1. take a writing workshop in taos, new mexico
2. pay off all my debt
3. fly to portland and spend some time with my best friend, jen update: spent a week in november 2008. update: fully intend on doing it again.
4. spend a week during our cold frost winter in hawaii
5. stare out at the blue water in greece
6. swoon over tulips in the netherlands
7. lose all the weight i gained while on bed rest pregnant with henry and eliot and the weight i gained while living with the grief.
8. lose the bit of weight i gained when i quit smoking over four years ago
9. join the masters swim club
10. complete an iron man triathalon
11. bike from jasper to banff and marvel at the crispness of the rocky mountains
12. take surf lessons in tofino from surf sister
13. complete a masters in fine arts
14. finish writing my novel
15. publish a book of poetry
16. white water rafting trip in golden, british columbia
17. drive to alaska
18. become a grandmother that my grandchildren want to hang out with (not for a long while though, tee hee)
19. grow old gracefully
20. keep the funky fun in my life
21. write every morning for a year
22. turn my backyard into a garden oasis
23. turn my frontyard into a garden oasis
24. drive up to visit my parents at least twice a year, ideally 3 or 4 times a year
25. ride my bike to work everyday during spring, summer and fall.
26. continue to do some form of exercise five days a week for the next year, for the year after that, for the rest of my life
27. clean out all my closets
28. keep the top of my fridge clear of junk for the next year
29. at least one photo a day for the next year
30. start a new photoblog just for me
31. reinstitute new boots on my birthday every year (even if husband thinks i own too many as it is)
32. get a new tattoo on my upper arm
33. get my bellybutton re-pierced
34. get two more daisy outline tattoos for henry and eliot to match the one i have for aiden which means sucking up the pain of the needle on my rib
35. sit in a cafe in spain and write mad poetry
36. succeed at our photography business to the point where we can quit our day jobs
37. own a cabin/house on the sunshine coast, british columbia
38. take up cross country skiing
39. learn to scuba dive
40. go skydiving again (sorry jen but i really loved it)
41. get a clean bill of health on my asthma so i can do 39 and 40 (am convinced that diet and exercise are the key and have been off my steroids for a month now, crossing fingers)
42. accept the beauty that is me
43. tell my gremlins to take a hike
44. invite more possibility into my life
45. continue to be honest with myself and those around me
46. have another photography show
47. and another photography show
48. and perhaps even more than that.
49. teach again in some capacity (i really loved teaching)
50. travel to vietnam
51. walk the path of my dreams in england, the dreams i had while working on my english literature degree
52. read more philosophy again
53. do one brave thing every week
54. paint at least once a month for a year
55. make a dream vision board
56. learn to play the drums (sheesh, i mean i have the most awesome drummer living in my house)
57. practice the guitar more
58. meditate in india
59. singing lessons
60. sing in public
61. send my poetry out for publication (i stopped when my twins died and its time to get out there again)
62. write letters to people not just emails
63. stop caring what other people think of me and my somewhat eccentric ways
64. wear more purple update: i have gone purple crazy, purple is the new black … i am loving the purple me
65. go to scotland to meet a certain photoblog friend and his wee family
66. go to boston and hang out with a couple i cherish
67. blog world tour ~ drink tea with a list of bloggers that i heart
68. attend artfest
69. new york baby
70. practice my japanese in japan
71. travel to germany where duke and i both have roots
72. have a novel published
73. grow old with my love, snuggled into our hearts
74. continue finding beauty and magic in other people
75. listen more, talk less (eep!)
76. more calm, less storm inside
77. italy, a dream since childhood
78. romantic weekend in the french countryside and paris of course
79. get off the grid as much as possible … a romantic yet entirely green notion that becomes more and more doable every year.
80. canning from my garden
81. make bread from scratch
82. have a completely present free christmas
83. buy less
84. buy handmade, independent artistry
85. give more to the charities i believe in
86. make a documentary
87. make another short film
88. drink more water
89. eliminate the clutter in my life, let go of things that don’t matter
90. find a good home for the kickass can go up a mountain stroller, car seat and bassinet that are sitting in their original boxes in our basement
91. have a bowl filled with seaglass, i currently have no seaglass but long for it in a way i don’t even understand.
92. honor my feelings and allow myself to be whatever it is that i am
93. photograph the architecture in chicago and detroit, so very different yet compelling and beautiful
94. encourage others more
95. stop wasting my time on people who don’t understand me and don’t want to
96. dance under the moonlight with true abandon
97. stop eating processed foods
98. continue reaching out to people even when i fear rejection
99. live a life filled with compassion
100. live in the moment fully always

i honestly think i could write a hundred more things but i’ll stop for now :) would love to see your list …

20 years ago

I was a high school drop-out, high on this and that and yes plenty of those too. I worked a 12 hour shift as a desk clerk at a motel on the edge of town that catered to oil field workers or as we called them and they called themselves, rig pigs where I had to remember to turn on the porno movies at a certain hour. I worked an 6-8 hour waitressing shift at a restaurant in town and yes, I realize that left me a grand total of 4 free hours of which to party my ass off but my weekends were free for drunken escapades and wild bush parties, naked beach running into cool waters under moonlight acid trips.

(i can’t believe i am sharing this!!)

I was in the process of leaving my boyfriend of a couple of years for what would become my new boyfriend and having a bit of fun flirting with this one and that one.

I was working my way through shakespeare and enjoying all the philosophy books I could get my hands on. I had a lot of time to read during those long 12 hour nights manning the night shift.

15 years ago

I was living in the city (as us small town homies like to call it) and working on my english degree in university. I had hung up my lifeguarding flippers to work as a morning baker at a convenient store called happy mart (it was filled with other university students and was indeed quite happy) and was done work by 2:00 pm every day giving me plenty of time to plan my wedding and hang out with my fiance.

I had left the previous boyfriend for the shiny new fiance not quite a year before. I had just moved out of a house of many shared accomodations, it seemed the party had come to an end and moved into a high rise apartment in the heart of downtown.

(gosh, i had abs back then ~ this was just before i dyed my hair blonde)

My hair was dyed blonde and my skin was a lovely shade of brown and I looked a bit like a barbie doll having somehow managed to abandon my hippy ways and my red hair. It was my one and only stint as a blonde and I found it extremely annoying that I was suddenly being hit on right left and centre. I was bouncy happy and a little freaked out by all the sudden changes.

10 years ago

My son turned four (did I mention that I got pregnant on my wedding night?) that July and I we had just moved into a big two story house in a beautiful neighbourhood near the university. We had a big old apple tree and a boat and a car and I was happily back to my red hair and patched jean hippy ways. I wasn’t even freaking out about turning 30 as I was happily working on my education degree, working here and there as an admin assistant and enjoying my family. I was doing a writing workshop and spewing poetry to whomever would listen and was writing a play which was later performed at our city’s fringe festival.

(technically, this was taken when i was 31, about a year in a half from this point but i think it represents the period well)

I biked everywhere and did yoga 3 nights a week. I even purchased rollarblades and enjoyed blading to school and around. I would get drunk on too much beer and wine, friends and laughter, intellectual discourse and chattering banality and loved to walk barefoot along the dew danced grassy side of sidewalks from the Avenue to home. Looking back, I can see that it was quite the idyllic summer and I couldn’t have predicted at this point that it was all going to fall apart though I can see the frayed edges if I look closely and see how lonely and confused I felt inside.

five years ago

A lot can happen in five years as it turns out.

I was living in the downstairs of an upstairs/downstairs house with my a son who had just turned nine. My landlord lived upstairs and she too was divorced and sharing custody with her ex-husband and she had three boys all around my son’s age. In fact our little street was quite the divorce central and filled with boys running up and down the yards, playing street hockey and enjoying the end of our street which turned into a ravine and led to all kinds of parks.

I should have been reeling by the fact that in five short years, I had been separated, discovered myself as a single woman, danced through the dating scene and ended up engaged to a boy nine years younger than me. I had watched my sister die and decided that I couldn’t get married again and then somehow ended up in a relationship again.

I had been dating my love, duke, for nine months and we were so completely committed to each other that we had just moved in together. My ex-husband had a house about 12 blocks away and my ex-fiance lived 3 blocks away. I somehow managed to stay friends with all involved. I had just gotten a promotion from research assistant to project coordinator and was managing a major fund and flying here and there and there and here.

I was contemplating quitting smoking but wasn’t quite there yet. I had been making a few fun project films and was craving still life so I had just ordered a brand new sony dsc-f717 camera which was the best digital that I could afford at the time.

Oh and … *blush* as of tomorrow, I posted my very first post though I had really no idea what the heck a blog even was … my first time

3 years ago

I was still living in the upstairs/downstairs trying desperately to save to buy a house of our own. My son, had just turned 11 and duke and I were so very much in love and so very happy together.

I had quit smoking for a year and was really into photography, it became my new addiction and I shot with every kind of film camera I could get my hands on.

(photo by paul ‘duke’ paetz)

That July, I shot my first roll of medium format film in my holga.

I was contacted about having one of my photographs published in a book and there was discussion of a photo show. I shot my first band photo shoot, all in film I might add as I was pretty much shooting exculsively in film in those days.

I took my first helicopter ride and spent 2 fun filled weeks road tripping across southern alberta with my boys. It was an amazing wonderful summer.

one year ago

My son officially became a teenager, hello 13. We celebrated the fact that we had been in our very own house for a year now and we were enjoying our first garden. It had been just over a year since our beautiful twin boys had died in our arms and we were still feeling fragile but were doing a lot of talking. We headed to the coast and vancouver island to spend some time with Duke’s brother who had lung cancer and are glad that we did as he passed away in October. We spent a lot of time reading buddhist texts and discussing whether we would try and have another baby.

I learned how to twist up jewelry and we decided to become vegan. we spent a couple of beautiful whirlwind days with my best friend and her beautiful family as we met up in Victoria.

and we were also lucky to meet up with another beautiful talented jen for breakfast.

yesterday

I worked through lunch, worked through coffee breaks but managed to make a whole lot of headway with the papers on my desk. I have less than two weeks before vacation so am trying to get things in order. I biked to work and biked home in the burning hot sun. I watered our garden and flowers and marveled at how far we have come with it all. We went to bed early because I was exhausted and listened to the rain pour down as lightning lit the sky from the wide open windows and the breeze lulled me to sleep as the fresh scent of grass and trees and flowers fragranced the first good night sleep I have had in days.

Today

I am not working through coffee, clearly, and am doing this fun meme that I found on a lovely friend’s blog. This morning I biked through the most incredible storm light, darkened skies highlighting downtown’s skyline as I biked through trails lined with grafitti to booming crashing thunder and emerged into the inner city downtown core to large raindrops cooling me. It was beautiful. The sun is out again and I am looking forward to biking home and then perhaps eating and walking over to the fairgrounds as I would like to see Joan Jett play at edfest because she was my hero when I was 12.

tomorrow

bike … work … gym … work … bike … home … hang with my baby and who knows what else, every day is a new possibility.

in the next five years

well. if i look back over the past 20 years, even the snippets that i have done here, i really hate to predict because so much can happen, so much can change and so much of that we have absolutely no control over.

I hope to see my son graduate high school and turn 19, I hope to enjoy five more beautiful years with this beautiful husband of mine. I hope that our house continues to be filled with the sound of his drums, music and laughter, the smell of paint and more photographs that I can keep track of. I hope our darkroom is fully functional in the basement and I envision my yard and garden to be so much fuller than it is. I would like to be working on my masters in fine art and I would like to be doing more traveling. Five years is a blink but it is also a lifetime.

At the end of the day, I hope that five years from now, I am enjoying the sunshine and my heart is full of love and that I am happy.

It has been a very long time since I’ve been tempted to do a meme but I have been seeing this one absolutely everywhere and the more I see it, the more I love it!! I was finally tempted by this lovely blogger.

Here’s how you play:

type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr search.
using only the first page, choose an image.
copy and paste each of the URL’s into the mosaic maker over at FD’s image maker.

The questions:

What is your first name?
What is your favorite food?
What high school did you attend?
What is your favorite color?
Who is your celebrity crush?
Favorite drink?
Dream vacation?
Favorite dessert?
What do you want to be when you grow up?
What do you love most in life?
One word to describe you.
Your Flickr name.

1. Happy Happy Birthday to Darlene-(Luv-2 flickr), 2. kabuki facial, 3. Mount Mitchener, Alberta, 4. Sunny Side Up, 5. Dr. House MD Caricature Hugh Laurie, 6. Blue Water Skinny Dipping…, 7. San Francisco de Asis, 8. raspberries, 9. The Photographers, 10. LOVE, 11. Vibrant Pink Balloons, 12. 021