I Don't Know What I Am Anymore, But I'm Here

The internship is finished. FINALLY, I can COMPLAIN. My physical reaction to this schedule is something I've completely had to ignore in order to keep going. But two months of nonstop travel and six hours of sleep per night put me in complete fight-or-flight mode: insomnia, weight loss, vertigo, indigestion, constant stomach pain, gall bladder issues, the spontaneous loss of a toenail, and I STILL can't eat without feeling nauseated for half an hour afterward, but it's only been just over a week and I went to Halifax for the weekend. The sudden relaxation, of course, left my immune system confused enough for a head cold to walk right in and make itself at home.

But can I say, I still loved the work I was doing: totes worth it.

Now, I've got the quilting studio completely converted into an office, and I've started to get serious about this project report.

The experiences of the last... year? Four years? Month? Doesn't matter: they've left me totally broken open. And that's ok. I think it was time to realize that things happen and they're going to have their effect whether you're prepared, protected, vulnerable, alone, on the front lines, or elsewhere.

So yeah, Halifax. Well above, you see a visit from my spirit animal, lovingly posed in the Public Gardens.

And a pretty little scene that's only slightly ruined by the editor in me pointing out that Hey, this isn't Point Pleasant...

The harbour, ocean-side. Just a bunch of condos and fancy boats, I know. I hug it anyway.

Head cold remedies: whiskey punch at the Old Triangle.

And the CUTEST LITTLE GUY!

What did we miss last week? Oh yes, turns out MomBlom's got some Scotch Bonnets growing in the garden, so I'm going to figure out how to make enough hot sauce to keep us warm all winter.

A Week at the Gift Show

Spent a good part of the last week helping out with setting up and running the HarperCollins booth at the CGTA Gift Show. Culmination of my whole internship, basically, and with the office picnic tomorrow, everything's kind of got the old end-of-school-year vibe. I've been so... I don't even want to say stressed, because all of the work I put in was a joy (as it is for everyone: that life-size Gruffalo is hand-made by one of the sales assistants).  I guess I just love books. Hated them for a couple of minutes today, but naw, I love'em. I feel different than when I started this though. I mean, I felt a lot of things last week that were a result of steroids, but in general I think it finally hit me that only so much can drastically change before I change. And that's a huge relief, because it's that inner shift I've been waiting for, I guess. I just hope it sticks.

But also I feel sure that it WILL stick, if I just stick around books. Come on, look at this wall! I read more kids' books in the last three days than I have since grade school.

Then, oh my goodness, I found out that at the end of the show I get to take books home. Obviously, I went straight to the craft display. Tough call, but in the end I chose this modest pile:

Among which, most are for the nieces. Tal loves The Gruffalo (she even recited some of it at breakfast this morning), so I picked up a Monkey Puzzle board book. I think it's new; I don't even know. Also she likes planes, although that particular choice is rather basic. But no matter: maybe the Nai-pod will like it. My Zoo, who wouldn't like My Zoo? And The Crocodile Who Didn't Like Water, I actually bought that for myself. I keep putting it on lists and it's just the cutest. Also, it reminds me of a certain someone who thinks baby crocodiles are cute and also likes dragons (spoiler alert: this particular baby crocodile IS a dragon).

But admittedly, I'm MOST excited about these two. And you should be too, since they're the ones most likely to reappear in this particular setting.

:D

That is all.

The Best Bits of July

A busy week followed by a busy weekend, and I'm having as much of a meltdown as this ice cream. If only I was half as soaked in cognac. On the plus side, the martini was for me. Something else for me?

The last of the birthday presents! One day I'll stay up late enough to cheers Craig Ferguson with it, but probably not until the internship is over. That's in exactly a month. Then it's the rest of my life.

Storm's aBrewin'

I haven't been very forthright lately. I think this is mostly due to a sense that complaining about my current situation does nothing in aid of ameliorating it. Because don't get me wrong: complaining about my current career path, or at least this particular stretch of it, is in no way a bid to quit. The work itself is, well, intern work. This doesn't mean I hate it; on the contrary, I simply feel underused, and worry that I don't have the opportunity to exercise my other talents. No, the internship itself is not the problem. It's perhaps the definitive knowledge that this is a new stage. I have talents and value now that I didn't see or have before. Some things that seemed insurmountable are so easy. I can take things by storm if I want to, and I managed to get to this point in a field that I love. But the fact of the matter is, this is not an ideal situation. I've mentioned my daily schedule, and I'm doubly burdened by the fact that this was my choice. Every day I wake up and think that if I just lived in Toronto I could sleep in for another three hours, but. When I get there, my discomfort is overwhelming.  It's not Toronto's fault, guys. I know plenty of people love it. But just as in Vancouver, where when asked how I liked living there I invariably answered "well... it's... um... actually, I don't," I don't mean it personally, or that I actively hate anything about it. I'm just not a city girl.

But what's THAT in aid of? Well, nothing. I'll have to move there anyway. My only hope is that having a small box to call my own, in which to read and have quiet and be unseen for a little while each day will make Toronto bearable, and will fix the funk I've been in. It's not a depressive funk, not really. On weekends I experience a strange inability to speak, which may be an unwillingness to talk about work coupled with a lack of any other subject matter. This turns into indulgence, of course. Not of booze or anything else, but indulging in nothingness. In not having conversation trickling in to every moment of the day, no outside noise, no irritating need for decorum or professionalism. It is not sad, this funk. I love it. I love the quiet, and I love it in what feels like an almost ruthless and cruel way. I will fight for it. I will lie and cheat and steal to get my fix. I cannot go out, I might moan, for I am exhausted from the travel. To my delight, it works every time.

Well, it is true. It's exhausting. In any case, I'm finding it to be tremendous motivational. I don't have to lie or cheat or steal because all I really need to do is get a paying job. If I get a place to myself in Toronto then I'll have SO much time to myself and to feel like this that, yes, I'll likely get bored of it and stop being so antisocial and brooding. I'm not turning into a supervillain, although it sort of feels like it. So. The best way out of this is up.

In other news, MomBlom's garden is filling out nicely!

The clematis is going just INSANE for some reason, but we haven't been able to figure out why. I feel like his chair might have a bee problem because of it. Wouldn't know though: haven't sat in it.

This is what is officially the last peony of the year. Pure white and slow-growing, but perfect. Once it's gone, it might as well just be Christmas though, I mean what's the point.

Oh yeah. Now it's the time of year for the best gardening of all! Functional (i.e. delicious) plants!

Ever wondered what a baby cucumber looks like? This little guy is maybe an inch long:

Now you know.

Commuter's Weekend: Bloomsday Edition

Welp, this is my life these days. My me time. The time for reading books and writing theses. More the former than the latter, but I guess if books are what I do... it's all research really.

But at home, it's Father's Day and Bloomsday. Very recently I lost my grandfather, my mother's father, which I meant to post about first and completely forgot, but I suppose this is more timely. Anyhoops, MomBlom and I decided to spend the day together, in honour of both our fathers. We tried to think of something that they would both enjoy, but apparently all they really did together was work on a pig farm, with my Grandfather's quiet stoicism and my father's ensuing feelings of inadequacy (a city boy, you see). Consequently, we just decided to go out for lunch (and a Guinness), watch some Sherlock, and finish the evening off with some Irish Whiskey.

In other news, remember how I only had three peonies last year? No? Well I don't really feel like linking to that entry, so all you have to know is that there were only three flowers on the shrub, but I learned that if you cut the blooms off on the first year, you'll have a lot more the next. Well turns out that's true! These are just the six biggest as of today:

in the same vase in the same place! But I won't leave them out in the sun like last year because a) they wilted in an hour and b) there isn't any sun.

Oh my god, what is going ON back there? Well that's MomBlom's fantastic new garden in the works. Here she is plotting exactly where the vegetables and herbs are going to go. Immediately after a little gust of wind!

Oh yeah hey, remember that whole thing about Peonies and ants? True:

Apparently they like the sweet coating on the unopened buds, and may help to weaken the structure such that it's easier for the flowers to open quickly, but there's nothing to say that the flowers can't open without the ants, or that the ants pollenate the plant, so it's not really symbiosis. It's just something cool that happens. Also, a brief dunk in the pond rids any cut blossoms of their ants and does no harm to the blooms either!

Other things about the back yard: I'm in charge of the pond this year! Which of course means no goldfish, and the lilies are totally taking over again. But there's a pretty flower about to come out so I don't have the heart to choke them out with, say, water hyacinths.

Lots in the works for the garden, and while I'm sad to miss it during the week, it's really nice to see such progress on the weekends. Next up: these plants have to go somewhere...

Apologies/Announcement

I've been trying to get on top of things, but things keep happening. I'm currently typing through the bleary fog of exhaustion that's been clouding my judgment for the last two weeks. Why? Oh I haven't even TOLD you yet!

I think we'd left off at the fact that I didn't have an internship anymore, and I didn't want to talk about it. Well, it was a no-hard-feelings kind of situation, and I wasn't in a huge rush to muddle about at a government-run company that had never had an intern, and especially not in a city that is notoriously short on publishing companies. Plus, still being enrolled in the Ryerson certificate program for publishing meant that I was being sent a huge number of employment and internship opportunities nearly every day. So I figured it wouldn't be too difficult to find a replacement position; my biggest concern was preserving the six-week holiday I'd set up for myself. Fortunately, I was called in for an interview with HarperCollins Canada nearly immediately.

It was my first opportunity to use my newly designed resume and a nicely fattened portfolio, which I put together with the most ancient binding machine imaginable:

I guess it payed off though; I was offered the position pretty quickly too. One of the small projects I was to work on was binding special sales catalogues. When being shown the ropes for it, an identical binding machine was pointed out, and I was asked if I had ever used one of these before. I just laughed. I'm in the right place.

So yeah, thanks to new carpets and a paint job in the offices, my start date wasn't set until May 27th, meaning I got my six weeks vacation. I spent most of it making paper flowers, some of it at Erin's wedding, much more watching Kids in the Hall until my brains turned to mush.

So where was I? Oh yeah! The fog of exhaustion. Well, I'm still living here in Waterloo. I'm hoping to get a permanent position in the industry come September, but it may not happen, and I've been moving so much that I don't want to move AGAIN for potentially only three months. Once I get at least a year-long contract, then I'll move.

But the commute? Oh man. I get up at 5:00 am, am on the train at 5:45, arrive in Toronto at 7:53, am at my desk by 8:20, leave at 5:00 pm, catch the train at 5:45, arrive at 7:42 (but it's always late), and get home by 8:20. It's... it's do-able. But this exhaustion-fog is quite... pervasive. In fact, if anything distracts me from lying down and taking a nap right now, I think I'll just cry.

Speaking of, I think that's all I have energy for. Those six weeks gave me material for a whole summer's worth of blog posts though, so worry not. I'll be back.

The Tallest Lasagna and the Things I Left Behind

I got busy, and I'm sorry. For the first two weeks of April, most of my time was spent thinking about how to eat the lasagna left over from Easter. I used the Fine Cooking recipe, but I'm pretty sure you need a membership of some kind to access it so I'm not going to provide a link even though that's probably the polite thing to do. Oh fine you can find the recipe here. It's supposed to make three small lasagnas, but I only had one deep dish on hand, so I halved the recipe and made half a lasagna on top of the lasagna. The recipe assures that the pre-cooked lasagna can rise above the edge of the pan, because it settles quite a bit while cooking. I was apprehensive, but they have a picture with two whole noodle layers towering over the edge. 

But no. It still bubbled over, and it was still the tallest, deepest, heaviest lasagna. 

Other ways I altered the recipe: well... I used hot Italian sausage instead of mild. I also didn't have much spice on hand, but the seasoning from the sausages permeated through the lasagna very nicely. I just love the word lasagna, don't you? Lasagna, lasagna, lasagna. 

And: there was some packing up and moving back to Ontario to do. Some things to leave behind. Like my lovely little coffee plant, and a pennant from the magazine project (I was going to bring it with me until the E fell off, and then I figured by the time I got home it would probably just be a brown triangle. i.e. clutter).

And books! Most had to be left behind for weight considerations. I feel like there's a pro-Ebook argument to made here, but I wouldn't have been sentimental about these books in the first place if they'd been electronic. Aww, remember that one on the right? That's the book with nothing in it that I was so excited about. I feel guilty about every one of these books. Except maybe for the Editing Canadian English, which I have only used a) to ventilate my old laptop and keep it from overheating and b) as part of my Mennonite halloween costume because it looks the most like a bible out of all my books.

Fortunately, I sent a couple of things on ahead, like this Super Mutant Magic Academy poster that I just had to have.

In other news, I'm enjoying my mom's house (and company!) so much that I've decided to commute to Toronto for my internship. Or at least give it a try. If it drives me insane I'll find a place to live, but with the way I feel right now I really wouldn't mind having a few hours every day to sit and read or write or think or sleep or whatever. I was brought up on road trips, and 401 traffic has an oddly calming effect on me, as long as I'm not driving (but even then). Without homework to stay behind or rush home for, it feels like there are six more hours in the day.

The only problem now is GETTING the internship. What happened and why don't I have one yet? Oh I don't feel like getting into that. Just wish me luck.