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Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
-Leonard Cohen, Anthem

My To-Do List Before I'm Dead/Crazy
1. Learn to play the freakin' guitar already. And drums. 
2. Try black truffles.
3. Meet Oprah and thank her.
4. Go white water rafting again. Maybe a girlfriend getaway.
5. Visit New York City for a week.
6. Build a self-sustaining healthy house on a plot of land large enough to have a big, gorgeous dog that never poops close to home, some sheep, a big garden, and fruit trees but close enough to other people that if someone came to murder us, there would be people to hear the gunshots. 
7. Publish a work of mostly fiction. Change the names and details of people I know such that they really have no idea I'm writing about them, the fools.
8. Go to art school.
9. Own a log cabin on a lake where you're allowed to shoot people if they seadoo. Two sports in one: Cottaging and Target Practice.
10. Compost with worms.
11. Finish knitting Montana's baby blanket.
12. Travel Europe and Russia.
13. Throw a neighborhood carnival block party, raising money for a family in need or other worthy cause.
14. Somehow make international adoption easier. Get airlines to give free airfare to people who are picking up their international adoptive children.
15. Learn pottery.
16. Visit Chicago Institute of Art.
17. Get all my body hair lasered off. Celebrate with a naked stroll in a park.
18. Learn to really sing.
19. Go scuba diving somewhere really colourful and take photos. 
20. Go horseback riding again.
21. Make pesto from scratch.
22. Make a stuffed salmon encased in pastry that's cut to look like a salmon.
23. Learn to really, properly swim.
24. Have an all-girlfriend canoeing-camping trip with someone who can play guitar. Woman with the longest leg hair the next day doesn't have to paddle back.
25. Memorise all the best Scrabble words and tactics.
26. See May Erlewine and Seth Bernard again live.
27. Read the Harry Potter series.
28. Develop all my online photos with journaling comments.
29. Ride in a gondola in Venice.
30. Grow peonies.
31. Learn to can my own fruits and veggies and then actually do it.
32. Visit Vancouver.
33. Have Garrison Keillor read one of my poems on The Writer's Almanac.
34. Roll down grassy green hills in Ireland. Fall in love with some rogueish Irishman with that accent. 
35. Catch some fireflies again. Then let them go.
36. Catch some frogs. Then let them go.
37. Get my braces off. Celebrate by rubbing bread and carrots and salmon all over my teeth.
38. Get into really fantastic shape. Feel strong and healthy.
39. Become buddies with Julia Roberts Jennifer Garner. We would totally mesh.
40. Be in a flash mob.
41. Write a song and sing it/play it on the guitar.
42. Be in the chorus of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat.
43. Finish reading War and Peace.
44. Read The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens.
45. Invent something awesome and sell it like crazy from a website.
46. Learn to cook Indian food as well as our local restaurant does.
47. See a ghost or an angel. Anyone from another realm will do.
48. See Prairie Home Companion live.
49. See Jack Johnson play live.
50. See Cathy achieve her dreams, however that happens.
51. Be so rich that I can give away money to people who need it.
52. Buy a much nicer camera.
53. Re-learn to play piano.
54. See Les Miserables live.
55. Learn Photoshop.
56. Get a book deal.
57. Make a really nice, large abstract quilt.
58. Visit the Great Wall of China and leave my name on it somewhere.
59. Become fluent in French.
60. Learn basic Italian.
61. Become fluent in sign language.
62. Become a pretty good chess player.
63. Have my own photo exhibit in a gallery.
64. Remember history studied and study more.
65. Become more charitable in my heart.
66. Have an Etsy store.
67. Visit London, bump into Jude Law and have him quickly fall in love with me.
68. Design my own house blueprints. Or build a treehouse or hobbit house.
69. Teach Daisy to read and watch her silently devour books.
70. Teach Lulu to read.
71. Take a hot air balloon ride.
72. Be in a musical/play with Daisy.
73. Make healthy cookies I actually love. For my grandkids.
74. Learn how to breakdance. Or at least do that move where you support your body just on your hands tucked under your belly? That move.
75. Hold a hand stand for at least five seconds.
78. Do a backflip. With a belt on. Tied to the ceiling.
79. Hear James Taylor play live.
80. Become a Big Sister.
81. Be able to roll in a kayak.
82. Adopt some older children when my kids are older or be a foster parent.
83. Have some of my poetry published. Under a different name.
84. Do a month-long vacation with Joelle in the UK.
85. Have a butler's pantry right off my kitchen and have it extremely organized at all times.
86. See Swan Lake performed.
87. Raise my children to be happy, nonjudgmental, kind, creative, humble, open-minded, critical thinkers.
88. Own "Hay" perfume from Santa Maria Novella perfumeria.
89. Swim in an Italian grotto.
90. Host a dinner under a large canopy-like tree, with candle lanterns.
91. Be able to do one pull-up.
92. Eat some freshly shucked oysters I've dug, out east.
93. See my sister happy and well-off in Victoria, B.C. 
94. Meet my all of my virtual friends.
95. Teach my girls hand clapping games.
96. Sleep in a hammock in Hawaii with mellow island beat music playing and with the waves splashing in the background.
97. Go seashell hunting.
98. Visit Boston in the Fall. 
99. Go up the Eiffel Tower.
100. Get Lasik eye surgery.
101. Get new tortoise shell glasses I love in the meantime.
102. Learn to juggle.
105. Get a degree in something I'm sure I'll decide on and stick with at some point.
106. Rock grad school some place awesome. Be paid to go. 
107. Get a PhD, presumably in something Englishy but maybe in Theology. Or Philosophy if I can figure out how to do that without going insane.
108. Figure out a convenient and inexpensive way to have Joelle be my laundress. In return, I will untangle anything that needs untangling and offer editing services. 
109. Own a flower shop?
110. Find Murray Clark, my fifth grade teacher from River View Public School in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, and let him know how much he blessed my life.
111. Speak at TED.
112. Learn to ride a unicycle.
113. Find and marry The Love of My Life (Matthew Rhys?).
114. Have all my closest friends at both my ceremony and reception. Have an awesome paper flower bouquet that my friends have made for me (and make bouquets for them), and otherwise handmade reception, with yummy food, music he and I have chosen together (no stupid DJs), guitarists playing prior to the reception, with lovely little surprises.
115. Participate in a hip hop number on stage. 
116. Be anywhere in the Fall where I can see red maple leafs again, collect and press them, and then make a Martha Stewart-idea frame thing with the leaves. 
117. Throw fantastic Sweet Sixteen birthday parties for my daughters.
118. Learn to drive stick shift. 
119. Race a race car along a track. 
120. Do karaoke. Maybe "Thunder Road" by Springsteen. Or "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" by Meatloaf with Joelle.
121. Do a stand-up comedy routine. 
122. Finish my book of subversive children's poems.
123. Make a multicoloured snow sculpture for the kids' front yard. 
124. Learn to waterski. 
125. Try squid ink in a pasta recipe. 
126. Make a really indulgent cheesecake for the people I love the most and serve it to them at once.
127. Embroider something awesome. 
128. Own a collection of beautiful handmade nativities. 
129. Visit St. Peter's, Santa Margherita in Cortona, the Duomo, the Louvre, and Westminster Abby again and actually be able to go inside this time. 
130. Attend La Tomatina in Spain.
131. Write two plays and have them performed: one comedy, one drama. 
132. Have someone cool perform a song I've written. (That guy in the art wing of my school doesn't count.)
133. Find a really fabulous red lipstick that doesn't turn pink and doesn't make my teeth look [more] yellow.
134. Get my ex-nephew to do some wild make-up on me before going to an excellent Halloween party. 
135. Take TLoML to Cortona, Italy and live there a while.
136. Visit Pompeii.
137. Make love in a field under the stars. 
138. See an animal be born. 
139. See a baby be born. 
140. Learn to belly dance.
141. Write a "little instruction book" for my children. 
142. Set up a soapy slip 'n' slide with my kids. 
143. Make a fairy house with my girls like this one. 
143. Go to a drive-in movie.
144. Be a part of a protest that changes the outcome of something.
145. Have a picnic/snack in a cave behind a waterfall.
146. Catch a fish and eat it.
147. Take kickboxing classes.
148. Get more politically involved in my own country. 
149. Find something to do with my engagement ring. (Anyone want to buy it?)
150. Be a redhead for a while. 
151. Own a gourmet luncheon/deli place specialising in incredible sandwiches?
152. Make some etchings.
153. Conduct a social experiment of some kind.
154. Own a really great buttery leather jacket.
155. Milk an animal.
156. Attend a lantern festival such as this one.
157. Do really artsy portraits of people.
158. Live a long, healthy life with my brainy, funny, creative, sexy spouse.
159. Walk the Camino de Santiago.

Hello. I'm Natasha.

I'm Canadian, thirty-one, single, and a mom of four children ages 6, 8, 10, and 12. I'm a student, in my second year, studying Literary Criticism, Gender and Social Justice, Anthropology, and Contemporary Art.

About twelve years ago, I slipped on a banana peel, fell, and accidentally got married. To someone who, while a thoroughly decent person, was, in some not-insignificant ways, totally wrong for me. Oopsie! Do-over?

Now, you're going to find this hard to believe, but cross my heart and hope to die, shortly after getting married, I was walking down a street in Northern Alberta when I glanced up at a seagull that was flying above, slipped on some marbles that some boy ahead of me on the sidewalk spilled from his Crown Royal bag, smacked my head against a parking meter, and promptly forgot to pursue a university degree. I know. I'm such a klutz.

Instead, I became a stay-at-home mom. Four is not a lot of kids, but it's certainly enough. Especially when you luck out and get the most perfect ones possible and I'm not the only one who says that about mine. (Just slipping that in there so you know that I'm grateful and would only trade them in for abundant financial wealth.)

After a significant chunk of time (and enough anxiety to kill a strong horse) of trying to fit a large square peg into a small round hole, I am ecstatic to report that I am living alone in what is arguably the most beautiful place in Canada. I will be transfering next year into the Fine Arts Writing programme.

I love reading, art, travel, photography, language, food. Nothing terribly original about that. As well:

  • I have never seen more than a few bits of Star Wars.
  • I am really an only child. My "sister" is really my cousin/adopted half-sister and we didn't know each other for six years of our childhoods.
  • I don't really like desserts all that much. 
  • That said, I'll eat all kinds of candy.
  • Jobs I have had: newsletter folder/deliverer, waitress, legal secretary/runner, office supply store clerk, seller in a mall holiday kiosk of mugs that changed pictures when hot water was poured into them, Hickory Farms seller of sausages and cheese balls, jewellery maker and business owner, copywriter, small online business consultant. 
  • I can scratch every inch of my back all by myself without props and that's not even a metaphor.
  • I love CBC, NPR, and BBC. Love radio shows like The Debaters, This American Life, Quirks and Quarks, DNTO, Vinyl Cafe, and of course, Prairie Home Companion.
  • RadioLab! Love!
  • I really can't overstate how much I hate reality shows of all kinds.
  • I once ate a dried cricket. Not the best, I have to say. I mean, it was no grasshopper, you know?
  • I engaged in a LOT of eye sex in Italy. The men there are shameless, seducing trollops. It was glorious.
  • I won a creative writing award (with cash!) at my school for my poetry. 
  • I recently had five poems published in Fire in the Pasture, an anthology of poetry by Mormon poets, ironic since I am now happily ex-Mormon.
  • I also won a $1000 award for the highest mark in any of my school's intro Philosophy classes. 
  • My new life philosophy: To say 'yes' as much as possible, to not force things, to love.