How not to holiday

Ottawa, ON

August 2010

I am a spectacularly crap tourist. Once upon a time, when planning holidays, I would spend the month leading up to my trip researching my destination to within an inch of its life. How do I get downtown from the airport? Where is the airport? Where should I stay? What should I do? Where do the locals eat? Where can I see a band? Do they have a good art gallery? Where can I get a crème brulee? Should I bring thermal underwear? And, speaking of underwear, is there a laundromat close enough that I won’t have to resort to the ol’ 'inside out 'n' back to front'?

For my first overseas trip, I constructed an enormous Word document featuring a hideously detailed itinerary, a backup itinerary in case anything on my real itinerary turned out to be lame or a scam, and contact details for any and all airports, hotels, and car rental companies I might come into contact with. I researched public transport options from the airport to downtown, then put together a walking map from the drop-off point to my hotel. I then printed the whole thing out and had it bound together - I was basically a fanny pack and a sun visor away from being a 50-year-old Floridian woman.

These days, however, my forward planning involves booking a flight, and, if I’m lucky, finding somewhere to put my stuff and sleep for the week. The situation deteriorates even more so, should I find myself travelling alone. I arrive in the airport at my destination, excited but largely disorientated and confused, and head directly towards the giant wall of brochures that every plane station invariably features. I make sure to grab a good city map, and then proceed to furiously molest the display, rabidly snatching up every brochure I can see - these will constitute my itinerary for the trip. After tracking down some sort of transportation from the airport to my hotel, I use the drive downtown, not to look at my surroundings, but to sift through my hefty brochure loot. It's at this point I normally realize that I have three copies of most things, and that half of them are advertising elderly walking tours and scenic helicopter rides – i.e. largely unappealing, and/or for millionaires only. After whittling out the lemons, I’m usually left with maybe two ideas for things to do, which might keep me going for about one afternoon.

For some reason, the idea of being alone for an extended period of time is generally accompanied by that paralyzing fear we all know and love, regardless of the situation. Whether I've gotten lost in a Super Target for days and haven't been able to find a single staff member, or if I'm travelling in a beautiful and fascinating city, the ominous feeling of my impending loneliness is always the same. I become overwhelmed by the prospect of having to find enough activities to occupy myself for the whole time, and invariably end up running errands for the duration of my holiday. Suddenly I realise that replacing the screen protector on my iPod Touch is my first and only priority. I mean, the corners of my current one are peeling up, they're losing their stickiness - we're talking life and death. I can't fathom how I didn't recognize the severity of the situation until just now - and what luck, that I should have this week away from all my responsibilities to devote 100% of my focus to the task of acquiring a new one. And this is a recurring phenomenon - when I was in Ottawa last month, I visited six different Shoppers Drug Marts one day trying to find a Neutrogena cleanser I had seen in SELF magazine on my flight up there and realized I couldn't live without. 

So if you ever find yourself traveling somewhere with me, I apologize - but you have to realize that if I don't find a place to get a haircut immediately, we're both going to be in trouble. 

He sure got Meyer's number

Admittedly, I'm verging on deliriously tired right now, but I was laughing so hysterically as I tried to read this to my friend that I could hardly breathe and had tears streaming down my face. It is even more hilarious if you have read the Twilight books (I'm not saying I have. Don't look at me like that! I'M A MONSTER!!!) and understand what this legitimate book reviewer is hinting at. Is it really as amazing as I thought, or was that the sleep deprivation talking?


my name is bella. bella swan. here's what stephenie didn't tell you. it's super-duper-important.

on the morning after it rained, it was rainy outside and i frowned at it being so rainy all the time. i chuckled to myself, darn weather! i stared at the rain outside, which is where they usually keep the rain. there was never any rain in phoenix. i love phoenix. i hate rain.

i tripped over a large air pocket on my bedroom floor and bashed my skull into the corner of my bookcase, which had three shelves and was faux wood veneer. after i applied cold compresses and stanched most of the bleeding, i drove to school, but they must have moved the school building across town. i chuckled to myself, darn school moving people!

after i drove around for a few hours looking for where they put the building, edward cullen pulled up alongside me in his shiny, silver volvo, which was silver and a saab, i think. his well-muscled chest was riding shotgun, wearing a blue-gray waffle knit long-sleeved t-shirt, relaxed fit jeans with contrast stitching in a lightly distressed wash, and an ivory-colored jacket made from the dyed skins of clubbed baby seals. he dressed very well, like someone who wears nice clothes.

his well-muscled chest waved to me like an old friend, but edward glowered at me from the driver's seat. his eyes were black. i think he came down with glaucoma.

even though he glared at me and gave me the finger, he smiled and told me to follow him to school. he knew where they kept it. i wonder how he found out. but just then, i nearly tripped over my gas pedal and fell through the windshield. i am so clumsy. when we got to school, edward's well-muscled chest walked me to english class.

"try to be careful in there," the chest giggled while at the same time giving me a sinister sideward glance that made the blood in the veins under my skin in my body feel ice-cold.

"haha," i giggled, tapping the chest on its rippling pectorals. "very funny," i then said running my finger around his kennedy-half-dollar sized nipples. "i'll try to be careful," i joked, alarmed at the unearthly chill emitted by his taut obliques.

everyone stared at us in the hallway, which was a long interior space allowing access to various doors. the students were wearing clothes and talking and carrying books. through the windows of the classroom which looked onto the out-of-doors, i could see the rain was still raining outside. then i tripped over my clitoris and fell into a galvanized steel av cart on casters. three people were seriously injured.

i chuckled and turn bright red. how embarrassing.

at the end of the school day edward cullen came to walk me to my car. his chest was nowhere to be seen. probably at banana republic or out hunting mountain lions again. i chuckled to myself, darn chest!

"where's my car?" i giggled after chuckling for a while.

"don't you remember that you totaled it this morning when you drove into the orphan's hospital?" he said. he was looking at me with his eyes. he gave me his ivory jacket to keep me dry from the rain, which is usually very wet. then he looked at me again, smiling with the right half of his mouth but frowning with the left half of his mouth and oddly expressionless in the middle part of his mouth.

"you know," i said, falling over a parking bumper into a rack of bicycles, "rain isn't the only thing there is that gets me wet."

"let's just be friends," he hissed, arching an eyebrow, flexing his sinewy wrists, and flaring his beautiful muscular nostrils.

i realized then he might be a vampire. or really gay. or a really gay vampire.

i should have known. he had erasure cassettes in the car.

- review of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight by this guy.

Embarrassingly, I very much have a 'type'.

How unfortunate. 

A friend and I sat on my bed discussing our ‘types’, as far as physical attraction goes. After vehemently insisting that I did not, in fact, have a ‘type’, I then went on to say, “Although you know, I do like boys with beards - even more so if they also have messy hair. Curly, messy hair. Preferably brown. And I do love when boys wear poorly ironed plaid shirts. Oh, and totally glasses, but not in a ‘these still have the clear Perspex in them from when they were on display’ kind of way. More in a ‘if I wasn't wearing these, I couldn’t stare dreamily into your eyes without them going blurry’ kind of way.”

Alarmingly, it seemed that, not only did I very much have a type, but also that type had a decidedly homeless vibe to it. I have somehow reached a point in my life where unkempt facial hair and a lack of laundry skills can turn any average dude into a veritable sex bomb of a man. Throw in a couple of clever tattoos and a very obvious Adam’s apple, and I’ve already turned jelloid. My claim of being type-less could not have been further from the truth if it tried.

Perhaps more to the point, it perplexes me to no end that I find eye diseases alluring. Not even in a sympathetic way – no, we’re talking “let me smooch that eye patch right off your beardy face,” kind of stuff. For whatever reason, the prospect of a boy with poor eyesight does things to me. Astigmatism, you say? Oh, baby! That’s right, big boy, talk eye drops to me. What happened in my life that could have resulted in such an attraction? Perhaps someday I’ll find out that, all along, I was repressing some memory of an unrequited love that will explain why exactly I get my kicks from the physical ailments of my mates. Until then, I suppose, I just have to try and control myself lest I go weak at the knees every time I see a boy on crutches.

It’s not even as though this sort of aesthetic is particularly original, or vaguely hard to come by; it’s more or less the unspoken uniform for every twenty-something Arrested-Development-watching, indie-music-listening-to, quasi-creative type on the planet. On the contrary, this ‘type’ transcends time and space, and spans many an ocean, a phenomenon to which I can attest. Perhaps my guaranteed adoration of such a man comes down to the fact that, with this ever-growing army of plaid-clad Beardies comes the assurance of meeting a slightly off-kilter dude who, growing up, was always just unpopular enough that he was forced to develop a delightfully self-depreciative sense of humour (that is to say, the XY-chromosomal version of myself).

I feel like it's somewhat of a security blanket - as in, I know what kind of dude looks this way, therefore I must know what to expect. Yes, on articulating that, I know how sad it sounds to have a security blanket-esque fetish. Even if it is a very, very comfortable blanket.