just in case you missed it...

i’ve been getting some emails lately from people who didn’t see the last post because it didn’t show up in their reader, so they just thought i’d stopped blogging altogether.

no.

if i stopped blogging altogether, my brain would blow up.

i’ve just moved. i’m now at

www.suzykrauseandtheskyscrapers.blogspot.com

things are just kind of the same there as they were here. 

fizzy blood

on saturday, barclay and tim and karz and i drove to manitoba to see a group of friends that we hadn't been with in a while.

i'll be up front with you right now and admit that, yes, we did blast 'since u been gone' and sing along to it at the top of our tortured lungs even though it was vastly out of our range of singing capabilities. we couldn't help ourselves and though that may be a weakness on our part, we like it better that way.

but the point is not that, the point is the people that we traveled with and the ones we traveled to.

i can't even describe to you this group of people or how they make me feel, so i won't. this degree of friendship is one of those things that i don't have enough good words for. if i said i loved them, you'd think i loved them, but it's better than that.  

i will say, though, that today my blood is flowing fizzy and bright through my veins twice as fast as usual, and i love the feeling.

i love and am loved and that is probably the best way a girl could be.

please pardon the recent obsession with powerlines and post-it notes

there is a cathedral down the street.

and down the street from the cathedral is the bakery.

and down the street from the bakery is a clothing shop with a snobby owner.

and down the street from the clothing shop with a snobby owner is the paper shop.

"today is going to be wonderful"

it says that on the sidewalk in front of the paper shop. 

someone painted it there a while ago, so i'm not sure which day they're referring to.

 but i think it's today.

{i've got a hunch.}

oh! good.

i forgot about the library.

i thought about it, but i forgot about it just as quick.

yesterday, i remembered.

i was having an overly sick day, but the couch got hard after about an hour and megavideo timed me out so i couldn't finish the episode of project runway that i was watching and the temperature sheepishly peeked its sorry head just above freezing {it's not supposed to last long, but it's here and that's enough} and i thought, "it's nice outside; i should go visit my friend at the flower shop."

because, in case you didn't know, my friend works at a flower shop. 

in case you didn't know that.

i made it a quarter of the way to the flower shop when i discovered a thing: i wasn't probably going to make it. 

so i thought, "i can't just give up, but maybe i'll go visit my friend at the paper shop instead."

because, in case you didn't know, there is a lovely lady who works at the paper shop and she always remembers who i am and acts like she's happier to see me than anybody else. even though i know she's probably just like that to everyone all the time. 

i still feel special.

i made it almost half of the way from where i was to where the paper shop was, which from my house is about half of the way to the flower shop, when i found something out: i wasn't probably going to make it. 

so i thought, "maybe i'll just go home."

but then i looked up and saw the library.

so i thought, "oh! good."

the library is magic, in the loosest sense of the word, because you can go inside for free and then you can have anything you find there for free. 

{but not the computers, you can't have those, though.}

i always sit on the floor in front of the cds and feel like a crazy person.

i feel like i need to take the whole cabinet home with me. 

i sit on my gloves and lean against my backpack like it's a turtle shell, and i flip through the cases and i grin like a fantastic idiot. 

i can pick a cd based on cover art, based on a feeling or a foggy memory of someone saying it was a good one, based on one song i heard once at a friend's house or at a show. 

you just can't do that when money's involved.

but the point is not that.

the point is that i found a completely fantastic mittenfull of stuff--some cds i hadn't heard in years, some i'd been contemplating buying, some i'd never heard before. 

and i left with all my money. 

all of it. 

not one cent less.

i quickly made the trek home, deciding which cd i would listen to first and taking pictures with my cell phone while pretending to talk on it {because there was a lot of traffic and i didn't want anyone to think i was taking pictures of them}.

it was a neon day.

so far, i've listened to keane's under the iron sea four times and wintersleep's welcome to the night sky twice.

have you been to the library lately?

PS: if you could go HERE and click the vote for this idea button, i'd just think you were the best person on the internet. 

good help is not hard to find

it was ok, except that we don't have any lettuce or celery or backup milk or sprouts or pretty much anything healthy because of an overly helpful man in the bakery section of the grocery store.

i've always known that i look pathetic and helpless at the best of times, but at that moment i was lugging around two baskets of groceries because i'm consistently too dumb to get a cart and my arms were falling off a little bit and i guess it took the overall appearance of helplessness to the next level.

i was reaching for a loaf of country harvest flax bread and wishing i had a bread maker when a guy appeared out of nowhere and asked if i needed help.

i said no.

actually, i said no, thank you. polite smile. polite turnaway.

then i had to say it again as he reached for my grocery baskets.

i made a feeble attempt to collect my things and walk away, but he was too fast for me. he was now successfully, awkwardly, holding half of my groceries.

i had a moment of panic and the fleeting thought: i'm being robbed.

and then a moment of clarity as i remembered that i hadn't actually paid for any of this stuff yet.

i stretched out my hand gently towards "my" things. "thanks, i got it, i still have to hit the produce--"

but he appeared not to have heard me--and he snatched my groceries from me and carried them to the checkout. he was on a mission. it was like he was still trying to earn some sort of boy scout badge for helping people and his time was almost up.

and me, i had to kind of run and push through the crowd to keep up with his long-legged stride and by the time i caught up, my food was being rung through by a most depressed looking lady.

and i suppose that's ok, except that now we can't make salads.

on my way back home

okay, i think i'm back.

am i back? 

is this thing on? 

check, check. hello?

it's been a movie week. 

on my way back home on sunday, the song by that name came on and i felt like credits were rolling and the movie was over and everything that had happened over the course of the last few days hadn't really happened in real life.



it was the same feeling as i had after watching that foreign film at the library last year: though i didn't really understand everything that had gone on, it was beautiful and heartbreaking and real but in a somewhere else sort of way.

but then i parked in my driveway and turned the car off and the movie was still playing, even after the credits stopped rolling. 

and i guess that those weren't the credits, it was just another scene. 

i've always loved moments like that, where everything settles like dirt after a windstorm, even if it's not a perfect or necessarily happy ending. because you probably learned something, even if all you learned is that life is hard sometimes. 

and then you get up and keep going. 

printable valentine's day postcards

i know the type of people you all are. 

you've already scoured etsy for really cute valentines day cards and ordered them probably a month ago, addressed them the day you got them and placed them in some cute basket by the door so they're ready to give out to your friends on monday.

me, no. 

in case any of you out there are like me, and hadn't even given monday a thought til right this second, i made some printable valentine's day cards over brekkie this morning, and i'm willing to share. they're nothing classy, but they're free! free is always two thumbs up.

just stick some pretty paper in your printer, arrange these however you need on a word document, and print.

what's the word? 

presto. presto is the word.

so in conclusion: email me if you want the word doc or the jpegs for any of these.
{itwalkedonmypillow@hotmail.com}

ps: thanks for the kind emails and comments asking if i was ok this week. i am. :)

disclaimer

i don't know how much i'll be able to post this week. just because of reasons.


maybe i'll just update the whatever you do do not click this button button a bunch, and we'll leave it at that.

let's all laugh at the crying girl

i woke up this morning in kind of a hopeless mood.
the sun was tentatively peeking into our bedroom, casting cautious rays on the bedspread so as not to wake us too abruptly. i blinked and involuntarily slid into consciousness.

there's usually a moment upon waking where everything is beautiful and nothing hurts--the moment is often shattered by reality. this morning, i don't think i had the moment for even a second before i remembered the things that happened last night.

here's the situation:

barclay has hotels on the light blue properties, the orange properties, the red, and the green. so by the time i had enough money to build, the hotels were mostly used up and did you know that in the monopoly rules, you can only build until you run out of buildings? that means: no using the extra playing pieces as hotels or crumpling up gum wrappers for houses.

so last night before bed, i landed on new york and had to come up with 1000 dollars. i only had $200 and most of my properties were mortgaged. so i had to start removing houses, for a major loss of money.

i said i needed to sleep on it, that i'd make my decision in the morning: sell or bankruptcy. i really hate to lose, but if i'm going to anyway, i don't want to drag it out.

anyway, barclay's at work now so i don't have to make my decision til he gets home.
to make myself feel better, i'm laughing at this little girl's pain:



if you'll now excuse me, i have to go prepare. my first two students are coming today, and i shall officially be a piano teacher.

i didn't post yesterday

and i don't really feel like posting today.
but i will, because it's what i do. i post.
i'm working on lots of things lately. i keep telling people, "yes, i'll start working on that tomorrow!" and soon i have twenty hundred projects on the go. most of it's just for fun, but that's the problem because unfun things weigh so much more than fun things, and they sink to the bottom while i bob for fun things near the surface.
someone needs to come along and give my head a good shove to the bottom of the barrel so i can get a mouthful of unfun things that simply need to get done.