Work In Progress

This year, my Sista Perfectionista turns forty, which for some reason I keep thinking is my age.  I am partly correct because I am in my forties...just the north end of forty...   Somehow, her crossing over the threshold has reminded me of that. But wait, this is not about me. Last year, I got to see Sista on her actual birthday.  It was a Sunday, I had just started simmering soup and she called me. "Can you come and meet me for coffee?" "Oh crap, I just started making soup.  The pot is on, stuff is bubbling, I am chopping..." "OH COME ON IT'S MY BIRTHDAY!" "Ok.  Meet you at the bookstore in 20." "What? You're coming?" "Of course I am coming.  It's your birthday!" This year we were actually trying to plan to do something fun.  An overnight getaway.   She wanted something close,  so we didn't have to spend time travelling.  Something where shopping was an option and observing...

With my oldest back at university, most likely to go from classes to co-op, I have been eyeing his room.  For the past six years, blackout curtains shrouded the space in shadows, trapping the lingering smell of "teenage boy", dust mites dancing in the light the few times I dared venture in and open a window to ensure he was still alive...and not a vampire.   With a desk and long, low dresser crammed underneath his double loft bed, he hibernated in his cave during his high school life and I tried to just shut the door and pick my battles. While I have I have, I am sure, passed on many of my neuroses to my oldest, the need for order, beauty and LIGHT in life was not one of them. I had assumed that my youngest would naturally claim his brother's space when he left; a rite of passage, moving up to "the high bunk".   I was secretly thrilled that he wanted to stay in his own room...a double loft bed is not helpful when your seventy-something mother comes ...

A few weeks ago Robin Williams was everywhere you looked. People were desperate for details; to find the one thing that assured them that his situation was so different from theirs that they are safe; that it could never be them. But if you suffer from depression, the suicide of such a brilliant, successful, individual; part of our lives for so many years and responsible for so many laughs; looks like a leak in your boat. A friend asked me, "Ok but no one knows what the future holds.  Could he not see that?" For someone drowning in the dark spiral of depression, there is no future. There is only now. There is only nothing.  The boat is gone.  You are under. It is not about your spouse or your friends or your kids or career or fans or dogs or anything.  When the darkness squeezes it is all about now.  And now is nothing.  It is bleak and empty and so dark, you cannot see a bottom, or edges or surface ---just darkness. "Some...

It has been made abundantly clear to me via my 15 year old step-son that setting up a tent in the backyard is not camping.  In fact, he goes so far as to 'air quote' camping each time he refers to my now obsession with sleeping in a tent in the backyard.  He claims camping occurs at a campsite, in a campground.   (I am sure anyone who hikes and sets up in the wilderness is now 'air quoting' his use of the word 'camping'.) It is all a matter of perspective I suppose.   Nevertheless, I get what he is saying.   So it seems to me that this now begs the question---what do you call it when you set up a tent in your back yard and sleep in it for a month? (minus the two days that there were extreme hail and thunderstorm warnings)  Bohemian backyarding?  Tenting?  Suburban Sleeping Out?  Lazy Stay-cay? Whatever it is called, I am forever in love with it.  Which is an amazing thing to me because: a) I am a light sleep...

When you sleep in a yellow tent, each day you open your eyes to a bright, golden morning, regardless of what is going on in the outside world. Keep the warmth in your heart regardless of what is going on around you.

When I talk to my kids about school, I talk about choice.  It has always seemed to me that the more choice you have in life the better.  So I encourage my kids to take a variety of courses, be active inside and outside of the classroom and do their very best at whatever they tackle.  In doing so, I believe that they will have a variety of options available to them when it comes to further education, employment and all the other things life has to offer.  They will have more choice. In my final year of high school, I decided to drop all my science courses in favor of extra spare periods that meant I only had two classes in my final semester..  This would allow of course, extra time for studying while at school during spare periods (socializing), university prep (spending time with my boyfriend) and planning my future (going to bars and dancing all night).  As a result, the choice of becoming a marine biologist was removed from the table as an option...

As an only child for eight years, and a bit of a loner even after my sister came along, I had a rich fantasy life.  I imagined myself on stage wowing the crowds as I crooned along to the creamy sounds of ABBA, disco danced into fame to Saturday Night Fever and was absolutely sure that somewhere, near my home, there was buried treasure.....or dinosaur bones.   One of my favorite things to do was to quickly flip the pages of a catalog, stop at a random page and imagine I could choose anything on that page for myself.  Landing on a page of men's socks would earn a "re-do" or three additional picks--it all depended on my mood that day. I fervently remember pouring over the Canadian Tire catalog when it came in the mail each year. Much like the Sears Christmas catalog that consumed many hours of fantasy purchases in the toy section, I often confined my "random" page flipping to the camping section. This section required many picks. After all, I had to se...