April 2007

I’ve always thought it was a good idea to have a wide variety of friends. It’s nice to know someone who’s whip-smart about everything, someone who’s goofy and silly, someone who likes the same sports or hobbies, someone who reads the same books.. It’s rare that you’ll find one person who embodies all the various sides of a personality.

Not to mention, variety is the spice of life.

The one type of friend that I’m pondering lately is the friend-who’s-not-really.

I’m talking about the friend with whom every interaction leads, afterward, to three hours of ranting and raving to your other friends or spouse. (“WHY does he do that? WHY?! How can he possibly think that.. Why would he say THAT..?!”)

The ‘friend’ who, after a long conversation, leads you to wonder why you’re friends when you seem to have nothing in common.

The friend who, no matter how hard you try, always makes you feel on-edge. Like you can’t relax and be yourself.

Or, perhaps, the friend who always makes you feel inadequate or unworthy or uncool or.. un-whatever.

There seems to always be one of those ‘friends’ in my life, no matter where I live and what I do and how we met. For a long time I felt that particular friendship was necessary. It seemed reasonable to have a friend who, without a doubt, would always keep me wondering and questioning and, in theory, growing and developing as a human being (when I wasn’t inwardly shrieking and hollering profanity).

After all, we need a little strife in our lives to keep us striving for the good stuff, right?

But lately I’ve been realizing that perhaps that ‘friend’ isn’t as necessary to my well-roundedness as I once thought. It’s one thing to have a friend who prods me to think – about my choices, my life, my ideas and actions – and another altogether to feel like that person is purely an antagonist.

Of course, part of this is my own head. I recognize that sometimes I misinterpret, hold grudges, forget to let go of arguments – not to mention my own bad-friend behaviours!

But I wonder, too, if it’s necessary to have someone in my life that I don’t fully trust with my secrets – hopes, dreams, failures, whatever. I don’t mean that everyone in my life needs to know everything about me, but, at the same time, it’s an odd sensation to hold things back simply because I fear having it flung back at me at a later date.

Then I wonder if it’s more that I’m uncomfortable with acquaintances who are slightly more than mere acquaintances, but not quite on the whole “Best! Friends! Forever!” level. It’s a strange level between “someone I wave hello to” and “someone I tell about the problem I’m having with X” and I don’t know quite how to deal with it sometimes.

Am I overthinking this? Does it matter?

Maybe it’s that time is of the essence nowadays. I don’t have the luxury of spending my spare time hanging out with people who make me feel bad (about myself or otherwise) and I don’t like spending endless hours analyzing a relationship when I should simply be enjoying it.

Maybe it’s that, in my life right now, I have so many very good, “high quality” friends that I genuinely enjoy spending time with or emailing or talking to or all of the above, in some cases. And it seems silly to invest energy in relationships that aren’t as healthy and happy.

Either way, friendships are just plain weird.

The list of things I want and need to accomplish keeps growing.

Perhaps this is because I have not been actually DOING the things I want and need to accomplish but instead keep adding more things to the list. Maybe?

I think I just enjoy writing the list more than the other parts.

My mad glass-fusing skills have not improved much but I am still whole-heartedly enjoying the process of smashing, slashing, scoring and otherwise mangling large pieces of glass. It’s.. liberating. Very, very liberating.

I am still completely in awe of the creations my fellow classmates have been assembling – they can seriously be considered ‘works of art’.

Me? I’m still thrilled as all get-out when I manage to cut a straight line. My classmates must think I’m insane from all the bum-shakin’ dancin’ I do, but hey, y’gotta’ celebrate when you can, right?

When we arrive to class in the evenings, we pick up our completed work from a shelf in the kiln room. The works there are from our class, of course, but also from the Thursday night class.

Both classes are the same – there’s no “level”, just glass fusing. Come as you are. Learn as you go. Show up just to use the kiln.. whatever. But the Thursday night class seems to be filled with people who are as untalented as I am.

There are a lot of blobby-glass creations, wonky-shaped pendants, weird things that have no indicator as to their purpose.. I can’t help but think that I’d have been more comfortable in that class while starting out. Less pressure!

At any rate, there are three more classes to go and I’m really looking forward to all of them.

(Photos to come next week – my main project was fused, but still needed to be slumped last night.)

Henry, the wayward mallard, hath returned. Both ducks are happily bobbing around in the pond in the very bright sunlight.

Huzzah for Henry!

(Seriously, I’ve been working on being calm and rational about his disappearance but it wasn’t working very well. Last night, somewhat-PMSy, I started to get weepy about Henry being gone… yeeesh.)

Sadly, I cannot burst out the door of the house and shout, “YOU’RE BACK! YAY HENRY!” Heh.

Preparing the house for a child – one who could be ANY age, really – is difficult. There are a lot of unknowns and a lot of things that we’ll have to wait to do once we know who’s coming to join us.

Several tasks, though, are just “common sense” – like removing the carpeting from the upstairs bathroom. I cannot fathom why anyone would carpet a bathroom. Why? Why would someone carpet a bathroom? Anyone got a good reason for me, other than blind optimism?

Since moving in I’ve wanted that carpeting gone. It’s in great shape, reasonably new, and there are no funky stains, but.. carpet. In the same room as.. the toilet.. no. No thank you.

We wanted it gone, but we feared for what we might find underneath said carpeting. Hardwood floor (as is under all the other carpets in the house) seemed like a possibility, but it probably wasn’t in good shape. Not to mention the “step up” that they built to accomodate the toilet’s plumbing would most certainly be plywood. Ugly plywood.

Yesterday, Coffee grabbed a blade and hacked up the carpet in the bathroom, cutting a straight line by the doorway to the hall. Underneath was some old, ugly (but not creepy or mouldy or..) peel-and-stick linoleum. Usable, but not… pretty.

After a relatively quick trip, we picked up two boxes of laminate flooring, some lavender paint and a new glass shelf for the bathroom. We’re also the proud new owners of a jigsaw. That part excites me almost as much as the rest.. a new power tool for my collection!

Obviously, you know what I’ll be working on this week – in between glass fusing, adoption training and my usual “slacking around the house”. Coffee and I were joking about how long it will take for an ADD person to redo a bathroom – at least, HE was joking. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t. Heh.

Perhaps it will be completed before the child moves in!

June (the female duck) has been sitting by our pond for the past hour or so – without Henry (the male). I am concerned. Melle’s recent blog posting isn’t helping to allay my fears.

I’m hoping the Henry is off doing some male-duck bonding things. Perhaps he’s in a bar, drinking with his buddies or helping one of his friends drywall a basement. Or whatever male ducks do when they’re hangin’ out.

But June is wandering around the back area by herself and I have never seen her there alone before. Not for five minutes, even.

Henry is always by her side.

I hope he returns very, very soon.

It is time for me to stop torturing JJ. :)

Our first adoption training class was on Wednesday night. Coffee came from work and I came from home, so we drove seperate cars – I, of course, had been sitting in the parking lot with a library book more than 45 minutes before class started.

My fears of “being late” always do this to me, by the way. The first few times I have to travel to a new place (whether near or far) I always allow a ridiculously long period of time for the drive. 40 minutes for a 10 minute drive. An hour for a 20 minute drive.

I make up for it later, however, by totally forgetting the actual length of time required to drive there and showing up late at the same location. 10 minute drive? I can make THAT in 5… Uh huh. One hour drive? Gimme’ 20 minutes and I”ll be there!

Time and me? Not really on the same wavelength. Ever.

Anyway.

The class had 28 participants, each of whom was wearing a name tag in a specific colour. People with green writing were adopting, people with green writing with a red dot were foster-adopting and people with red writing were fostering.

Coffee and I were the only adopting people in the room if memory serves correctly.

This, of course, leads me to wonder: what do these people know that we don’t?!

The class involved a lot of sharing. Some tears. A LOT of laughter. We went around the room introducing ourselves and stating why we were there (i.e., why we wanted to adopt or foster or whatever). It was interesting to hear the reasons – some people were there to be trained for kin fostering (where they’d be taking a family member’s child(ren) instead of a stranger’s) – and I was quite surprised by the number of ‘empty nesters’ who wanted to foster.

The class was neatly divided between older couple, younger couples and a few singles. This pleased me greatly.

We talked about the reasons kids come into care, the goals of the CAS when it comes to these kids, and then we covered the statistics. Not surprisingly, but holy moley anyway, the statistics are depressing. The number of children in need of homes, the very small number who were adopted last year, the very small number who were fostered.. yeesh.

I was, however, surprised to learn that the two hardest groups to place in foster care situations are teenage girls and newborns. Very surprised.

The binder of information we have to read, learn, study (etc) is.. huge. I am trying not to hyperventilate when I think about going through all of it. One step at a time.. one step at a time.. in through the nose.. out through the mouth… Most of it appears to be interesting, at least.

Other than a cheesy, outdated video, everything else was up-to-date, well planned, well executed and kept my attention. That’s no mean feat right there, quite frankly.

Three hours passed really quickly, and I was exceedingly pleased that no one read to us from an overhead or powerpoint or handout. I was also pleased that one of the women at our table is a social worker at another agency (she’s planning to foster from our agency, however) so I could ask her questions surreptitiously as they occured to me.

Overall, I think we’re going to get a LOT out of these classes. The people we met (at our table and in groups) were fantastic, and I think it’s safe to say we’d happily keep in touch with them when all is said and done. There was only one person in the class that I’d like to slap some duct tape onto to make her SHUSH ALREADY, but I’m holding out some hope that it was just “first class” jitters that compelled her to babble on like that.

Sometime in the near future, we’ll be hearing from our adoption worker and starting the homestudy process. We’re both hoping it will be the same woman who did our initial interview (she’s one of the possibilities) because we really liked her – but we’ll know soon enough.

I’m anxious to get to class #2.. Really, really anxious.

We picked up a Furminator (medium) today. Despite brushing with a regular brush AND using a slicker, our dogs are.. sheddy. The commercials and online info looked hope-inspiring.

This thing is.. like.. well, let’s just say that the advertising does not lie.

Do not use it indoors. Use it outdoors where the hair will not accumulate all over you. (We did it on the front lawn area and the entire ‘hood is probably coated at this point..)

I have never seen that much.. fluff.. come off of any animal before, other than while observing the shearing of sheep and angora goats. Holy crap.

And so, if you have a dog OR cat that sheds? I must insist you purchase one of these. I rate it 10/10. No joke.

The only downside is the sheer volume of hair. Handfulls of it, from each dog. I repeat: do not use this thing indoors.

I have now been on Facebook for 2 days.

During those 48 hours, I seem to have found a good portion of my mishandled youth. Some of the emails are downright embarassing – I’ve been reminded of parties, people, sexual activities, dating habits and all sorts of things that I had forgotten.

Some of the people and messages are very much reminding me of who I used to be back when I thought I knew who I was.

It’s becoming addictive. Every time I login there’s another “friend request” to approve. Another name, and sometimes a face, to jolt me backward. Of the 40+ friends I have on my list, nearly all of them fit the category of FRIEND and not just “person I knew”. Sure, some of them are from the past, and the friendships were transient, but.. wow. Talk about memories.

Weird, weird shit.

I heard a loud THUD outside the house earlier today, and wandered out to see what had happened. Nothing was out of place, nothing was broken.. and then I noticed the tiny dead bird on the front step. Poor thing.

Scooping it up with a plastic bag, I noticed it was still warm and I felt even worse. I’m not good with things like that. It made me sad.

I was feeling bad, standing there, until I heard the friendly neighbourhood mallard ducks muttering at me from my neighbour’s lawn. I said hello, popped inside to grab some seeds and various nuts (to put out for the squirels) and then made my way up the driveway and into the backyard.

As I scattered the seeds (leaving the nuts in the container for the moment) I could hear their little pattering duck feet coming up the driveway. They all-but shoved me aside to get to the food, muttering the entire time. Duck mutterings amuse me.

After they had eaten their fill of safflower seeds, they hopped into the pond to do a little post-dinner relaxation swimming.

As I stood, watching them paddle around, a little grey squirrel dropped down from a tree and landed on the picnic table where I was leaning. She stared at me intently. I stared back and softly said, “Hello, squirrel!” She chattered at me.

I opened the container of hazel nuts (in the shell) and the container of almonds (not in the shell) and tossed one about two feet in front of me. The squirrel happily leaped on them and snarfed down the almonds first. I had intended to leave a small stack of them for the squirrels to eat for breakfast.

At that moment, a small rabbit meandered over. She stopped to snarf down some seeds that had fallen from the feeder.

By the time Coffee came home, the ducks had taken their last dip in the pond and flew away to wherever it is that they nest for the night. The bunny had hopped away to the neighbour’s lawn (presumably to gnaw on the delicate shoots of un-peed-on lawn).

And the squirrel?

She was taking nuts out of my hands as I sat on the patio.

You read that right. The squirrel was happily wandering up to me, swishing her tail against my arm, and gently plucking the hazelnuts out of my fingers. Then she’d trot away, dig a small hole in the lawn, drop in the nut and… run back for more.

Repeat this process for about an hour and a half. She decided she wasn’t remotely afraid of me and was brushing against me, sniffing my toes, and otherwise happily hanging out.

When Coffee arrived, I whispered for him to go inside the house and watch through the window. I wasn’t sure how Baxter (the squirrel) was going to feel about a new person.

Soon after, Coffee came out and sat next to me.

Soon after that, Baxter was happily accepting nuts from Coffee’s hands, too.

We fed her all the hazelnuts we had, letting her run away to hide them in our yard and elsewhere, then returning for more. And more. And more. And soon she ran out of places to hide them nearby and was scaling fences and running along the neighbour’s garage rooftop.

All too soon it was dark, so we fed her the last nut and went inside.

I swear, the wildlife in this city ROCKS. And I am positively giddy from all the animal-interaction today.