Mothers and Fathers at the End of Time; Before & After

Still working at the seniors community. The first residents had mainly bought their suites before the building was even completed; purchasing was their idea, not their children's. Now, those newly arriving are mostly installed by their children. Odd how many are moving in just before Christmas - 'Hey, happy holidays, let's put Pa in the home.' Many of the new residents seem to be on the borderline between requiring independent or assisted living facilities, so there are more concerns about memory, more frequent hallway wanderings in pajamas searching for the movie theatre at 5 a.m. or expecting the bus to the Co-op at 2 a.m. I am working harder than I ever have, and now that I've moved again (5th time since arriving) I'm in the opposite quadrant of the city from where I work. Travel time is condusive to getting reading done, but not great for socializing after events. In southeast Calgary there's a neighbourhood my bus goes through called Forest Lawn. It's got a bad reputation for crime, gang activity, and a proliferation of roving teenage girls wearing poofy tight parkas short enough to show off tight jeans, each hellion wired into a rap-filled MP3 player. Who says transit can't be entertaining?

So anyway, I hate men. Couldn't think of a way to sequitor. No, seriously, I'd like to but I can't. It's just that I've accumulated some big ugly baggage that's suddenly weighing me down to a new level of low. For the first while after Blake and I broke up, I went so far as to narrow my eyes at men on the train if I found myself forced to sit with them. Why would a sensible woman keep attaching herself to men who need help, help getting by or being inspired to write songs or both, when she finds each time that for some reason, each one NEEDS that difficulty in their lives and are, deep down, unwilling to part with it? And useless me, some saviour, without a license or a car or money - all I can offer, my encouragement, faith, and loyalty, has been spent on unappreciative men who eventually begin to treat me like the doormat I become, trying to please them. No matter who he is, that's what happens. It's entirely my fault I haven't had time to write or get my own life in order. 26 years old and still moving every few months, still without the things I need to be really independent. Listen all you big-hearted little poet girls, take heed: do date for love, but hold self-preservation to be just as important.
Finally keeping a job for the long term, even if it doesn't pay well enough, has been a good exercise. (Previously: record store employee, fast food slinger (bagels, pitas, donairs), reception/office temp, waitress, busker, etc.: all the glamour jobs!). Now that I'm free again (read: FREE!!!), I'm going to focus on reading, reviewing, writing, and volunteering with the local scene. filling Station magazine here in Calgary has on its editorial board some of the nicest, most interesting arty folk you're libel to meet in any city and I find myself drawn fully into that fold, if it'll take me. Blake was jealous and suspicious, paranoid even, so I'd rarely gone anywhere social without him since coming to Calgary last December just to avoid fighting about it; that included fS meetings. Yuck, that even some of the equalist firecrackers among us can turn passive as I did. At any rate, I'm off men for now. Nope, zero, zilch, nada. It's a diet where you lose about 185 pounds of useless weight and have tons more energy. As others who diet big say, after, showing their before big-waisted pants: "It's like I lost a whole other person!"