Tiiiired

...but awake. Today:

-Deposit cheque.
-Pick up meat.
-Dressew.
-Respond to apartment ads.
-Garden shop?
-Mountain equipment co-op for bike fondling.
-Bikes on the Drive likewise?
-Buy tahini.
-Download blue Rodeo and Jack Johnson.
-Watch Where the Wild Things Are with Angus.
-Co-conspiratorial mutterings in the kitchen w/ Angus and new vegan comfort food cookbook and new hot drinks cookbook.


Yesterday was awesome. It was my first day off and awake since the 10th (not that I am entirely awake). I caught up on my website a bit, went on a lovely tea & Banana Leaf date with Angus (that place is GOOD), helped teach a gardening workshop while a streaker dressed only in the Canadian flag and shoes ran by (it takes a long time to run into and out of view on city streets), chatted with a fellow permaculturalist (!!!) who wants to hire me about a day a week through the summer, had more lovely Angus time, walked through ground zero of the Olympic celebrations (Robson and Granville, but all of Robson and all of Granville up to the bridge was closed, buses weren't running 'due to crowds' because all those roads and for one block back on either side was closed off. Good for police/normal pr, girls were flirting with the policemen like crazy), went to Guu with CrazyCrhris and Tim and Navi and Anthony and kindlingboy and Shaun and a friend of Anthony's, sat around showing off salmon sashimi yukke (so so good) and drinking super yummy cocktails for a couple of hours (earl grey ramune cocktail anyone?).

Then home, some sleep, apparently I still wake up around 6:30 or 7 so not -enough- sleep, and some baby rat photo-ops. Now I'm here talking care of Blue Rodeo and writing. I love to write, you know? I'm just usually so caught up in trivia about what needs to happen that I don't do it. I've been thinking that an iphone with a keyboard of some sort (do they make those?) would let me journal on my lunch break at work, which would be a peaceful time when I couldn't do any of this other stuff anyhow.

My beautiful Ice Cream kiddo is apparently very ready to pop over at Lizzy's, I'm nervous as can be-- when they give birth here at least I can check them every ten minutes.

Regarding food, part of my date with Angus yesterday ended up going to the bookstore. We bought four cookbooks (sigh) to supplement our ever-growing collection: vegan comfort food, rice, apples, and hot drinks. It will be fun to cook again. I wasn't doing a lot of that this last couple of weeks, partly spurred on by the fact that food was provided at work, partly as a time thing. It was an interesting food experience altogether-- I was eating four meals a day, one at 9pm (breakfast) one at 2am or so (lunch), one at 9am or so (breakfast) and one at about noon or 1pm (lunch) which I would wake up for. That may partly be why food took up so much time.

I did have time, however, to have this exchange with Angus. Me: I know what I'm going to do for lunch! It's totally modern Japanese, not restaurant Japanese but authentic. Angus: Oh? Me: You're gonna hate me. Angus: okay. Me: I wanna take rice... and mix it with ketchup... (Angus makes fake vomiting sounds) ...like they do with pasta in bento boxes, and then get cheap hot dogs and put them in (more fake vomiting sounds from Angus) ...like octo-dogs, but maybe coins (Angus continues to fake vomit for awhile).

I have two other posts in my head, or maybe it'll braid into one, but it feels like it needs a separate space.

Blue Blue Rodeo

So I went to the Blue Rodeo free show with Bob the other night-- it was my first night off, I had specifically taken it off work to be able to go with him. It was a free show, so we got there just after 4pm to be sure we got in, which we did with dispatch (the line was only a block or two long and moving quickly). We hung out and looked at some things, and there was a bit of a musical tour of Canada on stage (first some Bollywood stuff from here, then an indie singer from the Maritimes, then Chic Gamine from Montreal/Quebec (who are awesome btw), and finally Blue Rodeo). In between there were Olympic things on the big screens, including the skating gala (super cool) and the end of the Slovak/Finland bronze medal hockey game.

It was a lot of standing given that I had got off shift and home by about 10am, had two hours sleep, and by the time I got home had been standing about eighteen of the previous 24 hours. Still, it was worth it-- they're a fabulous live band, they looked like they were having fun, we were two rows from the front or so, and-- well, it's this way. Bob and I were together for a fair chunk of time-- more than two years. We lived together for awhile. Blue Rodeo has always been one of Bob's favourite bands but it was also our album. He got me into them, we played them a lot in our house.

And I care about Bob a whole lot. And- when I realised that things with Angus were going to completely flame up emotionally I stopped the relationship with Bob. I stopped it cold, none of the trailing off I've done with other people, because the feedback I've got from my exes is that they would generally rather things just stop, like, END, rather than go through a cyclic more-less-more thing as people come and go from my life. I really care about Bob, I respect him a whole lot, and I was privileged to be let inside his emotional shell. I wanted to do the right thing for him-- and this was the time when everyone was saying that Angus was a dickhead for fucking me and spending time with me without being able to commit to a full-on relationship. I didn't want to be a dickhead. I didn't want to hurt anyone, but I suspected it was coming one way or another and wanted to do the least damage.

It wasn't fair, because Bob had always been awesome to me. He took the poly thing in stride and the rats thing in stride and really was proud of who I was and how I did what I did. In an ideal world he would not be dumped or emotionally overshadowed by some unproven subby kid with dimples and a whole lot of emotional ambivalence.

He was really upset with Angus for a couple of years after that, understandably, but he's been making a point to reverse that lately. I've been hanging out with him sometimes too, much easier for me with the Angus animosity resolved, and I always really enjoy spending time with him.

So here we are standing in this crowd (about nine thousand people?) and it's raining and-- hah --the band is playing our songs. And Bob is just being Bob, he's geeking out about the music setup and enjoying the music in a quiet sort of way, and we put our arms around each other for one song and not after that, and I don't even know what else to day about that. I didn't cry then because it wouldn't have been fair but I am now.

Cause, you know, Angus is my person but that's a good man there and I care for him a lot. And it's been a long time since we were close.

There are a lot of blessings in my life, but the people are absolutely the greatest of these. I have friends who-- you know, over time we wear on each other softly, we build up a share of commonalities, we get to witness the completely beautiful arc of each others lives. I have so much love both there and in my family.

One More Thing

First, some music. Ignore the video:

Okay, so last post was about some sad bits I had. This post is a little happier. Jack Johnson is definitely one of my favourite happy romantic musicians-- I can't say I have many of those. Usually they turn melancholy.

I think I'm exploring crush territory again over here. It's a nervous place for me to be, mostly because I have handled it so very poorly in the past and I'm shy of doing to Angus what I've done to others, namely going to the ignore/distracted place with him. In reality we have a bunch of time and good connections, but with his illness there's also a special need to be mindful that I'm not only hanging around him when he's shiny to me.

And anyhow, I wonder about how appropriate it is to get in any way involved in someone who doesn't have a significant other (ha, I realise most people are on the other side of this one!). I know that I'm not willing to give any kind of commitment besides 'I'll keep treating you like a human being'-- nothing regular by way of visiting, sex, emotional support, anything like that. If someone has a great support network and a focus for that, it's great, and it relieves my mind greatly. If they don't, well...?

On the one hand people do casual or short-term hookups all the time, sometimes with a lot of that energy behind it, and that energy is super fun. They don't get hurt, there are no bones broken-- fire is surely a tool humans have been using for so long we can sometimes do so successfully. I have some very fond memories of various liaisons over the years, including some searingly intense ones.

On the other hand, it can so often go bad in so many ways.

Bah, I'm not going to decide this alone or on livejournal. I'm pretty sure only Angus can help bring me clarity on this. Thank god for him, you know? I live so much in my head, with social interaction sort of a tacked-on set of learned stuff. He lives in his heart, and he's a born sweetheart.

So that's where I'm at, as the expression goes. Time to finish waking up and head out.

(To-do list additions:
X rat website updated with baby pix
- belly dance classes signup?
- yoga drop-in?)

Torrent of Posts

Also: I saw this saying on a greeting card:

To be happy for a night, get drunk. To be happy for awhile, fall in love. To be happy forever, take up gardening. It purported to be a Chinese proverb. I am enthralled.

Also Greatpoets says:

Starfish

This is what life does. It lets you walk up to
the store to buy breakfast and the paper, on a
stiff knee. It lets you choose the way you have
your eggs, your coffee. Then it sits a fisherman
down beside you at the counter who say, Last night,
the channel was full of starfish. And you wonder,
is this a message, finally, or just another day?

Life lets you take the dog for a walk down to the
pond, where whole generations of biological
processes are boiling beneath the mud. Reeds
speak to you of the natural world: they whisper,
they sing. And herons pass by. Are you old
enough to appreciate the moment? Too old?
There is movement beneath the water, but it
may be nothing. There may be nothing going on.

And then life suggests that you remember the
years you ran around, the years you developed
a shocking lifestyle, advocated careless abandon,
owned a chilly heart. Upon reflection, you are
genuinely surprised to find how quiet you have
become. And then life lets you go home to think
about all this. Which you do, for quite a long time.

Later, you wake up beside your old love, the one
who never had any conditions, the one who waited
you out. This is life’s way of letting you know that
you are lucky. (It won’t give you smart or brave,
so you’ll have to settle for lucky.) Because you
were born at a good time. Because you were able
to listen when people spoke to you. Because you
stopped when you should have and started again.

So life lets you have a sandwich, and pie for your
late night dessert. (Pie for the dog, as well.) And
then life sends you back to bed, to dreamland,
while outside, the starfish drift through the channel,
with smiles on their starry faces as they head
out to deep water, to the far and boundless sea.

by Eleanor Lerman