Five minutes.

This is the start of the downpour last Wednesday.

This is five minutes later.

The rain here has the power to scrub away those pesky sidewalks.  :-)  SuperDeluge's sidekick Humid McHugsYouToDeath has been thwarting the hair rescuing efforts of straightening irons throughout western Canada.

I only mention it because it stormed again this weekend and we're "due" (ha!) for one tonight.  I predict a province-wide "Hat Day" tomorrow....

Absent. Minded.

I have been quiet.  So quiet radar couldn't have detected me.  I wasn't moving.  I wasn't lurking.  I wasn't even online.

And I missed it.

It's a treat to me to get a little bit of time to sit and read, to think and commiserate, to opine and admire, and to share, to be part of this delightfully weird and inspiring community connected by wi-fi and cable but joined by more than that, even if it's a laugh, a tear, an invisible hug for a stranger who shares a passion for the same obscure candy from childhood, or  a thank-you for a tidbit of advice or a heart-rending story, a powerful set of words, an incredible photograph, a project, a slice of life so very different and so very similar to your own.

 I wasn't absent-minded;  I was absent.  And I minded.

My world has been like a box of pieces.  Nothing's fallen to pieces;  it seems they've simply arrived that way.  It's exciting, the assembly, but pieces seem to take up far more room in their original state.  I can't wait to see what they become.

Distractions have been many. Anticipation of tiny, pudgy arms. (No, not from me. But I do get to knit with wild abandon and look forward to many squoodges and fat-belly kisses with the added bonus of relinquishing said fat-belly when it poops or starts to cry!  YAY!)

The wettest spring since 1874 complete with all the climatological consequences for migraneurs.  When my head hurts, it is far easier to knit  and block than to read and blog.

Registering for classes and applying for student loans - I've only been gone from university for seven years and EVERYTHING is different or being renovated.  (I've already cased the bookstore so I'm ready come August.  Me = Nerd.)

Tackling a massive to-do list that I am determined to conquer before September 1st, including a stack of actual printed-on-paper reading!  I am adding the odd 'easy-to-check-off' item to the list like Go For Coffee (or vodka) with So&So so that I can eat my coffee cake and check it off, too.  ( I add a very square check-box beside each entry on the list.  Me = Anal-Retentive Nerd.)

I've spent the last couple hours catching up on other people's lives.  I still have a few more to check in on. And some emails  to which I've wanted to reply. But I plan on adding my blog-reading and -writing respite onto the permanent list of things I want to do.  Insert very square check-box here.

Sweet Nostalgia; Random Connections

On the street where I grew up, like the streets where everyone else grew up, you could mark seasons by the sounds.  Summer brought the whir of lawnmowers, the subsequent clank when one mower would pick up a rock and send it shooting across the sidewalk, the clickety-tap of neon-coloured beads on bicycle tires,  or engines revving as teenagers took to drag-racing down the stretch after curfew.  In winter, metal shovels scraping against cement driveways, toboggans dragging on asphalt behind sixty-pound children wrapped in eighty pounds of scarf, and tinny, choking engines trying to turn over.
Regardless of the season, you could hear the kid across the street firing hockey pucks against the garage door.  But the timbre and pitch of the bang would let you know if it were a crisp autumn morning or a balmy spring evening.  It was a constant reminder that it was an ordinary day in an ordinary neighbourhood.  To this day, the sound is comforting and bittersweet.
Tonight, that kid from across the street hoisted the Stanley Cup.   Ordinary day for me.  Extraordinary day for him.
They put residential speed bumps on the stretch, we moved to a crescent, and most people have replaced shovels with snowblowers.  But no matter the season, there's always a kid banging pucks against the garage.