Perhaps I shouldn't say "I did something dumb". It wasn't like it was planned.
I stayed up the night before making Christmas treats to bring into the office the next day. I was used to trudging into work sleep deprived, so my mind was still back in bed when I shuffled across the parking lot to my waiting cab. I hit ice.
I felt like I was in a cheezy slow motion movie scene. My right foot went right out on the ice, my left foot solidly planted on pavement. I dropped my purse. The Christmas treats went flying. I landed with my left foot bent under me, and the entirety of my not insignificant weight came crashing down on my ankle.
I swore. A lot. Loudly.
When I didn't get up the cab driver, to his credit, moved very quickly. After an aborted attempt to stand (followed by a copious amount of swearing), it was fairly obvious my foot would not bear any weight. I called Hubby, who was downstairs in his PJs in record time, looking white as a sheet. He got me settled on the couch, where I tried to figure out why I was crying, before realizing it was due to shock. Rest. Ice. Compress. Elevate.
Fuck me. 5 days before Christmas and I go and bugger up my ankle. What are the chances.
After a few hours it was obvious that a trip to the emergency was in order. X-Rays, hobbling along like gimpy walrus. Not broken, thank god. I heard the words "tore", "muscles, "ligaments" and "physio".
48 hours later and I have a new found appreciation for my body and good health. I can manage a hobbling kind of shuffle by putting a minimal amount of weight on the ball of my big toe, but after a dozen hops my body reminds me that "put no weight on it" means stop shuffling around like an idiot and sit on the couch. I'm not ashamed (alright, I'm slightly ashamed) to admit to collapsing on the kitchen floor and having a minor tantrum. I was just so tired and hurting and frustrated.
Oh Christmas. Some of my shopping was done, but I had so much more to do. And cookies. How was I suppose to bake cookies while balancing on one increasingly sore leg? I knew no one was going to hold my stupid injury and inability to provide presents against me, but I was still my harshest critic. And Hubby. As I was sending him off to work this morning it dawned on me that one of the last presents I was going to buy was his. He had been gloating about his marvelous gift for me for weeks now, crowing with delight and ingenuity. I was suppose to take him shopping to feel out his present. As it stands, I had nothing to give him. Absolutely nothing.
I sat at my computer and just cried. I'm not telling you this to illicit sympathy. It was just the only thing I could do. A final release of frustration and pain and disappointment. I blubbered and snotted and felt a million times better for allowing myself to feel rotten and pained and sorry for myself. There was no Christmas baking. We had no tree. There were no decorations up. Nothing was wrapped. The house was filthy.
Self, I said, this is silly. You are not useless. Christmas is not ruined. So, I can't get out to shop, or put up decorations, or walk more than 4 steps without swearing in pain. I can still give.
On behalf of myself and Hubby, we just donated $1000 split between CHEO, The Ottawa Mission, and the Canadian Federation for Sexual Health (formerly Planned Parenthood Federation of Canada). I sat and stared at their little Comments box for a while, before writing simply "Merry Christmas" and sending off my money to do some good out there.
My mum surprised me by showing up and now my fake ficus tree has some pretty (if lopsided) lights on it, and there's some incredibly tacky red garland hanging off one of my paintings. It looks wonderful. It feels like Christmas.
So Merry Happy Christmas to all those out there wrapping presents, or fighting through shopping malls, or feeling a bit sad because things didn't turn out quite as you planned them. I love you.
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Christmas (Part 1)
I love Christmas.
I'm one of those annoying people who get ridiculously happy at the sight of Christmas lights. If I had my way, my house would look like Santa vomited all over it. I love the lights, I love the decorations, I love the tree (real, sticky, messy, half frozen, pain-in-the-ass tree) ... I'm that person.
However, my other half is not. He's the person who, when malls begin playing Christmas Carols on loop, wants to strangle people like me. Or stick me in a box, wrap it up, and ship it off to Antarctica where he no longer has to deal with the lights, decorations, tree and annoyingly perky attitudes. In part, this is because he works in retail, and so Christmas is his own personal Vietnam. But it goes deeper than that, to before he worked in a mall being hounded by Christmas cheer. He just does not like Christmas.
So we compromise. I get over enthusiastic and run up our electricity bill with lights, and he shuts up and allows it. He wants nothing to do with gift buying or wrapping, so I happily put on some music and build a fort in the living room out of wrapping paper, tape and ribbon. Honestly, with his retail hours I consider myself a widow until mid-January, so it works out fairly well. I can explode in Christmas cheer, he can Scrooge it up, and we can reconvene in the new year and bond over other shared interests.
This year, however, it looked as if his Scrooge-ness was going to win. We're in a smaller house, so our gorgeous 7 foot tall Christmas tree can't be resurrected from the basement because it won't fit. Then the cats went and peed on it, so we had to toss the whole thing out - tree, wreath, garlands. The whole lot. (I love real Christmas trees, he thinks it's cruel to kill a tree for a holiday - so I get a big tree, but it has to be fake. Love is all about compromise.)
That's alright, I said. We barely spend any time at home during the holidays anyway. We're over at his family's, then his sister's, then my brother's... our place is much too small to host a Christmas anything, and with no kids the onus of travel falls to us. We don't need no stinkin' tree to enjoy Christmas! I still have the lights!
Then he had a dental emergency. A panicked appointment, followed by two months of visits and fixes and work wracked us up over $5000 of dental crap. It had to be done, no help for it. And I'm an obsessive compulsive squirrel when it comes to hoarding money, so we could afford it. But it was tight. So, no tree, no plans to buy a new tree or anywhere to put it, far less money than we had planned, and an increasingly cranky hubby facing a month of close-combat style Christmas retail insanity with ongoing tooth ache on the side (our dentist is amazing and was a miracle worker in his mouth, but with his teeth shifting around and the amount of work done, the recovery is long and painful.)
So I was feeling distinctly un-Christmasy. My mother was visiting soon, which meant my house was a chaos of cleaning. My school work was piling up and I was going to have to juggle final exams with two jobs, the dojo training, my mother, and my newly returned-to-the-country brother and his son. And a tooth-cranky hubby. And his family. And what on earth was I going to buy everyone and when on earth was I going to do it!?
The stress levels were high. The Christmas spirit was low.
It was in this frame of mine that I trudged home from an excruciatingly long day. It was cold, it was wet, I was wallowing in some self pity. Maybe because of all this, I was looking for a reason to love Christmas again.
I moped. Hubby and I had a long talk about our finances, and decided that we could do it. He wanted to buy presents and we would stretch our budget to accommodate, since the one area we agree on completely when it comes to Christmas is that the giving is a million times more important than the getting. I could bake cookies, which would supplement our low-income gift giving. We could put Christmas lights on the fake ficus and make it our gimpy Christmas tree. We could do this.
Then I did something dumb.
To be continued...
I'm one of those annoying people who get ridiculously happy at the sight of Christmas lights. If I had my way, my house would look like Santa vomited all over it. I love the lights, I love the decorations, I love the tree (real, sticky, messy, half frozen, pain-in-the-ass tree) ... I'm that person.
However, my other half is not. He's the person who, when malls begin playing Christmas Carols on loop, wants to strangle people like me. Or stick me in a box, wrap it up, and ship it off to Antarctica where he no longer has to deal with the lights, decorations, tree and annoyingly perky attitudes. In part, this is because he works in retail, and so Christmas is his own personal Vietnam. But it goes deeper than that, to before he worked in a mall being hounded by Christmas cheer. He just does not like Christmas.
So we compromise. I get over enthusiastic and run up our electricity bill with lights, and he shuts up and allows it. He wants nothing to do with gift buying or wrapping, so I happily put on some music and build a fort in the living room out of wrapping paper, tape and ribbon. Honestly, with his retail hours I consider myself a widow until mid-January, so it works out fairly well. I can explode in Christmas cheer, he can Scrooge it up, and we can reconvene in the new year and bond over other shared interests.
This year, however, it looked as if his Scrooge-ness was going to win. We're in a smaller house, so our gorgeous 7 foot tall Christmas tree can't be resurrected from the basement because it won't fit. Then the cats went and peed on it, so we had to toss the whole thing out - tree, wreath, garlands. The whole lot. (I love real Christmas trees, he thinks it's cruel to kill a tree for a holiday - so I get a big tree, but it has to be fake. Love is all about compromise.)
That's alright, I said. We barely spend any time at home during the holidays anyway. We're over at his family's, then his sister's, then my brother's... our place is much too small to host a Christmas anything, and with no kids the onus of travel falls to us. We don't need no stinkin' tree to enjoy Christmas! I still have the lights!
Then he had a dental emergency. A panicked appointment, followed by two months of visits and fixes and work wracked us up over $5000 of dental crap. It had to be done, no help for it. And I'm an obsessive compulsive squirrel when it comes to hoarding money, so we could afford it. But it was tight. So, no tree, no plans to buy a new tree or anywhere to put it, far less money than we had planned, and an increasingly cranky hubby facing a month of close-combat style Christmas retail insanity with ongoing tooth ache on the side (our dentist is amazing and was a miracle worker in his mouth, but with his teeth shifting around and the amount of work done, the recovery is long and painful.)
So I was feeling distinctly un-Christmasy. My mother was visiting soon, which meant my house was a chaos of cleaning. My school work was piling up and I was going to have to juggle final exams with two jobs, the dojo training, my mother, and my newly returned-to-the-country brother and his son. And a tooth-cranky hubby. And his family. And what on earth was I going to buy everyone and when on earth was I going to do it!?
The stress levels were high. The Christmas spirit was low.
It was in this frame of mine that I trudged home from an excruciatingly long day. It was cold, it was wet, I was wallowing in some self pity. Maybe because of all this, I was looking for a reason to love Christmas again.
I moped. Hubby and I had a long talk about our finances, and decided that we could do it. He wanted to buy presents and we would stretch our budget to accommodate, since the one area we agree on completely when it comes to Christmas is that the giving is a million times more important than the getting. I could bake cookies, which would supplement our low-income gift giving. We could put Christmas lights on the fake ficus and make it our gimpy Christmas tree. We could do this.
Then I did something dumb.
To be continued...
Friday, December 2, 2011
Why I Use Facebook
I realize I'm stepping dangerously close to freaky meta territory by writing a post about a social medium on a social medium. Like somehow by blogging about facebook, they will be thrown together in some disgusting social media orgy resulting in freakish internet babies who are over-opinionated and have zero grasp of grammar and the English language.
I'm going to risk it though.
Full disclosure time: I facebook. Often. (Also, when did facebook become a verb??)
Most of my family (read: everyone) lives far away. Inaccessibly far away. So the glory that is facebook allows me to keep in touch, or at the very least keep tabs, on both close and extended family. Except for the once-every-two-months phonecall with Mum, who could fill me in on major life events (babies, weddings, major surgeries), if not for the glory that is facebook newsfeed I would have zero idea what was going on with any of my family. Like most other internationally scattered families with a high rate of divorce, second marriage, and rabbit-like breeding, even with the glory of the facebook newsfeed it's difficult to keep track of them.
More full disclosure time: even if all my family lived within driving distance (may such a fate never befall me), I would still stalk facebook whenever possible.
It's like a train wreck you can't look away from. Or those videos of disgustingly fascinating staph infections I wasted most of an afternoon watching (don't judge me). Or the fact that I wasted three hours last night watching Glee (please don't judge me). I feel like there is nothing healthy to be gained from compulsively checking facebook on my phone while I wait for the bus. I gain nada from hearing about how the guy I vaguely sort of knew in highschool is having a fantastic day and enjoys waffles. I know this, but I still find myself waiting for the bus, trying to look like I'm reading some email from work when I'm actually checking out the lolcat picture the girl from second grade posted on her wall.
Final disclosure thenI'll stopIswear: I worry I'm one of those annoying people the internet tells you to defriend.
Or maybe just that I'm doing this whole facebook thing wrong (I know, I know, there is no wrong... let this one go, it's my anxiety talking not me).
I was reading a blog-ish post on facebook, and she had posted her own list of criteria for defriending. I shamefully fit some of it. I'm that person with more photos of her animals than anything else. I've posted pictures of the meal I just created. I share things. Lots of things. I've been that annoying farmville person (although I've since kicked the farmville addiction, so there is hope!). I've friended people I haven't seen in years and have no plans on seeing for years more. My mum's on my facebook and I don't block her from seeing anything I post.
And yet... I'm kinda okay with all of this.
See, I like facebook for the same reasons I enjoyed World of Warcraft for years, for the same reason I'm a million times more likely to text than call. I'm only human, I crave social contact. I like people. But I'm terrified of people. Facebook gives you a venue to connect with other human beings, without actually having to deal with the social morass of actual interaction. Not that I'm against the occasional cup of coffee with a physically present person. But sparingly. And only with people I well and truly like.
And it's not just the stalkerish aspect of peeking into someone's window. I enjoy sharing on facebook too. I spend a crazy amount of time alone, both by preference and circumstance. Poor hubby gets pounced on as soon as he walks in the door and has to deal with my verbal explosion after having no one but the dog to talk to for the past 6 hours. He takes it well. Facebook allows some of that verbal explosion, that need to impart a little of yourself, to bleed out and satisfy the social craving. Like that just-one-more cigarette to tide you over in the process of trying to quit.
My social group is small. Beautiful, but small. I don't have close family. If I cook something crazy good, like my chicken stuffed boccocini and baby spinach wrapped in prosciutto, I can't call my mum or my sister or my aunt and say, "Check this shit out. I MADE that!". I'm lacking that critical social component, the someone to give my uncooked pasta art to so they can put it on their fridge.
Facebook is my fridge.
So, sorry about all the pictures of my dogs being dumb. But I'm not going to stop.
I'm going to risk it though.
Full disclosure time: I facebook. Often. (Also, when did facebook become a verb??)
Most of my family (read: everyone) lives far away. Inaccessibly far away. So the glory that is facebook allows me to keep in touch, or at the very least keep tabs, on both close and extended family. Except for the once-every-two-months phonecall with Mum, who could fill me in on major life events (babies, weddings, major surgeries), if not for the glory that is facebook newsfeed I would have zero idea what was going on with any of my family. Like most other internationally scattered families with a high rate of divorce, second marriage, and rabbit-like breeding, even with the glory of the facebook newsfeed it's difficult to keep track of them.
More full disclosure time: even if all my family lived within driving distance (may such a fate never befall me), I would still stalk facebook whenever possible.
It's like a train wreck you can't look away from. Or those videos of disgustingly fascinating staph infections I wasted most of an afternoon watching (don't judge me). Or the fact that I wasted three hours last night watching Glee (please don't judge me). I feel like there is nothing healthy to be gained from compulsively checking facebook on my phone while I wait for the bus. I gain nada from hearing about how the guy I vaguely sort of knew in highschool is having a fantastic day and enjoys waffles. I know this, but I still find myself waiting for the bus, trying to look like I'm reading some email from work when I'm actually checking out the lolcat picture the girl from second grade posted on her wall.
Final disclosure thenI'll stopIswear: I worry I'm one of those annoying people the internet tells you to defriend.
Or maybe just that I'm doing this whole facebook thing wrong (I know, I know, there is no wrong... let this one go, it's my anxiety talking not me).
I was reading a blog-ish post on facebook, and she had posted her own list of criteria for defriending. I shamefully fit some of it. I'm that person with more photos of her animals than anything else. I've posted pictures of the meal I just created. I share things. Lots of things. I've been that annoying farmville person (although I've since kicked the farmville addiction, so there is hope!). I've friended people I haven't seen in years and have no plans on seeing for years more. My mum's on my facebook and I don't block her from seeing anything I post.
And yet... I'm kinda okay with all of this.
See, I like facebook for the same reasons I enjoyed World of Warcraft for years, for the same reason I'm a million times more likely to text than call. I'm only human, I crave social contact. I like people. But I'm terrified of people. Facebook gives you a venue to connect with other human beings, without actually having to deal with the social morass of actual interaction. Not that I'm against the occasional cup of coffee with a physically present person. But sparingly. And only with people I well and truly like.
And it's not just the stalkerish aspect of peeking into someone's window. I enjoy sharing on facebook too. I spend a crazy amount of time alone, both by preference and circumstance. Poor hubby gets pounced on as soon as he walks in the door and has to deal with my verbal explosion after having no one but the dog to talk to for the past 6 hours. He takes it well. Facebook allows some of that verbal explosion, that need to impart a little of yourself, to bleed out and satisfy the social craving. Like that just-one-more cigarette to tide you over in the process of trying to quit.
My social group is small. Beautiful, but small. I don't have close family. If I cook something crazy good, like my chicken stuffed boccocini and baby spinach wrapped in prosciutto, I can't call my mum or my sister or my aunt and say, "Check this shit out. I MADE that!". I'm lacking that critical social component, the someone to give my uncooked pasta art to so they can put it on their fridge.
Facebook is my fridge.
So, sorry about all the pictures of my dogs being dumb. But I'm not going to stop.
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
We're Idiots About Our Health
We're idiots about our health.
I say a collective "we" because, while I recognize not everyone is an idiot, there's enough of us out there that we can take comfort in numbers. And the fact of the matter is that a significantly large portion of us are idiots, mostly especially when it comes to our health.
I was over at xoJane reading random articles (because it's more fun than working and I have no work to do anyway) when I stopped by this articlle on the joys of eating breakfast. Now, I am a firm believer that if I don't have something in my stomach within an hour of waking up, murder or vomit will happen, and the two are not mutually exclusive. But I still remember a time not too long ago when I (like the author of the aforementioned article) wouldn't think of looking at food until I could hold a conversation consisting of more than grunts.
I start work at 5:30am (although not walking in until 6am is frequently the case). My alarm clock goes off at 4:30am, and I am in the shower before 5. This is not by choice, it's the nature of my job. It is a completely unreasonable time to expect much of anything from your body. Today I am wearing socks that don't match. My underwear are frequently on inside out. I comunicate only via grunts and hand gestures until around 7, when my faculties catch up with my semi-conscious mind. So if you were to say to me, "Breakfast in the morning is a hassle, I'd rather get up and go"... trust me when I say, I understand. Completely.
It's a standing joke in our house that I will put the milk on the shelf and the cereal in the fridge. Or leave everything on the counter to spoil. Or put in bread to toast and then leave the house without it. I once tried to make egg sandwhiches in the morning, but I kept leaving the stove on so that idea had to be scrapped. These days I stick to cereal being the easiest and almost foolproof in it's simplicity. And if my hubby finds the cheerios in the fridge and the milk souring on the shelf... well, he loves me enough not to hold it against me and my sleep deprived brain.
Cause here's the thing: If I don't eat something in the morning, I am useless for the rest of the day. I've been doing these awful hours on and off for 8 years now, and it used to be that I couldn't look at food until at least two hours and one coffee later. But I would crash, hard, as soon as the coffee wore off. And then the rest of the day was a painful, uphill climb trying to stay awake and be productive. Usually, I failed, and would tumble back down the hill at around noon only to spend the rest of my day laying at the bottom having a nap.
My mum (bless her heart) always had the simplest explanations as to why I was so exhausted all the time. "Sleep more" was her answer. I would scoff. If I complained about feeling ill, "Don't eat an entire bag of chips" was her quick reply. And heaven forbid I said I was bored and listless. "Get off your bum and go take the dog for a walk". The idea that appropriately healthy habits could be the cure for all my ailments was absurd. It was far too mundane to be true. I must have mono. Or a bowel obstruction. Or a brain tumour.
And it pains me - kills me - these many years later to have to admit that she was right. When my old therapist suggested that exercise would naturally increase my endorphins and help me manage my anxiety, I guffawed. But while I'm on a roll admitting past mistakes, let's add this one to the list too. She was also right. It hasn't been a cure-all, but exercise has helped me better manage my stress and lord help me actually turned into something fun, something I look forward to.
I'll say again, none of it has been a cure-all. Nothing ever is. But after years of crappy eating habits and no exercise habits to speak of, and the myriad of associated health problems that cropped up because of it, I think I can say with confidence: We're idiots when it comes to our health. Because I still know so many people who don't eat breakfast, or get off their tooshes for so much as a walk. And I'm lumping myself into the idiot pile because given the slightest provocation, I will still devour a bowl of popcorn for breakfast (buttery, none of this low-fat nonesense) and spend the entire day watching re-runs of Star Trek. But at least now I recognize why at the end of the day I feel so horribly bleh.
My health habits are improving, with much more room for improvement to go. I'm at least exercising on a semi regular basis, more than I ever have in my life. My sleep habits are shit, and that's my biggest struggle. But when one of my friends complains about how exhausted and fatigued they are, my first thought is now my mother's voice saying, "Take better care of yourself, you goof."
I say a collective "we" because, while I recognize not everyone is an idiot, there's enough of us out there that we can take comfort in numbers. And the fact of the matter is that a significantly large portion of us are idiots, mostly especially when it comes to our health.
I was over at xoJane reading random articles (because it's more fun than working and I have no work to do anyway) when I stopped by this articlle on the joys of eating breakfast. Now, I am a firm believer that if I don't have something in my stomach within an hour of waking up, murder or vomit will happen, and the two are not mutually exclusive. But I still remember a time not too long ago when I (like the author of the aforementioned article) wouldn't think of looking at food until I could hold a conversation consisting of more than grunts.
I start work at 5:30am (although not walking in until 6am is frequently the case). My alarm clock goes off at 4:30am, and I am in the shower before 5. This is not by choice, it's the nature of my job. It is a completely unreasonable time to expect much of anything from your body. Today I am wearing socks that don't match. My underwear are frequently on inside out. I comunicate only via grunts and hand gestures until around 7, when my faculties catch up with my semi-conscious mind. So if you were to say to me, "Breakfast in the morning is a hassle, I'd rather get up and go"... trust me when I say, I understand. Completely.
It's a standing joke in our house that I will put the milk on the shelf and the cereal in the fridge. Or leave everything on the counter to spoil. Or put in bread to toast and then leave the house without it. I once tried to make egg sandwhiches in the morning, but I kept leaving the stove on so that idea had to be scrapped. These days I stick to cereal being the easiest and almost foolproof in it's simplicity. And if my hubby finds the cheerios in the fridge and the milk souring on the shelf... well, he loves me enough not to hold it against me and my sleep deprived brain.
Cause here's the thing: If I don't eat something in the morning, I am useless for the rest of the day. I've been doing these awful hours on and off for 8 years now, and it used to be that I couldn't look at food until at least two hours and one coffee later. But I would crash, hard, as soon as the coffee wore off. And then the rest of the day was a painful, uphill climb trying to stay awake and be productive. Usually, I failed, and would tumble back down the hill at around noon only to spend the rest of my day laying at the bottom having a nap.
My mum (bless her heart) always had the simplest explanations as to why I was so exhausted all the time. "Sleep more" was her answer. I would scoff. If I complained about feeling ill, "Don't eat an entire bag of chips" was her quick reply. And heaven forbid I said I was bored and listless. "Get off your bum and go take the dog for a walk". The idea that appropriately healthy habits could be the cure for all my ailments was absurd. It was far too mundane to be true. I must have mono. Or a bowel obstruction. Or a brain tumour.
And it pains me - kills me - these many years later to have to admit that she was right. When my old therapist suggested that exercise would naturally increase my endorphins and help me manage my anxiety, I guffawed. But while I'm on a roll admitting past mistakes, let's add this one to the list too. She was also right. It hasn't been a cure-all, but exercise has helped me better manage my stress and lord help me actually turned into something fun, something I look forward to.
I'll say again, none of it has been a cure-all. Nothing ever is. But after years of crappy eating habits and no exercise habits to speak of, and the myriad of associated health problems that cropped up because of it, I think I can say with confidence: We're idiots when it comes to our health. Because I still know so many people who don't eat breakfast, or get off their tooshes for so much as a walk. And I'm lumping myself into the idiot pile because given the slightest provocation, I will still devour a bowl of popcorn for breakfast (buttery, none of this low-fat nonesense) and spend the entire day watching re-runs of Star Trek. But at least now I recognize why at the end of the day I feel so horribly bleh.
My health habits are improving, with much more room for improvement to go. I'm at least exercising on a semi regular basis, more than I ever have in my life. My sleep habits are shit, and that's my biggest struggle. But when one of my friends complains about how exhausted and fatigued they are, my first thought is now my mother's voice saying, "Take better care of yourself, you goof."
Thursday, November 3, 2011
What the hell happened to the past year?
I was just getting ready for bed and poking around on the internet (which eats up my time like a freaking hungry hungry hippo) when I realized that I carved out this little corner of the interwebs a year ago.
Technically I missed my blog's birthday, which was in October, but better late than never. Maybe I'll wax more poetic tomorrow, when I haven't been awake for a million years (I woke up how many hours ago? 20?!)
Happy Birthday, Little Blog!
Technically I missed my blog's birthday, which was in October, but better late than never. Maybe I'll wax more poetic tomorrow, when I haven't been awake for a million years (I woke up how many hours ago? 20?!)
Happy Birthday, Little Blog!
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
My Soul Sings
Driving with the hubby, Mumford & Sons comes on the radio.
We turn it up until the car shakes. I sing so loud my voice cracks while he pounds the steering wheel like drums.
This music makes my soul happy.
We turn it up until the car shakes. I sing so loud my voice cracks while he pounds the steering wheel like drums.
This music makes my soul happy.
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Get your comraderie out of my face - Pt 2
I am the queen of avoidance.
I've already talked about the hows and whys of ducking your coworkers. Or rather specifically one of the reasons I duck mine. This frustrating office ticket selling lady. I said I had a couple of problems with it, and one of them is the rearing, ugly head of my anxiety. Which, admittedly, is a fairly large problem when I'm inside my own head.
There is, however, another larger issue - an insidious problem, lurking below the surface.
I have little to no desire to participate in office shenanigans. Don't get me wrong, I have no major problems with my coworkers. Yes, they annoy me from time to time, but on the whole this is a group of decent people. However, there is a culture of forced office camaraderie that I take major issue with - and whether this is a government thing or an office thing, I can't say. I suspect it's an office thing.
Every year there is a Charitable Donation campaign, where there is a tremendous amount of environmental pressure exerted to get the whole department to work as a team to beat last year's donations, or other divisions' donations. I couldn't give two shits if we beat some arbitrarily set goal. And this is aside from the fact that I don't support or agree with the charity they push, and resent being guilted and harassed into donating or made to feel like a pariah for abstaining. [Author's Note: I donate on my own time to a charity I support. I'm not against raising money for needy causes, I simply take issue with the sense of being forced into it.]
My biggest source of resentment and anxiety is the yearly retreat. Now, I know that this office is not the only one that holds similar gatherings. And in the spirit of full disclosure, I'll admit I've never gone - a combination of being on contract for so long, and bad timing. Last year was the first time I was around for it and a full time employee considered worthy enough to include.
But I didn't want to go.
I already spend a third of my time in this office, with these people. Good people though they may be, I would like to choose the time and place for my social gatherings. There have been several that I've attended - drinks after work, someone throwing a dinner party - that I've enjoyed immensely. Thrown by a group of individuals who have honestly become friends due to their own merit, not solely because they happen to share an office wall. Even in these low key gathering I tend to feel a bit out of place, with my psychology background and gigantic age gap (I'm the youngest person on this floor, by several years, and one of the few without a political or economics background. Why on earth am I working here...)
Yet, when you remove the common denominator of work, they are still good people.
This forced retreat, however, grates on my nerves like knuckles on a cheese grater. Contemplating being forced into a conference hall with dozens of other people, most of whom are almost total strangers to me, most of whom I would never have a real conversation with, to smile and participate in team building exercises for the next 6 hours... If there is a hell, this would be mine.
You cannot force friendship. You cannot force a sense of family, or of trust, or of loyalty. Those things, those ethereal filaments that bind a group of people together in an unspoken sense of teamwork - it cannot be forced. Most certainly not over a 6 hour period of arts and crafts and speeches.
I duck the corporate retreat the way I duck the ticket lady. With subtle maneuvering and not a little bit of lying. My overwhelming urge in both these cases, however, remains to same.
I'd love to be able to say firmly: "Get your comraderie out of my face". Then I'd close my door, and get back to work.
I've already talked about the hows and whys of ducking your coworkers. Or rather specifically one of the reasons I duck mine. This frustrating office ticket selling lady. I said I had a couple of problems with it, and one of them is the rearing, ugly head of my anxiety. Which, admittedly, is a fairly large problem when I'm inside my own head.
There is, however, another larger issue - an insidious problem, lurking below the surface.
I have little to no desire to participate in office shenanigans. Don't get me wrong, I have no major problems with my coworkers. Yes, they annoy me from time to time, but on the whole this is a group of decent people. However, there is a culture of forced office camaraderie that I take major issue with - and whether this is a government thing or an office thing, I can't say. I suspect it's an office thing.
Every year there is a Charitable Donation campaign, where there is a tremendous amount of environmental pressure exerted to get the whole department to work as a team to beat last year's donations, or other divisions' donations. I couldn't give two shits if we beat some arbitrarily set goal. And this is aside from the fact that I don't support or agree with the charity they push, and resent being guilted and harassed into donating or made to feel like a pariah for abstaining. [Author's Note: I donate on my own time to a charity I support. I'm not against raising money for needy causes, I simply take issue with the sense of being forced into it.]
My biggest source of resentment and anxiety is the yearly retreat. Now, I know that this office is not the only one that holds similar gatherings. And in the spirit of full disclosure, I'll admit I've never gone - a combination of being on contract for so long, and bad timing. Last year was the first time I was around for it and a full time employee considered worthy enough to include.
But I didn't want to go.
I already spend a third of my time in this office, with these people. Good people though they may be, I would like to choose the time and place for my social gatherings. There have been several that I've attended - drinks after work, someone throwing a dinner party - that I've enjoyed immensely. Thrown by a group of individuals who have honestly become friends due to their own merit, not solely because they happen to share an office wall. Even in these low key gathering I tend to feel a bit out of place, with my psychology background and gigantic age gap (I'm the youngest person on this floor, by several years, and one of the few without a political or economics background. Why on earth am I working here...)
Yet, when you remove the common denominator of work, they are still good people.
This forced retreat, however, grates on my nerves like knuckles on a cheese grater. Contemplating being forced into a conference hall with dozens of other people, most of whom are almost total strangers to me, most of whom I would never have a real conversation with, to smile and participate in team building exercises for the next 6 hours... If there is a hell, this would be mine.
You cannot force friendship. You cannot force a sense of family, or of trust, or of loyalty. Those things, those ethereal filaments that bind a group of people together in an unspoken sense of teamwork - it cannot be forced. Most certainly not over a 6 hour period of arts and crafts and speeches.
I duck the corporate retreat the way I duck the ticket lady. With subtle maneuvering and not a little bit of lying. My overwhelming urge in both these cases, however, remains to same.
I'd love to be able to say firmly: "Get your comraderie out of my face". Then I'd close my door, and get back to work.
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Get your comraderie out of my face - Pt 1
I just ducked someone at work.
I'm not innocent in this manoeuver. It happens, sometimes, that there is someone you just want to avoid. Or desperately do not want to deal with today, just not today, maybe tomorrow you'll feel up to it. So you close your door, or pretend to be on the phone, or take frequent, long bathroom breaks. These are all acceptable white lies we act out to spare uncomfortable office moments from creeping up and attacking us. It's a sad reality that there's a good chance we spend more time with our coworkers than with our spouses and loved ones. You won't tell her that dress makes her look fat ("It's just not the right cut on you, sweetie") in the same way that you occasionally play the avoidance game to keep from grabbing an industrial sized stapler and braining your colleague.
However, today I was not avoiding the person - who is for all intents and purposes quite pleasant. Whether this is normal for all offices, or just this one, but we seem to have a plethora of fundraisers. The weekly one is a raffle draw for a pot of money, that also raises cash for the end of year christmas lunch (buy a ticket, half the moolah goes to the pot, half goes to christmas food). Every week someone walks off with $60, $70, once it was $90. It's harmless. It's fairly unobtrusive. It gets you food once a year.
I have a problem with this. Actually I have a couple of problems.
First, I walk around as an un-medicated basket case. Most of the time my basket is pretty sturdy, a lifetime of learned coping mechanisms - some good, some bad - are my arsenal against the little bumps that threaten to destabilize my happy equilibrium. Finding myself in an unfamiliar environment still brings on the flop sweat, but I have a better than good chance of making it through alright, without freezing up, crying, vomiting or otherwise being a huge embarrassement. There are, however, a few buttons that still result in nuclear meltdown. I think part of maintaining the healthy is recognizing those buttons and avoiding the crap out of them.
This ticket fundraiser thing is a button. It's not the buying of the tickets or dealing with the woman selling them - who I've said is quite pleasant - it's the winning. The potential for winning. Money isn't just quietly dropped into your office. Oh no. A mass email is sent out. Sometimes it starts a big conversation thread of people laughing at how Mr. So-and-So always wins, or about how the drinks are on you now for the rest of eternity. Then there's the donuts. It's become an unspoken rule that whoever wins must buy baked goods for the rest of the floor. The pot is rarely under $60, so it's not like the baked treats will wipe you out. And it's not that I have any objection to feeding my coworkers warm tasty pastry. I'm a fan of tasty pastry. I'm not a fan of the sudden, abrupt spotlight.
At some point in the day, it will be announced that you won. Then you will be the center of attention for the rest of the day. Unable to even pee in peace without someone stopping to say congrats and laughingly wonder where their bleeding donuts are. Until it is announced, I sit in my office, dripping in flop sweat, watching my email like a hawk with one eyeball twitching, waiting for the moment when the ticket is drawn, the number goes out. The inevitable will happen and it will be my ticket. And I'll not only bring upon me the unwanted attention of a couple of dozen people, I'll have to announce that yes it is in fact my ticket. I'll have to invite this unwated attention into my life, at least for a few hours before I can escape.
Do. Not. Want.
But here's the rub. Try explaining that to your coworkers. See, I've learnt what some of my big red nuclear buttons are, and I avoid them when possible and break down crying when not. But the big red buttons are not always obvious. Hubby dearest used to throw up everytime the phone rang. There is nothing inherently threatening about a phone ringing (provided the voice on the other end isn't whispering about a serial killer being inside the house). Unless you understand the various forms of anxiety, how the brain can latch onto and make associations with the most innocuous of things to cause panic and chaos... it sounds a little crazy. It is a little crazy.
I was lamenting to a friend at work about this whole thing when he saw me duck the ticket lady. He knows about my anxiety, and when it's come up (which isn't often) I try to explain my thinking and what it means, hoping to educate at least one more human being about the intricacies of mental illness and the varying forms it can take. After I'd finished my diatribe about tickets and donuts, he nodded sympathetically. With a hint of wtfcrazy in his eyes. It became clear to me that unless you were in my head, ducking the ticket lady because I was terrified of winning sounded absolutely batshit. And if this person I'd worked with and shared lunch with for the past two years was giving me the wtfcrazy look (while compassionately staying silent and ignoring the fact that I just leaked crazy all over his office), there was no way in hell I was going to be able to explain it to the ticket lady or the office at large.
So when the ticket lady came by today, I was taking a very important phone call with the dial tone.
[Part 2 to follow]
I'm not innocent in this manoeuver. It happens, sometimes, that there is someone you just want to avoid. Or desperately do not want to deal with today, just not today, maybe tomorrow you'll feel up to it. So you close your door, or pretend to be on the phone, or take frequent, long bathroom breaks. These are all acceptable white lies we act out to spare uncomfortable office moments from creeping up and attacking us. It's a sad reality that there's a good chance we spend more time with our coworkers than with our spouses and loved ones. You won't tell her that dress makes her look fat ("It's just not the right cut on you, sweetie") in the same way that you occasionally play the avoidance game to keep from grabbing an industrial sized stapler and braining your colleague.
However, today I was not avoiding the person - who is for all intents and purposes quite pleasant. Whether this is normal for all offices, or just this one, but we seem to have a plethora of fundraisers. The weekly one is a raffle draw for a pot of money, that also raises cash for the end of year christmas lunch (buy a ticket, half the moolah goes to the pot, half goes to christmas food). Every week someone walks off with $60, $70, once it was $90. It's harmless. It's fairly unobtrusive. It gets you food once a year.
I have a problem with this. Actually I have a couple of problems.
First, I walk around as an un-medicated basket case. Most of the time my basket is pretty sturdy, a lifetime of learned coping mechanisms - some good, some bad - are my arsenal against the little bumps that threaten to destabilize my happy equilibrium. Finding myself in an unfamiliar environment still brings on the flop sweat, but I have a better than good chance of making it through alright, without freezing up, crying, vomiting or otherwise being a huge embarrassement. There are, however, a few buttons that still result in nuclear meltdown. I think part of maintaining the healthy is recognizing those buttons and avoiding the crap out of them.
This ticket fundraiser thing is a button. It's not the buying of the tickets or dealing with the woman selling them - who I've said is quite pleasant - it's the winning. The potential for winning. Money isn't just quietly dropped into your office. Oh no. A mass email is sent out. Sometimes it starts a big conversation thread of people laughing at how Mr. So-and-So always wins, or about how the drinks are on you now for the rest of eternity. Then there's the donuts. It's become an unspoken rule that whoever wins must buy baked goods for the rest of the floor. The pot is rarely under $60, so it's not like the baked treats will wipe you out. And it's not that I have any objection to feeding my coworkers warm tasty pastry. I'm a fan of tasty pastry. I'm not a fan of the sudden, abrupt spotlight.
At some point in the day, it will be announced that you won. Then you will be the center of attention for the rest of the day. Unable to even pee in peace without someone stopping to say congrats and laughingly wonder where their bleeding donuts are. Until it is announced, I sit in my office, dripping in flop sweat, watching my email like a hawk with one eyeball twitching, waiting for the moment when the ticket is drawn, the number goes out. The inevitable will happen and it will be my ticket. And I'll not only bring upon me the unwanted attention of a couple of dozen people, I'll have to announce that yes it is in fact my ticket. I'll have to invite this unwated attention into my life, at least for a few hours before I can escape.
Do. Not. Want.
But here's the rub. Try explaining that to your coworkers. See, I've learnt what some of my big red nuclear buttons are, and I avoid them when possible and break down crying when not. But the big red buttons are not always obvious. Hubby dearest used to throw up everytime the phone rang. There is nothing inherently threatening about a phone ringing (provided the voice on the other end isn't whispering about a serial killer being inside the house). Unless you understand the various forms of anxiety, how the brain can latch onto and make associations with the most innocuous of things to cause panic and chaos... it sounds a little crazy. It is a little crazy.
I was lamenting to a friend at work about this whole thing when he saw me duck the ticket lady. He knows about my anxiety, and when it's come up (which isn't often) I try to explain my thinking and what it means, hoping to educate at least one more human being about the intricacies of mental illness and the varying forms it can take. After I'd finished my diatribe about tickets and donuts, he nodded sympathetically. With a hint of wtfcrazy in his eyes. It became clear to me that unless you were in my head, ducking the ticket lady because I was terrified of winning sounded absolutely batshit. And if this person I'd worked with and shared lunch with for the past two years was giving me the wtfcrazy look (while compassionately staying silent and ignoring the fact that I just leaked crazy all over his office), there was no way in hell I was going to be able to explain it to the ticket lady or the office at large.
So when the ticket lady came by today, I was taking a very important phone call with the dial tone.
[Part 2 to follow]
Thursday, October 20, 2011
And herein lies the hypocrisy. . .
Not that anyone in power is going to care about the valid, eduated opinions of academia... but I'm happy to see two female lawyers argue so effectively for something I support. Go read their article.
Why anti-john laws don’t work
Toronto Star, Wed Oct 19, 2011
Lisa M. Kelly, a Trudeau Scholar, is a doctoral candidate at Harvard Law School and a Fellow in the International Reproductive and Sexual Health Law Program at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law.
Katrina Pacey is litigation director at Pivot Legal Society in Vancouver and counsel in the constitutional challenge to prostitution laws currently underway in British Columbia.
Why anti-john laws don’t work
Toronto Star, Wed Oct 19, 2011
"If Canada adopts the Swedish model, we can expect a disproportionately negative impact on street-based sex workers, the most vulnerable workers in the sex industry. Since the mid-1980s, street-based transactions have accounted for the lion’s share of prostitution-related charges in Canada. As many urban areas face the pressures of gentrification, street-based sex workers and their clients, homeless persons, and street-based drug users and sellers become common targets of police sweeps. “Not in my backyard” campaigns result in street-based sex workers and their clients being much more heavily policed than indoor sex workers. Criminalizing purchasers of sexual services would force street-based workers to continue to resort to furtive and isolated transactions with clients who are seeking to avoid arrest.
And herein lies the hypocrisy of the prohibitionist campaign. Advocates of “ending demand” claim the moral high ground by asserting that their efforts to eliminate commercial sex are motivated by a desire to end sexual exploitation and to protect women. But the evidence suggests that the Swedish approach in fact increases dangers for a significant proportion of these women."
Lisa M. Kelly, a Trudeau Scholar, is a doctoral candidate at Harvard Law School and a Fellow in the International Reproductive and Sexual Health Law Program at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law.
Katrina Pacey is litigation director at Pivot Legal Society in Vancouver and counsel in the constitutional challenge to prostitution laws currently underway in British Columbia.
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Charts are fun. Charts about sex are funner.
I didn't go looking for something hilariously sexy to blog about, but it fell into my lap and I must share.
OKTrends, I gather, is a site that compiles data from OkCupid users in funny and insightful ways. Unfortunately, it looks like the site has fallen on hard times and hasn't been updated since April, but that doesn't detract from it's inherent value as an amusing time waster.
So I urge you to go read 10 Charts about Sex because you'll have a good giggle. And depending on your age group, be heartened that your sexual peak is yet to come, or saddened that your potential for finding rough sex passed you by a few years ago.
Although I am slightly perplexed as to why gentle sex and boating seem to have a correlation...
OKTrends, I gather, is a site that compiles data from OkCupid users in funny and insightful ways. Unfortunately, it looks like the site has fallen on hard times and hasn't been updated since April, but that doesn't detract from it's inherent value as an amusing time waster.
So I urge you to go read 10 Charts about Sex because you'll have a good giggle. And depending on your age group, be heartened that your sexual peak is yet to come, or saddened that your potential for finding rough sex passed you by a few years ago.
Although I am slightly perplexed as to why gentle sex and boating seem to have a correlation...
Aft Agley
Fucking migraines.
I've had migraines since I was a kid. Luckily their frequency has diminished in the last year, but I don't imagine for a moment that I will ever be "migraine-free". When I was smaller, it would be annoying but just another facet of life. Spend a couple of days in bed sleeping and being stilll. Now, they're downright frigging frustrating.
Whether it's because a couple of days off with a migraine as a kid meant a couple of days off school (I hated school, loathed it with a seething passion). I would happily trade excruciating pain for some time off school. Now, however, time is not a luxury I have. I have work and school, and dogs and cats and a boyfriend, all of whom demand little bits of my time until I get maybe an hour a day for me and just me and nothing else. Time to just be still.
So when a migraine crept into my brain lobes during class on Monday, my first thought was "Fuck. I do not have time for this." Followed by two more tylenol (it was 11am and I was already up to 6). Followed by a half a migraine painkiller (I can't remember what they're called, but they're big and blue and strong). Followed by 50 some odd hours in darkened rooms stoned off my rocker. Which was a good time back in highschool, when I had the Luxury of Time.
I had some time to think, with my laying in the dark and trying to ignore the pressure building behind my eyeballs. We plan so much, we spread ourselves so thin, and all of it is brought crashing down by things completely outside of our control. Best laid plans, gang aft agley'ing. Yet we still plan and spread ourselves thin, as if we enjoy the Luxury not only of Time, but of Certainty that things will continue on unchanged until we decide to change them.
Which just isn't so.
I've had migraines since I was a kid. Luckily their frequency has diminished in the last year, but I don't imagine for a moment that I will ever be "migraine-free". When I was smaller, it would be annoying but just another facet of life. Spend a couple of days in bed sleeping and being stilll. Now, they're downright frigging frustrating.
Whether it's because a couple of days off with a migraine as a kid meant a couple of days off school (I hated school, loathed it with a seething passion). I would happily trade excruciating pain for some time off school. Now, however, time is not a luxury I have. I have work and school, and dogs and cats and a boyfriend, all of whom demand little bits of my time until I get maybe an hour a day for me and just me and nothing else. Time to just be still.
So when a migraine crept into my brain lobes during class on Monday, my first thought was "Fuck. I do not have time for this." Followed by two more tylenol (it was 11am and I was already up to 6). Followed by a half a migraine painkiller (I can't remember what they're called, but they're big and blue and strong). Followed by 50 some odd hours in darkened rooms stoned off my rocker. Which was a good time back in highschool, when I had the Luxury of Time.
I had some time to think, with my laying in the dark and trying to ignore the pressure building behind my eyeballs. We plan so much, we spread ourselves so thin, and all of it is brought crashing down by things completely outside of our control. Best laid plans, gang aft agley'ing. Yet we still plan and spread ourselves thin, as if we enjoy the Luxury not only of Time, but of Certainty that things will continue on unchanged until we decide to change them.
Which just isn't so.
Friday, October 14, 2011
On Restlessness
I'm restless.
This happens every now and again. I spent my childhood getting to do a fair amount of traveling, nothing terribly exotic but with all my extended family being elsewhere, visiting always involved a plane or a few days in the car. It's left me with a pressing need to be moving.
The last big trip I took to see family was four years ago (five? Oh god, time is slipping away). It was the first trip I'd taken in a long time that was just me, traveling alone. I loved it so much I did it again the next year, a trip just for myself. But I've been stationary every since and it's beginning to chafe.
My friends can be divided into two groups. Those who nod their head in sympathy, while quietly thinking that hours spent in an airport waiting for a flight sounds like the worst level of hell. And those whose eyes light up with an intensity of focus, saying Yes. Yes. Take me with you. It seems you have itchy feet or you don't.
And my feet are itching something fierce.
This happens every now and again. I spent my childhood getting to do a fair amount of traveling, nothing terribly exotic but with all my extended family being elsewhere, visiting always involved a plane or a few days in the car. It's left me with a pressing need to be moving.
The last big trip I took to see family was four years ago (five? Oh god, time is slipping away). It was the first trip I'd taken in a long time that was just me, traveling alone. I loved it so much I did it again the next year, a trip just for myself. But I've been stationary every since and it's beginning to chafe.
My friends can be divided into two groups. Those who nod their head in sympathy, while quietly thinking that hours spent in an airport waiting for a flight sounds like the worst level of hell. And those whose eyes light up with an intensity of focus, saying Yes. Yes. Take me with you. It seems you have itchy feet or you don't.
And my feet are itching something fierce.
Saturday, October 8, 2011
We Deserved Better
I was trying to explain to my mum what I was doing with my psychology degree. My ever-in-progress-never-going-to-get-done psychology degree. That my interest is in sexology (hur hur).
The first time I said that, she acted like I'd said a bad word. So I had to explain to her that I'm interested in the study of sex and relationships, not in becoming a sex worker. Although, lets be honest here, if I had the body of a dancer instead of an 18th century bar maid I'd happily be making my cash around stripper poles. As is, I'd probably cause eyeballs to bleed.
I'm digressing.
Sexology. So mum and I get to talking about it and she starts asking questions, because most of her initial reaction stems from a perception that she should keep me from swearing and talking about sex, but in reality her curiosity is greater than her sense of propriety. Thank god. Like when she asked me what a bong was. So I start explaining about my fascination, and my belief that the way in which we teach sex education in schools does a woefully bad job of accurately preparing our kids for the reality.
Which opens up a Pandora's Box of issues, like what should be taught in schools versus taught by parents. Schools only teach you (poorly) about the biology (barely), so maybe you should leave all the other stuff, the majority of what sex really is, to your parents to teach you. But parents were brought up in a the same woefully inadequate system, and may not have the information needed. The repercussions, the social stigmas, the emotional vulnerability, and the joy. Kids catch on pretty quick that sex is something that feels good, but heaven forbid any school would admit to that. The spider web of things surrounding sex get glossed over in an effort to scare the bejezuz out of our children so they don't become pregnant at 13 or catch some crotch-rotting disease.
Not that I'm advocating teenage pregnancies and STIs. Don't misunderstand me. I just think we're going about teaching sex the wrong way. So my mum asked me a question to which I had no quick answer: What would you teach then? Why don't you write a book teaching kids about sex?
Crap, I thought. She's right. I'm exceedingly good at bitching and moaning, but putting thought into action has never been my strong suit. How would I write a sex ed book? What kind of information would I want to impart?
I remember my sex education classes. And by sex education I mean: Here's some basic biology. Use condoms. Or better yet don't have sex at all ever. Unless you're married because when you're married you magically learn all the skills to have a successful and responsible sex life. And if you're a girl, your virginity is special and sacred and don't just give it to anyone.
I was 11 years old when I sat in my first sex ed class. By this point, I had already discovered period cramps, that some things felt good when you touched them, and was reading 1000 page historical romance novels. I'd already discovered The Joy of Sex on my parents' bookshelf and sneakily read through it all. I was ahead of the game going in, and immediately started questioning what this older woman with the dour face was teaching us. Not out loud, but silently disagreeing with things she said and wondering why she never talked about any of the good stuff. Masturbation seemed to be something only boys did. And the paper handouts of genitalia seemed to be lacking some key details, like this thing called a clitoris, who's existence I was prepared to defend. STDs (back then they were diseases, I'm getting old) were bad, and here's a bunch of pamphlets on why. This is a penis, these are testicles. This is vagina, this is a womb (I didn't hear the words vulva or labia until many years later).
How was this suppose to prepare me for the world? I knew where babies came from, I knew how you got them. And yes, I could accurately pick out a penis from a lineup. But never was there even vague conversation about the role that sex plays emotionally, that it plays in relationships, that it could be healthy. It was stigmatized into the realm of the forbidden. At least this wasn't abstinence education. At least I had parents who made an effort to teach me according to what I wanted to know, not according to what was appropriate for my age. And yet, I still found myself, more than a decade later, sitting in a 3rd year university level Human Sexuality class, screaming in my head: Why!? Why didn't I have this information 10 years ago when it mattered, when I needed to know all these things? When it could have actually helped me!
Maybe I will write a sex ed book for kids. When it comes to sex, they deserve better than what we've given them.
The first time I said that, she acted like I'd said a bad word. So I had to explain to her that I'm interested in the study of sex and relationships, not in becoming a sex worker. Although, lets be honest here, if I had the body of a dancer instead of an 18th century bar maid I'd happily be making my cash around stripper poles. As is, I'd probably cause eyeballs to bleed.
I'm digressing.
Sexology. So mum and I get to talking about it and she starts asking questions, because most of her initial reaction stems from a perception that she should keep me from swearing and talking about sex, but in reality her curiosity is greater than her sense of propriety. Thank god. Like when she asked me what a bong was. So I start explaining about my fascination, and my belief that the way in which we teach sex education in schools does a woefully bad job of accurately preparing our kids for the reality.
Which opens up a Pandora's Box of issues, like what should be taught in schools versus taught by parents. Schools only teach you (poorly) about the biology (barely), so maybe you should leave all the other stuff, the majority of what sex really is, to your parents to teach you. But parents were brought up in a the same woefully inadequate system, and may not have the information needed. The repercussions, the social stigmas, the emotional vulnerability, and the joy. Kids catch on pretty quick that sex is something that feels good, but heaven forbid any school would admit to that. The spider web of things surrounding sex get glossed over in an effort to scare the bejezuz out of our children so they don't become pregnant at 13 or catch some crotch-rotting disease.
Not that I'm advocating teenage pregnancies and STIs. Don't misunderstand me. I just think we're going about teaching sex the wrong way. So my mum asked me a question to which I had no quick answer: What would you teach then? Why don't you write a book teaching kids about sex?
Crap, I thought. She's right. I'm exceedingly good at bitching and moaning, but putting thought into action has never been my strong suit. How would I write a sex ed book? What kind of information would I want to impart?
I remember my sex education classes. And by sex education I mean: Here's some basic biology. Use condoms. Or better yet don't have sex at all ever. Unless you're married because when you're married you magically learn all the skills to have a successful and responsible sex life. And if you're a girl, your virginity is special and sacred and don't just give it to anyone.
I was 11 years old when I sat in my first sex ed class. By this point, I had already discovered period cramps, that some things felt good when you touched them, and was reading 1000 page historical romance novels. I'd already discovered The Joy of Sex on my parents' bookshelf and sneakily read through it all. I was ahead of the game going in, and immediately started questioning what this older woman with the dour face was teaching us. Not out loud, but silently disagreeing with things she said and wondering why she never talked about any of the good stuff. Masturbation seemed to be something only boys did. And the paper handouts of genitalia seemed to be lacking some key details, like this thing called a clitoris, who's existence I was prepared to defend. STDs (back then they were diseases, I'm getting old) were bad, and here's a bunch of pamphlets on why. This is a penis, these are testicles. This is vagina, this is a womb (I didn't hear the words vulva or labia until many years later).
How was this suppose to prepare me for the world? I knew where babies came from, I knew how you got them. And yes, I could accurately pick out a penis from a lineup. But never was there even vague conversation about the role that sex plays emotionally, that it plays in relationships, that it could be healthy. It was stigmatized into the realm of the forbidden. At least this wasn't abstinence education. At least I had parents who made an effort to teach me according to what I wanted to know, not according to what was appropriate for my age. And yet, I still found myself, more than a decade later, sitting in a 3rd year university level Human Sexuality class, screaming in my head: Why!? Why didn't I have this information 10 years ago when it mattered, when I needed to know all these things? When it could have actually helped me!
Maybe I will write a sex ed book for kids. When it comes to sex, they deserve better than what we've given them.
Friday, October 7, 2011
Helluva Week
It's been a helluva week..
[Alright, you know what, I had another train of thought I wanted to get down to, but I just looked up and saw on the news that "mumpreneur" and "unfollow" have been added to the Collins english dictionary. What the fuck, Collins? What are you doing to the english language? You hurt me, deep in my literary center. We can't be friends anymore. Moving on.]
Helluva week. My natural reaction to having a-helluva-week seems to be the deep seeded need to write. Catharsis is a beautiful thing.
Weeks like this one remind me forcefully what "mental illness" means. I understand in a visceral kind of way why it's the "last minority group against whom it’s socially acceptable to discriminate". I live with panic disorder, most of my close friends have problems ranging from the mild to the severe-needing-lifetime-treatment, and yet I still find myself mentally slipping into the "suck it up, buttercup" camp of thinking. Having dealt remarkably well (if I may say so myself) in going off SNRI medications and dealing with my own anxiety using good old fashion stubbornness, it's easy to delude myself into thinking everything is fine. Then I have a-helluva-week and my fragile little narrative comes crashing down.
But the week is over. Yes, I had a panic attack, full blown and awful. Yes, I took a day off work to mentally regroup. Yes, I drove the people around me to distraction.. But I also successfully took care of my hubby (who had a major dental emergency, and will be wearing his grumpy pants for a bit), successfully wrote my first exam in three years (returning to school is terrifying in an exciting kinda way), and have managed to avoid committing murder or alienating the people in my life.
Helluva week. But I'm still kickin'.
[Alright, you know what, I had another train of thought I wanted to get down to, but I just looked up and saw on the news that "mumpreneur" and "unfollow" have been added to the Collins english dictionary. What the fuck, Collins? What are you doing to the english language? You hurt me, deep in my literary center. We can't be friends anymore. Moving on.]
Helluva week. My natural reaction to having a-helluva-week seems to be the deep seeded need to write. Catharsis is a beautiful thing.
Weeks like this one remind me forcefully what "mental illness" means. I understand in a visceral kind of way why it's the "last minority group against whom it’s socially acceptable to discriminate". I live with panic disorder, most of my close friends have problems ranging from the mild to the severe-needing-lifetime-treatment, and yet I still find myself mentally slipping into the "suck it up, buttercup" camp of thinking. Having dealt remarkably well (if I may say so myself) in going off SNRI medications and dealing with my own anxiety using good old fashion stubbornness, it's easy to delude myself into thinking everything is fine. Then I have a-helluva-week and my fragile little narrative comes crashing down.
But the week is over. Yes, I had a panic attack, full blown and awful. Yes, I took a day off work to mentally regroup. Yes, I drove the people around me to distraction.. But I also successfully took care of my hubby (who had a major dental emergency, and will be wearing his grumpy pants for a bit), successfully wrote my first exam in three years (returning to school is terrifying in an exciting kinda way), and have managed to avoid committing murder or alienating the people in my life.
Helluva week. But I'm still kickin'.
Monday, July 18, 2011
The Space Between
There are these tiles in the bathroom at work, that have beige and brown swirling patterns on them. I think they're suppose to mimic real stone, but they fall short of the mark. However, if you unfocus your eyes a little you can see pictures in the stone pattern - a squirrel perched, a bird cleaning his feathers, a head tossed back and laughing.
Today, it made me suddenly remember the pine trees.
The house I grew up in had this wall of pine trees, separating our yard from our neighbours. This was no tame hedge, these were behemoths. To a small child, they seemed impossibly tall and impossibly skinny, reaching up into the heavens, as if they would suddenly buckle under the weight of their own branches, admit defeat, and bow down to the ground.
My parents' bedroom, with its massive picture window, looked directly across the yard towards the pines, lined up like imperfect soldiers. When I got sick or wasn't feeling well, I would be tucked up in their bed with a book - which became problematic in later years when they painted their entire bedroom the colour of a deep peach. It was like being inside a pale pumpkin, which does not help a nauseous stomach to settle down and go to sleep. Regardless, usually whatever illness was afflicting me made it difficult to read, my eyes got tired quickly and refused to focus. So I would stare at the pines.
Few things in life, then or since, have made me feel as singularly calm as watching those pines. They were tall enough to always catch the wind, even if it there was only a small breeze, but it made them sway like drunken dancers against each other. I would watch them until figures emerged from the branches. You could only catch them for a second, as a branch moved just so to form the perfect image of a dragon in flight, before they swayed away and the image was gone. Dragons, turtles, tea pots, a flock of birds... Those pines asked nothing, grew contentedly on their own, and yet they provided the perfect pallet for an imagination to draw out whatever shapes and images you could desire.
I was devastated when we sold that house, I think it was a beautiful place to grow up, but more than the house, the walls, the stone fireplace... I would give anything to have those pines back.
Closing my eyes brings them vividly into relief, but there's a funny thing with memory. Sitting in bed, sick and imagining, I let my eyes unfocus in order to stop seeing the details of the branches and instead see the images between them. Now, I can see the trees perfectly in my mind, can even watch them swaying with the wind, but the details are fuzzy, the branches are just branches, and the images aren't there. They are just trees, pines that grew at the house I used to live in.
Today, it made me suddenly remember the pine trees.
The house I grew up in had this wall of pine trees, separating our yard from our neighbours. This was no tame hedge, these were behemoths. To a small child, they seemed impossibly tall and impossibly skinny, reaching up into the heavens, as if they would suddenly buckle under the weight of their own branches, admit defeat, and bow down to the ground.
My parents' bedroom, with its massive picture window, looked directly across the yard towards the pines, lined up like imperfect soldiers. When I got sick or wasn't feeling well, I would be tucked up in their bed with a book - which became problematic in later years when they painted their entire bedroom the colour of a deep peach. It was like being inside a pale pumpkin, which does not help a nauseous stomach to settle down and go to sleep. Regardless, usually whatever illness was afflicting me made it difficult to read, my eyes got tired quickly and refused to focus. So I would stare at the pines.
Few things in life, then or since, have made me feel as singularly calm as watching those pines. They were tall enough to always catch the wind, even if it there was only a small breeze, but it made them sway like drunken dancers against each other. I would watch them until figures emerged from the branches. You could only catch them for a second, as a branch moved just so to form the perfect image of a dragon in flight, before they swayed away and the image was gone. Dragons, turtles, tea pots, a flock of birds... Those pines asked nothing, grew contentedly on their own, and yet they provided the perfect pallet for an imagination to draw out whatever shapes and images you could desire.
I was devastated when we sold that house, I think it was a beautiful place to grow up, but more than the house, the walls, the stone fireplace... I would give anything to have those pines back.
Closing my eyes brings them vividly into relief, but there's a funny thing with memory. Sitting in bed, sick and imagining, I let my eyes unfocus in order to stop seeing the details of the branches and instead see the images between them. Now, I can see the trees perfectly in my mind, can even watch them swaying with the wind, but the details are fuzzy, the branches are just branches, and the images aren't there. They are just trees, pines that grew at the house I used to live in.
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Kicking & Smiling
Yes, yes I suck at posting on even a semi regular basis.
I often find myself reading something interesting, or having some profoundly witty thought, and saying "Self, you should blog that". But it never quite happens. I spend an inordinate amount of time on the computer because of work (and most of the video games I play are on the computer), and I have been finding as I get older I crave the real world, with it's 3D graphics and surround sound capabilities.
So, mini update as I make an effort over the next couple of weeks to be a little more diligent at posting my meandering thoughts.
Kickboxing
Yes, I'm still there. I had a nice powwow with the Sensei and co-owner of my dojo. I admitted my enthusiasm was waning, and I had a million excuses as to why the time and location didn't work. He challenged me to go twice a week for 4 weeks. Mini goals, so as not to overload my poor anxiety ridden brain.
So I did it. I've been twice a week religiously for almost 6 weeks now. (I think I failed one week, but it was a long weekend, the dojo was closed, I lost track of time, the dog ran away, the car broke down, and the apocalypse was nigh. It wasn't my fault.) Have I lost any weight? I'm told by my nearest and dearest Yes, but my clothes and scale say No. What I can tell you, dear anonymous internet, is that I can accomplish things today that I didn't have a hope in hell of doing 3 months ago.
I passed my Level 1 test, which means I'm more coordinated than a slug. I partook in some crazy seminar of kickboxing insanity, which included a 12 minute iron man workout (I am not ashamed to say I almost passed out, having stressed my heart into an arrhythmia). I did manage to do 3/4s of it before bowing to my physical weakness and sitting down until my vision returned. I did punching situps for a minute straight. I kicked someone holding a shield so hard they almost fell over. I was told that I have graduated from "girl punches" to "boy punches". Go me.
I grabbed my proverbial balls and applied to school again, in the hopes of eventually, slowly completing my psychology B.A. I've made a concerted effort to read more, interspersing books relating to psychology and sex (my field of interest, hur hur) with books that allow my brain to rest (Terry Pratchett is a godsend). I continue to try and not eat crap, which succeeds 66% of the time.
I made my own tzaziki dip.
So, all in all, focusing on the accomplishments already gained and not on the myriad of things that I still have/want to do, or can't manage to do, or don't want to do but have to do, is providing me with positive proof that attitude is 9/10s of the battle.
There is something soul-fulfilling in taking that and encouraging others. Everytime I say "You rock" to someone, I feel like by association I may also rock a little bit too.
And it keeps making me smile.
I often find myself reading something interesting, or having some profoundly witty thought, and saying "Self, you should blog that". But it never quite happens. I spend an inordinate amount of time on the computer because of work (and most of the video games I play are on the computer), and I have been finding as I get older I crave the real world, with it's 3D graphics and surround sound capabilities.
So, mini update as I make an effort over the next couple of weeks to be a little more diligent at posting my meandering thoughts.
Kickboxing
Yes, I'm still there. I had a nice powwow with the Sensei and co-owner of my dojo. I admitted my enthusiasm was waning, and I had a million excuses as to why the time and location didn't work. He challenged me to go twice a week for 4 weeks. Mini goals, so as not to overload my poor anxiety ridden brain.
So I did it. I've been twice a week religiously for almost 6 weeks now. (I think I failed one week, but it was a long weekend, the dojo was closed, I lost track of time, the dog ran away, the car broke down, and the apocalypse was nigh. It wasn't my fault.) Have I lost any weight? I'm told by my nearest and dearest Yes, but my clothes and scale say No. What I can tell you, dear anonymous internet, is that I can accomplish things today that I didn't have a hope in hell of doing 3 months ago.
I passed my Level 1 test, which means I'm more coordinated than a slug. I partook in some crazy seminar of kickboxing insanity, which included a 12 minute iron man workout (I am not ashamed to say I almost passed out, having stressed my heart into an arrhythmia). I did manage to do 3/4s of it before bowing to my physical weakness and sitting down until my vision returned. I did punching situps for a minute straight. I kicked someone holding a shield so hard they almost fell over. I was told that I have graduated from "girl punches" to "boy punches". Go me.
I grabbed my proverbial balls and applied to school again, in the hopes of eventually, slowly completing my psychology B.A. I've made a concerted effort to read more, interspersing books relating to psychology and sex (my field of interest, hur hur) with books that allow my brain to rest (Terry Pratchett is a godsend). I continue to try and not eat crap, which succeeds 66% of the time.
I made my own tzaziki dip.
So, all in all, focusing on the accomplishments already gained and not on the myriad of things that I still have/want to do, or can't manage to do, or don't want to do but have to do, is providing me with positive proof that attitude is 9/10s of the battle.
There is something soul-fulfilling in taking that and encouraging others. Everytime I say "You rock" to someone, I feel like by association I may also rock a little bit too.
And it keeps making me smile.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Itemized
Now that the rest of my work week looks far less hectic than it has been (a double curse-you to elections and politicians), I suppose it's time to sit down and do some house cleaning, blog style.
Item #1: No 'Poo
I did, indeed, succeed in going a whole month without using commercial shampoo. I will admit that my resolve has waned slightly, especially in the face of 4:30am wake-up time, but all in all I proclaim it a success. My hair was... different. It was drier, but on the whole healthier, if you can grasp that. By far, Hubby and I agree that it is thicker, which is fairly mind boggling considering my hair was already thick enough to suffocate me on a regular basis. Although I'm now only sporadically using commercial shampoo and homemade shampoo (depending on mood, time and inclination) one benefit I feel that it has had on my grooming habits is the act of washing my hair less than I used to. My head is itchy, which is normal with or without 'Poo, and dandruff abounds, but towards the end of homemade only shampoo it was far, far less than it has been.
One surprising account, which I feel I should impart as a warning if nothing else, came at around day 18 or 20 of using natural shampoo. I was running late, I'd worked out the night before, and desperately needed to wash my hair. Alas, I had not mixed up my shampoo! "Fuck it", I said to my self. "Self, you can cheat this one day. Your coworkers will thank you for not stinking up the office." I grabbed whatever was in the shower and used that.
Soon as the lather hit my head, it burned. Like itchy scalp omggetitoff kind of burn. My poor head, having reasserted the natural oils and routine of hair, utterly rejected having all those oils striped off by commerical products.
"Self", I said later, sitting in my office, absent-mindedly itchy my head. "If nothing else, that was a beautiful demonstration that all the crap in these commercial products cannot be good for your skin. Also, ow."
Item #2: Dog (aka, Max)
I had mentioned at some point that we acquired a new dog following the death of Mandy (best, dog, ever). It remains to be seen whether Max will fill the tiny paw shaped shoes that Mandy left, and while it's doubtful that any animal will exhibit the amazing combination of intelligence and compassion that that girl did, Max is proving to fit in very well in our household of fuzzies. All 70+lbs of him. (Rottie-Lab... so much for my desire for a small dog).
Sunny (my dog) tolerates him. He's almost twice her weight, so their playtime tends to be dictated by her schedule and inclination. For some reason unknown to us, he's slightly obsessed with our cat Pi, and attempts to play with her constantly -- which usually ends in tears and a pissed off cat, considering she's all of 8lbs to his 70lbs. Fatty returns his obsession with Pi into an obsession with cleaning his big floppy ears. We have never understood what goes on in Fatty's brain damaged skull, and it's probably safer that way.
On the whole, Max is excellent. He has this joie de vivre that comes from a unique combination of being a rescue dog without a particularly traumatizing past. Mandy and Sunny both had less than ideal beginnings, and no matter how happy they are (were), scars from their past still show through, and probably always will. We aren't sure of Max's past, but from his health and vet records it seems his previous family cared for him greatly. And it shows in his behaviour, which is a combination of excited 4 year old on a sugar high coupled with giant suck-ball in need of constant comfort.
On the whole, I approve.
Item #3: Post Lunch Sleepy
It's post lunch, which means all my brain can think of is sleep time. The day is almost over, and I can't remember what my item #3 was originally...
Wait! I remember!
Item #3.something: Kickboxing
I had mentioned a while ago my intent to begin kickboxing, and I can't remember if I had ever delivered a follow up. I truly enjoy it. And by it, I mean the dojo at which I train. It's become very apparent to me that I am not someone who enjoyed exercise for the sake of exercise. In fact, I loathe it. But the dojo I attend (K2 Martial Arts) is fantastic, and the most effervescent and supportive group of people I have ever met.
Unfortunately, my bank account is crying in pain, and my laziness is threatening to reassert. As much as I enjoy going, the location and timing are less than ideal which means that I only wind up dragging my arse in there once a week (between work, dogs, yoga, evening work, and picking up hubby from his work... my free time to indulge kicking pads as hard as I can tends to be limited). So, new plan.
There's a gym opening up very, very close to my house, and it's my thought that if I join, it's 24hours and close enough to remove any excuse. However this means I have to call and cancel my kickboxing... which I haven't done because, well, I love the people so much I feel like I'm letting them and me down by quitting.
So here's hoping I grow a pair and finally cancel my membership... else my cowardice is going to cost me an arm and a leg.
Item #1: No 'Poo
I did, indeed, succeed in going a whole month without using commercial shampoo. I will admit that my resolve has waned slightly, especially in the face of 4:30am wake-up time, but all in all I proclaim it a success. My hair was... different. It was drier, but on the whole healthier, if you can grasp that. By far, Hubby and I agree that it is thicker, which is fairly mind boggling considering my hair was already thick enough to suffocate me on a regular basis. Although I'm now only sporadically using commercial shampoo and homemade shampoo (depending on mood, time and inclination) one benefit I feel that it has had on my grooming habits is the act of washing my hair less than I used to. My head is itchy, which is normal with or without 'Poo, and dandruff abounds, but towards the end of homemade only shampoo it was far, far less than it has been.
One surprising account, which I feel I should impart as a warning if nothing else, came at around day 18 or 20 of using natural shampoo. I was running late, I'd worked out the night before, and desperately needed to wash my hair. Alas, I had not mixed up my shampoo! "Fuck it", I said to my self. "Self, you can cheat this one day. Your coworkers will thank you for not stinking up the office." I grabbed whatever was in the shower and used that.
Soon as the lather hit my head, it burned. Like itchy scalp omggetitoff kind of burn. My poor head, having reasserted the natural oils and routine of hair, utterly rejected having all those oils striped off by commerical products.
"Self", I said later, sitting in my office, absent-mindedly itchy my head. "If nothing else, that was a beautiful demonstration that all the crap in these commercial products cannot be good for your skin. Also, ow."
Item #2: Dog (aka, Max)
I had mentioned at some point that we acquired a new dog following the death of Mandy (best, dog, ever). It remains to be seen whether Max will fill the tiny paw shaped shoes that Mandy left, and while it's doubtful that any animal will exhibit the amazing combination of intelligence and compassion that that girl did, Max is proving to fit in very well in our household of fuzzies. All 70+lbs of him. (Rottie-Lab... so much for my desire for a small dog).
Sunny (my dog) tolerates him. He's almost twice her weight, so their playtime tends to be dictated by her schedule and inclination. For some reason unknown to us, he's slightly obsessed with our cat Pi, and attempts to play with her constantly -- which usually ends in tears and a pissed off cat, considering she's all of 8lbs to his 70lbs. Fatty returns his obsession with Pi into an obsession with cleaning his big floppy ears. We have never understood what goes on in Fatty's brain damaged skull, and it's probably safer that way.
On the whole, Max is excellent. He has this joie de vivre that comes from a unique combination of being a rescue dog without a particularly traumatizing past. Mandy and Sunny both had less than ideal beginnings, and no matter how happy they are (were), scars from their past still show through, and probably always will. We aren't sure of Max's past, but from his health and vet records it seems his previous family cared for him greatly. And it shows in his behaviour, which is a combination of excited 4 year old on a sugar high coupled with giant suck-ball in need of constant comfort.
On the whole, I approve.
Item #3: Post Lunch Sleepy
It's post lunch, which means all my brain can think of is sleep time. The day is almost over, and I can't remember what my item #3 was originally...
Wait! I remember!
Item #3.something: Kickboxing
I had mentioned a while ago my intent to begin kickboxing, and I can't remember if I had ever delivered a follow up. I truly enjoy it. And by it, I mean the dojo at which I train. It's become very apparent to me that I am not someone who enjoyed exercise for the sake of exercise. In fact, I loathe it. But the dojo I attend (K2 Martial Arts) is fantastic, and the most effervescent and supportive group of people I have ever met.
Unfortunately, my bank account is crying in pain, and my laziness is threatening to reassert. As much as I enjoy going, the location and timing are less than ideal which means that I only wind up dragging my arse in there once a week (between work, dogs, yoga, evening work, and picking up hubby from his work... my free time to indulge kicking pads as hard as I can tends to be limited). So, new plan.
There's a gym opening up very, very close to my house, and it's my thought that if I join, it's 24hours and close enough to remove any excuse. However this means I have to call and cancel my kickboxing... which I haven't done because, well, I love the people so much I feel like I'm letting them and me down by quitting.
So here's hoping I grow a pair and finally cancel my membership... else my cowardice is going to cost me an arm and a leg.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Technognome Salvation
I have to apologize, yet again, for disappearing.
The sad fact is that the majority of the posts that I wrote were from work. Despite popular claims, I do actually do work at work, but I have long periods of downtime which allow me to flitter away my time on silly things like blogs and self improvement through wikipedia surfing.
But unfortunately my work is currently without internet. It shouldn't be, but it's shocking to me how dependent we are on these tubes and things. The upside being that since it went down mid-January, I've read more, do the entire puzzle page in the paper almost every day, and carry on long winded conversations about important matters, such as politics, how much politics suck, and how much I truly don't care about curling.
Oh, please don't take my current post to mean happy news that we've restored internet. Oh heavens no. Through the ingenuity of my tech savvy compadres, my cellphone is magically providing a little netbook with the ability to access the interwebs. I think I understand this process in theory, and if I tried I'm sure I could dissect exactly how this is possible, but I prefer to imagine my phone as a magical little device with a small gnome inside who powers my every whim. He is currently communicating with the tiny gnome in the netbook, and together they have decided to share with me some of their magic so that I may explain myself to all of you (read: 2) nice people who have wondered in passing, "Hey, that blog na does, what ever happened to that?"
Thank you, little technognomes. Thank you.
But unfortunately my work is currently without internet. It shouldn't be, but it's shocking to me how dependent we are on these tubes and things. The upside being that since it went down mid-January, I've read more, do the entire puzzle page in the paper almost every day, and carry on long winded conversations about important matters, such as politics, how much politics suck, and how much I truly don't care about curling.
Oh, please don't take my current post to mean happy news that we've restored internet. Oh heavens no. Through the ingenuity of my tech savvy compadres, my cellphone is magically providing a little netbook with the ability to access the interwebs. I think I understand this process in theory, and if I tried I'm sure I could dissect exactly how this is possible, but I prefer to imagine my phone as a magical little device with a small gnome inside who powers my every whim. He is currently communicating with the tiny gnome in the netbook, and together they have decided to share with me some of their magic so that I may explain myself to all of you (read: 2) nice people who have wondered in passing, "Hey, that blog na does, what ever happened to that?"
Thank you, little technognomes. Thank you.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
No 'Poo for You
I took a picture to illustrate my plan.
In that picture is the sum total of what I will be using on my hair for the next month. The middle of February may not be the best of times to try this, considering my house is so dry even my dogs have dandruff, but I'm pushing on regardless.
Okay, slight aside on dry houses. In order to combat this I filled a spray bottle with water and periodically wander the house spritzing everything non-electronic. After a quick visit to a local hippie store for some supplies, I added a few drops of Sweet Orange essential oil to the water and I'm freaking loving it. My house is still pretty dry, but it doesn't carry the odorous punch that Febreeze does, but it also won't give me cancer, so I'm happy.
Right. No Poo. Or Shampoo Free. Which is a slight misnomer because I'm not forgoing washing my hair entirely. I'm just not using store bought shampoo.
A quick google search turned up this concoction from several sites, so I have no idea who to credit it to. Sources say you can double or tripple the recipe, but not to mess with the ratio or your hair will dry out from too much baking soda.
Here's the recipe:
Now, I tried to acquire a good size bottle from the dollar store, but alas could only find silly little 100ml bottles. So I picked up some of those and figured I'd split the recipe in half! Unfortunately, 1cup is 250ml, and what I had was essentially 200ml. So to play it on the safe side, I used 1tsp (5ml) per 100ml bottle. Which is a bit less than the 1tbsp per 1cup, but I'll go with this and then adjust as needed. I did this same ratio for both the shampoo and conditioner. Hopefully I can get my hands on some used shampoo and conditioner bottles once the boys use them up and use them.
I'll let you know soon as I give'em a go.
Post Shower Update:
I do not smell like a fish and chip shop.
It was a little odd not having foamy hair cleaning stuff. I used about half a bottle, so roughly 50ml each of my makeshift shampoo and conditioner. My hair is about shoulder length, but crazy thick - I could have easily used the whole 100ml bottle. I had to remember to specifically poor some on my ends, since there were no suds to move the substance around, and I did notice my hair felt tangled, but so far so good.
The conditioner made me nervous. I had it in a spritz bottle, which made hitting the ends of my hair easier if longer to apply, and by the time I was done spritzing my shower smelt a bit like fish&chips. The smell of apple cider vinegar was very strong. I read that you should rinse your hair in cool water, but I live in Canada and it's the middle of February. I settled for tepid water, and it rinsed out very easy. The tangles from the wash all disapeared.
Hubby assures me I do not smell bad. He says my hair just smells clean, which was the point obviously. So far, a success.
Okay, slight aside on dry houses. In order to combat this I filled a spray bottle with water and periodically wander the house spritzing everything non-electronic. After a quick visit to a local hippie store for some supplies, I added a few drops of Sweet Orange essential oil to the water and I'm freaking loving it. My house is still pretty dry, but it doesn't carry the odorous punch that Febreeze does, but it also won't give me cancer, so I'm happy.
Right. No Poo. Or Shampoo Free. Which is a slight misnomer because I'm not forgoing washing my hair entirely. I'm just not using store bought shampoo.
A quick google search turned up this concoction from several sites, so I have no idea who to credit it to. Sources say you can double or tripple the recipe, but not to mess with the ratio or your hair will dry out from too much baking soda.
Here's the recipe:
- 1tbsp of baking soda per 1 cup of warm/hot water.
- 1 to 2 tbsp Apple Cider Vinegar per 1 cup of water
Now, I tried to acquire a good size bottle from the dollar store, but alas could only find silly little 100ml bottles. So I picked up some of those and figured I'd split the recipe in half! Unfortunately, 1cup is 250ml, and what I had was essentially 200ml. So to play it on the safe side, I used 1tsp (5ml) per 100ml bottle. Which is a bit less than the 1tbsp per 1cup, but I'll go with this and then adjust as needed. I did this same ratio for both the shampoo and conditioner. Hopefully I can get my hands on some used shampoo and conditioner bottles once the boys use them up and use them.
I'll let you know soon as I give'em a go.
Post Shower Update:
I do not smell like a fish and chip shop.
It was a little odd not having foamy hair cleaning stuff. I used about half a bottle, so roughly 50ml each of my makeshift shampoo and conditioner. My hair is about shoulder length, but crazy thick - I could have easily used the whole 100ml bottle. I had to remember to specifically poor some on my ends, since there were no suds to move the substance around, and I did notice my hair felt tangled, but so far so good.
The conditioner made me nervous. I had it in a spritz bottle, which made hitting the ends of my hair easier if longer to apply, and by the time I was done spritzing my shower smelt a bit like fish&chips. The smell of apple cider vinegar was very strong. I read that you should rinse your hair in cool water, but I live in Canada and it's the middle of February. I settled for tepid water, and it rinsed out very easy. The tangles from the wash all disapeared.
Hubby assures me I do not smell bad. He says my hair just smells clean, which was the point obviously. So far, a success.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Dirty Hippies and The Rocketman
I have a plan. It's been percolating in my head every since I went off my meds permanently (Oh... oh that didn't sound good at all. I promise that sounded better in my head. It's not what you think!)
My family lean towards being dirty hippies. In fact, they lean towards a lot of things, but I grew up with a mum who had this uncanny ability to grow absolutely anything. She used this power for good, and we always had fresh herbs and random tinctures and infusions around. There was a passionate interest in herbal uses, and she played with combinations and essential oils, usually to the benefit of healing bruises, stings, sore throats and the like.
Since I'm getting older and my friends have begun procreating, I've become more aware of all the shit that we willingly expose ourselves to. For me, I probably have enough endocrine disruptors to seriously impact my ability to have children not possessing four eyes and far too many noses. But suppose I have children with the appropriate number of organs? Do I want to be exposing them to all this shit? And why am I still willingly exposing ME to all this shit?
So I'm returning to my dirty hippie familial roots. Slowly. I have a plan. It's a simple plan, but it is will be implemented slowly and judiciously. This is to increase my likelyhood of actually doing it -- the thought of going no 'poo (shampoo-less) has had me scratching my scalp all morning. But I have a plan. I'm also trying not to terrify the Significant Other into either bolting for the door or (more likely) physically hosing me down while screaming "Unclean! Unclean!". I've already exposed him to a corner of my plan, and the sideways look judging whether or not I had finally gone straight off the deep end and would shortly be wearing nothing but leaves and painting my body with mud left me thinking that slower is better.
So I have a plan. I will keep you informed as it progresses.
I also have this most interesting article of news. Seems that even the sight of The Gays will infect our poor impressionable children. (I'd be more worried that the sight of Elton John may give you a ridiculous glasses fetish.) The fact that a large store chain covered up a gay couple happily holding their new infant left me sputtering in righteous anger.
The fact that the comments supported and defended this left me mildly nauseated. Not particularly surprised, but definitely disappointed. It set me back on my quest to have a low stress week. Thwarted also by the frustrating re-training of our new dog, fighting with my yoga mat, and locking myself out of my office not once, but twice, before 7:30am. I feel like writing that store and telling them that they're shortening my lifespan by stressing me out with their stupidity. Oh no, some people complained? Grow some balls and respect the freedom of both speech and personal identity.
My family lean towards being dirty hippies. In fact, they lean towards a lot of things, but I grew up with a mum who had this uncanny ability to grow absolutely anything. She used this power for good, and we always had fresh herbs and random tinctures and infusions around. There was a passionate interest in herbal uses, and she played with combinations and essential oils, usually to the benefit of healing bruises, stings, sore throats and the like.
Since I'm getting older and my friends have begun procreating, I've become more aware of all the shit that we willingly expose ourselves to. For me, I probably have enough endocrine disruptors to seriously impact my ability to have children not possessing four eyes and far too many noses. But suppose I have children with the appropriate number of organs? Do I want to be exposing them to all this shit? And why am I still willingly exposing ME to all this shit?
So I'm returning to my dirty hippie familial roots. Slowly. I have a plan. It's a simple plan, but it is will be implemented slowly and judiciously. This is to increase my likelyhood of actually doing it -- the thought of going no 'poo (shampoo-less) has had me scratching my scalp all morning. But I have a plan. I'm also trying not to terrify the Significant Other into either bolting for the door or (more likely) physically hosing me down while screaming "Unclean! Unclean!". I've already exposed him to a corner of my plan, and the sideways look judging whether or not I had finally gone straight off the deep end and would shortly be wearing nothing but leaves and painting my body with mud left me thinking that slower is better.
So I have a plan. I will keep you informed as it progresses.
I also have this most interesting article of news. Seems that even the sight of The Gays will infect our poor impressionable children. (I'd be more worried that the sight of Elton John may give you a ridiculous glasses fetish.) The fact that a large store chain covered up a gay couple happily holding their new infant left me sputtering in righteous anger.
The fact that the comments supported and defended this left me mildly nauseated. Not particularly surprised, but definitely disappointed. It set me back on my quest to have a low stress week. Thwarted also by the frustrating re-training of our new dog, fighting with my yoga mat, and locking myself out of my office not once, but twice, before 7:30am. I feel like writing that store and telling them that they're shortening my lifespan by stressing me out with their stupidity. Oh no, some people complained? Grow some balls and respect the freedom of both speech and personal identity.
Monday, January 24, 2011
Friggid
It's cold. I'm indoors (19 floors up, so my fat ass heat rises), under several layers, frantically giggling my legs to keep warm, and I'm still cold.
I have no good reason to post other than the hope that sharing my soul crushing coldness will somehow help alleviate the sense that it will never be warm or bright again. Snuggled at home last night in front of a large electric heater, I had such lofty goals such as dishes, laundry, dog walking, and hitting up kickboxing tonight. But right now, sitting in my frigid office wondering how ridiculous would I look if I put my winter jacket on and would anyone judge me for it and more importantly would I care because at least I wouldn't die of exposure -- right now I just want to go to sleep.
Somewhere warm. Go to sleep somewhere warm.
Edit:
I seem to remember, as part of my manditory Canadian survival training -- which includes, but is not limited to, proper snowball throwing etiquette, igloo survival, and how not to get eaten by a fucking bear -- that sleepyness is one of the stages of hypothermia.
I should care, but I'm too breaking cold.
Oh, and I'm not over-reacting! Yes, it's been colder, but when it's a balmy -35C (-31F for you 'murricahns), I'm allowed to say that it's the next freaking ice age! Godamn, I want to be warm again.
I have no good reason to post other than the hope that sharing my soul crushing coldness will somehow help alleviate the sense that it will never be warm or bright again. Snuggled at home last night in front of a large electric heater, I had such lofty goals such as dishes, laundry, dog walking, and hitting up kickboxing tonight. But right now, sitting in my frigid office wondering how ridiculous would I look if I put my winter jacket on and would anyone judge me for it and more importantly would I care because at least I wouldn't die of exposure -- right now I just want to go to sleep.
Somewhere warm. Go to sleep somewhere warm.
Edit:
I seem to remember, as part of my manditory Canadian survival training -- which includes, but is not limited to, proper snowball throwing etiquette, igloo survival, and how not to get eaten by a fucking bear -- that sleepyness is one of the stages of hypothermia.
I should care, but I'm too breaking cold.
Oh, and I'm not over-reacting! Yes, it's been colder, but when it's a balmy -35C (-31F for you 'murricahns), I'm allowed to say that it's the next freaking ice age! Godamn, I want to be warm again.
Friday, January 21, 2011
Animal Conversations
I tend to get pretty ranty on here. I like to think of it as a beautiful coping mechanism. It's a fair assumption that the various topics I want to rant about, the people around me have absolutely no interest in. Or they're sick of hearing me bitch. So I spew my unsolicited opinions all over the interwebs like some kind of mentos and diet cola fountain of ideas, and when I'm all used up I can rejoin society as a calm, silent individual.
When I was a kid, my mum used to bemoan the fact that I didn't stop talking. I vaguely remember this, listening to myself expound about... whatever. Like my brain was moving too fast for my mouth to keep up, so it inevitably turned into this unpunctuated string of consciousness that resembled the low din of channel 3 at 4am.
This still happens, but with the wisdom of age (harhar) I have learnt to focus the impulse to talk uncontrollably. Towards my animals. I have four.
Pi, our first siamese cat, who is shy of 8lbs, burbles constantly in this trilling little mew, and is a complete spazz head. She's your brain on weed, if your brain was approximately 3 ounces and you were covered in furr. Pi bears the brunt of my string of consciousness due to her burbling creating the illusion that she actually cares about what I'm saying rather than the reality. I'm fairly certain in her world I'm simply the large thing that makes noise and feeds her, that she must valiantly defend from the ever-present threat of attack by Q-Tip. For if the Q-Tips win, she would lose her large food-providing-entity. And she has proven again and again to be the worst hunter, completely incapable of fending for herself. She catches a bug, looks puzzled at herself, and then lets it go to see what would happen. Unless the object of her attack is a stationary Q-Tip, she's doomed.
Fatty is our other siamese, about twice the size of Pi and appropriate named not for his size, but for his attitude. Fatty thinks fat. Movement has specific purpose, usually food or warmth. Anything else is wasted energy. Everything encountered must be licked repeatedly to test for consumability. After licking, further tests in the form of fatty-chomps must be applied. Fatty chomps are slow, so as not to scare the potential prey, and pressure is applied delicately, just in case the object of chomping disagrees.
The object of chomping tends to be Sunny, my wonderfully patient chocolate lab/chow/something. Sunny is special. Special in the slow brain way, yes, but also due to the fact that I rescued her directly from a fucking awful situation. Like raising a foster kid, she came to me utterly broken, unable to handle even moderately loud noises, doors, wood floors, other dogs, scolding, or men with facial hair and baseball caps. She's a bit of a spazz head, able to grasp basic training but any command not practice and reinforced several dozen times illicits confusion, wags, and the inevitable decent onto her back, paws in the air, giving herself over to confusion and belly rubs. Hers was a long, long road, but she has become this fabulous companion, wonderfully patient in the face of long self ruminating conversation, Pi licks, Fatty chomps, and being used as an occasional pillow.
Her patience has most recently extended to Max, our most recent addition, another rescue. Rottie/lab/something, I would not have chosen Max as his name, but since that's what he's used to we figured it best not to mess with his reality too much. Max is what happens when my impulsive partner falls in love with a poor abandoned animals that is has a jaw strong enough to snap bone. To be fair, he's a suck-ball. He seems overwhelmed that he's no longer in a kennel, to the point that addressing him in any manner illicits a sugar high on meth reaction. Suffice it to say, my comments to him so far are in the form of commands, sparse praise, or out of the side of my mouth. I've found that if I don't look directly at him while discussing his various personality traits, his small dog brain can't comprehend that it's him I'm talking about/to and he blissfully ignores me and goes on licking himself. Sunny figured out this trick long ago and fixes me with an underhanded stare whenever I try it on her. I'm curious how long it'll take Max to catch on.
When I was a kid, my mum used to bemoan the fact that I didn't stop talking. I vaguely remember this, listening to myself expound about... whatever. Like my brain was moving too fast for my mouth to keep up, so it inevitably turned into this unpunctuated string of consciousness that resembled the low din of channel 3 at 4am.
This still happens, but with the wisdom of age (harhar) I have learnt to focus the impulse to talk uncontrollably. Towards my animals. I have four.
Pi, our first siamese cat, who is shy of 8lbs, burbles constantly in this trilling little mew, and is a complete spazz head. She's your brain on weed, if your brain was approximately 3 ounces and you were covered in furr. Pi bears the brunt of my string of consciousness due to her burbling creating the illusion that she actually cares about what I'm saying rather than the reality. I'm fairly certain in her world I'm simply the large thing that makes noise and feeds her, that she must valiantly defend from the ever-present threat of attack by Q-Tip. For if the Q-Tips win, she would lose her large food-providing-entity. And she has proven again and again to be the worst hunter, completely incapable of fending for herself. She catches a bug, looks puzzled at herself, and then lets it go to see what would happen. Unless the object of her attack is a stationary Q-Tip, she's doomed.
Fatty is our other siamese, about twice the size of Pi and appropriate named not for his size, but for his attitude. Fatty thinks fat. Movement has specific purpose, usually food or warmth. Anything else is wasted energy. Everything encountered must be licked repeatedly to test for consumability. After licking, further tests in the form of fatty-chomps must be applied. Fatty chomps are slow, so as not to scare the potential prey, and pressure is applied delicately, just in case the object of chomping disagrees.
The object of chomping tends to be Sunny, my wonderfully patient chocolate lab/chow/something. Sunny is special. Special in the slow brain way, yes, but also due to the fact that I rescued her directly from a fucking awful situation. Like raising a foster kid, she came to me utterly broken, unable to handle even moderately loud noises, doors, wood floors, other dogs, scolding, or men with facial hair and baseball caps. She's a bit of a spazz head, able to grasp basic training but any command not practice and reinforced several dozen times illicits confusion, wags, and the inevitable decent onto her back, paws in the air, giving herself over to confusion and belly rubs. Hers was a long, long road, but she has become this fabulous companion, wonderfully patient in the face of long self ruminating conversation, Pi licks, Fatty chomps, and being used as an occasional pillow.
Her patience has most recently extended to Max, our most recent addition, another rescue. Rottie/lab/something, I would not have chosen Max as his name, but since that's what he's used to we figured it best not to mess with his reality too much. Max is what happens when my impulsive partner falls in love with a poor abandoned animals that is has a jaw strong enough to snap bone. To be fair, he's a suck-ball. He seems overwhelmed that he's no longer in a kennel, to the point that addressing him in any manner illicits a sugar high on meth reaction. Suffice it to say, my comments to him so far are in the form of commands, sparse praise, or out of the side of my mouth. I've found that if I don't look directly at him while discussing his various personality traits, his small dog brain can't comprehend that it's him I'm talking about/to and he blissfully ignores me and goes on licking himself. Sunny figured out this trick long ago and fixes me with an underhanded stare whenever I try it on her. I'm curious how long it'll take Max to catch on.
Friday, January 14, 2011
Linguistic Pitfalls
I tried posting a picture of the new doggie addition, but my tech-savvy-ness is obviously lacking today. Suffice it to say, it's been an adjustment, and inevitable comparisons to Mandy abound, but he has enough personality in his own right that he's his own man (dog) and is slowly making a place for himself.
On a non-canine related note... Censorship.
A few stories have come out and struck me as fucking irritating. Canadian radio has pulled Dire Strait's Money for Nothing from radio play, due to the fact that the lyrics include the word "faggot". Matt Good also felt the wrath of the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council when a local Saskatoon radio station played the non-radio edit of Load Me Up, in which the lyrics are "This seems so practised / Me fucking this up". I'm a big Matt Good fan, so I personally think the swearing in his lyrics isn't gratuitous and really fits in with the song... but some bored little @#$%?& whined enough and there we go.
Turning away from radio and back to some paper-based insanity, some self important scholar (*cough*AlanGribben*cough*) has decided to edit Huckleberry Finn because "nigger" is offensive. Which I won't argue, it is. But it's also period correct. Do a quick google news search for "Huckleberry Finn" and read the numerous blogs all condemning this action as unwarranted censorship.
Anthony Furrey recently wrote a column in a local newspaper arguing against the vanilla-ing of language (at least that's what I like to call it... the cleaning up of preceived offensive words). He argued that there are dictionary definitions for the words "retard" and "lobbyist", and we shouldn't soften them by saying "disabled" or "advocacy". Changing the word doesn't change the thing (a rose by any other name?) and doesn't change society's reactions, positive or negative, to it. Furrey makes an excellent point when he says: "I’ve always thought it dumb that some people wanted to extract the word retarded from our discourse. If a kid wants to make fun of a disabled guy then he’s going to do it. The problem is not the word we use to describe the retarded, the problem is just that if someone is different from the masses they’re going to be made fun of once in a while."
Changing the language we use isn't going to change what caused the negative connotations to that language in the first place. People treated retards with disdain, so the term become disdainful. People oppressed black men and women, so nigger became oppressive. People continue to persecute homosexuals (LGBT) so queer, fag, faggot, gay have all become inappropriate terms to use. Despite the fact that according to Oxford, these are all legitimate words.
My point is not that we should necessarily resurrect the everyday usage of all these words. The negative connotations are pretty firmly implanted in our collective consciousnesses, and it's moving backwards to go around intentionally saying offensive things to people you know will be offended by it. My point is that instead of focusing on the language, focus on where the negative connotations came from. From intolerance, and oppression, and ignorance. Put your energy into fighting those things, into promoting tolerance, patience and understanding; not into using white-out on a few words. By hiding behind white-out, we're moving pushing the root of the problem out of the light and instead focusing on pretty-ing up the symptoms.
On a non-canine related note... Censorship.
A few stories have come out and struck me as fucking irritating. Canadian radio has pulled Dire Strait's Money for Nothing from radio play, due to the fact that the lyrics include the word "faggot". Matt Good also felt the wrath of the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council when a local Saskatoon radio station played the non-radio edit of Load Me Up, in which the lyrics are "This seems so practised / Me fucking this up". I'm a big Matt Good fan, so I personally think the swearing in his lyrics isn't gratuitous and really fits in with the song... but some bored little @#$%?& whined enough and there we go.
Turning away from radio and back to some paper-based insanity, some self important scholar (*cough*AlanGribben*cough*) has decided to edit Huckleberry Finn because "nigger" is offensive. Which I won't argue, it is. But it's also period correct. Do a quick google news search for "Huckleberry Finn" and read the numerous blogs all condemning this action as unwarranted censorship.
Anthony Furrey recently wrote a column in a local newspaper arguing against the vanilla-ing of language (at least that's what I like to call it... the cleaning up of preceived offensive words). He argued that there are dictionary definitions for the words "retard" and "lobbyist", and we shouldn't soften them by saying "disabled" or "advocacy". Changing the word doesn't change the thing (a rose by any other name?) and doesn't change society's reactions, positive or negative, to it. Furrey makes an excellent point when he says: "I’ve always thought it dumb that some people wanted to extract the word retarded from our discourse. If a kid wants to make fun of a disabled guy then he’s going to do it. The problem is not the word we use to describe the retarded, the problem is just that if someone is different from the masses they’re going to be made fun of once in a while."
Changing the language we use isn't going to change what caused the negative connotations to that language in the first place. People treated retards with disdain, so the term become disdainful. People oppressed black men and women, so nigger became oppressive. People continue to persecute homosexuals (LGBT) so queer, fag, faggot, gay have all become inappropriate terms to use. Despite the fact that according to Oxford, these are all legitimate words.
- Retard: delay or hold back in terms of progress or development
- Queer: strange; odd
- Faggot: a bundle of sticks bound together as fuel.
- Fag: British slang, a cigarette
- Gay: light-hearted and carefree; brightly coloured; showy
My point is not that we should necessarily resurrect the everyday usage of all these words. The negative connotations are pretty firmly implanted in our collective consciousnesses, and it's moving backwards to go around intentionally saying offensive things to people you know will be offended by it. My point is that instead of focusing on the language, focus on where the negative connotations came from. From intolerance, and oppression, and ignorance. Put your energy into fighting those things, into promoting tolerance, patience and understanding; not into using white-out on a few words. By hiding behind white-out, we're moving pushing the root of the problem out of the light and instead focusing on pretty-ing up the symptoms.
Puppy Update
Although he's not a puppy, Max is fitting in well :) and obviously has the "look cute, get treat" down pat.
Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.5
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Woof
If everything goes as planned (and how often does that happen?) we should be taking home a new dog in a few hours.
On August 13th we lost Mandy (german shepherd mix). It honestly feels like so much longer than just a few months. My partner and I have been looking for a couple of months now, keeping our eyes on the shelters, and as we predicted we knew the moment we saw our (hopefully) new addition that he was awesome, and ours.
He has a lot of the same characteristics of Mandy... not in the look, the coat, the breed. In the eyes. In the way he responds to you. We left the shelter, promising to come back the next day (today) and go through the paperwork to take him home. We drove away talking about him and Sunny (the dog waiting for us at home) and the logistics. Then we stopped talking, and I couldn't stop myself from saying, "I miss Mandy".
We both miss Mandy, and finding a new dog was a far more painful experience than I thought it would be. I feel like saying I'm sorry for bringing a new dog into Mandy's vacated place in our home.
I am so ridiculously excited to meet a new personality and seeing how they fit in with us and our menagerie of fur. I'm also so horribly, painfully sad.
We shall see which wins out in the end today.
On August 13th we lost Mandy (german shepherd mix). It honestly feels like so much longer than just a few months. My partner and I have been looking for a couple of months now, keeping our eyes on the shelters, and as we predicted we knew the moment we saw our (hopefully) new addition that he was awesome, and ours.
He has a lot of the same characteristics of Mandy... not in the look, the coat, the breed. In the eyes. In the way he responds to you. We left the shelter, promising to come back the next day (today) and go through the paperwork to take him home. We drove away talking about him and Sunny (the dog waiting for us at home) and the logistics. Then we stopped talking, and I couldn't stop myself from saying, "I miss Mandy".
We both miss Mandy, and finding a new dog was a far more painful experience than I thought it would be. I feel like saying I'm sorry for bringing a new dog into Mandy's vacated place in our home.
I am so ridiculously excited to meet a new personality and seeing how they fit in with us and our menagerie of fur. I'm also so horribly, painfully sad.
We shall see which wins out in the end today.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)