CURRENT MISSION

I have had extraordinary luck meeting people when I've travelled, or when people have travelled to my city.

ABOUT ME

Well, I always think the first thing people say about your is interesting, though not particularly revelatory. They would say tall. Which doesn't interest me. I'm a grownup though I don't act like one. I have a fancy job, but live in a loft in an artsy neighbourhood in downtown Toronto, and shudder at the thought of becoming mistress of a fancy house with an SUV and Starbucks in the holster.
I am divorced, have two kids (8 and 9) who have grown up among eccentric, fabulous people. I have amazing friends who have zany lives, dancers, poets, artists, musicians. I do know some straight people, I even date one.
I am very social, but also love to cook.
My favourite Christmas involved a crew of six straight male dancers, a squabbling lesbian couple, a couple of intellectuals and activists from Brooklyn who were vegan, which meant I went to the market and gathered a hundred bucks worth of veggies and spent the day making everything veggie I could think of. This was the year Hanukah fell same day as Christmas; my kids are also half Jewish. So we made a mennorah out of a banana wrapped in tin foil (a banannorah!) with birthday candles and did the blessing over the phone with someone who had that skill. We went through a lot of Veuve and five dozen oysters. The colourful nature of the guests is not the point: the joy is in mixing great people, iconoclasts welcome, around my table.
I have great instincts about people, and I trust them. I've never been disappointed.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

Yeah, not sure yet. I'm a hotel girl when I travel, spoiled by years of fashion reporting in Europe and New York. That said, I've had the most incredible experiences staying with people all around the world. I'm open to tailoring specific visits with extraordinary people with whom I feel comfortable after some conversation.

COUCHSURFING EXPERIENCE

I met my friend Rachael through an email intro from a director I was dating from Los Angeles. She is a photographer from Australia, who had spent the previous decade in London and New York. She picked Toronto because she could still get a Commonwealth visa before she turned 30. She signed up for an apartment thru Craigslist in a farflung part of town. As she grew increasingly depressed taking a long streetcar to civilization, I took her on a hotel launch junket to Niagara Falls and said, oh, just come stay with me.
I was recently separated, and have my kids half the time. She stayed on my couch one week, then in kids' rooms the next.
Rachael was a joy, a total hippie and a music obsessive. She took me out to see amazing live shows, some of bands she had photographed for magazines. It came to pass that I would wake up with the sweetest, coolest musicians camping in my living room. I loved making coffee for Blood on the Wall.
She also had a knack for picking up cool people I would never have met, and my home became richer for it.
She stayed for I don't know, about 8 months, and she never bugged me.

Interests

• fashion
• cooking
• coffee
• vegan
• traveling
• socializing
• music
• camping