The little brown house
In my neighborhood, a couple blocks from where I live, there is a little brown house that sits on the corner of two streets.
Long before I ever moved to this neighborhood, I used to know a girl who lived in that house. Her name was Lauren. She was in my first grade class. She wasn’t very popular. I remember that occasionally, some of the meaner girls in our class would tease her. I can’t remember why. We were friends.
I still know where some of those mean girls are at, today.
First grade was, according to most of my former classmates’ account, a great year. (I say “according to”, because unlike my classmates, I was still recovering from The Worst Year Of My Life.) We wrote and illustrated a school newspaper, had a class store, studied way too many insects (Madame Yvonne was exceptionally fond of them) and sang a whole lot of French songs, songs like C’est L’Halloween.
Before the school year was over, Lauren’s mother died from a brain tumor.
And this is why I take public transit everywhere
On the way home from Surrey tonight (DON’T EVEN SAY A WORD), a girl sitting across from me on the Skytrain started a conversation with me. It began with a comment about a fighting couple that had just gotten off and ended with the story of how she had just broken up with her boyfriend of twelve years.
They have two kids together. She always paid for things like groceries and utilities. He always paid for things like the TV and the barbecue. Guess who got what.
Breakups are always so messy. The Dividing Of The Stuff makes it all that much harder.
But damn, 12 years? And two kids?
It kind of made me realize, shit, the things we go through for happiness.
Confessions, part one
I’m one of those people who wear runners with (nearly) everything.
Running shoes are practical. Sure, flats are cute. But they kill your feet and leave you (me) limping after a day in the city. Sure, heels are sexy. But they’re impractical to wear for day-to-day use.
Can a girl not win?
As a general rule of thumb, if where I’m going involves walking from more than just the car to the destination, I forgo the four inch heels for running shoes. Because I mean, seriously. I’m a practical girl. I wouldn’t walk ten blocks in heels unless true love and a million dollars were waiting for me at the end.
For the things you wanted to say
As seen on the back of a stall door in the ladies washroom at a rest stop off the I-5 North:
I love reading the things people write on the walls in the stalls of bathrooms.
At first glance, most bathroom graffiti typically looks like trash—you know, the usual suspects of “JESSICA WUZ HERE” and “JT+BS FOR EVA”—and if you take it for face value, it’s nothing more than that. But if you really think about it, everything written on those walls has a story behind them. People do everything for a reason, even if they don’t consciously know the reason for it at the time.
Whenever I read the things people write on walls, I simply can’t help but wonder about the author’s life: Are JT and BS still together? What’s Jessica doing now? … And when you read particularly chilling words like “I can’t take this anymore”… Are you still hanging in there?
It’s such an odd thought, looking over a cluttered wall and knowing that many, many people have been exactly where you are, and of all those people, some of them felt particularly impressed to write something on the walls surrounding them. They’re each strangers to the next, all going through different things in life, some coming in, some going out… But the one thing these strangers all have in common is the wall. They wrote on the wall.
We’re not all that far apart from each other as may we think.
What’s the most memorable thing you’ve ever seen on a bathroom wall?
How not to be a workaholic
The answer is simple: Just make time for yourself.
If you’ve ever observed work-obsessed people, you will notice that one of the common factors among almost all of them is the fact that they rarely—if ever—make time for themselves. And the scariest part? They don’t even realize it.
I mean, it’s not as if they set out to make work their life. Sometimes they use it to fill a void, sometimes they just get too carried away with the illusive “future” and what they need to do today to be where they want to be tomorrow—but regardless of reason, if they just set aside time for themselves each week, many would be in far better shape (if only mentally) than they currently are. (And if you want to get technical, being in better shape mentally = more productivity, so really it’s a win/win!)
I visit both sides of the fence on a regular basis. Being a business owner, I know what it’s like to sacrifice, and I all-too-well understand the concept of delayed gratification—but the thing that most of these people somehow overlook is the fact that no matter what you do, there must always be balance. You can be successful without giving up everything, even when it doesn’t always look like it’s possible.
How were YOU punished?
Switches? Soap in the mouth? Food deprivation? Cold showers? Spankings? Cayenne pepper?
Call my naivety what you want, but I am appalled to have recently learned that the above punishments are actually considered “acceptable” by a disturbingly large number of parents. How this could be is completely and utterly beyond my farthest stretch of logic, because quite frankly, I don’t believe for even a second that you could starve, beat, or shove soap in your child’s mouth out of “love”. That’s total bullshit. Barbaric. Inhumane. Absolutely, undeniably, without a doubt appalling.
The same parents will often tell you that these children “need” these types of punishments. Somehow, this doesn’t surprise me in the least. You raised them to be this way - of course its your fault that your child is a raving brat. Don’t make matters worse by taking your own failures as a parent out on your child. Didn’t *your* parents ever teach you that violence and anger solve nothing?
Oddly enough, it seems that few to none of my Canadian friends were raised this way, yet many of my American friends were… So I’m curious to know: Were you punished as a child? How? If so, looking back now, do you believe that it “fixed” anything, or did it make matters worse? Would you punish your child in the same way?
An open letter to the technologically dependant
Older generation, I have a bone to pick with you.
Look, I understand you didn’t grow up with “The Internet”. Or computers. Maybe they make you a little nervous. Maybe they make you feel completely stupid, because your five year old grandson can use your computer ten times better than you can. That’s okay. I too remember the day my second grade teacher announced that our next assignment was to research something on the internet - it was terrifying, believe me, I know.
But let me explain something to you. You see, the world is changing. The internet is a great place, really… You can shop online, talk to people all over the world, learn about anything (and everything)… and oh my god, you can even do all your banking in your UNDERWEAR. Preposterous, you say? I know.
I understand that the older you get, the harder it (typically) becomes for you to change—and that’s okay. If you don’t want to use computers, don’t. If you still want to send all written communication via fax (what’s that?) or mail, that’s fine. If you still want to do your payroll by hand, that’s dandy. If you still want to run down to the bank before 3pm to pay your bills, more power to you.
However.
If you find yourself desiring to do dirty little 21st century things like sending emails, shopping online, reading weblogs and the likes, don’t rely on “the younger generation” to do everything for you.
Put on those high heels, we’re playing grown-up for life
If you were (or are) anything like the “average” person, you probably know what it’s like to try being older. When you were 11, you wanted to be 13. When you were 16, you wanted to be 19. When you were 19, you wanted to be 21. And when you were 29?
You wanted to be 25 again. Suddenly, growing up wasn’t so glamourous.
In this day and age, there is such a seductive pull to being older. We want to look older, act older, be treated older and just be older. Years pass, and then something changes - we get older. And then suddenly, being old isn’t what we thought it would be. We want to be young again.
There are bills to pay. There is a job (or two) that demands our time and energy. There are things required of us. There are adult restrictions and responsibilities. When things go bad, we don’t have our parents to hide behind. We’re not children anymore, and more importantly, we’re not teenagers anymore. We’re - finally - the ever elusive “adult”.
And for some, it’s terrifying. But for others, it’s just another step in life.
Why is it that so many of us try so desperately to speed up the life spedometer, only to hit our 30s, slam on the aging brakes, and put the time gear in reverse? Why are so many of us intent on mentally aging ourselves to a certain point, then 360-ing back to the days we lost trying so hard to grow out of?
Go on, make my day
I love it when people try to ruin my day.
While I usually try my best to live my life as if the world is conspiring in my favor (as opposed to conspiring against me), there are often moments when it is clear that certain individuals are not - it’s in their words and actions; in the sly venom or double meaning of ill intent encapsulated within seemingly neutral statements.
One big decision that not only forever changed my life but also brought a lot of negative opinions was the decision to leave the public education system forever. Suddenly, people were popping out of the woodwork everywhere to voice their “concern” - What about socialization? Don’t you miss the school system? What about your friends? Isn’t homeschooling for “special education” kids? How will you learn?!
Marriage, divorce, and pre-nuptual agreements
Imagine you’ve got loads of money—maybe throw in a couple cars, a mansion and worldwide fame. Now imagine you’ve met the one, that special guy or girl. Two years later and you’re engaged. Your family, friends, and even your lawyer are advising you to get a pre-nup. Do you or don’t you? Are the cases where having a pre-nuptual agreement is “the smart thing to do”, or is it always the first step to divorce (i.e. “I’m making you sign this because you might leave, but my money stays with me forever”)?
For me personally, I wouldn’t do it. I’d like to think that my future self will have enough sense to marry someone with the morals, consideration, and basic dencency to take his part and leave me mine (as I would do to him) if our relationship was beyond repair.
In terms of pre-nups in general, I think they can be the smart thing for some people—people who are being married for money, most everyone in Hollywood (where the milk often outlasts the marriage!), people who marry “for fun”, people who don’t think things through…
You might think I’m being satiristic, but think about it: if you ever found yourself rich and ‘one of those people’, you’d want a pre-nup too—after all, the only thing worse than being divorced is being divorced to a ex-husband or wife who’s now rich as a result of it!
On a different-but-related note, I find it ironically hilarious that the women who host The View are all divorced (some more than once). When one of the hosts asked Whoppi Goldberg (actress and co-host) whether she’d gotten a pre-nup, she replied, “Which time?”. America might have laughed in reply, but with a 50/50 statistical chance of your marriage making it or breaking it, marriage and divorce is no laughing matter—especially when children are involved.
