Tag: life

a day without dread is a day of victory

  • Passengers aboard a Continental Airlines flight from Phoenix to Everett, Washington, engage in an impromptu pillow fight.

    I’m out of practise with going outside. Almost everything I prepared to do on Thursday had to be put off until Friday because of Remembrance Day, unemployment having excised my awareness of such things as holiday hours. I lucked out, though, in feeling far better with the way things worked out than if my original schedule had fallen into place. I got out of the house, reconnected with a good friend, had a great time, and finished all my chores. Plus there was chocolate. Win.

    Some other good news is that the Sell All My Stuff sale has been going well. Not galloping along, but steadily sauntering, which is enough to keep me content with the plan. In response, I’ve been doing my best to keep up with my listings, adding items in time with things sold, and sending things promptly to those out of town. (Not everyone has paid for what I’ve mailed them yet, but that’s to be expected, and I’m sure it will be fine.) I’ve also started moving the books I’m selling from my shelves to the hall. I’m finding that when involved in a project that involves thinning down my possessions, it’s really quite helpful to keep everything that’s for sale in one place. It gives a visual sense of the scale of what I’m doing, as well as allowing me to keep an accurate tally of what I’ve put up for sale versus what I’ve decided, for now, to keep. Also useful: when someone buys a book, I no longer have three places to check for the title.

    • living in the eye of a needle

  • Men and Women Entrepreneurs: Not That Different

    I only have one Young Drivers Of Canada classroom lesson left, on December 9th. Except for that, it’s now all about learning in an actual vehicle, something I’m terribly nervous about. Lori gave me a very sweet lesson in her pick-up truck when she was in town last week, out in a parking lot along Spanish Banks, one of the most beautiful spots in Vancouver. It was nice to see her, nice to be a student, nice to be out of my apartment. She was remarkably patient, and though she says I did great, I’m still mourning the imaginary bumper I clipped while practicing parking.

    In other news, my quest to list everything I own for sale seems to be going well. Not only have people been putting dibs on my books, I’ve been getting a positive reaction from my Craigslist ads too. I can’t overstate how good I feel about this. I didn’t start this project to get rich, after all, but to find some relief. My debts are intense, ravenous things with sharp, horrible teeth, and any extra five dollars I can conjure to feed them makes my life better. Once they are gone, I’ll be able to save for myself, and maybe even, le gasp, go to school!

    Tomorrow I plan on going through my mending box and seeing how much there is worth saving, as well as setting aside some time to actually fix what’s left. I’m also going to bring books to the post office to calculate shipping, return all of the household’s bottles and cans for bus-change, and maybe meet some friends for tea. Not the most thrilling plans, but enough, I think, to see me through a day without falling into unemployment depression.

    P.s. I have a bag of clothes to donate to charity, does anyone have a particular favourite?

    • lately I feel a lot like I’m dying

  • His Face All Red

    I am a shipwreck. My sorrow sits on my tongue with all the delicate heft of a humming bird’s skull, graceful bone, fluted lines, sharp enough to slaughter the heart of a flower, sweet as a metal pike. I wander my files, catalogue my house, looking for more things to sell, searching for a way to break through the notion that I will be trapped here past thirty, past every promise I’ve ever made. I do not sleep through the night.

    • now to finally clean the kitchen after our weekend of victory

    Now that was a SPLENDID weekend.

    Nicole and I hosted a pot-luck at my place on Friday, based on a delicious giant ham and a big dead bird. I also made Eight Hour Eight Bean & Lentil soup for the vegans and vegetarians, which takes more than eight hours, but involves eight hours of constant stirring, as well as potatoes, steamed broccoli, and garlic portobello mushrooms with red peppers. It was an old-fashioned feast, and about twenty wonderful people came, most with their own delightful contributions, like home-made pulled pork sandwiches or berry wine. My oven lied a little about how hot it was, so we didn’t get to eat any chicken until around 9:30, but excepting that: COMPLETE SUCCESS. We all had so much food and good company that the last guest didn’t stumble out to a cab until 2 a.m. (Tony, sadly, didn’t make it until after midnight, as work prevented him from catching an earlier bus into town, but I set aside a plate for him.) Once again, thank you to everyone!

    Saturday was just as great, as it was Duncan’s Dress-Up-Like-Duncan Surprise Birthday Party and A Mad Dash for the Down & Out: Tom Waits Tribute Night! I went to his party dressed as Cake Fight Duncan, in boxer shorts with a cake crown made of a birthday card and safety pins. It was a pleasure to attend, even though we left early to make sure we would get to Tom Waits night in time to get in, and it was a pleasure to catch up with some people I hardly ever see.

    The Tom Waits Tribute Night was another sort of thing altogether. Completely incredible, it was gloriously mad gypsy dirty yet soulful and sweet, like circus music dancing through love songs with boots on. Some of the acts played it sinister, sandpaper rough and intense, while others sang as if their honeyed throats were on fire, a broken hearted sound that could only be put out with poetry or glass. My heart could have burst, it was so full with joy and pride for my friends. It was an astounding show, as memorable as a favourite birthday, as inspiring as only an insanely talented trumpet player twisting out a solo on top of a hammond organ can be. I’d tell you some highlights, but I’m sure if I tried, I’d describe the whole show.

    The after party was pretty nice too. I spent most of it on the couch, curled up by a fire, swaying into the early morning surrounded by warmth and more music, singing a little and catching up with old acquaintances I dearly adore. Tony and I were almost the last to leave, starting our walk home just before dawn, safe from the chill with each other. We lucked upon five raccoons after only a block or two, a family, maybe, playing together, foraging along the sidewalk. When we got close, we stood very still, until they got used to us as we crept along beside them. One of them, slightly braver than the rest, tiny paw raised, body tense with investigation, came up and touched my leg three times, like casting a spell. It worked, we were enchanted, and smiled all the way home.

    Sunday we spent almost the entire day cuddled up in bed, exhausted from being up so late, but glad for it. We forgot completely about the live Jonsi webcast concert, so we watched movies on my laptop, (Return to Oz, Reign of Assassins, & Ghostrider), and poked at the internet until it gave us some of what we need for Halloween, content anyway. Amazon provided Laika’s dog costume trimmings, minus a collar and dogtag, and another site had actual soviet space patches covered in bad-ass rockets and lightning. The next thing we need are matching flight suits, but I’ll be in Seattle next weekend, and there’s a rather epic military surplus store there that should set us up. Aside from that, the only thing missing are my four antennae, which I expect to find at Circuit City or a Radio Shack.

    whipping couch potatos

  • The furthest you can get from a McDonald’s in the continental United States is 115 miles.
  • Costco now offers a 12 month survivalist food supply for 1 person, on sale now for for $800.
  • Neiman Marcus is selling edible life-sized gingerbread play houses, complete with interior lollipop tree, for $15,000.00.

    As part of a resolution to attempt to get more exercise, now that I’m an unemployed blob that hardly leaves the apartment, I’ve joined HealthMonth, a beta stage on-line game that let’s you choose customizible health rules and then tracks your progress as you follow them through a month, (or don’t). My rules are fairly simple: Exercise for at least 30 minutes three times a week; write 750 words in a journal four times a week; and Ride my bike at least 20 miles a week. My progress is a little spotty, as I forgot about it until now, a full week in, and I should have chosen one of my rules better, as due to my glasses, I can’t bike in rain, (one of the more unfortunate side-effects of Octoberism). Instead I should have made a rule about my diet, as all I’ve been eating at home are microwavable cup-a-noodles, an entire Costco flat of them. On the plus side, food has been entering my body at regular intervals, on the other, even I have to admit that’s an extremely shoddy definition of “food”.

    Speaking of food, Esme recently introduced me to the most pornographic food blog I’ve ever seen, Tastespotting, a Trendspotting for your mouth and belly. Just scanning the page starts saliva flowing, as well as the profound desire to push technology to the point where it’s possible to to reach through the screen and pick up delicious baked goods. Nom. It’s not as internet classic as whatthefuckshouldimakefordinner.com, or as useful as Recipe Matcher, which makes suggestions based on what ingredients you have, but it’s certainly more inspiring.

    • we love her and miss her

    This evening my mother and I went through some of the things Brenda left behind in the storage bench when she died. Everything neglected, yellowing, ten to twenty years old. Music notation, folders for a defunct band, rejection letters from Island Records and Virgin, acres of her hand-writing, pages upon pages that she touched with her hands. The dust made me sneeze and created a film on the top of our shared cup of acai tea.

    We found black & white photos of her, hair teased, badly posed, her lips coated in an 80’s shade of lipstick, impossible to name, improbable anyway. When I think of her, I think of her sitting at the table she had in her front yard, singing jazz while she chopped organic vegetables for soup, or dressed as a beautiful wood elf for Hallowe’en, almost androgynous, a knife at her belt and two streaks of pale bronzer slashed across her cheeks in the colour of fake ivy, a sparkling green. I was too young to remember her as the rocker wannabe, even though I recognize her in the pictures. Her smile is the same, and her bones.

    and what are you doing right now?

    thingsorganizedneatly.tumblr.com

    This past week might as well have been a montage. Except for Sunday Tea, every day whipped past without clear delineation. One scene sliding into the next, cut, fade, patch cables snaking through the corners of my vision, the boom mic menacing just overhead, Damocles sword for the new generation, waiting in the wings an outdated phrase. My body moves again, my feet carry me, my hands, they grasp. Everything forward. My cases are packed, sitting open in the living room like two full mouths, unable to speak for the wealth they carry, their tongues tied with t-shirts and his&hers cargo pants and travel bric-a-brack. Food is on the way. In the meantime, I wait for laundry, I wait for the dishwasher. I wait. A pause as subtle as the violin sap hollywood pastes over love scenes.

    this week in brief

    Things I have not been mentioning here: I attended Matthew David Cale and Sarah Rose Edward-Noelle’s wedding on Monday, and, coincidentally, am planning to attend Matthew and Sara Rose’s newlywed picnic next Sunday. I hope for all the best to both couples and idly wonder if I should introduce them. Jim asked Mishka, finally, if she would marry him. She said yes. I am to be their Maid of Honour next summer and in charge of photography. I tapped Lung to do the honours while I’m standing up front, trying not to drop her ring. He and Tony and I went to see Twilight last Saturday, which was even more hilarious than the last movie. I accidentally left my hat there, but recovered it Tuesday. My mother is leaving on Friday to NYC for three weeks, where she’ll meet Van Sise in person before I do, as Lung already did. I am going to be recording her show on Thursday with Paul and T. Crane before she goes. She will be out of a job when she returns, as well as down one local child, as one of my brothers just moved to Montreal to learn Asian languages in french at the Uni of Montreal. A different family member was recently arrested and spent a night in jail, but we’re hoping it will turn out okay. The lawyer seems positive that charges will be dropped. At home, David has been given a raise and I am still looking for work, though not finding any. EI is still threatening to dock my social assistance, which has already dropped by a hundred dollars, no longer covering my rent. In hopes of softening that blow, I have been updating my Etsy shop, as I cannot rely on photography until my wrists have recovered. Also, to complicate matters, I am running out of space to put digital photos, a situation that will only grow more dire the longer I do not have access to my work computer, which continues to blackscreen during boot. On a more positive note, Van Sise sent me a vintage medium format pinhole camera so I will be able to take pictures at Burning Man. (I’m unwilling to risk my camera with playa dust). I have not used one since highschool, when I made a shoddy one from a shoebox, so it should prove to be a very interesting experiment.

    “When life gives you mascara, make masquerade”

    365:2010/07/07 - preparing

    Tony and I have decided to go forward with our trip to Burning Man!!

    Even though we’ve been planning on going together practically since our first kiss, we were a hair’s breadth away from cutting Lung free to try it alone this year as my injuries cascaded, stranding me immobile on the chilly shores of chronic pain and disability. Tony wavered, delighted to take me on my greatest adventure, yet terrified of the idea of abetting further or possibly permanent damage to my body. It was last week’s miraculous physio appointment, (where my dislocated ankle was put back into alignment), that finally tipped the balance, as well as this: my arm is no longer in a sling, in one week my broken toe should be fully healed, in two weeks my strained wrists should be better, and in three weeks my previously dislocated ankle should be almost fully functional. My right shoulder’s still an internal ruin and my recovering ankle will be tender and tire easily, but by the time we get to Black Rock City, I should be recovered enough that it won’t be actively dangerous for me to attend. Not any more than for other people, at least, what with all the DIY fire throwers and all.

    So far we’ve booked a minivan rental, bought warm vintage fur coats for the cold playa nights, and Tony’s hooked me up with a truly sweet pair of dust goggles, as seen in the inset picture.

    This week’s plan is to find a truly fabulous wide brim hat, three cheap-as-pity bikes with fat tires and good brakes, and acquire at least one Lawrence of Arabia outfit, the better to survive a week of searing desert sun, that which I am most afraid of. (Some people merely flush a bittersweet bloom of pink, but my flesh reduces to crispy ashes in under twenty minutes. My thin skin, pale like paper, burns as such, and the last thing I want to do is spend my trip hallucinating from pain with a back like peeling, bleeding bacon.)

    Does anyone know a good source for such things? Local, (Seattle/Vancouver), or on-line.

    FYI: there is no such thing as karma

    Due to a sudden family emergency that I’m at a loss to speak to any one about, but that’s serious and scary and bizarre, I am going to be very, very unavailable for the next while.

    I may be slow to reply to messages and not very good at keeping in touch and for that I apologize in advance. Life was already going through a bumpy patch, (unemployed, crippled, on welfare, in severe and crushing debt, a rather lousy handful of adjectives), but my injuries are now very low on my list of problems. Some incredibly bad things have just happened and I have to take care of my family.

    Please and thank you for your understanding.

    ps. this is unrelated to my dangerous dad. don’t worry that someone’s out to kill us. it’s not quite that bad.