My new favourite blog

Check out www.realmarytales.com. Mary is bright, hilarious and absolutely fabulous. We all have awkward, embarrassing moments but Mary blogs about hers.

Best. News. Ever.

With all the crazy overtime comes the ability to look into the future to take time off. With the insanity that has been happening around the office that means that when my baby sisters come to visit me in August I can take the whole week off. Weeeee!

Possible plans include:
Drumheller
Jasper
Columbia Icefield
West Ed
Fringe Festival/Whyte Ave (access by the streetcar the runs during the summer)
Football game: Eskimos vs Saskatchewan Roughriders
Science Centre
Muttart
Outdoor market on 104 St, just north of Jasper Ave
Leg/River Valley stroll

..what else should be on the list?

Excerpts from the best e-mail I've ever received

Pieces from a message sent to me by my baby sister. A girl of whom I am so proud. I am so in awe of her smarts, her integrity, the way that she thinks and how she treats others. I look up to her. Even as she is the younger sister and I am the older sister, I've learned a lot from her. The thought that I have had some impact on the magnificent person that she is warms my heart to no end. Last week when I was having a horrible, horrible week, reading her words was what got me through.

I can't say enough.. how happy I am that you found someone that makes you SO happy. Sometimes I get really down because boys aren't exactly knocking my door down or anything.. but I'm glad that at least I have enough strength to be able to face the fact that at least I've got my independence and I can go anywhere in life. I think I owe a lot of it to you.. because you don't put up with the shit boys dish out.

Many people have impacted my life for me to be the person I am... but in the sense of boys.. it comes down to a couple people.. you... joe and christine.. cherie (a woman I work with whom we talked about it a little) and a random patient one day (who was beat by her first husband.. and was telling me how she finally found true love..)... it funny how different people can impact one's life.. hah. (OMG. this rant is just SO RANDOM! I'm sorry.. ahha. basically I'm thinking in writing. haha...) But anyways.. if it wasn't for you.. telling me some of your stories... I don't think I would be the confident young lady that I am.. that would stand up to a boy and not deal with the shit he has to throw my way...

I love you.. and I hope someday I will be as happy as you are with B... from what you tell me.. it would be my definition of true love.. not finding someone who "needs" you, or you "needing" them.. but someone that compliments your life in such a way that you are a better you when you are with them... not having someone you can live with.. and not merely someone you can't live without.. but someone that without them.. you wouldn't be the best possible self... I don't know how else to describe it. But this is long enough already... I love you .. you make me me. and I miss you terribly. xoxo.

Overwhelmed and under caffeinated

It's been a fairly insane month of work which has included an insane amount of overtime and more than a couple tears shed (which makes me feel so much worse). Seriously, who cries at work? ...this girl. And it's not like I take it so personally, I swear. It's that I get so overwhelmed that I begin to feel this lump just rising in my throat. I'm okay until I have to open my mouth and speak to someone. If anyone asks me so much as "How are you?" during this feeling, it just all bubbles up and out my eyes.

The good: this job is way busier than the last job, I'm getting crazy awesome experience, and I have great bosses who are really supportive and have had my back a lot when things get bad (ie. when I get hounded for something that I don't have done because the person hounding me hasn't given me sufficient information to complete the task... or when more recently, a client sends me a nasty e-mail or asks in a meeting "so then, what exactly IS the role of communications... I thought it was to communicate to people?!") So this is what it's like to be grown up... people act like children.

The bad: this job is way busier than the last job. Ha. Somedays it makes me a rather inconsiderate and bitchy person to be around (if you catch me after a day that I just feel completely beaten down). Luckily, I have certain people around who easily take my stress level from unmanageable to relatively low considering.

Taking off Friday for a cheap trip to Vancouver with the girls. It will be great to get away... and I'm so excited to get out to Vancouver... however, with huge events on Monday and Tuesday of next week it means that I can't afford to leave my BlackBerry at home and do vacation up proper.

"To fulfill a dream, to be allowed to sweat over lonely labor, to be given the chance to create, is the meat and potatoes of life. The money is the gravy. As everyone else, I love to dunk my crust in it. But alone, it is not a diet designed to keep body and soul together." -- Bette Davis

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

Love, Love, Love

The New York Times held a Modern Love Essay Contest, the first winner was featured in the paper on Sunday, May 4.

Seeing this article made me think a little bit of my own little notions of modern love, so why not write this here, really?

Love, to me, is all about finding a certain amount of balance.

It’s about finding someone who lets me be myself. My nerdy, completely clumsy, somewhat girly, into the wine -- which makes me very chatty, self.

It’s now a balance between the guy who once thought he was a good guy, but really wasn’t and another one who was annoyingly nice. The former told me he was, “so glad that I wasn’t a feminist” which bothered me as I do consider myself to really be into what’s good for my gender. We’d have in-depth discussions of Big Issues and he’d listen to my opinion and then repeat it back to me completely unrecognizable as he had morphed it to equal his own. He also had a sneaky way of consulting me on plans but ensuring that we did whatever he wanted to do. This eventually led to me crying in the Sand Hills, my pale skin roasting under the hot sun, my feet burning from the insanely hot sand. Mild heat stroke. Walking up steep hills of sand, which shift you back two steps for every step you take. That day, walking over the shifting sand, I also decided that I wouldn’t settle. Though it did take a bit longer to break things off.

The latter was another good-on-paper guy who I just was never really into. However, he wouldn’t let me really be me either. The only reason I really even went out with him was because I had recently gotten out of a thing with a guy who was less-than-nice to me, so it was a refreshing change. I would try to crack a joke about how clumsy I am, or a stupid thing I did that day and he would shut me up with a comment about how I was perfection. As my incredibly-too-smart-for-her-age baby sister has more recently mentioned (about a boy like this who she dated), “If he thinks I’m perfect, he isn’t paying enough attention.” This boy proved that he was far less than perfection, when in a fit of anger, months after our short lived whatever (I refuse to call hanging out a few times over a span of three weeks a relationship) he decided he couldn’t stand to see me with another boy and drove home from a party Roomie and I hosted incredibly drunk. After trying to get along “as friends”, this was the last straw. I haven’t talked to him since.

My mother mentioned to at least one of my sisters (can’t remember the details exactly) that she didn’t think I’d ever settle down. Mainly because I’m “too independent” and refuse to settle. Which, personally, I now take as a compliment.

Because of refusing to settle, I’ve ended up in something pretty great. Refusing to settle means that I made The Big Move from small-town Ontario to urban Alberta. It means that I’ve found a career that challenges and excites me. It has helped me develop friendships which otherwise would not have been developed. It has directed me to the current man.

A boy who makes fun of me just as much as I make fun of myself. But who also lets me make fun of him. A boy who I can talk to about the big things, without having to agree on everything. A boy who encourages me to play video games (something I am completely awful at) but who teaches and is helpful instead of demeaning. A boy who makes incredible breakfast and has very unexpected musical tastes. Some of which I like, and some of which I don’t. And he doesn’t expect me to like it all. For a long time, he was afraid of playing it around me because he “didn’t want to scare me away”. Heh. He’s incredibly smart and tells me about his day and his complicated scientific job even though I don’t understand all the technical stuff. Likewise, he asks about mine. We spend an increasing amount of time together it seems, but still have apart-time for other friends and our sanity. It’s all about balance.

More important than men/boys in life are the girl friends (or platonic guy friends). The ones who are around to listen and support. Sometimes with alcohol and ranting. The ones who make sure that we are well aware of our own personal worth and don’t settle for anything else. The ones who are close and encourage caffeine addictions by the number of coffee dates had. The ones that are unaffected by physical distance and are absolutely magnificent even 3,900 km away.

Those are the real modern love stories.