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 True - Lost Children

People who know me know I'm an alcoholic. It's not something I've ever tried to hide; it's not something I'm ashamed of. I had a problem, I took action: no shame. Last August, I celebrated seventeen years of sobriety.

Seventeen years. I need to think about that for a second.

In my entire life, there is nothing else I have done (except breathe) for seventeen straight years.



I was 22, and I could drink anyone I met under the table. I started most days with a glass of scotch. Good scotch - let it not be said that I was a cheap drunk. I thought I was all that and a bag of chips.

A Good Glass of Scotch by Ray Toth - from flickr

One day I took a good look around. I saw that the crowd I was hanging around with were all considerably older than me. I saw that while I was having a good time - a great time, to be honest - I wasn't really moving forward with my life, wasn't really accomplishing anything I could be proud of long-term. And I knew that alcohol was a factor - the factor - that was holding me back.

And I knew, without thinking about it too much, that I would not be able to simply cut down on the amount I was drinking. In love, in friendships, in life, I have always been all or nothing. Why would drinking be any different? I looked around, and I saw the future, and it was Not Good.

So one fine August day in 1992, I didn't have a glass of scotch for breakfast. After ten months of not drinking, I went to my first AA meeting, between sets at a Grateful Dead show in Seattle. (True story.) About a year after that, I went to my last AA meeting, unless you count the time a couple of years later that I talked an addict/alcoholic on the street in the downtown eastside out of attacking me by commiserating with him about how hard it is to stay sober. (Another true story. I was scared shitless but made a snap decision to treat him with dignity instead of fear, and the story had a happy ending.) (For me, anyway.)

I don't know what makes me a person who can't have just one drink and makes you a person who can. I've been sober much, much longer than I was ever drunk; so long that I don't even think about it anymore, it's just my life. And now I have a lot more money for shoes.

Ah, bonjour Monsieur Louboutin! Comment allez-vous?

So why am I thinking about it now?

I work from home, and the factory here in Vancouver that makes Chill Monkeys clothing is on the other side of the most tragic neighbourhood in the country. I've had to drive through it a few times this week. Not the first time, far from it, but it really affects me differently now that I'm a parent.

I see The Imp, and all his energy, and his optimism, his excitement about learning and trying new things, and all the electricity of potential that his little body is almost bursting with every minute.

And I know that all children start out with that kind of potential.

And somehow, some of them get lost along the way. It breaks my heart, shatters it into more pieces than I can count. I can't not see these broken people wandering through their tombstone-eyed existence on the streets of my city. I can't not see that they were once somebody's child full of potential. I can't forget that I was heading down a similar path at one time in my life, that I could have been one of them.

And I don't know why I can't drink, or why they can't stop harming themselves, and why you can.

And I live in mind-numbing terror that The Imp, my Imp, my beautiful joyous boy, will inherit something from me and become one of the Lost Children I see gathered along East Hastings Street.

And I don't know how to make sure that doesn't happen.

And the not knowing is killing me.