Two things I learned this morning:

• You can fit a queen-sized mattress into the back of a Kia Soul if you scrunch it up and give it a shove.
• Island Waste Management will take residential mattresses at no cost at their drop-off depots.

I also learned that taking your late partner’s bed apart brings with it a certain degree of “she’s really not coming home.” Which I knew, of course. But still.

Today in the Observer, ‘I’m a stranger in my own city’: Prague takes on Airbnb to dam flood of tourists:

Speaking to the Observer in his office in Prague’s new city hall – near the heart of the tourist district – Hřib, a member of the Pirate party, said the idea was the focal point of a scheme to “give Prague back to the people of Prague” and mitigate the negative effects of tourism.

The fall of Prague: ‘Drunk tourists are acting like they’ve conquered our city’ He said Airbnb’s growth had turned the city, once the capital of the Holy Roman Empire and later a jewel of the Habsburg monarchy, into a “distributed hotel” and that failure to regulate it was “eating the city from inside”.

Smart people–my mother, my mother-in-law, my brothers, Tim, my friend at the market–say that I need to take care of myself. So tonight, rather than rushing out the door to do the grocery shopping after supper, I said to hell with the grocery shopping and drew myself a bath.

I am not a bath person. But when in Rome. To mitigate the annoying bathroom fan noise, and to up the self-care-ambience, I extinguished the light and fired up every candle I could find in the house.

I put Peter Gabriel’s Scratch My Back on the turntable and resolved to listen to the entire album (those of us unused to languid nights need conceits for lolling).

Lest lolling prove too much, I had a good book at the ready. But I did not need it.

It was a an unmitigated, relaxing success.

About a year ago I asked Catherine if she would dig out her old paper-making gear for me, and a few weeks later some tubs and screens and some waxed paper emerged from the depths of her studio and into the depths of mine. Where they stayed until today.

Today I took my first stab at making handmade paper, using the condolence cards and flowers we received for Catherine over the last few weeks. My intent is to make thank you cards from the paper with my letterpress; today was a beta test for that project.

Here are the first 8 sheets of paper, each about 5 by 7 inches:

As you can see, I experimented with different amounts of flower petals thrown into the blender with the ripped-up paper, with different colours of flowers and of paper paper, and with different consistencies of pulp.

It was a very helpful learning experience, and I’ll come back at it again tomorrow with with I’ve learned.

Skyway Drive-in, by Shane Alexander.

Covered by Dodie.

From an essay by Mira Ptacin in Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving New York.

Ptacin writes about relocating to Maine from New York City, and how her first week was spent at the home of a grieving family friend:

Here are some of the things I learned at Rosemary’s that first week after leaving New York: I learned that when a widow is crying and smoking a cigarette, you let her cry, and if you speak, it’s to ask if you can get her another Diet Coke. I learned that no one cares that much what you do for a living, but they will be grateful if you stay up with a six-year-old and watch Dennis the Menace because his grandfather is dead and he cannot sleep. Rather than get into a political debate about the war, you thank an Iraqi veteran for his service. You do not check your BlackBerry in the middle of a toast, and when someone hands you a crying baby, you hold it. I learned that ice cream cakes make grandpas feel really special, and when a neighbor invites you to swing by the food pantry during her volunteer shift so that she can take a look at that nasty poison oak on your shin, you go, and you wait patiently until she can get free to see you. I learned that you don’t judge someone’s worth based on what they can do for you and that you aren’t expected to ask, “How can I help?” Instead, you just jump right in.

On Saturday afternoon Oliver insisted that we leave lumpen form at home and go out on the town for some fun, in part to celebrate the birthday of our next door neighbour.

At the last minute I threw my sketchbook in my back pocket; it’s a habit I’d fallen out of in recent months, and something I miss.

We landed at Receiver Coffee, having muffins, coffee, and a London Fog. I used the opportunity to make a quick sketch of Oliver; I pulled my long-dormant watercolour set out my bag and added some hints of colour.

Its a rusty sketch, which reflects my time away from the pen. Oliver didn’t look nearly as bereft as I’ve rendered him. But I do think that I managed to capture some of his essential Oliver.

We continued on our way, stopping at The Bookmark to buy aforementioned neighbour a birthday present, and then, when we dropped it off next door, found ourselves invited in for a pleasant evening of tea, birthday cake, and conversation.

All hail Oliver, my social animator-in-chief.

Facebook knows you’re pregnant before you’re pregnant.

Spotify is in on this game.

Yesterday I hit “shuffle” on my Spotify “Discover Weekly” playlist, and the first three songs it played were:

• The Book Of Love, Peter Gabriel
• You Can’t Rush Your Healing, Trevor Hall
• Only You, Jimi Charles Moody

Now all credit to Spotify: I had been playing covers of I Think It’s Going to Rain Today on rotation for a few days, sending up a fairly obvious signal flare.

But really, Spotify robots, you play me a song with this as the chorus:

So, you can’t rush your healing
Darkness has its teachings
Love is never leaving
You can’t rush your healing
Your healing

Fortunately, I’ve arrived at a place where descending into a torrent of tears, or some variation thereof, seems like a pretty healthy thing to be doing. So a hat-tip to the robots.

Also, The Book of Love is an amazing song, especially the Peter Gabriel cover.

And from there it’s a short hop, skip and jump to The Power of the Heart, which Lou Reed wrote for Laurie Anderson as a marriage proposal and Peter Gabriel also covered.

You looked at me, I looked at you
Your sleeping heart was shining through
Wispy cobwebs that we’re breathing through
The power of the heart

That’s not such a bad place to dwell.