When something is so familiar you could just cry.

One more thing

Second thing that needs to be said right now is that I need to start dancing again. Tonight, even. 

Two things need to be said right now. I just love it. I just absolutely love it when I walk into a store or anywhere basically, and a song that my mother blasts in the house or car is playing. I just love it. I know every single word to the song and I get this urge inside of me that wants to start dancing just like my mother does. Being able to hear my mother singing in my head and vividly remember how she dances to the songs from her youth is like a treasure to me. I can see her now in my head doing that thing she does while she’s cooking and singing. I heard this song today and I could have cried. Last train to london, just heading out. Last train to london, just leaving town. 

Duh

I was sitting at the stop waiting for the street car just thinking about how I wanted to go home and write about my smile and then I couldn’t stop laughing. It was quite embarrassing to myself because there was no one else around. 

I was thinking about what I was going to write about and of course since I was thinking about smiles, I started to think about Kwaku. No, it’s not creepy at all considering I’ve spent everyday with him for the past seventy something days. His smile, the third smile I encountered in Toronto ended up being seventy something days of laughter. Except for the time he thought I was going to catch the frozen snickers bar that he threw at me, but I missed and I woke up with a bruise the next day. 

I was laughing so hard I had to pretend like I had just read something funny on my phone. I loved it. 

Sunshine, lollipops, and smiles

The other night I was having a terrible time at work for more reasons than I’m normally used to. Both my eyes were beaming red and of course causing my face to feel like it was stuck inside an over heated oven. I was so upset and the look on my face clearly stated it. 

My over-sized nerdy glasses felt like they weighed 80 pounds on each side; therefore, causing my face to naturally crunch and drop at the same time. (Stop right now and try it) My hair was a mess, like usual, but I like it that way so that wasn’t really a problem. More importantly, I wasn’t smiling. 

Fortunately, I started talking to myself in my head again, like always. I don’t understand why I wasn’t smiling. I felt terrible, but I didn’t need to look it as well. If I feel disgusting there is no such thing as looking terrible as long as I’m smiling and staying positive. When people look good, their entire outfit can be completely slammed down by their aura. Consequently, that night because of my bad attitude I felt gross and looked gross. 

The next day my right eye got worse so I figured I really needed to maintain my wrinkled smile. I had to distract people from the evil within my eye somehow. I planned to smile all day and it was really effective. I’m not saying people thought I looked great that day, I was probably wearing yesterdays laundry, but I felt great inside and it showed in my smile. 

So I wore it. My greatest vintage possession. My smile. Like it was brand new. And I rocked it. 

Fresh Hot Apple Dumplings

Joanne Sales doesn’t like chemical she can’t pronounce. 

That’s why Sales, the mother in the family owned business, Fresh Hot Apple Dumplings, chooses to use Shaw’s Ice cream to top off her product. Shaw’s Ice cream, another local family owned business located in St. Thomas, ON, 200 miles south west of Toronto, provides the perfect organic companion to the apples. 

“The apples are in season at this time and we love to support Ontario products. Every part of the apple dumplings is local,” she says at her booth at the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair. 
The apple dumplings are hand designed, this year, by Joanne’s two sons. The apple is cored and skinned until it can be laid out into one long Slinky like piece. The apple is then turn into a curled hollow shape as originally invented by Joanne’s husband Carl, or turned into a new sculpture made by their sons. 

After going through the peeling and designing process, the apples are coated with brown sugar and cinnamon and then baked. To finish the dumpling, the apple is topped with Shaw’s Ice cream and local butterscotch. 

At their booth, Carl, Joanne and their two sons do business and also inform customers the benefit of buying local. 

Meanwhile, at the Ontario Agri-Food Education booth, Becky Parker raises awareness for people just like the Sales. Parker states “If you’re eating Canadian food you know it has standards that it needs to meet and every Canadian has free access to find out what these standards are.” 

The standards of the apple dumplings are glorified in several online reviews. This year, Toronto.com voted the fresh apple dumplings one of the five reasons to go to Royal Fair. 
-30-

When we were younger, my sister Sara, and I would watch the movie Mermaids all the time. Probably not all the time, but often enough to have that movie remind me of my childhood. Strange, because that movie is probably really inappropriate for children. That always happens. You don’t realize something was naughty until you re watch it years later and finally catch the humour in it. Anyway, Mermaids always made us laugh. I was sitting here trying to figure out what my new years outfit is going to look like and all of a sudden Mermaids popped in my head. If you’ve never watched it, there’s a part in the movie where Cher is getting ready to go out on New Year’s Eve. And let me tell you, she looks fabulous. Stunning. That’s the way I saw it and still remember. I can’t find it online anywhere, so I’m going to have to find the movie and watch it. Whatever outfit I end up stitching up for myself has to give me that same feeling. Also, I can’t wait to go home this Christmas and watch this movie with Sara. 

LOL

I almost just - 30 - that last post. #jschool forever 

long hair, don’t care

Do you remember when fashion saved you from hibernation? Do you remember that day? Because I do. I remember realizing I’d rather learn to walk in heels than cry over a boy. I knew I’d rather flaunt my nappy hair than hate my job. The more I started barking, the clearer it became that it was more than okay to wear big nerdy glasses with a -4.25 prescription, and Jeffery Campbell knock-offs because I haven’t been paid yet.

I remember my thoughts clearly as if they were happening right now.  Everything was going terrible at that point, but I had just found out about fashion, so everything was almost okay. I wore the same over-sized, ratty-old black pants to the same job almost everyday for 3 years. And almost everyday of those 3 years, I stuck some sort of flower, dead or alive, within the naps of my hair. It still gives me the nasty chills to this day. I must have looked dirty.  I hated not wearing my hair down.

 As I tried to look for a new job, most of my expectations revolved around the answer to whether or not I would be able to work it with my hair down.  The less I worked at the home of my over-sized, ratty-old black pants, the more my hair was out, wild and free. I felt great. Life was good.  I didn’t even mind having to run after buses anymore, my hair looked good and the running gave it more volume.

I stopped wearing my flowers so often, which hit everyone around me pretty hard. People were so used to having me wear a flower in my hair, that when I didn’t have it in … they thought something was wrong. Customers would think they had run into me but declared that it hadn’t been me because they couldn’t see the flower. I stopped wearing it almost on purpose. I didn’t want to be recognized so easily and realized that if the entire town knew anything, it was this: Tania Peralta. Loud.  Always running for buses. Big hair. Flower.  And I hated it.

So then the dreadful day came when I had to pack up my room into three luggage’s. I owned something like a 130 different flowers. All nicely stuffed into a paper bag. The war for the empty space was between this very bag and another paper bag filled with material to send slow mail. Let’s just say I have a love affair with post cards and only two flowers made it with me to Toronto.

Here, no one knows me as the girl with the flower in her hair. I’m still Tania, loud, big haired, and unfortunately I still do run after buses, but no flower.

Not to my surprise, my friend who also moved from BC called me out just recently and said “Why don’t you ever wear your flower anymore?” 

I am not a sweetheart.

I hated the idea of grad night from day one. I feared for three things: a bad hair day, going solo, and an ugly dress. Although solo I did arrive, that was the first night I ever felt at peace with the fashion gods, who had been non existent in those previous four years. I found myself stuck in way too many conversations with girls explaining what type of cut-line they were looking for in their dress and how difficult it was to choose between and up do or hair down.

At that time, I didn’t understand why this even mattered. By the time I was finally taught - by google - what a sweetheart even was, I knew I was not one. Not until I finally started looking for ideas online did I ever feel like the cut line of a dress even mattered. As soon as I saw a sweet heart, I knew it mattered. As soon as I tried on a sweet heart, I knew it wasn’t me. Not for that night at least. For that night, that more or less last night I would be spending with these people, I had to look like me.

Fortunately, I quickly found it. It quickly found me. We found each other quickly. I remember looking at a picture of the dress online and literally laughing out loud. If in another life I was a dress…well, there I was. That was it. The neckline was absolutely me, because it wasn’t. It had no fashion rule to follow. It wasn’t any neckline that you could coin down with a term. It was wild. It was flower petalled. No direction really, the dress just began and ended. From the Jovani 2010 Prom Line, it was there. Bright yellow, big and most importantly it looked like me.

Everyone would expect my hair to be down for that night. I’ve always hated my hair being down, but I knew it would have to be up. I wanted an up do but with my curls flowing down. I thought it was impossible until I started going through this weird phase where I really wanted a mohawk. I’m too in love with my own hair to get a real mohawk so I thought, Why not just fake it? The braids on the side of my hair kept my curls up creating the up do image even though they flowed down at the same time. My hair, my dress and I looked like me. And now that I think about it, them two were my grad dates.