Little known fact: I have a back deck on my apartment.

The weather this year has been so crap I haven’t been able to share it’s wondrous spaciousness with anyone, but we have an adopted porch swing and a fence and everything! I discovered not long ago that our Christmas lights were outdoor ones so I strung them up on our swing and have enjoyed evenings out on the swing ever since (whenever it’s dry).

Anyway, I’m sitting out here tonight - justifying it that because it was nice and blue sky-ish near the end of the day and because the seat is dry, I can sit out and blog. Despite the fact that SFU’s elevation and the general dampness in the air makes it like 8 degrees out. I can see my breath!

Ironically enough, I will be having a birthday/”house-cooling” party in a few weeks to mark the departure from residence apartment life…. if I can ever find a place to live. This has been my hardest transition to new housing - I feel like if I framed every “sorry, we wish you well but our suite has stairs” e-mail it would wallpaper my bedroom.

So… if you receive a frantic phone call around the 1st of August, you’ll know to make up your living room couch for me and 10 of my favourite storage boxes.

Having laid bare her fears of failure, our heroine conducted herself through the first day of her charge with aplomb; fears of inadequacy dispelled by the realities of gainful employment (and friendly co-workers).

L.M. Montgomery’s English aside, work was good. Nice desk, nice office, nice people. I have my own local (!), business cards (!!), and a desk that is primarily mine (near a window!). I am no longer the one who gets banished to the library to “research” when the “big kids” need my workstation… I am the one who will do the banishing (somewhat). I can barely believe it. No longer “6% in lieu of vacation,” I actually get sick days, one 1/2 day every month for appointments (paid), and other such good things. It’s so strange. I keep reminding myself to assume the role and the reality will come later.

Which brings me to the issue of blogging and work.
There are so many famous and unfortunate cases of people who ruined their careers by blogging indiscriminately about their co-workers or work content. This is not something I anticipate happening, however it does complicate matters, because my blog has almost always been about my life. Work has just executed a spectacular invasion of my previously hectic but flexible schedule, leaving me very little time in which to process and generate blog fodder. How do I balance this need for discretion with the need to diarize the minutiae of my life?

Tomorrow is my first day at work.

I’m a little nervous. I feel like I now know none of which I confidently assured my employers during the job interview. I feel like taking this job was a huge mistake.

I’m one of very few people in the world who doesn’t need to work. Before you get angry, that comes with a strict condition - you have to be able (/willing) to live with a $375 rent stipend per month and around $450 for everything else, including groceries, gas, entertainment and clothes. It’s not so much fun, but it does give me the luxury of not working while in school. But it also comes with severe restrictions on movement, lifestyle and dignity.

I’m not done school yet. My final project is not where I want it to be - but I felt that it was time. I realized all of a sudden that this was my decision to make, and my opportunity to make it. I’ve been in school for so long that I’d gotten used to the rhythm of school and class and professors calling all the shots, but in actuality, I do. It’s my turn to take hold of what I want, where I’m going - and I realized that I was letting a small thing like a due date keep me in the same rut I’ve been in for… too long. I realized that sticking around my faculty any longer was to risk having my work being further devalued, and being taken advantage of yet again.

I love my program, but it was time to grow up - graduand or not.

Oh, I’ll finish, you better believe it.
Only, I’ve learned recently that “growing up” and “graduating” don’t always happen concurrently - so it’s time to get on with things.

I spent much of my childhood/preteen/adolescent summers on my parents’ boat, cruising up and down the Strait of Georgia, visiting the Gulf Islands, the Sunshine Coast, and the mis-named Desolation Sound. People often find this quite surprising given that I’ve had a disability my whole life (and the fact that wheels don’t tend to mix so well with water or boats), but there you go - it’s true. We always just found a way.

I haven’t been on my parents’ boat since I was…. 16 or 17. At a certain point, flinging my body around into small crevices, dragging my butt over the teak deck (often ramming my hip into a cleat - OUCH), and flipping myself into the V-bunk at the bow of the boat was just not so fun anymore. At any rate, not as fun as basketball.

Recently I met my parents during their 3-month trip aboard a capella as they were docked in Ganges Harbour waiting for Will and Briana who were coming for a wedding. It was crazy to be on the boat again, flinging my now-28ish year old body into the same places my (substantially bigger) 16 year old body was 10 years ago is a real trick. I’m out of practice with the monkey routine, and my bum bones don’t take as well to “scooching” as they used to.

But all the same, it was nice to be outside the city, soaking in the green, earthy smells, waking up to see water and seabirds outside your window (instead of rain and pigeons). It was so novel to be in the boat and smell the mix of diesel fuel, salt water, mom’s cooking, and seafood, to bob back and forth during the night as the boat rises and falls in the water. You can read more about mom and dad’s travels at her blog: Bird Droppings. (”Bird” has always been my dad’s pet name for my mom.)

So I disappear for a few weeks from blogging and what happens? I lose the love completely… five posts and no comments? What’s up, peeps? Where’s the love?

I am employed!

Wahoo!

that is all.

Heather Mallick, noted Canadian journalist and author, responds to the cattiness of fellow female columnists writing about the Maxime Bernier affair, and - ahem - Bernier’s busty girlfriend.
It’s delicious, girls, positively delicious.

Jenn sounded off recently about media sensationalism in the photos of Burma’s Cyclone Nargis… which made me comment (perhaps too much!): (note that I couldn’t find the specific pictures that Jenn mentioned, but I’ve seen so much of the recent media coverage that I’m pretty sure I have a good idea of what she’s talking about.)

I get your point - I abhor sensationalism as much as the next person… but the activist side of me knows how important images are to the communication of critical messages.

*BTW you HAVE to read James Orbinski’s An Imperfect Offering, speaking of peacekeeping. It changed me.

www.blog4burma.blogspot.com

I used to have the cutest feet ever.

Seriously. I wear a 2.5 in Converse kids shoes (converts to a womens size 3.5). I call them my “potato feet” because they are wide and short and round like a baby’s. Even a year or two ago I could put these puppies in the coolest of shoes. I developed a rep in my family for having a shoe fetish (seriously though - I had at the most, 14 pairs. My mom has 14 pairs of black shoes ALONE. Who’s the real shoe person?) because I had such an awesome collection of footwear.

But now, my feet are swollen all the time - it’s a circulation problem that sometimes happens when you can’t walk, but I have no idea why it’s happened all at once for me. My feet look like they belong on 82 year old Millie and are swollen and mottled and don’t fit in ANYTHING…
…which is fine when you live in a rest home and wear flowered doily dresses and play bridge with Norman from 318, but when you are 28 and single and fabulous, it’s such a SHITTY THING.

Just saying - no more shoe fetish comments, okay?
There’s a reason I only ever wear Converse Chuck Taylors.

I was offered a job last week. For the very first time in my life, I’m in that position where I have an employer seeking ME out, trying to get me to say yes because I’m the candidate that they wanted most out of all who interviewed. I started applying for work because the conference basically delayed things to the point that I a) got so sick of being at school, and b) ran out of money. If I’d finished it when I’d intended, ie in time for June convocation, I’d be looking for work right now anyway…. so I saw some job postings that looked interesting and applied just to see where I stood in the market.

Now, of course, this has triggered all sorts of soul-searching and navel gazing: what do I want to be when I grow up? Where does an MPH in Global Health get you anyway? In the wake of being made the legal guardian (is this the right term?) for my brother and sister-in-law’s son Wesley in the event of their untimely demise, I’ve found myself wondering if a life of gallivanting around is really what I want for myself. I just can’t stand being away from these magical little people in my life for very long - Matty, Sol, Simon, Wesley… They grow up so quickly! Do I really want to miss a minute of their lives?

I am still incredibly committed to the promotion of health access and fighting injustice in the world, but I keep wondering - where? How? What if this opportunity in Kyrgyzstan doesn’t turn out? How can I find an opportunity that I’ve always dreamed of, working with an international organization, really contributing to improving access to health care to vulnerable people, when I have no clinical skills? I feel like I’m having a professional crisis of confidence!

By this time next week, either way, I’ll be employed, and will either have already worked two days, or will be preparing to start my first day back at work in a “real job.” I’m SO EXCITED. I can’t even tell you. The idea of going to work and coming home from work, even on the bus, even for not so much money, is so incredibly amazing after paying enormous amounts of money to slave away at University for so long, is just amazing!

So. That said, I have no idea where I am or where I’m going, but I’m glad to say, I’m happy to be moving in some direction at all.