my city holds its breath.

Beck's song "Earthquake Weather" is in rotation on my iPod (as are such timeless classics as "The Hamster Dance" and Duran Duran's "View to a Kill", but the awful songs on there are another post altogether). I remember reading somewhere once- where? probably on the internet- that the Japanese called certain weather "earthquake weather"; days of stillness, as I recall, when there was no wind and everything waited.

My city is waiting today. Grey and still and untimely humid for mid-April. I run to the park and around the lake once, twice, three times, gulping in air that feels too still and too moist. It has been a day of sitting in front of the computer fiddling around with Photoshop. Day two of my first "professional" photography gig. Running is a relief and an escape and a question: how much longer will I be able to run? Will there still be too much snow up north? Will I be too afraid of bears to attempt it?

Today I hold my breath and cinch myself into the corset I will wear all summer long under various Gold Rush-era costumes. I hope that by the end of the summer I will be smaller and the corset will be more forgiving, but who knows?

I know that around the world, people are waiting too. For planes to be able to fly again. For a volcano to stop spreading so much ash, already. I know people who are getting ready to fly to Europe this week. Will they be leaving on schedule?

Every morning I rise early, for me, with a load of energy and high spirits that nothing can quench for long. I am so grateful for this energy, and fearful of its leaving.

I am counting down: last time I play with this band. Last time I play with that one. Last time I see him or her; last time I do that or go there. Soon, there will be new stories to tell you, new people in my life.

Maybe new people will read my stories, too. I'm planning to keep writing, but at a new location for the summer. Come on over and visit me here, starting in May. I hope you have a great spring. Me, I can't wait for the waiting to be over.

i have been sitting so long, my ass is numb

trying to write things but the words don't come

waiting for inspiration but my skies are grey

feeling like i wasted this free day

there are a million things i should get done

but do i want to do any of them? not one

emails are trivial, phone doesn't ring

no willpower to practice or sing

i could complain or simply shrug and say

"this day's a write-off, tomorrow's a new day"

far away/so close.

Doesn't air travel blow your mind?

I mean, isn't it crazy that I can wake up in Vancouver, BC, get on a train, be at the airport in under an hour and be in Winnipeg, Manitoba less than six hours after I woke up? And I can also iChat with my sweetie and talk for free over the internet as if we were almost in the same house. The world is tiny.

I'm in the Prairies to spend a week with my mom, who's been out here since January doing some stage managing until mid-May. If I don't see her now, then by the time she gets back I'll be up north and who knows when we'll meet up?

She's staying long-term in a B&B haunted by three portly cats: Indy, Pumpkin and Shadow. Today we roamed by the Forks and had sushi (sushi! on the prairies! another example of how small the world now is!) and I marveled at the sun and the complete absence of snow. (An unfortunate by-product of how small we make our world? Jet fuel as destroyer of snowy landscapes?)

I get back and a few weeks later I'll be gone again. Up north, where I suspect everything will seem far away and the world will get larger again. Until then I scratch a living catch-as-catch-can, play a few last gigs and savour the good stuff:

• looking out from the stage at a gig and seeing some of the people I love most staring back at me
• sharing a stage with three of the craziest, most inspired friends I have, and getting to make music with them
• sunny spring days in Manitoba with my mom

This spring is shaking up my old beliefs and habits and making me believe that life could change forever.

What is Spring telling you?

Stop the presses! Professional Musician Actually Caught in the Act of

Practicing Her Instruments!

Stunned partner, friends say they've "never seen anything like it!"

It's sad but true. I don't often just sit around and work at becoming a better accordion player and singer. Which, I know. "Ambivalent" and "Lazy" probably don't cover the half of it. Being one of those lucky folks who can coast through most things in life without putting in a lot of grind is a mixed blessing I guess: saves you a lot of effort but gives you lousy work habits.

But here's the thing- having to work at a crappy retail job 3 days a week sure gives you (and by you, I mean me) a better appreciation for the work you really love. And a burning desire to do more of that and less standing around making sure grubby little children don't get too violent with puppets that don't belong to them.

So on my days off I'm pleased to report that I've been putting in some long-overdue work on my 2 favorite instruments and actually hearing the results. Which is good, because I have some gigs coming up.

Being productive is also helping me to avoid the 800-pound elephant in the room. You know, the one with dollar signs in its eyes and a sign around its neck that says You Owe Me. Because really, who don't I owe at this point? Visa, Cel Phone, Utilities, Taxman, Medical... they're all lining up to take a piece. And I really, really have nothing left to give them. This time of year is always brutal. And I'm lousy with money. So roll on, May. Because although it means I'll be heading far, far away from my home and loved ones, at least there's a steady job waiting for me. (Thankfully, compared to most people with credit cards and mortgages and kids, my debt load is tiny. And I know I can get out with some steady work. It's just that my work is so seldom steady.)

Being at home has also given me ample time to read my favorite blogs and news sites, and so I offer the following observations:

• Why, why, WHY is "DH" the preferred acronym for one's husband in the blogging world? As in "dear husband"? Can we get any more 1950's? Blech.
• I hereby swear to never, ever use the following texting acronyms: LOL, IMHO, ROFLMAO. They annoy me. However, I do admit to using BTW and my favorite: WTF.
• If I have kids, they will never have a "playdate".

Okay, time to do some chores. Otherwise, my DCLS (darling common-law spouse) will come home and shout "WTF?!"

Later, 'gators.

In the midst of honking horns, gleeful shouts, a fairytale ending to two weeks of olympic games-

A sobering email comes in.

It's from my aunt in England. It's titled simply, Mother. It can only mean one thing.

My grandmother, my mother's mother. Gladys Dennis. Grandmee is dead, at the staggering age of 103.

Bon writes so tenderly in this post about caring for her grandfather as he nears the end of his life in a hospital bed. I am bowled over by her love for him. I am so sad that I have never felt anything like this for my own grandparents.

My relationship with her was a casualty of distance and dementia. She lived in England. I live in Canada. When she did live with us, for 5 years, her mind was still ok but her body was failing her. She was the sick lady in the guest bedroom. Then as her body got better, my parents split up and she went back to the UK and lost her memory. My aunt would go upstairs to work and Gran would forget that she was still there and call the police and say she'd been abandoned. She went into a home and survived, as tiny and frail as a bird, long after her sense of self had flown.

When she saw you, her face would light up and she'd say "Hello, Lovely!" Even though she didn't really know who you were she knew you were someone she loved.

She couldn't remember what happened fifteen minutes ago, but she could sing the lyrics to wartime pop songs and seeing Hitler's face in a documentary could still inspire pure terror in her.

Her house was bombed to the ground in World War Two.

She survived on her own after her husband Fred Dennis died of emphysema when my mom was 19.

She was born in 1906. Nineteen-oh-six. Can you imagine the things she saw, the changes she lived through?

I wish I'd known her better. I wish I'd appreciated her more when she was with us. I wish so much of my family wasn't so far away.

Rest in peace, Grandma.

Yesterday, J & I celebrated our 12th anniversary together. What did we do? Well, we ended up playing 'tourists' for a day, and got caught up in the Olympic Party Machine that is sweeping our city at the moment. The surprising part, at least to me, was that we ended up having such a good time doing it.

Yes, the Games have begun, and like many people in Vancouver my thoughts about them were mildly grumpy when I though about the crowds, and extra-grumpy when I thought about the staggering expense attached, the expense that we'll ALL be paying off for years and years to come.

I have no problem with athletes. In some ways they are like artists: they practice their skill hard for years and years and most see very little reward for their work. (I mean, when was the last time you saw a bobsledder with a big-name sponsor? They all get media hype for the olympics, but I bet most of us would be hard-pressed to name a luger, a curler or a ski jumper when the games aren't on.) As a non-athlete who is cowardly about heights and pain, I have huge admiration for people who can jump off a gigantic slide and soar through the air, or survive being cut in the face by their partner's skate and even think of trying again. Some might say that what they do is ridiculous, but hey, I play the accordion for a living. I prance around on stage pretending that I'm someone else from time to time as well. Who am I to throw stones? So if these athletes want to compete in their sports and win little metal discs as a reward for their risks, their pain, their hard work, good on 'em.

I DO have a HUGE problem with the olympics as a money-sucking, corporation-favoring machine. I think that they have no business spending the amount of money that gets spent on these games, lying about how much it's going to cost, and then making us pay through the nose for years. My friend Rodney deCroo writes brilliantly about it on his facebook page, and his arguments are much better-informed than mine, so I'll get off my soapbox now, and say...

... that before yesterday, I never would have believed that I could have so much fun in downtown Vancouver on a Tuesday in February! Jon and I walked around for hours, taking in the free performances, the crowds, the fun. And I thought isn't it kind of sad that we need this kind of bloated, over-priced, over-budget event in our city to let our hair down?

Restaurants packed with happy diners. Strangers spontaneously talking to each other. Parties in the streets. Free concerts all over the place. Pedestrian-only areas. Art installations everywhere. A downtown core filled with crowds and excitement. For a moment, we have become a city that knows how to celebrate life.

When this is all over the after-party hangover will begin, and we will be grumpy again. But I hope that we will remember to tell the ones in power that this- this explosion of art and music everywhere is what Vancouver needs more of.

And in this time of gigantic budget cuts to the arts, something that we're going to see less and less of, unless we fight hard to be heard.

Fired Up

Last night I emailed a friend:

'You know how I started off the New Year nearly naked in a hot tub with you and B, swearing up and down that I wanted to take more action in my life and stop watching from the sidelines all the time? Well, I have no work and life feels as if it's kind of standing still, but now I'm back from Surrey and excited about starting to figure out where the hell I'm headed for the next few months...'

Man, I was so full of fire in early January! And then life and inertia and unemployment and dogsitting rose up and claimed me, and I tumbled happily back into the sticky chocolate pudding-ness of the everyday, where you take a few stumbling steps forward and a few more giant sliding steps backward again.

I am back from my doggy job in Surrey, and as much as I bitched about the locale, I was overjoyed to spend time bonding with my furry 'niece' and 'nephew'. How can you possibly complain too much about this:

"I'm getting fed up with these damn photos!"

...and this:

"Pleasepleaseplease play Tug-o'-War with me rightnowrightnowrightnow!"

Nope, pretty hard to complain about that, huh?

Plus, they don't call it "City of Parks" for nothing:

Pretty hard to believe that this is 10 minutes' walk from Strip Mall Hell, isn't it?

Back when I was more fiery and conflicted, lo these 2 months ago, I accepted a job offer that will take me up north for 4 months this summer, and I was reminded of that job yesterday as I sat in on someone else's audition. Now only 3 months (less, actually) away, and I am excited to work somewhere that will stretch me as a person and as a performer.

Here's what else I want to experience in the next couple of years:

• I want to go to the UK with my guy and see our families over there.
• I want to hear the call to prayer soaring up from hundreds of mosques in Istanbul again.
• I want to sing more often, and get really good at it.
• I want to play music in Montreal, Toronto & Europe with my best friends.
• and more prosaically, I would like to sort out my finances so that the future isn't so scary, tax time isn't a drag, and collection agents don't call us all the time.

Let's see how that goes, shall we?

(In the mean time, stay tuned for my reports as the bloated, costly Olympics descend on my city. I intend to go to as many free concerts as I can, avoid all public transit, and definitely not see any of the actual sporting events.)

Oh, and by the way, I made 2 incredible pizzas tonight. From scratch. Dough and all. In case you thought I was doing nothing with my days. Cooking: I highly recommend it. You will always surprise yourself with what you can do.