It’s Tortilla Time| Hi I’m Tori and This is my Story

My room speaks volumes about my quirky personality.

I performed a massive cleanup this weekend; drawers were emptied, enormous garbage bags containing clutter were disposed of. I’m admittedly proud of my efforts, though this summer I plan to redo my room entirely. It is painted an extremely vibrant shade of yellow that I selected at the age of four. I have grown more than weary of its vibrancy through the years, and I get increasingly eager to paint it every breathing moment.

Tucked away neatly in my room is a music stand, my saxophone not far in proximity. My music binder containing countless copies of sheet music rests directly below my alarm clock (that I still have yet to figure out). Placed on my top shelf are trophies that I’ve earned throughout the duration of my young life, among them are numerous soccer trophies, a couple from baseball, a notably large karate trophy and a metal earned at karate.

To the average eye, I’m probably some ass-kicking, soccer-playing band geek with an infatuation with obscenely bright shades of yellow. Oh but that’s not all.

Below my shelves lies a gigantic dog crate, where Seamus will quietly pass his time on occasion. Guests probably attempt to conceive just why I have a rather large cage in my room. Though it may look rather sketchy, it serves its purpose when need be.

I also happen to own a large collection of various dog books, encyclopedias and magazines that are placed together on my second shelf. This is generally not considered ordinary reading material for teenage girls, but when was I ever considered anything remotely close to ordinary?

Not too distant is my retro lava lamp, won in grade seven. The purple of my lava lamp clashes considerably with the yellow of my walls, but this has hardly mattered to me. I took an immediate liking to this lamp, however retro it may be. It was free, after all. Won by a fortunate twist of fate.

A mid-2001 edition of ‘The Lake Front News’ hangs on my incandescent wall, brought back from Ohio when I was ten years old (my family would immediately break out in a fit out laugher if they were made aware of this). The truth of it is that it reminds me very much of The Ohios and brings me that much closer to them. This, however, would undoubtedly bestow much confusion among guests. Why does this girl have a newspaper on her wall? And what the fuck is Frosty’s Pizza?

And lest I fail to mention Calanthe. She inhabits the surface of my desk, tucked away cozily in her camera bag.

I am such a weird kid.

This morning I awoke to worst kind of realization; an English test had been completely forgotten about. I usually wing English tests with minimal effort and pass with flying colours, however I knew that today this would not be an option. For it was on Macbeth, penned by my arch nemesis, Mr. Billy Shakespeare.

Shakespeare and I have never gotten along. To my recollection, this feud commenced years ago when I was forced to play Bottom in a rendition of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream.’ I did not take kindly to playing a donkey. Shakespeare has bestowed much chaos and confusion in my life since, with his complicated usage of the English language and complex story lines.

Long story short: I loathe Shakespeare.

This morning I found myself at my desk, completely discombobulated, scribbling down any answer that made an ounce of sense. I have learnt over the years that when in doubt, guess. Any wild guess is better than nothing. One of the questions that I had left blank was ‘Who appeared in Banquo’s dreams in Act II Scene iii?’
Good God, I thought, how the fuck should I know?
In a fluster I quickly scribbled down ‘CAMERON DIAZ’ before completing my test. There was no doubt that a laid back guy such as my teacher would find this comical. A sense of relief then overcame my very soul; the test was over. Finito. Done. Water under the bridge.

My teacher then instructed us to hand our tests to the student who sat two rows directly to our left, as they would be the ones to mark them. There are many reasons why I despise this arrangement, the main one being that it’s pure and utter laziness on the teacher’s behalf. They get paid to mark, so why shouldn’t they?

I looked over at the classmate that would be grading my test, and it was inevitably the most popular girl in the class. Oh shit, I recall thinking, she’s going to see my Cameron Diaz answer and think I’m fucked in the head. I scurried through my test, in desperate search of the answer so that I could quickly scratch it out.

‘PENS DOWN!’ my teacher barked. Fuck. It was too late.

I handed my test to the girl, visibly panicked and unsure of what exactly to say to her. I cringed as we slowly made our way to the dreaded question. I finally mustered to courage to peer over at my classmate as my teacher discussed the answer, and she immediately shot me a confounded expression. Her eyes bulged, her forehead creased. She was in complete awe of the answer that lay before her.

I felt like melting. Word of this would undoubtedly spread among the popular crowd.

As we exchanged our tests back, the girl was still intent on giving me an awkward glance.
‘I just figured Banquo had a thing for the ladies,’ I said, figuring that this somehow defined my answer.

As we make our way home from my Nana’s house:

Ben- Mum, want to hear a weird statistic?
Mum- Absolutely.
Ben- You know that 3lbs. of your body weight is pure bacteria?
Mum- Where do you learn this? Do they teach you this at school?
Me- Yeah, who feeds you this crap?
Ben- I don’t know, I just hear it.
Awkward Silence.
Mum- The singular form of bacteria is bacterium.
Me- Why would anyone ever need to use the singular form of bacteria?
Mum- They could say ‘there is one bacterium.’
Me- Or ‘the bacterium crossed the road.’
Mum- Yes, and then you could say that his brother crossed the road too and then there were two bacteria.
Me- I don’t know where I would be without you to teach me this stuff.

This morning brought the dawn of much dreaded yard work. Isn’t it horrendous?

Ben tackled the tasks with vigour I found impossible to muster so early on a Saturday morning.

Instead of contributing to this tedious task, I opted to take pretty pictures that define the season.

The enemy that we were forced to fight in an exchange of mortal combat.

This is Charlie, one of the three felines that permanently inhabit the vet clinic at which I do my co-op. He is a corpulent cat, relocated from another branch of our vet clinic in a last-ditch effort by the management to aid him in his perpetual battle against the bulge. Exercising him has been added to my daily list of duties.

Some days I admittedly display more enthusiasm toward this cause than others. On one such day I was in a back room with Charlie, pulling a rope toy that he was only too delighted to chase.
‘Come on Charlie! You are going to party off those pounds! I can feel your self-esteem rising! YOU ARE BECOMING MIGHTY!’
I would holler out these, among other quotes, in my best adaptation of Richard Simmons. All that we were lacking was bad 70s music, a bitter disappointment, because there is no way better to lose weight than to sweat to the oldies.

As I was cheering on Charlie with an abundance of fervour, I happened to peer out the door and noticed my co-workers standing there, dumbfounded looks spread across their faces.
‘Charlie takes well to encouragement.’ I mumbled as I exited the room, my tail in between my legs.

A general reminder to everyone: If you bring in a large box of pleasant-smelling doughnuts to the work place and offer them to your co-workers, it is courteous to also offer one to the lunch-deprived co-op student drooling in the corner.

I generally try to discourage myself from ranting about the goings-on at my co-op placement, however today I simply cannot. I was ordered to clean the downstairs, a daily ritual for me at the vet clinic. As I stood alone in the basement, about to commence a bout of rigorous cleaning, a cat in a cage directly behind me let out a tiny mew. I turned around and discovered a white Persian cat with disgustingly filthy fur and a most wistful demeanour.

‘You’re a mess, look at you,’ I uttered softly. And a mess she was. I cannot recall ever encountering a cat, generally clean animals by nature, in such uncleanly conditions. The aura about this cat was one of dolefulness and dejection. I stood with the cat for a few moments, peering into its cage. She seemed immensely appreciative of any sort of attention.

I continued about my daily tasks, scrubbing the floors with an apparent lack of zeal. The veterinarian entered the downstairs and removed the filthy cat from its cage.

‘I’m so sorry. I wish so much that I could do more to help you, but your owner won’t let me,’ the veterinarian whispered with a sense of regret.

It wasn’t a few minutes later that I emerged from the basement and saw the cat lying dead on an exam table. I’ve seen euthanasias and dead animals many a time at my co-op, but somehow this one really affected me.

Spring is undeniably among us at last.

I am so eager for summer to arrive, it’s unreal. The sheer amount of school work I’m receiving these days is enough to make anybody wish to stick their head in an oven, if ever so briefly. I, fortunately, have not succumbed to such a lurid inner desire as of yet. But who knows what tomorrow will bring.

The ever improving temperatures outside bring back fond memories of previous summers. Last summer brought several Ohio trips, and I unfortunately have not been back since. Liam was still quite young, at an adorable stage prior to the horrendous terrible twos. I like to think of it as the calm before the storm.

We were driving through the seedy quarters of urban Michigan, en route to Ohio; Liam, Ben and I in the back seat. Amid the factories, abandoned houses and smog were enormous signs advertising various strip clubs and the like. Pictured were often trashy looking females, no doubt in attempts to look alluring to sleazy men driving on the interstate. We passed one such bill board and Liam, gazing intently out the window, immediately pointed his nineteen month old finger at the sign and proclaimed ‘MOMMY!’

Ben and I were understandably unable to control the ensuing laughter.

We now have a basketball net. A basketball net that is damn near twice my height and damn near impossible for me to score into. I’ve taken the liberty to come to terms with my defeat and admit to myself that I will never be able to get the ball into the basket.

Ben, however, has enjoyed taking shots on the net, and I’ve enjoyed taking shots of Ben whilst he’s taking shots on the net.

Check out the bizarre faces that he makes. No doubt I could use these as a form of blackmail one day.

And just WHAT is THIS???

I gave the blog a makeover. I quite like the new look, but I’m aware that the feeling may not be mutual among my readers.

The site may look distorted to those who use Internet Explorer, but quite like my good friend Mary, I harbour little sympathy for this. Get Firefox.

Teacher- Godzilla Graph? Tori, is there a reason why this is the title of your temperature vs. volume graph?
Me- What? Sara said that I could call it whatever I wanted.