now with 90% percent less beer money!
still unemployed, just even broker than before. got my acceptance letter from vancouver community college for my culinary arts program; don't know when i'm starting, but with any luck, i'll be commuting downtown for classes every weekday during the olympics next winter (yay! traffic jams!)
the garden is doing well. this year i've planted 7 different kinds of hot peppers as well as some heirloom tomatoes, beans, & squash. the opium poppies are loving the sun but no sign of the pot plant yet.
...the urge to sell my books, pack up the cat & just leave town is still there. doing my best to not listen to it.
i wish... out of work again, by the way.
so now i've been doing the office furniture in the vancouver convention center expansion (yes, the overbudget, for the olympics, most-people-won't-get-to-set-foot-inside-the-place-even-though-their-taxes-helped-pay-for-it one) for the past few weeks, working for the guys i worked for before my most recent gig because they're enormously busy all of a sudden.
[lots of 'f's & 't's in that sentence...]
& the reason i'm mentioning that, asides from keeping my hypothetical audience updated, is that the boyfriend & i struck up a deal wherein he shaves his winter beard off a month early(it made the bottom half of his face look like a crotch) if i stop wearing my disintergrating leather with holes where the pockets used to be & now i'm stuck wearing a black velvet frock-coat to a construction site; i end up taking it off, turning it inside-out, folding it up & putting it in my bag the moment i'm on site, & then freezing my ass off during coffee breaks.
being right on the waterfront doesn't help either. i had my salad blow away one time...
word of the day:
"somnolent."
"in these current economic times"
- got 'let go' last week from my job as a furniture installer, am looking for work with little sucess; going back to school is starting to look better & better...
-accidentally gave myself a bald spot on the left side of my head due to over-enthusiastic hair trimming. good thing it's not too warm for hats yet.
- january's rent still isn't paid off.
-smoked tobacco out of an actual tobacco pipe for the first time. it was less harsh than cigarettes but not as mild as smoking out of a hookah & didn't get me dizzy.
word of the day: "jeremiad."
christmas was fairly low-key this year, chinese takeout & perogies for dinner -- mainly because we were snowed in, being in the suburbs & all.
going anywhere meant having to slog through knee-deep drifts of snow because nobody shovels the sidewalk & the city can't manage to plow the streets because we live in a 'temperate rainforest' & it doesn't ever snow here.
new year's eve consisted of seedy bar-hopping as per usual. my resolution for the year is to take up smoking, but only good cigarettes.
word of the day:
"chthonic."
as in: 'i would like a gin & chthonic, please.'
marathon
had the runs all week...too much beer & not enough other vegetables, i guess.
smoked crack cocaine for the first time about 2 months ago; only did it once since. i liked its high better than the one coke gives me: i got the same hyped-up/jumped-up giddy feeling but without the paranoia & numbness. tastes better than meth too.
harvested many bucketfuls of tomatoes (cherrys, beefsteaks, & smoky purple ones) & a big bowl of chillies (serranos, cayennes, jalapenos, & little purple ones. the habanero didn't grow) from the garden, spent august-september (i'm 23 now, by the way) putting tomatoes into everything to use them up. all that's left now is the herb garden; planted some tulips under the fig tree. red, striped, & dark purple ones.
it's december & the grass is still green outside. that will never stop disturbing me...
work is going ok, got a steady job building office furniture some months ago -- there's still a lot for me to learn so i'm not bored yet -- i'm getting strong for someone my size, calluses on my hands & bruises on my legs. the only aspect of my life i don't lie to my parents about since moving out & they still freak out about it.
words of the day:
"havocado."
"actionable."
nope, not dead yet...
the cat & garden are doing well, though the nasturtiums are taking over.
have not left vancouver except for a weekend a coupla months ago in victoria (- on vancouver island, not somewhere more exotic)
going on 2-and-a-half years with the boyfriend...
had a drunken breakdown & cut most of my hair off with my pocketknife in the bathroom of a bar.
feeling rather selkie-like these days, fighting the urge to run away from the ordinary & resume haphazardly exploring.
-- & i'm thinking of going to cooking school. hey, if i'm gonna learn a trade, why not pick one that's stressful, messy, & not all that lucrative? might drive me to blog more often.
is this what growing up is supposed to feel like?
just finished a 3-week stint at an unheated & rat-infested warehouse where every day started with a small chinese man in a facemask banging a gong & shouting in heavily accented english that everyone should stop what they're doing & "clean poo poo" -- start sweeping up the piles of shit left by the rats the night before. the other 7.5 hours of the day were spent packing hippie goods into boxes, taping up boxes, measuring boxes, weighing boxes, & printing up labels for boxes; i got to inventory boxes too, just to switch things up a bit.
one hour lunches & 45-minute coffee breaks are your friends in situations like these. they also allow you to get fired without feeling too bad about it.
word of the day: smorgasboredom.
post-x mas carnage report:
dec 23rd -- got really drunk while out visiting friends but i still had enough manners to vomit in my fedora as opposed to on the people on the bus; my hat turned out to be leaky so we still got kicked off the bus & had to walk/stagger to the grocery store to do the last of the christmas dinner-shopping...the boyfriend & i somehow managed to catch a cab back home. i have no recollection of it.
dec 24th - 25th -- woke up at 7am to start cooking, yours truly had multiple mini-freakouts because it was my first official 'proper' christmas. i was also hungover until about 2pm.
a ship of meat!!!
this is what christmas dinner looks like if one's dating a rabid carnivore who also happens to be: a professional chef, intoxicated, & obsessed with pirates. it's a deboned turkey (covered with bacon), stuffed with stuffing, on top of a 'hull' consisting of several racks of ribs (larded with strips of bacon & slow-cooked in bacon grease), on a 'sea' of mashed potatos & yams (covered in cheese). i was supposed to make the sails out of puff pastry, but we forgot to get flour the night before.
people started arriving around 5-ish, the booze started flowing tsunami-like, as opposed to merely torrentially when it was just the 2 of us. the party itself? you know, the usual blah, blah, drugs, yadda yadda, antics; presents got randomly handed out & opened around 1 in the morning & the rest of the party was spent wading through drifts of paper, trying to not step on those who'd crashed out & was semiburied by blankets & giftwrap.
all but a few went home to fall down & recover around x mas midafternoon.
the wreckage
dec 26th -- those of us still standing went to see 'aliens vs. predator 2' before disbanding. i had nightmares about meat all night.
yesterday -- spent comatose.
today -- i'm typing this after i had to pull a shit-encrusted piece of feather boa out of my cat's anus.
words of the day:
"confussied."
"umwelt."
updates, updates, updates
- got my impoverished, yellow-trash ass booted off welfare a coupla weeks ago & am scrambling to make my half of the rent by doing random & distasteful odd jobs like cleaning inches-thick layers of pigeon shit & feathers out of air ducts, & working with children.
- am doing initial research on setting up a small saltwater fishtank, now that it looks like i won't be moving anytime soon.
- i have started collecting antique teacups & jello cookbooks.
word of the day:
"sweatheart."
give me whiskey or give me death. preferably whiskey.
this is a header.
this is where something witty wiil eventually go & you will shower me with accolades for it because it is so damn clever.
not now though, because i'm too sober to be clever.
alt. productivity
spent the whole of wednesday on crystal meth, & all of yesterday recovering from it... & yes, before you guys say anything, i know the shit's bad for you; it was a calculated one-time-only go at it, done in the company of people i trust, just so that i know what it feels like.
strange thing about it is, you don't even notice the high it self much -- you're just extraordinarily motivated, focused & hyper-aware: lot's of stuff gets done -- you don't get any visuals or any significant mood changes, it's the day after that you feel completely exhausted & kinda sorta realize that hey, you forgot to do simple things like eat or shower or sleep...
like i said, it's not something i'm gonna go out & get addicted to.
well, that was quick...
found a new place already, just waiting to move in. it doesn't have much of a view or a kickass window big enough for 2 people to sit in -- nor is it directly above a bar -- like the old place in nelson did, but it is close enough to the skytrain that sneaking on & going downtown/wherever is no big deal, & at $670 & twice the size, it's about as close to spiffy as one can get in vancouver right now. gotta do something about the mustard-colored paintjob, though.
back in vancouver
...& looking for affordable housing that isn't a slumhole or an hour commute to anywhere interesting sucks balls.
missing the boyfriend & my cat ('cause they, along with most of my stuff, are still in nelson waiting for me to find a place first) , seems like i've degenerated into a whole 'nother realm of cliched turmoil, doesn't it?
word of the day:
"pylorus"
all these things that i've done...
haven't posted in a while & if i wasn't so intent on trying to keep something of a personal record of stuff that i can look back on when i'm senile & rickety & cackle at, i'd probably delete this blog.
- tried 2CI for the first time (about time i had a new drug to experiment with!) & didn't like it: too expensive & i spent the first hour or so of my trip lying all drooling & puking in the bathtub. acid is better.
- made creme brulee from scratch for a potluck-type thingie.
- gonna be moving back to vancouver at the end of september. can't believe i spent a whole year out here.
- have acquired a kitten some weeks ago; her name is toast.
word of the day:
"flummox."
last september was the last time i tasted chartreuse.
got sucked into playing video games for the first time in my life & am now hopelessly addicted to grand theft auto: san andreas...there's just something gratifyingly wrong about beating virtual people to death with a big purple dildo.
words of the day:
"fop." & "sodderly."
thinking about making butter tarts with rasins soaked in orange brandy. still can't believe my life now revolves around Welfare Wednesday.
my boyfriend folds laundry better & faster than me...
snorted a couple lines of grape-flavored pixy stix yesterday just to see what would happen (it burned my sinuses horribly & i felt headachy for a coupla minutes but that was it: you can't get high off of pixy stix, apparently) .
that's how bored i am.
...spent v-day with the boyfriend watching lost & drinking bottles of 20-to-30-something year-old beer i bought from the local antique store.
i'd urge y'all to go buy up all the antique beer you can find & horde & savour it like the delectably malty & highly potent liquid awesomeness it really is, but since when have i done anybody anything nice?
i am performance art.
trying to liven things up by carrying around a bunch of bananas on a coat-hanger as my Random Prop of the Day -- still nothing beyond the usual eatsleepshitfuck happening.
if no one feeds me drugs or spontaneously combusts soon, i shall go mad.
word of the day:
"porno-copia."
absolutely nothing happening, even by normal people's standards & not mine...been staying in alot & furthering my pop-cultural education by watching movies with car chases & explosions in them...
words of the day:
"beeriod" & "bromance."
i've gotta start posting more regularly again
..or i'll start losing what few readers i have left... so i'm back in nelson again, have been for a week already & as such have almost gotten used to being back out here so there won't be much in the way of yummy, yummy angst to amuse y'all with...
but here's some notable things:
- the closest i got to chemical excitement (asides from pot, of course; this is b.c.) was a slightly chewed tab of e a friend gave me. that's right. one. single. happy pill. no ketamine, no acid, nothing.
- pickled baby crabs taste almost as bad as raw fish eggs; jellied pig's blood is awesome, though, like salty, slightly gritty jello.
- r.i.p., my counterfeit handicapped bus pass, you've served me well.
[L, if you're still reading this, will you make me another one when you get back?]
- christmas rush & muzak at malls is likely the one thing i don't miss about city life.
- i got back to nelson a day early & came home hungry, exhausted, & horny to a houseful of random people & ended up chasing everyone but my boyfriend out with a switchblade. but not until after i got fed a shitwhack of beer & 'shrooms.
- i managed to find 2 twenty dollar bills on the street between christmas eve & boxing day.
- i still don't have any chartreuse.
back amongst the crazies & skyscrapers in vancouver...not staying long but cramming in as much Exploration and Adventure as humanly possible.
today's realization: raw fish eggs are gross.
(no sexual experiments, though, as i'm flying solo & have promised to be a good girl.)
crad kilodney is evil, almost as evil as me.
just finished reading putrid scum by the guy, a signed copy of which i purloined from a family-owned, independent bookshop.
go read his stuff, i command you.
got tired of barely eating in order to barely make rent so i finally gave in & put my impoverished, yellow trash ass on welfare last friday.
gonna be back in vancouver for a week-or-so starting on the tenth of december.
mmm...air pollution.
