Ready, set, go.

We have been negotiating the roads of boundaries. It is so much more complicated than it seems.

You get the internet dating, i get the kids for your date nights. You get facebook, i get spring break.

You know, you hear stories about couples who split and they both remain friends with the same people. I call foul on that one. I don't believe it. It's too complicated, at least for the first few years.

Perhaps because of the way we split, perhaps because my name and reputation was dragged through the mud, perhaps because i wasn't the favourite in the friendship equation. But, most of the people that were "ours" are now "his."

We try to be friends, he and i, but most often it is just too hard. We are friendly. And sometimes we aren't. Sometimes the kids get dropped off in the driveway and there is no hello in the kitchen. No friendly chat.

And there is this. This internet thing. They all read it. Girlfriends, in-laws, friends. They all know more about me than i do about them. Sometimes i wish i could just reach my hand through the screen and shake them and say "what you know is not the whole truth, all of this is just smoke and mirrors."

I find myself asking people i meet "please don't google my name, not yet." That's what we do right? We google people. And there i am. And now i think, maybe, maybe i have put too much out there.

Then there are the ones who understand. My friends who live this same life. The singles, the only's, the bloggers, the twitterers. I watch with interest as couple after couple form from this little community. That would be easier. I would understand, you would understand.

You throw hope up in the air and wish for it to find you. To find everyone.

If i take myself as a single entity, just me, hope is really all i have left.

Sometimes, like this morning, we have these nice conversations. Checking in, updates on children and legal papers, and we end up chatting for twenty minutes. It gives me hope that things are working out as they should.

It also makes me so sad. I miss him in those moments. Someone who listens to my brain dumps, offers good advice and understands. Gets it. Gets me.

One stupid decision and two lives are changed forever.

I hope that someone will find me. Someone will love me. Someone will understand.

I'm done with this sadness, this self-pity. It gets me nowhere. I want to rush at life, i want to get dirty, i want to stub my toe on the steps because i am running up them too fast.

I want to be scared, to feel the sting of rejection and then kick it in the shins, shove it to the ground and run away laughing.

I want to jump in the river, feel the shock of coldness and the strength of the undertow. Let it race me towards the ocean and drag myself up the rocky shore and fall in a heap of exhaustion.

I want to sit too close to the fire, let the sparks jump on me and slap them away before i get burned.

I am two espressos into the morning. I keep forgetting to buy coffee beans. This morning i sent my daughter across the road to the coffee shop to get me something. Instead of drip she came back with the thick syrupy espresso.

I like this. I like this village living. I like the streetlights.

I haven't lived near streetlights for six years. I wander home from work, late at night, under their orange glow. The village is empty, quiet, peaceful. The flashing red light at the intersection is the center of my universe.

The kids rush in from school, tossing backpacks and the day aside. Grabbing pocketfuls of snacks and run back out the door to find friends and wander the village giggling and laughing and getting up to the perfection of kid trouble.

I watch them from the windows of the restaurant. They march by in packs of two's and three's. I sneak out the side door to watch and listen. "Doesn't your mom work there?" There are whispers and adrenaline as they embrace this new freedom.

They are village rats now. They own this town. All three square blocks of it.

I woke up this morning feeling bleak. I have been feeling a little bleak lately. Not in a super depressed way, more of an "is this it?" kind of way.

I think i have finally slowed down. When i drop the kids off at school the day spreads it's expanse in front of me and i think "im just going to stay home today."

I think that every single day.

I can't remember the last time i wanted to just stay home, enjoy being home. I'm getting caught up on rest and phone calls and myself.

I am getting caught up with myself. I have been in a state of flux, not just since the fire, but since september 7, 2007. The day i first walked out of my marital home. I have moved six times. Once back into that house for eight months. I haven't felt grounded, rooted, at home, in almost two and a half years.

I finally do. I finally feel like i have a home, i am home.

And, my god, it feels fantastic.

And, this morning? That bleakness? I figured it out. I want to just be me again. Me - mother, daughter, sister, friend. I want to spend my nights in that bed, curled up with a good book. I want to bake cakes and banana bread for my children. I want them to laugh and love and grow. I want to laugh and love and grow.

I will bake cakes. I will do everything we do in homes. I will sit by the wood stove in the evenings chatting with my children. I will plant a garden and watch it grow. Year after year i will watch those flowers bloom and the apples fall from the tree. I will have roots that are strong and sturdy.

I sit in my room with my oldest daughter, whom i have to constantly remind myself is not even thirteen yet, and i ask her "what should i write about?"

"missing buttons..."

And she giggles and i giggle.

I am getting ready to go out for dinner and to drop them off at their dads. She helps me pick out clothes and chooses her favourite coat of mine. It is missing a button. We decide i will wear it anyway.

We have been missing so many things that suddenly a missing button seems like no big deal.

Over the past few days i found myself in the middle of an Olympics based debate on tipping and automatic gratuities. I was going to write about it, but have decided it may be best to just walk away and bang my head on the wall a few more times.

I will say one thing. I believe that a 10% tip is a bare minimum and should be applied to service that is acceptable at best, if you enjoy your dining experience you should tip 15-20%.

Important things i have been doing include cutting down two ugly, half dead, trees in my yard to let the sun shine in and give me some space to grow some vegetables. Having a veggie garden is very high on my list of things that give me immense joy. The kids and i love growing things and eating them too. I'm fairly certain they get the majority of their green vegetable intake during the summer months. Last summer i grew watermelon! That was awesome. I think we'll go simple this first year. The standard peas and carrots, salad greens and root vegetables. No potatoes because last year we got those worms in them and that was just gross.

Also, my bedroom. It is a huge room and i don't have very much furniture, but what i do have i love. I have a little antique desk and chair that sits under my window and when i sit here i can look out and see the lake (thanks to previously mentioned tree removal) which is magical. I also set up my turntable that i got from santa in here and that is lovely. I fear i may listen a bit too loud when i get home from work and the kids aren't here, but i'll let my neighbours decide on that one. I also have some pretty cute company in my room.

Who? Well his name is Chewie and he's orange and petite and purrs really loud. Our newest addition, a wee orange tabby who's six months old and came home from the SPCA last weekend. Now i have company when i'm all alone.

I should have been on an airplane at this very moment. But all of this is pretty darn good too.

Working valentines day is cruel and unusual punishment. This is the third one in a row i have worked. Last year the attempt to reconcile my marriage was rapidly coming to a close. The final silent moments of a marriage banging around in my head while i served table after table of happy or pretending to be happy couples.

I don't feel bitter this year. I feel happy. I am happy with the place my life is at. There are many things to change and look forward to. There are gardens to grow and children to flourish. There is a home to be filled with love and kindness.

I have finally, i think, come to a place where i have forgiven myself. I have truly forgiven myself for mistakes i made.

It is not easy for me to say that out loud, but there it is. I am happy to have had the marriage i did. I am happy for the love that was there. The children that we had. The years that we shared. Good times and bad, it was a magical ride.

My house is warmed. Today, today, i feel all settled in. I can feel a shift deep inside me. I feel calm. I feel like i am at the starting line of something.

It's not a race. I don't feel a need to go anywhere, do anything. Just to start. To start again. It feels great.

I had a party on saturday night. I had such a lovely time. Sometime around midnight all my friends and co-workers had arrived and i sat for a moment and realized this is it. This is my life. There were only about 15 people there. And that was enough.

Before the party i was feeling anxious as i am want to do.

What if nobody comes? I don't have any friends.

But, there, in my kitchen around midnight i realized that these are my friends and they are more than enough. They are the people i care about. The ones who have stood by me through everything. The ones who don't judge. The ones who have seen me at my best and at my worst.

And i was happy to have them there. To share a little bit of a crazy night with.

I am still getting used to being alone in this house. Moving is hard on your soul. Your body has to adjust to new creaks and moans, different light, strange air.

I have moved six times in two years. I am tired of moving.

This house feels like home. It is home. I know that because we are all so happy to be here.

I got very sad yesterday thinking about a sixteen year old girl that committed suicide in victoria. I got an alert on twitter that she was reported missing and then, through facebook, found out later that day her body was discovered.

It really knocked me for a blunder.

Sixteen. Sixteen.

The first time i tried to kill myself by a lethal combination of prescription medicine from someone else's medicine cabinet i was only fifteen. I've never really talked to many people about that. I was so young. I wish in my adult mind that i had found help way back then. That some adult noticed what i did.

But, i was tricky then. I hid things well.

But, i was tricky then. I hid things well.

Obviously, i still hide things well.

I have noticed since december i have been unfollowed and unfriended by most of my local acquaintances.

I have noticed parents being more protective of their kids around my kids.

Oh god. I'm so sorry. I am an excellent mother and i would never do anything dumb with my kids around. Can't you see my struggle comes when they are not here? I understand.

I keep thinking of that little girl and her parents. Of her walking into that cold pacific ocean and swimming until she drowned. And reaching that point where you are too far in to go back. That terrorizing moment that you know you really did it.

I had that moment in december and there by the grace of god goes i.

My life is getting so much better.

I am feeling the impending arrival of happiness. I can hear it knocking on my door.

I love my house. I love it. I love being here. I want to just sit in it for a whole day. I want to be done with all the business of lawyers and insurance adjusters and the mess of moving.

I want to not feel such huge emotional attachments to events i have no control over or connection to.

Sixteen. Sixteen.

I couldn't, for the life of me, give you a photo that could articulate the happiness i feel.

I am so happy. I am so happy to see my things, to sit at my little antique desk, to have dinner at my table, to sleep in my bed with my sheets and duvet.

This has been the best week. So hard and so rewarding. I moved all by myself. My daughter was there and a huge help, but she is twelve. I did it all by myself.

I had some help from good friends with hanging up mirrors and what-nots, but everything else i lugged and organized and directed, and now we are here. All unpacked. Fire burning in the woodstove, dinner at the table, children snoring softly.

I know i have waxed endlessly about my housefire, but i didn't realize how it had affected all of us until we were here. We were out of sorts and lost for six months. We were not home.

And now we are.

And it is so much better than i could have hoped.

I feel great. I feel like i can move on with my life. I feel deeply, truly happy.

the new house! from jess howard on Vimeo.

We are moving in three two days. In two days we are moving into the home i bought last summer. The home that has caused me more stress than anything else in my life.

I know i have put so many other stresses into that home.

Everything would be okay if my house didn't burn down.

And that is not completely fair. My house didn't make my mouth all wonky. My house didn't make me file for divorce. My house didn't make me nearly lose my life and my mind.

But, everything would have been so much easier if my house didn't burn down. I can't really put words to the trauma me and the kids have felt these six months. Living out of suitcases. Waiting for what has seemed like years to be in our home.

I was waiting in line at the insurance office the other day and reading an ad about buying insurance and it said that 1 in 2750 homes burn down (in my region). And, at first blush i felt so bad for all those other 1 in 2750 people. Then my feeble mathematics brain thought in percentages and that's really not that many homes, especially considering how small my community is. And i thought; fuck, i really have some bad luck.

But this? This is a new beginning for me. I will move to my lovely, brand new! home and i will be happy there. I know it. Surrounded by families, in the heart of the community. I will find home.

I will find hope and happiness. And you have been there through it all. My crowd-sourced home. Thank-you everybody for looking at my pictures and offering advice. I truly feel like you, me and the internet built this house.

Now, do you have a truck and are you free wednesday and thursday?

I've said before that the hardest thing about being a single parent is not the parenting. It's the hours they are not here.

Sometimes, the opposite is hard too. Last night parker woke up screaming and crying and when i even hovered my hand over his belly he would shriek out in pain. Tristan came running upstairs and comforted parker while i frantically searched on google for symptoms of appendicitis. She seemed so grown up in that moment. Softly soothing her baby brother.

My oldest daughter amazes me.

Parker was fine in the end, just a little gas. We all crawled into my bed together, parker in the middle, and settled in for sleep.

I think what amazes me is how all of my kids have become more independent, but at the same time we are more of a cohesive unit than we have ever been. It truly feels like we are a little team.

I filed for divorce yesterday.

It wasn't a very good day. Sitting in a lawyers office, hashing out all the details of a life in two hours. The small details. All the negative things. No mention of all the joys. All the tiny moments that made up a marriage.

It seems like a lifetime ago that i was such a young woman walking through my parents backyard, between my mother and father, towards my soon-to-be husband. All giggles and grins and beauty.

The dress i was married in is hanging in my closet. It is still a beautiful dress. I hope one day one of my daughters will wear it somewhere.

I filed for divorce yesterday.

I have been feeling so lost since i walked out of that office. The final steps. I wish all of this could have turned out differently. I wish i could feel certain that this is the right thing to do.

Instead, i feel great loss. I feel immense sadness. I feel like nobody understands. I feel so much anger in the universe directed at me.

Did i do my best? No. I tried. I always tried.

I was interviewed last week and called myself a flawed human being. When i hung up the phone i cried. I know that we are all flawed, perfection is irrelevant. But, i failed. I failed at marriage. It is a horrible feeling.

My lawyer told me that this would be very hard. That i would feel all the anxiety and angst that i felt when we first separated. That i would feel bad.

I do. I feel very bad.

I feel like i live in this constant state of neither here nor there. I am hoping that when i move into my home i will feel my feet sink in and have a place to push off from.

My house! It is almost done. There are floors and paint and a kitchen and just about everything. We are moving in in a couple of weeks. Excited doesn't even begin.

I am doing well. Pushing myself. Creating a life. Making plans. Going on an adventure.

When we were driving away from my parents house parker shouted from the backseat "a bear! a flying bear!"

I pulled over and looked at parkers finger pointing to the sky and sure enough dangling from a helicopter was a bear. It was not the strangest sight i have ever seen, but it came close.

So this is the new year. I don't have any weighty goals, no resolutions. I know what i won't do. I won't smoke. I won't let this unquiet mind break me.

I will do every single thing i can to be calm and at peace. I will seek out the positive in every person and every single moment.

The night before my doctor's appointment last week i had the strangest dream. It was long and simple. I walked up to a man i had a crush on and i lay down and put my head in his lap, he placed his hand on my cheek and softly chuckled. We sat like that all night. My dream lasted all night. Just like that, simple, at peace, cherished.

I want to be cherished this year. I want to fall madly in love. I want to be wrapped in arms and legs and giggle furiously.

It feels like an impossible dream. That kind of love doesn't happen anymore. That is a love of youth and innocence and freedom.

I once watched a woman smash a raccoon's skull with a boulder to put it out of it's misery. I was a young girl and the image has never left my heart.

I want to teach my children the value of life. The beauty in the mundane. I want to take them to the beach and marvel at every grain of sand as it runs through our fingers. I want to take them to visit my 96 year old grandmother and show them how every line is beautiful, each wrinkle telling the story of a life lived - the glory of old age.

I want to wake up every morning to the rushing sounds of footsteps and childish excitement bursting forth in my new house.

My mum likes to tell the story of moving across canada, before i was born, and my brothers guinea pig (smuggled on) escaping from it's shoe box on that orange canadian airlines 747 and running between the feet of passengers creating a "wave" of jumping and screaming. I like this story.

My life has been so shifty lately. I imagine sitting still this year. Happily settling in for the long haul.

it rains in vancouver. it rains in vancouver ALL the time. i remember this from when i was young. i sleep a little better with that rain pounding above my head.

Let me think, let me get this all straight for you.

I went to my appointment on thursday afternoon in a building that my father and i both agreed seemed very post-apocalyptic, floor to ceiling glass for 8 stories. Leather sofas repeating floor after floor.

I was a bucket of nerves, had been for at least a week. All butterflies and irritable.

I filled out some forms at the "Mouth and Mucosa" clinic. Trying desperately to ignore those words, instead having them repeat in my mind over and over.

mouth and mucosa. mouth and mucosa. mouth and mucosa. mouth and mucosa.

The exam room was unremarkable, just like any other dentist office. I waited as medical students darted past the doorway, making deliberate sideways glances at me.

The doctor came in and we went over my referral, yada yada, boring. He has me put those coat hanger things on the sides of my mouth and pull it open like a turkey ready to be stuffed. They examined me using words like "very interesting." They took pictures with normal light, blue light and with my mouth died blue. Then they asked me to participate in a study, i said yes, which meant more scraping and taking of tissue and cells.

Then it was done. mouth and mucosa. mouth and mucosa.

It was done and the doctor sat down to talk to me. I am going to explain this as best i can. It is a little confusing and i have two doctors in my family helping me wrap my head around medical technology.

I don't have cancer. Good news. What i do have is some high-risk cell abnormality in my mouth that can be termed "dysplasia." How i understand it is thinking of a line. If "A" is a healthy mouth and "C" is cancer i am sitting at "B." I will never be an "A" again because to remove the abnormal cells surgically would result in a serious speech impairment or with lasers a high risk of aggravating underlying cells into becoming cancerous. So, the concern is that i have high risk cell abnormality and i am on a line that leads to cancer and that i am extremely young to have dysplasia in my mouth. The doctors have no concrete idea of what the rate of crossover to cancer is for this condition, hence the "Study" that i am participating in.

What does all of this mean? Well, it means that for the rest of my life i will hop on the ferry every three months and go through that same photo, photo, photo, scrape, scrape routine. I will be followed very closely and just wait and see.

Somewhat frustrating and somewhat a relief.

Thanks for all your thoughts, well wishes and prayers. I am heading home tomorrow and will begin my new years.