When you’re decorating for Hallowe’en this year, why not consider a demon?

Last month, we sold our house in Toronto. Today, I was in it for the last time.

Of course, we haven’t lived there for more than two years. But this year we decided to quit hedging our bets: we’d sell the house and commit to life in the U.S. My sister and brother-in-law (and, starting last year, niece), who had been living there, helped to get the place ready to be seen, and then our agent sold it…the first day it was on the market. Canada’s recession hasn’t been as bad as America’s, but still, I think we were very lucky and had a brilliant real estate pro working on our behalf.

With the closing nearly upon us, we planned our trip back. Thank God for Dave “House Husband” Cole, who was able to spend the week here doing all the remaining packing and organizing. I arrived this morning, and after a very brief meeting at our lawyer’s office to sign the few relevant papers (fifteen minutes, in and out — take a lesson, AMERICA), I went to the house to go through the four boxes of my things that remained and tossed out probably half of that. Finally, I decided I could part with my English papers from high school and university and the Fametracker stories I used to draft out longhand (!!!). And wow, I really used to buy a lot of stationery when I had a whole office to keep it in.

Parting with the house has been a very different experience than I had expected. On my drive in from the airport this beautiful summer Friday morning, I found myself overwhelmed with nostalgia for our old life. When I was self-employed running a TV website, I used to get in maybe a recap a day during the summer months; we looked forward to summer like schoolkids do. The hotel where we’re staying on this trip is just a few blocks from the gym I used to go to every weekday, so the cab driver even followed some of the same route I used to take to get there, and I remembered how nice it was to have those few hours to myself, and to follow that up sometimes with shopping in Yorkville — and then, if I felt like it, an afternoon nap.

But when I actually got to the house, for some reason all I could think of were the bad times! Self-employment has a lot of downside, too — particularly when you start a successful website in 1999 and have to scramble to keep it alive and yourself (generally) out of debt through the internet bust that follows. Our story ultimately ended well, but we were extraordinarily lucky there too, and there were some pretty grim days and months before that. Compared to our wee little one-bedroom apartment in New York (which we love), the house seems so big now, and so full of encumbrances and obligations. It’s almost a hundred years old now, and it could be a lot of work. When our sewer backed up in the basement (…the first time), we’d only been living there for a few months — and after that we had to replace the furnace, the dishwasher, the sewer pipe (eventually), and the roof. And every winter, there was shovelling. I mean, I didn’t do it. But it happened.

We had wonderful times there, too. My sister lived with us when she was in university, and though our relationship had been testy at times before that, our second cohabitation made us, like, super-sappy best friends, which might never have happened if she’d lived in a dorm. We hosted dozens of Oscar parties and barbecues and game nights. We built a nice little home business there. If you’re going to work in your home, it helps if it’s big and comfortable and has lots of room for the crap you accumulate. But we don’t need that much space (or that much crap) anymore.

So goodbye, Toronto! I’ll miss our friends (obviously), but also the veggie street dogs; Shoppers Drug Mart; the plentiful Simpsons reruns on every channel; the free health care; but most of all, Utopia.

I won’t miss the house.

And I hope the new owners just love the new roof.

12:41:10 AM Tara Ariano: Where did you put my birth certificate after you scanned it?
12:41:14 AM Tara Ariano: It’s not in the folder.
12:41:24 AM Dave Cole: Are you sure? I put in all together.
12:41:33 AM Dave Cole: Did you look in folded paper, etc?
12:41:47 AM Tara Ariano: The envelope that it had been in just has Leah’s organ donor card in it now.
12:41:49 AM Tara Ariano: I’ll look again.
12:42:10 AM Dave Cole: I just scanned the two small ones. If it was a long-form thing, I didn’t scan that
12:42:32 AM Dave Cole: There was a old one and a new one
12:42:53 AM Tara Ariano: It was not a long-form thing.
12:42:55 AM Tara Ariano: I know.
12:44:04 AM Dave Cole: I put them together in a pile. Either on my desk or the console. Maybe Marcela moved them
12:44:24 AM Dave Cole: Check my desk’s bundle of papers
12:44:58 AM Dave Cole: I’ll double check I didn’t take them… one sec.
12:45:01 AM Tara Ariano: There’s a pile of stuff on the shinebox beside your desk, but that looks like the scans, not the originals.
12:45:12 AM Dave Cole: Yeah I mean on my desk
12:45:18 AM Dave Cole: near the lamp
12:45:25 AM Tara Ariano: There’s no pile.
12:45:39 AM Tara Ariano: Or rather, there’s a small pile of receipts and stuff, no ID.
12:46:40 AM Dave Cole: No I don’t have it. Did you check the console desk
12:47:11 AM Tara Ariano: There’s no pile.
12:47:17 AM Dave Cole: Ok.
12:47:28 AM Dave Cole: Check the console pull out and my desk drawer
12:48:14 AM Dave Cole: Check the floor under the console. Maybe it fell down. When you say you checked the folder….
12:48:26 AM Dave Cole: You mean the manila folder or the passport folder?
12:48:37 AM Tara Ariano: I already said I’d check the folder again and then you told me to look everywhere else.
12:48:40 AM Dave Cole: The green passport folder
12:48:44 AM Tara Ariano: I meant the file folder.
12:48:52 AM Tara Ariano: Did you put it in my passport cover?
12:48:54 AM Dave Cole: Yes
12:49:06 AM Dave Cole: Stuffed everything in there
12:49:18 AM Dave Cole: Which I told you.
12:49:33 AM Tara Ariano: I thought you meant the FOLDER, like the file folder.
12:49:35 AM Dave Cole: But you are getting The Old
12:49:39 AM Tara Ariano: WHATEVER, I found it.
12:49:42 AM Dave Cole: YEAH!
12:49:47 AM Tara Ariano: The green thing is not a folder.
12:50:02 AM Tara Ariano: There is a passport cover on my passport, which I keep in a travel wallet.
12:50:18 AM Tara Ariano: Don’t try to turn this around on me just because you have an inferior vocabulary.
12:50:27 AM Tara Ariano: Why I would even need to bring a birth certificate I don’t know but whatever.
12:51:33 AM Dave Cole: I told you it was there and I drew you a map showing a green folder and I called it the Green Doctrine and I changed my name to old greenie.
12:51:53 AM Dave Cole: I painted my nuts green too. REMEMBER?
12:53:01 AM Tara Ariano: I don’t miss you anymore.

The day after Boxing Day, we discuss how our Christmas was ruined, and seek your advice on how much champagne two non-drinkers should try to consume on New Year’s Eve — for podcasting purposes — and not die.

I won’t bum everyone out with the whole sad story, but the short version is that Dave and I were supposed to go back to Toronto for the holidays. Maybe you’ve heard (or experienced it yourselves), but the weather’s kind of screwed up people’s plans.  After two days and three cancelled flights at two different airports (and, between cabs to and from the airport and two nights of our Toronto hotel reservation that we wouldn’t be using, lost cash expenditures in the mid-three figures), we finally decided to cut our losses and resign ourselves to not seeing our closest family members for the holidays this year.

This, among other things, is what I’ll be missing.

Destined to become the web-sensation heir to “Kids Watching Sneezing Panda,” please enjoy my niece Olivia cracking the hell up at “Hamster On A Piano“:

This news really unexpectedly bummed me out yesterday: an entire dictionary staff laid off because the publisher can’t compete with online dictionaries? But most online dictionaries suck balls — and don’t get me started on online thesauruses. The Canadian Oxford Dictionary is one of the first reference works I bought when I became self-employed, and the one I brought with me from Toronto when I moved to New York and kept in my office at 30 Rock for spelling emergencies.

Meanwhile, my mom’s old two-volume compact Complete Oxford that had four dictionary pages per tissue-thin page and came with a magnifying glass in a little wee drawer, which fascinated me as a child, was ruined this summer when our basement in Toronto flooded from the record rainfall. Thanks a lot, God.

Not actually in pog form, but with seven (7!) new designs. First, get to know the ones that are only here for a limited time.

“Office Manager” Back in the day, the office manager was the undisputed queen of all the secretaries, assigning the cutest girls to work for the most powerful executives, showing off her perfectly hoisted bosom in her perfectly tailored outfits, purring passive-aggressively at her foes, possibly sleeping with the boss, and generally running the floor with an iron fist in a velvet glove (literally, in the winter months). It was a sexier, more refined time; you could tell from all the cigarettes.

“McPoyle Family Reunion” Ah, those summer long weekends. Perfect for sleeping in, lazing about the house in your robe, and heading out for a little togetherness at the family reunion. In fact, who’s to say you even need to change out of your robe?

“Stealer Of Money From The Church Collection Plate” Perhaps the best way to distract attention from your actual transgressions is to claim one you probably didn’t even do, and identify yourself as the Stealer Of Money From The Church Collection Plate. (You…didn’t do that, right? Because people can tell — the money always smells like church.)

“Sparkles Mall Tour” There’s an impression abroad in the world that the U.S. leads the world in shopping mall domination. But can Glarkware make a point, please? Can we talk about the spectacular malls that Canada has to offer?

And then, the three new additions to the permanent collection:

“It Takes A Pillage” Today’s parents put out a spread of cassoulet and filtered water; for Vikings, it was a whole roasted goat, washed down with mead — but they ate it as a family.

“Jack The Rabbit” Elephants could be as forgetful as your grandma. Mules might not be stubborn, but easygoing. Maybe if the Lord knew what assholes lambs actually are, he’d have chosen to describe his only begotten son as the “ocelot of God.”

“On Ze Way” When an American Presidential campaign can drag on for nearly two years, and the average voter is expected to follow along and care for that entire time, well, it’s almost enough to make you wish for a good, old-fashioned coup.

They are ready for purchase…now. Go get you some!

(Credit to Sarah for coming up with a name for what I’m doing (in the last podcast) while Dave is in Toronto for the summer, facilitating my sister’s maternity leave from Glarkware.)

So it’s been a week — and so far, it’s gone pretty much as I thought it would.

Day 1: Worked, and stayed in my my pyjamas until about 8:30. Got out of the shower at 8:45, debated not going to the store for supplies, remembered I was out of toothpaste, and went after all. I celebrated temporary singlehood by getting non-Dave foods like white bread and Froot Loops, and takeout McDonald’s for dinner.

Days 2-4: Went out very rarely, just to run errands — bank, mail, takeout salads. Earlier in the week, I had made a note on the calendar to clean out my closet on Friday night and the drawers full of toiletries and medicine on Saturday. However, I got through both tasks in about half an hour, so I ended up making Friday a very early night, half-watching TV in bed with a Sudoku book. Oh, speaking of bed: I’m sleeping on Dave’s side. My left hip has been bothering me lately (kind of like a cramp; sometimes puts my left leg to sleep), and I had theorized with my vast knowledge of orthopedics that the cause was the bed, since it has a bit of a peak in the middle and sags on the sides. So if I sleep on Dave’s side, with my left hip elevated, maybe that would correct the problem. And guess what? It has! (We’re getting a new bed and frame when Dave comes back.) Oh yeah, I also made a lovely fruit salad.

Day 5: Slept in like a mofo and puttered around with a special project. Installed Skype and had my first video chat with Dave. “Oh my God, you look like Saddam Hussein when they found him in his spider hole” might not have been the most loving thing I could have said, but it was accurate. Maria came into town and we hung out, which was nice — it’s the most I’d physically spoken to another human using my voice the whole week.

Day 6: Slept in just a little. Hucked three green garbage bags of castoff clothes and other soft goods down to the lobby, hailed a cab, and dropped them off at Goodwill. Had a quiet lunch with my New York magazine and then went to Mamma Mia! with all the other middle-aged ladies of the Upper West Side. (Review: goofy but delightful.) Quick stop at Kiehl’s; considered getting some stuff from Magnolia for later but it was so hot the thought of a cupcake made my throat close up. However, seeing Magnolia reminded me that I’d wanted to try making an icebox cake their way (stacked in layers) instead of my mom’s way (in a modified log in the shape of whatever year birthday I might be celebrating), and I stopped for supplies before heading home. The result is pictured above. I just made a miniature version — four chocolate wafers per layer, for maybe nine layers — but was pleased with the results. Dave doesn’t like the chocolate version much, but when he comes back I might try it with ginger snaps. It turned out so well that I dragged out the Magnolia Bakery cookbook I’d bought years ago and from which I’d never baked a thing and looked up the recipe for chocolate cupcakes (my favourite) to see if I could make them from scratch. Got intimidated by the mention of a double boiler, but Stephanie — who’s having her own Spinster Camp on the west coast — has assured me via email that there are ways to MacGyver the recipe without one and not to be scared.

Day 7: First day back to the gym! Shut up, I did so. And oh, God, it sucked. More errands.

Day 8: Biggest day yet! I put everything on the same day to get it all over with, and started very early and ended late to make up for the chunk I was taking out in the middle of the day. We’re thinking of redoing the floors and kitchen in the apartment, so a contractor came to look at the place and take measurements and stuff. Then I had lunch downtown with Nsenga, and got my hair cut. Finished work and put laundry away.

Day 9: More work. More groceries. More of the same. This is why I’m looking at cupcake recipes and trying to invent projects for myself. I already miss Dave. Sigh.

Order of events:

1. See item on FARK about a bike store getting its stock by stealing bikes.

2. Note that it’s from the Toronto Star.

3. Read first line of story and scream to empty apartment, “I KNEW IT.”

That place is so sketchy that I really could not have been less surprised to learn that they steal bikes. Jerks.