A new purchase

I never thought I'd need a graphing calculator in my life, but I bought one yesterday. I'm looking at this thing earlier thinking about how it's probably going to be harder for me to learn how to use this thing than the actual end goal of remembering how to do calculus. Which I've done. Without a graphing calculator. 

Ugh I'm old. Although not old enough for the clerk at Bureau en Gros (Staples for us Quebecers) to not mistakenly ask Jean, whom he thought was my father, if he was buying it for me for my eleventh grade math class. Which I did fourteen years ago. Without a graphing calculator, I might add.

Anyway, my college calculus credits, which are almost as old as the age I'd be if I were actually in the eleventh grade, are apparently too old to be considered as pre-requisites for the program I'm applying to this winter. I highly doubt that math has changed very much in the last decade, but that's what the head honchos at my potential future school have decided. So now I'm trying to relearn it so that I can take the equivalency exam in December.

Amazing how something as boring as how to do calculus can just disappear from your brain without a trace, like it was never there before. I wish I could put my memory banishing powers to better use, but no. Apparently I only forget things that are useful to me.

Rock the Casbah by Myself

I woke up this morning with an awkward medley of Rock the Casbah and All By Myself stuck in my head. A hilarious creation of my nocturnal subconscious and lingering evidence that something weird went down in dreamland last night.

I've always had incredibly vivid and strange dreams, but these days they escape my memory minutes after I've opened my eyes. This makes me sad because I love the amused look on Jean's face when I tell him the latest.

As I was walking to the office this morning, I saw a man in a suit on his knees in the mall, picking up a dozen Timbits in different flavours scattered all over the ground, the empty Tim Hortons box he'd dropped lying on it's side not too far away. It's really insignificant on the scale of bad things that can happen to someone, but it damn near made me cry. I'm such a sucker for these kinds of "sad" situations, I don't know why the hell I'm such a jellyfish for this type of thing, but I always have been and forever will be.

It's nice to have a garden...

... and a boyfriend with a green thumb.

One thing I never learned about as a silly city girl is the art of gardening, and the wonder of having fresh vegetables and herbs at your disposable. At the beginning of the summer, we planted three varieties of tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, onions, beets, parsnips, and a whole array of fresh herbs (among other things), and we're finally starting to enjoy the fruits of our (his) labour.

As a descendant of farmers on both sides of the family, I guess it's pretty sad that it takes me tremendous effort to keep even the most low-maintenance house plants alive. But such is life.

Dinner was a freebie tonight... we just chopped up some tomatoes and herbs we picked from the garden, tossed them with linguine and gobbled it down with a dollop of ricotta. 

It was. SO. GOOD.

I mean, it makes me kind of mad. Because when I go to the grocery store to pick up these types of ingredients, I end up with watery tasteless tomatoes and herbs packaged in so much plastic. Would you believe that I never even really knew what a real tomato tasted like? That I actually thought that I didn't like tomatoes? The flavour in the stuff picked from the garden is nothing at all like what you buy, unless you go to a farmer's market - which I do sometimes, but I don't live close enough to do it regularly. Even the taste of our arugula is incomparable. I pulled a leaf off the plant and it had such a strong peppery flavour that it almost burned my tongue. In a good way, of course...

I have so many plans for the other things we have growing. SO. MANY. PLANS.

Can't wait for those beets to be ready.

This.

This.

This is how I feel right now.

I'm not super elated or excited. I'm not bursting at the seams. I'm just...

My job has been getting me down in the last few months, but I won't write about it here because I'm terrified of the powers that be that will strike me down if I do. My company has an internet policy that reads like a novel, and I'm forced to accept it every time I open my browser at work.

So I'll avoid that topic for now (and perhaps forever) and instead say that I did two 30km rides this week on my bike, and a few shorter ones, and in the last two weeks since I've started riding my bike more often, I've been feeling really:

Baby Steps

It can be easily inferred from my last few posts that I’ve been spending a lot of time with Netflix these days.

My routine (or lack thereof) is easily governed by the weather. Last week and the week before that were oppressively hot and humid (or sunny and beautiful, as an optimist might say), and in a direct betrayal to the centuries of tropical-climate-inhabiting genetics on my mother’s side, I do not handle heat very well. Thanks to my lovely father, I have the constitution of a pasty Welshman, and in extreme heat situations, I get heat stroke and sunburns and have an undeniable desire to retreat into a cool dark place and... well... watch Netflix, I guess.

The weeks preceding the dog days of summer were rainy and grey – conditions even more conducive to becoming a recluse. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that in about five weeks, Jean and I have blown through entire series’ of House of Cards, Lilyhammer, Breaking Bad and Orange is the New Black.

Saturday morning, the inevitable happened. I had an “I’m bored” breakdown. (As a side note, I just can’t read or even think about the phrase “I’m bored” without hearing the voice of Louis CK’s television daughter). We had just stirred awake and were kind of joking around in bed, and during a lull in conversation, I looked at the perfectly blue sky and thought OH MY GOD. What in the fucking fuck have we been doing?!

The first step, as always, is acknowledging you have a problem. That step was easy, because the cabin fever induced depression had already bubbled to the surface. “We’re depressing”, Jean declared. To which I agreed. God, he’s depressed about this Netflix situation, and he spent the entire first week of his time off from work landscaping... a.k.a. chillin’ outside and being productive. If he’s feeling depressed, what should I be feeling?

So... we went for a bike ride. It wasn’t really a huge leap forward, but at least it was a nudge in the forward direction. He lives in what we call the “country”, which isn’t really the “country” as you might imagine it, but it’s definitely quiet, on the rural side and is punctuated with farmland. There’s a back road through the cornfields where we rode through a gentle breeze as the sun was setting and believe it or not, I didn’t miss Netflix. Not one bit. (And, I should mention, it was about ten thousand times less terrifying than riding my bike around my place in the city, where I’m always in a state of constant sweaty panicky fear for my life.)

We almost managed to avoid getting stuck in front of a screen for the rest of the weekend, but Mother Nature was cranky last night and there was a succession of angry thunder storms that ultimately kept us indoors.

Tonight... well, we’ll see. I’m optimistic.

Tomorrow's Friday

A glass of wine and some good cheese was waiting for me when I got home from work today, and I've got to say, it did wonders in quelling the intense envy I've been feeling toward my boyfriend for having taken two weeks off work. Dragging myself out of bed every morning when he's sound asleep and looking like the picture of pure bliss and comfort in a pile of blankets and pillows has not been easy.

We've been talking about taking off for ten days in October and have been weighing our options. Nothing official yet, but seclusion, relaxation and amazing scenery are high on our list of criteria. I've been looking at private house rentals in Portugal with patios overlooking the sea, and it looks so alluring that I just want to teleport there NOW and not have to do any planning or counting down the weeks.

Some beef brochettes just went on the grill and they smell so fucking good. I don't love cooking, but damn, I love to eat!

Oh, hey!

Phew. Rough fucking day. Could have done without it, but things don't always go the way we want them to.

I spent the afternoon finishing up Orange is the New Black on Netflix. It's been so hot and humid lately that I've been spending all my free time under a spell of lethargy that has had me stuck within the frigid, miserable confines of my air conditioned apartment. The entire week, actually.

God, I hope I never go to prison. I am not cut out for that kind of environment. Not even a minimum security facility. I'm the type of person to feel emprisoned by roommates. I have this irrational fear that I'll end up being wrongly identified in a criminal case, get sent to jail and never have privacy or alone time ever again. Among other unpleasantries, of course.

I'd love to go to sleep right now, I really would!

But I'm too exhausted.

On relaxing

The train lulls me to sleep most mornings, if it's quiet enough. I love the train, it's the best form of public transportation. It's clean, always on time, dependable and best of all, there's a silent understanding among most passengers that the train is a quiet place. Unlike buses, trains are not at the mercy of traffic, and unlike the metro, trains are well ventilated and air conditioned and I can stare out of the window at the passing scenery and daydream.

There's a stretch of green between two stations that's my favourite. I often see deer there, which always makes me excited. I've lived my entire life in the city and you don't see deer in the city. Raccoons, skunks, rabbits, maybe. But not deer. Ever. Not long ago, I saw a fawn standing, bewildered next to the tracks. I hope it went back into the green and into safety.

I've got to learn how to relax more. I'm not a busy person by any stretch of the imagine, but I suffer from two debilitating affections: not being able to shut my brain off, and anxiety-based procrastination. Two separate issues that occasionally get tangled. At least only the latter is self-destructive. A friend suggested I take a "relaxing bath", so I said, "yes, dear friend, I shall try that". Except I ran the water, sank into the steamy bubbles and only lasted about two minutes before thinking "I'm bored and pruny" and wanted to get out.

But... I have my quiet morning train rides, so there's that.

Shit

I'm about to get the ball rolling on something that requires a year-long commitment and a major life change.

I'm scared shitless.

But I have to keep reminding myself not to let the fear get to me. Not to chicken out.

Weeknight evenings just got a lot better

Spring's here. Shit just got real.

Rain. All week.

At least it's better than snow.

... right?

A list, of sorts

Since I'm awake, here's a list of fucking things I'm going to try to accomplish tomorrow:

1. Clean the floors. Sweep/mop. It's been slightly too long since they've had a good moppin'.
2. Post my old TV and printer on the FREE section on Craigslist. Yeah, that's how badly I want to get rid of them.
3. Execute a much needed sartorial spring cleaning.
4. Rid my bookshelf of crap I don't need anymore.
5. Clean out the fridge.
6. Do my nails.
7. Make TACOS!!! (Although in my current condition, I'll have to run them through a food processor in order to be able to consume them.)

I've been doing a bit of reading about minimalism lately. Not that I actually think minimalist living is in any way feasible for me. I just am realizing way more now than ever that I'm a prisoner to all the stuff I have and it's stressful and depressing. I don't even really know why I have so much crap. I think it's partly because I uselessly attach sentimental value to things that I really shouldn't have any strong feelings toward whatsoever, and partly because... I'm paralyzingly lazy.

I always feel motivated at the wrong times. Like when I obsess about all the things I can make for dinner while I'm at work, but am too tired to actually tackle when I get home. Or like now... when it's 2:30am and I should be sleeping.

I just hope I've received the last of the drunk texts and that my boyfriend stops snoring sometime soon so that I can get some shut eye and feel well-rested enough to accomplish at least 25% of the things on my list tomorrow.

I'm wearing my optimistic pants!

Ouch.

I did something dumb.

I went to the dentist to get a filling, and later on in the evening, while my tongue was still frozen, I chomped down on the entire side of it really badly without realizing it and now I'm in so much pain.

My tongue is all raw, swollen and bumpy on the left side and I can barely eat or speak.

… and I'm PMS'ing.

… and I have a cold.

Zzz

Sunshine makes it infinitely easier for me to wake up in the morning. I can mash the snooze button a million times and end up late for work every day of my life, but it's way more effective if I leave my blinds open just enough for the sun to pour in early in the morning. I mean, how can you go back to sleep when your room is flooded with light?

So that's why I've been a bit bummed in the morning for the last two days, because since we sprang the clocks forward on Sunday, it's still been dark at the time I usually wake up at. The awesome thing is that I actually get to see daylight when I leave work, which really is way better than having the sun set at 4:00pm in the dredge of winter.

It was so dark this morning that I kept deliriously checking the time like "Am I really supposed to get up now? In the... middle of the night?"

It's that much harder that J isn't stirring because he's sick and not going to work and I want to stay with him. He has a slight fever and so the bed was SO warm and that much more inviting.

Haha that's terrible. What I really mean is that I want to stay home and take care of him.

...

Happy Tuesday!

Well...

... I think I'm going to try this again.