2001-01-23 - 5:50 a.m.

But I talked to Dad about moving out and leaving -- which was something that was very hard for me to do, since I love him dearly and am grateful for my chance to live here and I don't want him to feel I'm shafting him. But he's been AWESOME. Totally supportive of however long I stay or go, telling me he'll help me get to LA if I need to leave in a week. And today he took me shopping for clothes to get me ready -- and it meant so much. Now that we're feeling so lovey towards each other, and I've told him I'm thinking of leaving, everything is good for me to go and Now I'm more ready than ever to get a move on and get to LA. I'm not liking the idea of getting a job here to work for a couple of month to save the money to go -- I'd much rather get a job in LA and get going immediately. But we'll see how things work out . . .

However they work out, I feel better about my life plans than I have in years and years. I've got my interview with the Peace Corps on Monday, and the absolute WORST case scenario is that I don't get into the Peace Corps like I planned, and I end up in LA living near my friends and working on my book and being happy because I'm near them. Or that I do get into the Peace Corps, but I don't get the job I want in LA and have to take a job at the ski resort or at the mall here for a few months to save up to leave for LA. None of those things are bad -- All the possibilites are very good ones and I feel so good to finally know what I want and where to go to find it.

I saw a movie today, Riding in Cars with Boys. The movie made me cry -- in it there was a kid whose father left when he was a kid and he grew up with just his mom.

Those stories always get to me, because I think of me and I think of my sister and how hard it was to grow up with out both your parents around. I remembered how after my parents divorced I lived with my mom and her parents -- and my grandfather was the best dad in the world to me. He always came home from work with little presents in his pockets for me, and took me on walks around the neighborhood carrying big sticks to fight off the nonexistant beavers. He meant the world to me. And I realized, I didn't have it so bad after all. And unlike most kids, I got the second chance to come make up with my dad and live with him and see what he's all about, and to tell him about my childhood -- all the stories of the things I did and saw and felt that he missed -- and we are starting to share a little past together in the now. And I'm glad I came to Canada, glad I got a chance to go there. Some part of me has healed, and I'm ready to leave the nest for real now.

And I'm ready to have kids. I'm 25 now. Until this year, I always thought I was too young to have kids, and I didn't really want them, didn't think it was very feminist to want a family. But now every time I see movies with kids in them, I want one of my own to love and cherish and to be there for when they're sick and to make them laugh and to hold them when they cry -- And I envision living near my best friend La and having her teach them about magic and myth. I think I would be a good mom.

But of course, I know I'm still years away from that -- I'm just saying. I do want a family.

My fantasy is that I will go away to the Peace Corps and meet some good looking single young educated man who is also a volunteer. He volunteered because he, like me, has a vision for the world and he has compassion and love for humanity and because he's smart and wants to travel. We'll meet in training or at one of the Peace Corps volunteer regional meetings they have once ever few months overseas -- and then we'll fall in love and keep up a lovely correspondence. And when we get back to the states we'll both be free to settle wherever -- and we'll end up in the town of my best friends wherever that is and of course they'll love him to death because he had to be the coolest guy if I chose him, and if he loves me -- And then we'll get jobs and I'll publish my book and in a few years I'll have money saved to start my own business -- a bookstore or coffee shop or publishing house or a combination of all those things -- and we'll have a couple of kids and La will be there in the delivery room with me and my man too -- and my kids will grow up very very loved by a mom who writes and publishes novels, and by a dad who loves them to pieces and does whatever it is that he does, and they'll get to come to work with me at my bookshop and read books all day long and they'll be happy. My husband will know how to play instraments too and our house will always be full of music. And La will live so close that we see each other all the time and my kids call her Auntie La and if she has kids they will play together. And when my kids are grown up and we're old La and I will buy some neighboring property in the countryside of northern california to retire to. And there will be horses for Leslie and for the grandkids to ride when they visit. And La and I will grow old together and garden and will wear outrageous clothing combinations and drink wine all the time at the dinner parties we throw for our friends who come to visit us from miles and miles around to stay over at our houses. And people will ask us, what is your secret? Why do you look so young? How have you had such happy lives? And we will thell them that the secret is LOVE, and the other secret is little birds.