Red Cedar

Today is a day of all new things. I didn’t plan it that way, but somehow many things have crowded into this one mid-week March 3rds that I had to remark upon it. Here are the new things in my life as of today:

• the new studio roof is being put on as we speak
• I had my first beginner pilates class today
• Brian and I have our first dance class tonight
• I have an appointment to speak with a potential new therapist before the dance class
• and……..
• I got my new car today! (2006 Hyundai Tucson with 4WD and the clearance of a small truck! Dream camping vehicle!

Things have been a little busy lately, but now that I’ve got the house on the coast transferred to the new owners, and a whole lot of other bits and pieces coming together (new vehicle, studio, debts paid off), I’m looking forward to some spring adventures – camping, biking, hiking….. which have been sorely neglected over these winter months. Not to mention gardening! Now that the studio exterior is pretty much finished I can start working on the yard again soon.

It all feels like a big consolidation of my life though – moving on from the past, my life on the sunshine coast and all that took me there (and brought me back to Vancouver again) and a big investment in my present – my family and the home we are building together. It feels right, all this newness right on the cusp of spring with another glorious summer right out in front of us….

In between a friend’s emergency and making soup I managed to finish my environmental history article last night – weighing in at 3350 words. Not that those 3350 words cover *everything* but I think I did manage the capture the highlights and am so very glad that’s done and sent in (thanks Brian for editing this morning)! I’ll let you all know when the mag is out (sometime in April) and hopefully be able to link to the article online.

I’m feeling pretty pleased about finishing on deadline, and having another small publishing credit to my portfolio. Now if only I could get publication in one of the literary mags locally! I’m working on a piece right now combining an earlier blog post and a poem I wrote in the same timeframe, and I suspect that with some polishing that piece might have the power behind it to get accepted somewhere. Plus, I have a few other pieces that I am going to get sent off this next month for consideration.

All sorts of things going on – I’m feeling the push of spring cleaning, both inside and out even as we seem to be plunged back into winter temporarily (though not like eastern canada which has mountains of snow right now). Of course this is the weekend I finally divest my house on the Sunshine Coast, and it really feels like closing off a chapter of my past in doing so. Not that my time there was terrible, but it was a very solitary period of my life and a time in which I had many personal and political struggles that have lifted from me since, and I’m not sorry to let go of the last physical remainder of that period. Not to mention being relieved of the headache of owning a place I don’t live in! That’s something I haven’t particularly enjoyed in the last couple of years (I get too stressy about such things).

On the fun (or terribly weird) front… Brian and I have signed up for dance lessons that start next week at a studio in Burnaby. Yes, I know – dance lessons! But we actually really enjoy dancing with each other when we get the opportunity and thought it might be even more fun if we had a little more idea what to do besides wiggling our hips in sync. I suspect that even if we aren’t great at it, we’ll have some fun at least trying….

And on the less fun front, I’ve decided to embark on some counseling/bodywork again to deal with some ongoing issues of stress and mild depression that seems to be the ongoing plague of my life no matter how good everything is! I’m looking for someone who comes from a somatic approach, hopefully in East Van/Burnaby, and am pursuing a couple of recommendations that I hope pan out. As much as I hate to be all “I need help” with my life, there is no doubt that little spates of therapy really can be useful to my overall coping skills.

I feel good though, like as much as I have little ups and downs to contend with right now, I also have a path to move forward on that I’m surefooted about. Some more planning around family activity, some special fun with my partner, a little more self-work – seems like a good combination for creating more positivity and resilience for all of us. It’s ongoing, this work to stay afloat isn’t it? But at least I’ve got good support in order to do so.

I’ve got this new wireless keyboard at work and I’m not so sure about it yet. It’s got a bit of delay which can make for skipped letters and spelling mistakes, but if I don’t race across the keyboard it seems to work okay. I finally read the instructions on it this morning and moved the receiver the required eight inches away from my monitor and computer, which seems to help matters somewhat by cutting down on interference. On the plus side, I really like having less cables running all over the place, and the wireless mouse is so liberating!

And that is about the most exciting thing about work these days. Really, our office has been pretty quiet with half my co-workers telecommuting for the duration of the Olympics or out sick (nasty cold going around), and it’s been a lot less stressful coming into the office than I thought it would be with the tourist madness outside. Not to say they don’t get in the way of those of us who live here, but if you stay away from that cauldron thing, and the sporting events (and robsons square) it’s pretty easy to avoid them. Like herd animals these tourists, they moo and shop and pretty much keep to their own tourist kind.

I went to the island on the weekend to visit my folks and while I was there I bought onion and shallot sets at the Victoria “Seedy Saturday” event. Of course I’ve gone and planted them out now, heedless of the fact it’s only late February and perhaps I should have waited. But I’m hoping they are just like other bulbs and like to go in cold ground in order to really fill out in the warmer weather? I don’t know much about planting onions, though I am realizing that starting shallots from seed (which I did a few weeks ago) is probably a mistake as most of my starts have been taken by mould or are otherwise looking pretty bad. On the other hand I’ve got killer early tomato starts and my pepper plants are looking great for early days. I’m going to start more tomatos shortly, and sunflowers, squashes etc. when it’s time. Spring can’t come soon enough for me! Then again, our backyard studio is still in want of finishing and I can’t do much in the yard until the workmen are done tromping everything into smithereens back there.

This weekend I will be on and off and on the Sunshine Coast as I finish up with the last duties associated with the Gibsons house before the ownership transfer. I’m hoping it doesn’t amount to too much work on Saturday, though I am steeled against the possibility that there will be more than one dump run and it could be raining quite lot. Last responsibilities though, and that feels pretty damned good. Talk about a load lifted off my shoulders! I’m not cut out to be a land baron it turns out, only one property at a time feels manageable to me.

In general my spirits have been high these days, I feel like most things are manageable and I’ve had lots of energy! I’ve been mega-dosing on B-Vitamins and fish oil which has helped a lot, plus my gym routine has been increasingly strenuous as I move to the next level of fitness capability (jogging, who knew?) These feel like good days, getting longer and heading towards summer with all sorts of plans and ideas for vacations, home improvements, weddings (ours and Brian’s brother for whom we are hosting the rehearsal dinner). And I’m really very grateful for it all. Thank-you universe! Thank-you friends and family 🙂

Wow. I am right in the middle of writing this article on the history of Canadian environmentalism and I’m captivated by it! Who knows what I’m going to say next? I sure don’t. But it’s one of the things I love about writing, once I get a basic idea in my head my subconcious does a lot of the work for me and my job really is to channel that and get it onto the page coherently. I have now got about 2000 words of a 3000 word piece, though I suspect some serious editing will be in order to keep it to length since there seems to be so much more to say.

So I’m going to be on track for my goal of finishing the article, but of course the novel has taken a backseat until that happens. I’m also right in the thick of it there, trying to figure out the final conflict/resolve that will take it to its close which is only about 15,000 words off I’m sure. That is really only fifteen more days of morning writing, or ten more days if I throw in a couple Saturday-afternoon sessions. It is going to happen, but perhaps not by February 28th.

I know these goals mean little to anyone except me, but I’m excited to keep myself to task in order to finish these various projects I’ve committed to and started. My next big committment is going to be to the garden which is calling to me in its muddy, trampled-upon state. Since the start of our studio project, all the lawn out back has been ground down to a muddy pulp! But I’m excited about that because I’ve got plans to re-seed it with a really nice true grass blend from West Coast seeds that my friend Kyla turned me on to.

The studio siding and sub-floor will be finished today and then we’re onto the interior finishing and the actual roof. I wish I had a picture to share here at work, but I don’t. Promise one by the end of the weekend so you can see what it’s going to look like. Brian and I are in the process of choosing what type of hottub and sauna will comprise the “spa” part of our backyard and wow is that ever going to be cool. By May 1st I estimate all the major work will be done, the hot tub will be in place, the grass will be regrowing and our lovely veggie boxes will be full of seeds and starts. That’s not so long away and this early sun is really making me feel spring’s potential. We were thinking for Brian’s birthday this year (and our one-year anniversary of being in the house) of having a studio/spa launch in the backyard. Probably not the free-for-all we had at our housewarming last year because our backyard has gotten more crowded since then! But definitely a good gathering in the offing to show off our hard work.

This weekend off to the island to visit my folks, next weekend Sunshine Coast cleanup and divestment of property. Wow. I thought these days would never come!

Brian’s finally blogging again and has articulated perfectly so much of what we have talked about in the last few days vis a vis diversity of tactics. I’m posting this here in the wake of borderline being called a traitor by someone in my own collective and feeling a bit at odds with where I’m going next with this whole activist journey I’ve been on for the past two decades…