Hello Blogging My Old Friend

A brief life recap, as summer turns to fall…

An unexpected and interesting development at work this summer was the presentation of some opportunities to appear on camera, on the radio and in other forms of media. The most hilarious/intense was the morning I had 14 back to back syndicated interviews with various CBC shows across Canada, chatting about invasive species. I got to be a bit of a fan girl when I was on Metro morning, and had my picture in the Toronto Star. And I got my first taste of what it feels like to want to hide under a rock, when you see yourself on national TV repeatedly saying "go away bear" while waving your arms back-and-forth with an angry facial expression... at a guy in a bear suit... Overall it's been fun to help spread the word about a variety of important topics related to nature and conservation, and drop the name of my organization to anyone who is listening :-)

Fan Girl

Guess what – I still haven't figured out how to balance healthy eating and regular exercise when things get hectic and busy. My dog had surgery last week and I've been stress eating on his behalf ever since. I read an awesome read this summer on the topic of "overcoming binge eating". I'm not someone who eats out of the garbage can or anything, but I've been known to clean off a tray of cookies and overindulge at parties basically for my entire teen/adult life! And often when I start eating badly, I find it hard to bring myself back to the world of vegetables and moderation. I'm pretty tired of the binge – restrict cycle (this is the basis of the theory "dieting doesn't work", which I fully subscribe to even if I don't necessarily put it into action), so I've been trying to stop restricting to hopefully stop the binging. It's been an interesting journey, one that I was surprised to find required you to really do an assessment of the things you like and things you don't like about yourself. Turns out, my list of "don't likes" was longer than list of "likes", and of a length and breadth that took me by surprise (kind of)! This is likely a key reason why I'm not doing my body the service of being kind to it with what goes in! So, as always, a work in progress. The good news is, I can still fit fine in most of my pants, and hey, that's not too shabby!

I made 48 of these lovelies last weekend for M's shower (Pam ran the icing job, clearly).. I may have eaten 7... :S

Jeff and I went to BC for the first half of September. I can't say enough good things about this vacation. Obviously what stands out is the fact that we saw six grizzly bears, several which were so close that we could see through our camera lens and binoculars the various shades of gold in their fur, and the absolute size of their claws. But there was so much more than just the bears. There were whales. Bald eagles, seals, beautiful stellar jays, marmots and even a pica. There was falling madly in love with Whistler, and then repeating the whole thing over a day later to fall madly in love with Vancouver. There were those trees – those giant trees that just seemed to get bigger and bigger as the trip went on - trees you couldn't even hug if you tried. There was bungee jumping, hands down the most terrifying experience of my life, particularly the feeling when I was freefalling towards my death and acutely aware that there was no lap bar holding me in, as there always seems to be when I'm hurtling downward at those speeds i.e. on my beloved roller coasters. There were mountains, mosses, rivers, lots of laughs, hundreds of thousands of steps taken, and always, what stands out the most is the amount of quality time I got to spend with Jeff. Grizzlymoon was one that will go down in history is pretty awesome. So for everyone who asked "why BC?"… bc! I don't think a destination needs to be far-flung or exotic to give you simply incredible experiences. Plus, isn't it a little tragic that before BC I hadn't traveled further west in Canada than Winnipeg… in December? Canada's a beaut - can't wait to see the Rockies someday!

Rawr

Squee

I think my last interesting life update is that recently I took over as organizer for the Meetup group Happy and Child Free – Guelph/KW. For anyone not aware of the loveliness of the website/org meetup.com, this is a site where you can simply type in your interests and be presented with a bunch of like-minded people doing things that appeal to you in your geographical area – well-played Meetup creators, well played! It can be so tough to meet new ppl in the post-university phase of life! This particular group was founded by Heather, a lovely woman who did an amazing job back in 2015 of uniting a group of 30-somethings who would have probably never met otherwise, but many of which are now lucky enough to call each other friends, with new potential friends arriving at every event we hold (..some duds also..). Heather is pursuing some other passions now, and asked me to take over management of the group, which I was happy to do! We don't do anything too much more exotic than eating, movies, trivia nights, but the one thing that is always there is great conversation, and many laughs.

Last week's showing at trivia - 2nd place! I'm a nerdy trivia addict, for the record...

Winter din at Artisinale w/ a nice sampling of cf friends (photo by Heather :))

Did you know one in five women now end their lives without a child? They're not necessarily all childfree by choice, but I think it's neat to think about the fact that this "alternative" life path which seems to make most people over the age of 50 gawk at me as if I'm an alien, and elicit otherwise confused and concerned looks from many folks of all ages, and genders, is perhaps not all that "alternative" after all. I don't talk about this particular life path of mine all that much, because some parents have read into my choice as some sort of judgement of theirs (to be clear – I am totally 100% okay with what everyone chooses or ends up doing re kids. What you do with your life and reproductive parts has absolutely nothing to do with me or our relationship. Kids, no kids, I just want everyone I love to be happy), and for some other more sensitive reasons I won't get into. But I don't want to do a disservice to a group of people who don't deserve to feel like they have to hide who they are and how they are living their life. So in the interest of owning my truth, my reason for being childfree is simple: from somewhere deep inside me I have never wanted kids, knew that it would be the wrong path for me, and more than this being a decision, it was simply a matter of looking inside myself and identifying what has always been there. On my first date with Jeff we somehow (wtf) ended up on the topic of kids and he was the first to confess he didn't want them. His reasons were essentially the same as mine (though he uses less flowery wording than "looking inside myself"). A little bell definitely rang at that point - "huh.. that's interesting..". :)

Interesting indeed :)

I'll keep this one short, but it was so nice to sit down and write again. I don't know why I let so much time pass before coming back to the thing that makes me so happy :-)

I'm going to earmark binge eating as a topic for a future blog as I really got my mind turning about it again as I wrote tonight – so stay tuned if you're interested or have ever found yourself struggling with it as well!