jennifer

Although nothing terrible happened this weekend, and, in fact, some very fun things happened this weekend, I have spent most of the past two days in a foul mood. I have no right to bitch, because everything that is happening to me, with the exception of the comuter, is good. But two of the main good things happening to me require the marshalling of a lot of small details I'm not enjoying. During weather that is nigh unbearable.

One of the very fun things is that Ivan and I ended up going to see The Dark Knight on Friday. Earlier in the week, we'd talked about maybe going, but then an early afternoon phone call confirmed no. All good. I had cupboards to scrub; Dish Mountain to be scaled; boxes to pack.

The phone rang just as it was getting dark. She wasn't getting any work done, did I want to go after all?

I looked at the dirty dishes, I looked at the boxes.

"Yes. Yes, I would like that."

The movie was terrible. I think we were the only two peope in the theatre who thought so. At least we each had back up.

It was nearly 1 am when we came out of the theatre. The air was soupy.

"God," Ivan said. "I don't get this weather here, in what, Southern Ontario?"
"I'd say Eastern. But six of one, really."
"Okay, yeah. Whatever. In Vancouver, you look outside, it's grey and drizzling, and you know it's cold. Here you walk out and it's like you opened the dishwasher mid-cycle."

That phrase - dishwasher mid-cycle - didn't stray far from my poor overheated brain as I zipped from place to place picking up this and dropping off that. There are lots of things I probably hate more than the damp film of sweat a mid-summer Ottawegian day leaves over your skin, but by god, I'm hard pressed to think of them right now.

Maybe the dry, flaking skin of a February day.

And another thing: I could probably go on and on about how much I miss my computer and why, for fuck's sake, did the p die three weeks before my long distance lover came to town? And why, for FUCKS SAKE, didn't I think this through and just copy and paste the p until he got here? There are lot's of words without p's! That's why god invented ctrl-v! Chrissakes.

Lucky for me, my friends rock. Instead of going on and on, I will just transcribe this conversation.

Me: Don't those people at staples know that right now that computer is my sex life? They're killing me.
Jennifer: Well, feel free to use my computer when I'm gone. For whatever you want.

That, my dears, is what they call Above and Beyond.

And also, I love video Skype. Pixellation and all. Take that, 3000 miles.

This morning I went for a run along the river, and saw two of my favourite birds.

First though, I ran through the flocks of Canada geese, which generally I don't much love. But the goslings are half-growed now, gangly teenagers in fluffy dirty gold coats. The birds are so used to humans down there by the river that they sit on the path, two birds here, three there, one loner a little ways down, 8 goslings all in a clump. Every once in a while, one may turn its beady eye on you and give you a little hiss, but otherwise you're darting from right to left around them and timing your steps to miss their shit.

To get my sleepy body warmed up, I walked a few more minutes than I normally do, taking me a little further than I normally go. Instead of turning at the first tree past the sign for Parkdale Ave, I rounded the corner past the tree, you know that one, the one where the river widens and spreads out in front of you? It's the seagull apocalypse there right now, all screeching and wheeling and diving for mayflies like it's the end of the world.

I turned around, and the graceful dipping neck of a great blue heron caught my eye.

There are three birds that remind me of my grandparents' house: hawks, kildeer, and great blue herons. They have a special place in my heart, all of them, imbued with happy family memories.

So I stopped, jogged in place a few moments, watched the bird pick its way down to a rock right in the water as it stalked something below the river's surface. I was hoping to watch it make the kill, because it is always impressive to watch beings do what they do best. But the prey must have disappeared, doing what it does best, and the heron turned its back on me, the white and black v slick down the back of its head, opened its grand wings to their widest and awkwardly flapped back up onto land.

I kept on moving home, through the already unbearable humidity.

Twenty seconds from the end of my playlist, a kildeer cut a jagged swath across the path, up over the stone wall to my right and down to the creek that comes out of nowhere and goes someplace else.

Life is just a good place to be right now, these past few days. I think I've managed to convince a certain cute Californian that he needs to visit Canada's capital this summer. I got a Mysterious Package from a Mysterious Person that rendered me speechless and hungry. Saw some good rock and roll with a good group of people last night. Lolled on the grass in Westboro to watch a great reading by Jennifer. Had a satisfying chat with Shelley, wherein we commiserated about how being in between houses sucked and how we couldn't wait to live together.

Now I’m half naked under the fan, the bath water slowly evaporating. J. and I are going for sushi, and I’m going to have wakame, which for me is the kale of Japanese food. After that, J. and I will get foxified, hit the Babylon Club, drink some beer and tipsy-traipse our way home. Maybe it will be raining and we’ll get wet. We probably won’t care.

Jennifer: Did you knit this afghan?

Me: Yep.

J: How old were you?

Me: Oh, I dunno, in my teens.

J: How did you get it so long? That's crazy!

Me: Circular needle. The stitches all bunch up in the middle. I had no idea how many stitches there were - that was supposed to be the short end. Took forever.

J: How long?

Me: Jesus. Huh. Five years? I started when I was like, 13.

J: So not really in your teens, but when you were a teenager.

Me: Yes. Precisely.

Funny what strikes a chord with people. So far, the post with the most comments is about organizing Eric's records. The one about sheets was surprisingly popular too. I guess it makes sense, since those of us lucky enough to have a bed spend a considerable amount of time in contact with it. The records, I have no explanation.

Jennifer was a peach on Sunday.

First, we had a lovely gossip and catch up in the car. You would think that since becoming neighbours we would see each other all the time, but that has sadly not turned out to be the case.*

Second, Ikea. Sometimes I love Ikea, sometimes it freaks me right the fuck out. Too many choices, too much humanity, a squirm of people slugging along the mandated path through objects tiny and large screaming "buy me! buy me!". And that chair - the Poang - that has the pneumatic arms pressing it? I hate that thing. When I told Jennifer that I hoped it wasn't working, she said "I'm going to start keeping a list of the weird things that creep you and Adam out. He hates lamps." How can you hate lamps? I thought. And almost said. But then again, why would you bother hating a chair being pressed pneumatically?

To my great pleasure the pneumatic chair pressers were out of commission when we got there.

It was actually a fairly calm trip as Ikea jaunts go. As we were walking in, J. said "I love playing Ikea bingo."
"Ikea wha?"
"Crying baby, check. Couple melt down, check. Yknow."
But we didn't see either of those things. Nothing really untoward happened. Not very dramatic, but also not very aggravating.

The only small drama of the trip came from me. You know what I think is obnoxious? Companies asking for your postal code. Fuck that. When the cashier asked me for mine, I said "Unnnnh, for...?" and pretended to look very confused.

I know exactly what they need it for, and while "So we know what neighbourhoods want catalogues," is probably on that list, it's probably not as high as say: what neighbourhoods buy big ticket items? what else do those people buy? where's the real money? who should we care about? And may I say again: fuck that.

But because I am at least moderately polite, what came out of my mouth was "No thank you, I don't need a catalogue." Which is an answer to a totally different question, of course, but she didn't ask again.

I got all the stuff on my list, plus one or two more small things, and walked out having spent $22 - half of which was a purchase for Eric. J. spent less than $10. Success indeed.

Then the real reason for the trip: Linen Chest. Or Linen Closet. Or Bed Bath and Beyond. Or Beds and Other Things That Make Your Life Comfortable. I don't need to remember it because I don't have to go back there for a decade.

That's right:

TAH DAH!

They are 350 count, white, egyptian cotton sheets. They are, in fact, crisp but soft.

Jennifer's presence worked in a totally different way than I expected In the end, she did not just pick one and make me buy it. For the best really, because no one wants her friend sleeping on sheets she hates and thinking of you every time she hates them. Instead, I was acutely aware of how much time I was taking and how much circling we were doing and I did not want to take too long or drag her all over the hell's half acre of the warehouse-like store looking for the exact right thing at the same time I knew there would never be an exact right thing, but still wanting to make sure I had covered all my options.**

So before I went, I decided WHITE. And left the rest up to my quixotic brain and the pressure of another person to seal the deal.

I'm happy with them. At least with how they look. They feel nice on when I touch them, but they were just put on this morning. And I'm leaving town.

Oddly, the first person who will sleep on them is neither me nor my paramour, but my paramour's friend, Housesitter Ian, while I'm in Halifax. That did give me pause, though I don't know why. I considered putting the sheets on after their first wash, getting it on with Eric, and then re-washing them. But that's a lot of work for something that doesn't really matter. In a decade, will I remember that Ian was the first person to sleep on them?

Now, probably yes.

*Although, I was having some people over for drinks on my porch on Tuesday night when she and her paramour and their three dogs pulled up in his boxy orange car. All we could see of the inside of the car from the porch was two dogs staring at us - the humans being too high up to be visible. "Hey," I said, very pleasantly surprised, since J. had left just a couple hours earlier. "It's Jennifer and the Man of Science!" Carolyn looked puzzled. "You know those dogs' names?"

**You know what would make my life easier? If linen stores were organized differently. Instead of by brand, say, which I'm sure the companies pay for (so the richer companies can get better spaces and it's way harder to comparison shop) it would make much more sense to organize sheets by size (king, queen, etc.), then type of sheet (set, flat, fitted, pillowcase, skirt, etc.), by material (including thread count), by solid or pattern and then by colour (or dominant colour, in the case of patterns). Okay, that sounds like a lot of work to put stuff away, sure, but think of how much time it saves in the end! And I'm gonna have to do it, yes, I am going to say something in the exact words of my father: I'm neat because I'm lazy. Why would I waste minutes searching around for something right at the moment I need it when I could just spend 5 seconds putting it in its right spot to begin with?