Cocooning

Today I'd like nothing more than to cocoon myself in flannel and fleece. I'd like to unplug the phone and watch bad daytime TV, eating comfort food along the way. Grilled cheese sandwiches and maybe some icecream. I'd like to hide away in my own space not answering to anyone, only to my own whims and fancies. No contact lenses, no clothes that aren't of the above mentioned flannel or fleece, slippers instead of socks.

I want to be isolated from the cold, from people, from the world. Just for a day. Those who know me know it can't be much more than a day. But, unfortunately, it can't be this day. This day is already spoken for.

Maybe tomorrow? Maybe March 9th? Maybe some random too-far-away-day? Maybe.

The Girl and The Boy

They call me Auntie.

Or rather she does, he doesn't talk yet. (Although the other day I'm sure he said my name). They are the children of my heart, the offspring of two of my dearest friends who I choose to name as family, because that's how they feel to me. They are the first children to regularly fall asleep in my arms as I do the sleepy dance, or at my side as I read to them.

She and I paint toenails and discuss paleontology, dinosaurs and favorite colours. (when she grows up she wants to be a paleontologist, an astronaut and a veterinarian - I hope her parents have good RESP's). She is always thoughtful, always considering the why and the how. You can not fool her, or gloss over a tough question. Her vocabulary astounds me on an almost daily basis. We cuddle on the couch and watch videos, we play games and mess hair and she invariably teaches me something. I hope that I teach her as well.

He is smaller and all boy; a tumble of energy, bouncing off things, falling, getting up and running again. A constant smiling boy: even when he's tired it's easy to wring a smile or a giggle from him. He goes to me for comfort more easily than she did at his age. He always seems to get great amusement from his sister - they are almost always comrades (almost always, for now anyway).

I love them both more than I can express. Their presence in my life has brought a dimension that I never expected, for which I am eternally grateful. I marvel at the feeling, when I leave them, of exuberant exhaustion that leads to a smiling peace.

I love those kids. And why not?

They call me auntie.

Tripping tongue

I've lost the words. My tongue trips over even simple things. Hello. Goodbye. I make less and less sense with each repetition of the script. My ad libs don't help matters at all. I forget where these words were headed and they become suspended in mid-verb. I don't know if I've accomplished anything or just filled the world with more gibberish. Let's hope for the former because if not, I'm in big trouble.

"Aren't you tired of them?"

"Don't you ever get sick of them?"

The people who asked me these questions just don't seem to get it. It's like asking if you're sick of your favorite food (or sick of air).

Although I guess you could, conceivably, be sick of your favorite food if you'd had it 7 nights in a row or something but let's be honest: If, on any given day, you came home to your favorite meal awaiting you, you'd be pretty stoked wouldn't you? And if you didn't eat it and the next day you learned that you could never have that meal again wouldn't you regret not having it that last time?

Music (for me) is "food for the soul" and my soul doesn't tire of my favorite music. True, there's the odd day when they don't suit my mood and so their CDs get shuffled out in favour of something else. But I'll never tire of them as an experience, the live show, the full meal deal. I can not explain it. It is as abstract and as personal as why I like the colour blue. And for those of you who are not satisfied with my answers, I'm sorry, but I just really like them.

They've touched something in me and have become so much a part of who I am that no, I can not tire of them. It would be impossible. Even after so many shows I can no longer count and so many plays on the CD player that some CDs have had to be replaced with new copies. Even after sore feet and lungs battered by second hand smoke and that bruise from that girl's elbow that time. I will be that first (only) person on the dance floor. I will cheer and clap and dance and lose myself in it on every occasion and at every opportunity.

They are my favorite musical meal and I will continue to come back for seconds and take even the smaller helpings when and where I can... until the time I hope never comes - when there's none left.

Conglomerates and amalgamations - a disclaimer

Sometimes when I write, either here or elsewhere, an idea that I've had meshes with another idea which meshes with an emotion I felt then and oh, maybe then too. And so what I eventually write is not always inspired by specifics but rather a strange melding of feelings and thoughts that connected in my mind for that one instant before I wrote them down. And so if anything seems a bit too specific to those of you who read this, it probably isn't. Not entirely anyway. Pieces are but not the whole and I just wanted to make that clear.