clearbluecup

The Party Girls

I pick my way through piles of broken rock, overturned couches and rickety side tables thrown in a heap, trying to find this party. Ariel from electrolicious has bought a house and it's time to celebrate. I wander through this strange landscape, around little hills and through valleys of junk, weaving my way between hoodoos, watching the antics of the people around me and looking for any familiar faces. There is a couch in front of a row of evergreen trees, with two people sitting on it, holding hands. Wait, that girl is Elicia! I rush over and say hello, bubbling with exuberance.

"Look at my new shoes!" I exclaim, pointing at my new black converse high tops. "They're pink on the inside! And check out my new tattoo. It's not finished yet."

There, on the back of my right calf, is a newly inked tattoo. So new it's still healing. The design is a little indistinct, some swirling lines and droplets in rainbow colours. It reminds me of raindrops and rainbows. We chat for a while, sitting there on the piles of charity shop blankets, while the party people wander in and out of sight. We reminisce, we catch up. The boy sitting next to her says nothing. Eventually I say goodbye and continue searching for the party.



Cabin Fever

It is snowing outside, thick and fast. Inside the party is buzzing, great crowds of people are standing around inside this mountaineers maintenance cabin with drinks in their hands. I must have found the wrong party, this isn't Ariel's party at all. Tom and I mill around, chatting with friends and coworkers. The crowd is a strange mix, canadian friends are standing alongside irish coworkers and everyone is chatting away. But that's not what arrests my attention. What arrests my attention is a subtle suggestive undercurrent and an organised game, a treasure hunt with polaroid cameras. Tom's friend stands up and calls the attention of the crowd to the aim of the game - be the first to find the secret box. Only one person at a time can go outside into the covered area and search for it, time is limited and the crowd is merry. Laughter and talking, everyone is talking and laughing. It's getting almost overwhelming now.

Tom is nominated to go outside and search for the box. He dashes outside into the snow, swoops around the covered area, nips into the dodgy looking metal trailer, and comes out holding the box victorious above his head. Someone takes his picture with the polaroid, the flash blinds me. When I look at the picture later I notice that there are black numbers and bar codes printed on the box. Everyone is cheering and holding up their drinks.



Animal Shelter

I am sitting in a big old car, in the front seat of a station wagon that has a bench seat in the front as well as in the back. Through the windshield I can see the other car, a red one. I pull the car (left hand drive, american style) around in the parking lot so that it is perpendicular to the red car. Easier to see the others that way. We're parked there for a good long while, and while I wait I think, thinking and thinking all the time but only going around in circles. I have something in my hand, a handkerchief, a plastic bag, a juice box, a ring, and I'm fidgeting with it constantly.

I could just drive away right now. Put it into D and fly away. I could just never come back. I could. I fidget some more. The others are watching me too, although since I'm a driver on this outing i'm given a little bit more slack. More than when I was a passenger, that's for sure. Although the lines seem to blur every now and then. I couldn't just drive away. That makes me a passenger in one sense. A prisoner. But not in a real prison. In a place where they want to seem like they're doing me good. Like a rehab centre, or a boarding school. An animal shelter.

In the time I've been here I've worked hard, inched my way up the scale until I was allowed to drive on outings like this. Taken on more and more responsibility by coordinating things like those first aid kits. That was a real success. But nobody cared. The kits ran out of supplies because people were wrapping themselves in gauze bandages for halloween and I had to order more. nobody cares. they wouldn't notice if I just drove away. today's the day, i've been planning it for ages. I could just drive away, now, while my car's empty. and never come back.

I'm trembling like a leaf. the key turns in the ignition and the engine leaps to life. i place my hand on the gearshift, trembling.

"Have you got a pen? I've lost mine." My coworker is standing beside my half open window, leaning in. Her sensible blond bob is blowing around in the wind.

"Sure." I reply. "Of course I have a pen. It's in the backseat." I turn off the engine, get out of the car and open up the back. I have a box somewhere back there, full of useful bits and pieces. Safety pins, scotch tape, bits of string. There it is.

My coworker goes back to the other car and I stand heavily beside my own. It feels like an immense lump of metal right now, an unnecessary encumberance. I look around me and see trees, lots of trees. I could just run. Legs throwing everything into it, arms pumping, breath heaving. Just run, and dissapear into the trees. Instead I turn around and get back into the car.

I look at the red car again. There are passengers in the back seat; a little boy is sitting in the window seat facing me. I look again and it's Bart Simpson. My heart is pounding. I am Lisa, and I am sitting here thinking of escaping from my brother. An equal. My illusions of power and grandeur fall away like broken scaffolding. I am back at the bottom of the ladder. I get out of the car and start walking, slowly, trying to go unnoticed.

"Can I help you?" my coworker asks, coming up beside me. He's an older man, a grandfather figure. "I can drive you out of the compound if you want." He too is in a position of authority, and it would look like he was accompanying me on official work. I gratefully accept the offer of a ride, and climb into his car. Again, from the window I see a vulnerable child in the other car, and suddenly I see two white kittens dash towards the child. Like an arrow shot into a balloon, the trees, the cars, my coworker all dissolve with a pop as I am overcome by an emotional pain in the middle of my chest. A wave of compassion fills me, then remorse, then a powerful sense of duty and responsibility. I begin to cry, great heaving sobs that leave me breathless. The grandfather figure embraces me.

click on the photo above to see the rest...

When I went to get my bike after work yesterday I met another fellow cyclist getting his bike. This was the first time I'd ever met anyone else who bikes to my work - there are usually five or six other bikes in the shed but they are always in the exact same places, as if they are never actually ridden to and from the place.

"Which one is yours?" he asked.

"This one." I pointed at my totally generic blue bike.

"Hey, is that a hybrid? It looks like it is. See, the wheels are bigger, and the tires have smooth treads. I'd say twenty-two inch tires. Nice."

"Thanks. I got it second hand a while ago. Which one's yours?"

Ever since we got back from Amsterdam I've been riding my bike to and from work every day, unless it's really pouring out of the heavens. At first I just huffed and puffed and clenched the handlebars and tried desperately to ride in a straight line so I wouldn't be squashed like a gopher by the passing cars. I didn't see much of anything except the traffic and the potholes in front of me. But now that I'm getting a little stronger and a lot less terrified of the traffic, I'm starting to see other cyclists. Lots of them. And they smile and some even wave and I feel like I've been accepted into the club.

Cycling is the ideal mode of transportation for me in Cork. It's cut my commute to work in half, from 50 minutes (if I catch the bus on time) to 20. Nipping around for errands is quick and easy, 5 minutes into town and I can sneak down the wrong way on the one way streets if they're not too busy. Yesterday I got caught in a terrible jam-up, and I just wheeled round the other way and ducked down a side street. Take that, suckas! I'm home already and you're still waiting for the guy with the trailer to turn around in the tiny one-lane road.

There are definitely drawbacks though. Don't get me wrong, it's not yet the idyllic Amsterdam cyclepathic experience. There is no greater terror than working your way up a short but steep and narrow hill, puffing away, and hearing a giant lorry full of beer kegs roar up behind you. except maybe the apocalypse, but that probably sounds like a beer lorry anyway. Cars just don't see you, and neither do pedestrians. And nobody wants to give a cyclist the right of way.

Despite the potholes, the rain and the traffic, I still think it's great. It's the environmentally-friendly choice, and the healthy choice too. I've cut back on cardio at the gym now, and stopped doing leg-building exercises. I don't need my legs to be any bigger, really. They're getting kinda hulky as it is. Rather than having one beefy arm I'll have two beefy legs instead. Rrrrrawwwr!

For the past several months we've been trying to get our landlord to fix the hole in our roof. It's the sort of hole that doesn't really cause a problem until the rain gets really heavy, or frequent, or both. Which is not to say that the hole isn't big, but rather that there is a large bucket beneath it. If water comes in faster than water evaporates out, we have water dripping out of our living room ceiling onto our mantlepiece and the carpet in front of the fireplace. lots of water.

Last night the bucket started overflowing again, the second time in about four days. Tom climbed up into the attic to get the bucket and he passed it down to me. Picture this, if you will. I am standing on a barstool in our bathroom, trying to maneouver a heavy rubbermaid tub from over my head to a position where I can empty it without having to climb down off the stool because there is nothing to hang on to, and even if there was I don't have three arms. So there I am trying to decide whether I should aim for the tub (big, but far away) or the toilet (small, but close). Last time I aimed for the tub, and got a lot of water in the kitty litter tray, which was a mess to clean up. I decide to aim for the toilet.

After a split second of water pouring into the toilet, the stream of water catches the lid of the toilet (why didn't I think of this before I started pouring?) and the lid slams down. Some part of my brain registers the fact that the water is now pouring all over the bathroom floor, but this message does not reach my arms at all. I just continue pouring water. Good thing I moved the kitty litter tray first, huh?

It's situations like this, and the fact that every time the landlord's repair guy tries to fix it he just makes it worse, if he shows up at all, that have brought us to looking at other rental properties. Like this one, which is just down the road, enormous, and only a little more a month. I'm not keen on moving right now, but we're both fed up with this business of having water coming through the living room ceiling.

Over the weekend I reorganised my bookshelf. When we moved in I was in such a distracted and lazy state that I just flung the books up there however they happened to land. But with the immenent arrival of our new couch and the preparatory rearrangements, the bookcase needed to be moved across the room. And so I asked myself: will I arrange my books by size, shape, width, alphebetically by author, alphabetically by title or according to what the book is about?

I love making piles of things. And piles of books especially. ((My geeky pencilcase-organising-kid self is really starting to show here, isn't she?)) These are the categories I came up with:

Poetry (Pablo Neruda, Leonard Cohen)

Philosophy & Religion (Siddhartha, Tao Te Ching, Sartre)

Psychology (Freud, LaBerge & Van De Castle)

Shamanism & Altered States (McKenna, Casteneda, Huxley)

Science & Mathematics (Darwin, Hofstadter, and one of Tom's books that looked really well beside mine - Finite Mathematics. That's not cheating, is it?)

Favorite FemLit (Nin, Atwood)

Dark Night of the Soul Lit (Plath, Kafka)

Joyce (A category of his own, even though I couldn't finish Ulysses. Yet.)

Classics (Hawthorne, Conrad, Woolf)

Biographies (George Sand, Baudelaire, Anne Frank)

Secondary FemLit (A.S. Byatt, Urquhart, Allende, Binchy)

Foreign Cultures (India, Irish Myths, How to be a Canadian)

PopLit (Dice Man, Douglas Coupland)

Utilities (Dictionaries, Travel Guides, Maps, Crossword Puzzles)

Boring and geeky to most, I'm sure, but hoo boy did I have fun standing amidst all my books with a bunch in my arms, exclaiming "What about the Kafka? I'll have to make a new pile!"

I've decided to go to this conference in June.

This link was forwarded to me with incredible timing. I've been thinking about these issues non-stop for the past week or so. (much better than compulsive baby thoughts) I'm always amazed that when I feel like I've made a real decision, when I'm prepared to take action, when I feel like I'm doing the right thing - the next step becomes that much clearer. Opportunities begin to present themselves where there were none before.

A few days ago I registered for my driving test. This may seem like a silly thing to do given that I am not prepared to take the test immediately, but remember - this is Ireland. The waiting time is, on average, 33 weeks for the test centre I'd be going to. 33 weeks! This is something like 8 months. Hopefully by the time my birthday rolls around again I'll be ready to take the test.

So, in preparation for my upcoming driving test Tom and I went out for a short practice last night. We drove around the industrial area of town looking for a suitable open space where I could stall and stammer the car around to my heart's content. The Fairgrounds! Perfect. The gravel parking lot was nearly empty, except for a few funfair rides scattered here and there, and some cars parked along the far end. I started, stopped, started again, drove around very slowly in first gear, stopped again. Practiced turning around the Spook House, the soggy cardboard box, the crushed orange traffic cone. Stopped. Started, sped up and shifted into second. The third time I drove around the perimeter of the parking lot we went directly by of a van full of people, all of whom were giggling madly at my driving efforts. By this time I didn't care whether they were laughing themselves into hysterics because I WAS DRIVING and it didn't seem nearly as hard as I remembered.

articles like this make me want to freak right out. like running down the streets with placards and megaphones and a thunderous voice, jumping up and down in the face of everyone I meet. But that's not how I want to spread the word. I really and truly believe that the next 5, 10, 15 years are going to be a time of extremely difficult changes, but I also believe that a sane, rational, intelligent approach is better than shouting and fearmongering.

I've started thinking about buying a couple of acres of land. and a cow, sheep, spinning wheel and butter churn. I want to learn how to build things with my hands and identify useful plants. I want to spread the words, skills and attitude required to make the most of these challenges.

It's scary though. And real.

for the past three days I've had a continual headache. I'm starting to wonder, is this a headcold? hayfever allergies? or am I growing a massive malignant tumor in my brain?

too much DOOM and worry, I think. it's bad for the brain, and makes me convinced that the worst possible scenario is the truth.

We are waking up.

"As heaven and earth come together, as the dreamtime and daytime merge, we register the shockingly exhilarating fact that we are in charge--you and I are in charge--of creating a brand new world. Not in some distant time or faraway place, but right here and right now."

Amen.

Our records show that:

You have been accepted to the following graduate program(s):

Application for MA -- Integrated Studies

wOOp!! :) Athabasca University, here I come!

how is it possible that a week has passed already? it seems like i just turned around for one second and a whole week slipped past me. sneaky, those weeks. what happened this week?

1. Our new couch was delivered. We celebrated with a bottle of tequila and a game of cards.

2. I went to the doctor a while ago complaining of mysterious joint pain, and she sent me for some blood tests. This week I went back to get the test results. Most of the results hadn't come back from the hospital yet, so my doctor couldn't shed any light on the joint pain. However, when she had requested my blood tests she also had my rubella immunity tested. I didn't request this at all, but she assumed that since I was a married woman of childbearing age who had recently come off the birth control pill that I was likely to be thinking about getting pregnant soon (fair enough, i suppose, although i'm glad to say that my rational brain has returned and the baby crazies have dissapated somewhat.)

Anyway, the rubella test came back showing that i had a lowered immunity, and my doctor suggested I come back in three weeks when the rest of my tests were done to have another rubella shot. I'm a bit suspicious of this, not entirely certain it's necessary, and a bit freaked out by stuff like this...

"This is the first instance that I have ever come across of a true double-blind study of any vaccine. They have actually used a true placebo rather than another vaccine or a vaccine adjuvant. This Dr. Tingle has been investigating the rubella vaccine for many years. I've read some of his earlier studies where he found that 1/3 of the cases of rheumatoid arthritis he saw at the hospital showed the involvement of live rubella virus . Perhaps this is one of the reasons for the explosion in juvenile arthritis. Especially when the package insert itself says that up to 23% of those who get this vaccine will develop arthritis or arthralgia - and a percentage of them will be chronic."

Great. so I already have chronic joint pain which I suspect is rheumatoid arthritis, and when I come in to the doctor to have it investigated she suggests I have another vaccination which is likely to further aggravate my arthritis symptoms. not to mention the link between re-vaccination and autism in children. Scary stuff. I can't quite figure out if i'm being paranoid and believing too much of what I read on the internet, or whether vaccines are really just semi-dangerous products being pushed on the public by huge pharmaceutical corporations without enough testing and safety studies being done.

3. Louis dissappeared for a day and a half. I'm convinced this cat has a second home somewhere nearby, where they let him come in and sleep by the fire, give him saucers of milk and play fun games with him. It's obviously a classic cat trick, enough so that the simpsons have immortalised it with a recent episode where snowball does the same thing. "Snowball! How could you? You toyed with my heart like it was a toy heart!" Classic.

4. The roof got fixed. Hooray! we just did the intelligent thing, called a professional roofer and got the job done, then told the landlord and got him to send on a cheque to the roofers. Sorted.

5. I went driving again, on the road and everything. And Tom only had to grab the steering wheel twice to prevent me from driving the car up over the curb. I'll be an expert in no time.

We're off to england for a few days next week, visiting the young and the old and the family we don't get to see very often. I'm looking forward to it - a few days off work, playing with a new nephew, and some shopping and sightseeing in London...

we've been madly flying about trying to get everything sorted before we head away to england tomorrow, and the other day we sat down and said, "what about the cat?"

What about the cat, indeed. Usually we would drive him down to west cork for a revitalizing weekend by the sea. It's cat heaven, really, so many things to chase and trees to climb. But it's a long drive, tom's busy finishing a journal paper, and I still haven't got enough confidence behind the wheel to make the journey by myself. So we went through the options, which included:

- riding down on the bus with the cat in his box on my lap, mewing for the entire 2hr journey. Not pleasant, especially given his tendency to become carsick.

- leaving him outside, putting a blanket in the greenhouse or the garage and asking a friend to call by and put food in his dish every day or so. Louis would probably get by, but I would worry about him being cold, the rats or other cats eating his food, and the possibility of him wandering off when we didn't come back in a day or so.

- attaching a note to his collar asking the owner of the hand cream scent he comes home with every now and then if they wouldn't mind watching him. Possible, but unreliable. And we would have had to do something about it before now. So not really an option at this stage.

- leaving him inside and asking a friend to come by and feed him every day or so. he'd be safe, but bored to a dangerous state of cat insanity. we may come home to find the wallpaper peeled off in claw-sized strips.

- taking him to the cattery at the vet's. he'd be safe, fed, taken care of, and probably only mildly bored/pissed off/trapped. it's a bit expensive, but pretty much guaranteed. and there would be other cats to play with.

I think we'll take him to the cattery tonight. But still, i worry. will he hate me when we return? will he catch a nasty disease from one of the other cats? will he have to sit in a cage for several hours each day? Ach, i'm still pretty torn. But overall, i think it's probably the best option.

good timing - today clem told us about the synergy project happening in london on friday night. And today my boss offered to cover some of the costs for me and blue fescue to run in the dublin city mini marathon as part of the company team.

Sometimes everything seems to fit together like clockwork...