Category Archives: Life

Hot Thrashing, a 3:00 AM Story

Posted in Finding Home, Fun, Life by

These are one of those posts concocted in my head at 3:00AM. It feels like a good idea at the time. . . so I start writing it (in my head) and then say, “No you don’t, brain! We are going to sleep now, not write blog posts.” So it gets grump and tries to keep writing. And I need to make a promise that tomorrow (if we go to sleep now) I’ll write a real post all about the idea, and share it here.

hot thrash

Therefore, here we are with another blog post.

This past week I had one major angry fit. It was like hot flash amplified. There I was lying in bed reading a YA novel about magic and realms and pettiness amongst ‘friends’ when in walks the Zsoltster. He says to me,

“Can you clean the apartment tomorrow, because it’s really messy.”

And I erupted into a dragon, blowing a stream of burning fire, filling our bedroom with my rage, and then stormed out of bed into the other part of the apartment. Anxiety began pulsing all over and I was just-so-angry. SO-ANGRY.

This is the bit that kept me up last night. “It wasn’t a hot flash” says my brain, “it was a hot THRASH! High-five!” So at least a part of me finds that hilarious. Probably the part of me that also loves reading YA magic books.

I guess I should make it clear that my husband has been working his butt off these past few weeks. Like morning till midnight. We help each other out, right? So when he is crazy busy, I try to take over things and vice-versa.

Anyhow, I was doing my best, and it just ticked me off that it was pointed out that my best wasn’t good enough. Of course Zsolt would never actually feel that way – but I’m a hormone flashing woman, plus a writer, and therefore will, without doubt, read into all statements made about my housekeeping.

While my husband hid in the bedroom, I began throwing everything in the apartment into this large bin. In went my purse on the ground, in went the papers on the kitchen table, in went my new camera, in went the clothes on the sofa – everything went in. Even stuff I needed. It just all went in.

So that felt good. The apartment seem a bit more tidy, all the crap was now isolated in one place.

Then I went over to where the floor was sticky. Apparently my soup leaked on the floor. Not that the observer of this leak cleaned it up. So, continuing my anger, I got down on my knees and scrubbed that damn floor! Scrub, scrub, scrub!

All the while, I’m sweating like crazy having one hot flash after another. (or working out, this may also be the case.) It became quite late, and there was still that damn box of stuff. But first, I could no longer stand the site of all those stupid dishes piling up. Still pretty furious, I began washing those dishes – one after another, after another, till I’d washed about 1,000,000 utensils and maybe 20 different plates.

That felt pretty good.

And then there was the bin of crap.

Sitting down at the now clean kitchen table, I sorted that crap (much of it not actually being crap, but very useful things) into different piles according to their ‘home’ within our apartment. Then, one pile after the other, I put it away. Finally, I filled out a survey for the OICC where I get my vitamin C, because it had been in that pile of crap, and had quietly weighing on my mind  all week. e.g. “when am I going to do that survey, already? Later. Later, later, later.”

By this point, exhaustion had really hit me. I was KNACKERED. It’s hard to be furious when you are knackered. And by this point the fury had left me. Instead I felt really damn satisfied.

And since that point, I’ve stayed pretty darn-tootin’ satisfied. The apartment is tidy. I like that. Life is better this way. And we are eating better. And I’m not as overwhelmed, for some reason.

Sometimes you just need to get incredibly angry. Or at least, I do.

Hot THRASH. Change of mind, that is hilarious. High-five, Catherine who wakes up at 3:00 AM and dictates blog posts. See? I kept my promise.

The End.

An Explosion of Gas from my Brain*

Posted in Life by

2You know what I’ve never really understood? I have never quite understood that phrase, “You can learn from my mistakes.” Some part of that has never settled well within my mind. Do you know what I mean?

In life I want to learn. For instance, I want to create three columns in a wordpress post. So I google it, find the CSS code, and create those columns – all because some lovely person took the time to share that resource online. But then I want to have two columns rather than three, and try to edit it, and ruin everything. I’ve made a mistake. To fix it, I’ll really, really need to start paying attention to what the heck is in that CSS code, and what all these little labels mean, and why everything did a back flip with I erased that little “/”

What am I talking about in this post? Hang on, I’m trying to form a complete thought, and it’s probably (based on past blog posts) going to form at some point.

During Women Executive Network breakfasts (which I get to enjoy thanks to SisterLeadership.com), they often have a question for the speakers that goes like this: If you could give your younger self a piece of advice, what would it be? And then inevitably sometime wise and full of insight gets shared. Which is lovely. Except. . .

Except those insights have derived from the highs and the lows of previous experiences. That knowledge was made from all the mistakes and successes in that person’s life.

Basically what I am saying is looking to save people from their mistakes just doesn’t make sense. (Not to me, at least) Mistakes are good. They are necessary. They can be terrible. They certainly are difficult. They force change. They are surprising. They create deep knowledge.

Mistakes are intrinsic to life, and life is worth living.

You know what I really like? I like when people share their knowledge/stories as a resource – not as an ultimate cure-all answer. We can still make the mistakes, but knowing someone else has made them too is reassuring (even knowing they are making them at the same time as you is reassuring. I’m thinking of chats with my girlfriends, where we compare life notes over tea). Knowing there are other people facing similar challenges gives me a sense of connection and understanding. I also like when I make mistakes, and someone can help me look at what I’ve just lived through and understand how to pivot. I really appreciate coaches, mentors, friends, google articles, etc., that hold up a mirror.

Don’t deny me the mistakes . . . guide me through them . . . laugh with me . . . live them with me.

Anyhow. I just wanted to write that down. It’s awesome to have teachers, but there aren’t shortcuts in life. Maybe we get easy answers with the online sharing of knowledge – but that doesn’t mean no burdens or efforts. Mistakes are going to happen.

This is as far as I feel like writing. My thoughts have not come together particularly well, but at least I got this off my mind. Oh my goodness there is so much to do today! You ever make one of those lists for the day . . . and it’s already past noon, and you’ve only done about 2 out of 10?!

That’s is me right now.

BAH!

 

*Brain Fart

 

The Locked Door – another story for distraction

Posted in Bumpboobs, Finding Home, Life, Life despite cancer by

As usual I should be busy working on something else at this very moment – but I think this is a little story that is very blog worthy. It involves one conversation, a shower, various small straight objects and one locked bedroom door. (Hmm, that sounds bizzarly racey. But don’t get your hopes up for that kind of story)

So, this morning Zsolt asked me to stop locking the bedroom door at nights. I should preface this by quickly mentioning that we sleep with the door closed. It took a considerable amount of time before my man agreed to the closed door – but with the troubles we’ve had downstairs coupled with a humming deep freeze not far from our room (because we live in an apartment, so everything is close to our room), he eventually agreed that we could close the door connecting the room to the apartment.

Anyhow, this is an old and smelly apartment. Sometimes we leave the living room windows open to allow for fresh air circulation at night. Except lately I’ve become rather paranoid about this – what if someone breaks in through the window in the middle of the night? Right? Okay. So, we are now closing the windows. EXCEPT, this remains a smelly old building, and come morning it’s worse since there has been no air circulation.

Anyhow – my solution to this was to leave the windows open, but close and lock the bedroom door so that if someone did break in, we would be separated from that drama.

However, this morning my man asked me to stop. He said, “It makes me feel trapped.” And how can I argue against that? You just can’t. So I said, “okay, I will no longer lock the bedroom door.”

End of conversation?

Well, no, not quite.

Later in the day, I decide to take a shower. Because that will later involve me running around in a towel, I therefore close the backdoor leading to the balcony in our bedroom so that I can run around without clothes later on and not be seen since we normally have it open with the screen door for more fresh air (to be clear, this is a different door that leads directly outside – which we always have closed and locked at night. What Z and I were talking about is the door connected to the rest of the apartment).

Anyhow, back door locked. I hop into the shower and get clean – because today I met with this wonderful author Stacey Atkinson and wanted to be clean, as one does, when meeting.

After the shower, I wrap up with my towel and head for the bedroom, except the door is closed.

I try to open it.

The bedroom door is locked.

Is this a joke?

I made the mistake of asking Zsolt if he locked the door.

No, he didn’t.

For about five minutes, I entertained the idea that someone had busted through the back porch door and was now in our bedroom robbing us of our bedsheets, and locking us out as they did a search. (Paranoid, much?)

But no, that wasn’t the case either. In my day dreams and reflections while heading for the shower, I simply did what I said I would not – and locked us both out of the bedroom.

!!

Zsolt was really unimpressed. Though to be fair, I seriously can’t even remember doing this – obviously I did it, but in no way do I recall the action.

Bah!

I try to unlock the door with a coat hanger.

I try to unlock the door with a meat holder stick thing.

Zsolt tries to unlock the door with a drill bit.

We unscrew the door handle and try to unlock the door magically.

We nearly break the door handle.

Zsolt attacked the door handle device vigouraly, essentially stabbing it with his screw driver.

We watch Youtube and think we’ve got it.

We nearly break the handle, again.

I am ready to take out the entire thing, but then worry: if we knock off the handle on both sides, how do we twist the actual lock device to allow the door to open?

So we do nothing.

At this point, I am supposed to be at the coffee shop to meet Stacey.

Also at this point, Zsolt (normally so wonderfully calm) has flipped his lid, and is ready to ram against the door till it breaks open. He is literally ready to run it down – and I am assuming part of this crazy was connected to that whole sense of being trapped. He really wanted to break the door.

But then I remember: the screen door! It would be better to break a screen than to break a door.

So, I slip on my PJ dress and rainboots, grab the house keys, and go around to the back yard. Here I very carefully pushed out the screen from the lining, (and then fixed, ‘cause I’m freaking lady McGuiver), and unlocked the back door to enter the bedroom!!

Holy hot dog, did that feel good. Stepping into the bedroom, I went over to the other door and unlocked it. Simple stuff.

In my head I was like, “WHO IS AWESOME? CATHERINE IS AWESOME!” and then I mentally punched the air and moonwalked into the living room to announce my awesomeness to my husband. In reality, I walked into the living room (where Zsolt was cooling off), took off my rain boots, and then put away the key.

What is the lesson in all of this? Why bother reading all the way to the end of this post? Why bother writing it? I guess I find it hilarious that one little lock can cause so much chaos in our lives. We’d be terrible on The Amazing Race Canada if they somehow randomly choose us to be on the show and tackle challenges. One door, one little basic lock, had us arguing and ready to destroy something.

So, apart from some concern over 100% subconscious behaviour that I cannot remember, I guess the real lesson is . . . hmmm . . . I’m awesome?

Yeah, that sounds about right.

; )

Distraction done!