Looking Back

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair…" - Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

For the first time in many years, I will meet the end of the year with a measure of relief.  2014 was a year of joy and a year of loss, a year of celebration and a year of pain, a year in which I experienced the highest highs in the same week I experienced the lowest lows. 

My business was the slowest it has been in ten years.  Projects were pulled or postponed at the eleventh hour.  Clients were slow to pay their bills or didn’t pay at all.  A lot of people asked for help and advice.  Most of them didn’t want to pay for it. 

We started the year with great joy.  Our dear friend Howard got his new lungs in December 2013.  He was released from the hospital in January.  We had a party before sending him and his wife home to Timmins the week before Easter.  A couple of months later he caught a virus and came back.  On a quiet Sunday in June, his 58^th birthday, he died.  We lost our miracle man.  His wife Lise who had become such a cherished member of our family, went back to Timmins.  We did our best to support her but it was not long before she began to withdraw from us.  Sometime in September she unfriended our whole extended family from Facebook.  She stopped responding to messages.  She stopped picking up the phone when we called. It was a loss I didn’t see coming and one that still has me reeling.  

In April, Merv’s brother, Eric and his partner, Val arrived for a visit.  The day after their arrival, I hosted Courtney’s 21^st birthday with a Disney princess themed dinner party.  I decorated the house with banners, tiaras and fairy lights.  The following day, I replaced the décor with British bunting and Union Jacks as we celebrated Merv’s 60^th birthday.  Their one week with us also included Easter celebrations, a trip to Niagara, visits to all the local tourist spots, cooking, cooking, cooking and endless cleaning. It was fun but by the end of their visit I was ready to fall down with fatigue.

I attended far too many funerals this year.  I lost mentors and friends. In the week of Howard’s death, I lost two old friends.  It was the same week that we celebrated Jacob’s graduation at the top of his university class.  We travelled to Guelph to watch him receive a prestigious engineering award and went back to Guelph two days later for his convocation.  We sent Jacob and Courtney to Italy as a graduation gift.  Courtney moved into our house for the summer.  At the beginning of August I herniated three lumbar discs.  It is the end of the year and I haven’t yet managed a full recovery.  I was in bed for my twenty-fifth wedding anniversary.  I missed a scheduled trip to England for a family wedding.  Merv went alone.  I was grateful Courtney was here to take care of me.  There are some things I can’t ask my boy child to do.  She was wonderful.  In September, Courtney moved back downtown at the start of school.  In November, Jacob and Courtney called it quits.  I am sad.  I miss her.  I’ve maintained my relationships with Jacob’s other exes but I don’t know if I’m going to be able to do it this time. She has pulled away from me. I can only hope she will still find a space for me in her life.

Yesterday marked ten years since we put my mom in the nursing home.  I never expected we would see this anniversary.  She is mentally vacant but her heart is strong.  It is just one more of life's mysteries.

Today I will take down the Christmas decorations and pack the holidays away for another year.  In a couple of days 2014 will slip away quietly.  I will meet the new year with renewed hope for better health and better days for us all.

Oblivious to The Slow Simmer

 

"If you throw a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will hop right out.  But if you put that frog in a pot of tepid water and slowly warm it, the frog doesn't figure out what's going on until it's too late.  Boiled frog.  It's just a matter of working by slow degrees." - Stephenie Meyer

I'm feeling a bit like the frog in the old metaphor.  I've been wearing reading glasses for close to twenty years now but my long distance vision has always been great or at least good.  Since I suffered a viscuous detachment last year it has admittedly been less than it had been but I still don't wear glasses for distance or driving. Lately I've noticed the street signs aren't quite as clear as they once were. So last week I decided to go to an opthamologist for an eye exam. Following a thorough exam, the opthamologist told me my vision is lousy in all ranges and suggested progressives. 

As I was unable to wrap my head around wearing glasses full-time, I decided to take a couple of days to mindfully go through my life attempting to be cognizant of my vision and any obstructions I was experiencing.  Sitting in a conference room the following day at The Law Society, it only took until noon before I was ready to order new glasses.  When did I get so blind?  Everything was fuzzy.  In the harsh overhead lights I couldn't read the laptop in front of me or the words projected on the screen fifteen feet away from me. 

My glasses are on order though unfortunately I probably won't get them in time for Christmas.  I suppose that's okay.  The lights on the tree look very pretty in a blur.  My failing eyesight is just further evidence that aging is not for sissies.

13 Days of Giving

"Remember that the happiest people are not those getting more, but those giving more." - H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

 

Last year, the remarkable organization, Change Heroes ran a program called 30 Days of Giving.  Each day in the month of December, participants were tasked with doing a specific act of kindness.  It was a great deal of fun and a wonderful way to fully engage in the joy of the season.  Whatever their reason, this year they have reduced the program to 13 Days of Giving.  Today is Day 3.  

 

As I'm struggling a bit this year getting emotionally connected to Christmas, I have welcomed the activities.  My mood is dark enough that I explained to someone today that to hit bottom, I think I need to climb up.  Nonetheless, I'm trying.  The tasks have been simple enough.  Day 1 was to compliment a stranger.  Day 2 was to write three things for which I am grateful.  Today's task was to bake cookies to share with my colleagues tomorrow.  I don't have colleagues and I rarely bake cookies.  Instead, I put some Christmas music on and stirred up a pumpkin spice loaf.  I cooled and wrapped it, ready for Jacob to take to work with him tomorrow.  I didn't get to sample it but the kitchen smelled heavenly.  I hope his colleagues enjoy it.  Somehow even that activity hasn't boosted my mood much.  Maybe tomorrow.

Silver and Pearls

"Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love." - Hamilton Wright Mabi

It is a silver and pearl Christmas for us this year.  I normally choose the theme for our holiday from something that happened during the year or someplace we travelled.  It was a strange year for me.  No big trips or new adventures.  I decided on the silver because Merv and I marked our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary in August and the pearls because I like white.

My back and hip remain painful so Christmas decorating is going slow.  Today I did the banister.  Tomorrow I will tackle the fireplace mantel.  Perhaps I will do the upstairs tree this weekend.  I haven't really been in the mood.  A little more than a week ago, Jacob and Courtney ended their romance after three years.  It was a mutual decision but one that left them both sad.  I'm sad too.  Courtney has virtually lived in our home for much of these last few years.  She was a God send to me this summer when I was bedridden with back trouble.  She cared for me and looked after me.  I don't know what I would have done without her.  I know the relationship between she and I will continue.  We didn't break up.  But it won't be the same.  I didn't have my girl kid to snuggle up with and watch TV on the weekend.  I miss her already.  A couple of days after the break-up, I got the news of the death of an old friend.  Old, in the sense that we've known one another since 1993 but certainly not in the sense that he was old.  Stewart was one of the most brilliant men I have known.  He left us all too early at the age of 67. 

His death started me thinking about how many funerals I've been to this year and how much loss I've been witness to.  2014 hasn't been the kindest year.  There are just 29 days left in December.  I'm trying to make the best of them but in all honesty, I can't say I will be sad to close the book on this year.

Jian and Other Pigs

"There is no kind of harassment that a man may not inflict on a woman with impunity in civilized societies." -  Denis Diderot

It happened a long time ago.  I was a young woman living in the big city, trying to find my way in the workplace.  It was a fact of life for women in those times.  We all talked about it, shared information about who to avoid, how to handle the attackers.  It didn't even occur to most of us to go to someone for help.  Those who had sought help from management or Personnel (as Human Resources departments were called then) were told to toughen up or just avoid the problem.  One woman was told to lock the door to the secretarial pool at 5 o'clock to keep out the man who routinely assaulted women when they were required to work after hours. 

It wasn't one incident, it was hundreds. There were the events that took place in my workplace when I had full-time work.  They range from being groped and fondled to dealing with a man who exposed his penis and tried to force me to gratify him orally.  There was the boss who hit me when I was trying to clean up the coffee I had accidentally spilled on the floor. There was the colleague who groped me in his car while he was driving 120 kilometers an hour on the 401.  I had asked him for a ride home from a company sponsored golf tournament that I was ordered to attend.  It was more than 100 kilometers away and I didn't have a car.  A very nice man on the executive team drove me there but once there he asked me to find another ride home.  Fair enough.  He didn't live in the city.  A man who had been harassing me jumped up to volunteer.  I didn't want to go with him so I asked another colleague who lived very near to me.  I thought I could trust him.  I thought he would protect me.

There was a time when I didn't have a full-time job.  To meet my rent, I temped.  Every new assignment was a minefield to be navigated.  Some of it was easy - the pornography, the disgusting notes that would be left on my desk when I went to lunch.  I threw them in the trash without reacting and moved on.  Much of it was harder - being grabbed or chased around the desk by men who seemed like the least likely aggressors.  Sometimes the other women would warn me who to avoid ahead of time.  But sometimes I think they were just grateful there was someone else there to take the hits.

I remember the first time I went to management with a complaint.  I worked in Human Resources and one of my responsibilities was to take new employees on an orientation tour.  The walls of the mail room which was on our tour, were covered with pictures of naked women.  I wanted them taken down.  I was accused of being a prude.  I wouldn't back down and neither would the manager of the department, a woman who had worked at the company for many years.  In his wisdom, the head of H.R. decided on a compromise.  On days I led the tour, the breasts and genitals on the offending photos would be covered up.  The other times that I needed to visit the mail room, I would just have to suck it up.

A couple of years later, I was assaulted by a member of management.  It was a vile attack that ended worse for him than it did for me.  I took my complaint to the company president.  It takes a special kind of stupid to assault an employee in the H.R. end of the business.  An investigation was launched and my attacker was dismissed.  The company kept things very quiet which I appreciated.  But soon after, the phones began to ring.  Women who had left the employ of the company, some of them without giving notice, called to ask if it was true he was no longer there and if so, could they come back to work.  Not a one of them had ever come to register a complaint - at least not to me. 

I've had a very long and very successful career and it has been many years since I was the woman facing sexual harassment and abuse aimed at me.  But I'm still in the Human Resources end of business.  I've investigated many complaints of sexual and workplace harassment over the years. Women are still getting groped.  Still getting assaulted.  Still getting harassed. By now, I'm shock proof.

Pornography isn't posted on workplace walls anymore. Reading the news about Jian Ghomeshi and the CBC, the complaints against Members of Parliament, Scott Andrews and Massimo Pacetti and the comments made on social media by OHL players, Greg Betzold and Jake Marchment, it would seem that little else has changed.

Healing at The Highway

"The wish for healing has always been half of health." - Lucius Annaeus Seneca

 

It has been an interesting week.  After eleven weeks of agony, my back problems mysteriously began to subside.  I'm not all the way healed yet but I have come far enough that I'm managing the pain with Advil and living a pretty normal existence.  I knew I had come a really long way when I managed using both feet to climb the stairs.  I was wondering if I would ever be able to do that again.  I've shopped, attended an all day seminar, done a significant amount of driving and even sat up and had enough concentration to make a couple pieces of jewellery.  

Like all Canadians I was hard hit by the death of Corporal Nathan Cirillo on Wednesday.  When I heard Friday morning that his body was being brought home that afternoon along the Highway of Heroes, I decided I would stand on the overpass alongside many others as a sign of respect.  I know Corporal Cirillo wouldn't see me, but I did it for his mother.  It was she who went to Ottawa to bring her baby home.  Brian and Geraldine were also planning to stand on the overpass and Cath decided to join us.  The hearse was expected to pass us at about 6 o'clock.  We arrived around 5 and waited.  It was a lovely day but when the sun started to set, there was a distinct chill in the air.  There were already about fifty people on the overpass when we arrived and more than a hundred by the time the hearse passed.  It was close to 7 o'clock.  The procession travelled much slower than was anticipated. There were thousands of people lining the highways and overpasses from Ottawa all the way to Hamilton.  It was dark by the time it reached us.  It was also eerily silent though we were many people.  The only sounds were waving flags and sniffles.  It was sad.  The rear window of one of the limousines in the procession opened and a hand emerged, waving an acknowledgement to the crowd.  A couple of moments later, it was gone.  We quietly returned to our cars, mumbling to the strangers we had stood with that we hoped never to meet this way again.  I remembered that is what we said to one another the last time I stood there in honour of a soldier killed in Afghanistan.  When we pulled out of that war zone, I hoped that was the end of my time standing in wait for a fallen soldier.  I certainly didn't fathom I would be there to honour a young man killed in our own nation by one of our own citizens.

I certainly don't regret the hours spent waiting yesterday.  But two hours on the concrete in the cold did set me back.  I ramped up my pain meds and have spent some time in bed.  I will heal.  I hope that seeing the outpouring of support and respect from a proud and grateful nation, will help Corporal Cirillo's mother to heal a little too.

Unthinkable

"Our belief is that people who are using violence to undermine democracy want us to be silenced and we refuse to be silenced."  - Kathleen Wynne

This morning Corporal Nathan Cirillo went to work, unarmed, to stand as an honorary guard at the tomb of the unknown soldier in Ottawa.  Corporal Cirillo was a reservist,  just 24 years old, a son, a brother, a father.  I imagine that his mother was quietly relieved that her soldier son had such safe duty rather than being posted on the other side of the world to fight a war that few of us understand.  Tonight, Corporal Cirillo's mother is without her son, his sister is without her brother, his son is without his father.  And all of Canada is without the sense of security that has always shored us up.

There is a great deal of chatter today about the gunman who killed Corporal Cirillo.  We know little of him.  What we do know is that he is another home-grown terrorist, a recent convert to Islam, the second in a week to launch an attack on Canadian soldiers.  Social media, as it is want to do, is filled with venom, with hate, with misinformation and speculation.  I suppose it is the nature of people in the absence of information, to try to fill in the gaps.  Anti-Muslim rhetoric is in full swing.  There is rampant speculation about the ethnic origins of the gunman.  It is sick and sad and more than a little frightening.  Judging from the gunman's name at birth, his ethnicity is as about as exotic as Wonder Bread.  When his face is not wrapped in a scarf, he looks like an average white guy.  He was born in Quebec.

As a nation, we face a few challenges in the next few days.  We must resist the urge to vilify a whole religious segment of the population and we must resist the urge to politicize these events.  Each of the three main party leaders made statements today about the situation.  Beyond platitudes, none of them had much to say with the exception of Mr. Trudeau who managed to rub some people the wrong way by suggesting that we need to figure out how we are contributing to the creation of home-grown terrorists.  He's right, of course, but perhaps it was too early and politically unwise to speak beyond platitudes today. 

I am beyond trying to figure it out tonight.  I've been crying all day for the loss of the innocence of a nation, for the loss of a good man and for another mother's broken heart.

Longing for Louboutins

"A shoe is not only a design, but it's a part of your body language, the way you walk.  The way you're going to move is quite dictated by your shoes." - Christian Louboutin

 

If you looked in my closet you would find at least a hundred pairs of shoes.  I like shoes.  It's the one thing I have in common with Imelda Marcos.  What you wouldn't see is much in the way of flat shoes.  There are are a couple of pairs of mocassins and a couple of pairs of Toms and even several pairs of running shoes in various colours.  But flat dress shoes aren't in my wardrobe.  It is week eleven of my hip and back saga with no end in sight.  Sandal weather is gone.  I'm trying to carry on with my life, within the limitations of my pain.  Last Friday night we attended a wedding.  I stopped on my way home from physio and bought a lovely pair of beaded ballet flats that were a terrible price but they worked with the black cocktail dress I was wearing that evening and I was in poor enough shape that I couldn't manage more than one store. 

Today I had a business meeting downtown and I once again faced the problem of what to put on my feet.  I ended up wearing those same shoes.  While they are a little dressy for the business dress I wore, they were a better alternative than the too casual choices available.  Tomorrow I will go and try to find some other shoes to buy that would be a bit more suitable for my business wardrobe.  On the way back to my car from my meeting today I popped into a shoe store to scope out their inventory.  I saw two wonderful pairs, one suede pair in the perfect hot pink colour I've been looking for to go with my pink leather jacket, the other in an electric blue.  Alas, both pairs have four inch heels.  The flats in the store were all so boring and so not me.

When I finally get over these problems, I think I might splurge and treat myself to a pair of Christian Louboutin shoes.  And of course, whenever possible, I will sit with my legs crossed to show off the red soles.  A girl can dream.

Broken

"All the king's horses and all the king's men, couldn't put Humpty together again." - Lewis Carroll

Week nine and still down.  The problems with my back have gotten worse.  One step forward, two steps back.  Three herniated discs, now mostly resolved followed by a dislocated hip that doesn't want to stay in the socket no matter how many times my physiotherapist puts it back. The as yet, unconfirmed diagnosis is a labral tear. The pain is breathtaking. 

I've been trying to carry on with some semblance of a life in spite of my current challenges.  I sucked it up long enough to attend a business lunch last week, even driving myself downtown for the meeting.  I spent the next two days flat on my back.  Sunday was the day on which I had long ago committed to attend the theatre with Courtney, her mom, Jan and sister, Sarah.  We had tickets to see Wicked, my favorite musical as a belated celebration of Jan's fiftieth birthday.  Given that Jan's partner had a serious heart attack last week, she really needed this celebration and the tickets were ordered many months ago.  I had told Courtney that I would take everyone out to lunch before the matinee performance and I was determined I would keep that commitment, no matter what it took.  There was a lot of ice and a lot of pain medication involved but I did it.  We had lunch at Joey and then three hours sitting at the performance.  Though I had a few tense moments when I wondered if I could sit any longer without fainting from pain, I managed to find my Zen space and I thoroughly enjoyed the show. 

Admittedly, I was pretty wrecked by yesterday.  A visit to my physiotherapist in the morning followed by a visit to my doctor's office and an xray clinic exhausted whatever little reserves I had.  Grocery shopping today, so sapped me that I sat in the driveway for about ten minutes after getting home today, my back and hip in spasm and me unable to get out of the car.  All things pass.  Eventually I got into the house, took some pain meds and collapsed on the sofa.  A half hour later I was revived enough to get up and put away the groceries.  Two hours later, I was able to make the bolognese sauce for tonight's dinner.

Clearly, I'm broken.  I hope the doctors have more luck putting me back together than the king's men had with Humpty.

Playing Hurt

"An injured lion still wants to roar." - Randy Pausch

 

I have little in common with most professional athletes.  I'm uncoordinated, plump and doughy.  I've never been an even adequate player in any sport.  So it is interesting at this late juncture in my life to find that I now have something in common with them.  I'm having to learn to play hurt.  

Playing hurt is a part of every professional athlete's life.  Now it is a part of mine.  Seven weeks into my back issues, I'm still often inconsolable with pain.  My hip is so inflamed that I cry out in the night when it goes into spasm.  I feel like hot knives are being thrust into my leg and foot.  But life does not stand still because I'm on the sidelines.  Bad enough that I missed real participation in my 25th wedding anniversary and Jacob's birthday.  And I didn't get to England for a long awaited family wedding.  But I did do some things.  I spent two days leading my crew team at The Weekend to End Women's Cancers.  I did it through a haze of pain, and from a chair, but I did it.  Last Saturday night, I attended a surprise party hosted by Brian's and Geraldine's kids to celebrate their fortieth wedding anniversary.  It was a lovely party.  A couple of hours in, I felt desperate to go home but I managed to hang on until the bitter end.  The moment I laid down when I got home, I burst into tears.  Hiding pain is exhausting.

I've got a number of events ahead in the next few weeks - an afternoon at the theatre with Courtney, her mom and sister, a welcoming party for a friend's new grandson and the wedding of the young man that I mentor professionally.  I'm praying that I will be doing much better by then.  If not, I'll just have to suck it up and put my game face on. 

Same Circus, Different Clown

"Just cause you got the monkey off your back doesn't mean the circus has left town." - George Carlin

 

I wouldn't wish ill health on my worst enemy so the health challenges of Rob Ford give me no satisfaction.  I hope he recovers from whatever his ailment turns out to be and goes on to raise his family and live his life - just so long as he's not doing it as our mayor.  Dropping out of the mayoral race is absolutely the right thing for him to do.  Having his brother Doug step into his shoes and run for mayor is absolutely the wrong thing to do.  And yet, here we are.  Rob for councillor.  Doug for mayor.

What is it going to take to rid our poor inflicted city of the Ford boys?  Haven't we suffered enough?  Rob Ford is a buffoon - moronic, crass and idiotic.  Doug Ford is just a more dangerous version of his brother.  God help us.  We're in for a bumpy ride.

Disappointment

"The principles of living greatly include the capacity to face trouble with courage, disappointment with cheerfulness, and trial with humility." - Thomas S. Monson

I finally had to call it a day on my goal of going to England for a family wedding this weekend.  It is the middle of week five and while I'm making some progress, it is not enough to allow me to navigate airports and sit on a plane for a seven hour flight.  I'm sad.  We've been planning for this trip for two years now.  Merv will go without me. 

The silver lining is that it is also The Weekend to End Women's Cancers and had I gone to England, I would have missed it for the first time in 12 years.  This year, Jacob has co-captained our crew team with me.  As I've been down through all of August, he has had to attend all the meetings on our behalf and I have done all the planning and communication work with our team.  The work of crewing is heavy and my contribution this weekend will be limited but at the very least I'm hoping to pull up a chair and cheer on our walkers for a couple of hours each day.  This year I am reminded of why what we do is so important.  The money raised at the Weekend not only is helping to find a cure for women's cancers but it is also helping to find better, less damaging treatments.  As my back problems can be traced largely to the bone loss and compression that resulted from my breast cancer treatments, I acutely feel the need to help find a better way.  The path forward from life saving treatment should not be a lifetime of pain. 

England will still be there when I'm back on my feet and while I will miss this joyous occasion, I'm sure there will be other opportunities to celebrate with my English family.

 

Trying to Heal

"High expectations are the key to everything." - Sam Walton 

I'm now in my fourth week of being down with three herniated discs.  I've met the first two of the three goals I set for myself at the start of this latest round of back trouble.  I sat at the dinner table for Jacob's birthday and I went out with Merv, Jacob and Courtney for dinner to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary.  That was a week ago today.  By the end of two hours of sitting in the restaurant, I was paralyzed by pain.  Nonetheless, I did not regret having gone.  A quarter of a century of marriage is worthy of celebration.  We had a good time.  It was worth it.

A week later, my expectation that I would be further along the path of healing has been crushed.  I've made little progress.  I took a few steps forward and then a few steps back.  I developed new symptoms and new problems.  Today I spent an hour and a half in physiotherapy.  It was a gruelling session.  I feel like I've been beaten.  I only have eight days left to get in good enough shape to meet my third goal - a trip to England to attend a family wedding.  From where I lay today, it seems a bit like a pipe dream.  But I am determined.  I am striving.  I am praying.  God help me.

Progress

"I was taught that the way of progress was neither swift nor easy." - Marie Curie

 

 I checked the box on goal number one - to sit at the dinner table on Jacob's birthday.  Other than my presence at the table and my debit card, I contributed nothing to the events of the weekend.  Courtney did all the shopping, cooking, set up and clean up for Jacob's birthday party with his friends on Saturday and his family birthday dinner on Sunday.  Until dinner on Sunday night, I stayed flat on my back trying to practise the art of surrender.  My surrender mechanism still needs some work but there was little I could do in any event.  I eventually made my way down the stairs on Sunday afternoon, taking them one at a time on my seat.  And with a lot of determination I sat at the dinner table for an hour until I simply couldn't do it any more.

 

By yesterday morning my pain level had escalated to high but I once again went down the stairs on my seat and spent time with Gail who graciously arrived with lunch and iced coffee.  It was great to have some time together and even greater to have Gail grace me with healing energy which warmed the foot of my painful leg and eased the spasms that had me crying before her arrival.  

 

A night of sound sleep, the first in weeks, was followed this morning by a session with my physiotherapist.  Claire is a gentle soul but a no nonsense therapist and I spent an hour and a half reminding myself that no pain would result in no gain.  By the end of the session though feeling battered and sore, I could stand mostly upright.  The rest of the day has been spent laying low, resting, icing and doing my stretching exercises.  Tomorrow is our 25th wedding anniversary and I am determined that I will be upright enough and strong enough to be able to go out for dinner.  

Pain

"Pain is temporary.  It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place.  If I quit, however, it lasts forever." - Lance Armstrong

How much pain should one person have to endure?  I've asked myself this questions many times in the last few days, always in a moment of weakness when I'm indulging in a little session of feeling sorry for myself. For the last few weeks my back has been growing increasingly sore.  Rather than go to bed for a couple of days and rest until I felt better, I chose to live on the river in Egypt.  And while denial as a strategy has served me well at some points in my life, it wasn't a good strategy this time.

The doctor's diagnosis was disheartening.  I have herniated discs L5S4, L4 and L3.  The last time I herniated a disc was in 2007 and it left me flat on my back for five weeks.  I can't bear to do that again - thus my retreat to the strategy of denial.  When I stopped being able to stand, walk or turn over in bed, I was forced to face the reality.  So I'm back in bed though trying a different strategy this time.  My physiotherapist has given me some excercises to do along with instructions to ice and use my tens machine five times per day.  The excercises hurt like heck but I'm trying.  I don't have five weeks to spend flat on my back.  I'm looking for a miracle here.

 

Sunday is Jacob's 23rd birthday.  My first goal is to be able to sit at the dinner table.  I'm resigned to the fact that I won't be cooking the meal but there are enough other capable people around to do that.  Goal two is to be upright and able to dress well and go out for dinner on Wednesday - Merv's and my 25th wedding anniversary.  I'm happy I did my anniversary gift shopping early so I don't have to worry about that.  I don't even need to be able to dance, just to be well enough to go out and enjoy a quiet dinner.  Goal three is to be recovered enough to be able to get on a plane and do a red-eye flight to England for a family wedding in the first week of September.  In my current state it is hard to even imagine seven hours in economy class but it's still three weeks away and I'm determined.  I'm praying a lot too.

A Path Toward Peace

“If women ran the world we wouldn’t have wars, just intense negotiations every 28 days.” – Robin Williams

Like a lot of people around me, I can't make sense of what is going on in the Middle East.  There is so much hatred being spewed, so much misinformation being spread, so much anti-semetic and anti-Arab sentiment permeating the fibres of every discussion that I don't know where to begin to sort things out.  What I do know is this - the people of Israel are entitled to a secure homeland, free from fear of attack by their neighbours and the Palestinian people are entitled to a secure homeland, free from fear of attack by their neighbours.  

Every night on the evening news, I watch the casualty count grow.  Dead Israeli children.  Dead Palestinian children.  That the count is greater on one side than on the other is irrelevant.  The common denominator is that they are children and now they are dead.  Not a single one of them deserved their fate.  Not a single one of them had anything to do with this fight that has been raging for more years than we can count.  When is enough going to be enough? How many dead children will it take before we figure out that the way we've been negotiating peace agreements just doesn't work?  

Here is my proposal. Let's turn the negotiations over to the mothers.  No more politicians.  No more men.  Just mothers.  Let's see how long it takes for a group of Israeli and Palestinian women to figure out how to find an agreement that will save their children.  If the idea seems simplistic - it is.  Doesn't mean it won't work.  Just means that I too am a mom and I know I'd do anything to protect my child and so would every other mother I know. 

Sell It To Somebody Else

“Advertising is a racket, like the movies and the brokerage business. You cannot be honest without admitting that its constructive contribution to humanity is exactly minus zero.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald

 
 I don't have Sam in my pants and even if I ever need to, it is unlikely I ever will.  I am so disgusted by the advertising campaign for Poise pads that I would rather wet myself than use this product.  Likewise for the Cottonelle cleaning system, the ads for which make the little hairs stand up on the back of my neck whenever they come on.  I don't want to listen to people talk about how they clean their bums.  The premise of the ads - crashing a wedding reception to talk to guests or talking to men about their posterior hygiene routine while speed dating offends me to my core.  Cottonelle is the brand of tissue I've been buying for years.  I'm in the market for a new brand.

How did we get to this point?  There have been ads that offended my sensibilities in the past (though you would probably think me nuts to be upset by an m&ms candy commecial) but nothing like these ads.  They are crude, rude and gross.  It may not be worth much but until these ads are off the air, I will be boycotting these products. There are enough disgusting things in the world without adding these annoyances to the list.

The New Beautiful

“If you think something is ugly, look harder. Ugliness is just a failure of seeing.” - Matt Haig

I haven't been feeling very good about myself lately.  Though I've put a few pounds on, I can't seem to summon the will to do anything about it.  Added to a slowdown in my business, I've developed a case of the summertime blues.  On Saturday we will be going to the wedding of the daughter of dear friends.  It is a black and white wedding meaning that guests are required to be attired in black or white only.  At the last minute, the bridal couple added navy blue as an option.  Thanks a million.  I'm not sure when it became acceptable to dictate to guests what colours they are required to wear but I'm writing my ignorance off to age.  At some point the rules of etiquette changed and I didn't notice.  But I digress.  I have at least a half dozen black dresses and at least a half dozen white ones.  And for good measure, I have a half dozen black and white ones.  Dressing for this event should hardly be a challenge for me.  But as I'm feeling fat and unattractive in everything I own,  I set out on Tuesday to find a new dress that perhaps I would feel better in.  Big mistake.

Five hours of trying on dresses at Yorkdale made me want to run directly to the freezer where I had stashed a pint of Hagen Daz Black Cherry Amaretto ice cream.  Every dress I tried made me feel a little worse than the last.  I saw some beautiful and very suitable dresses but if I could get into a size six, I wouldn't be in this crisis in the first place.  At one shop I saw a great dress hanging on the rack and thought it would be perfect for my needs.  It had a big tag hanging on it that claimed it was an instantly slimming dress that would make the wearer look ten pounds lighter.  I thought I had hit the jackpot.  But the only size they had in the dress was a size two.  I spent a fair bit of time trying to understand why anyone who can wear a size two needs to look ten pounds lighter.  Then there was the perfect black dress at another store.  It came in small, medium and large.  I couldn't get the large over my hips to even try it on.  Seriously?  Who was the dress made for?  A large child perhaps.  I gave up and went home.  That afternoon I read an article about the new size option at J. Crew - Size 000.  How is that even possible?  Is triple nothing going to be the new yardstick we are being measured against?  It strikes me as sick.

I finally resigned myself to the idea that I wasn't likely to find a dress that I was going to feel good in.  Today I was running some errands at Fairview.  I happened upon a white lace dress.  It was on sale and it fit perfectly.