So my mother had her living room redecorated not too long ago. It’s gorgeous, with beautiful chocolate browns, gold, tan, and dark red accents. I have a severe love for that sort of “rich” color scheme. I also found a great tutorial that seemed within my sewing skill level. But before I purchased fabric, I wanted to double check the colors a bit.

So I sent an email to my sister. Yes, my little wee baby sister? She has her own email now. This boggles me at times. In said email, I asked her to “Take some videos of the livingroom and throw pillows.”

She replies a bit oddly, saying she’ll have to wait until Sunday when Mom isn’t around so she doesn’t get in trouble. In trouble for taking video? Oookay. Then she continues and says, “So… you just want video of me throwing pillows?”

I laughed. For about 5 minutes straight. This is one I’ll be reminding her of until she’s 90. Sorry, kid. I know it’s probably not recommended to mock children, something about self esteem or whatnot, but HOLY CRAP THAT WAS FUNNY.

Anyway, once I had cleared up the misunderstanding, and she sent me my source photos, I bought some lovely shiny home decor fabric and some chocolate brown felt, and followed this tutorial.

The end result was this:

I’m pretty pleased with myself. The stripes lined up and everything! I even serged the edges, because holy crap does home decor fabric fray like a mofo.

Of course, I was immediately shown up by my mothers wonderful (and much better seamstress than I) cousin, Linda, who made my mother two absolutely stunning aprons, one of which I would totally wear in dress format and would make me feel like a frigging princess. Oh well. Even if my craft projects occasionally make me feel like a six year old looking for a gold star, I was proud of it…

I also made another thing recently: I signed up at Spool of Thread for their Schoolhouse Tunic class, and it was completed on Monday night. Ignoring the dumbass look on my face, I am SO proud of myself. It’s pretty much perfect, and it looks adorable.

Holy crap: I made something that is not only well done, but looks good? I WANT TO MAKE A HUNDRED OF THEM.

Gotta say, if you’re looking for a local sewing class to take, I can’t speak highly enough of Spool of Thread. They’re amazing, their instructors know their stuff, and everything I’ve made there has turned out fantastic. The ridiculously awesome selection of gorgeous fabric doesn’t hurt either.

I also recently picked up about 70 meters(!!) of fabric from Our Social Fabric so now I have huge inspiration to get better at this. I’ve been using Pinterest as a place to collect inspiration and tutorials I want to try. I am totally excited to sew more.

And on the knitwear side of things, I’ve been going to a knit night every Thursday with the awesome Shoshona of Wool is Not Enough. It’s a mere 4 blocks from my home, but totally worth traveling further for the excellent conversation and simply gorgeous shop and excellent yarn.

Speaking of which, I’m late for knit night. So long!

It’s been a supremely awesome month. I sold a metric shit ton of soap at Blim on the 18th, which was a great re-introduction to the fun of making All The Soap Ever. I also sold a ton of soap to friends & family, who have given me wonderful feedback. Hooray, my soap is popular!

Now, to get back on this stained glass thing…

Christmas was awesome. Dan & I stayed at my parents place on Christmas Eve so that for the first time in yeeeears, I got to have a Christmas morning with my family. Which was a blast, even though I’d already gotten my main gift from my parents — my new bike, Natasha Pistachio, who I plan on taking out for a ride today.

I was also utterly astonished when I opened Dan’s gift and found a painting by an excellent artist friend of ours, of me. Bret tells the story better, so I’ll leave that up to him.

I also managed to succeed at Christmas. I have this thing where I LOVE buying gifts, and attempt to take pride in thoughtful gifts, but am not nearly as creative as I’d like to be and end up failing miserably. Add to it that Dan tends to just go out and buy something if he wants it. Argh. He claimed that he’d dropped all sorts of hints as to things that he might like, but LIKE I PICK UP ON SUBTLE. He had also mentioned a gift someone had given him in the past that *I* thought was SUPER thoughtful, but he was less impressed with. OH GOD THE PRESSURE IS ON.

I managed to do okay: I got him a kindle, which he hasn’t actually put down since he got it, and one of Bret’s paintings (see link above for full story.) SUCCESS! Of course, his birthday is in a few months and now that I’ve had a success with Christmas, I somehow have to duplicate it… ack.

Much food was eaten, my dog was only a LITTLE idiotic (we have a theory that she’s anti-beard), and we trundled off home to proceed to suffer from the WORST PLAGUE EVER. It was so bad I actually took a day off work — my second since I started working at this company, the first one being when I sprained my ankle and knew the ER trip would make me miss the start of my shift. Damn.

So New Years: So I’ve gone to the same awesome house party for … what, 6 years? 7? More? I have no idea. And the original plan was to go to the party. But as it got closer and closer to the 31st, I found that I didn’t really have an interest. I haven’t kept in close contact with most of the people I would see there, and while they’re utterly fantastic people, I find that I’m going in a different direction… and so in the last couple of days before New Years, we asked kdot & cas if they wanted to come over for an evening of boardgames and sparkles instead. (My shirt provided all of the sparkles, but everybody else took some home. As did the dog, the couch, and the carpet. Ah, sparkles, the herpes of craft supplies.)

I can’t decide if I’m getting boring or if my priorities are shifting. Possibly both, but I had a fantastic night and wouldn’t have had it any other way. Also, I got to be a werewolf, which was great. Am sad not to see all the Awesome People, but I had the New Years I wanted — even if it was a WEE bit different than last years.

Last year was such an interesting thing. It started off with me still being utterly miserable… but fuck that shit. I got better. I never would have expected how MUCH better! Hooray, better!

Next: We’re going to Cuba in April. I’m super stoked. I have the vacation time booked off and everything. Our savings account is growing steadily, and soon I’ll be out buying a bathing suit that actually fits. Excited? Yes, excited. This year is going to be great.

Most of the time that I worked at Telus, I lived by myself in a cute little basement suite in north Burnaby. It wasn’t much — standard basement suite fare, low ceilings, odd layout, back door entrance. But it had insuite laundry, and who cares about low ceilings? I’m short. I referred to it as the Hobbit Hole.

I lived there for about a year and a half, moving to Yaletown about a month before the layoffs came down. Oops. Anyway, life moved on from there and I didn’t think much about it. My next job was at a small software company in Vancouver, where I worked twice — first from March 2003-July 2005, then from March 2007-September 2010.

My employer was a guy named Dave, who’s pretty awesome. So a few months ago, I got an email from a slightly confused Dave asking if I had any idea why he would have received mail for me from Standard Life at his new house. Perhaps the office manager updated an address wrong? Except they did nothing with Standard Life, so … huh. Wtf.

So he sends me the address.

And it’s The Hobbit Hole.

He’s living in the upstairs portion (he’s got 4 kids, so y’know, a 600sqft 1 bdrm isn’t going to cut it) but still. What are the odds?

So I finally picked up this letter from him a few months ago, and I assumed it had something to do with my pension… or something. I figured there might be a few hundred in it because I really didn’t work there very long, but whatever. Not really a big deal.

This morning I was trying to file some things and get my desk more in order, and I came across the letter from Standard Life. So I called in with a bit of a sheepish “I have no idea what I have with you… help?”

And I was right, it’s my Telus pension that was converted to an RSP after I left. And … wtf. There’s over $4000 in it.

So, sweet. I’ve got my address updated, they now know that I really do exist, the account is no longer abandoned, and they’re mailing me information for how to see what I’ve got, and I’m reasonably certain once I get login access, I’m cashing that puppy out and paying off one of my credit cards. Yay, found money!

On Thursday night, we had a lovely dinner with my father at Sandbar on Granville Island. After we got back home, we almost immediately grabbed our camping chairs, extra socks, gloves, scarves, and my duvet, and headed over to Pacific Centre. There were already about 80-100 people in front of us. Oh good, we’re not the only insane ones.

We arrived around 11:30, and set up camp with the illustrious Stephanie, Brianna, and Brian (although Stephanie was smart enough to go home and sleep, as she didn’t actually want a phone. She DID come back at 6am and bring us delicious lattes. Thank fucking lord.)

It was frigging cold, as expected. Luckily, my duvet is delicious and warm and I may have spent a good portion of the evening curled up into a small pretzel in my camp chair, buried completely under my blanket. (I left an air hole, so I could still breathe. It is hard to breathe flannel.) I may have been utterly terrible company, but given how cold & tired I was, that was probably the nicest thing I could have done.

Surprisingly, the time went pretty fast. One run to Tim Hortons, one to A&W (for their bathroom), and a great deal of half dozing in a little ball… it wasn’t bad.

At 3am, a rollerblading guitar playing singer happened by. And, to be honest, he was INCREDIBLE. Seriously, I can’t rollerblade, play guitar, OR sing, nevermind all three at once. The only catch was that he was standing two feet away from me singing INCREDIBLY LOUDLY while I was trying desperately to nap. He then proceeded to get shirty about the fact that we didn’t want to give him any money for it. Hey, you know what? Yeah, you got talent, but pick your friggin audience. And go away, please.

The Apple Store did a darn good job. Around 6am, they came out and started chatting with us with how things would work. Blenz even went down the line giving out free tea & coffee. And since the city garbage cans were removed in anticipation of Occupy Vancouver, Apple walked down the line with garbage bags, too. And occasionally cheering and whooping at us. Uh. Thanks, guys!

So we got our phones, and went home so that I could sleep since I had to work at 3:30. Until 11:30. And then be back at work for 7:30 the next morning. Jesus christ. If I hadn’t already gotten a free iPhone out of the deal, Dan would owe me BIG TIME.

Enough about that: The iPhone 4S! Holy crap, Siri is awesome. I was looking forward to the faster processor and the better camera, but Siri is totally awesome and better than all of that. The first use I had for it was when I got my phone setup, collapsed into a pile in bed, and told my phone to “wake me up at 1pm”. And it set the alarm for me. Sweet. But that’s only the tip of the ice berg. It googles for me, it sets up reminders, it looks up all sorts of awesome facts… and it’s even funny and witty and amusing.

Even if the bitch did turn me down.

Downside: While using it, the battery does drain considerably faster. Also… actually… nope, that’s pretty much it. Huh.

I love my new phone. Totally worth lining up for 9.5 hours in the freezing cold and having two days of utter exhaustion in exchange for a free iPhone with Siri. Yay!

So anyway. It’s Thanksgiving, and I have a lot to be thankful for, so I’m going to go over it.

The funny thing is, I can’t help but cringe a bit when I read last years Thanksgiving post, what with the “hey, my boyfriend is awesome!” thing was followed up a mere two weeks later with “oh hey look, I got dumped”. Ok, so less awesome than anticipated, but I imagine this is some sort of learning process.

Last Thanksgiving was also the day that my mother got really sick — well, after I wrote the blog post about it, that is. For those playing at home, Mom’s last round of chemo two days prior to Thanksgiving was the likely culprit of an intestinal blockage that landed her in the hospital for weeks, required 6 feet of intestine to be removed, and scared the bleeding jesus out of all of us. And worse, she didn’t get to enjoy ANY of the Thanksgiving dinner. Good god, cancer, intestinal blockages, hospital stays, and NO TURKEY? So unfair.

Anyway, good news — we had Thanksgiving dinner last night with my parents, and Mom was able to enjoy it greatly. As were the rest of us. I even contributed more than “peel those potatoes and set the table” (I did also peel the potatoes and set the table.) Lately, I’ve had some minor culinary successes that I am quite proud of. So, I also contributed homemade cranberry sauce, cranberry chutney, apple butter (for the ham), and half of the dessert, which was utterly delicious pumpkin cheesecake squares. Dan supplied the other half of dessert, pumpkin creme brulee. I am a fan of any dish that requires a blow torch.

Things I am thankful for include:

- The fact that my mom is healthy. Hell, the fact that my mother is alive. The alternative is about the most terrifying thing I can think of. I’m not done with her yet. I don’t think I ever will be.

- The fact that I am infinitely stronger than I realized. Last October was the hardest month of my life. I started a new job, which was great, but still stressful. My mother was extremely sick. The man I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with dumped me rather harshly. I mean, in the end, that turned out to be a good thing, but I certainly didn’t see it that way last October. And as a result of that, I had to move out of an apartment I loved without a lot of warning. So yeah, a shitty month all around. But you know, a mere year later, I am doing so much better than I ever could have imagined. I honestly thought I was going to be an utter mess for at LEAST a year, but fuck that noise. I’m better than that.

- And you know what? I’m even thankful for my ex and for getting dumped and for going through utter hell for months (ok, maybe not so much for the hell, but you get the idea.) If it wasn’t for Nick, I wouldn’t be the person I am today, and that person is awesome. I’m pretty sure I can handle pretty much anything and come out of it even better than before. And if it wasn’t for that, I wouldn’t have…

- My amazing boyfriend. I had no idea it could be this easy and this amazing and this awesome and this wonderful. I’m so frigging happy with Dan that there’s no way I can put it into words, especially not without making people roll their eyes in disgust. Thanks, sweetie. I love you.

- My fantastic apartment. We’ve only been here a few months, but holy crap this place is great. I HAVE A CRAFT ROOM. Yay me! (Man, if you told me that I’d be this stoked about a craft room ten years ago… but making things is awesome.) One of these days, my bizarre schedule might even allow me to throw a housewarming party. On a night people can actually make it.

- My pets. Justice continues to impress and amaze me every day. People who have known her for a long time credit me for how much of a better dog she is than she used to be, but honestly? She deserves more of the credit. Yeah, I helped, but she’s just such a good dog and she tries to damn hard, I can’t help but be utterly crazy about my adorable dog. And not to be outdone: I’m rather fond of that gray fuzzy thing that is getting brave enough to venture into the rest of the dog-dominated apartment.

- My job. Yay job!

- Making things. Making things is awesome. Goes with the craft room thing, but there is very little that makes me happier than being creative and creating actual tangible STUFF that other people are also stoked about. My latest creative joy is stained glass, and I have so many plans for projects. So many!

All in all? Life is pretty damn good. And even better is that I still have a bunch of those pumpkin cheesecake squares in the fridge. Can you say lunch? Hell yeah.

So for the last year, I’ve been talking about this little walk I was going on. And by “little walk” I mean “60km over two days”.

So, as I’ve mentioned a million times, my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer last year. That’s been documented enough elsewhere, so I won’t go into that, but what it comes down to was that cancer makes you feel ridiculously helpless. There’s stuff that doctors can do, and stuff that the cancer patient can do, and there’s fuck all that an adult daughter who lives over an hour away by transit, and I don’t do helpless well.

Last year, I volunteered for The Weekend To End Women’s Cancers, and it was a pretty amazing event. I’m not the most Everybody Hold Hands kind of girl, but it was pretty great to see over a thousand women crossing the finish line after walking sixty kilometers.

So I signed up.

As a pretty awesome aside, a few months ago I apparently inspired Dan enough to walk with me. Which is also amazing. Not only would I have someone to walk with, to hold my hand, and to kick my ass into getting to the next checkpoint, but he’s also on the line for $2000. I’m only taking a LITTLE credit for what he raises, but between the two of us, we’ve raised well over $5000. That’s fantastic.

So for the last year, I’ve been fundraising, on & off. My goal was $3000, but I didn’t honestly expect to make that — as long as I got the $2000 minimum to walk, I would be pretty pleased.

Total raised: $3360. That? That’s frigging awesome.

A thousand of it was from my parents (and they gave another thousand toward Dan’s total) but still. I’m a little verklempt at the generosity of my friends, coworkers, family, and everybody who donated. A small call out of awesome is required:

Huge, huge thanks to: Vince, Chris & Kathryn, Adrienne, Steve, Tod, Robin, Uncle George & Auntie Ingrid, Angela, Ryan, Kim, Jenn, Shelley, Markus & Brigette, Betty, Jag, Tom, Gennie, Nick, Doris, Grandma, Riann, Tapestry, Gill, Ange, Kathryn, Lori, plus everybody who gave me cash that went in as a lump sum. You guys are all absolutely amazing, and there’s no way I could have done this without you. No, literally, they won’t let me walk without raising the money…

And honestly, when it got really hard and I didn’t really want to continue on, that’s what kept me going. Well, that and Dan — I couldn’t let him win. But mostly I just couldn’t let down everybody who donated.

I mean, there’s no actual connection between walking 60km and cancer research. It’s a gimmick, I know that, but this goes back to the feeling helpless thing. I felt like I finally found SOMETHING I could do to help, and part of what made me keep putting one extremely blistered foot in front of the other was the insane thought that if I failed, and Mom got sick again, then it was my fault because I couldn’t finish.

Look, when you’re on kilometer 48 or so and you have a blister the size of your thumb on your heel, you get some crazy ideas.

So the walk itself: Honestly, it was both easier and harder than I expected. Day one started off pretty fantastic. We live in an absolutely gorgeous city.

I was really hoping to be able to track where the walk went, but there were so many twists & turns and by the time I was done I was so tired I couldn’t remember where I was RIGHT THEN, nevermind where I’d been 4 hours ago. But I have a basic overview.

The walk started from UBC Thunderbird Arena, and we walked all through Point Grey, marvelling at the utterly gorgeous homes along the way. Our first pit stop was at Volunteer Park in Point Grey, and by the time we got there I had to pee so badly that it was starting to seem like a good idea to go knock on one of the multi-million dollar homes to use their bathrooms. Or just pee in a bush. Whatever. Surely nobody in Point Grey would mind if I peed in their rhododendrons?

Glad I waited — honestly, that might have been one of the nicest porta-potty experiences of my life. One of the sponsors was Royale, who provided all of the paper products for The Weekend. I think we had nicer toilet paper there than we do at home. I am a HUGE fan of wiping my ass with kittens. Thanks, Royale!

After that particular observation, we met up with Chris, who was there cheering his mother & cousin on their walk (his Mom’s fourth go at it!) That was awesome and fun, and after a quick photo op and water refill, we were on our way to wander along Kits Beach, through Vanier Park, and then over the Burrard Street Bridge to head into the West End.

Amusingly, but not surprisingly since they’re the title sponsor (I can’t even begin to imagine how much money they put toward this event) our route took us past what seemed like every Shoppers Drug Mart in the city. Which suited me fine, as they sell the type of knee brace I prefer, and my knee was starting to ache a bit. Not great when you’re only a quarter through your 36k walk. So we stopped in at the one on Davie St, grabbed my knee brace, and continued on along Denman, into Coal Harbour, and then for lunch on the seawall.

I really appreciate what good care they take of us. Lunch was a tasty quinoa salad with chicken and a cookie, and all of it was super tasty.

From there, we headed on back toward Downtown, hit Granville Street, then down Georgia to Library Square, and eventually over the Cambie Street Bridge, to a rest point by VGH. This was around where it started getting hard.

Honestly, other than my knee acting up, the first 20-25km weren’t a big deal. And I wasn’t really expecting it to be — I do regularly walk 10-15km with no problem. I’m a transit user and I have a dog. I walk a LOT. And so… I kind of slacked on training. The main problem was that June, July & August was when I planned on doing most of my training, and that’s when life got chaotic. We were short staffed at work, so I was working a LOT. Dan & I decided to move in together, and that … well, that pretty much took up all of my time when I wasn’t working.

To add to that, I have really oddly shaped feet. They’re tiny for one — my nine year old sister has essentially the same size feet as me, maybe a half size off. But my feet are super wide in the “front”, and super narrow in the heel. I have duck feet. I also have feet that are INCREDIBLY hard to find shoes that fit.

So, to say that I am well versed in blisters is an understatement. I’ve had two pairs of shoes EVER that didn’t give me blisters immediately: My hiking boots that I bought from MEC and wore all over Africa (which do now give me blisters, but because I had to get them repaired, and the shitty repair job made a ridge where there was no ridge.) And my running shoes.

That lasted until about 25km in on Saturday. Damn. Blisters.

By the time we’d finished the walk (having wandered all through Shaughnessy, down to King Ed, through the Dunbar area, and then finally into Pacific Spirit Park and back to UBC) I had some pretty significant blisters. 4 in total, two on the outsides of my heels, and two on the insides of my … hmm, what’s that part of your foot called? Well, what would be the palm if it was a hand. I dunno. Near the toes, but not actually toes. The ones on my heels were the worst — they were honestly thumb sized, half under callus and half not. And puffy as hell.

But a little foot pain couldn’t begin to diminish the utter joy & relief I felt at walking 36km. We started at about 8:30, and hit the finish line at almost exactly 5. There were some breaks, pit stops, lunches, etc in there, but 4.8km/h isn’t terrible. Heck, I’m usually slower than that when I walk with Justice, but she likes to stop & sniff. I did very little stopping & sniffing.

The walk wasn’t even done yet — we still had to get home. The bus loop was two blocks away, too. Stupid bus loop. Thankfully I got a seat, as I was fully ready to inform the first happy little university student there that I had just walked THIRTY SIX kilometers for cancer, please for the love of god let me have a seat. Please.

Went home, and pretty much immediately passed out.

Woke up around midnight, walked the dog (augh, sorry puppy! Honestly, she didn’t even ask to go out until then.) And was so nauseated I could barely stand up. My head was pounding, I felt feverish, and then there was that damn nausea. Managed to get some food in me (thanks to Dan for making me… hmm, I have no idea what I ate, I just know there was something. Pasta, I think.) and then hit the Gravol hard, and went back to bed around 2, so that we could be up at 5:30.

Here’s where I screwed up a little: So, we both moved at the beginning of the month, and didn’t quite get our addresses updated fast enough. I missed mine by a day. Oops. But, no problem — the people at The Weekend said they’d just leave a new package for us to pick up there. But when we got there, no package. We still got registered, but didn’t get the full “here’s what’s happening” deal that everybody else got, including maps, properly printed badges, and I assume, schedules. So we had no idea that on Sunday, the start time was 7am, not 8am like it had been on Sunday.

To add to that: We missed our bus. Oops. Sunday morning service being what it is, the next bus was going to have us there later than I wanted. So we grabbed a Car2Go car and drove down to King Edward, meeting up with the 25 we had originally wanted to catch. Parked a few blocks ahead of it, and hopped on, arriving at UBC at 7:35.

Except… what the heck? Why is there a slow stream of women in pink already heading out? We grab a nearby crew member and ask what time things got started.

“7am!”

…oh fucking hell.

On the upside, it looks like we weren’t the only slackers by a long shot, as there was still a steady stream of walkers heading out. And it was kind of nice to not be all bunched up at the beginning like we’d been on Saturday.

So off we went, and sweet jesus it was a more painful experience than Saturday. The nausea that had horrified me in the middle of the night had faded. Thankfully, as I was just about in tears that if I still felt that terrible, there was no way I was going to be able to get TO the event, nevermind walk it. And amazingly, I wasn’t nearly as stiff & sore as I was expecting. But the blisters were agonizing. By 5km, I was limping pretty badly, and at the third pit stop I had to stop and do some more blister care. I’d already drained one in the morning, but had to get a lancet from the medical tent and drain the other one. I then pretty much solidly wrapped my feet in moleskin and gel bandaids (god, I love those gel bandaids) and hobbled off. I was also switching my kneebrace back and forth at every pit stop or two, just to give my knees a break.

This sounds like I was particularly whiny, but … okay, I was a little. It really wasn’t the intention, I was going for more of a “state of the union” update. Honestly, if it had just been the walking and the knee pain, I could handle that. I’m used to that. Muscle aches are a pain (har har) but they’re acceptable. The blister pain, on the other hand, was getting hard to deal with. My feet simply didn’t want to keep taking steps because every time shot a little more “aunnaghjshs!” through them.

On the upside, by lunch, I think they’d given up. They pretty much went “Fine, you’re ignoring our pain signals? Fuck you, this is on you then.” Walking got a bit easier then. I didn’t so much switch out my bandages as add a few more, and it seemed to work fairly well.

I livetweeted the entire walk, for the entertainment of my followers, and because Mom was reading along from home, and hell — I’m doing this for her, and she was enjoying the updates. I know my Sunday updates were a bit more bitter than Saturdays, especially when Chris let me know there was no shame in being swept up to the next pit stop. (They had crew members responsible for “sweeping” to make sure nobody got left behind.)

And I know there isn’t, but … god damnit, I WANTED TO DO THIS SO BADLY. I am only 31, there is no bloody reason I shouldn’t be able to go and walk sixty km just for fun. I know I’m not in the best shape, but I’m in pretty reasonable shape and seriously. It’s just walking, right?

Ok, ok, so I should have trained more.

I realized that my sense of scale for what is “walkable” is totally skewed. At the lunch break on Sunday, the marker said there was only 10km left. Only 10? ONLY TEN? TEN IS NOTHING! I CAN DO TEN ON MY HEAD! THAT MEANS I’VE ALREADY DONE FIFTY FUCKING KILOMETERS!

I was SO excited to see that, and knew I’d made it.

As an aside: I’m a little nervous about going back to work. Part of my job is giving directions and helping people figure out if something is walkable for them. “Oh, it’s only 8km from the bus stop, that’s no problem.” “Eight KM? I don’t think I can walk that far…” “Pfft, slacker, I saw women going through chemo walk 60km this weekend. YOU CAN WALK EIGHT!” “Miss, I’m 85 and have a walker…” “LAZY!”

Ok, right, walkable is usually considered a half km. Got it.

Anyway. It was still hard. I am so thankful that Dan was there, he honestly did keep me going. I couldn’t let him win! He’s got a much higher pain tolerance than me under the best of circumstances, and well, has never had a blister before. Ever. I think I hated him a little for that. But he made me laugh when I wanted to sit down and never move again, he didn’t care when I was whiny, and he supported me and took care of me for the entire walk — EVEN THOUGH HE WAS DOING THE SAME WALK — and for that I cannot thank him enough.

When we hit the last pit stop, I was exuberant. I was also in so much pain that my speed dropped to a snail crawl. My mom called me to say she was on her way into the city when we were only a km away — she was at Granville & 41. I was a little nervous that we were going to beat her there — I REALLY wanted Mom to be there when I finished — but then I realized that at the pace I was going? Hah, no, she was going to beat me there easily. Mom & Carol Ann met us at the last turn down to the finish line, and walked in with us.

Chris took a picture of us crossing the finish line — look at mister casual, hands in pockets there. “Oh, this? Yeah, I was just out for a 24km morning stroll… with my whiny-ass girlfriend.”

I was extremely jazzed, and in so much pain I could barely move. Headed straight to the medical tent. Didn’t really have to do too much — my self care was pretty good (yay, I DO know what I’m doing!) but I wanted to clean them up and get new bandages. The moleskin I had with me was way too thick and wouldn’t wrap around my heels. So we got me cleaned up & rebandaged and sent on my way. “Did you bring sandals?” No, because there’s no pair of sandals in the world that doesn’t hurt my feet like hell. I’ll just go barefoot, thanks.

We finished around 2pm, and I didn’t want to wait an hour and a half for the closing ceremonies when I could instead have booze much faster (they did have wine & beer sponsors, but wine gives me migraines, and beer isn’t my preferred drink) so we ended up hitting the Chill Winston in Gastown, where Dan & I got reasonably sloshed on a measly two drinks. Exercise is fun! (Well, I was reasonably sloshed, Dan was slightly tipsy.)

And it was goooood.

After Mom & Carol Ann got to look at our pretty new (still disasterous) apartment, they headed back to the suburban wilds, and Dan & I passed out pretty much immediately. Woke up around 10, walked the dog again (ow, ow, ow) and went back to sleep until 5:30 the next morning.

Amazingly, while I was pretty stiff when I woke up, it went away quite fast. The only lingering pain is my feet, and even those are holding up pretty well (as long as you don’t bump them directly like I seem to do EVERY THIRTY FUCKING SECONDS. WHY ARE THERE SO MANY THINGS TO ACCIDENTALLY KICK IN THE WORLD?) We both had yesterday off (Dan has a throat infection, and took the day off to avoid giving it to anyone else.) and even managed to move some furniture around so that our livingroom doesn’t look like a storage locker.

Overall… it was an amazing experience. I’m so glad I could be a part of it. Overall, the weekend raised over 2 million, and has raised over 20 million dollars since it started. That’s absolutely incredible. I’m proud of me, and I’m proud of Dan, and I’m proud of every single walker, and I’m proud of everyone who donated, and every person who was being walked “in honor of”. Too many people had “In Memory Of” shirts, and this really, really helps.

And that’s something I’m proud to be a part of.

But as of today, it’s true! Justice is in fact five years old, and I couldn’t ask for a better dog.

Here’s to another five and beyond, pretty girl. Happy Birthday.

(Justice does not care about birthdays as this is a silly human construct. As are dogs in bunny ears. Pleh.)

So I’m moving in with Dan, which is pretty awesome. We found an amazing two bedroom condo near Main Station, 11th floor, huge balcony, fireplace, a bathtub I’m pretty sure I could drown in… am extremely pleased. The building is about 3 years old, and has pretty good amenities. A gym, steam room, sauna, and a private courtyard with a playground. What? I like playgrounds. I am occasionally a six yr old. Fuck you.

I’m really, really looking forward to living with Dan. Yeah, it’s fast, but who cares? Honestly, if this is going to crash and burn soon, I’d rather know now rather than dance around wondering if it’s going to work or not. I’m tired of the logistics of working around our different residences, although this may be because I always tend to move in fast.

So last night, I brought Justice over to Dan’s place to introduce her to her feline step-sister, Ben. Ben is a neurotic little gray fuzzball, and Justice is an anxiety ridden mess who responds to fear with aggression. Not the best combination, but Justice does also have a decent history of getting used to things pretty fast. She has also lived with a cat before, although I’m not sure if Liam is really a cat, and not a minor demon in disguise.

Either way, it’s been a few years, but Liam tormented the shit out of Justice and she learned fast to avoid him (not that he would avoid her — he’d hide under tables and ambush her as she walked by, and pin her in the bathroom where she’d just sit and cry.) On the upside, Ben is not quite the malicious presence that Liam is, and seems content to ignore Justice as long as Justice leaves her alone.

Justice is distressed by Ben’s existence, but actually handled it pretty well. I assume she remembers that kittys have claws, and it’s better to stay a few feet away from them. I’m not allowing staring, barking, or other exciteable behaviour, but she’s doing a great job of coping. She was perfectly happy to accept treats and go through some of her old rally commands with Ben only a few feet away, so … this might just work after all.

Don’t worry — they won’t be left alone together for a long time. Justice will be crated when they can’t be supervised, and there will always been escape routes for Ben when they’re together. But based on the first introduction, I am optimistic!

However, he’s still a pitbull, and still a foster, and part of the rules of a foster is that they don’t interact with strange dogs. And for good reason — any little incident, no matter who’s at fault, and Bran will at best have a super hard time finding a forever home. At worst, get euthanized. So, he’s allowed to play with dogs I know, or dogs who belong to people I know. I’ve never worried about him, he’s RIDICULOUSLY friendly. Hell, he gets along with Justice, and she IS a jerk about other dogs.

But, I know what dog aggression can be like, and I follow that rule pretty strictly.

So today, I was walking a friend of mine up the street. We get a few blocks from my place, and this sketchy woman smoking a joint has a little pomeranian on a flexi leash (one of those retractable 30 foot deals). She’s in her yard, so I’m not worried about it — Justice wasn’t with us. If she was, I think I’d have crossed the street. I don’t trust flexi’s.

But as we walk by, she gets up and walks over to us and asks if Bran is friendly. Well, he is, so I’m not going to lie (I would say “no”, but I’d rather be an “ambassador” for friendly pitties — they have a bad enough rap without more people thinking “Oh, there’s another aggressive pitbull.) Also, sketchy woman looked totally sketchy, and there’s no way I’m trusting her dog not to be a total dick, and Bran to accidentally squish him. He was about 9lbs soaking wet.

So I say “Sorry, he’s not allowed to interact with strange dogs” with a smile, and pause so she can call her dog back and we can pass by calmly. But she keeps coming, and she’s blocking the sidewalk, and her dog is running toward us. Bran, of course, wants to go say hello, so he’s pulling at the leash while I try to get his attention back on me — something he’s getting quite good at, unless there’s a perky little pom bouncing 4 feet away from him trying to say hello.

The woman makes no effort to pull her dog back, and he’s clearly got more slack on the retractable leash he can pull, and he’s still coming closer. At this point, I’ve put myself between the dogs, and am working my ass off to get Bran’s attention… and to tell this idiot woman to call her dog back.

And she’s all “Why? Why?”

REALLY?

I say again, “He’s a foster. He’s not allowed. Please call your dog back.” And she’s STILL NOT PULLING HIM BACK.

So I start pulling Bran back, putting me between them, and then start in on her a bit. “I’ve said no. He’s not allowed. That’s enough. Call your dog back, please!” And she’s STILL blocking the sidewalk.

Eventually, I tell my friend to just go on — I was only going another block anyway — but jesus fuck. What is WRONG with people? I appreciate her asking, but what the hell. Accept my response, y’know? If that had been Justice, she’d have lost her shit with a dog charging down on her like that.

On the upside, Bran IS totally friendly, just kinda boneheaded. In fact, he reminds me rather strongly of this dog, minus the talking part.

But still. People just blow me away with their stupidity. Bonus points for asking if her dog could play with Bran. But MINUS ALL OF THOSE POINTS AND A LOT MORE FOR NOT TAKING “NO” FOR AN ANSWER. Gah.

So this? This is the wonderful woman that I’m walking for in August. No hardship, she’s put up with me for 31 years so far, the LEAST I can do is walk a measly 60k for her.

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