Some shivers, some cold toes, but it was worth heading out to stand on my balcony and marvel over nature, if even too briefly.

I’m reaching my winter tether’s end. My sanity is tattered, my resolve weakening.

I want Spring.

Living here, north of the 49th, winter days become as short as 8am to 4pm. When it is daylight, though, it’s often oblitered by grey and dreariness. When the sun does emerge in Vancouver between December and February, the first day is always an optically painful experience. The light! The light! Is blinding, boss! BLINDING.

But I’m bracing myself. Winter ain’t over yet, not by a long shot. It’s not even that the weather’s been that cold or that bad this year. It’s just that there’s a big difference between the light-from-4am-to-10pm days we get in June and July, with 18 hours of daylight, versus the miserly 8 -and-a-bit-hours we have now.

I am, indeed, seasonally affected.

And it affects me to my core. Existentially these days, I feel like I’m a giant, walking, talking Wistful Sigh.

With the new life that comes with spring’s arrival, so too do I come alive. I explode in giddy happiness. Cotton-candy streets of cherry blossoms and sweet aroma-filled warm spring nights complete me.

I love summer, but I prefer spring and fall. I’m not one for extremes. I like the middling seasons, when clothes are required, but not too many clothes.

Still I sit here with cold toes, flannel jammies, and a bittersweet longing for something, anything, springing to life.

I blame my stroll through the park courtyard yesterday, where I saw blossoming pussy willow trees. GASP! Evidence of spring!

It’s almost painful to have such powers of observation before the onslaught of new seasons, to see such evidence in its early stages.

Honestly, I find the tease almost insufferable. You show me this now, but I have two months to wait? Oh, cruel, cruel nature, you tease like no one else.

Kill me it does, and yet I wait. Toes tapping, nervously humming, but I’ll wait.

I’ll wait for bike rides careening through new-growth tree-canopied streets. I’ll wait for a sun that sets after dinner, warm enough to sit on a log for an hour or more, lost in a friendly conversation as fire falls into the ocean. I’ll wait for warm nights spent sleeping with nothing but a sheet, the smell of salt, herbs, and flowers on the breeze. I’ll wait for spring nights on the balcony with the barbecue blazing and a drink in hand, standing over fresh-planted aromatic herbs in flowerpots.

I’ll wait.

But today I’ll pull on my thick, warm boots, my down coat, and a scarf. I’ll bring my eye drops for tired eyes, take my vitamin D to fake my body out, and plan my breaks from work for when the skies part ever so slightly and a beam of sun breaks through.

Because I know, after nightfall, a week of rain is blowing in off the Pacific, and the dreariness that’s only alluded to in the light greyness that is my present morning will soon explode upon us, and with that will arrive dark tumultuous clouds and winds that cut through lesser-than outerwear, and Vancouver’s therapists, travel agents, and tanning beds will have a boon of a week as those more well-moneyed than I will plan their means to momentarily escape the endless bleakness that tends to be a Vancouver winter.

Even though I saw pussy willows yesterday.

But I’ll wait.

I was raised to believe in the magic of Christmas. We’d have a houseful of people singing carols, Dad would make his famous cardiac eggnog, the house was full of decorations and laughter, and us kids would even have visits from Santa, who brought every child there a gift. It really was magical.

When my mother died in 1999, I was pretty sure Christmas would never feel that Magical again. And, yeah, I was right — it hasn’t. But my life isn’t over, and “dreams” don’t always have to be big, flashy, and involve a credit card. Sometimes they can just be about getting back to the heart of what made your life wonderful and good once.

Not everyone has had a magical Christmas. Not everyone has known what that kind of good will and cheer and boisterous fun can be like. At least I had that — and in childhood, where a memory can last a lifetime, and provide a framework for that which you aspire throughout that lifetime.

These days, I don’t aspire for magic — I just aspire for a little joy, goodness, and friendship.

This year, there will be people left alone, doing anything they can to avoid everything Christmas-related on television, trying to convince themselves it’s anything BUT the most magical night of the year.

Because, for them, it’s not magical. For them, it’s a reminder of their loneliness, their wants, their desperation, and maybe even where they’ve gone horribly wrong in the last year.

It’s a time during which a lot of people WILL realize it’s the first time they’re celebrating the wonder of the season without a loved one, or in the fresh light of a divorce, or with a debilitating new health condition that limits their ability to enjoy it. The first time always cuts the deepest. I know, I’ve been there for a few “firsts”.

I’ve experienced heartbroken Christmases, the kind of loneliness that’s left me standing at the window of my apartment, gazing at the lazy morning of happiness unfolding in apartments across the way. But the difference for me was, I’ve sort of believed deep down that my loneliness would be short-lived and it was what I needed to experience, for whatever reason, at that time.

But what of the people who can’t have that perspective? Those who are devastated by the loneliness? What of those who are waiting, slowly hoping for their own Christmas miracle, unsure of how to ask the right people in order to bring it about, but who instead wait on a wing and a prayer, hoping the magic simply unfolds without provocation?

And why does it matter to you?

It doesn’t. Not really. But you can choose to let it.

Because that’s what Christmas REALLY is.

It’s not Hallmark and batteries-included. It’s not diamonds and slippers and mugs of hot mulled wine. It’s about the very nature of humanity and what it is that makes being human such a marvellous thing — it’s about everything good that we as a people are capable of.

This time of year, I talk to more strangers. I smile at the people who seem to need it, I linger if they make small talk, I look them in the eye. When I can’t afford it, on a cold and brutal day, I’ll find a nice homeless fella to buy a giant hot chocolate for.

It doesn’t take a lot to remind people that kindness exists. But that reminder can be more powerful than I hope you will ever need to know.

It doesn’t take a lot to remember that this season is about goodness — not just to those you know, who can thank you later, who’ll be in your life day-in, day-out, who you might just be placating with that gift or visit, but ALSO to those who don’t experience goodness often.

There are those who, over the course of this past year — for whatever reason — may have lost their hope in the future. They may have lost their belief in their friends. They may be feeling alone and like any good in life has forsaken them.

You should never, ever assume their condition is permanent.

Kindness can change the world. Show some. Be the change you want to see in the world, let it start now, this week, this season. Don’t wait another day.

See if there’s some good person who’s without a Christmas dinner this year — you have a week left. Invite them. Make them welcome.

If you can’t invite someone and let them into your life for the night, maybe then you can show them kindness in the days before the holiday, and after.

It’s like Armistead Maupin wrote in the inimitable series Tales of the City: There’s no morning of the year that waking up alone feels more isolated and lonely than that of Christmas morning.

There’s something palpable in the air on Christmas day — that moment that comes but once a year, with weeks of hype and glory leading up to its passing. And it’s magnificent when you have people you love in your life. It’s unbeatable when you have the perfect Christmas day filled with food and family and fun.

And when you don’t?

There’s no day upon which your losses, heartbreaks, loneliness, and neediness shines more brightly.

This year, for my Christmas present, in thanks for all the writing I do for you for free all year round, I’m asking that you look for a small, real way to improve someone else’s life, if only for a moment.

Tell me what you’ve done, if you wish, or keep it in your heart for only you to know (the method I usually prefer) — I don’t care. But, please, BE Christmas this year.

Some ideas:

* Offer a homeless person a hot lunch, a sandwich, a beverage, anything — don’t just throw coins in their cup. Interact, ask them what they’d like, and then give it to them. It’s really not much, it’ll cost you five dollars, but the mere act of asking that they WANT or NEED validates that they’re a human, not just someone to throw pity at. It’s not about the pity, it’s about the humanity — something they don’t get often when people walk past, scowling at the indignity of that homeless person having the NERVE to sit on THAT sidewalk. Be better than the heartless, indifferent, skeptical throngs.

* Invite a lonely friend or co-worker to enjoy Christmas with those you’re gathering among. If they can afford it, ask them to bring something so they feel included, a part of the event, rather than some lonely fuck who’s been invited out of pity.

* Instead of throwing blankets and coats into another donation bin, experience the feeling of choosing & giving it to someone on the street. Remember, just because they’re where they are now doesn’t mean they haven’t lived an incredible life and have stories worth telling. See beyond the dirty, needy face before you, and accept the person within.

* Pick a family one of your friends or coworkers knows, or someone from your church or any other organization, and put together a great food box so they don’t have to be scared of where the festive meals are going to come from, and instead of milking the moment, just be sure the box discreetly finds its way to the people in question.

* Smile at people who seem miserable and grumpy, overlook their short moods, and just try to indulge them a little — just because YOU don’t know how hard this time of year can be for some people doesn’t mean you can’t be understanding of it when you see its less agreeable side.

Remember, while you’re in a panic about getting gifts for people or time-managing your way through to the big night, others are in a panic about how January 1st’s rent will be paid, how they’ll explain to their kids that Santa values them less and gives THEM smaller toys than their friends, or even panicking over whether the little food they can buy will stretch through the week.

Christmas is about more than big meals, gifts, and lofty drinks with high times and good friends.

It’s about love, community, sharing, understanding, hope for the year to come, reflecting on the year gone by, and a belief that, yes, Virginia, there is a better person inside us all.

Please, with the week you have remaining before Christmas, remember that this season is about MORE than just you and your family — live it, show it, share it. Don’t just spend it in malls and parties.

This Christmas, be MORE.

Thank you.

I hadn’t given the idea that much thought until the recent days.

See, the thing about legacies is, they don’t just happen. They take years — often, decades — to carve out. Who we are, who we were, isn’t just some momentary snapshot — it’s a grainy 8mm movie that never stops playing.

Every day we have opportunity to contribute more to  our lives. Every day is another stroke on the canvas of our legacy, another swath of colour or texture that contributes to the work of art that is our life.

These days, I’m caught in a nasty swirlie of knowing the choices I need to make in order to realize the legacy I want to leave behind. Books don’t write themselves, words don’t land on your screen like fruitflies in your wineglass. Isolation is needed. Sometimes that isolation turns into hours spent writing, sometimes it’s a wasted opportunity. Much like life.

And I don’t like that I need to make those choices. I don’t like that I somehow lost my whole social summer because I couldn’t balance what I had going on and incorporate socializing into it as well. It pisses me off that I can’t manage to be more social yet accomplish everything I want to accomplish. I’m angry that I have to be torn between these things.

Yes, I like my alone times. But I also enjoy having my cake and eating it too. I’m a greedy sensualist; not only do I want it all, but I can taste it all in anticipation.

But I can’t do it all. Not anymore. Choices have to be made, or I’m spread far too thin. Girl can’t be everything to all people, and often barely can be enough for herself. Shouldn’t I have more energy than I do? But I guess my days and weeks are as heady and hard as they sometimes feel. Life feels like an unending obligation, sometimes.

It just can’t remain this way, not indefinitely. I need to find it in me to do the work that needs doing. Most of that means just finding time.

I’ll be undertaking a drastic schedule change this week, as I start early-morning shifts that will leave me free after 3pm a few times a week. It’s all in the guise of attempting to manage my time better.

“Time management.” It’s the laughable modern Holy Grail. A myth. Everything is geared toward it now. “30-minute meals”, smart phones, fast food, TiVo — everything is supposed to help contribute to “convenience” in our lives. Instead, we all get busier, busier, and busier, and life slips away ever faster. None of us gets done in a day what needs to be done. Why? Because a world of distraction was built around us, obligations layered upon obligations.

Last year I read a fantastic novella by the much under-appreciated British writer Jim Crace, A Gift of Stones, about life at the end of the Stone Age. What did people do then? They caught and raised their food, prepared it, they practiced their livelihood, and they talked to people around them. That was the human condition, that’s all there was. They all had the same obligations every day: Sustain thyselves, sustain thy livelihood, know thy fellow man.

A part of me longs for that. An old rickety home in the country filled with lush comfortable belongings, where I spend my nights writing, listening to the wind playing tricks with trees and dogs yapping in the distance. A place where life can stand still and one day bleeds into the next, where lazy mornings aren’t filled with a feeling of torn lack and longing, where the urban world doesn’t speed at me day in and day out.

I like my sheltered life sometimes, but because of my ADD tendencies and my proximity to Just About Everything In The City, I’m constantly left feeling torn, like so much is happening that I’m missing out on — movies and concerts and coffeeshops. “What am I missing tonight?” is something I’ll often find myself wondering on writing nights.

Yet I’ll have these phases where I experience so much, am out so often, that I get burnt out and long for the quietude of my little home again.

Then along comes some conversation where I’m enlightened about the Buddhist eulogy-of-a-life-lived exercise, the questions rear up and I find myself wondering how unsatisfied I’ll be with myself and the life lived if this — quiet mornings, wind whipping through my apartment, typing in my bare feet, as the last days of summer slip away — represents the status quo for too much of that life.

Balance is always the conundrum. How does one find it? Does one ever? For me, I probably never will. I’ll always feel torn by the duality of who I am — good with people but ultimately comfortable being left in solitary thought, too.

I suppose it’s ultimately like chocolate and a diet. Cutting back is essential to your success, but enjoying it is essential to your soul. Never exclude anything entirely, and never overdose on it, either. Too much all the time means you never appreciate it when you have it; you take it for granted. But occasionally enjoying it, when it’s quality over quantity, fills the soul a little and makes the lonely hours in wait that much more worthwhile.

How much will others contribute to the life I will have lived? How much will I let them in, over the years to come? How much will I give to them, be with them, and appreciate them? And vice versa?

I turn 36 this week. If statistics are to believed, my life isn’t even half-over. Yet I’m in that week-before-my-birthday midlife crisis that always come my way. So few of us lead the lives we’ve imagined for ourselves, but is it a life we’re happy to be living?

My complaints are small, typical, and nothing worth breaking a dream over. I used to say I had no regrets, but the older I get, the more the small and infrequent regrets seem to snowball and crash into the reality of my life. Sure, I have regrets. I have a lot of the regrets had by many people who get stuck on the financial tightrope of lower-middleclass life. I wish I could travel more. I wish I could dine out more. I wish I could know what a real spending spree felt like. Most of my regrets have dollar-signs attached, which is to say, they’re regrets that won’t break my heart anytime soon.

I commented to a friend once that I’d love to have the trappings of success, but could never live in the trap of success.

The truth is, when I do look back at the choices I’ve made — the ones that have left me happier in my off-hours and more broke because I’ve chosen a low-paying low-stress low-demand job, so I can enjoy my day-to-day, despite the ways it causes me to cut back and miss out on the perceived things we’re supposed to live for, well… I’m pretty comfortable living with those regrets.

We all pay prices for the choices we make. At least I know, and can live with, the prices I’ve paid.

Because, if nothing else, at this point in my unorthodox life, I really have managed to do it my way. Broke, not far from home, but my way. And if I can pull a Sinatra and make that claim when I’m in my 80s and gumming my food, then all the regrets in the world won’t mean fuck all against the quiet satisfaction I’ll feel if I go to my grave singing Frank’s brassy classic under my last raspy breaths.

“Oh, he’s amazing, he leads such a full life!”
“Wow. I feel so sorry for her when she leaves to go home, she looks so sad, like her night and life are so empty.”

…But how much of those “full” lives is filler? And how much is just arbitrary because of choices made earlier? Who or what is the standard for measuring weightiness or completeness of existence?

What’s St. Peter gonna say at the gate? “Oh, sorry, another 3.7 activities per annum and you might’ve led a “full” life, but, no, you don’t squeak through, even. I’m afraid we’re filing you under “adequate” life. Better luck next tim– Oh, ha, yeah. That’s our little joke here. Too bad you weren’t Buddhist, eh?”

I don’t have a full life, not by any stretch of the imagination or anyone’s definition. I could be volunteering, but I don’t. I could see friends more than I do, but I don’t. I could be little Miss Adventure all the time, but I don’t.

And YET I don’t feel empty. Less filling, tastes great, maybe, but not empty.

And YET I feel like my life is jam-packed. Not necessarily in a good way, or even acceptable.

I’ve spent months now filling my life with activities, obligations, people, and places that I didn’t really have the time for, didn’t really know why I was doing them/seeing them, and YET.

We do this — we clutter our lives with “shoulds” instead of wants. We do things because we’re expected to, because of obligation or status quo. We do things because it’s the “right” thing to do for others, the proper way to act or the most beneficial for our friends or lovers or spouse or boss.

But what if we stopped it?

What if we suddenly decided which of our obligations wouldn’t end the world if we just… stopped? What if we chose to turn off the cellphone, or start unsubscribing from emails? What if we stopped with all the promotional events we delude ourselves into believing are essential for our careers? What if we learned to say that what WE want is more important than what THEY expect? What if this myth of selfishness and time alone being horrible things was finally exposed as one of the worst social constructs out there?

What if we stopped cluttering our social calendars with events we’re obligated to attend? What if we stopped feeling like we need the approval of others when it comes to what we do with our time?

What if we made choices? What if we could live with with those choices, live with less? What if everything was slower, easier, less demanding, if only for a while? What if we could finally see the life that’s racing past us day after day?

Wouldn’t that be swell?

I worry about this as I try to slow my life down judiciously. I want to be social and have friends, but I don’t want a lot of them. Unfortunately, I’m getting kinda visible and more people seem to think getting to know me is a wise idea (fools) and I’m not sure I want that. I want a dozen friends, okay? That’s about it. 10, 15, 20 cool people to know, that’s all I have the time for — if I even have the time for that. I don’t want people trying to ingratiate themselves into my life if they’re not my type, and that’s the situation I’m sort of faced with as I start “making friends” through the world of social media.

So I’m starting to think, how can I impose boundaries? I don’t want to be considered that “uppity bitch” or anything — it’s not about that. I get overwhelmed with obligation easily, and the more people in my life, the more I ultimately feel I’m failing them all when I make protectionist choices about my time and space and become Loner Steff for weeks on end.

Plus, I don’t know where the scientific facts are that back this up, but I’m pretty sure it’s REALLY HARD to be a loner when you have oodles of friends.

I  come cut from that cloth that dictates five good friends are all someone needs for their lifetime. I got about 3 already, I think. A solid 2 — my Dead-Body Removal Crew. I got lots of acquaintances, don’t worry, but I know who to call about corpses these days. Over the years, I thought I had a much larger body-removal crew, but my standards for friends are high, and few live up to them longterm. That’s okay… because any standards I hold for others, I hold for myself. I’m a good friend to have. I’m not always “there”, but I’m ALWAYS there.

I don’t need filler in my life. I don’t want the society-approved “full” life. Keep it. ENJOY. I’m happy as-is, though I do want more than what I have, but I want quality times with quality people, and my definition of “quality” is far more select than most folk’s. Those people are out there, but I need to turn away scores of peeps to find the diamonds, and I know it.

As long as I remain the person I am, with the values I have, the loyalty I possess, and the generosity I share, my standards will remain high and my life, I guess, will remain appearing “emptyish” to the casual observer.

And maybe to you, to them, it is. But when I fall asleep with contentment in mind and wake up satisfied each morning, I’ll know I’m fuller for my lack of filler.

More happily, TiVo ate some Breakfast Club and is serving it up fresh for me this morning — one of those few movies I can recite more than half. It’s surprising how many of those movies I can recite are of the John Hughes Library.

I  _am_ the John Hughes Generation. I’m so sad he passed away before 60, and bitter he stopped his brilliantly insightful teen movies when he did, back in the ’80s. I always wanted to go through college with John Hughes as my guide. Thank god Cameron Crowe peaked when he did. I’ve not yet written about Hughes’ death, though, and have been meaning to say a few words.

Everyone in my crowd has their own John Hughes memory. This is the biggest of them all, for me: The Breakfast Club.

It was a June day back in 1985. None of my friends (overstating it: “classmates”, not friends)  had seen this movie “The Breakfast Club” but I was sure they’d like it. And to show it to ‘em, I had the biggest, baddest party of them all. A slumber party!

Every girl in my class was invited. And… unbeknownst to Mom & Dad, so were most boys; I had hatched a master plan. It was a Saturday, we’d hang at my house, then we’d all head down to the FunFun Park… (I kid you not, I grew up a block from a park called The FunFun Park — explains a lot, no?) …and all the boys would meet us there. We could play for an hour or two (ahem, play) and then go back home, do our girl-thang.

It was the end of grade 7. We were all 12-year-olds and we were each just discovering that the opposite sex wasn’t so icky after all.

I invited many kids that day, but I had not invited Danny.* He was the goat farmer’s son. Guess what he smelled like? Yep. Mm, goat — HAWT.

We were in Grade 7. Seriously, kids that age a) don’t shower like they should and b) tend to be mean to those who don’t fit in. I wasn’t immune to being a cunt then.

At school, the chatter was to a minimum about the party — most kids knew it was hush-hush. If parental units heard, Bad Things Would Happen. This was The Big Ticket. Our first attempt at going parentless, the summer before high school.  Whatever trouble could we get up to, out there, at the FunFun Park, sans Parental-Types?

I had visions of being the mastermind behind many a first kiss. SMOOCHIES galore! Oh, the excitement! Only two days left and my parents still hadn’t gotten wind of my brilliant scheme.

Then Danny phoned.

While I was literally washing my hair.

Mom took a message.

Ever so destructively helpful of her. Typical.

“I was just wondering what time we were supposed to come out there for the party at the… FunFun Park?”

“…The party? At the FunFun Park? There’s no party at the Fu… Fu–!!”

God help me. Oh, the tirade it unleashed. My mother was not one for letting a lesson go unfelt. And by “unfelt” I mean punctuated with several whacks to one’s tushy. Sheepishly I hauled my tenderized ass to school that Friday and told everyone rather dramatically “DANNY WRECKED IT. FOR EVERYBODY.” At least it wasn’t MY fault.

My party! Destroyed! All by the GOAT FARMER’S BOY. Dammit! Foiled!

So now it would be — sigh — a movie-and-popcorn-and-stupid-girlie-stuff night. No boys. Damn you, goat farmer’s boy!

The girls all still came over, gamefaces on. We’d have fun anyhow. (Damn you, goat farmer’s boy!)  Cake was had. We behaved. Then, 13 of us crammed into my bedroom for the night’s movies, and pajamaed up and readied for swoonery: The Breakfast Club and Rebel Without A Cause. I was a discerning pubescent girl.

The Breakfast Club blew our minds. All that teen angst and the hotness and the — RRR! — god, we loved it. I fell hard and long for the baddest boy of them all, John Bender. Oh, how I swooned. I watched it several times before returning the VHS on Sunday afternoon.

For me, The Breakfast Club became a foundation for who I would become. To this day, I don’t apologize for what I am. I don’t fit into any “typical” holes. I’m an acquired taste, and I really don’t care. I don’t have to justify who I am to anyone, and more importantly, I won’t. Hughes taught me that in both the opening and closing voiceovers of The Breakfast Club.

But that’s not all John Hughes schooled me well in. Among other things in life I learned from Hughes & his movies –

• Love, in all its stupidity, is a really big thing, and when hearts swell or break, it’s SUCH a big thing it’s probably worth writing a movie about, or at least a song.
• Whatever happens, it’s really, really important that it happen when there’s good music playing, because a good soundtrack makes everything all better.
• Image is everything but can also be uniquely you, because Molly Ringwald looked fuckin’ hot in that quirky Pretty In Pink dress. Ducky kinda worked it in his own hot-dorky-way too.
• Story is eternal, human struggles are common when they’re matters of the heart, and the geeks shall inherit the earth or at least the really hot chick every now and then (especially when they can rig serious equipment in their bedrooms when the folks are outta town).
• Bad boys are hot, but they will break your heart. So will the good guys, though. (I blame you, Ducky.)
• If you’re stuck somewhere and have time to kill, marijuana might be fun.
• If you’re REALLY smart, you’ll ask for a computer for Christmas, because look how well it worked for Ferris.
• Always know at least one good dance move, and have a big bag ready-packed, because you never know when you may have to jam.
• Insecurities are like dustbunnies; they’re hiding everywhere, and everyone’s got ‘em.

We’ll miss you, John. Thanks for the memories.

So, hey… what’s YOUR memory?

*All names have been changed to protect the identity of children of goat farmers.

Basil, well, that’s easy enough. Wait until June, plant, water often, eat often, be happy.

Tomatoes? Good god. Apparently they need pollinators! One thing we apartment-dwellers on the slopes of major cities don’t get enough of is pollinators. Apparently bees think apartments are for the birds.

So there I am, a beautiful balcony, three steroid-induced tomato plants looming tall, reared on dark coffee and eggshells, with about 40 flowers bursting on each, and about 12 tomatoes in total. 10% tomato production? Oh, I don’t think so, we Steffs don’t like those kinds of results AT ALL.

If the nuns from Catholic school saw me pulling in a 10% result on anything, my ass would be at one with the leather strap and its thwacky-thwacky-thwacks.

Desperate to change the odds, I consulted Twitter. I’ve heard about the whole “use a Q-tip to pollinate” thing but THAT didn’t work, I’d tried that already.

But then I got told a twist on the Q-tip-pollinating thing by @Astrogirl426. Turns out one should use an electric razor with the blades removed, turn it on so it vibrates, let it hover right by the flower’s stamens, and then, with a plate underneath, one collects the falling pollen. THEN a Q-tip gets dabbed and collects all the fallen pollen, and that Q-tip gets rubbed onto the centre of each flower. Poof, pollinated! And you get to proudly know you can do Bee Duty when needed. Score.

Hmm, problem: I have no electric razor. So @Astrogirl426 suggested I try using a sex toy.

A sex toy? For gardening?

WELL, it happens, I have one of those. Or two. Or something.

I also have a very, very open balcony, on the third floor, with completely open and exposed railings, not solid ones, so whatever’s happening on my balcony, one certainly sees, whatever their vantage point.

So, I considered her advice for a few days, but took a pass because the last thing I need is neighbours calling the cops about the weird lady with the sex toy and a thing for plants.

Then, last Friday, it dawns on me, “It’s August 21st! OMG. I’m never going to get tomatoes.”

I looked around. No one was at their windows… in the 50 or so apartments with exposure to mine. No one was in the long alleyway where everyone parks. No one was on their balconies.

“It’s now or never,” I thought.

So, I rummaged through my Unmentionables Drawer, and conjured the Big Bad Daddy of my vibrators, in brilliant transparent red, a motor that would power a boat, that some sex toy company sent me last year, and put on my big housecoat.

There I am, trying to stand with my legs wide apart so as to shield me from the view of prying neighbours with my monster-big-ass never-gonna-get-laid-in-THIS robe spread out, a big gleaming red vibrator in my right hand, and a shiny white plate in my left.

I take the vibrator and put the tip of its head within a quarter-inch of the flowers, and let ‘er rip. bRRRR-rRRRRr-RrRRR-BuZZZZ-RRRR-BuUUuZZZZZ-RRRrrrr.

Sure enough, yellow dust starts to fall onto my plate.

Suddenly I know what prospectors for gold must’ve felt up in the Yukon Gold Rush in 1898.

“EUREKA! I’VE HIT THE MOTHER LODE!”

Ever so quickly I tried shoving the sex toy into my robe’s pocket so I could continue with the actual pollinating. Naturally, foiled by the silicone, the vibrator’s head stubbed on the pocket and the friggin’ thing bounced, hitting the floor, and nearly plummeting the 3 floors below. Yeah, that’d be great, a giant $90 red vibrator goes bouncing on the pavement. No one’s gonna notice THAT.

Fortunately, it just rested on the railing. Whew, score one for my fragile pride! I’ll just roll that over there, under the deck chair then…

With my trusty 0.04-cent Q-tip, I collected my fallen pollen and proceeded to attempt pollination. I mean, this isn’t something that comes with a referee standing on the goal line shouting that you’re successful. You wing it and you hope.

But, tonight, oh sweet victory! There are 14 new baby tomatoes!

That sex toy’s coming out at 6am for round two, baby. Fuck pride. This is tomatoes we’re talking about!

And you just thought your toys got you off.

Apparently they work on more than one kind of hunger. Damn, I love multipurpose implements!

For about $110, I’m completely reinventing my living area. That includes building a new pantry for storage with MDF shelving, a gallon of primer, a gallon of paint, and some paper filing boxes. I’m also using leftover paint from last year.

I have a few pieces of furniture I’ve reused several times. My kitchen table has gone from glass-topped and clear pine to fake stained glass and white wood, after having been green for a while. My filing cabinets got some fancy brown kraft-type paper slapped on them with collage glue slathered over it for effect, and in the end now look just like leather. Mirrors have been painted several times, as have a few other pieces of furniture, always resulting in a bigger change impact than I’d have suspected. New drawer pulls and a two-tone paintjob turned a 35-year-old side table of my mother’s into a beautiful accent piece, and it cost less than $10 to do.

This isn’t just about being cheap and practical, it’s about changing the way you view your place, and your accountability, within the world, by making practical at-home decisions with greater impact than you can realize — that is, until you stand back and imagine what an impact 6 billion people making similar decisions would have upon this ball in space.

Sure, you can donate old furnishings to charity and it will, in theory, be used by someone else, and this is better than the alternative, but that still means you’re buying something, that you’re contributing to this endless cycle of production in industry today.

Becoming environmentally-friendly means not just disposing of what you have in a responsible manner, and buying less, but also buying less often, or not at all, when possible. Everything we buy takes energy to get to us; it takes fossil fuels to transport, electricity to create, raw materials to make.

It’s this cycle of more-more-more that needs to change for us as a society before we can get to a safer ecological standing.

Turning your light off and chucking cans into the recycle bin are a great start. But it’s just a start.

Now you have to stop replacing your toys with every new version release, switch to rechargeable batteries, buy products with less packaging, try to reinvent your furnishings before resorting to replacing them, and a whole lot of other little things one can do to help the planet.

When I had to get rid of a couch last year because I’d bought one that was cheaply made as a temporary fix, it was an eye-opening experience for me. I’d contributed this massive, horribly made, useless to anyone, bad-ass no-support sofa to a landfill, and it was going to be a part of the problem for years to come. When I purchased my new sofa, I decided to go into debt and buy something very expensive, leather, with a lifetime warranty. Now I can rest assured my purchasing decision will be solid for at least 20 years, whether I keep it or sell it down the line. Now that’s a happy landfill!

In the next week or two, I’ll be done with my home fixes, and I’ll have some great photographs to share with you from the process.

And when I do, you’ll be boggled by just what $110 can accomplish in the modern home. Cosmetic fixes that you, and Mother Earth, can love, on the cheap. It’s a beautiful thing.

*No, I’m not turning this into a Martha Stewart column. If you want to know how to repaint furniture, fuckin’ Google it, honey!

But it doesn’t always need to just happen on the page. My Sunday was an infinitely illuminating day, and just the beginning to what I think will be a strange but profoundly fulfilling experience.

I’m undertaking a MASSIVE restructuring of my home. My goal is to pare away some 20-30% of what I own. Simplify. Let go. Move on in a physically obvious way.

This began yesterday when my organizational guru, Terra Atrill,* came on by to assess my State of Disaster for where we’re headed, the “Land of Ahhh.”

We walked into my bedroom and she looks up in the closet and goes, “So, what’s in the filing boxes?” I looked at her, laughed, and said, “Actually, I don’t know!”

Five minutes later, I’ve gotten the three crammed-full boxes down. One was correctly labelled, and the other two were way off-base. What were they? About half of the journals/notebooks I’ve ever filled (I have about 25-30 or so kicking around, and haven’t written in books in about 7 years), all my childhood report cards, college assignments, every report paper ever written from grade 4-10, scrapbook clippings, little silly things I had no idea my mother saved, ideas for a novel I might write one day — two massive folders filled with notes on that alone, random pieces of fiction (which I never write anymore), correspondence from friends and family from my Yukon-living year, and more. My mother saved these things, I just unloaded them from a filing cabinet into some boxes one dark day after her death.

Like, how could I not love the letter she saved, that I had no idea still existed, that I began writing Cyndi Lauper the summer before my 12th birthday, when “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” was my dream-life-song. “Cyndi, you’re one of my idols! [insert effusive prepubescent gushing here]” It’s too nauseating and silly to share with the world. (Tee hee.)

Or my little hand-coloured flyer from when I was 12, trying to advertise for “neighbourhood services” like pet-walking and garden-watering, in which I included a poll asking respondents to “please print real neat” and how often they might use “our services”.

But most of what I found were various pieces of writing — whether I was eight and making a cute little poem, or 20 and railing against injustices — of pretty enjoyable levels.

I laughed a lot last night. I had thought the experience would be a sad one. Even when I came across copies of my mother’s memorial card and the eulogy I wrote for her, my mood didn’t really come tumbling down like I thought I would when I took a nosedive deep into my past.

Instead, I sort of remembered how I got from A to Z in my journey of becoming Steff. Through words. Always through words. No matter what destructive or empowering forces have traipsed through my life over the years, words have never forsaken me. (Well, there’s the six years of writer’s block, but I suspect that’s as much my fault as it was the words.)

I was surprised to discover that I was a more competent writer in college than I remember. I didn’t have it in me, I didn’t have the time, to really read much. Just a line here, a passage there. But I’m less scared of going back there to experience it now.

It’s funny, I’d been talking to Terra during a little chat break, about how I’d been so scared to actually step into my storage area. There’s ONE box in there I know is filled with Mother Things (and by “filled” I mean “some stuff is in there, but probably not even a majority of it is related”), but I somehow made it feel like my entire storage area was Mom Stuff I needed to go through. In reality, it’s maybe 10%, if not less.

It’s funny how our brains seem to like to gang up on us. “You got fears, huh? Well, I got Exaggeramagic™! We’ll take your fears and multiply ‘em! Welcome to Death by Procrastination.”

I’m scared of one box, thus scared of the whole fucking room. I am human, hear me whimper.

It’s ironic, though, that I read a short passage on my friend Tia’s blog (she’s a lifecoach) yesterday morning, in which she’d written: “Physical objects have residual energy in them from when you were in a certain experience. And it’s only by letting them go that you can clear the energy around your current space and be fully present and IN it.”

I started wondering if maybe it’s true. I’ve tried to get rid of more and more Mom-related stuff over the last year, keeping things I actually value of hers, as opposed to just keeping everything.

And, sort of on a whim, since I did ask OrganiziGuru Terra to be kinda militant with me when going through things, the idea occurred to me while we chatted that this one table I had smack-dab in the middle of the storage, that I’ve been hanging onto for five years in there, never really ever using it. The trouble with this table I loved the look of? It’s the last piece of furniture my mother bought before she died. She had Plans for it. Plans that never happened.

So, with that whim, the decision was: Turf it. As soon as Terra left yesterday, I slapped a note on it and put it in the lobby, and an hour later, it was gone.

I thought I’d be filled with regret today. My dead mother’s dream for that table of hers will never come to be now. But somehow, it’s all right. Because, the reality is, that’s been the case for 10 years, and I just didn’t want to accept it.

The most difficult moment of the day for me, though, was when I was pulling a bunch of metal rods out off the floor in the corner, and an index card was stuck in the pile. I pulled the card out, and, in Mom’s writing, it read, “What if this is as good as it gets?”

What was the card? It was this phase my mom went through in the year before she died, making little notes, filing them off.

Well, Mom… It was as good as it got. She died shortly after that card.

Me, I took the card and set it alight. Burnt it in the barbecue. And then I carried on, my mood barely changed, just resolved more to make these unexpected moments not happen again. She’s been dead 10 years and I find the card NOW?

The past, it turns out, can only hurt us if we let it. Maybe this purging thing is more healing than I realized.

I’ll never escape my past, but at least it looks like I’m more equipped to accept it than I might have imagined. Maybe now that I have the bravery to go there, maybe now I really can put it away in a little box, and respect that it belongs in my life, but always in its place.

*Terra’s services will be available to YOU in Vancouver soon, too! She’s founding a new company, Manic Manipulation, which WILL have its own website soon but is under construction, where she’ll come save your untidy, unkempt ass with organizational solutions that work for your life and your way of coping. I pride myself on being pretty creative with the solutions but she surprised me with many of hers, which she made once she knew what my needs and goals for my space were, complete with having to have workout space in front of my TV. I’ll share before-and-after photos with all y’all over the next month or so, as we completely reinvent my living space.

It’s just a chair. A measley little chair I see out my window every day, and yet when I really crunch the memories as I scour it down from up-close, a world I’ve lived through in eight years come washing over me. It’s just a chair. Wow.

Imagine if everything had that kind of conjuring power? But then I log into Facebook.

A whirlwind of old faces I thought I’d moved past come popping up in my “present-tense” friends page. Who’s kidding who? They’re not my friends, and I’m not their friend. I’m an existential notch on the belt of their life — at best, and they’re lucky if they’re the same in mine.

We shared some times. Likely some laughs, probably some pains, and maybe more. But the only thing we all know is real is, that was then and this is now.

Yet we delude ourselves into thinking the past is more than prologue; that it’s more than then; it’s ongoing. And maybe, in this digital age, it is. Maybe it shouldn’t be.

Maybe it’s not wrong of me I don’t want my ex-lovers in my life, or those who’ve scorned, mocked or hurt me to be in my world today. Still, I often approve those friendship requests a part of me would rather decline. And why do I? Especially when I think it’s the modern equivalent of slowing down for a car wreck? Because a part of me remembers all that was good for a time.

In reality, though…

Hmm, why, yeah, sure, I remember the last time I saw you — in my rearview mirror as I sped away after the incredibly hurtful fight that ended our relationship. Of course you’re a “friend.” Step right back into my life, “friend.”

Or you, who never called me back, never reached out for get-togethers, never replied to my email or my attempts back then to be in your life, you’re such a “friend.” Glad to see you there, ever-present on my “friend” page, even though you’ve never, ever been there in flesh on the page of my actual life.

Sure, you’re all my friends. Let’s go ahead and kid ourselves. Honesty is SO the worst policy.

But for all its fakery and delusions, Facebook does give me social closeness with a network of friends who do use it as a means of better organizing their social lives. That’s an incredible benefit to my life, and I quite enjoy its usefulness in that context.

I just wish I didn’t have to contend with all the superfluous bullshit that comes from pretending friendships exist where ones so often don’t.

And much as it might seem I’ve completely closed the door on possibly changing that — via rekindling friendships or taking things into reality where they haven’t existed for a decade or more — that’s not the case. I’m open to having these people be players in my life again.

But I’m not the one who added them as friends.

They came to me. They befriended me. I accepted.

And then nothing.

See, if you want me to be a player in your life, the reality is, there’s a whole long time, and a lot of choppy water yet to pass under a bridge, that needs to be addressed. I’m not talking about some United Nations committee meeting that needs to transpire with signing of truces; I’m just saying a “So THAT happened!” conversation probably needs to take place, or else this is just more of the skirting-the-truth bullshit that seems overly abundant in today’s society.

All I really am to you, friend, is a name on a screen to indicate that, at one point in my life, I approved of you as a person. I’m not anything more, not unless you want to make an effort and see that happen.

Let’s everyone just get real and accept that becoming “friends” on some fucking social media site doesn’t mean the past really is the past. No, the past is just being really efficiently ignored because there’s literally a screen in front of it.

It’s funny. We’ve got more ways to connect, more ways to tap into “reality”, more ways to communicate than we’ve ever had before… And yet we’re saying all the same nothing we’ve always said. We’re just faking it better.

Maybe it should be called Fakebook.

It’s too bad, too. I always thought I had pretty awesome taste in people. It’s a shame these “reconnections” are all so falsely promising. It’s just some fleeting electronic encounter, more reason to wonder why everything changed, and more reason to accept that maybe some cliches are true, like never being able to go back.

Unfortunately, it seems like going forward is out of the question too. Limbo, however, is entirely in play.

——-

• Time evaporates. Make use of what you have.
• It’s a big world out there. Get lost in it sometimes.
• When I grow up, I want to be carefree. And aware. Always.
• Alone is good, but so are people. When meeting them, it’s easier to find flaws than positives, but more rewarding to make the effort for the latter.
• Nothing pains me more than confessing I’ve not yet gotten around to an experience. So it’s time to get around to getting around to it.

——-

Every night I’ve been walking down to the cliff to look at the light changing on the mountains for a few minutes, smoke something, and ponder life.

It’s easy to forget how big and unforgiving nature is, and when I do, I think myself larger and more significant than I really am, and then my problems magnify in their “importance”.

To be reminded of my smallness and my not-even-a-cog-in-the-wheelness is what happens when I get my face too close to a mountain or a lot of rural dirt in my bike chain. I need that smallness reality check to confront the evil bigness of life’s challenges.

I require disconnection from the scattered pace of the real world sometimes; I’m reminded here how seldom I’ve done that in the last couple of years. I’ve let the concrete jungle make me its bitch. I’ve lost my soul a little as a result.

I’ve been the kind of person who’s not satisfied just getting out in nature, I have to pull an Ansel Adams and stop to watch how light moves across a landscape. There’s something mystical yet existential in watching light move. When shadows are cast from clouds in transit, or the line of pink from a sunset drops lower and lower on the horizon, it’s really hard to deny that time’s always moving and our existence doesn’t even leave a speck on the cosmic passage. The next thought should naturally be that our lives are similarly expansive landscapes, and the problems of today will be the forgottens of tomorrow. Why fret it now?

Of course, my philosophical take on all this is lovely but naive. Harder done than said.

——-

When I’m on my game, there’s no one faster or wittier at the wisecracks, even in person. Zing-zing-zing. Trouble is, “on my game” is synonymous with “blue moon” and “hard to come by.”

I want to find that place from which my creativity comes. I want that electrical current of inspiration to go zapping through me more often. I love that hyper-alive feeling that comes from slaying with chuckles. And the writing thing could use a little boost, let’s face it.

——-

I still don’t believe the hype, but this is the only hype I want to believe. Wish I did.

——-

My grandmother, who died at 88 years old, apparently ate a McDonald’s hot fudge sundae every night. My aunt would deliver it. She lived till 88! Had a piece of chicken, took a nap, never woke up, how my aunt says she hopes she goes. Ha. Well, so do I, if I can reach 88 in reasonable health like Grandma. Damn! And a sundae every night!

*Note: The photo’s shot by me, frm Mission Hill Winery, and is not, sadly, the cliff I walk to. But, boy, is it nice. This is in Kelowna, BC, Canada’s Wine Country, with dozens of wineries that would probably blow your mind. I may review one here shortly when I enjoy my expensive bottle of small-batch  Black Cloud Wine this weekend.