"Hello, World..."

Wow.

Okay.

So she's the type of girl who, after confirming plans tonight with me, gets distracted by a Nepalese scarf store on her way to yoga, meaning that she's now going to a -later- yoga class, meaning that we no longer have plans tonight. 

Red flag now firmly planted in place, and duly noted.

(On the plus side, this means dinner at the veggie Mexican place down the street with Matthew tonight: yumminess on all counts!)

Missed connection this afternoon - meeting my friend with the rainbow hair and her new lover for lunch will have to wait until tomorrow.

I should hear very soon from the graduate program that is still considering my application. They've really gone out on a limb to take a chance on me: accepted my application late, and were prepared to wait on grades and commendations from the professors I worked with this semester to make an admissions decision (as opposed to a quite justifiable and flat-out "no, try again next year" off the bat). All of my grades this term have been outrageously high, and my professors are very happy to throw their support behind me, which is to say: I may very likely find myself in the position of having to decide quite quickly not only whether or not I'm prepared to uproot from my life here to move across the country for a 12-month Masters' program, but if I should pack up Matthew with me, or leave him here to maintain our home-base.

My graduation has officially been approved; my convocation is in just over two weeks. I don't think that even most of the people closest to me can really begin to appreciate what a struggle it was for me to earn my BA, so I won't try to convey that here, but suffice it to say: this is a very momentous milestone for me. My parents and grand-mere are coming into town, as is my mama-in-law (who I'm blessed for an amazing relationship with), to attend the ceremony and celebrate this with me. I'm trying really hard not to get anxious and stressed out by the weight of all of this family coming together, and to focus on the celebration that this is instead. I think I'm going to set out to find a pretty dress and make sure that my toes are yummily pedicured for the occasion.

My first summer course starts tomorrow night. Critical theory - Adorno, Benjamin, Marcuse. Much as my last couple of weeks of Absolutely Nothing on my Plate have been wondrously novel and great (it has been years - years - since I've had so much as a day with nothing looming on me), it's time to create some structure again. Coursework. Should start looking for employment, too.

Matthew has a work meeting this evening that will see him home at around 8 o'clock tonight (I'm a spoiled girl whose fiance is usually home from work by 4, and so this makes me unreasonably cranky); my favourite former lover, the boy who had me fall in love with mixed CDs, has dropped off the face of the earth again (as he's wont to do), so I wasn't exactly expecting a response when I invited him to go sit by the lake and have a beer tonight; and I was in the middle of typing "I'm not holding my breath that that girl I'd been seeing is going to make herself available for the burlesque show plans that we'd had when she said wasn't sure she'd be able to make it" when I received a message from her asking if I was still up for going. So, I guess she and I will be seeing each other tonight after all. (I think this is what a deer in headlights feels like.)

My current FaceBook status: has had the most bizarre twilight-zone-esque day... Now, to recuperate by, er, watching Doll House (because clearly -that's- the cure for a topsy-turvy, not-quite-right universe).

My date last night went... well? Yes. I think. It went well. (I can't tell... and I can't quite figure out whether I can't tell because I'm not being given positive signals to be picking up on, or because I'm just totally dense and don't have the perspective to see the forest from the metaphorical tree). The plans themselves were rather impromptu: she sent me a message during the day saying that she was up for hanging out that night if I was available. So I took the time to sit down for a yummy home-made cheese fondue dinner with Matthew, and then off I went to meet her for funkily-flavoured shakes at a hyper-hip place called East is East (oh, my, but she's a hipster) (there was flamenco going on in the restaurant!, and they give you little samples of chai tea when you step in the door!, and it was lovely). Then, we went back to her place for the 'wine and movie' plan. (Oh, dear me: "and then we went back to her place".) She lives in an absolutely yummy character house with a clawfoot bathtub, and a loft, and beautiful hardwood. We chatted some - me looking through her bookshelf, her playing me some music from her laptop, me asking questions about where from her intimidating travels the beautiful pieces on her wall came from. Then, we popped open the bottle of wine and settled on watching a lesbian romantic comedy. (Oh. My. God., this evening is such an L-Word stereotype, it's tripping me out.)

And... Nothing happened during the movie. We were laying together on her bed, watching the flick on her laptop.  Our hands didn't brush; we didn't lean against each other. Our legs maybe touched, I think? And then, when the movie was over, at 1:30am, and the bus schedule kind of sucked for getting me home, she says I was welcome to spend the night if I felt comfortable. Now I'm half kicking myself for having chosen the 5-dollar cab ride instead of a night with her. See, this! This is what "dating"(?) girls does to my brain function.

After making another date for tonight via swapped emails this morning ("I'm tickled we've come into each others' lives, and really enjoyed our time together"; "I think you're awesome, and absolutely adorable!"; "yes, let's check out the burlesque festival tonight!, ooh, and tomorrow, too!"), she starts getting wishy-washy ("hey, my friend may come with us tonight, if that's ok"; "oh, er, yes! sure! my friend wants to come, too"). So, my Newfie Friend (/newly appointed wingman) and I end up at my neighourhood watering hole (where, yes, "everybody knows my name", from the dark and mysterious psychology student who serves us beer on our regular Sunday night expeditions and chats me up when I run into him at other pubs in the neighbourhood, to the dude who performs requests every week and yoinks me up on "stage" to back him up on his Ani covers). Our plan is to get some dinner. and then join this girl and her friend at the show afterward.

("I'm having girl problems!," I tell the psych student when he comes up to our table to greet us and take our beer order (honey brown). All he knew of my relationship status is that I'm engaged to Matthew: he looks at me funny. "Uh... like, uh, physiological problems?". I laugh and spill my decidedly neither heterosexual nor monogamous nature. He treats me like I'm an alien with special powers for the rest of the evening.)

Newfie Friend resumes gushing to me about this girl he's had a few dates with and is absolutely, wildly crazy for. Things seems to going smashingly for him with her: they've kissed; have plans to see more of each other; are, it seems, mutually smitten. He'd been sharing random bits of information about her throughout his gushfest, and, all of a sudden, it clicks: this is the same girl who, years back, Stalked (yes, capital S: fake internet identities were involved) my Bohemian Actor Friend. (Oh, bless the Bohemian Actor's teenaged heart: he slept with Psycho Girl while dating her little sister; Psycho then wouldn't leave him alone, for years. In fact, he and I met via LiveJournal, through a mutual local friend. The night we got together in person, one of the first things he said to me was, "Wow, I was worried for a second there on my way to meet you that you were actually this chick who stalks me.."). I text the Bohemian Actor and confirm that this is indeed the same girl. Upon finding out this disturbing piece of his new girl's history, Newfie Friend spends a few hours in an essentially catatonic, blindsided state. Can you imagine the cognitive dissonance?: he was so taken with this girl by date #2 that he'd been angsting about how to bring up with her the fact he's been considering a career relocation to the UK ("and, oh, man, I figure that if we're totally in love by, like, June, I'll ask her to move with me!"), and this person is actually Bat-Shit Crazy with a history of Stalking and sleeping with her little sister's boyfriend.

(And amidst all of this, I called my new friend to tell her that Newfie Boy was in crisis, and we just couldn't make it out to the show with her and her friend, but I'd still see tomorrow, yeah? "Mm, well," she responded, "I kinda wanna go to yoga after work tomorrow; I need to stretch, so, uh, I'll let you know!"...)

(My Newfie friend and I, we've kinda given up on finding a woman to love in this city...)

I have a "date"(?) tonight... A third "date"(?). With a woman.

(You have to understand how terribly inexperienced I am in matters of dating women.)

For our first date, we met by the lake down the street from my house. We meant to catch the sunset together, but she ran late, and so we found each other in the dark and spent hours sitting on a log on the beach, talking and getting high.

Date number two was brunch (my meal was called "Woman in a Flowing Dress Kissing her Lover"), and goofing off with absurd clothing in a terribly hipster vintage store on Main Street.

Tonight... tonight, I'm packing up a mixed CD and the bottle of homemade chocolate-orange port that's sitting on my kitchen table, and heading over to her place to watch political documentaries. ("Which, well, that might be a little cerebral for a Saturday night," she mused, after her recommendation... Yes: have I mentioned the only that's put me off her was how judgmentally incredulous she was that I'm not particularly well-versed on the political situation in Burma?)

I get so ridiculously uncool around girls who like girls; it's like I'm a 16 year old boy... This one, she's wicked-smart, driven, totally together, has red kinky hair, and about a million and a half things in common with me. I need to stop telling myself she's cooler than me, that I'm totally not enough, that there's no way she could be interested: she's made sure to include time with me in her schedule consistently for the past 3 weeks. She invited me over for wine and movies tonight. I am worthy of the attention and interest of a cool girl. I'm not coming from a place of scarcity. I would love a deep, significant, romantic and sexual connection with a woman, but this is not desperation. I have all the time in the world, and have everything to gain from holding the universe with an opened palm rather than a clenched fist. I will not fear rejection. I will be me, and enjoy my time, and not shy away from how I feel and what I want: whatever comes of that will be absolutely perfect.

I have a friend. I don't see her terribly often, but her hair's a handful of wild colours, she's wonder-ful, and I adore the lens she holds to the world. I spent an evening with her earlier this week: dinner, peanut butter-and-chocolate fondue with a terrible soundtrack, three different tints of hair dye, spurts of sadness, blushing, and being in love, and her lovely bra collection. She's poetry, and now I'm left with gorgeous images and prettily turned phrases running through my mind, like: She twisted lilac into corkscrewed curls that frame my face - she, the girl who's on a mission to keep track of kisses until a thousand before she loses count; she, who I'd never seen in love until two nights ago - and she was right: it does soften her. For the unadulterated sadness I'd never before seen in her eyes, she's fallen in love, and that's worthwhile, in and of itself. Softened release, for her, looks like sadness.

I updated my FaceBook status last night to read: had a yummy day that consisted of sunshine, a vintage lace slip, sifting through 60 gigs of musical treasure on a borrowed iPod, a happily unexpected connection over coffee, and a just-gifted flowey skirt that moves like she does. Now, to enjoy her date-night with that redheaded boy of hers!

My friend tore her new lover's wedding band off his finger the other day, and flung it against his chest with enough strength to generate an impressive thump. Her jealousy, her struggle, her steadfastness in the love that makes the danger worth it (Won't you come in for tea and make me laugh?, she asked him, a request for healing) make me feel less despairingly embarrassed about my own outbursts. That date that my fiancé and I had made for last night (to see a local production of Age of Arousal)... well, I believe that the words "this is the worst date I have ever been on" came out of my mouth rather venomously once or twice. Tears, fears, and lessons in communications. After all was said, and done, I did fall asleep wrapped up in his body, in his love and lust, and so I suppose that's something. It's more than something, that we go to bed together in love each and every night. His phone may be bursting with overeager text-messages from the woman he's begun to date - and that may trigger me ugly when I just want to be excited for and with them, and he may not always know the exact right way to appease me right in those moments (as if there was an "exact right way"), and I may feel compelled to write to her and wring her neck for thinking it's at all appropriate to pine at him for more of his time when he and I are still struggling with every ounce of energy we have to find our own grounding through this as it is - but despite whatever else may be going on in our lives at any given time, coming home to each other is still always the absolute best part of our respective days. And that's abundance.

That Love is Always Good.
That Love is Always Good.
That Love is Always Good.

Hello, world...