tallnlucky: blog

Sushi and Group Flailing Classes, I Guess I Do Like Them.

We're sitting, sweat-marked, in a tiny sushi joint in the waterfront village by my home.  We're next to the  fireplace and my cheeks are still flushed from a 90-minute boot camp class that had me leaping Mr.Bean style over yellow pylons and pedaling frantically into nowhere while lying on my back on a perspiration soaked mat.  There's a man in a wheelchair in front of us, solo, sipping white wine and flipping through the paper, untouched maki just off to his left.  Flickering light washes through the restaurant and the fish tank in the corner swishes, whirs.  There is a hand on my left leg and a man attached to it: he's rummaging through the menu.

"Greek rolls?  They have feta and onion - there's these Burn In Hell rolls, hot sauce and spicy scallops, let's get those!"

I murmer, either sounds good, and I am looking at the man in front of me, slowly sidling through the classifieds and I think: I hope he doesn't feel alone.

I'm overwhelmed with something that resembles tears but inches toward gratitude.   I have just finished a rigorous fitness class in front of others, something I have never contemplated.  I'm enjoying sushi.  I'm in love, immeasurably, for the first time. I'm doing things I never imagined I would do, could do.  I sometimes can't believe this is my life.

***

Every once in a while I'll receive a random comment on a very old entry in a blog post.  This weekend I received a comment , a mean one. I don't get many of those, and this one I just deleted, but of course it stuck with me.  They always do.

The commenter said that I'd spent far too much time looking for a boyfriend, and not enough time with my boy.  These are years, she noted, in the sniffly self-righteous tone reserved for the anonymous, you'll never get back with him.

Sometimes I wish that this blog offered more than just a pinpoint view.  I would never, ever sacrifice time with my son for a man.  Having a man in our lives, one we both adore, has enhanced and enriched and not taken away.  I understand too fiercely that my days with my son are speeding by, rapid fire, and I continue to cherish the spots of time where it's just he and I against the forest.

A Sunday afternoon amble through towering trees, over banana slugs and through giant puddles of doom. 

He is such a big, robust boy.  He brims with sensitivity, sweetness, and stubborn indignation in equal doses.  His athleticism and joie de vivre inspire me everyday.

Indian Arm from the woods above.

***

One last thing, I've tweeted it and mentioned it before but I wanted to remind you again: Kate and I will be having a beverage at Steamworks Pub in Gastown tomorrow night at 8ish.  I'm dragging Corey, and Teej, Hilllary, Gwen and Kgrrrl, (and maybe Angella D?) we're excited to see you.  Anyone else?  Meeting People from the Internet is funner than boot camp, without fail. 

On eating living things, drinking strongbow, and hanging with Kate

We're sitting in the backstage corner of a severely unkempt bar.  It smells like Stetson cologne and over-eager armpits, there are plump matrons with heavy eye makeup and sequined red dresses swirling drunkenly with thin-moustached slick-haired men in wife beaters and there is a chip dispensing machine in the corner.  A towering pillar of chairs senselessly takes up an entire back corner and I look at the table of chattering friends and acquaintances and think: damn, I love dive bars.  Damn, I love my girlfriends.

A tall can of strongbow sits in front of me, the bartender has provided a straw, and I go to take a sip.  My girlfriend poses with her camera and I say,"Uh, don't put that on Facebook."

"You're not supposed to be drinking,"she says in resignation.

"Right." God forbid I admit failure to my blog readers, who will undoubtedly rush to pitchfork me.

And then I have a sip of Strongbow.  I had two Strongbows on the weekend and they were really very good.  I may do this again, I may not. But I have to admit that after my last blog post, I broke down in the Waldorf Hotel on East Hastings, amidst the checkered carpets and sausage-wrapped dresses, while I was out with girlfriends for the first time in months.  I don't know what this means yet.

(If you want to play the ancient Arcade Games in the back, you have to wedge yourself between the mounds of chairs.  Which is kind of awesome from my vantage point)

***

In the summer, marching mounds of tickly, determined little black ants made their way into my sink, around my cupboards.  I laid out pools of sticky ant trap for them to eat up with their little antannae, to take home to their family and kill them.

I thought about my remorseless ant murdering, and about the honey in my cupboard and the living bees that were exploited to create it.  And then I started thinking about lines, grey ones, concrete ones, and blurred ones.

I've been abstaining from meat for about two years now.  Most of it stemmed from ethical reasons and a book that shocked me into action. It was primarily about factory farming in North America and it literally made me puke. 

But slowly, seafood has begun to make a re-emergence in my diet:  I just don't feel as badly about eating a crustacean plucked from its backward swimming confusion as I do about a very intelligent pig wedged into a tiny, cement den in a windowless cavern, basically being tortured alive.

So, I can't call myself a vegetarian.  I don't know if I'll give up seafood entirely ever, probably, if I read the book that was just sent to me on overfishing and the environment.  For now, though, crab is kind of delicious, as long as I don't watch Corey crack them open on the dock.

***

Two more things.  In a few weeks, I'm heading to California Wine Country to hang out at the Broad Summit, a gathering of friends organized by a few of the smartest Internet ladies I know.  Mimi Smartypants will be there.  For those of you who don't know who Ms. Smartypants is: she is an old-school blogger (literally: has been blogging for 10 years) who has never revealed her name on line, nor has she accepted ads, nor does she have comments.  She follows none of the rules, succumbs to none of the usual pitfalls and temptations. And yet she's riveting.  I would rather meet her than have a lifetime supply of Lululemon and calorie-less Kozy Shack pudding.  Seriously, how exciting.

Last thing: Kate Inglis of SweetSalty fame will be joining me in a Vancouver hang out thing on October 6th.  I've written about her before: in my opinion, she is one of the best writers on the Internet, and she also happens to be a whackload of fun.  Both of us have a number of Vancouver based readers, and we're hoping some of you will come to join us.  I may or may not have a Strongbow.  And crab. We might even end up at the dock, who knows?  Come join us.

Photo taken for new column I'll be writing on blended families and life outside the "traditional" family unit.  Deets to come!

Yeah, that's a crab trap.  We caught three and we ate them and they were a little bit delicious. 

Changing

"But...you knew that when you met him, right?"

She is dark haired and cat-eyed, pretty in a nondescript way and I have spent the entire afternoon feverishly and secretively inspecting her butt, her linguistics, and her personality for signs of flaws and advantages over my own.  They kind of "dated" once, but not really, in the heyday of the fuzziness and debauchery and it was really more of a misguided friendship.  She wanted more, though, which is why I'm examining her so intently.

"No." I respond carefully, biting down on  my defensiveness.  He wasn't an asshole when I met him.  At all."

If she weren't his friend, I would have been more defensive, because what the hell?

"It might be the drinking, right?" Corey pipes in,"People change over the years, and substance abuse just helps morph that." 

Of course I couldn't have predicted the volatility, rage, hatred, and the knowledge that once I loved him. Once I believed very firmly that he had flaws but that his heart was at the core soft and good and I would have gleefully pushed you over a cliff and into a cesspool if you tried to argue otherwise.  Now I look at him, his scowl, the loathing in his face when he glances at me and I am at once empty, sad, and mystified.  This is the man who called me K-dog, who posed in front of a fireplace in a loin cloth for a goofy blog project.  This is still the man, I think, who asked me to be his wife.  But yet, he's not the same person and I don't know where he went.

***

I don't think I ever loved my ex in the same way I love Corey.  There was love, for sure, but there wasn't the powerful synergy and connectivity of every synapse in the way there is this time.  This, for sure, is the only time I've ever felt this way, this certain of long-lasting love -- with the sole exception of the eternal love I know I'll have for my son.  But that total exhilaration is matched by an underpinning of fear that I grimly push down each morning.

"He might change,"it whispers, snaking in the dark,"Maybe you don't know him like you think, maybe you will change, haven't you learned anything about reckless abandon?"

The fear isn't enough to stop this: my fear is not stronger than my hope.  But it's been almost 5 months now, and things are just beginning to sink in.  I'm in it, I'm committed, this is fantastic and I am the luckiest woman in the Universe. But god, I'd better be right this time.

Lucky

Corey leaves to go outside for a minute, he is overwhelmed with the perfume and the dangly earrings and the breathy estrogen and I kiss the side of his neck as he leaves and think: I probably shouldn't have dragged him out with me here.  We're still only four months in, it seems impossible at this point because I know him inside and out and can feel his emotions in a way I've never fathomed with previous partners.  That intrinsic understanding has its detriments, though, and I am fidgety and restless when I sense his discomfort.

"Oh. My. God."  My friend Kendra, introduced to me by the Birthday Girl, is staring at me with green eyes aghast."He is. Gorgeous.  Kristin!  Maybe I should try out the online dating thing after all.  My God."

"I know," I say and I look at the door where he's just exited, where two thirty-something women are staring out the door with jaws dropped. 

***

When I first met Corey, I spent most of my time secretly wondering WTF.  Here was an astonishingly handsome man with a whip-smart brain and razor sharp sense of humour.  He had a sparkling, light-filled apartment, a University degree, an excellent, flexible career and an enormous heart.  His ability to skip small talk and hone in to the deep core of matters of the soul flummoxed me from our second date.  He told me the story of his life: a story that made my heart plummet, soar, and exit my body temporarily in raw astonishment and I his yellow green eyes caught something in mine and held them and I think that is the exact moment I fell in love.

And then, jaded cynicism crept in and I thought: I am a mildly socially awkward single Mom, filled with cracks and tarnish and a disintegrated relationship with a man who treats me like sores on the ass of a starving fucking banana slug.  Why would this dude - this beautiful, sincere man - with his potential to the stars, to create his own family, to start fresher, shinier - want me and all my crust?

Here's the thing: I get it now.  The independence created from my two years of single motherhood have created a strength in me: I am strong enough for two at times, and newly humble enough to admit when I am feeling week.  I am into my thirties, can wear red lipstick with confidence, appreciate my body and its strength and capacity for feeling.  I understand electricity is fleeting, and gather every minute.  I'm strong in my career and my assets and for the first time, don't need a man to create my happiness.  I get why he digs me, and for the first time in a long time, I don't want to be 25 again, I don't wish a do-over for the last few years of my twenties.  This has all happened exactly as it needed to.

I am grateful to have found this, and infinitely lucky.  We're both lucky.

***

I mentioned in a previous post that I have ceased all alcoholic intake, and so far so good except this weekend we realized how much of our weekends revolved around going to pubs.  Going to pubs licks when you're drinking soda water and you're mildly socially awkward.

We're thinking of joining a knitting club or photography course or some kind of sexercise yoga to keep us occupied on the weekends (when we're not running mad distances, omg)  This might be a little more challenging than I think we originally thought.

Thursday Pickup, Summer's End

My home rests on the top of a long hill that curves alongside a rain forest trail, and most days at lunch I run through the evergreens and the moss stretching vainly and hungrily to Vancouver's rare lemon sun.  But today I'm running to my son's daycare; it's a short jaunt but a gruelling one, up one of the steepest hills in the city, one that lasts for well over a kilometer, almost the duration of All This Time (which is currently on perpetual repeat on my iPod running mix)

I'm wearing a sports bra and shorts, the summer keeps unfurling, though there are cracks in her bravado, yellow-red leaves spackling through the green of the trees. My stomach has finally started to display its underlying muscle, but with all the ab work I've been doing, another, unwelcome visitor has returned: the hernia that I got repaired two years ago.  It sticks out of my bellybutton like an angry red dwarf and fabric can't touch it or I will die.  I wonder what neighbours think when I tromp largely and angrily through the neighbourhood each day, bobbing Mr. Bean like with my yellow headphones wrapped strategically around my bra straps (because, for the love of all things holy, not a single manufacturer can make decent running headphones.) with my little red dwarf hernia along for the ride.

The gallop to Nolan's preschool takes about 20 minutes, past a fire station,over weeds in sidewalk cracks, up a mountain. I splutter red faced and determined and my legs, after months of this, are strong, surprisingly strong.  I pump my arms to travel faster and suddenly feel gritty: want to go faster, want to push harder, want to test my limits to the point I almost puke.  I am firmly entrenched in obsession faze with this fitness thing and it's not really surprising: I always have an obsession: in past it's been men, travel, wine, real estate.  This one is free and makes me feel like my body can do anything.  I'll take it.

***

I open the door to the little portable daycare.  I see my son:  his blond head bobs behind a table filled with wigs, combs, and mock shampoo, he is playing with a little girl with shiny black hair and the whole room choruses with small voices when I arrive: "Nolan!  Your Mom's here!"

He runs, as he always does, into my arms at full speed with a beam across his face and my heart crackles and splits, as it always does.

"Did you run here, Mommy?," he asks, already taking his shoes off,"Can I take my shirt off and run wit you?"

I take his hand and we amble out the door: I'm loaded up with his lunch bag and art work and a note from the daycare director saying she still needs that immunization record from me, crap.  But I am ready when he says: on your marks, get set, GO, Mommy" and I puff and sweat and my dwarf hernia blazes along in the fall sunshine and he laughs uproariously when he beats me to the red car, as he always does.

***

I'm reluctant to watch the tendrils of summer slip away.  These past four months have seen some of the most intense, beautiful, and intensely joy-filled days of my life.  I met my match, against all odds, and contrary to my long held belief that there is no such thing as a soul mate, I have no doubt that this man is totally, completely right for me.  For me, and for Nolan.  

***

My son and I slow from our run and he slides his hand on mine as we walk toward the gas station for a slushie for him, a water for me. 

"Mommy,"he asks contemplatively and I am struck again by the wisdom in his blue-white eyes.  His teachers at daycare say he is profoundly sensitive and unusually affectionate and his softness breaks my heart,"Mommy, why does Daddy not like Corey?"

I'm used to these random questions, my back is permanently braced for them and I never have answers.  He asked me last night why I "struggle with Daddy" and, most painfully, why I hug and kiss Corey so much, before I only hugged and kissed him.

These questions are the reason so many Wisdom Spewers admonish that one should not have a relationship while a child is so young, and I struggle with the guilt associated with sacrificing any of my son's innocence for some of my own happiness.  To my son's most recent question, I say, sweetheart, your Dad doesn't know Corey and if he did I bet he would like him very much.  We both love you more than anything in the entire Universe."

He nods but he doesn't understand and I can't help but hope he doesn't understand animosity and bitterness and the complexity of loss for a very, very long time. 

***

The backdrop of a wedding we attended in Revelstoke two weekends ago.  We've been to 3 weddings in 4 weeks, all of them beautiful and expensive and exhausting as all hell. 

Evidence of fall.  There is nothing like a little baby becoming a toddler, morphing rocket speed into a boy, to make you suck in your breath harder with the wind-knocking realization of life's sudden speed.

In a toque, wicked.

Dominating

Things that have been dominating my life:

1) Weddings (3 in last 4 weeks)

2) Running (6 times a week, including a 15k on the weekend.  Am training for a half marathon with Corey in October and already scouring the route for a toilet so there is no reprisal of the 10K I ran in April.)

3. Porn (I could write about this, but you'd think I was practicing my fiction and I totally wouldn't be but I would be incriminating some people I'd rather not incriminate.  I often wonder if my life is stranger than fiction or if everyone's life is filled with this kind of stuff and the only difference is that they refrain from writing about it on the Internet.)

4. the Blond Minion (who has asked approximately 7 ear-scorching questions in the past two weeks, stuff like why Daddy doesn't like Corey and why I kiss Corey when I only used to kiss him.  Post to come tonight on that shit.)

5. Work (7 million proposals, am buried.)

6. A side project. Corey and I are in the midst of creating a pretty cool new site that is a combination of inspiration, motivation, plans, road maps, 3d.  It will also include his story, which I've never written about hear, and which will almost definitely blow your mind.  It's still in development, but in the meantime I'm posting a blog a few times a week there and I'm hoping you'll come and participate in the conversation.  Today, come and share your favourite healthy recipe.  I'm in dire need of lunch and it's not even 11:00.

Scenes from a Drink

The drapes are thick in this part of the house, brown corduroy smothering veiled white fabric, meant to keep out the chill and mildew of Pacific Northwest winter.

He sits next to a table with an ineffective smoke sucker on it.  There are bins on either side of the fireplace for logs, there are only three channels on the TV and there are only ever two shows: Hockey Night in Canada and CBC news.  He has a cigarette in his mouth and one tucked behind his ear and he wears an off white robe with crimson piping, there are three cigarette burns in various places.  I don't know where my Mom is but I suddenly wish I do because he hands me a crumpled fifty.

"Go buy yourself something, you need to understand the value of money, may as well be sooner."

I don't know what drunk is, I don't know what's wrong, but I know something is amiss as I drag the fuzzy roped hair of my cabbage patch kid to the corner store, to buy Tubble Gum and baseball cards and to ask the grumpy proprieter if he'll give me work because I want to buy a horse.  That might teach me the value of money, right?  Tears splashed the pavement as I left the house in the rain and I didn't know why.

***

There are a row of them at the bar and I know all their names but they all may as well be Bart from Scotland Who Lost His Wife to the drink, because that's their common thread.  That and the bulbous veiny noses, the stomachs that stretch and glide over the top of black polyester pants.  They have stories that they tell each other, but none of them know how to listen, and even if they did they'd forget the next day.

I hand them Strongbow, Guinness, a third and a forth, yeah I'm OK Rab, how's it going Barry, yes, I know if you were twenty years younger I wouldn't stand a chance.  And how's that lovely daughter of yours?

They came initially with proclamations of life events: it's my daughter's wedding, I'm a grandfather.  And later: a funeral, my wife left me. 

Now there's no excuse, they just sit side by side at the bar, at the high top, one hand on the mug and one toward the screen, avoiding the knowledge of their shame by making it normal, by sitting beside that other Bart from Scotland.

***

The pop and the hiss of a third beer can made me cringe from upstairs, I could hear it in the bathroom and wake up from a dead sleep, even when he tried to hide it with a turned up TV or a half hearted cough.  I'd taken to hiding them in the Lazy Susan, even pouring them down the drain, and if he knew he didn't talk about it.  He'd just buy more, and my resentment would build until it hit a crescendo in the middle of the winter as he swayed outside in -30, wild eyed.  I rubbed my protruding belly, that incubated life and said through the glass: You are not coming in here like that.

In the end I'd screamed it: "Me.  Me and him or the alcohol."

He didn't choose me.

***

I've worried about it for years, pondered its hold on me and conducted a tentative kind of dance with alcohol.  Why, though, am I still allowing it to hold me, interact with me, stomp across my threshold when its caused so much destruction in so many facets of my life?

I've finally decided to cut it out altogether, and I can't tell you how relieved that makes me feel.

Skinny tight ropes

It's my Dad's birthday and he's ordered spare ribs in my Mom's savory honey ketchup sauce and salmon stuffed with crab and prawns, and there's a chocolate raspberry mousse sitting on the counter, waiting for candles.

My Aunt is there, my Dad's sister.  She spit on his face when he was a young boy and that's the only explanation he's ever given me for why they don't really talk, why he relegates all conversation with her to my Mother.  I am dubious because she's so silver grey and joy eyed and pleasant, and is a little bit of childhood spit really the only reason they're so far away from each other?
My Brother is there, his hair has grown back in thick ropy Jesus waves and he is in love with a girl who cooks him pot roast and dumplings every night, carefully timing the meal for when he gets home.  The house smells like cupcakes and green frosting all day and he's got a Buddha belly, which he rubs kind of lovingly amidst murmers of getting pudgy.  He doesn't seem to mind this. 
My brother's girlfriend and my boyfriend talk in the kitchen beside the cheesecake stuffed white-chocolate dipped strawberries she has made: they have a bond created out of the weirdness of being outsiders in our odd family and I'm grateful for the comfort they create for each other just by being at our dinners.

"So anyway,"Dad says suddenly and the room is so quiet without my son scampering around collecting rocks to throw in the water.  Forks scrape on plates and a motor boat roars outside on the silver cove outside, cutting the late summer silence.

"I had these rings put together, they're Mom and Dad's and it's rare that the five of us are together," he nods at me, Dave, my Mom, my Aunt,"And I wanted to bury them out by the big tree on the cliff and so when you guys are ready, let's do it."

I feel the odd racing of discomfort in my heart, the same feeling I always get when confronted with mortality, death, the increasing frailty of my own parents, myself.  My brother stands up and I look at our significant others and say: you guys don't have to come.    They put their plates in the kitchen sink and slip on their shoes to head down to the dock.

***

"Nothing in life is certain,"my Dad says, holding up the rings,"But if all goes as planned, you guys can do this for Mom and I one day, in this spot."

I look at my brother who is kind of shuffling away from the scene, muttering, oh god,  my Aunt sniffles and I pretend my Dad's eyes are not full of tears.  He scoops dirt out from underneath the tree and places the intertwined rings in a small dugout, overlooking the silver ocean and the looming mountains.  Two lives gone, lives that made mine possible, intertwined.

My Mom's eyes are full of tears too, and I don't know what to say so I look down at the dock, the heads of my brother's girlfriend, of Corey, sitting at the edge of the water. 
"Was that Dad's idea?" I ask Mom.

"It was,"she said, surprise in her voice and I nod.

It's now twilight and we make our way back to the cabin. The cream-cheese filled strawberries are waiting.

Perfect Imperfection

I received an email a few weeks ago from a male blogger (one who happens to be both a brilliant writer and commenter) - wondering.  I read the email and snickered and read it to Corey who laughed out loud too.  Here's the email verbatim:

K.

My best marathon is a 3:57. He's way faster, isn't he?

That's exactly my point, K-Dar! I'm gonna go out on a limb here and speak for your male readers. You need to humanize this dude or you're gonna alienate the lot of us. Does he chew tobacco? Have a pill habit? Like bad music? Something.

I understand the con list isn't very deep and that you're flipped out crazy in love. But the fellas - they don't wanna feel like losers every time they open your blog. So what? He's got an annoying high pitched giggle, doesn't he? Does he watch Friends reruns?

Help.

Here's the truth:  Corey snores.  He pinches his non-existent fat after he eats something he considers excessive (like a "big" bowl of cereal).  But other than that, he's all around rad.  He's funny, and he's effing brilliant and he's sweet.  He refuses to lie to me about anything and sometimes that smarts, and mostly it's just amazing.  I'm ridiculously, head-over-heels in love with him, in a way I never believed was possible.

But I do want to make it clear that this wasn't always the case: Corey has a multilayered and complex past and it's all going to come out as part of a project we're working on but I wanted to let you know that this isn't perfect: nothing is.

I'm so appreciative of so many of you that have said you're so happy for me, and us, and god, it's amazing to feel like you have hundreds of strangers routing for you, sincerely.  And I'm extra grateful because there has been more than one occasion in the last two years that I've wanted to chop Happiness off the head of people who clearly had too much of it.  Schadenfreude, I think it's called.  None of you seem to have it - even Rufus apologized, what the hell?  You're all better people than me.

***
A few weeks ago, I posted a picture of Corey and I in Jamaica at Dunn's River Falls. The camera angle sucked away my muffin top and it was a flattering picture of both of us and a photographer friend I'd met at a conference three weeks ago left a comment - would we be interested in being models at an upcoming bridal shoot he was doing?

The word "bridal" sent chills of fear through my spine, but Corey thought it would be fun - especially since Oscar said he'd take some casual photos we could keep afterward.  As the date approached I started freaking out a bit - I was going to be in a wedding dress for the first time in my life.  With the man I love.  But not marrying.  Not right now.  Who would see me in a not-mine wedding dress.  This was going to be effed, ohmygod, wtf?  It was too late to back out, though I think Corey was starting to freak out about it a bit too.

Long story hacked: the bridal shoot fell through so Oscar just took some pictures of us.  I posted them on Facebook and via Twitter but they're so rad I'm posting them here too.  If you are in Canada and need a photographer - or if you live in a super cool US city and want to fly out a wicked photographer - I recommend this dude, he's rad.

Those are my faves.  So yeah - for those of you wondering and emailing - we didn't get engaged.  But I do think it will happen eventually - and in the meantime our living arrangements are going to be shifting.  And no, I don't think it's too soon.  When you know, you know.  It's ridiculous and cliched and totally true.

***
(For those of you interested, I've also written my farewell column over at Work It, Mom.  Hard to write a column about single parenting when you're not single, but that is a rad site full of quality writing and I hope you'll visit there still.  I may continue to write there under different topic, if I can think of something relevant)

Whirlwinding

In the last ten days I have been to Houston, Jamaica, and Lake Louise.  Nolan turned 4 and his Father apparently turned 3 and a half and I made a pivotal decision that at least 50% of you would yell at me for (the other 50% would nod in teary understanding and totally understand the motive) My best friend got married and, Corey and I did a photo shoot for a super talented photographer, and I witnessed a scary display.  It wasn't given by the person you think.

I have pangs of guilt about my poor, neglected blog, especially because, man, so many of you have been so incredible.   I'm hoping pictures will tide you until life ebbs and flows and slows for just a little while.

The beach at Negril.  Our cabbie dropped us off at the most ghetto of the hotels on the sandy white strip of beach and told us it was free access. Here we ate jerk chicken and salad and drank red stripes and gallons of water and marvelled at the colour of the water, the white of the sand, the shapes and diversity of the people.  Every two seconds a random dreadlocked beanie be-decked low-talking dude would try to sell us either valium, fruit, or weed but it was all kind of part and parcel.

Cliff diving off rocky ledges into crystal clear Caribbean water with this dude I love - was without question one of the best experiences of my life.  I took this picture of Corey off the lower cliff and still can't quite believe I mustered the gumption to do the 40 foot plunge from on top of a sketchily constructed platform on top of a dead tree where normally the whitey tourists are not allowed to jump from.  My heart was lolling and screaming in my mouth and about to pop out of my eyes and it was wicked.  The only thing better was watching Corey do the same insane thing without questioning it and thinking: dude, we're so made for each other. 

This picture was taken with my shitty point and shoot, by a tiny muscled Jamaican dude who was trying to rip us off ( 20 US dollars and I will carry your camera up the dangerous rocks for you, here, I'll take picture, no problem, 20 dollars.  Respect.) Jamaica is not inexpensive, especially for gullible Canadians who cannot say no and who under no circumstance will risk being impolite.  In the end, tiny muscled Jamaican dude and his harassments were worth it, he took my favourite picture of the trip.

Two days after we returned home, Nolan returned home to me from a vacation with his paternal grandparents and I ran to him and could barely lift him, he is so big and full of limbs and ideas and joie de vivre.  He turned 4 and it made my heart soar and plummet simultaneously.  He is getting so big, so fast, faster now even than before. I wrote a post I almost published about him and our four years together and then I pulled it.  He's four now so it's just for us, just for him.

This weekend my best friend got married.  This is my favourite shot from the day - there are more on Flickr if you're interested.  Her story, and her husband's, is a whole post on its own, perhaps a whole book.

What have you been up to, Internet?  I've missed you.