{t3}

well. that was kind of like walking into a cave expecting a fire-breathing dragon and finding, instead, a really short, bald guy sitting at a desk sorting through his stamp collection. 

and you say to him, "is there a dragon in here?"

and he says to you, "nope."

i got in the chair at 9:56, was out of the chair, all four wisdom teeth gone, at 10:13. i was downright shocked when they finished, because i'd only heard them pull two {yeah, you hear it, cracking and breaking, right by your ear. kind of weird}, and i was starting to fall asleep. i'm not trying to act all tough, i'm just thankful for novocaine, that's all.

actually, the worst part of the whole thing happened not in the chair, but at shopper's drug mart a half hour later. i was paying for some stuff and when i reached for my wallet i noticed that my shirt was wet. i couldn't figure it out. wet? wet? wet? ohhh...i put a hand up to my chin, which was still frozen. wet. bloody. everyone in the area was looking at me all sympathetically, and a young man chivalrously, and magically, produced a box of kleenex. i tried to apologize, but the whole swollen mouth thing made that very hard. 

"i...so sowy...jus ha my wisum teef ow... sowy..."

i was hard core drooling. and bleeding. a lot. i looked like a zombie and talked like a two year old. it was a shining moment in my existence. liz was with me. she said, "well, someday you can look back on this and laugh..." but i was laughing already because it was dang funny. 

anyway, zombie toddler experience aside, the morning hasn't been too bad. i've given up on appearing in public and am now sitting here in my glow-in-the-dark pajamas happily downing my first t3 of the day and thinking about watching a movie. and drooling.

{dream days}

the past couple weeks have felt kind of like a dream. it's not that anything overly strange or wonderful or terrible has happened; it's just that every situation or event has had kind of an unreal quality to it. like a picture with a vignette.

someone will say something very unexpected, or i'll run into someone i didn't think i'd ever see again, or i'll find myself downtown standing in a big glass box full of money with strangers gathered around me screaming, "STUFF THE MONEY IN YOUR MOUTH!" {there really is a first time for everything.}

last night, i was sick in bed one minute, and at a weird 1980's rock concert literally five minutes later. me and a thousand 45 year-olds wearing leather and heavy eye make-up. and the whole time i wasn't sure if i was actually there, you know? i guess it just caught me off guard, because i'd been mostly planning on staying home and watching animal planet.

so the problem becomes that i'm going to start getting my real dreams mixed up with my real life. and when a dragon comes out of my neighbor's house and burns me down, i'm going to be very, very confused. it's like legally blonde meets inception. what a mess.

anyway. i get my wisdom teeth out tomorrow, all four of them. i'm not going under; i'm going to bring along my iphone and listen to really, really loud music the whole time so i don't hear my teeth being broken apart  right by my ears. i feel like that in itself will be a surreal experience to cap off these strange summer days. i'll blog again when i'm brain-deep in painkillers, because you all are the type of people who will probably enjoy that.

ah, life. you know?

{a girl walked by with a rat on her shoulder}

we were in vic park--me, barclay, and some friends.
and some friends of some friends, who i didn't know.
there were lawn chairs and blankets and snacks and stuff.
it was maybe 5 o'clock, or 6 o'clock, or 8 o'clock, or something.
it might have been 9 o'clock.
a girl walked by with a rat on her shoulder, and i said, "look!
a girl walked by with a rat on her shoulder!"
and everyone looked and saw and made all of the sounds that people make when they see
a girl walk by with a rat on her shoulder.
exclamations and tongue clicking and disgusted laughs and stuff.
i didn't get my camera out fast enough, so i have no picture.
but i'm sure you can picture it without a picture of it.
a woman was sitting near me and she said, "oh yes, that's olivia and sarah."
and i said, "is olivia the rat or the girl?"
and she said, "the rat. sarah is the girl."
and when i was telling the story to someone later, they said,
"oh yes, i know that girl who walks around with a rat on her shoulder. her name is andrea."
and i said, "no, her name is sarah."
and they said, "no, her name is andrea. i know her."
and so, i guess, there are two girls who walk around this city with a rat on their shoulder.
next time i see either of them, i will take a picture for you.

{taylor swift and me}

since 2007, i have had a long and arduous relationship with taylor swift. i'm pretty sure that was the fall i first saw her video for teardrops on my guitar, where she is pictured in bed in a flowing green grad dress, cuddling with her guitar and, you know, crying on it. crying glitter.

i was in the living room of my new apartment, eating oatmeal with peanut butter and cereal mixed into it, when ctv previewed the song and its new music video. i'd never seen taylor before, and didn't know then that i'd ever see her again, let alone that she'd become part of my life in such a ridiculous way.

at once i didn't like her. she was awkward looking, and she laughed in this way that i didn't like--with her hand curled in front of her mouth and her eyes all squinched up and her teeth splaying out--and the song, lyrically and musically, was cheesy and also the part about her laying in bed cuddling with her guitar and crying on it. i judged her. i judged her so hard.

taylor swift. whatever. i was over her before she began.

anyway, it started that spring at a grad supper. a friend was introducing me to his family, and when his dad shook my hand he said, "well! you were right: she does look just exactly like taylor swift!"

because i didn't know this man, and because i didn't know how to react to this offence, i looked sideways at my friend and gave a bewildered laugh, which prompted a guffaw from the father, and further commentary: "you laugh just like her too!"

i know, i know. there are worse people to be compared to. bill cosby, for instance. i knew it was meant as a compliment and that i should've reacted with a blush and a shy smile but, first of all, i knew i didn't look like taylor swift. i had the same hair as her--long, blond, and very curly--and now i realized that i also shared the same awkward mannerisms: the splaying teeth, the squinchy eyes, the i-know-i'm-very-tall-for-a-girl posture. i realized that the dislike for her music video had been similar to the feeling i have when someone posts a picture of me on facebook mid-laugh, when my mouth is open and you can see my tonsils. {i know, i need to get over it. i just have a really strange laughing face.} second of all: i'm kind of snotty about music and i just straight up didn't like hers. on the other hand, if people said i looked like aaron weiss, i'd be all over that, minus the beard. he dances like an angel.

and so it began. taylor swift was famous overnight and everywhere i went, people commented on the likeness. strangers stopped me at the mall to comment on it; i heard teen girls whispering off to my left in the grocery store about whether or not they should ask for my autograph {until i took my sunglasses off}, i heard the reference no less than twice a day. my dad called me one day to tell me that he thought he'd seen me on tv yesterday! {but then it wasn't you!} {it's okay, dad. i can understand why you thought it was me on the stage at the country music awards.}

it took a couple years, but finally i realized that taylor swift wasn't going anywhere and that i should probably just embrace the whole thing. i mean, i didn't start listening to her music or anything {except that one song she did with the civil wars}, but i stopped being bitter about it and started finding it quite funny, especially when the strangers who stopped me on the street were 60 year-old men telling me i looked like the girl from the romeo and juliet song.

as kind of a "truce", i dressed up as her for halloween.

and then i got sick and my hair straightened itself pretty much overnight and all the comments stopped. i no longer "looked" like taylor swift, and finally i was proved right: it was always only the hair.

so i went back to being myself and walking through the mall undetected by squealing 13 year-olds and elderly country fans.

anyway. the point isn't all that; that's just backstory. the point is that i got my hair cut on friday and when the hairdresser was done with me, she spun my chair around and studied my face.

"wow. you look like taylor swift," she said.

i hit google as soon as i got home to find out what she meant.

this is what she meant:

why did no one tell me that taylor got BANGS?

{one last post}

yesterday i walked down to the park where the folk fest had been and they were mowing the grass and cleaning up the last of the cups and styrofoam food containers and i walked around for a bit. i guess when i looked up at the trees, i half-expected to see amy milan hanging out in a branch or something. she wasn't. and so, because the rest of the city has clearly moved on and maybe was never as emotionally invested in the whole thing as i was, i will finally quit talking your ears off about #rff12. i'm sure you know, though, that i could go on and on about it. i'll leave you instead with a playlist of some of the wonderful artists in attendance. big fat hairy dramatic sigh.

{the night starts here}

now that you know how much i like live music, you might understand that the week after folk fest is always a bit draggy and melancholy around here. it's exactly like when you go on a space shuttle to the moon and spend a weekend there doing astronaut stuff and then you have to come back to earth and do your normal life grocery-shopping-bills-paying-dishes-doing stuff, i think.
folk fest runs friday to saturday, just once a year, and the line-up has everything from i've never heard of them before to they've been my favourite band since grade 10. my friend, becky, and i have the whole thing down to a science so that we don't have to miss a millisecond. i know that to some, it comes across as obsessive and ridiculous, but...yeah, i guess it is a little. oh well. i'm obsessive and ridiculous. {i still manage to have a few people who'll hang out with me sometimes and not make too many snarky comments about the excessive hand-washing.}
the point really, really is not that.

the point is actually that you need to be a little crazy to get the most out of the weekend. there are three free stages running at all times during the day with "workshops", which are basically mini concerts featuring three or four bands jamming each other's songs, unrehearsed. they might throw a rap artist in with a group from africa and an indie band from toronto, and the sounds that come out of it are brilliant.
but in preparation, you have to go through the schedule with a fine-toothed comb and work out which stage you need to be at in order to see your favourite artists, and what time you need to leave, and how early you need to be depending on the popularity or obscurity of the bands playing, and which bands you're willing to miss and which ones are non-negotiable and whatnot. it's a fantastic mess sometimes. it's fun. plus: food trucks and handmade market.
the evening stages run from 6 pm - 12ish, and they cost money to see, unless you're willing to stand in the back and peer over the creepy bird-shaped fences. because i'm the thriftiest cheap-skate frugal mcdougal on the block, i usually just bring a blanket and pack a picnic and camp out there for the evening.
imagine my luck, though, when a friend who'd paid to go in decided not to {i still don't understand this decision, but am pretty thankful about it}, and gave me her pass...for free. i made this face. all night.  this has probably ruined me for next year, because once you've stood in the very, very front and had torquil campbell sweat on you, i don't know if you can go back to sitting behind the fence, even if the sound quality is about the same.
i ended up spending the night in the pit with hannah, and i have a fairly amazing video of her dancing to austra. she left before the encore, but i stayed and stood by myself in the back so that i could soak up the last few minutes. i don't like to miss anything. dear everyone, can life just be music festivals and laying in parks all day with friends eating mini doughnuts and and people watching?

WHY NOT?

{easy contentment}

i've finally figured it out, i think. it came to me while i was walking down 13th toward the park for the first night of folk festival, kicking at rocks and picking at a hangnail on my thumb. my brain was sparking and fizzing and short-circuiting and every blood vessel was pumping twice as hard, twice as fast as usual.

live music. it gets me all wound up. i've never thought about why before, because i just assumed that that's what live music does. to everyone. like, sun makes you hot, caffeine makes you jumpy, live music gets you all wound up.
but then i found out that that's just not true; that there are people in the world who would just as soon sit at home and pet a cat as go to a show. {it's true, i met a person like this the other day.}

but the point is not that.

the point is that as i turned the corner onto retallack street and glanced behind me at a man pushing a stroller with, presumably, a baby inside, i realized all at once why live music is so appealing to me.
it's like this:

i believe that it is completely possible to be perfectly content in whatever life stage or situation you find yourself in. i also believe that this is not a natural leaning for most people, that most human beings spend their entire life trying to be/get/do something they are not/have not/haven't done. contentment takes work. it's something you learn and strive towards, even when life doesn't hand you exactly what you want on a silver platter. {i would even argue that perfect contentment is sometimes more perfect when you haven't gotten what you wanted in the first place, but learn to be content without it.}

but.

i have found a little pocket of time where i am completely and perfectly content without even meaning to be, without even thinking about it. where my face just smiles by itself and i couldn't be put off if i tried. it doesn't matter what stage of life i'm in or what is going on in the minutes, hours, days, before or after. it's like a bubble in the ocean, a tiny little moment with none of the things inside of it that fill everything outside of it.

and that, in case you're just not following, is when i'm sitting right in the middle of a big cloud of notes and chords, watching the music being made right in front of me, shoulder to shoulder with a lot of other people who feel the same way about it. my mind, which never stops running, stops running. i can't talk loud enough to carry on a conversation, so i don't. it's like being asleep, but in a much more awake way.

and so that night at the festival, as i looked up at the stars and imagined the sound waves crashing up and out into the night sky, i savoured the easy contentment and remembered to say thank-You for it.

{young people these days}

"where's that doctor? my appointment was supposed to be fifteen minutes ago. this is ridiculous." he glares at the styrofoam cup in his hands. his wife tips her head back so it's resting on the wall behind her and casts a similar face at the ceiling. inanimate objects really get the brunt of a lot of undue frustration, i've noticed.

the phone rings.

i'm the youngest person in the room by about 50 years. i always am. not to sound rude or anything, but the kind of waiting rooms i frequent these days usually consist of me and a lot of really fat, really old people talking about their heart attacks. i never have anything to contribute on the subject, so i try to blend in with the cheesy plastic office plants and play solitaire on my cell phone.

the receptionist hangs up the phone, a little harder than necessary, and sighs the way you would if you were in a play and the director told you to over exaggerate everything. her eyelids are bright blue and she looks kind of like yzma, from the emperor's new groove. you can picture her talking the same way too, if you want. "the doctor is still at the hospital, so you're all going to be waiting a while. i'm sorry." i don't think she's sorry.

she looks at me and frowns. "you're really early, anyway." i glance at the clock. it's 11:20, and my appointment is scheduled for 11:30. i don't feel like 10 minutes is 'really early.' i smile and say nothing.

the fat old man in the corner is talking about young people these days. young people these days are so impatient and young people these days are so rude and young people these days are always in such a rush and where is that doctor anyway? ...been waiting for half an hour, and that's unacceptable. i quickly pan the circle with my eyes to see if anyone else is picking up on the irony of this tirade but i just see a lot of nodding grey heads and furrowed wrinkly brows. i hold my chuckles in.

we wait another half hour. i'm not anxious about it; i sat here for four hours last time and i'm completely prepared to spend the entire afternoon again. {the doctor is a heart specialist, and he often gets called to emergency in the middle of office hours.} the news is playing quietly on a tv in the corner and there is running commentary from around the room. this, i find fantastically amusing. the stories all seem to be about young people these days, which is perfect material for the gentleman in the corner to get worked up about.

i'm sitting on the floor now, between the magazine rack and the front desk, because the waiting room is so full.

a woman with a brooch and a cane catches the receptionist's eye. "how long now?" she asks.

the receptionist's eyebrows shoot up underneath her bangs as though this were a personal and deeply offensive question. her answer comes out in short, sharp bursts. "couldn't tell you. i have no idea. could be an hour. or more. i don't know." i think it's funny when receptionists, whose job it is to receive people and answer their questions, don't like people talking to them or asking them questions.

the woman with the brooch nods. she looks around the room at us and laughs. "my granddaughter is out in the car. she won't like this. she's so impatient. my friend offered me a ride here today and i told them, i said, 'no, i'll get my granddaughter to take me. but she'll be sulky about it.'" she holds a hand up to her mouth and stage whispers as though the granddaughter might hear. "and she is so sulky about it. she needs to learn patience."

the man with the styrofoam cup gives a short laugh at this. "young people these days," he says.

a woman across the room wants in on this. "i had my daughter drive me here today too, and she is probably just so upset out there. i've been here for an hour and a half and i had her wait in the car. she's probably wondering if i've slipped out the back!"

everyone laughs. i smile slightly at my solitaire game and move the seven of hearts to the eight of spades.

the woman with the brooch looks up suddenly, as one of those aforementioned young people these days enters the room and approaches her quietly. her hair is in a messy bun on top of her head and she's wearing scrub pants. her eyes are glassy and her voice is scratchy. "grandma, do you know how long you'll be?"

her grandmother smiles sweetly and says, "i don't know, dear. the lady says it could be more than an hour." the granddaughter nods and, seeing that there are no empty chairs in the waiting room, mumbles that she's going back to wait in the car. her grandmother waits until she is out the doors before saying to her captive audience, "you see? she is so sulky! she wants to go home and sleep. she worked the night shift last night and just got off work this morning. but this is good for her. she needs to learn patience."

at this point i happen to look up through the windows and spot the doctor come in through the glass doors. i'm thankful, because i'm tired of hearing about how horrible my generation is. i mean, we are pretty horrible, but so is every generation. probably because all of the generations are generally made up of human beings and stuff.

the doctor has stopped just inside the doors and is watching something on the tv in the adjoining waiting room. i'm irked. how is it that he's two hours late and is just standing there watching tv? doesn't he know that there is a room full of us waiting on him, growing more belligerent by the second, and that we can see him just standing there? i've got no problem with the emergency room thing, but tv? i know, i know. young people these days. i move my king to an empty space.



i make it into the examining room an hour later, and my appointment goes exactly like this:

"hello, miss. your test results are in; your condition has not changed. see you next year."

{i believe in silence}

even when it's perfectly quiet, it's not. that's the thing that's too bad about being inside of a house inside of a city.

the garbage truck and the neighbours and the sirens and the lawnmower and the fan and the fly buzzing against the window and the fridge. there's a separate humming sound all the time too, and i don't even know what's making it.

i sometimes wish for the nights when i was 17, and i'd follow gravel roads out to a place where i could barely even see any lights, and lay on the hood of my car in complete, actual silence. i recognized all the constellations, even if i didn't know all of their names, and would try to find them in the freckles on my arms. sometimes i'd have friends with me, but the rule was that no one was allowed to say anything because that would wreck it. one time a few of us drove to the valley at midnight and made spaghetti and meat balls over a campfire and stayed up watching the stars until they were gone.

it's amazing how quiet stars are, how quiet space is. you'd think something that big would make a sound that we could hear from here.

i think people were made for more silence than we get in a day. i know a lot of us are uncomfortable with dead quiet, but i wonder if all those little sounds and big sounds and tv shows and background music and words and creaks and hums contribute to the screws in our necks and shoulders?

{rage}

this weekend, barclay and i went to the rage regina logo and site launch. it was a pretty swell event, and the live music was fantastic.

{danny goertz played some of his acoustic stuff. click HERE to hear. barclay usually gets pretty critical of musicians--muttering things under his breath about obvious chord progressions and cheesy over-rhymed lyrics, but even he didn't have one negative comment to say about this guy. that is, for lack of a better word, something.}

but the point is not that.

the point is that the new website is up and running and i'll be writing over there a lot more frequently from now on. i mean, though, not more frequently than here. because here, i don't have to use capital letters and i can talk about whatever i feel like.

click the screen shot below to visit the new site and read an article i wrote about some fun things i'm going to do in regina in august.

ps: if you live in the area, and you bump into me at one of these events, come up and be like, "HI!"
pps: if you want to buy something from the society6 shop anytime before august 12, click here for free shipping

{the kitchen table and what's "up"}

i've been busy every second of this week. busy with fun things and strange things and challenging things and learning things and so much caffeine and a good baby snuggle or two. it's come to a point where, when a friend asks what's new in my world or what's "up", i draw a blank and look up and to the right and say "nothing," even though i mean to say "everything." i mean, this is what my kitchen table looked like on wednesday. or tuesday. monday? tuesday.

and you should know that when the kitchen table looks like this, the rest of the house looks similar and my meals mostly consist of handfuls of crackers and chocolate chips and there's one song playing on repeat over and over in the background. i guess i'm well on my way to becoming what they call somewhat eccentric.

in movies, i feel like the eccentric people are usually very endearing and loveable, but in real life i think people are mostly just scared of them. so that's too bad.

the song on repeat in the background today is this cover of maps by the fray. i don't usually love the fray, but i always love the song maps {originally by the yeah yeah yeahs}, and this cover is right on. i appreciate a cover that sounds nothing like the original, yet maintains the important things about it.



 {here's the original, just in case you weren't already in love with it:}
 
ok. have a sweet weekend. i need to get back to work.

{dragon boats}

today, my arms are just hanging from my shoulders like giant linguini and i have a new favourite thing:
DRAGON BOATING. {click for more info}

i know i'm constantly like, "go try new things!" but i'm going to say it again because so few people actually do. when it comes down to it, we're all too tired, or too lazy, or too broke. well not to be morbid or anything, you guys, but on your death bed i guarantee you're going to be like, "i wish i'd gone dragon boating."

what you need to do right now, is find yourself 21 friends and a dragon boat and a pretty big body of water. and don't even look at me like i'm crazy, because my pops-in-law rented three of them last night, and we filled them and we raced them.

barclay and i sat in the very front, and we paddled like nobody's business, and our team won. i got all competitive about it and sometimes i was really good at it, and sometimes i lost count and gave the guy sitting behind me a pretty full-on shower. which i tried not to think about too much because, after all, this was the lake i saw them pull a dead body out of last year.

anyway, even if you're not the competitive type, you'll probably like the part where the caller yells, "let it ride!" and everyone pulls their paddles out of the water and you're all out of breath a little so you just sit there in the middle of the water and watch the people on the shore wish they were you.