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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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We always said that we were different. But we know now that we weren't.

So Claus is here, as I mentioned. He found an apartment. He paid too much for it, of course, as he did the Clausy thing and panicked. But he will be living 4 short blocks or 350m from me, in the best part of the city, so all is well.

Of course he is joining the working poor--as I cruelly pointed out to him--as he will be paying more than 30% of his entry-level salary on housing. :)

Sigh.

I'm such a charming friend.

Sister, shall we say.

So I had to renew my driver's license today. Every fifth birthday. And a new picture was required. And my old picture was so lovely. :( I now have a Ronald picture...

All of the license bureaus in the big O are out in the suburbs and I don't own a car (ironically (hmmm...can you ironically not own a car, really?), don't you think? And I have absolutely no intention of buying one...), so C. and I decided that I would run the nine miles to the nearest office open in the afternoon on a Saturday, and he would bike alongside. It was a rather nice day but I got quite stiff whilst waiting patiently with my number in the office, before we were able to commence the journey back home. (Old age, you know...)

And about half-way home C cajoled me into stopping at a charity BBQ--at which I couldn't, of course, resist having a hamburger--so the remainder of my run home was spent clutching my stomach. (I stopped thinking-- by choice-- at some point in my twenties, it would seem. ;))

So I love my job and still HATE my hair. Larry's guy gave me a good cut on Thursday, but there's really nothing that one can do about the Ronald McDonald colour until it fades, and the damage from the bleaching underneath is irreparable. So each day I count the mm of regrowth and pray for the next six weeks to fly by rapidly so that I will have the pleasure of a boycut of fresh, soft hair.

I know that you're sick of hearing about my hair. Trust me, everyone in my life is too. :) They're about to strangle me.

Yet, strangely, they are still taking me out for drinks for my birthday tonight. :) I suspect that the place will be loud enough that they will be unable to hear me. ;)

So. Thirty-seven tomorrow. With so little to show for it. ;)

A friend asked me what my big plans are for my birthday--Larry, in fact--and I realized that my fondest wish is to go to see a movie about a relationship dissolving in the face of Alzheimers. More or less.

I'm just a barrel of laughs, aren't I?

I should really tell you the story of my hair cut Thursday. The salon was truly in an industrial park, beside an auto body shop. I kid you not. It was badly decorated and run by a single, enigmatic guy. I liked the guy, a great deal, in spite of the fact that he spent the cut telling me about his wife and kids, and alternately telling me in that surprisingly inoffensive manner that only a very few men master that I'm sexy--if your hairdresser isn't there to make you feel attractive, who is? ;)--and trying to find out tidbits about my personal life. At intervals he left me, to chat in Arabic and cut the hair of the various old men who entered the shop. I sat and reflected. It was odd. And amusing. And oddly therapeutic. And lovely--all in good fun.

Since the salon owner is a friend of Larry's, I took up his offer of a lift to the bus stop after he closed up shop for the evening. It was rather amusing. Here I was, after my first day of work at my new job and in a nice pale grey skirt and pumps and pretty blouse with puffed short-sleeves and shot through with a tiny metallic stripe, with a freshly coiffed, flaming red mane of hair, being driven by a chubby stranger in an SUV to a bus stop at a strip mall in the nether suburbs of the poorest part of the city. (The bus took FOREVER to return me to downtown...) And sitting in the idling bus at the strip mall, looking around at the immigrant faces and chatting with the Sikh bus driver and the little old lady with the bad hairpiece who was clutching her grocery bags for dear life...I felt at peace. I felt like me again, for the space of about half an hour, if you know what I mean. Kind of a lost me--maybe the me that I was at twenty-five, at fifteen, five. Unencumbered and uncritical of myself. Smiling.

I just loathe feeling inauthentic (referring to the red hair, here). But with the windows down in the SUV and the happy, charming chatter of a stranger (the hairdresser) about long marriages and childrearing--and love, in general--I started to feel new and free and hopeful in a way that I haven't felt in YEARS. It reminded me of times when I traveled with Andrew in my early twenties, when I would take our laundry from our backpacks and walk as far as I could away from him in a strange city to a a strange laundromat. I'd make a day of it: I'd check out the strange houses; I'd people watch in dark laundromats whilst sipping coffee and sketching little, noticed things--playbills, people, the garden across the street, a bit of fence.


So Claus rented an apartment on Waverley Street. I lived on Waverley Street once. The summer that I lived there I bought the Sarah Harmer CD You Were Here. I played it over and over, with the windows open--in the sun and with the rain coming down outside--in that lovely little flat with its old fireplace and sunroom and light dappled by the old trees outside. I loved that little place. So today I have the CD playing over and over. There's a nice coming-full-circle element to all of this, since that summer I worked at the very same department as that at which I started on Thursday!

I did some interesting things pertaining to Parl. committee meetings on the economic security of senior women in the last couple of days, by the way. And I have such an interesting project upcoming on the gender wage gap. I really think that I am going to love my job. :)

Now to pursuade Clausy to take me to see Away from Her at the Bytown3...

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3:45 p.m. - 2007-05-12

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