The first time I remember coming to downtown London, I stopped at the corner of Wellington and Dundas. To me, this is where downtown London begins when you come in from the east. Well, the intersection of Wellington and Dundas is a huge (10 metre by 10 metre) sinkhole now, because some of the old plumbing failed, causing the street to collapse and a large grid of electrical power to shut down. Most of downtown is completely dark right now, and this darkness only ends about three or four short blocks from my house.

The city council has been told for years that the plumbing in the downtown core needs to be replaced, but instead of implementing a plan to fix the problems in a controlled, sectioned way, they have ignored it. And now this. Sigh.

I forgot today was Hallowe’en until I saw a kid dressed as one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Ten years ago, this kind of costume would have been considered kitschy or campy, but now, it’s an honest emulation. Ah culture, why don’t I always “get” your weird little cycles?

One of the girls in my class says she is dressed up as a sex kitten. She’s only wearing fuzzy cat ears. Ha, ha.

I, on the other hand, am dressed as a 30-something college student. Wait, that’s what I am! I guess I won’t be winning any costume contests.

My pal, Mr. Varkentine is having a good week. Go say hi!

Well, the guys downstairs are moving out this week. Officially, they will both be sleeping elsewhere, as they have moved their beds to their new places. One is moving in with his girlfriend somewhere in Cambridge, and the other will probably wreak havoc on some other poor sap somewhere in this city. It just won’t be me.

I don’t know if I am sad or elated.

I mean, obviously, I’ll be glad for the peace and quiet, but a few things worry me. The landlady hasn’t found a new tenant for the downstairs unit, so I am alone up here. The one good thing about the party animal having people over all the time, was that there was always activity, and the place looked lived in. Secondly, although Steve (the responsible guy) assured me he will give me his key so I can get down to do my laundry and adjust the thermostat, I worry she’ll have a conniption fit if she finds out.

Also, the hydro was in Steve’s name, and he has already cancelled his account, but no one has talked to me about how I’m going to have electricity while they are gone. I don’t have the money for the deposit London Hydro now requires for new accounts, and I like the idea of giving the landlady more money about as much as I like the idea of having my foot chewed off by a hamster.

To cap it all off, she STILL hasn’t replaced the window that was broken over a month ago, or boarded it up. It’s just the storm window, but in a house this old, that second pane of glass can save you from too much heat loss. Since I pay the gas bill…. Add in the fact that it looks like no one gives a shit about this place, and you have an invitation for all kinds of potential mischief.

Oh yes, I will be looking for a new place in April, May and June of next year, and this year, I will ask TOUGH questions.

Seventeen years ago tomorrow, I met Esso in a friend’s parents’ condo on the 16th floor of a building in downtown London on a blind double date. Three years later (to the day), we were married in the church I briefly attended as a child in my tiny hometown in front of pretty much everyone we knew. It hasn’t been the easiest row to hoe, but then, what marriage is?

On the plus side, I married someone to feels the need to WORK, and while he would prefer to have a job commensurate with his abilities, he has been known to take a shit job just to have money coming in. When he lost his job last year, I thought he was going to go berserk from the stress of trying to find something else. If the company hadn’t offered him such a generous severance package, I’m sure I’d be visiting him in the funny farm.

Anyway, Esso is staying here with me for a couple of days, and even though I have classes, we’re going to have a good anniversary meal and lots of time doing fun stuff…

ESSO, PLEASE DO NOT READ THIS!!

I am playing hooky from school today. I haven’t really had much of an opportunity to get groceries, and it’s pissing me off. I also haven’t been able to get downstairs to do the laundry, and since Thursdays see me at class until 8:30 p.m., I’m going to take the opportunity to pounce on the guys the minute they get home from work so I can.

The rest of the day will be spent cleaning, studying and generally enjoying myself. I work tomorrow from 10-2, and then I have a screening of David Lynch’s Eraserhead to attend at 6 p.m., which doesn’t leave me much time to do anything, so I am taking today to do it at my leisure. Yay leisure!

Last week and this week are mid-terms–meaning exams. I, thankfully, only have two classes with mid-terms, and as of 1:30 this afternoon, I had completed them both. One I am relatively sure I passed decently on, the other I am not sure of at all.

I also worked 13 1/2 hours, plus participated in a 48-hour filmmaking challenge, and prepared a 1-hour presentation for my European Movements class. I have basically spent the last 6 days pushing the pedal to the metal: going to bed at 11 and waking up at 6, not eating properly and running out of clean pants (I have two pairs of jeans, one pair of khakis and two pairs of dress pants for work–only the khakis are clean right now).

It followed hard on the heels of the worst family Thanksgiving day I have ever experienced.

As I indicated in my one entry, the only males in my family that bothered to attend were my grandfather and my nephew (who, at 9 years old, didn’t really have a choice). Esso worked overtime, Dad was at fuckinghockey (now one word), and my brother-in-law decided he’d rather have a leisurely time to himself before going to work that night. This pretty much sums up the way my family (or more specifically, my mother) works: privileging the men, and forcing the women to conform. That I might not want to go was never even considered; my sister told me when she was picking me up, and that was that.

The truth is, I knew, from the moment I stepped in the door that my presence at this…this THING…was a mistake. My mother greeted me cordially, but not particularly warmly. I got a sense that she might not have been that happy to see me, which was not a shock or even a surprise, just a sad disappointment. She hardly spoke to me, and when she did, it was to ask me to set the table or clear the counter, while my one sister sat and gossiped, and the kids ran around underfoot. I told her about my classes, and she didn’t express any interest at all. She just said, “Oh, yes…” and the focus was shifted to my youngest sister’s new paramour. The sad part is, I am USED to this, but I guess a part of me just wishes it would change.

The food was overcooked. The turkey literally fell apart as we tried to lift it out of the roasting pan, and all the juices stayed behind, along with the wings, drumsticks and one thigh. I wasn’t carving the meat so much as trying not to shred it onto the serving platter, it was that dry. To top the indignity of this off, my sisters decided to “tease” me about how crappy my carving was: “Dad’s so much better at it than you.” The fact that I had almost no room in which to work meant that bits of meat were dropped on the floor where they were inhaled by the most spoiled non-lap dog on the planet, who seemed hell-bent on tripping me.

Apparently, I was supposed to hide my frustration at these circumstances. When I didn’t, my sister chastised me, and my mother pulled the martyr routine again: “It’s my fault, I asked her to do something.” I called her on it for the first time in my life, but my sister yelled at me and told me, “And all this after I gave you a ride!” What I want to know is, how does her giving me a ride have anything to do with the shitty carving conditions, the cold shoulder from my OWN goddamned mother, and comments designed to control and shame me into behaving a certain way? It’s a week later, and I’m still livid.

This was the background onto which I attempted to pull my academic shit together, and I’m not entirely convinced I was successful. I can’t wait to see what they pull at Christmas time.

Technology is not my friend today. I am currently sitting in the WUFS office, waiting for some people who may never show up for a study session. Tomorrow, I have both a mid-term AND a presentation, not to mention a brief quiz on readings I haven’t done yet. My phone is on the fritz, and my computer has been a little fucking bitch today. Everytime I hit the shift key, some new surprise has popped up.

I fear I may fail this mid-term and the quiz, and yet, I am also exhausted and feeling over-freaking-worked already. Ah, the life of a student!

It seems Warner Bros. new production policy is to red-light any scripts with a female lead. Read this, and come back for my thoughts.

This bothers me a lot, because it seems to me that it’s a very myopic way of looking at why those films failed.

Perhaps we don’t like the idea of Jodie Foster playing yet another victim who gets mad and somehow survives? The Brave One is just one more of those kinds of roles for her that I don’t want to see. While Ms. Foster is still a powerhouse actress, I cannot connect with her in these roles, and for me, it’s just like Robert DeNiro in yet another mob/mafia/gangster role. It’s the same character, just with a different name, and it’s tired. At this point in her career, you cannot blame the casting agents for it. The blame rests on the writers, producers, and the choices offered to her. No one seems to be offering her juicy, chew-the-scenery parts right now, except for these victim roles, and it’s a damn shame.

Audiences may very well be in a male-centric mood these days–it’s something that cycles through. Remember the later part of the 1980s when every other film seemed to be an action flick with Seagal, Schwarzenegger, Willis or Stallone? It was preceded by a films that had a sensitivity to them–the kinds of films that appeal to women.

I hate this term “chick flick,” almost as much as I dislike most of the films that fall into this category. I like a smart, strong-minded, witty romantic comedy with snap and crackle in the dialogue, but I can’t stand films like Terms of Endearment or Pretty Woman–and don’t get me started on Dirty Dancing, yuck!

Unfortunately, this Robinov guy doesn’t seem to understand that there is a middle ground, and we have seen it before, and the lead roles are almost ALWAYS played by women.

After a month and a half, I finally got a call from the manager at the portrait studio. I am hired, starting on Tuesday. I am really looking forward to getting back into it, and I’m hoping I can get up to speed on everything that’s old and new as quickly as possible. Christmas portrait season is upon us. Oh, and I’m permanent…yay. Another plus: it’s only one bus to the mall where the studio is, from both my apt. and the school. The one near my house drives by every 15 minutes, and takes about 45 minutes.

Thanksgiving is this weekend, and through a miscommunication, Esso will not be at our family Thanksgiving dinner. Nor will my Dad. My nephew, brother-in-law and grandfather will be the only males in our family there. It’ll be a henhouse, as my grandmother, mother, two sisters, two nieces and I are (obviously) all female. Esso has volunteered for 88 hours of overtime over the next month, which means, unless he is able to get a couple of days off around our anniversary, I won’t see him until at least November. I’m not sure how I feel about that. I do miss him–a lot–but it’s good to keep to my own schedule.

After writing that down, I realized it seems incredibly sad. “Keep to my own schedule?” And yet, I know Esso feels the same about his schedule, and our schedules are vastly different now. One of the great difficulties we had (or I had, I guess) when I was home all the time came from a lack of opportunities for me to leave the house a lot of the time. Because he came home for lunch, I had to be there to cook it, nearly every day. Most of the time, I enjoyed it, but after a year or two, instead of it being a great chance to spend time with my husband, I began to perceive it as a rigid and unyielding obligation. I didn’t plan to do anything out of the house, unless I was guaranteed to be home in time. Similarly, Esso would be home at the end of the day at a certain time, and then didn’t want to go anywhere. His schedule was inviolate sometimes, and he relished the time he got to spend at home. I probably would have, too, if I hadn’t already been home all day. Let’s just say, things changed when I went back to school…

The Great Mouse Murder has been put on a hiatus until I can clean out the traps. I bought two re-usable traps that you can put a bit of peanut butter in for bait, but since I’ve been so busy the past two or three days, I haven’t had a chance to clean them out and reset them. One of them has a little red puddle of mouseblood on it…I’m going to need REALLY hot water to clean that off. My landlady says this year has been particularly bad for mouse infestations in the city. Yuck. Where’s that Pied Piper when you need him?

I skipped class last night to catch Matt Panesh, the Monkey Poet, in his last Canadian gig before heading back to Manchester, UK. Matt’s an awesome guy, and during the Fringe, we shared a couple gin and tonics and some good conversation. He kissed me on the forehead last night, and promised to e-mail. Who knows? He’s pretty sincere, but I know what it’s like when people get into their own schedules. Which reminds me, I promised to e-mail a playwright from Toronto during the Fringe, and haven’t, yet. Better get on that.

Anyway, skipping class meant I had to rent the film we were screening, and I’m lucky Zip.ca had it, or I’d have to march up to the screening room this morning instead of watching it here, in my PJs, with breakfast. Speaking of which…