Even though I’ve spent a good deal of my lifetime DEATHLY afraid of needles, almost exactly four years ago, I walked into a tattoo shop in Osbourne Village, Winnipeg, and ON PURPOSE (and without drugs or alcohol of ANY kind) got a spontaneous tattoo from a gent named Cameron, who just happened to be one of the toughest looking humans I’d ever had the good luck to see. I have to say, I still really get a rise out of the fact that a man who was sporting a leather vest with a biker patch on the back, stalking the…

Bear (get it, forest, bear...I'm staying on theme, y'all) with me for a sec...I will get to the adventure...but I have to tell you about another adventure  first... About Three weeks ago, before my ECSTATICALLY ALONE breakthrough moment, I'd been texting with a gent I'd met...well, VIRTUALLY met on a dating app... SIDEBAR: Though I support and celebrate all the humans who are meeting and have met people on dating apps...me having been one of them...no matter how long I am out in the dating world, even writing "met virtually on a dating app" makes me feel an all round…

Zzzzz. Bzzzzzzz…zzzzzzz. Is there something in my ear? Why is my face so hot? It’s boiling…like burning. Where am I!?!? I wake up fast, like I owe someone money…and I find myself in front of a lake, in that red muskoka chair I fell asleep in and the incredibly hot late day sun is burning, burning it’s way through my skull, it seems. And the bugs…I am being over taken by bugs of every shape, size, colour, and velocity. Fast and stinging, slow and running into your face and then the virtually millions of hovering, annoying mosquitos of the suck-all-your-blood-while-you-are-sleeping-off-a-huge-backpack-hike…

Last Tuesday, all of a sudden, I found myself with 7 days off in a row…in the glorious, humid, weird, almost normal but definitely NOT normal dog days of summer 2021. The two projects I’m on moved my work days for this week to another week altogether…moved both of them…and I found myself with some unexpected free time In the olden days…not before-the-pandemic olden days, but before-I-was-single-again olden days… SIDEBAR: That’s still so weird to say…single…it sounds like I’m a character not unlike Mary Richards from the Mary Tyler Moore Show. Single. Single again. Stylishly solo. By choice. Well, maybe…

  Ecstatically Alone. My friend uttered those words to me yesterday and they fell straight into my soul, no hyperbole...no joke...no stopping at GO to collect 200 hundred dollars...and if you don't get THAT reference? WELL, then you've never played Monopoly...which, incidentally, was my favourite thing to do all summer, almost EVERY summer, when I was growing up. You know what? I gotta find me a double vaxx Monopoly group. That was an out loud thought. Okay. Yesterday, at around sunset in Toronto, I found myself sitting on my life jacket, on the beach that is inside the break walls…

(The following was written while Ray LaMontagne's JOLENE and then Bob Schnieder's KATIE was playing in the background...just for soundtrack reference, in case you would like this reading experience to be immersive and listen to two very diverse songs written about women, while you read this. UPDATE: at the end, Mariah's FANTASY played, as well...just for flavour. ALSO, it was written on the Monday of the long weekend…so do the time machine work, will you?) This long weekend, it kinda feels like I have shaken off the pandemic for a while...well, till the inevitable fourth wave arrives, anyhow...but the world…

So, I'm sitting here, at my writing desk, in my bathing suit and cover up...just about to leave for a covid test and then a beach day...in THAT ORDER. Oh summer, 2021. You gotta test to work, people, and I have GRATEFULLY had about 100 covid tests (or more) in the last eleven months. GRATEFULLY. GET VACCINATED!! That is my PSA for vaccination for the day. Please don't write me if you disagree...I mean, you can if you want...but, to be honest, I will not read it. Just keeping it real and true. ANYHOW!! I was meditating this morning...I know,…

A couple of months ago, just after I started work for the summer, I came home after a long day, turned on the lights, looked around and realized that my apartment... ...I love calling it an apartment like they do in NY, even when it's a condo, so I'm going with that.... ...I realized that my APARTMENT was almost finished...there was nothing I needed to buy or find to make it warmer. It was done. I promised myself, back when I sold my house, I would only sell my house, if I made my APARTMENT as awesome as my house...and…

Hey Mighty HUMANS! It's a lazy, hot Sunday here in the 416...I cannot pull that off, can I?...that amount of coolness...rephrase: it's a lazy, hot Sunday here in Toronto. I used to do this thing on the FACEBOOK back when I was on it all the time...it's a demon, that platform...I would find WHOLE afternoons captured and held ransom, while I looked around at how wonderful everyone else's vacation/life/outfit/relationship was... DEMON...anyhow, back in the day, I used to make lists of things that were never long enough to write a blog about, but that I felt deserved to be written…

  I was driving home from my pal’s cottage (it was an absolutely lovely trip, to say the very least) this weekend, and a stray thought slithered through my water logged, sun cooked and 100% peaceful/happy brain. What if I could live, change, work, grieve, love, move, sleep and lay in my body…this body…without impunity or notice? What would that look and feel like? Read that again…and imagine. I think I actually moaned out loud at this sudden,  shocking and desirable thought. I mean…IMAGINE. IMAGINE just waking up, breathing, living, being and changing without anyone commenting, noticing or categorizing. Fuuuuck.…