little soundtrack

scientific fact: everyone feels, sometimes, as if their lives should have/already have a selected soundtrack appropriate for every bitty moment. that is the beauty of mp3 players - they offer, if fully charged, countless hours of grooves fit for soundtracking. folks can even make their own playlists fit for varied occasions! 'wandering' playlist, 'christmukkah' playlist, 'gym - ughhhhh' playlist, 'cooking with nobody' playlist and so on. my current life soundtrack doesn't need those aforementioned pre-selected playlists, though. i've set my week-of-december-13th-through-19th soundtrack to play only three albums: the tragically hip's 'world container', leslie feist's 'the reminder' and buck 65's 'situation'. so far this week (today is thursday, meaning there rests only two days of week left) there has not been one event or occurance that could not be suited to a song on my crunched-up, canadian soundtrack. let me explain:

sundaysundaysunday!the 13th: night of rowdy staff party. want to dance my pants (uh, dress?) off. prepare for a long night of the boogie, drinkie and (unexpectedly) drama with buck 65's "cop shades". sample:
just listen, listen to this, listen to this,
loosen yourself up, toes in one, learn your lesson,
swallow this to burn your stress and earn your blessing...

monday?monday!the early hours of the 14th: still at rowdy staff party. enjoying blueberry vodka and soda water far too much. watching friends kiss friends. watching date touch other girls. confront date, get let down, get angry, get another drink. i turn to feist's "past in present". sample:
the scarlet letter isn't black
gotta know who's got your back
he comes in right in front of you
he comes telling you the truth...

monday, monday, mundane the 14th: rararar didn't sleep all night thanks to date drama and a last-minute blueberry bomb (tastier sister to the jaegerbomb) before hailing a cab for home. get over my cranks, get over the night, get a great group of kids at work, get a chilly walk in afterwards. walk to buck 65's "dang". sample:
dangdiggydanggidangdiggydiggydangdiggydang...

mondaaaaaaywhenwillyouend?!the14th: walk my way downtown to see a) k. mcg, b) work schedule and c) where my laptop is in former date's apartment. see schedule first, see former date, the lovely lady he brought home second, manage to remember laptop and see kelli third. hover with frustration and embarassment, consume a coors light and a handful of french fries. kelli pats my head as i think of the tragically hip's "fly". sample:
i don't want them to see me like this,
they way they like to kick people when they're down,
you said, 'please stop worrying about this
they stop kicking once you're down'...

tuesdayNEWDAYthe15th: feeling good, feeling grateful for good friends and family and christmas is coming and sweet mother of lord i love my bed and books. cue feist's "i feel it all". sample:
i feel it all! i feel it all!
the wings are wide, the wings are wide!
wild card inside, wild card inside
...oooooh i'll be the one to break my heart!

tuesdayNEWNIGHTWOOWOOthe15th: i'm drinking sleeman's and eating sweet potato fries with a nice friend. we are silly and argue over videogames. i would have chosen a buck65 song here but clam chowder were playing and their cover of elton john's "rocket man" is just so nice. so rocket man is the exception to my pre-made playlist. it's only fair that i have one exception.

wednesdaythe16th: meet former date for lunch and feel caught between extreme fatigue and severe frustration. settle for shouting a snappy, "go fuck yourself" and then run back to apologize. think to feist's "how my heart behaves". sample:
the cold heart will burst
if mistrusted first.
the calm heart will break
if given a shake...

wednesdaynightHOUSECLEANINGthe16th: clean the entire apartment and bake cookies. wrap presents and begin a new book. break toilet accidentally. dance in my lack-of-pants to buck65's "shutterbuggin'". sample:
flashy flash! watch the birdie!
trashy trash! wash the dirt-ay!

thursdaythe17th: run errands, speak to few, purchase unnecessary leopard-print dress and eat noodles and eggs before work. think little of past few days and lots of family thrill to come. pretend i am a rockstar whilst in the shower. sport kilt. prepare to work a student night at the cover-charge booth. the tragically hip's "yer not the ocean" sets the tone. sample:
yer not the ocean,
yer up to my chin,
yer not the ocean
yer not coming in...

my week, so far, in song. not a terrible number of songs. only one real exception (rocket man). all canadian-written, canadian-performed goodness to a mess of a decemberish week. so much relevance between song and situation, i'm beginning to wonder why big-deal movies spend so, so much on lengthy soundtracks to begin with.

and in the spirit of the season...

a fantasy christmas survey/wishlist! fun, no?


Have you been naughty or nice this year? nice, nice, nice...and only a little naughty. granted, my naughty behaviours were fair given the circumstances. that's what happens when you work at a sticky pub.


What do you want most for Christmas? a certain future, a stocking filled with chocolate and a good life for me and my family.


Do you believe in Father Christmas? i believe he goes by the name "wal-mart" now.


What is your favorite food at Christmas? ah, jeez. aunt connie's potato salad is my most favorite side dish. mom's butterscotch pie is the best dessert. a big breakfast on christmas morning is probably my favorite meal with the family, though.


Have you started your Christmas shopping yet? yes, and i'm nearly finished! all wrapped up!


What is your favorite Christmas song? it's a tie between band-aid's "do they know it's christmas" and paul mccartney's "simply having (a wonderful christmas time)". band-aid's song nearly kills me, it's so sad. paul mccartney's song just makes me laugh.


What is your favorite Christmas movie? pssh. puh-leeze. national lampoon's 'christmas vacation' wins.


What is your best memory of Christmas? the entirety of last christmas.


What do you look forward to most at Christmas? just hanging out and making visits with my family. i also always look forward to bonding with the girls again in kelli's basement.


What are you doing for Christmas this year? i'm going back home to cb for a couple of weeks. i'll probably spend most of my time between my house and kelli mcgean's house and that's the way i like it.


Who do you want to kiss under the mistletoe? justin timberlake...obviously.


What kind of Christmas tree do you have? it's artificial but it's adorable.


Do you take part in a secret santa? i do sometimes. this year, i donated a few gifts to 'toys for tots' instead.


Do you go to any Christmas parties? oh, plenty.


Have you ever had a white Christmas? certainly...but most of our christmases are green and rainy.


How early do you wake up on Christmas morning? depends entirely on kelly. sometimes we're up freakishly early (6am - no jokes) and sometimes we get a little bit of rest (around 8:30 or 9:00am). when we were children, kelly would wake up the whole house often before 5:00am because she'd been waiting in bed all night, awake, for santa to come. cute!


Do you still get a stocking? i do! i get one from mom and dad...er...santa...and one from my barnes grandparents. they're both amazing socks of treats.


How many Christmas cards do you normally send out? only a handful to my most important friends, family members and co-workers.


What is your Christmas wish? that my little family has countless more christmases together. please.

guess what?!

the happiest of new years - 2009.

i have five days left of work in halifax until i trip my way back to cape breton!

within those five days, i am expecting a visit from two dear, far-away friends.

within the past five days, i had an unexpected reunion with another dear, far-away friend.

my lovely little sister is finishing her last exam as i type this and she will be doing some much-deserved lounging for the next few days.

i believe it will be another bunkers new years eve!

i feel as if there are one million plus one things to really enjoy and appreciate this christmas.

i know that my mother and i will cry at church and i know that our annual christmas eve party will be another night of food and madness.

i know that i am lucky and i can't wait to really see it and feel it again.

in the name of love

violent kissing in front of his mother. that’s what my first boyfriend and i had. smooshing, sweating, slippery and salivative slops of face-touching in the middle of the gymnasium floor. it always seemed to happen just as lonestar’s “amazed” came to its climax and my boyfriend’s mother, a french teacher at our school, made her last chaperonic round. she’d disappear for a moment, behind a smoke machine or something and feigned our make-out safety. always, always, though, i’d catch a glimpse of her salmon-pink cardigan and her notably highlighted and choppy ‘do. she’d glare at me and pass whispers to her colleagues. she’d pull my spit-covered boyfriend into her car at ten o’clock (when the dances concluded) and either talk too much or not at all. she would smile gently to me in class and would always make me feel welcome in her home. i felt, at the time, that she was a sort-of enemy. she wanted to foil my plans to win her son over with my wicked-good snogging skills! she gave me dirty looks! she was nicer to me as a student before i publicly licked her boy’s face! i was convinced that the entire rest of my LIFE rested on her; i was in love with her son, he was “the one”. she should learn to love more, too, and judge less. little did i realize how cool she was about our entire escapade into lipgloss and breath mints. she took what was in front of her, a couple of CHILDREN sucking face, and managed still smile to us both and treat us maturely enough not to rip us limb-for-limb from each other. she never once told her son to break things off with me. she never lectured me regarding our ages and our involvement. she never really made me feel uncomfortable and she never pointed out how twisted our sexual lives might end with a begininng involving parentally-witnessed heavy petting.

now, her son is one my closest friends. throughout thick self-discoveries with one another in junior high and thin levels of patience for each other in high school we learned to love each other either behind closed doors or only platonically. during our undergraduate degrees we were provinces apart and we could only know of each other through drunken phone calls at 3am and the occasional christmas break. there have been periods of time when we didn’t talk to each other much at all (mostly due to romantic involvement with our new “ones”). there have been shitty drunks and punches in the face (my bad) and there have been culinary adventures and plans made and broken and now we are lucky enough to live within five minutes of one another. he is the only male peer in my life whom i KNOW will call me from mexico or australia if a frantic message is left on his phone. a bonus, too: his mother no longer makes me worry regarding her approval. i don’t know if it’s because my eighth grade hormones have settled snugly away to
their proper cabinets or because her son and i no longer smash our faces together. point is, she's a wonderful woman and mother and i feel lucky to know her.

anyway, this young man and myself were playing a game of dice last week and we had nostalgia on the brain. over a bowl of salt and vinegar chips and plastic beer cups we took a lolling trip down the memory road and ended up asking ourselves, “how could we possibly be so stupid then?”. obviously it was impolite and probably hurtful to his mother to see us wrapped around each other so often. more notably, though, how could we have just ignored her so fully only for the sake of our sexual gratification? have our practices then affected our current romantic situations? if we had been a little more thoughtful, would we have been more aware of our future sexual and romantic selves?

we got on the topic of past and present thanks to our combined terrible romantic track records. for two people so young (we are both twenty-two), it seems ridiculous to have such a build-up of failed loves and dates. each terribly burnt and blistered once, we share a similar problem of not knowing what to do with ourselves once involved with a new partner. he seems to find himself involved with girls wanting serious, committed relationships and who are willing to do anything (even call thirty times in a row!) to make them happen. naturally, they don’t happen. i seem to find myself beginning dating adventures with wanting something fun and light, getting seriously involved somewhere in the middle and then frightening myself (or them) off so that one of us makes a speedy and messy jump to something new. this man and myself are rather exhausted from all of this up-and-down, pull-and-push, want-need-loathe cycle. we’re so, so young and have so, so much more life to get through and love and hate! how did our dating failures come to take over 50% of our days’ concern? we decided that our flip-flopping ways of the bow and arrow are likely a result of our first wades into the sea of love. remember what i said about how our public make-outs were rather rude? well, maybe those times are experiences we haven’t yet learned lessons from. perhaps we’re too quick to judge those around us as doing something to get in the way of our fun. we could be getting too caught up in the rush of a great kiss or a thoughtful gesture to really see what’s standing on the other side. we only take what is happening to us and for us at immediate value and ignore the potential spaces for karma to interrupt later. we’ll swap spit if we want to (not with each other now, clearly) and whoever doesn’t like it can SUCK IT! we’ll love as we do and we’ll be the good people we are but we’ll forget how good others can be too. we’ll share and be shared with but not fully take in the ways of which a share can be used or misused. we’ll say nice things and mean them but we’ll mean the mean things we say more. we’ll forget that we’re not the only two daters in the world who’ve been through romantic hell and hilarity and we’ll come to the conclusion that:

it was probably a good thing to give in to our tiny hearts as kids. it was likely awesome of us to learn our french-kissing skills from each other as we are now a) still great friends and b) pro kissers (i am only sort-of kidding). dealing with rumors at school might have given us a thicker skin than we wouldn’t have otherwise and having his mother watch over us was probably much safer than having her not. kissing unabashedly at thirteen now, at twenty-two, offers us a little insight and a lot of room for humbling as we shovel our ways through laughs, tears and sighs, all in the name of love. In the name of love! What more? In the name of love!

here's the deal...

i've been neglecting my blog lately for many reasons (mostly work-related). i am feeling well and doing decent things and i try to eat enough servings of fruits and veggies a day - no worries.

this uneventful update will be followed with a whirlwind of excitement and glitz in a few days. i just need to screw my head back on straight and put on something other than a 1) bathrobe, 2) button-down, 3) kilt or 4) a kilt.

much love and sillies,

jenner