It's been awhile.  Too long.

We didn't have Internet for awhile, my comp's hardware isn't configured for dumb dial-up and we have been ferociously job-hunting for four+ weeks.  I have applied to everything I can possibly attempt to be qualified for, and after 60 applications, I have received one call back.  That was Thursday morning, and I spent the entirety of the afternoon chasing down the lady.  Today is Friday, I've given up and decided to keep on trying elsewhere.  I have enough money for the summer, if I pinch pennis and only buy necessities, but he doesn't and he definitely has to get a job soon.

I worked at a marketing firm for a few days and he was working in landscape, but neither job panned out - a combination of management defects and poor working environments, led to both of us quitting.  And on the same day as well - a day when the heavens opened up, and I trudged home from work walking without an umbrella in my best suit, carrying an 800.00 set of knives on which I got a discount.

Our weekly entertainment includes a bowling night with 10 to 12 of Ryan's closest friends.  Apparently he is a legend and is close to many of his former high school friends, many of whom graduate university this month.  It is 5. dollars for three games of bowling, including taxes and shoes.  With so many people, we play for most of the night and last week, Ryan and I chose to be captains for separate teams.  My team name, courtesy one of his buddies was "Better than Benoit" - Better than Ryan, lol.

We found the place on a whim jogging by one day, and it is amazing how our little two-some has grown exponentially.

I'm getting writing done - I have a set a deadline for the end of the year with my newest book.  And then a search to find a great agent, which will be a new challenge because I sold the first book as an inexperienced, un-agented sixteen year-old.

I read, on average a book a day.  I read The Nanny Diaries today. 

And I'm becoming a Pilates/Yoga guru.  Mats and material galore, coupled with a 400.00 Pilates machine which we scored on sale at a Sears Outlet for 65. dollars!____________________________________________________

Today is the nicest day we have had in a long while - about twenty-five degrees, a nice contrast to the rain which has fallen almost every day and kept us cooped up inside.

I think I'm going to head out on the balcony and soak up a little!

I've found Inspiration is a fleeting thing; it becomes necessary to capture the 'perfect' thought immediately, to ensure that its essence is not lost to the world forever.  Write on scrap pieces of paper you find lying around.

This is poetry, these tiny fragments of imagination, not yet bloomed into their full entirely.

Good time with Ryan on my birthday.  Not so great at home - my mom is threatening to divorce my dad because he doesn't make enough money.  Everyone - brother, sister and dad, are oblivious but she thinks I am a good person to tell.  I DISAGREE>>.

I am Daddy's little girl.  He is losing his memory and will need someone to take care of him.  Mom thinks he is big enough to take care of himself - but I don't think that will be the norm in a time.  I might end up as caregiver down the road.

I really can't handle the thought of my parents - married 23 years - as anything but together.  And I won't, either.  After a long, long evening of bawling the night before my birthday, really don't feel much like discussion.

I am moving away, Ryan in-tow.  We finalized plans for our apartment - and we are now the proud co-renters of a gorgeous two-bedroom apartment in a fantastic neighbourhood, everything is within walking distance!  Shared accomodation with a 25-year old photography student named Tiffany who works every day, attends school and is never home.  The three of us seemed to have really hit it off!  And only a ten-minute bus ride to the University of Ottawa!

Ryan fell in love with her fat cat Lex so that's what that is all about.

I am alive with anticipation.

I'll be MIA for a little while...

Head home tomorrow, Thursday for my birthday on Saturday.

Return to Toronto on Tuesday to pick up a friend.

Make the long trip to Ottawa with the Boy + friend.

Return to Toronto on Friday, drop friend off, head home.

Finish final major term paper for Monday.

Return to Toronto to drop it off.  [Only two final exmas and one presentation to go!]

Then a much needed break - reading and writing, and oh so much time for me!

Not sure what I am going to do with myself.

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An updated snippet of the plumeria passage.  My apologies if flowers aren't your thing.

Quintuplet petals pressed together and pursed as an indolent lover’s kiss, sigh against themselves.  Named for Charles Plumier, the traditional flower of the lei is the plumeria, native to warm tropical areas and openly unforgiving of bitter Canadian winters.  Inside the hospitable home nonetheless multihued colours gush, exploding artifice.  The canary yellow flowers fade into titanium white while the warm, watermelon pink flower ripens into scarlet.  Shrimp.  Peach.  Rustic orange.  Grapefruit, even.  Wafting fragrance, a floral blend of the purity and romance of Hoonanea, Hawaiian word to signify the activity of ‘passing time in pleasure’.  It is the collision of scents:  crispness of fruit, citrus tang, spicy cinnamon, smooth coconut, the enigmatic jasmine.  Its bouquet is utterly ineffable.

Stripped of fleshy, leather-like leaves, the broad, widely spaced moist branches were wrenched, in the early hours of a dew-licked Hawaiian morning from glistening trees and shrubs of varying heights, the tallest standing swollen with pride at forty inches.  Found in Hawaiian backyards, resort paradises, gardens and local cemeteries, the prolific trees appear to flourish with minimal continual upkeep.  A crystal vase half-full with water holds the flowering limbs in luscious posy:  evokes the brilliance of vibrant, waxy blooms hastening together shamefully.  Flowers yawning or ajar, fastened half-shells coil like seashells.  Petals half-hooded like tulips.  Clasped as the hands of innocent children kneeling in prayer, pleading for salvation.  Wide elliptical petals, reflexed at points, fashion the rainbow quilt of fresh plumeria in ecstatic embrace.  Forgotten blooms separate from rigid stems and sticky yolk centres gazing like a single, marbled slice of lemon.  Blossoms slip, stumble, stagger, and then fall soundlessly to their demise.  A pocketful of petals lays scattered across the smooth bench of oak panelling.

A paroxysmal pinch of colour, the plumeria spray engages the eye, breathing, existing before expiring in the very same moment.  It is remarkable because some piece of it, either one of large or small quantity lives and dies with every breath.

This SARS outbreak is blown-up over-the-top here in Ontario.  Province-wide, soon-to-be upgraded to national [health] emergency for possible new cases of the fatal, enigmatic disease currently sweeping across the globe.  Reuters states Ontario will:  "quarantine hundreds of people in their homes to combat [the] mysterious respiratory disease and quell growing public unease".

Public unease seems scarier to me than the presence of the illness in parts of the city. 

Go for a simple dentist appointment at the neighbouring hospital, as yet unaffected by the illness, and treated like a possible criminal.  Spitting questions; name, rank, serial number; curt response; gaudy, yellow, sanitary face masks with elastic straps, for all.  One question asked, no answer offered.  I was on my own, amidst a swollen, yammering crowd of glaring police officers, fluttering staff and whining ambulances.

And no one seems to know anything - regarding the hospital blocking most exits except for main entrance and emergency, restricting access, cancellation of appointments and doctors simply not showing up for shift.  Trust me I would have preferred an approved cancellation, but was fearful they would still charge me for services unrendered.  Cruel world when you lack dental insurance.

Scarier to know nothing, instead of everything.

On another unrelated note, Divorce is such a nasty word.  It is difficult on the couple involved, children, friends and family on either side.  Periodically I talk to the man I dated at the beginning of last summer, around the same time that Ryan and I finally met-up after months of hearing from Capt. B. about his fabulous son.  Maybe there were a couple days of overlap, but I'll never tell

Anyways, this man who at the time was separated, is now in the throes of a dirty, contentious divorce.  He was granted full-custody of their two children - he is possibly a better parent, certainly a smarter, more conscientious one.  Courts have overturned this initial decision and are giving away his precious 5yr.old baby to her mom, possibly unfit and neglectful.

Breaks my heart, his devotion to that little girl is so absolute.  He refuses to talk about the impact it will have on him, likes to hold it all inside until the dam breaks - flood. 

Just hope he keeps his head higher than the water.