I only ate sushi once all summer.

I'm sure that there are some nice people hiding out somewhere in their basement apartments, but I'm not sure how much longer I want to live in a city full of either unhappy or rude people.

Hey guy in the black Zoro hat.. Miss seeing u around. you said I should smile more... Im trying.... maybe we could chat sometime..

My confession is I’m so tired of doing my 8:30 to 5 office job, that I’ve started daydreaming about winning the lotto. It’s so mind numbing the rat race called Vancouver office jobs but I can’t quite afford to retire yet, let alone feel smart about forking out my hard earned wages for those fancy $12-18 downtown Vancouver takeout lunches that my younger coworkers enjoy regularly. Guess they are enjoying now instead of worrying about their senior years, to each their own. =) Years ago, I decided to speed up savings by learning how to be really frugal. About once a blue moon I make an instant ramen noodle $1.25 and add some steamed veggies for a quick desk lunch or get a mall food court takeout like on Taco Tuesday 2 tacos with sour cream for under $3. I supplement it with the company’s free organic fruit bowl, free cold drinks/snacks for staff. Again, I don’t do it on a regular basis but sometimes it just feels right to not spend crazy money for a $14 gourmet salad. At the end of the day...like so many wishful thinkers, I secretly wish to win the lotto so none of these small petty things like saving $2 here and there would matter in the least. Ah well! First world problems....lol.

I’m sick of all these regular news reports of yet another rapist or violent criminal offender who just “walked away from Vancouver halfway house”. Alerting the community is good, but how about doing something proactive and preventative? Something is obviously broken with the current halfway house system and this needs to be fixed pronto. Another rent...VPD moved its Main Hastings branch to the west side in 2011, and just look at the mess in the DTES now...having 4 patrol cars doing donut run patrols is absolutely doing nothing for this city’s public disorder. Open drug dealing and just a complete eyesore. Clean it up! We can’t have ordinary DTES residents, people with kids afraid to walk through the DTES as an off limits zone just for meant for drugs. It’s not just homelessness but the sheer lack of presence of police in that particular area that is truly disturbing. Where the hell are the beat cops that used to walk through DTES?! It’s now just become a volunteer based “community policing” center that does squat.

My mother told me before I got married to keep a nest egg for myself in case my marriage went bad and to always work and never depend on a man for anything. I have been saving $100 a paycheck and putting it away for 10 years. This amount is now over $15,000. I have never told my husband about this nest egg even though we have seriously struggled financially at times but its my money.

My close friends have positively encouraged me to keep up with my, "can you please turn down the music volume. You're being inconsiderate of others" mini transit etiquette speech. I know they won't admit to how roughly blunt I sound doing it, regardless of how incredible polite my words are...and I can't admit that it gives me the pleasurable opportunity to keep practicing my direct approach problem solving skills on a regular basis, which I look forward to doing...lol

Heading home after work. It's pouring with rain, I'm damp, tired, and just looking forward to getting into my comfies(soft lounge clothes) at home, and cozying up to the fire. I'm a few blocks away, and this stranger stops me in my tracks to say, "You look tired. You should smile cuz there's no reason to be sad." Just when I start actually thinking I might be too serious and don't have a sense of humor, I realize I actually do. That, and quick smart ass answers, that leave those that fueled me to do it, realize that they are the annoying assholes of this world. "Fuck off! If all drivers had a huge smile plastered on their face, you'd think they were insanely scary or look ridiculous. Stop pissing strangers off by telling them what to do, and if you need to see everyone smile, go see a performance with only clowns in it. Would you still tell me to smile if I told you a close friend just died?"

Sometimes I torture myself with the what-if's. Mostly I don't. I truly don't do the wouldacouldashoulda thing very often. What's the point in that, right? But lately, what's been torturing me is the what if's about the night I met you. What if I had listened to my instinct that told me to get away fast? What if I hadn't allowed myself to get close enough to smell you, and realize that yours was the only smell I wanted to be close to forever? That chemical was overpowering for me, and has been my downfall. Just like a drug addict, I've become addicted to you. I keep trying to quit, and I have this time I know because now you've quit me, but the withdrawal is the worst pain I've ever felt. I don't know where to put that pain. I squirm like a bug on a pin, but there's no escape. I hear my brain tell me that I made the only choice I could make without completely abandoning even a pretense of self-respect. Even when we talked a couple of weeks ago, I wanted so badly to just beg your forgiveness and ask you to come back, because it's so hard to breathe without you. But something inside me just kept silent. I think it's whatever's kept me alive for this long; that inner skeleton of steel that just keeps on standing even when the rest of me is paper-weak and crumbles when I hear your voice. If it's anything at all, know this: I am sorry for the pain I may have caused you. If I could go back and re-do that situation, I'd do it differently. I'm not apologizing for having valid feelings, and I'm not apologizing for being upset about the way you reacted. I am apologizing for going over the top and saying too much. Even if someone I love has hurt me to the core, I never want to do the same to them, because I love them so much. So, I am sorry. I wish more than anything that we could have a re-do, but I know that for you that's not possible. Sometimes a song lyric can say what you can't, so let this one by Lord Huron say it for me. Good bye. Take me back to the night we met And then I can tell myself What the hell I'm supposed to do And then I can tell myself Not to ride along with you I had all and then most of you Some and now none of you Take me back to the night we met I don't know what I'm supposed to do Haunted by the ghost of you Oh, take me back to the night we met

Too much space to fill up with crap I don't need.