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.

The Nutcracker

As a kid, Christmas is kind of a big deal. It's a time where you do things the exact same way you did them the year previously, because that's tradition, and tradition brings back good memories. Or, as in the case of bad memories, laughter that comes much, much later.

One of my all time favorite Christmas time memory is the time my Grandma took the granddaughters to the ballet. She had organized a special night for us girls to watch The Nutcracker in Vancouver.

side note: Grandma will be known as 'Grams' from now on, cause Grandma and Grandpa get cool nicknames that make no sense but everyone calls them that anyway.

The granddaughters at this point in life consisted of my two sisters Ashley and Shannon and our cousin Kate. Kate lived in Nanaimo, and if you've read previous posts you know by now I lived in Whistler, and Gram lived in Osoyoos but somehow our family had arranged it so we met in Vancouver for a special evening.
Actually we probably met in Horseshoe Bay at the designated meet up point and Gram probably suffered through Vancouver traffic to get us to the hotel safely while the four of us jibber jabbered in the back seats.
The hotel!! We stayed in a hotel! This didn't happen a lot and I believe this began my infatuation with nice hotel rooms, ones with pretty views and nice bedspreads, and free stationary and random extra chairs situated throughout the room.
I don't remember the hotel we stayed in but I remember a part of the view was the Woodwards W rotating on top of a building and been kind of mesmerized by that and wondering why someone would put a W on top of a building and not another letter.

So we're staying in the city, it's Christmas time, and when you're little,everything seems huge. So a big sparkly city with sparkly decorations...my mind was blown.
I remember walking by The Hudson's Bay store with the big windows decorated with tinsel, and white fluff and fake snow and colors and lights and shapes of all sizes and Christmas music, and giant department stores and lots of people. Gift wrapped presents under giant shiny trees, nice store people giving out candy, people lined up for photos with Santa. It was as if we were in a movie. Oh it was just so great to clamor from window to window, never knowing what the next one would look like, but being amazed by each one all the same and pointing out our favorite parts. I don't remember letting go of Gram's hand but I'm sure we gave her a start with the four of us wandering off in separate directions all the time.

That night we got ready in the hotel room for the ballet. We might have ordered room service, I may have made that up. We got to wear pretty dresses, at this point I think we all believed we were princesses and our carriage was waiting to take us to the ball.
The Nutcracker ballet was amazing. I think. I might have fallen asleep at some point, it had been a very long day and as all girls know playing princess can be very tiring. I remember not really understanding the story so much, I mean there were mice, and mouse kings, and did they eat the gingerbread men? And I thought nutcrackers cracked nuts, what do they have to do with sugarplums and giant men dressed as creepy wolves, but the music was pretty and the ballerinas were lovely.
After the ballet Gram probably scooped us all up and poured us into bed... it was like that scene out of 'Annie' when she goes to the movies and Daddy Warbucks tucks her into bed after a magical evening. And this time every year when I see an ad for The Nutcracker or hear the music there's a part of me that gets transported back to the ballet and the pretty dresses and the time our Grams took us to the big city and ballet. After all, Christmas time is a time for nostalgia, family, and memories. And bright sparkly lights :)

What you need to know

My wrapping is not a reflection on how I feel about you. I love you very much, it just doesn't come across in the way I wrap presents. Each year, every Christmas, every birthday I think I've reached a new low in my abilities until the next time I'm surrounded by discarded and unusable wrapping paper. My sister Ashley loves wrapping presents, she loves the bows and ribbons of it all, she does such a good job all the time, it must drive her nuts how badly I do it. I don't even bother with bows and when people make the pretty ribbon go all curly I stand slack jawed in awe. I usually start off nicely, but then I get bored real quick and the nog needs to be tended to. I put a lot of thought into the present itself, not a heck of a lot into the wrapping.

 Here's how it goes with the first present
 1) Neatly cut paper.
2) Measure precisely.
3) Carefully tuck and fold ends flat.
4) Never use more than 5 strips of tape. Stand in awe of your beautiful work.

Next present

1) Cut paper. Doesn't matter if parts tear or if it's even, those bits get hidden anyways right?
2)  Basically smoosh all the end paper bits down in to a ball. Use both hands.
3) straddle present between legs.
4) hold scissors in mouth.
5) use both hands to get a strip of tape long enough to wrap around both ends.
6) Spit out scissors.
Stand in awe at the horror you have created.
Repeat until wrapping is done or you run out of paper, or can't find the scissors cause you wrapped em by accident.
That's how it's done. And remember, I love you.

My attempt at a food blog I guess??

I like cooking. I don't know if I love it- no okay I do, I love cooking. There. I said it.
I love cooking, I really love baking, and I really extra love eating the food that I have made. I haven't yet had a cooking disaster happen to me luckily. I assume if I am cooking for myself and it doesn't work out I'd just order pizza. And if I was cooking for others and it didn't work out we'd order pizza! And if the people I'm cooking for aren't okay with that then I'm not okay with them and they can go hunt and gather for themselves.
The great thing about cooking is that you feel like you are doing something good for yourself. Even if it's a seven cheese macaroni, at least you made it, and you had a hand in what was put in. I'm generally pretty lenient with recipes as well, most of the time I don't use them. I just buy ingredients I think would go well together and I put em in a pot. This summer I had a pretty great little garden turnout so I made a roasted carrot and brie soup with the carrots I'd grown, and it was okay, not great or mind blowing but OK.  I am a huge fan of pasta so the tomatoes I'd grown were roasted in this dish I sort of kind of made up and also stole/borrowed parts of from step mom Diane (thanks!) Here goes:
Roast cherry tomatoes, garlic, red peppers.
Caramelize onions, add some sun dried tomatoes, and artichoke hearts, maybe mushrooms if you feel like it?
Sprinkle of chili flakes
Boil water, add any kind of pasta you like till it's done how you like it.
Mix that all in the pot (do I need to tell you to drain the pasta water? Please tell me I don't ) Toss everything together
Grab a plate, pile it with pasta, dump/sprinkle some Parmesan on it and you're done! Don't forget the wine.