uniforms...

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wow my nerd post seemed to hit a lot of you where it hurt, which is, in fact, the same place it hurts me :)

tonight princess valium and i are off to the fire fighters ball and it is reported (by an excellent pal of mine) that we will have a fantabulous time. apparently she has friends that go every year it's that much fun.

of course i'm sure that it will turn out that i've got tickets to the other professional fire fighters ball and we'll be stuck there with all the stodgy matrons or something.

okay i doubt it since when i called to find out what 'clothing optional' meant [i mean really i guess i could show up naked?? but i don't really *want* to...] they said 'everything from jeans to gowns' and i don't think the stodgy set go to that kind of party.

of course it also makes deciding what to wear nearly impossible. *grin*

couldn't they have limited the menu just a tiny little smidgy bit?

personally i'm hoping for some men in uniform. yes, i know just how cheesy that is but there is something about fire fighters that i just don't understand... they're all hot. no seriously they are. even the ugly ones are hot.

i think it's that service thing or something. you add the information that they are willing to run IN to a burning building to save my sorry ass and somehow they get super hot pretty much instantly.

there's a lot more to it than that and truly i can't explain it but i swear sometimes they also select for hot when they're going through the applications. i'm such a shallow little bitch that i wouldn't even mind if that were true!

anyway they're hot in jeans but they're smoking [oh man did i just make that pun?!?] in their uniforms and frankly i honestly don't give a crap if the room is filled with ugly people because if you give PV and i weed (d-uh!) and some booze? fucking right we're going to sit in the corner and play fashion crimes.

don't get me wrong, we'll dance too but even if the entire crowd is lame and the music sucks? we're going to have a blast.

it's actually almost a little bit funny how stoked i am about this evening. mostly to party with her of course but still stoked. i don't really hang around anywhere i can meet other people my age. i meet young people at the climbing gym and older folks teaching pilates [and even if they aren't old i can't really make them into friends right?] and gay people in my neighbourhood.

and i love the gay community i do but i would kind of like to make friends with some straight folks my own age. i guess that's kind of a strange thing to want and yet i do.

damm i wonder where my client is, she's ten minutes late which is a lot even for her. i hope she makes it this week, i need the money to pay rent. i'm okay without it but life would be easier is all. doesn't matter too much, being a few days late is not a problem in my building.

turns out i had forgotten to unlock the front door of the building and she was standing outside. oops!

regardless, i'm stoked about this evening and i declare that all of you should be jealous.
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one of my readers decided i needed cheering up and this appeared in the mail: (can i out you or is it a secret?)

that is in fact me sitting at band practise with my drum between my legs in case y'all are wondering.

note the hair, finally long enough for a shitty ponytail! also note the grin, so it worked :)
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i came home to have a shower and the water is off. annoyingly i can't even get pissed about it because there were signs up for three days warning of this. it does sort of wreck the annoyance factor doesn't it?

it pisses me off because i had time this morning before work and i didn't do it. now i have to sort of smell for my last three classes of the day and THEN i can finally have a shower.

*grumble*
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what the fuck does one wear to a clothing optional party? and does the phrase 'clothing optional' strike the rest of you as funny as it does me?

speaking of clothing options, i am meeting with my ex sometime next week. the thing is i'm like a hundred times hotter than i was when we split up (which is tragically satisfying... but not as much as it could be since all i've done is gotten back to how i was when we met... so he won't be AS surprised) and i know that will surprise him.

my inner bitch is thinking 'wear your fucking hottest outfit but make it one that looks effortless' and my inner angel is thinking 'wear sweats, it's not like you want him back after all' and my inner neutral and sane person is thinking 'wear something simple and comfortable and who cares what you look like' and the rest of me?

it's wondering why the hell i'm even thinking about this.

in fact it's thinking that if i spend any more time on this contemplation of what to wear for the ex that i might actually find i'm in denial about my real purposes. which i'm not.

i think.

it's so hard to read your own mind. wouldn't it be nice if there was a little box you could stick your head in and it could tell you what you were really thinking and what your real motivations were?

i'm pretty sure that i just want to look hot for the sheer satisfaction of it. take that you you you EX and see what you're missing. it's stupid really because looks only matter when you're first, first meeting someone and after that you see in their faces a reflection of their inner soul and their real appearance becomes irrelevant.

okay except when the girl you've only seen in sweats shows up in pvc on hallowe'en... which is unfair as hell.

but otherwise? yeah it doesn't matter. you don't even see reality after a while and i'm almost certain that neither he nor i can see the other with any clarity. we broke up hella ugly after all.

so why, after all that, do i still want to look as hot as possible?

ahh vanity you silly thing you.

<-- nerd

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why are people always so surprised that i'm a nerd?

first of all i'm not actually referring to anyone specific k? k.

sersly i'm not. look i even spelled seriously all cool and bloggerific to prove it. it's just that this has happened to me for like fifteen years now and i still don't get it. okay wait let me explain a little.

when i meet someone on the street and we get to talking about computers and they express stunnedness that i'm a nerd i can sympathise. i mean i bathe and i'm not ugly and i can use complete sentences AND i even have a social skill or two.

this surprises people. i don't fit their stereotype of someone who can speak technical computer jargon. i mean i go outside!

so i can get their reaction i really can.

it's the others. they meet me in irc (think chatroom you not old timers) or in some message board or mailing list or newsgroup or even (lately) through my blog and we talk about computers and the internet and about a million other things and yet somehow they don't quite believe that i'm real.

the idea that i use unix instead of windows and understand what the guts of my computer are for seems completely foreign to a lot of folks.

don't even get me started on the asshole who actually asked me if he could 'speak to someone more technical' and when i said 'no you can't but i can transfer you to a man if you'd rather' said that he rathered.

because i'm female?

because i have tits i can't operate a computer?
do math?
fly a plane?
play pool?
drive a car?
be smart?

what the fuck do breasts have to do with any of this?

absolutely nothing that's what.

and yet i've been treated as though i couldn't do all of the above things simply because of my gender on more than one occasion in my life. as though what i don't have bouncing between my legs can somehow determine what i will and won't be competent at.

i just do NOT get this at all. not even a tiny little weensy bit.

i mean i get it that i'm going to be surprising if i can carry some crazy load that only a power lifter can heft or if i can arm wrestle rambo and win. those are feats of strength and men tend to have more power in their muscles while women tend to have more endurance.

so uncommon strength is kinda strange in a woman.

but what does the performance ratio of my biceps have to do with my ability to operate a gear shift? a pool cue? NUMBERS????

like nothing at fucking all right?

and yet i've consistently had really strange expectations thrown at me in this regard. i never did manage to convince the system administrators at my former job that i had any kind of clue what i was doing and yet whenever i sent them something it was *always* [yes, every *single* time] something that they needed to do on their end. i never once sent them a spurious ticket.

okay once i sent them something and then took it back and fixed it... so i don't count it. and they were impressed with the fix even and i got kudos.

and still i was just some girl who answered the phone up in tech support.

maybe it's the pocket protector. i don't even have pockets to protect after all (like me the tight shirts). except that back then i showed up to work in sweats so that can't be it.

on my first day on the phones (after two weeks of training) one of the level twos was actually taking people around to my cubicle and pointing me out. eventually even oblivious i noticed and so finally i asked him what was up

'well you're impossible'

"i'm impossible??"

'yeah, you're an anachronism'

"um why?"

'because you speak french'

"so"

'you're also wearing a freebsd sweatshirt and you actually speak computer'

"d-uh it's tech support"

'but you're a chick'

irony? in his case it was the FRENCH that freaked him out. what a sweetie i still miss him. everyone else was shocked by the unix but not him, him it was the french.

i remember not being a feminist. i remember thinking that feminists had pokers up their asses. i even recall wondering what the fuss was about... and it is a testament to my parents that i didn't believe for a second that i needed to be a feminist.

i believed that i was equal.

as such i never felt that i had anything to prove. i was quietly going around getting a's in subjects that girls didn't get a's in but since no one told me that i had no idea. it didn't occur to me that i should have been upset that the boy in my class who was good at math got an award for it and i didn't. though i was his equal or possibly even better (we tied in contests and on tests and even on our second term grade... i'm leaning toward equals.)

i wasn't upset, i had gotten an award for english after all. [truly they should have rewarded us both, and i'm not sulking over a trophy, he and i were equals...]

i remember the moment that i realised that to be equal also meant that i had to be a feminist [in college]. that i had to fight to get what i had heretofore assumed was readily available to me. that i was not going to be offered the same opportunities as people who were my equals because well, i had breasts.

and to this day it baffles me at the way girls are so easily shunted away from science and math as though that is the natural order of things.

the way that people are stunned when a girl can operate a computer. and how somehow even after they realise it?

after you sort of beat their head in about it?

they'll forget again somehow instantly. because i'm impossible after all.

wouldn't want to remember me and the experience of meeting a girl who was also a nerd, that might make you less stunned the next time it happens... and then you might start to realise that lots of girls are nerds and then that old worldview gets turned upside down.

and then what do you do?

'gasm

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okay i emailed my ex

we're having coffee

*deep breath*

this is fucking weird territory man, on ancient maps this would have been marked here be dragons if nothing else.

but it feels good, like a release. and he thanked me for doing it and said that he wanted to do it too. damm i love my instincts sometimes.
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okay so.

oh my god.

i invented another 'gasm. uh huh i did. it's called a footgasm and it is what happened to me today. you see, way back when i told my lovely client b that i had never had a manicure or a pedicure.

she was aghast.

*i* was clueless as to why.

so she gave me a mani/pedi for christmas and i never went and did it. i kept meaning to you know but i just never quite did. so finally i had to phone them and ask them to renew my gift certificate and so i suggested to her that we go together.

so we did.

so i smoked a teeny bit of weed on my way out of work and ran off to the spa for my treat and there were robes and little rubber thong sandals in my size and lockers with magical combination tricks and so on.

and then out i went to meet her in the waiting area which is a lounge with bowls of pears and apples and biscotti lying on little tables that have current magazines on them. and you sit your little terry cloth robe covered ass on these delicious chairs and consider the tea menu before wandering over to the little buffet area...

the little buffet covered with teas [energy, relax, monsoon chai, etc], hot water, tiny jars of honey, coffee and four kinds of water. i know, i was stunned. cucumber, orange, lemon and plain.

and that's just the waiting area! i hadn't had long enough to properly relax because i wasted time smoking weed after that class so our ladies came to get us slightly too soon but that's okay because yeah...


out we come into this marble hallway that has these glass panes set into the floor with little water fountains that come up and hit them and it's all lit from underneath and the side and there are lovely containers with interesting things arranged inside of them in nooks on the walls.

they bring us to a room with these crazy stations at them and have us choose our polishes and then we plop ourselves into these captain picard looking chairs with our feet in little tubs of water and we get to play the change the intensity game on the chair backs and in the water. oh man.

so i'm sitting there getting a back massage and a hot foot bath with jets and this woman starts to toy with my feet. she takes one out of it's warm oasis and clips the nails and trims the cuticles and then she gently puts it back in the bath before she does the other foot. i can't tell you all the things she did but i know i was pumiced and clipped and trimmed and rubbed and dremmeled and lotioned and oiled all interspersed with repeated bathings.

and then... *song of exaltation* she takes this mix of lavender and sea salt and oil and she rubs my foot with it all over and gently exfoliates up to my KNEE with this stuff. up to my knee! and then plops the foot in the water and rinses off my whole leg. god it felt so good.

more clipping and filing and oiling follow and then...

then? they take these little bags filled with delicious hotness and wrap your feet in them and the delicious hotness is in fact paraffin wax which is sooo hot and then it cools and sorta molds to your foot and you just sit there and die of happiness.

i'm not kidding. i will willingly pay a hundred bucks to do that again. i'm getting my mother one for her birthday. i'm serious.

eventually she *sob* removes the paraffin and sorta finishes off your foot a little bit before doing the magical polish job (sparkly lavender!) and some cuticle oiling and sending you on your way.

that takes seventy five minutes.

dudes my feet are blissed out like i can't even begin to tell you.

and then?

oh my god they did my hands!

they rub some stuff on your hands and then drop them in little warm and soapy baths that have little warm pebbles in them. i am not making this up. following this your nails are trimmed and filed and your cuticles are fixed and your nails are smoothed and oiled and all the while they keep getting covered in something and dropped in the little warm water oasis bowl on the table.

and then she whipped out the lotion and started the massage. oh good christ. all the way to my elbows and since SHE CLIMBS she even did the right PLACES!

and then? yeah more of the magical paraffin!

okay so you figure at that point that you must have exhausted the possibilities that encompass this wondrous oasis of joy and spoiling and peace? but you haven't.

oh no because now? while your hands are dying of glee in their paraffin bags? now the magical lady MASSAGES YOUR SHOULDERS!

oh god it was wonderful!

she even pressed hard.

she finished up with the nail buffing and the final sorta finishing touches on my cuticles (i went with buff over polish due to climbing)

and then to ease you out of this wondrous experience you get to go and sit on your butt in these lounging areas and watch HOCKEY/whatever you like while nibbling more biscotti and having more tea and water and...

oh man you guys.

if there's a hyatt in your town that has a spa? go get a mani pedi!

(yes it's worth whatever it costs)
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and then i came home to a really good email from my ex. i'm feeling good about this. weird, really weird... but good

aswirl

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i'm feeling all swirly right now.

also i'm watching hockey so you're only getting half my attention. i'm tempted to leave in all my typos since i'm typing while watching hockey and rarely looking at the screen.

anyway swirly.

the universe has seen fit to present me with a lot of possibilities in a very short time...

which tends to be it's wont. i mean if it's easy then you aren't sure what you want. but if it's hard and you have to make decisions?

then you know what you're after.

funny thing is that i could (i just fixed a typo but i did it all without looking, those ones i'm allowed to fix) be talking about work or dating or friends or climbing or all of the above and it doesn't matter. it's the swirly that matters.

i have so much stuff to think about that i can hardly focus on any one thing. earlier today i was talking to my dealer and i just zoned out and into a commercial. i was gone. gone enough that he noticed and people rarely catch me at that.

damm this game is getting good. it was 3-1 anaheim but now it's 3-2 and calgary is playing well. this second period is totally working for them. erk penalty, too many men on the ice. that's a stupid shitty assed penalty.

okay so i have a pile of shit in my head right now and my brain feels sort of full. it's weird, i don't usually hit thread capacity very often. in fact i'm usually idling on at least a few tracks but right now nope, not so much.

some of the stuff in my head is good, some of it is okay, some of it is client based and some of it is kinda shitty. and a lot of it i don't have any control over whatsoever.

which is most likely to serve to remind me that there is no sense worrying about the things you can't control. but it also won't really stop me. i know this damm well. worrying is one of the most senseless things you can do to yourself. it's a major waste of energy.

we're talking the most pointless use of energy there is. and yet still we do it.

i definetely do it more when i'm worried about money. which i am a gbit right this minute beecause i had to pay for a workshop and for my teacher insurance in the same month. and i wasn't expecting the insurance. i thought that was may or june for some reason.

ah well, that will be fine in a couple of weeeks.

i typo more when the hockey is good.

that's one of the few things in my head i'm actually going to discuss and one of the few that isn't positive, most of the rest of it is either good or at least not bad. but it's funny because there are things that have been owning a few of my 'aware of most of the time' tracks for a while and they've been dropped into the depths of history.

that alone feels really strange. you almost get used to the tracks that live on the front burner of your brain. they become like old friends. so when you look up one day and they're gone? it's strange.

as you can imagine a lot of crap has happened recently.

and i'm having trouble talking out loud. it turns out that the ability to speak is currently being superseded by the stuff that i'm thinking about. that never happens and it's really strange.

i hadn't actually realised that talking wasn't one of the priority tracks. i keep having to sort of force my attention into the conversations that i'm in.

and all this time i thought that i was a natural extrovert *shaking head*

please note that i am not complaining, in fact i'm in an excellent mood right now, i'm just having trouble talking. i'm all in my head and ddddddddthinking about the way my life is going and i'm enjoying the contemplation.

it's just.

it's hard to teach when your brain is trying to lock up all your tracks in little think bubbles. it turns out that you need a few free tracks in order to function in the universe. i think that i'm really finding my inner introvert these days and while i quite like her and the way she thinks before she talks it's making teaching a lot harder.

sometimes i don't answer the phone because i can't make words.
sometimes i have to leave my friends' company for the same reason.
regularly i find myself in a corner just watching the room.

i think one of the neatest things about getting older is how you get different parts of yourself in the forefront. it's sort of like you're a bonsai tree.

when you're young you can grow any which way because you're just growing but as you get older you start pruning and encouraging other bits to grow. you go after the things that work for you and try to let go fo the things that don't.

you pay attention to the ways you grow naturally and the parts that are hard and you turn yourself into the tree you wish to be. of course the things that form you help to determine your shape, you're not the only one influencing how you're made.

*sigh* flames lost. series is even. i'm actually starting to think i should cheer against the teams that i like *rueful laugh*

some parts of you will sprout and be killed
some will be encouraged to sprout
still others will grow as if they were always there
sometimes you'll grow a branch into another tree
occasionally pieces will slough off naturally
branches from other trees will be grafted on
walls will appear
nodes and forks will appear magically
light will be stronger in parts of you than others
and suddenly they're you'll be

this dense little tree shaped exactly like no one else in the world.

tears

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crying is not one of my talents.

i heard that. you're thinking that that's one of those weird things to say right? that crying isn't a talent or a skill.

that crying is something that just happens when you're sad.

easy for those people to say.

when i was seventeen i had a really shitty time for a while and that came after like fourteen years of shit before that so you know it didn't take much [or that it took a hell of a lot]. so a whole pile of shit happened in the space of three or four days and at the end of it all my crying was gone.

and not because i cried.

because eventually the weight of those days got so heavy that it somehow blocked the tears unshed.

and i've never really gotten them back.

when my motorcycle was stolen i cried for two hours straight [i was hrm... twenty five or twenty six] and when athena died i cried my face off a lot. but a lot of that was for her more than me because i felt so terrible for her.

there she was dying and going blind and no one had a clue what was wrong with her including her. what a way to go with grace and dignity though. she was such a darling and she did NOT deserve her death. (brain tumour)

i never felt as bad about sappho because we knew she was dying before you could see that she was. with athena it was the other way around, no one had any fucking clue what was wrong until the day that she died and then i had to choose to do it. i think she knew though because she slept the whole night before with her head on my shoulder.

something she had never once done in all her life.

no, never.

also athena was the first pet that was *mine* that ever i lost so i think it was extra nasty.

and that's about it. i shed tears for long distance commercials and movies and television but a lot of that is learned response from the music and the scene. we're sort of trained to have a typical emotional response to those triggers. and none of it is about me really.

i'm crying for them.

so i can feel for other people and pets just fine. but it sure makes me wonder why i can't cry for me.

i wish that i could, i feel this giant ball of unshed tears inside myself. for that girl and for that young woman and for me. there are things we need to cry about my tears and i but we don't know how to find them.

or maybe i should say but we don't know how to let them out.

the people really, really close to me (my family, othercat, hubris and princess valium) have seen me well up but not cry. i'm not sure anyone has seen me actually shed tears for myself. my family saw a LOT of crying while athena was dying but i maintain that most of that was on her behalf.

crying for myself? no idea how to do that.

i only know that it's something important and that i must learn to do it. i only know that no matter how grief stricken or sad or wounded i am the tears only make it to my eyes.

never to my cheeks.

and i have friends who complain that they're always crying. that they feel like they have no control over their tears. that they worry that people think less of them for crying so often.

maybe *some* people do but i for one am pretty envious. it is not a power that is within my arsenal but oh do i ever need it to be.

imagine being able to let feelings out of you?

imagine that giant ball of unshed tears in the middle of your chest actually being released.

imagine not carrying around feelings you should have let out years ago?

imagine your current feelings letting go AS you have them!

imagine the freedom that follows that kind or release.

man that would be so awesome.

but for me it's like every tear that doesn't fall adds a little more weight to the ones that are already there. that little ball gets heavier and heavier and the floodgates get more and more impossible to open.

i can feel it there when i tear up. it's like a big giant tease. it's worse that the worst player who ever played me it's that bad.

it goes 'maybe i'll let you cry'

'hmmm........' *thinking thinking*

'nope, DE-NIED!!!'

and you're left sitting there going 'but please, please, please, can't i just cry? come on, just this once?'

imagine that, those of you with the power of crying. imagine wishing and wishing you could cry... and never managing it. never once actually letting your feelings leave your body as you're having them. always feeling them growing inside you like some kind of cancer...

bet suddenly all those tears sound a lot less irritating ne?

======================================================

also in case you didn't get the fantastic news yesterday?

PAT QUINN GOT CANNED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

*clears throat*

yeah i'm not excited by that at all.

really not in the slightest.

i swear i'm over it already.

*dances in her seat like a three year old who has to go potty RIGHT NOW!*

[coach of the toronto maple leafs hockey club]

happy 420

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addendum:

PAT QUINN GOT FIRED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

FUCKING A!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

*DANCE OF GLEE AND JOY AND UNADULTERATED AWE*

*clears throat*

back to the comments....

onions

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so i've been okcupidding again.

i know, i know, but i go check my mail every couple of weeks and sometimes if i'm bored i play around a little and play 'rate the pictures' [so evil!] or do quizzes or just surf my matchlist for fun. i don't really pay that much attention because i don't have the energy or the time to dedicate to online dating that it really requires so i'm more of a dilettante.

every now and then i email someone but mostly i just see if anyone emailed me. ahh i'm so lazy. :) anyway so i updated my photos and changed my profile around a titch and added a couple of things and a couple more got dropped cause i don't have a chance to do them anymore and just generally decided to keep it current after all.

which was not the decision that i expected to find myself making because online dating is annoying.

anyway i just logged in to check my email and had a glance at the recently uploaded photos section of the homepage and there's a picture there of a man from his shoulders to the top of his underwear who is standing full frontal and not in any way appearing to be worried about his posture.

and he's not fat but he's not thin or ripped or particularly fit either. he's like hrm... a little bit round and generally on the thick side of attractive. football rather than swimming so to speak [and not one of the skinny running guys or the quarterback but also not 'fridge']. and he's standing there unabashedly in all of his half naked glory and not for a second thinking that maybe this isn't the nicest picture in the world.

that picture would have been so far into my rejects pile that i'm not sure it would even have made it into my temp directory. i don't know that it would have made it off the camera.

and there he is all tummy hanging out and not thinking that maybe a shirt wouldn't kill him.

i have to say that in the long run i think that his is the healthier attitude. (and by the way the guy has a nice enough body that i wouldn't be sad to see it up close and less dressed... that's the thing!)

it's like when you go to europe and you see people taking their time over their food or standing on a beach in a speedo. sure the guy isn't pretty but you know he's sure feeling nice letting the sun hit his skin all over like that. [okay some of the europeans are actually hot enough for speedos but i digress] he's (or she in a bikini) not busy worrying about how his ass looks in his bathing suit. he's not worried at all whether or not you think that he's hot.

he's being himself and he's having a lovely day at the beach and fuck you if you don't want to look at him because he was here first.

and then there's the other guy. the one who looks embarassed and covers himself with a huge t-shirt and giant baggy shorts. the one who doesn't go in the water. the one who sits on the beach not having any fun and wondering why he bothered to show up.

i saw someone change from the latter to the former once. right in front of me... and it was good.

now, at the beach i am fully the girl in the bikini who does not give a shit if her rolls are hanging out (i grok that they're not really there anymore BUT when they were this was true) because there is water to be played in and sand to curl your toes in and fun to be had.

stay out of the water????

are you mental?

wear fourteen layers of clothing to SWIM??????????????????????????????

yeah no.

so i'm good at the in person lack of embarassment about my body but i really fucking suck at the pictures kind. all i do when i look at pictures is see the things that i'm not satisfied with. the really odd thing about that is that when i look at myself or in the mirror?

i like what i see. sure okay i have a couple of pairs of tights that could stand to never be worn by my saddlebags again but EVERYONE has a couple of pieces that aren't right for them and that they don't like to wear. i wear said things when i don't care or i'm teaching a short day or i need to do laundry.

but aside from that? usually i get dressed and do the mirror glance and the look down and i'm like 'right on, i look pretty good' or 'damm' or 'ahh whatever' [generally followed by either changing or going somewhere that doesn't involve giving a shit how i look] or 'eek' [followed by immediate changing or hair fixing.]

i just hate pictures sometimes is all. i think there's been maybe ten photos of myself that i've ever seen where there wasn't something that i hated about them. somehow on film i can see every single ounce of fat left on my body and every muscle that isn't quite just how i want it and each millimetre of jowl that i've grown since i was fifteen.

what's ridiculous is that i would NOT take back that girl's face. now my face is lived in, it's mine. i've done things with it and to it. it's laughed and cried and hurt and blissed. we've been there together it and i and i like where it's going.

i think so far almost all my lines are the pretty kind. the kind that turn up at the corners. and i'm getting this interesting double line on one side of my mouth... so whatever, it turns out i get jowls too... my nana had those and she looked pretty good in her eighties.

but somehow i expect to see that stupid body. that swimmers body that i had once. and even though i wouldn't... oh fuck who am i kidding. i would take that body back in a second. but my brain would still know pilates.

i was so much less broken then, and i know how to fix what was already wrong. man i would be in such a fucking amazingly happy body if i had learned pilates back then. so many of the rest of my injuries would never have happened or would have healed up so much better. i'm fixing things that i did to myself twenty years ago (and last week) and some of it is pretty frozen.

man this post is digressing from where i expected it to end up.

i just don't get what my problem is. rationally i grok it. i'm nice looking and i have this great length of muscle from my head to my toes. long arms and pretty feet and a tummy with a cute little mole where my belt is. green eyes with yellow rings in them and hair that looks good when i crawl out of bed in the morning.

what the fuck is not to like?

it is fucking amazing how mental bullshit you thought you had dealt with can come back to haunt you. i thought i was over all this shit and then i got in an accident and got fat and here i am right back there.

i know it's a powerful pattern, it was formed when i was young and impressionable and nobody liked me at all. it has teeth and it's fucking more stubborn than a bulldog with a toy but still i thought i got it.

nope, i just got a layer of it. here's the next one...

stolen tag - redux

.

now a while back jmai posted a tag that she'd *stolen*!!! and she didn't tag anyone because well she stole it so she didn't really feel that she had the right. but she did absolve everyone who stole it from her of guilt... and i wanted to do it so the same rules apply as with hers:

You have $10 and need to buy snacks at a gas station; what do you buy?
.anything with a name i recognize, but considering the stores in the gas stations in toronto i'm going for the gold...
ruffles - plain or all dressed
or baked lays - sour cream and cheddar
or miss vickie's - garlic
red licorice
a bag of chocolate sin
a couple of pepperettes

If you had to be reincarnated as some sort of sea dwelling creature, what would you be?
.can i be an otter? if it has to be sea then i pick dolphins, because they play... but i pick otters first.

Who's your favorite redhead?
.i only know a couple of true redheads... i guess J the teacher at the studio i study at.

What do you order when you're at a pancake house?
.eggs

Do you own any naughty toys?
*sigh*
.no

Have you made out with anyone on your link list?
*looks at link list*
.i jumped everything nice in my head a couple of times?

Describe your favourite pair of underwear:
.hot pink and low riding

Describe the last time you were injured:
.define injure.
if you mean needed xrays? uh... car accident.
if you mean 'hurt for a while'? every day.

Are there any odd things that make you feel comfortable?
.what a strange question. uh. uh.
i did the whole tag and still. hrm.
*looks around apartment*
uh. fuck i have no idea what the answer to this question is. all my friends are odd. so them. yeah. (such a cop-out)

Tell me a weird story from your high school years:
.i met a date at school and a girl from my class hit on him from my school until he and i got off the subway downtown at the museum. such class. (that's wait for the bus, ride for fifteen minutes, try to hide, enter subway, wait for train, get on train and ride for half an hour *sob* [serious!])

What is the wallpaper on your cellphone?
.don't have one. was a pic i snapped of the acc from my first ever nhl game. (there's a post called that back in october) :)

What is your favourite soda?
.brio

Flavor of pudding?
.chocolate

What type of shirt are you wearing?
.form skimming black mock turtle neck with short sleeves in a semi stretchy fabric with a grey old navy hoodie over it

Prescription medication?
.no

If you could use only one form of transportation for the rest of your life what would it be?
.my feet but assuming they're allowed anyway and that i get to repair it?
the car i currently drive
or a magic carpet d-uh!

How many people are on your links list?
.uh...
*jeopardy music plays as sass counts*
assuming you mean blogs, 23

How many people on your links list do you know in real life?
*further jeopardy music...*
.4

What are you listening to right now?
.the computer fan.
but swing finished in the cd player a while back

Most recent movie you watched?
.i rented three kings and the perfect man the other night. it was awesome

Name 5 things you have with you at all times:
.i'm assuming for this that i'm not in my neighbourhood because i've gone to the store in flip flops, a looooong trench coat and with a key to the building and 20 bucks in my hand. so yeah

wallet, keys, datebook, my car *grin*, shoes?

Would you rather give or receive a foot massage?
.duh, receive.

Name a teacher you had the hots for:
.oh man. oh man. um.
trying to think if ever there was one.
well except for the flight instructor i was sleeping with in college. does that count? *snicker*
ahhh he was sweet, i'd like to find him someday and give him a hug.

What is a saying that you use a lot?
.inhale/exhale
or else maybe fuck me!

What's one piece of advice that you think should be passed on to every child?
.listen to your brain, your heart and your soul with equal measure and weight your decisions with all of their input and yet when still the issue is in doubt? hear your heart.

oh and because i'm feeling like it, a rejected pic from the shrug shoot:
(see bubbles they're sorta all blurry and yellow like this but way worse)

not just hockey

.
so the leafs are out.

bye bye my loves, i'm to be a calgary fan this year it seems. [see you can have one team per conference and then you only have a problem in the final and what are the odds of that?]

i love the leafs but i've acknowledged publicly that they sucked up the ice this year so i can't be too stunned at their outness. i only hope that sundin's stellar play in the latter part of the season puts the focus squarely where it belongs which is on pat quinn.

that guy is a relic and he should let go now.

i'm sad. it's been a while since i haven't watched the leafs in the playoffs. i mean calgary rocks but well... okay fine i'm in love with kippersoff and iginla but still. it's nice to cheer for two teams at once.

calgary is having a pretty good year though and they're going into the first round with home ice advantage so they're doing all right heading into the second season. the general sentiment in the hockey community is that the cup is going west this year. apparently the teams are so much more well matched that everyone is playing better.

or something.

either way? the leafs are out.
.

i have just had two days off.

now because i'm insane i went climbing on the first day off and took a nasty pilates class on the second day off. it was actually a more brutal class than usual because something was up and i couldn't get my spine to loosen up and move. it felt like i lost control of a bunch of muscles.

this does happen on occasion and i am due to get cranky and have sore boobs any day now. actually this is really interesting. it means that you lose your abs before you actually start to menstruate. hrm, i wonder what the lead time is. [update - about 16 hours]

of course i could have killed my abs at the gym yesterday...

i'm climbing really well lately but i'm still not happy. there's some fundamental thing about what you do with your weight and your centre of gravity that i am just not getting. i've had this problem before with other sports as well and up to now i haven't managed to get it.

i think maybe i should either ask rr or take some modern dance classes or both. i can see moving from the centre and i understand what it's for and how people do it when i *see* it but i can also tell that i myself am not doing it.

this got me in trouble in footbag too.

i feel that pilates will help send me in the correct direction and that further climbing will teach me to fake it and from there i can learn it. and yet still i just know that there's some thing i'm not finding.

in some ways i think it sort of relates to sex.

the really good climbers (in other words? all the ones you want to fuck after you watch them ascend something?) all move from the same place. it's between the belly button and the pubic hair and it's the centre of everything.

in martial arts they call it the kiri or belly and when they refer to it they mean the soul or the centre or your 'self' or your power ... cause yeah i'm not a translator but you get the gist. [that's why they disemboweled themselves... hara kiri was sort of to separate the spirit... ack i'm making a hack of it.]

regardless it's the same thing.

the good dancers and the good high jumpers and the good skiers and climbers and fuckers and acrobats and hula hoopers and martial artists and movement specialists and everyone else that has it? they can do anything they fucking well please with their bodies. anything.

i mean i suck in comparison and i can do ridiculous things with mine. what it must be like to have that much more control and comprehension.

like wow.

the difference is that i am a trained body. trained from like birth to play at sports. but i don't have that natural grace that some people have. i do have a lot of innate talent with sport but a lot of it is learned for me.

i'm cool with that, but sometimes it's hard when i watch the naturals just walk in and a month later they're better than me.

it's okay though, in about two or three years i'll put a pile of shit together and suddenly bam. i'll ascend to another level entirely. or at least that's what happened in the pool.

it took almost three years to put together my stellar kick with my natural stroke. but when it happened? i knocked twenty seconds off my time in an event that took under a minute. (fifty free at age nine or ten should take between 40-50 seconds. the world record might be under twenty... google... is 21 seconds for men and 24 seconds for women. i dropped to something around 41 from about a minute)

so training works over time but is a lot more frustrating in the short term *laughs*

i haven't seen the videos from yesterday. well one but it irritated me. well except for the laughter after i fell. it was taken before i was really warm.

anyway, i've had two days off.

in a row.

and it was so lovely i can't even put it into words. now i'm going to go to bed and then i'm going to get up a little bit early and go for coffee and a few more little treats for a gift i'm constructing.

teach a class and then head out of town until monday afternoon.

this long weekend is turning out stellar for me i must say and i'm actually feeling a little better. my body is *pissed off* with me for all the work i threw at it and because it's about to remind me once again that i was born with ovaries but i feel so much more human.

it didn't hurt at all that the weather was freaking stellar and looks to continue. i walked around in sandals today!

sandals!

i know, i was so happy. i even left the jacket in the car and wore a tank top around. that was slightly chilly but i didn't care. i was shopping for presents in the sun on queen west in my favourite town after having a little snack and a cappuccino at terroni [good italian pizza joint says the girl who has a dad with more than one pizza oven]

then i rented (yes i'm admitting this and fuck you if you make fun of me) the perfect man and three kings. so i came home and i watched the perfect man and i smiled at it's adorableness and cringed at the embarassing bits and actually found it to have quite an excellent message in the long run.

and then i watched the last relevant leafs game of the season (they won 5-1 but it wasn't enough) and then othercat dropped in for the second movie.

three kings is really fun, if you missed it the first time around? go rent it!

night all, hope your weekend is as stellar as mine!

the crystal meth incident

.
i have today off.

yes, you heard me.

an actual day with no work, no classes, no phone calls to clients, no reason not to be stoned *all* day (okay i waited about two hours to waken'bake) and go climbing at my leisure.

so far this day is shaping up pretty well. hubris and i met up at othercat's for brunch and then the three of us are going to go climbing. i'm blogging and listening to mc hawking while hubris naps and othercat gets ready.

poor hubris, he's messy from yesterday night. othercat and i are making lots of fun of him.

this is so cool ... i don't actually have to teach pilates for two and a half days in a ROW ... it's wonderful. of course because i have no outlet for it i'm doing the eye on everyone who walks by me. ahh addiction, got to love it.

i have a pretty cool list of addictions actually
pilates
movement
climbing
chocolate
coffee
breakfast in restaurants
weed
books
excellent beer
dancing
talking out of my ass
musing (:P uncle matt)
irish whiskey
rambling *snerk*
giving advice
couple of tv shows (house, ncis, gilmore girls, er, survivor, charmed)
hanging out with my friends...

you know, good stuff.

i've had some less positive brushes with addiction in fact, there was (for example) the crystal meth incident. yee ouch. i slept something like sixteen hours a day for a couple of weeks on the way out of that almost tragedy.

although the most fun that i've ever had with drugs happened from the sublime combination that is crystal, weed and booze i will tell you that i suggest that you NEVER try it. it's too much fun. i knew i was in trouble when i was taking downers that i'd never heard of to counteract the drugs that i had just done in order to get some sleep.

and still not sleeping.

for days.

it's not a place i reccommend going and i am a very lucky person. i'm lucky because some part of me noticed what was happening and encouraged stopping. lucky me because i was five days a week into a habit less than three months after i first tried the stuff.

it's no wonder that it's decimating the gay community. it's the perfect drug for their lifestyle.
.

so there's been climbing and then hubris and i came back here and ended up ordering sri lankan food. fuck me that is still the best butter chicken ever.

no dudes. i mean ever.

i can eat the sauce with a spoon or dip two entire pieces of naan in the sauce and still want more.

i can be so full that i will barf and if there's any more i will still eat it.

yes, it's that good.

and now we're listening to some xavier rudd and playing tony hawke pro skater four and all is well with the world. it's been so nice not to worry at all about what's happening tomorrow. i don't care if i sleep in tomorrow either. well i do but i really only miss a class with rr, it's not like i get fired.

course i HATE missing those.

but still if i do it costs me twenty bucks and there's no problems. well except i miss an awesome class.
.

climbing today was really cool. when i got to the gym i could hardly move and then as i warmed up it got better and better. an hour later i was climbing my favourite 5.10- and loving it. actually othercat videotaped it and if i'm feeling generous i'll post it (when he sends it to me of course...)

in other words? if i don't suck too much i'll share it with the world. i'm still not that good on a scale of one to the people in the magazines. i'm down around a three. that is not lack of confidence talking either. i climb v1 and people at my gym climb v9 and that's not even counting the people in the wild.

trust me, as climbers go i suck pretty hard.

i might post it anyway, or maybe one of a bouldering problem i didn't finish. it's shorter and stuff.

hell for all i know the whole thing will be blurry and there won't be any point.

*grin*

yes matt/bubbles that means a shoulder shot is coming...

*hee* i'm such a tease.

okay fine, in the meantime...

bubbles these are actually the shrug day... unfortunately most of them didn't turn out.


happy good friday y'all!

haze

.
i have exactly twenty one minutes before my client arrives.

and now ten because a lovely lady just came in to the studio and we got to chatting about the leah mclaren incident [she teaches journalism] and finding that link to make your lives easier took long enough that my client arrived, has been worked, someone else has been worked and delicious dinner was had at a lovely greek restaurant and i wrote three quarters of a post with no discernible ending in sight and chatted with my sister.

ahhh good times.

i had a post in my head when i started this and i don't know where it went.

i'm having a strange time lately. professionally my life is going really well, i'm starting to recognize trends in my clients which really helps me with all of them. like if it helps her shoulder because of this it will help his neck because of that and then...

the knowledge sort of makes itself bigger simply through use. when they say that your best teachers are your clients they mean it. it's also true that the more you learn the less you know. but it's most true that each of them makes themself a small place in your heart and you miss them for a while when they leave and continue to wonder about them at steadily decreasing intervals for years.

journalism lady said that she found herself thinking of them in the middle of sunday brunch and suddenly i felt so much better about the little client dazes i go into for no apparent reason.

anyway so teaching is going awesome. [hey look leah, shitty english!]

i've found a client who is into trading work and who will help me set up as a business. (incorporation and all that shit needs to be done as does accounting and taxes.)

i'm working just enough, i can probably call the hot doctor for referrals one more time if i need to and my clients are starting to self refer. i love that i see one lady AND i see a friend of hers. that's how i'll make it in the long run.

word of mouth rocks in so many ways.

anyway so work is going well and continuing education is dialled in with my awesome teacher and professionally all is well with the world. [dear universe that was NOT a challenge and yes, i could stand to do a little better.]

but there's this god damm haze in front of my face and i can't see around it.

i'm getting hit pretty hard with some kind of seasonal bull shit and i truly do not understand it. i know that it's been raining and that i've gotten wet and cold but it's also been sunny and warm.

i've gone for walks.

i've swung my hips with my jacket slung over my shoulder and traded smiles with random passers by as i sauntered wherever i was going.

i've flirted with taxi drivers and bartenders.

there's been brunch with lovely friends.

i went to a punk rock concert. and?

i made my friend hubris drop his jaw by dressing like a girl.

i've randomly bought shit including climbing shoes, cds, bonbons and dvds. i can't afford any more random shit.

my car is fixed.

i am climbing really well lately and feeling some new connections make themselves with my new shoes.

i did the impossible (a rollup [PROPERLY]) after three and a half YEARS of learning pilates and i didn't even notice.

i have no reason to be feeling maudlin and sad and yet i do. i feel like i'm not all there no matter where i am or what i'm doing. i really can't describe it any better than to say that it's like wearing dirty glasses and cotton in your ears *all* the time.

i'm having to force myself to keep my JUST CLEANED BY THE MAID apartment remotely tidy.

so yeah i'm depressed. it's not ennui it's that other fucking bullshit and the only thing i know for sure about it is that if you give in to it it's worse than if you just live well in spite of it.

but damm, it's getting harder and harder to get out of bed in the mornings.

hell it's getting harder and harder to take myself over to my friends' houses for fun and weed or to take myself climbing or basically to leave the house for anything that isn't work related.

i'm still doing it all but it's getting brutal for me. i think it's because there wasn't a winter this year. i saw snow for a day or two here or there but it was usually always melting. it snowed on me a few times but i just didn't play in the snow. i didn't put my snow pants on ONCE this year. there was no skiing in falling fresh powder and then lunching on the deck in the sun before lazing away the afternoon on the fast and easy runs.

so i went from fall to perpetual spring with a few days of winter here and there.

i think the endless spring is doing to me what winters in vancouver did way back when. it's actually why i fled vancouver, i knew that if i went through another winter of mist and drizzle and cold wet weather i would kill myself and i came back to ontario.

i think this is also why it took me so long to clue in to what was going on. i haven't been in this kind of weather in nine years. fuck me, it's been ten. i'm not up on the symptoms anymore and frankly?

this is a much milder dose. i just didn't recognize it because the weather caused ones are a little different...

the one thing with depression is that after the first one lifts you have a secret. you know that it will get better because it did once.

then you get your second one and that's when life gets funny because it can take you in one of two directions. either you'll recover from that one and then realise that it always gets better OR you will recover from that one and realise that there will always be another one.

it's all about that question. because i know it will get better i am not hit nearly as hard by this depression as i was by my last one... and that one hit less hard than the one before and so on.

i cannot imagine how shitty it must be to be the other kind.

sore tongue

.
things i've really wanted to say but haven't... in the last 240 hours.
[or why sass isn't as nice as you think she is]

. get your own lane!

. please just try listening to the teacher

. i love you

. please shut up, i don't really care

. no, i'm actually not interested in you

. damm you're gorgeous

. why would you do that?

. want to go out sometime?

. you're an unadulterated ass

. stop talking to her like that, it's not respectful

. that music sucks

. try listening

. remember, he's a douchebag

. woman, TRY training your dog

. god you whine a lot

. damm i'm proud of myself, that was awesome

. please don't tell me you made coffee and then tell me that i'm not invited for any

. dude you really aren't capable of that move...

. oh god this hurts so much

. might i suggest some drivers education?

. i don't want to read your blog, it's boring

. yes, those pants really do make your ass look fat

. oh my fuck you make idiots look smart

. as my ex husband used to say "you consistently set the bar low for yourself and then fail to reach it."

. stop looking at me like that

. are you sure you should be eating that?

. dude, you're insane

. mmmmmmmmmmmm fresh laundry

. this music rocks

. it sucks blogging with no graphical user interface

. dear new operating system: INSTALL FASTER!

. i don't love you anymore

. this television show sucks ass

. please stop pointing out subtleties, i got them all already

. i'm hungry

. but i don't want to wait three hours for lunch

. um didn't i tell you i have clients that night?

. it's not ALL.ABOUT.YOU.!!!!!

. i won't blog for a couple of days cause of the new os install

. you hit me so hard it left skid marks

. sucker!

. you *like* this?

. try communicating, all the cool kids are doing it

. if you leave my door unlocked one more time i'll beat you bloody

. why on earth would you think that i would want to know that?

. oh god STOP SELLING $9.99 CDS!!!

. please start again and assume i have twice your iq

. i will love you forever

. mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm pretty

. ah i see they didn't teach parking when you were learning to drive...

. does this story really need to be this long?

. *whine*

. oh dude, that was SO not the right haircut

. you're cute

. no, i really don't care about your opinion

. more coffee NOW BITCH!!!

. oh man, he got hotter!

. this is fucking endless

. grab a spine

. damm blogger saved this twice, weird...

. try thinking for yourself

. weird, i know.

. i don't think i want to be your friend anymore

. i love having you as a friend!

. tease

. i'm not sure i can keep pretending that i like you

. did you think for even a second before you did that?

. it really pisses me off how many people are going to mistakenly assume i'm talking about them, not ask me and dump me.

. and yet? maybe it doesn't.

. the thing with ennui is that it makes it easy to burn bridges...

. and really hard not to.

. mmmmmmmmmm so nice outside...

pursed lips

.
i have ennui.

ennui: noun. Listlessness and dissatisfaction resulting from lack of interest; boredom: “The servants relieved their ennui with gambling and gossip about their masters” (John Barth).

yup that's what i've got. i've got me some ennui. i'm wandering around my life feeling listless and bored even when i'm in the middle of doing something that i love. when i'm out with people or at their places i catch myself staring at the clock so i can leave at the first possible second.

this happens at band practise!!! yeah exactly.

this is not just your run of the mill ennui, this is a full on dose. this is ennui that is almost worthy of a capital e except that i can't be bothered hitting the shift key. this ennui would be legendary if i bothered to write odes to it.

there could be urns.

grecian urns no less!

i don't really know what's causing it exactly. i love my activities and my friends and the things i do to pass the time. i enjoy my television shows but (get this) i'm actually caught up. yeah in december i was eight weeks behind and right now? all caught up. what the heck is up with that?

i only watch television when i don't feel like dealing with humans and suddenly i'm watching a lot of tv. i suppose i could be getting in the hibernating i sort of forgot to do in the winter. what winter? right that explains the not hibernating.

it could be a simple case of spring forward syndrome. you know where everything feels too late and too early and all discombobulated for like two weeks because of the stupid time change? where eating dinner at ten pm seems reasonable?

where you're tired in the afternoon and wide awake at night.

yup, that time change.

it could be my growing sexual frustration. i didn't actually think it was possible for that to grow but who knew. it turns out that every spring i get another layer of bricks and mortar to weigh me down a little more. to make me feel a little shittier for my total lack of sex.

yay. love me some spring.

it could be that along with spring life returns to the village. this means that there are people everywhere and lineups at the bars and that my living room window area is rediscovered as an excellent place to smoke crack or weed.

since my apartment is excessively large this also means that they keep me up half the night with their giggling and shouting and talking. sometimes they fuck outside my window too... and it's never the attractive ones either. those ones seem to be able to find somewhere indoors to boink.

i mean really, who thinks that against the wall of an apartment building is a good place? people live there. we're SLEEPING. i know, so weird. why would you want to consider others in your behaviour?

along with that comes the return of the sunday driver. you know the one i mean, scared of his car, afraid to change lanes, her head stuck to the steering wheel, death grip on said wheel and they seem to think that twenty seven is an excellent speed in the fast lane of the freeway.

what they're looking at scenery, shut up already.

ahhh spring.

oh and i almost forgot, i'm feeling fat as hell lately. i feel fatter today than i did when i was wearing jeans that were four sizes bigger. or even when i was wearing extra large shirts instead of mediums.

i feel fatter than i did when my back fat still made folds between my bra and my waist.

i feel fucking fat. and ugly and boring and lame. and it's pissing me off. i mean really there's no reason for it. i can tell when i look in the mirror that i'm thinner. heck someone called me slender the other day.

and besides? who GIVES A SHIT? like it matters if i'm a little overweight or a lot overweight or fat or not? i mean i was fat and i'm not now and neither one got me anywhere so seriously why do i care?

moreover feeling ugly? i mean seriously that's just plain stupid. hardly anyone likes their own looks but everyone knows lots of attractive people who don't find themselves attractive. hell sometimes i'm amazed at the combination of hair/eyebrow/skin that i have and how striking it is in a mirror.

yeah mirrors.

i have this mirror rule, i'm allowed to look long enough to fix what i'm wearing and not a second longer. otherwise i start to pick and to notice my saddlebags. except i work in pilates studios.

if you haven't had the pleasure of seeing a fitness studio then imagine a wood floor, some pretty coloured walls and a wall full of mirrors. or at least mirrors all over the place. take that and add one insecure pilates instructor with mirror issues and toss it all in a shaker.

decant into martini glass to provide one pilates instructor with growing self esteem issues.

it's weird because when i look at myself with my rational mind i see this mass of happy wavy hair with fantastic skin and cheekbones that used to cut glass and still bruise it. i mean what's not to like? i see a long and lean body with muscles galore and ribs that show through my clothing.

sometimes i'll catch my eye in the mirror and be stunned at that aforementioned eyebrow/hair/skin combination. it's just so many other times i'll notice that my shirt is too short or that my pants aren't quite right for my frame or that my pants emphasize my saddlebags or whatever.

and all of this is true because my clothing is primarily either handed down or was cut for a much shorter woman than i am. because i'm a medium on top i end up with shirts that are too short. or that are long enough but way too big.

no winning for me. don't even get me started on the sleeves.

it's better in yoga clothing because that tends to actually be the right length for me (dancers are allowed to be both long and not fat at the same time... regular women aren't... fat and tall or short and thin... those are your options) but that's just as bad because it's all skintight... and when you're having a fat day the figure hugging stuff does not cut it.

i mean one fat day you can fight with your sexiest outfit. two fat days you can fight with a little shopping for cds or something. a week of fat days and you can go buy stuff from mac but then what?

you can't just keep buying stuff because the old credit card starts to barf. and besides if you use client cash you can very easily spend yourself homeless without even trying. it's so hard to put cash in the bank!

so now it's a string of fat days... and no end in sight.

and for the record i'm not asking for reassurance about my looks. i am rationally aware of the fact that i'm pretty enough... and that some people even think i'm hot. let's see... married people. gay people. women, coupled people, people at the other end of the country/world, people who are otherwise unavailable and twenty year old men. that whole list thinks i'm hot.

tragically none of them are dateable.

and i get it that i'm smart and funny and all that other awesome crap. that in no way takes away from the ennui.

the sheer unadulterated boredom of it all.

there is nothing that i do that doesn't bore me. this is clearly not about what i'm doing and all about how i'm feeling. where the hell is my self esteem?

oh fuck, i bet it went back to jamaica with my sex drive!

fit

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so i brought my climbing shoes to see rr today. i walk in carrying them and dj is there and she looks at them and goes 'whose shoes are those?'

and i go "mine"

and she goes "no, those can't be yours, they're way too small..." which made me laugh and assure her that yes they were mine. it's the curve, it makes them look smaller then they are.

anyway so later during our session i tell rr that i brought them because i met a guy who is a couple of years older than i am and has been climbing since age twelve. and dude has the most enormous bunious and like fucked up toes. they're cool toes, all long and prehensile but still the overgrown bone was a bit much for me.

and i don't want my feet to do that so let's see what we shall see. and she's like 'can i see one of those?' and i go

"of course" and then i put the other one on while she was looking at it. and she was stunned. she couldn't believe my feet were supposed to do that. so i reached out my toe and i stuck it in a weird corner of a machine and went "it's so we can stick our toes in holes like that and hold on."

i also invited her climbing. told her i would arrange for the good climbers to be there and everything. she might even come. in july [fair enough, she is significantly busier than i and she has a boyfriend to boot]

anyway i learned a new muscle to stretch too. my peroneus brevis is shortening and if that keeps happening you can grow a spur and no fucking way. i wake up in the morning and it feels like the end of my pinky toe (basically the little bump just forward of your ankle on the outside of your foot) is crunched together somehow and it takes a while to walk off.

she blames the shoes and the act of climbing and says 'whatever every sport has inherent injuries' and showed me this cool stretch. dudes it was fucking intense.

like stuff let go and it was super deep and surprising. and when i stood up after it was such a relief i can't even tell you. so i think she found it.

god i hope so.

oh man the looks on their faces when they saw those shoes *laughing*

here, to refresh your memory of what climbing shoes look like:

and because they're pretty.

anyway that was useful and interesting and if you're me? lots of fun.
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i didn't buy any cds today. be proud.
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i'm having dessert for dinner again.

pretzels and nutelly
cadbury flake
belgian orangey dark chocolate
bolthouse farms perfectly protein mmmmmmmmm

what's a nutelly?

i'm not in a very healthy mood lately... but i've been eating a lot of fruit and vegetables anyway so i guess it's okay.
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the other day at the climbing gym hubris and i were eyeing up the candy er climbing and he looks up at me and goes 'dude, you're boy crazy' and i was like 'yeah and?'

because that is so not news to me.

i'm finding it a little wasteful honestly.

i mean it's not like it's particularly accomplishing anything for me after all and lord all that energy could be so well used in other things.

hmmm this particular orangey chocolate is all right. i'm not sure i'm big on the orange peel chunks...

anyway let me just clarify that i don't mean that looking at beautiful people is a waste of time because no way. that is one of life's greatest pleasures and i will never give it up. i don't think boys i'm on dates with approve really... but i point out hot girls too. note to self, stop doing that on dates.

okay so beautiful people are for looking at all the time. funny that everything nice lying on her bed with sun glow on her skin just popped onto my random desktop ... i wonder if i'm allowed to post it here since she put it on her blog before... anyway it's the one where she's lying on her side all nude and you can see a breast and a tattoo. it's really lovely.

anyway, that pretty much sums up the beautiful people are meant for looking at argument right there.

but otherwise? this whole thing i have for boys and wondering if they're dateable? it's a bad thing i think maybe a little.

i mean it's not getting them to like me obviously and it wastes all these brain cycles that could be so much better occupied doing other things and really, why should i care?

like someone smarter than me said recently 'i want someone to take the risk of falling for me for a change'

well okay one person did that, but people who know them agree that we are desperately unsuited.

why am i always the one wondering if someone is dateable? they don't really seem to be wondering that about me after all and really aren't there a zillion better things to do than that? this is where someone lists off all of the things that i do every day and makes fun of me.

okay it's true that i'm certainly not sitting on my couch waiting for someone to knock on my door (currently i'm sitting at the computer actually) and that i am in fact living a busy and active life. but i spend a lot of time at the climbing gym looking at men and wondering about them.

and i do that everywhere.

everywhere and all the time. because hubris is right, i am boy crazy. i fucking love men. they don't love me (well they do... they just don't want to date me) or at least not in the sexual way and yet still.

men are fantastic and alien creatures and i am ever and always interested in them. i love to flirt with them and know them and look at them and smell them. men are a lot of fun to hang out with and frankly all of the women that i like also tend to hang out with men more than women. or at least enjoy traditionally masculine activities or lifestyles.

funny anecdote, i was talking to the beautiful eastern european man a couple of weeks ago and we got to talking about climbing being addictive and i said that that was okay because i was addicted to lots of things like coffee and chocolate and weed and my blog and he goes 'what about sex?' and i laughed and said that i vaguely recalled it being fun but that i didn't really know and he goes 'why not?'

and i said "i don't know, for whatever reason no one ever really asks me out" and he just sort of looked thoughtful. [i get that i've met men on the net but they don't tend to ask for second dates so that's kind of the same thing right?]

can i tell you how much i appreciated him not giving me platitudes? he just accepted it and thought about it instead of instantly saying something easy. i wonder what he eventually concluded...

anyway despite their apparent lack of interest in me i'm just fascinated with boys. i'm fucking boy crazy and what a waste of time that is. seriously what's the use?

ready maid rescue

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okay first of all i need some kind of personal shield around sunrise records. they keep putting more cds in the list that's on sale and i keep getting sucked in and buying two or three little cds. i mean they're ONLY 9.99 after all. this is killing me, seriously i've spent like two hundred bucks in that store in a WEEK!

but oh such lovely music!

so many things i've wanted forever and so many others that i've sort of considered getting but haven't.

god i shouldn't be allowed to have money in my wallet... all i want to do is spend it. something has to happen or i'll just stay this broke.

i did "blow" fifty bucks and some chinese takeout on a maid yesterday to clean my apartment and it looks AWESOME!!! [yes maid i'm talking to you! feel free to out yourself... not sure if you're private about such things in the blogverse or not] i walked into my apartment today and it was so nice. i didn't have to feel oppressed by my own mess... and i didn't feel guilty about what a pig i am.

the fact remains that i do not have the energy to clean my own house when i get home from work and my place was basically falling into greater and greater disrepair.

interestingly since then i've organized my entire cd collection (yes even the burned ones) and started throwing shit out. guess i just needed someone to start the process for me. my place had turned into some kind or metaphor for depression actually.

one of the signs of depression is an inability to get anything done. you think of doing this one thing and that leads to this other thing and this other thing and suddenly you have this huge list of stuff to deal with and you don't know where to start and then you don't do *anything*. so they tell you to imagine a giant dresser and each drawer is one task and that you're just opening one drawer at a time.

that's actually some hella useful advice by the way.

anyway my apartment had gotten like that. i wanted to clean my living room but i had to find a place to put all sorts of shit away and then i started thinking i should get the bedroom done first and work out from there and i basically started spinning in circles and not starting anything.

then i added guilt to the mix and thus got nothing done for another month.

finally i caved and offered my friend fifty bucks and dudes. SO WORTH IT!

i am here to tell you that it's worth giving up a dinner out or whatever if in exchange you get a maid visit. so much better than half a pair of shoes or a month of cable or anything. if you find yourself perpetually behind the eight ball when it comes to cleaning your place?

GET.A.MAID!!!!

so nice.

so today, instead of looking around my apartment, feeling guilty, getting depressed and still not accomplishing shit?

yeah i made a mixed tape and organized my burned cds.

so good!

hubris will be so proud of me when he sees the CD i got today...
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i've noticed some oddness happening around my comments section... people show up when a post has been up for a little while and start saying stuff like:
'i know i'm late to the party but...'
'this is totally off topic but...'
'everyone already said what i'm thinking so i'll just say hi'
'i'm sure what i just said was stupid'
'i hope you don't mind if i comment...'
'i don't think that made any sense...'
and i would like to address a little of this.

first of all? if a post is up? you're not late to the party at all, it's there to be commented on. even if it's the tenth post down my list it's still there to be commented on, if you have something to say, no matter how long ago the post went up *i* still want to hear it. regardless, just comment okay?

there is no such thing as off topic, if you have something to say? say it... i don't care what it's about, i'm here for the conversation.

say what you're thinking anyway, your words are different than theirs.

IT'S NEVER STUPID!

i welcome every single, solitary comment i get. i just delete the spam. if you're not linking to massage schools i'm probably happy to hear whatever you have to say... even if it isn't positive.

it always makes sense. every single time someone has said 'that probably didn't make any sense' it ALWAYS has. just so you know.
.

i used to clean houses for money. some of you may not know that. and the thing i noticed universally was that almost everyone was somehow embarassed to have called a housekeeper in. and i totally didn't get it.

these people make a hundred or fifty or thirty or whatever bucks an hour. they work their forty hour weeks that turn into sixty with commuting and lunch. they go out with their friends and you know? they're freaking tired at the end of the day.

i'm freaking tired at the end of the day.

and still they call you up and you show up and you cheerfully clean their house. which they've often cleaned already because they're so embarassed to have called you.

and then they see it. the house is clean and they didn't do SHIT.

and that's it, they're over it... suddenly you're the hero of their lives.

i'm like that myself, and i can't really afford to get someone to clean my house... and yet?

SO WORTH IT!

hire a housekeeper. give someone fifty bucks to clean for three hours. watch your taps sparkle.

have a mimosa and thank me in the morning *grin*

see ya! have a good night!

fog

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oh man.

i went to class with rr this morning and whatever i did a couple of weeks ago to my spine has turned out to be one of those positive changes that suck ass while you're having them. okay first of all i know exactly what i did to my spine and i'm perfectly happy to explain it but when i start talking about my dura people tend to look at me sort of funny and then their eyes kind of glaze over.

so i tend not to do it.

the one paragraph, skip this if you don't want the technical details portion of the program, version goes like this: i was doing control-balance [DO NOT ATTEMPT: lie on floor with hands by hips, legs straight to ceiling, legs away from chest a bit, roll up through spine until legs are over head, pick a good height, slowly lower one leg to touch the floor (above forehead) and lift, switch legs. sass version has feet on the wall due to her problematic spine. DO NOT TRY THIS WITHOUT AN INSTRUCTOR!] and to get my feet to touch the floor i was trying to lower my breastbone. (if you sink your breastbone your spine sorta lengthens and as a result your pelvis changes a little relative to your belly and then your feet go closer to the floor... sorta) well my breastbone sank more than i expected so my spine sorta *stretched* without expecting it and so the next segment down was unprepared and the dura {casing around spine and brain} got overstretched. and dura stretches slooooooow.

so basically i overstretched the elasticey tissue that goes around and supports my spine. and it's pissed. and it's going to take a while to fix.

shit happens.

it's just that teaching and walking and sitting in my car and sleeping and taking classes are all a little harder than they were a couple of weeks ago. the thing that's interesting about this? i'm better at a bunch of stuff.

whatever let go in my back really let go and it's moving now. it's weak and cranky and not liking this new direction at all but it's moving. i'm not sure that it's ever moved before to be honest, at least not like this.

rr keeps pointing out that rollups and rollovers and all other complete flexion of the spine moves are looking much better. and they ARE! i can feel it myself even. not that it's easier so much as more connected. we really are putting my spine back together and it's fucking fantastic.

but god damm it my back has been sore for two weeks. in a whole new place. places i'm not used to and don't expect. so it keeps randomly hurting for no reason. ah well, hope she gets it this week when i see her on tuesday. hope it's gettable.

so, i take this class with her today and it's lovely. just lovely.

she walks me out after and we chat for a minute and i realise how much i like her. i mean not only do i respect her as a teacher and as a human being but i genuinely like her. i dig her personality and how she thinks and her beautiful blue eyes blow me away. she really does remind me of michelle pfeiffer only hotter and with more glow.

anyway i hop in my car and i have this nice easy drive where i just cruise with the windows open and practise my new found niceness to stupid drivers. i smile and wave at people. i take the long way.

i drive at seventy kilometres an hour most of the way there. it gets foggy and i'm singing along to an old old mixed tape. it's so old i'm not expecting the right next songs...

and it's foggier so i slow down to fifty (25-30mph). and then i look around and there's this world. this small and close world filled with water and shades of early spring like gray and taupe and beige and smoke.

old cattails and seagulls and birds coming home and no other cars on the road.

and i exhaled and i smiled and i slowed down some more and i filled my eyes with beauty. i almost missed the road i've taken for longer than i can remember. since before i learned how to drive. since i still slept in the back of a minivan while my parents listened to 'as it happens' on the radio.

since 'as it happens' was on on saturday afternoons. [cbc show that is on weeknights now]

hah it was too on at that time once.

i was almost sad to arrive at my destination i was enjoying the drive so much. it put me in this super mellow place that made it almost impossible to talk and i sort of wish that i'd had a camera and yet sort of glad that i didn't.

but because i was driving so slowly and because i was looking around a lot more than usual and because there were no cars on the road i noticed something. the drive is getting built up... there are more and more businesses. there is more and more money and there are an ever increasing number of more than two lane stretches or highway. the road is going to turn into a real highway one day and then this place will slowly get paved over.

i hadn't taken the long way in a while. it's got a much slower speed limit but much less traffic. i'd forgotten how nice it is though, all rolling with the pretty hills.

i'm just sad to see all the money creeping north of toronto.

i saw farms and wanted to buy them all just to keep them green. i see streams and marshes and giant puddles and mist and i want to fill my soul up with it because i don't really expect it to be there one day.

i know that all i can do is attempt to love and honour the earth in whatever form it is but it's so much nicer when it doesn't have pavement on it.

i didn't mean for this post to turn maudlin, i'm in fact in a pretty good mood. i ate way too much for dinner including apple crumble for dessert. okay i'll tell you but it was out of hand.

i had this weird 'tempura vegetables' thing that had never heard of tempura but was a decent fried vegetable appetizer anyway and then i had the 'mixed grill' which sounded SO good and then it had sauce. a ton of sauce. so much sauce that i felt vaguely ill. sauce up the yin yang. but it was lamb steaks or tiny little chops and then a beef skewer thingy and a venison sausage that i only ate half of (because that's a LOT of meat) and some mashed potatoes i didn't finish because they were drenched in sauce... and because i was full.

and then i had dessert. because i'm stupid.

and i'm still full. apple cobbler with ice cream of course, gets me every time.

it was out of hand. and now i'm drinking beer and blogging and chatting with othercat and life is good. i have a pile of clients this week, life is back to normal and i might have a new time to climb that works a lot better than my present wednesday attempts. my schedule is in a bit of flux because a semester just ended and i lost a class that had occupied an entire afternoon.

so i'm pretty happy that i lost the class although i will miss the ladies in it. now i can teach like three hours there instead and let that morning class i don't want also die... and not feel bad because i'm not the one that killed the class. if she wants it back i might do it, see how the summer goes in that time slot.

anyway it's been one of those weeks where the bad news tends to turn out to be good news.

sort of like life really. man this is a weird post.