Flu

Wow, so most of the time I think I have this invincible body but if the last little while has shown me anything, it's that things have a way of catching up with you eventually... and also that if your partner has a little kid, they're going to catch all kinds of bugs in school, and then HE will, and then YOU will!
But it's been kind of a sweet enforced rest period for the last few days for both of us: rest, eat, rest, watch movie, rest... I typed "reset" instead of "rest" there, and indeed that's what it feels like. Resetting. I feel very lucky that we both had a few days there to relax utterly and let this illness do its thing. I've read three James Bond books. Drank more lemon-and-honey than I thought possible. Had a lot of great conversations and listened to tons of music. So although my body is not so great, my spirit feels considerably better than it did last week.
Here's hoping the rest of the Christmas break is just as relaxing, but minus the flu symptoms.

Biology/Biography

I went to an acupuncturist yesterday and all the while she put needles into my back and feet and arms I felt bubbly, almost euphoric, as I lay face-down on her table. I probably looked like a giggly porcupine. Then she stuck glass jars all over my back (it's called "cupping") and it felt like being attacked by an octopus. I floated home on a cloud of bliss; I was in love with the whole world.
Today, the flipside. I wake up feeling as though an army of dwarves has pummeled me while I slept. I am sore, and sad. I have jar-shaped hickeys all over my back. The acupuncturist, who had a lovely Columbian accent, reminded me that "your issues are in your tissues", a saying which I found delightful yesterday, and all too true today.
So much has happened in less than two years. I had cancer. I had surgery. I had to rush back to work after almost no time to recover from the surgery. I let two men go out of my life. I moved. I started school the DAY AFTER I came back from my summer-long work. I juggled a busy school and work schedule... And now my body is exhausted. My issues- sadness, worry, guilt, frustration, anxiety, ambition, money troubles- are hurting my body... There is so much love and good fortune in my life too but right now I feel subsumed by the bad things and they are working their way out through my body. I don't recommend running for you, she tells me. Slow walks: notice the trees and the sky as you walk. Yoga. Tai Chi. Don't do that cleanse (I was thinking of doing the Master Cleanse for a few days). Eat well. No stress. You need to look after your body. 
I don't always eat well. It's been just over a week since I quit eating desserts and I fantasize about licking the biggest candy cane in the world from time to time. Instead of sugar I eat salty fatty snacks (like Barbara's Jalapeno Cheese Puffs- Look! It says "All Natural" on the bag, so they're healthy, right?) I made lamb stew last night but the dumplings fell apart so now it's Lamb Stew with Thick Flour Paste and I chased it with like a million crackers anyway. When I eat something I love, especially sugar, I have to eat it until it's all gone. I have no self control.
I am impatient. I read books fast. I grind my teeth when people around me are slow, either to move, or to 'get' things. When I DO exercise, I like to be breathless and sweaty at the end of it. Yoga and Tai Chi don't fit the bill, but maybe I have to make them fit. Maybe I also have to let patience fit into my life as well, or the dwarves will keep on pummeling me until I'm really sick.
Today I wanted to be looked after but my sweetheart is looking after his five year-old, who's also sick, and I clenched my teeth and thought Do I have the patience and the selflessness to be with someone who has kids? Can I put myself second, for a little person I haven't even met yet? And the answer is a resounding I don't know. It's another issue right now, the elephant in the room. At times it shrinks to nothing and at times it's so big I can't see round it to all the good things. I don't know how to adapt to a life with someone who has three kids with two exes and needs to grab work when he can and god, you do the math- between all that and me being at school and working when do we spend time together?  And more importantly- because of course we DO find the time- what kind of future can two people build who are so far apart in age and experiences and goals? Always the underlying question: what do you want whatdoyouwant? From love, from life, from work, from school. And again, the resounding I don't know.
 My singing teacher told me to take deep breaths today and I almost started crying. I can't breathe properly, I told her with tears in my eyes. It's been a problem- an issue- ever since I was little. I get stressed and I take these shallow, gaspy breaths and if I breathe 'deeply' I feel panicky and air-deprived.
Yoga
Meditation
Healing

Patience. 
And from my window, as a reminder, this:

*NOT Starbucks, silly. The rainbow.

Thankful...

...for a day of sunshine, even if I was indoors most of the day and didn't see it...

 ...and for the reason I was indoors: because I was performing with this theatre company, doing this. 

I was up here, on a teetering scaffold, surrounded by a bunch of my instruments:

 And below me, some surrealist children's theatre was happening:

Creating theatre in a few short days, seeing magic unfold and being part of it. It's been a long time since I've done a project that was so simply fun from start to finish. I think I really needed it right now to remind me that life isn't all about school. It's also about simply playing.

It's about working with lights and cushions and costumes and hazers that fill up the space with beautiful smoke:
It's about working with a 9 year-old who can't help chasing the smoke. And also getting to work with someone I haven't worked with for too long and someone else I've wanted to work with for almost twenty years!
And at the end of the day, it was about cream pies and plastic sardines. As all theatre should be. Yum.


(The show was A Place Called Whisper, produced and created by pi Theatre for Obstructions. What can I say? It's American Thanksgiving, a holiday I've always thought is ridiculously close to Christmas, poor Americans. But I find myself thankful this weekend, holiday or not.)

Hi. How's your weekend going so far? I am a bit embarrassed to admit that mine began on Thursday afternoon and is still going, but in a calm, reflective, restful way, not a four-day-party kind of way.
Actually, it really began with some hard work, as I decided it was high time I reclaimed my front door from the graffiti "artists" who clearly prowl my neighbourhood late at night with nothing else to do but tag my door over and over and over again:
 
A couple cans of red spray paint, some stick-on letters and numbers and a light head from all the paint fumes, and...

Isn't that nice? It probably won't stay that way for long, sadly. But I'm determined to stay on top of it this year.
My tiny attempt to make east van prettier was done. I was looking at a few days without work, homework or school, believe it or not. It was time to escape for the rest of the weekend...
There is someone new in my life these days.  We are still working on how to fit "us" into our busy and very different lives: School! Work! Kids! Exes! Friends! Family! Some people have been enthusiastic and accepting. Others hang back warily and wait to see how it's going to go and if it will last. There are a lot of things to figure out. But basically we try to keep things simple on the days when we can meet up. It helps that he lives in a beautiful neighbourhood. It's not close to where I live, but I'm learning to make the travel time enjoyable. We eat bread and cheese and stay in out of the rain, or brave the elements and head to the beach.

Today he went to work and invited me to stay and wait for him to return. I was determined to get outside for a while, but even a borrowed rainjacket was no match for the elements. By the time I got to the beach I was soaked through.

It was NOT a very smart day to leave my bus pass behind, but at least that forced me to get some exercise. And the almost-deserted beach was still lovely, in a grey sort of way.

I walked past cafes, stores and late-autumn roses, still blooming. Oh this mild climate of ours!

The leaves this year have been amazing:

Finally, I decided that the only sensible thing to do was to go back to the apartment, get dry, and spend the rest of the day reading and listening to music. But first, there was one more stop to make...

I'm not seeing this person because he lives so near this bakery, but it certainly IS an advantage. Tucked away unassumingly on the side of a building with a dry-cleaner, a coffee shop and a couple other stores, this place is a sort of bready heaven. I am not exaggerating when I say that it is one of the best bakeries I have ever been to. And their granola is without peer. Get yourself down here and check it out for yourself.
As I was buying their incredible lemon-rosemary loaf, I felt a drop of sweat begin its excruciating trickle down my lower back. Ugh- soaking wet and sweaty.  I slopped home. It is doubtful whether my boots will ever recover from this walk. But I do have some very nice things to snack on this afternoon.
Have yourselves a great weekend and stay dry!

passing.

The rain has come back to this rainy town, and maybe people are mourning for our endlessly sunny September, but I look out of my living room window and see this:

and I am secretly very happy. (Would you have guessed from this photo that on some days I can see the North Shore mountains from this window? Didn't think so.)
I think I'm happy not so much because it's grey and cold, but because the weather's change has echoed a change in my own life, as I finish a contract that had a punishing effect on my schedule, and as I adjust to school and my new life as a student.
Yesterday I sat at this table, which serves as a desk, printing station, computer home, and general paper-dumping area. I put Chet Baker on the cd player and I surveyed the grey day with great satisfaction. I was home. I had time to catch up on homework, a little practice, some cleaning. Nothing earth-shattering, but it was so good.
I'm so happy that I had the chance to do this sound design contract...

(So proud. You can go and hear my work, if you like, until November 3rd.)
...but I'm also glad it's over, and I'm glad it happened when it did, because I have the feeling that school just isn't going to feel so tough after the craziness and fatigue of this month. I'm talking under-eye smudges, shuttling back and forth from school to work, despair, and crying jags that were a little scary. I don't do tired very gracefully, I'm afraid.
My grandpa died a little while ago. He was my last surviving grandparent, and now he's gone. My dad flew to the UK to take care of the business that happens when someone dies, and to be at the funeral. I sent him a note to read at the funeral, which was today. And really, I struggled with what to say, because Grandpa and I were never close, at least not after I grew up. He was an uptight man, very fussy. I don't think he was very happy most of his life, and he was certainly very unhappy when he went into a home a few years ago. He went downhill pretty fast after that, which is pretty common I guess.
In the end I wrote that he had made me proud to have Welsh heritage (his accent was one of the loveliest things about him), that I hoped some of my musical skills came from him, (or at least our Welsh ancestors), and that he had instilled a love of family and good food in his children and his grandchildren. All true. He's left us all some money- I don't know how much yet- and it's weird knowing that someone I hardly knew would leave me something like that, but I'll try and honour his memory by putting it to good use and making my life better with it. If it's a lot of money it will make tuition easier to pay, and if it's just a bit of money then I'll have a really good dinner somewhere, because although he would have frowned at the extravagance, Grandpa really liked his food.
Today I survey my grubby neighbourhood (which Grandpa would have hated) with glee, happy to be here, happy to be home, and I raise a metaphorical glass to his memory.

Gig Madness!

It's come and almost gone, the weekend I was dreading. Three gigs, all of them challenging in their own way, and all of them were fantastic. Not, always, technically the best playing or the purest singing. But at every one of them I found things to delight in, whether it was the joy of trying something new (playing accordion in a leather mask, anyone?), reviving an old band with a bunch of friends  (Flying Folk Army!) or winning over a crowd of jazz fans on a sunny deck (Pender Harbour Jazz Fest)... it was busy, and exciting, and exhausting too (I got about 2 hours' sleep last Friday night).
So once again I feared something because it seemed too challenging, too scary, too much work... and it became pure fun, from beginning to end. You'd think I'd learn by now, right? Nope.
I have another hectic bunch of weeks coming up: a project that I should have done more work on over the summer is finally here, and I need to buckle down hard to get it done. Plus, there's school, which is a whole 'nother thing. I want to keep my head above water. I really want to not fail any of my courses. And then there's my social life- I'd like to still have a few friends in four years when this academic craziness is all over.
Do you know what I do? Some people cook to relieve stress, some people make things or take long baths... I eat, certainly (and damn you, Capilano U, why do you have to have a Tim Horton's lurking so that I want to buy donuts all day long?), but mostly I come home and grab the electronic bug zapper. You know, it looks like a tennis racket, but when you press a red button it becomes electrified and kills bugs on contact.
What can I say? The summer heat is still upon us, fruit flies are breeding like mad in our kitchen, and the zap! spark! crack! of the Bug Racket fills me with inner peace after a long day.

*I may not be around too much in the next few months as school is really kicking my ass. However, I will try and check in once a month at least, and as a personal challenge, I am going to try and add a photo every time, to make this blog more interesting on the eyes. Wish me luck...

Being Schooled.

They are like deer, these girls, like long-legged does.
I see them on the bus in the mornings, loping around campus in the afternoons. They are giggling with their friends, they are wearing short shorts, so that their perfect brown legs go on forever. They all have long, shiny hair, looped casually back from their perfect pure faces, or hanging straight down past their shoulders. They are impossibly young. Today in Jazz History we were talking about the best places in town to see live jazz gigs and one of them asked Is that a 19-plus bar? and I realized that I am taking classes with people who cannot legally drink yet.
If ever there was an incentive for me to want a drink, that was it.
The boys-and they mostly are boys, not yet men- aren't so bad, somehow. They're so far from perfect, with their skinny jeans and their fashionably awful goatees and their pimples. They're brash, some of them, and the rest are awkward and silent. Most of them, boys and girls alike, avoid looking at me. In my more paranoid moments, I believe it is because they believe they will catch my oldness like a disease. I know that really, they are mostly shy, or socially inept. Some of them are barely out of high school, after all.  But some of them have so much more confidence than I had at that age. Than I still have.
On top of that, most of them know more about jazz than I do.
Okay, so there are many, many good things: the campus nestles in the north shore trees and is small and warm in the sun. I think that most of my classes will be interesting, and also my teachers, although I mistrust the one who memorizes all of our names right off and (mostly) correctly guesses what instrument we play. He is a little too pleased with himself.  I see the boys and girls giggle at his barb-tongued remarks and think Either you're going to grow on me, or you're an arrogant prick. We'll see. I get to challenge two of my classes; Class Piano and Sight Singing/Ear Training which basically means I can do the homework and not have to show up, because I already know a lot of the material. That's cool. I like learning again, although my fingers stray too often to email and Facebook as I do my reading and writing. I must learn to be more disciplined.
I will go to sleep early tonight, so that more wrinkles won't form, so the Beauty and Fashion Police who surely roam the campus won't eject me for being too old, too plain, too out-of-place.
I will bide my time, and remember the old bumper sticker that reads Old Age & Treachery Will Beat Youth & Skill Every Time.