snow day

it's snowing. it's been snowing since yesterday afternoon. and it hasn't stopped. i may not all have stuck but it's still snowing. unbelieveable.

it was a lazy day today. i had every intention of cleaning my apartment and doing some winter cleaning but my back still hurts and i spent most of the day writing and preparing the slide show for the skit on friday. it looks quite good, although i wish we had better pictures for some people.

i finally turned on the tv at 8 to flip around, maybe watch a CSI if it was on or maybe watch one of the DVDs i borrowed from the library last week when all of a sudden, on the CBC, i saw that "love, actually" was playing. i had tuned in just as the wedding was ending so i hadn't missed much. and i can't stop myself from watching it. i own it and yet i would rather watch it (again) on tv than watch a CSI episode that i haven't seen. what is it about this movie?

ah, i know what it is. we all know what it is.

google me

i just googled myself and i came up with a thread on a cannabis website. my full name and all. my first thought was, "WTF?"

it turns out, some pothead took offense to my letter to the editor of 24hrs newspaper this summer and cut and posted it onto this discussion thread. they took it slightly out of context, however. they seem to think that just because i'm defending the police for trying to keep the public safe that i'm also anti-legalization. dumb fucks. i'm only offended because some guy called me delusional. them's fightin' words!

basically, i responded to a letter from a woman who said that the police are wasting the public's money by raiding grow ops because pot smokers are peaceful and would never hurt anyone. i responded with a, "yes, you're right. pot smokers probably couldn't stay upright long enough to hurt anyone. but the ultimate suppliers i.e. the grow operators and not the dealers) employ many methods of protection to keep their investments safe - vicious dogs, guards who assault people and people that use guns." (i was much more eloquent in my actual letter but you get my point)

i will return the guy's favor by posting his letter that he sent but obviously didn't get printed (maybe because he was high when he wrote it or maybe because he can't spell):

dear editors, your email writer, makes the case herself. We should legalize and end all the harm and costs. unfortunately your writer is delusional as her world doesn't really exist out side of her mind. you have a better chance of being harmed by the machinery of prohibition (police, jail, stigma, lost assets, lost job, etc) than you do from some anti-prohibitionists protection scheme , that harms only robbers of their products. there are no drive-by shootings at liquor stores because they are protected by the police force we all pay for. its too bad we are not all afforded the same rights in this country. NO DRUGS ARE SOLD AT GUN POINT THEY ARE VOLUNTEERINGLY RECEIVED some of your readers were spoiled, self centered, tattal-tailing children as they grew up and it seems they are the same as adults.

i'm not sure which world he is speaking of when he says my world doesn't really exist. does he mean the world of grow ops and the means operators take to protect them? i worked with freaking Crown for four years and i can tell you that my world does exist and there are color pictures to prove it. i concede that his world also exists but, quite obviously, in a cloud of second-hand smoke.

when will we learn?

i got a phone call today at work from a friend of mine. i was a bit surprised to hear from her as she doesn't often call me. whenever we get together, it's always fun, but she often does things with her boyfriend and their couple friends. her bf is actually how i met her - we used to work together. they are the ones i cat-sat for when i was staying in yaletown.

anyway, she said, "so you know we broke up..." my jaw dropped. this is the couple i ... nay, everyone ... thought were literally created for each other. the couple that was always stealing kisses and holding hands and making faces at each other. they bought their apartment together three years ago. they went to jamaica earlier this year and they just got back from a month-long jaunt in europe. and she kicked his ass out of their apartment friday after last. WTF?

we had a three-hour long coffee together after work. she seemed very together but obviously needed to vent. so i let her. i didn't say much (she said it all) and i learned a lot of things i didn't know. for one, i always thought he was loving and caring and totally spoiled her. she says he ruined their europe trip (where she celebrated her 30th birthday) by being sullen and grumpy. for her birthday, he complained about everything they did and didn't even give her a gift or anything to unwrap when she woke up. despite what i ... nay, everyone! ... thought, they only have sex once a month and it's only because she has to ask him for it.

i feel bad because i was going to tell her about my observations at new years (when he was grinding with another friend of ours) but i didn't have to - the other couple we were with told her about it. and after she broke up with him (after, not the cause of the breakup), he told her he cheated on her a year and a half ago. they broke up the friday before last and he tolder her about his infidelities just this past saturday. how hurtful can you be?

she sat there for three hours, rhetorically asking me how she could've been such a fool. we all know why. i know why i was such a fool for my ex and i know why she was such a fool for hers.

you believe he is going to become something better than what he is. you believe that if you love him enough, if you give him what he wants (sex, space, attention, gifts, or what have you), that your over-compensation will make up for his lack of trying and that he will change for you. you blame yourself for the troubles in the relationship when he had just as much to do with it as you did. you hope that he doesn't really mean it when he says he doesn't want to get married and doesn't want to have children. you take it as a good sign that he wants to move in together and make financial commitments with you (i.e. buying a place together, taking big vacations).

i think the problem with relationships is that women tend to live in the future while men live in the present. if you're not in the same place to begin with, how can you get anywhere together?

breakups are hard. they suck, actually. i think my reluctance to connect with anyone in the past six years has something to do with the fact that i don't think i could take another big breakup if it came down to that. the last one sucked the soul out of me. i feel bad for what happened with my friends and, despite witnessing his indiscretions, i was shocked to hear they had actually split up. i won't take sides; i don't hate him for what he's done to her because he's suffering in his own way. he's an ass. he's a jerk. he's a fool (he said the sex wasn't even worth it - i say, if you're going to fuck up your relationship, go big!). but she chose to ignore her intuition.

and in the immortal words of shakespeare (or was it marvin gaye?), "it takes two, baby. me and you."

parachuting rodentia

everyone left at 4 a.m. i finally dragged my ass out of bed at almost 11 this morning.

the sprinkler guys (the first one) came by at about noon today. unannounced. they came in and assessed the situation. it looks like some sort of small animal chewed through the sprinkler pipe. i told them i heard scurrying in the ceiling about a week ago and i guess this is the product.

at this point, they need to let the glue dry for a full 24 hours so one sprinkler guy is coming back tomorrow at lunch time to test the sprinkler again. but that doesn't change the fact that there is a hole in my bathroom ceiling and a potential rodent running around that could fall through it!

i will hope that nothing happens and that whatever critter that chewed through the pipe has now moved on.

what bothers me most is that, while i have experience with squirrels in the attic, the sprinkler guy said that the teethmarks were too small and it was probably a mouse.

EEEEEEEEK!

there's a hole in my ceiling....

dear liza, dear liza.

it's 2:30 in the morning and i'm still awake. it all started when my downstairs neighbour knocked at my door at 11 pm. he asked if my suite was leaking - maybe i left the tap running, maybe the tub was overflowing. i said no, not that i knew of. he thanked me and went away.

i went into my bathroom and there were droplets of water on the toilet seat. odd. i listened and could hear water flowing but i couldn't determine from where. odder. i looked up at the ceiling and saw two large, dark spots on the ceiling. oddest. i took my step ladder and touched the ceiling. wet. i bumped the cover of the bathroom fan and water spilled out. oh, sheeeeeit.

i called my property manager and since about 11:30, i've had no less than six different men in and out of my apartment. and not in a good way.

it's 2:30 (as i've said but i'm very tired now) and the plumber is still in the bathroom with buckets to catch the spraying water (they punched a hole in the ceiling to confirm that it's not a plumbing problem but in fact, a sprinkler problem. the sprinkler guy was the first one to get here and he said it was a plumbing problem. of course.). i'm waiting for the sprinkler guy, who phoned about 45 minutes ago and is still not here which leads me to believe i'm going to be awake for a long time.

to top it all off, the main plumber guy (a nice looking guy named Nick - of course) said to me, "oh, this building is not good. always problems." oy, now you tell me!

WTF. i just want to go to sleep. i've already finished my book and now i just want to sleep. i started reading dan brown's "deception point" last night and i finished it before the plumber got here. it was good. not "da vinci code" good or even "angels & demons" good but it was probably 3rd on the good dan brown books list.

all i can think about now is i really hope this falls under the strata's insurance. i know it does but you know me - worst case scenario, always.

are you flirting with me?

i know my problem now. i think i can recognize when guys are flirting with me but it's usually the wrong guys (and they're not flirting).

yesterday, the telephone guy finally came in to install the microfilter for my phone line. my buzzer still doesn't seem to work but that's not his fault. anyway, i run downstairs to open the door for him and, lucky for me, he's kind of cute in a skateboardy-geeky sort of way. we seem to have a moment when he walks in the door - our eyes meet and there's some sort of mutual thing. anyway, we spend the next 15 minutes wandering my building trying to find the phone room. luckily for us, we run into a guy who used to be on council and he points us in the right direction. BTW, had we just continued wandering, we never would've found it. but i digress...

anyway, we chat as he's installing the filter (it's obvious he's married because of the ring) - he talks about his little girls and the family's upcoming trip to hawaii in the new year (they went last year and the year before and his wife doesn't work - i'm so in the wrong profession). once he's installed the microfilter in the telephone room, he says he needs to come up to my suite to install something else (cue the 70s porn music...)

anyway, he actually did have to install a double line (could sound dirty but it wasn't). after he was done, we stood in my kitchen chatting about the merits of the BlackBerry (he saw my BB on my counter and picked it up). when he left, he gave me a smile, a fleeting look and said, "see ya later."

why is it so much easier to flirt with guys that aren't available and/or don't want anything to do with me than it is to flirt with guys who are available and/or do want something to do with me?

ah, the age-old question.

incidentally, i've discovered that every second wednesday of the month at the paramount theatre downtown they have an event called "click at a flick", hosted by lavalife and it's where singles 19 - 34 come to mingle and watch a movie - all for the price of admission. the next event is this coming wednesday but the movie is "the prestige", which i've already seen. strange because in calgary and toronto where this is also taking place, they are showing "stranger than fiction" which i want to see and haven't. why would they have different movies? is vancouver that far behind? anyway, i liked the movie but not enough to see it twice in the theatre...maybe. :)

disturbances in the force

i had a dream the other night about my ex-boyfriend. you know, the one that broke my heart and left me a shell of the person i used to be (ok, i left him and i'm actually a better person than i was when i was with him - most of the time, anyway). it was an odd dream. here's the gist of what i remember:

i was going to e-mail him or phone him to ask him what the scoop was - were we getting back together? were we just going to be friends? were we going our separate ways? i remember that the reason i was going to do this was because we had been hanging out occasionally, not doing anything in particular but just hanging out and enjoying each other's company. he was giving me mixed signals and i wanted to confront him about it because, as we know, i hate mixed signals. but i woke up before i did anything about it. it left me feeing rather empty.

the other disturbance i've had this week was a disturbing conversation with my mother. over lunch the other day, she told me she was going to give me power of attorney and get her affairs in order because - get this - she honestly thinks my dad might kill her because of the disruption her leaving him has made in his life. repressed anger and all of that.

she said that over the years, when she watches the news or reads the paper about an ordinary guy who kills is wife in cold blood and the neighbours describe him as, "a nice guy - quiet, kept to himself - but nothing out of the ordinary", she sees my dad.

now, i understand that she knows him better than i do but at the same time, i think i know him too and i don't think he's going to kill her. i mean, she seriously thinks that he will snap and murder her during a heated argument. she told her sister this and now her sister wants her to take extra precautions to keep herself safe (NB. they are both chronic over-reactors so putting them together just makes it worse).

am i wrong to think she's a bit crazy? admittedly, my dad is very introverted but at the same time, i don't think he's a sociopath (which is how she's described him in the recent past). i just think he hates her.

am i wrong to be insulted that she's speaking about my father like this? when my dad was looking for a new place, he made an offer on this apartment on 12th street, which happens to be along the hooker stroll. my mom says to me, laughingly, "well, at least he won't have to go far!" when i admonish her with a, "mom!", she laughs harder and says, "what? you don't think your dad would use one? you'd be surprised!" and i got mad at her and said, "look, just because you don't want anything to do with him anymore doesn't mean you can speak about him like that to me. he's my DAD." she shut up after that.

you know, we moved to the gawd-awful suburbs because my mom wanted to live in a place where my brother would grow up surrounded by families in the neighbourhood that we all knew and all socialized with, etc. she constantly criticized my dad for being anti-social. and yet, my dad knew every other dad in the neighbourhood by name. he helped out the neighbours with gardening or gutter cleaning, even though his 60 year-old back was much worse than their 40-something backs. he would stand in the cul-de-sac and chat away with the neighbours while he gardened or mowed the lawn. my mom didn't even recognize our next door neighbour when he walked by her at london drugs and said hello. she only recognized him when she saw his daughter, who often played with my brother. she avoided saying hello to any of the neighbours if she could help it. and my dad is anti-social?

through months of therapy, i've come to realize that my mom wasn't always the bad-guy in the marriage. in fact, a lot of the blame can be put on my dad. i've also come to understand why my mom is the way she is. but my mom's no angel either and the dirty halo is very apparent when she starts to criticize people for faults she's got the market cornered on.

parents!

i'm weak

i can't help it. i wish i could. really, i do. it would make my life a lot less overwrought.

square one.

drafting

so, i'm finally getting to draft a real agreement, using real clauses for real people. the catch? it's my parents' separation agreement.

my mom pulled this precedent off the internet and filled in the blanks (shudder, i know!). unbeknownst to her, my dad asked me to come over and read it to see if it was okay. i read it over and asked him if he was happy with the terms. he said his usual, "i don't care, i just want this over with," and the proceeded to go on a rant about how my mom was trying to screw him financially. oy.

yesterday, my mom asked me to read over the agreement and see if it was ok. i've spent the afternoon cleaning up the language, adding some general clauses, and formatting the document. it's in redline so she can make my suggested revisions or not.

the one thing i did have a bit of a problem with was what she was taking from the proceeds of the sale of the house. she gave my dad a bunch of advances from the eventual sale proceeds in order for him to buy and do some needed renos to his house. this was necessary because he doesn't have any money saved. my mom handled all the finances, including but not limited to the savings accounts, the chequing accounts, the RRSPs, and other investments. my dad has no idea about where his money went in the 30 years of marriage, just that my mom took care of the finances. he didn't have any interest in it. this is why i was so worried about him when they separated. sure, he had everything to do with the maintenance and running of the house but when it came to using an ATM card, forget it.

anyway, that's background. in the separation agreement, it outlined the advances made to my dad and subtracted them from his share of the proceeds. one transaction listed as an advance was X amount of dollars that my mom received as inheritance when her dad died a few years ago, that was put into my dad's RRSP. she's subtracted that amount (which is a sizeable amount) from my dad's share of the proceeds. am i wrong to be troubled by this?

the way i see it, she was in control of the finances. it was her choice to add this money to my dad's RRSP and not one of her own savings accounts or investments. i realize that it technically is her money but shouldn't she have thought of that, particularly since she's been trying to get out of this marriage for 30 years? and now she's asking for it back?

maybe i'm just feeling protective again. or maybe it's because i know that, as oldest child and the daughter, i'm the one whose moral responsibility it will be to take care of him if and/or when he needs money to live.

the selfish me wishes they had never split up so financially, they would both be sound. and i wouldn't have to worry about them. but that didn't happen and now i get to watch as their financial inequalities become more and more apparent.

i think it's all well and good to say we all make choices in our lives and we have to live with them. but as we all know, life isn't black and white. and it's hard having to see your parents in the gray (or in some cases, the red).

mentor

my friend Kimini e-mailed me the other day and asked if i would be interested in participating in the YWCA's highschool mentorship program. they are looking for someone to mentor a grade 11 girl who is interested in becoming a paralegal. of course, i said yes!

i've been looking for a new volunteer opportunity since i finished with my advisory committee. i actually looked into the whole mentor thing but assumed they were looking for more doctor/lawyer/entrepreneurial types so i never bothered applying. but this program seems like a good one. i spoke with the coordinator who seemed very nice. she explained some of the details of the program, including the types of activities i might want to undertake with my mentee (which included coffee and shopping, as well as seminars or field trips up to a school). i'm getting my application ready this weekend (including finding a current copy of my resume and getting criminal record check done) and there is an orientation coming up on tuesday that i'm going to go to. i think after that all i need is to interview with the coordinator and then they determine whether or not i'm a good match. i'm quite excited!

my grandma was taken to emergency at Burnaby Gen on tuesday night. she was in emergency until yesterday, when they finally found her a room (ridiculous, eh?). i went to go see her last night. she seemed to be in good spirits and very chatty. by the time visiting hours were over, there were about 10 of us visiting and we got a stern talking to from one of the other visitors her shared room. my aunt was pissed off at him but really, we are only allowed 2 people per patient! anyway, the doctors still don't know what's wrong with her. they are going to do some sort of test on monday (tube down the throat) and maybe a biopsy. she's 86. she's my only surviving grandparent and oddly enough, all of my other grandparents died in order of how well i knew them. my dad's dad went first then my mom's mom. my mom's dad and i had a letter writing relationship (he lived in the philippines) and it was very sad when he died. my grandma now is the one that lived with us when i was a kid and is the grandparent i'm closest with.

did i tell you that the girl we interviewed accepted another offer? i was disappointed but such is life. until then, my days will continue to be busy, which thankfully or not keeps my mind off other things.