A Day In The Life: 3/12/16

I sleep long enough, but wake up tired and headache-y. One of those days when my body feels...off. There have been too many of those this fall. My body is getting slammed with one malaise after another; a disadvantage of working with children. 
I've set myself a goal this month: run 30 minutes a day, every day. Even Christmas. It's Day Three, and I want to bury myself in blankets and pretend it's still dark, but my back is too sore to stay in bed anyway, so up I get. At least it's not raining, for a change. 
I decide to run south, which means that the outward-bound part will be hard (all uphill), but the return will be easy. I decide to sweeten the pill by ending the run at my favourite coffee bar/breakfast joint, Matchstick, where the poached-eggs-on-toast are just perfect. 
I simply cannot get up any speed this morning; my legs feel leaden but I keep running anyway, and at least I am warm. Up to 28th, across to Fraser, back down to Kingsway, with a little detour to add time. Finally my timer pings and I gratefully slow to a walk. 
Eggs, toast, black tea. Expensive, and I don't care. 
Walk to work, because I need to use their computers to write the music for a documentary I am scoring for a friend.  A detour to the mall because he needs a bit more time to edit the film. Buy some fuzzy pants at Ardene because they have foxes on them. Buy some slippers because everyone needs more warm slippers this time of year. Get to work- can't get in because the front door is locked. Seethe with frustration because my damn cel phone can't get a signal within a 2-block radius of work, for some reason. Finally manage to contact my angel boss, who is in the neighbourhood and lets me in, bless her. 
Wait some more. Fiddle with the music. Put on the new slippers. Get the new cut. Talk to the filmmaker; suggest changes. Wait for another cut. Make tea, raid the cupboard in the office for the cookies we serve to the ukulele students. 
Edit music, slide around tracks until they time up with the new cut (the actual composing was done last Tuesday). Talk it over with the filmmaker; change some stuff, send it off again. Suggest changes to the grammar in the subtitles, because I am as passionate about good english as I am about good music. 

Still life with fox mug and Garageband. Yes, I scored a film on Garageband. Suck it, music tech snobs. 

Five hours after I arrive at work, I am done. 
Stop in at a local clothing shop and spend more money. Leggings, big sweater. Basically the same clothes I was wearing in 1993. Everything old is new again. Hungry again- the local pizza joint is calling my name so I give in. Cocktail, delicious thin-crust pizza with leftovers for tomorrow. 

Get in my mouth, pizza with arugula & gorgonzola. I ran today- I can eat whatever I want. 

Home to my room. Saturday night, and I'm wearing the fuzzy fox pants and folding laundry. Love is out of town and the Christmas parties don't start until next weekend, that's my excuse. Put off prepping for work tomorrow teaching the preschoolers from hell. Put off prepping. Put off- Dammit. Time to prep. 

And yet, I'm still not prepping. Fox pants, BTW- are you sensing a theme here? 

Body still feels tired and- wrong, somehow. Like it did all day. Anger, frustration, just a little too close to the surface. Some days are just like that. Be thankful that there was no one around to unleash that frustration on. Be grateful that you got to make some art in a quiet room wearing new slippers. Some days, that's the absolute best thing you can do.

The Last 2 Minutes: An Unexpected Trip to Ottawa in 31 Short Hours

It really was a jaw-dropping sense of I can do this that flooded my whole body just over a week ago. 
I got an email saying that my upcoming Wednesday class was going to be pretty bare-bones, so I didn't really have to be there. I had nothing happening on Tuesday... Could it happen? I think my heartbeat actually sped up as I contemplated flying to Ottawa to be part of the Ottawa International Animation Festival with my partner, to pitch our animated show, The Adventures of Little Ali Fox at the Pitch This! competition. He'd bought his ticket weeks ago, knowing that I couldn't come because of work. 
I checked available flights. They were expensive, but still available. I emailed my boss and impatiently waited for her response. 
The next day (finally!) it came, while I was at work. I could go! I bought the plane tickets on my phone, on a break, and then I waited impatiently (again) until the moment where I could call my boyfriend and say "So guess what..." 

And off to Ottawa we went. On borrowed money, on stolen time, we got on a plane on Tuesday afternoon and-

But wait. First of all, you've got to know that Jay's and my time-management styles are... pretty different. I like to get to airports EARLY...

Or wait. Back it up a few hours earlier, when we realized that neither of us had printed out the "pitch bible" we were supposed to bring with us to show to all those animation executives we'd be pitching to. And it was 1:30pm. And our flight was at 4:15. And we had No. Fucking. Printer. Paper. 

So instead of getting happily tanked at the airport waiting for our flight to be called, I'm rushing down the street to the little printing shop on Commercial Drive, grinding my teeth while an Italian grandmother mulls over the cost of getting a book printed. Finally I thrust the memory stick into the printer's hand and seethe visibly until the data on that stick is returned to me in printed form. I meet Jay outside Shoppers at 2:30 and we take transit to the airport. By the time we're through security it's after 3:30 and our flight is just boarding. 

Thank god for credit cards (gone are the days of free airline meals, unless you're on a long-haul flight I guess). Thank god for being on a fairly new airplane that has Westjet Connect so we can watch movies and even get on the internet for a while. Thank god for earplugs so I can turn those movies up LOUD and block out the noise of: 
The toddler in front of me
The toddler behind me
The 4-month-old baby beside me and
The small dogs in carry-on bags across the aisle from me (I am not even kidding.)
Actually, it was in all honesty not as bad as it sounds. Everyone was trying to be good, even the toddlers. Mostly. There was zero turbulence. Jay was 5 rows back but we waved and smiled every once in a while. The flight was shorter than advertised. 
So we tumble off the plane at ten to midnight and Jay actually finds us a bus that's still running (yay OC Transit!) so we save tons of money taking public transit into town. And as we near our stop, we see an appealing pub that begs to be visited and lo! They are still serving food at 12:30am, so it's double Jamesons and platters of brown, deep-fried things for us. And so to bed. 

But it's Wednesday where we really excel, because I don't think two humans have ever crammed quite so much into one day ever before. 
We manage to get to the Chateau Laurier and transfer the correct slide show presentation for our pitch two minutes before the cut-off time. 
We visit the Byward Market and nervously sip coffees.
We meet the man who mentored us over the past month as we prepared our pitch. Hi Phil! 

Getting ready to pitch our show.

We do a few final run-throughs of our pitch and then... the fastest ten minutes ever fly by as we do our presentation in front of 4 executives from various companies. It goes really well. 
We spend a relaxed 40 minutes exploring and having lunch, and a fraught 20 minutes where I run to buy more memory sticks for Jay to give out to other execs he's pitching our show to, and Jay gives up on me and heads back to the hotel and I catch up with him, furious and sweaty, to thrust the memory sticks into his hands minutes before his first pitch appointment. 
I go for a 6k run that takes me to the Rideau Canal, which is rich with childhood memories for me, and then over a bridge into Quebec and back over another bridge and back to the hotel to meet Jay. (Due to the last-minute nature of 
my trip I didn't actually buy a pass to the festival, and so it fell to Jay to do all the Fast-Track pitching events, which is basically like speed dating except instead of trying to sell yourself you're trying to sell your show. He did marvelously.) 

Rideau Canal! Home of many happy childhood adventures! 

Giant soup-contemplating pigeons in Quebec. 

My first-ever multi-provincial run! 

Some more decidedly odd public art. 

I meet up with Jay and we decide to rent bikes and ride down the canal to rent some kind of boat. We rent bikes two minutes before the place closes for the day (are you sensing a theme here?). This is magical. Ottawa is surprisingly warm, and very beautiful.We actually find a place that lets you keep boats out until 7:30 pm (which is nuts, because it is fully dark at 7:30 pm), so I persuade Jay that we need to rent stand-up paddleboards. It is now around 5:45. We spend a beautiful hour splashing around on Dow's Lake and the Rideau Canal before getting back on our bikes and going to a nice waterside restaurant where I am so tired that I start to weep gently into my meal, but it is nonetheless very nice. 
And so back to our pension, where we have to sneak our rental bikes into our room because we are keeping them overnight and there is NO WAY we are risking locking them up outside. And 6 hours of sleep. And then I kiss my lover at a bus stop at 5:20am and fly back home. 

Ottawa was amazing. I would actually love to go back there as a tourist. Jay has been hard at work schmoozing and pitching back at the festival, and although we did not win Pitch This! we have made some really great connections there, and learned that our little project has a lot of potential. Apparently it is a pretty big deal that we were one of ten semi-finalists there; we were so green that we didn't even know what a big deal it was until we got there. 
Even though we had some tense moments, Jay and I were in heaven the whole time we were there. It's the first time we've ever really had anything even remotely resembling a holiday, and we made the absolute most of our 31 hours together. It was very hard for me to unwind myself from his arms and get on a bus to the airport on Thursday, let me tell you. 

Now it's all a little bit like a dream. We'll see where things go from here with our show, but it's far from over. In fact, I think the adventure's really just beginning. 

Epiphanies and Anniversaries

Dammit, body. You were supposed to spring into action around Epiphany, ready to start a new year of eating right and exercising hard. Instead...

It's been a hard week. Over a week, in fact, of being a congested, tired, achy, brain-foggy mess. At least I can console myself that everyone else in the city also has this virus right now. But worse, I started to feel my mood tipping into a dark place it hadn't been for a long time... hard not to feel that way when you're sick and the numbers in your bank account are slipping down past the safety zone, with no big job to push them back the other way. I was starting to feel as if I was standing on the crumbling edge of a cliff. I was/am too tired to exercise, too sick to watch every little thing I ate, too broke to afford a Grand Gesture or a fancy event to cheer myself up. The nagging voice of self-doubt started creeping in: How could I be loveable, with my straggly uncut hair showing months of roots (and grey), my belly rounded from holiday overindulgence, my tissue-reddened nose and glassy tired eyes? How will I ever make a living making music? Would I be forced to live forever as my brother's tenant, unable to afford my own apartment? Had I made the wrong decision in cutting myself off from the summer job and northern towns I love so much?

When my guy offered me a small, easy photography gig with a bit of money attached, I grew insecure and snappish, sure that I couldn't do what he needed, although he assured me that it was a simple job. Although I ended up doing it, I was needy and grumpy about the whole thing.
I decided we needed a date night, since I'd hardly seen my sweetheart since New Year's Eve. Although I'm still feeling gross, I rallied- 2 nights ago- and dressed up. Pretty skirt, classy fishnets with the seam, even curly hair, because I know he likes it. He called: he was feeling stir-crazy and wanted to get out. Maybe we could meet up earlier and go for a ride on the bike before dinner? I started seething, thinking of having to change out of my carefully-chosen outfit. I'd wanted to feel dressed-up and civilized, not climb on the back of a motorbike in the cold evening air... I snapped at him, unwilling to bend, to re-write the script in my head. Then I called back and apologized for snapping at him- "Did you snap at me?" he asked, puzzled. Again, the script I was writing in my head, the one called I Am A Terrible Girlfriend And He's Probably Going To Leave Me Tomorrow, was completely different from what was going on in his head, where he was feeling bad for being irritable at me because he'd had a frustrating day, and was just looking forward to seeing me and maybe taking me out for a spin because he knows I love riding on the back of his motorbike whenever I get the chance.

We met. His eyes gleamed at the skirt, the stockings and the curls. He parked the bike and we walked- me mincing a bit in unaccustomed heels- to the cheap but fun place I'd picked for us to eat at. And even though the bike broke down (later) and the movie we'd picked to go to was sold out, we managed to make our own fun. We always do. And the black mood that had sat with me for days slowly lifted. He loves being with me. He loves that I know the words for obscure things (he can't get over the fact that I knew that the word for a monk's shaved head is a tonsure). He drools at my fishnetted legs and curled hair, but is equally inclined to say "god you're hot" when I'm standing in front of him with bed-head, sweatpants and no makeup. He makes me laugh with his stories and his imitations of his friends, he draws me cartoons and plays my music for his friends; he takes me for motorbike rides and always, ALWAYS gives me the warmest gloves when we do, and insists that I borrow his hats when it's raining. I can't believe it's only been 3 months since we first met (in fact, it's exactly 3 months today).  It's time to stop writing those glum scripts in my head and try to roll with things a bit more. Because this one's a keeper.

One of my favourite bloggers has a post that touches on this as well. You can read it over here; it's what inspired me to write this post.

On a completely different note... the Oscar nominations are out!  I don't know why, but this year, I'm pretty excited about them (well, partly because Grand Budapest Hotel made the list and I think that it was a damn fine movie). Although I probably won't watch the Oscars (I'd rather watch paint dry, honestly), I DO want to spend the next couple of months watching as many of the nominated movies as possible, including the docs and the foreign films. When I do, I'll blog about it here. (I'm definitely inspired by this guy, who also worked up in Barkerville this summer, and who is a smart and funny writer.)  Hey, if nothing else, watching movies at home is something my guy and I both love to do together. And it's dirt cheap.