Wonder if anyone else is going to get the moments you laugh out loud and smile for no reason?

Wonder if you’ll ever stop wanting to eat french fries?

Wonder if you hug as well as you think you do?

Wonder if you could slow your thoughts down for five minutes?

Wonder how they look when they’re sleeping?

Wonder if anyone knows you love this song?

Wonder if anything will ever seem as fun as this again?

Wonder if your parents are still proud?

Wonder if that cake tastes as good as it looks?

Wonder if you’ll ever get it all done?

Wonder if you’re singing on key?

Wonder if anyone else would adore that painting as much as you do?

Wonder if coffee is your true soulmate?

Wonder if that bee feels like stinging you?

Wonder if you’re crazy?

Wonder if this is the day you get fired?

Wonder if you’ll ever stop being struck breathless by sunsets?

Wonder if you’ll ever stop saying dumb things?

Wonder if that will ever stop making you blush?

Wonder if you’ll ever stop letting music make you cry?

Wonder if you’ll ever love waking up?

Wonder if you’ll ever stop dreaming of being somewhere else?

Wonder if you’ll be everything you’re supposed to be?

Wonder if you’ll go a day without cringing at something you did?

Wonder if you’ll love someone more than they’ve ever been loved before?

Wonder if you’ll ever get it all together?

Wonder if you’ll ever be effortless?

Wonder if you’ll say it the way you meant to — just once?

Wonder if anyone else has the same taste in everything you do?

Wonder if you’ll ever dance the way you do in your dreams?

Wonder if you’ll ever stop feeling like you have to try so damn hard all the time?

Wonder if things are really as beautiful as you feel they are at times like this?

Wonder if they love you, too?

WE NEED THIS IN VANCOUVER.

Except I’m pretty sure that I could drag out stuff from my early 30’s that would make me cringe just as much.

And I’m only 32.

But this man needs a good slap. I just fear he’d enjoy it.

Why do some people NEVER HAVE TO LEARN ANY LESSONS?

Catherine and I once discussed the notion of consequences, and how I tended to react less gracefully to the idiocies of others than she did. Not that I was a jerk, but just that I was very justice-minded (I did plan to go to law school and become a prosecutor for years and years.)

I asked why she thought this was the case. And she replied:

“It’s because I’ve never met anyone who kept having to pay for all their mistakes like you do.”

Good enough reason to make me Joe Francis for a day?

Well.

I can’t imagine how I’d stack up if I had to write a “pros and cons” list about dating me.

But the effort is… impressive?

Hockey. Hockey. And More Hockey.

I love hockey. Have I said that yet?

I think most people who read my blog are pretty tuned in to the fact that hockey is one of my most significant loves, right up there with coffee and hair products and my laptop (but below my family, friends, babies and boys — although hockey-playing boys occupy a zone I can only identify as “Damn!”).

I don’t know that I’ve loved hockey my whole life, although I’ve certainly been exposed to it since birth. My dad used to play and referee for a league (in fact, I think he was the head official for a time) in the tiny prairie town in which I was born.

He actually played rec league hockey wherever we lived for a good portion of my growing-up years and followed the NHL, too — still does. My grandfather was an NHL-calibre player when he was younger, and we also have a few family friends who were scouted to play in the league (or did, for a short time).

When I was six, my family moved to Edmonton, which is a hard-core hockey town if ever there was one. We arrived at the beginning of the dynasty years for the Oilers — to this day, there is a special sign you see when you enter the area: ‘Edmonton: City of Champions’.

They won five Cups in ten years — more than fifteen years ago, mind you.

One of my student teachers in the fourth grade was Mark Messier’s sister — he played on the Oilers team at that point with Wayne Gretzky. I now refer to him as ‘Satan’ for his brutal ethics as a player, but his sister was lovely. One day, we got to pass around pictures of him posing with the Stanley Cup during Show and Tell in class!

But here’s the twist — in the midst of all that mania, I didn’t like the Oilers. I liked the team my dad liked and still likes, the Vancouver Canucks. He’d grown up here, so his loyalties were set in stone.

And if you know anything about the relationship my dad and I share, you know that the things we both enjoy, we ENJOY. We are very similar and very passionate. And on this issue, we were 100% in agreement — we were Canucks fans, and would be always, no matter where we lived.

This made me somewhat of a pariah in class when talk of hockey would come up — Edmonton Oilers devotees bring new meaning to the term ‘rabid’.

But it also gave me a solid dose of the underdog mentality that true sports enthusiasts require to transform them from passive observers to diehard fans.

By the time we moved back to BC in the fifth grade, the seed was sown.

It’s been a journey since then; the Canucks are a brilliantly unreliable franchise in many respects. They can be the best, most exciting team in the NHL one game, and the most confusing, sluggish one you’ve ever seen in the very next contest. But I love them — and I will continue to, unless they start using babies for pucks or something like that.

But it’s not just about pro hockey.

I have many friends who play rec league hockey still, and I spent a good portion of my late twenties trekking out to games most weekends, where I would be one of the most volatile and vocal fans in the arena (usually one of the only, truth be told).

They were threatened with a couple of penalties for the stuff I’d yell at the refs, but the refs were clearly being oversensitive.

My dad came to a few of the games with me, and I think he was a bit startled by my ferocity (not that he didn’t share it — I just don’t think he knew how close the apple fell to the tree until that point). And my dad’s car was actually stolen from the parking lot during one of those games — perhaps it was good that we’d gotten all of our aggression out in the stands!
Those are incredibly fond memories (well, maybe not the part about the car… )

And today?

I belong to a couple hockey pools now as far as the NHL goes, and those add to my life in ways that I cannot describe. Well, I can describe it, but you’d mock the heck out of me if I did. Suffice it to say, one of those pools began not just as a celebration of the sport, but as an effort to keep me and ten or so of my best guy friends in touch.

And it worked — we trash-talk one another to this day (lovingly).

So what do I really adore most about hockey?

What really draws me to this sport and makes me long for the return of my misplaced Trevor Linden bobblehead doll (give it back, Kirk)?

I love it because it has significant history in my life. I love it because of the mechanics of the sport — I skate myself, so I can imagine the skill it takes to actually pull off what they do. I love it because I can understand and remember the statistics with detail and accuracy. I love it because it can be both insanely graceful and ridiculously clumsy in execution, like all good things in life.

I love it because people I love play it. I love it because I watch it with my dad and my grandpa. I love it because the players are freakishly attractive to me (not all, but some). I love it because I can yell and be obnoxious when I watch and no one really takes me seriously — except a couple whistle-happy refs, but they had it coming (”Maybe you should take that whistle out of your ass so you can blow it now and then, huh?”).

I know hockey isn’t perfect.

I know there are moments of incredible violence that have occurred in the midst of play. I know that some parents of minor league hockey players are absolute bastards to their children. I know that some men watch hockey more often than they speak to their wives — and vice versa. None of that is reasonable.

But to me, none of those things are the fault of the sport as much as they are a manifestation of inherent weaknesses and excesses that we exhibit as human beings. If those individuals who make an embarassment of the sport didn’t act like asses in connection with hockey, they’d find another venue — no doubt in my mind.

But that’s not my hockey, anyhow.

My hockey is the one in which sweaty-headed players tell rink-side reporters –with incredible sincerity — that they “just want to give 100% out there”. My hockey is the one in which grandparents hold cups of Tim Horton’s coffee and huddle under quilts to watch their grandkids play. My hockey is one of impossible shots and victory hugs and stick-twirling magicians and the tsk-tsk-tsk of skates on ice.

My hockey is the one that lives in the heads of kids playing street games all across my country (”Car!”). My hockey causes people sitting side by side in an arena to spontaneously discuss memories of where they grew up with complete strangers. My hockey is the one that embodies the more positive aspects of our national identity. My hockey is the one that gave us all permanent gold-medal smiles for a month after the SLC Olympics. My hockey is the one I see evidence of in the old, faded photo of my grandpa in his uniform, stick on the ice.

My hockey is the one I discovered from the vantage point of my dad’s lap, cuddled in close, watching ‘Hockey Night in Canada’ more than 28 years ago.

It’s just a game, sure.

But it’s my game.

It was one year ago today that my iBook came via FedEx.

And since then?

No blue screen of death.

No weird errors.

No weird virii.

No problems connecting with the wifi.

I’m not saying Macs are perfect, or that they’re perfect for everyone. But Martin (my iBook) is one of the best investments I’ve ever made.

Happy Birthday, my wee milky Apple.

Thanks for not sucking.

I’m an arguer. I like to argue. Not because I’m a (complete) jerk, but because I’m passionate.

I know.

I laughed at me, too, right then.

And I realize that I just used passionate as a synonym for pain in the ass.

But that’s me. I’m a former debater. A trivia/fact/philosophy nerd. A girl with an elephant memory for conversations and statements. A girl unafraid of speaking her mind. And consequently, a single girl. You’d think there would be at least one man out there who can handle the verbal sparring, wouldn’t you? No?

Damn.

I mean, don’t get the wrong idea.

I don’t insult, I don’t belittle, I don’t nag. That would be lame. And mean. And I am neither lame nor mean. I’m not one for questioning the intelligence of my opponents or mocking their views or slamming their ethical viewpoints.
I just tend to be a little more animated — and more blunt — than is absolutely necessary. And incredulous.

For some reason, this hasn’t gone over beautifully with the kind of men I seem drawn to: easygoing, soft-spoken, fiercely anti-conflict, sunnily-optimistic types.

They like my “passion” as far as expressing my ideas and my loves and my joie de vivre goes… as long as we’re in agreement. In fact, it’s one of the things that men often appreciate most about me, along with my love of televised sports and Dave Chappelle and not asking if I look good in what I’m wearing… along with my ability to grin at very, very inappropriate things.

But when we disagree, I think they’d rather I just shrug and smile or — better yet! — be magically persuaded to their point of view. Like, now. Right now. Before I take exception or cock an eyebrow or simply say, “Wha?!”

Oops.

The quote I hear most often?

“Can we just drop it?”

And granted, as I get older, I’m learning to do that more and more, but I don’t think I’ll ever get really good at putting down my Nerf Bat to concede that Cory Stillman isn’t a bum or The West Wing isn’t a pander-fest or that it’s okay to call women “bitches” or that Jewel can actually sing.

Or, you know, not pushing questions like, “Why are you so terrified of trusting anyone?” or “Why are you still looking for a perfect woman?”

Because, you know… I’d like to know.

I must say that I rarely argue with my female friends. And it’s not because we don’t ever disagree. It’s more likely because we tend to veer from topic to topic so quickly that conflict falls by the wayside in favour of a new idea or a total conversational switch. Not to mention that the whole sexual chemistry thing is absent, so I’m less charged in the way I communicate. Or is it bigger than that?

Am I actually a really lame episode of Moonlighting?

Or a Meg Ryan movie?

Or am I putting men — one of which I plan to keep for the rest of his life, no takebacks — to the test to ensure that, no matter how bad it gets (I get), they’re still going to be there?

Yeah.

Because the ones that hold their ground and don’t walk away?

Those are the ones I love.

Oy.

I guess it’s me that’s the terrified one. You’d think I was used to being alone by now, but at the end of the day, it probably scares me more than anything else.

I want a guy who can read me like a book and call me on the last chapter before I even know I’m working on it.

I want a guy who doesn’t view disagreement as the end of the world.

I want a guy who tells me what he thinks and trusts that, when I’m done asking questions about it, I’ll get it. And if I don’t get it, I won’t stop trying. And that I accept him even if I never quite understand.

I want a guy who will watch me get into a red-faced monologue about something entirely not that important, and laugh.

And deal with the aftermath of laughing at me.

And not leave.

Is that too much to ask?

I never really thought of myself as difficult until recently. In fact, I used to think I was a martyr/placator/pollyanna.

But anyone who has ever watched Oprah with me knows that isn’t nearly the case. Or, you know, watched a hockey game.

First morning back at work after the longest vacation EVER in the history of Meg.

Several shocking things have already occurred:

• I ate breakfast! WHAT?! Yes, indeed, a bowl of Kashi. I’m now all about the “I never do that!” activities. But it took a long time. You really need to chew that Kashi. I was pretty tired by the last spoonful, but there was no time to nap again before I had to leave.

• I packed a lunch. WHAT?! Yes, indeed, a tuna sandwich on flax bread, coronation grapes, and carrot sticks. And, uh, Pepperidge Farms soft cookies. BECAUSE IT’S MY FIRST DAY BACK.

• A man I have never noticed before on the bus said, “You’re back!” Oy.

• I had 466 emails. Meep.

• I look less tan under these lights. Dammit.

• I missed my co-workers. They are very cute. Woo!

So.

One Toyota Corolla.

One camera.

Two girls.

Two weeks.

Three states.

3,000 miles.

Countless cups of coffee.

From Vancouver, BC to Cannon Beach, OR to Redding, CA to Fresno, CA to San Diego, CA to Fresno, CA to Eureka, CA to Cannon Beach, OR to Vancouver, BC.

And a gazillion places in-between.

Some quick conclusions:

• We don’t ever need to see the following places again: the drugstore in Hillsboro, OR; Portland, OR; Sacramento, CA; Chico, CA; Modesto, CA; Fresno, CA; the restrooms in Garberville, CA; Grants Pass, OR; or Oakland, CA.

• Life will suck just a little if we never see these places again: Coronado, CA; La Jolla, CA; Hodads at the beach; Port Orford, OR; San Diego, CA; Santa Monica, CA; Cannon Beach, OR; and the exceptional restrooms at the Hotel Del Coronado, Coronado, CA (someday we might even stay there.)

• We mean no offense in expressing these preferences. I mean, it wasn’t Fresno’s fault that a girl tried to spit on me, or Modesto’s fault that my Starbucks cup exploded on my shirt or Redding’s fault that it was TOO DAMN HOT TO CAMP or Garberville’s fault that there were creatures lurking behind the toilet or Chico’s fault that there was so much construction and so few flaggers who had a clue.

• Taking pictures from the car window while moving? Tough.

But whatever. It worked for us.

I’m obviously going to write about all of this in more detail (since when have I EVER been succinct?), but for now, the important thing is that we did it, we had an amazing time, we got home safely, and I have to work in, oh, eight hours.

I’ll leave you with this, from an email I wrote Eric (our host in San Diego) on the day we got home. Because I said it right once, and odds are I’d mess it up the second time. I don’t think Eric will mind:

Nothing changed much while we were gone -- the
leaves on the trees are a bit more gold than green and the temperatures
have dropped just a little -- but I feel like a different person in a lot
of ways.

I mean, I actually WENT somewhere. I DID something. Something full of
memories and tracked with photos and apparent in the freckles on my skin.
I love it.

Now I'm watching baseball on my own couch, having washed my own floors and
cleaned my own bathroom and done my own thing for a few hours, but I can
sense something inside of me that feels slightly switched or adjusted or
changed.

I see now that I'm capable of stepping out financially and
physically into different challenges. To someone like you -- someone who
has been places and done things and taken chances -- it can't seem like
that huge a deal, but I suppose that makes no difference. It might not
seem significant to anyone but me on the whole planet. But I think I'm
learning that that's ENOUGH. It's enough to have something mean something
to me, and to do it for that reason alone.

So many changes this year. So much stepping out into uncertainty. And so
many of those steps have brought heartbreak... not to be dramatic, but how
else do you say it?

But this one brought joy.

It really, really did.

And that, if nothing else, makes up for leaving all my underwear in Fresno.

Catherine pulled over to the side of the road immediately when she saw the sign, having heard this phrase out of my mouth in answer to most questions on the planet, including “What are you doing?” and “What are you thinking?” and “What are you bringing?” and “What do you look for in a man?”:

Awesome. Garibalidi, OR.

And a few more shots to tide you over until I remember how to type: