you wouldn't believe me if i told you; i'll try anyway.

i'm sitting here, in my bathrobe, with my tiny cup of coffee by my right hand, my desk covered with books and zines and driftwood and its statues of ganesh and buddha and the goddess and my pills and my incense holder that's actually a piece of termite-eaten driftwood that i picked up off the beach in tofino this summer...the only sound i can hear is the hum of my old computer. my eyes keep getting drawn to the huge copy of living artfully that i want to roll around in.

basically, it's like i've never left, but oh-so-much-has happened in the four days that i have been away. i basically haven't stopped moving or drinking wine or hiking or talking or hugging or writing or cooking or singing since. now comes the part where i try and tell you all the story of my weekend.

it starts when i turned off the computer from blogging my last entry. i knew i was going to be late to the bus station, and would probably miss my connection through to peterborough once i got to ottawa. i packed up my homework and stuffed a sweater and some underwear in a shoulder bag and went to the metro. i got to the bus station and climbed in a huge greyhound and it took me to ottawa.

where i realized that the earliest i was going to leave for peterborough was at 12:30 am, so i decided to spend the night at my friend c's house.

i didn't call or anything beforehand, i wanted it to be a complete surprise. so i walked the half-an-hour from the bus station to her house, all through little italy and down one of my favourite streets in ottawa - and finally stood on her doorstep and rang the bell.

she opened the door, squealing with delight (which is always nice) and i noticed that she was wearing a knapsack on her back.

"where are you going?" i asked her, and she said, "to the pool. i was going to take a hot-tub. do you want to go?"

and i said, "sure."

so she lent me one of her bathing suits and got me an extra towel and we walked the block up to the pool and swam some laps, then sat in the hot tub for a while and then steamed the stress out of our bodies in the steam room, chatchatchatting all the way.

she was on her way to my other best friends' house to babysit her son while they all went out to celebrate my friend angell's birthday. so i went along with her, and the door opened and my friend k., who had surgery earlier this month, started crying and said, "i've been calling you and calling you. what took you so long?"

(calling in the sense where she's been asking the universe to send me to her.) so that was nice, too. i hugged her back and told her i got there as soon as i could. c left with the baby, and k and i were sitting out on the picnic table in front of her house and she was smoking a cigarette and telling me the (horrific) details of her surgery when a car pulled up.

and who should get out of it but our friend charlie, who is apparently not living in thailand forever and ever but is back on this continent for a few weeks.

so amid the screams and welcome-home hugs and looking at all our physical differences (my hair cut, his lost weight, new tattoo and shaved head) it was a very heady welcome home indeed.

george and i drove to pick up angell from her work and she screamed when she saw me, too. (apparently, i have to go back home more than once every 4 months.) and we brought her back to t's house and there was much wine and beer drinking, and a birthday cake in the shape of a pirate - and then we called two cabs and went to a west-end bar where there was karaoke...

where there was MORE beer-drinking and bellowing of the "rainbow connection" and i ran into my best friend from high school (of all the bars in all the world i had to walk into hers) who had apparently written into a gameshow once, trying to find me.

we went home and i put myself to bed shortly thereafter. and woke up the next morning already having missed the first two buses to peterborough, and with a pounding headache that no amount of coffee would make better. george and i took his dog moe for a looooong walk in the beautiful november sunshine the half-an-hour back to the bus station and i tied my greasy hair up in my goddess scarf and got back on the bus for another 3 1/2 hours.

*poof* out of ottawa.

the ride to peterborough was uneventful, except that i realized that i had misplaced the directions to banane's new house somewhere in my foggy-headedness of that morning. so i read homework and listened to the only cd i had thought to bring with me, over and over until i got there. of course when i got there it was getting dark. and so thank god i remembered the first few directions on how to get there (up to go across the pedestrian foot bridge) and was hoping that someone would find me when....

banane did. i crossed the foot bridge which brought me to this dog park, and there was banane, magically standing on the other side of it at a completely random moment, to take me home. with her wonderful puppy. so we walked home and i got to see her brand new house (her first-ever OWNED one) which is the cutest wee bungalow painted in earth tones and has a lot of reggae-influenced art and milk-crate furniture and a root cellar full of pickles and preserves...and had my bf in it. my bf from last week who is now living with and good friends with my sister. which is fabulous (and no doubt confusing to people who know them only by initials and nicknames).

they were having a meeting for their "hunger gala" (a night staged to bring attention to peterborough's poverty and food crisis...if you'll be in the area, it's on tuesday at market hall) so i helped a bit and wrote a piece for their zine and curled up and did some more homework and then drank some wine...i think we went to bed somewhat early, but i can't be too sure.

the next day we woke up slowly again and had some coffee and then banane and i went to the farmer's market, too late to buy anything. and then we drove up to her farm property where she showed me what grew where during the summer months and we went on this long hike with her puppy to the watering hole where she and her boy and her dog swam all summer, and the hike took us through this forest that was incredibly, incredibly magical.

it was all grown over with coniferous trees and there were needles on the ground and these huge stone caves overgrown with moss - porcupines live in the caves and we saw some dead ones, and i picked some of the porcupine quills to make a necklace for someone (the quills are good for asthma, apparently) and then we went home to get ready for her birthday dinner.

she and her boy went into their backyard to build a bonfire pit and i opened the crate of dumpster-dived white wine she found to make a cauldron full of sangria (i am always called on to make the sangria at any party i go to. add wine - cheap juice - fruit. mix.) and then bf roasted some squash and made chocolate cake and rice, and there was fresh roasted venison, and then people started arriving and we drank sangria and beer and ate cake and sat at a bonfire and...i went to bed around 2 am, after realizing that king lear was very hard to read after a party like that.

i woke up yesterday morning by 11:30 and by 12:30 banane's boy and i were at a diner, eating sausage and eggs and drinking mucho coffee and water and then we got back in the car and he drove us to his parents' house where we made an impromptu showing at his family's birthday dinner - i drank more wine and more beer and ate lasagne and more cake and then boy drove me to the bus station, where i bought a student priced ticket for montreal and boarded the bus.

*poof out of peterborough and ottawa*

i got home at 9:30, called met so that he could use his keys to let me in, we talked for 3 minutes (or so) and i walked into my bedroom and passed OUT.

i woke up today a full 12 hours after i went to sleep. i got up, took a shower, and made coffee. i have a lot of work to do.

i realized a few things this weekend, though. i was thinking, once i made it to peterborough and realized that banane didn't have a computer and the town hasn't quite made it to the concept of "internet cafes", that of course my resolution to blog every day in november, much less my participation in nanoblopomo, was down the crapper.

i was a bit upset, and then i realized that there was nothing i could have done to change the situation. what was i supposed to have done - missed my sister's birthday in order to stick close to the internet? no.

and being away from it showed me how healing it is to take breaks every once in a while. breaks even from healing resolutions to journal every day. to be flexible with yourself even when you think you're engaging with yourself flexibly. to allow healing to come through in different forms - like the half-an-hour wordless cuddle that banane and i shared on her couch. to let go of attachment to things - to events and outcomes and notions of oneself - and to just, plainly and finally,

BEE.