LINDY-LOO'S LIFE

Wow, motherhood. I never thought it would happen to me - though somehow I've always known that if it were to happen, it would happen this way: a huge surprise, a mild shock, a pleasant warmth, and two extremely excited parents to be.

 

I've known for almost 2 months but I've still not had much time to absorb it all. Instead, I've been madly trying to survive a full time job, the election, and a 24 hour hangover.... morning sickness is an all day, all night affair - one that I have been dealing with for 8 weeks and counting, causing me to actually lose weight instead of gain it even with a little peach inside of me now.

 

Amidst the re-named by me 24-7 sickness sits proudly the pregnancy hormones causing it - moreover causing me to be so extremely calm and cool about it all that even I am beginning to think I might be going crazy. Of course I have a lot of fears and a zillion things to worry about - namely, where I am going to live and what I am going to do. But somehow these great hormones just make it all seem like no big thing.

 

Now, you, like many others, probably have a hundred questions.

Well, let me go through some of the typical Q and A's for you and if you still have little things nagging by all means email me!

 

Who is this Keith guy?

"The Italian", as he was formerly known as and is still referred to is actually from Victoria (his parents are from Italy, and god does his mum make a great pesto). He works in real estate/financing and dabbles in his own side projects. He is a pretty good soccer player and drummer and cook. When we first started seeing each other I could run circles around him, which served to motivate him to a point where I can't even keep up with him anymore. I took him on his first bike tour ever (through the Okanagan in June) and I guess it won't be our last!

 

When are you due?

In the first week of June, 2012. Fingers crossed for June 9^th so that the baby's birthday is 06/09/12- a good mathematical birthday!

 

Is it a boy or a girl?

Recently the rules changed in B.C. so that parents can only find out the gender of their baby if they go have a special 3D ultrasound in a private clinic. That is a bit WASPey to me so I am voting to hold out until the baby is born. I think it's going to be a girl though.

 

Why are you doing a home birth?

Ideally, yes, my baby will be born at home. My midwife will coach Keith and I through the birth and we can be in the warmth and cleanliness of our own place. Complications can and do happen and if they do then I will go to the hospital (pouty face here) but I won't like it. Hospitals are dirty, smelly, factories and more people leave them sick than well. Not to mention the fact that child bearing and birth are pats of a HEALTHY normal life, not a sick one, and so should be treated that way.

 

How did this happen?

You know, I always thought that if I did settle down and have a family, it would have to be forced on me - not in a bad way, but in a surprise way like this. So yeah.... it happened like all other surprise pregnancies happen. But I am pretty sure you'd be hard pressed to find two people more ecstatic about a surprise like this than Keith and I.

 

What do your parents think?

My parents have been pretty cool with it. In fact, pretty much everyone has. It's funny, the people who I thought would freak out the most are some of the ones who have had the most logical and loving responses. The award to best reaction still goes to Bonnie, for sure though. I called her mid November, right after the election, and like most other people she assumed the election was the big news in my life. Well, not long into the conversation I changed topics and spilled the beans. She immediately broke down crying and I couldn't understand a single thing she said for what felt like hours, until I finally heard her say, "this is the best day, ever!"

I knew I'd get involved in my community upon returning to Canada. I knew there would be some politically charged blog posts once I got settled. But I would never have guessed I would take it this far.

I'm running for Victoria city council, and the election is in 3 weeks!

Snapshot 2011-10-31 18-21-44.tiff

It all started about 3 months ago when three people during three separate and completely unrelated conversations in one day said to me that I should consider running for city council. So I did. But I considered it to be too time consuming, too out of reach, and way too out of my league. Then I got a call one day from a group of people who were putting together a "slate" called Open Victoria. they wanted to run as a team, one pushing together for open and accountable government, one working without a political affiliation....and they wanted me on it.

Since I am not one to take much time in decision making I spent a few days muddling it over and went to them and said yes. The way I saw it was it would be a free education. One requiring about the same effort and time as a university class, and with much more reward. Moreover, it would give me a voice and a way to speak to my community. To call for more environmental responsibility and more awareness of how even we, in clean little Victoria, are devastating the planet and what we can be doing differently.

It's been four weeks now since we launched our platform and two since I was officially nominated to run. I have already gotten my time and money's worth...and there are still three more weeks!

We've been all over the papers and on the radio - even the Globe and Mail. We are mentioned constantly in local magazines and feeling support form all corners of the city. I particularly enjoy my chats with people at their doorsteps about all the things we can be doing better, and the first all candidates meeting last week was fun - especially when the crowd started to boo Dean Fortin, the current mayor who is really just your typical yucky politician. We want the future of politics to be clean and open...politicians don't have to be slimy, and those who are should not be getting re-elected! If we are able to really up-end the current 8 seats on council, I think we might have a chance of really changing to closed culture currently looming over our city hall.

Open Victoria stands for openness, accountability, transparency and independence, and with my love for both business and the environment, I bring a whole new meaning to a passion for sustainability. Sustainability to me means making decisions that have both our financial and environmental future in mind. It does have to be a question of gold bars OR the earth. We can make policies and bring in technology that help with saving money and help the earth at the same time.   

Today marks exactly six months of me being back in Canada and three months in my new job. For a while there I thought I wasn't going to make it; but things are really starting to turn around. Canada is feeling more and more like home, and I am learning to trust again (thanks to a very patient Italian).

 

Part of what is making Canada home is having a weekly schedule and getting up to old and new shenanigans. Recently I went on a bike tour along the southern tip of the island, and another through the Okanagan. Furthermore, my weekly schedule is littered with fun and games - or things that I turn into fun and games, anyways.

 

My Canada Day bike trip to Port Renfrew was, not surprisingly, an unattainable goal. 120kms out and 120kms back. I made it to Jordan River (90km point) and the Italian picked me up - knowing it was an unattainable goal and just happening to be in the area (my hero). Just in the nick of time, too. I had only begun to cry a little.

 

The next bike trip was in fact with the Italian. I took him through the Okanagan, which he had never been to, and tried to persuade him that Okanagan wines were on par with Italian wines. It is tough selling someone on an idea that you yourself don't believe in. But I wouldn't say I totally failed.

We are both in love with Pinto Gris from Burrowing Owl.

The best view award went to NkMip, for the second year in a row.

 

During the week long, much needed visit to the Okanagan, the Allenby Awesomes got together for our first ever reunion - twenty years after I had moved away. We did what we always did - played Soccer Baseball, and the best part by far was teaching the children of the kids I had grown up with how to play our childhood game. The second best part was the Okanagan Springs Brewery donation we had won, which contained 8 12-packs of beer and a plethora of beer-related paraphernalia.

 

In and among the odd bike trip, work drama, and Italian lessons, I do still maintain a weekly schedule of things I look forward to when in town (2 out of every 4 weeks). This weekly schedule is probably what has allowed me to begin to finally feel at home again.

Sunday dinners at Ian and Debs are by far my favorite part of the week. Aside from the fact that Debbie's food is the best in the world, Eli and Lily remind me that there is so much more to life than a career and traveling. For instance, playing at the park and watching Cars 2!

Every Wednesday afternoon I volunteer with Crime Watch for the Victoria Police. Even just saying that makes me feel sixteen. The little red shirt I wear, with "Crime Watch Volunteer" on the back, is the real kicker though. I feel like a kid doing it, in a lot of good ways. Basically we drive around looking for criminals, and walk the beat, keeping the peace. No, not really. We mostly just watch for things like suspicious behavior and then walk through parking lots, "locking out" auto crime. The odd shift something exciting happens, like the time I found a stolen lambourgini. And the time we followed a guy running with only underwear and an ipod. I wanted to call the cops but the manly guys I was with wanted to follow him. We proceeded to park and got out to follow him (the perp.;)) by foot. We subsequently lost him (um, guys, cause we're not cops). But found him again when the real cops came and wrestled him to the ground, 200m from our van. I don't think the po-po were impressed by our initiative.

 

Moreover, I spend many of my weekends and the odd afternoon volunteering as the Business Coordinator for the BC Green Party. So far this has involved spending afternoons with the leader of the BC Green party, who is so awesome. On the topic of politics, I was talked into running for city council in October and running in the upcoming municipal election as a Green in the university riding. The results of the HST referendum will impact the ability for students to vote...more on that in a month or so. Last thing on the politics front - I met with Elizabeth May in the flesh Monday and am going to a bbq with her today!!

I might break down and ask for her autograph... she is so cool.

Lastly, as part of my update for the month, here is my favorite pic of July. An abandoned hotel on our bike route between Oliver and Penticton. And the best song of the month: http://youtu.be/AhxF9xudm04 - Mia, by Emma the Great.

 

 

Now that the Feds have mandated postal workers back to work (does anyone else feel this is somehow against human rights and proving yet again that unions are useless in this day and age?) we can all wait in anticipation for our HST ballots. These ballots will be one of the joys of living in a spoiled country full of people who think they are all deserving of a say, "just because". An accompanying reality is that most of these pampered people don't bother to act when given the chance. Too lazy, too laissez-faire.

But I am not. And I hope you aren't either.

 

 

When you do get that ballot in the mail and open it, think of how you want your province to be. Then vote No.

 

Yes, the question is the most obscure and confusing wording ever (I'd love to read how this was translated into Chinese).

 

Yes, the government sucks and all that other whiny crap I hear all day, PLUS they "illegally" forced HST upon us (or some such other ignorant view).

 

Yes, the government misspends a lot of our hard earned money.

And yes, you want to vote No.

 

You want to vote No for many reasons:

 

If the GST and PST are reinstated, small businesses will have to change their systems again, the costs of which will be as much as a month's profit or more.

 

The jobs of the GST and redundant PST workers will be restored, and the taxes somewhere else will have to increase in order to pay for that bureaucracy.

 

The government will get enough money to operate in the comfortable way they like to, with the amount of money they feel they need (to pay B.C. Parks officers an 85$ per day stipend for food while traveling, or entry level clerks Helijet tickets to sit in on meetings in Vancouver)... So just deal with it.

And if you don't like it, run for office. 

 

The HST was an attempt at streamlining our government - something we never see.

Don't punish this behavior just because you didn't like the way it was implemented.

 

Can you tell the difference between stupid and brave behavior? Most of the time, no... (I know this because of the amount of times people tell me I am brave, when I really know I am not). On the outside, acting in a way  to "punish" the government (quotations because you are just punishing yourself) looks the same as when someone is behaving with stupidity and not bravery. Acting out of stubbornness can seem like an act of principle. It's not (I am an expert - you'd know why if you met my father).

Just because the government forced HST upon us, doesn't mean we need to vote it away.

And since that is the only argument I have heard so far for reinstating the PST and GST, then by now you all must have come to the only logical conclusion too... vote NO.

 

And just in case you are left with any doubt, take a moment to step back and try looking at a bigger picture.

Instating a Harmonized Sales Tax was a move towards a more sustainable system of taxation: decreasing income tax and increasing consumer tax. I should not be getting taxed more the more educated I am, the harder I work, and the more money I make and neither should you. But we all should be getting taxed more the more we spend, the more we buy, the more we consume and the more we tax the environment through that consumption.

An additional "health" tax on fast food, alcohol and tobacco; a "green" tax on petroleum based products and anything that contains PCBs, fire retardants, and other such bio-accumulating chemicals that are slowly killing all living things; and a luxury tax on anything that costs more than 50% above the average price for a good would be a dream come true in a province that has the potential to be a leader in the world, but instead sits sniveling about how expensive things are and how it sucks to be in debt while you sit there drinking the second 3$ coffee of the day.

 

I used a facebook app to find out I fit in the middle right. Pro HST, moderately care. It's true.

 

Lastly, if you don't like it, move to China, where there is no sales tax and also no option to vote; move to the US where it is more like 3%, state-dependent and a government that lies and steals. Or here's a novel idea: stop consuming. Show me an average Canadian who actually needs to buy more than 50% of the things he spends his money on, and I will show you one who could care less whether there is consumer tax or not.