01 11 09 - 01:25
Tis Halloween, Take Two
Halloween was on Saturday this year, and those of you who know me well know that presents a very real dilemna for me. I love to dress up for Halloween, and I almost always write my sermons on Saturday night.
So as I write this blog, I am sitting at the computer dressed in full Goth regalia, right down to the fingerless fishnet gloves, working on my sermon in another open window. Okay, the little ghosts are long gone from my front door, but get undressed?! Are you kidding? I only get to do this once a year! If that.
My kids, who were racing around after their own costumes and their own arrangement to go out for Trick or Treating, were startled when they came back to dump some candy and saw the final version of my costume. My middle daughter in particular, who prides herself on her sense of style, was startled to see that her mother could put on a black and white streaked wig, black eyeliner, black clothing, and a studded collar, and look, I don't know, ... (more)
15 10 09 - 15:02
I Feel the Winds of God
I have often wondered what the difference is between being a minister in Southern Ontario and being a minister here in the Maritimes. I am a Maritimer born and bred, but I lived away for twenty years, and coming back to Halifax meant coming back to a city that sometimes feels like it could be a city anywhere in Canada, or most of the northern States. I mean, I live in the suburbs, which are much like any forty year old neighbourhood anywhere. The big box stores are all the same out on Bayers Lake Road as they were on Gardner's Road back in Kingston. Halifax is supposed to be such a happening city, but we're at the stage in life where we're too old and tied down to really enjoy the downtown night life.
But week before last I had an opportunity I don't think I ever would have had in an Ontario church, even one that was 30 km or so from Lake Ontario, like the last one. I was asked to perform a wedding on a tall ship. ... (more)
18 04 09 - 00:56
Good Friday Pain and Easter Gift
An update on my exercise program: For six or seven weeks, I have been diligently getting in at least four substantial workouts a week, two thirds of them over 40 minutes long. I've been stretching myself, doing heavier weights, harder cardio, workouts I haven't done for years because they were too hard. I've been seeing results, too. The first person at church came up to me and said that the minister had lost weight. (I know it's not all about weight, but I'm enough a product of my culture to feel flattered.) About an inch has come off my waist. And I haven't been huffing and puffing so much when I've walked up the hill at the kids' school.
Things were going great right up until the Saturday before Palm Sunday. I had done a 40 minute yoga session the night before that seemed pretty normal, but when I woke up the next morning, it felt like I had strained my lower abdominals. Great, I thought. ... (more)
19 03 09 - 03:13
What the Mountains Had to Say
I am writing this tonight from the beautiful city of Vancouver, British Columbia, where my family is vacationing over March Break. Since our kids first went to school we have never taken a trip during March Break. But the kids had never seen mountains before, and since my hubby's sister and her family live in Vancouver, and they've been begging us to come for a few years now, we decided to just do it.
That's quite a leap of faith for me, to decide on something and just do it. I always have to weigh the pros and the cons, working hard to come up with the optimal solution that takes all the variables into account. I have a sneaking suspicion that sometimes that's really all about making the decision so hard that I can decide in good conscience not to do anything at all. Maybe as I get older I'm getting more ruthless, but we tossed the idea around for a week or so in January, and finally I said to hubby, "We need to do this. ... (more)
22 02 09 - 22:05
Body Language
I made a slight tactical error last Saturday. I work out at home with video workouts and hand weights, and I pulled out a 40 minute circuit training DVD that I had done once before. It's called "Pick Your Level," and has three levels of difficulty. I had been sick the week before, and it had been a good two weeks, maybe three, since I had done any workout other than a gentle yoga session. This sounds manageable, I thought.
Hoo, boy! Okay, first off, it's not in my nature to just do the lowest effort level and move on. I did Level 1 cardio, but weight training is my thing, so I did Level 2 strength training. With my usual amount of weight. After not having done any for three weeks. On Sunday morning, I was limping. It was worse on Monday, but since it was my day off, nobody at the church had to listen to me. Lucky them! My family wasn't similarly spared. ... (more)
12 02 09 - 01:19
Confessions of a Writer's-Blocked Blogger
A couple weeks ago my hubby commented, "There's nothing on your blog since Halloween." I attempted not to bite his head off, because it's really bad form to bite off the head of your best beloved when all they did was tell the truth. It was hard, though, because it was a sore point.
I began last September trying to get out a blog every two weeks, and I honestly tried. But by the time I got to the end of October, we were thick into our Anniversary events at the church, and then there was Christmas, and then there was the Annual Meeting and the two PowerPoint presentations and learning how to do PowerPoint, and... And they're all excuses.
The real issue, and I've been coming to grips with it for a little while now, is that I have writer's block. I've had it for years. Nobody believes me when I say that, because when I can bring myself to write, I write fluently and well. When I can bring myself to write. ... (more)
01 11 08 - 00:44
Tis Halloween
I'm sitting here on Halloween night waiting for the trick or treaters to trickle into my door. Man, this isn't anything like Enterprise, which is a hamlet of about 300 people set in farm country where the next nearest hamlet is about five miles away, so the parents from miles around drove their kids into the two blocks that surrounded our house and we saw maybe 130 in a night. Other houses on the main road a block away got more like 200. Just at this moment, I'm up to 12. Oh, and an impressive pile of wrappers next to my computer desk.
In Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, intelligence is defined as being able to hold two mutually contradictory ideas in one's mind at the same time. Well, Halloween is my favourite holiday of the year. And Halloween is the worst holiday of the year. (Do I qualify for Mensa?)
It's my favourite holiday because it's the one day a year adults are allowed to dress up and behave like children. (Medieval events don't ... (more)
16 10 08 - 15:22
All By Myself
My hubby left at 6:30 am Monday morning to catch a flight to Banff. He emailed me to say that driving from Calgary into the mountains is just as spectacular by the light of the full moon as it is by daylight. Last I talked to him, despite early protestations that he was going to be spending all his time locked away indoors in boring conference sessions, he was on his way to climb a mountain. I think he's having fun.
Meanwhile back at the homestead, the kids and I are toughing it out without him. I know that the cliche is that when Mom goes away, Dad and the kids live in squalor for the week, with piles of pizza boxes competing with school papers for space on the table. Not so much in my house. In this partnership, he's the neat freak and the listmaker and the morning person. I'm the creative project person who leaves little piles of stuff behind me, and I also specialize in the, ahem, creative use of time. ... (more)
30 09 08 - 19:10
I Can't Get Sick, It Isn't on My Schedule
My six year old son is a very giving child, he shares everything. Including his viruses. 
I fought it off like a tiger for about a week. But one night staying up too late was all it took for that nasty little virus to wrestle my immune system into the ground, and boom, I've got this year's first fall cold. The symptoms weren't all that bad, except that every time I lay down, I started coughing, which made sleep a wee bit problematic. Getting up in the morning to go in to the office just didn't happen a couple of mornings last week.
I started off by telling myself it wasn't that bad a week to get sick. The fourth week of the month is the week my meetings slack off. Oh, except it's September, so there was a bunch of extra things scheduled. I was triple booked on Wednesday night alone. ... (more)
19 09 08 - 13:23
The World of Grownups
I spent a lot of time with my kids this summer, since the church office was closed and they were home from school. Kids live in a different world from us grownups, and sometimes I think that we grownups, if we think about the kid world at all, tend to think only about its inadequacies. Like, they're late for school because they get suddenly fascinated with a bug on the wall (but who made the rule that the school bell is more important than the bug, hmmm?), or they cry because they don't get to stay up for an extra half hour to play their favourite computer game (I'm in a really poor moral position to comment here, as I drag my son off to bed so I can get at the computer... 
), or they just refuse to see reason on a whole host of issues (translation: They don't see it my way). But when you live closely with kids for a while, you start to get glimpses of where they're ... (more)
