Sometimes, Willi (aka Stinky Bee) thinks I'm dirty and require a bath. Kitty style. Just a few minutes ago, I was sitting at my desk, checking my email, when I decided to give her chin a tickle. She clearly felt my fingers were filthy and started to lick them.

Unfortunately, this stimulated her mothering needs and within only a few seconds, she had climbed up onto my shoulder and started licking my ear and hair. She hunkered down and held on when I tried to remove her from my back. Getting quite whipped up by all this (unwanted, on my part) bathing, she started to lick my face and when I pulled my head away, she swivelled around and bit my chin. Yes, she BIT me on my CHIN.

And it hurt. I have rosacea and a while back, a flare-up on my chin got infected. It's finally healing after more than a month (it looks kind of like a cold sore - eeeww), but it is slow going because it splits when I smile, yawn, or laugh. And now, her tooth just cut through it. Yuck and ouch !

Her removal from my back was immediate and involved her flying through the air and me running in the opposite direction to break out the rubbing alcohol. I'm pretty sure Willi thought she was just acting like a mother cat with a disobedient kitten, but holy crap it hurt. And it bled.

Yes, I know that dog-people will simply add this to their fodder as to why cats are 'bad' but I say to them: "Yeah, at times like this, sometimes even I wonder why I like them."

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In other news (you know, I write that quite regularly in my weblog), I had a very good day at the ROM today. I love working as an Eternal Egypt educator and I think I do a darn good job. Today I was in a room I'd never done before but have wanted to do since the very beginning. It was a little rough for the first two groups, as I hadn't settled on a spiel, yet, but my excuse to them was that I had a sore throat and wasn't feeling too good. This is not, in fact, a lie. I do have a sore throat and it was worse this morning.

Most of the school groups were quite easy to engage, even the highschool kids. I had one teacher of an art class, probably in her 40s, but quite hip and enthusiastic, totally re-evaluate the way she had been teaching the Egyptian period to her kids, in part because of the stuff I talked about. She said to me afterward, "I had always thought that Egyptian art progressed from the beginning through to the end in a linnear fashion. Now I see that this is not actually the case." This little bit of question and answer made me feel not only smart and cool, but gave me one of those rare moments when I realised that my degree was not entirely a waste and I really DID learn something at school.

Our conversation went like this (Warning: Art-nerd alert):

"Unfortunately, Egyptian art is anything but linear. Sure, the tools improved, which allowed for more risk-taking and, yes there was a standardised 'look' that was developed over time, but they spent a lot of time looking back at what came before."

"So I really need to take another look at how to teach this."

"Well, the idea that all things progressed in a straight line is more and more out-dated. If anything, this exhibit proves it."

"How often did they archaise [use older styles]?"

"A lot. During this period, the 12th Dynasty, the headdress of the Old Kingdom came back into vogue, at least in art, as did the figural style, but at the same time they were experimenting with portrait styles and studies from life. You'll see this sort archaism again in the Late Period when Egypt was ruled by foreign kings and they were looking to reclaim their strength through the visual identity of the much earlier past."

"What about the period of naturalising that took place in the New Kingdom?"

"The Amarna period?"

"Yes, Amarna, didn't that change their art?"

"Well, you'll see that later in the exhibition, and I can't take much more time now 'cause the next group is here, but you'll see that for all it's changes, and apparent progressiveness, it was so identified with the negative aspects of the king that by 100 years later, you would never know it had existed. You'll see the remarkable shift back to static sculpture that comes with Rameses the Great."

"I had no idea how complicated their art really was. It was never my specialty, but it is really fascinating and I think I'll take a closer look at it over the summer."

My great week has now been followed-up by a great weekend. I feel so lucky and so happy and satisfied, even though not everything is going the way I want it to. That's life, right? Right. Following up on the idea of life as a spiral, while things look, on the surface, much like they did not so long ago, here I am, looking down, and I can see where I was this time last year and I KNOW I have progressed. I've got school to look forward to in the fall and a summer full of excitement and adventure. I have a boyfriend with whom I am very happy and friends surrounding me. Sure, the money is sometimes tight, but not like it was, and for that I am extremely grateful. I am talented and smart and generally a good person. I have a cat that I adore and plants that are healthy. Things are good.

And bearing that in mind, I now prepare myself for the inevitably unpleasant phonecall to the people at Canada Student Loans.

I've had a great week. It's not that anything out of the ordinary has happened, it's just been, well, pretty good. With the exception of an encounter with a co-worker that was less than pleasant, all has been well.

I managed to go out for someone's birthday on Thursday night and hear some music, which was really nice. I haven't gone to hear a band, or musician play in months and months. I knew one of the performers and she was excellent, really moving and fun. Her name is Karyn Ellis and she's pretty darn good, so check her out. Following her performance was group called Amanda Mabro and the Cabaret Band (I think). They were a tight little swing band fronted by Amanda Mabro and she's incredible. Pipes out of this world. Rick came out for some of the fun, but due to pressures at his work, he had to leave early in order to get some sleep.

The evening prior, Wednesday, was spent at Rick's and he cooked a yummy dinner and we watched television. I know, how exciting is that? Anyway, we were both dead tired (see a pattern?) and rather than pass out on his couch I decided to head home for a good night's sleep. It's a good thing I did, too, or I'd have missed the awesome "street theatre" at Queen and Carlaw. This is a sketchy corner at best, and truly divey and sometimes scary at worst. I've had a lot of experience with it, in that Rick's the third guy I've dated who lived right there.

Let me set the scene. One plump art student type guy with portfolio and parchment case under his arm, another fellow of undetermined ethnic background, a little shorter than me with dark eyes and long dark hair, and a deaf-mute. The deaf-mute (is there a more PC term for this?) was dressed in a sporty wind-breaker, nice cream-coloured, very clean, pressed slacks, and expensive looking brown woven leather shoes. He also had tattoos on the back of his hands between thumb and forefinger, plus a very expensive looking watch. If it weren't for his wild gesticulating and howling at passing cars, he looked as if he would fit in very nicely on the set of The Sopranos.

A patrol car came cruising up Carlaw, as the police tend to do, slowly checking out everyone at the corner, stopping when it came abreast of the ranting fellow. The got out, a female officer and a male, and they started to ask him some questions. This was the point when I realised he was deaf, previous to this I had assumed he was a crazy, drunk man, of which there are many in the neighbourhood. Through rudimentary sign language on the part of the female officer and more of the man's wild gesticulating, he got his point across that he lives in a house "over that way" and he was waiting for the bus to take him.

At this point, the bus arrived and we all filed on. The police chatted with the driver for a minute and parted company when the driver accepted the deaf guy on without a ticket. As soon as the bus starts to move, the guy starts ranting again, hands forming big shapes in the air. I'm paying loose attention, mostly seeing him as comical and basically harmless, but I can't figure out what he's saying. The guy from the bus stop, the one of undetermined ethnic origins, turns around in the seat in front of me, grinning, and says, "Wow, that guy's great." I agree and he adds, "Do you know what he's saying?" When I said I didn't, he began to decipher the hand gestures for me. I don't know how he was able to figure it out, but once he started to explain, it became obvious that he was right.

It went something like this: I live in a big house and have lots of money and it's really funny to me that I am riding the bus with you poor people because I fly all over the world. We started to hypothesise about what kind of a house he really lived in and whether or not it was true or whether this guy was really out of it. It was impossible to tell since he was clearly a bit of a head-case, but also dressed pretty darn well. He got off the bus at Danforth and headed off down the street so we'll never know for sure, but it was awfully amusing to watch his antics.

In other news, my dear friend Tanya is getting married. Whee ! More about that at another time. Also, Willi has been extra adorable with me, following me around and talking to me constantly, while Tobe spends a lot of her time sleeping in the sink.

Tonight, after a not terribly satisfying "bad movie" night with Stew and all his girls, or almost all them, and a fairly satisfying game of Munchkin, I am now engaged in a very Canadian tradition. I am drinking beer (though it is neither Molson or Labatt) and watching Game Seven between Toronto and Ottawa (Hockey, here folks). Ottawa is losing and there are only three minutes remaining in play, the Toronto fans have begun chanting "Hey, hey, hey, goodbye", and it's fairly safe to say that Ottawa won't be able to catch up those three goals to tie it up. A small part of me wishes it were not the case, I wanted Ottawa to go down with a greater fight, but what can you do? One of them has to win, the other has to lose - that's the way it works.

I don't usually watch hockey. Most of the season I only pay passing attention, though in previous years, because I was part of a pool, I did pay some. I love playoff hockey, though, it's fast and tense and the meat-heads prove their worth and for once, Toronto fans make noise. If I lived in my old neighbourhood people would spill out into the streets from all the bars and make a lot of noise, but here, in this predominantly Italian soccer-loving neighbourhood, there will probably be very little noise made. Rick might go whoop it up on Yonge Street, he said. I've done the whooping, albeit for baseball, but I know what it's like and I don't need my arm nearly pulled off by a drunk again, thanks, once was enough.

I just whitnessed something that was pretty interesting, I must say, a melee broke out between two players and it was essentially broken up by the ref and one of Ottawa's players who took hold of one of the Leafs and just talked him down and kept him out of it until it was settled. I'm not used to seeing that sort of sportsmanship.

Anyway, it's official, Toronto won and a single person just came out on my street and rang a hand-bell. And then he went away again. This really is a soccer street. My neighbours woke me up every morning during the World Cup, in case there was any doubt. The game was won by the beginning of the third period as Ottawa couldn't get it together to score any more and as their confidence slipped, Toronto managed to broaden the win even further. In the end, it was 4-1 and Toronto will go onto play Philadelphia.

Finally, I would like to take a moment to make it public that when Toronto picked up Belfour, their extraordinary goalie, Rick said, "Nah, he's OLD." I was a fan right from the start and said something along the lines of, "Ya, but he knows what he's doing and he's good at it." Boy is he ever. Yay !

Well, my beer is finished, and for you who care to know, it was a Rickard's Red, the hockey game is over, and company is still over. There remains a small portion of my room that still needs cleaning, though it's all vacuumed and swept and tidied and whatnot, so I should attend to the details before they start to pile up again. Or, I'll pop a new cloth on my Swiffer Wet-Jet... yes, that is what I will do. And it will be wonderful. Goodnight.

It's been a little time since my last real post and I decided it was time to sit down and write a little. This week has shown a full scale welcoming of spring in my neighbourhood even though it began with coolish temperatures and wind chill. Firstly, the sun has been shining most of the week and the birds have been singing merrily every morning. I've been watching various urban birds go through their elaborate mating rituals. The pigeons outside the ROM aren't the best examples as they court in good weather almost the whole year long, but the males have been especially impressive with their puffed up strutting and cooing and the females haven't altogether ignored them. I was watching some starlings do cute things with nesting materials yesterday and each evening I've enjoyed the sound of robins wishing the day a goodnight.

The tom cats have been out prowling. My house which has two spayed females upstairs and a as of yet unspayed kitty below, has been a frequented spot for the neighbourhood toms who have been leaving their musky calling cards against the front of the house and porch. Yum. The other neighbourhood toms, the young men, have been out lowering the suspensions of their Hondas and driving around with their subwoofers turned way up - a sure sign that the weather has been improving. Also, for the first time this season, I heard the dreadfully annoying jingling dingle of the icecream truck coming down the street. The skunks have been out and about, scurrying across the road and getting into things. Inside the house, Willi and Tobe have been in very high spirits, cavorting about the place with gleeful abandon. As for myself, I've been in pretty good spirits, too, most likely because of the longer days and bright, warm sun.

And, the final, most telling sign of spring are the Italian (and Portugese, to be fair) housewives standing outside hosing down the sidewalks. Why they feel the sidewalks must have litres and litres of water poured over them, I don't know, but obviously, water conservation is not a high priority. My landlords are currently out downstairs landscaping the front lawn, as well. They have an interesting concept of garden design, what with the birdbath set at the very front of the lawn with the enormous frog that pretty much fills it. I think it's a fountain of some sort, too. Today, when I came down the street, I found them, and a friend, busy planting geraniums. Already. I told them it looks very lovely, but I warned them that it might just be a bit early yet. There's a rule for planting on the May 24th weekend for a reason. I explained that there could still be snow, even if it's not terribly likely. They seemed shocked but grudgingly agreed it was probably too soon, but oh well, geraniums are hardy. They're from Spain. I think there's a lot about Canada they haven't quite figured out yet.

Anyway, this post out of my system, I think it's time for my nap. I haven't been getting to bed when I ought lately, for one reason or another, and I'm really tired. There was supposed to be a Job Review Committee meeting today but it was canceled, happily. Had it gone ahead, I would have stuck around for a ROM Friends of South Asia event tonight, but I couldn't justify hanging around for five hours. I knew that if I went home I probably wouldn't make it back, either. So, I went for lunch with some of the girls at the museum and then came home. I browsed around on St. Clair for a bit when I got off the streetcar, but I have learned that nothing will fit me. All clothes stop at size 12 and all shoes go up to 91/2. I guess they're not buying their goods for the tall market. Funny, that, this being a predominantly Mediterranean neighbourhood.

How seasonally appropriate, thanks to Meriam Webster:

The Word of the Day for Apr 08 is:

Pasch \PASK\ noun

*1 : Easter
2 : Passover


Example sentence:"Miss Ina will not be for burying him in the kirkyard, but in Isle-Monach, where my Donald would be seeing ghosts at Yule and Pasch." (Walter C. Smith, "Kildrostan")

Did you know?
Easter is sometimes called the Christian Passover, and Passover the Jewish Easter. Given that, it's not surprising that "Pasch" comes from the Hebrew word for "Passover" — "pesah." That word, in turn, is from Hebrew "pâsah," meaning "to pass over." One interpretation (though not the only one) is that the word refers to the final plague before the Jews were permitted to leave Egypt (the Exodus commemorated by the celebration of Passover), in which God slew the firstborn sons of the Egyptians but passed over the Jewish households. "Pesah" became "pascha" in Greek, then "Pasch" in English, which, like a basket with two eggs, has held both a reference to Passover and to the Christian celebration of Christ's Resurrection since at least 1200.

Please note: unfocused thought processing ahead. Please be advised that there may be no conclusion whatsoever found or even a real point to this entry at all.

Some of you, those who know me, I suppose, know that I have an interest in the occult. It's a general interest that has influenced my studies and hobbies for years. I didn't put a name to it for a long time, and using the term 'occult' might be a bit misleading, but I am fascinated by mythology and early religion and how it's come down to us over time. Maybe I can lay the blame at the feet of my open-minded mother who gave me a huge book of greek mythology when I first learned to read. Now, we also used to read from my awesome illustrated Bible stories book, too, but I'd had that from before I could read, so I don't count it - though the story of Samson and Delilah always impressed me.

I was also raised in a house of two faiths - Judaism and Christianity - and allowed to chart my own course. Add to this my mother's involvement with Native Earth Performing Arts and the education in Native storytelling that I received via their shows. By the time I was twelve I was well on my way to broad-mindedness concerning faith and spirituality.

I'm rambling now; my essay-writing skills have suffered these past two years outside of academia. Anyway, I have just finished a really interesting book, Witch: the wild ride from wicked to wicca, by author Candace Savage. It discusses the image of the witch and how she has come down to us through history. It debunks a lot of myths surrounding the witch in her many incarnations and links each subsequent century with their misconceptions, right down to our own. It seems that in each successive generation, the roots of 'witchcraft' go further and further into the past so that by the middle of the twentieth century, the witch had been embraced by feminists and radical social reformers as an icon of collective resistance. Wicca, itself, was born from a misconceived idea of medieval witch cults built from scant records and elaborated on extensively by early anthropologist Margaret Murray. You can read the revised texts here, but when the intro states that "Murray was one of the first to objectively review the evidence of the 'burning times' witch trials to try to extract a kernel of truth" understand that this is not wholey true. It seems that she actually did a bit of book-cooking herself.

In fact, there's been so much cooking of the books that it is nearly impossible to know fact from fiction. And that is one of the reasons it fascinates me so much. In one of my fourth year seminars, I began with the development of an idea about depictions of peasantry in Renaissance art and how they served as moral truths and satirical commentary. This developed into an interest in depictions of women in Renaissance art and from there into the idea of the witch. I also recently read an excellent book called "King Death" and I can see the parallels between the ideas it promoted, concerning Bubonic Plague in the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, and the rising fear of witchcraft and evil. I feel like I should revisit the topic, but I think my paper might be gone - thrown in a bin for my lack of interest, or something. Perhaps my professor still has a copy, or perhaps it exists somewhere on a disc.

Thought process is here ended. We return to our regularly scheduled programming.

I'm currently in the Petes in order to celebrate Passover with Mom. All the matzoh has stoppered me like a corked bottle of wine and I'm already yearning for biscotti. Terrible, I know. I should be ashamed. I am working at the ROM on Good Friday and Easter Monday, which is very good for my bank account, and as I'm not working Saturday or Sunday, I can take the car into Toronto and return with it for a couple more days of relaxation. I have a date with Rick tomorrow night. I believe we'll be seeing Hell Boy, which should be fun, even though I've never read the comic book. So, my return to Peterborough with the car will be Saturday morning. I'd bring my cat if I were staying out a little longer. She could use some romping in the garden as she's gotten a bit pudgy.

But now, if plans hold, I am to help put up the bird feeders.

I have been neglecting this journal in favour of the much more mindless Live Journal that I can be found frequently posting in. I've been trying to reserve this one for more profound thoughts, but I haven't had many of late.

With the exception of my little theory concerning the grade nine students who come through Eternal Egypt. I have discussed it with various people whom I consider intelligent and thoughtful, including my mother, and mostly once I lay it out, they agree. I came to this understanding after one particular day when I had lots of grade fives and one class of developmentally handicapped adults.

From what I have seen and experienced, the grade nines are the absolute most difficult age level to engage in conversation. They do not want to talk. Sometimes, they raise their hands and then as soon as I turn to them they falter. This is not nearly so bad among the grade elevens, who are beginning to show interest and offer answers. It came to me when I dealt with the developmentally impaired group. These were also young adults, probably around 18 years of age, or so, and yet I had no trouble engaging them. They were a lot like the grade five groups I see so much of with their enthusiasm and volunteering of information.

Children are very emotional. They have no trouble suspending their disbelief. If I tell them that Egyptian judgement consisted of the deceased's heart being weight against a feather, they have no problem accepting that a heart can weigh as little as a feather. Or that the feather of Ma'at (the concept of truth and order) might actually weigh more than a normal feather. Again, with the group of special adults, they had no problem accepting this. They are able to believe, just as a child can believe in Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy. In contrast, the grade elevens have developed their 'mature' thinking skills. They no longer think of things in terms of emotion, instead they think rationally. They can understand the emotional qualities, but place it in a seperate compartment.

The grade nines, however; are in the process of making the leap from emotional thought to rational understanding. More often than not, their questions are the ones that struggle to bridge the gap. For instance, "How can a heart and feather weigh the same?" They are attempting to reason out the answer, but are unable to quite let go of their child-like comprehension. It's sort of an extension, I think, of how younger children try to comprehend the existence of Santa Claus. Grade nine is a brutal time in a person's development, and now, taking into consideration what I have seen, I think I have a much better understanding of exactly what makes it so difficult. More than any other year in a kid's life, I think that one is the gap over which the youth is standing, one foot in childhood, the other in adulthood.

I wouldn't want to repeat it under any circumstance, but it does make me view them less as a downer and more as a challenge.