Monthly Archives: June 2012
Elsewhere
Hello my friends. Today’s post is over at http://poopingrainbows.com. Come say hi!
A Horrible Day
One of my favourite things to read on the internet are Peter Dewolf’s letters to his future wife, not necessarily knowing whom that future wife might be. They are sweet and hilarious and smart. In fact, I challenge anyone to read through them and not want to marry him at least a little bit. This week, Peter challenged his readers to write letters to their future spouses. With my own future husband no longer a work of fiction (although he’s so darned awesome sometimes I wonder) I couldn’t resist the challenge!
Dear Future Husband,
Someday we will have a terrible, horrible, no good day.
Someone will get demoted, the kids will just be real jerks, we’ll have to take the dog to the vet, Stephen Harper V 3.0 will win the election, someone will die, I will forget to do that thing I keep promising I’ll do – again. You’ll start to seriously wonder if it’s on purpose. If I was, in fact, just put on this earth to deliberately find ways to frustrate you.
So basically we will be cranky. Real cranky.
We will both feel a little mean and small and fed-up.
With no one else around at the end of the longest day, and no energy or ability left to accept things with grace, or laugh it off, or just go the heck to sleep and do things better tomorrow, we will turn on each other. And we will fight.
We won’t fight fair, either.
We will prod at tender places and spit salt and lemons into secret little cuts. Seeds and all.
Odds are, I won’t swear, or call you names, but I’ll find some way to take a dig.
Then we’ll circle each other warily. Tired but stubborn. Nursing our hurts. Not ready to let go.
If you weren’t so mad at me, you’d probably just stare in some combination of fascination and abject horror as I work myself into a most unreasonable lather, and stalk around the place like a thundercloud.
It won’t be adorable. In fact, you’ll probably never be less attracted to my mean little face. And let’s face it, you won’t be looking so hot to me either.
A horrible day.
But here’s the thing, Future Husband.
I’m kind of looking forward to it.
Or, I suppose, more accurately, to what comes next.
I’m looking forward to that moment when we’ve seen each other’s ugliest, meanest, maddest faces. When we’ve been comfortable enough to let a glimpse of our very most shameful worst be laid out on the table, when we have been our absolute hardest to love.
And we decide that it’s not so bad.
That if this is our worst, our best or even our average more than makes up for it.
And we choose to let it go, or be the bigger person, or take our turn to back down.
I’m looking forward to the day that we’ve chosen each other every day for years.
And we choose each other again.
Horrible days and all.
Next Life I’ll be a Cat
I don’t nap often.
For someone prone to sleep paralysis, an afternoon siesta is often more stress than it’s worth.
Possible “paralysis” notwithstanding, I hate waking up all groggy, limbs impossibly heavy and neck inevitably in seizure from some strange contortionist angle. When i do manage to nap, I often wake with a start, alarmed, extremely disoriented and a little angry about it
So it was a surprise this afternoon, after being released from work early after a company-wide meeting, with grand intentions to “be productive with this gift of time” – I might add, to find myself quietly unfolding from a blissfully deep sleep, one tendril of counsciousness gently rolling out to reconnect with the day at a time.
As I squirmed luxuriously out of sleep, yellow sunlight a throw blanket across my tucked up knees and stray bits warming my hair and cheek and shoulder, I took a minute to gaze around at my quiet little nest of an apartment.
The gorgeous yellow-orange roses on the table, a gift left over from my parents’ last visit just because, the glass bookshelf I proudly assembled myself (one of the doors doesn’t quite close), my faithful companion in baking: a Kitchenaid stand mixer and finally, the little slice of wooden deck and the breeze-blown trees visible through the back door.
And as the grog and disorientation faded from my mind, my first lucid thought appeared with a smile.
I’m home.
Goggles
One of the unexpected things that have come along with having some fairly significant life changes suddenly pop into view on the horizon recently is the overwhelming desire to get my affairs in order. I’m struck by the urge to take classes! Learn French! Eat healthy! Be tidy!
And for Pete’s sake, exercise!
Unfortunately, as I’ve been distracted by the near constant endorphin high of falling crazy in love and investing my time in five-hour Skype conversations accordingly, the Bikram practise I was keeping up has fallen woefully by the wayside. Sure, I’m strolling (lounging more likely) around all blissfully happy, but the bod is starting to creak and pop and ache its grievances known.
Still, it’s hard to head back into that 40-degree windowless basement room now that the weather outside is mostly gloriously sunny and warm. Basically impossible really. I can hardly be held responsible.
So, I’m left searching for something new to keep my muscles from melting and my joints from fusing me into the shape of my office chair. Luckily (haha) the massive blood clot in my leg helps narrow my list of potential physical activities, and I’ve narrowed it down my potential summer exercise to pilates and/or swimming.
I’ve never done pilates and it sounds not terrible. And, while I’m pretty sure not a swimming lesson went by that I didn’t try to get out of as a kid, I always really loved it once I was in the water and I was actually a very strong little minnow.
I also strangely prided myself on the ability (superpower really) to see underwater. This really just meant that I squinted a lot and left the pool with eyes on fire with chlorine, which may have accounted for some of my reluctance to return to the pool every week.
Well, that and the horrible scarf/hood combination tube my parents would insist I wear home to prevent ear infections from September to June. I looked like weird pink ET. Not good.
However, as that guy I’m marrying recently pointed out, there are these wonderful devices called “goggles” (ridiculous word) that allow you to splash around to your heart’s content with eyes wide open.
So I’m pretty much out of excuses.
Make no mistake, I am pretty darned content with my life as is but shaking things up means new opportunities and challenges, and I want to be as prepared as possible to face them.
I just want to clear up all of the little distractions (like health) that are lurking around waiting to block my path so that I can step forward onto it with confidence and strength. And killer abs.
I mean…
With confidence and strength and (begoggled) eyes wide open.
