whelp...

March 21, 2021

whelp...

whelp...i stayed up too late. i found out i had all these channels i didn't know that i had and i found one that was playing the live action cinderella. so i watched it. it was over at 12:30--you know still respectable bed time for a saturday. BUT. but! but...directly after cinderella they started playing jack the giant slayer.(ie. the story of jack and the beanstalk) i mean. i had no choice but to watch it. no choice!

so i didn't get out of bed until 9:28am. i was telling fatima about my non romance date with a stranger to happen later on. more about that later. but suddenly i realized that it was 9:28 and i threw back the covers, jammed a blouse on and shimmied into a skirt. i wanted to look good when i got released from yw and no doubt all eyes would rest on me. thankfully zoom good is not too hard to achieve, what with all the burry soft webcams. i joined the zoom call just 3 minutes late--just as we started the opening hymn.

sure enough i was released! no doubt some people gasped at my stunning look, but i'll never know because we were all on mute. haha. so we got a new primary presidency and a new yw presidency and i think they are all pretty fab. i tried to tell if the chan girls, who i noticed on my grid looked surprised. their mom is a councellor. but they have pretty good poker faces.

evelyn gave a talk today on 6 things to do when you don't feel good enough, or 6 somethings. it was good. i think that's a very human feeling. to feel not good enough. because in a way we aren't. we are here to become something not be it already. and we can be yoked with Christ who makes our burdens light.

after that meeting was ward council. my mouse hand twitched, but i didn't join it. we had sunday school and after that i started preparing for moqueca--brazilian fish stew. i've been meaning to make it since getting a surplus of fish from heather in january. today was the day. i chopped some garlic and zested and juiced some limes and put the fish and their marinade in the fridge to become better acquainted.

it was time for my non romance stranger date. so i think i mentioned before that i've been talking to this guy for about a month. he's from turkey but has lived in canada for about 9 years. he just moved here from edmonton. he was looking for friends. when we first started talking he wanted to meet for coffee right away and i said i would rather talk more until i felt more comfortable. and he was cool with that and said take as long as you need.

so anyways i finally felt fine to meet. but my new friend has been working every day but sundays. so i didn't want to meet at a coffee shop or anything on sunday. so i said let's meet outside. he lives in burnaby so we decided to meet at central park. fatima told me that it was sketchy to meet at central park specifically. she said central park has a rep. so i made a safety plan with her. we both agreed that obviously it would be a good idea to meet at a place in the park where there were lots of people... i also gave her his name and picture, told her what time we were meeting and i shared my location with her. that's when you can share your location with someone. get it? ha ha. well a little map shows where you are at all times, so your safety friend can see if you leave the area you said you would be in etc.

i've never done a safety plan before but i have had some situations with people i met for the first time when i didn't make the wisest decision and having the safety plan made me feel better. not that i was worried about my new friend. "you are never worried tho." said fatima. "worry is not your thing." she is mostly right. but i had misgivings those other times. i just wasn't worried about them. hahaha. what's wrong with me. anyway the point is i wanted to be legit this time. i felt like i owed myself legitness.

today was cold. i don't know if you noticed--but it rained off and on. perfect day for a meet up in the park. but my new friend said we should meet rain or shine. he seemed game. he wanted to meet at metrotown food court. it was me that said i'd rather meet in the park. i said i would bring us hot chocolate in thermoses. and i did.

central park is quite large and i drove around it 1 time to decide which area was best to stop at. i settled on the area by the tennis courts. it wasn't in the trees and it was close to the road and seemed to be people around. plus there was a picnic table. so i told my friend where i had parked and he came and joined me. while i waited for him i set up at a picnic table. stone picnic table. of course it was wet. i had my handy rain poncho for him to sit on and i sat on my new reusable strawberry shopping bag.

he drove up in a sliver mini van. and joined me at the table. he had a chocolate bar to share. he was masked. and true to what i have come to think of as turkish men's grooming practices, he was wearing some kind of scent. not too strong.

so we talked. his english is pretty good but he struggles sometimes to express himself the way he wants. anyone who learned a 2nd language knows that frustrating sluggish tongue feeling. he told me that he moved away from edmonton because all his friends and family were turkish and he wanted to improve his english. but he also said he didn't know if he was going to stay because he misses his friend and family.

he also said he doesn't like books. any books. kind of a shocking blanket statement but it was in the context of religion. he was saying he doesn't trust what books tell you. he knows himself what is right and wrong and it is between him and God. that kind of thing. i asked what about novels. he said no because he doesn't care about people. haha. i was like you don't care about people?? from what i could understand of his explanation it's more he doesn't care about other people's gossip. what is that to him? still i think he's missing a rich world in books. he does like movies, so that's something.

so we had a nice talk but after an hour of sitting on a stone bench in 5 degrees weather we were both super cold. (my friend from the caribbean once said to me "why are you sitting outside in the same temperature as the refrigerator?") i was cold to my very marrow. my bum and legs had no feeling and my feet were icy. my feet! you know i was cold if my feet of fire were cold. so i took a piece of chocolate and took back my poncho and thermos and we said a friendly good bye and that was that.

back at home i huddled under my covers for a couple of hours and had a phone convo with jenn the new yw pres and answered all her questions. oh but first i discovered my uterus is was shedding her lining the whole time i was on my non romance date! fun.

then i got up and made brazilian fish stew. aka moqueca. it was piping hot and super delicious and very satisfying.

the end.