My finger must've slipped sometime, and blurred along the pages of my fairytale.
I needed to find it again, the page with the hand-etched Jabberwock twined about a fearless rainbow-mohawked Alice, her metal-strewn fingers twined in the Wock's close-cropped whiskers.
I skipped out on climbing, promising myself I'd still go sometime this week and at least learn how, and wandered in slow circles about an almost-familiar kitchen.
I poked the dishwasher until it went on, rearranged the stuff under the sink so that you can actually see everything on a whim of "I want to get to know this kitchen better". I packed the garbage since it's garbage night and I've never had one of those before, straightened the recycling until everything that was going to fit, fit, and giggled to myself how much fun recycling could be since it means banging around bottles and tins and crinkly things.
A monstre, sitting cross-legged on a dark green linoleum floor, playing with tuna cans and giggling to herself.
Debbie came home while I was playing Paul Bunyan in the back yard, stripping the branches we'd pruned last week, crumpling the leaves into the compost heap and snapping the twigs into two-foot piles for bundling.
She chattered with me just briefly enough about this or that tree, giggled at this or that gesture, and wandered upstairs, leaving me to my cathartic delirium.
Two hours of fierce focus later, my arms were screaming happily, the compost heap was a green-smelling mess, and the intimidating pile in the backyard (well, one of three) was reduced by more than half into three tiny little to-be-recycled-next-week-with-yardwaste bundles.
Compost heaps are so much fun. Soaking them and squishing them and poking around and finding little weeds sprouting tiny stems and leaves in them, watching the spiral of fruit flies that swirl out as you lift the cover to stir it about a bit.
Now, you'd think, that by eight-thirty and covered in that fine sheen of sweat that means you've just used your body for something important, a monstre would say "woohoo!" and wander inside to go play internet, or catch up on that set of short stories that John loaned me since he'll be in town this weekend and will probably want his book back.
That would be logical.
Far more logical than going hunting for my rollerblades and that elusive point of perfect exhaustion.
Far more logical than shaking the crumpled leaves from my underwear, filling a water bottle, and strapping on my pads, pulling on nasty thick anti-blister socks, and heading up Merrick rd to Indian st to High Park rd to Roncesvalles to Marmaduke to Sunnyside and in a thousand figure-888's.
After the first major intersection, when the minivan driver smiled and waved at me to go ahead in front of him, I pushed an extra bit harder to not slow him down and bent my knees real deep and shot right over the manhole cover so as not to end up in the middle of the street.
Manhole cover. Didn't lose balance.
Oh, good. I found my zone.
I found my zone heading uphill, and when I passed a lost-looking Volvo I tapped on the window to ask how fast we were going.
A bewildered young lady drove along beside me to tell me "20km/hr" which isn't very fast, but I was going uphill and only red-faced, not purple.
Not a single minivan tried to run me over.
Each time I got lost, I asked a smiling stranger which way Indian street was, using it as my landmark.
Each time they stopped me for a chat about rollerskates and how hobbies are good for the mind, or the frequency of cracks in the streets (which are in impressively good condition, actually), sometimes breaking into accents so thick I had to giggle and ask them, in polish, if they spoke polish.
I could tell that the elderly we-just-took-our-dentures-out-after-dinner couple wanted to pinch my cheeks, but they settled for gummy smiles and cheery waves.
An hour, and I guess a good ten or fifteen kilometers later, my focus was waning and I was idly watching some young fellow taking out his blue box when an ill-tempered sewer-grate jumped out of nowhere and bit into my blades.
Well, either that or I tripped over my own feet and landed neatly and rather contrived-like at the feet of said gentleman, who laughed and inspected my armour and pronounced me unharmed and invited me in for coffee.
I thanked him and announced that if I'm starting to fall then I've pushed myself hard enough and I ought to head home.
We waved goodbye and I surfed my way back down Marmaduke to Indian, one foot in front of the other, knees locked, leaning far enough forward to remember how to fly.
I flew and weaved and marvelled at how impossibly convenient it is that Mr. Pyke's house is at the bottom of so many hills, that all ways lead home, and terribly tired monstres can just drag their heels straight into the driveway.
Surfing back past midnight gardens and silhouettes of young women reading in windows, the heat and scent of the September breeze ruffled the pages of this fairytale,
and whilst these selfsame smiling Volvo-drivers would have thrown the same rocks that the crooked children of my adolscent neighbourhood threw at me back when
This time, when I wasn't glowering at them from behind spiked hair and spike-studded shoulderblades --
they weren't trying to run me down either --
and sometimes that's almost enough.
Sprawling out on the stone steps, Mr. Pyke drove up just as my toes were beginning to uncurl.
We took aforementioned garbage to the curb, bundled some more cardboard for recycling, chattered and giggled and now my shoulders and knees and adductors and glutes and all sorts of bits are slowly making themselves heard
and I can see the slightly-purple sky of a city that never goes quite dark, peeking out through old-fashioned windows and urging me to sleep.
And tonight, I think I just might.
Goodnight, Jabberwock, goodnight gnomes and paladdins, goodnight heroes great and small.
I can hear you dreaming, just beyond this page of this fairytale.