July 2007

CANCER (June 21-July 22): Imagine all the life processes that unfold outside of your conscious awareness: your body digesting your food and circulating your blood; trees using carbon dioxide, water, and sunlight to synthesize their nourishment; micro-organisms in the soil beneath your feet endlessly toiling away to create humus. You don’t perceive any of these things directly; they’re invisible to you. What other growth and transformation might be going on in secret, Cancerian? This is the perfect time to tune in to all the vitalizing alchemy that is usually hidden from you. In a sense, you have X-ray vision.

(Freewill Astrology.)

For some reason, my brain has decided to append the phrase, “hookers and blow” to everything I hear and everything I say. It’s been going on for weeks and I haven’t the slightest clue where the phrase originated (WNET?) but, man, my adoration for the phrase has not waned in the slightest over these weeks.

Around Coffee, thankfully, I can say it out loud (and giggle) but I try to avoid using it in general conversation or email. When the cashier at the grocery store asks if you found everything you were looking for and you’re tempted to say, “Where, exactly, are the hookers and blow?” you know you’ve got a problem.

Lately, I’ve started to just use ‘hooker’ since the whole phrase takes some time and, even without the word “blow” being used, I can still hear it in my head and it still cracks me up.

It cracks me up Every Single Time. I cannot help myself and I cannot explain it. And I’m really sorry if it starts to happen to you now that you’ve read this.

“What do you want for your birthday?”

“Hookers and blow.”

“Hookers and blow? What happened to going out for sushi?”

“Oh! Yeah! Okay, sushi, hookers and blow.”

“You can have either sushi OR a hooker on your birthday. Not both.”

“But.. it’s.. my birthday!”

“Yep. But you can’t have both. Which one do you want?”

“I’ll take the sushi, I guess. (dramatic sigh)”

“You guess?”

“Well, I really want BOTH. Sushi AND hookers AND blow”

“I’m sure you do. Sushi it is.” (deadpan)

It occurs to me, just as it has to you, that I have a lot of interesting stuff to purge from my brain before the children arrive. Yes indeedy.

As I was scribbling some assorted stuff on an envelope, I happened to look out the kitchen window and see two very handsome men (in uniform! men in uniform!) walking up the driveway.

While my normal reaction would be – and yeah, I know it’s not normal – to hurridly wonder if there’s anything illegal anywhere in the house before I ducked under the counter to hide, they had already seen me standing, staring at them. I didn’t want to chance them breaking down the door to arrest me for simply being suspicious.

Turns out, it was the fire department. They don’t usually come with handcuffs.

The very handsome men informed me that they go from door to door, once a year, to remind people about fire safety. They handed me a pamphlet, told me to have a lovely evening, and then they walked to the next house.

Would it have been wrong to invite them in to show me – in great detail – how to be fire safe? Yes? It would? Hrmph.

God, I love Kitchener.

I’d consider joining this church if I was, um, planning to join a church. You don’t have to believe in God to love church signs, thankfully.

Over the weekend, Coffee and I visited a local garden centre in the hopes of finding some lavender to plant in our front garden area. Since moving in, we’ve been staring at two empty beds – in which the previous owners had planted annuals at some point – and drawing a complete blank as to what sort of plant(s) belonged in that empty space.

Lavender occured to me a few days ago, having driven past a wild and funky garden that morning. There was a huge purple bush blowing in the wind that I assumed was lavender but which, on further investigation, could have been Russian Sage. No matter, though, since I had reminded myself of how great lavender smells when it’s freshly cut. Mmmm.

Thus, we set out to find some lavender.

While I have complained (muchly) about the completely out of control garden in the backyard of our house, it is really only the fact that I do not know which plants are weeds and which are not that really makes me twitchy. I love overgrown, wild-looking, full-of-colour gardens – I just need my own garden to be identifiable to me.

Taking me to a garden centre is akin to setting me free in a candy store – I become thoroughly convinced that each and every plant must be dragged home with me, even when I have no place to put it.. In fact, I’m usually quite assertive in stating that I will FIND A PLACE for the plants. I even asserted that when I lived IN AN APARTMENT.

But the plants are so colourful! So pretty! So ALIVE! They have not yet succumbed to my zero-attention gardening skills or my failure to remember that plants need watering.

I could spend thousands of dollars at the garden centre.

With Coffee by my side, however, I was kept mostly in check. We found the lavender and chose two healthy looking plants. Then I spotted the section devoted to “butterfly gardening” and.. THERE WERE BUTTERFLIES THERE! I mean, heaps of them, fluttering around looking totally happy.

As I swooned, Coffee began looking closely at the plants – y’know, looking for healthy plants that would last at least a week before I killed them. I wondered aloud if the garden centre had imported some butterflies and set them free by those specific plants to entice people to purchase them. Either way, they were coming home with us. Coffee selected the plants and we loaded up the cart.

In the end we picked up some generic “planter flowers” for the containers we have and we purchased two lavender plants, two daisies, two little pinkie thingies, one butterfly bush and one orange and yellow plant that had the words “orange and lemon” in its name. There’s a reason I do not work in horticulture.

Coffee dug holes (my technique is to dig a little hole and try to cram the roots in) and we planted everything with a scoop of worm poop for good luck (or fertilizer, if you want to be formal) and then.. well, that was it. I mean, what else is there to do other than wish them a good growing season and promise that they’ll (hopefully) get watered at some point?

This morning I peeked out of the front window to see if the plants were still there and still alive. Big yes to both, but, even more importantly, there was a BUTTERFLY on the BUTTERFLY BUSH. One that had not been specially imported by the garden centre to lure me into making a purchase!

I grabbed my camera, but by the time I got outside the butterfly had moved from the purple bush to the orange-and-lemon plant. No matter, I was still totally giddy and near-dancing on the sidewalk.

(EEEEE! COOL!)

For the sake of conversation, ALL of the plants we purchased were from the “butterfly gardening” section. Perhaps we shall encounter an entire FLOCK of butterflies when spring rolls around next year?

Yesterday, I turned 32 years old. That’s right, it was my BIRTHDAY. Truly the best day of the entire year; a day more important even than Christmas as far as I’m concerned.

When Coffee asked me what I wanted for my birthday this year, it took me approximately 5 seconds to announce that the only thing I wanted was for him to take the day off from work and hang out with me. Possibly while eating some sushi, but certainly while playing some Tetris, and, quite frankly, I wouldn’t mind some sweet, sweet lovin’.

So he booked the day off and that’s pretty much what we did: Tetris, sushi and some sweet, sweet lovin’.

We crammed all the fun into a three-day-weekend that’s humanly possible.

I’m not ashamed to say that I love my birthday. Spending an entire day bossing Coffee around (more than usual) and indulging my whims (more than usual) totally equals a good time for me. Coffee doesn’t even flinch. I am the Princess of My Birthday.

Next year I suspect my birthday won’t be quite as me-centred. (But I bet I can convince someone to make me a macaroni necklace! Whoohoo!) There will be less spontaneous loud sex and probably a few more vegetables consumed so as not to send the children into a sugar coma.

But this year? It felt good to dance around and be obnoxious and eat too much and stay up too late (and sleep late) and have loud sex. ROCK ON!

32 is totally shaping up to be a Really Good Year.

“To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all of the miseries of life.” – W. Somerset Maugham

• MythTV
• Skeptic magazine – my “try something new” for this week.
• This weekend is a long weekend, thanks to Coffee taking Monday off from work.
• Finding a long-lost BFF on Facebook. Actually, several of them!
• My new car kicks some serious ass. And it’s shiny!
• It’s fun to hang up on telephone solicitors. I have only recently discovered this fact.
• The sun has been shining a whole helluva lot lately.
• My beloved does not mind that I attach myself to him sometimes and won’t let go.
• The library gives me FREE BOOKS to read. How cool is that? The mind boggles.
• When both dogs are asleep, and snoring, I cannot help but giggle. They’re like little old men.
• There’s a plethora of pillows on the sofa, thanks to a certain someone.
• Tomorrow is library, sushi, and Kelly+Sylvain day! Weekends ROCK.
• I have access to clean, cold water that is safe to drink any time I want it.
• ..and Dr. Pepper, too.
• My friends are truly amazing creatures.
• Life is good.

Sweet, sweet, new car. I love you very very much.

While Andrew was visiting last weekend, with his kids, he was kind enough to help Coffee move two big chunks of furniture from our dining room down to the basement where they now await the completion of our office.

It probably sounds ridiculous and silly when I admit that having those two storage units moved has made me about twenty-thousand times happier about the state of our house, even though I haven’t moved the dining room table into that room or done anything, really, other than marvel at the now-open space.

Those two pieces of Ikea furniture represented a whole helluva lot of angst for me. They had become completely and utterly symbolic in some demented way, of all the work that we need to finish and my lack of belief that we can get it all done before the kid(s) arrive(s). They seemed to stare at me, accusingly, every time I walked into the dining room.

Logically, I know we can easily finish up the work we’re doing before the kids arrive – at least, the important stuff. Between Coffee and I, we’re pretty good at solving problems and creating workable (if not exactly beautiful) solutions. But we couldn’t move those storage units by ourselves and it was totally undermining my confidence in all the rest.

I’m sure Andrew thought he was just being a helpful kind of guy – moving the furniture took ten minutes, perhaps – but man, he totally freed my brain up from the tangle of chaos it was constructing. Thanks, Andrew.

Thank you very very very much.