blue milk box

just stopped to chat along the fence with my neighbour, sweet ol'e. she thanked dN (thru me) for his thursday night rescue. she had her place locked up tighter than fort knox and had locked herself out, she called upon dN to help her break in. they ended up using the old blue milk box to remedy the situation. apparently there used to be a dairy just up the street from us. (where fiesta farms is now) they used to deliver milk by horse drawn carridge. (e remembers a thick layer of cream along the top of the glass jugs.) since we moved in, I wondered what that tiny blue door was for. mystery revealed.

i think there are alot of people, me included, that just need a few minutes of chatter to lift their spirits.

speaking of...we stopped by our new house to show nn today. we were there only a few moments, safely by the sidewalk. when the current owner, thelma, raced out, cigarette in hand, in a frenzy. "yes, i was smoking inside but it will be aired out by thursday!" (as though we had been alarmed to see her smoking inside and were thinking -- how dare she! when really we hadn't even seen her at all and just wanted to admire the place for a few minutes from the sidewalk) she then offered to let us come inside, which of course, was not a good idea, nor expected. she chatted with us about the family home for a few moments, then abruptly excused herself saying she was on the phone! i just wonder what possessed her to run from the phone out to us in the first place. she's moving next door (other side of our semi), so expect more stories about thelma. what a character!

smiling ol'man in a wife beater next door quietly observed the entire exchange from his favourite perch of the front porch.

last night i dreamed in patterns & designs

strange snapshot from yesterday: dinner: veggie dogs at a picnic table beside harbourfront shared with rasta fellow in search of a new hat to fit his expanding dreads.

it was dinner on the run, art class style. the first class went well. time just flew! we ended up staying 1.5 hours later than expected, no awareness of time, in love with the joy of something new and indulgently creative, focused on the projects. it was a blur. last night i dreamed in patterns and designs. my first t-shirt (for dN) hangs proudly on the drying rack in the kitchen.

china town wandering

today i found myself in chinatown in search of cheap tees for my silkscreening on fabric class that starts tomorrow. stopped into the kim moon bakery on dundas for a late lunch and ended up sharing a table with this elderly chinese man, both of us absorbed in our reading materials and absentmindedly filling our mouths with dim sum. for a moment, i thought he was going to offer me one of his three mini egg tarts. not this time!

bizarrely all the t-shirt places seemed to be in a cluster on the West side of Spadina just north of Dundas, near the gates to Kensington. on the Spadina car home, i ended up sitting next to a woman reading No Logo by Naomi Klein. We laughed at the coincidence - me with my bags full of no logo t-shirts and her with the book. the first chapter references spadina so we felt oddly connected to each other, the street, and naomi.

dN came home with maps from the late 1800s of our new street, we laughed at all the little oddities like Asylum lane which has since been renamed to Massey Street. Ossington used to be named Dundas! As it turns out our house was close to both a prison and lunatic asylum! our house grew up at the edge of civilization among the wild rough crowd.

note: our latest work.in.progress is a 125 year old house. :)

work.in.progress: chapter one

This blog has been loitering on the verge of existence for awhile now. i felt like i couldn't begin until i had just the right title, the right idea to wrap around all the crazy adventures and stories i have been collecting and wanting to share. But it's like Woody Allen says "80% of life is showing up." So even the title of the blog is a work in progress but at least I've shown up. ;)

work in progress fits in many ways. sometimes it's a state of mind, sometimes a state of being, sometimes it's a lofty goal when my subtitle for existence could read:

(Should be) working in progress

or

Slacking in progress.

It's part art, part business, with an earnest streak of productivity and just a hint of procrastination.which is what i am doing now. procrastinating! need to finish a report.will write more soon...