Em, you know, I’ve discovered that making coffee in a French Press is too divine not to have every morning.

In all the time it takes to wrestle one goddamn cup out of that rotten Keurig, I could have 3 or 4 full-bodied cups o’java that taste almost like butterscotch. I can’t afford the stupid pucks for that Keurig thing, so am reduced to the do-it-yourself feature; which sucks, just so you know. Like completely sucks. Thanx Lexi.

I must have my coffee in the morning as this defines a certain aspect to my day. It feeds my soul. That bitter, yet smooth, rich flavour of a well brewed coffee is one of my simple pleasures. AND, the wonderful poop one may add to its other divine rewards. Grandma would be proud. Good poop, good day.

Yeah, so up now since just before 4am, have to be into work for 12pm. Love these odd lazy mornings my schedule peppers through the month. It keeps me interested.

I’m always excited to be up as soon as possible, so I can enjoy every minute. I know, I’m so different than Lex. She would be using that time to SLEEP to the very latest possible time she could. Not I. No, I want to taste every single drop of the day I can. I’ve always been like that, as you well know.

It also recharges my battery I suppose, this alone time I afford myself every morning. It’s another essential to my contentment.

Before I must venture out into the possible cacophony of the world, I must partake in at least 2 hours of waking up time.

You remember when I lived at Grand and Emery and worked at Pall Mall and Oxford? I walked 45 minutes to work every morning, usually because no buses ran that early, as I had to be at work for 6 am, and I LOVED it. I would be off in the afternoon at 2pm, walking both ways, never took the bus, for almost 2 years straight. DAMN my ass looked good back then .

I realised just now that we never got the chance to email or text one another, but it’s just as well, I suck at brevity anyhow. The world has indeed changed a lot since 2001.

It is truly amazing sometimes, this world I now inhabit without you. Tim and I were so removed from all this up at the cottage. I mean, I say to everyone that I lived in the bush for almost 4 years, which technically isn’t true, but damn bloody close. You lost cell reception about a half mile or more from our little private, cedar ringed Lake. Driving in through the giant, graceful Pines, columned as if one were coming through a grand hall, and on the other side lay paradise.

I truly believe you know Mom that it was those four wonderful months I chiselled out for myself up there, after Tim’s death, that saved me from completely falling apart, and losing my mind. That place had the magic of an ancient forest about it, with pockets of abandoned habitation throughout the wild and free landscape.

Now, here, in this quasi-metropolitan place, I find I’m a little behind the times. I feel almost backwards at times. But you know what? I don’t care. I don’t tweet, basically, because there is NOTHING I have to say that is worth saying in such a way. Absolutely nothing. I don’t watch TV or listen to the radio. I don’t read magazines, except the front covers whilst in line at the grocery store.

I sometimes find it difficult adjusting to all the noise and smells at play around me. It bombards my senses sometimes, and I find myself unable to properly breathe, with great sighs of pleasure escaping my lips once I’m returned to a bush or small forested gap in the sidewalks.

Both Irish and I on yesterdays’ walk played a game of dashing from one snowy pile to another, whilst avoiding the muddy muck of the ground unfurling spring along the Thames at Stanley. While Irish stopped to inspect some urine stains, I watched a pair of Canadian Geese waddle off down the bank away from Irish, who btw was completely uninterested in them.

AND once again in true Paula fashion, I forgot to put the memory card back in my camera, so no pictures from yesterday’s jaunt around town. Which is just as well, this time of year is wasted in a picture. You can’t capture the bliss early spring brings to my soul thru the lens of a camera. The earth is not at her best, like me in the morning I guess. She needs a little time to adjust.

Well, should take Irish out once the dawn breaks, she’ll enjoy that. BTW Mom, this video I attached reminded me of you sending me off on those adventures when I was young. To California at 18, Australia the next year. And hell, what thirteen-year-old today would get the opportunity to spend one glorious weekend in Toronto with two magnificently gay men? Eating at Mr GreenJeans, then afterwards being shown the difference between a male hooker dressed as a woman, and a rEaL female hooker? Not many I would think. What Mother would have the courage?

And yet, still I have maintained my sense of naïveté, and my rural mindset. I’d say it’s one my “features” most who don’t know me from Dodge would say of me you know Mom. I j-walk you know like a pansy ass.

But this piece really got me thinking, and I realised that you did all the things you did because you saw in me a voice, if only I could find the courage to use it. And how else was I going to get the courage to speak up stuck in some dinky, backwater Southwestern Ontario village?

thank you Mom,
Always,