I’m sitting at my workstation at home, the traces of last night’s mascara still clinging to my eyelashes and my hair looks like a rat’s nest. I’m the epitome of who you don’t want to wake up to in the morning, and frankly it feels awesome.

It’s August 27th, 2008 and I’ve been thinking back to this time last year…

I remember my living room set was puzzle-pieced nicely inside my mom’s own living room. The humid, earthy smell of boxes filled with books are lining her entrance way. My TV unit sits in the backyard covered in tarps. I’m waiting for the moving truck to arrive and haul my life away. It comes, my life of commodities is shipped away and I exist as a single unit and wait. Twelve days go by and it’s the night before my one-way flight whisks me away to Vancouver. I’m filled with anxiety, uncertainty, excitability, and exhaustion. My stomach is filled with one-thousand butterflies on standby and it almost hurts me.

The morning arrives and mentally I’m searching hard for the breaths that come out mellow and light, but the intake is heavy and my heart does a somersault each time it beats. I couldn’t really tell if I was excited or shitting my pants. It was a really strange feeling actually.

So we pack up my mom’s car, and I ride with Kenny to the airport. We engage in small talk and I’m forcing myself to concentrate on everyone else’s thoughts so I can have a respite from my own for a while. We’re early, so we wait. Walk around. Watch other lives enter the atmosphere inside big metal birds. The time comes, and my mom, dad, Kenny and I stand outside the security gate and I begin my goodbyes to the two people I have seen nearly every day of my life since I was born. They represent my home, my roots, and the foundation my constitution grew from. I say bye to Kenny, and give him the kind of hug that I hope feels like an apology to him for closing the doors on what was going to be “our” life so suddenly. “I have to follow this dream.” “I know.”

I go through security frantically searching for the pack of Kleenex I swear I left in my pocket. I’m clear, and the guards like that, because the line up behind me is long.

I gather my laptop, my carry on, my purse, jacket and make my way down to Gate 9 bound for Vancouver.

Now it’s just me. Each step I make propagates progress toward who I will remain and/or become after spending 30 years in the same location and landing on new soil.

I cry quietly for the first 2 hours of my flight. An elderly couple beside me smile and hand me some Kleenex. Where the hell is my Kleenex?

I snack on these digestive-cookie-tasting things that aren’t Digestive Cookies but the crunch sounds good.

I watch Top Gun on my laptop.

I hear the wheels engage and my body descends into the Vancouver air.

That was a year ago in one day from now. I’ve been self-reflecting lately, naturally. Mainly on what feels like the magnitude of what I’ve done and accomplished and the things I’ve gone through in just a short period of time.

I want to list them, for reasons of nostalgia, but also because sometimes if I look back on the last 364 days, I can’t believe it sometimes.

In order of appearance:

August 2007:
- Pack up my 30-year life as I knew it and head cross country with Marshall&Otis.
September 2007:
- Start new job
- Give my lease termination notice from the Gangster’s Paradise after 13 days of dwellage
- Sam, my beloved dog dies at 14 back home
October 2007
- Escape the Gangster’s Paradise within one month and remove the butcher knife from under my mattress
- Move into new place
November 2007
- Get rear ended 45 seconds from my front door
January 2008
- Layoffs at work
- Start new job
February 2008
- Visit Montreal to see my grandfather for the first time since being diagnosed with cancer
March 2008
- All 4 doors of my car are keyed
- Car is hit while in parking lot
April 2008
- Turn 31
June 2008
- Vacation home to Montreal and then Ottawa. My first time back in Ottawa since moving.
- My grandfather dies the morning of my arrival, 8 hours before I landed at the airport.
- Come back from vacation … laid off
July 2008
- Smooth sailing
August 2008
- Begin new job, quit after three weeks because of this

So here I am now. I’m anxious for year #2 here. In some ways I hope it’s as action packed, but not as emotionally draining. I really like challenges more than I can explain, makes for some good campfire stories and I’ll take them all over stagnancy any day, even if sometimes I wish I could crawl into a hole and never come out again.

Pick it up and take it home with you.

… Or, is that just what I say.

So I was meandering down the pathway along the ravine behind my house and what do I see sitting beside a park garbage with its power and usb cable tied neatly on top?

There was also an old Canon ink jet with a serial cable which was tres passe. So I just grabbed the new one. I see that a lot here actually. Abandoned TV’s, hamster cages. I guess the owners feel too bad actually including it in their garbage at the end of their houses so they put it beside the park garbages and forget about it.

I’m just doing my part to help the environment, you know?

Anyway, onto bigger and better things … See? I have to always remind myself that there is always a silver lining, even if it’s a little tarnished at first. I know bigger dreams await me, now I just have to believe in myself, and hope for the best for Step Three.

August 18, 2008

Dear Andrea:

Re: Competition EA2008:xxxxx

Congratulations on your recent successful interview! The final step in our recruitment process is a reference check. Could you please provide references from two people who directly supervised you in a work setting. My preference is your current employer plus your most recent past employer.

In addition to this, could you also please provide a reference who can verify the scenarios you described when answering each of the three competency based questions during your interview.

Please note that we will be contacting the above employers within the next two weeks, so please prepare them for our call.

Yours truly,

X

Recruitment Supervisor
Ministry of ….

From: Andrea
Date: Sun, Aug 17, 2008 at 11:58 PM
Subject: Letter of Resignation
To: “d@………com”, “g@………..com”, “m@………..com”

Dear “D”, “G”, and “M”:

Please accept this letter as my official letter of resignation from __________ effective August 18th, 2008.

After this weekend, I realized how little respect and commitment to employee well-being circulates through both the NY and the Vancouver offices. This is something that is unacceptable. I will not work for a company where I am informed by the inebriated and drugged vice president that I am disliked by at least 1/3, if not 2/3, of the management team and that my “expendable role” essentially depends on how well I suck up to him so he can move up in the company. I also will not tolerate inappropriate behaviour like the vice president rolling onto my mattress with me at a weekend work retreat while attempting to review, undermine, and insult my performance and value as an employee while under the influence of alcohol at 11:00 PM on a Saturday night in front of my colleagues. I also do not feel the need to commit or dedicate myself to a company who apparently has every intention of firing me if I “slip up.”

I wish ____________ the best of luck at continuing to circumvent the issue of employee morale based on selfish expectations and delusions of grandeur and then skirting around the issue because of an uncultivated grasp of what it means to run and staff a business. It’s a shame, really. I can only hope that come the next round you understand that tirades, swearing, belittling, insulting, berating, punching filing cabinets, and a zero lack of training from day one are not only counter-productive but also a form of harassment and against the Employment Standards Act.

I have left the laptop on my desk and turned in the keys on M’s desk.

Please mail my ROE and T4 to the following address:
293 ____ Avenue
Vancouver, BC
V_R 1S_

Thank you,

- Andrea

From blogging. Just for a bit though. I’m in a weird place in my life right now. It’s exciting, frustrating, angering, exasperating, but full of anticipation, and big dreams for some really good things just at the tips of my fingertips. They’re so close… I just need to really concentrate on them, then I think I’ll be set.

Back soon.

In the meantime, I would like to provide you with some Otis. He is just so fantastic and wonderful.

I was sent to my room and not happy! I must have made my mom so mad that she had to send herself to her room too. I’m so thankful she kept this and has since scanned it and sent it to me.

Just for a laugh, because it’s so nice outside today … and it’s Friday.

Oh, and a bonus video too … everyone needs Looking Glass on Friday.

From: “Mum”
To: “Andrea Gmail”
Date: Fri, Aug 8, 2008 at 12:38 PM

Here is your ‘cry-for-help.’ You were six years old.

I didn’t say bad things to you – I just told you to stay in your room until you calmed down..and I went to my room because I was really mad… then you threw this out the window.

Love,
Mum

So my new job is in Yaletown.

Some quick stats: Approx 11,000 residents, 940 businesses, and 9,500 employees.

I do love Yaletown. It’s a little gentrified puzzle piece of downtown Vancouver that hustles and bustles with every demographic extreme you could imagine. It’s riddled with boutiques, high-end furniture galleries, loft-style condos, tall, window-wall apartment buildings – some guarded by Gargoyle sculptures on the outermost ledges, cuisine and wine bars, lounges, high-priced real estate, renovated historic sites, and a really lush and ritzy nightlife.

Yaletown is swank-o-rama on one hand, but can be quite dismal on another, which is what fascinates me about it.

For instance, yesterday while walking to get some lunch I passed these two women in their early 60s. Still dyeing their hair strawberry blonde, they sported LuLuLemon suits – one pink, the other purple – and they laughed with each other while sitting outside of a fair-trade, organic, granola, coffee shop at an antique-looking iron table and chairs. They were each resting one of their wrinkled, veiny hands on the bar of up-scale looking strollers. Inside the strollers were their … dogs.

No, not their grandchildren, not groceries, just little dogs.

I wonder who decided that walking was no longer a natural activity for dogs, to take that away from them. The one escape they have from the confines of their four-walled homes. Just like us. We need escapes. We need to walk, run, bike, no? How boring! If I were the dog in this image to the left I’d be furious, not to mention mortified.

I’d want to pass by other dogs on the sidewalk. I’d want to say hello and circulate around them. I’d want to smell… actually forget that part. I’d want to be pet by passers by, feel the wind in my fur, shnuffle on the grass. Who’s idea was this?!

On the other hand, I fully understand that instinct. Maybe they’re not mothers themselves. Maybe to them, this is like me when I was a kid treating my Cabbage Patch Kids like they were my own flesh and blood. Maybe that’s what being retired is all about?

Fast forward the last block before I reach work. There’s the dentist with the 90% radiation-free x-rays, and the all-natural teeth whitening treatment, the hypnotic dentistry, the cosmetic dentistry, and the beautiful waiting room; the high-rolling real estate agency with its 21st-century logo – two colours, block lettering, bold. A statement of modern class. Then, I smell different things along this stretch. Sometimes it’s last night’s garbage, sometimes it’s the traces of someone who’s had too much to drink, other times it’s the smell of liquid trickling from a shop-owner’s entrance way. Then I arrive at work. There is a pretty brick, raised platform I have to step up onto, it’s lined with a very short, iron railing, and leads into the open area of my building. Every morning I pass by this spot there is some trace of libelous activity from the night before.

The first time I came across the paraphernalia I saw: 2 aerosol caps, a pack of AA batteries, 3 needle caps, an empty syringe, and a shoe string. The second time I saw: an empty bag of cookies, 2 needle caps, and a spoon. This past Tuesday there was an empty box of condoms and an empty bottle of cream soda.

The gentrification seeds in Yaletown started in the 80s, and now is just consumed by it on so many levels. It just fascinates me in so many ways and really is a neat and very beautiful place to behold.

In Yaletown you can buy a condo 15 floors up for 5 million dollars and get a view of someone shooting up right across the street.

I mean …

Last week I worked almost 50 hours without lunches. Pretty good first week in the ole workforce.

Let’s see, every morning I deal with a 1/2-hour conversation over the phone with one of the partners at the NY location. This conversation mainly consists of a little bit of patronizing, some condescension, some lambasting, and an over all poor outlook on life in general. And my day begins …

Life is so funny sometimes – I don’t know if the rest of the world feels like this so often, but it’s like whenever I think something good is going to come my way I’m always wrong. Although, at the same time, if I extract this new job from the equation, things are going pretty darn good. Oh wait … we’re going to have to also extract the fact that I haven’t received a paycheck in 2 months now as well … but other than that it’s good.

I caught the fireworks twice this week, walked along the ocean and saw a tug boat tugging another tug boat. I watched the Gay Pride Parade under the hot sun, walked through the streets of d-town with Gee and ducked into little shops, rifled through milk crates of records outside an old record store, checked out items at a yard sale and became utterly fascinated with the things people harbor until it’s time to say goodbye.

I’ve also got Caesar here for his 2-week vacation while his parents are in Germany. He’s such an adorable little old man and he loves cuddles and kisses on his forehead.

(haha you’re like “little old man??” “cuddles and kisses on his forehead??”)

This is another interesting time in my life. I’m approaching my one year anniversary of living here. One year! How did that happen so quickly? I almost want to slow time down. In a way, I don’t know if I’m prepared to realise that I will have been here for 365 days. I remember when some years used to drag on into forever. You couldn’t wait until a new year would begin – For reasons of change, or redemption, or whatever, and here I am holding on, and I’m not sure why really. Maybe it’s that I like the fact that Vancouver still seems new to me. That if I’ve been here for 12 months I can say I’m still “new” to Vancouver. It’s hard to put into words really, but maybe I’ve gotten used to the struggles so much that they’ve become comfortable to me in some twisted way.

In other words, I just don’t know.

Here are a couple photos of Caesar and a bonus video from one of my favourite bands – it’s apropos to this post I thinky.