The 411 on Positive Thinking

A couple of days ago I wrote about the power of positive thinking and I just want to reiterate, if you stop fretting about things and just go with the flow good things will happen. As I said, I got the word that I was one of the lucky ones to get parking but then my carpool initiative fell to the ground. I was worried about how to pay for the parking, not to mention the stress of all that driving. Well, then I thought perhaps it would be just as well to be independent of anyone and just experiment with it. Lo and behold, by end of day yesterday I got a message from one of my colleagues who was interested in splitting the cost and driving. Sure, I will have to drive to DeWinton but hey, that is all highway driving and if I just go slow and easy, things should be fine.

The 411 for me – try not to see everything so black and white. It’s a real failing of mine. When it comes to most subjects I can be fairly balanced in my thinking but on certain subjects I am really stuck with my opinions. And in particular, when it comes to my work day versus my home time, I am extremely predictable and inflexible. That must change. If I keep doing the chuggalugg things that I have always done I really will have no life! Cut loose, Sanne. Kick up your heels and live a little!

All this for just changing my hours slightly, for driving a different route. Isn’t it sad? I`m guessing there is a little HDAD in my system!

And one more thing . . . looks like we got less than 20 cms – perhaps 10.

I'm laughing at myself. Not Jack Cravat --- Dick Cavett . . . . oh it was early this morning and NO COFFEE.

Young at Heart

I looked in the mirror when I got up a few minutes ago and thought I looked pretty wild and haggard. Then I thought “well, I’m not a movie star so I look pretty good for my age”. That led me first to think of Sophia Loren. She was on Jack Cravat’s show in the early 80’s at which time she must have been in her 50’s. I recall thinking she looked pretty darn good for her old age! J Then I thought about Lauren Bacall in the movie “The Mirror has Two Faces” when she tells her daughter (Barbara Streisand) that she still feels young inside. That’s how I feel. I still call myself a girl and I still call my friends “girls”.

Isn’t that the best way to go through life? To feel young at heart?

Some days though I do feel like an old fogey (just saying that term makes me sound old). When I was coming home on the train last night I stopped myself after I had been looking at the high school students with disgust. One of them had sat on the outer edge of the seat and didn’t budge to allow a woman to sit down on the inner side. It was cloddish, to say the least. I thought to myself as I looked out the window that I shouldn’t show disgust because it was a signing of judging which isn’t very nice and just made me feel old! (However, I must say that it’s not just young people who can be clods. I was also sitting on an outer edge and then the inside person made motions to get out – no “excuse me” or other verbal communication emitted from his throat. I’ve noticed this frequently happens and I think to myself “why does a person have to be so lazy and so rude, what’s the big deal to let the outer person know they would like to get out?” People really have lost all sense of common courtesy, why is that?)

This isn’t a lecture on manners but on youngness. Even though my outside is looking older than a spring chicken, inside I am still full of vim and vigour and I like it that way.

Life, bring it on!

Sugar Ray Leaves

I called it - knew it was Sugar Ray that would leave tonight. He is a very gracious gentleman but his dancing was quite stiff though he really did give it his all. It was a tough competition last night - sorry anyone had to go!

Positive Thinking

I truly believe in the power of positive thinking. For one thing, when a person has positive thoughts she has a happier state of mind which is a bonus. Then thinking positively the outcome is frequently what you want it to be. In today’s case, I did get the parking just as I hoped! Next step, organizing a car pool to help pay for it and share the risk of driving downtown.

Mornings are my favourite time of day. I love my positive energy when I get up, I love all the plans I have for the day and I love breakfast! I love the sunrise and the birds tweeting. I love to see Thumper and Cherie watching me to see if they get to go out to play or if they get to frolick with me because it’s “Saturday”. Mornings are fresh with possibility. I’m energized and ready to take on the world.

Now isn’t this just like Pollyanna and The Glad Game? I loved that movie when I was a kid (and I still love it). True confession, I still adore children’s books and teen novels. Sometimes I think they are actually better written than adult novels. Certainly they have more core values in them than adult stories and most often they are cheerful. I am not a fan of Oprah’s picks because they are usually dark and dreary stories of despair and hopelessness. I don’t like to take that mood to bed with me since it would give me nightmares.

Yep, I am just Pollyanna at heart.

Just another flying by the seat of my pants remark - seriously, can Kirstie have any more bad luck . . . her talented is being destroyed by accidents.

New Horizons

I will literally be looking at a new horizon this morning when I arrive at our new offices. I believe my office will overlook Prince’s Island and of course I will be able to watch the joggers and baby strollers while I peg away at my job. I will be unpacking something like 18 bins for myself and most likely bins for Anne and Lorne as well. But that’s alright, it will give me the workout which I attempted earlier this morning. I’ve got some sort of twinge happening on my right ankle so I stopped before it got worse. I have to walk about 6 blocks from the C-train to get to the new place so I suppose all in all there will be some exercise this morning!

It already feels cooler than yesterday morning as I opened up the door of the sunroom. Brrrr. Will spring ever get here?

But let’s not complain as we have this wonderful new office to enjoy and I’m back in the same building with my buddies Cristy and Jane. This office has what they are calling “focus rooms” or “break out rooms” and we have been encouraged to take our coffee there to enjoy this space. We already have plans to bring our little red notebooks with us and thus look extremely important as we imbibe coffee and look wise. We are so bad, but in a fun way! This reminds me a bit about how I used to carry around a legal file when I walked around the office of the first law firm I worked at. We had a German office manager who really behaved like a Nazi by not allowing us to leave our desks for any sort of break and so I would pretend to take the file to a colleague and be consulting them on a file. I called it my decoy but when I was training a girl to take over my position and I showed her the cover story she started calling it her “deek” and that is the word that stuck in my head. I’ve never had to use this strategy until now when I have used the little red book as my deek just to amuse myself and my friends. As chance would have it my friend Jane told me her dad advised her to use a clipboard and then she would look like a boss. So I have to wonder, are we fooling anyone but ourselves?

Ah, my laugh of the day, the joke is on me! I love it!

April Showers?

When we lived in Ontario my sister Jeanette and I loved to go searching for pussywillows in the spring. The neighbour who lived behind our house had some bushes and for a while we could go over there to get a few sprigs so we could play with the furry buds but after a few years the mother would catch us and we would get heck. So we had to go farther afield. It’s one of the many things that I find disappointing about a southern Alberta spring. No pussywillows.

But hardest of all is the erratic weather patterns we suffer through. Unlike Ontario, or even Manitoba, once spring has sprung it stays and progresses into summer. Here in Alberta we find we can have spring in January for several weeks and then we can get another long blast of winter. Seldom have we experienced a truly balmy springlike spring. And the last few years we haven’t had spring at all, we went directly from winter into about 6 weeks of summer and then we had fall. Can someone explain to me why do we stay? Oh that’s right. There are jobs here!

Well, it’s Sunday morning and I’ve gone for a long icy walk already but perhaps I can experience a more springlike walk after lunch when the sun has warmed up the land. I saw a flock of ducks in a newly made pond across the street from my house and one of the ducks made such a squacking noise when it saw me that I was reminded of Mrs. Puddleduck! Yesterday we saw a flock of white swams flying north; it was a sight to behold. I’ve been hearing the geese fly over my house at night so I know that spring is around the corner. I just wish the corner was a little shorter!

Ah, springtime. Everyone loves spring. Some day, like every other woman, I will go to Paris in the spring, and imagine Gene Kelly dancing in the rain. But for now, I will do my jazzercise in the sunroom!

It's A Beautiful Day in the Countryside

In the summertime I used to tell my dogs “it’s a beautiful day in the countryside” as we went for our walks. I think it came from Mr. Rogers but I’m not sure. Anyway, the loved it and now I tell the same thing to Thumper and Cherie. They immediately know it’s time to go out to play and they eagerly run to the back door. This morning Thumper dashed off to the woodpile and hasn’t been seen since. He is in love with that playhouse and will likely not come home until I call “breakfast” this afternoon. He comes when I call for food since he is a greedy little critter. Cherie, meanwhile, likes to bask in the sunshine, roll in the grit and then come and hog me with affection for a couple of hours, pest free (that being Thumper of course). They are like little kids fighting for my attention and sometimes I cannot help laughing at the stunts they pull to get it. Often they will wrestle with each other, run races (a few shattered vases being the result) or they will find some toy to fight over. Yesterday they were fighting of a nail file and then they dashed backwards as it flipped back on them. It was quite funny to see.

Cherie has now wandered off and I have managed to clean the sunroom and the kitchen as my lovely mother is coming over later with hot cinnamon rolls, slathered with chocolate icing. I can hardly wait. John will be here as well to help me install the new heater which I am very excited about. If all goes according to plan I am hoping to talk him into taking me to Winners tomorrow to buy a carpet for the sunroom. My friend Marsha and I discovered a couple that I really liked but they were both way too big to get in her vehicle. We need a truck. What else are brothers good for if not their trucks? Well John is good for a lot of things. He is a talented carpenter, mechanic, roofer, millwright, painter and critic. Yes, he almost sounded perfect ,didn’t he? But John has 2 flaws. He loves to criticize other people and he is the president of the Procrastinators Club. That is, he would be if they ever got around to having a vote. (yeah, yeah, stale vote but oh so true – if you have ever lived with a procrastinator you would understand we have to find humour where it comes)! If John would ever give me a word of praise I would fall over in a convulsion or I would be suspecting a clone. He is definitely not generous with praise. However, I know somewhere in that Grinch-like heart of his he must have some respect and affection for me because way back when we in our early twenties he had a conversation with Dad that went something like this:

Dad: If you were a car what would you be?

John: (can’t remember what he said)

Dad: And me?

John: Grand Torino

Dad: Sanne?

John: Cadillac

When Dad told me the story I was rather insulted because I thought a Cadillac was rather a stogie kind of vehicle but Dad said that I should take it as a compliment because it meant quality. Well, naturally I was very touched and now as I sit with my hair all sweaty and wild, in my too short joggers and a stained t-shirt I pretend to myself that there is a Grace Kelly inside just waiting for a shower! J

Mother Nature you silly girl!

It’s Friday, it’s Friday! Who doesn’t love Fridays? And it’s moving day for us. I packed up pretty much all my stuff yesterday except my computer. Today I get to pack my bosses’ stuff. I was in Lorne’s office yesterday looking around and holy cow, he has more stuff than I do! It will be a challenge.

Never mind. I am looking forward to a mellow weekend of hanging around my house and visiting my mother and my sister. I might even get both of them out for a good walk in nature. Let’s hope Nature cooperates. Yesterday I was startled to get a call from my accountant when she asked me how much snow we got in Calgary. Snow? We got more than 6 inches in town while Calgary got zero. Naturally I spent the rest of the afternoon fretting about the drive home but fortunately there was nothing on the roads and only a bit of flying snow just out of Calgary.

Mother Nature you unpredictable woman you! How many odes have been written to you? What a silly question when Emily Dickinson had written hundreds! I particularly like The Bee. Have you noticed how people appreciate nature much more as they get older? When we are young we don’t think about it though we are revelling in it every day. How much we enjoyed catching polliwogs and hoping to see them sprout their legs. Watching and counting the ladybugs’ dots. Noticing the different coloured butterflies. I’ve always adored butterflies and even started a card collection of them. They were in Red Rose Tea as I recall.

This morning just before the alarm rang I thought “April and we still have mounds of snow, gross.” But what can you do about it? The O magazine has a big article and quiz on Optimism this month and the key is to “think positive” so I will positively see no snow when I get outside this morning. Here’s hoping.

Skip to My Lou, My Darling

Approaching the end of the week and the end of working at the “wrong” end of town. Apparently many downtowners feel that once you are past 5^th Street you are going downhill. Our new building is between 2^nd and 3^rd Street and we are going to be a hop, skip and a jump from Prince’s Island. Get ready for some serious walking. Come on sunshine, come on heat, we are waiting for you to get us out there to enjoy our Vitamin D.

Yes, I am really starting to get spring fever and my body is crying out for some real workouts. Meanwhile let me tell you , my brain is getting such a workout it is saying “stop already”. Last night I started to read about Keynesian economics (yeah, forget nuclear physics, PAINFUL) and I went to bed with a headache! Fortunately I had bought the latest O magazine and was pleasantly surprised to find a truly delightful section edited by Maria Shriver on Poetry. As I may have mentioned, I took up Haiku last winter as a step to exercise this old brain against Alzheimer’s and I’ve had a lot of fun with it. Every once in a while I pick up my Emily Dickinson, in fact I read quite a lot of her poems when I was in Ecuador, but I must admit that poetry reading is not my strong suit. I’ve tried to memorize poems but my brain protests. It’s as though it rejects hard work when it knows it doesn’t have anything to do with my real life.

But that has got to change. I am steadily working my way through the maze of work as I approach my retirement years and poetry, nature and gentleness will be the order of the day. Stop laughing, I can be gentle. (This reminds me of The Nanny when Fran was trying to be demure! She was so cute).

Retirement

Twilight no, but a new dawn nears

Smile through the tears

Pre-Retirement Planning Part 2

Today I talked with a fellow on the “adjustment to transitioning into retirement” person. I didn’t find the information as helpful as last week’s financial coaching. But we are going to have a second session and then he will send me a lot of information on resources. He did give me some food for thought which I am supposed to think about over the next few weeks. He asked me a lot of questions about what I liked to do, who my friends were, did I think about the spiritual side of things and so forth. He was going for the 6 slices of the pie so I knew where we were heading each time he asked the question. What I wanted to know was whether I was prepared for retiring early. My concern was whether I would get bored or lonely because my friends might still be working.

I thought perhaps a good way to start my retirement would be to use the first year sectioning it in Quarters and spend each quarter on a particular hobby so that I really find my true love. So perhaps the first quarter would be photography, the second drawing, the third writing and the fourth gardening. (Fitting the quarters into the proper yearly cycle). Exercise would still be all year round. It would be a novelty to spend so much time on a particular project, perhaps I could actually become a perfectionist.

Retirement seems so attractive to me, more so every day. Once again, it isn’t because I don’t like my job, it’s simply the sense of deprivement I feel by not enjoying the outdoors and daylight hours and things that normal people seem to take for granted. This commuting is a real curse. Yet I would really regret selling my home, I love it so much.

Oh, and is anyone ready for the psychological shock of not having a steady income coming in? No wonder people dream of the lottery winnings.

I asked about the free university tuition and that led him to ask me if I had any desire to study something new or different. I mentioned that I would like to take horticulture classes to enhance my gardening skills. He was so serious and spiritual himself I didn’t feel right about pulling his leg with my nuclear physics dreams. But sometimes I actually do think I would like to study the sciences just for something different.

Oh yes, and he suggested I might want to study languages. How did he know? I guess Spanish is definitely in the cards for me. And by the way, I watched “The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo” the other day and I could understand Swedish a whole lot better than I can Norwegian. I must be a very odd Dane to find Swedish easier to understand than Norwegian because my parents always said it was the reverse. Most peculiar!