Ahhh.

One week of solitary nights and I've learned something already.

I've got the evenings down. It's the mornings that get to me.

How long has it been since I had someone to talk to companionably before 10am? The answer is: a year. Crazychris would sometimes get up before me even, and we'd make breakfast together before going off on our days. I need something like that again. I remember I used to joke that I could conduct a whole extra relationship in the mornings, if I could just fine someone who woke up early. My evenings are so busy, but there's close to three hours a day in the mornings.

I could start going to work earlier, which would bump the space to afternoons.

I could live at my house and take my babies to bed, and snuggle with them for an extra hour or two in the mornings while the covers are still warm, and talk to myself.

I could cut sleep down to six hours a night again and start sleeping in.

Fascinating.

Afternoon and a Flower

Transcribed from real, true paper on which it was written during coffee break! Imagine that. someone's written a poem in 'boy writing' on the next page of this book. Starts, 'Cloudless skies/bleak, barren and cold' with a reference to Lady Tempest. If this is your poem, you're welcome to it back. But, the post:

I wrote delight on someone's face today. There it was, plain as day (not saying much in Vancouver), clear as the air (that's better). It was a beautiful thing. This is what they mean when they say a person is 'lit from within'.

One of the very best things about Graham is that his facial expressions are like a written language to me: easily visible, easily translatable with a little knowledge, and very intuitive once learned. His face, when it expresses something, looks the same way mine feels from within when I'm trying to express that same thing. I like this a lot. I like a lot of things a lot, generally. I should pick up my thank-you lists again.

I picked a crocus today. The story begins before then. Graham has been getting me little gifts-- sparkly face paint, bootlaces, pretty mask things. This delights me to no end. It feels wonderful, and it's always a thoughtful thing he's picked up on from watching the other things I like. It also makes me feel more than a little thoughtless or inadequate. So, I asked him the other day if there was anything I could do that would give him the same kind of happy. He said, "get me flowers, or a flower."

I gaped at him for awhile (honestly, I suck), and I'm sorry to report that I actualluy said 'how about some plaster-of-paris ovaries on a stick' (I can be diplomatic, believe it or not. He imperturbably replied, "no, I'd rather have something that will die and not leave me with more stuff." I'm glad he realised I wasn't being sarcastic).

So, I picked a crocus today before I went to meet him for lunch. They're not quite open outside, just long buds upstairs at work. Given that they're not supposed to be growing there, illicit relics of past years in the beds that now hold pansies and tulips, I can pick them. Already in the time it took me to go downstairs, get my coat on, and get to the skytrain, it was opening in my hand. Flowers are simply a bundle of chemical reactions, after all, and applying heat speeds them up-- from five degrees celsius to twenty degrees puts the work of a day into half an hour.

The crocus sat there as we ate lunch, and by the end of that hour it was open wide, a white crocus with yellow stamens pretending it was a sunny spring day in a French restaurant (and it was sunny, until it rained). It will likely be dead by tomorrow, but I remind myself that that is specifically what he wanted.

Interesting how I had to suppress the surge of shame that it was picked, not bought, before I gave it to him. Money does equal love in my skull somehow.

I know enough about the environmental and social costs of the cut flower industry not to buy many of the things available at florists', though. Besides, I think this was the first open crocus in the downtown, and that means something.

Thank You List, Again

Food. It feels good in my tummy.

Sleep, and anticipation. There is something especially lovely in feeling my eyelids heavy and sticky after a day of working outside, and knowing I'll be lying down very soon and they'll close.

Opportunity. Somehow I've become part of a social network where lots of cool new people are showing up on the horizon, all attached to cool events.

Juggler. I've been leaning on him a little lately, and he is so entirely there. Call him late at night, drop by early in the morning, it's all good. I hope there's reciprocation enough for him to be happy.

Time. Who knew? Things. Keep. Getting. Better.

My little community that, like a net (aha! network) keeps me from falling-- Tillie, Crazychris, lots of less-used but still strong strings.