Pre-Approval

Who knew it would be so exciting to be pre-approved?

It isn't me exactly who has been pre-approved, it's Leon, but since we are feeling like one and same person lately we are sharing in the joy equally. I mean I will be giving in half the downpayment and paying half the mortgage payments and hopefully one day soon in the future (maybe after we are married? LOL) my name will go onto the mortgage as co-owner. It will definitely be our house.

So, there was something so amazingly exciting about finding out last night that we can buy a house! Now, we weren't pre-approved for much, but enough to buy a small house in Saskatchewan and that is saying something considering that we are both artists and both make the kind of income that usually discredits any ideas of owning real estate. It is a kind of beautiful miracle to me, proving that you can do what you love - hell, you can even be totally confused as to what it is you want to be! - and you can still experience the things that you once thought only 'normal' people could. Dispelling the myths, I say. We are both over the moon.

Now, the shopping will begin in ernest. Since I love to share my life with y'all online, I will hyperlink some of the mls postings of the houses that we have either already looked at, are considering or are about to look at this weekend...

The Cottage House - KJ's favorite

The Tiny House - looking at it on Friday and even thought it is super small, it has promise!

The Pink House - Leon's favorite

The Corner House - needs work, but huge house/lot for the asking price

The Regina House - our fave in Regina...this house is not in the best area of town and I hate the chain link fence, but the house is a beauty for the price

Just a sampling of what we are looking at...and, gee, it is fun. Fun, fun, fun.

Now, I must go. I am on a mid-week day off in Lloydminster and L and I are gonna go to the wave pool.

I mean, we don't want to grow up too much.

Suffocation, Merci Beaucoup

Today was the first day in a long, long time that I felt like I couldn't find a single shred of myself in any moment. I suppose it has been building lately...re-reading my last few blogs I can see my overwhelm at all that is unfolding right now. But today, at about three o'clock, I suddenly yearned for the world to disappear, including L, and just leave me and my MacBook alone.

Then to my right, a shopping cart came whizzing past me with a grown man balanced atop it on his belly. It was he, the one that I call Babe, and I could not help but burst into a fit of giggles. My mother, present for the antics, was aghast. "How could I ever get sick of this man?" I thought. So, I refined my yearning to me, my MacBook and L - my inscrutable life partner.

How did this happen to me? I am so stupidly happy with this man. It is boggling. He put outfits together for me today while we shopped (oh, our one day off in the week, how divine!) and then we went and looked at houses. This man likes doing practically every single thing that I like doing and not because he is trying to impress me, but because he actually LIKES doing these things! Yet, he remains amazingly masculine. And funny. Watching him with the kids at school is amazing. They adore him. He gets them, because, let's face it, he is the kind of adult who rides shopping carts on his belly. Plus, he is sexy. Even as our honeymoon phase wears out and our seven month approaches (and this ain't no normal seven months...this is seven months of living and working together every single day) he still stops whatever he is doing when I get naked to watch with complete and total focus. His dimples deepen and I am in love all over again. It is sick, I know. Even reading this must make the cynics cry out "it will all come crashing down on them sooner or later!". Perhaps they would be right if they weren't so wrong.

Somewhere along the line I had started to join the ranks in believing that Love Like This didn't exist. I had started to wonder if I wouldn't just find some middle ground with a lovely man that was a 'good match in many ways if not in all ways' and settle comfortably with that. It would grant me the individuality that I was so yearning for today at three o'clock and represent the idea that becoming One was an unhealthyily codependent goal. Both very important ideals for a young feminist like myself. It would have been a fine life, had that been what happened...

But OH how much better is it to be drowned in someone's love and in your love for them! Pa-shaw, I say to those who shake their heads in concern! It may not be healthy, it may not be safe, I dunno, but it is ALIVE. It is the stuff made of the greatest ballads and the most profound art. To be okay all by yourself is necessary, but to be even better when you're together is fantastic. Don't get me wrong. If he left me tomorrow, I wouldn't die. There would be a death, but I wouldn't die. What I would do is never settle ever again for anything remotely less than what L has brought me, because after this there ain't no goin' back.

He even told me the other day that if he was offered a six month gig after buying a house in Saskatchewan, he wouldn't take it. "But it would be six months of work," I stammered, assuming that an actor like himself would use this fact to override any other priority. "Yes, but it would be six months away from you and our new home - and those things are more important," he answered without prompting. My eyes filled with tears. Little does he know that I have been waiting my whole life to hear those words.

Now, how could I need time away from that?

I've Been Everywhere, Man

It's a life so filled right now that sometimes I stop walking in the middle of a hallway of whatever elementary school I am teaching in that day to find that I have stopped breathing.

There are little kids looking to me to teach them and they are filled with innocence and it breaks my heart. There are older kids coming to me to confide that they feel lost and alone and all I can do is tell them to hang in there because we both know that I am just passing through. There are small town bars filled with the type of people I judge so harshly...probably because I don't understand them very well. I sit on the ground of a cold hard gym in Nowhere, Saskatchewan and a janitor calls me a 'free spirit' with a very mean smile.

There are team members that remind me of CrazyTrain and I remember someone explaining to me once that until you have healed your anger towards a personality you don't like, Life will keep presenting you with that personality in other situations until you have learned to choose love.

I try to choose Love.

There are numerous hotel room beds and this wonderful man who I know wants to marry me. He is adorable the way he rolls as far away from me as he can when he reaches REM sleep. How perfect we are together, I think every night, because I have never liked anyone too close to me when I am sleeping. There is a promise ring on my finger and kindergartens who ask me 'are you married?' There is the fact that my answer is 'almost'.

There is sex that is always hushed and quick because we are always in someone else's home and the new progesterone-only pill that I am on that is not really working. There is my sore body, aching from crawling around on the floor everyday acting like a cheetah. There are tax returns and down payments and welcoming in my final subletter who just happens to be a young, male doctor. Ah, then there is the beauty of seeing my lover jealous.

There are little boxes of raisins and a very awkward stage for my hair. There is this silly wound between my eyes and the tiny panic in my heart about the unemployment I face next year. There are those rare moments when I wonder about trying Real Estate again and moments when I mourn the loss of my love for the theatre industry. There are my uber-long fingernails and the dreams I have been having about the documentary Jesus Camp.


There are balmly October nights filled with pink sunsets and stealthily watched boxsets in the back of vans. There is the perfect fact that I haven't thought of Jo in weeks and weeks. And, even when I do, it is mostly to wonder where he would look if he needed to find a free third party software that read .mod files. There is my homsickness for the ocean. There is shock of knowing that this Saturday I might be making my first offer on a house.

I overflow.

When Furnaces Suddenly Become Sexy

Leon and I are thinking of buying a house in Moose Jaw.

Not just any house, but a specific house. It is an adorable, 866 square foot, three bedroom, cottage-y home. And it is in Moose Jaw. Moose Jaw - the town from which I tried to escape for the first 18 years of my life.

The wierd thing is that we can afford it. As the Real Estate market booms in Saskatchewan, this is still one of the cheaper properties out there that hasn't been inflated. And the other perfect part is that my mother, about to retire in April 2008, would be willing to rent it from us if we didn't want to live in it.

Although we would want to live in it. Which would mean, we would be moving to Moose Jaw. For at least a year or two. Two big city actors living in Moose Jaw. A BC boy who has never seen a prairie winter, moving to Moose Jaw.

The whole thing is quite surreal to consider.

Don't get me wrong, we haven't yet put in an offer, as we need to confirm that we could get the financing. And with the market as hot as it is, the house could get snatched up while we visit the banks. Still. The possibility is very real and looming.

What are we thinking? Are we crazy?

Everything is so strange in my life right now. I am walking around coughing and sneezing. I am teaching kids, who I have been known to dislike greatly. My boyfriend is custom making me engagement rings not-so-secretly. We are staring at our bank accounts trying to pool together thousands and thousands of dollars. I am actually courting the idea of moving back to Moose Jaw. Everything is so strange in my life right now.

It is too much to take in, really. I take the advice I heard once about not staring at the mountain, but instead putting your pick into the rock and beginning the climb, one step at a time. It's exciting to be taking such adult steps, especially because it is with the man that I love. And sure, it is overwhelming, but it is a hell of a lot better than just staying stuck in one place until they move my corpse into a coffin.

First step, get better. Second, establish financing. Third, buy that cute house. Fourth, replace the furnace.

Fifth, hold a funeral for my extended adolesence.

Prince Albert

I wasn't supposed to be in Prince Albert today. I also wasn't supposed to sleep in a van on some deserted road in Isle a la Crosse instead of teaching today. I was supposed to be healthy and on tour with my team, with my boyfriend. I was supposed to be facing my fear of leading dance classes for kids who don't want them. Instead I huddled on a doctors table in the Emergency for two hours convinced that I had been hit by a bus and forgotten about.

How have I gotten this sick? They say ('they' being the doctors that I have seen and are currently 0 for 1 in successfully diagnosing this bug) that what they thought was bacterial is now definitely viral, and like with most viruses, there is nothing that they can do for me. So, I am taking Ibuprofen and sleeping more than I thought was humanly possible. I will not teach at all this week. Tuesday and Wednesday I have spent in Isle a la Crosse Saskatchewan sleeping (yes, today having checked out of our cabin the only available place to sleep was the van) and tonight I am in a hotel room in Prince Albert so that I can take a very early bus back to Regina. As I typed this in my hotel room blessed with wirless internet, I sneezed four times, painfully attempted to swallow about a dozen times and tried to lay as still as possible as to not move my aching body.

I have until Monday to get better.

Part of me wishes that this tour could just be over and L and I could hop on a plane and go lay in the hot sun in Puerto Plata. The teaching is stressing me out and that, no doubt, has to be harming my immune system. Everyone on the team is now feeling the beginnings of a sore throat and I worry that I have infected the whole lot. My poor boyfriend is without me tonight, sleeping by himself in some farmhouse outside of Choiceland. I suppose this guilt that I am feeling is ALSO not helping me heal.

Ahhhh, get a grip Konkin.

Dear readers, send me your healing energy...fill me up with the health and confidence needed to complete the remaining six weeks of this tour. And not just complete it, but complete it with Glee.

Yes, I said Glee.

Glee, God Dammit!!

Glee.

How I Spent My Days Off

I have a raging throat infection. Ug. Ug. Ug. I can't swallow without causing myself tremendous pain. Regardless, I spent yesterday - the first of our three day weekend - celebrating Leon's birthday which is actually tomorrow. It was fun, it was, but I was trying to ignore a sore throat and he was trying to ignore the headache that he has had since riding the Mind Bender roller coaster at the West Edmonton Mall. We antique shopped and went out for a Medival Dinner and climbed hay bails and visited with the owner of the Moose Jaw Tunnels. It was a great day. But oh man, by the time I was ready for bed, I had aches and fever and a swollen throat.

Today, I have done nothing but moan and lie about while Mom and L have rented me Grey's Anatomy boxsets and scheduled me frustrating doctor's appointments. I have tomorrow to get over this and then the next day I start another week of the teaching extravaganza. I am trying to picture having to teach all those crazy kids the way I did last week, but with a THROAT INFECTION added into the mix. The thought is making me want to dye my hair, change my name and skip town. I could be a redhead named Vivian and go live in Memphis.

What pisses me off is that I haven't gotten sick all year. I had one, maybe two days, in Europe that I felt under the weather with a bit of a cold, but other than that I have escaped every bug that has floated around me. So why am I succumbing right now? Why, when I have this very stressful, very demanding job to do? Could it be that I want to be sick? Could it be that I am allowing myself to get sick because I secretly want an escape? I hate to think that I would do that, consciously OR unconsciously, but I am curious as to why I am getting sick right now.

Even more, I am curious as to how I can now kick this bug in the ass.

Even more, I am curious as to who in town sells red hair dye.

La Ronge

First things first, La Ronge is beautiful. The stigma of The North being full of teepees and powwows and deep, dark cold is just a lie. It is full of bright yellow trees and a serene lake and people just like you and me. The house that The Maroon 5 are staying in (L has nicknamed us that since there are five of us and our tour van is maroon) grants us a comfy bed with a veiw of the lake and a hot tub to soak in at the end of the day. It isn't even much colder than it was down South. I like it here.

As for my first day of teaching...well, that is a whole different story. Let's just say it wasn't filled with cozy blankets and tranquil waters. The first thing that happened this morning was that my iPod froze. The little white box that is carrying ALL OF MY MUSIC FOR TEACHING froze. And just as it froze the gym teacher, whose space I was told to use for my classes, appeared and was none to pleased that I was going to be in his way. All this before 8:30 am. Kim, our tour manager, unfroze my iPod somehow and Chris, the gym teacher, warmed up to me eventually, but that wasn't the worst of it. The worst of it was my first class.

There they were. Twenty Grade Nines, almost all boys, and they hated me the moment they saw me. No one listened to me. Half of them went and sat down against the wall and refused to acknowledge my existence. The other ten were evenly split between the mean spirited boys who spent time making fun of and interupting me and the ones who just stood around in groups and talked. It was like my worst nightmare come to life and it was THE FIRST CLASS OF AN EIGHT WEEK TOUR. Don't ask me how I got through it because I don't remember. I went into a state of shock and the rest is a blank. In the staff room after class the other four Maroon 5 were cooing and smooshing about how amazing their kids were. I was so anixety ridden that I contemplated how I could escape La Ronge without a vehicle or a dogsled team. Walking, I considered. I could walk all the way back to Moose Jaw and if I was attacked by Mad Elk and killed along the way, my death would be a sweeter one than the suicide I would commit if I had to teach another class like my Grade Nines.

My precious boyfriend, forever the optimist, assured me the second class would be better. I also contemplated punching him square in the jaw before departing for my Mad Elk walking adventure, but he was, in the end, right. My second class was better and my third, better yet. Still. The verdict is out on this teaching thing. I am aching and tired and terrified to return tomorrow.

Not to mention Wednesday when I have something worse than Grade Nines.

Yup, you guessed it. Kindergartens.