Life

From Juicy to Feisty!

A few years ago I wrote a post about being JUICY (Are you juicy? – June 2011), and I published it again here on this blog on Sunday.  I am finding these days that being juicy just isn’t enough.

feistyŸ/ˈfīstē/
Adjective:
1. Having or showing exuberance and strong determination
2. Touchy and aggressive

Juicy seems to be the first part of the definition of feisty. I thought it would be enough to get me through life with a smile on my face. These days I think I need to go to Step Two: Touchy and Aggressive. Except I don’t really think it is about being either Touchy or Aggressive, I think it is more about being honest and saying it the way it is.

I keep finding myself in situations where I WANT to say:
“You are going to talk to me like that and think I believe a word you are saying?
Or
“It has been three months since you got back to me, and now you are saying you want to work with me because business is a little tougher for you and you need my business?
Or
“You told me one thing last week and this week you are telling me something completely different and pretending that you never even had that conversation with me?”

And you know what?
I AM SAYING IT EXACTLY THE WAY IT IS! 

I am being respectful and honest and only using the F-word in my head (that is F-U-C-K and not F-E-I-S-T-Y) but interestingly enough the response is quite refreshing. Well actually there is a lot of stuttering at first, long pauses at the other end of the phone, and many lines of apologies in the e-mails with closings that have gone from “Kind regards” to “Let’s talk soon!”. The end result is a stronger relationship and the knowledge (and relief) that both sides may be straight up with whatever they need to say.

Here is my advise on being FEISTY:
1. Listen to what that voice in your head is telling you – that you are being given a line, played with, or given the run around.
2. ALWAYS BE RESPECTFUL, POLITE AND HONEST IN WHAT YOU SAY. Remember, you don’t want to play their game or be mean or rude or condescending.
3. Ease into feistiness. It is a bit addictive, once you start; it’s hard to stop.
4. Start with being JUICY. If you haven’t mastered that you will never be able to be FEISTY!

Have a FEISTY day!

Somewhere Over the Rainbow

I’m at a payphone trying to call home
All of my change I spent on you…
Maroon 5

I was listening to the radio in the car yesterday and I heard the announcer talking about the new Maroon 5 song called Payphone. The producers were concerned that no one would get it because there are no payphones anymore. Kids these days wouldn’t know what the song was all about. It is #1 on the charts right now.
Now this post was going to be sentimental and touch you in so many ways. I was going to take you back to when you were a child and talk about walks to the ice-cream store and running through the sprinkler. I am sure if you were under forty you wouldn’t have related to most of what I was going to write because you may not have known those things in your lifetime, or maybe under thirty. And then I watched the video to this song.
When I got to YouTube I saw that it was marked, Explicit I figured there must be a swear word or two. It is a little more than that. Let’s just go with needless violence and destruction. I am posting it here although part of me wonders if I am only promoting the violence but you will go look for it anyway. So here it is:

I just have to ask: WHY? Why does it have to be that videos (and movies and TV shows and video games) are being made like this? All we hear about these days are shootings and bombing and death. Do we need to glamorize it in our music videos too? I know I sound like an old fuddy duddy and God I hope so! If I were in my twenties would I think it was cool? I hope not. Or worse, in my teens. I don’t even know what you do if you are a parent. Do you tell your children they can’t watch these videos? How do you police that?

If happy ever after did exist
I would still be holding you like this
All those fairytales are full of sh*t
One more stupid love song I’ll be sick….
Maroon 5

I grew up with happy ever afters and I believe in them. I really do.
I grew up with running through the sprinkler and ice-cream cones on hot summer nights.
I grew up with 45’s and 33’s and dancing in my bedroom memorizing the words.
I grew up where the channel was changed on the TV if the show was too violent and the language was too course and let’s not even talk about nudity. We didn’t.
We sat down to dinner on Sunday nights and had to finish our peas whether we wanted to or not.
We took the bus and got a ride with the milkman to the corner in his truck.
We delivered newspapers and didn’t expect a tip.
We knew when we did something wrong, we waited for the punishment we knew we deserved, and we were sorry. Truly sorry.

But we didn’t watch videos like this.

I am the biggest believer in freedom of speech in all ways. I believe in the joy and hope of creativity and that we have a need to express ourselves. What are we doing wrong that videos like this are what we want to create? If this is what our world is creating and expressing then do we have any hope for a happy ending anymore?

I will not give up.
I will make a wish on the first star I see at night.
I will say RABBITS! on the first of the month.
I will keep money in my pocket when there is a new moon.
I will remember what happens when I step on a crack.
I will hope that the violence and destruction that surrounds us will come to an end one day.
I will say my prayers before I go to sleep.
And I will pray that there is a happy ending somewhere at the end of the rainbow.

Renewal

I haven’t written here in a very long time. The last time was just after the New Year in fact. Then recently I received an e-mail from WordPress asking me to renew the domain for this blog. I had to make a decision if I should continue this blog or close it down. I have been doing what I am quick to criticize everyone else of doing: nothing. Well not nothing exactly, but I have been so busy wrapped up with work that I haven’t been doing anything else. Sound familiar?

I have been in the garden watering and weeding over the last few days. It has been hot and beautiful, perfect weather to be a gardener. I love the process of the planting and I love looking after the garden once it is done – the weeding and the watering. For me it is like meditation. There is sitting and walking meditation, could there be gardening meditation too?

I learned how to garden from my father over forty years ago as a child. I had my own garden in our backyard and he would help me plant pansies and marigolds. He showed me how to take the seedlings out of the pots, how far apart to put them, and then how to dig the hole, put the young plants in, and then fill in with the earth and finally to water them. It’s what we would do my Dad and I in the early spring after the May long weekend in sunny old Winnipeg.

I usually forgot about the garden as the summer progressed and we headed down to the lake for July and August. When I would come back after the Labour Day long weekend for school I would run down to see the garden and it would be bright with pansies and the marigolds would be strong and high. My Dad looked after it all summer for me.

My father passed away in January and I am wondering if that is why I stopped writing my blog. I think I always wrote it for him. I don’t really like to admit that, but I know it is the truth. It gave us something to talk about, something that kept us connected as we each grew older. I know that he didn’t always agree with what I wrote but he loved that I wrote. When my brothers and I were cleaning up his things we found files of everything that I had ever written. Not strange for a parent to do that, but I found it strange for my father. It was not how I thought of him: sentimental. Perhaps I didn’t know him as I thought I did, or I am more like him than I thought.

My garden this year is quite spectacular. There aren’t any pansies or marigolds, but I planted it exactly the way my Dad taught me to. I get out there on the weekends and I prune, deadhead, weed and I water. Just as I know my father did when I was down at the lake for the summer. He was there making sure it would be there for me when I came home.

I am not sure that writing this blog, or life, for that matter is any different. We need to be consistent, and work at it and give it the love and respect that it deserves.  A garden, a blog, or life: You water it and weed it and give it some love. You work at it. I thought my father was showing me how to garden when I was a child, I think now that he was simply showing me how to live.

Are you juicy?

I heard this a few years ago at a conference called The Power Within from a woman named Loretta Laroche. She is an acclaimed speaker, consultant, author & TV personality who gives talks and makes us laugh at ourselves. Or at least she made me laugh at myself. She spent the hour on stage talking about stress and what we do and don’t do to make it better and how humour can help in our lives. If any of you have seen or heard her I know that you laughed even if you did your best not to as I saw many of the men in the audience ‘trying’ to do. Us men are always the last to give in. “I am not going to laugh, she is not really funny…..” and then we finally let out a guffaw from holding in all the laughter.

There are three things that I took away from her talk:

1. Don’t take life or yourself so seriously. Get rid of that pinched up, not smiling, I know it all face and laugh a little.
2. This I do every morning. I come down the stairs, okay, sometimes I bound down the stairs when I am in an especially good mood and jump into the dining room, throw my arms into the air and say, “TA DA!” What that means is: “Here I am world, get ready for me. Watch out because I am right around the corner!”
 If you don’t think that starts my day on a positive note I can tell you!
3. BE JUICY. That’s right. Next time someone says, and someone will say this to you every day: “How are you?” Mind you half the time they are not really listening or seem to realize they are even asking. Look them straight in the eye and say, “I AM JUICY!”

Is life not filled with so much joy and laughter and possibility, is it not really JUICY!
“BUT…” you say, “I have problems, I have all kinds of things going on in my life, I I I……” You know what I am going to say to all of that: STOP IT!
So next time, someone says, “How are you?”
Answer, “I am JUICY!”
What is the worst that can happen?
1. They laugh.
2. You laugh.
3. They look at you funny and laugh.
4. They look at you funny and you laugh.
Get the picture? So far none of the above seems like a bad thing to me.

Have a JUICY day!