A wonderful mess is made with chocolate

Monday, November 28, 2011

I am no longer a drinking woman, but I sure could have used a stiff Marguerita before I went shopping for a gym suit a couple of weeks ago.

The last time I had my carcass in one of those contraptions was in 1974 when I was 14 years old and in Phys Ed class in Grade 9.  It was a blue zip-up thing that left my hairy armpits and legs exposed. As a teenager I hated gym class for all sorts of reasons and the gym suit just added a whole level of disaster to the experience.

Some 37 years later you’d think I’d have my gym suit issues worked out, right? Obviously not.

Denial is not a river in Africa.

I joined the gym in recent weeks because my Body Mass Index of 31.7 (I’d round it off to 32 but that would be stupid) was crying “Uncle.”

My bra contents could no longer slide in like a warm hug and it was a juggling match every morning pushing the bottom of my butt fat back into my underwear. Oh Lordy.

I needed to get back to the world of exercise in the same big way that Steven King purports I come to the writing table—any way but lightly.

So off I went to the local department store for the darkest fat-camouflage gym gear I could find. I chose carefully a two-piece black number that would cover everything from ankle to elbow and slinked into the change room to try it on, wishing I could knock back a Marguerita before I looked in the mirror at myself.

However I was pleasantly surprised when I peaked through squinted eye to see that the camouflage gear was living up to its name. Praise be to Lycra!

But I still needed to get to the gym to make this equation work. I packed a gym bag and drove from my house in the direction of the gym, all the while thinking of one hundred excuses why I really didn’t have to go at all. In fact, I drove past the gym twice just to see how many cars were parked there before I drew up enough courage to pull in. I so wanted a second Marguerita before I stepped on to the gym floor in my gym suit.

For all the belief I have in myself—and I do believe in me—all it took was the threat of exposing myself in a head-to-toe gym suit to put me at the back of the line in self-esteem. How crazy is that?

I managed to make it across the co-ed gym floor without looking up and bolted upstairs to the women-only section like I was being chased by Michael Myers from the “Halloween” movie. No word of a lie.

But I made it and when I got on that treadmill almost immediately I was fired with adrenaline. As I quickened the pace and the sweat began to pour off my face taking with it all my mascara I couldn’t help but believe I was a force to be reckoned with—a workout heroine!!  My 35lb weight loss goal (okay, 40lbs) had begun.

Day One was in the bag. Then I went to my workplace, souped up on myself, and opened the little drawer at the coffee station to fetch a piece of gum and discovered an opened bag of “Lindor” truffles staring back at me from their perfectly round and beautiful foiled wrappings.

I poked five of them in my mouth. Oh Lordy. The err of my ways.

Balance? Sometimes I do it well sometimes I do it appallingly.

But nonetheless I’ll be the first to admit—I am a wonderful mess (with emphasis on the wonderful.)

Comments on a job well done

Monday, November 21, 2011

What I know for sure is, that for the most part, I could take a lesson or two from the primary school of thought known as the three-year-old.

Small children are grounding spirits of presence who are wise beyond measure. Or so I believe anyway.

Sue Patton Thoele hit the nail on the head when she penned, “One of the quickest ways to disturb peace of mind is to worry about the future.”

Three-year-olds aren’t consumed by worries of what might happen tomorrow, or next week, and they certainly don’t let the overloaded soul get in the way of what’s right in front of them.

Quick is the decent to being the victim when my ego nags at me to be troubled by what might be in the tornado of the “future hole,” as Thoele calls it.

Then along comes a three-year-old to teach me about the present moment that I often lose touch with when I start projecting myself into the days that aren’t even here yet.

One of my six little peppers came to stay with me last week while her family was out of town and I’ll admit that in the days leading up to her visit, I was apprehensive because I didn’t quite know how I would juggle work, home life, and a child.

It was 48 hours of my life, and yet I was convinced I was too busy to handle it. Too busy. I am embarrassed to see the latter sentence in print.

Thank Heaven I didn’t let myself off the hook.

For two days I was captured under the spell of a little person who holds wonder for almost everything under the sun.

That’s not to say she didn’t “wig out” in the local department store and momentarily take on the personality of a budding Medusa when her Granny told her she couldn’t climb out of the shopping cart and run through the store. Oh yes, I have seen the flipside in its purest form. The only difference is that now, at the age of 51, I am not swayed by the public tantrums.

When I was a young mom and that kind of Tasmanian devilry occurred, it was all I could do to get out of the store with my screaming child and my embarrassment cloak thrown over my head.

The coolest thing about a little kid who is angry and upset is that, for the most part, the moment is lived thoroughly and then left behind as they move on to the next “now.”

I need to learn how to do that more often—to have my moment and move on and not cook it up for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for five days straight.

However, my little pepper’s 15 minutes of fame in the shopping cart is but an aside to the real lesson here.

I love my little peppers and I remind them of how awesome they are and how much I love them every chance I get.

I wish I could say I was the one who planted so well the seed of positive reinforcement in a three-year-old that she pays it forward every chance she gets.

I am not the one who did that.

Mother, father, and “Zaagi-idiwin Aboriginal Head Start” teachers, kudos to all of you.

My respect for your child rearing couldn’t shine any brighter than when my little pepper said to me, without provocation,  “Good job, Gran,” every time I did even the most simplest of tasks.

Oh, how the young can grow by example.

Good job, caregivers. Good job.

My pitching philosophy is simple

Monday, November 14, 2011

I don’t watch baseball, but I do know that a baseball bat is supposed to be used in the game of baseball to hit the ball thrown by the pitcher.

This is an open letter of sorts to the driver and his passenger who used a baseball bat to take out my mailbox at the end of my driveway in the wee hours of the morning on November 9^th.

At least five other residents along my country road also woke up to find their mailboxes smashed open or on the ground.

My ex-husband used to say, “It’s much easier to be bad than it is to be good.”

The last thing I want right now is to prove him right.

I challenge you to do better. Many will doubt that you will rise to that challenge. It’s much easier not to, right?

I picked up the pieces of my old, dear-to-my-heart mailbox that morning and carried its shattered little shell back down the driveway. Its day was done.

My mailbox was a bit of an icon in my neck of the woods. My grandfather, the late Joe Drennan, had built it some 25 years ago as a replica of the old red barn on the farm. It was one of the few handmade treasures I had left around here.

Finding it smashed on the ground that morning wasn’t the way I had wanted it to go out. My heart still hurts over that, and that’s the truth of the matter.

So my dilemma was this. Do I put up a new mailbox or forego the ritual of rural mail delivery and rent a post office box in town? Do I defy the vandals and re-group or give in to their spontaneous trickery and eliminate the temptation?

I was a lucky kid. I was raised to believe in the good in people and I have carried that sometimes challenging and often blinding notion throughout my life because not believing that means I lose. And I’m not a loser. I dwell in possibility and doing anything else is not an option.

So up goes a new mailbox. Do I run the risk of witnessing a repeat offence? Chances are pretty good, yes.

Peter DeVries said, “We all learn by experience but some of us have to go to summer school.”

Well then, I guess I’m still in summer school.

I refuse to lose faith in the one who rides in the back of a truck with a baseball bat in his hand and that someday he will choose the harder path and take it to the game instead. This is my hope.

Here's to the wisdom of Andy Rooney

Monday, November 7, 2011

“My lucky life.”

That was Andy Rooney’s story title six weeks ago when at the age of 92; he spoke in his final television essay on “60 Minutes.”

And when he died last week, well, this “Rooney wanna-be” was very sad indeed. I guess I expected Andy Rooney would be around forever. After all he was the grandfather of the personal “take it public” essay and the face of someone who told the unspoken truths about life.

He was awesome.

I am an Andy Rooney groupie. I wanted to be just like him and I have spent much time at the CBS website, watching his essay videos with a magnifying glass at my computer screen, trying to read the titles of the books he kept on the shelf behind his desk.

After much eye strain and time I have managed to pull the names for three including, “The Book of Ages,” by Eric Hanson, “Fowler’s Modern Day English,” and “Giants Among Men,” by Jack Cavanaugh.

I want them all.

I just realized I already have the Fowler’s edition and I am elated.

Andy Rooney once did a three-minute essay on “Clutter or Memories,” and talked about among other piles of papers, the cardboard boxes he kept by his desk where he stored ideas on paper he thought were worth keeping. When a box filled up he’d just start another one.

Man, would I love to go through those boxes of his today.

Yet, here I sit at a desk in my very own writing den surrounded by all sorts of wisdom fairies of my own making. I have books by Eckhart Tolle and Caroline Myss, and New York Times reporter and journalist Nicholas Kristof. I have a really big 2010 edition of “Writer’s Market” and a little tiny book called “Creative Block – 500 ideas to ignite your Imagination,” which I use A LOT.

I now realize I have my very own clutter and memories right here on the upper shelf that includes a book of poetry I wrote as I was growing up, a pile of legal papers, family stuff, financial stuff, and thick rows of old school exercise scribblers stuffed with my creative writing and muses of the sort. 

There’s a candle burning, a container packed with more pens and pencils than I will ever need. I have my magnifying glass and a copy of “On Writing”—the best book, in my humble opinion that Stephen King ever penned.

And oh yes, a perpetual cup of hot coffee to help speed my brain along the path of original thought.

I also have this little head-bobbing, smiling Holstein cow toy that sits by my computer. She is my writing mascot and every time I need positive reinforcement I just tip her snout a bit and she nods “Yes.”

Today she is reminding me to give a shout out to the local farmer.

On Saturday night I sat among farmers of one type or another, at the Rainy River Federation of Agriculture’s annual dinner and general meeting held in Stratton. I am not a farmer.

Farmers are awesome. I was in a room full of them that night and it didn’t take long to realize just how important the local farmer is in this district and how very hard they work. Very hard indeed.

In fact, I could take a lesson or two from a farmer’s commitment to his or her trade. “Come to the craft any way but lightly,” as Stephen King penned.

“If you can’t it’s time for you to close the book and do something else.”

Support your local farmer.

And I’m going to keep on writing. My lucky life. Amen, Mr. Rooney.