AURORA BOREALIS

YESTERDAY WAS(cue in drumroll)...... EARTH DAY! Everyone was to shut all of their lights off from 8:30pm-9:30pm to make a statement about energy conservation. Cities all over the globe took part, including my city of Saskatoon! I have just begun to realize how lucky I am to live in Canada. Canada is one of the most beautiful, least polluted places on the planet. There are moments of true natural beauty here in front of my very eyes. Saskatchewan is famous for it's Northern Lights(aka: Aurora Borealis). One of the most fascinating places to view the Northern Lights in Canada is along the shores of Hudson Bay in Manitoba ... polar bear country! The other prairie provinces of Canada(where I am living right now) are also excellent for viewing the Northern Lights as there are wide open spaces and very few towns meaning plenty of darkness to enjoy the spectacular sight. The hours around midnight are the most rewarding to watch "Nature's Fireworks". I thought I would show some of you living in other parts of the world what it looks like:) Let's keep our planet beautiful and try to take care of it. HAPPY EARTH DAY!

The Infamous Fork

I thought that the infamous fork in the road( that we all come to at some point in our lives) was divided into two. There are said to be two different paths and one has to decide to take one or the other. It is pretty black and white... choose A or B, left or right. The standard fork in North America has 5 prongs. I have come to the North American fork in the road where there are 5 different decisions I could make and all could inevitably change my life. I have never been one for making decisions. I ponder too much and think too much, and in the end, usually stay where I am and never fully make a decision one way or the other. Maybe this is because I am a Gemini? I have two personalities and my rational, intelligent person often disagrees with my "fly by the seat of my pants", heavily emotional person. Who really knows why I am the way that I am....I know I don't. So I won't get into the logistics of these private decisions but they are very hard ones to make. I hope I can get enough enlightenment to make the right decision and then enough courage to follow through with it. It is scary to think that I am in charge of my own destiny and whatever decisions I make are ones that I will have to live with forever. I wish there were less options because then I could just do eeny meeny miney mo;)

MY PROMISE TO MYSELF

I promise to...

Marry my soul mate
See the Great Wall of China
Adopt a baby from China
Own a home
Return to Japan
See the Eiffel Tower
Go to Shakespeare's home
Go para-sailing
Learn another language
Have babies
Be healthy
Donate my organs
Donate my time for a good cause
Get 2 (or 3) University degrees
Write a book
Take lots of pictures
Have a spa day
Drink wine and espresso in Italy
Go scuba diving in Australia
Have a job that I LOVE
Inspire someone
Live every single day like it is my last...

Death by School

Homework is literally killing me...I swear! haha
Having almost completed my first year of school I am feeling overwhelmed and, in general, very tired. I forgot that the end of the year means tons of work. Every day I seem to have hours of homework to do... not to mention meetings and other engagements. I am on student council for next year which I am happy about but I will have a course load of 13 classes(I just found this out today!) I guess I should count myself lucky right now because next year will undoubtedly be MUCH worse in terms of workload. It seems odd because the work is not the same as what I had to do for my first degree yet it seems that everything expected in Education takes a lot of planning and is therefore quite tedious and time consuming. I am looking forward to the last day of school which is April 8th and then I am looking forward to my last final exam on April 25th. I am moving back to Tisdale for the summer to work and hopefully(fingers crossed) save a ton of money for next year. I am not used to living on a "student's salary" ;) Wish me luck on my exams and papers, hopefully it will all be smooth sailing...

A Heartfelt Shout Out!

PUGS SCHMUGS
Just want to send one heartfelt shout out to Miss Jody for the lovely display of pugs on her blog put there especially for my viewing pleasure! Just in case people don't know, I have a problem with these creatures. The main problem is that their eyes do not look directly at you. There is always one eye that is somehow looking in the wrong direction. Also, they look to me as if their faces have been pressed in and I always feel bad and want to pop it back out for them;) I am loving this ongoing joke though and always smile when I get a google-eyed pug postcard from my friends over in Japan. Thanks You Two!(I am sure Juan had something to do with all this as well) xoxo

My Slate

We are all born completely and totally innocent. We are truly clean slates, untouched by any type of emotion or hardship. I have been thinking about what life does to us...how each thing we do from the moment we are born, or each thing that is done to us, shapes us into who we are. Some people blossom into beautiful, intelligent people and others don't . Is this because they inherently were born to not succeed in life? Are people born with a certain kind of temperament that is unchangeable? I do not have answers to these questions but it often seems this way. Scientologists believe that we choose our own parents even before conception. There is also a belief that through reincarnations we hold karmic relations with certain people(our parents) and choose to be born to them for one reason or another. I am not sure that these ideologies sit well with me. I do not think that anyone would choose to be born into some of the abusive, impoverished conditions that they are in if it was their choice. Karma is something which I do believe in however. I think we all attract certain things or people (good or bad) to ourselves through our thoughts and actions. We should live our lives in such a way that every action tells others what type of person we are and know that whether it is now or down the road, those actions will come back to us and therefore live our lives accordingly. I have been having very strong memories lately, they are not brought on by anything in particular but I seem to be reminiscing about my life in general. They could be memories from last year, memories from my time in Japan, or memories from when I was 4 years old but I have come to realize they have all shaped me into the person that I am right now at this very moment. Are people born depressed or shy or is that something that developed because of defining moments of their life that turned out negatively? Are people happy and successful because they were always told by their parents that they could achieve anything? Experiences we have throughout our lifetime change the structure of our personality for better or worse. I think that although our slates have been written on, and for me at 28 years old, there is A LOT of writing but I believe no matter what we can make a choice. We can choose to wallow in past mistakes or move forward with our lives and change our perception about ourselves and the world around us. I want to live a life of complete freedom and joy and try to have life experiences that will make me feel these things . My new creed is "Dance like no one is watching, love like you'll never be hurt,sing like no one is listening,and live like it's heaven on earth."
If the whole world could do that what a place it would be...

Winter Blues

It is March 8th and it is cold. The wind blows, we have blizzards and all you see everyday is white snow all around you. I am getting really sick of this. I was quite happy and optimistic until the last couple days. Now I am just thinking " Come on, Enough Already!" Living in Saskatchewan, Canada we live through about 7 months of cold, snow filled days. There are about 2 1/2 months of nice, warm weather and the other 2 1/2 months are all about slush, mud, rain and all the leaves dying or budding on the trees. Although I have lived here almost my entire life I cannot help but wonder who would choose to live through this. Yes it is beautiful in the summer(all 2 1/2 months of it) but the rest of the year it sucks! I am so used to plugging in my car, having to let it warm up for 20 mins before I can drive it, shoveling snow, brushing snow off my car 3 times per day, taking heavy winter clothes on and off every time I go in and out and lastly just basically freezing my bum off. Frankly, it really chaps my ass (metaphorically and literally). I talk to friends in other countries where it is 10 degrees celsius while I am sitting here in -35 degrees celsius and am insanely jealous. It doesn't really seem fair. I will continue to wait patiently until spring has sprung. Hope all who are living elsewhere are enjoying your lovely weather;) xoxo

A Serious Contemplation...

Love is a funny thing...
I don't think you can help who you are in love with. No one can. It is something that is either there or it is not. Other factors don't seem to take precedent over this feeling and the heart usually wins over the head. I have been asking both married women and women who have been divorced what love is and what makes a marriage work. All have said "You just know." The divorced people say that they knew in their heart that it was not right and would not work before they even walked down the aisle. I wondered if they thought that in retrospect but after accidently saying that out loud they answered that you know in your heart if it is wrong or right at the time. The ones that are married say that it is incredibly hard and it takes a lot of effort to keep a marriage alive and well. You need to have the love but there are so many other factors to take into consideration. I think in this day in age where divorce is so prevalent it makes it hard to make decisions about marriage. People seem to wait longer and longer to tie the knot and are far more contemplative about their potential mate thinking of all possible factors and making list upon list of positive and negative attributes. (Maybe this is just me??)
A common thing for people to do in modern times like these is select their dates on the internet. You get a list of their basic traits which include height, eye and hair color and even religion. You see if they have been married before or have had children with anyone else. Is this how you should meet someone? Is it possible that fate is a myth and a computer can play cupid?!?!? Fearful of making a mistake, I tend to overanalyze things and feel that I can not just listen to my heart but think down the road to the hardships that may or may not occur. I have talked with single people, people in relationships(both long and short term) and people that are married. Every person has a different story, different set of obstacles and different views on love and how relationships should be run. A friend of mine told me that an old lady she worked with(who had been married almost 70 years) told her that the secret to a long marriage is strength. Each person individually has to be strong enough to carry the other through the times when they fall out of love. This is reminiscent of "Footsteps" where the man thinks that he has been abandoned and God tells him that the times he saw one set of footprints in the sand was not because he was left alone...they were the times when he carried him. One person must always have enough love for both of them or it will not work.Each will undoubtedly fall in and out of love with the other throughout a lifetime together. I have concluded that there is no right thing to do and no cut and dry answers when it comes to love which poses a problem for me as I do not like to take risks. I want to be assured that everything will be perfect... but life is not perfect nor are relationships. Is love enough to make things work? Does the heart dictate a smooth marriage? In order to love someone completely you have to be able to forgive, compromise, compliment, apologize and above all respect that person for who they are and what they stand for. In addition to love...acceptance, respect and understanding are the key attributes.True love will encompass all of these things. Are we ever assured that we will not encounter problems of such magnitude that it forces us to give up on that person? My conclusion is there will never be that assurance but love does conquer all and it is the strongest of any human emotion. Love is all you have in life. Everyone inherently wants to love and to be loved. I am finally putting caution to the wind and shutting off my analytical side and will begin to finally succumb to this idea. If not I will surely end up alone with my bottle of wine sitting on my afghan covered couch surrounded by cats like Bridget Jones(in the first movie of course ;)

Barren of Solace

I write a lot and I have started a number of novels over past couple of years. Here are a couple of excerpts from the one I am working on right now entitled "Pieces"

We all wear our grief as a badge for everyone to see, it shows others that we loved and did it well. There is always that picture on the wall of what you think your life is like but undoubtedly it falls off at some point and is smashed. All you can do is stare at all of the broken pieces and know that you will never be able to glue all of those tiny slivers back together.


I found out today that one song played on the radio can evoke an emotion so strong it takes you in an instant roller coaster ride breaking your heart all over again and leaving you breathless, heart racing. I never want to hear it again...

Comments, criticisms, questions greatly appreciated...