here in my head

To the asshole who hit me with his bike while I was out on my evening walk:

Bikes are vehicles – they are to be ridden on the road. Unless you are under the age of six, which you, clearly, were not, you should not be riding on the sidewalk. I understand you might not like biking on the road – I, myself, am a nervous biker when biking with traffic, so I get that. But it was 9:40 p.m. in a sleepy little suburb – there is no traffic on the road to speak of. The roads were clear.

Also, when you do hit someone when you are riding on the sidewalk, it’s customary to stop to make sure they’re okay and not just continue on your way, with barely a backward glance. The least you could have done was mumble a sorry or something. You were the one who came up behind me, I had no idea you were there until your handlebar connected with my arm, leaving me with a nasty scrape and a bruise and causing me to stumble and drop my water bottle, so you were the one responsible for avoiding a collision.

Fucker.

I’m sick – full of virusy goodness. Sneezes, sniffles, feverish cold sweats, the works. I hate summer viruses. I blame my bus-taking ways. That and hubris. Just last week as I was rubbing Purell all over my hands I was thinking to myself that “hey, self, we’ve not been really sick in a while! Like since January. Whee! Yay for improved immunity.” Pride goeth before a fall…

And since all I’ve done today is sleep, whimper in my sleep so loud that it woke me up, cry in my sleep, and watch Buffy, my brain is a little fried. So you get bullet points. Hurray for bullety goodness.

• I think my cats are trying to kill me. Sure, they might be cute and cuddly the majority of the time, but I think that is all just a front to hide the fact that they are really violent, murderous fiends. Not only to they lie in wait under beds and tables to take swipes at my feet while I pass by and they stop mid-stride to try to trip me on the stairs, but they are now moving on to more sophisticated methods, like dive bombing me from windowsills and knocking sharp objects from above me whilst I sleep. I am now sporting a fancy new forehead scar from the picture frame that came crashing down on me in the wee small hours of Friday morning, thanks to Winston.
• We have begun operation sell this house. Back in January (and back on my old blog) I wrote about how we had begun to consider selling our suburban house in favour of a house downtown (or at least closer to downtown). We have moved beyond just simply talking about it to action. We had our realtor over to discuss what we need to do to get the place show-worthy a few weeks ago, and this weekend we started with the minor home renos – the painting of our bedroom, the decluttering and tossing of our stuff (so much stuff) and today the workers started on updating the bathrooms – making them look shiny and new. There is so much work to make the house saleable, and it’s a shame that we’re only doing this home improvement because we’re looking to move. But it will be worth it in the end…
• So, because we’ve made the decision that yes, we are indeed moving, I have been spending an inordinate amount of time on MLS.ca lusting after houses in our desired locations. I’m trying to ensure that they are within our price range. But every so often I forget and fall in love with million dollar homes in Sandy Hill, or the Glebe or Rockcliffe Park. I really do need to remember to set a price limit on my searches… That and maybe I should wait for the house to be on the market at least so we have a hope of even looking at these houses I keep falling in love with (that are, in fact, in our price range) before they are sold…

One of the things I love about working downtown is that so many of my friends work downtown too, so lunches can often be spent catching up with someone. Today I met up with a friend I haven’t seen in a while (obviously, since I forgot she was due in three weeks, thinking for some reason that instead she was due in October. Had I seen her recently, I would have clearly realized my mistake…) One thing I had forgotten, however, was that June is the season of the Grade 8 trips – thousands of twelve and thirteen-year-old children from all over Ontario descend upon the Nation’s Capital City from mid-May to mid-June. Waiting for my friend at the base of the food court, watching the swarms of almost-high schoolers reminded me of my own eighth grade trip to Ottawa, and how they let us loose on the Rideau Centre back then too, and how back then I never dreamed that I would end up living in Ottawa, 20 years later…

And then it hit me. My grade 8 trip was 20 freaking years ago. And then I just felt old…

Ever since Sizzle mentioned them in a post one day, I’ve been receiving my own Notes from the Universe. Hokey? Perhaps. But, I love them. Somedays the notes resonate better than others, but they provide, every morning, a few moments just for me to try and help me reframe and refocus my mind for the day.

And somedays? Somedays the notes are eeriely on the mark. For example, this morning, I was lamenting to my coworker that the soles of my new(ish – purchased about a month and a half ago) funky, cute red shoes were falling apart, as I opened up my email, to read:

Happiness comes first, Susan . Partners, abundance, and cool shoes come later.

Or at least this is how I’d line up my duckies.
Ungawa –
The Universe
Thoughts become things… choose the good ones! ®
© www.tut.com ®

No, Susan , cool shoes never came first.

Think the universe is actually trying to tell me something?

I don’t have many words of my own right now, so instead, I’m going to share with you someone else’s words… Go read this – Dear Pixar, From All The Girls With Band-Aids On Their Knees – and then come back here and tell me about your movie heroines or why it is so hard to find strong female heros in movies. And why it is we socialize our girls to be princesses (which, if you think about it, is inevitably setting them up for failure, given that princesshood is mostly determined by birthright). Or tell me about why we need another princess movie, why little girls should be allowed to indulge the princess fantasy. And how not every Disney girl is a princess (think about Alice in Wonderland – she was just a girl who liked to read and got bored one day and followed a rabbit…). Maybe we don’t need more movies for little girls? What do you think about the theory that girls will read books with male protagonists but boys are much less likely to read books with femal protagonists – do you think that’s true? Do you think that has anything to do with Pixar keeping its female characters in supporting (though sometimes wonderfully fantastic) roles? And are those supporting characters enough to help little girls realize that they can be anything they want to be, even if that is wanting to be a princess? Or, are we all just worrying about nothing – because it’s not like we didn’t have the princesses growing up too…

It is virtually impossible to be in a bad mood when looking at this picture of my niece. Her grin is infectious. How I wish she was closer…

I’ve opened this posting window countless times in the last few weeks trying to find something to write, but instead I just end up staring at the blinking cursor or writing something even more self-indulgent and navelgazing than usual and then deleting it all, because no one wants to read that shit – not even me… I’ve been wallowing in the depression, swimming in a sea of discontent for a few weeks now and finally, yesterday I found myself again. I picked myself up, dusted myself off, signed up for two half-marathon walks in the fall and joined a gym. Because, the time in my adult life that I’ve been happiest was when I was training for the half marathon last year. So I might as well go back to what’s worked in the past…

I feel better now that I’ve done this – and had my first elliptical workout in months. Yes, I’m still having dramatic mood swings, thinking about finding a new therapist (since in the midst of everything else going on, I got an email from him last week telling me he was quitting his practice) is sending me into hysterics and leaving the house each morning is causing anxiety attacks the likes of which I’ve never experienced before. But, in the midst of all that, I’m still making a point of practicing some semblance of self-care. Despite all the hate the negative voice inside me keeps throwing my way, a part of me knows that what it’s telling me isn’t true, and wants to prove it wrong. Wants to prove to me that I’m worth working on.

I’m here. I’m hanging in. I’m fighting my way back to the light. I just might not be posting much lately – no sense dragging you all down into the dark with me…