here in my head

Lazy sunday bullet-y goodness:

• We have a partially-functioning kitchen again – huzzah! The renos aren’t finished, but we are on hold until the new countertops arrive (the lovely, smooth, shiny black granite countertops…I never thought I could be so excited about stones or a kitchen. I am getting old…) Hopefully by this time next month, we will have our kitchen completely back to rights. In order to carve out a bit of serenity amidst the chaos, we cleaned up what we could of the kitchen on Saturday and then Mike made bacon, eggs and homemade hashbrowns to celebrate that we could, once again, cook at home. I then spent the rest of Saturday turning out bedroom inside out and tossing out all the clothes that are too big/too ugly/too ‘what the hell was I thinking’ and now I have closet space once again. Which I will attempt to not fill with more clothes that in a year or so will fall into one of the too big/too ugly/too ‘what the hell was I thinking’ categories.
• I need a lesson in goal-setting and prioritization. Also, time management. If someone could also tell me what the perfect career for me would be, that would be swell.
• Today was a near-perfect day. We went to a friend’s farm in Cantley, Quebec and I proceeded to hang out in front of the wood stove in their gigantic kitchen for pretty nearly the whole day while Mike went to the ski hill to tackle black diamond runs. I also learned how to make delicious chocolate pudding from scratch and was amazed by my friend Jen who simply whipped up a lunch for 20plus people in the course of a morning. I would like to find somewhere where I feel so at home like she does just puttering in her kitchen.
• I may be the last person on earth to be watching this, but my in-laws are out of town so I finally got to commandeer their TMN on Demand on Friday night to start making my way through Season 4 of Dexter, and can I just say that John Lithgow is one terrifying SOB? Seriously creepy. And brilliant. I may never sleep again…
• Can you do me a favour? Keep your fingers crossed for me – the signs are pointing to something that I’m hoping for might actually work out and if you could just send me some good thoughts to help this along, that would be swell…Thanks.
• Finally, I leave you with a song that has been running around in my head for a few weeks now, ever since my latte buddy (the other) Mike posted it on his blog…

Today was apparently the the most depressing day of the year, and, I don’t know how it was for you, but here it certainly lived up to it’s moniker. I awoke from a night of tossing and turning and very little sleep to dark grey clouds and absolute pouring rain. Which would have been fine, aside from the fact that it’s JANUARY and I live in Ottawa and therefore I shouldn’t be waking up to temperatures eight degrees above zero and massive amounts of rain. And because it is January and I live in Ottawa, I will awake to a skating rink tomorrow as temperatures cool and all that lovely rain that pooled over sidewalks and walkways (and the ski hill – I’m already dreading Thursday’s lesson) will freeze. Remind me again why I live in Ottawa…

So, the rain, on top of very little sleep, a stressful weekend, and unsettling dreams made for one very cranky Suze today. Luckily a long meander home after the rain had stopped and the sun had come out just in time to make the sky pretty as it set helped to put me in a slightly better mood. I can’t tell you how much I love that I can walk to work. How much I love that my walk home takes me through the Byward Market. How much I love my neighbourhood. How much I love that our lifestyle has shifted to one where the car remains parked much of the time and we walk to get the groceries we need, or to go to the movies or to our favourite Indian food place.

Despite the stressors of the last few weeks, I am all-in-all content. Happy.

On a completely separate note, this past Saturday night was date night. We went for dinner and a movie – Up in the Air. And I realized that I have had a crush on George Clooney since I was nine years old and he was on Facts of Life. Sure Mackenzie Astin would have been more age-appropriate, but it was George. Always George. I’m still crushing now. That’s 25 years of crush, people. 25 years. One hell of a crush commitment… I’m sure if he knew he’d care not a whit…

Sometimes you don’t know what you need until it’s sitting right in front of you. Or in the case of today, an email pops into your work inbox inviting you out for coffee. I had a lunch-time Starbucks escape today with my good buddy Mike Le.Sombre, aka ‘the other Mike’ as he signs his emails to me, or alternately, my husband’s french doppelgänger. (Mike’s wife Suzie would be mine…). It was soooo good to get out of the office and to have a long chat with a good friend. I didn’t know I’d needed that.

I was in the grocery store near our house yesterday on a mission to buy grapes (my go-to fruit of choice to take to work now that the mini-oranges so plentiful last month are looking pretty pitiful this one) and some garbage bags (well, green bin composting bags. whatever.) when I stumbled upon them. Easter eggs by the dozen. Little gold-foil wrapped Lindt chocolate bunnies (my favourite!). Mini-eggs just calling out to add inches, nay miles, to my hips. Bunched up right next to the easter treats were the omnipresent heart-shapped boxes for the upcoming big hallmark holiday of love, and then next to that were the leftover remnants of the Christmas holiday just past – foil wrapped chocolate Santas and gingerbread houses left in ruins. A single depressing aisle celebrating holidays past, (almost) present and future, tucked in next to the bulk foods. Just one, very blantant, symbol of my struggles right now – of how hard it is to just be in the moment. To let go of the past, to not fast forward so quickly to the future. I mean, even the candy aisle can’t decide what time to be in…

Also, there something to be learned in this last bit, but I’m not sure what it is…

The candy, something I wasn’t looking for, I could find with ease. But the garbage bags? No where to be found. I left without either.

I did get my grapes though.

I don’t have many words of my own right now, so instead, I’m going to share with you someone else’s words… Go read this – Dear Pixar, From All The Girls With Band-Aids On Their Knees – and then come back here and tell me about your movie heroines or why it is so hard to find strong female heros in movies. And why it is we socialize our girls to be princesses (which, if you think about it, is inevitably setting them up for failure, given that princesshood is mostly determined by birthright). Or tell me about why we need another princess movie, why little girls should be allowed to indulge the princess fantasy. And how not every Disney girl is a princess (think about Alice in Wonderland – she was just a girl who liked to read and got bored one day and followed a rabbit…). Maybe we don’t need more movies for little girls? What do you think about the theory that girls will read books with male protagonists but boys are much less likely to read books with femal protagonists – do you think that’s true? Do you think that has anything to do with Pixar keeping its female characters in supporting (though sometimes wonderfully fantastic) roles? And are those supporting characters enough to help little girls realize that they can be anything they want to be, even if that is wanting to be a princess? Or, are we all just worrying about nothing – because it’s not like we didn’t have the princesses growing up too…

It is virtually impossible to be in a bad mood when looking at this picture of my niece. Her grin is infectious. How I wish she was closer…

I was exiting the bus the other day when it hit me. I’ve never really appreciated the fact that for the last five years, I’ve lived across the street from a fire station. Sure, it’s been a great landmark to use when giving people directions, and their close proximity is reassuring if we were to ever have a house fire. But, hello, that’s not all it’s good for. Also, when the weather starts to get warmer and the sun starts to shine, the fire fighters bring the fire trucks out to the lot and wash them. While in uniform.

All this time, one of the prime female fantasies playing out practically in my back yard, and I’m only now realizing it…