November!

Dear November,

It's a good thing I kept those "Daily Download" notes in my Bullet Journal, otherwise, I would have a really hard time right now remembering what even happened in a month that seemed to speed by before I was ready for it to be here, let alone done!

So, what happened in November?

November marks the birth dates of some very important people in my life.  First up was G, in the first week of the month.  I girded up my loins for the idea, and booked us dinner at a restaurant in the town of Blind River, knowing I would have to drive at night for the occasion, something I have assiduously avoided whenever possible.  I am pleased to say, both the dinner and driving went smoothly, and we greatly enjoyed the experience.  I chose the experience to be my gift, instead of an item, as he's never eaten at that restaurant before.

In the second week of November, it was my younger brother's birthday, and Remembrance/Veterans' Day.  I was able to spend a half hour or so with him on Skype, in video messaging, and got the ten cent tour of his home and yard, to boot.  I loved every minute of it, moments like that call are what take the edge off how far away I live from my family.

In the fourth week of November, my youngest brother celebrated his birthday.  2015 has been a significant year for him, he has made great personal and professional strides, and he celebrated the day with thanksgiving in a way that touched my heart.  I love nothing more than seeing my loved ones succeed, and he is going for his success with a determination and focus I admire.

November also marked several changes.  First up, there was the end of Daylight Saving Time.  Hallelujah.  We all know how I feel about it, so I won't belabour how happy I am to be given the reprieve I wait all year for.  It was also time to get the tires on our vehicle switched from summer to winter tyres, and a semi-annual checkup, done with its usual speed and care.

November was a good month for my physical fitness goals: of 21 week days I missed a total of 4.  I began tracking my water intake in my BuJo, as I have noticed that I am struggling to drink even nominal amounts of water on a daily basis, even though we are at the time of year when the presence of heat indoors means one loses even more water through the skin.  I also decided to start getting up early again, and for November and December set myself the goal of making it out of bed before 6 a.m. at least 3 weekday mornings per week, and succeeded for November.

November brought some fun as well, in the form of a pen pal group forming out of the Bullet Journal Junkies Facebook group.  I received my first letter from a "pal" in southern Ontario, and mailed off a letter to a chosen pal in Australia.  I had great fun writing the letters: in this day and age of constant contact on social network platforms such as Facebook, it is surprising to realise that we really still don't know a person, and that methods such as letter writing can help us to learn about others.  I know, I know...I rail against DST as a relic of a bygone age, but I write letters on paper and send them via snail mail?  Yes.

There was light snow a couple of times in November, but the weather remained mild.  I did some serious praying to the weather gods as the end of the month loomed and our trip to southern Ontario hastened up my to-do list.  All I asked for was the mild weather to continue into the first weekend of December, so that my first long driving trip would not be complicated further by poor road conditions.  Obviously, we made it safely, as it's now past, but I'll share details in the post for December!

BuJo hack: I use the flags to stamp on, so no bleed through of the ink to the other side!

Studying.  Yes, our tree went up in November!

Supposedly, that's a people-only couch he's so relaxed on.

Better late than never...

Yes, I know it's a hoary old cliche, but it's all I've got for why I decided to write this post so late in the month.  I promised myself to write here at least once per month this year, and I still have 9 days to stay on track.

So, what happened in October?

Weather: October was, incredibly enough, tolerably "warm" for most of the month.  I managed not to need my sweaters until close to the end of the month when the week of Halloween brought days and days of buckets of rain.

Travel: I got the chance in early October to go to Sault Ste Marie for a meeting, and quite enjoyed the trip.  The fall colours were peaking, so the drive was quite colourful. This was my second visit to "The Soo" as it's called, and I finally got a chance to actually see the city as my first visit was at night in November, about three years ago at this time.  I quite liked what of it I got to see, and especially enjoyed glimpses of the St Mary's River, which separates Sault Ste Marie, Ontario, from Sault St Marie, Michigan.  A bridge spanning the river is one of the busiest border crossings between Canada and the United States.

Yoga/meditation practice: For some reason, I began to find the yoga flow I favoured for my morning routine quite stressful.  It is described as "invigorating", and throughout the spring and summer as I worked at doing it daily each morning, I enjoyed the way the practice challenged me.  It's only ten minutes long, and eventually I knew the sequence by heart, but by early October I would find myself gasping for air by the time I was done, instead of the usual feeling of being awake and engaged, ready to being my meditation.  I decided to try a different routine, one consisting of more calming, grounding poses, and discovered that this new flow was more suited to the much darker mornings.

DST rant: Of course, the more we got into October, the more impatient I became for Daylight Saving Time to end.  After three years in Canada, I have decided I am never going to like or enjoy this practice of shortening one day so that we can change the way the clock runs in the subsequent months.  Insofar as I am concerned, perhaps this practice made sense two or three hundred years ago when it was conceived, when electric lights were either still a thing of the future or so rarely found that making use of all possible daylight by shifting the clock forward was a good idea.

In a world where electrification is the norm and non-electrification the exception, where industry and business function twenty-four hours a day worldwide, and where everything and everyone is connected across multiple technological platforms, DST is an anachronism, and a case should be made for getting rid of it.  In more localised terms, I am not "saving energy" (the current reason advanced for the continued existence of DST) when I have to have the lights on for two hours prior to leaving for work because it's dark as pitch when I wake up and sunrise is artificially timed to just before I get into my vehicle.

Bullet Journal Junkie addiction: October also saw me borrowing an idea I saw cropping up often in the Bullet Journal Junkies group: habit tracking.  I've worked on a number of habits in 2015, the main one being to spend some time meditating every day, but I had been neglecting others I could do well to get back into, such as drinking enough water, consistently working out, and waking up earlier in the morning.  After trying a few suggestions, I decided to make tracking water intake, my wake up times and the days I work out as part of my set-up for November (so I'll be writing about how that's going in a couple of weeks, ha).

I also decided to institute a "15 Minute Clean" into my routine twice a week, which would see me doing whatever needed most doing around the house for 15 minutes, in an effort to reduce the need for me to spend all day Sunday getting the house back into shape, or (worse) starting my cleaning on Saturday because I was unable to relax due to the state of the house.

Driving!: October saw me making my first long drive, tackling the 170 KM (one way) drive to Sudbury, to take G to an appointment.  There is construction on Highway 108 South leading down to the Trans-Canada/Highway 17, so there were some delays.  The funniest moment of the drive came when I saw a spider on a tissue near the gear shift, and almost jumped from the vehicle (not fond of creatures with more appendages than I have!).  Fortunately, we were sitting in a construction delayed line of traffic, so I controlled myself and G carefully removed the creature and the tissue to outside the vehicle.

In all, I think it was a successful drive.  If there's one thing I have learned from all the traveling I did across Jamaica via public transit, it is that wherever I am going to is not moving away from me, I am moving toward it, so I will eventually get there, and I do not need to do so before anyone else.  Going anywhere for me is very much about the journey, and now that I drive it is about the process, as well, and I am going to tackle it the way I do everything else: knowing my limitations, cautiously aware of how what I do affects those around me, and abiding by the established rules/guidelines governing my actions.

Finally: It won't be long before I have to write an entry for December, and will therefore be able to check off one of the things I was working on for 2015: Write a blog entry each month summarising the month before.  I'm also more than 320 days into my year of meditating, closing in on the 365.  December will see me spending a lot of what spare time I have looking back on how I came through 2015, and looking forward so I can get a handle on what I want 2016 to look like.

On the way to Sault Ste Marie

Halloween candy treat bags, all gone!

I tried making Jamaican coco-bread

Fall is here

September slipped away nearly as quickly as August did.  I barely got myself re-organised, before it was all over and the month of October was looking me in the face.

This month: I discover Bullet Journaling

Back in August, I began trying out the Bullet Journal system of planning and noting in what I call my "Day Book", which I have been using since 2014 to keep myself organised alongside the Evernote and Trello apps.  I came across the Bullet Journal system thanks to a blog entry from Evernote, actually.

Not everyone finds a digital application suitable to their purposes, and there are still (many!) people in the world who prefer pen and paper for the inherent flexibility and customization that comes with a blank sheet of paper, as opposed to the structured architecture of the app.  There are also people, like myself, who use digital applications for one purpose, but otherwise turn to pen and paper (or, in my case, pencil and paper, I prefer pencil) for another.

While I will plan a day of doing the bookkeeping for G's business in an Evernote notebook, or list the three things I must get done so I can feel accomplished on a specific day on a Trello board, I have always had an agenda/daily diary type book since I was 13 years old, if not every year, then most of those years, and rely on them for keeping appointments and scheduling work and personal occasions.

Previously, my Day Book just consisted of my goals for the month and any other tasks I wanted to especially accomplish (in 2014 I just did a list of my Resolutions under various subheadings).  If you checked out the Bullet Journal (Bu-Jo to its fans) site, you will see it starts with calendar spreads for the month and the week, and then daily logging (rapid logging) in the form of tasks, events and notes with signifiers (symbols) that quickly identify what an item is.

So far, I am still tweaking the system to suit myself.  I use a monthly calendar listing to see any events at a glance, a Tasks page for an ongoing list of anything that needs doing, a Due page for my bill payment schedule, and follow these pages with what I call my Daily Download, which is just a summary of each day's main events, completed tasks, activities and even random thoughts.  I do not think I will add "Collections" in the form of say, books to read, not this year anyways.  I also do not log daily activities such as meals or workouts in my Day Book, I use apps (LoseIt, Fitocracy, Fitbit) for all that already and am not minded to change that.

One thing that is quickly apparent about Bu-Jo users is how creative they are.  I can't decorate anything to save my life, I have zero talent in the area of drawing, or art, or crafting.  I feel like quite the impostor looking at the posts of the group on Facebook I joined to get ideas about tweaking the Bullet Journal system, my Day Book is relentlessly plain, just words on a page.  To add just a touch of creativity, a friend sent me a box of rubber stamps designed for planners, with symbols you are likely to need in a planner.  I spent a little time stamping each one into the last pages of my Day Book (I don't call it a Bu-Jo, even though I use the Bu-Jo system to organise it now) and labeling them so I know what each will be used for.  Who knows, I might even spend some money and buy some washi tape, a very decorative tape originating in Japan, and give my Day Book some colour.

What else I got up to:

In September, I didn't save anything.  I temporarily discontinued my RRSP contributions in July to allow for some additional income, because G's business slowed right down to very little.  I re-started my contributions with my first pay in October.

I served as a volunteer at the local running of the Terry Fox Run on September 20.  Terry Fox is very much a Canadian national hero, he ran on a prosthetic leg across Canada to raise awareness about cancer.  35 years later and counting, his inspirational spirit is still honoured with runs organised in communities large and small.  It was my first year volunteering with this particular effort, but likely will not be my last.

For 29 of the 30 days in September, I wrote a short affirmation each morning after completing my Headspace meditation practice.  I wrote for 3 minutes, as that was the most time I could add to my morning schedule without going completely off-track.  The point of this was to both start the day with a positive frame of mind, and to use my handwriting, something I don't do much of anymore with all the digital tools I use.

Finally, I decided to not pull out the sweaters and scarves until it was at least mid- to late October.  Summer ended on a beautiful note, but fall swept right in, with high temperatures going from an average of 21 *C to no more than 15 *C in less than a week.  It's not winter yet, and I am not going to dress for it until I have to.  After 3 years, I am interested to see just how adjusted I am.

Some of the stamps, labeled

The rest of the stamps, labeled

The stamps

A single fall rose

This month's cute pup picture

September...already!

Happy Labour Day!

Oddly enough, whether in Canada or Jamaica, this day has always been about doing the very least I can do and still make it through the day.  Maybe because I always work so hard every other day, on a day declared a holiday in honour of workers, I just want to sit on my backside and do nothing.

Today, so far I have managed to fold and put away laundry, and tidy our bedroom and living room, because I didn't get around to it yesterday during my regular housework day.  I didn't try very hard, I will admit, I haven't felt like doing much this weekend, even moreso than my usual "It's the weekend, leave me alone, I just want to vegetate" way.

However, I did manage to go out yesterday and mow the heck out of the lawn.  Most of it, anyways.  Just when I started to feel like I couldn't do much more, G came out and took over and finished up by doing the part of the lawn that is the hardest, the slope leading down to the street level.  Honestly, the state of the lawn was beginning to annoy me, and I am pretty sure the neighbour was giving us the evil eye every time he looked at our lawn and compared it to the pristine verdant carpet he calls his lawn.  We can't afford the lawn guy, but that's no reason to let ours grow over as much as we sometimes do, I am sure.  I like to do things on a regular schedule, but G is not that organised.  He notices things need to be done when they are far gone, generally, rather than relying on a programme of regular maintenance to keep things in check.

I am not sure what happened to August.  That general feeling of running behind that I mentioned in August's post continued right throughout the rest of the month, and it ended as it had begun, with me feeling like I had lost the plot and needed to do something radical to get back on track.  Whatever that radical thing was, though, I didn't quite figure out, so September started the same way.

I did manage to achieve a few things, for one, I hit 8 push-ups and 8 pull/chin-ups in a set.  That, I consider pretty awesome, and can't say enough good things about +Tim Berzins, the coach who got me there.  After an entire month of plugging along at assisted chin-ups and incline push-ups, I felt like quitting and bawling because I wasn't progressing, but he said to just keep working on the assisted movement, and what do you know, the full movement came after.  I've gone back to lifting weights three times per week, and doing yoga two days per week as of August 31, but I am still adding in push-ups and pull-ups to keep that goal in play.

Also in August, I started keeping my Day Book as a Bullet Journal, an analogue organisation system I came across on the Evernote blog.  So far, I think I haven't written as much in it as it is meant to record, but as it's my first month using the system, I am thinking that as I make the system my own, I will record more and more in it.  I am trying to move more towards my Day Book being a log of my day's events, activities, and thoughts, even inspiring quotes, instead of just a planner for work hours and bill payments with a monthly goal/to-do list.

The calendar is sliding towards the coming fall, due on September 23rd.  It is still quite warm, and very summery today (I am typing this wearing tank top and shorts!), after a scary couple of weeks when it looked as though summer was over and cooler temperatures were coming in early.  Thanks to a "Colorado Low", we had a few wet, foggy, cool days when the high temperature hovered in the low 20's and refused to budge much past 21 *C.  However, the summer weather is back, although leaves are changing here and there.  I will "allow" this, it is September, after all.  Personally, though, I am not pulling out any fall clothing before September 23rd.

I am working hard to make sure I don't try to lump the last few months of the year together in my mind, I want to keep looking no further than the current month.  I need to re-set goals for September, add them to my Day Book, and get this month sorted before it also gets away from me.  

Yes, the inukshuk wears a toque.

Nipper and Ariea like to join me for meditation sometimes

Nipper thinks my meditation pillow is his.

"I'm late, I'm late, I'm very, very late!"

I feel a lot like Alice's White Rabbit this month, hence the title of my post.  Quite a number of things, including this post, haven't been done according to the schedule I am trying to keep, and I feel rather off-kilter because of that.

I meant to post a more reflective/introspective post around my birthday, but I didn't get around to it.  So many things seemed to crop up and run into each other that, three weeks later, I am so far behind that I am having to be strict with myself to get things done and off my to-do list, or risk falling into the trap of procrastinating.

I did have a good birthday, though.  It was a long day at work, but as usual my colleagues did their best to make it a fun day.  G and I then went out for dinner, where I was able to have the dish I have been craving for some time: Four Cheese Spinach and Artichoke Dip with Pita Chips.  That, along with the Chocolate Lava Cake and ice-cream for dessert were all I wanted, and I had them, and it was good.  I was "outed" as a birthday celebrant to the restaurant staff, so they stuck a candle in my lava cake and sang for me, and though I had hoped to avoid it, I enjoyed it.

Things went sideways after that because I encouraged G to get involved with a weekend event in the nearby town of Blind River, to get some exposure for his business, and also to get some camping done because it's an activity he enjoys (like most Canadians) that we hadn't done together yet.

The event itself was a success for us, but I cannot say for the organizers.  On Saturday, the weather was spectacularly warm and there was some turnout.  On Sunday, the weather took a turn for rain, although not as much as it looked like we would get, and the turnout was poor.

How was the camping?  I didn't hate it, and I would definitely do it again, but with some differences.  I would get more involved in the planning next time, to start with.  I left everything up to G, seeing as this is something he has been doing all his life, and the only times I ever camped in Jamaica I was just sleeping out in the backyard under a makeshift tent consisting of a sheet thrown over a clothesline and anchored with rocks.

We had great gear, but way too much food for the time period we expected to spend and the location we would be at, and had I put my foot down as he loaded the truck, we wouldn't have trucked so much food to Blind River only to bring it back home again.  I can only imagine that had we actually been out in the bush and not just at a property located off the beaten path, we would have needed all that he packed, but as it was, a weekend spent (basically) in someone's backyard with a Tim Horton's less than 5 kilometres away?  Excessive is the word that comes to mind.

While our tent and its accoutrements were fantastic, including a waterproof "fly" (covering to protect from insects and elements) that protected everything inside the tent from the rain, the sleeping arrangements left a lot to be desired.  We brought a sleeping bag and moving blankets to spread on the ground, but...seriously...the ground in Canada is basically iron.  I mean, in Jamaica we say "dutty tuff" to describe when the ground is hard, but I have slept on concrete that was more comfortable than the Canadian ground.

As I tried to settle to sleep that Friday night, after working all day on the busiest banking day of the month, I wiggled around in vain to try to find a comfortable spot.  I thought, at first, that I was lying on a rock, so I eventually decided to turn my sleeping bag perpendicular to its original position to get away from said "rock".  Nope, didn't help.  It was like that.  All.  Over.  I spent two very uncomfortable nights tossing and turning and vowing that our next trip would see us going nowhere without an air mattress or a slab of thick sponge.

I returned home on Sunday evening, chiefly because I had had enough of not having had a shower in more than 48 hours, and I wasn't sleeping on that ground one more night.  G opted to stay to enjoy the rest of the performances lined up, so I made the 58 KM drive on my own.  Yes, I drove on my own on the highway for the first time, and I think I did well.  I had a loaded truck, so I monitored the turns very carefully, and I stayed at or just below the speed limit to acclimate to driving much faster than I ever do in town.  I feel quite proud of myself, and much less nervous now about handling highway driving.

As far as July's goals went, I decided to end the 52 Week Money Challenge after week 26, same as I did last year.  Various circumstances converged at the same time to make it burdensome to save the increasingly larger amounts that would be needed for the Challenge.   However, I have not given up on the Challenge, I intend to do it again next year, with one change: I will save the amounts in reverse.  That is, I will start saving the higher weeks first and work my way to the lower amounts at the end of the year.

Looking back at my efforts in the past couple of years, and at how my income is earned, I have come to realise that my income is higher during the winter and spring months but lower in the summer and fall, and this has held true where I had a single job with full-time hours (2014) and two part-time jobs (2015).  So, next year, I flip the script, and start high and move to low, and see how that works.  If that fails, I will simply go to setting aside a specific amount from each pay, the same as I do for my registered savings plan.  I'm not giving up on saving, I am giving up on saving with this particular methodology, and trying another method to find a way that works for me.

Other goals achieved in July include regularly doing push-ups and pull-ups in my workouts.  My current workout programme calls for a progression to these, and I am now at the point where I can do 5 sets of 8 push-ups and 5 sets of 6 pull-ups 3 times per week.  If I wanted nothing else from this programme, I really wanted to achieve these goals, and I am very happy to have worked my way this far.  The programme ends this month (August), but I plan to keep those exercises as part of my regular routine, and to work on getting to a 1 minute plank by that time (I am at 55 seconds, but it is quite a struggle).

I also hit the 180 day mark with Headspace, successfully meditating every day for half the year.  The next stop is to complete the year, and be able to mark 2015 as the year mindfulness became established as part of my daily routine.

I have been sitting for an hour now, and have a few more things to do around the house before I can call today a success.  I can check this off on my list in Evernote, and move on to the next item.

On my way to 365...

The Blind River, Rocking on the River

Our booth and camp

G, ready to rock

With my favourite bike at the Show 'n' Shine

Hey Canada, our birthdays are in the same month!

Happy Canada Day!  It's July 1, formerly Dominion Day, now Canada Day, celebrating the birth of the country now known as Canada (from the Iroquois word "Kanata", meaning: village).  Though I need another year of residency and good (pro forma) citizenship before I qualify to apply, I spent a good part of today's day off from work reading "Discover Canada", the official guidebook for persons hoping to become Canadian citizens.  All questions on the recently-revised citizenship test are based on information in this book.

Here at home in E.L., other than it being Canada Day, it is also the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the founding of the city.  Various days since last weekend have been earmarked for activities relating to the history of the city, including the Uranium Festival (uranium mining was the whole reason for the first birth of the town), now named the Homecoming parade, since the mines closed more than a decade ago and took with them the boom and bust cycle of resource mining.  The big celebration will happen this weekend, with a street dance showcasing Canadian artists as the main attraction.  I am hoping to swing the budget in favour of G and I attending, The Roadhammers will be performing and my first Canadian concert was watching their front man Jason McCoy in concert around Christmas 2013.

June was a significant month, marking as it did the half of the year.  It also marked our fifth wedding anniversary.  Wow, five years.  When we were getting married and watching a lot of wedding shows on The Learning Channel together, we joked that for our fifth anniversary we wanted to go to Hoboken, New Jersey, to meet Buddy of "The Cake Boss" fame and challenge him to make a cake that used the colours of our national flags: red and white for G, black, green, and gold for me.  We didn't make it to Hoboken, but in secret we both made plans to do something along the same lines: I commissioned a wreath from his sister's shop Wreathamania by Aiesha that would incorporate those colours and themed items significant to our relationship.  He ordered a beautiful bouquet with red roses, white and yellow carnations, ferns, and a black bow.  We both laughed at ourselves, being so secretive and doing the same thing.

In June, I only managed 75% of the $98 I needed to save for the 52 Week Money Challenge.  The fault lies entirely with my planning: I based it off the expected income from my seasonal job, completely forgetting that I would be working only 3 weeks there, not 4, so I needed to have split the required amount into thirds and not quarters.  Salient lesson there.

I completed my goal of 180 days straight meditating with Headspace.  In essence, the roughly 30 minutes each morning when I do a short yoga  session (less than 10 minutes), then sit in silence for 15 minutes with Headspace, is now inseparable from my morning ritual.  It's how I begin my days, and I can't have it any other way.

During the month, I also entertained friends I met through the immigration forum G and I went to for information and advice when we planned my emigration to Canada.  By the time the Canadian wife and I first communicated, I was already gaining a reputation for having some answers when it came to Family Class issues, which is why she reached out to me.  Eventually, what started as a plea for help became a friendship, we met in Toronto when I first came to Canada and G took me there, and since then have communicated through a successful appeal of the denial of her husband's visa.  He landed last year after a 4-year process, and finally I got to meet him in person as well.

We shared the joys and tribulations of settling in for the long haul, and introduced each other to our cultures, mostly via food.  I cooked a full Jamaican lunch of ackee and saltfish (Jamaica's national dish), fried plantain, callaloo (Jamaican leafy green, resembles spinach and prepared in a similar fashion), and fried dumplings.  Nearly all the ingredients were had thanks to my friends' living in Scarborough, with its Jamaican and Jamaican-descent population, having access to grocery stores carrying these items.  In turn, they prepared a Sri Lankan dinner for us of dahl, puri, and coconut sambal.  On the second day of their visit, G prepared a Canadian dinner of barbequed chicken, salad with a homemade vinaigrette, and I fried a breadfruit he roasted in a fire outside.  (Yes, my Caucasian husband knows how to roast a breadfruit, he paid attention when he lived in Jamaica!)

The moon is full and high as I type this up, and I can hear the fireworks starting as dusk deepens outside.  I am due at work tomorrow, so I will call it a night for now.  Later this month, around my birthday, I will try to look back on the half year that has gone by, and see how far I have come with the goals I set and where I am going for the last half of 2015, and the beginning of the 40th year of my life.

180 days of Headspace

With my friend's help, I wore a saree for the first time

All the coconut on hand called for coconut drops!

My friends brought me a gift of tea

Happy Anniversary, Canada!

Our, mine and Canada's anniversary, that is.  I emigrated to Canada 3 years ago today.  Wow, just like that, and 3 years are gone.

I'm not sure G realises the significance of the day, he hasn't been well much of the past week, so for today we have mainly addressed immediate needs: we went to the store to pick up dog food, the deli to buy meat (we like to frequent the local butcher as much as possible to get good, fresh cuts), and the gas station to top up the gas can and the truck (gas prices here astonish me, considering Canada produces its own).

I could have bought the dog food on my own, but I insisted on his company for the meat shopping and the gas pumping, chiefly because I don't know one cut of meat from another and would simply accept whatever is offered so long as it is reasonably priced, whereas he is quite particular about his protein, and I have never pumped gas into a receptacle before, and pumping gas is quite the ordeal for me due to the gas cap on the truck having its own key and requiring opening and closing in a particular way.  I absolutely hate struggling with opening and closing anything, it is one thing that will easily send me flying into a rage.  I am not sure why this is so, I have never tried to examine the roots of that particular issue.

Looking at myself today, and at the self that arrived in Canada, it would be easy to think they are quite different.  I have grown and changed quite a bit in the last 3 years, and though I am certain there is much more growing and changing ahead of me still, I am not unduly disappointed with myself.

If you'd asked me 3 years ago if I would expect to be working now, I would have said, "Of course!".  I could have had no inkling, though, that working would mean two part-time jobs, and one of them in a field I swore I would not go back to but find myself enjoying nonetheless.

If you'd asked me 3 years ago if I would count meditating and working out among my essential daily activities, I would have said, "No."  Now, I start my day with a yoga sequence and meditation, and am committed to at least 3 resistance workouts each week.  My body and mind now both reflect these interests, I am more "toned" (as in, there's less fat on me so my muscles show up more) and even developed in some areas I never gave any thought to (hooray for defined traps and delts), and I am calmer and less prone to hyper-anxious episodes.

Living in Canada has changed me, yet many things about me remain the same.  Many of my fundamental definitions of myself and the world are still firmly in place.  Of course, 3 years here compared to 36 years in Jamaica (minus about 18 months spent living in New York) isn't enough time to overturn these definitions, but some have been altered, perhaps even radically.

What about May's Goals and Notes,though, you ask.  Yes, enough of all this retrospection and introspection, what did I do with the month gone by?

I continue to save in the 52 Week Money Challenge.  As the weeks mount up, it is going to become even more challenging to set aside the funds.  May weeks were 19, 20, 21, and 22, for a total of $82.  I managed to squeeze $41 out of two pays for the month, reduced as my income was.  I keep reminding myself that with only one job last year (and the same amount of bills!) I was able to save all the weeks up to 26, so I should be able to manage it now with two jobs making up the same number of hours as the one job last year.

I could not do as much paying down as I wanted to of the next credit card on my hit list.  I had to make adjustments based on the reduction in hours/income, and that was one of the things I had to reduce.  I am keeping an "every mikkle mek a muckle" attitude towards this credit card, knowing that every little bit will add up to the balance as long as I keep plugging away at it.

Last month I read "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People", read more from The Simple Living Guide, and completed the final two Headspace Packs in the Performance series, Creativity and Happiness, as well as the first pack in Headspace Pro.  In the Pro series, there is much more silence and less guidance than in any of the other series.  As you can imagine, keeping my mind on track is challenging, but I am enjoying this series.  As much as I never minded Andy's gentle tones, I find I quite like sitting in silence to start the day.

I see by the clock that it is time to wrap up this month's entry, I am on duty as the sous chef and bottle washer.  The dishes are done, but I am responsible for preparing the asparagus and broccoli that will be served with the prime rib tonight.  I like easy recipes, and preparing the asparagus is a matter of tossing with olive oil, salt and pepper, and broiling for about 8-10 minutes.  The broccoli I plan to stir fry in butter, as steaming it is not my favourite method of preparation.

This month's glimpse into my life:

The family tree, planted for my arrival in Canada.

 

150 straight days of meditation

May the fourth...er, first, be with you!

If you're wondering how come I am writing this post before noon on May 1st, and not on the weekend, it's because I took the day off from both my jobs.  March and April have been a two month-long orgy of work, work, and more work, and I knew this going into these months, so I planned a day off to reward myself, and I am taking it.  I'm going to work tomorrow, which was unplanned: this was supposed to be a long weekend off but circumstances beyond my control threw a serious monkey wrench into that part of the plan.  However, that is no reason not to enjoy today, so here I am.

I started the day off a little early: last night I ate about half the pint of Haagen Dazs ice-cream I had been saving for this day.  It made for a great dinner, if I do say so myself.  Today's meals will consist largely of the rest of that ice-cream, and chips and salsa of the Tostitos brand, but only the "Medium" salsa and not the "Hot" one because after nearly three years of scouring every place in E.L. that has food for sale to the public, I have come to the conclusion that either none of the stores stock it because no-one buys it, or everyone buys it so there never is any when I look.  My money is on the first alternative.  I've eaten about a third of the jar by now, and have a somewhat interesting tingle on the sides of my tongue, but that's about the extent of the "spicy" factor in a "Medium". Oh, well.

Looking at my day book, I would say April went well, indeed.  I wrote 7 goals and 2 notes, and, of the 9 items, 8 were actionable in April.  The ninth item requires some budget adjustments starting in May, so it will be carried forward to this month.

I planned to save for the April weeks from the 52 Week Money Challenge ($15+$16+$17+18=$66) by setting aside $22 from 3 each of the weekly paycheques from my seasonal position, and did exactly that.  If you're wondering why I didn't save each week's amount from a cheque in each week, it's because I wanted to have this particular item accomplished well before the end of the month.

Three other goals for this month were also financial, namely, to keep paying down the balance of one of our two low limit credit cards, to pay both off once I received my income tax refund for 2014, and then to snowball the payments I made monthly on the lower limit cards to the card with the next higher limit (multiple credit cards is the bane of the modern North American's financial existence, if you ask me!).  My return was duly assessed, Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) agreed with my figures, and refunded the excess income tax deducted.  Both smaller cards now have a nil balance, and I have quite the sense of accomplishment in keeping both at nil.  I was able to make a second payment on the next-higher limit card in April, and the plan for May is to put a little from each pay towards it.

One goal and two of the notes involved writing: I wanted to write my April blog post over the Easter weekend, which I did, and the second goal and note involved reading then writing "take-away" points from a book I borrowed from the Library at Job #1.  Since last year, I have been reading through the Self Development and Personal Awareness list compiled by that library, and each time I borrow a book on the list I try to write a summary of what I read that really resonated with me.  April's book was "Smart Women Finish Rich" by David Bach, which was so popular I had to wait 3 weeks on a waiting list before I could take a turn reading it.

I would recommend the book as reading material for any woman, no matter where she is in life financially.  It is solidly grounded in the reality women face in dealing with finances, and written on the premise that any woman can hold the reins of her financial life and do just fine at it with some guidance under her belt.  Bonus: the book was originally written with American women in mind, but the version I read was specifically targeted to Canadian women, and contained some eye-opening facts and information about my financial future as a female Canadian resident.

My carried forward goal actually relates to something I learned from reading "Smart Women Finish Rich", which was to figure out where you stand financially and where you want to go (Chapter 3).  After doing my figuring, I decided to "max out" my Registered Retirement Savings Plan (RRSP) contribution room for Job #1, and after doing the calculations demonstrated by the book, I realised I was only contributing about half of what I need to in order to make that a reality.  (RRSP contribution room is set by the CRA, currently the figure is 18% of earned income for the previous year, up to a set maximum limit of $23,820.)   In composing my Goals & Notes for May, I now need to state my plan for making it happen, and get it done.

One goal was related to G's business, namely, doing the bookkeeping for January through March of this year.  In 2014, I tried to do the bookkeeping on a monthly basis as much as possible, chiefly because I had to the bookkeeping for all of his first year (8 months in 2013) in four or five days in a rush to get his information ready for having our taxes done.  I would learn later on from our tax preparer that had I not done the bookkeeping myself, his fee would have been considerably higher than the sum I paid.  This year I fell behind because I have been working every weekend since mid-February, but with winter 2014/15 as slow as it was for him, I was able to do the first quarter over the course of a day in April.  Hopefully, I can go back to the two hours or so each month now that my weekends are soon to be mine again.

To wrap up April on a high note, my seasonal employer has asked me to continue on throughout the summer on an ad hoc basis, whereby she will turn over to me some of the work she usually does herself in that business, so she can focus on another that she co-owns.  I will not have as many hours as I did from January to April, but even a smaller income stream is better than no extra income at all.  I will have access to additional training resources and information, which means I can also upgrade my skills to be of even more worth when the next season rolls around.  I am very excited about this opportunity, and need to do some forward planning to make sure I take full advantage and give the best possible service.

It's a beautiful day out there, I think I have rambled enough for today.  It's time to get some air and sunshine!

Changes, challenges, and choices

Just like that, March is gone, and the first quarter of 2015 is over.  Looking back, I'd like to say it was successful, this first quarter of another year.

According to my Day Book, I made it to my goal of 90 days straight meditating with Headspace.  I'm really happy, and very pleased with myself for sticking to this particular goal.  Meditation is a real challenge for me, I have quite the "monkey mind" going on, and can mentally leap and veer from issue to issue with seeming abandon.  Sitting still and observing this behaviour, without judging and with gentle compassion, is very hard for me.

For the last 30 days of my 90 day count, I worked on Headspace's "Focus" pack (a pack is a meditation series designed to guide you through a particular mental challenge), and I came to the conclusion that I will need to repeat this pack several times before I will feel like I am comfortable with the techniques.  Although I find visualisation one of the easier techniques, my vivid imagination also proved to be my downfall.  I spent quite a bit of time bringing myself back to the visualisation that is part of the meditation from the tangents that I suddenly found myself wandering off on.

March was the second month in a row I chose not to spend unless I was using cash or debit, i.e. no credit card purchases.  I came to the realisation that it is quite useless to try to pay off a credit card while adding charges to the balance (the bank is doing so without my assistance!) , so I stuck to my decision to get off that particular treadmill.

Having to stare at my bank balance or rummage in my purse before every purchase made the decision to spend money that much less automatic and forced me to be more aware of what I was doing with my money, and it is working.  I am coming to like seeing my money sitting in my bank account, or resting in my purse, as opposed to vanishing into the ether to pay another credit card bill, or into someone else's till.  I have kept up with the 52-weeks savings plan to week 14, another March goal.  I aim to continue this theme into April, and will make some changes once I apply my tax refund to additional debt repayment.

It is most definitely spring, the snow is receding.  The sun's warmth is actually felt, it is not just bright on sunny days.  G has plans to begin raking the lawn and garden, and has started raking the backyard so that the accumulated leaves and other debris that got buried in the winter snow can be gathered easily as the backyard dries out.  There is still slush and ice in the backyard where the shadow of the house covers it, but if the weather continues the warming trend, that should also pass by the end of this month.

It will soon be time to put away my sweaters and pull out my not-winter wear.  To make life easier for myself this year, I have decided on a "uniform" for work, to minimise time wasted in contemplating/worrying/choosing what to wear.  After reading the same exhortation on several minimalist living websites, I have decided that a "uniform" is not a bad thing.  Several public figures, including President Obama, the late Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook CEO) are all pointed to as examples of this, as they are all known to wear more or less the same type/colour of clothing daily.

On the one hand, it is certainly easier for men to do this, but on the other hand, I am from a country where working people are used to wearing uniforms and I never had anything against the practice.  I found it convenient not to have worry about what I would wear to work, as there was no choice: most of my employers provided uniforms, and I wore them.  Certainly, it was cheaper: uniforms were either a deductible expense to the employer or a taxable benefit to employees, but it meant that the clothing I wore for most of the day was not an out-of-pocket expense.

Since coming to Canada, most of my spending (including many of the charges to said credit card I am now paying off) has been on clothing.  Quite often the first thing I asked myself before buying something was: "Can I wear this to work?" and if the answer was no, I was always conscious of a very tangible sense of guilt at spending money on something that wouldn't get worn very often.  Last year, I tried to buy spring and summer shirts that could be worn either for work or during leisure time, but found that I was still buying too much, as I am more often at work than anywhere else.  Indeed, whenever I am out and about, it is either work-related or just after work so I am wearing my work clothes.

To that end, I chose a "uniform" outfit from what I am most comfortable presenting myself in for work: long-sleeved Oxford shirts and dress pants or skirt.  Long-sleeved, because I work in air-conditioned surroundings in (largely) sedentary jobs and find that I feel cold quite easily.  23* Celsius, the normal temperature of the buildings I work in, is just a tad on the cool side for me if I am not moving around.  Having made the choice to stick with wearing this uniform outfit, all I need do now is ensure that the clothes are washed and ironed each week. (Yes, I still iron my clothes.  I have not adopted the Canadian habit of using the dryer or relying on "wrinkle-free" material.)

G and the pups are napping yet again, so I think I will do some reading while I have the peace and quiet.  Today, I finished reading "Smart Women Finish Rich" by David Bach (the Canadian version), and wrote some take-away points that I hope to include in my financial planning over the rest of this year.  I am going to take up again reading "The Simple Living Guide" by Janet Luhrs, which I bought for a toonie ($2, coin) at the last library sale.  I had to pause reading Simple Living Guide as I had Smart Women for two weeks only from the library at work, as it is very popular and I had to wait to get my turn to read it and want to ensure I have it back in time for the next person.

Until next time, enjoy these photos of the pups:

Nipper on the yoga mat

Nipper and Ariea

Ariea hogs the yoga mat too

 

Sleepy buddies

Spooning puppies!

Spring? Already?! (Also, the apps that keep my life organised)

I am late with this entry, but at the very least it's still March!

It would appear that spring is definitely going to happen sometime around the spring equinox (Friday March 20 this year)!  Last week temperatures began to warm up, and the amount of melting that has happened in that week is simply amazing.  Mind you, we have less snow this year, and the frost went deeper into the ground because there were very cold days as usual, but the snow has melted dramatically.  In just a single day, we went from small, random patches in the backyard to large swathes being completely uncovered.  Even the front lawn is giving up its snow cover quickly.  While being undeniably glad to see it go, I'm also hoping it doesn't go too quickly, because flooding of basements is always a concern at this time of year.

Flipping the page back to my February Goals and Notes, I see that I did well on several of my goals for the month.  Having hit a 30 day streak on the Headspace app, which I am using for my meditation and mindfulness training, I decided to go for the gusto and hit a 90 day run.  I decided to mark off each day in 15 day increments in my monthly planning book, and it kept me in good stead all through February.  February ended with me successfully two-thirds of the way to the 90 day mark.  If it takes at least 84 days to successfully make something a habit, I am on my way to meditating daily.

February also featured financial goals, including:

1.  limiting incidental spending to cash only, 
2. paying down the balance of one of our smaller credit cards while keeping the others current with just-above-minimum payments (the goal being to eliminate balances one at a time in this fashion), 
3. keeping my spending overview app Spendee up-to-date instead of waiting until weeks (or even months!) have gone by to look back at my income/outgoing comparison, 
4. setting aside some savings using the 52 Week Money Challenge (click this link for a .pdf template), and
5. bringing my own lunch for work daily, rather than buying it.

Aside from still being lax about updating Spendee (I only got to it twice in February), I managed all the other goals.

I started a "gratitude practice" in February.  This involves writing down three things from the past or current day that I feel grateful for.  This has become a sort of preliminary to my meditation practice, to set the frame of mind for a period of mindfulness.  At times I feel almost apologetic about the things I feel grateful for, they can seem so trivial, rather ordinary and mundane.  

Gratitude for the fact that I have a less rigorous workout on Friday mornings has been a recurring theme.  Lately, I have so little motivation to get up in the mornings (see last year's rant about daylight saving time) that knowing all I am required to do is twenty minutes of yoga and 3 sets of 5 reps of one-arm dumbbell rows is all that gets me out of bed at the end of the week.  For the rest of the week, Bodbot schedules my strength training workouts, and I have been learning the basics of yoga from Rodney Yee's excellent Beginner's Yoga DVD (link to his website here).

My work week right now includes Saturdays, as I am trying to get in as many hours as possible at my seasonal job.  There's about two weeks left in the "peak period", so my manager tells me, and then we will "coast" for the next four weeks to the end of the season.  On the one hand, I will have more time on my hands, on the other I will go back to a single income stream.  For now, I am making the most of things by paying down what I can, so that when we are back to the lower income level there will be less it is required to cover.  

I can now go to Trello, and move writing this blog from both "To Do" (last week's card) and "Doing" (card for the week before that).  I felt quite guilty as it sat undone on the Weekly Planning board, in two places, for two whole weeks, let me tell you.  I find that visual reminders work very well with me, so lately I have taken to putting things where I can't avoid seeing them.  I am learning to utilise Trello as a sort of "big picture" viewer, whereas when I want to plan a specific activity such as my housework day or a day of doing G's bookkeeping, I prefer to use Evernote, if only because it has a cleaner, more utilitarian feel, when compared to Trello's decidedly creative feel.

In spite of all this reliance on technology, I haven't given up pencil and paper.  I still carry an agenda: this year's is a smaller, pocket-sized Moleskine (I don't know how to pronounce it, either) Daily/Weekly agenda, complete with handy labels.  Looking back at last year's agenda, I see I used it mostly to record hours worked, and the odd event, so I didn't mind graduating to a smaller size this year.  There's a lined page across from each week where I can put a checklist of things I need to do or remember, and I update Trello from this list if necessary.  And, of course, I have my "day book", where I record my monthly goals and anything of note that comes up (registration keys for products, for example), and keep a copy of each month's calendar once past, so I can see how many days I worked out for the month.

G is awake, and out of the bed, taking the dogs with him, so I can finally fold the laundry.  Aside from accompanying him to the grocery store and doing some light tidying of our bedroom, that's all the housework I am doing today, so no list for that.  I hear a book calling my name, because it will be a while yet before dinner is ready.  I don't know which it will be, but I need some uninterrupted reading time before my rest day is done.  Here's what the bed looked like while I wrote this:

Three Yellow Ribbons, and hello, February!

Well, the shine is off 2015, it's already February 1.  I could say something about how fast time is flying, but I sound cliche enough when I say that out loud.

Yesterday, to close out January, I participated in the Walk for Memories put on by the area chapter of the Alzheimer's Society.  This is my third year participating in this Walk, so I have three yellow ribbons decorating a lanyard on my bedside lamp, one for each year.  This is the last year I will be doing the Walk for Memories, though.  Oh, I will still be supporting the fundraising efforts, but starting next year it will be the Walk for Alzheimer's, under the theme "Make Memories Matter".

My family was very briefly touched by dementia when my great-grandfather regressed to his youth shortly before his death at the age of 87 (almost).  He was convinced my mother was his mother, and that she was upset with him because he wasn't at home, and he kept trying to leave the home he had lived in and raised children with my great-grandmother in for more than 30 years, including my mother.  I loved him as the only grandfather I knew, and this period of his life intersected heavily with ours because my mother was his main caregiver, and I still remember how helpless she felt because there was nowhere she could go for help.  It matters to me that others affected by dementia have support locally, so when I was asked to participate in the fundraising and walk, I had no trouble saying, "Sure!"

Looking at my January goals, I can say I did OK for the most part.  Financially, I am still struggling to put a cap on the expense side of the equation.  Balancing our household budget was made especially hard over the past three months by the Hydro (electricity) bills soaring past $400 because we were using the electric baseboards to heat the house, after the furnace stopped working.

G kept saying the furnace was essentially done for, and that it couldn't be fixed.  When I raised the subject of getting a technician in to look into it, he flatly refused and would only provide reasons having to do with personal issues with prior technicians.  To me, those reasons didn't wash against the need to know exactly what was wrong and exactly how much it would cost to rectify the situation, so on a day when he couldn't stop me (he had to go to the hospital for his treatment), I essentially defied him and got a technician to look at the furnace and fireplace.  Mind you, this particular technician was not on his blacklist.

Less than $100 later, both the furnace and fireplace are up and running.  The fireplace needed to be set up properly and restarted, it took the technician less than 10 minutes to get it roaring away.  I was never so grateful to anyone in recent memory once I saw the blue flames burning away.  The furnace needed a little longer, but within an hour he was dusting off his hands and leaving.  As much as I cringe when I look at the Hydro bills for the last 3 months, I am blissfully happy to be warm again.  Baseboard heaters are simply inefficient in a house with rooms this size, central forced air is the way to go if you're not in a small apartment.

On the accomplished side of the list are things like getting the bookkeeping to the end of the year done for G's business.  For the most part, that is.  There are still one or two things left to be done, but all "cosmetic" touches, really, they will not affect the bottom line very much.  Essentially, we are waiting on my slips to do our taxes for 2014, unlike last year when I had to do his entire year's bookkeeping a month before the tax deadline.  Starting this year, I will be spending some time each month to do the previous month's bookkeeping, much as I did for clients when I worked in an accounting firm.

Also accomplished was making time each day to meditate before 11 a.m.  I am working on making mindfulness a daily habit, and want to get it done as part of the beginning of the day, rather than squeezing it in somewhere near the end, as I found myself doing on weekends and poorly-planned weekdays.  The plan is to keep that going into February, as it is supposed to take as many as 84 days to make something habitual.

As is often the case these days, I find myself surrounded by sleeping husband and sleeping dogs.  I think it's time I closed this retrospective on January 2015 and wind down to sleep.  5:45 a.m. comes quickly!

Twenty Fifteen, and 2014 Resolutions in Review

Happy New Year!  Yes, it is 2015.  I managed to stay awake until about 11:45 p.m. but alas, not until midnight and the passing of the old year into the new.  Oh, well.

Yesterday, I looked back at my goals and resolutions for 2014, as written out in my Day Book, and found that I accomplished not a few of my goals, partly accomplished some others, and came not even close on a few more.

I'll share a few of the ones that went well.  The others remain Work-in-Progress, so they will stay unmentioned for now.  What went well in 2014:

• Reading 50 books for the year, including at least 5 related to self or career development.  In actual fact, I read 10 related to self and/or career development, and even took notes of "Take Away" points from several in my Day Book because I found them to be especially relevant to myself.
• At my current job (we'll call it the year-round job henceforth, for reasons soon to become apparent), I made goals to stay up-to-date with my assigned targets, to inform myself of procedures and processes as much as time allowed.  I did well, receiving commendation from my supervisor at year-end.
• I applied for a seasonal job, and was successful in being accepted into the training programme for it.  I participated in the training between September and November, and got stellar grades.  I have been invited to start working when the season opens in mid-January 2015.
• I set workout goals to: deadlift my bodyweight, and scored a personal record of 195 pounds, or approximately 1.8 times my bodyweight; bench press 60 pounds, and scored a personal record of 65 pounds; and learn to squat up to 45 pounds, and scored a personal record of 135 pounds for reps.

Going into 2015, I have decided that I will record my goals on a shorter time-frame, rather than under broad headings applying to the entire year.  In order to make the process more mindful, and to acknowledge the fact that, rather being a discrete event in time, my process involves revisiting, revising, and reviewing my goals several times throughout the year, I will focus on smaller goals for each month, which will add up to what I accomplish throughout the year.

So, January, what am I going to do with you?  Well, I already got one thing out of the way: I created a new spreadsheet for our household expenses, added in the bills under categories, assessed or input what needs to be paid for the month, and started planning what will be paid when and by whom.

I also need a new workout schedule from the Bodbot app, I took a month off from working out in December following a severe bout of the flu, but now that I feel recovered, I am ready to workout with weights again, and need a new starting point.

One final one I will mention:  I see from Blogger that I managed all of 5 blog posts here last year.  One more than I managed for 2013, so that is some improvement, but not much, really.  Having started this month with an entry, I will add it to my monthly goals hereafter.  I have a few ideas how the Evernote app can help me there, and that will go on January's plan in my Day Book.

I hope, whatever your plans for 2015, that you find them as exciting as I do mine.  Walk good, and all the best for 2015!