Thrifting in Winnipeg

Winnipegers are renowned for being cheap. In fact, new products are often tested here, because if Winnopegers will buy it, anyone will. This means that Winnipeg makes for excellent thrifting opportunities for broke wannabe fashionistas like yours truly. Here's my thrifty trip tally:

2 dresses
4 skirts
1 pr shorts
1 t-shirt
4 blouse-y shirts
Set of striped martini glasses
= 66$

Not that I'm excited about that or anything :)

So what? I'm still a rockstar...

This vacation has been wonderful. A visit to home ground, full of my moms and dogs and friends and the ease of familiarity. It's been carefree and rejuvenating. Its also been a big boost to the old self-esteem. Because here, at home, I'm a total rockstar. I don't mean that to sound snotty. Just that when you go away and then come home again, everybody wants to hang out with you. And for a girl like yours truly, who is not yet realized as a rockstar in Redneckville (don't worry, I still am a rockstar, I'm just - you know - incognito, I suppose.). And it has been so rejuvenating to spend time with old friends who I love and who think I'm kinda wonderful. And to make new friends who seem to find me reasonably interesting as well. So, so, so nice. It's been a long time since I've thought of myself as wonderful and interesting and worth getting to know. I guess sometimes, it's nice to be reminded that no matter who notices or doesn't - you're still a rockstar.

So thanks Winnipeg. For all kinds of reasons and in all kinds of ways, you'll always be home to me.

Neighbourhoods and daily living

I'm back on my home turf, in the house of my youth, in this fabulous neighborhood called Wolseley. Now, my other friends poke a bit of fun at Wolseley, deservedly, for it's hippy/lesbo/green-y/lefty earnestness. But being back in this neck of the woods feels like heaven right now. It couldn't be farther from my Redneckville neighborhood if it tried.

For starters, you're more likely to see People driving a Prius, Volvo or Subaru than you are to see the Tonka trucks that proliferate back home in Northend Edmonton. And you're more likely to be hit by an errant cyclist than a car here in Wolseley. The streets are lined in 100 year old elm trees than make enormous canopies over the roads and the 100 year old houses, whose front doors are more likely to be blue or red or yellow or pink (naturally, my personal fave!) than beige or white or brown. The streets are filled with the bustle of people walking dogs and strollers full of littles and bags full of organic groceries. (Did I mention there was a street corner with two competing organic stores?). The gardens are beautiful. Really, really beautiful. Haphazard and wild and unmanicured kinda beautiful. (My kinda beautiful). Even the boulevards are full of shocks of wildflowers, bluebells, irises, daisies, towering masses of lilies and hollyhocks.

And running through these streets every morning feels like such a treat. Because everything feels alive, lived in, artful, historied. And makes my home neighborhood seem drab, dull, lacking noise and vibrance and, well, life. It's not that folks don't garden in my neighborhood back home. But Wolseley gardening makes those wee flower beds seem perfunctory and devoid of imagination. And it's not my neighbourhood's fault it isn't full of turn of the century homes. (Though certainly their doors and gardens could use some serious inspiration). It is what it is, which is the only neighborhood we could find a house we didn't hate that we could also (almost) afford in Edmonton.

But this sojourn into Wolseley has reminded me about the importance of inserting beauty in one's everyday surroundings. And how much your everyday surroundings can impact, even sustain you, whether it's immediately noticeable or not. And how very much I miss that kind of daily dose of loveliness.




My favorite pink door.




A red door across the street.




Garden bliss.




Elm canopy.

Sunday Morning Wolseley Run

Aaahhhh Sunday's in Wolseley, where a busy avenue gets blocked off to all vehicles. There's something very satisfying about running in the middle of an ordinarily busy road. And then, a funny Wolseley sign, reminding cyclists that they need to make room for car traffic. Hilarious!





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The sound of therapy

Ever wondered what sound your kids future therapy makes? Girlio's apparently sounds like SQUEAK!

Girlio has, of late, rediscovered her baby giraffe squeaky toy. And insists on falling asleep with it. And also insists on using it as a tool in her already stacked arsenal of sleep resistance tricks. She NEEDS to snuggle the giraffe. And the giraffe squeaks when you squeeze it. You see how this might be a situation of un-fun-ness for the parentals of Girlio.

So - enter a particularly bad night of trying to get Girlio down. Giggle. Squeak. Gigglesqueak. Mama lays down law. Quiet. Squeak. Peals of laughter. Law riot act. Quiet. Fake snores. SQUEAK. This went on. And on. Until Mama, in a fit of parental frustration grabbed said giraffe. And threw it across the room. Where it hit the wall and landed with a resounding squeak. Perhaps not my finest hour. But very, very satisfying.

Now, days later, whenever Girlio gets mad at me for various reasons, she looks accusingly through tears and reminds me: Mama threw giraffe-y. SQUEAK!

And that friends, is the sound of future therapy.



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Vacay

My apologies for lack of prompt and interesting bloginess. I'm on vacation, and the sunshine has been proving far too compelling.

Summertime, and the livin' is easy...


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Feminine scream...

There are some days where I wish I could carry around magic scissors and give especially deserving people vasectomies. Today at the park, this complete and utter jackass was berating his son for having 'a feminine scream' coming down the slide. Made my heart ache and my stomach turn. I walked by him loudly recreating what he had said to a friend, adding "you wanna hear a feminine scream?!". I know he heard because he had the wherewithal to look simultaneously sheepish and aggrieved. But I still didn't feel remotely mollified.

Snip, snip buddy.


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Self-care and motherhood...

Sunscreen.  I always forget the freaking sunscreen.  Not for the kids - they are slathered in it.  I always forget to put it on me.  And even when I do remember, I still get burnt because I can't reach, you know, the hard to reach spots.  It's really easy to forget yourself as a mama.  I know, I know, everyone will give lip service to the 'the kids won't be happy unless their parents are happy/you have to take care of yourself first' business.  And I totally agree with that business.  It's just good business sense for the survival of mamas.  BUT - it's not always so practical.  I do what I can.  I'm trying to get out more.  I'm trying to read more books, take more runs, look for jobs and daycares, and somehow make more time for me.  However, my day-to-day existence often makes remembering about the minutiae of self-care kinda difficult.  I'm the mama who's at the park, with sunscreened, bugsprayed kids, complete with sunhat, snacks and water, having had the forethought to anticipate everything my kidlets might need or want.  I'm also the mama who's at the park, skin getting sun-damaged  and likely courting skin cancer, and surreptiously sneaking goldfish from the tots' snack tupperware and sips of water from their sippy cups.  This is due to the fact that my toast from breakfast is still sitting in the toaster because somewhere between wiping the kids out from under their oatmeal haze and breaking up fights #1, 2, and 3 of the morning, I totally forgot to eat.  I'm the mama at the park, marvelling at how easy it is to forget one's own existance. 

Oh Kia, really?

So - I was reading the daily blog post by Phd in Parenting, which yesterday was all kinds of holy shit disturbing.  Advertising is bad (of course, not all of it - but I'm talking the mainstream stuff).  Advertising is exorbitantly saturated with sexist, misogynist, racist, homophobic and other kinds of all around yucky imagery.  But an ad that actually overtly celebrates a male teacher imagining how sexy and buxom his grade-school female student will become?  All kinds of icky-unacceptable-gross (Um, yeah, it's a word - look it up ;)  It was run in Brazil by Kia.  Yup.  Kia. 

And this ad - apparently - it won an advertising award.  For reals.  It can be seen here, at Peggy Orenstein's blog.  Doesn't look ironic to me.  Doesn't look funny to me, or tongue-in-cheeky (which when done well, I'm all about).  It sure all hell isn't hot.  It's just, well, icky-unacceptable-gross.  It makes me stinkin', hoppin', holy-mother-fuckin' mad.  That could easily be a depiction of my kids.  Or yours. 

Wanna tell Kia where to go?  You can do it here:  http://www.kiaresponds.com/brazil-ad.html  They also have posted their statement regarding said ad.

Femme-tastic

Today, if you don't already know, has the auspicious distinction of being International Femme Appreciation Day. You might be saying to yourself, what is a femme, and just why should I appreciate them? Or possibly querying (queerying?): isn't that just buying into traditional notions of femininity which have saddled women with all kinds of, you know, oppression-y badness, for years and years? Aren't those women just capitulating to heterosexist notions of beauty and gender? To the first question I say, read on. And to the second I say, not so much and I don't think so. And that, in my not so humble opinion, is an overly simplistic reading of what inhabiting 'femme' means for and to a lotta folks.

For starters - for those not steeped in queerspeak already - it's important to say that not all lezzies identify in terms of butch or femme, not all butches dates femmes and vice versa and etc. etc. Moreover, it is both tiresome and misleading to speak about femme-ness as the binary to butch-ness. Femme-ness is not the natural match to butch-ness any more than woman is the natural match to man. You see where I'm going with this? And further to this - femme is not just an identity inhabited by women. Many men, gay and straight and tranny and not, also identity within the spaces of femme.

Anyhoo-

Inasmuch as femme can be described, we are difficult (and more than likely worth the effort) to pin down (and I do mean that figuratively and literally, in case you were wondering), a few general trends do emerge.

1. Femme is queer. Intrinsically. Always. 2. Femme rejects traditional culturally enforced notions of femininity. 3. Femme insists upon sexual autonomy. 4. Femme is complicated and muddied in all kinds of ways by social locations of class, race, ability, gender, body size etc. All of these impact the particular ways in which feminine bodies are inscribed with meaning and read in our culture(s) at large. (Fatness and body size has certainly has an enormous impact on my own experiences of femme, and how my femme-ness and body get read)

And to explain further, I will turn to turn to some of the brilliant femme minds of "Brazen Femme: Queering Femininity", edited by Chloe Brushwood Rose and Anna Camilleri. In snippets. Just snippets. Because femme is shifty. Slippery. Ambiguous. We like it like that. It's part of the mystique ;). And also because it's really quite challenging to blog on one's iPhone in one's car on a roadtrip with children in the backseat. I do what I can...

Chloe Brushwood Rose and Anna Camilleri offer this:

[F]emme might be described as "femininity gone wrong"- bitch, slut, nag, whore, cougar, dyke or brazen hussy. Femme is the trappings of femininity gone awry, gone to town, gone to the dogs. Femininity is a demand placed on female bodies and femme is the danger of a body read female or inappropriately feminine. We are not good girls - perhaps we are not girls at all (13).

Kathryn Payne describes:

Femme is the position that deliberate feminine sexual agency often occupies in queer girl subcultures (49).

And one of my favorite descriptions, which answers to concerns (criticisms?) about the gender performance(s) of femmes, is brought to you by Lisa Duggan and Kathleen McHugh. They argue:

And now, in the postmodern reign of The Queer, the fem(me) reappears, signifier of another kind of gender trouble. Not a performer of legible gender transgression, like the butch and his sister the drag queen, but a betrayer of legibility itself. Seemingly "normal". She responds to "normal" expectations with a sucker punch - she occupies normality abnormally (167).

And last but not least, another gem from Duggan and McHugh:

Rejecting Girl-By-Nature, the fem(me) is Girl-By-Choice. Finding in androgyny...too much loss, too little pleasure, and ugly shoes, the fem(me) takes from the feminine a wardrobe, a walk, a wink, then moves on to sound the death knell of an abject sexuality contorted and subjected to moral concerns (166).

Sufficiently confused now? Good. Then all is as it should be. Remember - shifty. Slippery. Hard, (but not impossible), to pin down.

So - to the badass, the gorgeous, the sassy, the sexy, the saucy, the tough-as-nails, the fancy and the fabulous femme-tastic girls and boys out there - I appreciate you - your femme-y ways, femme-y wiles and femme-y wickedness.

And I send you all a great big air kiss with lips resplendent in my shiny and fabulous pink 'revolution' lipstick...



Excerpts taken from: Brazen Femme: Queering Femininity. (eds). Chloe rushwood Rose and Anna Camilleri. Arsenal Pulp Press: Vancouver, 2002.

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