love. loving someone can be scary. not only because you are vulnerable and open to hurt but because you are afraid of losing yourself--afraid of losing your balance. afraid of being swallowed up in this big feeling and this person. does anyone ever feel that way? i've felt that way before--kind of out of control.

anyways, i had such a fun weekend in nanaimo. friday night we went for a phosphie swim. pipers was pitch black as always. as i followed katie and sarah down the narrow sandy path between the shadowy, long grasses i felt that giddiness that comes from anticipating something wonderful. it was so black i felt like i could take a step and fall into space. but i didn't. there was the twisted stump to go around. there was the fat, whited, a smooth grey lump in the darkness. and there were the waves lapping at the shore.

we deposited our towels. on the whited log. katie and sarah are cold water pansies, as everyone knows. it's on their birth certificates. i didn't find the water particularly cold--a shock to certain areas, yes, but not very cold. but i'm a cold water junkie. it's on my birth certificate (if only i could find it!). suffice it to say it was a long time before the two pansies succumbed to the thrill of the deep. the phospies may have been as bright and as magical as i've ever seen them--bright sparks in the blackness. it was a clear night and we could see the milky way and even glimpsed a few shooting stars.

i showed katie and sarah how you can capture the phosphies in your suit and make your own sky full of stars. sarah had shooting stars running down her hair. we swam back and forth along the shore line to keep 'warm' and did a silly synchronized swim. i told them about how bethany gets spooked out during phosphie swims and that's when sarah told us of her creepy boat fears which really baffled katie.

there were some people on the shore with a duck and a baby.

after a while we saw some lights flashing towards the parking lot. we thought it was probably the guy who locks the gate and it was. "oh sure. the gate never gets locked exactly at 11" they said accusingly to me. luckily the guy came down to warn us so we wouldn't get locked in. we rushed to our cars dripping wet and as we were driving away i saw that the time was something like 10:56. he was early!

sarah and i had to get kyle a slurpee. he felt bad about getting left behind in the heat. "i don't want to go into 7/11 in my bathing suit." i told sarah. but i was resigned to going. we pulled into the sev by departure bay and looking at the full parking lot i said "oh good. it's super busy!" luckily that's when we remembered that we were going to go to macs because sarah had a coupon. mac's was considerably less busy but there was a couple car loads of young punks that we had to walk by. one guy was yelling "YOU'RE EMBARRASSING ME!!!" "is he talking to us?" sarah wondered, and we laughed nervously clutching our towels around us. inside mac's it was super air-conditioned and that's when we felt the full force of our chilled to the bone-ness. neither of us wanted to hold kyle's sprite slurpee but i sacrificed and took it between my toweled hands. it didn't take long for it to freeze right through. we got some five cent candies. the guy at the counter who called us 'darling' ("he only called you darling because you're in your suit" i later told sarah as we walked to the car), did not know how to use the coupon so the whole reason for going to mac's was foiled.

back in the car sarah blasted the heat. "no need to be shy about it." she said. we ate our five cent candies and watched a tiny bit of harry potter before we went to bed. there were no batteries for the air mattress so i slept on the couch cushions on the floor of sloan's room. i woke up sometime in the night with the light on. i had fallen asleep reading.

next day i had pizza for breakfast. sarah, kyle and kids left and i read for a while. then katie and brent came to pick me up and we went shopping. nanaimo is always good to me deals wise. i found a pair of butt friendly jeans for 15 bucks, a pair of capris for 15 bucks and a cute little short sleeved jacket for 15 bucks! we did it all quite quickly--after all brent was involved in this outting. back at katie and brent's we had pizza for lunch. then we piled in the van and drove out to courtney to go tubing down the river. since i left my bathing suit at sarah and kyle's i had to wait for them to get there before i had the priviledge of donning my suit in the van with a towel covering the front window from peeking toms on the street.

it was smokin hot out. the heat oppressed us as we waited for brent and kyle to come back from depositing a vehicle at the bottom of our tubing route. we pressed into the shade at the edge of the woods like shy children press against their mothers. :)

there was some discussion about tying the tubes and who would be tied to who. kyle didn't want to be all tied together. he snubbed us. at first it seemed like i was going to be left out of the tying together by virtue of the tube i was given--the fat on one side skinny on the other tube. but i made sure i was tied and i'm glad i was.

anyways we all grabbed a tube and or a child and traipsed down the steep path to the river. at the bottom of the trail things were stressful. there were tonnes of tubers ahead and behind us and trying to get all our tubes tied and together and everybody in was daunting. katie, natalie and elizabeth were in a blow up boat. brent kept saying to me and michealah "once the boat starts going you have to be ready to jump in!" "how do you jump in?!" i said freakin out. in the end i just sat down and brent pushed me off the rock. it was no big deal. in the end we weren't tied to brent and michealah at all. they went floating off and we went floating to the right side of the river when we were supposed to go left. that's when we got grounded and i had to get out of the tube in the uber-graceful way i am known for.

later down river we caught up to sarah and kyle who were waiting for us by holding on to a large jutting out rock. once we got really close and adriel who was riding with kyle grabbed on to my hand. he kept saying "i gotcha! i'll never let you go. i gotcha!" in a reassuring cute little way. so we rode like that for quite a while until kyle--the snubber made me let go. "aunty laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaura!" cried adriel as i left him behind. "waaaaaally!" i called back to him.

we got to the first bridge and brent fished us out of the water. we were going to go a second time so brent and kyle and michealah drove up to get the van. we spent a lot of time watching the kids jump from the wooden bridge. the water looked so cool and green and inviting. we decided that after the next trip we would take a quick dip but it never happened because when brent got back he brought concerns that it would be too late getting home if we went again. so we didn't. we went to mcdonald's and changed in their parking lot and had cheeseburgers and fries and raspberry shakes. then we drove home and i fell asleep in the car.

that night was sister's movie night. katie and i chose date night. it was super funny but a little crude in some places. kyle watched it with us because he loves it. we talked late into the hot hot night about sarah and kyle's issues with their landlady and then everyone went to bed and i read my book. and i read until i finished it which turned out to be five am.

after my nap we went to church. after church i had a longer nap. after my nap we had a bbq in which we all helped. we also had a dumb argument over what can or cannot be called a chutney. this is a tradition we find hard to break--arguments on sunday afternoons about silly topics. it's a family legacy. then sarah and katie drove me to the ferry and that's the end of my trip.