Took A Walk Monday

with all respect to Supertramp:

Downstream

"Took a boat Sunday, down by the sea
It just felt so nice, you and me
We didn't have a problem or a care
And all around was silence, everywhere

You are the reason I was born
Be with you through all seasons, I'll always hear you when you call
We'll keep the love light shining through each night and day
A lonely life behind me, oh what a change you've made

So down here on the ocean we will stay
Went through a lot of changes
Turned a lot of pages
When I took a boat Sunday

To know you as I know you now, that is all I need
And we will get along somehow, if we both believe

So down here on the ocean we will stay
Went through a lot of changes
Turned a lot of pages
When I took a boat Sunday"

Play MP3 Excerpt from Downstream

----

Took a walk monday. it was a holiday here in Canada.

Smitten is chaperoning for her son's outdoor education in June. She is doing crafts and leading the hiking trips. She wanted to scout out the trails and area on her own before actually hitting the camp. She asked me to go. I did.

It was a cooler day with a little spray of rain, but not really - like having a mister occasionally shot over you. We looked at cottages and went to the camp - it is on the side of a valley that has a large lake in it. Our feet were wet from the damp grass, but the air was clear and invigorating.

I enjoyed being out very much.

But I was overcome by an incredible sense of loss. Before marriage I was a pretty outdoors guy. I may have had gelled hair and worn funky clothes in trendy bars - but i was on a couple of canoe trips a year, and went hiking all the time.

Half the time i would hike in the valleys near our farm. This camp was in the same chain of valleys that our farm was adjacent to. We didn't ever live on the farm, we just drove out to it. Our family cottage was on the side of a valley on another lake in the chain.

I was overcome with grief and loss that my children would never know a cottage or trail hiking or the outdoors as a part of their childhood the way i did. That i had lost years of going up north to canoe - something i loved - because it was stymied for house cleaning or house maintenance or for whatever other reason each time i suggested it. i felt shame that i hadn't been strong enough to assert my needs and wants - and that i hadn't given my children the opportunity to spend that kind of time in real nature - not just city parks.

The day was beautiful, and i was with a beautiful woman who loves me. Whom i believe i love. Whom i love.

But i don't trust myself with that emotion right now. or trust where that emotion will lead me.

There was catharsis and a determination formed yesterday.

I want a cottage - whether i get one or not, i don't know. i doubt i will be able to afford it - but we'll see. I want to live more outdoors and do more things outdoors. It is always such a shock to return to the outdoors in this wasteland where i live. huddled indoors for 8 months of the year and two months of half-assed in and out on top of that.

a lot of living to fit in four months. that's why i'd like to move. 8 months of the year feels like pure survival...

i want to take my children out on good days and on bad (or half-assed days). normally i wouldn't have gone out on a day like yesterday (for the last 18 years or so anyway), but now - i'm going to do it.

----

we wandered around one of the sort of resort towns nearby.

had an ice-cream. i bought a vase. hand blown glass.

it is now my second vase. i bought my first one a few weeks ago. i was having Smitten over for dinner and i wanted flowers on my table. i discovered that when i left the house i had taken no vases. i bought stbx-Mrs_C every kind of vase known to humanity, but took not vase for myself.

so i bought one. i had flowers on my table. they are still there. i am very good at keeping flowers alive. in fact this weekend (friday) Smitten brought me flowers (orange/yellow roses) assuming that my flowers would be dead. we stuck them in a wine bottle that night, but they are now transferred to the new vase.

----

this is only the second time in my life that anyone has ever bought me flowers.

the first time was when i was about 21 and i had an awkward tryst with this one woman, and she felt bad that she had "lured" me into something i didn't want to do - so she sent flowers because she didn't know what else to do. i was touched.

especially since i was working as a bouncer in bar at the time and she sent them to the bar where i worked (she was unsure of my exact home address). let's just say that it is not ever day that a bouncer in a biker bar gets sent flowers (I was one of the guys hired to be an "enforcer" to clean up the bar and get rid of the scuzz-bags).

lots of the guys tried to give me a hard time about it. i just told them "You WISH some woman would send you flowers, asshole(s)."

my flowers spent the evening until closing resting in the beer cooler on the beer cases.

Smitten brought me flowers because i was a little down on friday night. still the emotional hang-over of all the issues i've written about recently. Dad, my boss and work stuff, son's school, daughter, housing, disagreement with Smitten.

Smitten said "You always seem to know when to lift me up by visiting, or doing something special, or bringing me flowers... I don't have your sense of the perfect thing to do, so I thought I would just bring you flowers because it always makes me happy when you bring flowers, so I thought it might make you happy if I brought you flowers."

----

i've had a thing for orange hand made glass for a few years now. orange and the wild cobalt blue that they use with it in most glass making.

i have wanted to buy some pieces for some time. stbx-Mrs_C wouldn't let me buy any, and i didn't have to balls to say i was going to buy it anyway. i saw some over this last year, but it was at points when i was broke.

the vase you see above was the princely sum of $16.95 for a hand blown vase. how could i say no. i could use the $17 on something else, and really don't have it to spare - but when will i get a better deal? not everything in my life has to be utility or food driven, hey?

----

my new vase

my new vases

my own flowers.