Back in Vancouver. Although the Lawyer says with typical confidence that there’s not much to this city, that may be because he’s leaving this month. Granted, it doesn’t have the obvious, roll-over-and-beg-for-treats wonderfulness of Seattle, but it’s an excellent place when the sun is shining. Did the aquarium this morning – the perfect place for Blake. From his youngest days he’s loved fish tanks full of motion and colour. Now we get to dazzle him with slick otters, bellicose sea lions, showy dolphins, irritated sturgeon, and miniature frogs like a scattered handful of amphibious jewels.

We took a tourist trolley around in the morning so we could cover ground and kill time until the aquarium opened. It was a good introduction to the city, although there was some tension when Blake had to suddenly get off to use a bathroom. [redacted rant about my parents…again] I’ll be glad when I won’t have to dread Blake’s misbehaviour at yet another restaurant.

Anyway. Vancouver. Vancouver reminds me of Mason, or it’s the kind of place I want to be with Mason. I constantly dream of the Boy and wake up irritated. I feel like I can’t clean the slate in my mind.

Saw the Lawyer this afternoon. Typical Lawyer; he dropped two big bombs within minutes of getting me into his car. He’s moving back to Toronto this month, and his wife won’t need a job because she’ll be raising their baby come December. Now I need to knit a layette. I’m inordinately excited.

My God, I miss home. I miss my bed. I miss my kitchen. I miss my garden. I miss Mason. I miss the phone that never rings and my stereo and my pictures. (I didn’t bring any music on this trip, grudging the luggage space. This is the first time since I was a preteen that I’ve traveled without a protective bubble of melody.)

This time I’ve just had to write comes to me courtesy of Javina, who is a bit late for our meet up. I’m excited, but I never know what to expect. I hope I can bring good news back to Toronto. And with that, I run out of space in this DiDi journal. Eeek.

Later:

Yes, all is well with Javina. She’s healthy and happy and I’m so glad to see it. Of all my long-distance friends, she’s the one I worry about the most. But not only is she thriving in paradise, she’s crocheting. I got to take home an octopus, which tickles me immensely.

Labels: blake, crafty, friends, vacation

Trying to gather my thoughts. I’ve been painting for 2 days and it’s taking a toll on my coherence. It's not just the fumes; it's also the fact that I listen to the same CD over and over until the painting is done. Last summer my album was “The Else” by TMBG (I still can’t listen to “The Bee of the Bird of the Moth” without thinking about edging my kitchen). This year it’s “In Our Bedrooms After the War” by Stars. Yes, I still manage to be electrified by bands everyone else has known about for years. At this point it’s a lifestyle choice.

So! Painting. The good news is that the second coat is drying in Blake’s room, and it is BLUE, baby. The bad news is that now I really, really want to make him some curtains. With some appliqué stars and planets and a rocketship. I think I need someone to talk sense into me before I go to Fabricland and set up my new-to-me sewing machine and spend days cursing about my seam ripper.

Speaking of crafting obsessions, here are some photos of the projects I was yammering on about last time:

As always, click through for more.

This Friday I got a haircut, which I immortalized at the same time Strong Bad was trying to get into Scherezade’s email.

This isn’t so much a photo of my hair as it is a photo of me and Scherezade in the park near the flatiron building. We tried to get a photo of my hair, but the results weren’t that striking. Suffice it to say that I walked into Destiny’s salon with serviceable but boring shoulder-length hair* and walked out with a bob. I even let her give me a fringe, as it’s summertime and it’s not critical that hair stays out of my face. It makes me feel like a flapper. And so damn cute besides, especially when I wear one of the few baby doll dresses that hide in my wardrobe, and I’m not speckled with blue paint. Cosmic Pluto was inspired to ruffle up the back without warning. It’s that kind of hair.

* Tomorrow is my eleventh anniversary of this journal. I’m pretty sure that when I woke up on Friday morning, I had the same hair as I had when I banged out that first semi-coherent entry. Plus ca change, etc.

Labels: crafty, friends, hair, house rich, on-line diaries

So, for just about all of my Blake-less summer vacation so far, I have been vegging. I had thought that it would be really hard without him for so long, and I did cry the first day when I saw a little guy splashing in a public wading pool, but mostly my angst has been reserved for me. Since the first shock faded in January, my loneliness and feelings of abandonment have never been as strong as they have been this month. I find that more than ever before, I long for the Boy. The interesting thing is that despite this desire, I don’t particularly want him back in the state he was when he left. I can recognize the nostalgia in my thoughts and I’ve decided to give it free reign. As long as I don’t get maudlin and start drunk dialing him and begging him to take me back, I’m going to accept these feelings as part of the process.

I’ve been telling people that getting separated is like getting ready to eat a pie. People like me tend to think that they’re smart enough to avoid certain pieces and they can throw away a bunch of the pie uneaten. The bitter truth I have found this summer is that I have to eat every damn piece of sadness, every piece of nostalgia, every piece of insecurity and fear. I do not get to skip a slice because I’m clever, or because I’m aware of the dangers or because I’m trying very hard to sympathize with the Boy’s decision. The pie has to be eaten regardless. And no, it does not come à la mode. (Unless the ice cream is made of tears, that is. Salty salty ice cream of tears.)

But! On a happier note, my mood has improved in the last 3 or 4 days, and I’ve mostly gotten over the hump of inactivity. It took a lot of aimless wandering, but it seems to be over. Yesterday was the first day that I felt normal and even happy to be out and scooting around the city. Which is a good thing because there were so many good things yesterday that it was more or less my birthday: first, a matinee of Die Roten Punkte that had me wishing for even more rock, then dinner at the Corner House for Summerlicious, and then a long and happy Stitch n’ Bitch at Lettuce that incorporated Little Mousling’s search for anonymous sperm donations (“just go to the Brunny and stand for a pitcher,” I counseled) as well as the memorable phrase “reach-around colonoscopy.” And Denny wasn’t even there to hike up the smut levels…we did it all on our own. I blame German performance rock and really good wine and the never-ending medical talk that practically begged for a punch line to lighten the load.

Yesterday and today I prepped Blake’s room for painting, and I hope to be done my taping in time for Saturday. I even bought him a fan, so that when he insists (as he does nightly) on going to bed in long pants and snuggling under a comforter, he might not die of heat exhaustion. (I find myself in the curious position of begging him to wear less clothes now that we’ve hit the warm weather. “Come on,” I whine, “don’t you just wanna wear your undies? Or nothing?” He makes me sweat just looking at him. And yet he springs up every morning refreshed and ready to snuggle in my bed. I don’t get it.)

I’m feeling a little guilty for taking advantage of his absence. Blake has been quite vocal about his desire to paint his own room. He’ll probably have a freak out when he finds it’s been done without him, and small wonder. Still, my guilt can’t quite overcome the sheer lunacy of single-parenting a 4-year-old while I paint his room. No dice, Blakers.

I really should have taken some “before” pictures; his room is usually a cluttered mess of epic proportions and almost all of it has all been transferred to the closet. I wouldn’t have thought it possible if I hadn’t done it myself. I even vacuumed the baseboards tonight, seeing as I’ll be getting up close and personal with them before long. And if this painting job is anything like my last one, I’ll still be painting when he comes home. He’ll like that.

I’m also finishing projects every couple of days, with recent standouts being the De Profundis pillow (which combines knitting with cloth strips of text so that Mason can decorate his couch with one of the most depressing bits from Oscar Wilde’s letter from prison) and an amigurumi Strong Bad. I’m madly in love with Strong Bad, and have to stop myself from saying the same thing over and over: “Dear Strong Bad, How do you crochet with boxing gloves on? Yours, Rocketbride” I think the people around me are finding it old.

I got my big box of prize yarns yesterday. There is something absolutely magical about a box of yarn that is for me and me only. It’s a pretty interesting assortment; not a lot of anything I would choose myself, which means that I’ll have to stretch and do a lot of new things. And there’s nothing wrong with a big old stretch, especially when I haven’t done yoga for months. Did you just hear something crack?

In final crafty news, I’m wondering if I have the fortitude to enter the Summer Ravelry Olympics. I committed to doing a lot of amigurumi toys this summer for my co-workers, and it would be kind of nice to plow through them in 17 days. On the other hand, I’m going to the Ottawa Folk Festival in the middle of the run, and I can’t imagine that it’ll help my time. Still, a dozen toys in 17 days would be pretty cool. We’ll see.

Labels: angst, crafty, friends, outings, the boy, victory

Some pictures, peeps. I made a Cthulhu toy for the cool home ec teacher/game store owner who got a new job for September. It was half farewell and half payment for getting me started re-lining my favourite spring coat (translation: she traced, cut and sewed it together; now I get to sew it in. I'm cool with that.)

For those who worry, I am seeing a counsellor about once a month. I'm also reading some good books about CBT and one called Rebuilding After Your Relationship Ends which sort of makes me mad but has some good stuff buried among the patronizing points. Last night, when all I felt like doing was crying, Mason came over and made us supper. Good, healthy, fresh food does wonders for my mood. I even had the energy to clean up the kitchen before he arrived, which was an insurmountable horror when I was weeping into the tissue Blake so kindly provided. My parents are worried that I'll scar Blake with the tears, but the truth is that I cry very infrequently around him. Yesterday was a big exception. I worry more about the time I disengage, although I don't suppose it's any worse than what the Boy was doing this fall. I'm hoping to use the next two weeks to recharge and find my joy wherever it's hiding.

Labels: angst, crafty, health

I had a lot of fun this morning. As soon as Blake & I finished breakfast, we sat on the couch for some reading/chilling time. During this pause, I noticed something exciting across the street: a yard sale! Blake, despite his bad associations with the concept (think: Toy Story 2) and the fact he was still in pjs was easily convinced to go across the street. I found a haul of excellently tacky knit & crochet patterns, and managed to wander into a psychodrama.

"Blake, don't go anywhere," I cautioned, "we have to pay for these patterns."

"Nope," said the middle-aged man in charge. "Just take them. They're women things. She left me, and I don't care what happens to her stuff." He went over to another customer and continued, "all purses for a dollar. Women stuff. She paid twenty dollars – of my money! – for that purse. You can have it for a dollar."

It took all the social grace I had not to back away slowly, but instead to turn and walk like I heard this sort of thing all the time. As we moved around that morning, I continued to catch glimpses into the marital trainwreck across the way, courtesy of the curiosity of other customers and a loud cellphone conversation.

i keep typing "yarn sale" by accident

Gee, I hope she won't need that crocheted vest pattern now that she's living with her boyfriend.

In other crafty news, I managed to get myself a free afternoon while the boys were out buffing the hog, so I set up the sewing machine and started to make curtains. It took 2 hours, and I need a curtain rod for the final step, so I'm not done yet. Still, despite the extremely salty language that spewed out of me during the set up, and despite the fun of only having one plug (so I could use the sewing machine and the iron, just not at the same time)… I think I'm going to do this again.

Labels: crafty, humanity on parade