Posts (page 2)
That I am taking pictures in my cosy bed before I cuddle down should not be coming as a major confession here but it is one of the reasons I have troubles coming up with posts - I want to broaden the range o f my photos and my posting times. Maybe that will be my goal this week - daytime post (morning post, even?!).
But I feel justified this evening, posting away, feeling a little bit more in control. I wandered down the the giant store of mass evil (starts with a "W"), a SuperCentre even. And fuckitall, they had cheapie organic apples. U.S. organic, but this girl, surviving a Canadian winter, has yet to experience the luxury of being that picky (I work on Saturday mornings - Saturday afternoons too, for that matter).
They also had the 3M hooks by which I live my life. As an apartment dweller, even just as a girl who likes to rig stuff quickly, 3M's hooks rule my life. They hold up my curtains and artwork, besides actually acting as hooks. I've used them for other random window treatments and I'm even now starting to experiment with another kind - the wonder-velcro stuff.
It is such a great relief to be a little bit in control of my space again, curtains hung, and art, a bedside table for the first time in 2 years or so (yeah, it's a wee plastic-y think from ikea, but it has a DRAWER), a working sewing machine set up with an ironing board and my first attempts at rotary cutting. This is what peace looks like in my world.
P.S. I was wandering through The Small Object's photos on flickr a couple of days ago, and found this one.
I made careful note of it, and am now (of course) the proud owner of a terrible corner-rounding punch. Ha. (Though I should point out that I am still completely in love with it, and now wondering why anyone would choose non-round corners).
I am having a relatively low-fi evening - listening to a cd then maybe watching a dvd - my media is not disembodied, though it is still digital.
I spent about 30 minutes hunting through old emails before I finally gave up and re-typed a most-precious gifted poem, because I want to print and frame it and do dorky things to it so that it can stay nearby - it reminds me of my best self, I think, and that's good because I'm stuck in that place where all I want to do is curl up and be...nothing: weak and small and quiet for several days until someone comes banging on my door with the fire department. And even then, I might only leave if some of them were cute, and single. I'm just sayin'.
I was talking with a friend of mine about people in your life who sort of *know stuff* - they make pronouncements that you fear because you know that they are going to come true. And The Person Who Knows - not the friend with whom the discussion took place, I should say - recently revealed fears of broken hearts to come in my life.
Which, I think, also on the level of a no-brainer - brokenhearted is a well-worn-in state of being for me and it will usually come 'round again.
I am tired but awake and confused but resigned. I am finding things that are missing and losing more at an alarming rate - current worry being that I will sit on my glasses before i notice them, but what's a girl to do?!
Here is a picture of my harbour in the tempest, I moved my bed so that it was under my pretty pictures, and now i feel so happy sleeping under them.
An Andrea, by definition, does not whine. So I don't know exactly what to call the terse email that showed up in my inbox suggesting that I write a post. More than one, actually.
Okay. So the blog and I have been having time apart like nobody's business, and that's not quite the way that I want it to be. I want to be taking beautiful and amazing pictures of my life to post up here and share with loved ones who are still learning just how crazy I can be.
Oh. Right. Beautiful & amazing. I want to say that the problem is that my life isn't living up to that vision. And that's true, in part - the house is an absolute mess - not a joyfilled crafty mess nor an in-progress-growing kind of mess, just a pile of stuff on the floor I don't really like to look at, ugly space in my house, and, yes, my head.
I have been trying to clear out the debris -both physical and mental, and it's working, but the thing I kind of forgot to do was replace that mess with a vision of what I do want - so it lurks in corners of my mind, in pages of magazine spreads I've saved, not really willing to reveal the bigger plan or even let me know where the next step is.
And I do want to create that coherent vision, want to be one of those people whose house becomes a lovely vision of how they want their spaces to be, and is able to execute - this being one example that I envy - especially given the circumstances under which it occurred.
I don't even want to think about the idea that a cohesive vision won't just present itself - that I'm going to have to work and dream one up. I'm applying for school and trying to get a certain certification under my belt at the same time - how many ways are there to suggest that it's not going to happen just yet. (Oh, but the promis of February makes me want to reneg!).
That, I think, is quite enough of that. I am waiting on a book to be able to dig in and study, I am waiting on my brain (and that's not the best idea I've ever had, let me tell you) to be able to finish applying. I am scattered to the wind, all over the place, 100 ways from Thursday of not being able to ever *do* anything, not quite. Enough.
I long for spring and spring dresses and I need to remind myself that sitting down and making them in a day or so is a real possibility (because they're light, airy spring skirts, so it seems - just sew some seams).
So. I made up a half-assed strawberry sorbet - no recipe just mashed and blended frozen strawberries with sugar and a little water until it was done. I wrote some conceptual poetry - bad, probably, but important.
And then. I dragged my sewing machine down from on high where it had been resting for too long, and we talked. I spent 3 or 4 hours just sewing and pressing and cutting in a sort of timeless place where it was just me and the last season of Coupling - a good place to be, really. I ended up with 2 mostly pieced pillow tops - both sort of from patterns and sort of just from me, seaming the first part of a stuffed cat and trying my first paper piecing (which, holy crap, sort of super-duper fun times there).
I am going to try to have *that* kind of week. We'll see what happens.
Not this movie: http://www.pajiba.com/pirates-who-dont-do-anything-the-a-veggietales-movie.htm
But definitely this song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiBACkvosq0
Flurry - and in a house with a Buddy and a Lucio, I do feel a need to apologize for the name - is one of the cats that lived with my mother and me about a million (10) years ago. She and her sister came to us as kittens, from a pair of people who called this little one "Elvis" because of a streak of gray on her forehead that reminded them of a pompadour (long since faded away). Fleur is one of the only two cats that came to me as a kitten - her sister is the other. This one is insane, she is a little pathetic, and there is a family tradition that dictates that she's delicate - she sleeps more deeply than a cat should, and has been on medications for a congenital heart murmur for many years now. And yet she's a survivor, I think, brave and accepting of new situations, willing to try new things.
And she's mine. Lucio is my cat in the way that a dog is yours, he follows me around, greets strangers, worries about food all the time and is faithful. Flurry, though, is ultimately catlike. She waits for me in comfort on my bed - which she still allows me to share for the time being. Or, actually, a more accurate description, in my bed, amongst pillows and blankets, buried down into a warm cave she's made. Tonight I crashed on the bed next to her, and she washed my arm for a bit before - gently as anything and with nary a razor-sharp claw in sight - she reached out a paw in an attempt to play with the shiny pink thing in my nose (my piercing).
I am happy to have her here, though I won't describe the circumstances for fear of sounding bitter (suffice it to say that it's unfortunate that we can't handle two more cats and keep her sister from potential harm or confusion as well). But Flurry is settling in, the hissing is becoming less frequent, and we're starting to settle in to wait for spring.
My Christmas rather fundamentally failed at actually being any good as a Christmas. It was strange and split up, tossed between houses and provinces, no turkey ever materialized, and I cried on the day (but such is life).
We ended up moving mid-December, houses, lives, everything, picked up over the course of a week and transported to a strange new place with new rules and an adjustment to my art arrangements (welcomed, actually), and then I took off for Saskatoon where my venerable father just barely celebrates - no tree, no lights, no baking, just peace and joy - and I take it, but a holiday season it does not make. My mother, on the other hand, was with her new family, decorating and presenting and generally being foreign to me so I borrowed the computer and im-ed people I was missing - yes I did it!
New Year's Eve was quiet, peaceful, too - I worked until 8, then got chauffeured around to various locales and people by an amazing friend who gave me a most awesome late Christmas present - maybe the best of the season. We met up with another friend before midnight and were trying to make it to yet another friend's apartment when midnight hit, so we stood outside, freezing, with a great view of fireworks in downtown Edmonton. It was a just-right, quiet but joyful night and I was with people who light my life as much as the fireworks.
I wish you amazing things in 2008 - unimaginable, beautiful surprises that break your heart and make you laugh.
I am thinking about the things that make Christmas the season it should be for me. When I was younger, I had the great joy of seeing the best Christmas play that exists - at least as far as my experience goes. And one of the things that always felt very much like Christmas was The Butterfingers Angel, Mary & Joseph, Herod the Nut, & The Slaughter of 12 Hit Carols in a Pear Tree aka The Butterfingers Angel. It was a play that spoke very much to my understanding of how stuff might really have happened. The way I saw it done Mary's brothers want to eat the baby, Joseph doesn't understand who the father (Father?) is, and everything is almost messy. Until a beautiful baby is born who changes everyone's minds.
The power to do that, to bring a stop to fighting, a moment of quiet, a reminder of life and death and sacrifice - I don't believe in those gods, that God, but I believe with all my heart in Christmas and the power it should have.
My roommate and I were singing - okay, shouting - carols tonight as we trooped across the field for cat food in the not-very-cold winter night. Tomorrow we turn worlds upside down, but tonight there were songs of both joy and peace shouted at the top of our lungs.
Maybe I think that's what Christmas is missing - being together, being joyful, loving. I love getting presents, believe me. But I also love watching movies with my families, making a mess of the kitchen, sewing and knitting and gluing a storm. I love watching a friend at work as he makes me a pink reindeer from a martha stewart tutorial, and half-assing a little sheep from pipe cleaner and wool to give back. I don't want to forget that stuff when I'm shopping - I want to hum along to the canned music and remember.
You know there's something wrong when:
I trucked out to see the Golden Compass last night with the people (not, strictly, my people, but a people to whom I sort of belong). It was, well, okay. There was some stuff that was right some stuff that was wrong and some stuff that was. And then there were the knits.
Yeah. You know there's something congenitally wrong with you when you spend the whole of a much-anticipated movie trying to figure out the composition of the knitting. Which, by the by, was gorgeous. There were lovely rich thick knits. It made me so happy and calm.
The movie itself? Freaked me out a little and seemed unfinished. But was nice.
