One day I hadn’t heard from my cousin Deanna for a couple days, maybe less even, and I commented on a mutual friend’s post about not wanting to die on Hastings. And I just said something like “Me neither.” And then Deanna posted on it “Yeah I am in Van and I totally avoid that area.” And I was like WTF???? Because she hadn’t said goodbye or anything. I thought it was a joke.

But no, she spent her last dollars on a bus ticket and is now living at Occupy Vancouver!!!! :O

That’s really far away! She did say if she got the chance she was going to be in Vancouver, so I guess that is what she did. It seems crazy! Everyone is worried because Occupy Vancouver has a 2pm deadline tomorrow to get out “or else!” Well, I don’t think they said “or else” but it was implied, and they’re going to throw their stuff away. And do I don’t know what with the people.

So here I am, powerless in Saskatoon while Deanna goes off to save the world. I could point her to some people in Vancouver who know how to live on next to nothing there and where the free food is, but she is all about the movement right now. I’m just worried it will totally disperse and she’ll be homeless in Vancouver, which is way more of a fuck show than being homeless in Saskatoon, where she knows a lot of people. And call me crazy but all the chanting in all the occupy videos remind me of that film we watched on cults in high school where the fresh faced hero gets brainwashed to the shouts of “Juicyfruit, juicyfruit! Rah rah rah!” I have mixed feelings about Occupy.

So you can call me PreOccupied.

She will probably be fine, she hates when people worry. And who knows, maybe she will end up in a Vancouver jail cell with drag marks on her legs. Or maybe the people will prevail and it will all be a heartwarming scene with heroic Occupiers waving their fists in front of the VAG, free to live another night on the front lawn.

Occupy the VAG!!!

Hopefully she will be fine and have some crazy adventure story to tell her children, when she has some. And it’s true I know people who have up and moved to Vancouver and made it work. It’s not entirely out of the realm of possibility that she will land on her feet. She’s been fed for free this far! And she’s been there a while now.

I guess the grim underbelly of Vancouver is what I worry about, it’s so ridiculously expensive to live there and the occupations that will allow you to live reasonably decently there are sketchy. And plus all the free food places are in sketched out neighborhoods. I dunno. But what do I know, it’s been five years since I’ve lived in Vancouver, six almost, and it has changed a lot in the meantime. Maybe there’s a magical Quatchi’s Inn where poor people can go to eat and sleep and smoke weed in their bedrooms for no money. Well whatever. And now I am going to be in trouble for writing a worrywart blog post.

I just don’t want to have to fly out to Vancouver and put up posters of her. But I have felt that about all my native girl cousins who live in BC. It’s just not a good place to be a Native woman, considering how many go missing there. But yes, I lived there, and only had one really dodgy night with some crazy old punk and his roommate he was kicking out who had pitbulls. Oh yeah, and that one old lady who called me a pedophile in the street because she mistook me for someone else. Okay, and that guy with the blood on him who said “Canada~!” at me and shook his bloody nose on my shirt. That was sketchy too.

But there are also lots of good people in Vancouver. It’s just a big city with big city problems. But Deanna has never lived in a big city before. But neither did I before I was 18. And she’s way older than I was when I moved there.

Ha ha, listen to me be an old fuddy duddy! We’ll just have to see what happens tomorrow at 2pm.