laura the destroyah

i'm sitting at the half moon table on my porch.  the sun has set but the horizon in the west remains rosy peach and the sky is a pale pale blue.  couples are walking the paths in the park.  i like to watch them.  two ladies circled briskly about ten times and a grandfather slowly meanders pushing an umbrella stroller.  i can hear some guys playing basket ball across the park by the school.  i can hear my neighbour next door doing the dishes and my downstairs neighbours enthuse over and over about their garden. "did you see what the potatoes did??...my but this zucchini!"  it amuses me, but i know i'd be saying the exact same things.  growing things in your garden gives you a feeling like you are a partner in a miracle.  dusk in the long days of summer is peaceful and sweet.

i know it's not technically summer.  tell someone who technically cares.  :)

i ordered thai food today.  you need to spend 20.00 minimum so i got chicken satay with a coconut peanut sauce as well as my customary pad thai of delight.  i was sitting out here working on lil' hux's photos and gazing at the tree in the park with the golden hour light glinting off it's lush green leaves.  i was thinking about how in the fall that tree will look like it's on fire, the setting sun setting it's colours ablaze.  and how in winter it will be barren and stark and wet and how the seasons pass so quickly and how life is all a cycle of living and dying, in the natural world and in ourselves.  not just our physical bodies.  but death and rebirth of different parts of ourselves.  i was having deep thoughts ok.  then i heard a heavy foot on the stairs and izzy bolted for the door. i stood up expecting to see a gentleman delivery man.  but it was an older woman.  her hair was'n't grey or anything but we're talking sixties.  she struggled up the stairs breathlessly and at the top she told me in broken english how she gets dizzy with heights.  and i, knowing the uneasy knot in my stomach when my back is to the stairs, felt for her.  i think she told me she can't do rides at the pne, but i'm not sure.  i told her to be careful going down and she said she won't look.  and she went the whole way down looking at the wall.  i liked her, she was cute.

so today i was happily making one of my favourite soups--roasted tomato with roasted garlic... i was in the middle of scooping piles of juicy roasted tomatoes and slopping them into the pot that had onions sauteed in butter and oregano bubbling on the bottom of it.  the big metal bowl of tomatoes was resting on the flat top grill beside the pot.  well, i got to a point where i felt i had slopped enough and the bowl was now empty enough to pick up and pour the rest of the contents into the pot.  so i went to pick it up and that's when i recoiled in horror and did a wild and silent dance--you know the kind.  the bowl was white hot.  and i burned my finger prints off.  well i immediately ran them under cool water.  and it turned out of the 3 digits concerned in the accident, thumb was the worst off.  thumb screamed  bloody murder as soon as i took him out of the water because it felt like he was a torch of fire.  a michael jackson with his hair aflame.  long story short, i kept my hand immersed for 4 hours, to 2 advil AND 2 tylenol  and doused it in lavender.  after this time, when i became totally chilled and there was no blood left in my hand, i felt fine to take it out of the water.  then i went home. but thumby torched again in the car because it was so hot in there.  i went beserk while driving.  seriously, it was like an unquenchable fire.  i don't know what the deal was.  i blasted the ac, but it wouldn't get cold, so i stuck thumby out in the cool wind as i drove, but stop lights and delays were agony for thumbster.  finally at one light i doused it with lavender again, thanks be that i had some in my purse, and that helped for my remaining 5 minutes home.  after a nap everything seems fine and in fact i have very little feeling there.

rewind to tuesday evening.  we had a young women's/young men's activity canoeing from gary point.  on a previous occasion, i had asked brother cook if he had a kayak.  he was all, well i have one of those little sit on the water open ones.  and i was all yah! that would be great! canoes are so tippy and heavy and i'm so much more comfy in a kayak....  sure enough on the day of the activity there was a little plastic short kayak for me.  sister cook was in the other.  i had never been on that kind, but how hard could it be?  brother taylor who had been paddling a round in it, helped me get on.  "i know to do it." i told him.  "ok" he said, helping me anyways and shoving me out.  unfortunately, i didn't take the time to adjust the seat, so i found myself paddling from almost a laying down position.  it was really not comfy.  also the life jacket i sucked myself into was riding up to my ears, covering part of my face... so after a while, i decided to ground myself on the beach and fix my chair.  brother cook came zooming up on his safety-man seado, and helps me.  then he vroom vrooms off and it's just melissa and i.  melissa was in a canoe by herself.  we just get going again, and melissa lightly  nudges me with her canoe, and flip! over goes the kayak. well that was refreshing.  i was at about chest/neck level, and i got myself to shore, and back into the kayak and we started off again.  ok.  so there was a channel.  you could go outside this crop of land or between it and the shore.  we decided to go between, and that's what the others had done as well.  well because it was so narrow, there was quite a current going through there.... a curved one.  a current that as soon as i crossed it,...flip!  it flipped me like a was a tiny hotcake and it was a huge flipper.  totally over my head and in a current, i swam my flippity flip kayak to the rocky shore and admitted defeat.  it was a bit of a blow to my pride, but i also felt it was quite funny.  we tied the kayak to the canoe and i was just getting into melissa's canoe when mr.safety seado returned and helped stablize the canoe and help me get in.  brother cook is so funny because he hardly ever changes expression.  :)  he told us everyone else was turning back so we turned back... we never made it too far, but i was glad to turn back because, dang canoes are heavy to drag through the water against the current!  after that i sat around in my drenched clothes until everyone was back and things were packed up etc.  and then i came home and huddled under my duvet until heat returned to my limbs.

two clumsy days.  what will happen tomorrow?  you know what they say about 3s...