Day 197: The Polka of Dots

I'm alive followers, I really am! I realize that I haven't posted since July 28th, which means an entire month and a bit has gone by without me sharing the ins and outs of my life. I have failed those of you that want to know what is happening in my life. And I have brought joy to those that don't give a crap and can't be bothered with reading my blog.

I spent almost the entire month of August working just outside of Edmonton. Four weeks of hotel living. This idea of spending the month of August in another city has become a theme. Last year I lived in Portland, Oregon for four weeks straight. This year, Edmonton, Alberta. While Portland is a way cooler city than Edmonton, the people I worked with in Edmonton were fabulous! They even took me to dinner and a (absolutely hilarious!) comedy show on my last night there!

My August was filled with: recruitment, driving rental cars, Panago, nausea (also a summer theme), packing, unpacking, repacking, hotel beds, hot tubs, sunshine, laughter, "smoke breaks", baseball, random encounters with celebrities, maid of honour tasks, new and improved texting abilities, messy situations, and a whole lot of Skype dates.

I loved August. I forged friendships with many people. I had some of the more interesting experiences of my life. I gained perspective on many life situations and my own feelings related to them. I feel like I grew as a person this month. I am thankful for my work term for ending up giving me space that I was craving and honestly, probably really needed.

I can't believe this month is over. Let's go, September!

xo

Day 196: People.

Guys, there is just a lot of war happening right now. A lot of fighting. A lot of not understanding where other people are coming from.

I, obviously, don’t have any fabulous ideas on how we can reach the elusive idea of world peace, because I don’t see how this world will ever get to a place where we respect one another, even if we are different. Where we love one another, even if we don’t agree. Where we put down weapons and embrace one another as people. As living, breathing, thinking humans.

We’ve heard many times that ‘variety is the spice of life’, and yet, we kill people over their ‘variety’: their religion, the colour of their skin, their political ideologies, their affiliations with certain countries – as if we all have a choice of where we are born.

Sometimes in Canada, where life is pretty good, we forget how much death at the hands of another happens in other parts of the world. Sometimes we turn a blind eye to the news reports, assuming that the media is sensationalizing things again. Guys, 20 people have died in Afghanistan in the last two days via suicide bombers and gun fights. 76 people died in Norway because one person decided it was his duty to fight back against a perceived impending domination of a certain religious group. There is a famine in the Horn of Africa, where a South Somalia political leader is denying the famine is a problem in his area, forcing thousands upon thousands of people to walk many miles in the hot sun, often leaving sick children behind to die, in hopes of being given a bite to eat. Anything to eat. Imagine having to choose between your two children, knowing that one is definitely not strong enough to make it to the camp because they are so malnourished that they cannot even walk. They are so malnourished that they cannot even cry.

Why can we not love each other, or care for each other? Why is it so hard for us to see past titles of what/who people ‘are’ and focus on the fact that they are people?

I don’t have the answers. I can’t claim to have never fallen into the trap of stereotyping/judging/disliking people. But, I can say for myself that I am trying. I am trying my best to love people, even if I don’t understand them. To show people I meet that they have worth, even if the world has told them that they don’t. I’m sure my own personal ‘Love Movement’ won’t bring about world peace, but hopefully it can make even one person feel more loved after having met me.

Share love. Share hugs. Don’t kill people.
It seems like common sense, but we're getting it so wrong.

xo

Day 195: No socks

Okay, so I'm not showing socks on this one because I'm actually adding this from a computer that is not my own. Therefore, this computer houses none of my sock photos.

But, this is a story for the day/week/two weeks/whenever I wrote last. Forgive me.

Here goes:

I have this life that is sometimes unbelievable to me. I wouldn’t change that for anything. I like the excitement. I like the drama even, sometimes. I don’t crave it, but I like having things to deal with, things to keep me busy.

What I don’t like is killing things. No, not killing them, but badly injuring them. That is too much drama for me. However, this is exactly what I did yesterday.

I am working outside the city this week and am, therefore, commuting. It’s about a 40 minute drive, mainly on highways and secondary highways. Highway driving lends itself to specific dangers, such as a wheel blowing up, or an engine overheating. Perhaps one of the most common highway dangers is the danger of hitting an animal. Mostly people hit squirrels, gophers, birds, or the odd rabbit. But why would I hit one of those? No. For my first murder (or almost murder), I decide to go big. And flat. And hit a badger. A BADGER. I’ve never even seen a badger before yesterday. This thing was HUGE.

 This is obviously not the one I hit (I don't think!), but this is what they look like.

So there I am on a secondary highway, cruising along in the sunshine, music playing, cruise control set around 85km/h in an 80km/h zone. I literally did not see the badger at all until after I hit it. Cruising along and BANG and then what feels like I ran over a massive speed bump. I screamed bloody murder, as it completely terrified me. My eyes shot to my rearview mirror and I saw this huge animal curled into a ball on the road. I knew what I had done. I had murdered an innocent animal.

I quickly pulled over to the side of the road and put my hazard lights on, just in time to begin crying my eyes out. Because, what else was I going to do? I couldn’t go pick it up, it was big. I didn’t want to get out of my car because the next guy behind me might run over me like I ran over the poor badger. As I was contemplating how awful of a human I am for not seeing the animal before hitting it, I look in the rearview mirror again and, I kid you not, see the badger uncurl itself from the ball and try to DRAG ITSELF TO THE SIDE OF THE ROAD. It was obviously in misery. It was obviously in pain, barely clinging to its little life. The waterworks turned on full tilt now. I LOST MY MIND.

I could have lived with myself if I had killed it. At least it would have been fast and over. But no, I brutally wound the animal so that it has to peel itself off the pavement and drag itself to the side of the road and disappear into the grass of the ditch. I cried basically the whole way home.

I really hope I never hit another animal in my life. I feel like a bad person! Please forgive me little badger, I didn’t see you. :(

Day 194: Jailbird

Blogging every day was much easier in the fall/winter when I was in school and used it as a way to avoid doing homework. I shall use this post as a way to recap my incredibly eventful weekend.

Friday evening my friend, Kaitlin, flew in to town from her respective homestead in BC. I totally love this girl. While slightly apprehensive since we'd never spent more than a dinner or an afternoon together in BC, and were now facing a whole weekend, it turned out fabulously. Some friends you just don't miss a beat with, you know?

As she came out the doors I was so super excited and we both squealed like little girls and hugged and laughed. I think internally we knew this weekend was going to be fabulous!!

Friday night, we met up with Jadah and went to a delicious exclusively vegetarian restaurant in downtown Calgary. It was incredible (as always)! While on our walk to another friend's house, we encountered some extremely inebriated guys who asked if we would "skip" down the street with them. Let me just express how much I love Stampede in Calgary and the ridiculous antics that all seem to partake in at this time of year.

Saturday was such a fun day. Kait and I got up fairly early for breakfast at one of my favourite breakfast places, Diner Deluxe. We enjoyed delicious food and coffee. I took her on a little Calgary tour and then we went shopping. I got two dresses and a pair of shoes for under $60. Kaitlin also scored some wicked deals. It is important at this point to mention that at the TNA store we were helped by a super sweet girl who happened to have big bandages on her face. I'm not mentioning this to be cruel or anything, but later this story will come into play.

After getting ready to go out for the evening (we bought tickets to the Cowboys tent for Stampede), we were driving to Jade's and we drove past a girl in a car who had big bandages on her face too. This led to a purely speculative conversation on whether or not people were getting bottled at parties during the Stampede. Naturally, me being me, my anxiety levels rose and I was worried that someone this evening would happen to get in an unfortunate fight at the Cowboys tent and that they'd get bottled. I pushed these thoughts aside for a couple drinks and some barbequed chicken. We all traipsed over to the Cowboys tent and and had a really fun night. Tons of people dressed in cowboy/girl gear, loud music, and incredibly overpriced drinks (aka the water I bought was $4.75). While exiting the girls washroom, Kaitlin and I ran directly into the girl from the TNA store with the bandages on her face. Kaitlin (very politely) asked if she'd mind sharing her story of how she hurt her face. She definitely was not bottled in a bar fight during Stampede. She actually had an unfortunate accident where she happened to faint while on a flight of stairs -- poor girl! Mystery solved. I had more faith in the people of Stampede than to be angry types. Usually everyone is so happy at Stampede time.

Sunday we both slept in and got ready and then went out for lunch. We enjoyed a super leisurely late lunch. Then we headed to the Stampede grounds for Kaitlin's first-ever Stampede experience! We took the train and took in all the sites. Indian Village, the Agriculture tent, all the little animals, the BMO Centre, etc. We wandered around for a few hours, ate some mini donuts, commented on many people's unfortunate choices of attire. We decided to head out of the grounds for dinner and along the way saw that Mariana's Trench was doing their soundcheck on the Coca-Cola Stage. My inner 13-year-old girl freaked out. I totally LOVE Mariana's Trench. No, for serious. Love. Sigh.

Anyways, so we stuck around and watched their soundcheck. I was feeling good about this and decided to post a picture of them on the stage to my Twitter. Right after this happened I saw that the Calgary Stampede had tweeted saying if we could find them at this location (with a picture attached) that the next 5 people would get FREE tickets to the Kenny Chesney concert that night. I opened the pic and knew exactly where they were. I said to Kaitlin, "Free Kenny Chesney tickets for tonight! This way! Run!" She, being the easy-going girl that she is, just ran after me. Well, we were one of the five, because we got free tickets! It was incredible! Twitter is quite possibly one of the best inventions. I heart social networking! So the concert started 30 minutes after we won the tickets. So we hustled on over to the Saddledome and got in our seats. I was a little bit disappointed that by winning the tickets I was missing the Mariana's Trench concert, but this was also possibly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that I couldn't pass up. Plus, capping off Stampede with Kenny Chesney is pretty swoon-worthy. We were also a little disappointed that seeing Kenny Chesney meant missing Doc Walker playing in the Nashville North tent. However, Doc Walker ended up being one of two opening acts for Kenny Chesney!!! How was our luck so incredible on Sunday? Seeing Mariana's Trench doing soundcheck, winning Kenny Chesney tickets AND having Doc Walker open for him. AMAZING. So we country'd it up at the concert, sang along to all the songs, and left feeling pretty good. As we got closer to the train we realized the fireworks show was about to start so we stuck around and waited for the fireworks and then headed home. What an absolutely incredible day! Probably one of the best Stampede days I have ever had in my life. And that means a lot, because as a 14-year-old I met The Moffatts at Stampede. So yeah, big day.

Today Kait, Jade and I headed out to Canmore for a hike. Gorgeous. The blazing sun, the exercise that I am seriously craving and chats with two smart and fun girls. We saw pristine mountain lakes, a waterfall, two guys having an impromptu jam session with their guitars, sitting beside a crystal clear lake. So chill. What a perfect way to spend a last day in the Calgary area for Kaitlin. For dinner Kaitlin and I went to Peters' Drive-In, which is a Calgary staple, then headed to the airport for a drink before she took off to go back home. Now I sit here in a chilly, air-conditioned Starbucks recounting a truly astonishingly fun weekend.

Not sure a weekend will top this for quite some time. Thanks to Jade, Kaitlin and ALL the others that made this as enjoyable as it was.

Oh, and...ALOUETTE LAKE. GOLD CREEK. HANEY PLACE MALL.

xo