Off...

I apologize to anyone I ignore in the next week. I'm going to Scotland tomorrow night and won't be back until next weekend...maybe later. My Grandma is in hospital and I don't know if she's going to make it through this. It came as quite a surprise...I knew she had been admitted into hospital but didn't think it was very serious. Today Brian and I went to my Mum and Dad's house for breakfast and we got a phone call to tell us that things had taken a turn for the worse. It was a somber breakfast to say the least. I just hope I can get there in time...

Nimirum in Rhyme

I had a long lost friend once,
he said "life is a trip"
I listened to him intently and
bit my bottom lip.

Because I knew what was coming,
what loomed far up ahead,
our lives are slowly ending,
in 100 years we'll all be dead.

Dying people shouldn't dream,
they shouldn't hope to fly,
We should be good to ourselves,
and sit and sip before we die.

Gallivanting and gyrating
will only hasten sleep,
and death will leap upon you,
while on quiet it will creep.

I pity the fools who live each day,
denying there's an end,
while I know sitting, sleeping here,
each hour is on lend

and though I have seen nothing
and count existence as a bore,
I know that when the darkness calls,
My friend will miss life more.

Red or Blue or Both?

One of my friends at Special Olympics tells me, every time I see her, that she believes in God. He seems to be a large part of her life. Brian once lived with a man named Kenny who also had a very strong relationship with his faith and with God. He too had mental disabilities and this seemed to make faith a lot easier for him. Now, before anyone gets all worked up, I am not saying that people who believe in God are lacking their faculties. I'm merely saying that for some people the world is a simple place and living forever in heaven requires nothing but a little faith and some bible camp sing-a-longs.

This got me thinking. If I could just believe, if I could take some kind of pill and just believe in God and heaven and eternal life, would I take it? And if I had a child who was able to believe in those things would I be doing them a favour by encouraging it? If I were to have a little Kenny would it be kind of me to teach him all about God and how much He loves him and allow him to have a life of blissful faith? Or is it a disservice? Would I explain away a serious illness by invoking demons or "bad air"? Probably not. Brian believes that people only feel a religious void when faith is lost. If you are raised as an atheist, he doubts that you would ever long for more explanation or for religious experience. I'm not so sure about this. People created religions to fill a void which must have pre-existed religion in the first place.

Having said that, maybe it's merely having a construct to use in the world and it doesn't require a supernatural component at all. Maybe being told from day one that we are biological creatures who die but become part of the larger universe is enough to stem the human desire for more. Maybe, information will one day replace faith in that archaic brain of ours.

Foot in Mouth Disease

I wouldn't really label myself an innocent in any sense of the word, but I must admit that I seem to have missed some crucial education somewhere along the way. Every once in a while I will be caught out in saying something really bad without even realizing I've said anything. Like the time I told my professor that I was a member of the Mile High Club. I had no idea what I was talking about.

This morning, I told my friend Greg that Brian was going to grow a Dirty Sanchez. He lost it. I thought he was going to cry he was laughing so hard. I asked him what was so funny and he couldn't really even answer me. Obviously Dirty Sanchez isn't what I thought it was. Greg wouldn't enlighten me (couldn't enlighten me between gasps for air) so I called Brian. After hearing what it really is (if you don't know you'll have to do some of your own research) I realized that it is NOT the little Mexican mustache I had previously thought.

The things you learn.

Things that make me laugh...

1. Dooce
2. People who buy Volvos because they're safe and then drive them like maniacs.
3. People who apply suncreen (presumably to protect them from the sun's damaging rays) while smoking.
4. Women in high-heel shoes in airports.
5. Fancy people who don't bother to wash their hands in the bathroom.
6. Stephen Harper's hair
7. When other people laugh...especially Brian
8. The term "Beep...boop...bap." Funniest when said in a high pitched robot voice.
9. Kurt Vonnegut
10. The absurdity of it all.

Butterflies...if you throw it hard enough.

So much has been going on and I've been so busy that I've neglected writing...I hate having to play catch up. So I won't...I'll just brush over the bare details. Brian finished school and I love having him back. He's at home working on the house and being bored while loving every minute of it. I'm his sugar mama.

I've been coaching Track & Field (notice how track & field automatically gets written with an ampersand instead of the word "and"? That's really weird...has it been branded and packaged that way? How did that happen?) for the Special Olympics for a few weeks now and I am loving it. It is easily the most rewarding thing I've done and I have a lot of fun.

Work is going well. The weather has been warm. I planted a cute garden with a little shrub and a mini white picket fence and I transplanted tulips from the back and put them in the front. They promptly died. Just goes to show you what an effect your environment can have on your health!

My parents came back from Europe and my brother gets back from Nepal tonight...all the Knox's back in one country...hooray!!

Hmmm...what else have I been up to? Oh, I know...I just wrote the most boring blog post ever.

Making Memories

Yesterday I packed a picnic lunch (using all the nifty picnic paraphernalia I brought back from Korea) and met Brian at the University where he had finished his fourth of six exams. The sun was shining and we set up our picnic blanket on the grass in a grove of tress near the Mormon church. No significance there except for the free parking. We had such a great time. We ate the Easter dinner leftovers and fresh cheese and bread from the deli. After lunch we laid down and let the sun warm our faces. I felt so happy I could have burst. We laughed and it felt so good to be lying on a red and white picnic blanket on a warm April day with my husband. The bright sun gave it all a kind of dreamlike quality...or like a memory sequence in a movie. Where everything gets a little fuzzy and too perfect to be accurate. But it was accurate and everything was a little fuzzy and I loved it that way.

Like the Branch Davidians miss their David, so I miss Easter...

I actually missed Church this past weekend. Not because I suddenly started believing in God again but because I missed the rituals that made up such a large part of my Catholic youth. Easter consisted of more church than any other season and truth be told, I loved it. I was fervently religious as a child and I now realize that I was trying desperately to receive some kind of sign. When I kissed that old wooden cross at the front of the church on the "day Jesus died" I imagined as hard as I could what it must have been like to die under the hot sun and above the jeering crowds. I cried for Jesus and sent him messages of love and thanks with all my little heart. When it came time to have our feet washed I tried not to feel the tickle of the old priest's gnarly hands and imagined it was Jesus himself cleansing me of my sins. On Palm Sunday I waited anxiously for the part when the Holy water would be sprinkled across my row and felt renewed and freed as soon as the tiny droplets hit my skin. Easter was the greatest day of the year as I rejoiced that Jesus had risen and given me chocolate.

I actually thought about going to Sunday mass last week, just to relive it all again. To me this does nothing but illustrate the incredible power of ritual and tradition. There is a reason the Catholic church uses so many ritualistic elements in its services and why its been around so long...if you do anything for long enough its bound to seem normal. And not so completely crazy.

Life and Death and Rain

It's dark and raining this morning and it looks sort of foreboding and eerie outside. I love the rain...it means spring is coming and everything will be clean again...oh, and the smell. That fresh "good things are coming" smell...it's enough to make me cry.

I experienced a runners high for the first time in my life last night. I've had friends who've told me about this phenomenon and claimed to have experienced it but I honestly didn't believe them. What I felt every time I went running was hot, sweaty, tired and in agony. Not exactly a high. But last night something happened. I don't know what cosmic circumstance aligned for it to happen but I know at one point I felt freed from my body like I was invincible and as light as a feather. I felt like I was floating and that I could run forever. It was awesome.

I've been thinking about death a lot lately. Now, I think about death a lot anyway but a few people I knew have died in the past several months and that has got me thinking. After millions of years of evolution you would think that humans would have come up with a way to deal with death better than we do. I find it a hard concept to get my head around. The idea that someone is there, with feelings, a smile and a history and then suddenly, they aren't. It doesn't seem to make any sense, even though I know it makes perfect sense. I heard Margaret Atwood say once that our ability to understand death is hampered by the English language. We think in a first person language that has past, present and future tenses. We struggle when we try to drop the subject or the future tense...it just doesn't work.

These thoughts of death haven't been sad so much as just considering it as my certain fate. I have always appreciated the small things in life and have made an effort to slow down and feel grateful for being alive. Lately I have been trying even harder to live life actively as opposed to by default. The TV has been put away for months now and neither Brian nor I has dragged it out. I have been running, breathing deeply and talking to friends a lot. I'm eating healthier than I ever have. I've started doing a lot of volunteering and getting involved in the community and it feels good. I feel alive. The way I figure it, if I've never really felt alive I won't be able to appreciate feeling dead.

An Invisible Praying Dragon

The idea that prayer can heal the sick has been around for a very long time. Today, the results of the world's largest study were released, and guess what? Prayer has no effect on health or on recovery. The study was done over a span of ten years and involved 1,800 patients. I'm satisfied with the results given the paradigms of the study and the number of top-notch researchers involved (some of them with a religious bias I might add). What annoys me is the response that I know will meet these results.

The same religious people who have quoted previous, less reliable research that showed prayer to be effective will dismiss this study. Others will argue that science cannot test religion and that its silly to try (Of course, had the results been positive the same people would be shouting from the rooftops, "Science proves the existence of God!") and then there will be the obvious, God knew we were testing him and withheld his amazing healing powers as an attempt to teach those silly scientists a lesson. Nice God.

When a stance, whether it be religious or otherwise, requires so much mental gymnastics that you're tied up in a knot or leads you to take all your reasoning skills and put them on a shelf, you might just want to re-examine your position.

Carl Sagan, as usual, says it best...

Thunderings

I think I have some kind of attachment disorder. Usually people who aren't cuddled and loved enough as infants develop some kind of pathological aversion to deeper human relationships. I think I may have been over-cuddled because I have difficulty making a distinction between stranger and friend. I really care about people and that's not always a good thing.

I have learned the following things lately:

1. It is not normal to miss the guy who bought your car. It's not acceptable to wonder aloud how "Steve is liking the car" and "whether he's happy". Yah, apparently that's weird.

2. It's abnormal to buy things online just so you can visit people's houses and get a quick "peek at their life".

3. Hunting people down on the internet because you had a crush on them in grade two isn't "bumping into an old friend"...it's creepy.

4. Talking about your friends Heather and John as though they are your next door neighbours and not people who happen to run a website is also weird. In fact, having a whole host of "web friends" who you've never met but email regularly tends to be frowned upon. But not by the people emailing me because they are emailing me back...so maybe that's not weird?

5. Most people tend to put up big fat walls and I don't. I don't like to waste time. I am what I am and we've got so much to say and so many people are so damn worried about what others will think that they don't realize we are all dying. You have nothing to hide and everything to lose.

Anyway, the point it that I don't actually have to have MET someone to care about them. I need to feel connected to a lot of people. I like to know what other people are doing with their little slice of life and I want to hear all their stories. It makes me feel human and connected and not so alone on this big blue ball. (Big blue ball...ha...anyway...) Brian laughs at me because I am forever tracking down old friends and writing to them but you know what? They usually write me back so maybe they need it just as much as I do. Only they didn't know it yet.

Quarter Life Analysis

I was listening to the radio last night and they were interviewing the author of Dish, a new book about women in midlife. The author was saying just how many women feel as though they lived the first half of their lives for other people and it got me thinking. I am sure there are decisions I have made that were designed to please others, but there haven't been many. In that respect I feel very lucky. I know that women tend to struggle with saying no and feeling guilty for taking care of themselves. I find it very sad that so many women have neglected their own wants and needs in order to satisfy someone else, or even worse, social expectations. As I look at my life today I don't feel like it has been shaped much by either and that feels good. I realize that this may change in the next few years but at least I know I won't wake up at 50 and wonder who the hell I am living for.

A Thousand Lives Will Do...

I wonder if I am ever going to figure out what I want to do with my life or whether I'm destined to spend my whole life looking...not that that would be a horrible thing. It would be far worse I suppose to just give up entirely or even worse to never really care at all.

I have come to the realization that despite my love for writing and other "artsy" endeavors, I am at my truest, a scientist. Nothing makes me hotter than the endocrine system, maximum velocity and cell regulation. I love the feeling I get when I know my brain is working at maximum capacity and I am really struggling to understand a concept. I haven't felt that way in awhile.

Now I need to decide whether I'm satisfied with having a relatively easy job and finding things outside of work to occupy my brain or whether I'm going to go back where I belong and make my life a lot harder. I also need to figure out who will pay the bills while I do that.

Bros and Books

I spent last weekend in Edmonton with my not-so-little-little brothers. I honestly can't remember the last time it was just the three of us. Boyfriends, girlfriends or parents are usually present so it was really great to just hang out with both of them. Craig leaves for Nepal on the 31st and is getting really excited for his trip. It's his first big adventure and what a place to start with!

I just finished A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews and I actually cried at the end. It was so good! It's written from the perspective of a young Mennonite girl in Manitoba (I think) and it has been resonating within my little head ever since I finished it. It was nominated for the Giller Prize so I assumed it was well written (and it was) but I never thought I would be so moved and drawn in to the lives of the characters. Awesome.

Reason for not writing much? Life is deliciously, boringly, perfect. Pain breeds literature, perfection breeds sex.

Just another crazy CBC'er

Yesterday I got mugged! Okay, so it's not as melodramatic as it sounds but I was still pretty excited. The CBC Eye Opener (Calgary's morning radio show) has been going around town each week giving away CBC mugs. Every morning I drive to work listening to Angela Knight giving away her coveted mugs and yesterday morning I was shocked when I realized she was just around the corner at McMahon Stadium. I had ten minutes to make it to her before she closed up shop and drove away for the day so I gunned it. I pulled up, jumped out of my car and ran towards the CBC min-van yelling, "I've wanted one of those mugs forever!" And a slightly frightened CBC host gave me one!

So, if you happen to live in Calgary and heard me ranting and raving like a lunatic on the radio yesterday morning, what can I say? I got a wicked mug. And I finally did some contract work for Calgary CBC One. Awesome.

Where's Julia Roberts when you need her?

If I was Erin Brockovich I would have been all over Fort McMurray years ago. I always thought that we had higher than normal rates of cancer but I wasn't sure. When I left Fort Mac and met other people my own age and started talking (not that cancer was always a big subject)I began to realize that I knew WAY too many young people with cancer...all kinds of cancer. Fort McMurray had a population of about 35,000 when I grew up there. I can list dozens of people, mostly under 20, who I have known (or known of)and who have had cancer. Skin cancer, nose cancer, leukemia, stomach cancer...not to mention the number of people with weird ailments and diseases. I have been saying for years now that some day people were going to discover that the oilsands are killing people. Looks like I was right. Lucky me.

Cancer Questions

This story has been bouncing around the inside of my skull for days now. I'm fascinated by the topic and the possibilities it raises and impressed with Wendy Mesley's balls. To question and criticize the very organization that is securing you medical care and perhaps saving your life? That's the kind of passion for a story that journalism needs.

I was shocked to see the stats on cancer in Canada. One in two Canadians? Those are not good odds and they're far worse than I ever would have guessed. I know I tend to be a skeptic and I am particularly skeptical of big pharma, but I'm not the least surprised that they play a role in all of this. They stand to benefit from sick people, and that is never a good thing. Not for the sick people anyway.

Way to go Wendy...I just hope that the right people are listening.

Car, job and a fixed address...

I've been made the official photographer at work...does life get any better than this? Yesterday I had an interview with the most amazing young woman, I'm doing more writing than I've ever done and today I get given a fancy new camera to play with. And I'm getting paid for this.

This past weekend my parents took Brian and I out for dinner at the Keg. The food was delicious but what I appreciated most was being able to spend time with my Mum and Dad. We headed out to Okotoks after dinner and ended up staying out there all day Sunday. Might have been because Mum cooked a big breakfast and then a chicken dinner, you can't really be sure. Either way it was really fun and relaxing. Dad and Brian went for a drive in the new car and talked engines and Mum and I just chatted. I have always gotten along really well with my parents (okay, not always but for the most part) but now we are entering a new phase it seems. They will always be my parents, and they've always been my friends but now we're all grown up and on equal footing. It's good.

The Error of My Ways

I can't believe I've been such an irresponsible pet owner. Shabba, things are going to change around here my little furry friend.

Don't even miss Dr. Phil...

I have a cubicle. I also have a computer, and a cork board, some filing cabinets and a really comfy desk chair. So far, so good.

I have been doing some really interesting work already and I'm feeling pretty excited about things. I have set up some interviews and worked on an ad campaign, done some web design and helped develop some creative material. I'm writing and branding and even did a SWOT analysis. I love it.

The people in my office are all really cool and nice. They're young and hip and go for drinks on Fridays. Welcome to Yuppieville...population? Whatever it was last week plus one.