Mombie – a bit of everything

Things I learned on my bike today

I bought a bike about 3 weeks ago, but aside from a 5 minute spin around my neighbourhood (while wearing a skirt!) on the night I bought it, the weather had been too lousy or I’ve been too busy to use it.

Today, I decided that I was getting out on the bike no matter what. Nature tried to throw me off by dropping the temperature by I refused to be diverted. I was getting on that bike.

I was halfway down the bath between here and my Mom’s when I remembered that I didn’t know how to use the gears. I actually laughed out loud at that, because holy metaphor batman, that’s a problem for my whole life – I’m either all out, or I’m in the tub with a book, no in between. I got The Man to explain it to me when I got home, hopefully learning it on the bike will translate to real life too.

What else did I learn?

I like to go fast. Well, fast for me anyway.

If you look friendly, and like you are trying to share the path, people smile as they move out of your way.

That stand up and pedal thing to get up a hill is a lot harder than I remember.

And, last but not least, bicycling is more fun if your bike looks cool. I think I knew that when I was a kid, but I had totally forgotten until now.

Hmm, maybe I need streamers for the handlebars.

How is a mombie like a monk?

Nope, not that way (insert smirk here). Nor am I shaving my head in a circular pattern, hanging out in a remote stone building, or praying for hours a day.

According to some info, I’ve read, one of the purposes of yoga was to prepare the body for meditation. Creating strength and relaxation in your muscles enabled you to sit for long periods of time to meditate and look deeper within.

I do meditate, I do yoga, and I do try to look deeper within* but I am borrowing monk-liness (monkitude?) for a whole different purpose.

I am making August all about writing, and all about exercise. Normally those two things seem quite far apart in my goals list but I have decided to emulate the monks and use exercise to prepare my body for long hours of sitting still. Instead of yoga for meditation, I am using exercise for writing.

I’ll let you know how it works out.

*turns out, deep within, I am made of equal parts chocolate and words.

Listen Up! Story-a-day May.

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I’ve signed up for the Story-a-day May challenge so I’ll be writing a story every day in May, some will be long, some will be short, and some will be better than others.  Here’s my first one (with minor edits only):

 

Listen Up

 

He was always missing my meaning.  This is what happens when you go out with someone who never really listens.

 

I can only assume he developed his fake listening skills from spending so much time with his mother. All while he was growing up, it was just the two of them and she was a big fan of road trips, so it she would have him as a captive audience the whole time. And good lord could that woman talk.

 

I’ve never heard anything like it. If you can imagine the fastest talker you have ever heard, combined with the sort of boor who talks over everyone else at the party, combined with, I don’t know, some sort of chirpy, annoying, bird that gives you a facial tic just from hearing it, you would have some idea of what Fred’s mom is like.

 

To be fair, she’s a nice lady, generous, sweet, and she loves her son like no one has ever loved their kid before, and really, she’s not a boor, I just don’t think the fact that conversations normally involve more than one person talking has ever registered with her.

 

So, I can completely understand why Fred never listens when I talk. I mean he nods, and he looks interested, but he’s not really there. I think it’s a self-defence mechanism, a way of carving out a few minutes for his thoughts, honed on a thousand road trips with Our Lady of the Chatter.  She never notices that he zones out, and I really think that he thought I wouldn’t notice either.

 

I noticed. Right away. The first time we talked, I did the nice-girl-on-a-date thing and I let him tell me all about himself but as soon as I started answering his first question (So, what do you do?) it was like he became a mannequin. Or maybe an android, one who knew what he should do, but couldn’t quite pull it off.  I ignored it at the time, figuring he was just nervous, and he had so many other nice qualities that I was willing to let a few things slide.

 

It got old though, even though I understood where he was coming from, and why I was being tuned out. It just didn’t feel good, even though he made me feel good in all sorts of other ways, I guess I just need to feel listened to.

 

I was trying to explain that to him last night when we were out for a walk, that if we were going to keep going out, he was going to have to tune in to me at least part of the time. And I think, for at least a little while, he was listening but as I went on, I could see his eyes glazing a little and his head bobbing gently like he was listening to a song that I couldn’t hear. He was obviously lost in his own head.

 

I guess that’s why he left 4 messages on my machine asking why I didn’t show up for his birthday supper tonight.

 

Last night, he never heard me say goodbye.

Thinking about Princesses

My guest blog for Girl Guides of Canada ‘Pretty Powerful Princesses’ (http://girlguidescanblog.ca/2011/03/04/princesses/)* went up today.  In the process of writing the post, two princess-related things came to mind that didn’t fit into the entry so I thought I’d share them here.

1) When The Boy was in kindergarten, I used to panic every time we were invited to a girl’s birthday party.  I wanted to get the little girl something she would like, but my gut wrenched at the idea of indulging the fluffy pink princess fantasies that all of the little girls in his class seemed to be wrapped up in.  I thought back to my own little girl self, and briefly entertained the idea of buying them spy kits and legos or a wonder woman costume like I would have liked.  I talked to Moms of little girls about what else their daughters might be into. Then I grudgingly reminded myself that the gifts were about what the birthday girl might like, not about what I thought they should have.

I roamed the aisles of the toy store like someone lost, fighting against my natural inclinations the whole way. Then it struck me: I could indulge them and me, I could buy them some princess crafty things, or a crown, and a copy of Robert Munsch’s Paperbag Princess. Or I could get them them a pink cape and a foam sword for protecting their castle.

I could make them happy and keep my ideals intact. There’s nothing wrong with being a princess, as long as being pretty and pink isn’t your only goal. If you can be a ‘princess AND’ instead of a ‘princess only’ then you can really get stuff done. It was a good compromise.

2) A few years ago, I was driving Jan and a friend of hers somewhere and the boys were along for the ride.  Jan’s friend was trying to impress us and he was weaving a story for the kids about a prince and a dragon.  To really take things up a notch he was adding in details of things he saw along the way, so the prince was travelling past a local coffee shop and the dragon was named after another store.  When the prince began searching for the beautiful princess, Jan and I quickly glanced at each other and we both said ‘Not me.’

Clearly, if you know us, you know that neither one of us are princesses. In fact, we both wanted to be the evil queen in the story.  Better to be evil and powerful than be bargaining with life based on your looks.

 

***************

End of stories, beginning of think-y bits.

But, here’s the thing.  I think it’s okay for little girls to want to play princess**. BUT and this is a huge but, I think you need to help them contextualize the whole princess thing.  Don’t let them away with ‘pretty’ as their only asset. Encourage them to be a Princess AND…(a doctor, a warrior, a chef, the boss of the world) instead of a princess only.  This could be your chance to teach them about personal power, ask them what good things the princess is doing in her world. Ask them why Princesses are cool***.

Let’s not forget that pink can be a power colour – it’s all in how we let it play out

 

 

*Something wonky is going on and I can’t create a link, let’s run with copying and pasting, hey? Sorry!

**Yes, yes, I know. It’s a complicated thing to tease out what kids actually want to do versus what marketers and gender norms tell them they want to do, and when it is your individual kid you can’t spend all your time going on about gender or they’ll tune you out.

***Maybe you can even g.et them thinking about She-Ra, Princess of Power or Xena, Warrior Princess.  Not perfect role models, but somewhere to start. 🙂

 

 

 

Potions, charms, and invocations

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At the moment I have several green stripes in my hair, my toenails are painted green, and so are both my thumbnails.

If I had been nervous about my test last night, these things would have been charms  to help me do my pattern right, but since I had prepared adequately for a change, I was wearing the green as a celebration, as a badge of confidence.

But when I first planned on my green hair and nails, it struck me that I do little rituals, carry ‘charms’ and call on the universe* for help in a somewhat superstitious way on a fairly regular basis** and I began to wonder why.  It’s not an OCD thing (my crazy doesn’t manifest that way, usually), and I can do these things without the charms and rituals so it’s curious but not worrisome.   I don’t believe in the Law of Attraction*** so I’m not really thinking that I conjure up success with these things, but they do help me on some level.

The key to figuring it all out came when I reread an email from Marianne Elliot of the 30 Days of Yoga program I’m doing. In her note, she mentioned certain ritual type things you can do (burning incense, lighting candles, playing music) to put you in the right frame of mind for your yoga practice.   The email made me think about my charms and the like, and made me realize that the objects and rituals are part of my preparation.  They’re anchors holding me in the mental space I need for the activity at hand.

Lighting the candle in my ‘create’ candle holder puts me in a good space for writing,  painting my thumbnail green would help me focus on my punches and blocks instead of any nervousness, calling on the universe reminds me that I need to ask for help, or that I need to let go of my need to control, just lean into whatever is going on and trust that it will work out.****

So, my charms and rituals are a way of creating a space for the task, and pulling my concentration back to that task when needed, a way to remind myself about something important.

Now I feel a little less silly about my approach.  Creating space to accomplish things is vital, and I should use any tools I have in order to do that.

Do you have rituals, charms or potions to help you with challenges? Does my use of these things still seem superstitious to you? Do you use prayer to help you with challenges instead? How do you view prayer in that context?

*I don’t practice any organized religion, but I believe there is power in the universe above and beyond individual human power. That may jibe with your feelings about God, do with it what you will.
**And I am passing it on to my kids too.  I have a little leather bag full of courage/luck charms that they wear when they are feeling nervous, I draw a red dot on their fingers so they can ‘focus like a laser’ when they are having trouble settling, and I recently told The Boy that caffeine gave you extra math abilities so I gave him a shot glass of pepsi before bed so he could be ready for his math test in the morning.  I ‘fessed up afterwards on that last one, though.
***I was on board for the positive stuff, in the sense that once you tune in to something, you notice more examples of it (like when you buy a red hat and suddenly the world is full of red hats) so you can take advantage of opportunities that come your way.  I couldn’t get on board for the negative though, I can’t buy that rape victims vibrated on a frequency that brought on their attack, and I refuse to blame genocide on the victims either.  Glerg.
****So the dots on my kids’ fingers reminds them to focus, anchoring them in the task at hand. Their little bag of courage lets them draw on their own courage without having to ‘find’ it.