Essays from East Lawrencetown: Queenie's Big Chill III

What a day! Queenie is finally warm, at 9.45pm. Warm and in bed. Finally.

The electricity in the house has been acting up since before she moved in. During the summer, whenever someone flushed a toilet, all the lights in the house would dim, the odd appliance would blow for no reason, stuff like that. But as the evenings got darker and the power drain increased so did the problems. By Christmas, most of the circuits in the house were blowing at least once a day.

When Queenie got back from New Jersey, the only power left in the house was her light, the bathroom light, one socket in her room and the socket on the stove. Not funny, trying to run a house for five on all that. Queenie was lugging the microwave in and out of her room so that people could make dinner. But at least the furnace was working. Until last night. Everything blew last night.

So Queenie went to bed, because she had to get up at the crack of dawn anyway. So there she was, tossing and turning in bed, groaning a bit because Lady Moonbeam was making her presence felt. PsychoB and the Argonaut (Jason) were watching a hockey match loudly in the dark (no change there), but as well as being kept awake, Queenie was wide awake because she had drunk Coke that evening, had not drunk beer, had run out of relaxing holidays, and had to go to stressful, election-ridden work the next day.

At two fifty am she lost it and tore into the living room squeaking like a bat tracking a mosquito to demand they shut up. The Argonaut slunk off to bed and PsychoB banged around the kitchen a bit to show Queenie who was boss. Got to sleep despite for a bit but Lady Moonbeam is the boss in this house today and woke Queenie up again at 5.45am.

So I got up. Got dressed. Ate breakfast. Went out to get the 7.40am bus. It was minus eight and a bit windy.

No bus.

No bus for forty, achingly, freezingly, FUCKING minutes.

Queenie’s feet were sending pain shoots up her legs and into her groin by the time the bus came. As Himself would say 'Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr'.

You can only say Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr properly when your whole body is shaking involuntarily so that you don't slip into a frostbite coma on the street while waiting for the bus.

Her face hurt.

Her cheeks felt like she’d burnt them on a stove. But cold.

There was a spot in the small of her back that felt like the Snow Queen was kissing it relentlessly.

And of course it was the first day back to work so the office was cold.

Cold all day.

And then Queenie decided to work late, and then remembered she had to go to the supermarket. Which is freezing because of all the freezer cabinets pumping out cold air. Then home in the cold. And even though it was after seven when she got home, Nova Scotia Power were still foostering around the pylon in a cherry picker. And the house was down to fifteen degrees.

We issue press releases about houses when they’re that cold here.

Good thing I grew up in a Georgian house, where heat was something that escaped as soon as it was created in the radiators, and wafted up to warm the cobwebs in the ceilings. (Not that we had cobwebs very often, it’s just sometimes in the winter when it was very dark you didn’t notice them for a bit).

Now I know I can do cold.
I hate it, hate it, hate it.
But I can do it.

I was relentlessly cheerful about the whole thing because I thought my landlady was going to have a nervous breakdown and she’s a great landlady and she didn’t deserve the strop she was getting from the Argonaut.

I swear there’s nothing uglier than a whingey Cape Bretoner.

Anyways, it all got sorted in the end and Queenie cooked dinner and ran a bath and sat in it until her bones started sweating and now she’s finally warm. In bed. Warm.

Aaaaahhhhhh……………!

And she’s all smiley too because the fourth member of the Byrne clan to visit Halifax in nearly as many months emailed her today to announce the impending visit next week.

Queenie was very amused to think that there will have been four Byrnes in Halifax since she moved here and no Queenie-familias.

How ironic. I think I’ll do like my brother Baz and just move family.

I jest, I hear a little rumour that that might be on the turn soon. Just a flutter of a rumour mind, nothing in stone yet. But deliciously portentious all the same.

Yes, yes, I know that’s the incorrect use of the word portentious. Do I look like I care? You can’t see me to know? Well, get your ass over here then. Too cold furya is it? Brrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

I stayed late in work today, as part of my ‘January is for working and working and saving and scrimping and more working’ vibe. They all left at five on the nose (despite there being a federal election), forgot I was there and turned off all the lights.

I couldn’t be assed turning them back on, so I put on RTE's Nine O’Clock News for company.

What has Sharon Ni Bheolain done to her hair? It looks like she got the new Siena Miller look done in the Ballyragget Ladies' Badminton Society Perming Salon.

And I got such a fright when I heard the regional correspondents. Do I talk like them? They all sound like leprechauns.

I’ve gotten all cosmopolitan, you know.

That’s cos I’ve been to New York (photos under the name there).

For two nights and two days.

Shopping.

And bar-hopping.

‘Twas fab, ‘twas.

Some things I loved about this visit to New York

The Stars and Stripes suspended from the ceiling of Grand Central Station.

The Manhattan skyline from the train to Queens.

The red, green and gold flags fluttering in the wind at the Rockefeller Centre – were they for Kwanzai, I wonder?

Going on the beer with Stevo and Eileen after walking from 42nd to 2nd in the FREEZING cold.

The REALLY expensive Eastern chi-chi household stuff and Just Fahblus T'ings store we found in the Village, that had Nepalese woollen hats on sale for seven hundred dollars. The kind of hats you get for a fiver when you backpack in Nepal.

Finding a signed, first edition hardback of Salman Rushdie’s new novel in Shakespeare and Co that was reduced to twenty bucks in the sale. The shop assistant told me I should sell it on eBay. I said ‘after I’ve read it’. But I won’t.

The gawa crab we had at in Mainland India at the end of Bleechers (am I spelling that correctly)

Spending all night the first night looking for that Irish bar.

Finding it.

Having it to ourselves.

Getting a business card that said Kevin, Solas Vibe Co-ordinator. I shit you not. Imagine getting the apostrophe wrong on that!

Knowing we could do it all again the next night.

Hearing the snippets of conversation. My favourite was Because I love you, I will wear socks to the airport.

Being persuaded to buy that skirt by Jersey Girl. Who is now haranguing me on my own blog about buying clothes. Tsk…. Ahdunno!

The people working in the shoe shops on West Eighth Street. Particularly the woman who tried to get me to try on a pair of boots and when I said ‘no, no more temptation, don’t let me buy anything. I’m not allowed buy any more shoes today’, replied ‘okay girl, but you in a shoe store’

Being completely wrecked so deciding not to go home and change but to just keep doing it all again the next night.

Pastrami sandwiches in Katz’ Diner for supper, sitting between the photos of Johnny Depp and Bill Clinton.

Drinking cucumber gin with a lawyer from New Brunswick in the Rue B. Cucumber gin is almost as nice as sloe gin.

The bouncer at The Living Room carding me, not letting me in because I had no id, and then letting me in for being honest when I told him I was thirty five and a half.

Having ‘ceann an baile’ at almost three am, served to us by a girl from somewhere near Nenagh.

Hailing the maddest Malian cab driver in the world to take us back to Queens. MCD – do you know which way you want to go? Queenie – no, but I know how much it costs, so don’t rip us off or we’ll kill you. MCD – Would you really? Queenie, not very upright at this point – Oh yeah. MCD laughs insanely and whizzes us across the bridge, turning round to talk the whole time. Queenie wonders who’s going to kill whom.

The How did they keep the bar up in Whelans’ while we were separated? Lower East Side Pub Crawl

Eileen would like to point out that she invented this pub crawl about five years ago. Stevo would like to point out that he used to live in New York and already knew his way round. Queenie would like to point out that she wrote it all down. Once on the back of a Delirious Tremens beer mat, and again tonight.

If she can find the effing beer mat!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh no it’s okay…. here we are… I had it put away in the new wicker basket tidy set for posterity!! Queenie got to Canadian Tire this week and bought storage receptacles so she doesn’t go mad with the clutter. Nice Indonesian cane ones. For seven bucks. She dreads to think...

6.25pm The Fleamarket, on Avenue A. We had onion soup and glasses of Cabernet Sauvignon, and the cheese in the onion soup was soft yet chewy – perfect

7.42pm Croxley Ales, on Avenue B. We had the Beer of the Week, except they had run out, so we had the substitute beer of the week.

9.26pm 2A, on Avenue A and Second. So famous they don’t have a name on it. Apparently

10.21pm Katz Diner, for pastrami sandwiches, coleslaw and fries

10.50pm The Living room, near Arlene’s Grocery, which we didn’t go to for some reason. Marc the bouncer cards me and there’s a jazz funk band playing in the back room who aren’t as good as what’s on the stereo in the bar