Category Archives: enjoying life

Another year has passed

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Today marks four years since the day my mother passed away.  Not a day goes by that I don’t think about her or laugh at some funny memory that bubbles to the surface.  But with each smile, I still feel that pain of loss.  It will never go away but it does get easier with time.  This is the poem I wrote after she passed and it touches my heart as much now as it did when that pain was so fresh.    I miss you, Mom.  xx

You left us in the early hours,

so peacefully your spirit would roam.

Through a gentle wind and the rising sun,

the angels called you home.

A ladder was built for your journey to light,

each rung meant to make you content.

While bathed in the glowing light of rebirth,

you gracefully began your ascent.

Loving arms awaited  you there,

curling you into their embrace.

Heaven welcomed an angel back home,

 rejoicing her love and her grace.

You leave behind your spirit and joy,

in those who loved you each day.

While our days will be saddened by the emptiness we feel,

we know we will see you someday.

~

Jane Eleanore Nairn – May 21, 1940 – March 7, 2014

Je ne parle pas le francais…..

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When it comes to making decisions, I like to take my time to weigh all my options.  I am not a “fly by the seat of my pants” kind of person so I choose to give a great deal of thought to the choices I make.  Last year, choosing to suspend my satellite subscription was the best choice I have made in a long time because it resulted in me being able to focus on my writing and finish my first novel.

This year, I wanted that ‘lightning in a bottle’ experience again so I contacted my satellite provider and arranged to have my service disrupted on the 9th of February.  I counted on that move to encourage my creativity and focus my attention on my new book.  I hadn’t counted on the Olympics beginning just as my TV programming was ending.

There are a handful of free channels still available on my Bell network and one of those channels is covering the Olympics.  Sadly that channel is a French station and, although I excelled in my Grade 10 French class, there is no mention of the little dog Pitou or finding a sweater because it is cold.  If, at some point, either of the phrases, “Il fait froid aujourd’hui, ou est mon chandail” or “Ou est Pitou?” should ever be uttered, those words will be some of the very few I shall have understood during the entire 2018 Winter Olympics.

Thankfully, emotion is a universal language.  While I cannot understand most of what the commentators are saying during the games, I can comprehend what the athletes are feeling after they have crossed their finish lines or completed their programs.  Exhilaration and anguish do not need words to be conveyed.  On Monday night, I watched Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir perform their Free Skate in the Ice Dance Competition.  Once their program was completed, I muted my TV and simply watched their body language and their smiles.  I didn’t need anyone telling me how they felt because I could feel it just watching them.

Sometimes taking the rhetoric out of a situation allows us to truly perceive the emotion as it is meant to be conveyed – naturally, organically and wordlessly.  Je pense, ne pas etre capable d’entendre les mots m’a fait comprende encore plus.



 


 

					

		
					
			




				
					


	

		

							

					Find me in the middle of nowhere
				

			
							
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My heart is here.


This could be my absolute happiness.


The day I find it will be true bliss.




The land will curl around me for miles,


and the noise of reality will be non-existent.


The only sounds I will hear


are the crackling of the fire,


and the sound of the night


putting the day to bed.


 The crickets will sing their rhythms


in that four-part harmony


that hushes the night into sleep,


and the dawn will paint a new day.


My heart is here.


And with it lies my soul,


and my true passion.


For life breeds love,


and my love lies here,


forever waiting for me,


surrounded by nature,


soothed by its song.

					

		
					
			




				
					


	

		

							

					Boys will be boys, and then they make you dinner
				

			
							
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I stopped by my brother’s house on Saturday to pick up my empty Tupperware containers.  The rule is….if I get them back, I fill them up again.  I love to make soup and they love having homemade soup for lunch, so it’s a no-brainer.


My oldest nephew was in his car behind me and we pulled into the driveway at the same time.  After most of the family had an appropriate amount of time to make fun of his morning hairdo, I headed to the grocery store to get all of the ingredients for the three soups I was making that afternoon.  I was just about home when my phone beeped with a text message.  It was from my nephew asking if I had dinner plans for the evening.  His parents were going out for the night and he wanted to make something nice and have me join the two boys for dinner.


I have written two previous blog posts titled, “Boys will be boys and then they make you cry”.  I’m sure you can surmise what happened next.  Yes, the tears appeared at the thought of a 17-year old boy not taking advantage of an empty house to have his friends over.  Instead, he made steak, baked potatoes and a salad for his Aunt and his brother.




Suddenly, the dynamic of boys being boys was replaced by a dinner that the three of us enjoyed and gave us time to catch up.  There were no sibling shenanigans, my older nephew cooked, my younger nephew cleared and stacked the dishes in the dishwasher and I sat staring at these two faces who seem like they should still be seven and four, not seventeen and fourteen.


In a world where the character of some children can be questionable at best,  I sat in awe of the two young men sitting with me at the dining room table.  To say my brother and sister-in-law got it right is an understatement and I am so proud to have these two young men in my life.  Now, if you’ll excuse me…..I have something in my eye….again.

					

		
					
			




				
					


	

		

							

					My doctor took an oath to save lives, but she may kill me
				

			
							
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I have high blood pressure.  It is something I have lived with for a long time and something that runs in my family.  I take pills, I have check ups with my doctor and I am careful about the things I eat so I can moderate my intake of sodium.  So when I went to see my doctor last Friday, I was shocked and appalled by the number that she gave me as my BP reading.


She dutifully asked the questions she needed to ask about the obvious things that could be causing the spike in my blood pressure.  I didn’t have the heart to tell her that part of the reading may be due to the fact that my appointment was for 9:45 am and I finally got in to see her at 11:07 am.  Then there is the “white-coat syndrome” that in itself raises the reading by a few points.  But I was truly perplexed.  Over the last 10 months, I have given up coffee, I have been eating a more plant-based vegetarian diet and I have been walking with my dog on a regular basis, so why the high reading?


Let me take you back a few years  to when I found myself in the same situation.  My reading had been high at a regular appointment and my doctor and I scrutinized my daily habits until we discovered one particular thing I had been doing that was the cause of my high reading – nasal spray.  Yes, a seemingly innocuous nasal spray to relieve my constant congestion was to blame for the spike in my numbers.  However, since that appointment, the nasal spray was discarded and I have learned to live with a stuffy nose.


So for days after my last appointment, I closely examined the things in my life that may be contributing to this high and disturbing number.  It was not my food choices, it was not my exercise habits and it was not my stress level.  As I leaned back one morning to drop my allergy eye drops into the corners of my eyes for the first of many daily doses, I put my cheaters on and looked a little more closely at the label on those drops.  The saving grace for my red, itchy, allergen-filled eyes was a decongestant.  In the world of people with high blood pressure, this is also called a No-No.  Decongestants not only have the potential to increase blood pressure, they prevent the medication I take each morning from doing its job.   DUH!!




So, this coming Friday I will, once again, sit in the waiting room of my doctor’s office to see if I get in on time for my appointment.  I have not been using my eye drops since Tuesday morning, so I will wait to see what my reading is to see if those drops are the cause of my high numbers.


As I await my fate, I urge you all to carefully check the labels of any over-the-counter medications you may be using and ask questions about the long-term effects they may have on your body.  You just never know.

					

		
					
			




				
					


	

		

							

					This one says it all
				

			
							
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As I have said before, I don’t make New Year’s resolutions.  I do, however, follow certain mantras and this one is at the top of my list for 2018.  I have let undue stress affect my health and well-being far too many, very unnecessary, times.  Thankfully, I have mastered a few techniques to bring myself back to a relaxed state of mind before I become a victim of a rapid pulse and high blood pressure.  Recently, I have also been using essential oils and find them very calming.







The key to dealing with stress is to figure out the trigger points and avoid those situations entirely.  Much easier said than done for most, myself included, but I have spent a great deal of time pinpointing the worst of my stressful situations and learning how to gracefully excuse myself from those circumstances.  It may not be possible all the time, but at least I am aware of the biggest triggers of my stress and can make better choices for the sake of my health.


I may be trying to achieve the impossible, but at least if I remain aware of how much stress affects my body, I can enjoy a very happy and healthy 2018.


 

					

		
					
			




				
					


	

		

							

					Ready to welcome 2018
				

			
							
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2017 has provided me with many things, not in terms of wealth or possessions but things that mean so much more.  It has urged me to embrace the people who mean the most to me, to ignore the negative energy and to run with my full self towards the things that engage me and avoid the things make me feel trapped.


I don’t make resolutions on New Year’s Eve.  I don’t go out to a party.  I spend a very quiet night at home with my dog.  I make a tasty dinner for myself and enjoy some nice wine and reflect on all of the things I love and the few things that I barely survived.  Writing my book was, by far, the thing I am most proud of.  It was a daunting task that I saw to fruition.  The story was a very worthy adversary but I put forth a solid effort and, in the end, I won the battle.


Although I don’t make resolutions, I do make a vow to be the best version of myself and to give as much of myself as I can to those around me.  It is a simple task and one I find easy to do.   This coming year will also be the year I aggressively pursue a literary agent or publisher in the hopes of seeing my book in print. I am also set to tackle book number two (once football season is over!).


May 2018 bring us all love, health and happiness.  May those special moments and special people still be able to surprise us and remind us that each moment is precious.  And may we give as much of ourselves as we can to those less fortunate.


I wish you all a very Happy New Year and hope this will be the year that we all have the courage to hold on to the things that make us the happiest version of ourselves.




(image credit)


 

					

		
					
			




				
					


	

		

							

					It’s all in the signs
				

			
							
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I admit to having a warped sense of humor.  But in my defense, I have many friends who share my love for the strange and twisted things that make us laugh.


There is a road sign about five minutes from my house that I am assuming leads to a lovely cottage on Lake Muskoka.  It was really just an innocent sign until I told a friend about it and our back and forth texting about that sign had us both in tears we were laughing so hard.




The simple amusement about the sign itself turned into a full-on laugh fest when we thought about invited guests coming up to this cottage but, before they drove down the road, they decided there was no reason to go any further.  The point was moot.  We pictured groups of people milling about at the end of the driveway wondering why they even made the drive up in the first place.  The more we thought about it, the more we laughed.


My friend drove up here to have lunch and we made a point of stopping in the driveway to take some pictures of the sign.  The laughter that we had shared before was brought back quickly as we sat in our seats, tears staining our cheeks as the laughter started all over again.


Now, every time I drive by Moot Point, it makes me giggle.  One innocuous sign is now the thing that can bring a smile to my face because it brings back memories of sharing great laughs with someone who is just as warped as I am.

					

		
					
			




				
					


	

		

							

					My letter to Santa this year
				

			
							
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Dear Santa,


I hope this letter finds you well and feeling the joy of the season.


I have spent many hours considering what I would like for Christmas this year.  I do believe you will find my name on the nice list so I thought I would save you some time when it came to my gift.


santa's list


I want life experiences for my gift this year.  I want to sit in a room with my family and laugh until we cry because the joke is something only we would understand.  I want my brother and I to share a toast to my parents and take a moment to remember my dad waking us up at 6:00 am by cranking the Beach Boys vinyl album and my mom inevitably leaving a price tag on at least one of our gifts and then finding the last gift sometime in April because she had hidden it so well.


I want to really watch my nephews this year as they tear open their mountain of presents.  It seems like only yesterday they had no real concept of what was happening and now I’m going to blink and they will both be off to University and, soon after that, having Christmases of their own.


I want to embrace the friends I have and let them know how lucky I feel to be able to call them friends.  I want them to know how much they mean to me and how close I hold that friendship to my heart.


I want to take a quiet moment or two during the holidays and reflect on all of the wonderful things that happened to me throughout the course of the year.  And I want the words “I love you” to be a comfortable phrase that gets shared a lot, and not just during the holidays.


I know you are a busy man this time of year so I shall leave it at that.  I will be waving at you on Christmas Eve as we stand at the end of my brother’s driveway and watch you go by on the Fire Truck as I have every year since I was seven years old.


Merry Christmas Santa.

					

		
					
			




				
					


	

		

							

					The fork in the road
				

			
							
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Everyone is given choices.  For the naysayers that exude denial and say they didn’t have a choice…..they are lying.  Everyone has a choice and sometimes choosing not to make a choice is their choice.


Although choices should be made carefully and given ample thought, they are available for everyone to make.  Many factors should be balanced before you make a choice but ultimately the decision-making comes down to a rational mind with an understanding of the potential conclusions.


05MP-fork


(image credit)


The fork in the road is put there for a specific purpose.  It is a deciding moment that you are able to pause and weigh your options.  Each fork will bring an alternate result and it is that pause that you are given that will help you make the choice that is best for you.  Choices should not be made on a whim because the trickle down effect could cause more people to be affected by your decision.  Take that gift seriously.   If the choice you are making could be detrimental to you or to someone else it is worth putting in a solid effort to weigh the pros and cons before you give your final answer.


Inevitably we will all make some bad choices along the way, but there is always that promise of redemption by making a better choice the next time.  And ultimately choosing to make the better choice is afforded to us by making a choice in the first place.


Put faith in your ability to make that choice wisely and choose to live with its consequences.  At least you will have the benefit of knowing you made the effort and if it wasn’t the right choice, you will get the chance to re-think your next path at that next fork in the road.