Not My Cup of Tea, Not Even My Cup

Okay, I'm sorry, but this is going to be a total 180 from my last post. I do not feel tall and beautiful, I am not a strong little flower. But I will preface this post by warning you that I've been having a buttload of anxiety and depression this past week topped off with a heavy dousing of hopelessness the last two days. Also, it's 8am and I'm eating Candy Cane and Dark Chocolate with Mint Truffle Hershey's Kisses as I write this.



Does anyone else feel like the world totally sucks right now?!?!



As I drove Brandon to work this morning, I chanted out loud "I hate my life, I hate my life, I hate my rotten lousy life". I can't get a job in my field, I have family members who like to share my personal information, I have seemlingly reasonless anxiety that verges on dabilitating, and so many people in this world are just cruel, selfish and thoughtless.



Now that I think about it, as I was chanting I probably made Brandon feel like it was his fault, which it totally isn't. That man loves me so much. He puts up with the bad/mean things I do on purpose and snuggles me and tells me he loves me no matter how grouchy and unkind I am.



And he works so hard and gets so little in return. Which is reason number one why I'm so infuriated this morning.



Brandon works for a company (which shall remain nameless because I just can't afford to be sued for libel right now) that DOES NOT appreciate him. He's been working for them for two years and has put up with all sorts of crap from them. He moved from Calgary to Edmonton, was laid off, and then moved back to Calgary to continue working for them.



Granted, this probably wasn't the best/smartest move on his part, but the opportunity for decently paying jobs has been sparse. I'll get to that little bundle of wonderment later.



Anyway, Brandon has proven his loyalty time and time again. Finally, after more than a year working for them, they finally decided to move him from the bottom of the pile and give him a promotion. He was ecstatic! I was ecstatic, though wary. And for a few months, we were golden.



I wouldn't say I live a life of luxury. I don't go out and buy every and anything that tickles my fancy. I have a lot of self-control when it comes to spending our money and I generally run with this question in mind: Do I need it? If not, is it worth it?



So for those few months at said un-named business, we weren't living the life of money, but we were finally at a point where we didn't have to worry if our bills were going to get paid, or if renting a movie this week was going to put us past our overdraft limit. We were finally safe.



And then....



On Monday, Brandon came home from work and told me he wasn't working the next day. Even though he'd been promoted, for the past month or so, he'd been doing a job that had nothing to do with his position. He'd been invited to participate in the training required for his new position, but on Monday after he got back to the shop, he found two pieces of paper tacked up on the wall. One was a list of all those who would be participating in the training the next day, and the other was a list of people who would be doing other jobs for the day.



Brandon's name wasn't on either. Which means, his promotion was revoked.



Say what?!



I hate that saying, but seriously, WHAT?! This is absolutely ridiculous! I know Brandon had a review last week and that he'd been missing some things on his job sites, newbie mistakes, but even the vetrans at the company STILL make those mistakes and no one says a word about it and they still have jobs every day. And can someone please tell me why new guys who've only been there for a month are working, but Brandon is told to stay home?



I've told Brandon to TALK TO THEM! Tell them how he feels, give them his perspective. But he tells me he's tried, and nothing ever comes of it. So, some might ask us, why doesn't he just quit and find a new job? I've been asking him that same question for over a year. The fact is, it's a really good safety net. Brandon doesn't have any post-secondary education, and at this point, we can't afford for him to get any. And in all honesty, I don't think it would make a difference. I've got a bachelor's degree, and where do I work? At Ricky's All Day Grill in Shawnessy.



Graduates can't get a job anywhere because everyone wants five to eight years of experience. And the economy is so crappy right now that the babyboomers are coming out of retirement. Who do you think they're going to choose? The vetran who they don't have to train? Or the new guy who is eager as anything but doesn't have a lick of experience?



Boooo on the economy! BOOOOOO!



So now we're stuck between a rock and a hard place. Brandon doesn't get any respect or appreciation, but he can't quit because there aren't any employers who will hire him without experience and pay him what he's getting paid now.



I don't want it to be true, but right now.... it feels like money is everything.



This whole situation is so not my cup of tea. It's not even my cup. And all that Brandon said to me this morning after I'd finished my chanting, was "We just have to work through it". But I'm tired of just working through it. I don't want to push through all the time, head down, shoulder to the forces.



Is this all we'll ever get? A month or two every couple of years where we can finally walk at ease and breathe without having to look over our shoulders? When will "safe" replace "fear"?

The Cracks Beneath Me

Dear Ashley,

I'm sorry. I suck at writing consistent blogs. Please love me.

Cherie

This past summer I tried my hand at planting a vegetable garden. Since I'm still only renting and our yard doesn't get much sunshine, I planted my garden at my sister-in-law's house. Sadly, I planted too late in the season and only got a box full of tomatoes. And not good tomatoes. Green tomatoes. The kind of tomatoes you have to put in a paper bag above your fridge and check up on until they finally turn red and you realize you haven't checked up on them often enough because they're all soft and squishy now.

Oh well. Next year.

I also tried planting some flowers. I bought a packet of Morning Glory seeds and two large flower pots. The directions said to soak the seeds overnight and then plant them 12 inches apart. Since my flower pots were only 12 inches across, I naturally planted about 30 or so seeds in each one.

There were still quite a few seeds left over after that, so I found a 4 gallon pail, punched some holes in the bottom and very quickly realized that I didn't have enough soil to fill it up. So I filled the bottom of the pail with cardboard and paper and layered the top with the rest of my potting soil and planted the rest of my seeds. (I'd like to take this moment to say how incredibly difficult it is to plant tiny seeds that have been soaked in water. They stick to your fingers and won't let go. "Get in the dirt, you little scoundrels!" I kept telling them. "Be planted!")

As soon as I put the pots and pail in the back yard, I looked in sadness at my makeshift flower pot as the soil started to sink down into the cracks between the cardboard and newspapers. I figured I wasn't going to get any flowers out of that one.

Over the next few weeks I babied my little garden and watered it every day and moved the pots around as the shadows changed direction throughout the day. I also grumbled at the holes in the soil, obvious signs of somebody foreging for food. Either a squirell or a bird. Those little rascals.

But finally... tiny little leaves started to sprout and eventually, even two little leaves popped up in the pail. One of them ended up being a weed, but I did get one flower out of that pail!

The two pots blossomed.
But even though a little green stalk had emerged out of the pail, no flowers bloomed yet.

When the frost finally hit, I gave up on my garden. I stopped watering and stopped plucking off dead flowers and eventually it wilted and all the flowers were gone.

Until today. I've been driving to work lately but today I took the bus and on my way home, I got off the bus early so I could walk and admire what is left of the Fall colours. As I walked through the gate in my back yard, I spotted one flower still standing tall. And guess where it was.

This was a little miracle to me. It had frosted half a dozen times and even snowed a little twice. And yet, this one flower, in a crappy make-shift pot with a shallow bed of soil, that hadn't been watered for at least a month, was still there, tall and beautiful.

The flowers in the two pots were beautiful and brought me a lot of joy over the summer and it made me sad to see only one flower bloom in my 4 gallon pail. But when I saw that little flower today, I was awed.

I hope I can be like that flower for the rest of my life. Standing tall and beautiful even after the frost has come, even if I've been planted in a dingy old pail with the soil sinking down into the cracks beneath me.

I Have Lost My Friend!

My sister-in-law, Kristen, has four children under the age of seven.

Last Friday she picked me up and the six of us went off to the Farmer's Market. We wandered up and down the crowded bustling aisles comparing prices on carrots and Brussels sprouts and finally decided on one booth close to the entrance.

I stood to the side with the stroller and Kristen's three oldest children as she wandered around the booth collecting what she needed. Her youngest, Enoch, was following her around and "helping" her get some corn on the cob. He held onto one side of the bag and she held the other, but since he's so little, it was more like a leash for him. She filled the bag and guided Enoch back to the cashier.

But then she took the bag away and handed it to the lady behind the till and Enoch decided to prove, right then and there, that he is indeed, two years old.

He stood behind Kristen, arms limp, completely still, head thrown all the way back, and bawled. "WaaaaHa! WaaaaHa! WaaaaHa!" Each wail a carbon copy of the previous one. He had lost his friend. His eyes were squinted shut and he seemed completely oblivious to everything around him. This was in its truest form, a cry for attention.

The girls behind the counter, and some of the ladies in line, were giggling, and I, still off to the side with the stroller, was standing there nearly doubled over with laughter. Kristen just shook her head.

As soon as she had finished paying, she turned around and touched Enoch's shoulder, holding out the bag of corn on the cob. He slowly opened his eyes and tilted his head back down, still wailing, and took one side of the bag again. Almost instantly, the crying stopped. Kristen let go of the other side of the bag and started to walk away, leaving Enoch there to follow her back to the stroller, dragging the bag of corn behind him, his face streaked with tears. This kid has "pathetic" down to an art.

Two-year-olds: making the world a more complicated, dramatic, and entertaining place.

Goodbye Again

Written on my last visit. At the airport.

I can't quite figure out why, but I feel like my heart is breaking, like the love of my life is being left behind as I sit here waiting to fly away to a place not so far but far enough to be termed "foreign" by your heart.

A great love is in this place and for some reason I never opened my heart to it this last time. I was too afraid, too fragile maybe, too tender, worried that my entire being would split into two if I let myself give in to this place even in the slightest, even for a moment. It is the most equisitely beautiful, most heart-wrenching place I have ever been. And why??

I grew up in this place, my heart learning to break as I grew older, as I learned to understand that the pain and the screaming and the tears weren't supposed to be a part of my childhood. Once I finally learned that everything was wrong, I learned how to break down and fall to my knees, unable to cry hard enough to stop the pain, unable to mold it into something I could understand or measure. I learned to curl into a ball with my forehead on the floor and sob until my body forced my heart to go unconcious and pushed my mind into sweet sweet sleep.

I'm leaving this place, after a short visit, and I'm wondering as I sit here in the airport why my heart aches so intensely and why the back of my throat is harvesting a teetering gag reflex. Why do I still love this place?

The trees were waving goodbye to me as I drove down the highway to the airport, all their leaves moving and flowing together like a wave in the see, or a flock of birds in the air. That was really the moment I opened my eyes to the beauty of this place. I finally let something in and now I'm cracking in all the most painful places.

The potential stabs at me, sharp and exquisite. This place could have been such a wonderful place. I could have learned about love, instead of having to wait years and years to discover the precious beauty that comes with sincerity and kindness. I could have opened my mind to the beauty that surrounds me. We could have been a happy family. We could have. I could have. The "could have" ... what sharp and striking, bitter words.

And now I sit here, leaving it all behind once again, closing the doors to the potential and shutting the blinds to what could have been. My heart aches for it, reaches out to it, and I deny access, turning my face toward my new home and the love of my life and more happiness than I ever learned could be possible.

Brain as an object

I've been married for nearly two years and I'm starting to realize that everyone who ever said that men and women are from two different planets, or speak two different languages, or have two different brains, was right.

My husband and I have the classic argument that goes from one of us trying to tell the other something, to arguing, debating, voice raising, anger-ing, and finally: realizing; realizing that we were talking about the same thing all along.

My husband works construction and the other day he told me it would be fun to have all his co-workers' significant others come to work and have them do the job for a day.

I asked him why he thought it would be fun: he said because it would. I asked him what would be fun about it: he said it just would be.

He told me I was over-thinking it and I told him I was just trying to understand how he got from one thought to the next. How did he go from "significant others at our job for a day" to "fun"?

He told me that I think differently than he does, that all my thoughts are clear and laid out and 'sensical'. I told him he was wrong.

All of my thoughts do connect to each other, each paving the way for the next, but they aren't in any way organized. I can go to thinking about oranges to thinking about the day I was in grade three and for show-and-tell told the class about my uncle with the lazy eye. Why? Because after I gave that presentation, my teacher told me that when I do show-and-tell I often have no direction; one moment I'm talking about apples, and the next I'm talking about oranges.

So there's the common thread that linked my thoughts together: oranges.

Speaking of thread, I told my husband that my thoughts are like a ball of yarn that's been unwound. The one long thread crosses over itself over and over, there are knots that are beyond un-knotting, some of the thread has worn away and ready to snap (theses are the moments in my thought-process where I forget what I'm thinking about) and all other sorts of travesties. But it's all connected.

He turned to me and said, your brain is a bunch of thread, but mine is a bunch of bouncy balls.

I thought about that for a moment and realized how true it was. We're pretty sure he has ADD so bouncy balls made the most amount of sense, especially since he's also a very bouncy person externally. He bobs his head with each bouncy ball thought, entertained until it dribbles out into nothing and rolls away, then he turns around quickly to find the next one and watch it bounce around for a while.

He says that none of his thoughts are really connected, but I think there must be SOMETHING similar between each thought. Maybe it's the color of the bouncy balls, or their size, or their proximity to each other that causes the link.

In any case, we're still a "newly-wed" couple, we're still in love with each other, and we're still trying to figure out how to get our yarn and bouncy balls to play along.

Cheese Sticks

When I was small, my Gramma would always shop at the same grocery store. Sometimes I'd go with her and one time she took me to the bakery afterwards.

The first time Gramma took me was the first time I'd ever been to a bakery. I fell in love the moment I walked in the door. So many wonderful smells filled the room and numerous delicious-looking treats sat behind the glass compartments. I wanted it all. I wanted to live there and wake up every morning to new smells and new breads and cookies and everything else a bakery had to offer me.

I had such a hard time deciding what I wanted that my Gramma had to decide for me. She chose cheese sticks. Soft, skinny loaves of bread covered with baked-on cheese. It was wonderful! Whoever got the idea to put bread and cheese together was a genius in my eyes. I wanted another after I'd finished mine but Gramma said the rest were for the others who would be home for lunch.

I always asked my Gramma when we went grocery shopping after that if we could go to the bakery and she always said "we'll see" with a smile. We never did go back and I haven't a clue which bakery it was.

When I was in my first year of college, I moved in with a spunky girl named Jessi. We would go grocery shopping together and ride home on the bus with our backpacks full of food. On one of these ventures we decided we'd only speak to eachother during the trip in English accents. We probably made complete fools out of ourselves but we were thoroughly entertained.

We came to the bakery section and Jessi spotted the cheese sticks and started loading them into a plastic bag. My long lost love! I'd forgotten about them. We started devouring them on the way home, careful to save some for later, and chatted to each other on the bus in our faux english accents.

Just before we got off the bus to go home and eat more cheese sticks, some teenaged girl who'd been sitting behind us asked Jessi if she knew Harry Potter. Without skipping a beat or pulling a face, she simply said, "no", and we went on our merry way, giggling and immitating the girl on the bus.

Oh, cheese sticks; how I love thee.

Hot Spring Bliss

I grabbed my little notebook from my purse, the one that has my memories, and sat down to start writing. But then I looked down and instead of my notebook sitting before me, I found my wallet. Why did I grab that instead of my notebook? I guess that's for review on another day.

Two days ago I was looking at a friend's blog and decided that I love how much she uses photos. I think I'll start using a picture or two in my little stories.

Forward! Memory Lane: trip two...

When I was younger, my twin brother and I would go visit our Dad and step-mom on the weekends. In the summer we'd spend an entire month with them and they'd take us camping for a week or two.

One summer, when I was 9 or 10, they took us to a hot spring. I was nervous when we first arrived, wary of how hot the water would be. It wasn't regulated by civilization afterall, and mother-nature could be so unpredictable. How was I to know if she'd had a hot flash that day, a really hot hot-flash, that would boil my skin right off?

At the mouth of the hotspring were two sets of stairs. The one on the left led into the hotspring. The one on the right led into "the glacier pool". It was a tiny round pool that could seat about six people. It was an ice blue colour and had a picture of a polar bear and the temperature listed on the wall behind it. There was a burly old man sitting alone in this tiny tub, arms stretched out on the wall behind him, leisurely, almost relaxed. I just knew he'd freeze to death and come out stiff and purple.

Was I going to take a dip in this icy "slice of heaven"? Not a chance. But I was a little worried my Dad might make me.

But before I could worry much longer, I watched in horror and awe as my step-mother walked straight down into the pool, as though she were walking down the stairs in our own house, held her nose, submerged, came back up again, and wiped off her face as she ascended the stairs, all in one smooth movement.

Well if my step-mom could be so brave, so could I! On the hot side of things anyway.

I poked my toes down onto that first little step of the stairs into the hot water, and had all my suspicions confirmed, and yet was also pleasantly surprised.

The water was hot. Really hot. Hotter than a hottub. But it felt like nothing I'd ever felt before. It was soft. So soft it was like every part of my body that was in the water was being gently moisturized by billions of tiny unseen bubbles.

It was the most awe-inspiring experience I'd ever had in "the wild". Here was nature's own hot tub, complete with ledges to sit on, like little seats perfecftly formed to your backside, bubbles, and even a cave to wander around in.

I haven't been to a hotspring since, but now that I'm thinking about it, I'm going to find out where the nearest one is.

Memory Lane

For months and months I've been jotting down memories.

Every once in a while something will remind me of a time when I was younger and I'd reminisce for a while and then the memory would be gone. I didn't like the thought of losing my memories, so I started jotting them down with the intent of writing them out.

So here I go, the first trip down memory lane:

My sister-in-law went to England last year for a week and while she was gone I took care of two of her four kids. One of them, Enoch, was only a year old and he was the easiest to take care of. I had to check up on him every few minutes just to make sure he hadn't pulled the bookshelf ontop of himself or discovered that our toilet was just as magical as the one at his house. But other than that, it was easy-breezy!

My fifteen-year-old sister was living with us at the time and she came home one day from school a little pink in the face from the walk home. Enoch was standing in the living room doing who knows what when she walked in, and when he saw her he paused for a second as she smiled and said hello to him. Immediately, he ran to her, literally ran, smiling with his arms outstretched and she scooped him up, just beaming, and hugged him and said hello.

She just loved it, and I loved watching it.

What is Canada to You?

Evan, that friend of mine who said I should start a blog, posed an interesting question about Canada. Since Canada Day is just about a month away, I thought I'd put this up so that we can really ponder it over the next month.

Evan was born in the States and we got talking about a country's identity as a whole. He said that whenever he asked Americans what America was to them, they would go on listing all sorts of things: valour, courage, the Statue of Liberty, war, the Constitution.

It can't be denied that Americans have a great sense of collective hisotry as well as collective purpose. As a whole they are very patriotic and will defend their country and their freedom to no end.

But when Evan has asked Canadians what Canada is to them, they ususally just sit there and look at him sort of lost for a moment, not really sure WHAT it means to them. Evan said the best responses he could find were "it's where my family is" and "it's beautiful." He started to find that Canadians see Canada as a geographical place, not a united body of citizens with a common purpose.

We were sitting in my old apartment living room while he was telling me all this. On one wall there was a sliding glass door as well as another door-sized window, only twice as wide. I could see straight off the balcony and across the apartment courtyard where a tall oak tree stood swaying a little in the wind.

I looked at Evan and said that to me Canada is a tree, old and tall, but youthful, strong and beautiful. When the wind comes it bends with it, never laying down or breaking in two. The branches bump into each other, sometimes quite forcefully, but they all move together in the same direction.

There were a bunch of there talking together in the room and when I finished they all just looked at me for a moment before they teased me for showing off and for being "such a writer". Once everyone calmed down Evan said that was the best description he'd heard.

Canada is an old and vast land, but a fairly new country. The land and the people are strong and beautiful. Everything and everybody varries from ocean to ocean to ocean, but we fight for our freedom and brave the cold each winter.

When the wind of adversity comes our way, be it political, economical, elemental or so on, we aren't known to stand firm and unshaken; we are passive. But we aren't doormats. We won't be pushed down or broken in half. And though we each have personal opinions, we recognize the quiet unity that comes from being Canadian.

The difference I see between Americans and Canadians is our perspectives. When it comes down to it, what are we all fighting for? What is the reward we're seeking? A safe and happy place to be with our families. We fight wars for safety, we have courage and perseverance to provide for our families. We sacrifice, we keep our chins up, we love.

It seems to me that Americans are still fighting for that peaceful and happy place, though I think they're probably already there. But for a country that often ends up a target, it's admittedly difficult to let go of fear and see the beauty all around.

As for Canada, "it's where my family is". It looks like Canadians are at the end. We've reached that safe and happy place and we're not really very worried about having to fight anymore.

So, aside from what I think, what is Canada to you?

One Great Man

A friend of mine stated recently on facebook that he went out for lunch with his Grandpa, and that got me really missing mine. I grew up in the the same city as my Grandfather, who always referred to himself as "Grand-dad" but I called him "Grampa". Some of my second cousins called him "Dad-O", which was a nickname I'd never heard before.

My Grampa passed away just about four years ago after a bad car accident. He survived but his back was broken and he spent the next year in a wheelchair. I remember how depressed and how irritated he was. Even though he was 88 years old, he'd kept in amazing shape right up to the accident. He kept good care of his huge yard and garden and little orchard, and he would go for walks every day alone. No one could ever keep up with him, his long legs stretched out on the pavement too quickly.

One day I started writing down little notes on my childhood memories and one of them was about the day I opened my very first bank account. My Grampa took me to Canada Trust when I was ten years old and opened up savings accounts for my brother and me. I didn't really understand what the big deal about bank accounts was except that I could go and get my book stamped and it would tell me how much money I had, which as a ten-year-old sounded pretty cool.

After we opened the account my Grampa sat down with me and said that I'd have to save my money and only spend it on important things and that I couldn't spend it on silly things, like lolipops. That was sad news to me because there was always a bin at the grocery store check-out filled with bunches of lolipops and I always wanted to buy one but I never had the money.

My mother always told me to cherish my grandparents because you never know how long they'll be around. I always thought that was a pretty pessimistic way of looking at life, but she was right. I wish I had sat and talked and learned more about my grandfather before he died. He had so much knowledge and life experience.

When he was in the hospital after the accident I came to visit him on one of his really rough days. He didn't want to see anyone and told my Gramma and my mom to leave him alone and go away. They left the room but I stayed where I was and let the quiet overtake us for a while. I felt so terrible for him. He went from a man completely self-reliant and independent, reduced to a man who needed someone else to feed him and wipe his chin and help him cough.

After a few minutes I opened up my English Literature textbook and read some of the poems I had been assigned for homework. I didn't quite understand what the poems meant, but I asked my Grampa what he thought of them and without hesitation he spilled out an analysis of the poem and brought to light little details I would never have seen.

He was a brilliant man and he did things in his own unique way. Whenever he sat down to type up a letter, he would only use his two index fingers. My Aunt said that he could type incredibly fast using just those fingers, the two of them flying over the keyboard faster than your eyes could keep track.

Grampa even designed his own house with a very open and airy second floor, but that was because he was an architect. Across the back of the house were several door-sized windows and two sliding glass doors leading onto the balcony. Every once in a while in the summer we'd be sitting down to eat and a bee or a wasp would fly in through one of the sliding glass doors. We would hear it buzzing and sometimes it would fly around our heads and everybody would flinch and duck. Or, if it was trying to get outside, it would get stuck bumping up against the window. Grampa would roll up a newspaper or magazine sitting nearby and make his way to the windows and bludgeon the thing to death. It always took more than one swing and if I didn't know any better, I'd say Grampa was a little afraid of the thing.

Grampa was a workoholic, in some ways. He worked as an architect in an office downtown well into his seventies, but when he chose to retire, all he really did was move his office into the main floor living room in his house.

Despite how dedicated Grampa was to his work, he was more dedicated to his family. He and Gramma would drive to the opposite side of town to pick my siblings and I up for church on Sundays from time to time. Everyone in our entire family loved him. Consideration was in all of his actions, and despite the fact that, in women's eyes, most men are thoughtless, he was consistently thoughtful.

But he wasn't all seriousness. There were times when I looked at my Grampa and couldn't help but laugh. He was so expressive, silly and at times very sassy. I was eating lunch with my Grandparents one day and Grampa reached for the butter. Gramma looked at him and said, "You're not supposed to reach across the table!" and Grampa paused for a moment before sticking his hands in the air and mimicking Gramma. That made me laugh.

A few minutes later my Gramma reached for something and my Grampa just couldn't resist. He put his hands on his hips and said, "You're not supposed to reach across the table!" That really made me laugh! Unfortunately I was drinking from a glass of juice at that exact moment and the juice came out my nose. My Gramma just sat there looking indignant, knowing he was right but bitter at being reprimanded, and yet nearly smiling. Deep down I knew she thought it was funny.

I got married just about a year and a half ago and whenever I think of Grampa I feel a little sad because my husband never met him and I think they would have gotten along marvelously. He taught me so much and I never realized it until this past year. Love, acceptance and understanding of family, dedication, hard work, perseverance. He was a venerable old man who had never forgotten to laugh. Life had taught him his place as the patriarch of our family and the bread-winner of his home, but he never forgot the little kid that still lived inside his heart.

Return of the Honk

Well that honker just couldn't stay away. Because he came back the very next day.

This time my bedroom window was closed because of the snow that had been falling since the day before. I had just woken up and was still lying in bed when I heard a man calling out from the other side of my window. My first thought was one of hope, hoping it was the same guy back from yesterday just so I could see what would happen this time.

I wasn't wrong. This time he was standing ten feet from the door yelling the girl's name and throwing pittiful little snowballs at her third-storey window. In hindsight I guess I should have given him a little credit for standing out in the snow instead of waiting in his car. But he dashed that credit to smithereens after what happened next.

"Jane! Jane!" he called. No answer and yet he stood there for a solid three minutes staring longingly up at the window, waiting for his supposed Repunzel not to let down her hair but to buzz him in. No such luck. I watched him walk away, all the while looking back at the window as if she might just show up and let him in. He disappeared around the corner of the parking lot and I thought he was gone for good.

I should have known better. He came back about a minute later, this time in his silly black car, a Sun"flower", and parked by the fence with his window rolled down. Last time I spied on the man I peeked through slightly opened blinds. This time I had absolutely no fear. I opened those blinds all the way and stood with my arms folded and my nose not five inches from the blinds.

There was hope that he might not honk this time, but that was foolish. About thirty seconds later he honked his sing-song honk: honk-ha-honk-honk honk-honk! I waited and about three minutes later he honked again. No girl to be seen. Then the old man that lives in the apartment next to mine walked up with his little dog and the creep in the Sun"flower" called out, "Sir! Sir! Can ya hold the door for me?" My neighbour is a kind man and did so.

So Honkomus-Maximus, as I shall now refer to him, backed up his car about twenty feet, for what reason I haven't a clue, parked it and ran up to the door. I figured this was the end of it for a while and as I started to make my bed (a consistant morning ritual) I thought perhaps the girl doesn't have a phone. That would explain why Honkomus-Maximus doesn't ever buzz or just call her.

As my four teddy bears made their way to the head of my bed I noticed Honkomus-Maximus leaving the building. He got back into his car, rolled down the window and lit up a smoke. This perplexed me. So I stood and stared at him for a good couple of minutes. He pulled forward twenty feet after his smoke and honked again. Nothing. No girl. No Repunzel.

After a few more minutes he must have had all he could take because he ripped out of the parking lot and around the corner onto the street in a big fat hurry. I haven't seen him or the girl again and since a new tenant moved in this morning, I guess I won't be seeing Honkomus-Maximus again. I feel triumphantly grateful, and yet a little sad. I will miss our little encounters, even if he never knew I was there.

The Man Who Honked

I'd like to take this moment to express how irritating certain people are. The people I speak of specifically today are honkers. Not the people who honk in traffic as a means to tell you to get the heck out of the way, but the people who arrive at your doorstep and honk to let you know they've arrived and that now is about the time that you should be walking out your front door to get into their car.

As I was waking up this morning I heard one such individual do just that. My husband and I sleep with the bedroom window open so as to create some kind of decent airflow through the room at night, so when this person drove up outside my window and honked, I heard it loud and clear.

After about a minute I heard another honk and sat up in my bed and looked out to see what was going on. I thought maybe it had something to do with the construction going on in the back alley, but as I gazed out through my open window I discovered just what I had truly suspected: an immature little man probably in his thirties, parked outside my window in his stupid little black car. The little turd left his engine running too, which is lame sauce since he sat there for about five minutes waiting for the person he was honking at to show up and get in the car.

I was half tempted to go out there, knock on his window and say,

"How old are you?! Didn't your mother teach you anything?! You do NOT honk when you want somebody to come out to your car. You get out and knock, or buzz, or ring, whatever it is that needs to be done. Don't be such a lamewad!"

But I didn't.

Before I could get too irritated with the man I got up and got my day started and casually looked out my window at the same time, just to see what would happen next. I closed the blinds and changed into some sweats and as I started making the bed I tried to give the guy the benefit of the doubt and to see things from his perspective. That lasted about two seconds because as I reopened the blinds I realized that it was sleeting out. (This is what I call it when Mother Nature can't decide whether to rain or snow).

What a little girl! Did he seriously pull up ten feet from the front door and honk just because he didn't want to get out of his precious car and get wet?! I couldn't see him very well but I could just imagine his popped collar and hair gelled into concrete. What a punk!

At the point that I was arranging my four teddy-bears at the top of the bed, I saw the lady this man had been honking at exit the building. She was wearing jeans and a tight bright pink hoodie, probably from LuLu Lemon, and she was carrying an enormous garbage bag. My first thoughts were "she's moving in with him and that garbage bag of stuff is all she owns. Her roommate doesn't like him, so that's why he didn't buzz". My next thought was "he's parked right in front of the dumpster".

I kept watching as she threw the bag into the dumpster and walked to his car just to find out if I could see her face and maybe recognize her, which is a semi-creepy thing to do considering she could see me in plain view if she even so much as glanced up at my window.

Well I saw her face and I had no idea who she was. But I was sad for her and slightly annoyed with her for being with a man who would treat her like a pet. "C'mon girl! Here girl! C'mere! Get in the car! Who's a good girl?"

As soon as she got in the car I assumed that my people-watching time was over, so I started to pick things up around the room and stubbed my foot against the frame of our bed as I tried to skirt around my husband's massive pile of clothes on the floor. Grabbing my foot and holding it close to my chest, I fell back onto the bed and whimpered slightly as I plotted angry words I might use to convince my husband to pick up after himself.

But before I could structure full-sentence threats, something caught my eye. The little black car with my two mystery people was still sitting outside my window, only it was about twenty feet further away. It was almost as if they'd started to leave and she'd forgotten something and run back inside to get it. If that was the case I was even more irritated with that guy. The douche-bag couldn't even back up twenty feet to put her closer to the door.

It ended up that she was still in the car and they were just sitting there, so I didn't have anything to be angry about. They turned around and came back toward the building and I saw the man clearly. I didn't take notice of his face though, all I could focus on was the gangster lean he had going on as they slowly crept past the building. What a tool.

Just putting it out there

I just finished my very last assignment for my very last semester of my very last year at university. It was a career analysis about my choice to try and provide a living for myself as a writer. As I sat there going over journal entries I'd written over the past four months I got to thinking...

What on EARTH is the point of being a writer?! I went to school for four years and absolutely loved it and fell in love with writing and reading and discovered my own voice and loved it the moment it popped up on the page and in my head one of those days in my Creative Non-Fiction class. And now that I'm almost done I'm looking around at the world saying, "Hey there! Here I am! I'm excellent and I'm useful and worthwhile. Hire me! Hire me!" But the world only pauses momentarily to glance my way with incredulous eyes that say, "Are you really that naive?" and then rushes past and keeps spinning its dizzying race around itself, day after day after day.

The world has no jobs to offer me. Except of course those important looking "technical writing" jobs, which I honestly don't think are really writing jobs. To write is to paint and to take the beauty of what sits in front of your open eyes and put it down for the record and strike a chord in your readers who aren't so lucky to see it for themselves. Technical writing is a necessity, done because information that is needed once must get to another person who needs it for the time being, and who will then promptly discard it when version 2.0 comes into stock.

I want to write! I want to do something with what I love, with what I've devoted myself to on a daily basis for the past four years. But no. There are no such jobs. Instead I have to find something that doesn't require any formal education and will pay me enough to get by so that maybe at some point in my week I can stop for even a moment and jot down the fuzzy little feelings I get from watching the rain hit the rocks outside the window at my day job, that is if I'm so lucky to be granted a desk by a window.

Perhaps someday, and this is foolish blind optimism popping up again for a quick bout of encouragement, the "perfect job", the one that lets me love it and wake up every morning excited to get there and write my little writer heart out, will show up and I'll be able to run to it and hold on for the rest of my life and stop having to worry about paying my bills and just rejoice in the fact that I am living the dream and that I have finally, FINALLY, reaped the benefits of devoting myself to the ridiculous idea of writing for a living.

I shared all these thoughts with a friend of mine from out of town and he told me something outrageous. Maybe, if I write a blog people will start reading my work and eventually I'll get some sort of readership going. Then when it comes to kicking off my career, I'll be able to prove that I've got some sort of talent or skill and they'll have some incentive to hire me. Plus I love to rant, and everyone loves to read a good rant. So here goes...