This week, walking through the university centre to get coffee, I noticed that it’s “club days” for students. On club days, the centre courtyard that is so often turned into a retail sales venue is set up with tables where representatives from the dozens of clubs that are available here chat with prospective new members or just interested people. And I walked right by the club that plays board games (I don’t know what it’s called), and two of the representatives there were actually playing a game. And I thought, what fun! And then I looked up, and I saw the way the perfectly groomed blonde glanced at them and quickly glanced elsewhere. And I once again thought, I’m so glad I’m not 20.
See, I love board games. One of the big drawbacks to living in the country is that I don’t often have people just drop by for a cuppa, or because they were wandering down my street and figured they’d see if I’m there. Thus, I rarely even have anyone to *ask* to play board games with – and most of my friends, they’d rather do something else anyway. But, back in the days when I lived in undergraduate residences – or before, in high school – I would never have admitted that I loved board games. Even though Matthias and I went through a Monopoly phase where we abolished paper money and worked only in credit notes, and hotels were nothing, we had entire condo blocks – symbolized by little flat boards that we stacked on top of each other as we intensified development – and games went on for days. Or the time when Matthias, Marlene and I were fascinated with a computer strategy game called M.U.L.E., it required colonizing a new planet and commodities: food, energy, and mining two minerals. You needed enough food to get time to do your turn properly, enough energy or your properties wouldn’t produce, and the minerals were cash commodities. You traded stuff at auctions, and if you controlled a commodity – or colluded with another player to control it - the base price – as set by the store – would go up tremendously. We loved M.U.L.E., but only when we played with each other. Playing with the computer by yourself was no fun. I also remember chess phases (mostly with Matthias, when we were a lot younger), and a fascination with Connect Four, and some time with Chinese checkers and cribbage and concentration. The games we hated were the ones that were pure luck, with virtually no game play: Mousetrap, Snakes and Ladders, Sorry (they all had German names then, but the games are the same). So, I always did love board games, but they just weren’t *cool*.
Let’s get this one straight: I was *never* cool. Not by a long shot. And kids who are not cool don’t automatically embrace that which is commonly perceived as un-cool – that would just be another nail in the coffin, why give them any more ammo. I don’t know when things changed, when I figured out that doing what you *like* is as cool as it gets. Not soon enough: I don’t even know if there was a games club equivalent when I did my undergrad.
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At 20, though, my body was more cooperative in some ways. After a lot of general slug-like behaviour, I’ve discovered that the aerobics instructor I always had such a girl-crush on is back in town. Which means that I promptly got an aerobics membership and now go to her classes. Step aerobics after several years of no step aerobics? Not fun. Actually, painful – my calves were protesting like you wouldn’t believe. I hobbled around for days last week. Monday, I went for another step class, and my left calf hurt. I know from past experience that this goes away after a few classes. Maybe today is the day where I not only skip off to step class, but skip back (as opposed to hobbling back). We'll see. It most definitely takes a lot longer for my 34-year-old muscles to recover than my 22-year old ones needed (I did my very first step class ever at 22). Ouch.
(I like exercise classes. Judge me if you must. But I find them far more effective for building fitness than running or cycling. Or sitting on the couch, which is another thing I’ve gotten far too good at in recent months… I find the people who slag off aerobics classes just don’t know how great a workout they are. I don’t mind. They work for me.)
Also not fun: turning beet red from exertion, heavy breathing, not liking my reflection in the huge mirrors in the aerobics room, wishing the class was *over* already… But there’s no way to get there from here without going through that. So, suck it up baby… Further in the not fun category: being in rooms whose designers clearly thought that the above-mentioned "mirror" is the same as "wall" and the 30 or so other sweaty bodies in there are so young and perky and perfect (because they are 20! and young and perky and perfect!), and somehow, thinking that they are "normal". Let's see - me: not 20, very un-perky, far from perfect! them: 20, perky, perfect. In most areas of my life, I like myself better as I get older, but my self-esteem where body confidence is concerned has not been getting that memo.
But, to get back to fun: having beer motivation. I’ve got a deal going with someone else: for every 30 minutes *I* work out, he puts $1 into the beer bank. And vice versa. We’re up to $25 collectively now, and we started sometime last week. If you have thoughts on beer as a motivator for exercise, I don’t want to hear them. I *like* beer, I’d drink it anyway, but this way, I’ve gone and done stuff when I felt like a nap just because I wanted someone else to put a toonie into the virtual jar.
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I now have my new mattress. I'm sleeping *great*. But it’s going to take some getting used to – it’s substantially thicker than the futon/foamy combination I had before, so I can no longer sit up in my loft if in bed. Tall people never could, but I could get away with it. Not anymore. So I’ll bonk my head a few times, but I don't care.
I'm still *great* at sleeping. Go with your strengths, I say.
Lately, I’ve been feeling inadequate about a few things. I have been compensating said feelings with doing things I am good at: drinking beer and sleeping. However, I’ve recently decided that the beer drinking, not such a good idea, or my next activity will be shopping for bigger jeans. I am not good at shopping (unless I can point and click and receive packages in the mail).
So. That leaves the sleeping as ego-boosting activity. Now, you should know, it’s pretty remarkable that I’m not only good at but enjoy sleeping because, despite being 34 years old, I sleep on a futon. A crappy futon I inherited from a former room-mate, to be precise. Note that I have not had a room-mate since 1997. The futon is so crappy that when I first started sleeping on the futon, I decided it needed something more, and I bought some 6-inch open cell foam for under it. Except the foam didn’t come in a double size, so I bought two half-double sized chunks. So, in addition to the crappy futon, we have saggy foam, which periodically slides apart and thus creates a lovely trench in the middle of my bed.
And yet, I sleep! But, I also wake up with a sore back from time to time, and I’ve been lusting after grown-up sleeping solutions for a long time now. A real bed isn’t going to happen, what with three feet of space between loft and ceiling. But I lusted all the same.
And then today, I saw a mattress store! My dislike of the whole shopping experience means that I don’t go to the suburban temples too often, but I had to go to Canadian Tire (I wanted to see how big a box for a wind generator is, an errand that made me feel far more important and interesting than I am!). And across the parking lot from the village-sized Canadian Tire is a new mattress store. And as I bumbled out of the hardware store (new purchase: a power bar, so I don’t have to unplug the phone if I want to use the computer up in the loft), I realized I wouldn’t even have to *drive* to go to the mattress store. It’s *right there*.
Yeah. Sucker. Innocently, I wandered in. Eagerly, the salesman met me. Confusedly, I looked around. And then, in a rush of fun, I was on a hard, a medium, and a soft bed, to determine my bed preference. Honestly, I couldn’t really tell the difference between hard and medium, and I hated the soft. Salesman told me that hotel beds are often the hard kind, because it’s more durable (and Johanna’s mind: more durable? Good investment! And I sleep well in hotels!).
So, now we had narrowed the choice of beds down to a subset, marked with a particular colour dot. Now it was time to educate Johanna: I learned about things like pocket coils (“do not disturb” is a key feature), king coils (the grand-daddy of them all) and posturpedic coils (something about head to foot and less sag in the middle over time). And then there was much bouncing, and much nap potential evaluating, and suddenly, I lusted after a $700 mattress!
But I was still being reasonable. I needed to *think* about it, on account of definite rosy glow of love spreading over me at the thought of the mattress. So I muttered about, won’t fit in my car and the like. Salesman brightly chirped “we deliver!” I equally brightly told him I live in Campbellville (while giving the coveted mattress an affectionate pat). He said “no problem! And we’ll take your old one away for free if you want!” And I?
Sigh. I pulled out my wallet.
I feel terrifically grown up! First, winter tires. Now, a big-girl mattress.
Up next: buy a third pot for my kitchen. Okay, maybe not. That would require cooking to justify. I sleep every night. I can justify the outrageously expensive mattress (please note, by mattress store standards, not expensive at all. Do you know you can spend more on a mattress than I spent on my first all-my-own car? You can. You can also buy much, much cheaper ones at non-mattressy stores... but, free delivery! Take away my old stuff!)
You'd think I couldn't possibly write about my damn igloo kit *again*. It seems like every single time I use it to make an igloo, I must obsessively take pictures (maybe that's why it takes so long?). So, I'm not going to write about the process again. No, this time, I shall tell 
you what made *this* time remarkable. In list form. Because I am lazy.
1. New location! This time, at May's place, in Deep River. Where there actually was snow. And where May hosted an open house, to which you may have been invited, and you didn't go. I bet you regret it now!
2. Three new building companions: May, Kevin and Jim. All of whom are better at every other winter activity than I am! Thus, I picked the one activity I was sure to be the most skilled at!
3. One of those building companions was Jim. And Jim has been vocally sceptical of the igloo kit for years. I suspect he does it just to annoy me. I also suspect I rise to the occasion and take his bait just to annoy him. And it's occurred to me that we both actually annoy the mutual annoying.
4. Three companions means four people. Two person job. Supervising! Better yet, supervising Jim! Which is better than stuffing a kitten into a Nalgene bottle. Not that I've tried that, ever. But you should know, it's not been two weeks since one of my brothers asked my sister if he could borrow her wide-mouth nalgene. I'm just saying.
5. One of the builders actually excited about sleeping in it even though there was a warm bed nearby. May has that sort of attitude. She also got the hang of packing the snow the best: gently! The first time I tried building one of these, my building companion put his foot in the form to "pack" the snow.
6. End of Christmas holidays. Meaning, too full to want to do anything aerobic, and not in the mood to have three people give me tips on how to pretend not to suck as badly as I do at skiing. Ergo igloo building!
All right? All right. That concludes the Deep River Igloo Building Road Trip portion of the entry. Because, I'm sure, if I told you about the world's greatest French toast breakfast, the Chinese dinner feast (not a carton in sight), the pasta dinner, the multiple bottles of wine, the Mexican hot chocolate, the sauna in the basement and subsequent rolling in the snow and all the bacon we ate, you'd think we never left May's property at all! And you would be right! (at least, Kevin and I didn't. Jim stayed longer. And Kevin is heading back to make it up with some indubitably hard-core skiing. Thus, ok, fine, I'm the sloth of this group. News to no-one. And this is why I should have stopped talking about the road trip when I said I was going to!
So, Happy New Year! Here's my advice for the coming year: if Kevin offers to cook, say yes. If you're going to May's house, ask her about the sauna (the first time I went there, she did not tell me about it! Thus I got no sauna!). If you see Jim, be sure to contradict him! Because it's fun!
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Ok then. Here's the thing: I'm a bit bored. Not with this here little blog, but with the (lack of) content! I need adventures! Preferably short ones, 'cause I kind of already booked all my free chunks of time for this year. Yes yes, those *are* adventures, but they're *far away*. I need adventures *now*. Because otherwise, I will do what all those other people with blogs do when they have nothing to say: they ask themselves questions that nobody wants to know the answers to, and call it a "meme", and make like "well, I wouldn't be telling you this, *but*, you know, it's a *meme*, I *have* to", because, I'm sure, the world is just *dying* to know what books I read this year and what I got that I wanted and didn't get that I wanted and all sorts of other stuff to be filed under belly button lint. Or I could endlessly troll the "blogosphere" (my nomination for banned words, by the way) and find things that are vaguely related to things I write about and "blogroll" (that's next on the list of the banned words) them. Or better yet, contact them, and see if we can get a "blog carnival" going. And then? then we'd be bogged down in hopeless ennui, and pretty soon I'd have to get a puppy or post some of the many pictures of admittedly cute cats that are nevertheless in the "nobody gives a shit" category. You know what blogging about blogging is called? Meta-blogging! And you know what that is? Stupid.
(Can you tell I just had some time off, and spent far too much time surfing the web? Yeah.)
(and all this ranting aside, I did find two new to me blogs that I'm tentatively reading, so you could go here or here and check it out. I'm cheap with links, and this is only the second and third time I've ever linked anything with a "typepad" or "blogspot" type home.)