<![CDATA[unravellings​ - Blog]]>Wed, 20 Jul 2016 10:20:22 -0700Weebly<![CDATA[Vignettes on Home Renovations]]>Tue, 19 Jul 2016 22:01:04 GMThttp://unravellings.weebly.com/blog/vingettes-on-home-renovationsIt's been almost three months since my last post. I apologize to those who have been checking the site daily waiting for my next witty contribution to the internet zeitgeist; I've been caught up in home renovations and other springtime traditions like day drinking and losing track of time. I now present to you, dear reader, a series of vignettes on home renovations.
It is Saturday, and although I spend five days a week working directly across the street from this hardware store, I drove twenty minutes to buy three hinges. They have one. I drive five minutes further to the other hardware store. They have one. I drive home muttering about another weekend wasted.

Every Canadian backyard needs a rhubarb plant, and I went to plant one only to find thirty wheelbarrow loads of a broken concrete foundation buried in the garden. I start to wonder if home ownership is just a series of 15 tasks that turn into blister-inducing 30-hour projects.

My tomato seedlings are outgrowing their red solo cups. “Plant tomatoes” has been on my to-do list for three weeks, and I realize that if I wait to plant them until I build the planter boxes I’ve been fantasizing about, the tomatoes will be dumped from their red solo cups into the compost as the first snowflakes fall. A winter of
pinteresting planter boxes does not a planter box make.

​In a unusual moment of letting my guard down, I have been ambushed in Aisle 29 of the hardware store by an eager associate desperate to help. Reluctantly I tell him I haven't been able to find dishwasher hose, and he tells me it's his first day. Together we wander the three plumbing aisles like I had just done, with his only expertise being the nametag he is wearing. I resolve never to let them catch me again. If there are circles of home renovation hell, one is being stuck in the hardware store where it's everyone's first day on the job.


My partner (and co-owner of the house we continue to try to improve) is diligently searching the electrical aisle gathering our list of items. I'm doing hot laps through the rest of the store, avoiding all associates, lingering as little as possible, and ducking into dark corners when I need to google something. Twenty minutes later I notice he's being helped by someone who is knowledgeable and distinctly lacking the glazed-over first-day look of the other associates. Turns out he's not an associate -- just a customer who is more helpful than anyone who works there.

<![CDATA[Alive: When Life Imitates a Mediocre Canadian Music Video]]>Wed, 20 Apr 2016 22:06:00 GMThttp://unravellings.weebly.com/blog/alive-when-life-imitates-a-mediocre-canadian-music-video
​Remember Edwin? Singer of  s̶u̶c̶h̶ ̶h̶i̶t̶s̶ ̶a̶s̶  the hit “Alive”?

I work above a fabrication shop that listens to the local classic rock radio station eight hours a day. It’s mostly a constant rotation of AC/DC, Queen, and Twisted Sister, but sometimes they throw on something by the Red Hot Chili Peppers or Green Day, which makes me feel old. On Tuesday, no undoubtedly as an attempt to diversify their Canadian content from constant plays of Bachman-Turner Overdrive, they played “Alive” by Edwin, a song I had completely forgot about until the moment I heard it, when suddenly I knew all the words.

When I was your age, kids, the best way to hear an overplayed radio hit was to tune into MuchMusic and hope it was playing. Weekly I would watch the MuchMusic Countdown and sigh with relief when they finally played the songs that had been stuck in my head all week.

When this video emerged, circa the year 2000 (after we all miraculously surviving Y2K) my classmates were burning mixed CDs of tunes downloaded via Napster with their fancy computers. At home, we had dial-up internet and a 15 MB hard drive, so I had to resort to recording my favourite earworms onto a cassette tape using a karaoke machine my dad hooked up to the TV. Believe me, it was archaic even at the time.

I listened to a lot of the same songs over and over again, and like Edwin’s song, for better or worse they’re now burned into my brain.

Back to Edwin.

After hearing the song, I took a coffee break from my mundanely adult life to google the video and relive a moment of high school.

​The video opens with our hero, Edwin, donning mirror-lense Oakley sunglasses, not wearing a helmet, jumping from an airplane with a snowboard strapped to his feet. He descends quickly and slays some super sweet backcountry powder, drops cliffs, and doesn't put on a helmet.

Twenty seconds later we cut to Edwin, now in orange-lense sunglasses resembling aviators  (still refusing to wear a helmet) is mountain biking through the forest. Suddenly, he’s trail-running.

The video then takes a momentary break from adventure activities. Edwin, in typical turn-of-the-century fashion is wearing a short-sleeve button down, completely unbuttoned and exposing his plain white t-shirt. He spreads his arms like Jesus and belts out to no one in particular.
In the video, Edwin completes the following activities:
  • Skydiving
  • Snowboarding
  • Mountain biking
  • Trail Running
  • Singing on a beach
  • Base Jumping
  • Snorkeling
  • Swimming with dolphins
  • Fake hang gliding
  • Beach running

On a scale of 1-to-Edwin, my life is a 7/10. It would be a 6/10 except that anyone can fake hang glide.

I did not know when I was in highschool that I would assemble a life that imitates an Edwin music video. What if it had been another hit from that year like Lady Marmalade? 
The music video for “Alive” won a Juno Award in 2001 for Best Video and Edwin won a People's Choice Award for Best Canadian Artist at MuchMusic's 2000 MMVAs, Edwin is now bartending at a bar in Toronto. He probably still refuses to wear a helmet

<![CDATA[Hide the Frying Pan. We've Got Guests.]]>Wed, 30 Mar 2016 18:39:21 GMThttp://unravellings.weebly.com/blog/hide-the-frying-pan-weve-got-guests
If a visiting guest were to explore my closest, they might find a non-stick frying pan between my sweaters. The pan looks young for it’s age. Several years old now, the non-stick coating is pristine and without a single scratch. Like the youthful faces of Cher and Joan Rivers, it is not this way by accident.

My entire upbringing can be measured in frying pan units. At regular intervals, a brand-new, remarkably non-stick pan appeared in the kitchen “only to be used with this plastic utensil”, my mother would say, and inevitably, eight months later it would be scratched up worse than burned CD from 1999. The coating flaked off, acting like extra seasoning for every meal. Two frying pans spanned junior high. There were at least three for high school.
Somehow we’ve gotten to a place where it’s expected that a non-stick frying pan will wear out faster than a pair of jeans.

​ It might be a little too early to call, but I feel like I’ve beaten the system that had me treating them like they’re disposable; and I’m no longer buying a new one as often as I change the batteries in my smoke detector.

Like a parent cares for all their children equally, I care for all my kitchen tools. Like my younger brother, the non-stick frying pan gets coddled the most. It’s used almost exclusively for eggs, with only the gentlest of tools, and it’s stored on the shelf covered in a plush microfiber cloth, tucked in like a baby just down for a nap.

My kitchen is a general minefield of metal utensils and sharp objects, where one wrong move would be the beginning of the end for the frying pan. It’s a private maze only I can navigate.  Partly, I cannot trust anyone not to ruin the flying pan, but mostly I can’t bear to see their faces as I take them through the kitchen, and explain “here, under this luxurious tea towel is the non stick frying plan, if you could please make sure you store it with the towel on top, and be sure never under any circumstances to…” Or while cooking, I imagine myself interrupting our wine-fuelled conversation with a shrill “not that one!” as the ever-helpful guest reaches for the metal flipper.

If someone is using my kitchen, rather than watch the train wreck, it’s easier to put the train in the closet.

And it’s not just the frying pan. There’s the aluminium ice cream scoop that leaves grey streaks in the ice cream if put through the dishwasher, and, as a result of too much garlic-flavoured pineapple, there’s cutting board that has a fruit-only side. 
With almost every visit, another item gets added to the list of shit-to-hide-next-time.

​​I’ve fallen short of writing a “Guide to Kitchen Item Use: 24 Pages to Make the Most of Your Stay”. It just seems so much easier to hide things. I’m not looking forward to the day when I have to explain to a guest, perhaps looking for a towel, why there’s a cutting board, ice cream scoop, and frying pan under a blanket in the closet.
<![CDATA[Don’t Order a Salad At a Burger Joint]]>Thu, 17 Mar 2016 17:02:42 GMThttp://unravellings.weebly.com/blog/dont-order-a-salad-at-a-burger-joint
During a long weekend one winter, I was having a meal at the kind of restaurant where patrons dine off plastic plates while sitting in rows of cafeteria tables. The woman behind me was complaining loudly about her dressing-on-the-side, hold-the-croutons salad, and her companion was equally disappointed with his vegetarian pizza.

Given that this was a back-door barbecue joint, and I was elbow-deep in ribs, brisket, and baked beans, I wondered: what was she expecting? A smokehouse is a terrible place to order a salad. From top to bottom, the menu listed barbecue ribs, country ribs, spare ribs, baby-back ribs, and a rib combo platter before reaching the chicken section (including the chicken ’n’ rib platter), and the beef section (featuring a beef ’n’ pork rib platter).

The menu ended with a brief mention of pizza and salad, which looked like a footnote for wayward vegetarians who wandered through the wrong door.

We’ve all been there. It’s five days or fifty hours into a road trip, and you’re stopped at the only town for miles, in the only restaurant that isn’t McDonalds. The coffee-stained menu is split between types of hamburgers and a hodge-podge mix of “steaks”. Swiss steak, chicken-fried steak, hamburger steak, country-fried steak, and “special” steak. It’s been days since you’ve had something that isn’t deep-fried and this place has french fries listed as a vegetable. Somewhere on the second page of the two-page menu, right below the “Senior’s Specials” you spot it: the only thing on the menu that can ward off the deep-fried-road-trip-scurvy. Nestled between “chicken fingers with fries” and “fried chicken with fries” is the one fresh vegetable dish on the menu.

It’s tempting, but don’t order it. Like a culinary Where’s Waldo, you’ve spotted the anomaly on the menu and I guarantee you it’s a mistake to order. It looks like an oasis in a desert, but it’s really a flavorless landmine.

The routes of my past road trips are a connect-the-dots of disappointing entrees; evidence building the case for a life lesson.

The dishes are unforgettable. A terrible donair I ordered at a fried chicken place. The stale beef dip at the pizzeria. The gummy rice pilaf at the roadside fish stand. If it’s the odd-one-out on the menu, it will likely be the least-fresh, most poorly made item you can order. After all, the locals would never make that same mistake twice, and the unique ingredients are crammed in the back of the restaurant fridge waiting (for days) for the next tourist.

The lesson is this: never order the salad at a burger joint. Sure, it’s possible Sparky’s Burgers & Stuff has a fresh and tasty chef salad, but it’s more likely week-old, store-bought, pre-mixed iceburg lettuce with a sprinkle of carrots, and a single pale slice of tomato that has seen better days. Always ordering the obvious specialty of the restaurant is the best bet you can make.

So, order pasta at the Italian place, fried rice at the Chinese take-out, and chicken wings at the bar. Just don’t order a salad at a burger joint.