I haven’t known what I’ve wanted to say on the page for a while I’ve been walking around having a lot of conversations with myself. I’m in this place that I’m not used to; I’ve discussed it in therapy. It is really strange for me to be in a place of recovery of sorts but be able to tell myself that on the bad days. Yesterday I was convinced that was it; I was depressed, DEPRESSED again. I slept most of the weekend and sleep hadn’t been coming easy to me and I was just out of it. Friday night was particularly hard.  When you are used to having suicidal thoughts almost daily for an extended period of time and then all of sudden you have healthy thoughts and then when you have a bad day you can say oh im having a bad day and then when day three of bad days rolls around and the suicidal thoughts re enter the picture it fucking sucks.

I cried myself to sleep Friday night picturing new and exciting ways to knock myself off which weren’t limited to tying the sheet around my neck attaching it to the bed post (we have a poster bed frame) and letting myself fall out of bed. Fucking horrible. It makes me realize how lucky I am to have been feeling so well for a long while now it is draining it took me till I woke up today to fully snap out of it, yesterday we and my new Neko t-shirt did make it out for a walk but I wasn’t in an instant good mood.

My bad days have been bad but Saturday was the first day where I woke up beating myself up for the images I fell asleep with and told Adam about all of the ways I thought of and how much it sucked that the feelings were back and that day was a fucking write off and then yesterday I was still cunty pants. My therapist was all proud of me for actually being able to sit in my apartment and do nothing and be HAPPY about DOING NOTHING. And all I could think of was how quickly I’d regressed how easy it was to slip how I couldn’t even remember what the trigger was I can’t remember what took it over the edge to wanting to off myself.

So there is a part of me that is really proud because my parents and I are still doing well, I’m doing well, I know when to hold em and when to fold em I’ve been rocking out on the happy bus and then I fell off and got run over real good. I want good things, I deserve good things, and I’m only letting good things into my life. I want to stay in this *happy place* but fuck man, it’s really really hard but easier than it was.

Someone offered free kittens; I like kittens, a lot. Bubbles from the Trailer Park Boys loves kittens, remember Steve French? I figured if I get a kitten half as cute and cool as Steve French then this post will be worth it.

Some things are left up to coincidence; we have a friend coming to visit from England in just under a month and on our things to do with said friend number 7. is T.P.B. At first I had to ask @abc4 what T.P.B was and I laughed at myself when he said  Trailer Park Boys, last time this friend came to visit we didn’t even show him one of Canada’s most loved shows or one of my most loved shows filmed in Canada because I probably shouldn’t speak for the whole country.  The contest isn’t open to people in Europe, [sorry!] just the US and Canada but I’m just sayin the contest going on fit the time line of someone we can’t wait to show the bloody show to anyway.

Trailer Park Boys II: Countdown to Liquor Day doesn’t hit theatres until September but to tie you over Ricky, Julian and Bubbles are having a Countdown to Liquor Day movie sweepstakes.  Four grand prize winners will receive the complete series on DVD AND a pretty classy stash bag.

Enter, do it, you can never have too much Trailer Park Boys in your life, ever. Long live Steve French.

In 2008 my weight hit an all time low. I hadn’t been that tiny since I was a teenager, I dropped below ninety pounds at thirty-one, with a frame of five foot five and three quarter inches. I got rid of my scale years ago and normally only weigh myself at the doctor.

I’ve always wanted to speak of my personal issues with weight on my blog but haven’t until now believed I was in a healthy enough place to tell the bad but see it from a positive place. Although I am very comfortable talking about my depression in general, the anxiety, the suicidal thoughts etc., I’ve always left my weight issues sort of off limits.

Having watched myself go from having to try and hold my weight at 115 once I bought my wedding dress in January of 2006 to it almost being too big by that August and then almost immediately following the wedding packing on what I very fondly referred to as the Newlywed Fifteen (it was more like twenty) that became what was originally my very first positive experience with weight until at the weight of approx 130-135 in the below photo I was called fat. And my instant reaction was, are you fucking kidding me 130-135 on my frame IS NOT FAT. Am I in shape in the beige bra photo NO, but fat, fuck off.

But it still hurt. It hurt because I’d been picked on my entire life for being too thin and now I was happy and bitches were calling me fat. Realizing 100% that you can’t win is one thing but it opened up an even bigger defense system in me when people would comment on how great I looked just to call me fat behind my back AND the EXACT same thing happened in the other direction as well, people telling me how great I looked just to turn around and back stab the shit out of me for being too thin.

The facts in my case are this: I hate food, despise it, give me a pill that has everything I need to stay at a healthy weight I’d be living on cloud nine and up until around twenty -six I did have the metabolism of a race horse and the abs of a wash board this was all before I admitted to myself that I did in fact have a problem, a problem REGARDLESS of whether or not a was born with thin genes and ran races with fast times. When I spiral into long and serious depressive periods I starve myself. NOT because I want to be thin, the emaciated body that ends up staring back at me in the mirror makes me sick, but it isn’t enough to make me eat, the image is not the issue. The metallic taste of what feels like a bar forms across the back of my throat and I live on tomato soup and fruit IF I eat, the anxiety generally wins and I don’t.

In therapy I’ve discussed with my shrink that I believe that the weight loss I suffer through my worst depressive periods will someday have a disorder name because everything has to have a label and I know I’m not alone in the disliking food department but it isn’t socially acceptable and just like people can’t seem to wrap their head around how demeaning and disgusting it is to say to something to the effect of “Holy crap are you ever skinny”, big surprise they can’t figure out that if affects the EXACT same place in the brain when a woman is called fat and it is NOT A GOOD PLACE. Either comment is ignorant and unnecessary for women AND men to have to stand and listen to. I rarely if EVER comment on people’s weight.

I have heard my larger girlfriends complain of men saying “wow what a pretty face if only she wasn’t fat.” I had a man CHANT “cheeseburgers, cheeseburgers” at me for the duration of whatever we had. I’ve been told to EAT SOMETHING when I’m eating everything in sight: bags of cookies, ice cream, cake, donuts, BURGERS you name it and the weight will not stay on if I’m suffering mentally.

Even at my thinnest I have stood strong in saying, ok thanks for that compliment but I’m too thin and working on a healthy weight.  It greatly changes my opinion of people who compliment me when I weigh in the 90’s and MEAN IT when my clothes are literally hanging off me, in some cases I probably think you are sick and have a problem of your own.  Part of why I have waited until now to write on this is because these aren’t just words to me and I refuse to perpetuate the skinny bitch stereotype, that it’s all shits and giggles and perfect outfits and FUN! It doesn’t exist we are all in the same boat.

I have never been happier about my body than I am right now. But thanks for asking.

I have given up on finding the Beaver for the time being, we didn’t look very hard the second time so I will likely go on more beaver hunts but now I am on a baby swan and baby mallard kick only saw one raccoon today.  One swan down at Lost Lagoon has a cygnet with her and it is adorable but there is another one sitting on a half open egg and apparently a couple that haven’t cracked yet, felt like everyone got to see her stand up and see the eggs but me but she just sat there heavily guarded by a male who spent the whole time I stood there watching her talk to her eggs sleeping. It is awesome that  there are more cygnets to come fingers are triple crossed that a couple more make it, this is very exciting to me, and  it should also give me various opportunities to keep practicing with the camera.

There are more photos on my Flickr stream, of course.

Late last week my husband and I met up with a group of bloggers and twitterers at the Vancouver Police Museum for an open house of the premises and the highlight, a two hour: Sins of the City Walking Tour through what I now know to be the oldest parts of the city.

I’ve been reading true crime novels since I was too young to read crime novels, some of my favourites are by retired FBI Profiler John Douglas, I can quote the likes of David Berkowitz (aka Son of Sam) and Charles Manson and tell you things about Aileen Wuornos that aren’t in the Hollywood-ized Monster, Ed Gein is another serial killer whom I enjoy separating the fact and the fiction on.  This is something I have always been interested in, I would have loved to have been a forensic scientist or profiler myself I dreamt about it long before I could live vicariously through the cast of the original CSI, but I’ve never been strong in math or science, I have some of the natural skills required for the career but science and math can pretty much kiss my ass.

Until earlier this year I didn’t even know we had a Police Museum even with this intense interest in the more macabre side of life and death, so when Chris Mathieson the Executive Director of the Museum sent out an invitation on Twitter I rushed to sign up and also followed The Police Museum’s twitter stream. I didn’t really have any idea what to expect but when I got to the Off the ‘Cuff blog also run by Chris and saw the tour was not only called Sins of the City but we were going to be exposed to a newly revised Sins of the City Tour, I became even more excited because they had me at Sin(s).  By this time I had already scoured the website and found the photo group on flickr and was delighted to find the museum even has a morgue!

Vancouver is a city faced with many serious problems that more than a few people would say are being pushed under the carpet, with the Olympics only months away and there being less and less talk focused on what is going to be done about the Downtown East Side it also seemed like a really good time to take a tour such as this that boasts information and true stories on and not limited to:

• Bootleggers, prohibition, and the often quirky evolution of liquor laws (and their enforcement) in the city
• The development of the early drug trade and the surprising Vancouver origins of Canada’s narcotic laws
• Racial and labour tension boiling over into demonstrations, riots and murder
• The evolution of the sex trade, from brothels to streetwalkers
• The city’s considerable predilection to gambling

You can still go from swanky rich shopping stores to junky cracked out homeless, suffering, and ignored individuals in less than a block here. I don’t have a solution, I just know that educating yourself as much as you can on something at least gives you a voice people will listen too if and when you choose to use it.

Even when guests have been in the city I’ve never taken a city tour in any form and I would take this one again it was quite simply superb. Aside from this tour offering up many stories and dispelling many myths the loads of information from the birth of Vancouver, you are even taken to the very first place a building ever stood, a ground zero of sorts from which the city grew out, you are right in the thick of it, where the good the bad and the ugly all took place, still pretty creepy regardless of what it appears as now.

Not only was Chris extremely informative, his delivery and level of enthusiasm was particularly refreshing. Chris appears to take pride in his knowledge and just wants to share it with you and share he will, there was nothing that stumped him. He knows Vancouver’s history of VICE, and then some.

Other attendees, Stacie Biehler, John Biehler, Ian A. Martin and Jon Jennings all have photos up on Flickr, there are some great shots of some of the confiscated weapons on John’s stream, and just more of the same old same old on my Flickr sin set.

We saw Neko Case at The Vogue last night, Middle Cyclone tour.

Up until yesterday I had avoided writing the word epic anywhere and I had also avoided saying it. I knew it would happen just like it did with fail, damn catchy one syllable words.  When I can only vomit so many words into what we all now know of as status updates these annoying words do come in handy. If you think fail is bad let’s just hope you don’t have to put an EPIC in front of it like I did last night.

Now I do admit, after having just seen her FRONT ROW CENTER the ordeal that was getting my tickets or my PAID stamp rather does seem a wee bit trivial. And it was my forth time and all. Adam’s fifth as he saw her with The New Pornographers.

Three different sets of information told me that the will call would open at five. And back on March 3^rd when I bought the tickets Adam had the audacity to not only put the idea in my head but convince me that we could get front row. I was upset it was open seating I don’t like open seating I don’t like festival in a park setting seating. I bought tickets early off her site because I am an insane fan like that and so they went through Etix.com and I’m not upset with anyone in particular it just turned into this epic adventure trying to maintain my place in line, FIRST, and get my tickets. I got there only thirty minutes before I thought will call was going to open.  I was extremely excited there was no way I wasn’t going to be able to go straight from the front of the will call line to the front of the have tickets line and make front row, or so I thought sitting there until five o’clock came there were people starting to arrive but there was NO WILL CALL.

Meanwhile I am totally stressing out, thankfully I took two extra milligrams of clonazepam which must have helped because it turned out will call didn’t open until six and I didn’t put a cap in anyone’s ass, and who CARES that I was there at 4:30pm anymore stuck, FIRST, in the bull shit will call line.  FINALLY very nicely and patiently we Etix.com people were given the correct information as they were under the same incorrect impression as I was. Will call would not be open until six, I still wasn’t impressed, whatever, I just spent three months with Adam planning different strategies on how to get front row no biggie.

I had never participated in a plan of this sort before because I normally arrive around half way through the opener of concerts on account of my headaches not on account of being rude although I understand that it is rude.

Enter here, Jessica and Sara both within close proximity of each other and because of this we start to plot together and I explain my situation, Jessica who was the first of the two to arrive sits at the front of the has tickets line with Sara and says she will save me a spot which was of course the awesomest nicest thing ever BUT I had too much adrenaline running through me to really calm down about the whole fiasco because even when will call opened there was a bunch of us standing there with print outs from Etix.com and they had NO tickets for us and had to go find people.  WHO wants to deal with that when you’re excited, and you got there super early. I am NEVER doing will call or not going through ticket master again it was just not worth the money saved with the stress added to my already anxiety filled body.

Had it not been for Jessica and Sara arriving exactly when they did I’d likely NOT have been able to have kept my first place in line and I thank them A LOT. Sara and I are already Facebook friends. When it came down to it, including Adam the four of us worked together for the first four front and center seats it was pretty remarkable to have gotten them.  I don’t think I will ever go that extent for open seating again I’ve seen her enough times now.

The show itself was sensational. My only complaint about front row is that I couldn’t see their shoes so until they walked off stage I didn’t noticed that Kelly Hogan had to die for red heels on and Neko had on Black Cons.  I don’t dress up anymore for her shows, I did for the first one but she always comes out in black pants or jeans and some kind of t-shirt or black top.  She doesn’t seem to be a dress up kinda gal.

It was really nice to hear a completely new set and arrangement, having seen the Fox Confessor tour or variations of it three times this set was very refreshing, I enjoyed the older songs added and the songs off the new album were prefect.  It was nice to hope, to wonder what, and want her to play certain songs and not having the faintest idea of what was coming, like the first time.

There are more photos on my Flickr.

We went out on Saturday night to the CD Release party for Mojave’s Crow’s Funeral. It was great that we finally got to see them in concert because other dates hadn’t worked out and we’d been hanging out with Paul keeping him company while LJ was out of town which meant we’d also met Philly the Violin player. Sorry; Paul plays guitar, LJ too and the vocals. But we knew a lot of 140 character things about each other.

Tis one thing to miss a concert of a new friend tis another to miss the CD Release party for the second full album of now official said friend.  As I tell people when they are like as if you have social anxiety if you get me out the door nine times out of ten I’m fine, plus I started to drink beer again, in extreme moderation but that does still give me loose drinking lips, but I’ve never cared much about those, my sober filter is almost as lacking anyway.

I slapped on my new blue dress over my newly not a skinny bitch just a bitch now body and headed out the door in my yellow shoes with my handsome husband.  Cost us all of ten bucks to get in and we bought the new CD which they all signed for us once I removed the 100% biodegradable film; Mojave take their pledge to the Earth extremely serious. It is pretty inspiring and made me all happy to have been wearing shoes made fully of man made materials.

I guess it goes without saying that Mojave are a local Vancouver band but I will say it anyway, Mojave are a local Vancouver band, and not only is the CD fantastic, not only are they great live, not only was it really cool to see how many of their fans came out for their party it is great that they are all down to earth and cool people.

Although we are getting better at outdoor photos we still both really suck at indoor photos and there was almost no lighting so for great band photos you want to go to PatZ flickr, these are just silly we’re dicking around although still TRYING to learn how to get this fucking thing to work indoors pictures.

Mojave play next on the 24^th of June in Vancouver at The Cellar, and their Crow’s Funeral tour starts near the end of August.

Listen and enjoy a sample of Mojave here
Buy and enjoy the new Mojave CD here
Follow Mojave on Twitter here
Read and subscribe to the Mojave blog here
Enjoy the brand new official Mojave site here