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Peony design for the painting I’m doing after I finish the space mural, based on this picture I posted on Saturday.

Remember when I went to a bachelorette party and dropped my purse down three flights? And I thought everything inside survived unscathed? Turns out that wasn’t exactly correct, which I discovered last week when I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out a handful of phone pieces. This is what my phone is supposed to look like:

And this is what it actually looked like:

In the fall the bottom piece of the faceplate broke off, and some things (I don’t even know what they were) fell out. Additionally, almost all the keys are cracked and the part of the back next to the charger plug was cracked off. It still worked, but it looked ugly.

Before I had this phone, a Sony Ericsson S500i in white & copper, I had the exact same phone in black & green, and I loved that phone. Until I stepped on it on New Year’s Eve and cracked the screen, which developed these red streaks that made it look like the phone was bleeding. It still worked, but it looked ugly.

So yesterday Taylor and I were looking at my identical-but-for-the-colour-and-damage phones. The white one had a perfect screen, but the casing and keys were disintegrating. The black one’s casing was in perfect condition but the screen was a mess. We figured I had nothing to lose by taking them both apart, and after some quick internet research Taylor discovered that replacing the screen should be a piece of cake- which it was. We just had to pull the faceplates off, unclip & unplug the screens (I did this with my fingernails), switch the white phone’s intact screen with the black phone’s cracked one, and snap the faceplates back into place (this turned out to be the hardest part). Now I have my favorite black phone back, with a non-bloodsoaked screen!

Of course, now that I have my old phone back, I also have all my old custom ring tones and alarm sounds, all my old contacts in my phonebook (there are people in this phone I don’t think I’d talked to for years before I even had It) and best of all, all my old pictures that I forgot to save to my computer before switching to the white phone.

Old-school no-beard Taylor; Kichou in the dark.

Six-year-old Symphony; some woman on a bench- I think she was wearing a half-slip as a tube dress, two different shoes and foam rollers in her hair.

Dougal lying all sexy in the bed; some man in a thong lying all sexy in the park.

Taylor trying not to laugh at the thong-man; a little girl I used to look after.

Taylor buying coffee at an unfamiliar Starbucks; smiley-face sandwich

Symphony and Kichou washing their feet together

An enormous haired & bearded man; Scandinavian Sweetie Halloween costume

Viking Vixen & Barbarian Babe Halloween costumes (these were all the same costume, just with different packaging)

Two faces of Taylor: weird & melancholy

Best Friends; Famine Hygiene Products

What happens if I don’t shut the bathroom door completely.

Dougal’s creepy mouth; New Zealand: Take your mum.

I couldn’t figure what beach this was, but then I saw in the properties that the picture was taken on March 21st, 2009. It’s Keawakapu Beach in Maui, and this is the last phone picture I took as an unmarried woman, haha. Also: Taylor’s hair curls.

Super greasy hair + deep V. sex.

Britney Spears concert; “nippy” cheese

My hairdresser’s mean dog; Sea of Shoes fan window display at Holt Renfrew (high-end dept. store) that I lolled about

Some strangers’ butts in shorts, I don’t even know. Also Dougal winking and saying “heyyyyyyyy.”

Steamy glasses at The Templeton for brunch. Taylor had mangled eggs & coffee, I had huevos rancheros & ruby red grapefruit juice. I loooooove having brunch there (their eggs are the MOST DELICIOUS in the city I swear) but it’s usually really busy we end up going to Glowbal or Cafe Crepe, so it was nice to get a spot at the counter. We always end up having chatty cathy convos with the staff and other diners- today was a discussion about how I need to take my vitamins so I don’t get sick all the time (I haven’t mentioned it but YES, I am currently sick AGAIN) and this awful story about the drummer from You Say Party WE Say Die collapsing on stage and dying from a brain hemorrhage last weekend.

After brunch we were going to come straight home (remember, I am sick, and yesterday’s trip to the art supply & Japanese $2 stores almost destroyed me), but I felt well enough so instead we decided to go to the Blim Monthly Market at the Heritage Hall on Main street, where I bought these stupidly cute buttons from Roxypop.

After leaving the market we went further up Main to Voltage, looking in some gift/baby/housewares stores on the way (at one of them I found the M-Cups I was looking for, D’OH! but if I hadn’t ordered them from UO I wouldn’t have gotten the dress or feather rug or all the extras from Marissa so it’s cool). It was fun- whenever we are out in different neighborhoods we always say we should go check out these cool little shops but we never do. At Voltage we got some blind box toys and zipper pulls and I bought a book of Joe Ledbetter‘s paintings.

Symphony and I both have vinyl Unicornasauruses- I think mine is the grey one (quelle surprise) and hers is yellow.

We also wandered through lots of side streets between the train station and the hall looking at houses, and Taylor told me what sort of house he would want. He’d rather stay in the city (HAHAHAHA AS IF WE COULD EVER AFFORD THAT) and he prefers old heritage houses with big trees. I told him that the houses I like in North Vancouver are old heritage houses with big trees but that “North” modifier is just unacceptable to him.

City Hall.

Weeping Angels ooohhhhh nooooooooo.

Anyway once we got home I started to feel pretty crumby again so now I’m going to go take more Advil and go read in bed with this cat.

Don’t let her horrified expression fool you- she loves belly rubs.

Colourful things I bought today: adorable elephant, mushroom and fawn-themed Japanese stationary; new Martha Stewart Living mag; Montana Gold “Mango” yellow spraypaint; turquoise and cerulean Pebeo acrylics

Kichou just came out from under Symphony’s bed- he was hiding from me because I had the hiccups and he has CRAZY hiccup-o-phobia.

My neighbor’s beautiful peonies.

This is actually from Friday. Dougal and Claire like to pretend they hate each other but REALLY they are BEST FRIENDS.

Before I moved my computer out of the bedroom, almost every time I took Photo Booth pictures Taylor would be in the background, snoozing away. Once I even made a video of him wearing a night mask and snoring and called it “Princess Boyfriend Snores” (this was before we were married obviously).

Now that I spend my computering time in the library I kind of miss having him around, even if it was just in sleeping form, so today I decided to bring back the Sleeping Husband.

Dougal, Taylor and Kichou

Do I want to snuggle into that bed full of cozy husbands and pups? YES I DO. Also as a bonus I managed to capture Kichou mid-yawn and his little pink tongue is showing. Too. Much. Cuteness.

Wicked Lovely, 29/104; Ink Exchange, 30/104

How handy that I found an image of these book covers already edited together! Of course, I did have to cross out the third one because I didn’t read it and don’t plan on ever reading it. Why? Because these books are lame. I bought the first one, Wicked Lovely, because the other night I was trolling through the Kindle Store and saw that it was free (which in Kindle-land apparently means $2.99), and even though I didn’t really like it, I thought maybe Ink Exchange would be okay. I needed some books and HOW BAD could young adult novels about modern faeries be? A: Pretty bad. Okay fine, the writing isn’t terrible, but the plots of both of these books is basically: sexy faery king sees mortal girl, faery king wants mortal girl for possibly nefarious or selfish purposes, mortal girl resists, mortal girl’s resistance proves futile. WHAT. THE HECK. I’ll stick to my post-apocalyptic dystopian future YA novels from now on, thank you very much.

Or in my case, GREYSfully.

So here’s the thing. I have grey hair. I started going grey when I was just seventeen, although you couldn’t really tell because I started colouring my hair when I was fifteen, and two years later I was a big ol’ goth with this on my hair.

Ahh, Nice’n Easy Natural Blue Black. The box didn’t look like that in my day.

I still remember the day I found my first grey- I was getting ready for school and when I parted my hair, there in the 1/4″ of roots I saw it. At the time I thought it was hilarious and ran downstairs to show the only other person who was awake at the time, my dad.

“Look, look! I have grey hair!”
“Um, you have black hair.”
“Dad. The roots. THE ROOTS!”

Of course, my natural colour was a light ash brown, so against the black my roots always looked a little grey, in fact my friend Megan Bot used to can me Ol’ Grey Roots.

Of course, what was funny to me at seventeen was less amusing in my twenties, when the grey hairs started multiplying OUT OF CONTROL. I still kept coloring my hair to cover it up until I was 24. I was pregnant with Symphony and had the brilliant idea to grow my hair out my natural colour. I figured if I looked hideous and huge anyway I might as well have terrible hair as well. Oh, what a brilliant plan! This only lasted for a few months before I ended up bleaching the crap out of it, dying it bright red, and adding black streaks. In the last weeks of my pregnancy I got sick of the whole situation and decided to shave my head (I used to do this every time I had a bad hair day), but then I lost interest halfway though. I then put half a box of blue-black dye on my roots (Feria, not Nice’n Easy), which bled into the red ends, turning it various shades of purple. Combined with my irregularly shaved head, the results were… let’s say avant garde.

(Note: I know a lot of people say you shouldn’t colour your hair when you are pregnant because you’ll absorb chemicals through your scalp and have a deformed baby. Before colouring my hair I talked to my doctor and she said it was fine. What you definitely shouldn’t do while pregnant is PERM your hair, because it won’t work, like the curls won’t take and you’ll just have straight hair still. Actually, you just shouldn’t perm your hair ever.)

In the time since Symphony was born I’ve definitely noticed a dramatic increase in the quantity of my greys- I guess kids do that to you (unless you are my sister, who has two kids and no greys at all- at least, I think she still has no greys- she colours her hair too). In the last few years I found myself having to colour my roots every three weeks. I had to do it at home with drugstore colour because going to the salon that often would be both inconvenient and ludicrously expensive, but I started developing a sensitivity to the dye, so then I started going to the salon but yeah, it was inconvenient and expensive. I switched brands of drugstore colour and it was okay, but I still had to do a root touch up every three weeks since the difference between my dyed, dark brown hair and natural light brown and grey roots was so obvious.

Last year I decided enough was enough and it was time to lighten up my hair. I didn’t want to bleach and strip out my whole head and end up with mush hair, so instead I got an ever-increasing series of highlights until my hair was close enough to my natural colour. The last time I got it done the stylist suggested that instead of getting more highlights we just do an all over dye that matched my natural colour. It looked great and I was really happy with it… until three weeks later when my roots showed their grey heads again. Because of course, the thing with all over colour is no matter how close it is to my original hair, it’ll never match up with the greys.

The last time I had my hair coloured was at the end of January (I did put a temporary colour over it before going on vacation but it is loooooong gone- the sun and sea took care of it) and my roots are CRAZY long, probably he longest they’ve been since that failed growing out experiment in 2001. Let’s have a look, because really, what better way to start your day with a close up of someone’s scalp?

Soooo all those light hairs that look blonde? They aren’t blonde. They’re white, and grey. You can sort of see where the line between coloured and non-coloured hair is (hint: it’s where the white & grey stop) but idk, from further away (the way most people would see me) I don’t think it’s too obvious.

(Please excuse my sleepy, no-makeup face. Oh, and the fact that I’m wearing the shirt Taylor was wearing yesterday, haha.)
I mean yeah, it’s a little obvious, but not as badly as when my hair was dark. I know I posted a few weeks ago that I was thinking of going dark again, and I think that if I was to do another all-over colour I would. But I’m just sick of the endless upkeep! Doing root touch ups every three weeks is ridiculous. I’m starting to think seriously again about just growing it out. Maybe getting some more highlights to make it less boring and help blend the lighter roots with the still-darker ends, but no more all over colour for me, and maybe when it’s all grown out I can be as fine as this silver vixen.

I figure at the rate my hair is greying I should be there by 2012! No, just kidding.

Sort of.

My husband looks like a babby! (Also, love our matching plaids.)

Greater Vancouver Regional District

Sometimes I feel like I’ve always lived downtown. Nevermind the fact that although I was born in Vancouver, I grew up on Vancouver Island and didn’t move back to the city until I was 17. Also nevermind the fact that in the sixteen years since then (SIXTEEN YEARS??? I’m old, y’all) I’ve lived in East Van, South Van, Surrey, Coquitlam, Victoria and spent a brief time in Nelson. Mostly though, I’ve lived in the West End, and I’ve always loved it. Everything is always open! It’s only ten blocks to the beach! You almost never have to drive or take cabs or even the bus because everything is right there! I always said I’d never want to move out of downtown… until now.

Maybe I really am old, but I think I’m kind of getting sick of it. It’s too noisy, even on my side street. I’m tired of getting cussed out by panhandlers and living in fear of crackheads climbing in my windows (that totally happened). My neighborhood used to be awesome but recently it seems like all the people I like are moving out and skanky people are taking their place (I dare you to ask me the pantyliner story. I DARE YOU).

Another reason is work; basically, I’m tired of it. I want to quit and focus on doing art and working out and maybe having a baby. Taylor is totally amenable to this plan once it becomes financially viable, but the sticking point is this apartment: it was designed to be a child care, so to live here I have to keep doing daycare. If I was to quit we’d have to move, but we couldn’t afford anything so nice and big in this part of town. We’d either have to MASSIVELY downsize (which is impractical if I want to upsize our family!) or get the hell out of dodge.

Obviously I haven’t actually started making any real plans (don’t forget the part about it being financially viable) but I have picked up one terrible habit: realtylink.org. When I’m on my break I start looking though lists of houses for sale and imagining they are MY house. For some reason I’ve mostly been looking at places in North Vancouver – it’s the most Douglas Coupland-y of the suburbs.

Look at these places! They are SO CUTE. The green one has a detached office and covered porch and the yellow one has a garage/artist’s studio and six (SIX) bedrooms. They both have huge fenced backyards, perfect for me to fill with puffy little dogs.

Soon, my pretties, soon.

Now I just need eight hundred thousand dollars to buy one! This is like, the pipiest of pipe dreams but maybe someday…