Hot Time, Summer in the City

Summer is here in full swing.

We've gone through our round of graduation parties, including but not limited to my son's 5th grade graduation. No one warned me 5th grade grads were such a big deal. I'm guessing that means I should start saving for tuxes and limos now, because in 7 years time, I can only fathom how huge a deal it's going to be. It was all I could do not to burst out laughing at all the pomp and circumstance attached to his ceremony last week. I'm surprised they didn't choose a class valedictorian.

Anyways, with that grad party and the obligatory PTA after-grad finished, it was on to my own Advancement of Excellence grad a couple of days later. Some of you may recall that I have been attending a seminar series these past several weeks/months and last Saturday was about celebrating our successes (whilst minimizing or eradicating our failures) and/or accomplished goals and tasks we set out to achieve all those many weeks ago.

Mine was about vitality, given that I've been feeling very sluggish (there's that word again) about my/our lot in life south of the border. Anyways, I decided to practice a little law of attraction stuff by changing the radio station from the country twang station (I can't get a job, I need to start getting pedicures with flowers to fit in, it's expensive here, and there ain't nothing on the home market available) to a more upbeat tune (God Bless America). OK, so maybe it wasn't so upbeat (I was actually singing God Bless My Underwear), but that's elementary, dear Watson. You sing America, I sing my underwear - potate toe, potat toe. My tune had changed and that was the important shift. And then I started saying a little affirmation statement to myself in the mirror. Check it out - I'm slim and trim and love the gym, je m'adore from core to limb.

I heart affirmation statements. It's like looking in the mirror and telling yourself that which is so not true but when delivering in such a way that you feel good believing the audacious lie, it brings a smile to one's face. So anyways, I started doing that because well, because I've never said nice things to myself before. I've never been narcissistic that way ~ admiring myself and murmuring, whoo, you are SOME hot...you should go out! So anyways, that's been fun. And I've been getting little notes from "The Universe" in my daily e-mail. On average, I get about 10 to 15 e-mails show up overnight but without fail, when I see that lone note from "The Universe" each morning, I feel compelled to click it open first. I mean, it's from the Universe. Universe trumps Target e-flyers and all the other junk that comes in. Just a tad. So that's been uber fun too...

Anything to keep my vibe away from radio goo goo, Radio ga ga, and tuned in, instead, to a more positive vibe like say Electric Avenue. I could have chosen REO Speedwagon but Beast Mom beat me to it.

Anyhoo, so back to my grad party. We all gathered in our small support groups and were ushered to the front of the room, group by group, to present our schtuff. Our group was introduced with Born to Be Wild blaring, because we were the RiCH Renegades (a team of individuals investing in Relationships, Career & Health), and our team action was a motorcycle rev. So here's a pic of us acting out a little silly dance choreography I orchestrated and somehow managed to talk everyone into following my lead to. Picture doing the hokey pokey in front of a crowd of perplexed and confused onlookers.

That's me - the shy, introvert, front and centre stage there.
















Thank God for red wine on an empty stomach, that's all I can say.

I bragged to everyone in the room about the amazing things I attracted - an amazing group of fellow Renegades for one. A 30-year all-time high exchange rate (or low, depending on which way you're transferring your dollars), a house I shall easily call home, and the biggie of all biggies, the final frontier of our green cards. So it would seem that my course focus - which was vitality - is now coming to me in droves because I live now on pure adrenaline, barely getting through the list of daunting tasks in front of me each day.

Blah blah, goo goo ga ga, it was a fun night in what has otherwise been a rather un-fun time.

I know, I know. I'm supposed to be excited (and I will soon, I promise) about house purchase, green cards, and this business of finally setting in - I've been blogging and lamenting about straddling the border for so long, a balancing act that has been relatively easy up til now, but wait until B&C Inc. put up the Great Barbed Wire Wall of America between the Canadian & US borders. Then you want to hear Electric Avenue. That's a brand of vitality I never wish to experience. Like the dudes coming across from Tijuana who were hiding out under the engine hood. Now that's a Darwin Award waiting to happen.

But back to vitality. My friend, Rahul, the lean, mean, trading machine featured in the above images, stage right, presented me with the coolest gift as part of a little gift exchange we did. He's a self-professed Holy Schmidt blog lurker but I don't mind because he has the good grace to admit he lurks. And so he combined elements of what I consider my blueprint for success - things like vitality, passion, pride & joy, and he attached them to images that speak to those (my) success elements, including one of my fave pics of my kids walking down a mountain 4 or 5 years back, and he made a t-shirt out of it. How. Cool. Is. That?! Rahul, you rock. Thank you again!
So anyways, that's about it. Busy finalizing the house deal still. The bank is now in a flurry because they can't decipher my Canadian social insurance number (SIN) from my fake SSN (I now have the IRS on my ass, don't I?) ~ which is a a temporary number called an ITIN which doesn't have credit info linked~ and thus, they may not be able to attach my name to the loan. I gave her a quick lesson in SIN vs. SSN but it was all Greek to her and frustrating as hell for me.

I will be glad to finally get a SSN this fall because the hoopla of trying to be taken seriously in this country without one is staggering. Fighting to have a bank account and in fact, I still can't have a picture on my debit card because I don't have a SSN. Thank God for Safeway and Blockbuster and Starbucks cards, otherwise I wouldn't have any credible ID in this nation. :)

Changing the subject ~ (I know, that's so not like me) ~ we're going to the Mariners vs. Blue Jays game tonight with some friends who are coming down from Canada to catch the game.

I'm hoping to be able to stand up and sing the Canadian national anthem. If you've been reading my blogs for the past couple years (if so, God bless you, you're tenacious and perhaps slightly twisted and clearly have the patience of Job to endure my run-on sentences and nonsensical ramblings - there will be a spot reserved for you in Holy Heaven) - you know that one of the first things that struck me as odd when I moved here is that no one sings the national anthem at games here. (Hey, I'm from hockey territory, remember?) They stand with hands upon hearts and look up to the sky (wth? - looking for God, perhaps?). Whereas we Canadians take great karaokean pride in bumbling like drunken idiots at sporting events through our changed-lyrics anthem. So if you're watched the game on TV tonight, look for us way up in the nosebleeds, alternating between waving our Mariners fingers and root, root, rooting for the home team, and half-ass cheering on our primordial national home team. I'm not a Blue Jays fan - I'm from the west - 'nuff said, but this is Canada Day weekend, after all, so it will be any excuse to show my national pride.

On that note, I'm off to get ready for a Canadiana weekend with all things red & white - drinking red and white wine, bbq'ing both red & white meat, eating red & white potato salad, and enjoying desserts of raspberries & cream and even saskatoon pie (had to get some blue in there somewhere). We will honour Canada's 140th b-day on Sunday but we'll be celebrating a day early with our friends in town and our son off to boy scout camp on the Sunday.

So if you hear national news reports of people shooting off fireworks nauseatingly early (ie. Saturday), don't be alarmed - it's just us crazy Canucks, making up for the fact that fireworks are illegal where we come from.

And heh, don't go blaming me for my oppressed pyromaniac tendencies - blame Canada.

Slugs, Thugs & Drugs

I woke up talking to myself today. Not out loud although that's not necessarily uncommon. No, I was having all these monologues in my head. Anomalistic thoughts, ideas and proto-essays were beginning to form a union and picket to be let out.

It's as though they were on vacation or a long season's slumber or something because I have not even had barely a moment since mid-May to think let alone unleash these unconscious, proletariat anarchists outside my cerebral confines.

So then I looked at my last blog post date and I nodded my head. Ten days since my last post. It's enough to make me want to gesture a sign of the cross. I can only have the theme song for all's quiet on the western front on the auto-loop for so long before I begin to go stir-crazy. There you have it and here I am. And it's raining. Which is just lovely and I mean that in the most puritan sense of the word. It smells divine. And rain and blogging go hand in hand. Here comes the rain again, falling on my head like a memory, falling on my head like a new emotion.

And with rain, comes slugs.

An entire row of slugs are knocking at the back door, begging to be let in. As if. I've been wondering about this lately. Why do slugs slither up to my door(s) in the early morning hours and plaster their pathetic little faces against the glass, pressing their gooeyness to the glass in hopes of eliciting human sympathy? Yet they seem to completely disappear at night. Where do slugs go at night? I ponder this sometimes. I think it's a book dying to be written. If Jamie Lee Curtis can write a bestselling children's book, Where Do Balloons Go?, then I'm quite sure Where Do Slugs Go? could be equally as popular amongst those of us who have dormant gastropod-voyeuristic tendencies.

Where do slugs go when you ply them with salt? Do they melt into liquid yet still keep slug gestalt?

Or even call it A Slug's Life. I could follow Mr. Banana Slug (Mr. BS for short) around my yard, documenting his meanderings. Slugs actually move much quicker than we think. Now you see them, now you don't. I'm convinced they only pretend to be sluggish and slow when we're looking at them. But then the minute you turn your head and then look back, they're gone. They may even have magic properties we don't know about. Certainly, their chemistry when mixed with sodium might suggest so.

So yeah, I could maybe follow Mr. BS around and then post it on YouTube. Somebody somewhere would watch the entire documentary. This I know for sure. In fact, I'm betting quite a few somebodies and nobodies who don't even know how to spell entomology might easily entertain themselves in this fashion.

But here's the thing about such slug documentation which is at the crux of everything for me. I would if I could but I can't so I won't. Did you ever used to say that as a kid? I did. All the time. I used to trick myself into thinking it was an empowering statement about choice. It felt powerful when I said it, especially since I was given to emphasizing every auxiliary verb with iambic rhythm, full stop pause and a whole lot of attitude. And then I'd do an accompanying hip check, hand on the hip, chin up, hair tossed over the shoulder, lip curled action thereafter so that there could be no disputing that such a statement was all about choice.

Did you notice my little segue from slugs to choice-based propositions? Suffice to say, when it comes to choices, I am a slug. Because I've since come to realize that whenever I'm confronted with a good idea or in the case of my slug epiphany, a novel idea, I then must admit to myself that OK, it's not so much about choice as self-limitation. Enter sluggish, slithery behavior, stage left.

How do I limit me? Let me count the ways. My slug idea is a rather good example, I think. My first stopping place is to ask myself, hmmm, has this ever been done before? And so then I research my original idea, only to find out it's been done before. Google "a slug's life," for example, and you will see what I see, a star, a star, fizzling in the night. An Amazon link for A Slug's Life by John Himmelman. It makes me think that Himmelman must also have glass doors and live on a greenbelt amongst slugs too. Don't we all though?

So in most cases, I don't even need to go beyond this stage because this is where most of my so-called great new ideas, which I thought were so a priori and brilliant, die their awful death like slugs in a pool of kosher salt. Someone else has already been there, done that. Hence, why reinvent a perfectly functional wheel? It's much easier to say I would if I could, but I can't so I won't. The 'won't' or 'will not' denotes a kind of deliberate choice as though I've thought the whole thing through and know I could do it, but alas, I choose not to. So I won't. Aren't I clever?

That's a rhetorical question, fair readers.

Speaking of slugs (a word whose meaning now switches from harmless gastropod to slimy, worm-like creature more closely resembling a thug) I've been up to my ass...ets in alligators with securing mortgage financing, undergoing additional property inspections, dealing with a realtor who suffers from frequent elevator malfunctions, sourcing money changers and securing insurance, security and related-house deal expense quotes, on account of the fact that we've bought a house and the deal closes in 3 shy weeks. These are all the necessary evils of buying a home in this great nation, where debt is revered above all else (give us your debt as you daily deliverance, and we'll forgive that you're a foreign trespasser, they chant, to which we are then asked to bend over in anti-genuflective response).

But Hay zeus H. Christos, it's bloody exhausting. Add to that boy scout outings and Brownie meetings and school field trips and baseball and soccer and concert and dance recitals and my looming Canadian tax deadline in two weeks and the little matter of needing to get all final paperwork and medical exams done for our green card paperwork due at the end of the month, to say nothing of the packing and purging that still needs to be done, and I'm ready to admit my true properties right about now: if you poured salt on me at this instant, I, too, would reduce to a pool of boiled banana-looking fluid.

So I'm just trying to make it through each day and handle only what's in front of me. Much like the slug outside my son's window who taunts same son with his very existence. I mention my son because this is the kid who won't let us kill spiders in the house since to do so is to harm one of God's great creatures (I point out the oxymoron but he hears only moron and then starts to call me names in response, at which point the conversation is at an impasse until such time as he turns his head and I secretly squish the spider). And yet this same son thinks nothing of taking the salt shaker out to torture one of God's greater creatures: the forest decomposer.

It's enough to make me want to turn on, tune in, drop out. Can you believe it's been 40 years since the Summer of Love? Like wow, man....check it out, man. What goes around, comes around. This donned on me as I looked in the mirror on Tuesday and happened to spot my tie-dye and paisley floral 60s style smock complete with brown sparkly headband holding back a near-boufant, retro-housewifey-looking do reflection. All I needed was a martini (something I never have nor ever intend to try - I discovered in grade six that gin gets in my mouth and more to the point, my bloodstream which then causes me to crawl down back alleys pretending I'm a wild creature. I have no intention of replicating that experience - been there, done that aka I would if I could but I can't so I won't).

I should note here that the only reason I'm permitted this retro-look is because I did not experience it the first time around. I was a babette in the late-60s and not a very fashionable one at that.So I suspect that's why they've decided to do the anniversary celebration up big this year to say nothing of the fact that many of the hippy doper freaks may not make it another ten years, on account of their psychedelic youth and all.

And here we are, after all, smack dab or should I say crack dab in the middle of another counter-cultural era. We're anti-war, anti-Paris Hilton, anti-religion, anti-agnosticism, anti-Democrat, anti-Republican, anti-consumerism, anti-socialism, anti-everything. There's always someone, somewhere upping the anti and arguing semantics over evolution versus revolution, even while my guitar gently weeps. So I think it's the perfect time to ressurect the human potential movement that was so much a part of the social mileau of the mid to late 60s. We're still firmly entrenched in a me versus we worldview; far more than ever, in fact.

Michael Moore speaks to this headspace in his new documentary, Sicko, scheduled for release in a couple of weeks. And along this same head up 'me' butt syndrome, I happened to catch a clip of him on Oprah last week, in which she was exclaiming a newfound enlightenment and light-bulb moment because of the ideas he expresses in his film about the notion of how snafu health care is in this nation. Her reaction reminded me exactly of how a sheltered, battered and neglected child might react, upon stepping outside their unsafe haven and discovering that being starved, punished and physically abused by one's parents is not the norm. My response to Oprah? Hellllllooo? Earth to Oprah, come in Oprah.

Of course she is not with the program precisely because she happens to be totally with the program - her top-notch HMO program, that is. And/or she has her good health, personal trainer and frequent full body scans. And/or access to the best of the best that her wealth can buy. But check in with Jane and Joe Schoe American who aren't exactly living the American Dream and they'd clue her in. Health care in this nation sucks. Everything about it - from the corporate, for-profit structure to the power that pharmaceutical lobbyists wield in Washington to the supreme dysfunction of the insurance agencies.

I first learned how rotten the state of Medland was back in the late-80s and early 90s, when I first began working in hotel sales for Fairmont Hotels & Resorts, booking large incentive travel groups, most of which were medical insurance and pharmaceutical companies. Incentive travel is the most lucrative of niche-market segments for the convention industry, because no expense is spared and every luxury lavished on ensuring an unforgettable champagne wishes and caviar dreams travel experience. Guess who ultimately pays for those trips?

So naturally, Moore travels outside the US to investigate how other countries structure their health care systems. What a novel concept. And of course, he discovers that yes Virginia, it is possible to have a universal health care system without having to become a card-carrying socialist party member. He glamorizes Canada's system just a tad too much but then it's easy to don rose-colored glasses when anything looks better than the current American medical crisis.

Sure it's "free" north of the border, but there ain't nothing free, honey. Income tax is astronomical and good luck ever getting in to get that emergency hip surgery done. It's like Robots meets Tim Burton....everyone is walking around north of the border praying they don't have to end up near dead in an emergency room looking for some spare parts. Wait times are double-digit hours, at best, and all the good nurses and doctors flew south on the wings of the geese long-ago in search of more lucrative wages.

But it's time someone let the dogs out on this issue. We need to put the care back in health and stand up for this, the most basic of human rights. And more importantly, we need to go back to the roots of the word and reclaim the holy and sacred heart of the issue.

health ~ O.E. hælþ "wholeness, a being whole, sound or well," from PIE *kailo- "whole, uninjured, of good omen" (cf. O.E. hal "hale, whole;" O.N. heill "healthy;" O.E. halig, O.N. helge "holy, sacred;" O.E. hælan "to heal"). Healthy is first
attested 1552.

The industry is terminally ill and in need of a holistic burial and by that I mean a wholly integrated and participatory vigil. We all need to wake up from the anesthetic fog, if only to stop those annoying pharmaceutical ads. I even saw an ED ad on tv last week (a metaphor for an industry out to stiff us if ever I saw one), and it actually flashed a subliminal image of a you know what. Couldn't believe my eyes. I'm being cryptic but you get my point without the explicit I'm sure (I don't need to attract more sluggos, thuggos and druggos into my life through weird and wonky search engine strings).

Anyways, that's my sex and drugs and rock and roll cautionary tale of the day. Moral of the story? Whether it's sprinkled on a slug, paired with a tequila shot and left to fester bitterly on your tongue, or poured in embalming fluid, salt is the quintessential spice of life. That's my story and I'm sticking to it like a slug to a glass door.

When health is absent, wisdom cannot reveal itself, art cannot manifest, strength cannot fight, wealth becomes useless, and intelligence cannot be applied.

Herophilos, Greek physician (335-280 BC)

Serenity Prayer

When the hell am I going to get this? I could use a little serenity about now. Life has been a bit stressed of late. We just put an offer on a house and the thought of it has me feeling excited and an intense urge to vomit.

The only thing that brought a smile to my face today and the reminder to breathe, was this e-mail from hubby:

Subject: Inner Peace

I am passing this on to you because it definitely works, and we could all use a little more calmness in our lives.

By following simple advice heard on the Dr. Phil show, you too can find inner peace.

Dr Phil proclaimed, "The way to achieve inner peace is to finish all the things you have started and have never finished."

So, I looked around my house to see all the things I started and hadn't finished, and before leaving the house this morning, I finished off a bottle of Merlot, a bottle of Zinfandel, a bottle of Bailey's Irish Cream, a bottle of Vodka, a package of Oreos, the remainder of my old Prozac prescription, the rest of the cheesecake, some Doritos and a box of chocolates.

You have no idea how freaking good I feel. Please pass this on to those whom you think might be in need of inner peace.

On that note, I see a bottle of Bailey's calling my name about now. Wish us some serenity, courage and wisdom in even doses. Or a whole lot of drunkenness - whichever comes first.

My Son is a Little League Tournament Champ and other Exciting Stories...

After a harrowing couple of weeks of baseball with nightly games this week and a torrential rain-out and a double- header win, my son's little league team pulled it off in both of the two final games of the playoffs against the top team with a final game win of 8-6, earning them the the title of league champs. Yeah, baby!

They came a long way, and I mean a LONG way from that first Bad News Bears practice two months ago. But their journey this past week, with this winning streak of four games, was exciting to join along on, because they really did seem to be grace under fire.

It wasn't all fun 'n games though. Number one son has been in a major batting slump this season, and no amount of apples and sugar cubes and the like could get this horse to drink from the trough. The most discouraging thing was watching him beat himself up in the dugout and watching as the team began to segregate by season's end to the haves (top of the batting order) and have nots (benchwarmers).

He's done remarkably well, considering that this is only his second season of ball and most of the kids in these parts cut their teeth on a baseball bat. But it was still heart-wrenching to sit back as a parent and hear snide comments from his teammates or worse, watch them and their school friend groupies snub him while making sucky with their fellow A-list players instead.

Anyways, it really did come down to the final game of the season. Sixth inning, unlimited runs, one out, fastest pitcher in the wild west throwing Mach 500 strikes consistently, and numero uno son steps up to bat. I was crossing fingers, toes, knees and elbows while simultaneously trying to appear relaxed when he looked over at us.

And then lo and behold, his coach tells him to bunt, something my son loves to do above all else. And so he does. Un.believe.able. He hits the most beautiful, assured bunt - it was perfectomundo. But as luck would have it, the catcher managed to scoop it up quickly and zing it to first for the out. It was a great sacrificial play that kept the runners on base in the game and headed for home with the next batter and it was a great moment for him to finally get back in the game.

It was a great season, in which I learned a tremendous amount about games and the games people play, about myself as a parent and reluctant bystander, about my son and his spirit and tenacity, and about God's amazing providence.

But just when I thought it was over and could finally breath a big sigh of relief, I find out they now have city and regional tournaments to participate in. Why doesn't little league have a beer garden for us Type A parents? Zoiks!

The Fountain of Youth

"We turn not older with years, but newer every day."

Emily Dickinson

Here's a glimpse at my vision poster I crafted this weekend. I've had the magazine cut-outs for quite some time but finally was able to dedicate the time and energy to craft it.

What I love about it is the jazzed feeling I get whenever I look at it ~ it's just very grounding to me. So many eclectic words and images pop and scream at me in their different voices. It is, at once, an image of who I was once upon a time, who I am but often forget to be, and who I happily ever after wish to be. But to be or hope to be ~ that is the question.

The thing in itself I'm referring to here is youth, because so much of the magic (or magical thinking, to coin a prophetic phrase from a very, magical gal I know) alive in this poster has a kind of youthful spirit about it.

I'm reading a book called You're Only Young Twice: 10 Do-Overs to Reawaken Your Spirit by Ronda Beaman. This is not to be confused with the most hilarious, must-read Dr. Seuss book I have bought for all the 70 year olds and other geriatric loved ones in my life, as featured below.

So anyways, I was attracted to it because the cover shows an image of the author leap frogging over a man, presumably her husband. And as I read it, I became intrigued by how she shifts the paradigms and creates fun acronyms out of words we perceive to know well.

Consider how she re-thinks the following words:

Age - Act, Grow, Evolve

Old - Outlook, Language, Drives

Live - Look, Inquire, Vent, Enjoy

Joy - Just Obey Yourself

The central premise of her book is that there is a science of the soul that enables us to remain youthful, if we so choose. She refers to this process as neoteny ~ the science of growing young. She insists that "we can direct our own evolutionary path" and reprogram our DNA from one of matter to a DNA of spirit, simply by cultivating traits like love, compassion, curiosity and wonder.

Her suggestions aren't rocket science. They range from incorporating more music and dance into one's life, starting a "joy" jar, or learning to play, laugh, sing, smile, learn and fall in love more. And it all begins and ends with thought. You're only as old as you feel, look, act, whatever...you really do choose your own reality on this one.

Aging is getting alot of media attention these days. It always has, but more so lately. Body scans, Botox, "real age" quizzes and anti-aging products abound, as the Boomer age comes of age.

Yet despite the reality that 60s flower children, who quintessentially defined 20th century youth, are our new-age grandparents, our vision hasn't changed much.

Sure, we have Dove campaigns now to help counter that youth is more than an air-brushed picture in a magazine, it's a state of mind. But what's really going on, Beaman claims, is that we've bought into the cultural and aging myths, memes and madness about what it means to age.

Memes are popular in blogging and e-mails. The run the gambit from those lovely 20 fascinating aspects you could care less about me but I'm going to tell you anyways to the ever-popular 43 things to countless other topic questionnaires. Memes in a cultural sense, are defined as "units of behavior, values, and language that evolve and are passed on through imitation and learning.

Tying shoelaces, perfecting family recipes, learning what not to say and do with an explosive personality in your life, understanding the intricacies of non-verbal communication - these are all memes, of sorts. And there's a ton of them alive and well in the arena of aging - not the least of which are the verbal vomit.

You know the one's we tell ourselves - "if I could just bottle little Johnny's energy....(big sigh)...I'd be a millionnaire" or "energy is wasted on the young" or "another gray hair...wow, I really am getting old."

And don't even get me started on modes of behavior. I'm reminded of it every time I hop on the shopping cart and take my daughter for a joy ride through the downslope parking lot, with both of us screaming ~ or in my case, just yelling that nauseating monotone ahhh! so that anytime we hit a bump it makes a vibrating ahhh! sound. The looks I get from fellow shoppers - now that should go in an American Express commercial - it's priceless, really. Come on, people. Lighten up, already!

And last night. I brought my new Wild Thing button (a variation on the Staples Easy button) to the penultimate final game of my son's Little League tournament. Every time one of the boys hit a homer or got someone out or made an otherwise fantastic play, our crowd would hoot and holler and I would hit the Wild Thing button. It was so much fun giving in to my Pavlovian side...and so much cleaner than salivating.

But it was also so funny because the other moms would look at me in horror whenever I offered them the choice to hit the button when their boy did something awesome. You would think I was offering them a hunk of stinky cheese on moldy bread. Which is a visual picture and aroma not altogether dissimilar to the process of becoming old and stodgy and decidedly adult and normative.

It's the cheapest of little thrills that bring the most joy sometimes. And God knows, with stress and bills and demands and deadlines looming for all of us constantly in our myriad work, parenting and home lives, a little joy can be a big thing.

I know people who have allowed their ill health and attitude to shape their perception of aging such that they became decades older than their years, in demeanor and appearance. And I know people who have already given up living, believing all their best years to be behind them or perhaps more telling, ahead of them in their "next" life. And conversely, I know a precious few who continually defy the printed date on their birth certificate, proving that one is only as old as one chooses to be. And that if you keep doing what you've always done (think you're aging), you'll keep getting what you've always got (old).

Anyways, I like the thought of being born again scientifically. Of course, we're continually doing that anyways, on so many levels ~ from the molecular and cellular to the big picture civilization and universal picture. But I like the idea that we can evolve backwards into our process of becoming. It's like being retro and futuristic at the same time without having to do anything except be.

To be or not to be, that is the question. Or is it the answer? If it was a multiple choice questionnaire, I'd choose forever young. I kinda have to. How else am I going to get away with popping wheelies, blowing spit bubbles and singing This Old Gray Mare She Ain't What She Used to Be while cruising erratically on the downslope in the grocery parking lot?

Because if it's gonna be a downward slope, I figure I might as well enjoy the ride. And if Lynn lived here, we could shop together and race each other through the parking lot.

That's what over the hill should mean. Conquering it head-on and head strong. On that note, I'm over and out.

The Vanishing Point

VANISH - 1303, from aphetic form of stem of O.Fr. esvanir "disappear," from V.L. *exvanire, from L. evanescere "disappear, die out," from ex- "out" + vanescere "vanish," from vanus "empty" (see vain). Vanishing point in perspective drawing is recorded from 1797.

Stories like this local one fascinate me.

Here's a guy who seemingly heads for the hills for his regular jog and kinda sorta doesn't return. As the story goes, he fell in a ravine and rolled under a log and covered himself with leaves to stay warm and dry, and then stayed that way for three cold, wet days seemingly unconscious and oblivious to the hordes of helicopters and searchers swarming the park area looking for him. So then he emerges from the woods days later, finds his vehicle towed and so then, walks home the eight miles or whatever. Tired but uninjured and in good health. Yup. That's his story and he's sticking to it. I'm sure as the years go on, it will become a "ten miles, uphill, in the snow with near hypothermia" family legend but for now it remains the city-walk version.

Of course, there's nothing fishy about this tale. Pffffttt... The parallels between his fantastical epic and this gal's famous escapade, which made headlines across Canada and even in Vegas for a time...by golly, they're uncanny.

So OK, in the spirit of "true" confessions, I'll admit once or twice or five million times, I've thought about dropping my kids off at school and then just driving in whatever direction traffic wasn't going on that particular day. It's a fleeting thought though, and is one that is more often linked to the rat race grind and fantasy of carving a new reality in a far away place - preferably a small Utopian mountain town. Hubby dreams of such a place where he can pump gas and channel Socrates from Way of the Peaceful Warrior. It's a dream job I assure him would get old fast. But alas, we do think sometimes of taking a game spinner, plunking it on a road map and seeing which new locale it might point to.

These are more get out of Dodge thoughts and they've crept up more and more since moving to the Pacific Northwest, whereby hubby has worked 90% of every weekend for the past two years and where my kids have been involved in sports, dance or church activities which account for a good 75% of available weekends. This leaves slim to nil weekends to frapper la route.

But the bye honey, gone for my run....back never if I can help it stuff - that's an entirely different matter.

I like this guy's story and from an artistic sense, I like how he has painted an elaborate portrait of his weekend "away" in such a way that he remained hidden at that vanishing point (ie. the point on the horizon where perspective lines converge to), under the log covered by leaves, as it were. Sung to the tune of "Under the Fallen Log...down by the stream....under the fallen log, down by the stream..."

It's an apropos place for a guy who clearly wanted and needed to disappear, whether that be consciously or not. The irony is that rather than vanish, he is now the subject of intense media scrutiny.

And of course, the entire tale is made even that much more surreal by the fact that the dude's last name is Schreck. Now I don't mean to confuse the man for an ogre, but I do think there's more fiction than fact to his crazy weekend ordeal. For his sake, I hope he lives happily ever after and can emerge from his secret hiding spot under the log to a place of truly being the credible hero of his own story.

While my Keyboard Gently Weeps

So if you've been reading my last few posts, you've noticed that I've been kinda fixated on vitality lately as the key driver for fostering my healthier mind, body, spirit.

I've gotten myself back to the gym - not regularly by any stretch - but I've been there, done that, at the very least and I lived to tell of it. And I dared to run this past week, and that was fun...well OK, maybe not fun but it was an accomplishment.

It appears I still know how, if barely. And I've been more consciously aware of my diet as in, which foods are vitality uppers, which ones are downers and most importantly, which ones are emotional numb-ers. And I've been spending an inordinate amount of time lately fixated on the link between healthy mindedness and mindfulness.

To many people, healthy-mindedness, eating and living is a natural state of thinking, doing, being. I admire such people (actually I don't; deep down, I think they're slimy slithery slibes but I pretend to admire them because it would be good for me to do so) but alas, in this process of deconstructing and reconstructing my own bad habits and thoughts over the years, I am discovering that I am not yet one of those healthy creatures. Ya think? Suffice to say, talking and being nice to me is not my natural habitat.

I am one of those creatures who deliberately gives away all her compliments for others (except for slibes) in order not to have any left over for herself. I am also one of those people who is not good at establishing firm boundaries and saying "no" to others. Thus, I tend to agree to tasks to the point of feeling compromised. Failure and disaster ensue and I unravel and then I feel like a failure so then I eat until I'm comfortably numb. Here's where my keyboard gently weeps.

Way, way back in the day before overeating, I used to do drugs or go on a bi-monthly drinking binge. Get home at 4am and ruminate the next day about (a) which letter in the alphabet I got to in my alphabet drinking game and (b) how close I came to blood alcohol poisoning. I'm not sure I see any one addiction as being better, worse, different from the others....I have found them to be, for the most part, interchangeable anesthetizers, varying only in accordance with their social acceptance, legality, cost, next-day effects and/or ability to impregnate or propagate disease.

All this crime and punishment rambling is necessary preamble for those of you who consider the connection between mind, body, spirit to be a bit of a no-brainer. For some of us, it's precisely because of our no-brainer disconnect that we struggle with it. The disconnect I refer to is, of course, feeling.

Any and all addictions are really just methods to quell and bury emotion. I considered myself an addiction adept at one point in time, in a been there, done that kinda way. I now see that there is not only a kind of environmental factor prevalent with addiction, but also a genetics to addiction that I did not consider existed until pondering family issues this past decade. I'm convinced most all families share addiction in some way - certainly every family I know has been touched by it in some way shape or form - be it a propensity towards sport, skort, port or in my case, chocolate torte. Caroline Myss cites Prostitute and Victim as universal archetypes we all share....selling our soul to the something that will make us feel good one minute ~ commiserating over it the next.

Lucky for me, I have been able to control my substance abuses over the years. The drugs were a high-school recreation perfectly suited to the university frat party scene I frequented and were a sport I tried in earnest to have consume me, but alas they were a fleeting fancy. The drinking was great fun through my teens, 20s and 30s; whose frequency and quantity correlated proportionately to my social or on-the-road travel life at any given time. While alcohol and I rarely get together any more, I still consider us good buddies and hope we can always be friends. I remain cautious, however, given my fear of genetic predispositions.

Which brings me last to food. Last but definitely not least. Food has been the one constant. Back in the day, I could overeat to my heart's content. I came of age in my parent's fast food restaurant, and had you asked me to list the four food groups, I would have honestly noted hamburgers, french fries, ice cream and bologna sandwiches. For me, they were the four food groups. I ate a proper balance from each category with zero effect to my slim frame, as luck and a healthy metabolism would have it.

I love food but I've never been especially good with establishing boundaries or keeping things in moderation. It's my Type-A persona. I tend to approach everything with an all-or-nothing zeal. It's a wonder and miracle my body has sustained such constant overeating with so little weight gain, relatively speaking. And even then, it has only been the last five years where the punishment has begun to fit the crimes.

Anyways, it was with this same all-or-nothing outlook that I woke up one day and figured out that my brain had atrophied from all my hedonistic, tourism work. So I decided to switch gears and become a university student. So there I was in pursuit of Mind, at the expense of Body and Spirit. Then a few years later, I began looking at Spirit. I read voraciously and began seeking out church homes for my spirit to reside. And now, four decades plus a year from whence I first began my journey, I have come full circle - awakening to a newfound consciousness that it not the pursuit of one at the expense of others (which so totally sucks, by the way) but the integration of mind, body, spirit that makes for the whole person.

So here I am at Body ~ the final frontier in my quest for health and wellness. Cue the spooky Star Trek music. I'm nothing if not an outer edge gal and don't even get me started on my procrastinator tendencies.

I've arrived at a few epiphanies about my body. One is that I tend to reside most of my time in my mind rather than my body, such that I can look at myself in a mirror in a kind of abstract way and feel very disembodied and disassociated from myself. I don't know if that's normal or not but I do know that such a disconnect no longer serves me. Truth be told, it never did.

Another epiphany I've had is that I'm either way more emotional than I ever realized or I'm becoming extremely hormonal. Or perhaps it's a bit of both. So I'm now trying to figure out ways to release my extreme emotions rather than suppress them. The ones that have me raging and railing against the world like an angry punk rocker or leave me wanting to wail at walls. This, I'm learning, is tricky business for us control freak types. The world around us cries and we're the ones handing them their Kleenex. Not for lack of emotion and empathy - it's just that the damn inner dam is Hoover strong.

So I'm now flirting with the idea of letting these emotions out to play more. I'm going to start with the emotions that move me to tears. Instead of holding back the tears, I'm going to let them flow like a river - I'll call it Denial.

I'm fairly convinced that as pent-up as all these tears have been all these decades, had I just released them at the apropos time, I might have had enough to create my own river. Woulda, coulda, shoulda. Now for fear this sounds like a dangerous case of allowing an intent of drama in my life, post-Law of attraction hype and all that, permit me to clarify. I'm going to focus on cultivating joy but remain open to acknowledging sorrow when it rears its ugly head. If/when the sad face mood arises, I'm going to let my tears out to play ie. crying 'til I laugh. Letting it be, letting it be. So I'll seek ways I can laugh 'til I cry.....like watching this dude on YouTube. Watch him: I dare you not to laugh out loud.

When I'm happy, I'm relaxed, when I'm happy, I'm relaxed.

So that's today's wise crack, as in foundation, as in Leonard Cohen's infamous words:

"there's a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in."

Thus spoke the man with extreme drug, alcohol, sex and tobacco addictions (how else does one explain Closing Time?) but heck, he's a Zen Buddhist now so I'll trust he's not only been touched by light near the end of the tunnel, but enlightenment, too. Or maybe he's just touched, in which case, I extend my hand and say, welcome to the club, dude.