flowers in the garden, laughter in the hall

you know how sometimes, when you wake up late, you worry that your whole day will be thrown off and you'll go to bed tired and frustrated, checking your alam clock a million times to make sure it will never happen again? but sometimes, you wake up late and the exact opposite happens and you go to bed happy and only slightly worried about the alarm clock?

today was totally an only-worry-slightly-about-the-alarm-clock day.

to talk like this and act like that

i wear big boots.

last year i gave up on being trendy or even remotely stylish and just went out and bought myself a badass pair of men's size eight sorel boots. they make a clump noise when i walk and are uglier than sin, but god i love them. truth be told, i pretty much feel invincable against the elements in them. after all, what kind of weather wants to fuck with a pair of boots like mine?

ice. ice definately likes to fuck with my boots.

i re-discovered this today. i also discovered that i can- technically- do the splits without ripping my pants and that my bionic knee can withstand quite the hit and not re-shatter into a million pieces.

it still bruises like a motherfucker though.

beautiful my love

the other night on my way to swimming i caught the light to cross kent just as it turned in my favour. gimping slightly, not paying much attention, wondering at the intense cold, i am snapped back to reality by the screech of near-threadbare tires on icy pavement. i stop and an old battered station wagon finally comes to a halt part way through the cross walk about five feet in front of me. the driver gesticulates madly, waving me across.

patiently, slowly, i gimp in front him. seconds dont pass after i clear the front of his car before he gun his engines, wheels spinning, into a right hand turn, the rear end of his car fishtailing wildly in the snow.

assuming it can't hurt, i flip him the bird in my mitted hands and yell after him.

"HEY ASSHOLE! TRY GOING A LITTLE FASTER THERE MATE!"

i don't realize how ridiculous i must both look and sound until i hear snickers from across the road. a younger man smiles, gives me the thumbs up and tells me way to be.

oh yes, it seems my powers of allurment are beginning to return.

and i've never met anyone quite like you before

it's been months since i've been out dancing- fancy going?

i know you say you're not one for eighties music, but i promise that the words will come to you as if by magic and that the bubbles raining down from the ceiling will linger in your hair for a few brief moments, mirroring the lights reflected in your eyes. i'll wear a skirt for the first time in forever and won't be offended when you laugh at the disproportionate size of my calves in relation to each other. when you finally drag me away from the music, down the stairs and out into the snow, i'll let the wind buffet my body from side to side and squeal in a girly fashion when the wind slips up my skirt and bits at my thighs. you'll have to sleep over because you missed the last bus, but that's ok, i have lots of extra blankets and i'll even let you have wallace. in the morning when i stumble down the stairs, the sun will be leaking in through the curtains and you'll have coffee on the go.

sleeping on a plane

sometimes, when i am as distracted as i am right now, with books and coursepacks spread out everywhere and little bits of paper scattered across the bed and bad pop music blaring at me and this screen up on compy in stead of word perfect, i wonder how i have gotten this far as a fairly successful student.

my money is on sheer dumb luck.

just what the truth is i can't say anymore

weird noises at night wake me up.

i'm fairly used to the quirks of my house. i know the particular rattles that signal the number fourteen rushing by on gladstone, or the way a huge transport truck will make glass objets tinkle against each other if there's a red light on kent. i'm used to the noise of the doors of both the kates, the particular clicking of the latches. morgen rarely wakes me up coming in anymore because the door opening has become an expected noise. and my own bed- consisting of milk crates and a goant piece of plywood- well, it never makes any noise at all.

but last night- falling asleep, dewey and wallace and the bear mashed alongside me and tangled in the africa quilt, there was an unknown noise. everytime i shifted- squuueak, eeeeeerk, squasqua. i woke up no less then five times to this weird eeeeerrrrrt noise coming from somewhere beneath me.

it took me twenty minutes, but i finally found out that it was a cord mashed down between the wood and the wall. i have no frickin clue how it got there, [i am the queen of weird-shit-in-her-bed, but still, no idea] but man, i'm glad it's gone and i can return to the semi-silent sleep pattern of life.

come on come on help me do

morgen walks in just as i- in a VERY ladylike manner- yell "you FUCKING fucker!" as loudly as i can.

tomorrow my clone is coming to ottawa. and then, later on in the evening, my younger brother is also coming and we are going to have a few days of general awesomeness together in the deep freeze that is ottawa. in preparation, i've cleaned the house [almost] from top to bottom. i scrubbed the walls in soem places even. and i finally- after weeks of chopping vegetables and doing dishes in half light- tackled the challaenge known as our kitchen light fixture.

i grew up in an old house, so i know they have their quirks. i know about plaster walls and crooked floors and expansion and contraction in the summer and winter. i know about backwards pipes and weird light switches and tricks to getting stuck cupboards open but never, EVER in my life have i encountered anything as ridiculous as our kitchen light fixture in my entire life.

of course, the superhero disguised as a mere morgen saved the day and now, once again we have light. real light. enough light to be able to distinguish between a carrot and your finger.

in other radnom news- i have created life in the form of a sock monkey named wallace. like doctor frankenstein i am slightly horrified at what i have created- he's so cute that i might throw up.

'cos yeah, that's rare

last year, anna's mom made perogies.

there are no words to describe the goodness of these little potato and cheese and onion filled bundles of dough. there were bags and bags of them packed in our tiny freezer and every once in a while [with anna's blessing] i would go in to the frosty land and grab a bag and eat the best damned perogies i have ever had in my entire life.

i bought a bag of perogies tonight because they have been all i have been thinking about for about the last three week. although the bagged no-name version can't hold a candle [or anything, for that matter] to the perogies of last year, they sure were good.

mmmmm, cheese-and-potato filled dough.

yes yes, here we go

for lunch i made myself apple slices with lemon juice and cinnamon. [the cinnamon is ace and the lemon juice keeps fruit from going brown and adds a certain pucker power to anything]. i also made a peanut butter and raspberry jam sandwich- a staple in my diet i have discovered.

i came home with crumbs from a tortiere and the wrapper from a granola bar in my containers. there's a simple explaination- but i'll let you imagine a crazy lunch-time adventure instead.

jesus don't cry

the snow is falling heavily here, like a blanket. sometimes it's hard to notice, living in a city, the way it collects on the braches of trees or how it piles up around foot prints. what's not lost however, is the way the light thrown from some window or streetlight reflects off of each flake as it quickly descends to the ground below.

once again, today found my time eaten by the time gnomes. today they came in the guise of a shopping trip with liz. you see, two years ago i bought a mancoat. a prime calfskin and wool coat right from the seventies. and man, is it ever warm. it's also a size forty four which- although impressive- i don't quite fill. [maybe three years ago, when i was twice the girl i am now, literally]. currently, i can wear three sweaters and still have room to dance in that sucka. anyways, it's beginning to fall apart and it weighs a tonne and it so strongly resembles jake gyllenhal's coat in brokeback mountain in my mind that i decided that it was time for a new coat.

of course, i was instantly drawn to the fine wool and cashmere combination that beckoned from the rack.

the vox instantly took over: "stunning darkish-brown double-breasted pea-type coat.... you will be mine, oh yes, you will be mine." then, of course, there was the matter of the price tag. originally two hundred and some odd dollars [who the fuck has that much money to spend on a fantastic-but-not-the-best-EVER coat in real life? i mean honestly!] the spring season had pushed the price down to sixty dollars.

hahahaha- spring season. because it's just so warm.

i however, will now be warm in this "spring" weather with my fine new wool and cashmere coat. i will also be stylish with my new generic-brand bag [that i had to model for liz in different colours with the new coat on to ensure that it would be an ok bag to buy] and backpack. and i'll also stop feeling nauseous very soon about the one hundred and fifty dollars i managed to spend randomly when i really should have been memeorizing sanskrit and pali terms for my midterm on thursday....

oh me.

just to see if you can

The apparition of these faces in the crowd:
Petals on a wet, black bough.

perfect. absolutely perfect.

[if you were wondering, it's ezra pound as suggested by my brother in an attempt to find the words for what it feels like to hang on a precipice before the maw of lonliness personified, or the feeling of belonging as a unique and unidentifiable part of a crowd that somehow is connected as a whole. and wow- can you tell it's paper-season around here? hahahahaha].

she broke your throne she cut your hair

in the past two days i have watched more tv than i even want to tell you about.

this with three papers, one mid-term and a HUGE amount of reading to catch up on. i blame cbc and their constant olympic coverage. seriously- that shit is always on. and there's just something so drawing about a sport that involves men hurling themselves down an ice track on a small sled at speeds in excess of one hundred and forty kilometres and hour.

i mean, who even thought to make that a sport?

diving off a rock into another moment

sometimes when i am surrounded by large groups of people i feel like lonliness personified is going to swallow me up in her gaping maw. and sometimes when i am surrounded by large groups of people i feel like i am invincible, unknowable and part of something that we're all part of that is never set down in words.

i'd like to find those words.

i hope you don't mind

so, i really secretly love the x-files.

i mean really love it. but not the later seasons when it wasn't mulder and scully anymore after david duchovny left. but before that- up until about the middle of season seven- man, i just can't seem to get enough of that action.

i watched the x-files all through grade school. i think that i missed eight episodes in total- and i can tell you what happened in them anyways. my best friends-who-are-boys from grade school and i really started hanging out together because of the x-files. i hate to admit it, but adam and i used to even call each other mulder and scully [owen was totally krycek... sucka!]. monday mornings were made that much easier by the fact that before class started, we could all gather round and talk about WHAT HAPPENED. and yes- WHAT HAPPENED needs to be capitalized like that because it was usually some serious shit.

some of the best episodes were in seasons five and six. there was just enough conspiracy to make watching a necessity, and just enough stand-alone episodes to make it fun.

one of the local/toronto stations here in ottawa has been airing the x-files in order every night at ten o'clock. most days i watch it- it's just before the news and after lost or house and therefore fits nicely into my t.v. schedule.

tonight's episode was the 'back in time' episode.

sounds hokey yes- but i think it may be one of the better x-files there is. mulder goes to the bermuda triangle and ends up on the queen anne, a ship that has been boared by the nazis who are searching for thor's hammer. various [and quite hilarious, i must say] characters from the rest of the show pop up either as nazis or crewmen on the ship as mulder wanders around trying to convince the boat to turn around to their future. the filming is also impeccable- enormously long one-take segments dominate most of the episode and make things seem a little more real.

also- scully kisses skinner and mulder kisses her back in time. and then the back-in-time scully totally punches mulder. this just tops the cake for the drama loving girly-girl in me- i actually cackled loudly, spilling popcorn and yelled "BAAAAAM!" when each of these incidents went down.

my god, i am such a dork sometimes.

i couldn't fight it

one of my major annoyances of all life are people who get on a bus and ride it for only one or two stops, and then get off, alone, making the bus stop unnecessairly not once, but twice.

some may argue that that is what the bus is for. but sometimes, say, during peak rush hours on busy throughfairs in larger cities, two stops which are really only two blocks apart can be walked faster by the solo person and can actually cut back on congestion and the like. also- the health benefits have been clearly drilled into us by the evil media we all depend on for life. so why, why then, do so many people- and mostly young, healthy, able bodied people- ride the damned bus for two stops?

i mean, i at least get on for four.

you can stay up late cos baby you're a full grown man

we're sitting in the lounge, a smattering of people, discussing cartoons concerning saftey during a possible atmoic bomb attack from the fifties.

yes, because hiding under your desk will help so much if a giant ball of flame and raditation rips through your building, disintegrating everything living and burning everything else, but you know, it was the fifties.

that has to be a legitimate excuse for something

i go about things the long way

let's see here. a year in review perhaps is the best way to go about this.

we started off with snow and cold. there was secret love, a visit from candice, dress shopping, a visit from melissa and the night of the chiken penis, or chenis if you will. there was the hums formal, fire alarms, latin tests and the d minus paper. there were the stolen cds in the middle of the long long longlonglong bus ride. there was bed appropriation and two lovely days with two lovely ladies. there was a sunburn in april, a crazy assed move-out and curried pineapple. there was a wedding. there was fish- a lot of fucking fish. there were movies including but not limited to star wars episode three. there was quite a bit of skin damage and swimming alomst every night in the month of july. there were three tips to ottawa, painting in forty degree, one hundred and eighty billion percent humidity weather. there was camping with the boys and a six hour hike all by myself just because i felt like it. there was moving back to ottawa, discovering the neighbourhood and walking to school. there was more houspaitning and pie baking and getting to know the room mates. there was a trip home for turkey, and a trip back. god bless airplanes.

there was getting hit by a car, using a bed pan, having surgery, getting an epidural and having gerry the homosexual nurse massage my good leg. there was codeiene, trips in the back of the van on a mattress and a walker. there were crutches and a shower stool. there was frustration. there was reclinging- so much recling. there was a lot of martha stewart.

there was u2.

there was the dweller.

there was christmas without kelly. there were a lot of cookies baked and a lot of dished washed. there was crutching to classes and nearly dying, but developing manly arm muscles. there was cathcing up on papers- the neverending chore. there was dad. there was his funeral there was being stuck in a motel that i SWEAR was run by norman bates with all my siblings and my mom. there was freezing rain- CONSTANTLY. there was learning how to walk again. there was appreciating stairs and carrying coffee.

quite frankly, i have to say that was quite the year. let's see what twenty two brings, shall we?

good news is on its way

red wine, chocolate cake, ac/dc and beck, birthday hats, garlic bread, one sparkly tiara, a bunch of yiddish and a bill of one hundred and forty four dollars.

KILLER evening if i do say so myself.