Aug 22 | Back to Basics

It’s a bit of a relief to be finished those serialized entries. I like doing and sharing them but I get quite anal retentive about making sure they’re finished before writing anything else. I didn’t really want to post anything new until I finished that last entry, which was really long!

This week and the next week have been the first couple of weeks that I’ve really relaxed since coming back from retreat. I came back on August 3rd at about noon, and my husband, a massive soccer fan, had already left with other members of his supporters’ group to travel to Portland to see the team. I don’t accompany him on trips like that, mostly because I’m not a big soccer fan and there’s very little to do on those trips besides drink, talk about soccer, and watch soccer. I know he has a heck of a time when he goes, though. :)

At any rate, I was left alone for a couple of days, and Sunday was the Pride parade, which meant that I had to be at church to play for the early Pride service, celebrated at 8am so we would have time to march. It was a lot of fun, but a lot of work to get up so early and head down there. I had a great time playing and marching, but was surprisingly tired at the end of things. I had a quiet evening to myself afterward.

On Monday my beloved came home, but I spent most of the day cleaning up the house to prepare for some company we were having. A very dear friend, who works as a teacher in Rotterdam, came and stayed with us for two nights, which was a lot of fun. We jabbered into the wee hours and I shared with her some entries from a really old sort of journal that I had in our first year of university. We also went for a swim in the ocean, which was fun.

On Thursday, she left me, and I had a coffee date with one of the priests from my church (who has her own very lovely blog here if you’re interested) to talk about some things that had been bothering me, which I may get into in a later entry. After that, I actually went home and fell asleep on the couch. This little introvert had clearly emptied her coffers! And on Friday, for the first time in twelve weeks, I came back to the Cathedral to be the Friday server at the noon Eucharist, followed by lunch with a friend. The week after that was taken up with more company – none of whom were staying with us but which still meant that I was quite the social butterfly.I also had a gig at Canuck Place, which was nice and put a little bit of money in my pocket.

It was only this week that I had almost nothing to do. I did get a brand new haircut, ditching the Tank Girl look which I so loved for a downgraded version – almost a Chelsea, but not quite. It was great to hop in the shower today and only have to take two minutes to do my hair. I find that I also keep putting clothes on and taking them off very carefully, forgetting that there is no longer a plastic claw holding my hair up!

At some point in the last two weeks – probably on the 9th – I began (finally) to observe the Daily Office. At first I was only very good at keeping Morning Prayer, and being gentle with myself about Evening Prayer. For the last week, though, I have successfully added Evening Prayer. So far it’s not been a burden or a chore at all, although I wouldn’t necessarily say I look forward to it. It does make me feel a little bit less guilty, though, heh heh. I feel like I take the time out deliberately to be with God, and I think that decreases my stress level a lot, so that I don’t have to worry about things like remembering to say, “Good morning, God” when I’m walking to the bus – a practice I tried to get into in CPE that totally fell by the wayside. Morning Prayer happens when I get up in the morning, and Evening Prayer happens at nine (or thereabouts). It’s been good. I’m getting better at navigating the services in the BAS too, although I should observe it from the BCP sometimes.

I have one more week of glorious freedom and nothing, and then class begins! School starts early this year, probably because of the week off we have to attend TRC events. I’d like to go to a bunch of them, and the Diocese is doing a special walk on September 22nd which I hope to attend as well. I’ll post more about those events in the future.

I’ve also been in touch with one of the folks who arranges those craft tables in the Student Union Building at UBC. Over the summer I’ve made a ton of jewelry and thought I should really be selling some of it. I looked into selling at Granville Island, but they’re very picky about the stuff that’s sold there – it needs to be hand-crafted, which my stuff is not (it’s more like “assembled”). I’ve been meaning to set up an Etsy page, but because the camera I use is basically my cellphone, the pictures don’t turn out well enough to display properly. Hopefully we can update our camera soon and I can get that off the ground. In the meantime you can actually find some of the designs here if you’re interested in looking at them. I have more that I’ll be posting soon. My mum loves nothing more than finding buttons that she wants made into jewelry.

The last couple of days have been pretty quiet, just like I wanted it. Yesterday I did very little except putter down the street to shop for ingredients for a delicious dinner. Today I might do some more puttering. I have a craving for gelato that I may placate by walking down Fourth. Even if I can’t buy anything I rather like walking down the street and looking into all the windows.

Wherever you are, enjoy the sunshine. Yesterday as I was leaving the house to go to the market, I happened to look over down the hill at the ocean, and it had turned a magnificent cobalt blue.

That’s how I know September is coming.

:)

-Clarity