thank you, Mozart or as some call him, Amadeus

So awhile back someone - okay, maybe my therapist, maybe not - suggested that I draw/paint/colour while listening to Mozart. Huh? I said, I can't draw! And that sounds goofy and silly and -
The next thing I know I'm sitting in her kitchen, Mozart in my ears and crayons surrounding me. This is dumb, I think. Don't look! I tell her. Off she went to other areas of the house.
The next next thing I know I'm drawing in all sorts of different colours all sorts of things that well, maybe they look like a child has drawn them. I'm sure they do. And my brain mocks me like that about it. But for a few minutes, my brain does not mock me. I draw and colour and stick my tongue out in supreme concentration. Wow.
So off I go to the library to look for a Mozart CD. There are about 25 of them, all by different symphonies. What to do. I don't know Mozart from Mozart. I pick one. A few days later I stop by a paper supply store and pick up a few crayons and drawing paper. They sit in my house for over a week.
Tonight I finally put on Mozart (nothing good on TV, no Dr. Laura/ Dr. Joy Brown on CFUN) and get out the colouring accroutements. Next thing I know, my tongue is sticking out in concentration. This goes on for a few minutes and then I get the idea to - wait for it - cook up that chicken in the fridge and that Weight Watchers chili box that's been in my cupboard for over two years and to try to steam some potatoes. I don't like cooking - even this little bit. I'm lazy and I admit it.
But Mozart, Mozart, you've inspired me.

stomachs and mistakes

So I've been extremely nauseous for like a week on and off. My ESL students and I were talking about remedies for illnesses. The Korean students said that for stomach aches you are supposed to prick your finger and let the black blood come out. I'm not so sure that will work but in desperation I may have to try it. Alright, enough medical talk for one day.

Mistakes. As in oops. I seem to put my foot in my mouth a lot. Less so than I used to but still more than I'd like to. My dear old dad was always ranting to someone about something and not listening to their points of view. He would just steamroll over them and they would be like "whoa." Growing up, I remember thinking that I would not do that.

Alas, as they say, you end up being most like the person you most don't want to be like. Now I don't blame him (anymore) because I'm almost middle-aged and can make my own decisions about how, when, where, etc. to say things. Yikes. Today, I just couldn't stop myself. The topic was ripe for the picking, as it were. And it really probably wasn't even the topic of conversation that got me going. I have this excess energy that comes out in anger that likes an outlet. I'm being vague here because I'm embarrassed mainly and ultimately, because the exact conversation isn't important. I just ended up running roughshod over a couple of people. I realized it right after and apologized. But I know that sometimes apologizing isn't enough. I learn that I make some people uncomfortable with certain topics of conversation. And that's not good at all, that's not what I want. So I take my foot out of my mouth once again and try to move along and not repeat the same mistake. Meanwhile, I am really, really hard on myself about the whole thing.

Sigh. Hmmmm. Black blood? Do we really have black blood? It's an interesting question.

Anger is an odd emotion. It feels very powerful and overwhelming and uncontrollable. I wonder if there's an operation to get that anger drained from your brain.

Off I go to prick my finger.

I realize that this has been a serious blog, I hope my fanbase of four doesn't run away screaming, never to return.

a little more hostelling

Hmmm. Hostelling, part two.

I was talking to a friend on the phone and she asked, "you mean, you all sleep like in one room kind of thing?" Well, that's not really a direct quote but you get the idea.

Yes, indeed. The one room type thing. At first I was nervous about that, but a good sleeping eye mask (like Felix had in the Odd Couple) and a couple of ear plugs to jam into the ear cavities works wonders. I'm vaguely nervous about another hostel in New York City next month, but that one is a 6-bed female dorm.

I think that beats the 14-bed mixed dorm in Prague, the 13-bed mixed dorm in Paris and the camping on a cot in a tent in Florence, Italy. Because I'm not always the brightest bulb, I didn't realize that a hostel called "Camping Michelangelo" actually meant camping. I had no sleeping bag and had to beg and plead for a couple of blankets. Florence is indeedy beautiful. When I went though in October of 2003, it was raining the rain of the rainy and brrrr cold. Live and learn.

Now Venice. Venice. The "Camping' was a cabin with a heating thingy. Oddly, I can't think of the word for the small heating machine that you plug in and heat comes out. What the heck is that called? I have totally forgotten.

In London, England, I stayed in a tiny room with four beds, two bunks. I met a 20-year-old soldier from Texas, on leave from his station in Germany. He had been to Iraq.

"Yeah," he said and these are direct quotes with no exaggeration, "Saddam is part of the bad Muslims - Shi'ite or Sunni or one of those."

"Are you sure Canada doesn't have soldiers down there? I was sure they did."

"Um, Austria or Australia are down there too."

"I don't know. I just will do whatever the president says."

"I wasn't good at school and I had to do something so I joined the army."

"Sometimes we have to run over little girls on the road - we don't want to but they may be carrying a bomb. It's them or us."

"The Queen is that old lady, right?"

He was telling me these things while I was in bed rather feverish. This made it all seem even more surreal. Also in the room were two jaded, skeptical yet awesome South Africans. I thought they were going to intellectually crucify this kid, but luckily they did not. They brought me breakfast in bed when I was sick. Awesome.

hostels without pillows etc.

Hostels. I stayed in a whole lot of hostels on my trip to Europe in Sept.-Nov. 2003. I hadn't really ever stayed in a hostel before so it was an interesting experience. I learned that there are all age groups in hostels, from the 16-year-old German boys in Prague who bragged about their repeat business to some Czech prostitutes to an 84-year-old American woman also in Prague. She didn't sleep much and wandered the halls in the middle of the night.

Hostels make me happy because they are so much cheaper than hotels and you can meet people. I met some amazing people in Rome and they made my stay there much more fun.

In Edinburgh, I had a little hostel nervous breakdown. The people who stayed at the hostel tended to be in their very early 20s and were longtermers who were abroad on their gap year. They were cliquey, smoked up the common room and came in drunk at 4 a.m.

"No one likes me here," I sobbed to my friend back in Vancouver (expensive phone card used).

"Oh, honey," said she, "how long have you been there?"

"Two hours."

Yeah, yeah, very sad indeed.

In Paris, don't stay at the "Friends Hostel" near Sacre Coeur. They basically turned a shed into an overstuffed mixed dorm room, where rats roamed. You weren't allowed a pillow either.

"Dorm, no pillow," the odd-English speaking janitor told me, "And don't stand there, I just cleaned that spot," he said. There was also an unadvertised lockout between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. The janitor burst into the overstuffed dorm room at 8:55 to tell us all this.

There was also no hot water to speak of. And I think it was in the toughest area in all of Paris. Packs of men stood on the sidewalk day and night, staring, shouting, staring. Cheap though.

Well, more later. Must go make money in order to pay for my hostel in New York City.

I have no new thoughts

I seem to be having no new thoughts. Well, I am thinking things but they seem to be re-treads. Therefore, I don't know what to write so as usual, I'll ramble on.

Thank you for all of your grace thoughts per my previous two posts. Please continue to add if you have any more.

Thinking thoughts. Wouldn't it be interesting if our minds were completely blank for awhile. Take a minute or two, try to be blank.

Okay, come back now. Now go easy on me, it's 8:50 in the a.m.

It is now 8:51 and I have to work at 9 a.m. So I'm under the gun here.

Hmmm. Okay, travel. The nicest place I've been is Prague for sure. The people are rude and surly but the place is amazing. It was the first city in Europe that I saw and I'll never forget getting off the Metro in downtown Prague and seeing the buildings and the whole area. If you haven't been, go. It's now part of the EU so you don't even need a visa to get in anymore. When I went two years ago, I had to pay $150 for an in/out visa and you had to mail your passport to Montreal to get it stamped. Prague, I definitely want to go back. Prague and goulash and 20 cent bottles of water. Ne perliva - without carbonation, perliva - with carbonation. It took me about a week to figure that one out. When you are expecting flat water and you get gas, it's quite shocking. I stayed at two hostels, the 2nd being The Apple Hostel right in the centre of Prague. 16 room mixed dorm with shared showers that water only dripped out of. Drip, drip. Other people's hair everywhere. Gross. Breakfast was included but it was ham and cheese, an odd thing in the morning really.

Oh brother, I'm rambling on again. Gotta go now but I think my next blog will be on the hostel experience. I'm going to New York City in a month and hostelling again. So I need to prepare.

waiting for grace

Hey, I've only had one response to my grace question. Now I know that my fan base is tiny but I'm still going to wait for a few more. I'll give a small example of what I mean. It's a personal one, but yours doesn't have to be. It can be whatever you want.
First, a caveat. My fighting, angry brain has a hard time with grace. Since most of the world suffers relentlessly I really don't understand how grace works or if it does at all. But if I can get beyond my rage screaming at me, I come up with a thing or two.
A small example. When I was 19 years old, I was an unhappy young woman (oh to be young again!) living in Winnipeg where I grew up. Lots of reasons for the unhappiness but suffice to say that I was living at home, miserable, without friends, hopeless, blah blah. It was the hopelessness that was the worst. I see it now as a clinical depression but then it just felt like horrible tedium.
One day in November 1985 I remember that it was a freezing Winnipeg day. I was attending the University of Manitoba at the time and there were a few Catholic chapels attached to a few of the St. colleges.
I think this one was St. John's, or St. Paul's, one of the boys anyway. Being raised Catholic by a French Catholic mother and a Jewish atheist father, I knew for Catholic. I don't remember anything from that chapel visit, other than sitting in the back pew, alone in the church, wearing my thick winter coat. "Help," is all I said I think.
A month later I got it into my head to move to Vancouver and a year later I actually did it. I'd never lived on my own, didn't know how to boil water. I'd dropped out of university at that point so had no marketable skills (I have a couple more now, I think). I had a few thousand saved, but without a job, I would be back home in no time.
I knew one person in Vancouver at the time so stayed with her. I found a job in nine days. It was as a mail clerk for the now defunct Guaranty Trust at Howe and Pender. The salary was $1100/month. That felt huge to me. Then I found a place to live in a single mother's house. (not a house for single mothers but a house where a single mother lived.)
The room she rented to me was huge, but had no heat that worked, only to that room. It was a cold winter so I caught the flu and pneumonia fairly quickly but being young! I also healed within two weeks. A job and a place to live that quickly seems amazing to me now. I didn't know a thing about cooking (yeah, yeah, I still don't.) I remember opening up a can of spaghetti sauce, using some and leaving the rest to use later. I left it in the can, open, in the cupboard and had it again a week later. I did this a few times and never got sick.
Grace.
So there you go. Your definition/example can be completely different. I just hope for some responses. Maybe it's lame, as one of my four fans tell me (Chris P., you know who you are) but oh well.
Grace.

a little survey

Grace. What is it, in your opinion? Post a comment if you would be so kind.

there's no rain of men, that's for sure

Remember that song,"It's raining men, oh hallelujah, it's raining men . . ." I think it is still well played at gay male type events.
And yet, for me, a basically straight 39-year-old (gulp) woman, it's not raining men. It's not even, um, what's a good analogy, snowing men, it's not snowing men either.
You know who seems to be attracted to me? Old men (70 plus) and very butch lesbians. I remember going to a friend's party a few years ago and there were mainly gay women there and oddly, a male priest. But I digress. The next day she called me and said two of the women had been asking about me.
"I told them you were straight, you are, right?" she asked, all kind of hopeful that maybe I wasn't so much anymore.
"Yeah," I said, "I pretty much am." Well, I think I could be heteroflexible if required. If gay women in real life looked like Jennifer Beals and the other women on the L-Word, I could switch over for a couple of hours I'm sure. Think of the advantages.
But . . . mainly I like the men, their equipment and well, them. Their masculanity (is that spelled right, my brain is not working well tonight). No, I think it is spelled wrong. Masculine? I don't know, okay, who cares, I'm digressing.
I haven't met a man in eons and my 30s are pretty much over. People young enough to be my grandchildren are getting married. I'm at my sexual peak! apparently. People my age are on their 10th marriages.
I am, I sadly admit, very, very influenced by the culture around me. In Canada, it's cool not to be married and in Vancouver certainly. And yet, it's still there, that need, that desire to be paired up. And society and pop culture scream it at you.
When you've been single for as long as I have, I think your self-image changes, perhaps gets worse.
I have a friend who moved to Toronto awhile back and she tells me that is where the men are. Fair enough. Thing is, I hate Toronto. I love Vancouver. My hairdresser tells me the single men are all in Kingston, Ontario. Eeek.
So, blog readers of mine, hook me up, set me up, I'm ready.
Now, while it may be tempting to comment on this blog entry with pithy words of pithiness, try and restrain yourself.
In other news, I haven't chewed ice in over a week. Okay, well I had two minor lapses. One was rather gross actually. I'd put a bottle of water into the freezer and then was drinking out of it when it had some ice in it. I was taking some medication at the same time. This medication is not the chewable kind. I thought the medication was actually ice and I bit down. It was the medication and oh my god in chewing ice hell it was bitter and horrible tasting and I nearly did the horrible vomiting thing.
In an effort to keep my blog just vaguely less self-absorbed, I'm going to recommend a website to you. www.racheldavis.ca She was brave and I only met her once right before she was killed but looking at the slide show of her was touching and amazing. She was awesome indeed.

hmmmm

hmmm
hmmm
hmmmm
Blah blah blah.

anyway, I just went jogging (and I mean jogging, slow, slow, slow) for 40 minutes around the wonderful Trout Lake. It nearly killed me. This is sad, really, because in the not so distant past I was able to jog for an hour without any problems. Sigh.

I find myself lazy of late (ok, especially lazy). Example. I've done no exercise all weekend except for 20 minutes on the Stairmaster (well, 16), a little walk in a beautiful park (walking is great but unless you do it for at least an hour with your cardio up, it really doesn't accomplish anything) and now this jog. I seem to spend an awful lot of time flat on my stomach on my futon. Or on my back. And no, not in a good way, ha ha.

Last night as I was flipping channels I came across some kind of world track and field competition. The women were running like 10,000 metres or something. Wowza, they are in shape. Very inspiring really. One woman from the China team, didn't move her arms at all. The commentators commented that this was her particular style and in the last kilometre or so she uses her arms for the extra oomph. It looked very interesting with her running full out and her arms at her sides.

Jeez, this is a dull blog entry. I'm a little worn out from the 40-minute exercise thing, in fact I'm a bit dizzy. Yikes. I'd better start running more regularly again.

Exercise is great really. So are potato chips and dip.

Sigh. I have nothing profound to say, sorry, fan base of two.

odd things I remember

I've been thinking a lot about my parents lately. They are in their 70s and live in Winnipeg. I am not in my 70s and do not live in Winnipeg.

My ESL students and I were talking about living with family, near family etc. They were flummoxed (awesome word that) as to why I didn't live in the same city as my parents.

"Well," I said, "Sometimes distance is a good thing."

They nodded, not knowingly.

I do love my parents. And I also remember, with humour, a few things they have told/taught me over the growing up years. My mother is always afraid that I am mocking her in some secret mocking location. So this is not mocking, just loving information.

A few odd memories:

Dad always said that the heat and radio or air conditioner and radio could not, under any circumstances, be on in the car at the same time as that would drain the battery. For years I beileve this, well into owning my own car.
"No!" I would scream when a passenger tried to put on my car radio, "not with the heat on! The battery will drain."
Turns out that is not true.

Dad always said that children urinate in whirlpools, you know the whirlpools you find at hotel swimming pools.He made it sound like en masse, thousands of children came in, peed and then left. I'm thinking now that this may not be so true.

My mother has always extolled the virtues of reading. For this I am immensely grateful. She used to tell me that it kept your arteries from hardening. And for years, and even now, I seem to literally believe this. So while I'm reading all of those books that I obsessively read, my arteries are in fact staying nice and soft.

While on my mother's side there is Metis, you know, way back. I've always thought that perhaps,just maybe, this is why I have a rather dark complexion and dark hair (my sister, apparently not a milkman situation, is fairer and looks remarkably more like my parents). However, if ever I say, "I've got some native in me, yes sirree," both mom and dad say "no, no,no. It's the Jewish side." I've never taken my parents for particularly racist but that's an oddity.

You will not go blind. Ha ha, they never told me that one.

Memories.

I feel exceptionally fat and largesse these days, particularly around the middle. However, this does not at all prevent me from eating an entire pizza in one sitting or chips, chips, chips. Hmmm.

It's my fourth day without ice. Eeek.