On the Sunday before Rowan was about to start school on Tuesday, I got text confirmation that I’d be subbing two hatha yoga classes at a multi-franchise fitness centre. Two different locations, actually, in two different Metro Vancouver cities. My first subbing, procured through a Facebook call out. Yes! I can do it, I reply….
Tag: Vancouver
Autumn run through Cedar Cottage
I’ve just come back from my first run ever! Well, in a really long time at least. 10 years ago, when I was lonely in Scotland I started a one-minute-run, one-minute-walk effort on a trail along a disused railway line. And I’m sure I’ve made some efforts since, but let’s just say ever since…
Visualize a butterfly birthday for 6-year-olds…
As my mother and husband will tell you (they’re always in cahoots) I’ve got a tonne of creative ideas, but often fall short on execution. So that means that whenever I propose something fantastic like turning our large balcony into a mini-golf course or painting the concrete with a pretty mandala (cheap and chic, right?),…
Cutest finger rhyme for kids
I’m cheating a bit today, since I have been super busy recently trying to sort out career stuff like resumes, cover letters, pitches. That means the blog gets shoved to the bottom of the list…booooo! But unfortunately, I’m the only one in the house who thinks that blogging is a sensible priority. Anyway, this is…
Me Oh My Oh, No Potato?
We were so excited to harvest potatoes from our first season of stacked growing. The leaves started out growing like gang-busters. Every few weeks I’d have to trot next door for more tires from the auto mechanic. We thought we’d be set for winter (well, for a short Vancouver one!), but the taters were a no-show until…
Banished from the hive
I suspect I was an entirely different person yesterday: First, a wasp stung me on my pinkie toe. Then, my son’s swimming instructor mistook me for my own daughter. Sting #1 Not once in my life have I ever been stung by a bee or a wasp. This, despite my pasture-wandering childhood on a prairie farm. It…
The Quiet Ones have the Strongest Stomachs
18 years ago (ack!) I was eating banana pancakes on a roof in Taiwan. Run by kind, English-speaking Janice, the Green House Café was an unofficial drop-in centre for expats in Tainan, a small city south of cosmopolitan Taipei. Unlike the capital, Tainan’s signs displayed only Chinese characters and Westerners were so rare that strangers…
Our Folk’s Fest
The first time my man and I went to Vancouver’s Folk Fest I was nine months pregnant with our first child. I was a fan for life. Not only are there five stages of music and so much good food, there’s a special hippy rule that pregnant women don’t wait in line for the porta-potties….
Secrets of a former loser
“And what was your high school experience like?” I’m sitting round a dinner table with three women I’ve only met once before. Two are my fellow volunteers for a poetry outreach society (how cool is that?!). The questioner is the society’s kindly executive director who pays us monthly with a savoury home-cooked meal, red wine…
Why I got FED UP and Signed Up to Homeschool
Big Brother had his last day of kindergarten last week, but you wouldn’t know it by activities going on. No last day party, no family picnic, no mini-graduation. Just a small grocery bag of papers and art projects from the year. Maybe this wouldn’t niggle me so much, except the French Immersion classes, in the…
School so-so for snowflakes
For the last few weeks I’ve been stewing over my 5-year-old’s Term 2 report card. He’s only in kindergarten, so there’s no reason for him to 1)Receive a report, or 2) For me to give a shit what it might say. But still. Here it is. The report declares how my son is ‘approaching’, ‘meeting’…
Wendy's House 