Wuddaweeeek

That's Shane Koyczan, Mike McGee and Anis Mojgani - three of my all time favourite poets. Yes.
That's my poet hero The Svelte Ms Spelt dressed as Dead Hunter S Thompson, and me, dressed as Marcel Marceau.

I haven't posted since the beginning of the week, and here it is the end, so this post may ramble a bit, and it will contain:

A CONFESSION
SEVERAL LENGTHY DESCRIPTIONS
A RECIPE FOR BANANA LOAF
A LINK TO SOME RANDOM SOMETHING
AN ENDING

1. A Confession
I have set up a facebook account. Lots of my friends are on facebook, and I kept getting those chippy little email invitations, so I signed up. It is intriguing and fun and you can waste a lot of time on it. I am determined not to ignore my blog in favour of facebook, because they are two different things. At the same time, I don't want to increase my time at the computer, so I guess I'll just have to learn to type faster.

2. Several Lengthy Descriptions
This is quite possibly the most stressful and delightful week I have had since early summer. Some of it I just can't tell about, but much of it is just business as usual in this full-up life of mine, but just a little too full these days. My workload at the office has gone off the charts. I feel like I am not keeping up adequately with anything, especially my non-favourite detaily-bits. I got a friendly reminder that I have not reconciled my personal cell phone expenditures for 12 months (it's supposed to be done monthly). Well, I have been keeping my phone bills clamped together with an attractive bulldog clip, so I am aware of them, but now I am compelled to do something about them. It's a horrible, boring, icky-picky job that takes about 15 minutes if you do it monthly. Tomorrow I will have 12 X 15 minutes worth of it uk. I am loving the parts about working with my lovely co-workers and the staff that I supervise. I am especially grateful that my counterparts are feeling similarly overwhelmed and are willing to share that feeling (it's better than being the only one in the place who can't keep up) but Oh my, please slow down. Somebody please give me a big hammer to smash my phone and a giant vacuum cleaner to suck up the stuff on my desk and my floor and falling off the stack on top of my filing cabinet. I'd like to start over. I'm sure I can do a better job next time.

Around the edges of work-wak, I am having some absolutely tip-top experiences. Monday was the Dead Poets' Slam at the Van Slam. I have posted a couple of pictures here so you have an idea. Everyone dresses up as a dead poet and performs the work of that poet. We sold the show out for the first time in several years, and the costumes and performances were stellar. Such a good night. I showed up as Marcel Marceau, which is a poetry slam in-joke. Mimes are mockingly reviled by slam poets because "Poets are the lowest paid artistic profession in the world. Mimes get paid more than poets, and they have NOTHING TO SAY." So when Marcel Marceau died this year, I felt sad, but I knew it was my opportunity to be him at the Dead Poets' Slam. I wore the makeup and a peculiar costume, and I did not speak all night. I think it was that last part that rendered me pretty much unrecognizable. It was a weird experience just keeping 100% mum for 3 hours, and even weirder seeing people and knowing that some of them did not know it was me. I have a series of photos showing how I put the costume together, but they are stuck in the other camera that is not talking to the computer right now. Eventually they will befriend each other again, and I'll post the pics. It's pretty cool, changing from a mom to a mime. The transformation took about an hour and a quarter.

Then on Tuesday we had Solomon Sparrow's Electric Whale Revival. Poetry House hosted this show. Five of the best performance poets in the world came to our town and did two back to back shows. Mike McGee, Buddy Wakefield, Anis Mojgani, Dan Leaman and Derrick Brown put on a show that defies description. It was the end of their three-month cross-America tour, in a van. The venue was The Cottage Bistro, a warm little cafe on Main Street South. We had about 100 people in the house for the first show. The vibe was just good, with everyone so open to the men on the stage and what they had to say and show and sing. It felt sometimes like we were one big body, breathing together. I found myself crying several times, and laughing my face off when I wasn't crying. It was just that good. I cried in the car on the way home too. I think I just had so much stuff to let go, and the show opened me up beautifully. It felt good.

Wednesday was Halloween. I took off work a bit early to come home and get ready. Usually we are so prepared for Halloween, but this year it didn't happen that way. I got the decorations out of the attic just the day before. I borrowed a staple gun (ours being temporarily misplaced) dug out the ladder, laid out the lights and skulls and carved a couple of pumpkins quickity quick. All the while I was feeling bad because I wasn't organized to get dressed up again (I like to dress up to greet the trick-or-treaters) and I had not baked (don't laugh, but I always have some cookies and squares to offer the moms and dads along with cups of hot coffee). I did manage to set up coffee but no cakes, and I was feeling pretty glum. I thought "I hope nobody says "where's the cookies?" because I'll either burst into tears or attack them with this borrowed staple gun. Luckily nobody said anything. It's funny how we set up expectations for ourselves, and when we allow ourselves off the hook, the world keeps turning. So anyway, Andy got home in time to do a spectacular lighting and spook-ifying of the carport with the stuff I'd dug up, while I drove Fi and her friend Shan to a Halloween party. I got home in time to make some grill cheeses and set up in the carport. We got almost 200 trick-or-treaters, and we sat out for an hour or so because it's more fun than going to the door. Our neighbours Sol and Wendy were out there too, with their new fog machine, so the whole double carport looked swampy and eerie. The little (and bigger) kids in their costumes were very entertaining. My favourite: 2 eleven-year-old girls with capes, tights and underpants on their heads, dressed as "Super Miyoko" and "Super Kaitlyn." I just love that kind of thing.

Today I went into the office obscenely early to try to stay on top but I just toppled off the heap and headed in for a full day at a Labour Relations course I've been taking on Thursdays. It was very good. The excellent news today was that my name was drawn to get a couple of hockey tickets in our employee group ticket draw. So Andy and Alex will get to see Colorado play the Canucks next Friday. Alex is over the moon. It's hard to get hockey tickets.

I came home in time to make a nice supper, then do an hour of work from the office and I'm starting to feel better about it. It's just work after all, and this too shall pass. I think I was a very grumpy bunny for the first hour I was in the house, but everyone pretended I was just my usual self until I calmed down and stopped acting mean and bossy and crabby.

So I think that's the detailed description. I hope you are still reading.

3. (What was 3? I have to scroll up... to remember)

A RECIPE FOR BANANA LOAF
1. Put a gorilla in a bowl
2. Stir the gorilla 15 times with your left hand, 14 times with your right hand
3. If the gorilla is still in the bowl, it's probably past its "best before" date. Do not eat it.
4. Go to the store and buy and banana loaf.
5. If you do not feel like going to the store, get 2 graham crackers and put a piece of banana and a marshmallow in between them. This is called "fast banana loaf." It's not very good, but you could feed some of it to the gorilla who won't know the difference.
6. Turn your stereo on and dance with the gorilla until you can't remember why you wanted a banana loaf anyway.


4. A link to a random something.

5. The end