enfinblue's Bluey (credit to Fifi for the nickname!) Diaryland Diary

"I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart." -Vinc3nt V@n Gogh

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pure cheese and a bit of Canuck-i-ness

I feel as though I've walked a desert. My bike broke down last night--at school-- and no amount of roadside tweaking was going to fix it. So I walked home from the university with the bike, crank handle and pedal in hand. A day later and $107.83 out of pocket and I have a repaired bike (with retooled brakes, etc.).

I didn't get the bike back until 5 p.m. today, so I had to walk the three miles to the university and the three miles back today. This is really not so bad, since I quite like to walk. I do not like the way that feet sweat in the summer, however, and leave one with blisters in all the wrong places (read: on the bottoms of my feet).

I also went for a nice swim whilst at the university today. I say nice swim because I am always proud of myself when I get into the pool, in spite of the suffering that ensues. C. calls me "little fish," a moniker I rather like. I am a woefully inadequate swimmer, but I give it the good old college try. I have muscular legs, coupled with small arms and lats--not to mention bad form--so I am a sinker. I'm working my heart essentially through the resistance involved in dragging my body in desperate, breathless strokes through the water.

I really wish they had a nice, big seawater-mix pool here the way that they do in Kitsilano in Vancouver, where even I can sort of float.

Alas. So there is nothing much going on here but I am attempting to energize myself with some pasta--and heaps of lovely Parmegiano Reggiano grated from the $16 block that I bought on the weekend--since I promised that I would go to someone's get-together later tonight. The thing that I dislike about socializing is that everyone always needs one to commit in advance and I almost never want to go out when the night of the gathering actually arrives. Regrettably, I'm fickle like that.

I still haven't found a dress for C2's big 40th birthday bash (with unfortunate photo session which mandates decent apparel) next Friday. I love her to death but I wish that her taste weren't so chi-chi. I mean, I will enjoy the free meal and drinks and the swish restaurant, to be sure. I will, however, almost certainly suffer from a dose of ugly duckling syndrome. The fundamental problem is that although I talk about clothes, the older I get the more difficult I find it to enjoy spending money on clothes. Buying clothes that I don't strictly need always makes me feel terrible, since I link it directly to the sad knowledge that I have that I fundamentally don't feel that I'm good enough-- with my dull brown hair and my crooked nose and my myriad other imperfections, i.e. just as I am . At the same time, I feel humiliated and uncomfortable when I am in a nice place and I feel I look frumpy or poor.

Actually, if I were to point to one thing--beyond feeling intellectually inadequate and limited in social capital in some situations--that links to shame nurtured in my childhood, I'd have to point to wardrobe. My mother is naturally frugal and never much cared for clothes (something that has completely changed for her now that she is older, but I digress). When I was a little girl and my dad was struggling to set up a practise--and was generous in giving away services, in spite of his low income--my clothes were all handmade (and generally matched my brother's, which is wrong, wrong, wrong!). When I was entering the teen years and he was ill, my mother never budgeted any money for clothes. My mother cheerfully accepted hand-me-downs and thought it fun to shop at Goodwill, before it was cool. While I used to enjoy the creative aspect of imagining outfits and took this up in various sewing projects, we unfortunately lived in a wealthy and preppy 80s suburb. There was one girl in particular, Suzanne Cross, who used to humiliate me every day with comments about my clothes as I ran the gauntlet of cool kids in the cafeteria. I remember deep shame over this, and begging my mother to buy me a new dress when I won a prize and found out that I had to go up on stage at an assembly at school. In buying that dress, I entered a ladies' boutique for the first time in my life.

All of this sounds so ridiculous as I write it, but I think that one of the worst things about me--and that I'd most like to change--is the fact that clothes make a big difference in how I feel about myself. I am envious of women who don't struggle with this.

Actually, one of the sweetest, clearest and last memories that I have of my father involves clothes. I remember that for some reason we were in a mall when I was about twelve. This usually meant buying electronics or hockey equipment for one of my brothers or something but I can't remember if this was the case on that day. I guess my dad must have noticed me looking at an outfit in the window of a jeans store because I remember him asking me spontaneously if I'd like to have that outfit. It was a pair of pink jeans and a matching cream and pink striped t-shirt. I even remember the store. It was the first and last time that my dad ever bought me an item of clothing. I remember cherishing that outfit desperately, knowing that my dad had been sensitive enough to put himself in the shoes of a pre-teen girl. I was at a new and tough school at the time--during the brief period that we lived in Ni@gara Falls--and I wore that outfit until one day when I was roller skating on the street and I fell and ripped a hole in the knee of the pants. I remember being devastated, and even though my mom sewed a patch on them (a stupid, big daisy one-- leave it to my mom :)), I felt I'd ruined something beautiful.

I'm a stupid, sentimental old fool because sitting here thinking about those pink jeans and that top makes me feels as though I can truly remember my dad, if for a moment. It's like when I think about being seven or eight and sitting in his office at the veterinary practise-- him sitting there in his white coat and leafing through books with me and explaining the operations that different animals were to have. It's magic. It's like yesterday. I find it difficult to believe that I am so old now, and that he died in the 1980s.

So sorry...that was maudlin.

The funniest thing happened to me at the library today. I was wandering around a floor lost in thought, totally in the wrong area of the floor from the LC number associated with the book that I had written down to retrieve, and the first book upon which my eyes alighted was one of the J@ney Canuck books written by my grandmother's cousin in 1910. It was just there. I have never read this book and I have a suspicion that it is going to be awful--browsing led my eye to catch phrases about this nice Indian or that nice Indian and his glowing attributes-- but I figured that the volume's success in grabbing my attention in an institution of something like 8,000,000 items merited a checkout at least. Rural Saskatchewan in 1910 is a place I have not visited often. I'm just crazy about archival photos of prairie ghost towns , however.

I used to think, incidentally, about starting my own general interest--NOT FASHION--magazine for curious, smart, and healthy girls; it was going to be called Jan3y Canuck after the frontierswoman popularized in fiction by Emily at the turn of the 20th. I still think it is a nice idea, if you are a millionare and can afford to sink good money after bad into the completely non-lucrative Canadian publishing market.

So, finally, I'm going to be assuaging at least some of my wardrobe-related guilt at the seniors' residence tomorrow. I just get so much pleasure out of those visits though that it is I, not them, who is receiving the help. I've cajoled my lovely pianist friend who looks like Buddy H0lly to come and play some ragtime tunes so it should be FUN.

8:05 p.m. - 2006-06-09

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