My Life~ Christina's Birthday!

It was my bestie Christina's birthday this past week and on Saturday we celebrated her! It was a love and fun filled night~ the perfect combination of amazing girls and guys, killer cocktails and food, laughs and hugs. Nobody deserves happiness like this girl~ she is an absolutely unbelievable friend, the kindest, sweetest and most thoughtful of people. Ever. I feel so lucky to know her and to be able to call her my friend and it was such a treat to celebrate her. My beautiful Berg, to many many more birthdays together! I can't wait!

(that's the gorgeous birthday girl in the middle in purple!)

The Three Musketeers

The beautiful birthday girl!

At the restaurant, Society in Yaletown~

instead of bread to start they bring COTTON CANDY! Now that's my kind of place!

Muah!

Besties xoxo

My Life~ Olympics Edition

Today was a GREAT day! I had the afternoon off and so I was able to be a tourist in my own hometown, so to speak. I met up with my friend Kayli in the afternoon and we roamed our city, participating in
Olympic fever!

We started out with lunch on Granville Island, currently home to the French Quarter, Atlantic Canada House and Swiss House. We ate at Sandbar, which was hopping as usual (no surprise there!). Well fed, we then walked over the Granville Street Bridge on this ridiculously beautiful day. It may technically be winter but here it is lovely, mild and sunny! Once downtown we wandered through the mob at Robson Square, where we saw the zip liners soar over our heads and took a few photos behind our beautiful Art Gallery. We then made our way down to the waterfront and the new Convention Centre to take in the Olympic Cauldron and its incredible flame. It was a truly wonderful day and I felt inordinately proud to be a Canadian
and especially a Vancouverite!

ps- My cute hat is from The Cross at Homer and Davie! If you live in Vancouver come and get your own!

Perception is Not Reality

It's 2am and I can't sleep. Again. This insomnia thing is really hanging on for dear life. I hate being up at this time of night. Except for the consistent sound of traffic outside my window, I feel isolated~ not lonely, just awake on my own, with no one to talk to... and so I play out what is in my head onto this blank page. Lulu is asleep, upside down and with her paws covering her face, at the end of my bed. I can see Christmas lights glowing in the apartment across the alley. They keep them on all night, every night. And I'm thinking about people.

It is a lesson I would rather not learn over and over again and yet I do. Why are people never in reality the way I see them in my mind? I know that sounds weird and I don't mean it in a bizarre, controlling way. More in a disappointed, seriously?! way. It is so easy to think you know someone when you have seen them over a long period of time. You don't even have to really know each other and yet from repeated interaction you feel you know them, what they are really like, what kind of person they seem to be, what they value. 

And then you find out things that are so absolutely to the contrary, that they are not at all what you had thought they were for years. It is such a shock, a loss even, because the person you thought existed, in fact, doesn't. It was all simply made up, or perceived (incorrectly), in your mind. Remember that stupid old adage, "you can't judge a book by its cover?" Here is mine... you can't know what someone is like without actually knowing them. I would like to assume that everyone I seem to know and like are sweet, kind, shy, nice. Reality check? They aren't. This is not cynicism. This is growing up and learning yet another lesson. One I value.

So maybe it's okay... no, maybe it's really freakin' good I don't truly know these people in the first place. Disappointment, be damned. 

(Image via Vi.sualize, song lyric Bixby Canyon Bridge by Death Cab for Cutie)

The Resentment of Change

Change. I know it is inevitable. Time ticks by, things change, the world moves on. I understand that with change there is progress and without that we wouldn't live in the amazing world we live in today. But why does progress sometimes come at the cost of good? I hate change sometimes and it sickens me  to see things I love being ruined and taken away for the purpose of... nothing. This may sound trite but all I see around me sometimes is greed and money and commercialism taking over. 

When I was little we lived on a street and at one end of the street was a fence. On the other side of that fence was a big, undeveloped lot with an ancient farmhouse and cows grazing in the grass. The neighbourhood kids would walk along the top of the fence and wiggle through a loose board to romp in the huge, wildly overgrown field. It was heaven for a child. Our own kingdom, to explore and play and dream in. I still drive through that neighbourhood to look at two of the houses we lived in there and where I grew up but the farm yard is long gone. Pavement and cookie cutter houses stand in its place. 

Yesterday brought back the sadness I feel whenever I see the over developed neighbourhood of my childhood. There was this house that stood on the corner of the neighbourhood where I went to school. It stood behind huge columns of trees and an imposing gate at the front so that you could barely ever get a good look at it, but I used to babysit two doors down and would walk the kids by it whenever I got the chance. It was huge and dark and dramatic, a house out of movies rather than the bland suburban neighbourhood it stood in. I always wondered what it looked like inside. Was it bigger than it looked from outside the gate... or was it much smaller, like re-visiting a place you loved as a kid and realizing it is, in fact, tiny. Was it as grand as it looked, or just ordinary? I worshipped that house and everything it represented to me 

as a child. 

Yesterday I drove by. In the passenger seat of my mom's car, I was gazing out the window when I saw... the emptiness. It had been torn down. I gasped. It made my stomach clench in repulsion. That beautiful house gone and for what? So that, like the rest of Richmond, it can be developed into three tiny, stupid, generic townhouses cramped onto one lot. I have witnessed the constant over development and changing of my hometown with a fair amount of ambivalence up until now. I, for the most part, understand (if not embrace) change. But this was too much. This was the destruction of a dream, the tearing down of a mythical palace from a little girl's imagination. I can't truly express how much it saddened me. Why do things that are so beautiful get torn down? How can the city allow that to happen? 

Today I hate change. And the developers that will stick up those ridiculous townhouses. Shame on them. These are days when I am proud that money doesn't mean everything to me. 

Today I hate change. 

(Photo via Paper Tissue)

I Believe

I have to believe in this. It just will be. 

Resolutions II

Here are a few more resolutions for our newly born 2010...

1. Go see more concerts (this sadly lacked in 2009)

2. Do things outside of my comfort zone ie. see movies I wouldn't normally choose (foreign, documentary) or go out for cuisine I wouldn't typically select (Indian)

3. Go out more instead of staying home and hibernating (see above comfort zone)

4. Encourage new friendships

5. Pay bills on time (ugh!)

6. Learn to master at least a few dishes in the kitchen so I can cook some semi decent meals

7. Watch every episode thus far of Mad Men

8. Cut down on Starbucks~ let's say every other day instead of everyday, twice daily (this one will be haaaaard)

9. Visit my grandparents more

10. Read more (not just blogs, not just Vogue)~ return to books (and good ones)

I've let some things that I cherish slip by the wayside in the last while~ good music, beautiful literature and long visits with loved ones... but I'm determined to regain what has been temporarily forgotten. 

Happy New Year, everyone, and here's to a long, eventful, fun filled and memorably happy 2010. 

Hello 2010

I've never been very good at either nailing down meaningful New Years resolutions or then keeping them, for that matter. My half hearted attempts at trying to change my careless spending habits and penchant for junk food usually collapse by about January 3. No joke. I really like shopping and sugar. 

As we head into a new year and I get to shed this 364 day old one, it is impossible to ignore the hope of a fresh start. I get to leave old disappointments behind, have yet more distance from bad choices and wipe my hands clean of 2009. A new decade, a world of new possibilities. Anything can happen. 

My resolutions for 2010 are less about ceasing shopping and more about continuing to shape the person I'm trying to become. Yes, at 30 I'm still very much evolving, and turning (I hope) into a person I can be proud to be. A person who will one day be a sound and steady mate and the best and most patient of mothers (like mine). A person who will be a more thoughtful and level daughter and a more generous and kind friend. A person who looks at the glass as half full and tries to live every day as if it counts (because it does). 

Dear 2010,

I have no idea what yet to expect from you, but you are a gift so I hope you are wonderful. See you in a day. I'll be the one in sequins.

Love, Ally Redhead

Resolutions for 2010

1. Stop procrastinating. No one ever got anything done by burying their head in the sand. Be an adult and do the things that you don't want to do, because they have to get done. Call the student loan centre, apply for jobs, straighten things out at UBC. I am the worst procrastinator and it needs to stop. In another day (ha ha). 

2. Be a more thoughtful and generous person. Be the first one to pick up the phone or contact a friend you want to see, instead of waiting for them to get in touch with you. Send birthday cards. Give genuine compliments. Be generous of spirit. Kindness is the nicest gift of all.

3. Stop dwelling on the "what might have been" and live the life I have been given. Live for today and its realities. Don't look back and don't regret. Don't make someone a priority when they barely make me an option. Embrace the future, the unknown, new possibilities and the endless fish in the sea. 

4. Stop self obsessing. The world isn't about me. Stop thinking it is so personal. Stop taking everything so personally. Get out of this head, stop being selfish and look at the wide world in front of me. 

5. Be more positive, work on being happy. For some people this is easy and for me it is work. Not work exactly, but not... simple. Work on being happy. Take pleasure in the little things, like seeing a cute raccoon at night while I walk to my car or my daily yummy Starbucks or one of my favourite songs on the radio or Lulu biting my toes. Don't descend into that dark space but try very hard to stay buoyant and positive. 

(Stay tuned... there may be more as they come to me!) 

Quote of the Day-New Years Edition

For last year's words belong to last year's language

And next year's words await another voice

And to make an end is to make a beginning.

-T.S. Eliot