Seizure Salad

Aha! There it is...damn, it's gone

I had a nice aha moment on the weekend, and it's stayed with me. My band leonids was playing at our "usual" club, Smiling Buddha to a pretty good crowd. It was a fun night, although not the best we've played recently. One brand new song was really brilliant.

Hanging around the club with our friends from the band Cedar, I realized something. And the realization wasn't just intellectual, it was very emotional and visceral. I remembered that around 7 or 8 years ago when I was playing drums in a different band in a different city, this was the kind of camaraderie I was desperately wishing for. I was playing music regularly then too, but my band spanned two cities, and none of us were really part of the local music scene. I was going out to a lot of local bands' shows and jam nights, trying to get chances to play and meet other musicians - just make musical friends really. It felt really clique-y in that city at that time, and I was thwarted constantly. I often thought it was a kind of boys-club sexism at work, and I'm sure that was part of it.

Anyway, back then I would see other musicians jamming together, going to each other's shows and socializing and I really felt outside of it. The boys (i.e. guys in bands) hung out with the boys and I...hung out with their girlfriends, wishing I was talking to them about music. And the other night at our show, I realized that I was "there" in that imagined future camaraderie from 8 years ago, and I felt truly lucky and (sounds funny to write it) - satisfied. For about 5 minutes, until I started griping internally again about how we need to be playing better venues, need our CD to come out soon, how that drummer in that band was better than me, blah blah blah.

But for that 5 minutes there it was really fun to be me. I *got* the fact that this is something I have really, really worked hard for, it was a place I saw myself inhabiting years ago, and I made it happen with practice, perseverence and connecting with people.  Satisfied really describes how I felt.

So why don't I feel that way more often? There are a lot of things about my life now that were mere wishes years ago. More often than not though, I am still looking towards that future place/state/happening where I will have what I want and be satisfied. It's a trick of the mind...a trick of time too. In that 5 minutes of satisfaction what I experienced could be called being in the moment. I realized (really felt) that 7 or 8 years from now, I will look back on this time with great fondness.

I never, never stop thinking about what the next thing is going to be. And I continue to harbour some kind of insane delusion that when the next thing arrives, time will somehow kind of slow down and I'll roll around in the pleasure of getting what I wanted. This is clearly total bullshit.

On y va!

It's hard being a supermodel

Just got back from the dog park where it seems like every male dog there tried to mount Pixie (again). She's normally a very sweet dog, but she gets very pissed off when this happens again and again especially when she's lying down resting and some little fucking dog climbs right on top of her back and starts humping away. With her bum leg, she likely has hip pain and I think this might even hurt her. It ends with her snarling and snapping at some obnoxious little humper. It happens EVERY time we go, it's like she's the supermodel at the bar and every guy is trying to pick her up.

One particularly annoying spaniel kept hopping up on his hind legs and "hugging" her around the front, trying to lick her face - kind of cute to see, but in dog-behaviour land that is RUDE. It would be like some stranger coming up to you and sticking their wet finger in your ear.

I wonder if she just has momma dog smell (she was a breeder) and they all go nuts for it? We usually leave earlier than planned because she starts some kind of humping frenzy. When we're leaving, dogs come trailing behind her in the dog version of "hey, can I just have your cell number before you leave? Or just maybe your email address? So we could go for coffee sometime? Heeyyyyy..."

If there are less than about 5 dogs there, everything seems to be relatively cool. But add a few more dogs to that mix and let the humping begin.

How bout some pictures? Click for big.

The pixter "roaching" (i.e. cockroaching - legs all waving in the air. It's a sign of happiness and comfort. Took her almost 6 months to do this.)

The thief a few weeks ago after being caught red-handed with a loaf of just-baked bread off the counter:

I love the nose close-ups:

And, in knitting related news (shut UP, I know you forgot this was kind of a knititng blog) here are the Austermann Step socks I started...uh...a year ago?

I was pretty pissed at having to repair these as soon as they came out of their first wash. I put them in the gentle cycle, and they came out with a dropped stitch from the cuff having run down to the heel. Had to repair that with a crochet hook and try all manner of bizarre grafting/darning things to secure where the damnable loose stitch was. The are very sporty and warm though, I am quite pleased. Keeping these ones for myself.

Spinning...no news. I haven't spun since a few weeks before my move, the house was in too much disaray before I left, and I haven't felt like picking it up in the new place yet.  Spinning is weird for me, it seems like everything has to be just "right" in the physical environment before I am motivated to do it. (House clean, stuff put away, good lighting, excellent music on, late in the evening but not too late, etc).  It's like I have to enter some kind of spinning zone. If I don't, then I commence spinning and get bored and stop 10 minutes later. If I find the "zone" place then I will fall down the rabbit hole and emerge 4 hours later with a skein of yarn.

I am going to have to get my shit together though, because an esteemed friend has asked me to spin some stuff for a craft show in December. I am pretty nervous about that.  I think "bulky thick and thin" is the way to be thinking right now.

House of sand

"Calm gave way to fear in financial markets Thursday, turning a relatively steady day into a rout that pushed the Dow Jones industrials below 9,000 for the first time in five years [...] shares of General Motors Corp., one of the 30 stocks that make up the Dow, tumbled 28 percent to their lowest since 1950."

-October 9th, Associated Press

Is this really it?

Like, the beginning of the whole "safety" net collapsing? Those big holes in that net have been there for a while now but it's remained pretty much intact for most of (Western) society for so long. Holding everything up for (some of) us. So, so not holding things up for (many of) us.

Is the whole fucking thing gonna come down - the economic house of sand, the big institutions, the resource-gobblers and the coffers of the very very rich white men?

Most of me hopes so. Bring it the fuck on, I know how to prep and spin wool and bake bread. I've got books on what kind of wild plants are OK to eat.

Well, not to put too fine a point on it but "the decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the principle of decay; the causes of destruction multiplied with the extent of conquest; and as soon as time or accident had removed the artificial supports, the stupendous fabric yielded to the pressure of its own weight"

-Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 1776