After a long pause in the record negotiations, I think we're finally getting rolling again. There is talk of the CD being out by Christmas. Maybe. There are a few final, vital things to sort out. But many of you have been asking. And the answer is: It's coming. Just so you know.
.........................................................
Today I dropped Iryn off at an hour-long sparks meeting and then tried to make it through rush hour traffic to the grocery store before having to be back again to pick her up.
Crazyness.
Ella helped me carry the block of cheese into the car, and I forgot she had it until I looked in the rearview mirror and saw her gnawing on something. I confiscated the cheese, which Ella had nibbled a hole into, and eaten almost one whole side of.

When we all got home, the phone rang. It was my dear and long-time friend Sherri, in town on business.

"How ARE you?" She said.
"Ugh. Worn. My kids are crazy tonight. I'm thinking about taking up drinking."
"Really?" she says.
"I would, but I don't really like alcohol that much." I say.
She laughs. "I love alcohol."
"You'd be an alcoholic in a minute if you were around here right now." I tell her.

I'm always aware that I might possibly sound ungrateful, so just to clarify: I adore my girls. I mean, tonight when Iryn started singing in the car, she sounded like a sweet angel, making up the words as she went along. And Ella is totally into helping me sweep the floor. Like, she actually gets excited about it. She makes messes sort of on purpose, so she can sweep them up. And the cute level around here gets so over the top sometimes. Like the other day, Ella put on her bright yellow underwear on sideways, so they were riding up her bum--which looked a little painful--with one whole butt cheek exposed. And you should have seen Iryn at the clinic the other afternoon, when she had an ear infection, and she was quiet and scared, and said: Am I going to go deaf? and I remembered that even though she acts 13 sometimes, she is only 6, and I promised her she wouldn't go deaf, and wrapped my arms around her tight until the doctor called us in.

But sometimes it's hard. Like, really hard.
It doesn't make it less beautiful. Just hard too.
And that's okay.

Last night Iryn was really angry and frustrated and letting it out on everyone. And finally, I said: Here is a piece of paper and some felts. Draw a picture of how you feel.

She drew a picture of her and me. She drew her arm pointing out at me, like she sometimes does when she is mad at me, and she drew a sunshine over her and a raincloud over me.

But - I'm not kidding - it seemed to make her feel better.
So whatever. She can draw pictures of suns and clouds and me with Xs for eyes until the cows come home. As long as it helps. Maybe I can even make it into a business and sell books full of all the pictures. I might make some money.

Today, at the grocery store, I bought some new fancy felts to entice her to draw more. I left them on the table for her.

She didn't use them, but after the girls went to bed, I picked them up and drew a picture of how I was feeling. I drew a stick girl with a frown, and my arms up in the air, one hand holding a spoon (domestic life) and the other holding a star (my creativity and things I love to do). I stared at it for awhile, then crumpled it up. I remembered an exercise I sometimes did with a workshop I used to teach. It's called "opposites" and you're supposed to draw a picture of a negative posture you feel you are in, and then you're supposed to draw the resolved posture.
So I took the pens again and drew another stick girl, but this time she was smiling and her hands were empty, but inside her heart there was a swirl of aliveness and pure being, and I drew it spinning around and shining and radiating however it wanted to in each moment.
This is how I want to live.

The other morning, at around 7 am, I heard someone clanging around in the recycling out the side of the house. I was getting the girls up and dressed, and I stopped to open the window and peer out. I saw a bedraggled looking woman with bashed-out teeth going through our bottles, stuffing some into her coat. I said hello through the screen, and she looked up at me and laughed sheepishly. “I’m just taking a few bottles.” she said. “I hope that’s okay.” “Sure.” I said. I decided she obviously needed them more that we did. “Take all the bottles you want.”
“What do you get for bottles now, anyhow?” she asked me, as if making casual conversation in a grocery line-up.
“Uh, I’m not sure.” I said, backing away from the window to help my 6 year old untangle her pants.
My 3 year old poked her head around. “Hi.” she said to the woman going through our bottles.
“Hello sweetie! What’s your name?” the woman said.
“Ella.” Ella answered in her tiny voice. “What’s yours?”
“My name is Eileen. How old are you?”

The whole thing had started to get a little weird. The whole situation was a little too “chummy” for my liking. I didn’t want her thinking she could come back for the lawn chairs or the kids’ bikes. Also, the idea of my kids befriending the local transients made me slightly uncomfortable.

I told Ella to get down from the window and to start getting dressed. But she really wanted to talk to Eileen. I insisted she get down—explaining that the woman was a stranger and we shouldn’t talk to strangers—and Ella was visibly upset by the whole thing. Iryn, my 6 year old, was confused too. “But you were talking to her!” She said adamantly.

I closed the window and started getting the girls ready. The whole interaction had felt strange and confusing—not really the part about Eileen, but more how I had reacted to my fear and had not known how to respond. I tried to explain it to the girls: “The woman was stealing from our yard. And I think she had a bit too much alcohol to drink, so I don’t feel comfortable with you talking to her.” I said.

But this felt so inadequate. Was I teaching them to turn a blind eye to suffering? Worse, was I teaching them to put people into categories—all of a sudden now every homeless person in the world drinks too much alcohol and steals bottles?

But at the same time, she was in our yard, going through our stuff—okay, our garbage—but still. Something just felt a little bit off to be saying, “Hey! How’s it going? Top of the morning to ya!” You know?

In my pre-kid life, I probably would have invited the woman in for breakfast. Or I would have maybe suggested we grab a bite to eat downtown. I used to do things like that. But with kids, it’s not so easy. I can’t just invite some unknown and intoxicated woman in for breakfast anymore. But I don’t want to teach my kids to be overly afraid either.

Later that afternoon, Iryn didn’t want to go out into the back to look for the cat, as she usually likes to do. She said she was scared of “the lady”.
She said “the lady” in a ghostly sort of way, like she was saying “spoooooky”.

“Laaaayyyyydyyyyyyyyyy”.

Now, see that’s exactly what I didn’t want to have happen.
It’s hard to know what to do sometimes. I reassured her as best I could, explaining that our yard is safe, but that if a stranger ever came around, it would be best to come inside just in case. I mean we DO live right across the street from a very happening drug deal spot (Iryn calls "them" druggers)

“She seemed nice though.” I said. “I think she was just hungry.”

Iryn looked thoughtful. “She could take our tomatoes and cucumber.” She was referring to our anaemic looking vegetable garden across the yard, where a few pale cherry tomatoes and one single cucumber were dangling pathetically from their vines.
“Yes, I guess she could.” I said.

“Then, out of the blue, a few days later, on the way home from school, she said, “Mama, I know what I would do if I was a mom and a homeless lady came into our yard. I would get some food and I would get a towel and I would put the food in the towel and wrap it around a long stick.” I knew what she was talking about. She was talking about making a “hobo stick” which we sometimes do with a bathroom towel and piece of old doweling. I thought ‘how sweet’.

She continued. “And then I would go out and say, ‘Here. Take this food, and then, please leave. And if you don’t leave, I will knock you unconscious with this big stick.”

Right. Who knows where she comes up with these ideas? But at least it’s opened the whole topic up for conversation, and I guess that’s better than nothing.

It has started to feel cold in the mornings now. Yesterday I noticed that summer had just up and left, all at once. I have that achy, slightly fluttery, heartbroken feeling. I miss it already—the bathing suits hung on the backs of doorknobs, the open doors early in the mornings to let the heat out, the hot, afternoon dullness when we’d escape to the nearest beach for a quick swim. I even miss the sand on the floors.

Also, school starts this week, which always feels so final. But truth be told, the bittersweet feeling there leans more toward the sweet. I am tired of doing so much event organizing—or should I say “not event organizing”, because although I have carried the weight of my 6-year-old’s boredom around on my shoulders for most of the summer, I rarely succeeded in doing much about it.

If she’d had it her way, we would’ve had play dates all day, every day, with little time for much else. Life would be party central around here if she was in charge. She’s always asking me if we can have this or that party:

“Mama, can we have a banana theme party where we make everything out of bananas?”

“But you don’t even like bananas” I answer.

“I would if they were mixed in with other food—like banana cake, banana milkshake, stir fried bananas.” she lists, and for a split second, it brings to mind Bubba in Forest Gump: “Shrimp Creole, shrimp gumbo, pineapple shrimp, coconut shrimp…”

“That sounds like an awful lot of bananas.” I say. But what I’m actually thinking is: That sounds like an awful lot of work. I imagine myself as one of those “good”, energetic moms—like the woman I saw at the beach this summer who, for hours on end was scooping up sand, singing Raffy tunes, hooting and hollering about something or other, and organizing games with all the 3-6 year olds that seemed to gravitate around her. She would do the banana theme party, I know she would. She would also let her kids help her make everything—she wouldn’t care about all the flour spilling across the floor and countertops, or the banana peels that mysteriously found their way to hanging across the arms of the couch.

When I bake with my kids, I always—every single time—reach a point where I want to scream like Lola in Run Lola Run, where she breaks all the windows. That mother at the beach would never want to scream like that. She would probably sing some version of “Peanut, Peanut butter, Jelly”; only she would find some witty way to substitute bananas instead.

Anyways. I didn’t for a second consider doing the banana theme party, and needless to say, it hasn’t been party central around here, and that’s how I like it—usually—but with little kids, I keep learning that good ol’ stay-at-home days don’t often pan out. I wish for them desperately—for long, slow days where we just take things as they come, maybe wander out for a coffee, then home again to read a book for, oh, I don’t know, 8 hours, under a tree. But the girls are not really into this. They have energy to burn.

So there’s this pressure to plan activities, but then on the flip-side, me pining for slow at-home days like I used to have often, before kids, resulting in me sabotaging my good planning intentions, resulting in too many frustrating, unstructured days when we all go a little nuts. Why don’t I just recognize this and get my act together?

Well, for one, I don’t want to be one of those families who can barely stand to be with themselves and each other because they’re so addicted to frantic activity. Like the guy my husband and I saw last week on our way down to Penticton—we were just in time for an hour-long highway closure, and the guy behind us went berserk—I actually thought he might punch the poor lady in the hardhat—and it was clear that the idea of just sitting still for one hour was too much for him. He proceeded to blare techno music from his truck stereo and then he went over to the side of the road—which looked onto sparkling Lake Okanagan, blue mountains and a beautiful dappled summer sky—where he chain smoked and fidgeted until the hour was up. We headed over to the ice cream/fruit stand, and agreed that there were worse things to be doing on a Tuesday afternoon than walking down a road in the sunshine to get ice cream.

So I don’t want to nurture that very thing in my kids. I want to be able to hang around the house a little while my girls make up plays like the sisters in Little Women. I want them to wander off and play like the pastel-painted children in Child’s Garden of Verses where you wonder where on earth the parents are. I’m told that one of these days, I’ll get my wish. I’m told that one of these days, they’ll actually want to take it slow too, instead of needing to go climb metal bars or hunt down all the neighbourhood cats.

But in the meantime, I’m sort of counting on school being back in to help take the edge off.

Craig keeps bringing up the fact that we should get rid of the rocking chair. We’re getting ready to put the girls into one room, and he’s gotten all organizational—spending far too much time on-line looking at closet dividers and bookshelves and things. He wants to discuss lamps, and duvet covers, as well as all the stuff we’re going to get rid of—the clunky old change table, the plastic baby toys that never got played with, the annoying toys that the girls did play with but which we can’t stand, like the pink singing pony with no volume control. And, also, the rocking chair.

But I’m so attached to the rocking chair.

“I nursed my babies in that chair.” I say, as if there’s no more need for discussion.

But he doesn’t see how this is relevant, seeing as how I don’t actually do that anymore.

“It’s ugly.” He says.

“Yes. It’s very ugly.”

He says: “Can’t you find something to replace it with?”

“There’s nothing.” I say.

It feels true. The houses where my daughters were born are gone, the windows where I nursed them, also their baby hair, the blankets they’ve outgrown.

He says, “Why don’t you take a picture of it or something?”

So I think about the picture. See, I don’t really like that idea. A picture would imply the time is passed, and now it’s just a memory, preserved for all time in a photograph. As in: ‘Oh look. Here’s a picture of the rocking chair we had when the girls were little.” As in: that’s all done now.

But if we keep the rocking chair, then it’s like it’s still in the present, as in the girls are still sort of babies, and are just barely past the needing-to-be-rocked-in-a-rocking-chair stage, and might still need it sometimes.

Except that the truth is, it just sits there.

So this is ridiculous, I know.

But I have this fear. This fear that if the girls are not small, then it’s just a short climb until they’re big and will want to move out and I will be old. Or maybe it’s better said this way: I’m afraid that if we get rid of the rocking chair, then it won’t be long now—just around the corner in fact, an eye-blink away—from the time when I will be old and die. More specifically, I am afraid that if we give the rocking chair away, then I will die.

Which is, also, ridiculous.

I mean, was I ever not going to die? This life was always going to be temporary. That’s the deal. But I think I had tricked myself again into believing that it was permanent—or at least semi-permanent, as in I would die eventually, but not for, like, a gazillion years.

Iryn asks me often: Mommy, do you promise:
1) The roof won’t fall in
2) A tidal wave won’t come
3) You won’t die today
4) No one will kidnap me
5) I won’t get cancer
6) We’ll go to Disneyland one day?

And I never know what to say. I imagine that a good parent might pat their child on the head and say: “I promise honey. Now you just quit fretting and go play with your Barbies.” I mean, if ever there was a time to trust blindly, to be free of worry, isn’t it now? But I just can’t bring myself to do it.

So I tell her the truth: “Sweetie, the sky could fall down on us at any moment. No one knows what will happen. We just have to trust that whoever put us here will take care of us.”

Maybe this is too harsh. I’m not sure. I could probably leave out the part about the sky falling down on us. But I want her to learn the truth early on. I imagine it might soften some of life’s blows. And at any rate, I would feel terrible lying to her.

But I lie to myself all the time. I pretend I’m here for the long haul, which relatively speaking, I very well might be. But still. There’s something about knowing that all of this is temporary, fleeting, which causes us to wake up, to pay close attention. I mean, if we could lose it at any moment, don’t we want to take more in? Doesn’t this jolt us into really being here?

So I’ve been thinking about the rocking chair. It takes up so much space. It really does. As does this other thing inside me—I’m not sure what to call it. I wondered if maybe by letting go of the clutter of the chair, it might clear out some of the inner clutter too.

It was a sad thought. Like someone had died. But then I remembered that no one had died at all—that they’re both right here—the girls sleeping in their beds down the hall, Ella curled up low down on her mattress in her new big-girl bed, Iryn long and lanky and slightly sweaty across the hall.

More recording.
And then, I return home to what feels like monotonous tedium.

Cutting up snacks. Folding laundry. Gathering the crayons from under the table.

I come home to conversations like this one:
"Mom, I'd like to be a reptile."
"Hm. Really? Why is that?"
"Because then I would be born in an egg."
(pause)
"And also I wouldn't have to go to school."

Or this one:
"Mom, can a worm marry itself?"
`Hm. I`m not sure. I"ll have to ask daddy about that one."

I get a little grouchy coming home after being at the studio, I have to admit. It is wonderful beyond words to be able to concentrate on one thing, one SINGLE thing, for a whole day.
I can sing my parts until I get them right, without any interruptions. I can make tea whenever I want. No one sits on the bath tub with me while I pee. I get to FINISH MY CONVERSATIONS, instead of having a thousand unfinished thoughts floating in the air like lost feathers.

Oh, what is to become of this double life of mine?

Just spent a week in the studio recording what will (hopefully) become another release. The producer is kind, and whips up gourmet meals while regalling us with strange stories of his rock and roll tours "back in the day". He knows all kinds of famous people and when I walk through his door, I make tea, and then place it on a picutre of David Hasslhoff, who is standing on a big stage wearing the most awful pants I have ever seen in my life, tight black with patchy black and white material on each leg and over the crotch.

Every day, I go down, like a spider, into a dark room. I sit there until my parts are done, and then I emerge into the too-bright light, squinting. It's almost 100 degrees here, but I wouldn't know it. They keep the air conditioning on, and I walk around in a sweater, with my hands wrapped around my warm teacup.

Making things (dare I say art?) is so vulerable.
Every day I have to go in and try my best while simultaneously letting go of the best, because often the best is just fantasy. Theory. The process is, at times, unbearable. I hear orchestras, symphonies, gospel choirs, horn sections in my head. But eventually, you have to let go and let it be what it is. Letting go of some grand idea is heartbreaking. But controlling it only makes you mental.

This is my struggle as a writer too; It has recently occurred to me that for years I have been waiting for that "just-right" feeling to descend upon me like a light beam from Heaven, and THEN... then I will know how to write the perfect song or the best-selling book or the great poem. This has never happened and I have come to believe that it never will. The very nature of art making is not one of glory, but of humility, and this means you have to be absolutely willing to say: "This could very well be total crap. But on I go."

Because of a need to express oneself. Because remaining silent has become more unbearable than saying it out loud.

And then, just when you've resolved to be okay with the mess, to do it anyway, something happens. And you realized it's the "just right" feeling you've been waiting for, but it only came after you'd been digging in the dirt a while, and it didn't come the way you expected it to either, it took on a different form, but there it is. You breathe a sigh of relief and realize, with finality that THIS IS THE ROAD. This is how it works. And so, at the end of the day, you see that not much of it is your business. In fact, the only part of it that IS your business is the showing up.

Some (hopefully) beautiful new songs coming soon....

I am torn today, between wanting to do a thousand things, and wanting to do nothing. I suppose, in the end, I will have to settle for doing just one thing, as is always the case. I read a book once where the writer confessed that as a child, she was very angry at being locked in her body and not being able to fly. I seem to have a similar condition in which I am angry that I cannot be in several places at once, doing multiple things. Right now I would be writing a book and shooting photos and taking a yoga class and scribbling poetry and playing guitar on my deck and riding my bike by the water.

But my 2 hours are almost up for the afternoon, and soon, my 2 year old will wake up and we'll go and play on the swings and maybe pull some weeds from the garden and then Michelle will come for supper and then she'll put the girls to bed while I take my bike (I don't care about the rain) over the the board walk and take some pictures of the weeping willows I've been longing to photograph for days. Evening is the perfect time, when the sun shines low and the green colors seem to vibrate.

This overwhelm of wanting to do everything all at once has always been a thorn in my side, and I have to believe that destiny saw my problem and sent me children. Children require undivided presence, which frees me from my obsession. Left to my own devices, I'd probably never comb my hair and go to the grocery store in my pyjammas, maybe I'd end up like the old homeless woman who lives here in the summers who walks along the road sides, cursing at the cars and pedestrians (What are you looking at you Mother F#*%er!) between rousing choruses of "Life is a Highway" or "Blowin' in the Wind".

As it is, my 6 year old lost her 2nd tooth the other night, and I completely forgot to leave her toothfairy money. She woke the next morning and came into my room, distraught, holding her sad looking tooth: "Why didn't the toothfairy come?" She said.

I moaned. I sympathized. I suggested that maybe the toothfairy didn't see it because it was so small, that we should try again.

I forgot again. And then again. Still my daughter, full of faith, kept believing. Although by now, her version of the toothfairy has changed from a shiny, smiling magical lady, to a fat old many who smokes too many cigarettes and misses work shifts due to hangovers.

I finally remembered on the 4th night, and left a note, apologizing:

"I'm very sorry I kept you waiting." said the toothfairy (whose handwriting looked remarkably like mommy's and whose pen had apparantly stopped working half-way through and had to be replaced with another pen of a darker color)

"So many kids lost their teeth this week, I just couldn't keep up. Some kids had to wait a whole week. Here is something a little extra." I left her double the regular price for a tooth. This morning, she crawled into my bed, smiling her little gappy smile.

I have been so tired the past few weeks. I feel like something within me is consciously draining me, making me have to lie down and be still with my thoughts... in a way I feel like something is trying to get born in me right now and it can only happen in stillness, not in the frenzy of my doing doing doing.

Which means I have had very little time for doing.

The other day I sat down at the piano to sing for 2 minutes. It's all I seem to have right now, stolen moments. Before 2 minutes was up, Iryn let me know that Ella had crawled up onto the counter and dumped lemon juice into the half-made cookie batter that was sitting there awaiting an egg. The lemon juice reacted with the baking soda, which Ella seemed to find quite interesting.

Yesterday I played piano while Ella watered my plants with a spraybottle. She also sprayed the entire window behind the plants but it kept her busy for awhile.

The new album is progressing... Ella sings along to rough tracks in the car: "If I had my way/These walls would be blue/and not this lonely color/Of me without you..."

It's a rough mix, so there is one part where you hear me cough into the microphone, and Ella, singing along, manages to do the cough too.

I cleaned up pee in 2 different places yesterday.

Then, in the evening I went to a party. A good friend threw herself a fancy birthday party at a winery and we had an 8-course dinner with wine pairings. People kept asking me: So what have you been up to? And honestly, sometimes I don't know what to say. All I could think of right then was about how, just before I left, Ella had peed on the kitchen table. It's not exactly impressive. I feel the pressure to make myself sound like I'm being useful or ambitious. Shouldn't I talk about my new record, or the writing I've been doing or SOMETHING? But alas, I couldn't get past the pee.

Today, with the girls away for a few days, I slept in. I pressed snooze 20 times.

I walked downtown for a misto.

I browsed in Value Village and found a turquoise velveteen jacket for spring for only $10.

I bought frozen organic blueberries and ate them at the kitchen counter.

I looked through a music contract and thought about my crappy blue couch covered in stains and wondered if one day, I will not have to play in bars with the blender going in the background, wondered if maybe I could actually own a nice couch one day.

I sat on the front steps in the sun.

I took a nap.

I read from my favorite book.

I made tea every 5 minutes.

I did not check my email or even turn the computer on.

I ate a delicious salad made of chick peas, sprouts, walnuts and organic greens.

I ran along the water. No one was out and I could hear it lapping at the sides of the cement walls along the boardwalk.

I saw a red-winged blackbird in the reeds of the marsh, and then another, and then another. I heard them too, their song which sounds a little like a referee whistle 3 octoves too low.

I swallowed a bug. It came too fast and before I knew it it was down.

I imagined it drowning in my half-digested salad.

I went running this morning, in the first warm sunshine. It feels like it's been a hundred years since I've felt the sun. The past few days has been gloomy and cloudy and rainy... and before that it was so cold. But today, there are rivers of melting snow everywhere, running through everything.

You'd think that after all those years of living in the prairies, I could handle the cold. But when winter comes, I stop my running routing, and go for snowy walks instead. It has to do with slipping in running shoes, and also that horrible ache that happens in your lungs when you get all huffy and puffy breathing in cold air.

So I don't run in the winter. And every year, it's like an awakening, to pump my legs and move across the road with my heart beating hard in my ears.

I often get little bursts of revelation when I run. Today, running along the waterfront, my mind started to wander. I was thinking of how Iryn, my 5 year old, loves to complain. It's exhausting to be around her sometimes. It doesn't take much for her to find fault with the world. Craig says when she was born, her first thought was: "This could be SO much better."

Sometimes it breaks my heart to see her this way. I'll plan a lovely picnic and she'll complain about the location I've chosen. Or I'll say we're gettting dressed for a walk in the snow, which I know she'll love, but she'll complain about having to get her snowpants on. Sometimes I want to shake her and say: You're going to like this. Can you just trust me for once? I also want to say: You know, life is gonna be a lot easier for you if you can learn to take it as it comes. If you can look for the beautiful instead of the ugly. Take it from me.

But as I thought about her, I remembered what I've read in so many places I can't even remember where now. It's the theory that everything you experience is a reflection of you. What you love in another is a quality you yourself posess, and what you despise in another is something you posess, in some way, as well.

It hit me: I can be exactly like her. How many times do I resist life, thinking that something could be "so much better", and missing the good that is right there in front of me? I imagined a kind motherly version of the Universe blowing out ever-so patiently, going: Kim, Kim, Kim... Can you just trust me for once? You're really going to like this.

I pondered this while I ran by the boats in the harbor and the locals out walking their dogs. For weeks now, the harbor has been frozen solid, but there were cracks in the ice now, split every which way like a road map, rivers and highways and sidestreets crisscrossing in all directions.

This is a photo I took of the girls last fall, eating apples on the front steps in the sunshine. This is the time of year when I feel I might burst into tears everytime I see a picture of a beach or a sunlit field.... The other day I wandered into a bookstore and found myself in the gardening section, looking at large, bright books of colorful japanese gardens. I cried at a picture of a wildlife reserve in Delaware, blossoms falling across a pond and sunlight streaming through the trees. By February I am so done with winter.

But here it remains. Yesterday I took the girls on their sleds up to the beach, where I pulled them along the sand. We decided to walk down to the shoreline to see the seagulls on the ice floes, and on our way, we suddenly saw a Great Blue Heron perched in front of us, right where the water washed up against the sand. As we got close, it opened its wings and took off further down the beach. We followed it and reached it again, and sat watching it for awhile. It looked strange there among the boat docks and the geese, out of place, like a creature from another world.

Again, it took off, this time disappearing from sight. We played with sticks in the water, breaking apart the chunks of ice. As we were leaving, an old woman came up from behind us. She had 2 Paris Hilton-type dogs wearing little knit coats. She asked us if we'd seen the Blue Heron.

"Yes," I said. "Wasn't it beautiful?"

She told us there were swans out further, and we could see them, their long, thin necks stretching out above the other geese. There were a few white ones and some black ones and we watched them open their big wings and fly off.

She told us she lived way up the road, and I imagined her to be like me, needing to get out, feeling cooped up. She said the Heron was probably there because by now it is usually spring.

"Really?" I said. "I don't remember that. Is it usually spring by now? I haven't lived here long." She said there were usually crocuses coming up in her flowerbeds.

I realized suddenly that I didn't mind. I was oving these long sled walks down the the beach we've taken so many of lately. A part of me didn't want the winter to end.

We walked with her a ways down the beach. She said: Well, a Heron and some swans. It's been a good day.

And I remembered that that's all it took to make a day good. A few small things, nothing big. It was nice to remember this. We've had so much ordinariness around here lately.... Kindergarten runs and trips to the grocery store and time-outs and checking email. It felt nice to remember that a good day could just be about getting out and seeing a few beautiful things, nothing more.

Still, I am anxious for those crocuses. We have bright purple ones in the backyard that, apparantly, should be up soon if the snow ever melts.

The girls are away this weekend. I've been Value Village shopping for vintage skirts, on a few short, cold walks, and spending a lot of time holed up with my books and my guitar. I've wasted much too much time looking at THIS and trying to figure out how to save the world.

Again and again, I find that I am much more efficient with only a few hours. But I have to admit, I'm enjoying the empty time.

Also, some lovely hours spent at the recording studio on Saturday where I'm working on a second album. I love being there, it's quiet, and surrounded by apple orchards full of snow.

I've been at my desk a lot, trying to finish a project I've been working on forever, scribbling early in the mornings when my mind is clear and calm.

My window looks straight into the window of Greg's small house next door, which has been sitting empty for over a year, the lonely FOR SALE sign still up in the front yard. I've been plotting about how to buy it. It is a beautiful house.... a lovely little tutor-style place with a small rose garden in the back yard and a sun porch. There's a tiny room upstairs that would be my writing room. It has slanted walls and I would paint it pale citrus and put flowers in the window.

All I need to do is sell 25,000 more copies of my CD and the place is mine. Anyone know how to get on Oprah?

The ducks across the street are getting bad. When we pull up in our car, they all start to crowd in. Lately I've heard myself saying: "Let's hurry up and get in the house before the ducks get us." The lady 2 houses down says "It's like that Alfred Hitchcock movie, Birds." They have become quite agressive, despite the fact that we all feed them, or maybe I should say because of the fact that we all feed them.

I have exactly 4 hours left until everyone gets back, so I'm going to put on my coat and head out for a walk before I return home and try to get a bit more work done.

I'm making Winter Squash & banana soup, and the smell is wafting through the air.

It's snowing again... It has been the most perfect winter, really. Not too cold, piles of snow for Christmas. It has been hovering around freezing most days, and many mornings we wake to freshly fallen snow all over the roads.

Yesterday I pulled Ella on her red sled down the road to the beach. No one had walked much yet, so we made footprints across the long stretch of snow-covered sand. We made a small snowman and threw snowballs in the water and watched as the waves washed them away. There was a clear-blue sky and the light was almost blinding on the snow. I wanted to just sit there and let all that light melt my S.A.D away.

I'd thought about renting a lamp this year. I've heard it works. But then I won... I WON!... a tanning package in the library Christmas draw. This only MILDLY compensates for the hundreds of dollars I have paid to them over the last few years in library fines. They have no idea that I, and I alone keep them afloat. But this tanning package will allow me to sit in some sun - albeit fake sun - for short bits of time... I am, theoretically against tanning for the sake of tanning... I mean, who wants that sickly orange glow? But I think I will use it in these months when sunshine is scarce.

I am still mostly floating along after my gorgeous stay at the Monastery. I stayed for 2 days, although it felt a lot longer. I meditated and read books and took many long walks in my snowpants through the forest. On my first walk through the snow, I felt this unexpected rush of joy... I felt 12 years old again, with not a care in the world. Why? Walking in snow is not something reserved just for kids. I realized, with a wee bit of sadness, that probably the last time I went walking like that was when I was a kid. After leaving home, I moved to a rain-drenched fishing community for 3 years, and following that, I lived in the city in the prairies where you rarely wanted to venture out in minus 30.

So here I was, finally walking again in deep snow, in snowpants. They made that swish swish noise I remember so well.

I did not work. I did not work on one single creative project. I just did things that brought me joy. I've had headaches again the past few months, and when I asked myself what I needed, the answer always came: JOY.
So I've been doing things out of joy. At Christmas, I read a Joan Didion book about her husband dying, strangely, because it brought me joy...the beautiful way she tells her stories. I thought: What a depressing thing to be reading at Christmas." But I coudn't argue. Everytime I had a spare moment, I rushed to the book to see how it unfolded.

At the Monastery, students had the opportunity to talk with the head Monk. I made an appointment. We mostly talked about Bob Dylan. We talked about my writing and about balance. The one thing that stuck in my head in the end was something I already knew. It was a reminder, really. That art should never come first. Life comes first, and art flows out of that place. I realized that's why I write here. Despite poeple encouraging me not to talk about my family, my kids, etc... I write about it here because I think that as a society, we've divorced ourselves from our lives enough. And I am not going to contribute to that.

Notice I spare you the dull potty-training stories though. And trust me. There are many.

Being back home, it is definitely harder to find those quiet moments that abounded at the Monastery. Right now my 5 year old is being sort of mean. Yesterday I said: "You need to learn how to say things nicer. No one is going to want to be your friend if you talk to people like that." She said: "Mom! Of course I don't talk to anyone else like that!"

Right. Just me. How nice.

So we are working on that.

It's one of the 10 perfections; Energy. "May I strive diligently until I achieve my goal."

I"m working hard on #10: Equinamity: "May I be ever calm, serene, unruffled and peaceful."

Unruffled.

As much as I would LOVE to move to a Monastery and move about in perfect quiet all day, that is not my life. A quote I found in the Monastery Journal downstairs said this:

When Mother Theresa received her Nobel Peace Prize, she was asked the question: What can we do for world peace? She answered: Go home and love your families.
This, then, is my task at home.
And, of course, to write. After the girls go to bed, I plink on my piano and have been writing many lovely things.

A kind producer has befriended me and we plan to make a record soon. He gave me a painting for Christmas of 2 ladies in big hats. They are both looking off to one side. They look the same, but with opposites: One has a red hat, the other orange. One has orange flowers, the other a red shirt.

I can't help but think of those ladies as ME. Me doing the kindergarten run, and then, me at my writing desk after their bedtimes, scribbling away on paper. This painting reminds me that both can exist in one frame.

What else? Just that the ducks are here with a vengeance this winter. Over a hundred of them are living across the street, and when we get home, they crowd around us, pecking at our shoes. One actually attacked Iryn, my 5 year old, the other day, jumped up and started ripping the bread from her hands. People see it and think it's strange...a tourist attraction...like all the pigeons in Times Square.
They give me the feeling of living in the the pages of a book when they all gather in our yard, and the cars slow down to watch. I can't help feeling special, like the ducks stayed just for me.

A long drive along a gravel road plus 2 5:30 am meditation sessions plus 3 long walks in deep snow in my snowpants plus 2 long afternoons to read and write, plus a little photographic adventure, plus a bluer-than-blue sky and a whole lot of tea equals one rejuvenated girl!

Christmas was nice, but my 2-day stay at the retreat centre was amazing.

I'll be back to share more later...

I am sitting at my computer while the girls have gone walking with Craig. It is snowing hard outside. They left in their mittens and snowsuits. I should be packing, I really should. It is less than an hour before we are supposed to leave to spend Christmas holidays in my home town of Kamloops and there are 1/2 empty suitcases all over the house.
But I know I must post now or I won't until the new year.
For some reason I decided to do this horrible cleanse thing. Don't ask me why I chose Christmas time to do this. Last week I was convinced it couldn't wait... I was feeling tired and kept catching things....but now all I can think of is everyone sitting around drinking wine and eating fudge without me. Also, I can't have my most favorite things: tea, bread, cheese (is: cheesetoast, my staple food) and salad dressing. I have seriously lost my motivation for making salads now that I can only drizzle it with olive oil and lemon juice. It's not exactly exciting. Also, I am forced to eat weird gluten-free, wheat-free inventions that taste like cardboard. Only 18 more days to go. I hope I last.

So Christmas is here.
I have my gluten-free snacks and my green tea packed. After Christmas I will go stay at a Monastery just outside of Kamloops. It is located in the middle of the forest and they employ very strict guidelines, like no makeup, jewelry, eating at improper times (other than twice daily!) and above all.... we must refrain from using luxurious seats and beds (whatever that means...does that mean I can't bring my duvet???)

I was disappointed to read in the guidelines that no music is allowed either. So I won't be writing any songs. And no drinks in the meditation hall. I guess that means I'm going to have to quit my habit of carrying around a cup of tea from morning 'til night.

In the living room the tree is lit. the middle string of lights don't work, so it looks lopsided. It is mostly filled with kids' decorations now... cookies and pre-school projects. I have my bag of books waiting at the door and snacks for the car. I wish I had something more profound to say, so I will leave you with this line from the Secret Garden that I read last night.

"Of course there must be lots of magic in the world, but people don't know what it is like or how to make it. Perhaps the beginning is just to say nice things are going to happen until you make them happen."
-Frances Hodgson Burnett

I'm off...

Last week was a struggle to keep my thoughts positive. Maybe it was the moon. I don't know. The world seemed doomed, and all I could think of was about moving into the forest, away from the car fumes downtown, away from the addicts (or druggers as my 5-year-old likes to call them) who shoot up in the vacant lot across the street. Life felt precarious and frightening. I felt too human and vulnerable.

On Friday night, as I was giving the girls baths, Craig called me out into the hall and said we had to get the girls outside immediately, because there was a gas leak. I kicked into mother-hen mode, gathering the girls from the tub, wrapping them in their robes and pulling them outside. It was especially bothersome that we had a fire in our fireplace going, but what can you do? We called the fire department and waited out on the road for our house to explode.

The trucks came and the gas company tested our house with little tiny machines. We had definite traces of carbon monoxide in the house, and they advised us to find somewhere else to spend the night while they condemned our furnace and the house aired out.

We went to stay at our good friends' place. They had extra blankets and beds and all of that. They made tea. I got the girls to bed and then I went to bed myself.

As I crawled into bed, Ella woke up. She was scared of falling and began clinging to me like a little lobster. She would not let go. I laid down and managed to get her to sleep with her on top of me. But every time I tried to move her off, she'd wake up crying, clinging. I was trapped. And really uncomfortable. And cold. I desperately wanted to sleep. Because I was tired. But also because I couldn't shut off my brain. My mind was a battlefield full of dead bodies and bombs. The world felt like a scary, scary place. Had we been breathing in carbon monoxide for days and days? (I had had a headache.) Could your house just randomly explode with no warning? Yikes.

I kept trying to move Ella, but she clung and cried. I was pinned to the bed. It was driving me crazy. By now it was 2am. I actually considered knocking her head with something, not TOO hard, just enough to knock her out so I could sleep. One thinks such things at 2am with children.

It suddenly and clearly came to me, all at once: Ella is me. I am Ella. I am a screaming, afraid child. I imagined God becoming equally impatient with me, blowing out air, saying in her kindest voice: You're being rediculous. You're fine. You are JUST FINE".

Finally I got Ella off me. I fell asleep, trying to trust again, for the millionth time. It feels like my life is all about this. Maybe all our lives are, really, come to think of it.

Morning came. Things looked a little better. Ella looked out the window and saw dandelion puffs on the grass and called them bubbles. We went upstairs and made tea, ate the last of the strawberries and cheese I'd bought on our way over the night before.

We drove home. The house was cold. Freezing cold. We lit a fire. I made a little bed in front of the hearth and slept again. The girls watched a Winnie The Pooh movie.

There is this one part in the movie where everyone thinks Christopher Robin is in trouble. They go on a perilous journey to find him. But what you learn in the course of the story is that everything they're afraid of is really just shadows and illusions. Nothing real.

I tried to remember this. My mind started to calm down. I started to get quiet for the first time in awhile.

Then I went to the library and got a book. A book I'd been waiting 2 weeks for. It was everything I'd hoped for. I started it in the evening and finished it the following afternoon. God only knows how, between napping and making meals (okay, we had cereal for dinner) and taking care of the girls (okay, so maybe they watched a little more tv than usual). I laughed and cried and sighed out loud while the fire crackled. That's what I love about reading. Good books have the ability to lift you out of you own mind, and into another place. But stangely, after you're done, you see your life a little more clearly than you did before.

What to say?
It's cold now. I forget. I take the girls out in light jackets, no hats. They shiver in the crisp air. It's hard to let fall go. We wake to frost white across the grass. The geese are loud sometimes as they cross over the house, leaving.

Today was a headachy day. A write-off day. I meant to get so much done with some time off, and ended up sleeping, brooding. I wish for a good book, for wood for the fire, for a long afternoon alone, in and out of sleep. I wish for a long walk in a warm hat, for tea in one mittened hand.

Today I am making peace with my own limitations. I always trick myself into thinking I can accomplish so much, get so much further down the road. The girls went away for 3 whole days last weekend. THREE WHOLE DAYS. Somehow I believed I'd get so much finished, I had a list a mile long of all the things I'd do without interruptions. But I forgot how strange I feel without them here....I miss them like a ghost limb. I wander around lost, overwhelmed, unable to focus with more than my usual 2 hour increments to work with. I always picture myself writing long into the night, or becoming lost in time for a whole morning and afternoon with my paints and poetry. The truth is, I'm incredibly scattered and never was very good at focusing for long periods of time. (In school days, this meant I was terrible at doing my homework. After 6 hours in a desk, how could I?) The truth is, my life works best with my kids at home, for now, anyway. Maybe one day, I'll learn to use hours and hours, but for now, I am okay with my pieces.

In the summer of 2000, in a 2nd hand bookstore in Mendocino, California, I found a book where I woman wrote:

"For me, the balance between doing and just being is the most important and dangerous question. If I am guilted or lured into achieving too much and lose the stillness at my centre, then it takes me a long time to regain it, and I do violence to myself and those I love because of fatigue and pressure. I have had to give up 'winning big' because I love my life when I am connected to it and I hate it when I get caught up in competition and deadlines."
................................................

In the evenings, we pile every cushion and pillow in the house on the floor below the couch. We lay the big, white, Queen-sized duvet across it all, and the girls jump onto it, first from the desk behind the couch, then onto the couch, then finally into the pile of pillows. They laugh, like they are landing on clouds. They get some pretty good airtime. Tonight they took off all their clothes and put their tutus on. They always put them on backwards, so their little butt cheeks hang out. I forgot to close the blinds. I can only imagine how it looked to the people across the street who must have seen it through the big picture window. 2 bright ballerinas flailing, then disappearing, then appearing again, aglow in the dim lamplight.

It rained all night. This morning I woke at 6am and made tea, went out and sat on the couch and watched the rain pour.

It's been a brutal week. The kids are out of control. We got kicked out of the library yesterday. I'm not kidding. It was because Ella was screaming and I couldn't get her to stop. Also, she lost her pink cowboy boots in one of the book isles, and we couldn't find them. We left with Ella walking in only her socks, screaming. Then I "beeped". I had forgotten to check out some books that I had been carrying around the library in my diaper bag. So of course it looked like I was trying to steal them. I felt like an unfit mother.

People can be so unkind. I mean this in the nicest way possible, but it seems like the old bitter ladies that work at the library have never been married or had children and because they live in the perfect, unmoving silence of the library all day, when a normal child comes in, they go mental.

Also, before we walked into the library, out in the parkade, the woman who was parked next to me called to me and said I dented her van with our car door. I dragged my kids over to have a look- I was sure we'd been careful getting out. I opened the door, and the dent on her van didn't match where my door would have been, so it obviously hadn't been us. I was relieved.

Now where I come from, people would usually apologize for inconveniencing a person, and especially they would apologize for falsely accusing someone of denting their van. I certainly would. But she said nothing, just turned her back and got into her van.

"Okay. So take care then." I said under my breath.

It really does give a person reason to worry about the state of the world.

Some beautiful things are:
The red snapdragons in a mason jar on the windowsill
The lavender oil I bought yesterday
Waiting for the kettle to boil for tea
The green, wet world
A nice new friend I met at a show on Friday
Reading my Annie Dillard book for the 2nd time
My old, ugly but warm red sweater
The leftover remnants of mudpies made today in the back yard.
A long drive "home" tomorrow for Thanksgiving weekend.

Today, I feel a little calmer. I spent the morning alone, writing. I wrote a terrible song on guitar and then patted myself on the back. "Good girl." I always say when I show up and write.

It's late. The rain is starting again. It's cold. Snow on the hills this morning. The girls are sleeping now. Thank God. They wore me clean out today. I have nothing left.

.......
"I guess what I am trying to say is that it's okay it's okay it's okay. To just be still and even confused and not have to move."
-from the lyrics of September Afternoon, which I wrote last week.

"Question everything. Learn something. Answer nothing."
-Euripides

Summer is losing out to fall now, I saw the first pale yellow leaves yesterday as I ran along Abbot Street. The Maple leaves are losing their color too, drying out along the edges.

Two nights ago, Iryn (age 5) got out of bed after I'd put her in, and came out crying, saying she was too hot.

"I'm too hot and I can't get my pyjammas off...." then, "What if I'm not real?"

I hugged her. She seemed scared.

"Pardon?" I said.

"What if I'm not real? I'm scared I"m not real." she said.

"Trust me. You're real." I poked her in the ribs with my finger.

I was tired and not in the mood for the philosophical chats that she always seems to initiate before bed, in the dark, when she's WAY overtired. I know all about it. I was exactly the same as a child. Something about the darkness makes you want to know the answers to things you didn't need to in the light.

I rubbed her back.

"I know what you mean. I used to wonder that too."

(I didn't dare mention that I STILL wonder about it now. It was too late at night and she was tired...)

"What helped you?" She asked as we sat on the edge of the bathtub.

"Well..." I thought for a minute. I am so not into the pat answers. But I"m also not into complicating the explanations so that she has no idea what I'm talking about. I don't believe truth is exclusive. It has to be simple, or there's something wrong.

I wanted to tell her about all the things I know now. The things I know in my bones. The things that have become, what author and meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg calls "abiding faith". I wanted to tell her that you can test truth in your body. That if it feels bad, something is off. I wanted to tell her that if it makes her afraid, she can dismiss it and know that it's not something she needs to worry about right now. I wanted to tell her that truth feels like warm water or a sunset or like watching snow fall out the window. It rushes through your body and feels healing and spacious, not cold and rigid and frightening.

But how to explain these things to her? I decided to give it a go.

"It's good to ask questions like that." I say.

"Why?" She wants to know.

"Because if you don't ask questions, you end up going through life believing everything everyone tells you, and not everything everyone says is true. Even if they say they know, they might not. You have to find the truth for yourself, and know it inside you. So asking questions is good, because it means you'll find out the truth about life...But when the questions start to feel bad, when they start to make you scared and afraid, when they start to feel too heavy - do you know what I mean by heavy? (she nods) - then that's when you have to open your hands and let them go for awhile."

I have told her before that I sometimes imagine God as a kind mother, and we are all her babies. Iryn likes this image, and she relates to it. It always makes her smile.

"Sometimes you have to let God take the questions and just let yourself be taken care of for awhile. Not worry so much. Do you think you can do that?"

She nods. "I just did." She says.

It gets her to bed.

But afterward, I can't stop thinking about it. She is five, for crying out loud. How do I explain to her that this is a part of what being a human is? Feeling scared, feeling lost, questioning the world, lying in bed at night and wondering if you are real.

.................
This afternoon, we drove across town to the grocery store. Iryn and her little sister were sitting in the back seat. The car was hot and the traffic was heavy. Suddenly, Iryn says: Mom, I keep trying to feel not real, but it's not working. I guess I let it go too good."

I hope to God she'll remember this. I hope to God I will too.

Suddenly, the light is leaving early, too early. After I put the girls to bed I go and sit on the wooden deck on the side of the house. I look out into the sky, into what is left of the day fading into pale colors and orange-edged clouds. There's only a bit of sky, with a few telephone wires in the way, but that's all you need sometimes. Just a place to see the evidence of the day's end. There is an enormous chestnut tree across the alley, and when the sky gets dim, it grows dark and looming, its huge leaves like hands, waving in the breeze.

Every Saturday and Sunday morning, from 7-9am, I have been leading workshops down at the beach where we sit on blankets and journal. It has been wonderful. Today, after the workshop, the girls and I hit the farmer's market and I bought some fresh-baked bread, a bottle of natural body scent spray that smells like blackberry pie and some tiny polished stones for the girls in little hand-made bags.

There was a lovely woman selling lavender products, and I have always dreamed of owning a lavender field, so I asked her: is it as lovely as it looks? She said it was a lot of work, but wonderful work. She told me about how, several years back, her son died, and it shook up her life and made her decide to live it in a different way. She quit her life-long nursing career and started her lavendar company on an acre of property.

Tonight there is noise out on the street. There is some festival going on and tomorrow the park will probably be trashed, scattered with smashed-up bottles and chip bags, stray shoes and cigarette butts. As Iryn said when she was only 4: "Some people just don't know how to take care of the world."

I am inside, with the windows open, trying to learn to play the banjo. Annie Dillard once wrote of writing books that it feels more like sitting up with a sick friend, hoping she will get better. I feel like that about the banjo at the moment. It has taken me nearly 3 hours to figure out how to tune the thing.

Tonight I had a few hours off alone and I rode my bike to the library for a stack of new books. Then I went and sat by the water, my legs dangling over the edge of the wall, as I have done so many tiimes this summer.

.............................

Conversation between me and Craig the other day:

Me: Oh, I'm so glad we finally have a new can opener. I LOVE this new can opener. I actually look FORWARD to opening cans now.

Craig: mm hmm....

Me: Seriously. I used to dread opening cans. But now, when I remember that we have a new can opener, I actually feel excited about opening a can.

Craig: Yeah, er, okay... I think it's time for a holiday.

(In my defense, the old one was really terrible... It gave out half way around, and I usually ended up prying it off with a butter knife. I almost stabbled myself a few times, and the whole process usually took about 10 minutes.)

Today was an ordinary day. My daughters and I were out in the front yard in the sun, reading books on a blanket after lunch. My 5 year old said "Let's look for 4-leaf clovers." I remembered many a summer day in childhood spent searching for 4-leaf clovers in cool grass. As a child, I never found one, but looking sure was nice. So I agreed. Within 2 minutes, we had each found a four leaf clover, to my utter amazement. it felt odd and magical and too good to be true. And call me superstitious, but I'm going to take this as a sign of things to come...

Hello dearest fans who are so faithful to check back here.... Since I am so terrible at updating you on things, I will post my recent eVent Life column.... It is a bit of a journal entry of sorts.

You can also check out my recent interview with legendary folk singer Ian Tyson here


Seedpods

On Saturday, I woke to tiny seedpods falling from the Elms outside. It was beautiful, and normally I love this time of year, love to sit on the steps and watch them spin from the sky.

Instead, I found myself terribly cranky. A creative project I’d been working on for a long time felt disastrous. It was clear I’d wasted years of my life when really, my time would have been better spent learning dentistry or interior decorating or the trapeze.

As an artist, these creative valleys tend to come and go. Normally, my initial reaction is to head to the cupboard in search of chocolate, which I did, but all we had was a bag of chocolate chips, which were, frankly, a poor excuse for chocolate and didn’t do the trick at all.

I abandoned the chocolate chips and opted, instead, for a run, which normally has the ability to shake off any and all yuckiness. Somewhere around the half-hour mark, something happens and I become light and free and carried along by something so much bigger. But not today. I just felt antsy and strung out the whole way, and afterward, I sat in the kitchen, mired in my own despair.

My favorite writer on creativity, Julia Cameron, writes a lot about how artists get cranky when they’re not working enough. “It’s not the working that’s hard”, she says. “It’s the NOT working.” So, I went to my desk and opened a notebook and tried to continue from where I’d left off the week before. I looked up at my bulletin board and read some of the quotes I’d pinned up to help myself along. One by Agnes De Mille says: “Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how… the artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.” Another by T.S. Eliot reads: “For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.”

Usually this helps. Usually just showing up makes all the difference, is just enough to turn on a switch and get the juices flowing.

But not today. It was SO not working today.

I abandoned my desk and headed for the teakettle. My husband returned with the girls, and they were loud and a little grumpy, armed with bags of groceries to be put away. Iryn, my 5 year old wanted to tell me about a kitty she saw out the car window, the potato bug she found in the garden. That’s the thing about children. They have this amazing, almost transcendent ability to bring you down to earth. Once, a few years back, I was lamenting to my husband about my recent lack of musical inspiration. “I don’t know if I’ll ever write another song again.” I complained. Iryn overheard and piped in, “Don’t worry mom. Just sing Row Row Row Your Boat!”

When the girls went to their rooms for their afternoon “quiet time”, I made myself some tea, and tried to unravel my thoughts. They were all twisted up like so much string, and for the life of me I couldn’t find where to begin. I was almost more frustrated by the fact that I was frustrated because I have been here before. I have done this creative block thing a million times. I know the rules. You fill up. You listen. You go for a walk. You press on. These are the things that I know work.

Then suddenly I remembered one I had forgotten. Or maybe I’d consciously left it out because our ego selves badly want to believe that the harder we work, the more we get done. This is not the case, as the deeper parts of our selves know. Seasons of unproductiveness, of latency and quiet reflection often yield the greatest results in the long run. But we forget this. I forgot.

I sighed and grabbed a great book I’ve been reading, called “The Joy Diet”. I opened it up to a quote by Lao Tzu:

“When 2 forces collide, the victory will go to the one who knows how to yield.”

The author goes on to talk about yielding to life the way water yields in a stream, finds the path of least resistance. “It means that we should surrender to relaxation, to flexibility, to the balanced state of mind and body that makes doing a job, raising a child, negotiating a deal…feel like dancing.”

Right then, I knew exactly what I needed to do. I grabbed my mug of tea, and headed for bed. I didn’t need to work or walk or read. I needed a nap.

It felt good to slide my legs under the covers. The light in the room was soft and muted and ever so slightly blue. The window was open, and a gust of wind came up and sent the seedpods flying from the treetops outside. They blew in torrents across the glass, some slipping under the sill and onto my writing desk. They fell so hard, and for so long, I almost thought it was snowing.

Okay. So it has been a really long time since I've posted. But I've been SOOO busy.

After New Music West, I came home and threw myself headlong into a project that is turning out to be a new job. I'm writing my own column for a local newspaper and doing feature stories. Last week I interviewed the legendary Ian Tyson. Tonight, I attended a hard-core boxing club. Part way through, I caught a glimpse of myself in the big mirror, and I looked so silly that I collapsed onto the floor in hysterical fits of laughter.
But I think I have quickly become seriously addicted to it, and I plan to return on Sunday for the womens' class. I left dripping in sweat and stinking to high Heaven. I have a feeling my whole body is going to feel like I was hit by a truck tomorrow or the next, but it was well worth it.

What else? Tonight is warm, and as I sit here at my computer, a cool breeze is blowing through the window and I can hear the hum of the traffic up on the highway.

I love summer. I love everything about it. I love the roses blooming by the fence, I love keeping my doors open in the morning, I love sitting on the steps in the sunshine, I love riding my bike everywhere, I love wearing flip-flops and I love watering my pathetic looking vegetable garden. I don't know what I've done, but the lettuce did not transplant well and one of my cucumber plants has wilted. I am a little afraid for my garden this summer. But I will keep watering it and hope some kind of miracle happens. I was counting on a profuse abundance of cherry tomatoes to last me until September. I might have to move them into a place where the sun hits longer, because we have these horrible huge cedars that seem to be blocking out the light.

That is all...

Well dear friends.... I am off to Vancouver tomorrow, where I will:

a)Perform a great show with my dear friend and cellist, Richard St. Onge at New Music West, a huge and critical music festival

b)make a connection which will drastically alter the state of my career for the better

c)find a great new pair of boots

d) eat more sushi in 3 days than I have ever eaten in my entire life and love every minute of it

e) If you're wondering, yes, I have been watching "The Secret", maybe a little more often than a person should be allowed to.

If you have no idea what New Music West is, I will tell you. It is a big music festival where new music is showcased and is also a big chance to meet key industry people and strut your stuff.

I am prosperous.

I am a diva.

I am filthy rich and have weekly pedicures.

Wish me luck...

"Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night. "
-Rainer Maria Rilke

Okay. I can't stand it. I'm here to tell you about my friend Michael Peters and the songs he has just posted on his myspace. He is releasing his album soon, but these are little peeks. They are so achingly beautiful I can't stand it, and the chick singing in the background aint' so bad either (er, in case I'm not being clear enough, it's me.)

I can't decide which is my favorite, DARK STAR, or LAST WORD

Check it out here

When I was a kid, my brother would always say "Kiiiiiiimmmmm.... You're soooooo gullible." Well apparantly, he was right.

I was so pumped about a free photo contest I found on-line a few weeks ago. I have been trying to find a way to buy myself a new Canon Digital Rebel camera for the longest time, and the cash prizes on this contest looked significant. I entered a picture of wild daisies I took a few summers ago when my daughter and I were strolling through the park.

Yesterday, I got an email that said I had won! Imagine the joy. It went on to say that I could attend the big event in Arizona where my photo would be prominently displayed for professionals to view. (This is where it began to sound a little sketchy....) Then it said that I had won an enormous trophy (valued at $300!) and some sort of membership fee and other such useless things. THEN it said that they would be happy to send it all to me if I would cover the basic cost of processing of $169!

Are there actually people in the world who send them the money? That's what I want to know.

***
Life these days has been busy with good things. I was scheduled to perform at a venue out in the boonies last week and got hopelessly lost. I stopped to ask a farmer for directions and he drew me the saddest looking map I have ever seen. His directions were right up there with, "Turn left where the old water shed used to be... Then right at the old Jones' farm"....

I finally made it in one piece. I have been writing songs about the II World War, imaginary letters between a couple separated over a long period of time. I sang one of these songs, and the next day and wonderful lady named Myrtle called to get my address. She said she had a book full of diary entries written by a woman during the war. It is full of wonderfully ordinary details like:

"A warm and pleasant day- that is if one had nothing to do. This morning Jack had an incinerator fire and burnt up all the rubbish, and I turned over the orchard bed ready to plant out wallflowers this evening. We had tea in the corner and were much worried with one or two wasps till Jack went in and came back again armed doughtily with the fly swat looming like a knight of old."

After that show was a trip out to Cochrane, to play at the best folk club in all of Canada, the Cochrane Valley Folk Club, opening for a few older, but apparantly sort of famous folk singers. One was the lead singer from the old band Chilliwack, which I remember hearing on the radio of my dad's blue Chevy. After the show, I hung out in Calgary for a few days, sipped Chai Lattes at the Oolong Tea House and took the train while the sun was setting all across the prairie sky.

Things are finally blooming here. The Magnolia trees are starting to open and there are little frail daffodills in the front flower beds. They look cold and uncertain, but they are opening anyway.

THIS is a very interesting article about plastic bags.

I have recently become very passionate about eliminating plastic from the world. Plastic does not biodegrade, and suddenly, one morning as I threw a piece of plastic in the garbage, it occured to me that all of this plastic was going to go SOMEWHERE and sit there. It felt enormous. To be ever-so-slightly dramatic (and I swear I am not wearing tie-dyed anything right now) I almost felt the earth weeping.

I imagined it filling up our forests and rivers and oceans, plastic bags flying everywhere like so many leaves. So although, yes, there are people dying all across the world and horrible things happening, far worse than plastic bags, I am bringing it up.

I think many times we use all the horrible things happening in the world as an excuse the keep throwing away plastic. "It's not important considering..." we say. But it is. And by forgetting the little things, we soon forget the big things. There are a million tiny things we can do every day to better our world. It is the little things, in fact, that add up to create something wonderful or something horrilble. Think of icicles and fossils and ants making ant hills all over your front yard.

Across the street, in the creek that winds through my town, there is a beaver who is trying his darndest to build a dam. If the dam goes in, it'll screw up the whole creek, and the city workers know this. They keep tearing down the beaver's work. There are teeth marks on many trunks along the creek for, from what I can see, miles. They have had to put netting around dozens and dozens of trees along the edge of the creek, so he doesn't chew them down, which I'm sure has been a lot of work for them. When we walk by, we laugh. I guess that's where the saying 'buisy little beaver' comes from.

One little, insignificant beaver, has caused such a stir.

So the next time you cause yet another plastic bag to be thrown into the universe, think of that beaver. The little, seemingly insignificant thing you can do is ask for paper bags at the grocery store, get a travel mug for your to-go coffees (you even get a discount sometimes), and, as they say, reduce, re-use, recycle.

Okay. I'm down. That's really all I had to say.

It seemed like spring was here. I've been riding my bike again now on the bare, dry roads. Riding a bike again for the first time after a long winter feels so good, almost like I could lift off into the sky like they did on E.T. Fly over all the buildings and the trees.

But today, snowflakes started to come down again, lightly at first, and then some more, until the whole sky was filled with the wretched things.

The woodpecker is back. He was here last year when we moved in, knocking furiously on the neighbor's chimney pipe, day in and day out, and he's back again, at the same house. He seems to never rest, and I can't imagine what it must sound like inside the house. I imagine the owners plotting ways in which to kill it, becoming more and more violent as the days go on. I wonder if it keeps them awake at night. Even with my windows closed, I can hear it in every room.

My little girls are beautiful together now. Ella can say a few words, nods and shakes her head, laughs at Iryn's bizarre antics. In the afternoons, they sit on the couch eating popsickles, side by side, and I find myself a little jealous, wondering what it would've been like to grow up with a sister in my life.

Maybe not much different. I dressed my little brother up in girls' clothes and painted his nails, like all good sisters do.

Sometimes Iryn is afraid to go down the hall to the the bathroom by herself so she asks Ella to come with her. They reach out to each other and walk hand in hand down the semi dark hallway. It is the most perfect thing.

I dreamed of Kelowna the other night. I dreamed I was outside the public library downtown and it was spring, and I was running down the sidewalk with the sun shining.

They say that you have become fluent in a language when you begin to think in that language. I think that when you begin dreaming of a new town, that town has become home in even the smallest way. I feel settled here, if only for a while. I walk around these streets now like I have been here always, and it is good to not feel like such a stranger, though I still get little aches for the places of my past, but it doesn't hurt like it once did.

Now the snow has stopped and all the roads are wet. The sun is out a little again, behind the bare grey trees, and it feels like everything is on the edge, waiting to open any minute now.

It's such a pretty day. The running season has begun again (I don't go in the winter when it' really cold) and I forget how high I feel afterward, how ideas descend on my like birds. How full and awake and transcendent running makes me feel.

The other night, I went running alone, as the sun was going down. I ran down along the waterfront, and geese were taking off from the water as if in slow motion like they do in dramatic National Geographic movies. All the trees looked old and weary, but in a beautiful way. Beautiful because you know spring is coming and so it is a redemptive kind of weariness.

Every winter's end, I have to shake off all my own weariness. Things accumulate over those cold months, and by the end of the first good, long run, they're gone, and I am weightless again.

As I was running, the sun fell behind the mountains. Sunsets in the prairies always seem to take forever. The sun sinks slowly toward the horizon, the colors start a good long time before the light is gone, and they linger a long time afterward. But here, I live at the base of a mountain. All you have to do is blink, and the sun has fallen behind it, and that is that. Everything is in shadow. You have to savor it a little more.

After the run, I went and sat on Greg's steps. I'll explain. Greg is the guy who lives next door, but he's never there much. I want to buy his house. So I've taken to sitting on his steps, pretending it's mine. His yard is surrounded by roses in the summer, and there's a big Magnolia tree in the middle of the yard, which will soon be covered in stunning, pink flowers. It's a little old house, with tiny bedrooms upstairs and slanted ceilings. There's a porch in the back overlooking the rose garden.

-------------------------

I haven't written much lately, because things are changing dramatically inside me. There are no words yet. I'm finding them, but they're still not here.

All I know is I'm grateful. I'm grateful for all of this and the sun right now against the trees and that spring always comes, in a metaphorical sense as well, and there is that glorious feeling of something blooming.

"Ever since Love heard your name, it has been running through the streets trying to find you." ~Hafiz

A miracle has, in fact, occured. The offer fell through, in a strange and random way. Then, a few days later, another offer came through from some people who want to keep renting this little house out, which means... we get to stay!

The FOR SALE sign now contains stickers that say SOLD, and for awhile longer, I can breathe a little easier each morning as I get up and see the sky lighten through the windows. The boxes can stay in their places for another while. The plants can stay on their windowsills and I can keep watching the ducks that waddle around out in the front yard.

Had a fantastic show with Twilight Hotel last Wednesday night. A good time was had by all. Thanks to all who showed up.

Outside there is the tiniest bit of snow falling. The evenings are stretching out a litte, it doesn't start getting dark now until almost 5. Halleluiah for that. Sometimes it feels appalling to think that I spend almost half the year waiting for warmer weather. Maybe I should consider relocating to Mexico.

The winter seems a little empty. My days are filled with happy work, though. Work on projects and new dreams starting like little tiny buds. I feel them there, under the ground.

Life has been a little monotonous these days. Words have not come easily. Songs have not been winding their way through my brain like they usually do.

Today I found myself browsing in the health food store again. What is it with me and health food stores? I feel I could spend hours there, trying on face creams, reading the yoga magazines, looking at all the ingredients in the salad dressings. It's a little wierd.

There is a part of me that has always wished that I smelled like sandalwood and wore long, linen dresses and made crafty things like beaded necklaces or crocheted scarves. I would shop in organic food co-ops and walk slowly all day long with lint between my toes and live on a little island selling handmade things forever and ever and ever.

The health food store has these amazing dark mint-chocolate bars that it would seem I am heavily addicted to. They're costing me bigtime, but I can't stop. I drive across town just to buy one for $3.25. It was really stumping me as to why I was so in-love with this chocolate. I started to wonder what kind of strange drugs they secretly make it with, and then it hit me...

SERATONIN.
Every year in January, I get the winter blues. Dark chocolate produces seratonin, which, if I'm not mistaken, is the hormone you lack in the long, winter months. I have not had the winter blues this January for the first time in years, and this may be a crazy theory, but... I think it's the CHOCOLATE! So now I can stop feeling guilty. It's either dark chocolate or therapy, and the chocolate is (slightly) cheaper.

After the health food store, I went to a yoga class down the road. I got there a little early. Before class starts, everyone sits on their yoga mats while the candles burn on the windowsills and soft whooshy music plays. I sat there, stretching a little. Other women began to arrive, and most of them were over 50 or so. They were beautiful, fit, grey-haired women who all knew each other. They whispered and talked and laughed and hugged before class started. I found myself watching them, something inside me wanting what they had. I could see it; they knew who they were. They had learned a lot of lessons. I could see it in their eyes. I wanted to be 50 in the worst way.

I have days when I know some of my own answers. I have days when I know where I'm headed and why I'm here and what matters and all of that. I have days when I am sitting in the sun and I look at my daughter and think: I have everything.

But lately I've been feeling so ready to be done with self-doubts and the questions; not the big ones that will never have anwers, not the big ones that we all have to come to peace with or the ones that are SUPPOSED to be there. But the ones that are not. I'm ready to be loosed of the feeling that sits with me often lately: like I am driving in a car, not quite sure where I'm headed and not even sure I want to be in the car. Or like being at a grade 7 girls birthday party sleepover and everybody's playing Truth or Dare and you're all pretending to have fun, but really you all just want to be in your own bed in your own house with your mother sleeping in the next room. If that makes any sense.

So I found myself watching them, wanting to be part of them. Wanting to know what they know. Wanting to stop spinning and stand firmly on the ground like they seemed to do.

The class finally started and I suddenly remembered how terrible I am at yoga. I am always the person the instructor keeps correcting & adjusting. She is always moving my feet and my legs and my arms because I seem to do so many things wrong. And I guess that's why I go. Because every class I get to the point where I want the clock to tick faster and I want the end to come, or I want to pretend I twisted my ankle and have to leave early. But I keep going. And at the end, I am so glad I did. I feel fantastic, like I have just climbed an enormous mountain. And my face is sticky with sweat and my muscles are a little shakey, but I am on the ground. And this class was no different.

Afterward, I wandered out into the dark, little tiny bits of snow falling in the air. I thought: if I can just do my whole life like that. Sometimes I get caught in the trap of believing that everything that's right is supposed to come easy, is supposed to come "naturally". Suddenly, I remembered something the instructor said to me as she corrected my foot position in one pose. As she moved my ankle, I said: "I don't think my foot DOES that." She told me that just because our body doesn't do something, doesn't mean it's not SUPPOSED to. Sometimes it wants to, but it can't because there's years of resistance in our muscles, years of tension. It's our job to work at it and over time, things change.

I climbed into my cold car. It is as cold as the North Pole right now. My breath made clouds around me. And I reached into my purse and pulled out what was left of my chocolate. It was warm and soft and it melted against my tongue.

Snow is spinnning outside under the streetlights, and there, in the semidarkness, sits the FOR SALE sign. An offer has been made on "our" house. I am trying to believe in miracles today, oh I really am. It might be working, I don't know.

When the realtor brings people to look at the house, I want to tell them it's a terrible neighborhood. I want to tell them there are spiders in the basement and drug addicts across the street and people staggering in the alley. And it's true, there are. (And I do throw hints.)

I don't care, I love it here. And who else will love it like me? Who else will love the addicts across the street, who only hang out there because there's trees and a small creek and ducks, and they need something beautiful, they need it in the worst way, and so who am I to want them to go? While all the rest of the neighborhood calls the cops, we let them be.

If the house sells, if we have to move somewhere else away from MY walls, MY tree, MY sparkling water, I don't know what I will do. Life can feel like a kick in the butt sometimes, but I don't think it stops there. I have to believe something bigger is at work. I have to believe there is an order, a story, an adventure scripting itself out in me. I've lived once before with no faith in anything, and let me tell you, it's a lonely. lonely place.

So outside, as the snow spins and as the FOR SALE sign sits, awaiting the verdict, I am here. Here inside, boiling the kettle for tea, tapping keys.

What I'm trying to say is that tomorrow is an illusion. Things could change in a second. The offer could fall through, or a tsunami could splash across the land or we could find an even MORE beautiful place to live. No body knows. But for now, here I am drinking tea while the snow blows outsid the window. And this moment is perfect, without all the fears, without all the 'what ifs". Without worrying about what may or may not happen. It's perfect.

Send prayers and good thoughts my way tonight....

There are still ducks across the street. I thought ducks usually leave for the winter. But there they are, hanging out by the almost frozen creek, taking bread from the little old lady in the black coat.

It's less than a week until Christmas. I had the strangest memory the other day. When I was in grade 5, someone gave me one of those enormous candy canes, the ones that are an inch thick and a foot and a half long. I kept it in my closet up on a shelf, and every day, almost out of duty, I would slide my desk chair over to the closet, hop up and suck on it for a few minutes. By the next fall, it was half gone. It ended up getting covered in dust and lint, and I threw it away.

Just when we were getting settled into this lovely little house on Water Street... the landlord has decided to put it up for sale. We don't have the money to buy it at this point, so when I first found out, I felt like I had lost my best friend. But it's exhausting living in fear of what might happen. It might not sell. Or we might be able to afford to buy it one of these days. Or the new owners could choose to rent it and we could stay here.

I had a good cry over it, and then I felt awash with gratitude. I felt this divine peace enter my system and since then, I am enjoying every moment here. We may get kicked out in 2 months. Or we may be here next summer, walking every afternoon to the beach like we did last year. But either way, this moment is all we've got, and it's made me see again how precious it is. I've heard of people getting a terminal diagnosis and afterward, they claim they feel more alive than they ever did, taking nothing for granted. It's a little bit like that I suppose. Albeit slightly overdramatized.

In the book I finished reading a few weeks back, "The Secret Life of Bees", the Beekeeper tells the girl that in order to not get stung, you have to send the bees lots of love. In the mornings when I wake and wander out into the quiet kitchen and boil the kettle and stare out at the trees, I think about how much I adore this little house. I love it and, if I'm not mistaken, it loves me. I love the way the floors creak, I love the way the sun shines sillouettes of the venetian blinds across the wall. I love the cedars out in the back yard and the bare Chinese Elm in the front. I love the chipping stoop and the wide windows. I love the ducks and the little old lady in the black coat.

And then I send the house lots and lots of love. Maybe it will help us to stay somehow.

It's rediculously beautiful outside. More beautiful than beautiful. Snow is balanced on every tree branch, every edge of fence, every railing. It's still falling now, and, as Iryn said this morning, "everything looks painted".

A fire is burning low in the fireplace and I have just finished a great book that I have loved with my whole heart and now that I'm done, I feel as though I have lost someone close to me.

This always happens.

After a good read, I wander around the house in a daze for awhile, wondering what to do next, jolted by my own ordinariness, unsure of where the book ends and my life begins. When I'm reading, I mistakenly believe that I'm part of the book, that what is happening to the characters is actually happening to me, and when it's done, it takes awhile to realize it is just me on my couch in an old pilling sweater beside a cold cup of tea.

So today I stoke the fire one more time. I blow on it the way my dad taught me when I was 14. Get right underneath and blow, bring the flames to life until they snap and rage and become so hot I have to back away. Sometimes when I do this, I imagine I am blowing on myself this way too. Bringing something to life again.

Sitting here by the fire, my fear of winter (leftover from my 7 years in the prairies) is pleasantly absent. It feels good to get quiet, to not have to run, to not have to rush out. It feels good to look out the window and see the brightness of the whole wide world.

Plus, I found $5 in my winter coat pocket this morning. That always feels like a direct order from the universe to go buy a really yummy coffee drenched in whipped cream.

But that's for later. Right now, the fire needs blowing on again.

There's snow on the hills now. Not down here, but it's coming close. You can feel it. The Chinese Elm in the front yard is completely bare. Not a leaf left. They were hanging on for dear life, but they're gone now. The wind has blown every last one of them away.

It's windy tonight, the kind where the house shakes a little, the windowpanes and the walls. Where strange shadows blow outside in the darkness.

I have a head cold. At night I dream I am suffocating. I wake at 2 am horribly thirsty and confused, drowned in strange, busy dreams.

I can't smell anything. Which means I can't taste anything either. I made a nice dinner for myself tonight and I might as well have been eating a plastic bag for all the pleasure it gave me. It makes one wonder what goes into smelling and tasting and how all those nerve endings work in there, the little tiny chords and circuits and buttons way inside us all.

I had to see a nose, ears & throat specialist once. I thought I had something wrong with my vocal chords and he had to stick a little tiny camera down my throat, which made me gag and almost puke. It ended up that I was fine. I don't think I would ever want to be a nose, ears & throat doctor, all that poking around inside people's heads with tiny instruments. I can't imagine it would be a very fun job.

So It's mid-November. Winter is coming. There are already Christmas trees in some of the windows and Iryn's eyes get wide as we drive by. She is thinking of the magic of Christmas morning, of cookies and snow and shiney tinsel and surprises and new toys. I hope the magic lasts a long tiime for her. Because it hurts so bad when it's over. You wonder if there is any magic left at all anywhere, or if this whole life thing is just one big sham too. (I've since gotten over this. No need to worry...)

On Friday, I played a wonderful show to a room full of people who were actually listening. The whole lot of them. I wasn't background music or dinner entertainment or the opener that no one comes for. (I have been all of these things before at one time or another. ) They were there to see me and I heard my voice and my guitar and my lyrics float out from way inside me across the room and I knew it wasn't wasted. It's so good to sing to people who listen.

Thanks to all those out there who are really listening...

I am waiting for a delivery man to pull up outside my house to deliver my new guitar. I won it, plus some studio recording time among other things, in a songwriting contest a few weeks back. There's a good chance it is Pepto Bismol pink, in which case, I'll probably sell it and get the guitar I've been pining for, a Washburn classical with a pickup.

There are still a few roses blooming around here. Barely. On the street behind us, the enormous Maples are starting to turn color noticeably. Upon close inspection, the leaves look the color of lemon-lime pop with rusted edges, but from a distance, especially when the light shines against them, they look like bright, raging flames.

I find myself trying to piece myself together a lot, trying to figure out who I am and what it is I do. Am I this? Am I that? One moment I am one thing, and the next I am another. One moment I am cutting up apple and cheese in the kitchen while Yankee Doodle plays in the background, the next I am flying above the trees.

Oh, to be in one piece again, to be just me, to be still and quiet, but mostly, to be okay with all the pieces of myself, to see it from a distance and see it as a whole picture, like the Maples out the window.

I was thinking of this today, and then tonight I read a line that Walt Whitman wrote: "Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes."

Glorious runs the past few weeks. I have been pushing myself again. I get into these spaces where I just go, I don't think, and I forget to push myself, forget to insert moments of speed. I have a neighbor who runs enormous 32 hour marathons, where she has to run all night and sleep in