Trying my patience

I’m normally a pretty cheerful and patient person (being a mother I find I have to be). I look on the bright side of life most days, and try to find the positive in every situation (it’s not always easy, but I give it the good old College-try) You’d think with Christmas around the corner I’d have a more joyful topic to write, but time and time again it seems that my patience is tried…

Line-ups – My #1 Pet Peeve - if there are more than 10 people in line I will walk away and put my potential purchases back. I will definitely NOT suffer for coffee. No matter what kind of coffee it is. Life is too short to wait in line. The only caveat to this is when I am at the grocery store and have a full cart. I will grit my teeth as the line crawls to the checkout. This is when I catch up on the latest celebrity gossip. (Must make sure I put the magazine back before proceeding through the checkout.) Christmas shopping and crowded line-ups in stores drive me batty.

Driving in Traffic – I am very fortunate that I am able to walk to work most days. On those days that I am forced to bring my car I feel my blood pressure begin to rise when traffic starts to back-up. I don’t like the feeling of being trapped between a line of cars and a curb. I’m not claustrophobic or agoraphobic – I just don’t like not moving…If I could abandon my car and get out and walk, there are many days I dream I could do just that. To get me through traffic I lose myself in the radio. I channel surf until I find something that interests me and if it’s a great song then I will sing along, if it’s a talk show then I will absorb myself in the topic.

Impatient motorists/bus drivers – If you can’t get through the intersection on the green then don’t try to sneak through on the yellow and then end up blocking both traffic and pedestrians trying to cross the other way. (On more than one occasion I have had to snake my way between cars to cross a street all the while wondering if the motorist even sees me.) No one can be in that much of a rush, can they? I make eye contact ALL the time to make sure they know I am there. There are also times when I just have to wait for another light cycle and hope for the best. Case in point: yesterday I was walking home and had approached a crossing with the pedestrian walk signal still lit up. I was one lane across the street when the signal changed to the “hand”. A bus turning right on the red started into the intersection and came within a couple feet of me. I stopped walking to make sure the driver saw me. He made eye contact with me, and then to my surprise continued turning. If I had remained where I was standing he would have hit me. I had to back up to the sidewalk to avoid being killed. It was as if he didn’t care.

Oblivious Pedestrians - People who walk two-three-four abreast on the sidewalk (and even worse, those who walk in the center) unaware of people behind them who are walking faster and would like to get by and then grudgingly move when you ask politely if you can get by, as if you are invading their sidewalk. Ditto for dog walkers who walk their dogs a long leash that spans the sidewalk and you have to either go around the dog or hop the leash. All I can do is say, “On your left” and hope for the best. Sometimes people move and sometimes they don’t.

Loud chewers - Please close your mouth when you are chewing. There is really no polite way to tell someone they eat loud without hurting their feelings. (If anyone has suggestions for this I would love to hear them)

Telemarketers – nuff said! (I know they have a job to do and I don’t fault them for that but I don’t have to like it and I don’t have to listen to them)

Malls in December - As I get older I get more and more irritated with crowds in malls. So…I refuse to step into a shopping mall after December 1st. If I have any Christmas shopping to do I will do it early in the season, or online or in stand-alone specialty shops. (*sigh…I failed with this this year…I had to step inside last weekend, but I went early and left before noon – it was the best I could do).

I am very good at calming myself down and deep breathing to get myself through these patience testers. Avoidance works best, but is not always the most practical. A gin&tonic or a glass of wine at the end of the day is also a lovely remedy.

Traditions Reconditioned

The author of a blog I follow recently asked readers to share their favourite Christmas tradition. This is a blog that I comment on quite regularly and I was looking forward to sharing my Christmas traditions. So I sat down and started to write, and realized that I really didn’t have one “Christmas Tradition”. As a child I fondly remember Christmas morning with my family when it was just my mother, father and brother for Christmas. As soon as we were old enough to figure out that we didn’t have to stay in bed until morning my brother and I would sneak out of our bedrooms and steal to the living room where the Christmas tree was. We would first check to see if Santa had come, and then seeing the plump stockings we would race to them and thrust our hands inside to retrieve the flashlight that was always included within. Santa was always faultlessly fair to both of us right down to the number of chocolate balls we received.

The stockings are the only constant for me. They are my favourite part of Christmas and I love searching out that perfect little thing to put in the stockings that are laid out each Christmas Eve.

There were some other traditions we begrudgingly followed. My father had been sent to Finland for work when I was in grade school. He came back with a couple of traditional Laplander hats worn by the children in Finland. As we went off to Christmas dinner at friends’ each year, my mother would pull out the hats and hand them to us so we could wear them into the house. My brother and I would complain incessantly about these hats


(they were actually quite cute) but we would put them on for the 15 or so steps to the front door and tear them off as soon as our hosts had seen us wearing them. I look back and wonder why on earth we put up such a fuss.

The early days were the most consistent but things began to change when we went away to school. After an intense school term all we seemed to want to do was to sleep, and instead of waking up early on Christmas morning, our parents would have to come and rouse us from sleep in order to get the day on its way. This continued until our early 30’s when we started settling down.

A devastating house fire when I was 25 resulted in the creation of a temporary new tradition for my family. Because we lost everything – including the Christmas decorations – we began to buy each other ornaments for the host Christmas tree each year. With just my family this meant 12 new ornaments each Christmas. When my brother and I both got married, the ornament count went up to 30 for a couple of Christmas seasons. We had to cease that as there was soon going to be no room for all the decorations either on the tree or in storage. The trees in our family are beautiful these days, adorned with eclectic mixes of fish and boats and trains and kitchen related decorations.

The married-pre-kids days were probably the most relaxed of all Christmas mornings that I remember. We would get up and brew a pot of coffee, pouring ourselves a cup with a healthy dose of Bailey’s Irish Cream, before making our way to the tree where we spent time laughing and leisurely opening gifts that had been carefully chosen for each recipient.

Once children entered our lives the Christmas morning routine went back to hectic activity. Children waking early to open gifts and a house full of discarded paper and boxes and new toys to try.

Since I’ve been divorced things have changed once more. For a few short Christmases we would buy ourselves a gift worth around $25 and wrap it in newspaper and place it under the tree for the annual exchange. Everyone would choose a gift they didn’t purchase, open it and try to figure out who had purchased the gift for themselves. (My brother was especially good at throwing people off his scent.) Then for some reason this short-lived hilarious activity was terminated and now we don’t even exchange gifts anymore. I have to admit that I miss the family get-togethers that just don’t seem to happen as much or as often anymore. I guess, as with everything, the only thing constant anymore seems to be change.

My Nose Knows

I have a curious sense of smell. Many of my fondest and some of the not-so-fond memories have been triggered by smells. Most of them trace back to when I was young. This makes sense. Sarah Dowdey writes on How Stuff Works: “Because we encounter most new odors in our youth, smells often call up childhood memories.”

As a child I used to visit my grandparents in Sudbury for two weeks in the summer. It was always hot and dry there – or so it seemed – and my cousins and I would spend every day outdoors. My grandparents had many large white pine trees growing behind the house and when the ground was warm and the needles heated up they emitted a musky evergreen fragrance that has stuck with me for years. When I started running over 10 years ago I had a regular route that took me past a lone white pine beside the path. On hot summer days when I ran underneath this tree, the scent from the needles so strongly evoked those memories of my summers as a kid that the first time I smelled it I had to stop and take a few deep breaths because it was so comforting and healing. Even now, each time I pass this tree in the summer I am taken back to Sudbury summers.

The smell of blueberries, which we used to pick that summer as well, will also transport me back to those days.

My first kiss while wearing Orange Crush LipSmacker has lived on in my memory and I’m taken back to that exact time and place whenever I smell anything remotely like it.

On one occasion I bought some Cucumber Melon body wash during a visit to a friend in Florida. That same weekend I met an attractive man who I spent a few hours with during a group run. From that moment on, even though I never saw him again and had never even had physical contact with him, the smell of that body wash reminded me of him. I had to finish the bottle and never purchase it again as it felt wrong to think of him while showering especially when I had just started dating another guy.

When my family lost their house to a fire in 1989 I couldn’t be near a campfire for ages because the smell of burnt wood evoked those disturbing memories of watching my home go up in flames. But that one has faded – likely because it occurred later in life and also because I have been around many fires since then, and have replaced the bad memory with much better ones.

Dowdey goes on to write: “A smell can bring on a flood of memories, influence people's moods and even affect their work performance. Because the olfactory bulb is part of the brain's limbic system, an area so closely associated with memory and feeling it's sometimes called the ‘emotional brain,’ smell can call up memories and powerful responses almost instantaneously.”

Some of my favourite smells have included:
• the back of my since-deceased ex-cat (don’t ask – long story) Sid’s neck
• fresh-baked bread (again, back to my childhood when my mother baked bread on a regular basis)
• frying bacon (especially outdoors while camping)
• decaying leaves on fall forest trails
• fresh cut wood and poured cement at construction sites (yet another youth related memory - they remind me of when my parents built their very first home and my brother and I would play at the work site during the day)
• vanilla
• sun-warmed skin on a hot summer’s day (evokes those lazy hazy crazy days of summer)
• freshly ground coffee

Finally there has been much research; much of it inconclusive, that women are attracted to a man’s pheromones. Although there may not be concrete proof, I have an interesting footnote with which to end this one-sided discourse. I spent many years waking up next to a man whose scent I found less than appealing in the morning. It was never a body-odor issue, but something else that I couldn’t put my finger on. And even though I had very strong feelings for him, I just didn’t want to be close to him in the mornings. With my current partner I find myself wanting to snuggle into his neck in the mornings and breathe him in, which makes getting out of bed very difficult unless he is the first to rise. Again I can’t put my finger on what exactly it is other than that I am attracted and comforted by it. I guess that’s a good thing. As Jennifer Aniston is quoted as saying, “The best smell in the world is that man that you love.”

Caring Capacity

We all carry baggage. For some of us it can be heavy emotional baggage, like wounded hearts and scarred souls, for others it’s more physical in nature, like those who can’t let go of body weight or possessions, and then there are the ones with what I call familial baggage; like children and aging parents. But if you are really lucky the only bag you carry is your gym bag or your lunch bag.

Emotional baggage can result from a bad breakup, stress in your life, or a traumatic event. For many people the presence of emotional baggage trumps everything, especially new relationships. Emotional baggage has followed me from time to time stymieing my urge to focus on a relationship. Many years ago when I was a couple months into dating a new guy my family lost their house to a fire. Oddly enough the house fire left me cold, and even though I had been dating this guy for a while, I couldn’t continue with the relationship. I simply lost all feeling I had for him. It was strange to suddenly feel absolutely nothing. Ironically, this house fire, while creating emotional baggage also helped me get rid of the physical baggage in my life.

Physical baggage comes in many forms; excess body weight, overstocked cupboards filled with food items near or past expiry dates, closets filled to the brim with ‘just in case’ clothing items that haven’t been worn for over a year, and even cluttered and paper covered desks because you are just too busy to file things in drawers or the round filing bin on the floor. I think shedding physical baggage is probably the easiest for me. I feel lighter when I am able to organize my living spaces and make them esthetically pleasing places in which to be.

Finally there’s familial baggage. I loathe calling my children “baggage, but they come with me no matter what I do or where I go, and when describing who I am my children are inevitably a part of that description. That said they are the best kind of accoutrements and I love surrounding myself with their presence. It wasn’t until I began dating again after my marriage ended that I noticed a big difference in my “post children” dating style. The freedom to go out spontaneously had been replaced by compromise. I quickly learned the type of person I wanted to date by his acceptance of my scheduling conflicts. There were some people who, once they found out I had children, were gone in a flash, sometimes even before our first date. What worked best was when I met someone who was both cognizant of my situation and who came with similar baggage of his own. I think that I was drawn to the same. I have dependent children and he has an aging parent, both of which require time and patience and an unending ability to empathize. There are many days we share our responsibilities (these are also the times when we must share our affections with others) and there are other days where we each shoulder the entire load ourselves. Our caring capacity does not diminish with this added responsibility. Conversely it continues to grow. It’s what makes us human.

Remembering

My sons are in Air Cadets and will be attending a Remembrance Day Ceremony tomorrow. Their paternal grandfather didn’t fight in the war, but taught pilots to fly during that time. They have heard stories from their father passed down from his father. The war is more real to them than many of their friends because it has a face on it.


I am not old enough to remember a time when then world was at war. I am glad for that. But I am old enough to keep the memory alive for those who gave their lives for us.

Boys and Girls

For as long as I can remember I have always gotten along with boys better than with girls. It started when I was young. There were never many girls in any of the neighbourhoods where I grew up. I always remember having boys as neighbours, and we would hang out building forts or playing hide&seek in the bush across the road from our duplex. When my younger brother got old enough he joined us. Since my parents had a cabin 30 minutes from town we spent many weekends there and most of the summer holidays. There were no other kids nearby, so my brother and I used to make up games and hang out.

I had a few girls as friends in public school but never anyone who I considered my very best friend. The one girl that I considered to be my closest friend had many other friends in our class so she never hung out with me exclusively. As we got older the girls in my class would have Barbie parties. I remember two or three girls bringing Barbie outfits over to another girl’s house, and they would dress up their dolls and swap outfits. I used to take my Barbie outside and make her ride around the back yard in GI Joe’s Jeep with his army guy friends. While the girls were plotting ways to make Ken like their dolls, my Barbie was going on jungle adventures.

Around men I never worry about competition because men and women traditionally compete on different levels. (And as I wrote in a previous blog entry, the person I most love competing with is myself.) I ran a small town half marathon a few years back and at about the half way point I began leap-frogging with another woman on the course. I would ease ahead of her and then she would come from behind and pass me. This kept me on pace for the second half of the race but as we got closer to the finish line she kept looking over her shoulder nervously. Then when the finish line approached, she took off like a bat out of hell. I didn’t give it another thought as I was racing my own race and assumed she was too. Later on in the washrooms I was changing before the awards ceremony and I overheard a woman’s voice saying, “I HAD to pass her! I was going to be fourth…There was NO way I was going to be fourth female!!” I emerged from the washroom stall to see her look up at me. She instantly turned red and shut up. I turned and left the washroom, secretly thrilled that I had placed fourth female overall and oddly confused about why she was more concerned with what didn’t happen than with her own placement.

I also don’t have to worry about a guy vying with me for another guy’s attention, or trying to outdo me by showing up in a fancier more stylish outfit. Throughout the years this still hasn’t changed. I am intimidated by stylish women. I don’t have a fashion sense worth beans and couldn’t pick out an original outfit without seeing something on a store model and trying to emulate it. Some women look as if they don’t even try. No matter what I do I always feel like a clumsy wallflower lacking grace around other women.

I’ve tried to determine the source of why I don’t feel nearly as comfortable around women as I do around men. Looking back into my past there was never a defining moment that changed things but I guess there were lots of little things – for example one winter when I was in grade four I’d had a fight with the girl who lived down the road from me and the next day at recess she rallied our friends around her and they followed me at recess “erasing my footprints so I wouldn’t exist” giggling and whispering behind my back the entire time. That symbolic gesture has remained with me over the years because it hurt me so deeply. I remember going home and crying.

It can be argued that boys can be just as hurtful as girls, and they often were, yet I forgave them quicker. Maybe I assumed that boys didn’t mean to be hurtful, but the girls knew exactly what they were doing. I had too many secrets revealed by girls I’d trusted. (To be fair, I do have some very strong relationships with women today, and there are some women in my life who I will always be close to and able to talk to about just about anything. But these relationships have been carefully nurtured and are a subject for another post.) Boys didn’t really care about my secrets. If they thought I was being silly they would tell me. They also told me when they thought I was being smart. The girls I knew seemed to have a secret language that I wasn’t privy to. I’ve never been big on the subtleties of the female psyche, or perhaps I am just extremely naïve, but I continue to remain wary. I think when it comes down to it most of the men I’ve known have always told it like it is. I never have to try to read between what they are saying to figure out what they are saying.

Competitive Spirit or Competitive Nature?

We, as humans, are a competitive species. It stems back to early days of man when one literally had to fight for food, for shelter and ultimately for survival. As humans evolved, the need to fight for the basics requirements of life began to subside. We had homes, we had jobs, and we had clothes on our back. We didn’t need to get up in the morning and wonder if we would live to see another day.

But the need to compete remained. It is a rare person who can honestly say that they are completely fulfilled and lack nothing in their lives. We all want something, and more often than not, that something needs to be fought for – in the way of competing for a better job, bidding more money for a home in a desirable neighbourhood, or sometimes even finding the perfect mate. Competition exists in some form in nearly every facet of our lives.

My own biggest competitor is myself. As long as I am achieving as much or more than I am personally capable of, I am usually happy. This drive to better myself is what motivates me on a daily basis. I don’t need to use another person’s achievements as a benchmark as long as I have my own. But that’s not necessarily true of everyone. Anthony Garcia in his article Decoding Personality: Why We Compete, Reward & Buy says, “Our whole lives are motivated by an internal sense of worth, measured by ‘rewards’ — both internal and external. We’re each addicted to our own reward system. It stains every action we take.”

Some people compete ferociously and will stop at nothing to try to win. I’ve seen soccer coaches push their young players to tears for the sake of the win. The losing team feels inferior and the players begin to believe that winning is the only outcome worth playing for. I’ve seen this intense competitive nature in my youngest son. He is very good at Wii Sports and will challenge me every chance he gets. He practices and plays more often than I do, so understandably, he is better. But there are the odd times when we play that I beat him. When my points begin to creep up he’ll pause the game and ask if we can start over stating: “My hand slipped”, “I didn’t mean to do that” or some other pretext. I refuse. He always has an excuse for why I beat him and none of them are because I played better. Some people may think this is cruel, but I believe in teaching my children the honest (and simple) facts of life, that you can’t win all the time, and that if you only play to win, no one will want to play with you anymore. Already his brother is hesitant to play against him for this very reason, and even less so when he rubs it in. This is a stain that takes a long time to wash out.

I try to instill in him the sportsmanship that I was taught in school years ago, which seems to be slowly fading in today’s society. It always seems to be about the win. For me, because I am not overly competitive, it’s more about the game, and sharing the experience with others: it’s hard for me to weigh in on why some people need to be first and/or best. I am a runner and there is competition at every race I have ever run in. I have never won a race, and yet I am not at all discouraged or disappointed by this. Simply put, I don’t expect to win. On the rare occasions when I have unexpectedly placed in my age category I am pleasantly surprised. An unknown author sums it up perfectly: “The principle is competing against yourself. It's about self-improvement, about being better than you were the day before.” A little competitive spirit is good for the soul. Like I wrote earlier, it’s part of what makes us human.

Being Grateful

Years ago Oprah introduced what she called a Gratitude Journal. I, along with many others, jumped on that bandwagon and began to religiously write down 4 or 5 things each day that I was thankful for. It was easy – I had two wonderful boys who were changing and growing daily. I found there were many things I could write about including how fortunate I was to have healthy and happy children. As these things tend to go I found myself slipping as it became harder and harder to not duplicate the same things day after day. I would pick up the journal and jot a few items down. Then I would forget about it for a few months and find it in my bedside table and pick it up again. The entries began to look like this: “I’m thankful for not feeling guilty about not writing for so long”. Not long after this my marriage ended and the book got packed away somewhere. I forgot about it.

(As an aside: Sometimes I feel the same way about this blog. I know I have a few followers, but don’t really know how often they check in, and if they even notice that it may be weeks between entries. So I am grateful to those of you who check in regularly and don’t lose hope in me.)

I found my old “gratitude journal” when I moved for the second time in 4 years. I flipped through it and found that not a lot had changed. I am not rich. I am not beautiful. I am not famous. I am not spectacularly good at any one thing. But I am still thankful for the health that I, and those close to me, enjoy. I’m thankful the writing muse deems me important enough to visit on occasion. I’m thankful for a great run on a cool morning. I’m thankful for having someone in my life to share things with. And though I don’t feel the need to write things down on a daily/weekly/monthly basis I still consider myself very fortunate in the general scheme of things.

Whenever I get upset at something that isn’t going quite as planned, for example finding myself hopelessly stuck in traffic, I try to halt briefly for a moment before I let it get to me. There are people in cities all over the world who have worse traffic woes than three cycles of a traffic light before getting through an intersection. I am fortunate that I don’t HAVE to use my car to commute on a daily basis. And perhaps that is why I get frustrated. I can usually walk faster than my car is going on some stretches. Those days I wish that I could just get out of my car, fold it up and put it in my pocket and then walk until the traffic volume spreads out and then just unfold the car and get back in and drive. In an ideal world…Instead, I plop in a CD or tune into a top-40 radio station (one of my guilty pleasures) and sing at the top of my voice. By the time a couple songs have played the traffic jam is usually behind me. Music gets me through (as you may have noticed in the last two posts) and I’m thankful for that in my life.

I think the trick is to stop and pause before you immediately assume something is going to be bad. There is a lot more to be grateful for than to be anxious about. I have wasted a lot of emotion in the past on dread that never materialized. A very wise person always tells me, “Everything happens for a reason.” Sometimes I have to search for that reason, but it is always there. And I am always grateful for it.

The one that ran away… (part II)

You know I don't even know what I'm hoping to find
Running into the sun but I'm running behind
Running on Empty – Jackson Browne

As I continue to explore this theme, I’m a little stunned and a lot ashamed of my reasons for running.

I met David one Halloween at the bar. I didn’t dress up. Neither did he. I was wearing a red hoodie so we pretended we had come as Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf. He growled and I laughed. After a few dates I noticed that he had an aversion to wearing deodorant; he said that it attracted bugs in the bush – he was a forest firefighter. Then I found out that he was so homophobic that he wouldn’t use a pink towel or drink from a pink coffee mug. There were some things I just couldn’t ignore. We lived and worked in different towns so I thought it would be easy to let this fade away by not calling him. But a week later, after not hearing from me, and finding out from my parents where I was staying, he decided to come and visit. By sheer coincidence I had chosen that very day to drive to my parents place for a visit. As I rounded a tight corner on the highway I spotted David’s truck going in the opposite direction. Thinking maybe he hadn’t seen me I glanced in my rear view mirror to see brake lights go on. That was my cue to hit the gas. It took him over 10 miles to catch up to me. I pretended to be surprised to see him “behind” me. Soon after that I ran away for a month-long trip to Europe and when I returned there was little left to hang onto.

And then there’s the most superficial reason yet. I’d met Stan at the wedding of my University roommate. After chatting for most of the evening and learning that we both enjoyed biking, he asked me out on a biking date. We met up and headed off side by side down a quiet little street in the city. We heard a car behind us and Stan pulled up ahead of me so we were riding single file. I looked up to see a black matt of back hair curling out over the neck of his t-shirt. I suddenly developed a ‘stomach ache’ and with apologies to Stan headed home. The next time he called I told him that I’d gotten back together with an old boyfriend. (Coward that I was.)

Sometimes, it's harder to face myself than face the world
But there's nowhere to run girl
There's nowhere to run
No Place to Run – Gym Class Heroes

When I got married I thought I was finished with running. I’d found a place where I felt safe. Years went by and the urge to run never arose, until a few years after my children were born. But this time it was a different kind of running. I began to run for fitness. As I look back on it now, from a completely detached viewpoint, I can see that the physical running was only thinly disguised as running away. Each time I laced up my shoes and headed out the door I suddenly felt free of all encumbrances. But it was like I pushed the pause button - there were no phones ringing, no children to feed, no house to clean, no dinner to cook – I knew it would all be there when I returned, but for the time being, there was nothing but me, the feel of my shoes padding the gravel path and the sound of my breathing and heartbeat as I found my internal rhythm.

I’ve never been able to explain it succinctly except to say that life happens.

I want to live
I want to run through the jungle
The wind in my hair and the sand at my feet
Animal Song – Savage Garden

I know I wasn’t running away from responsibility. I loved being a mom to my children. I loved keeping a home. But there were obviously things that I didn’t love, and it was those things that were easier to run from, and hope they went away, than to deal with face to face. (For further dissection of this topic see Continual Evolvement.) I used to wonder if I was just being spineless and taking the easy way out, but I know that it would have been easier to stay than it was to run. People who know me know that I am very non-confrontational. In most cases I will choose the path of least resistance. So when they found out that I had run/walked away from a 12-year marriage many people were a little surprised, but said they could see it coming.

'Cause goodbye's on the tip of my tongue
Tell me there's a reason to stay
Cause I'm about to get up and run
Tip of My Tongue – Kelly Clarkson

As I further delve into my motives and dissect each of the situations I’ve outlined, there is a common theme, but one my readers wouldn’t have seen. In each of these situations - Nick, Kevin, George, David, Stan, my ex – I vaguely recall feeling slight trepidation during the initial bonding to these individuals. In all cases I also remember sloughing it off as “cold feet” and that I would get over it, or perhaps, used to it. Obviously I never did. That observation, quite frankly, frightened me. Was I destined to be a runner? Were all my future relationships doomed from the start? And then I thought about the ones from whom I didn’t run. I realized there was never that gut feeling that something wasn’t quite right. And in those situations, including the one I’m currently in, there is a feeling of just knowing it is right for me. If I’ve learned anything from this exercise it’s that my gut instinct is usually accurate. Although that’s small consolation for the people I ran from, some of whom had true and deep feelings for me, I’m somewhat bolstered by this insight.

“You are under the unfortunate delusion that simply because you run away from danger, you have no courage. You're confusing courage with wisdom.”
-Frank Morgan as the Wizard of Oz

The one that ran away… (part I)

As seems to be the pattern these days a conversation with a friend got me thinking about this. She’d mentioned that she’d recently reconnected with an old boyfriend, and had always thought of him as “the one that got away”. And I wondered to myself, “Did I have someone in my past that ‘got away’?” I couldn’t think of any old boyfriends from my past with whom I wished I could have had a do-over. Quite the opposite - in fact more often than not I remember being “the one who ran away”.

You run away / You could turn and stay / But you run away / From me
You Run Away -The Barenaked Ladies

I started running away in Grade One… There was a boy, Nick, in my class upon whom everyone had the requisite ‘crush’. Every day at recess the teacher had us line up at the classroom door, boys on one side girls on the other, before we could file outside for our 15 minutes of energy release. If you, as a girl, were fortunate enough to find yourself first in line, and Nick was first for the boys, you were considered an item, at least for the duration of recess. Nick had the cutest smile and eyes that seemed to sparkle with mischief. All the girls wanted to be first in line when Nick was there. And then one day I got my chance. He made some cute comments about “going out” with me at recess and I blushed. The bell ran and out we went with my two friends, Eve and Donna. We started chasing Nick around the school yard – back then it showed you liked someone. We ended up at the front of the school behind some lilac bushes. Nick looked conspiratorially at all three of us and told us that he’d show us ‘his’ if we showed him ‘ours’. Eve and Donna immediately said OK and looked at me. I took off running before I could answer. Three minutes later the three of them emerged from behind the bushes smiling and laughing and when they saw me they turned and walked the other way. I was wounded. I made sure I was never first in line in Grade One again.

And I ran, I ran so far away.
I just ran, I ran all night and day.
I couldn’t get away.
I Ran – A Flock of Seagulls

I ran throughout junior high school. At the time I assumed it was just because I was so shy. Forward boys made me nervous, cute-looking forward boys petrified me. I remember thinking that the only reason a cute-looking boy was showing interest in me was because he wanted something – something that I wasn’t willing to give. “But all the other girls are doing it” they would say, and I would think that there was something wrong with me that I just wasn’t ready to do that with anyone, whatever “that” was.
Once, the junior high schools had a joint dance with all the schools invited. I met Kevin at one of these dances. We locked gazes across the darkened gymnasium and he courageously walked over to me, through the throngs of girls on my side of the gym and asked me to dance the last slow dance. I’d thought he was cute and said yes. As we swayed back and forth to an ABBA song I vividly recall smelling his cologne. He’d borrowed his dad’s Old Spice. My friends told me later that he was playing with my long hair as we danced, twirling it around his finger. After the dance we exchanged phone numbers and met every now and then after school to skate-board down St. Charles Ave. It was a very long street that didn’t usually have a lot of traffic on it. Kevin and I never held hands and we definitely never kissed. Being naïve as I was I didn’t know that it would bother him, so when he made the obvious overtures I did the obvious thing; I turned the opposite way on my skateboard and ran away. I guess it shouldn’t have come as any surprise when he sent a friend to tell me that he didn’t want to “go out” with me anymore.

And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun
Time - Pink Floyd

I was just out of University. I’d taken a job in the Forestry Office in town after graduation while I looked for a permanent job. I met George there one weekend when some friends and I attended a curling bonspiel that he was competing in. He asked me out shortly after that and we went on a few dates. He seemed nice and we grew close enough that he felt he was ready to confess a few things to me. He’d been in an accident years earlier and had injured his spine. Since that time he’d had “performance issues” and things weren’t that reliable anymore. He thought I should know. I said the only thing I could think of to say, “It didn’t matter.” But I lied. It did. Not long after that we were at a social. I’d had a couple too many drinks, something snapped and I ran. I left the social, in the middle of a very chilly March evening, without my coat or purse, and found myself running. I had nowhere to go. His house was locked, but the car out front wasn’t. So I hunkered down in the back seat not quite sure what I was going to do. He was understandably freaking out by my disappearance from the social (I heard this later of course) but eventually had to leave and come home where I sheepishly emerged from the car. He never asked why I had run away. I think he was afraid to because he didn’t want to know the answer. He forgave me instantly, and held me through the rest of the night, but it was the last night we spent together. I felt like a shallow fake and not worthy of him.

And so I lay here awake
As all the clouds fall away
Then fast asleep in your arms
Wake up wonder where we are
Try to freeze frame the day
Then the light starts to fade
I will scream at the sky
'til we drink the oceans dry
And so we run
And So We Run – David Usher

…to be continued

Continual Evolvement

This is more of a stream of consciousness entry than a carefully researched topic. This is not like me at all. I’m usually more wont to meticulously write and re-write topics until they are as near perfect as I can be satisfied with. This time things just flooded out and for kicks I left things as they sat.

We are in a continual state of evolvement. I foolishly thought at age 30 that I had reached “maturation” and “ the end of personal evolution” and when I got married I was quite secure in the fact that I was done and that my new marriage with my husband would continue on along parallel pathways. Turns out our paths were never parallel at all and that they only crossed briefly for that time and began diverging. By the time 12 years had passed I barely recognized the person I was, or who he was for that matter. I had different interests, beliefs and passions in my life. He accused me of changing. I called it evolving.

Change is to alter or modify, to transform. Evolve is to grow, progress, move forward. Subtle differences, but differences nonetheless. Yes I had changed but in the process I had also evolved into someone I felt more comfortable living with. A kind of “new and improved” me. Or “me, only better”. Well, you get my point…

My taste in movies has evolved, so has my wine preference and the books I like to read and the activities in which I participate, to name only a few. Watching, drinking, reading and doing the same things all the time would frankly be boring. Even my circle of friends is different. University friends have gone their separate ways, and although I still keep in touch with many of them, we have very little in common these days aside from the memories of school and residence.

I do have my days where I like being in a rut. It’s comforting and I don’t have to think much, and the old stand-bys are always there. But that does get old quickly and eventually I yearn for some kind of change.

We are hard-wired to evolve. If everything stayed the same we would all still be wearing bell-bottomed jeans and tie-dyed t-shirts with the same hairstyle (well ok…some people still are) or worse, one celled organisms swimming around a murky pond. It would be very boring. I think the moment we stop evolving in life is the moment we stop living life.

Someone Likes Me...:)

I was recently bestowed the title of “Versatile Blogger Award” by fellow blogger and very good friend, Kim. I was both honoured and humbled by such a designate.


Being the curious sort I am, I decided to research the origin of this award. After pages and pages of blog links with the same designate I’ve come to the conclusion that if there is an origin, it is lost somewhere in the multitude of cyberspace bloggers. My personal take is that this was invented by another blogger as a cool way of promoting other people’s blogs, many of whom wouldn’t get the exposure if not for this award. I know just from linking to Kim’s awards I have added new “Blogs I Follow” to my favourites. And when it comes down to it, there is nothing in the world more satisifying that a peer-bestowed award.

I started blogging as a method of releasing frustration and stress, and it morphed into a way of sharing thoughts and ideas with friends and strangers alike. There are no common themes to what I write, or why I write it. Thoughts come to me and suddenly an idea for a blog is blooming in my brain. Down it goes. One day I’m talking about clotheslines and the next I’m delving deeply into the personal. I never started writing because I hoped everyone would read and hang on my next word…in fact, I know I have very few readers. The few people who comment are usually the same people, and they have been tipped off (usually by me) that a new posting has gone up. If others are reading, then they certainly aren’t letting me know. I did try the stats link that Kim mentioned and it was interesting in that after the big two (Canada and the United States) my next largest “following” – I use the term loosely, comes from the Netherlands. I’ve also had a few hits from China , Germany and Denmark.( I’m assuming the last three were just accidental hits and when they realized what they got, closed the link immediately ;)

So, to accept the “Versatile Blogger Award” I have to do the following four things:

1. Thank the one who gave me this award.
Thank you Kim. In the short year we have known each other we have discovered a closeness that normally takes years to nurture and cultivate. If people want to know what Kim is like, they just have to read her blog. http://spo-r-tinglife.blogspot.com/  She is like that in real life. She doesn’t hide behind polished words and carefully rearranged paragraphs. She isn’t afraid to talk about anything and this makes many of her postings so real, and sometimes very raw, and more than once a blog entry of mine has been directly related to something she wrote that got me thinking.

2. Share seven things about myself.
These are random and in no particular order:

1. I am a mother, a lover, a friend and a dreamer.
2. I hate sitting idle and therefore carry a crossword book and a notebook with me almost everywhere I go.
3. At 46 I am happier, fitter, more fulfilled and loved than I have been at any other time in my life.
4. I have a secret crush on the Old Spice Man (but not secret anymore).
5. I hesitate over the “publish post” button each time I write about something new. I never know when someone is going to misconstrue what I write and attack me for it (it’s happened before).
6. I like to play like a boy, but smell like a girl.
7. Aside from the necessities in life I could not live without books…My Kingdom for a book!


3. Present this honour onto 15 ( I don’t have time to read that many – here’s seven, though not new in the sense of the word, I try to follow on a fairly regular basis as well as Kim’s which I’ve linked to above) newly discovered bloggers.

http://goseeruneatdrink.blogspot.com/  -->  Pam blogs/blogged about travelling the world. If anyone is at all inclined to travel anywhere, chances are Pam’s been there and has written quirkily about it. She has a huge following and writes with a flair I can only dream of.

http://startinglines.blog.com/  -->  Cathy’s tongue-in-cheek relentless pursuit of excellence in running. She is loyally dedicated to her sport and to the beverages that are consumed after a long run.

http://winnipegcyclechick.blogspot.com/  -->  Andrea is a strong, brave, classy and enduring cyclist. I want to be like her when I grow up.

http://clickspring.blogspot.com/  -->  Ian writes an eclectic mix - the simple and not-so-simple life in rural Manitoba, breeding all sorts of living creatures, fixing things that most people would have long given up on. His perspective on life is unique and I love the ‘randomness’ of his blog. You never know what you are going to get next!

http://kelodie.blogspot.com/  -->  Kelodie is unwavering in her quest to become a better runner and triathlete. She is tough stuff and reading her training and race reports inspires me to no end.

http://dalesblogaboutnothing.blogspot.com/  -->  Dale is a new father and aspiring ultra runner who has just completed his first 50 miler. He juggles family, training and work and still manages to retain a sense of humour.

http://downtownpeggy.wordpress.com/  --> ”Peggy” lives and works in downtown Winnipeg and writes about the latest happening, the places to shop, eat, listen and to be seen.



4. Drop by and let my fifteen new friends know I love them.

Getting back in the saddle

I like to think I’m a pretty strong woman, mentally and physically. I’ve been through some tough times in my life and manage to emerge unscathed and only slightly scarred on the other side. But there have been times when some things absolutely terrify me.

Last year I bought a mountain bike and embraced it with a passion I didn’t know I had in me for a sport. I love the sound of fat tires thumping over needle covered trails. The whoop of satisfaction after conquering a particularly technical section of narrow tree lined single track or rocky terrain. In my first (and thus far my only) mountain bike race, and only the 5^th time I’d ever ridden, I came in second female. So I was beginning to feel fairly confident with my skills.

Then we went to ride in the mountains...

The first day of riding we encountered a downhill trail that sloped quite steeply to one side, had tall trees on the other, and lots of gravel and boulders on the way down. My boyfriend and riding partner headed enthusiastically down the slope with a smile on his face. As he disappeared around a corner I decided that it didn’t look that bad. I began my descent slowly using my brakes as I’d been taught – heavier on the back, lightly feathering the front. Then my front tire slid sideways when I went over a large boulder that had come loose - I panicked. Not thinking I gripped my handlebars bike tightly which also immediately and firmly applied both brakes and the next thing I knew I was lying on the gravel facing up the hill with my bike partly on me, saddle askew and many scrapes all over my left side. I lay there for a while, testing my limbs to make sure nothing was broken or bleeding profusely, and then gingerly rose, checked the bike to make sure everything was working and then proceeded to walk the bike the rest of the way down the hill to my waiting partner who was starting to worry about me.

Because we were quite a ways from the car, there was no option other than ride the bike back. He was able to refit the saddle for me and I tentatively got back on and rode. The rest of the trip though I found myself balking immediately whenever I was faced with a steep decline or anything that appeared to be remotely technical.

Each time I encountered one my physical self told me that I was fully capable as I’d ridden much of this stuff before, but at the last minute the mental held me at a full stop, remembering the terror of flying over the handlebars earlier in the week.

I was angry and frustrated at myself for the rest of the summer. I rode cautiously - and I didn’t crash once. Frankly, it was boring.

Because we had a wonderfully late fall, we were able to ride well into November. I felt like I was starting over again, but I slowly regained my confidence and was beginning to ride aggressively again by October. Crashing, although it hurt, didn’t worry me as much and I’d get up, dust myself off and laugh. Though I spent my fair share of time on the ground, I knew that it was because I had the courage to try. As Samuel Beckett once wrote: “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” I fail spectacularly some days, but I have a blast doing it.

That being said, I would rather crash 100 times on my mountain bike than once on my road bike…Oh wait...I already have ;0)

When to Quit…

The act of quitting conjures up images of failure and defeat, but I’ve come to the realization that sometimes not quitting can be the more pusillanimous decision.

There are many opportunities in our lives to abandon things; music lessons that have grown old, sports activities, an unsatisfactory job that doesn’t challenge us. I have had all of these opportunities (and more) and have experienced quitting and not-quitting.

The Obligatory Children’s Music Lessons

I started taking piano lessons when I was in grade five even though my family didn’t own a piano. We arranged with my grade five teacher that I would stay in for both morning and afternoon recess each day and practice on the piano in the classroom. This earned me the distinction of “Teacher’s Pet Extraordinaire” even though I explained that I was practicing piano during that time (or supposed to be – I often gazed out the 2^nd storey window and watched the other kids playing outside because I quickly learned that practicing the piano was really not all that fun), not helping the teacher clean chalkboards or collate geography handouts. My family finally broke down and purchased an apartment piano when I moved to a new school for grade seven and there were no recesses or pianos to be readily found. I continued to struggle with balancing time for practice (Did I mention I really hated practicing?) with time for hanging out with friends in High School. When we moved to a small town and piano teachers were scarce my mother finally relented and let me quit. A part of me wishes I’d had the perseverance to hang in there, but I just didn’t have it in me.

Mandatory Phys-Ed

In high school you were required to take phys-ed in grades 9 and 10. After that it became an elective. Once it was optional I dropped it like a hot potato. I’d never been overly athletic as a teenager, was always picked last for sports teams (which is why I have never belonged to a sports team since) and I found that physical activity always hurt. (in hindsight it was probably because I was out of shape and every time we were required to do something for gym class, like cross-country running, I would tackle it gung-ho and then pay the price the next day.) So I quit gym.

Two jobs – Two very different stories

Job One

I had just graduated from University with a Bachelor of Arts (the most useful of all degrees /s) and had spent my summer working in the bush on a tree plant earning oodles of money to pay off my student loans. Once summer was over I began the search for a permanent job with which to showcase my talents. A small town newspaper offered me a job as reporter. Although I had no journalism experience aside from being a correspondent for a year or two with a slightly larger but more removed paper, I decided to take the job. After the first week I realized that reporting wasn’t in my blood. I lacked the straightforwardness and outgoing personality one needs to sniff out and attack the stories making the news, especially in such a thriving metropolis like Sioux Lookout Ontario. During my five seemingly endless tortuous months there a friend of mine called me numerous times telling me he was planning a trip to Europe the following spring and that he’d love for me to come along. I repeatedly refused, citing that I should give this job a fair shot, knowing in my heart that I already had, yet still unable to admit failure and quit my only source of income. Christmas came and my parents could see my joylessness. They urged me to quit, telling me that this opportunity to travel to Europe may never come again, and offered to lend me the money for the trip. After mulling this over for 100,000^th of a sec I finally agreed, and returned to work after my long weekend off to give my two weeks’ notice.

I have never once regretted this decision. Quitting that job was the best decision I could have made. I had an amazing five weeks in Europe and returned to find a 6-month contract job opening up in the Forestry department of the local paper mill which I applied for and got.

Job Two

After graduating from college years later (My ‘useful’ BA had outlived its usefulness) I landed a job with a national company, programming applications in their shipping and payables department. It was the best paying job I’d ever had, and my most despised. It was not despisable enough however to persuade me to leave the salary and benefits and I stuck with the job, eventually being pigeonholed into a support area that was mundane and boring and provided me with no challenges whatsoever. I started a job search with the hope that I could find something more to my liking along similar pay scales. Since nothing came up, as much as I longed to, I couldn’t just up and quit without a safety net, especially since I had recently separated from my husband and was supporting myself and my two children half time. Just when I began to settle into a boring groove, the company was taken over and 70% of the employees were to be let go at varying times over the next 12 months. My time was in six months. And the job I wanted to quit, but couldn’t, didn’t exist anymore and I had to move on. (As with Job One, this was the best thing that could have happened to me as I had four months of severance to burn through while I took my time looking for another job, while spending quality time volunteering at my children’s school and spending much of my free time hanging out with them. I landed my current job after those four months and have been very happy both with the job itself and the pay).

Quitting Friends

“Friendships are a tangled web from which escape can be very tricky.” DNTO’s Sook-Yin Lee said during a podcast I listened to recently. I had to whole-heartedly agree. It is much harder to break up with a friend than it is to break-up with a boyfriend. But I have found myself on both sides of the quit-zone. Some friendships simply outlive their usefulness. In this case both parties just eventually mutually drift apart. This is by far the easiest, and the one that is least likely to hurt anyone’s feelings.

Other “break-ups” are not so easy. How do you tell someone who has been your friend for years that you don’t want to be their friend anymore without sounding like you are in Grade Two? There is no diplomatic way of quitting a friendship without it sounding like a personal affront. When it gets difficult to put energy into a friendship, it’s time to give it up. When it’s one-sided it’s time to give it up. When your interests or values or outlooks on life change, it’s time to give it up. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been angry when someone decides that I’m not important enough to remain in their close circle of friends, but I get over it. I am an adult, and when I sit back and honestly think about it, I can usually see why the friendship failed and understand the reasons for dissolving it. I have also been on the receiving end of the wrath, and I think it hurts even more when you cause that kind of hurt to another person. So I’ll say it again, “There is no easy way to quit a friendship.” All I can hope is that others sit back like I did and try to understand the motivation behind the decision. A good friend of mine quoted the poem A Reason, a Season or a Lifetime, in her blog back in April. It seemed to fit here since it deals with friendships gracefully ending or moving on. It is succinct and the points it makes would be well taken by anyone who wants to be a friend.

Quitting, for me, has never been an entirely negative experience. I’ve always been able to look on the bright side and find good in decisions I’ve made. I’ve stayed true to more things than I’ve quit. I’ve become an athlete, something that I would never have believed way back in high school. I’ve developed and nurtured many wonderful and fulfilling friendships over the years. So in a sense, I’m not a quitter, but I know when to quit.

Living up to Expectations

I think everyone has felt at one point or another in their lifetimes that they had to live up to someone else’s expectations.

In the beginning it’s your parents. We feel the continual need to please and be praised when we are younger. It starts early when you are a child. The first time you smile or laugh or stand or begin to walk you get an exciting reaction from your parents. They smile, they laugh, they cheer and they encourage you and you decide that you like that. So you keep doing these things to elicit that response from them again. (This is what makes potty training easy for parents of eager-to-please children) Each time you get that desired reaction you know that you have done something worthy in their eyes and it makes you feel good. And each time you don’t, the look of disappointment you see hurts you and you are motivated to change, to redeem yourself – after all, they are your parents, the two most important people in your life.

Then you leave them and go to school, and your teachers begin to take the place of your parents and you start trying to please your teachers by doing well on tests, in sports, volunteering in the classroom. In Grade Six I was the ultimate teacher’s pet. I thought the world of my teacher (back then and still to this day), and when he showed approval for the things I did around the class it made me feel special. All for that smile, the validation that I was doing something right and something valuable in his eyes. (I admit I was a keener back then.)

As you get older, friends become your important circle. Peer pressure emerges and suddenly you are doing things that you may not feel comfortable doing, but you do them because you don’t want to lose the respect (or what you perceive to be respect) of your friends, again, trying to live up to expectations. On and on this goes throughout your life, and you start to wonder why you are living your life for other people instead of yourself. There was one time back in high school when I had two close girlfriends. All three of us were ‘dating’ boys and had all ended up at one of the friends houses when parents were out. The other two friends disappeared into bedrooms leaving me and my boyfriend alone in the living room. I could tell that he wanted me to go into the other empty bedroom with him. A part of me inside screamed “No!,” but I went along because I didn’t want my friends to think me a prude or a tease. We were the last to emerge from the bedroom later and although nothing happened - other than some innocent making out - my friends smiled knowingly at me. I suppose at the time I figured that being thought a tease was much worse than being thought easy.

There seems to be a double standard with friends that some people seem to expect more from some friends than others. In high school’s “the cool group” many things were completely forgiven depending on who it was. Not ever being in “the cool group” I remember being frowned upon for insignificant things, and I got to the point where I second-guessed everything I did. Even as adults those cool-groups persist, and I am still not one of them. (See ‘On the Periphery’).

As humans we crave acceptance. We want to be loved and appreciated. No one likes to disappoint. I’ve always been super-sensitive to what other people think of me. My aim had always been to please other people. To do things that I knew would be expected of me. It ended up being my curse, and I am trying to rid myself of it. I have realized that I cannot please everyone, and live up to everyone else’s expectations. Much of my married life was spent doing that, and I ended up harboring a lot of resentment. It is much more difficult when it comes from those who are closest to you. I think you try harder and harder to please them. I also think they begin to withhold certain things because they see they have the upper-hand. I have seen inklings of this in my children, and there were nights I spent talking to them for hours, reassuring them that they didn’t need to do something because they thought I wanted them to do it. But they should do it because they wanted to. I won’t have them fall into the same pattern.

In the process of shedding this curse, I have been able to open up my circle. I have discovered a new world out there. I am teaching my children not to fall into the same trap. And I have found someone who accepts me unconditionally, and puts no demands or expectations on me. It is refreshing and feels like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders.

I will end off with a prayer, well actually a quote from a Gestalt prayer that sums up this post beautifully: " I am not in this world to live up to your expectations, and you are not in this world to live up to mine. You are you and I am I, and if by chance we find each other, then it is beautiful. If not, it can't be helped."

The Men in My Life

As I make my journey through life I need to stop every now and then to think about and thank those people who helped shape my passage and bring me joy. I love each and every one of these men.

L – My Father. He has influenced many things I’ve done. He has guided me through tough times and given me a small portion of his vast wealth of knowledge. I learn from him every single day I spend with him. His calm and quiet demeanor is noteworthy and enviable. He sees things that many people miss. He is spiritual in ways most people will never experience. He has a peculiar ability to talk non-stop both in person and on the phone and make everyday events more exciting and humorous. He can talk to anyone anywhere and does. He is proud of his “little girl”, and I see that in his eyes.

S – My Brother. Very much like our father he is quiet and pensive. Yet he makes me laugh on a continual basis. He appears to be extremely unpredictable yet it is evident that things he does that may seem unpredictable to others have been in his thoughts for some time. I think he likes to surprise people. He is thoughtful and funny and amazingly generous. He is also modest about his abilities. He is an incredible athlete, a remarkable scholar and will be a brilliant and unforgettable teacher to his future students. Even though he is younger, I look up to him, and not just because he is taller than me.

T & S – My Sons. When I speak of two people who bring me joy these two come instantly to mind. I love them unconditionally. And as much as they may frustrate me at times, I cannot remain angry with them for long. They are part of me, and I see myself in both of them, in different manners. Through them I have learned to see and experience the world differently. I am amazed at S’s ability to pick up song lyrics after only a couple of listens, and I grin when he sings along to the radio, gazing sideways at me to see if I am watching. I try to sing along, and revel in his mock embarrassment. T has always been introspective and some of the thought-provoking questions he poses reassures me that he has an amazing future ahead of him. His sometimes annoying stubbornness to stand his ground will serve him well when defending himself. He is considerate and kind and never forgets to thank me with a hug and a kiss for doing things a mother just does. They will always own a large part of my heart. They are my little men.

C – My Soul-mate, Life partner & Best friend. After my divorce I didn’t think I would ever find someone who I’d be willing to open up my life to. I was guarded and cynical. When C initially came into my life what seems now like many years ago I was instantly attracted to his easy-going personality, unstoppable energy and uncanny ability to bring calm to a room. And unconsciously, that was what I began to look for in a companion. I never thought that we would come back full-circle and reconnect like we did. He doesn’t judge me, or expect me to live up to unreal expectations. He accepts and embraces the person I am. He loves me and tells me that every single day we are together. My heart smiles when I hear his voice on the phone or when he walks into the room. I am thankful for each and every day I have with him.

Communicating?…give me time

The old adage goes that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, so when it came to re-learn how to function in a new relationship this old dog found herself somewhat challenged. In my past I had spent so many of my years holding things back that it was just natural to not talk about things that bothered me, and to bury them for fear they would upset or disappoint others. It turned out that the most important person it ended up bothering was me, because I held everything inside, let it fester and boil until I was feeling upset for what would have been a pretty minor thing. Still, I kept it inside until it had boiled dry and I was emotionally ready to go on.

I know deep down, that this is not how you conduct a relationship, but it was my way of coping and existing so as not to rattle the cage. I don’t know how I got to the point where I was scared of communicating, but I remember always being apprehensive about sharing my feelings, especially, and this is the crux of it all, if they were in the least bit controversial.

The first time I distinctly remember being hesitant was the time I had taken a job with a small newspaper in a remote North Western Ontario town. The editor of the paper had been kind enough to find me accommodation in the town, with a local nurse, Mary, who frequently rented out furnished rooms in her house for people who needed immediate lodging. Mary was the town social butterfly. She knew everyone and was constantly introducing me to people in town. She had a party once and I think half the townsfolk turned up. There was a parole officer living in the basement room of the house and she had also invited a bunch of her co-workers. I met one of them, we chatted a bit and he asked me out for dinner. Seizing an opportunity to get to know him better, and actually go on a date with someone who seemed kind of nice, appeared to be a good way to ease myself into the community.

The day came and we went out for dinner (which, oddly I don’t remember at all) and then drinks back at the house. It was one of those rare evenings when there was no one else home so we grabbed some wine and curled up on opposite ends of the couch to talk. That’s when things started going south. He began to ask me intensely personal and probing questions that made me feel uneasy. As I look back and in his defense, I assume he just wanted to get to know me better, but I wasn’t ready for this type of investigative assault and the wall instantly went up. The conversation fizzled and the evening was basically over at that point. I never saw him again. I can’t remember if it was because I turned him down for subsequent dates, or if he decided that I was too much work and never called me again. Regardless, opening up was difficult.

I used to open up to my diaries all the time. They were the window to my soul, and when I lost them all in a house fire I felt like my emotional past had somehow been erased. I started one journal after the fire, and it never filled up. I couldn’t bring myself to throw the same kind of emotion into it as I’d done in the past. So instead of recording it all, I kept it all inside.

Relationships followed. Again I never felt comfortable enough to really open up to many of the guys I dated. Not surprisingly, those relationships were relatively short-lived. When you cannot share your passions and dreams and worries then what can you share? As wonderful as a warm bed and a bottle of wine are shared between two people, it isn’t enough.

I think when I look back, I was never encouraged, or perhaps never really had the opportunity to challenge others’ viewpoints. As mentioned earlier throughout my married life I took the easy path, always deferring to others. During one family dinner I stepped outside my box and had an interesting “discussion” debating rural vs. urban upbringing with my brother-in-law. The discourse left me nervous and shaking inside, probably due to the exhilaration of finally being able to express myself. I’ve always underestimated my worth, and my intelligence. I think the main reason I hesitated in speaking up was an ill-founded fear of looking stupid.

As with many things in my life, the self-esteem I gained once I started running helped me begin to open up the channels I’d previously locked-down. I saw and embraced a new world outside. When I realized I wasn’t going to be shut down for expressing my views it became easier to articulate them. But I’m no means communicator-extraordinaire. It has continued to be a slow road. And I am still uneasy voicing my opinion, or even accepting that my opinion really matters in the long run. I need time to mull things over inside and formulate a response and sometimes it may take a few minutes or hours or even days. But I am getting better. This ‘old dog’ is slowly learning how to open up.

Selfless to Settling to Selfish

I knew that my life was about to change when there came an “Aha” moment and I realized that I didn’t want to settle anymore. At the time, I didn’t think I had a choice, and, because I thought that way, I didn’t. But let me backtrack…

Selflessà As a new wife, of course I focused on my husband, our home. As a mother, the shift was even more pronounced and somewhere along the way I just began to give it all away – keeping nothing for myself. Isn’t that what moms are supposed to do? Views shift as you mature, and you begin to focus on the external, doing for others because it just feels good. I always took the burnt steak or toast. If there wasn’t enough bacon for everyone, I just went without. The kids and my husband always came first. After a while it felt normal, and just what everyone expected of me so I didn’t notice it anymore. I began to settle.

Settling à Life seemed to be about everyone but me. I had actually convinced myself that this was just the way it was. I don’t remember when the shift back actually began but sometimes I had frighteningly brief glimpses of my future. I remember lying awake some nights and wondering how much more I could give? How would I muster the energy to do this for the rest of my life? I was draining my very life essence away – and I couldn’t say anything, Because of the nature of who I was at the time, I wouldn’t say anything. I must have recognized at one point that if I continued thusly I would start to resent the very people I professed to love, and I could not let that happen.

Selfish à Everyone is selfish as a child – egocentric – the world revolves around and exists only for you. As you mature you realize that there are others in the world, and that being selfish is not so nice. As an adult the brief moments when I considered taking something for myself, I remember feeling a horrible guilt, “I should not be doing this!” It went on like that for a long time. My inner make-up was solidly built and not an easy barrier to break down. I think the turning point came shortly after I ran my first marathon. I realized that I loved running, how it made me feel on the inside and the outside. It stripped away the stresses of everyday life, and calmed me to the point where I knew that, “AHA! I had found my panacea”. This was going to help me. And I knew that by doing this, I was being completely selfish, probably for the first time in my adult life. In time I learned that it is completely acceptable to be selfish now and then if it means that you are going to be a better person for those around you. Taking time for yourself doing things that contribute to your well-being will go far when it comes time for you to give back.

Unfortunately not everyone saw things the way I did. But that’s another story. For the most part, being sometimes selfish has been a positive in my life. My kids see it, and understand it, and have their own selfish moments too. I let them, because I don’t want them to settle like I did.

Me? A Clothes Horse...Not bloody likely!

My significant other and I were having breakfast one morning not too long ago…I had showered and dressed for work and he looked at me and said, “You don’t buy clothes very often do you?”. At first I thought it was a reflection on my wardrobe choice, perhaps he thought it outdated or something, but he continued on with, “I was just thinking that I can’t remember you ever buying clothes other than running stuff.” (We’ve been together for over a year now). And I thought to myself for a moment and could not remember the last time I had gone into a store to purchase an article of casual clothing aside from the bathing suit I bought when we went to Jamaica in February.

This simple statement started gears turning inside my head. I thought about the times I’ve been to Winners or other larger clothing stores, discount or otherwise. I seem to glide blindly through the racks, fingering fabric, looking at random pieces but seeing rows upon rows of nothing. I usually get frustrated and impatient and end up leaving empty-handed. Then there are other times (fewer and much farther between) when I go into smaller stores, head straight to the clearance rack and find something in less than a minute.

At most stores the racks are usually organized by S-M-L etc. so I can head straight to my size. The difference being the larger stores have what seems like an unremitting selection. I get completely overwhelmed with so many choices and almost panic. I have come to the realization that if I have to choose from a store carrying 30+ shirts or one carrying 5 shirts, I will almost always find something I like in the store with only 5 shirts. When there are fewer choices to make the easier it is for me. (I have the same issues at ice-cream parlors where there are a multitude of flavors...I find it easier to choose between vanilla and chocolate than 45 different flavours.) I envy those women who can spend hours in these stores and emerge with fashionable wardrobes that they have put together from the endless racks.

It may be because I still have insecurities when it comes to choosing clothes that look good on me. I always find flaws. For some reason I seem to do better when I don’t actually try the clothes on first (perhaps internally it is easier for me to like the piece if I get it home and try it on because returning it becomes a huge chore -- keeping it seems less complicated). And I do best when someone else buys the clothes for me as a gift (again, the “not having a choice” comes into play). So I suppose my SO is a lucky man, living with a woman who is afraid to shop for clothes.

Anyone want to be my personal shopper?

The Rules

I was thinking about rules the other day and how many people have rules they live by. I think most of us have rules that we don’t even consider as rules, just the way we live our lives. I thought of the many rule/doctrines/tenets that guide people through their lives, and realized that there were many of my own, that I didn’t know I had. This list is by no means exhaustive (I seriously could have gone on for pages) but I chose a few that stuck out in my mind as particularly relevant to my life, past, present and future. Here they are in no particular order:

20 rules I’ve broken (but am learning from)
1. DON’T SETTLE --> Life is too short. I want to spend the rest of my days happy and able to look back without regrets…so far so good.
2. SAY ONE THING AND DO THE OPPOSITE --> Not any more. I’ve been able to become accountable to myself, and if I say I’ll do something, I’m going to do it. This is especially important when it comes to my kids. They know that if I promise them we will do something, we will do it.
3. NEVER TELL A LIE --> still working on this one but I think little white lies every now and then are needed.
4. PAY OFF YOUR CREDIT CARD EVERY MONTH --> give me time…this one is tough!
5. SAVE FOR RETIREMENT – START EARLY --> I didn’t start early enough…but I started.
6. WHEN YOU START SOMETHING, FINISH IT --> I used to be notorious for starting something and not finishing it. I’m getting better but there are unfinished projects still waiting for me.
7. ONLY DO ONE THING AT A TIME, AND DO IT RIGHT --> I’m not the greatest multi-tasker. I can do many things, I just can’t do them all to the level of satisfaction that I would like. So I have learned to pare down what I do.
8. RELEASE BITTERNESS --> I’ve seen enough bitterness to know that it completely consumes you. Reason enough to leave it far behind.
9. NEVER TAKE ANYONE/ANYTHING FOR GRANTED --> Anyone who’s been dumped without warning, or has lost everything they own to a house fire can appreciate this.
10. WHEN CHOOSING SOMEONE WITH WHOM TO SPEND THE REST OF YOUR LIFE, DON’T MARRY SOMEONE YOU CAN LIVE WITH – MARRY SOMEONE YOU CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT --> This is a rule that I don’t think I could have avoided...hindsight is always 20/20.
11. ACCEPT YOURSELF FOR WHO YOU ARE --> The more I began to love me for me (faults and all), the easier this became.
12. FORGIVE YOURSELF --> I punished myself over and over with this…learning to forgive yourself is much harder than forgiving others.
13. YOU’LL NEVER UNDERSTAND EVERYTHING --> But I want to…
14. SAY NO TO SOMETHING I FEEL I SHOULD DO BUT REALLY DON’T WANT TO --> I used to have a very healthy and active guilt complex. It made me do many things that I didn’t want to do.
15. LISTEN TO YOUR BODY --> I still break this rule on occasion… especially when it comes to running. I love running so much that I will ignore nagging pains in favour of going out for a run. But when it comes to illness, or gut feelings, my body rarely lies to me.
16. UNDERSTAND THAT FRIENDS COME AND GO... --> and some come back again and again, while others disappear. This can be summed up in the recent blog of a friend of mine who wrote extensively on this…There are reasons for everything.
17. REMEMBER THE COMPLIMENTS YOUR RECEIVE, FORGET THE INSULTS --> Humans are wired to react to ‘threats’, and insults can fall into that category. I’m still oiling my feathers.
18. ALWAYS READ DIRECTIONS --> Too much time spent driving around endlessly or completely dismantling and then reassembling things has showed me how valuable a time saver this is.
19. FLOSS EVERY DAY --> My bad
20. BE THE FIRST TO SAY SORRY --> Or take the high road. I sometimes get beaten to it, but I recognize when I’m wrong.

20 rules I’ve learned to follow (although with some it’s taken time)
1. ACCENTUATE/FOCUS ON THE POSITIVE --> And surround yourself with others who do the same. It’s amazing what kind of constructive energy you can create together. I love smiling and I love it when others smile; their faces completely change – in a good way.
2. SPEND SOME TIME ALONE EVERY DAY --> I walk to work every day – depending on my route it can take me 30 minutes to just under an hour. I use this time to reflect and think about things, I listen to the radio or my iPod, or sometimes I just turn off, and take in my surroundings…there is something different to see every day – you just have to look for it.
3. DON’T SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF --> Uh…I have enough big stuff to sweat!
4. AFTER YOU USE IT, PUT IT BACK WHERE YOU FOUND IT…--> because it really bothers me when others don’t do the same.
5. CHOOSE THE PATH LESS TRAVELLED --> Because I love breaking trail and seeing what’s around the next corner. I’m not one who follows the crowd, and haven’t been for a very long time.
6. DRINK LOTS OF WATER --> I love water and my body loves me for this.
7. CHANGE WHAT YOU CAN, LET GO OF THE REST --> When I gained weight after two pregnancies I took the steps to lose it, and tone up the “mummy-tummy”, because I could. What I couldn’t do is change my foot size, which is the same size as my boyfriend’s. I have come to terms with that, and have embraced being able to wear his shoes!
8. GET USED TO STEPPING OUTSIDE YOUR COMFORT ZONE --> The easiest way to do this is take a deep breath, and jump! (also known as “doing one thing a day that scares you”)
9. STAY YOUNG --> Having two young children and a boyfriend who is young at heart makes this very easy. I never feel my age…
10. KEEP THE MORAL HIGH GROUND --> When you see how this affects people whom it’s consumed, you recognize its importance.
11. DON’T BE AFRAID TO DREAM --> No problem here – sometimes I think I dream too much.
12. DANCE… --> to my own music (inside my head) most of the time
13. GET TO KNOW YOUR PARENTS; YOU NEVER KNOW WHEN THEY’LL BE GONE FOR GOOD --> The older you get the wiser your parents get – nuff said.
14. ACCEPT WHAT IS DONE IS DONE…--> like when you click “send” on an email you weren’t completely sure you should send. (attached to this should be; "BE ACCOUNTABLE FOR YOUR ACTIONS")
15. HAVE A BELIEF SYSTEM --> I am a spiritual person. The good things in my life are proof that there is a higher power working for me (and all people). I can’t explain it, but it’s there.
16. EXERCISE BECAUSE IT FEELS GOOD, NOT BECAUSE YOU KNOW IT’S GOOD FOR YOU --> This may come as a surprise to those who know me and the amount of physical activity I do on a regular basis, but there was a time when I had to force myself to do anything physical. I think the turning point was finding things that were fun, and that I could do with others (so it really didn’t feel like exercise). Once it became a habit it was easier. Now I get cranky when I need exercise…and once I get it, I feel an overall sense of calm and satisfaction.
17. DON’T DWELL ON THE PAST --> Experience has taught me that since you can’t change the past there’s no point in dwelling on it…though I have wasted a lot of time ‘dwelling’.
In the words of Buddha: “Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.”
18. DON’T LIVE IN THE FUTURE --> See above
19. FORGIVE OTHERS -->I wrote a blog post on forgiveness and how it freed me to forgiveness in my life. I have learned that holding grudges leads to bitterness which Bertrand Russell calls “a sign of emotional failure”.
20. WHEN YOU SAY “I LOVE YOU”, MEAN IT --> I say it more as I get older…to my parents(who I never used to tell how I felt – wasn’t cool you know), to my children (sometimes to their chagrin and embarrassment – get used to it kids, it’s not going to stop), and to my best friend and partner for life (I love him truly madly deeply).