My parents have had this sign for ages it existed when my name was still my maiden name Liscumb. I am pretty sure I even asked my dad the exact story from the sign while I was in Bali but I was on vacation brain and I have no idea. It has been repainted since it was on the green fence that held my dad’s old horse in Prince George. The weather there did a number on it. I never lived in Prince George so we must have had it in Terrace too.

This is the view from the back of the house from the top storey patio.  That mountain there that you can barely see was very hard to capture.  I made many a mental note to get a photo when it was more visible and I forgot and never did. Things like that made the place feel more real because I was able to say to myself fuck it, you can get it on the next trip.

That patio is also where the Monday massages took place. Just had to call up the woman and let her know that there would be three of us. I got there on a Monday night so I missed that day’s massage but still got two in while there. Decent massage, little different from anything I’d experienced before, I’ve had full body massages but never had it include a full butt massage as in those hands slipped into my crack on way more than one occasion.

This is the front of the house from the steps leading from the beach to this wee gate. Before I had seen the house in person I had a really hard time guessing and even picturing how my parents told me it was set up, for some reason I had only seen photos from this angle.

Facing this way on the left is the office and a bathroom and the outside sitting area, on the right is the kitchen and the kitchen eating area.  You do most of your living there outdoors.  My dad asked me after I’d been there for a decent bit how I liked living outside. I remember saying I honestly hadn’t really noticed but loved it, probably from camping so much from such a young age and spending so much time outside as a kid it just seemed natural for me to slip right into.

I noticed while pulling the above photo for the post that a cup of MY kopi is in this photo, I had mentioned in my last Bali post – Part Tiga that none existed which I have discovered was an unintentional lie.

Selamat pagi – which means good morning, as I’m about to swig from my water bottle. I’m wearing what I slept in here so I know that it’s still morning.

I read a decent amount while I was gone, I never ever read as many books on vacation as I think I will BUT I would still bring the same amount of books plus my eBook because no matter where I am I want a variety of books to choose from which is partly what makes having an eBook so awesome, although I don’t use it much I know I will because I will eventually have to face that not cutting down on weight for trips to Bali just to be able to have a copy of a book is pretty silly. But right now I don’t feel like that.

While gone I finished Rant - Chuck Palahniuk, started and read Still Alice - Lisa Genova, Blindness – Jose Saramago, When You Are Engulfed in Flames - David Sedaris and started The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood.  I enjoyed them all, although Still Alice has me convinced that I have early onset Alzheimer’s, for real, not being an asshole. And it was sort of interesting being around a bunch of rabid anjings and kucings [dogs and cats] having just finished Palahniuk’s, Rant.

One night I went to walk into the kitchen to get a drink of water or a bir IN THE DARK and a gecko fell off something from my opening the door and hit me in the face. I screamed like a pussy of course, it scurried off my forehead and I watched it run along well away from me. That was my only negative encounter with any lizards, although they are there and they are big, not tiny wee friendly looking things like the geckos, fucking lizards and I HATE lizards. I only saw one decent size so lets say medium lizard, thank fucking gawd.

Early evening here barbecue is being used for dinner, I can see the cover is off. Super bloody awesome cool thing about this time of day is the changeover between the birds swooping all over and catching bugs to the bats coming out and fucking annihilating the bugs. People ask me about the bugs, and there were a lot of flies, spiders, red ants, moths and mosquitoes but I was there during the windy season and so therefore the bugs for the most part kept off me.  I did have a few choice bites though, couple huge ones on my ass. I have never understood what it is with bugs and biting ass, but I always seem to get the biggest bites there.  And as mentioned right at the moment when evening meets night, you don’t even notice the changeover they look almost exactly the same as the birds, but the bats come out for the hunt and really they are your best friend if you want to sit outside as I am likely doing here it is fascinating watching them, trying to catch the birds accepting that their shift is finished as the bats suddenly emerge.  This is also why I FLIPPED when I opened the kitchen door as I wasn’t immediately sure if a bat was swooping by me or if it was a gecko.

So, I’m not the best sleeper in the world, unless it is a bed fat chance that I will fall asleep in it around it on it, planes can suck it I hate them I almost NEVER get any sleep.  This day however, it was my third day there I think, I can’t have been there long because I am reading Rant I fell asleep not once but TWICE. UNHEARD OF. My dad caught me sleeping on camera so I can remind myself that I was able to get myself into a relaxed enough place for that to have happened. Adam gave me grief over falling asleep in the sun to which I quickly informed him that not only had I waited the PROPER amount of time before entering the sun after applying my sun screen, I also had a my stop watch next to my head to go off AND my parents also woke me because I told them how long I was doing my front for. SO THERE.

Basically Dr. Vegas stole my tanning googles and I’m stuck in sun glasses. Not cool little buddy, those will give me tan lines. I wore my contacts every day I was there because it was so bright that my glasses were useless. We have to make Dr. Fever some swim trunks and matching ones for Vegas because Fever is still wearing his country western cowboy hat from his days back in northern British Columbia.

CRAB IN THE POOL!

They hung out together a lot, they are brothers and both doctors – they have a lot to talk about. My mom commented on how much more worn Dr. V is than Dr. F and I was all dude, Vegas gets around, he travels, he goes to concerts, parties, weddings, he hangs with the ladies and he is with the band I don’t know what band but there’s a BAND and he’s WITH IT.

The gazebo is another awesome place to sit and read.

And watch the sun set from.

This photo falls under my favourite photos, I am photographing the lights from the fishing boats. Mine didn’t turn out, I suck in that lighting. The fishing boats are tiny seriously tiny outriggers. I will cover those in another post.

This is the only photo I took inside up stairs, that is primarily what my dad wears every day, retirement is so seriously hard as you can TELL. The windows in the far right there open to the front patio where you can watch the sunrise in the morning and watch the fishing boats come in.

These are our diggs when we go visit, my bathroom had no mirror while I was there but I didn’t mind, I can go a while and not need a mirror, for serious. If the trip hadn’t have been a surprise my dad would have put a mirror in for me but he couldn’t do little things like that, everything had to be HUSH HUSH HUSH don’t do ANYTHING to that bedroom because my mom is snoopy, really aren’t all moms though?

One morning near the end of the trip I was sitting cross legged on the bed text messaging Adam and I had JUST pressed send when my bed started to tremble and shake or more like slide back and forth, took me about as long as it did during the earth quake in Vancouver for it to dawn on me that it was in fact an earth quake. I yelled up stairs “don’t you feel that?”, it rumbled a bit more and stopped. It hit Kuta about 100 kilometers from us. Wasn’t one of the ones that caused major damage around that time in September but still, that only means the people in Kuta were lucky that day.

As I mentioned windy season, my dad has a shirt on so it was one of the cooler days, again with the kopi mug I see it, the afternoon cup o’ kopi I am now an unintentional two time liar. Oh right this is the ONE day it stormed, if you look out the doors you can see the seats from the sitting area pressed together and against the wall, the storm wasn’t long but it was EPIC. And if you look really closely you can see some water on the tile.  I wasn’t really sure about the tile when I got there because generally I do not like being barefoot anywhere and I was worried they’d be slippery. Best tiles ever, who needs shoes, that is all I have to say about those tiles and that it was a delight for the first time really in my life to be shoeless everywhere around the house.

Almost every afternoon anytime after fifteen hundred hours cocks come into my parents yard and help my dad with his gardens, they clean out the bugs, it is a sight to see. I don’t know why they go by cock there instead of rooster but they do and you can talk about cocks all day long. COCK COCK COCK. They are not like farm cocks or any cocks I’m used to, for example I DO NOT remember them being so vociferous in the Cook Islands where I did not stay at a resort, they were all over our house I have loads of film photos of them. The cocks in Bali NEVER SHUT UP.  They must really like the chicks and warring over territory.  I call this cock the cock dwarfer.

That concludes Part Empat. Catch up on the Bali 2009 series here: Part Satu, Part Dua and Part Tiga.

There is a small back story here, Tiana likes cupcakes, and I had sent her a re-useable bag from the distributors of the cupcakes at least one year ago now, bit longer maybe.

Today I went out with the sole purpose to take this photo because I’m having the can’t get the fuck out of the house I’m a hermit blues again. Lovely. But I am still trying to make it out and it wasn’t raining for a split second so I thought fuck it, I’ll go get the photos.

I can’t wear my wellies anymore they are shot to shit I got them in 2003 before they were cool to everyone and their mother, granted here it doesn’t really matter everyone should have a decent pair if not even a stylish pair of wellies, I quite frankly want a pair of Hunter wellies to replace my shot pair. I wore my knee high boots instead I have black leggings on today so it worked and with my black you can call it a trench coat if you don’t know what a good one should like I didn’t have to worry about my ass. I get paranoid in my black leggings ever since this happened (link).

When I got home I found myself stuck in my boot, literally, these were tailored when I got them as I have chicken legs and so they have extra lining exposed and the zipper got caught in the lining WHICH in all the years I’ve had them I’m realizing I bought them in 2000, has never happened and so I ended up making VLogBlog Five as well for your viewing pleasure.

I don’t have any photos of myself drinking the kopi, the opening to this post is super misleading I do have photos of me drinking the bir but I never got wasted on it that was the mischievous sock monkeys Dr. Vegas and Dr. Fever getting wasted on the Bintang. When I did take photos of my food it was sometimes visible, it is a Pilsner and is a very good bir I enjoyed it almost everyday. No one paid me to say the bir was good, the bir is just good.

I did have a Bintang with this photo of my Bali fusion meal in Kintamani where the people are very poor and you find mostly restaurants all fighting for the best view, they are all buffet style with a real menu if you insist however being a high tourist area they gotta get you in and out fast. It is pretty high elevation wise and is actually cool there, I didn’t end up needing the sweater I brought that day, the only day I took one anywhere, but I did notice a big difference in temperature specially sitting to eat outside. Turns out I would not have needed my sweater anyway because they sell full on winter scarfs up there, totally tripped me out. We were leaving the restaurant and I noticed loads of tourists with these orange face cloths and they were steaming and seeing how I was still sort of upset for not getting steaming cloths to wipe off with at any time on my twelve plus hour flight from Vancouver to Hong Kong, I was all over this and sought out the orange steaming cloths, there was a table on the way out containing a huge pile and I quickly grabbed one and wiped my hands and face, I handed the cloth back to the pretty girl and said “terima kasih, sampai jumpa lagi, terima kasih”. (thank you, goodbye, thank you; I seem to be as repetitive in Indonesian as I am in Canadian, go figure.) I was left standing there and that was bad because I remember not being in the mood to be accosted by sellers that day, it does at times become extremely overwhelming so I turned to head back into the restaurant to find my parents just in time to see the girl dip one after the other then soak and twist drip and fancy fold the same towels from the same bucket of water and then return them to the pile on the table. I told my dad that I had just wiped myself down with who-knew-how many different people’s sweat and who-knew-what else to which he replied, “that’s Bali”. It was true, I had no witty rebuttal.

I am almost positive thanks to a lot of reconnaissance and a great girlfriend who dated a Hindu man for years that this is Hanuman. He is one of my favourite photos because of course I have aspirations of being tattooed in Bali and this photo was taken on my second day of exploring and I saw it through the lens and was instantly hit with THAT is my tattoo. I didn’t think I’d be smacked by something that I wanted to put on my body so soon into the trip. Little did I know that not only would he turn out to be a monkey but that he lead an army of monkeys and we make sock monkeys and we call members grunts of The Sock Monkey Army. This little guy spoke to me and when I read up on him I knew it wasn’t just a coincidence and even if it is who fucking cares I love him now, in some variation I’m getting him tattooed.

This guy walking down the beach was awesome, I saw him and did the run grab the camera tip toe sprint don’t trip on the tiles everywhere and break your knee or split your lip open get blood spatter all over my parents’ off white exterior everything to get this shot. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out considering I didn’t even notice the huge ass sickle sticking out the back of his pants until I had it offloaded onto my parent’s computer. The Balinese people are incredibly strong, I have photos of ladies carrying grape crates on their heads it takes four people to lift it up, yet one woman carries it. A tad mind blowing to see that for reals up close talking to them as I did on a photo walk one day with my mom, not sure if any of my favourites were taken that day though, I don’t think so.

The photo of this monk is from a temple the name escapes me but the Dalai Lama went there, he lives there more or less alone and the place is huge, I have numerous photos from this temple in fact this photo of me is also one of my favourites, I like how the sarong looks. It is disrespectful to enter temples in Bali without a sarong assholes do it but it isn’t cool with the locals, they cringe like when they see a copy of Eat, Pray, Love.

Stay tuned for Part Empat where I continue to discuss my trip through my favourite photos.
Part Satu
Part Dua

On both former vacations, to the Dominican Republic and to Mexico, I went with all inclusive packages. The outskirts of poverty were only visible from the airport shuttle, in my head it resonated and made me sad but as that bus pulled up to the resort(s) all I could think about was that smell, that smell of vacation, man I love that smell, I didn’t even notice the ignorance settling back into the spot I kept trying to force it into on the bus ride, the shacks, the garbage, the rabid uncontrolled dogs and cats, the frailty of the horses, the cows the goats, the dirt on the children doesn’t make them any less cute, I pushed it away, I was on vacation!

When I went to Bali I was of course on a vacation, but for me because they’re my parents and they live there it isn’t just a vacation I have a home there I have my own bedroom, I can leave things, it is mine and Adam’s room. We are trying to learn the language, in essence Bali means something to me personally. My parents have chosen to live a life where they don’t leave everything up to staff members, they have two, one being a security guard who comes to the house at night; he also cleans the beach in front of their house before he leaves in the morning, my dad keeps it clean during the day. The house and the parents living there is to some, I’m sure, already considered ‘all inclusive’ but except for not helping with the dishes I did not treat it as such, I even got my own beers from the fridge. But on a serious note I’m going to inherit this house I still may not ever own the land but whatever happens there is a house in Bali with a piece of beach in front of it that will be ours.

The children from the school down the road play all sorts of sports on that stretch of beach because it is one of the only stretches that is clean in the area. If you are thinking Vacation and beautiful beaches and surfers in Bali most tourists don’t make it out of Denpasar or Kuta, my parents are way north in the village of Banjar, near a rather small tourist area called Lovina, where another small patch is also kept clean.

On one of the first mornings that I woke in Bali I could hear kids playing, I grabbed my camera and walked towards the beach gate to investigate the class of boys and girls, they were wearing their gym uniforms, most of the girls wore their hair in braided pig tails with pretty ribbons to tie off the bottoms, they were playing dodgeball, on this particular morning they didn’t pay much attention to me, but I was still obviously distracting some of the students so I snapped a couple of photos and went to get some coffee. (kopi) In the following mornings I would always check from a distance to see what games they were playing, one morning they were playing a form of net ball, with two kids on each end holding up wee garbage cans, it made me happy to see them playing sports.

During the day when we’d be out exploring the island it was impossible not to notice the amount of children of age that were not in a school. The fact that the children who do go to school go in uniforms make the disparity stick out like a sore thumb. The Balinese children are ridiculously, heart meltingly cute and they LOVE cameras, if they see you have a camera they are all over you to have their photos taken. This is why it was sort of odd that first morning when I was watching them play. One of the mornings shortly before I came home I ventured back right up to the gate and they started yelling halo and waving furiously, I said halo and waved back, the positive vibes off these kids are really something else, a smile broke out on my face and I quickly took some photos, the teacher was tolerating me, he had a seriously sweet moustache and a whistle, he smiled, I turned and walked away with halo still echoing at me until the whistle started to blow.

Sitting in the afternoon one day chatting my father made mention of some of the dilemmas facing a lot of the poorer families and why the children were out on the street and on the beaches playing during the day instead of in a classroom. Although schooling in Indonesia is said to be free to all children it simply isn’t, it costs approximately 5,000 rupiah a month about 50 cents Canadian. Each student is required to have four uniforms at a cost of 50,000 Rp each about $5.00 CAD times two per year. If the average family is making 700,000.00 Rp a month about $70.00 CAD and a bag of rice costs 200,000.00 Rp and lasts a family around a month it isn’t hard to figure out that the money required to send one or more students to school for a year just isn’t there.

Of the lucky children who do get to go to school many are forced to start working as soon as they graduate, this basically eliminates any chance they may have of moving onto university. Once that child can bring in income some of the families don’t have the extra money for university and can’t afford to lose the new income. It is quite sad to think that at only 1 million Rp per semester times two semesters you are only looking at approximately 220 dollars a year.

My head was churning with this information I am seriously bad at math and these were easy numbers even for me. My dad is already a part of the Rotary Club in his area, the Rotary Club are heavily involved in community work and trying to bring a bit of extra education to the people as a whole. Between speakers coming in to talk about everything from the prevention of AIDS, road safety, the importance of beach clean up projects and also with reading projects for the children, the passage of information to the locales is spreading slowly, but it is at least being spread. I attended a Rotary Club meeting when I was in Banjar and was very impressed by the dedication to the cause and also that my father was a part of it. When my father mentioned that he had ideas and had mentioned it to a couple people already about starting a charity to get some of these kids into university and into elementary school I said pretty much instantly that I wanted to be involved. Because Adam and I are not having children it seemed like a no brainer to me.

We have been brainstorming ever since, we still have a long ways to go but have a basic idea of what we want to achieve with the charity. The name we are using right now is Bali Education and Ecology Foundation. Our main goal will be to provide children, who have the capacity and willingness to learn, an opportunity to attend school and/or complete their education.

As a result the children will have a greater opportunity to obtain meaningful employment and escape the cycles of poverty that are prevalent and to a degree hard to picture. The education will provide the opportunity to be a more productive and constructive member of the community. Due to the foundation’s emphasis on the environment it is our hope that this will lead to the promotion of environmental awareness in the communities to the benefit of the whole island of Bali.

This is where is starts with a desire to help, we have already had a couple people offer to help us get up and running but we need more, if you would like more information on our principles and goals and how we plan to put all this into play if we manage to raise some money, or information on how you can help us start this baby up, you can leave a comment below or email corinnal [@] gusgreeper dot com.

Also, stay tuned for Part Tiga – Where I talk about more cool stuff I did and saw.

If you can believe it we discussed whether or not I should remove the pin from the tail of Dr. Vegas, it holds it on, and I was worried they would take him away, I did remove his mask as shown above, he wore it in the beret style or not at all until we arrived in Bali, our final destination. Taking the mask off was a no brainer he looks like a bank robber minimum with that thing on. Adam said I should take the pin out, but I thought of babies, remembered that I was a cloth diaper baby and so there must be moms out there using pins in the diapers and not all Velcro. I realize that Dr. Vegas is a sock monkey and not a living thing but even though we were discussing it, and even though I had a vivid image of standing there while they humiliated Dr. Vegas by making me remove his tail and how odd and embarrassing it would be for us both, I decided the tail was staying.

First thing is that yes I did just say arrived in Bali, and secondly on the return Dr. Vegas stayed in the checked luggage. And to make a possible long tangent short I will just quickly add that we haven’t pinned a tail on a monkey in years the crotches are sewn with precise and sometimes intense whip stitches and the tails are also sewn on with a few extra whips of the stitch for added strength. Dr. Vegas, like his brother Dr. Fever, is one of the originals when we didn’t even know they took two socks to make we just made what we thought would look like a monkey.

I didn’t even tell the vast majority of my closest friends that I was going to Bali because the trip came out of no where and was a secret surprise of monumental proportions. Top Secret. Mission surprise mom for parents 40th wedding anniversary went into full affect. I figured even though I know I can trust my friends that it was best to say nothing, my mom is pretty up on my online activity and there were a lot of missions to action before take off.

I won’t lie I was incredibly nervous and discussed the trip in therapy and with Adam. After all of the intense drama that happened at the beginning of the year it was a bit daunting knowing that he would be staying home this go and I’d be alone with my parents for over two weeks having no idea how things would be with my dad, we didn’t even actually speak until the trip was already booked and my parents were in Denpasar where the internets are a little bit faster so we could see one another and we had a Skype conversation actually speaking in code part of the time while my mom was there and none the wiser, it was the first time I’d seen him or heard his voice is close to a year and here I was about to show up at his house invited or not I spent one minute freaking out like HOLY FUCK I’M GOING TO BALI and the rest like HOLY FUCK will things be okay with my parents and I?

Cathay Pacific rules, I had uneventful flights, on the way down I watched, The Proposal and The Hangover.  The Hong Kong airport was fun to hang out in minus the SARS mask invasion, not as intense as ET but how long will it be till they are all in full suits? Given the choice between the fear injection you receive every two minutes in all American airports – “please report any suspicious looking persons and unattended baggage ….” –  I’ll take the SARS masks, then I can hide my suspicious lookingness anyway.

When I stepped off the plane in Bali I was smacked in the face with the distinct smell of gas mixed with heat mixed with exhaust, I know crazy right? Not the typical vacation smell which is one of my very most favourite smells on the face of the earth.  I thought it was just the airport but everywhere smelt explosive to me and this isn’t just because they sell gas in bottles right on the side of the road so close to your vehicle you could grab it, but it probably doesn’t hurt either. I thought it was shitty wine at first but nope, bottles of gas. I got stuck in the airport for an hour and a half, fuck man I was beyond grumpy, beyond freaked out that my driver would be gone, my head was pounding, my eyes hurt, the ceilings were way low, at first I got in the wrong visa line, I was so hot and light headed I probably could have dropped dead from exhaustion if I had to wait one more minute in the let me in the bloody country line, all I knew was that there would be a dude there with my name on a sign to drive me to Singaraja on the opposite side of the Island another three and a half hour drive minimum away and I had already been traveling fifteen hours ahead in time for more time than that. BUT HOLY FUCK IM IN BALI! Hence this is where I stop complaining.

Even though it gets dark relatively early there around 18:00 hours and we didn’t get out of the airport till 16:30ish that initial drive all the way north from Denpasar in the south was one of the most beautiful drives I have ever been on. I covered a wide array of terrain from areas of intense traffic like I have never witnessed before, Bali has a scooter per every person in Vancouver and then some, through areas of nothing but rice fields and mountain views, scooters buzz by in every direction, they pass on every side in every direction, you quickly learn the horn in Bali is as valuable as the entire vehicle, be it scooter or car.  It is nearly impossible to tell the difference between someone honking at you because they are pissed off or just giving you courtesy honks as they literally fly by you. By the time I got to my parents place I was having an extremely hard time figuring out why they waste the paint to make non passing areas across the island it is almost comical that they bother.  It was dark when we hit the famous Monkey Forest coming over the mountain and it had started to rain but I saw one or two sitting around eating bananas and knew I would be back to that area anyway.

Driving over the mountain can make even the strongest stomach squeamish as I later learned when I relayed my trip over it to my dad who confessed it had almost made him yack a time or two. It is uphill switchbacks and downhill switchbacks, with let us not forget scooters and fast drivers passing at every free moment, tight turns in one and then the other direction that open to more switchbacks, basically if there isn’t a roller-coaster designed with thoughts of that road in mind, there should be.  To say there are statues and temples everywhere would be an understatement, you don’t buy a chocolate bar when you have a few extra rupiah in Bali you buy a temple and then you buy a chocolate bar but you offer to the Gods, trust me I have a photo.

The road you turn off of just outside of Singaraja reminded me of being up north, it is dirt, with full size tire pot holes and it isn’t finished being built yet, it probably won’t get much better than it is it’ll just get driven on more as more people move into the area so it will get wider on its own. It was oddly comforting even though I was far, very very far from visiting my parents in Prince George. We pulled up to the house and after I did almost fall over, Jackie, the driver grabbed me, with legs made of what felt like twigs I made my way to the front area of my parents house, having been staring at it in photos for almost a year saying this moment was surreal would be accurate.

I walked toward the outside sitting area where I could see my parents reading from their eBooks. Other than their lights (power saving I might add) it was pitch dark almost 19:00, my mom didn’t even hear me approaching, it is the windy season there and it was whipping up a fuss, my dad had of course heard us pull up and was waiting, finally I said “Hi Mom” but even when she looked over it didn’t register and so I repeated myself, still, oh wait, we have recognition but it didn’t take away the disbelief.  But how she starts to wonder out loud as she starts to realize I’m really there having made it into hugging distance. So she is crying and I may have shed a wee tear and by this time my dad has already gone to get my luggage and pay the driver and did I mention that HOLY FUCK I’M IN BALI!

To be continued…. with pictures!

all photos from Bali – 2009

A few months ago our close friend Phaedra went on a European journey that is still going but for the sake of the story I will leave it at European journey. One of our best buddies C.J lives in England so before she left I said “hey if you get a chance you should go see C.J” She was headed to Italy but hey why not just throw it out there, plus they both have our Sock Monkeys. C.J and I talk over email multiple times a week so at some point I mentioned we had a friend heading over near his side of the pond. As luck would have it Phaedra ended up in London, C.J lives near London, low and behold soon there were plans for beers and a Monkey Meet-Up. Mr. Bate and lady friend to their Monkey, Lester P. Mason were also in the original meet up plans but they were unable to make it.

The four of them, Phaedra and Bobby along with C.J and Joe Pepper Jones met at a pub. Never in one trillion years would either of us EVER even have considered people actually meeting over having one of our Sock Monkeys, if that doesn’t make you feel good about yourself and what you are trying to put out into the world I don’t really know what would. We were both and still are flattered beyond belief that two people who didn’t know each other and had really only communicated through comment threads on some posts on this here blog, ended up drinking beers and having shits and giggles and making new awesome friends.I have been given permission by them both to use their photos in this post which was totally nice.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

I know where she got the hissing from, the biting, not so much, if she hasn’t stopped attacking you if you get up in her face on say your third meeting with her she hates you, she is a much better judge of character than I am and once she starts only hissing and snapping at you occasionally, you’re in.

One day Adam caught her trying to relax, sleep, take a bath on the router, we’ve had said router for a while now and this was her first attempt at abusing the warmth it exudes. Like, why now it is hot in here, why not in the winter?

Naturally, we got Dr. Vegas on the job right then and there and appointed him a Router Guard.  Of course we don’t want anything on top of it but a black masked sock puppet is lighter and doesn’t envelop the thing. I know that busting out the camera and taking photos of her being bad is hardly going to lead to the correction needed to her behavior but it also isn’t often I  catch her and she ignores my patented scary face, finger snap twist hand back yells get down routine.

These incriminating shots were taken on two different occasions BOTH after we got a router guard who was either pushed off the router or bribed off with bananas, knowing Gus she just pushed poor Dr. Vegas off the router.

After I found out that my mother was and did return to Bali I completely cut off communication with both of my parents and for the first time ever they left me alone and there was zero contact but instead of it making me feel better like I thought it would it just made me feel lonely and I realized my life didn’t work well without them in it and my depression hit another intense low.

It has been an extremely interesting couple of months.  I was as angry as I ever remember myself being very self destructive very medicated at the edge of the cliff rocking back and forth on my heels but when I finally fell I found myself free.  There have been a lot of times over the years when I thought I’ve been over it, thought I was ready to move on from the past and really leave it there, write about it but not in any angry way or from any sort of blaming perspectives just to tell a story how I remember it. With all the things I have said about my parents on this blog over the years I’ve never painted myself as the perfect daughter. I’d say I was hardly hard to handle but still having a kid is having a kid and I was no angel.

I really had to look at my unhealthy attachments with the two of them realize and really accept that what’s done is done and sure I think I deserve more than we just remember things differently but after years of trying I’ve finally put that behind me and gotten to the point of forgiveness and have fully entered the real process of mourning the loss of the ideal parents to the point of seeing things that came before me like my father’s relationship with his parents, and my mother’s with hers, where she lived in a very interesting dynamic as a child.  As well I have to accept that there is also the process of my parents having to mourn the loss of not having the ideal child. Regardless of the job they did I know they didn’t imagine a thirty-one year old pot head unemployed housewife who doesn’t even cook with no savings and large arm tattoos as the ideal kid. But right now that’s me.

I’m ready for this journey, my father and I will butt heads there is no question but just because we get upset with each other doesn’t mean I have to flip out and stop talking to them, those days are over, the lines of communication are fully open, the three of us and now four of us have been through the wringer a few times but life is too short not to come out the other side and say fuck you to the wringer.

© abcIV

© abcIV

Yesterday we went on a mission to find the beaver but we came up short we did not see the beaver. We did see;

• birds
• an ant
• turtles
• mallards
• Canada geese
• swans
• other types of ducks
• raccoons
• a heron
• horses; and
• a bald eagle

Sincerest apologies if I have missed any animals that we saw, literally. We realize those aren’t the only animals that exist down at Lost Lagoon.

© abcIV

I am always looking for times to work on taking photos so I did take some standard photos of the regular animals we saw and so did Adam we have to trade back forth on the camera which is a pain in the ass but there are worse things in life.  [his photos in this post will all be credited to abcIV]

This photo that he took is the creepiest shit ever he said “I knew you’d love it when I took it” well, I do love it but it is still creepy. Just add some night goggles make it night and that is straight out of Silence of the Lambs that IS Buffalo Bill coming for me. And the funny thing is that the photo following I don’t even know he has taken the creepy photo I am just annoyed because I don’t have the camera.

© abcIV

© abcIV

It started to rain on the mission so we didn’t get photos of the baby Canadian geese and the baby ducklings. They were adorable but we were on mission Beaver Hunt 2009 anyway.

My allergies didn’t bother me till later when we got home it was nice of them to hold off on the inevitable attack. I am SO IN LOVE with my Neti Pot. [more on that at a later date]

I am not good and speedy enough to catch the good shit yet but the swans are horny fuckers right now and I was running around the Lagoon while one male chased a female down running across the water sort of like Jesus [in movies I've seen] would and tried to copulate with her but she was NOT in the mood he backed off pretty quick which was annoying because I wanted to see them get it on.

Made another VLogBlog busted out the Guitar Hero and I warmed up on expert to Schism, Tool and I’ve never even passed that song on expert and I fail at 98% but I’d watch it anyway. We’ll film a song I rule at on expert soon enough.

In 2000 when I started working for a subsidiary of CIBC [Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce] part of my benefits package included discounted banking so I made the switch and have never felt the need to change banks even though there are only two CIBC bank machines close to me and only one of them takes deposits. I am also a stickler for NOT taking money out of machines that are not my bank because I despise fees and try to beat the man whenever I can.

At the end of April a brand spanking new full service CIBC opened at the bottom of Robson barely further away than that taunt of a Royal Bank trying to entice me back with convenience, it only took ten years but the West End officially has a CIBC we have used it THREE times already, the location is perfect.

Ps. they are open 7 days a week and are located right under the Safeway 1720 Robson Street.

Canstruction an event in its 7^th year supporting the Greater Vancouver Food Bank Society each year gathers teams to compete in designing and building the most colossal sculpture possible out of canned food. I hadn’t heard of this competition before and sculptures, museums, and exhibits such as Krazy at the Vancouver Art Gallery last year are right up our alley.

© Paul Jarvis

Canstruction Vancouver, the local chapter of an anti-hunger project created by Society of Design Administration, is held in over 100 cities across North America, including 12 in Canada; and

Over 750,000 cans of food – much of it high quality protein – have been donated to the Greater Vancouver Food Bank Society through Canstruction Vancouver.

Entrance is by donation, even if your change purse is tight and can only spare a Loonie or Toonie for every dollar Canstruction donates to the Foodbank this allows the Foodbank to purchase $3 dollars worth of food for its clients.

© Paul Jarvis

Canstruction runs Sunday to Sunday April 26th – May 3rd 2009 10am – 6pm you can see lots more photos from our excursion on my Flickr.

It is pretty bizarre being in a place where I’m so depressed I’m suicidal sally but scared to post just how bad I feel in fear of someone phoning emergency medical services on me which wouldn’t be bad so much as it would be just a waste of time, Adam is here I have a psychiatrist but I’m running into my honesty for example on my outwardly violent PAST being used against me to a point that has made me for the positive re-evaluate a lot and I mean a lot of things and it has made it hard to post. It never ever used to be that way.

It is hard to be so depressed that you picture and see yourself dead every day I wonder how I get that low it seems almost impossible to me to feel so good one minute and just want to slit my wrists and have to hand the razors to Adam as I finally get in the shower with tears streaming down my face hating hating hating feeling feeling feeling too much pain.

I was thinking how, come August 2007 I will have been chronically pretty severely depressed for two full years, it blows my mind I haven’t felt good for more than approximately five days in a row since 2007.  And as usual I recognize I’ve got a good husband and I’ve got a good cat and I’ve got good friends it is my bloody rubbish head you see it just won’t let me be me at times that subsequently work for me. I lack balance and structure, I’ve had them both, I LOVE lists and have a day planner and then I let them slip away just like when I’m feeling good it’ll be two pm plus and I’ll remember you need drugs to keep feeling that good take em honey or it won’t last the rest of the day let alone five. (hopefully more this go)

I’m taking the good right now, I’ve managed to get back into Yoga but with it being tax season I won’t be officially back till Monday, I got all the tax shit done wanted to drink Drano when I saw what we owed after I’d worked my ass off giving the stupid damn government our money all year, we’ve been golfing as shown below and on my flickr, I’ve been speed walking and not experiencing ANY I/T band pain which is awesome I’m trying not to get too excited because I REALLY push myself when I walk and I walk long distances and if the I/T band pain stays away and I can run FAR at FAST paces again OMFG I will be the happiest girl on EARTH. I’ve also managed to pack on at LEAST 10 to 15 pounds – I am ecstatic, three different people have told me I look good and fit and I BELIEVE IT! My tits and ass are hanging out of my bras and panties and seeing as my clothes have been falling off for almost a year I’ll fucking take it. I think I’ll be fine with my bras mini cleavage on the mini rack is great but my butt not fitting in my underpants only works for Adam’s viewing pleasure.

In closing I made VLogBlog three yesterday on Earth Day, I am wearing triple green, sports top, v-neck t-shirt and snazzy Asian slippers from China town. I’ll give you the set up: I attempt a taste test with Gus, containing Whiskas Dentabites Complete Oral Care and Feline Greenies.  She is too old to be put under for a teeth cleaning and she hasn’t been as excited about the Feline Greenies which are the fancy ones. Hence I decided an experiment was in order.

And before I go I am very much in love with this old quote:

I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best.
— Marilyn Monroe