In this year of environmental wake-up calls, T wrapped my gift in reused paper and plastic and still managed to make it look attractive.

(It was Stefie Shock’s new album, Les Vendredis).

Daedal: ingenious. Dédale: a maze.

Welcome to the Montreal University Medical Care Center voice recognition system. If you know the five-digit number of the person you wish to call, dial it now. Otherwise, please say Appointment, Doctor, Department, or Employee.

I’m skipping the lengthy descriptions of each option, and the fact that you have to wait until all of them are explained before saying,

“Appointment”.

Appointment. For which clinic?

“Gynecology”.

Welcome to the Gynecology department. You have two options. To take an appointment, (uh… didn’t I just say that?) say Clinic. If you are a health care professional, say Doctor.

“Appointment”.

I don’t understand. Your options are Clinic or Doctor.

Oh right. To tell them I want an appointment for the second time, I have to say,

“Clinic”.

Clinic. For which hospital do you want an appointment?

“St-Luc”.

Welcome to Hôpital St-Luc. If you wish to take an appointment, say Appointment. &#*%$@! To reach a room, say Room.

“Appointment”. (for the third time. Shall we go for four?)

For which clinic?

“Gynecology” (for the second time).

Welcome to Gynecology. For an appointment, press 1 (Bingo! Four times!!!). For-

(BEEP - I press 1). A person answers. And of course, I tell them I want an appointment, in gynecology. Sigh.

This is an honest and unexaggerated account of my dealings with this phone system (I took notes). I have honestly not found a way to make it quicker.

So I have these really great friends who are really great cooks. Whenever they feed me, I don’t feel shame for my lack of skill, but rather, the eternal optimist that I am gets inspired by the fact that it’s actually possible to produce such kitchen wonders oneself. If it’s made in a restaurant kitchen, I assume that it necessitated some magic or machinery that’s out of my reach. But if someone I know made it in their kitchen, someone without superpowers, then I just assume I can do it.

And that’s how I came to think that I could ever make bread. On Michel’s recommendation, I ordered a book entitled Dough, which would demystify breadmaking forever. I excitedly tracked it on Canada Post’s website on its journey from mythical Mississauga to me. With each leg of the trip that this grimoire completed, I could almost feel my hands grow stronger with the power of the baker. Oh, how I was going to impress my team with homemade olive foccacia! How my father’s proud eye would tear up on tasting my baguettes on Christmas Eve! Nothing less than a new way of loving my uh… loved ones awaited me.

On the “what you need” pages, the author discussed how laughably simple the ingredients for bread are - flour, water, yeast and salt. Surely this is the most basic skill known to man. But still, the Scotsmontonian would think me a Goddess of the kitchen.

Then, later on down the page of what I’ll need, the author lists a dough scraper, a lame (thingy with a razor blade on it), and most importantly, a breadstone (a slab of rock on which to bake bread - the author mentions having found his on a construction site). Ok, so basically, to make bread, all I need is a bakery.

Undeterred, I hunted down and bought the exotic implements, and was finally ready to take to the dough. The DVD that came with the book, which demonstrates how to knead, didn’t work. Undeterred, I watched youtube videos of how to knead. Ended up with some beautiful proto-baguettes, which I set on my hot breadstone.

Set the timer. Waited.

The baguettes were too hot to pick up with my hands, so I planted a fork in one to get it out. But it didn’t plant. It almost bent. I pushed harder on the fork, but the baguette’s crust, seemingly made of adamantium, resisted. I pushed harder until the baguette flew to the bottom of the oven.

What had gone wrong? Was I wrong to use instant yeast? To use the highest temperature my oven went to? (the book said “475 degrees or more”) To be off in the cooking time by three minutes out of twelve? Where did my hubris lie?

Ever the sweetheart, Comet seemed interested in eating my homemade bread. She worked on it for an hour as if it had been a bone.

Update: Success on the third batch!!! Activating the yeast made the difference. Yaaaay!

Last spring, I sat at Bagel Etc on the Main, across from my darling friend Gord, and told him why I didn’t think people should get married.

The problem with love is that we expect our partner to fulfill unreasonable expectations, ideals that don’t exist, I remember saying. Your partner makes you happy only for a time, and if we saw relationships as temporary, which they are, we’d recognize when love is over and move on, without all the pain of dashed hopes. People would always know from the start of a relationship that it wouldn’t last forever, and they’d be less resentful of each other when it ended, I argued. And if people were that reasonable, they’d never get married but they’d be happier, I said to my engaged friend.

What an asshole.

I sat in church yesterday, watching Gord unite himself to his love forever, and promise to grow old with her. I was astonished at how moved I was by this, but what they must feel for each other, to be happily entering into such an enormous commitment… the beauty of that completely overwhelmed me. I was thankful to be there to witness it, and yes, in a state of mind to relate, because I may have remained cynical otherwise. I thought it was a miracle that we can all feel that way, despite being mostly reasonable creatures. Everyone, especially love cynics and curmudgeons like I was, should hope to have that faith someday. My voice of reason, so chatty back in spring, is now quiet on the topic.

Later, at the reception, someone expressed this revelation of mine in a blessing to the newlyweds: May your marriage be modern enough to survive the times we live in, but old-fashioned enough to last forever.

A long and happy life together, Gordon and Doris.

The astute reader will know by now that for the past few months, there’s been a lightspeedguy in the picture. The really astute reader will know that it’s a long-distance thing, and may have clued in to the fact that he lives in Edmonton.

I’ll probably have much to say in the next little while about adapting to the committed relationship lifestyle, but for now I’m having fun feeling my way around long-distance romance in the modern age: it’s a life of red-eye flights, webcams and the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection.

How many can say that the release today of Star Fox Command will spice up their love life?

Last night I dreamed that I was dead, and I was walking around in the afterlife. The afterlife was made up of a bunch of different cottages and buildings dotting a sunny mountainside. In a 3d rendered environment. The only people I knew there were my parents.

I walked around from house to house and talked to a few serene people about what it was like there. From these conversations, it became obvious to me that nobody liked each other in the afterlife. They didn’t dislike each other, but love and attachment to one another simply did not seem to exist. The strangest thing was that nobody even seemed to remember those concepts from life, like they had had their memory of love brainwashed out. They were normal and happy in every other respect.

I couldn’t believe my parents didn’t like each other any more, so I went to talk to them. I remember asking my father: “But surely you remember SEX!”

That’s when he serenely explained that if you like someone, you come alive and return to the living state. But then that separates you from them, because they are still in the afterlife. He said, “So we stay like this, lest life do us part”.

And as he said that, there was a break in the environment (like a bug in a videogame) and I could see through the game world into the real world, into life, and I knew what he meant.

Lui: Ah, ché pas trop quoi faire de moi-même. La carrière, la vie… J’filerais pour quelque chose d’autre, mais je sais pas quoi.
Moi: Ben voyons, prends sur toi. Tout va bien, regarde autour de toi, c’est l’été, on est dans le parc, fait beau, le monde est beau, y’a un spectacle de musique, le festival de Jazz, la Carifiesta…
Lui: Osti que t’es fatiguante quand t’es heureuse, toi.
Moi: Ben quoi?
Lui: Carifiesta? Tu te réjouis de la Cari fucking Fiesta??? Come on. Si j’avais un blogue j’écriirais un post intitulé Cari Fucking Fiesta, ou Happy People Suck.

- Hi Mom? Are you guys free to do something this weekend? It’s been ages.
- Yeah! But, well, we’re busy installing the new pool tomorrow, and we have things to do Saturday and Sunday.
- Gee, not even free for a brunch? It was like that last weekend too!
- What can I tell you? It’s crazy. How about the next weekend?
- I can’t. (Haven’t found a clever alias for him yet)’s in town and I won’t be available.
- Oh! Invite him over to swim in our new pool! We’ll be glad to meet him!
- No. Way.
- Why not? Afraid of showing yourself in a bathing suit?

Pause.

Giggle.

- Oh God. MJ, you’re not supposed to talk about this with your mother.

On the first of the two long weekends, I made myself a nice dinner. After grilling chicken that had marinated all day, I took some of the leftover marinade and used it as a sauce over the cooked chicken. I really enjoyed the meal, then realized that the marinade I had used as a sauce was uncooked, of course, and had had raw chicken steeping in it all day.

Oh no, I thought. I quickly looked up Salmonella poisoning online and found that the symptoms lasted up to a week and were not the kind you wanted to experience on a hot date. And I just happened to have one on those planned in the near future.

I called Info Santé and asked them what to do. The nurse seemed alarmed when I told her what I’d done, and told me to call the poison center. The latter told me that the vinegar in the marinade should have killed most of the Salmonella, and that that was my best hope.

Vinegar kills Salmonella, does it? I decided not to leave things to chance and downed a glass of one part water, one part white vinegar. Just to be sure.

Disgusting. Daft. But the date went swimmingly.

Une journée orageuse, un spectacle de drags, le Mont-Royal, un après-midi terrasse au Jazz, quelques soupers maison, un show au Spectrum, une journée dans le Vieux, les tam-tams, les feux d’artifice, le musée d’art contemporain, quelques sérénades. Même Montréal s’était fait une beauté pour l’occasion.

Pas mal pour un deuxième rendez-vous.