garbled

i have two letters planned, and i find myself lurking on social websites instead. had a chat with a friend in another province who didn't make it in to the memorial. i seem to be connecting more with people who are further away.

sometimes down time lends itself to good. other times, just cute things and weird stuff, but not real process.

a new day now. trying to put my grief into action. i need to garden, but i'm resisting. like washing the dishes is therapy, when it isn't. i'm still hiding.

but i have to blog. because i want the pigeon mistress to see this comic. this whole blog may exist merely as a vehicle for secret messages to her. the entries before we met could be fiction, establishing me as a random, one-time co-worker so she would not suspect. creeped out yet? ha ha. sigh.

no, it's just another way to avoid writing about what i need to write about.

today i tried to do the daily stuff. i even mowed some lawn. i also wrote and mailed one of the two letters. it was a challenge to write, but it loosened the weight.

the dumpling is feeling better, so it's easier to say bright and cheerful things. sometimes that works for the inside too. not so much today.

tomorrow, i garden. i want to be exhausted at night. 

...

my friend committed suicide monday night.

i had known her for about ten years. she gave good hugs. we shared long ones. she danced. brighid and i stayed with her when we went up to the city last winter. before that, i hadn't seen her since the summer, at a festival. she sat in hank with her cute blonde friend, and we all chatted.

when i stayed with her at her hobbit cottage, we sat up late one night and drank a bit of scotch, and talked. we talked about a lot of things, including depression. she spoke of how she had been traveling in her youth and got really, really sick. after that, she lived with depression. that's just the way it was. she tried a lot of things, and they would work for a bit, but then.

she was doing pretty well at the time, had a book that was reminding her. i forget the title but i can see it. i remember looking at the book, and it seemed familiar, like i had seen it years ago when i lived in cloud nine. i remember wondering if it would help me with my own depression.

she seemed optimistic. she seemed tired.

we wanted to play cribbage, but she couldn't find the board. she looked really hard, too. she was pretty focused on it. eventually we played just keeping score on paper.

i wonder who will take her three cats. 

pretty much a waste of your time

i'm really blogging so that you will go look at this hilarious site. cream cheese as deodorant. thank you. i needed that moment in my day.

the dumpling enjoys her socks. when she sees me bring out the socks, she puts her feet out for me to put them on. she then pulls them off, dangles them over her feet, waits for them to reassemble... today she pulled purple socks off while on the potty, then stuffed them down in there. oh yes. those socks went into the diaper pail.

she spends most of her time sleeping, eating and making waste, and it takes me back, thousands of years, to when that's what most of us did with our days.

evolution.
evolution?
no, of course... it's just that we're so busy.

the queen is down south, picking up mr awesome's brother. he's in the province/prairies for a while, visiting family. the boys will likely be out late tonight, and i've got into a nice bottle of the queen's homemade merlot, aged an extra six weeks in an oak cask, then a while on our shelf. the dumpling snores on (not really, but murmurs occasionally. two new teeth coming in). she had a good day; watermelon, walking, wriggling'n'giggling. she has been practicing words, in a gently expressive way that of course warms my heart.

going to go finish re-alpahbetizing the vinyl. go look at that site at the top of the entry. spend too much time there. listen to air while you're doing it. 

things that make me happy

it's grey again, but i had my one cup of coffee, and now i'm drinking twig tea. i listened to some nice piano recital music today. some good chopin. patient, happy music. makes the weather its bitch, if you will.

the dumpling says "baby" now, and coos when she sees baby faces in books. she also cheerfully greets her own reflection in things like the dryer and the overflow drain in the bathtub. "hiiii!"

my mom has been spring cleaning out her attic and had a pile of things for me to look through this weekend, including a picture of my childhood cat, my old report cards and my grandma's travel bathroom suitcase (with her initials). what a score... i'm still debating what to do with it; original purpose, sewing case (i sewed last night! also made me very happy!), or one of the many ideas i saw while looking for a picture of a suitcase that most reminded me of my new treasure. it could be a dollhouse, a chair, a cat bed (that the cat would no doubt ignore, so too bad olive)... yay!

yeah, the sewing was good. i mended a shirt of the queen's (i'm going to pile up his mended items and give them to him for his birthday, ha), and made a skirt. i have another skirt pinned to do tonight!

our weekend was good. very full, but some chilling out time in various places with lovely company. we stayed at our friend fieldinbloom's, and i sat in his special chair. he has an extra surface that hangs over his front entry way. it sits just behind the kitchen counter. most people would put plants there, but not our fieldinbloom.

day eleven

i made a cup of black tea. i don't feel guilty. black tea is a grey area - i had it on days one and two. it's just so grey outside... i was listening to some upbeat jazz, but now i've just got this one george harrison song on repeat. it's better. it feels the way i feel.

music used to be a big mood-setter for me. now it's usually just background music. how sad. i mean, i still get pleasure from playing it, but it used to help me connect more strongly with myself.

we're going to the city this weekend. it's supposed to be miserable road conditions. the dumpling is going to my parents' for saturday night and we are going to stay with our friend fielding. he lives a few doors down form the wife, but doesn't live with four children, so we are staying there instead of at the zoo.

current nicknames for the dumpling include the pork chop, pigeon, grublet, monkey and endless variations on her actual name. she went through another growth spurt and is starting to resemble an actual child; just a tiny, tiny version of one.

here is a louder version of the george harrison song if you use tinny computer speakers like me.

i'm going to go sweep out an empty hank now. fitting? maybe. 

late night on day nine

i can't sleep, so i guess i'll blog instead. that's a promising start to this entry, which will surely be pithy and grammatically correct.

here, read this entry instead. it's more interesting. or read notes from my friend in jail for not even protesting the g20. the blog belongs to one of her co-accused, but that entry is all hers.

for some reason, i thought the second week of the cleanse/detox would be easier. i mean, i'm past all the physical withdrawal symptoms (which were really just coffee) and i've developed all my interim coping mechanisms (which are really just tea) and i'm over halfway done, so what's the problem? the problem is that coffee is my friend and now i'm lonely. and without a glass or two of wine at the end of the day, i actually have to admit that i get pissed off and crabby about shit.

i journaled a bunch of crabby attitude to get it out. now i have a headache and it's late and i still don't want to go to bed. there are other things going on in my life but i don't feel like blogging them, so now i don't feel honest. some things are too private: either positive or terrifying, they are still in the cocoon, and i don't want to give the butterflies stage fright. not on their first time, you know?

our provincial election sucked, by the way. oh well. i think i'll just sit here in the dark.

if i won the lottery (which i have no tickets for) i would move to the town the awesomes live in. 

day seven

ahoy. happy earth day. today we went out to ya ha tinda, the only federally operated horse ranch in canada (they train horses to patrol national park boundaries), and had a picnic and a wee hike. the dumpling's first hike! she insisted on climbing tiny hills in her little pink runners. she huffed and puffed and her hat almost blew away. we saw some of the bighorn falls (most of the falls was still frozen - ah spring). the only wildlife we saw were a couple of eagles (and deer, i suppose, but once you live outside of the city, deer seem less like wildlife and more like large, suicidal rabbits). it was incredibly windy; less rice cereal and cheddar bunnies, and the dumpling may have blown away.

the weekend has been lovely, though a little more difficult in terms of the detox: new challenges. but we persevered (and ate a little bit of chocolate and some cheese)! i wasn't, for some reason, looking forward to the weekend. i think i like my routine, and my alone time during the dumpling's daily nap. but now, sunday evening, i feel sad that the weekend is over. we had friends over, we played cards and laughed, we ate celery instead of chips and drank tea instead of beer. and we had a great time. the weather finally came through and we all have pink cheeks now. we enjoyed ourselves.

hank (remember hank?) is getting a makeover! i cleaned out all the dishes n blankets n stuff, and the queen is ripping up the carpet and taking out the table and cupboards and crib he put in. by may long weekend (hopefully) there will be hardwood floors, room for a small wood stove, bunk beds (no, we are neither pregnant again nor planning a second child, it's just practical) and did i mention hardwood floors wow!! then hank will get a nice scrubdown and prettied right back up, with the magnetic poetry all over the ceiling, a few less windows and no doubt, an olive curled up somewhere soft (she quite likes the bus, and i think it's mutual).

and so. time continues to pass. the provincial election is tomorrow.