Radial Symmetry

In the airport, apropos of nothing, I said "I don't think it's conferences. I think it's us."

With CT in NOLA, I'd assumed the sense of severe disconnection from my real life had to do with a new city, a new lover, and the inherent nature of conferences. Now, at the end of our week-long stint at Camp Hotza, I'm not so sure.

Theoretically, I was in my life.

My house, even though I didn't know where half my stuff was. My city, which is much noisier five doors south, but still laid out the same way with the same people in it. My sister in my second city, Montreal, where we ran into more of my friends.

But I found myself wanting to spend less and less time in my life, and instead burrow into the space that CT and I were creating.

We are an unlikely pair.

He had never heard of The Vagina Monologues before. I had to ask why he was excited to see the Easton plant off the highway out of Montreal.

Today, my routine shifts from eating passably healthy food at restaurants to my regular brown rice and greens; from hoping I get enough exercise through walking and sex to the usual pendulum of yoga and running. CT will happily go back to playing hockey, driving, cycling, and pepperoni pizza.

But none of that seemed to matter particularly, not for this trip, at any rate, not for a week. Our Venn diagram overlap involved things that are seriously important to me - in friends and lovers and partners. He is also kind, easy-going, a good communicator, dryly funny. He was a lovely house boy guest, and my home feels that much less cozy tonight.

There wasn't much talk about "We." Both of us are cautious, either by inclination or through experience. There were shy admissions that we'd like to see each other again, a brief talk about how that might work. An agreement that needed to talk more, an agreement that our last few hours together might not be the best time for that to happen.

Instead, those hours were as they should be. We didn't talk much. We touched a lot. Intimately, but not sexually so. I managed to leak only a few tears at the airport. He caught his plane on time.

Poon Watch: *sigh*

You know, it's halfway through CT's visit, and I'm not really taking any pictures. I'm not taking the time I thought I might need to be by myself. I'm not going to yoga, I'm not running. I'm not really blogging, I'm hardly reading blogs. I thought I'd do all these things while CT was here, that I'd carry on with my life, but he'd just be around and we'd chat and laugh and fuck as we saw fit.

A couple days in, I ditched all pretension of carrying on anything normal. As soon as we settled into each other, I started feeling the time ticking down. I'm trying not to think about that too much, about how my chest will ache when I say goodbye at the airport.

But I'm well aware I've only got him for another few days.

After that, we might see each other again. We haven't discussed it either way. Might not is a possibility. Before about two weeks ago, thoughts of any future past the 17th of August made my sternum pull tight in fear. Now I know that flights to D.C. in October are cheap.

Considering that any future, but particularly this future, is an uncertain proposition, I don't care about yoga or blogging or brown rice or my schedule. I just want to soak up as much of him as I can before he leaves.

Poon Watch: No longer blazing red. Very definitely no longer angry.

When Shelley answered the phone tonight, it was with a worried voice.

"Hello?" she said. "Is everything okay?"

CT and I had just gotten back from a long looping walk, where I'd been showing off the best bits of the city to him: the view up the canal, the cats of parliament hill, a long walk down the cliff to the river, along the river through the sunset back home. He was upstairs, rattling around, making homey noises.

"Everything's great! I just missed you."

"Me too! I thought I wouldn't hear from you for a week, so wondered if maybe you were calling for a bad reason."

Driving out to the airport, I was nervous as fuck. CT and I hadn't seen each other in two months, except over skype. We'd exchanged a fair number of emails and chats, but it's certainly not the same as spending 8 days in close proximity to that same person. What if our pheromones didn't like each other anymore? What if he was actually a jerk in person? What if I bored him? What if we just didn't jibe?

I drove out to the airport with my hands shaking, running late. He was kind about my tardiness, but the tight dress probably helped.

Though I haven't talked about this with him, which might be more polite than having him read it over coffee at the breakfast table tomorrow morning, it felt to me like we took a bit to find our stride.

Not that things ever were going badly, but for the first evening and some of yesterday, I felt just a little off kilter, not quite my own self. We're both used to spending a lot of time alone, both used to being single. I don't know if he felt the same first unsure steps, maybe hid it as well as I hope I did.

But hit it we have.

Don't get your chocha waxed, for the first time, the day before your far flung lover comes to town. An angry red poon is not sexier than a hairy one, Q.E.D.

Okay, if I were a good blogger I would be taking pictures of my new place and giving you the ins and outs of the move, and making it hella entertaining and a fantastic read. But fuck, it's just boring. I've been painting and putting up blinds and trying to find curtain brackets and making enough trips to Ikea to last me a goddamned lifetime.

You don't want to read about that, I'm telling you.

Though I'm so out of practice with this blogging thing, I seem to have lost the knack of knowing what you want to read about and how to package that up.

Instead, I've been sitting at the computer, my fingers flailing about. Always returning faithfully to delete.

I want to write about CT's impending visit, about how it feels to have moved, to live here, to own instead of rent, tips on how to be friends with your ex. Indeed, I've given all those things a whirl, but I can feel that I'm not writing them from where the good posts come from.

It worries me a little. I haven't felt like writing much at all this past week. Now that I'm feeling less worn down to the nub, I'm starting to feel a little bottled up, but don't quite remember how to co-ordinate my fingers well enough to work myself up and clear the pipes.

These are the times you just have to believe it will be okay, that your talent, whatever its strength to begin, has actually not shrivelled to nothing, that it's just waiting for you to wake it up and release it once more.

Dear Internet,

I have missed you, and how. The past few days have been trying, but the stomach aches and dizzy spells are gone.

And now? Now my modem is lighted all up in just the right places, my comuter is once more a computer. My house is still a disaster, but it's my house, and it's painted. I blew off the housework this evening to loll about, shoot the shit, and drink single malt scotch with handsome butches. CT is going to be here in three sleeps.

I thought I didn't miss you at all, but here I am, at 2:17 in the am, writing you a note to tell you that I'll never ever leave you again.

xom.

Man, am I so much less stressed out. It's not like my house isn't a mess, because it really really is. And my mom is going to be here in a few minutes, and tomorrow we're going to start painting, and then it really really really will be.

But I've stopped getting a stomachache after every meal and the dizzy spells have stopped, so I figure that's a pretty good sign that I'm feeling much better.

Internet, I feel like I owe you a big long cozy post about how it went and how happy I am, particularly considering the bitching I've been doing lately. But if I sit down for more than 30 seconds my brain falls asleep.

So back to organizing the cupboards. Next up: spices.

That's the second-last thing Shelley said to me before we got off the phone together.

Have other people found buying a house this stressful? Is it because it's my first time? Is it because I'm a wimp? Is it because I am in that thin-veil few days right before I bleed?

Poor Mike at PC Financial. I've banked with the grocery store for about 7 or 8 years now, and they're a great bank. Sure, I can't walk into a branch and talk to someone, but I've never had to. Until last week, when it became apparent that I was going to have to do some fancy footwork to get a bank draft for the down payment to give our lawyer to buy the house. I couldn't just walk into the bank and show them my ID. There were a few options, all of which required at least one day's notice.

We close tomorrow.

I needed the exact number for the draft. Not for closing, not that day. At least yesterday from that day, and my preference would have been last week from that day. We waited and waited, and then finally, today, sicced our real estate agent on the other real estate agent to get on top of their lawyer, who was the person not giving the information to our lawyer, who really did want to tell us how much money we needed to give him to buy our house.

While Mike was doing his damn fine fancy stepping, he was also asking me questions. Can I call you Megan today? Who had we gone with for our mortgage? What was the rate? What was the term? Oh, hmm, I should look into this and that and had I considered this other thing.

I started crying. Not audibly. But it was gonna get audible in short order. I interrupted him.

"I'm really sorry, but I am incredibly stressed out right now, and that's already been decided and there's nothing I can do about it, so."

I didn't have an end to the sentence, but he did shut the fuck up about my options.

I am so fucking sick of options.

I would like to stop having a stomachache and dizzy spells.

I would like someone to hold my hand and tell me what to do.

I had an amazing day today. I was crabby for part of it, because I am waaay overtired, even though I'm getting more hours of sleep than I normally do. And trying to make food in a kitchen that is torn apart is no fun, and I'm really too tired to feel like cooking, and I'm really too tired to feel much like eating.

Except for the veg and havarti sandwich on wheat bread. Hrm. Perhaps the post-lunch crabbiness was not tiredness, but indigestion.

The weather this summer has just been bananas for Ottawa. It was cool and sunny, though humid, for most of today. Then around 6 pm, when I was heading out to pick Eric up to take him out to the VV, the clouds gathered ominously. By the time we hit the highway, it was pouring. Couldn't see 10 feet in front of the car pouring. By the time we got parked at the drop off centre, it was sunny and raining. By the time we came out from shopping, it was cool, bright and beautiful.

I was glad I'd made a last minute decision to thrift instead of go to yoga, since that gave me time to head out along the river in my favourite kind of weather.

That run almost always makes me feel grateful. Tonight, when I turned back home, and the sun was shining red off the stone of the church high up on the escarpment, and the browns of the townhouses were warm, and everything smelled green and round, and I thought, "this is my home, I get to see this for the rest of my life" I was nearly in tears.

Beyond the tiredness and the disaster and the seeming endless cavalcade of details, I know I am lucky, so lucky, to be alive and here, and in the life I live.

Around 5:45 Friday afternoon, my phone rang at work. It was Grace and Greg's number. Of course, I picked it up. Fiona, it turns out, had been sad all day. So sad. Super sad. Whiny sad.

When asked what would make her feel better, turns out she said "Go Megan's, see Freya." Could they make that happen?

Of course they could. What else are pets for except the de-sadding of two year olds?

Though I have no real idea if it worked, since they were off to visit their Bobcia shortly after.

++

There were many things yesterday that caused my simmering down: I made arrangements to buy three ceiling fans for $35, one of those very nice kettles for $25, off of kijiji mostly, thus saving me scads of cash; I had a great yoga class, where I was able to get past a couple of mental blocks I'd been having and into full lotus; it was especially great compared to the class on Thursday, during which I spent 20 minutes crying in the bathroom; the big cry in the bathroom on Thursday; certainly not least, the aforementioned Skype date.

The most important thing, though? More important to my general well being and mental health than all of those things put together?

I present to you, the list.*

Like many fellow neurotics/librarian-types, I'm a compulsive list maker. When I clean my desk off at work, clean out my day timer, empty the papers at the bottom of my bag, I find tons of lists. Most of them I'd forgotten I'd made, many of which no longer make any sense.

For this move, I had the lists of people who've volunteered their time, I had lists of what needed to be cleaned, I had lists of what needed to be double checked, what needed to be tripled checked, who needed to be reminded of what, and what I needed to buy to be prepared for the actual move.

All written on scraps of paper clipped on my desk at work, on my kitchen table at home, in my day timer, at the bottom of my bag.

And the tickertape was wearing me down.

Thursday, I stole about 7 feet of brown paper off the roll at work, tacked it up in my long long hallway, found all the lists I could find, and transcribed every thing from them onto the brown paper.

I promised myself that as soon as I thought of something, I would write it on the list. If I thought of it again, my mantra would be "ON THE LIST."

My brain caught on pretty quick. I had to use the mantra maybe 5 times before my brain just relaxed, and my shoulders with it.

++

I can only guess that the Go Megan's visit worked.

It's the best thing on there.

*Some of those names might not be right. The list is not so much for veracity as for the quieting of minds.