Category Archives: be yourself
You wear what you eat…
6 CommentsMy friend Sandra passed away tragically in May of 2003. It was such an extreme shock to get the phone call that she never made it home from her vacation in England. She had been infected with the Streptococcus bacteria that rapidly turned into the Flesh Eating Disease. In a few short hours after getting on the plane to return home, she was gone.
Her laugh still echoes in my head sometimes. She had a wonderful sense of humor, a biting wit that matched well with mine and she was just fun to be around. We both loved to cook and there were many food experiments done in our kitchen when we shared an apartment in Halifax. We enjoyed cooking together so much that we eventually started a small catering business.
Recipes were followed or created, heavenly smells wafted under our door into the hallway and many bites were nibbled in order to perfect those recipes. As we noshed on the fruits of our labor, scattered bits of food would inevitably fall onto Sandra’s chest. She was a well-endowed woman and she always referred to her cleavage as the “continental divide” because everything would end up there eventually.
As I was making my coffee this morning, I casually looked down at the sweatshirt I am wearing and noticed the stain directly at the entrance of MY continental divide. I heard Sandra’s laugh before my laugh passed my lips.
Some memories will always find their way back to the present and those are the ones you never want to forget.
Every little bit counts
1 CommentEvery person is made up of bits. Bits of humor mixed with bits of wisdom and intelligence and a few bits of humanity thrown in for good measure. All of us have bits of our selves. Some of those bits we share with the masses and some of those bits we only share with those closest to us.
Along our journey through life we choose to share the pieces of ourselves that we feel deeply connected to but we only choose to share them with people we are drawn to, people who will truly appreciate those bits of us and will find those bits endearing. We all have good bits and bad bits. There are bits of our past that are tainted but the true friends in our lives will see past those bits and realize they made us who we are today.
When you make a connection with someone who understands the pieces of you that make you who you are, the feeling of comfort is instantaneous. The bits of you that made you self-conscious no longer exist and you find strength in the bits of you that you once questioned. Those pieces of your life that seemed foreign now fit into the bigger picture and the puzzle is not nearly as puzzling. And those pieces of you that you chose to share somehow find a home in the hearts of those who truly get you.
At the end of the day we are the sum of all of our bits, good and bad. It is the strong forces in our lives that will accept us as the accumulation of our bits and look at the whole picture, not just focusing on each of the parts as individual pieces and labeling them as good or bad. Those people don’t enter our lives very often. When they do come along they leave a lasting impression. They will love you to bits and love all of your bits.
Learning to laugh at yourself
13 CommentsI hope you will all indulge me this week. March 7th looms and I would like to keep as many happy memories as I can at the forefront of my brain. Since my mom can no longer comment on what I post, her ethereal embarrassment shall be something that will hopefully make us all smile a little. Some of my best memories are of the funniest times in my life – the memories that made me laugh until I cried and that same laughter that made my mom wet herself. This is one of the memories I love.
We have always been a family with pets. Dogs have been a strong presence in our lives and in the early 1980’s mom and I would walk the dogs down the back road that was close to our house. On one of our walks, our Golden Retriever, Brandy, decided to take it upon himself to walk our Lhasa Apso, Misty. He took her extra-long leash in his mouth and proudly sauntered down the road, not looking back. Only mom and I could see the leash wrapped around Misty’s body and, when there was no slack left in the long leash, Brandy dragged Misty down the road backwards for about half a kilometer. That moment wasn’t just funny, it was absolutely hysterical and mom and I laughed so hard she peed her pants.
Now, in the 80’s velour was all the rage. Mom sported many matching leisure suits. They were comfortable, they were stylish, and they were surprisingly absorbent. But the variation in color could not hide the fact that my mom had peed her pants. After we collected ourselves, we made our way back to the house. We had a crowd of friends over and, knowing that, Mom was in stealth mode, maneuvering out of anyone’s peripheral to sneak in the back door and head for the laundry room in our basement.
She quickly changed her outfit and headed back up to the living room, thinking she had averted humiliation. What she had NOT counted on, was that her traitor of a daughter had already broadcast the episode to anyone who would listen and had even thrown in some play-by-play action in slow motion. Not only was I laughing but everyone in the room joined in, even my mom.
That day I learned one of the greatest lessons she ever taught me, even if by accident – if you can’t laugh at yourself, you will miss a great deal of enjoyment in your life.
Rabbits and lions and lambs….oh my
14 CommentsAs it is with every first day of the month I will have awoken, most likely at 3:45 am because that is a new and inescapable routine, and hopefully remembered to repeat the phrase “white rabbit” three times before I uttered any other words. It is a long-standing family tradition and one that is meant to bring luck for the following month.
Today is not only the first of the month, but it is the first of March which brings Spring closer to reality. After the winter we have just experienced, and still are experiencing, Spring will be a very welcome companion. The mercury is predicted to begin rising and the sun will have some warmth in its shine. I have already begun preparations for my tanning session on the deck and, even if I am fully covered in snow gear, I am going to enjoy every ounce of Vitamin D I can extract from that fire-ball during the high temperature of -5C.
Tanning in the early months of February and March is a family tradition I cannot seem to part with. When I was a child, we would spend hours in lawn chairs on the frozen lake and absorb all of the goodness from the sun. There is no better feeling than the first real heat of a Spring day and having those rays welcomed by an eager face.
This year, I am unsure as to whether the arrival of Spring will be classified as coming in like a lamb, or coming in like a lion. After the harsh winter and bitter winds we have experienced, it will certainly feel like a lamb, but having March temperatures still hovering around -15 C may classify the entrance into this new month as coming in like a lion.
Groundhog’s shadow or not, Spring is coming. I just hope it gets here before the rabbits, the lion and the lamb all freeze their asses off!
Uncovering the wrong letter in the word team
5 CommentsWhen you work with people for a significant amount of time, you not only become a real team but, you become friends. You get to know the nuances of each team members character and you learn to blend your strengths with theirs. They help to balance your weakness and you do the same for them. It becomes an unspoken rule that you have each others’ back and treat each other with the utmost respect because you have developed a real bond at your job.
But, unfortunately, teams change. Members of the group that you have come to know and admire often move on causing the dynamic in the team to become drastically altered. People tend to cling to the familiar faces expecting them to be their closest allies but that is not always the case. The feeling of working together suddenly changes and it now feels like you are working for the team and not with the team.
When the faces of the group are substantially different, there is usually a member of the original group that will try to use that reality to their advantage. Any allegiance that existed has been replaced by their valiant effort to get ahead and shine brighter than the other employees. They insinuate themselves into the role of the “a-hole” and become the only “i” in the word team.
I have met many of these “i” people. Usually the ones who had assumed this new identity shocked and disappointed me. We had worked well together but when the opportunity of advancement presented itself they didn’t think twice about using me as a wrung on the ladder of their ultimate success.
I’m happy I was able to move beyond those people. I didn’t dwell on their negative traits but focused solely on my positive traits and moved forward. I chose to enjoy the hours I spend at work with a new team that appreciated my contributions. I chose to be a part of a group where I could thrive and where my efforts would not be a stepping stone for that one person who didn’t know how to properly define or spell the word team.
I chose, but then I chose to choose again
18 Comments
Life is about making choices. Every day we are presented with numerous situations in which we have to decide the outcome of the situation by using our instincts to make those choices.
I am certain I have made many choices that, given the chance to go back and do again, I would change at the drop of a hat. But making those choices has made me who I am today, warts and all. I learned a great deal about life and especially about myself by choosing the way I did. And I learned even more about me by giving myself permission to make the choice to choose again.
I chose to get married. It was a bad choice for me, given the circumstances, but it was a choice I needed to make to learn a very valuable lesson. After that lesson had a chance to penetrate my brain, I made the choice to not be married anymore. Some frowned on my choice without having understood how much that life was not meant for me. It was a road I needed to venture down, but it was also the path that showed me who I could be if I chose to finally put myself first. That was probably one of the first choices I ever made with only me in mind. I didn’t gauge how many others would be affected by my choice. I just chose to make myself happy without putting anyone else’s needs ahead of my own.
Just because you’ve chosen, doesn’t mean you can’t choose again. While your first choice may have seemed to be the one that was best for you, perhaps making the choice to choose again will be the choice that will make you the happiest. Life is not predictable and giving yourself permission to choose what is best for you should always be your first choice.
Holy shit…..I knew it
13 Comments
I always felt there had to be a positive outlook on my sometimes expletive vocabulary! As much as I try not to swear in my writing, I can curse like a trucker when I’m watching a football game. There are days when those words seem to convey how I am feeling more than any other word….and I love words.
Sometimes there is no better expression of emotion than to simply let a few cuss words out in the conversation. Those words are able to convey a simple honesty about how you are really feeling rather than having to grapple with finding the perfect word to sum up your feelings. That one curse word is short and succinct and the person hearing that word is not left wondering how you really feel.
I will still strive to stretch my vocabulary when it comes to my writing but if I’m giving you a brief verbal synopsis on how something made me feel, don’t be surprised at the number of f-bombs I drop during our conversation.
Getting to the root of the question
16 CommentsI am a natural brunette, or at least I was a natural brunette until sometime in my twenties. Like my grandmother, my hair started to age before its time and I began to notice more salt than pepper at the roots surrounding my face. I have been dying my hair since then because I refuse to go down the path of “aging gracefully” without a hearty fight.
Someone recently asked me what my natural hair color was and, after I finished giggling, I responded with “I’m guessing somewhere between alabaster and egg-shell white”. I still like to think the hair color that I have paid for on numerous occasions reflects the age I feel and not the age I should look when I am eighty.
When I was younger I remember hearing the belief that grey hair made men look distinguished but made women look old. Along with every other changing belief, this is an outdated way of thinking and there are many women disproving this theory at an alarming rate. One stand-out woman who takes grey hair to a new level of sexy is this woman.
Jamie Lee Curtis is 56 years old, a mere 10 years old than I am and she looks absolutely stunning having allowed herself to embrace the natural greying process. Since the length of my hair in the summer months is very similar to her pixie cut, I have been tempted many times to put the box of “natural” color back on the shelf and see just what color my hair really is at this stage in my life. Somehow those ‘Natural Instincts’ make their way to the counter every time.
Maybe when I hit that magic number, the big 5-0, perhaps then I will be ready to leave the color in the box, but until then it’s time to put those gloves back on and keep fighting the good fight.
polysyllabic profundities 