Look at me!

OK, so I'm not a doctor... or a lobster... but the last part is right.

Those of you who know me personally will know by now that I am finally a home-owner. After years of saying I will buy at such-and-such a time, and then months of talking about house shopping without actually doing any shopping, and then two months of solid searching - including two frustratingly failed offers - I have finally found a home that's right for me.

Come mid-December, I will finally shed the bed-and-breakfast suburban image and become an authentic Torontonian, joining the revitalised and hip new neighbourhood of Liberty Village, in a quaint new townhome condo. Coincidentally, an old friend from high school is moving into the same complex. Not so coincidentally, it is also minutes away from the home of one of my best friends and from my aunt's old house on King St, (which, coincidentally, are across the street from each other,) where I spent every Sunday of my childhood.

Coincidence and non-coincidence aside, I am now swamped in determing how I will use the spare change that's left of my life-savings to buy furniture, tools, paint, etc., and how to effectively renovate, decorate, and arrange the new nest. I have many books to read, covering topics from home repair, to decoration, to cooking. One of the benefits of having a huge family, is that an expert in every trade is at the dinner table at family events, whether it be a banker to handle my mortgage, a carpenter to instruct on repair, or a graphic artist to assist in choosing colours, all of which will be thanked with copious amounts of food... as soon as I read my cookbooks to find out how to prepare said food.

Any fans of Arrested Development will understand why I was laughing as I walked into Union Station on Friday after work.

As I approached the station, a man was handing out pamphlets for a show going on in the city. The show? The Blue Man Group.

As I tried to contain my laughter, the thought running through my head was "Well this is joyous news!"

Of the two big life-changing announcements made over the past month, I had been skeptically and pessimistically anticipating that the latter would somehow collapse, and I would have to wait a while longer to own a home.

I had not anticipated that it would be the former that would be taken away.

We pray for the young soul that we now will never know.

As I prepare to leave the 'burbs and move into the city, I consider what it will be like to actually live in Toronto, rather than just work there; to spend late nights and lazy afternoons in the city, rather than just planned evenings.

Today, I stumbled upon an article by Erik Rutherford reasoning why he is leaving Paris and coming to Toronto. The closing thoughts stood out to me:

Pierre the bartender has been listening in. He decides to defend his city. "I don't understand you people. Paris is the most beautiful and brilliant city in the world. Do you condemn a woman for being too brilliant and too beautiful?"

Trevor, with a hint of drunken slur, offers an answer: "She was brilliant and beautiful. Now she's well past her finest hour, but because she thinks she's still got it, she bores you with stories of how she used to be the life of the party. She shows you her photo albums, all scrupulously indexed and labelled. And when you offer to take her memoirs home for a read, she forces them into your hand and makes you read aloud."

"Okay, then," says Pierre, slapping his towel on the counter top. "What is Toronto? Une jolie jeune fille?"

Everyone turns to me. I have never considered the question, but the conversation has conjured an image: "Well, I suppose Toronto is a young man, just out of university. He's done a degree in commerce with a minor in the humanities, where he shows surprising talent. He's always been an A student and done what is expected of him. When you praise him, he doesn't believe you; when you criticize him, his pride is wounded. He's still a little inexperienced, poorly dressed, a touch diffident, but full of youthful energy and ambition. And though he doesn't yet know the best way to achieve glory, he makes you feel he will."`

Our country is built on the freedoms and values that define a democracy, but the thought of another election campaign makes me want to stuff my ears with cotton balls and yell "BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH!!!"

They just couldn't wait until after Christmas, could they? Now the holidays are going to be bombarded with political slime, phony promises, mud- and filthier-than-mud-slinging, and the hypocrisy, hypocrisy, hypocrisy. I just can't stand the hypocrisy.

I am going to be listening to Christmas carols over the next month. If anyone knocks on my door politicking during that time I will kindly tell them to go away, and please clean up their slime as they leave.