The Lent Diary - Feb 25/26

Today was garbage day. This means making sure that the garbage and recycling are out to the curb before 6:00am. It's only once a week. How hard can it be? And yet, there I was this morning at 5:30 putting on my warm coat and boots to drag two bags of garbage out to the curb and then come back for the grey bin. And I was cursing.

There's no doubt that there are things in life that are just not fun to do. What's fun about scooping kitty litter? What's fun about breaking down cardboard boxes so they fit into the recycle bin? What's fun about ironing wrinkled clothes?

Yet, we need to do these things to make our everyday life more enjoyable. If you never put out the garbage, how disgusting would your house be after a few weeks? This is what I like to call negative motivation. It isn't a task that makes me happier by doing it, it's a task that would make me unhappy if I didn't do it.

So today, on garbage day, I am contemplating how much of my world is driven by negative motivation and I'm going to work toward finding the positive in everyday tasks so that when something as mundane as bagging my newspapers for recycling comes up, I'll find it a much more pleasurable experience. 

Then maybe, just maybe, the next time I put out the garbage I'll be whistling instead of cursing.

The Lent Diary - Feb 24

Today is a day of contradictions. The good and bad (or at least the uncomfortable) are living side by side today.

It's "Orange Day" at work. A made-up day where everyone is encouraged to wear orange and have a bit of fun with it. I have a bright orange tee shirt to wear so it'll be fun to stand alongside my work mates and get our picture taken and posted on the wall of fame.

It's also the last day for a colleague who is having knee surgery tomorrow so while we will have a bit of orange fun today, I'll be worried about her and keeping good thoughts in my head on her behalf so the universe might smile on her when she needs it most.

I am also proud to spend time at my lunch hour today with a good friend who just announced she is going to be a grandmother. First one for her and I couldn't be more excited for her.

The lunch hour gathering, though, is for the funeral of another friend's mother. She's been looking after her ailing mother for quite a long time and this loss will be bittersweet for her. I've no doubt she will feel a sense of relief for her mother's sake not to be suffering any longer but of course the pain of losing a parent will linger for some time. Forever, possibly.

My own mother used to say that you have to take the good with the bad. Words she doesn't live by herself but still wise words nonetheless. I'm sure she meant it as advice to get through days like this, when the world seems to be pushing us toward a kind of emotional equilibrium. It'll be a day to smile and to worry, to be joyful and to mourn. And perhaps the joy will be a bit diminished but so too will the sadness be tempered and maybe that's just exactly how we're supposed to get through life.

So go out there and enjoy your day but if something happens to put a damper on it, keep in mind that while the good could have been better, the bad somehow wasn't as bad as it could have been. And that's okay too.

The Lent Diary - Feb 23rd

I'm watching snow being blown off the roof of the building across the street. It's unnerving because it warns of the -33 degree windchill outside. I know I'm dressed well enough to stand at the bus stop for at least ten minutes before I might curse the bus for being late, but I still don't want to go out there.

The other day I wore 4 layers, the top one was a jean jacket. I also had a hat, two scarves and my warm fleece-lined mittens. Just about every inch of me was covered. My skin was never cold but my core body temperature dropped. That and the fact that my socks were wet led me to arrive home shivering and unable to feel my toes and the tips of the fingers of my right hand.

I wanted to change my clothes and make dinner like I do every night (okay, most nights) but all I could think about was getting warm. I flopped into my recliner, put a pillow under my feet and wrapped myself in two blankets.

My partner came over and felt my frozen feet, took my socks off and rested my feet against his warm legs. He had just stepped out of a hot shower so his skin was steaming. It was a heavenly feeling, his heat seeping into the bottoms of my feet. It was then I realized my fingertips were tingling and I set about warming them in my armpit.

In a matter of ten minutes I felt human again. The scariest part of this was that my brain fogged over while I was cold. I couldn't think, I couldn't string a sentence together and all I wanted to do was curl up into a ball. This is how people freeze to death. They think they can preserve their body heat by pulling themselves into a smaller space. Yes, the laws of physics state that if you compress something into a smaller space, both pressure and temperature rise. This is not the law of cold bodies.

After half an hour, with my warm feet tucked neatly under the blankets, I fell asleep. I was exhausted. More exhausted than I had felt in a good long time. The human body is an amazing thing but when it needs to recharge, you must let it.

Lesson learned, layers works in the winter but not when the wind is blowing at -33 Celcius.

The Lent Diary - Feb 21/22

It's the weekend, which is usually a time to relax and enjoy the fruits of our labours from the week past. Huh, right. The weekend is a time for catching up on all the things we didn't have time to do through the week. The main problem is the list keeps getting longer and the weekends, well, they just stay the same. Fourty eight hours to accomplish what you couldn't in the previous 120. That means groceries, meal planning, cleaning, organizing, laundry, dishes, snow shoveling, gas up the car, sew the ripped shirt, fix the broken earring, clip the cat's toenails, run errands for Mom, call the sister you haven't talked to in a week or more, clip coupons, take a photo of the 18 feet of snow in your driveway and email it to your friend in the southern US, open mail, pay bills, water plants, bake cookies, clean the cat litter, vacuum carpets, work on those winter projects that you never have time to work on, et cetera, et cetera.

Oh and when you're done all that, relax and make a cup of tea, read a book, knit a toque and watch a movie. And if your spouse is around and feeling chatty, talk to them.

Me? I rearranged the furniture in the living room on Saturday afternoon. Then I napped. Weekend accomplished.

The Lent Diary - Feb 20

They say when you lose a parent you come face to face with your own mortality. I don't think that's true presuming you lose your parent when they are older and have lived a full life. My father died three years ago, he was 86 and was suffering from emphysema. He wanted to go and it was a relief, in a way, that once he was gone he was no longer suffering. His passing didn't make me think of my own impending death. It just made me sad.

Over the Christmas break, my cat died. He was not particularly old, for a cat, but he was sick and even though he was sick, he purred whenever he slept in my lap. He had a great attitude. I held him when he died and I miss him terribly now. But he was a cat and no, I don't think of my own death when I ponder his passing.

Recently a three year old left his grandmother's house and froze to death in the middle of the night. It was a tragedy, no doubt, and my heart aches thinking of what his family is going through right now. I didn't relate it to myself and my own death at all. No reason to.

I have an aunt who is going to turn 100 this year. When she passes, one assumes sometime in the next decade of her life, she should be celebrated. How can you not celebrate a person who lives so long? I'm half her age so again, when she goes, it won't make me think of my own death. If I've inherited her genes, my biggest problem will be making sure to load up my retirement fund, not worry about how I'm going to die.

Death is all around us and I'm not sure there is any value in pondering your own mortality.

Right now I'm concerned with how I'm living.

The Lent Diary - Feb 19

Something you may not know about me is that I take the bus to work. I have long professed it as an easy way to travel for me because I get picked up about 200 feet from my door and it drops me within 100 feet of work twenty five minutes later. I've done this for over 6 years, give or take the days I get a ride or walk or ride my bike.

The great thing about it is I have two periods of twenty five minutes twice a day where I can just be with my own thoughts. Uninterupted, quietly and with no expectations whatsoever. It's heaven.

I've come to recognize those who take the same bus. People are truly creatures of habit. There is a little girl named Emma and her mother who have been on my bus for the last two years so I've watched her grow from a precocious 3 year old to an adorable little schoolgirl. And she loves school. And she loves telling people on the bus all about school. If I'm tired I try not to sit near her because I know she'll talk and talk and talk. However, I sit next to her all the time and she can turn my frown upside down in a matter of seconds. She's good at that. A child's enthusiasm is hard to ignore and it's extremely infectious. Everyone on the bus knows Emma.

Another passenger on the bus has no name but when she's there I sit with her. She often saves me a seat. She's about my age, has a job working for the city and we have a lot in common. We start a lot of our conversations with "when we were kids..." and then we laugh about how times have changed. She too grew up in Kingston so she knows what I mean when I say "the old traffic circle" or "the Sentry plaza".

I also occasionally bump into a woman I know from high school, Carolyn, who works for Kingston Transit and who always has a smile and a wave, even if the seat next to her is taken and I have to sit somewhere else alone.

So, while I look forward to having those quiet moments in my commute, what I've come to realize is that I have a bus family and I look forward to seeing them every day. And if I end up chatting about crayons with a little girl or talking about the latest movie with a nameless friend, that's okay because it's probably the best way to spend my quiet time.

The wheels on the bus go round and round.....

Real Life Lesson - A fly in the pumpkin pie

If there's anything I've learned, it's that it doesn't matter how much you try to make up for being an asshole, the fact remains that you will never be trusted again. Ever. No matter how big or small your transgression.

This isn't a pity party, I'm sincerely giving you my thoughts based on my experiences.

If you have insulted someone, either by accident or on purpose because for half a second in your life you were an asshole, you can never repair that relationship. You will always be considered an ass and you can never make another mistake ever because forgiveness doesn't truly exist. People may say they forgive you but they will never forget how you made them feel. Even if you've made up for it time and again with good things, that one minuscule insult will stay with them forever.

Let's break this down because I can hear you saying, "Wow, she's got a chip on her shoulder over something." I don't. I'm just realizing some truths about my past behaviour and the revelation is there is truly nothing I can do to change someone's opinion of me once they have crafted that opinion in their minds.

Let's say you have some good friends among your coworkers but then you find another job and you move on. How many of them remain friends with you? I guarantee that if you have ever hit a rough patch with any one of them, those are the friends who will quickly become ex-friends. Why? Because people measure the effort it takes to maintain a friendship with how worth it you are to them...and your worth is brought down by any bad thing you have ever done. And by "bad thing" I mean something as little as not agreeing with the majority on an issue, like when everyone gets together for a "best pumpkin pie" contest and you choose not to participate because you don't like pumpkin pie. Well, now you're not a joiner. You're an outcast because you didn't participate and worse than that you have inadvertently insulted anyone who likes pumpkin pie. People will talk about that fun pumpkin pie contest for years to come and will always remind you that you didn't participate because you hate pumpkin pie. No no, you respond, I don't hate it, it's just not my favourite. Years go by and there's a potluck where you are asked to bring dessert but don't worry, says the organizer, you won't be asked to bring pumpkin pie. Ha ha ha. Isn't that funny? No, it isn't really.

Now you are labelled. The pumpkin pie hater. This is a simple example of how you can quickly become the outsider.

Now, you move on from that job and you try to invite friends over for dinner or out for drinks. They accept, initially, but after time they are less and less available. So you stop asking. And one day you find the only connection you have to them anymore is on your Facebook page, where God forbid, you post a picture of a pumpkin cheesecake and your old friend comments, "I thought you hated pumpkin". Face palm. This is the only comment they have put on your page in months because the only thing they remember about you is the one negative thing you did to them. Make no mistake, you did it to them, you insulted them without even knowing it.

In the end, you were the fly in the ointment, all because you didn't play along. Instead, you set your boundaries. And those boundaries will be held against you for the rest of your life.

And one day, out of the blue, you will discover that your old college friends have been having annual summer reunions that you have never been invited to...and you won't know why.