Guess What? It's Still Cold.

It's been 3 weeks since I last blogged. It's still cold. There's still lots of snow on the ground. The forecast for the week shows more cold and more snow. And the first day of Spring is 18 days away. Someone needs to wake Mother Nature up and remind her of that fact. I'm so done with this weather. I think most people are. According to the weather experts, this is the coldest winter we've had in the last 20 years. I believe it. I'm hanging in there though.

From a mood/mental standpoint, this winter has been pretty good (knock on wood since it isn't over yet). Other than a  couple of days in December and a week in January, I've been doing pretty good. The demons haven't been bugging me. Maybe it's even too cold out for them! The only thing I've done differently this winter than last is Curves. It's become pretty much routine for me now. I haven't missed a session since mid January. I did miss one day in February but that's because they were closed so that wasn't my fault. I think the exercise really has helped. I've been pushing myself to get out more too, be a little more social. That's probably helped too. I'm starting to see the results from Curves. Just small ones. But they make me smile. In numbers, I've lost 6lbs and 10.75 inches. That means I'm trading fat for muscle. I think it's a pretty good swap.

Despite being up late last night, I woke up early-ish this morning and couldn't fall back to sleep. So I hauled my butt out of bed and got moving. I made it to the grocery store and home again by 10:20am. I then had breakfast, watched Police Academy and cleaned my kitchen. Like really cleaned it. I still have the stove/oven and my kitchen table to tackle but the sink and counters are looking pretty good. Took out a whole mess of recycling too. I can't believe how quickly it adds up! I did empty and toss out some expired stuff so that contributed to the recycling mess.

I've decided that I'm going to attempt something this week. It's going to be hard and I'm most likely going to be very cranky but it's worth it. Lent is coming up. And while I'm not Catholic and thus don't normally observes lent, over the last few years I have. For the last 3 years, I've given up chocolate for lent. I've managed to stick to it and then I go hog wild at on Easter. LOL. This year, I'm stepping up my game. I'm going to give up ALL sugar for lent. You see, sugar is my drug. Some people go nuts for chips, for me, it's sugar. Cakes, cookies, squares, chocolate bars, gummies....sugar. And I need to kick that habit. My mid-section needs me to kick that habit. So this should be an adventure. I'm not going to beat myself up if I'm not perfect and I'm sure God won't be disappointed in me either but I'm going to hold myself accountable and give this a real try. I've been told that it take 6 weeks to make or break a habit. Lord knows that my "doing dishes every night" habit attempt failed miserably but my making the bed every morning one worked. I bought a bunch of unsweetened apple sauce fruit snack cups to help with the sugar cravings. I just hope I can do this without killing anyone :)

Bed time has arrived so it's time to sign off. I really hate that the Oscars save all the big, fun awards until the end of the show. I guess no one would watch it to the end otherwise. Oh well.

Good Night!

Sarah

Cold Power Walking and a New Lunch Date

Well I certainly got my cardio in this morning. Thanks to the design of the downtown corridor, an accident in one key spot caused major backups for all the buses.

I was first aware of a problem when it took us 5 minutes to get up a hill. And then when we reached the stop at the top of the hill, we sat there for 5 minutes, without moving away from the stop. Thankfully, I'm a well prepared Canadian girl and was dressed for the weather. I had my boots, two pairs of pants, a sweater, a hoodie, scarf, mittens and my heavy wool coat on so I was good to brave the elements.

Me and about 6 other people hopped off the bus and started the trek into downtown. Looking down the street, there was a long line of pretty red and white buses and a heavy stream of people heading into the core on foot. While making the trek, I passed my boss' boss en route to the office. We said a hurried hi as we each scurried in a different direction across the street.

Despite the fact that it was -28 with the windchill when I left the house, I was quite toasty by the time I got to the office. There was a quick stop at Starbucks involved, where they gave me the wrong drink but it was still good so I was ok. I wasn't the only one who opted to take the two feet and a heartbeat approach to getting to work today. At least it was sunny.

I must say, I'm really looking forward to the new transit tunnel under downtown being built. I think it will really improve traffic in the core.

I had a fun lunch today. Due to scheduling conflicts and over crowding, I opted to have lunch with a couple of our students rather than my usual group. I know one of the girls pretty well as she's been with us for a few years now. They were quite fun to hang with. It was neat talking about school stuff again and I assisted in the one girl trying to plan a romantic weekend away. LOL. They were a nice break in the day. They gave me advice on boys too :)

Kind of like the conversation I had with our boss' assistant over the difference between the photocopier and the printer and the fact that you cannot send a print job to our photocopier. I'm sure it was a fun conversation for anyone who happened to over hear. Our office isn't equipped with over high tech machines. We're kind of an old school place.

All in all, it was a pretty decent day. I think it's time to go and feed my Merlin addiction.

Good Night!

Sarah

200th Blog

Today has not been one of my better days. Emotionally, February always sucks. It's been dark for 4 months now so my SADs is at its worst, 75% of my family have birthdays in February and I'm not there to celebrate any of them and right now, work has me stressed out. This week was bad. It took an amazing amount of effort to actually get out of bed and convince myself to face the day and get into work. But I made it through and other than being more sarcastic than normal, I don't think anyone at work noticed that anything was up.

As a result, I was really looking forward to a day out today with a friend, hoping to take in a movie so I could laugh and escape for a bit and get out of my own head. But that didn't happen. I was bailed on, again, and reminded why it is that I have such a hard time trusting people and the stuff that tell me. I keep a lot to myself. I very rarely admit it when I'm feeling this low and I almost never reach out to anyone when I am. But I tried taking the risk this time, doing that. Admitting that I didn't want to be alone and probably shouldn't be alone....and it blew up in my face.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is why I don't trust people. Why I don't open up to people, even those closest to me. Because at the end of the day, no matter how many times those around you promise to be there for you, promise to help you, promise that you can count of them, you're still alone. And the only person you can be 100% sure of and count on 100% of the time is yourself. I'd been lulled into a false sense of security as of late. I guess this was life's way of reminding me of that. That and the fact that I don't like burdening others with my problems. I figure everyone has problems so why I should I try to burden someone else with mine? I don't mind it when others do that to me, because it simply gives me a chance to focus on something/someone else and I can give my worries a rest for a while. What can I say? I love escapism.

The worst part? This isn't the first time this person has done it to me. If it had been, I might have been ok. But as it was, this issue has been bugging me for a long time and in true Sarah fashion, rather than address it sooner, I let it go and fester and a final straw came along and *BOOM*, I went off. I remember my mom warning me about "fair weather friends" when I was younger. You know, people who are only your friends when they feel like it or when you're of use to them, or when they don't have a current boyfriend? Yeah, it's that kind of situation. Except in this case it's a "when I'm alone/bored and my husband isn't here" kind of friend. There's a lot more I'd like to say about that situation but I'll bite my tongue. It's not my place to say and my opinions weren't asked for, so they shall not be offered.

All I'm going to say is that I'll NEVER change who I am for anyone nor will I ever let a man/my husband dictate my life to me. And if that means staying single for the rest of my life, so be it. I will never settle.

So, then I was faced with a fun old catch 22. All I wanted to do was throw myself onto my bed and spend the rest of the day sleeping/crying on and off. But that's not a healthy option. It just feeds my depression and makes it worse. So option 2 was to go out and get some fresh air and sunshine into my system, which meant being around laughing, happy people, which I really did not want to be around. Ironically, after the events of the morning, I simply wanted to be alone. Being a good girl and learning from my mistakes, I sucked it up, got dressed, slapped on some make up, did my hair and headed out. I'm not a child and I know how to take care of myself. Not that I have much choice. If I don't do it, there's no one else to! Besides, it's not like I enjoy feeling like this and I know I need to be pro-active to get out of the funks when they come along.

My destination was Confederation Park for Winterlude. As I feared, the park was crowed with people and it was damn cold. Those lying bastards at Environment Canada said it would be -6 today. Yeah, right. Anyhow, I wandered around the park and got in line to view the ice sculptures. I growled at the little brats that ran into me and nearly threw a snowball at the young couple sucking face by the garbage can, but other than that, I made it through without causing any great harm too. Even managed to use the Port-O-Potty without freezing my ass to the seat (but it was close). I got some lunch and treated myself to some maple taffy on a stick (one of my most favourite things in the world) and then I headed to the mall so that the feeling would return to my left foot, right hand and my face. After checking out a few places in the mall, I headed for the market.

Mmmm, maple taffy.

By this point, I was feeling better. Being outside in the sun and the air was helping, as I knew it would. The crowds were annoying me less. All good signs. I stopped at the butcher and got some of my favourite sausages and a stuffed hen for dinner tomorrow night. I got one of my favourite cheeses and grabbed some veggies from a very cool organic type market shop. I traded text messages with my buddy Xtinktor while waiting for the bus and we had a laugh making fun of the Leaf's fans. All was good until I got home and turned on my computer.

Despite telling said person "leave me the fuck alone" they couldn't leave well enough alone and had emailed again when I was out. Well there went any salvation of my mood. Kind of impressive how someone can ruin your day twice in the span of 8 hours. But I took the high road this time. I simply hit "delete" and the went onto Facebook and distracted myself with some farming. If only real life farming was that simple and easy.

I had a nice phone chat with a good friend this evening and a few good laughs. I know what brought on the call and I'm not really impressed by the catalyst, but it was great chatting with her none the less and I'm happy that she called. We've been emailing between baby naps and long days of work and sometimes it's hard to find the time to sit down and write out everything that you want to say.

After that, I realized it was kind of late and decided to re-heat my leftovers for dinner. I watched tv and played on the computer but I don't actually recall much of what I was watching. Online I was checking out some cool plant ideas and cool planters. Some of the stuff out there is very innovative! My dad called to rub in the fact that Toronto beat Ottawa and to update me on my parents' night out with my 2 great aunts and my great uncle. I'm glad that they all had a fun time. It stuff like that that I miss the most. Thankfully, the two calls helped make me feel a bit better, so this evening has been pretty good.

So now here I am, writing my 200th blog. Sorry it couldn't be a more upbeat one, but that's life. I really should get to bed. Despite getting to sleep in, even after Michelle texted me and woke me up!, I'm kind of sleepy. Being emotionally drained does that. I've got a whole laundry list of stuff I need to take care of tomorrow, including laundry, so sleep is a good plan. Tomorrow's another day and hopefully I'll be feeling ever better still tomorrow.

200 blogs. Wow. I can't believe that I'm still doing this. I can't believe how much it's helped me. I can't believe what a big part of my life it's become. I started it late last July because I love to write and I wanted to do something everyday that I love and as a way of getting the thoughts out of my head so I could sleep at night or relax when reading/watching tv. What an awesome experiment this turned out to be. Now if I could only think up a good story line for a book....LOL.

Good Night!

Sarah

My favourite ice sculpture - they're mermaids.

Paper lantern tunnel

Skating on the Rideau Canal

It's Called Winter In Canada People!!

Welcome to winter ladies and gentlemen.

So the weather was a wee bit on the crazy side today. About 25-35cms of cold, white, blowing sideways crazy. But I still prefer this to the freezing rain. I lucked out with my buses today and didn't have to wait long going to work or coming home from work. They buses were running so late that they were almost on time. Just the drivers were different :) Ottawa is still under a snowfall warning. We'll probably see another 3 or so hours of it before it tapers off and the skies clear. We're in for one beautiful weekend though. The sunshine after the storm.

I don't understand the whole brouhaha about this storm. While it's being billed as the biggest one in 4 years, this is Canada. It's winter. This is what happens. It shouldn't come as a great surprise to anyone. It happens every year. And yeah, it's been snowing for 24 hours straight and yes, it was damn windy. It still isn't anything unexpected. It's not like a level 5 hurricane blew through or anything. And it's no where near as destructive as the ice storm was so many moons ago. I made sure I had on my warm winter boots, my warm coat, mittens, a scarf and my warm fleece hood. I walked slowly and watched where I was going. It's how we deal. It's a snow storm people, not the end of the world. The east coast is going to get it much worse than we did.

And a special thanks goes out to my buddy Cam for calling me and telling me how warm and sunny it is in Calgary today. I'll return the favour in May when the mountain throw a snow storm at you guys and we're +12 and sunny :) Hope you found Jen!

Other than having to go out in the storm 4 times today, it was a good day at work. The day flew by and I'm very tired. My friggin' sinuses are pissing me off and it's getting very annoying. If things aren't better by Monday, I think I'm going to have to go and see my doctor. This morning I couldn't wear my glasses because they were pressing on my right sinus, which was causing pressure, which lead to pain and then it lead to my nose dripping like a tap. And my eye watering. I haven't worn eye make up in a week!!

I am very much looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow. I have a whole mess of house work to catch up on. Sounds like a thrilling Saturday for me.

I think it's time for bed. I know, I'm such a party animal!!

Good Night!

Sarah

This was 5 years ago but you get the idea.