Parallel Universes

Reynaldo is my hero today. 

He fixed my accordion straps with string so I could keep playing all day at the pumpkin patch. I don't know if you've ever played an accordion, but if you haven't? It's impossible to play one without straps. You need them to help brace yourself against the instrument so that you can squeeze the bellows that pump the air. When the metal loop that holds the straps on snapped today, it was just another blow for this poor, brave instrument that's suffered years of abuse at my hands. I love it so much and I've treated it so roughly! It now needs a complete overhaul: bellows full of holes, keys coming loose, reeds out of  tune, leather straps breaking, and now the metal loops becoming stressed and snapping. This poor thing needs to retire. Without Reynaldo's quick thinking (and a few inches of string), I couldn't have made it through an 8.5 hour shift today. 

I'm back at the pumpkin patch with a vengeance this year. Freelancing? No regular job? Damn betcha I need as many shifts there as I can get. It's actually wonderful to be back there a lot after several years of only doing a couple of shifts. I love it there. I love it. It makes me happy to be outside and it makes me happy to sing, so really this job couldn't be any better for me. I miss teaching, and I really miss having a steady paycheque. September was tight and October is way harder. Why sugarcoat it? My sweetie buys me toilet paper and my mom takes me for breakfast. Both of them give me frequent rides to work. I couldn't make it through without them. But in spite of everything, I am extremely happy. I have the almost grotesque luxury of choosing this life. I made my life harder because I chose to do a play next month instead of staying at teaching jobs and hating myself for not taking risks. How many people in this world get that kind of choice? 

Reynaldo and his co-workers don't get that kind of choice, I bet. They come up to Harry's farm from Mexico every year to work. They drive the tractors that pull the wagons I sing on. I'm sure that's super easy compared to the other jobs they have to do around the farm. I asked one of them how long he was up here for and he said "seven months". Sheila the fiddle player was asking one of them how his year had been and he said his marriage had ended. No wonder, if he's up here seven months a year. They are all brown-skinned and black-haired and I feel bad because every year I have to re-learn their names. I think Harry's probably a great boss. I've seen teenagers growing into not-so-young adults working in his market, through all the Octobers I've been singing and playing out here. I've seen the same Mexican guys driving tractors and slinging pumpkins year after year too.  Their English is pretty bad and my Spanish is way worse so I don't know much about them. I imagine they think it's pretty funny that thousands of people pay good money to bring their kids out to a farm right beside the highway to pick squash out of the mud, but then what do I know? Maybe they have pumpkin patches in Mexico too. 

I Found My Thrill

I walk north, across Broadway, down the big hill, onto the track where I have tentatively started running again, onto the bus. My accordion is a heavy bulk on my back but I have time to snap a picture as I walk; red berries against a brown background. It's January, but I am bare-legged as I walk. A testament both to the mildness of our winters here and to the heat of seniors homes, which is where my accordion and I are headed today. I learned my lesson after the first few visits: wear as little as decently possible or perish in a pool of your own sweat! 

The home I'm playing at is a religious one; the staff are kind and the residents are the usual mix of avid and comatose. It is a birthday party: the lodge has a monthly party and celebrates the birthdays of everyone born in that particular month with music and cake. Wayne introduces each "celebrant", and also takes a moment to acknowledge the centenarians in the crowd. Wow, there are a number of people in the audience (all women, unsurprisingly; women live longer) who are over sixty years older than me, and I'm no longer a spring chicken. Some of the elders take a well-earned nap, but I hear a strong baritone singing along to "Blueberry Hill", and when I swing into "Hey Good-Lookin'" two ladies on my left clap and harmonize with glee. I try to pick a mix of unknowns and singalongs. "Danny Boy", which I have grown to like, always gets 'em. But the rock-'n'roll/country numbers like "Blue Suede Shoes" and "Oh Lonesome Me" get enthusiastic responses too. I am reminded again that unless they are the really old ones, today's seniors grew up listening to Chuck Berry and Elvis (time to add some of the King to my playlist I guess). 

When I get home I decide to take the old dog to the corner store with me, since bladder/bowel control are becoming things of the past for him these days. Probably the same for some of the folks I played for this afternoon, sadly. 

Waiting patiently to go back inside again.

You know what, though? I took him to the park this morning and he was a firecracker. Up to his old tricks; even did my favourite, where he grabs a big stick and manages to get the end of it wedged in under his collar so he can wrestle it into "submission" all by himself. Happy grin, bounce in his step. Amazing what makes us shed the years: a quick jaunt in the park, a 65 year-old chart-topper and we shed our layers of years and become young again, if only for a few minutes. 

Despite her sincere attempts to end up with difficult guys, Accordion Girl kept getting distracted by gentlemen of the finest calibre.

It was a problem she could live with.

(As always, Accordion Girl is a bit tiny. Click on the images to enlarge them, and use the Right Arrow key to scroll through them.)

knowing when to turn off.

It can be so easy to live online.
I knew someone once, back when chat rooms were the thing. Maybe they still are; I wouldn't know. Anyway, he was always going off to the nearest internet cafe (we were on tour, and he didn't have a laptop; this was the late '90s and laptops weren't quite as prevalent then) and he would...Chat.
And I couldn't understand it. Why, why would he want to sit in front of a screen for hours when there were Real Live People all around him? Including his fellow cast members, who were only too happy to bicker at him, play loud music in the van, and go dancing at any weirdo nightclub we could find on the road.
On second thought, no wonder the chat rooms looked so appealing...
But the thing is, I find myself online so much now, what with this career development course I'm doing this month, and also looking and applying for jobs, and emailing, and blogging, and let's not forget the monstrous, life-eating FACEBOOK. Where I pop in to see how my friends, local and distant, are doing; to make some smart-ass observations; to answer and write messages; to see if That Guy is online so I can start a conversation. A Chat, if you will.
That Guy refuses to email or phone me, which means, if I was a smart girl instead of a fool, I would leave him the hell alone. Instead, if I see he's online, I start feeling twitchy and doing this little monkey-dance/chant in my head that sounds like this:
lookatmelookatmelookatMEGOSHDARNIT! And then, whether we converse or not, I feel like a bit of a twit.
If I was a very strong girl, I would leave Facebook altogether. I've been tempted, but I really have some great friends on there, and I wouldn't hear from them as much (nor they from me) if I didn't hang on to my account, so for now, it stays.
But I have decided to stay away from it for a while. Messages will come to my email account anyway, so there's no pressing need to go on there compulsively.
My job-searching (god, now there's a whole other blog post) is done for the day.
My coursework also.
I've checked my email enough times, already.
Time to switch off and face the real world, rainy though it is today.
POWER: OFF

Happy New Year!

Still working out the sizing bugs! You may have to save this comic to your desktop in order to zoom in on it... but if you feel like it, then Accordion Girl wishes you a very happy 2012!

Welcome to: Day jobs with Accordion Girl!!!

Accordion Girl dreams of the Best Gig Ever. It would look something like this:

Of course, reality doesn't always quite measure up:

Latest installment (it's a bit smaller than I would like, so click on it to enlarge):

This is Accordion Girl.

She has a big red accordion. She also has five other accordions, most of them tucked away in storage. They are called:
The Big Black One (given to her while she was busking at the ferry terminal on the Sunshine Coast. True Story.),
The Little Black One (she's had this one for years. If it was in better shape it would be her favorite.)
The Swedish One (gutted and only useful as a wall decoration these days)
The Playhouse One (given to her by the fly man at the Vancouver Playhouse. People really like to gift Accordion Girl with accordions!) and...
The Button Accordion (the one she can't really play.)
That's a lot of accordions!

Last summer, Accordion Girl worked up North, at a little theatre company in a gold rush town. She wore a hairpiece that made her hair look really curly, and a dress with dozens of ruffles, and she was very happy.


At the end of the summer (well, actually, it was more like autumn), Accordion Girl went back to the big city. At the beginning of the summer, she had said goodbye to someone, and now that she was back in town, she had to move all her things (including the six accordions) to a new place, and start a new life.


She had some kind of weird jobs to get her through the fall. One of them was dressing up in a magician's costume and scaring trainloads of people with a giant fake saw.


The other one was playing her little black accordion at a pumpkin patch in the middle of the country (well, Richmond).

It was nice to be outdoors so much, and sometimes you could spot random celebrities at the Pumpkin Patch, people like Elivis Costello and Tamara Taggart (not together, though. That would be weird.) But although these jobs were diverting, Accordion Girl wanted more from life. Like... a career that maybe meant that her next home wouldn't look so much like this:


Plus, Accordion Girl had realized over the summer that she still had the ability to fall madly, deeply, and very swiftly in LOVE. This was exciting, but it meant that she was never fully in control of her emotions.



Will Accordion Girl find success in her career? Will she adapt to her eccentric new home? Will she learn to be happy on her own or will she be able to fall for someone without turning into a zombie? Stay tuned...