It's a Ruff Life

Today was one of those days there is no question everything happens for a reason.  I was quite delayed leaving work and was meant to pick up a Christmas present for a certain husband (who shall remain nameless) at a specific time but ran an hour late.   So there I was, driving at the other end of the city when I see through rain & fog, (yup, it's getting dramatic) this little white fluff ball runing down the centre line of the street.  A car stopped, but moved on quickly, a truck swerved to avoid him but didn't stop.  I stopped instantly and pulled over throwing my 4-ways on and got out.  Looking back not considering on-coming traffic was probably a bad idea, but I didn't care. 

By the time I stopped and got out, he was nowhere to be found.  I signaled to the truck behind me, a sort of "where did he go" look and I walked around to the back of my car.  There he was, almost waiting for me to find him like a game of hide and seek.  I bent down and he came to me with no hesitation.  I picked him up, and a lovely lady came up and asked if I needed help, and then assisted me in getting him into my car.

NEW CAR!  BRAND NEW CAR!  WHITE DOG COVERED IN MUD!  Husband who shall remain nameless will KILL ME!

I had just put a huge tarp in our car for the Christmas tree we transported home so she unfolded that and laid it across the back seat.  Not 3 seconds later there was my new friend plopped in the passenger seat beside me waiting to go on our adventure.  I checked for a collar or tags, neither of which he had. He was so friendly and immediately burried himself in my coat for warmth.  White work clothes aside, I couldn't move him.  He seemed so grateful and content, so I pulled into the closest parking lot and decided to head to the shelter nearby.

"WE DON'T TAKE DOGS".  Another poor show by the London Humane Society.  Never a fan of them.

My Mom called me (after I left her a pretty frantic message) and we decided to take this little man to a no kill shelter on the other side of town.  If it was my dog, well I would have him tagged and micro-chipped, but I would also hope that if someone found him they would take him somewhere safe.  Off we went, picking up my Mom en route so I could drive with both hands, and soon my little man was safely in the arms of a technician promising a bath and dinner.

Riding shot gun

So, for 7 days he will await his family, which hopefully won't take that long, and if they don't find him he will go up for adoption.  If we didn't have our two furballs, even though a maltese/shitzhu/poodle thing like him isn't my cup of tea, I wouldn't have minded him curling up on our couch. 

So, 2 lessons learned today. 
1) License or at least tag your pet.  A collar, something to identify them.
2) When your boss decides to talk a lot at the end of the day and you think "I need to get out of here!"  perhaps just one time, it's because you are meant to go somewhere a little bit later and stumble across a little guy in need of a nice new white shirt and a warm new car. 

I'll check in with my man in a few days.  Here's hoping he gets back home for Christmas and that his next adventure isn't beyond his backyard fence.

From Bags to Riches

Ever since I was a kid I have had an issue with personification.  Not an issue with what it means, I have a problem personifying everything in my life.  I attach emotion and a back-story to almost everything I need to throw away, donate, trade or hand in.  I remember when I was about 6 or 7 I was playing in our front yard (when it was safe to do that without parental supervision or an electric fence surrounding a property) and my Mom had given me some sort of snack in a Zip-loc or other generic type bag to eat whilst I pretended to be Jem from Hollogram fame on our front porch.  I finished said snack and threw the empty bag over my shoulder, (clearly recycling wasn't a concern of mine) and much like American Beauty, I watched the bag slowly tumble down the driveway and into the gutter, and in my head thought "What if that bag has a family, and all it wants is to be reunited with the rest of it's family in the garbage can, and I just threw it away?!"

I retrieved the bag, stuffed it in my pocket and felt such satisfaction by throwing it in the garbage , hoping it would find some sense of camaraderie among the other discarded items.  It became a life-long problem.

You can't make this stuff up.

I pictured myself as Jem, or if not, Purple afro gal.

Why on earth do I tell you, the 3 people who may still read my blog, this story?  Because tomorrow Adam & I are going to trade in our beloved 2001 Volkswagen Jetta (or Yetta as we dubbed her after Adam mispronounced it the first time) for a shiny brand new 2013 Jetta.  Today I cleaned her out, and instructed Adam to take her for one final wash tomorrow, and to take some pics for the inevitable day when our future kids say "What did your first car look like?"   

Yetta was my first ever car.  Purchased used from a BB Gun happy rube outside of London that decided before I bought the car from him, it was a must that I knew the ins and outs of his divorce, and that the car kept his ex-wife safe when she used it, but hopefully nothing else would.  (I don't think it was amicable.)  So almost 214,000km's later, with a dashboard lit up like the 4th of July we will trade her in, with me hopeful she will be used for more than a strip show to sell her off for parts.  It's so degrading, and I'm trying to remember it's just a car.  Just a heap of metal with tires that took us...

-To and from the airport for 5 cruise ship contacts and numerous family pick-ups

-Adam drove her to our wedding

-To Chicago (twice)

-To Ottawa

-To Toronto too many times to count

-To Wal-mart to buy tweezers when Émilie decided to pet a cactus and we fell in love with Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance" to stop her from crying

-To 2 Funerals in one summer

-To get Adam's Permanent Resident status card

-To my 5 jobs since 2008

-To Adam's 2 jobs

-Through one accident safely (Adam!)

-To Niagara Falls & Niagara On The Lake

-To Buffalo for Celine Dion

-To Toronto for Celine Dion (the following week)

-To Detroit airport 

-My first (and only) speeding ticket

-Adam's first speeding ticket and a parking ticket (Yes, Adam you have to park the same way traffic goes in this county!)

-To Yoga

-To Arbonne Will Call

-To Family Events

-To go camping and fishing and on date nights and grocery shopping 

-To Adam's first ever musical in Toronto

-Wynton back and forth to the vet every day for a week when he was ill

-Through so many drive-thru's I can't begin to count

-Back to a VW dealership because we are so happy with ours we wanted another one

How can you not stop to think that the memories surrounding that sexy hunk of metal are not somehow permeated into the leather and plastic that surrounded us?  Yetta wasn't just freedom and a way to get around for me, she was the first car I bought and was so proud to pick up Adam with when he came home from his contract without me.  She was my first ever possession that I had to insure, and from day one felt completely safe in.  She goes like fire off the line, and her horn does NOT mess around.  

Adam was determined to sway me towards a different car, a different brand.  But no.  I would not waiver.  I know he'll miss that beep she makes when he hates a song and you abruptly turn down the radio, and how when he locks her  at night with her amazing trademark jack-knife key it beeps 3 times and he yells "Bye Yetta" through our parking garage.  (The new model doesn't have such kick-ass features)  He'll miss me putting in the tapes that Mark made me in high-school (yes, it has a tape deck with a CD changer in the trunk!  I told you it was cool!) and he'll miss burning his legs on those hot summer days on the leather.  We both will.

So, tomorrow I will do my best to thank her for her almost 6 years of safety, fun memories and so many trips since we got married without any sort of weird emotion.  Sounds crazy, but that car was my first step at proving I was an adult, and that I could go anywhere her Turbo engine would allow it.

Thank you Yetta. You are Das BEST Auto ever.

Beep Beep.

And though she be but little...

Anyone who knows me knows how much I love working out and eating healthy.

Sorry, I was distracted by the cheese, gravy and carbs.

I am NOT a sporty spice.  I was lucky enough to be born with my grandmother's metabolism, along with my Dad's love for salt.  The fact that one balances the other out is great, but aside from the movement I was forced to make look natural on cruise ships for 8 years, it takes a lot of prompting to get me to a gym.  I currently pay forty-something dollars a month to go to a semi-air conditioned Goodlife location that more than often makes me feel like I'm a member of the Red Hat Society.  It seems to be the new "hang-out" for ladies over a certain age who, instead of, oh, I don't know, actually doing the class that they paid for, decide to turn it into a ladies social hour.  I don't know if I should be doing lunges or giving my recipe for chicken pot pie.

 

Recently however, I have come across an amazing and London exclusive (hopefully not for long) place to address my various concerns with my health and strength.  Many of you know when I was 14 I had surgery for a severe case of scoliosis.  Those of you who don't...well, just keep reading, and for shame for not knowing my surgical history.
While I still have a very obvious (to me only I think) protruding right shoulder blade resulting in my back constantly asking a question, and a slight thug swagger from having one leg shorter than the other, my correction was astounding, as I grew 3 inches in 12 hours.  Not something everyone experiences in their life!  While gaining several inches in height, I lost almost all of my flexibility, and have been desperately trying to get it back since then.  An additional bonus to this is the looming threat of early onset arthritis, which I am determined to combat no matter what.  Discomfort daily is just par for the course for me.  And what is the best fight against this?  No, not poutine.  It's exercise.

While stalking checking out someone's Facebook page I came across a Yoga place called FlxYoga.  I saw this pop up on Groupon and a few other things, and I was intrigued, but was "happy" with my current twice a week workout routine.  For whatever reason I couldn't stop checking out the promo video of it.  (Check it out, the ladies & gents are pretty amazing.)  I saw the two Londoners who developed it would be going on Dragon's Den to promote their new regime, and that made me think..."I need to get to this before I can't get in."  

FlxYoga (or FlyYoga as my friend Sean calls it) was developed by Angela Rivard, a successful business owner, mother, philanthropist and entrepreneur who developed it in her make-shift basement home gym. Being active her entire life, her fitness regime always consisted primarily of weight training.  She no longer wanted a muscular physique and was motivated to develop a workout that would result in a leaner more feminine appearance.  

"Hang off ropes and get a workout?  Leaner and develop muscle tone?  WHY NOT?!"  So, after a nervous email to ensure it wouldn't kill me, I was in love after my first class.  With only 12 spots per class, the individual attention was just what I needed to ensure I didn't impale myself with anything, and to push me.  After going to cardio, strength and various Yoga studios, this was the first time I felt my hamstrings stretch...like, seriously stretch.  I was sore, but not in pain the next day, and couldn't wait to go back.

Ah, my back.  The reason we started this journey today.  My biggest obstacle since my surgery, and mainly in life, is not to expect my body to do what the gal beside me is doing.  I don't know if I will ever be able to touch my toes without bending my knees slightly, and I honestly don't know if it's possible for my body to even come close to do "boat", a pose Ang developed as a means of torture, in which you sit on your sitz bones and raise your feet in the air to essentially resemble - a boat.  I resemble more of a, well a person just sitting on a mat.  But, it is my goal to do boat 100% by December without having my feet on the ground.  My scoliosis granted me level of confidence that I didn't have before.  I am small, but mighty.  I may be short, but I know how to walk in heels, confidently.  And while my triangle pose may look more like a parallelogram, I am stretching and flexing my way to a healthier me, which makes me go to more of these classes than I ever thought I would. In short, (ha ha ha...whew) when you find something you love, put blinders on and stick to it.  Set the bar (or your resistance bands) high and push yourself until the end. 

And always, always ask for extra gravy.

www.flxyoga.com