What does that even mean, anyway? Welcome back to reality? New Zealand was pretty real for me. I’ve got a messed forearm tendon and a missing big toenail to prove it. War wounds, as Tim would say.

The air in the department is rippled by a symphony of some maniacal orchestra that replaced their traditional instruments with buzzers, bleepers and screaming children. The woman in front of me is still talking and I’m hoping that if I stand for long enough I’ll get my answer. Something like that thing with the thousand monkeys typing on a thousand typewriters and eventually producing Shakespeare. Or maybe it was that they never would – I can’t remember. I’ve never been good at figuring out probabilities.

I’ve had a bit of pressure to write this last blog entry. To wrap things up. I’ve been procrastinating up until this moment. It’s been almost a month since I’ve come back home. There are moments where it’s felt as though I’d never left but for the most part I think my trip to the other end of the world has done a lot in terms of changing the sort of person I am. And certainly there have been enough changes here at home that remind me of the length of time I’ve been away.

I spent the last few weeks in Punakaiki saturated by a viscous anticipation. And of course with me, no emotion is complete without a healthy dose of guilt. I really loved my time in New Zealand – in those moments where I had time to get to know her but there were a lot of things that I discovered I needed in order to feel happy with my life. Like a lower cost of living and the ability to visit home in under ten hours. But while I recognized these needs, I also felt terribly ungrateful for everything that the country had shown me. New Zealand was my first experience with rugged, isolated beauty. There were so many time when it was just me and Tim and mountains, or beaches or forest. Both Tim and New Zealand pushed my limits, physically and emotionally. And it’s nice to know where those limits really lie. And to know that I don’t need to keep pushing at them. Not everything needs to be driven to the breaking point. Settling isn’t always a bad thing.

I spent those ten months in New Zealand experiencing life in a way I never would have if I hadn’t been with Tim. Nature and I are more than just acquaintances now, let me tell you. And when work gets too loud and I close my eyes I can still see the sunset at Rangi Hut or watch Lou chase a stick or catch my breath when I feel Red flattening out into a gallop on the beach.

And when people ask me about the trip those are the things I tell them about. It’s one of those amazing things about travelling that once you’re on the other side of that gate you can glaze over the tears, the pain, the frustration and think of everything as the contributing elements that make you the person narrating today. So everything always sounds so rosy to everyone else.

I told Tim a while ago that I didn’t regret a single moment. And I hope he believes me. Every second spent there, comfortable or not, was exactly what I needed even if I didn’t ask for it. My life before I left wasn’t where it was supposed to be. My focus was hazy to say the least. But now I feel a sense of purpose and drive that I never experienced while trying to get into med school. It helps me at work while I wait for those thousand monkeys on their thousand typewriters. It’s pushing me all the way to London in October to stay with distant relatives I’ve never met before and check out their University.

Tim misses New Zealand. You can tell by his Facebook status. He misses the coffee (actually I do, too). He misses the mountains and the ocean and the fact that it’s only a three hour drive maximum to get from one to the other. He misses the outdoors, the adventure. The unpredictable independence. New Zealand had always been a better fit for him than for me. By the end of our time in Punakaiki he was often mistaken for a local.

I miss moments in New Zealand but I don’t have a desperate need to go back. I’m too excited about moving forward. I needed time and space to sit back from my life and really think about what I was trying to do with it. New Zealand provided plenty of both. And now that I feel like I’m finally heading in the right direction, I feel as though I can leave her behind.

But I will always be forever grateful.

Punakaiki is proving to be an excellent transition place to spring board me (and Tim…maybe…if he ever leaves) back into reality. As my friend put it: it’s the perfect winter cabin thing you got going on. He meant that in reference to my writing. See, even though I haven’t been writing the blogs I have been writing. And this idea I’ve got cookin’ in my head has me leaping out of bed in the morning and working on it tirelessly (no really, I’ve actually applied myself – ask Tim, he was blown away). Anyway, I’ve been e-introduced to someone that could potentially help this project become a reality so I’m incredibly excited.

We watch a t.o.n. – ton – of cooking shows. We’re addicted I think. But it’s great because Tim funnels all his nervous energy into cooking and creates some of the most amazing meals. We had a few of the neighbours over for dinner (to have company over and to thank Marie and Tony for having us over) and he whipped up the most delicious cannelloni with ricotta cheese and mushrooms. I baked a red velvet cake again and set up the cheese plates. It was a great night – the people here are fantastic. Tony and Tim will probably head up the valley soon to shoot some goats. There are a crazy amount of them up there. They tease me about my reluctance to fully accept goats as a pest, but that’s ok.

So because we’ve been eating such rich foods and tons of desserts (he made cinnamon buns from scratch – I almost died) we’ve both been making an effort to exercise. I’ve been running – got up to about ten km a few times but then started having a lot of trouble breathing. At first I thought it was my asthma coming back – it would take me literally hours to normalize my breaths. But after a quick, panicked trip to the hospital it turned out I just had a virus (Tim: I told you).

Tim – obviously – has done a lot of the hikes around here. Mt. Bovis was one challenge he had set for himself. Sitting at about 1250 m high it would take the average man five hours to ascend. But Tim isn’t an average man – he’s MacGruber. He left at about 1030 in the morning mumbling that he was off to climb a mountain. I had become so accustomed to this that I only half listened. You have a map, I asked. Yeah, he said. Did you leave me one? No, he said, it was on the computer but I closed the window. No one really knows about it anyway. And he was off. Note at the time I had no idea how long the climb would take.

Three o’clock rolled around and still no Tim. Four, still nothing. About quarter after I started getting nervous. Sun sets around five thirty and if I was going to get a search party together I would need all the day light there was. I called a few neighbours but no one was home. Then I started panicking for real. It’s the end of days, I screamed in my head, I’m alone and there will be zombies and Tim is nowhere to be found. Then I settled down a bit and starting losing my head about realistic things. He’s fallen. He’s fallen and has lain broken in a gulley somewhere cursing me that I haven’t phone for help sooner.

So I tried another number and got Lisa – a lovely Welsh lady that runs the youth hostel up the road. I told her my concern and she told me to wait until five. He’s probably fine, she told me – but later on she confessed that as soon as I mention Mt. Bovis she thought to herself: shit – there goes another one.

As you can probably surmise – Tim is still alive and well. In fact about ten minutes after five when I called Lisa back in a state he drove up cool as a goddamn cucumber – not a scratch on him.

“Where the hell have you been? I’ve been worried SICK! I couldn’t make tea! I couldn’t read my book! NOTHING! What if something had happened to you and I didn’t act worried enough!! What would the neighbours say?! Oh my nerves….!”

To which he replied:

“Jesus, it’s not even dark yet.”

Anyway – we all had a good laugh about it and Tim went back up because he didn’t summit it that time. Apparently it’s quite the climb, really not meant for the inexperienced tramper. And if Tim thinks it’s challenging then I’m not going anywhere near it.

I have, however, actually done a hike by myself. I know, I know…This was the conversation with my mother when I told her:

Me: So dust off your skates, Hell’s frozen over. Yesterday I went on a hike by myself!

My Mother: You what?

Me (Thinking there was a problem with the skype connection): I – went – on – a – hike- by – myself! Without – Tim!

My Mother (leaning forward, forehead crinkling with concentration): You WHAT?

Me (getting reeled in real good): I – WENT – ON – A – HIKE – BY – MYSELF! MYSELF!!!

My Mother: YOU WHAT?

Me: You’re just fucking with me aren’t you?

Turns out she was…when I was a kid we went for a walk in the fields and I saw a red berry. Are these poisonous? I asked. Well, let’s see, she said and ate one. She swallowed and grabbed her throat, eyes bulging in terror. She croaked and gurgled and dropped to her knees. I screamed and ran to her – Momma! I wailed – MOMMA NO!!!!! And then she started laughing.

She wonders why I’m looking into homes so early…

But back to the hike. There’s a nice one here that takes about two hours to complete the full circuit. I decided that I would try to walk it a few time a week instead of running back and forth along the road. The only thing is that in order to get to the start I have to cross this frigid river that goes just over my knees. So I asked Tim to drive me over. I honestly didn’t think he’d be interested in doing the walk with me since he’s already done it twice. But then one day he said to wait for him to finish up a phone call home because he’d like to come along.

And that’s how we became the monsters we loathe: Trail Runners. It all happened so fast. We had just finished the ascent over the saddle and were walking along the path that followed the river out to the road when he said: this part’s boring. And I agreed and said: wanna run it? And he said yes and then before you knew it we were jogging along.

In fact, I think we’re going back up today.

So aside from all that – we have a lot of fun with the horses and hanging out. We’re planning a trip up to Nelson in a few days as a break from the isolation. Then I think we’re going to try and go snowboarding. And then before you know I’ll be home. Ten months has gone by in a flash when I look back on it. This month will be hard, I just know it.

Glamorama written by Bret Easton Ellis (American Psycho) is a satirical commentary on our obsession with celebrity, sprinkled cameo appearances and movie titles so ridiculous that you can almost believe they’re real (**cough**Bangkok Dangerous**cough**). The story follows Victor while he tries to open a new club, calm down his disenchanted supermodel girlfriend and keep secret his affair with the club owner’s girlfriend. Everything was business as usual until oddly threatening faxes started to roll off the machine at work and black jeeps started terrorizing him on his commute around New York and people keep thinking he’s been places he hasn’t.

It’s not long after that a Mr. Palakon approaches him with a tempting proposition. Go to London, find your old ex-girlfriend and bring her back to the United States for a modest three hundred thousand greenbacks. Simple?

Before Victor can even utter the words ‘Spare me’ he’s fallen head first into the lap of a violent political faction that might or might not be working for the U.S. Not that it really matters, even if Victor could figure that out he’s still got to sift through the personnel files to sort the double crossers from the triple crossers. And they’re all just so gorgeous, baby.

Glamorama is an incredibly frightening novel that twists and turns in a way that only the mind that wrote American Psycho can. It’ll have you looking at your Ralph Lauren bathrobe in a whole new way.

Anyway, she and I got to talking in the office and it turns out that her children attend this school called Rudolf Steiner (apparently there’s a Canadian equivalent). I looked it up and it seems like a pretty interesting place to send your child. In addition to serving organic and vegetarian options on the lunch menu the school claims to strive for a bully free environment and place emphasis on peer support and even peer mediated resolutions. Students are not required to wear uniforms (which is rare here in New Zealand from what I can tell) and address their teachers by their first names. But they would also like to be clear: this does not make them hippies.

The American that was in the office with me spoke very highly of this type of school and told me that, in addition to all the other touchy feeling stuff, television was discouraged. Her kids, according to her, barely even know how to turn it on and when it is turned on they don’t really watch it. They haven’t even sat through an entire full length motion picture.

Now, I’m all about limiting T.V. consumption. I’m not even thirty yet and I’m already brandishing random canes at youths saying things like: when I was your age….in a phlegmy voice. And that’s only because when I was their age I only had three channels…and only one of them was in English. But I had ponies and the outdoors and friends with cable so I survived, y’know….

Sorta.

I think as long as your kids are going to a school where none of other the kids are really in tune with pop culture they’ll be alright. I was so not one of those kids. I had to go to school in the suburbs where the other kids not only had cable, they were walking distance to the mall and movie theatre which gave them a huge advantage over me when it came to knowing about music, actor names and other things we find important even if they’re really not. (Who’s Michael Jackson, guys? Is that the new character from the Bunnicula series? Guys?)

This one day we were given an assignment to draw a picture of our favourite T.V show. So as a sort of lame brainstorming exercise we would each raise our hands and tell the class our favourite show.

When I look back on my elementary school education I am surprised I can even read and write. If I could build a time machine (which isn’t likely considering my physics grades – eesh!) I would go back in time and beg my parents to get me a tutor so I could be homeschooled. I could’ve ridden ponies, played in rivers, read the books I wanted without being made fun of and not had to deal with morons like Dave Sears.

But I digress.

I was unusually quiet during this ‘brainstorming’ exercise. Partially because I had never heard of any of the shows the other kids were talking about and partially because I was pretty sure Saved By the Bell wasn’t going to make me very popular (not that I worried about these things…). Just as I was about to nod off, which I did a lot of while in school, Dave Sears tapped my shoulder and told me that he had already used up his turn but he really wanted to put his second favourite show on the board and would I please, please do it for him? Please?

Ok so I lied. I was always, and am still, very worried about being popular. I want so desperately for people to like me and feel absolutely horrible when they don’t – like I’ve failed them in some way equivalent to killing their brand new puppy.

So when Dave was asking me and the rest of his friends were looking at me encouragingly I couldn’t help but say yes. Yes, Dave – please, please like me. I raised my hand and when I was called upon by our teacher I told her:

“Bleu Nuit.”

As it turns out, Bleu Nuit was not the hip new show all the kids at school were watching to improve themselves for second period French class. It was (and might still be) a softcore porn.

I was a laughing stock. That is until I broke ten test tubes one day in science class. God, I hated school so much. I don’t think I was meant to be around normal people…

Unfortunately I had to go to the same high school as a lot of these other kids. I wasn’t too surprised when Dave turned out to be a huge tosser. I was however, quite surprised when that didn’t make him any less popular. Him and this other guy Steve used to compete for the highest grades in their classes. They were both in my Chem class and every time our test results would get posted we all had to endure Dave’s jeers and insults when he would get a better grade than Steve. Shortly after the Columbine shooting we were asked to stay in our first period classes (Chem for me) and talk about our feelings.

I put up with about twenty minutes of Dave and his friends going on about how bullying hurts, words hurt and wouldn’t it be nice if we could all just get along and not shoot each other? before I practically lost my mind.

Without raising my hand I told Dave that the way he treated his friends was probably the worse kind of abuse because it was so pedestrian. He couldn’t even be imaginative about it. Everything about him screamed my Daddy doesn’t love me and my Mommy won’t do anything about it and I had just about had enough of it. Sure we should be understanding that some people have rough home lives but at a certain point you want those people to man up and maybe put some of their own effort into not being complete assholes.

Man, I gotta tell you – I was not well liked at all after that. But who cares – if our school considered Dave and his friends cool then I didn’t want any part of it. Still, I wish I had had a few more channels growing up.

The two doctors, maybe in the mid-thirties, arrived about an hour after sunset. We were expecting them, of course. I had spoken to the man earlier last week about their stay. He told me there was conference in Westport, a small town about forty-five minutes North of us. He told me that he would rather stay in a nicer place and make the long drive. He told me that he needed a room to accommodate two people that were not a couple. I told him we had the perfect spot for them.

So when they walked into the office I asked about the conference. The man didn’t look like his voice sounded. He was skinny with longish unstyled black hair and a sharp angular face and he didn’t seem to have any idea what I was talking about. The woman he was with was prettier with a pale complexion and shoulder length strawberry blonde hair that curled gently to frame her soft features. She nodded and smiled kindly at me while he stuttered out an explanation that didn’t interest anyone.

And then I began to wonder. Maybe there is no conference. Maybe they’re having an affair. I imagine them both married. No, he’s married and she’s recently engaged to her boyfriend of five or six years. They both sacrificed everything to be top of their respective classes. They met at a graduation celebration held by a mutual friend. By the end of the night it’s impossible for them to ignore that they have something special in common.

So they arrange to meet. There is actually a medical conference in Westport but they have no intention on attending.

And now they’re here and he’s mumbling about how they need to get going because they have an early start and she’s gently leading him back to the car. I show them to their suite and leave them quickly to avoid any further awkwardness.

I imagine him pouring himself a glass of wine from a bottle he bought on his way here while she excuses herself to the bathroom. He drinks the wine in huge gulps trying to get drunk fast hoping it will ease the nausea that should be guilt. He’s pouring himself another glass when she opens the door to the bathroom and walks out wearing a full length lavender satin night gown that he had brought with him. He asks if it fits ok and she says yes even though the straps are digging into her shoulders because his wife is a size or two smaller than her.

She walks carefully over to her bag and pulls out an old t-shirt that she told her fiancé she was taking to sleep in. To feel close to him while she’s away. She hands it to the man with her now and he swaps his for it trying not to let it bother him that it’s much too big. Because that’s not the point.

He asks her if she’s ready and she nods and they walk into the bedroom, past the extra sheets and bedding we laid out for the pullout couch at their request. He asks her to sit on the bed and he drinks the entire contents of his second glass of wine. His head feels fuzzy and for a moment it looks as if he’s about to fall over. He clears his throat and looks at the woman intently and she understands that this is her cue.

“Is it too much to ask that you make the bed every once in a while.” She hisses at him.

He gasps and exhales sharply through flared, red nostrils. For a moment she’s afraid and he’s thinking about ripping the sheets one by one. The room melts away and suddenly he’s back in his house and the woman is his wife and she’s staring at him expectantly like a mother scolding a small child. His voice starts out like a shaky rumble but before long he’s spitting out every truth he’s ever held back for the sake of her feelings. He knows about the affair, he tells her. And what’s more he couldn’t care less. He hates her friends and knows what they say behind his back. He’s thinking about quitting or at least joining some project involved in feeding children in some malarial hole. Anything would be paradise next to the last four years being married to her. And he will leave her with nothing. He struggles to catch his breath as his wife’s hair is shortening and fading from its chestnut tones back to the woman’s red tinted blonde. He’s gasping for air as the room pulses unbearably until he’s back in the suite, hours away from his house, his wife and everything. His head feels like it’s been split in two and he’s regretting that second glass of wine.

The woman is still sitting on the bed trying not to look at the man as he takes a few calming breaths to regain composure. He clears his throat and she stands up and he takes her place on the bed. The t-shirt is sagging around his neck and he tries to tuck the extra material behind his slender frame. She waits patiently until he’s comfortable and he lifts his eyes to meet hers and delivers his line.

“Will you marry me?” He forces longing in his voice, the same way he did when he proposed to his own wife. But this isn’t his turn anymore.

The room doesn’t change but the man starts to inflate, not like a balloon but more like a cake rising, bubbling up in some spots until the shirt is straining against his bulk. Dark stubble covers his face and his hair becomes shorter, more serious. He waits for her answer.

“I can’t.”

And that’s all. She waits for anger, regret, something. But nothing comes, not even tears. And the two of them are left staring at each other in impotent silence. She starts to shake her head and opens her mouth to apologize but the man that is no longer her fiancé but now just the man stops her before she can. He tells her sometimes there’s nothing else to say.

She excuses herself again and leaves to change back into her own clothes. They feel better and she can breathe more easily. When she comes back out he has a glass of wine waiting for her. They sit on the couch in a comfortable silence, grateful for each other. Because the woman knows that the man will never tell his wife the things he wishes he could and will never leave her in the end. And the man knows that the woman will marry her fiancé and feign happiness for as long as it takes.

It’s late and they’re both tired. Neither one mentions the couch but instead walk back to the bedroom and turn down the covers. They lie down close but not touching and fall asleep.

The next morning they crumple up the extra sheets and put them in a corner with the rest of the bedding for us to find. Then they get into their respective cars and drive off in the direction of their respective houses, to their separate lives as though they are happy just like everybody else.

We went up to check the horses (all eighteen of them) for rain scald. Most of them had it, which kept us pretty busy scratching off scabs and bathing them in a virucide. It’s always better when we can go up on sunny days because the water we use from the river is usually freezing. There are three horses that are giving us trouble. They’re separate from the other fifteen and are almost impossible to catch. Tim’s been going up and bribing them with apples, but when we arrived with halters and buckets they were being coy again. We pushed them to the lower paddock and are hoping that they’ll settled down enough for us to treat them.

We take Lu (the dog – but you probably already knew that) up with us into the valley so she can get a good run. But we have to be careful she doesn’t corner a goat. If we lose track of her we stop and call out and wait for her to bark. Sometimes it’s close and sometimes it’s not – but either way Tim’s got to go bushwacking to find her and drag her away from her prey.

On our way up to the horses we passed by a herd of wild goats and we both rushed to keep Lu close, but she was too quick and already racing after them. Tim stopped the ATV and called her. Her bark wasn’t far off thankfully but it was joined by another one I would have hardly expected. It sounded just like the wailing of a small child. You know the kind of open mouthed cry a child makes when they didn’t get what they wanted? Exactly like that.

“Tim? There’s a kid in there! I’m sure of it – can you hear it?”

“It’s a kid – but not the kind you’re thinking.”

How eerie is it that a baby goat makes the same noise as a child? I can’t even think about it but I’m just grateful that Tim’s on the same page as I am about leaving them behind instead of bringing them back for Lu.

Unfortunately we weren’t able to keep her from catching a hare. Tim took off as soon as he heard her bark (if you can believe it she’s got a different bark depending on what’s she chasing) but didn’t get to her in time. She had bitten the hare hard in the hindquarters and it was too badly injured to run away. Tim, not wanting it to cause it any more suffering, took his knife and cut its throat.

We brought it home and Tim (seriously – it’s moments like these where I’m uber grateful to have him around) ‘took care of it’ and now it’s in our fridge waiting to be made into stew.

So while Tim searches for recipes I’ll sign off on these two notes.

I was mistaken – Sook-Yin Lee didn’t introduce me to The Acorn. It was her temporary replacement Mio Adilman. And he also told me about the Dom and Ernie Project an amazing story about one man (Dom) helping another man (Ernie) achieve his lifelong dream of biking across the U.S. It started out while Dom was biking around with a tandem bike asking people to help him on his way from Alaska to the Southernmost tip of South America. He met Ernie, a 74 year old cancer patient who had lost his wife six months prior and had always hoped to bike across the U.S., somewhere in California I think. You should check it out at http://blue-ant.tv/domandernie/01/index.htm.

** Shoot – I was looking something up about this and just found out that Ernie is too sick to make the trip so now Dom is looking for someone else that is in similar shape to take Ernie’s place so that they can raise money for LiveStrong together. Still worth checking out! **

And continuing with the theme of unnecessary spending here’s a story Tim read in Cuisine magazine:

In 1985 a bottle of 1787 Chateau Lafitte that had once belonged to Thomas Jefferson was auctioned off at Christies in London for just over $500 000 Canadian. But when the buyer brought it home and had it displayed the cork shrank and fell into the bottle turning it to vinegar!

(June 28, 2010) My life defining moments often remind me of good scenes from bad movies. This one in particular reminded me of that scene in Runaway Bride where Julia Roberts sits down after three (or so) failed attempts to walk down the aisle to decide how she likes her eggs. I think scrambled, but I can’t be sure. But the point is that her whole adult life instead of asking herself ‘how do I like my eggs?’ she would convince herself that she liked them the same way as everyone else.

And in a really sad way, I can totally relate. I am embarrassingly easily influenced by my friends’ opinions. I liked that movie until you told me it was shit. I liked that band until you said it was too mainstream. I liked my eggs sunny side up until you said that it was gross.

I’m not sure if you guys know but here in Punakaiki I spend a lot of time sitting quietly with myself reading and listening obsessively to Definitely Not the Opera podcasts. The latter started out as something to listen to when there was nothing on TV and I wanted something to keep me company while I knitted (that’s right. I like knitting) and it’s now become something so much more. I listen to Sook-Yin Lee talk to people about their experiences forgiving, the power of naming and what they’ve gained from their sacrifices every time I take the dog for a walk. Every time Tim takes off for a few hours. Before I go to bed. So, it wasn’t long before I would come bounding into Tim’s room exclaiming: “I was just listening to CBC” with the same story sharing enthusiasm my father radiates whenever he starts his sentences the same way.

And you know what Sook-Yin made me realize? I really like this Ottawa band called The Acorn. And they, in turn, introduced me to Jenn Grant and Dan Mangan who have been serenading me all day while I attempted bread baking for the fortieth time (and failed…but maybe it’s not really a failure since it’ll just be bread pudding later on).

And I was feeling really good about all of it until Tim came home from hiking expedition number three thousand and eighty-two and I started to think: oh shit. What if he doesn’t like it? What if he says something and I instantly begin to regret these purchases I should already be regretting because I can’t afford them?

Fortunately (and much to Tim’s surprise) I slapped myself. That’s what headphones are for, darling. And you can’t stand Alexisonfire. And that doesn’t bother him one bit.

And just like magic…nothing happened. The music kept playing. Tim didn’t really seem to mind (he had more to say about my bread baking fiasco, granted, so he may have been a little distracted). Which got me thinking – I have about two months before my old life swallows me up again and I will find myself churning along with the same stale gastric juices that made me the little pop culture automaton that you all remember. So I have very little time to grow a pair and stick to the things I like, regardless of other people’s opinions.

Starting with Constantine. I like totally super love that movie. Even with Keanu Reeves jolting uncomfortably from frame to frame, overacting each line in his charmingly halting way and missing every cue for comedic timing. And how could I miss an opportunity to watch Shia LaBeouf polishing up his soon to be trademark somewhat sarcastic ‘Reluctant Hero Meets Woody Allen Stutter’ routine?
But strangely I think the person that keeps me loving this film is (no, not Gavin Rossdale looking deliciously dapper in his suits. I mean, Lord forgive me – but if that’s a demon then I’ve been a bad girl…). No, it’s sexily androgynous Tilda Swinton playing the part of Gabriel.

Judge me all you want. That’s the point.

This next bit is for you, Albert. You once gave me some Scott Pilgrim Graphic Novels to read and I had to hand them back somewhat disgraced because I didn’t seem to share your incredibly enthusiasm. I am so sorry. So for you, I will dive back into the world of Graphic Novels but I won’t start with Scott Pilgrim because I don’t think I’m worthy just yet.

In fact as soon as I get a bit of cash I’m going to order Guy Delisle’s The Burma Chronicles, which came highly recommended by Tim himself, to get me started.

Oh and for the record. I like my eggs poached (and consequently learned how to poach them without an actual egg poaching device). I would rather go for a bike ride than run. I would rather run than hike. I will only drink coffee from a coffee shop. Chupa Chups Watermelon flavoured suckers help me think. Bret Easton Ellis is fast becoming my favourite writer along with Jasper Fforde, Mary Roach and Tracy Kidder. And I have no idea why I wanted to be a doctor.

And my MCAT results reflect just that.

And as much as I would like to find a deep psychological explanation for that that would give me hope that not all is lost – that everything happens for a reason – I find myself agreeing with John Constantine when he said: God is just a kid with an ant farm.

There really is no plan.

Our bread making is still taxiing on the runway. Despite excellent advice from both our mothers (and a father), neighbours, accosted grocery clerks and even the internet we have yet to bake a good looking loaf. We feed our yeast all the sugar it can handle, we keep it warm, we even sing to it and still nothing. The good thing is I’m getting really good at making bread pudding. So yesterday Tim was Skyping his parents and they bestowed upon him a failsafe recipe that would yield not one, but two loaves of bread. We didn’t waste any time. Well, Tim didn’t waste any time. Apparently the recipe is a big secret. I didn’t mind though, I was too busy watching Generation Kill wondering if I should laugh or cry.

Everything was going according to plan. The bread was rising to spectacular heights as we continue to feed the woodstove. We decided to let them rise overnight so that this morning we would pop them in the oven for twenty minutes and enjoy our first slices of reasonably sized homemade toast.

We were like two kids going to bed, hoping for Santa Claus.

This morning I was woken up by the beeping of Tim preheating the oven. I leapt out of bed and hurried to the kitchen and stopped short when I saw the look of supreme disappointment on his face.

There, on the counter, were our two loaves of bread, completely deflated. Just like our hopes and dreams.

But we baked them anyway. And when they came out piping hot from the oven we slit them open with a sharp blade like witches seeking out the day’s prophecy. We each grabbed and tore off sticky chunks of our bread’s innards and shoved them greedily into our mouths. And chewed. And stopped. And looked at each other for a moment.

“It tastes weird…” Tim said around a mouthful of failed bread.

“Is that vodka?” I asked totally confused.

“It does taste like alcohol.” Tim admitted after spitting out his piece.

“Dude,” I said in awe. “Dude you made moonshine bread…”

We could seriously write an entire book on screwing up baking bread. It is the most frustrating thing. But I’ve been cookin’ up some might tasty muffins and Tim’s still a whiz in the kitchen – so it’s not all doom and gloom.

Unlike the G-20 Summit. It was a little surreal looking at pictures of Toronto alit by the fires fueled by police cruisers. Seriously, folks? We need to riot? I wonder if the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo had to deal with morons setting cop cars on fire when they protested against the military regime that kidnapped and murders thousands of people. Maybe.

And I’m not saying we shouldn’t be a little uneasy about the outcome – or disappointed at the lack of one depending on who you’re reading. Paul Krugman from the New York Times (Thanks Cyn) appears to belong to the latter group when he writes: “governments are obsessing about inflation when the real threat is deflation, preaching the need for belt-tightening when the real problem is inadequate spending.” But a recent bit of news inspired the question – is it inadequate spending? Or irresponsible spending?

So, I before I sign off to fall back into a day of leisurely reading and deep thinking of important thoughts I just want to send a shout out to a little someone special.

Congratulations, Miley Cyrus for your recent purchase of a 3.4 million dollar home. I’m sure I speak on behalf of every homeless and soon-to-be jobless individual in North America, the people dying of preventable diseases in the poorest nations and the rest of those that struggle everyday on the meager bits this world has given them to survive – we’re super happy for you and the rest of your overpaid celebrity friends.

You bring out the Communist in me, Miley and that part strongly believes that the only person that should be awarded the salaries dished out to bulimic dancing queens and jacked up jocks is the person that holds the answer the world’s problem in their spit.

Sometimes, man…this world…the things in it…

…makes me wanna blow up a cop car or something…

And even after a week or so of thinking about it, I still can’t tell if that’s comforting or absolutely terrifying.

Joseph T. Hallinan is the Pulitzer winning author of Errornomics: why we make mistakes and what we can do to avoid them which I devoured in a mere few days (a task made easier without whiny children or a job, I’ll admit). The one main preventative measure I took from this book is to stop assuming you’re right, full stop. Because chances are you’re manipulating your memory in your favour.

(‘I didn’t say that nearly as harshly as you took it, dear. I only meant that those jeans made your ass look a little bigger…’)

Or you’ve left something completely unnoticed.

(‘Honestly, Officer, if I had seen you I would’ve slowed down.’)

Context is everything. How many people have found themselves in a circular argument with someone over minute details about an event that the other person ‘misremembers’? How we’re feeling, the kind of day we’re having, whether we’re hungry – everything – will have an effect on how we interpret certain events. And when gender becomes an element, things get even more heated. Women take failure harder than men, apparently, and in most cases are less willing to tinker with a problem to solve it. Which rings true in most stereotypes about men, women and directions.

“We’re lost.”

“We are not lost, I know where we are.”

“You do not know where we are. Stop and ask for directions.”

“I don’t need directions. I’m.not.lost.”

And you know what’s really interesting? Your guy isn’t being difficult. He really doesn’t think he’s lost.

And if that isn’t enough, it turns out that neither gender is particularly skilled at multitasking and are pretty easily distracted (like the pilots of Eastern Airlines Flight 401 who became so engrossed with finding out why a 12$ light bulb was out that they forgot to fly the plane and subsequently crashed, killing everyone).

So all those gizmos major car companies are installing in our dashboards are only increasing the chances that we’ll be involved in a collision due to inattention. And yet we are continually being told that this is to simplify our lives. Our lives that have been taken over by ipods, blackberries, netbooks and grande soy halfdecaf double shot sugarless caramel lattes. Seriously, though, does it frighten anyone else that we are creating a world that seems to overestimate our rather limited processing abilities?

And when we aren’t trying to avoid crashing into low-lying terrain and god knows what else we’re battling the effects of overconfidence in gambling (whether in the casino or the stocks – but really when it comes down it, what’s the difference?), hindsight bias (which is not even close to 20/20) and our innate human need to find patterns even when they don’t exist (constellations? They’re just random stars, folks. Let it go.).

It seems that a lot of the errors we make have deep roots in our humanness. We think rather highly of ourselves and are prone to explaining away our mistakes instead of searching out the causes and learning from them. And we are so apt to stick with our first impressions that we’ll often ignore glaring evidence to the contrary. Statistics show that the majority of the time students improve their scores on tests when they change their initial answers yet what are we consistently advised to do? Stick with your first gut instinct.

And experts are hardly above any of this. In fact, sometimes it hurts to know too much. The patterns are so ingrained that they overlook errors that are sometimes picked up by rookies. So give that a think the next time your doctor tells you: don’t worry, I’ve done this procedure thousands of times before…

We’ve all heard of how the media takes advantage of psychological studies and data on human behavior to encourage us to consume junk we don’t need, but playing French music to get you to buy French wine isn’t the half of it. The danger lies in situations where you’re taking advice from people who don’t even fully understand their own lack of qualifications.

Like your stockbroker and Dr. Phil.

(And even in some cases Dr. Oz. I mean, c’mon Oprah, stop subjecting us to these baboons…)

And even they’re not the tip of the pseudointelligence iceberg. To get into why we feel compelled to listen to outrageous conspiracy theories and overdose on homeopathic supplements you need to read Damian Thompson’s book Counterknowledge.

Top that off with Leonard Mlodinow’s Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules our Lives and you’ll soon be glaring at everyone through skeptically squinted eyes shouting things like: what’s your game, friend? In the middle of the juice aisle.

So godspeed, little cynics. Godspeed.

Which really stinks, because I’m still looking out over paradise. The weather’s been a bit pants, really. Raining off and on and winds so strong I’m sure Tim lies in his bed at night wondering if that palm tree outside his room is going to fall on his head because there’s a great big hole rotted through its trunk.

We called up a neighbour (Tim, if you can believe it. I am literally surrounded by Tims in this town) to come have a look and he didn’t seem too concerned. So there’s nothing left to do but wait and see.

The ocean is overflowing into the river with all the rain. It’s beautiful to watch the gigantic waves crash into the rocks and swallow up the beach. Lately, we’ve had to take the dog up into the valley for her walk which isn’t so bad. I plug into my latest Definitely Not the Opera podcast, arm myself with a big stick as protection against any T-Rex’s and enjoy the new landscape created by this new, all-consuming river.
Right, but today was out to get me. Despite my most valiant efforts I am completely inept at getting this goddamn fire started. Every time I see my tiny flame snuff out, unwilling to blaze long enough to even tickle the kindling, I’m transported back to those freezing cold Ice Storm days.

Do you guys remember the Ice Storm? Winter of 1998? Well, no matter. Where I was living we were without power for two weeks after a night of freezing rain knocked out the hydro lines. At first it wasn’t so bad. Our house had a woodstove and my mother liked to collect oil lamps. But then after a while the novelty wore off and it was getting colder. So cold, in fact, I didn’t take off my bottom three layers of clothes until my parents brought me into town to go to the gym for a shower. So at night, I slept next to the woodstove with my two dogs and six layers of clothing and during the day my responsibility was to keep the fire going while my parents drove to work.

And I wouldn’t have minded staying home from school to read the books of my parent’s extensive library if I wasn’t spending most of the damn day trying to keep that fucking fire going. ‘We need this fire’ I would tell myself desperately. We used that fire to cook, to melt snow to give the horses water (that is until my father said ‘fuck this’ and started buying them great big cooler bottles). It took me about a week and a half to finally get the hang of it. By then, my grandfather in North Carolina had started tuning into CBC and sent us a generator.

Here, when I get up before Tim (and believe me, I stay in bed reading as long as I can hoping he’ll get up and start it and save me the frustration) I tell myself ‘you’ve done this before you can do it again, how hard is it to light a fire?’. Apparently, quite hard. I’m sure Tim is lying in bed listening to me rip up newspapers, strike match after match and blow ‘til my lungs threaten to turn themselves inside out and just counting down until I freak out because I am still only able to conjure the smallest flame known to man.
And no matter how hard I try, this will taint the rest of my day. Every attempt I make afterwards is clumsy and ridiculous. The only solution is to either go back under the covers or drown myself in the shower.

[Note: I always smile a bit when I say that last bit to someone and they treat it like veritable suicide threat. I never mention that the drain in the bottom would constantly foil even my best attempts. I think I hope that in their darkest hour they consider this as their only escape route and someone will find them hours later, sobered up and with their fingers all pruney.]

But of course, neither is an alternative. And I think deep down this whole, life-is-so-difficult-I-might-just-swoon-on-the-couch-with-the-back-of-one-hand-pressed-to-my-delicately-perspiring-forehead (though I’m hardly sweating because of the heat in this house) is just a way to procrastinate from my outline writing.

I’ve committed myself to write a thousand words a day of this book I’m trying to finish. It was so much easier writing it when I had school and work to try and escape from. But now there’s no excuse.

Nothing to complain about except this stubborn as woodstove.