Virtual Reality

A year ago I was in a dark place. 

(I may have mentioned it a few times before.)

One of the places I turned for a bit of sympathy (or at the very least similar dark places) was the interwebs.  I somehow stumbled upon a wedding planning website.  I was searching ‘life transition blogs’ and the wormhole that is the interwebs sent me to A Practical Wedding.  I was done with the wedding stuff.  So very done.  But there seemed to be a bit of a kindred community there so I stuck around. 

This virtual community led me to other smart women looking for a bit of non-partisan advice and banter, virtually.  But funnily enough, some of those ‘virtual’ ladies became very real ladies and very dear friends.  Friends that join you on a mid-week runaway to Bath.  Send corny and fabulous postcards from the MidWest.  Brave the Christmas Crazies to go ice skating.  Send you good thoughts and baked goods when you go through one of the hardest moments of your life.    

I have since moved on from the original website, but I stuck with the smart, sassy ladies.  So when some of these virtual friends decided to organize an international gift exchange.  I was on board.  I was a bit nervous.  No lie.  I wasn’t familiar with everyone taking part but they seem good seeds so why not?

I was intimidated by my giftee.  But I sallied forth to my local market and did some browsing and digging and amazingly enough found the perfect thing.  Afterwards I realized that most of the lovely ladies were crafting their gifts and I felt like I cheated a bit.  However, I decided to go with my skill set and that is not crafting.  I do however have browsing my local market down to a science. 

So I sent it off.  Realizing after the fact that I didn’t actually wrap it and feeling like a real shit.  As luck would have it, she loved it anyway.  Phew!!

Now it was time to wait for my package.  Again, the nerves.  But not about the gift.  About Royal Mail.  No gift-giving occasion goes by without the Royal Mail and I butting heads.  It has become a tradition.  I don’t mean to criticize, but how is that a country that once ruled the globe cannot manage to deliver a package five blocks. 

Wednesday, a very large package appeared at my door.  I didn’t recognize the name and suddenly realized, THIS IS IT!!!  Greedily, I dove into the green packing peanuts to find…..

Maps and Maples. 

I got over my initial giddiness and on closer examination realized that the map coasters were personalized.  They were places that were incredible meaningful to me.  HOW COOL!!!!

And lovely lady that my gifter is, she also included a bit of herself.  A map of her home state and the signature tree and accompanying syrup.  What she couldn’t have known, but which makes it all the more cool, is the personal connection I have with maple leaves. 

A maple leaf immediately takes me back to 687 Dunny Ave.   My childhood home is fronted by two huge Silver Maples.  They produced a maddening amount of leaves which in turn produced the highest and biggest leaf pile for blocks around.  (Which, let’s face it, as a kid is pretty much your entire world.) Jumping in the leaf mountain until it was reduced to a mound of leaf bits (and the following chore of having to then rake the leaf bits back into a pile and transport to the compost heap) is a fairly prominent memory of that house.   

Once again, the interwebs are proven wonderful and full of lovely ladies with not only sass, but good taste and great crafting skills. 

As my virtual-recently-turned-real-friend Anna would say, ‘HUZZAH!’

...and a very Happy Holiday season. 

Holiday Hiatus

The scant 8 hours of daylight are seriously taxing my holiday cheer not to mention my writing mojo.  It took me a long time to get into the spirit and I can’t say that I am completely there, but I am trying.  The house is suitably dressed, but I’m not feeling it this year. 

I do sometimes feel as though the Christmas season gets undue attention.  I’m not saying I don’t enjoy the holiday season, but I do feel a bit sorry for other holidays that don’t get nearly as much build-up or domestic attention.  Silly and ridiculous? Perhaps.  But I can’t help feeling that Christmas is the beautiful, popular, impossibly smart and nice and funny older sister to all the other holidays and constantly stealing focus.  Through no fault of its own, of course. 

Despite this feeling, I have decked our halls and created a modest pile of gifts and menu for two.  I have watched Love Actually at least twice and finally caught The Christmas Story on TV this weekend.  I turn on the fairy lights in the kitchen and living room first thing to inject a little magic into the grey (yet no snow) days and attempt a little work. 

It was a long and hard year.  Different from the work of 2010, but hard work nonetheless.  As the year starts to wrap up I find I am prepared, if not a little frightened, for the year to come.  I feel as though there are big changes ahead.  These are exciting and scary.  As all new years and changes should be, I think.  But the excitement and butterflies lies with me.  I have the power to pull these things off, or to hide under the duvet and watch the slip away.  As wonderful as my duvet is, I think it is time I do a bit of work.  The loveliness of the duvet will be all sweeter when used a bit more sparingly.

This will not be easy, I will flail numerous times.  It’s my patented process.  But as greedy as it sounds, I want a bit more.  I have a lovely marriage and a lovely, albeit small, home and lovely degrees and lovely passport stamps and increasingly better health, but I want a smidge more for the next year.   That’s all on me. 

That being said, the holiday hiatus here will continue at least until the New Year.  There are a few ends that need to be woven into the 2011 afghan to make it a clean finish.  That means a bit of a rush to the finish, but I always do my best work under pressure (perhaps a skill that I shouldn’t cultivate as much as I do.) 

Happy Holidays to all and in case I don’t get back in time, here’s to a very Happy and Healthy End of Year and New Year!!! 

Ahh Normality

This lovely morning, as I settled in with my coffee to write the mighty return of the Reluctant Housewife, my washer started acting up.  Lights flashing, suds building, water rising, non-responsive to fevered button pushing...

I guess it's starved for attention. 

I'm not saying Pete wasn't doing laundry while I was away.  It's clear by the hanging shirts in the bathroom, that he was keeping up just fine.  However, I doubt very much he was doing a load (or more) a day. 

So now the washer, obviously desperate for attention and some TLC, is taking a time out until I have the time and patience to load another bundle of clothes in and watch as it freaks out again.  Because before I call customer support and dish out a service payment I have to exhaust all the 'troubleshooting' advice in the manual.  This could very well mean manually emptying the sudsy water when it fails again and rinsing the sudsy clothes/towels whatever in the tub again. 

I can barely stand to think of it. 


But before I tackle the washing machine I am working up the patience to wait in line at Royal Mail in order to send off our last round of Christmas presents. 


Deep breath.  AAAANNNDDDD  GO!

Balance is Restored

This is what Pete said as we snuggled in under the duvet, in our own flat, on our own couch watching our own (very tiny) TV. 

Our life can go back to its regularly scheduled monotony.  I can’t wait. 

However, as I stumbled into the house after a day of travelling that included three hours of fairly intense turbulence, 2 bouts of airplane toilet puking and about 1 million pissed-off London commuters, it felt oddly familiar.  Odd in that I caught myself second-guessing my reflex actions.  Is this actually the silverware drawer?  Has Pete switched up food storage while I was away?  And of course, it was and, he hasn’t.  But while I was unpacking and putting my stuff away I was also tidying the kitchen and house, reasserting my place in our life and daily upkeep. 

It was unconscious and completely fabulous!!  I was exhausted and achey, but I was smiling and content. 

Before the marvellous monotony sets in, I’m onto the business of an international Christmas.  We are home this season but there are cards and packages to send off before the end of the week to ensure that the post office has plenty of time to re-route everything through Newfoundland. 

It starts with Turkey

Three years ago, Pete and I called our families and friends from a hotel in Istanbul to tell them the moment they had been expecting the past 3 years finally happened.  We were engaged. 

It seems a long time ago and at the same time, not so long ago.  We had spent the previous summer apart.  Our second bout of long-distance relationship-ing.  For those of you that still are long-distancing or have ever long-distanced.  My heart goes out to you.  It is tortuous. 

My lovey returned home Sunday afternoon and we are immediately back to what feels like long-distance again.  It feels like ages since I have been home and taking care of business.  We left for Morocco on October 8^th.  When we returned 18 days later, I had two very busy, non-usual, weeks before leaving for The States for a month.  When I return home on December 6^th it will be almost two months since I have had a regular schedule for housewifing and writing and working. 

On my first run after the gluttonous event that was Thanksgiving  week(end) I was thinking about how much I missed my usual running route but also about how much I missed my life. 

Being away from home and routine can sometimes feel like being in a kind of limbo.  I’m not talking about vacations, but more those necessary trips so common to us expats like family visits, visa visits, admin visits.  Those visits where you return to a place that should feel familiar, that is a part of you, but doesn’t really fit who you are anymore.  You hang between your past and current self.  You spend the days continually negotiating the space between these identities.  Or at least I do when there is nothing on TV and the cats are responding to my attempts to play with them. 

I find it next to impossible to get anything done during these trips.  This may be due to my own lack of self-motivation, but mostly I spend my time trying to come to some routine that works.  Routines are very important to me.  I find it very hard to function without one.  That’s not to say I can’t roll with it when I must, but on a day to day basis I like to know what I am doing when.  This doesn’t happen when I am away. 

Getting back to the Turkey.  It was appropriate for Pete to wait for Thanksgiving.  First, it’s one of my favourite holidays, right after Halloween, second, it is the time my family traditionally celebrates my birthday along with my Dad’s and Aunt’s.  I went into my thirties an engaged woman.  An identity I never expected or wanted until I met Pete.  Of course, I spent my actual birthday taking care of Pete and then eventually puking myself because we were foolish enough to drink the water in Istanbul, but let’s skip over that. 

I was thinking of all these things as I ran and I was thinking that I could never planned the life I am currently living.  As a young girl in Sheffield Lake I don’t know if I dared to think this kind of life was possible.  I know I had wistful dreams of being an explorer or a dancer or an actress, but I don’t think I ever really took those seriously.  Sheffield Lake is not a place that nurtures dreams. 

Today I am going back to Sheffield Lake to be a guest teacher in my old middle school.  I am teaching a class about Geography.  I know it is only a day, only one class, but maybe it will help a student dream of something bigger than Sheffield Lake and take that dream seriously.

Three years ago, I was in Turkey for Thanksgiving (which until that point had been just a joke on Everyone Loves Raymond) and was living a life that seemed impossible to a younger Ariel.  I was also embarking on a life that I hadn’t even gotten around to dreaming about as a younger Ariel.  Somehow, that moment I said ‘yes,’ and those few days in Istanbul, have come to mean so very much to me and who I am.

And here’s the thing, for as much as I like my daily routines, my larger life timeline and history happened almost entirely by chance or spur-of-the-moment decisions.  In the last year, as I slowly come out of a very dark time in which I thought I was a huge failure and life was one big screw-up after another, I have begun to realize that my obsession with planning everything is a bit of a an anchor.  When I just go with ‘it,’ ‘it’ seems to produce benefits, whereas when I attempt to plan my life, I end up in Limbo.  On the couch, trying to produce something and spinning my wheels. 

This Thanksgiving, and the end of The Days of Thanks, I am thankful for all the unexpected and unplanned moments and decisions in my life that have led me here.  Despite all my complaining, I am very happy.  Perhaps more happy than I have ever been. 

Turkey for all!!!!

I hope your Days of Thanks have been equally as illuminating and wonderful and send you into the holiday and end of year with a big smile and goodwill toward all.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a large pimple on my nose that needs attention.  It’s like my body knows I’m going to a middle school today and wanted to make sure I fit in, or at least knock me down a peg.

To the Finish*

12-11.  Old Friends

I spent the weekend catching up with old friends.  Except calling them old friends seems off somehow.  They have been my friends for over at least 10 years now, and some have been around my entire life, so I guess that qualifies as ‘old’ but I still keep in regular contact with them via the wonder that is the internet.  The term ‘old’ friend brings up images of people you haven’t spoken to in years and are surprised, on meeting up, that they have grown or shrunk or have three kids hanging off them. 

It’s funny, though.  We don’t have a lot to catch up on.  Life is just puttering on as usual.  There are no great adventures to detail or relationship drama to discuss.  We have all settled into that part of life where it is an even keel with occasional swells here and there but nothing really to write home about.  That’s not to say we don’t enjoy hearing about the gentle sways of domestic life, but the meet-ups become more an opportunity to see each other.  To remember what the voice of your friend sounds like and to recognize the familiar gestures, again. 

That’s a lot of babble and just a long way of saying that I am very thankful for the friends that have stuck with me despite my ‘foreign’ resident status. 

10-9.  Mum’s foot

Well, not really.  But her unexpected sprain on Friday night provided the opportunity to do some returns Monday morning which resulted in some Christmas shopping as well. 

We still aren’t sure how she did it.  One second she was fine, the next she was on the ground.  I would say too much wine, but she didn’t drink any (as far as I know, maybe she was sneaking some on her trips to the bathroom).  Luckily, due to the pack-rat tendencies of the house (or the ability to see prop/scenery potential in every item) there were a few foot related medical supplies (a ‘moon’ boot and crutches) around the house to keep her mobile.  The doctor says she should be good to go in a few weeks and added yet another item to the medical-themed costume/prop shop in the basement.

However, this does mean that there is only room for two people on the couch in the TV room, but I watch too much as it is. 

So, I am thankful that I was around to get her to the doctor on Monday and look forward to seeing how the new addition to the costume shop turns up in one of her classroom productions.

8.  Cheap tickets

I am the first to lament the days of classy travel.  I physically shudder whenever I see adults in a velour tracksuit, or any such attire that could classify as pajamas, checking in at the counter.  I’m all for comfort and I understand that the seats are getting smaller and comfort is less and less important in Standard class flying, but take a little care.  Please!! 

However, that being said, I am thankful Pete can get a cheap-ish flight (it’s all relative, really) to come over for Thanksgiving weekend.  It is a big sacrifice on his part. It’s a long way to go for just a few days and he is taking a red-eye back to work, which I know will bite him in the ass, but I am overly excited to pick him up from the airport. 

I think the family is probably excited to see him too.  (Maybe more than they are to see me).

*I am ending the Days of Thanks on Thanksgiving.  It seems appropriate as my head immediately turns to my birthday and Christmas by Saturday.  Also, let's be honest, I will just assign the last few days to Pete like I did last year.

Risking my neck

13.  Scary stuff

OOOHHH!  Lucky 13 on a Friday.  This could go horribly wrong. 

You know that Eleanor Roosevelt quote, “Do something that scares you every day.”?  I have been thinking a lot about that idea for the last few weeks.  Ever since I participated in an online course about ‘finding your path’ in life.  I know, it’s a bit heavy, but it was an interesting exercise.  I didn’t learn too much I didn’t already know about myself, but I did come away with this idea of doing something that takes courage every day. 

I’m not talking about slaying dragons or jumping off cliffs, here.  Although if the opportunity presents itself and you’re mildly interested, go for it.  I’m talking about simple things that can sometimes feel monumental. 

Making the phone call you have been putting off.

Wearing the ‘too loud’ colour (even if it’s just around the house).

Attempting the impossible recipe.

Writing the long-shot application.

Wearing the red lipstick.

Declaring your occupation ‘Writer’ on the immigration form.

Hell, on some days just getting out of bed can feel impossible.   

Because you might fail or feel uncomfortable, but what if you don’t?  This is the part that I try to concentrate on, ‘What if I don’t fail?’  What if that burnt orange colour looks fabulous on me?  What if that application is noticed this time? 

Until recently I have been making decisions about my life in the opposite manner.  I would only attempt things I knew I could accomplish (or was too cocky to think I couldn’t).  And this served me well, but it also limited me and taught me to be a bit afraid of hard work. 

Don’t get me wrong, that bloody PhD was the hardest thing I have ever done, but I knew when I started it that I could do it. 

Yesterday, I went to a new yoga class.  I was a bit apprehensive.  I haven’t properly practiced in months and these ladies looked serious.  I mean they had all the gear and the outfits and the leader had arms like carved marble.  Within a few minutes I knew this was going to be a challenging class.  I started to freak out a bit.  Up until now, I have been one of the more ‘advanced’ students in all my yoga classes.  This was not going to be the case here.  I was behind in the sequence and my arms were already wobbling.  I kept breathing and moving and I began to feel a bit more calm.  I remembered that yoga isn’t about pushing into crazy poses, but listening to your body and finding its strengths or flexibilities.  It’s not about force. 

I don’t buy into most of the spiritual side of Yoga.  What can I say, I’m full up.  But I did find a freedom in not being the ‘advanced’ student.  I was able to concentrate on my own practice and body with the knowledge that no one was looking to me as an example.  I was able to take the posture further if I wanted, but could also take it easy if I wasn’t comfortable.  I really connected with what my body was capable of and also pushed it a bit. 

But apparently not far enough.  During a ‘camel’ sequence I was taking the easier pose (which to me felt difficult enough) when the instructor approached and gently suggested I go a bit further.  I was apprehensive and she could tell in my body, I tensed up.  But she also saw in my body that I could go further and when I started to freak out a bit (about falling on my head and cracking my neck in the process and then being paralysed and unable to return home….) she offered support, physically and verbally.  ‘I know you can do this, I can see it in your body. I got you.’  It was such a simple thing. 

And I did.  I did it fairly easily.  I was scared (in a mild sense) but I did it.  And it felt really good.  I remembered why I practice.  I didn’t push it and attempt the headstand, one potential neck injury is enough, thank you.  That one instance in that one posture was enough. 

Today I am thankful for the potentially scary stuff each day brings.  I don’t always succeed at tackling them, but I always learn something.  For example, I shouldn’t wear red lipstick. 

*still house-daughtering, not nearly as fun and rewarding as housewife-ing (see, scary stuff)