When Memories Hurt.

Christine and I are sort of in the process of house-hunting.The dream of finding the "perfect" home for our family in East Vancouver, a community we have embraced as our own, is slowly morphing into a nightmare of affordable houses being totally awful to downright frightening.

Chris found a house in the Republic of East Van that, while not fitting any of the preconceived ideas we had, was priced affordably. It sported zero of our "must haves", none of our " wish list" items, but its greatest sin was that it looks chillingly like the house in which I survived childhood. Ever experienced a viceral reaction to a house you have not entered? Without ever setting foot in that little shack, I was unable to breath, as my heart was racing out of control, felt instantly vulnerable and in great danger. Not fun, not at all.

There are several similar houses in Vancouver to which I react badly, but I've never contemplated entering any of them for any reason. Since they are what we can afford to buy in our chosen neighborhood, while being financially secure and at least a little mature, it looks as if we must say goodbye to our beloved East Van, and hello to PoCo or Port Moody. I'm sure hell houses, full of debilitating memories exist there, too......but ours won't we one of them.

Christine And Deborah, Up A Tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G.

We are an odd combination, Christine and me. I've never loved anyone the way I love her, she makes me want to be a better person, I'm a lucky woman.

At night, I'm also a cold woman, because my sweet Chris is a dedicated and accomplished blanket hog. She denies it, just like she denies she takes her half of the bed out of the middle, but goosebumps don't lie.

She can't fold laundry. How a well educated, intelligent, talented woman made it to 40 not knowing how to fold a pair of drawers is beyond me. She is banned (happily, of course) from doing the laundry, because when she tries, my clothes come back in worse shape than they were when she started.

I can see us as a "little" (it's all relative, y'know) old couple. She'll have a selection of aprons to wear around her neck when she eats, because food never goes directly from her fork to her mouth, there has to be a detour to her shirt. Hopefully the aprons will be multi-pocketed. She'll then have easy access to her kleenex, her lip balm, and her hand cream. It'll be better that way, because God help anyone who comes between Chris and her lip balm.

She'll spend her days drinking Tetley tea, watching reruns of "her" Kiefer on 24. (I wonder whether Jack will have finally broken down and taken a bathroom break, or changed his cell phone battery by the time Chris is 80?). She'll have her remotes, telephone, iPod, salt shaker and back-up lip balm laid out beside her chair. There will be a small breed dog in either arm, although I doubt she'll be doing the "Pee Piper, pee Piper, Piper go pee, good peeing Piper" routine by herself then.

She'll still yell at me from five rooms away, and get frustrated when I don't respond because I don't hear her. She'll also continue to point out that I do the exact same thing.

Will she still laugh when I need an audience? Will she still carry on inane conversations with me just because we like the sound of one anothers' voices? Will she still tell me I'm strong and smart and beautiful, and be able to make me believe it?

No doubt she'll still be putting her cup in the sink right after I've finished the dishes. She'll still get all bent about whether the toilet paper goes over or under, and I'll still never get it right. She'll still leave time on the microwave, and refuse to wear a watch, choosing instead to ask me the time 200 times a day.

Will she still love "hens and chicks"? Milk served partially frozen? The Walrus magazine? Will she still be a computer whiz? Will she still dance like Elaine from Seinfeld?

Will she still order Shirley Temples at high-end restaurants?

What will Angelina and I call her when "Gamma" is no longer a joke? We'll come up with something, I'm sure.

Will she still prefer screechy, atonal, angry female singers and schmaltzy, folky, oh-so-earnest male singers? Will she still be cold when everyone else is hot, and hot whenever everyone else is cold? Will she still want every electronic "toy" on the market, the very moment it becomes available?

Will hers still be the only opinion that really matters? Will it still be her voice that grounds me, her touch that comforts me, her eyes that see straight into my soul?

I am a lucky woman.

Mamas Don't Let Your Girls Grow Up To Be Vicious.

I know a little girl who is 10 (although she may be 11, and if she knew I got her age wrong, she might be unimpressed, a year makes a lot of difference). She's not a "little girl" in the sense that she plays with dolls or wears pink ribbons in her hair, but to me she's a child, a normal, healthy, above-average kid, not a 40 year old sociopath in a 10 (or 11) year old's body.

Last month police charged a 12-year-old girl with three counts of first-degree murder in connection with the deaths of her mother, father, and 8 year old brother. Apparently her accomplice was her 23 year old "boyfriend". The fact that this child was into goth, punk and death-metal music, was being sexually abused by an adult who professed to be a 300 year old vampire, and had access to guns begs the question "Who the hell was responsible for this kid?" Why was this little kid allowed to be so vulnerable?

My thought, though, is when did this girl's wiring get so screwed up that she could actually go through with the massacre of her family? She murdered her baby brother. Her mother. Her father. In cold blood, with what is now believed to be calculated and meticulous planning.

Lots of kids seek out "alternative" scenes. Tattoos, piercings, the whole "punk" lifestyle. They see a much larger world via the internet, and have access to a big and dangerous, and mostly uncharted space that can eat them alive if someone isn't watching out for them.

There is a giant leap between a kid getting a tattoo to piss off mom, and beating mom to death. Lots of kids are angry, lots of kids hate their families, hate the world, hate themselves, but they don't commit murder.

Another 12 year old girl has been charged with aggravated assault after she burned a woman with a torch and left her to die behind a video store. The victim survived, but not because the kid wanted her to, strangers saved her life.

So back to my young friend. She is the kind of child I (maybe naively) think of as "normal". Smart, creative, sensitive to the needs of her fellow humans and a lover of animals. She has two parents who love and support her. She likes her scooter, loves to swim, hang out with her friends and play video games. She was born perfect, just like every baby, just like the kid who murdered her family, just like the kid who tortured another human being with a torch.

What went wrong?

What If We Have To Move To The SubSubSuburbs?

We are in the market for a house. This, of course, is exciting, wonderful, a very big step. We are extremely lucky to have been put into a position where home ownership is possible. For some it is a dream that will never come true.

Especially in Vancouver!

The MLS pages are our new reading material. I must say "you have got to be kidding" fifty times a day. Cracker boxes on a miniscule plot wedged between two other cracker boxes on similar plots are being listed for $600 000! And they are selling! Forget character, forget charm, forget space, privacy or even pride of ownership. Basically for a half a million dollars in East Van, one gets either a really ugly Vancouver special, or a dump built in 1921, and renovated in 1950.

I've found some gorgeous properties for upwards of $800 000. In Nova Scotia, where grew up, a million bucks would buy a relative mansion on twenty acres, with manicured lawns, mature trees, maybe a pond, outbuildings, and space!

So we have faced the frightening fact that our dollars will go much, much further out in the suburbs. **Shudder**. This is what we get for saying we will never leave East Van, that we are urban Dykes, and you would never catch us living in the burbs.

Yeah 'k. Never say never. Port Moody, Port Coquitlam....they are looking more like realistic locations all the time. Poor Angelina may develop hives. The subs are so not ready for a family like ours.

I guess this means in future I could be blogging about Kirby's PoCo Harem.