- the only problem with having my closet now clean and organized is that i find myself wanting to sit in it. for not particular reason. i want to just go in and plop myself in the middle of the floor. just to marvel at the beauty of how being clean and organized really revitalizes me. of course, there is still that half of a shelf and my cd collection that needs to be done. maybe i'll get some of it down tonight.
- we went to cathy's little M's 5yr birthday party yesterday. it was fun! the kids had such a blast. cath had hired a clown. and when the invitation first mentioned about a clown, i was a bit concerned. i have an irrational fear of clowns. not a phobia, per se. but they have always given me the creeps. i was happy with this clown, though. she was whimsical and cute and really knew how to create good chemistry with the kids. and the children did love her! not only did they get a ballon twisted into something they loved, she put on a great magic show that starred a cute rabit in the end. the kids got to sit on a chair have hold the rabbit on their lap for about 30 seconds each. and then, after lunch, each of them got to have their face painted of their choice. chaeli was so crazy about the clown that she said, before going to bed, that she hopes she will meet the clown again someday.
- i'm hungry. it's a weird kind of hunger. i feel like i can eat a lot today. which isn't good, really. because i know that if i allow myself to go nuts, i'll feel like complete crap at the end of the day. but, i have brought some healthy snacks so hopefully, i can stay good.
At the far end of the enormous Turbine Hall in the Tate Modern is a correspondingly huge metal box: thirty metres long, thirteen metres high and sitting on two-metre stilts. One end of the box is open with a metal ramp leading up to the pitch-black interior. The artwork entitled How It Is by Miroslaw Balka is said to allude to the Holocaust, whereby the huge metal container is akin to the trucks that took the Jews away to the camps of Treblinka or Auschwitz.
Walking up the steel ramp towards the vast dark opening of the box is certainly unsettling. Even the sound and vibrations of footsteps on the metal ramp feels cold. Once you are inside the structure it gets progressively darker as your move further in. People beside you become less discernable and those at more than an arms length away cannot be seen at all. Were it not for the cheerful and exited chatter of most of the visitors the experience would have been decidedly eerie.
I went in with my sister while her boyfriend remained outside taking pictures. Once we had gone in some way and I could no longer make out or hear any people in front of us I stopped so that my sister’s boyfriend could catch up with us. While we waited for him we simply appreciated the odd sensation of being in a dark box. Before long my sister’s boyfriend appeared beside us. I was surprised that he managed to find us so quickly but also glad because I was eager to step into the absolute darkness that lay ahead. As I took a step forward though I came smack up against the back end of the structure. The wall was lined in soft black velvet, which felt nice to touch and was as unexpected as the wall itself. Turning around I was surprised to see how much more brightly lit the box now seemed and how close the entrance actually was. I had expected it to be further away.
For me the experience of walking into the box was comparable to ones journey through life: as you move forward you don’t actually know what is coming next or whom you will bump into. You might link arms with someone and walk beside others but most of the people you see or hear you’ll never know. When you reach the end it comes as a surprise, it’s disappointing, although you knew it was coming all along. Like the unexpected touch of velvet on the box however death is probably comforting. Our lives will also most likely seem like a much quicker journey than we imagined when we look back on them. Even at this point my life seems to have passed by ever so quickly. Lastly, I imagine that our lives in retrospect will seem far simpler than we experienced them to be, just as the box was much brighter looking back towards the entrance where we started out.
Since the box is supported on stilts you can walk underneath it and hear the footsteps of those inside. If the box is symbolic of life then the space under the box could be likened to the netherworld of ghosts perhaps, or the life one leads after we have left this box that we are now in. I don’t believe in life after death mind you, but if there were such a thing I would imagine that it would eclipse life as the Turbine Hall eclipses the box. Perhaps the after-afterlife would be the world outside of the Tate Modern and so on, until such a point that we live a space that is infinite.
sometimes i wish i had that magical, twitchy nose like that samantha from bewitched. ah - when t.v. shows were a league of their own. in a good way.
and as much as i wished i had powers to make my closet, or any space in my house, either big or small, become instantly organized and clean in matter of a milli-second, the reality is, of course, that i can't do that. and even if i could, would i really be using my powers just to clean closets?
anyway, this is something i have been wanting to do since september but something always came up. and as we had no plans today, i decided to go for it.
two hours later, i am left with just my cd case and one half of a shelf piled of magazines to go through. and i just can't do anymore. two hours in a closet is enough! i will do that half a shelf and cds another day.
most importantly, i organized all the christmas presents that i bought. yes, that's right. you heard me.
not only do i organize my christmas shopping lists into spreadsheets where there is one spreadsheet for each - my familly, doug's family, doug and chaeli and misc. gift... not only do i create another spreadsheet to correlate with the other four, but this one being by store, either online or off, so i don't end up running all over town, hitting stores more then once... but at some point, i organize my gifts so that all the gifts going to thunderbay are in one or two large shopping bags, and i do the same for presents for chaeli, doug and my own side of the familly.
there is a chaotic period where i shop and just pile everything in the corner of my walk-in closet, still in their bags/boxes.
it was driving me crazy. now, they are all organized. all i need to do is pull them out in the order that they need to be wrapped - doug's family being the front in line.
yup.
i'm psychotic.
there are a lot of parties, celebrations and events being piled into our already booked weekends from now until the end of the year.
doug and i have one weekend this month where nothing is scheduled. nothing - for the whole weekend. and just that one weekend alone. chaeli will be staying at my parents' place.
and you know i'll want to head out somewhere nice for dinner. probably with friends, actually, so we can have an adult night. where, i don't know. somewhere new and interesting.
i love this season. i do. i (knock on wood) just hope that we all stay healthy enough to enjoy all these fun things we have planned. a run-down of events we've got schedule:
- ada and hoa's duo birthday party
- cathy's daughter's birthday party
- SCAW charity concert followed by dinner ath roger mooking's kultura
- stuart mclean's reading/music concert after dinner on baldwin street
- disney on ice followed by a visit to city hall and dinner
- visit from MIL for an extended weekend
- visit to a christmas tree farm
and then, of course, christmas and new year's. and ta-dah! hello 2010!
actually, the peppermient mocha at starbucks is a tad too sweet for my taste. but i love the minty flavour so it's hard to resist.
the heaven part really isn't just the drink. it's that i took the day off, got the house cleaning done in the morning (so i know it's out of the way for the weekend), gone for a very good, strength-circuit class from hell, had a very yummy turkey sandwich with sparkling water and am now listing to tunes while surfing at starbucks (god bless 2 hour free hotspot a day here).
the mocha latte is my dessert.
and i have about 2.5 hrs more before i have to go pick up little miss.
i'm loving it!
so we ordered chaeli some chocolate ice cream after dining at a local german restaurant this past friday night.
about halfway through, chaeli starts to moosh up her ice cream.
my mom asks, "chaeli, what are you doing?"
chaeli mumbles, "i'm making food."
"you're making food?"
"no - i'm making POO!"
so exactly when did my sweet little girl turn into little miss disgustington?
but... if it's even possible, i love her even more then when she was first born.
how often does halloween fall on a saturday night? not often enough!
it was so nice not to have to race home from work along with all the other parents doing the same thing, thereby making rush hour even crazier. and then, not having to rush dinner to leave time for trick-or-treating.
and then, it was just so very nice not having to try and rush the whole bedtime routine knowing that it's a school night.
what made the night even better was that we got to spend it with friends. di and rick hosted a little halloween party which ended up being just as fun for the adults as for the kids.
noisey neighbours are driving me crazy!
on one side, we have 'the children of the corn' (they like to stand motionless beside each other and just stare at us when we're out doing stuff on our patio - i can not tell you how un-nerving and a tad creepy it is). they don't seem to have a bedtime because they can be up until 11pm on a school night (sometimes even up to midnight), even though they are 8 and 4 years of age. which is fine - none of my business, right? except that they run around the house. and when i mean run, i mean they stomp the ground as if they have lead feet and are purposely trying to damage the floor. of course, the vibration also travels as the floor is connected to our floor and our walls (which really are not that thin to begin with so you can imagine how noisy they generally are) of our townhouse.
on the other side of us are neighbours that tend to like to wake up around 3am to have sex. now, i gotta say, the sex isn't that loud. and i only hear it if i happen to be up visiting the loo. but when i'm tired and grouchy, which i'm always grouchy when tired, the last thing i want to here is the bed springs squeeking as i sit on the toilet.
having said that, i would prefer the bed springs over the children of the corn anyday. not because i'm a perve but because the bed spring action doesn't keep me awake and is over within 30 minutes, if not less. the stomping around can sometimes continue from the time they get home from school until the time they go to bed, which evidently, is after my bedtime.
so as far as the children of the corn are concerned, i'm not sure whether or not i should complain or not. it's a strange situation. it's not the children's fault and as a parent, i know it's difficult to get children to be completely quiet. so i'm not asking them to stop completely. i just wish that from, lets say, 9 pm and onwards, that they are more mindful.
i don't know - suggestions?
