Step 1: Apologize

When I was 11 I moved. I don't know how, but in my first 11 years of life I was friends with the cool kids, and obliviously niave...not just niave, obliviously so. I didn't even know I was niave.

So, when I moved to my new town, where there were only 20 other kids in my class I had quite the learning curve, I slowly picked up on things, always too afraid to ask my friends what they meant, but I'm a smart cookie, so caught on to most things eventually.

Sadly, early on, when I first arrived in grade 6 I had very few fiends. I was picked on. I was terrified. I just followed along, and flew under the radar. Anything to avoid attention because attention was negative. That's why, when my classmates bullied a boy in our class I did nothing. I don't remember ever doing anything to him, I don't remember ever talking to him myself. He may have spoken to me once, and I think I wasn't my normal overaccomodating self, maybe rude. I didn't really understand why. My classmates had been bullying this boy for a while. We had to go to group counselling and the police had to talk to a class of 12 years olds about harrassment. Someone stomped on his foot and broke it. Someone stabbed him with a pencil. Someone threatened him with a lighter and bugspray, or some sort of thing that was never really clear. Someone vandalised his locker. He had no friends.


He was called a "fag".

I was afraid and new and all manner of excuses.
I probably laughed a few times when people said something cruel so that I might fit in, or at least not stand out.
I may have been passive, but I feel like I contributed to what is going on now. I don't watch/read/listen to the news, and yet I know that kids across North America are committing suicide because people are bullying them. They are bullied about whatever other people don't like about them. A lot of the kids in the news today were bullied about their sexual preferences. The boy in my class was transferred to a different school because we were intolerable.

Listening to the news, and watching the most recent episode of Glee, has had me thinking for the last few days about the issue. I don't understand why the people who are considered "straight" feel so entitled to abuse others. Schools and religious groups make a huge deal about who can say about the issues or ignore them all together, and so people SUFFER.

Really and truly I don't even think the boy in my class was gay. I don't know. And it really doesn't matter because someone decided to give him that label and he was treated horribly.

And I've been thinking, what if the actual answer to the bullying was if we, the grown ups, started apologizing to the people we hurt when we were young. Or are hurting now. What if we stood up for people being bullied. What if kids saw us regretting the things we did? Would they see that ostracising and mocking people who are not "just like me" is something they will one day regret?

I don't know if it will make a difference. But what if, step 1 is apologizing?

Pierre Maltais, I don't know where you are or how you are and I can't take back what was done in grade 6, but I deeply regret never standing up and passively going along with what we did to you. You deserve to have found wonderful people to share life with, and I hope you haven't let our 12 year old selves hold you back.

It is stupid to believe that one apology that no one will read can make a difference, but I am choosing to hope that the world can change, that instead of legislating children's intereactions they will learn from their parents to interact with compassion and love.

Those are my thoughts. And that's my apology. My ownership of responsibility.

Do you need to step up to the plate and help spread a whole new attitude of compassion and love? To change the future. I love the idea of making a future so unlike our past that the news makes us smile...

A Day for the Books

Kristina and I may have scared a lot of little children...but we caught Fred Penner's eye! (He made eye contact with us as we sang along to "Sandwiches" and after gave us hugs and told us he liked our energy.

FRED PENNER!!

That's right. A day for the books.

I have also mostly sorted out my Lent issues, and just have to decide that I can commit to what I've come up with (with assistance).

It Sneaks Up Every Year

Every year Lent sneaks up on me. Perhaps it's my non-liturgial lifestyle. I always remember Epiphany (my birthday) but less about what it is (perhaps a refresher on the church calendar is in order...)!

Anyway. Lent. The sneaky season of Lent. I always find myself about 2 days away from Ash Wednesday, realizing it's Ash Wednesday and I have NO IDEA what to give up/take on for Lent this year.

It is definitely TIME TO PANIC!

40 Below Zero

Not quite 50 (sorry Mr. Munsch), but chilly nonetheless.
I have heard it said, "After -10 (or other unreasonably warm temperature) it's all the same."

I do not agree.

There is "cool", "cold", "colder" and "I am not going outside".
These descriptors are not consistently defined by any of the temperature markers, but are more dependent on my mood and my planned activity for the day. So, when the world revolves around me meteorologists will have to actually be trained in psychology in order to actually predict the weather (or how it will be interpreted and forecasted).

I should go now.

Ending Paragraphs with CAPS

Today I went to the gym (which was awful as I haven't been there since before the plague took me out, and I felt like I was starting the entire program all over. I'm hoping THAT doesn't think it can take as long as before!), then to the blood bank to donate, and there I found out that my hemoglobin is 146. Yeah, I'm made of IRON.

I also sliced up pears from Costco and stuck them in my dehydrator. Last time, I made them chips, but this time I cut them thicker (like the book said) and we'll see what comes out...it was good that I went out, because while I'm here I just keep checking. I'm like the kid in the garden who wants to dig up the seeds immediately after the dirt has been patted down. That's why I'm writing now...to stay away from the dehydrator because I can't keep turning it off, and taking off the lid. Tomorrow I have to endure the tempation all over again, just with mango instead of pear. SIGH.

I think I forgot to water my poinsetta one day too many. Not that I can say for sure that if I had watered it yesterday it would be ok, but I think it's been too long now. I watered it this morning and it has not made any attempt to recover. If it had a heart it would try, but it's done NOTHING.

Today I also (finally) finished (I had started a long long long time ago) making my photo album of Spain and Israel for Facebook. It was hard to look at the pictures today. It was the trip of a lifetime, and I love what I accomplished and who I was. I was in pictures and I didn't think twice. I saw so much more than Breton or Edmonton or Winnipeg. I know if it lasted forever it would not be the same, and I am going to learn to be that person anywhere I am, even if not on vacation. Or seeing incredible things or doing incredible things. So, here's to being in more PICTURES!

D-A-N-C-I-N-G & P-U-Z-Z-L-E-S & G-A-M-E-S. Oh My.

The problem, I have decided, with living in an attic apartment is that you can't really just dance (and sometimes, I just want to dance!). There is always this concern that the people downstairs don't want loud music OR jumping and leaping going on above them. I wish I was not aware of that possibility...cuz then I'm blast some music and do some cleaning dancing (dancing to music while cleaning is really the best way to clean).

I love writing with brackets. I am not entirely sure, anymore, what brackets are actually used for. Yet, I love to use them to insert whatever I want to say with complete disregard to grammar and punctuation.

My apartment now has a fantastic coffee table (it's glass, and I always VOWED never to have a glass coffee table because they have a knack at becoming fingerprinty and the dust that accumulates is incredibly obvious, but I do kind of really like this one). I put a tiny plant and 2 brass and glass candleholders on it, and now just need to find some candlesticks for the candleholders to make it perfect. There is a kitten puzzle that I can open, put out, and maybe start. I'm not a puzzler. I'm hopeful that someone will come and visit and put it together for me. My mom suggested I should not put it out because it will be one more thing I'll have to dust. I'll just have to have company over sooner rather than later.

So, if you are a puzzler, feel free to come over and work on the kittens with (for) me.

Under my tv I have Grey's Anatomy the Board Game (it was passed on to me, not sought out and purchased ha ha), Apples to Apples, iMAgiNiff, BopIt, and 2 decks of cards. I want a games night so bad, but am not sure who should come or where it should be. Part of me is very much afraid that no one would come. Oh The Fear. It follows me every-which-way I go, but a games night would be full of laughs, and smiles, and cheer! At least that is how I envision it.

All around my lovely new coffee table with some yummy snacks.

A LONG Time Coming

I've been wanting to write. Like, actually itching to write. I just have no idea what to write.
Let's see. Today was a fun kind of day. I went to work (dressed like a normal person!) and then went home (got rear ended) and then went and exchanged Christmas gifts with the lovely Amanda and her charming daughter, then went home and answered the billion questions one must answer to make a claim...the good news: the accident was not my fault.

I've been thinking about writing a lot lately. I think it would be such a neat experience to have something published. If only I could settle on a subject or a topic to write about!

It's taken me about 5 hours to write all of that...and I'm going to hit the hay now...perhaps something extraordinarily awesome to write will come to me in my dreams...g'night!