honey on a pimple?

This week I got a pimple. In one corner of my forehead, just below the hairline. So I did what every embarrassed young woman does -- I picked and touched it until it became several times more noticeable.

I had read somewhere that putting a dab of honey on a zit, covered by a band-aid, works like a charm. The honey is supposedly anti-bacterial and it should dry it out.

What did I have to lose? Last night I dutifully put a dab of sticky honey on my face, covered with a band-aid, and went to bed.

This morning when I removed the band-aid ...

Nothing had changed. Except the area was shiny until I wiped the honey off. The only benefit was preventing me from being able to touch it.

I love honey, but unless I've missed something this supposed "cure" for a pimple does not work. Don't believe everything you read on the Internet, people!

the great gatsby

The Great Gatsby has been on my to-read list for quite some time. One of the strange things about going to church in a movie theatre is walking by movie posters on your way in and out. Every Sunday for the last few weeks, I've been walking by a giant four-sided cardboard advertisement for the movie The Great Gatsby. I knew I had to read the novel before seeing the film version, so when Cole's had a convenient display dedicated to the book I picked up a copy. 

A willing victim of marketing. 

I really enjoyed The Great Gatsby. Even though it was published in 1925, Fitzgerald's writing is fresh and powerful. It was interesting to read from a historical perspective -- the main character talks about "going into bonds" because "everyone he knows is going into bonds," just a few years shy of the stock market crash. I had also learned in history classes how World War I had rocked Western culture. The shining promises of progress were replaced with doubts, disillusion and distrust. This shift can be felt in The Great Gatsby. 

I did not expect this book, set in "the roaring twenties," to be sad. But it was one of the saddest books I have ever read. Underneath the clothes, the cars, the glitz, the lights . . . there is a persistent emptiness in the world Fitzgerald creates. Characters are surrounded by people, yet lonely. Lives end abruptly, meaninglessly, and funerals are sparsely attended. Marriages are empty and love is fleeting. Things are broken. Identities are false, the past has been carefully crafted. All of the wealth that is showcased in the novel is ... hollow. 

The book is haunting, yet I believe it is so relevant today. My philosophy professor at Redeemer liked to call modern culture a culture of "cheerful nihilism." Everything is meaningless, it's all about having fun and chasing temporary pleasures along the way. It's about the Facebook photos, the appearances, the practiced smiles. But there are so many people -- especially young people -- who feel rootless, who are grasping after significance. The Great Gatsby reminds me again of the raw need for God, the hunger for hope and meaning. 

Some of my favourite quotes from The Great Gatsby: 

"'Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,' he told me, 'just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.'" (1) 

[Daisy, about her newborn daughter] "I'm glad it's a girl. And I hope she'll be a fool --- that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool." (22) 

"...the silver pepper of the stars." (25) 

"... the cab stopped at one slice in a long white cake of apartment-houses." (31) 

[Nick, the narrator]: "Everyone suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known." (59) 

"... the clock ticked on the washstand and the moon soaked with wet light his tangled clothes upon the floor." (95) 

[Nick sitting beside Jordan in the car, contemplating his 30th birthday and the passing of time]: "So we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight." (129) 

"... a hundred houses, at once conventional and grotesque, crouching under a sullen, overhanging sky and a lustreless moon." (167) 

"Her hand ... sparkles cold with jewels." (167) 

"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy -- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was the kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made..." (170) 

And the last words of the novel ... 

"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter -- tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms further .... And on fine morning ---
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." (172) 

swap till you drop

A few weeks ago I hosted (and attended) my very first clothing swap party. I needed to trim down my closet in preparation for our move to Uganda, so the idea of a clothing swap sounded genius. Our apartment is a little on the small side (and a little on the haphazardly-being-dismantled side) so my friend Lindsay agreed to have it at her place. Her poor husband was informed that he would have to vacate the premises for the evening of April 6 and we set about planning.

Some notes on how I hosted a clothing swap party:

1. I sent out the invitations as far in advance as I could (about a month) to give people plenty of notice to look through their closets. I just sent a Facebook invitation, so as the party drew closer I could remind people about it. I read that 10 -15 is a good number for a swap. We ended up having only eight girls (plus one who couldn't

come but sent clothing), and it still worked wonderfully. In the invitation I explained the idea, told the guests what to expect and gave guidelines about what to bring.

2. My guidelines: everyone had to bring a minimum of five items. These could be pieces of clothing, jewelry or accessories. Stains and broken zippers were to be left at home, along with any used bathing suits or undergarments :) Bringing some items with flexible sizing was encouraged.

3. We decided to make the party especially feminine, so I made a pretty strawberry angel food cake trifle (mostly just so I could use the trifle dish I got as a wedding gift) and brought out my teacups.

4. Since we had just purchased plenty of bins for our move, I used them to organize the clothes. I made labels using scrapbooking paper and organized the bins according to short-sleeve and sleeveless tops, long-sleeve tops, bottoms and accessories. I used a clothes drying rack and the curtain road to drape jackets and hang dresses. We got a lot of short-sleeve and sleeveless tops, so we ended up separating them into two different bins.

Our own little Frenchy's! 

5. My friend Cait sells handmade jewelry. It was fun to have her jewelry stand there to make it feel more like an event and to have the option of adding jewelry to new outfits.

Embellish jewelry by Cait

6. Tickets. Even though there were only eight of us, and even though we are all *nice* girls, we all know that things can get tricky when it comes to deciding who gets what. So I bought tickets from the dollar store. After everyone had arrived and the clothes had been organized, there was a set amount of time to browse through everything and try things on, and then everyone got five tickets. They got to pick their "top five" pieces (to avoid one person snagging all the good stuff). If there was a dispute over a certain item, they could "spend" more than one ticket on it to outbid the other person. The tickets helped keep things organized and it was fun to go around in a circle and show off your favourite pieces. Surprisingly we all had different styles and wardrobe needs, so there were only one or two items that more than one girl had her eye on.

7. After picking our favourites and spending our tickets, it was a free for all! Some people could stock up their wardrobes, while others wanted to downsize their closets and only pick up a few new things. It was really fun to try stuff  on together and get each other's opinions on different pieces. Surprisingly, despite the variance in sizes everything worked out.

At the end of the night ... we had a lot of fun and every girl walked away with new (free!) clothes. The only failure: I didn't end up scaling down my wardrobe as much as I had hoped :) I can never pass up new clothes!

citizens of tomorrow

More quotes from my grade 12 students ... Just think: in a few months they will be graduated "finished products" of the public education system with the ability to vote...

"Which country have you chosen for your presentation?"
[upturned face, total innocence]: "Ni**er." 
"Um ... you mean Niger. Niger."


"Miss, I don't understand what we're supposed to pick for our presentations." 
"You can either pick a country or an organization."
"But some people aren't doing that." 
"What do you mean?"
"They're not, like, picking countries. They're picking places in Africa."
Confusion. The realization that she thinks Africa is a country. And here's where I actually heard myself saying these words to a grade 12 student: "Yup, Africa's the continent and then inside the continent are countries. Congo, Rwanda ... those are countries."

On female genital mutilation:
"Often siscors, raisors or unsteril utincles used." 
You can't spell razors? Don't you see that word regularly enough to know that "raisors" looks wrong?

On an article about a Muslim woman being asked to remove her hijab:
"A Musleme woman was asked to take off her Punjab before playing in soccer." 

On an article about a Sikh man in the RCMP who was asked to remove his turban:
"They wanted him to take off his hijab." 
Wrong religion, wrong gender. And you just read about it in the article! 

[closing remark for a formal essay]
"All I can say is either way, the future is going to be f---ing crazy." 

[again, a formal essay about societal change...]
"In the 1880s women wore full body suits, now today in 2013 women are wearing dental floss up their bums at beaches." 


At the top of the page of a first draft ...
"RUFF COPY" 
I hope so!