wasted dates and car insurance.

hmmm. well here are the challenges of late:
1. restaurants. I have given myself permission to eat out/coffee out in a dating context. this is all fine and dandy. now i have found myself out for a drink and eats on 3 other occasions(excluding funerary activities surrounding grandma's passing, which i consider exempt) on 2 occasions out of town work people have been in Regina for meetings and I have been social and attended. this has been cordial, and I am sure good PR for future work in HIV/HCV stuff that i do, and also generally socialisation with Regina friends that i have met through work. but I am wondering if I should be taking a different approach. I will not suggest that should not have spent evenings with these folks. I think it is important to be a host in your city. but should i have pushed for them to come and eat at my place and shared a drink here? should i have eaten a cheese sandwich at home and socialised over as glass of water? In both instances i have insisted upon eating in a locally owned and non-chain restaurant. I have walked or car pooled to the location. But i can't help but feel like I am slipping.
The other restaurant event was out with my friends Amy & Mike, but they have been trying to take me out for sushi since the summer, and we have just not gotten around to it. so should i have deferred until next year? should i continued to insist upon eating at home, and that they didn't owe me dinner at all? I guess the problem is that i LIKE to eat out. I miss it. I miss not doing dishes. I miss the diversity without having to cook too much food. miss the feeling of being out. but this is not a need! this is not even close to a need.

a 4th event that is annoying me is that a friend set me up on a blind date 2 weeks ago, and i used my dating rule to meet this guy. His kids are 19. he has lived in the same place his whole life, and I have NO idea why my friend thought there would be chemistry. When he dropped me off at my house after lunch at a "family restaurant", he asked "Do you have problems with Natives around here?" I believe this question describes our compatibility. I answered "No, just systemic racism." I think this was lost on him. the sad thing is that it was a total waste of a "going out" opportunity. blah! No more blind dates for a while.

This weekend i temporarily re-insured my car. I was going to rent one to go and spend the weekend with my dad at the cabin, after all it cost the same for a month of insurance, as a weekend rental. but then 2 things came to the fore front.
1. I could get a refund for the rest of the month so it would be cheaper to use my car.
2. Most of the reason i wanted to rent was shiny factor. sure winter tires were in my head a bit, but it was more fascination with driving a Suzuki swift for the weekend. and that is not the point of this exercises.

So Kia And I drove up to the Cabin, spent a quiet weekend with my Dad, and Ben the dog, watched the gray cup, cooked in the fireplace, and walked in the woods. I will take my recycling to the Depot this week, and next weekend I will go and see my other grandmother, who is almost 90 and lives out of town, and then I will nix the insurance again.

Oh, and for any friend of mine who wishes to set me up on a date: please don't.

Going strong.

It feels weird to shift to talking about retail abstinence after the weighty topics of late.

The retail hiatus is still going strong. I did some sewing this weekend, and have been feeling really good about the process. I am going to have to make a trip to value village for new jeans soon, as mine are more patch than structure now and soon they may be declared a hazard. Sewing jeans not a fun game, so I will buy a pair second hand. I am also hoping to renovate a wool winter coat soon. Start out with a huge brightly coloured monstrosity, and end with my own monstrous creation.
This weekend i finished a few Crochet and sewing projects.
This weekend I attended a regina Ecoliving potluck, walked around the lake, and slept in. It was awesome. I organised an office potluck in place of our usual restaurant excursion and it was well received by all... amazing food!
The concert i was planning on attending last week was cancelled, so i now need to find a replacement Nov social event... Might go to BC at the end of the month for a Mike Doughty concert, but i have not heard back from the venue if there are tickets left.
It is getting very dark again... I feel like there is a layer of wax and wool on my brain these days. need more sun!
okay. sleep is free. I am going to go get me some!
E

Well it has been one week since my grandmother passed away. It is crazy how the world fills in around the people when they go. I have a sense of procrastination about not going to visit her. It is hard to believe after so many years of various struggles that it can end. It seemed that that state was perpetual.

My mom and I stayed with her on the night before she died until about 2 in the morning. I think we both planned on staying all night but as the night passed, she was stable and resting relatively comfortably so we decided to go home and sleep for a few hours, recharging our batteries for the next day that we anticipated. It is funny, because I remember the trip back to my house is a weird sleepy stupor. I remember parts of the trip like I was driving even though we were in a cab, but also remember that the cab driver was a very abrupt and crazy driver. Both mom and I fell asleep as soon as our heads hit the pillow, despite expecting exhausted layers of insomnia. At 4:48, Ken, my grandmother’s nurse called. She had just passed away. I called another cab, this one less rabid, and got dressed. We were there within 15 minutes.

I had never seen a dead person before. Or touched one.

The last time I saw her alive, her laboured breathing was shallow, and she was not able to respond to anything in the room. The silence in her room at 5 am was very strange. The room’s light flickered with light from her neighbours muted TV tuned to the home shopping network. She was still comfortably tucked into her bed, eye’s closed. Her hands and face were still very warm. Her colour had not changed much, which surprised me. It was definitely different than sleeping. I think it was the stillness. She was beautiful and scary at the same time.

I really value that last hour or so that we were able to spend with her, after she had gone. It was still early, so there were not many staff or people in the halls, giving us privacy and a lending a sense of the sacred to this time spent in a public place.

I am also very thankful for the time grandma and I spent together on the last day of her life. I talked to her about the great memories that I would keep close to my heart, share with my friends, and hopefully share with my children. I asked her for a few favours for myself and friends. A bit odd, and I felt weird asking, but I felt like she was close to having better insight than I have into “the big picture” so who better to ask? And weirdly, parts of my life related to my inquiry have started to change, not significantly, but more change than I have seen in a while. I have a good friend that I asked her to check on too, and there have been a few stirrings in that direction as well, though resolution on all fronts is still beyond the horizon.
I left my grandmother for a few hours on Halloween, to hand out candy, and have some supper. A good friend supplied the ride and the dinner as well as some good rejuvenating conversation. But before I left she kissed me good-bye. I had to ask her a few times, but she puckered her lips and pressed them to my cheek, wish I had placed close-by. When I returned later than evening she was no longer responsive. I wondered if I should have stayed, but that good-bye, potentially not possible an hour later, was such a gift that I know it happened for a reason.

After the funeral home came, and Mom and I made up her bed and tidied her room. Then we went and enjoyed a lovely breakfast at the Hotel Regina, I had Tea and hot chocolate. It was weird to be in public. It was weird to feel okay, sad but okay. I felt like it should have been obvious that we had just been sitting with the dead, that somehow the world should smell different, feel different.

But it was the same.

new mike doughty song to sing

New doughty music... not sure how i am feeling about the new 27 jens song... but new is good. respect the art. right?

JUST WANT THE GIRL IN THE BLUE DRESS TO KEEP ON DANCING

Frat boys gone to dogs
Brawling and sparring
Blue girl, dance for me
The empty floor,
and I said: brrmbpdpdmdm
I love your baby fat: brrmpddmdum
Your crooked nose is where it's at: brrmbpdpdmdmbrrmbpdpdmdmbrrmbpdpdmdm
I assess the essence of the mess
The perfect hourglass of my loneliness,
yes,And I don't care to count my chances
I just want the girl in the blue dress
To keep on dancing
What is this happiness? brrmbpdpdmdm
It was not ever thus: brrmbpdpdmdmbrrmbpdpdmdmbrrmbpdpdmdm
I will prevail for you: brrmbpdpdmdm
Behind the mic I'm burning to: brrmbpdpdmdmbrrmbpdpdmdmbrrmbpdpdmdm
Yeah, I'm just a zip code man
I got my house and I'll stay in if I can, but I
Don't care to keep my fences
I just want the girl in the blue dress to keep on dancingNa na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na