4:20 - the not fun one.

Finnegan- also not a morning person

There is nothing pleasant about a 4:20am alarm. It doesn't matter how soft the music is, or how gentle the kisses - 4:20am is rude.

I've never been a morning person. I was probably one of the few kids who actually celebrated Christmas that had to be roused in order to allow the festivities to start. Equally, no matter how exciting the reason for the 4:20 wake-up, I can never find one that makes me excited. Yesterday's reason for 4:20am was not overly exciting. I travelled somewhere new, but any curiosity or interest was being tempered by the temperature. It was and continues to be -32c, before any measurable windchill. I also find that rude. 4:20am and -32c. My capacity for accepting or tolerating any other rudeness this week will be significantly compromised.

I only remember one real instance of anticipatory excitement around 4:20am. It was once upon a time, when my sister and I used to visit our grandparents during the summer in Deep Bay. And it was before my pre-teen brain made the morning an impossibility to face. My grandpa used to get up before dawn to go fishing. He had a comfortable though basic Bayliner. I would hear him in the kitchen, and I would creep down the stairs. We would eat cornflakes and he would let me put sugar on mine (a great luxury I was not normally afforded at home). I would pull on my jacket and Grandpa would buckle my life jacket over top. We would then trudge towards the wharf just as the sun was coming up. Grandpa said that the sun hitting the water woke the fish up and made them hungry. It made sense to me. I usually fell back asleep, curled up on a bench until the sun woke me up and made me hungry. Quite often there were other types of forbidden treats in the boat, like powdered doughnuts or cookies, which I snacked on while the lines were set.



This is still my morning face.  Jeff sees this pout fairly regularly.
And remember, I wanted to be there.  Imagined how I looked yesterday.

A couple of spring salmon later, and lots of quiet bobbing around Denman and Hornby Islands, Grandpa and I would head back to the house, where folks would just be waking. Grandpa would clean the fish with a couple of eagles watching carefully from nearby, and then he'd make us pancakes on the griddle. The whole day was still laid out before us.

Life on the edge

I am a water baby. Born under the sign of the crab on the west coast of Vancouver Island, salt water courses through my blood. Rain, salt air and fog are essential life forces. Isolation and standing on the edge of the known bring me comfort.

I am here, next human is here-ish. Perfect. I like my personal space.
View Larger Map

For university, I chose to bust out on my own by moving to Montreal. Rain became snow, salt air was only constructed through the over zealous snow removal and fog was either really steam or self induced through hangover. Isolation was cultural and anonymity, and the were no edges. Montreal is the middle. But I still found the sea. Most people studied at home or the library (or didn't study), but I found my haven at the Biodome. Sure, my intertidal zone was a little too sterile, but it was one of the few places I could ground myself.

During the summers I went back to Ucluelet, back to the edge, to stare off the side of the continent. The summers recharged me, and the lack of anonymity often left me eager to escape to my cultural isolation.

Halifax is a nice balance. There's enough of a population base that you can remain somewhat anonymous, but it is situated on the edge. This past weekend, I craved that edge. Jeff, Finnegan and I went for a walk to stare off the side of the continent. I feel recharged.

We are here, next human is here-ish.  Perfect. We need out personal space.
View Larger Map

And over there is Muxia.  It's a long swim.

The sea at our feet and the sun on our faces.  Batteries are recharging.

Throwback Thursday - Halloween Edition

Halloween was always a big deal in our house.  Before we were born to the time we were around 3 and 1 respectively, my parents had raging Halloween parties of legendary proportions.  The photographic evidence of these parties show a lot of creative costumes (as well as other things that I am sure makes my elders extremely happy that they happened prior to the Internet revolution).  Back in those days, people didn't buy their costumes, they made them.  There was no Halloween Superstore or Value Village, especially not in Ucluelet, but this did not stop folks from going all out.

For our costumes, my sister and I were lucky enough that my mum had a great deal of cleverness.  Our requests generally fell on the classic side of the Halloween spectrum, but our mum did not fail to make some memorable costumes.

The Classic Halloween Jack-o-lantern:



Am I not terrifying.  Look at my scary face!

 

The Wicked Queen of Halloween.  Mum was not really sure what to do with this request, but I was delighted by the result.  It remained one of my favourites:

That is one smug looking queen.  And one nose-picky ghost.

The Classic Witch.  As you can see, my sister (2 years younger) ended up as a Jack-o-lantern two years after me...

Note the lack of colour on my ears. 
Pretty sure this is a direct result of orange paint coming out of my ears for days after my Wicked Queen days!

A horrible creepy crawly spider.  Probably would have been more effective with my scary face rather than a smile.

I could have only wished to be a terrifying as this dog.

I still love playing dress-up, and if there is a Halloween costume contest to be had, I do enjoy throwing my hat in the ring.  This Frida Kahlo costume did me well for a couple of years:

Say cheese, monkey.

But mostly I look forward to dressing my own little beasties in costumes one day.  Until then, Finnegan has been my guinea pig.



Doctor Whoiener

Dogtor "Bones" McCoy

 

Damn it Jim, I'm a dachshund, not a doctor.



People are complicated.

I want my blog to be a space of lightness and whimsy, because as we see time and again, there is plenty of darkness out there. I need to make an exception though, and like John Oliver, I promise that if you make it all the way through, lightness and whimsy will follow.  The last few days have been weird for me. I have been silently raging about the public discourse on the events surrounding Jian Ghomeshi. And following a nasty bout of depression that left me incapacitated for 3 months, I made a pact with myself and with Jeff to avoid any silent raging that may lead me down that rabbit hole again.

When I was in elementary school, I was inappropriately touched by a teacher. While there were other kids present, no other adult witnessed it. I was teased by the other students for years, but I didn't ever say anything to an adult about it because 1) I was scared that I would be punished, 2) I felt that the teasing of my peers meant that I should suck it up, and 3) everyone noted how much they liked this teacher, how much he had done for the school and the athletics program, and I was a bookish, quiet, 8 year old girl who was in said athletics programs. I was also in a classroom full of girls that sought out his lap during storytelling and hugged him before the weekend. Who would listen to me?

When I moved on to grade 4, he was made the grade 4 teacher. It was a horrible year for me. The next year he left the school. Soon after, my parents divorced and I was able to retreat further into my books, trying for all the world to become invisible. I put on weight and wore baggy clothes. I hated myself and my body. By the time I was in my late teens, I was ready to talk to someone about it. But being ready to talk doesn't mean that others are ready to listen. Action, it seemed, was my only recourse. If he had done these things to me, I should file a police report, I shouldn't allow him to do it to others, I should do the responsible thing. But instead, I shut up. I didn't want to talk to the police, and though I was made to feel that my silence made me an accomplice somehow to his potential predation of others, I also couldn't face him and the community as an accuser. I already hated myself, I didn't need anyone else to hate me too.  Besides, I had already seen him several years after the fact at a science fair with some female students. They buzzed around him, much like some of my peers had, and I rushed to the toilets to vomit. A court case? No way.

In my first month in my first year of university, I ended up in a very dark place after a date with a significantly older student left me lost and confused in a suburban Montreal apartment. I had consented to the date, and I had consented to watching the hockey game at his place, but I did not consent to what happened next. How could I have been so naive? How could I have been so stupid? Now I had no money, no way to get home, even if I had known where I was and how to get to my dorm (Remember the time before cellphones? Yep, this was then). So, is it rape if he drives you home afterwards? Maybe there was just something about me. I was the common denominator.

Jump to my late 20s. My mum forwards me a newspaper article about the teacher being arrested because of a number of recent and current students accusations of sexual misconduct. The RCMP were seeking witnesses and other victims.  Twenty years had passed for me, but in that instant, I was 8, I was vulnerable and I was terrified. Was this the time to take action? Ultimately I chose to come forward, but not for myself. After years of disordered eating, self harm and a destructive relationship, I had finally stopped hating myself and punishing myself for things that were not my fault. I needed to help give these girls a voice, to show them that life can go on. I needed to sit on that stand as a 'well educated, professional woman' because anything less, it seems, makes you at best unreliable and suspect, or at worst somehow deserving. I needed to sit there as someone that makes a living sparring with lawyers, and walk the world through why this man, a community pillar, a great teacher and a skilled coach was also, in fact, a very bad man.  Even though the process took 6 years, and had me fly across the country, I stuck with it. And even though there were something like 14 counts, ranging from aggravated sexual assault to sexual interference, all but one was dismissed - mine. Was it because the others did not happen? The judge stated that she believed something happened, but the burden of proof that was required was only met in my case. Because I spend my days sparring with lawyers as an educated, professional woman, I was able to get justice. But you will never see me going through that again for my university 'date'.

All this to say, we don't ever know the whole story. All this to say, the system is skewed. All this to say, that in this day and age, if that teacher had posted to Facebook that a jilted former student who didn't make the relay team was going to start a smear campaign against him and that all that really happened was that we used to role play parts from "Lolita"...would it have made him more sympathetic in this story?

Life is complicated, people are complicated. Here is a video of Finnegan as a puppy being adorable.  It is not complicated.

 

Xo

S.

The Leather Anniversary (More mushy than S&M)

If I had a flower for every time I thought of you, I could walk in my garden forever

-Tennyson

Three years ago today, Jeff and I had our last date before our wedding.  Our shared love of indie music was one of the things that drew us together (our first date was to see Olenka and the Autumn Lovers in a weird little venue that only had tea available to patrons).  This week in Halifax is the annual Pop Explosion Festival, and in 2011, we were happy to sneak out of the house for a couple of hours on our own to see Dan Mangan play.  Due to weather, he wasn't even sure if he and his band were going to make it from Newfoundland, where they had played the night before.  They rushed straight from the airport to the stage, and as such, didn't have the time to do a proper sound check.  The show was still very good, but near the end of the night, Dan finally unleashed his voice and used the venue to full effect. The rafters of St Matthew's Church grabbed his vocals and threw them heavenward.  The resonate sound was astonishing.  Afterwards, Jeff and I jumped in puddles and wandered by the waterfront, thick with fog and mist, and had a small reprieve from the stress of wedding planning.  No matter how small and casual your wedding, no matter how relaxed it all is - it is not, not one moment of it, relaxing.

On October 22, we stood in our very own backyard and stated in front of family and friends that the rest of our lives together didn't seem long enough for all the things we want to do.  As I was saying to my dear friend Elle last week, it's a pretty neat thing to have such an awesome memory embedded into your own backyard.  I stare at the spot under the apple tree daily.  And every few weeks we renew our commitment to each other, and all the things we want to do by reminding each other that we cannot wait to spend 60 more years together. 

Every time, 60.

Here's to 60 more years my love.

(I accept, and am grateful, that Jeff is more likely to quote Sir Lancelot the Brave than anything by Lord Tennyson.)

Nova Scotia Dreamin

All the leaves are gorgeous and the skies are blue.  We went for a walk on an October day.

It was 25C, and I though we saw a couple of big dogs, they were utter sweethearts.  So, warm and safe. 

And I believe that there is no better temple then the outdoors, when we see all the earth's systems working together to make this planet habitable. 

Thus ends my weird Mamas and Papas post. 

Nova Scotia in October - amazing.

Throwback Thursday - evolution of a crafter

I've been a crafter for a long time.  It probably started with Brownies.  I was obsessed with badges, and many of the badges for both Brownies and Girl Guides required making things.



Ta-wit-ta-wit-ta-woo, give me all the badges.

My collector's badge project.  Later made into landscapes and creatures

Success!  So many badges.

 

 I set up my first craft shop when I was about 8.  It was a roadside stand out front of my grandparent's house in Deep Bay, B.C.  They had a gorgeous property on the water where my sister and I were often shipped for a week of our summer vacations.  It was heavenly.  Besides raiding gardens and swimming in the bath-warm water of the Georgia Straight, I tried my luck as an entrepreneur.  My first endeavour - a joke stand, a dime a joke, was a bust.  I had but one pity sale.  Lemonade was too cliche, so I decided arts and crafts were a better fit.  I borrowed my grandfather's hot glue gun and began creating little statues out of driftwood, clam shells, seaweed and other found-objects.  They were a hit.  The strategic location of my stand - just outside the entrance of a campground, was a definite bonus.

For Christmas that year, I was given a glue gun.  It was the best Christmas present ever, and I still have and use it.

Crafter's manifesto...

High school art class - an excuse to stare
at pictures of Mikhail Baryshnikov to study his...form.

I was the queen of posters, and my science projects and history displays had as much style as substance.  I also took on roles in year book and photography to feed my inner need for creativity. 

Ancient things in an ancient lab - I had though archaeology involved more whips and horseback riding.

In university, this side of me took a hit as the projects undertaken were focused more on writing, though I did manage a job in the archaeology lab that had me photographing and sketching artifacts.

I taught myself how to knit in my twenties and got back into sewing at the same time.  I've never stopped sketching or writing, and crochet has now exploded in my life as my go to tactile therapy.

And so concludes this little trip down memory lane.  To my Brownie compatriots, you are welcome for posting that exceptional photo of us.

xoxo
s.