That's not why I'm so hard done by

According to pop psychology and after school specials I should have grown up riddled with guilt and self doubt. “

If only I’d been a better kid my parents would have stayed together.”

“If only I had cleaned my room like my mum asked she wouldn’t have become an alcoholic.”

“If only…”

What a load of bullshit.

I have zero sympathy for people that fall into that thought cycle. Unless you’re six, it doesn’t fly with me.

My parents separated when I was so young I have absolutely no memory of them being together. How was I ever supposed to mourn the loss of something I never had? That’s not to say I don’t ever wonder what it would have been like to grow up in a two parent family. I also wonder what it would have been like to have an older brother. It just was never going to happen.

My dad left me when I was… I dunno… five? Seven? I have no idea. I just remember being excited that he was coming to pick me up and he never showed. He wasn’t around much to begin with so it wasn’t really any skin off my nose. When I got older I would get sad that my dad didn’t love me enough to want to see me but I my mindset wasn’t “what’s wrong with me?” it was always “what’s wrong with him?” I still feel this way. My father is a broken man, and he was broken long before I was born.

My dad remarried and had kids. Apparently I was supposed to feel like I was being replaced. I felt quite the opposite actually. It was the only time my dad was really a part of my life. It had everything to do with my stepmother making sure we stayed in touch, but when they divorced things went back to the way they had always been. Again, not my fault. I tried, he didn’t. The man has demons.

I’ve never blamed myself for my mum’s drinking either. That was her issue, and I couldn’t cause it any more than I could have stopped it.

There are so many people in the world that use their childhood as an excuse. I use mine as an example. I know that I will spend the rest of my life working on ensuring that the best of my parents come out in me and not their worst. I want to hold onto the gift of gab bestowed upon me by my father (I talk a thousand times better than I write and my father can spin a yarn with the best of them) and leave the temper I inherited from him in check. I want to run with my mum’s sense of humour while ensuring that I always remember that I deserve to be loved better than some men know how to love.

I am the product of my parents. I am the product of my childhood. I would rather be defined by the lessons I’ve learned rather than the excuses I’ve made.

You know I feel so alive

Calgary was never meant to be my forever home. It was always meant to be a rest stop on the way to somewhere else. I said I would live here for two years and now that my first year is more than half over I’m already looking forward and making new plans.

I was talking to my mum tonight and I told her that I wanted to live in Scotland. She said I should do it. So I’m going to do it.

This is going to be a bigger move than my move to Calgary so it’s likely that I will need longer to plan the move. It’s going to take a minimum of 6 months to get the boys prepped for the trip. Apparently they need their own passports (proof of microchipping, various shots, etc.). I will need to put stuff in storage, plan shipping of the stuff I want to take with me, accommodation, job, getting my UK passport, and so on.

If I had the money in place I would be gone as soon as the cats could make the trip, but since it’s not I’m going to plan for approximately 18 months. . I will need to start creating a budget with a timeline and possibly getting a second job.

It’s a long way off, but it’s a goal. It’s a goal I’ve had for a long, long time. It’s about time I just got on with it.

Smile & wave

I have a friend I’ve been friends with since Christ was in kindergarten. We became friends out of circumstance more than anything. My mum was friends with his mum and we were forced to play together.

We both have very different views on these early days. I have memories of being terrified of standing near a window while in the same room as him because I was convinced he was going to push me out of it. I was likely convinced of it because he has either a) tried to do it or 2. had threatened me in such a way as to make me believe he would actually do it. I lean towards the latter rather than the former. He would disagree I’m sure.

Anyway, years went on, time worked its magic the way it does and we became teenagers. By this time he and his family had moved away from Vancouver and we started to form a friendship based more on common interest rather than being forced together. We started to write letters back and forth.

Fast forward many more years into adulthood.

People have often asked how we met since most of his friends are from being in the Naval Reserves or Sea Cadets. I am one of the friends that comes out of leftfield. The stories get told, from both our perspectives because they really are quite different.

One part of the story that used to boggle my mind, is when he talks about the letters I used to write him and the subsequent visit I made to see him in Quebec City years ago.

We had been writing letters back and forth for years. He finally ended up living in Quebec City and he said I should come visit him sometime. He didn’t think I would actually take him up on the offer. It was just something to say.

See, the way he tells it, I would write the weirdest letters. Really far out stuff. He thought I was really, really weird. Way out there shit. For the life of me I couldn’t figure out what he was talking about. I thought my letters were pretty normal. “Hey. How are you? Life is fine here. School sucks.” kinda stuff. To hear him tell it I was a total wackadoodle.

Based on my letters he was afraid of who was going to be waiting for him at the airport when he picked me up. We hadn’t actually seen each other in 6 years. When he saw me at the airport he was thinking to himself “Please don’t let that be her. Please god. Oh, she’s not with a friend, it can’t be her. Thank you lord! Oh shit, she’s coming over here, shit, she has a friend. It’s her! Oh god what have I done?”

My side of the story is pretty much the same. “Oh god please tell me that’s not him. He’s so… normal. Oh sweet jebus this is going to suck. What the hell have I done? I have to spend three weeks with that square? Say it ain’t so lord!”

We ended up having a great time. It was one of the best vacations I’ve ever had.

As far as the story goes I could totally see where he was coming from when he was picking my friend and I up from the airport. I had a cane covered in googly eyes, raver pants, piercings, and I’m sure to him I looked very odd. My friend didn’t look a whole lot different. I was never able to figure out where he was coming from with the damn letters.

A couple of years ago I finally figured out what the hell he was talking about.

When I was younger I would write down lyrics to songs I liked. When a lyric would jump out at me from a song I liked, I would write it down. What would happen is I would have a page of lyrics I liked, it would look something like this:

Seven lies multiplied by seven multiplied by seven again. Same pattern on the table, same clock on the wall. I’m well aware of how it aches. I'm a victim to the impact of these words. You’ve been running away from what you don’t understand. You can sit around waiting for the phone ring. We need lies to make it though the day. I’ve got ice in my fire.

Only it would be an entire page, and I’m guessing back to back. I would fill up the pages and when one was done I would just stick it in with whatever letter I was sending at the time. I’m sure I have other friends that received letters with pages of lyrics in it.

Mystery solved. I would think I was nuts if I didn’t know the context behind it.

So what does this story have to do with anything other than being a lovely story of a lovely friendship? Well I still create those pages of lyrics. I do it electronically now, but I still do it. At any given time, if I’m listening to music while I’m using my computer I will record bits and pieces of songs I really like.

Almost every title to every entry I’ve posted here is a fraction of a song, and about 80% of the time the song comes from something I was listening to while I was writing the entry. Sometimes I go to the page of lyrics I’ve collected for a title.

And in case you were wondering:

John the Revolator – Depeche Mode
38 Years Old – The Tragically Hip
Song to Say Goodbye – Placebo
Sea Legs – The Shins
Mysterious Ways – U2
End of the Line – Travelling Wilburys
Pills – The Perishers
Sidewalking – The Jesus and Mary Chain

Makes you wanna blow the stars from the sky

So I'm a sucker for a meme. Seriously. It's really hard for me to pass one up (which reminds me, I need to cross post one from my lj which is totaly friends only but yes, I'm that much of a dork that I have an lj, full of memes and everything). Anyway, what what I saying? Oh yes, memes. I find it hard to pass one up. Kristy posted a really neato meme and, shocker! I jumped in like stink on poop.

So here's the deal. I answer the 5 totally original questions Kristy has created just for me (excuse me while I swoon a little becuase Kristy is so freakin' awesome and I can't belive she totally noticed I'm alive, never mind asked me actual questions and let me participate in the meme and hot damn!). You then comment here, I give you 5 totally original questions and you answer them on your blog/lj/facebook/whatever. Now I don't have 10 people that regularly read my blog (that I'm aware of anyway. They could read it via RSS and I'd have no idea, but whatever) so whoever responds will get 5 questions.

So here goes nothing!

1. Okay, this is an easy one (but feel free to be creative): what's your most favorite and least favorite thing/s about knitting?

Knitting calms me down. I sometimes have a hard time dealing with stress in a productive way, but knitting calms me down and lets me turn my brain off so that I can gain some distance from whatever it was that was bothering me. I find that knitting kind of centres me.

My least favourite thing about knitting is how I have to remember what the hell I’m doing every Fall because I seem to never knit during the summer and I always forget what the hell I’m doing.

2. One of the super awesomest things I've discovered -- in a long, long line of them -- about getting older is that I'm becoming allergic to more things. What was your worst allergic reaction to something?

The older I get (which I absolutely love getting older. No joke, it’s so damn awesome. I wouldn’t go back to my 20’s for anything, ever. Not even to date that really cute guy that I had a massive crush on. No way.) the more allergic I get to latex. I swell up like a balloon when I come into contact with it. It is not fun in any way.

It’s not the worst reaction I’ve had, but it’s the best reaction a doctor has had to my allergic reaction.

I was in the hospital and being the diligent girl that I am I made sure that the nurse knew I was allergic to latex. I wait forever in the waiting room, I finally get to see a doctor, and she’s asking me what the problem was (I was having issues with a massive migraine with extreme jaw pain), and she then prceeds to examine my jaw, inside and out. As soon as she stuck her hand in my mouth I knew there was a problem.

“That glove tastes like latex”

“It is”

“Uh.... that's not good.”

She looks at my chart.

“Oh shit.”

Oh shit indeed.

What she didn't know (and I did) is that my reaction isn't so bad that I will actually swell up and die. She was very panicked.

She then gave me a shot for the pain I was in (I was seeing double I was in so much pain) then she gave me a shot of Gravol so I wouldn’t barf from the morphine (I hate morphine with a passion. I avoid it at all costs.), and then she give me another shot so I wouldn't swell up like a balloon and die.

She fucked up and she knew she fucked up. She was looking right at my chart that said in BIG RED LETTERS that I was allergic to latex. I’ve never seen a doctor scramble so much to fix something so fast.

The worst reaction I’ve ever had to latex has been a massive rash and very bad swelling in my hand where I had an IV inserted. The tape that held my IV in place had latex in it.

3. . I read that you want to be a bartender. Like, for real? And how come? Because a huge part of me has always wanted to do that, save for the realities of the hours of work it requires (not the number of them, but the time of day/night/wee hours of the morning). What about it do you find alluring?

I’m not entirely sure why. I think it has a lot to do with liking alcohol so much. I am passionate about a really good drink, whether it be a perfectly poured beer or a gin and tonic that makes your heart sing or even some random drink that somebody made up one drunken night but they are passionate about and insist that it is the beverage god would drink on a Tuesday night.

I just think it would be fun. I’m not crazy enough to think that it would be a magical job of rainbows and unicorns. No matter what job you do there will always be assholes and shit you need to deal with, but I just think it would be a really fun job, and a pretty good fit for my personality.

I was not meant to work in admin. I may be good at it but it kills my soul daily.

4. Are motorcycles super cool, or incredibly annoying toys for men who refuse to grow up and/or have some sort of need for more power between their legs (if you know what I mean) (and also I think we know how I personally feel)? What about chick bikers?

Both. I think there are people that are really passionate about their bikes and don’t give a shit what anybody thinks. I have to respect that. I personally find motorcycles terrifying and good luck ever getting me on one.

One of the most amazing people I know happens to be a girl with a bike. She is one of the most brave, courageous, talented, intelligent, crafty, beautiful, witty, all around amazing people I have ever met. She makes me think that chick bikers totally rule.

5. If you were going to do something totally sexually daring, completely out of the norm for you, would you rather it be with someone you know (but have never slept with), or someone you don't really know and won't see again?

Oh that’s a really awesome question. I have to think about that one.

I think I’d have to go with somebody I know. If it turned out to be a disaster we could both laugh about it for years to come “oh weren’t we so silly in our youth?” and if it turned out to be awesome, we could do it again!

Then again it could turn out to be a disaster and we never speak to each other again or it could be awesome, we try to move things along, they fall apart in an epic way and again, we never speak to each other again.

I think I’d still take my chances with the known rather than a stranger.

W00t! That was fun!

Been circling round for 20 years

When writing things that are for public consumption it’s always hard to decide how far to go with what you are telling people. It’s hard to know when it’s Your Story vs Their Story. Do you have the right to talk about your friends and family, and if so, to what extent?

I have spent a very long time thinking about what I can say, what I should say and what I want to say contrasted against what others, namely my family (or more to the point, my mother), would want out there for the whole world to read.

There comes a point when it becomes necessary to tell somebody else’s story in order to tell your own. Sometimes you need to possibly hurt somebody else’s feelings in order to mend.

I have a long history of not telling my story. That has to stop.

My name is Dawn, and my mother is an alcoholic.

I was recently in Vancouver for her first birthday (she has been one year sober and in AA). This was a very hard trip to make. I didn’t know what to expect. I honestly didn’t know if she could do it. I guess I’d spent so many years resigned to the idea that things were never going to change, they were never going to get better, that eventually Something Really Bad would happen. I never, in a million years, thought she would join AA, never mind quit drinking.

One of my mum’s friends pulled me aside and asked me why I had never told anybody, why I hadn’t said anything. I told her that I had tried, nobody listened. I think that was one of the hardest parts about growing up with my mum, nobody listened to me. I tried. I told people. They said that she was just unwinding, she was just having fun, there was no problem. They didn’t live with her. You can only try so hard for so long until you finally just give up.

Being back home I wasn’t prepared to deal with all the emotions that came flooding back, all the memories I had left behind. I don’t exactly bury things, but I don’t exactly face things head on. I think when I became an adult, especially after I was no longer living at home and having to deal with my mum on a daily basis, I just decided to move past most of the crap I’d been carrying around with me. There was nothing I could do to change things, especially the past, so why bother stressing over it?

It is going to be a long time before I completely believe that my mum is on the road to recovery. I think it’s fantastic what she’s doing and I fully support her. But it’s going to take a lot of work, on both of our parts, to rebuild a very damaged relationship.

I think most people would be surprised at how much work my mum and I are going to have to do. Most people would think that we were really close, but we aren’t. I may talk to her every day but she knows almost nothing about me or my life. Not in any deep sense anyway. I gave up trying to talk to her half a lifetime ago.

So now I’m starting to look at what I can start to talk to my mum about, to start telling her what it was like for me growing up. To start moving forward with her. I can finally start to tell my story because at long last somebody is actually listening.

The bloom upon my misery

It has been one hell of a week.

My trip home was long and stressful, work crapped on me, and I'm living in a bomb site.

I seriously need to do some house work. My suitcase threw up all over my livingroom.

I had so much fun in Nanaimo. I drank really bad beer, I ate really good food, I bought a lot of tea and I just had a great time hanging out with my friend Chris. I got to ride a ferry! That's always fun! I'm sad that I wasn't able to buy my favourite tea, but I now I have a mission to set out on, so it gives my life some focus.

Vancouver dropped a steaming pile of nostaliga on my head. We can never escape our past. It was a hard visit for a number of reasons. While I was in town I found out a girl I used to be really good friends with died in 2005. It hit me pretty hard. It could very easily have been me. We were both headed down the same road, somehow mine forked at the right time.

The other thing that made it hard was dealing with my mum. We are good, and getting better, but we haven't always been good and we have a long hard road ahead of us. We are both learning how to find our way forward, learning how to talk to each other. We skirt around our past but I know that oneday we will have to sit down and discuss it.

I was glad to meet her new friends. It was nice that my mum invited me to meet them.

Where you at?

I have a full post brewing but in the meantime, I am home from my Vancouver/Nanaimo trip, safe and sound. I'm very happy to be home, back with my baby boys and the snuggles.

Fun was had.

I'm always interested in exactly who reads my itty bitty corner of the intarwebs, but I'm more interested in how they find me.

So for your amusement, I present to you dear readers, a list searches used to stumble across my humble blog (in no particular order mind you):

calgary store coach purse
maggie, you ever been kicked in the head by a bull?
do triathletes shit and piss their pants
lolercopter
vancouverites friendly
how to count strokes per 50 meters
places to donate clothing in montreal


I'm so very amused.

I am so sad. The kitchen table I really, really, really wanted has been discontinued by Ikea.

I'd had my eye on the Bjorkudden gateleg table for quite awhile but I could never buy it because I had to keep buying plane tickets to Vancouver because my mother is good with the guilt card.

So now the table I wanted is no longer avaialbe and I am a sad girl.

I bet they discontinued the sofa I want too.