so long, Calgary

Ultimately, the most newsworthy part of yesterday was just that Paul thought that Nose Hill was called Noose Hill. And I was like no, that would be a different thing.

Now we're en route to Banff and I am SO EXCITED

West Coast: the sequel

Hi interwebs!

Soooo, the last time we spoke, I was ready to live-blog my West coast vacation. I even talked Paul into buying an iPad for the occasion because I was definitely going to post all the time and capture every step of our trip.

...and then I did not. Which surprised no one, but disappointed my parents.

But now it's eight months later, and we had so much fun last year that I was like !! I could do it again let's do it again! (and Paul was like, "Are you sure you don't want to vacation somewhere else?" and I was like "Shutupshutupshutup" and sent him a bunch of mountain emojis next to gun emojis). So I guess maybe I'm thinking that since I haven't updated my blog since the last trip, and since I'm on the very same trip now, if I were to blog THIS trip...it's sort of like I actually did the thing I was planning to do in the first place? One of those people who stumbles onto my blog because of Telefrancais probably wouldn't even notice what a shitty and inconsistent blogger I am.

Thus, I present Paul and Tessa's West Coast Adventure II. Because I'm pretty sure I can write at least one more post in the next nine days. 

this was part of my West Coast propaganda campaign. it worked!
(for context: I call Paul "Ham" sometimes.)

I'm writing this from a Calgary Starbucks, eating a pepperoni and tomato foldover and trying not to get flaky pastry grease all over the aforementioned iPad. (This foldover is life-changing; it's essentially a Starbucks pizza.)

Calgary is a necessary stopover due to Paul's childhood BFF and his wife -- who are awesome people with awesome cats -- but it still may be my least favourite city ever. Sorry, Calgarians. You're super friendly but all your grass is brown and the air is so dry that my eyelids feel like sandpaper when I blink. We are, however, only here for about 20 hours before we leave for Banff. In this specific way, our itinerary for this trip is vastly improved over last year's, where we were in Calgary for three or four days, because I did not yet realize that Calgaryissortoftheworst (again, sorry Calgarians) (your mayor seems great?).

From Banff, we're driving through the Rockies and down to Seattle, where we will enjoy more Starbucks tourism (the original Starbucks being substantially more thrilling than the Newport Village Shopping Centre location in which I'm currently sitting), as well as Pike Place Market and maybe that games store we went to last year where I took this excellent photo of Paul:

even his hair looks excited!

We'll also make a pilgrimage to Burgerville, which is just...more on that later.

For our last leg, we'll drive up to Vancouver to visit with my aunt, eat gelato at North America's best gelaterie (seriously, it beat Stella Luna), look at household items at CB2 that we can neither afford nor possibly take home with us, and drink a ton of Granville Island beer.

Hmm. I've now been in this Starbucks for long enough that I'm starting to get barista side-eye. Paul is about to pick me up following his visit with his ex-extended-in-laws (#modernfamily) and I need to pick up some Lysol wipes to sanitize our rental car, but then who knows what we'll get up to? THE WORLD CALGARY IS OUR OYSTER.

seven days...

Hello internets!

In an effort to return to my neglected blog, I've decided to chronicle our summer vacation.

In just one short week, Paul and I will be on a plane, starting our Westward Journey. We've planned a pretty badass itinerary -- we're flying to Calgary and renting a car, then driving to Edmonton and Banff, then coming back to Calgary, then driving to Seattle, then Portland, and then Vancouver.

I'm excited for the entire trip (cowboy hats! mountains! family and friends!) but real talk -- the climax of this journey will be Portland, the birthplace of all things that are wonderful in this world:

My hipster headband is packed.

We leave in a week and in an effort to fully appreciate all the Pacific Northwest locales we'll be seeing, I've been watching and reading everything I can find set in the Seattle/Portland area. This includes, obviously, Portlandia (sanctimonious hipster Portland), Ursula LeGuin's The Lathe of Heaven (dream-altered dystopia Portland), and The Ring (gloomy murder-tape Seattle).

It turns out that Paul has absolutely no cultural reference point for The Ring. Like, not only has he not seen it, he apparently didn't consume media the entire year of 2002. This led to a really awkward moment the other night when I was putting the DVD in after dinner and whispered "SEVEN DAYS" (as one does). Paul was like, "What's in seven days?" and I was like "Oh, you die," assuming that at the very least he was familiar with the most quoted line in the movie. Turns out he wasn't, and, needless to say, was pretty alarmed at me nonchalantly predicting his untimely death.

He's still willing to travel with me, though. So that's good.

expansion

I'm growing my Tessa-does-stuff empire! Check out my middling HTML/CSS skills over at Tessa Bakes (ideally using Google Chrome, because other browsers may not cooperate with my layout).

Unfortunately, work-in-progress banner has since been changed.

srs business brought to you by (belated) international women's day

Because it is where I go to lurk ex-boyfriends and read poorly thought-out political ramblings, Facebook often makes me a sad panda. In the last few days though, it's bothered me in a new and kind of unexpected way.

(Hold on to your hats, kids, and maybe get a snack, because this is a long one.)

I am genuinely saddened at how many posts I have seen lately wherein women denounce the women's movement. If this was an isolated instance, I would feel kind of cranky and disheartened, but it hasn't just been one; there's been a few occasions wherein girls appearing on my newsfeed have felt compelled to both post and defend at length statements that are really distressing in their implications. It speaks to a larger problem and frankly, the whole thing has left me feeling like I'm taking crazy pills.

Admittedly, I've been on a bender lately: for the last month, the bathroom floor has been covered in an array of Cosmopolitan magazines and feminist library books (thus making me a terrifying and conflicted human being). College has me missing abstract theory courses hard and so I've taken to reading nonfiction issues books while relaxing in the bathtub. In one of these books, Julie Zeilinger discusses what she refers to as "feminism's PR problem." This is a very real thing, I think. On the other hand, I'm not quite sure how to solve it without diluting a fundamental message.

I am 25 years old. In my little quarter-century of existence, I've had a turbulent relationship with feminism that unfortunately doesn't seem to be all that unique.  

I was an opinionated kid. I was also very much a contrarian kid, which meant that while my peers were listening to the Spice Girls, I was sneak-reading my mom's copy of The Female Eunuch and condescendingly pretending to understand the words inside. I declared myself a capital-F feminist to anyone who would listen; to me, feminism meant that women who cooked dinner for their families were pitifully unenlightened and men who didn't help with dishes were barbaric. I saw no problem with this black-and-white logic. I was also eight years old, so.

Then, boobs happened. Or didn't really happen, exactly, and I guess I was kind of bummed at the time about that. For whatever reason, I entered high school with a very fierce desire to conform in every way I could. The ninth grade syllabus included The Taming of the Shrew, and Glebe had three different ninth-grade English teachers, all of whom were women. One of them straight-up refused to teach it and I remember being jealous of her class getting to skip Shakespeare for a whole semester. Another teacher taught the play without any room for interpretation, at one point berating one of my friends for suggesting that Petruchio was kind of a misogynist. My teacher taught it and encouraged us to discuss different meanings of the text, which, in retrospect, I think was brilliant and the best possible way to open up a discussion about these sorts of issues.

Unfortunately for her, this teaching strategy served mostly as her own wake-up call. I remember this woman becoming visibly alarmed that no one in the room was willing to call themselves a feminist. To the contrary, many girls openly declared themselves anti-feminist. I never spoke up in class, but I thought the same thoughts in my head. I reflected on the irrelevance of feminists in today's society and how silly it was that I ever called myself one. We already have equal rights, I thought. I'm in favour of people.

That was also the year I actively snaked away a good friend's boyfriend. That kind of stuff takes two, and he was equally to blame, but I find it interesting that my self-proclaimed anti-feminist stage saw me treating my female friends the worst I have ever treated them.

University didn't initially come as an epiphany. When my high school boyfriend and I broke up and I started dating the university guy, it was never about my own growth or triumph. Rather, it was about the new boy swooping in all blond and smiling and saving me – because that was the narrative. 

I wish I could pinpoint it, but somewhere between the third and sixth year of my undergrad, my perspective changed. I don't think it was any one thing in particular, and maybe for me, it was just being single and alone enough that I had time to do some required readings and actually think about what they were saying. I could never have known this in advance but I'm so glad I chose to do an arts degree, if only because of all it exposed me to. Somewhere along the line, feminism shifted into focus and made sense to me again. I saw the need.

Once you see it, you can't stop.

Because one in five women is sexually assaulted in her lifetime. Because news stories on those women so often cite what they were wearing. Because many women feel unable to even report an assault. Because somehow, in our society, we think the absence of a no means a yes. Because a stranger put his hand up my skirt on a bus one time and I went speechless in shock and it took me six stops to get off the bus, and that is in no way my fault.

Because men think it's okay to approach me and keep talking to me as I give them subtle cues to stop. Because when I make the cues less subtle, they think that gives them the right to explicitly harass me. Because I am honked at in the street for looking leggy in my shorts. Because I am yelled at in the street for not being curvier. Because, simply for the fact that I am a woman, my body is perpetually on display, and it is apparently your God-given right to tell me what you think of it.

Because I can't turn on my television or even walk into my fucking classroom without hearing a sexist joke. Because I'm viewed as shrill, humourless, and paranoid when I complain about it. Because women in the grocery store with crying children are bad mothers and men in the same situation are championed for simply trying. Because we are called sluts and prudes and other things that exist in restrictive binary form. Because I still catch myself making these snap judgments sometimes, because they are so ingrained in me.

Because I walk home late at night with my keys out. Because I dial 9 and 1 on my phone, waiting, when cars slow down next to me on dark and empty roads. Because some people would say I shouldn't be walking down those roads, but that isn't fair, because this is my world, too...and because that is not what equality looks like.

So just to be clear: I am a flag-waving, card-carrying feminist. I am also a man-loving, makeup-wearing, armpit-shaving feminist. I mention these things mostly in an effort to dispel the incredibly false concept that feminists spend their days hating on men and refusing to bathe. We are a wide spectrum, and just for the record, armpit-shaving is completely irrelevant to both how "good" a woman and how "good" a feminist you are. It is, in fact, only indicative of whether or not you felt like shaving your armpits today.

Feminism is neither scary nor a bad word and it has been said thousands of times before but it bears repeating: feminism is not about superiority, it is about equality. And yes, we appear to have the aforementioned PR problem on our hands – but this is not solely our responsibility to fix. In a society where we are told from birth by the media (and, often, our teachers, parents, churches, government, etc.) that 1.) feminism's work is done and 2.) feminists are therefore obnoxious whining bitches who simply hate men and will never be happy, we are losing from the start. Few people are inclined to pick up books or take courses in women's or gender studies; those who do are disproportionately female. I can't count how many times I've heard a bunch of first-year dudes complaining about having to take a single feminist theory class in intro film (YES Riddles of the Sphinx is brutal; NO you will not die) only to follow up their complaints with a sexist joke. Exhibit A; this is why you need to take this shit, guys. 

One of the things you learn as you become more well-versed in the feminist movement is how diverse it is. Feminists are not conspiracy theorists, nor are we trying to take over the world, and if you honestly think that is our message, I implore you to listen closer. There are varying opinions on just about everything in the feminist movement. Some feminists hate porn; others work in porn. Some are religious; others are not. I don't spell woman with a Y. Make of all that what you will, but I think it speaks to how much room there is under this umbrella-ella-ella, eh?

That being said, maybe you don't like the label. I can live with that; we're free to call ourselves whatever we like. But just remember: maybe feminism isn't for you, but it sure as hell has worked for you, affording you the right to vote, work outside the home, and have control over your own reproductive rights. So if you don't like the label, fine. But can we please stop making explicitly anti-feminist posts? Or at least do a little more research on feminism before condemning it? Because these bold denouncements just add fuel to a fire that seeks to destroy decades of hard-won victories.

And at the very least, please remove "Feminazi" from your vocabulary, for so many reasons.

in which I say "Nutella" about four hundred times

A few weeks ago, my friend Leah (hi Leah!) posted a link on Facebook to fifty ways to make your life more awesome through repurposing items around the house. These were amazing – cut cake with dental floss, use a muffin tin for hamburger condiments, etc. It was essentially Real Simple: Low Budge Edition. Among all of these brilliant ideas, my favourite was number three: when one is almost done with their jar of Nutella, one should eat ice cream out of it so that the hard-to-reach Nutella remnants don't go to waste. Essentially, it's a plastic-jar sundae.

"Paul has Nutella," I thought. "I should totally do this."

Except Paul's jar of Nutella was only about halfway finished...and thus began a mission. For the last three weeks, I have been eating jar-Nutella by the tablespoon. This is somewhat distressing on its own, I realize, but it's especially hilarious as a relationship-comfort-level barometer: back in August, Pearl, having stayed overnight at Paul's and hungry while we slept in, helped herself to some Nutella-on-toast. I was all, "Oh my God you ate his Nutella? Jealous, Nutella is delicious," and she was like, "Umm, well, he has some, so...lucky you?" and I was like, "Oh God no, I feel like he would judge me for eating Nutella." Pearl was both confused, because Paul owned the Nutella, and offended, because she had just eaten the Nutella. But I'm insecure about both my food intake and my personal relationships, so my comments on either topic rarely make logical sense. However, now that we've been dating a year and a half, I apparently have no qualms about making a project out of depleting Paul's Nutella reserves several tablespoons at a time. (Paul, to his credit, has been very supportive of this endeavor.)

Tonight, it was finally time.

Basically, in case you're hazy as to how this works, Step One is to eat almost all your Nutella. Below, you will see streaks where I dragged my spoon through hazelnut gold, creating tiny little chocolate tracks:

Well hello.

Step Two involves filling the container with ice cream. There's a lot of flexibility to this step, so feel free to make it your own. I chose vanilla because I'm a traditionalist, but you could totally use something with a ripple of some sort or even lactose-free if you are so inclined. This is a brand new frontier and there are no rules. Use frozen yogurt, seriously, it's your life.

And finally, Step Three: lose any last semblance of pride while your boyfriend takes photos of you. Give no shits, because you are eating ice cream out of a motherf*cking Nutella jar and it is both delicious AND efficient.

This is probably going to be what comes up
from now on when you Google me.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.

it's awesome to be Paul

Tessa Foster, hanging in your house, breaking your humidifier, waterlogging your meat thermometer, getting fat from all your Arrowroot cookies...

This is why I can't have nice things (or deliciously bland baby-snacks). And apparently now neither can Paul.

Oops.