Controversial?

http://catholicinsight.com/marry-that-virtuous-atheist/?fb_source=pubv1

Sin isn't the end....

It really isn't.


http://catholicinsight.com/felix-culpa/

Feelings....

Come on over!

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Join me....

On Thursdays, at Catholic Insight.

http://catholicinsight.com/the-purpose-of-beauty/

Just Wing It

I was supposed to have a Spanish invasion over the weekend, but something urgent came up which meant he had to go to Madrid instead. Although it was, admittedly, necessary and even urgent that I be neglected this weekend - because yes, that is how I chose to view things - I didn't feel great about it.

That might be un understatement.

Late Friday evening, I knew I had to something for the weekend to shake my mood. Perhaps go somewhere?  Anywhere? I tossed around a few places, and for some reason Perpignan stuck. Possibly because I like saying it. There really is no other reason I can think of, for latching onto it as my destination.

But, I didn't decide anything conclusive, and woke up on Saturday morning in such a funk that I ate chocolate for breakfast to try and shake it off. Healthy. By the time 10 AM rolled around, I had decided that I just needed to stay home and sweep my floors. Possibly even mop them. By 10:05, I knew I would end up in the fetal position moaning if I actually did that, so I decided to make a break for it.

This left me half an hour to shower, dress, blow dry my hair, put on makeup, throw stuff into an overnight bag, book a hotel and check train transfers before my train left Couiza. I was like a chicken on crack, or something.

I did present a very well put together self, in possession of a hotel room in the "Historical District" when I arrived in Perpignan. But.......when I walked out of the train station there, I realized something important: the only thing I knew about the city was that it had a strong Catalan influence. That's....it.

I didn't know where my hotel was. I didn't even know the address. I didn't know the major areas for sight seeing. I didn't have a laptop for access to the internet so I could figure either of these things out.

I lost my Blackberry in London a month ago, so I couldn't call the neglectful Spaniard and make him figure these things out. And so I stood there, surrounded by French and Spanish people and all I could say was....."Oh, Shit."

And then...."Oh SHIT."

I did have a scrap of paper, on which I had written the hotel's name, and three vague directions on how to walk there from the station. But I could barely read my own hurried scribbles. I had looked at a map online before bolting out the door, and I remembered the general direction of things and the major road I needed to find and turn right off of, at some point. So I just struck out. Twenty minutes later, bless the angels in heaven, I found my hotel. And you thought I was going to get murdered. Well, so did I.

--------------------------------------------------

Here's the fortunate thing about most European cities: they are actually quite small. Within whatever area is considered their historical district, you never usually walk for more than hour to get to anything you want to see. I might have been vastly unprepared going there, but I did know that once I found the centre of town, I would be able to see nearly everything worth seeing just by wandering around and exploring. And so that's what I did.

The centre of Perpignan is composed of very winding, narrow cobblestone streets. In some way I was reminded of a calmer version of the back streets of Naples. There are cafes everywhere, amazing shopping (not that I partook) (that's a lie) (it was amazing), and even though this sounds cliche, there is buckets of "character" everywhere. I could have walked those streets indefinitely.

Simply by walking around, I got to see Le Castillet, which entranced me for some strange reason. I found the Cathedrale de Saint Jean-Baptiste de Perpignan, which is so beautiful it made me cry. I turned a corner and found the Hotel de Ville, which was interestingly ominous and had a wedding party coming out of it. I explored the Palais des Rois de Majorque - but that is a story in and of itself. 

And so when I checked a guide book after the fact, I found that I had hit upon most of the major attractions. 

Conclusion: that's how I want to do it from now on, because it is 500 times more magical that way, I had no pre-concieved notions or expectations. I didn't know anything, so everything was a surprise. I hadn't glamourized anything, and so wasn't disappointed by the clash of imagination and reality. In short, it was perfect.

As an added bonus I got some awesome shirts and had some amazing meals. Beyond being disgustingly beautiful.....everywhere, France knows how to do clothing and food. Seriously. I am not sure it is possible to be depressed here. The shopping therapy and the food therapy is beyond excellent.

I don't know if I have a point, except this: throw out your guidebook. Stop planning. Just wing it. It's much, much better that way. 

Dreams and Suicide Pills

A few months ago I started taking a supplement for sleep and relaxation. One of the side effects, apparently, is excessive dreaming. I saw that and snorted. This girl never dreams, or at the very least, never remembers them. Sure enough, the first two months passed by rather un-eventfully. No dreams. Not much more sleep than usual.

Then some sort of cumulative effect must have happened, because suddenly I would be washing dishes and a bizarre memory would pop into my head. I would wander down this memory lane thinking that it seemed SO WEIRD, but hey, everyone I know is weird. Par for the course.

I think it finally occurred to me that I was actually having dreams, when I woke up one morning and put the kettle onto boil. As I stood there waiting, like a bolt out of the blue I remembered something utterly disturbing that really had to be taken care of.

"Bastard. I totally hate him right now."

I  violently ripped open my tea bag and fumed. "What a jerk. I can't believe him. I just want to punch him." I took a sip of tea. "AGhhhhhhh. How could he DO this?!"

The problem? My boyfriend had decided to go to Miami with his two friends, in order to party with HOT GIRLS. Was I mad? You bet I was. Especially because this meant he was missing Christmas with me. I was having serious doubts about him. Beyond doubts. More like "He is dead to me. And I am going to slowly peel off his skin."

I was halfway through my tea when I remembered how terrible our argument had been about this trip. And how I didn't want my little boy - who was so utterly beautiful - to be exposed to such strife.

At which point my brain went "Wait a minute, genius. You don't have a little boy."

And then I realized that I had spent the whole morning mad...because of a dream. Whoops. 

*BLUSH*

Good thing my Blackberry was lost at that moment... or someone might have received a really nasty call. Can you imagine how confusing that would have been?

------------------------------------

A few days after that, during a conversation in which I was barely responsive, the Spaniard finally gave up.  "Ok. You're mad. What is it this time?" (This time?!)

"Nothing. " (The first most ominous word a female can utter.)

"Lies."

"Whatever." (Oh dear. The second most ominous word a female can utter.)

"Maryyyy.........Tell me now."

"Fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine." *Long Silence*

"WELL??"

"More and more I just get the feeling that you don't really care."

*Snort. Sigh of kill. me. now'* "About you?"

"Yeah."

"Based on............?"

"I don't know. Just things are different or something."

"Ok. Do we video chat every day? And do I email you ALL THE TIME?"

"Yeah, but they are....not the same."

"I work, remember? It's been busy. Am I coming to see you soon?"

"It's not that, it's....I don't know...." *long depressed sigh*

"I can't work with 'I don't know.' Unless you can give me specifics, there's nothing I can do."

*Gassssssp* "You know what? Be nicer."

What a prize I am.

--------------------------------------------------

And then it hit me. Much like the morning I spent angry at a dream, I was being bratty and REALLY annoying because of.... what?

Let's face it: a raging case of PMS and a lack of sleep is never pretty. 

In other words, I wasn't reacting to reality, I was reacting to hormones and a really, really, really....really....overactive imagination.

So now, if I haven't already flown off the handle, I have started checking myself. What am I reacting to? Is my reaction based in fact, or in a bubbling hormonal stew? (Yum!) Or fatigue? Or the fact that it's raining?

To be honest - shhhh don't tell anyone - I haven't really been that successful so far, but at least the awareness is there.

---------------------------------------------------

So that's cool. But now I keep wondering about this: Does the President of the United States carry around a vial of poison, which he must immediately ingest in case he gets kidnapped?

Because I woke up thinking about that the other day, and I am not sure whether this something true, or if my dreams of being the first female President and my horror of death are combining into one glutinous mass of absurdity.

I Googled "Does the President carry a suicide pill?" and nothing came up. But that's probably classified information anyway.

Mawiage.....

So, I have been thinking a lot about marriage lately. Partly because I am old enough (kind of); maybe almost mature enough (although....is anyone really mature enough for marriage before they actually just jump in? No).

Possibly because the opportunity seems to be waving at me from the near-ish future. Maybe. I don't know. I can't think about it or I start hyper-ventilating.

Also, my brother is getting married, which is just a brain explosion of gigantic proportions. I almost can't handle it. This is the kid whose arms I scarred with my nails. This is the kid who tried to push me down the stairs. This is the kid I locked outside of the house, on a winter's day, with no jacket. This is the kid who tried to yank out a fistful of my hair.

We have loved each other so much, so deeply. In so many unique and magical ways.

---------------------------------------------------------

 Marriage. Every time someone close to me actually goes through with it, they are usually subjected to an intense session of questions, courtesy of yours truly. I have interviewed so many people. So many couples.

And still: I struggle with how it works. More specifically: how do you trust that if you take that leap, it's going to be ok?

HAH. And the answer is, she says with much grinding of teeth, that you can't be sure. You can never be sure of anything. Ever. At all. Except - I am obliged to say, otherwise he might smite me: God.

What I have figured out though, is that a good marriage, a happy marriage doesn't just happen. There are things you can do, just as with every single thing in life, that can make it flourish, or cause it to wither.

I know this, because I have read two books in the subject in the past two weeks, I have a folder in my computer bookmarks devoted to Youtube videos by John Gottman, and I have read so many studies and articles dissecting every part of marriage that I'm surprised I actually have time to watch The Real Housewives of Miami. Which is also for educational purposes: how not to be a good wife.

I now have conversations like this:

Mary: I read a study saying that pre-marital counselling was a sign of future marital success. The statistics are mind boggling.

Spanish Boyfriend: *pause* *silence* *the beginnings of a look of desperation*

Mary: I know, it's so interesting. Apparently the breakdown of most marriages rests in not talking about important things beforehand and not being able to communicate well. Apparently if you try to deal with all that beforehand, it really makes things work better.

Spanish Boyfriend: Uhuh. *desperation has turned into panic*

Mary: I think we should do that.

Spanish Boyfriend: *Face of: Dear God. Please. No.*

He doesn't really think it's not going to happen, right? It's absolutely going to happen

----------------------------------------------------

I do have one conclusion. Happiness in marriage relies (along with an ocean of grace).....on you. It rests in your very own hands.

Be Patient, Generous, Forgiving, Charitable. Don't assume you are right. Always apologize. Praise abundantly. Don't be critical. Ask nicely, don't command. Be respectful. Don't mock. Don't bad mouth. Be cheerful, joyful even. Be attentive. Be considerate. And don't stop.

In short: Be virtuous. Be the best you were created to be.

Short of being married to a psychopath or a complete narcissist, if you act the way you want to be treated, you will be treated in the same way. It might take a while, but then, that just gives you the opportunity to hone your patience. Yay!

Sarcasm aside, there is something completely freeing in all this. This means - aside from life's curveballs, and yes, in spite of them - that happiness in marriage, happiness in life itself, is not some arbitrary thing.

Please note that I am not saying all that is an easy thing, either. In fact, I imagine there are some days that it is fudgingly (family friendly blog) hard. What I am saying is, though, that marital bliss something which can be worked at and achieved in very concrete ways.

It is not the luck of the draw. It is not dependant on how many doves flutter around you as you say your vows. It will be what you make of it. And if you make a mud pie....it's kind of no one's fault but your own.

*Said the unmarried girl with all the solemn wisdom which the weight of 25 years has bestowed on her.*

Creepy Vans and Angelic Toddlers

Obviously, many interesting things are happening in my life, as this blog has been so sorely neglected.

Like, the other day I was walking home from the market, thinking long deep thoughts to myself and enjoying the mellow breeze playing in the daisies. I know: It is the end of October and the breeze is warm and there are daisies and roses everywhere. 

Quite suddenly - interrupting my sunshine and daisy revery -  a van pulled to the side of the road, and the driver motioned for me to get in, and that he was heading in the direction of Couiza. 

Little did he know that I was absolutely and completely outside on purpose - to enjoy the beautiful weather - and that I had no intention of crawling into a van that was a doppelgänger for every van that has ever appeared on  the evening news, as the vehicle of a "person of interest" in a kidnapping.

No joke. This van was an absolute caricature of all vans that have been accessory to a kidnapping or murder.

Seriously, buddy. Girls these days don't hop into just any vehicle that stops for them. No. We are smart. BMWs and Audis are where it's at these days.

This isn't even the point of my blog ramble today - no. Not at all. Moving on.

-------------------------------------------

Today I would like to proclaim that little French children are the absolute bomb.

A while back I was at a cafe in Paris. I watched in awe as a little guy - not more than four years old - sat at a table for about two hours, cutting politely at his duck, eating with a fork, and rarely interjecting into the conversation of his elders. He seemed completely content and at peace - as if nothing could be asked of the world except duck and sparkling water.

And then, the other day, I was at the bakery I frequent for an afternoon tea, and as I sat on the outside patio, I became witness to yet another miracle of French parenting. This time the kid could not have been more than three. His mom and her friend were sitting and chatting over coffees, and he was sitting between them, devouring an eclair with the aplomb that only a three year old can manage. 

He finished, politely wiped his mouth, and slid off his chair to play with the toys piled off to the side, and kept by the bakery for just such occasions.

He biked on the path around the patio. He disappeared around the corner of the bakery to collect rocks. He played with a little truck. And the only time he interrupted his mother was to give her some flowers he had picked, at which point he skipped off again. "Ooh la la, ma petite!"

For the next hour, he happily hummed to himself and obtained a thin layer of dirt from his explorations of everything in sight.

Occasionally he would take a rest on the chair next to his mother, and she was quite happy to have him listen in; there seemed to be an unspoken agreement that he was quite welcome to join the adults, as long as he did his best to act like one. Never did the afternoon seem to revolve around him, cute as he was.  Beyond the delivery of flowers,  and the occasional head pat, mother and child were both quite happy to do their thing. 

Maybe it's just me, but in North America parents seem to exist in order to cater to their children. Beyond the ridiculous amount of paraphernalia that is carted around, anytime a child is in the near vicinity there is a mild uproar as he is attended to and praised and nattered at and catered to in every way shape and form. 

This French mother neither jumped up when her little boy tripped and fell, nor exclaimed at his abilities with the toy car, or at the fact that he ate his whole eclair. He didn't interrupt her conversation looking for affirmation or comfort, and she didn't interrupt his play with needless inquiries and streams of encouragement. 

Something tells me this is how it should be. The adult world exists, not to revolve around children, but as something for children to grow into. 

Perhaps if North Americans had this approach, children would actually know how to play and entertain themselves, and parents wouldn't be so stressed out and resentful of their offspring. 

I don't know about you, but there is no way in hell that, as a fully grown adult, I want to sit in the dirt and play with a truck while trying to have coffee with a friend, or curl up on a couch and pretend to like Dora the Explore in order to get a kid into bed.

NO. I protest. I draw the line.

Kids: Be kids. Adults: Be adults. Enjoy your separate lives. And if they must join, let it be the child stretching up to maturity, instead of the adult descending into toddlerhood.

Done. End of story.

The Razor Blade

The other day I was sitting in the bathtub shaving my legs - that's as inappropriate as I'm getting, promise! - and I noticed that the razor wasn't torturing my legs, like it had been doing the past few weeks.

Let me explain. Really: It's super interesting.

Ok maybe not. You can stop reading now. Thank you, and goodnight.

I have one of those Schick Quattro razors with the disposable heads, that are supposed to, with those four sharp blades, give you a mind blowingly close shave. That's a lie - your legs will still be spiky the next day - but it's the only razor that this klutz can use without hacking her legs apart. 

A few weeks ago I changed the head, and about a week after that I clued in that every time I shaved, my legs felt as if they had been rubbed with sand. They felt like hell.

In my mind I went "Hmm. Weird. Possibly this new head is faulty."

But I did nothing about it. I usually change the head about once a month and it was NOT TIME TO CHANGE IT YET. Therefore, I didn't.

So, my legs bled and burned their way through the next three weeks.

Fast forward to me sitting in the tub amongst Eucalyptus bubbles and the razor gliding in a smooth and pain free manner across my legs.

"Wow," I thought in awe, "it WAS a faulty razor blade head. You dummy! Why did you torture yourself?! This is the life. This is the way shaving should be. This is what my feminist foremothers fought for - a pain free leg shave. No wait. Maybe they fought to not ever shave their legs at all. Confused. Whatever."

In short: I should have changed the head way back when it sand papered my legs. Obviously.

And then because I am melancholic and read anything into everything, I stared into space for about ten minutes as the water got cold, and thought about all the ways I don't change things, even when they obviously aren't working. All the ways I make my legs bleed simply because it's not time to change the razor blade head, even though - no matter the reason - it needs to be chucked about three weeks too early.

I think it's a peculiar brand of stubbornness. Perhaps, even, pride. If a thing really isn't working, it's just plain dumb to keep moving forward with it, without either leaving it behind completely or, if that's not possible, changing what you can.

What's that Einstein quotation. Yeah. That one: the one about how insanity is when you do the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.

Except I didn't even expect different results. Not even that! I just concluded that my torture was inevitable since giving up on the path I'd chosen was, apparently, out of the question.

And so amongst the bubbles, I had this moment of epiphany:"Stop it! JUST STOP IT. If something isn't working, fix it. Change it. Leave it. Move on. Something. Anything."

In short: If something is causing pain, I don't have to sit and endure it. But guess what? It's not just me. I know too many people who don't change the razor blade soon enough, or ever. And they bleed and burn.

There are too many things we CAN'T change about life. And those things - those things must be endured.

But if you can change it, change it, silly.

Dare Greatly

So, I'm writing a book.

I say that, having the dead ghosts of the start of about half a dozen books languishing on various external hard-drives in various parts of the world.

This one though....is completely planned and discussed and my main character even has a face. Thus, as my creation, I am rather attached to her. Quite possibly I might not let her die halfway through her story.

Mostly, I am doing it as a discipline. As in: I WILL stick this out for a full 90,000 words, or else I will NEVER EAT CHOCOLATE AGAIN. DAMNIT.

That, my friends, is a threat worth attending to.

Also, I have a batshit crazy brain, so I tend to always have something on hand to distract it with. Sometime it's a fictional house I am redecorating in my head. Sometimes it's travel plans to exotic places. Currently, it's perfecting this story line and deciding the exact shade of my character's hair.

Besides the need for distraction, I just have way too much to say about everything, including the things I know absolutely nothing about, as well the things that are interesting to absolutely no one but myself. I need an outlet. Seriously.

Just ask the man who has to wake up everyday to an email of approximately five pages, possibly even ten, about not much more than the thoughts that have crossed my brain in the two hours since I last spoke to him.

"Do I really have to read this?"

"How is that even a question?"

End of story.

Then there is the fact that I just really want a movie deal. Because that's where the money is, yo. Write a book, get Bradley Cooper to star in the movie version.

I mean, he would be my first choice. Why? I have no idea. (But seriously: RIGHT?!)

I would also be happy with Ryan Reynolds, Brad Pitt, or Channing Tatum. Also: Will Smith. I will change the male lead's skin colour for YOU, Will! My brother!

No wait. Wrong.

My lover!

But in that, I am just being remarkably trendy because everyone and her rat wants a movie deal.

Guess what, though? Writing a book is hard work. The majority of it lies in the small stuff. You can have the whole story line perfectly pictured.....but you still have to fill in all the opening and closing of doors. All the walking and talking. All the facial expressions.

And there is this constant, nagging feeling that it just ISN'T GOOD ENOUGH.

And THEN you open up your favourite book and read. And you just KNOW it isn't good enough. Because great writers are born, and not made. There is a certain instinctual joining of words and expressing of ideas that only a great writer can thrust on a page.

It was Eights Week. Oxford - submerged now and obliterated, irrecoverable as Lyonnesse - so quickly have the waters come flooding in - Oxford, in those days, was still a city of aquatint. In her spacious and quiet streets men still walked and spoke as they had done in Newman's day; her autumnal mists, her grey springtime, and the rare glory of her summer days  - such as that day - when the chestnut was in flower and the bells rang out high and clear over her gables and cupolas, exhaled the soft vapours of a thousand years of learning. It was this cloisteral hush which gave our laughter its resonance, and carried it still, joyously, over the intervening clamour. 

I read that and I get sucked in, left breathless. What must it feel like to have that flow through your fingers?

Yeah. I wouldn't know.

But that, my friends, is no excuse.  Because, in yet another peace of glorious writing, there is this to think about:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.


 Now isn't that just the best motivation to enter your arena - whatever it is?

The Lovely French

Everyone always speaks about how unfriendly the French are.

Let me tell you this. Having nothing but two years of Junior High French under my belt (meaning: almost no knowledge of the language at all):

I have ordered everything from sandwiches to complete meals in Paris.

I have bought (way too much) bread in various bakeries in various towns and cities across France.

I have somehow criss-crossed my way across the country in trains, buses, and taxis.

I have exhaustedly slumped in the seat in a Cafe and mumbled something about a "thé vert" or a "café au lait," or if things are really bad and it's a hot day, "rosé s'il vous plaît."

In every instance I have been treated with nothing less than completely polite patience.

They know right away that I am an English speaker (how could they not), and they either switch into MY language in THEIR country, or  - if English is not at their disposal -  they do their best to help me anyway.

Seriously. I have nothing to complain about. In fact, I am endlessly grateful.

Besides that, in the small towns, like where I am, people constantly greet each other. Everyone is so damn friendly.

On the street, in the grocery store, in the cafes, there is a constant exchange of niceties.  A person exiting or entering a restaurant automatically says a general hello or goodbye to anyone who is within earshot.

And then things like this happen:

Mary (passing an elderly couple on the street): Bonjour!

Elderly Lady: Bonjour, ma belle!

Honestly. Can you GET any sweeter than that?

No. No you can not.

Children

The other day, I was lying on the couch in my living room reading. In the apartment above me I heard the characteristic thumping and chatter of children.

"Cool," I thought. "Kids in the building. Maybe I can play with them."

Let me qualify that statement by first saying that I am not really a lover of children. I am not really....maternal. I like my own siblings - I am mildly obsessed with my baby brother, even though he hates me - and sometimes the children of close friends grab my heart strings a little.

But I am not one of those women who looks at a child and gets a throb in the general direction of her womb and goes "OHMYGOSH....I WANT THAT TINY HUMAN."

No. Mostly, I think of how terrified I am of night feedings and explosive diapers and the the boundless energy that little people seem to have. 

And let's face it. The children of other people are generally brats. No one raises their child as you yourself would raise him, and so behaviour that, to another person is completely normal, might be utterly abhorrent to you. THAT'S frustrating. But it's more a problem of the parents, then of the children themselves.

However, I would agree that children are a somewhat necessary part of life and I hope that, if I have one of my own someday, the oxytocin kicks in majorly, and I come to love Minime as as much or slightly more than I like quiet and chocolate.

By all accounts this is possible.

But back to my upstairs neighbours. While I might not be utterly enthralled with the majority of children, I am very used to having them around. After a certain period of not really being exposed to any, I get this vague feeling of imbalance. There really is something about how young children view the world, and how they put words together, and how unconditionally they love you - or hate you - that I find fascinating.

Hence - after a month with no children - my desire to go play with the thumpers and squealers upstairs. But how to make that happen? Go knock on the door?

"I just moved in downstairs. May I take your kids to the bakery, and then to the river to practice skipping stones? Maybe we could also play hide and seek in the woods?"

*Slam*

An opportunity presented itself later that day, when the cleaning lady dropped off some extra bedding for me. 

"So.....are there kids upstairs?"

"Oh no no no."

"Oh! I thought I heard..."

"No! Don't panic! That was the electrician. He came to fix some things, and had to bring his kids as he had just picked them up from school."

"Oh! Ok."

"No. You don't have to worry at all. Not about THAT. No children in this building. Don't worry your head."

"Oh, but I wasn't....."

"I know. At your age you're not going to want children around."

"At my age....?"

"Well, ring me if you need anything. Bye!"

I was slightly taken aback. But guess what? If I had not been raised in an environment where children flowed at the same rate as Niagara Falls, I would almost certainly have the attitude which desires a complete segregation from children. 

I would not know them as occasionally interesting little beings who are fun to be around. I would not see them as a normal and necessary part of life, in spite of the chaos that swims around them.

I would hear them upstairs and groan, and I would think of myself as needing to be separate from them until such time as I deemed myself ready to somehow join their world with mine.

Having always moved in an an environment where the presence of children is taken for granted and accepted, I now wonder: what must it be like to grow up in an environment consistently hostile to you, simply because of your stage of development?

As a child - today, in this world -  a quarter of your siblings and friends have been aborted, when you appear in public people moan, and your own parents and every other magazine and latest study discuss quite freely the burden of raising you. And don't think that children don't, on some level, know this. They are scarily intuitive little beings. Of course they feel environment surrounding them.

All this at a stage when what you need is love and complete security. No wonder there are ever increasing rates of childhood depression and anxiety. Wouldn't you be sad and scared in a world that seemed to hate you?

In short: Give a kid a hug. Smile as you pass one on the street. Let them know that the world needs them and loves them. Sure, many of them might be brats, sure they can pains in the hiney, but in the end, it's not their fault. And a little love goes a long way.

Butter Can Bring World Peace

The other day, as I was walking down the road to the Intermarche - yes, I am back in France - I had this thought: It is impossible to be sad here.

Sure, there might be moments of sadness - everyone has those - that is normal. But in the midst of such beauty and such peace - because peace is the striking feature here - it is much easier to choose happiness rather than the alternative. 

On top of that, how is it possible to be anything but gleeful, when you can pop around the corner and get.....the most glorious loaf of light brown, slightly sour bread, still warm from the oven?

And then....drift into the store next door to grab butter the colour of the sun?

And then .... walk down wide lanes shaded by leafy green trees....and through narrow cobblestoned side streets which - believe me - have enough stories to tell to fill a lifetime with. Really. I can just tell.

How much, I wonder, is the lack of beauty in our lives, and the fact that we eat Becel instead of butter, and Wonderbread instead of Paillasse, responsible for the excessive use of, say, Zoloft? 

Maybe if everyone lived in beautiful places that insisted on taking life slowly, and ate real food made as it should be, we would be much better off.

I am beginning to think that if everyone in the world lived in the equivalent of a small French town, happiness would be the norm, rather than the exception.

Also....this is nice

Hypnosis

I was lying in bed the other night, in the throes of jet lag and insomnia, trying to convince myself to go to sleep. Somehow yelling "GO TO SLEEP" at myself tends to make me more panicky, and so sleep really was not happening anytime in the next fifty years.

So I tried that trick of relaxing your body starting with your toes. But I lost focus before I even got up to my ankle.

Then I tried deep breathing for a little bit: "slow inhale.....slow exhale...." but the focus on my breath made me think about my heart, and for some reason I have been worried about having a heart attack - everyone worries about that in the middle of the night, right? - and so started having a panic attack instead of descending into sleep-fulness.

Side note: How likely is it that at some point, someone, somewhere is going to use this blog as proof that I should be institutionalized?

The only rational option then became to find something to hypnotize to me to sleep. Obviously.

That's right: I did a Google search and for $24.99 got two hypnosis sessions, led by a man with a quite yummy Scottish accent, about calmly making decisions.

The thing is, it actually worked. I fell asleep.

So, early this morning - still in the web of jet lag - I decided to try it again.

The thing is, I must be the worst hypnosis patient. Ever.

Five minutes into the recording, he told me to start counting backwards from 300, by 3s. I did NOT remember this happening the first time I listened.

How did I miss the fact, the first time around, that I was supposed to be occupying my conscious mind with backwards counting, so that my unconscious mind was left free to explore the possibilities of my life?

I HAVE NO IDEA.

So I started to worry that, by not participating well in my hypnosis sessions, I would get wires crossed in my brain and end up more messed up than before. Things started to become stressful at this point.

And then on top of this, there was the problem of counting backwards by 3s, from 300.

This proved more of a problem than anything, to be honest.

"300....297....ummm....294......291.......OK....288...WHY AM I NOT BETTER WITH NUMBERS? Ok....*quick finger count*.....285......Right? Yes.....Ok....283....WRONG......282....."

And then I got hungry, so went to make myself an early breakfast instead of trying to get back to sleep, and ignored the rest of the recording.

Conclusion: That was $24.99 well spent.

Life Is Not a Punctuation Mark

I had this major epiphany the other day. Part of me wonders if I am excruciatingly slow on the uptake not to have realized this before.

I think I have always thought of "life" as a series of events:

"When I turn five, I get to go to kindergarten."

"When I turn 13, I won't be a little kid anymore. Maybe I can start using makeup!"

"When I turn 18, I won't be a kid at all and I will have to vote. What if I mess up and choose the wrong person?"

And of course, everyone has their "When I...." moments.

"When I get married...."

"When I buy my first house...."

"When I get a dog...."

"When I have a baby...."

"When I go to Africa......."

"When I take over the world..."

"When I figure out how to properly blow dry my hair...."

No? No one has that last one as a life goal? Whatever. You lie. Everyone wants to know how to blow dry her (or his, I suppose) hair properly.

My point is this: if you approach life from the point of view that you are living it only when you have achieved that milestone, and the next one, and the next one....you aren't really living life at all.

Am I just sounding super obvious here? Did everyone else know this but me?

Those milestones, those goals, are just the punctuation at the end of a sentence. They are exclamation points, questions marks, periods. They aren't the story. The real story is everything that happens in between. The real story is the words filling up the page, not the marks that end the sentences.

How absurd would it be to insist that the heart of a book lies in the placement of its periods and question marks?

No: the heart of the book, of the story, lies in the magic of the words.

When you think about life that way, it makes walking to the store rather important. Walking to the store isn't merely to get a chicken so you can impress your cute co-worker, so you can date him, marry him, and then have his triplets.

No. Walking to the store is a whole page unto itself. It's something that must be lived through - and why not joyfully? - on the way to whatever punctuation mark you come to next.

In a way, this makes everything kind of important, because everything you do is your life, and you only get one chance. I'm not saying that you get all hyped up and nervy and act as if on every choice rests the future of the free world. Oh no.

But what I am saying is that whatever you are doing, whatever you are in the middle of: this is life. So enjoy it. Love it.

And stop trying to find the next exclamation mark. Just settle for hopping to the next word.

Private Sin?

I tend to have a problem with sleeping. As in: It's very rare that I get more than four hours at a time, and so, as a result I:

a) spend too much time thinking

and

b) need afternoon cat-naps in order to survive.

Having spent the last week in the throes of intense insomnia,  which attacked me for various reasons that are probably not interesting to anyone but me and a team of Psychiatrists, I decided that this afternoon I really needed to take a nap if I wanted to make it to my next Birthday.

I'm not positive, but I am pretty certain that 18 hours of sleep spread across five days PROBABLY shaves some time off of your life expectancy. Also: it makes you crazy. Like, really crazy. Like...."I don't want to know that girl," crazy.

So, after having plowed through a bunch of work, I laid myself down with my Kindle and the intense desire that I fall asleep just for a little bit. Just for enough time so that I could gain the concentration to put eyeliner on without poking my eye ball out.

Unfortunately, I chose to try and finish Madame Bovary as a method of pre-sleep relaxation, and this hit on sensitive topic dear to my soul. Damn it, instead of sleeping, I laid in bed and thought about many deep, dark things. So much for successfully putting on eyeliner this evening.

Here's the thing. Something that I have known about myself for quite some time is that I have "issues" with trust. Everyone does to varying degrees, but this little problem is especially strong in me. I knew it was there and  I nodded to its presence, but it's not until you actually get really, really close to someone else that you see how any personal "issues" you might have can really affect your life and the other person's life in many deep and undesirable ways.

By the time I was 24, I had successfully avoided the messiness of getting close enough to someone so that my own insanity was reflected back to me and slapped me square on the face. Any relationship beyond the purely casual or completely superficial was something I was just not interested in. Anything headed into anything more would immediately be moulded into the "just friends" category.

Possibly it was because I hadn't met anyone I liked enough. Possibly it was because I had a list of things I wanted to do before actually committing to anything, let alone on any serious level to another person. Possibly because I was just too scared to open up that much. The thought of trusting someone to hold all of me in his hands - what is great and what is bad and what is downright scary - was something seemed too risky a thing to plunge in to.

And then like some cliche out of a "find yourself" chick-flick, I went to Greece and came to the realization that no matter how many amazing experiences I could have, if I experienced them alone, they would be just a little empty. No matter how much I desired to protect myself, if it came at the cost of never actually living the full extent of what it requires to love and be loved, then what a truly empty life that would be.

So, I went "Oh FINE. If someone good comes along, I'll at least TRY."

Four weeks later my heart did backwards flip in a little cafe in Paris (can you GET any more cliche than this?), and I went "Oh. Shit. OHSHIT. I promised I would try."

So I did. And thus began the process of coming to truly know myself: that self reflected back to me by someone who loves me, and is trying to wrap his head around my....own unique brand of crazy.

Which brings me full circle to my initial point (Insomnia does NOTHING for the ability to stick to a point):

I have major trust issues.

In bed today, after delving into Madame Bovary, I was reflecting, yet again, on this sad truth. I kept asking myself why? Why? Where does this come from? Some of it is, of course, the accident of my temperament combined with various formative influences that made lasting impacts on me.

And then part of it has to do with the direct experience of seeing trust broken, over and over again, in romantic relationships. In my own experience, one married man has directly propositioned me (yep, for an affair), one married man has obliquely hinted at it, two men with serious girlfriends have informed me that if I showed any interest they would move over to me, and three men have thrown it out there that I, for some obscure reason which I have not figured out yet, am someone they would love to keep on the back burner for future extra-marital action.

Yeah. I have no idea why either.

And don't get me started on the women who have told me - in the past year alone - of the affairs committed by their well loved husbands.

This, my friends, has instilled quite a strong sense of terror in me. I think any woman who desires faithfulness from a partner would feel the same way, at witnessing such repeated and overt attempts at unfaithfulness, or least an open willingness towards it.

Here's the rub: there is absolutely nothing I can do about the experiences I have had or the stories I have heard. I can't run away from the very real truth that it's a twisted messy world out there, and that shit happens. It really does. I can live in fear of that, or I can just do my best to choose wisely, and trust that whatever happens I can handle it. Because  - and this is rather heartening - in that moment I will have the grace to handle it.

But here is the point of this long ramble: There is a direct and very tangible reason that we all should try really hard not to sin. Yes, it hurts God, but that's a rather fuzzy truth for most of us to get our minds around. What is true, and what might make a bigger direct impact, is that sinning - your own personal sin - really hurts other people.

Someone told me a while back that he didn't regret much any anything that he had done wrong. In that moment, I had to agree in some small part: if you've had a lot of fun being bad, it's really hard to regret it. It's really hard to feel sorry for it.

But...for example - and keeping in our theme of the day - if a man shows a willingness to be unfaithful, he not only destroys the trust he should be building with his significant other - a horrendous thing in itself -  he also risks causing the object of his prospective unfaithfulness to apply his gross standards to all other men.

This could, potentially - not that I have direct experience or anything - harm the woman's ability to trust, and also does a huge disservice to the many truly good men out there.

That "private sin" turns into a chain reaction affecting who knows how many other people.

Conclusion - and you NEVER thought we would get here!......

When you think that what the bad thing you are planning to do will affect no one but yourself, think again. It's really not possible. Give me any "private sin," and I can tell you how it will hurt someone else.

On the flip side: any good thing you do touches someone else as well. So really, the world isn't as bleak as all that.

So go forth and do good.

 .....And try not to stare at the dark circles under my eyes. There is no concealer that will cover what I have going on over here.

NOT the Eiffel Tower

Quite often, I hear my elders rant about the current state of the education system.

No one learns multiplication tables anymore.

No one knows geography.

Grammar? WHAT'S GRAMMAR?

I know I have some holes in my educational background, but for the most part I consider myself at least a little better off than most, since I have always been a voracious reader. Reading covers up a multitude of sins. At the very least you have big words to use and interesting characters to talk about, at the drop of a hat.

But.....

then things like this happen, and I start to think I need to hire myself a private tutor.

A few days ago I was standing on a rooftop patio very near St. Paul's. The view of the London was magnificent. The sky was clear for once, and a beautiful shade of blue. The few clouds in sight were whispy and fluffy. A mellow breeze drifted through the air.

Sigh.

As my eyes scanned the horizon, my insides did an excited little jump. "Cool," I thought to myself. "You can see the Eiffel Tower from here. How ROMANTIC!"

I was about to point this out, when I paused. "Wait a second.....Is that possible? What direction is France? What direction am I facing? How far away is Paris? Is the landscape between here and there flat enough for me to even see anything in Paris from here?"

The thing is, I had the answer to none of those questions, and my Blackberry wasn't connecting to the internet, so I couldn't do a quick search to find out.

And I certainly wasn't going to ask anyone. No. WAY.

Because....while it LOOKED an awful lot like the Eiffel Tower, the logical part of my mind told me it couldn't possibly be. But the flaky part of my mind REALLY WANTED IT TO BE TRUE. However, I had no hard facts at hand to help me reach any kind of conclusion whatsoever.

So I took a surreptitious picture with my phone, as a reminder that when I had access to Google, I was going to do some investigative journalism, and I went on my merry way.

And then I forgot.

Until the topic of Geography came up with my friend, a few days later. My friends and I try to have cultured conversations.

"Can I ask you something? Is it possible to see the Eiffel Tower from a tall building in London?"

"....................I don't think so....."

"Are you SURE?"

"Well...the English Channel is between England and France, and then there is the distance from both London and Paris TO the Channel.....so I don't think it's possible."

"I need to check Google."

So I did. And I went to six different sites. And according to my research, no: It is not possible to see the Eiffel Tower from any point in London. Not even the London Eye.

So...there goes THAT romantic occurrence from my life.

At least I didn't embarrass myself by excitedly pointing out the non-Eiffel Tower from a random rooftop in London.

I Almost Became A Fifth Wife

A few weeks back, I was in Oxford.

It was as beautiful and romantic as you might have imagined it to be. But that's not what I want to talk about. What I want to talk about is the fact that I almost became the fifth wife of a 57 year old Saudi Arabian man.

Not. Joking.

I promise.

It was a lazy afternoon, and after wandering around looking at colleges (that's a lie, I was shopping), I was reaching that mid-afternoon slump. So I did what any civilized person would do, and took myself to a tea shop and ordered tea.

I sat down, savouring the silence, which was a nice contrast to the bustle of the streets outside, and decided that it was the perfect moment to write in my journal. I know: Oxford, Tea, and Journal Writing - they just go together.

My warm tea by my side, a feeling of contentment oozed through me. I should have known it was too good to be true. Very suddenly, I became aware of a dark swarthy man, repeatedly turning from his table to look at me.

"Don't make eye contact. Don't make eye contact. Mary DON'T LOOK UP."

I looked up.

He leaned over. "Sometimes, at the beginning, things are difficult. But as time moves on, they get easier."

You know what my first thought was? "That's so TRUE! I needed to hear that. Maybe this is my guardian angel! I wish he was better looking."

I am not sure normal people have thoughts like that.

I just nodded, because I was not in the mood to have a conversation with a stranger, not even if he happened to be my guardian angel. I turned my attention to my tea and pen, assuming that it would be obvious I was not willing to chat.

Somehow, it wasn't.

An hour later,  after having been asked if I was married or not - "Ahh! You aren't!!" -  I was in possession of an invitation to Saudi Arabia. I was further informed that he had not successfully had any children with any of his wives thus far  but was certain it would happen soon. Possibly he might have a problem, and not the multiple women he is married to - but this is not something I actually wanted to suggest to his face.

As I made a move to leave, he asked if he could show me around Oxford's Covered Market. Having lost the ability to say "no," I slowly nodded yes. He showed me his butcher's and his cheese man, and the place where he buys his bread, and as we entered into the sunshine on the High Street, he asked if I had been into the quads of any of the Colleges.

Having lost my brain, I dumbly shook my head. So he escorted me around some lovely college quads, and tried to explain some gorgeous college chapels to me.

Seeing as how I was the Christian of our dynamic duo, I am pretty sure I should have been doing the talking.

A further hour later, he was informing me that we would see so much more of each other in the future, and his hand had somehow found its way onto the small of my back. *Shiver.*

If the man you like does that, you want to kiss him. If the man who is informing you that you would look lovely with a head covering on, who is as old as your father, and very obviously not your guardian angel does that, you want to castrate him.

We entered a bookstore so that my eager suitor could show me some atlases, and I took this an opportunity to frantically text a Spaniard for help. Seeing as how he was in London, I am not sure what exactly I thought he could do to help me, but seeing as how he is my boyfriend, I thought he better do something.

My phone rang shrilly, disturbing the staid silence of the bookstore.

"Walk away."

"What?"

"Just....walk away."

"Just like that?"

"Yep. And if he follows you, ask for help."

"Oh."

I walked past the Saudi gentleman, motioned to my phone and told him I needed to take the call outside, and walked out the door of the bookshop.

"Oh my gosh. I'm on the street. And I am walking around the corner. And he isn't following me!!"

"So. Why didn't you just say no?"

".....I'm Canadian? I don't assert myself? Maybe?"

"Wow. I need to give you 'no' lessons or something."

And that's that. Except the next morning, the friend who I was staying with was getting a coffee. As she was waiting for it, a man approached her, started chatting, and asked her where she was from. Having been informed that she was from Canada, he did a little jump and said that he had met a Canadian girl named Mary the previous day, and was looking for her.

Shannon, having as she said "No time for drama like that," simply shrugged and told him she knew of no such person.

Somehow she escaped the Saudi man without having to lose three hours of her life to him.

I think I might have to take my Spaniard up on those lessons.

The American Invasion

So, I've been in London since the beginning of June: I know, I get around.

Obviously I was meant to be a gypsy of some sort.

I am not the biggest fan of London. In my head, it was the place of Holmes and Wimsey and Wilde. I suppose, somehow, I expected it to be stuck in the late 1800's/early 1900's.

This, my friends, is not the case.

London is chaotic. Always busy. Kinda smelly. Quite muggy. And full of incredibly unfriendly people.

Or perhaps it is just the famous British reserve.

It is a bizarre thing to be in a completely packed tube station.....and to hear nothing but clicking heels and rustling news papers. No one talks to each other. No one makes eye contact. Strangers don't strike up conversation.

Sometimes I just want to moan really loudly, or shriek some swear words, and then step back and see what happens.

I bet you everyone would pretend not to notice.

A few days ago, a rowdy American jumped on a packed train car and yelled, "Who here is from the U.S.?"

*Cheers*

"What about from the UK?"

*Silence*

Talk about complete and total inhibition.

What with the Olympics, London is suffering under the influx of the rest of Europe, as well as an invasion of Americans.

I am here to inform you that there is absolutely nothing in the world like watching an American abroad.

For one thing, they dress horrendously. Like, you kind of want to walk up to them and vomit on their fanny packs and polo shirts. I am pretty darn sure that it would help.

For another, they are so loud. SO. LOUD. Foghorn voices.

Also: they can't pronounce anything.

"Hey darlin, what you say we go to Pret ay Mayn Ger and grab something?"

In case you were wondering: "Pret a Manger."

"Ok, our stop is the Glock es ter one."

Gloucester (Admittedly: tricky. But, it's fun to watch the Brits try not to smirk.)

And get this: they are always eating. Always.

Sandwiches. Chocolate Bars. Chips. Cookies.

Crumbs down the polo, nestling on the fanny pack.

Hawt.

Attractive.

Yummy.

I really think there should be a reality show, in which Americans are followed around as they travel.

Purpose. YOU NEED PURPOSE, BLOG.

By my calculations, I have not written on this blog for about 3.2 Million years.

Or, almost five months.

One or the other.

I have never been good at math, but that's kinda sorta the same thing, yes?

You know how sometimes life gets in the way, and somethings gotta give? Well, this blog gave. I know there has been weeping and gnashing of teeth at my absence in the blogosphere.

And I'm sorry. Truly. Because weeping is awful, and gnashing....well, your dentist won't be happy.

Here's the thing:

I have this love hate relationship with bloggers and blogging. When it comes right down to it, what's the point? Ok, if you have a food blog you post yummy recipes which make people drool into their key boards. Speaking of which: try wiping spit out the little crevices between the keys. It's a pain the ass.

I'm just guessing here. I don't actually have first hand experience.

Or, I suppose if you have a design blog, you post amazing pictures of clothes, or houses, or rooms, or whatever your particular design fetish happens to be, which can occasionally make people sit in the darkest corner of their closets, moaning in despair at the complete lack of beauty or hipster-coolness in their lives: "WHERE IS THE TURQUOISE? WHERE IS THE LEMON YELLOW? WHY DO I ONLY HAVE FIFTY SHADES OF GREY?" (Actual grey, not the book.)

I'm just guessing here. I don't actually have first hand experience.

So, yes. A blog can have a purpose. Food. Art. Clothing. Animals. Ornithology (??!). Stamps. Religion.

But...say you have a blog written by someone who may or may not be lying in her bed, listening to a high school "Battle of the Bands" filtering in through her window, and all she really wants to do is hang out in heels, get covered in diamonds and eat chocolate for the rest of her life? (It's possible. I swear!)  (Not that I have thought about it for any extensive length of time.) What then? What's the point of her blog?

Because here's the thing: a blog needs to fit into a specific niche which gives it purpose.

Why?

Because you are human, damn it. And so, given a platform at which you believe the eyes of the world are directed, and from which you can spout absolutely anything because you are your blog's own boss and the centre of its universe....

you run the risk of becoming a whiny, namby pamby, self centred, egotistical, fake self deprecating, narcissistic piece of....work....

who should really just fly to Africa and dig a well and gain some perspective outside of your belly button.

I'm talking to you, girl lying on the bed in her underwear who really needs to pee but is too lazy to move. (Where is a catheter when you need one?)

Anyway: YOU IN THE BED! Does your blog have a purpose?

Oh. Whoops. We'll have to wait until next time for the answer to that, because no longer can she pretend that, if she delays thirty more seconds,  she won't end up peeing in her pants.

Until next time:

Thank  you, and goodnight.

Ordinary Moments

From one of my favorite lecturers and writers:

We miss what is truly important because we are on the quest for what is extraordinary, not understanding that in our ordinary lives, in the ordinary moments of our lives is really where we can find the most joy.

Brene Brown

If that isn't something to sit down and think about, I don't know what is.

Facial Toner

"Mary, you are in your early twenties right?"

Surely it doesn't count if you lie to an eight year old. "Yes. Very early twenties."

"Well, how old are you exactly?"

"I am twenty - four."

"Hmm. That means you are turning twenty - five in April."

"......yes....."

"So ACTUALLY, you are in your mid twenties."

*Whimper*

I had a crisis when I turned 18: suddenly I could drink legally and I was supposed to vote. That seemed much too grown up for me, and I spent the morning of my eighteenth birthday in tears. And now, with twenty - five just around the corner, I feel another crisis coming on. A quarter life crisis. Because...I can officially say I am......a quarter CENTURY old.

I know. I know. Twenty - five isn't that aged. But the thing is.....I am noticing some changes that I really don't like.

For one thing, I bought a teeth whitening kit the other day. I am not sure if the current state of my teeth is the product of age or tea, but I will blame the former before I blame the latter because......I can't give up tea.

Then, there is my skin. I have always had nearly perfect skin, without ever having to do anything to warrant that. I washed my face when I remembered. I put on moisturizer if I thought my skin felt dry. But mostly, I did nothing.

Not so anymore. Suddenly I have weird dry patches and weird break out patches and I am completely and utterly obsessed with how clogged my pores feel. What a first world problem to have, am I right? Maybe I should go Africa and get my priorities straight.

But...BUT... this morning I noticed two tiny indentations between my eyebrows that DON'T GO AWAY EVEN WHEN I STOP FURROWING MY EYEBROWS. They are there PERMANENTLY.

So, I went to Kiehl's, mostly because it was the first place I saw when I entered the mall, plus every time I open InStyle, I see a huge spread on them. I was barely inside the store when I was nabbed by an extremely solicitous assistant who seemed completely anxious to know what I needed help with. She ushered me into a chair, and I sobbed out my woeful story.

"Well, your skin doesn't really look that bad. But I will do an analysis anyway." She blotted my face with some weird tester sticks, compared the results to a chart and came back with her diagnosis. "You have completely normal skin, with dry patches on your cheeks."

I could have told her that. "But I want AMAZING skin. I want it to stop getting OLD."

"We can certainly help. Wait one minute."

*A short BBM conversation later:* "Darling. So wonderful to meet you."

I looked up into the face of a perfectly dressed, perfectly coiffed man, outfitted in a WHITE LAB COAT, gazing with concern and oozing helpfulness. "Tell me your story. Leave nothing out." He fixed his eyes on mine like a sympathetic priest during confession, and made small noises of affirmation as I told him the whole history of my skin. As I finished, he gasped just a little.

"What do we hear missing? Hmm? A crucial element." He looked expectantly at the shop assistant.

"Toning. She doesn't tone her skin."

"Precisely. Sweetheart. You MUST tone. Absolutely ESSENTIAL. It must become a daily element of your beauty regimen. This (handing me a bottle filled with amber liquid) is what you need. It has hand - picked calendula petals."

Well, if they are hand-picked.....

"And now. Cleanser. Tell me. What is hardest on your skin? Stress? Fluctuating hormones?"

"Oh hormones, hands down. They rule my life."

"Sweetheart, it happens to ALL of us. This will just save your life. "

He has fluctuating hormones too? Do all men have fluctuating hormones? Or just ones who desire to identify very closely with women?

"And I suspect you might just LOVE this: our Midnight Recovery Concentrate. It works miracles."

"Will it even out my skin tone? And help with my wrinkles? If I don't get something that helps, I will need Botox in my forehead by thirty!"

"Oh darling, we've ALL been there. Pat this on after you cleanse and tone, and then seal it with this moisturizer. Magic. Perfection."

"And you are SURE this will work?"

"We will call you next week to make sure it does. You will have glowing skin in no time."

I grasped the counter full of products as if my life depended on it. Both plastic surgery and a burqa seemed inevitable if I didn't buy ALL of the face-saving products. So, a short credit card swipe later, and I was on my way into Victoria's Secret.

Bad idea. You know what I'm talking about. What woman, ever, in any circumstance, wants to be surrounded by posters of VICTORIA'S SECRET MODELS??

Umm.......

I started contemplating extensive liposuction and a full body lift, along with a potential height increase of at least six inches.

At which point I realized I was starting to let myself be crazy... and that maybe the crazy had started when I so eagerly latched onto facial toner with hand-picked calendula leaves, simply because I have a wrinkle on my forehead and a dry spot on my cheek.

But it is so, so easy. North American culture is hard-wired to make us look in the mirror and hate what we see. Case in point: at my sibling's school about half of the mothers look as if they are psychopathic mass murders. Their faces are so full of Botox that they can't smile or move their eyebrows.

After wandering around small town Greece and France I think I am suffering a culture shock. In both places, I became accustomed to graceful, naturally aged faces. They were beautiful in their expressiveness and in the stories the laugh lines and eye-smile crinkles told.

I didn't really realize how much I liked the look of everyone until I re-entered North America, and was faced on a daily basis with smooth faced, airbrushed perfection. I became acclimatized very quickly and....

ended up with a charming gay man ministering to me in Kiehl's, and a bag full of special liquids meant to halt my intensely speedy aging process.

I am the crazy I don't wish to see in the world. Whoops.

Ash Wednesday. Blrg.

Today is Ash Wednesday. The first day of Lent.

I love Lent. It is such an enriching time full of quite moments of prayer, deep self sacrifice, and epic growths in holiness.

I look forward to it every year.

...................Hmmm......Nope.

Absolutely not.

In no way shape or form is this true.

In fact, I hate Lent and usually begin to dread it the day after Christmas, with ever growing hiccups of despair as the calendar creeps forward to the day when I am supposed to get ashes slapped on my forehead and wear them proudly until I *accidentally* but very vigorously scrub them off.

I suppose it's good that I don't like Lent. I am not sure one is actually supposed to enjoy a season of penance and being better-than-normal. That would kind of defeat the purpose.

The thing about Lent is, that simply as a side effect of "giving something up" or trying to attend Mass more, or adding in a few extra prayers here and there, one pays a little more attention to the spiritual side of one's life. And there is the rub.

I don't know about you, but I usually end up wanting to throw the towel in after about a week. Being extra holy becomes too hard. The deep black crevices in my spiritual life open themselves up and swallow me, leaving me no choice but to acknowledge the inevitability of a disturbingly long time in Purgatorio.

Lent this year promises to be nothing different. In fact, it might promise to be something worse.

Oh yes. Already. Before the close of the first day. Failure.

Instead of "giving something up," I decided I would, for the whole of Lent, work on being nicer and more charitable to everyone around me. Maybe work on Patience a little. I saw visions of myself walking around on a cloud of sweetness and light, spreading joy and happiness with each serene glance and graceful gesture that I bestowed on the minions around me.

I was dressed in flowing white, with perfectly styled hair and glistening skin....

Oh wait. Back to my goodness.

I woke up, dressed NOT in flowing white, with hair that looked as if it was an extra large fur ball regurgitated by an obese cat, and skin that desperately needs professional intervention.

To be fair, looking like that, I didn't really have a choice to be anything more or less than a complete bitch. It took precisely fifteen minutes and twenty five seconds for me to bite off, with rabid glee and complete satisfaction, the heads of every single person around me and possibly make them wish that I had never been born. Or, more terribly, that they had never been born.

And then I decided to go to an Ashram because, really, if one religion doesn't work why not try another? Am I right?

Now, at the close of the day, I have come to a conclusion, because there is no other conclusion - that doesn't inspire utter despair - which I can come to.

To enmesh myself in a cliche: What matters is that I get back up. What matters is that I keep trying. What matters is that I face the reality of myself and know that I tend towards head biting and soul crushing. YES - I will try hard NOT to be that way, HOWEVER... let's be honest - very often I WILL succumb to my true self. Just because I keep tripping, doesn't mean I should stop walking. Even if I fall flat on my face, I should get back up. Who wants to stare at concrete? Or have sidewalk bugs crawl up your nose?

So here I am, trying to be nice, inclined to be mean, full of failure, but intending to keep trying. And I have Forty Days to focus in on that.

Lent was MADE for people like me.

And maybe even for you too ;)