I had been in LA only a month but that was all it took to encounter one very bad haircut. So when I saw someone with gorgeous hair I asked her where she got it cut – Jessica Tingley at Frederic Fekkai was her answer. That was enough for me to go to the salon. Jessica was more than enough to keep me coming back.

Instantly we hit it off; the dirty jokes came out first cut, the laughter kept going and some kind of connection just happened. But she was now my stylist and I didn’t think that line could be crossed. Especially since there is that cliche saying in Hollywood “your friends are the ones you pay.” I didn’t want that to happen.

So for three years I’d look forward to going to the salon (a first since I hate it) until one day she said to me, “You know, I really want to be your friend and hang out.”

“Me too!”

And there we were.

Why it took 3 years for us to get the courage up to say “I like you, let’s be friends” is beyond me. Fear of rejection, of crossing some stupid line, of not being cool enough – they’re all inane whatever they might be.

Oddly though, I still tend to feel this way when I encounter someone I immediately adore and what to have coffee with. But usually my shy self just remains “knowing” them instead of befriending. I often then wonder how many great people am I missing out on, simply because I haven’t said, “I want to be your friend.”

If you dream of country life, or like the idea of a simple world coming to life with real stories but have neither the time or ability to make it a personal reality, then might I suggest a really good way to live vicariously: Katherine Dunn.

A woman who tells the most incredible stories with words and in pictures has captured my heart and imagination for years but never more so than when she created Apifera Farm.

It’s on this farm in Oregon that she talks about raising lambs and lavender and tells the sweetest stories about the other animals (I dare you to not be taken by Pedro and Juanita). But what is the most amazing thing to me, in all over this, is how she invites people to be a part of it.

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There used to be a time when I would lament that I never wanted to turn into my mother. During my teen years she had her own things to deal with which made her less than pleasant to be around. She was no fun, she was cranky, and she wasn’t the kind of mum that baked cookies or let me have playdough. No, I’d think, I’m not going to be like her. And I wasn’t.

For years we never really spoke and it wasn’t until my late twenties that I connected with her. We had both become more ourselves and surprisingly, more like each other. Our expectations of what a daughter was and what a mum was had been let go. Instead, we just looked at each other and realised we could giggle at everything for hours, liked taking long drives looking at antiques and wineries, we both noticed details of everything and were both overwhelmed by beauty and colour. Most of all, we discovered we both enjoyed a bit of fancy and really loved life despite all the curve balls we’d been thrown over the years. We were both eternally hopefully.

Out on the town people would always comment on how much we looked alike, especially our smiles. Which is perhaps why I like this photo; we both have the same smile that says “uh, we hate taking our picture but we’ll fake it because it’s raining really hard and we want it over with.”

Our birthdays are just two days apart, which perhaps explains why we’re both quirky little things and in a a few months when I’m celebrating mine, I’ll think of her and what I’ve learned from her. And smile. Just a genuine one this time.

On Tuesday afternoon she arrived in simple jeans, t-shirt and flip flops and I with tired eyes and a drained personality. Little did we’d know that this trip would change us both enormously.

The first order of business after leaving the airport was to fuel ourselves at Whole Foods for lunch before hitting the Pacific Coast Highway for our two nights in Santa Barbara. After with drinks and snacks in tow, it was time to roll the windows down, crank the music and begin out week long chats and laughing as we cruised alongside the ocean for the next couple of hours.

Arriving at the wonderful Hotel Andulucia just before dinner, we had only a few minutes to quickly change and prepare for what was supposed to be a tour of the farmers market with the Chef of 31 West. Truthfully, though, we weren’t in the mood to meet with him for driving, sunshine and too much time apart had us far too giggly for public interaction. Luckily it turned out that the Chef was too busy for us which gave us time for something much more important – Emily’s first trip to Anthropologie.

There I was her personal shopper; picking out clothes upon clothes that had her modeling for hours. I pushed her out of her comfort zone (something she wanted) and showed her that a skirt can be just as relaxed as pants. By the time the store closed, she agreed, carrying her pretty Anthro bag with ease and a new addiction.

After all that work we were ready for our dinner at 31 West. Wine, good food and conversation though truthfully we ended up being tired, wanting to really go back to the room, slip on our robes and watch cable – something that had become a guilty pleasure to both of us since we had both forgone cable for so long. But rest in comfy duvets was what we needed; the day had been long and the next morning we’d be up early for a good cause – a wine tour through the Santa Ynez Valley.

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Currently late morning, Charlie Brown Christmas is playing in the background, the heat is turned high and I’m waiting for the tea to finish brewing so that I can put it into my travel mug and head out. I’m heading north for the day to say good-bye to my best-friend of half my life, Emily.

It’s not the first time we’ll say good-bye to each other. The first was around 18 when I decided with no real reason (and no knowledge) to move to some little remote ski village in the Canadian Rockies. I did not ski and I didn’t know anyone there. But I went and she saw me off. The both of us cried so much because we were so connected, spending every moment together, being goofy, knowing each other’s synchronicities. We were a unit and unsure how things would be once separated. It was the hardest thing to leave her and I cried the entire trip there. I kept asking myself why I was giving up that friendship, why was I giving up comfort, why was I giving up everything I knew for something I had no idea of?

Turns out going to that little town was the best thing that happened to me and, several months later, she joined me and it began several years of adventures for us. I’d leave her a few more times but we’d always connect. Even through the bumpy patches.

Somehow in the last several years we managed to live only 3 hours from each other and that’s been wonderful. It’s allowed for all-night talking fests whilst playing Cranium, it’s allowed her husband and mine to become great friends, too, it’s allowed me to meet her beautiful son and so forth. But, once again, I’m leaving for some town in which I have no idea about and will try for some adventure – giving up comfort, what I know and a friend.

Oh, she’ll visit and perhaps I’ll return once in awhile here to say hullo. There’s emails and postcards to send but to leave a friend is always sad. Perhaps it’s that way so that we can know the joy of seeing them again.

Ah, the evening. Where do I begin? It started with what seemed like an ordinary afternoon – rushing from one place to the next, quickly jumping in the shower, checking email – only to become an extraordinary evening because of a meeting with amazing new friends.

Four hours of non-stop dishing and talking in the lounge with drinks, desserts and very bold coffee. Perhaps there were celebrities around, big names making big deals and romance happening at other tables but I wouldn’t know because I was far too busy being immersed in two people’s lives. Oh, the conversations, the understandings, the head nods.

After we bid them a long farewell, we retreated to our suite where we ate fruit, relaxed in the jacuzzi tub and played jazz on the stereo as we looked at the moon filling up the ocean. This is the good life, we thought.

And although were were at a nice hotel, indulging ourselves in that regard, what we were really talking about was the connection we had with others; the sincere connection where someone lights you up and makes you feel sane and possible rather than the glitz and pampering that you can buy if you have enough cash.

Because this night was really made up of what you couldn’t.

I’ve been moving forward with a new dream – production – and although it’s at times overwhelming, confusing and a wee bit scary, it’s also terribly magical, exciting and pure joy.

As I realised with writing, making a dream real involves a million tiny steps that involve stepping past fear, heartbreaks and more frustrations than one can ever imagine. No one is ever handed what they want on a platform – one has to work a little and struggle a little to enjoy it all a lot.

Today, two friends of mine gave me a little encouragement that doing what you want can be done by sharing the fruition of struggling through dreams.

The ever so talented and amazing singer/songwriter Summer Pierre has just released her new CD, Far From Here (which you can buy through her ). This girl amazes me because she’s the real deal. Her talent, her insights, her abilities stun me as does her wonderful, funny, down-to-earth personality. She’s been there when I needed and inspired me inbetween. She took time off from her music, underwent some personal and professional struggles and then came back to her true passion at full-force – something I can relate to.

She taught me that despite setbacks, one can move ahead – you just have to want to. That crap will happen but if you stay true to what is in you, you can succeed. She’s proof. So, congratulations to this brave girl for pursuing her dreams no matter what.

My other friend, Jenny Hart of Sublime Stiching first wrote me a couple of years ago. She wanted to participate on the Another Girl at Play site I run. Because she only did her work part-time and on a small scale, she didn’t qualify for the site but I told her if she ever did it full-time to let me know. Not long after, she had quit her day job, making her dream of Sublime Stitching more than just a reality but a huge success.

This girl knows what her talents are, what her strengths are and what she wants to do and pursues it all at full-speed. When I met up with her in Austin Texas last year, I was so inspired by all that she was doing and how much she had done in such little time. She took an idea and made it huge by working so amazingly hard at it. Success is sweet to those who try.

I received her Stitch-it: Classic To Cool Embroidery Projects kit today which blew me away. It’s so first class – just like her and her efforts. It’s so incredibly perfect (excellent little gift) and I’m so proud of her and what she’s done. She’s an inspirational ass-kick because she has done so much and come so incredibly far with something that was only an idea just a few years ago.

And speaking of women rocking out, the oh so talented and divine Christine Castro has just launched her new site Darling Studio (and it is). She’s created a company that provides charming, sweet and darling design (and even a little inspiration – her site has some very interesting tidbits). She’s got her own style that is so beautiful, but what’s more beautiful is seeing her use her talents in her own company.

So thank-you to these women who rock out with their dreams, continously reminding me that anything is possible if only you perservere and try.

Eight years later she remembers it as though it just happened; cliche yes, but true.

The fog that had not yet lifted made the morning cold and so before heading to explore the town she went into a nearby cafe for coffee. Not wanting to waste a minute of her seven days she took it to go and rushed out the door, only to bump into him. She looked first at the coffee pouring down his shirt then up to his face and knew right at that moment that things would be different from then on.

And they were.

He went into town with her that day and the days after that save one – the one they stayed all day in her bed and breakfast while it rained so hard that they just watched it fall against the windows. When it cleared they went for supper with his family and this was the only time her nerves kicked in. Without a word he winked at her; it was the first time she ever felt safe and believed everything would happen as it should.

When the time came for her to leave, he handed her a note he’d written that said he wasn’t sure what would happen next – if he’d ever ever see her again or not. She knew and when she knows something it happens. They went their separate ways – he back to school and she back to her country that no longer seemed to fit.

So two months later she returned to his country and there she stayed. Not only because she knew, but because he did too. And that was enough for the both of them.

One day when I was thirteen, my mum decided that she had yelled at me for the last time over the state of my room. She was tired of its dishevelled state; blankets hanging from the ceiling and over tables, mass amounts of string tied everywhere, books covering the floor, forts constructed, coloured paper all around. Despite the fact that I was living in a large attic space in which the entrance was hidden from the main house and no strangers ever attempted to go up the long narrow staircase, she believed the room had to be perfect and tidy and every day that it wasn�t, it was a frustration to her.

She decided one day that if she couldn�t tell me that my room was a mess and was in need of a good clean that she would show me. Without my knowledge, she took a picture of my room, took the film to the store, and waited anxiously for the messy photo shot to develop. She was certain that when the photo was ready and she showed it to me, I would instantly want to make my room over into something from a glossy magazine.

But it never happened.

The photo did get developed but the image that my mother expected to see never appeared. What she saw was this beautiful array of colour everywhere. She saw creativity, youth and joy. Somehow all those ribbons looked amazing the way they were tied all over the room; the forts had a special magic to them and the paper all around seemed to have purpose. She looked at the photo and for the first time ever, thought my room was beautiful.

She didn�t show me the picture that day or tell me what she had done. She wouldn�t do that until thirteen years later when we could laugh over it, our differences, and the magic of seeing something another way.

My father always seemed to be able to do anything. He was larger than life and I adored him for it. I was his ‘mini-me.’ His sense of adventure, his love of life, and his youthfulness kept me in awe of him.

Yet, the last couple of years, I began to recognise my father less and less for at 69, he had become solitary, bitter and old.

His language had changed as well; he talked about how, when purchasing a new car, it would be the last one he would ever buy. How he wouldn’t see something that would happen in ten years and how all he had left to do was grow old.

I could understand his line of thinking as he was the last one in his family left; everyone else had passed away. He comes from old stock where 69 is a very old age indeed. Also, his lifestyle had been hard I could hear him think to himself, “How do I eradicate the past to give me a new future? What is the use?”

One day, out of the blue, I wrote him a letter. In that letter I told him how much I adored him, even during the years when we weren’t on speaking terms. I told him how he always amazed me with all that he could do; politics, real estate, fishing, navigating, travelling, reading, pretending, laughing, dancing and so much more. I told him how I listened to everything he ever said to me and remembered it all – even the bits he didn’t think I listened to. I told him he was the most amazing man I had ever known. I told him he was my rock star.

My father is a Frenchman; tough on the outside but completely (and silently) meltable on the inside. I didn’t expect to hear from him on the letter I had written. I thought he would somehow work it into a conversation one day such as, “I got your note. Your writing is getting better.”

But he didn’t. In fact, he wrote me a letter back.

He told me how much the letter meant to him, and how it made him emotional. He also told me how he decided to look after himself, finally. He had gone to the doctor for a physical, he had found a homeopathic doctor to get healthy with and also, he had started a new diet, started to exercise and started to look for adventures.

I was shocked beyond belief. This sturdy, intense, quiet on personal things man had let out some emotion and also changed things in his life I never thought in a million years he would. I realized that he realized that his life isn’t over until he’s buried. That he still has use, even if it’s just in being my dad.

Most people give up when they think they have no use, but I think people give up when they forget how they are useful because they forget the true meaning of being of use. They sometimes think the meaning of being useful is by trying to obtain a million dollars, a large TV in a big house, slim hips or fame. Sometimes people forget that being useful happens in small, but important ways and so they distance themselves more and more from being of use.

In the last five years, my father had started to think that being of use would be to work as hard as he could in a job that left him bitter so that he could make a lot of money. When that didn’t work he didn’t think he had a purpose anymore. It took a little note from a daughter to tell him that his usefulness was in just being there, on the other side of the phone, laughing, giving advice, and talking. With that, he is more useful than he’ll ever know.

PS: Please don’t email me about your dad; write him instead.