Teacher's pet and the pony.

So many things.

As you may or may not have noticed, I have not written in a week. Thus my head is full, too full; full to the point where everything else is slowed because I haven't had time this week to sort my thoughts. JJ left for her home in MTL on Thursday and to say goodbye we sat, eight strong around a wobbly table. Beer in hand, I ended up downstairs holding a microphone with my free hand. Eyes closed, singing at the top of my lungs and horribly off key (bad, bad, bad) beside my new singing partner. "You take the bottom, and I'll take the top". Hearing the words escape my mouth, my mind went to Erin in Cuba, holding a rainbow colored drink with an umbrella probably named something ridiculous like 'Tahiti Treat' or 'Bahama Mama' and right after it went to the Erin I grew up with in the country, driving our dad's truck like a wild indian and singing 'His Eye is On the Sparrow' from Sister Act II grinning and saying "You take the top and I'll take the bottom" right before it started just like they do in the movie. We would sing so loud, and so poorly, but we didn't care. I miss you. I miss you. I miss you. I hope you think of me when you puke rainbows on pavement, because I always think of you when I do. Every time. Anyway, busy bee is me.

Go, go, go, stir, stir, stir, print, print, print, color, color, color, cook, cook, cook, sing, sing, sing, eat, eat, eat, walk, walk, walk, babyhold, babyhold, babyhold, draw, draw, draw, bike, bike, bike, blush, blush, blush.

I cut the pad of my left index finger off using a mandolin while slicing carrots paper thin for a soup and alas I have not been able to type fast. And to recap, my head has been full, full, full due to a (semi) missing finger. I am home now, in my favorite striped sweater, jeans, drinking coffee at my kitchen table enjoying my home on my first Saturday off as the soup lady. I am not a cook, yet. I don't know when the time will come that I can say with full confidence that I am a cook, all I know is that I am not. But I do a lot of cooking. Soup. My life is soup. It is methodical and I sing all the time and I work with beyond good people and sometimes we all sing. We do dance, we always dance.

My favorite time of day is around four, when everyone has gone home for the day and it is just me, elbow deep inside a burning hot turkey. Jurassic 5 is put on, loud, so loud that even the customers in the front of house cannot help but slip into a trance and are confused when they catch themselves head bobbing to some beat they can barely hear. Cleaning the cooked turkeys is a skill I am very indebted to Kent (the music snob) for teaching me. Another lesson. It is also methodical work, but tricky at the same time. It is important to cut to the quick, not to waste a drop because it will all be used at one point or another in that kitchen. At first it terrified me, these giant cooked birds. But then it became a game. Every day I force myself to become better, cut closer, waste not want not; and I do. So I clean them, and somehow still manage to dance fairly passionately to Jurassic 5. J5, hip hop. It is a very new genre of music for me and I am slowly exposing myself. I love it. Yesterday we went on a musical journey (I work with the aforementioned world's biggest music snob [he would be very pleased to read that, I think] and his record collection [copies in the thousands and thousands of vinyl stacked against the walls of his home, reaching the ceiling] puts mine to red faced shame) and we listened to everything from Bruce Springsteen, to Rancid, to Motor City Five, to the Stooges, to Michael Jackson, to Sloan, to Chad VanGaalen, to Neil Young, to Kanye West, to Johann Sebastian Bach. Wild. This is the pace of the kitchen, wild. But I find solace in the lists and recipes I follow, winging it half of the time and shitting bricks the other. But it is always fun. Yesterday I learned it was wrong to roast butternut squash skin side down. Who knew? I didn't. I had never done it before in my life. The day before that I burnt 40 gallons of turkey stock and threw out another soup and it was humbling. Humble pie. Tastes devastatingly delicious.

No one had ever seen kitchen appliances wiped with such attention to detail, with such delicacy, one hand wiping stainless steel in figure eights and the other smoothing out imaginary ripples along the mental. Always touching, always feeling, smoothing uneven surfaces only a trained or neurotic eye would notice. She sat on a blue upturned milk crate and inspected the room with her head craned to the right, childlike. She liked how the light reflected off the bread table making a subtle shadow on the corner wall. Something one would only notice from a child's perspective. "That's good", she said with eyes taking in the room, affirming her own handiwork aloud to an empty kitchen. "That's good for now".

When soup is not being made, time is spent at Martha Street in the low red building. With the start of January came the start of my mentorship with Art School Jeanette. I don't think she would mind if I used her name. She is humble and sinfully talented and she is my teacher. She is also very gentle and I never feel like crying when I leave after a lesson. These are all good things. She is another person that I have met in the last few months who has taught me to be a better teacher. I am not a good teacher because I am a selfish student. Always hungry for more, more, more; teach me, teach me, teach me. Not that this is necessarily a fault, it is just something to work at: be a better teacher to others. On Thursday I had my first Letterpress class and took to it immediately. It is fun, the arranging of tiny typeface is tedious but rewarding work. The letters are made out of lead and so we were encouraged not to lick our fingers or eat a sandwich after class. Using the letterpress felt even better, even more satisfying than printing with the regular press with the wheel. I don't really know how to describe it, but the feeling of dragging the rollers over my carefully arranged type felt good. Really, really good. Mondays I silkscreen, Tuesdays I draw, Wednesdays I sleep, and Thursdays I letterpress. It is a good life. I had no idea winter would be like this, this full, but I wouldn't change a damn thing.

This morning I sat in a darkened pub eating a baby sized breakfast called the Little Tadpole special beside Andrew and across from Rabbi and Alfie. These are my best friends. A collection of brothers and lovers and sisters and friends and coworkers, we ate and did the crossword and talked over each other and passed the salt and drank coffee in unison. This is being young to me. Eating breakfast at one in the afternoon with your best mates in a pub in your neighborhood, drinking coffee, taking turns being the Dad and footing the bill with such joy (because you love these people collectively and individually) and then leaving arm in arm (it doesn't matter whose arm, they are all good!) and then buying records and then leaving each other and walking away laughing. This is just another Saturday and I love my life and the people in it. I bought Of Montreal's new album, Skeletal Lamping and it is lovely. Two records, four sides, interesting inserts and album artwork and it came with a giant fold up poster the size and shape of a pony. I nailed it to the wall in my bedroom, it is that dreamy.

This is the album art, the first thing that sold me.







Today is really lovely, and it is bound to get better. When I was walking home from breakfast at the Toad, a middle aged married couple (I am assuming) wearing matching parkas in a half tonne honked at me and gave four thumbs up. I don't know what warranted four thumbs up, but it made my day. Anyway, I best be off. I have to get ready for the ball, time is ticking. I have a date.

Best regards says Cinderella, dressed in yella'.

Madge.

Post Script: Beth also posted such lovely photos of my home and sent me these ones as well.



























































I cried when I saw them. Yes to the switch. She is so dreamy that if it would be socially acceptable, I would pin her to my bedroom wall. Because it is not, we send each other art work and instead I appreciate her work on my walls and not her. Swap, switch. Thank you for the photos, Liza.