Things I miss

http://www.schmutzie.com/weblog/2012/9/11/25-things-i-miss.html


I begin this little post for a rainy-Friday with a nod to Elan Morgan and her lovely blog Schmutzie--a fellow Canadian, an all-round balanced person it appears, and just great with words. That's what I love the most.
So, when she ended this blog post with a "what do you miss?" I had to jump in. I miss lots of things, one of them lately being bolts-out-of-the-blue inspiration for this blog, and I wanted to get back to being list-worthy because yes: I still love lists.
I'll begin in a minute. First, I recap this First Week Back to Work.
Coffee played a huge part in this Week Back to Work (and to be clear it really wasn't a week, I was off Monday to a) recover from the drive and b) to run errands like a madwoman. I just can't get it all done. Arrrghhh....
So coffee. I had morning job-site meetings every day this week except Tuesday. And every morning I had a meeting I managed to sneak in coffee--not that I don't drink coffee every morning anyway--I do, just not the take-out kind. I'm frugal about this. About coffee, and about lunch. I make my coffee every morning at home with the French-press, I mix it with milk, I put it in my glass travel cup (my mother taught me: coffee tastes better in glass, it's a French thing, she's right, it does). I drink it in the car while listening to either the radio or my plugged-in ipod in the car. It gets me through the commute. The dumb-assery (as I've taken to calling it) of the other drivers. The traffic. The news I hear. All of it. It trumps my destination.
Morning meetings mean a break-up of routine (always welcome. I'm becoming better at embracing this kind of thing). I go to the meeting, I meet with people. We exchange Ideas, Solutions. We talk respectfully. The meeting ends, we go on with our day. I get a coffee. Sometimes from Starbucks. Sometimes Tim Horton's. Whatever is near by. If there is a coffee place near where I'm parked, great. If not--I find one. That's gotten me through the week.

It rained all day through my office window today and I loved it. I loved knowing my muddy car was being cleaned with no effort on my part, I loved knowing I had brought  my salad-lunch and didn't have to leave the office to get food in my sandals (I never leave the office to get food. Most days, in our two-storey building I don't even get downstairs). I ate my spinach-and-blue cheese and stared out the window. I finished a proposal. I took calls. I did it all still in my post-vacation haze. It was wonderful I will admit. Then home to Friday Night, the best night of the week (after Saturday). And I was in the mood for what I had planned--a nothing night, a Carolyn night, nail-painting, reading, organizing. Virgo stuff.

Here goes my list. (typo I just wrote "here goes my life". Odd)..
I have no idea how long it will be. I'm spreading this post out tonight so it may take a while. I may even do a second instalment. I miss alot of things...

1. My dad. His voice especially. I had no idea how much I would miss his voice. Getting silly mail from him. Far Side cartoons with smiley-faces drawn on the back of them. They are all over my fridge. I need a new fridge and I know I can't buy stainless because it's not magnetic. This is weird, I know. I love my fridge collage.

{It's hard to follow up the first one because it's a serious one, and obviously nothing on this list will really touch it, and some things will seem stupid in comparison. But I'm here, list-making. Randomly. For myself, for no one else. Just like running. For me}.

2. Speaking of which, I miss running without the fear of what it will do to my head, which is unpredictable and easily spooked, so it seems. In Mike's family, he has two relatives with migraine/head issues. This interested me.

3. Friends. Without kids. I really really miss that. Coffee, spontaneously. Plans that didn't have to made weeks in advance. I love them all, kids included, I just miss that 'let's do THIS!' we used to have. Maybe I just miss my twenties. Except that I don't. I would not go back to that decade if you paid me.

4. My Bathurst apartment. Just in a nostalgic way. The New Yorker of the nineties arriving in my mailbox every week. Reading in the dining room with the window open late at night after waitressing, the air from outside blowing in. My huge bedroom. The quiet mornings (as compared to downtown Toronto where I wake up every single day to the sound of a truck reversing. I dream of that beeping...)

5. Waitressing. Well, wait a minute, not COMPLETELY. I miss the good people I met when I was serving. The fun, interesting people, many of whom I am lucky enough to still count as dear friends today. And others who round out the edges. I don't miss the corporate slant that the restaurant I used to work for took on, I don't miss the people I met who were complete phonies, but I miss having drinks and a cheap steak on a Friday night after working fourteen hours straight. It felt so earned.

6. The Pre-September 11th, 2001 world. I know it wasn't perfect. But it was closer than it is now.

7. No internet. Time sucking, mind wasting. And yet here I am. Wasting my time with the best (and the worst) of it all.

8. Unlike other lists I've mulled over, I don't really miss 'my youth'. I mean, I still retain portions of it (memories, sense of humour, wisdom gained {I think}) but I don't feel the need to relive it. I think it's because I lived the hell out of it at the time. And I was born half-adult so I didn't have a childhood in the true sense of the word. But that's for another post.

9. My childhood home. In the true fashion of an interior designer I miss places. How weird is that? It was a townhouse in a borough of Toronto, red carpets on the main floor, a sunken entryway, an above-ground basement, a little square of backyard, front cement steps (six of them, I think), a small maple tree, a garage, a furnace room (great for hiding and playing in), no air conditioning, and we had a piano. Life was good. I still dream about that house. I think I read somewhere you will always dream about your first home. Or maybe that's just me.

10. My dog Shadow. This list is not in order. I miss how happy she made our family. All she did was love each and every one of us, and I think she made us love each other more too.

That's where I'm at right now. I'm sure I'll think of more as the days wear on...
I'm watching the darkening sky after a long walk and some sushi. There is a Californian Chardonnay nearby, not to worry.

I have to pack.
Girls weekend leaves tomorrow morning!