Savia has worms, pass it on

I've been trying to be more environmental in recent years, signing up for curbside recycling, renovating my house to be more energy efficient, and doing all those little things to save energy and water that add up. And now, I have worms.

It's true, people - becoming an environmentalist will give you worms!*

I've been intrigued by vermicompost for nine years now and have always meant to get a bin of worms to compost my kitchen waste. But I never did for some reason. I was worried that it would be too high maintenance, and it did gross me out a bit to think of a bin of wriggly worms underneath my sink, eating my lemon rinds and cherry pits. (It's a bit of a foreign concept around these parts, where rednecks outnumber hippies 257:1.)

But on the July long weekend, I finally got up the nerve and called the one company in Cityville that sells the vermicompost bins. A very pregnant lady in the midst of moving to a new house found a few minutes to hand me a blue bin full of what looked like dirt (but I later found out was worm poop, or the more palatable "casings"), worms and shredded newspaper.

I brought the little dudes home and prepared to feed them for the first time. I had been collecting fruit/vegetable waste for the past few days in anticipation of this moment.

But before I fed them, I needed to name them. That's the way it goes in the Bella household. No name, no food!

At first, I was going to name the worms collectively Fred. Then I remembered that's what I name all my art. Next, I was going to name them George, but then I recalled that's the name of my long-lost love, George the Morphine Dispenser. What on earth was I going to name my new squirmy wormies? They were looking so thin and hungry. I needed a name, stat.

Superstar made a suggestion: "What about Oscar, as in The Grouch?"

Why not? He does love to wallow in other people's garbage, after all.

I burst into the "I love trash" song and prepared to feed Oscar.

In eight easy steps:

Step One: Gather materials.
Bin of worms: check.
Mouldy garbage: check.
Annoying black and white cat who can't mind his own business: check.

Step Two: Open the bin.
Freak out because it looks like there's a lot of worms in there.
Realize that it's actually shredded newspaper.
Feel like an idiot.

Step Three: Open the bin of garbage.
Feel impressed at the amount of mould that has grown on the peaches in two days.
Think that mouldy peaches is a pretty awesome band name.

Step Four: Pull back the pile o' worm poop and put in the pile o' garbage.
Mmmm...tasty.


Step Five: Look at the worms squirming around in their own poop.
Think that's pretty messed up.


Step Six: Try to take a close-up shot of one of the Oscars.
Do a really piss poor job of it.
Which Oscar is that, anyway? Oscar 12 or Oscar 174?

Step Seven: Say, "Ah, fuck it" and take an extra blurry shot that makes the worms, worm poop and garbage look like some kind of post-apocalyptic society.
Name the post-apocalyptic society "Slimey" after Oscar the Grouch's pet worm.

Step Eight: Cover up the garbage with the "clean" worm poop.

Feel all smug, superior and environmental.

Try not to think about the squirmy wormies eating your garbage under your sink.

*Only if you buy them for $50, plus tax. Or eat raw meat or something (free range, organic raw meat, of course, so that you can be extra smug while feeding your intestinal worms.)

The Germans are coming, the Germans are coming

I googled the name of my jaw surgery blog last night, and the third entry that popped up was this:

It's the "Smiling Bella" Female Latex Mask!

According to the website: "No matter what you intend to do with this mask, one thing is certain: you are going to have lots of fun, guaranteed!"

Only if your guaranteed fun includes being totally creeped out by yourself and your ghoulish smile.

And why does it not surprise me that this particular website is available in both English and German? Hmmm, maybe that's how the German orthodontic fetishists found me?

Speaking of which, the 1,500 German orthodontic fetishists who found my jaw surgery blog a few months ago actually did me a big favour. Before their arrival, that site was getting 15-30 hits a day, from friends and people from the jaw surgery message boards I frequent. After the Germans came (in some cases quite literally, I am sure), the site gets about 100 hits per day (from legitimate searches, not more fetishists.)

Because of the spike in hits, Google's crawlers took note of my website and prioritized it in their searches. Now, when people who are looking for information on jaw surgery and recovery, they find my site. So in a weird way, the freaky fetishists helped me help other people going through the same thing.

How thoughtful of them! How am I ever to repay their kindness?

I considered taking some pictures of sauerkraut stuck in my arch wires, or maybe a big German sausage against my brackets. But that was too much work. The anemia makes me tired, don't you know.

In the end, I decided to devote my final braces colours to my legions of German fans. The bracket ties are bands of black, red and gold - the colours of the German flag.

Genießen Sie, meine Freunde.

Unsex me, Facebook

I noticed the Facebook ads but didn't think much of them until I read Nat's post about how Facebook keeps calling her fat. And then, I read this post over at the Feministing Community Forum about Facebook targeting diet advertising to all female users.

To quote the post:

...recently I've been trying alternating between being a man and being a woman and seeing how this affects the ads. I've also talked to a few of my friends who have been trying similar things.

One thing stands out, and it's so very obvious perhaps I shouldn't mention it: women are constantly told they're fat and ugly, and that they should pay someone to be thinner and more beautiful. If they're not marked as dating anyone, they're also told they should be and that they should pay people to help with this, but this does also happen to males, as well. I haven't yet noticed any obvious ads which seem male-specific, which seems odd to me.

It might seem a small thing, just like any one thing a person says to their daughter might seem a small thing. But there's a cumulative, wearing effect of thousands of pictures of tummies with tape measures around them saying "You're fat" in the corner of the screen.

Well, fuck you Facebook. I'm switching teams. Savia is no longer going to be a female pawn in your little advertising shame game.

That's right, I am unsexing myself on Facebook. And then resexing myself.

Hmmm...that sounds kind of naughy. Kind of makes me want to just sex myself a few more times for good measure.

Because even if Facebook thinks I'm fat, I'd still do me, 'cause I'm hot. And the only thing more hot than me now, is me posing as a male and then doing me, then posing as a female and doing me, then posing as an androgynous person and doing me, (and then posting the pictures on Facebook, of course!)

I'm still figuring out the logistics on how that's going to work exactly, so I might have to get back to you with the details and posting timelines...

Howdy, stranger

Savia has arranged for drinks and nachos with some of her favourite former co-workers, one of whom she has not seen for almost a year. She walks in the back door of the pub and sees him walk in the front door. He looks a lot older than she remembers, but she knows it's him anyway. She bursts into a huge smile and waves at him.

Savia: [walking up to him] Wow, it doesn't even look like you!
Him: [looking a bit confused] You were waving at me.
Savia: [pauses and looks at him again, a bit confused herself] ... I don't know you, do I?
Him: No.
Savia: I thought you were the person I'm meeting. I was about to give you a big hug.
Him: Well, you still can if you want. I'm a pretty huggable guy.
Savia: [pauses and looks at him for a beat, then gives him a big hug] Nice to meet you, then!

Savia sees one of the other people she's meeting for drinks and goes to the table to sit with her.

Friend: Who was that?
Savia: I have no idea. But I can tell you it definitely wasn't Jim.
Friend: So...why were you hugging him, then?
Savia: I figured it was the only way to salvage an awkward situation.
Friend: Alright, then.

Freedom...in a month, maybe

So, I went to my orthodontist yesterday and got the news that at my next appointment, I will be debraced, brace-free, free!!

Yes, it's true, Savia will no longer be called train tracks, brace face, metal mouth, or the Black and Decker Pecker Wrecker.

Not that anyone has ever called me that in the past two and a half years, but you get my drift.

It doesn't even feel real. These brackets and wires have pretty much become part of my face and it's hard to imagine not having them. No more brushing or flossing around them (note to self: try to floss once in awhile so that last statement will at least be true), no more kissing Superstar ever so tentatively to avoid metal against skin, no more wondering, "Can I eat that with my braces?"

When I get these mo-fos off, the first thing I'm going to do? Eat fresh, organic corn on the cob. Oh, my dear lord, it is going to be FANTASTIC!

Hooray!!

Caro Nonno

On Thursday, my Nonno (grandfather) died.

I'm still thrown by the news. The difficulty is that I don't know my father's side of the family very well because they live in Italy. My father died when I was 10 years old, so we didn't visit them much after that. In fact, I can count the times I have spent with my Nonno on one of my hands. I've always felt cut off from half of my family, my heritage.

The two times I have gone to Italy as an adult, it has felt as though the pieces were coming together, that a hole in my life was slowly being repaired with the connection I was making with my family.

Now, one of those threads is gone and I feel lost.

It's not as though I didn't expect this. When I went to Italy to see my family last year, I was surprised at how much Nonno had deteriorated since I saw him last. After ten years, my Nonna looked almost exactly the same and was still as feisty as ever, but Nonno looked so sick and old.

He was in a wheelchair and had a catheter bag. Nonna needed to take care of him all the time, even helping him in the bathroom. He almost never talked, coughed almost constantly, and seemed as though he were just existing, not actually living.

It was so hard to see him like that. To see this Italian patriarch who had once been so strong, now so weak and frail. It reminded me of when my father was dying. Of how I felt when I was watching him die. Knowing that it was only a matter of time until it happened. And this really was the last time I was going to see my grandfather alive.

I couldn't deal with it. While I was staying with my grandparents, I made excuses to go for naps during the afternoon so I could cry myself to sleep and pass out. I didn't know what else to do.

When it was time for me to leave my grandparents and come back to Canada, I took so many pictures that Nonno got pissed off and actually talked. Basta, he said (enough.) But it wasn't enough. Nothing I could do would be enough to make up for the lost years, would be enough to stop him from dying. I cried hard when I left them, because I knew I would never see him again.
And now that it's happened, it doesn't seem real. Because my family is still over there and I'm still here. In a way, it doesn't feel any different than it did before. Except I know that the next time I visit (next year, hopefully), he will be noticeably absent.

All I have left of him are pictures and a handful of memories.

He loved to tell stories about how we went to visit him in Germany when I was one and a half years old. His eyes would sparkle when he talked about little blonde Savia playing "Ring around the Rosy" with the German children in the town square.

When my father was dying, Nonno was the one who came to Canada to be by his side. My father was angry that my mom called him at first. I think he was too proud to have his father see him that way. But I do think they were glad to see each other and have that time together at the end, as difficult as it was.

Nonno couldn't speak English and my brother and I couldn't speak Italian, so the only way we could communicate was through gestures. When we went to visit ten years ago, Nonno was the one we "spoke" with the least. He was more the strong silent type. He did tell us once, through a translator, that while he couldn't speak English, he did understand some from when he worked in England, decades ago, and that he enjoyed listening to us. So, although he was quiet, he was always listening.

He communicated so much with his eyes. My brother's comment after we left that time was, "Wow, Nonno really loves you." I asked, "What do you mean?" My brother explained that he watched the way Nonno looked at me, and he could see in his eyes and through his expressions that he loved me best. I was surprised, because in Italian culture, it's all about the boy, the son, the one who carries on the family name. But it was me whom he adored. Maybe he and I forged some kind of special bond when we were in Germany together?

This is so hard and so sad. I feel for my Nonna, who is alone now. It was so hard having Nonno be so ill. She was stressed out all the time, afraid to sleep or leave him, lest something happen to him. You could feel her anxiety and frustration, see the weariness in her eyes.

While it's difficult to think about the fact that he's gone, I am relieved that he is no longer suffering and that Nonna doesn't have to worry anymore. She's an incredibly strong woman and I know she'll be okay and that my family will take good care of her (not that she would ever admit she needs taking care of, because she is one tough lady.)

I'll miss you, Nonno. I'm sorry I never got a chance to get to know you better, but we'll always have Germany, right?