Lucky me - How world disasters make my little problems seem like luxuries



Family portrait - Marine iguanas in the Galapagos Islands

Always good to start out with an amusing photo.  Sunday of a long weekend.  March 13th .  It's hard to avoid thinking about the work week ahead, but I do try my best.  It's another grey day, after a foot of snow, then rain for a couple of days.  I'm worried about the foundation of our house.  Our bay window cracked - for no reason - the other day.  First I blamed the cats, since the crack was on the inside pane.  I thought maybe they were being tormented by the limping gray cat from down the street who jumps up to steal glimpses of them.  We have little streaky paw prints on the outside of our windows from his "visits".  Maybe Penelope charged the window and the force of her hard head cracked it. The break in the glass did seem to follow roughly the shape of a little kitty head before continuing upwards.  Or maybe Zander took a running karate leap at it.  He can achieve a lot of air without much effort.  He boasts the advantage of a consistent weight of 7.5 pounds (I can eat as much kibble as I like and I don't gain an ounce!)   Now, I know that everyone thinks their kids/cats/dogs/ferrets are special, but even I had to admit that the cats breaking the window wasn't a likely scenario.  Foundation settling?  Unrelenting freezing and thawing?  Weight of the snow on the roof?  The earthquake last summer might have weakened it.  We do have a couple of cracks in the wall, too, so, maybe foundation work is in our future.  The idea of that stresses me out.   That is, until I think about the aftermath of the earthquakes in Haiti, New Zealand and Japan.  Suddenly I feel very lucky to have this small problem....to have a house, even, and a roof over our heads.  Clean water.  I could go on and on.  This year is definitely about perspective for me.  

The abundance of my life, everything I have, seems slightly ridiculous, and I'm not even overly-spoiled or wealthy, by North American standards.  How many hair products or mini hotel shampoos and shower gels do I need, really?  For my dental care alone:  toothbrush, rubber tip instrument, floss, between-teeth mini-brushes, mouthwash, and nighttime appliance to mitigate teeth grinding (caused by what?  All the stress of my relatively cushy life?  Or the guilt?).  Why do my towels have to match?  Why do I feel I should replace them when they start looking a little tattered?  They still do their job.  I've got a whole linen cupboard full of placemats, tablecloths, bedding, and dishtowels.  Extra blankets and pillows, just in case.  Our culture brainwashes us into thinking we need everything and it all has to be like-new and coordinated.  And our lives need to be made as easy as possible.  God forbid I actually mince garlic without the help of my handy-dandy garlic-mincing gadget.  And, choice, oh we must have choice.  We aren't like those countries with only two breakfast cereals to choose from: Corn Flakes or Cheerios.  We have a WHOLE WALL of cereals to choose from at the grocery store.  It's so embarassing.  I was going to go shopping after writing this blog, but I'm re-thinking that.

Saturday March 19th - I got onto Facebook a few weeks ago.  I'm not yet sure if I regret it.  After the initial crazed thrill of finding old friends and catching up, I've settled into a more relaxed kind of relationship with the thing.

I've snooped around friends' friends lists and have been surprised and shocked - mostly in a good way - by some of the things I discovered.  One former friend from high school, who seemed years ago to be heading towards self-destruction, is still alive and, by the look of it, thriving.  From a stoned streetkid to a yoga buff.  I smiled when I saw her healthy face grinning at me from her profile picture.  Another friend just adopted a baby.  I chatted with the very first friend that I remember, from when I was about five years old.  I friended the "little boy" for whom I was a nanny for a year in the mid-80s.  I'm gladdened by the indications on his page that he has a job, he lives abroad, he has friends, he travels.  As a child he was a little neurotic and sad, but extremely intelligent and sweet.  His parents were in the midst of divorcing and he had a steady stream of nannies in his very early years.  I certainly didn't have any childcare experience or any insight; I was a self-centred twenty-year old and I left after a year, like all the other nannies.  But, it looks like he made it through.  He can partially blame any abandonment issues he has on me, though. 

Reconnecting with old friends forced me to examine my own path.  A friend from my year of studying in France asked me to describe a typical day in my life.  That threw me into an introspective panic.  Hey, no fair.  I just want to find out about you.  You can think what you will about me, based on my carefully-selected profile picture (must be flattering and make me look slimmer than I am), my "likes and dislikes" and even my friends.

So now I'm obsessed with describing my "typical" day.  It looms before me like a big snoozefest.  What DO I do every day?   I'm tempted to make my life sound as exciting/fabulous/glamorous as possible.  Maybe I should just describe an ideal day.  Nah.  If too many people do that, we will all feel inadequate.  But, wait, Facebook also encourages us to share the very, very, very mundane.  I used to make fun of the status updates on Facebook; they couldn't BE more boring, I'd say.  Who cares if  "Veronica is delinting her favourite sweater with her clothes shaver", if "Topher just salted the driveway", if "Bella is loving her new spatula", or if "Brittany is all about chunky heels this season"?  Well, it turns out that I kind of do care.  Sometimes seeing those updates is comforting.  Your people are out there, going about their days.  It's not the content of the update.  It's the fact that it's there.  I hope people care about my little life, too.

Shanon is going to have some cinnamon raisin toast and put a load of laundry on.  Ah, this is the life!!