the master of the pre-church post.Well, I'm about to toddle down the trail to sadlier house to be with my church for an hour or so. It will be good. I vaguely think I'm helping out with the kids. It'll be good.

And now, I will be late-ish. You know, not exactly on time, but not late enough to raise any eyebrows. I really need to work on this whole punctuality thing. I'm getting worse.

aaaaaugh the lateness!

let it all go.
It's early, but I am going to bed. I just worked a good shift at the Bridge. I had a fantastic conversation with a guy, about God and life and Marilyn Manson, among other things.
And I met one of my girls new babies. She gave birth just after Bridge closed for a couple of months for renovations. I saw the baby a week after he was born but he was just a wee thing, and all bundled up in his stroller. Tonight he's three and a half months old. I rocked him and walked with him and sang him little songs. Then I prayed for his life, and made him giggle. Thank God that the little guy is healthy and beautiful.

Then I watched the last bit of the most ridiculous movie ever. No seriously, ever.
I dozed off a little, then trotted home.
Now it's time for bed. Don't wake me, I plan on sleeping in.

stealing mona
when the Mona Lisa was stolen in 1911, thousands of people flocked to the Louvre to stare at the empty wall where the painting had been.

L.H.O.O.Q.
(elle a chaud au cul)
- marcel duchamp

thursday. oh glorious.

I have a barbeque to go to in a couple of hours... I will go and eat veggie burgers. Seriously, why bother with any other kind?

So I'm sitting and thinking about a song I want to write. (This and other slacker activities brought to you by Meag's period of funemployment). I feel like writing a sad song... with a sad kazoo solo in it that's completely in earnest. We'll see how that goes.

I'm drinking some licorice tea. The tea is cold. I made it last night. This is my habit with tea. I learned to like it cold a long time ago because I always get distracted and forget about it for a few hours. But I wont give up on the tea. I'm no quitter.

I love my neighbourhood sometimes. I just watched Brian Wagner scoot down the hill on his bicycle with a load of what looked to be antiques of some description on his back. It's the season of stuff on sidewalks... it's mostly free, because the students are leaving and it's moving season.

It's gorgeous outside. I think Brian might have the right idea. I'm going outside to see what the sidewalk has to offer me.

infestation!

I laughed until I spat out my soymilk. Please read... because you may have hipsters.

oh yay.

update! I have no more clean sheets or blankets. I woke up to a warm spot on my crotch and thought... "Did I wet myself?"

Until I saw Small Cat... sitting on me... caught in the act of pissing on my sheet, (and the skirt I was wearing, and subsequently me)

Cat soup anyone?

if cats were twice the size they are now, they would be illegal. (ps. des. make them do this. )

Every blanket I own is covered in cat piss. I am left with one solitary sheet... which is clean because it was hiding in my laundry bag... washed from the piss incident of last week. I am boycotting my life.

In addition to this today I woke up early to catch my exam bus... I left late and just barely missed it. As I watched my bus go past me I thought, "I just can't be late for this exam. It's eight thirty five. If I call a cab, I'll still make it on time." I called the cab. At eight fifty five it showed up. I had missed my second bus by that point and the cab and the second bus arrived at campus the same time. I was out fifteen bucks for nothing. I could've just stayed for the bus twenty minutes later. I paid the guy, and walked into my exam. And realized that the people writing their exams weren't in my class. Alarmed, I walked out and consulted a schedule. My exam wasn't until two p.m. Ugh.
I rescheduled my hair appointment. I should've got her to dye the blonde out of this head of mine.

(>_<)

Figured I'd post my minor misfortunes for your collective amusement.
Okay, no more complaining. Instead let me take ten seconds to list a couple of things I was thankful for/joyful about today. Then I'll go to sleep.

- I am thankful today for topher, dahn and dan. I love them.
- I am thankful for the serendiptous meeting I had with noah at the exam. We hung out for a couple of hours and it was great
- I'm really pleased for dahn. He gets to go see the folks behind pig wings. With a press pass! It's so damn cool I could croak.
- I'm thankful for God. I wish I treated him better.
- I am pleased about my new haircut. I feel so... bouncy!
- I am thankful and ridiculously happy that first year is officially over. It is! It really is!

I love the bunch of you. Sleep well.

tomorrow is exam and haircut day.

(incidentally, this is a picture of me. bald and studying, back in highschool.)

I wish I could skip the exam and move right on with the haircut. But... it's not meant to be. I have to write this exam. I have to do well on it. So, I've spent all day having a quiet sort of sunday, involving laundry, church, radio, dahn and dan's and fun at my place with jen and topher and the roommate... and now I'm feeling a little panicky. What if I don't pass Canadian Studies? I mean, the rest of my classes will have decent marks... but I really let this one slide. Ah, worry sets in.

To be honest I will just be happy when this season of classes is over. I've got a week to pack my stuff and move upstairs. It'll be a change. I think I'm a sucker for change actually. If I don't move every few months I get itchy... hopefully an upstairs move gives me my fix. I also maybe start summer class in the first week of may. I've signed up for one class. I may back out for financial reasons. I'd only be a part time student, so I foot the bill for tuition... and last I checked you don't find nine hundred bucks in between the couch cushions.

And now it's quarter after one. I'm sort of sleepy. But I should study some of these concepts... but who am I kidding? If I stay on the computer I'm going to end up reading back issues of dinosaur comics for two hours and checking my friends blogs ten times. So with that startling confession out of me... I will rest up for this flipping exam. And the haircut. I'll rest up for that too.

radio. oh I know.

It is Saturday! That means it's radio day! And I have a vague feeling that this is my last show of the season. So here goes.

Tonight's show is called "Like women, Like Sylvia Plath"... And I'm reading from... you guessed it, Sylvia Plaths collected poems. You'll like it. Heck, you'll love it! You'll turn to your nearest neighbour and hug them passionately!

Foreigners here
Locals at 92.7 fm.

ps. credit to dahn for the title of the show. I swiped it off one of his pieces called "my love poem". Now, turn on your radio. Do it!

On the subject of the hippies in my backyard.
I have hippies. In my backyard.
Hippies. Backyard.
HippieYard.

I am NOT kidding. They moved in two days ago, and I think deep inside I was hoping they might go away on their own. They haven't. I know... I'm a dreamer. They set up their tents. They sprayed patchouli. OF COURSE they're not going anywhere. There are tie-dyed prayer flags. Is this the equivalent of backyard-squat home-decorating! IS IT?!

This morning I got up, and as I was washing my face I heard this great haunting violin music. I peeked out the back window and there was a hippie, in patchwork pants smoking a cigarrette and playing violin, cross legged on our picnic table. He waved.

I thought to myself. Oh dear.

I mean, I like hippies. I also like my backyard. Des doesn't like the hippies, and really likes our backyard. And all this seems like a very odd cosmic practical joke wherein God is pointing and laughing at me, (Hey! Hey Peter! Check this out! What a laugh!)... and in the meantime I'm wondering how to nicely (in Christian love) ask a group of people to please vacate my yard post haste.

Oh. I think I hear a drum circle starting...

a little bit of rice!

Well, I've got a rather Small Cat curled up on my pillow. I'm quite hungry and I just finished a book. I love days when I finish a book.
It's a good thing too, I haven't done much else today.

So I'm wolfing done some food (rice and beans WHAT!) Before I head out to the Bridge. It's my first shift back on in the renovated youth centre. I miss the place, it'll be good to get back. If all grants come through I start there at the beginning of May as my summer job, and that will be rad as well. Thank God for cool summer jobs.

I'm finished all but one exam. Which I should study for at some point in the near future. I'm looking forward to this first year being done. Then I can get on with my ever fabulous Summer Reading List!!

More later friends.

Celebratory post. Wherein the vegans eat parsley

Lets party!

1) I tso finished my finel sessay!

2) It's my brother's birthday! Happy flippin' seventeenth Andrew!

3) I'm going to be a vegan at a steakhouse tonight

4) This is my 300th post on this blog

5) Golly gosh darn it! I just want to par-tay!

small cat and tornado rooms.

This morning I woke up to find a rather small cat on my face. With hummus on her paws. So. I woke up this morning with hummus on my face, due to:

HUMMUS-CAAAAT!!

Hummus cat for the win. I left an open container of hummus on my desk last night. Now it has little paw prints in it. Small Cat wins. I really need to clean my room.

More later folks. I to the library.

Happy Birthday to You.

It is the roommate's birthday. Happy birthday Desiree-duck. You're a kickass roommate and a good friend. I pray this year will be the best you've had yet.
Keep being stubborn. Keep giving a shit. Keep being gorgeous and creative and hilarious. Keep feeding ducks.

much love desi-roar. happy birthday.

liars all.
Well, it's two thirty on Easter Sunday morning. I am practicing some songs to play tomorrow at church. I think what I can manage right now is an ugly post about a beautiful thing.

I'm in one of those moods. It's a fuck-everything sort of mood. I want to tear things apart and breathe smoke.
I also want to make these hymns tomorrow so beautiful that the whole world cries along with me. If I sing to Christ, I want it to matter. It'll cost me something.
If I am up in front of my church, then God help me I'll be up there wounded and everyone will be able to see it. And to hell with it. We're all sinners and liars. If we can find nothing else in the world to be honest about, let us be honest about that. We're sinners and liars. We're fucking broken, so God make us whole.

Let it be said that I love Easter. There's more hope contained in this one event than in any other in my experience. Christ loves us. He took our guilt. He was brutally executed. And when things seemed completely lost, he got back up.
I know I'm the idiot who believes in a man who healed people, walked on water and turned water into wine and was, somehow, God incarnate. Yeah, it's stupid. I know it is. You don't need to keep telling me.

I just know it's true. I more than believe it. I know it, somewhere.
It's faith, what little I have. And it's beautiful. I wouldnt trade it. I doubt. Of course I doubt. But when I shut up long enough to be still, I know that God is. I know that Christ loves us.


... Christ in every eye that sees me, Christ in every ear that hears me... everywhere I look: Christ!

lock and load.

I am no longer on lockdown. I still have a workbook to finish for monday, but I am no longer on lockdown. I am simply in quarantine.

Yes, in my double-all-nighter, stressed-out, forget-to-eat mode, I managed to get sick. I rarely get sick, so it's a bit of a bummer. So I guess I stock up on orange juice, neo-citran, dristan, cough-drops, advil, and... tea. And wait this thing out. That's right, this town ain't big enough for the both of us.

oh it still isn't done.

All nighter number two, coming on up. This is a first. I've never done two in a row. But the truth is that I am still not finished, which makes the essays late, which means I'm on triple-dragons-lockdown... ((I have NO idea what that entails))



So, on with triple-dragons-lockdown... (I have no idea what that entails)..

Holy crap I'm exausted to the point of hilarity...


ON WITH IT!!

cue the scary music, bob.



I just made a to-do list of epic proportions. Procrastinators unite... (ahem) -

to do -
- watch Antonioni's "Blow up"
- write three short notes on three keywords
- read "Regarding the Pain of Others" by Susan Sontag
- manufacture a workbook for cultural studies.
- write three thousand words on Barthes, Sontag and Antonioni's ideas about witness and death
- go over texts, sample exams and notes for my HIST 170 exam, tomorrow morning.

All this must be done by four pm. tomorrow. My History exam is from nine to noon, so I really should get some sleep tonight too. All this points to either an aneurism or a severe lockdown day.

I'm hoping for the former, while banking on the latter.

it's a cinnamon sort of sunday.


It's ten forty, I'm about to head out the door to spend time with my church. I'm reading poetry this morning. I'll read four poems, three from Ernesto Cardenal and one from Miguel de Unamuno. Both are priests, both got in trouble for edgy theology, both believed in freedom and God and the power of poetry. Gotta love my poet priests.


You cover us like the snow of this winter morning.
I hear you in the crows call,
the grunting of the pigs eating,
and the horn of the car on the highway

(ernesto cardenal)


I to my church.
I hope today that you will feel Christ with you, even if you're not used to the feeling.

I'll sleep like I don't ever have to wake up.

It's 1:30 or so in the morning and I'm genuinely about ready to pass out. I'm so tired.
Last night I saw Kelly and the Kelly Girls at the Montreal House. It was a fantastic little show, and I had a lot of fun. I just had to dance, against the protests of my inner shy-girl.

Speaking of shows. My roommate has her photography on exibit at Sadlier house tomorrow, noon till three. If you're local, go. It's the student exibit, and it showcases some stunning work. My dear friends Dahn and little Dan are featured as models in two pieces. Absolutely beautiful.

That and I've been told that when I'm all dolled up, I look like a flapper. This is cause for celebration!

So cheers, and goodnight.

I'll wait for it to rise.


I have to be out the door in a very few minutes to record my show at Trent Radio. If I end up being around on Saturday I'll just do the show live and bank the recorded show for another day. I may pick up tomorrow morning and head to Toronto for the day. Andrew, my friend from Lifeteams (and later Saltspring, and later here) is heading back to B.C. for the summer. Originally I had intended on going back to Saltspring with him, but the job with YFC plus a growing attachment to my hometown will keep me here in Peterborough for the first summer in recent memory.

I dont know guys, my friends here had a very formative summer last year from the sounds of things, and I don't want to leave and miss four months of a life which will inevitably go on without me in Peterborough.
I'm signing a lease this week. I'll have a hydro bill, with my name on it. You will be able to prove that I live in this town, something you can't do now.

So here's to summer. I have my last class this afternoon. One paper, one notebook and three exams later I'll be done my first year.

Good. I'm sick of being a n00b.

a muscle.


"your heart is a muscle the size of your fist.
keep loving. keep fighting."

six a.m.

I feel like making lists. It's six in the morning and I'm not in bed yet.


currently I am -
- scared for a faraway friend
- concerned for a near one
- sort of hungry
- tasting coke and black licorice
- happy to have the best roommate in the world
- thankful for my dear friends in general
- happy that school is almost out
- feeling nostaligic
- thankful for grace

soon I will be -
- sleeping
- working with YFC as summer intern
- writing down my dreams upon waking. I've decided that sometimes they're too great to chance forgetting.
- writing up a proposal for a summer show at Trent Radio

my favourite flowers are -
- black eyed susans
- daisies
- forget-me-nots

goodnight... er. goodmorning

vegan scones even you can make
(I got these from rosemaryamey.ca. They're quick, yummy and they're actually scones. Not tea biscuits. Scones.)

dry ingredients

2 cups flour
1 Tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 Tbsp sugar

other ingredients

1/2 cup plus 1 Tbsp vegan margarine
1/3 cup soymilk
egg replacer equivalent to 1 egg

and then!

1. Preheat oven to 450°F.
2. Mix dry ingredients.
3. Cut in margarine.
4. Make a well in the middle, add soymilk and egg replacer.
5. Mix with a fork to form a soft dough.
6. Knead lightly. Shape into 2 discs about 3/4" thick. Cut each disc into quarters
7. Put on a baking sheet and bake for 10-15 minutes, until light golden brown.
8. Serve warm with vegan margarine and/or jam

the part where you said amen? say it again.


I remember my Dad trying to teach my sister and I how to pray.
We were four and my sister and I cast uncomfortable glances at each other with our elbows on our itchy pink bedspreads and our knees on the carpet. My Dad didn't know how to teach us to pray, but I guess somewhere in him, where the church was still in the boy, he felt that he had to.

We had no interest in prayer. It was awkward, uncomfortable. It was also very foreign.
We didn't attend church and were unaware of any basic biblical teaching. To complicate the lesson, my dad wouldn't get on his knees and pray beside us. It was too much for him. So he would just tell us what to do and watch from the chair by the beds.

I guess the wierdest part of it was that although my dad was personally uncomfortable with prayer, and had no prayer time himself, he felt it necessary to at least attempt to instill the value of prayer in his children. It's a little sad really. I wonder what my dad was thinking when he saw my sister and I squirm with awkwardness, and fumble over 'Thou".

I don't know, my dad doesn't talk about that sort of thing. But he'd given up trying to teach prayer by the time my younger brother Andrew was old enough to try.
So the three of us, years later, gropingly stumbled across faith on our own.

in case anyone was wondering.

This is what Desiree-the-roommate and I look like as web dolls. Thank you. I'll have a degree someday.

(and you thought I was kidding).

Introducing... my immortal pets!

They are named Unsterblich and Ewig. Pronounced "ooonsterblik and eh-vig". Meaning "immortal" and "forever" in German. Here they are in their cage.

Me and Ewig, bonding. Note her appearance of overall immortality and good health.

Me feeding Unsterblich. I don't have to feed him. I just want to. Take that dog-mommies.

So happy together.

My sojourn into pet ownership has taken a new turn. As far as I'm concerned, the furry (mortal) ones can go break someone elses heart. As for me? I've got Unsterblich and Ewig in a tank in my room. They're quiet. They're tidy. They don't move much. But most importantly of all, they are immortal!

get yours today.