pop! goes my heart

on tuesday i went to high prairie so i could: 1) buy blank cds and iron-on transfer paper; 2) go to robin's and burn cds/hang out one last time/pick up my sewing machine; meet meghan for our regular tuesday night brownie at egan's (usually we have one at trivia, but it's done now); and 4) play soccer. hanging out at robin's was even more fun that usual, and we didn't even really do anything except burn cds. goodbye, friendship! he is moving to red deer to be an instructor at the college, i think, and so i won't see him very much any more. but we will try to hang out sometimes, because we like doing arts and crafts and music sharing together. megs and i shared our brownie and then i went to soccer, and it was more fun than i thought it would be. a bunch of new boys showed up, and we just messed around and then played world cup. robin and i won world cup, but i think that's because we got lucky/the other boys playing weren't really soccer players. but they WERE boys, and robin and i WERE on "the girl's team," so i think that counts for something.

on wednesday i got a ride back to joussard with meghan and some other ladies i work with. megs invited me over to her house, and we had chicken fajitas and then we went quading and blueberry picking in the forest. then we watched a movie called music and lyrics. it was not really great, but drew barrymore is always adorable and we liked the music video that hugh grant was in. plus, girl sleepovers are fun and i don't really do them anymore, so it was nice.

on thursday i made garment tags for my wallets/bags, using the iron-on transfer paper and white satin ribbon. they turned out so, so well. i am excited to start putting them in my stuff. also, my "service engine soon" light came on in my car, which would be bad except for that i had an appointment that day for the mechanic anyway. perfect! i took my car in to the guy in joussard, and then i stayed at meghan's again. we went quading again, and picked tons and tons of blueberries. then we made some blueberry muffins, and started watching a pretty lame movie called premonition. our movie selections are quite limited, because the joussard store only has about 100 movies, and meghan has seen most of them. and the ones that she hasn't seen, she has to filter through and figure out if they are ones that her boyfriend will want to see with her. she and i can't watch those ones. boo!

the reason i had my third panic attack last week is because i got a message on my edmonton apartment phone, saying, "hi, i'm looking for caylie ... nair-uh. i'm an investigator with the human rights commissioner. if you know where caylie is, can you please have her give me a call." yikes! so i panicked all weekend, thinking someone was suing me or something. but it turns out they were just questioning me about a complaint that was made against a former employer. whew.

a lot of times, i feel like my life is the song "empty cans" by the streets. everything and everything and everything goes wrong, and then one thing goes right and then everything starts going right again. anyway, this time, the one thing that went right is that my typewriter's broken keys just magically started working again. i spent a whole day typing letters, so maybe YOU can expect one in the mail! maybe not. don't get your hopes up. i got a bunch of letters done, and i got to mail a whole stack of them yesterday! i love love love walking to the mailbox with a handful of letters. it might actually be more satisfying than receiving mail. that doesn't mean that you should stop writing me letters.

i got a lot of crafting done this weekend also. i worked on a wallet for sam and one for joel's friend natasha, and i crocheted a few pairs of mittens (i am trying to get rid of all my yarn - if you want a pair of rose pink or royal blue or soft green or brown or maroon or olive green mittens, just let me know.). i cut out some fabric for some more plaid bags, and i also finished a beige kite wallet. also, i went to robin's for a bit yesterday and he taught me how to paint with watercolors. one of my goals this year is to learn how to paint. i got off to a... pretty poor start, actually. i think my problem is that i just want everything to be brown.

we've been sitting in your backyard for hours, but she won't even come out and say hi

on thursday i drove into town for soccer, but robin was the only other person who showed up. we had an "end of our friendship talk": "thanks for coming over and crafting...," "i wish we had gotten around to...," etc. he was a little mad that i didn't say goodbye to him last tuesday at trivia, but here's a newsflash: i never say goodbye. i make it a point to slip out of places before i have to say goodbye. in guyana, everyone was waiting around at rockview lodge for my plane to come in, but they had to go back to bina hill for lunch. i hoped super hard that my plane would come before they got back. isn't that terrible? thankfully, that's what happened, and i managed to avoid the hassle of goodbyes. i hate introductions; why would i like goodbyes any more? anyways, we say we are going to be friends when he is in red deer and i am in edmonton, but are we really? answer: probably. probably more than i am friends with people in my own city. mostly because we are both pretty good about e-mailing/calling/snail mailing.

i have had, like, 3 panic attacks this week. i will write more about the most recent one later (the first two were about having my room broken into).

a broken home and some broken bones is all he'll have to show

i made myself some multigrain oatmeal chocolate chip cookies last night. jealous?

on wednesday meghan and i went to the high prairie rodeo. i'm glad she likes rodeo as much as i do. for those who don't understand the attraction, here are a few pictures of the most enjoyable events:
mutton bustin' (kids under 10 try to ride a sheep. most are outfitted in a hockey mask. i told meghan that if i have kids, i am going to put them in mutton bustin'. she said she could see me having kids specifically for that purpose.)
calf scramble (kids under 10 are put in the arena, and a calf with a ribbon on its tail is let loose. kids chase it down, get knocked over, and the kid who finally grabs the ribbon gets a prize. in high prairie's case, it's a bike.)
wild pony races (i don't quite understand what the rules were for this one. i think it went something like this: teams of 3 young boys had to all try to get on and ride a wild pony. the rules were confusing because no one was really successful.)

also: sometime next week i am going to buy tickets for the canadian finals rodeo (it's at rexall place, and performances are at 7 p.m. on november 7-10, as well as at 1 p.m. on november 10 and 11). if you want to come, let me know. it is hilarious and adorable.

you got a reaction, didn't you?

so, i found out what happened to my mysteriously absent ipod. someone freaking broke into my house and stole it. i am still not sure if the bathing suit was stolen (my hypothesis is that some pervy teenage drug addict stole the ipod for drug money, and also took the bathing suit on the way out for pervy boy reasons. but maybe i flatter myself too much). last week, i was confused because i came home from work one day and one of the inside doors leading to the tea room was open. i had left it closed (because earlier in the summer, lee gave me a talking-to about making sure it is shut), and lee had been gone to lac st. anne all week, so i kind of just assumed that one of her kids or grandkids had come in to drop something off (they sometimes do things around the house for her, like take out her garbage and stuff). also, this solar-powered light was sitting next to my sewing machine, and it hadn't been there before, so i just assumed that someone had brought it in. but then when lee got back from lac st. anne, i told her that someone had been in the house and that some of my things were missing, and so she asked around in her family if anyone had been inside the house. no one had, so she looked around a bit more, and saw that the screen of the window to my room had been cut at the latch so it could be unlocked (my window leads to the tea room, not to outside). frick. scary. but i might be able to have the ipod replaced through my credit card's insurance. we'll see how it goes.

yesterday my work put a float in the high prairie parade. i think we might have won something. we had some spruce trees and our little tipi and a firepit. meghan and i walked alongside and handed out candy. this year the parade was way faster than last year's, so we mostly ran the whole way. holé. we were pretty exhausted and i was dying of cramps, so we went home after work and had naps. then we went to the final week of trivia at egan's (i'm not sure how we did - we left early) and then we went to the dance at the stampede. i decided vermilion's fair is way better than high prairie's stampede. at vermilion, you pay $5 a day, and you get into the midway, the beer gardens, the grandstand show, the tractor pull, the chuckwagon races and all that other horse stuff, the midway, the petting zoo, the exhibit hall, and the trade fair. at high prairie, you get into the midway for free, but it's $10 for the beer gardens/dance, $20 for the rodeo, and that's all they have. boo! anyway, it was nice to dance, but it wasn't as fun as the vermilion beer gardens.

some other sad news from the weekend is that i found some beautiful beautiful shoes at southgate mall. they are all-brown roll-down chucks. i tried on the one on the shelf, and it fit perfectly, so i asked to buy the pair, and the boy could not find the box with the other shoe! eff! beauty evades me...

east bound and down

in addition to losing my bathing suit, i've also lost my new red ipod. i feel like i'm taking crazy pills. i don't usually lose things for real, so when i do, it makes me totally crazy. i don't know where my ipod could have gone. i always keep it in this little box thing right next to my door, and i rarely use it because i always use my big ipod. eff. so, i am still feeling crazy and grouchy and depressed.

i went to edmonton/vermilion this weekend. i drove to edmonton on thursday. i got breadsticks and cinna-stix from domino's and sat at home by myself and cleaned up my itunes. on friday i bought a new bathing suit (the same one as i had before, but this time it was on sale and only $20. thrilling.). i cleaned up my itunes some more and went for an interview at second cup (but have since decided i don't really want to work there because i don't want shitty hours and everyone who i know who has worked there has totally hated it). later on i went for a walk by myself and hid a couple of tapes in the city. i checked for one of them yesterday and it hasn't been taken yet. i kind of doubt they ever will get taken. whatevs. i had a good time hiding them.

on saturday jenni and i drove to vermilion for the fair. what a day. we saw some baby chicks hatching and we played with the baby kitties and we saw some baby goats and puppies and stuff. then we watched a bit of the tractor pull, and then it was too too hot so we went looking for freezies but nowhere in vermilion sells them. we opted for some slurpies instead. then we went home and i drove my dad into town so he could work the gate. he was singing to the road hammers' song i put on, and it made me laugh pretty hard. then jenni and kelsey and i watched "driving lessons." i think it was pretty cute. then the three of us went longboarding in town, and it was so, so awesome. vermilion has really rad roads - wide, fairly freshly-paved roads with hardly any traffic. so good. then we went back to the fair to watch the fireworks, and we saw jonas and trenty. i was happy to see trent, but he was still crazy-jerky-trent, so we didn't hang out that much with him. afterwards, jenni and i went to the beer gardens for some dancing. the past two years have been really lame, but this year, the band was surprisingly enjoyable. not great, but definitely better than the last couple. we danced, and lots of people commented on jen's hair, and i hung out with brina and some other girls from high school. we went home around 2. i would have liked to have stayed longer, but jenni had to work in the morning in edmonton the next day.

on sunday we woke up around 7:30 and i drove us back to edmonton. we stopped in vegreville for breakfast groceries, and then i drove jenni home. i went to my apartment and napped for a wee bit, and then i met jonathan kobewka and his friend justin at the royal alberta museum. jonathan and i have known about each other for about 6 years, because we counselled camp together at nakamun, but we had never really hung out. anyways, the museum was super fun and the bugs in the bug room were neat, and then we went to the sugarbowl to eat. it was nice to hang out with them. then when i went to drop them off at justin's car, jon said, "i really want to hang out again. but... probably not this summer." ouch. then he got really awkward and said, "i mean... sorry... that was really rude. it's just...." ha. i told him it WAS rude, but whatever. i have two weeks at the end of the summer with absolutely no commitments at all, but i know other people are busy. but maybe he thought that i really wanted to hang out for an extended period of time, when really my version of hanging out with people is just riding the bus with them or something. whatever. i am grumpy now and all my friends are jerks. and where's my ipod?

i went to nokomis today to show them my bags/wallets in person, and they said that if i make up 4 bags and 5 wallets, they'll buy them outright! not even on consignment! wow!

my bff just got promoted! way to go, kds.

i e-mailed nokomis a little while ago to see if they'd be interested in selling my wallets/shoulder bags. they are! wow. so we'll see what happens now.

recent good news:
1. my student loan was approved within about a week and a half of me submitting it. wow!
2. megs and mega-hot-boy and a few more people and i came in second place at trivia last week.
3. i am driving to edmonton tonight, and might get a job at one of the second cups on whyte for the fall.
4. people actually want to buy my wallets and shoulder bags!
5. new wes anderson/jason schwartzman movie coming out in september.
6. something else. i forget.

recent bad news:
1. i lost my effin' bathing suit. where the hell is it?
2. student loan interest is ridiculous.
3. my best friend screens my calls. ouch.

kaylin just got into the social work program at the u of c's edmonton campus. she's been waiting to hear about it for months. i am really proud of/excited for her. she deserves it so much, and she's going to do such a good job. plus we will get to go to school close to each other and wear cute school-y sweaters and get hot chocolates and study together. yessss.

this used to be our town

i finished reading generation x on thursday, and then i read life after God this weekend. i liked the latter a lot more. i have two new options for books: girlfriend in a coma or one that i will write about in a bit.

on saturday our museum put on this big open house event so adults/locals could see our historical village (usually we only put it on for school groups in june). it seemed like it would be a pretty stressful day, but it all turned out to be quite enjoyable. the weather was perfect and there were just enough people so that the day was worthwhile but not overwhelming. plus i had some life changing stew and bannock. i talked with this man who used to be a fur trader. he asked me, as everyone always does when i am up here, if i planned on being a teacher. i said no, because my mom said i would be a terrible teacher because i wouldn't be able to handle the system, and because i am so introverted and i wouldn't be able to handle being around people all day every day. anyways, he said he is really introverted too, and he recommended i read this book called the introvert advantage. then the next day, i saw a special on the news about the very same book! strange. anyway, i took it out from the library today, and i am finally going to figure out why i can't connect with anyone ever. other visitors to the village that day included a super neat teacher who we kind of know and like (and who found one of my and robin's postcards at north country fair and wrote us back!), a lady from vermilion who used to teach with my mom, and the mega-cute boy i talked about in the last post. sweaty palms!!!

after work on saturday i was pretty exhausted but i went to robin's to talk about a new craft and have milkshakes and watch a movie. the milkshake made me super sick but i stayed anyway to watch stranger than fiction because THREE people have recommended it to me this month.

yesterday i read and crocheted and then i went to megs' for the evening. i longboarded in joussard a bit, because it is good, smooth, flat pavement all across town. then megs and i watched shopgirl, which as a whole was mediocre but was made excellent by the presence of my celebrity crush jason schwartzman. dreamboat. he was pretty adorable in it. you should watch it.

i am coming home on the weekend for the vermilion fair, and possibly some hawrelak park-ing. exciting.

my sister left for portugal yesterday. she will be ukrainian dancing there for a month. wow.

they aks me how i do it, and simply i reply, "this is why i'm hot"

part i: i met this mega-hot boy last year at the high prairie rodeo. he is one of meghan's friends from high school. anyway, this summer, megs said that he is dating some 30-year-old girl.

part ii: when i was in edmonton a few weeks ago, emily's boyfriend brad said he knew someone who knew me. he asked if i worked with a girl named meghan, and then he said he knew a guy who knew meghan who also had met me.

parts i + ii = part iii: the 30-year-old girl mega-hot boy is dating is brad's sister. meghan and i laughed pretty hard about this, especially because brad defensively told me, "she's 28."

i started reading some douglas coupland. i've been avoiding him until now because he's so damn trendy, but megs and i were in the library yesterday and wanted to avoid going back to work, so i took out some books. reading will cut into my crafting time, but maybe it will help rescue my vocabulary from its current state (the best describing words i can come up with are "awesome" and "real deadly," often spoken with a bit of an accent).

also, northern alberta has been real deadly as far as crushing goes. when i'm up here, i mysteriously find myself attracted to boys who drive half-tons and know all the words to old clint black songs. boys who have a somewhat steady labour job and all their fingers and don't drink too much strike me as keepers. yeesh. good thing i only have 5 weeks left here.

here's a picture of the moose bag i made. i like it.
also, i have a new celebrity crush.

solar-powered laser beam guitar

megs and i went to peacefest in peace river this weekend. i wasn't sure that i wanted to go, but i'm super glad i did. here are some moments that deserve mention:
-the "pirate guy," who wore a pirate cap and lots of beads and had pirate-y facial hair... and wore crocs.
-the slutty little 17-year-old girls who somehow always managed to be around me and megs, and who we witnessed wriggle out of their underwear right in front of us and then who then tried to throw it onstage, only to have it get caught by the wind and land on the fence separating the crowd from the stage. they panicked, and then tried again, and it still landed short of the stage. heh.
-the orange freezies. man, i just can't get enough.
-country bands, especially the road hammers. i didn't think i'd like them all that much (emerson drive and aaron prichett played too), but they were all super fantastic shows, and jason mccoy is such a dreamboat. i really like the feel of northern albertan country shows, as opposed to city shows/festivals.
-dancing

guess what i got paid $13/hour to do today? bead bracelets and drive megs into town so we could mail a package. tomorrow we are going to bead more bracelets. i can hardly even handle getting paid to make crafts. actually, we are kind of doing slave labor. our museum has a really shitty gift shop, with garbage that will never sell (like a $400 dreamcatcher), so our supervisors are letting us spend our hours at work making crafts from museum supplies to sell at the gift shop. sleazy? awesome? a little from column A, a little from column B.

i am working on shoulder bags. if you or anyone you know wants to buy them, they are $40. right now i have an apple green one with a black bear on it, and a brown plaid one with a beige moose on it. hot.

i got mail from dustan and bri and landon this week. thanks for not forgetting about me, friends!

yesterday megs and i played trivia at egan's with some of our regular team and a few extras, and we actually won! wow! most surprising/ironic was the fact that i am pretty sure i was the only person in the pub who correctly answered a question for which the answer was "the kama sutra" (the question was phrased something like, "the mixing of raw sparrows' eggs and something something was offered as a remedy for impotence in which ancient sanskrit text?" - so, i'm not a horny bastard, i'm just logical. because come on, how many ancient erotic sanskrit texts are well-known enough to be mentioned in a pub's trivia contest?).

when kaylin and i hung out a few days ago, we were walking by my apartment and we saw a pigeon next to the sidewalk. kaylin wanted to take a picture of it pecking at the ground, because her parents just bought her this neat camera that takes 8 pictures over 2 seconds. neat! anyway, just as we got close, the pigeon flew away, right in front of this boy driving by in a suit on a vespa with a wooden crate tied to the back. he was a little startled, and he looked at us because that's where the pigeon came from, and he gave this funny little smile. i liked that moment.

i went to a wedding dance with meghan in joussard on saturday night. it was fun to dance, but the dj was pretty terrible, and there was a lot of drama. but i danced in heels, which is i think the first time i have ever done that outside of ukrainian dance, and i didn't even break my ankles! wow. i am growing up. plus i got to wear my brown polka-dot dress. woo!

i sewed some shoulder bags yesterday. i am not happy with the first one, and i think i am going to keep the second one for myself. ugh.

my guts hurt and i almost threw up last night. boo.

pack up your bags, bells!

i think the best week i've had all summer was this week. first off, it started with canada day! then on monday, my mom and dad and i drove down to drumheller to visit the royal tyrell museum. dinosaurs sure are rad. plus i learned that north america used to have camels and lions and stuff, before the last ice age or something. wow! maybe i knew that, but i had forgotten. my very favorite part was the giant beaver statue. i guess there used to be super-huge beavers here, but they are all dead now. beavers are swiftly becoming one of my favorite animals.

after the royal tyrell, we drove to fort mcleod and stayed at a bed and breakfast. they had some giant pinecones.

on tuesday we went to head-smashed-in buffalo jump. it was pretty neat, and laid out really well. plus this super cute native boy came up to me and asked if i had any questions, but his cuteness made me nervous and i couldn't really think of a question because, hello, i work in a native cultural arts museum and i already knew what most of the artifacts were. frick. i get nervous around cute boys so i end up with all the creepy ones in the world having crushes on me. anyway, then we drove through longview (where i stopped to get my favorite beef jerky!) and by eden valley (one of the reserves i worked on a few summers ago) on our way to canmore.

my dad's brother has this super unbelievable condo in canmore, so we stayed there a few days. i bought some super hot boiled wool from this amazing quilting store in town, and i am going to use it for appliques for my wallets. i also bought a quilt pattern, because i am going to make another one for myself soon. i went in the hot tub at the condo a whole lot. kelsey came over from calgary on thursday, and the four of us went whitewater rafting on the kananaskis river. it was just a "beginner" trip, but it was so, so enjoyable. we vowed to never go canoeing again, because rafting is so much more fun/easy. it was apparently the nicest day they've had for rafting in the last two years. kelsey and i might go back to canmore later in the summer to go caving and rafting.

later kelsey and i went longboarding. it was really nice, but it's pretty hilly where we were, and we are too sucky to go down even slight declines, and too weak to go up even slight inclines. so basically it all just turned into a street lugeing session down a wide quiet residential road hill. i think i am going to buy some protective gear and do that more often.

yesterday i came back to edmonton and kaylin and i hung out for a bit. we went to watch the street performers at churchill square. i like that she is as introverted as me, if not more.

c-day

dear dairy,
i bet you are dying to know what i did on canada day. here's the condensed version:

-i played nintendo in the morning and throughout the day
-my parents arrived at the apartment at about 11, and we walked over to the legislature to watch my sister ukrainian dance (i never really believed people when they say that they're doing something to make their families and friends proud, but man, when emiline was dancing, i nearly cried. i was so proud. plus i cry at everything.)
-i met angie at the steps of the ledge, and we walked through the gallery (it's the only time in the year that members of the public are allowed to walk through it! thrilling!)
-a few minutes later angie and i met bri on the steps of the ledge, and we walked through the gallery again and then walked around the ledge a bit to see our awesome mace and "the magic spot."
-bri and angie joined me for my traditional "canada day burger" - a burger with white onions and red ketchup. festive!
-i walked from the ledge to the second cup on whyte ave and gateway. i met michelle there and we walked back to the ledge and had screamers and sat on the lawn. we were both surprised at how easily we picked up our friendship, which for four years has lay dormant, especially given the fact that we are both such awkward girls. i like her.
-i walked back home and my family and brad went for supper at the high level diner.
-we all went home afterwards, and i played nintendo while i waited for the fireworks.
-my dad and i walked along saskatchewan drive towards the bridge that i watched the fireworks from last year, but it seemed really crowded, so we decided to watch them from dr. e's apartment on the same street. bri and matt and linda were there too, all of whom i have spent at least one canada day with, which made the day feel a little bit more like tradition.
-i missed kelsey.