Magical Bliss...

It's official...as of 10pm last night...I have entered the magical bliss that is Harry Potter!!!! I do think it's worth mentioning though that I am on chapter three of the FIRST book...not the last!! You see, I have this little rule...I refuse to start any series until the final book is written and published. The very thought of starting a story, only to have the author potentially die without finishing it, is too much for the reader in me to bear. I'll admit, it makes for a long wait at times but, it also ensures that I never have to be left hanging!! With that being said, the final book of the Harry Potter series went on sale last weekend, and I am now free to throw myself in head first (Heather and Monica would be so proud!!). I've already covered all of my bases and verified that between Steve & I, Monica and Heather & Bert...we have every book in the series!!! Yeah for me!! The journey begins!!

I do have to say though, that I felt a little left out last weekend amongst all the excitement of the new book. I've seen the movies and enjoyed them all but, while little wizards (and big ones!) lined up outside our local bookstores, I felt a tinge of desire to be able to share in all the anticipation. As an avid reader since childhood, the idea that people around the world tied on their cloaks and watched for owls flying about for the release of a book fills me with great joy. Not just joy, but a much needed optimism for the generations to come.

I often feel like the generation gaps are becoming much smaller than just generations. I feel as though people even just five or ten years younger are living lives so different than what my friends and I used to know. And while we may all still be in our twenties, the amount that I seem to have in common with people in the first half of the decade is pretty minimal. Between all the technology and vacations to the moon...times, they are a changing. I recognize that everything generation is different and is remembered differently but, what does concern me about the future generations is the mentors that they've chosen to look up to. They live in a world of vacant socialites like Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan, and an unforgiving state of war and terror inflicted by governments and media. It's not an easy time to be growing up.

And just when the cover story of the paper hits an all time new low...Paris Hilton being released from prison, and we start to lose all hope...something wonderful happens...J.K. Rowling reminds us that creativity ultimately prevails. Among all the superficiality and gossip that our world is filled with...among all the greed and selfishness...alongside the troubles of the 21st century, we find ourselves celebrating the gift of the written word...the gift of literacy...and most importantly, the gift of imagination. It's refreshing to know that some things will always matter.

As I watched readers of all ages, line up in anticipation for the final chapter of their favourite wizard, I just had to smile and be grateful for those who remain young at heart...because when all else fails, if a little boy on a broom can unite a world of story lovers, and a British writer can make us lose ourselves in a world of wonder and magic...then you have to know that there is hope for us yet!!

Last summer, while my Mom was visiting Steve and I, we were out for dinner one night at Dow's Lake. Part way through the evening, a girl approached our table with a tinge of curiosity in her eyes that indicated we were suppose to know her from somewhere!! As it turned out, it was a girl that I had gone to elementary school with back in London who was visiting from B.C.!! We chatted for a couple of minutes and packed a lifetime of change into a brief encounter. What was hilarious about that meeting though was what appeared to have triggered the recognition...She said that she hadn't recognized me but, as soon as she saw my Mother...she remember our birthday parties from grade school!!! She said that she would always remember my Mother because of those birthday parties!!!! I hope that my Mom felt great pride in that moment because it's true...her parties were legendary!!

In my family, birthdays were always a very special occasion. Not necessarily a big occasion, but always very special. I can remember being a little girl and being so excited for my birthday because my Mom would fill my lunch with all these exciting treats that I couldn't wait to find. Birthdays were meant to be spoiled and shared and indulged in. Again, not necessarily with an excess of gifts but, definitely with an excess of love and thoughtfulness. My Mother is famous for her thoughtfulness and the personal touch that she adds to everything. My birthday parties were never generic...they were meant to recognize the fact that our existence is worth celebrating...and everyone got to join in.

As I got older, my Mother would mark my birthday with a stuffed animal, in hopes that I would never lose that sense of being young and the playfulness that we tend to lose with maturity. I have most of them packed away for our own kids one day but, I have the last one I received, on my twenty-first birthday, safely on our bed at home.

As I got older though, I found birthdays to be a bit stressful. The day would come and go and more times than not, other people's expectations would become the main focus of the day...who did you celebrate with?? who didn't you celebrate with?? who got most of your time?? who didn't get enough?? blah blah blah...it became all very dramatic and I lost most of my interest and excitement in celebrating.

Last year, my birthday was the best one that I could remember in numerous years...it was subtle but enjoyable. It was truly a reminder of what birthdays used to be like...that is, until this year!! This past week, I have been overwhelmed with love and thoughtfulness for my birthday and I truly can't think of any other way that I would want to turn twenty-nine. I would have liked to have posted something about my birthday sooner but, this is the first chance that I've had to sit down and really reflect on the past couple of days. As Jesper once said..sometimes in the middle of daily choas, moments come along that are just perfect!! This week has been one moment like that after another.

Even as I look back...my birthday wasn't celebrated in any extravagant way but, the number of people who went out of their way to genuinely wish me a wonderful day and year to come was extremely touching. Although my birthday was on Wednesday, it truly was an entire week of being spoiled!! Monday started with a mailbox full of birthday cards from family and friends (including Keir's contribution to helping me accomplish my summer reading resolution), and my Uncle Victor's mission to be the first and last to wish me happy birthday began!!! Tuesday was spent indulging in three hours of Orlando Bloom and Johnny Depp in the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie (because really, what girl can start any new year without such eye candy?!?!). Wednesday was literally sixteen hours straight of endless birthday wishes!! Other than my somewhat groggy husband (due to the late night of Pirate watching!!), my Dad was the first to wish me into my 30th year!! From there on in, it was simply one beautiful encounter after another that included a balloon filled office...Louise's specialty homemade cheesecake...milkshakes and poutine with Abby and Melanie...amazing surprises from Steve, Christina, Marie, Abby...great laughs from Heather, Roberta, Kathy and Doug (oh so much singing on our voice mail!!)...long overdue chats with aunts and uncles...a Venti Peppermint Mocha from my friends at Starbucks...a well pulled off surprise from my new boss...flowers from Alain...endless facebook messages (addictions do have its benefits!!!)...a terrific evening with Steve...some cake mix and too much wine!!! Where does the laughter end...?!?!

Last night, Steve and I headed to Montreal to enjoy our first experience of the Just for Laughs Festival. One of our favourite comics, Danny Bhoy, was the only solo performer of this year's festival and we managed to score ourselves some tickets to see him live. We had the most terrific time and it was so hysterical in fact, that we drove ourselves an hour and a half in the wrong direction on the way home!!! Fear not though, with a little help from an old map, we found our way back to Ottawa, albeit via a bit of a detour in the presence of some questionable creatures lingering in the night!!!

Just when I thought things couldn't get any better, my sister-in-law, Monica called to say she was coming up tonight to indulge in some drunken silliness with me (she was sweet...she got Steve's permission first to make a mess of his wife!!)!! The two of us are going to hit Kinki, martini in hand, with a vengeance!!!! The last couple of times we have done this...things have gotten a bit messy! I can't wait!! There may or may not be pictures to show for it...it depends on how compromising the evening becomes!!!!

Anyways, to my family and friends...thank you for one of the very best birthdays I've ever had. Thank you for your caring and thoughtfulness, and thank you for your simple gestures that reminded me of just how much I am loved.

My Mother...the legendary queen of celebrating birthdays, would be so proud!!

Tourism for the Starbucks Lover...

What happens when you hit a different Starbucks every seven minutes for over twenty hours??? What do you get when you spent a grand total of $396.14 in one day on countless shots of espresso??

Find out here.

Nadia's encouragement and optimism aside...I won't likely try to repeat this exploit while running!!!

La Vie est Belle...

For the unluckiest day of the year, Friday the 13th was wonderful to those we love...bringing into the world two little miracles that we have been anxiously awaiting!!!

Miles Paul Pacella Arthorne

Born at 1:06pm to Cathy and John

Virginie Comeau

Born at 7:25am to France and Francois

Congratulations to four of our favourite parents and good luck with your new projects!!!!

My bad haircut...part deux!!

Well...the saga continues and as promised...here is an updated picture without the dreadful sad eyes!! It's a good thing that we are moving to a house with three bathrooms because the extent of my hair accessories has increased exponentially!!! In order to overcome this trauma, I had to call in the big guns...my flattening iron, a new hairdryer, a whack load of bobby pins, a round natural bristle brush and some new additions to my collection of hair products (which was pretty minimal to begin with)(Joanne would be so proud of me!!!).

All in all, it's not so bad now!! It helps that it's no longer forty degrees out and the humidity factor is no longer an issue. On the positive side, my highlights (only a year old) are all gone now and my natural dark hair is back (which I love)...there isn't a split end in sight and I drowned my sorrows in some pretty intense retail therapy which resulted in a great new pair of shoes (learned behaviour from the girls of Sex & the City!!!!)!

So...all this to say that day three of the new haircut has been tearless thus far!! Thanks for the supportive and somewhat hilarious comments...I was amazed at how much people were willing to reach out for the sake of a salon experience gone bad!!

My bad haircut...

I got my hair cut yesterday and I HATE IT!!!! I cried for an hour afterwards! My beautiful long locks got reduced to this......layers upon layers of dreadful helmet head...

HOW TERRIBLE...

This picture was originally taken with me pouting but, my colleague thought that I would sway the "how horrible is my hair" vote with my sad looking eyes!!!

The polls are now open...cast your vote...(not that there is much I can do about it anyways other than cry every day!!!!!).

It's a very wet and dark day in Ottawa this morning. I always find that these kinds of days bring a certain solitude with them, as though it's permitted to sit by yourself somewhere with a book and a blanket, and look at the world without having to be a part of it.

Steve and I were up and out of the house early this morning. Unlike most mornings, it gave me the time to sit and drink my coffee in peace instead of rushing to work with it in hand. I sat at the window bar this morning, watching everyone come and go from the bus stops and it reminded me so much of a very similar day that happened about five years ago in which I found myself at this very same place.

It was in the Fall of 2002. I was walking downtown from my office on the Hill after work. It was rainy and cool, the kind of day that requires an extra sweater. I needed to be at church in a couple of hours and I was running around aimlessly trying to figure out what I could get done in the little time that I had before I was on to the next task. It was at a time in my life when everything seemed frantic. The days rolled by as though I was just keeping my head above water and it felt like I was starting everything without ever finishing anything. When you spend months on end like this, you don't even really seem to notice that you are in a perpetual state of stress. It just becomes so much a part of your life that you start to forget what calm really feels like. It's hard to live a life that way...without focus and purpose other than surviving.

Anyways, on that dreary day, I was walking towards home in a panic about whether or not I have enough time to do everything. It was rainy hard, I hadn't eaten much that day and I was feeling a sense of disorganization unlike any that I had felt in a while. At that moment, right as I was standing in front of the beautiful and majestic Chateau Laurier, the site of so many other people looking for an escape...a bus drove through a nearby puddle and soaked me head to toe. A dropped my umbrella to the ground, starting crying and just let myself get taken over by the rain. I was so frustrated and fed up and no longer had the desire to keep afloat anymore. Something happened in that instance...I gave myself permission to just stop.

I walked over to the Starbucks at the end of the block, bought myself a drink and just sat there, at the same window bar, soaking wet and watched the world go by. I remember the moment like it was yesterday...and I try to remember it as often as possible. Jazz music was playing in the background...the lighting in the store was subtle...it was getting dark...it was cold and wet outside...people were running frantically between the rain drops...and I was okay. It was enlightening to see that I was okay. While the world moved at an unpredictable pace around me...I sat there under a starbuck moonlight, hot chocolate in hand, jazz vocalists soothing my soul. Shortly there after, I dug up any spare pieces of paper that I could find and I just began to write. I wrote how I was feeling, what brought me to this place...this time, what I wanted to do next and mostly, about how small my world felt at that moment. And hour later, I found my way to church and was refreshed. I had stopped my world from moving and to my surprise, it didn't come crumbling down around me. I learned a very important lesson that rainy day...that the first step to getting anywhere is to take care of yourself first. Not only was my mental health preserved but, a ritual was created as well. Anytime that I start to feel overwhelmed with obligations and bogged down with the commitments of life, be it my own or someone else's...I force myself back to that day. I go to my nearest Starbucks, get a warm drink, tune in to the lovely music, pull out my journal (which I bought the following day and never leave home without!) and watch the world go by. Sometimes I sit quietly and reflect, other times an entire novel worth of emotions comes out on paper but, regardless of what comes from it, clarity is always found to some degree. I leave with a sense that the world really has slowed to a more bearable pace.

Surrender is a powerful thing that enables us to, if even for a brief moment, relenquish our desire for control. And while it's very ingrained in our human nature to crave control, we need to remember that nature will not allow the earth to stop spinning if the laundry isn't done or if the congratulatory card isn't sent right away. Instead, you will put on a pair of your old lady underwear, hit the post office a day late and have a piece of your sanity to show for it!!! Certainly a trade off worth making!

Given all of the travelling that we've done in the past ten days...Steve and I decided that we were going to spend this weekend just being lazy and housebound. We only ventured out of the neighborhood by car once and let me just say, for the record, that it was one time too many!!!!

The only thing that we really wanted to get done this weekend was to take in one last weekend of picking strawberries and we needed to visit the site of the new house. All of this was to be fairly harmless and if all went well, would be accomplished in under an hour. Well, we hopped on the Queensway Westbound to the farm and apparently, there is a new bridge being replaced at Island Park and the 417 was reduced to two lanes. Though the traffic jam didn't take too long to get through, we did notice that the traffic going eastbound was backed up for quite a ways.

After twenty minutes of getting our 4 litres of strawberries, we headed to the East end to see our new pile of dirt!! Being the clever people that we are, we decided to avoid the 417 until we passed the Island Park exit and would jump on after that. Unfortunately, the construction fairies had other plans in mind for us!!!! As is turns out, Carling was reduced to one lane of traffic due to construction and then once you got all the way through that crap... the on ramp to the 417 was closed due to construction in the other direction ...UNBELIEVABLE!!! After losing our cool more than once, we did an illegal turn and decided to try our luck going down to the Parkway and taking the scenic route to the East end. Much to our own astonishment, that too was closed due to Bluesfest!!! From the looks of it, we had entered some sort of abyss in which a line was drawn right down the centre of the city and any chances you made have had to cross back over could be kissed goodbye!! It was infuriating!!!

Our trip across Ottawa that should have taken us a mere six or seven minutes via the Queensway took us over forty minutes from end to end. A real pat on the back to all of those urban planners that decided to shut down the city in the middle of Bluesfest and the FIFA U-20 tournament because, you know, who would need to get around at a time like that?!?!

Anyways, to make a long story short...we ended up spending the rest of our weekend writing a strongly worded letter to the city of Ottawa suggesting that, in the future, when they post road closure signs, they should read a little something like this:

ROAD CLOSURES UP AHEAD. IF YOU HAVE ANY ANTI-DEPRESSANTS IN YOUR VEHICLE AT THIS TIME...PLEASE START TAKING THEM NOW!

Kathy's Garden...

If I were a flower...I would want to live here...