passport

Ruth and ScottM came over last night to watch Manhattan on our DVD player. We ordered in Swiss Chalet, and Scott brought over something called halvah for dessert, which is a Middle Eastern confection made from sesame seeds and honey. Fun movie. Yummy halvah.

I went running just before they arrived, out to Coronation Park and back. It felt like a tougher run than usual even though I've done the distance before, possibly because it was warmer. Or maybe it was all the popcorn I ate with Ruth the night before (she came over Monday night to hang out :-)). Should be interesting to see how much tougher the run is in the full summer heat!

In any case, I've decided to stick to my current running distance for the next couple weeks instead of continuing to push it further every time. According to my pedometer, it's about a 3.5 mile route, and I do it in about an hour (walking at the beginning and at the end for warm-up and cool-down, some stretching, running in the middle). I'm still the slowest runner in the world, but that suits me fine. So far, this running experience hasn't been anything like my first foray into running ten years ago (when I quit after only a few weeks because of knee pains).

I applied for a passport renewal this morning since my passport expires next month. The passport application process has changed somewhat since I last renewed, obviously because of the Sept.11 attacks. The application is longer, for instance, and it takes a minimum of two weeks to get your new passport instead of same-day processing. I'll be picking mine up the day before I leave for Marcon.

When I arrived 20 minutes before the passport office opened this morning, there was already a big line-up ahead of me. I came prepared with my MP3 player (loaded with a mixture of Ron Hawkins, Hawksley Workman, and XTC) and a book (Animist by Eve Forward, a gift from Michelle).

I hate being stuck in a line-up with nothing to do. In fact, I think I'm going to add this to my list of Official Peeves on my personal homepage. Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised to find that once the office opened at 8 am, I only had to wait about fifteen minutes before it was my turn.

I have to admit that I breathed a sigh of relief when the woman behind the counter stamped my documents after checking them; I haven't had much luck with bureaucracy lately. Hopefully the CCRA will be as satisfied with my audit documents as well. :-)

Today's Blatherpic:

The photo at the top of today's Blathering is of doll that my father brought from Japan for Sara or Annie. She even had real cotton underwear (yes, I looked)!

birthday

It's my Mom's birthday today; she would have been 65. It's hard to imagine her being that age (she died from cancer thirteen years ago). In my mind's eye, I imagine her being exactly the same, just with a little more grey in her hair.

I wonder if Mom ever felt ripped off, having her birthday and Mother's Day (which is this Sunday) so close together? We didn't really appreciate her back then; she did all the housecleaning and cooking for the family, except for those rare special occasions. like her birthday and Mother's Day, when she got to sit back and watch us making a huge fuss over something she did on a daily basis.

For the first few years after Mom died, my strongest memories of her were the images I remembered from the hospital, of her lying in her blue hospital gown, mouth half-open, eyes open but staring into space.

I remember how once, when I thought she had been lost in her own morphine-induced dream world for weeks, I had whispered in her ear just for the heck of it, "Mom, can you hear me? If you can hear me, blink your eyes". We had all been taking turns sitting by her side reading to her, talking to her, staring out the hospital window at the snow.

We had a ghetto blaster softly playing Mom's favourite music; someone had told us that the hearing is the last thing to go in cases like my Mom's, but I had strong doubts that my Mom was aware of anything in those last weeks.

Which was why I was so shocked when, in response to my question, my Mom deliberately blinked her eyes once. Not just blinked, but squeezed them shut very hard and then opened them wide again, as if to make very sure that I couldn't mistake it for a coincidence.

And then I was horrified, struck by the realization that my Mom had probably been aware of everything that had been going on around her this entire time these past weeks, aware of the pain in her body and of the fluids building up in her lungs as she struggled to keep breathing, aware that she was dying.





I talked to her a lot more after that, but she never responded to anything else again. Just that one blink, and that was it. I had nightmares a lot back then and after she died, mainly focussed on that one acknowledgement of awareness, that last heartbreaking attempt to communicate ("I'm still here!") before she finally faded away.

It's a strange experience for me as I browse through old family albums, seeing Mom as a young girl. At my age, Mom had already moved away from her home country to marry someone she had never met and had had three children.

It took many years, but my happier memories of Mom have came back, memories of how she sounded when she laughed, how comforting her cool hand was on my forehead when I was sick, how she used to tell me stories from Japan. I want to remember her the way she would have wanted to be remembered.

If Mom was alive today, I would have liked to take her out to lunch, maybe to Fune, and ask her all the questions I've been wondering about as an adult: What was her childhood in Japan like? What was it like coming here? Had she been happy? Did she harbour secret regrets? I just wish I had grown up enough before she died to get to know her better, if that makes any sense at all.

(Today's entry is part of an On Display collab. Topic: "Moving on/moving away".)

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My audit paper-digging is going pretty well, considering how innately disorganized I am and the fact that I handed over most Inkspot-related papers to Xlibris when they acquired Inkspot. I'm also grateful to old Inkspot helpers who still had their invoices from that time!

I'm really missing my writing. :-(

Hopefully the papers I drop off at my tax lawyer's later this week will be enough to make the CCRA happy, and I can get on with my life.

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Today's Blatherpics:

	Mom cooking in the kitchen when I was five months old.
	Ruth, me and Jim.
	Sara demonstrating her climbing abilities on Sunday. She can climb pretty much anything these days. (That's Andy in the background)

Sunday dinner

Had fun at my sister's place last night. Andy & Christine (who recently found out she is cancer-free, yay!) & Elspeth, Luisa & Ronnie & Michael, Ruth & Kaarel & Sara & Annie, and Jeff & me. Reid's at the Macworld conference in California right now.





Very cool to see all the kids playing together. I can still remember when Michael was born...and he's 12 now! It blows me away that Luisa is going to be the mother of a teenager next year. I feel like I've been in a time machine lately.





Everyone got introduced to Stripe and Fluffy, Sara's and Annie's new pets. Stripe pooped in Jeff's lap and then fell asleep. Nice life, eh?





Dessert was "make your own sundae". Ruth and Kaarel set up four different types of ice cream, chocolate and candy sprinkles, chocolate syrup, cut-up fresh fruit. Luisa had also brought yummy homemade almond-banana muffins. I pigged out on everything, of course. :-)





Back to digging up invoices and other paperwork for my audit today, oh joy. Jeff and Helen are off to the cottage this afternoon. Jeff wanted to stay around and be an emotional support, but I've told him that it would make me feel better knowing that at least one of us is enjoying themselves at the cottage.

Today's officemusic: Ron Hawkins.

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Today's Blatherpics:

	Ronnie, Reid's and Luisa's son. He can also make each eye move independently of the other. He was delighted when he first discovered that this freaks me out. :-)
	Annie in her soccer uniform. She had her first soccer practice this morning and didn't want to take the uniform off. I've asked Ruth if I can attend one of the Sunday morning practices sometime...I find the idea of a bunch of 5-year-olds chasing around a soccer ball is incredibly appealing. :-)
	A note I saw on the fridge door, from Sara about Ruth. "My mom is so great my mom is so nice and she cooks very nice rice but sometimes she wakes me way to early for school! Sometimes I feel like I'm in a big wet pool" (hey, I didn't realize this was a poem until Rand pointed it out, duh)
	Andy bonds with Stripe, with Sara supervising.
	Sara climbs Jeff, Annie tries to climb Jeff.
	Annie took this photo of me just before bedtime.

poll: solitude

Had a wonderfully lazy Saturday yesterday. Did a downtown Toronto walkabout in the morning, dropped by The Running Room at Yonge and Wellington, bought a hat and a neoprene belt that would hold my water, camera, and Walkman so I won't have to keep borrowing Jeff's cycling backpack every time I go running.

Went to a restaurant in BCE place for breakfast, had a decadent plate of Belgian waffles with strawberries and maple syrup and whipped cream, finished Tami Hoag's Dust to Dust (a fast mystery/suspense read), read some more The Discovery of Poetry by Frances Mayes, did some people-watching.





As I get older, I come to value solitude more and more. Not sure why this is, exactly. I enjoy hanging out with Jeff, with friends, with family...but I start going nuts if I don't get regular time by myself, apart from work. This is another great thing about running, I'm finding; I can do it anywhere, outside of the crowded gym.

I've never been a social exerciser, really. I'll do it from time to time (Larkin & I used to go to aerobics class together when I lived in Orangeville), but I tend to prefer being antisocial when it comes to working out. The people at The Running Club were encouraging me to come out with their beginners' running club, but I think I'll stick to being antisocial for now. :-)





TODAY'S POLL:
How much do you value solitude? Is it something you seek out or avoid? Have you ever gone to the movies by yourself by choice? Do you have any solitude rituals? Are you more comfortable by yourself or with other people?

Answer here.





In the afternoon, Jeff and I drove up to Orangeville and had lunch at my mom-in-law's newly re-opened restaurant, then hung out at her house afterward. I read my book on a recliner chair in the deck and fell asleep in the sun. So did Jeff.

A very relaxing weekend. :-) Tomorrow, I plunge back into CCRA audit research.

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Today's Blatherpics:

	Jeff and Larkin in Oasis. Larkin is waiting for Jeff to decide what he wants to order.
	Oasis cups.
	Oasis.
	My lunch! I ordered the special, which was penne with smoked mozzerella, grilled vegetables, artichokes, and Italian vinaigrette. VERY yummy.
	Jeff snoozing in the sun at his mom's place.

spider-man

So I saw Spider-Man yesterday. If you're the type that would rather not read anything about the movie before seeing it, you should probably skip the rest of this Blathering. If you're responding to this Blathering in Blatherchat, please avoid posting spoilers, thanks.

I wasn't disappointed; I really liked this movie! I saw it with Parki, Jeff and ScottM; none of them liked it as much as I did.

I thought Tobey Maguire made a great Spiderman, and managed to convey the right amount of angst from the original comic without overdoing it. His yearning for whats-her-face (can't remember her name, sorry) was entirely believeable even though the situation itself was (by necessity) so cliched. I'm such a sucker for romance.

My second-favourite character in the movie was J.K. Simmons as J. Jonah Jameson, the editor of The Daily Bugle. He played the character exactly as I remember him to be from the comic. Those who saw Cider House Rules (in which Tobey Maguire starred) might also recognize Simmons from his role as Candy's father. He also plays Dr. Emil Skoda in the television series, Law & Order.

I liked the fact that it wasn't one of those non-stop action flicks (though I wouldn't have been surprised it had turned out that way), that there was attention paid to character development and interesting personal interactions, adding an unexpected level of complexity to what I had only figured was going to be a fluffy, superhero action flick.

Today's Blatherpic: Parki and Scott, at Fune last night.