Happy Birthday, Mom

Today is my Mother's 76th birthday.

My Mother is a card-carrying caretaker. She's got a complicated combo of pride, martyrdom and isolationism brewing at any moment. She's also completely unaccustomed to allowing others to do anything nice for her.

Last night, my Mother's friends Stella and Mario took her out for dinner. You know where: Swiss Chalet.

When dinner was finished, my Mother refused to allow Stella and Mario to pay for her dinner. Her birthday dinner.

"Oh I don't want to be any trouble," my Mother said.

"Ma, it's okay to let other people be nice to you," I told her when she was recounting the story. "It actually makes THEM feel better."

"Maybe you're right," my Mother said, like she'd never thought of it before, and was undoubtedly sceptical about the whole notion.

A few minutes after her call, she called back. She'd opened the card that Stella had slipped her when they left the restaurant.

Inside, $12 -- the cost of her dinner.

The truth is not out there

I've long said that there are two types of people: people who like Star Trek and the people who live with them.

I used to feel the same about The X Files, until my BFF lobbied long and hard for its relative merits and I, too, came to care deeply for the search for extraterrestrial life and happiness in perpetuity for Muldar and Scully.

So it was with hope, and a fair bit of nostalgia, that BFF and I ignored the critics and headed off to a matinee showing of the new X Files movie.

How sadly disappointing it was. Countless episodes of the TV show were much, much better.

The most positive thing my BFF could find to say about it was that it possessed "the creep factor".

But it felt a little like looking at your old Yearbook. A little out-of-date.

We should have seen Brideshead Revisited.

What I talk about when I talk about running

I don't run, unless I'm being chased or some part of me is on fire. But I sometimes read books about running, especially when they're written by writers whose work I greatly admire.

I just finished Haruki Murakami's What I talk about when I talk about running. He became a marathon runner and sometimes triathalete in 1982, about the same time that he sold his jazz bar and started writing novels full time.

For him, the act of running long distances and the act of writing a long work of fiction are not entirely unrelated. In fact, he feels the painstaking detail and attention to form that goes into each of these disciplines actually supports and nurtures the other.

The book provides insight into this intensely private and enigmatic literary figure, while also informing, to some degree, what drives people to run and run and run, even when there is no destination in mind.

I offer you this tiny excerpt from the book. Naturally, it's as much about life, as it is about running.

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. Say you're running and you start to think, Man this hurts, I can't take it anymore. The hurt part is an unavoidable reality, but whether or not you can stand any more is up to the runner himself.

Yesterday at Home Depot

Click on the link above for a little of what it was like to be a single woman shopping for countertops at Home Depot during a regular work day. Maybe I should have taken off the hat.

The Do Nothing Vacation

I've been doing a lot of nothing over my week off, and it feels really good. It's one of the most relaxing vacations I've had in a long time.

Doing nothing is actually quite productive.

When you do nothing for long periods of time, and then you finally do something, you become more keenly focussed on the something you're doing and it becomes clearer someehow. Sharper.

Jesus take the wheel

I believe that anyone can conquer fear by doing the things he fears to do, provided he keeps doing them until he gets a record of successful experience behind him.
~Eleanor Roosevelt

Highway driving scares me a little. But I'm tired of being afraid. So I drove to Buffalo all on my own yesterday. The siren song of Target is sweeter than all other songs.

Guess what happpened?

The drive there was great. Good weather. Good roads. Sailed through customs and immigration. A 10 out of 10 on the fear conquering scale.

On the return journey, the area around Hamilton was hit by a severe storm. Torrential rain. Hail. Wind so hard I thought it might have been a tornado. Half the drivers were pulled over on to the shoulder, while the other half were driving with their hazzards on.

But you know what? I got through it.

I actually said out loud, "You know, Universe. This is freaking me out a little. I could really use a little help here."

And help came. I was calm. Focussed. Refreshingly free from anxiety.

The storm subsided. It still rained most of the way home, but at least I could see for most of it.

And when I pulled into my driveway last night, I had a huge feeling of accomplishment.

I did it.

Well, actually, me and the Universe did it. But I paid for the gas.

Mad Men

My holiday to date has been punctuated by two things -- Vampires and advertising executives.

While you might well argue that they're one in the same, the Vampires come in the form of "Eclipse", a rather tawdry but addictive bodice ripper that has been making the rounds at my office, and the ad execs come as I work my through Season One of Mad Men.

If you believe the writers of Mad Men, you needed three things to survive in the ad agency of the sixties: a high ball glass, a pack of smokes and an over-active libido. My how things have changed. Today, thirty years later, you need to go outside to smoke.

Tomorrow me and my questionable sense of direction are off for a little cross-border shopping. God help us all.