I'm in Vancouver again, a relatively spontaneous business trip (translation: "If you want me there at all in the next ten years, make it NOW 'cuz I am going to EXPLODE and then I will never be seen out in public again because I will be TRAPPED under a rabble of TINY, HUNGRY, CLAMOURING, PURPLE-FACED BEASTS!").

(Preface: I really, really, really miss my boys)

Paradise. I slept in this morning until 8 AM (which, by Halifax time, is noon) and was woken up to the sounds of my 3-year-old niece scrabbling at the door, asking me if it was really true that there were babies playing a soccer match in my belly (I told her this last night, and apparently it stuck).

I said No, not this morning — this morning they’re boxers-in-training, warming up at my kidneys like this: ga-diggity-diggity-diggity-diggity. Ooof!

Last night I dreamed that I had triplets, that the mastermind had hidden from the ultrasound. He was the third boy, the Klingon with the cloaking device. He came out last and went BOO! and I jumped. I woke up distressed, the dream seeping into wakefulness, convinced it would be true. Tonight it will be quadruplets.

Everything is so green and lush, saturated. It's my city, but I am rootless in it. I fly overhead and see all the arteries.. Granville Street, Broadway. There's the beach we used to launch our kayaks from, the cliffs overlooking my favourite doughnut shop in Deep Cove, the mountain, our Cypress… we snowmobiled to the peak, blinded by wind and snow, straight up the steepness after-hours with tents and beer for new years' eve. You know those memories that imprint on you so strongly, you can close your eyes and be there, instantly? I can still hear the deafening growl of the engine, smell the fuel and feel the vibration, feel the blizzard spitting on my face, soaked to the skin, look behind to see Justin trailing behind at the end of a rope like a water-skier.

My city, steeped in ten years' worth of thick, rich memories. But I don't own it anymore. It is a homestead that I built with my bare hands, occupied and interpreted by someone else.

I am gifted now with four days. Sitting here in this uber-hip Yaletown office with its brick walls and matching uber-hip people, cobblestones and thai restaurants and yoga babes with teensy bag-dogs and dumpsters all mingling outside. Nowhere to be except friends to see. Delicious, steamy goodness.