Becoming Something

2010 and a mild panic attack

Wow, writer's block much?

Did you have a nice Christmas?  I did.  A lovely, simple, content, snowy white Christmas.  Nice lead up.  Glad it's over.  I took down our decorations on Boxing Day.

Now I'm supposed to get excited about the turning of a new year.  People typically even get together to party out the last seconds of a year-- never mind a whole decade-- but we have no plans; we never do for New Year's.  If the coming of a new year included a money shower, or an alien visitation, or a flash of neon pink sky, or a freebie pass for boozing and schmoozing, then I would reconsider my outfit and location.  Alas, I can only look forward to flubbing my cheque dates for a few weeks.

One thing I'm happy about is being able to finally apostrophise the year from four digits to two digits.  (Nearly certain I made up that verb.  Good on me.)  Did anyone ever write '00?  It's just too ridiculous.  It's an embarrassment upon... All of Time, or something like that.  Even worse was saying, "the Zeros".  Anyone ever say that?  Of course not.  The '80s, the '90s but not the '00s, nor the Zeros, nor the Oh-Oh's.  Finally!  We're in the '10s!  The Tens!

What an awkward decade that was.

I feel like I should write something about resolutions and new beginnings, something cliché.  But I'm starting to get annoyed with this New Year's resolution thing.  I mean, EVERY YEAR.  Can we get more predictable?  What if I don't want to resolve to anything in January?  What if I want to wait until April when I become a new year? What if I want to wait until July 16th because no one pays it any attention?  

Well, so then don't, you might say. 

Uh huh.  Well, in church on Sunday, the talks given were all about goal setting, as if it's a commandment or something to improve upon ourselves.  Which, okay, it is a commandment but is it a commandment to do it on New Year's?  No.  It was a VERY ANNOYING high-pressure-salesman Sunday.  For me.

And it's not that I have no resolutions.  I totally do.  But I think I've made them less cheerfully this year than I have in years past.  You see, they felt like options in my twenties.  Now that death is looming ever so closer, now that the lines between my eyebrows have become wrinkles that I can see in photographs, I feel forced into becoming something. Do or die kind of thing. 

The truth is that this decade will bring more choices and I'm nervous about that.  In my twenties I was breastfeeding and changing diapers and cleaning messes and I knew I was making the best choices I could with my time because they weren't really fair options.  It was Feed Baby/Let Baby Die.  I'm smart enough to figure that one out. 

Now, my thirties around the corner, my children are self-sufficient enough that I have soooo much time on my hands and I feel paralysed every day by choice.  This year I feel like I'm birthing myself into a new life and I don't entirely know how I want that life to look.  What I birth for myself affects my family, too, so there's that to consider.

There, that's what I'm feeling: fear.  Fear of distraction, fear of frustration, fear of failure, I guess.  Mostly I'm afraid of wasting time.  I'm afraid of starting down the wrong path and figuring it out after the blisters have set in and I'm even more wrinkled and sagging and puckered.  What if, five years from now, I realise that it's my destiny to become a naked weather forecaster on Fox TV? And it will be too late!

I have all these things I want to do and no clear idea on how to do them and no one to turn to for advice and mentoring.  I kind of miss the days when people were paid to care about me.  Where's a high school guidance counselor when you need one?

So, I've been feeling restless and queasy for a while.  That's why I have nothing to write about.  I feel blah.  Blah and restless and nervous and confused.

Happy new year!

Daily Gratitudes

1. I will certainly have lots of time in February and March to figure something out.  A friend from the UK will be coming to nanny.  I don't really need a nanny but she needed the opportunity and I could really make some good use of this time if I want.  So, actually, that scares me too.  I feel a lot of pressure to do something great with all my free time.
2. Jude took extended holidays so it's very relaxed around here with everyone home. 
3. I'm glad to have a well-heated home in winter.
4. I bought myself some fabulous books for Christmas. 
5. I experienced the most stunning winter day two days ago and since I didn't blog then, I am mentioning it now.  Here are some photos I had to share of the amazing frost. My aunt saved the first photo from my Facebook album and put it on her Blackberry and said she thought it was a frosted leaf. No, that IS the frost.  The frost built itself up in layers to make furry crystals, inches thick, hanging off of thin, delicate grasses and twigs.

 
 
 
 
 
 

Who Knew? by Cy Densham

Shattered panes of understanding
This is not how things should be!
Self comprehension denied at once
Why try my hand at this?

For days and days I've been so sure,
Chemistry a simple slave,
Yet intellect provides no cure
When impulse be my bride.

Come seven hours or twenty minutes
(Confused minds know half as much)
My tongue shall speak a different name
And pray not know the change.

My new philosophy on Christmas letters

I should forewarn you that I'm in a bad mood.  Still, this conclusion I have come to I will stand by even when I'm in a good mood.  I just might be a little less snarky about it. 

My new philosophy on Christmas letters:  Why should I care what you've done the past year when you haven't cared about us the past two or three years enough to keep in touch? And why should I send a Christmas letter when if you really wanted to know how we were doing you would have 

• phoned
• sent an email
• messaged me on Facebook

?

Of the people who send us Christmas cards, we only regularly talk to about three of those people. All the other people?  Sorry, people, I throw your cards away.  Just signing your name to a generic card doesn't trick me into thinking you care about us.  It merely tricks you into thinking your obligation to our "relationship" is fulfilled. 

Also, I won't read your Christmas letters anymore unless most of it will not come as a surprise to me.  If it comes as a surprise, that means you haven't kept in touch.  It doesn't mean that I failed to keep in touch because I keep in touch with everyone.  I make phone calls, I send emails, I send letters, even.  I comment on your Facebook photos even when I really don't care about the stupid photos.  I care about you, so I make the effort.  

If you send me a Christmas letter all about your amazing family and life, and it's the only contact I've received from you aside from the occasions when I accidentally bump into you, that means that you care more about your life than my own (which makes sense because you should) BUT... seeing as it's CHRISTMAS, could you maybe reach your arm out and try to grasp on to some of that Spirit of Giving that's floating about and pretend to care about my family, just this once? 

Imagine if, instead of sending people Christmas cards all about your own milestones and accomplishments, you ASKED ABOUT SOMEONE ELSE'S!  Gasp!  I know.  I seriously am starting to think I'm a genius.  How about for Christmas, you care about someone via some words handwritten on a card or a phone call made after the busy season is over?

If your life is too busy for me, that's because you don't care about me enough.  People make time for those they care about at some point in a 2-3 year period.  We all have busy times, we all have disasters that prevent us from seeing past our microcosms but if I don't concern you enough for a phone call or email in two years, then I'm just not on your radar. 

You're just not that into me.

AND THAT'S FINE.  Despite what Barney might suggest, we don't all need to be best friends. 

Just stop sending me your Christmas letters, thinking that's the same thing as maintaining a friendship, because, HA HA HA and HO HO HO, it's not.  Cards can be a great addition to a relationship but they can't BE the relationship. 

And if you are going to send out a Christmas letter, you should read this first. 

Well then.

George Clack from 3:17 a.m. blog contacted me recently about answering a few questions for his profile series on mommy bloggers.  

What's followed is this kind piece he wrote about my writing on Becoming Something (and in my Twitter feed). 

Thanks, George!

Should we encourage penmanship instruction in school?

A friend of mine went to school in Canada where handwriting instruction was given, but then moved back to her country where it was not taught or encouraged, and she lost the art. 

Yesterday I stumbled upon this letter to me from my friend Suzanna. (You can click on the photo to make it bigger.) I have never not drooled over her handwriting.  <whine> Why don't I write like this? </whine>

I've been told I have nice handwriting but I'm always comparing mine with Suzanna's, so mine never measures up.  Suzanna's writing is always consistent.  She doesn't have bad writing days.  I do.  (Actually, this IS her bad writing day.)  Her capital C's are always perfectly curved, her little S's are always the same and perfectly pointy, her little R's are perfection.  She doesn't have many extra lines coming in and off of letters.  Her writing is crisp and clean.  Mine is not.  

The thing is, Suzanna spent a lot of time practising her handwriting.  I know because we've discussed this.  Does anyone do that anymore?  

I've heard that some North American schools, like those in England, no longer include instruction on cursive handwriting.  Is your child's school one of them?

My son's school does still instruct on this. (I think.)  And my son is very interested in perfecting his handwriting, which pleases me, even though he may never send a thank you card to anyone. By the time he's grown, will people still send postcards?  Handwritten letters?  Christmas cards? If it can be made on a computer, will anyone ever think to make it by hand? 

People used to be hand-writers for a career.  If you really wanted to fancy something up, you'd hire a calligrapher.  Of course, they still exist, but then so do blacksmiths. 

Do people value nice handwriting anymore?  Is it a dumb, vain ambition to want to improve your handwriting?  Do people even consider it possible or do they just think of their handwriting like their fingerprints, like we're destined at birth to write a certain way?

Heber J. Grant, a late prophet of the LDS church, was teased in school for his handwriting.  He said, "These remarks, while not made to hurt my feelings but in goodnatured fun, neverhtheless cut deep, and aroused within me a spirit of determination.  I resolved to live to set copies for all who attended the university and to be the teacher of penmanship and bookkeeping in that institution... I commenced to employ my spare time in practicing penmanship, continuing year after year until I was referred to as 'the greatest scribbler on earth.'"  He later won first prize in a penmanship contest and did go on to teach it at what is now the University of Utah.  [Teachings of Presidents of the Church; Heber J. Grant; page xii]

His signature:

 
 
 Maybe I should start practising my handwriting.

Daily Gratitudes

1. Every now and then my sewing machine's tension stops working. Nothing I do to adjust it works. So, I set it aside for a few months and then when I go to use it again, it's all fixed. This has been happening for years.  It fixes itself. Or the elves come out at night. Either way, I'm grateful because I don't even know what any of the parts are called nevermind how to fix them.
2. Jude and I found some decent used furniture at an out-of-town shop, for our bare basement.  Three solid wood pieces: $150. 
3. I have not forgotten preschool today.  I have forgotten for weeks but not today.
4. It's been very sunny the past few days.  Glorious. 
5. I'm almost done making Christmas presents. Just have the kids left. Hooyah!

Resist the Pretzels: A Poem

Eating pretzels
is not conducive to
writing poetry.

"Knife-edge of snow..."
*crunch*
...what was I saying?

This is a sport
best left to
peppermint tea
and creme brulé.
Maybe ripe fruit, juicy soft.

When writing poetry
everything becomes
a part of the poem.
The firm or gentle hand
of a rogue breeze
can change the ending of
a love story.

Unless you're writing poetry
about anarchy,
about bus accidents,
or maybe about
Avril Lavigne,

Resist the Pretzels.

How to spot the cool bloggers

I have a very simple formula for spotting the "cool" bloggers.  It's so easy to remember that after I tell it to you you're going to gasp and say, "I never noticed that before!" and you'll realise just how brilliant and observant I really am and you'll wonder what other special abilities I've been hiding. Maybe I'm trained as a heart surgeon but gave it up so I could spend more time with my family and, oh, did I forget to mention I graduated high school at age 9?  Well, that's because I've also a talent for modesty.  Obviously.

You ready?

The cool bloggers don't smile, yo.  Or, they have slight smirk-smiles. But the most important thing to remember is that they don't show their teeth.

It doesn't matter how gorgeously Chicklet-y their teeth are, they don't show them in their About photos.

So, if you are a blogger and you're trying to nonchalantly muscle your way into the cool crowd, my first suggestion to you is to put up a photo of yourself that really captures that elusive, ephemeral combination of subversive-but-just-exactly-as-much-as-all-the-other-cool-girls, disenchantment, intrigue, wit, and MILF appeal.  Also, see if you can manage to look as if your photo was captured with reluctance on your part, as though you did not doll yourself up for the purpose of a blog profile photo.

It's a really artful balance.

For examples of how to pull this off, just see:

Dooce

The Bloggess

Sweetney

Girls Gone Child

Suburban Bliss

Mamalogues

(Note: One of the About pages above should make any self-respecting person want to stab their eyes with a fork. Can you guess which one?)

Disclaimer: Not all mentioned bloggers will manage to perfectly photographically encapsulate the aforementioned qualities.  With a little more practise, maybe one day.

Never, under any circumstances, look earnest, at peace, happy.  People might stop looking up to you and start actually respecting you.

The next step is harder:  Your blog tagline.

Daily Gratitudes

1. My daughter Daisy, 6-years-old, has very grown-up, subtle, funny, vibrant facial expressions.  I'd be willing to wager all my best body parts that she will be involved in theatre one day.  She is such a joy to have.
2. Lulu had so much fun playing with my Martha Stewart glitter collection (I don't even know why I have it-- I don't scrapbook, I have hardly any craft supplies, but I just could not resist that glitter), that I didn't even mind the HUGE mess.  And I usually mind big time, so that's saying something.
3. Jude let me sleep way in this morning.  And I'm not so sick anymore.  I didn't really need that left nostril anyway.
4. That coconut lime rice pilaf with Indian sauce that Jude slopped together for lunch was intuitive improvisation on his part and you know that's the hallmark of genius.  Mmmm.
5. SO relieved that my friends received their Christmas package safely.

All I want for Christmas

I'm expecting nothing for Christmas and nothing would be just fine. 

I do love to receive thoughtful gifts but I hate to receive gifts that make it clear that the giver doesn't know me at all.  I do get gifts like this from family members, mostly.

"Natasha, for Christmas I give you Dejection and Loneliness.  I hope it fits.  If it doesn't, you can't return it because I stole it."

"Thanks, Gift Giver.  I was running out of the Feeling Misunderstood and Unloved from last year's obligatory gift. I think this will be a suitable substitute."

Jude used to say I'm hard to buy for.  If total strangers can tweet me or write me and say, "This is so you!", then I'm not hard to buy for;  you are just maybe not good with patterns and trends and should never try a career in marketing or business.  Or you need a hearing aid.  Or you have bad taste.

(I guess that means I think I have good taste.)  (I do.)  (Have it, that is.)

Jude is better now at buying me gifts because he knows me better, has been paying closer attention.

I'd rather get nothing than something completely disheartening.  I'm not put out about getting nothing. 

For one thing, I buy what I want.  If I want it that badly and have to ask for it, I might as well just get it for myself.  Making a list and then getting what you want on your list is not real gift giving or receiving.

As well, words, not gifts, are my love language.

I do love to give gifts.  The best gift someone can give me is appreciation for the gifts I give them.  Not all my gifts are awesome, I'm sure.  I once sent some people some guitar ice cube makers.  But when I make you a day-by-day calendar, completely by hand (365 pieces of paper cut and written on by hand, bound by hand), titled 365 Reasons Why I Love You, you better say more than just, "Wow, thanks."  A more appropriate response would be to weep and cut off your right arm and bronze it for me.  (Unless you're left-handed, in which case your left arm will do fine.)

I don't ask for much.

It makes me happy to know that I made you happy.  That was the point, after all.  Perhaps some people make gifts to receive praise and gushing over their talents but if that was the case for me, I'd have got around to opening up an Etsy shop.  I realised last night that unless I'm making something for someone I love, I have no motivation to finish it.  

Now, for a jarring interjection that breaks up this already lurching writing.

Shallow things I want for Christmas:

• the Swiss army knife of the 21st century:  iPhone.  I'm too stupid to learn how to use anything else.  I still have never read my camera manual.
• tickets to see Prairie Home Companion live
• a stand-up freezer for my garage
• drywall on the ceiling of my garage, then paint on the walls, then some curtain across the storage part of the garage, so that our home gym in our garage is more welcoming
• a treadmill for the dog.  I'm so tired of having to feel guilty all the time at all the dog walking Jude does.  It's exhausting.
• recessed lights in my dining room because this light fixture that we have is way dimmer than I expected.  I even put it ON a dimmer, which is such a laugh.  A private laugh because I'm too embarrassed to tell any visitors. 
• this weathered leather sofa in a lighter brown.  Lulu has stained the sage out of our Ikea Ektorp number.  And wouldn't you know, Ikea stopped making sage-coloured slipcovers.  Grrr.
• a seagrass blind for my front door, and ones for my dining room windows and something for the basement windows.  Although privacy after two years of putting ourselves on display?  Photos are probably already circulating the web.
• book shelf unit for the basement so stuff can be put away instead of just spread about on the floor
• laser treatments
• Garrison Keillor's Good Poems, and Good Poems for Hard Times
• a new book by Michael Chabon, any will do
• this original, stunning work of art that combines my love of letterpress, with my love for black and white art, with my love for fonts and language, with my love for the Salt Lake City temple

That's all.  Nothing much.

All that said, I do get gifts that are not exactly my style and if I love you a lot, I will love it a lot too.  When I was 16, Jude bought me a fitted but matronly navy dress I did not like, but he guessed at the size and it fit perfectly.  He loved me and went shopping alone for a dress for me.  I wore it with pride for years until my breasts got too big.  (Note me pretending that's all that got too big.)

Isn't that what gifts are really about?  Tokens of love?  Buying something off a list-- is that a token of love or of met expectations? 

I'm not expecting anything this year.  I look forward to Christmas morning for when Jude opens my homemade somethings and does a little better than a bland "Wow, thanks." 

If you feel loved by me on Christmas, and you love that you do, then I'm sitting here grinning, saying, "Aw, shucks."  I feel triumphant, my heart is full, my Christmas is good.

(But seriously: iPhone.)

Daily Gratitudes

1. A bright, sunny snow day.
2. Had a great idea for my son:  Write a play for us to act out on Christmas morning, incorporating words I've given him, and have them mostly make sense.  I'll video it and show you, if all goes according to plan.
3. Flirting with Jude quoting The Godfather on Twitter.
4. Sleeping in with delicious dreams.
5. Knowing what I'm going to make for supper tonight and just otherwise feeling lazy and happy today.
6. Lulu putting a blanket over her head, wearing only underwear and lots of pen markings (she calls them "love marks"--??), and saying in a ghostly voice: "I am thirstyyyyy!"

P.S. I decided to opt out of the Best of 2009 Blog Challenge.  Almost decided to opt out of blogging altogether, just because I didn't feel like it anymore.  We'll see where the wind takes me.

Banana banter

"Do you want pancakes?  There's no maple syrup.  Or that blackberry stuff."

Sigh.  "No."

Later he asked, "Do you want to try a pancake with honey?"

I recoiled.  "No."

My little caretaker would not let up.  I need to eat breakfast every day to lose weight and to take my 67 supplements that won't sit well on an empty stomach, supplements I depend on for better thyroid function, to grow my hair back, to ward off depression.  I'm like Jaguar:  You buy it for its obvious beguiling entreaties, then curse your impracticality whenever you need to order in a new, expensive, hard-to-find part.  Or so I hear.

"Would you like some yogurt?"

"Some plain, sour yogurt?" I scoffed only somewhat snottily. "No thanks."

"I was thinking vanilla yogurt."

"Oh.  Ya, sure, I guess."

Moments later my Oprah quiz-taking was interrupted by two attached pots of vanilla yogurt stuck in my face.

"Double barreled, ma'am," he said.

"How old is this?"

"I don't know."

"Well, check."

"I threw the tops in the garbage."

"I know.  But you can check."

"Well, how does it smell?"

I sniffed. "It smells... fine.  But the colour is weird.  Yellowy. And it's runny."  It had been a while since I'd eaten yogurt.

"Try it."

I hesitated.  I tried it.  It was fine. 

I just about finished the quiz to find out what I'm made to do for the rest of my life, or even a part of it, when Jude came near. 

"Mmm," I said, signalling that he should wait for me to take my refuse because I was nearly done cleaning out the second pot of yogurt.  He read my mind, as I knew he would.  Or maybe that was why he came near in the first place.  And I didn't even tip him. 

"Take your time."

I giggled and smiled like a little girl, scooped out the last bits from the corners, then handed it to him with a yogurt-painted grin. 

"Do you want anything else?  A banana?"

I sighed.  "Sure, I'll take a banana."

"Do you want maybe a banana roll-up with chocolate?"

"No, I don't want a banana roll-up!"  Why does he keep pestering me with banana roll-ups?  Is he on some advertising committee for bananas in stiff, whole wheat tortillas?  Is it some secret food-of-the-day like Pee Wee Herman's word-of-the-day, and if he manages to get me take a bite he'll win a prize, of satisfaction if nothing else?  After nearly 11 years of marriage, why would he feel the need to ask this question to which the answer should be obvious?

"I barely want bananas at all, never mind banana-somethings.  I don't like banana anything.  I never eat bananas because I want bananas.  I have never wanted a banana.  I just eat them anyway." 

Rifling through the fridge he asked,  "Do you want an apple?"

"No."

"Do you want some Vector cereal?  Maybe with Apple Jacks mixed in?"  WTH?  Apple Jacks?  Mixed in? 

"I want a banana!"

"But you said you didn't want a banana!"

I laughed.  "No, I said that I never 'want' bananas but that I eat them anyway.  So from all the times I've reluctantly eaten bananas you should take away that this is one of those times!  Like, duh." 

"Oh.  I don't know how I could have missed that."

We both laughed. 

He brought me a banana.  I ate all but two bites, then set it beside me on the sofa while I finished my quiz and here's what I ascertained:  If you know yourself well enough to answer the quiz questions, you know the answers already.  And when your tally is the same for three of the seven possible categories of personality, you're no better off than you were before the quiz.  Now you're saying, See Oprah?  Even you don't know everything.  I stumped you.

He brought me my tiny A&W mug full of my 107 supplements.  "Do you want water with that or diet Coke?"

"Water."  I'm considering giving up Coke.  I've assembled a bureau for consideration, sent out surveys, and am consulting my astrological reading.

Ten minutes later, finally done with swallowing my 181 supplements and a tall glass of bland water, I reached for my banana. 

"Where's my banana?!  Did you take my banana?"  How did I not notice this?  He is a good servant boy.  Stealthy.

"I thought you were done with it."

"No!  I was saving the last two bites for when I was done my 198 supplements, to help push them down my throat.  You know I need some food after.  I want my banana."

"So this time when you say you want your banana you mean you want it?"

Touché. 

Daily Gratitudes

1. The megadose of snow outside makes the house really bright inside.
2. Jude is shovelling the walk and driveway, with Izzy, though he suspected she'd probably run after the other people who are shovelling their driveways.  He's so faithful and enduring.
3. Sufjan Stevens Christmas music.  Namely, Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing;  Holy, Holy, Holy (even though it talks about the Trinity);  Sister Winter;  Silent Night.
4. Lots of sleep, though interrupted by many bad dreams and the eerie glow of our new alarm clock not turned off.
5. My kids are all playing downstairs happily.  Weird.  Wonder how long that will last.

"Wildly, messily you": The best article I can remember reading in 2009

It's day 3 of the Best of 2009 blog challenge and the topic is: Best Article You Read in 2009.

I love this article.  I read it twice and I typed it out to email to a friend.  Anne Lamott writes about becoming something better, and it sounds like something my friends and I could have written, we discuss things like this so much.

I'm going to share portions of the article here and hope that I'm not stepping on any toes by so doing.

She writes,

"We begin to find and become ourselves when we notice how we are already found, already truly, entirely, wildly, messily, marvelously, who we were born to be.  The only problem is that there is also so much other stuff, typically fixations with how people perceive us, how to get more of the things that we think will make us happy, and with keeping our weight down.  So the real issue is how do we gently stop being who we aren't?  How do we relieve ourselves of the false fronts of people-pleasing and affectation, the obsessive need for power and security, the backpack of old pain, and the psychic Spanx that keeps us smaller and contained?  Here's how I became myself:  mess, failure, mistakes, disappointments, and extensive reading; limbo, indecision, setbacks, addiction, public embarrassment, and endless conversations with my best women friends; the loss of people without whom I could not live, the loss of pets that left me reeling, dizzying betrayals but much greater loyalty, and overall, choosing as my motto William Blake's line that we came here to learn to endure the beams of love.

Oh yea, and whenever I could, for as long as I could, I threw away the scales and the sugar.

....You have to make mistakes to find out who you aren't.  You take the action, and the insight follows:  You don't think your way into becoming yourself.

I can't tell you what your next action will be, but mine involved a full stop.  I had to stop living unconsciously, as if I had all the time in the world.  The love and good and the wild and the peace and creation that are you WILL reveal themselves, but it is harder when they have to catch up to you in road-runner mode.  So, one day I did stop.  I began consciously to break the rules I learned in childhood:  I wasted more time, as a radical act.  I stared off into space more, into the  middle distance, like a cat.  This is when I have my best ideas, my deepest insights....

Every single day I try to figure out something I no longer agree to do.  You get to change your mind-- your parents may have accidentally forgotten to mention this to you.  I cross ONE thing off the list of projects I mean to get done that day....

...You are probably going to have to deal with whatever fugitive anger still needs to be examined-- it may not look like anger;  it may look like compulsive dieting, or bingeing or exercising or shopping.  But you must find a path and a person to help you deal with that anger.  It will not be a Hallmark card.  It is not the yellow brick road, with lovely trees on both sides, constant sunshine, birdsong, friends. It is going to be unbelievably hard some days-- like the rawness of birth, all that blood and those fluids and shouting horrible terrible things-- but then there will be a wonderful child right in the middle.  And that wonderful child is you, with your exact mind and butt and thighs and goofy greatness.

Dealing with your rage and grief will give you life.  That is both the good news and the bad news:  The solution is at hand.  Wherever the great dilemma exists is where the great growth is, too.

It would be very nice for nervous types like me if things were black-and-white, and you could tell where one thing ended and the next thing began, but as Einstein taught us, everything in the future and the past is right here now.  There's always something ending and something beginning.  Yet in the very centre is the truth of your spiritual identity:  it's YOU.  Fabulous, hilarious, darling, screwed-up you.  Beloved of God and your truest deepest self, the self that is revealed when tears wash of the makeup and grime.  That self is revealed when dealing with your anger blows through all the calcification in your soul's pipes.  The self that is reflected in the love of your very best friends' eyes.  The self that is revealed in divine feminine energy, your own.... You are divine.  I absolutely promise.  I hope you have gotten sufficiently tired of hitting the snooze button;  I know that what you need or need to activate in yourself will appear;  I pray that your awakening comes with ease and grace, and stamina when the going gets hard. To love yourself as you are is a miracle, and to seek yourself is to have found yourself, for now.  And now is all we have and love is who we are."

I'd like to ask what you think William Blake meant when he said that we came here to learn to endure the beams of love?  This instantly resonated with me and I have my own interpretation but first I'd like to know yours.

I can add my testimony that so much of what Lamott writes is true.  Dealing with anger does blow through all the calcification in your soul's pipes.  It's not a Hallmark card.  It does feel like birth.

Becoming something better unfortunately requires "mess, failure, mistakes, disappointments, and extensive reading" and often comes with moments of "limbo, indecision, setbacks, addiction, public embarrassment" and thank the Lord for "endless conversations with [your] best women friends", those beautiful people who save us from ourselves.  I can attest to this and I firmly believe that the more determination we put into trying to avoid failure, mistakes, embarrassment, the less we will grow. 

Just one big Daily Gratitude for today:

The self that I see reflected in the love of my very best friends' eyes.  In that reflection I don't see stomach rolls.  I see someone I love too.

Celebrating Sara-- the kind of character you wish you were imaginative enough to invent for your novel

Sara causes me physical pain with no real effort.  As she recounts her life stories and her endless mishaps, I use up my laughter until wheezing is all I have left to offer.  (See video at end of post.) My stomach aches, the bones in my skull, right behind my ears, ache.  I think she likes telling me stories because I laugh so easily and I always know that every story I tell to her will be the best version of that story because I know that I've got the perfect audience-- she'll laugh every time and at all the right places.  It's awesome.

She's the kind of person who, when she needs a room mate, agrees to let a strange man she's never seen, a man from China who doesn't speak English well and thinks that porcupines are monkeys, live with her, after one inquiring phone call.   You know there's going to be all sorts of hilarious stories after a crazy decision like that.

Sara's the kind of person who puts a photo of a laughing man, a friend of hers, sitting on her toilet, pants down, as her Facebook profile photo. 

She's the kind of person who, if you were getting your breasts reduced, would make you a Bye Bye Boobies cake with a perfect basket weave finish.

She ice fishes.  She coaches girls hockey.  She was on a women's hockey team that won first place for all of Ontario, our most populous province.  She plays on a baseball team.  She does dragon boat races.  She's just so damn cool.

All I remember about our OAC (Ontario grade 13) Geography class is laughing with Sara and Oak.  I can't point out Uganda on a map in under 30 seconds and I'm pretty sure that's Sara's fault.

While I was the high school floater, (friendly with anyone on a good day, ambivalent on a bad day, cliquey with no one, chums with the teachers) and thus frequently looked upon with suspicion, Sara was popular with the cool girls and with the OHL hockey players.  However she didn't hesitate to  be my friend. Well, maybe she hesitated, I don't know.  But in all my weirdness, she didn't judge me.  She's the only friend I still have from high school.

Since I've had children, Sara's been the only friend I have had without children.  Most childless people don't want to listen on the phone for an hour about your kids.  Sara did.  She would ask for more.  Then she would follow up, with equal excitement and love, stories from her nieces.  If I were rich and could to afford to fly her out, Sara is who I would choose to watch our kids while we took off to Europe for two weeks, having complete confidence that when I returned, the kids would want to trade me in for her.

She doesn't judge people harshly.  She doesn't sweat the small stuff.  She lives and lets live.  She finds the humour in it all.

Some of my favourite stories from Sara:

• The time she was so rushed getting ready for work that she made it all the way to the elevator of her office building before realising that the bag that she carefully drove to work and carried to the elevator contained not her lunch or some other useful accessory, but rather a bag of cat poop from when she changed the litter box that morning.  I don't know about you but I have a sweeping rule in my life to love people who innocently carry around tied up grocery bags of cat poop.
• She spent a whole psych class at university keeping track of the many different coats of a guy she named Armando.  "He never made a mistake," she says incredulously.
• She almost got framed for hitting a guy on a bike with her car.  I needed resuscitation after she told me this story.  It's funny to read but even funnier to hear her say it.
• She once locked herself out of her house in nothing but her housecoat from when she was 11, that didn't adequately cover both her tush and her breasts at the same time.  She had to go down the street to someone's house and phone her dad, make him leave work and bring her a spare key to her house.

She's a very smart person, in the gifted program at school when she was a kid, but she doesn't care about proving how smart she is.  She doesn't mind sharing the funny things she does to bring a smile and a laugh to other people's faces.  This is why she has more friends than anyone I know-- both men and women.  She is pure joy to know.  She doesn't put on airs;  she gives everyone a chance;  she goes out of her way to help out her friends and is moved to compassion for strangers.  You can tell her anything and she'll tell you anything.

I have said for years that one day I will write a play of Sara's life, or a book.  I begged to her write a blog.  She finally did.  It's a wonderful read:  adorable, approachable, funny, thoughtful, endearing. 

Sara wonders what people think of when they think of her.  Or as she put it: "Isn't it funny to think about what people think about when they think about you?"

This is what I think of when I think about you, Sara.  I think you're like ketchup.  Everyone likes ketchup for something.  Everyone needs a little ketchup in their life, on their fries or to ruin Kraft Dinner.  I don't really like ketchup all that much but some people put it on everything.  I know this from a Shopping Bags episode.  This analogy is going awry. 

Just about anyone would love Sara, just like most people love ketchup.  I think Jude would love Sara and that's why I've chosen her for his back-up wife, in case I should die.

Sara is 30 years old today. 

I wish I could be there to party with her on her birthday.  But there will be many more birthdays to celebrate together because she will always be in my life. 

You should pop over to her blog and make her acquaintance.  She'll make you her friend and I don't mind sharing.

Sara, I love you hugely.  Gigantically.  You are a treasure to all who know you.  You are a blessing to your family, to your nieces.  You are perceptive and wise.  You are unfailing.  You're a confidant.  You have made so many of my days better and you have helped make me who I am but only the good parts.  All the bad parts I blame my parents for.  Ha.

Happy, happy birthday, beautiful.

Note:  Every link in this post is worth reading.  You might laugh tears like I did:

Best restaurant moment of 2009

For two days I've been trying to think of a "best of 09" restaurant moment that does not involve Britain, just so I can stop writing about Britain already.  Geez, it's almost like I've never been anywhere interesting but Britain.  Oh wait.  That's actually entirely accurate. 

See, it doesn't matter that I've had a delish dish or two here in Canada because eating from a trash bin in a urine-saturated back alley in London would trump fine dining in say... Banff.  It may be squalor but it's British-- you love it for its squalor, for its skinny pants and pointy shoes, for its absence of Rs and Ts.  It may be gritty and grey but it just looks so damn good in a photograph.

And it's not really about the company being superior to my company du jour:  Jude.  He's a funny guy and I can talk to him about anything ad nauseum-- our children, periods, a magazine article I read, poop, whatever.  For someone with a lot of thoughts and a need to share them, Jude is a jackpot.  To boot, he's funny, cute, lets me order as much food as I want and he always foots the bill.  Then, later, he expects me to knows I will put out.  I never get to do that with other friends.

It's not that I prefer the company of my British friends.  It's definitely not that the food is better (although I only ate at good restaurants).  I'm sure that I don't have to explain to you that anyone you have to pay $1500 to see and any meal you have to fly 8 hours to eat becomes super desirable and stands out in your mind.  Marketers know all about this quirk of human psychology.

I'm all about novelty.  And luxury.  I'm also all about overused hipster-cool clichés.

So, here it is.  Best restaurant experience of 2009:

Newcastle Emlyn, Carmarthenshire, Wales. Photo by tomylees.  (Why have I never thought before to search Newcastle Emlyn on Flickr?)

I love that super-wide door, the stained-glass window, the tiled floor.  The support staff was also very gracious about shutting that door when the cigarette smoke from outside was shortening my life span.

Nice art;  good staff;  clean, crisp decor;  cozy;  food to cry over.  And the company didn't totally suck either.  Lots of laughs and leftovers.  My first time trying such a variety of Indian food.  I didn't know before that day that it's my favourite.  Now I do.

Daily Gratitudes

1. Laughing so hard with Sara on the phone that the bones in my skull, an inch from my ears, needed massaging after and my abs hurt.
2. Laughing so much with Rebecca that I'm still high on residual endorphins.
3. Making Jude laugh on the phone, telling him what Sara told me.
4. My new blog design.  I love it. 
5. Daisy saying, "Josie got a big piece of gingerbread house yesterday.  Everything is no fair in my life."  Bwahahaha.  Today is funny!

Falling upon the sexiness of frigid Canada

The lovely, earnest, sincere Gwen Bell has issued a blog challenge to do a year in review, writing each day in December.  The theme:  Best of 2009.  (You can click on the above link to see what my daily blog topics will be this month.)

Today:  Best trip of 2009.

Well. If you've been reading along for a while, you know already that in August I flew sans enfants to London-- England, not Ontario-- where I met up with My Burtons who drove me to their old stone mill-home in rural West Wales.  It was dreamy, waking up alone in a cushy captain's bed with the sound of a stream outside my window, waiting for lovely people with charming accents to bring me breakfast.  I didn't want to come home.  I was seriously bummed out by Canada for a good long while.  Specifically, until yesterday.  Okay, truth be told I'm still bummed out but I did have a small epiphany yesterday.

* * *

A sudden blizzard had turned our bare roads and blessed browny-green grass into 4 inches of fluff and it was still coming down hard.  In a rush to get to the post office, I drove with a small mountain of snow on the hood of my Standard Mom Vehicle to the full-serve Co-op gas station where the nice ladies, somewhat bewildered at my snow-besotted state, voluntarily swept me clean.  I sat upon my heated seat, giving them a thumbs up and a smile. 

I was happy, despite this attack upon my September soul because a package was wedged in the passenger seat beside me, a package assembled with love and destined for Spain, and I thought about how my expat Spanish friend has probably never had the pleasure of driving in a Canadian blizzard.  Sure, she's visited castles and ancient Roman ruins.  So the Spanish beaches are only an hour's drive away and on a whim she can decide to spend part of her day snapping photos of terribly old Gothic cathedrals.  But has she had to stop her van every ten minutes to manually brush the snow from her side windows so she can back up safely?   Has she experienced the rush of adrenaline that comes from not knowing whether the van will stop in time to not hit that oncoming car that has the right of way, as the van struggles to brake on the packed snow, despite its slow pace well in advance of the stop sign ahead?

I was happy because I imagined the package to her family beside me was really her, and I talked to her in my mind, touring her around my town.  It was exciting, this first big snowfall of the season.  We sat at the bar in Taco Time, looking out the window at the frozen diagonal downpour and waited for little Lulu to finish her "Mexifries".   Looking out on the white expanse only vaguely resembling a parking lot because of some white shapes vaguely resembling some vehicles parked randomly, I mused with pride at how cities in the US would declare a snow day over what is just business as usual for us soldiers.  We trudged through the snow back to the van, some of it getting into our boots, snowflakes pelleting our hair, making a thin crunchy helmet after sticking.  I brushed the windows again.  I scraped some snow that had melted on the previously warm windows that cooled to ice beads while Lulu took her time desecrating potato corks with plum sauce.  I gloated for my guest's nervousness as I twisted about slightly on the roads.   Noticing the flickering TCS light on the dashboard she asked what it meant. "Traction Control System", I answered with cool importance.  Glamorous stuff.

(What a tease I am.  Sorry.  This is an original Canada Moms Blog post and you'll have to click here to finish reading the rest of this post.  It gets better.  I'm not allowed to post the full piece here.)

#best09