It's almost too cold to type. I can't turn on the heat yet because the monopoly of the Nove Scotia Power Company is going to eat me alive financially come February so I have to start saving my pennies now. Waiting for my man to appear on cable 10 on the Colored Children's Home telethon. Freezing in anticipation. As soon as he comes on I'm gonna start record on the VCR and head outside to warm up.
Some of the tunes I wish I had written:
your Song - Ray Charles
Wurlitzer Prize - Willie Nelson (?)
Fruits of my Labour - Lucinda Williams

I've taken to calling bloggers bloogers. Just a childish giggle thing.
Some of my plants are dying because it's too cold in here. My goldfish plant and my coffee bush are near toast. I bought some healthy helpful fertilizer for 'em and am keeping my fingers crossed. My great-aunt Pinky calls fingers- findus and sugar- hoogey Her real name is Dorothy but she's been called Pinky ever since she was in her early twenties because she was THE fashion seamstress in the high class metropolis of Sydney Cape Breton. She's still very stylish. She always wears those cigarette skirts and sweater sets. Very sexy even in her 80's. I consider her a great role model. She's one of those independent 40's women that give you that feeling of smoky romance and intrigue. Plus her laugh sounds like maniacal bells. You just know she's been there, done that and is thrilled to hell about it. She's my gramma's younger sister. My mom is very close to her.
She was married to Jimmy who used to tell us he was a spy in world war 2. He did have a lot of strange and exotic items around his house. I was most intrigued by his stuffed alligator and his extensive pipe collection. Going to their house was like diving into a black and white Hollywood movie. Pinky kept these big steamer trunks of all of her old clothes. My childhood friend Heather and I used to spend hours decking ourselves out in them at Christmas visits. There were lots of Eisenhower era tweeds and tonnes of pink stuff, crinolines and lacey things and the like. Years later in high school my boy next door Carlo introduced me to the gal who would become his most beloved high school sweetheart and friend for life who turned out to be Heather from my dress up days in Pinky's basement. I thought that was cool. Two people from different parts of my childhood falling in love. Heather used to sing in a rock band in highschool. She and Carlo would perform in all these variety shows that I would make posters for and work on the backline of. They were the THE couple. Carlo was disappointed in me for breaking up with his good friend Eugene in junior high. Eugene and Carlo were versions of each other. They were those boys who developed your sexual attraction during puberty. They both had these muscley yet lithe bodies and dark peach fuzz and a certain way of moving their hips that made being 13 a very nice place. Carlo had Italian brown skin and dark eyes and Eugene was creamy with blue eyes and the thickest eyelashes. They both wore tight levi's and leather bomber jackets and had curly hair and reminded the girls of the boys in the S.E. Hinton book The Outsiders who we were all in love with. I don't know why I broke up with Eugene. I loved him and thought he was beautiful and he was seriously enjoyable company. We moved in such small and close groups those days. Our whole worlds evolved around each other. Carlo's hands were all calloused from guitar strings. Eugene's hands were calloused from lobster fishing. I can't love a man without calloused hands. Peter Gabriel has a line in an old genesis song about never trusting a man with smooth hands or something like that. Lamb Lies Down on Broadway era. I know what happened to Carlo but I don't know whatever happened to Eugene. He didn't stay in school and we lost touch. he probably became a fisherman like his Dad, married a sweet and pretty girl and decks his halls every Christmas, heavily steeped in family and friends.
I recently made a trip home to Sydney River with Heather to say good-bye to Carlo. We laughed and cried over old photographs and memories. Carlo's father got us tipsy on wine he and Carlo had made last summer and gave us roses. Carlo's father's wine guided many of our high school experiences. We had this crab apple orchard up behind our house where we all gathered on weekends for pot and booze and mushrooms and making out. It was a long standing tradition for kids from our neighborhood. Every weekend this one guy Jason would yell "cops" and we'd all take off down the cowpaths and end up having to walk home from Tobin's farm. It was annoying because you never knew if he was crying wolf or not but on the good side magic mushrooms grew in Tobin's field.
Sometimes we'd go down to the Sydney River dam near the steel plant pumphouse. That was the best place to skate or ski doo in the winter. The older kids were always there so it was a bit of a graduation for us to start hanging there.
In '94 I made my exodus back to Sydney River after a stint out west. Carlo called on me my first night home and we went over to his dad's place for some sentimental journey on that wine trip. He wasn't sure which bottles were ready so we grabbed two of the ones he thought were right and drank 'em out of the bottle listening to music and talking it all over. Within an hour we were both puking our guts up in a rather violent way. We had picked the wrong bottles and the yeast was rising right in our guts. After the purging was over we laid down and in our weary states disclosed the trials and tribulations of our respective lives. Got sentimental for a time and place where we were all hopes and dreams. Wondered if we were ever going to get close to what we had imagined for ourselves. I held onto him for my life that night. I was surprised his belly was so soft. In all my years of knowing him I was 24 before I touched his belly. The warmth of that softness endeared me to him forever, again.
Carlo formed my ideas of loving a man. We always talked to each other about our lovers and loves. He was the sounding board for my heart from 9 yrs old until November of this year. Now I have to trust myself without his advice and perspective.
My mom always wanted us to fall in love. We had love already so we didn't need to do that. I wouldn't have replaced that love with romance for anything. His dad teases all us girls that we were a bad influence on his son.
Carlo did all these things as an adult that made a lot of people know him or want to know him. Made his life into something to be shared. That was very Carlo of him.
I used to get frustrated with him for directing my life and calling me on everything until I was older and realized how good it was to have someone getting your back and paying attention to your possibilities. It was a sorrowful experience when his mind started eating him alive. It was worse when the meds stole his spirit from him. But he took it back in the best way he could find. Took that spirit right back into his own control. It was very Carlo of him. Damn it. I'll never get over it.