Thank you

Sometimes you just have to say thank you. Thank you to my family. Thank you to my friends. Thank you to my cats ( they do make me smile and giggle). We were at a funeral today for a friends father, he was 87. How lucky we are that our parents lived so long. I apologize for having been so whiny in my short life, our parents lived through so much. This father today was in a Siberian POW camp for 4 years. He landed in Canada with his wife and 2 daughters and $40 and worked hard and made a wonderful life for his family. How can anything in my life compare to that. I have been so spoilt. Thank you Canada for allowing me to have the wonderful life that I have. Tonight, I had a wonderful dinner with wonderful friends that I love dearly. I have a large (very large) family and I am so lucky to have them all in my life and all I can say is THANK YOU TO ALL OF YOU, I am so lucky and blessed. Yes, I know I use the "I" word way too much in this short paragraph, but yes I am so thankful. God bless.

Move over Forest Gump

How did this happen? It was a nice sunny day, no wine involved. Suddenly the little "you've got mail" beep dings. Happily I open my email and there's this email from my sister-in-law, Maureen, yeah - it's not junk mail. And then I open it. I read it, I read it again. "Who is this", someone has taken over Maureen's email. Well no, Maureen hadn't been abducted by an alien, she just wanted to know if we wanted to do something insane like walk 60 kms in 2 days. I started to laugh and then the next thing I knew I was replying, "sure why not". Remember, there was no wine on my desk at this point in time. Then I quickly emailed Rachel and asked her to join us, like the rest of us she quickly jumped on the band wagon and the next thing I knew we were registered for the "The Weekend to end Women's Cancers".

That is why I now feel like I am the female version of Forest Gump. I walked to IGA today (2 km). On the way down I thought maybe tomorrow I'll walk to Dominion (5 km), let's walk in the Santa Clause parade on Saturday. That should be good practice, as we'll be singing carols at the same time. All I am thinking of is different places I can walk to. Move over Forest.

Rachel asked how far is 30 kms. I thought about it for a minute and then said to her that it would be equivalent to walking from our house to Toronto straight down Yonge St., and then back again the next day. At that point, both our jaws dropped open, wow, what have we done.

We can do this, we must train, we will need good music, we will have good family and friends with us and I am really excited about accomplishing this feat, because this will be a feat. Thank you Maureen for your email. I'll make sure to say that lots over the next 10 months of training (probably with some wine). Let's go team "Organized Chaos".

http://www.endcancer.ca/site/TR/Events/Toronto2010?pg=team&fr_id=1440&team_id=92396

I miss my dad STILL

I miss my dad STILL. It has been well over a year since he passed away and his presence is still felt everywhere in my home. Bending down to pet the cats and rub their tummies I can hear his laughter behind me telling me what a nut I am. Turning on my cd's in the kitchen at 6 pm when I went in to start dinner always brings a picture of him sitting in his chair at the kitchen table, where he would update me on his conversation with Ina. Which I always new the gist of because even though he was upstairs in the bedroom talking to her, he talked so loud and laughed so loud that the conversation reverberated around the whole house. His soccer conversations with Andrew, his teasing David about girls, Rachel mothering him, laughing at Jim trying to sing all these memories still live in my home. Whereever I go, in the house, at the cottage even in the car (as soon as he got in the car he checked the time to see how long every trip took) he is still there with me. I am sure these feelings of him looking over my shoulder will diminish but for now I am still going to enjoy having him around. Love you dad

I like to laugh

I love my husband tremendously, but why is it that we don't belly laugh together the way I do with my girlfriends. Yesterday was Halloween and the guys went golfing so the girls and I went to Port Perry on an outing. It was grey, cold and windy but from the moment the girls hopped in the car, the moods all lightened and by the time we made the 40 minute drive to Port Perry we had shared a number of good laughs, shared some secrets (nothing major) and were ready to tackle the stores. The giggles and laughs continued up and down the streets of Port Perry as we bought some beautiful little Christmas crafts, read some hilarious pillows with quotes on pms and husbands (does your husband wear briefs or boxers - depends - this one really broke us up) and then the highlight was the Home Hardware store. Yes scary but the highlight of the trip was finding a pumice stone with a handle on it, there we were 4 50 year olds laughing away as we all lined up to buy a pumice stone with a handle on it for 8.99 so we could clean the calcium marks on our toilets. It was a great day that reinforced the value of friendship and made me thankful for being a women and having such good girl friends.