Take a moment

Just outside the doors of the Great Victoria Public Library there is an atrium. There are a lot of Ministry office entrances there and it serves as a shortcut (to me at least) home and for some it's just a quiet covered place to eat lunch. Most times there are buskers performing there, for money, for practice or, for both. The acoustics in there are ALWAYS incredible.
Today as I was walking home from work and the gym I was plotting my way home- it was raining and I was trying to decide if I absolutely had to do anything or pick anything up at the grocery store before I was home for the rest of the day. I found myself across the street from the library and noticed a choir in the atrium. I assumed they were singing carols. I thought about ignoring them and rushing home. I thought, 'how nice, a choir. Moving on. What's for dinner? Do I need to pick up bread?' I also thought, 'no I'm across the street and there's so much traffic and I kind of have to pee.'

I'm really glad I decided to cross the street.

It was the Esquimalt High School choir and there were about 25 kids. They were singing songs I didn't recognize. I started crying. Because I cry at beautiful things and beautiful moments and their voices were so beyond what it looked like would come out of them that I was just...stunned.

I stayed for 4 songs. The teacher joked in between each song and you could tell the kids were sort of embarrassed but also secretly proud that people were watching them. There was both boys and girls, bundled up from the cold, wearing scarves and gloves and Santa hats, scuffed chuck taylors, or uggs, or leather boots. Long hair, short hair, make up, no make up. The news tells you about all the bullying and on line torment and suicide for bullied kids but for those 4 songs all that went away. These people were just singing in a high school choir.
I mean, sure maybe some of them wanted to check their text messages or update their instafacebookogram or something but for now they were there, truly in a moment and it was lovely.

I watched the people that had stopped to listen. And the people that didn't. One girl continued discussing, in depth, loudly, her tuna sandwich to her colleague as she strutted past. A homeless dude with a dog and a shopping cart strolled through, bemused. People came back from their lunch with take out boxes and quietly stepped though the crowd to get back to work.
But a lot of people stopped. I think people were really appreciative to just have a moment. A moment where the outside noise stopped and all there was was this atrium and the kid's incredible voices. (And my phone. Which chose to ring at this particular moment of all moments. I turned it off)
A mom with her kids paused to listen and her little boy said 'mommy, this is cool'. (Spoiler alert, I cried again)

Moral of the story:  take a moment. Pause. Especially at this time of year. Life can be brutal and harsh and just like, windy, but it can also be really really calm and beautiful and surprising.

If you let it.

On Spiders

When I first thought of the brilliant idea to write about spiders, I got this far:

They need to stop what they are doing and die. The end.

It's my express opinion that spiders should be no bigger than that little square on your home button on your iPhone. They are too unpredictable, have too many legs, and the bigger they get the hairier they are and they seem really smart and build better webs than I do. And really quickly too, because I've knocked down this one spider's web just outside my front door every day for the past month and that little bitch is back up again the very next day with a different and more impressive web.
Side note: All spiders are shes, just as all boats are shes and all frogs are hes (not sure about that last one but the other two are totally true.)

It seems like this year there are more spiders than ever. And more and more people are posting how to/fix it ideas on how to get rid of spiders. There's that remedy I read about that says something about mixing pepper and vinegar and spraying it along your window sill. But, having more than a bit of ADD, all that made me want was a spicy Caesar and some fish and chips. So I called up my sisters to meet me at the pub- because everyone  has got a spider story, and it's less sucky to know you're not suffering alone. Plus, Caesars are delicious. 

There's the horse chestnut theory: that there is a smell or something from the chestnut that deters the beasts so people collect them and put them in spots where they generally see spiders, and again, generally, people have had success and lived spider free lives. Or so far as they know- there's that other theory that everyone swallows a certain amount of spiders in their sleep or whatever, and that other thing that claims we are no more than 3 feet from a spider at any given time.

Sleep tight.

When I grow up...

When you were little, did you know what you wanted to be when you grew up? I knew what I wanted to be - a cat. This was seriously my answer when I was little. I was riding the Green Chair lift on Whistler Mountain, a man sitting beside me was trying to be charming and talk to the shy little girl beside him and he asked me "so what do you want to be when you grow up?" and I replied confidently with "A cat!" which was obviously a viable option to me cause I was five. And the man, THE MAN, had the audacity to say to me "oh that's silly, you can't be a cat."

It took everything in me not to throw that man off the chair. 

It was then I decided I didn't particularly want to talk to this man anymore, or any other adults really, because if they were going to tell me what I couldn't be then I didn't really want any part of them. So I thwarted his efforts to speak to me for the rest of the ride. 

I wasn't raised in a particularly structured household, so there wasn't any 'this is this, and that is that' and we were sort of given free reign over what we were doing with ourselves. As long as we weren't shooting heroin into our eyeballs, I think my parents were happy and let us be. 

So now I'm 31-ish and I have no idea what I want to be when I grow up and pretty much everyone I know is married with children, a career, a mortgage. Am I jealous of them? I don't know. It's hard to say. Are they jealous of me? With all the free time and no stress, nary a poopy diaper or house payment to deal with? I don't know. Wait, did I mention I get naps? They are definitely jealous.

I have some friends who have known since they were little exactly how their life plan would pan out. A boyfriend who would become a husband who would become a father to two kids aged 2 yrs apart, a house, car, job etc etc. All before they are 30.  And, while I'm impressed by that... let's call it tenacity, I can't help but wonder if they've missed out on any opportunities that they ignored because it wasn't on the list and it could have been seen as a possible derailment. Where's the sense of whimsy, of wonder? But wait, who am I to poo poo (teehee) on people's dreams?  

Am I living in the moment? Yes. Am I thinking about my future? Yes. Am I taking any steps toward this? Slowly. At my own pace. Which is slow like a turtle cause I am remarkably unmotivated at times. Some might call this Peter Pan syndrome - running around all day every day, no worries or concerns, having a laugh, and in the risk of sounding like Oprah, just being. Which is OK too. 

I can't possibly know what I'm doing tomorrow, let alone a year from now, or a lifetime from now. I also find the word 'duties' hilarious and will talk about bodily functions all the live long day with anyone who will listen, mostly because I'm pretty sure my inner child is a 12 yr old boy and also because it's disgusting and fascinating at the same time and anything that is both those things will have my undivided attention, until a new [insert adorable animal here] video gets posted to YouTube and then I will share that with you as well. 

So even if I find out what I want to be, I guess I'll never truly grow up. 

And I guess I hope I never do. 

Rocky

It was late spring. Or summer. I don't know. I know it was definitely early evening and my two sisters and I and our Dad were walking along the railroad tracks on our way home from an early evening walk. We literally lived on the wrong side of the tracks in Whistler.
Anyway, one of us looked behind us and noticed we were being followed.

It was a raccoon. He was teeny tiny. And he was alone.

We'd been warned about raccoons (and bears and cougars. They were regulars in our backyards growing up. It's why we had a lot of cats go missing) so Dad told us to go on ahead and he would scare it away.
My sisters and I plodded up the path to home and I'm not sure how long it was before Dad came through the door and we all ran up to him to ask him what happened.
What happened was that Dad had the raccoon in his arms. He'd brought the little thing home.

Naturally we were all very curious and pokey. Turns out the little dude was blind and possibly abandoned because of it?  Dad set up a little spot for him outside if he wanted to leave overnight. But come morning little Rocky, as we came to know him, was still in his makeshift home. It looked like we had ourselves a new pet!

None of us remember much more than this, honestly. We don't even have a picture of him to prove this happened. I don't know what Buffy the dog thought of Rocky, or what Mom thought of him, or what we fed him, but what I do know for sure is how Rocky felt about Dad. Rocky fell in love with Dad. He liked his scratchy beard so much he'd perch on Dads shoulder and just rub his little snout in it. He peed on Dad a bunch while doing this which we all thought was hilarious. I'm pretty sure Dad was smitten with Rocky too. This was a bromance in the making.

 I doubt we were allowed to hold Rocky or anything. On account of the rabies. But he was pretty darn cute nonetheless. He stayed with us for that late spring or summer, again no one is quite sure how long he was with us, until one day my sisters and I woke up and Rocky was gone. Dad told us he'd gone to the raccoon farm.

Right.

It was only just a couple years ago Ashley realized there wasn't an actual raccoon farm. We told her what we thought we knew happened- we assumed Dad had...dealt with it. We didn't think any less of him for it or anything, we just accepted it and moved on.
I just talked to my father, to try and nail down some details, and he maintains to this day, there wasn't an actual 'raccoon farm' where raccoons frolic and scavenge merrily through well placed garbage cans, but that it was someone named Eugene Rickle and he had a wildlife preservation something or other in the Interior of BC and that's where Rocky went.
Well, if I've googled correctly, and that's the farm, the website has a photo of a cougar on the front, so RIP Rocky, RIP indeed.
We don't remember much about you, but we know you were there. And you peed a bunch.

Not Rocky, but a dude who scampers through my backyard every day at 3pm. VERY punctual.

By now you know who Joseph Kony is.
I don't need to tell you.
I'm ecstatic the video went viral so quickly, frankly I shouldn't have been surprised.
And now the backlash.

Of course Invisible Children, the company behind Kony2012.com isn't perfect. But at least they aren't standing by ignorantly and letting passivity take over. They are TRYING to do SOMETHING.
People focused on the negative aspects bug me. All the negative feedback may be true, but people are talking. Isn't that enough? 13 million views on YouTube, they've done something right.  Even if only 1 million people actually DO something out of that 13 million....that's something.
It's impressive to watch on Facebook and Twitter...to watch the message spread, just by people sharing. I mean, isn't that we all learn in kindergarten? How to share?
And if you watched Kony 2012 and you watched Jacob break down, and still felt nothing but negativity, then you are cold and dead inside. Jacob would rather DIE to be with his brother again, rather than live through that hell. That's how bad it is. Multiply that by thousands and thousands. The point I'm making is...I don't know, really. I'm just thinking out loud.

 It's good to be informed. It's good to want to know both sides of the story. But don't let that stop you from trying to do good, from trying to BE good.
I hope that in 3 months, people are still talking about this. I hope Kony does make it on the cover of the magazines, and that he's not just the soup of the day.

I hope he and his fellow bad guys are stopped.