clearbluecup

sometimes, when I am very tired, I look across the room at two wineglasses and see a window painted on the outside of them in gold paint. I think to myself, "that's very strange, we don't have any patterned wineglasses". and then I realize, there is no paint. the window on the wineglass is a reflection of the window next to me, with warm golden sun pouring through, lighting up all the leaves and petals and wineglasses.

sometimes, when I am riding the bus home at night, I sit in the very front of the top of a double decker bus and see a woman in front of me running her fingers through her hair. she has a wedding ring, and a diamond ring, and gold earrings. the bus lurches beneath me, the light inside the bus shifts and I lean over to compensate for the sway of the bus. my own image merges with the woman in front of me, two solid reflections becoming one. I lean back and my image dissapears. an older man that reminds me of my father-in-law sits down beside me and I unfocus my eyes. reflections bend and flicker before me, the whole universe dances to the music in my headphones.

there's an advertising campaign going on here that shows people in the middle of athletic activities with a water bottle next to them - "bodies never lie"

this weekend my body said, loud and clear: "stop working so hard!" I obeyed the message, went to the afterhours doctor, drank liters of water, filled my prescription, and stayed home from work today.

from now on, I'm going to pay more attention to what my body says than what work demands. no more replacing dinner with jelly babies and popcorn in order to work late, no more missing my run because I'm still fiddling with powerpoint slides. work ethic is important, but it's not going to sustain my body.

I think I'll spend the afternoon editing my course in the backyard with my sunglasses, a smoothie and a blanket, followed by a long walk along the river and then back on the train this evening. only 10 more days, only 10 more days.

I spent most of last weekend curled up on the couch with a blanket and a cup of tea, watching simpsons episodes one after the other. Outside, the wind heaved itself against the house, branches flailing everywhere and rain falling against the windows in gusts and patches. There is a chill in the wind now and the people I see while walking to work in the mornings are sporting scarves and fleecy mitts more often than bare arms and sunglasses.

Tomorrow is my last day in Dublin. Today I will clean out my desk, consolidate my notes and review my courses for next week one more time. I'll do another review on Thursday and again all day on Friday. I can hardly wait to eat dinner at home with my hubby every night, and sleep in my own bed and not have to wake up at 5:30am every monday morning. But I do think I'll miss the atmosphere on the project, the multicultural people everywhere and a fellow canadian to make hockey/snow/donut jokes with. not to mention the shops in dublin! I think I've bought more clothes in the past 7 months than I have ever before in my life. sometimes I think I might have a problem, but then I try on my red shoes with my new blue skirt and everything is right in the world again.

I've been finding it hard to write updates lately, for several reasons. Most of my existence is being taken up with work, which isn't the most exciting or internet-worthy aspect of my life. and blogging is starting to feel a bit empty, a bit one-sided. If I were more of a pontificator, if I had a taller soapbox maybe my blog would be more interesting and spark a bit more debate. But as it is it's starting to feel a little unnecessary. I hope that when life settles back into a routine conducive to me actually having a life outside of work my blog will perk up a bit. I'd love to do a re-design, and transfer my photos over to the new coppermine software. soon we will go places and take pictures of things other than flowers, what novelty!

10. no longer needing my housekeys to turn on the hot water in the morning (my flat in dublin had the most bizzare layout...)

9. hearing cork accents everywhere

8. curling up with a book and a cup of tea on the couch

7. finishing those self-assemble shelves that have been driving me nuts for weeks

6. every single item of clothing I own is in the same house

5. ringing my yoga teacher and joining a class for the fall

4. cooking potato and pea curry

3. morning yahoo messenger sessions with blue fescue - before work!

2. falling asleep beside my husband

1. walking home from work at 3pm on a friday afternoon

This afternoon I ran in the cork women's mini marathon. It's an annual charity fund-raising event, and it's massive: some 7000-odd women and men dressed in curly blond wigs and skirts participated today. I went with a bunch of people from work, most of whom I haven't seen in months. J, a girl I was working with in dublin, and I were the only two planning on running - the rest were just out for the social chat and a good walk.

Since J and I didn't make our way to the starting point soon enough we were stuck behind a sea of women, all nattering to one another and adjusting their sunglasses. One lady in front of us was actually carrying her little dog. Once the race started we waited and waited, then finally shuffled, then slowly the pace picked up to a walk and then a half-jog. For a long time we had to duck and weave between women pushing baby prams and walking five abreast down the road and simultaneously avoid the oncoming traffic. (This is something that never ceases to amaze me about cork - they never ever block off traffic completely. The road may have a gaping hole with workers drilling away inside, and there will be cars driving along three feet away. There was a soapbox car race a few months ago, and there was still traffic driving along the quays despite thousands of people thronging the streets. It's a recipe for an accident, I tell you.)

Eventually we broke through the crowd of walkers and hit an even pace, and kept at it through the rest of the race. I was fascinated at the diversity of the crowd - old and young alike were running away, moms pushing prams and grannies waving out their sitting room windows at the passers-by. The men were hilarious - I don't know if there's something about crossdressing and the irish culture, but there were a lot of men out there with waterballoons in their tops and sexy fishnet tights in their runners. The mini-marathon is one of the biggest events in cork all year, and it's exclusive to women (and men dressed like women). I wonder if this is an indication of the matriarchal history - despite the men earning the money, the women held the real power in the household and acted as the cohesive glue holding families together.

After we passed the sign that said "Nearly there - the hard part is over!" there was one last mean hill and then it was all a long cruise downhill to the finish line. I've guessed my time at somewhere around 50 minutes, which isn't a personal best for 5 miles by any means, but taking our exceptionally slow start into consideration it isn't too bad either.

When I got home I had a nice long bath, then cooked an adventurous smoked tofu and couscous dish. tumeric, paprika, nutmeg, cloves, pinenuts, tomatoes and smoked tofu over couscous - mmmmmm. Before I had left dublin we went out to a moroccan restaurant for a meal, and it was fantastic. The setting, the music, the food, the mint tea, the cone-shaped tagines that released plumes of sweet, spicy steam when the lid was lifted; everything was delicious. I really enjoyed the creative process of cooking tonight, and we both enjoyed the process of consuming the finished product over candlelight and a glass of wine.

It's good to be home.

the sheer hilarity brought on by the phonetics of the word jiggle.

(recommended: right-click and save as)

That takes me way back, back to a cold day in an edmonton winter three years ago when we were sitting around with tat & nick, talking about funny words. tat said the one word that just made her laugh every time was the word jiggle. jiggle, jiggle, jiggle, jiggle, jiggle, jiggle! hee hee! tom found the link above, and she ended up rolling around on the floor laughing hysterically for a good 10-15 minutes straight as he played it over, and over, and over. good times, good times...

since tom went away on friday I've been hanging out at home by myself a lot. I'm not used to hanging out in this house by myself - when I was alone in dublin I felt no guilt if I came home, ate toast and scrambled eggs for dinner, and spent the whole evening reading a novel. Now I feel compelled to actually accomplish things and so I've spent some of my time doing mundane things like getting the laundry done and buying an ironing board. I've also decided that work is taking up altogether too much of my attention and so I've spent some time just chilling out and getting work out of my head.

Last night was completely devoted to forgetting work - I walked up to the indie video store in search of "The Name of the Rose" and ended up going home with "Hair - the Musical". Half a bottle of wine, a lemon cheesecake and most of a bag of cornchips later, I had quite pleasantly lost myself in the land of the flower children. There's something very endearing about the musical format - every main character gets their chance to shine, the spotlight shines down on them as they dance down the table amidst the debutantes, swinging their long, shiny hair and belting out their song with gusto.

I've been planning on doing other things too. I'm trying to prod myself into tackling css again, working on a redesign of the site. And there are work-like things to do as well, which I really don't want to do but I know I have to. emails to write, issues to sort out. the lawn is a good 8-10inches long, but it never ever dries out this time of year. the roses need to be pruned. I'd really like to just spend some time hanging out with people, being social and friendly and just getting out of the house. I need to start sticking my neck out there and approaching people. making plans.

It struck me today that I am really quite a private person, especially when it comes to my friendships. There is a lot in my life that I keep to myself, or that I share only with tom. and while this suits me fine it does tend to narrow my friendships. thinking back, I tried to identify some incident or trend from my childhood that could have caused this, and all I could think of was my experience of being labelled an outcast by the local mean girls while in elementary school. But this sort of thing has happened to more people than just me, and they get over it and have normal friendships, right?

As I was thinking about my private nature, I realised that this website of mine is a complete paradox. A private person posting their thoughts on the world wide web for everyone who can find it to see. everyone's a bit of an exhibitionist, I suppose, and maybe those who are more private get more kicks out of it. At the same time, there is a lot that doesn't find it's way onto this website as well. This is both sensible self-preservation (i don't want to go through what dooce went through) and probably the result of some neurotic privacy and control issues as well.

I think I want to change this part of me, I want to be able to open up with people and have the confidence to let some of my faults and spots and irregularities show. nobody has a perfect life, despite hollywood's best efforts at creating a status quo of perfection in appearance and reputation. And I have a feeling that it's the imperfections and how we get over them that makes people interesting. it builds character. I just need to learn how to recognise the line and find the right balance. Nobody wants to be a laundry line for all their friend's dirty socks either.

Strangest thing I saw today:

an old man walking down the street wearing a black t-shirt that said "SPICY COW" across the front in large red lettering. Huh??

I did a double-take. The back of the shirt said "MOO".

lying in bed

listening to Sarah McLachlan

every rhythm familiar

like the lines on my palm

like the lines in my heart

like a girl I once was

who used to lie in bed listening to these same songs

and sit on the choral risers at lunch hour

eating noodles out of a plastic microwavable cup

or pizza pockets in plastic wrappers

looking out at the world

face full of acne

hair full of bad perm

head full of emotions and questions and teenage angst

"dreaming,

I was only dreaming.

I wake,

and I find

you asleep

in the deep

of my heart.

deep..."

edit: found her video for World on Fire today, and depsite having listened to the album and deciding it was uninspiring, the video rekindled a lot of old feelings I had for her music and causes. My favorite bit is about the 10 adopted grannies...

how does one deal with making costly and obvious mistakes, through one's own ignorance or absentmindedness?

mistakes such as booking the wrong plane tickets,

and then booking the tickets incorrectly AGAIN.

Non-Refundable tickets.

I think I'm going to go crawl in a hole and die now.