Monday, January 20, 2014

{the kitchen & living room}

{Continuing on from this post}
 photo IMG_8267_zpsb8e56ad9.jpg One of the things that sold us on this house was the size of the kitchen. Our old house had a wee apartment-sized fridge and a stove that all except one of my pans were too big for. You could fit exactly three people in the kitchen at once, but they all had to stand politely and still, hands at their sides, shoulder to shoulder. There wasn't room enough to crack a smile, let alone cook something.

I loved that little kitchen. I did. I painted it green and used all 14 square inches of counter space as efficiently as I could. But no matter how much I loved that little kitchen, I have to confess to liking this one a whole heck of a lot more.
 photo IMG_8292_zpsa0f40d61.jpg This kitchen, on its own, is almost the same square-footage as our old house. We could have a slumber party in this kitchen. We could play leap-frog, or square dance, or harbour six dangerous criminals in it. Or, you know, cook stuff. It's marvellous.
 photo IMG_8285_zpsafdbe0af.jpg The kitchen opens up into the living room/dining room. Though it's not as spacious as the kitchen, this is probably where we spend most of our time. I teach (taught, I guess) piano lessons here, we read here, eat here, watch movies on my laptop here, drink morning coffee here, have company here, play games here, take cat naps here...etc.

If you came over for the afternoon, we'd sit on that couch and play crokinole. And it would be awesome.
 photo IMG_8293_zps0116a005.jpg  photo IMG_8280_zps8abfcf73.jpg photo IMG_8281_zpsde583231.jpg  photo IMG_8291_zpsbfb3ddbc.jpg

Thursday, January 16, 2014

{no such thing as a "good"bye}

 photo IMG_8245_zps80f133bc.jpg I just hate that things I like can't last forever. I was that kid in elementary school who couldn't let a good joke die, and I'd kill it trying to keep it alive. I'm the girl who cries in romantic comedies because I can't stop thinking about how one of these perfect people in this perfect relationship are going to die someday. I have a hard time throwing out vegetables that have just been in the fridge for too long.  photo IMG_8246_zpsc9fabcfb.jpg My friend, Becky, is the same way. We used to live in the same neck of the woods, and on the days we both had free we'd leave our respective houses at the same time and meet somewhere in the middle, on 13th Avenue. We'd visit the stationary shop, the chocolatier (for free samples), the used book store, and the dingy coffee place at the end of the street. It always made for a good couple of hours, because how can you go wrong with that exact combination of things?  photo IMG_8237_zpsc8051add.jpg In a completely tragic twist of fate, both the book store and the coffee shop announced this month that they're closing their doors. For-ev-er. So, yesterday afternoon, Becky and I went to pay our respects and say our goodbyes. It was like losing a good friend and having to empty out the crisper all in one morning. Farewell, Buy the Book and Roca Jack's. I miss you already, even though you're not officially closed until January 31.    photo IMG_8241_zps11e32e01.jpg

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

{my mom's maternity dresses}

I'm done teaching piano lessons now until...well.

Until I feel up to it again, I guess. I'm done at the cable station; and I haven't been as busy with side projects lately. I tackled those boxes in the basement last night, and I've been deep cleaning every square inch of this house, slowly but surely. Washing blankets and tiny little sweaters, organizing and hanging pictures and baking a little.

I bought a box of diapers.

There was a middle-aged man standing in the diaper aisle with me. We stood there beside our empty shopping carts with our hands on our hips, red-faced and confused. He looked over at me, "First one?" I nodded. "Oh," he said, dissapointed. "I don't know what I'm looking at here."

"Me neither."

It's like time is moving in slow motion and simultaneously rushing at me like a rhinoceros with steaming nostrils. I have eight days left until my due date. Eight days is a century and a second all at once. I'm thankful for both the time and the lack of it.

And today, I found myself with a little bit extra. So I played dress-up.

When mom found out I was pregnant, she gave me a bag of her old maternity clothes. She laughs at the things that pregnant women wear now. She says, "You girls with your tight shirts over your big bellies. We hid our bellies under tents."

Tents with shoulder pads. It's true. As if you're not already swollen and beluga-like enough when you're nine months pregnant, you sewed shoulder pads into your tent dresses too in the eighties.

Granted, those things were comfy. Much comfier than skinny jeans. I tried them on today. With shoes that also belonged to mom when she was my age. I couldn't help but add a belt, just to tame the tenty-ness. (Note: I hereby promise never to be a fashion blogger. Posing is hard. Especially in a shoulder-padded tent and nine-month belly.)
 photo IMG_8205_zps36ccea87.jpg  photo IMG_8206_zps81ab9ee0.jpg  photo IMG_8204_zpsfb11a66e.jpg I'm wearing my regular clothes again. A waffle shirt and blue jeans. I'm significantly less balloon-like, but am also feeling a little lacking in the shoulder department. Ah, to be an eighties chick.

Monday, January 13, 2014

{officespace}

It's been almost six months now since we packed up and moved across town. It took all of one day for this new place to feel like home and we're happy campers here.

That said, there are still some boxes in the basement that need unpacking and organizing; I'm fairly certain that one of them contains most of my fridge magnets and some CDs I can't find anywhere else. I'll get around to it. Next year, probably. Fridge magnets are just not top priority.

There are walls, too, that need pictures, and corners that need filling and little projects that need doing. Nothing drastic, just the touches that make a house homier. I always thought that when I finished those things, I'd put some pictures up so that you could see where I live now. But then I remembered that in the last house I'd thought the same thing, and ended up not showing you the house until the day before we left it. Silly.

So I started taking a few pictures this morning, beginning with the office. It might look a little different in a few months, a year, five, but right now it looks almost exactly like this:
 photo IMG_8170_zps57dc3abe.jpg  photo IMG_8172_zps45aed391.jpg  photo IMG_8166_zpsbc78421a.jpg  photo IMG_8173_zps55750b9c.jpg  photo IMG_8175_zps565e9003.jpg  photo IMG_8177_zps4eb1259e.jpg It's been a little dream-come-true having a whole room just for putting all my creative stuff into. My paints and my pens and my computer and my scissors and my cameras and my books and my papers... Not stuffed into a closet in boxes, but organized on pegboard and on shelves and in filing cabinets.

Barclay built me that desk out of two filing cabinets and some wood, and it's big enough that we can both hang out and listen to music and act artsy at the same time, which is pretty great. We bought that gigantic hunk of pegboard at Rona for $20 and it has successfully eliminated my need for a messy junk drawer. I might be jinxing myself here, but I haven't lost the tape or my glasses in almost six months now. Magical, miraculous, marvellous pegboard.

There's even a nice big window with an apple-tree view, and when it rains I open it up and sit at my desk and draw or read or daydream. Not a lot sweeter than that.

Wednesday, January 08, 2014

{somebody's baby}

 photo 85C3D2CB-062D-4165-8C6F-8421F3CF8316_zpsy9tazdlp.jpgI'm listening to this song on repeat and feeling really, really nostalgic.

Forever Young by Youth Group on Grooveshark

I'm not sure which came first, the music or the feeling. I never know. It doesn't really matter. It never has.

So I've been daydreaming. I've always been very good at daydreaming; I always got stickers and praise and prizes and good report card marks for "paying attention in class" while all the other kids goofed off. I wasn't paying attention. I was daydreaming. But at least I didn't have a kitten hidden in my desk like Cody did, and at least I wasn't poking the girl in front of me with thumb tacks like Matt was.

But the point is not that. The point. This morning. Daydreaming. Thinking back.

My thoughts first went back to almost five years ago, when Barclay and I bought and fixed up the house in the Cathedral Village. We gutted the walls and pulled out over fifty bags of sawdust, which had been used for insulation. We drywalled and painted and wallpapered. We got married and spent the first four short and sweet years there. We put pictures on the walls and he bought me a piano and we celebrated Christmases and birthdays and anniversaries.

Then my thoughts skipped back even further to living alone in my basement apartment in Swift Current. The door didn't lock, and I slept on an air mattress, and I ate porridge and rice and peas almost exclusively. Not for lack of money or kitchen skills; I just liked porridge and rice and peas. I developed an intolerance to oats; I still like rice and peas. I developed an intolerance for the neighbours across the hall, who yelled at each other all day long. I sold nice watches and gold chains and engagement rings and my boss was crazy drunk every day by 10 AM. I developed an intolerance for that, too.

I thought about my time in Alberta; that day that I fell down a mountain and landed face-first on a tree stump. I was a waitress at a soup and sandwich cafe, and for the next month I was pulling in massive tips because my face was so bruised and scabby that people thought I was being beaten by somebody. One man said to me, "You don't deserve that. There are people who can help. I will help, if I can."

I thought about that summer I spent in Saskatoon, renting a tiny two bedroom apartment with four other girls and working as a debt collector. I thought it was the coolest and most exciting job in the world because I'd never experienced so many death threats and marriage proposals on such a daily basis before. Or since, come to think of it. I rarely came home at night before 5 AM, and spent most of my money and time at The Bassment seeing crappy local "punk" bands.

I thought about high school. I lived in the kind of small town where you had to be very creative because all there was to do was drive up and down main street and, believe it or not, even that got old after a while. Between the noon-hour main street cruises and the frequent road trips out of town to actually do something fun, I sometimes wonder how much money in gas I spent between the ages of 16 and 18. I feel like we could've afforded a house with real insulation if I'd saved that money. I hated high school.

I thought about growing up on the farm. We had chickens and tractors and stuff like that. I played in mud puddles and grain piles. Our yard didn't have a fence. I caught fleas from an adorable baby fox I found in a tractor tire. The adorable baby fox grew up into a nasty adult fox and ate our chickens.

Back in the present, I pulled out my photo box, stuffed with the pictures from dozens of different disposable cameras. There was me, barefoot and looking incredibly grouchy, at my grade 12 graduation, me on a 13-hour road trip with my best friend to see our favourite band, me standing in front of a grand piano at provincials looking scared out of my mind, me huddled in front of a campfire cooking a pot of spaghetti at three in the morning, me scraping cave mud and probably bat poop off of my face after spelunking, making faces and cheesy poses. Picture after picture after picture. It's amazing how many years and people and places can fit into a little box.

At the bottom of the box were a few baby pictures. Me wearing my grandma's wig, me and my brother eating freezies on the front step, me in pink clip-on earrings with my pants tucked into my socks. I had big ears and just a little bit of white-blonde hair.

These ones were the strangest. I'd seen them before but they struck me a different way this morning. I was somebody's baby. Weird.

Maybe it hit me this way because I'm 38 weeks along now. This little guy could come any day. He'll be my baby, but not forever. Right now he only has a future, but someday he'll have his own box of pictures and he'll have hilarious memories and friends and scars with stories and achievements and a family of his own and a past. And maybe he'll wake up one day and look back at a baby picture of himself and think, "I was somebody's baby. Weird."

And now I'm sitting here writing this and the thought of that is starting to give me a little ache behind my eyes. I feel him move in my belly and I put my hand on it. I realize that soon, really soon, this will be only a memory too. A little foot presses back into my hand like he knows. I know he doesn't know, but still. It makes me smile.

I think back and grab one last memory from my bank. I don't have a physical picture for it, but it's tucked away pretty securely and I pull it out from time to time. It's me in my bed under my rainbow quilt, and my dad has one hand under my pillow gently rocking my head, the other hand stroking my hair. He thinks I'm asleep, so he eases off of his knees onto his feet and starts to tip-toe towards the door. My eyes fly open and I make him come back.

I don't let him leave until I'm fast asleep.

Monday, January 06, 2014

{fifty below}

 photo 3D041CBC-6F87-4364-A231-4E6EFDA38123_zps0gkakzgv.jpg It's cold.

It's fifty below with the windchill and there is a rainbow halo around the sun. Something to do with ice crystals.

Christmas is officially over for us now; Barclay went back to work this morning after a little time off, the rest of his family flew out yesterday, and I'm sitting here trying to get used to how absolutely quiet the house is. The cold makes the walls creak and pop sporadically and it makes me jump every time. That's how quiet it is.

But it feels fitting for this time of year. If you had to write an instrumental score for a year, you'd probably begin January with quiet strings and piano parts and leave any serious percussion until at least February. Maybe March. And, obviously, you'd know to save the swelling crescendos and big bass drums and blasts from the horn section for the very end of November and on into the beginning of December when life gets blurry and crazy. You'd end off the year with a single, long note that you'd hold from the 26th until it faded away at some point on the 31st. And the whole thing would loop right back into January.

I don't mean to say that Vivaldi did it wrong, just that you and I would probably do it differently.

Thursday, January 02, 2014

{the writing on the wall}

 photo 577781E0-3717-44E1-84C4-02AA8D412609_zpspxnbdz2y.jpg
One day, I was looking at a white wall in one of the rooms in our little house. It looked boring, which made me feel sorry for it. I thought I should maybe hang a picture on it. I thought it needed wallpaper. I thought, "What a massive canvas..." I thought, "I could draw on that." Because isn't that what wallpaper is, anyway? Letting someone else draw all over your walls?

So that was settled.

I waffled for a few months about what, exactly, to draw on the Boring Wall, until I finally settled on an idea from Mandi over at Vintage Revivals. I didn't know if Barclay would go for it, because I think his parents taught him not to draw on the walls when he was a kid, but to my sweet surprise he was right on board.

And so it was that we spent yesterday afternoon drawing on the Boring Wall, which now needs to be renamed. Because we're adults, but we can't afford designer wallpaper. We can, however, easily afford a $3 paint pen. 

I'll show you the finished product soon; I'm really, really loving it. (I almost got out of bed last night at 3 AM to go look at it, but then I fell back asleep.) 

Cheers to adulthood! To paint pens and to Mandi! 

Wednesday, January 01, 2014

{2013}

 photo EB82F6DE-F321-4DE6-8A90-CA303D7F989D-487-0000005D988F19C9_zps3ab95105.jpg So this is the new year, and I have no resolutions.

It seems like 2013 wasn't very nice to a lot of my friends. My Facebook news feed is full of "Good riddance!"-es and "So happy to leave that year behind!"-s. I feel kind of like that one person walking out of the movie theatre after seeing a movie they just loved while everyone around them is talking about how horrible it was.  Because I really quite appreciated 2013.  photo 0AB076B3-FEB2-4AD4-AEF7-7BF56C098537-237-00000025CB2B21D2_zps622ad628.jpg I've never really been a "year" person. I mean, how could a whole year be deemed, in its entirety, either good or bad? I've had single days that were good and then bad and then great and then horrible and then awesome and then miserable. And a year has 365 days in it.  But there was something different and strange and sweet about this one. Not that there weren't hard or sad or scary moments. Just that, when I look back on it, those moments seem distant and dried up and unimportant, and the ones that stand out are the ones that I liked. Like vines with huge, colourful flowers that take up all the space in my head and are still growing like mad long after their seeds took root.  photo IMG_5284_zpsf25962ba.jpg I think back to January 1, 2013. I had lists. Things I wanted to accomplish and experience and people I wanted to meet and places I wanted to go. People who knew me well probably knew the things on my lists because I talked about them often. It had little things on it (spend time in New York City) and bigger things (sell my "art" in a real store) and vague things (do stuff I've never done before) and irrational things (hang out with Jian Ghomeshi) and full-fledged, all-my-heart desires (feel a baby kicking inside me).   photo 81BAB20D-6DD7-437B-ACF9-42676EDC5337-609-00000064BC238B4D_zps84c20664.jpg It was surreal when I started mentally crossing these exact, random things off my list, one by one. Sitting in La Bodega beside Jian Ghomeshi trying desperately to make small talk, laying in Central Park under a tree with my shoes off, walking onto the set of the cable show for the first time, interviewing bands at the Junos and CMW with a shaky little voice, selling stuff to my favourite stationary shop and having it sell out within weeks. Seeing that little pink plus sign after three years of negatives.   photo C3645A4D-3999-439B-AD7D-9D465EEB59C9-12751-0000066EA8E14994_zpse9890eac.jpg They came like presents with bows on them, one after another. I knew I hadn't really earned them or done much of anything at all to make them come, so all I could do was be thankful out of my brains and enjoy them.   photo IMG_4862_zps863c1964.jpg And now, 2013 is over. 2014 was ushered in at exactly midnight, not a second late or early. It could be another year of highs, or a year full of lows, or one that zig-zags crazily all over the charts and gives me grey hairs.

Whatever it looks like, I want to do it well. I don't want to waste the learning parts or forget to be thankful for the good parts or wish away the quiet parts, because I'm sure that every part has a reason.