Sugar

"Hi, my name is Kristyn.  And I'm addicted to sugar."

"I could quit if I wanted to!!"

"I only need a little bit every day, then I'm good."

"There are worse things I could be addicted to: cigarettes, drugs."

Yup.  Those are things I've been saying for a long time.  Several years ago I realized I had a true physical addiction to sugar when I tried to stop eating refined sugar for a week.  I lasted about 4 of the most miserable days I've ever had (and the most miserable days Jeff has ever had) because I was so incredibly grumpy, cranky, and irritated. I can remember eating a bowl of strawberries (the least satisfying strawberries have ever been, probably) after dinner one night and glaring at him for no reason, and the look of fear on his face. I didn't realize at the time exactly what was happening, but I was going through withdrawal.

Disclaimer - I understand this sounds a little #firstworldproblems to be complaining about sugar addiction (poor me with this abundance of sweets available to me), but it is actually way more serious than I realized now that I've been looking into it a bit further.  Disclaimer 2 - I'm in the early days of my research, so sharing only my limited understanding of this issue.

Refined white sugar was never a key part of a human diet - only showing up about 200 years ago.  Our bodies are equipped to deal with the breakdown of a small amount of a wide variety of natural sugars (e.g. fructose in fruit, lactose in milk, honey (pillaged from bees)), and have absolutely no idea what to do with the deluge of sucrose, fructose, maltose, etc. being barraged at us daily.  I have read some disgusting statistics about average folks eating 50 kg of sugar per year.  EWWWW!!!  That's crazy!

Sugar can be found in nature, for sure.  But the processing required to distill out a highly concentrated portion of a plant is comparable to how they get cocaine out of the coca plant.  And in the end: a fine white powder that in both cases alights the senses and leaves people craving more, in an endless cycle.  The damage done to our bodies by both is, sure, minimal each time, but over time can launch a cumulative assault that can eventually be deadly.

Where sugar comes from: sugar cane and sugar beet

Where cocaine comes from: coca plant

Sigh.... it's hard for me to malign my best friend sugar in this way. Those who know me well know my sweet tooth is absolutely out of control. Cookies, ice cream and chocolate are my favourites. Cake, candy, pop - I'll take it all.  After every single meal my gut starts pinging my brain: "sugar!" "sugar!" "sugar!".  As an intermittently health conscious person (in that I'm always conscious of what the healthy choices are, but don't always make them) I have creatively found my way around this issue while still managing to maintain or (when I'm motivated) lose weight.  My workarounds include 2 squares of 70% dark chocolate after lunch and dinner, eating my healthy ("healthy?") snack every day of plain Greek yogurt sweetened with 1/2 tbsp PC Blue Menu reduced sugar jam, raspberries and topped with granola (sanctimonious non-health food in disguise #1! but man I love it!!), drinking hot water with lemon and honey, and drizzling my favourite cold tomato salad with 1/2 Tbsp of balsamic reduction (basically tangy sugar).  If I'm dying for something sweet but know I need to cool it with the chocolate, I reach for super sweet fruit (apples, pineapple, mandarins).  My. Sweet. Tooth. Rules. My. Life. Jeff is afraid of it, in his adorable supportive-husband-battling-concerned-husband way, and doesn't at all understand it. It's gotten so bad that I have to manage my own chocolate supply when sharing a cottage with coworkers for a week in the field (because if I didn't have those two squares after field lunch one day, I'd wig out, likely on whoever ate them), and I nearly decimated the group chocolate supply while on a camping trip this summer. I can't reduce sugar/calories without a firm supply of fake-sweet Coke Zero nearby because even though it's not real, it's a reprieve from the blandness of food that's not brimming with sugar. I always offer to bake when I have to bring food somewhere because I know I get to nibble at what I'm making, lick the bowl and have some of whatever delicious concoction I've made when I get to wherever I'm going (plus I'm pretty good at it!).

This seems like a reasonable amount of cookies, no?

It's embarrassing too.  Agh, that's hard to admit.  I've always done such a great job of owning and loving that I'm a sweet person, not a salty one, that sugar satisfies me like nothing else can, and that I just adore it. But honestly, when you've been with me in public and I've ordered that massive dessert in a restaurant, or eaten one too many cookies from the platter that were supposed to be for everyone, trust me, it's embarassing.  Because, like a drug addict, I really don't have control over my actions, which is mortifying.  I'm an autonomous adult - why can't I control what I put in my mouth!?!!!  I recognize it's not like I'm alone in this in the world, and obviously I have SOME control over what I put in my mouth otherwise I'd be 400 lbs. But I'm tired of letting my urges and instincts control me.  I want to be controlled by rational thought - wouldn't that be nice!!

Again, this seems like a reasonable quantity of chocolate cake...

I'm absolutely terrified of the idea of detoxing.  I don't want to be that angry and cranky again.  And if you think about it, there's actually no good time to detox. I don't want to take any of my precious vacation time and spend it clattering around the house, groaning like an angry sugar monster.  I do NOT want to do this while things are stressful at work - who knows what I'll say!!  I am already not particularly nice when people interrupt me when I'm in the middle of something important/stressful - I can actually envision a particular coworker of mine lying unconscious on the floor with Kristyn fingernail marks across his face, and you can just see my rushed trail of destruction downstairs to the convenience store that is my office window looks onto downstairs in the mall........

I sometimes stand in front of the chocolate bars at a convenience store and can't believe this is allowed in this world. Probably how a trying-to-quit smoker feels staring at the wall of cigarettes, or an alcoholic in the LCBO.  "Why is (insert name of massive corporation producing product) allowed to make this largely unhealthy product, and tempt us like this?  Don't they know they're actually killing some of us with these offerings?!"  But of course it's not "their" fault.  It's our inability to control our impulses. I would do very well in a temptation free world, though.  Honestly, I would.  I'd nibble on my dark chocolate daily and get by.  This is what I do in the controlled environment of my home.  But the second there is a dish of candy or plate of cookies on the kitchen table at work, it's a constant struggle to stay out of them - every single time I walk past them, they call my name.  If I make the mistake of picking up the "healthy" ice cream sandwiches at the grocery store, I spend a lot of time at home convincing myself why I shouldn't have more than 2 a day, and often finish that train of thought licking my fingers from the third one.  If I'm at a social event, all bets are off.  If the sweet stuff is near me, I am in the sweet stuff.  Back and forth between my seat and the sweet stuff like a wasp at a BBQ in August.  If only temptation wasn't there, this would be SO MUCH easier.  But it is there, and I certainly don't want to stop seeing my friends and family, or going to work for that matter, so I need to figure out some workarounds.

Temptation, thy name is a convenience store

The full on sugar detox/quit sugar diet sounds a little wild for me.  This is the one where you don't even eat fruit.  You completely eliminate sweet flavours from your diet.  And after several horrible weeks, your taste buds, your brain, your gut finally all get the message, calm the f*ck down and stop sending you messages to eat the sugar.  Then it's easy breezy, and you're done with it - you actually no longer want sugar, or think about it.  OR it  continues to be a difficult struggle, and you always think about it (This reminds me of my mom smoked, who for a few years when she was a teenager.  Forty years later, she says if diagnosed with a terminal illness the first thing she'd do would be to light up. The love of your addiction never actually goes away).  What I'm surmising from the anecdotal research is that for some the pathways of "want sugar!"/"eat sugar"/"feel happy" probably never really go away, they just dry up a little, while the rushes of messages are diverted to other neural pathways like "want something!"/"eat vegetables"/"feel full". <-- so lame.  Haha.  I think that snide comment was my gut flora talking, don' t mind them.  They've just been eating copious amounts of sugar for life and don't want me to give it up because it would make them sad, and die.  What was I saying?  (Now I'm thinking about eating sugar...) Oh, right: the unknown of quitting and if you'll ever really stop wanting it.  It's advised for North Americans to consume < 20 g sugar per day (about 4 tsps, or just over 1 tbsp).  Some people count fruit in this.  If that was the case, I'd be allowed my couple servings of dark chocolate (about 3g each), a couple of pieces of fruit and no added sugar lurking anywhere else (it's always hiding!! in ketchup, pasta sauce, the weirdest places where you didn't even know you wanted/liked it).

APPARENTLY once you train yourself away from refined/added sugar, things start to taste much better.  Faint sweetness in unsweet products like coconut oil, cinnamon and low sugar fruits (mainly berries) really ramps up and becomes "enough".  Then when you reach for that refined sugar baked good, it's actually too much sweetness for your tastebuds/tummy to handle.  AND, AND, everyone - I have seen proof this!  I had a very healthy coworker several years back, for whom I baked a Kristyn Birthday Cake.  Full on chocolate with rich vanilla frosting, and messy blue icing writing on the top: "Happy Birthday!".  After I served everyone, I watched her gently scrape some crumbs away from her piece and lick them delicately off the fork, savouring them, and eventually pushing her cake away not even half eaten, saying "it's delicious, thank you, but it's just too much for me."  I looked up from my nearly finished second piece, a heaping forkful of chocolate en route to my mouth (add icing smeared onto my cheek for effect) and wondered what the heck that must feel like!

To my girls, who won't be surprised, but may feel sad for me: I ate the whole box of Katie's Christmas chocolates in one sitting.  I was SO SAD afterwards.  I did that thing I do, where I feel stressed, because I wasn't feeling well (massive headache), and then I ate all the chocolates in an effort to "feel better" (sidenote: Kate, they were delicious!).  I emerged from a chocolate haze wondering who I was, and what the heck I was doing.  To the masses - can you imagine eating 7 truffles in a row, essentially chain-smoking truffles???  Most people likely wouldn't be able to stomach it. My former coworker would have lost her mind!  I, however, took it like a champ. That kind of sugar binge is no big deal for me - my body can handle it. And that's a bit scary.

That brings me back to gut flora (ah gut flora - it's exactly what you wanted to be thinking about, right?). After some chats with a coworker over my squares of dark chocolate after lunch the other day, I was floating my musings about quitting sugar, and she was telling me about new research she'd read regarding the differences in gut microbiota (the lil guys that live in all our guts that help us extract nutrients from our food and digest away) between sugar eaters and non-sugar eaters, between obese people and thin people, and how it can take a concerted effort to really change the make-up of who's hanging out in your insides.  If I starve the refined-sugar loving gut bacteria, they are going to wig out and send me lots of cues - cravings for sugar, headaches, dizziness... but eventually they're going to starve, not be able to reproduce, and start to die off.  The plan is that I'd be concurrently feeding some of the good guys down there (I do occasionally eat vegetables..) and encouraging them to reproduce and take up some of the real estate of the baddies, and eventually all I'll hear from my lower half is: "dang girl, get me a salad!" (wouldn't that be nice. :))

You almost thought it was a picture of Goodies licorice candy, but instead it was gut bacteria...

The warnings I'm taking from my preliminary (anecdotal) research is that this process goes differently for everyone, and you can tailor it differently depending on what amount of sugar you want in your life - there are no hard and fast rules other than the more sugar you eat, the more you will continue to want it.  I'm not sure that I never want to be able to eat a piece of cake again!!!  But I may be like the alcoholic who can't just have one drink without falling off the wagon face first into a bucket of ice cream.  Maybe I'll need to ensure I'm handcuffed and tied to a couch, have Jeff feed me the cake, and then writhe around a little while I fight the urge to have another piece, try to negotiate with him to bring me another piece, and then eventually give up.  Man, I would be quite the party spectacle!

I don't know that I don't ever want to bake again.  My granny's chocolate chip cookie recipe is a legacy!

I don't know that I don't ever want an ice cream after a long hot day in the field again.

I don't know that I want chia seeds on my daily yogurt instead of granola.

I don't know if I could ever enjoy my morning oatmeal without the teaspoon of brown sugar.

I don't know if I can resist the social pressure of people foisting sugar on me; noting that this IS the world we live in.  Dessert comes after dinner!

However.

I don't know if I want to ravage my body with this drug anymore.

I don't know if I want to die years earlier from the damage I've done to myself by eating so much sugar all the time.

I don't know if I want to develop type II diabetes when my body eventually gives up the good fight and can't regulate my insulin anymore.

I just don't know if I want to be ruled by something OTHER than my rational brain anymore.

To be continued....

Manifesto

Hello!  I feel so sad that I went three months without posting anything - but I have an excuse for my general blogger lameness over the summer - in late May I started what I was jokingly referring to as "My Manifesto"... which I ended up naming "Manifesto"!! This is basically a collection of short, blog-like entries about how I wanted to live my life, places to improve, places I was doing well, aspirations, goals, regrets, you name it.  It's probably where this blog has been leading me for some time now.  I once started typing here as a place to tell silly stories and hopefully make some people smile/laugh, but it was so therapeutic getting my thoughts out that I started working out some serious issues in this medium, and it's been immensely helpful over the years (http://www.sincerelygoofy.blogspot.ca/2013/11/the-need-to-be-liked.html, http://www.sincerelygoofy.blogspot.ca/2014/06/green-grass.html)

So culminating in one big 5 month spew of thoughts onto paper, covering a huge variety of topics from buying a cottage to managing finances to exercise to eating healthily to friendships to being childfree to nature to my career to living life with purpose - you name it, I contemplated it. I read about AA one time (concerned for a friend - I still can't handle more than 3 drinks even if I wanted to #lightweightforlife) and it always stuck with me that a key first step on the road to recovery was to do a searching, brutally honest, self inventory where you basically lay out the contents of your head/soul and get really real with yourself about areas that need improvement, as well as just the honest clutter of truths that are feelings that live within you.  I pictured my manifesto as a tidy black and white notebook with my brain sprinkled across all the pages! :D

It was easy to get off track and wind up on crazy tangents.  I also made a lot of jokes - I think it's kind of funny that I'm just trying make myself laugh since I will never let anyone read my Soul Inventory!  But the most important thing I did was create "I will" statements throughout each entry and put a big star in a circle beside them.  "I will work out 3x/week".  It's a level of exercise that's manageable for me - I've tried 5-6 days; I've tried once a week; I've tried weekend warrior, I've tried consecutive months of inactivity...eep - I know from many years of testing that 3x/week is achievable, doable and beneficial.  So it's in.  Big star in a circle.  Done.  "I will prioritize alone time".  Why I have to keep learning the lesson that I fall apart when my schedule is too booked and I overdo it with social obligations is beyond me, but I'm hoping this big star in a circle next to permission to let myself be quietly alone when I can tell I need it (or even BEFORE I need it) will be the last time I need that lesson 'taught'.  "I will focus on paying off the car by the end of 2016" - it re-centered me to focus on debt repayment and away from thinking of other things to do with $ that aren't a priority right now (e.g. saving for a cottage I'll likely never work up the nerve/savings to buy :D).  You get the picture - lots of "to do"s and I respond very well to to do lists.

Issue - those big stars in circles were scattered across 100+ pages of writing and I would pick up the book on and off all summer long and add to chapters as it suited me - how do you keep track of all those "to do"s!?  So I decided an appropriate birthday present to myself would be to consolidate my list of action items, provide a bit of a status update for myself (pat on the back! or: get down to business, lady!) and have the list handy for reference as I move on from the first third of my life into the second third.  Three is my lucky number, so turning 33 on November 3 and contemplating my 1/3-life crisis felt just like the right thing to do.  There is no wrong time to take an inventory of your life and aim it in the right direction - not saying that path will always be walked in a very straight line, but at least it's nice to check in and make sure you're still heading where you want to go, being the person you want to be.

My BFF's fiance Dan really took to my chapter "Time" where I figured out what was a valuable and not so valuable way to spend time, so I thought I'd share my ridiculous list if it might be helpful for anyone else (you will likely need to replace things like "reality tv" and "facebook" with your own personal vices, should you wish to adopt this way of thinking ;)). Dan and I had a real moment when we were canoeing (with Dawn and Jeff - I'm not just sweeping Dan away on nature adventures) last summer when we realized we were completing four Category A activities at once (spending time in nature, meaningful interactions with people we care about, exercise AND relaxation!).

Ok so the rough breakdown here is a goal to spend 75% of time on Category A activities; 20% of time on Category B activities and < 5% of time on Category C activities.  Since this careful mathematical formula was contrived while I was exhausted after fieldwork one night, high on lake views and caffeine, and plain drunk on manifesto-ing, you'll understand it's highly flexible/adaptable! Inevitable and not included on the list are sleeping, working and bathing. lol.

Category A (i.e. What I Consider Worthwhile Ways to Spend My Time)
- exercise (light or heavy)
- cooking and consuming healthy/delicious meals
- learning (reading non-fiction, watching docs, taking courses, etc.)
- pursuing hobbies/interests
- financial planning (Nov 5 2015 ed: that is so lame)
- nature appreciation
- relaxation (reading; campfires; country drives, etc.)
- writing*
- acts of generosity (helping friends/family in need, volunteering)
- meaningful interactions with people I care about

Category B (i.e. What I Consider Borderline Worthwhile Ways to Spend My Time)
- watching m'stories (I didn't write that.. watching TV is what is says - it also then says "I love my shows - Bachelor, Biggest Loser, Downton Abbey, Grey's and How to Get Away with Murder; I like a good hockey game" - poor Leafs, can't get no respect even in the off season)
- spending time on my appearance (hair, clothes, makeup)
- thinking about work/catching up on work outside of work hours
- housework/grocery shopping
- napping (often a necessary evil)

Category C (i.e. What I Consider Poor Uses of Time)
- worrying
- watching mindless TV - anything outside "my shows" or hockey; may be bumped to Category A if I'm snuggling with Jeff - non-touching TV time doesn't count :)
- interactions with people who bring me down
- browsing facebook/the internet

* truth: the reason I am in here writing a blog entry tonight is because tonight was risking turning into a big old Category C of watching mindless TV alone if I didn't move my butt off the couch!

I still think the categories need some work, but it's interesting how much of my life actually slots into those groups!  I have never once quantified my time according to percentages, but I am certainly aware when I've been lingering on the Book of Face for too long and it's time to get moving, and I grumble about housework but recognize it's ok - a good thing to do, a necessary evil, and I feel really extra great and special when I combine things I love like when I sat under the willow tree in our backyard the other day that was raining yellow leaves all over me and my manifesto, and I wrote, and enjoyed nature and petted Bailey and kissed Jeff and thought: all is well in this Category A world!  Category C's last point spawned a massive tangent about my love-hate relationship that is social media.  Definite Essena O'Neill moment of feeling how hollow it can all be.  I hate to see people "curating" an image, that isn't reflective of real life.  I hate when I catch myself in an overly exuberant sharing moment and think: "what if you just made someone struggling with the opposite end of this issue feel like crap?".  For awhile now I've been trying to balance posts - negative with positive.  That's life, isn't it?  I just want to be more authentic.  And if I/others can't be, well then I'll be spending even less time on that Category C activity in the future and - I dunno - doing yoga while working in a soup kitchen outdoors in nature balancing my budget in an Excel sheet on a laptop? ;)  Hey, a girl can dream.

My manifesto landed me with a BIG to do list.  But I feel confident seeing it all laid out - the person I want to stop being, the one I want to continue to be and the one I would like to grow to be.  I like having a path, goals, a plan, and, really, dreams. I was very excited to learn last week that my good friend Erica is walking a parallel road beside me, waving to me with one hand and a self-help book in the other.  Who knows why some of us weirdos become so deeply interested in self-improvement?? I was suspecting that I was becoming so introspective because this is typically what happens to people in their 40s once their kids are more independent and I was just getting there 10-15 years early because I'm childfree.  But Erica, whilst walking this path, amazingly, has three kids attached to her!! :) It was nice to know I wasn't alone out there in the woods (while lifting weights and blogging and sauteeing veggies.. haha..)

On my radar this week:
- breaking habit loops associated with stress eating
- reducing sugar and increasing whole foods
- generosity (charity curling tournament here we come!)

I realize I've been writing a lot of the same things again and again over the years - sometimes I forget I've written them before and am surprised they're not new ideas.  Life is just a lot to process - and it's really helpful to have a place to come to to lay out the contents of my brain and make sure everything's still in fairly good working order. :)  Cheers to blogs and manifestos, and patience of the people I love to support me on my many varied, dissected, analyzed and beloved journeys. :)

French River Fun

What a super weekend backcountry camping in French River Provincial Park with my hubby Jeff and a few of my faves - Viv, Kristy and Evan.  I have to admit, I was nervous going in!  My last experience canoe camping was when I was 10-12, for three summers in a row at Camp Pinecrest, forced on a 5 day, 4 night canoe trip where we paddled what felt like hundreds of kms, shoved 5 people into a 4 person tent (one person slept at the feet of the other girls) and were allowed to bring a stuff sack with a sleeping bag and one change of clothes to be used as a pillow.  There was a trowel involved, and dehydration occurred frequently.. there were leeches, and crazed raccoons rattling the walls of our tents at night, and one time we came up unexpectedly on some rapids and nearly went down them in our canoes - picture three screaming 10 year old girls trying to steer a canoe out of that situation.  These memories are burned deeply.. and as such I only started camping again when I was ~23 and since then only car camping where escape was easy and I could always bring a fluffy queen sized air mattress ;)  However.. as a lover of nature.. solitude.. campfires.. relaxing.. canoeing... it seemed that there might be a hole in my life that the rest of the world's been experiencing that I've been studiously ignoring.  I was still wigged out about rapids (fear made worse by being dunked/stuck under raft on Ottawa River last year!).. portaging (blame my crappy back).. sleeping on an airpad barely the width of me.. wearing filthy clothes.. no toilets... but I flung myself out of my comfort zone and down the French River (the very same river of 1993 rapids trauma) this August long weekend.  Luckily I had two very experienced and awesome guides - Kristy and Evan, backcountry campers extraordinaire, instructed to remake some memories for me, and my very strong hubby who is more like a mule or workhorse of some sort.. so I had a feeling all was going to be ok!

Mrs. & Cap'n Camping

My husband, the mule, frequently seen carrying 2 60L backpacks - one on front, one on back!

I just wanted to do a short replay about the weekend and why it was so lovely.  Short because I'm still super tired!  I had trouble falling asleep last night, perhaps missing my 18" wide self-inflating airpad and collapsible camping pillow filled with chunks of foam, or the sleeping bag cover filled with clothing I used as a body pillow :P  So I am still pooped today.. but happy pooped!

We paddled 10 km downstream on the French River out of (roughly) the Walmsley Bay area.  I say roughly because the lodge we booked with totally didn't write down Evan's reservation and therefore no canoes were waiting for us and all canoes were gone for the weekend.  The very German lodge owner in the jean shorts, bald spot/ponytail combo and apologetic smile told us "Harold made a boo boo" and offered us a motorboat instead.  I will never forget Kristy's face when she heard that suggestion - pure disgust!  Luckily Harold fixed the boo boo by setting us up with canoes at a lodge down the road, which was a relief.  He told the other lodge owner on the phone that he was sending down "Evan Uge" - she promptly asked when we arrived: "how do you spell your last name, Evan??"  "It's Hughes...". (amazing)

We portaged around three sets of rapids - each one reminding me of my childhood fear of the feeling of the river pulling me down.  Jeff and Evan braved the second set in their canoes - first canoe down: success!  Second canoe down:

Viv yelled to Evan: "are you alright?" and he yelled "noooooooo!!!" as his sunglasses began to float away from him.  He realized later it was a misleading answer (they were fine minus some scratches) and he luckily managed to snatch his shades out of the water before they were lost forever!

We scored gold with only the second campsite we checked out - on a point of land around a bend in the river, with not another soul on it (even though there was another campsite around the back side!  we basically had a double wide site) and the nicest view in probably the entire world! :)

We set up camp and ate gourmet meals (check out this salmon fanciness below!), read, relaxed and shared drinks and laughs around the campfire.

The weather was super cooperative Saturday, Sunday morning and Monday, with just a snag on Sunday when it rained on and off through the afternoon and evening.  We passed the time under ponchos and our (mostly) trusty tarp, drinking baileys and hot chocolate, and watching 2 beavers feed and rest on the shore near our site.  No bears ate our food, or us.  No one killed themselves playing in the rapids at the back of our site on Sunday (I wimped out from going down.. figured why potentially ruin a good thing! :)).  We all fell in the water while completing benign tasks like washing dishes or our faces, including Muggins who is a dog, at least 1-2 times after it rained and the lichens absorbed the rainwater and made everything quite treacherous.  We swam, skinny dipped, read good (everyone else) and trashy (me.. Dan Brown :)) novels, napped, shared our hatred for mispronounced words like "warsh" instead of "wash" and "malk" instead of "milk". We reminisced over ridiculous memories from our 10+ years of friendship, talked about our theories on life, politics, got super politically incorrect for an irretrievable 20ish minutes that I'm STILL laughing about, and ate a LOT of food. Every time there was a slight relent in feeling full, I'd reach for something else to eat. Nice job on the food Cap'n and Mrs. Camping!!!

The sun blazed out just in time for our departure on Monday morning and we paddled back under perfect skies with puffy clouds.

Overall, backcountry camping has been redeemed!  I perhaps took Evan's suggestion to pack lightly a little too seriously (all my wordly possessions in my field backpack - 30L) and may bring a few more creature comforts along next time.  My bum was definitely sore from sitting on lifejackets, bare granite or a wooden bench that Evan carved to the perfect slope which I promptly sat on and split in half.  He tried to make me feel better by reminding me that the wood was rotten and full of termites and grubs.. I appreciate the effort.  So next time - a seat pad, a hammock.. and possibly an investment in a proper thermarest and maybe ONE extra inflatable pillow.  Other than that, it was essentially outdoor, silent, solitude, gorgeous Canadian Shield and White Pine paradise, with canoeing, swimming, reading, napping and nonstop eating and laughing all thrown in for good measure!

The wildlife was amazing too - a mink swam past our canoe and shot a dirty look back at us, we watched beavers living their beavery life, saw a bald eagle soaring over the treetops, a family of waddling mergansers scurrying off a rock and woke up to the sounds of "oh sweet canada canada canada" from a white-throated sparrow each morning, and ended the day to the flutey call of a thrush at night.

I don't quite know why it took me so long to get back out there.. but I can't wait to do it again!

3 man canoe! Jeff, Kristyn, Viv

Homeward bound - Kristy and Kristyn

Fresh clothes and hot lunch at the lodge that saved the day with spare canoes!

Bananas

I frequently describe things in my life as "bananas".  The past two weeks have been the most bananas of all time.  I will now attempt to describe them with minimal exaggeration to provide maximum jaw-dropping entertainment of how one person can end up in so many ridiculous situations... and still come out smiling... I think? ;)

On Tuesday, May 12 I travelled up to a favourite property for an annual monitoring visit - "to Georgian Bay!" is always one of my favourite things to say!  It was a cold, cloudy, windy evening but we trekked out by boat to this water access only property near Pointe au Baril to monitor for reptiles, frogs, birds, spring plants and really anything we could find.  I've only been to this property in late summer/fall before, so this was going to be a new and wonderful time of year to see this lovely place.  Two minutes in: bear scat.  A minute later: rocks flipped by bears.  This is nothing new - bears are present on almost every property I work on and I have never seen one to date.  I've had vague hopes of seeing one - from far, far away, as it disappears into the forest of course.  However, on this 10 acre parcel of land with a water taxi being the only way off, I would be more than pleased if the bears kept their furry distance.  Deep forest adjacent to a giant conservation reserve and barely any cottages feels a bit more like me barging in on Winnie's home than some of the other places with roads and trails that I frequent.  As we listened for frogs and flipped logs for salamanders and kept our eyes peeled for new and interesting plant species I noticed my assistant and I were being MUCH quieter than we usually are - we were listening!  I have a theory that I never see bears because I never stop talking and they know easily to keep their distance from that noisy girl.  So on the bear-iest property, we were the quietest we'd ever been - probably not the wisest - and luckily were standing right next to each other when I scanned around and locked eyes with a black bear. He was on all fours, on the small-ish side in terms of weight but as tall as my hip.  I can still hear my own voice, quietly, with much fear masked: "Laura, there's a bear."

Laura sweetly reached for my hand as if to pull me away.  I said "get the bear spray out of my bag".  Once I had it in hand, our training on how to handle bear encounters kicked in and we started being BIG and LOUD to frighten the bear away.  Bears are generally not interested in eating humans (it would be like a semi-vegetarian suddenly grilling up a huge steak - quite odd and unlikely) and they tend to be not interested in meeting/tussling with us.  Exceptions include predatory bears (like the one in Cochrane that broke in and dragged a guy out of his house - http://www.thesudburystar.com/2013/05/11/women-fight-off-bear-attacking-a-man), mama bears (protecting cubs) or bears that are startled/threatened.  This bear made a motion as if to bound away when we yelled, but slyly looked back over his shoulder which prompted us to decide to get the HECK out of there.  Laura reminded me not to run (WOW what a powerful urge it was to run!) and we walked swiftly away.  We heard a Broad-winged Hawk calling and decided "we won't let this bear ruin our day!" and Laura began pulling out her binoculars to look for it.  Her hands were shaking.  My knees were shaking, almost knocking together like in a cartoon.  Then I spotted the bear again - he was coming at us from a different direction, and not slowly either.  Laura stuffed the bins back in her bag and we proceeded to yell and shout and wave our arms to scare it away.  I yelled things that now seem so ridiculous: "Kristyn and Laura are VERY SCARY!" "Do not mess with us! We are tough!!!" "Get OUTTA HERE, BEAR!".  You could hear the fury and then the disappointment in our raised voices as we realized this bear was not pausing in his pursuit towards us and we realized nature was breaking its deal with us - we take good care of nature where I work; nature is supposed to take care of us.  At that point we didn't see another option except a hasty retreat back to the shoreline.  We stood, basically vibrating we were shaking so hard, on the rocky shoreline, staring back into the forest where we'd left, and hopefully left the bear. Laura was holding a giant stick. We didn't take our eyes off the trail into the forest as we called the water taxi to pick us up 2 hours early (thank goodness for cell service in the middle of nowhere!).  A bird landed on Laura's shoulder during these moments, which is hilarious to think back on because it's always my dream to have birds land on us in the field and it's never once happened.  We were a little too shattered to enjoy it properly, though!  After much cheesy lasagna, sharing the story with everyone we could talk to, and a good long hug, we were feeling a bit better.  After much research and discussion, I now understand that the bear was young, curious, hungry and smelled the food we had in our backpacks and decided to "investigate" and possibly try to share our dinners.  It's tough going in early spring finding food if you're a black bear.  I still don't forgive him.  We will not be back to this property until well after the berry crop is out this season, and will be bringing at least 2 other staff people, that's for sure.  I'm glad I didn't have to use the bear spray, or poke the bear in the eyes fighting for my life - I am grateful - but it took many days before the flashbacks went away and I felt normal again: "Laura, there's a bear".

We actually had a stellar next day on Georgian Bay near Sans Souci.  72 acres, 1 bear scat, no bear sightings - phew!  The following day I was down in Norfolk county, where bears are non-existent and I could finally relax (minus worrying about black-legged ticks crawling into my pants and giving me Lyme disease.. come on nature, cut us a break!).  I was helping the team down there cut down some Black Locust trees.  Invasive, nasty trees, with big crazy thorns on them.  I was wearing thin latex gloves, as we were applying some herbicide to the trees, and got a real "POKE!" from one of the trees as it was cut down.  I pulled out the thorn with copious amounts of hand sanitizer, and brand new tweezers, and saw the whole thorn come out and thought nothing of it.  But later that afternoon my left ring finger (thankfully minus my 2 wedding rings which might have had to have been cut off otherwise!) had swelled up like a sausage and I could barely move it!  I learned the thorns are covered in nasty bacteria and frequently cause reactions in people who get pokes from them.  The swelling went down the next day and I seemed to be good.  Phew!

That weekend I was off on our annual adventure to Cedar Point to ride the big rollercoasters with my friends.  It's always a wild journey travelling all the way to Sandusky, OH.  It's been even trickier since we started leaving Bailey with my parents in Niagara-on-the-Lake, meaning we have to travel under Lake Erie to get there, and the voyage becoming about a 7 hour journey - ack!  We planned to have Saturday free to pack, do laundry, get our act together, before taking the dog and ourselves down south on Sunday.  We'd hit the park Monday and travel back Tuesday.  But my kooky friend Pam (she's bananas!) suggested that we do an extra day at Cedar Point because it was closing earlier than we were used to (10 a.m. - 8 p.m. - short day!!) and the weather looked a little iffy for Monday.  Jeff and I mulled it over for about 10 minutes and as we are also bananas decided to go for it.  We wouldn't be able to make the camping work with the timelines, so we had Pam book us a couple of rooms in Cleveland that night and made the epic trip down.  The hotel was awesome, the breakfast the next morning delightful, our day at the park simply magical (Maverick! Millenium Force and no one fainted!), and we had a lovely campfire that night and a nice evening of camping with great weather.  We went to the park AGAIN the next day (bananas) and my feet were pretty done-zo by the end of it but I'll never forget the feeling of being in third in line on Top Thrill Dragster and then flying from 0 to 200 km/hr in 4 seconds.  Can't beat it.  Also the combination of Maverick followed by Chick Fil A as a delicious late dinner still makes me feel warm and fuzzy thinking about it a week later. Jeff, in the spirit of bananas weekend, ended up with a terrible hangover on Day 2 at the park and after he and I did the maiden ride on Top Thrill he said "I'm done." and disappeared, not to be seen on another ride that day!  Later, Jay said "sorry you didn't make it on Top Thrill a second time, Jeff" and Jeff replied "I had my own Top Thrill in the washroom".  I laughed for 10 minutes about that.  Poor Jeff - 6 beers are not his friend in old age! ;)  Our trip home on Tuesday took 9 hours (OMG - I nearly threw myself out the window on the QEW) and back to work Wednesday morning felt a little... bananas.. but totally worth it, of course!

Waiting for TTD to launch w/ Jay and Kevin (ride#2, I am sitting with a stranger while Jeff takes this pic)

Millenium Force fly-by - Kevin and my hands both look like crab claws

I tried to get my legs under me last week, organizing work and staff and schedules and finishing projects and writing reports like a mad woman.  I was feeling pretty good about everything after Thursday, but woke up disturbingly in the middle of Thursday night with my Black Locust finger swollen and throbbing.  What the heck!?!?  I was committed to a 24 hour biodiversity challenge in Carden Alvar on Friday/Saturday, with fieldwork and a meeting in Carden on Friday morning.  There was simply no time to get to a doctor.  I made an appt for this week, soaked my finger in Epsom salt before I left Friday and hoped for the best.  The Challenge was amazing, as usual.  Our new team member Bob saw a Loggerhead Shrike 5 minutes after the Challenge started - they are endangered and worth 4 points because of it.. alright!  23h55mins to go and we just kept knocking off species like crazy - Sora, Marsh Wren, Least Bittern, Trumpeter Swan, Eastern Meadowlark, Chipmunk, Green Frog... whirlwind night.  A couple of times I could feel my immobile-seeming finger under my glove, but I just birded and biodiversity'd on!  Raccoon, Barred Owl, Whip-poor-will, Rock Pigeon (a rural rarity if you can believe it!).

Team Basketcases trying to get a positive ID on some swallows flying around the Kirkfield Lift Locks!

The sunset was amazing - picture snipe, nghthawk and whip-poor-will song over this background - wow Carden!

By the end of the night I was having trouble making a fist with my left hand but I told my finger to shut it, got into bed with a hot water bottle at a friend's in rural Carden (Uphill - look it up!) and aimed for my glorious 5 hours of sleep: 12:30 - 5:30.  That's all the rest you get until 6:00 p.m. Saturday night when it's time to sit down to dinner.  I was beyond dismayed to wake up at 2:45 a.m. with my finger positively screaming.  I actually had tears in my eyes and had to slow my breathing to try to calm down.  Because what the HELL could I do besides tough it out?  After an hour of agony, I decided I had another option, so I snuck out of the house at 3:30 a.m., trying not to wake my sleeping teammates scattered through the hallway, left a note, left their gear inside, and disappeared into the night like a cat burglar: "gone to hospital for antibiotics - will text update - so sorry - good luck".  I sped 30 minutes to Orillia Soldiers Memorial Hospital, feeling epicly stupid for admitting myself to the ER for "finger pain" but also knowing I had no other option if I wanted a chance of getting through the next day.

Sausage Finger - reading/waiting in the ER exam room

2 hours later I'd gotten a tetanus shot, pumped up with antibiotics and given a prescription for 40 more pills  - 1 every 6 hours.  It was 5:30 a.m. and no pharmacy would be open until 9 a.m. but I needed my next dose at noon.  What the hell was I gonna do!?  My friend and I devised a plan: go back to her house and sleep, go to the pharmacy in the nearby little town of Kirkfield at 9 and rejoin the team for more biodiversity fun at 10ish.  I'm happy to report this plan mostly worked, except I sped past my friends' house on the way home, busy looking for deer in the early morning frosty fields, not realizing it until I reached a lake that is decidedly well past her home; and also I didn't doze off 'till 7 a.m., and therefore didn't want to get up at 8:30 so I closed my eyes "for a few more minutes" and didn't wake up again until 10:20 a.m.!  Oops!  All good though - got the drugs, finger was feeling more manageable and I was back to wielding binoculars and a butterfly net (though not very well - I missed way more than I caught yesterday!).  We got amazing species: Olympia Marble (butterfly), Semipalmated Plover, Milksnake.. I could go on!

Olympia Marble butterfly - a "lifer" for me!

We stopped at our friends the Ridgway's and didn't pick up a single species but managed 2 rounds of wine on the deck by their pond before we headed out on the road again.  During the visit the blackflies were so bad that I joked that my friend Trish looked like one of those moose in the documentaries you see about northern Canada in summer "this moose finds relief from the incessant bugs by submerging himself in the water" - and you can see the thick curtain of bugs around him.. that was Trish.  Blackflies=bananas.  Today I have a nice case of what I'm calling "blackne" - bloodied blackfly bites covering my neck, ears and shoulders - tasty!! However.. the best part of the day was: WE WON!  In our category, we have always placed below the top rung but last night we took home the trophy!  I was so happy I was able to stick it out and join my team for the celebration - ridiculous sausage finger and all.  Unfortunately I was hit hard by the effects of the antibiotics on the drive home last night. They are never kind to my sensitive system.  I left at 8:45 p.m. and by 9:00 was on the phone with Jeff asking him if he could book me a cheap hotel.. somewhere,.. anywhere.. as I knew the nausea, headache and general fatigue/dizziness were not going to bode well for another 2.5 hours in the car.  I ended up in Newmarket at the Holiday Inn and you can guess how soundly and for how long I slept in that big soft cozy white bed!  I finally made it home in one piece (more or less) this morning, but I need some serious rejuvenation before my next field adventure!  Oh.. it's Wednesday - Saturday??  I better work harder at relaxing today!!

What a bananas, bananas couple of weeks.  I hope next week is bug-free, bear-free, with only the prettiest flowers blooming, and warblers landing on my shoulder to sing me a song.  And not infecting me with anything in the process.

Said to Laura, while hightailing it out of the forest: "we're going to laugh about this, right?".  Line of my life!

Farewell Ghetto Office

I haven't been inspired to write a blog post in a little while now!  I should have raved about Costa Rica right when we got back, when it was all fresh and I was feeling "la pura vida".  It took about 2 days back in the office and to the grind of housework and dogwalks for my pura vida feelings to be swept away in a chilly late winter wind!  Le sigh.  It really was an amazing trip! Vacations are so fantastic to simply relieve yourself of stress, routine, and life for a solid week! :)

I thought I'd write about something more topical today, and just briefly - a farewell to my work's current Guelph office as this week we are relocating to the what I like to call "hip" (making me decidedly un-hip) downtown of Guelph.  We're going to be in the offices in the upstairs of the Old Quebec St. mall, meaning that I can WALK to some great places like Capistrano and Eric the Baker.. not to mention my bank.. a convenience store.. clothing stores.. oh my... and who knows what other fun spots I'll find downtown.. a place where I hardly spend time anymore!

This is a not so romantic ode to our office at the Orchard Park office centre, located in the Ignatius Jesuit Centre just on the northern boundary of Guelph heading up Highway 6 past the curling club.

Positive things:
- free parking
- nice cross country ski trails to ski on during lunch in the winter

Negative things:
- the dead flies that swarm the office in the fall, looking for shelter from the cold.. why are there so many places the flies can get in? they frequently line our windowsills, or cling to our ceilings and die there, forever frozen standing upside down...
- the dog pee stains on the carpet - having a dog-friendly office was a lot of fun for when the trained dogs visited.... not as much the others....  In the summer, the carpet heats up so much you can smell a vague pee-like odor rising from it like a vapour
- heat in the winter is always on full blast (if it's not, you're shivering and can't feel your fingers) so you're mainly sweating and wearing t-shirts in January - the radiators have no control knobs on them so you have to open your window for relief (I work for an environmental charity, this is painful!)
- there is no air conditioning.. not like it doesn't work.. there just is none.  Hot winters, hot summers.  Who wears short shorts?  All of us employees, on 30C days in the summer is who!
- my co-worker's office always had slight suspicious water damage.  This year, his ceiling caved in on him
- my same co-worker's office had bats found in it.. three times.. just his office though.  Bat bait?
- a Mourning Dove made a nest in the air conditioner window shaker in the printer room and you could regularly hear it cooing
- our storage shed was home to many mice, who regularly ate the granola bars that we stored there for volunteer events
- for over 7 years that I was there (we had the office for a good 5 years before that) raw sewage ran out of a pipe in the wall of the storage shed into a drain in the floor - smelled awesome
- the washrooms are unisex - never men/women in there at the same time, but let's just say I'd always wait awhile after the "men" sign had been on the door to go in!  ew, boys are just gross
- the washrooms were kept pretty clean, but the entirety of the floor was never mopped, as evidenced by a dead fly that sat in the corner of one of the stalls for over 6 months
- the cleaning service we hired frequently ate my co-worker's gum, hid my fork. and forgot to empty the garbage cans
- it's a 4 story walk up the stairs to our office, with no elevator
- hornets would regularly fly in through the hole in my window, leaving me screaming and running and enlisting my braver coworkers to trap them for me
- on a related note, my coworker Dan once had his office door closed and was on a conference call in the heat of summer so he took his shirt off, when a hornet flew in through his window, stung him in the neck and he couldn't make a noise or run into the hallway shirtless, so he just quietly freaked out like a mime
- lazy half dead flies would frequently fall off the ceiling, or do a kamikaze flight, into my hair and get tangled there.. again leaving me screaming
- the boardroom was always freezing cold or painfully hot, and never the right temperature for a professional meeting which was always good and embarrassing
- Jeff and I took the contract to paint the office in 2010 - it was a stark, prison white before that - we had to press the rollers "not too hard" over areas of the wall so damaged by water that the paint and drywall would just flake off as you went over them.  Now it's a lovely blue... but don't touch certain areas, whatever you do!
- not a single thing to buy - a drink, a snack, lunch, any commodity whatsoever - without a 10 minute walk down the shoulder of Highway 6
- the inaccessibility of walking up or down Highway 6 in rush hour.  Fun for my currently pregnant co-worker, teetering on snowbanks along the edge of a windy 4 lane 70 km/hr highway, and actually also a favourite on a bike - my former coworker was hit by a truck on her ride to work and I was nearly side-swiped by one last summer!
- the water that comes out of the taps is white, fizzes and tastes deeply of chlorine - delicious!

The sad part is not a word of that list is a lie and I'm probably forgetting things too!

Well....to "hip" downtown indeed!!!! :)  Very excited for riding my bike and walking to work to become more regular fixtures of my life.  The loss of free parking will be tough, but we'll get by I'm sure!  Climate control, potable water, gender-diverse washrooms, clean carpet and a general lack of fauna is going to make our new office feel like essentially paradise!

April 1!!!!!

Winter...

A few years ago I made a pact with myself that I was going to start enjoying winter.  I'm a firm believer in "you're whining - can you change it?  if yes - change it.  if no - stop whining." :)  I went with a combo of both actions... because you can't change winter.  All us crazy assholes decided to live here year round, for some reason, so what's the point raging against the inevitable 5 months of winter we're guaranteed each year?  I'm not saying I've got this practice down perfectly.  I have a "winter dogwalk countdown" going in my head almost every day (~45 winter dogwalks remaining - this is down from triple digits.. alllright!).  I HATE the disgusting burny salt all over the sidewalks.  I miss flip flops.  BUUUUUT. I know can change how I feel about it if I try..there is a lot to love out there!  I'm going to aim for a yoga-worthy balance with this entry and go point for point about what's sucked about this winter so far, coupled with what's been great.  Be warned, I'm an eerily good mood from an excess of endorphins from walking 8 km home from work in the sunshine today (not by choice.. we are down to one car this week as Bunny undergoes suspension surgery).  If you're having a dark day I promise the sun will come out tomorrow (actually it looks like it's going to be cloudy and snowy tomorrow.. but I promise the sun will come out.. on Thursday...).

THE BAD: SAD.  As in Seasonal Affective Disorder.  I have this.  You probably do too.  Read the Mayo clinic's symptom list for an ah-ha moment about why you've been feeling so crummy lately (http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/seasonal-affective-disorder/basics/symptoms/con-20021047).  Honestly, there was a point this winter where I had feelings from the 'major depression' list - loss of interest, hopelessness.. the trouble with sleeping even continues today.  But mostly I'm just a listless, carb-craving couch slug!  Sometimes when the sun is out I just turn my face up to it like a sunflower trying to drink in the weak rays and remind my body there is a light at the end of this winter tunnel!  To anyone else wondering why they've been pounding down the cookies (in my case graham crackers and marshmallows in the form of microwave smores.. oh man.. gotta stop this..) and laying in bed ordering themselves to get out of it with no hope in the morning.. you are not alone.  The good news: there are longer days a'comin'.  Just another month until Daylight Savings Time!

THE GOOD: Winter dogwalks (when I'm not doing the endless loop of death around our neighbourhood -  don't tell Bailey, but most days I just want to get these walks OVER with!). Memorable walks have included all the times I've strapped on my snowshoes and headed out into nature (even if nature is just the conservation trails in my neighbourhood!).  Bailey seems to love bounding around in the deep snow like a rodeo horse, which is always entertaining for me to watch :)  Yesterday in the late afternoon we took advantage of the "snow day" and headed out into the sunshine to break new trail in snow up to his armpits and my knees.  What a workout!!

My trusty sidekick Bailey is just up ahead - this is us snowshoeing the Minesing Wetlands (THE BAD: putting your foot through the ice and getting it stuck in the muck below the icy water! agggg!  THE GOOD: those are 20 Great Blue Heron nests in a place impossible to reach in the spring/summer/fall :))

Bailey is such a trooper - he's not tall, but he's hardy and broke trail yesterday afternoon for us in Eastview Park!

Well, ya can't complain about this view!  Laura Baily Memorial Trail between Eastview and Grange.

THE BAD: Everything being cancelled due to snow!!!  My Superbowl party included.  Not that Jeff and I had a problem eating the entire two racks of ribs in 2 days, but ribs are so much sweeter when shared with friends!  Already looking forward to Superbowl 2016!  Also, I've had a standing invite for some local ladies to join me for The Bachelor every Monday for weeks which has been a problematic weather day for at least the last 2 weeks! Either that or they're too nice to tell me my Bachelor addiction has gotten OUT OF CONTROL! ;)

THE GOOD: The chance to be at home.  I can't hate winter too much, or wish it away too quickly, because when spring and summer come I will have to take off for multiple long trips to the field which will leave me sorely missing home - the quiet solitude (not that I don't enjoy yammering with my interns nonstop for a week, I do, but quiet is really underrated!), being with Jeff and Bailey, my own bed and pillows, my bathtub - there are so many little wonders I miss all summer long which are mine all winter long, and for that I'm grateful.  Plus time.. just having time.. to be... very nice indeed.

I took this at the end of my adventure walking home today to show my assistant I made it home safely.  Never been so happy about HOME!

THE BAD: The dreaded winter cold/flu.  I've had 2 in January alone and I'm SO over them.  The last one sapped me for NINE DAYS (I was monitoring it closely!).  Being robbed of the ability to work out.. walk up and down stairs without getting winded.. last the day without taking a nap... even just the ability to tidy my house a little (the dog fur is in tumbleweeds) - so incredibly frustrating.  The feeling of being TRAPPED on my beloved couch is not one I enjoy!!  Man am I happy that last cold passed and I'll be back to walking in a wide arc around sick people and washing my hands every time I see a tap!  Sadly I'm finding a direct correlation between drinking and getting sick, so I might have to clean up my act.. for the next little while at least.  3 colds/flus in 5 months is far too many!  To health!!!

THE GOOD: Skiing!  I can't wait for my first XC ski!  The conditions weren't right until YESTERDAY and since I was snowshoeing yesterday and hoofing it home from work today, I haven't yet had the opportunity, but know I will be taking it as soon as I get it.  I love the swish swish sound of skis cutting through the snow, and the fun of zipping down a wee hill, and even laughing at falling over.  Skiing through snowy trees around Guelph Lake is pretty spectacular.  This was the original activity I decided to take up in my bid not to hate winter, and I'd encourage anyone else to try it, anytime!

Skiing in Carden Alvar in 2014

THE BAD: The dark.  The ominous, looming, ever-present darkness.  I'm lucky to work in town so I at least get to see the sunrise on my morning dogwalk and it's light when I leave the building at 4:30.  Poor Jeff, at parts of winter he literally never goes outside when it's light out.  He hates winter a lot more than me.  Point taken.  There is such an important interaction between light and mood - I've never felt it as much as I did this year.  Daylight savings countdown, keep it in mind!!!

THE GOOD: The hilarity that was mid-December weather.  On Boxing Day in Niagara-on-the-Lake it was 12C and sunny.  Jeff and I took Bailey for the longest walk EVER just to soak up the rays of what felt like a spring day! Jeff of course wore a t-shirt.  I walked Bailey in my hiking boots and shoes for most of the month which was awesome!  Though the point of this entry was trying to find GOOD things about winter.. a GOOD thing about winter is when it forgets to really show up at all! ;)

THE GOOD: Snowy owls.  I recently went on a mission to find one, and got lucky enough to see FIVE!  They are currently experiencing a population fluctuation known as an irruption, which drove huge numbers of them south this winter.  This might never happen again in our lifetime so I'm pretty excited I got to see 5 in one day.  0 before.. 0 after.. but that 5-Snowy day will live in my heart forever!!

Snowy Wink

Enjoy the rest of it.. spring is just around the corner! :)

The Turn of the Year

It's time again for the annual reflection on life over the past year.  For me, 2014 was a pretty good year.  For a lot of people in my life, it was not a great one.  So it's hard to say "what a fabulous year!" when indeed it wasn't.  I tend to live over-empathetically through/with the people I love and accompany them on their journeys, whether happy or sad, and there was just unfortunately a lot of sad this year.

But I can see lots of light for all my favourite people who had a rough go this year, shining ahead in 2015, and I can't wait to enjoy it with them!

Some of my 2014 highlights are here.  That facebook "year in review" thing kinda stole this blog post's thunder but I took my time picking out some of my fave pics in this one, so please come along!

- a fabulous trip to Italy in May.  That was some of the best eating I've ever done!  I came back completely addicted to cheese (worse than before) and even seek out buffalo mozzarella at the grocery store ($$$!!!) from time to time, in memory of our beloved trip through central Italy.

Lunch in Venice - fresh baguette, prosciutto, buffalo mozza and a basil plant!

Grand Canal in Venice at night - SURREAL!!

St. Mark's Sqaure in Venice at night - you can see that Venice really is sinking!

Found my parents in Florence at my favourite church, Santa Maria del Fiore/il Duomo

 - a shorter but still totally awesome trip to Florida in April to watch the Leafs play Tampa Bay and Florida, visit Americatherine and Patrick and check out the Everglades, even if only for just one fleeting day!

TML @ TBL

In excellently close proximity to my fave dudes (even Phil Cheeseburger Kessel, laziest man in hockey) in Sunrise, FL

- a great year at work, including an incredibly productive field season which had tons of funding, which meant tons of deliverables to complete, tons of traveling and fieldwork to do and tons of great results at the end of it.  I also had the most superb team of interns a girl could ask for, Mike and Laura.  We dubbed ourselves Team Awesome - this is what happens when you spend too many hours alone outdoors together!  Fieldwork highlights for me include canoe tours for donors down the Nottawasaga River in the Minesing Wetlands, a jaunt deep into a wetland to find endangered orchids, inventorying the 2 properties I successfully purchased in spring 2014 (woohoo! full circle!!!), a public event at one property on a beautiful September day (the week that I also scored a room at a beautiful resort west of Orillia for $99/night.. I will never forget!! <3) and evenings spent enjoying beers, taco salad, laughs and sunsets with Team Awesome.  I complain about fieldwork demolishing my body and spirit all summer long, but honestly, it's hard to imagine a year without it!

Laura picks up her very first snake, which musks all over her, but turns out to be an Eastern Ribbonsnake, which is a rare species!

The Nottawasaga River in July, by canoe - the only way to go!

Georgian Bay views while completing invasive species surveys

Property dedication and celebration in late September (felt like mid-July!)

Team Awesome at Minesing Wetlands tree planting event

- any and all outdoor time spent with my hubs. I'm not picky! Cross-country skiing, biking, hiking, boating, dogwalks, yardwork - all of it.  Time spent in nature is amazing.  Time with Jeff is the best.  Add in a furry idiot like Bailey and it amounts to some great memories, including a snowy ski at Guelph Lake where we could barely see on the way back the snow was coming down so hard, a November bike ride in icy 1C temps where we laughed our heads off and froze our hands off, or another trip to the dogpark on a summer Saturday!

Bailey helping Jeff in the yard on the first nice day of spring

Black dog party at the pond at the Hanlon dog park

- a great roundup of concerts and hockey games!  My absolute favourite thing to spend disposable time and income on!  I saw THE CURE!  I saw Kings of Leon .. twice!  I saw Alt-j!  I saw the Leafs lose a BUNCH of times!! ;)

- awesome dinners, lunches, nights in, nights out, long chats, and more with great friends.  I could probably go on for a million years about the great times I've had with the great people I'm lucky to have in my life, but I won't bore ya!  Just a little note that I'm super grateful to all the great people in my life, and glad you're a part of it, and glad you will be again in 2015!

However... because I don't believe in painting an untrue picture of life on social media, I will include a downer list, but it will be a benchmark to compare 2015 against so I can be like "wow!  2015 was soooo rockin'!".  Right?! :)

Worst Days of 2014
1. August 13 - finding out of my best friends was very, very sick and feeling completely helpless in not being able to do anything to help her.
2. June 9 - finding out another of my best friends Viv's dad, Hubert, had passed away, far too early for a man filled with far too much joy and laughter for the world to lose.
3. Dec 11 - attending the sentencing hearing for Philip Grandine with my very best friend Dawn and reflecting on the loss of life of the incredibly special Karissa Grandine (http://www.sincerelygoofy.blogspot.ca/2014/12/a-place-id-never-been-before.html)
4. October 15 - second day of a vacation week I'd planned that didn't quite work out, that later turned into a day of superior work/emotional burnout culminated in tears and forced reclusivity!  Sometimes you just need to escape from life and your inbox for a few hours...
5. Dec 24 - I had a bout of probably the closest I've come to depression in my life on this day.  It had been prickling at me for a few days leading up to this and culminated in me feeling incredibly sad, helpess and lost for absolutely no reason at all.  Jeff kept asking "what's wrong?" and I said "nothing is actually wrong.. so this will go away, right?".  Luckily for me it did subside, and went away entirely within a few more days, but it shed some serious light into what it must be like to be depressed and I have the deepest sympathy for people in that situation where there simply aren't any words or thoughts that can make you feel better. No magic bullet.  I'm wondering what I might be able to do to help people feeling similarly now that I've experienced it for myself, if only very fleetingly and nowhere near the same magnitude. I have no idea what brought it on my dark cloud but it was seriously scary.

And onto the bread and butter of a New Years blog post.  Resolutions!!!

Resolution Progress Report - 2014 Resolutions
1. Juice.  I was doing great juicing away apples, greens, ginger, lemons, you name it, into delicious concoctions when I hit a bad batch of spinach. But didn't realize it until after I'd drank the juice... Let's just leave it at that was the end of juicing for me in 2014. Lol.  Jeff and I made some nice fresh-pressed OJ on Christmas morning.  The juicer is otherwise in the pantry, mostly gathering dust!!!

2. Learn French.  I did pretty ok, though I don't think I made a crazy amount of progress I did spend some time with Viv and many nights in front of some free computer software just trying to get my vocab and pronunciation down.  I know some words..I can make sense of a fair bit of French. I will keep working on this in 2015! It's actually quite fun.

3. Floss. I'm finally giving in that this is the resolution that is not meant to be.  I'm not making it again this year.  It's useless!  To be honest, I floss for several weeks before I see the dentist so I don't get yelled at.  Aaaaand done!

4. Get Back to my Wedding Weight. I was really.. REALLY close in Feb/March of this year, before I was advised to throw out the scale, just eat what I want and stop when I'm full, stop counting calories.  I really heartily enjoyed this strategy.  And really, definitely put on about 7 lbs since then.  I think I'm fairly broken when it comes to functional eating/exercise, so now I'm back up to my old, time-tested tricks, watching calories and working out whenever I can, knowing that I will probably fall off the wagon about once a week. But that is a-ok!  See 2015 Resolutions for more info.

5. Read 5 Classic Books. I read 4!  I read Walden by Thoreau, painfully throughout several months of the field season.. it took forever!  I liked it, but upon later learning that this dude basically lived on the edge of town and went to his mom's for dinner on the weekends was a bit tough to swallow.  A fun reflection on nature in a specific time/place, but not a top read for me! When I realized I better step it up on this resolution toward the end of this year, I read Animal Farm (84 pages) (which I adored and sobbed over - Boxer :( ) and Dickens' the Haunted House (also short). I have been enjoying Madame Bovary for the past few weeks and just finished it this morning.  GREAT book with some good life lessons to pull that I think I'll be musing on for awhile.  For now though, I have a stack of 4 magazines and a Watchmen biography waiting to be read! :)  (woo!)

6. Be a Better Listener. I definitely tried to improve at this one, though it's hard to say how well I did.. you'd have to ask my friends and family, who wouldn't tell you the truth probably anyways because they're too nice. :)  I'm adding this one to the continual-improvement-life-skills section. :)

2015 Resolutions
1. Improve my posture and stand at work more.  The end of slouching!  If you see my sitting like the Queen of England, you'll now know why.  Also, did you know sitting is the new smoking?  Get off your caboose regularly, office workers!!! (have you seen this desk yet - my dream: http://gizmodo.com/ikea-sit-stand-desk-review-i-cant-believe-how-much-i-l-1652445999)
2. Have all my pants fit me comfortably again. To be achieved through eating well and working out.  Because who wants to buy all new pants?  Not this cheap bastard!
3. Cycle 50 km. Might be a little while before I can achieve this, seeing as it's currently "feels like -13C" out with 50 km/hour wind gusts.  However, this year, I hit a personal record of 35 km, and steadily improved my speeds on each ride this summer/fall without even trying, so I know I can get here for sure when that sun decides to join us again after these last couple of months of cold ol' winter.
4. Fix my back.  With stretching, massage, acupuncture, foam rolling, modifying how I sit/drive/sleep - I will do whatever it takes to get back to having the body of a 32 year old instead of an 80 year old!
5. Be better. Be good, sweet, light, generous, kind and happy.  Be the kind of person you've always wanted to be, and already are in your better moments!  There is nothing holding you back. :)  Sort of nebulous, but that's how it looks in my brain right now.  I just know life is too short to be cranky, critical, cynical, anxious, etc. - but how do you find your way to being an even better you and living an even better life?  Let's find out.... I will aim to shape this resolution even more as the year goes on and report back on progress.

Happy new year, friends!