Sunday 30 September 2007

Life and prayer

I don't know how to start this post. I feel like there are so many things I can write about but I am struggling with how to write them or how much to say. They don't necessarily belong together in the same post either. I am going to try a stream of consciousness and then edit it for easier reading after I'm done.

JM and I went out to White Rock yesterday to visit a friend of ours who has cancer. She has bad cancer. Not that there's a good cancer but she has aggressive, ugly, mean cancer that she is bravely and strongly fighting. She is thankfully out of the hospital and at home with her husband. For reasons that I don't want to have to think of (and am blessed that I have that choice), she wasn't up for visitors yesterday.

I wasn't raised in a religious home and I never really learned how to pray in any traditional way. I now know that there isn't really a right or wrong way to pray. What I have found that works for me isn't words. Words don't bring me comfort. I don't seem to be able to connect with the words. What I like to do is visualize. I close my eyes and I picture the person, the thing, the place, the situation that I want to pray for. I can feel it in my whole body when I do that.

This is how I pray for K. I visualize her and I focus all of my love and energy on her. As I do that my focus will widen and include her husband, her home, her pets and parents, her sister, her in laws, her friends, her community and so on. It is much like a meditation and the longer I stay in it the more encompassing it gets. I have often ended with my perspective being from way up high and looking at the entire planet with my pinpoint of energy, faith and love still on the one thing I started with. I picture that I am a portal for God to flow his love, energy and faith through to what I am focused on.

I believe in miracles. I believe that miracles happen on a daily basis. I have experienced them and I have witnessed them and the more I am open to them existing, the more of them I am aware of. I have started studying The Course In Miracles and I love it. I haven't figured out how to explain what it is yet because it is new to me and I am new to it. I know it isn't a religion and that it doesn't promote organized faith. It is more of a book of spiritual guidance. It is personal and it makes a lot of sense to me.

I spent most of my life not having any kind of relationship with God. When I was 25, I filled out a values survey. It listed 25 values and asked you to put them in order with most important to you being #1 and least important to you being #25. A relationship with God was #25 on my list. Now a relationship with God is way (way) higher on my list. (I should do the exercise again to see where it lands now).

I was with some friends recently and started a sentence with "According to Jesus..." and we all started laughing because it was probably the first time in my life I had started a sentence with that and it sounded strange. They knew me when I was 25 and I would have tuned someone out who started a sentence that way.

My mom had made an excellent point recently (and I am paraphrasing here) it was that you can start a conversation about any number of uncomfortable topics with a group of people, and nothing makes them squirm more than talking about God. Bring up serial killers, child abuse, molestation, cancer, war, prostitution, drug use and most people will enjoy a spirited discussion/debate about it but bring up God and people get weird. Just an interesting point.

Anyways for those of you that pray and/or believe in miracles/God, please send some thoughts of love and prayer to K.
Thanks.
Health, happiness, peace and love to you all!

Wednesday 26 September 2007

Across the Universe

Sigh.

That was almost going to be my entire post. Just a sigh. What a great movie. What great music. What great actors. And how sexy is Jim Sturgess?! In case you don't know the answer to that one, it is VERY!

I am listening to the soundtrack as I write this and swooning all over again. Go see this movie and go buy the music. (I'm so bossy)

I wasn't really raised on the Beatles and didn't go through much of a Beatles phase when I was growing up. Turns out there are a lot (and I mean a lot) of Beatles songs I don't know and being introduced to them through a beautiful, powerful movie was such a great experience for me.

I want to go see this movie again. I want everyone to go see this movie.

Sunday 23 September 2007

Sleepy Sunday night

A whole day off has gone by and I have enjoyed pretty much every moment of it. I sent out a mass email earlier today about a charity event I am hosting. My goal is to raise $500 for the Canadian Cancer Society. I am pretty excited about this event too. I will write more about it as time goes on and let you know how it's going and if I am coming close to reaching my goal of $500.

I spent a lot of time today doing homework. I can't believe that I can now have conversations about things like Trial Balances, Revenue Recognition, Income Statements and T-Accounts. I never, ever, ever thought that this would be something that I would be getting an education in. I am finding it hard. This is a whole new way of thinking for me and it is backwards to how my brain thinks of things like debits and credits. Mostly I just sit and stare at a question before I start trying to work it out. My understanding comes s l o w l y. I am used to getting things fairly quickly, so I am finding this slow thing pretty frustrating.

Well, I am going to spend the next hour chilling out with Cooper before I head off to bed. I sure am sleepy!

Sunny Sunday morning

It is a really beautiful day today. My windows are wide open and there is a lovely cool breeze flowing through my apartment. I have thrown open all of my blinds and the sunlight is streaming in. I have had such a busy week that I am really enjoying just having this morning to relax, drink tea, write, tidy up and sit with Cooper.

I need to clean and do some homework, but I have devoted my morning to just enjoying some free time. Some me time.

I drank some yummy coconut tea, wrote some emails, read some Jack Canfield, did a 20 minute meditation and am now writing this post while listening to some lovely music.

I hope you all have wonderful Sundays planned out today.
peace and love
kt

Saturday 15 September 2007

My dad

My dad is a good guy. He's actually a great guy. He is kind and generous and open. He is funny and smart. He loves me very much and I really feel that from him. I love him very much too.

We have had our struggles and bumps in the road, some major and some minor but our relationship now is the best it has ever been. I am fully committed to having the best relationship possible with my dad forever more. I am very grateful for him.

On the eve of your birthday, dad, I want to say happy birthday and I love you.
kt

Happy Day!

I have run the gamut of positive emotions today. From just plain old feeling good to giddy, excited, happy, heart warmed, grateful, connected, loved, alive, enthusiastic, delighted, joyful.

The highlights...
*Starting school today. As a student. Every single semester I interpret a number of new classes and for the first time I will be able to get involved, ask questions, be a part of the class. I was lying in bed last night actually giggling to myself about how excited I am to be a student again. I got the textbook on Thursday for my class and Friday night I actually read the first chapter, answered the review questions and did the applied exercises. I'm a total keener.

In class today the instructor had us do some of those applied exercises and I actually smiled while doing them (again) in class. I am going to get an A+ in this course. After I write this post, I am actually going to complete my homework for next week and start the readings for my next class.

*Seeing Across The Universe. ahhhhhhhh. What a great, enjoyable movie. I spent two hours swooning and either near tears or broadly smiling.

*Coming home to a surprise gift and lovely letter in the mail. Who doesn't love personal mail? When I got home from the movie, I checked for mail. I reached into my mailbox and pulled out a handful of fliers and junk mail and this one special envelope. I didn't recognize the handwriting that spelled out my name and address so my eyes went to the return address. A smile spread across my face. Not only was I getting personal mail, but I was getting it from someone really fun who I wouldn't have expected to send me anything. I chucked the junk mail and smiled the whole way up to my apartment.

The short and sweet letter brought tears to my eyes. I know you read this, so thank you. Thank you very much.
I'm not sure if you have the corresponding info where you are but my particular faves so far are ... 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15 (this is as far as I've gotten so far, so pretty much all of it).

*Drinking a glass of good, cold white wine. I opened a bottle that I bought in the Okanagan and I am savouring every sip of it. It is crisp and fruity and so hitting the spot right now.

*Two phone calls. I talked to my lovely friend who has been away and it was nice to hear her voice and catch up a little bit. We will do much more catching up in person soon.

I made another call to an old friend who I had lost touch with. I didn't get him but I left a long and rambling message (in the the best quirky, funny ways possible) and I feel good about having made the call and having left the ridiculous message. We actually reconnected very briefly last weekend and I got his number telling him I'd call soon. I'm glad I did it.

It's a feel good day for me. I wish all of this feeling good on all of you too.
Peace and Love
kt

Saturday 8 September 2007

My first love

Facebook is a funny thing.

A while ago, my first (and favourite) boyfriend ever, found me on facebook and friend-requested me. He is married now and lives far far away. I hadn't had any contact with him in probably 15 years.

I accepted him as a friend and was directed to define 'how do you know this person' I hemmed and hawed over what to write. Facebook gives you some options...
'we worked together,
lived together,
went to school together,
met through a friend,
we hooked up.'
but none of them were ones I wanted to use. There is one option that I use regularly to describe how I know people and it is that 'we met randomly'. This gives you the ability to fill in how you met using your own words.

I left it blank and over the next few days, anytime I would sign into facebook, I would go to that step and start typing something in for how I knew him. It was never what I really wanted to say though and I always deleted it.

The problem was, that what I wanted to write was that he was my first and favourite boyfriend; that he really was my first love; that he was the person who I most regret treating the way I did. None of these things are problems on their own but coupled with the fact that he is married now, it seemed disrespectful and inappropriate for me to write any of those things.


I first saw J when I was 14 years old at the DMV. I was there with my mom and sister so that ST could get her learners permit. He was there too. I pointed him out to S and said "Check out that guy. He is so cute". Our small town didn't have it's own DMV so we had to drive to another city for one. It wasn't far away but it was the DMV for a huge area. This guy could have been from anywhere. ST looked over at him and said "Oh that's JG, He goes to our school. Actually, he's our paperboy."

The next day I looked for him at school but couldn't find him and so after school, I sat at the front window of our house waiting for him to deliver our paper. I hid behind the blinds when he rode up on his bike and tossed the paper on the front step. I watched him ride around the cul-de-sac delivering all our neighbour's papers too. Then he was gone. I spent the rest of the evening humming and dancing and daydreaming.

This became a regular afternoon activity for me, waiting at the window and dancing around after he left. I also tracked him down at school and was ready to smile at him if he ever looked my way.

As the days went by I got a bit bolder and bolder. I would 'happen' to be outside when he delivered the paper. I'd smile and I'm sure turn bright red and say hi. I'd have friends over after school and we'd be outside 'playing'. I'd take the dog out to play. He now recognized me at school and we'd smile and say hi in the hallways.

I started to get impatient and decided that I needed to do something big to jump us forward a bit. I started by baking him cookies. I got home from school one day with the great idea and got to work. I made peanut butter chocolate chip cookies without the chocolate chips and cleverly called them peanut butter chocolate chipless cookies. I put them in a paper bag, wrote what they were and something else (I can't remember what) on the bag and put them out on the doorstep. I went and sat in the front window and waited. He rode up and as he got closer he noticed them. He picked up the bag, read it, smiled, opened it, looked around, grabbed a cookie and took a bite. He rode around the rest of the cul-de-sac, delivering papers, with the open bag on his handlebars and ate the cookies.

After the cookie incident, we would stop and talk in the halls at school and when he delivered the paper. One day when he rode up on his bike, my friend C and I were outside with a tape recorder being goofs and taping ourselves singing and reading from an Archie comic. He rode up to deliver the paper and I don't quite remember how things went down but the end result was that after he left, C and I recorded ourselves on one side of the tape talking to him. We went up into my room and just talked about whatever. We described what my room looked like, we talked about movies and music and school things. When we were done, we got on our bikes and rode over to his house and left the tape on his doorstep.

The next day in school, he was wearing a really cool shirt and looking particularly good. We talked by his locker. He thanked me for the tape and said he really liked it. After school, he was later than usual delivering the paper so I wasn't at the window or outside when he came by. When I opened the front door later to get the paper, there was a tape on top of it. I ran upstairs to my room, closed the door behind me, put the tape in my 'stereo' and hit play. It was J and his friend talking. It followed the same idea as ours, they were in his room, describing it, talking about music, cars and wrestling. At some point his friend says I hope you noticed J's shirt today because he wore it just for you. To which I swooned, I'm sure.

I still have this tape. Somewhere. I haven't listened to it in probably 13 years. I'm not sure if I ever will again, but I like that I have it.

After the tape exchange we started dating. He'd deliver our paper with little notes written on the front page or hidden inside the paper. My dad would be reading the sports section and moan and hand me the page and there would be a talking bubble drawn coming out of some athlete's mouth and he'd be saying "Princess K is the greatest" or something like it. It was incredibly sweet and adorable.

School ended for the year and we spent most of the summer together. He'd be going to senior high the following year and I'd still be at the junior high, so we knew we wouldn't see each other as much in the fall. I went away mid-summer for a week with my family and then at the the end of summer he went away on a bike trip with his dad and brother. I missed him dearly for a couple of days but I was having a lot of fun with my girlfriends and I was becoming boy crazy. I was 14 and finally cute (I had spent much of my past 4 years looking like a boy) and now the boys were checking me out and I was checking them out.

By the time J got home from his bike trip my interest had waned. There were so many boys and so little time...I wanted to date them all. Instead of dealing with it in any mature way and breaking up with J, I just avoided him. I didn't know what else to do at the time and so I didn't take his calls and I stopped calling him. This actually became my break up technique for many of my teenage years and I'm not very proud of it. It was cruel but effective.

I bumped into J once, a couple years later. I was sitting at a bus stop and he skateboarded past. I called his name, he looked over and fell off his skateboard. He waited with me until the bus came and while we sat and talked, I still felt an affection for him. We talked on the phone once after that and got together to play tennis once after that. And that was it. He graduated high school with honours in math and a scholorship back east. He moved away and that was my last contact with him.

I think about him every once in a while. I think that I wish I had met him later in life. I have tried a couple times over the years to track him down, by googling his name, or on classmates.com, or facebook. I've always been curious about where he ended up and what he is doing with his life now. A few months ago, my sister called me and she had found him on classmates. He had pictures posted of himself and I was surprised to see that he was a man. In my mind he has stayed 16 forever.

Then a month or so ago I get a ding in my inbox and a subject line that says "JG added you as a friend on facebook". My heart may have stopped for a beat. Just from sheer surprise. I accepted and then was delivered the dilemma of "how do you know JG?"

I finally wrote "He was my paperboy when I was 14".
It was benign, it was respectful, it was the truth, and it didn't say anything that I really wanted it to say.

I sent him a message through facebook that only he would be able to read and I said...

"Hey J,

For the 'how do you know J part of facebook', I wanted to write that you were my first and favourite boyfriend and the one I most regret breaking up with the way I did. I have often thought that I wish I had met you in my 20's instead of when I was 14.

It seemed an inappropriate thing to announce publicly on facebook since you are married and so out of respect for both you and your wife I kept it much more benign with you being my paperboy.

I decided to let you know anyways because I wanted you to know that you have always held a special place in my heart.

I hope you are well and wish you the best!
K"

I sent that about 3 weeks ago. Yesterday, he replied.

"Hi!

Thanks for the interesting reply. I appreciate and respect your comments. Makes me a bit proud too. Thanks. Anyway, life can't be rewinded so don't let it linger in your mind causing unnecessary concern or distraction. I don't want you to think I was ignoring your kind and nice comment. It's nice to hear and know.
Bye for now,
J


And there you have it. There's our closure. He is still my facebook friend but I can't imagine that we will have any contact again. I got what I needed with letting him know that he meant something to me. I didn't need anything back but it made me happy that he replied anyways.

Thursday 6 September 2007

I'm exhausted

I have lost my good writing flow since my holidays. I was doing so well for awhile there, writing a couple times a week. I am even struggling with writing this post right now. I am beat. My body is aching and I just want to have a bath and go to bed. So this is going to be a short post.

Sadly, that might actually be all I have in me for this post.
yep, I think that's it.

I am booked solid tomorrow so Saturday, hopefully, I will sit down and write a decent post.
Hope everyone is doing well.

Saturday 1 September 2007

Tennis

I have somehow gotten hooked on watching the U.S Open. I had no idea that tennis could be such a fun and exciting sport to watch. Tennis to me, is such a satisfying sport to play. I love everything about it and yet I almost never play. I have a great racquet and pretty much every single one of my friends also likes to play, yet we never do. I think it's time to make it a goal to start playing tennis more often.

Go every six months!

Well, I have been home now from Peachland for nearly a week and I haven't written anything about anything. I think I am overdue to write.

While I was away, one of my teeth that my dentist had filled was giving me trouble. Actually two of them were giving me trouble, but definitely one more than the other. While one was getting better the other one seemed to be getting worse. It was my upper right wisdom tooth. I couldn't bite down on it so chewing on that side of my mouth was difficult and then it would just start to ache and the pain would spread into my jaw and up into my head. I was avoiding taking painkillers because I wanted to be able to drink so I was finding tricky ways to deal with the pain.

I found something that worked 90% of the time and it was the most fascinating trick I've ever done. It is from The Course in Miracles and while I haven't actually read or studied the Course yet, my mom has told me about this part of it. I don't quite understand it but I like it and it worked for me. The philosophy is that nothing is real. Your body, the furniture around you, everything really...none of it is real. (it's very matrixy). If your body isn't real then any pain you 'think' you feel isn't real either.

Like I said, I don't quite understand it but I like it so I tested it out. When my tooth started to ache I would say to myself, "This pain isn't real. I have no need for this pain." and seriously 9 times out of 10, the pain would be gone by the time I finished the sentence. I can't explain why it worked but it did. Maybe because I really believed it would work.

On the drive home from Peachland though, this trick wasn't working at all for me. No matter how hard I believed in it or how many times I repeated it, the pain wouldn't go away.

I had an appointment to see my dentist on Tuesday. I walked in and told my dentist to pull my wisdom tooth out. She did a few things to make sure I knew what I was talking about and then got down to business. The entire extraction took 30 seconds and then it was over. She plunked my tooth into a dixie cup and sat staring at it for as long as it took to pull out and then said "Well, that's one for science." Which is exactly where it is now. We donated it to the UBC dentistry department. She then proceeded to do a root canal on the other side of my mouth.

I have spent too much of August in a dentist's chair. I hadn't been in 12 years and I am catching up in the three weeks I've been off work. It turns out that 12 years of dentistry work in 3 weeks might be too much. But really, I am happy to have gotten it done and not have spread it out over a longer period of time. I still have one more appointment in three weeks. I would have gone sooner but we had to give time for the extraction site to heal, which it seems to be doing nicely.

I am committing now to going to the dentist every six months for the rest of my life. I'd like to have all my teeth forever and I'd like them to be strong and healthy. I never want to have spend another month making up for so much.