Friday, February 19, 2010

Friday Thoughts

I am drowning in work.

Next month, I will spend more days away from my home than in it and if I think about that for more than a few minutes, it makes my stomach hurt. It's hard to know where to draw the line, especially in the current economic climate and frankly, I'm not the most adept person at saying no.

Of course, being busy is a good problem to have except that between my professional obligations and my life as wife, mother and gym enthusiast, the bloggy side of me is suffering. So please forgive me both for the randomness of the following thoughts and the fact that they are bullet pointed.

  • American Idol: I love it in spite of the fact that I am an emotional sap and cried right along with the final 24 contestants as they learned that they made it through.
  • Speaking of hormones: Mine are all over the map. I think I need pharmaceuticals. Or a truckload of chocolate. Or some wild yam cream. Or a personal assistant.
  • Marriage: It's like being wrapped in a warm, comfortable sweater. I love my husband.
  • Teenagers: Irrational, terminally lazy, foul, emotionally retarded, giant, sucking holes of self entitlement and need.
  • Books: Can't seem to settle my mind long enough to absorb a single sentence. I miss losing myself in a story.
  • Treadmill: Love/hate relationship. Love the feeling of getting a great cardio workout. Love the flood of endorphins immediately afterward that bathe the world in a soft, benevolent glow. Hate that my knees hurt so badly that I can hardly walk the next day. There has to be a solution because every single one of the really fit women at the gym spends a considerable amount of time on the treadmill. Is it the chicken egg thing? Do you have to be in prime shape to run on the treadmill without pain or do you run on the treadmill to get into prime shape?
  • Tiger Woods: His personal life is none of my business and frankly, I don't want to waste a single second clucking over his transgressions. They don't interest me. Apology? Oh dear God, you've got to be kidding me. That choir boy image he had is gone, never to return. He's human and flawed like the rest of us slobs so, can we all just shed the pretension and get the greatest golfer that has ever played the game back on the links?
  • Beer, pizza and Buffalo Wild Wings: Yes, yes and um..yes.
  • Birthdays: Although mine came with a hot stone massage I'll be experiencing tomorrow, birthdays are better when they're not your own. Like grandchildren.
Okay, that's it. I'm hoping to have something more insightful and better written next week. I'll be in Philly for a couple of days so at least we can talk cheesesteak, right.

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Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Happy Birthday To Me

Today is my birthday.

I'm forty-three.

I cannot believe it.

My mum encouraged me to relish my forties because, in her opinion, these are the times when we generally have a few bucks, a bunch of experience and still look and feel pretty good. I'd say that's a fair characterization.

And the truth is, I'm loving my forties. They've been very good to me so far.

With that said, I do have a few complaints, namely the decay.

Where did my eyesight go? Wasn't it just yesterday that I could effortlessly thread a needle or read the label on a pill bottle? Nothing symbolizes the aging process quite like the acquisition of one's first pair of bifocals. I can't express how much it pisses me off to have to put on a pair of readers to make sense of the small print.

And how about the body changes? Boobs making a southern pilgrimage, spider veins, wild hormonal fluctuations and hair. Without the benefit of regular waxing, you could stick a cigar in my mouth and call me Groucho Marx.

As a teenager, I used to flip through the fashion magazines and wonder if women really bought those anti-aging creams that promised to erase the hands of time.

"What a scam", I remember thinking.

Today, I am an AVID consumer and in my bathroom, I have very specialized concoctions. Besides the Retin-A, I have a tube of stuff that promises to lighten the black circles under my eyes. I have concentrated eye serum. I have one cream for the daytime with SPF and one for the night which promises to slake my thirsty skin. I have this pencil-like applicator which delivers a concentrated "plumping" lotion to the deepening crevices between my brows and around my mouth. I am a newly crowned BOTOX queen and I'm not ashamed to admit that I do not intend to go quietly into middle age. I shall use every tool available to appear to age gracefully.

I have learned that the excesses of my youth (too numerous to detail here) are no longer much of a secret. They are etched on my face and settled into the ligaments of my knees. As each day passes, I am surprised to see my father staring back at me from the mirror. Where I once dismissed my mother's ideas about food and holistic healing (with a saucy flick of a cigarette and a gulp of some intoxicant), I now embrace them with wide open arms and a fervent desire to remain healthy.

In an interview with Oprah, Cher was once asked how she felt about aging.

"It sucks," she replied.

I suppose there's some relevance to that sentiment because honestly, who wouldn't want their twenty five year old body back? In hindsight, I'd be a lot kinder to mine. But I wouldn't want to revisit that time if it meant that I'd have to give up my experiences, paycheque or the perspective that I have now because the truth is, life in my forties is pretty damn sensational.

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Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Travel Follies

I woke up a week ago feeling like a sack of garbage. My throat was raw and there was so much pressure in my head that if I leaned over just so, my eyeballs threatened to jump right out of their sockets. I left work after a few hours and went home to bed.

The following morning, I begged Dallas to run me over with his truck because I figured the internal bleeding would distract me from trying to cut out my sinuses with a razor blade. He suggested that a visit to the doctor might be more productive.

I'm all for natural remedies like zinc lozenges and mammoth quantities of vitamin C and that is usually the route I take to treat the first signs of illness but Thursday morning as my doctor wrote out prescription after prescription for drugs that promised more immediate relief, I embraced my inner junkie. At that moment, if someone had told me that heroin would help, I would have gladly offered up a vein.

By Friday night, with antibiotics, steroids, decongestants and antihistamines coursing through my bloodstream, I began to feel better. Sunday night, I was confident that I'd be able to fly to Indianapolis the next morning.

I hate traveling.

To say that I have poor travel luck is a giant understatement but since I am aware of this, I aim low.

I expect to be delayed.
I expect that my rental car will not be ready.
I understand that my hotel room tub will invariably contain remnants from its last occupant.
I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that if there is a condensation leak, a faulty tray table or a broken air valve, my seat on the airplane will be the recipient of the malfunction.
I get it and I've learned how to cope.

Having said that, there is only so much a gal can take before she starts to wonder if the universe is trying to tell her something.

I arrived at my little airport to a nearly empty security area. There were four TSA agents, me and one other person. I placed my stuff on the security conveyor and walked through the metal detector. I didn't buzz off but the bored TSA agent on the other side decided to give me a "random pat down". That's what she said to me in this odd, conspiratorial, whisper as she asked me to spread my arms and legs. Creeped me out and ruffled my feathers just a bit but I figured that she was just trying to earn her keep so I made the conscious decision to blow it off.

Then, I wandered into the gift shop to grab a litre of water for the trip and had my corporate credit card declined. Apparently, someone had stolen my credit card number and was trying to rack up a bunch of charges with T-Mobile. Fabulous. Which meant I'd have to use my own card. What's the problem, you ask? Well, I'm not the most disciplined about applying the reimbursement cheque right back to my credit card. I don't know why; I'm just not.

After this little drama, I walked to my gate area to find that my flight had been delayed. No problem. Expected, right? To me, a delay is something that can be expressed in sixty minutes or less. When one is made to wait for HOURS AND HOURS, the airlines should have to call it something else like, "huge inconvenience" or "unreasonable waste of your time" or "meeting rescheduler" or "go get yourself an alcoholic beverage and tuck in for the long run".

Eventually, I did get a flight to my next destination. We were on a small plane which takes your carry on luggage and stows it in the belly of the plane because the overhead bins are too small. At our destination, we disembarked and waited at the end of the jet bridge for our bags to come up via an elevator. After twenty minutes, a gate was pulled up exposing the elevator and there they were. Except mine. I turned to the gate agent and asked if the elevator would go back down and come up with more bags.

Ummm..no.

Together we went back to the elevator and looked. Empty. "They must have mistakenly put it on the baggage carousel", she said.

Of course. Because that's how I roll, baby.

Stressed, I marched away in search of the baggage carousel, already in Plan B mode, thinking I might have to make some emergency toiletry and clothing purchases if my bag didn't turn up. Over the loudspeaker, I heard the gate agent calling me back. I arrived and watched her through the window of the closed jet bridge door as she dragged my carry on behind her. She flung open the door and inexplicably angry, she spat, "You left this on the elevator." For a split second, I contemplated reminding her that together, we had both looked at the inside of that empty elevator but I thought better of it, said thank you and left. I tried very hard to wish her love, joy and prosperity in my head although I may have slipped just a bit and given her the stink eye. At least I had my bag.

I arrived at the next gate only to learn that I was delayed. Again.

By this time, it was early evening, I had no chance of making my dinner meeting and I had been on the road for nine hours. I began an internal dialogue with myself (Some call it under-medicated. I call it coping.) and set my new goal as trying to reach the hotel before midnight. If it hadn't been for the 6 person queue and a single agent on duty at the car rental place at my destination or the fact that the Garmin navigation system maps hadn't been updated since Indy opened their new airport, I might have met my objective. But alas, at 11:30 pm, I was in STOP AND GO traffic on an Indiana freeway with a bloody Garmin on crack. For a fleeting second, I contemplated buying a pack of cigarettes at the next available exit. Instead, I cranked up the music until the speakers vibrated and sang myself hoarse.

After midnight, nearly fourteen hours since my trek began, I made it to my hotel room, stripped off my clothes and reached into the shower to turn it on. And I'll be darned but there wasn't a single, stray curly in the tub.

Thank god for small mercies.

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Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Future Weekend Gardener

Have I mentioned the Omnivore's Dilemma and how you need to run out right thisverysecond and get yourself a copy or get the free Kindle app from Amazon on your computer and download it?

Whew. I felt an evangelical moment coming on there and had to take a second to let it pass.

Anyway, the book has changed my life. For real. But there have been some unexpected side effects.

Like delusion.

This weekend, I purchased one of those above ground garden beds so that when the spring hits, we can fill it with a mixture of compost and organic soil and grow stuff to eat. I have these pastoral visions of bounty whereby I say things like, "C'mon kids. Let's go pick our dinner!" And in my dream, they clap their hands together in excitement, grab a basket and skip out the back door behind me.

Unfortunately, my children are the only things that I have managed to grow with any success and let's be clear; by success, I mean that I haven't killed them. I can't say the same thing for the plants that have crossed my path so, this whole garden idea of mine could wind up being just another litterbox for the neighbourhood cats. It's a crap shoot.

Regardless, I've heard that vigorous gardening burns about 300 calories an hour. While not as efficient as the treadmill, there's still a part of me that will be thinking about that as I sow, water, weed and (hopefully) harvest.

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Monday, February 1, 2010

Random Monday Thoughts

The kids are home from school today.

Again.

I am determined not to let this bother me in spite of the fact that these NEVER ENDING SNOW DAYS are making it difficult to book our holiday home to Canada. Originally, we thought it would be a great idea to go the week after Memorial Day to take advantage of the stat holiday but alas, the children will be sitting in a classroom doing productive things like cleaning out their desks and having pizza parties.

No matter.

On Friday, I was in a meeting when my son text me to let me know that they had finished their chores and oh, by the way, Olivia had consumed several extra vitamins.

PARDON?!!!!

I excused myself from the meeting, called home and learned that she had ingested 7 vitamins. Panicked, I put the kids on hold and called poison control who assured me that she would be fine except there was no telling how her bowels would respond. She could either be spending a lot of quality time on the potty or she could be stopped up like a clogged drain. They recommended that she drink water and that I get a lick of common sense and put the vitamins in a cool, dark, OUT OF REACH, place. So much for the child proof cap.

The weekend was marginally better. I got a pedicure and a manicure but I didn't get my period. Oh sorry. Was that too much info?

I bring it up only because it's been 43 days since my last one and I am trying desperately to avoid thinking about the implications. Since my hubby no longer has any swimmers, it can't be a bun in the oven, right? RIGHT? I refuse to entertain the idea that somehow, nature has overcome the handiwork of a surgeon.

So, that leaves me with the obvious.

I don't know whether to throw a party in celebration or to mourn. There is something slightly disconcerting when one's fertility can only be seen in the rear view mirror.

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