Uh oh... A bit of a dilemma...

Just a touch of a hiccup in my newest plan.  Not that it’s a new problem, because it’s not.  It’s been my first concern ever since this idea (moving to Whitehorse part way through my year) popped into my head!  Considering i won’t have my car to move my stuff from one place to the other... (never mind i couldn’t drive in January anyway, if that was the moving time)... just how do i get to Whitehorse from Yellowknife?  I mean really... they’re both WAY up north in Canada... it can’t be that far, can it?  

Well, have you looked at a map?  It’s an 1880 km drive!!  It’s almost as far to drive from one to the other (horizontally across the map), than vertically from Vancouver all the way UP there!  Canada is a big country... 2nd largest country in the world (after Russia).  I already knew this, but it really sinks in when you try to go from one part of it to the other!  And we're talking about only the far west side of it!

Check out the air fares?  Cost is anywhere from $500 to well over $1000!  Does nothing go directly from one city to the other?  It seems as if you have to go to Calgary & all the way down to Vancouver, then back up again!  Surely not.  Anyway, price & route, etc aside, that’s not the main problem.  It’s packing.  How on earth do i fit my stuff... (stuff that i’ll need for an entire year mind you.. this isn’t ‘just’ a short trip!)... into a mere couple of suitcases?  Can i take a large suitcase AND a large backpack for cargo PLUS a carry-on onto the plane at least?  

I mean, there’s the clothing... i really want to take my long skirts, whose bulk take up almost the entire suitcase just on their own!  Lol.  Never mind a variety of tops, sweaters, dresses, sleepwear (both summer AND cushy warm winter... OH that housecoat alone is very light weight-wise, but SO bulky!)  Then there’s my hats.. i want to take a good variety of them... gotta have SOME fun up there!  A couple of my Starbucks mugs (i can’t live without them!), a small sampling of my collections (i can’t live a year without them either!).  My netbook.. my traveling scale (so i can keep control of my weight hopefully). My favourite cookbook or two, and art books.  What about art supplies on top of all this??  OH!  I forgot about the bulky parka & clunky Sorel boots! (thanks ladybug... i did get some on sale @ 3 Vets this last weekend!... i hope the -40 rating is ok!)... OH NO!  And my 'beanie' pillow!  I can't live even one night without my enormously heavy & bulky 'husks' pillow!  *sigh* And the list goes on!!  All into just a couple of suitcases??

Well anyway, i’ve got to fit it all in somehow!  Just in case i DO do this mid-season thing.  I am just NOT good at downsizing... as much as i’d love to do it!  Hehe.  I’ll probably moan about this a few more times as time marches on...  :-)

A bit of a change of plans....

I spent the entire day yesterday, creating a chart that compares events & festivals in 6 Northern communities… Yellowknife (of course), Hay River (YK’s neighbour across the lake) & Inuvik in NWT, Whitehorse & Dawson City in the Yukon & Skagway Alaska. The entire day & evening, and i’m not even half finished! Haven’t even looked at Skagway (just a 3 hour drive from Whitehorse) yet! Oh, so much fun is to be had up North!

Can Can @ Sourdough Rendezvous!

My reasoning? Well, there are so many great communities up there, and i want to live in them all, but can’t really do that, can i? ...Can i?  But maybe i can live in at least one more… Maybe the one i originally had planned on moving to in the first place? Whitehorse. To be able to kill two birds with one stone (urgh, what a nasty saying, but it applies well… live in two cities in one year) would be wonderful! Maybe then my Northern Yearning Heart will be satiated then, and i can go on with my life & get on the road & see the rest of the continent! I mean, i can just see it... After a year in Yellowknife, saying OK, now a year in Whitehorse! Oo! OO! Then a year in Dawson City!!

Well anyway... on with the events. The only ART Events i found though, was one in Inuvik in July, and Dawson City in August. And speaking of Dawson City… whoa, do they ever have a lot of events! :-) I would love to live in that quaint Gold Rush 1880’s town! Although, there are so many of these festival & events all over, that i would love to go to!  ... Yup.. found one in Nunavut as well...

Burning Away the Winter Blues

I think that’s what i’m going to do with this blog for the next little while... Post festivals around the North that i wish i could be at. ‘Yukon Quest’, the dog sled race from Whitehorse to Fairbanks Alaska just finished last week or so. The “Yukon Sourdough Rendezvous” (in Whitehorse) is starting right about now, so that one will be first. Then the ‘Burning Away the Winter Blues’ (sort of like a mini Burning Man... how wonderful is that?? OH i want to go to that one SO badly!!), next month, also in Whitehorse.  The Snowking Festival & Caribou Carnival (with Ice Castle and all!) is next month in Yellowknife...

*sigh* I wish i could be there...

Anyway, so seeing i have no life right now and obviously too much time on my hands to kill... i started this new version of my Northern blog. The other one’s name was life-in-yellowknife, and seeing i’m hoping to expand my experience of the North a tad, i thought a more all-encompassing version would be more suitable, before the Yellowknife one got too big to transfer all the posts.

Now i’m free to sing the praises of the entire Great White North! :-D

So much fun!

You know, i am having SO much fun planning this. For years i've fantasized about picking just a few examples of each of my most favourite collections & things (as well as the regular things like clothing, etc), to load into a car and take off & move to a new world. Sometimes the fantasy is just picking tiny representations of my favourite things (little miniature versions), just big enough to fit into a little ziplock bag in my backpack but not take up too much precious room, just in case i become homeless (for some unknown reason... one never knows!). I 'need' my 'things'. The things that represent me... the things that i love. They make me happy just to look at them!

Samples of my toy robots & ray guns... my ‘Toy Story’ alien... a car-dash hula dancer... tiki mugs... my 'Frida' art collection... Maneki Neko (the Asian 'good luck' cat)... mini dolls (Liddle Kiddles, etc)... one of my sock monkeys... devil duck... mermaids... my fav art (other artists and my own)... art reference books... just to name a few. Oh! And mustn't forget all my hats!

And now i'm picking those things for me to take to Yellowknife! A very real possibility, not just a fantasy! It's incredibly invigorating! A fun way to pass the time! They're going to take up valuable cargo space in the car, but as far as i'm concerned, they are more necessary than anything else, because i can always 'shop at the dump' or the Sally Anne for anything else i need! A year is a long time, let alone the possibility of two years, to be without my 'treasures'!

Did i mention this has been fun? :-)

Wow, another epiphany!

Apparently there is much more to this thing than just the dream of living with the 'Lights' for an entire season! I was about to write a short note to a friend of mine as a little reminder, because he hadn't answered my last emails in quite a while (i had questions i had asked him). But i knew it would be silly to do, because he still wouldn't answer. He's just not online much any more. Which is a good thing, in my books actually, and something i aspire to. Actually NONE of my friends answer my emails much any more. I'm not complaining, mind you (*please friends, don't feel bad!*). I'm just commenting on the fact that they have busy social lives in the real world. And my social life is in the VIRTUAL world because i live on a little island (just off the coast of Vancouver) in the real world. So i don't seem to 'mesh' with my friends any more. It seems as if we're drifting apart. It's getting a bit too lonely here for my liking.

And that's where today's epiphany comes in! :-) If i move to Yellowknife, i have a chance to have a REAL life with REAL people in the REAL world! Living downtown in the thick of things... walking to everything... No need to be online hoping day after day to find communication and companionship any more! Of course i'd still write in this blog & on facebook... to keep in touch. But i'd hopefully have real-time friends too. Yet another fantasy could very well come to life! *crosses fingers*

I know i could take the ferry into the city to socialize, but.. it's just not the same as living there. I have to constantly bug people for a place to crash (OR get a motel room) if i want to do anything in the evening (the last ferry being 9:30 pm) and that can get embarrassing and expensive. Not to mention the ferry is really expensive as well!

Come to think of it, why can't i socialize here on my island? Well at this point in time, i actually can't answer that, because i don't  know why! Maybe it's because this island is my refuge away from the world. My sanctuary with a moat. I really do love that. We do have a couple of good friends here though... i really should foster that friendship.. they're good people. Maybe it would help. Geez. *shrug* I'll have to do more thinking on this.

OH, i shouldn't say that ALL of my friends have busy social lives. I do have one friend whose social life is as 'virtual' as mine is! And even though he's horrendously busy at work, he still magically finds time to write huge long emails to me pretty well every day... if i actually wrote to him, that is! Emails back and forth, back and forth... i loved it! But lately, i haven't been writing him. Since Murray & i got back from our month-long road trip recently, from Vancouver to Boston and back, i've been reading so much, obsessing about the possibility of this move, and trying to stay offline myself (i rather enjoyed being off that grid while on the road!), that i've been neglecting HIM! MY bad, and i apologize for that... (sorry Mark!) I'll have to write him today.

So, kudos to my friends who have busy lives! :-) Maybe i'll be able to join that world myself some day. Unfortunately, being stuck on this rock is not conducive to that becoming a reality... at least not in the sense that i'm wanting it to be. I would have to sell this house and move to Vancouver (or Victoria), and that can't happen. At least not for a while. Too much time, sweat & tears have been spent building this house. And Murray doesn't want to live in the city any more anyway. He works there all day and loves to ferry over to his calming rock in the Pacific.

So that's why Yellowknife is appealing to me too! Gets me to that real-time social place i'm yearning to be! Maybe i just need to scratch that itch for a year, and then come back to my reclusive life on my island. Hmmm. I guess we'll have to see just how itchy i am...


Sidenote: I had a dream last night that i got an apartment in Old Montreal! Another dream of mine. Just for the summer, mind you! With no 'Lights' to go with the snow, i could NOT handle Montreal in the winter! The apartment had double french doors to a New Orleans style balcony (oooo, New Orleans...) and it looked down into the busy street. I was SO excited to actually be living the dream... living in Vieux-Montréal! I guess i had that dream because in yesterday's blog post i asked about other hidden fantasies that i could make happen! :-)

Just a little epiphany...

Today i spent almost 2 hours to move less than 1/2 a kilometre. I was in line @ the Peace Arch Boarder Crossing on a “quickie” trip to Bellingham WA for a few cases of Cherry Coke Zero. On a Saturday. At noon. Good thing i enjoy the quiet company of my brain, because i had a LOT of time to think!

I LOVE to think! Think & plan & fantasize. And try to figure out WHY i think the way that i do and do the things that i think about. No surprise there. I’m female.

So while contemplating in that lineup, i had a minor epiphany. I figured out one of the reasons why this move appeals to me so much. It partially satisfies a very old “secret” fantasy of mine. To disappear off the face of the earth & start a new life somewhere else. Of course there will be no earth-face disappearing (i love my family & friends too much to do that). But it does kind of fulfill the rest of the fantasy... if only for a year or two! Now THAT was something i never thought could ever happen! I like it when fantasies come true!

Hmmm... Now what other hidden fantasies can i make happen...

Please!! No more regrets!!

Darn it all anyway! I HAVE to do this... SOMEhow! Alone or not! I'm getting old, time is running out, and i don't want to live with regret! I already have just one regret in this life, and that is that i didn't go to art school 30-some-odd years ago. I got married instead. Instead! Like... i couldn't have done both?? It still stymies me that i didn't do it! So i don't want to add another one to that list! I can't! I won't! I need to at least TRY to do this thing!!

*big calming breath*....

Hehe. Ok.. rant over. :-)