may you live in…

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life is funny, last week i worked fifteen hours and this week i’m working 26 and next week too. (i need to work 20 specifically teaching which does not include travel and down time between clients… my scheduled work week is from 3 on monday to 2 on saturday and i work most evenings and every morning early.)

it was great, i got wednesday evening and friday afternoon/evening off!

anyway i’m hoping to get to a state where i work 25 hours a week and don’t have to work late into the evening on the same morning as i start at 6:30am.

more than that i’m hoping to take a vacation in february. first one since i went to new york with my sister just before tr and i split up. wow.

an actual vacation.

what the heck are the odds?

interestingly my friend the rolfer told me it would take five years to get to the point where i had a waiting list, and i’m at three and a half years since i finished my certification and four since i taught my first lesson (hi othercat!)

she was right too because i’m just about at that waiting list point but not quite because i’m still trying too much to find some savings. i think i might need to spend less on my education if i want to do that but that’s hard to countenance.

that said, 20 hours a week is a nice life and a consistent 25 is savings… go schedule!

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i’m now wandering toward the three month mark with nayrb which is an interesting time as well. it’s that point where you start to really look at the person you’re dating and see them more clearly.

you notice the little behaviours which are equally endearing and annoying depending entirely on your mood at the time. you see the edges and the funny habits and the attitudes you may or may not like.

you see where communication is full and where it breaks down and, if you’re me, you start to think. you notice what it’s like when you’re quiet together and when you’re both cranky and you wonder how that will work when you know each other better.

but most fun of all you start to believe just a little.

you start to think that maybe this might be someone that you could have around for a while. in fact you begin to grow accustomed to their presence in your life and their voice in your ear before you sleep at night.

you learn the sound of breath and the cadence of speech and the little private jokes and you start to feel that you are actually connecting deeply to another human being.

and it’s fun.

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oh god the leafs are so bad.

i love the leafs i really do but i might pretend that this year is a hockey strike.

the boys aren’t playing and i just wish that someone would light a fire under their asses.

someone? anyone?

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my lovely client B has decided to watch this year for the soap opera surrounding the leafs rather than for the team itself.

this strikes me as a great plan.

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lately?

i really really really love my job.

it’s the best job ever.

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hillside inside!

one day only on february second the magic of hillside comes to the sleeman centre in guelph…

AND???? xavier rudd is playing!!!

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if you’ll excuse me, i have to go meet a beautiful man for dinner…

i wonder

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how some people can smell so bad and yet seem never to notice.

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why i love the leafs so much when they’re sooo bad these days.

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what will happen to the planet when we’ve sucked all the oil out of it… and i don’t just mean with fuel. i just can’t imagine that nature made all that lube and stuck it down there for no reason… it just seems wrong somehow.

so, if you have no more lube between the rocks what happens when they try to slide?

seems to me the shakes will get bigger.

but i’m not a geologist, anyone else?

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why we think pumping water that sells for two dollars a litre into the ground to replace oil that sells (refined!) for one is good business practices.

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if i can sustain this 6:30 am client on wednesday mornings.

client that i love, that is my longest running client and the first one who ever paid me full price for an hour.

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when i became someone who cared about the state of her house.

although the answer seems to be ‘when she got a house worth caring about.’

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when i’m getting my next pedicure.

speaking of; here you go terry:

nat:

moi:

nat’s toes:

my toes

us

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why folks would rather focus on their misery and pain than their happiness and freedoms.

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why some people take so much pleasure in hurting others.

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why the above two are so often the same person.

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why it’s often so much easer to hear the spitefulness hurled at you by those who dislike you than the kindness lavished upon you by your loved ones.

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why i had a weird dream about my car last night…

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and why i remembered it.

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why the posts i am often most proud of will regularly engender the fewest comments…

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why rainy grey days (IN MODERATION!) are so awesome…

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why i’m not currently napping…

parts per million

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i stuck a nat pic at the end of this for you terry… just one though.

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there is something so interesting about the repercussions of emotional behaviour that authors everywhere have written endless treatises on the subject from about a million perspectives both fictional and non.

in fact i’m reading yet another fantasy novel based almost entirely around this very idea.

it’s as fascinating to study the effects of love run amok as hate… although one could argue that those are in fact the same thing. anger is at least as interesting as passive resistance and greed is in many ways it’s own reward.

lately i’ve been thinking in terms of wells. some run dry, others are fouled, still more run sweet forever but all of them started out as very deep things that fed us.

like friendships.

you can’t tell when you meet someone what kind of well you will make. will you make a few half-assed passes with the dowsing rod and then give up entirely or will you sink a good and true well that lasts an eternity?

perhaps you will not work hard enough digging the well you will trust your friendship to and will wake one morn’ to find that it has run dry. or worse yet has been poisoned by ill will.

i don’t know that we can tell in advance (ever) where these things will end up. i’m sure that every time someone sinks an oil well they’re hoping to make the strike of all time but i know for certain that you can never really tell how long a strike will last.

okay i’m mixing my metaphors, water is somewhat more predictable although you can’t tell still if the guy higher up the hill is letting his cowshit seep into the stream. but maybe that’s the point? maybe we should treat our friendships more like wells since a good well-keeper will have the water tested constantly and maintain the pump and have the water table checked and try not to over-use the available water and and…

i do know this much though, i know that one thing that always leads to a fouled well is lack of care… and i know that the same is true of friendship. i also know that wells can be poisoned.

i wonder just how many parts per million it takes to poison a well. i know that with hatred just one little part is enough. i’ve also learned that hatred is never reserved for just the person you hate.

you think that it is, but it isn’t because it poisons everything you do. kind of like poisoning a water table rather than a single well. or poisoning a river upstream of a major town.

you walk around and you spread your hate because you can’t help it. you think you’ve managed to reserve it, husband it or herd it to just one little corner of your life but it spreads. it spreads like poison into the wells of your life until all of them are befouled and you are left wondering what it is exactly that turned your life awry.

if you notice.

usually by then you’re so consumed by your ill will toward someone that nothing but their downfall will satisfy you. or, to continue the metaphor, you won’t be happy until the water table has no water left.

seems like such a wasted effort.

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okay maybe one more

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last one really

damn girl you have some gorgeous eyes.

new suits… old suits

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nat! i forgot to email you that i lived through my trip home!

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nat is, incidentally, totally awesome… we got pedicures… pics coming…

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there is something so odd about going on vacation… well if you can call a mediocre conference held in an amusement park a vacation…

i really can’t comprehend why they bothered to take us to disneyworld in florida and then stick us in air conditioned rooms all day. the weather this weekend was spectacular and all i could do was look at it yearningly as i went from class to class.

not to mention the overinflated room prices. if we can’t go outside anyway why aren’t we somewhere like maine in the off season rather than at disney?

the scheduling was retarded and the workshops were well… a mixed bag really.

some of them were amazing and most of them were uninteresting or so junior as to be not worth taking and there is NO WAY that a teacher with a measly four years of experience should be bored at a conference of her peers.

heck no, i should be scrambling to keep up.

in some ways it was at least gratifying, i’ve clearly left the ranks of beginner teachers and am firmly ensconced in the grad school class but it felt like a waste of money.

not entirely a waste because anytime you get to take a workshop from an eighty seven year old lady who is one of two people joe pilates ever certified?

you should do it.

but it would have cost less to fly to her town and take privates so that was kind of a wash.

anyway i learned a few things and got to hang with some people but i think next time i’ll just go to the same place and hang out. i think that i would get as much out of it. in fact i’m going to write a letter to complain (my teacher even suggested that i add ‘in fact my teacher won’t attend for the same reason.)

the workshops were, by and large, aimed at first year teachers… i see now why my teacher won’t go… i certainly won’t waste my money again, pilates on tour is FAR more of a value for money deal and the workshops are in a completely superior league.

anyway that isn’t the point really.

the point is that something happens to me when i go on vacation.

i come home from being away to find that my life fits me like an old suit that’s been in my closet unworn for a while. the shoulders are snugger than i remember and the waist seems roomier (or not!) and maybe it’s harder to sit in than i rightly recall.

it’s like my edges expand when i’m away from my comfortable little niche and it takes a while to make them fit back together.

this is even stranger since i have a boyfriend now and that adds another layer to the suit that i must needs put back on.

the only thing that’s never hard to come back to is my car… me and that car have been on vacation together after all (hi castu and crtx and lsd and and and!) so we’re used to being together through all moods but the rest of my life?

my crazy schedule and the beautiful man that i’m dating and even my climbing habit all feel just a little funny. almost like they belong to someone else that i’m not quite.

never fear, in a week the edges will be filed back down and my shoulders will have gotten used to the fit of the suit and i won’t even remember this feeling…

until my next vacation.