endosummer

crisp breeze drying raindrops on the hood of an old chevy
sharp squawks, get up get up! crows announcing morning
wet grass rich loam pervasive in the park
misty light chasing shadows from the dark

diesel fumes choking swirling through the market square
people huddled mutant waiting for their scheduled routes
giant scarlett gladiolas straining for the sky
whistling humming buzzing laughing sound the passersby

electronic beeping tapping reminders of the workday
shuffling papers research resolution and response
conditioned air metallic dry and sneezing
elevators waiting chugging zipping and one wheezing

heat haze smoglike builds up blanketing the city
horizons smudged, the clouds diffuse, humidity peaking
the sweet foul air of intersections, leaving work behind
arrow straight o'er to the deck to meet some friends of mine :)

have a happy long weekend

restart

wicke sweet - the sun's aborning and it'll be 29 degrees by the time i get off work! i told all my friends that it was only going to be cold and blustery until the kids went back to school (the schoolboard requested the autumnal weather in the hopes it will convince the children that it's better to be inside) and then it would get all beautiful out again. HAH! so there you doubting thomas/inas. most of my friends looked at me like I'd grown two heads ...oh yeah... sure it will... but it's still auguuust ... little miss optimist was my fave epithet mumbled/growled/whined at me with the wailing of "I'm cooold" echoed off the deck a close second. if you're cold put some layers on. if it warms up you can take them off - wait til old man winter starts to freeze of the appendages - then talk to me about cold.

it was so beautiful yesterday, better today - the sky a clear cerulean with not a cloud in sight and tomorrow 33 is the forecast - the long weekend's 24-28 - perfect camping weather. not so hot you're all sweaty and attracting bugs, but still warm enough to wear shorts and a t and appreciate life in general.

mental paused

it's just soooo much fun to reach that point in your life where your body's monthly betrayal begins to come unglued. it seems that doctors either use it as a catch all and try and put you on some kind of magic bean to deal with the vaguaries of your traitorous flesh and howling hormones, or refuse to even recognize that the onset of this profound change should even begin to affect you until the hot flashes are close to nuclear. a woman with a beard and moustache is just not where I want to be!

and gods forbid that you take any joy in the fact that the days of mushy motherhood are soon to be fading memories. find me a sugar daddy and a plastic surgeon I say!

Though it may seem like it, it ISN'T all about surface stuff either. for those of us who are more fully endowed than others, a difference in mass and shape is a world changing thing. especially for those of us who have criminally poor self images to begin with! talk to some women who have reductions and they'll tell you that the reduced back strain from hauling the boulder girls around adds a spring to the step, and once the tatas are back to their pre-motherhood stature - holy crap, buttoned blouses fit again, and you can wear shirts with princess lines and darts without the clothes looking like they have been mis-fitted. and you can buy oh so many different styles of pretty lingerie that makes you feel even more feminine (if that's what you're int0 - i am). and wear tight tshirts without feeling like your tits are going to pop out the bottom if you walk too fast. I'd WAY rather have to worry that the girls will pop out of the TOP of my tshirt than the bottom - are you kidding?

Mind, I wouldn't give up my kids for anything. HOWEVER, they are adults on their own now and it's my turn. why shouldn't I make myself look better if that's what I want to do? I want a set of Wicked Wanda or Little Annie Fanny titties. full on the bottom, perky and with the nips pointing just a little bit upwards. Thank you dad for those magazines you stashed in the downstairs closet when I was in grade 4. They helped me deal with the fact that there was only one other girl with breasts in my class, and gave me a goal to shoot for for my 50th birthday. I might even get a tummy tuck too if I can drop the poundage before then (fat chance!) it'll be a groovy granny shakin her booty on her 50th. a bit of a nose job too if the funds are there.

ah well - big dreams. perhaps i should focus, now what was i going to say - oh yes, concentration can also be affected by the miserable malady - (hmm that looks like my lady - i'll have to look up the etymological root for that one) on top of the Bay of Fundy mood swings! by the hundred little gods I want some freakin chocolate - but NOOOO - i can't have that either ....

see what i mean? and I actually feel pretty good this morning. I have no idea what prompted this and now it's gone. hope y'all have wonderful tuesdays.

monday, monday ... so good to me ... la la la

i believe that work today will be less work than staying home since i have a list of projects that need to get done. it seems that i just get the list reduced and murphy and his blasted get infest my home and gives me more to do.

I fixed the light switch (or thought i had) in my office 3 weeks ago only to have it go wonky on me again. the actual switch inside the wall keeps coming loose and it's affecting the contact so you have to wiggle the wall plate to get the light to stay ON! so now i need an electrician for a light fixture (previous problem) and a wall plate. right after my son went to work around 9:30 or so my lighter disappeared. usually not a traumatic event, however after spending time with my grands, my patience tends to wear fairly low and i knew that my stash of matches had already been rifled. i checked everywhere - it's gone (grrr growling under my breath at my son) i did manage to find some matches stashed in a box so at least i could have a smoke, but by the time i found them i could really have used a drink to go with it. the kids came and picked up seth at noon and i went for a nap.

i woke up around 4 - too late to get to the store of course. moved some plants back inside from the deck. did a few dishes, made a bite to eat and watched "Guess Who" a hilarious little tv show with Ashton Kutcher as the unannounced white boyfriend of the darling of a black family. a much needed diversion.

i was out on the deck reading when the boy came home with dreadlilocks in tow, to play on the computers of course - which still have some IE launching malware installed on them that i have been unable to remove after the boys attempted to patch a game they were playing last wednesday or thursday.

i went to go back into the house only to have my back door knob refuse to turn in my hand. fuck! enough! so there i stood banging on the damn door at 8 in the evening and my son looks at me when he opens the door like i'm some feeble old fool. "the door isn't locked you know..." eyebrow raised. so i showed him how the knob wouldn't turn. swore some more and went straight to bed. not 20 minutes later i hear a distant bang bang bang. oh yeah! it's the boys - locked out on the deck, and i have to get out of my nice comfortable bed to let them in. the boy says "well i made sure i had my keys ... and i tried to stop him from closing the door ..." keys will not open a door whose handle will not turn.

then it was up and down all bloody night & up for the day at the ridonkulous hour of 5:30 am - why? no freakin idea. showered went to have a smoke, i only have one left - and i cannot find the matches. found 'em and ID NOT lock myself out of the house. add to to do list - get new back door knob. very autumnal out this morning. first week that i'll be working 5 days since mid-May. think it may be a long one. heavy sigh ...

done:

finished moving 700 pounds of office furniture 180 - 270 degrees as well as 3 largish bookcases (full) as well as sundry art supplies, hats, scrolls, sewing paraphanalia and disconnecting and rewiring all the office technology. much better. now the grandson is coming for a sleepover, I'm having a sandwich and a nap before he gets here. hope everyone's weekend is gorgeous.

AHA!

wednesday & thursday - what a whiny mess i was: my knee hurt my left foot feels like it's broken, my back went out of place, the sun refused to shine, my rice didn't cook all the way through, i didn't win the lottery, i got the mother of all headaches and I have not been able to destrot the f@#$ing virus/malware that is randomly launching stupid IE browser windows (serves me right for using microsuck$ i guess)

however, i did write a few letters and did a dance for el Sol and it's here today. I also determined to get a bunch of little things done that i said i would do for people and then lost my round tuit. my to do list is almost ta done. plants, links, flowers, photos, website, letters, phonecalls - done. office - hmmmm half done. laptop is happening and all the storage, 1 desk moved, the other cleared ... gettin' there.

and karma smiles on all my dedicated focus by bringing me a loverly day on my day off and i have enough in my pocket for a coupla pints!

life gets better :)

p.s.

it's still yucky. it was too dark to read on my deck by 7:30 pm last night (heavy sigh) i had to turn my fan off and use an actual blanket when i went to sleep.

this morning i woke up at 5am and the birdies weren't even singing. you are still hiding. i wanted to just stuff my head between my pillows and stay hibernated.

we love you. if you show up tomorrow we can guarantee that we will sing and dance to your awesomeness. we might even sacrifice a pint or two.

letter to the Sun:

where did you go? school doesn't go back in until next week. there are still 10 days left in august. and labour day weekend is always our last chance for camping (except your are munificent and hang around a little extra through to October)

you peeked at me for mere moments at coffee break and then hid yourself again so fast i almost missed it entirely. please note i did not complain about your heat when it was 35 or 36 or even one day 37 degrees before the humidity. sure i complained about the humidity - but never the sunshine.

i love you. you make my flowers bloom, my grass greener and my skin tawny (to hell with the whole UV crap - i prefer brown to dead fish white thank you) my heart soars when you fill my sky. your rays illuminate my days and parts of my nights and that is reason to rejoice.

i miss you. please come back.

even the goddess gets a day off :)

ahh, what a weekend it's been. SO much fun and damn but my knee is NOT happy with after the dead celebrity party Friday night. but it was too much fun. we had all the blonde bombshells: Anna Nicole, Courtney Love and 2 Marilyns, Lucille Ball, Audrey Hepburn in Holly-Go-Lightly mode, crikey it's Steve Irwin, Mr. Kinsey was on report and an on the spot makeover to Hunter S Thompson. Then there was the Joey Ramone/Howard Stern multiple personality, 2 Johnny Cash (both without the hat or the guitar), the famous roadie that doubles as a boy toy for the blondes ... a Waylon or Conway (can't quite remember which?) and Indira Ghandi.



i love backyard parties. everyone has a blast, the living room becomes the dancehall, cards are happening in the dining room and one is never ever bored! to abigail and the house of pain, our great thanks for letting us come and mess up your house!



on a more bizarre note, we were getting into the cab in the wee hours to boogie on home and the taxi driver puts on a mask ( in little old Regina no less)- you know the little white ones that you use when you're painting, that almost look like surgical masks ... yeah! being me and being familiar with this particular driver, I just could not resist asking "why?" he said there was too much smell of smoke and alcohol, etc ... i just shook my head and waited for the ride to end. i had no idea how disconcerting it is to sit beside someone driving with a surgical mak on ... kinda creeped me out.



saturday morning was housekeeping and phone calls - and my Devi come to sleepover. my little joybug. and angus bodhi cat behaved for the most part! we didn't go to the park because of my stupid knee but we did all kinds of other things. frustration, and the itsy bitsy spider game, monoploy junior (which she very quickly bankrupted me at) watched a couple of movies, read some stories, and made french toast and bacon breakfast for uncle murray this morning (she thinks the texture of raw egg is "completely gross" - too funny). she is just getting so big - she starts grade 2 in a couple of weeks though she says she's not ready for stupid school to start yet. then as we were waiting for amanda & chris to pick her up we made up about 20 new choruses to "Down by the Bay" - she's getting pretty good at imaginative rhyming! Seth is coming next Saturday - who hoo!



so today is lazy day. mur came back after his diner shift and laughed because I am almost NEVER just lying on the couch - but it's all cloudy and windy and I'm just not interested in accomplishing much else and it was pretty comfy. and my lovely daughter had brought me home made chicken noodle soup the day before so i didn't even have to cook myself supper!



in retrospect ... I do have photos from 3 different gatherings to crop and post and a dress to shorten, neither of which I got anywhere close to. it appears i will have things to do after work this week hmmmmm. and my cousin Marci and her daughter are coming to town for a visit this week and I need to rearrange the office to move the pantry from the kitchen to pull out the appliances and move in my new little retro table for the breakfast nook and determine where i will put all the outdoor plants indoors and reorganize the hallway closet and YUCCHH! dig out the autumn wardrobe ... you know :)



so to all my friends out there at play, have a happy productive monday

awandering...

i was wandering through some blogs suggested to me by some of the nice people i know (see previous entry), when I hit upon I Am The Diva. she had a link to a colour test that she got from elsewhere. i love colour and i have done alot of research into it. all those psych classes and that is what interested me most... so I had to take the test.

my result: You're yellow, the colour of joy and energy -- two things you definitely bring to everyone around you. It's hard for anyone to be sad or lonely in your presence; your sunny disposition and cheery outlook just won't allow it. The warmth of your personality shines through in the kindness you show friends and family (and strangers, too). Always ready with a lighthearted joke or heartfelt compliment, you know how to make people feel good about themselves, so they can't get enough of you. Yellow is a warm and inviting colour for a warm and inviting person -- you!

HAHAHAHAHAHA - my homes have been painted 12 different shades of yellow like buddha gold, yak butter yellow and sunflower glory with serengetti sunset orange and arterial blood red for accents.

that was fun, thank you madame diva.

awarded for "niceness"

so my lovely friend of the orange scarf and dreadlilocks (knuckle toes) has awarded me for "niceness" and that after I was being my normally picky self and correcting her spelling on her profile. Here's what knuckle toes had to say when she bestowed this honour upon me own self:
"Clearly you deserve this prestigious award. You are always around to offer helpful advice, or an anecdote to go along with any problem or scenario. Your funny, caring, and just plain neat."

it made me start to think of the virtue of niceness. what does it really mean? when i look at the people who have already received the award, i know i'm in with the good crowd. these are all people who go out of their way to be friendly to strangers, help their friends and at the same time don't put up with crap from negative people. they smile. they're funny. they encourage niceness to grow. they live who are they are without masks or bullshit. they actually express their care for people everyday. and some of them make REALLY good cookies :)

simplified karma ~ what goes around comes around. so i am supposed to nominate nice people that i know and keep the niceness flowing. to Abigail who is pretty much one of the best people you could ever get to know and as beautiful on the inside as she is on the out. to schmutzie who makes me laugh and cry and makes me exercize my brain. and to palinode, one of the nicest guys i know, the squinty eyed portugee whose blog keeps me rolling on the floor.

and to a couple of people who don't blog and will probably never read this, my best friend Deb who is there - always. to Luanne who is THE nicest person i know and would go out on a limb for just about anybody, and for Renee who is even nice to the trees:)

Thanks, i'm in pretty heady company!

whazzat?

i awake - after a 10 hour snooze. am i rested? am i feeling alright with the world? do i have that lovely catstretch feeling that makes all the strange little bones in your toes and knuckles pop?

no.

"shut up" what? "shut up" who the hell is that? "don't do it" don't do what? "it's okay go ahead" "go back to bed - take a sick day" who the hell is talking to me? i look down the hall - nada. the boy is still sleeping so it's not him "hey, over here" well there's angus bodhi cat petulantly waiting for his brekky, but definitely no talkin' to me since his voice is a little raspier. there is no one else in my house!

it must be me. damn i thought i had those voices trapped away forever "ever's a looong time"

please make the voices stop

breathing space ...

change is eternal ...

and today my boss came back from her vacation and I am very very very glad. I did manage to hold downt the fort without any major fracas (albeit a few spelling errors and comma splices)while she was gone, but I was certainly a busy little bee.

wow - it's been 10 glorious days of summer weather since I last jotted notes to the few patient readers who pop in to see if I'm stil breathing. I am. the heat is wonderful but the humidity just sucks the energy right out of you like an electrolux after dust bunnies, or a summer-decker sucks back pints.

the Aug long weekend was a gooder. another fraturday night at OHees, off to the Jaw for my dad's 70th birthday (which for a while there we were pretty sure we wouldn't see - thank you oh hundred little gods for thine intervention) Sunday was my girl Renee's 49th birthday for which she had been planning a BBQ extraordinaire and of course - not only does it rain it freakin pours!

does she remember she has a 2 car carport? do I remember she has a 2 car carport? anyone else involved? of course not. but providence is a flighty thing and when I stopped by Luanne's for a ride over to Renee's - SHE remembered ... (open the locker door - "All Hail Empress Luanne") To hell with the rain tables chairs presents food beers people and hornets - off to the carport. we would have moved that spanking new bbq too but as Murphy would have it the rain cleared up by grillin' time. Guaranteed if we moved all the furniture back onto the deck, the rain would have reasserted its control and it would be back to drippytown. and we had a blast! ot two and the steaks were tasty, April made this mango corn salsa M-m-mm-mm and she bought liqueur filled strawberries - the stuff in the Elephant bottle that I love but always forget the name for ... and Lisa brought angel food cake and real whipping cream ... it was simply delightful

then it was back to work for 3 days shorter than I needed and it was fraturday again... with the hoopla reagining free and the folkfest tuneage drifting over the deck, old sots we hadn't seen for awhile kept randomly popping up and when the rain drummed it was off to Crazy Dee's for more laughter & frollicking.

then came funday (the day after fraturday) or in this case, another fraturday filled with the folksy dirges in the park followed by a happytime buyout from several escapees at O'hee's and on to the annual helpdesk pub crawl ... how can you NOT love summer? decadence to the break and on to the distrikt - the hooligans rejoiced and danced till we simply could NOT dance NO more (or at least some of us)... cause the bar was closing and they were givin' us the boot. and who were the last of the hooligans still astandin' on da corner eatin' hot dogs & waiting for a taxi - da goils!

then it was time to put away the glory days, clean up the act and get ready for work. Housework and laundry, a good book on the deck and family phone calls... life is gooood!

exhibitionists

the famdamily was of to the EX Wednesday afternoon - thought we'd take advantage of the cooler weather 28-29 and the breeze that was blowing. WHAT A BLAST!

devi is now 4 feet tall and cannot fit on all the kiddie rides any longer, while seth is only 44" so he still gets to ride them all. she was some put out let me tell you. talk about the righteous indignation of a seven year old who has already measured herself on the chart provided and then the ride master says NO. she looked like she was ready to spit.

they love the rides these kids, especially the roller coasters and anything that goes high in the sky. this year devi is tall enough to go on most of the big rides so she went with her mom on the tidal wave ... OMG at least she started out having fun. by the time she got off her little face was tearstained and her knuclkes were still white. i believe it was a little more than she bargained for, but it didn't really slow her down. seth & chris were riding the bumper cars while devi was looking at the loop de loop ride. she turned to her mom and said "I think I can handle that" ye gods and little fishes children are resilent. so I had her watch both rides to see that they moved the same except the loop went right upside down. when we explained that your bum lifts right of the seat as you hang there she said, "I think I'll save that for next year" ... too funny. then it was on tho the gravitron tand the niagra - food and game prozes and shiny beads. I got some great pics of them which i'll get posted on the clansite or facebook or somewhere.

the kids also went on this bungee jumping ride. trampolines and bungee cords with safety harnesses. the people running the ride were great. it should be about 2 minutes but the kids got about 5 minutes of air time each. they were flying higher than the treetops and the roof of the Queensbuty building - what a rush! spiderman, spiderman ... they didn't want to get off, and they wanted back on...

Mandy & Chris and the kids got the old tyme phots done this year and I hovered in the background snapping colour pics to complement the sepia ones they purchased. devi loved the princess dress and seth loved the 22. I got shit from the photographer for saying "smile".

6 or 7 hours of treading hot pavement has taken it's toll. the dogs are just killing me and the next morning i could barely step on 'em. then i realized i also had a fairly good sunwind burn to go with it. to hell with it we all had fun - it was a great day.

Thursday was nice AC coolness at work and a put your feet up slather moisturizer on, get pics processed kind day. Mur is getting ready for Connect (heavy sigh-i want to go too), most of my friends are going camping for the long weekend and I will be going to MJ for dad's 70th birthday Sunday and my friend Renee's on Monday for a gala 49th last party before you're dead celebration (she's 50 next year).

today the feets is better, the burn's a tan and I only work this afternoon. life is good today my friends :) happy long!