I cleared out my inbox today. I had been keeping about ten thousand old messages, important documents and Facebook notifications alike, in the same email inbox. This morning, I went back about a year, archiving important messages, and then I hit “select all” and “delete”.
Now my Gmail says “no new messages!”. It’s a wonderful feeling.
When I lived with a whole bunch of people, the girls and I would talk about the Mormon missionaries that walked around the city all the time. They are usually good looking young men, wearing short-sleeved white shirts, black pants, and backpacks. They do what no one else in this city seems to do: they strike up conversations with strangers and ask them intimate questions about their beliefs. They also wear mysterious underwear.
I watched the PBS / American Experience documentary, The Mormons, a few weeks ago, and it was a fascinating look at something so vastly different from my own experience. Growing up, my family wasn’t religious. I went to church a few times a year, either with my choir or with the scouts group I belonged to.
(Looking back, the Scouts were a terribly religious group, and I’m not sure my parents would have kept me in there had they known what kind of proselytising was going on)
The last part of the documentary, about the young missionaries, was especially interesting to me. These boys (some girls do it, too, but it’s an overwhelmingly male institution) leave home for two years. They get two phone calls home per year, on Christmas and on Mother’s Day. They learn a new language. They live with a semi-stranger in close quarters. All day, they try to talk to people who want nothing to do with them. They do it because they truly believe that they need to get this message out.
I’m not any kind of religious sympathiser. I’m well aware of the anti-gay-marriage propaganda that some Mormon groups put out. I just find it really interesting to see people my age sacrifice so much for a cause they believe in. What would it take for me to dedicate two years of my life to one exclusive pursuit?
I know that for the past week, I’ve been telling everyone to do yoga, how amazing it feels, how great my body is adapting. I apologize for my sudden morph into a yoga-preacher. And, humbly, I have only been doing it for about two weeks.
The change, so far, is amazing. Last night’s class was even more enjoyable than the others, in no small part because I felt my body melting into the poses. I understood when the instructor said to let the tailbone drop, I could feel it reaching for the floor. I relaxed into the forward bends. I lowered my body evenly, slowly.
I’ve never been athletic. I used to love going out and dancing, and I did it a lot in high school and early Cegep. Every summer, I take up running, and, every summer, I take too many days off, and eventually forget all about it. I’m terrible at self-policing, but I am very skilled in talking myself out of healthy choices. Now, though, I feel like I’ve found something. Re-listening to the TAL show on first days, I realized that it’s completely normal to feel aprehension when walking up the stairs to the yoga studio. There is a crowd of people in there, les habitués, and I’m the newcomer. They won’t beat me up before accepting me (as mentioned in the radio show I linked to), but I’ll have to do my own pushing to make myself comfortable.
In knitting news, I recently finished a gift for a friend, something that popped into my head one day as something she needed to have. I started the Featherweight Cardigan in some beautiful silk-wool yarn, hand-died shades of blue and green. Three times I have tried to use this yarn, and three times, I have ripped out the project. It’s special yarn, and it deserves a perfect project.
I’m also re-decorating what I’ve taken over as my boudoir. What was once our shared office has become my quiet space, with a single bed for guests (or for naps!), a desk, and plenty of craft storage. The walls will be a pale grey, the desk will get a fresh coat of white paint, and I want to knit a blanket in shades of charcoal and ecru. While I’ve been making many things in bright shades lately, and wearing more colour than I’m accustomed to, I feel like I need to return to neutrals, to un-dyed wool, to tone-on-tone. Maybe it’s this poor excuse for a summer we’ve been having. Maybe it’s the yoga.
I know. Blame the yoga.
I can still count the number of yoga classes I have attended. Four. Is it too early to say that I think something is changing?
I’m really, really calm. Maybe it’s because I have spent so much time over the last few days focusing on my breathing. I’m developing a dislike for loud noises — I keep asking J. to turn down the volume when he’s watching a movie.
I have never felt the muscles in my back like this. It’s not exactly soreness, just awareness. My thighs are sore, though. I keep wanting to go back and take more classes, but I know that what some people consider “gentle stretching” is still a workout for me. I need to rest.
I wonder what else will change.
Everyone’s talking about the weather in Montreal these days, how it sucks, how we’re barely getting a summer.
Honestly? I don’t mind so much. I’d love to have a few more terrasse days, lazy afternoons in the park, dinners on our back porch, but I’m just glad it isn’t -40 celcius. For the last few days, it’s been sunny from 7 to 9am, then we have a small rainstorm, and then it clears up.
Yesterday, I went to a Hatha yoga class. It was the most relaxing afternoon I’ve ever had. I left feeling energized and so, so calm. I didn’t want to go on the metro right away, so I went to Myriade and had one of their delicious hot chocolates.
(Speaking of the metro — has anyone noticed that they are upgrading the lighting in a few metro stations? The St Mathieu exit of Guy is now full of light, as is the Angrignon level at Berri. It’s much nicer. Way to go STM!)
Last night, I un-pinned Ishbel from the blocking board.
Ishbel, by Ysolda Teague
.75 of a skein Malabrigo Lace, Rhodesian colourway
3.5mm Addi Lace needle
I’m going back to yoga this morning, a Level 1 class. I want to get addicted. I want to start every weekday with 7:30 Mysore. I want to be one of those people that get grumpy when they go a few days without. I want to be addicted.
For the past week, I have started my day by reading Steve Pavlina’s writing, and listening to his podcasts. I’ve been teaching people to knit, learning things from friends, trading skills. This afternoon, I’m going to a yoga class. In August, I’ll be joining Toastmasters. Over the past few days, I’ve learned to create a self-hosted Wordpress site. I’m drinking my water, I’m eating three healthy meals.
I’ve also been finishing the knitting projects that I start — three lace shawls in the past month, a sweater, a cardigan. Some of these will be gifts. I’m making more than I can use, just for the pleasure of learning new techniques.
There are tiny, hard, green tomatoes growing on my back porch, and a tiny green bell pepper. Enough basil to make a ton of pesto. A container full of mint, reaching higher every day.
It all feels really, really good.
.
This past weekend, J. took part in the Ride to Conquer Cancer, which took him from Montreal to Quebec City over two days. That’s almost 300 kilometres on his bike. I met him there, and stayed at my friend M.’s lovely new apartment in the St Roch neighbourhood.
We fell in love with the city. It’s divided by a steep hill, which is punctuated with long staircases and city-built public elevators. The streets are narrow, and many are cobblestone. The houses are old and beautiful. Everything is clean.
It was interesting to see, in person, all of the restaurants that I communicate with for work. It was also fun to be there during the Festival d’Été, even though we were caught in a few downpours. That’s how we found out that you can get a pint of microbrewery beer for $3.75 at 3 in the afternoon. Think of the savings we’d make if we moved there!
Photo credit: Festival d'Été de Québec
We saw a tightrope walker go between the Château Frontenac and the offices of the Caisse de Dépot. No harness, no nets, just a long pole to balance him on a piece of rope. It was fantastic. During a radio interview, the funambule said that his work was part of a family tradition, and that he would encourage his daughter to do the same one day. That’s not your typical family business!
You know when you wake up, and know you had a dream, but can’t remember it? I was reading through my blog reader this morning, when I saw a post about canning, and realized that I had a long, elaborate dream about tomato season.
I have a tomato plant on my balcony, growing in a huge container with some basil. Caprese salad in the making! The plant is flowering, but there aren’t any bees around this year, so I don’t know how successful my efforts will be. My pepper plants have been flowering and dying.
Anyway, my dream was about the huge boxes of tomatoes you can get from the market for about ten dollars. Ten dollars! In the winter, that will buy you three under-ripe, tasteless tomatoes at the grocery store. At the end of the summer, though, you can get a huge box of tomatoes.
Then comes the preparation — boiling the tomatoes for a minute, just long enough so that the skin separates from the fruit. Dunking them in an ice bath. Peeling the skin off. Slicing. Removing the seeds and the juice. Simmering the tomatoes, getting rid of as much water as possible. I just make tomato sauce, no extra seasoning. Pouring the sauce in sterilized Mason jars, adding some lemon juice. Boiling the cans in a huge kettle for 45 minutes. Doing that over and over for an entire weekend, and, at the end, in the middle of a tomato-stained kitchen, a few dozen jars of tomato sauce. Is it worth the trouble?
In the middle of winter, when the only fresh vegetables at the store have more passport stamps than I do, I understand that yes, it was totally worth it. I’m dreaming of harvest season, I’m dreaming of a large garden with bees and a compost pile, with carrots you can pull from the ground, clean off with the garden hose, and eat without peeling. That’s what I want. At work, we’re all working towards a dream — it’s what keeps us motivated when we’re tired. One of us wants a boat, another wants to travel. I want a garden.
J. and I had plans to go to the Jazz Fest, but, with the awful weather we’ve been having, we decided to play it safe and catch a movie instead.
(Wow, I hope not everyone is thinking like this. I promise to go to the Jazz Fest before it’s over, rain or no rain!)
First, we had dinner at Burritoville, in their new-ish digs on Bishop street, in the building that used to house Art and Tea. I’ve always loved that building — it’s cozy, with big windows and old wood fixtures. The food was delicious and cheap, mostly organic and locally-sourced. I recently re-read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, which always inspires me to watch what I eat and where it’s coming from.
We got tickets to the 3-D showing of Up, complete with nifty oversize glasses. They were plain dark glasses, no red-blue lenses. I cried so hard at the first few minutes of the film! They really did a great job of conveying the characters’ lives without speech. Fantastic.
Later, we caught the 108 home, freezing outside on a lovely July evening. When is Montreal going to be unbearably balmy, so that we can complain about that?
My sister and I when we were little
I have few family photos. My mom now lives in Victoria and has the bulk of them, and I never remember to get everyone’s pictures when I go on trips with my dad. That’s why I was so happy when a friend of my mom’s scanned this photo and sent it to me. Aren’t we cute? I think I’m about four years old in this one, and Flavie is three. My mom made the dresses.
I recently found my mom’s photos from the seventies, housed in groovy fabric-covered binders. This was before digital cameras, before you could select the perfect shots out of the three hundred pictures you took at the party. It’s great to get a glance of her life. I keep saying that I should print out pictures and keep them in physical albums, but maybe I just need to take more of them.