Journal 12 Weather-Effect

I laugh for no reason.
I cry for no reason.
Actually, there are a million reasons for both reactions, and the random-ness in which I apply them lately is the REAL mystery.
Sad things, like reading an email from my dad where he talks about faith and God and prayers stay with me for ages.
Funny things, like my sister and I talking about what happens when you plan to have cake at an office (everyone takes their full lunch, comes back at 130. hears there is going to be cake at 3:30 and then they do nothing until the cakes shows up. then they all eat the cake. then they go back to their desks, but not before lingering/talking more about the cake they just had.) We had this conversation last night on the phone after both of us had each had our own particularly trying day. I laughed listening to my sister describe this cake story. I've laughed several more times today thinking about this story.
The weather has an effect. I had forgotten that, yes, in fact, the constant, endless days of rain do help contribute to a black mood for me. Running for consecutive days in the bright sunshine, in a running skirt, takes away some of the clouds.
It's early evening, the sun has been warming up my west-facing apartment all afternoon, and there is no sign of the sun going down as we march toward "June's long days".
Last year at this time I was marching along to June, trying to get May over with, ending my very bad relationship with that G person (who? what?) and finding out about his Lollipop.
I remember my sister coming over on the last day of May to bribe me to leave my apartment, and before we went out, sipping champagne, I solemnly declared, standing up in my living room, glass in hand that I was "Done with men". Not that I was going to women, but done, as in Done Dating. Done with Love.
I had my first phone conversation with M. a few days later.
Ah...best laid plans...

Journal 11 Joy less

I think I've lost my sense of humour.

Somewhere between reaming out my parents' eye doctor (via faxed letter) and dealing with the car company (who shall remain nameless but let me just say this; the letter T and a BIG recall) I have fully surrended the fact that things are not that funny right now.
Driving to work this morning and running into some construction, a worker was carrying a big sheet of plywood, and all you could see was the piece of wood, with the legs, moving. Normally that would be funny to me.

Not today. Not after my sister tried to return my parents' car to said car company, as this would be a big help to me; oh no. She can't. Because I am the g*ddamn POA. So I HAVE TO DO IT.

Let me just say this; that car can sit in their driveway for however long it has to.

So then I'm at work. I'm in a meeting. When I get out of the meeting, there is a message on my cell phone from car company. Guess who is NOT getting a call back from me today (ever)?
Correct.

See what I mean about the sense of humour?
GONE.

Journal 10--Why I am a Bad Daughter

"God wants you to be alone in your empty apartment"--L. on my sore foot

My foot is pretty much healed. Seemed to be a flip-flop accident where I tried to keep said shoe on without proper practice (note; long longgggggg Canadian winter).
I'm running like a normal person again. Normal for me anyway.

I'm also having some more 'normal' reactions of late, the kind I have when I am not patient, compassionate, or humble enough.

I lose it on my family sometimes. Different members, different times.
I never, ever feel good about it after. Does it stop me from doing it again, in a subtle variation, over and over again? No.
And when I talk about my family, I'm not talking about a husband or kids, I have neither; I mean my good old 'family of origin', the one you love more than anything, but who can also cause annoyances (in my case anyway) like nobody else. And I can react toward them like nobody else.
This is the dynamic though. This is what I was brought up with, conditioned to, and no constructive solution was ever introduced. We are a tense family, coiled up alot of the time with irritation, and in living on my own for many years, I have attempted to bring calm into my realm. Then I go home. And as I've going home ALOT lately, it's starting to grow on me, like moss.

Then I come home, home, as in back home to my downtown loft. M. has gone back to his home state to run his restaurant after living with me from November to March. So I'm living alone again (Hi April. It's me. I'm alone again).

So then I go down the laundry list of life and decide that other things are unsatisfying as well.

I'm carrying around a plastic shopping bag of my parents' mail and forms and the POA's (that stands for Power of Attorney). I didn't know what that even was, prior to somewhere around the second week of March. But then I surprise myself. I have moments of random happiness, dispersed in the (many) moments of mountainous sadness; an eighties song on the radio as I drive in the rain, the lift of a cup of coffee; these things never disappoint.

Is that the definition of my own form of maturity? I don't know. My concentration skills are shot.
But I have little pockets of hope.

May Running Log

In an attempt to meet my running goals, I've started a 30-day running log with distances
and times.
Running goal for this 30-day log is minimum 80 kms, and since I start and end my running weeks on weekends, it looks like this so far:

Date: Saturday April 30th
Distance run: 10 kms
Time: did not time
Weather: Sunny, dry, 13 degrees.

Date: Sunday May 1st
Distance run: 10 kms
Time: 51.73 minutes
Weather: Overcast, dry, 10 degrees
Total for weekend: 20 kms

Secondary goal of this 30 day log is to increase my distance runs to 15 km rather than 10 km. I reached the 10 km goal last July 1st, which is ten months ago today, and over the next few weeks is to do 11 kms, 12 kms, 13 kms, 14 kms, until reaching the 15 km mark, with a new route, and keeping at that distance for my long runs.
Update on the foot: Still sore-ish, but not enough for me to stop and walk; very good weekend in terms of no pausing to walk, and no cheating my staying still at stoplights.

Date: Monday May 2nd
Distance run: 4 kms appx
Time: 23.00 minutes
Weather: Sunny, dry, 13 degrees

Date: Thursday May 5th
Distance run: 5 kms appx
Time: 30ish minutes
Weather: Sunny, dry, 16 degrees...spring

Date: Saturday May 7th
Distance run: 10 kms appx
Time: did not time
Weather: Sunny, dry, 14 degrees

Date: Tuesday May 10th
Distance run: 4 kms
Time:
Weather: Overcast, dry, 15 degrees

Journal 9--Control

Endless frustration.
With everything and everyone.
I know, I know, this is the 'unlive-able' part of PMS talking, but I am in such a mood today, it's reminding me of the month of April in Toronto. As in, clouds for days.
I dread my own phone ringing, even though I have caller ID, because it's usually not-good news, or someone calling from a bank or somewhere like that.
I got all quiet on the phone last night with M because I was inside my head doing the 'where am I going to end up' trip and 'where is my life going and how are we going to be together in the same place at some point and what will it look like' and on and on like a broken record, stuck in an endless loop and it was only when I got up this morning, feeling a little more bright-eyed (and pill-free...) that I looked back on my phone-silence and how much that hurt M., because he's sensitive and sometimes I forget that, I really do.
I've had men from the past who were so emotionally unable to cope that having M is a huge treat, but it's also a privilege, and I need to treat it as such. We talked today on my lunch hour and I felt alot better.
I don't have to figure everything out right now, as my dream last night reminded me--I can't be in two places at once, but I can learn to exist in the here and now and not project too far forward.
What can I do, I'm a virgo (ie, endless planning...exhausting...)

Journal 8--My Voice

I wake up, lately, with heart-pounding anxiety, usually at about 4am. It's been going on for months.
When I don't wake up with this at 4am, I wake up on the weekend at a 'normal' time, but my heart is still pounding. What gives? I haven't even DONE anything to start the day yet, nothing has happened, I haven't even moved from my square in the bed, and yet...something nags at me.
It's like my writing lately--down in the depths, nothing 'new' to report, just a bunch of journal entries, the way I swore I would write them, at the beginning of the year, but not as diaristical as I would like them (is that even a word?).
If anyone is reading this, I can forgive them one-hundred-percent for being like, "this is god-awful." I re-read and it is. I'm 'telling' not showing.
It might be time for a list or something, a great way to sometimes revitalize dull writing (mine).
For now, I'm going to get my running clothes on (what temperature is it? will I be cold? when will the weather CHANGE INTO SOMETHING I RECOGNIZE?), go outside, and stop this nonsense.

Journal 7--Solitude

I'm tired today.
Of dealing with banks, the car people, co-workers, and everyone else who populates
this over crowded world.

I've wanted to be someone else lately. Not that I don't appreciate who I am, or want to be me, but lately I've wondered--hey, when did I get so serious? So weighted down, worrying about everything I can. My family, the rising cost of EVERYTHING, my LDR, my sore foot, the future, the present.

But to look at me and talk with me, this is probably not the impression people get. I keep it locked down when I'm outside. When I'm running the thoughts (I can almost see them) seem to spiral above my head, they 'hover' for lack of a better word, just around me, a little cloud. But they are out of me in those moments. Same with when I am reading, a good book, a good blog, a writer who is opening up right into the dusty corners.

If all my blog posts were like my emails to some of my closest friends (and here I do admit that I have a select list of friends that I email, especially L, who, like me, is tied to a desk during the day and has the talent of being able to put a sentiment in a matter of a couple of lines. No easy task). But most of my close friends of late feel far away. They can't really do anything for me, and I don't really need them to. The email is a great favourite of mine in terms of communicating; it allows me to think about what I am writing, and gives me greater freedom of the 'when/where' of communicating. Truth, I feel very invisible right now, of my own volition. I don't feel the need to be seen. Or talked to. But I do like it when friends drop a line.

I had dinner with a group of people last night, something else I've avoided for the last six weeks or so. I have to attend a shower today. I say 'have to'. Yes. I have to, for the six-hundredth-million time, paste a smile on my face and be happy for someone else. And I AM happy for them. I was whining to my sister on Friday night at her place, after her kids were in bed and we were a couple of glasses in, whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy. Why does the Misery not get divided up evenly? And the Misery picks a place to perch like a crow on a lamp post, and seems to roost there. Not letting up.

We can talk all we want about positive thinking (I'm TRYING), about changing our lives one minutae at a time (the change is usually THROWN at me, in a 'here-hold-this!' kind of fashion, where I'm left with what seems like bad luck at the worst moment), and we can boldly assume that, as always, WE are in control, guiding this life of ours into port, not hitting any icebergs. But, as I need to be reminded time and again--we don't. The part where I go .."But why..?" is the part when I make comparisons to others (God help me). Why do THEY never have to make their own luck? How come THEY get everything on a silver platter, offered to them at the exact right time, while my perception of life is that it's maybe 30% free will, what you do, and 70% everything else--what calamities choose to ensue, to alight on that lamp post and then fly overhead and sh*t all over your life, when you least expect it. Except that life has taught you to never not expect it, when it plays itself over again and again.

I am highly, highly imperfect. I strive to do my running, I try not to indulge in too much white wine, I want to get up early and like it, I want to create a budget, stick to it, and feel good about it. I want to care more about clothes (oh f*ck it I CAN'T) but I want to care more about everything, or maybe less, maybe more focussed caring. I want to keep up my church-going every week, I want to make life for my parents easier, I want all the special people in my life, the ones who've suffered so much bad luck, to get things without having to ask for them, I want wonderful things to find their way to these people.

Today, as I drink my morning coffee and offer up gratitude for Sunday monring, an imperfect day outside, weather-wise, but I'm here to bear witness to it. I'm here to lift the coffee cup to my lips and sip it. I'm getting ready to go outside and run in about half an hour. Maybe during my run I will solve this misery-equation and have an easier time 'being happy' this afternoon.

As the crow flies....