My Life: In Curtains

School's starting... and how glad I am to be sitting on my ass writing posts about my curtains instead of shopping for expensive books and worrying about B's from Soroka.

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Growing up, when I would visit my grandfather in Edmonton, I would always stay in the same room. I loved that house--I would love to live in it... if it wasn't in Edmonton. Anyway, when my grandfather passed away my mother sent me the room's accoutrements because she knew I loved them.

The primary object I loved was the curtains. The room had gigantic windows and these long blue and lavender flowered curtains, which were really sheets, so they let all the light through. I loved that. I love a light room, so I was very excited to inherit these totally old sheet-curtains. They cheer me up so much.

But I have trouble finding the stud in the right corner of the window, so they weren't hung securely, and when they finally fell my desk was in the way, and I was in school and All That, so they stayed unhung. Sort of. I have one anchoring screw in the middle to support the cheap rod, and I hung the entire curtain on that rod. Of course, it would be crooked. And when they changed the windows in our apt years ago they never painted the new (shittily done) wood frames. And then, at some point Nombly of course PEED on the bottom of the curtain, so I removed them and chopped off the bottoms and washed them. But I was so Schoolified that I only rehung one of the curtains (can't even remember why now--maybe cause it was lighter, for the broken rod).

So you can see here the poor one-sheet teetering curtain, with wood window frame. Sigh.

I managed to move around and clean up this corner enough to get my MA essay done. Notice how I did not photograph the top of the mono curtain so you can't see the crooked. (The chair I make no apologies for--the cover is for the cats to scratch. The yellow table held Haley's sleeping bed, and her favourite Reitman's bag which she liked to lick.)

This was the state of the desk after I cleaned up the rest of my room. I then lost the energy to clean up the desk area, so I've been desking at my bed for months. I think by this point, however, I had painted the wooden frame.

Today I finally pulled all the stuff out and rehung the curtain rod. I think it's secure now. It took me several long nails, the stud finder, my hammer, various screwdriver heads, and pliers. Then I dug out the other sheet, and put curtain hooks into them. You can see, however, that one of the curtains has been bleached more by the sun than the other... sitting here I feel like one of my eyes is more in focus than the other.

I hung up the framed drawing of the Swan theatre which used to hang in my grandfather's bedroom. I rehung the rice paper lamp which I love, and arranged all my writing books, and my current research. (My old compy is tucked in the corner--I still have files on there.)

A little fishy paper clip holder from my grandfather's desk. (Not sure who has the Hear all evil, speak all evil, see all evil monkey ruler.)

I laid out a carefully staged scene as though I was researching my book all day. There's my laptop with its cute gel cover, and notice my collection of Book Holding Apparatusi from my school days. (1) The plastic stand with my notebook; (2) the metal stand with Metallica; (3) the red heavy thingy that holds books open... (4) there's one more you can't see here, a small metal thingy. Don't laugh, I broke two book stands over those 2 degrees.

And as the moose in the Leon's ad used to say:
CURTAINNNNNS!

Here are the pictures from the room I used to stay in--they were all Chaucer related, presumably picked up when my grandfather took a trip to England--he taught Chaucer and Shakespeare. This is Canterbury.

Scenes from The Canterbury Tales. On the right is the Wife of Bath--one of my grandfather's favourite characters and he would love to recite her "Prologue."

The Wife of Bath talks about all her many husbands, but especially the last one, who was much younger than her. And he was always reading stories from a book about how inferior women were to men. One night they fought and he hit her, and she fell down on the floor and lay still as though dead, and he was upset and apologizing.

"O hast thou slain me, false thief!" she said. "And for my land hast thou murdered me? Ere I be dead, yet will I kiss thee." And he came near and kneeled down as though to kiss her, and she punched him. After that she made him give her his money and lands and burn the book, and they were happy ever after.

And I still have some other talismans about... my Alex Ross Wonder Woman...

the Writing Smurf Wai-Yant gave me...

the Terror who watched over my homework, and the little Lips Gorilla my stepmother gave me to get me through the end of my degree.

Imaginary Life on the West Coast

So my brother has finally found the perfect place to live in Vancouver. Check out this sweet listing:

"$725 / 1br - CAUTION - Slum alert (N. Surrey)If you want all the noise and don't mind other people hearing you do "everything", you don't care whether you have a fire, or you like the thumping by psychotic downstairs neighbors, rent this pigsty. Revolving door tenancy."

He'd better rush to grab that one.

My dad is always sending me places to live in Nanaimo. (My boss also, for some odd reason, thinks I should live in Nanaimo.) Anyway, he finally found me a nice place on my dream street: Buttertubs Drive. I would love to have BUTTERTUBS as my address. Buttertubs sounds like a lesser known member of Our Gang (The Little Rascalz).


Here's my sweet little home. I wonder if I can hire on whoever lives there now to do my gardening.

Conventiently located near Buttertubs Marsh, of course. As Virginia Thoreau said: A woman must have money and a marsh of her own if she is to write fiction.