Sunday, March 24, 2013

Just Another Sunday Morning

I guiltily cop to getting up past 10am yesterday morning and today.
God, it feels great.
But, it also destroys your day. Severs it, really, slicing it neatly in half to what you can and will get done, and those things that are just Not Gonna Happen today.
Coffee falls in the former category. Not just making it, but sitting with it. Not pouring it into a to-go cup, rushing to the car with your lunch and your work-bag and getting all set to sit in traffic for forty minutes (it's called Commuting.  I have the feeling that it's going to be one of those things that future generations will marvel at, as they did in that great book "Woman on the Edge of Time" by Marge Piercy.  They did WHAT? They DROVE TO WORK EVERYDAY? Why?).

So yes, weekend coffee is poured into a proper mug, milk is warmed, and maybe there is some Bailey's added, (there, now you  know everything) and in the background, the laundry spins in the dryer and the Sunday playlist drones on the iPod.
Coffee has a different purpose on weekend mornings, too, for this "weekend athlete" as my sister describes our work-out habits. It's fuel to run. It's a little spark to get me out the door.

So, the sleep thing.
It was a busy week, one where I measured my days by how fast they went as I rushed to get enough done in the day so that I could somehow enjoy my night without stress, or guilt, "did I get enough done?" and then the ever-present "does everything think this way, live this way, stress this way?".
I know the answer: yes. We all stress about something, and as my friend A. sums it up--we all use something to take that stress away. The thought recurred to me yesterday during my Saturday run, this time along Queen Street East (blessing the flatness of the road, so unlike my Broadview route whose hill sometimes seem as sheer and vertical as the side of a mountain) watching people outside the beer store--one guy sorting bottles, rows and rows of them, into crates, for the bottle return. Another guy sitting on the pavement with a guitar, the case open in front of him, doing his own makeshift Saturday jam.  I ran by it all thinking about what that something is, as A. and I discussed, pills, alcohol, food, stress, anger, a particular person whom you really just need to get the hell away from.  That is by no means an exhaustive list, but you get the picture.
As my husband calls them 'demons'. It's a fun conversation to have with yourself.

I'm sipping coffee and Baileys now and thinking about the next step of my day, the run, while recapping the week in my head.
An extremely busy work-week, capped off by a meeting with colleagues that truly ended in a screaming match, (we're talking grown adults here), my own wonder at watching the meeting end in this trainwreck, while not participating, I felt as tainted as anyone could sitting in the boardroom of our office sharing the same air.
Friday night saw me gulping champagne with friends (hello, demon) in an attempt to banish the memory of the Friday afternoon meeting, cabbing it home post-midnight and falling into a deep, dreamless sleep on the couch, sleeping very late the next morning.
Saturday found me committed to running, and it took longer than I thought, and as always, made me feel better than I could have possibly anticipated.
The car got washed, as did my hair, and I found myself at the fortieth birthday party of a good friend a few hours later, TTC'ing my way there like a champ. Seated with friends we laughed, drank, left early (tired....). I reflected on my own upcoming fortieth lying in bed reading the very original book "The Bride Stripped Bare" (more about that in another entry--it needs its own space) and fell asleep again, quickly, deeply, and here I am. It's Sunday afternoon and I'm in pajamas, letting the internet steal time from me, and writing, and catching up with friends (I realized, with pride, that I've managed to fit in catching up with each of my close friends this week. It felt good. I need them so much).

I also came across these two wonderful blogs, written by wildly intellligent women, the kind of blogs that put the twenty-somethings' whinging about men and self-image to shame:

http://bellejarblog.wordpress.com/about/


http://rantagainsttherandom.wordpress.com/

Take a read at both these sites, you will not be disappointed.
Real writing, real struggles, no fronting, no pictures of plates of food (that I came across).
Just logic (wow!), honesty, and a directness that comes with experiencing the world not as not living in a protective bubble.

The bubble has burst, people.


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