About A Stepdad

A great game tonight,  not just because the  Canucks won but because of why they won.

There will those who will say it was Daniel Sedin.  Others will say it was Cory Schneider.

They would all be wrong.  It was due to my friends, Sheila and Lani wearing their jerseys.  Mock that if you will, but look at the facts.  The Canucks didn’t play that well.  The crowd couldn’t stop the Canucks. The Canucks couldn’t stop the Canucks.  The first period had all the feeling of an LA blow out.  But then every break came the Canucks way.  Posts were hit.  A fast whistle stopped an LA goal.  Deflections went our way.  The Canucks didn’t shoot the puck over the glass at EXACTLY the wrong moment.  The refs didn’t decide to make a rash of bad calls. 

Nope, luck was on our side. 

Why?

The Jersey Girls. 

If you see them (they are on FB) thank them. 

Always bitter sweet.

Especially after having such a great time in Victoria.  Not that I don’t have some amazing people here, not that I don’t love my own bed and not that there aren’t things to do but coming home means I have to get on with things.  Taxes.  Bleh.  Bills.  Yuck.  Cleaning the house.  Barf.

Maybe it should be the other way around.  When I go to visit people in Victoria, they should make me do the laundry or weed their garden or do up a budget.  They should make me take their pets to the vet or figure out how to fix a touchpad problem or phone the cable guys and wait a half hour until they answer.   I shouldn’t be given a free ride.  It makes coming home all that much harder.

Now, hmm, what did I leave in the fridge that’s giving off that awful smell?

Yup, that’s my theme for this visit to Victoria.  KISS. 

Today was no exception.  Began with cupcakes and tea with my friend, Claire and her little boy Ati.  We ate at Crumsby’s.    A cupcake cafe.  A chalkboard over the counter.  Pale blue walls.  Scuffed floors from many little feet. 

It’s a place for moms, mostly, to gather and have a coffee, something sweet and chat while their children explore the part of the café filled with toys.    I love that the little kids are given small tea cups for their drinks (though clearly certain adults will sip from those cups as well) and that it’s a safe place for kids to play.

It’s amazing to watch how little kids interact with each other.  One little girl mothered a smaller girl, protecting her, supporting her, making sure she didn’t fall.  One little kid refused to come out from under the table.  One stuffed pretty much every toy he had into his mouth.  One tried valiantly to show other children how the toys worked only to have them run back to mommy.

It’s just not something I can do all by myself.  I can’t sit in a café, eat a cupcake and watch little kids play.  It’s kinda sad that that is the world we live in but so be it.  It was fun to do while chatting with Claire.

Then to the beach with my doggies in tow, little Ati in his rain slicker and Claire bundled up in her red leather coat against the wind.

For the dogs, it’s chance to run around in the sand, to find a good stick to chew and to splash in the cold sea.  For Ati, it’s a world filled with driftwood forts, all sorts of cool pieces of wood that look like guns or swords or skulls.  It’s a world filled with sand to be moved, molded or to bury things in.  It’s a world of shiny stones that need to be rubbed and looked at. 

For Claire, it’s a world where she ends up carrying and armload of driftwood, has her pockets stuffed with beach stones and her camera filled with neat memories.

For me, it’s an opportunity to chase down recycling blown away by the hurricane winds, to get my new shoes filled with sand and watch my doggies and Claire and Ati at play.  Simple, uncomplicated play.

Simply wonderful.

After that, a lovely chat with a friend (at Starbucks in Oak Bay) about her novel .   It’s fun to be a part of the creative process while the sun is still out and the coffee shop is filled with people chatting, no one who’s sitting in a rush, everyone taking a long moment to take a pause in their day. 

I return to Bill and Thora’s for supper and to take a quick trip to Margot’s Space.  There are new flower beds in Margot’s Space now, the earth black and fresh, the plants newly planted and green and growing.  Her tree has doubled in height since last year and green buds are just beginning to form on the branches.  This place is always a reminder of the life I had, the loss I feel everyday but like the tree, my new life begins to grow.  Joe 2.0.   Green buds on an empty branch.

Dinner is a totally Joe-meal of steak and potatoes and asparagus and fresh pineapple for dessert.    The conversation flows from topic to topic effortlessly, and, after supper, the dogs settle down to snore, we put on Jeopardy and I see if I can answer a single question in time.

Not life on the edge.   No skydiving.  No running with the bulls.  No explosions or car chases or gun battles.

Just a simple life.   Joe 2.0

Ok, so I didn’t sit on a beach in Maui or at a cafe on the left bank.  I wasn’t in a balloon over the Loire.  I didn’t paddle down the Rhine or bike around Amsterdam. 

However, I did get to spend some quality time with my friends, Sheila and Gord, their daughters, Aven and Thea (and Thea’s boyfriend Tommy.)   Say what you want about world travel, sometimes it doesn’t hold a candle to a relaxing afternoon in Victoria.

To start off with, I had crepes a la Gordo, (with fresh strawberries and properly whipped cream by the master chef Tommy.)  Soooo good.  Then I sat in the sun on a deck and talked for hours with Sheila and Gord, while Tommy and Thea threw around a football and my doggies chased each other around and Aven bouned on a small trampoline. Time rolled effortlessly by.

We didn’t resolve any great world issues.  We didn’t even resolve any great stresses in our own lives.  It wasn’t that kind of afternoon.  It was a kind of Tom Sawyer day, lazy and relaxed.    

For supper, we ordered from the Noodle Box and ate while watching the Game of Thrones.  Then the adults endured the loss of the Canucks together, while Aven and Thea were far more responible and worked on their homework.   

Nothing really special.  Nothing really amazing.  And, yet, having been down for a few days, it was exactly what I needed.  A sense of beloning.  A sense of family.  A sense of letting go of all the stress and just… being. 

And being is good.

Yesterday, I had a chance to laugh, to tease and be teased, to have fun. Today, a reminder of the joy of simple things.  Of little things.  My old dog, Freya, following the football and hoping it would get dropped so she could retrieve it.  My spazadoodle trying to seduce Tommy with her brown eyes.  Aven trying to find fun facts about the earth’s core.  Thea and Tommy sitting near the hotutb, arms wrapped around each other.  Gord eating all the ‘unacceptable’ crepes while he got the heat just right.  Sheila and I fanboying for an hour over Game of Thones (or Sheila showing me her organzied computer cable box.)

Little things matter.  Little things make life, 

Dear Victoria,

You are very pretty and I like you a lot.  I really do.  You smell nice.  You keep yourself up.  You’re fun to visit.

But we need to talk.

Here.  Sit.

There are a few things that bug me.  First off,  How come your gas is cheaper than Vancouver?  I looked around and didn’t see any oil fields.  How is it that in Vancouver, we are paying $1.42/L and here, it’s $1.24/L?  Huh?  Why?  Is it because you’re prettier?

Second, the pedestrian way your pedestrians walk is maddening.  It’s like they assume a car will stop for them, cross walk or no cross walk.  Do you have any idea how the rest of the world operates?  Cars rule (Ok, in downtown Vancouver, Bikes rule) but either way, someone walking onto a busy street better have good life insurance.  In Montreal, you’re not even safe on a crosswalk.  In Italy, you’re not even safe on the sidewalk.  What makes you feel so privileged here?

Third.  You only have two lanes coming in from the ferry.  It’s like a python trying to swallow a hippo.  Hello!  Do you not want us to get into town?  Is the plan to make us run out of gas somewhere near Elk Lake?  Gack!  Add another lane.

Lastly, why be so nice?  I assume if someone is waving at me, it’s because I’ve cut them off and they’re not actually waving.  Or they’re just waving with one finger.   Why be so polite?  Why even say hello or thank me for holding a door.  It just confuses me.

But I can’t stay made at your forever, Victoria.

You’re still my favourite.

Love

Justjoe

I needed a fun movie, a movie that wouldn’t make me sad or make me think or make me wonder what is our purpose on this earth. So, I chose The Raid: Redemption. I have no idea why they needed ‘Redemption’ in the title but it’s basically about a raid.  Hence the first part of the title.

Here’s the quick version. 20 elite cops enter a building filled with one bad-ass gangster and, as far as I can tell, 1000 of the best martial art, machete-weilding fighters on the planet. Why EVERYONE in the building is so masterfully trained I have no idea but it makes for perhaps one of the best action films in a long time.

It works primarily because it gets rid of all the usual fluff. There are no girlfriends that have to be saved, no wrinkled grannies offering wise advice, no little kids shouting, ‘Dr. Jones! Dr. Jones!’ In fact, except for the opening scene, there aren’t any women in it at all. They aren’t needed. This is all about cops vs gangsters, gun vs gun, knife vs knife and fist vs fist.

It’s a totally fun, blazingly fast martial arts fight-fest with the most amazingly choreographed knife battles that I’ve ever seen.  Stabby stabby goodness.

At some point I’m sure Hollywood will remake this with Jason Statham and a hot ninja girl and lots of coke machines in the hallways.   The bad guys will become two-dimensional Russians, there will be a lot more explosions and sooner or later, Statham will have sweaty sex with one of the renters (Or fellow cops.)

Until then, though, this remains a great non-stop action movie.

Touch.  Fox.  TV

There are plenty of shows I can watch and do something else.  Eat.  Type.  Read, even.  But not Touch.  It’s a show where every minute must be watched, where everything has meaning, where, if you go to the bathroom, you pause it so you don’t miss anything.

For anyone who hasn’t seen it, Touch stars 24’s Keifer Sutherland and is helmed by the Heroes dude, Kring.  In the show’s own words, here is what it’s about.  “There’s an ancient Chinese myth about the red thread of fate. It says that the Gods had a red thread around everyone of our ankles and attached it to all the people who’s lives were destined to touch. This thread may stretch or tangle but it will never break.”  Keifer’s young autistic son can see these threads and tries to get his dad to find and contact the those connected.

When I first heard about this show, I though, are you kidding me?  BORING!

But being me, I PVR’d it anyway.  And I am so glad I did.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen a show so masterfully plotted or a show with so much depth and feeling.  In an hour, they introduce us to a host of characters who are seemingly unrelated.  The mircle of the writing?  They make us care about all the characters.  All of them.  We feel their loss, their loneliness, their hopes and fears, their loves and hates, their pain and joy.

If you see only one new show this year, check this one out.  You don’t even need to see the pilot, each story works alone (though seeing the series from the very start gives each episode so much more depth.)  Keifer isn’t blowing away terrorists.  Kring doesn’t envision wacky superheroes.  No, this is something unique, something special.

Good news, Manson didn’t get pardoned.

Bad news, he’s still alive.

Good news, Got to watch the game and have a wonderful dinner with awesome friends.

Bad news, Canucks lost 4-2 in game 1.

Good News, Finished the latest Lee Child novel, The Affair.

Bad News, It was terrible.

Good News, Lost another pound since last week.

Bad News, I didn’t eat well last week.   No idea how I lost any weight.

Good News, Got 30 pages written on my novel today.

Bad News, still many more pages to write.

Good News, Cold nearly gone.

Bad News, It’s been hanging on for over two weeks now.  Enough is enough.

Life, at the end of the day, is balance.  Taking the good with the bad.   All I need to do is  remember the good sometimes.

Movie Review: Salmon Fishing In Yemen.

Ok, so they didn’t spend what it took to make John Carter.  It didn’t have teenagers trying to kill each other.  It wasn’t even black and white and soundless.  Instead, if you can get past the title, it was a beautiful romantic comedy with some great on-screen chemistry.

In short, it’s a story about a Yemeni sheik who wants to be able to bring salmon to his part of the world.  Absurd, right?  Well, that’s part of the fun, part of the story.  Little by little, even the doubters begin to believe, or to quote the sheik, have faith.

But this movie works for two big reasons.

Jedi Knight, Ewen McGreggor is fantastic, nerdly and awkward like me, often saying the wrong things, errr, like me, but ultimately very charming (unlike me) and very lovable.   He is well matched with Emily Blunt, gorgeous, intelligent, funny and yet, adoringly vulnerable.  The moment the two meet, we know they are destined to be together, even when they aren’t.  They are just that good.  The looks.  The tilt of a head.  Their little gestures towards each other.

However, as good as they are, they are overshadowed by the scheming Prime Minister’s PR guru, played by Kristin Scott Thomas.  Her lines are biting and brilliant and her email conversations with the PM had me nearly spitting out my pop on the people in front of me.  She is cold and calculating and as funny as any character written in a romantic comedy.

Add to that the sheik, played by Amr Waked.  He makes us all believe in him and his vision.  If we don’t then it all becomes a farce.  But he is earnest and wise and so full of faith that we can’t help but want the damn salmon to run upstream.

Now, there may be better romantic comedies out there but this one I will own.  I will watch it again.  And then again.  The premise is just the right side of quirky, the romance wonderful and believable an the comedic parts, pitch perfect.  It’s a great way to spend an evening.

No, not a flu fever.

Something I had last year.  Something I didn’t have until now.

Canuck’s fever!

It was almost like I got my heart broken last year when they lost (and the city rioted).  Like a love lost, I just couldn’t spend time with them when they came back.  I couldn’t watch them.  Didn’t want to hear about them.  Then, early this year, I pretended not to care, not to listen to any news of how they were doing, or who was scorig and who wasn’t.  I didn’t care, I tried to tell myself.  To hell with them.  pffffft.

But on the weekend, I watched them beat Edmonchuck.

And I felt it again.  That feeling that Vancouver fans get.  It’s not hope, no that’s too strong a word, it’s more like buying a lottery ticket with friends and thinking, this is the one, this time we’ll win.

Oh sure it may be a cousin of hope – one twice removed – but that feeling is back.  They could go all the way.  They won the prez cup or trophy or whatever it is.  They aren’t completely wracked by injuries.  Loooo isn’t even looking like a sad little puppy.

Maybe this IS the year.

Either way, I’ll watch all the games now.  All is forgiven.

Go Canucks!