In the Meantime III

So...

September happened.  I assume September happened because the calendar now says October and I am sitting in my new house, but that might be my only proof. 

The few scattered memories of the past weeks aren't much help. 


Sleeping on a mattress on the floor of our Fingal Street flat and crying about leaving a space that felt more like home than any space before.  I remember returning to the empty flat a few days later to clean and walking into an empty bedroom that smelled like our bedroom and crying.  

My skin can still feel the raging wind on the beach, described as a light breeze, whipping away any relaxation I hoped to gain sitting in the sun on a spit of land called Greece but serviced by Turkish cell service.

The anxiety and disappointment of a long-awaited interview, bookended by a very sad (figuratively and literally) shower.

Virtual friends becoming real friends. 

Tomatoes!!!

I am plagued by a constant feeling of being lost.  I lose things in the house constantly, I don't know the foibles of the house yet, I haven't hit on a routine in the house just yet, I don't know my neighbourhood yet.  We moved less than a mile from the flat but in a city where amenities are set up by walking radius we have all new services to find. 



And now it's October.  Back to School.  It will always feel like the beginning for me instead of the natural winding down.  Although that feeling is there as well.  How can it be helped when the sunlight is slowly disappearing and soon it will be dark at 3pm.  The long winter rain cloud arrived and is making itself at home.  Thankfully the new house is actually insulated and I can almost forget about the damp upholstery of the Fingal flat. 

As I look out the office window at the primary school across the street, I find myself missing my Fingal neighbours.  I didn't know them really but I was very familiar with their daily habits and goings on and I find myself wondering about the lesbian couple across the street, has the brother moved out yet? The gay couple next to them, is he still opening the blinds wearing nothing but tight briefs or has he switched to boxers? The crazy, loud, obnoxious family next door, what stage is the teenage daughter going through now?  The foul-mouths behind the garden, have they trained that dog or broken the tire swing yet?  

I'll never know now.  It's like your favourite show being cancelled after the cliff-hanger.  But unlike the TV show, life is continuing on Fingal Street.  Our sitcom moved location and there will inevitably be a whole new round of mishaps as we get comfortable.  I should state that the majority of mishaps we deal with are entirely my fault.  I'm a menace.  The most recent...almost gassing us because I don't know how to use the grill on our new cooker.  Oops.

We may be attempting a DIY/circus-rig fix of the sad shower which I can almost guarantee will be laughable.

   

It's going to be fun, people.  Stay tuned.  

What I've been doing other than writing here...

Now that all the paperwork is FINALLY done, I can tell you that we bought a house.  

Crazy grown-up shit, right?!  We can't really believe it either, except when we look at our bank account.  Then it becomes real as a punch in the face.  And that is what it felt like sometimes as well.  Ugh.  

Because we like to cram big events together into the most inopportune times*, we decided to buy a house in an Olympic borough, during preparations for the Olympics.  Needless to say, it took a bit longer than expected as no-one in the city was at their desk or if they were they were too busy watching the action to file some paperwork for little 'ole us.  

But it's done now and in a few weeks we will be settling into our third home together, but this time it is well and truly ours.  No crazy landlords refusing to fix burst pipes.  Now we will have sole responsibility for said burst pipes.  FABULOUS!!

But seriously, we are excited to have a space of our own to do with as we wish (with council approval, of course).  There are a few choice decor items that I know you are dying to see, for instance the bathroom wallpapered in imitation cork with beautiful, truly vintage, avocado bath, sink and toilet.  But that will have to wait for a bit.  


Meanwhile, while we *patiently* waited for paperwork, etc. we poured all our energy into nurturing another baby. 

GOTCHA!!!  Meet our little babies.  Tomas and Tommy.  We love them.  

We picked these guys up as seedlings.  During one of our walks through the 'new' neighborhood, we noticed someone had put out some tomato seedlings that needed new homes.  we scooped up two and they lived in the shower for two weeks before moving to their new home.  We have urged bees to visit and actively removed snails and slugs.  They are flourishing with our attention and we think they make a great addition to the family.  

I've also been sewing like a madwoman.  Last week I spent two days creating havoc in the living room as I burned through the t-shirt quilt.  An eight-hour run followed by a twelve-hour run have left me with almost complete quilt top and bottom.  You can read about the process over at Squaring Up.  

So that's me.  Not as exciting as you hoped, I know, but not everyday can be spent in the medina or recording petulant baking and laundry woes.  

What have you been up to these last few weeks?  

*see completing my PhD, international wedding and job change in June of 2010.

5 minutes in the medina

Last October I spent 17 days in Morocco.  Five of those were spent in the medina of Marrakesh.  The above photos were taken over a span of five minutes while sitting at a cafe waiting for lunch.  The teeming humanity of the medina and souks is hard to explain or illustrate.  

bread-wool sacks
logs-iron rebar
satellite dish
safety vests
pastries
cinder blocks
donkeys/scooters/handcarts/mopeds/bicycles (100s)
misc. bundles
rolled bundles
juice
coffee kettle with attached stove
boxes of cupcakes
van w/bikes
sacks of dates
TOURISTS
humanity in general

This list comes directly out of my travel journal recording the contents of five minutes of traffic. While we sat, stationary, at the entrance of the souks the amount and variety of traffic was fascinating.  We had been weaving our way in and out of the teeming masses for a few days, had more than a few close encounters with speeding motorcycles or scooters in the narrow passages and pressed into the wall to avoid passing donkey carts.  But sitting here, just watching, the mass movement washed over me.  

I haven't been able to find the words to describe the majority of that trip.  I wrote a lot during the trip, but I can't bring myself to turn those scribblings into anything as of yet.  What I have been able to do is create some photo stories.  These five stories speak to themes I experienced in those 17 days.  

Thresholds for the slow realization of my transition.  
Red for the heat, and sometimes frustration, of the country.
Earth and Sky for the deep contrasts in colour and the inescapable basic elements.
Green for the lush valleys and ever-present sickness (of our own).
Crowds for the, well, ever-present crowds.  

At the time of leaving Morocco, I had no thoughts of going back.  Our organized tour was close to disastrous, although the moments spent on our own exploring were exceptional.  After almost a year, the memories of frustration and sleeplessness and illness have faded, a bit, and my opinion has changed.  
The magic and mystery of Marrakesh is worth another look and the sea breeze of Essaouira so refreshing.

Ivy Women

I was the third granddaughter to get married.  
I was the third granddaughter to carry the ring down the aisle.  
I was the first to carry her mother's ring down the aisle.  

I was the first granddaughter to get married.  
I was the only granddaughter.
I carried her ivy down the aisle.  
The same ivy she carried down the aisle, and after, to each garden. 

After, I left the ivy at her grave.  The same grave I took ivy from after she died.  



photo by Genevieve Nisly

Idle Hands 2

My hair is straight.
What my stylist calls, pain-in-the-ass-straight.  

A simple trim that would normally take 30 minutes takes almost an hour because she has to 'sculpt' each hair.  It's not that I have a complicated haircut, it's that the hair is so straight and lies so limp, every strand is visible and anything out of order stands out like neon.  

This brings me to my fringe (bangs).  I have always been in the school of thought that anyone can trim their own fringe if they pay attention while in the stylist's chair.  Of course I have photographic proof that this was not the case in elementary school, but my mother claims my eye-scrunching was to blame for those choppy mishaps.  
I regularly trim my fringe to add another week or so to my short haircut.  Shorter fringe and the whole thing looks fresh again.  That is until June. 

The problem started when I dropped in to a semi-trendy salon on my way home from work instead of waiting a day for an appointment at my usual place.  The stylist was reluctant to trim as much as I wanted and did some funky flat-ironing to my already flat hair which caused a bizarre cowlick in the fringe, around which he based his fringe-trimming!!!
  
We have all had these experiences, yes?  You sit there watching your haircut go horribly wrong but you can't bring yourself to say anything except, "Thanks, that's great! Perfect!" You  hand over the exorbitant amount due for a drop-in session with an 'expert' stylist and as soon as you're out of eyesight, pull your hair back into a ponytail (or as close as you can get) and hope you're pulling of the 'messy look.'   Then for the rest of the day you either avoid mirrors completely or obsessively peer at how horrible it is and hold back the tears.  

What I should have done was go directly to my stylist, begged forgiveness and had her put it to rights.  What I did instead was attempt to put it to rights myself. 

Now, I am not a complete novice.  I have no real training, but I have cut other people's hair from time to time with some success.  Except that time when I got carried away with the buzzers and inexplicably shaved off part of my husband's hairline.  I'm not sure what happened there, and bless him, he just went with it, but he now trims his own sideburns.  
That episode aside, I'm not too shabby. So how hard could it be to, at least, clean up the fringe situation in this all-around disaster?

The answer can be found in the following scene...

It's 10am.  We're supposed to be getting ready for the wedding and I'm searching, desperately, through my toiletry bag for my scissors.  I know I put them in here, I never travel without them for just this reason: an emergency fringe trim.  All week I have been trying to fix the damage caused by that hack, but all I have at my disposal are fingernail scissors and the scissor on my Swiss Army knife.  The result is disastrous.  The cowlick he created is now a permanent fixture and trying to compensate for it is beyond my skill.  I have left a trail of tiny hair trimmings on hotel sinks across Ireland tyring to remedy this situation, but the curved nail scissors are not cut out for this job.  
I can't find the scissors and it's time to leave.  In a last ditch attempt, I secure my hat and get out the Swiss Army knife, flipping out the scissor section and trimming so at least it looks even for today.  I just won't take off the hat.  (And I didn't until about midnight.  That's commitment.)

On my return, I immediately made an appointment with my stylist and, upon seeing me, she gave me a right scolding and had a good laugh at my expense.  She did the best she could but the fringe was still a bit wonky when I walked out.  She just sighed and shook her head. 


I have an appointment tomorrow.  Do you think she'll notice I've been at it again? 

Updated: She didn't notice.  Or at least she didn't say.

Idle hands...

This week, despite the beautiful weather, I have been feeling a bit hermity.  


I've been curling into myself a bit and enjoying the smell of freshly laundered sheets which hold the smell of the sun.  I've been taking 'serious' naps, as in bra-off, contacts-out, naps.  
I've been doing a lot of writing and internet searching and a lot of re-reading of books.  All because of an idea.  


The idea, which was sparked in my field research and has haunted me ever since, is that objects and actions and even smells and sounds, have the ability to hold memories we temporarily forget.  As it's unlikely I will run away to the circus, again, in the relative near future, I found another way to 'investigate' this idea (without a funding body). 


I embarked on a new domestic adventure.  Quilting. 


Or at least I started, in earnest, a quilting adventure.  I have had it in my head to do this for awhile.  But it's more than a quilt.  In doing this I am trying to harness a bit of tradition and wisdom.  I want to collect the stories of sewing hands and materials, I want to create a collection of squares and memories.  I want to connect to the different versions of myself through sewing.  Part of me sees this as a bit of a research project with an exhibition of textile and story and oral history.
The other part, just wants to make a quilt.  I want to physically cut and piece and sew and create something tactile.  With so much of our lives tied to the immediate and intangible, I want to do something that takes time and effort and will endure time and technology.  


I'm embarking on the adventure with a friend, over the internet.  We are taking to quilting in two very different ways and writing about the process.  


We have only begun, but I hope you will follow along.*  Even if you aren't the quilting, handicraft-type, I think you might enjoy where the journey takes us.  That's not to say there won't be description of step-by-step process.  There most likely will be some dry quilt-eze, but I think there will also be some interesting narrative about the act of making the quilt and the memories the activities unearth.  


My hope is to have guest posts about readers' own experiences with quilting, sewing and the 'domestic' arts. Good, bad and ugly.  And who knows, maybe someday we will have that exhibition.


What I do know, is that at the end of it (if there is an end?) I will have a quilt, made by my hands.  A useful and beautiful object to hold some memories while I make some more. 






*you can visit us by clicking the link to the right or just bookmark squaringup.blogspot.com

Clarity after coffee

This weekend summer finally arrived in London.  

And not a moment too soon.  I have laundry piling up to dangerous levels.  

This sunshine means I can finally get through it all.  No more draping of damp clothes all over the flat, adding to teh already damp atmosphere, and having to turn the heat on just so I have some clean underwear.  

Yesterday, I got through three loads of laundry.  Washed, dried and folded.  It was amazing!!!

This morning, as I rolled out of bed, I got it in my head to continue the streak.  I gathered up another load and shoved it into the washer.  As I was squeezing out the blue washing liquid into its little awkward cup, my hand-eye coordination failed and somehow it ended up on the floor and running down the side of the washer.  

I stared at it for a few seconds and considered leaving the mess while I made my morning coffee (and there is the root of the accident, attempting productivity before coffee) but it started seeping into the seams of the kitchen tile and the machine itself.  10 paper towels later, it was cleaned up and I could continue with my laundry mission.  

Except now I want to get in the shower and the laundry still has about 45 minutes.  

The lesson here: do not attempt household chores before your morning coffee.