Fortunately I broke myself of superstition a very long time ago.
Otherwise I'd be worried about the tone set by the first few days of this year.
Fortunately, again, I woke up this moring with a hand on my waist and the nightmares that had nipped at my fingers only vague unrealistic memories, I know deep enough inside myself that each sharp little fang is composed of stress and sleep deprivation and over-reaction to the goosebumps in newly sensitive skin.
Friday afternoon I picked up my princess from an art gallery in a new part of town, the adventure driving there was discovery, and discovery always warms my blood.
Friday afternoon we ate ros� sauce with salmon and spinach, the spinach something that I could already hear Anna Maria clucking and tsk-ing about, but I need my magnesium and without a proper Valpolicella or a good white wine, you wouldn't be able to taste the difference anyway.
This is Canada now, this is how Canadians cook. Tried and true traditional forms, and then they add things that no traditionalist would ever think of. And they do it while the traditionalist waves his traditional wooden spoon and then they watch while the traditionalist realizes...
...hey, this is pretty GOOD...
America has always been good for something, in every science fiction novel of the last handful of decades, that is where they took the axioms built by the rest of the world, and radicalized them.
Despite my own worries that America is reaching critical mass the way any massive civilization always seems to, it has served immensely in its' time.
Allowing me to get away with spinach in my ros� is just the way that my inadequate brain allows me to visualize it.
Which some days I need to, those days that I wake up and ask myself why I've chosen to live on a continent where there are grocery stores that sell only canned goods.
In any case, I miss my princess already, crawling into bed with her on Friday evening after her after-dinner nap, cuddles that smelled exactly familiar, a different sort of comfortable.
Friday night the fetish cafe was packed, my vynil shirt poking me in all the wrong places, time having finally come for it to be retired. Stretched by Tia's ampler chest, bent in places that my smaller waist could no longer pad for me.
Idle worry about someone drinking and consuming chemicals at the same time, spontaneous hugs from a lady that it turns out I've met both online and offline, lascivious massages from a young lady who later came home with us for fondles that had been nearly eight years in the coming. Eight years of her boyfriend or my boyfriend or our individual insecurities, on Friday night, a lifetime later, in an entirely different city, there was warmth enough to light my skin on fire.
Seeing my love's grin over her perfect white shoulder, kissing his ear as he devoured her neck, devouring her breast as he tenderly loved mine.
Unfortunately this resulted in zero sleep for two nights running, and I never got to meet Reyl's little redheaded girl in the blur of the rest of the weekend, which I'd been looking forward to since finding out she was going to be in town. Granted, what conspired was immense in itself, and many years in coming, but I've gotten old and boring enough to still prefer the idea of spending an afternoon with a giggling child over a night in a perfect threesome. I'll still take both most days, though.
Saturday was difficult, despite the warmth of my princess, the beauty of how both of us have grown so much and yet when she holds my hand nothing between us has changed.
Three hours wandering about a christian art gallery, trying on new vynil at a fetish shop in which the salesman went a little far in his own domineering lasciviousness (some people need to ask permission if they want to call me bad girl), a Morticia Adams skirt obliging me to stumble just that way a vynil ribbed top that ends high enough for my waist to glare out from underneath.
Last minute costume shopping, Mr. Pyke in a shiny blue leotard with anim� style hair, my hands remembering just the right way to stroke the blue into circles.
Wandering through little India looking for vegan food, dressed in my clown overalls and having a difficult time not hopping-skip-trundling in character.
Drinking cold coffee right out of the pot in Arnon's kitchen, the pot as large as my head.
Rowan's admiring lilt as she watched me put my clown face on.
Discovering that Mr. Pyke understands the art of the clown.
Walking into a party where the average age was fifteen years my senior, and feeling more comfortable than at the last ten screaming shindigs.
Walking into a party where little four year old Katie with her curly blonde hair and flat hazel eyes looked up at me with my own face of twenty years ago, four hours of her brazen storytelling, chasing games, four hours of seeing the reflection of my bubblegum wig and blue clown face in the laughter that shook her entire self.
The last half hour of the party, after little Katie had gone to bed, and my attention turned to the grownups.
The large words they lay on my shoulders. The alcohol-addled compliments that put warmth deeper into my tired bones.
Anna's announcement that I'm a good clown, that my dollface persona somehow urged her to try to hug her first clown since she developed a terror of them in her childhood. Entire decades ago.
Kirsten's too-wide drunken grin that she was thrilled we'd come.
Announcements that this or that shining persona wanted to keep me. Me.
Sunday woke me up after eight hours of lying still but not sleeping.
The night was filled with all the wrong nightmares, sleep deprivation induced, based in anticipation of a response to an RFP that I sent out on Friday, terror that they'll refuse me, greater terror that they'll accept and that I'll fail the intensive interview process - terror intensified by how impossibly important this one particular contract is.
Terror that will eventually lead to me doing a healthy dose of studying, once I get over the debilitating bite.
Sunday afternoon we wandered about chinatown and bought a beautiful butternut squash for sixty four cents which is bubbling away in the oven right now along with ginger and spinach and onions and whatever else was left on the third shelf in the fridge.
Then we dropped Princess off at the train station and I was missing her already as we turned the corner towards Lakeshore.
I was reminiscing already about how she crawled into bed with me for cuddles, how she laughed to the point of hysteria about Mr. Pyke's plan to replace her entire wardrobe with vintage pink.
Sunday evening climbing was a disaster and suddenly all the pangs of the past week were back behind my eyes.
Sunday evening I was on the endurance 5.6 that I've made it 85% up and I couldn't get ten feet from the ground. I was watching my muscles flexing but the strength was missing. Entirely. Misunderstandings about dinner, lack of sleep, my own oversensitivity...
I tied into a 5.7 that'd I've climbed clean before, and after three tries couldn't get the stupid fucking figure-eight knot straight.
I sat down on the edge of a stair and was suddenly broken, wanting to cry but utterly unable to in front of people that I was suddenly afraid to call friends.
I went home nauseous and the evening was another pit of loathing until the phone rang
and it was Cristal
and an hour later it was too late to watch movies and have a romantic evening with Mr. Pyke (something we haven't had much time for in a while) but Cristal had opened up that spot in my heart that lets me think a little.
When I was having trouble laughing at the first ever episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus (Whither Canada!) I realized just how dumb a spot I'd dug myself into.
Doubting myself, doubting my position, over-reacting to things that I thought I'd learned better than to do last year.
This morning I sang my vocalizes and spoke to Sydney and talked very sternly to myself.
This morning I thought of Katie and Princess and spent some time just thinking of myself. Of what I want. What I need. What I'm going to do to acquire some of it, and to learn to live without the rest.
Attention. My childlike ego still wants more attention. More dedicated attention. Listening to Allie rave about how her nephew is in love with her voice over the telephone, I saw that same need for it in myself. Not rote repeated iterations of words to fill easier moments, but an honest realization that I am a priority. Important. More important than I've recently allowed myself to remember, or to feel, for whatever reasons.
I'm rambling again, but there are things wrong with how I am touching my environment, and some of the terrors are identifiable, the rest I still have to mutter about myself to identify.
This afternoon I'm going to go about the things listed in my todo list and simply try to breathe without panicking.
Tonight I'm skipping out on anime club to catch the Haujobb show with Kristen.
Loud music, and alone time, a place where I can't over-react.
Today's job is keeping the tears at bay.
Tomorrow begins productivity.