Thursday, June 26, 2014

{movie crashers}


It's been raining a lot around here and I haven't minded one bit. I can't think of many things I like better than taking a nap in the middle of a rainy afternoon; opening my window just a crack so I can fall asleep to the sounds of thunder and rain. I couldn't get more chill if I tried.

But this morning, after days and days of absence, the sun peeked her head out from behind a particularly dense cumulonimbus and said, "Suzy, you lazy cow! Go outside!"

You don't mess with the sun.

So I went to visit my friends, Brad and Theresa, at their little paper shop on 13th. I parked a few blocks away and walked (to appease the sun), but upon rounding the corner at Rae street a man in an orange vest stopped me.

"Sorry, ma'am. You can't get through this way."

I doubled back and through a back alley, undeterred, curiosity piqued. When I get out of the house, dressed and decent, baby in tow, on a very specific mission at 9 AM, there is no stopping me. I peeked out from behind the Burns & Hanley building across the street. There were orange pylons and cop cars and big trucks and cameras and people and lights and sound equipment. I was very pleased.

A movie set.

I love movie sets. I live in a tiny little city in the middle of the prairies, so I don't come across them very often, but when I do you better believe I'm right in there. As a kid I imagined walking by a movie set and having everything come to a screeching halt. The director would yell, "CUT!!! WHO'S THAT GIRL? I WANT HER IN THE MOVIE INSTEAD OF MARY KATE!"

And then I would blush and say, "Who, me?" And a tall man with sunglasses would appear at my side and say, "Hi, I'm your agent." And there would be a folding chair with my name on the back of it. And a bowl of raspberries in my dressing room.

Anyway. I'm all grown up now and so I know better, sort of, but I still get a little kick out of walking by a movie set. It's where the action is.

The best thing about this particular movie set, though, was that the action was all happening on the front steps of the Paper Umbrella. Fancy that.

I've always ascribed to the rule that you can get away with being somewhere that you're unauthorized to be if you look sure of yourself. I strode out from my hiding place with a smile on my face. A man with a headset and a Corner Gas hat spotted me and asked me to leave. Dang.

But then I spotted Brad, standing right in the thick of things. I pointed at him. "Oh, I'm with him." Sort of true, since I'd come to see him, and foolproof because who can't you kick off the set of a movie? The guy who owns the set. That's who.

Headset guy smirked at me. He smirked at me. "Riiiight..."

Brad looked up and noticed me just then and jogged over. He gave me a side hug. He said hi to Sullivan, who was sitting on my hip looking intently at all the commotion. Headset guy skulked off. I was safe.

Theresa came along just then with their son. We spent the morning watching the movie guys shoot the same scene over, and over, and over. The girl forgot her lines. Take 4. The sun was too sunny. Take 6. Can we adjust this flower pot? Take 48.

No one asked me to be in the movie, but I was okay with it. I just like being around.

PS: If you happen to see the Corner Gas movie, look for me reflected in the windows of the Paper Umbrella Theatre. They'll probably edit me out, but I tried.

Monday, June 23, 2014

{27}


I'm 27 now, as of Friday. Barclay's boss threw me a little birthday party at the office and gave me a card with a sheep on it that said, "Get well soon." I walked down to the art street festival with Barclay and visited the art gallery with Julia and Ruth and I got breakfast in bed and cheesecake and ice cream at my in-laws' after supper and I Skyped with my parents and Liz brought me macarons.

I also realized how obsessively I've been talking about that new Tom Hanks movie (Saving Mr. Banks) because I now own two copies of it as well as the anniversary edition of Mary Poppins.

27 feels so strange to me, probably because I'm perpetually stuck at 22 in my mind. I think I will always "be" 22. Even when I'm 98, I will be 22. I will look in the mirror at all of my wrinkles and think, "Dang. I'm wrinkly for a 22 year-old." I will look at my friends and think, "Man alive, I have a lot of elderly friends for such a young bird." I will look at my house and think, "Wait. This isn't my house. Where am I?"

Monday, June 09, 2014

{the hermit has left the building}


Barclay was on his way out the door Saturday morning when I derailed him.

"Can I come with you?"

He often spends time on Saturdays with a young guy named Noah. He takes him out for burgers and builds models with him and goes to his Tae Kwon Do tournaments and stuff. This particular morning, Barclay was off to watch him test for his black belt. I'd originally been planning on staying home to clean the bathroom but right now Tae Kwon Do seemed infinitely more interesting than toilets.

I don't know what the deal is lately, but I've been homebodying to the extreme, only leaving the house to go grocery shopping and starting to feel a little bit like I live on the top of a mountain instead of in the middle of a city. Suddenly, I needed to go to Tae Kwon Do. I needed to not stay home for one more single second. I needed to talk to someone who would, you know, respond. (My conversations with Sullivan are like, "Hey dude. I see you're looking at this cookie. You can't have it, because you don't have teeth. If you did have teeth, you still couldn't have it because it would rot them out of your skull and, besides, there's not really a lot of nutritional value in it anyway. I probably shouldn't be eating it either." Et cetera.)

He looked at his watch--he had to be there in fifteen minutes. I'd just rolled out of bed and you could tell, but I threw myself into hyperspeed, pulled on a hat and a pair of jeans, stuck Sully in his car seat, and we were off within five. 

(I was proud of that, but upon seeing it in writing I realized that rolling out of bed and leaving the house without brushing my hair might be indicative of me "getting old" and "letting myself go".)

When we got there (ONE MINUTE EARLY), I spotted the grand flaw in my plan pretty much right away. The room was quiet and large and echoey, the crowd small and serious and concentrated, and Sullivan was hungry and mad. And so it was that I spent half the morning in the janitor's closet between a carpet cleaner and a mop bucket, trying desperately to keep Sullivan from making a peep. I felt a little bit like a character in a mystery novel, hiding out from the bad guys after I'd stumbled by accident onto their secret hideout, trying to remain perfectly still and quiet in the broom closet while they discussed their evil plot in great detail. But when he finally fell asleep and I emerged, triumphant, I just felt like a straight-up superhero. With dry ice and theme music.


The other half of the morning, the half of the morning that I was not hiding in a closet, was pretty cool too though. The students were breaking boards and fancy kicking all over the place. 

At one point, the examiner said some pretty profound words to a guy who kept messing up and completely missing the board he was trying to break: "It's not about making mistakes. It's about getting it right."

Well, duh.

Anyway. Noah got his black belt and Barclay got to cheer him on and I got my morning out of the house, even if I did spend part of it in a janitor's closet and smell kind of lemony fresh afterwards. Win/win/mostly win.

Monday, June 02, 2014

{water works}

The door bell rang early this morning while I was working on a latte and watching Barclay make eggs. My heart hopped up and grabbed my tonsils for a second. Whenever the door bell rings at a weird time, I worry that there is a serial killer at the door. This is highly improbable and seriously illogical considering serial killers are not usually polite and considerate of social constructs such as door bells. 

But, there I am, a paranoid mess as per always.

I watch the whole thing play out in my mind's eye. I answer the door; a smile on my face. There he stands, greasy hair, 5 foot 6, chomping on a cigar. He has a gun, and a knife, and a chainsaw.

He says, "Boo," and kills me dead.

It was not, as it turns out, a serial killer, or even a one-time killer, or even, from the looks of him, a guy who cheats on his taxes.

It was a man, and he was greasy, but instead of coming to shoot me in the head, he was coming to inform me that he needed to turn our water off for a few hours so he could do some pipe stuff (technical jargon).

Rats rats rats, big stupid rats.

People like me, who like to wash their hands a million times a day, do not like to have their water taken away. I pouted about it for a minute, and then decided that it could be like some kind of inadvertent cognitive behavioural therapy for me. I rolled with it.

I rolled with it for all of five minutes, and then I packed up and abandoned ship. I headed off to the Log Cabin (the thrift store on Dewdney) where I spent $5 and got four shirts and two CDs (Sufjan's Illinoise and Death Cab's Narrow Stairs). I stopped by Don's Photo and dropped off a roll of film from over a year ago.

When I came back, the water was on. My heart abounds with thankfulness.