and other lofty goals.

I’m not usually one for new year’s resolutions, but I feel as if the start of a new decade deserves a better me, so here it goes… 

I will take better care of my feet because without them, there wouldn’t be any ridiculous dance parties in my living room and my neighbours wouldn’t have anything to watch. 

I will allow my friends to cook for me as often as they want. 

I will not feel bad for destroying my apartment during elaborate craft projects. 

I will nap as much as possible. 

I will not stamp my feet like a four year old when slow tourists get in my way. 

I will embrace my inner sexy librarian. 

I will flirt with many men, and actually mean it sometimes. 

I will do everything in my power not to kill my fish. 

I will stop leaving the salt shaker in random places around the apartment. 

I will remember to phone my mother. 

I will not let the pigeons win.

bed, bath and beyond.

I feel like I’ve tucked my normal self away in the linen closet, and that self will remain there until the dust has settled.  When the chaos at work stops and weekends or no longer an extension of the work week, I will finally be able to breathe.  And I’m hoping that when my other self comes out from her comfortable place beside the towels, she will be well rested, with a smart new haircut and a cute pair of shoes.

eulogy.

My dear Kit Fishto, you were a lovely fish.  You didn’t once complain when it took me weeks to name you.  You tolerated me calling you Kitty.  You didn’t mock me when I went running up to you and pressed my head up to the glass and yelled “LOOK AT MY FACE!” on the day that I came home wearing my new glasses.  You loved swimming in time to music and Tom Petty was your favourite.  You saw me naked more than you probably cared to, but I had to feed you freeze-dried bloodworms so I guess that makes us even.  You watched me dance around my apartment and listened to me babble about how happy I was when I met someone.  You watched me while I was curled up on the couch after I had my heart broken.  You watched me attempt pilates, rearrange my furniture and fight with pigeons.  I hope you were entertained by my antics.  I was always entertained by yours.

Love,

Violet

don’t tell PETA.

I threw a lime at a pigeon a few weeks ago.  I hit him square in the back.  The satisfying thud was short lived because he was only startled enough to fly two feet away and then he turned around and landed on a different part of my balcony.  I would have cried if I could have stopped yelling.

What possessed me to throw citrus?  I don’t really know.  The pigeon wasn’t afraid of me, and there was half of a lime just sitting in my glass.  So I threw it.  In retrospect, perhaps it was not my best moment.  But in my defence, the pigeons started it.

you say tomato, i say get the hell off my balcony.

 

Someone asked me whether I thought the pigeons love me or hate me.  I like to think that we have the same relationship one does with a sibling.  Sure your brother may torment you and make your Barbie do dirty things with G.I. Joe, but if something ever happened, they would be there in a second to help you.  Maybe I’m too optimistic, but I would hope that if I was ever lost and needed to send a message to the outside world, I could enlist the help of a pigeon to carry that message and that they would love me enough to not eat the note.

 

Or maybe the pigeons just hate me.  They do like to poop on my stuff.  That doesn’t sound like love to me.  Anyway, whether it’s love or hate, the pigeons need to vacate my premises.

 

Last week, when the pigeons stopped even pretending to be afraid of me, I snapped.  At one point I was yelling “I’M GOING TO BEAT YOU WITH A STICK” which, in case you’re wondering, is not something I would normally be inclined to yell or do.  I had to rearrange the barricades on the balcony.  I kept a glass of water handy so that I could splash them with it.  I seriously contemplated hurling strawberries at their heads.  They retaliated by inviting a third pigeon to join them.  And some sparrows.  I have become Francis of Assisi.  Except less loving, and more angry.  And with boobs.

 

Because the Rage is starting to get the better of me, I decided to try out a home remedy for deterring pigeons.  Enter the tomatoes.  Apparently pigeons don’t like the smell of tomato plants.  So, I went out for an adventure today.  I went to a garden store.  I think the last time I was in one was about 6 years ago.  It was overwhelming.  This time though, I was not overwhelmed.  I was on a mission.  I came out of the store with three small tomato plants, a bag of dirt and a tree.  The tree makes me happy.  The tree does not however, scare away birds.  That is unless I want to follow through with my threats of beating the pigeons with a stick, because technically, the tree IS a big stick.

 

I came home with my new green friends and made a big mess on my living room floor while I re-potted them.  Tomorrow, they will start their life on my balcony.  I hope they like it out there.  And if any of the pigeons defile my plants in anyway, the profanity that will pour from my mouth will be quite spectacular. 

lulling me into a false sense of security.

 

Exactly nine months to the day had passed since my last entanglement with the pigeons.  I thought I was safe.

 

I returned home from a long day at work, and instead of my usual routine, I went straight to my balcony.  I’d been thinking about the balcony all day, having various daydreams that all involved being attended to by a hot cabana boy while lounging in my new little sixth floor oasis.  I slid open the balcony door and to my utter horror, two pigeons wandered out from underneath my brand new furniture.  In a fit of Rage that has not surfaced in quite some time, I yelled out “HOW COULD YOU!?” and flailed my arms like a crazy person to get them off the balcony.  Their day had obviously been spent pooping and napping and most likely fornicating all over my balcony (but they had the common decency not to touch my nice cushions.  How thoughtful.) and they were quite startled with my reaction.  Once they realized that I wasn’t going to stop shouting and flailing, they flew away. I turned around, stomped into my kitchen, grabbed cleaning supplies and spent the next fifteen minutes disinfecting everything while muttering obscenities under my breath.

 

The next morning before work, I decided that something needed to be done.  I found a roll of purple streamers, my swiffer mop, a curtain rod, my laundry basket and a giant roll of packing material and proceeded to decorate and barricade my balcony in such a way that would scare away any winged visitors.  When I was done, it looked like Mardi Gras had thrown up on my balcony.

 

Here’s the thing: last year at this time, I came home to find two pigeons in my apartment.  Now I am aware that the Rage may have clouded my judgement a little, but I am almost positive that the two pigeons cavorting on my balcony were the same two pigeons who decided to go adventuring in my apartment.  And I remember the pigeons from last year, because the image of them is forever burned into my memory.

 

After setting up my elaborate pigeon deterrent system, I went off to work, confident that there would be no more problems.  Pigeon deterrent system?  FAILED.  I returned home, and as I had done the night before, I went straight to my balcony.  This time there were no startled pigeons sleepily stumbling out from beneath my chair, but there were several strategically placed feathers and other evidence that I had been pigeon’d again. 

 

Now I’m not sure how to make this more clear, but my apartment is neither a playground nor is it a sex motel for pigeons or any other creature unless their name is on the lease.  Full Stop.

 

 

 

This weekend I will be waging war.

 

 

My previous adventures with pigeons…

https://violetdiaries.wordpress.com/old-blog-posts/june/

 

https://violetdiaries.wordpress.com/old-blog-posts/july/

 

 

how i spent my saturday night.

 

– left work late due to complications with my ability to count.

– sat shivering on a bench, waiting for a ferry, cursing the wind and my inability to remember gloves.

– made a miserable trek up a very large hill, which I cursed for its verticality.

– was passed by a woman with the thinnest legs I’ve ever seen, running up the very large hill while wearing heels and carrying a case of beer.

– checked out a man who appeared to be walking with his parents.  Twice.

– got so distracted by a man’s cologne in the grocery store that all I could manage to buy was a box of Kraft Dinner, a container of tzatziki and a bag of salted kettle chips.

– awarded -10,000 points to a friend’s blind date who had postponed their date three times that day.

– ate my body weight in cookies. 

– promised to send an escape-plan text to friend in case her date was flaky AND crazy.

– watched my fish get stuck in the roots of his plant.

– felt guilty about being a bad fish parent.

– dulled guilt with half a bag of easter-themed jelly beans.

– sent escape-plan text to friend.

– was relieved when friend was neither dead, nor in need of rescuing.

– celebrated with cookie.

– laughed at people whose dating profile pictures are of them without a shirt on in their living room pretending that they didn’t know the webcam was on.

– wrote a blog post based entirely on cookies.

– took a bath and then let my hair dry without combing it because I wanted to see what kind of funny shapes it would make when left to its own devices.

– accidentally flashed my neighbours because a coughing fit caused me to lose my towel while standing in the living room.

– pondered the unfortunate mess that is Amy Winehouse.

– decided that my fish was staring at me in a very judging sort of way.

– turned off all the lights in the apartment so he couldn’t see me anymore.

– realized that I might be just a little bit crazy. 

the revival of solitude.

 

I have taken a self-imposed partial vow of silence.  For the last five days, the longest conversation I have had was thirteen minutes long, and it was over the phone.  The only person I have spoken to face to face for longer than it takes to pay for groceries, was my doctor.

 

Somewhere along the way, I lost my appreciation of people.  It may have been happening for awhile, but I didn’t notice it until last week.  Every request or question, no matter how trivial, awoke in me a level of frustration and annoyance that I have not seen in myself.  I didn’t like that feeling, but it kept happening.  And then I got sick.  I decided to hermit myself away, and not think about work, or things I should be doing.  I slept, read and watched movies.  I ventured out for groceries twice.  I took long baths and listened to music.  I tuned out the rest of the world and spent time with myself.  And I realized that I’m pretty good company.

 

Tomorrow, I return to the world.  And I’m looking forward to it.

i’m taking it back to the old school.

 

Tonight my desire for clean dishes outweighed the attraction of my faithful boyfriend, Couch.  As usual, I grabbed my ipod and put on my headphones so I could listen to something loud and suitably distracting for the task at hand.  Since I seemed particularly inclined towards nostalgia today, I decided to pick something that I hadn’t heard in awhile.  After scrolling part way down my list of albums (which I never look at), I came across something that made me laugh out loud.  I don’t know how it got there, or how long it’s been there, but somewhere in my travels I acquired the award-winning, life-changing album, Dance Mix ’93.  After making a discovering like that, you can’t NOT listen to it.  As the first few beats of ‘Whoomp! (There It Is)’ started playing, visions of my childhood came rushing back – sitting in my mom’s studio with my tape player and my Dance Mix ’93 cassette, listening to the same three songs over and over again.  Then the nostalgia ended, and the dancing began.  It’s really no wonder that there is a man in the apartment building across the alley that watches me all the time.  I can really shake my ass.

 

‘There’s a party over here
A party over there
Wave your hands in the air
Shake the derriere’

 

With lyrics like these, how could you not be moved to express yourself rhythmically?  And they give you the dance instructions right there in the song!  How handy is that?!

 

Even with all the ass-shaking and the hand-waving, I didn’t break any dishes.  I got me some mad skillz, yo.