for showing me home

I’m home. I’m in Vancouver. I think I’m finally going to have to accept a few things about this city:

1. I cannot get in and out of Vancouver without incurring a really terrible, splitting headache of a hangover.
2. I still miss my friends here a lot
3. Coming back still feels like coming home.

I’m going to have to move back here someday. Not this year, not next year, but maybe in seven or ten years, when I’ve finished seeing the world. I belong here. This is home. I still dream in Victoria – I always will – but Vancouver is like home with things to do. It’s Victoria crossed with San Francisco. And being here breaks my heart because I miss it so much when I’m gone.

I’ve been having a wonderful time so far, wandering Jericho with nafspeak and cracksmurf. We walked west from the yacht club, laughing at the dogs and bunnies:

GRAHAM: “That dog is so fat, it’s like a seal with legs!”

There is no place on earth more beautiful than Kitsilano on a summer day. It’s surreal, how gorgeous this place is: the beach with the inlet and the forest-covered mountains on the North Shore. It’s like something out of Lord of the Rings

I also went to brunch with nafspeak earlier today, which was also lovely. We had eggs benedict at Sophie’s (hers florentine, mine smoked salmon) and talked for two hours. And we went shopping. I’ve missed her.

And I was out at the Lotus Long Weekend last night and ran into joocelyn, who was unexpected, as well as my friend Farshad, who was very expected, while still in lineup. And I had just got to the bar and ordered the first vodka-soda-lime of the night when Danderson went by, so I grabbed him, and he immediately greeted me in his usual manner. Which is to pick me up, literally, while I leap into his arms and squeal.

The heavy drinking started when cracksmurf got off the decks and handed me a shot of Jaeger. “Welcome home, Jill.”

Home indeed. This is probably why I have this hangover today. Celebrating my return by heavy drinking is not always the smartest way to do it.

It was still so good to be back, at a dance party like that, with my friends. I was having a fantastic time just dancing, especially when, an hour later, Team Trainwreck put on Underworld’s “Cowgirl”. That’s is my favorite Underworld track, and I immediately bounced a foot off the ground, screamed in happiness, and danced for the next twenty minutes through the next few songs, totally happy to be back in something I’d missed.

Now, I’ve had too much liquor and too little sleep – I should get a nap in. But I’m actually glad I’m leaving tomorrow. It will make it easier if I don’t have time to get reattached to Vancouver as home, at least, until it’s time to come back, out of self-imposed exile.