve recognized this pattern in my life, I can learn to walk away, and surround myself with employers who respect me. I’ve learned to get away from these types of boyfriends, now it’s time to do the same for people I work for. It’s so hard to retrain your brain to a life pattern that is functional and healthy, and to a place where you feel empowered, not martyred.

She awoke early in the morning to the sound of crows squawking. It was 4:30 a.m. and the moon was high in the faded blue-black sky as daylight crept over its face. The birds were quite loud; they sounded angry. Recently she had been watching a couple raise a baby in the trees across from her third floor balcony. She rose out of bed and went to the open window, but couldn’t see them anywhere. Their continued noise made her look down to the far left. The mother and father were perched on a telephone wire that hung between some trees, looking down at something in the bushes. She thought their young one might be in danger. Two more crows floated downward, and they moved up to a higher wire right above the alley. Joining in the chorus, their volume was strengthened. Gradually, more of them came to the rescue, calling constantly.

“A murder of crows!” she said aloud to herself. She liked the way that sounded; there were twenty of them. Their black, pointy bodies fused with the wire as they hunched ominously over their target. They formed one throbbing voice, suddenly stopping and then gradually starting up again. She saw another crow flying by in the distance, and wondered if it would join the mob, but it carried on to its destination. Occasionally, one would jump up and down, flapping its wings. They then simultaneously turned around, and faced the opposite direction, relentless with their weapon of sound. At the end of the alley, she saw what looked like a cat or a raccoon run onto the sidewalk and disappear behind some hedges. She spotted the tail of the animal as it snuck into a fenced yard across from her building. The crows followed its path, moving sideways along the wire. They slowly dispersed as the threat crept away.

She lay back down after the show. Usually, she would swear at the crows, angered by the sleep disruption and their ugly sounds. She recalled a summer day when she had been a victim of one swooping down at her from the treetops towering above the city sidewalks. After yelling and waving her arms to scare it away, two more returned, frighteningly close to the tips of her ears. Another time, while walking beside a busy road, she felt a sharp tap on her head. Looking up, she saw black tail-feathers and dangling feet flying away from her face.

”That crow just hit me on the head!” she said to a man who was passing her.

“Good thing you have hair!” he said, pointing at his balding head. She smiled at the memories and drifted back to sleep.

A strange tugging at the end of her bed awoke her. It was her cat Yoda, meowing and poking at her big toe sticking out from under the blanket. “What! What do you want?” she said, sitting up and looking at the clock on her nightstand. It was 6:30 a.m. Yoda sat on his haunches; his eyes were black and shiny like big marbles. “Dumb cat!” she mumbled, and lay back down. Yoda pounced on her back and yowled. “God! First the crows, now the cat!” she exclaimed, sitting up angrily, sending the cat jumping onto the hardwood floor. “What, what, what?”

Yoda’s big, low ears flattened against his striped head as he ran out the bedroom door, his belly close to the ground. His tail flicked quickly from side to side while he led her through the living room and out the balcony door. The morning sun revealed a black- and red-feathered pile on the floor beside her potted bright pink azaleas. The crow’s wings were disheveled and crooked, its eyes open and still. A trail of blood seeped out of its beak. Yoda looked up at her for approval, licking his lips and purring.

“Yoda, did you kill this bird?” she asked. She couldn’t believe her timid apartment cat killed something that was almost his size. Bending over to get a good look at him, she noticed a red stain on the white fur around his mouth and throat. “How did you? On the balcony?” Knowing she wouldn’t get an answer from him, she collapsed on the patio chair, barely feeling the cold metal against her skin through the thin fabric of her pajamas. She stared at the corpse, shuddering at the thought of cleaning it up. It was probably still slightly warm. Yoda admired his prey, his head pointed down and ears pricked stiffly with fascination. He looked back at her, closed his eyes, licked his front paws delicately, and slowly walked back inside.

“Funny how something so cute can do something so horrible,” she muttered, resting her head between her hands. She thought of the crows squawking earlier that morning. There was no way that could have been Yoda down there unless he somehow grew wings. There wasn’t a tree close enough for him to climb down and back up. The bird must have already been injured, and then had the misfortune of landing on the balcony with an awaiting, thrilled cat.

She remembered when they lived in a house with a yard; he was pathetically unsuccessful with his timing while trying to pounce on a sparrow. He couldn’t even target a moth without her help. “I guess instinct has a way of taking over at the right time,” she thought as she stood up, stretching and yawning. She froze. She was face to face with two crows perched on the wire across from the balcony. Their beady eyes glimmered as they cocked their heads to one side. They lunged towards her unabashedly, their wings spread like giant hands. She ducked down, shielding her face with her arms, her back towards them. Their movements hissed in her ears as she ran inside.

As she slammed the balcony door shut, Yoda ran down the hall towards the bedroom. “Dumb cat! Now look what you’ve done!” she yelled. “Cause all this trouble and then run away like a coward!” Looking back out through the sliding glass door, she saw more crows lining up on the wire. She looked down on the balcony floor and noticed the body was smallish as the bits of grey fluff on its back jostled in the morning breeze. The thought of the parents protecting their precious baby wasn’t so moving anymore.

“Oh shit! Yoda, you killed a baby!” she screamed. She could see her neighbours across the alley peeking out through their curtains behind the unrelenting army. She was causing a scene! She didn’t know what to do. The birds kept swooping towards the balcony and landing on the rooftop directly above. Yoda was chattering away on the windowsill in the bedroom, edging them on. Slamming the window shut, she pushed him off the sill. “Stop it!” she yelled, and he cowered under the bed.

She stomped out of the room and retrieved a garbage bag and umbrella from the hall closet. Shoving the balcony door open, she released the umbrella and held it against her body as she wrapped the bag around the corpse. The crows were still swooping, but deterred by her shield. Twisting the bag shut, she left the apartment and exited out the back of the building into the alley. She placed the body bag on the ground, near the trees where she believed the nest was. Returning inside, she watched from her bedroom window as the crows swarmed over the black plastic mound. She understood the pain of losing a child.

Links: What To Do If You Find A Dead Bird:

http://www.wwhd.org/about_crows.htm
http://www.bchealthguide.org/healthfiles/hfile88.stm#hf88006

My first blog entry in Toronto. I wish I was proofreading forever. That was my first job, proofreading a 300-page manuscript. It was a mystery novel by Maureen Jennings, and it was such a nice read, so much better than the bloody slush pile. The slush pile nearly killed me. Reading really bad writing is depressing and discouraging. I didn’t know it could be so draining. It insulted me as a writer—people thinking that good writing comes so easily and that they have talent when they really don’t. It reminded me of Canadian Idol, when people think they can sing after watching/hearing professionals that make it look so easy. These people read some good books, and think they can pull it off quickly and quietly, not realizing it takes years of practice and experience of gaining good writing skills and creativity.

I always thought proofreading would be so boring and awful, but I found it relaxing and challenging. I realized I enjoy grammar and making corrections. I was so happy when I found an error and fixed it. That makes me feel smart, that I outsmarted the copyeditor and typist. How smug. And it’s such a treat to read a book before it’s been printed, and to read good writing for free. If I wasn’t an intern, I’d be getting paid to read all day.

I assume as a proofreader there is a lot of boring writing that needs to be read. It’s not all fun fiction and memoirs. The technical and historical writing might be eye-drooping, as well as any writing styles that I wouldn’t enjoy, like science fiction or fantasy. The latter would still be somewhat stimulating though, if not comical.

I’m still tortured over comma usage. Should there have been a comma in the last line of the above paragraph, between stimulating and though? I hated it in the last manuscript when it was written, “Shall we leave, then?” I happily deleted those commas! How many pauses should there be in a sentence? A comma should be used whenever there is a pause, or breath in a sentence, but sometimes it gets a little ridiculous. I was tortured over the last manuscript because most of the characters had Scottish accents. Are there a lot of pauses in that dialect? The commas still annoyed me.

Again. I haven’t posted for so long. I am going to try to post at least once a week, especially for my trip to Toronto.

Maybe I’ll even have an audience, if I advertise to my friends, and if they’ll read it. We’ll see if they’ll find it worth reading.

There are five days left before I board one of my greatest phobias. Fear of flying, along with fear of stairs. I can just hear Alex mocking me, “Oh, you have no reason to be afraid of falling down the stairs. I’ve fallen several times and never hurt myself!” Well, lucky you. I’ve fallen and hurt my back very badly, fractured my tailbone. And let’s not get started about getting hit by cars. My tailbone has a magnetic pull to cars and cement. What can I say?

Phobias are silly, really. There is no logic to them, and they stem from childhood, from pain, previous accidents. I have had way too many falling accidents, but not one plane accident. I’ve never had a problem on one, but every time I board, my heart races, my hands shake, and I feel nauseous. Heights and speed have always made me uncomfortable. They both never have been considered fun. I’m no fan of amusement park rides either. Big chicken—it runs in the family.

Let’s blame it on my parents, shall we? After all, we blame everything on them nowadays. My mother had an intense fear of heights (and stairs!), and my Dad was always telling me that something was going to be scary, awful, difficult. There is a lot of fear issues in my family. He told me before I got on my first plane I might get sick, because my sister Monique did. He told me I’d get sick on a motor speed boat ride, or on a train. Really, I’m not making this crap up. I was also born this way too, or was it nurture? It’s hard to tell. Some of my brothers and sisters are prone to motion sickness and scared of heights, but not all of them.

But really, I should take some ownership now. I am really trying to conquer these fears. Facing them, counselling, medication, deep breathing, writing, and practicing music all have helped, but I am not cured. A slow work in progress, or maybe it’s just part of my personality, like having blue eyes and a good sense of humour. Someone told me my nervousness was endearing. If only everyone saw it that way instead of a weakness. I am a natural stress case. How’s that for a Lavalife opening line? Call me Tweek for short, that character in Southpark whose parents feed him coffee and tell him scary stories.

Anyways, I think I am more nervous about getting there. It’s been two years since I’ve been home to London, and the same time since the funeral. I’ll go home and see all of Mom’s stuff gone, see her gravestone in person, and see my siblings. It will be very emotional. Plus I have my internship to tackle, but at least that will be in Toronto, two hours away from home. I always tend to pile a lot on my plate. But I can get it done, I’m sure. Besides, Mom would want me to be strong and succeed. She would be so happy for me, and proud.