Day is Done

Grant is done.
Meeting is done.
Homework is done.

I was at the library today and I don't know what it is about that building, but if I spend more than half an hour there I get hit with a tsunami of exhaustion and suddenly I just want to be at home in bed. Somehow I managed to get home and crash before picking myself up and finishing the day.

Dishes are not done.
Renovations will never be done.
Good night.

Pruning Hops

Since I'm worried the weather might get rainy again I spent a couple of hours pruning our hops and climbing hydrangea. You are supposed to prune hops after the first frost, but ours is so vigorous, it could use a bit of taming down. I have to figure out how to reach the vines that climbed up and onto the power line. We are going to use these prunings for our All Soul's Shrine. Today we had a meeting to work on the design and I am very excited about it. I've put the hops fruit in the back porch to dry out, along with my lemon verbena clippings and fennel seed heads. The porch smells great!

The weather has turned cool again and I am craving the comfort food of Thanksgiving. I really want turkey!!!!!!

Happy Little Kids

It was a good mood kind of day today. I noticed lots of toddlers having fun in the sun with their mothers or caregivers. There's nothing more cheerful than a giggling toddler or two and I am glad to see them getting along with their nannies because I have seen so many children who seem miserable with their caregivers. Sometimes the feeling seems to be mutual.

Also, a day of seeing really ugly little snarky dogs and beautiful pups and puppies. Why people choose to cling to those yappy little pissers with runny eyes is beyond me. Chacun a leur chien.

Garden Therapy

Almost every time I spent a couple of hours in the garden I am reminded of how much I love it. This winter I will be recording people's garden memories, particularly focusing on gardens at night. I am looking at moths and moon gardens and will create an installation with performance and sound. I'm looking forward to capturing a variety of voices, so if you or someone you know has some good garden memory stories, please let me know.

I'm also interested in the question "What have you lost?" in terms of garden memories and plants that are no longer in your life that you miss.

Home is the Bug Hunter

Yes, we are home and it was very good to sleep in a bed and not wake up in the middle of the night worrying about bed bugs. As soon as I came home I alarmed my partner by stripping naked in the porch and ordering him to help me put my clothes in bags and send them immediately to the laundry room. Everything else has either been soaked in disinfectant or stuffed into the freezer for two weeks. Even my artist fee cheque is on ice. Strewth.

We walked to school today in the overcast muggy weather only to find it was a Pro D day and there is no school. I could have stayed in bed! Argh. Today will be a day filled with cleaning up the domestic space and puttering in the garden. I also want to write more in depth about some of the performances we saw this past weekend.

Plagued by phantom itching, I am.

Do You Like Dark Chocolate or Light Chocolate?

My long lost friend cooked a veggie and egg scramble and we had a lovely morning in her sunny home on the edge of a bird sanctuary. She is a choreographer and dancer who is beginning to be interested in performance art. She showed me the dance studio in a big old church where she is teaching contemporary dance.

I bought a book for Ullie and chocolate for Peter and now I'm just about ready to go home. There are bed bugs in our hotel so I am having a bit of a meltdown over this. Luckily we have not had bites but other performers have. So we're bagging up all our stuff and taking home to be frozen and or put in the wash and a hot dryer. Just so you know, they are out there and you have to be very careful. Always check the mattresses in a hotel room before you decide to sleep there. We are hoping and praying our room was not infected at any point.

Anyway I am really looking forward to the performances tonight and I am eating a lovely mole square from the chocolate shop up the road made with spices, chocolate and ground almonds. I also found coconut water at a health store, so I'm drinking it to deal with that mid afternoon lull. I'm going to chill out in our room until we go out for dinner.

Oyster Bloat

Well, the performance is over and it feels great to have accomplished many of the goals we set out to meet in our collaboration. The audience was terrific and folks were very kind with their feedback and comments. We packed a lot of stuff into one piece because we were just so excited to have the opportunity to perform. One of the other performers said it was very demanding of the audience, which I think is a good thing.

Many of the audience had never seen a performance art piece at Open Space before and quite a few, I suspect were seeing performance for the first time. Victoria is a real student town and I think we had many young students out to the show tonight.

I enjoyed watching the other two performers and I will have photos and thoughts to share on their work. It was a feminist triple bill and I'm so pleased to have been a part of the evening. We went out for oysters afterward and talked some more about the evening. I'm stuffed to the gills. Tonight I met a friend who is a performer I haven't seen for at least 17 years and tomorrow we will meet and catch up. This is just too much fun. I love it.