I'm jealous of my cosmopolitan trousers
I bought a pair of trousers recently, at a consignment shop. I like used clothing. It's cheap, like me.

These pants, which are one of the three pairs which currently fit my fat, and mysteriously-expanding-like-a-mushroom ass, are khaki, with wee zipper pockets at the hips.

I've worn them several times, and even washed them twice, once after I bought them and once after I spilled something on them the first time I wore them. I had not, until yesterday, used the zipper pockets.

Yesterday, though, I wanted to bring some change to work for coffee. "These pants have pockets somewhere, don't they?" I thought, feeling around. "Are they sewn shut? No, zippers!" I unzipped the left-hand pocket -- and there was something in it. Something small and folded. Had I used the pockets already and forgotten?

No. There was a 5-Euro note folded up small and tucked in the pocket. My pants are better-travelled than I. What worldly adventures have these pants known, I wonder?

We are still fretting about the upcoming "pit bull" ban, and whether or not Onyx will end up being called a "pit bull" -- in which case, if we have to pay $75 a year for a "dangerous" dog license and get an extra $300 000 in liability insurance -- if our insurance company will even consent to continue coverage -- we will not be able to afford him.

Here is another view of the "problem." Do not watch this if you are not somewhere where you can sob at will; it is heart-rendingly horrible and sad.
The Pit Bull Problem

Life goes on
The recap:
My knee shots are finished, and now my knee has resumed a warning clicking. I wonder if it might be that with more fluid in there, the flappy cartilage can now swim about at liberty?

What with the lack of exercise (lazily, I allowed "knee shots" to serve as an excuse for slacking on all kinds of things) I've gained enough flab that I no longer fit into most of my winter clothes.

Which makes me angry, afraid and depressed.

I did a gruelling, fast-paced, high-rep circuit workout last night, and a run this morning, and now I hurt.

In other news, the bathroom has half a hardwood floor, and the top half of walls painted a pleasant cream. (The bottom half will have tongue-and-groove wainscoting, and is at present still sporting a rustic look of framing and furring.)

The dog may soon become an illegal dog, depending on how Ontario's pit bull ban plays out. Bryant is a jackhat. He has refused to speak, apparently, to any of the recognised experts (the Ontario Veterinary Association, safety councils, the Canadian Kennel Club and others) and is allowing sensationalist media idiocy to press through the ban. Despite evidence from places that already have bans (Britain, Winnipeg) that they are 1) unenforceable, and 2) just make the kind of idiots who have and breed uncontrollable, aggressive "pit bull" crosses move on to other sorts of fighting dogs (Winnipeg saw a big increase in Rottweiler attacks after their ban).

Blah. I can't rant about this any more. We rant about it daily, chez Compass; A. is furious. The thing is, poor little Onyx isn't even related, much, to the big American Staffs and bull terriers who are generally crossed with other big gnarly things to create yer average drug-dealer's ideal "pit bull". British Staffordshires fought 200 years ago, sure -- but so did lots of other dogs which aren't being banned. And since then, they've been bred as pets -- just like loads of other terrier and bull-terrier sorts of dogs, which are not being banned.

And in any case, regardless of that, there's no reason to ban any breed. What's needed is tighter policing of owners. A nasty person can turn any dog nasty.

Why, oh why, when I break with over three decades of devoted cat ownership, do I need to pick some cute little fellow with tough-guy relations and a bad media rap to fall in love with?

Next week, I'm off to my childhood dentist to finish off the root-canal saga with a nice filling.

And I think I need to get A. this for his upcoming birthday. Go, check it out! Could anything be more marvellous or more necessary? Brilliant!

Stumbling towards decrepitude
My, but it's been quiet round here, hasn't it? Well, I've been sick. Kof. Snif. I mostly feel better, but I sound like hell.

Lounging around with a box of tissues (extra-soft; specially purchased) combined with my one escape from laziness to put me into knots of pain that are still echoing. I did a leg workout on Saturday, the first in I don't know when. Then I basically didn't move for three days, with the result that the expected DOMS transmuted itself into tightness and savage spasms which actually made it hard for me to sleep last night and the night before. Actually, last night was a little better, since I begged A. to rub my afflicted hams with Traumeel before bed. He actually massaged the twitching fibres till I yelled in pain, but it did seem to break up some of the knots in there.

My, my, but I feel old.

The second shot has been administered to my knee. Again, the joint is clicking ominously (normally, the click-clunk sensation precedes a lockout episode and Great Pain) but hopefully, as before, this will pass when the general puffiness goes away.

I've gotta get back into the gym. What with the leg thing, though, I'm now suffering from severe pain aversion. Activity: very poor (I walked the mutt last night, though). Diet: getting better. I'm on the Food is Boring diet now. The fluffiness occurring after my non-comp decision was getting way out of hand (to the point where I could no longer fit comfortably into my favourite clothes). Since I can't afford to buy new clothes, clearly something had to be done.

Current diet, every day:
1) rolled grain (barley, oats, rye) -- 1/3 cup dry, cooked; optional additions -- plain yogourt, a teaspoon of brown rice syrup, a tablespoon chopped dried fruit. 1 egg, ? cup egg white, scrambled; optional additions -- a bit of cook cheese, hot sauce or salsa.
2) 4-5 oz sweet potato, cooked, 3.5-4 oz chicken. Small piece fruit.
3) 1/3 cup dry measure rolled grain, cooked, as above. 3.5-4 oz chicken, or can low-sodium tuna. A cup or so of fibrous veggies. Small piece fruit.
4) repeat either 1 or 2.
5) 1/2 cup cooked grain, 3.5-4 oz chicken or other lean meat, or 6 oz lean fish, a cup or so of fibrous veggies. (Actually, 5 has not been so virtuous, as I've been "finishing" things in the fridge. It's been quite a bit more varied, and usually included a small and low-fat/calorie dessert, with the result that I've forgone...)
6) protein shake, or half protein shake scoop plus 1/4 cup Quark cheese.

I'm avoiding seasoning as much as possible, and trying my best to drink 3 litres of liquid, preferably water, every day. Not doing too badly, despite Meal 5 and lack of exercise; in a week, I've lost 2 pounds of water puffiness.

And, indeed, food is very boring.

On an entirely other note, according to a very silly quiz promoting The Bachelor's Cooking to Hook Up Cookbook (I'm wincing just thinking about this), I am Progressive Girl. Apart from the Susan Sarandon thing (er, no!) it's pretty flattering, really. Of course, I am really more like Academic Girl, but without the sexy curled-in-the-stacks air and the litsnobbery (I will read Cosmo, but I won't buy it; I can get through all the editorial content in a supermarket lineup, so why shell out the cash?).

Germ-o-rama
It figures. I give up on competition for the present, take it easy for a couple weeks... and my bod crumbles. Let's see, now; we've had the abscess, the knee, the root canal -- and now I'm sneezing round with the Cold of Doom. Yukh.

Fairly quiet weekend. I did clean the living-room. Yes, only the living-room -- from top to bottom. Everything moved, everything dusted, scrubbed, vacuumed -- I found a mummified, horrible digestive by-product Thing behind the chesterfield. Animals are so disgusting. (Mind you, all that dust and muck probably didn't help ward off the budding cold.) Now it's sealed off, all doors closed. I don't even want to sit in there and spoil it, now!

Beauty isn't everything
This is so funny, I had to pass it on. (Nicked from the bookblog Beatrice.)

Ellen Fein, who has probably done as much damage to female self-image as Helen Gurley Brown through her self-help humour book The Rules and its sequels, got a divorce. Why?

Her teeth. A dentist to the stars messed up her cosmetic veneer job, which -- she says -- caused her constant pain.

We know the truth, though. Her husband, after seeing her come towards his Greatest Treasure for the first time with her gigantic man-eating Chicklets gleaming in the darkness of the boudoir, could no longer enjoy relations without fears of castration.

And rightly so. Read the book; it's true.

Important accessory
If our laptop ever gets fixed, of course. I'm pleased to see that the favourable review compares with mine -- though I have the adult model of Felis catus.

Er. Models.

Feeling mighty quibbly today. I'm off shortly for the first of my knee injections (eee-yuck) and the canal of my afflicted root will be roto-tilled tomorrow. Not, however, by the grim Germanic lady who first examined me.

The more I thought about it, the more uncomfortable I felt. No special equipment (after my mother said, "Dr. D. doesn't do root canals any more, since he doesn't want to invest in all the computer software for measuring the root and things"); indeed, a very "bare bones" sort of an office... unkempt assistant spritzing disinfectant about in a jaded manner... I thought the dentist herself seemed fairly solid, and probably has done root canals in less luxurious situations than this -- but do I want a grim Eastern Bloc operation when I could be enjoying all the luxuries of Western medical decadence?

A friend of mine told me about another dentist, a Root Canal Specialist who is, she says, of such notable accomplishment that other dentists from all over Southern Ontario refer patients to him. I called today, mentioned her name, and to my lasting astonishment, got an "emergency appointment" -- for tomorrow.

I feel so relieved. I hadn't realised until after I called and cancelled the other appointment how it had been preying on my mind. I trust my dentist at home implicitly, but have had such terrible experiences with others, that I think I do now have a little bit of dental phobia lurking in the shadows of my brain.

My girlfriend thinks you're homely (and you're not my type, either)
Not a bad weekend. I am still not back under the iron (I have an abscess, you know!) but I have been out running a few times, and Saturday night enjoyed my very favourite form of cardio, Aerobic Goth Dancing.

It could've been still more aerobic, but unfortunately I dressed for style, not comfort, in a purple satin corset I made myself, and a vintage black satin skirt cut very intricately in spiraling bias panels. The event was a concert by Canadian punk rock dinosaurs Dayglo Abortions and three other bands, followed by Dark Music, at a club some two hours drive from here. I've heard a lot about this club from R., a friend of mine; we've made several tentative plans to drive down, which have always been foiled.

This particular Saturday, however, his friend was the DJ for the music part of the evening, and R. managed to snag us a ride down in the DJ's car.

DJ's car, when it arrived, was driven by DJ's girlfriend, a very-much-younger girl, Russian, in elaborate Gothwear. The drive down was uneventful. When we got to the club, they were between acts, so R. and I went for a stroll down the main street of St. Catharines.

St. C.'s is Club Central. I've not seen the like since I left the Ottawa Valley and my misspent nights of bopping in Le'Ull. Blocks and blocks of street, with nightclubs every second door. And on this particular weekend, they were stuffed to the strobe lights and spilling onto the sidewalk, this being a festival weekend.

As it turned out, we are all, DJ included, a little old for the skull-splitting performances of the Abortions. (Sad, really; they are themselves at least my age. All right, maybe it's sadder to still be screaming adolescent angst and spitting onto the ceiling in one's mid-thirties.) We ended up enjoying most of the concert from the pavement in front of the club. (However, when I was downstairs, I was much in admiration of the small, but lively, moshpit. Had I dressed in my more usual teenage boy nonstyle, I could have been leaping there myself; as it was, though, I'd likely have popped a stay, if not something more vital.)

At any rate, at one point, DJ was talking about his girlfriend (still inside, flirting heavily with the female lead singer of one of the other acts). "She's Russian, so she's very competitive," he said. "So when I said we were picking you up as well, she wanted to know all about you." I expect my right eyebrow did its usual Sardonic Leap at this point.

"I told her you were R.'s date," he went on. "'His girlfriend?' she said. No, I said, his date. 'Oh. Is she pretty?' She's all right, I said. 'But she is a bodybuilder.' I told you -- Russians -- very competitive. 'I am a bodybuilder too,' she said. And I told her, no, you go to the gym twice a week. She looks like she lives there."

"I do, more or less," I said. "The gym's in the basement."

"Exactly. So she says, 'is she your type?' Not really, I said, you're my type. 'Is she my type?' And I said I'm still trying to figure out what your type is. Then we got to your house, and you came out... she looked you up and down, and said, 'She is okay. Not bad. But I am better.'"

I don't remember what I said to this (fortunately, none of the things I was thinking after the initial astounded "Whuhuuuuh?" zoomed through my brain) but it was along the theme of competitiveness, since we then spent some considerable time talking about how it had been variously instilled into us during our respective tender youths.

I'm still a bit stunned. Do people really do this? Set up to judge other people, that sternly, and do the Am-I-Good-Enough comparison test with other women they don't even know?

Yeah, women. I do think this is a girl thing. Sure, men compete too -- but they're bold enough to just whip out their weinies (or their big cars or their six-figure jobs) right there in the open, and everybody measures. It's girls (and I use the term wittingly) who compare in this underhand way.

Poor kid. She's cute enough, mostly because she's very young (much younger than DJ) and pert of figure -- but she's not classically boned, and she is probably not going to age terribly well -- which is going to make this kind of game harder and harder on her as she grows up. I dunno. I've never, really, seriously compared myself physically to other women; I've always taken it as read that most people are prettier than I am. An advantage of growing up homely, perhaps?

Of course, it's rather funny too that DJ would tell me, in so roundabout a fashion, that he thinks I'm a step up from the cat's dinner himself. (What it must be to be irresistable.) On the whole, though, it's probably fortunate that I didn't inform him that he needn't have bothered; I certainly hadn't given any thought to the possibility of ripping his clothes off, either. It's not wise, you know, to offend your only means of transportation when you're two hours from home.

After the noise finished, we ended up dancing for an hour or so, and then going to eat with one of the opening acts, friends of DJ and femme. (The one, indeed, whose lead singer seemed so very much to be the girlfriend's type. Sauce for the goose is not poured over the gander in this case, it would appear.)

Lovely people, but being from the States, they chose safety, and to visit one of the outposts of their fine American chain restaurants (which are all spreading themselves out over Southern Ontario right now like a contagious rash). Perkins, this was, where we had some of the worst food any of us had ever enjoyed, and I the nastiest "French Silk" pie that modern chemistry could concoct.

Home at nearly seven in the morning. I am growing old for this!

The secret of the handkerchief
I now know what that was all about. Sometime late Tuesday, my infection burst through, or whatever it is that they do in the dark corners of the jawbone, and my cheek really swelled up, to the point that it was impinging slightly on my vision all Wednesday.

And once that started, it began to throb, and also hated any kind of little blasts of cold, like draughts, or the normal air movement of walking. I bought a thing meant for sore backs, a kind of elastic belt with pockets in it, which came with chemical hot packs that activated on exposure to air.

That was a look, I tell you -- head wrapped in an elastic bandage with a hot pack increasing the dimensions of my already-swollen cheek.

I stayed home from work both days, too -- which felt like slackage during the moments when my face wasn't throbbing, and like a really good idea during the moments when it was. Read my way through most of Gerald Durrell, and more Jane Austen, and watched Out of Africa, which a friend lent me -- but not Love, Actually, which she included, and which I will probably watch tonight.

I liked Out of Africa, mostly because it was so beautiful. I would like to live in an African plantation house in the twenties! Somehow, Meryl didn't seem at all Blixen-like to me, but that didn't bother me as much as such things usually do. After that, I went scouting madly through the bookshelves for a biography of her which -- I was certain -- I had read quite recently... but I think I got it from the library rather than buying it, even though it was before the current Time of Austerity.

I saw a dentist on Wednesday night. She was stern and Germanic, and while she doesn't inspire me with confidence, neither does she fill me with terror, so I suppose she'll do. Oddly enough, she did not refer me to a specialist for the root canal -- apparently she'll do it herself, next Wednesday, after the antibiotics get the swelling quite down.

(I'm faintly tempted to call on my own bat the fella who is, I happen to know, the root canal specialist for this whole area, and just see if I can get an appointment without a reference.) But there it is. One way or another, the saga of Chipmunk Cheek has at least moved into a new and quieter chapter.

That's about it, really. Took two days off working out (sick, you know), then ran this morning, ten kilometres in about fifty minutes. Today, the ceaseless medical whirl continues; I'm to see my sports medico about getting synovial fluid shot into my knee. Eating has been not too bad, though running a bit to chocolate and sweets round the edges.

Curious thing about my infested mouth -- at no time has the actual tooth in question ever really hurt. It sometimes feels a little peculiar when I bite down on something; my cheek has certainly hurt, from the outside, and the outside of my gum, and at some points all the little glands down that side of my neck -- but the tooth has in fact very often felt better when I chewed with it.

Pardon me while I snark
The jaw? No better. However, instead of yesterday's cute marble-sized infection, I now look, in three-quarter profile from a left-hand elevation, like Hillary Clinton storing nuts for the winter.

And it hurts.

This morning, did the circuit workout from Friday again, but with only two rounds, as I was short on time.

The ghastly Sandra Lee of Semi-Homemade has haunted my grimmer nightmares for some time (ever since I ran into a link for her "holiday cakes" -- a capital crime against angel food -- last year) but this thread on the Television without Pity forums is marvellous. I don't know how many pages there are to it, but I read through 34 of them, and with each successive post, found myself less and less able to restrain open howls of laughter.

Yesterday, I finished The Great Safari -- the biography of the Adamsons I mentioned the other day. Gah. I was never so glad to close a book on two people in my life. Granted, the author, Adrian House, is decidedly against Joy and clearly believes her a man-eating bitch and tramp -- and decidedly for George, who is painted as a sort of 'manly man of the jungle' -- but I hated them both before I was halfway done. I wasn't in the least surprised to find that Joy was murdered by one of her employees, and I was ready to kill George myself. What a pair.

I mentioned this to A., who said, "That whole generation has always struck me as very odd. 'We love the animals. That's why we shoot them.'" Yes. Couldn't have said it better myself. And of that generation, the ones who went to Africa appear to have been particularly odd. I wouldn't want to take a long car trip with Isak Dinesen (nee Karen Blixen) for instance, either. "The wilderness" appears to be where those of the interwar hot things who couldn't fit in anywhere slunk off to do their madder drinkin', freakin', and f*ckin' around. Oh, and self-indulgent writing about it all.

Oh, I am cranky today. And my face hurts.

A marble and a handkerchief
I have the kind of old-fashioned tooth infection that used to be portrayed thus in silly stage comedies. There's a strange, hot, painful lump in my face, just beside the right side of my nose.

Oddly, though it hurts if I smile, or kiss someone, or speak, it doesn't hurt when I bite down on it -- in fact, chewing something firm and crunchy makes it feel slightly better.

My dentist? I still go to my childhood dentist, seven hundred kilometres (or so) away.

I'd recently seen that a new dentist had moved into the strip mall where my doctor has her office -- large sign on the door reading Taking New Patients. So this morning I called Directory Assistance, and told the automatic recorder that I wanted "the dentist at this address." That caused a moment or two of confusion with the operator, but eventually I got the number, and spoke to a receptionist with a heavy accent. Appointment on Wednesday. I hope the infection doesn't crawl through my sinuses and eat my brain before that.