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Legacy
I’ve been thinking about legacy lately and wondering what the long lasting impact of my life might be.
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Everyone Gets a Bigger Shell
Repotting plants feels like watching hermit crabs trade shells: one upgrade triggers a quiet chain where everyone ends up in a better home.
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Impermanent
I recently learned that in the Irish language, they don’t say “I am sad” but rather “Tá brón orm” which translates as “Sadness is on me”, implying that the feeling rests on you not within you as your entire being.
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Assessing myself
So I’m taking the Braverman Assessment for my naturopath. The Braverman Assessment, if you don’t know it, is a questionnaire that evaluates a person’s dominant personality type based on four key neurotransmitter profiles: dopamine, acetylcholine, GABA and serotonin.
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Divergent
As I was walking along the river on a warm May morning, I noticed the salmon berry blossoms had begun to shed their pink petals, revealing the tiny, green drupelets that lay beneath.
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Thank you and Goodbye
“Goodbye” I said, as I was leaving the house to run some errands. “Thank you” replied my husband absentmindedly from the kitchen. I paused on my way out the door, giving him a quizzical look. “Thank you for going away” he replied with a mischievous smile.
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Ptenderloin
As I was checking out at the supermarket the other day, I noticed that the pork tenderloin I’d selected rang in as: “ptenderloin”. Is that a silent “p” I wondered, as in the word pterodactyl?
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Made From Scratch
The sign advertised pastries made “from scratch” and I wondered for the first time about the origin of this phrase. Surely it must sound odd to an ESL student, not unlike saying made “from itch”? Did it have something to do with the scraping of a bowl by hand?
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Know Your Weakness
Knowing your weakness is a strength. As soon as you recognize and acknowledge your weakness, you can work around it. You can even work with it.
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Money, time or intelligence, a hypothetical.
It’s time for a hypothetical. If you haven’t played this game before: I come up with a thought provoking question for you to ponder. Sometimes it’s just a choice between two undesirable options (i.e. would you rather have sex with your sibling or a bear)
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Bump n’ Grab
Hitting my elbow the other day, right on the funny bone, got me thinking: Fuck, shit, motherfucker! But after that, as the pain subsided, I wondered: why are elbows so poorly designed and so easy to injure? And how can we improve them?
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Dissolve
Coming home from work late, she strips off her clothes as she enters her apartment; pops some bread in the toaster, opens the fridge and pours herself a glass of wine.
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Smart Phone
The other night we were talking about how a number of great TV comedies were predicated upon a lack of cell phones.
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Margarita March
I did Dry Feb again this year. Which, as you may know, is a fundraiser for the Canadian Cancer Society wherein you swear off alcohol for the month of February and people show their support for your sacrifice by donating; all to raise money for a good cause.
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What’s in a Name
“Emrys?” asks the girl behind the counter at Starbucks. “Yep” I answer after a brief moment of hesitation. “What a great name!” she exclaims as she hands me my drinks. “Thank you” I reply as I take my coffees and head outside to the car.
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Ambivert
I was telling my friends that other day that it’s nice that we’re all ambiverts, that is neither introverted nor extroverted but rather able to switch between the two as the situation requires.
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Squirrel
There’s so many squirrels in Port Coquitlam. I mean, you can practically hear them scurrying through the underbrush as you walk along the Traboulay trail. That is, if you can’t actually see them jumping from tree to tree.
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Too cool
The receptionist took my temperature (with a temperature gun), looked at her device and tried taking it again before finally declaring me: “too cool”. This strikes me as entirely accurate.
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The Birds
Under attack, I get angry and do the thing I’ll later come to regret: I clap my hands at him. Loudly. Repeatedly.
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You have rights but are you right?
The anti maskers are marching in downtown Vancouver, blocking my path. All twenty of them.
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Shit’s about to go down
Have you ever wondered what a dog thinks the first time his owner scoops up his poop and keeps it?
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Natural Selection
I bought some Maple Leaf Natural Selections turkey slices for a sandwich the other day.
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Why did the banana slug cross the road?
When it rains the Traboulay Trail is suddenly covered in hundreds of banana slugs…
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Just the Nuts
I’ve started carrying about a bag of peanuts for crows and squirrels I meet on my walks.
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Metrics
I had a funny experience at the gym the other day that got me thinking about metric conversion.
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The Bay
It’s a new year and a new you and a big part of that is surely shopping for a sassy new outfit.
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Smile
I came across a sour faced beggar with a hand made sign that read: “Smile, everything will seem better”.
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Fight or Fuck
We always listen to Rock 101 on our morning drive into Vancouver and one of the hosts, Alece, was recently on the show discussing her upcoming trip to the United States and how the new cannabis laws might affect her as someone who enjoys smoking pot.
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Dead Ant
It was a gorgeous, sunny day recently and I had the thought: why don’t I ever just sit in the grass?
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Show Of Hands
They say you can tell everything you need to know about someone by looking at their hands.
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Emotion-ectomy
I had an emotion-ectomy today. Can you believe they removed all of my emotions in a one hour, day surgery? Technology is truly amazing.
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Retail Therapy
I work at a law firm located in a high-end fashion district and I do occasionally venture into those fancy stores myself. I think the funniest thing to me about high-end retail, is the salespeople with attitude – because you know they’re likely making minimum wage.
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Winter Coat
The weather recently shifted from cool to cold and so I switched from my thin black jacket to my winter coat, which happens to be a beautiful but enormously puffy thing with a giant (fake) fur collar.
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The Non-Family Dentist
I noticed a sign for a Family Dentist on my bus ride to work the other day, which got me thinking: do they treat families exclusively?
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Dog Beers & Vanity Sizing
A friend recently shared a meme that read: “In dog beers I’ve only had one” which made me laugh and then gave me pause.
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Punctoplasty – it’s all in the eyes
I have a leaky eye. It doesn’t leak as much as it used to; mainly just when it’s cold out and I’m late and running to catch a bus.
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Wonder-full
There is a newspaper girl I always see on my walk to work. She stands in the train station handing out copies of the Metro and in a singsong voice she calls out to the passing crowds “have a wonderful day!”, which always strikes me as an awfully cheesy thing to say.
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Who Wore It Best?
It was on my way to work that I first saw her out of the corner of my eye, walking just a little ways ahead of me — wearing the same outfit as me.
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I haven’t always loved the word “weird”, with its negative connotations of misfit or strange.
