St. John’s

Our last day was simple and nice. We walked the downtown, browsed shops, chatted with the woman running the art galley, ate fish and chips, saw a hundred high school students bunching into the grocery store for lunch break (Zenny eyeballed the teen cliques and wondered which one was hers, finally deciding that she wouldn’t want to wait in line for her whole lunch break, so her group was probably laying around on the grass somewhere on campus), and we hunted out a lobster. The couple at the table next to us were teachers/kayak-rental owners from Ontario. They said they were relocating, but maybe not to St John’s, because it was too busy, like a small Toronto. That was amazing to us; our one small island has twice as many people crammed onto it as the entire province of Newfoundland and Labrador. Yikes. The couple gave Zenny a fresh oyster, and the table on the other side stopped to watch her try it for the first time, cheering when she liked it.

This has been a really good trip, and we’re so sad it’s over already. 

Heading to the airport. Back into the pressure cooker.

Gen Alpha goblin face

Styrofoam under sprayed concrete! Architecture of lies! This is why you don’t hire the lowest bidder.

Cape Spear

It was warm and sunny, so I let the girl sleep in while I walked up to the store for breakfast stuff and took a detour around the neighborhood to look at some houses for sale. A couple of them looked pretty good.

Midmorning we rode out to Cape Spear, the farthest Eastern point of North America, with a lighthouse, walking trails, and WWII bunker. Zenny hated it. She didn’t complain, but trudged like a prisoner up the endless stairs, stopping to sit and refusing to budge every time I paused to look at the view. That’s okay; the entire reason I even wanted to go to Cape Spear is because I remember hating the stairs so much as a kid. I took her to the mall afterwards, where she perked up over a bowl of poutine and we bought some fancy chocolates to bring home.

The girl needed some down time, so we stayed in and ordered noodle delivery while watching our K-drama. The power went out for an hour and plunged her into darkness while she was in the shower, which she thought was a great adventure.

With one day left, the stress is creeping back in. Zenny is behind on a fall break assignment that could only be completed at home, and I have storytime in a few days. This morning I woke myself up crying from a nightmare about being back. In my dream I begged the man to tell me what he’d done, and he said, I will NEVER tell you what I do. And I realized that’s all the truth I actually need.

We are going to try to enjoy this last day, taking our time to browse the shops downtown. We are on the hunt for a whole lobster.

Bowring Park

In the spirit of “revisit childhood” and also “pretend we live here”, I took the girl to the park today. That’s it. It’s a big park, though. 

It was cool and sunny, and she played like a little kid for hours, stuffing my purse with pretty autumn leaves and climbing all the playground equipment that has been banned in the US, making friends with a little girl from Scotland. There are still a million ducks in the ponds, and they swarmed anyone who stood too close to the water, hoping for treats. We walked through the woods along the river, and Zenny found a circle of fairy houses hidden in a grotto. 

It was pretty perfect.

Duck yoga

When the shadows started getting long, we went home and had tea to warm up. The characters on our Korean rom-com finally kissed, and Zenny was skipping and happy when we went down to the as-seen-on-food-network Italian restaurant for (really nice and affordable) homemade pasta.

The best kind of easy, simple day. I had a moment of delight when we saw a squirrel, and a moment of joy when a thousand pigeons flew in a huge circle overhead and then dove down to fly past so close that their wings blew my hair. I feel really happy.

The Rooms w/Laurie

It was colder on Sunday. We bundled up and walked down to a coffee shop for chai and a bagel before heading to the museum to meet Laurie, my childhood best friend. My mom worked as a cook at her parents’ restaurant and traded childcare while attending university, so we spent most weekends and school breaks together. I had a feral summer living with my grandparents when I was 9 (my mom sent me home from Arizona while she took summer courses) and Laurie’s mom made sure I stayed fed. We were as close as two kids could be - especially in the 80s when that meant roaming wild and getting in fights with the neighborhood boys until the street lights came on. We are a generation of alley cats.

I ran up and gave her a long hug when I saw her, and we started talking nonstop for the next few hours, barely looking at the museum displays. Zenny and Lydia stared at each other and didn’t say anything, which is pretty much how Laurie and I met the first time, too. They’ll get used to each other if we stay for longer.

Laurie’s husband drove us over to my old house. We maybe worried the current homeowners a bit, yelling and pointing at things and posing for pictures in front of the driveway, but nobody came out to investigate. Everything was so small. Looking across at the huge field I used to trudge across in the snow to get to school every morning, I saw that it was so close we could jog it in about 30 seconds. The far-away fence that never seemed to get any closer as we hiked toward it was actually only about 50 feet from the road. Having legs the size of baguettes while wading through 3-foot snow is a whole other world.

We stopped by Laurie’s house, where her parents live in the basement apartment, and her mom came out to give me a long hard hug, squished to her bosom like I was a kid again. I teared up a little bit, I was so happy to see her. Laurie’s dad came out and looked confused, saying he remembered my mother (and her Black Forest cake)  but didn’t really remember me. “He was after being drunk whenevers we were there,” Laurie teased. Can’t blame him for that, we were very loud and acted out violent make-believe with her Lady Lovely Locks and Rainbow Brite dolls.

Laurie supports us moving back, but knows a body need to see what they’re getting into, so she bought us supper at Mary Browns (Newfie KFC with vinegar taters) and explained the underfunded Provincial medical system, yearlong waits for surgeries, and scarcity of decent fresh produce - being that nothing grows locally except potatoes and turnips, and Newfoundland is the last destination for food trucks from Mexico. I noticed my accent starting to creep back in while we were talking, which I took as a good sign.

No matter which way this next year goes, it can’t be another 35 years before we see each other again.

The Rooms (museum):

View from upstairs 

We didn’t see any bald eagles in the nesting grounds by Quidi Vidi, so I am counting this as a sighting.

There are very few 19th/early 20th century landscape paintings of Newfoundland - it would be cool to bring back tonalism and academic realism for a new generation of painters.

My old street (our house on the right, next to the white one)

It wasn’t like getting transported back in time, it was more like watching an old movie you loved as a kid and realizing you can see all the strings on the special effects. It’s not a bad thing, just weird.

Zenny is still enjoying it here, even after a taste of the cold gloominess and fried foods that would be more typical of daily life than being on vacation mode. It helps that we’re staying in a row house that feels like a home, as well. As a trial run, it’s going okay so far.

Signal Hill

One thing a day. Unfortunately for Zenny, that one thing was a 6 mile hike up Signal Hill and down to Quidi Vidi. I packed her with eggs Benedict first.

The 30 min walk up the hill trail turned into a 60 minute walk with all the stops to pet cats, sit on rocks, and try out every bench. I gave up taking scenic photos and just took pictures of her sitting on things.

 

Don’t worry, she took a picture of me, too. 

We climbed up the tower, bought a shirt in the gift shop, walked down to Quidi Vidi - she scooted down the wooden stairs like they were each individual  benches - then I took pity on her and called an Uber for the ride back. We had a lunch of crumpets and tea and aero bars in front of K-dramas for a bit before I dragged her back outside to shop downtown and find dinner. A protest for Gaza marched down Water Street with drums and shouting, and a woman pressed a flyer into my hand, saying her niece is on the aid flotilla. We waved to them all and laughed at the Ferrari stuck impatiently behind them while they blocked traffic.

Dinner was scallops and crab legs at the Fish Exchange, with a slice of cake for the girl. Zenny was cold and happy when we got back to the flat, sprinkled with rain, and I was picking shells out from under my thumbnails because I gave her the tiny crab fork. We watched King the Land until bedtime. Really good day.

 

Tomorrow: meeting up with my childhood best friend and her tween daughter, so the girls can go do... something, while we catch up on three decades of living. Also I am going to grill her about the job market and costs of utilities.

Broads abroad 1

Arlo Guthrie was playing overhead in the terminal, singing City of New Orleans as we caught our connection to Toronto. Huh, that’s funny, my mom and I listened to that song all the time when I was a kid, I thought.

Two flights and 10 hours later, we finally rolled up to our flat and the next door neighbor was hammering his roof, listening to Led Zeppelin. I started laughing.

Me: help help, universe, I need a sign!

Universe: 

We showered, changed into clothes that didn’t stink, ran around opening all the cupboards and finding all the extra blankets, then I peeled the girl off the bed where she was trying to pass out and we hit the streets to find some food. (Three flights, ZERO MEALS. We ate protein bars and beef sticks for 16 hours.) I didn’t recognize anything, the stores are all different, but it smelled just the same as I left it - wet leaves, something baking somewhere, salt in the air. Our phones didn’t work, so we wandered around until something smelled good and ducked inside: India-Newfie fusion that kind of blew our socks off. Zenny went from a limp rag doll to prancing back up the hill to our apartment. We crashed out on the couch watching King the Land (Korean rom-com) and drinking chamomile. There should be sleep tonight.

It’s good to be back. Even if we did have to spend the flight from Toronto to St John’s sitting in front of the two worst people in the world having a meet-cute and developing the start of a finance-asshole romance which will have them both divorced and splitting all the assets they spent two hours bragging about. The guy’s red flags were in a race against hers, they were so excited to interrupt each other to talk about themselves. It was kind of sweet, in a way that made me wish there was an airlock to cycle them out of. I hope in the movie of their love story, their spouses connect with each other over discovering the affair and live happily with all their combined kids on a Christmas tree farm while those two suck down martinis in a casino and turn into tanning-bed mummies, complaining that child support payments should come with receipts for expenditures.

Anyway, I’m home!

She has had it with airports

Her bones grew back as soon as she got some sugar into her

Whoa, pork belly and masala fish & chips

Our dear little walk-up flat, with practically room to swing a cat

St John’s wins for best airport vending machines

Cat reporting for duty

lies and other affirmations

In general, I don't like to write unless I can joke about things, and that just hasn't been happening. On Sunday I went for a walk to try to shake things off, and got hit with a wave of grief and mortal terror like I've never felt before. It was awful, I thought I might be having a heart attack or something. Went home, had a massive crashout on my studio couch, and then felt empty, like my body had vomited up poison. It just left that thin whining fear/worry that I've been feeling for ages, which was a lot more noticeable once the racket of grief went quiet. Then I remembered something: Tylenol does not cause autism (for fuck's sake), but it does cause temporary suppression of empathy and reduced emotional pain. I took one before work, one in the afternoon, and HOLY SHIT, it actually helped. It turned the volume down, and I felt kind of indifferent. DIY antidepressant. Follow me for more ways to hack your emotions in ways that will make your doctor frown.

Once I had my shit back together I had to do my therapy homework. My new therapist is sweet and young and wants to do lots of exercises using feeling wheels and word association, and I am down for it even though I think it's a little silly. Silly is fine. Silly is a relief. My assignment was to come up with 5 affirmations to counteract the bad feelings from the Wheel of Feelings. This was harder than it sounded. Cheerful lies don't work on me. "Everything will be okay!" Nooooo, not necessarily, people die and starve and end up homeless. "You're beautiful and strong!" Why do I have to be beautiful and strong? That is not my job. "It's never too late!" Sometimes it is. You miss an opportunity and it never happens again. "Anything is possible!" No it isn't. Be real.

Here is what I ended up with:

1. I am still here. 

2. Don't get scared, get angry. (Terry Pratchett. It was a tossup between that or "It's not worth doing something unless someone, somewhere, would much rather you weren't doing it".)

3. Outlive your enemies. (I just have two  three enemies right now, but I'm open-minded.)

4. Fuck you, make me. (Yes, I watched John Oliver.)

5. The Dunning Kruger Effect. (Incompetent people greatly overestimate their competence, and competent people greatly underestimate their competence - so if you're feeling like a useless loser that's probably a sign that you're actually doing okay. Delusional overconfidence is essential when learning a new skill, otherwise we'd all give up before getting any good. When you learn enough to realize how much you don't know and feel like an imposter, that's actually when you're getting a handle on the skill and have things to teach others.)

I cringed after reading them to her, and she started laughing and called me cute. Oh no, this again. I don't know what my face is doing when I talk to people, but when I am an old lady I will have a secret weapon - nobody suspects the cute old lady. I should add that to my affirmations. If I change my last name to something like "Bibblesworth" or "Puddifut" or "Nibblewit" I'll be able to get away with murder.

We fly out Thursday. My atelier class starts as soon as we get back. I have a painting in a gallery show next month. I am reading Victorian Psycho, by Virginia Feito, and Bury Your Gays, by Chuck Tingle. Just finished the second Mickey7 novel, Antimatter Blues, by Edward Ashton. (I like the Mickey7 books, but the movie, Mickey 17, was better. That hardly ever happens, but the movie was weird and unhinged in a way the books aren't. They're still good, though.) Staying busy, is what I'm saying. 

Invasive Species II

I'm nervous about the trip. If it feels like home, that's the start of a lot of trouble. If it does not feel like home, that's the start of a lot of trouble. Either way, it's good information to have so I can get on with things.