Blake is back home, and the Mommy Clock has resumed. I can't say that I maximized my time, although I did buy a lot of crafting supplies that weren't yarn (and also bought yarn) and I did go to the gym until it made me violently ill. I shall have to complete the remainder of my marking in the dim hours after Blake goes to bed and before I collapse, which – hey! – makes my life exactly the same as it is when I'm working. Except I don't have to wear keys around my neck or pack a lunch, I suppose.

New Year's Eve was low-key, as befits the end of a decade that began in such fear and hope. When I showed up to Stacy's house ahead of the crowd in 1999, I was wearing a green velvet evening dress, a month-old engagement ring and a prominent hickey. When I showed up to Stacy's house ahead of the crowd in 2009, I was wearing a BSS t-shirt and my rings were at home, awaiting refinement to become some more relevant piece of jewelry. I left Mason sick in bed, but there was very little guilt; I was pretty sure that nuclear silos weren't about to malfunction and separate us forever. I limited myself to one beer, so that I could get home to hold hands for the countdown. And I brought knitting.

New Year's Eves in the new normal are a mixed blessing. I always have Blake until Christmas, but lose him on Boxing Day until the next year. I appreciated the chance to "cut loose" or whatever, but I still miss Blake in the midst of it all. Especially when I'm around other parents who have babysitting for the night, and didn't have to wait a full week to see their children.

(I'm not even going to get into how depressing it is to see all of my friends from ten years ago with or expecting a second baby. I can forgive the Boy many things, but I still have trouble forgiving the shuck-n-jive of so many years before he admitted that he never wanted kids in the first place. He's not the only reason why I still have just one kid, but he's a very convenient scapegoat.)

I wouldn't have left the house at all if it weren't Stacy's birthday the day before NYE, and if I hadn't spent the better part of two days working on her present. A last-minute inspiration really elevated this; who wants a regular elder god when they can have Cthulhu Bride? Behold!!

(We went to my grandfather's for lunch yesterday, and I was sewing on limbs as we visited. Everyone but Mason was puzzled by the project but I decided not to explain; what is it? is a better question than why would you bother? Stacy understands, I'm sure.)

The feature no one was asking for: a decade in review! Let's begin.

2009 was all about getting healthy. Lots of exercise with my brother, taking vitamins and oil of oregano (which for us was a game-changer). Lots of dancing in the fall, our troupe moving on from one-performance wonders. Lots of good food and cutting back on all the great beer. Greatest teachers: Valizan & Nic.

2008 was being single, really single. A single mom with a mortgage and a full-time job. Turns out I liked it a lot. Started bellydancing in January, discovered ATS, met Juuki, fell into her troupe. Started dating Mason in May; the summer was a whirlwind of late-nights, early mornings, new music, incredible food, and kissing. Visiting his condo was like taking a vacation from my suburban life. I fell in love with a current band, then all the associated bands. Lots of concerts, taking advantage of new custody agreements. A dance performance that didn't suck. New, local friends with common interests. Greatest teachers: Mason & Juuki.

2007 was splitting up with the Boy and fighting it with every particle of my being. Therapy, self-help, biting my tongue, lowering the bar, going to bed right after dinner, starting depression meds again. Bought a new house and had two months to enjoy being out of the fucking basement before everything else fell apart. Helping with Poppy's twins, trying to get pregnant to forestall the separation. Lots of crying. Greatest teacher: the Boy, who made me find myself again.

2006 was a new job in the best school I'd ever been in. Feeling like a good teacher again, being in love with my department and my job, meeting people who were more than colleagues and became friends. Camping with Blake & the Boy at StanFest. Social knitting for the first time, and getting hooked on monthly get-togethers. Greatest teachers: all the other knitters I met, celebrity and otherwise.

2005 was my first year as a working mum. Redefining work and home time, learning how to parent a person and not an inarticulate doorstop. And tonnes of knitting, once I learned how. Oh my god, the knitting. Greatest teacher: Debbie Stoller, via her books.

2004 was one word: mother. Making and losing friendships with Toronto mothers, trying hard to connect despite my new basement address. Trying out local mothering groups and feeling lost. Seeing old friends and being the first with a baby. Lots of frustrations, lots of love, very little sleep. Greatest teacher, again: Blake.

In 2003 I was adrift. I was recovering slowly from the previous year, but not losing weight or feeling happier. Got pregnant and went to Holland, in that order. Got off the depression meds and then spent the rest of the year reading up on parenting and getting used to the idea of living with my parents while my husband finished his undergrad degree. Greatest teacher: Blake.

2002 was the worst year of my life. Starting in November 2001, my teaching degree started to shake as my host teacher and evaluator treated me like an idiot for completely opposite reasons. Help appeared from every direction, but I barely squeaked through to the spring with my sanity intact. My new job in Ontario seemed heaven–sent, but after our exhausting August move cross-country, the Hosgboro administration in my new job made my host teacher look like Glenda, the good witch of the North. The camel's back being broken, I tried therapy and finally lots of drugs to get through the day. The new drug took away some of the depression and gave me twenty extra pounds in return. Started exercising, stopped eating meat and tried to turn it around. At the same time was trying to fit ourselves back into the social scene by clubbing with the young kids who now surrounded the Boy in university. But also there was Convergence 8, the last great dress-up, travel, punk rock bender of my youth. Greatest teacher: Theresa, who made me feel normal.

2001 was all about church. Fell in love with Wolfvegas and built a social life around the local United Church. Halifax visits for fun and sushi. Returning home, we were showered with love and glory for days. Discovered that the train was truly the best way to travel after 9/11 cancelled the planes. Slowly becoming a wife. Greatest teacher: Rev Robyn.

2000: Prepping for the big day, living in my parents and taking extra courses so I could go to teacher's college. Going to the city on weekends, living in the Boy's increasingly-shitty apartment. Married two weeks after my birthday and moved to Nova Scotia two weeks after that. Intense loneliness and even more intense bonding with the Boy. Slowly discovering the local community, and how supportive it could be of outsiders. First student-poverty, then the Boy's new job, and his days away on the back roads of New Brunswick. Missing pizza, clubbing and all of our friends. Greatest teacher: the Boy.

Labels: angst, blake, family, friends, nostalgia, the boy, triumph

Blake has been gone for 7 hours and I've already started binging on the computer. Ahhh. If only my modem wasn't a piece of crap and if only I could wrap up this silly Homestar fan pattern I wrote this fall. The pattern is all written, but. I'm spacey from sitting in the basement for most of the afternoon and my hands are cold. Still, I'm very happy that I get to mellow out this much today; it's been a long string of late nights and early mornings. Today is for knitting, writing, and sorting through Christmas pictures.

Yeah, it was a good Christmas. Every year gets better. On Christmas Eve Blake sang with the children's choir at church, the choir I somehow found myself directing this October. Blake has been practicing with this group for the better part of two years, but he has never made it to performing. I don't really mind. He wants to sing with the kids; he doesn't want to be in front of everyone with them, and that's much better than the reverse. And this year he's been singing with them. On Christmas Eve he scored a hat-trick: he stayed in one place, he kept his fingers out of his nose and I could hear him singing. A mother could not be more proud.

I made the genius decision to bathe him before church, so all we had to do when we got home was change into pj's, set out the cookies we'd baked for Santa, and go to sleep. Good thing we made 20 cookies; between Santa and my brother they were all gone by Christmas morning.

korknisse guards the few remaining cookies

This year Blake got a fish and some books and a foam sword and a shirt with a rocket on the front. I got a knitterly necklace and a book on regency sewing and the first Smiths album (on vinyl, my latest drug) and a quarter-year subscription to a yarn of the month club. Mason got old books and new books and a luxurious knit neckwarmer and a shirt with an evil cupcake. Someday soon he'll get another custom calendar, full of this year's concert photography.

And all of us got Homestar for Decemberween.

Yesterday we had dinner at my parents, which was very small but very emotional. This is the last big holiday without my grandmother, as she had a stroke on New Year's Day last year and our last memory of her in health was at my house for Christmas dinner. Mason was there with me, which helped. Blake and Nic got into a few scraps, which didn't. And when it was all over we packed up and went to Mason's sister's house to visit after their Christmas dinner (none of us could have eaten anything more if we were paid. We still managed to have cake, though.)

This is where Blake got to run around with his almost-cousins and receive all the noisy, battery-operated toys that I avoid like the plague. My favourite, and his, was a huuuuge Clone Trooper helmet with a very loud voice setting. He took it with him today for the 1 ½ hour car ride to see the Boy's aunt. I'm sure it will also be his father's favourite toy by the end of that ride. Hee.

This year I find myself nostalgic for lost family, dead and separated by feud or distance. This year I miss long-gone parties with my friends in-between family dinners; bread dragons and 3 a.m.'s in the Dance Cave. This year I listen to people talk about how much better Christmas is when you only go to one place, and I just nod politely. What I have gained in tranquility I can never get back in bustle. I love my house, but this is the time when I wish I was around for brunches and drinks and coffee in the city. And that's what Christmas is for too, I think. Nostalgia and melancholy are alright, as long as you don't binge on them. Me, I'm just trying to stay away from the chocolates and I figure that the sadness will take care of itself.

Labels: blake, christmas, church, nostalgia

I have the afternoon off while Blake is decorating my parents' tree, which allows me to get caught up on my digital tomfoolery. I'm glad he's doing it for his own sake; I thought that boy would explode with the need to decorate. We bought our tree on Thursday, which meant that it needed at least a night to relax. His first question when he woke up on Friday: "can we decorate the tree?" No, son. I'd love to know the code for calling in Festive, but it's a closely guarded secret. So yesterday, despite spending most of the day booting around downtown until Mason & I were thoroughly wrung out, we got out the precious red tote and started the tinselling.

Why were Mason & I so spent? It might have something to do with the fact that we were in pubs from school's end to well past midnight. It was a perfect storm of bar-crawling, starting with a staff function, sailing on through Brampton Drunken Knitting (with a brief dinner visit by Blake & my dad before they went off to see the Olympic torch in a nearby park), and finishing off at the Artful Dodger for a res reunion. It would have been even more difficult to get out of bed on Saturday if I had been able to put down the car keys at any point, but that's the problem with an inter-city booze expedition: there really can't be all that much booze if I don't want to have my car towed to some nearby, put-upon friend. So I watched the old crowd get loaded instead of participating.

(I'm really not sure that I could have stood back from this 12 years ago, put-upon friends or none. I suppose that means that I'm growing up. Or? Really tired.)

Everyone was feeling cozy and sentimental, and my ancient velour Christmas dress went over well, as the later it got no-one could stop petting my arms. (People love that dress. It is by far the most popular thing I've ever worn. Maggie M in particular thought it was worth building a time machine so that she could do as my mother had, and order it from the Sears catalogue in the early 90's.) I spent time catching up with Pete, Cranly, Steven, Seth & Kat, without wondering too much about when I would see anyone again. That may be the other thing about not drinking: I was able to appreciate seeing everyone without getting anxious about the fact that we never ever see each other any more.

I also found it interesting how easy it was to talk to Cranly, as I had to literally corner him to talk to him 6 ½ years ago, and I haven't been able to keep in touch since. Now he frequents the Dakota (for bluegrass), nearly joined the Peace Corps and has had a parallel experience with being seduced by bands in the BSS family. When I was younger I used to think that my friends then would like the same things as I did pretty much forever; now that I'm older my biggest surprise is that sometimes, they do.

No pictures, because I never went home for my camera. And also, I was talking too much. But to know what it looked like, you just have to picture everyone in my photos from the first days of the journal, only with beards. Yes, even the ladies.

Especially the ladies.

Labels: blake, christmas, friends, nostalgia, outfits, outings, res

As the truly long-time readers will have noticed, Sunday marked my twelfth anniversary of keeping this journal online. Twelve years and no domain to call my own! To celebrate, I uploaded a funkload of pictures, correlating to the appropriate entry. Yesterday I made the first setting change since I added Blogger comments, which is that I disallowed anonymous posting. I've been noticing that when people want to tell me that Mason is creepy, they do so anonymously. Feel free to judge our attractiveness, just tag on a name from now on. Also, have you noticed how fat I'm getting lately? Discuss.

To address an (anonymous) comment from the last entry: yes, I am surprised that the Boy has served the papers. His only action thus far has been to leave; I've been cleaning up the legalities ever since and have been paying the bills of nearly 3 grand. Perhaps in retrospect I should have expected that he would jump on the cheapest, easiest step…but I didn't. Be clear: I don't consider myself a victim here, but that doesn't mean that I can't acknowledge when things are done suddenly and without warning. It was a shock. Wondering why is not productive…although it may help to know that I dream of reconciliation 3 nights out of 5, and wake up feeling worse than ever. (Last night I dreamed of a Christian rockband that solved mysteries, so it's not always like that.)

A lost anecdote from Renfaire day:

On the way home, we discovered that Sage could "sing" "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star," although it was a lot like listening to Frankenstein's monster & Tarzan sing holiday greetings. He skips words, syllables, lines…sometimes he'll produce 6 garbled sounds before awarding himself a flat "yaaaaaay."

It was far past his bedtime, and halfway through the long drive home he became incredibly tired and cranky. He started to produce the long, sustained crying that doesn't stop until a bed is produced…but if asked, he would still "sing". So we sang with him, over and over and over. Near the end of this litany, Blake turned to him and asked, in all seriousness, "Sage, do you know any other songs?"

Um. Stats? Of a sort.

• So. I suppose that, except for waiting for my heart to numb during brief custody hand-overs, I can reasonably claim that my relationship with the Boy is now completely over. That means that I get to add another milestone to the journal stats, which is that I have written of the birth, the flowering, the withering and the death of my marriage, all in one series. Yee haw.
• I have developed an interest in photography, and am starting to be able to (sometimes) produce the pictures I've visualized since I was a child.
• My child has gone from a surprise union of two cells to a fully literate boy who dresses like Spiderman, demands his own copies of Neil Gaiman books, and sings hooks from Apostle of Hustle songs in the other room while I'm making dinner.
• I have accepted my occasional nature, and stopped apologizing for it. To compensate, I make sure that my feed links are working, and I have Facebook trolling for notes as well.
• I have redeveloped a love of music not really present since my earliest journal years, and spend much more time at concerts and listening to new music than I would have thought possible five years ago.
• I have permanently lost touch with Poet (by his desire), Palaver is too sick to venture out much of the time and Preacher lives in another country. Of the three, I am closest with the one who lives farthest away, and our sons get along famously.
• I have added a third person to my monogamy series. The first is getting married sometime soon; the second will be divorced from me in about three weeks.
• I finally found a job I loved with friends, love, yarn, and mutual respect; these elements have disappeared or been co-opted so that I am more than ready to move on next year. And yet I can't imagine being anything but the World's Worst Teacher. (A label to which Blake strenuously objects, by the way. He thinks I should get it changed to World's Best. I already have the t-shirt, though.)

two years ago

five years ago

seven years ago

eight years ago

twelve years ago

Labels: achievement, angst, blake, comments, mason, music, nostalgia, on-line diaries, photos, the boy

My Grade 12 class has a summative project that involves designing a utopia based on the principles they've absorbed throughout the semester. Then they make a presentation designed to sell us (or more importantly, me) on this idea of utopia. One group last month did a slide show about their institutions of higher learning, and partway through my startled voice proclaimed, "hey! That's my college!" Good old UC. And when they argued, I said, "I know that place. I was up on the roof once." Then they laughed at me.

Happy 11th anniversary, ridiculous Fireball. Happy anniversary random nudity, stolen ice cream and impossible love. It was worth the cigarette burns, the ruined stockings and the pictures in which my underwear was clearly visible. It was all worth it for the view from the top of UC.

Yesterday I offered to drive Mason home because I was going down for Drunken Knitting and we haven't had a chance to hang out since he came back to work this week. I didn't realize that being with a friend would make the handoff of Blake to the Boy that much harder. This is because I couldn't encase myself in the customary ice that cloaks my recent dealings with the Boy. So when the Blake had walked off into the snow with his daddy, I started to cry for the first time in weeks. Sometimes I am terrified by the amount of denial I use to get through the day. Watching the two of them walk around the corner made me realize that on some level, I'm just keeping my life warm for the day the Boy decides to come back.

This week was an especially hard one, because the blessings flowed in and there was no one to share them with. Asked to join a belly dance troupe – wait until work to cautiously tell anyone. Love bombed by Stacy – private and wonderful and no way to share why I'm smiling. Cosmic Pluto wants me to test-knit a pair of socks for her book – wait a day and a half until I can share the news with my knitting protégé Mason. It's really really hard to be missing the person who tried to understand my obscure flashes of joy.

But if emotion is the sickness, Drunken Knitting is the cure. By the time I made it down to the Dick, everything was in full swing. Sophie buttonholed me outside the door and we traded angst (not only are we goths, but we have actual troubles this winter, which makes it easier to mope convincingly.) I ordered food as fast as I could, then spun my head around when Mason, Kristen & Sage walked in. Yay! Between eating and talking and listening and playing pass the Sage and soothe the Zoë, I might have knit 8 tiny rows on my scarf. Maybe. It was one of the good nights, one of the best. I only went home when I was too tired to keep my mouth closed from yawning.

Conversation in the car on the way to K8rs' party:

Blake: I don't love Daddy anymore.
me: Yes you do, sweetie.
B: No. I don't love anyone anymore.
me: I feel like that sometimes.
B: No love for anyone. I'm not going to save anyone from dying.
me: I feel like that sometimes, too.

Labels: angst, blake, friends, knit, nostalgia, outings

I've been avoiding this entry for a couple of days. It helps that I've been on a non-stop social whirlwind (well, for me) and between my demanding public and my domestic duties there's been little time to work out the proper tone. But when have I ever let that stop me?

Okay. Those of you keeping score at home (and I've run into at least two of you this week) know that I've been taking ridiculous risks since the summer began. I've been carrying on like every night is Poet's bachelor party, which isn't a good strategy when you have a pre-schooler and a 40-year mortgage. Why? Well, the best I can explain it is that at the Maddy, I started to get to know Mason as more than just a work friend, as, in fact, an accordion wingman and general all right guy. Not having had a lot of recent experience with making friends (with two major exceptions: mommies & knitters), I seem to have reverted to my old template that used to serve when I was making new friends in my undergrad. Result? Alcohol-fueled bad decisions.

This all came crashing home to me on Wednesday night, when Mason told me that his partner was concerned. I believe the words "bad influence" floated around. And at first I was kind of tickled. Then the shame and guilt hit.

There's a gesture that Stacy makes when she is delighted by something: she throws her hands in the air and cheers briefly. She also makes this gesture when she is very displeased by something. I was reminded of this gesture when the whole bad influence idea came up. At first I thought of my rock n' roll cred. Then I remembered what this would do to my decent human being cred. Delighted/dismayed.

It's taken me almost two full days to come up from the shame to breathe. Once, after Dirk almost drowned, I told him to go home and write about it until he felt better. Today I decided to take my own advice.

The funny/ironic thing is that I met up with three "old-timers" from the Ferg days, people who saw me drunk off my ass more times than I can recall. And we were too busy taking pictures and laughing and reminiscing and catching up to drink all that much. So I suppose there is hope for me; I just have to speed up the process so that it takes fewer than 10 years to kick in.

As alluded to above (if you didn't doze off during the Angst Storm above), I went out to see Brigit, Dot, St. Jack & NotAnArtist at the Wheat Sheaf (Maria was a bonus!) Considering that I haven't seen them in 6 years, 4 1/2 years, 10 months and 5 weeks respectively, the rollicking good time was both surprising and expected. NaA knew Brigit in middle school, so she and Maria were plunged into the messy tide pool of Ferg memories from the mid-nineties. They did very well for themselves, only falling asleep once or twice. (Hee!)

It was a wonderful night, very validating. Sometimes talking to casual acquaintances from the Old Days can make me feel like a suburban sell out, a mediocrity in mom jeans. These guys had much more class and much more love...but that's always been true. Pictures to come tomorrow, I think, when I'm not in another rush downtown and I can sort out my elbow from my hairline. (Or, as I might have said the last time I saw Dot, when I can sort out my ass from my moustache.)

Labels: angst, friends, nostalgia, outings, res

Two days ago, my tenth anniversary of this online journal quietly came and went. No cake, no cards, no fireworks, no telegrams…just me and my slippery memory. But since that's what I started with, that's enough.

What I find most amazing about this milestone is that I am one slender month away from celebrating it where it all began: in my parents' basement. Back then, the basement had silver reflective wallpaper in hexagonal patterns and orange shag carpeting halfway up the walls, and it was always at least ½ full of my dad's stuff. Now it's suave and sophisticated, with blue walls & new blue carpet, finished with white moulding, plus a sunshine yellow bedroom and a functional kitchenette. Now, 2 weeks before Nic moves in, it's so empty it echoes.

I started this journal because I was very nearly completely alone, my social life having noisily exploded that spring when the Poet-Ophelia-me-Alexi thing wound up. I was wracked with guilt over what I had done, guilt that was even more intense because it had all come to nothing in the end. I could only blame alcohol for so much; the rest I had to take home with me. And it was social China Syndrome. The only people who wanted to see me on my 21st birthday were Dirk, Scherezade & the Lawyer. I was out of the city and home for the summer, working away in my parents' house for next years' tuition and eating my heart out with solitude. I wanted new friends, and the Internet seemed as good a hunting ground as any.

Also, since I was 8 I wanted to be a writer, and I hadn't given up on that dream at 20. I thought that this would be a good chance to write something that other people would read. The Internet was less saturated with personal writing then, and I could still stand out with my white-on-black website and my picture of myself in Ophelia's PVC dress and my grandmother's fishnets.

It was good for me, it really was. I got feedback and praise from strangers, which boosted me out of that dark place for at least a few hours. My writing improved and improved and improved, until I got to a place where I could read my own entries without wanting to jump out of my skin with embarrassment. I met Stacy, I met Javina; later I met moms in the same boat and even later, knitters. I love that so much of my life is available to me, and I can search out little stories and moments to give myself whenever the present seems overwhelming.

I also love that I am a happily-ever-after story, at least for now. I've dated, married, graduated, moved, given birth and changed jobs, all in the time I've done this project. I've travelled from sitting alone in a psychedelic cellar to sharing an office in my new house with my sweetie and pausing my sentences to zip a pre-schooler into a Buzz Lightyear costume. There is less dancing, and no sleeping away the weekend on Dirk's couch, but more snuggling and far less unhappiness. It is a very good life, la dolce vida to be sure.

Thank you for being with me for some or all or none of the journey. I owe at least a piece of my happiness to you, my readers, for just doing what you do and for letting me into your lives for the space of a few minutes. You make me very happy. You always have.

And here it is: my first post in all its ugliness. Enjoy if you can.

Labels: basement, blake, dancing, family, friends, house rich, nostalgia, on-line diaries, the boy, threshold experiences

Let's all bow our heads and have a moment of silence for the following purged items:

• a shiny silver suit Stacy thrifted for me, one piece at a time. I wore the jacket one memorable night at C*8, and I've been waiting to slim down enough to wear the whole outfit. The painful fact is that even if I lose 20 pounds, giving birth has irrevocably changed my hip shape.
• the turquoise and green dress in which I met Callum Keith Rennie. I threw it in the washing machine last year and shrunk the outer layer. I'm going to hope that some smaller girl thinks that the extra fringe is a design feature.
• the grey cardigan my grandmother gave me in the mid-90's. When everyone else aspired to the frumpy cardigan, I cornered the market.
• the skirt-that-may-as-well-be-a-belt that I inherited from Scherezade and wore to my 28th birthday celebration.
• the velvet tunic I found at Good Will By the Pound in '97. I interviewed the Heads in that goth-figure-skater-gone-wrong outfit.
• the navy blouse that was a staple of my first office wardrobe in '95.
• the denim jumper I bought with Alexi and wore over a series of little t-shirts. Also, the little black t-shirt I bought that day.
• the black and purple dress that made the Lawyer give me a good once-over when he came by to see if I was going to Tea one fall afternoon in '97.
• a number of items I inherited and kept even though they didn't look good on me.

Labels: friends, house rich, nostalgia, outfits