claui

Reiki and lots of it

2006-06-26T03:18:00.000-07:00

I just finished taking my Reiki Advanced and Reiki Master course. Imagine that being a "Master" so quickly. Actually, you really have to start teaching to be considered a Reiki Master.

I guess I will continue teaching. The difference being I'll teach what I want to teach and how I want to teach it.

An overload of information. Some of it still needs to sit with me for a bit.

So now that Reiki is with me maybe I can "share" it with you....WATCH OUT!!!

P.S. The course was taught at a student's house. It was big. Ummmm, actually on a 160 acres of land along the Ottawa river. An old brewery with a few original owners still "hangin'" around. Did I mention it was big? I did lengths in their pool. It was 25 metres long. When you gotta do lengths, you gotta do lengths! Mine won't be as long and I will put a retractible roof and make sure I can see the river while I am swimming. You know, when I have lots of money.

Detox: day 7

2006-06-25T04:16:00.000-07:00

WOW!!! I am feeling very good and trying not to be too preachy about the whole thing.
I was proud of myself yesterday. I resisted so well. I have been taking a Reiki course and we had a potluck dinner. I ate what I thought looked ____ free (you know sugar, red meat, wheat...) and I felt fine. I didn't have any desserts and I felt rather high on myself. Like, "I am better than you guys! Okay, I know this is so full of myself. I can admit this.

I did have a slice of watermelon and it tasted so good!

I am trying to conver anyone I talk to. I can already notice a difference in the way my body looks.

It's funny: When I am fat and just living day to day, I can't stand it and it makes me feel sad and frustrated, like I am living in this other person's body and that I am supposed to be fit and lean.

When I am doing some type of weight loss programme and enjoying it, I feel like I am saying goodbye to an annoying quasi friend and that it will leave me soon and I don't really care. I feel so in control.

Note Bene: I am bipolar and haven't started taking my meds.

Conclusion: Dr. Joshi's Holistic Detox is well worth the 25 bucks, especially when you borrowed it from a friend. I am goin' out to get me one too. I know I won't find one at a garage sale.

Claui

detox: day 3

2006-06-21T19:23:00.000-07:00

I've survived the coffee headache! It was a good 12 hour throb. Had the family drama with the throb... couldn't load up on cookies or other usual fixes. Needed a nap.

Day two: felt better but still needed a nap which made me late for my therapist appointment. Not very impressed with mum. words such as toxic and lethal came up. No more rescuing for me. No more role playing. Told me I looked good.

I feel really good. I am eating tons. Eggs, beans, rice milk, salmon, gluten and yeast free cereals and bread.

Lemon in hot water isn't so bad really. Rooibus tea with rice milk, looks like normal tea with real milk. Rice milk and banana blended together makes a nice treat!

Imagine some people just eat like this all the time. They don't have to "detox". They are called Asians living in Asia who have not taken on a North American diet.

The family I lived with in Korea drank milk and ate white toast for breakfast. Wonder when they will start detoxing.

She signed!!!

2006-06-21T19:21:00.000-07:00

My mom signed the contract that sealed our fate. She sold the building. Hallelujah! Not much convincing though, just tears, screaming, a quick ride from my bro from To (that's 450 km and back)

She wanted more money. She finally realized it wasn't worth all the aches. All of our aches and pains.

bravo maman!

Was the summer really that hot and long?

2006-06-13T20:28:00.000-07:00

My mother always said that August 1971 was extremely hot. "It was a long hot summer", she would often say to me.

I decided to come out on the absolute last day of the month.

Now, I am feeling the heat. The stress. The chaos. Children getting way too involved with their parents' finances and business.

I don't want it. It's almost midnight and it's been an evening of driving around looking for Alex who had received a fax earlier in the day at work because my parents' fax machine is kaput...Alex forgot to bring it home... almost running out of fuel looking for diesel for the brown boat. The story goes on. A few threatening calls later, waking up my mother who was not very happy and didn't understand why she had to keep signing papers. She mentionned something about being mislead. Hope the deal goes through. The midnight deadline looms.

I guess you wouldn't understand what I'm talking about. Too many people got involved. My family was always my little secret of chaos, weirdness, repression when they lived further away.

Now they live really close by.

paint

2006-06-06T08:27:00.000-07:00

I used to be afraid of those paint swatches. I'd pick a whole bunch, tape them to the wall and never go past that. I don't know why I was so paralysed but making a choice. It's as if I didn't understand that you could just paint over it again if it sucked!
Maggie chose my kitchen colours. She supposedly did in two minutes! I admired her so much and thought it was a supernatural skill.

In my new bi-polaresque fashion of living, I am making up for this by painting and repainting like mad. I bought yellow (sorry Maggie, that's wickerware) It really doesn't look that great with by basement's fluorescent lights.

As a contrast colour, I picked out a dark chocolate brown. They look together in theory, not in my basement. I must say it was my fastest choice to date. Lili helped me steer away from "pukey" yellows. Today I beat that record.

This morning, after dropping Sacha off at daycare; it was our first time together on my bike: those babycarriers are a bit scary at first, my kid does weigh 35lbs!, I went to my local Home Hardware and after 4 seconds of searching I picked out a turquoisy blue, called July something or other. I went in there for a bracket for a hanging basket. It's kind of like getting lost at the dollar store. Oh yeah, the back to the paint. It looks a bit 70's. If someone asks me if that colour was from the previous owner, I am changing it again!

Conclusions: dark panelling sucks.

You don't need to just use up all of your old paint to cover it up.

Painting in your undies rules!!!

claui

West Side Cafe

2006-06-03T04:01:00.000-07:00

Isn't it neat when you leave something for a long time and it's still there after years and years?

I worked in Paris at an American style sandwich bar when I was 20. I returned four years later for another 4 month stint. I loved Paris and loathed it all at the same time.

I know now this had more to do with my moods more than anything. I had the chance to study there and I took off because I was lonely and depressed.

Anyway, West Side Cafe is rocking. I always knew Fred, my boss, would make it into what he wanted it to be. He's got vision and he changes as he goes. Check out his site: westsidecafe.com

I'm going back. Someday.

Beugler au tigre géant

2006-06-01T17:45:00.000-07:00

So I'm at GT with Sacha. My two and half year old son did an amazing job of choosing a couple of cheapie toys ( a fisher price book: $3.00, Uno cards with Dora on them, can't remember the price and some jumbo bubble maker bottle at almost 5 bucks. Okay not such a great deal but we had fun.)

Anyway, we're at the cash and as usual there's a small line-up and a cashier opens a new cash and asks for the "next" person in line. This always gets me that many people interpret this as: Will the fastest person whose been waiting the least please step forward!

So this guy goes ahead of me and a few others and so I ask the guy in front of me if he would like to go ahead and he says no and that it wouldn't make much of a difference (ah, those calm men, must be passive agressive!!)

So I go ahead and of course just can't keep my mouth shut and say to budder dude: "You know, when she said the next person in line, she meant the next person in line!" So he told me to go ahead and I said no that I was just saying it for the others too (who didn't seem to care..)

I am not sure when we started speaking French but he told me "de ne pas beugler" So I asked for a clarification and he said: "not to bitch". I was a bit surprised but the cashier was the best. She told him to not use that language in front of children, that her mother never did... and then I chimed in that it wasn't appropriate for anybody... She got him good. He looked around for some male comraderie against these cackling _____. well, insert what you like there.

I did clarify that he was using it as a verb but she said it didn't matter.

I love the drama! I felt kind of stupid, bitchy because I was complaining to a stranger but it bugged me so much!

I chatted with a couple of ladies about that outside. Oh well, as I said to the cashier and to a small audience that it wasn't the first time that word had been directed towards me. Wonder what the others were mumbling to themselves!

the right kind of pace

2006-06-01T05:21:00.000-07:00

I came to a conclusion yesterday that what I had been doing for the past ten years just wasn't working for me. Teaching intensely for 10 months and then coming to a screeching halt for 2 and then starting all over again didn't match me. Me: my personality, my way of working...

I've been reading "An Unquiet Mind" and Jameson talks about her struggle to function in the "system". Attending classes on a daily basis was too much for her; it wasn't conducive to her mood swings. Research was ok. She could go full tilt for a while and then slow down when her body and brain told her to do so. If she were depressed and needed to hide away from the world, it was okay.

So, teaching kids. A crazy pace. Don't forget this meeting, help out with that, organize this, do it for the kids... I did it at a cost. I had to be the best I could be. I had to go beyond what was expected. Then life creeps up on you and says HEY! STOP! You have a family. Who is more important? The children of other parents, padding your portfolio? impressing your co-workers? or you... your child at home?

Shift in priorities. Take it as it comes. Make it happen. Don't let it happen to you. I can do this.

There are so many options in life that are only limited by our own thoughts and other voices. Listen to voices? I chose to listen to my own.

A skill to be taught. We owe it to our sons and daughters to teach them something we have taken so long to learn on our own through trial and error (not all of us took so long to acquire it but it is a process, that's for sure).

Listen, LISTEN!! and you will hear it.

ALS

2006-05-29T11:12:00.000-07:00

I know two people who've died of ALS. It's so horrible. My husband's uncle and my friend's dad.

I have another friend whose mother passed away about 6 years ago. I never met her.

Have you seen the commercials for ALS, aka Lou Gherig's disease? This middle aged, overweight, white man keeps running and running and running through the streets of his neighbourhood until he hits a junkyard and can go no further.

ALS, it kills the body first. I believe that is the tag at the end.

I read "Tuesdays with Morrie". The author was on Oprah. Lyse lent it me. Jamie and her are my free, good books, connection. Morrie was positive right until the end and began to appreciate the little things. Listening to birds outside his window. He had a funeral for himself while he was alive. What an amazing idea. Say goodbye to all of those who care for you before you move on to the other side.

I don't think my friend's dad had that chance. He died in hospital. He didn't do anything on his own anymore. My friend said she could understand what he wanted to say even though he didn't speak anymore.

What would I do if my dad was there? My dad is okay. Well, you may not think so if you saw him. He doesn't walk straight anymore, he needs help to put his slippers on and to get out of certain chairs. He uses a walker. He has Parkinson's and some type of arthritis that seems to bend his body in half.

He's alive and still has dignity. He can read to Sacha. He may not be able to lift him but Sacha can climb on him.

We're okay.

life

2006-05-26T12:59:00.000-07:00

It's not what happens to you in life, it's how you react to it.

Once you really get that statement (I found this quote in a journal but I can't remember the quotee) I mean, really grasp it... you've figured it all out.

You are then able to step back and truly "see" the whole situation and make the best choice for yourself at the time. You're perhaps even more equipped to understand others' reactions so much more, why they did it, what they feared.

Once you lose the fear of laying it all on the line, really being honest and not hiding truths from yourself and others, life becomes so much clearer. I feel that is what's happening to me now and it is so liberating and freeing that I want to jump up and down, boogie and shake all the insecurities, anger, anxiety, sadness and guilt away.

Seeing everything in a whole new light. What is this? The "high" that I am on is due to... the anti-depressants finally kicking in? My little get-away to BC? Sunlight and warm weather? Being off work for a few months now and finally feeling guilt-free? Prospects of new career opportunities and rediscovering my interests?

Or is me beginning to escalate to the buzzing high of the whole bipolar thing.

I picked up An Unquiet Mind, a memoir of moods and madness, by Kay Redfield Jamison.

We'll see if that clarifies anything for me.

thought so...

2006-05-25T07:20:00.000-07:00

I have officially been told that I am "bipolar". Not jumping off buildings but mildly bipolar. Aren't we all? Good days, bad days. This whole time I've been joking about it... not so funny anymore.

I hit lows more often than highs. Felt high and optimistic while I watched Quidam. Awesome!
I can't even do what they do when they are doing some basic warm-up exercises. This thought stayed with me as my cushy butt warmed my seat, rubbing shoulders with my neighbour, leaning on Alex because the seats of "le grand chapiteau" (the announcer dude even called it that in English when he asked us to refrain from smoking and turn of our mobile phones.... yup, mobile phones...sexy, older man british accent) weren't that accommodating for "moderately" sized people. You should have seen the two guys next to my husband. Let's just say they were cozy.

So you're watching these athletes and I know that everyone's thinking the same thing. Wow they must have great sex. The positions, the strength! Or am I the only perv? Naaahhhh.

Back to the bipolar. I digress as Sophia would say. I really liked that show but I always thought I would end up looking like Maude or whatever her name was. Who would you be? The slutty one? The ditzy one? The too tall, too fat smart and a bit nasty one? If you are too young to know what I am talking about or didn't spent hours in front of the boob tube as a kid like I did.. The Golden Girls. Trying to remember the tune but all I can think of is: Miami is nice, so I'll say it thrice... Oh yeah, THANK YOU FOR BEING A FRIEND... and a confidante... That really didn't go that well in the song but hey, I still watched it!