DIY: Close Talkers

Sometimes when you're out and about in the world you might encounter this savage beast. They live on the inside air of personal bubbles. They will often state facts to your face about something you're doing, and they will probably moisten your face with their breath.

First they scent out a ripened personal space. Usually they can tell by your actions. Are you doing something anti-social? Reading? Earphones in? Both is best. Do you look like you're too polite to send them on their way? Even better. They have now identified their prey.

You'll know you've been spotted by the presence of uncomfortable, unblinking eye contact.

Sidle. Sidle sidle. It has breached your outer personal space. They will often try, at this point, to look pathetic to lower your defences. 

They are intensely intent on their goal. You might try an unfriendly posture or facial expression. Greater people than you have tried this and failed. It won't help to take out your phone at this point. They don't care if you're texting someone.

There is only one proven way to counteract the creature's attack. It will take courage and resolve.

Be crazier. Beat them to the punch.

A Thing That Happened: Insufficient Leftovers.

Is this a thing that others find? I make food for my Other Half and myself, he snarfs through it in about half the time I'm done mine (Which I adore! He likes my cooking! A lot!) but then as he heads back to the kitchen for more I am silly and say, "You know, if you leave some for leftovers, tomorrow I can make blah blah blah..." and he says "okay!"

We're learning to match up my idea of leftovers and his idea of leftovers.

I head into the kitchen, look in the pot and I see:

And I'm left wondering what he thinks my wizardry might make out of a spoonful of rice and this:

He apparently thinks I'm much better at this than I do. And then I say what I think he meant for me to say all along. "Do...you want to just finish this off?"

Exercise Demons

Lemme just say from the get-go: I hate exercise. I do not enjoy it except in the smallest degree.

I should be honest and clarify this by saying I usually only hate exercise when standing on doorstep of actually doing it. I seem to enjoy it when I can actually do it, like when I was on a swim team in my teens and a brief period when I first moved to Vancouver and joined a gym I later abandoned when I couldn't afford any more Personal Trainer sessions with a lady that was awesome, inspirational and Damn Tough.

I remember those couple months with great affection. The gym I went to was on the 4th floor of this weird shopping mall that used to be an old brick government building. After my sessions I would cling to the railing and slowly lower myself down the 634,000 steps to street level as the muscles in my legs had been replaced with goo.

My muscles pressed against the surface of my skin and I could run! I ate well, in the way my body deserved, not in the way my brain kept telling me was good enough. I woke up each morning with energy, not totally cotton brained with fatigue. (I should also point out that at this time I was working in a physically demanding job in a seafoods warehouse type place, lifting and carrying a lot of heavy weight from 9:30 - 6, 5 days a week, on top of doing full time studies. Having energy anyway was amazing to me.) I felt and looked great, full of excitement about the future. Eventually the job put stress on my joints and mind and I gave up the gym, feeling guilty all the time.

Earlier than that was my swimming days. I absolutely love(d) to swim. There is no other exercise that I get fun out of, as in actual enjoyment in the action itself. I remember doing a swim-a-thon of some sort or purpose, being pledged to do over 200 laps of the pool. I remember (maybe not accurately) swimming well over 15 km that day, reaching a sort of dreamy out of body physical exhaustion and strength I haven't felt since then. Is that what runners call "the zone"? The thing I remember clearly from this time in my life was a coworker of my Mother's seeing me and exclaiming, "WOW! You're thin" in a really unflatteringly surprised tone of voice.

These times have been bracketed by longer periods of time of soft bodied jellyness and apathy. When I graduated University I was unemployed. With nothing to do and living in terrible roommate circumstances I went into a deep depression, fed by a lot of different things that seem fairly typical of new graduates. There were days where I only lay in bed from sun up to sun down, dozing to avoid thinking about anything. This went on for quite awhile, and I gained weight fast. My body sprung out in stretch marks like a rash and this pushed me even deeper into my self loathing. I tried to put on a pair of jeans from the previous summer and couldn't even pull them past my knees. I had changed that much in that much time. This was still not enough to spur me to make a change though.

That time of my life to now have been the hardest I've experienced. I don't know how much longer the struggles I'm dealing with will go on for, there isn't a plateau in sight. But I'm tired of practically feeling my residual muscles and toning fading away, a bone deep ache. The weight of my troubles shouldn't be such strong shackles, but there you go. I'm weak that way - it's always the first few steps that fell me.

So I guess I'm putting this out there in writing to force myself into a kind of spot light. My ego and pride push me much harder when there are witnesses to my goals and attempts. I don't have a goal weight, I have a goal feeling I guess. I want to go into shops and not have to shop all the biggest sizes or no sizes at all. I want to be able to wear something I like cos I like it, not cos it miraculously fits without adding further sins. (as in, WHY ALL THE RUFFLES AND ELASTIC PEASANT WAISTS FOR BIGGER SIZES! It does NOT help matters!) I want to feel good, I want to be able to physically do things, like run. I still remember the feeling of having a strong body capable of actual feats of strength.

I hate exercise now because it's still defeating me. I need to force the issue, a kind of debridement of my will power and resultant laziness. I've taken my measurements and some before photos.

Wish me luck, dudes.

New Years Edition

As we come to the newest year I have been thinking quietly about the things I am thankful for. This last year has been full of transitions, pitfalls, lessons, smiles, tears, freak-outs, family, severely tested patience, full out tantrums (my own and others'), bear hugs, heartache, tummyaches, belly laughs and touching someone else's puke (albeit with industrial rubber gloves).

I would say that the good has been slightly outweighed by the not good. The bad news keeps coming. This seems to have been the trend for the last 4 or 5 years. This is not to say it hasn't been a good yea.r, in fact I would be quick to point out that the fact I feel this year was good despite this ratio says a lot.

I suppose there are mainly two things which I have struggled with this year; first there was transitioning into living with a partner whilst also having only recently moved to a new country continent. Most the struggles have come from adjusting to either balancing another person's ideas and needs against my own or adjusting to a new culture (And it is another culture, trust me. Not as extreme as moving to a country that has an entirely other language, but still sometimes it seems I'm speaking a different language to every one else).

Secondly, it seems that the years of resolutely looking no further than next week or next month at most have caught me up. This has been compounded by my unwavering tendency to completely ignore my problems and issues in favour of focusing on everyone else's. This might be passive, as in catering my responses and character/personality to make everyone else more comfortable.

This has become a big problem for myself because I don't know that many people really understand or know even half of what I am and even more disturbingly, I don't know if I do either. I am a bundle of appropriate responses. It's exhausting and that was exactly what I wanted. If all my time were taken by other people's issues then I could avoid unravelling the choices I've made. Perhaps this is being a bit unjust though, because I take care of others out of genuine regard and compassion as well.

The combination of all these things caused my body and mind to come to a complete screeching stop a couple of months ago. Once I stopped, I guess I noticed the scenery and I didn't like what I saw. I would prefer to think of myself as brave but I am coming to fear/know that the opposite is true. I'm emerging from this realizing I don't have to ask permission to do, think or feel things. That they occur to me means that I own them and can decide where they go. There is a sense of freedom and a great, heavy sense of responsibility that comes with that.

My last life changing goal was going to Emily Carr University. I achieved that without making myself a next step and ended up stepping through thin air and completely face-planting. The time since just before graduating has been wasted by avoiding thinking about what I wanted to do next.

Now that I'm actually looking at the wound I suppose it isn't as bad as I'd feared while trying not to look. I can feel the pieces starting to rearrange into something usable though the overwhelming feeling of helplessness and fear of the unknown future are still pressing their weight against the door trying to get in. I suppose at this point it's less a question of "who am I?" as it is "who do I want to be?". I have some tenuous answers already but for now they're mine alone.

ANYWAYZ!

Serious stuff aside...

Things I Did: 2012

- I relearnt how to knit! I jumped straight in by knitting some tiny booties and scared the crap out of my bf. "No!" I was quick to clarify, "That was the just first project in the book!" After saying it I could totally hear how flimsy an excuse that seemed. But I swear! It really was just the first project.

Right now I think they're lurking under the sofa, mismatched in size and awaiting their chance. I'm making a baby present for a lovely friend of mine, when it's done I'll put up a photo because I LUFF EET!

I've been making things out of this giant ball of green (my favourite colour) and upon finishing them, completely unravelling them and starting a new project. Also I have thrown a project to the ground in frustration. The former is pretty zen and buddhist like sand mandalas, the latter is neither. But it felt AWESOME.

- I started drawing regularly again. I'm so pleased that I've done this because I have been genuinely enjoying it. I enjoyed it before but there was always this sense of frustration because I was always wanting it to look like someone else's work or someone else's style. My style is messy, erratic, you can see the loose ends. I am this way with most things I make; pottery, painting, drawing, knitting, photographing... there is always a strange uniform quality of being able to see the feet of the man behind the curtain. I used to berate myself for my complete lack of perfectionism. This is a highly valued quality in the arts and for good reason. But it's not me and I just can't fit into it, try as I have.

- I have started writing. I have maybe half a dozen short stories started and I aim to finish them soon and share them.

- I saw and connected with long unseen family and it was amazing. I am grateful for the chance I had to do so, God knows when I might have such a chance again.

Things I Love:

I make this list at the new year in my sporadic journals, it's a bit like things I'm thankful for but in a very simple way.

- Rain on a thin roof
- The sound of cars whooshing by in the rain
- Half melted popcicles
- Retro clothing, hair, make up but decor for the most part
- Cooking for loved ones
- Knowing I have unconditional love, and unconditional love to give
- Rows and rows of multicoloured yarns and threads calling out for me to buy them
- That shiver I get when I have snapped my shutter on my camera and already know I will love the result
- Milk dissolving in tea or coffee
- Hot tea hitting the bottom of my stomach
- Bear hugs
- Shocking people that still think I'm sweet, innocent or demure with a well timed remark
- Grocery shopping
- The pond and park by our apartment
- The smell of paint
- Fresh sage
- Writing/drawing in my journal at a cafe
- Cheese on toast
- The flip flop my heart does during the most mundane of moments in my shared life; glancing up and finding S. already smiling at me, washing dishes together, seeing each other and being equally as happy about it after only a short time apart, laughing at the same exact things, crying at the same exact things, other gaggy mushy stuff.
- Endorphins after pushing my body to the wobbly muscles stage
- Actually getting 'round to exercising
- Hats
- Gloves
- A line dresses that don't end above my knees and are not sleeveless
- Elegant wool coats
- Dry underpants after swimming in cold water

Things I want for the coming year (also known as "Resolutions"):

- Stability
- Be more consistent in writing in my journals
- Be more consistent in writing
- Be more consistent in replying to emails
- Be more consistent
- Feel comfortable in my skin (I have actually let go of my need to look "beautiful", I'm moving towards looking like a healthy and strong me.)
- Better examine and commit to my relationship with religion or spirituality or whatever one would call it
- Allow myself to create things without the pressure to be "good"
- Push myself to reach out to other people (in a local sense.)
- Figure out what career path I want to work towards
- Figure out what and where I and we want for our relationship to be and go
- Have something published (Anywhere, anything. I don't care where)
- Better eating habits
- Better exercise
- Better my Japanese language skills
- Start a foundation in learning Arabic (So S. and I can talk about cashiers in front of them. I know they love that from experience, y'all.) (Also, I already know how to say "where's the remote?", how much more do I need to know really.)

I'm sure there are others but that's ALL YOU GET!

This was a rather sombre post but it's all compounded from a million hours of selfish contemplation, and that is rarely funny. For realsies.

Maybe more funny later. Maybe.

Myself and S. are watching all million hours of the Lord of the Rings trilogy in preparation of body and mind for going to see the Hobbit. We started the Two Towers today and I remarked:

"Gandalf is kind of the king of badasses, isn't he?"
 S: "He's more of a battle mage than a wizard though."

It's heartening that we speak the same language.

Flying Is Never Really Boring. (at least for me.)

So I figured, a month later, that it might be time to regale you with the tale of my latest travel adventure.

You see, I had spent the summer back in Canada. I had gone to my Uncle's wedding at the beginning of June and I also took a summer job back at a department store.

But all of that is meaningless to this story. The point is to set the stage. By the end of the summer I was very eager to get back to my boyfriend and to England. It's strange having your heart and mind divided over two separate continents. You're never fully intact no matter where you are.

So I started watching prices for airline tickets. And thank you England Olympics 2012, you made that so excellent for me. Prices were over 3 times as much as the previous year, sometimes even more than that. Panic set in around my heart as day after day I scanned all the bargain sites, each wanting 4 digits or more for a one way ticket. Yes, or more. Not even for business class. I'm not sure how that works, are people actually shelling money out like that for something that is usually a quarter the price? Wackos.

So eventually I spotted one that was only a a couple hundred more than last year's one way ticket and pounced. I didn't think it was going to get any better than that. And I was right. The price went back up a few hours after I bought it. Phew.

This ticket alleged that I would have on 3 and a halfish hour stopover in Frankfurt and I was actually pretty okay with that. I was on my way, I had a date, I marked my calendar.

My Mother and sister were lovely and came with me to Vancouver and we had a really nice day before they took me to the airport. I was secretly glad that they came with me though I was just as prepared to say adieu at the ferry terminal to save them hassle.

The gateway by the cafeteria has always been a place of tears for me, whether I'm going or someone else is going. We group hugged, cried and I sped off before I needed SERIOUS tissues. Okay. So at this point it was pretty normal. I updated my BF about my whereabouts and estimated time of departure and settled in with my kindle.

Oh yeah! I was flying on a German airline, so everything was in German and everyone (nearly) around me was German. I watched, with great interest, as someone beside me in the waiting room got up and purchased an iPad from a vending machine. Imagine if that jammed? No thank you. I like my expensive retailing to be done in person thankyouverymuchsir.

Anyway, we got onto the airplane and I inwardly cringed to see that it was not a plane which had individual tv console thingies in the headrest in front of you. It had about 4 TVs hanging from the ceiling of the aisles and from my window seat, I couldn't see the top half of it. Which was okay because they showed This Means War and Mirror Mirror in German.

This was likely the first time I've ever had a lovely stranger sit next to me. (highlights have been a Spanish man with little english showing me half clad photos of his girlfriend(s?) on his phone and another man that slept with his head on my shoulder and cried out in his sleep if I moved.) She was a Polish Canadian woman and she was very interested in my life story. She worriedly asked me, having found out I went to art school, if I thought she had done her daughter a disservice by pushing her away from the arts she loved and towards Sciences in school. I...didn't really know what to say.

It was at this point that an announcement came on (in German) and EVERYONE started talking (in German) very excitedly. I don't know if I need to express that THIS WAS VERY WORRYING. Then everyone started pressing their faces to the windows on my side of the plane and I actually thought, "There's something on the wing!". But there wasn't, so breathe. Instead I was so lucky to be able to see a green streak dancing across the sky and reflecting off the clouds below us. This was the second time I'd seen the Northern Lights, but seeing it from an airplane was very exciting.

I got my camera out and prayed that I would be able to fully capture what it was I was seeing. It's very difficult to get a photo of a low light subject through double paned windows, as you just get the reflection on the outer glass of what is behind you. So I put my jacket over my head like I was an old-timey sort of photographer (thinking at the northern lights, "Look at the biiiirdie!") to block all the excess light and I got a couple fairly okay photographs of an unearthly greenish smudge on a black background. I was beyond excited. ("I'm like a real photographer!")

We landed in Frankfurt on time and I excitedly got up and gathered my things. This was when I heard an announcement (in German) in which the word "Manchester" popped up. This was my next destination so I froze. Um. I walked by the (my brain wanted me to write plane-mistress here, I don't know why. Maybe cos she was German. And intimidating.) flight attendant and timidly asked her what the announcement had said about Manchester. She narrowed her eyes at me, puffed out her cheeks in exasperation and just pointed out the plane door where this very excited looking man was anxiously gripping a clipboard. Next to him was a bicycle. With another glance at the attendant, I walked over to the man and asked him if there was a change to the stopover to Manchester. He nodded at me but it was very clear that he wasn't listening to what I was saying. So I just stood there and looked at him. After a moment he looked back at me. I looked at him. He looked at me. He cleared his throat. I scratched my wrist. I don't know why. It wasn't even itchy. But it was awkward. So awkward.

He turned away from me and shouted into the plane, "IF DERR IS ANYONE GOINK TO MANCHESTER, SEE ME PLEASE." and immediately about 6 people slunk up to him. So I slunk too.

He glanced over at me and said, "I vill help you in a minute please miss."

I said clearly, "I think I'm on your clipboard there, I'm going to Manchester."

"OH!", said he. He looked down at his clipboard. "Oh yes, you are being Miss Silvey?", correctly pronouncing my surname.

"Yes." quoth I.

"OH!" He boomed, "I am so so sorry, I was misunderstanding you."

He looked around, counting the people in front of him with his finger, shrugged his shoulders and grabbed the bike that was leaning against the wall.  He swung his leg over it and took off down the hallway. About halfway down he stopped, looked back at us all confusedly looking 'round at each other, and called, "You are coming with me please, I will explain."

Very mysterious, this was. As one, me and my peeps walked at a fast clip after the German on a bicycle.

We walked for ages, and after a short while the German on a Bike was joined by a Second German on a Bike and they spoke hurriedly to each other in German whilst bumping into people with their bikes and parting a path in the crowd for the rest of us. (who were, by now, all sweating because we were jogging in an airport with all our bags after Two Germans on Bikes.)

We reached a desk in an abandoned hallway manned by two men behind (I assume) bulletproof glass. They held out their hand for our passports and stamped them and off we trotted once more. I was very confused and getting sort of panicky. The only other times I have my passport stamped is when I'm about to leave an airport to enter a city. Even that scary time when I stopped over in Beijing. (Another story, another time.)

Finally we reached a general space that had a food court. The Germans on Bikes parked their transports and finally explained that the flight from Frankfurt to Manchester had had an electrical failure of some sort so they had replaced the flight with a smaller plane and this meant that there wasn't room from the rest of us. He told us he needed our passports and half an hour to procure us another flight which would take us to Hamburg and then to Manchester, 3 hours later than originally planned. In apologies, they gave us all vouchers to use on food.

This would have been fine, but this whole area only had about a dozen seats for some reason. And they all had someone sleeping in them already.

Anyway, after this point it all proceeded uneventfully. I got to Hamburg, then to Manchester and took the train home from there. Where I slept for about a week.

It's all fun times and bicycles in hindsight.

I Don't Drink. Really.

Don't get me wrong here, I really don't mind being around other people that drink. I'm not making any sort of judgemental stand here. Even back when I did have a few drinks I kind of liked it. I understand the appeal.

Thing is though, the appeal just isn't enough anymore.

I don't like the bad things it does to one's body, I don't like the way it makes me feel or act. I don't like not being in control of my actions or what I say. I hate the feeling after when I look back on what I said or did and how "ugh" I feel about it. Ashamed, I guess.

The only thing I really liked about alcohol was the sort of inclusion it afforded me. I generally stick out like a sore thumb in social gatherings. Having a drink in my hand sort of blended me in. And it also had the effect of making me more verbal. (I usually don't talk at all in social things)

It's interesting, now that I don't drink, how uncomfortable it seems to make people when I don't imbibe. Here in the UK, pub culture is a huge deal. It's tied into pretty much every social aspect of British life. If we go out to watch a match, it's in a pub. If we're meeting people for dinner, it's in a pub or we go to a pub after. The way it works is people take turns buying rounds for the group, that's just considered polite. I like it that way, really. It's very inclusive and generous in feeling.

Someone stands up and says, "what's everyone want?" and everyone rattles off their answers. "lager, lager, lager, ale, guinness, and..." and here they stop and look at me and at my BF, who is also teetotal, and we awkwardly go, "oh, nothing, we're okay." There's a look of confusion and they try again, "No, really though, what do you want?" We sort of just look at each other and go, "Um. Just a coke for me." "Lemonade for me please." If they're not used to us and our non drinking they sorta just blink and wander off in a daze like we just asked for them to please pee in a glass, that would be lovely thanks.

By the way, if you ask for lemonade here, you're gonna get something akin to 7up. I once spat back into my glass cos I just wasn't expecting fizz. I explained to my BF that real lemonade is basically sweetened lemon juice and he replied with this look of abject horror as he sputtered out, "WHY!?".

It's going to be interesting going back to Canada for the summer, not being a drinker. Some people think I stopped because my BF doesn't drink but that's sorta condescending. I honestly just don't feel the need anymore. When I did drink I didn't like it. If I could get a virgin bellini or caesar, I'd be all over that. It's just that I don't want to willingly take in something that's bad for my body, mind and self esteem. But if you enjoy it, then enjoy it. To each their own, eh?