That’s not a good place for an extension cord.

So, I’m listening to Matt Good right now, “Oh be joyful”, and thinking, I haven’t updated my iPod for an amazing and somewhat depressing five months. I should really get around to that. Or, I could just listen to the right ear phone, rather than the usual “left”. That seems to always screw with me if I need a change in music, because I hear the “other half” of things. Anyways, point is, I’m not finding that I have legit reasons to be joyful.

I could be joyful, because I have a boyfriend who is indescribably joyful, but that indescribability is hard to keep at the top of the floating layers in the cup sometimes, as it often becomes submerged in the other layers mainly consisting of the substance called confusion and a lot of doubt. Doubt being the most viscous, usually sits at the bottom of these quandries, but my glass is getting good and shaken lately. What a fucking weird analogy. I haven’t actually sat down and written anything in a while, so maybe this is more for myself than my “devout” readers, but I’ve got a disease, and it’s making me suffer in the daytime, and that disease, that dis-ease, is words on the brain.

Much like water on the brain, it causes uncomfortable pressure build-up and confusion. Not knowing up from down, left from right, and etcetera. Maybe that’s what love is, now that I think of it. Water on the brain promising an aneurism of orgiastic glee.

The boy causes me to conjure up many thoughts of doubt. In fact, if I were to sit and regard the whole thing for the negatives, it wouldn’t look so good at all. Actually, I should say it doesn’t look good at all, because I have done this. But yet, I can sit in his arms and feel like as long as I’m there, everything is ok, against all odds. Everything about him is severely “against all odds”, and yet, I’m still putting money on it. It’s so extremely unwise, that initially, when our status changed from a terrible phrase, to “significant other” [1], I was extremely reticent to tell anyone. A lot of this had to do with a worry about being judged, a lot of it had to do with people confirming my worst thoughts about the whole thing (my own judgements?), a lot of it had to do with people thinking less of me. Most of all, it bothered me because I couldn’t explain it. And truthfully, I still can’t, but I’m at least happy (weirdly) with this aspect of my life, so I’m choosing to just let it be right now. Whether or not this continues though or not, hinges on a lot of other things that have yet to unfold.

I was talking about this with a co-worker the other day, and she told me that she’d only ever had one other relationship, with her husband, and this relationship with a woman now, was only the second relationship she’d ever been in. She’s having a hard time right now in it, because they’re both really stressed out, but she also said, “I’m still trying as hard as I can to make it work. You have to work at these things, you know?”

I told her that I didn’t really know that, because I was pretty used to just running away if things were taking a questionable course. This was post-status change of the relationship, but I still had this odd realization that maybe this boy was the first time that I was actually just letting go and going with it, as opposed to double-digits of relationships that I’ve been in and ended at the cusp of an unfavorable change in affection. And it has been me that has ended these, 9/10.

All in all, this could be something I deeply regret and will make bad jokes about sometime in the future, but I am trying, bearing healthily in mind that there is a difference between trying, and beating an attempt to death.

The boy actually hooked me up with a very temporary job opportunity last week, in other news, that was very interesting. I have some landscaping experience, so he took me to the company he works for (after telling them of my experience and gaining their approval). It’s a notorious gig, known for the daily cash pay-outs and the colorful characters that work there. And really, it’s a total gong-show. I could go on for paragraph upon paragraph on the inadequacies of the whole place, but I won’t. I got my money, I’m done, and I actually had a pretty good darn time getting it too. After the first two initial days of absolute soreness, it really didn’t bother me to trim for ten hours. Actually it’s kind of nice once you get into it. If I had more time, and hadn’t missed my last day at work before my spring session, I’d probably go back. I’m still banking on my job opportunity as Safety Watch though.

That is supposed to be the job that carries me through the summer and gets me to some point of financial preparedness [2] for getting a real job, and possibly having to move with very short notice. I have been getting the initial chore of getting a real job done…real slow-like. It sort of freaks me out to look for a job, but I’ve been noticing lately as I slowly get my shit together, that it has started feeling really good to do all that, as opposed to hideously frightening. Because when I sit down and think about it, cocky as it sounds, I know that I can do extremely well by any school that hires me, and there’s no doubt in my mind about that now. Neat, and wildly optomistic.

Here’s the rub. It seems like things are shakily ok, but in reality, it sort of feels like a dream. I have become somehow, one of those people that is still sitting in a rocking chair with narrowed eyes gazing in the distance, shotgun in my lap, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

One of those shoes, is a wildly confusing dynamic with someone I know best embodied by this diagram. It worries the hell out of me. I wish that friendships were more simple sometimes, but at the same time, complicity is something I treasure in that context. I should thus know by now that with complicated friends…there is good, bad, downright confusing, but for now, I fret like a useless toad.

And useless toads were a-plenty last Friday, as my parents and I went on a road trip [3] to Drumheller, specifically to bring me to Reptile World. We also went to Linden to visit relatives, but that was fairly minor, I think, in the grand scope of the trip. It all started when I foolishly decided to tell my parents that I was a) incredibly broke, and b) incredibly stir-crazy. I made an idle threat about hitch-hiking out of the city (as some of my friends have done before, and been crazy successful at) to Mexico. I basically mentioned the wrong city, thinking about one of my favorite Simpson’s references, and since Mexico is my Mom’s current phobias [4] she sort of freaked out.

This is where you learn a little more gross detail about me that you didn’t know before. She freaked out, and in a very wierd phonecall later that week, my Dad declared that we were “going on a road trip”, and “it’s for you, where would you like to go?” It wasn’t for me, it was like this really weird attempt to give me fake autonomy on the way down to visit his Uncle in Linden. And so the farce went, my mom cramming herself into the back of the truck cab (if you’ve met my mom, you know how silly it is to cram an Amazon into a small space). I was to be the Navigator, and they jokingly called me ‘Greta’ after their GPS in Germany. So, I navigated us down to the south, feeling sort of uneasy and stupid the whole way down, but still managing to have a pretty good time. I do really like hanging out with my parents, so it isn’t hard to have a good time travelling with them (all my travelling, has essentially been with them to some degree), but admittedly, it was a little forced, a little coddling, and of course, throw in “eccentric”, because that stupid devil black cat came along too. Nothing says my family like walking a malignantly evil black cat through a park in the middle of desert. I mean for the love of groceries, there were children around.

“It’s time we started treating you like an adult, so you should sit in the front seat,” burns my 24 year old ass so bad. This is something that has been a bone of contention with my parents and I before. But I’m in an awkward position about it as well unfortunately. It’s a strange game. But I got good pictures. Of oodles of reptiles. Be ready for teh fantastique.

More later. Must sleep.

[1] I saw this officially on paper today, signing it at a registry for a new birth certificate for him. Right above the option for marriage license. You know, “Groom’s last name”, “Bride’s former/same last name”, “place of marriage”, etc. It ignited crazy Las Vegas thoughts, and I was extremely weirded out afterwards.

[2] Definitely not feelin’ that at the moment.

[3] Wait for it…there’s a segue.

[4] “Have you heard about ALL those DEAD Canadians in Mexico??”

midnight, EXTREME!!!

You know, in my lifetime, I’ve avoided eating doritos or gross oily junkfood at my computer. Cat-cat however, has developed an affinity for doritos, and has thus done the job of sullying my keyboard faster than I could have managed over the 5 year span of owning this PC.

In other more horrifying news, and actually I’m being serious, I was on my way home from Naked tonight, right around the time a stabbing occurred on the corner where the Royal Bank is, on 101st and Jasper. Lots of police everywhere, and lots of frightened or bewildered faces. The suspects I gather, were headed to my neighborhood, as I saw a police car pull up further up 101 in front of me, and arrest two gentlemen promptly. Maybe only for questioning, but there were handcuffs. The security guard in front of Holt Renfrew who was rubbernecking the whole scene offered to walk me home, and was surprised when I turned him down. It’s funny, but despite all that, I’m still not afraid of living downtown. Despite everything, and how closely in proximity violence often occurs when you live here, I don’t find it scary. That’s not to say that I’m not cautious, but I have a strong feeling that if I walked around being afraid all the time, that things would be quite shitty. Not to mention, something about being stabbed seems more deliberated than say, being shot with an errant bullet or something. “There’s less chance of being an afflicted innocent bystander when knives are involved”, a friend of mine once said.

But man….a half an hour later, and the cops are still buzzing down there, and ghetto bird circles above in the night. I hope dude is ok. Even stranger, I think that the involved parties in the stabbing were some of the spill-out crowd from New City. It’s weird. I could be wrong though.

Fuck, cat-cat and these fucking doritos.   ssssssssssssssssssss [1]
On a more positive note, I’ve been getting randomly spoiled like crazy lately. Today, I got a free coffee at Second Cup, because the interac machine spontaneously failed. Right after that, we got free catnip from the farmer’s market for Hanna, because we’re broke-ass motherfuckers, and the guy could tell we loved our cat, so he just gave it to us. I got a nice tip at work ($1, woo! Tips at convenience stores are amazing. To get, period.) And then, when I went to Naked, after my roommate left my absolute most favorite thing in the world for me in the fridge for after work [2], the guy working there fussed over the lighting specifically at the back table so I would have good light in which to work in. He dug up a little lamp and a little light bulb and everything. It was really really nice. A. thinks pity, and I say it’s my new  “bang-bang[s].”[3]

Only downside was11111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111 [4] — ok, so I can’t say there was a downside. I even got a big hug from an old Geekworld co-worker today, when he came into my work. He’s so freakin’ cute when he does that. He just comes in to visit his friends, but he always stops to give me a hug on the way up. I think he likes me, but he’s appalled completely that I’m a smoker, so he won’t broach the subject until I quit. So…I’ll keep smoking I think, for a while.

I did get a lot, if not all, the planning done that I needed to do for Monday at Naked tonight. I feel pretty good about that, and the ideas that I came up with. They’re fairly extensive, but they mesh nicely, so there is overlap from one activity to another, so it becomes one fluid collaboration that encompasses more than one concept. In fact, there are stupid amounts of concepts in this lesson plan, for three different grades. I’m pretty excited about it. And, to top it all off….it involves print transfers. I mean, the idea that I’m introducing the process of print-transfers with is not even important, so much as I think that it would totally be something that younger students would enjoy doing. Especially manipulating images of their choice. It’s like a gateway art skill, instead of a gateway drug, I guess. That is the most terrible analogy, and yet, it’s the only one that came to mind.

[1] Cat-cat angrily replies that somehow doritos fit into a food group for felines. And that she has the munchies after all the free catnip we recieved today at the farmer’s market.

[2] Cold pyrogies! Score!

[3] Really silly Nancy Sinatra reference regarding the haircut.

[4] Cat-cat learns one half of the binary alphabet.

neige

Ahh eet iz zee snow of ze overweight flakes, not unlahk fat americanz I can see on ze teevee.

It is muy late right now, and I’m exhausted. But if you go into Churchill Square tomorrow, and spy that huge ten foot snow sculpture…..?  I helped. We got spied on by some wierd emo-pants boy though at one point. He was of no help, the schlep.

Anyways…see some other flickr accounts for better footage than I can provide with my invisible high tech digital camera.

what’s my problem? My problem?

I’m not a very happy person right now. I’ll tell you why since you won’t ask. Because you are the internet, and the internet never asks us for anything but a password or our credit card numbers.

a. I wait a lot for things to happen. I’m stuck in this seemingly huge long transitional point where I have to wait for everything to happen that I can already see on the horizon, but cannot address on my own time. So, in this waiting game, I should be thinking of great fantastic ways to while away the time, and my imagination fails me, because the stimulation I crave, is at the end of the road– the destination I’m trying to arrive at. Funnily enough though, a lot of the problem is that I can think of a billion things to do in that time, but can never decide on one thing, because none of those “things” has nearly as much priority as said destination. Granted, they are important I’ve realized, because everything shapes you as a person, not just one thing.

b. I’m running myself to financial ruin.

c. I can’t stop smoking. I should have stopped like T-1 year ago, and it just hasn’t happened. I will probably smoke during my practicum again, and this pisses me off incredibly. If I don’t smoke during my practicum and I quit now…chances are I will lose my mind. Sounds dumb to you internet, but, it’s guaranteed.

d. I don’t know what I want. I know what I want …but none of that comes before I graduate. It’s not a monetary thing either. It’s where my creative inspiration is headed, where my personality needs to be, and where I will be peaceful. But right now, I don’t know what I want, and I can’t make decisions about anything. Even coffee. It’s pathetic.

e. I still can’t just fucking say no to people. I try to make people happy all the time, hugely at my own expense, and when I get angry about it, I get it in my head that I would be an awful person if I wasn’t doing so. It’s a scary flashback to highschool sometimes, where I was everyone’s girl but mine.

f. Financial wrack and ruin. It is bad enough to get mentioned twice. I may have to start selling crack.

g. Jesus fuck dude….why’d you have to go do that? I know the world is a terrible place, and we’re all screwed up, but we’re alive. The beauty is in the details of living. I’m so angry right now. I don’t feel I have the right to be angry at all, and that yeah, it’s probably inappropriate, but fuck.

how many broads does it take to screw together something anyways?

I have this aunt who has a thing about independence. It manifests itself materially in that instead of getting someone else to fix something, or say…make something for her, or maybe, she might borrow something from people, that she just will not do it. She’s excessively independent, and it’s almost like she’s not even able-bodied enough to be that way anymore.

In anycase….she decided she wanted to make a wooden box to go on the outside of the gas meter. It’s 20″ by 25″, and not completely square. Rectangular, with an open back. Now, if you had one half of a brain with a nail sticking out of it, this would really appear initially to be a relatively simple thing to do. Build a frame. Put plywood  on the outside. Oh wait, you want a stupid little door for the gas guy to be able to use? That won’t hurt him at all ergonomically….let’s fucking do it.

It took us roughly five hours, and we got one half of the frame done. One half of the frame, if you need an explanation, consists of 16 three inch screws that need to be inserted into pieces of wood that took three seconds to measure, 10 minutes of a 50 year old woman building up bravado around a table saw, and roughly five minutes to use said table saw to cut shit.

I’m angry, and I want to cut you because I love you, you silly girl. It was so incredibly lame that it turned out to be hilarious.

The moral, if there is a moral, is that you should get someone else to do this crap. It’s a waste of time and money. She has an admirable collection of power tools now, but I despair that the junkies in the back alley will only break into her garage and steal them. Selling them. For the drugs, you know? These kids of today, they’re right fucked I tell you.