I'm doing better than I was yesterday. Time helps. Also, my extensive goth training has prepared me for such psychological buffets; I'm predisposed to hate the world and be bitterly disappointed when my peers and bosses fail to understand me. As such, a Saturday spent cleaning out a dusty storage locker, followed by a sumptuous hakka lunch and an afternoon of napping, knitting and the Smiths' first album, has restored me. Or at least, it has restored me to previous, functional levels of bitterness. We can all breathe a sigh of relief (or one of ennui) at that.

Of course, last night helped, too. Last night I was privileged to witness the first Friendly Rich concert in a long while, and while it lacked the edgy chaos of a full-on FR Show, it was more than enough to make me happy.

It started late, as Mason went to bed right after school and I was tied up in getting Blake out the door. We didn't leave the house until 6:45, shockingly late by current standards. Since this was a new venue for us, we decided to find the place before we foraged for dinner. We parked on Dundas, in the approximate area we were going, and were stuck for ideas. I spotted a gallery I had wandered through last summer with Scherezade. Although it was late, there was an opening and the place was starting to fill up. "Let’s go in there and ask directions," I suggested. "Did you remember your monocle? We want to fit in."

Wow. The last time I was in that gallery, it was split between a pop-artish show and a graffiti show, both of which I found fairly boring. This show by Tessar Lo was called "Everything we wanted, in our nostalgic future" and it was about a dreamy childhood state that made me intensely happy. Large canvasses with dayglo sketches coming into or out of being, the figure of a small child sleeping or watching beautiful things or flying. All the colours were hot and seemed to be on the edge of disappearing. A shark collided with an airplane with a spray of sparks, while a small boy watched below. A plane sculpture emerged from the wall, with the head of a bespectacled boy leading the way. There was a bed installation with art pinned up around it, little figures hanging from the canopy with strings, and the kind of epigrammatic short sentences that are very nearly clues. On top of that installation was a large diorama, featuring wee representations of the things found in the canvasses (elephants! Frogs! Mountain with glasses!!).

I wanted to play with it all. I wanted to go to Casa Nova, drag Blake out of bed, and take him to this exhibit. I wanted to pull out my cheque book and blow three-months' mortgage on a small boy sleeping in the midst of leaping yellow frogs. (I didn't.) Mason and I were enthralled. We did the circuit a few times before leaving to find the venue and have dinner, then we came back between dinner and the show. By the time FR was done, we expected the gallery to be closed. "Hey! It's still open!" we yelled gleefully, and plunged back into the opening night crowd for a final circuit.

The crowd had thinned, and we were able to find the artist and congratulate him. "This is amazing!" we crowed. "We've been back three times!" And then we bought a small print and disappeared back into the night, much happier.

"collision course," our favourite.

As for our main activity of the night, Rich did not disappoint. He recognized me (or seemed to recognize me), which impressed Mason. Despite my tragic failure to bring my g.d. camera, I probably wouldn't have needed it. Unlike all of my previous FR Shows, there was more room for standing than sitting. Dancing to "Gentleman's Club" instead of waiting to be menaced with a blow-up doll by Soot? Okay, I guess. It was a smaller collection of musicians, but no less impressive for that. As long as I get the snarling, howling, belly-slapping dead-on precision of Friendly Rich himself, it's more than worth it. I got to buy a CD, Mason got a t-shirt and button, which seems more of a privilege than opportunity. Rich ignoring a persistent high-fiver and cursing out a newbie were just bonuses.

Labels: art, music, outings

I didn't get the job. Spent most of last night in a bitter stew of disappointment and self-recrimination for getting my hopes up. Up way too early, so I got dressed and knit instead of trying to sleep. The worst part was going to be this morning, when I had to tell people the news, and share how I felt about it. I did not want to share.

It was better than that, though. There had been not one job offered this week, but two. When I got in, another teacher who had tried for the other job-and failed-looked at me seriously for a moment, and then knuckled up.

"My eyes are puffy," she complained.

"Me too."

"Why didn't you call in sick today?" asked another teacher.

"Oh, that would've looked great," she said as I simultaneously said, "We thought about it."

"Separately," I added.

But with that out of the way, my day got better. Now I'm hiding from my brother's disappointment as a crummy stomach is keeping me from the gym. Seriously, though. Am I supposed to be made of stone? Tonight's for drinking and vaudeville-style performance art, not health.

Labels: angst, bat masterson

I interviewed (again) for a position of responsibility yesterday. I find out today if I got it, or if I have to interview (again) for the new school (sigh). The build-up this week has been very positive, and I'm glad of the opportunity for personal growth, but knowing that the news is coming makes me about as nervous as I can be without screaming and fleeing the building. And I still have one more class to teach. Joy.

In preparing for this interview, I made a list of personal qualities that I feel bear upon the job at stake. It made me realize that I have been genuinely experiencing a period of explosive personal growth. Just about every area of my life has been expanded and improved. Like that gross character Jack Nicholson plays in "The Witches of Eastwick" says, it's likely the result of the triple D: death, divorce or desertion. I also wonder if it's simply the extra energy I might have given to a second child, had there been a Burt for me.

Last weekend I escorted Blake to Beaver! Camp! in Hawkley Valley. We are extremely new Beavers - we joined this calendar year and Blake isn't even invested yet - but I knew that this was going to be our camp as soon as we heard about it. I think I may have loved it more than he did, and he really loved it. Constant food, bunk beds, snow and fires. Hiking, tobagganing, playing inside, reading quietly. He loved having people around him at all times, and he loved how late it all got before lights out (midnight! my stars!) I did a lot of knitting, and talked to the section leaders, and bossed other kids around. It was heaven. Intense, tiring and wet, and Monday had to be an isolated day at work just to decompress, but it was wonderful.

When we got back from camp! I took a short but angrifying nap (naps don't make me happy) and got ready for my theatre date. Mom bought me tickets to "Little House on the Prairie: the musical!" to honour my deep love of the books, but her neck was acting up and so Mason went with me instead. This meant that we had a chance to go Winterliciousing at the Biergarden, which is serving a trout and lentil main that is worth writing a valentine to. We were in excellent moods when we arrived to the theatre, but all was ruined when the play started.

It's not that I don't like a good, cheese-filled oat opera. (Mmmm...cheasy oats...) I like "Oklahoma." But this was so painfully written that I had to start taking notes during the first half, just so that involuntary snorts of disgust and loud bursts of inappropriately-time laughter were somewhat restrained. From the notes:

• first 15 minutes incomprehensible but not their fault; I couldn't stop rolling my eyes long enough to concentrate on the story
• good score; wretched book
• wow, these lyrics make "gonna paint a wagon / gonna paint it fine" look deep.
• Riley as cowboy: "I'm looking for a man. A Sales Man."
• definite Nathan Fillion vibe to Pa
• just starting to wonder if all those insane chances Pa took in the books were a result of a death wish
• Ma, square dancing with her skirt above mid-thigh?? I'm pretty sure the girls only saw their mother's knees when they emerged, squalling and bloody, from between them.
• Melissa Gilbert can't sing, which is not her fault. So why didn't they cast appropriately? Not fair to make her the cash draw and then surround her with 10 year olds with stronger voices.
• um, is Nellie supposed to be a direct steal of Galinda in "Wicked"?
• has anyone on script duty ever been bullied by an actual girl? Ever?
• this is simplified to the point of idiocy. I'm going to start drooling in self-defense.
• bothering my neighbours by laughing loudly at sincere lines
• it's like they through all the dramatic highpoints into a blender, with a scoop of ultrasincerity that reads as gay camp
• it's like they fed all the books to a dog and then used whatever it barfed up the next day.
• um, girls betting on ponies? Without their mother disowning them forever? Since when did they move to Gomorrah (or worse, Kansas City)?
• um, where did the sudden post-colonial self-consciousness emerge from? I don't remember Pa waiting for the government's permission to start stealing Indian land. Did they need something to fill time instead of using the actual story?
• blind sister taken out in public, encouraged to gamble instead of buy candy, then left to fend for herself during a wheat fire? Does that make sense to anyone?

We left at intermission, which must have been a tremendous relief for the people around us. I've read "The Ghost in the Little House," and I'm perfectly aware of how a bare-bones life story was used as part of a right-wing polemic to justify extreme self-sufficiency. Ultimately, there's no point in complaining that the story was changed to suit modern sensibilities; this story was never published in its original form and became popular because it comforted a society ripped up by the World Wars and hungry for a time of strict Puritan rules, the possibility of living outside them on border societies, and the promise of prosperity from a continent that already seemed played out by the time Rose ran her mother's manuscripts through her typewriter.

Yes, I suppose I do spend a lot of time thinking about this stuff. At least I gave everyone a break and left early.

Labels: books, camp, outings, snark, theatre

This morning I picked up Blake from his mid-week overnight at Casa Nova. He always seems tired on Thursdays, but today more so than usual. I tried to get him to talk about it when we got to my parents'.

"Are you tired?"

"Yeah." Disinterested sigh.

"Poor guy." I unbuckled his seatbelt.

"It doesn't matter," he returned stoically as we looked for his schoolbag.

"Why?"

"Mommy. It doesn't matter if I'm tired." He struggled out of the car. "What matters is that I get out of the car before you get angry." And without looking back, he slouched into the house.

Labels: blake

As I was sorting through my recent pictures for yesterday's upload, I did something I've never done before. Let me explain. I love my camera to bits, and I love taking pictures, but I, like so many of us, find the sorting and displaying tedious. When I make up my mind to share an event, I usually have to spend at least an hour (or at any rate, longer than I want to) evaluating, resizing and naming pictures. So when I do it these days, I do it with a kind of triage mentality and try to swiftly locate the area of greatest need. I don't linger. I barely have time to glance.

Imagine my surprise, then, when after I was done, I rethought, went back and readied more pictures. More! The mind reels. But I was helpless. Helpless in the face of Sammy.

Sammy is Q & Maggie's baby. I'd seen pictures of him on this great Internet of ours, but I hadn't met him until two Sundays ago, when I was invited to a send-off party for the family. Maggie has a job offer in Europe, and as of this writing they are long gone. I had knit a hat for Sammie in the summer, part of my big baby binge knit that encompassed Sabine, Callie, and this guy (who was then known simply as Punchy), but I was slow to co-ordinate the giving of the hat. This didn't particularly bother me, as a) it was summer, and no time for knit hats, and b) I figured I had all the time in the world to mail it to St. Catherine's, where I thought he lived. So I waited.

Then on Boxing Week, trying to upload a knitting pattern for a crocheted Homestar Runner (I know, I'm a nerd, move on), I figured out that my website was broken. When I poked around the webhost, I saw that I had no account. Oh crap! I thought, Q's finally decided to stop letting me freeload off his website! (For those of you who came in later than, oh, ten years ago, Q has been hosting this site for me since 1999. For awhile I paid him. Then I stopped. I figured this was my reward for neglect.)

I panicked! I started a new account, paid for a domain registration, started uploading files. Q messaged me, asking what in the hell was my problem. I slowed down. We exchanged emails. He assured me that he hadn't kicked me off; his account had switched servers awhile ago and this was the first time I had tried to access the site since then. I took a deep breath. And, over the course of a few days when he probably had better things to do, he fixed it for me. I kept my spiff new domain registration (rocketbride.net hurray!), things were back to status quo and he invited me to the send-off party, where I met Sammy.

Pictures don't adequately convey the majesty that is Sammy; in fact, pictures almost entirely fail to do him justice. The only thing that pictures do is remind the fortunate what it's like to hold this little guy as he placidly chews on an educational toy. (Author's note: don't chew on the other side at the same time. That way lies frightened tears.)

Throughout the party, whenever he was free, either Mason and I were holding Sammy. He was like the pinball machine in my cousin's basement, which I gravitated to during long visits every time my other cousins were bored with it. His presence lingered: on Monday morning, during the dull drive to work, Mason and I both spontaneously lamented our current lack of Sammy.

And this is why I went back for more photos. Because everyone needs to see him, if only to wonder what, exactly is the big deal.

Me: Are you ever coming back?

Maggie: Well, for visits, I guess. The plan is to stay until Q pisses off the Swiss.

Me: So, 6 months, then?

Maggie: Yeah. 3-6 months.

(Also, Sabine was there but I didn't get to carry her around as much so the crush wasn't as extreme. Sorry, Sabine. You're also awesome.)

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- Rocketbride's adventure of 1/24/2010 09:26:00 AM -