the tag blag

My good friend Sophia tagged me. I was supposed to:
"Open the 6th picture folder on your computer, open the 6th photo and blog it. Write something about it. Then tag 6 more people to do the same."

My 6th picture folder had more folders of pics, so this is the 6th photo in the 6th folder of the 6th folder. Triple 6's, baby! This is an appropriate photo for the times, as it's taken with Michele, my current roommate/co-worker/sister/husband, and in it, we are attempting an AO gang sign (that's A for Atlas and O for Orthogonal, a kind of chiropractic we're both totally into) back when our hair was long and our town was Davenport, Iowa. We sadly didn't become friends until our very last year at Palmer, initially meeting because of a mutual interest in the AO club taking over the world. Or at least, going down in history as having the best bake sales EVER.

So it's a good choice, since that there's the girl I share an apartment, car, grocery list, paycheck, and bed with, and those letters represent what brought us together in the first place. <3

I don't know 6 people with blogs. I don't even think 6 people read this blog. But I'll go ahead and try to get Griffon (my multi-talented comic-writing friend) to do something similar.

year in review

I’ve been journaling for a few years now, and occasionally, I like to revisit some of the exhilarating/mundane/bizarre experiences I’ve written about. It’s always fun to relive some memories, laugh at myself, and from time to time cringe a little at my lack of perspective, reading and reminiscing with the 20/20 hindsight I wish I could channel as things are actually happening to me, instead of months later. I collected a few clips that I especially wanted to remember. Either because it was a good memory, or for the laugh or neuroticism factor, or both. I think they’re actually better read out of context. So may I present a random sampling, a window into the crazy head of vernaculauri...

- I need to enjoy the moment here, and stop worrying so goddamn much. So…nothing new.

- I am pissed and upset. But more upset. And pissed.

- Here I was not pursuing anything, and had these suggestions tossed at me like so many softballs. I was trying to decide whether I should try and catch a few of them or just keep laughing and let them fall.

- It was one of those dark days, where you can never tell what time it is because you can’t see the sun, but it’s ok, because the reflections off of slick streets and the subdued weather make everything feel a little more relaxed. It reminds me of sick days in elementary school, or maybe this one sick day, when the weather was horrible, but I laid on the couch and watched the Care Bears movie over and over and all was calm and right with the world. I love rainy days sometimes.

- But it is what it is. He is what he is, and I suppose, not what I thought.

- It’s funny how a day can change everything. Your life (sometimes), your mind, the course of your non-stop mental drivel.

- My dad told me I’d earned the opportunity that awaits me, and that I may as well take advantage of it. He also said … not to worry about things I can’t control (I know this), and that everything happens for a reason (I know this too), and that it will all unfold with time (ugh) and work itself out.

- You tell it, Time.

- I felt this overwhelming appreciation for my life and every aspect of it. I thought about how lucky and happy I am. All the places I’ve lived and will live in, the fact that I’m making the most of my 20s, and have no regrets, and that I’m not missing anyone or anything, but am single and glad to be, am free, am alive, and healthy.

- Lately I have felt so distant and boring. Like there’s not much presently going on in my life I am greatly passionate about. For every positive, there’s a negative. Just like life, I suppose. Everything just… is.

- And I know it’s totally dramatic, but I felt wounded to have had to cross that off my wish list.

- I gave it my frowning hour, so now, it’s a new day, with a new obsession to fixate upon. I just need to find one…

- Funny how years ago, during the teaching days, Sundays were the most awful, miserable days of my life, and now, they’re what I look forward to.
And I’m so thankful that I can look forward to them.

- They are beautiful strangers. Beautiful friends. ‘Get in where you fit in.'

- What an awesome old guy. He told me, “take it easy, ma chere.” I think that was the best advice I’ve been given in recent memory.

despite the bitter

It officially descended to temperatures here that my body has never known. The low on Friday night was a chilly -24, and the high temperature - to clarify for emphasis, the WARMEST it got that day - was -9. Fahrenheit. Without wind chill, which has the nasty habit of lowering temps by another 10 or 20 degrees in these parts. It was so cold that the (gross) condensation on the scarf that covered my mouth and nose immediately turned itself into ice crystals that kept catching on my face. It was so cold that the moisture lining my nasal mucosa started freezing so that my nostrils kept sticking together. It was so cold that the tears that were forced out of my eyes in response to the biting arctic wind froze on my eyelashes. It was so cold that my mom saw someone on tv, in the same region as me, toss boiling water from a cup into the air which landed in ice crystals. She told me because she thought it would be a fun trick for me to try. And she instructed me that it had to be boiling water, because otherwise "it wouldn't work." Texan moms are cute sometimes.

Even in the face of extreme temperatures, through which I trudged several times for fresh baked bread (uuuugghhh I will miss the smells and fresh deliciousness of this neighborhood) and groceries (after just removing my hat and gloves and icicle tears: "We don't have any ricotta cheese?! Goddamnit!!"), it was a productive and all-around excellent weekend. I made lasagna. I did some laundry. I relaxed and drank coffee while watching ridiculously entertaining videos. I went out for sushi. I hung out with new friends, who have a talking parrot (oh my god a bashful, giggling parrot who talks in French and loves Marvin Gaye is the most wonderful thing ever holy shit I love her dslrjtb;aewo). I played a great game of line-draw-line, bilingual version (even more hilarious!). I returned to the awesome neighborhood bar that I want to step inside every time I pass - maybe because it looks warm and cozy and always hosts a good crowd, maybe because it's called "Sacrilege" and is located right across from a church. I spoke a lot of French. I tried a new cheese. I played in the snow. I caught three different excellent local live music shows. Plus! Let's not forget that a new US president has finally been inaugurated. That alone would make any American fish-outta-water content with the state of their world.

So in conclusion, Quebec, your foreign language and temperatures don't scare me anymore. I give the weekend a resounding two thumbs up.

winter in motion

I've been trying to make more of an effort to use the video camera while I'm here. Today I dug up some snippets I've caught in the last couple of months. The first one is a minute of our morning commute to work. There was just enough super fluffy snow on the ground, and just enough wind to make these entrancing little swirls along the surface of the road. I'd been staring at this snaking snow dust, hypnotized, for a good half hour before getting the idea to try and record it. The effect was slightly eerie, like dancing graveyard fog, but also incredibly pretty. (Midlake is playing in the background, incase you were interested.)

The next was taken after a couple of days of freezing rain, when all of these handrails were completely coated in a thick layer of ice. It was the most satisfying thing in the world to twist off the curved sheets and watch them crash to the ground. Earlier in the day, I'd walked down this one path alone, where there was about 40 feet of railing. I was strolling slowly along, close to the metal rail, twisting all of this ice off of it, a foot (or sometimes two! so gratifying!) at a time, totally mesmerized, as a couple of people passed. I'm pretty sure they thought I was retarded, but I could not take my eyes or hands off of the ice. Sure, I lived in Iowa for 3 years, but I think growing up without ice and snow has made me forever amazed with it. Winters like these will never lose their novelty to a kid from Texas.

adoptee

There is a black cat that occasionally visits our balcony. We fed it some canned salmon back in November, when it wasn't tear-your-face-off cold yet, and I was a little worried about it surviving through the winter here. It gave me hope to see little paw-prints every now and again on the snow back there, or on the car windshield. I assume it's taken refuge in our garage.

It's still alive and seems to be well, as it paid us a visit today. I felt obligated to give it SOMEthing. It just seems like if you can survive even a week in this eyelid-stinging winter without ever stepping indoors, you deserve a goddamn medal, or at the very least, some leftover tuna casserole. Plus, it's the cutest and most heartbreaking thing ever to see fog exit the mouth of a frozen little meowing kitty. It engulfed the food straight away and sat there on the balcony, staring at us and crying. I figured it may have been awhile since it ate anything, as dumpster-diving for scraps can be difficult when trash freezes the millisecond you put it outside. So we opened a can of sardines (in mustard sauce) and stuck it outside for the second course.

And that is when I learned a few things. For one, freezing, homeless cats LOVE mustard sauce. She meticulously licked up every drop of it before even starting on the fish. Also, 'it' is a girl. I have no proof, but have a hunch, and I'm going with it. Thirdly, her name is Rhiannon. I didn't so much learn this one as guess it, but it was confirmed when I put on Stevie Nicks and she looked up at me after the name was sung. I think that clarifies the issue.

But I don't think it was food she was after, or a human's acknowledgement of her obvious god-given name. No, because this normally very skittish feline, who usually freaks out and runs when we just peek out the door-sized window to catch a glimpse of her, sat bravely right in front of the door, separated from me only by a pane of glass and a couple of feet, and peered into our kitchen, vocally requesting some unknown cat wish. At first she cried continuously, and then she chilled out a little and only said something when I looked up at her from my herb-chopping.

She'd eaten her fill, we'd left water out there for her, and she certainly had never watched either of us prior to tonight - we were always the creepsters spying on her while she munched on our cat-snack offerings. She even stayed put when I sat right up against the window and asked her what she wanted. I narrowed it down to one of the following possibilities:

a) She was emphatically thanking us. Over and over and over again.

b) Those sounds were cat-talk for, "I'm freezing my fucking ass off out here. I don't trust you enough to enter your home but can I at least sit out here and bitch to you for a while?"

c) She has a mad crush on me.

d) She loves the mellow voice and twangy guitar of Iron & Wine.

e) She suspected that I was making a cat stew, and the thought of swimming in hot soup sounded luxurious and dreamy when compared to sitting frozen on someone's back porch, watching her hot breath leave her body as steam.

Aaaand, it had to have been c), because I left the kitchen, and she's gone now. Either that, or she strongly disapproves of Radiohead. But that just wouldn't make any sense.

of babies and bombs

Since I've arrived here in November, I haven't recalled many dreams, which is pretty unusual for me. It actually wasn’t until the last week or so that I’ve remembered dreaming at all. It’s as if during sleeping hours, my brain’s been motionless and empty, a black slate devoid of activity. Which is, to tell the truth, a little unnerving. I enjoy having crazy dreams from time to time and trying to piece them together, sometimes searching for meaning in ones that are especially vivid.

The first two nights of the new year have brought especially vivid and memorable dreams. I won't go into detail, since listening to someone else talk about their nonsensical, impossible-to-follow dream plots ("so I think we were in my living room, even though it didn't look anything like the real room, and Bob was there, but he looked exactly like that guy from the grocery store, but in the dream, I knew it was Bob, and we were sitting around watching this strobe light, or maybe it was the TV, I dunno, but then for some reason, we were suddenly in the middle of a corn field...") usually induces immediate glazed-over expressions, sometimes accompanied by drool from sheer boredom and puzzlement. And since everyone knows I can't tell a concise, interesting story to save my life, I'll spare you. Suffice it to say that one was about a baby, presumably mine, since I was showering it with affection, and another was about trying to escape from an exploding bomb that I felt sure would kill me, no lie. Like, I think I almost woke up dead. It was that real.

I seldom think of infants and I’m not especially moved by babies in general, so it was a strange dream to have, I thought. A sudden burst of nesting emotion thrust into the midst of my single, nearly anti-parental existence as of late. Perhaps nature was trying to plant a seed, attempting to have me embrace the primal backdrop that lies in wait somewhere on the back burner of my biological consciousness. “Pssst, Lauri. Don’t forget, you still want to have babies one day. I know you do. Here, look at this and think about it a little, before you write it off completely.” Or maybe the online dream dictionary had it right. Babies are about new beginnings, blah, blah, and it was the first day of the new year, so there you go.

The bomb thing was a tad off-putting, since it was scary. But it's sometimes fun to have that adrenalin rush in the middle of a peaceful sleep, if you ask me. And it apparently means I have repressed desires and unexpressed emotions I need to confront. (Hopefully nothing that tends to shoot lethal, fiery sparks when confronted.) And also I need to boost my self-esteem. Because, you know, nothing symbolizes, "you need to love yourself" more than running for your life from a fatal explosion. Those crazy dream gods should revise a thing or two in their execution of symbol usage.

I seriously hope Dream Moods is right, and there will not be any exploding babies or life-threatening combustions in my near future.

So, in sum, the take-away lessons are (if I'm lucky):
- I have hidden potential, and I need to gear up the self-confidence.
- I need to face my fears, and act on certain repressed desires.
- It is a new beginning. The year of change. The year I will Make Things Happen.

Also if I'm lucky, my next dream will feature either a scandalous affair with James Franco, or a psychedelic hippopotamus. And if you're lucky, I won't act on the desire to tell you about it.