drownded

i did my last run of the route (paper) on wednesday.  it was raining steadily by the end.  good bye paper route.  we had some good times.  i'll miss you, but i'm better for having experienced you.  on one of my last houses there was a giant, blow-up, glowing frankenstein .  i appreciated him.

i was an owl for halloween.  making the costume was a lot of work, but once you're locked in, you're locked in.  that's what i told myself on the 3rd night in a row that i stayed up until 2am working on it.  why so craycray laurlaur?  i did it for the kids...and probably myself.  one night i watched 3 episodes of downton abbey as i cut and sewed and pinned and cut and sewed and pinned and cut and sewed and pinned...  there was this one point in this one episode--i lost it.  i cried and i cried hard.  i was sitting on the floor of my living room, after midnight, covered in fabric scraps, holding pins and i was rocking back and forth in grief.  sometimes shows are too real for me.  i seriously had to stop myself from saying a prayer for a character.  but i was feeling the pain you know?  kind of like that adorable baby video i saw on facebook, that cried and got all emotional when her mom sang this song.  she felt the pain too.  me and that baby--we're kindreds.

anyways on the day of our trunk or treat i was still sewing minutes before i left for the activity but it all turned out ok.   the kids loved it.  lots of them asked if i was harriet, our sharing time owl that asks "who are you?" to the kids each sunday.  at work i had a good reception also but some people didn't know what i was.  i asked one of my co-workers if she knew what i was and at the same time i flapped my wings and said "hoo-hoo-hoo".  she looked at me blankly and guessed "a bat?".  that was the funniest one.  seriously.  a bat.  i had these fake eyelashes with huge gold lashes on and my left eye literally and physically ran all day.  every single moment of the day it i had a tear rolling down my left cheek.  here is a weird photo i took of myself that does not show it very well.  obviously my hair is the owl 'ears/ 'horns' and obviously by beak is made from fabric and obviously i didn't go with traditional owl colours--BOring!  on actual halloween i did my eyes a little diff.  i used black and poiple.  that's the way i rolled that day.

friday i had yeLANa over.  we decided to make beet burgers.  she came to my house and then we went shopping for our ingredients and then came back to my place and collaborated on our beet burgers with a side of sweet potato fries.  i made a super lemony, double zout garlicky humus.  i don't want to brag, but i did make it.  and aMAHzing find--balsamic, fig chevre!  oh. my. goodness.  so my burger went a little like this: toasted sourdough bun, thick spread of the doublazout humus, arugula, melty chunks of balsamic fig goat cheese heaven, beet burger a la aweseomenss, dijon, ketchup, sourdough bun.  so YUM!  we kept eating even when we were full because our food was that good.  after dinner we had some good chats and then watched whale rider which yelena had never seen. it was a situation that needed to be corrected and i was the one to do it.  oh! the speech pai does to honour her grandfather when her heart is breaking--it gets me every time!  the sweetness, the courage, the choice to love when not receiving love in return, the power of her beautiful vulnerable heart.  i love that part.  i love that movie because it's a girl power thing and because of the way it showcases the hard work of love, and because she was special and no one seemed to know it but it didn't change how special she was and in the end it all came out anyways and much to my relief eyes that were blind were opened.  good stuff.

yesterday was cold, and rainy.  i stayed in my jammies most of the day.  i must say that i'm grateful to natalie for giving me fleece jammies for christmas.  i use them a lot because my house is a beef locker in temperature much of the time.  i did manage to clean my room and do laundry and i worked on photos.  but for about half an hour i went outside and took some clicks of the fallen leaves.  the them is, "drowned"

i leave you with two stories.  one is a yesteryear one sarah and i did, probably from last november when i visited kelowna.  it is thus:

it happened so suddenly.  a gust of wind came out of nowhere, and blew off all of marge's clothes revealing her well kept secret--her octopus legs.  marge froze like a deer in headlights.  when her legs were out (which only had ever happened in extreme privacy) they gyrated around her in hypnotizing undulations.  she hoped no one had noticed but perhaps that was impossible when one is on stage in front of a crowd of people.  this was both a blessing and a curse.  the other actors tried to incorporate her legs into the scene, but it was difficult to be maria von trapp with wildly undulating octopus legs, let alone a nude maria.  the von trapp children being children, forgot about their roles and began climbing, riding and hanging from the octopus legs while singing "doe a deer".  thankfully, flaubert, who played captain von trapp, thought to roll in the puppet stage and a thankful marge ducked behind it and began a particularly robust version of the yodeling goatherd song.  but hanz, who was secretly behind the whole thing because he was jealous of marge, wouldn't have it being covered up so smoothly, so, he being a back stage worker, gave her a big shove from behind sending her flying towards the center of the stage in mid yodel.  marge stood there, exposed, shamed and enraged, and reached a tentacle back stage and seized hanz by the ankle, and began juggling him with her legs while singing the dramatic music in a minor key and with feverish gusto.  the audience, although aq little surprised by the change from the traditional story, was thoroughly entertained.  at the end of the night it was marge who received a standing ovation, which really bugged hanz who had vomited after his sudden debut in the play.  everyone was afraid to actually confront marge about the octopus legs, and decided to just pretend nothing weird ever happened.  hanz moved away from town shortly after and no one heard from him again.

the next is a beaut from me sarah and delanie.  delanie was a delightful addition as i think you will see:
sometimes your own nose is your worst enemy, thought gigi irritably.  she hated it when body parts turned against her.  on this morning the left nostril seemed swollen. well, swollen was an understatement--it seemed to pillow out towards her ear.  and on today of all days!!  today was the beginning of something BIG.  why on earth would her nostril pillow out on the day of her much anticipated 1st date with dreamy dirk?!  dreamy dirk...for a moment she was taken back to the day he FINALLY asked her out.  the stormy day under the protection of the library canopy as she waited for the bus, he appeared.  she had felt the electricity of his nearness instantly, and so naturally she in that moment, tripped and fell backwards in an awkward jumble of limbs. she skidded to a stop on her bottom, and ended up right at his feet.  she jumped up, runner her fingers through her hair in complete refusal to acknowledge the devastation that just occurred. "uh...hi!", she chirped a bit too brightly.  at first it was almost as if he didn't hear her, so she moved right in front of his face.  "hi! would you look at those clouds...what a storm eh?"  but that nervous tic of having to swallow put a pause between storm and eh and came out sounding precisely as awkward as she felt.  "go out with me?", he said it so sweetly and so suddenly that her blasted knees gave out again and she fell forward into his arms.  and so she had to do what she always did when her nose pillowed out to huge proportions--she offered it to her cat who ate it and she and dreamy dirk fell deeply and madly in love, and her cat got lovely nose scraps for the remainder of his days.