Hello Winter

I feel like summer was yesterday, but this morning's snow-covered roofs I saw outside confirmed it was not.

I was talking with Vnss and I told her I felt like being a mom and being paid to blog. All I want to do right now are crafts, cleaning, cooking, rearranging things in the apartment, making things pretty. I had this thought about having a little girl and making dresses for her. Easy ones, since, I can barely stitch.

I didn't work all weekend. I surfed blogs looking for easy d-i-y projects. I made a fabric flower à la Carrie Bradshaw, except mine is made from dark purple velvet (which was not the right fabric for this project). Oh well, next time.

I've been having lots of ideas for projects and things I want to do that are sort of "professional skills" building, but I can't seem to put my finger on any of them. Do I want to start a lecture series? A publication? A one-time event? I'm not 100% sure about any of these like I was about starting the cinema journal last year. I need somewhere to channel this stuff!

P is coming back tomorrow!! I'm so excited!! I almost can't handle it!!

There are too many beautiful things in this world! So many things to share!

Spazzing out 24/7

I put my finger on a few things in the last few days.

I've been feeling generally overwhelmed since I started this program. It's a very powerful feeling. A mixture of fear, doubt, irrational, and some positive things but I can't remember now. That's what I mean. I'm in a constant state of forgetfulness and, as i like to call it, spazzing out. 24. 7.

I don't feel like myself in all this. I'm the one who remembers details. I'm the one who's always on time. I'm the one who makes plans. Not anymore. I don't know who I am anymore.

I don't like this feeling.

And another thing. I'm feeling very strange about communication these days. Most of my good friends are gone from this town, and I find most of the conversations I have in my day-to-day are kind of shallow. I mean, I suppose there's hope with a few people that something will come out of it.. but really, it's just one person, and she has lots of friends, so who knows if i'll fit it.

I feel sad that many of my favourite people are no longer around me, and that i'm not aware of their daily lives. More and more I'm beginning to feel that the only thing you can really be rooted into is yourself, because people come and go, and you have no control over that. And the happiness you get out of life shouldn't necessarily be totally invested in the people around you.

This is a very hard thing for me to say, because i've always believed and known that in life, it didn't matter where I was or what I was doing, as long as the people I loved were around me. Now I don't know what to think anymore... but maybe that's just the grad-school talking.

One thing I do like, is how all this graduate stuff if making me really excited about having a normal life. Cleaning. Cooking. Canning. Being healthy. Being happy with the simple pleasures of life. (Am I turning into a mom already!? uh-oh)

I've been thinking about going to yoga twice per week... that would be super intense for me. Since i've started, i've been walking around more, because my knees don't hurt instantly! I feel like my sanity is always restored when I do yoga. I could use more of that.

I could also use more P. He's in Peru. And although we wouldn't necessarily be spending time together right now, we would be having our little daily chats.

This bed is nice. I like how they prop up their pillows with those big decorative ones.



I really love beds in general. So comfy.

Cheese Please

Did you know fondue is delicious AND fun?

Here I am on P's front steps, ready to go to the market.



The boys walked at a brisk pace -- who wouldn't!? when cheese is involved.



A very serious search began and soon we found...



Cheese!



Definitely worth smiling about.



And voila! Delicious and fun!



Then there was chocolate fondue, what a life!

This week P is in Peru with some friends. It doesn't change much, I suppose it just means my next weekend will be free. Free for me to wrestle with the fourteen-hundred papers I have to write on topics I barely understand.

I should stop wishing time away... I did that a lot during the undergrad and it mostly left me with feelings of unsatisfaction.

I did however make a delicious baked-beef stew today; 3 hours of baking time and totally worth it.

Be here now. Mantra of the week.

He Calls me 'Puppy'

I just had an intense yoga class tonight -- stretching all kinds of legs muscles that should not be stretched. And during the final relaxation, I got a little misty-eyed. I have no idea why or what caused it, I just know that it felt special.

I've reached a point in my life: the point where I feel happy. Actually happy. The kind of happiness that made me have tears of joy (!?) for no apparent reason when I got home.

I spent most of my youth crying for different reasons. I remember having these 'I don't know why' conversations and feeling all the weight of those question marks. I spent that time trying to figure out why I was sad, why I couldn't feel happy, why, why, why.. Today a similar feeling of not knowing the sources of my feelings washed over me, but it was radically different. It didn't have all those other questions attached to it. It just felt beautiful. It felt like I could feel all the wonderful things in the world.

The only thing different about this yoga session from the other ones is that we made the corny 'Ohm' sound. The teacher said we could find some things to dedicate our 'ohms' (which are representative of our practice) to something or someone, so that we hold the tradition closer to our heart. The first thing I thought of when I thought of the dedication were three people in my life, then when I let the thought sit in my mind, I felt like the thing I really wanted to dedicate my practice to was myself, my well-being and my mother. The last time we did the 'ohm' I dedicated them to my well-being, my mother and life in general. I'm not usually into this esoteric stuff, but it felt like the only thing I could dedicate it to. Life. Why not?

It hit me how far i've come. This time last year I was having meltdown after meltdown about my relationship with P, because of my insecurities, and many more other reasons. I'm not ready yet to go re-read those posts, because i'm still not ready to accept that I was that person at some point in life. That I was desperate, that I didn't have perspective, that I asked so much of other people (my friends included), that I was holding everything so tightly I wanted to squeeze all the life out of it.

I've gone back and read a few posts about Vncnt -- the height of my desperation before last September. I look at those with a little more kindness. Sometimes they even make me laugh a little. For better or worse, Vncnt really taught me a lot about who i wanted to be (and who I didn't want to be). I don't think I could have ever dreamed of being here if I didn't live that experience with him.

P called me 'Puppy' this weekend. Affectionately, of course. We have lots of little names for each other, most of them he conjures up, but this one felt particularly right. I do feel like a little puppy around him! Happy and excited and giggly and smiley and a little bit too hyper.

It's really nice.

I'd be the one on the right.

When I grow up..

I still want to be interested in food, I still want to take the time to make healthy meals, I want to be active and in touch with nature, I don't want to think I know everything about anything, I still want to listen, I want to speak and mean what I say, I don't want to be a complainer, I want to make the time to take care of myself.

These are some things I've been thinking about this weekend. I've also been thinking a lot about how i'm becoming more and more like my mother. I remember when I was younger she would make cleaning up our closets and dresser drawers a weekend activity. She would move the furniture in our rooms to make them seem fresh and different. She took care to make the bed with 10, 000 pillows and put baby powder between the clean sheets.

I've noticed I've get great satisfaction from cleaning up the pile of clothes sitting in my closet, rethinking how to optimize my storage. I make my bed with the same care my mother took to smooth out all the wrinkles and make the sheets tight.

I know that I have no idea how children will change my life, but I really, really hope that I will still be able to do things with care for them and when they are around. I don't want to go to quick fixes most of the time. I want to connect with them through these activities.

The older I get, the more old-timey I'm becoming - wanting to make things homemade as much as possible. I don't think this is bad thing, but I'm still unsure of how I will be able to negotiate this with a full-time job later on.

Another thing is friends. The more time passes, the more I see how relationships become the center of people's lives. It seems like nowadays when I have free time, it's almost always spent with P. I love spending time with him, but it also makes me wonder: where my girls at? I want to keep my friendships even when I'm old and have a family, but this seems next to impossible when everyone is busy and far away.

I'm not saying I'm giving up hope, i'm just saying, I miss you!

Next Year

I just had a radical idea. There's part of me that wants to propose to P that we move together to Vancouver after I'm done my MA.

He has expressed interest in going back, since he was born there.

Right now I'm in the mood for an adventure!

There's a first time for everything

I just spent the whole day studying -- from 11am until 10pm with only a few breaks to eat.

It's the strangest thing I've ever done. Writing notes, making flashcards, checking to make sure I know something and if I don't making a note of it. Using our nifty blackboard (that was the best part)!

I feel very stressed and a little bit not stressed about these upcomings midterms. Everybody keeps saying: don't worry about it! But when I went to a study session last week and didn't know a fraction of what the other girls knew, I got worried.

I really wonder how much of this is useful.

Going with the flow either way though, and it kind of feels good.