7 posts tagged “where i live”
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.
There is a war going on at my house. A war involving dishes and cleaning that means that it's not easy to find peace or quiet or any of those most essential things that I crave. I sat down to watch a movie and a couple minutes later popped back up, unable to relax where there is so much left undone.
I'm in the midst of a re-evaluation - looking at the things I keep and the things I buy and trying to make sure they're what I want - serving goals and purposes in my life, and advancing it in the direction I want it to go. I keep throwing out mementos that are turning out to be baggage and stuff that is just STUFF and that doesn't make me joyful. Given that I like the very very minimalist spaces, I may have miles to go, but I feel optimistic that I can get there, to the peace and calm and quiet.
I think I can.
ETA: Even though this is not strictly my style; minimalist yes, super-modern no, here is a link to more tiny houses. Oh how I want to build one.
I cannot decide to be done with Edmonton. I have tried repeatedly to throw in the towel, or cash in my chips, to give up and move on and find another hobby that's not quite so time consuming nor so exasperating.
But.
Yesterday I went to the Mall (The mall if that helps), and it was.
Edmonton is a stupid little (though big) town with no bookstore to speak of. Seriously. SERIOUSLY. And I grew up (or, I dunno how much, but grew up), with THIS a 15 minute walk from my house. The Indigo here has yet to even try. And I don't want to talk about Chapter's or Audrey's or Greenwoods - I've been, I''ve seen, I don't think so.
But.
The Mall has a Sephora, an H&M (where I cannot shop but, oh, the comfort), and, AND, as of last month? An Omer DeSerres. For those of you who are unfortunate enough *not* to live in Quebec (where there are both english and french bookstores enough to please any girl), you've missed out. Omer is like a high-end Michael's - there's art, there is, sadly, scrapbooking, and there are some beads. My heart goes pit-a-pat. I love the smell, I love the style, I love the random semi-European notebooks that saw me through school.
And.
Rafters/The Panhandler now have Momji. My mugs and the little dolls too. It's such a relief. Not a replacement, but a joy. More on that another day!
This is a post that was composed during yesterday's into-the-night bus ride. Believe or not *today* I'm too tired to write something brand spanking. Enjoy.
“NO VISITORS ALLOWED” it says on the gate that will take me out to the bus. But every time, my dad sort of gives a nod to the bus driver – who’s always been male and I’m wondering if that makes a difference – and says “I’m just going to take her bags out,” and then does. He’s just about 60 years old, my dad, and I’m 25, and a big girl, just about as tall as him, I stand at just about 6’ in my socks (turns out it’s more like 5’11 3/4” but that’s a hard precision to make most days). I’ve carried bookshelves home on the bus, I’ve hauled luggage almost the size (and weight) of a child, not that small, up the subway stairs. Yet every time, he carries my bags.
To sum up my father’s and my interaction with only this information is very much an oversimplification of a complicated story, yet I do love him for the simple act carrying my bags, love him for “giving up” attempting to text and only sending a preset message – “I love you!” – the exclamation mark already included and the emphasis, even, ultimately, love that he thinks that my life is his business, that he cares what I put into my mouth and if I have plans and how well I slept.
I’m heading home now, on the bus, typing mostly in the dark, a comfortingly gigantic suitcase full mostly of wool and other yarns, a book or two and some fabric and sundries tucked under (I hope, I always hope). But I’m missing my dad, the soup, the cribbage and the cosy spaces he makes his own.
It is, still, tiny and perfect. There's barely plumbing, and it's tiny, but my dad, whose cabin it has been for quite a while now, has it fixed up with a complex-looking stereo and a tiny teevee and it's cosy of an evening. We hiked around in the dark for a while and then played a crib match - I can keep up but I can't beat him - except at the end there where we learn an important lesson: given the cards, I can perfectly well peg 7 in the clutch to win when he has to score 2 and it's my crib (for those of you who don't play crib: that's a little like saying that you win by scoring in the final end when your opponent throws the last rock and if you don't curl either, I'm out of ideas but basically it's hard and unlikely).
I love the lake, which is very much Saskatchewan-parkland (and I need to point out here than when people are feeling mean they have been known to say that I'm a child raised in the parkland and not *really* the prairies). It's not showy - the cabins are little and square, they sit back from the lake a gracious distance - the dad's isn't even, really, anywhere near it - back among what would look like stunted and underfed trees to anyone from B.C. or Ontario but which, to me, are perfect and absolutely right - they're ash or birch and quiet except when the wind blows through them.
And blow it did, this morning, as we hiked out and saw deer - magnificent and calm but running as we came close, and I was toured around to where all my distant relations have cabins - it's our lake, you see. And there were swings. It doesn't get better than that, not ever. My dad rated the morning walk a 9, and I gave it an 8 but I got to swing, so maybe I could bump that up to an 8.5. I do love a good swing.
It snowed last night and into the morning so the ground has a bit of snow covering the grey and brown - like icing sugar on a dessert. In the little house there is a bit of uproar: messes (mostly mine), sick people, and snuggling under covers. I've got both Amelie and Pushing Daisies on tap right now - the technicolour joy is a requirement for first snows. If you're a Canadian t.v. viewer who was affected by the shutdown of a certain site, be aware that CTV streams Pushing Daisies, and it's a little annoying to get stuck with the commercials but it is fast and relatively good quality.
It's been a while now that I've wanted a place all my own - a space to be in that truly forreal belongs to me, something I can paint, where I get to choose the kitchen cabinets.
I have this love of little houses, turtle's back houses - the kind where it belongs to you and not the other way around. You can find them around - the little house-in-progress over at greenkitchen appeals greatly, I'm also very fond of the tumbleweed tiny houses - I covet the weebee in particular.
But, it seems, it is not yet time to have a house of my own, I have a lot to do yet before I can settle down in one space and take up a mortgage (although I should point out that some of the tumbleweeds are, essentially, mobile homes so that solves half the problem, at least). Yet I still want that space to decorate, the little house that's mine all mine.
It's not exactly the same but I think it's a start. I have so many ideas for decorations - I should mention that asking your friends to save bottlecaps so that you might make tiny pies is a surefire way to get some weird looks. I do love the idea of ClubLittleHouse, but I think that I'd rather sit back and watch.
Today is a day for quiet, for hot drinks, for curling up on the couch and watching
Oh. And since the pear post, I've continued to find pears showing up in my life. A knitted pear at pea soup, and other examples of stitched pears via cherry tomato and daciaray. I also want to see if I can find one of those balloons that will allow you to blow up the neck and then try some papier-maché over it.
But for now the couch calls. Fairy tales for grownups and a snuggly blanket.
I've started walking to work as the weather gets colder. My route takes me across fields and over little hills - on a good day I feel 60 feet tall as I stride to work. It was only a couple of days after I started walking that the bread graveyard made its appearance.
It was really the most amazing experience, as I crested a little bit of hill a few minutes from my house I noticed the ground was blanketed in white lumps spread all down the far side of the slope.
