family times

hey all yall

the last couple days i've been spending with family i've never met. i highly recommend this kind of travelling to anyone. family is awesome.

on thursday i got picked up from the bus by trish, who is the lovely wife of my dad's mother's cousin. she took me back to their gorgeous house in horseshoe bay. their daughter janet was in town for a conference - she goes to school in alabama for interior design and basketball.

janet had to go to a doctor's appointment in north van so she took me with so i could explore the town. i spent most of the time in a bookstore, which was an excellent and terrible find because now i have two more books to carry around everywhere i go. but i'm excited about the books - one on guitar techniques which is exciting so i'll have something to work on besides playing songs i already know, the other is about the best farms to visit on vancouver island for great food year round.

when we got back trish had a lovely dinner prepared and bill was home so the four of us had a nice dinner. after dinner i grilled trish and bill for family information so i could gather some data to help kim with her family history project. it was really cool to hear their stories and take a look through their family bible, published in 1818.

the next day i trekked to the ferry to nanaimo, where my dad's cousin sue picked me up. on the way to her place half an hour up the coast we stopped several times to run errands, stops which got increasingly exciting as we got further from nanaimo. in nanaimo we saw fast food joints and big box stores - we stopped at costco. further up the coast we stopped at a farm that makes cheese, another farm / bakery, and a seafood joint where you have to drive right out onto the pier past all the trucks and fishing boats to get fresh, local seafood that is prepared right in the back of the trailer where you buy it. sue likes great food and i have no problem with that. needless to say we get along great.

oh yeah and her place is incredible. she just sold her previous house and moved only a few days ago to where i am know. when looking for new places to live, she had to make a split second decision between a house that was perfect with no view, and a serious fixer-upper overlooking the ocean. ocean view wins every time, obviously. sue has been working so hard to paint and set up the place, and already it's impossible to tell that it was last inhabited by a 95 year old woman who, understandably, hadn't done much upkeep since the 70s.

sue is a writer and has a company with her son where they do writing for different companies and clients. she also has a publisher for a murder mystery she's been working on / thinking about since the year of my birth. it'll be done by the new year. she's way cool.

something i ate over the last couple days didn't sit right with me and i woke up sick this morning. sue was awesome. she even asked if i might be pregnant - beacause if i was this would be the best place for me to be. that would be a great story wouldn't it? got pregnant and ran away to the west coast so i wouldn't have to tell anyone, found an open and accepting cousin who would take me in and get me through it. fortunately i'm not pregnant, and if i was i would never feel like i would have to run away from my family and life because of it.

i'm feeling great now. sue is off with ryder, her almost-5 grandnephew, at hockey practice. i skipped out on that part of the morning's activities to recuperate, but they will pick me up in a few to go for lunch at sue's sister carol's cafe. sue has a great network of family here on the island and in vancouver. they're all really close and i already feel a part of it. sue is hosting a big thanksgiving dinner and everyone's coming and i have already been invited. not sure if i will make it, but it sure sounds nice.

i totally love it here. can you tell?

j

p.s. sue helped shed some light on my schizophrenic relationship to my name. am i jacqueline? am i jackie? jaki? jax? something else? apparently when she last met me, at my christening at age 6 months, i was jackie. jackie and jamie. so apparently, when my mom told me that i they always used jacqueline because 'jackie and jamie' is too cutesy, she meant that we tried 'jackie and jamie', and so many people said 'awwwww jackie and jamie, that's soooooooooo cuuuuuute!' and they got sick of it. hahah now i know.