You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

I spend most of my waking life in constant thought and am most stimulated by those who are the same. I think it’s because in some sense it’s like being telepathic only there’s not necessarily communication in the verbal sense and it’s not el-creepo. It’s more like when you’re around someone similar your psyches do this kind of high five with each other. I know when it happens because I’m attuned to it.

You have to really be there to get it. I get a sense that some of you are going to know what I’m talking about. Still, some of you are going to wish you knew what I was talking about and some of you are reaching for the popcorn right about now to sit back just for the entertainment and stay completely out of it. It’s okay.

If I can try to explain it very simply: Imagine you’re traveling alone in a foreign country where you don’t speak the native language. You can move around and go relatively unnoticed when it comes to sticking to the universal standards of human behaviour (walking on two feet, feeding yourself with your hands, etc.) but at some point you will need to communicate with a local which you are already anticipating to be a challenge.

Your entire exchange will be quite basic and might include carefully flipping through the pages of your translation book as well as the odd, shameless charade in an effort to enhance what you’re trying to say. You would still be interacting, but it won’t be the most relaxed or natural way for either party. Each person is forced to augment the way they would normally communicate. Things might become so misinterpreted that you end up purchasing a live hen when your original request was directions to the latrine. You might try to explain yourself a few more times to no avail; the hen doesn’t fix the fact that you still need a toilet. With the other person’s hands waving in the air they motion you and your new hen away with reckless abandon. Frustrated and misunderstood, you have no choice but to give up and walk away.

Then, by some fortuitous happenstance you spot someone familiar through the wanderers. It’s someone you recognize from home – maybe the teller at your bank… anyone. It doesn’t matter that you’ve never officially met; what matters is you have found instant fellowship; someone who will understand you.

You rush over to the bank teller and bypassing all formal introductions, you both begin to laugh. You don’t need to offer a word of excuse for why you’ve got a dusty, old, clucking hen tucked under your arm because they will already know why.

There are some people who you meet along the way who will get you, even if you arrive at the friendship with a hen tucked under your arm. They won’t ask why because it will make sense because it’s just what you do. Find those people, keep them close, love them with all your heart, and be good to them.

Cluck, cluck.

Wednesday Jam Sesh?

Note: Lyrics.

Incubus | Dig

We all have someone that digs at us, at least we dig each other.

…especially when Katie’s back in Vancouver! Oh how I miss my Katie B. She’s only a province away but she used to be only ten minutes away. She’s from home and home out here feels good. Comfortable.

Man this weekend was busy for this hermit. I moved TMo with Keira, got my atrocious split ends dealt with and my hair enriched thanks to Marlee, a birthday party that ended at 2:30 in the morning, coffee early this morning, and Katie’s baby shower Vancouver-styles.

And the weather was beautiful.

Oh wait, well… SaturDAY was not beautiful. It was rainy. But, Saturday evening was balmy because the finished rain made it so. The city smelled pretty. Clean almost. Moist too. Good for my soul.

So I spent the weekend with my circles of dear friends experiencing a sense of renewal. New apartment, new year ahead, new life on the way. And, I just kind of cycled through it all floating around and watching everyone experience their moments of magic.

Tomorrow’s back to work, back to the people who need me and back to the business life of Andrea.

I’ve got a week’s vacation coming up next Sunday. Oh my it’s my birthday too. I will feel this newness but at the same time I reflect and wonder how the hell it got here this quickly. How is it that I’m going to be thirty-three years old already? I test myself at times and my memory still goes vividly back to three years old. Okay good; I hope that never changes.

I wish I could present more photos, but I only brought my camera along for Katie’s shower. So here they are…

But first here’s your Sunday Jammin’ Music song actually on a Sunday for the first time in a long time!

Click it for the beautiful song, the lyrics, and the beautiful video.

The Warped 45s – Radio Sky

Tried to get us with the tummy.

I thought this was a lovely and intricate tree.

This is Smokey, I found him to be very handsome.

I’m writing you this letter in hopes of reaching out in apology for neglecting to listen to you this week. It’s been months since I ignored your needs and I fear that this time around it’s too late and I can already get the sense that you’ve shut down and are giving me the silent treatment in an effort to make me understand that I really shouldn’t be neglecting my responsibilities to you.

I know that it was foolish to stay up so late on Tuesday night and then to give us a false and very cheap sense of exhaustion by taking a Gravol and pretending that we’re tired for natural reasons. Then, it was irresponsible of me to have even taken that Gravol knowing that the alarm would be going off earlier than the usual 8 hours it takes for Gravol to leave the system.

Oh how I hurt you Wednesday morning by coercing wakefulness far too early and we encountered that nauseating feeling that comes from prematurely rising before the mind and body are physically prepared to even deal with such a concept. So then, as luck would have it, Wednesday turned into another day whereby night time brought on the kind of put me to bed now, you bitch pleading that largely went ignored except during the last ten minutes of The Last Station when I think I may have granted us 7.8 measly seconds of instant REM but then shook you awake with the velocity of a stifled sneeze. If it’s any consolation I did save us the embarrassment of being that “theatre sleeper” which I hope might count for something. In addition, you know you loved that movie so I’m sure that secretly you are glad I kept us awake for extra long just for the opportunity?

There was Thursday I might remind you. I did put us to bed at 9:45PM and we did have a good sleep that night but I know that the damage may have already been done because Friday felt like we were functioning at half capacity while dragging a hippopotamus behind us which was made ten times worse by the fact that we were sitting front line at work that day which also seems to have been the kind of day that my people were particularly hostile and hungry. 

We did also see the 2009 remake of the 1972 version of The House on the Left. Remember how we got that sick with fear and upset feeling? You like that feeling when you’re watching horror movies, don’t you? That was a nice time we shared together. Well, at least I thought it was.

Actually, come to think of it, it was excessive and predictable and the scenes at the end when the good people are trying to kill the bad people was so stupid because everyone knows if you’re going to choose between a plumber’s monkey wrench or a fire poker you’re going to go with the monkey wrench, no? When you go with the fire poker the bad guy is obviously going to grab it from the good guy and bend it in half with his massive strength thus rendering it useless and the bad guy lets out this thunderous grunt while the cowering good guy shuffles backward like a wounded crab trying to get away from a pelican. hahahaha That was so silly, eh? hahahahaha.

hahahaha (corner eye glance) hahahaha

hahahahaha hahahaha

ha ha ….. ha ha.

hm.

Well I guess that’s enough for now. It’s Saturday night and we’re tired but we’ve stayed in and that’s just for you because you’re worth it. What do you  say we put some eucalyptus oil in the diffuser, throw on some butter socks, and turn down the covers? Just me and you alone in the dark. 

Yours in eventual vindication,

- Andrea

It’s been a busy week that felt long which is always the worst. The highlight of the week though was having someone’s blood dripping from their mouth onto my counter. Shortly thereafter I sent a love letter to Plexiglass inventor, Otto Röhm.

I experienced gastro euphoria for lunch on Thursday which could have very well redeemed my week because good food tends to fix everything. There are bright sides to working in the Downtown East Side and that’s being so close to Gastown. For my visiting readers from cities aplenty please forget not to experience Gastown if you’re in the neighbourhood. Then find The Black Frog and call me, damn it.

I overhauled my living room last weekend (which is really two weekends ago now, this has taken me that long to write). This will be my fifth arrangement since October 2007. I’m not sure how normal that is but normal doesn’t usually apply to me anyway so I’m not going to worry. 

I did acquire a new piece of furniture as well and that is a big, IKEA Billy shelving unit with glass doors that Gg handed down to yours truly. Ghetto me could never afford such a thing brand new so hookups are nice. Now that I think about it, this may have all started when I sold my IKEA Benno shelves on Craigslist. For approx 5 nights 140 DVDs and probably an equal amount of CDs were actually taking up space on my living room floor. If you know me then you know how devastating this disorganization was to me. At the same time, those who know me will also know that it makes perfect sense that I sell the shelves on a whim without any sort of plan regarding where the DVDs and CDs will go when the shelves are actually sold. I lament the disorganization I bring upon myself. Go figure.

So to recover from this not-very-well-thought-out situation that was my living room, I reorganized, shuffled, and rearranged my furniture just to prove something to myself. As a side note, I never feel wholeheartedly lonely because I seem to be perpetually in a state of autonomous interaction with my conflicting personality idiosyncrasies. In this case it was the impractical visionary vs the disciplinary and the end result, fittingly, was a living room I love and one that so far Cathy and Gg are not so fond of. It only makes perfect sense.

What do you make of it:

Here’s why I like it:

1. Previously my computer was against the wall behind where it is now. I faced … the wall. Again, for those who know me, they know I can’t face walls – especially in restaurants – and while also sitting at my computer desk. It’s not claustrophobia, it’s neurosis. 

2. I like feeling cozy and workstations are sometimes hard to make cozy. But tell me you wouldn’t curl up into a ball right on top of my desk now and fall asleep there.

3) I spend most of my reading, scheming, escaping, daydreaming, and playing crossword puzzles on that there sofa. There’s something very tranquil about lying down on it and having those wide open windows in front of me. Previously they were behind me and what kind of purpose does that serve? None other than to make me wonder what’s going on in the world. Pointless; I need to know everything at all times.

4) Other than three glasses of red wine, Gravol, or Coronation Street, there is not much else that turns my mind off other than flames from a fire with a flavouring of José Feliciano from the vinyl.

Oh come on, you appreciate the effect and secretly wish you were sitting in my living room too.

5) The wall that now stands to support my books, DVDs, and CDs is the only wall long enough to keep them together as a family. 

And with that I will not justify my logic any longer. You will either enjoy it, dislike it, or not really give a shit either way so there really isn’t much more to discuss. 

I’ve now been composing this post for two weeks and four days. My new year’s resolution really should have been to finish my blog posts in a reasonable time frame…

Last weekend Mandy bunny and I made a fairly spontaneous plan to go to Whistler. The last time I was there they had the peak express lift closed because it was miserable and torrential. But this time, although it wasn’t a clear day, the snow conditions were probably the best I’ve skied in my 22 years of skiing. It was abundant and frigging fast and this is perfection to me.

In the words of whistlerblackcomb.com: “Whistler’s Peak Express offers some of the planet’s most rugged high alpine.” Now tell me that doesn’t send a shiver down your spine in all the right ways. We reached the peak and were submerged in heavy clouds. It was blustery and dark making the ground impossible to decipher from the atmosphere. I’d be lying if I said we weren’t scared shitless and that’s simply because when you’re on a sharp decline and you can’t see even ten feet ahead of you, you’re pulling guts from areas other than the pit of your stomach. In fact we were stealing guts from each other. We swore the whole way down to the first ridge and upon survival we masochistically wanted to do it all over again just for the thrill of it.

Isn’t Mandy the cutest thing?

On one of our lift rides we started talking about what the hills in Ottawa were like. Myself, I learned to ski at Edelweiss in Gatineau. We thought of all our favourite hills and how sadly they pale in comparison to what we are so lucky to have here. Just to put it into perspective, I did some quick calculations and came up with this very roughly scaled example of how Edelweiss might compare to Whistler. Technically speaking, Whistler has a top elevation of 2,182 metres compared to Edelweiss’s 350 metres. 

I mean, check out this vista:

Whistler © Andrea C.

Oh, am I bragging? Sorryyy.

What else is new…

Oh yes, here’s the car that’s going to replace my Ford Fo’ once my lease is up. Thirteen more days to go, by the way, and my last car payment comes out. Then I will be car-payment free. Free! Fr.EE! F|r|e|E! f:r/EE!

Cute isn’t it? Rando found me this little gem and I couldn’t be happier. I introduce you to my 1991 Civic Si.

Okay I will leave you with some Sunday Jammin’ Music on… yes, Thursday. This one’s solid for jammin’. Thievery Corporation – Un Simple Histoire

Please also enjoy with me this incredibly sexy photo of Johnny Depp.

Once again I have become completely consumed by nothing at all and have been periodically beginning a post only to run out of steam and leave it hanging amongst the continuously growing list of draft posts I’ve accumulated over these last two weeks.

It is not for lack of trying. You should see some of the things I’ve started out with. They had all the makings of some kind of revelation (something that happens to me at least once a week) and there I go, fingertips to keys, I type. Type. TYPE. Clickety, tickety type … Here we go… yes, yes, yes! … It’s working, the thoughts are coming … ooh these are good. But then my mind begins to wander, my fingers slow down and ADD (Andrea’s Design Deficit) takes hold.

I get hungry, or decide I want to exfoliate my face, do a mask, soak my hair in avocado oil, paint, paint my nails, brush the cats, clip their nails, tickle their tummies, dust, listen to records, do my dishes, clean my cupboards, play Nintendo, take a nap, scrub the walls of the litter box (that’s when I’m feeling particularly energetic), tidy up my MSN contact lists, purge some Facebook friends, think, daydream, fantasize, read, learn, think again, over-think, map out my life, pick my next travel destinations, self-actualise, -reflect, -analyse, -deprecate, love myself, hate myself, resign myself to my self, take a shower, make a list. (Reprise) Then, before I know it, it’s 10:PM and my half-finished blog post is still lingering on my monitor leaving me feeling unfulfilled, disappointed, and mad at myself that I did it again. I may attempt one or two sentences for good measure, hate where they’re going, and as a last ditch effort I’ll try to channel the exuberance I experienced earlier. However, it usually concludes with me opening up Bouncing Balls in Facebook, and then I go to bed.

Anyway, in a life’s nutshell, since my last successful post, I received my transfer request to start working in one of the downtown east side offices. For those of my readers who are unfamiliar with the DTES, I encourage you to visit the above link. This area of Vancouver is aka “Canada’s poorest postal code.” It’s the truth, bang on. And, it fascinates me in the most sincere, genuine, empathetic, compassionate, and heartfelt way I could ever express.

This area struggles in so many ways and does seem like there is no relief. In many ways there really isn’t. The struggle is consuming. So I’m here now experiencing at least a duplication of destitution from what I experienced at my old office. Some people, when I tell them I actually requested this transfer, will say I don’t know how you do it. My parents will say, Oh, just be careful, Andrea. I mean, in many ways they’re valid concerns. This place isn’t for everyone. But, for me, it’s full of damage, and for those who know me well, they know I love people’s damage.

I wonder about why it appeals to me so much and I believe a lot of it has to do with the fact that in the DTES, as an example, you will come across real people. Their afflictions are there for the world to see. Denying them to save face it is no longer a concern. They can be inappropriate, yes. Addicted, mentally ill, lost souls, and are in perpetual survival mode – survival is all they live for. It can be vulgar down there, yes. But it’s still real, there is no facade. Real as a state of being is very comfortable for me to be around. It’s the philosophy I live my life by, only with equanimity. There’s also something about helping someone find a roof over their head, give them some food, give them some hope, some warmth, just an ounce of understanding, respect, and comfort. The DTES is so rich with community resources too, I mean there is support for every possible social circumstance you can find yourself in. Starvation, addiction, fear, violence. You name it.

The DTES community resources are almost as saturated with support as the area is saturated with devastation so there is a good balance. Remember the industrious Doozers who lived under Fraggle Rock? They were constantly working but never really seemed to focus on what the heck they were constructing and why they were even doing it. They just did it because it seemed to need to be done. That’s almost what the DTES is like.

Pull up a chair, Andrea goes into the deep end…

I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that I identify my own damage on a regular basis. I don’t hide from it. I might wish some of it away, or may resent experiencing some things, but, at the same time, I’ve found that there’s nothing more cleansing than understanding what your damage is and meeting it at face value rather than convincing yourself it’s not a part of who you truly are. In doing this, I find it gives me better perspective into someone else’s life. When you know what hurts you, and you acknowledge it, you have a good idea of what’s going to hurt someone else. Then you make many friends that last a lifetime. You become the person who just “gets it” and I don’t care who you are, we all want that in the people we meet along the way.

Yea..

So things are going well at the new office overall. I was caught last week picking up the sticky insect traps around the office to see what goodies were inside. This may or may not have included going under some unoccupied desks. See, bed bugs are an issue in the DTES and I’ve never actually seen one so the sole purpose of my investigation was to find one stuck in there that I could see for real. Don’t you pick up sticky bug traps in your office to see what’s inside? What? That’s not normal behaviour for a thirty-two year old?

What else did I get up to…?

Oh yes, I finally finished painting my living room. It took me three weeks to complete and even still I’m not entirely finished painting the frame around my front door but on the whole the walls, trim, all six window casements and baseboards are finished. 1/3 of the door frame is complete. Perhaps I’ll finish the rest tonight.

Doubt it though.

On Friday night I vowed to my body and soul that we would do nothing together. The hour struck 9:00 and I turned off all the lights, put on my Beatles’ Love Songs album set, put on the fireplace and mentally escaped while staring at the ceiling from my sofa. If you’ve never done such a thing, I highly recommend it.

At any rate Let it be came on with a little crackle and as one of my favourite Beatles songs played I started to really concentrate on what that song meant to me and actually came up with a new tattoo idea. Of the three, but technically four, that I have, this would really be the only one that would actually be something I truly believe in. I have one, but technically two, on my left foot that translate into “Happiness” and “Truth” from Chinese (to the best of my knowledge) and I got those when I turned seventeen because my first real boyfriend made out with some other girl on a beach one night. That was how I dealt with the heartache. – Might as well tattoo my passive-aggressiveness on my own foot.

Now, when people ask, I just tell them it means Merry Christmas.

My mom will find out I’m getting a new tattoo from reading my blog. Hi muzzy. Reminds me of the really bizarre time I was actually coming back from my technically first tattoo on my foot and my mom was surprisingly driving right behind the OC Transpo bus. She spotted me, my face pressed against the back window of the bus and mouthed the words Did you get it? With the kind of look on her face that screamed I fucking hope not! I gave her a thumbs up with a really innocent look on my face that said Please don’t hurt me. All was well.

Okay so… blogging … new office … painting … tattoos. There’s got to be something else…

I might just very well be lapsing into that state again so I best get this published before it gets thrown into the pile of drafts that I will never get back to and eventually delete in a moment of housekeeping my blog.

Nicole, that one was for you okay? It’s my wedding gift to you.

Haven’t jammed in a while? Me either… let’s jam.

Neil Young – Unknown Legend.

I think this is such a beautiful song. I want someone to play it for me some day.

Someone… anyone?

The Enthusiast, by David Uhl

The heat wave has finally broken enough for me to stop contemplating sneaking into a meat fridge at night to get a good sleep. I look back on it now and think … was it so bad? Now that it’s over and there is a coolness in the air at night … was it? After considering this for several minutes I always come to the same conclusion that yes, it was bad – but in a good way. Bad in the sense that it was inescapable, the nights didn’t cool, Marshall & Otis couldn’t move, I would need to rest after changing channels on my remote. Good in the sense that it’s summer. I appreciate the summer heat. There is a kind of comfortable heaviness to it. I say as long as you can breathe comfortably, the temperature is at the very least acceptable. I remember in Ottawa, August months could find heat in the early-30s Celsius and with the humidity you could really struggle to breathe. Your lungs would just crave  a solid stream of cool, crisp air, but all you’d get is a channel of hot vapor. Much like our winters are recognised in Canada as a force to be reckoned with, so are our summers. 

So it’s Monday today, this has officially taken me three days to compose. That’s what happens to me, I’ll finish a sentence and my ADD will kick in and I’ll leave my computer for a reason I always forget by the time I’m up. Then, to compensate for this I’ll find something to do to give myself a reason to have gotten up in the first place. Sometimes this will find me out the door and I won’t return for hours. Such was the case on this glorious weekend…

Friday after work was a planned soiree at Boulevard Casino with Gee and a couple other peoples, the night ended up with us at Gee’s house struggling to stay awake like the elderly people we are come 11PM. We managed to push the envelope until around 12:30AM somehow and the night concluded on a high note.

Saturday started off with all the promises of a somewhat lazy day. I found myself on Kits Beach with MG, as scheduled, and for 4.5 hours. After this, MG invited me to a BBQ/Fireworks party that one of his clients had invited him to. A little whim-ish but what the hell, right? It’s an extra long weekend for me. So we went, it was an intimate affair with about 9 of us and I had the chance to watch the fireworks from a rooftop. Come midnight, grandma was ready for bed, pooped from the day in the sun and the beer that sent me into Slumberville.

Sunday I met up with T.Mo and Luis for breakfast on Commercial. I got home from this and circled my living room for about three minutes trying to figure out what I was going to do with my day. I eventually decided to make my way down to the Shaw tower at Waterfront Station to pick up a new two-way splitter after mine decided to stop carrying the current for both my cable and Internet. It was one or the other and this would not suffice. 

(it’s now midnight Tuesday)

Lucky for me, Shaw decided to change their hours this week while neglecting to update it on their website so my trip was futile, however not wasteful because I decided to take a walk up to Burrard and Robson where the Vancouver Pride Parade was in full swing. Speaking of swinging, I saw many a private part adorned in rainbow colours and pretty sparkles. Which reminds me, can someone tell me why some gay men have the most incredibly smooth, hairless, firm, and immaculate bodies imaginable? I stood there under the protection of the parasol of a towering transvestite trying not to make my grin obvious as my eyes locked on the sweaty washboard stomach of Venus while he had Eros bent over his knee. I mean I was being that girl, almost as bad as construction workers at lunch time.

Jodie then called me to advise that she and her Chicken were heading to Davie to the gay bars. I decided I hadn’t seen enough raunch and marched over to drink some beers while mingling among some more lasciviousness. We found ourselves in two bars, the first of which was more of a beer and wings joint; where the last was just bananas. This is where YMCA, Chippendales, Clay Aiken, the Indigo Girls party and it was awesome. I was accidentally kicked in the shin, then told I looked fabulous, all at the same time! After we sweat our asses off with some sweaty asses, in the truest sense of the word, we cabbed over to a Brazilian BBQ where we mowed down on pork tenderloin, steak cooked to perfection, some seasoned chicken, chips, potato salad, cupcakes, wine, caesars, and water then eventually rolled ourselves out the door toward the conclusion of Sunday night. 

Funny how a quick zip over to Shaw Cable turns into a 9-hour affair where I saw enough of a saturation of hedonism to write my very own documentary. It was such a wonderful day, one of the best I’ve had in a while.

Monday I had breakfast with Gee then met up with MG where we found ourselves back at Kits Beach. Another perfect beach day … an amazing long weekend. This place is too much fun. When do I have to be serious again? 

Here’s your Sunday Jammin’ tune at one hour into Tuesday. Clearly way past Sunday and also my bedtime. I need to allow my cells to regenerate. 

U2′s Running To Stand Still. 

It’s what I feel like I’m doing a lot of the time. It’s also one of my favourite songs on one of my favourite albums they’ve ever made, and that’s Joshua Tree.

How nearly every time I log into Hotmail I’m assaulted by some WSPA banner ad that contains images of a dog with its lip split open and slash marks on its face and body or a dancing bear with a pashmina around its neck and rings through its nostrils. 

I understand the purpose of the ads, believe me. If anyone on this earth understands the plight of all animals, insects, rodents, etc., it’s me. I just don’t want to see that ad however many times a day because I find it incredibly horrifying, deeply disturbing, and enough to make me want to do that hermit thing and cleanse my body of the thought of things like this still happening by lying in my dark room, deep breathing the images away.

I used to tell my mom I thought I needed therapy because of how hyper-sensitive I am toward animals. I remember a time when my mom took my brother and I to see Benji the Hunted in theatres. I was 10 years old. Within the first scene, a hawk swoops from the sky, snags a leopard cub, and flies off with it caught in its talons. I was so beside myself for having witnessed such a thing that I burst out crying so hysterically that my mom had to remove us from the theatre. 

Growing up I’d be the kid that intervened when a cat was preying on an unsuspecting bird or chipmunk. Then, if any one of these little creatures was caught and left clinging to life I would be the kid that had various-sized cages and a mini infirmary in my bedroom closet. 

I was the 15-year old who had a rat named Susan. When Susan was diagnosed with a tumour on one of her many nipples my dear mother, fully having identified and understood my obsessive and powerful compassion for all creatures, booked an appointment with our vet to have Susan’s tumour removed. This resulted in a mammectomy and she lived another two years. 

I was the one who happened upon an possibly abandoned Canada goose nest containing six eggs. I was the one who made Kenny drive to the nest at midnight with me  just because I couldn’t sleep while my mind raced wondering if mother goose had returned. I was the one who then made Kenny let me take the six eggs back to our house because they were in the nest cold and abandoned. I was the one who then stayed up until three in the morning researching how to incubate goose eggs. Kenny and I were the ones who went to Home Depot the next morning to buy the wood to make a platform that the humidifier would sit under while the eggs incubated on top. Kenny was the one who let me rig all this up in our walk-in closet. Kenny was the one who never yelled at me when he’d walk in and be overcome with steam and heat then walk out with wrinkly dress shirts.

I once witnessed a father Canada goose lead his family and wife onto the 417 highway in Ottawa then proceeded to dry heave and almost pass out.

I’m the one who has seen seven loose dogs running on either highways or major streets in their life time. I am the one who will risk life and limb to catch these frantic, thirsty, and scared dogs, then resorts to calling 9-1-1 if unsuccessful and requests a return phone call once the dilemma has been solved. 

I once lived with a chipmunk in my kitchen while Kenny was away on a fishing trip. I gave it fresh water every morning along with some leafy vegetables and whole wheat Shreddies. I fed the cats in the living room while boarding up the kitchen so the chipmunk would be safe. Come Kenny’s return we had a Hav-A-Heart trap which ended up catching this less than appreciative chipmunk while he was in the middle of peanut butter and crackers. He was then released back into the wild with a full tummy.

I once made a boyfriend’s friend look into a black, garbage bag thrown on the side of a farm road because I thought it had a calf in it. They wanted to bet me money that I was paranoid and mentally ill but I ended up winning. 

I spent two hours once cleaning off glue from the legs of flies that I had picked off strips of fly tape at a cottage. 

In my first apartment here in Vancouver it wouldn’t be uncommon to have some wolf spiders hanging out in the shower drain when it was time for my shower. I would pick them out with toilet paper every time and bring them to my front door then release them. 

I figure if I never make it to the pearly gates of human heaven, I’ll have a VIP pass to the barn door across the meadow made of clouds. I don’t think this would even bother me anyway; sometimes I feel like I like animals more than I do humans anyway. 

The long and short of it is … I just don’t want to see the WSPA ads anymore.

I’m relatively back. Not 100%, though. I’ve had the craziest week since my surgery on Friday. Today is my 2nd day back at work. In the meantime I’ve been eating flavourless things, I’ve had no appetite, I’ve been sleeping, tossing and turning, swearing, whining, and making the best of what’s around. Oh, I also completed six crossword puzzles, and nearly finished Mistry’s Such A Long Journey.

I became very familiar with the little insect colony that’s moved onto one of my succulents. It’s as exciting as watching Sea Monkeys being born. But, things like this happen when you’re confined to your confines. I made it out of my house for little field trips like to the end of my street and back. Sometimes this was such a feat I needed to march right back to my house to go to sleep again.

Isn’t it funny how when you’re recuperating, or if you’re in some sort of recovery that your body has the conch when it comes to determining exactly what you’re going to be capable of at any given moment of the day? Part of this recovery has been a battle with convincing my body to let me out of the house. I know I abused my privileges maybe two days too early when I attempted to drive my manual transmission car to meet up with a friend for ice cream. My body was really not in a state to be scratching my own head let alone shifting the gears of my car and I arrived at my friends place sweaty, nauseous, and ready for my bed again.

Dear Body,

I’m sorry.

Love, Andrea

Work’s been okay though. My colleagues have become used to me screaming out in pain of I turn weird, or use a part of my body that didn’t want to be used. I don’t think they were expecting me to be laughing through my tears but it’s just what I seem to do when I’m in pain. This never did work in my favour when my brother and I would be fighting as kids because my laughter (even though I was in agony) would make him so mad he’d wrestle me harder, which would make me laugh louder.  I’ll admit, it was weird of me and was especially confusing for all of us because as a parent, do you go running to your children to break up a fight when all you hear is laughing? And when you’re a sibling, furious and unrelenting, how much more angry are you if your sister’s laughing in your face while you have her in a headlock?

I’ve completely lost my trail of thought and gone off on a tangent. I blame the agony that I’m in. I should have never started this post after 3:PM because it seems to be around the time that my body’s like ‘Listen sister, I’m going to turn up the pain now because I want to be in bed like yesterday.’

How rude.

More intelligence must be forthcoming my friends. My vacation starts and I need to be in top form.

Where was I?

It’s exactly 11:05PM PST and I just got very excited to head to bed. It would seem strange though, that it’s this late and for someone this excited I should be there already, however, I was not around or near my bed for the last six hours and forty five minutes so as I wandered over to my computer to check emails, blog stats, RSS feeds, and quite possibly just one word I’m stuck on, I decided it might be nice to reflect on the sleep I had last night. I mean, that’s a normal thing to blog about, right? 

Now, the setting will obviously be different for anyone, and what I find cozy could be like hot coals to you, but that doesn’t matter right now because it’s my blog and my sleep.

As usual, I entered my bed with three things. 1) Eat, Pray, Love 2) A Crossword Puzzle 3) A Pencil … sometimes under one of my arms is a dangling Otis if he’s been misbehaving, he’d be #4. I usually throw all onto my bed before I survey the surface and aim for the area of least obstruction.

One thing to note is that – and this could be largely due to the fact that for my entire 20s I slept on the right side of the bed with someone else on my left – even when I get into bed alone I always sleep on the rightmost side, regardless of whether or not there is a heat generating unit to my left. But, last night I decided to position myself in the dead centre of my bed, surrounded by my pillows, my projects, and Otis. My bed is a queen, Posturepedic, with a super fluffy pillowtop mattress pad – aka heaven on 4 legs. I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to grasp this concept and believe me even typing this out is slightly embarrassing for two reasons: 1) I just admitted that I just grasped the concept of sleeping in the middle of my bed after 31 years and 364 days of living on this earth and 2) Should I have a sleepover, the poor soul is going to have to utilize 1/3 of the space and make due because I’m going to be a selfish bed sleeper for a while. 

So anyway, back to why my sleep last night is worthy of such detail tonight…

As I lay in the middle of my bed, I had Chris Botti Live playing like I have been lately, and the CD begins with a solo trumpet rendition of Someone To Watch Over Me; all of the sudden I felt instantly heavy  - like my body could have weighed 800 lbs, but it was an incredibly calm kind of heavy. It felt like the blood rushing through my body just stopped and floated in limbo (no I was not high) – everything stopped. I was drowning in the opulence of my bed and felt this undeniable equanimity at that moment. My bedroom is pitch black at night. The only sources of light come from the numbers on my alarm clock and the little rectangular light coming off my stereo – other than that it’s so pitchy that you’re usually asleep before your eyes even have a chance to adjust to the darkness.

I proceeded to have the best sleep that I can remember in a really long time. I swear I woke up in the same position I fell asleep in. I almost feel like I should be renting this experience out to the tired and weary. It could have been any number of things – my recent resolution with my life, my discovery of the amazing place called “the middle of my bed” – either way it was pretty fantastic.

If you’re interested, and you’re in the neighbourhood, contact me – you can rent my bed for 3 hours.

Yours in forty winks,

- Andrea

I have come to the end of a five day, long weekend, thanks to Easter and my gov’t jobby. I did a lot of what I like to do best, and that is Sweet F.A. I lay in bed Friday morning at the crack of my cats’ meows with a visualisation of a yellow house, a big old tree with a tire swing, and a noisy sky – it’s what I picture when I write this - and decided to begin painting it.

I did that for roughly four hours and may or may not have watched two Dirty Dancings in a row during this time. I finally stopped when I had a matte, pale, yellow house, with a plain grey roof, and a plain grey deck, and a stark, dark brown 2D tree ominously creeping up at the bottom right corner like a gnarled rake. At this point I became rather bored, and there wasn’t much more I could do while I waited for the house to dry. I really wanted to add some rusty, old shutters, and a creaky door, but alas, my time is as precious as the oil paint decides it to be.

I brought out another quarter-finished canvas of Gee’s cat, Whiskey, sitting in a windowsill. I stared at it for about 15 minutes, even stepping outside to look at it through my living room window from as much of a distance as possible, but by the time I came inside again, I forgot why I was outside in the first place primarily because of this condition, and then set forth in pursuit of clean dishes. The rest of my night would have looked really cool in time-lapse.

Saturday was half Sweet F.A., half party time – which is just the way I like to ease into any activity that involves leaving the confines of my cave. One step at a time, as the saying goes; I didn’t want to overstimulate my senses.

Saturday night I checked out The Market restobar in Vancouver’s newest, and tallest, sky-scraping hotel, The Shangri-La, with my friends MG and G. I stank of swank just setting foot in that place. It was fun to pretend. The theme of the hotel boasts Asian subtleties with earthy dessert-tones and hues (like caramel, espresso, milk chocolate), monstrous round pillars, ornate chandeliers, and a lot of granite. Otherwise known as I Am A Very Expensive Hotel.

We mosied over to The Alibi Room in Gastown apres ça and sat at solid wood picnic tables drinking beer and wine and talking about things I cannot mention in this post, sorry.

Come Sunday I was really only half-way into my long, long weekend and was feeling like a newly retired person already. I believe it was rainy and gross on this day and I remember this because I wanted to ski. Instead, I painted some more, made a huge mess of my place, brushed Marshall, and scolded Otis for attempting to eat Marshall. Met up with Quack at Starbuckle and may or may not have talked about 21st Century Woman-related things on a global scale. I also chilled with my beloved Katie later on that day; surfed the Net for a bit, then head on over to Tinseltown and saw One Week -which I highly recommend if you’d like to go through a metamorphosis of your life focus, and emerge roughly two hours later feeling like you need to latch onto a purpose and get that shit done like yesterday. In other words: Life is too unpredictable and short, so stop idling because it’s bad for your mental environment. It was also really nostalgic to see my home and native land portrayed with some beautiful country-side scenery. From TO to VAN … and everything in between.

Monday I tried to find people to beg to go skiing and couldn’t even find that let alone someone who would actually go. God, you’d think it was Easter or something. I painted some depth into the tree instead, then met up with Quack and Ciavarro and head into North Vancouver in search of Italian salted, deli meats. We found ourselves at The Quay munching on little Italian nibblies and I felt like I was at an outdoor family fiesta back in Montréal. I ended the day sitting down to paint and put on The Black Stallion then proceeded to bawl my eyes out so much that I couldn’t even see what I was painting.

Tuesday was another hot, sunny, and magnificent day. By this point I was falling into a depression due to the fact that I had four Grouse passes sitting on my mantle and the skiing season was quickly coming to an end. I met T for breakfast, then G  for lunch – where I was very late (due to construction) and I’m still very sorry (there was construction); then rolled into the afternoon with one mission and one mission alone on my frontal lobe: Must.Ski.Today.

And so I did. I resigned myself to the fact that no one would be able to go with me come hell or high water. So I packed up my gear, loaded it into my car, brought some driving music and head to Grouse forgetting nothing, and making no wrong turns. I had just enough change in my wallet to treat myself to rock star parking, nothing could really ruin my day. Not even the fact that the 100 capacity, red line gondola was under construction and the wait in the blue line was roughly 35 minutes. I made friends in line, got up to the hill, and skied for a good 4 hours. It occurred to me several times while on the chairlift with the sun hot against my back that I hadn’t engaged in conversation with anyone during several half-hour to hour-long increments. I was literally in a meditative state, submerged in nature. It was nice too because there was hardly anyone on the hill. I rode the chairlift several times by myself. I skied in silence. At one point I got to the peak of Grouse, just when the sun started to deepen in colour, and sat down on my skis staring out over Vancouver and the grandiose, infinite Pacific. For that moment in time I swear I felt the activity leave my mind and it felt still and free of all thought – it’s been a long time since I felt that.

Today is back at work, but it’s a three-day week ending in pay day. I can’t complain. It’s been a great five days and a new weekend is already so close, I can taste it.