extreme de-clutter: the soundtrack

~ carin ~ 2 Comments

The reno, the inspiration for this, The Year of the Big De-Clutter, has begun in earnest. In the basement, more precisely. Yesterday they ripped out walls. Today they’re cutting cement.

The sound of the saw—gasoline powered so there’s the added benefit of fragrance—has made Jake the Cat hide in the closet and howl. Not only that but the house is slowly filling up with dust causing a ceiling smoke alarm near the bedroom to go off for five to ten minutes at a time. I haul a dining room chair up the stairs. Stand on it with my ears six inches from the eeeeeep eeeeep eeeeeep eeeeeep eeeeep eeeeeep, trying to figure out how to turn it off but can’t see any switch so I run around the house thinking, thinking what to do, what to do??  I call Peter at work, leave a less than ladylike message inquiring if he might know how to shut the frigging thing off. Meanwhile the saw is apparently cutting the house in half, Jake watches from his hiding place, mewling, wide-eyed, fur on end, and now Cuddles is throwing out a few questions of her own from behind a closed door where she’s spending the day so Jake doesn’t blame her for all this and inadvertently kill her. I consider going downstairs to find the workmen, ask if anybody knows anything about smoke alarms but they’d never hear me and, anyway, I’m not sure I want to interrupt a guy with a saw that loud and that big.

The answer, I decide, is to smother the thing, I grab some garbage bags to tape over it but the only tape that’s handy is the green painters’ kind, which doesn’t stick to the stucco ceiling (another reason to hate stucco).

But it does stick to the alarm itself. I put layers and layers of it on the bastard.

And then it stops.

At least in the real world. I can still hear it inside my head, right behind my eyes, next to my headache.

Then it starts again.

But oh blessed miracle! I notice the saw has shut off for a moment so I run downstairs and in a probably too loud voice tell the guy to come upstairs with me. He looks concerned, unsure. Should I take my boots off? he says and I say, no, no, it’s okay, you can keep them on…

I let him stand on the dining room chair with his boots, which amazes him, makes him chuckle. He pulls the alarm off the ceiling, says it’s hardwired, that’s why I couldn’t find an Off switch. He disconnects it and I say thank you a few dozen times. Possibly still a titch too loud.

He advises I turn off the furnace to cut down on the dust circulating through the house.

All that’s left now is the sound of the saw ripping through cement, which I’m told should be done in about two hours.  This would have been depressing news pre-smoke alarm but fortunately my hearing still hasn’t returned to normal.

And I have plenty of coats.

thirty truths: 6

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Truth #6: Okay, it was me. I broke Mrs. Thingy-Next-Door’s perfume.

The expensive, exquisite bottle from France, or Spain or Norway. Somewhere far and fragrant was the point—or so my friend D explained as she whispered me into her parents’ bedroom to see the stuff for myself.

But you can’t smell it, she said, it’s too precious. It’ll evaporate if you open it, you can’t even touch the bottle, she said, then went to the kitchen to get us some Captain Crunch.

I touched it the moment she left. I turned it over in my hand, admired its tiny perfectness, such a contrast to Mrs. Thingy herself, whose hands, she’d once told us, had regularly wrung the necks of chickens on her grandfather’s farm. D had explained how one drop would do you for a whole night of dancing; so powerful was it you couldn’t sweat it off. I turned the miniature top to the right in exactly the way you might open a tube of toothpaste, except instead of a screw cap there was a little glass stopper and what I’d done was snap the neck right off.

Oh fudge. Or nine year old words to that effect.

I balanced the broken halves on the dresser as well as I could, then flew past D in the kitchen and out the back door, yelling something about forgotten homework. I calmed myself with logic, figured by the time Mrs. Thingy went anyplace special enough to use the perfume no one would even remember I’d been in the room. She’d think she broke it dusting.

Events after D and her mother arrived at our house  with those chicken killing hands are a bit of a blur. I remember D crying, her mother blaming her, D saying no, no, it was her, it was her, pointing at me. I have no memory of confessing or denying the crime. I can’t remember if D was punished or if I was or if we did hard time together. All memory will allow is that it was a very long, drawn out, noisy and unpleasant ‘situation’.

But for the record, yeah, it was me.
Sorry.

thirty truths: 5

~ carin ~ 1 Comment

Truth #5: Sometimes all it takes is one potato. Maybe two.

Sliced thin and tossed with olive oil, sprinkled with salt and freshly ground pepper, merken, paprika or cayenne, and baked at 350 for 25 minutes (or til crispy).

This in itself can bring much simple-homemade-potato-chip-joy to an otherwise grey and headachy day. But if I add a spinach salad dressed with garlic, olive oil and lemon and sprinkle sea salt and turmeric and whatever other spices call to me then top with that bit of cold bbq’d salmon from the night before, I will have a lunch that takes the wind right out of grey and headachy’s stupid and annoying sails.

In other words, food is one of my favourite medicines—for which I make no apology.

maybe the turtle

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‘When Even The’  by Leonard Cohen

Your breasts are like.
Your thighs and your carriage.
I never thought.
Somewhere there must be.
It’s possible.
Summer has nothing.
Even Spring doesn’t.
Your feet are so.
It’s cruel to.
My defence is.
Summer certainly doesn’t.
Your.
And your.
If only.
Somewhere there must.

But the.
And the.
It’s enough to.
Soldiers don’t.
Maybe the turtle.
Maybe hieroglyphics.
Sand.
But in your cold.
If I could.
If once more.
Slip or liquid.
But the.
And the.

Sometimes when.
Even tho’.
Yes even tho’.
They say suffering.
They say.
Okay then let’s.
Let’s.
The sign is.
The seal is.
The guarantee.
Oh but.
O cruel.
O blouse with.
This is what.
And why it isn’t.

But what do they.
What do they.
When even.
When even the.
Years will.
Death will.
But they won’t
Even if.
Even if the.
They never will.

O deceiver.
O deceptive.
Turn your eyes.
Incline your.
To the one who.
Rotten as.
Who does not.
Who never will.

But now your.
And your.
And these arms.
Which is lawless.
Which is blind.
If you come
If you find.
Then I.

Like all.
Like every.
If only.
If when.
Even though.
Even if.
Not for.
Not for.
But only.
But every.

If I could.
When the.
Then I.
Even if.
Even when.
I would.

thirty truths: 2

~ carin ~ Leave a comment

TRUTH #2—I have never read One Hundred Years of Solitude.

I know. I know.

Believe me, this isn’t an easy thing to admit, but because I’ve challenged myself to air a truth a day throughout April—in order to travel that bit ‘lighter’—it had to be said.

Also, there’s a kind of omen-y thing going on. The title has crossed my path three times in the last few weeks. First, in an answer by Charles Foran in a 2008 Q&A with Steven Beattie, which I stumbled over while looking up one of Foran’s books:

“I abandoned a career as a hockey player – okay, I got cut by the Young Nationals when I was seventeen – for literature because of how books rocked my suburban Toronto world. I can even pinpoint the turn. Once I opened the epochal paperback of One Hundred Years of Solitude, a book purchased, largely for the allure of its pastel cover, in my local Coles in my local mall in 1977, or thereabouts, I knew I was a goner. I knew this because of how I read Marquez and, in turn, how Marquez read me.”

Second… I can’t remember what, but there was a second.

And third, in the short story ‘How Healthy Are You?’ from Sarah Selecky’s collection This Cake is for the Party.

“On the first day, they were given their capsules with breakfast. The numbers 009 were printed in black on the outside of the capsule. Carolyn swallowed hers with orange juice. She showered and dressed. She’d brought One Hundred Years of Solitude to read, a journal, her Spanish textbook and some Post-it Notes for vocabulary, and her Canon SLR.”

~

All of which can only mean it’s time to read this magical book (my own unopened copy, purchased close to 100 years ago, is currently packed away in prep for a basement reno; TBR this summer.)

thirty truths: 1

~ carin ~ Leave a comment

In the spirit of this year’s self-imposed de-cluttering theme, I’ve dedicated April to ferreting out a truth a day from the large container where such things are kept and lugged about for no good reason. 

TRUTH #1—I can’t skate, I never drink beer, rarely eat maple syrup, would rather have a bagel than a doughnut, execute a pretty sad J-stroke and really don’t understand hockey (although I like watching it and miss the song).

Note: being able to identify grounds for having my passport revoked is my only saving grace…

things i saw

~ carin ~ 2 Comments

A lone deer at the edge of a field about 100 metres from the highway. A group of men watched from the side of the road. They didn’t look like nature lovers.

A teenaged girl sitting alone on a playground swing, smoking. Something about her made me think she’d secretly welcome someone saying hello, but I wasn’t sure, didn’t want her to think I thought she looked sad and lonely. So I said nothing. That she stays with me makes me wonder if I erred on the wrong side of cautious…

Four silver pails hanging on the trunk of a front yard maple. (I want a front yard maple!)

Some yutz in a silver car with tinted windows who pulled out of his driveway in front of me without looking. I could smell rubber from how hard I braked and swerved in order to miss him. Some choice words tossed about on my part, though his windows were safely rolled up.

First robin of Spring!