Ode to Lola

There’s Flopsy and Mopsy, Cottontail and Peter. Thumper, Bugs, Harvey and Trix.  Alice’s White Rabbit, Monty’s Killer Bunny, Jessica, The Easter, The Energizer and Fiver, to name a few…but none come close to the original diva showgirl herself – Lola Josephine Lowry.

Today I lost my beautiful little fur ball of love.

Lola was a real beauty queen – a true showgirl from the get go.  A miniature palomino Rex – reminiscent of the Velveteen Rabbit, we first met at the Royal Winter Fair 13 years ago.  She was in a bunny beauty contest and simply the most adorable itty-bitty caramel and white bunny girl of the bunch!  After the show, waiting her prize, Jeff poked me on the shoulder, pointed at her sitting impatiently on the table and told me she was mine.  BEST SURPRIZE EVER!  I didn’t even wait to find out where she placed, because in my heart, she was number one.  Put her in my pocket and home we went.

From the beginning I knew Lola was a special lagomorph.  She had a mind of distinct moxie and a precocious personality of her own. Smart and sassy, upon meeting her brothers Angus and Pagan for the first time, she simply hopped up to them (in their great horror) and stomped her foot to set the stage of who would be the lady in charge for the next 13 years.

Lola was a born diva.  More beautiful than Beyonce, more dramatic than Whitney, she owned her prima donna-ship to the likes of Aretha…as far as bunnies go.  Famous for her hop and delicate bunny snort, Lola would have you wrapped around her little rabbit’s foot in a blink. Speaking of which…her prowess for “blinkies” was profound.  There is nothing cuter or more bizarre than a bunny performing a blinky…simply put it is the happiest expression a bunny can make…picture a completely unabashed jump into the air, followed by a twist of its head and body in the opposite direction (often twice) before landing back on the ground in utter bunny glee. Her happy dance…telling you she is loving her life!  Lola loved her life!

Lola had free rein of the house because cages were for rabbits and she would have none of it. She had a personally designed, bunny warren for her to burrow in moments of just wanting some peace and quiet pleazzze!  Her favourite spot…on the piano bench, listening to me play or sitting on the window seat, looking out for the entire world to admire her adorableness.

Famous for her fashionality, her gorgeous bunny bum, demonstrative stomp, and incredible insight on men, she was also quite the party girl …always being the last to crash at any Lowry event.

Friends to many, whether child, grown-up or fellow critter, you couldn’t help but fall in love with Lola at first sight. Nothing was more true then her complete adoption and mothering of her bff Fiend.  Upon bringing home this little lost ginger kitten, Lola and Fiend have been inseparable.  Perhaps bonded by similar colouring and size…the two would play for hours, clean each other, cuddle together and Lola even taught Fiend to sit up and hop. This morning when I found Lola, Fiend was sleeping beside her on the chair.

It’s funny; bunny…but I have always loved bunnies. I feel like they are part of me, my personality, my nature, and my spirit. Lola was one-of-a-kind. She was the cutest bundle of love who gave me daily reminders of embracing your unique beauty, talents, moxie and joy for hop.

Fiend, Angus, Pagan, Harriet and mostly me, will hold her close to our hearts forever.

In honour of Lola…a little excerpt from The Velveteen Rabbit:

“The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the others. He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath. He was wise, for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break. He knew that they were only toys, and would never turn into anything else.”

“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side?”

“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”

“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.”

“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you

are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”

“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”

“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become it. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.

 “I suppose you are real?” said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not

said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive.

But the Skin Horse only smiled.

“Until one has loved an animal, a part of one’s soul remains unawakened.”

How to be uber cool without trying too hard.

 

1. Old school is always cool. Duh.
2. What goes around comes around – except for the unitard.
3. Realize that some pretentiously named colour that is a shade of black is NOT the new black.
4. Don’t follow the pack. Waddle your own gaggle.
5. Be full of surprises. Keep them guessing.
6. Be a cherub on the outside and a mad trickster on the inside.
7. Be really awesome at something. (even if it’s eating chips)
8. Create a signature expression… like umm…Awesome Sauce!  Loviation!
9. Perfect your cartwheel.
10. Collect something. Like bug wings, eggcups, wind-up toys, belt buckles, berets or all of the above.
11. Embrace your inner spaz, nerd, geek and freak.

 

 

How to be brilliant and supremely happy at whatever you want to be.

1.  Be you.  You’re already the most awesome sauce at it in the entire universe galaxy!  Shake your pompoms baby!
2. Never listen to naysayers, bosses who are drunk by lunch, teachers who call you dumb, parents who think you are destined to be an excellent typist, or scardy cat wannabees with inflated egos of their dullard reality.  Always listen to strangers on the bus who spontaneously talk to you or themselves, children, animals and the voices…yea, you know you hear them.
3. Trust your gut.  It tells you the truth 99% of the time. You know…that wonderful, peaceful, satiated feeling that you are doing the right thing…as oppose to the turbulent, horror-filled, vomitus ache that defies eating an entire family-size bag of ripple chips and onion dip drowned with a bottle of red wine (which by the way is a highly recommended paring by gourmands and sommeliers worldwide)
4. Make stuff up to validate your beliefs.
5. Be fearless.  Feel everything and rejoice. Shake hands with your fears, give them a hug, have a drink with them, then make a monster face and tell them to get out (Amityville horror-style).
6. Crazy ass spontaneous imaginative non-sensible combustion is way better and infinitely funner than playing it safe.
7. Replace the word need with desire.
8. Embrace mayhem, madness and chaos – it is a prerequisite state in the process of evolution.
9. Believe in something unbelievable, invisible and intangible.
10. Embrace your inner psychopath.  Don’t act on it – just tend to it.
11. Lose the attitude. Develop a lovitude.

 

How to manage unreasonable stress.

I’m BACK!  From outer space, just walked in to find you here with that look upon your face. I should have changed the stupid locks, I should have made you leave your keys, if I had known for just one second, you’d be back to bother me.  Go on now go, walk out the door, just turn around now, cause you’re not welcome anymore!  Ohhh that felt good. Thanks Donna!  So yea… times are a changing. I felt fall tickling my nostril hairs this morning, contemplated knee socks, have a hankering for a new school bag and feeling the itch to put the pencil to the paper and let it all hang out once again.

Pondered the possibilities of what to write about – then looked to my two favourite dudes of verbosity – Dr. Seuss and Jack Kerouac.  What I love about DS is he always states the pure, simple truth. Jack on the other hand is all about the rambunctious rant of incoherent nonsense that frees us all.  So hold onto your hotcakes…here comes some whacked, wunderdrunkulous words of wiseassdom to make you scratch your beautiful noggins and say….what the frack is that dame on?   Just telling it like it is folks…   welcome to my wonderlust world!

Let’s just get this one outta the way first!

How to manage unreasonable stress.

 

1. Separate it into buckets so it isn’t overwhelming and you can tackle it in chunks.  For example: impending apocalypse, work, money, family, health, STUPID BOYS; STUPID BOYS; STUPID BOYS.
2. Get it out of your head. Put it on paper. Write a letter, write a list, pros and cons; to do, not to do; best and worse case scenarios; fantasy vs. reality; express your feelings, tell it like it is, rant, rave, ridicule and release.  Then delete the email.
3. Eat chips. Drink wine. Repeat.
4. Exercise.  Walk to the corner store to buy more chips. Put them on the top shelf so you have to move a chair, get up and down to get them.
5. Obsessively clean your house. Empty your closets. Throw out useless shit. Organize your drawers. Colour coordinate your socks and underwear. Alphabetize your records. Wash your floor (so when you’re laying on it in fetal position rocking, at least it’s clean).
6. Get everyone in your life’s opinion as to what to do – but don’t follow any of it. Trust your gut. Even if you need to make a mistake – it’s yours and will be your lesson to learn.
7. Apparently breathing helps. Personally I find it over rated and makes me hyperventilate.
8. Do something nice for yourself. Like Mac & Cheese, take a lavender bubble bath, buy fabric, hire a hit man.
9. Rip something up. Stomp your feet. Throw an axe.
10. Start fresh every day.
11. Believe no matter what – you will be just fine. Because you already are!

 

Turning 5.

It’s been coming…for 50 years in fact and now it’s here and it seems surreal to me that I am turning 50 years old today.  Well happily for me, it’s 50 years young, silly, wildly adventurous, wisely astute, imaginatively free, joyfully juvenescent, playfully young.  I love my life!

Like winning an Oscar…which will clearly have to happen during the next fifty years….turning 50 is kinda an auspicious milestone in a gal’s life.  Five decades of learning, loving, making connections, experiencing this world, creating stories and building an authentically happy full life. Sometimes it feels just like yesterday I was five and Mom was hosting my birthday party playing the hokie-pokie and shaking all about, making me my favourite strawberry shortcake with pink icing and cherries and asking me to blow out the candles and make a wish.  Little did I know it was all going to come true, and some.

I am the luckiest girl in the world.  Turning 50 is a piece of cake and I feel the brightest and best in all of my life.  The number doesn’t faze me in the slightest. Call me five or fifty – how I feel is inspired by how I think, how I express myself and how I see this awesome sauce world we all get to play in.  I am the luckiest girl in the world.

So over the past few weeks, I’ve been noodling the past 50 years, and last weekend up at my little piece of heaven in the woods, while lying in the grass, moving clouds, I was reminiscing all the highs and lows and lessons I’ve encountered, and pondered if I had figured out any great mystery to happiness  up to now.  And not that I know any magical secret or am preaching some unicornian gospel… but this is what I came up with…and well …in the least, you should respect your elders!

Be grateful… for your health, for the opportunity to work, for whatever your purpose is, for being able to move, to see, to hear, for having a good hair day, for that first sip of coffee or red wine, for laughter, for the lessons, for the sound of birds, the colours of the rainbow, for freedom, for your imagination, for having a choice, for this day.

Cherish your relationships….my incredible parents, my inspiring sister, my extraordinary friends, my loves, my free-spirited co-workers and wacky strangers along the way.

Be observant.  See, taste, smell and feel all the colours. All the elements. Listen to the animals. Be one with nature.

Be kind. Be generous. Be silly. Dare yourself daily and eat fear for breakfast.

And most of all, be real.  Be honest. Be yourself.  Choose happiness.

Yea, that’s it.  Whatcha expect, I’m just five.  So in honour of living a hellisiously full life…here are a few, in no particular order, of my most memorable 50 moments in the last 50 years!

1. Falling in love.
2. Playing Barbies with my sister Susan.
3. Watching my first kitten “Beanya-boobala” being born.
4. Honouring my parents, Elly and Pinky.
5. Being chosen as a high school cheerleader.
6. Working at Club Med.
7. Singing the blues on stage.
8. Kamperslut.
9. Jeff Siegerman.
10. Theodore – my Tibetan Buddhist mediation teacher.
11. Brownie of the Year – 1969.
12. Riding a camel – “Valentino” and camping on the Sahara dessert.
13. Being Buttercup in HSM Pinafore – grade 8.
14. Taking Mum’s ashes to Machu Pichu.
15. Giving a monkey my Dad’s watch in Katmandu.
16. Getting gonza with James.
17. Seeing Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald and Leonard Cohen.
18. Wiccan Fest.
19. Feeding chipmunks on my step at the cottage.
20. Going to NFLD with Ducky.
21. Dip N Sip Girl’s Nights.
22. Road trip across Canada with Mark.
23. Breaking and healing. Being lost and found.
24. Hiking the West Coast Trail.
25. Proving them wrong…I wasn’t dumb and I could write.
26. Lifting the veil and believing in magic.
27. My Gurls: Dips, Mel, Jodie, Tracey, Mira, Cathy, Sue, Meli, Jennifer, Jen, Kelley, Dana, Momo, Rocky & Rach.
28. My Boys: James, Chris, Tom, Brian & James, Murray, Rich, Johnny, Frankie and Ian.
29. Fabric shopping with Mum.
30. Kate Sharpe – “Julie isn’t real”.
31. Perennial and Top Drawer Creative.
32. The faeries living in our chandelier.
33. Giving up control…letting go of fear.
34. Sex, sex, sex, sex, sex and more sex!
35. Nepal, India, Cambodia, Vietnam, Morocco, Turkey, France, Spain, Peru, Huntsville, Mars.
36. Buying my first house.
37. Dave’s Cave days.
38. Little people… Terra, Cyan, Orion, Naia, Madison, Veronica, Ben, Benjamin, Tessa, Owen, Nami and Claire.
39. Learning to love myself.
40. Angus, Pagan, Fiend, Lola, Harriet, Marley, Zsa-Zsa, Bartholomew & Raphael, Spaghetti & Mrrp, Winston, Joe Bunny, Buddy, Tippy and Lumpy.
41. NYE Dance marathon with Murray.
42. Loving and losing Mum and Dad.
43. Every day is Halloween.
44. Watching Beluga whales play in Moose Factory.
45. Winning an Oscar…ok a girl can dream.
46. Captain Morgan & The Mermaid.
47. Point Pleasant Park in Halifax.
48. Grandpa Jojo giving me my first piano.
49. Bathing with the elephants in Nepal.
50. Today.

Major loviation and here’s to the next 50 years to come!  Let the adventure begin!  xx

 

Prepare to gather and collect your thoughts.

Call me nuts.  Call me squirrelly.  But my rodentia senses are tingling.

Something quite exciting, quite amazing and quite near impossible to believe is happening.   But I believe it.

This morning I noticed the rotten planks of wood on the back of my sunroom had been torn off and scattered across the deck.  The work of rebellious raccoons?  Frisky faeries?  Idiot neighbours?  I think not.   My RDJ Sherlockosity honed in on a small pile of peanuts, neatly arranged to spell out a name.   A name you all know.  A name some of you fear, some of you hold in the highest regard.

You know who I am talking about.   I dare you to say it.  Say it out loud damn it!

Crackhead Betty has come home.

I KNOW!

How did she find me after 4 years of leaving Kamperslut? After the tornado? After the horrible neighbour’s dog ran all the squirrels out of the forest? How did she defeat the wood zombies?  Highjack the hillbillies?  How did she hitch a ride from Huntsville to Toronto?  Find out that I had moved?  Crossed busy streets? Survived on a hobo’s pack of acorns and seeds?  I’ll tell you how.

One word.  Loviation.

For those of you who don’t know Betty … she is one famous pigeon-toed, puffy-lipped rodent from the back woods ghetto.   She’s got the fur of a ruby slipper and the song of a tortured soul. Fearless is her middle name and her heart’s as black as coal.  I had the fortuitous pleasure of meeting Betty on a path up at my cottage.  She wouldn’t let me pass.  She was clearly from the wrong side of the tree and had an attitude that would scare off a pack of wild turkeys…and in fact did.  She had kamikaze moves that made Bruce Lee look like a showgirl and a shrill that would deafen dolphins.  But I knew she was misunderstood.  I knew she just needed a friend, someone to show her love…and so I made it my life’s mission to do just that.  After months of death-defying patience and warding off viscous attacks the likes of King Kong (queue chest pounding visual) she let me scratch her little head and at that moment the chick-a-dees burst into song, the dragonflies painted a rainbow in the sky and all the unicorns began to dance.   We were one.   We did everything together.  She even spent an entire winter inside the cabin after the tornado left a little hole in the roof for her to make herself at home.  We drank wine, ate chips, and did peanut art.  We were the best of pals.   Then she disappeared.  Some said Hollywood called. Others whispered alien abduction.  But I think she ran off with Zordock and have the life she always dreamt off.  All I know is a day hasn’t passed without me thinking about her.

And now she is back.  We’ll sit and chatter for hours, cracking peanuts by the pound and we’ll sing little squirrel songs, nuturing the love we’ve found.  The moral to this furry tale – look far beyond the shell.  For the hardest nuts to crack is where the sweetest love may dwell.   Never give up on love.

P. Nut Lowry

 

 

My voice.

Ever since this bumpy year began I seem to have lost my voice,  my written voice.  I’ve looked for it several times, but it went into hiding somewhere it didn’t want to be found.  It would poke at me and blurt things out at the most inopportune moments, in a tourette-like rant of incoherent nonsense and horror…then run tauntingly, gesturing its silence back to its vacant soulless cave.   I’ve felt like I’ve had a strangle hold on me and constantly short of breath.  I’m mad and I’m sad and I’m pushing through it like a frenzied herd of zebras trying to find their way back to the field…but the field no longer exists.

So today as I arrived home, I noticed my idiot neighbour has once again, without asking my permission parked in my parking space.  I don’t have a car.  I never park there.  But on occasion I may have a guest who might want to.  It’s really no biggie but what drives me to the brink of spending time behind bars…is the inconsiderate assumption that they can just do what they want without even asking me.  Wrong day to park in my spot.  I relayed a few choice poignant words that fall under the Wrath of Patty to these ill-considered curb-side criminals asking ever so Pollyannaques politely to move their van and in the future if I ever see it in my space again I will have it towed.  I don’t think we’re going to be sharing sugar over the fence in the near future.

I came in and burst into tears.  Then I found my voice.  I wanted to write.  I wanted to rant, share, speak, yell, scream, express myself, let it out, feel so I can deal and not carry it around all night scaring the cats.  Maybe it’s not the inspiration I was searching for, nor the field of daisies I once ran through, it’s certainly not beautiful or poetic, but it’s real and it’s found its way to paper and once again I am speaking my mind.  I can only hope it will find its way back to my heart one day soon.  Thanks for listening.

Broken.

“What doesn’t kill ya…makes you stronger.”  “It’s better to know now, then 5 years down the road.”    “There’s more fish in the sea”.    “Best way to get over a man…is to get under another one.”

Clichés.   Truisms.  Trite remarks that I don’t want to hear.

I don’t want to feel better.   I want to feel sad.

I’ve broken my leg five times, my foot four,  my arm,  hand,  collarbone and back once,  my spirit for a spell and I do my best to break the mould every day.

Most recently,  I’ve had my heart broken.

Shattered.

It hurts like hell.  Like walking through glass on fire with acid poured all over you…not to be dramatic…because quite frankly that doesn’t even come close.

I am completely empty and I am completely full and the waves of emotions are like a tsunami coming out of nowhere.  I’m drowning.   My brain hurts.  My eyes sting.  My skin aches.  I’m tired.  I am so fucking tired.  I walk into walls.  I yell at innocent people.  I yell at myself for being stupidly in love.  I hate this.

I have no rhyme or reason.  No lilt in my step.  My pallet is battleship gray.

I pace.  I cry.  I talk out loud, I scream.  It’s a sickness; being heartsick.  Nothing helps.  Nothing numbs the pain, the sadness, the brain space that struggles to hold on and to let go.  It sucks pickles.

I know it gets better.  Duh.  Been here done that before…but I can’t get away from here fast enough…this molasses drip of transitioning from sad to mad to eventually glad is excruciating.  I want it over – but the end is not nearly in sight and my feet are sore and covered in blisters and the road is rough and long.

Love is so amazing.  So freeing and contagious.  Such a precious gift.  No wonder it hurts so much when it is lost.

“This too shall pass”.  “Love is blind”.  “It’s better to have loved and lost, then never loved at all”.

Lost keys.

I lost a set of keys on Sunday.  Three to be exact.  I have looked everywhere for them and I can’t find them.  It’s like they have just vanished into thin air.

I’ve retraced my every step, frantically searching for clues, where I could have misplaced them.  How they could have possibly come unfastened from my chain.  Maybe they slipped through a crack or fell out of sight.  Maybe I put them in the wrong pocket or haphazardly tossed them aside and they are lost in the abyss of paper work on my desk.   Maybe they are playing a trick on me and mischievously hiding.  I half expect them to show up, but they haven’t.  I feel lost without them.  It’s strange how such a small trinket can hold such important meaning.  I miss them.  I need them.  I can’t lock my doors and I don’t feel safe.  I feel exposed and it’s hard to sleep at night.  I don’t have an extra set.  I can’t just duplicate them.

I guess I’ll have to change my locks.

Being brave.

I always brag that I’m fearless.  I mean I have some serious moxie and a crazy adventurous nature, but if I think about it I do possess some fears.  They creep up at the most unexpected times and paralyze me.  Maybe my crowing about being fearless has more to do about it being my choice, as oppose to when I experience something fearful that I didn’t choose to engage in.  Go ahead…call me a scardy cat.

I was once told that fear actually stood for “feel everything and rejoice”.  I like that.  Makes it less scary.  Feeling everything as oppose to not.  Kinda like a release, a relinquishing of what tortures you inside.  It shrinks its power once you stop giving it power.  It also gives you control.

The couch doctors say to face your fears head on.  Shake their hands, get to know them, have a drink with them and decide if you really want them to remain in your life.  Not always so easy….but doable.  I’ve faced some pretty magnanimous fears in my time – some life and death, some involved pickles.  All were incredible lessons.

Tonight I hung out with a very brave person.  A person who has left me inspired and humbled.  It was unexpected.  Really unexpected.  My sister has been in the hospital since Christmas. It’s no secret we have a tumultuous relationship.  But she is sick and alone and needs me, so I am doing what I can.  She is one brave mother fucker.  She is experiencing symptoms of a stroke although yet to be confirmed and hopefully it is something else more easily fixable.  But she has no feeling in her right arm or hand.  She can’t pick up a pen, let alone write and if you think for just a minute about all the millions of things you need your good arm and hand to do – from the basics like being able to give your cat its shot of insulin to your artful pleasures like painting…it’s pretty damn scary.  It’s scaring me.  So I asked her how she is coping with this unknown body of fear and she said “by just taking it one minute at a time and not letting myself go to the dark side.”  Funny because she lives on the dark side, but she sure shed some serious light in my small world tonight.  She isn’t letting the fear control her.  She is taking control.  That’s inspiring and truly fearless.

Please get better soon little sis.