OK, maybe I've been working too much, but I'm starting to find Joseph Gordon-Levitt pretty darn attractive. Is it wrong to lust after the weird kid from Third Rock from the Sun?!
1446 days to go. Curriecat Frenzy.
I do not know what is up with the Currie Monster, but she is out. of. control. Yesterday she pulled my new pair of lightweight black cotton pants into the bathroom, and bunny-kicked the hell out of them until there were holes in them everywhere. Then she dragged my purple Lulu Lemon tank top in as well, and had a go at that for an hour or so, until I discovered her and took it away. Now we're playing a new game where she stands defiantly on my Pineapple Couch, scratches the hell out of it while staring into my eyes, then darts away the minute she thinks I'm reaching for the discipline - a squirt bottle. Oh, and she's forgotten that she doesn't usually get up in the mornings, and is standing on me at 5:37 a.m. meowing for breakfast.
I think it's treat withdrawal. She's begun to think that Temptations are her due, and jumps up on her "treat stool" every time I walk by or into the kitchen, and meows plaintively for treats. I informed her two days ago that treats are a gift, not a right, and I think she's taking it out on me. I caught her for this photo, silently plotting her next move, with her toy mouse (unpictured) in between her paws. Do they have a Betty Ford Centre for Kitty Treat Addiction? Because I think Currie Cat might need a 12 step program.
1448 days to go. On the Main.
Another scorching day at the W, which shall henceforth be known as "The Sauna." Currie is still rocking her cool white facecloth and we have our fans on full strength.
I went up to Main Street today to meet my friend Karen and her adorable baby daughter Anika for some lunch. The driver of my bus was decked out in an orange Netherlands jersey and had the Dutch flag flying at the front of the bus. As we headed up Main I read him the play-by-play on FIFA.com, from my iPhone.
Karen, Anika and I ended up ensconced in the shade outside Solly's Bagelry. You'd think matzo ball soup wouldn't be that satisfying on such a hot day, but it really was. Mostly it was a chance for me to cuddle with Anika, who is two months old. Her very patient mother lets me grab that child any chance I can. Ah, babies. I need a puppy or a cat with more cuddle tolerance than Currie to channel all this baby-longing. Hey, I'm 30 now - I'm allowed.
On the way home I jumped off the bus early, and walked along False Creek in the sunshine. Vancouver is truly spectacular on days like this, and almost makes up for the nagging London homesickness that I think maybe I'll always feel to some extent. But don't get me wrong - on days like today, there is no place I'd rather be than here.
1449 days to go. Beach babies.
My cousin Bobbi's kids are very special to me. My "nephew" and "nieces" - one of whom is my god-daughter and one of whom is my god-niece (wait - is there such a thing?!) are 5, 3 and 1. I like being "Auntie Dani" and spending special time with them. Tonight we decided to take them to my Uncle John's house for a barbecue and a dip - he has a fabulous beach house in Tsawwassen (which, by the way, he said he'd rent to me - anybody want to be my roommate and come live at the beach?).
Getting 3 kids, 3 adults (Bob's husband Mark as well as Bob and I), a dog (Bob was babysitting Uncle John's 5 month old retriever, Sam), a cooler full of barbecue stuff, 6 towels/bathing suits/sets of watershoes, and a gigantic watermelon down the 57 steps to the beach house from the driveway was challenging, but we all made it in one piece, and the kids and I frolicked on the deck, playing games and colouring with crayons while Bob and Mark made dinner. We ate outside, playing "I Spy" and watching boats motor past, and ferries come and go. Then it was time for a swim in the ocean.
I love the ocean so much. As a child I was scared to swim in the sea - I felt much safer in a lake, where there weren't jellyfish and currents and whales and sharks and killer octopi. At Pearson I discovered my love of the ocean, as I often jumped into the waters of Pedder Bay, even in the dead of winter, to swim in the ocean phosphoresence. I just enjoy floating in the salt water, and feeling like if I wanted to, I could swim to the other side of the world. I always feel calmer by the water, and more creative - I often take paper and pen down to the beach to write, as I find the water gets my thoughts flowing. I'm a Cancer, a water sign - I don't doubt this has something to do with it.
We all spent the rest of the evening bobbing in the water until the sun was setting, the kids in their bright red life jackets, and even Sam the pup learning the swim for the first time, joyfully pursuing her favourite stick into deeper and deeper waters. It was a perfect summer evening - I arrived home tired, with frizzy beach hair, still wearing my bathing suit. If ever there was a night to be bottled and preserved, to be savoured on some cold bleak grey winter's eve, this would be it.
1450 days to go. 1 out of 7?!
I never buy lotto tickets. I'd much rather save my money for shoes, which are always a sure thing. But for whatever reason, starting on Wednesday, some psychic voice in my head told me I had to buy a ticket for tonight's LottoMax draw. I ignored the voice until today, when I got a junk email urging me to buy a ticket. At that point I thought, "Well, hey - if I've been reminded twice, I've got to buy a ticket." So I did.
I went for a walk tonight to escape the heat of my apartment, and checked the LottoMax numbers on my iPhone - no big winner, but one winner of $150,000 for getting 6 out of 7 numbers in Vancouver. I didn't have my ticket with me, but I decided it was definitely me, and hurried home to check - no, confirm - that I was the winner.
Nope. I got 1. 1 out of 7. So much for the psychic voices. I think I'll go back to saving for shoes.
1451. Let the Sun Shine.
The delightful sunshine of Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday gave way today to sweltering heat, without a breeze in sight. What I wouldn't give for a downtown lake. I had to make do with biking over to Stanley Park for the third time this week and dipping my toes in the ocean.
I had a late night conversation with an old friend last night that's been on my mind. We had not spoken in a long, long time, and we had started chatting over various important events in each other's lives which we had missed. We were discussing the long marathon race of the countdown, and I said how exhausting it was. And how scary it was to feel, deep down, that I am supposed to get to a certain destination, but I don't know the way. And that uncertainty made the destination seem unreal, an oasis. "You can be great if you want to be," he said. "Don't be afraid to believe in magic. It exists."
So today, I'm thinking alot about magic, and hoping really hard that it exists.
1452. Hot Time, Summer in the City
We've been having a very lacklustre summer so far - Monday we started to get into the swing of things with a day of sunshine, but today really was fantastic - temperatures in the 30s, sunshine, a comfortable breeze. My firm hosted a group of would-be baby lawyers from UBC for a bocce ball tournament at Jericho Beach, which was a great work-sanctioned excuse to a) enjoy the late afternoon and evening sunshine; and b) wear shorts to work (dressy shorts! I swear!).
Our "tournament" was overseen by Jason from Bocce.ca and his adorable little dog Tino, who trotted through the fields, refereeing (Tino and I had several cuddles. I wanted to steal him and take him home with me, although Currie would devour him alive). Jason gave us a quick explanation of the rules, including the creative additions of the Meathead Rule (if someone throws the jack way too far, you can call "meathead" and ask for a more reasonable re-throw), and the Alive Dog Rule (if a dog running through the field of play moves a ball, it stays where the dog plays it - tricky!).
We were divided into several four person teams, named after Italian cities: I was Captain and Grand Diva of Team Napoli (are you proud Edy?) and while we soared to an easy victory in Round 1, we were unfortunately defeated by Team Pisa in Round 2, but won the consolation round against Team Firenze, who, to be honest, seemed more interested in the post-game beers than their game.
I would say my skills lie more in leadership than in actual, um, playing. I had some brilliant shots, but I would not say I'm the most accurate bocce player, although I'm certainly enthusiastic. I loved trooping out with everyone to inspect the balls, argue about who was closer, who had next throw, who had managed to winkle another point by landing just a millimetre closer to the jack. Maybe I should just umpire?
Check out Jason's site - anyone want to join me for the 6th Annual Don Giuseppe Boccefather Tournment in September? It happens "rain, hail of rubber bullets, or shine." We have all summer to practice!
1454 days to go.
Every so often, I post this kind of update on Facebook, and am usually barraged with messages from FB friends: “Until what?” “What’s the countdown mean?” “What are you counting down to?” I jokingly reply in all sorts of ways: “Until I achieve world domination.” “Until I get my first Broadway role.” “Until I become Editor-in-Chief of Vogue.” “Until Brangelina becomes Brani.” This kind of thing.
What it really means? Well, not to be too melodramatic (oh, who am I kidding, this is me): freedom.
When I was going to university, I made a number of choices that resulted in considerable student debt. I chose to go live in Montreal for a year on student loans. I chose not to work but to plow right through the last four terms of law school, in order to get-‘er – done, to fly to interviews for jobs in Toronto that I ended up not wanting, and, the biggest kicker of all, I chose to do an obscenely expensive Masters’ program at London School of Economics, and while my tuition was subsidized by the school’s merit scholarship program, my year of living in one of the most expensive cities in the world (and travelling to Italy every month with Edy) was not. My student loans also financed my final “golden summer” of not working, when I moved back to Canada and settled in Vancouver to finish my Masters’ thesis before starting my articling year.
The banks really helped me out with this: they see the word “lawyer” or “doctor” and immediately fork over obscene amounts of cash. More than all of my years of government student loans combined.
And sure, I started paying them back – as soon as I was working, I started making payments, but just what was required, and no more: I was suddenly in a social circle made almost entirely of lawyers and we didn’t think twice about eating out at expensive restaurants, dashing up to Whistler for a day or two of snowboarding, jetting to London for the weekend. So, financially, I treaded water. I was aware that I had to pay back these loans someday, but it was some amorphous day of reckoning in the future, and I imagined that as a lawyer, I would be making more cash in my lifetime than I could possibly burn through, and I’d have no problems paying everything off…someday.
This past fall, however, I found myself thinking a lot about where I wanted to go in life, and how I wanted to get there. I realized the shopping and the travel and the nice nights out were a great “right now” distraction from the nagging questions that were starting to get louder in my head: Where did I want to live? How did I want to do it? Did I always want to be a lawyer? Did I want to do a different kind of law? Did I want to be able to pursue other passions? Both? I didn’t know (and I still don’t). What I knew, however, was the student debt monster looming over my shoulder meant it was not okay not to know. If I continued the way I was going, in terms of making wee little payments and blowing the rest on quick answers to the existential I’m-almost-30-years-old questions I was asking myself, I would never have a choice: I would need to continue to work in big-money, big-time corporate law until kingdom come, just to stay on the student debt treadmill.
I decided I wanted, and deserved, after so many years of working hard and overachieving, the right to “not know.” So – I consolidated everything. I committed myself to huge (really huge) monthly repayments, got myself a scary little budget, and determined to buckle down. The cost of giving myself this future luxury of not-knowing? 1454 days, to repay absolutely everything and save a nest-egg for the future big enough to finance a home of my own, if that’s what I want. Goodbye personal trainer – I can walk or use the gym in my building. Goodbye Holt Renfrew – H & M will have to do. Shoes? Well, I guess I’ve got enough to keep me going for awhile (gulp). Credit cards? Chopped up. Every single one. No safety net. If I spend what I’ve got, I don’t eat. And eating out? Try using one of your eighteen million cookbooks Dani – if you like to cook and bake so much (and squawk about it on your blog) – get to it!
Taking away the “buffer money” I was using to soothe myself after stressful days at the office – the money for clothes, socializing, travel – was taking away a massive crutch. It’s been very hard emotionally, to give up the numbing-but-delicious consumerism that was getting me through. After difficult days, 1454 days (which was the count on Monday) doesn’t seem achievable. It seems too far off. I have dark days where I am frustrated that the freedom to choose what I do next is still so many days away, and I resent living on less money than a lot of students. Even though this entire situation is built entirely of my choices, even though this decision to buckle down is still doing something, the fact that the pay-off (literally and figuratively) will take years makes me feel like a prisoner, that I’ve been robbed of the right to choose, at least temporarily. I feel like I’m just waiting, waiting, waiting. And that these 1454 days (which, in case you’re counting, will take me to June 28, 2014) will pass with no joy, no fulfilment, no satisfaction.
Clearly, that attitude is not going to work for me. I cannot spend the next, oh, four years, in stasis, resenting my situation, angry and frustrated and unfulfilled.
So, 1454 (well, now 1452) days until I have the freedom to choose – to choose to continue on the path I’m on or not – the important word there is “choose” – and make peace with my choices, whatever they may be. And see if any other doors open - and if I even want them to.
I have to believe that these 1452 days will also be days of growth and happiness and moving forward, even though it feels like I’m standing still. And so I’m committing to chronicling – even if in just a few words – the things that happen on each of these 1452 days, other than the repaying of loans, other than the building of the nest egg, other than the time spent in the office, to show myself, more than anybody, that I’m still here.
What it really means? Well, not to be too melodramatic (oh, who am I kidding, this is me): freedom.
When I was going to university, I made a number of choices that resulted in considerable student debt. I chose to go live in Montreal for a year on student loans. I chose not to work but to plow right through the last four terms of law school, in order to get-‘er – done, to fly to interviews for jobs in Toronto that I ended up not wanting, and, the biggest kicker of all, I chose to do an obscenely expensive Masters’ program at London School of Economics, and while my tuition was subsidized by the school’s merit scholarship program, my year of living in one of the most expensive cities in the world (and travelling to Italy every month with Edy) was not. My student loans also financed my final “golden summer” of not working, when I moved back to Canada and settled in Vancouver to finish my Masters’ thesis before starting my articling year.
The banks really helped me out with this: they see the word “lawyer” or “doctor” and immediately fork over obscene amounts of cash. More than all of my years of government student loans combined.
And sure, I started paying them back – as soon as I was working, I started making payments, but just what was required, and no more: I was suddenly in a social circle made almost entirely of lawyers and we didn’t think twice about eating out at expensive restaurants, dashing up to Whistler for a day or two of snowboarding, jetting to London for the weekend. So, financially, I treaded water. I was aware that I had to pay back these loans someday, but it was some amorphous day of reckoning in the future, and I imagined that as a lawyer, I would be making more cash in my lifetime than I could possibly burn through, and I’d have no problems paying everything off…someday.
This past fall, however, I found myself thinking a lot about where I wanted to go in life, and how I wanted to get there. I realized the shopping and the travel and the nice nights out were a great “right now” distraction from the nagging questions that were starting to get louder in my head: Where did I want to live? How did I want to do it? Did I always want to be a lawyer? Did I want to do a different kind of law? Did I want to be able to pursue other passions? Both? I didn’t know (and I still don’t). What I knew, however, was the student debt monster looming over my shoulder meant it was not okay not to know. If I continued the way I was going, in terms of making wee little payments and blowing the rest on quick answers to the existential I’m-almost-30-years-old questions I was asking myself, I would never have a choice: I would need to continue to work in big-money, big-time corporate law until kingdom come, just to stay on the student debt treadmill.
I decided I wanted, and deserved, after so many years of working hard and overachieving, the right to “not know.” So – I consolidated everything. I committed myself to huge (really huge) monthly repayments, got myself a scary little budget, and determined to buckle down. The cost of giving myself this future luxury of not-knowing? 1454 days, to repay absolutely everything and save a nest-egg for the future big enough to finance a home of my own, if that’s what I want. Goodbye personal trainer – I can walk or use the gym in my building. Goodbye Holt Renfrew – H & M will have to do. Shoes? Well, I guess I’ve got enough to keep me going for awhile (gulp). Credit cards? Chopped up. Every single one. No safety net. If I spend what I’ve got, I don’t eat. And eating out? Try using one of your eighteen million cookbooks Dani – if you like to cook and bake so much (and squawk about it on your blog) – get to it!
Taking away the “buffer money” I was using to soothe myself after stressful days at the office – the money for clothes, socializing, travel – was taking away a massive crutch. It’s been very hard emotionally, to give up the numbing-but-delicious consumerism that was getting me through. After difficult days, 1454 days (which was the count on Monday) doesn’t seem achievable. It seems too far off. I have dark days where I am frustrated that the freedom to choose what I do next is still so many days away, and I resent living on less money than a lot of students. Even though this entire situation is built entirely of my choices, even though this decision to buckle down is still doing something, the fact that the pay-off (literally and figuratively) will take years makes me feel like a prisoner, that I’ve been robbed of the right to choose, at least temporarily. I feel like I’m just waiting, waiting, waiting. And that these 1454 days (which, in case you’re counting, will take me to June 28, 2014) will pass with no joy, no fulfilment, no satisfaction.
Clearly, that attitude is not going to work for me. I cannot spend the next, oh, four years, in stasis, resenting my situation, angry and frustrated and unfulfilled.
So, 1454 (well, now 1452) days until I have the freedom to choose – to choose to continue on the path I’m on or not – the important word there is “choose” – and make peace with my choices, whatever they may be. And see if any other doors open - and if I even want them to.
I have to believe that these 1452 days will also be days of growth and happiness and moving forward, even though it feels like I’m standing still. And so I’m committing to chronicling – even if in just a few words – the things that happen on each of these 1452 days, other than the repaying of loans, other than the building of the nest egg, other than the time spent in the office, to show myself, more than anybody, that I’m still here.
The Flowermobile
So I decided today to start a little garden on my balcony. I may be
the only person who would think it is reasonable to go to Home Depot
on a bike - but hey, that's what bungee cords are for.
the only person who would think it is reasonable to go to Home Depot
on a bike - but hey, that's what bungee cords are for.
Strawberry Rhubarb Sour Cream Pie
Alright alright - I know I said LAST summer that I'd stop blogging
about pie...but I made such a pretty one!
about pie...but I made such a pretty one!
Raspberry Sour Cream Brownies
You're welcome.
Well, that explains it.
My friend Ashley just sent me an email - she read my earlier "Hey Soul Sista" post and thought - huh - that's weird - why are the credits in Catalan? Guess what?! There's a UVIC in Spain too! Hee hee hee - I thought when I was watching the video that I didn't recognize much of the campus - because I've never been there! I just thought it was shot around some of the new buildings!
I blame Perez Hilton - he blogged about it and said "There are some talented people up in Canada!" Just shows you can never trust us bloggers for accuracy - and, as Ashley said, that OUR UVic probably hasn't changed...props to the folks in Catalunya though!