Dancing Queen

I'm having an ABBA morning. Why? Because they make me happy. It takes me back to being 11 or 12 years old and going to the rink on Friday nights, skating round and round to Does Your Mother Know. I was just starting to settle in and get comfortable with the idea of being a kid when everything shifted again.

I hated most of elementary school. I was shy. I was fat. I was smart. I wore my cousin's hand-me-down clothes. Not good things when you're a kid. I couldn't wait to grow up. Most of my memories from Grades 1-5 are nasty. Bullied, poked fun at, not fitting in . . . so much hurt . . . I spent a lot of time in my head, in my room alone, outside alone, hating, crying, and most of all wishing I was an adult. Because when I grew up then I'd make the bastards pay for every shitty thing they did to me, for every moment they caused me pain.

I even had a list, a pay-back list I kept in my diary. It was just a list of names, dozens and dozens of names. I didn't need to write down what they had done to me, I could recite the list by heart. I suppose if I were growing up today I'd be the kid who goes postal in the cafeteria. But back then all I could do was make my list and wish to be grown, because then I'd have the power and I could do what I wanted.

By 6th grade things started to shift. I don't know if it was the wonderful teacher we had that year or what. In spring I started playing soccer and football at lunch hour, I'd been going to the rink in the winter and spending hours skating. The only album they had to play over the speakers was ABBA. This was the year I got my first pair of jeans. I settled in. I started to have fun being a kid. But it didn't last long. The best part of my childhood lasted a few months before my girl friends decided playing games in the field was not cool, sports were not cool. The focus shifted to hair, make-up, clothes, and of course, boys.

I resisted at first. I tried to convince them to at least continue playing until summer break. We could all enter 7th grade as proper young women, but couldn't we finish grade 6 as little girls? Nobody was interested. They left the field and went down to stand on the pavement, leaning against the brick wall, where they would gossip and brag and scheme. I remember standing on the hill, looking back the field at the boys running with the soccer ball, watching the backs of my girl friends walk away from me, and I knew it was over, whatever peace and freedom and joy in childhood I had been briefly experiencing had ended and a new chapter was beginning. I took one last look at the boys kicking the soccer ball and followed the girls to the pavement.

I wish I could say my transition into teenager-land went more smoothly, but seventh grade was a bitch of a year. By the end of it I had gone numb to everything. I no longer kept a pay-back list because I figured none of these people mattered anyway. I lived for the day when school would end and real life would begin. Throughout high school I kept my eye on that prize. As far as I was concerned none of what happened during my teens mattered in the slightest, this wasn't real life, that wouldn't begin until I graduated and left. This attitude allowed me to do things that other people were angered or shocked by. Making out with someone else's boyfriend was perfectly acceptable to my way of thinking because we were just kids having fun and it wasn't like anyone was going to stay together and get married and all that crap in our real life after high school. Nothing was out of bounds. Because nothing mattered. It was all one big waste of time, might as well get some thrills out of it, sample a bit of everything.

I remember an incident where a girl came up to me and told me she knew I'd gone out with her boyfriend but it was my lucky day because she was going to let it go. I remember being surprised that there had even been a possibility that she wouldn't let it go. I had been hanging on the fringe of her clique and she had said repeatedly about how she didn't really like this guy anyway, how she was probably going to break up with him. So, as far as I was concerned, he was beyond fair game and I'd actually done her a big favour by giving her a good excuse to dump his cheating ass. So I was surprised to have her confront me in the schoolyard.

I remember how her face blushed all red and she turned and stomped away when I just shrugged and said something like duh, of course not, you got no beef with me. This happened a couple of times in high school, girls coming up to me to tell me I'd done them wrong but they were going to let it go. And I have to wonder why? Why didn't they beat me up? And what must they have thought when they'd get my calm cool logical reaction? They were always big girls, taller than me, and I was pretty tall. I'm sure they expected me to be intimidated, apologetic even. I was quiet too. I never said much in school. Out of school I partied harder and louder than anyone else. Nothing and nobody was off-limits, if I found someone attractive, if I wanted something, I went after it and I didn't take no for an answer. I didn't realize it at the time, that I had no respect for anyone or anything, I just thought I was putting in my time, same as everyone else, just getting through until the first day of the rest of my life. I got away with a lot. I'm not sure why.

And all of this has nothing to do with ABBA, except that for a few brief moments in childhood I felt free and ABBA was there with me. This explains everything, right?

Mood: nostalgic
Drinking: cold coffee
Listening To: thunderstruck, ac/dc
Hair: needing some colour

Good Day

Good day, eh. I loved Bob & Doug, loved SCTV. Crazy legs! Remember him? Cracked me up every time. I was what? 12?

So, today is Good Friday. Happy long weekend! It is not a holiday for me. No rest for the mighty, you know. I've got a bnm meeting this afternoon. Not the whole crew but key players for a special section in June. The meeting will focus on that, not the entire edition. A holiday is a good time to have a meeting because sales people have no clients to see that day anyway. Others can rely on their spouses to watch the kids. And then there are those of us who never know what day is a holiday and what day isn't anyway, because we generally work right through them.

Up semi-early this morning to get prepped. Am writing big story, and will throw some pages on the table today for feedback. It's going to be interesting. This one is a real challenge to write. This next issue is going to be something else! Kind of exciting.

Tomorrow I'm interviewing someone for another story. An interesting young woman who's got some important stuff coming up. Then some friends and I are going wandering, see where we end up, what we find to do. That's always fun. And then I'm going to Barnettville for Easter. Two kids have already promised to share some chocolate, perhaps I can twist a few more arms to get some more. Such a chocolate craving going on this week! So unlike me. Mom is going to have a big supper too, I think. She was leaning toward pork roast last we spoke. That would be lovely.

I got my train ticket to Sackville for Thursday. Arrive shortly after lunch. April can be a pain with both the WFNB event and Frye Festival. It's certainly exhausting and a huge drain on a pocketbook that seldom has much to spare. I so wish they would change the festival part of it, the workshops, the readings. Move it to summer or fall. Have the business meeting only in spring. A one day affair, instead of a weekend. I lobbied for that, but it was too big of a change. Too "out there." I understand. Kind of :-) No, really, I do understand that not everyone is as eager to embrace change as I am. I'm a change junkie. Change is good!

But despite the money/timing issues for me personally in having the WFNB weekend in April, I know once I get there I'll have the best time. That's a given. I always do. My creativity will be fed. I'll meet some new and fascinating people. I'll laugh until my face hurts. Enjoy great food and drinks, stay up too late, get up too early, fall into my bed when I return home and not kick for a good 12 hours. Have memories that I'll cherish. I've been to a lot of these events now, all over the province, and that's just the way it is. Every time. You can count on it. So, I'm excited! Party in the Coach House! Woo-hoo! :-)

Mood: awake
Drinking: coffee, cream
Listening To: fridge drone
Hair: development soon . . .

Second Wind

Exhausted only moments ago. I laid down for 15 minutes. Just laid, eyes open, stretched out flat. Then I got up and ate leftovers from yesterday's not so great pork supper. Drank a bunch of diet Big 8 cola. And then spent a few minutes on the phone remembering my childhood. The camp. Well, well, well, three holes in the ground. Frig, I love wieners! Man oh man, would you look at that cloud? I remember my cousin doing Bob & Doug McKenzie round the campfire at night. Oh no, the magic bunny! Simpler then. Being a kid is good sometimes.

I think my two nieces will come have a sleepover this weekend. First one on my own in the new place. It'll be fine. We'll have a good time. I need to make more effort with the kids. Before they slip away and grow up on me. Opportunity. I need to seize them all. I want to be able to have sleepovers with the other kids too. I need to practice counting carbs and giving needles. I seem like I see them less since I moved than I did when I lived away. That's kind of weird. I haven't been going upriver much. Only once since the move really. Only Oscar weekend. When are the Junos? This weekend? Next? I should go.

Talks of a murder mystery night in the air, perhaps I'll go then. I'll be the gypsy and predict the killer.

Mood: whipped
Drinking: tar
Listening To: running to the rain, peter gabriel
Hair: off my face at least

In Which She Learns Four Quarters Equal One Loonie

Slept in this morning. Until almost 8:30!! Well okay, I wasn't really asleep all that time. I was wide awake at the increasingly predictable 4:30. Again around 6. And pretty much a constant from about 7:15 on, but I didn't get up. I was sleeping in the living room, on the futon, to get off the floor because the wind chill dipped pretty low in the night. (I so need a boxspring to go with Mom's old bed frame, and get me off the floor in the bedroom.) The sky was amazing this morning. It was so cold in the room. And the sky so pretty. Shades of red, purple, mauve, orange, cotton candy pink, and dark denim blue. I just laid there, watching the changes in light and thinking. It used to be that getting up anytime before 10 was early. My normal biological time for waking happened at 10:30. I don't see this quiet time as a waste. I think it's important.

Many dreams happening. Lots of Asian culture for some unknown reason. Last night a boy, I think Korean, quite handsome. A friend of my Calgary cousin's who visited Grandad's with him when we were kids. (Never happened really . . . though one summer, wasn't there a blonde-headed boy? A friend?) Anyway, returned now, adults. We were all at my Uncle's next to Grandad's. Summer night. Very dark. That smell of horses. The three of us sent into the field to look for rope to tie something. A bit tipsy, me and Stace. Lots of shushing as we tried to laugh less, be quiet, not wake the kids sleeping in tents out there. Me tripping, falling into every hole out there. Then it dawns on me. Grandad's would have rope in a store or shed out back, lit up with fluorescent tubes. Instead of cutting through the field and walking over, there is this elaborate stealing of my parents' car, Korean boy the sober driver, a rolling down the hill, not starting the engine until we hit the pavement, so nobody would know. Driving two feet and then up the hill again to Grandad's. We get out of the car, and scatter. Nobody seems to remember what it is we've been sent to get or where we need to look for it.

And then there he is. Grandad. Standing in the shadows by the side of the house. Looking just as I remember him. Vest, trucker's ball cap, work pants. He's healthy, a big man, before he faded away. That gruff voice, "What are you doing?" And I'm glad to see him, relieved, though part of me understands he's already gone. Stace and I can't speak. It is the Korean boy who explains about the rope. It is the Korean boy he puts his arm around and leads back the field toward what looks like a Co-Op store. And Stace and I exchange knowing looks, shrug and then run to catch up.

Was it my imagination, or did the smell of horses linger in my blankets when I woke up?

Then I laid there and watched the sky. Could you blame me?

So yesterday I tried to do laundry. Couldn't get the coin-operated machine to work. Ended up sending a load of pants to Barnettville. But here's the thing. I went armed with quarters. The last time I used coin-operated laundry . . . it was all about the quarters. Costs a buck and a quarter, the sign says. Two coin slots. Hmm. Maybe it's only 50 cents? Frigged with it for a good 10 minutes before I gave up. Then this morning in the red sky at dawn, it suddenly dawns on me -- a loonie is four quarters! Two slots! A buck and a quarter! Duh! I don't have any loonies though. Need to go out.

Mood: pretty good
Drinking: coffee with cream
Listening To: let's get it started, black eyed peas
Hair: limp

Dawn

"Expect trouble as an inevitable part of life, and when it comes, hold your head high. Look it squarely in the eye, and say, "I will be bigger than you. You cannot defeat me." --Ann Landers

Seems outdated. Not the way to do it anymore. Now, we're being told to expect the best, visualize it, thank the universe for it before it happens, and it will all work out as you believed it would. Power of positive thinking. The secret. If we're listening, this is the message that is out there in the world today. Some people are picking it up, evolving.

I knew this when I was a kid. From the time I was very young right into my teenage years I thought I had a secret power. I knew if I could see the desired result in my head, if I never wavered from that vision, then it would work out just as I thought it would. If I couldn't see it, it wouldn't happen. I constantly surprised myself. Seemingly impossible things would be meditated on and then come true. Like winning the writing contest in grade four against 5th & 6th graders. Many an evening was spent imagining what the announcement would look like, where I would be sitting when I heard my name called. But even then, I didn't totally believe. I was speechless when it happened. I wrote about my secret power in childhood diaries I'm sure, I may have talked about it with my mom. Certainly I spoke of it in reverse enough. I said many times that if I didn't see it, it wouldn't happen, when it came to questions about marriage and children and all sorts of other things. I hadn't put it together that I could make myself visualize it, because it was always things that I didn't really care about anyway. If a split second search of the old noggin didn't zone in on a crystal clear picture, I said I couldn't see it, wouldn't happen. I didn't get that just because I wasn't visualizing it, didn't mean it couldn't happen.

So I didn't understand what I was dealing with, I had only a half-assed appreciation for the power of visualization. No concept of positive thinking on a regular basis. And as I got older and more hormonal in the teen years, it was difficult to be brooding, dark and mysterious and still be positive and spiritual. Things started to go haywire. Then journalism school, which if you're not already skeptical, is certainly the quickest way to become a cynic. And by the time I was 23 all I had was a fleeting memory that it seemed like I used to be able to make things happen, but it must have all been a fluke, I must've used up all my luck.

My re-awakening started the year I turned 30 and continues through today. I literally spent a solid year in my parents house, where I didn't really go anywhere or do anything. I spent most of my days and nights in a bedroom pounding out stories on an old word processor/typewriter. Just me and myself. Facing yourself is hard. Being honest with yourself is really hard. Exploring your motivations, recognizing your weaknesses, admitting your mistakes--it's damn hard. I did this everyday, 12-18 hours, for a whole year. It was spiritual. It was cleansing. It was therapeutic. It was one of the hardest things emotionally and mentally that I've ever done. When my unemployment ran out, I went to work, better and stronger than ever before. I likely could not have survived had I not taken this time alone, so beaten and broken down was I when I went into seclusion.

And last night another proof that my secret power is back. My brother's girlfriend stepped out of my mind and into my living room, exactly as I pictured her, exactly as I willed her to be. Such a nice girl! She's lovely. This is good. We had a really good dinner and conversation and I totally see this girl in our family.

Mood: happy
Drinking: coffee, lots of cream
Listening To: why is it that i never put the music on early anymore?
Hair: stringy because i put some greasy balm in it last night, which wasn't really good