On Wandering, Lust, and Wanderlust

You may have noticed I haven’t been around much lately.

It’s because I have a severe case of wanderlust.  The seven-year itch is slipping in and I wanna slip away.  I’m throwing a tantrum in my head.  It’s getting like a daycare right before naptime in there.

I have a history of this.

Some people collect stamps, Lady Di memorabilia or those little tiny spoons that never actually get used as spoons, but I collect experiences.  It is my goal in life to experience everything at least once.  (Well, wait – let me amend that.  It is my goal to experience everything cool at least once.  I have no desire to experience poison ivy, starring on a reality show or living in the suburbs.)

I used to be so bad, I used to move every year.  I would have 3 jobs at once, because I couldn’t stand working 40 hours a week at the same place.

I’m haven’t been that bad in a while, because I’ve learned that there are other, better ways to stave off the restlessness and get my adrenaline fix.

Sometimes the spontaneous acts that are bred by this ambition lead to good things, sometimes not so good; but the things that remain are the memories, the experiences.  I’ve jumped out of airplanes.  I’ve dropped everything and given away all of my stuff to take a road trip across the continent.  I’ve torn off my clothes and gone skinny-dipping with large numbers of near-strangers.  I’ve taken a lot of chances and I don’t regret a single one.

I’ve never understood boredom, with everything there is out there to experience.

Except now, I find myself climbing the walls.

I’ve been living in the same place for eons. I’ve been working the same job for centuries. I’ve been getting entirely too much sleep.  Even skydiving is getting old (and where do you go from there?  I mean, I’m still waiting to hear back from NASA, but in the meantime…?)

I find myself dreaming constantly about the city.  I am craving the noise, the smells and tastes and sights.  I miss people-watching.  I miss summer, too.  I want to wander the streets late at night without the police pulling over to ask if I’m okay (because the streets in a small town are empty at night, except for drunks and abused women running away from their spouses.)  I want to make love in the field of sunflowers painted by van Gogh, I want to make love on a train rattling through ancient towns full of people and sights as yet unseen, I want to make love in the London Eye (there has to be a way).  I want to celebrate life.  I don’t want to read about it.  I don’t want to write about it.  I want to live it.

This longing has been going on for some time, well over a year.  I need to shake things up.   (And right about now, my boss is reading this and having a mini-heart attack and already beginning to search for my replacement…)

I probably just need to rearrange the furniture or get a new haircut or something, right?

Life Lessons

In the spirit of the New Year that is coming, I have been reviewing my life thus far.

Over the years, I have had many incarnations and with each one, I have learned many valuable lessons which I feel it only right to share.  I know how you live for my advice and wisdom.

Here are a few of the things I’ve learned, broken down by era:

The Actress Days

If you accidentally fall on stage and later the director praises you for your creative acting choice and excellent stunt abilities, smile modestly and take the credit.  Tell people you are ‘method.’

Don’t ask every other actor you see if your ass looks okay.  You’ll sound like a wanker.

When you show up for an audition and they ask you how old you are, say, “How old did my agent say I was?”

Stage kisses are just that.  Stage kisses. No need for off-stage rehearsals.

The Rave Days

Dancing too hard for hours and hours = Overheated = Taking off shirt on dance floor to cool off  and dumping water over head = FREE BEER!

People in country-western bars do not appreciate when a couple of punkish club kids crash the party and try to mosh in the middle of a line-dance.

Don’t panic when your feet leave the floor in the mosh pit.  This is the safest place to be.

Don’t immediately write off the cute guy who buys you roses and wants to go out with you, just because he is currently living in his car and working as an Elvis impersonator.  He may be the lead singer of INXS one day.

Being asked to be the keyboardist in an all-guy band is not really an insult, despite the glaringly obvious fact that you are just the token female, because you don’t really play keyboard all that well.  Just enjoy the attention.  One day you will be old and boring.

The Neuroscience Days

Being a brain surgeon does not necessarily mean you are sane.

A major final research project can indeed be carried out and written up in a single 24-hour session.

If you are in a class of only 8 people and choose to sit in a seat in the top far corner of a 200-seat auditorium because it happens to be the only left-handed seat, be well-prepared because the professor will inevitably assume you are a slack-ass and will call on you repeatedly.

If your Abnormal Psych professor dresses like Madonna circa 1984, you may want to consider switching to another class that fulfills your clinical requirement.

The Artist Days

Artists who claim to need expensive paints and brushes are wankers.  Don’t waste your money.  A decent artist could create a painting with nothing but pocket lint if they wanted to.  And they have.

Use artistic license.  Make people look prettier.  If people wanted stark reality, they would just take a photo.  That being said, don’t make them look too much better or everyone will know you’re full of shit.

The Extreme Sports Days

ALWAYS listen to your skydiving instructor.  Unless he’s been smoking pot.  Then you may want to take a quick glance through your skills manual on the flight up to altitude.

The insurance company will not insure you if you tell them the truth about your hobbies.

Sunscreen.  Always.

Invest in a belt chain for your cell phone when jumping out of airplanes.

When approaching large groups of teenagers on the trail when barreling along at high speeds on your mountain bike, yell at them to get out of the way well in advance if you don’t feel like stopping, because they.  will.  not.  move.  voluntarily.

Next time:  The Skater Years (or How to Figure Skate Without Becoming Tonya Harding or That Other Chick);  The Rubik’s Cube Years; and The Martha Years (or Who The Hell Are You and What Have You Done With Drea???)

Why I Should Be the Next Lara Croft

It has been some time since the release of the last Tomb Raider film, and I’ve been thinking it’s about time for another. 

Now, men have James Bond, right?  James Bond will never get old, he will never die.  And you don’t have to be a great actor to play him.  You just have to be really, really cool. 

I would like to propose this sort of immortality for the Lara Croft series.  Let’s face it, Angelina ain’t gettin’ any younger.  Yes, I know that I am actually a couple of years older than Angelina, but she has six kids and has spent a lot of time under the African sun.  That’s gotta age you prematurely – I don’t care if you are having sex with Brad Pitt.  I, on the other hand, am childless and wear sunscreen religiously, so I think my time has come to assume the title.

This is not just about my own desires.  There are a multitude of reasons why I am the most logical choice.  I AM Lara Croft.  Observe.

• I skydive.  I can ride a motorcycle.  I have dangled from the wings of planes by a single hand.  I can ride a horse.  I. HAVE. NO. FEAR.  Thus, I can do my own stunts and can save the studio a ton of cash.
• Angelina’s chest was padded in the movies.  I have naturally big boobs.  Again, saving the studio a fortune.
• Lara Croft does a lot of martial arts.  I very much enjoy doing tai bo.  And I lived with a Chinese guy for a really long time.  I also watched a lot of Kung Fu as a kid.
• If I ever owned a huge English manor, I too would have a gymnasium full of bungee cords in my foyer. 
• Interest in archeology.  I took Intro. Soc. in university…  Oh!  And I read National Geographic a LOT.
• I went through a phase in high school where I wore jodpurs a lot.
• I, too, have nerdy friends who are good with computers and gadgets.
• I would never be fooled, either, by cute Irish guys with blue eyes and crooked smiles.  I am far too clever for that.
• I also like pretty, shiny objects and treasure.
• My extensive experience with playing video games assures me that I have excellent reflexes and would make an expert marksman.

I’m sure there are many, many more points to consider, but I think it’s obvious from the above that there is no better choice for Angie’s replacement. 

I’ll be waiting to hear from my agent. 

 

Why, Yes, Actually – I AM a Superhero

It’s no secret that I am an adrenaline junkie.  People think this makes me uncommonly brave.  While this is true *brushing fingernails on lapel*, it is easier to jump out of an airplane or whatever when you know you’re not going to be hurt.

How do I know this?  My history of near-death experiences speaks for itself.

It started, actually, before I was born.  My mother got hit by a car while she was five months pregnant – the impact was a direct hit to her hip.  I was unscathed, naturally.

My brushes with mortality multiplied most rapidly as an adult, but there were a few memorable moments in childhood.  Motorcycle wipeouts were plenty (not a scratch).  I once fell through a treehouse floor, a 12-foot drop, landing flat on my back onto a tangled mess of rocks and roots (climbed back up and kept playing).  Flew off a swing once, smacked my head on a boulder (after a brief period of unconsciousness, I was deemed by the doctor to be concussion-free – and I didn’t even have a bump.)  I’m sure there are other times I am forgetting, but I want to get to the good stuff.

Speed Demon - me, age 7

The year after I graduated from high school, my boyfriend and I were walking in the woods when he decided to pick me up and swing me around for a cinematic kiss.  Imagine his surprise when he put me down and I disappeared.  The ground swallowed me up, like Alice down the rabbit hole.  Turns out he had put me down directly on top of an old abandoned well that had been long covered over with leaves and crap.  Luckily the well was dry (ish) and only about eight feet deep.  Tall boyfriend jumped in after me (once the shock wore off) and boosted me out before climbing out himself.  I was fine.

Another time, I was hit by a car while crossing the street.  I was so embarassed that I jumped up, scooped up the stuff I’d been carrying (which had been thrown a fair distance by the impact) and was about two blocks away by the time the driver caught up with me, panic on his face, yelling, “Wait!  Are you okay???”  I was.  Of course.

Once, I was reaching for something at the back of a shelf at the place where I worked, not knowing that there had been an industrial coffee maker hard-wired in at one time, and when it was taken out, the wires were left live and dangling out of the wall.  Electrocution hurts a bit, but is apparently not fatal.  To me. 

I was camping alone once in the middle of a friend’s very remote piece of land when I was stung by something and began to have an allergic reaction.  I am allergic to bee stings and spider bites and am supposed to carry an epi kit.  I don’t.  (Because …well, you know.)  I began to go into anaphylactic shock, with no drugs and the nearest hospital a half-hour away.  I meditated a bit, did some deep-breathing and I was fine.   Within a few minutes, not even a single hive remained.  (Okay, this one isn’t all that impressive, really, but whatever.)

The closest I’ve probably come to meeting my maker was the Great Crash of ‘01.  I was on my way to work when a transport truck came flying around a bend in the road…in the wrong lane.  That’s right.  I got smacked head-on by an 18-wheeler.  In my Volkswagen.  How many people can say they’ve had that experience?  Well, the truck pushed my car backwards along the road until the car was so mangled, it wouldn’t move any further.  Then the truck compacted the car until it wouldn’t compact any further.  Then the truck ran over my car (missed me by a couple of inches, naturally.)  

Made the cover of three local newspapers the next day

People always ask how terrified I was during this.  Um…not at all?  Because I’m a superhero?  I DO remember watching the hood crumple in front of me right before the windshield blew, and thinking, “Crap…they’re probably not gonna be able to fix that.”  Then, “Crap…I’m going to be late for work.” 

I had been wearing my glasses that day, and they flew off during the crash.  Despite being nearly legally blind without them, I couldn’t help but notice the enormous white shape on the lawn of the house next to where my car had ended up.  And then the crush of bodies racing toward me, screaming.  Yup, you guessed it.  Wedding tent.  Thank god, it was just the rehearsal, not the actual wedding. 

Well, I calmly undid my seatbelt and reached for the door handle (it wasn’t there), only to discover I couldn’t get out of the car.  The front end of the car had been pushed against me so tightly that the dash was draped over my lap like a vacuum-sealed blanket.  There wasn’t even enough room to slide a piece of paper between my seat and the dash.  The steering wheel was pressed firmly against my abdomen, pinning me against the seat.  Yet I was cool.  I could wiggle my toes and everything.  I just couldn’t get out of the car.

The first person to my car was the photographer, whose eyes were like dinner plates when he saw me.  Now, having an advanced honours degree in neuroscience, even though I was not in pain and did not seem injured, I knew it was possible that I was sitting there with an eyeball hanging out of my head or something without even realizing it.  So I copped a peek in the rear-view mirror (which was still bizarrely dangling from a remnant of shattered windshield).  Nope, I was good.  No blood, nothing. 

Then someone handed me a cell phone.  The 911 operator wanted to speak to me.  I explained that I was fine, I just couldn’t get out of the car.  The 911 operator asked to speak again to the hysterical women who had placed the call, “She sounds like she needs me more than you do.”

Then the minister arrived.  (Wedding rehearsal, remember?)  She looked like, well, like her time to shine had come.  I felt kind of bad for ruining it for her.  She said, in a tone that she had likely practiced for just such a moment, “I’m the minister here, and I’m here for you, dear.”  I smiled and thanked her for her concern before dismissing her with “Thank you, but I’m fine.  I just can’t get out of the car.”  She backed away, making the sign of the cross.  I kid you not.

Then…the coroner.  That’s right.  Based on the appearance of the wreckage, someone had deemed that no one could have survived, so the coroner was called.  After a brief chat with me, he left to finish his golf game.

When the rescue crews arrived (2 ambulance loads of paramedics, three fire departments and a handful of cops), the medics were going all ‘What’s her BP?’ on me (it was normal, by the way), all worked up and in frantic mode.  I finally looked at them and said, “Guys, could you take it down a notch?  You’re stressing me out.”  After a couple of stunned looks, they started calming down a bit, but were still kind of patting me on the head and saying, ‘Yes, dear’ when I told them I was wiggling my toes.

At the hospital, the doctor tore up five sets of x-rays before he was convinced I didn’t have any injuries.  The nurse was sent in to ’stitch up my boo-boos’ and after seeing that I didn’t have a scratch – literally – she, I believe, may also have backed away making the sign of the cross.  (I had been strapped to a board for five hours by now.  The only thing wrong with me at this point was that I really needed a pee, a snack and a cigarette, not necessarily in that order.)

The nurse returned with my clothes (I had FREAKED on the doctor when he attempted to cut them off – FREAKED ON HIM – so they had managed to wiggle me out of them around the straps and collar.)  She said, “Well, I took them out back and shook out as much of the glass as I could….usually people in these sorts of accidents don’t leave in the same clothes as they arrive in…”  Possibly more signs of the cross.  I was pleased to see I didn’t even have a run in my pantyhose.

But one of the coolest was the most recent.  Parachute malfunction.  I mean, come on. 

Coming in for a landing

I was maybe 100 feet from the ground, coming in for my landing, when I felt that there was nothing supporting me.  I looked up just in time to see my canopy collapse in on itself before I went into a spin, moving so fast that my body was nearly parallel with the ground.  I had hit a thermal – a hot bubble of air rising from the nearby tarmac, which lifts the parachute as it rises, then cools off, causing the chute to drop suddenly. 

The funny thing was, the night before, I had been reading fatality reports on the Canadian Sport Parachuting Association website, and so I knew that this exact scenario was precisely how about 90% of skydiving casualties occur.  So I was spinning out and in the loooong seconds before I hit, I knew I was going to die and I remember thinking, “Well, at least I get to know how it happens.  And as far as ways to die go, this isn’t so bad.  At my high school reunion, when they ask, ‘What ever happened to Drea?’, the answer will be, ‘Oh, Drea?  She died in a skydiving accident.’”  I kinda liked that, actually. 

Yeah, well.  I hit the ground at a ridiculously high speed.  On impact, I felt my entire skeleton vibrate, like a cartoon.  Then I realized I was alive.  ‘But I’ve broken every bone in my body’, I thought to myself.  Another second, and I realized I hadn’t broken anything.  I jumped up and started daisy-chaining my cords.  My skydiving partner (who I was dating at the time, and who was also a medical first responder) had just been beginning a slo-mo, ‘holy fuck’ run across the airfield because he thought I was dead.  I think it kind of freaked him out when I jumped up.  Again, not even so much as a smudge of dirt on my jeans.  I even went up for another jump that day. 

Now, I do realize that writing all of this out in such a cocky manner sets me up for another one of those swift kicks in the caboose from the Universe.  A risk I’m willing to take.  (Because I’m a, you know, superhero.) 

While I’m grateful for having been born with a horseshoe up my ass, I can’t help but wonder why.  There is apparently some reason why I’m still here.  Talk about pressure.  

*sigh*

I have to go find a cure for cancer now.

In Praise of Sleep

I love sleep. I mean I really, really love sleep. I love sleep like Juliet loved Romeo. I would throw myself in front of a bus for sleep. I need, at minimum, seven hours sleep to be human. I prefer nine or ten. I have been known, on more than one occasion, to sleep up to 15 or 16 hours without so much as a pee break. (And yes, I know that’s obscene in this day and age. Don’t care.)

People often assume that I don’t sleep. People are under this weird assumption that because I am slightly (slightly) type-A, I don’t sleep. People think that because I have a lot of interests and get a fair amount done in the run of my day, I must not be sleeping. People think that because I am energetic, I don’t sleep. People are stupid.

Now, I will confess that there was a time when I didn’t sleep much. When I was in theatre school, it was four or five hours a night, tops. But I managed to supplement this pittance with 10-minute power naps on the smelly couches in the student lounge, massive amounts of 35-cent sludge coffee from the theatre department kitchen, and the occasional doze in the dark of the rehearsal hall. I’ve even taken naps in my car in the Dal parking lot. I didn’t really mind not sleeping then, because I was…well…drunk a lot of the time. At the time, my motto was similar to that of my biodad: “Sleeping is for dead people.”

Then I started developing weird habits. My ex tells me that I used to fall asleep mid-sentence while we were talking in bed. I frequently woke him in the middle of the night with my talking; he would participate in full conversations with me that I wouldn’t remember in the morning because I hadn’t actually been awake. Several times, he caught me walking in my sleep. Once, he found me lying on the kitchen floor in a puddle of blood – in a dream, I’d been cutting the ends off of candles in order to make them fit in the candleholder…and sure enough, on the bloody floor beside me were a tapered candle and a paring knife. My finger healed up okay, though. Doug took a bit longer to recover.

Happily all this strange behavior ended once I was diagnosed with a sleep disorder. I won’t go into all the technical details, but basically, my brain doesn’t make enough sleepy-drug. Most people experience four different levels of sleep, and it’s the fourth phase that makes you feel rested in the morning. I was only going to the third phase (REM sleep, where you experience dreams…and sleep-walking.) So although I was sleeping, I was tired all the time, thus the falling-asleep-mid-sentence thing. Now I take medication that regulates that and I sleep like a normal person.

And OH! How I sleep! Oh, yes, I do.

Sleep is a religious experience for me now. I take it very seriously.

First of all, environment. My bed, I have been told and I truly believe, is the most comfortable bed in the world. It begins with a nice firm mattress. Then you counter the firmness with lots of cush – meaning eggcrate foam topped by a feather bed, topped by crisp white linens (for some reason, sheets must be white for me to be truly, deliciously happy – my favourites being the starched vintage ones trimmed in handmade lace and embroidery inherited from my grandmother.) Sleeping in my bed is like sleeping on a cloud.

Then there is the whole pillow issue. I am quite ridiculous when it comes to my pillow. I panic at the thought of the day my pillow dies and I need to search for a new one. My pillow is light and fluffy and broken in just the right amount. There is no other pillow like my pillow. If a bedmate attempts to use my pillow instead of the three other available pillows, they experience the wrath and quickly learn their place. I have occasionally been tempted to name my pillow, but that would just be silly. Names are for cats and cars and bicycles.

The fact that I work the graveyard shift is not even a problem. My bedroom is equipped with a soft cotton blind that diffuses the sun and simulates dusk. Then I don the all-important black mask that turns the day into night and put in my earplugs, tell myself that I am just like my distant cousin Audrey in Breakfast at Tiffany’s (my mask actually has eyelashes, too) and drift off blissfully.

It doesn’t end there, though – oh, no. Sleepy time is when I do some of my best work. In that twilight place before sleep comes, I meditate, I work on my writing (I am able to remember entire chapters the next day, believe it or not), I practice windsurfing maneuvers and skydives and plan my bike routes. I even focus on what I hope to dream about, planting the seeds for good adventures that night.

The only thing I don’t like about sleep is that whole alarm clock thing. I’m still working on that one.

I wish I could marry sleep.

 

REM

Okay – anyone who knows me well knows that I have THE wickedest dreams…dreams of epic proportions. Dreams of high adventure. Dreams that rock my world.

Tonight’s dream:

As a secret operative (I am often a secret agent in my sleep – similar to how I am one in real life…), I was undercover at a Star Trek convention. (No idea.) My partner and I were dressed in the traditional Starship Enterprise uniforms – yellow (I’m not sure what rank that made us…something terribly powerful, though, I’m sure) – which was lucky, due to their similarity to skydiving jumpsuits. (You’ll see…)

When the bad guys left the convention, we followed them in a high-speed chase down a perilously steep and twisting mountain road, until they discovered we were tailing them. The bad guys pulled over and as they exited their vehicle, we could see that they were wearing parachute rigs. In the blink of an eye, they were over the side of the cliff and gone.

“Dammit!” I yelled to my partner, who was now that Data guy from Star Trek (I have no idea what was up with the Star Trek connection.) “They’re BASE-jumping! We could follow them, but [mentally calculating the ratio of distance x falling speed at terminal velocity] in the few seconds it would take us to strap on our rigs, they’ll be long gone!”

“Don’t worry about it!” Data replied. “Just follow me!” And with that, he dove off the cliff, sans parachute.

Freaking out because he forgot his rig, I watched him fall partway down the abyss and then, because of special material that had been grafted onto his fingertips by our tech team, he was able to latch onto the cliff wall – Spidey-style.

Exhilerated by that reassuring news, I immediately followed. And trust me – while I loooove skydiving in real life, NOTHIN’ compares to freefall in dreams! NOTHIN’!

(The special Spiderman finger stuff ate away my nail polish, though. So it still has some bugs to be worked out.)

After a successful parachute-less BASE jump, we went to the ballet. I really like ballet.

(Then I became lucid in the dream, realized I’d forgotten to set my alarm clock – and woke up with exactly enough time to have a shower and go to work.)