I remember husking corn on sunny September afternoons.

My mother grew a huge garden, really truly huge...the canning and freezing of produce kept our family of six in vegetables all winter long. This meant a lot of work for us kids, a lot of weeding all summer long, a lot of picking of peas and carrots and raspberries and tomatoes and beans and......well, you get the picture. The day we husked corn, though...that was maybe my favourite day.

Dad and my older sisters would be picking corn all morning, and my little sister and I would cart it in our little red wagon to a sunny spot beside the house and dump it in a mountainous pile, then head back to the garden for another load. Once all the corn was picked, then we started husking.

Can you smell the warm sun heating the pile of corn so it smells like golden bread? Can you see the pale green and yellow as we strip ear after unashamed ear naked of their husks? To me the whole memory is infused with slanted September sunlight, gilding every kernel of corn, every strand of silk, every bug hiding in the husks with harvest gold. We would make wigs of the silk, we would make dolls of the husks, it seemed the whole of the day was filled with play...yet somehow we always made it to the bottom of the pile.

I think I needed this memory to prod me to approach work now as I did then...how do I make it fun for myself? How do I remove the drudgery and replace it with joy?

I remember punching a biker in the face.

I was at the Commodore Ballroom, watching some band or other. At one point I was heading from the amazing, spring-loaded (I'm not kidding, the floor actually kind of bounces when everyone is dancing!) dance floor up one of the short flights of stairs to the second level. In front of me was a very large biker trying to come down the stairs. He was VERY drunk; in fact, he could hardly stand, and his gang of "brothers" were trying to maneuver him down the five or six steps. The large, drunk biker and I were all of a sudden blocking each other's path.

I wish you could see his face. It's like his eyes were open, but he was actually somewhere far away...and then he resurfaced for a moment, and there, right in front of his bleary eyes, was my chest. He looked like a little boy who just opened a present on Christmas morning, and he reached out his hand and grabbed my left breast. I didn't even think. I just popped him one as hard as I could, right in the face. His expression changed, still a little boy, but this time caught with his hand in the cookie jar...it was almost funny. He mumbled something about "sorry"...and then I became aware of all his biker buddies who were holding him up.

I realized at that moment that maybe punching someone so big and with so many big friends wasn't the most intelligent thing to do. Thankfully, after the brief pause of silence, that moment where the situation could turn in any way it pleased--they all started laughing and congratulating me. "Way to go, sister!" "That'll teach him to keep his hands to himself!! Harr har harr!!" "Did you see her?" etc. as they began again to move the big hulk unsteadily towards the dance floor, and probably the exit.

And I fully understood, perhaps for the first time, how that old cliche "sigh of relief" actually feels.

This has nothing to do with remembering. But I'm such a Lord of the Rings freak that I had to share my result with the world....

I remember wanting to go see Star Wars when it first came out.

Major problem...we were not allowed to go to movie theatres. Ever. For any reason. This did not make sense to me, and at the age of 11, I was seriously grilling my mother for reasons why. "Why can't I go?" "What is the big deal with movie theatres?" "Why?" She could never give me a satisfactory answer, and I was the only person in my whole school who hadn't seen Star Wars when I was in Grade 7. I would sit on the school bus and listen to the other kids talk about how many times they had seen it, and I would just want to cry.

This led to an obsession with Star Wars on my part. I bought the Star Wars novel. I bought Star Wars trading cards. I imagined I was Princess Leia kicking the snot out of overly-religious parents who wouldn't let their children go to see movies in a theatre.

The obsession is mainly over now, though I will always remember with fondness the first three movies. Anybody want some trading cards? I have almost the whole set....but they're in really crappy condition. I spent too much time looking at them, playing with them, using them to tell myself the story of the movie, counting them, sleeping with them....you get the picture. On second thought, I think I'll keep the cards.

I remember watching an old man trying on boots.

It was the late 1980's, and I was making my semi-regular trip to my personal Mecca...Fluevog Shoes on Granville Street in Vancouver. I'd look at shoes and boots, dreaming about owning just one more pair. Everywhere on display were black leather pointy-toed boots with buckles and zippers, all kinds of shoes and boots, all very avant-garde and unique.

I headed past the unisex and men's shoes in the front part of the store and into the room that had women's shoes and boots to see if there were any new styles. There was a man talking to the salesman. The man was old, short of height and thick around the middle, balding head with wisps of grey hair around the edges, and wearing a grey suit. He was saying to the salesman, "I'd like to see them in a size 11, please." The young, trendy-looking salesman popped to the very back of the store, while I continued to look at shoes. (I can look at shoes for a long time...) He came back with a large pair of red leather, thigh-high boots with four-inch stiletto heels and very pointed toes. He handed the boots to the old man.

All of a sudden I wasn't quite sure where to look; I had a feeling it would be impolite to stare! I managed to maneuver myself into a place where I could watch by looking in a reflection, and saw the old man pull up his pant leg and try on the boot. He zipped it up the back and stood looking at himself in the mirror, turning this way and that to see if looked right. He walked around the shop a bit to get the feel of the boot.

I left. I didn't want to know if he actually bought the boots or not. I didn't want to imagine him wearing those boots. I kept hoping that maybe his wife happened to have very large feet just the same size as his, and he was buying her a present. I was trying so hard to not be from a small town, and I'd keep running into stuff like this, making me uncomfortable.

I remember getting a Hot Wheels Fat Track for Christmas one year when I was really little.

We had been opening and opening the presents, and there wasn't one for me from Santa. This was very disheartening, and I almost didn't want to mention it...wouldn't that be admitting that Santa thought I was bad, that I didn't deserve a present?...but I had to ask if maybe it was somewhere else and I'd missed it. My dad said he thought he saw something in their bedroom that morning, maybe I should look. I ran to the door (right off the living room, of COURSE Santa would leave something there for me, why didn't I think of that?) and burst into the room. There, with a bow on the Juice Pump (battery pack), was an oval Hot Wheels Fat Track plus two cars. Yahoo!

Santa never let me down by bringing Barbies or dresses...he always came through with a toy revolver or something...and this year was the best ever. My own race track!! Cooler than the boys at school had!!! None of the other presents mattered anymore at ALL, and I played with that track non-stop. You could juice up the cars at the battery station, then they'd race anywhere, even on the kitchen linoleum! You didn't need an electric line on the track to keep them going...very cool. I miss that track. I'd play with it now if I had it.

A quick janitorial-type notice: I changed the number of posts on the main page here...all the blog entries are still available in my archives. Now that I have high-speed, I sometimes forget about people who have to wait for minutes out of their life for a big page to load. Sorry it took me so long to figure that out.

I remember finding a mummified cat.

Actually, I didn't find it . . . my boyfriend at the time, Rob, found it in a mostly empty warehouse that a friend of ours was using as an artist studio/living space. He couldn't wait to show it to me, and to show me where he had found it while poking around behind some boards on one of the abandoned floors. The cat was a normal sized house-cat in the exact same pose as the "Restricted" panther, one paw forward and in low slink mode. All the skin was there but thin, like wasp paper, and shrunken over the bones. Just like the warning growl a living cat gives before attacking, its face was pulled back into a tight grimace. All in all, it looked remarkably life-like. We were fascinated with the cat! What a find!! Naturally Rob put it in a place of honour in his room. How a dead creature could mummify in the moist humidity of the West Coast, I'll never know. I do know it felt like a gift to find it.

I remember drinking tea with my friend, Sheri.

This was back in the early '80's, and Celestial Seasonings was still relatively new to us, and we bought new tea if we liked the picture on the box, or if the quote impressed us. We didn't care if we actually liked the tea inside. We would save the empty boxes and pile them against our walls, arranging and rearranging them into pleasing patterns. The tea made us feel artsy and unique and creative, which is a lot to ask of a little tea bag. I never did like the Red Berry Zinger all that much, but it had a cool box, so I'd just put a lot of honey into the cup and drink it anyway.

This past summer I managed to take a tour of the Celestial Tea factory in Boulder, Colorado. It was more fun than I expected! But I realized as I watched the endless parade of neat and tidy little tea boxes on the assembly line that something like "artsy" and "unique" and "creative" can be used as marketing tools, and that they worked on me for a long time. I don't buy tea anymore unless I think I'll like the flavour. If I want to look at the boxes, I go to the store and look at them.

I remember the first time I dyed my hair.

I was 20, hanging out on Granville Street with a bunch of street punks. I was quite attracted to a 16 year old guy named Adam--he reminded me of Sid Vicious. It didn't strike me as strange at the time that I wanted to go out with a boy instead of a man...I didn't know who I was, and he seemed so confident about his identity. It was quite alluring! So when he suggested I dye my hair black, I jumped at it. Anything to break ties with who I used to be.

One problem...I grew up in a house without hair-dye. I had never seen anyone dye their hair. Adam and his friend, Kale, said they'd help me. Oh boy!! Two for real punk rockers....fur-coat-hating, metal-stud wearing, tattooed vegetarian punk rockers were going to dye my hair!!! I couldn't wait. We went back to Adam's apartment and Kale, who turned out to be surprisingly gentle considering his large girth, took care of the dyeing process. I remember looking up into Kale's eyes as he rinsed the dye out in the bathroom sink. I was so happy. I felt so daring! I was going to look so unique!

It was 18 years before I grew out all the many and various colours I put into my hair. Now it is North American mousy brown with a generous sprinkling of kinky grey. I like it! I look intelligent. I look distinguished. I know for certain that nobody else on the planet has hair quite like mine. And I had thought uniqueness could be bought in a box from the drug store...I'm glad I figured that one out.