falling down

When Fiona and Ruby were born, I offered up my babysitting services. For a long time, the Grs didn't have babysitters, and I was honestly a little scared of putting two wee babies to bed, when I wasn't even used to putting one wee baby to bed.

Since the Grs have started using babysitters, they've called me a couple times to see if I was available. They called tonight.

I didn't make it to the phone.

I spend many of my evenings at my kitchen table in front of my computer. My main floor is pretty small, just living room and kitchen separated by a peninsula of counter. My table sits at the end of the peninsula. Making it an archipelago, I suppose. I sit in the kitchen, facing the living room window that looks out onto the street.

It's a great table, found in the garbage around the corner, in near pristine condition, a round pedestal table with flaps that come down to make the perfect sized-rectangle for my flat surface archipelago. It's marbley brown with chrome.

As I sit at my table, at breakfast, in the evenings, over the course of a few days, the table gradually millimetres its way towards the living room window. The progress is so gradual, I don't notice that it's happening.

Until.

The phone will ring, or someone will knock on the door, and I will try to get up quickly. I'll push the chair back. But since the table has moved forward, so has my chair. When I push, the back legs will get caught in between two floor tiles. The top will keep going. I'll catch myself before I go teakettle over arse, but then I'll rebound back and bang my ribs into the table. Then I'll try to turn sideways to make my getaway, misjudging the space between the chair and the lowered flap, banging my knee and thunking back down into the chair.

I am nothing if not graceful.

So surprise! I didn't manage to get the phone. But I did get the message, and could I babysit on Sunday? No, damn, I couldn't. But I was free tomorrow night! Ha, did they need a babysitter tomorrow night, ha ha.

They did!

So tomorrow night, at 6:30, me and my camera will wander down the street to put two hilarious adorable children to bed, and then we will blog about it after for the pleasure of the entire internet.

Since this morning's entry was so bleak, I thought it deserved a follow up. I'm feeling better. Still a little not myself, but moving towards normal. I didn't have a treat, since I think that a big part of this stupid crazy craziness has to do with the fact that I was eating wheat, dairy and sugar this month. A lot of it. The last time I went off those things hardcore, I stopped with the PMS altogether.

I also went to yoga, which would have been more relaxing if I hadn't sprained my toe. Yes, that's right, I hobbled myself doing yoga. After I caught my breath, I laughed pretty hard.

This has happened before. Once, when I was probably 17 or so, my friend Teresa and I got all stressed out and crabby with each other because we were running way late to pick up Erin to go camping and one of us had forgotten something. And she'd packed the trunk like some kind of numbskull, so my stuff wouldn't even fit, never mind Erin's stuff, and guess who had the tent? We were both digging around in the trunk, trying to fix the mess.

She, I guess, gave up and stood up. And, somehow not noticing I was still futzing away, slammed the trunk down. On my head. And then, when it didn't shut, right away, with no break, she slammed it down harder. Still, again, on my head.

I reeled back, staggered, and fell onto my front lawn. She ran over, stood over me, apologizing like mad, her words pricks of light on the backs of my eyelids.

It was so ridiculous, the whole damn thing, that I started laughing, belly guffaws, and then she started laughing, belly laughs too, and tipped over onto the lawn beside me, and I was holding my head, and she was holding my head, and we were laughing and crying and laughing. And still late, but it didn't really matter because what we lacked in promptness, we made up for with hilarity.

Thanks, you all, for being so nice.

I know I should write something clever for you today, heading into the home stretch of NaBloPoMo, but I got nuthin except wicked bad sad PMS, like the entire fucking world is ending and all I want to do is cry and curl up in bed and think about what a right fuck up I've made of my life, and what a knob I am, and how I ruin everything nice and good that I ever manage to find, how I always say the wrong thing and just can't leave well. enough. alone.

And I know it's all not true, or at least not all true, but it is sometimes very very hard to listen to that tiny calm voice of reason when what feels like some form of insanity is whirling around so fast over the top layer of my brain that the calm voice is just a murmur and I can't hardly make out the words.

I've been a bit down this weekend. Haven't felt much like blogging.

However, I am having the back-skull tingle of a new story. It's a bit of a problem because I don't really know how to go about writing stories any more. It's been over a decade since the last time I wrote fiction. And I was bad at it. My stories made no sense. So I stopped.

Anyway, this latest thing started with a guy who teaches at a school near here, got rolling with an email that one of my mom's friends sent her, and every once in a while, someone will say something that sets that tingle a-tingling. It's weird, a very physical sensation. As soon as I can, I pull out my little moleskin notebook (one of the three notebooks I have on me at nearly all times) and jot it down. We'll see if the jots ever turn into anything.

Went for dinner with Adam and Jennifer on Saturday night and had a great time. Then met up with Liz and Matt for drinks at the Aloha. Liz is working at a museum in Kingston, and just finished cataloguing this crazy cabinet full of glass disks used to generate, well, I forget. It has to do with x-rays, I think. But it's not actually x-rays. You'll have to forgive me: the first time she told me about it, I was drunk so I forget the details; the second time, it was loud so I didn't hear all the details. I must pin her down in a quiet place with no alcohol and get the details again.

Also coming up: haircut! birthday dinner for steve! yoga! bellabombs fuckingmachines mufflercrunch! yeah!

And on the 25th, I start my bass lessons. Very exciting. Speaking of which, one of the things I did this weekend, after I discovered that January is a Blessed Three-Pay Month, was go buy a very tiny and pretty cheap practice amp, so I only have to lug the behemoth down Misse's steep and slippery stairs one more time.

I have a propensity for falling down stairs. So much so that my parents actually put grippy tape on the stairs to their basement in their Stouffville house. I kept ending up in a heap at the bottom. It happened all the time in the Ballantrae house, too, but the stairs were already carpeted. With white carpet, which my dad had a bug up his arse about. There's no way he would have put grippy tape on that carpet for anything. We did have plastic runners on the carpet for a while, but they got all yellowed and gross. I kind of missed the plastic runners when they were gone; I always did like to lift them up and press my fingers into the little spikes.

Anyway.

The last spectacular fall was here in Ottawa, on the stairs of the Big House on Preston St. I had nothing in my hands, there was nothing on the stairs but carpet. And out went my feet from under me. No good reason.

Falling down the stairs fucking hurts. And it's not even the falling. If I didn't instinctually grab for the wall and railing, I'd probably just end up in a slightly bruised heap six or seven stairs down from where I started. But instincts are hard to beat, and so I grab for the wall, grab for the railing, and the inertia of my body pulls against the muscle and tendon holding on, and two days later it feels like someone laid me out flat and tried to tenderize me. I always end up walking around for a week like a wizened old man, wincing when anyone touches me anywhere.

The last time I fell down the stairs even a little was when I was living with my ex in the Small House on Preston St.

There may be bats here, but no more falling.