Uphill both ways

… to the library that is!

I feel like a pioneer who has to walk for miles and miles to get to the resources I need for the week… except the ‘miles and miles’ is 1.4km, and the ‘resources’ is internet, and… well there’s really no comparison at all.

Seek and I shant find

Left the house in the morning looking for a job, walked around for almost 7hours, found three locations that are hiring, dropped off zero resumes, found some pics.

Here they are:

If this is your guard dog…

I want to shop at your store!

This is in front of an elementary school, and I find it creepily beautiful

 

Alas… none of these will pay the bills.

heyyyy neighbourhood…

…I’m part of you now.  It’s officially offical.

Today, I woke up feeling like I’d been run over by a team of horses.  Not a herd; a team.  Because only a team could work together, rallying up the effort and efficiency to run me over with such an unrelentingly brutal force.  My nose won’t stop running. I can’t stop sneezing, and my body temperature is fluctuating faster than I can take off my sweater or put on my COAT. 

I walked home from dropping off a vehicle early this morning wearing four layers of clothing, topped with a fleece.  Others around me were wearing tanks and shorts.  They looked a bit chilly, but I still looked rather ridiculous.  The point is that I walked home.  It took me almost 45 minutes.  I wanted to ensure that by the time I got home I’d be so exhausted, there’d be no way I’d be able to stay up to endure the terrible cold that had struck me overnight.  In my cold-ey haze, I walked, and walked, and I really saw my neighbourhood.  I saw it in a way that you can’t quite grasp when you’re whipping by on a bike.  I saw the little stores I wanted to explore.  I saw the little bars I wanted to ignore.  I saw the bakeries and took note of their opening times.  I noted which cafes looked like they’d have free wi-fi.  I noted which coin laundries had tempting food options near by.  I walked along the bike path and noticed the meticulous planting methods of those who had filled the formerly drab, chain-link fence with creeping vines of Virginia Creeper.  I arrived home and promptly passed out in bed for nearly four hours.  Had I had the energy to resist the sleep at all, I would have noticed the sound of more than one rush-hour GO-Train going by less than 100 meters away.

I awoke to the sound of my own sneeze. I sneezed IN my sleep.  This is a terrible feeling that I wouldn’t wish upon anyone.  I endured the fit of sounds that would be emitted from my nose and throat over the following fifteen minutes.  Once it passed, I worked up the energy to make myself some eggs and toast.  I thought about adding kielbasa and tomatoes, or making a sandwich, but I decided that simple was what my system needed.  I realized I hadn’t made myself breakfast in nearly two weeks.  It was then that I decided to make the time in the mornings to give myself some sustenance before embarking upon physically taxing days of labour.

I puttered.  I put away clothes.  I moved my mattress to the other side of the room.  I rested on said mattress for nearly fifteen minutes because the act of moving it nearly knocked my entire bank of energy out of me.  Finally, I mustered up enough energy to pack all my dirty clothes into a suitcase and make my way to the laundromat.  I passed the closest one.  It was so close it didn’t feel worth the effort of having to pack for a laundering adventure.  I found the one I was looking for, and realized it was right next door to an amazing little coffee shop.  Today marks the very first day of their liquor licensicng, and had I felt up to it, I’d have raised a glass to them.  They have local art on the walls.  They serve real coffee.  They offer more than just danishes, donuts, and muffins to snack on.  They’re amazing.

Clean clothes, fully belly, I walked home.  I passed another team of animals, waiting outside a sports bar.  The least pleasant of my neighbourhood experiences, I was asked by more than one of them to come away with them on vacation with my big suitcase.  I literally felt leered at.  But I walked past and stopped at a little 24hr convencience store to pick up a little milk for my morning tea.  He had something that smelt WAY too good not to look at underneath a papertowel.  “Columbian empanadas.”  Yes please.  And yes, I will tell my friends.  Tender beef and perfectly mushed potatoes, encrusted by a batter that can only be described as perfectly fried.  I will have to prevent myself from eating these every day. They’re that good.

I’m home now.  I feel really at home.

cat power

has one of the most beautiful voices in the world.

so unbelievably suited to a one hour walk home by yourself in the crisp almost-spring.

would you let me walk down your street
naked if I want to  ??

you forgot something, sir!

tonight i handed a stranger a bag of poop

tonight i handed a stranger a bag of poop that i had picked up

that was from his dog

that he let poop on someone in our neighbourhood’s lawn

 

i saw it happen. i felt apalled. i felt in my pocket and had a scoopy bag!! i picked up the poop. i ran to the man. i handed him the bag silently. he looked perplexed.  i said ‘it’s your dog’s poop! i just happened to have an extra bag!’ he said ‘thanks.’  i ran home.

 

i feel sort of righteous.

 

but i also feel like that was a funny interaction that not many people will have the opportunity to experience.

 

poop.

Actual intentions

Yesterday I posted a list of resolutions that are used by almost everyone.  It’s almost as though it’s a mantra that many people chant to themselves for the first two weeks of January.

I do actually have some intended goals/resolutions/plans that I want to put up here to keep myself somewhat accountable.

• Be less accessible on the phone - I’m slightly terrified at the expectation that if I get a telephone call, I must return it as soon as I get it.   Or worse; that I must answer it regardless of what I’m doing.  I’m going to take a lesson from my manfriend and leave the phone at home a bit more.  Turn it off when I’m sleeping.  Ignore it if I’m in the middle of a conversation with someone.
• Blog a bit more about real life – I like all the links I post, and the fabulous little finds that I put up on this blog, but somehow, I think I’m copping out and not getting in as much writing as I would like.  I would like this blog to take a turn for more the more personal.
• Be less attached to the computer – now this is a bit of an overstatement. It kind of relates to my first goal of being less accessible. I don’t neccessarily want to be ON the computer less, just less obsessed with checking virtual modes of communication.  I would like to ease up on the gmail, the facebook, the hotmail, etc.
• Go for more walks – around my city, around other cities, around my neighbourhood, around and around and around.  Just more.  I love it, so I don’t know why I don’t do it more.
• Take more photos – this part of my life has slowed down significantly, and I want to change that.
• Make more soup – I used to be kind of compulsive about making a soup every week. Now I can’t remember the last time I made some.  It’s the greatest way for me to do the next one:
• Save MONEY – ok. This one is predictable, but is neccessary.  But I guess this one needs description too. I don’t want to be frugal.  I don’t want to be a penny pincher.  But I don’t want to WASTE my money on stuff I don’t need… ESPECIALLY food on-the-go.  I want to make better money decisions so that I can go on more trips, do more tourism in my own city and others, take more classes, etc. 
• Spend more time with my mom – this is something that many people always say they wished they had done.  I lost both a Nana and a sort of Grandmother-in-law this year.  Both of their daughters were devestated.  I saw a bit of a sense of guilt in my own mom around the intentions to spend more quality time with her mom.  I don’t want to have that guilt.  Quality time, here we come!
• Read more hardcopy pages – I’m a recent university graduate and have become totally lax on the reading front.  I just don’t really do it anymore.  I had to renew a book from the public library that should have taken me less than 2 weeks to read.  I’m on my 5th week.  That’s a little sad.
• Get out of my bubble – in every sense of the saying.  This will be more explored in the weeks and months to come.

Okay 2009.  I don’t know if you’re going to be a happy one, an exciting one, or whatever.  But you’re going to be a tad more productive, and I’m going to attack you like a panda does eucalyptus… only because that’s pretty damn cute, and I wanted to end on a note that didn’t make me depressed.

front lawns

i was going to title this ‘front lawns are the faces to our homes’

or ‘lawns are the first impression’ or something equally cliche and corny.

 

bah.

i haven’t written in a while because i’ve been actually pretty involved in DOING… i’ve been landscaping, and this has provided me with a lot of examples of excessive frivolity on lawns, gardens, and related items.

without spewing my bad feelings about the unashamed wealth of a good portion of rich torontonians, i will say that i’ve fallen in love with the idea of lawns saying something about the people that live within the home that falls behind that lawn.

i was walking home from a friend’s house and saw this:

 

i really couldn’t decide what i thought of it, but i knew it needed to be documented.  i felt strongly about it, but didn’t know how i felt.  more than a month after i’ve taken the photos, i still don’t know how i feel.

this entry reminds me of some old journal entries; sort of rambling and unrelated, but i’m done school and i need to continue to write, so i will publish this entry knowing that i will continue to write BETTER pieces in the near future.

stopped to smell ‘em

  I was walking home in the crisp early evening and stopped to smell these tiny little pink buds on a tree.  A girl was biking by and caught my indulgence and smiled at me. I realized how rarely I do actually stop to smell flowers.  I kept walking and realized that the reason I stopped in the first place was because they were so pretty, so I took some flower pictures on the rest of the way home.

The first two are in front of a restaraunt with the loveliest patio I’ve ever seen.

  

The next two were inside a fence, and I sure did have to hang myself over the fence, bum up in the air, to get these shots.

  

The last three were in the front lawn of a house that always has beautiful landscaping.  Right now they don’t have a lot of flowers, mostly greenery, but this lone daffodil certainly caught my eye.

 

procrastination produces pretty patterns

i have a consistent pattern of behaviour.  it’s procrastination.

i also have another pattern. that is to change topics instantaneously.

i notice patterns and repetitions when I walk, and I was thinking that to myself when I noticed this:

immediately after I saw this, I turned around and noticed that birds ALSO follow patterns, in that they teach richies that polishing your car and then parking it under a tree is going to result in some repetitively ‘beautiful’ artwork;

         

hehe.  poop is always funny.

walking yields neat shots

perhaps I’ve realized that this site will be a place for me to post my random thoughts and mostly my pictures.

I’ve been walking more lately… trying to ingest more fresh air, trying to take productive and healthy breaks from studying instead of just creeping around on facebook.  (side note, i wonder how long it will take for facebook addiction to become part of the D.S.M.?)

 Anyway, I was on my way to the library and found this cute little house that still had easter decorations up.

                  

I really like when houses have children in them, and they decorate for each and every holiday. It reminds me of when I was a kindergarten teacher’s assistant and we’d be so very thankful when a season was upon us; grateful for the unending craft options that would soon become available to us.

this kind of inspires me to decorate my house more for holidays… unfortunately, apathy usually takes over.