Family and Love

Leaving on a High Note

by Reb Stevenson on March 6, 2012

Vancouver always puts on a show when I have to fly back to Toronto.

This isn’t the first time I’ve wandered down to Granville Island before an afternoon flight, only to discover that the sun is beaming, the mountains are all snowcapped and proud and the water is postcard blue. Where’s all this grey and gloom that Vancouver-haters cite as the reason they’d never survive here?

Last night, I caught up with Zach and checked out his new pad in the West End. A friend informed us that Zach is now appearing on buses in Vancouver (he’s reprising his role as Buddy Holly this summer – I’m so excited to see it for a second time). I didn’t manage to spot a Buddy bus, but if you live in Vancouver and you do, snap a pic and send it my way!

This is the view from Zach’s retro apartment, which is decorated in true Mad Men style, complete with record player and mistresses! Kidding about the mistresses, I meant mattresses. Air mattresses. Speaking of which, must they be so hard to deflate?

Anyhow, I’m happy to report that I’m leaving B.C. with good news – I’ve secured a place for us to live in Victoria. Even better: it’s not my dad’s guest room!

It’s a small house with a major backyard/private football field. There are a couple of raised garden beds and a chicken coop, which I’m thinking will provide some fodder for ongoing blog adventures.

And dinner for raccoons.

Just kidding. Sorta. The people who live there now said their chickens were assassinated by raccoons. So brace yourself for chicken blood.

Now the stress begins: the actual moving bit. We’ve got to clear out our place in Ontario and get on the road within the next couple of weeks. I’m still waffling on whether to ship things like the bed or say to hell with it and sell for a painfully low price. I contacted a moving company, expressing that I wanted to move the bed, an area rug, two computer chairs and some boxes and they replied with a quote nearing $4000!!! Hardly seems worth it.

Does anyone want to weigh in with an opinion? Or buy a Reb Stevenson-used bed for $1000?

On second thought, I’m actually hoping I don’t have stalkers who are that passionate about the blog.

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Maybe You Can Go Back

by Reb Stevenson on March 4, 2012

Back in November, I wrote this post expressing how much I missed my family. I received a lot of comments from readers who sympathized with my plight.

I’ve always known that I would eventually move back to British Columbia, the question was simply “when?” After a lot of soul searching, honest dialogue with myself and a small health scare involving my dad, I finally decided that life’s way too short to put off something you want so badly.

Thank you to all the readers who helped me make my decision!

Sometime in March, Billy and I are going to chuck a few pairs of underwear (and possibly some electronics, but let’s not get any thieves salivating; please help perpetuate this myth that our car is FULL of underwear) into our RAV and drive out to Victoria.

You’ll be able to follow the adventure right here on the old blog.

When I tell people about the move, the first question is usually “why Victoria? Why not Vancouver?”

Well, there are several reasons.
1) I think Victoria is the prettiest city in Canada, and I’m superficial like that.

2) There are loads of seniors there. People often cite this as a bad thing. I say: bring on the white hair! I love seniors. I think they have so much to offer – insight, experience, perspective and unparalleled lawn bowling skills.

3) It’s a manageable size, with access to Seattle and Vancouver.

4) My dad and brother Jacob live there.

This will be the first time since 1996 that I’ve lived in the same community as Dad and Jake, and I’m so excited to be able to invite them over for dinner, or impose upon them to do some heavy lifting.

You often hear about my other brother, Zach, on here because we’re closer in age and have managed to live in Ottawa, Vancouver and Toronto at the same time during adulthood, but I’m equally fond of my baby brother.

I was smitten from the moment I laid eyes upon him. Zach and I often tried to convince Jake that I was his “real mother” but I guess the seven year age gap wasn’t convincing.

Yesterday, I hiked up a mountain with Jake and some of his friends.

It’s hard to believe that Jake, who I cradled on my lap and smothered with kisses, is taller than me.

But you know what? I still see the baby in that face. Maybe I really am his mother!

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The Resolutions Project: March

by Reb Stevenson on February 29, 2012

Resolutions? What are those?

As we head into March, numbers are down at the gym and up at the cigarette shop. Welcome to the season of lapsed resolutions.

But not I! As I stated in my New Years blog, I will be tackling my resolutions month by month, using this blog as a cold, unfeeling supervisor. So far it’s working…er, to a point (read on).

This month’s resolution: DEDICATE MORE TIME TO READING

Reading saved my life in elementary school. Not to get too deep into it here (perhaps some other time), but I went through many years of cruel bullying that left me feeling isolated and ostracized. Thankfully, I found friends in Narnia, Oz, Nancy Drew, Encyclopedia Brown, The Babysitters Club, Sweet Valley, Christopher Pike and steamy hot softcore Danielle Steele novels (those were friends with benefits).

While others were playing tetherball and showing their privates to the opposite sex at recess, I hid in the library. Books became a juvenile form of crack. I’d come home with a backpack heavy as a sack o’boulders and devour several books in a sitting. At night, I outsmarted my pro-sleep parents, sneakily reading by the light of this Glo Snail.

Today, when I think about free time, I think about reading. I crave that intimate relationship you quietly develop with the characters, that addictive feeling of having to know what happens next.

But with the pressures of work, exercise and household chores upon me, I find my adult self sorely deprived of reading. Yes, I read. But not nearly enough. And that’s where this resolution comes in.

For March, I will strive to reserve just half an hour per day for reading – not status updates on Facebook, not emails, not fortune cookie platitudes. Real books.

I tend to go for British male authors in the dramedy genre, like Nick Hornby (About a Boy), Mark Haddon (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time) and David Nicholls (One Day). A holdover from my younger days, I’m also a sucker for historical chick lit (Catherine Cookson et al).

The books I’m looking at in my immediate future are:

That is, if I can get past Steve’s weird beard pinch. Do you think some bitter ex-Apple employee photoshopped that in as a posthumous prank?

Moving along….

February resolution postmortem: GO ON EIGHT DATES

It’s important, when dealing with resolutions, to embrace self-forgiveness.

Wait a second – was that a fortune cookie platitude?

What I’m saying is, I didn’t exactly complete my February resolutions. But that’s okay, because they can be carried over into March!

Billy and I started off on the right foot, each writing down four dates. We affixed them to a decorative screen.

How many did we complete? A big fat two. But they were good ones, they were.

For “watch the original Superman and sip Superman floats,” I bought these tighty reddies from American Apparel and insisted that we wear them on the outside of our pants for the duration of the movie. Now if this look doesn’t scream “you’re getting lucky tonight,” I don’t know what does.

I also made Superman Floats – cream soda (or red pop of your choosing), ice cream, Superman Pez dispensers.

Gotta love the 1978 Superman with bumbling Clarke and raspy two-pack-a-day-and-cigars-for-dessert Lois. The “can you read my mind” spoken poetry sequence gets worse every time I see it.

Another date was “make a snowman together then have hot chocolate.”

As soon as it snowed, we rushed outside and constructed Gus (above). It was a lot of fun – so much better than grumbling about shovelling your driveway.