JessVersteeg

August 30, 2014

Fall, Imminence, and Change

hello fall There’s something about the imminence of fall that just gets my gears going (in a good way). Suddenly, I got my game face on and I’m crocheting again, and blogging, and reading, and being a contributing member to society. Why fall? Especially when fall is usually the time when my brain starts going to mush and my soul starts getting sluggish because winter is coming (you have to whisper that word). I even read an article this week about how this winter is predicted to be even worse than last winter.

Sweet Jesus, have mercy.

But let’s not think about that. Let’s go into our happy place of Pumpkin Spice Lattes (HELLO, I HAVE MISSED YOU!), spicy smelling candles, cool breezes, pants, and cozy sweaters but no need of a coat yet. Automne, je t’aime.

Imminence & Change

W and I have been thinking a lot about change and imminence lately, mostly related to becoming parents. When else in life do you have to wait a long time for a change that WILL come? Even with marriage, graduation, etc. there’s the (unfortunate) slight chance it wont happen. But at this point, I will give birth. Thanks to modern medicine there’s almost no chance we’d lose the baby in the process.

So we sit here and wait, try to expect and prepare for the inevitable. It’s kind of a mind game.

We did our wedding a little non-traditionally. We had a morning service, lunch reception, no dancing party or anything. When the MCs invited my parents up to give their parental speeches, my mother shot me surprised look and a glare and mouthed the words, “You didn’t tell me I was doing a speech!”

She was right. I had assumed. She knows convention and tradition. I had confirmed with my dad, but not my mom. Later, mom explained that because we had done enough things differently, she didn’t assume anything would be the same. Oops.

But no one at the wedding had any idea my mom composed her Mother of the Bride speech on the spot. I wish I had it on video because that was the best speech that has ever been winged.

A year later, my older brother was about to get married and I get a text from my mom thanking me for forgetting to tell her about the speech part of my wedding. The imminence of her delivering a speech at her first-born son’s wedding was eating her alive. She had been up at 4AM most nights trying to think of what she would say.

I can adapt pretty easily; I think it’s one of the positive sides of having moved so many times as a kid. But staring down the barrel of a proverbial gun to watch change come at you is a bit of a different animal.

So now, I’m trying to enjoy the things that have not yet changed: like being able to get 8h of sleep, do what I want (mostly) whenever I want, and not having someone depend on me for their entire existence.

August 24, 2014August 24, 2014

The Pinnacle

Yesterday I think I had the best saturday of my life. Let me give you a run down of what happened:

I “woke up” early with Willy’s alarm (6:45) and got out of bed shortly after
I read a Psalm
I was at the grocery store by 9am
I came back, helped tidy the kitchen, prepped lunch
I started a load of laundry
(Accidentally?) Cleaned the bathroom
Ate lunch
Evaluated the status of how on-top of our Picture a Week project we are
Headed off to a baby shower
Came back, baked bread for spelt hamburger buns
Made one of W’s favourite meals: Chicken Piquant
Cleaned up, read some of Anne of Avonlea, and headed off to a movie with W.

If you don’t immediately understand why this was so great, let me help you understand.

I did laundry, cleaned the bathroom and groceries ALL IN THE SAME DAY. I do not really like groceries or cleaning and laundry can feel like a nuisance. Often when I spend my Saturdays on these activities it feels like it’s all I’ve done and I’m annoyed that I didn’t get to relax or do nice things that I like (I know… this will be parenthood and the rest of my life, right?)

I did some hobby-type things instead of watching more Netflix. I filled 20 minutes here and there with reading, keeping on top of our annual scrapbook and baking.

I was selectively social and left before I had had too much. I love this term because it describes how I feel after a week filled with people. I will always been an extravert, but sometimes I need time with certain people or anybody but certain people. It was an enjoyable afternoon celebrating the baby of a friend a few weeks ahead of me in her pregnancy.

I made good food for the man I love. I listened to CBC Radio 2 and made a heart-warming supper. I forgot how I do like to cook when I feel confident about what I’m doing and I’m not stressed for time. It felt good.

Unplanned

I think part of what made this day the best was that I had some key things in place that I needed to do but I hadn’t planned out my day to the point that it felt stressful. They were all executed at a leisurely pace and wasn’t the end of the world if I didn’t do them. But the most important thing was getting up early so I felt I had time to do everything without feeling like everything was rushed and terrible.

I’m writing this out mostly because I will always need a reminder of

why getting up early is good, and;
why staying on top of things like groceries, laundry and cleaning will always feel better when it’s done.

I’m sure I’ve written about this before – how I have selective memory. I forget that things I don’t like to do actually feel good when it’s done. It’s like playing certain boardgames with people. I will NEVER want to. But I’ve learned that if I agree despite my zero interest or desire, I may actually still have fun and enjoy my time.

I said to W at supper, “I think I have reached the peak of my life today, and I will never have this perfect a Saturday ever again. I think I’m ok with that, because at least I know it happened.”

Kind of sad, but I’m anticipating my life to be totally upside down once baby comes. Part of me wants to try to make Saturdays like this (flexibly?) regimented and habitual. The other part of me is afraid that if I try to do that I will add all kinds of pressure and expectation and it will culminate in epic failure and disappointment.

This day reminds me that I do need more order and structure in my life to help me manage everything, and I’m still trying to figure out how to do that as painlessly as possible.

July 12, 2014July 12, 2014

My continued adventures in Pie baking

There are two things in the world that make me erupt in explosive rage: people getting rich from oppressing others, and failed pie crusts. I know, they’re not exactly equal in terms of global importance.

Around this time last year I wrote about how bad I am at making pie crusts from scratch and wondering, maybe I should just give up? When do we realize we’re just not cut out for something and give up, and when do we keep going because we just need practice? “Giving up and moving on are two different things,” was the image I had front and center on that post. I didn’t give up, mostly because I’m pretty limited in my (yummy) dessert options with being wheat and sugar free. So I persevered in pie crust making, becoming sensitized to my bad pie crust shame. I tried a few different recipes and was slowly making progress. One indicator of my progress was my lack of cursing under my breath and SERIOUS anger. I thought maybe I was just becoming a more patient person (ha!), but really I was actually just getting better at it, and the changes in recipes actually helped.

About a month ago, I made this pie with this crust. It is by far my favourite and THE BEST gf pie crust I have made to date. I have to admit, there was this crescendo of triumph when I rolled out that dough and then placed it in the pie plate WITHOUT THE THING TEARING. WITHOUT IT CRACKING. I yelled and then called Willy into the room. I will admit, there were tears in my eyes because OH MY GOODNESS, I AM NOT HOPELESS. While my successes and failures at pie crust have not been as important to my husband as they have been to me, I could see on his face that he recognized how important this was to me. I still have far to go to rival my mother-in-law’s gorgeous/effortless pie crusts with the nice crimped sides, but dangit, I’m glad I didn’t give up.

What helped

Honestly, if I had stuck to that same original pie crust, I’m confident I would still be having problems. The key thing that I’ve found is for gluten-free pie crusts, you need to have an egg and you basically need to use half shortening/lard and half butter. I just cannot make a pie crust without crumbling into an evil, cussing wretch unless the there is an egg and half shortening/butter. My takeaway from this (since when can I do anything without taking away a life principle?) is that before quitting something, I need to vary my methods to be sure that the problem is ME and not the methods. This is a lot like the time I was having trouble getting up in the morning and going for runs.

Here’s a of my baby bump for good measure:

June 10, 2014

A New Kind of Therapy

The last six weeks have been really great. May and June in Montreal are fantastic. We rarely get to spend any length of time in our own city during the summer due to travelling for work. It’s quite strange to see leaves on tree sand to smell the flower-perfumed air. The city undergoes a transformation as everyone exhales a sigh of relief as the sun comes out and les terraces open on the street.

Last week Willy pointed something out that made me think: “You’re laughing a lot more lately.”

“You’re just funnier,” I replied.

“No,” he commented, “My jokes are the same. You just laugh more.”

I’ve been thinking about that since then. We had been laughing a lot more lately. We’ll laugh into near hysterics, tears welling in our eyes because we were so funny. There is so much laughter in our house and in our relationship especially lately. Humour has been a key part of our relationship — I’ve always found his wit hilarious — but apparently, I just hadn’t been finding things as funny.

Life has just been a lot easier in the last 6 weeks. Things have been more low-key, no stressful deadlines or decisions to make.

It reminds me of a conversation I had with my dad sometime during my first semester at University. I was driving home from school with him and I was stressed, although I didn’t realize that I was. I just felt rattled and not very happy. He said something that made me laugh and I couldn’t even describe how good it felt. It was then that I realized that I hadn’t laughed in a lot in awhile. I made it my goal that weekend to do just that: laugh.

When YouTube is the prescription

You’ve heard people say “laughter is the best medicine” but did you know that there’s actually such a thing as laughter therapy? It sounds a bit ridiculous at first, but when you think about it — why the heck not?

This HowStuffWorks article points out that all kinds of studies have been done on how laughter impacts our mental and physical health, many of which were instigated by this one guy Norman Cousins:

When Cousins was diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis, he was given very slim odds of recovery. He was unable to move and in constant pain. However, in the midst of this dire situation, Cousins didn’t lose his sense of humor. He credits his recovery to a prescription of “Candid Camera” episodes, Marx Brothers movies and funny stories read by nurses. With 10 minutes of laughter, he wrote, two hours of pain-free sleep could be procured. [Source]

Here’s what some of the studies found:

Watching funny shows increased children’s tolerance for pain, which could be helpful when tiny patients have to undergo big procedures [Source]
This is not a lady with zebra legs
“Positive” humour styles build resiliency in life [Source]
It reduces stress (we all know that!) and can reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease [Source]
It can help your bottom line in businesses [Source]
Elevations in natural killer cell activity consistently appeared in quantitative experimental studies and now some nurses are being trained in ‘laughter therapy’ to help their patients reduce pain, tension etc. [Source]
Humour can increase hope [Source]

Laugh or Cry

My husband has a saying he says frequently when things are kind of crappy: “Well, you can either laugh or cry.” We do our best to try to laugh about things instead of cry, which isn’t always easy (but easier when you’re like me and find irony and have a “dark” sense of humour). A few weeks ago we spent a few hours in the ER because I had passed out on the metro. Despite being there 5 hours, it didn’t feel painful and terrible even though there were people moaning and groaning in pain and the whole atmosphere was pretty depressing. Willy can’t help but be funny and crack jokes a lot. So there we were busting our guts, guffawing for a solid 5 hours. It turned out one of the funnest evenings we had had in awhile!

So what about you? What makes you laugh? Do you have a TV show, a YouTube series, or a favourite comedian that you turn to when you need a good laugh? Have you ever tried to “force” yourself to laugh when you were feeling down?

May 18, 2014

About that hiatus…

Remember that I didn’t really blog for like 5 months? It became so normal for me to not blog that people even stopped asking my what was happening with my blog. I partially happy people stopped asking (because I didn’t have answers) but also disappointed with the fact that my lack of blogging became so normal. I think I saw it as a type of failure – failure to persevere in difficulty, failure to be creative and figure out what to write.

Yesterday I took some time to actually think it through. I meant to write more, but have been putting of thinking through what’s next. And now I have a bit of an idea. I know what distracted me from blogging and I have an idea of what I want moving forward. (If you want to hear a bit more about some of the changes in my life that influenced the lack of blogging, I’ll be sending out my next newsletter soon. My newsletters are typically more personal than the blog content. If you’re interested, sign-up here).

Some things haven’t changed

This is a relief. I’m glad that even though I’ve lost interest in some things (staying on top of social media/platform building innovation) other values have still stayed.

GUYS, I still care about running. This, I’m honestly surprised by, but I guess I shouldn’t really be. I haven’t run in almost a year. But I’ve thought a lot about it (I know, it so does not count). BUT, I was this close to getting back into it, and then I fell pregnant (yay!). Because I had been so inactive before, it wasn’t recommended for me to re-start running. This will be postponed until the baby comes. I had a lovely conversation about running with my best friend’s multi-marathoner dad that was inspiring. I think I might try to talk to him more on the topic.

I still value writing. Even though I haven’t done much of it lately, it still is something I want to continue to cultivate the habit of. This winter semester I took a class and was SHOCKED that it took me a couple of painless hours to write a 15 page paper. This is not what my life was like in my undergrad, but all the writing since undergrad has obviously paid off. This was very affirming!

I really like you guys. I don’t know if I can go so far and call the readers of this blog a “community” (my husband is really picky about the proper use of this word!), but I appreciate all of your feedback, the fact that you actually read this and seem to find it helpful. I don’t know where this blog will go and how long it will stay running (I have no plans of being a “mommy blogger”), but I have enjoyed it and been surprised by it and you.

This Summer

I’m not going to make you or myself promises about writing this summer considering I’ll be pretty busy travelling with work as usual in the summer. But, I do know that I’m a different person in the summer: full of energy and ideas. I imagine I will likely have more to say.

I hope this works out! I miss it.

April 19, 2014

Bullet Journaling

I have been having a hard time keeping consistent with one method of keeping track of my tasks and thoughts. I was using a combination of paper and digital for awhile, but started moving more towards digital as I started working more with other people. We started using Asana, where we could assign tasks to each other and track with them. I’m kind of tied to this system, but I’m not finding it working excellent for me.

I was pretty excited when I found about Bullet Journaling. The website does a great job of explaining it, but if you like creativity, there are a few examples on Pinterest to help inspire you.

Bullet Journaling isn’t journaling exactly. It’s like a GTD inbox where you write everything down that you need to keep track of, to-do items, and events. To-dos are indicated by a box, a dot indicates something to remember or a note, an open circle is an event.

I haven’t tried it yet, but it looks like something that could work. Willy has been using it a bit, which he’s said it’s been helpful.

I just wanted to share it in case it was useful to you.