What the fuck is your problem? How on earth do you think you can get away with cat-calling women at the next table as they sit down? Let alone, loudly announcing that one or more isn't as attractive as the others? You are not on a construction site; we are not passing through; we are SITTING AT THE NEXT TABLE. Do you think it's cute? Do you think it's sexy? Do you think at all? As Elizabeth so rightly responded: Fuck Off.

What the fuck is your problem? Why would you and you oafish friends (one of whom belongs on MenWhoLookLikeKennyRogers.com, which is funny but irrelevant) loudly brag about sex acts you seem to have only a passing familiarity with? Do you think you sound worldly? Because I've often heard groups of teenagers who sound more experienced than you which forces me to conclude that you and your tablemates are as full of shit as my students. Also? Your female friend needs to stop bragging about sucking dick before I find one to stuff down her throat and thus SHUT HER UP.

What the fuck is your problem? Why, after several hours of loud, stupid, oafish behavior would you then turn to the only male in the group and ask him if he "likes how that feels"? Does that question make sense to you in your drunken piggish mind? It doesn't to anyone else.

What the fuck is your problem? Do you genuinely think you could follow up with that nonsensical inquiry with a loudly muttered, "ya faggot"? Where the fuck do you think you are? Who the fuck do you think you're talking to? Did you expect Mason to just cringe and take it, while the rest of us ignored you? Did you think that you were proving a point or uncovering some mystery for the rest of us? Did you think that two dozen people with sharp needles were going to let that pass after an evening of listening to your horseshit?

As I said last night (or rather, yelled repeatedly): Go Fuck Yourself. If I ever see you in that pub again I'm not going to stop until I have you kicked out. And the next time you call any of us a nasty name, I'm not going to even try to stop Mason from "fucking you up," like I did last night. You may think you can fuck with knitters, or guys in bars who do things you don't like, but I will end you. Believe it.

Yours in Christ,

Rocktbride

P.S. Just a final heads-up: What the fuck were you thinking? You're fat, stupid and ugly. You really shouldn't be throwing stones at the people you see, who quickly realize that those things on this outside are less important than the fact that on the inside you are nothing but a turd.

Despite leaving the bar shaking with unused adrenaline, I had a good time last night. Mason and I preceded knit night with a date at an excellent Irish pub, where the food was just a smidge better than the atmosphere, which was sublime. Today we got up unconscionably early so that I could do a free dance demo with Valizan, and we had a chance to explore the almost-revoltingly cute downtown area of Bronte. Then! Korean bbq for lunch, new work clothes for us both, and an hour at the gym with my brother. I always feel guilty about this, but I have to be honest: a child-free weekend is awesome when you do it right. This Saturday couldn't be any righter and still take place in public.

Labels: dancing, drunken knitters, humanity on parade, outings

Last night four of my troupe were standing around in my kitchen, drinking tea and chatting before we started to practice our newest choreography. Juuki and Jessamyn linked arms, and one asked the other if they would tell them. I immediately began to wildly speculate. Jess took a deep breath.

"I'm not pregnant, but the person on my right is."

Immediately I hear thumping feet, as Mason runs in from the livingroom. "Calm down," I hollered. "I'm nowhere near her."

Later, when we were slow-dancing in my study to Patsy Cline, I thought back to this moment and giggled. "You were in a huge panic to see who it was." He grinned.

"'Somebody next to me is pregnant'? I didn't know Jess had that kind of power."

Labels: dancing, mason

In the ranking of the schools where I have worked (all two of them) Bat Masterson has officially left the Shangri-la category. Today I was called down to the office after class. As I walked down the steps, I readied my opening line. Look, I don't know what that student told you, but it was consensual.

Heh. No, I kid. Opening with an inappropriate joke about pederasty in a school office is about as inflammatory as joshing about bombs to airport security. It may be funny in my head, but I'm still going to get tackled. So there was no opener, just a look of polite interest.

The problem: me, knitting. The (new world) order: no more knitting in meetings or (gulp) the classroom. Even Goneril, my previous principal, never thought to prohibit knitting in the classroom. And, unless I want another after-school meeting (and I don't), I suppose I should assume that I'm not to knit on my supervisions anymore.

Caf duty with no knitting. Can my irritability be contained? I think someone's gonna get suspended.

The bright side is that I've been told to substitute with writing. This may increase my journaling frequency, but at the cost of all y'all having to read a lot of ill-tempered rants and sniveling pleas for just one more row. That, or I'm going to be hiding in the bathroom with a secret stash more often than I'm seen in public.

Fabulous class last night. Valizan worked us until my arms screamed for mercy, and I had a maniacal grin on my face the whole time. This is the first exercise class in my entire life in which the ending came as a surprise. I'm a classic clock-watcher, and the order to turn in our tassel belts came through as noise at first. What? Aren't we going to dance some more?

I love this. I LOVE this. I LOVE this.

Too bad I can't knit and dance.

Labels: bat masterson, dancing, knit

Waiting for my Flickr photos to upload. My internets have been spotty this week, so while I've been mostly homebound I've been thrown abruptly on my own resources in order to amuse myself. I barely remember what life was like in my home before hot & cold running webpages. It's...much less filled with trivia, for one thing.

Besides living it up like it was 1995, I've been recovering from a mercifully mild cold, babysitting Sage at irregular intervals, finishing up my report cards and generally trying to get on top of the backlog that formed during my grandmother's mourning. I haven't been able to make any troupe practices lately, although my Monday ATS class with Valizan, despite being in Oakville, has been 58 kinds of awesome. Not the least of why is because I'm carpooling with Jessamyn & Juuki, so there's a lot more time for gossip and tea than is usual at troupe practice.

Anyway. Despite the fact that report cards are one long haul away from completion and despite the fact that I lost a job opportunity and an elder on the same day, and despite the fact that exam season always makes me anxious, miserable, unhealthy, feral and desperate to run away to somewhere far from my perpetually snowed-in driveway, I'm cautiously optimistic for the end of the week. I'm not 100% sure what I'm basing that optimism on, but it's there. Maybe I'm just ready for the spring term, with its attendant rocketslide to June. Maybe I'm just glad that I can wear black out of choice, not social necessity.

I'm not going to do a blow-by-blow of the funeral. I was too out of it for much in the way of recording, anyway. I did a eulogy at the funeral, which seemed to be well-received, but it's like a 8-year-old's piano recital. You never know. Who's going to go up to you and say, "hey, that eulogy really blew. Sorry we asked you." I found myself much more comfortable with my grandmother's corpse than I was with her post-stroke state in the hospital, or maybe I just had three weeks of practice without her answering back and that made it easier. Blake has been handling it well, occasionally asking "when is GG coming back?" My glib answer ("when Jesus does, and that's not for a long time") feels shallow.

I didn't cry. I think most of the shock and guilt and panic all went out of me when I read that letter to her a few weeks ago. I started trembling half-way through the eulogy, but it wasn't a sentimental speech – I had to pause part way for the laughter to subside – and it didn't carry me into spasms of weeping. I still hear her voice in my head, and it makes me smile. It made me smile to see my family together, cracking jokes before the visitation. It made me smile to know exactly where we should have dinner before the visitation, because we'd gone there with her 4 years ago before another funeral. It made me smile to re-use my wedding program inserts, and force "And did these feet" on another unsuspecting group of people. I think it was a good funeral. I think she would have approved.

Labels: bat masterson, blake, dancing, death, family

I have just taken my once-yearly tour of all things Blogger and I am very excited about the idea that I can consolodate my knitting blog into this one. What's that? You've never seen my knitting blog? Well...I don't really care. It's not a good blog as these things go. It's a project journal more than anything else, and my last entry is from March Break. Now that Ravelry has come into my life, all of the detailed scrapbooking I felt compelled to do fits neatly into their searchable database. I may even move my projects over, as I'm doing with this. Or, not. So, you won't notice anything much on this end, unless you're seriously into my archives or you're a knitting person who's come here out of desperation and wants to know where the other blog went.

The other thing I want to do is add a Twitter feed, which is a new thing I started to do because of Ravelry (of course). I can be a sheep, but it usually takes me a year or two to pull my head up and figure out where the rest of the herd has wandered off to. And in this case, the sheep wants to tweet.

Heading into my last full week of the first semester. This year has gone the fastest I can remember. St. Stephen used to say something about how time goes faster the older we get because of its relation to our total age. All I know is that it's never been this easy to get through a season. I think that being busy every night of the week helps. Tonight is the first American Tribal Style class - it's expensive and far, but I'm doing it with Jessamyn & Juuki and we're pumped. I expect to be bewildered, sore and exhausted when I get home tonight. Here's hoping.

Also, knitting like mad. I haven't really slowed down since Christmas deadline, and since I'm gearing up for my yearly finish-athon, I'm not trying to slow down. I don't get to start anything in February until I clear out my old projects, so I might as well rip through as many hats as possible in the meantime.

Labels: bat masterson, dancing, knit, on-line diaries

So, I've been putting off marking ever since I returned to work, as I binged on marking in the days leading up to my return. The problem with my self-voted vacation is that I had even more marking to finish that was sidelined by a combination of procrastination and my grandmother's stroke. My classes want mark updates and I have none to give. Today I decided that I had to apply the Pavlovian screws, and deny myself social knitting tonight if I couldn't mark at least one set of essays. Earnestly, I opened my folder. Frustratedly I realized that I had no marking sheets. The relevant file is at home. I can't mark. Darn.

I'm stuck with rifling through Ravelry for a carrier bag for my new SIGG bottle and a suitable present for Hestia's upcoming birthday. I'm thinking that 4 should be the year of GIR.

Speaking of goth geekiness, I suppose I must at some point face the last night of Savage Garden. For some prosaic reason, Pale is closing the club. (I choose to believe that they're trying to hush up a new virulent social disease that somehow mutated in the toilets, or that Pale has to return to England to apprentice to the last Master Cooper before he dies.) I tried to make it out to the last retro night, as I'm not keen on the industrial vs. really industrial playlist in Revolution vs. Machine on Saturday nights. (Or as Zub put it, the really industrial room sucks but in a more pretentious way - a cybersuck.) Unfortunately, that weekend the heavens dumped a tonne of snow between me and Retro Night, and I was forced to curse my luck loudly and often. Stacy, who made it out that night, tells me that Pale finally achieved his dream of the post-apocalyptic nightclub, as the Garden was the only thing open and thus the only thing packed with people in the still, snowy streets.

I met up with Zub & Stacy at their house and had a lovely late dinner before we began primping. I was in my Classic Gothgirl Clothes i.e. the Dress I bought when I turned 21, the Fishnets my grandmother gave me when I was 20 and going to the Rocky Horror for the first time, and the Fluevog 8-holes Mason gave me last Mother's Day. Stacy, in her rush to get out, forgot the first rule of dressing: boots, then corset. Zub worried that he had a spiked pompadour, but I assured him that he just looked like his DNA had been crossed with a pufferfish. Very cyber. As Stacy made herself beautiful, I knit and Zub distracted me with an audio tour of his cracking joints. This pretty much set the tone for the evening.

We got to the club shortly after 10 and were confronted by the First and Last Line Up to the Garden I Have Ever and Will Ever Stand In. Twenty minutes of sub-zero temperatures, speculating on the luck of those who intended to "drop by" later and watching the cyber bikini bints was enough to dampen our spirits, and we slithered up the stairs subdued (if you can call such a motley assemblage of elders "subdued"). Lotwyr, Monstre & Dav were already there, which was good because we saw very few familiar faces until we'd cleared the door. Once inside, I felt like I was in the middle of an old-fashioned anatomy textbook with layers of clear overlays to show the blood, the musculature, the bones. Instead of tissues, I saw all the modifications of the past 11 years jostling uneasily with the doomed reality. The DJ platform was the raised place where Dav, Anne, Sheila & I had eaten candy for hours. And farther back toward the bathrooms was where we'd sat the night Dirk wore his 3-piece seersucker. The cage was tiny, half the size of the place where a variety of amateurs would try their luck in spooky cage dancing. The paintings on the walls were different from the concentration camp silhouettes that seemed to move when it was late and you'd been dancing in the strobes for hours without a break. The front section, in its majestic cybersuckage, was just wrong. No pool tables with players to annoy the hell out of everyone not playing. The autopsy table that replaced our own personal coatcheck in 2001 was the dj booth. The booths where I'd met so many people were full of strangers and off-limits. The view from the front window burned down last summer. Most of my friends have moved on or couldn't get in. The place was too full to navigate and I didn't know enough of the bodies I rubbed against.

It was something less than tragic, something more than portentous. It made me cranky. Dav, too.

And I was weighted with the unacknowledged guilt of my grandmother's stroke, compelled to share, quick to deny feeling and yet anxious about something I couldn't get a grip on. I cried in frustration. I became disconsolate and tried to find a hug. My claustrophobia kicked in (or as I think of it, agoraphobia because agora means market and this was panic in the midst of a meat market). Loftwyr and Josh found me a wall to lean against, and that helped. Josh also helped by starting a conversation about Mason, and if that weren't enough, helped me to jump the girls' bathroom line by using his bouncer skills to wave me into the men's when it was clear. I hadn't realized that a men's bathroom could be that bad without being attached to a gas station. In any case, I was glad for the help, as I always love to feel like I'm part of some secret elite.

Which is, I suppose, what we were all mourning in our imperfect ways that night: we were saying goodbye to membership in a tiny, hidden circle of those in the know. Those who knew how to get Pale to play a request and not laugh in one's face (and those who can take the second in good humour.) Those who know how much to tip the bartenders, and how to get out of Doug's way without being obvious. Those with the manners to greet Pale & Brenda on every visit, if only with a wave, because that's what you do when you visit someone's place.

And despite the lows I felt that night, I'm still happy that they let us come over so many times, for so many years.

Labels: angst, bat masterson, dancing, friends, outfits, outings

6 Degrees of Savage Garden, a collaborative entry written by Stacy, Javina & I in 2002.

More to come. It's been a long week.

Labels: dancing, death

Hey, all y'all. Bet you thought I wasn't coming back till 2009. I hope we've all set up our RSS readers, 'cause I don't think I'm going to be posting any less erratically in the new year. (Or any more erotically. You can get that elsewhere on the Internet, or so I've heard.)

Dudes, I actually have to look up what was happened when last I wrote…

Oh yeah. Blake's birthday.

My whole strategy this December has been to focus only on the next goal. First it was Blake's birthday, which, despite the lack of party, was kind of a big hoohaw. After that, I was spending the week making my costume for my (major) student recital debut. And when I say "making," I'm talking about hemming the places where I turned a sleeveless velour turtleneck into a v-neck choli (almost like turning a sandwich into a banquet), stitching up my troupe armband by hand in the midst of a wildcat sewing machine strike, knotting lengths of novelty yarn onto an elastic waistband, and assembling all the makeup I've accumulated in my life. Also: I painted my nails for the first time in about 7 years, and tried to convince Blake that I was turning into a cyborg. He remained suspicious. "It's just paint, Mommy." Jessamyn painted henna on my arm, a design that's lasted till now in certain parts. I was ready.

The big day was…well, perfect. We were the only group to collectively choreograph our own dance – the rest were teacher-led classes and improv performances. We all looked AMAZING, and I even stopped minding The World seeing the belly I've been hiding since I came out of my mother's. We developed a new catchphrase ("It's okay, we're belly dancers") and spontaneously flashed our gang signal at each other before the dance started. We even had a miracle: Souzan does not perform in front of strangers, but she did, perfectly. (We all pretended not to notice, so's not to call her attention to her death-defying feat. She was our Coyote, but she got herself safely to the other side of the canyon.) I didn't screw up the improv verse under my leadership. It was so good.

With the dance debut done, I had a scant 12 hours to make ready for Mo & Brand's housewarming/xmas party. Fortunately, I didn't have to do anything but bake cookies and show up with the Blake. We had to miss Sarah & Leo's yearly do to dance, so this was our chance to sit and relax with the gamer geeks and geeklings. I miss those guys since I moved to B-ton. It just doesn't get any easier with time. But the party was nice, and the food was excellent and Blake accumulated many interesting new bruises and abrasions whilst playing in the basement.

After the weekend was done, it was just a matter of charging through my last week at school. I'm behind the 8-ball with two of my classes, so there was one period on the last day spent in tests with no fun at all. The others were treated to cartoons, although my 11 Faiths are apparently too sophisticated to enjoy the Tick. I didn't know there was such a pitiable condition.

The only other event of note in this week was when I scraped another car on Wednesday morning, resulting in a $500 cheque to some very nice people. Ho ho ho. It was totally my fault: I was trying to get through a gap in stopped cars, and I misjudged the distance. So in a week when everyone else in the GTA was skidding around in the winter wonderland, I just lack discernment. (Obviously.)

On Saturday I hosted a troupe tea to celebrate our successful debut and fight over Secret Santa stuff. Such a good way to end the year with the women who have changed my life forever. Sayward even give me a drop-spindle, a craft I was purposefully avoiding so that I could have the semblance of a social life. I can kiss that idea goodbye. Get ready for 2009: the year of the roving stash.

On Monday, Mason, Blake & I headed up to his parents' house for an Xmas sleepover. For people with four grandsons already, I'm continually surprised that they are so enthusiastic about seeing an honourary fifth. For me, the highlight was not the heated, late-night discussion of shifty Catholic priests, but rather the WWF wrestling ring of Mason's youth, unearthed for Blake's enjoyment. My boy had them all, including a ref. So we had the traditional Christmas smackdown, in miniature.

And then, on the way home, my transmission went on vacation. We were towed from the Kawarthas on the day before Christmas Eve, and the shop tells me that I'll be carless for a week into 2009 as well as on the hook for a 2 grand transmission. Ho ho ho…Santa, is there a mechanic in your family? Two repair bills in a week? Ho ho oh well. I've had a good run to this point.

Mason & I spent the time leading up to Christmas in an orgy…(wait for it…) of crafting. By the time Decemberween dawned, we had reduced the basement to a jumble of clean laundry, crafting supplies and a few unfortunate toys that got caught in the friendly fire. We spent almost all of the 'ween knitting, sewing and finishing things. And the best part was that it was fun. Blake was excited and happy, we were excited and happy, and there was a "Christmas in the trenches" feel to our final countdown of craftiness. Everything on my list was crossed off, with the exception of my mom's scarf that still needs an hour or two, but which I'd intended to finish on Christmas day (note to self: when hosting the family dinner for 10, don't expect a lot of time to sit n' knit).

I brought Mason to church on the 'ween, keeping him as far from my mom as possible. It worked, too: there was no apocalypse scenario, no fires to be doused. And I got to bring my sweetie to the big swirling chaotic mass of spirituality and grandparent-indulgery that is Xmas Eve. Also, for the second time in a lot of years, I didn't have the yearly "we are not going to your Mom's on the spur of the moment!" Decemberween fight that I've had with the Boy since we got married. Best Decemberween in a long time.

Yesterday I hosted my family for Christmas dinner. It was pretty good, right up until the point when the hat I'd made for my dad was widely mocked and I felt the need to retreat to the laundry room with my glass of wine before I burst into tears. I got over it. I had to. And everything else was excellent. My first turkey was juicy, completely cooked and, well, still had the giblets inside, but that wasn't a huge deal. The only snag was my spectacular lack of drinks, leading us to forage through the liquor cabinet for half-forgotten bottles of novelty whiskey. Even that was sort of fun, in retrospect.

And with the spectacular exception of my dad, all my other presents were well-received. It was a good Christmas. Of course, this one had no marital trauma, but it wasn't that that made me the happiest: it was putting my Blake to bed in his new pj's and then going to snuggle Mason while he finished reading "World's End." It was talking to Preacher on the phone. It was knowing that I had lots to do and many new things to be this year, and most of them were wonderful tasks and interesting identities. I'm happy. Merry Christmas, my peeps.

Labels: blake, crafty, dancing, family, friends, house rich, mason, outings

Closer and closer to my public dancing debut. Last night Jessamyn and Keeral came over for a drill session that became an impromptu henna party. I can't get over how profoundly my social life has changed since I started taking belly dance lessons. When I moved to Brampton shortly before Blake was born, I was more or less content with the assumption that I would never have any local friends to match my Toronto pals. Or, any at all. And now, 5 years on, I have local friends, local activities and even local parties. The only thing I lack is a local boyfriend, but I'd rather have a commuting Mason than no Mason.

We had our dress rehersal last Saturday, and I felt the magic of costuming for the first time. I had no idea what a profound difference it would make to run through the choreography in full shimmying, sparkling glory. Juuki was overwhelmed with pride in her girls. I was pretty pleased myself. Since last week's practice was punctuated by long bouts of crouching on the floor, coughing helplessly, this couldn't help but be an improvement.

Yesterday was Blake's fifth birthday blow-out. For obvious reasons, I took a year off from the party thing, but somehow I managed to make the house look great without filling it with people. My secret is dollar store streamers in orange and hot pink, and helium balloon bouquets left-over from the semi-formal I supervised on Friday (tarted up with Buzz Lightyear stickers from last year's birthday). Total expenditures: $2. This is so typical of me; if I pour tonnes of money and effort into something, results are decent but if I slap a bunch of dispirate elements together, I somehow make something amazing.

Blake was spinning with glee all day long. (His first question when I picked him up from Casa Nova in the morning was, "Daddy gave me Iron Man; what did you get me for my birthday?"*) My parents showered him with Backyardigan merch, Uncle Nic bought him his first drumset and promised to give him lessons, I made him an Arthur Mothman doll...he even got a small box of chocolates from Jessamyn. Dinner was ham, scalloped potatoes, peas and coleslaw. My mom made the Iron Man cake of his dreams; he was served the head at his request and I let him eat it any way he wanted. He got to stay up late with the ladies and sing snippets of lusty pirate songs. It was pretty much the perfect day.

just in case you forgot what he looks like.

I even got a present: there was a fair chance that Mason would have to stay in the hospital after his doctor's appointment yesterday, and he didn't have to after all. So my gift was not loading a sleepy and sugar-crazed Blake into his carseat for an evening in the ward. Not that I wouldn't have done it if he'd called, but it's nice not to have to add a depressing asterisk to this year's birthday celebration.

The only downside for me was that I was up till forever o'clock finishing Arthur - it took me a full half-hour to realize that the wings weren't going to work - and I was pretty tired. It was a weird kind of tired, though; I didn't feel tired but my patience was at absolute rock-bottom. I snapped at more than a few kids with very little provocation. I called it my rage-bubble. I'm just glad I didn't do it to my classes.

Tonight I'm hiding out from the oppressive sleet and trying to finish my choli. I had an appointment to eat food for money, but when I arrived I discovered that they were overbooked. Easiest $15 I ever made, and it's nice to be back in my found money/yarn money loop. If only I could let myself knit something that wasn't a gift and required foolish squandering. I'm sure I'll find some reason to blow it.

* "A pancake," I responded. "I hope you didn't get one already."

Labels: blake, dancing, friends, home town, knit, mason

Another week has whooshed past. Last night was the busiest night yet: I left work early to take Blake and myself to the dentist, rushed home so that my whole family could go to Blake's school's open house and eat hot dogs, then spent an hour marking papers before rushing over to my new dance class. (I'm taking a hula class this fall, because clearly I don't have enough to do.*) I feel like one of those completely over-programmed kids we all read about in editorials. This is not the life for a slacker like myself.

While bolting down hot dogs, I met Blake's best friend at school, the boy whom Blake admires for his "beautiful brown skin." Probably Blake didn't notice that the two of them are exactly alike in that they're running, screaming, jumping partners in crime because that was completely obvious.

Last night I also worked on getting rid of two Broken Social Scene tickets that my foolish impetuous heart demanded I purchase immediately when they extended their tour to Montreal. How was I to anticipate that two weeks later, a Toronto date would be announced? I thought about sucking it up and going to Montreal anyway, but I realized how foolish and inconvenient it was all becoming. It wasn't just the concert, it was 12 hours of driving and a place to spend the night and missing Blake's trick-or-treating and rushing to make it back to NotAnArtist's wedding the next day. The possibility of seeing Amy and Evan and throwing a big haunch of smoked meat on the gifts table when we got back couldn't compensate. So I decided to be sensible.

I called the label to ask if there was anything they could do for me, and they were very nice in their refusal. Then I wondered if I knew anyone in Montreal who would take the tickets. (This is complicated by the fact that the tickets don't have corporeal existence; they'll be at the will-call desk.) All of this led me to the surprising conclusion: I'm giving my tickets to my ex boyfriend Alexi, and trusting him to give me some money at some point (if he can get in at all). I can't think of very many people who would go to a concert hall on spec, but he's definately one of them. Or, he was ten years ago; I'm sure he's a little different now.

* in truth, I'm taking this class because when Juuki took a leave of absence, I had a course credit to resolve. Since I don't want to confuse myself with another style of belly dance and I'm not really cut out for ballet or tap, I gravitated toward hula dancing. It's been fun so far - a lot of hip shaking without all of the discipline I've come to associate with belly dance. Of course, now that I'm in a belly dance troupe, I have to be good, whereas I can be the biggest hula screw-up and not care. Ah, the pressure of a submerged Type A personality.

Labels: blake, dancing

Exhausted. My troupe practice was indoors last night, and over-the-counter antihistamines proved no match for Juuki’s 7 delightful cats. I actually didn’t mind the main part of the allergy attack – it was the sniffles that stretched into the night without the distraction of choreography that killed me. I feel like my head was run over in the night. I'm right back to the good old days of visiting my in-laws and feeling my throat close. This time, though, I have new dancing moves on the other side of the experience.

I just don’t have the energy to be cheerful today. I wish I was more with it, but I’ll be lucky if I can make it to 7 without keeling over.

Labels: dancing

Check me out with the slacking. I’m going to chalk the first three days to jet lag, which not so much incapacitated me as reduced my capacity to anything other than going to bed late and sleeping an unreasonable amount. Blake adjusted within a day, which was a gloriously ill-timed achievement considering that I couldn’t get out of bed until 11 and he usually takes 2 weeks to adapt to the end of Daylight Savings Time.

So there was that action, and the fact that I couldn’t get my shit together to go to the grocery store and was living on diner food, pub grub and the whole chicken Mason roasted us in honour of our return and my birthday. When you can’t make the time to pick up milk, journaling seems a hopelessly ambitious task. Plus, my mom made me a cake on Saturday, and I was snacking on a ladybug-shaped chocolate birthday cake when I should have been taking a few minutes to write. And further plus, if you remember that I was getting really into weeding before I left, it will come as no surprise that I was a little obsessed with the lush intruders that greeted our return to the middle coast. I still have dirt and plant juice grimed into my skin, 3 days after I promised that I would give the weeding a rest for a little while.

Considering that I just got a copy of Lasagna Gardening for my birthday last night, I feel a little guilty about the time I spent on weeds. I’m loving this book to death, and I’m certain that the author would be wondering why I was spending my precious time this way when I could have been layering newspapers and grass clippings on what will be next year’s veg garden. You gotta love a book with a chapter on pests called, “How to ignore problems.”

This year’s birthday celebrations were pretty understated, given my low profile of late. I was able to get a dinner going with a few faithful, including Ian, Nadia, Stacy, JimZ & Mason. Dinner was marked by kooky inconvenience (running out of space and spending most of my time in an ornamental thorn bush) and ghastly service (25 minutes before anyone deigned to take a drink order in that tiny patio with empty chairs). We had a bit of a comic book convergence, with Ian & JimZ trading stories and later JimZ dragging in an artist friend who was going out for a coffee and ended up listening to our weirdness for over an hour. I capped the night with dancing at the Cave, buoyed by the presence of Pixie, her ex, his wife, etc. Not that anything is supposed to make sense in my life, but I find it delightfully odd that Pixie and I are closer now that her brother moved out than we’ve been since before the Boy and I got married. Life. Is wee-yurd.

So I’m happy, if a little organizationally challenged. Blake is off for the week, and I’ll be leaving town on Friday for a folk festival. Yesterday Scherezade and I went on a shopping afternoon in the Queen and Ossington area, which was delightful. I’ve always liked doing a boutique crawl with her, but it was especially fun to do it in a neighbourhood new to us both, and during summer clearance sales. As long as it involves good clothes, good food and the chance to draw unsuspecting clerks into our sphere of madness, it remains the best way I’ve found to run up my credit card.

Oh, I’m looking forward to wearing my new pink dress this fall. I look like an expensively-wrapped present. It’s awesome. And I bought a very cool hipster hat today that will see service on occasions not covered by my girlie broad brimmed sunhat or my utilitarian hemp Tilley. I’m surprised that it took me so long to fill this hat category, as it does represent 90 of my life.

Labels: dancing, friends, outings

I am closing in on the end days of my sixth year as the World's Worst Teacher. This has not been one of my better years. I am profoundly disappointed in my time management, and my deep, deep procrastination reflex has never been exercised quite as much as it has this year. Of course, I have an automatic: this is the year the marriage sprung a leak, foundered and sunk. Still, I'm going to need to rise above it sometime, and that's going to have to be next year, I suppose. Next year I will have to learn how to balance the single mum thing, the teacher thing, the crafty thing and the dancer thing with the venerable closet intellectual/weekend goth thing. I think I'm going to have to get one of those books on how to sleep less at night.

And yet, I haven't done too badly this year. I had grave doubts about my ability to deliver term marks before exams were written (because marking term work and exams together is hot, crispy death), but it happened. All I had to give up was lunch yesterday, and while I am not one of those people who can skip meals without noticing, it all came right in the end. I was able to go to my exam supervision with a clear conscience, and once the whanging headache subsided, I had an awesome evening that included two dinners. Sweet.

Last night was a costuming session for my troupe, and I was all ready to skip it on the grounds of not enough good health and too much the Blake (who was not misbehaving, but who is not a kid you can safely park in a corner while you do something else). As Blake and I left the house to run an errand, a tiny bell clanged in the back of my mind. Hadn't I promised...something? To Juuki? About giving her a ride tonight, oh crap. So I went to her house, drove her to the meeting and was prepared to turn around again when Blake asked if we could go in.

"Just to say hi," I said, thinking he'd lose interest quickly. After all, he hadn't eaten dinner and we were on borrowed time. I hadn't counted on the amazing attraction of a new male friend, all to himself, in the person of Jessamyn's husband. The two of them played video games in the basement while the troupe ate freely of the potluck feast (to which I hadn't contributed, of course, not that it stopped me from eating away) and worked on our costumes. Blake was awesome for two hours, and the only reason we went home is because it was my bedtime. By this point, Blake had tried on my skirt and demanded his own so that he could dance with us.

He definitely has moments when his cuteness threatens to overwhelm existence and snuff out life as we know it.

Labels: angst, bat masterson, dancing

Last night I got on a bus with 13 other teachers, various snacks and a tonne of booze. Destination: Niagara Falls. Purpose of visit: Ladies Night. It was completely unlike me; I was way out of my comfort zone, not to mention wearing a low-cut grey dress and a push-up bra. And yet I had a brilliant time.

Poppy came over to my house early, and we chatted while I did some last-minute tidying that I hadn't done because I was busy recovering from Drunken Knitting. Poppy is such a great friend that she immediately joined in, and between the two of us we had the place sparkling within a half-hour. So completely awesome. Then it was time to put on my owl dress…which wasn't zipping properly…and led to the last minute substitution of the grey dress. So instead of being quirky and childlike, I was busting out of this slinky grey thing. Shit happens, I suppose.

Trixie came to the door when I was in my underwear, so I rushed down to let her in with a dress held over my front. Good thing we take yoga together, and the sight of my granny panties is a familiar one. We quickly primped and prepped and the three of us stepped out the door with our potluck goodies, taking my wedding boa for good luck.

Our cocktail hour was kind of rapacious, as none of us had eaten supper and we fell on the dips and snacks like wolves on the fold. There's nothing quite like a room full of beautiful, ravenous women set loose on a buffet. It's humbling. We also started the night's drinking in earnest, me with Orangina and rum and the others with more grown up drinks. What can I say; Preacher has ruined me for more sophisticated mixed drinks.

By the time the party bus pulled up, we were more than ready to be let loose. The ride to the falls was marked by laughing, dancing & drinking. We made good use of the pole, let me tell you. This was my first real surprise of the night, that I would have so much fun lurching down the highway, dancing and giggling and getting down in a 3" wide aisle. Reminded me of the C*8 improvised punk dance floor, in the best possible way. When you gots to dance, you gots to dance.

Trixie wouldn't let me take my knitting into the casino, so spent a profoundly bored 45 minutes staring at people who looked like they just came from Arby's for a brief stop at the slots. It ain't no fun to be wearing a tight evening dress when you're in a crowd that could be at the mall. Things picked up when we got into the nightclub, which was packed tighter than a rubber brick. I can't even imagine what it would have been like back when they let us smoke indoors; we were asses to elbows (thanks, b-girl!) and I grew desensitised to strangers brushing up on me at all times. In 2 ½ hours of dancing, I didn't recognize a single song, and was tremendously amused to be the only one in the crowd not singing along. I made this comment to a stranger, and he was incredulous. "How can you not know this song?" Because I live under a rock, buddy. Or, more accurately, because I live under a shifting yarn stash. It muffles the sound of your popular music.

I spent a goodly chunk of the night talking to some tall guy in a sweater who kept telling me how innocent I looked. I liked hanging out with him, but I was absolutely blunt. "I'm a single mom. I'm a cynical goth. I'm on a bus with 13 other women. I'm not getting picked up tonight. I like talking to you, but if you want to go find some other girl, I won't be upset." He stuck around for awhile, his arm around my waist, and we yelled minimal conversation in each other's ear. At one point he said that he wanted to kiss me, so I let him. Why? Because he was sweet, and because it wasn't going anywhere, and because I didn't really want to know his name or for him to know mine, and because it was Ladies Night. There was no making out, just a few random kisses, and then he went away.

I heard about it on the way back. "Who were you making out with?" "Nobody," I said, and kept eating chips. That's just as true as anything else I could say.

oh, what a night!

Considering that I saw Blake for a grand total of 4 hours today, it was a pretty damn fine Mother's Day. When the Boy dropped him off for church, Blake held out a five dollar bill. "Happy Mother's Day!" he beamed.

I looked at the Boy and smirked. "You are a class act."

"It's for the spring concert ticket!" he protested, but the damage was done. Highly amusing.

Pixie and Scout dropped him off for supper, waking me from a long nap of doom in the late afternoon. I didn't know that they were coming over, and I was really glad to see them. The Boy has been stiff and uncomfortable this past week, so I'm just as happy to see two friendly faces, especially since I haven't seen Pixie since last summer and I haven't seen Scout since she came by to move over a load of the Boy's stuff.

I'm glad to know that I still have sisters, even if I may not have a husband.

Labels: bat masterson, blake, dancing, family, outfits, outings, the boy

The best part about living on my own is that on mornings like this morning, when I go to do a load of Blake's pee-smirched bedding and find that the dryer and the washer are full of loads I can't remember putting in, there's nowhere for that frustration to go. So it just goes away. Having made the mistake myself, I deal with it and move on. There's a lot to be said for shared chores, but I'm really starting to prefer this total responsibility model.

The worst part about living on my own is that on nights like Thursday, when I'm completely exhausted and want nothing more than to go to sleep early, there is no one to take care of Blake if he doesn't feel like quietly going to bed hours before his bed time. That was a bad night, and not just because he pooped his pants at 5 and peed the bed at 2. I made it worse than it had to be, simply because I was at the end of my tether. He is one of the chores of which it is good to be relieved once in awhile. But I love him madly, and I know that our time together is better simply because I don't have the option of ignoring him. We rub along pretty well most days. I only wish he could be sent out to the movies once or twice a month. At most.

Juuki has decided to take a sabbatical from teaching, so my lesson nights are suddenly free. They wanted to transfer me to another belly dance class, but I don't really want to screw myself up at this stage in the game by trying to absorb another style of bellydance. So I think I'll try to transfer to African dance or Bhangra or something like that. It can only help and totally not confuse, right?

Also, I'm still crafting like mad. I'm trying to figure out a way to consolidate my knitblog with this one so that I can give it the mercy killing it deserves (poor neglected knitblog) (poor audience members who don't like hearing about knitting!). Any ideas are welcome. Especially ideas that involve creating imaginary punk nights with band names that Mason & I made up. Although that might not be helpful with this particular problem, it's still fun!

rocking word 97 like a girl from the suburbs

Labels: blake, dancing, house rich, imaginary bands, on-line diaries

What have I been up to?

A little crafting

a little socializing with the knitsibs and knitsiblettes

and a little belly dance costuming for my troupe, with a great deal of help from the cool Family Studies Teacher, who does this to her horse's mane. Five minutes after this photo was taken, I was cutting the Manos del Uruguay yarn out of my hair. Cut about an inch out of my hair as well. D'oh.

meme via notanartist

What we have here is the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded. Bold the ones you've read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell Anna Karenina Crime and Punishment Catch-22 One Hundred Years of Solitude Wuthering Heights The Silmarillion Life of Pi : a novel The Name of the Rose Don Quixote Moby Dick Ulysses Madame Bovary The Odyssey Pride and Prejudice Jane Eyre The Tale of Two Cities The Brothers Karamazov Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies War and Peace Vanity Fair The Time Traveler’s Wife The Iliad Emma The Blind Assassin The Kite Runner Mrs. Dalloway Great Expectations American Gods A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius Atlas Shrugged Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books Memoirs of a Geisha Middlesex Quicksilver Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West The Canterbury Tales The Historian : a novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Love in the Time of Cholera Brave New World The Fountainhead Foucault’s Pendulum Middlemarch Frankenstein The Count of Monte Cristo Dracula A Clockwork Orange Anansi Boys The Once and Future King The Grapes of Wrath The Poisonwood Bible : a novel 1984 Angels & Demons The Inferno (and Purgatory and Paradise) The Satanic Verses Sense and Sensibility The Picture of Dorian Gray Mansfield Park One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest To the Lighthouse Tess of the D’Urbervilles Oliver Twist Gulliver’s Travels Les Misérables The Corrections The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time Dune The Prince The Sound and the Fury Angela’s Ashes : a memoir The God of Small Things A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present Cryptonomicon Neverwhere A Confederacy of Dunces A Short History of Nearly Everything Dubliners The Unbearable Lightness of Being Beloved Slaughterhouse-five The Scarlet Letter Eats, Shoots & Leaves The Mists of Avalon Oryx and Crake : a novel Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed Cloud Atlas The Confusion Lolita Persuasion Northanger Abbey The Catcher in the Rye On the Road The Hunchback of Notre Dame Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values The Aeneid Watership Down Gravity’s Rainbow The Hobbit In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences White Teeth Treasure Island David Copperfield The Three Musketeers

Labels: crochet, dancing, friends, outfits, silly

Tonight I was supposed to have a night in with Blake, but he decided to have a sleep-over at Camp Grampa, leaving me free. Then Scherezade called to invite me to a party celebrating the completion of her first semester back at school, which seemed heaven-sent. But by 6, I realized that if I had just drank an entire can of Diet Coke with supper and still felt the urge to crawl into bed and sleep for a year, then driving an hour to get to a party might be a bad idea. So I opened a new bag of sunflower seeds and set up four different books on the back of the couch for when I finished my current novel (Flashman and the Angel of the Lord).

It's been an odd week. As spring rushes upon us, I'm still feeling beat down and ill; there's this charming rattle that sneaks into my laugh whenever I'm really enjoying something, and it makes me sound like my Grandmother. I'm not ezzactly sick, but neither am I ezzactly well, and an early night of pure indulgence seems just about the perfect cure.

Last night at my troupe practice I discovered to my joy that Juuki does not need to be there to rally her troops. I was afraid that with Juuki at the belly dance conference, the rest of us would be too retiring to run an effective practice. Last night may not have been as focussed as it is when Juuki's running the show, but we are far from passive and today I was feeling it in my knee and my arms (who rebelled at the amount of blackboard writing I required of them).

I'm really glad that we are pulling together as a troupe. Even if I'm not the dance dervish everyone teases me about, I don't want to be a star. It's better than awesome to be a part of such an enthusiastic group of ladies.

Today Mason finished the wrap-around sweater he's been knitting for his wife for almost half a year. (Too bad they split up two weeks ago, but it's a hell of a sweater. I'd take it if I were her.)

I was so proud that I took the long ends of Suri yarn and had the cool family studies teacher braid them into my hair. She is used to decorating horses, so this came easily to her. I had an immediate flashback to the Animal Farm musical, and took care to remember that if I were obedient, I'd not feel the whip.

pretty ribbons in my mane…

In other news, it's spring!

Labels: blake, dancing, friends

Now that I'm in my second session of belly dance, I find myself much more at ease and much happier with the dance. Last night was my second class of the second session, and I noticed that some of the other women were getting a bit uptight about their difficulty with the steps. Juuki handled it well, of course, but I privately decided to help as much as I could, so I made sure that when we were playing the games, I went straight to the most vocal critic and fairly beamed positivity. I got her smiling by the end, which was awesome. Next class, a new grouch. And the best part about it was that there's another repeater in this session, and she's sharing my self-imposed cheerleading duties. (And she lives on my street, and she's coming over to my house to dance on the weeks when Juuki is at the belly dance conference. I drove away last night trying to figure out how I landed a BFF. It's cute.)

Labels: dancing

When we last spoke, I was in full-on rant mode about the Boy's stuff. By the time he came by to pick it up on Monday, my attitude had softened considerably, and I tried to apologize for being a bitch. No response. So I went to hang out with Blake while the Boy loaded his crap into the car. Since I was feeling reckless and light-hearted, I mentioned that Blake had ratted him out*, and I knew about his special friend. (This is what I didn't want to share a few weeks ago.) Instant aloofness. I even tried to kiss him, which he dodged neatly. I walked into the house with a smile on my face, waiting until the door was locked before dissolving into sobs.

There is just something about sending the degree and the R2D2 Phone that betokens a finality. The kiss was my last desperate stab at denial, and I myself was denied. I called Scherezade, and choked through the sobbing: "Can you tell me that part about how it's inevitable that I'll be loved again?" She did. Eventually I was even able to stop crying.

* I was towelling him off after an unfortunate soiling incident, and he looked up brightly.

"Daddy has a new friend."
"What's her name?"
"B----."
"Does she sleep over?"
"Yes."

Egged on by the ladies at work, I looked her up at the Boy's school. I'm being supplanted by a kindergarten teacher. I should have known those nasty primary-coloured sluts would be at the bottom of this.

True to form, when my life starts sizzling, I get too busy to write about it. Good thing I have these long periods of boredom contemplation to sift it all into words. It's been a good March Break, despite my house-bound frustration of the first weekend.

On Monday I kicked around the house, deeply into my kid-less fester. (Who knew that it would take separation to catapult me back into Ferg Life?) I was so bored I even marked a set of papers. But since I had a date, I wasn't prey to the same restlessness as the day before. At the stroke of eight, I changed into my dancing pants and drove down to the Bloor Theatre to meet my favourite Stacy. First there was No Country for Old Men and a lot of good popcorn; then there was Shannon at the Dance Cave. Stacy was celebrating her last freelance week, and was more than happy to dance with me till the wee hours. The only hitch came when we got there and I was shedding layers, only to discover that I'd never bothered to put on a bra. I guess I really was committing to partying like it was 1998, what with the PVC pants and the lack of supportive undergarments. On the spot, I resolved to avoid Prince songs, having found out the hard way what happens when I dance to Prince without benefit of a bra. Some guy did eventually try to pick me up (during Gloria Gaynor, of all weird moments), but he wasn't too impressed when I told him that I wouldn't be available till the summer. Well, it's true.

There was much beer and much soul-deep girl talk and lots of dancing (I am too sexy for this shirt, you know.) When they kicked us out we hugged Shannon goodbye and walked off into the cold night. I drove Stacy home and went home myself, and by the time I went to bed on the first day, it was 3:30. Rock and roll.

The next day I got up at 10:30, the absolute last time I could get up and expect to shower off the dirt before meeting Scherezade at the mall. I was almost on time, too. We met at a big Toronto mall with the idea of getting sassy jeans for me. Boy, Yorkdale was happy to see me; between the H&M binge (3 dresses, 2 blouses, 1 blazer, 1 pack of underwear), 3 shirts at Jacob Connexion and 3 pairs of jeans, I dropped a tonne of money in that place. Even Scherezade was taken aback, as our traditional model consists of talking our way through many many stores while she buys the occasional item and I look on cautiously. My new model is entirely driven by the consciousness that I will not get back to a store twice in a season, so I'd better buy it now. I got back home at 6, ate my take out bbq pork in front of the teevee, and passed out cold. And the night and the morning were the second day.

On the third day I got up rather late and looked around to fully grasp the mess I had made in nearly a week of neglect. I was barely able to make a start on it when the doorbell rang with my the Blake. He nibbled his way through lunch while I figured out where the dirty dishes could go for a few days without stinking up the kitchen, then we packed up, got in the car, and went to K8rs' house for a sleepover. It was pretty much the perfect time for him: a lot of new toys to play with, a lot of climbing and rolling around in the gorgeous snow, Kraft Dinner for supper, and then a sleepover with K8rs. (Marc tells me that when he went in the following morning, Blake was leaning on K8's bed like the Fonz, Miles the dog was sleeping in Blake's place, and K8 wasn't wearing pants. Good times.)

It was also the perfect time for me, as Andrea & I were able to discuss all aspects of everything in the universe while following the kids around, then go to knitting in the evening. This was my third night of cathartic girltalk, and I was feeling pretty comfortable in my skin as we rolled into Lettuce. I've discovered that there's nothing quite like indignant girlfriends when a man has done you wrong. I know, I know: I'm a little long in the tooth to have this revelation, but in my defence, the last break up I had was clearly my fault and Scherezade (my only girl at the time) is not about lying to me to make me feel better.

I fell asleep in Andrea's basement, confident that Blake would wake me up in the morning. And this restless night of strange rockstar dreams was the beginning of the third day.

Andrea and Marc did a full pancake and bacon breakfast the next morning, so my tossing and turning of the night before was mellowed by delicious bacon, hot tea and cloth napkins. (Don't ever think that I can't be soothed by good living, because I can.) Blake didn't want to go, of course, but we were due at our next social engagement. Opera Sarah & I had talked about the zoo, but the weather was hostile, so I figured that the best thing to do would be to go over and just hang out. Of course, then I parked in the wrong place, got stuck in the unplowed snow and had to call a towing service to yank me out. Fun fun fun. By the time that was sorted, I really wasn't going to the zoo. So I hung out in the apartment, proofread Leo's flyer, knit a bit, and watched Blake slowly succumb to the sleep he had missed whilst talking K8's ear off. Eventually I packed his resistant body into the car and took him to the Children's Storefront to meet Opera Sarah, Hestia & Persephone for the afternoon. I used to go there when Blake was wee because it's right close to the Midwives' Collective, and I've never forgotten how stimulating it is. Blake had a great time with the other kids, and we frittered away the afternoon until it was time to caravan back to my house for supper.

My parents had asked us over for supper so they could see Blake as soon as possible, but they were more than ready to bring supper to my house, and we all ate happily in the dining room. After my parents left for the night, Hestia and Blake played around while Sarah and I got progressively glassy-eyed, then we forced the kids into bed. My guests slept in my bed, Blake slept in his bed, and I slept in the basement. And the night on my old futon and the early morning were the fourth day.

Tossing and turning on the futon, I heard a little voice from upstairs. "Mommy?" "I'm down here, sweetie." "Mommy, Hestia didn't sleep in my bed with me." And he burst into messy tears. Aww.

We made oatmeal with many fixings for breakfast (walnuts, yum!) and festered while my dad took the car away to fix the part that had been ripped off by the towing (did I mention that towing is a damn good time?) Then it was a whirlwind of dressing and brushing and packing and we were all off to the sugarshack. First stop: pancakes. It was just the sensible thing to do. When we got outside, Hestia and Blake ran around the snowy paths while me, Sarah & my dad followed at a sedate pace. So much better than the zoo – cheaper admission, more room to roam, the possibility of many snowballs, and the smell of boiling sap. I heart the sugarbush, even though I was thoroughly worn out from my marathon of fun and sincerely regretting wearing my new jeans to slop around in the snow.

When we got home, Blake & my dad puttered around while I went to pick up some paperwork and a few more Flashman books in downtown B-ton. And then came the best part of my day: I got to lay down for an hour. Bliss.

Conversation in bed:

"Mommy, when I grow up, I want to have big breasts like you."
"Do you want to be a girl?"
"No, I want to be a boy with breasts."
"Well, they don't just happen when you're a boy."
"How do they happen?"
"Um. Hormones and drugs and surgery. It's a lot of work. Why do you want breasts, anyway?"
"I want to nurse babies."

All together, a la Scarface: First you get the breasts. Then you nurse the babies. Then you get the power.

At 4, my dad came back to pick us up, and after dropping them off at his house, I went on to my bellydance teacher Juuki's house to pick her up. She had expressed an interest in Drunken Knitting, and I am nothing if not a world-class enabler. So we travelled down, chatting away, and she got her first introduction to the high stakes world of pub knitting. You know the one I mean, the world of, um, girls who knit. And who talk about knitting? While they drink?

Ok. It's not a high stakes world. But it is a high-larious world, and we did it up. Between planning the Unemployed Girls Road Trip of July 08, accepting yarn from Laura (more swatches, mule!), and trying to chivvy Lisa into dating my brother, I barely had time to knit three different things. Somehow I managed.

On the way home, Juuki remarked that it's hard to feel at home with a large group, but she'd never felt like an outsider. Thanks, ladies, y'all did me proud. I collapsed into bed at 12:30 with a book of patterns, and the night and the morning were the fifth day.

Saturday was supposed to be my relaxing day, but somehow it wasn't. Blake was perfectly happy at Camp Grampa, so I took the opportunity to meet Opera Sarah and her neighbour Briar Rose at the annual Balfour Books sale. Hestia was also spending the day at Camp Grandma, so we ladies were free to book shop, eat crepes and drink martinis (Briar Rose, that is), and exchange money for church-lady-created Easter eggs. (I have a connection, yo. It's, um, my mom.)

I also hooked up with Ian three different times, starting with busting into his apartment as soon as I'd parked the car in order to use the bathroom. (And did I act like obese Homer trying to get a ride to the Power Station? Yes I did.) Ian coped well, considering he was in his pyjamas playing video games with the shades drawn when I frantically hunted him down. He even groomed himself to join us at the crepery before disappearing to find his wife. I found him for the third time when I went to the apartment, and I was able to spend the better part of an hour lying on the couch, watching other people play video games while I did sweet f-all. Only my cat allergies kept me from insinuating myself into their dinner plans. I visited two separate yarn stores for a few vital errands (it happens, shut up), double-parking at both. The lady at Romni not only remembered my weird project from the last time I went there, she even made a joke about the inevitability of double-parking when one requires double-pointed needles (only she didn't make it sound pretentious the way I just did). People always complain about Romni, but I've always received service that ranges from adequate to exceptional, so I'll remain an apologist for them. I do so love to be unconventional.

I came home in good time, then went to my parents for dinner. Blake came home with me, we put on pyjamas, and I made him go to bed. And the night and the morning were the sixth day.

Today has been tidying, church and marking. I didn't finish all of my Mark Break homework, but I've done a sizable chunk. I'm proud. Also freaking exhausted. Remind me that I don't get to complain about not having a life, would you? I'm going to lie down now.

Labels: dancing, friends, knit, outings

Listening to a lot of music these days, as always. I've been unusually pleased with the albums I bought two weeks ago, and I think I figured out why this morning. I finally have something that the Boy doesn't know about. In some ways the worst aspect of our separation is that he started keeping secrets right away, while he was still living with us and our lives were open to him. Now that he's gone, I'm curious about all manner of things. Is his bathroom as filthy as it was when we dated? Is he cooking real food or stir-fries and pasta? Is he already dating? Is he thinking about dating? Does he spend as much time thinking about us as we do thinking and talking about him?

These are questions I won't ask, nor would I trust his answers. (See above, re: secrets.) Music was/is a big part of what we have in common, and there is something about having music he's never heard that makes me feel a little less vulnerable. I suppose that moving on needs to start with the feeling that I don't need him to enjoy Arcade Fire with me if I'm to enjoy it at all.

Aaaaand speaking of music, I suppose we're all wondering the same thing: how did the third night of the Brampton Indie Arts Fest go? Well, fabulously, of course. I went home for a bit after school, then went to my parents' for dinner and Blake noodling while I waited for Nic to come home. He was an hour late (which I should have expected but somehow didn't) and I had to drop him off at Kenny's house before driving myself to the theatre. There was barely time for a driveway dance-party before he was into the house and I was gone.

The main stage was late, so I saw a bit of Courtney Lynn's set and bugged back to the main theatre in time for the beginning of that program. I caught all of Dan Griffin's set, which was so lovely that it felt instantly familiar, and so intimate that he could hear me boo'ing when he asked if everyone had had a good Valentine's Day. (Hee.) Somehow I managed to get a free copy of his CD (no, not by stealing it, thank you) and will be passing it on to someone else who will love it.

Back to the Secondary Stage for David P. Smith, a quirky solo accordion player from B.C. who isn't Geoff Berner. He was a lot of fun, and there were so few people in the theatre that I could stretch out on the floor in front of the stage and pretend I was at StanFest.

Back to the Main Stage for Dr. Steve Mann's States-of-Matter Quintet. I love the hydrophone, but it was kind of disappointing seeing it so far away after last year's up close experience. Not that I played it last year, but I liked that I had the option.

Intermission! I did something I never ever do: buy and drink a regular Coke after 10. It got the job done, though, and I went back in for Becky Johnson in considerably better spirits. (Weird, spastic, funny monologue about an agoraphobic with social anxiety accepting a write-in election for school president.)

The next act was billed as "A Celebration of Canadian Beards: 50 of the GTA's finest beards will swarm the stage of the Rose Theatre," and I was beard-spotting all night, trying to figure out who I would see. Only one beard was present, and though it was a great beard, I can't help but feel cheated.

I went to the lobby to complain to Nic and stood around chatting to him and Kenny and some of their friends. Kenny is an old friend and old bandmate of Nic's. He has a moderately successful music career and knew enough about tech to get he and Nic employment as teenage roadies at a variety of festivals and concerts when we were all in highschool. Kenny is also probably the weirdest functioning adult I've ever met. As a kid, I found his company hectic and unpredictable in the extreme, but he can also be as charming as Satan, and this was the side on display Friday night. I think we made a playdate for him and Blake.

nic and the gross bald spot he's shaved into his head

his eyes shut under the radiance of his own sneer

I went back to the theatre for Maypole, a film inspired by a Joel Giroux poem and scored by Gavin, another old friend and bandmate of Nic's. The follow-up was Dorit Chrysler, an awesome blonde sex-kitten theremin player. She was poised and talented and kind of spooky in a way that totally fit the sound of her instrument. I liked her a great deal, even though the Coke had worn off and I was getting sleepy again.

Two more films: Golden Age, a hilarious animated short following the later lives of various imaginary candy and cereal mascots. Then, Nic's film: A Day or More in the Life of a Russian Furniture Maker! A Grade 12 story that had received a 60% was produced by Kenny into an OAC project that got a 90%. This was that film. Silly and clumsy in parts, but fun and weird. After it was done, Kenny got into the puppet booth to chat with Curtains, the puppet MC. (He and Nic had been talking about doing it, but only Kenny had the guts when all was said and done.) Somehow, seeing Kenny as a puppet only made me like him more, especially when that puppet plugged my brother.

Because all enjoyable experiences need a palate cleanser, the next act made me want to tear out chunks of my hair to distract from his voice. No names, because I don't want him to ego-Google and get sad. But it was the first time I truly understood what it would be like to listen to Vogon poetry. Ugh.

The festival closer was an outfit called Samba Punk Sound System, a group of percussionists somewhere between a marching band, a drum circle and a house party. They encouraged dancing, and when they started up, I knew that all my time in the hippie dance circles of StanFest would compel me onto that stage. I waited until two girls ahead of me started dancing up the aisle, and did a different dance behind them so they would know that I wasn't biting their style. We got onto the stage, joined the guy who was already dancing up a storm, and started the wild rumpus. At one point during that frenetic first dance, I opened my eyes and saw my brother and Kenny playing drums at the other end of the stage. I danced over, one of the two girls following my lead. Nic caught my eye and grinned. And then I danced until the drums stopped, at which point I realized that I had lost my breath some time ago and could taste blood at the back of my throat. So when the next song started, I got up and danced some more. Absolutely glorious.

When it was over and we had shaken hands all around and gone back to our seats to watch I Met the Walrus, I tried to catch my breath. The endorphins were still sizzling, and I found that I didn't care much about anything. Even the lingering cough didn't bother me (although I decided that dancing had somehow given me the TB, and delighted in accusing the other dancing girls.) When the film was over, I caught up to Nic and Kenny in the lobby. Kenny held his palm up. I high-fived it, smiling.

"I have got to thank you. You took it up a couple of notches."

I smiled bigger, wondering what this was about.

"I was sitting there with Nic, trying to get him to go up. He was complaining about his wrist. And I said, how can you stay here when your sister is up there, owning the place?"

Like I said, charming as Satan. And I, for one, welcome my Satanic acquaintance.

Labels: dancing, family, festivals, friends, music, the boy

Today was the first day of the new semester, and the less said about that, the better. The brightest spot of my day was the return of Mason, who is now doing behavioural stuff all day (or, as he likes to call it, 5 periods of prep). Unfortunately, there wasn't a lot of time for knitting & chatting, but there's always the rest of the semester. And speaking of segues, here's Sage, the cutest baby of 2007:

sage-in-a-pot

sage models a tart hat

sage gets ready for cake!

Tonight after my dance class, my instructor asked me to stay after. Uh oh, I thought. I think I'm cut. Maybe she was going to refund my money as long as I promised never to take another bellydancing class. Instead, she asked me to join a student troupe she's forming. It's not based on ability (which is obvious, considering that she picked me) but personalities. I suppose there's something about the sight of me playing the finger cymbals with my eyes closed, weaving backwards and forwards through the otherwise-orderly rotation of dancers that caught her eye. Or maybe she likes that I knit my own dance socklets. Either way, I'm thrilled. This could be the start of something shimmery.

Labels: bat masterson, dancing