Wednesday, March 31, 2010

I bought some Allspice. I don't really know what Allspice is and I do not have any designs to cook anything with it. I don't know how to cook anything except grilled cheese sandwiches. I just bought the Allspice because I like the way it smells and I want it near me. I brought it to work today in my pocket. Don't tell anyone.



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Sometimes I have elaborate fantasies about taking the sixth edition of American Psychological Association Publishing Guide, setting it on fire, and cramming it down someone's throat.



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Monday, March 22, 2010

un jour comme les autres






Being rather a fan of instant gratification, most of the time it seems too difficult to do something in November so that its rewards may be reaped in March. Not so with planting daffodils.





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Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Something I didn't remember that I missed since moving to where it's warmer: I like it when it's cold enough that I can see my breath.


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Tuesday, March 16, 2010

the sign of the teaspoon

My mother has Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Not the cute kind where you occasionally need to pick your cuticles until they're bleeding (I assure you it's adorable) but the scary kind that is accompanied by screaming, violent hair tearing madness. The obsessions were focused upon cleanliness and order.

When it snowed, our dog - who lived mostly under the deck so as not to get dog hair anywhere in the house - was not permitted to play in the backyard because the paw prints would mess up the otherwise perfect white cover. I would have to take the dog out to the park to play, which was a good escape for both of us.

If anyone disturbed, with the act of walking through the room, the parallel lines she'd carefully combed into the tassels of the rug, my mother would indiscriminately damn us all to burn an eternity in hell. She's not a very religious woman. Her cuticles didn't look too good either.

I would sometimes go outside in the snow and march around on the lawn to spell out my name in gigantic letters, jumping from the end of one letter to the top of the next. I wanted to make sure she would know it was me who had ruined the lawn and not blame the dog.



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Friday, March 12, 2010

Monday, March 08, 2010

This morning I accidentally gave K a little peep show. I thought he was at work because he always leaves the house by 7:30 on weekdays. So it was a complete surprise at 8:00 when he came through his bedroom door which is right beside the linen closet where I was digging for a towel for Shawn, dressed only in underclothes. He looked petrified for a second, then seemed to recover and said, Great are we doing this now? and started to pretend he was taking off his shirt. Funny man.

By the time I was dressed the two of them were downstairs at the kitchen table laughing at me and making fun. They sound like those two old bastards on the Muppet Show. I keep expecting to come home one day to find a note from them telling me they've fallen in love with each other and are leaving me.



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Friday, March 05, 2010

mmmhmmm

J's relationship with her mother reminds me a little of how it was with B in the end. Once it was clear things were never going to be the same he started to scramble - almost desperately - to unearth something from back then that could still evoke those feelings. And sometimes he could find something, some memory, that worked for a day or two. But time always gets around to telling you that the present is what's relevant. So you find something current or you disappear. He disappeared... because he couldn't exist in the present; he never really even tried to. He was almost past tense from the start. And this is almost exactly how C is now scrambling, struggling to dig up sentimentality that only exists for her, struggling to cling to a past that was only precious in her memory. J doesn't want those memories. C- and B - don't understand that children always want to move forward into the future and it is only adults who revere the past.


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My old school was on the news last night; a hostage was taken. No one was hurt. People are crazy.



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Spring break is supposed to mean crazy things but to me it just means I get to be alone. J is going home to visit her grandparents, Shawn is working through most of it, and I'm excited - because I am wild like that - about being alone with my new book, my old friend.


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I called to speak to Dad because it's his birthday, but I ended up talking to Mum for a great deal longer. She always has more to say and I wonder which of them I am turning into. I want to be like Dad because I have always related to him better, understood his quietude. I have always appreciated his way of taking his time, his gentleness with people. But it is my mother who I probably become in the end, impulsive neurotic and sometimes violent. Sometimes violently angry. Sometimes tearing things and people apart because there is no other way to make it clear that it is not okay, it is not okay, for things not to go my way.

I'm neither of them really. I do not have the inner tranquility to emulate my father's serene approach. I am too tired to be as angry as my mother. I love them both. I don't really understand either of them. But I love them now in new ways that I could not find when I was younger.


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I dreamed I parked my car inside a shopping mall, inside. Not in a fire lane or somewhere else obviously illegal, but right inside the shopping mall. It was towed and I could not find it. I told Shawn this dream and he immediately began to deliver a sermon about how irresponsible I am, as if this was real and not a dream at all. Sometimes I have to tackle him when he's not expecting it and make him fall down. Otherwise he'd be impossibly right about everything. I like it when he's trying to be serious but cannot stop himself from laughing. I wish I was big enough to squish him properly. As it is, I have to rely upon surprise.



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K told Shawn - in front of me - that he thinks I am "more fun but harder to live with" than his wife. Shawn laughed at this like it meant something profound and I scowled at both of them and mumbled bad words. In the last couple of weeks I have done nothing but read and write because I have had papers due. I have neither been difficult nor fun because I have been too involved to be either one. K has decided to attend counselling with his wife in hopes they may reconcile. I like the optimism behind this but Shawn is annoyed in the way only a close friend can be. He thinks H is not worthy of another chance. I don't know her well enough to know if she is worthy or not, but I like that K has started whistling and looking less grey. I will miss him and his watch when he leaves us. Tomorrow morning I am going for breakfast with K while Shawn and J sleep their lives away. I hate Dutch food.


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I have become embroiled in pranks and this isn't something I especially want to be a part of. My reputation as a zebra rustler is creating problems, especially because it's so easy to take apart an overhead projector with a screwdriver. These are not things that require much in the way of brains. Sometimes people are lazy. I should not be the one who has to point this out.



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This reminds me of the IQ tests I took when being skipped from first to second grade. This kind of thing would not happen now, I think, and with good reason. When I was a first grade student it did not matter, especially, that I was not emotionally prepared for these changes. It mattered that IQ tests indicated I should be in second rather than first grade. This was based entirely on cognitive capacity. I wonder what would happen if I was IQ tested now, if I would be demoted instead. I think it's a good thing that skipping grades doesn't really happen anymore.



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I'm uninspired about next week's plans. I don't like performing when I am supposed to be me. There's nothing dramatic about that.




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