De Nada

I got nothing, kids. Even less than that, if you went by the last post. Zip. Zilch.

If you really need something to do, go see stuff on my cat.


*click to biggify*

Thanks for the Mammaries

Okay, here's the scoop. Every year, Canada-wide, there's a fundraising run for breast cancer called Run for the Cure.

The Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation CIBC Run for the Cure is an extraordinary single-day experience that unites more than 170,000 Canadians in over 40 communities across the country. Together, we're raising millions of dollars to fund innovative and relevant breast cancer research, education, and awareness programs in the communities where you live. Last year, we raised $21 million. This year, we'll strive to surpass that goal - and we know we can do it.

The run is on October 2. We've registered a corporate team called... "Thanks for the Mammaries" which will consist of a bunch of the hospital workers from our department. What makes it kind of neat is that our department actually runs the breast cancer screening and mammography program in Victoria, so we see a lot of boobs. What never ceases to suprise me is the high percentage of tumors that are found through the screening program.

Speaking for one of the areas that some of that money goes to - I can't stress enough how things like the screening program are super important to the health and well being of that portion of the species you love so much - women. Or, really, just their breasts. Not to mention the research to find a cure for not only Canadian women, but all of us.

I'll be running 5k for maJen who survived breast cancer 10 years ago.

Unfortunately, being an internet unsavvy island, our organizer didn't realize that registering online would allow the team members to get donations directly to the team. This will make it a little more difficult for you to sponsor me (if you so desire).

The first option: to donate directly to the Canadian Breast Cancer foundation virtual runner, which will generate a tax receipt automatically to your email for any donation over $20 CDN. (that's $16.95 US / $9.40 British pounds). Tax receipts for smaller donations need to be requested on the form.

If you donate that way, please leave me a comment or send me an email at my.own.boat(at)gmail.com so that I can 'add' it to our team total.

OR to sponsor me directly, use paypal and donate to 'me' at my.own.boat(at)gmail.com and I'll *gasp* fill out the paperwork and do it the old fashioned way. Please include an address if you wish a tax receipt. I promise to not share your information with anyone other than the charity itself.

I'll take pictures and post a little album after the run.

And now, I'm off to East Sooke Park for a hike with Wade and his crazy cousin before sitting down to a lamb roast dinner.

Giving in to the Lure of the Brand Name. But Close to Done with the Shopping.

Today, after picking Wade up from the airport and having a fantastic lunch at Milestone's, I took the opportunity to drag him around the inner harbor (which I avoid like the plague most of the time) to Capital Iron for a few things. From there I proceeded to get us lost, twice, on the way to Robinson's for more supplies.

(YES, I'm working on this directional dysfunction thing. I ask for directions more often. I DO!)


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Clockwise from the left bottom, we start with my dusty blue MSR Packtowl. LARGE! Hello! Bath-size baby! And apparantly, it matches my eyes.

Next up, the Nalgene water bottle and the Master contractable cable lock (thanks 'nessa! damn good idea!).

Beside that some *gasp* generic bottles for my Dr Bronner's soap and whatever else I may decide to use them for. Hanging off one of those is my waterproof Shockwatch.

Next up, we've got my Austin House Adapt-A-Kit travel adapter before moving onto the earplugs and antiemetic (travel sickness pills).

Whew.

Also, Wade brought the two packs that Pam & Tony sent for me to choose from - which the picture just doesn't do justice to, unfortunately.


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The 'lower' one is Pam's and the smaller one but it does wrap up very nicely into a suitcasey style case. I think, however, that I will eventually end up needing a large one for my travels and should take this opportunity to test a biggie while I whittle down my 'essentials' on the road. Especially since I'll barely actually be what I'd consider to be "on the road" for this trip.

I also ordered my MedicAlert bracelet, which I'd totally forgotten about. I'm not sure if it'll be here by the time I leave but if not, I can get by with a generic penicillin one for this trip. Penicillin's the biggie, the other ones won't kill me.

So, just waiting (still) for my new computer(s) and other small sundry items to arrive and then I'm pretty much set except for the parental gifting issues and the horror of actually packing it all to stay within the 20 kg I'm allowed on the internal Aus flights on Virgin Blue. Although, I should probably note for now that 1 - 10 extra kg is only $10. So, that's not bad. That gives me..... erm.... 66 lbs. I should be able to do that.

If I can't - I should be shot.

HEY! Stop lining up! I'm sure I can do it. Have a little faith, willya?

I have one more afternoon shift but then we're gonna need to have a little talk...

...about breasts.

Play It Again, Sam

I've been thinking about this one lately. I think because I wrote it during a winter week in Calgary that felt more like fall evenings in Victoria.

Like what being outside feels like right now. Like what missing the city a little feels like.

Secrets
When you get right down to the heart of it, every city is the same. Even the sounds are equal across continents.

But each place has it's very own brand of silence.

The breath of the trees, the whisperings of brick, the scrutiny of the streetlights.

That electric, suspended calm before the first raindrop of a summer storm falls, the quiet that is a soft curtain woven through beads of rain strung from clouds.

The sound of frost on windows.

Of autumn leaves changing color.

The turning of a snowflake that does not fall with it's own weight but as an accent to the currents of air that wind their way between the buildings.

The changing face of the moon.

The sound of a city asleep, the silence that is constant and so constantly unheard by those who live there.

To know the silence of a place is to know it's soul. The ringing of the church bell is half the music, silence is the other half.

In a time of an inner autumn, when in returning from work I think October thoughts under grey winter clouds, I hear the city's silence and I know it's secrets.

For I think they are much like mine.

Hiding in a the stillness unspoken between the sounds. Crouched in a hesitation, existing unseen and unknowable. Just....right... there.


February, 2004

Today is.... Thursday?

The thing with shift work that I'm still getting used to is never knowing what day it is. I imagine it must be easier if you work shifts Mon - Fri only but I'm working 7 days a week. In two different hospitals (but potentially 4) in three different areas of the department.

I guess I have a valid excuse then. Whew.

But, this week (for example) Monday 8-4 in Hospital #1, Area #2. Tues - Sat in Hospital #2, Area #1, 2 early day shifts, 2 late afternoon shifts and a weekend shift. Apart from that being 6 days in a row, I've got a ton of other stuff going on. After two days off, next week is five shifts, no two at the same time, over two hospitals and three different departments.

For each of the shifts there are different job duties. Even the same shift is totally different between the hospitals. And it's BUSY.

So, yanno, I have no idea where I am, what day it is, or what I should be doing or which doctor is waiting on what line for the other doctor I just paged.

It's kind of fun. But I'm very tired. Last night I had a two hour nap, ate dinner and then went back to bed until 9:30 this morning.

Right now I'm just waiting for the eggs to cool so I can start making lunches for the next three days, writing to you, answering email, figuring out when I have to leave as I've got a doctor's appointment on the way to work and looking for the phone number of the person I'm supposed to be having coffee with once I actually get to the hospital.

I haven't run since Sunday but I've committed myself to participating in the Run for A Cure. More on that later.

I had a family dinner on Tuesday (where round about the third beer I promised I'd go to Peurto Vallarta for a week at Christmas), I've been working on the site redesign for the trip, tomorrow, I'm picking Wade up at the airport for lunch before work. This morning I set the combination to the locks I bought for my pack (which is arriving with Wade. Hopefully.)....



Aren't they cute?

I've got a bunch of stories to tell you, just not enough time to tell them.

How boring does that make me? Minutiae of daily life just seems to be intruding on my inna'net time.

How dare it! The nerve!

Suddenly, A Whirlwind Tour. And Not a Thing To Wear.

(Phil - you may remember Sandy S?)...

So, I've chopped and changed a flight or two and now am flying out of Perth a few days early to Sydney for a quick day tour...

"Okay, I will gather some thoughts as to what we can do with our day in Sydney … how about a wander around the Opera House to look at the harbour, then a ferry trip past the Opera House and Harbour Bridge, across the harbour, to Manly for fish & chips on the beach…"

then a drive down to Canberra for a day of sightseeing AND ......

"I was just speaking with one of my lovely colleagues, who has invited us both to a wonderful luncheon on the Tuesday: it is Melbourne Cup day! (a lovely, fun, crazy horse-racing carnival in Melbourne, and the whole country will come to a standstill at race time…) anyway, C and a few of her friends organise one of THE lunches in Canberra … it is quite likely to be warm, so if you have a fav ‘frock’, or just want to do a little shopping while you are here, keep it in the back of your mind… It will be an absolute HOOT!!! And set you up to sleep all the way back to Canada…."

I.AM.SO.EXCITED.

Have I said that lately?

Can't Run, Bike or Hike it Out

He owns that piece of me that fit so neatly inside of him. That hot messy wild thing that, like all of our love stories, is half invention and half truth. Real, yet somehow mythic.

We don't show that piece to many people and the ones who see it, never forget it. They have that on you for the rest of your days, unchanging even though you have changed, existing even unspoken. They've seen you naked, vulnerable, pathetic, needy. In lust. Fear. Pain. Heat. You both know it. It lives with you from that point forward.

Sometimes it's hard not to want that self back. Days and nights when you look inside and just cannot understand how you could have given that piece of yourself to someone who, mostly now, you barely even recognize.

I want that private self back. Not to reclaim ownership but back to a place where no one else ever held it. I want my blood and guts to come home where I can hide it away again and keep it safe, although I know it can never be.

In the light of a fall day, feet pounding the dirt, I come to understand that he was the perfect fit in the particular context I had needed all my life. Longed for. Inevitable. He was my heroic territory and my occupation of him tore down and rebuilt something enduring, it's intensity simultaneously burning and healing a stunted part of me.

It is that route to some essential part of me that I didn't fully recognize or understand that he brought an almost complete set of directions for. The mirroring effect that allowed me to see myself as he saw me, to see a me I'd never seen or even believed could exist. To fall in love with his version of me - that I was the most beloved and gorgeous creature in all the world.

Ending, I see that I no longer amaze and entrall myself and it breaks my heart. But, still, that which now breathes within me retains it's newfound health.

I have learned to embrace it when it comes. I learned that I can give my vulnerability and my nakedness to another person and still be strong. Still be free.

But with new knowledge comes new questions. Giving even a small piece of this new knowledge to another suddenly engenders a new need...

...how to weather what feels like a whole new breed of rejection.