I was a superstitious kid. I'm not sure why exactly. Some combination of my anxiety-driven nature and a catholic school education maybe.

For whatever reason, I was the sort of child who started out whispering curse words, in fear that GOD might strike me down (with a lightning bolt, of course). I read my horoscope religiously and coveted those pastel-coloured new age scrolls they sold near the cash at the grocery store. (I think they still sell those, come to think of it.) I believed, as a Cancer, I was a "moon child" and a "water baby" and that there were certain inalienable truths about my personality. (I was a crab. I had a hard exterior. I was sensitive. I was loyal.)

I held my breath when we drove past cemeteries in the car. I lifted my feet when we went over railway track (can't remember why, though). I stepped on or avoided cracks in the sidewalk, depending on how I was feeling about my mother on any given day. This sort of thinking took up a great deal of my time.

I've turned into an atheist and I'm not really superstitious anymore, but it's been hard to shake my attachment to dates.  There's something about January in Toronto, about looking out at the night sky glowing reddish, ready to snow. There's something about seeing the flakes fall through the halos around the streetlights.

The other morning, I went for a walk through Cedarvale ravine, which is a small woody path near my house, and I was struck by the white light and the general quiet and the seemingly extreme sound of ice being brushed beneath my boots. It felt like something magical was going to happen.

Of course, nothing magical happened. Not unless you count depositing my pay cheque and visiting the local Starbucks as magical.

Still, I felt like something was going to happen. And that's what makes January bearable, I think. At least for me.

Today's photos are from my walk through Cedarvale ravine.

I've always loved Halloween. Always. Even when I was a little girl, and my parents made me wear my winter coat and a cowbell over my costume, I loved it.

I even loved the cowbell.

For my very first year of Trick-or-treating, my Dad fashioned bunny costumes for us, complete with tin-foil ears (as shown).  We used my mother's eyebrow pencil to draw on whiskers and rouged our cheeks with lipstick. He seems bothered by this effort now. Thinks he did a bad job. He's become an advocate of the "store-bought" costume.

But I loved my bunny ears. I don't remember feeling that I was missing anything.

Regardless of the friendships I forged at school, Trick-or-treating was always a neighbourhood activity. I tended to troll for candy with a small pack of boys from my street, like Peter (seen above, in the early 1980s, dressed in a sort of Hobo-clown costume that put our bunny ears to shame).

As we got older, he (and the other boy I palled around with -- Dennis) would run ahead, trying to hit as many houses as possible, while I was left struggling with my costume or adjusting my mask and calling, "wait up!" But I didn't care. I still loved every part of it.

Halloween was magical. More exciting than Christmas.

I "made" my costume every year, sometimes using my allowance to buy components from the drug store. My parents didn't have the time (or inclination) to help us out with this sort of thing, so the resulting costumes were often strange, but I think we were lucky. Halloween was about having fun, being creative, and learning self-reliance. It wasn't a fashion show.

This is not to say I didn't wish for the perfect store-bought costume. I did. And at school, when I compared my odd efforts to those of the girls who'd dressed as cheerleaders, punk rockers and princesses, I was embarrassed. But a little embarrassment can be good for you, don't you think? In retrospect, I'm glad I was who I was, and glad that my parents generally left me to my own devices. (And that my mother let me do what I wanted with her scarves and old maternity clothes.)

Sometimes I wonder what it would have felt like to have been a "princess" for a day. I wonder if it would have been as wonderful as I imagined? To head off to school with confidence, feeling that no one could possibly make fun of me in my perfect, store-bought costume? That might have been nice. And I understand parents who'd want to give their kids that kind of peace of mind. School is a battlefield. And kids who conform are generally safest in the wild world of institutionalized education.

This year, Nathan went as Jim Henson and I went (in keeping with tradition) as ... something odd. And it was kind of scary and kind of funny. In other words, everything Halloween should be. But as usual, I felt a bit anxious about my costume. Was it too weird?

Was I too weird?

And then I remembered... I'm grown up. There's no such thing.

Happy Halloween, everyone.

Hey friends.

It's not my regular day to blog, but I felt like it and decided to go for it, despite the schedule.

Look at me. I'm a rule breakin' rebel lady.

Anyway.

On Monday, I wrote about being a child kleptomaniac. (That's an exaggeration, but I did write about my childhood thefts.) And thinking about that got me thinking about something else: the book I always WANTED to steal from the school library, but never did: A Woggle of Witches by Adrienne Adams.

I was crazy about this book. Really crazy. I borrowed it from the school library (and then from the public library, to maximize my enjoyment) every October for approximately 10 years. And in high school, I wanted to continue the tradition, but was too paranoid/embarrassed about being seen with it at the checkout counter.

Stupid teenage brain.

I just loved this book. Loved it beyond all reason. (I mean, it's basically a picture book. On the surface, there's nothing especially special about it.) But then... there are the illustrations. Gorgeous, painterly and sort of home-spun at the same time.

And the prose! The story opens with the following:

"In a dark, dense forest the witches live,
sleeping safely in the branches of tall trees..."

I mean, come on. That's good stuff, right there.

Originally published in 1971, I think A Woggle of Witches was reissued in the mid 1980s. It's out of print now, of course, but if you have a kid (and even if you don't) I highly recommend you try to get your hands on a used copy for your personal library.

I can't think of a single children's book that better captures the creepy wonderfulness that is Halloween.

I almost wish I'd stolen it when I had the chance.

(Just kidding. I'll just find a used copy online.)

Happy haunting, y'all. I just love this time of year.

The other day, I was cleaning out a storage cabinet when I came across a book: The Make Your Own Creepy Spooky Horrors Book.

And seeing  it again, after quite a long time,  I remembered something I'd forgotten:

I STOLE this book from the school library when I was eight years old.

Yep. I admit it. I was a sticky-fingered little thief.

There were so many things I wanted, and so few that seemed within my reach. So on occasion, I pinched stuff.

Bad, I know. But I was a little kid. I've forgiven myself.

The thefts I remember are as follows:

• The Make Your Own Creepy Spooky Horrors Book (shown)
• Ed Emberly's Big Purple Drawing Book
• A 10 cent Freezie from the local corner store (blue)
• At least one (but probably more) of those weird little flocked craft bears that were all the rage in the early 1980s.

I was obsessed with those bears. I don't know why.

Little kids are strange creatures, aren't they?

I wanted this stuff, sure, but stealing it was about something more than want.

I think I felt that I was unfairly treated much of the time. Under-valued and less loved. And I stole because I thought that having stuff would make up for that. And I decided it was okay for me to steal -- little things in particular -- because I deserved them. I wasn't being given what I thought I was owed, so I was allowed to take. Simple.

Of course,  I always felt horribly guilty, hid my thefts away and never got to enjoy any of them.

I didn't even eat that freezie. :(

Sometimes I wish I could meet my little self. It's kind of sad that I wanted those little bears and books and assorted other meaningless junk so very very much. Poor kid.

Remember Felicity? That TV melodrama starring Keri Russell? It was an early J. J. Abrams effort, before all the intrigue and smoke monsters and persons of interest and whatnot.

And I loved it. (I was 18, okay? Give me a break.)

I loved it because it was about a girl who was just beginning university, and it began airing, in a perfectly-timed sort of way, just as I myself was just beginning university.

I was a giant dork, so the it gave me shivers. Like My So-Called Life before it, Felicity was proving itself to be about me.

I guess if you can get a teenager to draw that sort of connection, you've got a good show on your hands. (Or, if not a good show, at least a show well-tailored to a teen audience.)

Anyway.

I recently wrote about how autumn tends to ignite in some of us the urge to reinvent. Then, just a couple of weeks ago, I posted about the dream/nightmare I had about mushrooms. The mushroom dream interested some of you, and bored others (mostly, it just creeped you out), but no one was more invested in it than my mom-in-law (a writer) who felt it was heavy with the symbolism of transformation and said that she felt I've been engaged in a period of reinvention over the past few years, which could be seen mirrored in the dream.

Maybe that's true. I don't know. Certainly, I've tried, many times over the course of my not-yet-very-long life to reinvent myself, or rather, to become someone that people saw differently. I don't think I've ever succeeded. And it's true that in the past few years, massive changes that have been largely out of my control have forced a corresponding change in terms of where I live and what I do, but at my core, I think I might be exactly what I was before and what I've always been.

My life changed. My circumstances changed. My outlook and politics and idea changed, sure. No one can help having experiences and having experiences change the way you think and behave. I mean, at the very least, I've tried to learn from my mistakes, but despite all my efforts (both historic and deliberate, as well as more recent and inadvertent), I think I'm beginning to think I'm largely the same as I've always been.

It even occurs to me that I've blogged about this before. Back in 2007 I posted something entitled "People you've been before" (the title being a reference to a very melancholy song by Elliott Smith). And in that piece, I wrote about reading my old elementary school report cards and finding that the descriptions of me written by my Jr. Kindergarten teacher still held true. (And still do today.) 

"It's official," I wrote. "Nothing ever changes."

And now I've written it again, in a slightly different way, because I'm still who I was. And who I was is who I will be.

At first, it seems annoying, doesn't it? But actually, it's kind of comforting.

It seems like fall decided to arrive all of a sudden, doesn't it?* In with a bang, if you will. On Sunday, it was all heat and humidity and then, the very next day (Labour Day), it was suddenly cool and crisp. Perfect back-to-school weather.

Only, I don't remember the weather ever behaving quite so well for any of my own back to school adventures. I spent every August fussing over the details of my perfect first-day-of-school outfit, and inevitably, said outfit would be far too heavy to wear on the actual day. I'd lay out a striped sweater, cream cords and high tops, only to wake up (late) to 30 degree heat.

This happened EVERY YEAR. And I never learned. I never had a cooler (both literally and figuratively), back-up outfit planned. I'd end up in cut offs, dirty flips, and a day camp t-shirt. In other words, I'd ruin my debut. (Again.)

This is just one of the reasons being a kid is hard.

Nate and I spent most of the long weekend at the beach, which was nice, barring the fact that Selks were there and at their worst. We checked in on Bay Fest (see this old post to learn more about that), did a little thrifting (which I'll post about on the Chic blog later) and swam in a lake that is already beginning to feel too cold.

I know it's not really fall. Not yet. But it feels like it.

*Disclaimer: I live in Toronto. Obviously, you may have had contrary experiences with the Labour Day weather. Can't help that. As I said to my niece recently, "No one can control the weather." She answered, "Yes they can!" But when I asked her about who was able to control the weather, all would say was "SOMEbody. SOMEbody can."
She's four.

The cicadas are loud this year, aren't they?

Maybe they've always been loud. It's easy to forget these things. The sound of the cicadas seems, to me, both deafening and part of the background, as I suppose it must seem to anyone who grew up here.

It's the sort of sound you don't generally notice. Until you do. And then when you do it's so obvious and intense, you wonder that you spent even a moment ignoring it in the first place.

I like this time of year, these first chilly mornings.

Last year, I think I referred to September as the "emotional new year." For some reason, autumn leaves it's mark. It's something to do with the impending school year, that youthful determination to reinvent... to leave the husk of the old self behind.

Most of us spend much less time in school than out of it, but nonetheless, those early years seem to result in a kind of muscle memory. And come fall, we begin doing and feeling those things we did and felt a long time ago. We prepare ourselves. We stand in front of our mirrors, resolving to be something different this year. The fall brings these impulses to life. Maybe it's the smell of rotting leaves. Or the cicadas.

Don't get me wrong. The sudden summer, with it's heat and late nights and general wildness is fun for awhile, but isn't it a bit of a relief to put the blinding sun behind you? Won't it be nice to layer on a sweater again? To turn off the fans and listen to the silence?  

It's lovely to live in a place where the seasons change so completely and dramatically. Having lived elsewhere, I appreciate it. It's nice to find, over and over again, that just when you've had your fill of something, something else is right around the corner. You don't have to will change forth, or chase it, or work for it. You don't have to do anything at all.

You just have to wait. And it comes.

My friend Nick's first child was born eight months ago.

Eight months ago, and I only managed to meet her last week.

I've had a gift for her sitting on my desk for ages - a small, blue elephant, purchased during the Christmas rush. Plush, of course. Friendly-looking. Adorned with a jaunty red bow about the neck (a sweet addition, if I do say so myself).

I was looking forward to handing it over. I was sure the baby would like it.


But nonetheless, as I drove across the city to Nick's house (way up in North York's east end, where he and his wife decided to settle in order to get something of a decent size that was at least semi-affordable), I thought to myself, 'this is what our friendship - no wait, our lives - have come to.'

Eight months to plan a simple visit.

And then I realized I'd forgotten the elephant at home.

Which, just, you know... figures.

Nick is what I'd call a good friend. A close friend. I love him, even though I only manage to see him only a few times a year (at best). But this is what most of my close friendships are like nowadays. Almost everyone I love best is at a distance, in a different city, or working a different schedule. We're all kept apart by the demands of young families, new partners, and business trips. We exchange sporadic emails that are lovely to read, but hellish to get around to writing, and catch sight of each other at weddings and christenings and that sort of thing, when we generally find about five minutes to talk before our relatives sweep us away. I receive (and send) the occasional nostalgic text, but we never talk on the phone. (Who has the time?)

And that's just the way it is.

That's being grown up and living far away and being busy with work and grocery shopping and exercise and family obligations and all of the general hoo-ha that goes along with being a (reluctantly) upwardly mobile thirty-something living in a major city.

It's related (somewhat) to the money issue I wrote about a few weeks ago. Mo' money, mo' problems, remember? We're too busy, mostly because we think we need more money. I think that's what it comes down to.

Like I said, that's just the way it is, but at times, it's hard to reconcile with what I remember.

When I was a kid, I would take four to six paperbacks out of the school library on Friday afternoon, just to ensure I'd have enough to occupy me over the weekend. I'd lie on my living room floor, paperbacks in a pile, bowl of snacks beside me, just killing time, for hours. I was often bored. I was never busy.

Were someone to call, I'd be ready, at the drop of a hat, to do whatever was suggested. I was always free.

And my fluid, free-time filled lifestyle continued all the way through university. Once, when we were both still students at Queen's, Nick called me up in the wee hours of the morning and said, "I'm going to Toronto. Want to come?" And 30 minutes later we were on the road. Three hours later we were in the city. And by nightfall we were back in Kingston. I didn't even have to think about it. He called and we went. That was the extent of our planning.

Now it takes me eight months to sort out a simple lunch.

And I'm not even popular! That's the real shocker. I'm well-liked  (I think), but no social butterfly. And compared to most people I know, I'm positively lousy with time. I work part time. I play sports for fun. We have no children and Nate is an academic, which means he's often at home. My life is shockingly easy, and still, I find myself saying no to half the things I'm invited to, and constantly apologizing for being absent. And at the very same time, I feel like I'm failing at being busy enough. It's mental. Mental, I tell you.

I'm not sure what my point is. I guess this is just something to work on. For the time being, I've visited with Nick and I've met the baby (adorable, chubby, sweet). But the elephant is still sitting here, on my desk, staring at me.

Judging me. I can tell.

I've fallen off the blogging wagon.

This happens sometimes. I get busy. I can't think of what to write about. Global events depress me and leave me with nothing to say.

It'll pass. And when it does, I promise I'll be back to posting like a madwoman. Promise.

In the meantime, let's all take a moment to say goodbye to winter (which has its moments) and hello to spring (which leads to summer):

That's me, by the way.

See you soon, friends. Again, my apologies for the hiatus.