Writing Zazen
I notice that this blog is being problematic again. If there are no posts here for a few days, I'll be posting at my other blog that hasn't been problematic : Writing Zazen

EY

Can't Sleep
Topic: WC - Daily Practice
Thursday 10:44pm 15Feb07

Can't sleep. Had all the lights out, got all comfy under the blankets and my mind was going a mile a minute. Tried to use my imagination to think about other things or make up possible futures but it didn't slow down the mind, just got me thinking more.

I reached my 3 hour writing goal today and had all sorts of plans to see how much more I could accomplish in one day. My phone rang. The continuing saga of a friend's health scare. All is well. Played catch up on the stories that I have to tell from the past several months. Talked for over an hour, laughing and yelling, like we do. Cordless phone needed to be recharged, not mine my friend's so we bid good-bye. I was going to write and thought with Merc's retrograde (I can call it Merc since we are so close) I'd call a blast from the past, Tyrone. Called his house in Guelph and some strange people were on the voice mail. Holy shit did he move?

Emailed another blast from the past to see if he had Tyrone's current number then vaguely remembered a voice mail of month's past with a cell number. Where the hell did I put that? I don't seem to have a phone book anymore. Found the sheet and got Tyrone's wife. Tyrone called me back from a land line and the catch up began. Much laughter. Baby daughter had a birthday on the 9th. I actually remembered and mentioned it first. Tyrone was the tall skinny white guy that hung out with me and two other black people. He told us his middle name was Tyrone and we believed him, telling him it was a black name. One day while renting movies with him, I saw his card and his real middle name is Todd. Laughed my ass off. So I call him Tyrone here because he will find that amusing. Yet another admitted village idiot in the group.

His daughter is an Aquarius and I realize that my life has become inundated with Aquarians. How did that happen? I've had so many birthdays go by in February and everyday I think, Who's birthday is it today? I know it's someone's. Lolo started them rolling in January on the first day of Aquarius, then Fredo and Hy and Goldfish and best friend's girlfriends and daughters and on and on. Jeez, can't we just get to Pisces already? Aquarians can be very similar to Pisces and vastly different. It's most amusing. Goldfish is decidedly the most gentle Aquarian soul. Lolo and Fredo the most difficult, or at least they give me the hardest time of it anyhow.

Lolo likes these funny games like making you choose between one gross thing over another and you have to choose one. She makes you. Like knowing that I don't like feet she makes me say out loud what I would choose - licking a man's ass or sucking his toes. Now I know the licking of the ass is gross (unless you're into that, then there's nothing wrong with it) but sucking his toes is just as gross to me. Sorry no foot fetishes here. She made me come up with a list, her rules and doesn't the wench chicken out and not even come up with the same harsh list after I racked my brain? Not sure how I'll ever forgive her for it.

Yeah Aquarians are a treat.

Caught the second half of Grey's Anatomy and what are they doing to Dr McDreamy and Christina? Come on Shonda, you're hurting me. And we have to wait another week and watch Christina lose it? It's any wonder I can't sleep. And the freaking announcer says next week's most devastating episode yet! sigh!

Zelda mania has calmed down for a few brief moments and it's actually quiet in the building. Maybe I can have a tea and attempt the face first climb back into bed. At least it's Friday tomorrow. If I don't get to bed soon, I may be fried for Friday.

Oh yes and one of the ex's called yesterday. Peculiar that he'd call on Valentine's day after all this time. After 5 years together and missing each and every Valentine's day, he calls me when we're not together. We always did make better friends than lovers. He's not an Aquarius. No he's part of my Capricorn hell. I work with 5 Capricorns. And the last person that I saw regularly had the same name as this ex and the same birthday and I know a third one. It's any wonder my brain is spinning out of control. Meredith is talking to the hot bomb guy that got blown up and Denny Duquette is on the other side of her telling her damn straight you're dead!

Maybe I should have a glass of wine instead of tea.

EY

Valentine's Day
Topic: Another Entry
Thursday 5:31am 17Feb07

Well, another valentine's day has come and gone. You know it's manufactured romance but I never know how I should feel about it. Should I feel jealous because boyfriends are forced to romance their girlfriends because everyone else has to? Who knows.
I'm single anyway so I don't have any expectations either way. No expectations that some secret admirer will send me flowers or a love note or anything. ha ha!

But my lovely boss bought me a box of Ferrero Rocher. Even though I'm off sugar I had to at least have one. It's not like it's a cheap chocolate. G.Mac makes me laugh because he always does something like that. He always buys me a gift on secretaries day. He may even buy me a mother's day present, because I'm the mother of cats. ha ha!

I got an ecard from Pillsbury and if you know me you know that I love the Pillsbury dough boy. He could be the perfect man! He cooks (a lot of fattening stuff mind you), he giggles when you poke him in the stomach, and those eyes! I even have a Pillsbury stuffie that my mother got me years ago. Anyway, I sent my love of the Pillsbury dough boy in ecards to some of my single friends.

I had some good laughter asking my boys what they were doing for their wives for valentine's day. Cranky tall boy, who has been exceptionally happy as of late, said he was giving his wife a shovel. We got a lot of snow yesterday. Then he proceeded to rant about manufactured romance and hating to be told that he had to be romantic. Cranky tall boy? Maybe you'd like to look into the reasons why your wife doesn't want to cuddle you at night... She has to cuddle me, it's so fucking cold in the house because I turn down the heat! Ahh such a romantic!

Jojay said grudgingly that he was doing the roses and taking his lady out for dinner. Just paying for regular sex folks, just paying for regular sex. ha ha!

Air, you might want to think about getting your thing snipped for valentine's day as a present for your wife. The guy can't even look at his wife without getting her pregnant. It's pretty scary when you can't just enjoy sex with your husband when you know you're just going to be pregnant, AGAIN! Especially when your husband wants a football team for a family.

Fredo sent me a good giggle of valentine's day insults which was the perfect icing on a very funny day. Most days I feel like the only sister in a family of big brothers. Getting first hand knowledge that most boys are sick puppies but in a good way. And the odd hug and regular teasing isn't such a bad thing for a single girlfish.

Now if I could just keep to 1.5 hours of writing in the am and 1.5 hours of writing in the pm, I'd get my 3 hours a day easily. I'm just saying.

Hope your valentine's day was something!

EY

The Overcoat
Topic: Another Entry
Thursday 5:22am 15Feb07

I heard the first advertisement on the radio for The Overcoat which will be playing/ is now playing at Can Stage.

I saw it when it was brought in during World Stage, my favorite theatre festival, a few years back. I remember that as the show began I was cringing when I realized that there were no words. Oh no, I thought, this is a fucking show in mime. I hate mimes!

But what a beautifully done show, oh and they're not mimes! To be able to convey so much with no words.

I'm happy to say I'm going to see it again with my sweet friend for my birthday, truly a month long celebration.

If you can scrape the pennies together to go see, don't miss it!

EY

Tragically Fascinating
Topic: WC - Daily Practice
Thursday 4:08am 15Feb07

Perhaps first thing in 4am isn't the best blogging time for me. Will have to figure this all out. I've been thinking that my early mornings may be better for working on my novel.

Maybe I'm discovering why I need to stop reading the newspaper and clearly I have huge issues with spouses being killed by their husbands. It's probably the domestic violence I was raised in. Maybe I really need to write about it in a substantial way.

Anyway it started Monday when I got the email newsflash - breaking news from CP24 news saying that two women were found dead in a Markham home. Tuesday morning Erin Davis and Mike Cooper were discussing on CHFI that one of the women, Julie Crocker was a CHFI employee and how devastated they were especially because it was her husband that had been charged with her murder and the murder of the other woman who still hadn't been identified.

I have to say here, before I go on, that for me the only way I can grasp some things/ most things sometimes is to look at things from a writer's stand point. Especially when they are upsetting.

I read the cover story in the Toronto Star about how Julie Crocker and her husband Christopher Little were high school sweethearts, had been married for ten years and had two little girls Madison,4 and Mackenzie, 3. Such sweet names. The little girls were in the house when their mother was murdered. The assumption was that the unidentified woman in the house was a friend of Julie's.

I discussed it with my boys at work. Wow, that poor friend that was at the wrong place at the wrong time... Shit, why can't people just break up, why does it have to end like this... imagine high school sweethearts, how much longer do you have to know someone before you can trust them with your life, never mind your heart... Truly sad.

Julie Crocker had recently started dating Rick Ralph of The Fan 590 radio station. He was gone to Halifax for his father's funeral when all this happened. Being a person who has lost a parent and knowing the size of that pain, I started to focus my thoughts/comments on Rick Ralph. Poor guy has to deal with losing his dad, which is such a huge pain that you need people to help you through that grieving process, and now he comes back to Toronto to find out that his girlfriend has been murdered. It doesn't bode well for a good new year.

Such a sad and tragic story, I say thinking I'd leave it at that and move my attention to something else.

Yesterday morning, I get to work with my Toronto Star and the story has turned operatic. They've identified the other woman and she is Rick Ralph's estranged wife. I can't get my head around it. They think that Christopher Little had abducted her, Paula Menendez from her home, brought her to Julie Crocker's house and murdered them both. First - degree murder, pre-meditated murder. Then you have to think, how the hell did he find out where Rick Ralph's estranged wife live to abduct her and ultimately kill her. What a horrifying way to meet your boyfriend's wife. What kind of rage must you have to strangle Paula and stab your wife?

Then it clicks in, this is Rick Ralph's story! He's coming back to Toronto having lost three people and if he's the common denominator in these two beautiful women's lives, he was the one that was meant to be killed, if not all three of them. The magnitude of that realization has to be beyond overwhelming for him. If my father hadn't died, which is tragedy enough, I might be dead. The man who gave you life, saved your life in a symbolic way. That's mind fuckery.

Can I just say that the sketch of Christopher Little on the Toronto Star makes him look like a Muslim? What is that? The guy's name is Christopher Little how does he end up looking like a Muslim?

So many lives are broken from one act of immense rage. If Christopher Little is indeed the killer, he made the 911 call from his cell phone around 3am to say that he'd found his wife dead and the babies unharmed, how long as he been this sick? How long has he been planning this? How does Rick Ralph ever find normalcy in life after all this? It's like being in a natural disaster and having your whole family wiped out in one fell swoop only worse.

And Christopher Little apparently has Paul Bernardo's lawyer representing him. Another sick murderer.

My co-worker said yesterday that it's times like these that you wonder if the death penalty would be a viable option. I don't know. I don't have any answers. As I said previously in another entry, we're still using caveman techniques.

It's like the male consciousness has reached a fever pitch, the cracks in the patriarchal system are showing. Being around men day in and day out it's funny the things that come out of some men's mouths. Things about, if their wife/ girlfriend should leave him, she'll get half and their bitterness around that. Little girls that look like women and can trick a man into sexual intimacy making the man appear as a pedophile. And then I wonder, is this how violent men deal with not being able to just beat their women anymore. In the 1970's when we were running away from my father, if the cops were involved they'd say shit to my mother like, "He's your husband ma'am. We can't get involved with what happens between a man and his wife." Perhaps to some men, those were the good ole days.
The police can't say that shit anymore. Nowadays they have to charge a man even if his wife refuses to charge him.

How do we now raise our sons and daughters to make a difference in what kind of adults they become?
And what's to become of the children that are raised without their parents because one killed the other?

EY