When, not if.

I was sans computer for days on end (my friend Bram is making a skate film that premieres today, cool) but I am back at long last. Pardon my hiatus. Nothing much has changed since, Rabbi and Kit left me for Buenos Aires, I was uninspired at my job for the first time, I made a beef borscht with the help of my Grandma over the phone and I think I nailed it, prints were finished and are ready to be mailed so sit tight. I take forever getting things to the post. Today. Today. Today.

Yesterday I was moping around my home missing my best gal, tired, hungry when Alfie called. Saved by Barfredo. I walked through wintery streets towards his home and the air was fresh. Country fresh, it was alarming and satisfying. We drank martinis on the floor and eventually got into a cab to go to a cocktail party in Wolesely (hilarious, if you know that neighborhood). We walked in and were greeted by men and women in shabby evening wear. Suits with sagging shoulders and bow ties that used to belong to grandfathers now long in the ground. Bejeweled dresses stolen from thrift stores with jagged hemlines and ripped panty hose. Knowing how that group rolls, I anticipated this and dressed accordingly.

The house was spilling with the right people and at one point Emily put on Fleetwood Mac's Rumors and I two-stepped shamelessly with this one blonde man with glasses for the rest of the night. He was more of a boy than a man in retrospect. All I really remember is twirling, and dancing in perfect step, laughing into him, everything was muffled and nothing else mattered. It had been a while since I shared a dance of that sort with another. All of the shameless twirling and martini consumption suddenly went to my head and the next thing I knew I was zigzagging down Arlington and then I was INSIDE an evergreen tree. I somehow fell in. Actually, I was leaning against one casually, resting, and then I fell in. So I chilled out underneath that beautiful span of evergreen, lay down and collected myself. I might have barfed once or twice, not on myself thankfully, but all in all it was quite a lovely evening. After a while I heard Alfie shouting my name from the front door of the cocktail party so I somehow bushwhacked my way back out and onto the sidewalk and called a cab. Once home, I realized I lost my keys (every single key to my life, gone) and had to stagger over to my sleeping sister's home to pick up my spare set. She was not impressed and I don't blame her. I think it was around three.

All the things I lost last night:
- my house keys
- one pair of slippers
- one pair of gloves; no, not the cashmere ones Anne M
- my breakfast, underneath that tree
- all of the money on my person (funny how that works)

All of the things I took home:
- one hundred pine-needles

So. Eventful Friday night. Ripper night, as they call it. Who is they, you ask? They would be tree planters. I was accepted to go tree planting come May first. Good Lord. Two months of back breaking work in the wilderness, ten hour days of repetitive work spent mainly alone, nights spent sleeping in a tent and sitting around a fire, suppers made for Gladiators and eating like a truck, bulking up and skimming down, working beside bald eagles and elk; here I come. I think I will have to write a book if I come home alive. I think I will have to write a book when I come home alive. That is news I guess.

I am off to our weekly Saturday morning greasy spoon breakfast at the Toad. Rebecca and Andrew and I were having a conversation before they left for their respective vacation spots (her Buenos Aires, him Thailand, them Jerks) about the routines that stay the same for the people left behind. Yes my routine will stay the same but that doesn't mean I am not missing them like crazy. I have been dragging my behind around for the entire week in mourning. I am grieving the loss of. But. Today I am chinning up and going to go eat my Little Tadpole breakfast in good company (we are the ones left behind and we eat together to pass the time until our best friends, lovers, brothers, mothers, sisters, whatevers come back to us).

I miss you Babs.