April Sunshine

Well I survived the sogginess of winter and early spring of Victoria once again. Spring has been busting out all over! We travel to Duncan once a week and stay overnight most times. I work two days in Duncan and two days in Esquimalt.  The scenery is gorgeous on the way to Duncan and back as we trek up and over the Malahat (mountains). Everywhere I look there are trees and flowers in blossom. I friggin love it. This is just another reason I love living in Victoria. Not only do we have snow-free mild winters, we have super early spring. The cherry blossoms have been out for about a month or more, and the magnolias are out these past few weeks. Stunning! 

So Nash and I have been travelling around a bit, and we often take a drive to the ocean and hang out for the day. Esquimalt Lagoon is a favorite. Sailboats and other sea traffic here and there, birds all around, people and dogs walking up and down the beach. Nash has tons to watch. I had him out on the leash for a few minutes too. He loves being out but is a bit headstrong about wanting to go wherever he wants to. But then a motorbike roars by and he's over it. TAKE ME BACK INSIDE PLEASE!!! He is such a fun kitty, and so personable. He loves to hang out, no matter who is around. I'm trying to get him used to hanging out in the courtyard (heh heh) with me on the leash but he is still getting used to being outside, so it will take time and patience. 

I've been trying to sort out the year's travel plans. I really wanted to spend the next winter in Costa Rica, but now that I have my dream job, I feel like I can't walk away from it. The issue is my contract is up next month, and they want to extend but they don't know about the funding yet, so I don't want to spend too much money yet until I know if I have an ongoing position. So then I began thinking about spending just a few weeks with my friends there, but it's quite a distance to travel for just a week or two and expensive if I'm not driving Gertie down. Scratch that then. From there I began considering booking an all inclusive to Mexico for a week, which I've never done but am so ready for an easy travel trip, and Mexico is easy on the culture shock, particularily compared to China. That's where I'm at now, but we kind of all have to book together if we want to stay in the same hotel so I really need to nail that down. It might be that I just go down with a few friends and then have a big party here in Victoria or on the island somewhere this summer. It's my 50th so I feel Iike I want to do something special. 

Which brings me to the next bit of news - I got a new tattoo today! I've been pondering ever since my last tattoo, which was the lizard one on my left wrist that I had done in Byron Bay at Shark Tattoos. This time I went for a dandelion. My dad and brother were both in the military for more than 20 years, so I grew up on a military base. My dad continued with Transport Canada on military bases so when I left home, they were living in Labrador. As a military brat aka base brat, we often talk about there is no place to call home and our friends are everywhere. So over time we have unofficially adopted the seeding dandelion as a symbol of how we feel - my home is nowhere, my friends are everywhere. I've set up house in so many places. I have tried to keep in touch with a few close friends in most of those places. I'd been looking for a way to recognize just how much that brat life influenced who I am today, and where I've come from. It may seem like a rootless existence to some, but for me, I feel like I have a huge network of people I can count on and together we stretch around the world. I may not have college besties that I went to kindergarten with, but these people collectively hold my life history. I belong to a couple of Facebook groups for military brats and we talk often about the life we lived on the bases, and we have so many shared experiences from life on the base, and knew we were different than other places in some ways. We made friends fast, because we knew our parents could ship out again within a month, a year, maybe two, who knew? So the tattoo - the dandelion is throwing petals to my maple leaf (existing tattoo). On it reads "the nomad life". I just love it. Dave at Tattoo Zoo in Victoria did it for me. Across the street from the tattoo studio was the Canadian Forces Recruitment office. Coincidence? Fate. And Dave did exactly what I wanted and more. Thanks, man. 

I've got some music shows coming up. The Who in Vancouver next month. Meatloaf here in Victoria in June, and Dave Matthews Band in September at the Gorge. I saw Blue Rodeo earlier this year. I want to see about packing a couple more in, so we shall see.