The Other Child

I know what's going on. I know why she cancelled and you're not here yet, even though it's 11a.m. and work started an hour ago, even for you. I know you are fighting and I'm afraid, probably losing. I know she's screaming; throwing a tantrum to rival any two year old.

But, is she wrong?

There are so many feelings that can't find their way to the surface. So many habits that prevent me from typing this out. And yes, it's gory. It's outside the lines and at least halfway to hell.

For me; for both of you. For the rest of our family, if only they could see it. Everyone fights, right? It's normal, they say. As normal as it is for me to speak in half sentences.

How do you remember not to hate the person at the center of the issue?
How do you remember that at the end of the day, it's not just her fault? It all seems so easy right now; simple, clear cut and uninteresting.

How do you remember to account for the decisions and their consequences that brought people to this juncture?
People don't really. It's all about the underdog; the one who is so "obviously" hurt. Everyone forgets to ask about the other side. There are always people on the side where the grass isn't greener; isn't as desirable. And those people hurt just as much as your victim. Sometimes, more. There's no support; no system in place to remind them that is in fact normal; felt by many other people just like you. Because, it's not normal. It's the wrong side of the tracks.

And it never ends. There's no cure; no magical pill that makes it go away. The solution is the one everyone demonizes; the one that makes the victim cause for pity. Because it's the only solution that ends the fighting. The victim is still hurting, but so are the people on the brown side of the grass.

It's not different. It's 100% the same on the other side of the coin. And it hurts too.

The fighting hurts too. More so because we have to live it.

So, why should I pity the child left behind? There's closure in that; more so than being the child standing right there at the base of the stairs; outside the shaft of light playing shadow puppets of the people that are supposed to be your salvation.

How do you not turn all your anger, fear and desperation on that other child?

Ice Wine Revisited - Two for Two

Saturday was perfect and that includes the necessary 7a.m. wake up call. Second Cup didn't have any peppermint for my hot chocolate and that sucked balls, but that was where the bad news ended.

We boarded a coach bus and headed out to Niagara. The trips through iYellow are planned so well; we arrived around 11a.m. ready to drink. We began our tour at Vineland Estates Winery. (None of the following pictures are mine, I forgot my camera.)

It's kind of beautiful, no? Apparently, it's built on what used to be Mnenonite country, which is kind of ironic. The buildings all look like churches to me. Beautiful churches to the sacred grape. Vineland has a restaurant as well as a gift shop that includes a bar where you can taste any of the bottles they have. We were lucky enough to be brought down to the cellar to try a 1997 (maybe 1998 - the point is old) bottle of Gewurztraminer. (This is a light, fruity white, usually.)

They then took us upstairs to try some other table wines and three ice wines. The theme of the day was red or rose ice wine, which is highly unusual. Much like champagne, ice wine is generally a white wine. The pressing process is to blame, I think. I bought one bottle the entire day and it was an ice wine at Vineland that tastes like tipsy strawberries liquified. It's awesome!

We had lunch in Jordan at the Jordan House (which is supposedly haunted). I watched tennis and chatted with Ren about my deep need to go down to the Native craft store across from Cave Springs winery. We walked the 5 minutes through Jordan and found no dream catchers. I would like to point out that Jordan is in fact a town. The waitresses at the Jordan House were all blonde, lightened by the bottle and you could walk through all of "downtown" in about 10 minutes.

Flat Rock Cellars was next. It's the green, eco-friendly winery. It's also new (about 10 years old) and had a very good Chardonnay but not much else. Ren and I are both pretty much anti-Chardonnay. We don't like it because we both feel that it often tastes like piss. The bottle we had at Flat Rock was very good and even more surprising.

We tried everything in the glass encircled room above the building on the left. It was hot but very cool and modern. Of course, Flat Rocks crowning glory was the ice wine marshmallows they gave us to roast outside at their fire pit. Awesomeness #1: We got to roast marshmallows, which is on my top ten things to do. Awesomeness #2: For the rest of the day (& night) my hair had the sweet scent of camp fire and whenever I moved, I got a whiff of it. Below is a picture of the owner and our tour guide (who's awesome too!) on a summer day at Flat Rock.

Ed is in love with wine and winemaking. He spent the entire time telling us about the process Flat Rock uses and various stories regarding how they make their wines. It was very informative. Flat Rock uses gravity to filter their wine; no one else has thought of that!

The final stop of the day was at East Dell Estates.

Whereas the other wineries displayed their wines front and center, East Dell took a different approach. We were greeted in the restaurant. We sampled a red ice wine paired with the vegetable chowder. The chowder was spicy and the ice wine very sweet, but it was interesting pairing. Not one I would purchase, although I did take a copy of the vegetable chowder recipe. The second option was a lemony, sweet ice wine paired with a divine lemon mousse. Much better!

All the wineries had a bar to do extra tastings and Ren and I did taste as many as we could. Notably, we tasted East Dell's Black Cab, a semi-dry Riesling at Vineland and Flat Rock's Twisted. At the end of the day, we were driven back to the Vineyard's shop down the street from my condo. There we were given a taste of a rose champagne that was the perfect end to the day.

I arrived home at seven o'clock ready for a nap. I said it to Angela (Aiello, our tour guide on both tours and one of the founders of iYellow) on Saturday: Both tours were perfect. There's not one thing I would change and we even got lucky with the weather!

I Feel Pretty

I would be extremely happy to tell you I braved the winter wonderland that recently fell on my city with as much style as the woman in the photo. However, as sad as I am to tell you this, I would be lying through my teeth. I nearly slipped twice today in the same spot. Clearly, I don't learn.

This morning I thought the snow was pretty and the temperature of 0C wasn't a bad addition. Snow looks very nice when you are lying in bed watching a chick flick with a mug of peppermint hot chocolate. It sucks ass when you are outside trying to remain vertical.

Despite my bad temperment and clear inability to weather the well, weather (hehehe), I am in a pretty damn good mood. Many things could be causing this contentedness and none of them have an Irish accent calling me heartless; that my dears is a story for another time.

I still have to discuss the ice wine tour and I fully intend on doing so... later. Right now I'd like to talk about how a tenant told me she was happy to hear from me. (Seriously! I was shocked too!) More proof that I am in fact highly susceptible to flattery in my job: she has an issue which I am going to resolve out of the goodness of my heart. Why? Well, I don't know. She's responsible and has agreed to be a reasonable person. Maybe I just feel badly because her ex is pulling a Charlie. Who knows?

The most likely reason is that I am full of self-importance. When I call her later, I anticipate that she will be very thankful. How many men can say that?

EDIT: I totally made her day. Sweet!

Just A Bother

I love blogland. I really love to see the different types of people and what they think they need to say for one reason or another. I love feeling like I can escape my bubble for even a few minutes and live someone else's joy or pain.

Some people make it easier than others. It's great to write about you but it needs to be engaging. (I do it too - I write without thinking of my audience). Still, I find myself needing to digest the fact that all those thingsi hated about high school, then university and society in general exist here in blogland too. There's no way to get away from the judging, or the blogger's feeling that they might be judged. It taints the post or inspires a post much like this one, where I feel the need to discuss my feelings again.

I'm really sick of acting like a chick flick's worst nightmare. I'm not a "sensitive" girl and I don't really want to talk about my feelings until I'm left breathless. I want to use my blog as chatharsis, sometimes. I want to be able to rant about how my boss bugs me today because he's being unnecessarily harsh. This isn't the kind of feelings I'm talking about. I don't want to preach about my blog being my own. Of course it's my own! I can post, not post or tear it right out of the intraweb and hope that maybe someone or other is a little bit disappointed.

The truth is that it probably wouldn't matter. At the end of the day, people would forget, because it's what we do. We move on from the pain life deals to us even if we don't always recover. Sometimes I think as a blogger, we (I) almost want to not quite recover; it provides endless blog material. Today, it just feels like stinky bull crap.

I want to want to be here. I don't want to be selfish in my thoughts. Blogging used to feel so much like freedom; like knots were untying, systems were cleansing or winter was thawing. It was the place I'd go to be heard, because I never felt like anyone wanted to listen. I needed to feel like someone wanted my story, thoughts or emotions of the day, otherwise I was just a bother. Journalspace did that (with the help of a therapist that I seriously love or her patience). And, suddenly I was working through issues I never even recognized were mine. I was a teenager again; this time with angst and neuroticism that I never had before. it was like I developed backwards.

No one will really know what the catalysts were, but seeing as I'm talking about myself (again), I'm going to guess. My parents are overbearing and they just expected too much from me. Nothing short of perfect behaviour was acceptable, so that's kind of what they got. No child is going to be perfect; people of all ages make mistakes. It's a fact; yet they still seem to believe we're capable of perfection. Of course, other, non-family people are exempt from these ideals and subjected to a much more rational view. All I saw was that the rules were different for me than they were for others. It bothered me and originally I fought back.

I tried to fight back. Losing consistently will wear down on even the strongest of individuals. (At least that's what I like to tell myself.) The pain of the fight wasn't worth the end result: loss, necessity to apologize. So, I stopped talking, fighting, arguing. Me, I know. I argue everything. It's probably part personality and part to be heard without leaving myself vulnerable.

Now, I've plateaued. I'm writing less. I'm busy more. I'm seeing politics where none should reasonably exist. And, I hate it. I don't want to feel like a failure if my blog isn't read (or no one comments). I want to feel openness and acceptance and it's just no longer there. This time, I'm not saying I might be imagining it: I'm not. Too many bloggers have left, commented or searched for the secrets to the popular blog. There isn't one; not really. Some people excel and some people don't, but I don't want to deal with the attitudes of those who change when they do.

It's not a popularity contest, is it? I mean, the symptoms are there. Those who excel feel appreciated, loved and sometimes revered. Comments make us excited; "Ooh! Someone's talking to me today!" And we make up these games, contests and giveaways so fill the spaces between the real reason we blog; between the lines of dwindling text that read like literature when it was done genuinely. 

I do it too; I talk about some things without interest and it comes up flat. I feel like I have to please everyone (in real time too). My views on politics are often harsh and unpopular, so they aren't posted. Particulars of my life and even my photo are scarce to avoid the kind of judgement I have so often felt when standing face to face with a stranger. My name, which used to be a pet name, a sweet breath of new life whispered across the circuits, has become common; used in fashion/beauty/online communities. Alianna is real now and I'm not entirely sure I like her.

She's kind of selfish or self-centered, no? Honest, yes, but not always virtuous or nice.

I'm no longer sure where she ends and the real me begins, if there really is a separation. Alianna was anonymity; a way to express the things I needed to have said, the way I said them without fearing that they might harm the people I talked about, or gotten back to them. She was a shadow; beautiful and strong and I wanted to really be her, so I started to use the name.

It's bizarre, but that's what happened. I was jealous of myself; of the person I could finally be online. I made excuses that I would have laughed at privately if I'd heard them from someone else. But now?

I'm not sure where to go from here. I don't want to be anyone but me, but I don't think it's possible and I don't really know how. Half of me wants to stay here, use this space and continue in the bed I made for myself. The other half recognizes the need to deal with things, not to leave anything left unsaid and go that final step towards blogging as me, as ...

It's hard. It's too real, too much. It's easier to just shut this down and start over elsewhere from scratch.

The Results Are In

Well, it's been a week since I freaked out about an audition.

And:

I totally got it!

I'm so excited! This is going to be fun!