Fasching

Nik and I got to go out (together!) last weekend, in costume, to a Fasching party hosted by our awesome neighbor Rachel and her entire family. My mother (bless her heart) came over to babysit, and asked us where we were going. "To a party," I said. "It's something called Fasching." "Oh, a Fasching party!" she exclaimed over her knitting. I looked at her funny. "You know about Fasching?" "Sure," she said. "Fasching is when Germans get to do all the things they're too uptight to do the rest of the year."

There weren't too many Germans there, although there were quite a lot of different accents represented. There were also people older than my parents dressed in all manner of things related (however remotely) to the theme "007 - The Age of Bond". I really should have taken more pictures. These are the few I did manage to take:

Pia and David, also neighbors, came as Austin Powers and That Bond Girl. Pia's glam black minidress, complete w/ gold grommets & leather laces up the chest, belongs to David's mother. GO FIGURE.



This is me dressed as the Queen of Hearts (I said the links to 007 could be tenuous, didn't I?), with an awfully cheerful Dr. Evil.




Nik came as a Background Character...




... complete w/ love beads and crushed red velvet pants. Very nice.







Austin, Bond, and the ever-cheerful Dr. Evil...





... joined by the inimitable Octopussy. Complete w/ a cat picture on her bum bearing the word "unacceptable." Uh-huh.

Liquid Sunshine

Last weekend we went over to the Sunshine Coast for a few days. It was the maiden voyage of our vanagon (still unnamed -- Nik vetoed "Sheila" but hasn't come up with anything better yet) and my mom's first time on the Coast. It was also Elliot's first ferry ride. (At least as far as he's concerned. He's actually been on the ferry before, but he was such a small baby that it probably doesn't really count.) He managed to sleep through most of the trip there, and was a tad disgruntled to find himself on a "scary ferry" when he woke up.

We stayed in Roberts Creek, on the recommendation of my friend Tara, who lived there for ten years and gave us a long list of things to see and do. ("And if it's raining," she suggested, "just think of it as liquid sunshine.") The weather, in fact, was less than sunny. Though there was a nice orange glow in the sky waaaaay off to the south.


We stayed at a great b&b called Artists In Residence, run by two glassblowers named Dyan and David. Yes, glassblowers. Yes, their house was filled with priceless glass objects. And yes, they knew ahead of time that we were bringing a toddler along. Bless 'em. Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures there -- probably because I was too busy hurling myself between Elliot and the hand-blown glass art objects to pick up the camera. Plus my camera battery died on the ferry ride over and I didn't manage to get it charged until Sunday morning. But hey.


Roberts Creek is pretty small -- heck, the whole Sunshine Coast is pretty small -- so even hamstrung as we were by Elliot's dictatorial nap schedule, we managed to see quite a bit. We tooled up the coast to the beach at Davis Bay (at least, we were led to believe that at low tide there is a beach where we were walking), with the waves pounding the shore a foot or two from the sidewalk. We lunched in Sechelt at one of the many Wheatberry cafes (serving yummy food and staffed by some friendly young women with serious THC-induced short-term memory loss). We scanned the available real estate listings (cheaper than Vancouver, but not cheap).


We went to the beach at Roberts Creek, where Elliot enjoyed the mandala and we walked down the pier in the bracing winter air.

Nik and Grandma taught Elliot how to throw a rock. Or at least how to say "one, two, three -- let go!" The throwing wasn't so successful.

We took a nice hike in Cliff Gilker Park. Virginia had to feel the water (yes, it was very cold). There were huge trees and a beautiful creek (Roberts Creek? I guess) running through it with several waterfalls ranging from charming to impressive.

Elliot decided to scrap the nap schedule and fell asleep in the backpack. So we walked another 45 minutes, much to Nik's delight.


Then it was back on the ferry for a nice ride home. (But only after whacking my head, hard, against the side of the van as I tried somewhat ungracefully to get Elliot into his car seat. Ow.)


As peaceful and lovely as it is on the Sunshine (haha) Coast, it was nice to be back in the hustle-bustle of Vancouver again. I really am a city girl at heart.

Childcare Under Attack

And now for something completely different...

I've been posting some silly things here, but for those of you who think (like I did, until last week) that Canada is a child-friendly place where things like free neighborhood drop-in toddler playtimes are still the norm, I've got some bad news: the federal government (thank you "family-oriented" Conservative Party) has slashed funding for BC's childcare services, and -- so far -- the BC provincial government has not stepped up to the plate to finance the services. This means that vital (and I mean *VITAL*) services like West Coast Childcare Resource Center will be SHUT DOWN within six months. Other amazing resources, such as the West Side Family Place will also face severe cutbacks in services -- possibly so severe as to make them unusable for the majority of the communities they are serving.

Click here for more information on the new budget cuts


What can you do? Tell your elected representatives to restore funding to these crucial resources for families of young children. Go protest in Victoria. Share this information with everyone you know. The BCGEU has a great webpage full of information on how you can get involved and help restore -- and even improve -- our community's childcare system. There are sample letters you can print out and sign, complete w/ addresses. There's even an awesome animation (that made me want to laugh and cry at the same time).

Please do something.

V is for...

Vanessa. And Vancouver. Welcome.

As the first official posting in my spanky new blog, I'm going to point out that most of Vancouver missed one kick-ass concert last Saturday night, which I had the good fortune to witness up close from the dance floor of the Commodore Ballroom. The concert was actually two concerts: the first being a decent show by the alternative mellow jam band New Monsoon -- but following them being the Venezuelan funkedelic funsters better known as Los Amigos Invisibles.

I should perhaps start by saying that I started last Saturday having my pancreas worked on by an energy-balancing massage therapist. (When you go for a massage in Vancouver you never know what's going to happen.) I should also probably mention that I had consumed a substantial amount of a particularly delicious (and low-sugar, I'm quite certain) cannabis cookie on my way to the concert. So I was in a very good mood when I got there. Whatever had been lurking in my pancreas, it felt like a huge relief to be rid of it. I felt lighter, happier, and more alive than I had in a long time. All of which may or may not help to explain why I was unexpectedly given a free ticket at the door by one of the bouncers, and a free drink at the bar by one of the bartenders. It was my lucky night.

My friends had come to hear New Monsoon. They kept bemoaning the absence of the band's tabla player -- which may or may not have explained the band's somewhat lackluster performance. My personal theory is that they just weren't in the same league as Los Amigos -- who have a well-deserved international following but are relative unknowns here in the Great White North. (I later decided that every Venezuelan in Vancouver must have been at the Commodore. Luckily for me and my friends, Venezuela is not well-represented here and the ballroom was barely a third full.) In any event, we all kind of swayed and grooved in a docile, appreciative, Canadian sort of way while New Monsoon did their thing, but everything changed when the Amigos hit the stage.

I'm not going to do their music, or their show, any kind of justice here. Just check out their website, buy one of their CDs, and for gods sake, if they're playing anywhere near you, go see them. They are consummate performers, and would make a doorpost want to shimmy. My only regret of the evening was my lack of a dance partner. Nik was fast asleep in bed, a mile away, recovering from a long and miserable week of work and shoring up for the inevitable 7:15am wake-up call from Elliot. (I should also give Nik a big shout-out for not only letting me 'sleep in' -- i.e. huddle under the blankets until 8:30 or 9am, pretending to be asleep -- but also for refraining from berating me for my lack of maternal effort the following day. Bless his heart.)