The sun is shining but the wind is still blowing cold. The flowers on the hillside don't mind. They are popping up all over the place, the tiny bright yellow buttercups and others I don't know the names of. I want to plant some flowers in the hillsides that weren't there before I got here. I thought about bright red poppies, which are my favorites. I could plant them and forever more they would grow there on this mountain and it would be all because of me. I don't know if they'll grow in the dry dirt, but I'll give it a try. I want to leave something behind.

I have done nothing this week but eat, sleep, and look for a new place to live. I hit a wall a few weeks ago. I have not liked where I live for months. It's too hilly and hard to run. It's lonely. I miss small neighborhoods where you talk to old ladies on their way to the grocery store. I want a little place on a stoop to watch birds and cats and poeple mowing their lawns.

It's lonely up here where I live. The houses are huge and rich and empty because everyone has to work 55 hours a week to pay the mortgage. I look out onto a pine forest, which has been lovely. But not enough reason to stay. I need sunlight coming through a window (this place is dark). I need my own tree (or a rental tree).

Kelowna has officially been declared the richest city in Canada, or so I hear from reliable sources. I was invited to a new friend's house one morning. Her place was unbelievable. She had FIVE bathrooms. What on earth anyone needs 5 bathrooms for is beyond me. She said she had to hire a housekeeper to get them cleaned every week. Her whole house looked over the lake and the hills far away in the distance and there were enormous windows absolutely everywhere. She had a movie theatre in the basement, and I'm not joking when I say a movie theatre.

She, like her house, looks perfect. She mostly wears LuLu lemon. Her children look perfect in Baby Gap everything. The huge underground pool built on the cliff is perfect.

Everything was so perfect.

You almost wish for bad things to befall a person like this. You at least hope that they will be mean, horrible human beings so you can feel good about yourself. But she is actually very nice and warm and enjoyable to talk to. I really liked her.

I thought about all the houses I have lived in. Small houses, mostly. Places to sit by a window, back yards with little tiny gardens. I lived in a house once that smelled of cat pee and another one by a river where loons would come and you could sit out on the back deck and hear them calling. I have lived near trees and smack dab in the middle of the city away from trees. I have lived in basements with spiders and upstairs with creaky floors.

I don't need much. Just a little place to sit in the sun. Just a room to go to be alone and quiet for awhile each day. Just a few trees and a place to run where I don't feel like I'm hiking Mount Everest.

So maybe before I go, I'll scatter poppy seed everywhere. Maybe some of them will grow and I'll be able to look up to this hill years from now, and know that for a short time, I was here.

A pink scarf left on the deck.

A new robin hopping around the front yard.

The wildgrass blowing.

It's been a slow, rainy day. A sun shower earlier, water running down the glass. Now the clouds seem to be clearing.

Spent a few days last week at my grandma's. The drive there was beautiful. Huge mountains and layers and layers of snow. piled up like frosting on the sides of the roads. We stopped for icecream. The wind was cold.

My grandma's house always smells like chicken soup. She seems tired. She talked about where she will go after she can't care for herself in her tiny house. She seems scared. She is mostly all alone. Moving around her house, putting the kettle on, peeling potatoes, reading her Harlequin Romances and watching The Young & The Restless and curling, getting all riled up because the Canadian women wear skirts.

She has an old, creaky attic. As a kid I used to love exploring all the old boxes and trunks up there. Everything was covered in dust. I used to wonder what would make my grandparents keep some things; old scarves, practical jokes like the snake that jumps out of the can, porcelaine figurines.

As I explored on this recent visit, I found some old, books. Books with interesting illustrations and diagrams (see above). Survival books about making fires and hanging deer, probably from when my grandpa was in the army. When I hold an old book, I always wonder where its been, how it got there, what the person was feeling when they read it, and what they felt when they stuffed it away.

I've hit a strange patch. I have found myself standing in the self-help section of bookstores reading self-improvement books, you know the kind that teach you about goal setting and taping mantras to your bathroom mirror.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. But it's very unlike me. That's all.

The strange thing is, it's kind of helping.

It's the end of winter symptoms. I know it. Once I get outside for any length of time, these signs should clear up in a jiffy.

Jiffy. Where did that come from?? Oh, I know. My mom was just here visiting. She's always saying cheery things like "in a jiffy" and "keep your eyes peeled" and "Isn't that a hoot?"

How do you tell your mom she's wearing mom jeans? I mean, she's your mom. It's her right. But still. The pleats. The tapered legs. You really wish you could help.

It's been such an off day.

I'm not sure what to say. I thought maybe if I came here and pounded the keys, some revelation would come. There were a million interruptions. I kept trying to remember something Julia Cameron says in one of her books, that interruptions are actually divine interventions.

I like that.

I believe that.

It doesn't help me right now.

I looked everyhwere all day for some clarity. But none came. And here it is, almost 9 pm, and I wish I could just erase the whole day.

I've been reading a lot. Maybe that's the problem. I feel like I'm just too inside my head. I know exactly what would fix this: a good 45 minute run. But alas, the snow is covering the roads and the sidewalks. And a cold wind blows.

Save me.

Today everything I wrote was crap and every piece of toast burned and every cup of tea was forgotten and got cold and every pot boiled over and every note was out of tune and every word came out wrong and every flower seemed to wilt in my hand.

Just after 5:00 I turned on Oprah. There was a man on the show with his son who was in a wheelchair and together, with the father pushing the son's chair, they have run hundreds of races. Marathons and triathalons. The son in the wheelchair just loves it, sits there, swinging his arms with the wind in his face, smiling like a three year old with icecream. The father said that his son's not disabled, he just can't do some things, so he himself has to be his arms and legs.

You'd think that would have been enough to stop me from feeling sorry for myself in a hurry.

It was, really.

But I still feel off. I wish my head would clear. I wish the snow would melt. I wish I had a river that I could skate away on...

It's quiet now. Maybe I can gather myself together. Quiet quiet quiet. Lovely. It's too bad the clatter in my head is so deafening.

Is there an off-switch in here?