fragileheart's journal

Jackie and I were partners in crime at Victoria Park Secondary School way back when… when I look back on my favourite vacations she is always there. I have two: One when I went to visit her in LA and when I went to visit her in Holbox, Mexico. Jackie, you are my soul mate and I wouldn’t have it any other way (except maybe I wish we could be physically closer to each other for a larger chunk of each year but one day… right?)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BESTIE!

Albert and I got tattoos together in 2005 and we haven’t looked back. I wasn’t sure whether you wanted to be displayed in public so I picked a photo that hid most of yer face But know that I am not ashamed to call you my friend because you’re one of the best friends I could have ever asked for. I’m happy you and Barb are in my life.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SIR!

I know Valentine’s is becoming more and more of a nuisance than a treasured holiday, but at the end of the day it was still intended to celebrate love, so I still like it. Like Christmas, you just have to find ways to make this a more meaningful holiday rather than buy into all the propaganda they try to shove down your throat. And so, in celebration of this wonderful celebration of love here is a Valentine’s Day meme. I stole it off Bearcub’s Soapbox, but deleted quite a few questions¹ because it was  a very long meme!

1. If you married the person you last sent a text message to, what would your last name be?
   Neate².
2. Are you getting engaged any time soon?
   I don’t think so.
3. Are you looking for a girlfriend /boyfriend?
   No, I’ve got a great one.
4. Public displays of affection?
   Depends on the situation.
5. What is your favourite restaurant?
   Milestone’s Restaurant
6. Favourite candy?
   Mini fuzzy peaches³, but I don’t actually like candy – I prefer chocolate.
7. What was the first thing you thought of when you woke up?
   Ugh. Is it not May yet?!
8. Have you ever intentionally made someone jealous?
   Yeah… but not maliciously.
9. What’s something you’re excited about right now?
   May = my love moving here!
10. Do you spend a lot of time with your parents?
    Yes, though not recently.
11. Have you ever been in a long distance relationship?
    Am in one right now.
12. Next party you’re going to?
    Haza’s Birthday party.
13. Last time you were truly happy?
    The first few days in January, right before I left him again.
14. Do you flip your pillow to the cold side?
    Yes!
15. Do you sleep with one leg out from under the covers?
    Depends on the temperature.
16. Do you want a small or big wedding?
    Err. If I am getting married, I would want a fairly big wedding. Like maybe 100 people.
17. What made your day today?
    Not much.
18. What’s something you are looking forward to in the near future?
    Haza’s birthday.
19. Plans for this weekend?
    A few small parties.
20. Why are you at home?
    Because its a ‘school’ night.
21. This time last January, were you single?
    No.
22. If you’re being extremely quiet what does it mean?
    I’m either annoyed or uncomfortable.
23. Have you ever liked somebody and never told them?
    Those who I have only encountered once.
24. Are you a jealous person?
    Depends on the situation.
25. Do you currently hate someone?
    No.
26. Is there anyone you would do anything for?
    There are several people, but it depends on ‘anything’; I doubt if I could kill.
27. What do you think about when you are falling asleep?
    Him.
28. Have you ever liked someone way older than you?
    Depends on if you consider 5 years to be ‘way’ older.
29. Does the future scare you?
    A little.
30. Are you happy right now?
    Meh.
31. Do you clean when you’re upset?
    Yes, but I prefer to blast music while doing it.
32. Do you usually tell people when they hurt your feelings?
    I try to. Depends on our relationship.
33. Do you always answer your phone?
    No.
34. Is anyone overprotective over you?
    He is. And my father.
35. Do you like it when someone calls you babe or baby?
    I like it when he does it, and any close friends but that’s it.

Feel free to answer the questions yourself!

Footnotes:

1. the ones that didn’t have anything to do with Valentine’s Day[↩]
2. I’d also be a lesbian hehe[↩]
3. the ones that only come out around Halloween[↩]

February is Heart month and my dear friend¹, Shannon Hunter, has put together a super FUNdraiser called Love a Heart which is in it’s 2nd year; All proceeds go to the Heart & Stroke Foundation.

She had actually asked me last year but I turned it down because I was in enough “complicated” situations that I couldn’t even fathom going up on stage in such a high-pressure situation. This year however, I was pretty excited when she asked me again. I got even more excited when I heard my wifey, Christine, was also being auctioned off… and then I heard about the other wonderful women who will be auctioned off².

I don’t think I belong up on stage with these ladies, but I’m so happy to have been asked that I’m just going to go up on stage and have fun. I think so long as no one throws any food or drinks at me it’ll be fun. If you aren’t doing anything on Febraury 9th and you want to watch me feel really nervous on stage while people³ yell out seemingly random though somewhat sequential numbers at me then you should come to the Hideout at or shortly after 8pm. Full event details can be found on facebook.

Moving on to less-neurotic thoughts, I’m excited to learn more about the date packages that each bachelorette & bachelor will be paired up with. I like fun dates. Dinner is great for the first date but you learn so much about a person from watching them conduct activities… like rock-climbing for example. What a fun date that is. I’m also super excited about the private fitting that Rent Frock Repeat has organized for us Bachelorettes tonight.

RFR also be generous enough to give anyone who uses the code LOVEAHEART a 10% discount. I hope I find something within my limited budget but if not, it’ll be a fun to try on dresses with the other hot bachelorettes who will be attending⁴.

While I wasn’t a Bachelorette last year I did attend to give moral support to my friends who had been auctioned off and it was quite a fun night and I’m sure this year will be no different. If you’re a fan of Tiny Danza‘s music⁵, they’ll be playing a set between the Bachelor & the Bachelorette auctions!

It’ll be a super fun night and I hope you can come out and show⁶ some moral support⁷!

You know me and questions, I like to ask them: What is your favourite activity to do on a date?

Footnotes:

1. all star-columnist at Women’s Post and Community Manager[↩]
2. and I kind of got scared[↩]
3. hopefully[↩]
4. Guys, I know you’re picturing us all in our underwear now. You’re welcome[↩]
5. Of course you are[↩]
6. me[↩]
7. if not for me, then for some of the other Bachelor/ettes or for the Heart & Stroke Foundation[↩]

See the lady on the left, that’s my mother. We used to fight a lot. We still fight every now and then but it’s easier to see things from her point of view these days¹. I worry about her and I’m sure she worries about me². Sometimes I wonder about whether she would have preferred raising us with her own family around but she does well³ to keep in touch with her siblings and my Grandfather. I know she would still be keeping in touch with my Grandmother too if she was still with us today. I could learn a thing or two about keeping in touch with people who are millions of miles away from her.

I have learned a lot of things from my mother; not necessarily through any intention of hers but I learned them all the same. I’m attentive like she’s attentive. I’m incapable of being unproductive like she is incapable of the same. I snack a lot… but that’s something both of my parents do. I am good at baking… but again that’s something both my parents are good at. I can talk a lot like she talks a lot⁴.

Anyone of my friends who has met my Mum always goes on about how cute she is. And if you look at her, you’d see why: at 5’1″⁵ she’s petite but it’s more than her height that makes her adorable. She is ever-caring and a gentle soul; she wouldn’t hurt a fly⁶; and she’s always smiling, yet another thing I learned from her.

We’re going to dinner at a Chinese restaurant in Markham China Town to celebrate her birthday tonight even though it’s a school night because that’s just how we like to roll. I’m glad my Mum is my Mum. She’s beautiful, talented, intelligent and patient⁷. I can only hope I make her just as proud of me as I am of her.

Footnotes:

1. and potentially vice versa[↩]
2. Nothing major, typical stuff I am sure[↩]
3. better than anyone else I know[↩]
4. she is usually the one talking when the four of us get together[↩]
5. sorry if you are taller than this Mum, but this is how short you feel to me[↩]
6. but do not be fooled, if you ever get her upset you better be prepared[↩]
7. and so much more, but that is all I’ll list out for now[↩]

Katia Millar posted a link to this article on facebook and I just had to try it out but it wouldn’t be any fun if there were no witnesses.

Listen to Reggy reading “English Pronunciation” by G. Nolst Trenité

Just in case you’d rather read the words off my blog, here you are:

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it’s written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation’s OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.
Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.
Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.
Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.
Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.
Pronunciation (think of Psyche!)
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won’t it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It’s a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.
Finally, which rhymes with enough,
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

– written by G. Nolst Trenité

I made a lot of mistakes along the way but this was a lot of fun to record. I’m sure I could’ve cheated and tried again but I already got to cheat twice because people called in the middle of my first two tries.

Also, just in case you’re wondering: I was listening to Graydon James & The Young Novelists and that’s who you can hear in the background. The fan sound is from the kitchen exhaust.

If you happened to do the same and you’ve recorded yourself reading this out loud, please leave a link in the comments so I can follow along!

Will I ever love again? It’s a question that has been on my mind for a while now. It’s the question that led me to go on my mancation¹.

The honest answer right now is: I simply don’t know.

I find myself avoiding thinking about things that have happened². It’s unlike me. The moniker fragileheart wasn’t coined because I wanted people to walk on eggshells with me. It’s supposed to remind me that I wear my heart on my sleeve and that I like to feel things because it makes me feel alive. Finding myself running away from memories that make me smile is a little unnerving.

I don’t think I know how to be in a relationship. It’s been so long since I’ve been in a real relationship that I don’t know that I’ll ever manage to maintain one again. My last real, meaningful, mutually respectful relationship ended in 2004. Everything else after that I consider a mess. Yes, even my relationship with the Irish boy³.

Then again, I’ve gotten better at maintaining deeper and more meaningful friendships and I think that every good relationship is built on a solid foundation of friendship so maybe there’s hope for me yet.

Oh whatever. Maybe you⁴ were right; what was it that you said, sir? Something along the lines of, “You’d make a great mistress [but not a wife]“. And yes, I still think about it to this day.

Sometimes, you just need to blog things out loud.

Footnotes:

1. vacation from men, and more importantly – meaningless sex[↩]
2. like NYE[↩]
3. that was probably the biggest mess[↩]
4. I don’t even know if you read my blog[↩]