sundae afternoon

so i'm having an enjoyable afternoon of hockey, fleece pants and a pink hoody. i've tidied my room, made a big brunch for calvin and sarah (i even cooked bacon!) and did some laundry for both me and our houseguest.

now i'm drinking tea, eating banana bread (bad sundae!) and doing some thinking - but then i just can't shut my brain off... it's the worst when i'm feeling kind of content. i start to wonder when the other shoe is going to drop.

sarah and daisy both asked me yesterday why mike b. and i don't date. i think i passed them off sort of flippantly, but it started me thinking. i'm fairly convinced it's a bad idea, but why?

i think it comes down to the fact that we are really really alike - which can be a good thing, but a bad thing, too, in that we are really alike in our relationship issues... and i think that, after the rori debacle, i am afraid of losing yet another friend because i'm an emotional cripple. it's kind of messed up, and i've said it before, but the reason i end up with 24yr old boys is because a) they don't challenge me on my bullshit and b) because i know they are only looking for a night or two with no complications. and i know that it's kind of self destructive, because it totally ends up confirming all the stuff i think i know about myself and relationships and people. but i do it anyway.

case in point - psychojeremy just called (seriously, just this second. i swear to got he's hardwired into my psyche - he knows when i'm weak and he strikes like a viper) to ask if i wanted to go for a drink and i said yeah. i know it's gonna make me feel like shit, and i know what he wants, and i know how it's gonna end up. but i said yes anyway...

i was watching sex and the city with mike b. last nite, and at the end of it, samantha comes out of the elevator and smith is waiting and she starts to cry and says that she hates herself for doing this to him... well i hate myself for doing this to me but i don't know how to stop.

i'm getting too old to stay up all night

last nite i went to a house party with mike b., his friend maria, and daisy. it was at the home of his other friend, georgia. we only stayed till 1.30 or so, but because i live out in the sticks, it was 2.30 till i got to bed.

i had to get up quite early, though. one of calvin's friends was leaving this morning to go live with his grandmother, as he didn't get along well with his mom. his flight was at 6.30, so he had to be at the airport by 5.30. that is well before any public transit is practical, so the original plan was for him to sleep in the airport, because his mom doesn't have a car. this is a 16 year old kid. calvin naturally asked me if he could sleep at the airport, as well, to keep him company - this is how i became apprised of the situation. so i said, of course, no. however, i volunteered to drive josh to the airport this morning. so i had only been in bed for just under 2hours when the alarm went off again. but there was no way i was going to let a kid spend the nite in the airport alone.

the second part to this story is that we also have a guest in our spare room this morning. calvin's other friend, sarah, had a fight with her mother the other day and was thrown out of the house. this 14 YEAR OLD GIRL has been couch surfing since wednesday. she went to her house yesterday to pick up some clean clothes and things, and her brother slammed the door in her face and would not let her in. this 14 YEAR OLD. what the hell is her family thinking?

my mom and i were talking about it a bit this morning. she is as befuddled as i - it's as though an entire generation of children are being raised to believe that they don't matter as much as their parents' jobs or lives. and here, i have to bow my own head in shame a bit, because i have been caught up in work. as a single mom it's been really hard to provide for us sometimes without putting in really really long hours. even now, with my commute, it takes me forever to get home from work at the end of the day. i don't spend as much time with my kid as i should. i'm fully guilty of that. but i do try to make special time for him. and i will make a full effort to do more. and i hope to god he knows how much he means to me. i try to tell him as often as i can without making it meaningless.

i don't know. i don't have any answers. but just cause kids don't seem like kids doesn't mean that they aren't. they still need to be guided and looked after and loved. but then, i guess adults do, too.

one of the funniest things i've seen all week

this man after my own culinary heart has made janetjackson's breast cupcakes. i am in love.

saturdays

what a lovely day.... met up with sarah u and mike b for a round of brunch and vintage store shopping.. came home to calvin hanging out playing video games with his friends in our house (something he does too rarely) and the smell of veggie lasagne made just for me baking in the kitchen. this evening i shall venture out to a house party with people i don't know, wearing my fun new skirt, i think. it's really quite lovely - cut on a diagonal and splashed with giant red poppy-like flowers. there are too few days like this; the kind that leave you feeling a little tired but content and at peace with the world.

maktaaq has posted some of her high school poetry... i am sort of tempted to track down mine. however, it is probably at the bottom of a huge box in the very back of the storage room. so it's probably best to leave it. really that makes me sound lazy - truth be told, i'm afraid of spiders and dust bunnies, two things our storage room is quite overrun with. i usually have calvin dig things out for me, but that would involve me telling him what i'm looking for, which would involve him wanting to read it, which would involve him laughing most heartily at me as he is so much more talented in that area than i ever have been or probably ever will be. as a parent, i have to tell you that it's a mixed blessing to see your child outclass you at most of the things they attempt. it makes you proud for them, but a little ashamed to be you...

apology

i do want to apologize for the poorly rendered poem below, and offer a bit of an explanation for inflicting it upon everyone.

i used to write - a lot. poetry, mostly, but also some short fiction and definitely a great deal of theory-esque non fiction. even gave some readings, here and there... unfortunately, in the grad school/relationship hell that sort of occupied my attention for 3 years i lost the drive and apparently the ability.

sooo... this blog is actually my first attempts to get back into it. work doesn't really allow me to be creative (had my performance review the other day, and when pam asked me what i found most challenging about my position i had to say completely relearning how to think and interpret information) so this is my way of reteaching myself how to play with words and language; how to make my thoughts go from my brain to my hands...

it'll take a bit to get going again, and i'm sure there will be numerous dodgy offerings like the posting(s?) below. so i apologize in advance.

poe(m)

elaborate upon this
  ...hypothesis
    a reaction for every action

re-action replays the act re
  calls the play.

rewind the words which
  play
    upon re
      word re
        write the act

recall the words re
  spoken re
  wind the action re
  voke the play

actions re
    verberate

elaborate
upon this -
  i am the action to
    your
    re
action

re
lease the words
re
tell the story
re
verberate upon
me

bleak and powerless II

i'm really worried about calvin. i know that he hasn't been that happy... and he's not hanging out with the best people in the world. he seems to be giving up on the things that make him happy.. or is it that not much is making him happy anymore?

he's got the bad end of the stick, for sure. my dad has a mood disorder, as do i, as does his dad. so there's not much chance that he hasn't been affected in some way or another. i just hope that we can help him get happy again. he's the whole world to me. i can't imagine going through life without him around.

nothing surprises me anymore.

i heard on the radio on the way home today that someone in knoxville tn is suing janet jackson, justin timberlake, mtv and (i think) abc for bearing the booby at the superbowl. i'm not sure that i'm surprised - it is the american way to attempt to get rich quick at the expense of others. why not sue jt for showing the american public a breast mostly covered by a hideously ugly piece of metal?

interesting

strangely enough...

today is not sunny, and the scissor lifts were nowhere in sight...

completely separate and unrelated

well, sort of not, cause nick's the 'inbetween' thing that i did that means that the other will never happen...

i finally got the balls to ask him(nick, not the other) what was going on... i mean, i knew the answer, but i needed to *know* the answer, you know? and it's what i knew i knew the answer to be... but whatever. it still feels kind of crappy. i got the blah blah blah working together blah blah blah just want to be selfish blah blah blah.. the ususal boy crap. i stopped him mid flow and told him he didn't have to explain himself to me. i just wanted to know what was going on. i told him that i wasn't looking for a boyfriend.. that it never works out for me when i do.... and that he doesn't owe me anything. i could tell he was feeling sort of bad, but there is no reason for it, so i tried to reassure him. i hang out with young boys and they act like young boys - i deserve pretty much everything i get. so i feel ego bruised and kind of sad.. but mostly cause i think we could have had some fun.

but in all honesty there is still the other... and i don't know if i could really get away from it, considering. what's the song? "you are still a whisper on my lips.. feeling at my fingertips.. pulling at my skin.. days go by and still i think of you.."

i've asked mike b. to smack me when i start liking the next one. he said that he will do it, unless they are good. i pointed out that i never really like the good ones, so there isn't much chance of that happening.

hmmm

how come sometimes you meet someone and you are attracted to them... and for some reason or another it doesn't work out between the two of you.. but the scent of him clings to your skin, and he's always sort of at the edge of your peripheral vision, whether he's in the room or not? so you begin to wonder if it is just you... but you catch him watching you from time to time with an expression on his face that might be..... longing? and you begin to wonder to yourself why you thought that it wouldn't work out to begin with... but know that you have done things in the meantime that have ensured that nothing else will ever come about. but at the same time, you can't escape the idea that your lives are intertwined, for some reason or another....

wednesday

i usually really dislike wednesdays - halfway through the week and usually nearly interminable. but today was not bad. mind you, after yesterday, most days would be an improvement.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
on the way home this evening, i noticed off to the side of the road a herd of scissor lifts, necks fully extended, grazing from the tops of buildings. they all faced together towards the setting sun in a herbivorous salute to the pretty end of day. i wonder what caused them to gather there; what migratory instinct brought them together on this february wednesday...

the darkness

a quote from someone else's blog that succinctly describes my feelings on the matter: "Perhaps I am excessively judgmental in believing that anyone who looks like the bastard child of Robert Plant and Steve Perry via Austin Powers's dentist has no business as a rock god. "

and just because everyone else is talking about it

here are some fun shots of justin and janet. man, if jt wanted to bare my nipples i gotta say i would not necessarily object.

a story

this is a jp and andrea story.

jp and andrea are my image of the perfect couple. they have their own lives but they have such a great life together. they are my 'couple' hero. they were married this past thanksgiving (that would be the canadian, not the american). i spent all day saturday on top of a 30ft ladder stringing long swooping pieces of white gauze across the ceiling of the hall, then chucking autumn leaves into the centres, trying to transform a gymnasium into a room that i would want my best friends to be married in. but i digress.

the party was, essentially, thirty family members and 100 friends - cheap drinks, fun music and lots of dancing. someone had given jp celebratory cigars, and the girls snagged one and headed outside to smoke it and giggle. andrea's mom was putting something in the car, or getting something out of the car - whatever she was coming back into the hall - and busted us all standing outside smoking this little vaguely fruity smelling cigar.

now what you have to understand about andrea's mom is that she is very small and very eastern european, and very traditional. she came past us and looked upon the group in general, but andrea specifically, very disapprovingly. she then marched inside and straight up to jp: "your wife is outside smoking marijuana!". yes, she fully ratted her daughter out to her new son-in-law. jp smiled, told andrea's mom that he'd handle it, and wandered off in the direction of the door so that it *looked* like he was handling it. he then told andrea all about it when she came back in. she told all of us and we laughed and were secretly jealous that she's so lucky...

it's *so* not just me

case in point. i've only half been watching this rather lacklustre hockey game, but i've heard the announcers say these things: "Ohlund's up against it... Ohlund goes off". then, just now: "Sandwiched by Swedes! Naslund and Ohlund!"

bored

so i was bored and updated the look of my blog. i think i'm going to set up a geocities account so that i can store images, then use them. hmm a thought anyway.

calvin and i went to see the butterfly effect this afternoon. strangely, it did not suck as badly as i thought it would. indeed, i can say that i actually liked it. it did, of course, cop out at the end but it is hollywood, after all. what can i expect.

the film did bring me back to my pet project of a few years ago, though: going around and asking random strangers if they could go back and re-make one decision that they made, somewhere in their past, what would it be, and how do they think their lives would be different?

it's an interesting question, because everybody has one thing that they would change if they could. i'm a big believer in not having regrets; i fully know that the decisions that i have made have created the person that i am today. it's just that sometimes i'm not sure that i *like* the person that i am today. if i remade a few of those decisions, how would i be different? how would i be the same?

case in point: after a particularly bad blow-out with psychojeremy, i had more or less made the decision to move to vancouver. i was done teaching for the semester; had no more coursework; had no real commitments to bind me to where i was. what would be different if i hadn't gone into the cafe to pick up my things and let him convince me that we could work it out? i can remember the look on his face as i turned and walked out; i remember the song playing on the stereo (chicane and bryan adams, don't give up); i remember the feeling of abject sorrow in the pit of my belly; i remember the blast of cold air hitting me as i stepped out onto the winter street and pulling my car over a block down the road to cry; i remember the cell phone calls and him pleading with me to rethink my decision: "lisa don't leave me. i hate the thought of my world without you in it. you aren't supposed to go."

even thinking about it now makes me feel sick. but imagine if i'd just kept going? left my stuff at the cafe, given my notice on my apartment (the rent was paid for another month), rented a moving van and left? all of the shit that went on for another 2 years would never have happened. or would it have? were our lives intricately intertwined for a period of time and, no matter what decision i made, would have stayed that way?

and what good things would have been lost? calvin would never have had the success at track that he had in the next two seasons; he never would have developed the closeness with his dad; i would never have become so close to JP and Andrea.

it's a strange thing to think about.

bleak and powerless

here's a bleak outlook on life. talk about a wonder killer. you know, it's only been in the last few years that i thought maybe i'd want to get married some day. on closer inspection (i.e. talking to some of the women who i know who actually ARE married) i may have to rethink this. scary, really.

someone else's brilliance

this is a quote from a blog that i happened upon earlier:

"Viruses are so last year. I don't understand why these virus makers don't get more creative. They could turn us all into unwitting participants in a massive social experiment/soap opera, but instead they mess up our computers. Ooooh! How brilliant!
If they really wanted to fuck with everyone and change the course of history, they would make one of these:
Two Suggested Viruses
*A virus that sends out every saved draft email to its originally intended recipient.
*A virus that sends the last twenty emails you've sent out, to everyone in your address book.
Jobs would be lost, relationships would disintegrate, tears would be shed, phone lines would be tied up for hours. And the whole damn thing could be sponsored by an alcohol company. "

i, personally, am particularly fond of the second option. that tickles my naughty bone. i have to admit to having certain, um, i won't say psychopathic but they are definitely not normal, tendencies sometimes. a bit of the devil living in me... the desire to go out and raise hell... cause a little trouble. the last time this happened and i went looking for nick (who, in remarkable twist of synchronicity, had skipped out of work to go shopping), his comment was "Total Irish girl!", which, i suppose is true. i never have the desire to physically hurt people... just make mischief: take french fries off the plates of total strangers, or steal popcorn from the bucket of the person sitting in front of me in theatres; gently tip people over when they are bending over, stork like, tying their shoes; undo bra straps and string-tied halter tops; things like that. the second virus idea is something that i wish i'd dreamed up. mind you, i'd probably be writing this from an CRTC-sponsored room in a cozy federal penitentiary, if it had.

oscars

the oscars are on feb. 29. mike b. and i are plotting an oscars party - this is something i've always wanted to do. so we are now soliciting donations of a long red carpet to put down the main hall of his house. we can have people arrive on the red carpet and take their photo as they arrive along the red carpet....

i don't necessarily buy into the oscars as a standard of film making, but i sure do love the glitz and glitter surrounding them. too much fun. a couple of years ago, psychojeremy and i had a particularly crazy party weekend, and didn't go to bed all weekend. he passed out on the couch beside me, but i am quite proud to say that i managed to stay awake all the way through..

i must say i'm getting overly excited about this already... is a month early too early to anticipate a party?

i'm also going to create an "oscars checklist" for myself... see if i can manage to watch as many of the films as possible before the big night. ooo fun!