Life lessons and accidental thoughts - the holiday edition

I could go into the “I’ve been a bad blogger so spank me because I’m not visiting or posting regularly” spiel. But seriously, aren’t we all tired of people saying/writing that? Just being honest here, folks.
So, if you’re reading this, either:
1) you are new or,
2) you really do like me (at the very least tolerate me) or what I write about.
Whatever the reason, thank you and I really do appreciate it.

This was going to be titled “What I learned over the Christmas Holiday” but I expect that’s been done to death as well. So I'm leaving it in my accidental thoughts and life lessons category.

Let’s get the “first real post of the year” housekeeping stuff out of the way first.
Chicklet and I had a lovely time over her school break. Santa was most generous to her, you know. And I was fortunate enough to have some lovely meals with people that are dear to my heart over Christmas and New Year’s. There... that sums it up nicely, no?
And it was my first Christmas as “an orphan”. But I survived it thanks to Chicklet, my cousin and aunt, a great deal of silliness on Facebook, many hours of movie watching and a lot of cooking (that's for a later post).
What else... Um, I don’t do New Year’s resolutions. I just live to learn and grow... and change (some, not all of me). Maybe it’s all the stuff that has happened to me (both good and monumentally bad) in the last few years or my reaching the age of forty -or both. But I’ve spent a whole lot of time with myself, been through a lot (that’s an understatement) and decided that it’s best for everyone involved if I just be myself. And if people don’t like it, tough noogies.

Most passport pictures are good likenesses, and it is time we faced it.” 

~Katharine Brush

OH... speaking of harsh, honest reality. Yesterday, I drove through the snow-laden and irritating side streets of Montreal, with Chicklet as my passenger and co-pilot. We were on our way to see "Sherlock Holmes" and to engage in some book perusing at Indigo, and during that ride I got a reality check.
Before Chicklet dives into her latest book and becomes silent and absorbed, she starts looking through the sports center’s brochure that I picked up at town hall. I ask her what kind of classes they have.
I just set myself up.
So she starts telling me about a “healthy living and exercise class” – something about combining dieting and exercise. I manage a glance sideways at her while dodging opening car doors, mounds of snow that are spilling over from the sidewalk and the occasional hapless and absent-minded pedestrian foolishly darting out and assuming my snow tires and reflexes are uncompromised. If you think Sully is a hero, ha! Let’s see how he navigates the wintery streets of Montreal! I bet you he mows at least one pedestrian down (or at the very least takes someone’s open car door off).

After she tells me what the course curriculum is, the following ensues:

“Are you saying I need to go on a diet?”

“Mom, are you kidding? You’re tiny.” says my astute and brilliant child.

“I think I do need to firm up a little, though.”

“Start with your butt, Mom. It jiggles.” says my suddenly not so astute and brilliant child.

Sigh and harumpfffff!

“Cloquet hated reality but realized it was still the only place to get a good steak.”

 ~Woody Allen

So... here’s what I was meaning to post about. This past week, in one morning, I was reminded of two very important things to stay upwind of:
1) A pooing dog, and
2) Snow being removed from the top of the car.
In both cases you get smacked in the face by either a harsh noxious foul smell or the harsh freezing reality that is winter. And either of them will literally take your breath away, and NOT in the good “heaven that is a flambéed liquored-up banana dancing on your tongue” way.

Life lessons. I don't have all the answers, but I'll share what I find out as much as is possible

That’s it, for now.

“I am always ready to learn although I do not always like being taught.”

 ~Winston Churchill

ripples... accidental thoughts of thanks

A holiday... and I wasn't feeling it. My daughter, The Chicklet, isn't with me. Dad is gone. Mah Honey is traveling for work. Oh, and I woke up at an unmentionable hour (it's not like I had a turkey to stuff in the oven) unable to get back to sleep. Ugh.

Life hasn't been particularly cheery this year, but I would hate myself if I didn't look for something good.

I got awesome snuggles from Sharkdog (there's magic in kissing a beagle belly), there's French Vanilla coffee in my cup, and I have bacon. I get to spend some time snuggled warmly on the couch with a blanket while I read Pride and Prejudice, again. The little things matter.

I have this picture in my kitchen... a sweet smiling face of a girl that Chicklet and I sponsor. She loves to sing and read. She's far away, in Senegal, but knows that someone cares across the ocean...




That's what matters... to help as much as you can, to care for someone you've never met, to want their well being... to hope they live in Peace.

I feel sorry for people who can't wrap their brains around the thought that they can, through small gestures, start a ripple that in the end, might seem like a righteous surfer's wave.

Through the Blogblast for Peace, we can do that. We can reach out to people all over the world, we can live as one people...

Join the Blogblast for Peace on November 5th... here in the Bloggosphere, on Facebook, Tweet for Peace even. I promise I'll be thankful if you do *smile*.

November 5, 2009

The Peace Globe Gallery

The more things change... accidental thoughts

So... I was watching “Fiddler on the Roof”. It’s one of those “have to watch" movies for me. You know, you flip channels and it doesn’t matter where it’s at in the storyline, you still "have to watch" it.

I love this movie. I love the songs, and the characters. I love the story… Tevye the milkman, the patriarch of a poor Jewish family in pre-Revolutionary Russia, explains traditions and is faced with marrying off his three oldest daughters.

During a commercial break, I went over to the computer to check e-mails and I figured I’d empty the spam folder on my e-mail account. I empty it every day. I check it just to make sure actual “for real” non-spam e-mails don't end up in there. As I quickly scanned the “FROM” field, I saw that one of them was from a dating website and this lead to one of my "thinking" episodes... you know, the accidental kind.

At least three times a week, there's an offer from some online dating service... the “Fiddler on the Roof” Yentes (the Matchmaker) of the 21st century.

There are many different kinds of them, these dating services. There are some that make you answer questionnaires in 26 parts and then run match algorithms to find the most compatible candidate. There are some with pictures and short profiles that talk of loves (walks on the beach, whiskers on kittens, snowflakes on eyelashes, blah blah blah) where you browse and pick from the profiles of men/women whose faces are appealing, and so on...

Bottom line is, on some of these, people get “matched” based on what we think of as dimensions of compatibility. Just like the matchmakers of yore. Actually, matchmakers are still a part of Orthodox traditions, and they’re found in many cultures to this day.

It’s interesting really, which factors are considered to determine the best matches. The stuff that will determine whether the relationship will evolve towards a commitment and have a shot at surviving.
Compatibility… Possible life mates picked based on personality traits. The Matchmakers based themselves on things like education, family history, degree of religious observance, financials…

“What counts in making a happy marriage is not so much how
compatible you are, but how you deal with incompatibility.”
-Leo Tolstoy

Then there’s the notion of romantic love. Flies in the face of traditional matchmaking, it does… imagine, picking your spouse by the butterflies in your stomach.

But it’s what Tevye’s daughters do. They marry for love.

This is my favourite song of the movie… Tevye has just told Golde, his wife, that their daughter Hodel is marrying a man she has fallen in love with and chosen for herself, not a man chosen for her following the long-established tradition of matchmaking and arranged marriages as they themselves were thrown together.
Tevye has two daughters who have picked spouses for love... and it prompts him to ask himself something he's never considered.
In this moment, Tevye, after 25 years of marriage, asks Golde if she loves him...

And so I thought. It doesn’t matter how people find their way to their life mates… but that the commitment survives what life throws at us and that love is given a chance to grow, and flourish.

Some time ago, Ann Meara had this to say of her decades old marriage in an interview in The New York Times:

"Was it love at first sight? It wasn't then - but it sure is now."

Lately, I've tried to help some friends struggling with the survival of their marriage, witnessed friends embarking on a journey, rejoiced over another anniversary with people I love like family.

No matter how it starts (a slap behind the head, a glance across a room, a questionnaire, the matchmaker...), I guess it's whether or not we love the one we're with and commit to a life together, to each other and to surviving the obstacles we face along the way that determines the best matches. What do you think?

"I knew couples who’d been married almost forever – forty, fifty, sixty years. Seventy-two, in one case. They’d be tending each other’s illnesses, filling in each other’s faulty memories, dealing with the money troubles or the daughter’s suicide, or the grandson’s drug addiction. And I was beginning to suspect that it made no difference whether they’d married the right person. Finally, you’re just with who you’re with. You’ve signed on with her, put in a half century with her, grown to know her as well as you know yourself or even better, and she’s become the right person. Or the only person, might be more to the point. I wish someone had told me that earlier. I’d have hung on then; I swear I would."
Anne Tyler, "A Patchwork Planet"