it's not like i haven't had internet access AT ALL in the last month, because technically, i have had internet access. i've been able to check mail from work before eight, during my lunch hour and after four, which is kind of like being let out of your cell into the yard for exercise period, with less barbed wire and one or two fewer felons.
you will be pleased to hear that i have spent my time offline doing sensible, necessary things like sitting on the porch, assembling furniture, not unpacking, acclimatizing to all the gay people in my new neighborhood and listening to badly electronicized kenny g muzak on speakerphone, the same three sphincter-loosening songs, over and over and over again, with a woman's voice intermittently interrupting to say: "our representatives are assisting others, or, if the last time you called and could hear them in the background is any indication, talking to one another in high pitched, giggly voices about how mad they are at a mutual friend. when they're done, they might pick up or they might go home for the day. your call will be answered more quickly if you let us keep ignoring you than if you scream in frustration and throw your phone at the wall. but not by much, and only if our automated attendant doesn't cut you off while transferring you. fuck you, and have a pleasant day."
i can't even describe the post-orgasmic sense of satisfaction i experienced half an hour ago when the problems were all ironed out and i got connected. but in case you were a little anxious, let me just assure you that it was definitely good for me.
questioning/examining:
my sanity. again.
grateful/relieved:
fer sad bastard music.
regret/deny:
how small this space.
musing/reflecting:
once i get internet access again, look out world.
whistling/humming:
rapunzel - dave matthews
absorbed in:
imagining the monday morning reaction if i went into work and when asked about my weekend said:
man,
it was really great.
i had naps when i got tired,
ate whatever i wanted
whenever i wanted to,
wrote letters to friends
in far away places,
had a relaxing bath,
bought some furniture,
went out saturday night
and read
two
really amazing books.
each day felt about three days long.
how was yours?
shout out to:
the fun and helpful people at the phone company, who won't hear this because they have me on hold AGAIN
and
ang, who got the job.
How frozen is frozen enough? Like, if your ice cubes are icy and your meat products are solid but your bread is still malleable and your fish sticks are yielding, is that frozen enough? I need to know. I will have to call my landlord and get him to send out the fridge repairer again, but in the meantime (about the next six months), is there any point in putting my loaf of bread which I only manage to eat two pieces of before the due date (why don’t they sell half-loaves, anyway?) in the freezer? Is it doing any good? How much good? And can I still eat the fish sticks?
Aside from freezer angst, it has been a good day. It started out crap but improved mightily when I found out I was getting a raise. And a season’s pass to one of the best ski hills in North America. Tomorrow I may even get new skis. On sale.
Last night I went to see Filmman, or as they say much more elegant-like in French, Le Filmeur. Laur and I were supposed to go together but she’s so sick with a cold she’s been leaving phone messages from the House of Snot*. For that reason I ventured out alone to my first ever VIFF movie. It was an autobiography by Alain Chevalier, and aside from a bit of frustration due to personal deficiencies**, it was wonderful. You know when a movie goes from what-the-fuck into silly and serious and sad with several dizzying loops through lovely? It was like that. Part of what made me like it so much is the movie spans ten years, ten minutes a year. It's all these moving snapshots of his parents dying and Françoise and his skin cancer operations and a furry hen under a table that hasn't moved in two days. It felt like journaling to me. That urge to chronicle made manifest. Truthful. Walking home afterwards (after the curious incident with the skinny man in a ballcap standing outside the theatre) I felt...exactly there. It has been on my mind quite a lot today. I keep wondering what Françoise, Chevalier’s partner, is doing.
When I got home today there was an email from Poke that said at the end:
I hope you have a great day, Nan. I'm really glad to be your me. (And I'm also really glad that you're my you - even taking the dull, obscure movie-craze into account).
And the shirt that I’d ordered for her from Fussy was in my mailbox. Plus this time there was a little red heart drawn in after my name on the envelope.
Can things possibly get ANY better?
I dare them.
---
* Like, it is a living force. Our last phone conversation, it was me, Laur, and the snot. And the snot was not polite.
**Thank the sweet lord for subtitles, but they are always at the bottom of a very big screen when what you want to be doing is watching the movie and listening to the voices, not, with your high-school-French-in-disrepair, reading.