Some Ways to Get Out of a Bad Mood

1. Eat something hearty and warm. Like a really good soup, or a piece of Shepherd’s Pie.

2. Run until your brain can’t think anything except “Don’t Die! Don’t Die! Don’t Die!”

3. Watch Friends, or another candy-coated TV show, where the people are attractive, say funny things, and have their problems solved by the end of the half-hour. Pretend that you are one of them.

4. Listen to some good, fast-paced tunes. Maybe some hardcore punk.

5. Do something unpleasant you’ve been putting off, like organizing your desk drawers or cleaning out the closet or scrubbing the shower tiles. If you’re going to feel unpleasant anyway, might as well roll with the vibe by doing something unpleasant, too.

6. Talk to a friend with an awesome sense of humour, and laugh until your stomach hurts.

7. If people say, “My, you look grumpy”, say “Yeah? I just got fired from a job I really loved” or something along those lines and make them FEEL BAD. Because they shouldn’t, under any circumstances, have pointed out your mood to you.

8. If it’s nice out, lie on the ground and look at clouds for half an hour, breathing deeply and thinking Zen thoughts.

9. Vent your RAGE to somebody who is quiet, and will just listen in total silence for half an hour and then say “Well, that does suck” and offer no other commiserations or advice. You’ll have got it all out of your system and have nowhere else to take the conversation.

10. DON’T kick a dog. Or anyone. You CAN punch or kick soft, inanimate objects.

11. Stomp around the house. As long as you have no downstairs neighbours.

12. Throw a mini tantrum in front of someone you admire. Feel like an idiot. Decide to get over the bad mood just to prove you are really a graceful, accepting, Zen-like person and the tantrum was just an out-of-body experience, or brought on by electromagnetic pulses in the air or something.

13. Read a good book in the bath, with a cuppa and a chocolate bar.

14. Drive with the music turned up LOUD on a country road. Preferably with beautiful scenery.

15. Sit and look at moving water. River. Lake. Ocean.

16. If nothing works at all, just say “I’m Out”, call the day a loss, and go back to bed.

Things That Are Making Me Happy Right Now

Because I’m really not a big, swirling mass of gloom!

1. The fact that the pasta salad I had yesterday tasted pretty darn good.

2. The fact that the radio DID have one great song on this morning when I pulled into the parking lot: “The Boys Are Back In Town” by Thin Lizzy. Nothing but good times when I hear that baby.

3. The fact that I have a big window in my office, and it’s open because the day is beautiful.

4. The fact that right now, the messiness in my office (and the pasta salad smell) is kind of reminding me of my grade-seven locker, and Fridays were “locker clean out days” back in junior high, so I’m declaring tomorrow just such a Friday and will clean my office until it looks like one of those awesome offices that you see on TV shows like Cashmere Mafia, with fresh flowers and big glossy piles of art proofs and bamboo plants and sweet office chairs and Blackberries and stuff. Although it won’t be like that at all. But it’s something to aim for!

5. The fact that some people don’t take things too seriously. Like Stuff White People Like .

6. The fact that it’s warm enough to wear sandals, and the ones I’m wearing ROCK!

7. The fact that my car started this morning. And that I can afford groceries, if not tons of savings.

8. The fact that gas prices are forcing me to consider being more environmentally correct and not driving somewhere every thirty seconds.

9. The fact that there are environmental legal teams!! And it would be so cool to be on one!

10. The fact that a girl like me could use a deadline to get her ass in serious studying mode.

11. The fact that whenever I want to, I can remember a “you had to be there” moment to myself and it will make me LAUGH OUT LOUD. Like Caitlin’s insisting that “Alien! Ali-eeeeeeeeennnnnn!” was a real song she’d really heard. And she would sing that one line over and over to everyone she knew to try and find someone who recognized it. Oh. Funny. You had to be there. You should have!

Things That Are Bumming Me Out Right Now

1. The fact that my office smells like pasta salad, because I had pasta salad for lunch yesterday. Yuck.

2. The fact that the radio has boring commercials on instead of fabulous songs.

3. The fact that I have no plants in my office except a Christmas cactus, and it won’t bloom.

4. The fact that my desk currently consists of 11 assorted piles of files/papers, and I can’t remember which pile represents which project anymore, and I really need to do some organizing, big time.

5. The fact that some people bum us all out by taking things way too seriously. See the Rachael Ray scarf incident. Any chance the scarf was an innocent fashion accessory? Like, maybe her outfit was too plain and scarves are hipper than the turquoise chunky-bead Martha Stewart necklaces these days? Plausible? Yeah. I thought so.

6. The fact that my toenails aren’t painted, and I’m wearing sandals.

7. The fact that my car is acting up. Last night when I left work at 9 p.m. it refused to start and I had to wait till 10:30 for the AMA guy to come boost it, and then as soon as I started driving away the battery light came right back on, meaning SOMETHING IS WRONG. Do I really look like I have the cash for a new car? And to the know-it-all financial voices in my head: stop talking to me about how “financially smart” people should have savings for car replacements and so on! Because, occasionally, I prefer to buy groceries than put money into car savings. We call that “street smart”. (Because you end up walking everywhere you need to go. On the street).

8. The fact that, even if my car DID work properly for the next 30 years, gas prices are so high that I am fending off mini panic-attacks everytime I see a gas station sign with the cost of gas. It’s torment!

9. The fact that polar bears don’t have icebergs to stand on, anymore.

10. The fact that I am experiencing EXTREME test anxiety and have an EXTREME test coming up, which I have been studying for forever but feel just as unprepared as if I started last night.

11. When you exaggerate something, and you are obviously exaggerating, like “Yeah, I know, it is like plus ONE HUNDRED DEGREES Celcius outside today!” and then some stiff-lipped individual feels compelled to say “If it really were that hot, you would be dead right now.”

A Few Random Fears, Possessed By Me

1. Mirrors at night – because WHAT IF somebody looks back at me . . . that isn’t ME? I also hate rearview mirrors at night when I’m driving alone, in case I look into them and SEE SOMETHING OR SOMEONE IN THE BACKSEAT!

2. Getting stabbed to death in an elevator (because you can’t escape! Unless somebody else calls for that elevator, and it arrives on their floor in time for them to come in and save you. Wow. Maybe that’s not so bad.)

3. Flying in planes.

4. Heights, and falling off of them.

5. Swimming in deep water (If I start thinking about what might be floating around underneath me, like ugly fish or decomposing CORPSES or if I think about what might happen if my feet touched the bottom EW EW EW then I panic and start splashing around like crazy and freaking out. And might actually drown myself someday because of that behaviour. Ironic.)

6. Getting sued. If I ever become a lawyer, I just want to be the one doing the suing. Or representing somebody being sued. Just not, myself, getting sued. In fact, I’m hoping that if I get through law school, I will at least have a better idea of what may, or may not, be sue-able, so I can relax somewhat. Or maybe I’ll become even more paranoid. Hard to say.

7. Not being successful.

8. Looking stupid in front of people. And I don’t mean, looking stupid like “Oops! She tripped on the stairs! She looks stupid!” Because I’ve done that often enough that I have to be OK with it, basically. I mean, somebody asks me a question, and I go “Umm . . . Hmmm? I’m not really sure.” Or I say something, and then somebody else goes, “Actually, that’s not true. Here’s the correct info.” AWFUL! For a wannabe know-it-all like myself.

9. Ghost stories/paranormal stuff. My imagination is way too vivid to handle this type of thing. It really freaks me out. But I’m also addicted to ghost stories of all types. Here’s what happens when A Haunting comes on the Discovery Channel on a Friday night:

STEVE: “Is that A Haunting you’re watching?”
AL: “Ummm . . . yes. I just want to see what’s going on. See, it’s crazy – there are objects flying around this person’s house, and I just want to know why.”
STEVE: “You’re seriously going to watch that? You’re just going to freak yourself out.”
AL: “No, no, it’s not that scary, I just want to know what’s happening. Shhh.”
STEVE: “You’re going to leave the kitchen light on tonight so you don’t have to walk to the bedroom in the dark, aren’t you?”
AL: “Shhh. I’m watching – see, there’s something in that room, she just saw a shadow go by . . . AAAHHHH! OH MY GOODNESS! OH MY GOODNESS!” (From underneath a blanket, peeking out).
STEVE: “Yeah.”

10. Getting sick in public. Which I have done, once, on a main street in Red Deer. On the crosswalk. Throwing up into my hand. It was awful. I am only thankful that I had at that point been sick for so long that there was literally nothing left inside to throw up so it wasn’t like I made a big mess. I was sick because I was pregnant, but because you couldn’t tell yet, people most likely thought I was a drunk, reeling across the crosswalk at 11. a.m. on a Wednesday.

11. Bees and ladybugs.

 

Welcome To My Nightmares

I know people aren’t supposed to talk about their dreams, because there is nothing more boring than somebody telling you all about this long, rambling dream they had that makes little to no sense in the light of day.

But I’m going to do it anyway. Because I had a WICKED nightmare last night. It was so scary that it was actually cool. When I woke up I wanted to make it into a movie . . . Picture THIS:

I lived in a small town, quiet, ordinary. Always sunny, at least in the dream. There was a dollar store downtown where people often went . . . but this wasn’t just any dollar store. It had everything you would expect – cheap clothes, costume jewellry, fake floral arrangements, kitchenware, party supplies and so on. But it also had a storage room, filled to the roof with boxes of stuff.

And under that storage room, asleep all the time unless somehow awakened, were VAMPIRES.

They didn’t look like vampires. All female. Some of them were older, or middle-aged women, some were young and pretty.

But us townspeople all knew that around that store, you had to be pretty quiet. Not ridiculously quiet. You didn’t have to tiptoe or whisper. But you couldn’t make any extra loud noises. No thundering around the upstairs. No breaking windows. No fire alarms or parades outside or fireworks overhead. You just had to be extra careful and your heart definitely beat a little faster when you were in that dollar store.

Because if you did make noise, boxes or no boxes, the beautiful vampires would claw their way out of the storage room and feast on the townspeople. I’m not talking just sucking blood, here. They would EAT us, head to toe.

In the dream, this had only happened once before in living memory. But it had been awful – the vampires had been woken up by a crashing display in the dollar store, and they had come out of the storage room with these sickeningly evil eyes and terrible teeth and fingernails and all hell had broken loose in the town.

A little vampire history, which somehow I knew in the dream: they didn’t all like one another. There were two factions of vampires, and they were enemies. But that first time when they were awakened, they had joined forces and ganged up on the humans, in order to eat as many as possible.

And they’d eaten a lot of us. I must have escaped, because here I was in the dream, still alive, aware of the previous vampire attack but distantly, as though maybe it had happened when I was very young or something. So there I was, trying to be quiet in the dollar store.

Something went wrong – a bunch of boisterous kids came in, shouting, laughing, knocking around the place. “BE QUIET!” someone begged. But it was too late. We could hear a stirring downstairs, then an angry shriek from an awakened vampire, we could hear the floorboards splitting open, the shifting boxes . . . we ran but the vampires chased us.

Followed by an epic battle. Here’s what happened, to sum it up: the two enemy groups of vampires were more angry at each other than they were hungry. So each time a vampire from one group would close in on a human, another vampire from the other group would swoop in and “save” the human just so their enemy didn’t get to eat.

I was one such human. My vampires kept me in this sort of “holding pen” that they guarded so their enemies couldn’t get at me. They had to be careful not to eat me (not sure why, it seemed that they wanted to keep us alive to taunt the others or something), but they were succeeding in controlling themselves. The leader of my vampires was a very beautiful blonde girl, and my guard was a middle-aged lady, who actually seemed pretty nice. She kind of reminded me of a nurse or something.

I’m not sure what happened to the rest of the humans in this “holding pen” but eventually it was just me left. By now, I kind of had a relationship with my vampires. I think the leader was in love with me or something. Maybe I was a guy in the dream? Or maybe vampires don’t care. In any case, I was getting the sense that I wasn’t going to get eaten by them.

Anyway, the dream ended when we knew that the enemy team was going to make an attack on the place I was being kept. My guards and the leader of my vampires got me away to a clearing in a forest with some very tall trees. Their plan was to keep me at the very tops of the trees to hide me from the other vampires.

Once we got there, though, before we climbed the trees, my guard, the nice middle-aged nurse lady, went into a hunger craze all of a sudden, and turned on me. It was so scary! The eyes, the teeth, the fingernails – she was trying to grab at me and eat me. Thank goodness for the leader, the blonde vampire who loved me – she fought against her own instincts to eat me in order to try and save my life!

Then I woke up. I don’t know what happened – did she save me? Did I make it to the tops of the trees? What went on? Who knows? All I know is, it was such a vivid dream, and so scary, that I have been thinking of it all day.

Wondering if I should write a novel or a screenplay about it or something.

Look out, Stephen King!!

Anyone out there had a really scary nightmare lately?

Excuse Me, I’d Prefer to Have Every Second of My Life Planned

I hate change.

I’m the kind of girl who has never ordered anything at Subway besides the turkey breast on whole wheat with cheddar cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, and mayo.

The kind of girl who gets sad when her friends move from one house to another in the same city, just because “I’ll miss their old place”.

The kind of girl who rarely rearranges her bedroom/household furniture, because what if it just doesn’t look as good in a different configuration?

The kind of girl who wants to have every second of her future planned out.

I’m not talking about day-to-day events. I’m fairly spontaneous as far as events go, because I’m from a family where plans inevitably change several times right up to the minute they’re happening. I’m used to not having the events of the day be set in stone routines.

I mean major life events. I wish I knew how they would all unfold, and I try my hardest to keep ‘em set out. We’ll live here for two years and have these jobs and this house, this car, this grocery store, these friends.

Then we’ll move here for three years, and I’ll be going to school and Steve will be finishing his trade certification.

Then we’ll move here and buy a house and settle down and nothing will change ever again and we’ll live happily ever after.

Perfect.

I’m getting a little worried that life doesn’t work that way.

I’m getting a little worried that God doesn’t work that way.

Here’s how I know that:
“Now listen, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.’ Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say ‘If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.’” –James 4:13-15

God is showing us right now that all our plans can come to dust in one day. He is showing us that, no matter how strong our intentions, desires, or willpower are, he can change things in a second.

I have to shut up and listen to His plan instead of making my own, I can see that. I’m scared to do it, I don’t know why. I know he says we’ll have trouble, but he says he can also take care of us.

And give us life abundantly.

Maybe not a planned out routine. But a real, true life. That’s better, right?

It’s just very scary, for a person like me.

But I’ve got to learn how to let God decide. I mean, he’ll decide anyway. I’ve got to learn to listen and be willing to go when he says go, and trust that, no matter what . . .

. . . if you’re doing what God wants, you’re doing the right thing.

Saturday’s Love List

I like how Meg Fowler at megfowler.com has a Friday love list on the go. She just writes a list of all the things she is currently and/or always loving, on a Friday. It’s great. She encourages everyone who reads her blog to post their own. So I thought I would. I was feeling a little depressed last night, things in life don’t go always as they should, and it seemed like a good way to “count your many blessings” and so on and so forth.

But I couldn’t convince Steve to get off the computer. Something that will never be included on my love lists are computer games that are addictive to people like Steve and my mom, who once played DX-ball (an old-school game where you hit a ball at these tiles and watch them explode) to such an addictive extent that she wouldn’t even let me on the computer to write a social studies essay in grade eleven. Even when I threatened her with “Worst mother of the year” award.

Haha.

Anyway! Here is the Saturday love list that I have:

1. Juno. The movie with Ellen Page, not Zeus’s wife.
2. The way babies sleep on their tummies with their legs tucked up underneath them so their bums are in the air.
3. On the prairies, before a summer storm when the leaves on the poplars and birches and such begin to blow in the rising wind, and you see them flash green and silver.
4. Summer thunder and lightning storms on the prairies. (Not the horribly scary tornado-spawning storms, though).
5. Toast with butter and tea with milk for breakfast.
6. Lanterns.
7. Paintings with trees in them.
8. Couples who love each other but still kind of make fun of each other, in a nice way.
9. The way toenail polish and sandals look so good together.
10. Lemons and limes.
11. The sound of rain.
12. Baby washcloths.
13. Siblings, rivalry and all.
14. Babies falling asleep on me.
15. Spanish words.
16. Rodeos. (I never thought I’d say that, but I’ve been converted all right).
17. The yellow flowers that I got for helping out with the convocation ceremony at work.
18. The caps and gowns that professors wear at graduation ceremonies from all the different universities they graduated from, many of which are completely ridiculous and utterly hilarious.
19. The words “Dinner’s ready!”
20. Pasta.
21. When both girls take a nap at the same time.
22. Falling asleep at night.

The World Is Sad.

The news is so sad.

I guess it’s not the news that’s sad. It’s life. It’s just . . . sad.

And I’m not just saying that because here, where I live, it is pouring with rain outside and many, many things in my life are going wrong and freaking me out even though I’m trying to stay calm and positive and focused and all that stuff.

I’m saying that because it’s just the way the world is. Sad.

Like this latest story about baby Angelica Louise. Just when I get over the fact that in Austria, a man kept his daughter and their children prisoners in a basement for as many years as I have been alive . . . I hear about a baby girl, 11 months old, being abandoned by her parents. Now she’s in foster care. I just can’t stop picturing her – lying facedown when they found her, and very, very cold. I wish I could pick her up and hug her forever and sing her a million lullabies.   

There was a story in the Alberta news a while ago about a little girl who took a plane ride with her grandpa. The plane crashed and he was killed, but amazingly enough, she survived, because her grandpa strapped her properly into a carseat. What a good thing to do. What really choked me up about the story was to think of how they found her, hours later, hanging upside down in her carseat. All those hours by her little self! The first thing she did when the incredulous rescuers found her was point to her teddy bear, lying just out of reach on the ground. Angel.

Another story today, about Steven Curtis Chapman, a Christian singer, whose littlest daughter was just accidentally hit by an SUV driven by her brother and killed.

I read these stories, and it hurts. It makes me want to go pick up my two little girls and hug them and never let them go. It makes me wonder why I’m so imperfect, myself, why I get upset with them or frustrated with them when they are just being little girls. In the bigger scheme of things, here they are, healthy and happy, and I love them so much I think my heart might fall out.

I just want to protect them. All children. I just wish I could make sure nothing bad ever happened to a child. I WISH I could do that.

The world is sad.

Happy to Be Wrong!

What can I say?

David Cook – you did it.

I’m happy my prediction was wrong.

And sorry I ever doubted you.

Well, not really. That’s a little extreme. But – way to go!

American Idol, You Are My One Weakness

On a weeknight (let’s say a Tuesday and/or a Wednesday) there are a lot of things I could or should be doing:
1. Studying for the LSAT
2. Laundry, mopping the kitchen floor, Lysol-ing places like the top of the fridge and the microwave that just simply don’t get Lysol-ed enough in my house
3. Paying bills and balancing the chequebook
4. Attending to my correspondance (yes, I have correspondance)
5. Perfecting some skill like: cooking, writing, art, music.
6. Attending to personal hygiene – nailclipping, nailpainting, eyebrow plucking, legshaving, hair styling, at a reasonable hour instead of either way too late at night, way too early in the morning, or 15 seconds before I’m due to leave for somewhere.
7. Thinking deep thoughts and reading new and/or classic works of literature.

What am I doing instead?

Watching American Idol. Soon, watching Canadian Idol. And So You Think You Can Dance. And, So You Think You Can Dance Canada.

I don’t like reality TV in general. Don’t get me wrong. Amazing Race? Never seen it. Survivor? Blah. Big Brother? Good grief. Don’t Forget the Lyrics? Don’t Forget to Change the Channel (although I love Wayne Brady on Whose Line Is It Anyway, so no offence, Wayne.)

But talent shows . . . yes, I have a weakness for talent shows.

This year, I wanted David Cook to win. I think it’s because we’re the same age, 25, and I think people our age just need a little something awesome to happen to them. And because I can picture him as a kid in a class with me in elementary school, a guy who would drink white milk at lunch and maybe once did something geeky, like throwing up in class or spilling paint on himself and then having to wear gym strip for the rest of the day. I’m not thinking of anyone specific . . . just a general impression of elementary school boys. Who could become famous!

And I wanted him to win because I like his style. Not always of clothing (too many vests, man) but overall, his style of music. He sings good songs, and he sings them in a good way, IMHO. I mean, say what you will, he likes Our Lady Peace, and Our Lady Peace is a SWEET band.

Go Canadian band.

Anyway. Last night, I was geared up for the showdown. I was expecting the cheesy boxing metaphors. I was expecting the cheesy winner song. I was expecting the vague and incomprehensible Paula comments, the cryptic Randy comments, the Simon sarcasm and style.

But I wasn’t expecting David Cook to fizzle out. Me and my Mars bar and my steadily-growing pile of folded laundry watched it happen in disbelief. The thing is, I knew exactly how he felt. At least, I think I do! Ha. Anyway, you know when you want something to go perfectly? But then, in the days or hours before it happens, you just have a feeling that it won’t? You try to ignore it, but you know you just don’t have what it takes at that particular time . . . and you can’t for the life of you figure out how to get it, so you overthink it and then decide to stop thinking and then just kind of fade to grey. And so you lose before you even get to the competition.

I think that’s what went down. And he’s much more human than little David Archuleta, whom I also think is fantastic, but who, let’s face it, may likely just be a teen sensation and as soon as he grows some facial hair will automatically become less cute and pretty boring. Like Taylor Hanson, or Billy Gilman or something (where is that little dude, these days?)

But coming across as human, a little older, a little sarcastic, a little threatened, maybe a wee bit arrogant, who can say, against a sincere little goody-two-shoes sweetie like David A. just didn’t go over that well last night.

It’s OK, David Cook.

This may be premature, anyway, you might still win.

But girls screamed during little David’s performances, and they waited to scream until yours were over. So the vibe I’m getting is . . . runner up.

Except in my heart.

Goodbye, American Idol, and goodbye, excuse for low productivity.

Goodbye and thank goodness!