All Drama or Freckles have to do is flick Monster on the arm for him to come running upstairs, complete waterworks, screaming about how he was brutally punched. This worked maybe once or twice. But after some time with the constant hysterics and exaggerations, I stopped listening. The truth is, his siblings should be spoken to in some way for constantly annoying him. But the fact that the truth of HOW they are annoying him have been so greatly exaggerated means that I now do nothing. Sometimes, I need to discipline Monster for lying. Rarely, though, do I remember after all the truth comes out to reprimand his siblings for the infraction they are guilty of. Monster doesn’t understand it, but his over the top screaming and exaggeration have made me tune out, which isn’t helping his cause one bit. Lately, this graphic is circulating the web And it bugs me. It’s only the latest one in a string of ‘Support or Troops’ propaganda that is misleading or false. I’m not going to speak on any of the other ‘facts’ listed on it. I don’t know for sure how much the PMO makes on retirement, but all my research up to now puts it at much less than what this says. But that’s not my point. My point is that the ‘average’ Canadian soldier (or military member, since there are sailors and airmen as well), does not make $40 000. In fact, on enlisting, a Private makes about $33 000. By his or her 2nd year, they make $41 000. By 4 years – over $55 000. So I’m not sure what ‘…
How’s that for a title? Two things occurred to me when I decided to write this post – 1. I don’t write a lot of ‘Christian’ things, or at least things that most people would view as ‘Christian’ (can a blog post be Christian?), so you might be caught off guard. 2. There are going to be a lot of people who don’t like me when I’m done. Or possibly, without even reading. Actually, I’m hoping all the people who don’t like me are the ones who don’t bother to read. A while back, I started working again part time. I kept thinking of all the reasons I wasn’t going to be able to find work before that, because I wasn’t going to find summertime childcare, because my kids would always come first, because I’m inherently lazy and enjoy not getting dressed until noon. But then this opportunity came and despite my best effort to convince the Director of the agency that I suck, they still hired me. I work almost exclusively from home, and they basically demand that I put my family first, so overall, it was pretty clear that I am supposed to be there. The goal of the agency is to reach the marginalized in the community. The broken, ignored. The ones who not only who may be poor in physical assets, but who are poor in spirit, poor in community, poor in supports. I can get behind that. To love Jesus is to love those who are broken, right? People may have in their head that to love Jesus is to hate things, and well, that’…
Have you seen Dear John? So, I actually technically haven’t. I skimmed it. But this is the gist I got from it: Girl falls in love with soldier. Soldier leaves to do his job. Girl tries to wait but can’t so she marries someone else. Blah blah blah other stuff happens but I don’t really care at that point. Is that really a love story? What IS a love story these days? While thinking this over, yesterday, I melted. And I do mean physically, with a temperature reaching +37 Celsius once you added in the humidex, this Canadian girl was not made for runs that seem like swims in the sticky, thick, sweaty lakeside heat. I was a hot mess. And not just in the holy-crap-my-knees-are-sweaty way. Because I also mean I melted. Exploded. Lostallsenseofreasoninmycompleteselfabsorbedangrymess. Right now, I am taking full time classes through university online to finish the degree I started 14 years ago. I am slightly panicked every single time I use the line of credit to pay tuition and worry that I will end up working at Starbucks to pay it off because a B.Sc. majoring in Military Resiliency is both interesting and possibly way to specific for the job hunt that’s coming. I am also working part time at a local inner-city drop in. Because my kids love Mixed Martial Arts and we love that they are in it and that means I am willing to work to pay their gym fees. That gym? I’m also going there now to take some strength training classes because the time the kids are in martial arts is the only time I have for…
When I was 18, I fell in love. And shortly before I turned 19, I agreed to marry him. Cause that’s just how in love I was. A couple months after I turned 20, I was a married woman. 7 months later I was expecting. And 2 months after that, I was on my own. When I said goodbye I didn’t consider the costs. I didn’t consider anything, really. He had already been gone so often, but this time…. When I watched that bus pull away my heart fell and my stomach turned and I looked around the rest of that gym while the ones left behind cleaned up after the big send off. They barely noticed the girl at the window and they certainly never appreciated the effort I was putting in not to fall on the ground sobbing. 6 months later so much had changed. Without email, facebook, videochats or really, even decent phone service, deployment looked a lot different then than it can look for some people now. When he walked off that bus I was so pregnant I couldn`t even stand up straight. The boxes were packed in our tiny PMQ for the home we were moving into in just 6 weeks. And the baby! He was coming anytime. But that one night, when the bags were picked up and the phone calls to relatives made and the house was still, we sat in our room and I stared at him for a very long time. By the time Dh came home from war that first time, he was still weeks away from his 21st birthday. When I look at 20 year olds now they seem so young. When I look at my 10 year old son my…
It seems like as a culture, we can’t do anything halfway. Or even reasonably. We are all ‘EVERYTHING THIS WAY” until we find a new way, and then we are all EVERYTHING THAT WAY. And the whole ‘Everything in Moderation’ or ‘Let’s just try a little of this’ gets thrown out the window for ‘DO IT ALL! GO TOO FAR!’. The newest trend is ‘Strong is the new Skinny‘. And for the record, I love the concept. Let’s not push ourselves to be as skinny as we can be, let’s try to be as strong as we can be. Awesome, I’m on board. Except, wouldn’t that theory mean that we’d see less unattainable, photo shopped or otherwise perfect photos? Wouldn’t that mean we would see more goals about how far you can ride your bike or how fast you can run or how good you feel or how much more your body can do whether your goal is keeping up with your kids or keeping up with the Boston Marathon? But it doesn’t mean that and we’re not seeing that. All it means is instead of seeing extremely thin models in airbrushed poses, we see extremely muscular models in airbrushed poses. And instead of dieting it’s about eating clean and instead of starving it’s about exercise and weight lifting and ‘fitspiration’. Which is healthier when done right. And I am a proponant of eating clean and exercising. I work hard at it every day. But lately, fitspiration is starting to feel just as shaming as ‘thinspiration’…
I will admit, it’s not been my best couple weeks running. The last weekend in April I ran a Race Weekend here where I live. I had registered for a 10k on the Saturday night and a 21k on the Sunday morning. I told myself during training and repeatedly the week before the race, that I would ‘race’ the 10k, but that I wouldn’t worry about time for the 21k since it was the very next morning. I would just treat it like a fun long run and get it done. No stress. And as usual, that’s the opposite of what I did. I raced the 10k, that much is true. I even came in with a Personal Best at 55min, which impressed me considering the hilly course and the abundance of ingested mayflies. I was happy with my run and my effort and my time on Saturday night and I took an Epsom bath and went to bed early. Sunday morning, however, I did nothing that I said I would. After a few false starts getting out the door (I thought I grabbed the wrong drink (I didn’t but went back anyways) and I forgot my Gamin), I lined up with all the other runners. I already felt like I didn’t fit in. In my none-trendy but functional white compression socks and all black cotton tank top and running shorts, I felt frumpy and chubby in a sea of brightly coloured athletic wear and tall college students. Looking at the course record sitting at barely 10 minutes longer than my 10k the night before, I felt slow. Especially when my barely rested legs still felt sore and tired…
April is the month of the Military Child. I mean, there’s a month for everything, right? So why not one for them? It’s actually not even a thing in Canada as far as I know, but we’re going to go ahead and steal it from the USofA for the purpose of this blog post. I don’t think they will mind, the American’s I know are actually much nicer than we tend to give them credit for. Let me start off by saying that kids in any circumstance, are special. Farmer’s kids are amazingly resiliant at sleeping in combine’s come harvest time. First Responder’s kids spend nights worrying about dad every time they hear a siren. Pastor’s kids get dragged to every single church potluck and hugged by strangers. And kids who’s parent’s work in banks, in fertilizer plants, in prisons and in offices, they have all learned very special ways to adapt to their own life. But I have me some Military Kids. So that’s what this is about. When April first started, I saw quite a few posts going around the Social Media World. And they started like this: ‘Your average military brat…..’. And I would cringe. Is there an average military child? Some kids, like my husband, will move 5 or 6 times in their life. Accross the country and across the world, they will watch the trucks pack up their life and they will make new friends and learn what TV shows are cool in which crowds. They will adapt to different playgrounds and different teachers. Sometimes they will even adapt to a different language. And…
My car has been broken into. More than once. It was because I didn’t lock it. Thieves, broken people doing broken things, they stole things from the inside. Once they also took the time to make a mess in there, too. Leaving my car unlocked was not my best decision. That didn’t make the theft my fault. It was MY car. And MY things. The truth is, cars get broken into every day. And some of them are parked in quiet suburban neighbourhoods and locked up tight. You cannot be completely safe from those who mean to do you or your possessions harm. And regardless of where I parked my car or whether or not I remembered to lock the doors, the person responsible for the crime remains, 100%, the person who committed it. Now, clearly, since I used the phrase ‘more than once’,you can tell I didn’t change my door locking ways. Our van had a habit of not locking all the doors when using the automatic locks. The truth was, I didn’t really value my car or it’s contents enough to worry about it that much. Want to steal my CD case, diaper bag? Want to try and make off with my bright red 2002 Windstar? I wouldn’t lose much sleep over it. So I continually forgot to check the locks and, thieves continued to take advantage of that to commit a crime. A crime that was entirely their fault and not mine. And, knowing that I was not to blame for the theft no matter my errant and unsafe car parking practices, I did use my experiences to…
So yesterday, I got a DM on Twitter. And I thought ‘Oh great, someone else has seen that picture of me…’ But, no, in fact this was not spam, it was someone with a question. They wanted to know Dh’s rank before they followed me. Um…. So we’re gonna go ahead and go there, friends! What I’ve learned about Rank 1. If you’re not in the military, you don’t have one. Most important of all the points. I am not in the military. I don’t have a rank. And as amusing as this little piece is, it’s satire. No one is giving me a rank any time soon. That’s OK by me. Let’s say it together, friends. I’m not in the military. I don’t have a rank. Excellent. 2. Ranks Have a Purpose. Rank is not some arbitrary annoying rule put together by the military to make your life more difficult. When soldiers are in battle, there needs to be Leaders. Those leaders need to make objective, life and death commands quickly. That is profoundly harder if you are good friends with those who you are Commanding. And that is the purpose of Rank. It might be awkward for two people to be friends socially if one is above the other in a direct Chain of Command. It’s hard to maintain a friendship with your boss. It’s done, don’t get me wrong. People do it. But it can be difficult to be best friends with your direct superior. Separating work and friendships can be tough. And that’s OK. But for non-military people reading, the…
Several weeks ago while walking in to pick up Drama from Dance class, I heard a few parents having a conversation in the corner while looking through the little window into the class. “No… I say 5.” “You think? I’d put no more than 4. I mean, look at her!” “She’s pretty coordinated, though. One lady said she saw her registering for Sr. Kindergarten. She’s gotta be at least close to 5. Either way, she’s too young to be in this class.”. My heart sank a little and I got butterflies in my stomach. Because I knew what they were talking about. They were guessing the age of my daughter. And they were angry. Angry that their daughters were in the same class as someone so young. As though their eventual scholarships to Julliard were hanging in the balance of this one pre-school age child that could hold their class back. Except she’s not preschool-age. She’s 7. And she’s been dancing for almost 5 years. So I stepped over to where they were, I looked through the window and I said “Are you talking about the little girl in the purple tank top?”. (I resisted the urge, at this point, to say things like ‘the one NOT disturbingly dressed in hotpants and a completely functionless sportsbra like most of the others’. Because that was not the point, that was only my judgement.) And when they said yes, I simply followed up with this. “She’s actually 7. And I believe in the same grade as your little girl.” And…
