Dreaming and Waking

I wear a little gold pentacle necklace - a gift from Russ for our first Christmas together - every day from the moment I get out of the shower until I go to bed, taking it off during the day only to work out. I have worn this necklace this way for over thirteen years now. I knew that I checked for its presence several times a day: just before getting on and off buses, just before leaving home or work, and in the bathroom. Those checks stem from the day that the chain broke unexpectedly and I didn't notice right away. I was lucky that day; the pendent and chain got caught inside my shirt. But now I check for my pendent before doing anything where I wouldn't be able to find it again if it broke.

What I didn't realize is that I touch that necklace through my shirt about four times an hour besides those checks. I am realizing that today because this morning, in my chaotic rush to get to the gym before work, I forgot to put my necklace on. Even though I realized this when I got out of the gym, I've still been checking and having a micro-moment of panic before I remember why it isn't there. Finally, I had to stick a safety pin to my shirt about where the pendent would normally be. Now I diddle a safety pin every 15 minutes, but I'm feeling much less anxious.

Even in my morning fog - when I walk without thought, just following my feet to work by the same route as every morning - I still notice so much just by virtue of moving so slowly by it. Even on a bike, there's just so much you can just glide passed without having the time to see.

Walking is a part of a "slow life"; the only part I'm good at practising on a regular basis.

I love looking at the gardens. My favourite yards are those that are more wild, with local plants and driftwood and found metal fences. I also love weeds; the abandoned plots of dandelions. And, of course, the cherry blossoms have been gorgeous this year. One street, the flowers are so thick on the trees that the branches are arcing over the sidewalk. It's like walking under a canopy made of tiny pink petals.

I see a lot of posters on my walking commute. There are a lot of homemade ones posted in my neighbourhood: political causes, local bands, conspiracy theories, protests, and various events. I see a lot of missing pet posters. It breaks my heart to see the photos of missing Fluffy or Rover and the pleas for their safe return. I read all of the posters, because one day I might spot one the lost pets or want to go to a dance at the community centre.

There's also a lot of death along city streets that drivers and cyclists probably miss.

After the gym and some errands yesterday, I walked home. It was a good morning: I felt very accomplished, having worked out, done some banking, refilled my prescription, bought a new mat for the bathroom, and deposited some money for the Gathering. Normally I take public transportation home from the gym, but the weather was perfect for walking and I wasn't ready to be inside yet, not even in a bus.

I got to the bus stop about two blocks from home when I saw the poor thing: a cat's body just off the sidewalk. Hit by a car, probably. A black and white cat; like my cat. Small; like mine. No collar that I could see.

I rushed the rest of the way home and got on Russ' computer, trying to find what phone number I call so the body won't be there when kids get out of school and start walking to the park and the ice cream shop. Russ returned from the kitchen to find his paused game minimized.

"There's a dead cat and I can't figure out what to google to figure out who to call to come and pick it up, but once I figure out what number I'm supposed to call, I'm going to keep it in my wallet because I see a lot of dead animals on the street when I'm walking around and this is the first time I've found a domestic animal, but I've seen seagulls, rats, crows, squirrels, raccoons..."

And that's when Russ hugged me for awhile, which was better. Then I made the necessary phone call, and then I spent some time petting my cat.

I remember when our bigger cat, Puck, was missing for a couple of weeks. Our first wish was to have him home safe. Our second wish was to know for sure if he wasn't coming home. If there's someone to tell about yesterday's cat, I don't want to tell them, but I don't want them not to know either.

On Monday morning, I will be looking for a poster I don't really want to see of a small black and white cat missing from a neighbour's life. And I'll be looking at the dandelions and tulips.

I like goals and lists. When I went to New York City with my Mom and sister many years ago, I went with a list of foods I wanted to try while there: a piece of New York cheesecake, a soft pretzel from a street vender, a bagel from a Jewish bakery, and an egg cream. Completely doable, and delicious, goals. I proudly achieved them all (I actually achieved cheesecake several times over).

I have goals for this summer. They are fairly straightforward:

1. Finish my cloak (the one I've been "working" on since March). I finally started weaving the second half today, after warping it many weeks ago.

2. Figure out the two heddle technique on my loom so I can do a double-width piece. I want to use this technique to make a baby blanket for my first niece or nephew; I am not convinced that I will complete it before "Bean" is born (due at the end of July), but I want to finish it before the end of the summer.

3. Buy an ice cream treat off an ice cream truck.

The last one is the one I'm having the most trouble with. For the first two, I have written instructions to follow. If I have trouble with the instructions, there's the rigid heddle YahooGroups email list or the forums on Weavolution to help me out. But I don't understand how to buy from an ice cream truck.

I don't think they had any ice cream trucks in the small town where I grew up, and if they did, the trucks certainly didn't come down the mining road where I lived. And I only see ice cream trucks on the move in Vancouver. I hear them pass, music tinkling away, from my office (why they are in my work neighbourhood at all, I don't really know; maybe the hookers, addicts, and Maritime Labour onion members are big lovers of the Rocket Pop), but I would never have time to get my money out and get out in time to catch them. Even when I see the trucks near the park, they are driving past. I don't know how they sell anything, but I'm determined to figure it out.

Of course, once I've caught one of these elusive venders, I will have to figure out what to buy. I'm rather fond of Drumsticks - do they sell those from trucks?

Where I learn that cookies won't keep you together

Two people who were customers of mine as a couple split up recently. He moved out, and she kept their old apartment and account. He opened a new account from his new apartment across town. They order the same ginger spice cookies in their deliveries every week.

Where I feel bad for the dog

The dog next door has a thick, tightly-wound tail that coils on his back. When he is happy or excited, his tail twitches like a snake dreaming of swallowing a fat mouse.

Where I am pedantic and get a new enemy

Someone called me "caustic" yesterday and told me that I must be a very unhappy person... or maybe it was a very angry person. To be fair, I was rather condescendingly correcting her grammar and spelling in an email at the time. I maintain that I was provoked: she works for a book publisher and she sent me an unsolicited sales pitch wherein she spelled the title of the book wrong, spelled "distributor" wrong, and neglected to use full stops on half her sentences (amongst other problems). In the final email of our correspondence, she told me that "grammer [sic] doesn't matter in emails", which is when I gave up - anyone who believes that good writing doesn't matter when selling a book cannot be saved.

Where I want the unwanted

This week, I keep encountering random cases of black jellybeans being used as a metaphor for something or someone unwanted and left behind. To that I say: Send me your black jellybeans. I always leave them for last because they are my favourites. I always like the underdog.

Where timing oneself by others gets confusing

I know that I am going to be on time for work when I pass Marionette Man at the corner of Hastings and Clark. We pass each other somewhere along Clark every morning. It is a non-encounter; we don't even nod to each other. All too often, I pass him many blocks farther up, as he turns off Clark towards his workplace and I start walking faster towards Hastings because I must be running late.

Today, I got to Hastings and Clark and Marionette Man was nowhere to be seen. He is distinctive: more than six feet tall, lanky and long-limbed, and his is arms only swing forward of his hips and his knees seem to bend too much. This peculiar rise and fall to his step makes him appear to be controlled by invisible strings and a not-entirely-talented puppeteer.

I finally saw him a couple more blocks along, turning on to Hastings from McLean. I wasn't early for work, so he must have been the late one today. I wonder if he knew that by when he saw me. I wonder if he'll notice when I'm not around for the next two weeks.

Where I realize that even if I write this in an email while in my office, it does not count as work, and I have far more tasks to complete than I have time to do them in as it is...

Has anyone seen my orgasm?

( Quite possibly too much information – siblings should not proceed )

I just hate to leave it wandering around by itself.

Shave my legs; I want to wear a skirt tonight, even if it means navigating a razor around the two hives on my right ankle. Damn allergies.

Ten years. More than a third of my life.

Change the kitty litter. Give the cats fresh water. Russ must have fed them before leaving for work, or maybe they just aren't eating as much because of the heat. It is so stuffy in here.

A couple of weeks ago, he brought home Dairy Queen Blizzards. He didn't bring home spoons; he knows that I wash and keep all the plastic spoons that come into our house and that we have several Blizzard spoons in the drawer.

Ten years. Double digits. A milestone.

I forgot to do the dishes last night. This heat is making me lazy and forgetful. No time to do them this morning; luckily, Russ rinsed everything after he served seconds last night, so it won't be too bad later. I'll try to get them done before we go out for our anniversary dinner. I give the counters a quick wipe to clean up crumbs and coffee marks from the morning's preparations.

A decade. That's a daunting thought. One day, one month, one year at a time, and now we've collected a decade. Today isn't actually different from yesterday, but now it's ten instead of just nine and some.

I've got my purse and my travel mug. Russ left me the last of this week's cherries. I don't think I've forgotten anything. 7:30 already; I've got to get going. The garbage truck is rumbling in the alley, but I remembered to put the garbage can and blue box out last night.

Yesterday evening was a warm-up to tonight's anticipated sappiness:
"I'll be in the living room."
"I'll bring you dinner when it's ready."
"I love that! I love that you bring me dinner every night."
"And I love that you bring me clean underwear every week."

I kissed him for the first time ten years ago today, after we saw Men in Black in the theaters for the second time together. How many kisses is that now? And how many movies seen, meals eaten, tears shed, laughter shared, and orgasms reached?

I'm still new to this MP3 player thing. I fumble with it - drop it when I tangle the cord with my house keys - and when the music finally comes on, it's like an omen, playing song 14: Give Me a Kiss You Dirty Old Bugger*:

most married couples seem to get kind of sick of each other
after too much time together
but once in a while you see an old pair with a sparkle in their eyes
that's strong and weathered

Ten years is nothing really. My parents have together for more than thirty. My grandparents were together for about 60 years before my Grandpa passed away. My great-grandparents were married from young adulthood until Grams passed away at 90 years old. Ten years is just a blink of an eye. It feels that way, anyway.

At work already. The walk does seem to go faster with music. I'll have to remember to thank Russ again for giving me his old MP3 player when he upgraded to a better one. Get the computers up and running and start the emails downloading. During university, when Russ had an office job, I used to go to the computer lab in the main library during my breaks to email back and forth with him. I bet I still have those old emails printed and stored in a binder somewhere. I have mementos from every year, but I don't need to look at them to remember. Only ten years, after all; after another fifty, I may need touchstones to bring back even important individual moments from these early days.

The tenth time we've celebrated an anniversary. Well, not really, since some years we've both forgotten our anniversary; we aren't really romantic like that. Last year we noticed a week late that the date had passed. There's just sometimes too much day-to-day life going on: vacuuming and weeding and answering emails and paying bills and grocery shopping. The things that fill days and years; the things a decade are built on.

It's not even noon yet. I'm feeling a little giddy, and I'm not sure if it's the first coffee I've had this week or the excitement of going out to dinner tonight. Russ has a surprise for me that he is being very mysterious about.

Ten years: A university degree and a college diploma; Mom's cancer, Grandpa's Alzheimer's, best friend's cancer, and Grandma's cancer; six moves and five homes and one house; two cats and one iguana; three beds; two trips to Mexico; Grandpa's death; nine jobs; two months of unemployment; numerous trips to the ER; three vacuum cleaners; four minor car accidents; countless family gatherings; three coffee makers, two French presses, and one espresso machine. And two less Blizzard spoons.

*Kim Barlow, Gingerbread.

Though I have been unable to convince the cats, who were on free-feed until Puck got too fat, that they should come running at meal time and each eat from their own bowls, I still have two bowls out. Twice a day, I jerk open the door – which sticks – to the area where the huge food bag is kept and I carefully add half a scoop of food to the "Zoey" bowl and a full scoop of food to the "Puck" bowl. I always put out the food in that order.

Zoey sits nearby and watches me. She sees the first food bowl get set down, but doesn't go to it. She waits until I put down the second, fuller, bowl before she trots up to eat from it. Always.

She eats a couple of mouthfuls, then walks away, back to whatever nap she was taking or bug she was chasing before food happened.

There is no point or benefit to our mutual routine. I wonder what would happen if I were to fill the bigger bowl first, but I don't do it. I like to have something that happens the same way every time.

How do you know when you've really gotten absolutely all of the toothpaste out of the tube?

Subtitled: Why we can't have nice things.

My friends from the suburbs, or even from the wealthier areas of Vancouver, have often noted the complete lack of garbage cans on the streets of my neighbourhood on the East side, especially at bus stops.

Strathcona is a lovely neighbourhood. It is a neighbourhood with tradition, with Italian and Chinese families who've been here for generations, taking advantage of its proximity to both Chinatown and Little Italy. It is a neighbourhood with energy, with hip up-and-coming artists scattered everywhere in studios, garages, and basement suites.

We finally got a garbage can at the bus stop near the park and community garden. It was full to overflowing most of the time, which either shows how desperately we needed it or how infrequently the city emptied it. It isn't an issue anymore, though, because someone, who was probably looking for cans and bottles to return, cracked the garage can open – split it top to bottom – and now they've taken our garbage can away.

Russ and I got broken into on Monday morning, not long after we left for work. Someone jimmied the basement door's lock. They didn't get any further then that basement storage room. As soon as they got the basement door open, our monitored alarm system went off, and functioned exactly as it was supposed to: the intruder ran off, the police came, we didn’t lose anything. There wasn't even any damage.

When we moved into this neighbourhood a year ago, there was this ugly lump of a building two doors down from us. It was free-standing from the house, right on the alley. It was covered by a massive black tarp, with flapping corners where it wasn't tied down completely, and it dominated the view from our deck.

As with most of the lots on our street, the main house's size meant that there was already more building on the lot then was allowed, so the second building must have been old enough to have been grandfathered in. As long as the building stood, it could remain, but if the owners ever tore it down, they would not be allowed to build anything new in its place.

Recently, the owners decided to re-roof and start fixing up the lump. They've been re-shingling, making additions, basically rebuilding it from scratch without it ever coming down. In talking to them about their plans, we found out that the building was actually a 100-year-old horse barn. This was one of the last areas of Vancouver to have horses.

We heard stories about the building when we first moved in. A previous house owner had divided the old barn into bedrooms. Though the building did not have electricity or running water, people would rent the rooms (stalls?), then go into the main house to use the washroom.

There was also gossip that the barn was once a bordello… but I may have started that rumour.

There are old houses in our neighbourhood being fixed up, getting heritage status. There are some gorgeous buildings near us now, painted with rich colours, with so many details like trims and stained glass and beautiful railings and fences. A lot of time and money went into those buildings.

The summer's rash of arsons seems to have ended, though no one was ever apprehended. Some brand new homes, still unfinished, and a importer's warehouse were among the victims. The warehouse was only damaged, and it is fully repaired now. The houses were completely destroyed, but they have almost been completely rebuilt.

Russ and I put down a deposit on our new windows today. They will be installed in January. Our house is a long way from being heritage, but it will look nicer with shiny new windows. They will also cut down the noise from the street and will help with our energy costs. As soon as they are installed, we will have our alarm company come in to upgrade our system.

Someone was sleeping in the next door neighbour's car port the other morning.

"Downtown and in the rich areas, people can be completely cut off. They only see the prettiness of this city," David, my British co-worker muses, "I like working here because it reminds me of what's really happening."

"Can I have a banana?" there's a skinny woman at the gate. She holds the gate with both arms, her body bowing and swaying away like a windsock with the tip caught. She's either on drugs she shouldn't be taking, or off drugs she should be on.

"Sure," David grabs a banana from an open box and takes it to the gate. She mumbles a "thanks" and stumbles away.

"When you bus through the downtown Eastside, you see our poorest, our most desperate citizens. You know, it, uh, keeps it real," David smirks at his word choice, "and here, working here, with the crack and the prostitutes and the bottle collectors... it is real."

How real do you want it?

I live and work on the edge of the bad neighbourhood of Vancouver. The most notorious corner in Canada, Main and Hastings, is less then 10 blocks from my house. On my way to work, I pass a homeless man sleeping in the park and a prostitute waiting on the corner for her next customer. A group of addicts shoot up in the doorway outside my workplace. The vacant lot on the corner is an improvised dump where pilfered garbage bags have been ripped open and emptied of any useful or slightly valuable contents.

At home, we keep our recycling box under the deck. We used to keep it on the deck, until the morning where I walked into my kitchen to see a stranger on my deck, checking the box for returnables. We leave all our returnables in the alley where a man with a liberated shopping cart picks them up – the East side recycling system at work.

To me, this sums up how un-romantic the real reality is, when you are here:

On top of a cupboard on my back deck, I had stacked a couple of old litter boxes. They were clean, in that Russ had sprayed them with the hose, but they hadn't been soaped or scrubbed. That's why they were still outside, actually. We had bought the cats a shiny new box, with a roof and a filter, and the old ones were just sitting waiting a need.

They were stolen.