Grumpy to grateful

As in I am. Hugely. Unjustifiably. But I am.  And I'm not entitled to it, I know.
I had a regrettable massage last night, my own fault (lying on the table it finally hit me: the why of why I hate massages and have never ever been able to enjoy them my entire life. A massage table reminds me eerily of an operating table. You're naked, exposed, and for me, it's scary. It really is).
I love when Mike or my sister massages my neck, truly, or my friend L.
But I'm sitting up. Clothed. In control.
Lying there, especially when ticklish/cold/warm/kind-of in pain/whoops a very sore muscle/ow that f*cking really hurt/ and then the one reaction I did not have: Stop the whole tired exercise and say, okay, can't do this.
I walked into the clinic feeling the best I had in fourteen days and left in pain.
I drove home.

And then, with poor Mike on the phone, having to listen to me when he's 700 miles (that's 1100 kms to you and me) away, I had a complete meltdown. Complete.
Crying. Hysterically. I had to hang up. I sat down in the bathroom, on the closed toilet seat, and
clutched kleenex while the tides of frustration, despair, and old-fashioned, "I give up" washed over me.

I calmed myself. Well, pills had to help, I ashamed to admit. Also, I took two muscle relaxants. So much for living pill-free (wow, I made it two whole f*cking days). 

Stood up, went to the kitchen,  the freezer to be exact, to my friend the ice pack, and slapped it on my smarting neck. I'd deal with my arm and leg next (yes, whole right side  of my body. I get it. RMT's want to TREAT you. But I don't want TREATMENT. I want this exact part of my neck and back rubbed LIGHTLY and I don't want you to touch ANYTHING else).  While I was taking out the ice pack I noticed, wayyyy in the back, a lone bottle (7/8 full) of Ketel One vodka. Took it out too along with some ice (chardonnay not going to cut it).
Wandered over to my little bar, grabbed the Vermouth, threw all ingredients into a short juice glass. 
Back to the kitchen (it's one step from the bar, really. Laughable) combed the fridge for olives. No dice. Capers? Not in a martini. No lemon either.
I gave up caring.

Living room now, I've traversed the length of my loft, sanity slowly returning as I 'fix it'.
Sink down on the couch, ice pack, martini, cell phone. Called Mike back and convinced him I was no longer on the ledge.
But God. Was I ever frustrated.
I let the whole scene ruin my evening. I had insomnia (again).

I watched the Housewives of Vancouver but even that didn't give me my normal jolt of horrified fascination. I turned on my computer (it took about two years to boot up), and opened an email.
You see, this is why they invented gratitude. This might even be why we even HAVE evenings like this, even though we know we are not remotely entitled to them. There are far far worse things than having a crappy massage experience that you engineered yourself (the masseuse, when we were done, said she sensed my discomfort. Me, in my head, Then would it have killed you to have said something? I didn't say anything either. She told me that somewhere inside me, I have a blockage. Really, is this something to say to a person awaiting an MRI? I have all sorts of nightmare scenarios that involve just that, so ....thanks?).  I'm adverse to touch in the best of times. Take away my creature comfort of endorphins for a couple of weeks and here I am, the monster (is that a full moon looming?) you see before you.

Back to the email.
My friend had not just emailed me, but sent me a letter, one of those pieces of writing where you say, damn, how come I couldn't write that?  It was almost a short story. A really good one.
A slice of a life.
A portrait of pain.
It's hard to write about pain, it really is. When you can, to me, it bears acknowledging that on some level, even if it's not conscious, you are somehow getting through it.  That it's starting to ease.
This is the sense I got from my friend and her graceful words.
I'm not going to go into deep details here--it's suffice to say that her story involves something we all often struggle with--loneliness--and how there are times in life when it is more acute than other times. Those are the times where you can be knocked down by pain. When I look back on my most lonely times, through my adult life, I notice how hazy they are. That's what pain can do for you. Shade things. Smudge them. Soften.
And then, you emerge from under that cloud.
And here, my friend so disarmingly sums up how her life is right now.

At once everything that I ever dreamed of yet packaged

so very differently that I could have ever imagined.

I couldn't agree more.

Insomnia(c)

It's far too late for me to be up, (the flipside of my too early wake ups), and light is hurting my eyes.
All of my nail-polish collection is cluttering up the coffee table, as I managed to paint my toes over when I got home from work tonight. The laundry (all washed, all of it) pile continues to grow. I rummaged through it this morning looking for a tank to wear under a nice mocha-silver new shirt to work that I discovered was a little low-cut when I put it on.  Second round of rummaging happened tonight, looking for a pair of (yes, freshly-washed) pajama shorts. Found them. Put them on.
I should be tired. I've been taking some sort of daily pill, I'm sad to admit, since The Headache hit two weeks ago.
I'm positive it's interfering with my sleep. I've continued to drink powdered magnesium dissolved in warm water, either at night or in the mornings, as a friend of mine wisely recommended.  I like it. I like adding to my vitamin and mineral aresenal, my mini-battle against my ever-shrinking cerebral cortex, the elasticity of my memory losing some of its precious snap these last few trouble-some years.
I re-read an entry from the second half of late 2009, one about trying to control my anxiety, and it was like reading something from another lifetime. Like something someone else wrote. I suppose it's good. I've had urges, lately, to prune the blog, to delete and dis-able some of the more painful entries to me, but I don't. For good or bad, they're here. They're what I had to say at the time.

I should be alot happier tonight. It was a 'good' day at work, an important project was secured, on the heels of another one being secured a very short time ago. I worked hard on both proposals. But once again, I watched, outside myself, the meeting that ensued after, (remembering my friend L's sure lines: 'confusing their lies with your truth' ) and another fitting phrase I read in the novel I was flipping through tonight, one I've read several times before, 'aggressively calm'.  A good description of much that unfolds in my daily life at work. Except I can't be both. I can remain calm through the whirlwinds, but that calm also damages my passion for work, I can't be both of those either. My calm comes across as lobotomized, I'm sure of it, and it too attacks my memory.  Routine tasks pile up. Fear of criticism, both direct and indirect, seems to paralyze me.
Then I get up, wash my hair, put a face on, and gamely do it all over again. Sometimes it feels marginally better.  Other times I have a distaste that I'm certain is spilling over into my physical self.  What do headaches mean anyway?
For tomorrow, this might be one of the posts I look back on and regret. But I can't censor it. All writing is practice, and this practice does require my truths. As one-sided as they might be at times.
See, I'm working on editing. On being more precise with truths--illustrating them, pinpointing and examining them. Finding out which ones I can use to fuel my ever-evolving voice.

City life has really been getting to me lately. It's summer, I want to be a social-loner, but there are people everywhere, on the streets, driving, walking, pedalling. Sirens are screaming. Birds are chirping. Light is revealing itself earlier and earlier in the mornings. The year anniversary looms. One of my dad's old friends emailed me on Monday night, randomly, to ask how my dad was doing. I had emailed him my blogged-obit, but he had not read it. I tried, clumsily, to explain, in an email reply, what had happened. The same thing occurred with my dad's accountant at tax-time, whom I had called to confirm I could once again mail him all the tax info for him to compile returns for my mom, dad, and me (you have to do a tax return for a deceased person. Go figure). It was as I dialled the accountant's number, a lovely man whom my father knew for many years, that I realized I had never contacted him to tell him of my dad's death. I apologized profusely, (he was very kind about it all) and mailed him a prayer card from my dad's service with the taxes.
It occurred to me then--really, anyone I told got their info in an email. I didn't really call anyone. The initial scar of being interrogated, rudely, over the phone, by an uncle of mine, the day my dad died, didn't go away. My cousin and her mother, and their self-centered attitude to it all, further soured me.
At the time, and even now, I just don't want to talk about it. Who really understands? That it wasn't just one event, but a series, tests of sorts, none of which I feel I really excelled at. Instead I just 'got it done'. No joy in those kinds of tasks. But doesn't getting it done have its own small pride? Perhaps this is me mingling work back into the equation. It's done, we've achieved something. Can we have a couple of goddamn hours to just be?

It's all exhausting. I'm going to bed.

Thanks for reading, if you are.

What I want to be...

Today, after a successful series of meetings here at the ol' workplace, I am still
at my desk, late, thinking about what I want to be when I grow up (a writer) and
that somehow, I will crank out a book at some point in my life (sooner rather
than later) and that somehow, my blog will become something that will allow
me to 'work' and be two places (ie, in two countries) at one time.

I started thinking about women and blogging and how much super-bad writing
there really is out there, and how few blogs I find myself relating to, and making return
visits to, when I stumbled upon a Forbes list of top 100 websites/blogs for (by) women
(says them) --I clicked on a few, mostly disappointed (Divine Caroline was on there,
my pick for a vacuous blog for idiots).

Just as I was despairing for the younger generations, for the twenty-somethings,
for my niece, the women of tomorrow, I clicked onto this,

http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2012/may/27/keegan-opposite-loneliness/

The last name drew me in, I'll admit. Anyone who knows me well knows who
in my life had this same last name.
I clicked on the article about this future New-Yorker writer (to me, the New Yorker, even after Tina Brown, is still a veritable force to be reckoned with) and was filled with sadness.

I was also filled with a sense of how brief our time on this planet can sometimes be. How unfair things turn out to be sometimes, and how, even when some of us do get to live to a ripe old age, we let our years be barren, we litter them with regrets, with the should-haves of life, instead of the "I dids".

I'm at a point in my life where I really need more "I dids".

Monday Highlights

1.  awaking at 5:30 am, unprompted, not a noise, nothing. Just...awake. HOURS before I needed to be.  Before I WANTED to be.

2.  trying to blog since I was up so early, but my computer refusing to work. just...REFUSING.

3.  throwing together an outfit that ended up looking completely 80s--all black and white. With stripes. It's alot nicer than it sounds.

4.  my new dark dark brown hair. I've left the medium brown behind. I used at-home mousse colour. I have to say: I loved it. I feel that it makes my newly-minted 'off' eye less noticeable. Black eyeliner seems to help this effect too. My right eye. It's so....strange. If  my face was asymmetrical before, now it's even weirder. And my eye gets so tired. And it hates the sunlight. When will this fix itself? (I was going to write "right itself" but that seemed punny).

5.  muscle relaxants. How have I never known about these before?

6.  calling a client back and having the 'on hold' music be "Love is a Battlefield" by Pat Benetar. Made my day. Sadly.

7.  listening to the monotone voice of Louise Hay on her affirmations cd at work..all day long. At least it distracted me from the coughing.  I focussed on her Health section. Loving your body. Treating it with kindness when it's not well (I tend to do the opposite. Yelling "HEAL" at your body does nothing to change things, I'm here to tell you).

8.  condo board meeting. always entertaining.

9.  my Sunday Night Syndrome being in full effect last night. I tossed and turned all night, despite sleep-tea. I dreamed weird things, about work, about my car, about not being able to get where I wanted to go. I woke up thirsty and hot, my sheets and duvet in a tumbled muddle.
9a.  the pile of washed, semi-folded laundry on my couch. It's the size of a person. A small person.

10.  I finished reading Chai Tea Sunday last night.  As I mentioned, I experienced great sadness reading it. I also experienced profound "first-world" guilt, reading about the circumstances of 'disadvantaged' Kenyans. I also found myself borderline-disgusted with the protagonist's casual mentions of expensive dinners, diamond bracelets, and a worship-ful marriage, albeit one with a husband who f*cked off when his wife (the protagonist) needed him most. But it made me squirm, I'll give the book that. Our rich, empty, soul-less lives here in our land of getting everything-we-ever-wanted. And if I feel that way, someone who did not grow up with extra money or stacks of privileges, how do the over-advantaged feel? Do they have to sublimate their luck by pushing it down, denying the circumstances of their birth, to rid themselves of feeling dirty about money, guilty about privilege?  Is this why they drive so aggressively in their large cars?  Why they project a sickening sense of self-entitlement, that they somehow deserve it all, and how these same people are now my contemporaries? Or are they truly embarassed by their good fortune, access to excellent education, and chastised by the knowledge that on the other side of the world, people are waiting for it to rain so that they may eat?
I'm not leaving myself out of this continuum by the way. I'm in it too. Very deeply. I've got the mortgage, the job I depend on to pay it, the car, a wardrobe for the four seasons, and the rrsp's that our government tells me to buy.

11. New Yorker, week of May 21st. I read another piece about Kenya, about a young Kenyan marathoner who fell to his death off of a balcony during a fight with his wife. He was in the beginning stages of an amazing career that should have lasted years. Reading about the training, the landscape, the expectations of someone earning good money in an impoverished country shed some more light on this sad story.  Imagine being given a talent like that, having the training to sharpen it, and then have your life just......  end.  By misadventure.

12. The nightly news. Last night, at 6pm, I tuned in to City Tv to take in what they had to say about the weekend. I'm happy to report that it was pretty safe going in Toronto this weekend as their lead story was about a traditional 'tourist' trap in Toronto known as "Doors Open" where prominent buildings open their doors to the public for the weekend. City Tv decided to include themselves in this prominency and open the doors to their Yonge and Dundas news-room.
When I was young, these were the types of things we did as field-trips with the Scarborough Board of Education, so I feel no need to stand in an endless line-up of unwashed-masses and wait on the sidewalk on a beautiful day for hours on end for the chance that I may turn up on Tv. In truth, I didn't notice many people of my demographic participating in any of it. Most were people with children, and probably no access to private outdoor space, looking for a way to fill in an otherwise boring Sunday.  If only they could turn to exercise. Watching it last night reminded me why the news enrages me (I also went a step further and read the Saturday Star too. I felt icky afterward)--it disgusts me how vapidly people spend their time. And I am not judging. I watch Real Housewives sometimes too. But I also engage my mind more often than not. Social research.

13. Instead, I lie in bed at night, prior to just falling asleep, and have a creative awakening. Nearly every night. My friend L. reminds me to scrawl these thoughts down. I must commit to this practice. Again, practice. Practice, practice, practice. That's all this post is today.
Nothing new to report...sorry.
Work--check.
No headache--check.
Weather wayyy too hot--check.
Want to go running but can't--check.
Missing Mike--check. Check check check.

Happy-Monday-is-over.

Sunday Randoms

I've dealt with head (migraine? something more?) pain now.
I've seen the doctor, been to the hospital, had a catscan, visited the eye doctor for my constricted
(right eye only) pupil. Had drops put in that made my vision blurry for hours.
Continued to go to work every day, getting little done, as I try to 'work through the pain'.

So far, it's a flop.
Upon waking Friday morning,  my head felt the best it had in two weeks.
Good enough that if I had had the time and it wasn't a Friday morning, I would have laced on my shoes and blasted off for a run.  Except for one small thing--I couldn't  move my neck from side to side without a screaming pain.
My body is still not happy, and I still can't run, and as I await an MRI in some distant medical future (end of June now), this makes me very un-happy.
Another weekend spent combing my mind as to how I did this to myself, what happened, why, and when it will stop. All those honest serving men (remember that rhyme? Or am I the only one who knows it? "I keep six honest serving men, they taught me all I knew. Their names are what, and why and when, and how and where and who").

Not running means I am a caged lion(ess).
Irritable. (I currently have two co-workers with recurrent, seemingly incurable coughs. I am losing my mind at work).
I've also cut my coffee consumption down by about two-thirds, my chardonnay-imbibing skills are at an all time low, and today, Sunday, was an epic day to run. Light breeze, half-sunlight. I had to talk myself out of it (it went like this: You will injure yourself MORE if you go today, you must heal, you must...I ended up at Costco with my mom and sister. Bought more vitamins).
Not running also has another side-effect:
Writer's block. (just typo'ed blog by mistake. yea, I get it).

So...here are some links I've explored this week, in a vain attempt to get me out of myself and back into the world of the pain-free, where I prefer to reside.

Louise Hay.
I listen to her affirmations CD often. I need to tune into the section on Health right now, for obvious reasons.
http://www.healyourlife.com/author-louise-l-hay/2010/05/lifeshelp/get-healthy/your-body-is-asking-for-help
I explored this blog entry, where she instructs that pain can be referred to as "sensation" which is a good semantics trick. I'm trying it right now. The other thing I'm trying are muscle relaxants (praise the lawd. I can move my head and check my blind spot). 

This article does not pertain specifically to me but I was happy to find it as this word, 'orthorexia'. http://life.nationalpost.com/2012/04/17/nutrition-bites-when-healthful-eating-goes-awry-and-the-roots-of-orthorexia/
It talks about that really annoying condition where you go out to dinner with friends and there is always that ONE person who is obsessed with every pithy bite of food that goes into their mouth. It usually encourages me to have more wine so I can block them out.

I'm reading "Chai Tea Sunday" by Heather Clark. She classifies herself as 'not a real writer' but so far, five chapters in, it feels like a 'real' book. I even caught myself crying as I lay in bed late last night, unable to put it down. She wrote it while on mat leave for her second child. Yes. One of the overachieving-types whom I tend to admire and whose abilities to get it all done amazes me.
http://heatheraclark.com/

That's about it. I've got a couple of posts on the back burner that are kind of negative, as I'm feeling so low without exercise.
If I get around to editing them, I'll post them shortly.

Ah Sunday. Speeding right by...

The White Horse



photo credit Ryan Hefferman



"Injuries began to slow him as he closed in on 40, but he eventually viewed these annoyances as a liberation. He started to care less about piling on the megamileage and more about finding challenging trails. Running was an exploration, inside and out, endorphins feeding his cerebral bliss."

Read the rest of the article about Micah True, ultra-runner and free-spirit.

If only we all had the ability to enjoy life this gently.

I read his attitude towards his injuries as his graceful allowance for his own limitations without being hemmed in by then...another example of that 'calm acceptance' of life in an uncertain world.
I strive to emulate that kind of grace in my own endeavours..

From the New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/21/sports/caballo-blancos-last-run-the-micah-true-story.html?pagewanted=7&_r=1&smid=FB-nytimes

The life I signed up for

I did a reading with a friend of "angel cards" last week.
My arch angel right now is "Haniel" and he is relative to the "Passion" in life.
I thought about this for a while after I drew the card.
Passion, huh?
Well, it showed itself with flying colours last Sunday morning (aka, race morning).
I re-discovered my passion for running, remembered the why and not the what, and I got out of
my comfort zone for a time. And it always seems, that when I do that, I feel that much better.

Example: Driving to Maine, alone. After I arrived on New England soil, me and my little grey Mazda, my Ontario plates giving a shout-out "She's far from home people!" I felt like I'd conquered the earth.
Truly. I felt like I'd propelled myself to the moon.

That first 16k run I did last summer. Where I stopped at the corner of Broadview and Dundas and leaned against a post to stretch because I was so exhausted. But through the exhaustion I felt exulted. It was amazing.

Mike. Meeting him (again). Getting to know him (in person, just as he is). The sheer wonder of meeting someone, at the stage of my life where I was "done" with relationships, "done" with the games, the lies, the withholding. And then to have this gift land on my lap.

I've had ample time to think about the life I've signed up for this week. Injury has had me with plenty of time to do nothing but think, reflect, and read a bit--in between icing and heating a neck problem that has blossomed into continual head pain.
I've thought about how self-inflicted this injury was--alot of over-doing it during training runs (I train on my own, there is no coach to rein me in, I'm starting to think there should be. But there I go..passion again).  Then I didn't rest my body enough before and after the race run.
So on Tuesday of last week the injury flared, became acute, and led me into the land of being home, in pain, on my own for a good four days before I started to enter the world of the mobile again (and that means walking. NO running. For at least another week).

I had to admire my body's passion. She's tired. I get it. She's stressed (she's fuelled by my mind). She's had a rough eighteen months. Not all bad I have to add--my engagement and wedding were exactly what I wanted, but here I am, a newly-wed. And Mike's not here. He's in Maine, working, while I remain here, working. And despite all the time that work eats up for both of us, there's lots of time to miss each other too. To pine. To start to feel low.

And for my dad, the one-year anniversary looms. It's had to describe. But it's a big milestone. I knew I would and I am, re-living many details of last year at this time. What the weather was like, what I did each weekend, going to see the Angel-reader and hearing his take on things.
Maybe my body wanted to remind me that there are bigger fish to fry in life than the day-to-day to-do list. That pain will make you stop and notice. That pain will make you  detour sometimes.

This week, I'll go to two doctor's appointments, and hopefully I will fit a sports massage in. I want to be well, I want to stoke my passion, I want to run again. SOON.
But I have to be patient, which is hard for me. The rebellious side of me wants to ignore my body's cries for help and just start secretly jogging. But I know the price paid for that could be an even worse injury.
So I wait it out. I read about training, and breaks, and rest and recovery. I read about pampering injuries so that they heal with less recurrence. And I sleep, I eat, I stare at the tv, and I watch the days pass.

Passion. It is a mighty fire, one that must be handled with care.   Feed the fire too much and you're burning the candle at both ends (although, as the poem says, it makes a lovely light).

For now, there's a brownie in the fridge and a pain pill waiting to help me drift off...

Good night...