Radial Symmetry

You know what is a very nice thing?

I will tell you.

A very nice thing is to have emailed the person with whom you are currently involved in intermittent, but very fun, pants removal, and to have told them that your visit with your family was stressful and it was very difficult to leave your grandmother not knowing if you would see her again, and then to open up your door and find a bouquet of lilacs on the step.

I think these will be a very lovely addition to the Marathon Date.

Smokin Hot Mae and I have had one of the oddest starts to dating I think I've had. I asked her out for a coffee, which turned into a beer, which turned into two, which turned into a tipsy walk home through the snow. So I asked her on a date date. The soonest we could schedule it was two weeks after. It was a smashing good time, so we decided we'd like another. In 10 days. It ended in a torn skirt and was very much fun. We decided we should do that again, though perhaps leaving out the ripped seams. We only went 7 days, that time.

This weekend, we're going to make up for it. Our next date, 10 days after our last date, goes from 6:30 pm on Saturday to sometime in the evening on Sunday.

We're making up for lost time, seems like.

I can't quite say how I feel about these gaps. I find them frustrating, for sure. That's a lot of time in between the kisses of someone whose kisses you quite thoroughly enjoy. And email, I do love email, to which anyone who has any kind of a relationship with me can attest, but, well, it's just not as easy to get to know someone that way as it is in person.

But I am enjoying that I want to see her again, and that the longer the gap, the more frustrated I become. It'll simmer down for a while, but I'll get an email, or see a picture and think, fuck, how many days?

It's all I can handle, as well. I can feel my heart struggling to come back alive, a thick ka-chunk as a bout of adrenaline shoots through its twisted veins and arteries and it lands hard in the bottom of my ribcage. The slow stretch and snap of a romantic feeling winding through.

That sounds dour and hopeless, but I don't mean it that way. I find it encouraging. I'm surprised I even have these jolts of actual feeling for someone else.

Whatever organ let me believe in Fate and True Love and The One is dead, starved of oxygen at a key point, perhaps. Maybe it'll grow back. Maybe it won't.

I'm not sure that's a bad thing. Because if what I get out of it is a day of backgammon and the newspaper in bed with a hot girl who is solid and thoughtful, funny, smart, creative, community-minded, warm through her core and a fucking great kisser, the kind of girl who will leave lilacs on my doorstep and offer me tea and hugs at just the right time, then I think that organ may have been vestigial.

Granny had been looking right at me just before I took this picture. As soon as she realized I had pulled a camera out of my bag, she went from an expectant smile to this wistful look. She doesn't like having her picture taken any more, but I think she looks beautiful. There is a grace and serenity about her, a hint of a smile that wouldn't leave, that makes me proud to be her granddaughter.

Yesterday was her birthday, her 94th. Originally, Amy and I had timed our trip so that we could spend part of her birthday with her. Instead, we started home yesterday around the time that the ambulance was supposed to show up at the hospital to take her to the nursing home. We could have gone in for another morning visit, but my father was going to see her off, and my uncle was going to be at the other end. We figured that there would be a lot of commotion already, and that the more people there were, the more commoting it would be.

Monday night we took her some fish and chips - "Oh  this   lovely!" she whisper squeaked, so tired of the sandwiches and soup and neverending carrots - and some birthday cake and ice cream, and we took over the Activities Room to have a party with my aunt and uncle, mom and dad there too. And sometimes also George, The Ward Wanderer.

Sitting up for a couple of hours tires Gran out. Having visitors tires Gran out. So after we finished up the cake and a bit of desultory conversation that was pretty evenly divided between planning what was going to happen to Granny and her stuff, and the difference between Brock Road and Brock Street and where each of them lead, Granny wanted to go to bed. Uncle Wayne and Aunt Marilyn went to pack her clothes up for the morning commute, Gran got taken to the bathroom, the four of us waited a bit.

I spent my time there very conscious of the fact that the coming half hour was not impossibly going to be the last half hour I had with my Gran.

When she was finally back in bed, after the waiting and the bathroom and the changing and what have you, after we had joined her there, it was time for the four of us to go. Gran was tired, the woman in the next bed was obviously upset there were so many of us.

"Okay, Granny, we should go." Amy and I both took a hand.
"Oh   dears  When?"

Talking with Granny has always been a bit of a guessing game, but new rules were added after her stroke a few years ago, with even more added after this last illness.

"Amy'll be back soon," I said.
"In July," Amy confirmed.
"Just a couple months."

Granny furrowed her forehead. "Maybe  won't be    then"

She had been playing variations on this theme all week. When you hear someone say this, your first reaction is to respond with "Oh, no! Of course not!" Which is what I'd said earlier in the visit, even though I was immediately sorry I had. Which is exactly what dad said right then.

"Oh Mom! You'll be with us for ages yet! You're not going anywhere!"

No words came out, but you could tell Granny didn't agree. It was a lie. She knew it was a lie. Maybe not a couple months, but ages? No. Not going anywhere? No. I used my free hand to stroke the back of the hand I was already holding. The skin there is loose, thin and soft. Like the finest grained sand, like sinking into down.

"Well, Gran, if you start doing poorly, Dad'll let us know right away and we'll be on the first bus to come see you. We'll definitely have another visit."

It's still a lie. She could drift quietly off in her sleep. She could have a stroke and die in a quick flood of blood through her brainpan. So I may well have lied, but it was a lie with a ring of the truth. The furrows smoothed out, her shoulders relaxed into the mattress. I felt like I had done right by her.

We told her we loved her and left the room. I looked back, but she was already looking out the window.

Do you know what I have had enough of? Small talk. Conversations with my father that take hairpin turns into uncharted and awkward waters. Neverending planning to see people to whom I have nothing to say but "Oh. Huh. Oh really? Still in Ajax. Huh. Oh. Nice. Yep, just down the street. Yeah, I probably will borrow my friends' wagons. Ha ha."

Last night Amy and I had a surprisingly good Thai dinner in Keswick. You might not think that a small town on the shores of Lake Simcoe might be the place to find a good green curry, but I assure you, that's faulty thinking. The food we had last night was as good as, and in the case of that curry, better than, any Thai food I've had in Ottawa.

The brunch I made this morning, for my mom and sister-in-law, for mother's day, during which I conscripted Amy to cook, even though it was her birthday, was very definitely not better than any brunch I've had in Ottawa. I've poached eggs before, but not very often. And cooking tip #42: If the water is not hot enough, the egg whites will disperse into the water. You won't think this is a problem until you do get the water hot enough, and the egg white molecules, thoroughly entwined with the water molecules, will cook and turn the water a cloudy white just before they create a foamy scum on the surface, just before you put the whole pot in the sink, grab a skillet, and start frying.

So yes, you can also add: kitchen disasters in other people's kitchens to that list.

Amy is going to kill me, because I'm pretty sure she doesn't like this picture. And you know, it's not the most flattering picture I've ever taken of her. Maybe because I was laughing so hard I had to hold my breath to take it? And that was making her laugh? And I don't think either of us knew why exactly we were laughing so hard except it kept getting funnier and funnier?

If you have an extra few hours on a cool, sunny spring Thursday, I highly suggest you take a road trip with my sister. You will have a most excellent time.

I love that drive. We used to take the 401 all the time, which makes no sense, since I live 45 minutes north of the 401 and so does my family. Sure, it feels faster on the 401, because you're driving at 140, and when you take the 7 and 7A, you're lucky to push 100. But the back roads take the same amount of time and way less gas.

On the 7, too, you can stop whenever you want, and you end up in these weird rural way stations. The first place was a complete hardware store. With nails by the pound, and boots, and vacuum bags. The second was a greasy spoon restaurant serving samosas and curry, with a lot of signs in the bathroom telling you how to flush the toilet and to please turn out the lights. I got out of the car and was taken with how clean the air smelled, yellow-green, like those fuzzy tails that hang off of birch trees. The smell of the bathroom hit me even harder, a mauve fake floral sitting in cakes: one on the back of the toilet, one on top of the paper towel rack.

Then there's the dusk. The 7 and 7A take you mostly through countryside, forests and if, you time it right, through farmland as the sun is going down.

As always, being home is a maelstrom of planning with immediate family, aunts and cousins. I find it incredibly frustrating, because none of them are communicating and it's Amy and I trying to figure it out, and mostly Amy on the phone, because I hate that part, and mostly me saying "I don't know, yeah, we could do that then, but oh, we need to be at the hospital by 5, and-" And quite frankly, I'm not sure why most of them want to see us, since we get together and there's nothing to say, nothing in common. But that's blood family for you. Some people you can spend 5 hours in a car with and still think it could have been longer, other people get a begrudging half hour.

It is a very great lot of pressure to write the first post on the new system. I've been thinking hard since last Friday about what I should write. I wanted it to be brilliant, just in case there were new people coming to this space for the first time.

I don't have time for brilliant.

Guessing from the incredibly slow turnover in my Google reader, I'm guessing that I am not the only one navigating those particular waters.

Maybe it's the spring busy time. After such a long arduous winter, the past couple of weeks have been insanely busy and/or stressful for almost everyone I know. Has been for me, what with the housebuying and dating and website fiddling. The only thing I have not tried to change is my job, and even that is only because I decided not to apply for the perfect job.

And I'm off to Stouffville tomorrow, to visit my sick Granny. Though accurately, she's no longer sick. She's over the infection that put her in the hospital, but the turmoil of it has made everyone realize that she's no longer safe living alone. Including her, though she is not happy about that realization.

It's good that she's healthier, it's good that she'll be out of the hospital once my dad and uncle have found her a space. And I worked as a housekeeper in an old age home from 15 to 18, so I can tell you that at least one of them was a pretty clean place.* The people who worked there were mostly nice, there were activities.

But they're all institutional. That can't be helped: the horrible greens and pinks, the disinfected smell, the terrible food from powders, the unrelenting sameness. The most I can hope is that she'll have a room to herself and we'll be able to move her favourite things over. Her white lamps with the blue flowers on them. Her two frames of decorative plates, the ones the same powdery soft blue as her eyes. The Robert Bateman print of a cardinal between them.

Come to think of it, that'll fit right in.

I'm more sad about this than I've been letting on, even to myself. I don't want her to move.

First, because she doesn't want to.

Second, selfishly, because she's the first of my elderly female relatives to have to leave her home. That's how I've seen the end of my life - a heart attack at home, maybe a few days in the hospital after, and then done.

Third, because I can put myself in her place and I can feel how lost and frustrated I would feel at my body betraying me so badly I had no choice but to leave the space that had made me feel safe.

Generally, I don't love going home. It's a lot of visiting, it's very tiring. Very little alone time. Most visits, I don't look forward to going, and I only go for a few days. This visit, I'm trying to rush the time before Amy arrives and we head out, until I can see Gran and hold her hand, try not to cry for her that everything changed.

*Provided I wasn't too hung over.

Tonight: I have turned down fun with Shelley, M-C and Mel; also turned down a very different kind of fun with Smokin' Hot Mae.

Tomorrow: I am going to do something I have never, ever, done before. Read the first draft of something that I have probably just finished that day. If you've ever seen me cringe when someone's said "I just finished this next piece a couple hours ago, it's maybe kind of bad, but I hope you like it" you'll know that it is out of character and not a little hypocritical to do what I'm about to do.

You might think tonight and tomorrow are unrelated.

I'm taking some work time to blog, which I rarely do, because as soon as I go home, it's business time. I'm sick of reading all the stuff I have to read. I'm at the point where I would rather read potential shite than the decent stuff on tap. Most people who will be there have probably seen me read a bunch and they're probably also sick of what's on tap.

Alors.

There's a tofu burger in the fridge and leftover bibimbap waiting to be hotted up. I'm going home, turning on the computer, and writing, whatever the fuck comes out, until I can't keep my eyes open. And then I'm going to get up early and start again, and I am going to read something new, and I hope it won't be kind of bad.

I think that my Gran is dying.

Not in an "everyone is dying" kind of way, but in a "I don't think I'll make travel plans that don't involve going home" kind of way, because, as Shelley put it, cancelling a fun trip to go to a funeral is not going to make the funeral any easier.

I have no real reason to believe she's dying. Yes, she's almost 94; yes, she's in the hospital; yes, she had a serious stroke nearly 5 years ago that we were all surprised she survived.

But: she's been living quite well on her own up to now, and lots of people live to be in their late nineties; the infection that put her in the hospital is under control; under her soft exterior, she comes from farm people, who are a tough people.

So I'm left with the woo: a general feeling that she has had enough.

I've had this feeling for a long time though. Over the past year and a half, I've seen my grandmother turn from an incredibly gentle, soft-spoken, laughing woman, to one prone to fits of irritation and frustration.

She's started giving away more and more of her possessions.

Everything she owns, she knows who gave it to her. My last trip back, she gave me back the tiny pig sculptures I'd given her for Christmas in 1983. Both Amy and I also got a compact, complete with original cakey powder. She knew the back story for each one - who had given it to her, when, why. I don't know where I've put mine.

When I talked to her on the phone two days ago, we talked for just over two minutes. By the end of it, she was frantically tired: she mumbled "I have to go now" through still-broken teeth and exhaustion, hung up as I was saying "Bye, Gran, I love you."

I don't know what to think, exactly. I do love my grandmother, very much, though we had a blip about 8 years ago that severed an innocence in our relationship. We never spoke about it face-to-face.

She's a generous woman with a warm soul. My mother once said, "If you want to know the truth, you go to your Grandma C. If you want to feel better, you go to your Gran." It was the truth. I have heard about three unkind words out of my Gran's mouth.

So I hate to see her so much not like herself. Not the self I knew her as.

Maybe I'm wrong about this dying thing. Maybe she's not, or not immediately. Right now, not having seen her, only having heard her wheezy voice over the phone along with the stories of her hallucinations and severe lack of mobility, I feel it in my bones.

My bones are preparing me to grieve for a woman who has been the glue in our family for at least as long as I've been around. But maybe that's just the spring damp.

Phew.

My slot at the 160 Workshops went well. Really well. I can see where I did okay, and where I could have done better, both in terms of planning and presenting. But all in all, I'm satisfied I did a decent job. I didn't make a fool of myself, and no one got hurt.

I also attended Heal Thyself, a workshop on herbal remedies, where I met quite a few people interested in foraging. Foraging for food is something I've become a little obsessed with lately, and hopefully I'll get around to posting about why sometime.

The energy swirling around the place was just amazing. For those of you not yet lucky enough to know, the 160 Workshops are put on by the Yes People.

Who are these mysterious people, you ask? The Yes People are the people who say yes! to sharing their knowledge, who say yes! your knowledge is worth sharing too, who say yes! to opening their home and their kitchen and their warm warm hearts to friends, acquaintances and strangers.

And one of the Yes People is the Smokin' Hot Mae Callen, with whom I managed to steal a snuggle at the end of the day.

Before that though, before even my meltdown on Saturday, Andrea and her BH came over to take a gander at my apartment, and decided that they would really like to take it. Not that it's mine to give, of course, but what landlord wants to go looking for someone when a tenant he's really liked for 2.5 years hands him one on a silver platter? Not my landlord, it would seem.

That was another thing stressing me out that I didn't realize was stressing me out. I finally got up the nerve and called him to tell him that I'd be breaking my lease and moving out. Even though it's illegal and I knew I could get out of it, my lease runs yearly, ending September 30. I've always really liked my landlord, who is an efficient, kindly, paternal Frenchman with a wife about 20 years younger than he is.

I didn't want him to be mad at me. I didn't want to cause trouble.

But you can't waver on buying a house because someone you only speak to when there's water in the basement might be upset. And you can't carry a mortgage and rent for that reason either. So I dialed. He answered. Fuck.

"'Allo?"
"Mr. [Redacted]?"
"Oui? Megan?"
"Yes, it's Megan. How are you?"
"Oh, very well, thank you. Very well. And yourself?"
"Good, thanks. In fact. Umm. Well. I've bought a house."

My shoulders were up around my ears, and it wasn't until he responded that I realized I'd bitten my lip.

"Oh! You have! Oh my! Congratulations! You know, for young people, with a steady income, it is the smart thing to do. Many people, they cannot do it, maybe with their background, or some hardship, you know. But if it is possible, it is really the best idea. Such good news!"

And we talked details and everything was fine, and I felt just a little more tension drain out of my back.

In other home front news, I've started going through my books and cds to figure out what to sell, made plans to hang out with the Smokin' Hot Girl who's moving to Montreal on Wednesday, have almost finished the book I'm reviewing for the Venus Envy Newsletter, updated my financial spreadsheets and paid my April bills, I've had a good chat with Jennifer, a good long chat with Shelley. Now all I need to do is write a story and get caught up with the k,g,r,f, and I'll be sorted out completely.

All that fakey-fake middle-class faux-enlightenment inspirational bumf (cf. Oprah, Lululemon, Starbucks) says that you should do one thing every day that scares you.*

I am a creature of habit. I rarely do things that scare me. Unless you consider ordering the special omelette at brunch a scary activity.

Unless you consider saying yes to too many things.

Here in Ottawa, spring has sprung. I haven't had a whole evening at home by myself since last Sunday, and won't until this Wednesday. An evening I will spend holed up writing a book review to send in just under the wire for Shelley.

Wow.

I just went through the list of things that I need to do, people I want to see, commitments I've made, in the next week and I can actually feel the stress coalescing just under my sternum. My chest is feeling tight, my diaphragm has contracted up. It's like a slowly twirling ball of TV static, throwing sparks off down my nerves.

One of the things that is freaking me out is the workshop I signed myself up to give tomorrow. Giving a yoga workshop seemed like a good idea when I offered, but though I know yoga, and I know giving workshops, I've never put the two together and I'm pretty freaked out that it's going to go badly.

And did I mention the reading? On May 3rd? For which I don't have anything new written and my time to write is being slowly eaten up by other things I've said yes to and are really important to me to do? Yeah. That.

Also, and. That my grandmother is sick in the hospital? Apparently okay, but she broke her teeth when she was hallucinating during a fever on Friday? I'm going home on the 8th to visit.

And perhaps I said something about buying a house? Which is a good decision but a big decision and I think it's finally sinking in now that the busy running around schedule shifting part of it is done.

And also maybe did I say that I'm dating again even though I still sometimes cry when I think about Eric and how much I loved him and how fucking much it hurt when he told me he felt like he hadn't been a very good boyfriend and intimated that he couldn't do better, not right then, not for me? And that I'd picked the wrong person, again? When I was sure that I hadn't?

And one of these things is something that I'm going to fuck up, and something awful is going to happen. I'll look like a fool, someone will get hurt. Possibly badly. I'll drop the ball and that ball will have been made of glass and we'll all get sliced up.

Wow. Okay. You know, I just wrote myself into a complete gasping crying trembling panic attack.

If I say no to you in the next few days, my pounding heart is why.

Put that on a cup-sleeve and drink it.

*With apologies to Eleanor Roosevelt who said it first, but didn't think to slap it on a $50 yoga bag or $4 cup of coffee. Sucker.

I cannot even describe to you how excited I am about the Queer Spelling Bee tonight. Even though I now know I am a terrible out loud speller.

When I saw the facebook note about the Bee, I emailed Don at the Shanghai right quick to get my name on the list.

Who wants to spell? I-D-O.
Who likes The Gay? T-H-A-T-S-M-E.
And China Doll said, let there be space.

Now, I am generally not a competitive person. I hate board games. I hate races. I especially hate team sports. When forced to compete, my response is generally "Okay, you win." Because I guess it's nice to win, but it's not worth the stress of worrying about winning.

What is it about spelling? Dunno. 'Cause I got my name on the list and thought "I am going to fucking clean this up. Oh, I'm being cocky. I am going KICK SOME WORDY ASS! Oh, the hubris. Victory! Before the fall, Butcher. It's mine! Oh dear."

So when I took my sex word thesauri over to the Smokin Hot Girl's house for her to help me bone up on my words,* I was shocked and dismayed when I got most of them wrong.

Not just a couple. Most. Like 90% of them. If I tried to rush the spelling, I'd inevitably forget something important. If I tried to go slow, the syllables would get all loopy in my head and I'd get bogged down, stuck in the middle of whatever dirty word I kept asking her to repeat.

It was a good lesson, and though I wasn't pleased that I was a bad out-loud speller,** I was mighty glad my bubble got burst in front of a lovely young lady and not a crowd of people expecting the librarian to rock the Queer Bee house.

Even though I am not likely to clean up tonight, I don't care, because I'm going to be in a room full of people who are either spelling or cheering on the people who are spelling. That's a lot of word love and that's alright by me.

Queer Spelling Bee
Shanghai Restaurant, 9 pm
$5, proceeds to the Village Initiative

*Yes, it was that hot.
**On paper, I rock. Spell check, pfft.