- Live the life you're meant to

Penmanship

February 4, 2014 by Farewell Stranger ·

“Look, I did a really good 6.”

“That is a really good six. Good job, buddy.”

He looks over at my side.

“Your numbers are really good too.”

I’ve been really sick the last three days and have barely ventured out of my bedroom. Yesterday, Connor asked me if I would put him to bed, and, in a moment of maternal optimism, I agreed. And then bedtime came around and it was clear that was not a good idea. When I told him Daddy would have to put him to bed instead, he cried and cried.

Funny how these things—when Mom has been a bit MIA and you’re catching the same bug and will be throwing up by morning—can seem like the end of the world.

It took a while to get him to calm down, but he enthusiastically agreed to my suggestion that we sit together while Daddy put Ethan to bed. He brought his new erasable mat so he could do some writing practice and generously agreed to let me do some of them.

It was nice. Better than bedtime stories, even.

And apparently I’m good at writing inside the lines.

Join Greta from Gfunkified and I for #iPPP (iPhone Photo Phun), a weekly link-up that requires nothing more than a blog post with a photo from a phone camera (any phone camera, not just iPhones). We want to see your funny, your yummy, your heartfelt, your favourite phone photos of the week.

Filed Under: Motherhood · Tagged With: #iPPP, bedtime, moments

Quiet at the Car Wash

January 28, 2014 by Farewell Stranger ·

Sometimes moments of quiet appear in the oddest places.

I’d been staring at my horribly dirty car for a few weeks, feeling like finding the time to get it washed was one more thing I couldn’t fit in. Maybe even the one thing that would put me over the top from managing to it’s-all-too-much.

You know how sometimes it’s the silly, stupid, small things that do that?

I decided not to let my dirty car do that.

Last weekend I had a window of time on Sunday afternoon. I had some other errands to do that would take me in the neighbourhood of the car wash and decided I’d run through while I was out. But instead of just tacking it on to the end of a series of errands I decided to use it to my advantage.

I took a magazine with me, turned off the radio, and sat in the quiet. I waited in line at a time when I would normally have felt rushed and I just…sat.

Self-care at the car wash. Who knew?

Filed Under: Happy things · Tagged With: #iPPP, gratitude, moments, weekends

Second Side

January 23, 2014 by Farewell Stranger ·

She likes to pretend people can’t see it. In her own mind she is lean and lithe and neither the bulges she tries not to see nor the fit of her clothes seem to convince her otherwise.

At yoga she does triangle pose and imagines the length of her limbs must make everyone else notice. The slender feeling moves with her as she transitions into the stance of a warrior.

There’s a bit of comparison there; of course there is.

I’m not that heavy, she thinks.

I definitely don’t look like that.

But what she’s imagining is what she used to look like, not what she looks like now.

Time has marched on. Life has intervened and left its marks. Former good practices now abandoned, she is flawed. Imperfect.

She knows this, yet doesn’t see it. Her body image is based on a mental picture, not what the mirror reflects. But she’s about to turn around.

The warrior windmills, hands to the ground, and a vinyasa follows. Chaturanga, cobra, downward dog. She steps to the top of her mat, takes a deep breath, returns to mountain.

Second side.

She takes the pose once again, picturing lissome limbs and graceful movements.

But she has placed her mat along the far wall, closest to the mirror, and the truth lurks. In triangle once again, she stands strong, reaching through her fingertips. Her pose stable and her balance solid, she moves her gaze towards the sky and in doing so catches a glimpse of her reflection.

In that moment, she sees it.

More large than lean; more bulgy than beautiful.

The warrior vanishes; the wise yogi fades away.

She is just a girl in front of a mirror. Flawed. Imperfect. Trying to find her beauty.

Filed Under: Hard things · Tagged With: admissions, telling the truth

A Winter Rant

January 21, 2014 by Farewell Stranger ·

This is a rant. Just so you’re warned.

I love winter. 90% of the time, anyway. But lately winter is just messy.

We had some really cold weather and a ton of snow in December (more in that one month than in an average January, February, and March combined, apparently). And then it got warm. And then it froze again. And then it got warm and froze again and repeat.

And now the sidewalks look like this:

I love winter, but this I do not love. It makes it very hard to walk the dog without breaking one’s neck.

And this makes it very hard to get into one’s driveway without 4-wheel drive:

And this is what our street looks like at the moment:

I don’t know what this is (Snowpocalypse? Icemageddon?) but it’s not the winter I love.

Anyone have a dump truck full of ice melt?

Filed Under: Randomness · Tagged With: #iPPP, rants

Look to the Sky

January 16, 2014 by Farewell Stranger ·

I left work late tonight, as is often the case these days. But I guess the days are indeed getting longer, because instead of being dark the sky was full of brilliant tiger stripes of colour – pink and red and orange and wisps of blue. The city skyline was a barely lit silhouette, and at the end of the wash of colour was the outline of the mountains and a brilliant, golden glare as the sun started to sink behind the horizon. It was incredible. Stop-to-take-a-picture incredible. (But of course no picture I could take would ever do it justice.)

I breathe deeply when I see sunsets like that (even if I’m in my car). And in doing so I pause, sometimes just figuratively and often just for a moment, and think about something other than what I have to do next.

Your comments on my post about missing inspiration were interesting. Good interesting, even though I don’t agree with many of you, including my mother. (Sorry, mom.)

Here’s the thing: I like that wide open space of a new year. I love the anything-is-possible feeling. I thrive on change and possibility and new. Day-to-day life gets boring pretty fast, and if I don’t have something to jolt me into a new perspective I will blink and 20 years will have gone by and my small boys will be big and all I will remember is how much laundry I did.

That is not how I wish to live my life.

I realized, upon reading (and railing against) some of those comments on that last post, that I don’t necessarily want some huge, gigantic goal and I’m not really looking for change. But I also don’t want to let life just happen. I prefer living with intention.

That’s why I’ve chosen one word as a guide post for the last few years. It’s why I have a life list and why I breathe in sunsets.

So where does that leave me? I’m not sure yet. I will probably start by committing to my one word for 2014 (and sharing it here). I’m going to make some changes to my day-to-day focus and schedule. I’m going to move away from feeling stuck in the everydayness of wake/feed children/commute/work/commute/feed children/put children to bed/walk dog/do dishes/fold laundry/repeat.

I’m going to look to the sky. And see where it takes me.

Filed Under: Hello, Inspiration · Tagged With: Life list, living life, One word, perspective