THE FATES REALLY DO WORK IN MYSTERIOUS WAYS

Today, while on my lunch hour, I had written one of my usual flippant blogs and discussed how I had been working on my own for the last 10 years without any coworkers and that I had come to a lonely, and crazy of mind kind of place, where I had started to talk to bugs and walls and plants, and in all honesty, it made me giggle after I finished the entry as I did look like a complete lunatic (and of course, it would not be the first time). And I had felt that it was a good ending to a long week full of ups and downs.

But then out of nowhere an 80 something elderly gentleman had just wandered off the street and landed in my office, which let me tell you is no easy feat as he had to climb up two flights of stairs.  Bent over and tired and using a cane for support, he just parked himself down in a chair across from me and started to cry.  I wasn’t sure what to make of this and I wasn’t even sure why he had come into my office. But what I did know for sure was that he was in some form of crisis.  Sadly you see, he had informed me that he had lost his wife in November and that they had been married for 65 years and he was now at a loss.  In fact, I would venture to say that he was completely devastated.  He went on to tell me that his wife was his best friend and the absolute love of his life. He shared with me the beautiful story of how the first time he saw her, he reached for her hand and from that day forward, he had never let go of it until the day she died.  His soul mate was gone and now he was alone.  And I could see what he was thinking: he had that wish, you know the one, that wish that said that he had wished it was he who had passed first.

Out of his jacket, he had pulled the memorial pamphlet from his wife’s funeral that he had gotten laminated and carried in a little book in his jacket wallet.  I really was at my own loss for words.  I did not know what he wanted from me and I wasn't sure what to do for him. And then I saw it in his eyes, he was just lonely.  So incredibly lonely and he had come thru my office door looking for some compassion.  After I wiped away my own tears, the only thing I could think of doing was to just get up and hug him.  And I hugged him hard and then he cried and I cried and he told me that was all that he needed and he got up and hobbled out thru the door.

I stood there wondering how and why he ended up in my office and then I thought of my recently drafted blog and it hit me hard.  Yes, I have incredibly huge moments of loneliness working by myself.  After all, I am a bit social and not having someone to work and laugh with during the day, does become a bit daunting.  But at the end of the day, I get to come home to my better half and my adorable little pooch, my great neighbours, phone calls from my awesome mother, emails from my fabulous friends, and by 9:00 p.m., I am often looking for a quiet little space for myself which is ironic since several hours earlier I was complaining about being lonely.

Coincidence that this man had walked into this office? I don’t think so.  Fates slapping me in the back of the head and telling me I have no idea what loneliness is?  Perhaps.

But whatever the reason, I can tell you that this man took my hand and pleaded with me to always appreciate that life was precious and fleeting, and I am grateful that whatever force ushered him towards my door knew that he would be the perfect person to kick me in my ass.


Until Next Time.
Smooches Pooches.

I AM WOMAN HEAR ME ROAR (ESPECIALLY DURING A WAX JOB!)

I am coming back as a man in my next life.  Yup, you heard it here first.  I am so over being a woman.  Being a woman has just become way too much maintenance for me!

You know, last night I was sitting there covering up my grey roots, yet again, when I got to thinking about how super easy men have it.  As a kid, I use to always feel sorry for my Dad and his daily shave of his face and neck, but now that I am in my early 40's, I can see that he has absolutely nothing on my daily routine.

Oh its starts off innocent enough. First you start shaving your arm pits in your preteen stage and then you might as well start shaving your calves, and what’s that you say, all your friends are doing their thighs too?  Well I guess I better start mowing the lawn up there as well, and before you know it, there isn’t a speck of hair on your entire body, well of course, with the exception of your head and a nameless area (after all this is a family friendly blog) and even that nameless area is debatable with some women.

But you think that this would be it, wouldn’t you?  Oh no, then we have the joys of entering in our 40's and you get up that one morning and you pull out your magnifying mirror (because let’s face it, you are starting to loose your sight and can no longer see the flaws without 200x magnification) and OH MY GAWD, horror strikes!  “What’s that at the corner of my mouth?”  Oh my lord, is that the beginning of a Foo Man Chu moustache.  And, if that isn’t the icing on the proverbial cake, upon closer inspection, I start to wonder if I am now sporting a full goatee.  Eeeek!

My esthetician thinks I am crazy.  She says there is nary hair on my face.  Personally, I think she is just being polite. I think that she is worried that if she tells me the truth, I will go screaming off into the night and reside with the rest of the apes, and she’s probably right, you know!  But I’m no fool. I can see it in her eyes and I know what she is really thinking!  I know secretly she wants to grab my face and say to me “Look Bush Baby, stick your entire face in that vat of wax because you are beginning to look like the hairy woman from Borneo!” 

And if this isn’t the worst possible news, I now spend my free time with my face glued to the mirror looking for strays that have sprung up somewhere new in the middle of the night.  I swear that while I am sleeping there is a Hairy Fairy that comes and spreads “instant growth” manure on my face!  I’d certainly like to catch that little bugger and clip her wings! 

And then the other day, another woman said to me “wait till you start growing nostril hair.”  WHAT?  Are you kidding me?  I certainly thought that was only reserved for men, but in any event, I spent the next two hours inspecting my nostrils for any indication that I might have had a reforestation going on!  Ugh I say!  UGH!

I am at a loss on how to beat the fact that I am starting to revert back to one of my ancient ancestors.  I have thought of buying bulk containers of Nair Hair Remover and filling up my bathtub and just dipping myself in. Or, I could just give up and starting swinging from the trees like the rest of the primates.  In the meantime, I am packing up my bags... I have just been sent my invitation to join the Gorgades, a Tribe of Hairy Libyan women.  Don’t laugh, I hear your invitation is in the mail too!

Until Next Time.

Smooches Pooches

THE COLOUR OF COLUMBINE

Oh the Columbine, small in stature and seeming to have less impact in a garden than most flowers, but nonetheless, it is a flower that should never be overlooked.  It's beautiful, delicate, star shaped face that carries the colours of the rainbow in it's petite petals, and having a gentle, meditated movement when it sways its small face in the soft winds.  By all accounts, it is completely glorious in its own right.  

Did you know that they were able to trace the Columbine as far back as the 11th Century where it was used as an aphrodisiac.  It was even dedicated to Freya, the Norse Patron Goddess of Love and Fertility, and at one time it was even considered highly inappropriate to give a young woman a bouquet of Columbine due to its sexual connotations.

One thing I do know, it reminds me of something I read several months ago:  "A flower's appeal is in its contradictions - so delicate in form yet strong in fragrance, so small in size yet big in beauty, so short in life yet long on effect."  ~Terri Guillemets

 

This is my second time participating in Outdoor Wednesday and I want to thank 

asoutherndaydreamer.blogspot.com for hosting same and allowing my participation.

I hope your week is filled with all the colours of the rainbow.

Until Next Time.

Smooches Pooches

TO BE IN LOVE WITH SUCH BEAUTY

Oh the flower, its beauty, it's gracefulness, its delicious scent.... My heart runneth over among a field of colour.  Thank you flower for providing a feast to my eyes and a warmth to my soul.

I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.  ~Claude Monet

I hope this Sunday has brought you a moment of happiness.

Until Next Time.

Smooches Pooches

OH MY GAWD, PASSION JUST KNOCKED AT MY DOOR!

I decided to take the bull by the horns and start coaxing my passion back.  I have always been one to glide over the surface of learning new things and not really get into the depth.  I am easily bored unfortunately.  I suppose that besides Interior Design, nothing really has piqued my interest for any length of time, that is until a couple of years ago when I started using my mother's camera to take pictures.  My entire life I sucked, seriously sucked, at taking portraits pictures or of humans in general.  You know those people who cut off heads and knees and you are left with a torso?  Well that would be me, my friends. But low and behold, one day I went out and starting taking pictures of foliage and I wasn't that bad.  It surprised everyone in my family including yours truly. Several months later, my lovely better half surprised me with a wonderful little Cannon Powershot and I have had a blast with it thus far.  But lately, I was feeling frustrated with the lack of up close and personal pictures I was trying to achieve.  I could see it with my eye but with my lack of zoom capability, I could not achieve the pictures I so desperately wanted. So today, I bought myself a macro camera, and you know what, I am starting to feel "her", my passion that is.  She is telling me to get off my rooty toot butt, put some umpf into it and start being serious with the camera and so I will and I have a lot to learn but isn't that part of the fun?  So here is to the first attempts at reviving my passion!  She told me it was a weak attempt, but she was pleased nonetheless....

And I promise, it will get better.

Until Next Time.

Smooches Pooches

HAVE YOU SEEN MY PASSION?

I have no Passion anymore!  There I said it and I can’t take it back.  Yup, I have become a passionless dried up, in serious need of a good exfoliation, prune.  Is this something that happens when you hit your 40's?  It’s a question I have often asked of myself in the last two years.

Sometimes, I wander around my house searching for my Passion.  I look in the kitchen cupboards (nope not there), under the rugs (nope), in the hallway closet (nothing), upstairs (not there either)  and then I go outside and I say “here Passion Passion Passion... here girl, where are you girl?”  Sadly, she never comes.  I did notice in my 30's that she would sometimes wander away for short periods of time, but eventually, she always came back. And now well... she seems to be gone and I can’t find her.

There are days that I actually think about putting up posters on the telephone poles or taking out a newspaper ad that says: “Looking for my Passion, she’s pretty witty, incredibly feisty, drawn to the colour blue, loves to dance in the rain, let’s her hair go loose when it’s windy out, can’t get her to stop talking about art... If you have seen her, please send her home.  Signed Shell of my Former Self!”

And, before you say it, no I have not hit menopause, but I am seriously wondering if I am starting to hit the dreaded mid life crisis.  It’s not that I want a younger man, why would I?  Have you seen my better half?  Good looking arab man with his dark, brooding eyes and his squeezable, yummy butt.  It’s not that I want a fast car, I have new red jeep and although its not a little convertible, it is kind of smoking hot looking and practical at the same time.

So what is it?  And why did Passion leave me?  Adventure I think..  I have lost the art of going on a good adventure.  I tended to blame Passion for leaving me on many things: the amount of pain I live with, the fact that my better half loves being a homebody, the town I live in, the job that I do, but the fact remains, that Passion has left me because of me.  I never kept her fueled up enough.  I stopped taking her for nights out on the town.  I replaced spontaneity with complacency.  I forgot to learn new things that would have really got her mojo revved up.  Ultimately, I took her for granted and she got tired of it, and she left me.

I feel sad without her and at a bit of loss.  She was the very best part of me and now everything feels mundane.  She made me want to get up and go each morning instead of throwing the covers back over my head.  She made me fight back when I knew things were wrong, instead of standing there nodding my ahead in order to avoid confrontation. She made everything feel like it was in technocolour.  She forced me do crazy, stupid things that gave me such an exhilaration that it would leave me on a high for days.  She could take any old grey sky and turn it blue.  Oh how I love her.

What I wouldn’t do to get my Passion back, and secretly, I am afraid that she is gone for good. I am holding out hope though that she will realize that there is still a flame that burns in me and that together we were and could be a good team again.

In the meantime, if you happen to see my Passion, I would really appreciate it if you could kindly tell her that her best friend is really very sorry and that she will never take her for granted again.  And then dive on that little bugger, pin her down, box her up, and ship her collect to me via Fed/Ex!


Until Next Time.
Smooches Pooches

FOR MY BETTER HALF WITH LOVE

Oh what a simple stroll, hand in hand, with someone you love can do for your cluttered mind, your tired soul and your heavy heart.  Have I told you lately how much I adore my better half.  He is a very good man and I am incredibly lucky.  Thank you my sweetie for a lovely walk in the rain. You make my life bearable and memorable.

xxxooo

SIGHT UNSEEN

I once read somewhere that our visions begin with our desires.  I had always thought that I was well aware what that quote represented until this past weekend.  I was on a garden tour you see and had entered the delightful garden of a gentleman whose gardening passion was 65 years strong.  What made his garden even more spectacular than those of the others was that he was visually impaired and that his garden was created on 2.5 acres of quick draining, sandy and rocky soil on a steep incline.  And it didn’t stop there, as his garden was self sufficient with not only a vegetable garden but an orchard and a backyard bowling green.  I was speechless as I stood there in the rain watching him tend to his vegetables, by feel rather than by sight, and it was at that particular moment I believe that I came to understand that it truly is our soul that sees and not our eyes.

And while I stood there in complete silent awe, a particular quote from Patricia Barrett of The Sacred Garden came to my mind: “Connection with gardens, even small ones, even potted plants, can become windows to the inner life.  The simple act of stopping and looking at the beauty around us can be prayer.”

I heard that prayer that day and left the garden with an everlasting moment of gratefulness.

Until Next Time.

Smooches Pooches

IT WAS A CRAZY LITTLE BIRTHDAY!

I have a running joke with my closest family members, i.e. my mother and my better half.  That is that I was born under a dark cloud, the reality is that I was born three weeks late which I believe has ultimately screwed up my destiny.  Everything possible that can happen, will happen to me.  If there is a pole in the middle of nowhere, I will ultimately walk into it.  If there is one mosquito and 2000 thousand people, it will find me and not only get me once but a few more hundred times for good measure. Wherever I walk, I cause the ones I love some serious stress and usually you will hear one of them say: "watch the curb, watch the pot hole, there is a dip in the road, there is a tree up ahead."  And not only am I destined or pre-destined to be a klutz, but my whole path in life has been a series of potholes.  Not that I am complaining, it makes life fairly interesting, if not a wee bit painful at times!

As like every birthday I have ever had, my mother goes beyond what is necessary to make it memorable for me but ultimately something goes astray. This birthday was no different with the exception of me.  I knew that bad things were going to happen and I just embraced it and went with the flow.  I woke up sicker than a dog (strike one), we went on a garden tour where it just poured and poured (strike 2), I drank too much before we left and almost peed my pants (strike 3), one of the gardens was so packed that we couldn't find parking after we drove 30 minutes to get there (strike 4), my mother sat in pitch and I tried to get it off her butt with my hand and then everything stuck to my hand for the rest of the day (strike 5), we had a picnic lunch on a back road in the middle of nowhere in the car because we couldn't find anywhere dry (strike 6), I stepped out of the car into a great big muddy hole of sludge (strike 7) and on the way home after the garden tour was over, the sun came out (strike 8).  And those are just some of the highlights. But you know what? I just don't seem to care.  And at some point, it just was so ludicrous it was funny and I couldn't stop laughing.  Its just par for the course in a day of my life and I just wouldn't have it any other way. I can't imagine everything going perfectly right, and if it did, I am sure I would pass out from sheer boredom.  

I have to admit though that no matter how much my water downed, hair sprayed hair was dripping in my eyes, I did not miss the beauty that surrounded me.  It is definitely at times like this, when I am standing there like a drowned rat with mascara running down my face, sneezing with a kleenex stuffed up my nostril, my legs crossed to avert a dangerous bladder problem and my pitch covered hand stuck to my hair, that I continue to feel blessed.  Really!  Because whatever my problems are, nature counteracts it with tiny miracles that are nothing short of spectacular.

And in any event, it was memorable, this birthday of mine, and although extremely simple by most people's standards, it was special to me nonetheless.  And while I like to say that I am 21 on the left half of me and 21 on the right half of me, becoming 42 has started with a splash!  Now where are my rubber boots as I am in some serious need of puddle jumping!  

Until Next Time.

Smooches Pooches

A GARDENER'S TALE: SLIGHT GREEN THUMB WITH DEFINITE BROWN TOE

I like to believe that I am the most fabulous and talented of gardeners. The fact remains, however, and with the greatest of sighs, that I am just average in my gardening expertise at best. Give me a house to design inside and I am in my glory but give me a garden to design and I am perplexed.  Not because I can't imagine what I want, but because I can never determine which plants go with which dirt and what fertilizer goes best with which plant and is the ground clay, or should the ground be alkaline, should you lime that plant, or give that one blood and bones.  ITS UTTERLY EXHAUSTING!  I'm exhausted just thinking about it.

Sadly, I have had so many compliments on my garden and I cannot take credit for any of it!  The foundation of my garden was created by a landscaper and my only contribution is that I water the crap out of the plants so they don't die!  Or maybe that is why some of them have died, too much water perhaps?  Who knows!

I have decided that my forte lies with evergreens.  Thankfully they are hardy, thankfully they do not require a lot of care and thankfully they tend to make your house look beautiful without a lot of work.  People ooohh and ahhhh and I think to myself, it isn't me people, these evergreens have done all the work themselves.

Still doesn't stop me from looking in garden nurseries.  In fact, I love fleurs.  I usually buy them in large abundance.  I plant them here, there and everywhere and I apply the same principles to them that I do with the evergreens, i.e. they will take care of themselves.  You have to ask yourself, based on this misguided philosophy, why is it every year I still go out and scratch my head when my fleurs start to take on that pitiful weedy appearance!  Thank goodness I didn't have any children, can you imagine.. "oh hey honey, let's get ready for work, the kid will take care of itself"!  Sheesh!  scary thought!

Anyway, on the weekend, I hit my favourite little garden nursery.  I am kind of opposed to those large uninviting ones.  Not because the plants aren't very good, but because I love the coziness of this little place in a converted home on a small town lot.  I can walk around it many times over and never get bored, that's for sure!

This year, I have kind of held off from buying a lot of posies.  I suppose to save them from my mediocre gardening skills.  In fact, I think that this may have been the most charitable thing I have done all year.  I am sure that when I walk past a potted posy, it cringes with "please don't buy me lady, please!"  Well I listened this year, and stuck to just my hanging baskets... They will survive as usual due to my better half taking care of them, and certainly not from anything I do!

And while I am slightly sad that my yard won't be filled to the brim with colour, it's okay, because I would be the first to admit that I was born with a slightly green thumb and an unfortunate definite distinctive brown toe!

Until Next Time

Smooches Pooches.