Is it really November already?  Seems like just last week the tomato vines were laden with heavy ripe fruit and we were eating garden-fresh salads daily… oh, and it wasn’t raining every dang day!

Yes, November is one of the wettest months in Vancouver, so when the sun is out we have to make good use of it.  Already this month I’ve dug up two patches of the front lawn for new veggie garden beds.  One, the garlic bed, is about 15′ x 2′ and it’s up against the hedge row on the east side of the house where it will get good sun for much of the morning and mid-day hours.  After two beautifully sunny days of working on this project–removing all that grass, and digging in 3 very full 5-gallon buckets of compost into the top 10-12″ of soil–Day 3 saw rain, rain, and more rain.  Nevertheless, I trudged out to the yard in full rain gear to plant 54 of the largest cloves of garlic I could get my hands on.  I finished off with a layer several inches thick of decaying leaves collected from my own yard, my neighbor’s yard, and even the street.  About the garlic, some 20 cloves are a hardneck type called Music that I purchased from one of my favorite Farmer’s Market vendors–Brian from Sheffield Farm.  The rest are supermarket garlic–smaller, less pungent, but guaranteed to be organically-raised and as local as you can get.  I know, I know, 54 heads of garlic sounds like a lot, and maybe it is, but I’d rather have too much than too little.  It’s fun to share!

Besides, I was inspired to try growing enough for a whole year when I recently attended a workshop on the long-term storage of raw foods like squash, pumpkins, onions, garlic, potatoes, tubers and root vegetables.  The class focused on how to cure veggies for storage and how to decide where to store them so that they receive appropriate amounts of moisture, warmth, light or dark–just as you decide where to plant what in the outdoor garden based on the “micro-climate” of a given spot (how much sun it gets, how well-drained the soil is, or whether the spot is warm and protected from wind due to a nearby wall, for instance).  The workshop, taught by Robin Wheeler (whose book Food Security For the Faint of Heart I devoured in a matter of days and ultimately got her to autograph!) was a nice complement to my recent interest in other types of food preservation such as canning and drying.  This summer saw my first rough attempts at hot water bath canning.  I did some whole, peeled tomatoes, tomato sauce, applesauce (from some beautiful Ambrosia and Gala apples obtained at the Farmer’s Market), huckleberry jam (a failure due to bad recipe calling for waaaaay too much sugar), blueberry-rhubarb jam (a winner), and spicy dill pickles.  I love the look of all those colorful jars up on the kitchen shelf and the feeling, not just of security and comfort knowing it’s all there waiting to be eaten, but of satisfaction and pride in having put it all by, all by myself:)

Oh yes, back to the garden work I’ve been up to… The other new bed that I created in the front yard is a large round area tucked up against the west side of the porch stairs, a perfect spot, some would say, for some lovely ornamentals and perhaps a colorful flower border.  But not me!  I transplanted my rhubarb crowns there and look forward to seeing their bright red stems and broad green leaves displayed next to the lilac bushes, tucked in with the perennials as if they belong there–and they do!

Since I’m renting, I’ve inherited a yard that is well-planted, but somewhat over-landscaped (for my tastes and purposes) in bushes, bulbs, and ornamentals.  My plan is not to commit to any major earth-works and not to invest too much time and effort in tearing stuff up and starting over, but to work with what I have, even if it means that I end up mixing veggie plants and berry bushes into the established perennial borders.  In fact, maybe the result will be all the better for being nice-looking as well as edible.  Edible landscapes are a recent phenomenon, you know… As an aside, I picked up a circa-1970’s gardening book from a thrift store over the summer and I was amazed (in a horrified kind of way) and kind of saddened to see the vegetable gardens all tucked away in hidden, unused corners where they do not detract from the look of the landscaped yard.  Interesting how times have changed…

Other stuff that’s changed since last I wrote–I know, I know, I’ve been really bad about updating this blog lately…  Well, I completed my yoga teacher training program at the end of June and taught two classes over the summer.  The first was nerve-wracking; the second went so smoothly and the response from my students was so positive, it was a major confidence booster.  I came out of that class feeling like I had really achieved something and had really made a major transformation from the beginning of the training program to the end.  I still don’t know if I want to pursue being a yoga teacher as a profession; that was never really my intention in deciding to enter the program.  I wanted to challenge myself to do it for the deeper understanding of yoga philosophy and physiology, as well as to push myself into a deeper commitment to my own yoga practice.  Unfortunately, summer visits, trips and the lack of free time due to no more Happy Hands for Eleanor have all conspired against my sustaining a regular yoga practice and, because I feel out of practice myself, I do not feel like I’m in a position to teach.  However, I’m trying to get back into a regular practice and I have noticed in the brochure of classes offered in the new community center that there’s no one teaching a mom-and-tot yoga class or a class for moms with child-minding available (it was for want of these types of programs when Eleanor was a toddler that I first got it into my head that I could become a teacher and offer them myself), so we’ll see what the following year holds…

Deciding to do the yoga teacher training program in December of last year also held out the hope of possibly being employable if Stephen’s job ended up taking us to Switzerland, where his boss was and presumably still is trying to start up an office.  Well, I don’t know if you all have noticed, but the economy hasn’t been that great lately and financial services companies have been especially hard hit.  Stephen’s employers are apparently doing just fine, but certain things like opening offices in Switzerland have taken the back burner for now.  That’s okay, though.  Stephen has decided that he wants to go back to UBC and complete his PhD.  He can continue working for his current employer nearly full-time and incorporate his work-work into the work he’ll be doing for the PhD so he can continue to be paid as he currently is and we can consider ourselves settled for the foreseeable future–which is a good thing for me since I just went to all the trouble of digging up two new garden beds and I’m sprouting asparagus from seed this winter and I won’t be able to harvest it for at least two years!

Here’s a thought…  Renters are hesitant to do much in-ground gardening and they certainly don’t bother to plant things like berry bushes and apple trees that take years to produce their first crop, mainly because they regard their adobes as temporary shelter, they know it’s only a matter of time before they move on and they don’t want to make long-term investments of which they’ll never reap the benefits.  Imagine, though, if every renter who felt that way went ahead and planted those long-yielding perennials anyway.  Then, every time they move, they wouldn’t have to mourn the loss of those raspberry canes or that strawberry patch, because they’d have fresh blueberries, and an established, productive asparagus patch to look forward to.  It would take a change of attitude on the part of renters everywhere: namely, to stop thinking of their gardens in terms of what it produces for them, or how much money it saves them, or that it’s even “their” garden.  A garden does not serve the gardener.  A garden is self-creative and self-renewing; planting one and cultivating it is a service to the earth and to one’s community.  Renters should go ahead and plant anything and everything that strikes their fancy, knowing that they’ve done their small part to heal a little piece of earth (and more, the more they frequently they move) and that one day down the road many, many people will enjoy the benefits of their labor, as as they themselves will go on to enjoy the benefits of someone else’s labor at their new place… Just a thought…

In other news, Eleanor’s doing great.  She’s as smart as a whip and very clever, too.  She’s got a real sense of humor these days and, though she doesn’t shy away from poot jokes, she’s also very mature for her age.  She’s in a combined three- and four-year-old preschool class for two hours two days a week.  Her favorite thing to do at preschool is dress up in the beautiful dress-up clothes.  She’s a real girly-girl.  She was also doing ballet and gymnastics once a week and a program called Happy Hands, which is just like preschool, all at the community center.  The center has been slated to move into a new location for a long, long time and the time had finally come… or so we thought.  The old center closed and took reservations already for classes at the new center, but they’ve just informed us that construction delays at the new center have held up the move once again, so everything is canceled for the rest of the year.  Boo hoo…  That community center was like a second home for me when Eleanor was young and we were new to Vancouver and to parenthood.  I started taking her there when she was just a baby; I met a lot of my neighbors and other moms there; Eleanor’s practically grown up at the tot gym there… and now it’s all over… and we’re stuck waiting around for the new center to open.  The new center will be very nice and I like that it has a library in it and it will be easier to get to from our new house.  In the meantime, Eleanor and I have been forced to find other things to do on the days that she doesn’t have preschool.  We’re discovering free drop-in playgroups and strong start learning centers all over the place.  Vancouver’s publicly-funded services for families cannot be beat!

Well, there’s a lot more I could write about.  Seeing as I haven’t blogged in well over half a year, I have a lot of catching up to do.  Knowing myself, I won’t make promises to be back often and fill in all the details of the summer months or recent projects taken up around here, but I’ll do my best.  Even if I never get into the habit of blogging about everything that goes on in my life, I would like to share more of my thoughts and philosophical ideas about the world and what in it is important to me–my family, community, good food, the environment, my garden, sustainability, politics… I could go on and on and on…

So much to say, so little time…

Firstly, there’s still no news about the potential move to Switzerland and with the economy what it is right now, we’re assuming that “No news is bad news” and resisting the urge to feel anything about it right now.  Insecurity and uncertainty about the future seems to be the new norm and so we figure we’re in the same boat, but still doing better than all the millions of people losing their jobs and their homes.

Vancouver, I think, has remained somewhat isolated from the major economic downturn–perhaps due to affluence, next year’s winter Olympics… I’m not really sure, but I’m perfectly happy to stay right here in Vancouver where I have my friends, my community, my garden…my life.

We missed most of the major snow storm that hit mid-winter, but spring is shaping up to be absolutely beautiful.  I saw the most intense rainbow of my life just last week.  We’ve had lots of rain to bring the flowers up and lots of sun, too.  Unfortunately, it seems the sun is always out on Saturdays when I’m in my yoga teacher training program all day and it always clouds over just in time for Sunday, or Family “Fun” Day as we’ve taken to calling it (although three-year-old Eleanor has taken to turning it into come-between-the-parents-andplay-one-off-the-other day).

Yes, Eleanor is three and–what do you know?–the Sunday that we had her birthday party was the only sunny Sunday in recent weeks!  At least we can be thankful for that.  We had seven kids an their parents over so it was really nice to be able to spread out and use the patio for part of the party.  See our flickr stream (www.flickr.com/photos/twistycorn) for an idea of how messy it was!  The streamers hung from the ceiling for over two weeks!  Eleanor got lots of cool stuff, but her big gift was her brand new blue bicycle, which she rides everywhere now.  Next weekend, we’re taking her to see Annie at the Vancouver Centre for Performing Arts.  We considered making the tickets her birthday present, but thought three weeks was too long to make a three-year-old wait.

In other news, Eleanor and I, on one exceptionally beautiful spring-like day, decided to plant part of ur garden experimentally early.  I’ve also got some peppers and tomatoes started indoors to get a headstart on their growing season.  I saved (also experimentally, since I wasn’t sure if the whole fermenting, separating, drying process was going to work for me on my first try) seeds from some especially delicious tomatoes I purchased at the local farmer’s markt last summer.  For all those out there who have never really liked tomatoes, look for one called the German Red Strawberry Tomato.  I swear, it’s the best!  It’s everything I ever wanted a tomato to be, and more!

Also, my German Rams (Ramirezi Cichlids) have finally produced a batch of eggs that they didn’t eat within a day and now the little fry are wiggling around wanting to grow and swim!  How exciting to watch the miracle of life unfold before my eyes!

It’s a small class, but the yoga teacher training program is happening… and I’m in it!  Wow!  What a way to start a new year!

Training to become a certified yoga teacher is something I’ve thought about doing for at least the last six months.  I got really good at making excuses for why I shouldn’t do it–it’s too expensive; it’ll take too much time away from my family; I don’t have enough experience as a student of yoga to teach yoga…  But, alas, with the opportunity, thanks to Stephen’s employment, to move to a Swiss resort town looming in the fast-approaching future, the time is nigh to get off my butt and make the rest of my time in Vancouver count for something.  It isn’t just that teaching yoga would be a marketable skill in a place where wealthy Europeans go to relax, and therefore a good credential for me to carry into a new life there.  The real focus for me isn’t even the graduation (although I will certainly be proud to possess the certification), it’s the process and the time spent getting to that day six months from now.

I need to do this to keep my mind focused on the here and now.  I know from the experience of waiting to move to Vancouver, that when a major life change is in the offing and it’s just a matter of time before you take the plunge, it can be exceedingly difficult to enjoy the present, to remain engaged and interested in what’s around you.  Waiting for what comes next is no way to live, so I’ve decided to focus on myself and the present moment through doing this yoga teacher training.  Ultimately, I don’t even know if I want to be a yoga teacher.  Maybe I’ll decide it isn’t for me.  But, I do want to learn more about yoga and about myself and both will definitely be addressed by taking up this challenge.

I’m writing all this with the perspective of having exactly one session of the program already under my belt.  I started this journey on Saturday with seven other individuals from all walks of life (well, there was only one guy) who I have no doubt I will get to know very, very well as we all get to know ourselves a little better in the process.  Part of the training program, and one of the reasons I wanted to make the commitment to do this, focuses on “living yoga,” or living a life in balance.  We were asked on Saturday to picture our lives several years from now and to think about setting some goals to put us on the right track to eventually achieve our biggest dreams.  This part was difficult for me because the move to Switzerland seems to be a major leap into the unknown, like the life I can reasonable plan for ends six months from now.  Setting goals or trying to picture what life will be like after the move seems a practice in futility.

If I had to set a goal for this period of my life, I would have to say that I want to learn to leap without looking, to not be fearful when making decisions.  I want to be able to take action with the confidence of knowing I’ll be able to handle what life throws at me.  I don’t meant to say that I intend to start acting without any consideration of the consequences of my actions, but I do know that I’ve been very indecisive in the past and it has not served me well: over-analysis leads to paralysis.  Once a decision is made, I aim to be able to stick with it without wondering if it was the best, most perfectly right thing to do.  A good first step might be to challenge myself to order from a restaurant menu in under ten seconds…

I’ll report back on how I fared with that challenge a little later… My point is that big goals are not met without first meeting many incremental goals which, though small, are far from insignificant; baby steps allow us to see progress for what it is–not a long way to go, but a great distance traveled: an achievement in itself.  For now, I’m congratulating myself–despite nerves, reservations, and fears–on simply showing up Saturday to take part in the first of over twenty full-day sessions.  I dissuade myself from nervousness about the actual teaching part, the practicums, by reminding myself that, for now, I am simply the student.

Well, I know I haven’t witten in a while.  I’d say I’ve been busy–and not that that isn’t true–but also I’ve found other things to do in my spartan spare time… yoga, knitting, Eleanor… excuses, excuses.  Well, I wrote a while ago about quitting my job to take care of Eleanor full-time.  I still do that and, when I can tear myself away from my knitting for long enough, I take yoga classes at night.

Yoga, for me, has become a kind of way out of the hectic and child-centered life I currently lead.  I love my life, but I have to balance the time I spend focusing on and caring for others (namely, children who scarcely can return the many favors I do them in a day) with some “me time.”  Yoga, therefore, is not just an exercise in stretching myself physiclly to the limit, but a means of mentally and emotionally bringing myself back from the limit.

With all that said, I committed to doing a six-month yoga teacher training program.  Ever since th demo job I had with Horizon, I’ve felt very comfortable with the public and I quickly gainined a real sense of confidence a leadership role.  So, I thought I’d make a great teacher.  But, there’s just one snag: I just received word that there may not be enough people signed up for the program to go on.  I had planned to get back into blogging by writing about the process of becoming a yoga teacher.  Here’s hoping…

This always happens when I go to the farmer’s market… I have two or three things in mind that I need to get, but I end up buying fresh, local produce until either my backpack is full or my wallet is empty.  So, this week I ended up with some delicious yellow summer squash that I needed to use up.  I thought, if carrot cake is classic and zucchini bread is divine, why not give squash bread a go?  And why not make it vegan while I’m at it?  Here’s what I came up with:

(Due to the amount of squash I had on hand, I made enough batter for six muffins and one large loaf, but the recipe can easily be halved for a single medium-sized loaf, in which case you’d just want to bake it at 350 deg. for 55-60 minutes.)

Dry ingredients:

• 3 c. all-purpose flour
• 2 tsp. cinnamon
• 2 tsp. baking soda
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp. nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp. salt

Wet Ingredients:

• 2 c. coarsely grated summer squash
• 2 c. raw cane sugar
• 1/4 c. canola oil
• 1/4 c. olive oil
• 2 tbsp. honey
• 1 over-ripe banana, mashed
• 1 carrot, finely grated
• zest of 1 lime

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Mix dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl, make a well in the center, and set aside.  Mix wet ingredients in a separate large mixing bowl.  Add wet mixture to dry mixture all at once and stir just until moistened.  If desired, fold in 1 cup chopped pecans.  Fill six paper-lined muffin tins level with top of pan.  Pour remaining batter into a greased 8×4x2 loaf pan.  Bake loaf and muffins for 25-30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted near the center of a muffin comes out clean.  After removing muffins, lower oven temp. to 350 deg. and bake loaf for another 25-30 minutes, or until toothpick comes out clean.  Let cool for 10 min. in pan on a rack, then remove from pan to cool completely.  Now, sit back and enjoy Vegan Summer Squash Bread Perfection!

Once, when we were kids, my brother and I accompanied my dad to a new public golf course in town.  He assured us we could drive the golf cart.  What he failed to mention until we got there was that the course was built on top of a landfill and that there would be “smell showers,” as my brother and I came to call them, all over the place–literally 6″ PVC pipes sticking up out of the ground, taller than a grown man, and curved at the top in such a way as to keep rain from entering but also to literally shower passersby with the noxious odor of civilization’s excrement.  I haven’t thought of that golf course in a very long time…

That is, until yesterday when I had the distinct non-pleasure of visiting Vancouver’s Transfer Station.  The Transfer Station is not exactly a landfill, but close enough; it is a small (as far as warehouses go) warehouse-like building with a huge garbage pit in the center.  Supposedly, trash gets sorted and packaged there to be sold to reclamation companies.  Some trash is treasure, but I’m guessing most is still just trash.

The stench made me want to retch; it also made me hope that the guys working there are well-paid.  The rope I had used to tie my old box spring to the top of the car for transport there fell in a puddle of trash juice and when it got on my hand, I totally freaked.  I’m not a germ-a-phobe by any stretch of the imagination; it wasn’t even the dirt and germs I wanted off my hands so much as the guilt that accompanies participation in this cycle of waste, consumption, and more waste.

Waste pervades our culture; we cannot escape it.  Indeed, waste turns the wheels of the capitalist economy.  There is so much more money to be made in selling people the same cheaply-made goods over and over than there is in selling a few well-made goods to consumer-collectives.  It just isn’t in the interests of the capitalist owner/producer to build his product to last or to encourage it to be shared amongst consumers (think anti-piracy laws).  No, he wants each and every consumer to buy his product an infinite number of times (either because it is made to be disposable or because its construction is so shoddy that its use-pattern is virtually disposable); in this way does he insure the future of his business.  Does he care what ultimately happens to his products?  No; the fact that they wind up in landfills, on beaches, or in the stomachs of unsuspecting marine mammals–and the cost of cleaning all this up–is not accounted for in his books.  For all its free market rhetoric, Capitalism’s blatant disregard for true accounting is an abysmal shame.

And yet, it is me who bears the burden of shame.  My visit to the Transfer Station, that stinking garbage pit on the south side of town, left me with a feeling, not just of nausea, but of guilt and overwhelming sadness at the thought of every consumer good I’ve ever bought and had break on me far before its time.  There’s the lamp I just bought at Ikea the other day, off of which a plastic clamp broke as I pulled it out of its package.  (When I go to exchange it tomorrow, there’s no doubt in my mind they will give me a new one and toss the broken one, having never been used once for its intended purpose.)  There’s the fancy Cuisinart coffee maker with the automatic timer I got two Christmases ago, the clock-set function of which ceased to work within six months.  With some simple math, I could still utilize the automatic timer function… that is, until it, too, stopped working.  (There’s nothing more disappointing than waking up to find the coffee you prepared the night before did not brew as intended.)  Then there’s the electronics kit my partner ordered to help him learn the basics of circuitry; it arrived with malfunctioning switches (no good for a beginner who spent a full day pulling his hair out trying to figure out why his closed circuits weren’t making the dang light light up).  There’s the reusable coffee mug I spent a whopping $16 on to save all those paper cups from winding up in a landfill.  I ask you: Whats worse: throwing away a paper cup every day or a heavy-duty plastic and metal mug once every six months?  If the “reusable” mug isn’t built to last, I’d just as soon toss the paper–at least its made of a renewable resource.

By far, the worst instance of business-as-usual waste that I’ve encountered in the last year comes from, of all companies, Snugli, the original maker of baby-carrying devices.  I was given one of their backpack-style carriers when my daughter was not quite a year old.  By the time she was eighteen months old and a scant twenty or so pounds, a snap had broken off the adjustable waist belt.  I contacted the company for mailing instructions, assuming I would have to send it back to the factory for repair; in all the two pounds of canvas-type fabric, nylon straps, plastic buckles, and metal rods and fasteners, all that needed replacing was one measley little half of a snap–a single cmponent the size of a dime.  Their instructions?  Destroy the product, send us the cut-off straps as proof, and we’ll send you a brand new one.  Customer service replaces craftsmanship.  Un-freaking-believable!!!  When I sent in the straps of the hardly-used and hardly-broken first carrier, I enclosed a letter to the company stating my severe disatisfaction with their wasteful policy.  Their response?  Silence…

And nothing to break the silence but the ping-ping of balls and clubs on a smell-showered golf course…

Lately, the Eleanor-isms have gotten so precious, I can’t stand the thought that one day I’ll forget them all.  There’s the just-plain-cute stuff, like yesterday when she told me she loves cats… especially Mouthy!  Then, there’s the stuff she says all the time, like:

She calls everything “awesome, cool.”  As in, “Momma, watch me turn on my awesome, cool new night light!”

She always answers yes/no questions with an exaggerated “Sure, why not?” 

She follows “good-bye” with “See you to-mario-day!”

Her favorite mantra: “Suck, suck, suck on a lollipop.”

Her imaginary friends, so far, include: Hippy Andre, Ticca and Dicca (twin rats), and Da-Da-Doo.

So, I finally quit my job.  Yeah, I’d been thinking about it for a little while, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go the route of full-time mommyhood.  Why?  Because of so many societal and cultural pressures to always do more: to work more, make more, be more.  Especially as an educated woman of a certain class, it’s as if I’m expected not to fritter away the workplace opportunities that countless women before me had to fight a political and cultural uphill battle to gain.

That we farm out chores like housework and childcare to women of a lower socio-economic class than ourselves belies how much we really value the most intimate functions of domestic life.  I’m not arguing that cleaning toilets and mopping floors is for everyone.  (Although, housework can easily burn as many calories as a trip to the gym, so why not save money on the maid and the membership?)  Childcare, on the other hand, performed full-time by loving and invested parents, has got to be better than institutional care for a young child’s social and emotional development–their confidence, self-esteem, and sense of security in the world.

Ultimately, I think, children value your time and attention more than the things you can buy them and the shiny wrappings in which they come.  Young children who haven’t yet attended school and have no experience yet of peer-pressure and cultural cues, do not care that their clothes aren’t name-brand or that their furniture and toys are second-hand.  In fact, they don’t even know what a brand is or what consignment means.  So, what better time to be poor than when your children are young?

People are always congratulating Stephen on making it through his Master’s program having had a baby in his first year, but we say grad school, with it’s flexible and autonomous work schedule, was the ideal time to have a baby.  Stephen was always able to work around me, whether I worked a solid and stable two full days like at the bakery or a random and ever-changing schedule of afternoon demos like with Horizon.  In the end, though, me working full days was better for Stephen because when he had to come home early for me to be off to do a demo, the commute-time meant he only got two or three hours of work done on some days–hardly even a half-day.

This summer, Stephen landed a job with a hedge fund manager that not only pays amazingly well, but that he really likes and looks forward to doing part-time even when he has to return to school in the fall (if he returns to school in the fall).  Since Stephen is able to make at least three times more than me per hour and since he can easily make all of our financial ends meet, my work was just cutting into our time together as a family.  When Eleanor was four months old, I went back to work because we needed the money and I’ve been working Saturday or Sunday–sometimes both–ever since in order to not cut into Stephen’s work week too much (since we don’t have a nanny, me going to work means he has to stay home with Eleanor).  Only having one-day weekends–our “family fun day”–was a sacrifice we were willing to make when it was financially necessary and now that it isn’t, it’s a sacrifice I can’t rationalize making any more.  We were starting to wonder how we’d spend all the extra money we were making, anyway, and then it occurred to us that we didn’t need to make money that we can’t use.

Things would be different if my job at Horizon was something that really fulfilled me on more than a financial level–my ego, my soul, my future.  Don’t get me wrong, Horizon was a great company to work for, the job I was doing was engaging, my boss was really flexible, and the pay was great.  I certainly got a lot of practice speaking off the cuff and to groups of strangers and, in general, dealing with the public.  These are valuable skills that I can take with me to any future position and, on a personal level, I feel more confident with the experience of this job under my belt.  But, alas, I was in sales and marketing–a department I was never quite comfortable with, although I didn’t have to be an aggressive salesperson because I never worked on commission.  That I was “marketing” to the public made me feel, sometimes, like I was just out there hawking products.  Sometimes, the products were awesome–organic, local, independently-owned, something I’d actually buy–but a lot of the time I was demoing products that I didn’t personally like or regard as being particularly healthy or eco-friendly.  On those occasions, I made it my personal mission to at least use the demo as an opportunity to discuss with members of the public the environmental impacts of their food choices and why they should consider paying the little bit extra for quality organic products made closer to home.  But, let’s face it, I mostly worked in Capers and Choices markets, which are the Talley’s Green Grocery of Vancouver–meaning, if you’re shopping there, you already care.  So, basically, I came to feel like I was preaching to the converted.

So, what’s next?  Well, in the fall I want to start volunteering at the Aquarium again.  Maybe this time I can be a presenter or group leader or something a little more engaging than data entry, not that I didn’t learn a lot about the coastal geography of the Pacific Northwest by entering data for the Cetaceans Sightings Network.  Also, I’m thinking of enrolling in a yoga teacher training program; there’s a dearth of child-friendly yoga classes in my area.  Ultimately, though, this move to not hold a permanent paid position for the time being, allows me to spend every glorious day of summer with my little girl and what could be better than that?!

With me only working two 2.5-hour shifts this weekend, Stephen staying home Friday morning, and today being Victoria Day, it’s as if we’ve just had a four-day weekend!  

Friday, I unfortunately had a demo at 2, but the weather was absolutely gorgeous and it was the first truly hot day of the year, so Stephen spent the morning with Eleanor and I.  Normally, we would have gone to the tot gym and hung out with friends, maybe gone to the grocery store and ridden the mall pony… Instead, we thought, “It’s duck-feeding weather!”  Of course, we didn’t see the Please Do Not Feed Wildlife sign until our last piece of bread had been decimated by the angry Canada goose.  (Recently returned from his travels South, he wasn’t as polite as I’ve come to expect of most Canadians.)  

This was at Queen Elizabeth Park.  We then walked the meandering paths looking for Totoros and ended up at the top of the hill where there is a conservatory, fountains, and viewing areas.  The views, I have to say, were a little disappointing, as the beaches and most of the city were obscured by trees and the North Shore mountains from so much pollen in the air.

A quick jaunt back down and we were back at our old haunt: Main and 32nd, the little dive we called home for all of three months, having been forced to move due to a pregnancy and an idiot.  Didn’t know it at the time, but there existed all along this amazing Vietnamese, French Bread sandwich shop for which Stephen only recently read a review.  Lately, I’ve found a new love in Vietnamese food (in part thanks to the take-out place down the street from where we now live).  Then we rushed home for me to go to work…

The next day was opening day for the local Farmers’ Markets.  Saturday is the East Van Market at Trout Lake, a comfortable biking distance if you avoid the Mosaic route with the killer hill.  When we arrived, we had to walk our bikes a good 100 ft. down the lane to find an opening to chain them up.  I love how bike-friendly this town is!  Anyway, the crowd was a little intense: the line for tomatoes was 20 ft. long and it took almost 30 minutes to get Eleanor’s face painted, but at least it wasn’t raining and someone was playing gamelan music!  After a tiring bike ride home, I planted the rosemary and sage in the garden and Eleanor played with the neighbor’s son in their sprinkler and kiddie pool.  Also, we got to meet the brand new baby that was just born to our upstairs neighbor.  Now, I want another one!  Dinner that night was wild-caught salmon (the only salmon), local potatoes and a salad of fresh field greens with dried peppers and a touch too much olive oil.  Hehe.

Sunday… We never have so much time together in a weekend, by the way… Sunday, I did have to work, but again, it was only a 2.5-hour shift, so we had all morning together and I got home around 5, just in time for a BBQ.  First off, we went for bagels at a place with a “Don’t Kvetsch, Be Happy!” sign next to the till.  Yummy, albeit not what I ordered.  A long walk led us even further south and east than the old apartment–to the cemetary and Fraser St.  A walk north long Fraser revealed an ethically-diverse business district where there happened to be hiding away exactly what I’d been hoping to find for some time: a large fish store with an amazing selection of fish and equipment at reasonable prices!  I was so excited, I started fantasizing about my next tank set-up (moss wall, for sure).  A brisk walk home left me out of breath, rushing out the door to yet another shortened demo (yay!).  When I returned, Stephen was setting up the BBQ (grill, for the Americans) so that we could BBQ (cook out of doors, for the Americans).  The smell of the neighborhood on the walk home from the store that evening revealed that we were taking part in a city-wide celebration of the coming dry season: the first BBQ of the year.  

Today, day four of this unusually-long-weekend, was Victoria Day, an event for which I hardly noticed any fanfare, not even a great-than-average number of store closings (for a Monday).  As the day progressed, my confidence that it was indeed a statutory holiday that I was getting paid for began to wane, to the point that Stephen had to ask a store clerk, presumably a Canadian for whom Victoria Day might mean something.  Her response: “Um, yeah, isn’t it?”  Anyway, it was raining.  We appeased Eleanor’s two-year-old desire to spill juice on a restaurant floor by taking her to The Pancake Store (a.k.a. White Spot) for breakfast.  When we got home, we cleaned the house from top to bottom–even the mold that grows on the underside of the toilet tank from clinging condensation.  Oh, and in between rain showers, we took long walks and breathed the smell of clean flowers… 

The days are already so long I put Eleanor to bed with light still clinging to the edges of her blinds, and as the weather warms up, I look forward to many more such perfect weekends.   

I looked out the window the other day to see the biggest snowflakes I’ve ever seen in all my life!  They came down hard and fast for a couple of hours.  Eleanor and I walked in the snow to the Community Center where we go the tot gym two to three times a week.  The snow melted so fast that when we left, it was as if the snowfall had been a mere dream.  There was nothing left.

Those who know me know that I love snow.  In fact, the promise of at least one good snowfall a year is part of why I wanted to live here in the first place.  But, come on!  By this time of year, I’m done with it.  I’m basking in the sunlight that lasts past 5pm.  I’m looking forward to putting away my winter coat for good.  I’ve gotten over the dreariness that makes me want to kill myself or move… It’s spring time!  “Oh Vancouver, I’m sorry I was so quick to judge you; I could never leave you.”