Battle Royale

If love is a battlefield, then my life is love-ly.

This week I feel besieged from all sides, nothing can be taken for granted and even life's more mundane elements are in revolt.

Anyone who has been reading my blog knows that there is a long-standing duel between my inflatable bed and me. When I moved here in the summer it seemed cheap and practical. And for a time it served me well, inching me closer to my ceiling fan during the sweaty nights of the humid Toronto summer. However, we are allies no more.



Granted I expected the queen-size air mattress to be punctured eventually. When the sad day arrived I used one of the patches that came with it and moved on. But our relationship was never the same. The bed became temperamental, she wouldn't stay inflated for as long as she used to and deep down I knew that we no longer trusted each other. Another puncture, another patch. Then, mid-exam week, the situation turned nuclear. TWO PUNCTURES! And one on the bed's fuzzy upper surface. At first I lamely tried to cover the hole with masking tape which would sometimes hold long enough for me to get to sleep. But more and more as I would settle down for my slumber the pressure of my body would cause air to whine most insolently through the perforation.



(By the way, your eyes are not deceiving you. That oblong gash in my sheets is exactly what it looks like. A vagina. No. I'm kidding. That's where my threadbare sheets have actually ripped down the middle. Am I classy or what?)

I went to Canadian Tire and bought more patches. But these never stood a chance. My bed hated me now and was determined to undermine my comfort (and strain my neck). In desperation I tried to remove the fuzz from the bed's vinyl surface with my razor. But my razor was too sharp and her skin too thin. I would apply a new patch every night, praying that it would hold, but to no avail. I must now reconcile myself to the fact that my bed doesn't want me anymore. This morning I pumped her up at 9 a.m. when the door buzzer woke me at noon I was lying flat on the floor.



It's over between us. And so tonight I'll try to fortify my yoga mat with some additional blankets to make a poor facsimile of the bed I used to know and love.

Winter weather has descended on Toronto so that every exposed area of skin becomes numb and feels like some kind of dead organism coating your body. I knew it was coming and I dislike it just as much as I thought I would.

Every day I walk over to the campus gym only 10 minutes away from my apartment. Unfortunately the Chuck Taylor knockoffs I bought at Payless Shoes do little to protect my feet from the elements. Which is absolutely shocking considering the shoes consist of "sturdy canvas" and a "full half inch of rubber sole." When I yank them off in the change room I usually have lost all circulation in the bottom of my feet. Because there's no blood making it through my capillaries my skin becomes yellow, character-on-the-Simpson's yellow. It takes a good fifteen minutes of grunting exertions on the elliptical trainer for my extremities to tingle back to life.

When I'm done punishing my body I throw my winter wear on over top of my gym gear for the walk home. It seems silly to squeeze my sweaty ass back into my jeans for such a short walk.

On Monday I left the gym just as the early pre-solistice dusk was falling. Fine particles of snow blew into my eyes at a 45 degree angle and my cheeks stung like well-used pincushions. At last I was home. Now, just to put the key in the door and waltz into the heated loveliness of the foyer.



But my key stuck only a quarter of the way in. I tried again. I jiggled. I rammed. I cajoled. I took a deep breath. I jiggled again. Nothing. My key wouldn't slide into the lock. A warmly dressed couple stared at me through the foggy window of the adjacent poutine shop where they chewed their hot grease bomb with bovine placidity. My post-gym flush was beginning to fade and tendrils of icy wind wound themselves up my legs and caressed my upper thighs.

FUCK!!!

I dug around in the bottom of my gym bag for my cell phone and called my landlord. She called one of my neighbours who came to let me in. Though I'd probably been outside the building for only 15 minutes or so it felt like ages. The temperature that day, with the wind chill, was -23 degrees.

It turns out some water had gotten into the lock and frozen solid. The next morning my landlord shows up at my apartment door with a mini can of WD40.

"I already put so much in there the door is working now, but don't leave the apartment without it!"

After the front-door-not-opening debacle I had a hot HOT shower and settled down for a quiet evening. But a strange gnawing sound began to issue from the kitchen.



I had seen a mouse once before so I wasn't exactly surprised. There are still plastic garbage bags full of packing peanuts littering my kitchen so assumed that Mr. Mouse was commandeering some material for building his nest. It's not that I'm afraid of mine per say but where there's mice, there's mouse shit. Mouse shit is bad business. Also where there are mice there are mouse teeth, mouse teeth can bite you. A mouse bite means a tetanus shot, a shot (of any kind) is bad business.

So I decided to go on the offensive. Walking loudly into the kitchen I gave the pile of syrofoam peanut bags a tentative kick with my slippered foot. Nothing. A more aggressive kick.

Then I almost feel over backwards. A morbidly obese mouse leapt out of my Ikea garbage can, clearing the rim with inches to spare, and skittered away out of sight.

After my heartbeat returned to normal I took out the garbage and stored the organic scraps from the preparation of my evening meal in a bag in the refrigerator. Subsequently Mr. Mouse has taken his business elsewhere.

The ongoing saga of the bed aside, I have been largely successful in rebuffing the attacks levelled at me by life during the past week. The WD40 never leaves my purse and I have a rotting bag of vegetable scraps in my fridge but I'd say that's a small price to pay for victory.

Look! My salad is Christmas colour coordinated.