Three Days

I got home last night from the Talented Tongues reading about 11 pm. Much later than I thought I would. Earlier in the day, I hadn't wanted to go. I was going by myself, it was in a venue over the bridge, my leg was killing me, I'd had a busy and mostly frustrating day.

Freya woke me up yesterday at a more reasonable hour - 7:30 am - without having woken me through the night. For all of you with children who don't sleep through the night, my hat is off. It's exhausting.

At any rate, there I was, fed and watered by 8:30. Two hours to kill before leaving for yoga at 10:30.

Turns out that neither the Herb or the Hartman's opens till 10 on Sunday, so if you try to go grocery shopping at 9 am, you can buy your Bridgehead coffee beans, but nought else.

Sadly, that was just my first attempt at grocery shopping. I got much further during the second. In fact, all my groceries were tallied and bagged before I went to reach for my wallet.

"Shit," I said.

The clerk was nonplussed. I've been going there regularly for years, and this is the first time I've sworn at the checkout counter.

"What I need," I continued, and at this she started to look wary. She'd just asked me if I needed any extra bags. "Is my wallet."

Lucky for me, they're lovely there, and let me store my bags behind the counter for 20 or 25 minutes while I went home and got my money.

Third times a charm, I suppose, since I managed to avoid any mishaps, and ran into Eric, who, if I may interject, I never ran into at the grocery store while we were dating but who always seems to be buying food now. He saluted me with a baguette.

I was relieved to get home, and to crawl into the bath to relax my sore thigh. The internet has slightly misreported my bowling injury, though I am almost always pleased when the internet talks about my ass.

Nope, what happens to me if I do approximately 70 lunges with my right leg in about two hours without a thought to stretching at any point, is that my ass is fine, but that one of my hamstring muscles goes from mildly disliking me to outright spitting vitriol.

It's too bad, because I had a good time bowling. The activity was pretty fun in and of itself, though man, I'd forgotten how much I dislike doing anything that requires any kind of physical dexterity in an environment that basically forces people to watch.

Because even though the look in my friends' eyes told me they meant it when they said I looked cute when I bowled and that they were charmed by my robot-like pacing off of the distance between start-line and throw-line, the words themselves were achingly close to the words my classmates used in the decade of gym class I was forced to endure. Nothing is meaner than a 12 year old girl, the sticky sweetest knife sliding between your ribs.

Still and all, it was a fun time. Like Sequencia, bowling is enough activity to keep you occupied but not so much you feel like you're not actually getting to hang out with your friends.

But back to Sunday afternoon. After 70 lunges the day before, a 25 minute walk to Centretown and back in the morning, a yoga class + a half hour of walking to class and back, plus two more 25 minute walks to Centretown and back to finish my three-part shopping, I was grumpy about going out, even if it was to hear people read erotical. I was sore, I was tired, and it was going to be my 7th night out in a row.

I felt like I should, like professionally it would be stupid not to go. And I'm pretty good at making myself do things if I really think I should do them.

I'm glad I went, though, and for only tangentially professional reasons. It made me realize that it's been a dog's age since I've been to a reading without having to do some reading myself. It's a pleasure to just sit back and enjoy being part of the audience, listening to how other people play with words. I did end up doing some open mic stuff, but there was no pressure and no worry about it.

It was also a pleasure to hang out with Amanda, who I haven't seen in a dog's age, and talk writerly stuff. What inspires her, how she gets published, what she's working on, typewriters.

Today continued that trend, when Jennifer and I hied ourselves and our computers over to Bridgehead for some writing. I didn't get that much done, maybe a page's worth of stuff. But I did fill her in on my writerly goal for 2009. More on that later.

The rest of today has felt pretty lazy, though only if you consider two loads of laundry, baking bread, cooking beans, vacuuming the couch, sweeping the house and spot washing the baseboards lazy. Which I don't, come to think of it, but the luxury of sticking around my house, listening to the new Animal Collective album and clearing out a bunch of crap that's been piling up around my house has been very soothing, indeed.

Tonight, I'm really looking forward to cracking the last Guinness in my fridge, playing some more records and enjoying this space where I live.