Last weekend was delicious. The days were a blessing; crisp and sunny, the kind of autumn days you need to be out in because you know that with every weekend that passes, these kinds of days are less likely to occur for… well you don’t want to think about how many months.
And it was more than that.
It started with spontaneous “beer o’clock” on Friday with family, then moved into a weekend that was about wandering around, changing minds, making diversions, sharing meals, turning your face to the sun and letting it slide its arms around your shoulders against the cool air, exploring neighbourhoods, watching diamonds floating on the lake, taking pictures of freighters, long kisses, longer conversations, sharing old pictures, beholding skylines, sleeping in, drinking cesars with big breakfasts, standing on the street corner deciding which way to walk home and then a crying like an idiot in the middle of a busy station as you collect your long-away sister.
That weekend – lets not bother to quantify the beauty. Lets call it all beautiful thing number seventy-two.
To my non-Canadian friends – the reason you don't have Cesars in your country is because we're not willing to share them.
A sunny patio on a late Saturday morning in late October looking at diamonds on the water on Lake Ontario.
I've had an unusually social week. If I wasn't having dinner with company, I was out with Carly seeing the final installment of Harry You-Know-Who in 3D or having a thirteenth birthday celebration for my niece Lainey.
Summer's been particularly enticing this year. Each year, I'm drawn out into summer more. I get panicky when I think even a few moments of it will be wasted. My mother experiences the same thing; I checked on her last week during a nasty heat wave and she was cranky and feeling squirrelly, trapped indoors.
Most of the summer has been luscious though. Now that I'm working in the downtown core I escape several times a day for a walk around a different block. There have been a number of blog posts in my head, but didn't get written because I can't stay in.
After this very social week, I must say I'm enjoying having some alone time tonight. But I'm glad you're virtually here, and so I think it's appropriate that I share a little of my summer, and some of those unwritten blog posts with you.
Oh, and have I mentioned there is a new little boy in our family? I have a new nephew, Logan James, a tiny (well not so tiny) harbinger of all kinds of beautiful newness to our world. You might not like this when you're a teenager Logan, but right now, you're beautiful thing fifty-one.
Tomorrow I'm off in a rental car to another event which can't be talked about in advance. But when it's over, I really will try to share it with you in writing.
I’m walking home from work this evening to meet up with my sis and my cousin for dinner, and I find this status kicking a little ass amongst friends on facebook:
“[I’m] disappointed to see all of the judgmental, mean and even flat out jokes being said about Amy [Winehouse]'s death. Addiction is never funny and unless you have a loved one who has gone through a similar struggle [you] have no right to judge a perfect stranger.
This week of all weeks should remind us we all need to practice a little more compassion.”
If you could give your kids one thing, what would it be?
I’m moving down to number two. Number one, compassion, seems to be taken care of.
Moments in which you realise a daughter has become much more than you ever hoped she'd be: beautiful thing number 49.