Things I Know Are True - 41st Birthday Edition

Me, at an unapologetic 41 years of age.

On the occasion of my 41st birthday, I thought I'd sit down, take stock, and write a list of things I know are true.*

1. I don't need more storage space, I need less stuff. The battle against clutter must be vigilantly waged.
2. I don't understand boots with open toes, or sandals with ankle cuffs.
3. I'll never be one of the cool kids. Even the cool kids aren't the cool kids.
4. The best way to save money is to stop buying stuff. When you do need to buy stuff, never pay list. (That being said, I'll never buy cheap ice cream, makeup, or toilet paper.)
5. There are no flaws. (Thank you, Karen Walrond.) When I stop worrying about what other people think of me, I start to appreciate the beauty all around me. This song's been on constant repeat in my head the last few days.
6. As I get older, I care less about looking foolish and I make less apologies for who I am.
7. "Let's dance, Mommy!" is my cue to drop everything, pick up The Imp, and get my funk on. Best use of five minutes on any given day, and he'll be embarrassed by it soon enough.
8. Nothing gives me more satisfaction than seeing my friends and family enjoy a meal I've prepared.
9. Wheaton's Law always applies.
10. Leggings are not pants.

 Let's see what's on this list a year from now, shall we? In the meantime, what's true for you?



*These are things that are true for me. Your mileage may vary.

Wordless Wednesday - Home

It's good to be home.

Things I'm Doing - Traverse Trip: Day 7

In Portland. Karen is tidying up after our last in-room hotel picnic meal. Tomorrow we'll be home.

I did all the driving today: nine hundred and fifty eight kilometres. It's worked out that I've done most of the driving for the entire trip. There've been moments during the day while the others write, read, or nap, that I've looked out at the "...fine white lines, the white lines, on the free freeway" and let my thoughts wander.

I've noticed the long black scars of sudden braking on asphalt, and thought about the near misses they must represent. My eyes have followed the twin tracks of rubber that disappear off the edge of the road into grass, or gravel, or guardrails, and the tragedies they bear silent witness to as they flash by my hundred kilometre per hour windows.

In the quiet moments, with the radio off and the others occupied, I've thought about my own near misses.

Countless moments of stupidity.

Alcoholism.

Abuse at the hands of a man I thought loved me.



And yet, here I am.

Five hundred and four kilometres of scarred asphalt framed in the windshield remain between me and the end of this great adventure.

I miss my boys. I can't wait to be home.



Full disclosure: GM Canada is providing Karen, Nicole, Tracey and I with a Chevrolet Traverse, insurance, gas, and hotels to make the road trip to San Diego and back. I paid for my BlogHer ticket and hotel during the conference myself. The navel gazing is free of charge, and entirely my own.


Also, I'm pretty sure Hejira is my favourite Joni Mitchell album.

Things I'm Doing - Traverse Trip: Day 6

Interesting what three days of driving plus three days of BlogHer plus one day of driving can do to a person. I just checked into a perfectly reputable hotel outside Sacramento, California, looking like this:

Make way for the crazy lady, y'all.

 Also, yes my phone case is a monster face. Because I am twelve.




Full disclosure: GM Canada is providing Karen, Nicole, Tracey and I with a Chevrolet Traverse, insurance, gas, and hotels to make the road trip to San Diego and back. I've paid for my BlogHer ticket and hotel during the conference myself. And the crazy just comes for free.

Things I'm Proud Of - Eighteen Years

Eighteen years, friends.

My sobriety is, as of today, old enough to vote. It's old enough to send to college, old enough to be legally married, old enough to serve in the armed forces. It's old enough, believe it or not, to drink in Alberta, Quebec, and Manitoba.

Exactly eighteen years ago today, I woke up, took a long look at a tumbler of scotch by my bedside, and decided not to drink it.

I don't know why I didn't; I don't think I knew in that moment that I never again would.

Eighteen years. Sobriety's been a part of my life for me so long that I struggle to remember what it was like without it.

I remember events, and anecdotes. Flashes of experience, like someone else's old home movie. But I don't really remember being that person who needed to drink to feel normal. I'm not her anymore.

But I was. And that's what makes me an alcoholic.

Quitting drinking was the hardest thing I've ever done. I forget that sometimes, because it was so long ago. The days when it was a conscious decision - sometimes on an hourly basis - to not drink are far behind me. Now it's just part of who I am, like my green eyes or my delight in the absurd.

I only know my own story, and I'll tell it to anyone who wants to listen. But for now, I'll just say this: getting sober's hard. But I promise you it gets easier. I promise you.

I promise you.

I'm Alexis, and I've been sober eighteen years.

Things I'm Doing - Traverse Trip: Day 4

It feels good to be not driving.

Not watching for road signs, not finding rest stops, not filling the gas tank.


Except I'm doing all of those things anyway, metaphorically at least.

The BlogHer experience is overwhelming. I knew this going in; I scheduled some quiet and alone time into the weekend. I didn't seek party invitations or product launches in the weeks leading up to this event. And today I am happy to just be.

I've sat in sessions today and been shown road signs: Why do you blog? What do you want to get out of blogging? What are your goals?

I blog because I can't not write. I want to tell my story, flawed as it may be. I want to know that there are others who have been there: alcoholism, triumph, identity crisis, motherhood. I want to leave a record for my son, so that he might know one day who I am, what I'm afraid of, what I love.

I've found some rest stops.

I hosted the Serenity Suite for an hour. I'll do it again tomorrow. I've had the opportunity to speak one on one, if ever so briefly, with some bloggers I admire greatly.

I've filled the gas tank.

I've sat in sessions and wept at the resonances. I've looked at these women, these smart, funny, accomplished women who accept me as one of their tribe. I've felt like I belonged.


And that is no small thing.


Full disclosure: GM Canada is providing Karen, Nicole, Tracey and I with a Chevrolet Traverse, insurance, gas, and hotels to make the road trip to San Diego and back. I've paid for my BlogHer ticket and hotel during the conference myself.

Things I'm Doing - Traverse Trip: Day 3

Today there was shopping. Oh yes, my friends, there was shopping.

And I made the mistake of trying on a pair of boots before I actually looked at the price.

I saw them from across the store. It's possible that I actually said, "Helloooo, lover" as I reached to touch them for the first time.

"Doyouhavethisinaneight?" I asked, absentmindedly, as I stroked the soft brown leather.

Seth, the architect of my doom, was very helpful. He brought me the brown boots in a size seven and a size eight. He brought the same boots in black. In fact, he came out of the stock room with five or six pairs of the things, ready for me to try on.

So I did, and it was my undoing.

The boots of my dreams, they were. Soft, buttery leather. The exact right height, a perfect fit below my knees. A low heel, ideal for walking in.

I had to have them. Had to. I justified it in all kinds of ways. I've been looking for precisely these boots for five years. I've always wanted sort-of-riding-boots. They're such great quality I will wear them forever. The colour is exactly right. They fit perfectly - something that's been a challenge since my pregnancy when my feet changed shape.

And they were discounted; I would save four hundred dollars.

Yeah. I know. I have lost my ever-loving mind. Learn from my folly: do not walk into a Ferragamo store. Just don't. Trust me on this.

So I bought them, yes I did.

And then I stumbled out of the store as if out of a dream, and back, blinking, into reality. The conversation with HWSNBN a couple of hours later was interesting. As I explained why it made sense to spend more that I used to pay in rent on a pair of boots, he stopped me. "Lexi," he said, "you are the kind of person they keep in the basement of the White House to come up with reasons for completely horrendous government policy. You can justify anything."

He's not wrong. Still, they are fabulous.

Plus, they're a perfect match for my new cape.

Yes, I bought a cape. Because why not, right?

Full disclosure: GM Canada is providing Karen, Nicole, Tracey and I with a Chevrolet Traverse, insurance, gas, and hotels to make the road trip to San Diego and back. I've paid for my BlogHer ticket and hotel during the conference myself. And my own boots. I paid for those. Although it's possible I may have to wear them every minute until the day I die to amortize their cost over time.

Things I'm Doing - Traverse Trip: Day 2

I have a confession, friends.

As Curator of Musical Experience, I have totally skipped out on the job.

See, the Traverse that GM Canada has graciously allowed us to gallivant about in has satellite radio. My job: done. No need to play dj when you can tune into All Pearl Jam All The Time whenever you want. Plus, I've been doing a largish chunk of the driving, because the other women on the Traverse Trip team have deemed it prudent to allow me to drive rather than have to hold my hair back while I vomit on their shoes.

Motion sickness: it's a motivator.

(I am totally having greeting cards made with that on them.)

So today I turned on the Wayback Machine and we listened to 80s music all day. ALL DAY. For 1063 km. Which is 661 miles, for my imperially minded friends.

Tracey and I were pretty much on the same page, musically. At one point the seat dancing was so accidentally but perfectly coordinated that we felt the need to high five each other. This is what Madonna's Holiday will do to you, people. Consider yourselves warned.

So despite the fact that she does not share my love of Rick Springfield, and I don't understand her enthusiasm for Tears for Fears, there was much loud singing in the front seat. Nicole and Karen in the back looked up from their mifi-enabled tech addictions periodically to blink at us in puzzled wonder.

In addition to providing endless hours of amusement, the Wayback Machine also led to the inevitable "Who was your favourite member of Duran Duran?" question. Neither of us were Simon girls. (For the record, she: Nick, me: John.)

"What ever happened to Howard Jones, anyway?" we wondered as the miles rolled by. "What's Richard Marx doing now?" and "What ever became of Rick Astley?"

Because I have superspy access to secret information (read: google, I can haz) I will tell you what has become of them. I'm giving like that.

The good news: none of them has died.

The even better news (for them, anyway): all of them are still working and touring.

Howard Jones has a regularly updated website, a twitter account, and will be touring the US in October. He's also released a bunch of his music for the remixing pleasure of the general public.

Richard Marx is still writing songs, touring with a solo acoustic show in the US starting in a couple of weeks, and is tweeting and google +ing like a boss.

Rick Astley has committed the heinous crime of having music auto-play on his website (he's rick rolling us, how meta!) but is still touring. He'll be in Denmark in October, for my Danish readers.

(I'm pretty sure I have no Danish readers.)

(But now I want pastry.)

Tomorrow: the thrills of LA morning rush hour traffic, and on to San Diego and BlogHer '11.

w00t, etc.

Full disclosure: GM Canada is providing Karen, Nicole, Tracey and I with a Chevrolet Traverse, insurance, gas, and hotels to make the road trip to San Diego. I've paid for my BlogHer ticket and hotel during conference myself. And no animals were harmed in the writing of this post, although Karen and Nicole's ears may be bleeding from all the bad singing.

Things I'm Doing - Traverse Trip: Day 1

Five o'clock came way too early this morning.

Four women have rather a lot of luggage, especially when you add in four laptops, four smart phones/ipods, a mifi unit (which I choose to call "mofo" since it's a bit unreliable, connection-wise), cameras, cables, and coolers, oh my. The car, fortunately, has adequate cargo space.

Barely.

After sufficient ingestion of caffeine, we got underway, crossed the border without causing an international incident, and have made our way to our first stopping point, a town with the most romantic and imaginative name of Central Point, Oregon. This is how I summed up our first day on twitter:

But since I have more than 140 characters to play with here on my blog, I'll fill you in on the Rules of the Road, arrived at by general consensus.

1. Requests for pee stops shall be promptly attended to.
2. Requests for Starbucks stops shall be promptly attended to.
3. Requests for chocolate shall be promptly attended to. Fortunately Karen brought home made chocolate chocolate chunk cookies and enough Purdy's to choke a horse, so this one can be accomplished while hurtling down the highway at a hundred kilometres an hour, no stops required.
4. No unflattering photos of Traverse Trip team members shall be posted on these here internets without consent. No bikini shots. (Or in my case, tankini shots - the bikini shots for the over 40 set.)
5. Cheese is to be consumed at every opportunity. As someone who sneaks cheese in the dead of night after The Imp's gone to sleep (he has a dairy allergy) I heartily approve.
6. Potty mouth actively encouraged - nay, expected. Three out of four of us are parents of small children - the freedom to speak like a trucker at will gives us all a heady sense of recklessness.
7. Innuendo: see #6 above.
8. Friends don't let friends tweet tipsy.
9. No Pink Floyd.
10. No, we are not there yet.

So far no one has had to threaten to stop the car. No one has lost any articles of clothing or other personal possessions.

And most importantly, not one chuck was given this day. (Meaning: my motion sickness did not make an appearance.)


If you'd like, you can follow our adventures on twitter, and read posts by my fabulous travelling companions.


Full disclosure: GM Canada is providing Karen, Nicole, Tracey and I with a Chevrolet Traverse, insurance, gas, and hotels to make the road trip to San Diego. I've paid for my BlogHer ticket and hotel during conference myself. And I'm paying for my own cheese.

Things I'm Doing - Packing

I'm packed. Karen is sleeping in the living room as I finish up last minute things before we leave for eight days on our big! adventure! road trip to BlogHer. In more than three years, I've never been away from The Imp for more than 48 hours, and he is not pleased that I am going.

I am very pleased that I am going, for what that's worth.

We have the car, and we have named it George.

We have discussed what to wear.

And we have unlocked the Sparkletoes Achievement.

I'm really not sure what to expect from BlogHer, but I tend to go about my day inclined to have a good time, so I have no doubt that fun will be had. There's no other agenda for me for this trip. If I can meet some like-minded people, learn a little, and hit a party or two, I'll consider it a roaring success.

One thing I am very much looking forward to is hosting the Serenity Suite for a couple of hours during the conference. I saw tweets about it last year, and thought then that if I ever made it to BlogHer myself, I'd volunteer as a host.

So here I am, going to BlogHer, and I'll be hosting at the Serenity Suite on Friday morning between 10:00 and 11:00 am, and Saturday afternoon from 1:00 to 2:00 pm.

Wanna know something cool? The Saturday shift marks, to the hour, the eighteenth anniversary of me waking up one day and deciding not to drink anymore. I can't imagine a place I'd rather spend it.

So if you're at the conference, and you need a quiet moment and a friendly face, please come by and say hello. I give good hugs!

Of course you don't have to hug me. I'm not creepy about it.



Full disclosure: GM Canada is providing Karen, Nicole, Tracey and I with a Chevrolet Traverse, insurance, gas, and hotels to make the road trip to San Diego. I've paid for my BlogHer ticket and hotel during conference myself. And I paid for my own pedicure. Grin. (Just making sure you were still reading!)

Things That Are Awesome - I'm Going to BlogHer!

Last January, in an impulsive fit of whimsy, I bought myself a ticket to BlogHer '11. I didn't actually think I'd be able to go, but better to have a ticket and have to sell it, I reasoned, than find a way to go, and not be able to lay hands on a pass.

I had no money, no way of getting to San Diego, nowhere to stay. No clue, really. I just bought a ticket. I don't think I actually believed I would be able to go.

For two years, I'd read blog posts about BlogHer, seen my friends attend, and been regaled with tales and photos of legendary parties. I followed the fun in my twitter stream: Chicago in 2009, New York last year. Seething with envy, I added it to the "maybe someday" list.

Three days after I bought the ticket I knew I wouldn't be able to use, my friend Karen asked me if I wanted to do a road trip with her to San Diego for BlogHer '11. Just like that.

Uh, yeah. Yes. YES! Absolutely! Yes, please?

She'd been having conversations with GM Canada about getting a loaner car to do a blogger road trip, and they said, "Yeah, sure!"

Seventeen kinds of awesome right there.

So that made two of us.

Soon after, Nicole climbed aboard the fun machine. Itineraries were vaguely discussed, but it was still so many months away, I don't think I actually believed it was going to happen.

And then Tracey joined our band of merry pranksters, GM told us what kind of car we'd be driving, and Traverse Trip was born.

And now, it's a week away. A week from now we'll be on the road to San Diego. Hotels are booked, forms filled out, passports renewed. We leave next Tuesday!

Four bloggers, a car, a boatload of tech, and 2247 kilometres. Give or take.

To say that I am looking forward to this is to be very restrained in expressing my over the moon giddy happy-dancing excitement.

We checked out a Traverse one sunny day a couple of weeks ago. The verdict: cup holders, check. Power outlets: check. Good times? You know it!

And I could not ask for better traveling companions. In my head, it goes like this:

Karen at Chasing Tomatoes is our Director of Noms. She will save us from the indigestion and hardened arteries of freeway fast food, making delicious cooler-friendly meals to bring along, and she's already scoped out all the Starbucks and Trader Joe's locations between here and our final destination. Also, there are rumours she will be bringing cookies, and people, you have not lived until you've eaten her cookies. I even like the ones she makes with oatmeal, and I hate oatmeal.

Tracey from Fashion Forward 40 and TJR Ramblings is our Mistress of Fabulous Fashion Finds. She's plotted out our stops for outlet malls, vintage shops, and specialty boutiques along the way. I know I can trust her to tell me what looks good and what doesn't and to say, bluntly if necessary, "Honey, no. On you that is not a deal, even if it's discounted 90%." And although we're all working to live greener lives, Tracey's gone and done the math about driving vs flying emissions and how to minimize the garbage we create on our trip.

Nicole is our All Things Tech Goddess, bringing adapters and cables and external hard drives, oh my. Pretty sure if I locked her in a hotel room for a couple of hours, she could show me how to code my own website. And, she's giving away some very cool tech right now over at Resolving Timeline Issues. Go leave a comment by July 31st to enter to win.

And then there's me. I'm, um. I'm bringing the cooler. And, uh, an inflatable mattress. And the motion sickness. No trip is complete until someone's ready to hurl. I've also appointed myself Curator of Musical Experience. I'm putting together playlists and burning a couple of CDs (old school!) in case we're stuck somewhere without satellite access and we're sucked into a vortex of doom where all of our iPods stop working all at once.

There will, friends and neighbours, be seat-dancing. Eighties music for the win!

I also plan on doing a largish chunk of the driving. An old boyfriend of mine used to call me the Road Warrior based on how long I could drive without needing to stop. What he didn't know was that I insisted on keeping my hands on the wheel because I'm a control freak I get carsick as a passenger. So yeah. Road Warrior/Curator of Music. Either of those sound better than Princess Pukes-A-Lot.

I have so much to do before we leave.


Full disclosure: General Motors Canada is providing us with the use of a Chevrolet Traverse, gas, insurance and accommodations for our road trip to BlogHer and back. I've paid for my own ticket to the conference, and will be responsible for my own accommodations while in San Diego.

Wordless Wednesday - Grand Day Out

The Imp: How do I get into that space ship, Mommy?


(Print on canvas from Cici Art Factory, who I adore. Full disclosure: paid for the print myself.)

Thursday Confession - Shampoo (Or Lack Thereof)

I outed myself on twitter yesterday in front of the whole internet. I saw a conversation about haircare go by in my twitter stream, so I jumped in.

That's not strictly true. Every 6-8 weeks I visit my stylist for a cut and colour, and she uses shampoo. And last September I stayed in a hotel and used the posh shampoo in the room. But at home, none at all since late May of 2010.

And this from someone who used to spend about $200 on professional colouring, and $80 on fancy shampoo and conditioner, every month. I was drawn in by the promises of the latest botanical extracts and bought a lot of different products in search of perfect tv commercial hair.

And still, most of the time I looked like this:

Dark roots, frizzy, and unmanageable. That's about $3500/year. Not very good value for money.

A bunch of different factors led me to change my hair regimen.

When I was pregnant, my sense of smell, mostly absent or defective my entire life prior to that, went crazy. I became really sensitive to chemical smells - the scent of our regular bathroom cleaner sent me running, gagging, out of the apartment as I begged HWSNBN to stop using it. I figured my newfound sense of smell would fade away once the baby was born, but it didn't, so we switched to unscented products, and even they were too strong. Eventually we started using baking soda and vinegar to clean almost everything in the house.

Including my hair.

My new hair regimen: apple cider vinegar, $8. Baking soda $1.

Inspired by the likes of my friend Amber, I'd planned to go "no poo" for a while, but it was seeing my then almost-two-year-old manage to open a shampoo bottle and try to eat its toxic contents that really convinced me to give it a try. (Here's how.) And I haven't looked back.

It was weird, at first, to wash my hair with no suds. It felt like it couldn't possibly be getting clean, but it was - almost too clean. I used to wash my hair every day with shampoo, and adjusting to the baking soda/apple cider vinegar routine took a while to figure out. I fiddled with the amount of baking soda to find what worked for me. At first I was still washing my hair every day, then as my scalp adjusted, every couple of days. A year later, I wash it about once a week, more if I've been swimming in a chlorinated pool or had an evening out where I used lots of product.

I've been asked, "Doesn't it hurt to get it in your eyes?" I imagine it would sting, but after 30+ years of washing my hair with chemical-laden shampoos, I've managed to get pretty good at not getting stuff in my eyes. If I ever do get to experience baking soda in the peepers, I'll update this post. But I can't imagine that it would be any more uncomfortable that getting an eye-full of shampoo.

I've also been asked about odour. To be honest, I haven't noticed any. Neither has my husband, and he would tell me. He thought I was crazy when I started this, but he's begrudgingly come around. It's true, the apple cider vinegar rinse does leave me smelling vaguely like a salad until my hair dries, but after that, no scent to speak of, and certainly not the unpleasant "dirty scalp" smell that I feared would be the result. Just clean. What I do notice, though, is the overpowering smell of regular hair products. The time I used hotel shampoo, I didn't like how I could smell it for hours afterward - well into the next day.

About a week into the baking soda treatment - smelling good enough for Rachael to get close for a photo at a Vancouver Yummy Mummy Club tweetup. (photo credit tjrossignol on flickr)

Sue from Raspberry Kids, unfazed by my hair smell, at the Vancouver Mom Top 30 Mom Bloggers party in May (photo credit Elayne Wandler at Bopomo Pictures)

What does my hair look like now? Well, aside from the grey that insists on sprouting from my scalp despite my best attempts to hide it, I think it looks great.

Here it is a few moments ago, air dried out of the shower, no product, no styling. (I'd usually do something with it, but wanted to give you a "naked" look, direct from my webcam, at my hair as it is right now.)

Straight up

I have a lot of hair, thick and wavy.

My best "Cousin It"

The box of baking soda lasts about 3 months. The 1 litre size apple cider vinegar, about 8 months. Which means my new hair care regimen costs me a grand total of $25/year.*

So what do you think? Are you going to try and smell my hair the next time you see me? And would you give up shampoo?




*Not including professional colouring to hide the grey, which costs about $800/year.

Wordless Wednesday - Skinned Knees Edition

skinned knees, a photo by alexishinde on Flickr.

Looks like we've officially entered the "bruises, abrasions, and skinned knees" years. Ah, childhood.

Things That Are True - Stargazing

When I heard the learn'd astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.

Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892)

I cannot read this poem (and I read it often; I adore Whitman) without thinking of my dad.

My father is a gentle man. Thoughtful in his approach to everything, he lives his beliefs and treats everyone he meets, even when he disagrees with them, with respect and dignity. He has taught me much - even though when I was 18 I thought he was kind of an idiot. It's amazing how wise he has grown in the last twenty-odd years.

Grin.

My dad is both an auto-didact and a raconteur. With no formal education beyond high school, he was the source of all information as I was growing up. There was nothing he couldn't explain, and he treated all my questions - and there were a lot of them; I was the quintessential "but why, Daddy?" child - very seriously, and did his best to answer in a way I could understand. Now that The Imp has reached the "but why, Mommy?" stage, I'm learning first hand how hard this is to do consistently, and my admiration for my dad grows daily.

Dad loves astronomy. In the family library of my childhood, I remember a well-thumbed book of star maps. As a small-town prairie kid, the skies must have been vast indeed for him as he learned the names in the heavens. But for me, as a young child in the Yukon, when it was warm enough to stargaze, there was 24 hour daylight and the stars didn't come out to play. When it was dark enough to ponder the universe, it was mind-numbingly cold.

Me, my Dad, and my sister with the family car parked under the avocado tree, 1979

But then, when I was eight years old, we went on an epic family adventure, and were lucky enough to live on a tropical island for a few years. The switch from day to night at that latitude is instant, there's no twilight. We lived in a tiny village (link in French), so light pollution wasn't a huge concern. And it was warm, gloriously warm. Warm enough for my dad and I to head up the hill behind our house and out into the sugar cane field, and for him to teach me the names of the stars and constellations. It was the southern hemisphere, so everything was different from what he knew. In that pre-internet era, Dad must've had to buy a whole new star maps book for this unknown celestial territory.

We tracked the progress of the Southern Cross together, caught glimpses of Orion's belt (the only constellation in the southern hemisphere that followed us from the north) on the horizon, and learned the names of unfamiliar groupings of twinkling lights. And together we sat, in that "mystical moist night-air", and "look'd up in perfect silence at the stars."

Those evenings are my favourite childhood memories. I only hope I can give The Imp the same appreciation of vastness and wonder that my dad shared with me.

I love you, Dad. Happy Father's Day.

Things That Make Me Angry

I live in downtown Vancouver. Every day, I cycle the bike paths, walk the streets, and shop in the stores that made headlines and breaking news all over the world last night, as hooligans destroyed my city.

They were mostly young. They were mostly male. They were mostly white.

I don't know what that means, but it means something.

I am devastated. I was in the CBC Fan Zone yesterday afternoon, with The Imp. We've been there for the beginning of every game since they started screening them for the public. "We go to the hockey party!" exclaimed The Imp, every time the Canucks played. Without fail, it was a great experience. Face painting, "Go Canucks Go" signs; fans gathered peacefully to cheer on their team, celebrate their victories, and commiserate when they lost. Beach balls were batted around by the crowds. One afternoon, three separate groups of people noticed that The Imp was desperate to have a turn with the ball, and in front of my eyes, they conspired to make it happen, getting the ball to him so he could bat it back into the crowd. There were countless families there. Canucks fandom seemed to know no age, race, or ethnicity. The enthusiastic singing of O Canada before every game was deafeningly awesome - my voice and The Imp's added lustily into the mix.

The CBC Fan Zone in happier times

We'd watch the opening face-off, the first few minutes of the game, and then make our way, through happy crowds, home for dinner.

Yesterday started out the same. I picked him up early at daycare, we made our way to the fan zone at Robson and Hamilton, and found a patch of pavement to call our own.

But the energy was different yesterday. The makeup of the crowd skewed to young, male, and drunk. I posted on twitter:

"In the #fanzone. Most packed I've ever seen it. The Imp insisted he wanted to be here; I'll be surprised if he makes it to game time. #loud"

I saw an almost-fistfight when a security guard made a simple request of fans to sit down before the game even started. People were on edge.

I wanted to leave right then and there. The Imp wanted to stay. I convinced myself it was a one-off, that people would settle in as the game began and there was a focus for all the pent-up nervous energy. After all, it had been fun every other time.

The anthems were sung. It was loud, but somehow it wasn't the same.

The puck dropped. The game began. The energy in the crowd was intense.

My gut told me it was time to leave. The Imp insisted he wanted to stay. I fought an internal battle. "This could be one of The Imp's earliest memories; watching his beloved Canucks win the Cup!" vs "This crowd makes me anxious. This could get ugly."

I followed my gut; we left halfway through the first period, after the Bruins had drawn first blood. Once home, I tweeted:  

"Home. Fan zone vibe: sketchy. Everyone's wearing a jersey, but spider senses tell me the Ed Hardy factor approaches critical mass."

You know the rest. The Canucks lost. The city erupted in violence.

I am heartbroken. And I am angry.

I love living downtown. I've enjoyed the variety and diversity of urban life. I've loved raising The Imp so that he doesn't blink when he sees a same-sex couple, he's not thrown by different languages being spoken around him, and he's accustomed to lots of different skin colours in his world.

And I've felt safe here. The tremendous success and happy shiny feelings about the Olympics showed, I thought, that Vancouver had grown up. A cosmopolitan city, it could handle huge crowds and public celebrations.

Not so.

I'm absolutely heartsick at how wrong I was, how wrong everyone I know was, and how wrong, it seems, the authorities were about what would happen if and when the Canucks lost.

I hate the fear I feel now. I'm angry because I will now never quite feel safe in a Vancouver crowd again. The Celebration of Light takes place right on my doorstep every summer. A few hundred thousand people crowd into my neighbourhood to watch the fireworks, and I will never feel comfortable taking The Imp out into that crowd again. The veneer of civility is too thin. I'm angry that I can't unsee that now.

And I'm angry that I can't unsee the images of people wantonly destroying my neighbourhood. Setting cars on fire, breaking windows, and looting? Who does that?

I don't understand the people who do that. I just don't. And I don't believe it had anything to do with hockey. I saw footage of a person using a hammer to break the windows of a bank. Who brings a hammer to watch a hockey game? Who comes to a hockey party with gasoline to set things on fire? Who brings a baseball bat to a hockey game, just in case they feel like breaking the windows of an SUV parked blocks away from the arena? People were throwing bricks through store windows. Where are they getting bricks in a city built of concrete? Who brings bricks to a hockey game?

There was premeditation involved here. The loss of the game was just a pretext; the spark that lit a fire long set and stoked.

It's no secret that I am warm and fuzzy about social media. I blog, I'm on flickr, I'm on youtube, I'm on facebook, linkedin, listgeeks, pinterest, and twitter. I've met people I adore through social media. I've learned a tremendous amount, and I've benefited hugely, both personally and professionally, from the connections I've made online. I've been a huge cheerleader in my social circle for the benefits of social media. I love that everyone has a voice, everyone has the opportunity for community, and we become our own content generators and media channels.

Maybe I've been naive, but last night I saw a side of social media I hadn't even known existed.

The violence, the destruction, those were the acts of relatively few people. Out of 100,000, there were maybe a few hundred actively involved in creating the mayhem. But there were thousands of people standing by, watching. Taking pictures to post on facebook. Chanting, clapping, and posing in front of burning cars only feet away, high fiving each other. Jeering and leering gleefully at the damage being done, at the taunting of riot police. Thousands of people who chose not to go home, but to stand by and watch, and laugh at the spectacle. And tweet about it.

For these people, the (in this case mostly young, predominantly male) milling about observers and inciters, is nothing real until it's been on a screen? And being on a screen, is it then not real, but spectacle? Have they been so desensitized to violence that when they see it right in front of them, it's entertainment?

Over and over again, news cameras caught thousands of people taking pictures, getting in the way of emergency responders, making it harder to defuse the madness. There was a self-consciousness to it: I saw people running from looted stores, one hand full of stolen merchandise, the other with a camera phone on, recording the whole thing to relive later on youtube.

Is this online space, where I have found education, community, and solidarity, the same space inhabited by people who actually tag themselves on facebook committing criminal acts?

My son is a digital native, growing up in a post-facebook world. The mere act of me writing this blog is creating a digital footprint for him before he even has a say in what gets shared. His generation will never experience our antiquated concepts of privacy.

How do I raise him, in this oversharey, tweet-happy environment? How do I make sure this lovely little boy, who loves the Canucks as only a three year old can, doesn't become one of these young men, completely unconcerned, gleeful even, about being caught on camera in this appalling behaviour?

The Imp went to sleep last night as the madness was descending. He missed it all - saw no footage, no photos. I've kept it that way this morning. He's staying home from daycare today because I am not prepared to answer his questions. His daycare is in the immediate vicinity of where the violence started last night. The Imp's uncannily observant; he sees everything. He asks questions about everything. And I don't know what to tell a three year old about broken glass on the sidewalk, boarded up windows, and burn marks on the pavement. So I'm postponing the discussion; opting out for 24 hours to sort out my own conflicted feelings and to try and figure out what a three year old needs to know.

But I do know this: "We have met the enemy and he is us."

Friday Confession - Impostor

I spend a lot of time avoiding doing the very thing that I love most.

I know. It makes no sense.

But it's true. I alphabetize things that don't need it, I cook, I clean, I sleep, I watch tv, I surf the web. I spend too much time on twitter. I do anything but write.

It's ridiculous. I've been writing in journals and notebooks, scribbling on the backs of envelopes and bar napkins, and composing letters in my head for as long as I can remember. (Okay, maybe not the bar napkins. That was a later development.) I started this blog as a place to organize my thoughts, share my ideas, and have a living record of my experiences as a parent. I love the sense of community it gives me, the power inherent in having a voice (whether anyone listens or not) and the thrill of learning from others who've trodden the path before me or are walking by my side.

And yet, I don't write. I avoid it like... I dunno. Laundry? I hate laundry. Avoiding that makes sense.

Fear, friends. Fear is the dream killer.

It's not interested in what makes sense. It doesn't care what's rational, or even what's true. Its only focus is to prevent risk. Any risk, real or perceived. And imaginary risk is its specialty.

Fact: All my life I have longed to be a real writer.

Jebus. Just typing that out loud has made my hands shake.

So yes, I've longed to be a real writer, whatever that is. (Is blogging writing?)

I even managed in second year university to enroll in Creative Writing 100, with the intention of majoring in that or journalism. I went to the first class; it was all about poetry. We were assigned to write an autobiographical poem. The night before the class, drunk in the student pub, I dashed off a few lines of suckage and handed it in at the second class.

The third class, the prof gave a prize (one of her own books of poetry, she probably had a basement full of them) for the best poem. To me. She thought my poem was the best of what had been handed in.

I knew it was a piece of crap.

I never went back to that class again.

I haven't really ever told that story.

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The tyranny of the blank page

People I respect and admire have told me they enjoy my blog. Out loud I thank them; inside my head I'm immediately discounting what they say. Based on my twitter stream, I've been told by someone who writes! professionally! that I should write a book. I joke that she's crazy. "From your mouth to a publisher's ear," I grin.

Recently at a party, I was introduced to someone as "Alexis, a very talented writer" and I almost fell out of my shoes. The Fear That Rules Me screamed, "No, no, no. Don't be ridiculous!" I managed to keep my game face on and shake hands like a normal person, but inside I was ramping up all the old arguments for why the person was so wrong.

But that moment made me pause. It's always interesting to catch a glimpse of yourself as others see you, like a reflection in a shop window as you hurry by. And in a heartbeat, I decided to stop discounting what I do and say in this space.

It's not easy.

I feel like a fool most of the time.

But the other day, as I met a friend, a writer friend, for coffee and encountered another friend, another writer friend at the same time, I introduced the two, saying "David, this is Heather. She's a writer too!"

And for a split second, I allowed the "too" to include me.

Then I did a crazy, crazy thing. A few days ago, I submitted one of my own posts for BlogHer's Voices of the Year. This one.

This is progress, yes?

Wordless Wednesday - Fortune Cookie

Standing by to receive.

Wednesday of Few Words - Shoes

Yesterday HWSNBN and I celebrated our eighth wedding anniversary. (A year ago, I wrote this, and it's all still true. Just sub in eight for seven.)

It was a quiet, lazy evening at home - after my Spanish class, of course, and after The Imp was asleep. It's a rare thing, but occasionally HWSNBN and I actually get a chance to hang out together. To talk, grownup to grownup. For just a second last night, it almost felt like it did before we became parents.

Then, we walked around the corner and found this:

Yup. We're a family.

Things That Are True - Kid + Grownup Clothes = Cute

We have a very happy little Canucks fan, here wearing HWSNBN's retro hockey sweater.

The only time I ever think twice about living downtown is during the NHL playoffs when the Canucks are having a successful run.

Longer spring days mean The Imp insists, "It's morning time!" as the prolonged sunset creeps in past his dark curtains at bedtime.

And loud cheers from balconies and open apartment windows all around us put the lie to my, "Okay buddy, the game's over, time for bed!" when it's really only the end of the second period.

I can usually explain the "they just scored" cheers away just by saying that people are happy the Canucks won the game. He accepts that. "I'm happy too!" he says. "Go, Canucks, go!" he shouts before I get him calmed down enough to drift off.

The day The Imp figures out there are three periods in a hockey game? I'm hooped.