Mother's Day

Mother's Day is more than just an other commercial holiday, yes I know it is a great business day for the flower industries, restaurants, and any other businesses catering to women. But, most of all it is one of those special days where your family gathers together to remember and create special moments.

I have been blessed with three great kids that are now on a journey of starting their own families. This year we have a new addition to our family, baby Brooke was born last March and soon, around November, there will be an other addition.

Today was a reunion of mothers, grand-mothers and mothers to be, we celebrated together what it was and is like to carry a child within, to give birth, to watch his or her first step, to dream all that is possible and to love like you could never imagine you could. Yes today was a special day, one of those days when you feel proud, a day to be happy, grateful to be alive. This is a day when you make time for the people you love. Yes, I know, we shouldn't wait for a specific day to do that, however our fast paste living swallows us up and turns us into robots, sleep, eat, work, eat and back to sleep. We had to invent a bunch of holidays to remind us that we are alive and that we have families and friends we love but hardly spend time with. I wish we had invented more special days.

A great day, yes it was!

Painting in progress

Ok, it has been a while, but here I am again playing with paint and brushes. This time I decided to tackle a forest, my forest, the one in my backyard where I go and walk for hours with my dogs Charlie and Fanny.

I took an old canvas 40" X 40" and covered it with the base colors to cover the old image. From there I sketched some trees and made the composition with oil pastels and oil paint.

I was on a roll, I kept adding colors and trees and ground leaves, but I sort had a mix of a summer autumn scenery. So I redid the top part by covering it with more skies and branches, I want to go towards softer tree tops and more texture.

This is where I am at, a bit stuck.




I've worked out the bottom and somehow I have to blend it with the top...More to come.

Midnight thoughts

It's 1:40 and I can't sleep, I ate chocolate and had some wine, and lets not forget the brownies! I am sensitive to chocolate, caffeine and alcohol, somehow these substances seem to activate my thought process, and the more I think the more awake I get. Usually, I stay in bed hoping I will dose off, and this can go on for hours. However, tonight I decided to share my thoughts on aging.

Some kids are eager to turn eighteen, I wasn't one of them. It actually scared me, it meant that I had to become responsible and enter the adult world. The only cool aspect was that I could drink without worrying about being carded. Then the twenties have come and gone, I fell in love, got married, had kids and got a divorce. A few relationships later and I am in my forties. Still I think I can do it all, and yes, the forties is the best sex phase of your adult life and you do hope it will last forever. However, it doesn't.

You cross over the fifty yard line, and you feel these little changes happening, sometimes they are so subtle that you forget about them, but they are persistent and manifest themselves in the form of aches and pains that get to scream louder as the years pass by. So you start wondering if it is your diet, must of had too much sugar, or maybe the food was too greasy...should of taken my calcium and glucosamine!

You start reviewing your life and sometimes you don't like what you see, some say we should not have regrets, I don't know why they say that because I regret a lot of things, sure everything I did up until now has shaped who I am today, but still I regret not knowing who I truly was. And, because of that identity crisis I regret some of the crazy choices I made. However, I do have a bag full of stories. Maybe my stories are a bit crazier then some, a bit weird and unusual, sometimes even funny but, I can't say they are worth the "no regret" saying.

My biggest regret is not asking more questions about my family's history or maybe I should say my family's stories. Now I would like to know how my aunt Nora met uncle Jedeon, and why I never new she was an alcoholic until my uncle got sick and died. Why she felt she had to lie to him every time she bought a new piece of clothing, she would say "That old dress, it's been in my closet for years, don't you remember it, I wore it to so and so's wedding" or "I borrowed it from my sister", she had an open account at the New York Fashion store and she sold fishing worms to pay it, she would take off to the fields with her shovel and bucket and turn cow dungs over to rake the harvest. I can still see her in her black skirt with her sun hat and her rain boots digging for those wiggly worms...what a sight! I wonder why no one took a picture of her that way.

I wish I had asked more questions about my great-grandmother, about how it was for my grand-mother to be a single mom in the nineteen thirties. I did ask a lot of questions, however, they were not the questions I would of ask today, and back then adults did not answer all.

I wish I had taken more interest in my mother's family and visited them more than once a year, I wish they had taken more interest in me.

I wish they hadn't been so wrapped up in their secrets and shared their real emotions, their fears, their anger and their love. I feel that most of my life I was missing pieces of information that would have explain their behaviors, I am sure this would have calmed some of my anxieties. Instead, I wondered what was wrong with me.

They all died, my mom, my dad, both my grandmothers, my grandfather, my great uncles and great aunts and my aunt...and most of them died with their secrets.

So what does it all have to do with aging? Well I guess it is about knowing you won't live forever and wondering if you did anything that anyone will remember after your dead. It's about going through an identity crisis at fifty five because you still don't know what you want to do with the rest of your life.

It is about watching older people waiting their turn to die while they lose one more friend or family member in the waiting process. It is about choice, choosing to age miserably or gracefully. It's about knowing that the clock always goes forward and that somehow you have to eat more vegetables and less sugary stuff. It is about relationships, about loving and being love, about listening and sharing your stories. It is about being afraid of illnesses, about fear of needing help, fear of dependency.

While I was growing up I thought my grandmother was the strongest women on the planet, then one day she was eighty and she seemed weak, fragile and needy, and that scared me. In my defense, I was young and did not yet understand the cycle of life.

Birth, growing pains, bliss, aging pains, death. It is as simple as that.

Why should you keep a journal...

I started to keep a journal at thirteen, I felt the need to confide my feelings and my thoughts down to paper. I did not know it then, but by doing so I provided a useful map to a better understanding of myself.

I kept all my journals, and sometime when I am trying to remember certain things or events in my life they serve as reminders. However, they were most useful at showing me the repeating patterns I have created over my life time. When you put something down on paper you can not deny its existence, especially when you are the author of both your life and journals. By realizing these life patterns through my journals, I embarked on a journey of changes. After all, if you keep doing the same things you have always done then you will always get what you've always got. At some point in a life there are only so many lousy outcomes one can take. On the other side, you hold on to the good stuff.

My journal was my confident, it was where I made sense of it all. Ok, I must admit that some of the entries I made as a teenager were lacking in depth (and some of my adult entries didn't make the Hall of Fame either), yet when I read through some of the passages I wrote, I can find a window looking into my emotional state. Like all teenagers my feelings were raw and I didn't understand the mechanics of it all. I rediscover the naive girl I once was, the dreamer, the idealist and, the artist.

Through the years a long list of joys and sorrows are filling the pages. Agony of the heart going through a painful breakup. Loneliness, misunderstandings, judgments, and self-pity, you find it all. The joy of achievements, the joy of motherhood and its mishaps, the doubts and the courageous decisions, the unconditional love, the passion and the dark side of the soul. It is not a novel, but it is a life.

Through journal writing grows a better understanding of the self. Sometime it can force you to take a good look at yourself and realize the different dimensions you carry within yourself. It allows you to choose the parts you want to invest in, or better comprehend. It is a Legacy to oneself, a precious gift. One that will help you remember your journey through an overstuffed memory bank that your brain will become over the years.

Loosing jobs to technology

Lately I have been seeing things a bit differently, for instance as I am watching television there is an ad about getting "movies on demand" directly from your living room couch. I imagine most of us would think it a great idea, no need to either walk or drive to the video store, no need for returns either and, most but not least, no late fees! However, when I think about it I wondered how this would affect the people at the video store in our village, I believe there are 5 people working there including the owner.

During my last visit at the video store, I chatted with the owner about how her business had changed these past years, and she was sad to say that she was loosing a bit more each year and she might have to close shop sooner than she thought. Between the downloads and the on demand movies from cable providers her shop has lost ground. Consequently, our community will soon lose its only video store and 5 people will have to look for a job. But it is not only the small shops,the big guys like Blockbusters are also losing grounds.

This is a trend that is affecting so many different spheres of the work force that one wonders how long it will take before the majority of us find ourselves out of jobs.

It has affected my family directly, for twenty five years my husband was a photographer specializing in artist's portfolios and art work reproduction, trough trial and error he perfected his craft to get the right lighting, composition, angle and mood. He could make an art work look even better than the original.

He tried to keep up with the times and invested in new equipments and new technologies. However, while he thought he was investing in his business, his client base was dwindling. After several years of upgrading he was actually using his savings to keep his studio open. What happened? Progress and simplified digital photography for all and, most of his clients started doing their own shooting. It did not matter that the end results weren't technically perfect, hey, they didn't have to spend money on a photographer!

Most of our friends in the profession are turning to other avenues to earn a living, for some the transition was not so bad but for others it was very difficult.

Then their are all those small shops that used to make a town or a village, they gave character to the main streets. People got to know each other, it was colorful and lively. Now, most of these places are replaced by Corporate Stores, convenient but without soul. Where cashiers are slowly replaced by self check cashiers, where the service clerks are replaced by scanners or computers. These Corporate Stores are becoming one stop shop all, from groceries to clothing and car parts too medication, no need to go on main street. Consequently, small shops are closing or have to specialize.

Is technology slowly killing the work force, now I find that a bit scary since we all need money in this world to sustain ourselves. So, how will we earn a living if machines and technologies are doing the work? They say that the service industries will be our future, but how many services can we provide to sustain our ever growing population? And, who will be able to pay for them if the majority of people are working at meaningless jobs at minimum wage salaries?

If you watch the news then you can see all the destruction that mother nature is inflicting on all the different areas of our planet. If this keeps up, I wonder how long the Insurance Companies will be able to stay afloat, and how long the governments will be able to provide financial relief to the victims? And how technology will be able to help the global financial crisis for all of us to benefit?

I wonder how many of us will be able to reinvent ourselves to find suitable employment or start a new business. I guess only time will tell if we can continuously innovate our economic growth, or will we have to change our ways to survive this new century.

I wonder if cable tv and all its new channels are not design to hypnoptize the global populations into inertia? In a positive note the broadcasting industry is providing work for a lot of people. However, when the rest of us will be out of work and run out of money...who will be watching? No money, no cable, and so on...

Other promising jobs are in health care (as long as we have health insurance), then the legal sphere and lets not forget new technologies because we need smarter phones, computers, cameras and whatever else. Lets face it, we can not stop progress, but it would be nice if progress could serve us all better. For each new thing we come up with; we create a new problem...

All of this leaves me wondering...what is next?

One day surgery

These past few months have been enlightening about our health care system. Beside a common cold or flu, and a few stress related tensions, I did not need particular medical attention. My yearly check-ups were mainly routine, more preventive than anything.

Then we moved from Montreal to a small village in the the Laurentians, only an hour away from the big City, but a long way if you want to see your family doctor. Anyhow, the commute from the village to my work place would take on average about 3 to 4 hours a day, I never thought this would add to my stress level but it did.

Consequently, I started having some digestive problems, and I started getting these real abdominal pain attacks on a regular basis, mainly at night which meant I did not sleep much. My family doctor gave me a referral to see a gastrointestinal specialist. Each specialist I called had a waiting list of 2 to 6 months for the first appointment. So, I got myself on several lists and finally got an appointment within six weeks. However, before seeing the specialist I had a major painful attack and I went to an emergency clinic in St-Sauveur in the morning around 7:30 only to find out that they were already full, they sent me to the next one in Ste-Adele, same scenario, so I went to Ste-Agathe Hospital where there was a 17 hours waiting period, my case did not seem urgent enough to be bumped ahead; I was in so much pain that the nurse told me to go to Red River Hospital, "there's usually no one there, if you don't mind driving 45 minutes" she told me. (I should specify that if you want to see a doctor at the emergency clinic, you have to be in line by 6 am.)

So, I went to Red River Hospital where I was seen within 2 hours of my arrival, I left with several referrals, one for a scan, another for an ultrasound and some major blood works. Now, getting an appointment for the ultrasound and scan is an other story unto itself, but I am resourceful and again got myself on several waiting lists at different facilities, got the tests done within 1 month, by then I had my appointment with the specialist for my stomach and had to go for a gastroscopy. By the way, if you put yourself on several waiting lists don't forget to cancel the appointments so other people don't lose their turn.

It turned out I had gallbladder stones and an inflammation in my digestive system, nothing major but it took 6 months to get to the bottom of it all, first they had to monitor the inflammation, fortunately that disappeared on its own (I took a sick leave from work, my work related stress level went down, I believe that is how I got rid of the inflammation).

I just had my gallbladder removed this week, I stressed over it for months. The idea of getting a piece of my body cut out was terrifying, Although many people shared their experience of gallbladder removal which did not sound so bad, I was still terrified.

This adventure started in August, and I just had the surgery this week on January 25th. I know, it wasn't life threatening, but this six months of tests and pain was very stressful, when you don't know what is wrong with you, your imagination can provide you with a multitude of scenarios that can be pretty scary. Over all, this waiting game affected my life in myriads of ways. Personally, I wish we could have access to first line care quickly, this would probably diminish the possible stress/strain related illnesses caused by the unknown, this "unknown limbo" can be scarier than the disease itself.

Anyhow, I was fortunate enough that the inflammation disappeared on its own, and the only thing left was to remove my gallbladder.

"My One Day Surgery", you go in the morning at the designated time, and you are out the same day a few hours after the surgery. I was surprised at how efficient the system can be when everything is in motion. You register like in a hotel, they set you up in a cubicle and help you prepare, then I was moved to pre-op where I met with a nurse that double checked my identity and the nature of my surgery (they don't want to remove the wrong parts, a good safe guard to have in place), a few minutes later my surgeon came to talk with me and asked if I had any questions, next I met the anesthesiologist and we went through my medical history, afterwards they wheeled me into the operating room where I was surrounded by the very comforting operating team. From that point on, all I remember is the anesthesiologist telling me she was giving me a welcome cocktail and to let her know when I would start to feel heavy, the heaviness came quickly I tried telling her but I was gone.

Strange how you are totally cut off from the world under this drug cocktail, you surrender yourself completely they could chop you up in little pieces and you would not even know it. When I woke a couple of hours later I had no idea what had been done, except that I still felt heavy and the last thing I wanted at that point was to get up and go home. They don't rush you out, but you know that your welcome is limited and, that eventually you will have to leave. I was given a couple of pages of information on the operating procedure and what I could expect afterwards, side effects and stuff, what was normal or not.

Now I am on day four, and I feel much better. The first forty eight hours are the worst, you still feel the anesthesiology's aftermath lingering on, and the pain slowly comes back to the surface, fortunately they give you pain killers. So, for the first forty eight hours you are basically out. Then, on day 3 you feel like you are regaining some control, you realize that the pain has dulled out and that you don't need to fight it chemically anymore. Day four, your bodily functions reboot and your head is much clearer.

Still, after this semi minor surgery, I come out of this experience thinking that it is better to prevent than to fix an illness. I feel for all those people that have to undergo any type of medical intervention, it is a time when you feel vulnerable and, whether you like it or not, you have to surrender to others to nurse you back to health if possible. Fortunately, the staff at St-Jerome's Hospital was amazing and very compassionate. Even better, I got to find out how good my husband is as a caregiver, a cook and a housekeeper, I sort of forgot over the years while I took over. A blessing in disguise, I don't have to do it all, all the time!

Still, the best gift we can give ourselves is to treat our body with respect and behave in a responsible way towards it by doing whatever is necessary to stay healthy for as long as we can. And, last and but not least, we should be grateful, always.

Change

“Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.”Maria Robinson

My life has been about change. From birth until now, I have been in a whirl of changes. As a child change was forced upon me, as a teenager I embraced it by challenging everything and everyone around me. In my early adulthood I had no directions and no models to follow, therefore my scatterbrain was on hyper alert and with that I made a lot of strange choices that constructed my forever changing life. I won't call my choices bad because some good came of it, they became learning experiences.

One year, I moved seven times, my discouraged girlfriend said "I will need a new address book just to keep up with you." An other year, I changed job about 6 times, talk about lacking stability. I had no goals and no idea who I was or what I wanted to do or be. No sense of self, thanks to those early formative years when no one thought it was important to provide a stable environment for a child. My parents did not have that parenthood bone in them, they were self centered and too emotionally screwed up to raise their kids. So my brothers and I were raised in three different environments. Our parents eventually grew up themselves and made amends, but by then I was in my thirties with kids of my own and struggling to find an identity for myself and my family.

For years I worked in the restaurant industry as a waitress to the dismay of my grandmother who used to freak out every time someone would ask me what I wanted to do when I grew up, I would say candidly "a waitress" and my grandmother would slap me behind the head, she had better plans for me. But, how could she fight with the only happy memories I had of my mother, since the only time I got to see her in my early childhood was when my grandma took me to the restaurant where my mother worked as a waitress until she moved across the country three thousand miles away.

Anyhow, eventually I tired of the restaurant industry and enrolled in an "Office automation course" meaning a secretarial course, this turned out to be a rough ride, but I made it through the intensive 18 months of classes, to finally graduate and find an entry level job that lead me to grow within the company I worked for. Through the fifteen years I worked there I was a receptionist, an administrative assistant, a coordinator, a buyer, a production manager to finally end as a sales representative. This company and its people became my second family.

So, when I reached my forties I still thought everything was possible, I wonder, is forty the midlife part or is it fifty? Either way, now I am faced with more changes, recently unemployed (yes I was let go due the bad economy) I am wondering what my next move should be.

If you believe in numerology, then I am entering a personal year 3, social expansion and creative success. Does this mean that I should get back to painting? I have been thinking about it but not doing it, or should I write, it seems that is what I have been more comfortable doing these days. I started a new blog:

www.worriedaboutourworld.blogspot.com

about the environment and what I can do personally to help. Also, I am currently volunteering at the community thrift store and applying to volunteer at the library as well.

We have to be careful what we wish for because it might very well happen. Although I did not have the courage to quit my job, I did wish for it and, not long after, my job quit me. Consequently opportunities will be knocking at my door and I have to be ready for them.

So now I am wondering, can I both Write and Paint, will I be able to earn a living at it? Whatever I decide, it will require more discipline on my part. These past few months I have been compelled to change, change my eating habits, my life style and integrate more discipline.
Therefore more changes are coming my way.

Funny thing, even though I am familiar with change it is still a bit unsettling. There is always that scary part where you'll have to make a decision that you know will affect the rest of your life, but either way whatever decision one makes you have to be certain that it will be the right one at that time, and from it will sprout a new learning experience that will shape who you are and will become.

So this was my two cents on CHANGE

“What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.” Pericles