Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Brief rhymes

It's another quiet night
Where the stars are bright
But I cannot tell
Why the moon ain't right
It's like an aeroplane
Or a flickrin' flame
And I'm starting to forget
How to whisper your name

And I find myself
Losing myself again
And I can't just mend
What you've never been
And your promises
Are just the moonlight mist
That your lips can't kiss
And my memories miss

It happens when
Your words are closing doors
And what I'm waiting for
Ain't worth fighting for
When you cannot show
What I need to grow
And have hope that you
Will find your way back home

'Cause you've long been gone
From what I'm fighting for
And when I'm wanting more
It's another empty shore
Where there ain't no tide
And you're not by my side
And it's all my strength
To find the strength inside

So I wander on
Toward the setting sun
Not knowing if you're there
Or if you're long since gone
But I struggle through
The storm you put me through
Because in the end
I'm trying to wait for you.

T

Monday, May 25, 2009

Keeping busy and returning to routines

I returned to work last week after a nearly-two week hiatus for surgery. My demon appendix was removed without any major issues, and after about 2.5 weeks, I'm pretty much back to normal. I went for my first post-surgery run today for about 40 minutes and feel like a million bucks. It was maybe a bit laborious than other runs, considering I haven't run since my 1/2 marathon, but it felt good nonetheless. And when it's nearly 20 degrees, who am I to complain?

Two weekends in a row I've had family visitors out. My mom came out to visit last weekend and we were able to spend a bunch of time together. I assumed that my aunt and my mom would want to hang out more, but since I was off work, the two of us roamed around and saw some of the sights in Victoria. We made a trip out to Buchart Gardens, had lunch and ice cream at the Red Barn Market, ate some Noodle Box, and had a delicious dinner at a local Carribean joint called The Reef. Sooo good. And I just realized that most of the "events" of our weekend were based around food... funny how that works :)

I got back to work last Tuesday and survived it without any real inklings of discomfort. And then I packed my weekend full of busy-ness. Friday I hung out with a good friend and her sister, drinking some homebrew and telling obnoxious stories. Saturday held a bit of a shock with a phone call from the pub saying I was supposed to be at work (they scheduled me for the Saturday rather than Sunday for some reason), so after hustling in and slinging beer for the day, I got off work, picked up my pirate friend from his boat, hit up the grocery store and went over to his girlfriends place for an epic meal of steak and freshly caught local dungeness crab with some delicious veggies and beer on the side. Then the pirate and I abandoned his first mate and met another friend of mine at a concert for the local alternative/hard rock band The Armchair Cynics. I've seen them before, but they put on a great show and are doing their best to make it big with their new album. The new song, "Ablaze" is really solid and they sound great in concert. My good friend KR is dating one of the band members, so she is keeping me up to date on upcoming shows.

Sunday brought more good weather and a wake-up call from the pirate. He had to move his boat from Oak Bay to Cadboro Bay, so I tagged along and did a bit of sailing with him. It was a gorgeous day full of sunshine, and we had a great (albeit brief) voyage from one marina to another. After picking up our vehicles, I went and met my uncle and his fiancee for some dinner downtown and hit up a brewpub for dessert. Uncle K and I had beer for dessert, while DD chose to actually go for some lava cake. The beer was sweet enough in my books.

So, it was a pretty busy and excitement filled weekend. Today, although I'm not working, is still going to be a busy one. Now that I'm back from my run, I have to shower, have some lunch and do some running around. One of my errands consists of filling out a rental agreement with my old landlord. It's true... I'm moving again, and a lot sooner than expected. While my mom was here, she wanted to help me look around for a solo place to live (the house with friends in James Bay fell through), so on a whim I called my old landlord from when K and I first moved in together, and he just happened to have a really nice (but small) place coming up for June 1. I hemmed and hawed quite a bit, but after being disappointed with the quality of affordable housing around town, and being totally uninterested in looking around at more places, I called him up last night and I'm taking the place! It'll be much more central and familiar than where I am now, and it'll be mine. So, other than the fact that I'm paying double-rent (here and at the soon-to-be-new bachelor pad), and the fact that I have barely any furniture (K hasn't parted ways with much other than the camping gear and a bunch of stuff I had before her and I moved in together), I'm pretty excited. It's clean and pretty much everything is new, and I'll have a big patio for morning coffee and hopefully some BBQ'ing. If anyone in Vic has some used furniture they want to abandon, let me know!

Alright, a guy's gotta eat.

T

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

What a week can bring

I often joke with friends and acquaintances that I lead a pretty boring adult life. I'm no longer a partier or much of a late-night boozer. I'm not one to set sights on a crazy trip to Vegas or a nutty road trip to the bush to get rowdy. I like to think my life is a good sort of calm. And although I've faced some hardships, I do my best to keep tabs on pessimism and find the light in the middle of the dark, cloudy days. You know... days with ravens and owls and black-caped men lingering in the fog.

This last week has been a different sort of ridiculous. And in so many ways, I've just had to laugh it off. There are powers out there that I'll never understand, and I can't help but wonder if there's a cosmic chalkboard tallying up, well, something to create some sort of balance. And I'm wondering exactly how that chalkboard is tallied. Because it's been a crazy few days.

Just over a week ago, I posted an entry where I was obviously jaded about the state of my relationship. Now, I can't say that I'm overly optimistic, but I still hold on to hope that things can find a way to mend. That's a long road that I'm walking, but it's one that I'm still willing to walk. Lately, this blog has been a release of all the anxious frustration and desperate longing I've felt for the woman who I gave my heart to (and still do so in a much more silent way). So I'm hanging in there. Last week was a bad encounter, and I was hurt by it. But as with everything, one must move on.

The day after the encounter, I ran my first half-marathon. It was a goal I'd had in mind for almost a year, and had been working toward for months. I trained and prepared completely on my own. I ran my miles solitary without anyone pushing me or giving me advice or helping me through the minutes where I just wanted to stop the pursuit all together. No one kicked me out of bed or reminded me of the importance of my long runs. I didn't grab on to anyone to hold me up when I had the urge to sit. And although I didn't train like a professional and I know that more work could've been done, I persevered and accomplished my goal on my own. And damn, it felt good. I spent the rest of my visit to the big city eating and catching up with friends and relishing in my feeling of self-satisfaction... this was something I did without a running clinic or a partner or a trainer... just me and the road. And I have to say I'm pretty proud of that. Funny how quickly the tables turn, from bitterness to triumph in two totally separate aspects of life.

The return back to the island was a smooth one, and I was quickly back at work. However, it seems like it couldn't last.

I ended up in the hospital last week and had surgery the same day. That was Thursday... I had just returned to the rock on Monday. Who would've guessed?

It turns out that when you feel like you have indigestion or food poisoning but you don't vomit or have diarrhea (and the pain stays localized to your right lower abdomen), you might have appendicitis. Which is what I had. I started feeling like rubbish on Wednesday night, and after trying to eat something, then trying some antacids at about 10:30pm, and then tossing and turning all night before going to the nearby Macs store for some pepto at 5:30 in the morning and STILL feeling like my gut wanted to kill me, I decided that I should probably go to the clinic. This turned out to be a bit fruitless, since the walk-in GP assumed food poisoning or possible appendicitis. His suggestion: sleep it off and it should get better, but if it gets worse, go to the ER. But after getting home and checking the expiration dates of the food in the fridge, and reassessing my pain and checking symptoms of food poisoning vs. appendicitis, I grabbed some books and my IPod and headed to the ER an hour after leaving the doc's office.

I got there about 11am, and at 11pm that same day, I was lying on a surgical table in the OR and was uncomfortably waiting to be knocked out. They removed the alien appendix that was causing all the muss and fuss, and here I am today, sitting on my backside, taking it easy. I actually went back to the ER for about 6 hours yesterday because of a new and brutal pain I had the previous night, but it turns out that my aversion to pain killers is what caused the extra pain... I weaned myself from my Every-4-hour-tylenol-ingestion within 2 days and was trying to go sans-drogues. That and my quick return to my regular food habits caused some irritation around the internal surgical site and I just needed to take some more tylenol. It's just that easy I guess!

So, 5 days post-surgery and I'm sitting on my ass, watching a whole craploap of TV (or, in reality, multiple TV series on DVD), and trying not to move around too much. I should be at work (although I'm not sad about being away from work, I hate just sitting around for any length of time), and I want to go for a run. But sit I will, because I'm willing to override my stubborness to get better in a more timely fashion.

Oh... and I was even able to do a bit of a good deed for a cousin of a brother-in-law that I'd never met, and was lucky enough to do so with the help of a fantastic friend.

So this is how my life goes. And there's still light. And laughter. I do just laugh at the comedy of errors that seems to present itself in this tale of tragedy and woe. It's not all clouds and darkness... sometimes it's triumphs in between the lows, and cookies and popsicles from friends, and relatives who take you in when you've got three holes in your guts, and well-wishes, and upcoming visits from parents, and the knowledge that I kicked just a little bit of ass in my first 1/2 marathon (the next one will be significantly faster). And words from the girl I still love, even if we're still a million miles apart.

T