Simon's Cat...

This must be where Tugger learned it from!!!

Someone take away this man's pencil...my feline is trouble enough without his tutorials!!!

Wow…I have a lot of catching up to do. It’s the kind of catching up that requires me to just sit down and carve out the time that I need to get life organized again. For any of you who have been reading the papers lately, you know that my work days of late have been somewhat tumultuous (on that note, thank you to everyone who has been emailing to check in. I have very much appreciated knowing that you were thinking of me). Given the circumstances, I’m not really in a position to offer my opinion about it just yet (at least not in writing!) but, needless to say that it has left my mind feeling rather exhausted. Each day has provided its own challenges and to witness the degree to which people will go out of their way to hurt each other has really made me ache. It’s been a very upsetting way to learn that there really is no price that you can put on your reputation and dignity.

All of this to say that I am patiently waiting with baited breath for some down time in which my brain and my body can work cohesively together in order to start plucking away at my to-do list. If you’ve emailed me lately and haven’t heard back…then rest assured that you are on that list!!!

First things first though…a rest! I need a little rest! Steve’s actually been out camping with Colin so, for the first time, I have the house (and Tugger!) to myself. So tonight I plan on going home, putting on my comfy clothes, and watching too many hours of sitcoms (thanks to Steve’s fancy new television, it’s actually like having company over because everyone is life-sized!)! Then maybe I’ll have a bath, a glass of wine and early to bed. This girl needs some beauty sleep like nobody’s business!

As Steve gets home tomorrow night (hopefully all in one piece), it will also be the start of our much needed August long weekend! The timing couldn’t be better!! We’re heading to Kingston to spend some time cruising through the thousand islands with Heather and Roberta, and I have a coffee date with some of my girls on Monday but otherwise, we intend to do nothing but play and rest all weekend long! It will probably rain all weekend (just like it has for the entire rest of the summer thus far) but at this point, it could even snow and I wouldn’t care…I just want to unplug my brain and have a change of scenery.

After that…it’s on to the to-do list!

Wish me luck…I feel like I’m going to need it!

p.s. thank you cartoonist from the Globen and Mail for making us laugh (even if you are making fun of us!!)...given the week we've had, it's long overdue!

Carrie Bradshaw...You're So Wise!!

"Later that day I got to thinking about relationships. There are those that open you up to something new and exotic, those that are old and familiar, those that bring up lots of questions, those that bring you somewhere unexpected, those that bring you far from where you started, and those that bring you back. But the most exciting, challenging and significant relationship of all is the one you have with yourself. And if you can find someone to love the you you love, well, that's just fabulous." ~ Carrie Bradshaw, Sex & the City (final episode)

Rebuilding...

Okay, so I know that I haven’t written much in the last ten days or so. I read somewhere that when people get writer’s block, it’s because they are lacking passion. I certainly hope that is not true. In my case, I’ve just been contemplating change a lot lately and for me, change has to be a solitary thing absent even of the written word.

I don’t cope well with change. I am a creature of habit and while I don’t necessarily resist change, I certainly approach it with a bit of apprehension. Even when I know that the change is a good thing, as the age old saying goes...I have a tendency to choose the devil that I know versus the devil that I don’t know.

This past week involved some change with one of my closest friends and in doing so, all of my fear and anxiety regarding change came flooding to the surface once again. I’ve been very blessed to have some extraordinary friends in my life and in turn, I’ve come to realize that usually the best of friendships have to endure a period of tribulation and the real test of longevity is always found on the other side. In many cases even, you never fully understand the depths of your friendship (or how much you love them) until it’s been put through the ringer and left hung out to dry. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve been better able to respond through the eyes of compassion and a shared desire to endure versus my usual reaction of emotional fear (which seldom gets me anywhere but into trouble!). Nonetheless, maturity gained or not…my quickness of breath never fails to follow me every where I go in patient anticipation of the long sought after “normalcy” that was once taken for granted.

As I spent the weekend thinking about this, Steve and I attended the very last service held at the Metropolitan Bible Church (aka. the Met). Since Steve and I are considered a “mixed marriage” (two different Christian denominations marrying each other), we’ve made a very big effort to attend services that reflect both of our religions. We tend to alternate between the Met and Blessed Sacrament Church but lately, we’ve found ourselves at the Met a little bit more often than usual.

The Met was built nearly 76 years ago in the depths of the Depression when a group of a hundred Christians got together and decided that while they may be poor, they were still rich in love with Christ and needed a place to celebrate. Now, three quarters of a century later, the Church has been renovated and expanded multiple times and has five different services every Sunday (two of them held off site at Carleton University). Now, due to the ever increasing needs of this ever expanding congregation and watching the ceiling fall down more than once, a new building has been built and the Christian community is moving to its new home next weekend. A beautiful new place to worship on acres of green space with many new and much needed facilities will house a new generation of believers and begin a new legacy.

This kind of change though, doesn’t come without its own sense of apprehension. We tend to get so used to the way things are that it’s often very difficult to let go and embrace the possibility of how things could be. We become afraid, vulnerable and reluctant to let go of what we’ve known for so long, even if it does mean opening ourselves up to better and bigger opportunities. Most of the service last night was spent passing a microphone around and giving members the opportunity to reflect on their favourite memory of the Met. One gentleman began going there when he was three years old with his grandmother. He was baptized there, he was married there, he said goodbye to his wife there and now he will have to watch condominiums be built there…as will we all. But Pastor Reid tried to ease our anxious minds by reassuring us that no part of what we love will be left behind. He quoted Hebrews 13:8 stating that "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever” in order to remind us that Christ will be the same in our new sanctuary as he was in the old.

As I walked out of the doors for the last time and ran my fingers along the bricks, I thought of our old Church, my dearest friend and the changes that we are enduring together. I thought about how much I’ve loved singing in the sanctuary and how much love hearing from my friend every day. I thought about how much comfort I’ve found among its walls and how much comfort I’ve found in my friend’s words. I thought about how grateful I was for having such a place to worship and how grateful I was for sharing in my friend’s life. And for the first time, I thought about how much I would miss this building and how much I would miss my friend if I wasn’t willing to endure the change…both of these experiences have been incredible gifts from God.

Yes, it’s always hard to adjust to a different framework and the growing pains of new surroundings but, at the same time, it’s even harder to enjoy any relationship, with God or with loved ones, when the ceiling is crumbling down around you. So, instead, you endure the agony and hard work of putting back together the broken parts of your foundation and finding yourselves a new place to reside…a place with a bit more room to grow. Often times, change is just that, growth; we just grow out of our broke down churches and our new friendships, and if we’re really lucky, we move forward with courage into the more mature and better suited versions of what we’re leaving behind.

Sometimes our faith and love, for our sanctuaries, our friends, our God, is just so grand that you need a bigger roof and stronger walls to protect everything you’ve worked so hard for.

Because God knows that there is absolutely no way that I’m willing to let it sit out in the rain and get ruined.

Christian the Lion...

Oh my goodness…do not watch this if you are feeling emotional in any way or you will find yourself weeping in front of your computer screen in about sixty seconds!!

For all of us animal lovers especially…This is incredibly touching.

John Mayer...You Say It Best...

Take all of your wasted honor
Every little past frustration
Take all your so called problems
Better put 'em in quotations

Say what you need to say

Walking like a one man army
Fighting with the shadows in your head
Living out the same old moment
Knowing you'd be better off instead

If you could only
Say what you need to say

Have no fear for giving in
Have no fear for giving over
You better know that in the end
It's better to say too much
Then never to say what you need to say again

Even if your hands are shaking
And your faith is broken
Even as the eyes are closing
Do it with a heart wide open...

And say what you need to say

A Letter To My Younger Self...

Dear Little Miss Genevieve,

You’re ten years old today! It’s a good thing too because you drove our mother crazy in anticipation of finally reaching those infamous “double digits”!! I guess no one really calls you Genevieve right now, do they? Most people call you Genny or some variation of well-earned nicknames! I don’t know if Mom has told you this yet but she said that she and Dad named us Genevieve Victoria so that when we became famous, we would never have to change our name! Sweet, isn’t it? So promise me that any time you ever feel a little under the weather, you will remember that long before we were even born, a couple of people had some really big hopes for us. I know that right now, you find it hard to live a life with the name Genevieve as it just seems so grown up and sophisticated but I promise you that eventually, you will grow into it and in some ways, you might even think it suits you. It goes with well with your long legs!!

As you turn ten and I turn thirty, I wish that I had some really great words of wisdom for you. As it turns out though, I seem to be learning just as much now as I did when I was your age…sometimes, it’s even the same lessons over and over again (no, we don’t appear to grow out of our stubbornness just yet!). I’m finding that advice, much like happiness, is something that we seem to reflect on in retrospect. At some point in time, we look back and say to ourselves “yeah…that was worth writing down” but, with youth comes the inability to see that life will and does go on, whether we make the same mistakes or not.

About five or six years from now, your going to find yourself curled up in a ball on your bed, crying your eyes out because you’ve had your heart broken for the very first time. You’ll soon come to learn that you are a person that loves so deeply with every fiber of your being. This means that you also grieve, hurt and feel that loss with the same degree of passion. While you’re curled up in your moment of misery, Mom is going to reassure you that, one of these days, you’re going to meet someone that will more than make up for all the love that you put out into the world that never seemed to come back. Though it will seem like little consolation at the time, believe her…she is right. Paul McCartney’s words will follow you through more tears than you ever thought possible…“in the end, the love that we take is equal to the love that we make”.

As I say this though, I want you to know that dealing with men in the earlier part of your life will come as the most unique example of trial and error that you’ll ever experience. I’ll be the first to admit that men are still a complete mystery to me but one thing that I do know is that for all of their differences, men bring so much feeling into life. They are handsome and funny and protective. They smell good, they have the most adorable smiles on their faces when they are happy to see you and they will, with utmost certainty, flip your world upside down!

Two men in particular though, will make your heart break so much that you’ll feel like it might never beat again. While you endure the agony of humanity’s cruelest test of patience, to have loved and lost, you will find comfort in knowing that you are, indeed, still breathing. Much to your surprise, you’ll come out on the other side anchored by an even stronger ability to stand on your own. Somehow, despite the pain, you do find that a broken heart still beats just the same. You will discover though that friendship with someone that you’ve once ached over can be equally agonizing. Something about the way you once looked at each other never really goes away. The sound of their voice, the way they reach out to grab your hand in a crowd, the first sight of them after too many days apart…they just leave an indelible mark that is not easily erased. Eventually though, you come to realize that maybe you don’t want them to be erased from your life. Instead, maybe it’s okay for them to be the incomplete chapters of your life…the blank pages at the end of your book. After all, they were fantastic kissers!

One day though, at the most unexpected moment, the most handsome of all men will come along and promise to hold your heart in the palm of his hand so he can protect it from the ravages of the world. It won’t always be easy but it will always be worthwhile. You will laugh like you’ve never laughed before, you will see the world in the brightest of colours, and you will be healed with him in a way that you could never have been without him. What you will learn about yourself through his eyes will help to you grow in a way that only comes from such pure and unconditional love. Then, surrounded by (almost) everyone you love, you will stand before God and commit your life to him. The sun will shine brightly the day you wake up to marry the man of your dreams.

I know that right now you don’t know much about God but, in due time, you will find your way back to Him. It will be a painful search at times and you’ll be more lost than you’ve ever been but, He will find you and you’re life will never be the same again. Be prepared to defend your chosen path though because not everyone will share in your serenity. But that’s also part of what makes it so special…that your decisions are slowly starting to become your own. You’ll learn that your choices, like your faith, only require that you believe in them and not anyone else. For all the validation and approval that you seek, through your faith, you’ll realize that your existence, in and of itself, makes you worthy of being loved. I really wish that this was something you could learn sooner but, sometimes, we only open ourselves up to the possibility when there are no other options left. You’ll cry, you’ll fall on your knees and you’ll raise your hands to the heavens but you’ll also be pleasantly surprised to find that the heavens are always more than happy to return the favour!

Relationships will become the foundation of your life and the reality is that relationships can be hard. Humans are unpredictable and the people we love can cause us more tears than we would like to admit but, in the end, they are our reason for being. It will never become easy for you to let go but you need to know that some relationships, regardless of how important they are, need space. Time doesn’t only make the heart grow fonder but it also paves the way for forgiveness, grace and the necessary room to grow. During these times, try to have compassion. It isn’t always the easiest thing to do but, everyone does the very best that they can and more times than not, it’s more than good enough. You are who you are because of the people who loved you. We don’t always make the wisest decisions in the midst of love but, we always do what we think is best, be it right or wrong. To show humility and understanding to another person’s choices takes great maturity and I’m proud to say that it’s a maturity that you’ll develop very soon and will become one of your greatest gifts.

Speaking of gifts…let me assure you that your life will be blessed beyond what you are even capable of imagining right now. Your life will become layer upon layer of every day miracles; the arms that hold you while you sleep, the furry friends that welcome you when you come home, the serenity of the walls that protect you, the shoulders that are constantly there through laughter and through tears, and yes, you will see the Southern Cross with your very own eyes (and it is just as incredible as you always imagined it would be!). The people that you choose to fill your life with will become your pillars of strength, your reflection of yourself and your very proof that God exists. Carry them with you always for they have witnessed your life in immense ways.

Let me tell you something though, young lady…with great gifts comes great responsibility. You will be blessed in ways that some people will spend their entire lives hoping for and in turn, you have been entrusted with considerable duty. As the older and wiser one of the two of us, I feel obliged to tell you that I have great expectations for you and the manner in which you walk through this life. And while it may seem like a lot of work now…I know that you’re up for the challenge; I expect you to always find the light when there is darkness. I expect you to always hold your head high because whether you know it now or not…you are a Child of God. I expect you to be the hands that reach out to help another and I expect compassion from you even when it’s not being offered in return. I expect you to find joy in the simplicities of life (you’ll discover Starbucks in your twenties…that is a great day!) and I expect you to share that joy when others need it most. I expect you to always find forgiveness in your heart…not just for others, but also for your self. I expect you to never give up on another person and to be thankful everyday, even if you’re just thankful that the day is finally over. I expect you to share your last Smarties and to share your heart. I expect you to believe in others even when they don’t believe in themselves and I expect you to never, ever, refuse a good piece of birthday cake!!

Most importantly though, don’t be afraid. You’re so much stronger than you think and twenty years from now…you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.

Bonne Fête belle petite fille!
xoxo

What Dreams May Come...

I had a dream last night that my teeth were falling out! I’m pretty used to these because for as long as I can remember, I’ve had dreams about my teeth, except that usually, in my dream, a tooth is just loose and the entire dream is spent anticipating when it’s finally going to fall out and me frantically trying to prevent it in the first place.

Last night though, my dream involved all of my teeth crumbling to pieces and every time I went to open my mouth, it was full of my teeth. Needless to say that I was in a wee bit of distress about this (and I think I was on a job interview too…always a good place for losing your teeth!).

So, when I finally woke up this morning, I checked quickly to make sure that all of my teeth were solidly in place, I then proceeded to brush, floss and mouth wash meticulously…then made my way to the computer to google the meaning of my nocturnal occurrence. Sure enough, one of the most common interpretations of such a dream is anxiety towards aging!!!

Not only do I find that completely hysterical but, I also think that means that things aren’t looking too promising for birthdays to come!!!

To Fear or Not To Fear...

During the summer of 2000, I spent thirteen weeks traveling out West. A group of six of us drove from Vancouver to Winnipeg and back on the road trip of a lifetime (with many tears along the way!). Our last three weeks of the summer was spent working at the Pacific National Exhibition in Vancouver. Every morning, we would leave our swanky hotel near Robson Avenue in downtown Vancouver and make our way to the PNE grounds via the infamous stretch of Vancouver’s East Side known as Hastings.

For those of you who aren’t entirely familiar with East Hastings, it’s one of the most run-down and dangerous places that you may find in the entire city. East Hastings, at one point in time, was known for having the highest rate of HIV infection in the Western World. Drug addiction, homelessness, prostitution and violent crime are all too familiar in this part of town and for a fairly sheltered girl from South Western Ontario, it was a sight that I had never seen before.

Every day we spent hours stuck in rush hour traffic driving through this alternate world and every day, as I peered through the windows of our SUV, I witnessed people having sex on the street, injecting drugs on the sidewalk and poverty unlike anything I ever want to see again. Oddly enough though, none of the people living in these conditions seemed to care that we were there. Much to my own surprise, I found the fact that our presence went completely unnoticed to really upset me. Somehow, my inability to look at any of these people in the eye (because they never looked at us), made us seem different. And we weren’t really...I knew that. Every day, I felt awful driving through their neighborhood because it felt like they had been put on display. Kind of like the freak show at the local fair, I felt like someone could have been standing on the corner shouting “come one…come all…come see the most apathetic people in the world”. It was heartbreaking.

One day, motivated by my desire for someone, anyone, to care about the desolation that existed in the midst of such wealth, I decided to take the bus home from work. In order to do so, I had to transfer buses three times, which meant that I would have to stand at the corner of pure terror and complete vulnerability until I found my way home (in broad daylight, of course). Sure enough, I made my way and I soaked in every moment of witnessing what felt like another dimension of humanity. The more time I spent walking among them, the more I realized that this could have happened to any one of us. The roads through life do lead in many various directions and one wrong turn could have just as easily brought me here under different circumstances. It’s so easy to see the obvious things that make us different but we all started with the purity of life before the fork in the road came along.

Anyways, as I stood waiting for the last sequence of buses to take me back to the marble floors and crystal chandeliers of my hotel lobby just blocks away (but what seemed like a world away), I overheard two girls sitting on the pavement just next to me. They were leaning up against a shelter wall, smoking cigarettes. Each one couldn’t have been more than ninety pounds and you could easily see the track marks along their inner arms. Their eyes were dark, their cheeks were sunken in and their souls looked tired. The one girl was crying to the other about some guy that she had been with. As she sobbed to her friend, she frustratingly shouted out “WHY DOESN'T HE LOVE ME?”

I couldn’t help but turn around and look at her as the words came out of her mouth. My bus came at that very same moment and it was soon time for me to leave the land of the neglected. While people pushed and shoved their way on to the bus around me…I just stood and looked at her. She eventually looked back at me…straight into my eyes. I gave her a shy smile and eventually turned to walk onto the bus. She didn’t smile back but she knew. She knew what I was trying to say to her...

...That I too, had just asked that very same question the day before and in turn, we quickly realized just how similar we really were. I appeared that regardless of where we were from or how we spent our days, we seemed to share a common trail of thought that consumed our mind...a common rush desire to understand the incomprehensible...a common ache to finally get to the bottom of the million dollar question...BOYS!

Even now, almost a decade later, I can't help but wonder if maybe, just maybe, she's figured out the answer? Because I know that I certainly haven't!

Canada Day was a blast…as always!
Ottawa really knows how to throw a good party!

For more pictures from Canada Day, click here.

The Art of Negotiating Sleep...

Steve and I rose with the sun this morning having shared a very good night last night. We had such a great night because, low and behold, we got to sleep through the entire night!!

At the risk of sounding too much like “real parents”…we woke up rested, excited and proud because for what is possibly the first time…our little Tugger slept through the night!!! Or, at the very least, he didn’t feel the need to wake us up to share in his nocturnal prowlings!

Ever since we got Tugger, almost two and a half months ago, we’ve found ourselves routinely getting up anywhere between 2am and 6am to kick the little guy out of our room because he either purrs, plays or is just outright stubborn about this cherished time that we so call “sleep”. Even he is pretty used to it by now as he no longer tries to race back into our bedroom before we close the door. Instead, he just gives us this defeated look and walks away as if to say “fine…then I’ll hunt without you…but don’t think for a second that I’m sharing any of my winnings with YOU!”

I think it’s worth mentioning though that even Tugger has developed his own little ground rules regarding our sleeping time; even if we do kick him out…the moment our alarm clock goes off…he patiently sits outside our door and meows pathetically until we let him back in. As far as he’s concerned, this is non-negotiable! We’ve accepted his terms thus far and our system seems to be working quite effectively!

This morning though…I woke up to the alarm and as my eyes opened, I had a brief moment of panic because I realized that I hadn’t gotten up at all to remove our fur ball from the bedroom. I tried frantically to think of where he could be or what could be wrong that kept him from waking us, as per our agreement! Sure enough though, as the split second passed, I looked over to find my purring little guy lying right next to me, curled up by my pillow, one eye peeking open at me and the other is a slight daze of his own! It was heavenly…our kitty let us sleep! They really do grow up so fast!!!

Before we give him too much credit though, here’s the look he gave me on Sunday when I woke him up from his eighteen hour afternoon nap!!!!!

For more pictures of Tugger (not sleeping!), click here.

A Cure for the 21st Century...

Why is it so easy to feel trapped and cornered in this huge world of possibility? As I often sit in my office, I become overwhelmed with this feeling of having taken a wrong turn somewhere and suddenly finding myself in unfamiliar territory. The more lost I get, the more I fear that I can no longer find my way out.

Sometimes I wonder if I was born during the wrong time in history. Women in the 21st century seem to lack so much balance and more so, they seem to consistently pursue further imbalance by taking on more and more that inevitably continues to tip the scale. I often feel like I don’t know how to live in this state of disregard for our well-beings and it frightens me how surrounded I already am by the influence of ambition. I spend all day surrounded by women who scramble relentlessly to climb the corporate ladder and all the while, are watching their marriages, their families and their sanity dissolve before their very eyes.

I long for days of horse-drawn carriages and isolated convents…days of simplicity and mental equilibrium…days when having red hair was the worst of our problems! This place, these walls, this computer screen has chained me to feelings of driving in a fast lane that I accidently merged into, sadly enough though, I don’t exactly feel like I’m in the driver’s seat anymore.

I want out. I want to break free of this crippling feeling of being held captive against my will…held hostage for all to judge and criticize for my lack of desire to work sixty hours a week. I feel like a pack of wolves is keeping watch while the blackberry gets forcefully glued to my hand. How do we end up like this? How do we find our way out?

I find it incredible how so many of us have spent our whole lives going to school in order to live a life pursuing careers. I, myself, never thought to do otherwise. At the age of ten we’re asked “what do you want to be when you grow up?”, only to find ourselves at the age of twenty, thirty or forty still asking the same question.

When I sit on the front steps of my new house, the world seems vast and full of possibility. I am reminded that I’ve travelled to the corners of the world and read history in the palm of my hands. When I sit here, in my office, I feel like my world is reduced to this time and this place…with no where else to go. Even more tragically is that I overlook a spectacular scene of creation and a miracle that should bring serenity at its very sight. But it doesn’t. It brings heart palpitations and a depletion of my hope.

Two summers ago looked much the same way. My beautiful view was blurred by tears and anxiety that perpetually seemed to have brought me to my knees asking for mercy. Time did bring clearer skies and a more optimistic forecast…but I spent forty minutes this afternoon at the foot of the Lord begging for Him not to make me endure that storm again.

One of my favourite writers once said that when days like this fall upon us, we are to try and find comfort in that which soothes our soul; a good book, a beloved pet, a warm bath, the embrace of a loved one, a good dose of chocolate…whatever it takes to makes the rumbling, dark clouds a little easier to bear. In the end…if all that fails…we’re to take two Tylenol, go to bed and give her a call in the morning!

The fact that I have the book, the pet, the bath (a rather large one!), the loved one (lots of them), the chocolate AND the Tylenol leaves me feeling a little selfish for being sad at all…but maybe the best remedy to sad days is just that…counting all the ways that could make it better. Fur balls and loving arms are indeed very hard to frown at.

But still, just for today…anyone got any Tylenol?!?!?

Easter in July!

I think that I need Lent again! Or rather, I think that I need Lent to begin with!! As I mentioned back in March, Lent wasn’t an overly successful time for us this past year. Between the move and our trip, we found ourselves being less than disciplined and “reflection” was one of the last things that we ended up having time for. Though the summer months are usually fairly hectic for us, all things considering…so far, it’s actually proving to be a time of a bit more consistency than the past six months. So, I figure that perhaps God wouldn’t mind if I jumped on the Lenten band wagon a bit late this year. Better late than never, right?!?!

My beautiful cousin, Dawn, is getting married this coming fall and for the past few months, we’ve been passing emails back and forth about the time leading up to her wedding. Having been there myself three years ago, it’s still rather fresh in my memory what the summer was like filled with anticipation. A good friend of mine had mentioned to me to try and use that time to reflect a bit as I entered this new and very exciting phase of my life. It was great advice and I really made a conscious effort to soak up everything I could before the big day. I took the liberty of passing on the same advice to Dawn because before she knows it, the wedding will be here and life will never be the same!

That being said though, I don’t think that weddings are necessary in order to “allot” time for reflection. The season of Lent is all about re-evaluating our life and our commitments…counting our blessings and filling ourselves with gratitude. It’s about trying to observe the bigger picture and realizing that, as children of God, we are expected to hold ourselves (and our lives) to a higher standard. This too, doesn’t need to happen only at Easter.

A lot of amazing changes have happened to us this year and I think that this summer, I would like some solitary time to push the pause button! Things are quieting down at work for the first time in nine months and now that life is settling a bit, I feel it’s time to take a little breather from it all. I would like to recommit myself to a couple of things and spend some time being a bit more disciplined than I have been as of late. At the very least, in order to purge myself of all the decadent food I’ve been eating!

So, from now until the weekend of Dawn’s wedding (I can’t wait!), I am going to set aside two lunch hours a week to spend on my own however I please. This is just one of many goals to follow this summer that will help to re-establish my sense of balance and continue to anchor me as I move ahead with the rest of the year. Once I’ve figured out the rest of my goals, I’ll let you know. I have a tendency to be a bit ambitious with my motivation…so I need to think this through properly so that I don’t fall flat on my face before I’ve even crossed the start line!!!! I do know though that one of them will be to cut back on my Starbucks consumption (sad but true…it’s necessary to test our limits sometimes!)…I’m anticipating that their shares will plummet significantly as a result!!

In the meantime though, wish me luck! I’ll likely need your encouraging words when I find myself, peppermint mocha in hand, slowly moving against the grain of righteousness!!! Father Joe would be so proud!

Happy Birthday Canada!
We love you!!