Merry Christmas—I stole your iPod

Just before Christmas, my husband and I decided to treat ourselves to a cross-country ski date (without children). So we hired a sitter and headed to Nakkertok.

The weather was perfect. We had a nice lunch of paté and crackers and fruit in the lodge afterwards and met up with old friends.

We returned home; I paid the sitter; she left; Oli looked over at the kitchen windowsill and said, “Where’s your iPod?”

And there it was, THAT SINKING FEELING. The iPod nano was a gift I had received the week before from my employer after working for months on a big project. I used it only a few times.

“I thought it was right there,” I said, hoping I was wrong and misplaced it.

“It was exactly there,” he said. “And the cord for my phone charger is missing too.”

You see, my husband seems to have a photographic spatial memory. He seems to always know exactly where things are. I’m very spoiled because I use this memory remotely, never having to wonder where my keys or glasses are.

He picked up the phone and called her. This sitter is a high-school student who had babysat for us once before.

He asked her where the iPod was. She said she didn’t touch it. He asked her if she perhaps borrowed it and forgot to put it back.

“I wouldn’t do that to you guys,” she said. The denials continued.

Then, my husband suggested that perhaps it was dropped outside when she was playing with the kids and that she should go look for it. He offered her a reward for returning it, but warned that if it wasn’t returned he would be calling her principal and employer (where she works part time).

She agreed to look.

I felt sick about this, but marveled at how calm, kind and persistent he was in questioning her.

When he took the kids out to play a little more, our “former” sitter showed up, handed me the iPod and told me a story about how she found it in the snow.

She refused the reward and then said, “I want to work for you again.”

I tried not to laugh. Then I shut the door.

All this had me thinking about some things:

1. Dealing with behaviour like this is a skill and one that my husband demonstrated handily. He was clear about the consequences, provided a face-saving option for recovery and never lost his cool.
2. I’m really naïve. I can’t believe that someone would go for instant gratification, forgoing a future income in excess of the value of the stolen item. She’s never going to work for me again, nor for any of my friends. The sad part of this is that my kids really like her and pestered us for weeks to call her.
3. Thank goodness, I packed the laptop away. Mind you, that's much tougher to hide, even in a bulky winter jacket.
   
4. I wonder what went “missing” the last time she was here. But if we never noticed, it couldn’t have been that important.
5. Bad shit seems to happen when I go skiing.
6. I don’t see many dates in our future now.
7. Sometimes the greatest gifts are the ones you get back.
   

Moving beyond regret: "Gourmet" food and office visits

Maggie's recent dietary misadventure is a good example of how, in
life, suffering is inevitable, but misery is optional.

Her digestive tract is still pretty enflamed. At least,she keeps her food down now, but each meal is followed by a bout of gagging. Lovely.

But, she's never looked better. Look at her in that photo, showing off her now somewhat perceptible cheekbones after 48 hours on the supermodel diet. Although in her case it was paper towel that was (likely) consumed and not toilet paper and heroin. Careful, Maggie those bones could cut glass. Her coat is all soft and shiny now too. Bitch.

So, Maggie made a mistake (or ate a mistake). Who hasn't? But she's
still wagging that little Aussie butt of hers. For her there wasn't
exactly a fallout from this, more of a spray out, but she's not
suffering. Not her. She's moved on--right into my office, where:

• I can feed her several home pre-cooked meals a day, along with a king's ransom worth of gut-soothing medication, and
• She can be admired by all and sundry who stop by for a visit.

What's the lesson here? I guess that even if things seem to suck at
first, there can be an upside. Either that or Scott towels are yummy.

Me soooo sorry

Maggie deeply regrets her lack of control around paper towel the other day. Doesn't she look contrite?

Here I am complaining about the cost, but she must have been deeply uncomfortable. She added much vegetation to her paper indulgence. Interestingly, her vegetation of choice was the dessicated mint plants growing in the backyard. How do I know this? Guess. Mint is an herb known for improving digestion. Didn't work though.

Maggie doesn't look like her bouncy self in this picture. In fact, she kinda looks like me when I eat the WHOLE bag of Doritos and then feel like I'm going to go into labour (which would be miraculous because I'm not pregnant. I just have a LOOOOOONG memory).

But my whiskers are much darker.

Sparkling snow and dog vomit: Taking the bad with the good

Bright sun and a 20-cm snow base--it was a perfect morning to ski, so I did.

My husband dug out my skis and waxed them up for me. Not well enough to go out himself, he was determined to send me out to enjoy an hour of sun and snow. He’s wonderful that way.

Out the door Maggie and I went. I skied along the river parkway where an earlier skier put down perfectly straight tracks, which eventually gave way to a lumpy walking trail. But I didn’t care.

It was -10C, with a wind chill factor that supposedly made it feel like -16C and I was warm and happy.

In the past, if a cross-country ski wasn’t at least 90 minutes of significant effort on groomed trails, it didn’t count. Of course, that was before children and before THE SHIT happened. (For my other thoughts on shit, go here or here.)

Today, I was thrilled just to be out and ski alongside the sparkling river with its growing patches of ice that bobbed on its wind-ruffled surface. Maggie chased squirrels and collected burrs in her fur.

When I got home, I had coffee and laughed and chatted with my little family.

Then Maggie vomited and vomited all over the place.

Setting your intention: a practical approach

Hag with a big bag of sh--

I used a little positive thinking to apply to my conundrum of the other day, and it worked.

See, I lost track of Maggie’s “output” again. The brown leaves of late autumn make that one special chore of responsible dog ownership a little tough.

With this light dusting of snow we got today, scooping the poop will be so much easier. I sound like a total lame-ass. Why do I like winter? “Well, there’s skiing and it’s easier to find and bag the dog shit.”

So, I made a point of looking for other shit and disposing of it in order to balance things out in the universe—that little bit.

Boy, did I find it. The first pile I happened upon looked like it was left by a small pony. Definitely not Maggie’s. She would have needed stitches.

After I set my intention to pick up shit wherever I found it, I found it in spades:

• near the schoolyard
• on the sidewalk with shoe treads squashed into it
• bagged and hanging on a tree
• at work (just kidding!)

But, luckily not on the bottom of my shoe. See, I find that lucky. It’s all about having the right aspirations.

Looking for shit in all the wrong places

Watching my dog run and jump and chase the ball makes me very happy. At the risk of anthropomorphizing my little Australian Shepherd, Maggie: she looks so joyful when she’s outside.

And that makes me joyful.

But when I’m bending down to the ground, trying to locate her brown shiny turds on the brown shiny leaves of late autumn, I get frustrated.

Here I am trying to scoop her poop like a responsible pet owner and I can’t find it. I’m being thwarted by the frickin’ environment.

Then I get philosophical and start thinking about “shit” in existential terms.

When we look for shit (in the form of offense or things that piss us off--like lice), we often find it. It’s a the-glass-ain’t-just-half-empty-it-has exploded-into-tiny-shards-on-the-tile-floor-and-a-piece-just-got-stuck-in-my-foot kinda thinking.

My grandmother called it fault finding. You may have forgiven someone their trespasses against you, but you’ve always got your hairy eyeball out for the next transgression.

And most of the time, we get offended because we’re so egotistical that we think that a person’s sole motivation was to hurt our feelings in some way. More often than not, people are just doing what they’re doing to get by, but we misread the situation completely.

I like to say that if you walk around with your head in the toilet, you’ll always find shit.

But, when you’re looking on the brown shiny ground for the remains of last night’s Alpo, it’s nowhere to be found.

Sometimes, you just have to let things go.

After I resolve to locate it next time, I call Maggie and take that first step on our return journey. Then, there’s that squishy, sinking feeling under my shoe and the smell hits me in the nose.

There are two ways to interpret this situation:

1. Sometimes even when you let go, the shit finds you, or
2. When you surrender, you find what you’re looking for…sort of.

A peaceful titan or Madonna in lingerie?

The reasons for coming to Shambhala that rainy night were eclectic among our group. There was my fictional reason, stress relief, for help with depression, and my favorites:

• further develop one’s psychic ability, and
• complete a fourth-year assignment to try something new.

The university student brought along her boyfriend, who sat at the ready to yank her out of there and run for the door if it started to resemble some weird cult.

After making sure everyone was comfortable—extra cushions or a chair for those who needed them (not me, I could sit cross legged because I was fit and did yoga regularly), it was time for simple instruction:

• Keep your eyes open and the gaze forward on the floor without focusing on anything in particular.
• Just breathe and be still.

It was off to the meditation races. Here’s what my inner life looked like for those few minutes:

• My ankles are starting to hurt. How am I supposed to think of nothing when my ankles hurt?
• Back to the breath.
• Gotta remember the followup lice treatment. It’s a miracle our washing machine hasn’t kacked out with all the insect troubles we’ve had to deal with over the last two years.
• If I find gnits on their heads after Round 2 of treatment, we’ll have to do 12 more loads of laundry. I’ll want to run away from home.
• Breathe
• Maybe I can whittle our wardrobes down to five outfits each.
• Oli should sign up for this. It’d be good for him.
• Shut up!
• Must get Sauvignon Blanc for Saturday. And red wine for Friday too for that matter.
• What’s Tibetan for: She who has the attention span of a gnat?

“Time’s up. Anyone have any thoughts?”

I snorted. That’s all I was—a seething mass of thoughts that make me feel dissatisfied and snarly.

Henry shared a Buddhist anecdote about imagining we’re in a house, with the front and back doors open.

“Just let the thoughts pass on through,” he said. “Don’t serve them tea and cookies.”

That’s what I was doing wrong. I was busy renovating, growing heirloom tomatoes, preparing a 10 course-meal, and opening the door for the jangling horde of uninvited thoughts.

Then we took another crack at it. Here’s how it went:

• Breathe.
• Maybe I’ll sign up for a course here.
• Just thinking. Breathe.
• Breathe.
• I wonder how often these cushions get cleaned?
• Breathe.
• Someone here is a really loud breather.
• Breathe
• Hey, it’s quiet in my head. Shit! I ruined it.

That was much better.

I figure that if I could achieve a few more seconds of mental peace, then I’d probably stymie it by getting irritated by my own blinking.

On Sundays, they meditate for two hours here. Two hours!

The rockstars of Buddhism (not to be confused with Buddhist rockstars) go on retreats that last for three years, three months and three days.

Start with smaller amounts of time, Henry suggested.

I learned to run one minute at a time. I’ll meditate one minute at a time, until my brain becomes a peaceful titan, or maybe my brain will become muscular, yet svelte like Madonna in lingerie. Figuratively speaking.

I have a small head; no titan would ever fit in there.

Why not inner peace and whiter teeth?

Maggie's way ahead of me--show off

Squinting at the dark, shiny road and mentally berating drivers who dared to delay me by tens of seconds with their left-turn antics, I drove to my first meditation instruction at the Shambhala Centre on Wellington Street West in Ottawa.

My irritation intensified as the bumpy asphalt gave way to the undulating, crunching gravel of a construction zone. Now, where in the hell was I going to park?

I knew I should have left earlier.

After pussyfooting around this for about three years (four and a half—let’s be honest!), I decided to take the plunge and do the meditation open house. I’m driven, easily distracted, but not impulsive.

I can’t even get into the right frame of mind to approach this whole Buddhism thing. I’ve read a few books and I know that doesn’t make me an expert. I’m not disciplined enough to regularly sit and meditate for longer than a couple of minutes.

I don’t think I can last more than 20 seconds without thinking of something on my unrelenting, never-ending internal to-do list, or something utterly ridiculous like:

• What does Lady Gaga look like without her makeup?, or
• maybe I could put Crest Whitestrips on my teeth while I meditate. Then, I could achieve inner peace and have whiter teeth.

And twenty seconds of thought-free mental silence is probably an exaggeration, it’s probably more along the lines of 0.49 seconds.

So why was I subjecting myself to this mental torture? I guess for anyone seeking a change, it was because what I’ve been doing isn’t working. The barking in my head makes me tired. I’m not talking about auditory hallucinations, just the constant din of the internal chatter.

So, as I was ushered into the Shambhala sitting room, where two other newbies waited. I worked at calming myself down and making small talk. Eventually, our three became seven.Once we achieved the critical mass, a sinewy older fella named Henry, led us to the smaller shrine room.

Off we go, I thought. I did my “criss-cross applesauce legs” and perched on my pillow. I was sure that I had the best posture there.

“Now, that we are all here, I think we should go around the circle, introduce yourself and tell us why you decided to come here,” Henry said.

Oh shit, I thought. There’s nothing more that I hate than sitting or standing in a circle formation and talking to people I don’t know well. I go red in the face, which is pretty stupid, really because I’ve MC’ed weddings, for feck sake.

So, it was my turn and I told them my name and I lied. Sorta. I said that my mother-in-law has studied Buddhism for years and I borrowed some of her books and became interested.

But, this is not new for me. This is part of a pattern. I was raised Catholic and when it was time for Confession, I was afraid that my sins were too terrible (I called my mother a mole-face and then drew rude pictures of her), so I lied: “I stole some candy.”

I was convinced that I was going to hell. So, now I’m switching religions to get around that.

Next: What happened?

Then: What did I sign up for?