Last night, yesterday in general, I started having symptoms of strep throat.  Feeling like a whiny five-year-old, I called my dad (who didn't pick up), then my mom, then my dad for some parental comfort.  It sort of happened.
I told my mother what I thought I had (actually what I pretty much know I have), and she suggested I get a prescription for amoxyl.  And, I mean, how could she be expected to remember that it is believed that I have an allergy to that.  I mean, after all, that's only been the case for 22 or so of the 25 years I've been around - and it's only come up a couple of times - every instance of me needing antibiotics ever.  I can only figure that my mother, who's pretty into alternative medicine, was suggesting an alternate treatment that I had yet to consider (and I admit it: I hadn't considered it at *all*).  I thanked her for the suggestion, then hung up the phone and promptly dialed my dad, again.  It was nice that this time he picked up.

Me: I think I have strep throat.
Dad: Aw, poor duck
[yay, I got "poor duck"-ed, parental comfort take one, let's try that again].
Me: Yes, and I feel awful and achy.
Dad [clearly violating his ideas about liquid calories, because he is good that way]: Ohhh.  Well you should make yourself some hot chocolate and tuck into bed. Or soup, soup is good.
Me: *sniffle sniffle*
Dad: Do you wash your hands enough because, you know, studies have shown that washing your hands regularly-
Me: Er, dad?  Trust me when I say that there's really no way this could have been avoided.
Dad [who I told, probably yesterday, that there was *someone* new in my life]: Uhhh, that is okay, I do not need details.

Parental comfort achieved, and I tucked my achy self into bed.  Now I have to wander down and hunt up a prescription for some drugs - though I don't think I'm going to take my mom's advice and go with the one that is likely to kill me - but that's just the kind of girl I am.

There is this stupid movie, with Keri Russell and *some guy*, wherein the guy's grandfather tells him that the point of life is, pretty much, sex.  Or sex and fruit.  Either way, I pretty much think this is a pile of crap.  And at the same time, this little premise in an otherwise pointless movie is giving me pause this (freakishly early) morning.
Sex is, I think, ultimately the best way some of us know to connect to other people.  Maybe the only way.
The first time I was exposed to E.M. Forster's epigraph "Only Connect...", it wasn't at the beginning of his own novel, where it belonged.  O.R. Melling had stolen, borrowed; had seen the wisdom of those two simple words, and used them at the beginning of one of her books, which happens to be one of my favourite works of ya fiction.  And while Melling's book does have sex in it, the connection she writes about that seems the backbone in her web of overlapping lives is one where not only is there no sex, there's little physical contact.
That is the power of the epigraph, of the concept: connections that can be made through physicality, and in that case, quickly, can be made in other ways, sometimes stronger ways. And those are the ways that often endure long past the memory of a kiss, of even a fuck, even though they often don't have a physical manifestation.
And even saying that, typing that, I know that I'm wrong.  I look at physical proof of non-physical love on a daily basis in things as small as an envelope full of good wishes, a pudding, a surprise present from an unexpected giver.
Given my druthers, I don't want to have to choose between them, between the talking and laughing, the knowing that love is coming at me from miles and miles, and the simple act of putting my arms around another person, of holding on for what I'm worth in the time I get, I'll take both.  And maybe, what I'm looking for is as simple as that, someone or someones with whom I can have both, more, all kinds of connections.

In hionour of the fact that I have the great joy of waking up despicably early to do work at my work, I present a random list of things I was thinking this morning (yay!):

1.  The ETS and I seem to differ distinctly in our thoughts about how much a local transit system should suck - I think a small amount, but ETS seems to prefer a larger amount - on a pretty much daily basis I can watch buses that I could catch to take my very very near my house leave the transit centre that the bus I'm riding on it arriving at.  Woot does not cover it.  Additionally, the opening of Ani's "You Had Time" has been fairly consistently long enough to last until a bus does come.

2.  I am going to have to tell my roommate that the cleaning elves that he seems to think live in our house do not, in fact, exist and that it is I who is washing his dishes and taking out the garbage and cleaning the bathrooms and (once) vacuuming the floor.  I have never had to tell someone this before, and I am quite afraid that he will cry or act out (in this case by continuing to leave messes around the house).  Alternately, I have to get him some counselling as he appears to be subconsciously threatened by clean spaces.

3. I really really really want to quilt.  Or, at least, want to have a quilt.  And I may eventually want to have more than one bobbin that will fit in my machine.

It was the birthday of a most specialest person - and it is here where I take all of 2 seconds to wax poetic on the fact that we all need those strange short people in our lives whether we want to be raising 'em or not, because they remind us of what's really important in the world: cake.  And robots.  And taking pictures of feets.
My particular feets are taking a break from the potentially emo/goth/minor-depressive - they're pretty pink now instead of black.  I tried to do the same with my hair, but, unfortunately, there are not that many dyes that will actually make a difference over top of blue-black, so it's still, essentially, blue-black.  A couple of months ago when I first dyed it this colour, it felt amazing - I was kind of angry and rebelling a little (yes, at 25), and THE HAIR made me feel stronger and different and *good*.  But now spring is here (yes, I am sticking with "here") and I am ready to have a little more lightness.  I am sitting here looking, essentially, like a whiny emo child (because there's nothing that describes me like the phrase "whiny emo child"), and I am ready to look like...well...a whiny indie kid.  Major change, right?

I have continued to try to clean rooms - the kitchen today, but it's bigger and less straightforward and i got lost somewheres around the stove and had to leave the house (that is, realized it was sunny and 6 and going up, and wanted to leave).
And there was CBC radio one on a small radio blaring in my kitchen, and that was what I wanted, and cats that are sleeping in one bed every day now,not a one-time fluke, but a habit.
It was 5 degrees and sunshine was pouring through windows, and I put on my brand-new-yet-ages-old high top shoes that  let the water in and ventured into glorious sunshine.
And then, coming home, I missed the connecting bus that would get me exactly to my door, my bags were stupid heavy and my socks were wet; the wind that had been blowing me kisses earlier in the day was trying to bite.
But I made it home.  Home to pizza and a cleaner kitchen and peace, for once.  Home to Secretary, which is a movie that I muchly love if only for its ability to share the concept of love, in a way that only the lover and the loved can understand.
I re-dyed my hair, or tried, and painted my toenails baby-baby pink - I'm trying to come out of hibernation here, away from the dark and the cold and the lost that, yes, I admit, was what I was mainly feeling around Christmas.  Because it's the season.  For new life and beginning again.  Again.

As evidenced by the photo a few days ago, I am exhausted.  I think I could tell you exactly why, but the truth is, I have no real interest in being exhausted: it annoys me.  Which isn't particularly helpful.
In continuing in my attempt to live a small and graceful life, I am trying to pay attention to moments of beauty and be aware of being in those where it seems to be lacking.
I was talking to a woman on the phone at work a couple of days ago, and Hillary Clinton was yelling in the background.  Yelling, not simply speaking.  I realize the U.S. is in the middle of a major, probably positive shift, and that we, as Canadians, need to be caring about this.  But she was yelling.  No peace to be found, no quiet moments, just YELLING.
I live in an environment where there's pretty much constant noise pollution: my roommate basically lives with a soundtrack - often reality television, something I don't watch, and I contribute my own noise; my workplace is basically 500 noisy boys and men; my ipod runs when I'm by myself, sometimes just to drown out noisy conversations about who friended who on facebook (seriously, we have problems here).
I want quiet mornings, times filled with either mellifluous voices on the CBC, restful lovely music or even just, possibly most beautiful of all, pure gentle silence.  I want soundtracks that don't include Hillary yelling or housemates shouting at each other over who should be eating peanut butter.  I'm working on it.
In continued efforts to make my life a little more peaceful, I cleaned the bathroom today.  No, no, hear me out.  I wander around this apartment, loving its nooks and odd bits.  But, at the same time, almost every one of those spaces contains a mental to do list: the dishes aren't done, vacuuming should be, this needs to be picked up, that needs to be put away.  And I came to the downstairs bathroom which is almost empty, quiet and white, and small; it too was messy, in need of cleaning.  And I figured, here's one small space where I can give 20 minutes of my time, and get back a few moments a day of being blissfully free and clear of a to do list writing itself.

One of the discussions I remember reading about etsy when it was first starting out what about the basically non-curated nature of the beast - anyone could post works for sale and there wasn't one overarching master dictating that this is in but that's out.  To be honest, this is not my favourite thing about etsy. Nor about thrift stores nor flea markets nor garage sales. All of which could be considered events or places that are not curated.
And, given the strange exercise my brain is considering, I continue, by starting to contrast this with some spaces and places that I consider to be, essentially, curated.  Places that would fit the bill in this case: poppytalk, cut+paste, buyolympia all seem to be put together with thought about themes and ideas and trends.  There are secondhand stores out there that do it too - preloved is a great example of this, potentially, though they are creators as well as keepers of their artifacts.
The truth is, although there may be a price difference, I prefer spaces that are curated, those where someone has taken the time to form ideals and set in motion what they think those should look like.  Good designers, people who are able to make their homes something really special essentially become curators of their own personal collections, weeding out what doesn't fit, making room for what does, making sure that everything is displayed to its best advantage.
Curators who are working on a personal scale seem able to do what their professional cohorts do, as well, find unexpected glowing treasures among the messes of the open spaces.  Maybe it's a skill I am needing to learn.

In the midst of many many (so many) projects that refuse to be satisfactorily finished (not, I mean, that they will not come to satisfactory ends, but that they just won't do it any damn time soon).  On top of that, I left a tuque that I loved (that I *made*) in a freaking London Drugs, and when I went back a week later they decided they had DONATED it.  DONATED MY DAMN-NEAR perfect, giant-pompom-ed, keeps my head dry with wet hair, blue-grey alpaca, crazy cabled labour of love.  So, I thought: a hat.  A simple, straightforward, easy peasy....

Um.  That's so not what I had in mind.  Yes, well, it goes to show that gauge swatches are...no, screw that, it goes to show that if you *think* it's too short, add the extra cable row. before you start your decreases.  My yellow yarn (as seen above) seems to be pretty clear on one thing: it doesn't want to be a hat, *especially* if that hat is pointy.  I cannot tell if it is as bad as it seems - if it needs more stitches around (the thing is popping off like nobody's business every chance it gets, leaving me few moments to decide exactly where the problem is).  I want to pretend it's just length.  The truth is: it may be length, witdth and needle size - a yarn this lovely and pouffy maybe needs to be knit loosely so that it isn't quite so...um...
Oh god.  Let's just look at that one more time.
(I should point out that I am as tired as I look and that's probably not helping).  Oh, oh, oh, it just has to be fixable.  She is being wet blocked on my floor right now as I find that wet blocking has a darling  tendency to make my knitting stretch and soften and please oh please.

ETA: Okay, okay, the blocking is doing the lovely things it should.  And in my excitement despair, I forgot, and I can't believe I forgot, in an annual, ever-continuing, too-early tradition, I'm declaring spring.  I can feel it.  SPRING.  Don't be afraid of it - roll the word around in your head, let it settle, consider the possibility.

Sundays are not my favourite, not by a long shot.  I feel like they should be - Sundays should be those days where you wake up and know they belong only to you, and that, therefore, whatever you feel like doing is stretching before you.
Except.  I work Saturdays and Sundays can easily become the disappointment of the single day off.  I woke up this morning believing it was 10 - it was 11:30.  So I got myself up, and dressed, and trundled down to work at the sewing table - stopping briefly to pour chocolate chips in the middle of pillsbury crescent dough and pretend it could pass for a chocolate croissant - it did okay.
I am running between projects - not really ready to finish any one, but knowing that finishing would make me calmer - unless they don't stay finished of course.  I am also continuing to brood over the builders'-white-unfinished nature of the apartment - I spent the last few days favouriting flickr pictures, and it's amazing how much they combine into one yellow-tinted but mild palette of aquas and reds and true whites, stopping once in a while to bring bright flashes or a dark respite - but ultimately, they know what colours they want to be.  While the colours I get to pick out for myself seem to have some reflection of this, I am also surrounded by greyish whites and greys, colours meant to be personality-free and easy-to-repair.  It means that my works, my rest-stops, my bits of colour are flattened, and unloved next to these despair-ridden backdrops.  I would love ideas for what to do - how do you disguise the fact that your walls, your floors are not pretty (and are not going to be painted, ripped up, repaired any time soon?).
In my quest for pretties I spent the day sewing and piecing patchworks, re-learning or maybe learning for the first time how to unquirk a sewing machine - bad tension on the sewing machine, for once, did not make me tense - I love playing with the tension knob until I get a neat line of stiches escaping from the grasp of the presser foot.  I love my slightly wonky work - and can I just say, summer and easy-to-sew are, I hope, potentially synonymous.

This is the clearest picture I got this morning of, maybe, 20.  Turns out that when I wake up and trundle off to work, I'm not exactly the steadiest person you'll meet.  I am in pieces, just tired.  Thursday is, as usual, a day of resting, in theory, or, in practice, a day of errands and running about.
It was, apparently, pancake Tuesday, and I missed it.  I brought home the ingredients for Gingerbread pancakes, looked at them, looked at the instructions, then ate an apple, sat on the kitchen floor, and played with the magnetic poetry.  Which, somehow, still satisfying.  Though pancakes need making too.
I should mention, I guess, this insane-ish shift that has me working from 9 a.m. (leave home at 8-ish) to 8 p.m. (get home at 9-ish), 4 days out of the week - leaving 3 free but leaving me a rotten mess the remaining hours of the 4.  But that, soon, will change.