Wafflesexual

So the Martlets lost in the semi-finals yesterday. I am not overly surprised - we were playing Laval, and they are a very talented team. Beatable, certainly, but a tough battle nonetheless. I was very crushed to have been taken off halfway through the second half. I missed a huge tackle, which resulted in a try, and as I was jogging back after the kick, after having cried in the end zone out of shame, convincing myself that I was going to redeem myself, Francois subbed me out. I am still mortified over it.

So I went out and got rather drunk last night. Had some beers, played some pool. Bought groceries at 1:00 am. Took home a package of Belgian waffles.

I no longer bring boys home from the bar - I bring waffles.

And every short lived moment spent with them is sinful, indulgent, and ultimately regrettable.

Rugby Homework?

I have to write warm fuzzies about all my McGill team mates as homework tonight. I have absolutely zero desire to do this. I don't really like half my teammates, and am confident that they don't like me, and I really don't want to hear the contrived niceties they throw my way.

Warm fuzzies are not ever a good idea. Even when I played on a team I loved deeply and was intensely loyal too, I'm pretty sure everyone just commented about my love of A Shot At Love with Tila Tequila

See You in A Century

I have 60 12-page midterms to mark. Rugby semi-finals. My thesis to research. A book review on a 500 page book I don't even own yet.

What's that age old saying again?

Ah yes.

FML

Rugby War Wounds

Lost to Concordia today. Lineouts were shit. How does one actually work on their lineouts except through rote repetition? Very smashed from the game.

In particular, I have discovered a lovely token that will come to remind me always of my season with McGill (as thus far, little else will); shattered cartilage in my ear. Yup, after 12 (yes I counted) seasons playing rugby, I have finally managed to cauliflower my ear.

Don't worry, I have never counted my ears among my more seemly body parts, and it is virtually unrecognizable lest you take time to note the symmetry of one's ears. That said, it hurts, and a pinna piercing is probably out of the question for my beloved left ear.

By the way, if you google image search "Pinna piercing" (yeah, ok, I didn't know what it was called prior to authoring this post- sue me body art enthused indie dilettantes!) you get an uncensored photo of Janet Jackson's nip slip at the SuperBowl 38 (it's football - it is not really worthy of roman numerals, let's be real). Don't know what that is about.

So my pride, my ear, and the insides of my knees, which have been randomly taking a lot of blunt force these days, are hurting. Only 2 guaranteed games left in my rugby career before I relegate myself to the club season for the rest of my days. Got to turn it out.

I leave you with words more poetic than I could ever pen, regarding anything, let alone rugby.

Truro Sevens - by Anna Mancini We find ourselves past mud scraped roads, on rare prairie patches of rooted sun gazers. Boundaries have been left behind, and itching in pale winter skin our limbs twitch with memories of bone and grit, of thick warm earth. All reason must be thrown away flaked and tossed like last year's crumbs baked inside our thinning boots bound by fraying hardened knots. On the pitch we are what's left of prior seasons, hopes for Spring. We are nothing but our bodies with adrenaline's denial. We beat our cores to worn out chants thrust ourselves for old time's sake breathing, breaking, waiting for our thoughts to keep pace. These burning thighs and flesh skinned hands, chipped toenails and loosened knees bring us something more like life something like uncharted truths. Our worth is all we have to prove between the stomps and locked down ribs, the mud streaked brows and grinding teeth. This is the closest we can come to dying for each other. On the pitch we find ourselves lost inside our frantic calls lost inside all there is to glorify in war. On the pitch we find ourselvesin the heavy heat of game.

Thankful For

I have returned from my Toronto escapades. A beautifully photographed Thanksgiving post is pending, and not pending like those photos of my apartment which have been pending for months, I promise.


For now I will awkwardly formulate my weekend's revelations in the forms of things I am thankful for.

I am thankful to have realized and come to terms with my body's inability to recover from binge drinking.

I am thankful to have friends whose lifestyles are so worthy of emulating; I am inspired to be tidier, healthier and more intellectually active.

I am thankful for canned pie filler.

I am thankful for gay men - may they rule the world.

I am thankful for friends who serve as family.

I am thankful for my family instilling a sense of prudence and bravery in me, lest our Thanksgiving turkey have been cooked with neck and giblets in.

I am thankful I was not home to witness, and therefor euthanize, my cat when she broke my candle holders.

Five Senses Friday IIIf

Feeling:

Jittery. A lot of coffee - an awesome class - a wildly productive morning - a trip to Toronto in 4 hours to party with my bestie and his boyfriend!

Smelling:

My apartment, legitimately clean, but still with that wet grass/mud smell that accompanies the rugby season.

Hearing:

Oh God, "Only the Good Die Young" as performed by Mark Salling on Glee. I know, it's super embarrassing. Embarrassing raised to the nth degree given the absoluteness of my obsession. I think I have found the Good.

Tasting:

Coffee. And nothing else. My diet is starting today.

Seeing:

a potential quarrel with VIA Rail employees over what exactly qualifies as a carry on. Only sadists would enforce a "one carry-on" policy.

Gobble Gobble Surprise

I owned three of these plastic faced gremlins

Remember Kitty Surprise? Those stuffed cats that had a velcro pouch in their tummies full of smaller, poorly constructed kittens, and you never knew if you would get 2 or 4! What a manufacturing scam - how many people actually got 4 kittens? And furthermore, how misleading! I believe that the birthing process is not so simple as velcroing open and closed a pouch.

I mean, maybe for marsupials - I'm no biologist.



Anyhow, not the point of the post.

Point: I am surprising my best friend Orry this weekend with a Thanksgiving visit!

I feel rather grown up about the whole thing actually. I have only had the pleasure of meeting my best friend's boyfriend once, but he tracked me down on facebook and he and I have been covertly messaging back and forth trying to plan a surprise visit for Orry. This weekend is it.

Of course, this did not go off without a hitch. Tony, the boyfriend, wanted to cheer Orry up (though I also have my suspicions that alcohol was involved) and let spill the plans for my visit. Then, regretting his decision, and wanting to make it all a surprise again, asked me to "cancel." What an asshole I look like.

But as far as I am aware, surprise is on. I take a 5:00 train to Toronto tonight. I can't wait a) to see Orry, b) for a bit of a break from rugby and school, and c) to gorge myself on turkey until it is just unsightly. Like, gnawing on bones with stuffing in my hair unsightly. Can't. Wait.

Mean Cat!

My cat is bringing out the worst in me.

She is not being very neighbourly with the cats which like to wander outside my window. And by that, I mean she flips shit and has even started to go so far as to gnaw on the window frame as an intimidation tactic. An intimidation tactic which I do not entire understand. It's like if, to convince me just how pissed someone was with me, they started, I don't know, kicking the shit out of a radiator outside of my dorm. Which may or may not have happened to me. And, in such a scenario, my point stands: it is not intimidating. These neighbourhood cats are sitting on the other side of the glass, like I sat in first year, laughing, impressed with their own ability to have such an affect on someone.

So, with feline peeping toms and tomasinas coming round my windows fairly regularly, She Ra has gotten a little sensitive. She is like someone on the edge of a nervous breakdown. She's like my mom when her arthritis used to get bad.
"Sydney. Did you just kick cat food under the dish washer? Why would you do something so ignorant?! Don't make that face at me! YOU'RE GROUNDED!"

and you're thinking is this her mom, or her cat, with the vested interest in the final resting place of cat kibbles, that she is quoting? God, what an absurd reason to be grounded for.

So, like an individual on the verge of a nervous breakdown, She Ra is quick to lose her temper without reason. Curled up in my arms purring one moment, jumping away and hissing the next.

And this, my friends, drives me crazy.

My cat hissing at me brings out some of the worst and weirdest qualities in me. I don't do anything I could be brought to criminal court over, don't worry, but I have developed absurd reactions to being hissed at. Normally when a strange cat on the street hisses at you, you jump away or withdraw your hand or whatever, and carry on your way: you assume you were in the wrong and leave the cat alone.

When She Ra, that obese feline for which I have been the lone caregiver of for three years, hisses at me I feel utterly indignant. I am Holden Caufield and she has scrawled fuck right across my front door.

Today I actually yelled - yelled! - "How DARE you?!"

At. My. Cat.

Insane reactions to being hissed at by my cat:

     "HEY! WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM?"

      Person hissing in response (which is not really effective, since it communicates all too well how pissed I am, prompting her to react more aggressively. But then I'm just impressed embarrassed to have communicated with her at all)

      Spraying water out of a glass using a straw, conveniently sitting on nightstand

      Going to the kitchen, filling a mug with water, dumping it on unappreciative cat, when convenient water glass is absent

      Nose flicking

      Rolling cat off bed

We both need to be medicated it would seem.

Dragging Things Together

Things are finally start to come together in Montreal.

I have a thesis topic. I need to start researching, but it looks like it will be an analysis of Weimar German directors who emigrated before the Second World War to Hollywood and how the depiction of women changed according to the change in audience. I need to discover a pithier description, but right now that is kind of all I have. But, that does mean that my lack of German is no longer an issue, and that I have some new ground to research.

I played in the B Team's game yesterday - they were scant for subs - and I don't know if it was because the pressure was off, or just because the overall level of skill allowed me to rise above, but it was the first game in a while where I was actually very happy with my performance. It has me excited to meet Ottawa again this Thursday.

My apartment is clean, I have been reunited with my cell phone, I have been getting my ass to yoga and, though I have certainly sabotaged myself by making some delicious peanut butter oatmeal cookies, I have been eating quite healthy as of late.

Life isn't so bad kids.


Since I am feeling magnanimous, here is my recipe for peanut butter oatmeal cookies

I have a very reflective desk...

ingredients:

1 cup salted butter
1 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup white sugar
1 1/2 cup crunchy peanut butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs
1 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/5 teaspoon salt
1 3/4 cup quick cooking oats
a bag of dark, bittersweet chocolate chips

directions:
1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees, a la every baking recipe known to man
2. Cream together butter and sugar. Once done, add peanut butter and vanilla extract (you could, in theory, cream all of these ingredients together at the same time, but since I use crunchy peanut butter and do not own a hand mixer - I know, I know - I find it easiest to cream the butter and sugar first). Then add the eggs one at a time, mixing well (obviously...)
3. Add flour, baking soda and salt, and mix it up. Once mixed, add remaining ingredients.
4. Cook for about 10 minutes each batch on an ungreased baking sheet.
5. Eat inappropriate amounts of dough, making yourself too sick to actually eat the finished product.

Bon Appetit