Rolling quarters. The coins shine on the bed, spread out with precise concentration, sweeping hands across hard cold coins. Dimes, nickels, pennies and quarters shimmer on the bedspread making a divet in the bed where a body would normally lay. But I am alone today, the bed is made and the coins create a song through my fingers. Tsst, tsst, tsst, as my hand rolls over the entire pile, deafening sounds of the real money in a Vegas casino or at a bank. It is pretend money. It is not real, not until it starts being rolled. Again.

There is grime in the bathroom that grows. There are dishes in the sink that will drown in lemon soap. There are dust bunnies making friends with the cat. And there is a layer of dust on everything in the bedroom. I run my finger over the small corner of the white shelf. We sleep in the dust. Just like those cowboys in old movies. Inhale the stirred up particles until they settle once again in a place they have never been before. Chase them like the cat. The dust bunnies roll under our feet and glide under the table.

I can't believe she didn't use the 3x word right after I put a "z" two spaces above it. She played a four letter word on the other side of the board. "Dart". I rubbed my hands together when it became my turn. I quickly placed an "a" under the "z" and then placed my "p" under the "a". I let the letters sit there for a second, almost floating above the board. I looked down at my letters leftover and with a giggle moved my "s" into the space underneath the "p". ZAPS! 30pts! I sat back. She left.

My husband has become a drug dealer. He sat in our living room and sold a whack of mushrooms for five times what he bought them for. Then he said, "I gotta jet" and he took off to The Bronx from Coney Island where he sold his mushrooms. I think he said something about the price of marijuana coming down and he was off to Manhattan to buy some, before the prices came back up. On his way there, cops started to chase him down the street. Someone asked if he wanted to buy a longer trenchcoat. He said no.

Crossing off one of your life's "to do" lists. Exhilerating. We are off to see The Tragically Hip in Barrie today. I have always wanted to see this band. They are a Canadian Icon and the anniversary present of all anniversary presents. I wonder what he will do next year. Bah, not thinking about, just go and enjoy the sounds, the people, dance, sing and consider yourself extremely luck to have married such a wonderful person. This shall be a day to remember. And I have it all in my head, and on paper. You are ahead by a century!

Tap, tap, tap. Fingers dancing across the letters. Like playing piano. But instead of making music, it's like word painting. First a sketch. Then darker lines that make an impression on the paper. Then colour. And then the layers are added. And after a little while of stepping back from it and looking at it up close, turning it upside down and then right side up, you can start to see the images. You can start to see the story. And listen to the fingers, listen to the pens whisper to each other as the images and emotions come alive.

That is where we stood a year ago. We were with all of our friends and family. We stood in the nook in the deep of the backyard. We were protected by the old pine tree. We laughed when we didn't know we were going to laugh. The picture reminds me of the joy of that moment. It wasn't rehearsed. You can't rehearse feelings, they just come out. And I didn't think that we would be standing in the exact same spot one year later, doing the exact same thing. A little kiss, a little hug. And a little laugh.

Shit, shit shit. Everything was shit today. I watched a movie that I loved as a little girl. It made me wish to be that young again. It made wish that I hadn't wasted so much time, and just got to it, and started earlier. I want to be more successful, I guess. No, that's a lie. I don't care about success. But I do care about happiness. I am not going to fill anymore blank space in this world with depressing shit. The whole world is shit. I finally realized that I am not a corporate girl. Fuck that.

The bubbles float down my throat as the big bubble on the roof of mouth feels smooth on my tongue. It is as if there is a permanent hard candy stuck up there, and it won't come out. Salivating, my tongue touches and rolls over the smooth surface. Like a rolling hill. Rough paper made smooth by rubbing the hands along its crevices. Rough hands smoothed by lotion. Lotion heated by rough hands. It slowly becomes absorbed by sun soaked skin. The burning star from the late afternoon is now replaced by the silky white milk glow of the moon.

My hands look so old. They resemble my mother's hands. She had this ring I remember she wore on her left hand. It was silver and curled around her finger for safety, and it had orange in it. That faded with time. It was well worn. Well worn on her finger and well worn with age. It changed from a shiny silver ring to a piece of aluminum with a spec of orange colour. I wonder if she knew that when she bought that ring that it would go to the grave with her. I wonder if anyone knows that.

My husband said tonight that there are people somewhere in this world who are going to be living in our house soon. We will be off somewhere else and they will be living here, smelling the same smells as us, walking the same walk as us, going to the same store and shopping at the same grocery store. Wherever we go, there are always going to be people who know a little more about what our future life is going to be like than we do. I wonder what the people are thinking about whose house we are moving into.

I fixed some broken china for her today. She wondered if she would ever get a chance to fix it herself. It is just a matter of time she said. It wasn't anything for me to sit there and fix the broken soup bowl and sugar bowl. But somehow in my own life all that housekeeping stuff (taking old clothes to goodwill, replacing the battery in the kitchen clock) just never seems to get done. Maybe it is because there isn't a 93 year old woman at the end of all my chores who smiles and says "God Bless You!"

The red glass makes every liquid in it look so good. I want to drink it all, but then I don't want to drink any of it for fear that I will drink it all and then it will be gone. But the water in it right now looks like the sweetest, tastiest Jell-O in the whole world. It glistens and shines like newly cut hair from the salon. It looks like gold. I think it makes the water taste better. It makes the water look better. I wish everything in life could be seen through this little red glass.

I can't even imagine trying to organize my life into categories and deciding who gets which picture, which photo album, which CD. But that is the task at hand. Compartmentalize your life. Put everything in its place and make an Excel spreadsheet of your findings. Make sure that the columns and rows are wide enough to fit all the words. All the images, all the memories, all the stories and all the history. Take it from your mind and write it down on a piece of paper, and then from there type it into a cell. The jail for words.

Strangers are traipsing through our house tomorrow. Strangers always traipse. I will not be here. I will work late. It will be sad. They will see our stuff the way that I have looked at other people's stuff and wondered about them. They will wonder about the things we did here. They will look out on our deck and imagine themselves there, reading the paper on a warm Saturday afternoon. They will imagine themselves cooking in our kitchen, showering in our bathroom and sleeping peacefully in our bed. At last they will wonder about us, and wonder who we are.

It is amazing how someone can say something nice about you and it changes your whole day. Especially in the corporate environment. Hearing nice things is always a tasty treat, but it seems to mean more when it comes from an important person. Just can't let it go to my head. Oh shit I was supposed to fill out my volunteer form tonight. I have my meeting in two days. That will be fun. I hope. It has been far too long that I have been away from doing something to help people. It will make me feel more human.

Create. Build. Admire. Cherish. Nurture. Love. Care for. Cry over. Sweat about. Fear for. Rip apart. Get inside. Dig. Strengthen. Rebuild. Laugh later. Remember when. Feel. Look into. Stare at. Wonder how. Imagine if. They say that everything happens for a reason. Others say fate has more to do with it. Is the debate about fate the same argument about god and evolution? Is there one camp who sit on the fence and wonder, while others do things and see what happens. Are they the same? Happy coincidences? Do people run around and experience epiphanies like orgasms? The brain's G-spot?

I can feel the cold starting in my body. I am feeling very fatigued and my legs are aching but I have been sitting all day. I am surprised I have any ass left at all from the amount of sitting I do. That was one thing I will never forget S saying. His ass disappeared when he said he was exercising more and eating better. People said he had lost so much weight when he was "working out". What we didn't know was that he went off his medication. He was loosing weight because he was getting sick again.

All the people in the room laughed at his jokes. Well, he was funny. And put everyone at ease about being in a room full of strangers. He was great. It made me want to work for an organization like that one day. All you do all day long is come up with creative ways to help people. And the word ‘people' is one of my favourite words to type. I am thinking about volunteering at their next event. I think it would be fun. Maybe if I get really into it, I could get a job that I love.

A feeling of exhaustion is in my stomach. It is making my head heavy and my eyes droopy. I bet it is making me look like shit too. But I haven't cared about that in a couple years. Maybe I should again. Start caring about my appearance. Try a little harder. Don't let all those dark circles and little wrinkles appear so easily. Fight fatigue, buy this new product. A marketer's wet dream, I am. Buy it all because it is new. How about getting a good night sleep? Just airbrush it on. Paint on the eight hours. And smile.

Moving stresses me out. I feel so disorganized because things aren't in boxes and wrapped up in newspaper and the truck isn't booked and there isn't enough time it seems. I just don't know where to start. I wish that all our belonging would glow pink if it was going to one location and glow blue if it was going in another location. Actually that is not the major problem. The major problem is not having the boxes to pack all our things into. Go and get some boxes and start putting things in them. Don't forget to mark them.

My whole body is tired. I can't believe that I was even able to do the laundry. But sometimes I think that I make myself more tired by adding stress to an already exhausted body. I can't believe that when someone quits smoking, they gain so much more energy. I want that energy. Capture it in a bottle with all the good hair days and perfectly ironed clothes. Every morning, you crack open the bottle just like having your morning coffee and Voila! You are the best you can be. There is no bottle. I have no more ideas today.

I can't wait to make one of those little leather bound books on November 1st. I really hope that I can do it. It is beautiful. And I think that a lot of people would like it as a gift. But in the meantime, I will sew pieces of paper together and punch holes in with my awl. The Word On The Street got me excited about writing again. I am going to check out some contests and Calls for Submissions that was in the newsletter. I feel more comfortable with Calls than I do with Contests. Those scare me.

I wrote this morning. On the subway. I was surprised I got a seat even. But I did. I ran for it, cut off another woman who was eyeing the same seat. I wonder where that column went about subway stories in the weekly "alternative" magazine. I thought about submitting, but I haven't seen it for a long time. My eyes are dry tonight, I have to go and take out my contact lenses. My optometrist would say there wasn't enough oxygen getting to my eyes. That is the very last place I would be worried about oxygen getting to.

I had a strange dream lastnight. I was driving and lost. I was angry. There was a billboard with a crashing vehicle and I didn't see the people until I turned around and they were cheering and clapping. It was frustrating because it felt like I was running around in circles. I remember being in one place, seeing something that caught my eye at the beginning of the dream and by the end, I was staring at the exact same image. It was cream coloured. I hated it because it confirmed my worst fears. I was forever alone and lost.

My hands are the first things that are starting to age quickly. Three years ago I looked down at them and noticed the change. They had more wrinkles than I ever remember. I bit off hang nails on three fingers. I extended them in front of me and flipped them over and over. I wanted to make sure they were still my hands. They are always chapped now and in the winter they get so cold. They remind me of my father's hands which are like dried autumn leaves that make scratching sounds when he rubs them together. Scratching hands.

I like the way that his keys sound when he is typing. I can tell when he is getting inspiration or on a role, or when he is waiting for something to come to him. But the sounds of his fingers on the keys is soothing. It makes me wonder what he is writing about. Sometimes the keys dance with my fingers too. Sometimes he even dances with me. We dance in the kitchen and in the living room. Soon, we will dance in a different house where the ghosts can come out from hiding and listen to the music.

Okay here is a new font. Hmm, can we say bored? I wonder if it will be accepted. We shall see what we shall see. I wonder how many clichés there are in the world. A colleague at work is the worst for using clichés. It seems that every time she opens her mouth another cliché come falling out and crashes onto the floor. Sometimes I want to say something. Maybe I will play a little cliché game and every time she says one, I will just say "A rolling stone gathers no moss". Blech, I hate clichés. Two more.

Solidarity does not exist.
Everything exists in relation to each other.

Even space.

Space is a character, keeping the words separate from each other, each word in their own house. Each letter has its place, each and every word a place that makes a place for itself on the page.

A home.

Breathe life into words, and inhale the smells, close your eyes and feel the ink on the paper. Play the piano of poetry, listen to the heart of the story. Space is not the final frontier, but the beginning of something that has always been there.

An old man was just outside our house, rustling through our recycling bin.

Clink, clank, clink.

I couldn't see his face, but knew I had seen him before. He stopped for a second and went over to our neighbours recycling bin.

Smaller clinks.

Not much there.

He walked back over to our house and checked once more for the possibility of an empty beer can, an old bottle that he could take back to the store for his deposit. I wonder if he was hoping for a drop of old beer, something he could use to help forget about today.