Skoolie’s Neighborhood

...going on between Kirk and the mountain.

I NEED this on my iPod.

At Crankypants' Restaurant.

Still having fun in the land of wind and cold.  Yesterday was incredibly productive. Cranky left for work so I shuffled her iTunes and tried on her clothes.  It was pretty kinky.  I also shopped more in her attic which is full of the most beautiful treasures.  I want to move down here and reopen Aye Chihuahua for her.  After I stole a couple of sweaters and bought her Climax Ginger Ale sign I settled in for some very important business - my annual tradition of catching up on a year's worth of Days of Our Lives in a single episode.  I got to do it while eating a leftover t-bone served over mushroom risotto.  I felt like a queen.

Side note: Cranky, I am listening to iTunes right now and it's a dance remix of Anything you Want and Lithium and a bunch of other oddities...is that the Beach Boys?  Yep, it is. The track says "It's a Crankypants Christmas", wtf, woman?  It is cool if nothing else...makes me wanna dance.

Miss Cranky returned mid-afternoon and we bundled up and went out for some Christmas shopping and a secret trip to Trader Joe's without telling the BFFN.  We oogled over pretty wedding dresses, expensive luggage and leather portfolios that would've made Miss. IG drool.  Cranky lathered, rinsed and repeated at Crabtree and we both picked up some good gifties for ourselves and others.  Trader Joe's was fun, we sampled coffees and we were nearly runover by old ladies and their carts as they greedily horded all of the cookies for their Christmas parties.  We got some staples - like pigs in a blanket and chips and salsa for dinner.  Came back to Casa Cranky, toasted to a couple of beers and settled in for a Roseanne marathon.  Elvis even got a half a pig and blanket.  No wonder he whines all the time, he's very spoiled (it's hard not to spoil the little asshole, he's adorables). 

As far as I'm concerned it's been a perfect vacation!

PS: NickCaveNickCaveNickCaveNickCave

I don't see one Christmas related item in this photo titled CHRISTMAS STORY I found at one of LOC sites, but it sure is the sweetest thing just the same.

Perhaps they're saying their prayers on Christmas Eve?

Christmas Story

On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me...

... a partridge in a pear tree . Why?

In Greek and Roman mythology, pears are sacred to three goddesses: Hera (Juno to the Romans), Aphrodite (Venus to the Romans), and Pomona, an Italian goddess of gardens and harvests.

The ancient Chinese believed that the pear was a symbol of immortality. (Pear trees live for a long time.) In Chinese the word li means both "pear" and "separation," and for this reason, tradition says that to avoid a separation, friends and lovers should not divide pears between themselves.

However, more relevant to our pear tree partridge:

Perdix, "Lord of the Pear Trees", was one of Athens most sacred kings, when he was cast into the sea to die, his goddess, Athena, carried him to heaven, in the form of a Partridge.

When the legend of "The Partridge in a Pear Tree", was made into a Christmas Carol, the symbol of Christ was substituted for Lord Perdix.

you can listen to the steven seagal song here http://ping.fm/9Xk9c

we're having quite a storm. the wind is roaring around the corner of the house. i can hear the willow tree outside the window whipping about.

very soon i will take the quilt top that my great-grandmother made and quilt it to a backing that i have yet to make. there used to be all manner of quilts she'd made kicking around. over the years some less than careful relatives have destroyed most of them. i've hung onto this quilt top though. it's made of white cotton with an orange and green and red floral design. there are bits of trapunto and my g-grandmother had begun to embroider french knots in places. quite pretty.

i am simultaneously dreading and welcoming the new year. how can that be? it just is. if i look back at december and january posts from this blog and the old one they all seem to say the same thing. my wheels are always spinning. stuck in the mud. i keep rocking my ride hoping it will eventually free itself. i think i feel an extricating momentum. i won't say it with certainty though because i don't like to jinx myself.

think i'm going to revisit some nabokov. it would be better to do so with lebkuchen and tea. especially given the weather. but i'm out of tea and am lebkuchenless. darn it.

wellidy.

I'm sure their mother loves them double...

Double

Even though they're so small and squatty....

Hey guess what I just figured out? I easily get sucked in to the vortex of inner sadness and self pity, it wounds me and lasts for days. Then I snap out of it and realize life is kind of imperfect and beautiful in every aspect but with the correct mindset this is the only way to visually take in the beauty of it all. My therapist has decided to change her title to 'reminder' in my case. Reminding me of the beauty of life, reminding me of the art of living that I do so enjoy. I adore the daily twists and turns. Honestly.

Also we discovered together just how remarkably intuitive I am about my own feelings and 'roots' of issues. Easily are my issues traced, hurrah! My dad fixed everything. He could fix anyone and anything, oozing a sort of calm along the way. In one fellow swoop extinguishing the fire of the situation, removing any future concern by ensuring the problem didn't even have a faint pulse remaining. I strive to be this person, I feel I need to be this person and 'fix' everything.

However! Some people and some things I cannot 'fix'. I cannot make them happy, chose the forks in the road they take, push them towards greatness, calm, happy lives. It turns out, unbeknownst to me, that everyone and everything around me have their own agendas and feelings and thoughts and likely won't respond well to threat or force. Especially Mister, who remains wounded and who is obviously interested in me but still very hesitant.

No.

I can't.

This. Sucks. Unfairness overload.

You can't be me, I'm a rockstar. (Note to self: Self, marry Pharell Williams...skater rock punk urban dude who can sing and design jewelry for Louis Vuitton. Purrfect.)

Numerous muses and project starters swimming around my head , alike hundreds of cold and ambition hungry guppies. I want to grab my guitar and figure out how to both slow down and folk up T Pain songs. I spoke to my friend Steph yesterday and we spoke about Vlogging, something I may add as a weekly feature to my website/Blog thingy currently under construction. Found an amazing web designer via the Alchemy portion of Etsy.com. She is a godsend and every progress report or picture attachment gets me even more excited to get this thing going.

Adding to the excitement is also having been bestowed an amazing honour at the pink dinner party. More about that in the future, very exciting. Have new-found confidence in going public and realizing this opportunity could likely propel me in all sorts of new directions. Future forks in my winding road of adventure. I need a sprinkling of fairy dust here and there. I like a little excitement within my day. I like something interesting and foreign strewn about during my commute. This is what makes everyday just a little memorable and special. Something I am trying to concentrate on.

I have this very poignant, interesting entry at least halfway done and sure enough my Open Office software is being a spoiled child and suddenly, without warning, closing down the application. Sigh. I even went to all the trouble of making bullet points below the written text to remind myself of the other things I wanted to tell you folks. Nevertheless it seems that entry isn't ready to be posted so I will elaborate slightly on the happenings of the past week.

Anxiety. I got it. It comes and goes. I find it hard to concentrate, I find it difficult to daydream and I read way too much in to everything. And by everything I mean mostly everything, one, sight, sound, overheard, under-heard and so forth. I have ways of dealing with this, mostly saying out loud to myself 'stop' and concentrating on the task at hand. My stomach is in knots at times as well, that's just poor digestion I think. Or possibly the chili I had on Wednesday. Likely the chili but with all this over-analyzing who has time for reason?

I went swimming at the Rec centre twice this week. If you don't feel you require the exercise then I suggest you go solely for the rather impressive selection of men who choose to swim there. My. God. On Monday the whole lot of them were in the 8-10 range, I saw one 6 once. Once! The others were all basking in the glow of that high range of desirable male, at least in an attractive, fit, excellent hair, sense. And we all know how much I enjoy a man with a nice head of hair!

Speaking of which, Mister. Promised me a walk this week and suggested a lunch next week. The walk is untaken. The lunch unplanned. I took it upon myself to plan a couple of hours for the two of us to go Christmas shopping for his niece and nephew. Personally I can think of not a better date then both spending his money alongside browsing childrens toys and books. I did mention out of pure desperation that I do need some progress on this before I go on vacation and suffer from mister-withdrawal for two weeks. We'll see, when it comes to Mister...there hasn't been any coming yet.

(Have not heard from Married. Miss him. Miss getting fucked on a regular basis, possibly too graphic but it's true. I have taken matters in to my own hands however it is not the same, I am so predictable with myself. Why can't he just leave the chubby wife and make the obviously better choice? DON'T answer that, I don't want to hear it.)

Ohhhhhhhhh snap! Guess what just decided to work...my good friend O squared. I will back-date that entry and post it after this one under Rockstar. Tell your friends, and their moms too.

Toronto gets cold in the winter...Torontoians forget about this. This one did. The wind? She is as bitter cold, as most of my past relationships. I bought a new coat from Lornes after work today, got 10% off just for asking and scored myself a little down filled black number that can seamlessly go from corporate to casual. Lornes has amazing stuff, Michael Kors can make one hell of a winter coat trust me. Kors has such a great eye for colour, the selection was impressive...all jewel tones; ruby, sapphire and emerald. Had I six hundred extra dollars lying around I would totally go back and get me some Kors. Instead I went with fashionable and functional.

Look at me I'm an adult!

Kind of left my passport project to the last minute and now have to scramble to get the needed document so perhaps mother and i can take a trip down to Florida in late December or early January. Mister was thinking he would go to South America over the Christmas break, he didn't invite me. I have over two weeks of vacation left and plan to use them by physically going somewhere. Over the past few years I have mostly subscribed to the 'stay-cation' and spending my vacation time up north at my parents house.

I miss my dad. I really do. In dreams he is always alive and my mother has passed on instead. WTF? It bothers me. Wrote this down for my therapy appointment next Tuesday. Next Monday I am having a birthday dinner for about a dozen of my friends at a local pub. I will post pictures, trying to get excited about it but to be honest I am exhausted from anxiety this week and can't wait to spend two and a half days up north with my mom. Sleeping in, 2.5 hours of Coronation Street on Sunday., dogs, cat, one mom and eight horses. My mom sold my dad's horse. Initially I was devastated but then realized he is going to a good home and my poor mom can't take care of everything all by herself.

Which brings us to...my brother decided to battle again with drug addiction and last week was forcibly moved out with his skanky girlfriend whom I cannot stand. Yesterday while Christmas shopping with my bestie Katya I texted him asking if he needed anything in particular for the new apartment. No response, tried calling my mom to see if she knew and she didn't answer the phone. I got slightly concerned considering she had to let out, let in, clean up after eight horses all by herself. I envisioned her bad knee giving out in the blizzard while the horses run amuck around her. I tried my brother again, girlfriend answered and I asked her if she could possibly ask my brother if he could possibly make the five minute commute to mom's for a checkup. I was civil! My brother didn't go over or call.

Today he told my mom I had 'freaked out' about her to the girlfriend last night. Bull. Shit. \He also took his dog who my mother was very attached to considering she was his main caregiver. Ugh. Which leads me to a question for you all that I have been asking around about - do you like your siblings significant others? I've gotten a mixed bag of answers, certainly it's an interesting subject non?

slow boat to China by Steven Seagal is a good song