happy

This year has been quite something. The big things that have happened have either been supremely excellent or heart-rendingly hard.

Hard or excellent, take your pick, it was a mostly unbloggable year Chez Butch.

Since not long after I started it, this blog became one of my main places for working internal shit out. We've all got that shit, I figure; most of it's not all that different from person to person. Maybe the details, but often not the reasons or root. And most of us feel terribly alone while we're trying to work it out. I wanted to feel less alone myself, and hoped that it would maybe make other people feel the same.

Which works fine if the emotional stuff you're working out are the increasingly weak aftershocks of things one or two decades old.

Peeling back the layers to get at the raw stuff means sharing the details. Without the context, it's just senseless wailing.

If the stuff you're dealing with is unfolding in real time, around you now, it isn't ghosts conjured by your messed up chemistry. It involves the details - and, more importantly, the feelings - of the lives of people you love. Who would, perhaps, choose not to share their lives with the internet.

And so, the hard stuff has been absolutely unbloggable.

It's all to do with family. I started 2009 with a lot of certainty as to what my life was going to look like in the near and distant future. That has shifted significantly and I have no real idea what my life will look like in 12 months, 5 years, a decade.

None of us do, not really, but I always liked to pretend. I clung to the visions I conjured up. I'm not sure that doing so was particularly good for me. This year I have been learning how to open up to what happens a bit better. That hasn't happened without a lot of crying.

The excellent stuff was both very much and only slightly more bloggable.

Chronologically last, I wrote a novel this year, which you've already heard more than enough about. It was a door slamming shut on one phase of my writing life. The next door is open, and I'm taking a breather before stepping through to take a look around at what's in the next room. It's exhilarating and a little terrifying.

Chronologically first, I fell in love. It crept up kind of slowly, which is an emotional first for me. I've tended to not so much fall in love with people as throw myself out of a plane at super high altitude without checking my parachute. I moved in with my band boy ex after we'd been dating for 6 months. Eric and I had our first four dates in four days.

The unspoken plan with D., at least back in May, was that we'd have a fun summer together, full of kisses and larfs, and then he'd head back to London and we would drift quietly and amicably back to being acquaintances. Except he didn't and we most definitely didn't. He stayed and I though that was excellent.

Normally I'd have been blogging it the whole way along, as I have with the other people I've dated in the past 4 or 5 years. This time, I wanted the space to feel all my feelings, to not pin them down or push them along the most narratable path. Those feelings continue to grow and I continue to want to give them free rein.

2010 might also be nigh unbloggable. It's hard to say. The stuff that started this year will still be playing out through the next.

We'll see how much I want to write about it.

The festivities for my birthday started on Friday, when Shelley took me out for a fancy dinner. We gossiped and laughed and drank wine and ate a lot of tasty food. They ended last night, when D.Jack took me out for a fancy dinner and we gossiped and laughed and drank wine and ate a lot of tasty food. In between, there was cocktail drinking and present getting and family members singing to me.

This is a crazy corny tradition in my family and one that I cornily get crazy excited about. At the end of my nephew's message to me, I heard my brother: "Say bye, buddy." Followed by Deckie's wee voice: "Bye Buddy!" Then Chris left me a good early morning message, saying that she hoped I was doing all the things I liked: breakfast with good people, booze, yoga, sex. Oh, I laughed and I laughed. Hilarity and cuteness is a very good way to start a birthday.

It is also a very good way to continue a birthday, and would describe the small gathering that Shelley held for me on Saturday night, at which were many cute people and many fun gifts (such as the amazingly fun Fashion Crimes Bingo, from J.) and many delicious drinks and snacks.

You may not know that I am what they call a lightweight, or "a cheap date," with regards to my drinking stamina. You may also not know, since I did not, that that if I have a reasonably-sized bowl of noodles and several delicious snacks I can, in fact, double my alcohol consumption without feeling particularly drunk. Which would be an advantage if said food also staved off the concomitant creeping hangover, where you feel pretty fine when you wake up and fucking awful by 3 hours later.

Still and all, what a great weekend. When you manage fit in most of the things that you're known for liking, it's really can't be too bad at all.

If I had to hazard a guess, I'd tell you I was happy. The only explanation I can think of for the number of strangers who smiled at me yesterday is that they were smiling back.

It's fall, though not technically, but that's what my skin is telling me. Fall is my favourite season. I love its hues and crisp air.

Last night d.jack and I took in the Astronaut Love Triangle at Milan's art opening. There was beer and flirting. There were pretty pictures and BLEEDING GUMS.

Which you will only understand if you were there to appreciate the genius that is ALT.

Now I'm waiting for my mom, it's her birthday today. I'm taking her out for a fancy dinner. We'll maybe go to yoga tomorrow. Go shopping for new interview clothes. Eat peaches and corn, bought on the side of the road.

+One+

Grace and I quite handily beat Greg and Bobcia at 4 games of Sequencia, mostly, we decided, because of the Polish Diagonal Sight Disorder with which both are afflicted. This, you will have to trust me, is hilarious, and I would explain why, except that by the time I finished explaining, complete with diagrams and flow chart and game plans, it would not be amusing in the slightest.

I love this game, though. I'm not a huge board game fan, having been turned off them at an early age by a childhood friend who cheated like mad, lied about it, and then made fun of me for losing. But I find Sequence - "It's part card game, part board game!" - thoroughly enjoyable. It's enough to keep your hands busy while you're chatting, and not so difficult that you have to pay much actual attention.

Bobcia also called me a boozer all night, as in "Get a load of this boozer here!" because it took me an hour to drink my one and only beer of the evening. I found this also to be hilarious, for reasons that probably do not require flow charts.

+Two+

One of CT's pictures from his trip here in August has been chosen by Schmap for the Downtown Neighbourhood section of their Ottawa site. I'm very excited about this. I was standing right. There. Swear to god.

+Three+

Does anyone want a yowling cat? I've just about had enough.

I've heard her through the earplugs, the past two nights.

If I thought it would make it better, I'd get her one of those automatic feeders. But it would have to have multiple compartments so that she could get fed at 3 am and 5:30 am, and probably 4 pm too, so I didn't have to generally listen to an hour's worth of yowling when I got home.

And sure, I could feed her earlier, but at what point does it stop, yknow? She's on a pretty strict schedule. Between 6:30 and 8 am, 5:30 and 7 pm, and 11 pm and 12:30.

If I fed her every time she started yowling, she'd go through a case of cans in a couple days.

Basically, if you are in the house and she hasn't just been fed, she's either yowling or I'm hunched up waiting for her to yowl.

At 5:45 this morning, I took my earplugs out, wrapped myself in a robe, stomped down the stairs and shut her in the basement. Then I stomped back up again, shut my door, plugged my plugs back in and slept, solidly and deeply, for about 90 minutes.

You know what I want?

I want my pre-diabetic cat back. I want the cat who ate dry food 5 kibbles at a time, who slept with me at night and put me to sleep by purring. Right now, I do not want the wet-food eating, stink-drooling, demon-infested yowl monster that my formerly sweet natured lovely cat has become.

Not much of a salesperson, am I?

+Four+

I didn't go to the Slow Dance Party tonight because the thought of strangers touching me made me want to back slowly out of the room instead.

+Five+

I think my post yesterday came across as less hopeful than I meant it.

It's really quite a relief to have stopped looking, and all in all, I'm pretty happy about it.

I don't really think I'm going to be alone forever, not necessarily, at any rate. Hence the wry half-smile and the murmur.

Maybe I'll find someone, maybe I'll find someones. Maybe I won't find anyone.

But what's the worst that can happen? Most of the women in my family who are over 50 - all but two of them - are single, either through divorce or death. And those are just the ones who are alive. All my great aunts were either spinsters, or widowed young enough I never met their husbands.

I come from a long line of women who have ended up without a partner, though not alone, not by a long shot. They've all lived full and happy lives.

What I need to do is fight against what pop culture tries to shove down my throat as the one true way. Difficult to do, because being coupled in some form or another feels right to me in many ways. But wrong in many others.

So I'll write and I'll knit and I'll run and skate and lift weights and practice yoga. I'll play board-and-card games with my friends while drinking one beer. I'll put on short skirts and go dancing with other friends while drinking several. I'll go to California to visit hot boys. I'll travel. I'll go back to therapy. I'll laugh at good jokes, read good books, eat good food.

And happily, mostly, I'll warrant.

Not too long ago, very randomly, I checked the comments on my old blogspot blog - remember her? It's rare, but I do get the occasional comment over there.

A few days before I checked, someone named Hannah had left a message saying she wanted to include one of my photos in a book based on the website We Feel Fine.

I thought it might be adverstising. I'd never heard of We Feel Fine, and while the comment was better written than other similar marketing ploys I've seen, still. Why not just email me? I am definitely not the hardest person in the world to find.

Anyroad.

No ploy, it's all on the up-and-up. And it's a totally crazy wicked website, though I would suggest reading the explanation before opening the actual app. Once you figure it out though, holy fuck. Expect to have half an afternoon sucked away in the click - or two or three or so - of a mouse.

Funny thing: turns out it's not my photo. Well, technically, it is my photo, in that it is a photo of me. But a photo of me taken by Woodsy while I was very happily sporting a binder clip in my hair.

We've both given our permission for the authors to use our words/image/likeness, and if/when the book comes out, believe you me, I'll keep you informed.

Okay, now I'm really really excited. With no melancholy. I think my mood started to lift when I realized almost half of what I was packing was pants removal related.

And also, while I'm about this happiness business, I love:

• eating tasty beet risotto with house friends
• bike rides for vegetables, even when cars honk
• orange vegetables
• being pleased, but not too pleased, upon running into my ex
• traces of campfire on my pillow
• knitting weather
• Winter Gloves

More from Chicago, I'm sure.

Okay, so here's another thing I don't like about buying sheets. How was I supposed to know that mattress people are sleeping on mattresses that are approximately 10 feet high, and so if I bought a queen-sized sheet set for my queen-sized futon, I would end up with a fitted sheet that goes two feet under the futon on each side and a flat sheet that would make pools of crispy cotton on the floor? I mean, really.

Last night Eric and I strolled down the street for a going away party. MC, who is/was the singer for the Solid Senders, is up and moving to Montreal to go to museum studies school. God help her if it's anything like library school, but Montreal! And she'll be living by herself for the first time. We advised her to get a cat so she wouldn't be talking to herself. She advised us that she had no problem with talking to herself. I had a glass and a half of wine, Eric had some beer, we ate chili, MC got really excited about my brownies, and the three of us had a really nice conversation about tattoos. We left just as Tracie was fomenting the move to Babylon for some dancing.

Eric worked early this morning, so I got up with him, and was up and out for a run by 8 am. Then greasy breakfast, grocery shopping, crossing the street to avoid the Somerset Vort-ex,* and back home.

Since getting home, I have been dividing my time between all the rooms in my house. Ironing board in the bedroom to measure what I was going to chop off the sheet and iron the new hem. Sewing machine set up on the kitchen table. Living room breaks to change music, check my email, and copy the bass lines from a 5678's song. Sheet finally hemmed, and down to the basement to wash it. Washing machine finished and out through the lean to out to the back yard to hang the sheets. More fucking around in the living room, back to the kitchen for dish washing and banana bread baking. Bread in the oven and off to blog.

And now, I rest.

*Jennifer, Eric and I all have exes who live on Somerset Street. Within two blocks of each other. On the same side of the street. Sometimes that's just too much, even if I am fond of my Somersetex.

On my way home from the latest installment of Divergence Movie Night, which is put on by Caitlyn Pascal, who has a To Do list longer than my arm and both moves and shakes, which involved the playing and watching of a movie called Muxes, which is about gay men (though I don't think they use gay in the same way we do) in Oaxaca state in Mexico, which was very well done and very interesting, but did make me think Where are the lesbians? in between loving the teachers and also the Man Who Was Always Drinking Beer, on my way home from this movie, I walked through the school yard that is the setting of a bit of fiction I've started working on, and this made me think of when I would have time to work on it, and that made me think of going to Halifax in July, where I will get to see Shelley and Steve, and that makes me very happy, and I will also be there with Eric for most of the time, and that also makes me very happy, and Aurele* will be there and I like Aurele too, though not as much as I like Eric, and I will bring my fancy pants laptop that only weighs 5 pounds which I bought because it is better to schlep a tiny laptop than a heavy typewriter, though it is not as fabulous, and thinking about Halifax made me think of relaxing and drinking beer, which made me think of the lone Red Cap I had in my fridge and the front porch that I like very much, which has a red chair and an ironing board on it, and the Red Cap made me think of Eric, because he brought it over, and Eric made me think of, well, many things, but specifically of a poster that he is designing for me for my reading in Halifax, and that made me think of how nice he is that he is designing me posters, even if he keeps saying "Oh, I like it. No big deal." and made me think that maybe I didn't deserve to be so happy and that made me think of some very unhappy parts of my life, and that made me realize that I do deserve to be happy, at least as much as I have deserved to be unhappy.

And then I was home and I met Jennifer's new upstairs neighbour, Danny, who is very nice and cute and gay and moving here from LA, and looks like a non-smoker, which I like, and then there was a postcard from Grace and Greg that mentioned grammar and that made me very happy and it also made me laugh, and then it was time to call Eric and so I got to listen to his voice for a few minutes, and part of that time not only was I talking to a very nice and cute boy who knows where my buttons are, but I was also opening that Red Cap with my very short shorts and thus holding the very cold beer against my very warm thigh and the whole experience was just very nice.

And now I am outside, on my porch, with my fancy pants laptop that I could afford to buy because of my generally rewarding fancy pants job, which I used to write a story for the Xpress that I really enjoyed writing and that the editor really liked and the fact that he like it and called it "tight" made me proud of myself, and I am enjoying that Red Cap immensely and even though it is a cloudy night, I am counting my lucky stars and they really do add up to a very large number.

*Just so everyone knows, Aurele is supposed to have an accent grave on the first e in his name, but it's dark out here and I can't find the NumLock button to make the accents.