tell laura i lo-ove her...

big news

2012-01-23T00:01:00.001-08:00

i've got big news:
1. i'm moving! i've never been happy with this place and the three dead rats laying by the gate on the side of the path don't sweeten the deal for me. so once in a while i would look on craigslist but i didn't have much hope that i could find a nicer place that i could afford and that allowed fat felines. but i was talking to mom one day and she has a firm testimony that God wants us to live in nice places that we can be happy in. and it got me thinking. so i began to pray about it and search more regularly and then one day i found this place. a one bedroom suite on the second floor of a duplex. 2nd floor??? i was instantly into it. so i made an appointment for the next day. and the next day i met ken and saw what was to become my new home. it's the upper back side of a house that sits right beside a park. it has a kitchen with lots of nicely made cupboards, and room for a table and chairs. i'm looking for a table and chairs btw. fyi. gas stove, and wood floors and lots of light, carpet in the bedroom and a back PORCH, not to mention gardening options in the backyard. it's smaller than this grow-op rat house but i think it's doable. bathroom's even smaller if that's even possible. i met the two downstairs neighbours who seem nice enough and have lived there a long time. ken liked me. i liked him and i liked the place. and i got it! by march i will be living there.

2. i'm done bethany's pics. i would have a new post to brag about but after hours of uploading i went to publish and noticed that some pics that look gorge on my comp look way less gorge uploaded to the blog. so i'm going to look into that before publishing. but know that they are done!

3. last night just as the sun was making the sky a tapestry of light and colour i stopped at save on foods to get some food. i had just recently come up for air on a day devoted to editing images to realize that all i had eaten was a cold pancake. what i'm saying is i was hungry. famished. and as a result i bought some things i wouldn't usually. like TWO haagen das ice creams. i wanted both dulce de leche and chocolate peanut butter but not at the same time. well by the time i got home i realized what i had done. my freezer was broken and the repair man was awol. this meant i had to eat them both in one sitting. it did not feel good, let me tell you and i learned my lesson in greedy guts shopping. this is technically not big news.

i leave you with some boring pics i took on a day when there was snow in my backyard temporarily covering the rats one of which was later eaten probably, judging by the paw prints in the snow, by another rat. (rats not pictured here. use your imaginations)

bowl of mini marshmellows

2012-01-15T23:29:00.001-08:00

i used my new hair product today and i can say with 99% accuracy that my hair has never been crispier. it's after 11pm and it's still crispy. guess i don't need as much as my other products. got the message loud and clear. or hard and crispy.

this morning was beautiful. frozen white ground, powder blue skies with big expressive clouds, rays of golden light piercing patches of fog--i appreciated you.

i've been typing out my mission journal and misson letters. and today i was typing some entries from the mtc period. it was interesting to see myself back then right in the middle of some personal growth. what i was worried about the most was not the language. i was worried about teaching. i didn't think i could do it. but i tried to do it anyways and i started to have experiences, even in the mtc that filled me with so much joy. and as i was typing this all out, i thought about how much i love to teach and how little i knew back then about what lay ahead and what lay inside me.

now i'm listening to swedish radio. i love listening to swedish people. their swedish is just so perfect! :)

dawn of a new day

2012-01-14T13:55:00.001-08:00

archie kickin it his his duvet cave. a messy bed holds no attraction for the fat orange cat, but a bed being re-made, sheets and all--that is a veritble bouquet of the strongest catnips to the hefty fellow.

the mormon channel has a segment on creativity. i was listening to this pannel of writers discussing creativity and their processes and yadda yadda. they were saying that most of the work of writing is just doing it every day. and reading every day. that it was like working a muscle. i've heard this before and i believe it's true. not just for writing but for any creative endeavour. if i want to get better at something i just have to keep doing it. some stuff might not be good but it's how you get to the good stuff.

i struggle with this because i take lots of pics and then get overwhelmed with the editing aspect and so stop taking pics. i could use some balance but what's new.

i think about creativity a lot. i marvel at the bounty of creativity in our world. it's amazing really. for example--cheese. there are more kinds of cheese than i can even think about. and that's a cool thing about creativity it builds upon and expands on other things. it's not selfish or miserly. it's open and giving and it can expand in just about any direction. and it's like every person has their own personal way of creating, making this world such a rich, wonderful and amazing place, from cheese to music, to architecture, to cars, to art, to clothes, to infinity and beyond. and tapping into this creativity is tapping into your own divinity and a partnership with God who is the great creator. so many people say that when they create it's like they are tapping into something, that it's not totally them. i feel that way too. sometimes i look at what i've done, or what i wrote in college or university, or photos i've taken and i think, how did i do that? i actually did that? that's more than what i am. more than what i am capable of on my own. but in partnership with God, what is there that we cannot do? so i think the act of creating is an act of faith. i may fall short. i may fall flat on my face. but there is also the capacity to soar. and the more i exercise my faith/creativity the better my abilities (hopefully) and the higher God can fly me. like a kite. ha.

well those are just some of my thoughts. i'm feeling so much better today. i might actually do some cleaning. then i don't have to look around and feel bad about myself because i have a messy house. i loathe self loathing. in the height of my misery and illness, i was sitting listlessly on the pot looking in despair at my overflowing recycling bag. then i thought, why do i have to hate myself for not being good at this? what good does that do? why can't i be generous and kind to myself and so facilitate change and growth? why do i sit here and wish that i was different? sometimes i'm hard on myself without realizing it. it's like a current of thoughts that flow without much attention from me, until i stop and examine what i am actually thinking. a messy house isn't a reason to despise yourself and wish to be someone different. it's just something i'm not good at right now. it does not define me. right? of course right, as yenta would say.

ok later skater.

bed sores

2012-01-13T20:16:00.001-08:00

i've been sick. just a cold, but a bad cold. actually i don't know why people scoff at the common cold like it's nothing. i know it's usually not fatal, but just because it's common doesn't mean you don't feel really sick. that's the way i feel about it anyway. i was hoping when i had the sore throat and nothing else for 3 or 4 days that it was just going to be a throat thing. but then bang o rang, i got slammed and slammed hard. a head cold and a chest cold. two for the price of one. i won't go into all the gory details but let's just say that i went through a box and a half of kleenex, my face, sinuses, eyes hurt continually, and i was chest curdling and coughing. today i turned the bend away from the pit of illness towards the light of wellness. now all that's left is the chest and and cough. i pulled a muscle in my back from all the coughing.

i've been locked up in my house for 2 and a half days. i'm so bored. i can't stand the sight of my bed. my fridge has been making horrendous noises the whole time. i made a short trip to get human food and cat food today. i had a shower before i left because i was totally dizgusting looking. but i couldn't bring myself to do anything to my hair. i just left it wet with no product. out and about the healthy people i felt like the survivor of something. my red and chapped nose and lips were my badges. ...sometimes when i'm alone for too long i get too wrapped up in my own experience. like it's not that dramatic. i'm just sick and in a couple of days i'll feel so much better. it's just that i want you to feel sorry for me,so... ha

one good thing about being sick is how grateful i am for health when it returns. health is a marvelous thing. another good thing is that i've had a lot of time to work on photos. i got a lot done yesterday. i spent the whole day listening to the mormon channel and working on photos basically. today i was too burnt out from that so i spent most of the day watching episodes of bones. now i'm burnt out from that. what's left? that's why i'm writing this blog--just because i need something to do, but it hasn't been that satisfying, to tell you the truth.

may 23rd 2011--jordan and tracy and family

2012-01-12T18:08:00.001-08:00

one fine day in may, i spent an evening with jordan and tracy and their kiddos. here, finally, is the result. the small pics are ones that i have already posted. i just wanted to post it all together.

redwood park:

jordan has the deepest set eyes. that was a challenge for me.

i love the look on isaiah's face right here.

"rolling down the hill"

tracy brought these stufties to prop up gidgidgidoni on. this was sometimes hilarious.

i had this vision...

gideon didn't like it.

there's a lot of these cuppah-gid pics. deal with it.

the end!

january 2, 2012

2012-01-11T20:03:00.000-08:00

the day after new years found karey, heather and i at heather's squameesh abode. we were there to see the eagles. i think on our walk we saw 23 eagles, give or take a few repeats. i didn't get any good eagle shots but i had fun taking pics of other things.

these next two pics remind me of pics of karey when she was a little girl.

i did eet

2012-01-09T22:30:00.002-08:00

just short of their six month anniversary i finally finished erin and tyler's wedding pics. whew! what a load off, let me tell you! to complete this task i took myself to blenz and spent 4 hours doing what i had to do. and besides what i had to do, i had to have a lemon ginger herbal tea and a cheddar chicken panini. you wouldn't believe how much joy filled my heart when i opened the last folder and realized that there were only 5 photos in it. it was like the light at the end of the tunnel had been tucked around a bend in the tracks and suddenly it was blazing brightly upon me as i shot towards the opening. ...or it was something like that. ...maybe.

thank you erin and tyler for this whole experience. i know it wasn't easy waiting for so long. hey jordan and tracy, bethany, abby and daniel, elicia and andrew--you're next! maybe it's been so long some of you won't care much. cause i done ya wrong. at least i know bethany is eager still.

hey so i was supposed to go to jury selection last week but due to the lawyer job action (that's my guess anyways) it was cancelled and then today i found out i'm to go tomorrow. thanks for the great notice sheriff man. preshiate chya.

also i'm getting a cold. AGAIN. it's a throat one. making me horse and unable to attend stake choir practice (grrrr) and now i'm starting to cough as well. a guy at work who i converse with in swedish because he's a swedish speaking finn, gave me a pack of super strong hals. like the kind that blow your sinuses to smithereens. i'm taking them to jury selection. see if i don't.

also i like to read when i'm in the loo. so i keep a book in there. just before christmas i finished the children's stories anthology (did you know the man from snowy river, originates from a POEM?? it does). my new toilet book is tom sawyer. thought you ought to know.

whazoo

2012-01-07T14:48:00.001-08:00

i feel like i haven't really written in a long time and that makes it hard to know where to start. but the key, i tell myself, is just to start. so i am. tomorrow is fast sunday and so i'm making this weekend the beginning of my year. i have high hopes for this year. i have things i want to do. i have improvements i want to make. my heart's bursting with hopes and dreams. it's a typical new year kind of feeling.

i heard in a ted talk that sometimes telling people your new goals gives you that positive feeling like you would get from actually making a change so then you don't always follow through to keep the goal, so i'm not going to list out my plans here. i'll just let them come out in the course of actually doing them.

but i will tell you my one word theme for the year. it's this: live. i choose life. it's the constant struggle of my frustrating mortality. and this year i want to really live, to leave behind death and it's many forms that leech on to me. no more death cuddles. time for life high fives. know what i mean?

i know it's going to be hard because sometimes death cuddles are so comfy and safe and life high fives can be scary although thrilling. but i'm just going to keep trying. that's all that matters, really.

and that's what's on my mind today.

the first day

2012-01-02T00:42:00.001-08:00

i had a fun new year's. it was with friends (karey, heather, shauna and scott). we ate out at this cute little pan asian place called flying tiger. shaaaan told me about it. i got the shredded duck crepes. awesome. then we went back to my place which was quite squeezie, and ate more foods--thanks to karey and heather, i was super grumpy about it the night before at the grocery store. i just wanted to get out of there and go to bed. anyways heather brought these awesome cheeses with her from squameesh. let me list them for you: smoked gouda, ginger mango stilton, cranberry welslsdkldjslj, and a log of goat cheese blanketed in crushed blueberries. hello.

when we weren't re-stuffing our faces, we were playing pit. pit's a fun game that should be played more often. there were some hilarious moments like when all the spoons were being grabbed but heather was up in scott's face about trading his cards with her properly, totally oblivious to the spoon grab going on around her. that hit my funny bone. karey put her iphone in a bowl to amplify it and we listened to music that way.

today was church. i missed those primary kids. i just love being in primary. it's the place to be man. after primary karey and heather showed up and wordlessly started helping me put the chairs away. yumi looked at me confused. "oh are they having something in here?" she asked. i wasn't sure what she meant but saw she was looking at heather and karey. "oh, no. those are just my friends. they just want me to be able to go home."

we had another cheese and cracker fest back at home in the kitchen.

we talked. we napped.

heather and karey left for squamish but i stayed for stake choir. i insisted on it. choir is my special little thing that makes me feel so good. i need to make time and space for things like that. so i ended up sitting in my same spot in between the same people. and the same people were sitting behind me.

sister ashton gave one of her great speeches about what we're singing. one of the songs is an arrangement of i know my redeemer lives. she challenged us to count how many times the phrase 'he lives' is in the song. it was 27. and she said go home and see what happens when you say 'he lives' 27 times. as she was talking about it a power filled the room. she said we'll try it five times and as she did the spirit swelled up in my heart. it was special.

i was thinking about it on my drive to squameesh. how in that moment, when i feel that way, full of the spirit and totally inspired, in that moment i suddenly want to be better to do better. then i started thinking about this up coming year and all that i want to do and be better at doing.

it's a fresh new year and i'm feeling good about it.

ps. i get my own room because neither karey nor heather can sleep with me despite the breathe right strips that karey got 'me' for christmas. you should see how they make your nose and nostrils widen. it's funny. but although i had big gaping nostrils and could breathe quite well i still snored. so. what are you going to do?

pss. i got new boots and some drapie sweaters.

2011-12-24T15:34:00.001-08:00

it's the holy eve. merry christmas beloveds. i'm having a nap while katie arranges her surprise. mom and dad are downstairs. potatoes au gratin ready to be put in the oven. only 8 presents left to be wrapped.

eve of an eve

2011-12-23T17:22:00.000-08:00

it's the eve of christmas eve. i chose to go about town with wild ratty hair. what of it? when katie and i were picking up some stuff from pier one, we had the nicest experience. the staff were just extra nice. it gave me some of my christmas vim and vigor back.

last night i was wrapping karey leigh van wieren's presents at the kitchen table while sarah, michealah, and katie worked on sarah's home made utterly fantastic perogies and the boys watched a movie. then everyone was going to bed, including sarah and kyle on a air mattress that fit in the living room like a glove. was i going to wrap while they were trying to sleep with their children? sarah thought so. is this light enough for you she asked? silly. it's not like it's christmas eve!

yesterday when my brain had been eaten by mall zombies i jolted vim and vigor into myself by spastically going rigid and zzzz zzzzzing in imitation of the pedestrian lights. katie tried it. it works man.

sarah and i had many a funny moment shopping that very morning. i can't think of any of them right now due to the meal the mall zombies made of my brain.

below is my eve of christmas eve photo essay.

2011-12-22T09:16:00.001-08:00

my nose this morning is represented by the above photo. just saying is all.

so last night we had a little adventure on the roof with michealah that involved me standing below to catch her should she fall, and then katie and i grabbing her stick legs as they inched out over the edge. her jeans got stuck on the gutter. there she was prostrate on the frosty roof with her toothpicks sticking straight out in the air, giving little shrieks. it was ridiculous. katie had to get a kitchen chair to unstick her. and in the end she came down onto my shoulder and we did a victory lap.

then i wrapped until one thirty in the morning and i barely made a dent!!

2011-12-21T21:57:00.000-08:00

how many times can you patch a pair of jeans? and how many patches can one pair take? i aim to find out. katie wondered if i brought only jeans that needed to be patched. "i brought all my jeans and they all needed to be patched." i explained as we perused the aisles looking for that certain elusive something.

christmas projects are full throttle at the schofield home. a home that katie likes to keep at meat locker temperatures. a touch from any one of her children will make you jump because it's like being touched by an ice nymph. luckily i brought my slippers.

tonight i wrap like the christmas fiend that i am.

christmas week

2011-12-19T13:17:00.000-08:00

hi. i'm in nanaimo. i got here late saturday night after missing the ferry by five minutes because i went back for my phone which was laying innocently and abandoned under my pillow.

friday was my work christmas party which i was very involved in. i woke up at 3:30 that morning, wide awake. like my eyes popped open and would not be shut again. so i was one of the only staff who didn't go home to get ready. i got ready at work. i wore the red dress. my feet were killing me. i served mashed potatoes, desserts, danced with children, cleaned and endured until nine o'clock. then we i went with the group to a pub for the traditional after the party get together. i didn't get home until one thirty am. in bed by two. if i spell it out for you, you may notice that i was up for almost 24 hours. t-h-i-n-k-a-b-o-u-t-i-t. katie woke me up the next morning at 8:30 to tell me the news about ma and pops.

the weekend before was the dunkel and renee christmas lunch and the cantatatatata. i felt really blessed to be a part of the cantata. it gave me the christmas spirit. it helped me express the hallelujahs in my heart. i was given a special gift. an alto gift. it was really special to me. when i was driving out to surrey sunday night a landing airplane shone in the night sky like the christmas star. it seemed to hang in the sky for a long time. i imagined it was over the surrey stake centre. sister ashcroft gave us some good speeches. i'd be in her choir any day. she's rad man. :)

so anyyuletide, i'm here in nanaimo now. yesterday i went to church and saw a smattering of other christmas returnees as well as the old regulars and some people i don't know. i even went to a short choir practice. we're singing far far away on christmas day. audrey told us not to sing in triple forte the whole time. she was looking at katie and i. we admittedly belted it out, but that's what it's all about. we pledged kyle and dad to the choir so i hope they don't make liars out of us.

natalie and michealah and i made up a story while waiting for katie and brent to join us to watch the nativity. they had different visions of this story so i had to end it. this turned out to be the jist of it:

once upon a time there was a sad lonely donkey and a bear that died twice. they were abducted by aliens. the end.

some holiday bokeh girls.

it's chilly in this house. my nose is always cold. (katie just came in here and said it was quote unquote roasting in here. whatevs. chilly's just her norm. (not eryn's biological dad)).

brent's made fudge. vanilla and chocolate. we have fudge after every meal. i'm fudgy. are you?

2011-12-07T23:07:00.001-08:00

i had toasted peanut butter and banana sandwiches on sour dough bread for lunch today. while holding the banana in my hand and slicing it lengthwise i got emotional over how cool sliced bananas look. i think they're beautiful. does this make me odd? everything God created has a beauty a sublimeness to it. even bananas and slugs and even you and me.

especially you and me. next time you look in the mirror look yourself in the eyes and smile. you'll see it. instead of picking out your faults honour the beauty of who you are. oh and be kind to slugs. they're cool. just saying.

wet cat nose smears

2011-12-03T23:10:00.001-08:00

sometimes it's nice to spend a weekend with a friend. not doing anything big. just regular friend stuff. i had a weekend like that this weekend with heather and it was great.

friday night we walked around the mall and i hemmed and hawed about christmas present possibilities. only bought one little thing. when the hunger pangs settled in we had dinner at earls. she had the brie chicken apple fig sandwich that reminds me of leif at highcroft, but that's neither here nor there. i had the pulled pork sandwich which had coleslaw and chipotle in it and even the bun was perfect. purr-FEKT as heather says. that's how they say it in the heartland. for dessert gingerbread cake and cheesecake. the cheesecake wasn't too cheesecakie but the gingerbread cake hit the spot. you know the spot. the gingerbread cake spot. it was hit and hit big.

after earls we stopped at shopper's to get heather some earplugs. they didn't work. i always like to check my blood pressure. so we did. usually it's in the optimal range but last night it was barely normal. heather on the other hand hardly had a pulse at all. wiewd.

we watched the 3rd twilight movie to prepare ourselves for breaking dawn part 1 which we saw today. and then we went to bed. and before i knew it i was hitting snooze blindly and desperately on my alarm. but then my phone rang and i remembered that i was driving nikki and james and son to the airport and babysitting their car so i answered it. it was them and they were here. "were you sleeping?" asked nikki. "no" i said not very convincingly. technically i wasn't. technically i was groggily hitting snooze over and over. "i'll be right out." i promised. that's when i noticed heather wasn't in bed. she was out on the couch. boy was she surprised when i turned on the light.

she didn't come with us but she said hi. spencer was crying and james was in the back seat. "what did you do to the baby?" i asked as i climbed in the front seat. their answer was waking him up at some ungodly hour. they had tim bits for me. we had some nice talks and soon we were at the aiport and i was hugging them goodbye.

i had to smoosh my face into the windshield to get into the car. that's how close the seat was. finding the lever to move the chair back was my first victory. before we left my house i had asked them "this is not not a standard--uh an automatic is it?" in my usual clear and succinct manner. nikki gave me a confused look and said "no." so then i looked at the gear shifter and it looked like none i had seen before. like a standard wannabe and for a minute i was concerned. i can't drive standard. i mean karen taught me once when i was 18 but i haven't practiced much since then and that was over half a life ago. but it wasn't a standard. it was not not an automatic. clearly. so then i put it into what i thought was drive but for some reason i couldn't accellerate past 20 without the car revving past 5. what is going on here, i thought. i had to pull over a couple of times before i figured it out. the gear shifty-wannabee-standard-thing needed to sidle over a bit. then everything was fine.

when i got home heather slept in my bed and i watched some tv and did some scrabble and whatnot. by the time h got up i had an idea. an idea worth doing. "hey since i don't have any good breakfast food, how about we walk to mcdonad's for some mcgriddles and walk back!" i said with visions of sugar plums dancing in my head. h was all for it so we did it and had a lovely late breakfast with foods that clog arteries just for fun. i was short 54 cents but h refused to help me. because of this i could only have one hashbrown. why do these bad things happen to me while other people all over the world get 2 hashbrowns??

what exactly is a sugar plum?

we bought some treats at shoppers and this time my blood pressure was back down to optimal if i do say so myself. we also looked in at a bed linnen place. it smelt so horrible we could barely stand to be in there. but one of the despereate sales women showed me an awesome pillow. too bad it's 89 buckeroos.

the smell came from the starbucks next door. it didnt' smell bad in the starbucks but it did smell bad in the linnens store. that's just the way it is. we got salted caramel hot chocolates for our walk home.

we went to the matinee of breaking dawn and then did some christmas outfit shopping at reitmans. heather got a nice flouncy red top and black shrug for her christmas party. i wanted to look at pennington's for a white blouse but guess what--penningtons is gone! rude.

heather wanted a donair for dinner and who am i to deny her? i hadn't seen deva the last 3 or 4 times at the donair spot but he was there this time. as heather says, his face lit up when he saw us (me). we exchanged that we remembered each other's names and then he related to me that he picked the colour for the new sign and he asked me where i live and said they should have a donnair stop in richmond and i was all yes they should. and then he told me that he is going to cullinary school and only working 2 days a week. he said he's gained over 8kg since going to school because of all the butter. and then he patted his stomach. it was nice to see him again.

i drove us to my old apartment and we gorged on our donairs there and then drove to edition elle where we whisked in when they only had 5 minutes before closing. which they told us twice. but i found a white blouse super fast. within 5 minutes even but the ladies were chatting and taking their time with their customers which is not my fault. one of the ladies had a major whistle in her speech. she was the most unfriendly but that didn't stop me from being amused at her whistle speech.

after we got home heather packed up her stuff and headed for the squamish hills. and that was my fun weekend. today i wore my new blouse and my bethany scarf and one of my 4 grey sweaters.

i don't have anything else to say so i won't.

2011-11-27T17:18:00.001-08:00

i picked katie and kimme up from the ferry on friday evening. it was dark and blustery. so what do you guys want to do? i asked. well we're pretty hungry, starts katie, perfect! i say. i was ready for this moment. at lunch i had picked kaz and shan's brains about good places to eat. i really wanted to go to suika because i had been drooling about it since first hearing of it's goodness. luckily katie and kimme were game.

i have a parking trigger finger. i know it, you know it, so let's just get it out in the open. i park too soon. i see a spot and i giddily go for it. then we end up taking a little trek to our destination. well friday night was no different. but to be fair, i wasn't sure where i was going. we could have been close. "where are you?" asked kaz when i called him. "broadway and hemlock." "oh no you want broadway and fir on the other side of granville" explained kaz. i thanked him and shivered my way with katie and kimme to broadway and fir.

we liked suika at first sight. kimme especially liked the bottle chandelier. suika is like japanese dimsum or japanese tapas. ie. small share plates of yummy japanese foods with modern twists. everyone who works there is actually japanese, which is a pleasant surprise. we listed everything we were interested in on kimme's phone. then we each got to pick one we wanted the most. and then we got two more things. it's what we did. kimme chose everyone's number one--the prawns. katie chose the melt in your mouth pork and so i went out on a limb and chose the chinese poutine. we rounded it off with the deep fried corn niblets and agedeshi tofu. everything was delish! even the corn niblets which we only got because shan recommended them to me. they did not disappoint. my first bite of the pork did melt in my mouth. "this doesn't even taste like meat!" i said. turned out that i ate a piece of the fat. thumbs down to the fat and thumbs up to the torotoro.

it turned out to be cheap. only 12 something each. we all agreed that we would have had more prawns if we had known.

we went to ikea to do ikea things and we were hungry again by the time we were out. so i suggested a starbucks treat stop and that's what we did. we got salted caramel hot chocolates and big ginger molasses cookies. katie and kimme laughed about getting the same as me. it was a drafty un-cozy starbucks but we made do and talked until they were closing.

back at my house we went through the ENORMOUS bag of clothes from rhiannon that andrea stuffed in my trunk a couple weekends before. being a sick person i slept out in the living room to hog the germs to myself. katie and kimme talked far too long into the night.

i woke up at 4 and went pee, which is not usual. it seemed bright out. it could of been the moon. i thought, what if gramma b appears to me right now? and i thought, no. not now. come later. then i went back to sleep.

the temple was a nice special time with aunty heather, uncle dennis, jawrd, ev and esther, katie, kimme, gramma b and me. families--it's good stuff.

jordan is quite svelte right now and lookin good. down in the lobby i saw a scab on his head. did you have a dad accident? i asked him. he hit it on an open cupboard. dad accident fo sho. even was sporting a tapered in moustache for movember. we thought he looked like an army guy. specifically i saw sarah's dad on the little princess.

aunty heather and uncle dennis had to go to the hospital but that didn't stop aunty heather from telling us all sorts of genealogical tidbits. then jordan even and i walked out into a group pic of a wedding. it was raining and cold. i had been wearing the red dress, but not for long. we changed at the stake centre and then met jord and ev and esther at coza, and italian restaurant across from the olive garden.

non stop foccocia, olive oil and balsamic vinegar. hello. non stop caesar salad. i got a pesto chicken panini which i quite enjoyed. it came with soup and i chose the tomato. the tomato soup was the dark horse. so yummy! katie copied me. it was a nice time. nice sib time.

then we did some shopping. when we were in old navy the exhaustion hit me and almost bowled me over. and then they almost missed their ferry but we managed to scrape in there. the ferry must have been late to our benefit for once.

back at home i crawled into bed and by six thirty i was asleep for the night. i didn't get up until 7am. and today after church i slept again. then to choir where i fought phelgm and coughing. our performance is soon and i'm excited. brother roeder said the altos sound the best of the whole choir. it's the best alto experience evah.

before you say it--shut it.

2011-11-24T22:58:00.001-08:00

i went back to work today. it went fine besides a little grumpiness on my part in the morning. then i said to myself, self you have a choice to be grumpy or cheerful. why double your misery? so i cheered up.

then i took our christmas card photo and totally tanked it. there is not one good shot. and it's not that they are not good. they are bad. horrible. tres puke. i don't know what i'm going to do! i wish a dog would eat it.

i feel like i hear people through a tunnel right now. i asked a member to repeat himself 4 times today and i was not being a smart alextrebek. blahalbhalb voeuroiuexlkjsooihghie french toast---is what i heard.

i finished the help on my sick bed. i dreamed about it. i also felt sharp pains in my side as i tossed and turned and said to myself "roll over, that's the side the baby's on."

i've been emotional and weepy for the last couple of weeks. not sad weepy but 'touched' weepy. like everything gets me right there. you know, in the tenders.

a little while ago i became wildly compulsive with online scrabble on facebook. i've had longstanding games going with elicia but at a slow pace. one day i just wanted to play and play so i kept joining random games resulting in an overwhelming amount of games that i now have to keep up with, most of which i am losing i might add. and the rub? i've lost the scrabble burning in my belly. now i just feel obligated to finish these games with these strangers. now it's pride that keeps me going.

you would be shocked by the amount of dishes piled up in my kitchen right now. and by you i mean every person on the planet. that has ever lived and ever will live. i would shock you all with the terrible truth of my dish stack.

well all except fatima because she is in fact never surprised and andrea because my room was messy as a child and i blamed it on her.

2011-11-23T12:30:00.001-08:00

i'm sick. i had so hoped to avoid this passing plague but it was not to be. i went to work anyways yesterday. lisa and i had a dump run to do. my coffee table, my housing person's chair, her housing person's couch. my nose was running like water and my throat was burning gravel, my jaw and sinuses ached and my head throbbed. keeping myself busy, i did alright. before lunch we drove to my place to pick up the coffee table that i had lugged outside that morning so lisa wouldn't be a witness to my messy house. after lunch we went out in the rain to the parking lot to leave to complete the pick ups and dump run. i noticed the parking brakes were on. "did i leave the lights on? i asked lisa. "if you did, you're dealing with it." she said. sure enough i did leave the lights on and sure enough the battery was dead. what followed was a mini gong show of 4 adults trying and failing to even open the hood. finally lisa found the latch below where we were searching over and over. after that it was pretty easy to charge it and go.

at my housing person's lisa stayed with the running cargo van and i went up and got the chair--a small stuffed number with a broken swivel bottom. at lisa's housing person's she went and got the couch with the help of the dolly and her housing guy. she was supposed to let me help but she wanted to spare me the rankness of the apartment.

at the dump waiting in line we joked and counted eagles. i saw a sign that was worn out so that it looked like "you are entering a nose hazard area" and we laughed about the danger to noses at dumps.

by the time we got back i felt hot and cold at the same time. my feet and jeans were soaked. my face felt hot.

on the way home i bought hals, puffs plus with lotion (blessed puffs plus!) and night and day cold meds. i climbed in bed and read for a while and then fell asleep.

luckily i had set my alarm so i wouldn't miss the primary presidency meeting. i would have skipped it but i needed to figure out what our primary was going to do for the ward christmas party because i am on the committee. i felt so cold when i got up. i blasted the heat on the way to the church.

we had a good meeting. on the way out to the car i started to feel so dizzy. not this again i thought worrying that the vertigo was back. please just let me get back home. which i did. and finally it came through to my thick head that i had a fever. dizzy, burning hot and my jaw ached so much.

i took the night time cold meds and weathered out the fever until it kicked in, reading the help. finally i fell asleep and this morning the fever was gone. i'm thankful for that.

right now i'm studying the scriptures that have 'heart' in them. this is my favourite one from today:

psalms 147:3-4
He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds.
He telleth the number of the stars; he calleth them all by their names.

bright spots

2011-11-20T23:04:00.001-08:00

we had our primary presentation today. i sat up on the stand on the floor holding up cue cards and the like. the kids were fantastic of course. they always are. at one point i looked out at the congregation and saw it all on their faces. we love our children so much. mei lin said primary is like heaven. i think she's right. i love being in primary so much. i felt it wash over me as i sat with the kids waiting to go up on the stand. as i watched them do their presentation i saw a glimmer of the future.

the other bright spot in my day was the stake christmas choir. i love singing alto in this choir! it's like sitting in a surround sound of strong altos and it's never hard to find my note or learn a song. it's a joyjoyjoyjoy down in my heart. afterwards mei lin and i sat and talked while we waited for brother roeder to be finished with the men's chorus. mei lin is the newish councilor in primary. she's from taiwan and she told me all about the differences between taiwanese, mainland china and hong kong. there was lots of interesting stuff i didn't know. like i didn't know how much japanese influence there was in taiwan. she said her grandparents spoke japanese and they used the japanese relationship names in their family. earlier in the day she was sitting behind me and she told me she liked my hair. she said it was 'romantic'. while we were talking she picked up a curl off my shoulder and was playing with it. i don't know if she even realized she was doing it.

i'm sad to see sunday go. it was good to me.

merfolk, windshield wipers and doughboys

2011-11-17T20:16:00.000-08:00

i visited sarah in kelowna last weekend. i drove there thursday evening, arriving at the little yellow house around 5pm in the pitch black. the only reason i knew it was their house was the car because one cannot tell if a house is yellow or not in the pitch dark and neither can one see addresses.

we wasted no time in letting the good times roll. sarah and i went out for a girl's night with a bunch of ladies i didn't know. it was supposed to be at a chinese restaurant but when we got there it was closed so we went to kelly o brian's. turns out it wasn't so bad to hang out with a bunch of people i didn't know. they were pretty easy to get to know. sarah and i got different sandwiches and split them. hers wasn't very good and mine was. but she got the yummy pajo fries and i didn't, regrettably.

after chatting and laughing with the mormon moms of kelowna we went back home for some rock band with kyle. lurfapaloooza was reborn. i gave her a lime green femover and turquoise eyebrows. it was funny because by the end we were so tired and the songs seemed to last forever. i almost fell asleep during some of them.

friday sarah cut my hair and we played outside with the boys. we also went swimming at the pool. and spent a lot of time taking water pics....

weird tiny heads and giant under water bodies.

back when we were amateurs at taking the underwater pics.

i like how you can see her legs floating behind.

sarah didn't like kyle's underwater faces but i enjoyed them. smurfy.

this is what cabin fever looks like under water.

that's sarah to the far right almost completely obliterated by bubbles. it was supposed to be a couple's pic.

then sarah and i started our quest to do mermaid hair pics. this quest consumed us for most of the rest of the time in the pool.

sarah and sloan kickin it in the shallow end.

the shallow water allowed for some mermaid hair possibilities.

it looks like bubbles are coming out of my eye.

sarah's a mermaid natural.

this is what cabin fever looks like on a lazy river. sloanie is cute at least.

this next pic makes me laugh so hard every time i look at it it. the more i look at it the funnier it gets. we agreed that sarah is a cartoon in this pic.

lazy river with adriel.

kyle as a indo-canadian. adriel and me as ourselves.

i think this is the best mermaid pic and a little scary at the same time.

cannon ball!

after the pool we got the yummiest indian food. we each picked a sauce. kyle's favourite is the chicken mango curry and sarah's is the chicken coconut curry. i picked lamb curry and it was delish as well. sarah and kyle got 3 naan to share and i got 3 for myself. but they have rice and i don't. "filler." i said.

after our indian feast i went with sarah to her soccer game. i sat in the box and learned all the team gossip and observed many a thing, saving up tidbits to tell sarah. sarah was awesome as usual. she was on defence and this one time she drilled the ball straight down the boards and a slammed a guy right in the family jewels. he was not very far from her and she drilled it hard. it really hit my funny bone. he had a limp for a while.

her team is weird because they are astounded any time a girl does something good. sarah was on this guy as he tore down the field. she was with him stride for stride and kept herself between him and the goal and he was pinned against the boards and he ended up completely running right over the goalie, kicking back and cutting sarah's knee with his cleat as he did so. after the game we were in the empty change room drying off the blood and another girl and her 'friend' ? came in. no big deal. then the friend started helping the girl undress. it was odd. we looked away and the next time we looked up she was barenaked bottoms. weird we said to each other with looks.

the indian food previously eaten did not agree with soccer playing. in fact it disagreed.

more rock band.

on saturday i got the dry hair fix-up. "i'm going to make you look like a lion's mane" said sarah as she snipped the offending 'loafie' pieces. sure enough the lion mane was achieved and i liked it.

we did a stratton family photo shoot and froze our butts off. sure, we'll walk to the park without coats and proper warming paraphanilia we said. sure we'll pose like gangsta's in front of the grafitti wall, we said.

when we got home we went to the bakery and got treats. "no thanks" said sarah and put the dessert canoli back down after one bite. 'yes please' i said to the hockey puck. "you had me at marzipan" said kyle.

sarah made doughboys and we ate them.

i decided to teach adriel how to play sardines while sloan was having a nap. it was pretty funny. sarah played too and in then end kyle joined us too. i had some good chuckles, like when i was the hider and i took the cushions off the couch and sat down and put them back on top of me. sarah and kyle joined me and i guess you had to be there, but it's time to chortle.

adriel and i also played a memory game with his bible old man game as sarah made the doughboys. she thought i was being too strict. games have rules man.

andrea came over that night and we got mexican. andrea stayed home with the boys and sarah, kyle and i went out to pick up the mexican (food, not man). while we were waiting for the food we played thumb wars and then developed the three way thumb war game. we also played 20 questions. i almost stumped them by picking cashus(i don't know how to spell it) russell and saying yes he was related.

back at the ranch we had an awesome feast. each person got a turn to pick what we would eat next and then we would divide it in four. meanwhile the kids would run in from the kitchen every couple of minutes and kyle would head up the futile mission of making them stay in their to eat their mcdonald's.

sarah, andrea and i watched country strong. it was not what we thought at all and quite disappointing and depressing. but what was not disappointing was the caramel cheese popcorn we chowed down on. i found a few pieces stuck to my shirt the other day.

sunday we chilled until it was time for me to go at 12 noon. once i was up in the mountains and a car drove by me spraying me with dirt, my good, driver's side windshield wiper flew off. so i drove to meritt almost blind at times. i made it on a wing and a prayer, bought a windshield wiper at ther meritt walmart where i think i may have seen the dad of some girls that i forget their name but their brother's name was forest. katie knows what i'm talking about. anyways i got the wiper on myself and drove on forgetting to take off the yellow strip. so then when i got out into snow and weather it did not work too well. bright move i know. so it the snow and ice was bad in some parts. people were going 40km/h and such.

somewhere around hope in the driving rain i noticed the yellow guard thing on my wiper was coming off so i reached out the window and grabbed it as it slid close. felt smug about it.

i made it back just in time for the family curry potluck at evan and esther's but doug and del didn't get there until an hour later just when i had to leave for choir so i barely saw them. in fact did not see doug and ate before everyone else.

at choir i had to stand next to the director and teach everyone how to say the swedish. embarrassingly i taught them one thing wrong. it was right on their phonetic sheet and i taught them a different way and once i got home realized how wrong i was. embarrassing. shucks.

2011-11-16T23:09:00.001-08:00

well i was just taking off my mascara for once in my life and thinking about what i did today. and i felt compelled to come back into the living room and jot it down. get down witch yer bad seluf.

don't be disappointed.

1. wore my grey t-shirt that says happy birthday in light orange velvet letters. it's a value villiage special. no it is not my birthday. guess what i'm not going to wear it on my birthday. i don't need to tell myself happy birthday fool! it's a message to the WORLD.

2. pancake breakfast, chicken enchilada casserole lunch and sushi dinner. after dinner snack: sushi burps.

3. during the course of doing the dishes banged my arm harrrrrrrrrrrrd against a thin jutting metal sheet. it felt like hitting your funny bone x5. it felt like i severed my nerve. it hurt and it hurt for a long time and there was no one around for me to tell about it. so then i told everyone i saw after that and now i'm telling you. i didn't cry. i didn't actually say a word or make a noise but i made a lot of faces.

4. start. it. up.

5. bought an external hard drive for obvious reasons.

6. watched akeela and the spelling b and cried. a lot.

7. i'm studying scriptures that have the word 'heart' in them. and i am placing a <3 over the word 'heart' (no not a bum 3.) going to go do that now.

owt.

2011-11-06T14:49:00.001-08:00

yesterday i took a short hiatus from the slug suit and did a major overhaul of my house. i moved the couch, the chair, the tv (that is one heavy suckah let me tell you!). i took the storage shelf and put it in the bonus room. i also took the too large for my space coffee table and stuck it in the bonus room until such time as i can get rid of it. i unpacked all the stuff that has been sitting around in blue bags since august 2010 and re-organized my closet. i also re-organized my craft bin and got new containers for my 'implements of art'. fabrics were organized. i put away laundry that has been sitting in a basket, growing and shrinking since the spring. i did laundry. i cleaned out the hell-hole the kitties are forced to do their business in and i swept and washed the bathroom floor. i also vacuumed. i just have to figure out how to place my 3 book shelves and where to put my food storage. and put up some wall art.

not too shabby eh? think of what i could get done if i put my slug suit in a salt bath and donned something like the super-industrious-girl cape permanently. i'm not saying it's going to happen, just imagine if it did.

i vacuumed up some spiders. can they get out after? please tell me no.

after all of that i sat down to work on my jean rag rug project. but my tension must have been wrong because the top thread kept coming un-threaded. you, see i don't know what i'm doing but i do it anyways. during one dramatic moment, as i was untangling a disasterous knot in the bobbin, which is another story, i heard a ping of something metal falling. i couldn't see what it was but as i went to re-thread for the 1000th time, there was no uptake thing to hook around. gone. i couldn't find it anywhere. GONE. what was i to do? well watch tv of course.

so word on the street is that the stake choir is singing a swedish christmas song IN SWEDISH and so i am jumping on the stake choir bandwagon. meanwhile i just had a bowl of popcorn to curb the hunger pangs that were harassing me and a husk jammed itself between my teeth. not cool husk. not cool.

once sarah sat on my cot in my new tent and gave me a special braid. the end.

2011-11-05T10:44:00.001-07:00

i made a wordle. wordles are cool.

2011-11-03T17:20:00.002-07:00

you know what's awesome? autumn is awesome. autumn is awfully awesome. autumn is amazing. autumn awes. just saying. i feel so happy when i leave the dungeon of my work and it's crisp and cold and sunny out and vibrant aging leaves everywhere. i thrill when, on halloween afternoon i am walking from my car through lisa's co-op complex and big gusts of wind whirl around me scattering carpets of leaves and blillowing out my red riding hood cape. awesome, like i said.

and is it just me or are we having a long fall this year? i thought usually by november the trees and largely neked and shivering. go ahead tell me i'm wrong.

shameful secret: there is a thick, wiry, pure blonde hair that grows down and curls over my lips at each corner. if i let it grow it would keep growing. i can touch it with my tongue. but i don't let it grow. i wax it right off and feel like a conqueror each time i rip it out. maybe now that you know this you might not look at me the same way. maybe the thought of those hairs makes your toes curl in disgust. maybe you don't even care. it's just 2 measly troublesome hairs. don't be a hater man. be a 'preshiator.

i'm feeling crafty. will you come over and do crafts with me?

i was talking to lisa m. about our work christmas party today. we were collaborating. we were brainstorming and word bubbling in a figuratively and non-literal way. mireya too. she was there. she contributed. i got pumped. i got pumped and proceeded to go upstairs and force stories on theresa and barb about my nylons break down on my mission and the resulting h and m and on knee high cream socks so and on.

i like ideas. i like collaborating with people. it makes me feel light and bubbly and excited. this is something i've learned about myself during this year--2011. i know myself just a little better during 2011.

i told theresa that the church is growing in central and south america. she said i need to go there then, to find a man. the truth is, i've kind of given up on finding a man. i just don't see it happening. i mean, maybe it will but i can't see it so i'm not going to think about it too much. i'll leave it to THEBIGGUYINTHESKY and get on with my life. please don't give me a pep talk. i'm not discouraged. i'm just 37 and i want to be happy with my life at whatever stage i'm in.

one thing i'd like to do is foster parent. i need another bedroom though.

also we got new cell phones at work. flip phones are just about obsolete. so i have an android. i feel like a newbie.

2011-10-30T02:00:00.002-07:00

well i've moved the couch. i was tired of the tube like quality of the living room being emphasized by the sausage link placement of the furniture. so now the couch is under the window facing the kitchen and the lazy boy is in the middle of the room and there is junk everywhere. sometimes it takes some chaos to get somewhere. and i've found the jane eyre memory stick along the way. it was under either the couch or chair. --see what i mean? progress.

i've got things to tell and you're the people i'm going to tell it to. i'd like to entitle it "my weekend so far". catchy eh.

my weekend so far:

i made halloween prize ribbons. i wish i took a picture of one because they were beautiful. i actually made them on thursday night which isn't the weekend but i didn't go to bed until friday morning so it's getting in on a technicality. they had spiders glued in the centres. not real ones. they were composed of orange fabric and black and orange ribbon. i sewed them by hand because i'm a crazy woman.

after work i got gas. this is important. everybody needs gas. some people have more than others. boys, apparently lisa's sister, sheikhs, albertans....

then i slept in my car on a pull out very near the ferry terminal, for 45 minutes. then i picked up katie and brent.

we went to the temple. i forgot my recommend. brother burgart was the counter guy. sarah burnam's dad checked out my info and let me in. we did initiatories. on my sheet i had what i believed were two sisters, named guidit and madalena bonjour. they were from the same town and were two years apart. they were italian so i pronounced bonjour like bonjourno, instead of the french greeting. i felt like a hick. none of the other ladies followed my lead. but they weren't french! guidit was the younger sister. i told her i was there with my sister too. we had a bond.

we picked jawn up from the airport. jawn flew in from dallas texas to buy one of evan's motorcycles and to drive it all the way back to utah. crazy eh?

we drove to ubc to drop in at evan's birthday party. we got our pics taken with clown noses and fake mustaches and big sunglasses etc. it was cute. ev gave us the low down on his fraternity. as we were leaving some cops were busting some underage drinkers outside. we passed some people who were saying "those mormons--" and stopped as i walked by. i guess i didn't fit in to the college scene in my church clothes. shrug.

we got donairs. deva wasn't there. i wonder if he still works there. i haven't seen him the last 3 times i went. just when you win a food guy over they're gone. well there's always the panago guy. brent got the plate instead of the pita. but he didn't eat it in the care like we did.

we missed the ferry. it was the last one and they turned out the lights just as we got there.

we drove jawn to evan's, surprising the spanish speaking babysitter. we drove back. we searched richmond for an open drug store so katie and brent could get allergy meds, contact solution and tooth brushes. upon entering my house brent fell asleep on the lazy boy with his shoes on and would not be moved.

the alarm went off at 4:40 am. it took katie's nudging me for it to register. brent never ate his food and left it for me. was weirded out by the white sauce. too bad. i think he would have liked it. at 5 we drove to horsehoe bay to catch the 6:30 ferry. we were there by 5:37. katie and i talked until one of the booths were open and brent stretched his legs outside. we parted ways.

i reminded myself to stay awake on the drive home. i did.

i fed the cats and fell asleep until 9thirty.

sewed brooch pins on all 12 ribbons and listened to my saturday mornin' playlist. made toast under the broiler. and then i made my little red riding hood cape and hood. it was fun! i made it out of red satin and i did not a half bad job. i wanted the hood to be oversized and droopy and boy did i ever. it's kind of funny. i didn't have time to hem it before the activity though.

on the way to the church i stopped and bought some prizes at the dollar store.

there were 3 of us red riding hoods. sabrina, a cute, shy little chinese girl giggled when she saw i was 'little' red riding hood too. so we had judges and prizes, played games, had a haunted house, trunk or treated (leilani and i did too. i felt kind of sheepish about it but leilani had no problem. then she wouldn't take any of the candy!) i didn't stay for the chili cook-off.

i bought fake lashes and came home, watched movies, ate brent's yummy meal and moved furniture.

and that's the bare bones. gah! the choir sings tomorrow and the only strong alto is away. i've got to practice my head off before church. oi. so . tired.

2011-10-20T21:54:00.001-07:00

i'm creepy. sure i'll admit it. yesterday i was so creepy that i spooked myself. this is what happened: i had a nap. nothing new, as you are all painfully aware of. when i got up i went in to the living room and started working on wedding pics. at some point during the evening i became aware of my blue star and moon glass mug (an old gift from the fat one i believe). it was sitting on the ironing board which was out to facilitate the previous day's failed craft, and sitting right in front of my front door. well i don't use the blue glass mug. i drink straight from my water jug in the fridge because i live alone and i can do what i want. as soon as this all registered i creeped myself out big time. like did i have a visitor while i was sleeping?? two things. 1. i hope not. and 2. i think i was sleep walking. this would make it the 3rd suspected incident of sleep walking in my life. also my lock was half turned. it's like i went to the door and put down the glass mug on the ironing board and half turned the lock. i hope i didn't go outside because frankly, i was not wearing pants. nuff said.

change is in the air. i'm venturing out onto the path of self-improvement yet again. signs that i'm hiking the mountain of self-betterment (did i just make that word up? so what if i did.): a) i flossed two days in a row. b) began a 30 day tv fast--this has already made me so much more productive! c.) participating in hydradew mask rituals. d) fitness goals e.) anti-napping battles waging daily. here's to bettermentations! betteristically yours, lauraannlivesinagarbagecan,facelikefryingpan,lookslikeaman-is-your-face-hurting-you?-well-it's-hurting-me!everseeatrainwreckinadarktunnel?did-you-know-that-cheezwhiz-is-really-barf?-noitisn't.-yes-it-is.-there's-a-man-in-a-factory-barfing-into-jars. and here's to growing up with three older brothers! and here's to tangents! and here's to sew rite! bye.

2011-10-18T23:02:00.001-07:00

izzy is going through a stage where she likes to snuggle on my lap for hours on end. i believe the technical term for this is "it's freezing in here. turn the blankety bleep bleep heat on woman!" but i like to call it "izzy totally loves me", which also may be quite valid. who's to say.

i bought the cats a remote control mouse. it's pretty funny. it's not fast enough for archie who is on it like white on rice. izzy is equal parts disturbed and confused.

today to keep myself from napping i tried a martha stewart craft. martha's mean. she makes it seem like one could very easily replicate her results. but in real life martha's crafts are mere mortal things--flawed and caked about with mud. oh well. it worked. i didn't nap.

today i was earnestly working on wedding photos, lost in my editing world when the phone rang. as soon as i heard yumi's voice i realized that i forgot to go to the primary pres. meeting. oops. at least i didn't nap. so i went and we planned our trunk or treat halloween night. i need a costume. i'm halloween disabled because i can't ever decide on what i should be. then i'm nothing.

i need to go to bed and for once i will do what i need to do.

thanksgiving

2011-10-18T00:56:00.001-07:00

i had thanksgiving in nanaimo with katie. i told katie that my goal was to wear yoga pants or sweats on every day of that weekend. on saturday i got up and went along on the paper route circuit. when we got home brent took the kids with him to chris and kimme's, to do turkey things. katie and i spent our time doing pecan pies and apple tarts.

katie rolled and i shaped.

the apple tarts were just with the left overs. i had fun making different tops.

finally we packed all of our pies and back packs and slippers and such into brent's work truck and headed over to chris and kimme's where were having our joint meal. i made the mistake of changing out of my yoga pants into my jeans.

kimme's luscious mashed potatoes.

brent's baby. brent's bird.

a study of natalie.

brent butcher's his bird. can you see the steam? i can but that's just because i know it's there.

pippa.

cute pregnant tanya nee slabodan and nate came too. tanya made this kale and beet and feta salad. the kale was massaged with olive oil and lemon juice which made it so good. chris even ate it!

i was so full and my pants were too tight. everything was so delicious. our pecan pies were too runny. kimme made perfect caramel popcorn. i did 3 different braids in michealah's hair. lots of chit chat. yadda yadda.

the next day we came home after church and changed (capri yoga pants for me) and then went straight over to chris and kimme's for thanksgiving day 2. brian was there too. i stuffed myself again. i really wanted a nap but instead we all went on a big walk around neck point with various, tanya and nate, and the zollingers.

nate found a huge jelly fish with a bite taken out of it. i thought it was cool.

michealah and her precious jelly shoes.

then we hung out a while longer at chris and kimme's and i showed kimme some tips on her camera and then we went home and katie and stayed up talking to brian about various school issues.

the next day brent made us a huge breakfast of pancakes with whipped cream, hashbrown patties, scrambled eggs with ham and sausages. i was stuffed again. when i went home it was with one of brent's homemade cheddar dill loaves in my back pack.

weekend festivities

2011-10-02T22:24:00.001-07:00

friday after work i drove to squameesh. heather met me at the door with an offering of peanut butter pie.

such a hostess. we had a big breakfast for dinner. heather made it all while i lounged on her couch. we had bacon and sausages and eggs and fried tomatoes and hash browns and sourdough bread. oi. then we started watching this really lame movie but it was too much for heather so we gave up and watched prime suspect instead.

i slept on heather's deluxe double decker air mattress in the skinny door room. the next morning i started out of sleep with 3 loud thumps. i found out later that this was heather killing a wolf spider.

we watched conference together. rothko had a very cozy spot.

a view of my notes.

at one point i drew a beard and some hair and ears around one of the holes in my notebook. then i got an idea...
and drew the face on my pinky and stuck it in the hole...

but most of the time i was intent on the messages.

even while taking a pic of myself being intent. ha. i loved conference. so much food for my soul. so much of what i was hoping for.

one of my treasure hunt items for my e-class this week was to find faces in unlikely spots. i kept seeing stuff in the tile of heather's bathroom. below you will see an uruk-hai from lord of the rings with a heart on the tile above his head. i also saw a peacock's head. which reminds me that i've been meaning to confess that i've been seeing a kangaroo with boxing gloves in the wood paneling on the stand at church, for a long time now. also a cartoon samurai/panda. don't judge me.

after conference we decided to go to one of squameesh's 'sweet spots'. i chose the spit. we had a hard time finding it. at one point we stopped and i asked this girl walking by if she knew how to get to the spit. she looked at me like she didn't quite get me. "the spit.....where's that?" she asked me. "i guess that's a no..."i replied and we drove on. after driving into a hard hats only logging site or something on a dirt road, we finally found it just as we were about to give up. the drive down the spit is the prettiest. there's a view of the chief \(but it was behind clouds most of the time), and of the falls, which you can just pick out in the background of this pic.

it was supahwindy.

hi. this is a caricature of me. note the tear on my cheek that i did not know was there because i have a cold cold heart.

my shoe print is cool, hey?

my wide angle lens began to give me mysterious troubles just around the point that i needed it. these pics give it no justice, but just as we were driving away the clouds came off the chief and the sun hit it's walls. it was really pretty.

and so i made this face.

it was fun. we had fun. when we got back it was time to go. i went to the washroom and when i came out heather handed me half a peanut butter pie (a second peanut butter pie) and my pan and pie plate and we walked out to my car and i was on my way.

it was a gorgeous drive back to vancouver, because hello, this is the sea to sky highway we're talking about. just as i was going over the lion's gate bridge the sun was setting in a huge firey ball. it was spectacular and i may have caused an accident and burned out my retinas at the same time for gazing at it too long, but luckily none of these happened.

i met up with fatima and daman down town after i changed my pants in a parking garage. i brought the pie and we shared it at a starbucks. the baristas wanted pie too but we were like no way hosea. daman was estatic over the pie. i had a salted caramel hot chocolate.

then we went to fat's and d's sushi place. i got spicy agedeshi which was so good and i got the granville roll which had prawns and crab and other good stuff and which was deep fried. so good! fatima got the alaska roll which was also delicious and daman got a bento box.

i went to the bathroom before we left and found that the stalls had so little depth that one could not bend down to pull up one's pants, but that one had to instead kind of shimmy down careful not to bang one's head on the door.

we went to a vancouver film festival filum called patang, which means the kite. a very beautiful filum indeed. i liked it a lot. the director was there. he introduced his film and did a questions and answers period after. my jeans were so tight from too much eating expansion that i was driven of necessity to watch the filum with my pants UNdone. don't judge.

fats and daman walked me to my parking garage and then we parted ways.

the end.

week 2

2011-09-30T01:50:00.002-07:00

this is my shadow. hi shadow.

heart.

i had a fun time walking around my neighbourhood doing things people don't normally do, like set up a tripod on hands and knees on the sidewalk and lay on an abandoned lawn to photograph some weeds. if i were counting how many people have asked me if i'm ok since i started this e course, it would have to be the man on the bike, the woman from the blacony, the woman by her car and the couple on their bikes. there could have been more.

2011-09-28T00:17:00.001-07:00

i just watched whale rider again. i love that movie. why wouldn't leif let me show it to him? somethings you never get over.

i woke up this morning and it was 8 on the dot. i'd set my alarm for seven at night. consequently my hair was wild and wooly. around 1:30 i went to the washroom and got an eyefull of myself in the mirror. that's when i got debi to give me a fishtail braid. she did a good job. her first fishtail braid. she asked me if i brushed my hair ever. no not ever, i answered. (except in the shower with my fingers).

i gave lisa a fishtail braid earlier in the day during the house meeting. it's tuesday--braid day. we were twins.

i put my spring calendar photos up on the wall in the shape of a heart.

heather was visiting me this last weekend. on friday night we went to the temple. i was deliriously tired. actual delirium occurred. but also i was happy. the familiar giddy lightness and joy that i have felt in the temple since i was a 12 year old. i have a lot of emotions in the temple, i feel quiet and peaceful. i feel solemn and worshipful. i feel thankful. i feel ponderous. and so mortal. and so eternal.

we ate at the olive garden after. i got stuffed lasagna rolls. hello. heather got the soup salad combo. it was all paid for by heather's friend from back home. we had to wait a long time to get a seat so we took our little buzzer thingy and went shopping. i bought some jeans that i'm going to take back and a sweater. then we walked into atmosphere and i just came face to face with my destiny--vibram five finger shoes, and the buzzer went. we left in a hurry and i left my bag there and had to return to get it.

saturday we recycled a tv, shopped, got threaded, had screamers and watched the rs broadcast. it was fun. next weekend is general conference and i'm glad. i need it.

oh and on saturday when we were shopping i bought some of those vibram five finger shoes. i didn't want those ones. i wanted some barefoot shoes from new balance or something. but i made the mistake of trying them on. freedom. comfort. felt like my own foot. nothing felt as good and what do i care that i look like a freak with blue monster feet? lisa says she can't even look at them. :)

maybe

2011-09-26T04:35:00.001-07:00

maybe i have a sleeping disorder. i just cannot seem to get a handle on my sleeping issues. i've gone off rhythm before but never for so long. rhythm is a word like gypsy--the only vowel is the 'sometimes y' vowel and therefore a good stumper for a vigorous game of hangman.

maybe i am a project hoarder. i tuck away many projects for safekeeping. for the future. and that's where they stay--tucked away.

maybe i am tired of guys that are wrong.

maybe i'll have a nap before work.

some photos i took this week:

i took these rain drop shots laying prostate in the wet grass beside the path to the dike. after a while a woman called to me from her balcony, and asked if i was ok. i looked up and behind me to see her and her son, looking quite concerned. i said i was fine, just taking pics of rain drops and she seemed relieved. 'i know it looks weird.' i acknowledged. 'i thought you were passed out.' she admitted.

2011-09-20T21:05:00.000-07:00

i moved someone today. now i am laying prostrate paralyzed with exhaustion. i could have gone to bed for the night at 5:30 but i've been fighting it. but this post will probably be my last hurrah. a weak mumbled hurrah, hardly articulated and trailing off into silence.

sunday night i was researching braids. i'm taken with braids recently. on tuesdays during our house meeting i do a new braid in lisa's hair. today i did the cascade or waterfall braid. people liked it. i myself was sporting a side fish tail braid. nobody noticed much. but then i demonstrated to debi how to do a fishtail braid on lisa m. and then everyone oohed and ahhed over the braid. dark hair is so much more dramatic.

i'm doing an e-course. called superhero photo. it's about letting go of your perfectionism and letting fly with creativity. yesterday was the first day.

today was the second. you see how it goes.

photo walk

2011-09-19T23:35:00.001-07:00

i went on a photo walk today. it was fun. here's some of my clicks. there's a very bad smell wafting through my home and i'm trying to ignore it. it's time for some new beginnings. it's time to do things behive style.

2011-09-18T21:54:00.000-07:00

rhiannon and andrea visited me on tuesday and wednesday of last week. they were here with other home schoolers. i picked them up from science world tuesday after work. i had been circling science world looking for a way into the parking lot when i saw andrea jumping and waving. there was a grass island between me and them but i saw my chance and took it, driving through a small paved spot when no traffic was coming. we drove back to richmond and picked up some foods for our supper. it was rhiannon's birthday eve so we had something from her 'p' diet. pesto pasta. we also bought a bagette and some chipotle garlic butter and some blueberries to make blueberry ice cream.

my home was very messy as it has been continually for a long while now. i'd had a chance to empty the litter box, and do a quick vacuuming and that's it. andrea basically said i've always been messy so it's no big deal to her. she started doing my dishes and i started making supper which also included and delicious salad, if i say so myself.

after supper andrea knit my custom soxs that she's been working on for a long time and rhiannon and i worked on the ice cream. it had to chill for 3 hours so we decided to finish it on her actual birthday. then we watched the secret life of bees.

rhiannon slept on my camping cot at the foot of my bed. (i've now set up said cot twice by myself). i warned her about my snoring but she assured me that she had her earplugs with her. andrea and i chatted a bit once in bed but i fell asleep really quickly. andrea said i snored the loudest she's ever heard me. i like to exceed people's expectations. i have a niggling fear that i might have sleep apnea or something.

next morning i had to go to a job site early in the morning and so i was off early. when i got back we finished off the ice cream and ate it. so delicious, but we ate too much. rhiannon wanted to eat mexican food on her birthday so we went to a place my co-worker told me about on commercial called bandidas--mexican vegetarian.

very tasty. i got the ronny russell burrito baked with cheese and sour cream. andrea got the wolf and goat. rhiannon got enchiladas of some sort. my burrito had sweet potatoes in it. rhiannon also got a virgin lime margarita but she didn't like it that much. a huuuuuuuge hornet/wasp/whatever flew into the window behind me at which point i need to get up so we all did and a nice lady came and captured it with a jar and a napkin.

after dinner we drove to stanely park and rode bikes around. it was rhiannon's first time to stanley park. she didn't want to try the tandem bike though so andrea and i got to tandem together. it was lots
of fun and the hour it took us seemed like 15 minutes to us. at first andrea and i had particularily
wobbly and dangerous starts. she likes a 3 bounce start and i like a one bounce you're on start. dismounts were always great though and by the end of our hour we were pros. here's a video that i did while we were cycling. i'm not sure if it will work...

rhiannon loved her cruiser. "aren't you glad we did this for your birthday?" asked andrea. "i was just concentrating on how fun it was." said rhiannon. we had a beautiful sunset too.

aside: earlier in the day at work one of the members at work, a cute little chinese man who says hi to me at least 5 times a day, called me over when i was cleaning the tables off. "i like your red t-shirt." he said. "hu?" i said. "t-shirt. it's a t-shirt right?" "yes." "i like your red t-shirt." "thanks." "but i don't like your white shirt." "lol. whaaat? you don't like them together?" "no. go change it." "haha... well i'll wear something different tomorrow." "ok." now i have my own personal fashion consultant.

anyways after our ride around lord stanley's park, we went to pacific centre and checked out h & m which aparently has the best underwear known to man. this is what andrea's friend said anways and andrea picked out a couple to try so look to her for an underwear update. rhinannon got some socks and then she tried on some clothes. it was sitting in the change room across from hers with andrea that the tiredness hit me like a giant wave. yes--as tsunami. suddenly i could barely function.

we went to starbucks for a drinkiloo (passion tea lemonade light on the ice for me) and this is where i probably lost the parking stubb that had been resting in my wallet. we'll never know. all we know for sure is that when it was time to leave i had no such stubb even after emptying out my entire wallet so i had to pay a bitter price.

just before nine i dropped andrea and rhiannon off at the aquarium and drove home and could not stay awake despite many attempts, slept until just before 8, almost 10 hours and spent the whole next day feeling like i could fall asleep at any moment. maybe i have narcolepsy too.

2011-09-17T23:43:00.000-07:00

i brushed my hair out. i did the recycling. i sank into oblivion. now i'm going to bed.

beautiful birthday birding bash

2011-09-13T05:05:00.000-07:00

it was heather's birthday on saturday and she came to vancouver for some birthday fun. we went out to eat, i made her a birthday key lime pie, we went to ikea and most importantly--we birded. i haven't gone much since she went away and it was lots of fun. perfect really. here's a few pics of our day.

chickadees! they played us. they teased us. and they landed on our finger tips. the first time it happened heather almost inhaled her chickadee visitor. one time a chickadee landed on my fingertips, cocked his head looked at me with his black little eye, and chirruped. i tried to take a photo and he flew off. meanwhile a squirrel that i was prejudiced against and heather befriended, followed us. see him behind h. in the last photo.

i love bird blinds.

8 sandhill cranes--so cool.

home chez tent

2011-09-02T14:43:00.000-07:00

i have more pics to post but frankly the internet here has been temperamental and it took eons to upload this here beaut. in the spirit of said frankness, i have to tell you that my eyes are not that blue. i ENHANCED the blues in this pic.

i'm currently snuggled up on my camp cot in my tent. it's windy outside and i'm feeling drowsy. we just got back from a trip to town where i picked up some trail mix. i have a huge bag of said mix because i let natalie pull the lever and the trail mix came a tumblin' down. i added a few extra items as well. you could say i ENHANCED the trail mix. i aint no yuppy. i believe in additions.

after we got back, michealah and i continued our previously interrupted match of skip bo and i beat her, not with a rod but with my mad skip bo playing skillz. then we played again and i beat her again--this time with my fists. (not true) every day michealah and i have a match of the skip bo. the first couple of times she beat me. she preened as the queen of the skip bo. however i have staged a coup d'etat and have now beaten her at her own game, as they say, three times. read 'em and weep kid. the trick is to win as much as possible.

something brent said: first of all it's hard and second if all it's difficult.

i got here last saturday at 4:30 pm after missing a ferry and then missing my exit. then my bank card wouldn't work at the office. then i had trouble opening the new security gate with my card. then i drove up and met sarah and kyle who were happy to see me. i said "is this it?? it's so cramped. there's no room!" but really i was just giving outlet to my grumpaloos. sarah and kyle helped me find a spot and helped me set up my new tent the eureka pinery 400 thank you very much. adriel and sloan helped. then we set up my new camp cot which took all of kyle's muscles. "you won't be able to set that up by yourself." warned sarah. but i think i can. and if you think you can then you can. 'sides i'm strong too you know.

sometimes a large and buzzing dragon fly gets caught between my fly and my tent. it's gross but i managed to get it out without it touching me. sarah killed the one that was stuck in hers. as a punishment she received the curse of the slugs. slugs were often to be found in or under her vestuble. one time she stepped on a slug under the vestuble mat and one time she stepped on some slug slime in her sock.

skip bo is the official sponser game of this camp. one time i tried to play chinese checkers (ha ben!) with natalie and adriel and became very irritated. one time when i barked out orders once again for natalie or adriel to keep their hands off the board when it was not their turn, sarah who was playing skip bo with kyle and michealah looked over and commented "you guys are having a fun time." she didn't mean it. she meant the opposite.

on monday we all drove up to courteny to go tubing down the river. it was super fun. fun for me that is. sloan, adriel and elizabeth were miserable most of the time. it was pretty hilarious. i was on the tube with a huge bubble which made it impossible for me to paddle. (laura stuck her fingernail in to paddle, brent was wont to say) and i was tied the blow up raft that held katie, natalie and elizabeth. michealah's tube was tied to it as well. brent was a free agent at first. and we all panicked because we couldn't steer the boat away from the wrong side of the river and elizabeth began to wail as soon as some water got in the boat. and then katie nabbed on to brent and he used his super long arms to steer us wherever we needed to go as katie held on to his feet. we called them his man paddles. anyways adriel had cut his toe and he was scared silly and crying the whole time on top of sarah and sloan was with kyle and crying too. eventually we got sarah into our group as well.

brent was trying to calm the kids down at one time and he said "say hi to the birds" and we all dutifully droned |"hi birds" and had a good laugh about it. i took the opportunity to use my new underwater digital and clicked some pics. sarah had a loose cheek and i fixed it for her. then i took an underwater pic of her bum just because i could. kyle wanted nothing to do with our group. he and brent kept competing. when we got to the end, i jumped off and swam in the river for a while and took some clickers. a man was watching me so i splashed him in the face. not really. he asked politely if the pics were turning out and i said "yes....well most of them."

brent and kyle went again and we lay in the sun on the grass. brent discovered why i could only paddle with a fingernail and let some air out of my tube. michealah and i played skip bo and katie and sarah were gone most of the time buying us cheese sticks and grapes. i let the children play in the road willy nilly.

the stussis have a waterslide now. it's an almost daily activity at camp. brent and kyle tried to out do each other with their big splashes as they came down. they also tried to angle their splashes to hit the worker in the corner. it's all in the twist of your bum as you come down. i got people to do videos of themselves as they came down. yesterday michealah and natalie did like 16 videos.

we played frisbee golf.

we had campfires. we sang many a version of quarter master's store, fish n chips n vinegar, and the deacon went down. we ate many a good food. we played girls against boys beach volleyball in the which was all about 'the ready stance'. we got ice cream cones. sarah braided our hair. katie and i read our respective books. we talked. we did the dishes and went on walks. we electrocuted many wasps. today's my last day.

2011-08-29T11:17:00.000-07:00

it's all about a good fire.

2011-08-28T23:24:00.000-07:00

2011-08-25T08:04:00.000-07:00

last night i had my first ocean swim of the summer. there is nothing as wonderful as the pacific ocean. i met barb at whytcliff park around 4. it had been many a year since i had been there. since the ysa days. as i drove in i had flash backs of karey driving and us trying to find a parking spot and of the short beach jammed with logs. this time parking was easy. i found the path down and secured a picnic table for us. not long after, barb showed up with her english kid side kick, mark.

mark went straight for the beach and barb went back up the stairs to see if she locked her car. then we stripped to our suits (not birthday suits. it's not that kind of beach and we're not those kinds of girls). barb took her sweet time but i was in quite fast. we decided to swim out to the island. once there the seaweed and barnacle encrusted rocks deterred us from getting out so we swam back. barb got out to check her phone and then we started swimming out to the light house which was just a bit farther than the island in parallelogram talk. mark said he would come with his trusty log friend. but he chickened out once barb told him about seals. just as she said that i saw biwy by some rocks. we made it most of the way there when the ferry passed and another big boat passed at the same time creating 'big' waves which we decided to 'ride' in.

mark and his log had stopped half way and mark got out on the rocks. we decided to make a pit stop there. barb got out but last minute i decided i didn't want to risk the barnacles (i almost put barbnacles lol). so forward crawled most of the way back.

we sat at the picnic table robed in our towels and devoured barb's banana cake. then we went up to the grassy area up top because this was barb's good luck picnic and everyone else was about to arrive. mark skulked down below for the rest of the evening.

gab and pete, chris and ian, slack family trio, annette, and susan paulson eventually joined us. there were lots of eats. and lots of wasps swarming. i had to eat standing up ready to flee at any moment. when nikki arrived she sprinted around the area when any wasp came near. i finished eating quickly and moved my blanket away from everyone else's and declared it a no food zone. anyways we ate and talked and so on.

by the time it was 8 i was feeling really tired. the kind of undeniable sleepiness you get from a day in the water and sun. so everyone else was going down to the water but i left. and was in bed dead to the world by 10ish.

i woke up myself without the alarm this morning after a strange dream in which i was married to a married man from our ward, who turned out to be a member from work, who was talking crazy talk and i was like, oh no, i married a crazy person! we were standing on our bed eating chocolates in the shape of disney characters which were arranged on the headboard, and then back to himself talking to me seriously in pink hawaiian themed pajama pants, and then a bunch of ysa burst into our room to use the washroom and another guy from our ward started going through my husband's wife's drawer looking for something nude coloured for another lady to wear over my husband's protestations. finally he left and the last ysa people left too. the last one out the door was oriana and she turned and said 'bye' to me. i called 'bye!' after her and woke up because i actually said 'bye' out loud. doesn't get weirder than that folks.

well i have to actually go to work today. bye man.

you must be the one

2011-08-24T13:46:00.000-07:00

i'm indulging in bethany's yummy salad sans chicken. a glorious salad. i just didn't feel like thawing out and cooking the chicken and a glorious yummy salad without chicken is better than no glorious yummy salad at all. am i right? yes i am.

i've had unexpected time off this week. long story short is that the construction dudes next door broke our water main. just after lunch i was filling up the water jugs. 'what's with our water pressure?' i asked. lisa said she noticed the same thing. minutes later kristin came back from the walk with news. water was pouring out of the door beside the thrift store. 'that's the electrical room!' lisa says. we all run out to check it out.

that was monday--we were sent home early. no work tuesday and no work wednesday. right. on.

yesterday it was 11:30 and i was still lounging around in my pjs. i had read my scriptures, wrote my morning pages and eaten a nectarine and a slice of sprouted whole wheat. the day loomed long and lucious before me. that's when lisa called and invited me for a walk and fish n' chips in steveston. i was all over it.

i did something crazy. i got a grilled fish burger instead of fish n'chips. there was something in me that was rebelling against the deep fried batter but that something was totally ok with deep fried potatoes. that's totally different. we ate and chatted and then walked around garry point. there's a new and mysterious dock there. it groans loud and metalically every time there's a wave. we went on it. we saw a seal. i barked to him and he swam out further. who knows what i said. it could have been rude or threatening. hope it wasn't biwy.

back on the wharf we bought tanya's baby a little something something because we're going there for a visit tomorrow. we also got ice cream. this was a bad idea because i became very very full. it's just that timothy makes their waffle cones fresh and warm and chewy. i don't have a defence against fresh, warm and chewy waffle cones. i just don't.

however i needed to change into a looser shirt before meeting fats domino at metropolis at metrotown. we were shopping for daman's birthday presents. and he's getting some sweet gifts from his little lady. i tried on some really odd clothing items at winners.

then i drove to yvr and picked up sarah and kyle who were out waiting by my third time around. i showed them the yucky vitamin water i got. i made the mistake of getting a low calorie one. blech. we got donairs. this time cutie pie donair guy called out my name as we walked in. there was a long line up that he was oblivious to. "what's my name?" he tested me. (i found it out the week before when i took sarah there. s and k are obsessed with donairs lately. he was washing windows and offered to wash mine) "deva." i answered. he nodded his approval. when he started on sarah and kyle's donairs, deva says to me "laura, would you like to dance?" "right now?" i ask. "just kidding." he says. "you have donairs to make." says sarah. i told him that this was my little sister. he said we looked nothing alike. he said sarah looked russian. "because of her hair?" i asked. it was. he said he lived in russia and many russian women had sarah's hair do. anyways we all asked for extra sauce but i got extraExtra. i saw sarah noticing it. but he put an l on mine. and i saw sarah frown. i know she was hoping to procure it for herself. ha ha! she has to cultivate her own donair guy relationship. deva said he should be our brother because our names all sound the same. i wonder how old he is.

by the way, a bus shmucked us.

drove s and k out to horseshoe bay and drove back home.

talked to h.

did stuff.

went to bed.

vulnerability

2011-08-21T21:29:00.002-07:00

i have had a great weekend and i've barely left my house.

friday night i went to the temple. i didn't feel like going but i needed to go. i felt restless, almost angry, unsatisfied, bored, unfulfilled, stagnant blocked, un-spiritual, cloudy. i was going with yumi, the primary president and it ended up that leilani, our secretary and her aunt our relief society president, came too.

yumi drove us all in her mini van. i sat in the back with leilani and we chatted. she noticed that my hair was different and i told her about my toilet paper roll experiment. "so you can tell it's different?" i asked her. i thought it might end up looking the same or different only to me. "yes." she said scanning it with her eyes, "it looks nice." i told them how i did it. yumi laughed about the toilet paper rolls. i laughed too. "you can only do it once because they get wet." i told them.

so we drove and chatted. and made it to the temple in plenty of time. i got ready quickly and sat in the chapel. i opened a bible and began to read randomly in psalms. i read for a while and then i thought of a scripture i wanted to read. i knew it was in ezekiel but i couldn't find it. just as i discovered it it was time to go in.

i struggled with sleepiness as usual. i've given up on that. i think it's just part of my mortality. i get sleepy when the lights go out and when i watch something i've seen over and over. i feel it is enough that i just struggle with the sleepiness--that that is acceptable to God. maybe one day i won't be sleepy. maybe i always will be. it doesn't really matter.

i saw something differently. i understood something a little better. that's the good thing. the good thing is how i feel in the celestial room afterwards. how i feel in my life after a session in the temple. and i feel better. i feel stronger. i feel clearer. i feel lighter. that's the good thing.

we were in the last session of the night and we were cleaning the temple after. i felt so giddy as i changed into my flattering white pants and white top with white no-slip socks. i felt so happy. i couldn't stop smiling from ear to ear at all the people i was cleaning with. i was paired with melissa and we had to clean two bathrooms. it was simple and over so fast. it felt so special to be there cleaning God's house. i can't explain it.

on the way home i couldn't stop talking. the words and the questions and the stories kept bubbling out of me like spring of water from the ground. i felt happy. hours before i had been feeling miserable.

i spent all of saturday in my pjs on the couch. mostly i was working to finish the ceremony part of eryn's wedding but i took a break to watch two episodes of expedition impossible. i love the team no limits so much. they make the whole show. so much heart. i love all that heart. i'm totally in love with jeff. i don't care about his looks, not that he looks bad, but i love love love the way he is. i love the way he cares and leads. i love his spirit. i love the way he's so positive and supportive of everyone. he builds everyone up. i love that. i super love it. it's what i loved about steve nash in the 2000 summer olympics. if i ever meet a guy like that i'd swallow them whole with love. i love that there are men like that out in the world. love. love it.

after seven thirty at night i felt burn out coming on so i put the computer down and went to the kitchen for some creative rejuvenation. i made bethany's yummy salad. mine wasn't quite as yummy as hers but it was pretty yummy. seriously bethany's yummy salad is one of the best salads ever. some salads are made by one or two extremely good ingredients--stars of the show, if you will. yummy salad is a salad of all stars.

i posted kleowsky ceremony just after midnight and then i started watching ted talks and i stayed up until quarter to 3. i really have to stop doing that. but anyways i found a talk by brene brown on vulnerability. if you want to watch it--here it is.

i thought about it as i got up to go the bathroom and then to bed. i had lots of thoughts and an insight. she talks about shame and connection. how shame is about not feeling worthy of love and connection. and then i understood something that had stumped me for some time. i feel shame when someone i love, someone i'm vulnerable with and trust with the true me, when that person treats me badly in front of someone else. i feel so ashamed when that happens. if someone who i love treats me badly it's almost like i'd rather hide it and not let anyone know that. but i never understood why. it doesn't make much sense. the person treating me badly should feel bad, not me. but last night i realized that i'm ashamed because i fear that the truth is that i'm unworthy of love and i'm ashamed for someone else to know that, to see that. it's like i want people to think i'm lovable but somewhere inside me, i know it's not true and when someone treats me badly then my un-lovability is revealed.

crazy. i know i'm worthy of love. i know i'm lovable. but i guess i don't know it on all levels and on all parts. i might believe that there are parts of me that are not lovable. brene says that the key to connecting to others is being vulnerable. in having the courage to be seen. she says "The root of the word courage is cor—the Latin word for heart. In one of its earliest forms, the word courage had a very different definition than it does today. Courage originally meant “To speak one’s mind by telling all one’s heart.” i got that from her blog which of course i then searched out. it's full of good stuff. the kind of stuff i eat up. the kind of stuff that when i learn about it, think about it, have ideas about it, makes me feel alive.

i realize that i hide myself in so many different ways. i tuck away the parts i think no one will love and i shove the lovable parts out into the spotlight. i think during different times of my life i have been more courageous than others. life sometimes sends me diving for cover. embracing vulnerability was what my poem nude was all about.

Nude

i want to be a nudist--
a maple in winter weather
shake off lusty leaves
yellow-lime pools at my feet.
i want to reach bare arms to heavy slate skies
let biting rains drench
and wild winds bow and quiver
and be stark
until the snow.

i want to shed my skin
like mandrin peels
and sit plump
in God's palm.

i don't want people to see the shape of my stomach. i don't want people to notice the hairs on my chin or the ugliness of my feet and the cracks on my heels. i don't want people to see me sleeping with my mouth open and snoring. i don't anyone to see the messy way i wolf down a donair. i want to hide the fact that i perpetually have dishes in the sink, some that are moldy. and that i leave emptying the litter box until the last possible moment. that i am sometimes lonely. that i sometimes don't know what to do or what to say or how to act. that i am sometimes needy for approval and praise because i worry about being good enough.

i want them to see the parts of me i like. the colour of my eyes, the magical wilderness of my hair. my lips and my fingers. i want them to see my thoughts and my intelligence. my cheerfulness and my independence. my uniqueness. my empathy. my talents and skills. my wit and my humour. my art.

but good and bad, both are me. all is worthy of love. all together, the total package--that's beautiful. i am beautiful because i am. because i am God's child. he created me. he loves me. all of me. he has infinite tenderness and care for me just the way i am. and he has every confidence in what i can become. i'd like to thank brene brown for reminding me of the power of vulnerability. bringing it back into focus for me and allowing me to take a look at myself and where i am.

and being vulnerable gives me power to create and to be more creative. brene interviewed an author named gretchen rubin and this is the part i especially liked from her answers:

Is perfectionism an issue for you? If so, what’s one of your strategies for managing it?I remind myself, "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good." (Cribbed from Voltaire.) A twenty-minute walk that I do is better than the four-mile run that I don't do. The imperfect book that gets published is better than the perfect book that never leaves my computer. The dinner party of take-out Chinese food is better than the elegant dinner that I never host.

such goodness. so true. gretchen also said "the days are long but the years are short." amen to that. so my mind is so full of goodness and thoughts and ideas. thoughts that if i don 't catch on to them and pin them down they may fly away. i love that kind of fullness. i'm so grateful. such a good weekend.

2011-08-19T16:54:00.000-07:00

last week i went through a stage. it was the 'new and innovative braid' stage. my challenge was to find a new braid hair do for each day i didn't wash my hair.

day one:

no i don't really have a splash of green in my irises.

i feel this pic is a bit dorky but i'm proud to reveal that i do recycle on occasion.

day 2: i didn't get a good pic of. it was a braid twisty bun combo.

day 3: you can't tell but--milk maid braids.

then i was done.

today i came home and had a shower because i'm going to the temple tonight for a session and then joining the cleaning crew. in the shower i had a moment of truth. i've been grumpy and unhappy all day. irritable. i want a change. i'm bored with my life. i got out of the shower and proceeded to roll my hair into cut up toilet paper rolls--using the rolls as curlers. sometimes when i need change the first place it shows up is in my hair behaviors.

sensitive

2011-08-14T14:45:00.000-07:00

i'm senseetive. my skin is doing things it shouldn't. like it shouldn't break out in eczema in various cracks and crevices and it shouldn't turn green when i wear a bracelet that i've had for a couple of years. it should be saving it's energy for looking young and fresh. it should be plumping up wrinkle lines. that's what it should be doing.

yesterday i was at playland all day having fun times with my friend theresa. i went to pick her up at her new house just around 10am. she gave me a short tour and i said hi and bye to brad and the dogs and then we left. theresa wanted some sun so she was clad only in a tank top and shorts sans sun screen. "i want some colour." she would mutter repeatedly while rocking back and forth. whatever. so we stopped at tim hortons for a breakfast sandwich and a toasted bagel or whathaveyou. really hit the spot.

i parked up the hill on a residential side street and we walked down to the playland gate. it was a bit of a chilly day--never hot but sometimes sunny. "what ride are we going to do first?" i asked theresa with excitement. "i don't know. i don't plan it out like you do." "i don't plan it out!" i retorted, "but we have to make a decision or we'll never go on any ride." so we chose--beach party. we went on to many rides and many laughs and lots of talks.

there's a new ride at playland called atmosfear. it's a swing ride that goes very very high (highest ride at playland) and very fast (60 or 70 km/h i think). theresa was excited about it and i was nervous. "it's so high." i'd start. "you're going." she'd say as firmly as she could. "you only have one out and that's the coaster." "you can't take such a hard line with me." i'd object. we decided to do it just before we stopped for lunch. funny thing happened. once on the ride i was less scared and theresa was super scared. like frozen in fear scared. "i can see your house from here" i joked. she responded in bursts of staccato, "laura! no!"

we ate at the white spot. they wouldn't let us have a cup of water. you had to pay the same as pop just for the cup. they had these tiny sacrament cups and a water cooler. so i opted for that and then just filled up my pop cup later on. lame-ohs. we made up stories about the people around us and talked a lot.

we went on a lot more rides. laughed a lot. talked a lot. i got a grape sno cone that totally fufullied all my wants and needs. theresa got mini doughnuts. we decided to do the atmosfear again. theresa surveyed people in the line about the ride. she tried to convince them all that it was scarey. no one really believed. the second time up she was less scared but still really scared. she started talking like a person with ocd which made us laugh. it was freezing up there in the atmosfear.

she was turned away from the kids fun house. "it's only for kids" said the boy in charge. "but parents go on it." objected theresa. "but they are parents." reasoned the boy. we walked away and she was dejected. i was turned away from the hells gate ride because of the new no flip flop rule. we sat on opposite sides of the pirate ship and took pics of each other. we went on the enterprise for our last ride and made friends with the two little boys in front of us in line. they were so exuberant. their favourite ride was the atmosfear . i outed theresa as a chicken on that one. hehe. the enterprise was their 3rd fave and they challenged us to do it with no hands which i did but theresa gave in mid ride.

we ended the day with some mini doughnuts and a slow walk back to the car. theresa saw a guy walking a pug and literally ran to catch up to him to have a pug talk. pug owners. meh.

today i taught the primary kids about modesty while wearing a dress that bounces up to reveal my garments while i walk. oh the irony--the hypocrisy. i put their modesty pics up on the wall outside the primary. some of them were so hilarious.

the long 3 hours

2011-08-13T02:09:00.000-07:00

i'd like everyone to know that i finally have my favourite toothpaste again. i dutifully finished off my plain mint paste, which you should know takes a very long time when one lives alone.....and when one only brushes once a month--however i brush more often than that so mine went a bit faster. the point is, i have a full tube of cinnamon crest in my purse. small mercies.

i am one of those people trapped by their homes. sometimes my home seems like a jail to me and it's a prison of my own making. i just can't seem to be as productive as i'd like in the walls of my own home but if i change locations things change. that's why i spent my whole summer semester at ubc in the park across the street under that tree with my sun hat occasionally cheering puma around his park and occasionally visiting the honey pot. and that's why i did a lot of school work actually at school. when one is prone to home paralysis one needs coping mechanisms. maybe this is why i have not been blessed with a family of my own. who knows.

what i do know is that i had to leave the house last night and so i rushed off to the movies only to find that my movie was sold out. i made the rash decision to wait for the next which was 3 hours later. it was hard to while the time away. i could be editing pics right now i told myself ruefully. to while the time away i got a frozen yogurt. that took 5 minutes off the clock. then i decided to drive to ironwood to go shopping. all that interested me was reitmans and it was not interesting. then i bought some rj's at london drugs and my coconut milk conditioner because it was on sale.

only an hour had passed. i drove down to the dike, parked my car in an empty parking lot across the street and got out. the moon was big on the horizen and full and mount baker faded off into the background. i stood looking at the water for a time but then a car drove by and the guy looked at me all dirty like from his side view mirror. out right leered. i decided to go back to my car and when i turned to cross the street behind his car he slowed down to a stop. i didn't watch to see what he would do, but marched straight to my car. creepy man. i drove a bit and sat watching the water for a while and eating my rj's. there was a man fishing. the sun was setting. an otter swam by.

i left. it was 9. i went back. i asked for pepperoni pizza at pizza pizza and they didn't have any--again. so i got poutine at new york fries even though i didn't want it. the boy gave me a cuppa water and said to tell him if i needed more. i chugged it right there and then and asked for more. "sorry, i'm very thirsty." i said lamely. "it was a very warm day." he said soothingly--not looking at me. i couldn't waste any more time. it was 9:11. maybe the theatre would be empty. i tried. the girl told me to come back in an hour. i ate my poutine on the front steps and hungrily texted people and re-watched the silly videos i've done on my phone. my battery was dying.

two yutes were smoking near me. i went to my car and that's when i saw the squamish paper that elicia or heather left in my car. i looked through it and found a sudoku and that's what i did until it was time to go in. by the time the movie started i was totally stumped.

the movie was 'the help'. so good. i loved it. powerful, moving and courageous. i want to do good courageous things. but right now i'll have to appease myself by sleeping.

2011-08-06T13:08:00.115-07:00

i just posted a set of chowkly (you like?) bride prep morning on my photoblog. i have a lot of emotions right now. these are amongst my favourite and maybe strongest pics of the whole event. i feel good about them. i got the tenders towards them. i've spent long hours--early, early mornings and late late nights, whole days, whole weekends. i've tried to spend the time to do them the best way i know how. my home is a shambles because i do nothing else but work on photos. i don't want to brag but it's past 3:30 pm and i have only eaten a freezie today. obviously i need a touch more balance. i know this but i also feel the urgency to get them done.

i really wanted to post them like a storyboard. like i see on real photographer's blogs. i tried all morning to accomplish this. i researched and downloaded and bought different things but in the end i gave up. i just don't have it in me to figure it out and i realize that the storyboard thing is more about me and my pride in how i present them. so i let it go.

i don't know if anybody cares about this. i feel like the land of time and toil between the actual shoot and the presenting of the body of work is not very well understood. perhaps the pro photogs know how to do it faster and more efficiently and perhaps that's something i'll learn over time along with a lot of other things i just don't know yet.

i'm learning a lot about myself and my personal creative process. like i know it's very easy for me lose all time and space and end up out of balance and washed up on the beach of life like a shipwreck survivor. and that i need to do things to rejuvenate my creative spirit or i'll burn out big time. and that my creative spirit has it's own pace. and that i am stubborn about what i want and the way i want it. actually realized that long ago when making a quilt with gram. also i shouldn't take myself so seriously.

also bethany is egg.

additionally amy ate a duck.

i have no one to unleash my cabin fever on. i'm going to go clean my kitchen--i think it will rejuvenate my spirit.

topsy--

2011-08-03T21:30:00.000-07:00

4 confessions:

1. my sleeping is all mixed up. what else is new. i woke up at 9pm and rolled into the living room with a bowl of frozen cherries.

2. lately what i like to do is undress and discard my clothes in a pile on the floor. in the exact spot i happened to be standing when shedding. it's what i like to do.

3. i've started using my photography blog again.

4. i had to take a small hiatus from the wedding pics to do the baby-bump ones of my friend tanya who is due tomorrow. i think the small hiatus was good because i started back on eryn's photos yesterday and i felt all fresh and good with a new burst of energy and a new appreciation for the pics--my picture babies. in fact i'm going to go work on them right NOW.

--turvy.

wowee

2011-07-31T14:41:00.002-07:00

i love love loved this.

2011-07-28T14:47:00.000-07:00

i must relate a detail about my physical appearance with every post. it's not a choice. it's a requirement. so in compliance with said requirement you must know that today i had a hippy hair-do. to achieve this hippy hair style, one must tuck one's long hair behind one's ears and then pin it there. voila--hippy hair. it's good if one's hair is a little fuzzy too. = hippyhairhappiness. it's a basic foundation do for hippies. well documented too. i'm surprised andrea doesn't wear her hair like this. :)

i want to buy a tent. i'm researching tents. it will be my first home buying experience. good tents are not cheap. when i buy my tent i'm going to celebrate by camping in my back yard.

these days as soon as i get home i peel off my various clothing items and leave them in piles on the floor wherever i might be and climb into my pjs. i'm so tired and i'm so glad a long weekend is coming up. i know exactly what i am going to do this weekend. i know exactly what i'm going to devote this weekend to. it's for me to know and you to find out.

2011-07-28T00:36:00.000-07:00

when karey was here end of april, beginning of may, oh yeah that's right--my BIRTHDAY (37 years young folks), she was watching this cheese and crackers show all the time on her little pet portable dvd player. heartlands. well i'm watching it now too. totally sucked in to it but at least it wasn't vicki who convinced me to watch it if you know what i mean karey, and i think you do.

i stayed up all night watching it but i could because i worked the social today. it wasn't my turn but i did it for lisa. she doesn't really like doing the socials but i do. i like it. so i slept in until quarter to 12 or something like that. barely did anything before work but get ready for work.

today was baking day. we made fudgy brownies with a peanut butter 'frosting', ie, peanut butter, chocolate and rice krispies. i think the quote-unquote frosting may be thicker than the brownies. but we'll just have to accept them for who they are.

i was working the social with my pal lisa m. and i told her i liked her just the way she was and then i started crooning billy joel 'just they way you are' to her. tender moments aside we made an awesome summer-time meal--pesto chicken salad sandwiches in kaiser buns (pesto, parm, feta, lemon juice, mayo and craisins), fruit salad (doesn't watermelon smell like a fresh blue lake just as you're tip toeing in?) and roasted potato salad--it's only the best potato salad evah. let me tell you about it. you cut up bacon and fry it in a pan with some water, then you toss your baby potatoes (supposed to be russet but i didn't use russet) in the bacon grease and salt and pepper and roast them in the oven. then all you do after they are cooled--toss in some old fashioned grainy dijon, mayo, pickles and i put in green onion too. it's a michael smith recipe and it.is.good.

i had seconds of fruit and potato salads. please note that each item of the meal is salad related. please also note that i was so full i had to be rolled out the door. we used paper plates because we're lazy and it's summer time and a summer meal.

so we went to garry point for ice cream and bocce ball. one of the guys i was driving spent the whole trip telling me about how he has the second sight and how he has deja vu 24/7. "most people just have it a couple of minutes and it freaks them out. i have it 24/7!", he boasted. "trippy." i agreed.

lisa and i were very excited about the ice cream especially when we realized that you could get two different flavours even though it was a small. i got coconut and hazelnut. she got coconut and hedgehog. i know--not much different. we were estatic and almost in a fanatical fervor about the coconut and then we laughed at ourselves. we played bocce and lost badly to the boys. whatevs.

last night i was so thirsty i ate all the rest of my welch's freezies, which may or may not have been 6. don't judge me palies.

2011-07-27T13:12:00.000-07:00

some days i feel like i can do anything. other days i feel like i can do nothing. know what i mean?

what i did

2011-07-25T21:59:00.000-07:00

what i did was pull my hair up into a ponytail fountaining from my crown. then i wrapped the ponytail tightly around itself and pinned it. that's what i did. and i did it on a whim.

what i did was order pizza from panago. i tried the new butter chicken one. i don't know. it's not very butter chicken-y to me.

what i did was back my car full of monday groceries so close to the garage door that it was a hair's whisper from contact.

what i did was take tall, goofy, childlike, mostly unintelligable, so and so shopping with me. a couple of times i told myself, "laura, god loves soandso. soandso is his child." to curb any impatience and unkindness that might stem from me. looking back it was a humerous experience--totally innocent. i ought to think like that more often.

what i did was change into my pahjijis as soon as i got home from work.

what i did was watch we are marshall. had to quickly sniff back a few tears before opening the door to the pizza guy.

what i did was lay the nectarine pit on the carpet beside the couch.

feeear not, though the enemy deride, cooooourage, for the lord is on thy side.

2011-07-24T23:30:00.000-07:00

i wore my sundress with a red shirt today. when i was little and we lived in terrace, i befriended a lady who lived across the street. i was always befriending adults because, hello i'm a middle child--i craved attention. i think her name might have been lola. they had a huge boat in their driveway that her husband was always working on. once lola promised to buy me a sundress but for some reason she never did. i have been longing for a sundress ever since. now i long no longer.

it was the harker's last sunday with us. i'll miss them. i'll miss tami and her enthusiasticness (yes i know the right word is enthusiasm, but enthusiasticness seems to fit better). i'll miss brother harker and his giant sweet tarts. i'll miss david--he's sweet and earnest. i'll miss paul and his incorigable, boyish, lovability. i'll miss daniel, so sweet and so happy to ever be picked. i'll miss shaelyn (sp), such an individual, so crazy with her hair. happy trails harkers. here's to your year of adventure.

i had to do a short bit on the salt lake temple for yumi's sharing time and i totally forgot about it until one of the talks on the pioneers in sacrament meeting. so i had to wing it, but i think it went alright. at least we had ancestors who helped to build it that i could draw on. and, i told the kids, my mom and dad were married there and the day before i went on my mission, my mom and i went there together.

and after doing this with the jr. primary i was thinking about temples and how amazingly beautiful they are and how the people who have built them put so much dedication, craftsmanship and excellence into them not to mention sacrifice. and i was thinking that one thing that makes them so holy to us is that whole hearts and souls go into creating them because it is god's house and we want to give him a good gift. give him our devotion and all our love and put it into the work of our hands. and that god then blesses us back by consecrating our offering with his presence in that house and that we can go there to meet him and feel him near and be endowed with power and to have a refuge from the storm etc.

and i want to be more like that--put all my love and devotion for god into the work of my hands and heart. to give him a good gift because i love him.

after church i came home and ate a quarter of my watermelon and curled up on the lazy boy and listened to the rest of the talk that i started listening to while i was getting ready for church. i'm still recovering or something because exhaustion keeps flowing over me like a rip tide and carrying me out to the sea of unconsciousness. i didnt' sleep long because brother roeder came to home teach me. but after he left it wasn't long before i fell asleep again in the middle of something i was doing. when i woke up i continued editing photos. around 5 or 6 i gradually became aware that i was ravenously hungry. after all, i had only eaten a quarter of a watermelon all day. it's funny that i didn't notice my hunger before because once i did, i was overcome by it, felt weak and shaky and everything. i made some tortellini and ate some yogurt while i waited. welch's grape freezies for dessert.

saturday morning i awoke at 7am on heather's couch cushions on her living room floor. there was banging and i wasn't sure if it was heather or not. if it was heather then i should get up. it wasn't her, but by the time i knew that i was awake.

i lay in bed for a while, just slowly waking up and then i read in ether. and wrote a blog post about heather's sneeze. at 8:30 heather got up. we had a lazy morning. she had a shower and then went out to buy a towel so i could have a shower and i made us buckwheat pancakes and talked to karey on the phone. karey incredibly rebuked me for eating an apple while talking to her. this from the person who always eats snacks while talking to me. the gall. the nerve.

we went out and did some errands that were needful, like finding the greyhound station, getting h some plate/bowl/mug set from london drugs and the very painful errand of purchasing a bed. the brick has heavenly memory foam pillows on their beds. i want one. but i don't want to pay a hundred bucks for them.

when we got back the missionaries came over. they're all gung ho for new people. squamish has a very small branch. one of the elders is in the branch presidency. h thought one of them was slow at first because he talked slow. i find this funny. h has to shed her torontonian pace and get with small town bc.

after the elders left we went to fat burger. h once again suggested wendy's but i put my foot down. i wanted to try fat burger. h choked on her own spit when she saw how much my meal came to. ok, it was expensive for a burger. "i'm never coming here again." vowed h. good burger though. as we ate our burgers we reflected on how many burgers we've had lately and made a pact to not eat another burger for a whole month.

then we waddled up to shannon falls, which seem way more spectacular to me than the time i went there with barb and karey. what is also spectacular is the chief and i cannot wait to climb it.

we meandered around the falls and talked and then i took heather home and set off for home myself. on the way up one of the many steep hills that lead to heather's house we passed some girls sitting at a table on the side of the road. "fweeeeeezies for sale! fweeeeeezies for sale!" so cute. on the way back down the hill i stopped and bought a red one even though i was not hungry and even though it cost a dollar. kids with stands in the summer need to be supported.

the drive back home was lovely. i sang. at one point i sang the same verse and chorus of let us all press on 5 or 6 times, which i enjoyed. it only took me 45 mintues to get to the lions gate but it took forever to get over it and through down town. in fact 45 minutes more to get home.

i wish to now fulfill my need for sleep. i believe in making wishes reality.

l and h go to the temple. l points out many dogwood motifs to h. h manages to break sound barriers

2011-07-23T09:25:00.000-07:00

wednesday heather met me at my work at the end of the day. it was the day i made blueberry clafoutis at work. don't know what clafoutis is? too bad bub. look it up, as i used to say to the twins.

heather and i went to richmond centre to buy a gift for niks and her bouncingbabyboy, but first i took back approximately 5 items of clothing that i purchased from old navy and then had buyer's remorse the very next day. (hold the phone. somebody is bbq-ing. who bbqs at 9:06 in the morning??). i got a nice chunk o change back too. as we walked away h says "hey we forgot to look at the baby clothes!" for some reason i was loath to turn around and go back. so we went on our way. after doing a full circle of the mall and only finding receiving blankets we were back at old navy and right away found two cute lion onesies. please remember that i very much heart the onesie.

back at home we got ready to go to the temple and drove out to langley. we ate at wendy's because h has not eaten at wendy's in her whole long 2.5 years of exile in ontario, ie. the heartland, aka the centre of things. h's first suggestion is quite often wendy's because of this 2.5 year wendy's fast. dave thomas would be pleased. rest in peace dave.

it was h's first time to our temple. one of the things i love about having our own temple is that i have never once gone and not seen someone that i knew. does that sentence even make sence?? this time it was the burgesses whom heather knows as well. in the chapel heather waved wildly to them and they reservedly but pleased, waved back.

now we get to the crux of the story. we were in a session. it was solemn. it was very very quiet. i was, as usual trying hard not to be sleepy. suddenly a clap of thunder echos through the room bouncing off of every wall. now, very wide awake, as i had been rocked to my very foundation by the noise, i look over at heather sitting beside me and am aware that this sound came from her and this sound was in fact a sneeze. after getting control of the silent laughter that shakes your body, i managed to whisper to her "you couldn't transfer it?". please see this post about heather's transfer of sneezes. no she could not transfer. after a while the sound stopped bouncing off the walls and we continued with our worship.

in the white quiet stillness of the celestial room i felt a soft touch on my elbo. it was sister burgess. her and brother burgess stopped for a whispered hello. they asked about mom and dad of course. it was nice to see them. h and i were the last to go. it was past 9 when we walked outside and the temple was glowing in the just darkened sky.

2011-07-23T00:17:00.000-07:00

i'm in squamish. heather just went to bed. i felt like i had a lot to write about but now my mind is blank. let's start with how bushed i've been lately. 3 days out of 5 this week i have had to go to early morning work sites. yesterday and today i wasn't training. i was covering a shift and working my buns off. like a dog. a dog with buns of steel. hu? anyways this site i was covering at-- is a really big office and i had to do the floors. vacuum, sweep and mop. let me tell you it was like a two hour work out. i don't want to brag or anything but i rocked those floors. each morning i would get up, pee, brush my teeth, get dressed, feed the cats, grab my make-up bag and leave. wild hair--didn't care.

yesterday i got home just after 2 to see heather sitting on the ground outside my door. i did leave her the keys but they are tricky to work so she gave up and had a sit down outside my door. we watched something together and then i had a 3 hour nap that felt like 2 minutes.

on the way to see nikki, james and newbabyspence we stopped at konichiwa to pick up some sushi. i got a yam roll, a beef teriyaki roll and of course, gyoza. we took the low road and the low road as some irregularities in the surface of the said road, that may or may not have caused my soy sauce to rise up in the air and splash down the sides of my jeans which may or may not have caused me to slightly scream but not slow down in any way.

nikki and james live in the top half of a house in north east van and not in a warehouse. we pulled up just before they pulled up and we met them as they were backing into their back driveway. james parked so close to the fence that he had to get out the passenger side. at the bottom of their back stairs was a wild effusion of unkempt flowers, which i liked.

we had a nice visit. newbabyspence is super cute. he has the cutest almond eyes. i got to hold him quite a bit because he was fussy and h panicked and passed him off to me. i managed to settle him down with the ol' bum pat rhythm and eventually the hang over my arm football hold which he seemed to particularly enjoy. my arms tired quickly though. moms should have the buffest arms. speaking of moms nikki was a calm peaceful mom. motherhood sits well on her and h and i noticed.

suddenly it was already 9 and we left.

today was my early day and since i worked early i was off extra early as in 12:30. today was the last day of our current menu. today i had a bokchoi salad and it was delish.

today when i got home heather was not sitting on the ground outside my door. today i was extra loopy due to lack of sleep. the loopiest. so heather drove. first we stopped at best buy so she could pick up a tv show or something and i could pick up a cordless mouse. the mouse i have now is the worst. i picked out a stylish red one with a design on it. it was on sale for 24 buckeroos. but it scanned as 34. so it follows that i got it for 14. nice eh? unbeknownst to me, i left my laptop at home, backed in it's cute little bag. grrr to that. i had plans! i was going to edit late at night and early in the morning and while we watched so you think you can dance, etc.

heather was hungry. i wasn't. but she was. let's just be clear on that. so since there was no wendy's on the way we racked our brains. and it all came down to the donair. yes. yes we did. we went there on tuesday night and friday afternoon. it was a little embarrassing actually. their new interac machine was down so i ran next door to the 7/11 to get some cash. when i got back cutie said "so laura, you're all ready to go?" "what?" i said like a dummy. he repeated himself and i said yes and paid and heather and i left and as we left i said out of the corner of my mouth to heather "how does he know my name?" he sneakily asked heather when i was gone if my name was michelle and she said no, it was laura. sneaky hey? that cutie donair guy with his little boy smiles. he's kicking it up a notch.

so then we wolfed them down as we drove in a manner that no one should ever have to witness, and drove on to squamish. beautiful squamish and rothko waiting for heather's loves and snuggles.

i thought i was fine but once here i laid my head down and realized how desperately tired i was. i slept for an hour and 45 in h's dark bedroom on h's deluxe air mattress. she tried to wake me up after 1 hour. i vaguely recall this. apparently i asked for half an hour more. she gave me 45.

so you think you can dance was watched despite the antics of the computer. what a good show. it's my summer show. thanks to barb for getting me hooked even though i never once came to watch it with her and amy and fox.

ok. i've rambled hard and long. i'm going to get some cushions together and have a snoozeroo and i don't have to get up at any hour that has anything to do with the number between 4 and 6. ha.le.lu.ya.

2011-07-19T22:02:00.000-07:00

h is back in town. she's chit chatting to nikki right now as i type. i'm sitting here hydra-dew mask on cheeks thinking about my day.

cutie donair guy was all smiles and chit chat when we stopped in this afternoon. i love donairs and they love me. night.

2011-07-19T07:25:00.000-07:00

today is 'country day' at work. it's a day i invented. on country day one dresses country style and one listens to country music all day long. basically i just want to wear my cowboy hat. we'll see how many people comply to my directionals.

i'm very disappointed in my new bamboo bath scrubby.

a week or two ago i went to the beach on a whim. i thought i just might take a dip. it was in the evening and i put on my suit and just pulled my jean capris over my bottoms and just wore my top as a top if you know what i'm saying. at the beach everything goes. well once i got there it was quite chilly and no one was swimming so i stayed on my blankie and read and watched the sunset. on my way home i was thinking about how i had to have a shower but that i needed a new bath scrubby. i had been without a bath scrubby for far too long and i didn't want to have one more shower without one. so i decided to stop at shoppers on my way home. it was closed. safeway was open. so i risked it and went in in my bathing suit top. i felt so embarrassed. it's not like my stomach was showing or anything, but it was because i was wearing it like a top. i felt like people were purposely averting their eyes. to make matters worse, there was only one kind of bath scrubby--the bamboo one, and i didn't know if it would work out but i had to get it now that i had breached safeway in my suit. i also bought some ice cream. how weird for some woman to come in, in her bathing suit top, and she proceeds to buy ice cream and a bath scrubby. i'm avoiding safeway for a while.

and now the said scrubby does not perform well=mortification for nothing.

on the brighter side i wear a cowboy hat to work today. i might even line dance while i'm making butternut squarsh soup.

efusions

2011-07-18T14:52:00.001-07:00

start early-- off early--that's my day today. i came home feeling very agitated--bugged. somethings really bug me. like i felt bugged way down past the epidermis and into the platelets. pumped straight to the heart. it's ebbing now and i'm ready to say that i had an over-reaction. what interests me is why? why was that particular stimulus (involving recycling bins being left in the cargo van, it so happens) so potent, so virulent? i don't know. it just bugged me and bugged me deep. i guess i'm allowed to be bugged once in a while.

last friday i did a quickie at the sharing farm in the morning first thing. the last people to be there were una and i three weeks before. we had staked the snap peas and tomato plants. we didn't know how to stake. we made it up as we went along. at that time the plants were barely mid calf high. as we approached our garden plot last friday morning i gasped. it was a totally different garden! a wild amount of growth had occurred. the snap peas were now chest high. full of flowers and peas and totally curled around our bamboo stakes. it was awesome. i can't tell you how exciting the snap peas were for me. i want to grow some of my own next year. i just think it's so cool and miraculous how they grow. how their curly tendrils reach out and grab a hold of something and climb up. i loved how bushy and wild and beautiful they were. meanwhile the beans a row over had reached over and completely wrapped itself around the pole all the way to the top.

i like gardening. who knew it would happen to me?

my hair is like snap pea bushes. it's wild and bushy and the small curls reach out and curl around any other curl it can fuse on to.

one more day and lisa will be back at work and i'll be glad.

healthy, wealthy and wise

2011-07-18T05:25:00.001-07:00

i went to bed at 7:30 last night. i woke up this morning at quarter to 5 from a dream. i was with my new husband and it was christmas time. everything was very busy and many projects were on the go. in every room of the house somebody was doing something. at one point he called me to come see him and reprimanded me on something i did or did not do, at which point i had the "you are not my dad you are my husband" talk with him. haha. later i was stirring something in a pot and amy was playing something on the piano and singing and he walked by and started singing in harmony with her which melted my heart. "she composes too." i bragged. then we were laying in a field with long grasses and he was singing fiddler on the roof songs to me which made me laugh. it was our moment in the busy day--and it was quickly over when someone needed me for some sauce or other.

drip drip drip drop little april showers

2011-07-16T09:36:00.000-07:00

it's raining. don't care. sometimes all that matters is sleeping and waking because you've slept enough. i've had a lot early mornings and late nights lately. they take a toll. elicia and bethany jnr stayed over yesterday. spent the night, as karey would say. we were going to watch a movie but by 7:30 i was wondering how i was going to stay in the land of the living long enough. sure enough as soon as we started it, i was fighting to stay awake. not long after it started elicia went to go put junior down and i took the chance to succumb to the sweet drug of sleep. leesh came out at 10:30 appologetic--bethany took too long going to sleep and she was just going to go to bed. i was grateful to go back to sleep myself but then i got my second wind, watched the elimination round of so you think you can dance--sad. i really liked her. and rookie blue, then the drug hit me like a wall again and i curled up on the lazyboy love seat and slept like a baby...a snoring baby. this morning i woke up with a purring cat on my hip and a pinched ear and the drug slowly drifting from my body as the sound of rain registered on my consciousness.

a lot of old friends have been popping up out the snow like daisies lately. and by lately i mean this last week. which also happened to be the week i put on a dance, did one and a half photo shoots, covered then trained on an early morning job site for dave and lisa who are away and other such things. because life happens all at once and nothingness can be a long drawn out vacuum. so anyways busy and happy week--that's my point. heather arrived thursday morning. i took some of my many overtime hours to pick her up from the airport. of course it was raining. "welcome back to vancouver!" i cheerily greeted, gesturing to our vancouver drizzle. heather got into my car and said "your car smells the same! and your windshield wiper still doesn't work! somethings never change." ( that's right everyone else changes and i stay the same. that's the way i feel all the time) "my car smells the same? what does it smell like?" i wondered, hoping it wasn't a bad smell--which it very well could have been. "i don't know, like lip gloss, and lavender" she said.

thursday night we ate at the white spot and wandered chapters. talking talking talking. it felt like heather was never gone. friday morning i dropped her off at budget car rentals at 6am before going to train at my early morning job site. rothko and the kitties had a near showdown earlier that morning.

i was off at 12:30. i came home quickly, left quickly to go pick up tania at evan and esther's. when she got in the car she said "your car, so many memories!" i asked her if it had a smell. she said it was a fruity smell. first we went to the famous 3 dollar threading place where i was only charged 2.50. i think it was a new girl. she was good but threaded slower and so it hurt more. we drove into vancouver to pick up elicia and jr. from yelana's. we drove to a random park and sat on a bench by the tennis courts and talked while bethany played with tennis balls happily.

on our way to drop tania back off we stopped at the mcdonald's in marpole so tania could get a bite to eat. tania was ordering and elicia and jr were in the bathroom and i secured a table by three elderly. i enjoyed listening to their conversation. the man with the portable oxygen tank was questioning the prim lady in the dressy yellow jacket and stylish bob about her scooter. "i can go over 30 kilograms!" she exclaimed. "it's kilometers." one of the men corrected. "i thought i could go all the way to oakridge mall!" she laughed at her foolishness. "you don't want to do that," wheezed the man with the oxygen tube, "you'll run out of juice! now do you have one of those that can turn on a dime?" they thouroughly entertained me while i was waiting. once everyone was there we chatted and bethany played. an older man maybe in his 60s stopped to talk to us. "you gotta keep your eye on that one!" he said to elicia. he said a few more jovial remarks before coming out with this stunner--"so what do we have here, mother and grandmother?" we both just stared at him. i was taking a while to register that this man actually thought i was elicia's mother. her realized his mistake probably by the way we both were just staring at him stunned, "sisters? are you sisters?" "GRANDMOTHER?!" i finally sputtered out. "YOU THINK I'M HER GRANDMOTHER???!" at which point elicia started killing herself laughing. "we're only two years apart!" the man explained something about how when you have grey hair you think everyone has grey hair. i think this story is going to make andrea feel better for being thought katie's mom--but at least they are 7 years apart. so then this guy comes over to me and engages me in a conversation all about the canucks and how he and gretsky and some others would have bought them and everything would have been better yadda yadda. everyone else did their best to not be part of this conversation. when the guy left tania said "you always attract strange people." tell me about it tania.

so we drove out to hamilton to drop tania off. i asked elicia what my car smelled like. "weiners." she said. so elicia. someone was having a fire somewhere outside and the smell was wafting in.

speaking of elicia i better get off this computah and get on with my day. leesh is in the shower and jr. is playing with her tennis ball and stack-em's in front of bambi. i taught bethany how to say no. i'm cool like that. i'm going to get some breakfast.

dead

2011-07-13T22:55:00.001-07:00

that's what i am. longest day ever. today i put on another dance at work. 50's theme. i made sliders. i attempted baked onion rings--fail. root beer floats--victorious! we danced our heads off. 43 people came and i was thinking it would be around 25. meanwhile i'm dead.

a freebie is a freebie and a rubby is a roughie and so on

2011-07-08T16:50:00.001-07:00

it's friday finally. that's the way i feel. this week seemed long and dreary in parts. and my home is dreary. i don't like it right now. drearsville. i don't know--it's just yucky.

today we made french toast at work. kaz and i got in a debate because our menu said french toast, scrambled eggs, and sausages. he thought that was totally outrageous. "it's a lot of egg," i admitted, "but it's not that unusual". kaz could not wrap his head around the concept. he said he changed it. i said "kaz. i am making french toast and scrambled eggs tomorrow and that's final." he doesn't trust me about these things. he had to ask some other people to see what they said. once doing that he begrudgingly allowed that canadians are weird about their eggs. i don't know if this is true. today he had mac and cheese in protest. he missed out on the best french toast i've ever made. i based it loosely on a recipe i saw on pioneer woman. she uses only egg yolks, half and half, sugar, lemon zest and vanilla. i used only egg yolks (you need way more eggs this way--that's the down side), icing sugar, creamo and lemon juice. divine. just saying. i still sprinked brown sugar and cinnamon on top. pioneer woman also makes a 'lish looking berry butter. check it out. i think the french toast cheered me up. sometimes when i get into making something that i enjoy it totally cheers me up.

wednesday i woke up full of the drears. i was tired and in a bad mood. my hair was ick. i was on dishes for lunch. the steam helped plump my hair out. then straight from dishes i was doing the wednesday baking with rob. he's my baking buddy. we were making pizza pretzels. when we started i was still in a bad mood. sometimes when i'm in a bad mood the rain cloud is mostly on the inside and i manage to treat everyone pretty cheerfully but sometimes it escapes out in some shortness and impatience. so anyways i was rolling dough for the pretzels and people kept coming to the snack bar. it bugs. this one guy in particular was pushing my buttons. "idiot." i muttered under my breath and went to help him. when i got back rob asked me if i was in a bad mood. i looked at him in surprise. "is it because i called him an idiot under my breath?" i asked. he hadn't heard that but thought it was funny so for the rest of the day we called people idiots and that actually cheered me up quite a bit. nothing like name calling to cheer the cockles of ones heart. that plus the pizza pretzels turned out really well.

that night i went over to esther's to baby sit while she went to pick up her two sisters in seattle. it was super hot inside of the house what with the heat wave and the pizza in the oven and a day with no windows open. so i decided we would have a pizza picnic outside on the grass and that is what we did. afterwards we washed my car which was completely spattered with bird poo and under that was the dried on bugs from my will's lake road trip and probably some from the vernon road trip too. that plus i haven't washed my car since a couple of years ago when i paid douglas to do it. the rain washes it, ok?

all the kids took turns with the hose. it was the most dangerous when isabel had it--we all got quite wet. it was lots of fun. then we had 'yogurt freezies' and played go-go-stop, life guard, what time is it mr. wolf, and freeze tag. i leaped onto a black knobly thing in the grass with my bare foot during go-go-stop. anything to win go-go-stop, you know?

then we read something like 10 stories and after prying them off this most annoying long game i got them in bed. easy peasy taiwaneesie. then i had a shower and fell asleep on the couch working on photos. esther and tania and other sister came home a little after 12:30. i was pretty groggy. i drove home in a grogg and fell into a deep sleep. in the morning my hair was weird because it was still damp when i fell asleep. the side that i slept on wasn't as curly--more wavy on top except a really tight little curl at my temple and the other side was it's usual curly self. i looked weird. i shrugged it off. una pointed it out and laughed at the tight temple curls. hmph.

anywho, in will's lake i did a photo shoot of bethabee and her rubby-hubby and baby boys. i offered her a freebie or two while i'm doing eryn's weddin. here they are below. and don't you think the water mark she made me is so beautiful? i love it. and hey can you see the tiny flecks of rain? it was raining lightly at this point.

the softest

2011-07-04T23:16:00.000-07:00

i remember once when uncle mel was visiting. at breakfast he remarked exuberantly on our soft water. he said something about it being so soft that he felt like he couldn't get dry. i didn't know exactly what he meant back then. now i do. dear God let me always have soft water pleasepleaseplease--thank you. soft water is delicious. i just had a delicious shower. i never felt totally wet in will's lake communal shower and let me tell you i showered long in search of wetness.

i lost my sunnies in will's lake. they simply disappeared. a reasonable explanation is that mom came and put them in never never land because i didn't put them away. technically they're karey's mom. you put karey's sunglasses in never never land.

speaking of mom i met a new member today who is from trinidad. "my mom and dad are in tobago!" i yelled at him from the kitchen, bursting into their conversation. he nodded calmly, "it's very beautiful there." he said appeasingly. we both went on our ways.

i bought new sunnies today. i like them. they've already pulled out a hair from my head but this is not why i like them.

i also bought a shower gift for my friend tanya. onesies. onesies are so cute. i know it's not wise but i bought some new born onesies--up to 7lbs. there were just too sweet to pass up. i'm doing a pregnancy shoot for tanya next week. yay! but ack! at the same time.

2011-07-04T08:01:00.000-07:00

home and back to real life. sigh. i made such good time yesterday until i hit hope. then it was stop and go traffic until langley. annoying. my time would have been around 5 hours and 45 minutes. but it was 6.5. oh well.

i woke up this morning dreaming about x-men vs vampires. vampires invaded brooklyn. it was intense. :)

later.

ps. i missed one of the sneak peek pics. it is now added to the post below. take a lookiloo.

cholowskleyh sneak peekeroo

2011-07-01T16:44:00.001-07:00

pleased to present...

can't wait to do them all!

yeehaw

2011-07-01T12:02:00.000-07:00

"...not with pennies, dimes nor quarters, but with happy sons and daughters""

2011-06-30T11:45:00.000-07:00

williams lake insists on being cloudy and cool with occasional shower. i really wanted to go swimming when i was here, but i find i'm not that disappointed. today is photo shoot day. a williams lakie photo shoot of the b squared family. should be ready in time for christmas. ha.

speaking of photos, i have some weddin' sneak peeks ready. the problem is internet. i haven't been able to get my laptop hooked up to the worldwideweb. last night we even tried unplugging it from bethany and ben's computer and plugging it into mine. no go. no go. not a go. anyways i'm excited to share them. bethany and i have been working on a watermark too. well bethany has been.

right now the little fam is out on some errands. when they get back the magic begins.

yesterday i experienced the williams lake caribou donair. it was pretty good but of course i still love my donair spot donairs. there's nothing as good as them. after stuffing our faces with donairs bif, blubby and i did some shopping at the sally-ann. bif has an eye for the finds and i'm not too shabby either. we had a whole shopping cart full of stuff for her to try on. we spent a lot of time squirreled away in a corner bordered by an open door, the shopping cart and the change room. i on the folding chair and gus-r-us burbling away in the cart, on the floor, in my lap, on bif's hip. so many good finds. jangling keys. chewed carmex tube. crocheted two toned green ballet slipper with a flowered toe. then with angus in my arms--sodden with sleep, i discovered the fabrics. well they were old sheets, curtains and pillow cases and such. lots of cool stuff that i could make stuff out of in the winter seasons. i had to dump the lump on his mom to delve into the goodness. i went a little crassy. fatima is crassy.

bif makes a mean meatloaf with bbq sauce. we ate it with brown rice, more bbq sauce and a carrot. ben played dr.mario. i liked the frantic hyper music--it describes just what goes on inside me sometimes--cabin fever times.

we watched arranged on netflix. it was really good. i liked it. ben thought he wouldn't like it but he did.

the sun is coming out. i'm going to go read a chapter or two of the iron rod.

2011-06-29T11:44:00.000-07:00

feet are burning, feet are burning, draw near, draw near... i need to walk on oven mitts so as not to burn the floor. that's how hot my feet are. hi. i'm in williams lake. i'm sitting at bethany and ben's computer. beside me is a huge wooden bird cage built by ben. he built it yesterday. inside is a budgie named phillup. bethany just leaned into the mesh and cooed softly to phillup, "you went poo! i'm glad that you went poo!", in the most loving and gentlest of ways. phillup blinked at her his little vibrant aqua chest rapidly rising and falling.

ben named phillup.

i arrived here last night 11ish. the neat thing about driving north in the summer time is the way twighlight lasts for miles and miles. the roads were mostly empty. it was lovely. after the windy parts were over i sailed along, singing my heart out. the evening light was gorgeous. such an amazingly beautiful province we live in. it filled me up with peace and gratitude.

bethany just came out of the shower be-turbaned. "i love my hair now!". basically i don't like to brag, but i knew this would happen.

speaking of showers, their shower tricked me. when i turned on the tap the water came out fast and furious. nice, i thought. and yet the shower was a mere dribble. how do you think that made me feel? well it made me feel like my hair was never fully wet, that's how it made me feel. also it's hard water here. hard water feels sticky. does anyone know what i'm talking about? anyone? when i washed my face my hands skidded stickily across my cheeks instead of gliding smoothly over the surface with the water. it's strange is all i'm saying.

bethany brushes her teeth in the kitchen to avoid the sulfur water in the bathroom.

i won owen over quite easily, not that i'm rad or anything. i'll just say favourite aunt and you know what i'm talking about. smug, pleased, double chin look. angus is proving more difficille. he's warming up to me but at first he was making strange. angus, i documented your birth. i went two nights in a row with no sleep for you. remember when i babysat you? you were perfectly content. remember me? your favourite aunt? we'll keep working on it. sloan used to get mad at me for sitting next to him in his car seat on our road trip to calgary. now he croaks my name over and over every time we skype. not that i'm rad. i'm not saying that i'm rad.

angus has hot meaty man paws. he slaps them down stiffly as he crawls dragging his leg behind him.

ben is getting antsy. he also just lost a bet. just saying is all.

red dress ghetto-like

2011-06-26T16:04:00.000-07:00

so. i know everyone wants to see the wedding pics. well you can't yet... ok, i'll try to get some sneak peeks out soon just to appease and please. the truth is that i've been having some deep down soul struggles and i haven't been able to do anything creative. it's funny how for me being creative is tied to my soul's well being. but it really is. that being said, i wore the red dress today. i woke up and i began to think about primary and was i conducting that sunday and then in the cloudy recesses of my mind i remembered something about stake conference coming soon... sure enough it was today. i missed yesterday's session. "of course you won't go." said the dark girl stretching languidly, "you had a really bad day yesterday. it's too much. just stay home." "of course i will go. it might be exactly what i need." corrected goody two shoes girl. so i got up, showered and ironed the red dress. even standing on my stool looking in the bathroom mirror i couldn't see the full effect so i just went on to church hoping that there was nothing glaringly wrong with the fit.

now i know that what is not so right is the arms. they are tight elastic and too tight. by the time i took it off after church i had a glaring red line bracleting my upper arms. especially uncomfy when my arms are stretched out in front of me in driving position. also the neck is quite open. i constantly felt like i might be exposed with every movement. i need to secure that a little more and then i'll feel better.

so when i got home from church i took some pics. i didn't put my heart into it. they're totally ghetto and the lighting is bad. but you'll get the idea.

outside my bedroom door with edith's bbq. i look totally lopsided here.

my eyes aren't really that colour. you'll see that the ruffles are trimmed with black serging.

hi. i live in the ghetto.

izzy watching me from the kitchen, is embarrassed and pretends not to know me.

you don't know how hard it is to take a full body pic of yourself.

doin' a twirly. it's a good twirly dress.

weird i don't now what happened to the lighting here pic.

clippity

2011-06-22T16:40:00.000-07:00

peony has blossomed.

the house next to mine has been torn down--trees and everything. it totally changes things. the first time i drove right by my house because i didn't recognize it.

the for sale sign for my house is gone. so i guess i have more time to live in plywood house afterall.

red dress came. it's cute. i need to iron it to see if it really does fit like a glove.

over 1300 images to go through.

my house is a big mess. i don't care. (i kind of do care)

two days of itchy wrist syndrome and counting.

i love "so you think you can dance"! everybody is so good! i think my favourite dance so far was the statue one. emotional. emotions are where it's at.

hope you know...

2011-06-16T00:14:00.000-07:00

emotional day today. i worked late but had to drop my car off for an oil change, new battery and apparently some kind of belt replacement, at 10. i thought it would just be an hour or something so i walked down to lisa's mani-pedi place for a pedicure. i got new and fancy shoes--a dressed up flip-flop if you will, for eryn's wedding yesterday and i needed a new look for my grubby feets. this place is all korean women chit-chatting to each other and doing what they do best. i felt sorry for my lady because she had a lot of work to do on my toots. understatement, right? anyways she totally gave her. i mean she went above and beyond and did miraculous work. the weirdest feeling is when they put your feet back in the water and how they slip around because there is no more traction. i cut my baby toe on the faucet. it was weird. she was really kind to me. funny that today when i was feeling so emotionally fragile, all throughout my day i met strangers who were kind and gentle with me. anyways i really like the colour i chose and i got her to do a design on the big toes. i like it.

then since my car was still not done, i went to chapters to look at photography books and to pick up a wedding card. the man at the till was almost tender. it was strange. then i realized that i had not eaten since lunch the day before so i went to eat at the white-spot because it's the right spot. i haven't eaten alone at a restaurant since my stop over in seoul on my way home from japan in 1998. i was feeling brave i guess. it was really busy. surprisingly so. the hostess was pushing me towards sitting at the bar. i hugged my books to my chest and told her i didn't want to sit at the bar. i felt like a little kid. she found me a nice table facing the fire place and beside the window. i read my book and my food came really fast. i had a blueberry shake. i was going to say chocolate but when she listed off blueberry it reminded me of steve and his blueberry pie and i chose that. the only reason i got a shake was because there is a special right now with burgers and shakes but truth be told, the shake was too much.

work called while i was at the white spot. they were out of granola. i told lisa i would just walk to price smart before coming to work and grab some. when i was walking into price smart, i got a call from one of my housing guys who was sick and throwing up. he's a young guy--just out on his own for the first time and i think he missed his mom taking care of him.

it was super windy today and my hair is yucky as a result--not that i minded the wind at all. i like wind a lot.

i'm going to bed.

no title

2011-06-15T01:57:00.000-07:00

listen, i'm really tired and i'm up way too late. but here's a few crowd piciloos of the hockey game on monday and few others.

this one is over exposed but look at the signature. whose do you think it is?

yah i saw the big fake stanley but i had no idea it was a big fake stanley that you wear. that guy took it up a notch. on the way home i sat on the sky train across from a guy who used his strainer for the bowl part of the stanley.

this guy was sitting next to barb.

barb thinks her eye looks fat here. i think what she thinks is dumb in this instance. i like how you can see a skyscraper reflected in her eye.

i made barb take one of me. i had to crop some wrinkles out to tell you the truth.

and today my other new lens came. a very few practice shots with that one.

1. me in my frumpled frizzy hair.

2. archie supremely bored with anything i say or do that is not food related.

3. izzy rightly suspicious of everything i do.

g'nigh......t

new lens day 2

2011-06-13T01:24:00.000-07:00

~~subject~~ victim 1: the long suffering orange chubby

why doesn't she leave me alone? doesn't she know what time it is?

if i ignore her maybe she'll stop bugging me and go to sleep. meanwhile my paw will turn her to jelly with it's unbearable cuteness.

subject 2: the gorgeous niece. we were at maria's baptisim and i had no room on my plate for dessert so i forced my desserts onto madelaine's plate and pointed out to passers by how much dessert she was taking. it's what good aunties do. then while others were still eating and visiting, i took out back to practice with my new lens. "i'm not photogenic..." she started. "pffff. please!" i interrupted. and who, i ask you, was right. me. i was right. i'm right a lot but don't let that discourage you. we can't all be right. anywatanabe, look at this kid. she knocks my socks off. i was only going to do a couple but i just couldn't.

madelaine's eyes are liquid amber and i'm smack dab in the middle of them.

these shots i was testing out different f stops and well madelaine was just hanging around being her cute self.

madelaine was only a few months old when i lived with her family in japan. i sang her to sleep with my swedish lullabyes. this makes my head spin (literally. it's like the excorsist)

we sat around the church talking for a long time. then we went back to jord and tracy's changed and went for a walk a tynehead park. fatima declares this park to be in cloverchuck but that's NOT TRUE. it's in fleetwood.. it was a very pretty park chalk full of buttercups and....

slugs. subject 3: slugs everywhere. i can't help it, i think slugs are cool and make a cool subjects. i mean i don't ever want to step on one, but look at their shape. it's awesome.

here i missed the slug but i thought this shot was kind of cool anyways.

eventually i had to lay down on the path to get my subject. this time, just outside the narrow line of focus, he looks like an alien.

it looks like he's eating a rock.

subject 4: hips and legs comparisons

nice bums eh? it was getting too dark and thus the blurriness.

subject 5: tiny tot

the end.

tippy canoe life

2011-06-11T12:22:00.000-07:00

my life as of late has been woefully out of balance. everything is out of whack. my exercise and diet, my home, my spirituality. everything is a big mess. someone is shaking my snow-globe world and i appear to be drowning.

i think that sometimes when my life is whacked out, putting one thing straight helps the other things line up and balance as well. the most powerful aligner for me personally, is my spirituality so i decided to start there. set one thing right and see what happens. my scripture study as of late has been so poor and i miss it. i miss the peace and strength it brings into my life. i miss the expansion of my mind and my heart that comes from losing myself in God's word. i miss the way he talks just to me through the words. i miss the comfort and the perspective. so this is my self challenge. it's nothing big. it's just to get myself steadily and consistently back into daily scripture study. i am going to read the book of mormon in 67 days starting from where i am now, and go full circle. that's about 8 pages a day. and that's all i'm going to focus on. i'm doing this one change and we'll see after 67 days how and if my other wildly skewed life bits have come more into balance.

2011-06-10T22:30:00.000-07:00

so i got my new macro lens today but something bad happened to my other order. i was stressing out about it so much that i didn't take too many shots with it, like i had planned. none the less here's what i did take.

my jeans in the car after picking up the package at the ups depot.

my growing peony bud.

ants love peonies.

wiggly willus

2011-06-10T00:04:00.001-07:00

i am a bad person because i don't give myself enough sleep.

i get some new lenses in the mail tomorrow. ask me how excited i am. ask me. there are no words. and it was super hard to get them. harder than it should have been but sarah-lynnelizabeth helped me. she's real swell that way. then i ordered a super cute dress for eryn's wedding but it may or may not arrive in time. that's the way life is. either way i get a super cute dress. it's RED.

i've also been reading up on how to prepare yourself for and the actual doing the photography for a wedding event. i found some good things. i'm excited and nervous. it's going to be an awesome wedding. it's going to be a growing learning expanding experience i hope and it can be a good gift for eryn and tyler... i hope. cross your fingers, say a prayer, send out good thoughts.

today i finally had my birthday dinner with my workmates. we went to cactus club and i had the pesto chicken quesadilla and we shared chocolate lava cake for dessert.

we are doing major renovations at work, floors, walls, furniture--everything. but probably not for the kitchen because we have to slave away in the heat and have all the junky stuff. we're second class citizens but really we're the salt of the earth.

really i am so tired that i am not making any sense. good bye

black cracked crescents on two heels

2011-06-05T23:13:00.002-07:00

there's something so satisfying about a peanut butter banana milkshake. i added some chocolate pudding mix. hello welcome to my body. so glad to have you. it's the first time i've used the blender since moving here, 10 months ago.

had a busy weekend. friday night i packed up, gave the chubbies some lovin and took off for barrrrrrrb's. when i got there she was on the phone and i spent my time happily watching the 3rd episode of jamie oliver food revolution. so happy that it hasn't been cancelled.

we went to the movies in coquitlam. the xmen movie. this was the first xmen movie i have ever seen. odd thing that happened--when i was at the movies with fatima and moninder on tuesday we saw a man dressed very strangely. he was in a fedora and a long camel coloured cashmere coat. kind of dick tracy-ish. well on friday night i saw what might have been the same man dressed the same way but there was no coat. just a cream double breasted suit with a hankerchief in the pocket and the same hat. odd, eh? anyways the movie was pretty good and barrrrb lent me her xmen movies so i can be in the know.

we were both so tired so when alissa got to barb's we didn't stay up long except the shania twain show caught our interest for a while first. i slept in barb's room on the couch cushions. my snoring is not a big 'dilly-o' (a barb word) for barb, although she did comment in the morning that it really is pretty loud. "not as loud as sarita's." i hoped out loud, recalling the time in harrison that she brought ear plugs for us all and i foolishly turned them down.

speaking of the morning, it came all too soon. i got up at 5 and had a shower. barb had a squishy slippery thing on the bottom of her tub and that's all i want to tell you about that. shaving in a tub shower is much nicer than shaving in a stall shower. so true.

barb made us her famous german pancakes (my idea, smug, smug) but then had to eat them in the car or be late for our early morning temple session. i drove barb's car to said temple and we got there just in time. "cutting it close aren't you girls?" said the temple worker at the front desk. i like old people because they always see you as young.

it was a nice temple time and i had some deep thoughts. it was nice to just sit in the peaceful stillness and feel close to God.

so after the session we changed into our reg clothes. all except barb who inexplicably wanted to change once we got there. there, being hope--our destination.

we met barb's new friend whom we'll call 'husky' at a place called harrison bluffs. husky is a major climbing enthusiast. i'm enthusiastic about other people climbing who are not me. anyway husky has been totally instrumental in establishing harrison bluffs as a climbing place. like he keeps up the trail, he establishes different climbs and cleans brush and dirt off of the cliff face etc. husky had his kids with them. 4 really cute kids with beautiful amazing eyes. lisel was also there with her daughter. she lives in hope too, and her and husky climb in all their spare time.

barb didn't want to climb either so we hung out with the kids. ethan, the oldest became our especial buddy. funny kid--hates blackberrys, loves i phones and all things apple. ethan is all about the specs. he was also into taking pics with my camera. charlotte found an inch worm and named it rainbow. it was her pet most of the time at the bluff. nolan and elias were more distant at first, although elias threw maple leaves at me in an offer of friendship.

barb, ethan and i climbed up these huge blocks of moss covered stone and named the climb barethalaur/ ethan town. on the way over to the blocks ethan showed us where on the trail he had gone to the bathroom a week or so before. then we all went for a walk through the forest and along a faint trail that husky was cutting back as we went. we ended up in a clearing. and then walked down a two track 'road' lined with profusions of buttercups. ethan and i lagged behind taking pics and barb joined us. but she unjoined us once i started trying to capture ethan's spit hitting the water--very difficult.

by this time i was starving and thirsty. husk gave me some of his water. then we all drove back to husk's and lounged around for a while not to mention pillow and tickle fights with the kids, who each have their own nerf machine gun, but our hunger got the best of us, so brab aleesa and i walked down to cooper foods to buy our food contributions for dinner. i got potato salad and i rock. then we needed foods for our bodies so we went to the diner across the street. barb and i each got a kids size grilled cheese and aleesa got a kid's burger which turned out to be the same size as an adult burger. we all got shakes. the shakes were the point of everything.

the diner was where we began to tease aleesa.

not long after we got back to husk's we had dinner. i dozed a bit on the couch though. dinner was pork roast and a really yummy caesar. like really yummy.

things happened. we went to these cool tunnels. more things happened. ethan became obsessed with farting. elias hurt his toe and i carried him and then gave him a shoulder ride all the time having to pretend to be different kinds of ambulances. like a dog ambulance etc. the hardest one was the stick ambulance, which was the one elias wanted. "how do i do a stick ambulance?" i asked him. "you go 'whack whack'!" the little voice above my head instructed. difficile.

we had strawberry rhubarb pie. we watched a movie. we were all very tired and we went home.

today i went to church. i didn't have to do anything but conduct. after church i made cheesy tuna pasta and this is the end.