the Arrival...

My trip was 7 days instead of the 5 we thought it would be, there was no ac in the truck(poor hot doggies!!) and we cracked a trailer hitch crossing the Canadian Shield..fortunately K had seen a billboard for a truck stop a few miles back and had memorized the number! This guy came in a huge trailer, with every mechanical tool you can think of in it. including the arc welder we needed to fix our hitch. We pulled in to Smiths Falls and collapsed for the night. In the morning we knew the truck and trailer were not meant to go any farther, so I left all my stuff except what I could carry to the bus depot and got on the next bus to Toronto. Here ends the historical overview of how I got to where I am now. The next chapters will be the story of how my bike got me pregnant and the aftershocks of thinking about being a Mom at 41.

And On...

As we set out to drive across Canada, we were all very optimistic about how long it would take and how we would travel. Scott was in the  suv, pulling a trailer full, me and Karen were in the truck with the three dogs and pulling a second trailer. There were signs in the beginning, you know, small ones you don't notice unless looking back over the events. We didn't actually leave the day we were supposed to, I spent two days with K and S at their trailer, having sold almost everything I owned and said my tearful goodbyes to friends and family, I had tied up this part of my life and was essentially in limbo. It felt strange, a closed door at my back, a wide open one in front, full of hope, full of promise, but also so full of the unknown it was terrifying. I had done this before, this pack-up-everything-I-own-to-go-chasing-a-boy-to -another-city thing, and had never really panned out. In fact the last time I did it, it had cost me my marriage. So here I was on the brink of a new adventure, missing my folks, missing my pets about to set out on one of the biggest adventures of my life!

The Story Continues...

After the buzz of a lovely Christmas in another town had worn off, we still had the issue of living long distance. Now that I knew it was for realz yo, it became harder and harder to stay put. I felt like ditching my last semester and just bolting.B came out around my Birthday and stayed for a month or two, and we made plans. B had to go back to T.O. for work and I was nearing my graduation date. One of my teachers at school approached me and said that her and her partner were moving to Ontario in July and wondered how I was going to get there, I said I didn't know because I really didn't have enough money to rent a truck, not to mention I didn't(don't) have a drivers license, plus, my stuff! Kindly she offered space in one of her two trailers for my things and a seat in the truck if I helped with her three dogs along the way. I quickly agreed. FINALLY! a plan in place, graduation imminent, Toronto here I come! oh wait. I have two cats that cannot ride in the pick up with me, that I must take with me...hmmmmm....Dad to the rescue! We bought carrying cases for them and drove them out to the airport 2 hours before their flight, only to be told they would not be taken as the cases were too small! We mad a mad dash to into Sydney to the small pet store there in hopes of finding what we needed. As we pulled up in the parking lot we could see several people waiting outside the shop..this did not look good, we were on a major time crunch mission and the buddy wasn't even on time to open the shop! I was very nearly hysterical at this point and thank god my Dad is as calm as f#ck, because we got the cases with no one getting hurt, managed to make the check in deadline to get the cats sent out AND he paid for the whole thing. Whew. Oh did I mention Brian hated cats? ( I say hated in the past tense as we all live  together now relatively conflict free). And so I held an indoor garage sale, sold everything I could ( I have very generous friends, they often gave me more than the asking price for things just to help out) gave the remainder of my things to my good friend Raya to hold on to and went my merry way out to Mechosin to Karen and Scott's to get ready for the departure, which was to happen in 2 days...

And So It Goes...

So we decided we were going to do this. But we really hadn't figured out how. That November I got a call from B's brother. As a surprise he wanted to fly me out to Toronto for Christmas! He also stipulated that it must remain a secret. That was very hard for me, as I love to tell people good news. By the time the flight date arrived I was ready to gnaw my own arm off, rather than spill the beans! i told B that he should call me on Monday as usual and that I had a few errands to run but should be around. His brother told him they needed him down at the studio work space for help with something and his partner and good friend said they had a maintenance window to do and could he come down to the office....Well I managed not to tell him, but when he called a few times and realized I had been incommunicado for hours and hours and his two closest people had two different stories as to why he MUST be at a said location, he put two and two together. But it was a lovely reunion, and a wonderful Christmas with lots of snow, food and family...

Here We Go...

So that was that. I knew I wanted to be with him and he with me. There was just the problem of where we were going to live and when. Shortly after the four days with B at his cottage, I flew to Crestone, Colorado to live at a hermitage for two weeks! here. That is a whole other post that I may talk about one day, but for the sake of our tale, I will truncate. Every day I would ride the donation bike from the my little cabin in the desert beside the Carmelite Monastery, to the town of Crestone, to use the one pay phone in existence there to call B and say hi. I missed him. Even though we hadn't been together in the same place for longer than four days, I missed him. So we'd chat, I'd get groceries, ride back to my private spot in the desert and think. Alot. We would have music dates, where we would pick an album, and a time and both listen to it in our respective comfortable seats. Miles apart, but together in spirit. Our favourites were Viva la Vida (coldplay) and Agaetis Byrjun (Sigur Ros)...I knew we had to decide what was what. I was terrified, but I was hopeful.

The Next Step...

When I contacted B, I didn't know what kind of reaction I was going to get, after all it had been almost 10 years since we had parted ways and we had only seen each two other times after our falling out. Much to my delight and surprise he called me on the phone almost immediately. We chatted. It was a good chat, one of those chats that fills in all the feelings of missing that person. We were friends again. He had just come back from living in Paris for the last 3 years, he was single and now living in Toronto. I was having a long distance relationship with a fellow from Saskatchewan and had plans to move there after I graduated from Architectural Interior Design school....We continued chatting once in a while, and I must admit things were getting flirty, and as my long distance relationship dissolved, I felt like something might be happening between me and B.

It was kind of a problem. Not only was I totally not interested in having another failed long distance thing, I couldn't move there as I was in school!
So then I had an idea, you see I had to know if this was a real thing, look at him in the eye, touch him, smell him, search his face for the signs. It was a tuesday that i called him and it went something like this:

Me: Are you sitting down? I have something to tell you and I really think you should be sitting for this.

B: ok. Is it bad? should I be worried?

Me: No, no it's not bad..are you sitting yet?

B: Ok, I'm out on the patio and I'm sitting.

Me: I'm going to be at the Toronto airport on Monday...

B: Wait..what? Where are you going?

Me: What do you mean where am I going?

B: I mean are you flying somewhere? Why are you going to be at the airport?

Me: No silly I'm coming to see you! Pick me up!

Anyway, I decided on a whim to go visit B for 4 days on my reading break. I made the right decision. when I got off the plane and came down the walkway, B was looking at the other door and I could look at him in profile for a full minuet before he noticed me coming towards him...It was awesome, he looked exactly the same, and when we hugged he smelled exactly the same. I felt like I had come home.

How It All Began...

It sounds cliche, but you really never know what life is going to give you. I would never have guessed in a million years, that at 41, I would essentially be shacked up, with a baby, living in Toronto...No way. I think I can speak for many of you out there, that you actually never thought you would make it to the age you are now. I certainly never thought I would make it to 35, let alone 41. It's not like I had a terrible childhood and was a tortured soul who was hell bent on destruction, I just thought I was burning too bright, too fast, and at 25, I could not see the future at all. Sure there were things, everyone has things, mine just happened to manifest in my 20's, not in my adolescence....At 19 I was freshly back in Victoria, after a 9 month jaunt in Ottawa that, quite honestly, almost killed me. I had just gotten a job at the coolest art cafe called JAVA. This was THE spot for the poets and musicians and general misfits of Victoria's alternative crowd. Many people came for the atmosphere and the smoking, some stayed for the chess, scrabble and go. it was here I found my people and to this day look back on Java as some of the best years of my life. This was right around the time I got my second job at Scandals as a speaker dancer(!). When B rolled into town, I have to say, I was immediately curious, as he had quickly nestled himself in the deepest niche of my friends and proceeded to completely ignore me! For those of you who know me and my penchant for demanding all attention in ANY room, you know this drove me mad! B later told me this was, in fact, done for that exact reaction. After three days of this routine, I promptly marched up to him and demanded to know who he was. After this dramatic beginning, we became fast friends, sensing a deep kinship with each other, it was a fantastic winter. Of course, at this time in our lives(mostly in my life) this was too good to be true. B tried in vain to get me to leave Victoria and come travelling around the world with him, he was sure I needed a bigger space and some room to grow. I was too afraid. I got angry at him for criticising my life and we promptly had a falling out...We both went on to have completely different lives, we married and divorced other people, I saw a little more of the world, I grew and had settled back in Victoria, doing first a fine arts diploma, and then an architectural interior design diploma. Upon a conversation with a close friend about the Java days and people we miss B's name came up, so of course I Facebooked his name and about 5 pages with the same name came up, but there was one profile pic of a fellow on a motorcycle wearing a helmet. I took one look at those eyes and I knew it was him....

The Beginnings...

When I was growing up, I never really thought I would have a child myself. I was not one of those little girls that dreamed of growing up, getting married and having a family.

When I was very small and until about age three, me and my Mom were alone. We lived on Cortez Island in a little cedar truck house and it is here that my ideas about family and home were first formed. There wasn't really a Dad, there wasn't really too much structure in that sense. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it wasn't a great way to spend my early years, but I think there was an impermanence to my idea of home and for sure was missing the Daddy component. Then we met Ed, and he is who I now lovingly call Dad today.. We became a trifecta, and it took almost two years for me to take him seriously as a father figure, let alone a person who wasn't going to leave. I literally didn't speak to him directly for over a year! (Sorry Dad).

As I grew older, I never really felt like enough of an adult to really seriously consider having kids. I mean the biological clock and I were having some serious conversations, but I never felt ready.  When I envisioned Motherhood I always pictured me, doing it on my own. It's not that I thought there wasn't someone out there who would do it with me, I just had deeply ingrained in me from childhood, that men are transient and the women are doing things with or without them.

Enter the therapy years....I have spent about 8 years working very hard on my "stuff" and trying to figure out who I really am, how I really feel about things and why, and most importantly healing the wounds from my past that hindered my growth into a happy adult. There are some pretty dark corners in my psyche that I choose not to get into here but let's just say, I now have an advanced degree in exorcism! Therapy changed my ideas about what a family can look like and how I felt about my capability as a Mother, and for that I am grateful. It also allowed me to forge a deep, trusting and lasting relationship with my partner now. Don't get me wrong, a relationship is always changing and it is work, but 90% of it is showing up right? So I showed up. And things happened.

Admittedly, this is a very truncated version of my life up to now, but I wanted you to have a sense of where I came from before I got into 'baby' part of my life and how i got there. Talk to you soon.

Hello There World...

Well hello again! This is my first blog post after stating the changes I want to make and the new path my blog is going to take. I find that I also have a new approach to blogging as well. I feel a little serious about it(finally!). You see, I always wanted to be a consistent blogger, one with good content and a strong personal voice, but never really knew what to blog about. I mean who really cares wether I glued my fingers together working on a craft project, or that the paper I had been waiting for finally came into the Paper Place? (amazing store BTW). So here I sit, baby napping, house somewhat clean, in front of my computer with so many ideas I don't really know where to start! Motherhood is pretty amazing (cliche, I know) but now having “crossed the veil” and had my kid, I'm finding it interesting and challenging in ways I never thought about. Like the fact that I did NOT like being pregnant! No one can really prepare for what it feels like to have what is essentially a parasite inside you for 9 months, squishing everything up into your ribcage and making sleep impossible! Don't get me wrong, from the sounds of it I had a really easy pregnancy (more on that later) but OMG I started missing sleep  almost right away! And what's with the sensitivity to every little sound in the bedroom? Sigh. I digress...Anyway, I'm hoping to find a nice balance between the artistic independent me (and my stuck together fingers) and the new Mom me (with my fingers stuck together for an entirely different reason)and talk about it here. So thanks for reading! Please feel free to leave a comment, unless you can't stand me, then you can take a hike.

A NEW DAY, A NEW BOY, A NEW POST!

Hello! from the above picture , you can see I have had other things on my mind these days than Blogging! Jake is 4 months old now and I feel that I want to change my blog to more relevant subjects than just life in general and journaling my random thoughts. Yes, I will keep posting about my art and things that interest me, but I want to start blogging about Motherhood as well. I feel like there is a paucity of Mom blogs out there that share the way I feel about being a mother . I would like to address my specific struggle to navigate in the world as a mom with many tattoos and some different ideas I have  about what it means to me personally to be a mother in this day and age of helicopter parenting.Also, what it's like to raise a boy and the things that worry me about that too! Anyway, I hope you will follow me in my little adventure and come to feel like Jake and Brian and I are family to you, if you don't already(you know who you are!)