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.

 “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate, our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, “Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?” Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world.

There is nothing enlightening about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We were born to manifest the glory that is within us. As we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people the permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

Written by Marianne Williamson
Read by Nelson Mandela in his 1994 Inaugural Speech

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.

Up until a little over two years ago I had been living a life that, for the most part, didn’t feel entirely fulfilling on certain levels. Fulfilling in terms of what I know it was capable of becoming and how close I was to realising all the great things I wanted to do and accomplish. I felt like there were bigger things out there for me to discover but they appeared like mirages in daydreams and I could never distinguish exactly what they were.

Much of my life had felt that way and come thirty I guess I started to reflect on just how fragmented it really was. It became really apparent after high school. You know, the moment when you can no longer use the excuse of high school or being a teenager to justify why you’re still working at New York Fries (yes, New York Fries).  I used to be the type of person who could fall too easily into physically accepting complacency. Physically in the sense that once I’m there I don’t have much of an interest in doing what needs to be done in order to stimulate myself and escape. Emotionally I would suffer my life instead and convince myself that suffering was work in itself even though it was such a contradiction of what I truly wanted and expected of myself.

I was all over the place in college trying to find my calling. I was literally in post-secondary education for eight years and I certainly was NOT becoming a doctor to excuse it. In those eight years I took Advertising, Graphic Design, Web Design (night classes), Psych 101 (this one was at University), Bartending (space-filler), Small Business Management, and lastly Enterprise Network Specialist. Eighteen-thousand dollars in student debt later, I had graduated from two of those programs. In my first year of college I was often the youngest in class; by the time I left I was the same age as one of my teachers.

Meanwhile people I graduated high-school with were already getting married, had careers, children even and here I was living under the safety net of post-secondary education which made me feel better about myself. If I wasn’t well on may way into adulthood and all the regular responsibilities that came with it, at least I could explain it by saying I was still in school. “What are you taking now?” My answer was different almost every year. Life was still very much unanswered for me, unfortunately. Secretly, at that time and in many ways, I was quite envious of my peers and how focused, settled, and grown-up they seemed. Here I was supporting myself and my misdirected habit working as a supervisor at a grocery store. Overseeing and working with bag boys I may have once babysat.

Oh how I hated that aspect of my life.

In many ways, and now more than ever, I realise I wasn’t meant to have a structured and regimented life early on. Part of what makes me who I am today is due to difficulty, confusion, and misdirection in my past. I was never in the same place as some of my friends whose primary focus was to get into a cushy career, buy a house, and settle into the life of Ottawa, Ontario. I was still ready for many more adventures and perhaps in some ways I figured my meager grocery store job allowed for that kind of free-spiritedness. I knew it wasn’t a real job so I didn’t really have to be accountable to it. I had always had an urge to pack up my life in Ottawa and just get out of there. I’d had that urge since I turned 20. If I had been in a career, packing up and leaving would have been very difficult not to mention frightening. If it weren’t for my complete loss over what the hell to do with my life I would have never had the experience of fine tuning so many of my interests in such a short period of time.

Finally, at almost 28 years old, I finished my final year of post-secondary education after two years of configuring IP addresses, encrypting servers, pinging things and began my first “big-girl” job working for an environmental compliance company. I had my very own desk, my very own work load that I was responsible for. I was learning things – and it wasn’t new codes for strange vegetables. It was chemistry, science, engineering, electronics. I got to travel to California on business trips, got a promotion … “big-girl” stuff. Girl, you’ll be a woman, soon.

For the first time in my life I was being stimulated at work in the type of way that my mind really needed in order to flourish. Not only that, but for the first time in a job I could use many aspects of what I had been going to school for all those years. I think now that job was what I needed to tell myself that things were going to be okay and really believe in what I was saying.

I had finally emerged from a life filled with foolish excuses to one that I needed to be responsible for in more serious ways. You can only convince yourself for so long that the reason why you’re in your seventh post-secondary program is because you love learning and that your grocery store job at twenty-seven years old is so rewarding.

Lesson #1: Denial is still and lie in Wordplay

It was in that job that I got engaged, turned thirty, got dis-engaged, and left it to move to Vancouver alone. With cats. And guts. The cycle of uncertainty and fear starts up again only this time, just like after every other time before it,  I feel so much more armed against whatever comes because of the places I’m leaving behind. Like a mental evolution.

I had first come to this realisation the year I turned seventeen and was working at New York Fries at a shopping mall. I tell you, there’s nothing like getting fired from a fast food joint (yes, fired from a fast food joint) to make you feel really shitty about yourself but to also give you a brief moment of thought that says: It can’t get any worse than this. Even though realistically it can get much worse, it feels almost that bad when you suffer the shame of being fired from a job that you always thought you were better than.

Lesson #2: You’re never better than a job that can make you worse in one sentence.

So I’ve been shamed and humbled and confused. I still become humbled and get confused but there’s no shame coming from putting myself down so much and spending so much time being a martyr.

I’ve gone through quite a bit over these last two years in Vancouver. The stories are within the pages of my blog. Some aren’t ready to emerge into the light of day yet, if ever. But, I think I mean it when I say that currently, life is really good. I have a wonderfully rewarding, yet emotionally taxing job with the Provincial Government. I embrace the challenges, hurt over the circumstances, occasionally grieve the workload and yet I couldn’t be happier right now – unless of course John Mayer rang my doorbell – but at the end of the day I go home and don’t mind knowing that the next morning I have to do it all over again.

Do you know what that means to me!?

Everything.

In addition to this I’m going through a new cycle this time. One that feels very certain and one that I’m impassioned with. It’s something that I know I must do and now I’ve got the maturity, the strength, the experience, the organisation, and focus I need to be able to bring this to life.

Perhaps that’s why I haven’t blogged much lately. Other things have become more important than Dear Diary-ing my existence to the World Wide Web. I have a bigger target market now, and that’s the Universe. We have some business to figure out and I am about to propose a big life change to it and request unhindered success.

You’ll have to stand by for I don’t intend to throw in the towel yet. I’ve found my calling. My joie de vivre. It took me this long but it’s what I believe I’m meant to do.

More on it later – when I have something substantial to report. In the meantime you’ll have to listen to the hold music…

Tomorrow for Sunday Jammin’ Music though.

If there’s one thing I’ll never stop doing even in the face of a disinterest in blogging for a period of time … is jamming.

It’s been what I like to call a tick tock morning.

What I mean by that is everything seems to be functioning on a tick tock rhythm. For instance, the signal of the commercial van in front of the bus this morning was in unison with the signal of the bus. Tick, Tick, Tick. Sometimes at a red light you can sync up signals with your own for about 20 seconds but then the rhythms slowly disconnect until they are tick tocking at opposite intervals. These two ticks stayed in rhythm like tango dancers.

I stood beside a frowzy woman eating a McDonald’s hash brown on the bus. She was wearing a necklace with a hefty blue gemstone at the end that rested gingerly upon her joyful bosom and with each veer and bump that rock tick tocked from one mamm to the other. Like a child on a trampoline.

The everything machine that sits outside my office is not feeling well, for each time it revs up to pass pieces of paper through its internal organs it tick, tick, tick, tonks. Not a tock that time.

Today feels like I’m just a little removed from my reality to the point where my mind blurs out much like your eyes would when you’re in a daze. When that happens, minute activity that thrives on a daily basis around us unnoticed, all of the sudden becomes as obvious as shampoo in your eye.

It could be because I’m kind of groggy this morning so to focus on important things doesn’t become as necessary as enjoying the time I’m spending swinging from silky cobwebs. I fell asleep last night watching Mad Men in bed on my laptop and woke up to the sound of the fan overheating. Oopsie. That’s probably why it’s taking me a while to meet up with the rest of society.

Still though, somehow when alertness and responsibility call I’m able to turn up the collar and face the important issues of the day. Newsworthy? Yes, sometimes. But never worth the news. I made it to work, left to help the sick and wounded, made it back to work without distraction and here I am hungry of the stomach and writing a blog post instead that will most likely leave you, my readers, wondering why you just wasted your time on something so incoherent and absurd. It’s just part of my ‘ism.

Oh, I showered with a spider last night. It was actually quite distressing because he was trying desperately to scale the wet tiles. His rear legs managed to get a grip in the grout but his little front legs were just slip sliding away. I finished concentrating on myself while keeping an eye on him so that if he did lose his grip and tumbled down into the tub I would be on stand-by to save him.

I even took a photo of us which I can upload later today for those who are waiting on definitive confirmation of my nonstandard existence.

The fact of the matter is I have a good heart and I mean well and I can sleep at night knowing that if I’m turned away at the gates of Heaven, I’m VIP where the animals play and that if I can make one idiosyncratic person feel normal then I’ve done my job. Hey, I find faces and animals in the pocked patterns of suspended ceilings, too.

You know you are weird in your own little way. You should just throw a party for it.

I’m back from lunch and wanted to mention the orgasm my taste buds had at lunch. Jodes and I walked over to Solly’s on 7th and mowed down on a very tasty soup and bagel sandwich lunch, not before … or after, for that matter… I had one three of their date nut macaroons – which I’m sure are actually meringues. Anyway, holy kosher are they ever yumms. They’re little bite-size mounds of (see above) and they come loose or in packages. They’re gluten-free too and quite perfect according to Jodie and I.

I marvel sometimes how curious life can be. How one second you think you understand everything and the next second you have no idea what is going on. And, it’s not necessarily in any negative kind of way. Often it’s almost in a revelatory way or completely polarized from the direction you thought you’d be heading at least for the next little while. So a bit of re-routing is necessary even without a guarantee that what’s happening on the other side will make sense, or work out, or end up the way it needs to in order to not grieve the change.

We put a lot of faith in our innate ability to navigate the pathways through life but I think – no, I know – that there are certain times when all you can do is reach your arms out in front of you and feel your way through the dark hoping that you don’t bump into any sharp corners.

That’s what we call blind faith.

And that’s all I’ll say about that…

Here’s your Sunday Jammin’ Music – on a Sunday too! For once.

Frou Frou – Let Go (sung by Imogen Heap)

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?

I am coming down from a very fun 3_nd birthday this past weekend. Luckily I had today off as my flex day so tomorrow’s Tuesday will feel like my Monday. J’aime ça.

It’s hard to believe I’m (60 ÷ 2) + 6 – 4 now, I mean some days I feel like I’m 18 .. other days I feel 85, but that’s neither here nor there. Those days, if they’re going to happen at all, will be on a Sunday morning. I’m XXXII which means I might have to start accepting that I’m an adult. It’s hard though, when you constantly get guessed for 22. I mean, I’m trying to be mature! But it doesn’t help when I get ID’d to purchase scratch and win tickets. Worst is when they look at my ID and say “Is this you?” It’s very frustrating getting in a discussion over such things, and even more frustrating when I’m turned down. *sigh*

Still though, IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII IIII II isn’t so bad. I’m still young-ish. I don’t mind this age. I’m really understanding myself more. There’s more clarity around me. I have more answers than I have questions right now and that feels very comfortable.

Although difficult at many points along the way, I feel happy with where I am and how I got here. That’s not to say that tomorrow I might feel like a piece of shit and hate my life, but if I can have some moments along the way where everything feels right – then I’ll hang onto those for dear life, and just as a reminder that things always have a way of working themselves out. 

This year I had an amazing birthday. I was surrounded with friends I’ve known since I was in elementary school, friends I met in my life back in Ottawa, my family, and brand new friends here. I’m thankful for all of them, I truly am. I am lucky. Some stayed for dinner, some stayed well past that. I’m just happy they were there to celebrate avec yours truly. I even found me some Italians! Honourable bloggers in attendance were: Le Quack, Keira-Anne, Marlee, Danielle and Dario

There’s not really much more I feel like adding to this except maybe some photos that I have always loved looking at from when I was small, just because it’s my birthday and it’s fun to reminisce. I’ll finish with some highlights from my birthday party this past Sat. Then, when you get to the muff-diver shot one, you can scroll back up and look at the cute, little girl I once was. 

haha.

This is what you get when an Italian and a Ukrainian get together.

First, a quote I love by Chuck Palahniuk:

No matter how careful you are, there’s going to be the sense you missed something, the collapsed feeling under your skin that you didn’t experience it all. There’s that fallen heart feeling that you rushed right through the moments where you should’ve been paying attention. Well, get used to that feeling. That’s how your whole life will feel some day. This is all practice. None of this matters. We’re just warming up.

Some people think I look like my mom, but sometimes, her and I beg to differ…

My two grandfathers. My Dido, on the right, will be 100 years old on June 17th.

My brother and I (my two absolute favourite photos of us as kids)

Check out this little gem I found from high school grad. Grade 13, 1996.

And today (well Saturday):

I woke up the first time this morning at precisely 6:04AM. I had forgotten to take all the girly bath products out of my shower because Syl’s boyfriend is coming today to redo the caulking. I was surprisingly alert considering I was up until the ungodly hour of 12:36AM desperately trying to figure out “Wonderland Cake Phrase” 5-letters. I think by this time my mind was really over-thinking the answer which seems somewhat strange considering on a week day, come around 10:00PM, my mind only has enough energy to remember to brush teeth, set alarm. Sometimes I wonder if between the hours of 12:00AM and 12:45AM, if I’m still awake, I enter this circus-like vortex where my mind runs in colourful overdrive, peaks, then I’m incoherent again, even if my body feels like its being dragged through a pool of marzipan while all this is going on.

Anyway, the answer was “EAT ME” as in Alice in Wonderland. I recall letting out an exasperated sigh as I began the first E then must have been asleep by the time I got to the last E because I woke up spooning the newspaper about an hour later, threw it to the ground, and fell back asleep.

So, after cleaning out my shower, I fed mes chats, opened the blinds and exposed my living room to the world outside. I could hear crows in the trees, the sky was still groggy and had this kind of cobwebby look to it because of the clouds. I admired it for a bit, then decided to go back to sleep for another 35 mins before my alarm would be going off.

I didn’t wake up again until precisely 7:29AM; one minute before I’m supposed to be on the SkyTrain heading to work. I remember letting out this kind of half-stretch wail, half-blood-curdling scream then leaped out of bed with enough of a stride to *almost* land me at my bathroom sink down the hall and around the corner. Mike Powell would have been really jealous.

I know there exists a definite window where if I am running late and manage to be on the SkyTrain platform at 7:38AM I can snag a roomy car. Don’t ask me how or why it works this way but if I get there at say 7:35AM, that train is generally packed like a lobster tank in a grocery store (of which I am adamantly opposed to, btw), 7:40AM and I run the same risk. But, for some strange reason, 7:38AM is safe. So I aimed for this. I was on the platform 9-minutes after waking up, and that includes 2-minute foot time at the pace of a mid-60s power walker.

It’s a good thing we’re advised, as women, to not dress too pretty at work for our own safety, because boy, I feel right at home today. The good news is I am wearing different clothes from yesterday.

I should focus on my 2-minute walk to the SkyTrain because I believe it’s what really lead me to this idea for a post today…

Luckily, I don’t concentrate for too long on my misfortunes (sleeping in, in this case) and am usually distracted from them the minute the scenery changes, so I was of clean slate by the time I locked my apt door. I traipsed down the street toward the ravine and immediately noticed how brisk and fresh the air felt on my face. The sun was high by this time and the blue sky seemed silky and new.  It was unique enough for it to register with me and I think it’s because it reminded me of Ontario in spring. So the beauty of it, combined with the nostalgia felt pretty rejuvenating and renewing considering how chaotic my morning started out.

Sometimes I find I enter this sort of realm of clear perspective, it’s almost like walking into the great wide open (thank you Tom Petty), and it makes my existence feel completely comfortable and carefree. Redemption from unsettling things comes quicker, either that or they just don’t phase me at all. I’ve been having this kind of numbing feeling of turning 32 lately – where things have been feeling kind of open ended, or unfinished, or delayed. I desperately wanted to claw back the last four years of my life and see if I could rework my path, or dust it off a little bit, or maybe even take the different fork in the road. When I used to read Choose Your Own Adventure books, I’d sometimes skip ahead when I was completely torn over which direction I wanted to go, it was cheating but I liked having the control of the outcome and the choice of making the most favourable, or exciting decision for me. I guess that’s how I’ve been feeling lately although not to a heavy enough degree for me to fixate on it.

Over the last two-ish days though, I’ve been feeling so alive and alert. Almost as though it would take a lot to bring me down. I’m turning back into myself although I never really noticed a morphing of anyone different, I’m only just realising that perhaps I’ve been feeling befuddled and/or cloudy. So maybe it is age and maturity that provide the clearest recognition of one’s life at any given moment. I remember around 24 I was misdirected and quite bratty, although that was also part of the component of the changes I’d be going through and I think now was a necessary transition for me. I felt like if there was anything I wanted I was deserving of it regardless of whether or not I would appreciate it if it eventually came to me. Thankfully this only lasted about eight months, and wouldn’t have otherwise happened if the first half of my 20s had turned out differently. There are no regrets, only the feeling of a life that needed to be lived at that time, and I’m glad I did. Toward the end of this particular “season of change” I started to feel dissatisfaction or distracted by where things were sitting, almost like where the part of your flip flop rubs wrong on your bare foot, then when you bandage it up it’s like heaven and you can keep walking with comfort and focus. Just like that, you know? No more static.

So I’ve come to appreciate that now, as well. I look at the ups and downs of my life, and believe me, I have a story to tell. I must have experienced such a full spectrum of emotions with so many levels within this spectrum, that when I emerged from my adolescence, I must have been roughly 120 years old emotionally for quite some time. In other words, tired and cranky.

I’ve since got a grip and am now just kind of rolling with the ‘whatever mans’ – it’s a cool club. Perhaps this makes me seem a little aloof and perplexing but this is the way I would like for my cookie to crumble right now. I’ve adopted a new philosophy since hitting 30 and it is an appendage to the term “Who gives a shit” except by my definition there is a measure of benevolence and selflessness in there as well. I find that the more concerned you are with your own essence the more certain people become concerned with your essence as well. When you function for yourself and your own self-preservation, people regard you as kind of like an independent, self-cleaning mechanism. They worry less about you to a spacious degree because they know you’ve got a handle, and the general interaction between yourself and whomever that takes place is one that is very calming and familiar. I think it’s giving off an air of peace and contentment that calms the frantic around you, even if sometimes you have to fake it. Otherwise, it’s like molecules colliding and causing a lot of friction. Sometimes you have to just turn on your heel and lead the way, even if you end up walking alone for several miles.

So it’s because of these realisations as of late that I feel so at peace with everything. Even more at peace than I may have previously been. Life really is a constant teaching device both when learning about yourself as well as just understanding the ways of the world.

I honestly encourage everyone to go through a similar crisis, it’s very enlightening.

Yours in introspection,

- Andrea