christine

It seems I've lost my blog-head. I miss it.

For years that's how I walked around, my brain full of intros and outros; thinking of a phrase that really needed to be written down; the words I might use in a vain attempt to make you see what I was seeing.

That doesn't happen any more, for whatever reason. I think it started with wanting to keep my love life more private than I had. I think the novel last November finished it. I've been pulled more to fiction and longer pieces, and lord knows I've got a limited amount of time and/or energy for writing.

At any rate, that in part explains why I went to Winnipeg and came back without posting even once. I thought about it, but in that way where you think you should want to do something, not because you're bursting to do it.

But Winnipeg, yes.

I went out there for a long overdue visit to Chris, who I befriended a few weeks into library school and was the only thing that made my life in Halifax bearable - until we added Grace and Greg and Daniel to our twosome and we all got each other through the special kind of hell that is an MLIS.

Right, Winnipeg.

If you stand in one spot in Chris' hall you can see both the Assiniboine and Red Rivers. The Assiniboine is wide and leads you straight east into the sunrise. The Red is a snake's curve through the elms way off in the distance.

They've got a swank pad, her and her man, with two balconies and lots of natural light. I had my own room and woke up to that sunrise every morning, though only enough to think "I should get up and watch that from the balcon-"

We took the bus; we walked. I saw several local characters - Fast Freddy, former shoplifter and pool shark, who takes good care of his shoes - Someone Low, a strange writer-type man with a knack for saying just the wrong thing - Eric Pyle, about whom Chris' man said "Some indie rockers develop job skills when they realize they're not going to make it. And then there's Eric Pile." - and then an Ex who shall not be named, but about whom I'd heard a lot and was more famous to me than all those other people combined.

There was art, a movie, diners, bridges. The Nonsuch at the Manitoba Museum brought on the vertigo I hadn't felt in months. Chris swears up and down it was moored solid, but my inner ear saw fit to inform me otherwise.

There was sitting and reading and talking and talking. We fell easily back into step - we always do, after the first hour or so of disorientation.

Standing at the bus stop early Sunday morning, waiting for the 20 Academy to take me to the airport, we talked some more. Chris told me about flying business class - for cheap - from DC to Chicago.

"It was so nice," she said. "All this room, and food. The man beside me was pretty grumpy. But I didn't care, because I had a beautiful fruit plate."

I started laughing, hard. And crying a little too, a little wet around the lashes.

"I don't know why, but that sentence encapsulates everything I love about you."

She hooted and threw her arms around me. We hugged tight and kept laughing.

What a Friday!

The excellence started before midnight, actually, but carried over into the wee hours. The nervous making email I sent off a few days ago was an email to D.Jack, in which I laid out what was going on in my head and heart. I thought there was a decent chance it would be well received, but there was enough doubt that I did not get very much sleep. The decent chance, I'm more than happy to report, was much much better than that.

Which means I did not get very much sleep.

When you do not get very much sleep, 6.30 am rolls around even faster than normal. But I hauled myself into the shower, got dressed up in my office drag and headed off to the wrap-up meeting for a work project. I met my boss there and drank too much coffee and fruit that tasted of onion. All went well, so I was glad about that, not to mention being in a too-tired dreamy happy good mood to start. As we were cleaning up, my boss got the call.

The letter of understanding was in from our funder. I had a job.

Not that I was ever without one, but my last day was rolling around with alarming speed, and the thing about a house is that it's expensive. And also, if you have been looking for a job in Ottawa in the last little while, you will know that there's not a shit ton out there.

On the way back from the meeting, we hit the LCBO and the bakery. When everyone who was away assembled again, we gathered in the board room and called the people whose last days had already come and gone. None of them were home, but we left happy cheering messages for them.

That, I will tell you, is already a fucking good day. I am lucky to report that there's more.

At around 6 pm, I headed off to the airport to pick up one Chris from Winnipeg. Chris and I have been friends now for 10 years. One decade! We met in the third week of library school, and spent nearly every damn spare minute we had together for about 20 months. Since then, we've visited back and forth, though she has been far more back than I have been forth.

On her way here, she was sitting beside this bear hunter guy, and they got talking about far away friends and keeping in touch and he said "How long does it take you to get used to seeing each other again?" And she said "No time."

It's true, every time we see each other, it's like she just walked the four blocks up North Street from Gottingen to pop in. Though usually an hour or so in, one of us almost always says "It's so strange that it's so normal! It's so great!"

And we are always right.

Christine is mad for the podcasts. She listens to them while she does her logic puzzles.*

Yesterday, she wandered downstairs to tell me about a science one where some cardiovascular guy was talking about how if you listen to your favourite song it will expand your blood vessels as if you've done an aerobic workout and make you very happy. But only if you don't listen to it more than once every two weeks. Any more than that, the desensitization sets in.

Today, this afternoon, after the market and the Herb and the Hartmans, I was puttering, cleaning for dinner, chopping for dinner, sifting for dinner, my iTunes providing the background. She was feeling a bit blue, with the hormones, with the grey sky and impending winter. I was trying to be entertaining. She was lying herself out on the couch.

"Is there anything I can do?" I asked.
"No, no."
"You sure? Tea? Food? Hot toddy?"
"Oh, yes maybe."

That helped somewhat, the whisky and the cloves and the lemon. I kept on with the cleaning and the chopping. She was a muddier and muddier puddle every time I look over.

"Oh chicken. I feel terrible. Are you sure there's nothing I can do?"
"No," she sighed. "There's really nothing. Exercise would help, but I'm not prepared for that here. I need to get my light box out when I get home. But thank you."

The song changed. Moved seamlessly from one angular and melodiously melancholic song to another. The light bulb above my head went on.

"If you could listen to any song in the world, what song would it be? What song would expand your blood vessels?"

In short order, Rubberband Man was coming through the speakers. She was up off the couch almost immediately. As it was ending, she hauled out her iPod and off we went. When Shelley and Steve got here for dinner, we had a dance party in the kitchen. Chris was smiling and laughing and neither puddly nor muddy at all.

The moral of this story? If your dear dear friend has the random sads alongside wicked fierce seasonal affective disorder, don't be confused as she gets more and more deflated as an album called Autumn of the Seraphs winds through a darkening mid-November afternoon. No, dear internet, at that point you should know that it is time to get out the funk.

*1) Yes, you read that right. 2) That tickles me to no end. While I can deduce that there are other people who do logic puzzles, as evidenced by the giant website she uses to get her fix I do not personally know of any others. Though maybe I know dozens, and they're all too embarrassed to admit it. Fear not! my logicians, for your kind is a kind I love.

Chris says "Okay. They're applying metadata to these photos they're digitizing, right? Except it's students creating the metadata. So I look at this one photo, of the legislative buildings, and the student has applied the subject 'government'."

And I hoot, say, "You've got to be fucking kidding me. Like who is often inside?"

The same conversation, an hour later...

I say, "So I have to send out this cranky email today saying 'Hi everyone, Just a reminder that on the shared drive our capitalization convention is not ALL CAPS.'"

"Good for you," she says. "We've got to fight the good fight."

And I say, "I know, and thank you. But guess what was all caps. In amongst all the folders I set up for the major bits of our work, like "website" and "catalogue" and "networking" and "admin," there's a new folder called TRACKING MESSENGER. I'm curious, so I open it, and what's inside? One file. Called TRACKING MESSENGER."

And she can't speak, she's laughing so hard.