Trust Shattered

It is amazing how quickly we learn to distrust, isn't it?

Trusting people is second nature to me. Why wouldn't I believe what people say? What have they done to prove themselves untrustworthy?

I do have a suspicious nature and my spidey senses do tend to tingle when something (or someone) seems to be too good to be true. But even then, I try to take a step back, research a little (gotta love "Google") and wait before I slap a label on a person or incident.

My most recent story comes from the give-away items I have posted and several on-line auction sales.

My stats are these:

Free items - a total of twenty one items were given away to eighteen different people (a few people took me up on a few offers). Other than the frustration of promising an item to someone who was an hour late in picking it up and declining numerous other offers as I awaited pick-up, I had a 100% rate of people following through on their promises.

Auction site sales - out of a total of twelve sold items and ten pick-ups, nine out of ten of those people followed through as agreed. Ninety percent.

One person tainted my 100% success rate within both of these stats. One person out of twenty eight. Yet now I am officially jaded.

I have often pondered over the fact that some people seem to have such a negative view on the world, people and issues of trust.

In my little utopian world of believing trust begets trust and do unto others as you'd have them do unto you and believing in people, I thought the distrusters of the world must have a different philosophy than me, thus this distrust of the human race.

After this week? I am beginning to believe that perhaps their experience with the world has been just slightly worse than mine. Two out of twenty eight would make me grumpier than I became with just "one". Three? And I may have never trusted again.

I think of when the trust I valued over every single other thing within a relationship was broken. I shattered into a million/trillion tiny shattered pieces. Because I trusted this person implicitly. One incident out of a million/trillion and I broke.

I think of the relationship I had that was built on distrust. He lied to me so much I never trusted him. So I didn't break into a million pieces when that relationship ended. Instead, I finally started piecing myself back together.

Trust.

It is everything in my world. I would rather hear a truth that hurts me to the core of my being over a lie any day of the week.

So there, Auction Site Winner!! You didn't break me. But you shattered my 100% success rate. But guess what? Another buyer wanted that item anyway. She will pick it up today. I trust her. Implicitly. Because she proved herself trustworthy the first time she made a promise.

I still win.

It is more than selling my item to the second highest bidder. It is because I'm willing to trust again.

P.S. In other "news" a potential daycare family from Columbia, who I have been corresponding with via the Internets over the course of the past three months sent me a message from Toronto last night. They will be in Saskatoon today. We will meet this week. And do you know what? Even though my spidey senses were on fire when I read her first message (who looks for a daycare when live half a world away??), when she didn't do any of the things scam artist do, to try and con an unsuspecting victim out of their money, I started to trust her. Now that she is this close, I can say I DO trust her.

Trust is a gift. Embrace it when you can and hopefully it will attract more trust worthy people into your life. Hopefully. Because now that I know the reality of how one incident can jade a person, I understand your distrustfulness. Or at least I'm trying to.

A Shower Scene From Our Life

The only problem with our slightly made over bathroom renos is that I could not afford to go any further than a cosmetic touch up.

The yellow bathtub and almond tub surround had to stay. So my solution was to purchase a new shower curtain with a white fabric curtain to go outside the tub.

If I keep that curtain closed, the bathroom looks pretty good, if I do say so myself.

 

Before

After

See what I'm talking about? Cheap fix, right? That's what I thought too. [Note: the pliers on the top of the toilet are to turn on the shower because that knob won't stay on]

The reason I am telling you this little story is because I have never closed the shower curtains "for cosmetic reasons" before. Our shower curtain was always wide open and closed only when necessary (i.e. when someone was having an actual shower).

The reason I told you that is because our laugh-a-minute new black furball of a cat has taken to hiding in the shower then popping out when I think I am in the bathroom alone.

I think it is his equivalent of some horror movie flick where the killer is hiding behind the shower curtain.

He pops out when I least expect him and I think he is thinking "Boo! I scared ya!"

Instead, our little (getting bigger with each new bag of cat food) black kitty makes me chuckle when I am sitting in the bathroom (almost) alone.

I have a pretty good life.

As I was having my morning chuckle, I thought of the many times I have laughed out loud in a room by myself lately.

I am either going a little bit crazy or I am happy in my quiet little world.

I choose happy!

Quiet Time

Quiet time in these parts is from about 12:30 to 2:30 or 3:00, Monday through Friday. When parents shake their head and comment on my patience and say "I don't know how you do this", I  have two words for them. "Quiet time."

I don't care who you are, what you do, how young or old or big or small or how busy you are. I have two words for you. "Quiet time."

Children who are swinging from the ceiling fan, crying at the drop of a pin, disobeying for the sake of disobeying, throwing tantrums at every turn. I have two words for them. "Quiet time."

Overwhelmed, underwhelmed, life has got you down or you cannot figure out which way to turn. I have two words for you. "Quiet time."

Quiet time where you turn off all electronic devices and gadgets. Quiet time where you sit still with your thoughts. Quiet time where the world around you stops spinning and you actually hear your inner wisdom come to the forefront of your mind.

Quiet time where you are awake and alert and alive. Quiet time is not sleeping. Quiet time is being wide awake and aware. But still.

Quiet time may be spent watching or holding your favorite furry pet. Quiet time may be sitting still on your doorstep and staring into the sky above you. Quiet time is watching nature, gazing into a fire and if you are very fortunate, setting your sights out into an ocean in a trance like state until "nature" peeks out at you and makes you feel in awe of this thing called life.

Quiet time = peace of mind to me. It energizes me. It feeds me. It sustains me. Taking away my quiet time is like depriving me of oxygen.

Why do I write this today? Because yesterday my children were not still between 12:30 and 2:30. While three nodded off for no longer than an hour, the fourth sobbed quietly because "she's too big to have a nap" (no one said anything about napping - I only said you had to be quiet). Then as soon as her roommates were asleep, I allowed her to quietly watch a movie while I made the phone calls I had been putting off until the house was quiet. I hung up the phone and my little non-sleeping four year old started talking. I think the others heard her voice because they started stirring at the exact same moment in time.

The afternoon was a write off.

Was it because the kids missed their quiet time or was it just me?

It was me, not them. I need that little piece of quiet. I couldn't find my oxygen mask. My coping skills and patience were next to nil. And the children cried. And cried. And cried some more. Because they could have used a little more quiet time and they definitely needed me to have my quiet time so I could deal with their lack of it.

Carve yourself a piece of quiet time today. The world around you will be so glad you did!

An Ordinary, Extraordinary Day

It seems to be a matter of feast of famine when it comes to my word supply lately. This morning I woke up with such a "feast", I had no idea where to begin.

A few notes-to-self reminded me of little things that came to the tip of my consciousness that I could write about when the word supply ran dry.

The sadness that has enveloped a piece of our world as a little two-year-old girl who was declared "missing" two days ago has been found. But she was not found alive. There has to be a background story that is not being told there. I don't want to know. I want this family's privacy to be protected. It hurts to think of what this community is going through .,,

In light of that, it feels wrong to write about the light and easiness which is my life.

I have it easy. I know that. The bumps in my road are only little speed bumps and there is a lot of smooth road in between.

Yesterday was smooth sailing.

I ended the day in the company of two very good friends. Friends I have known for twenty five years. Friends who knew me before I had a voice. Friends who were instrumental to me finding my voice. Now they laugh because they can't shut me up. Everyone should have a set of friends (or even just one good friend) who knows you through the good times, the sad, the growth spurts and dormancy.

I found an "epal" (it seems to be the best invention of a word to describe the "pen pal" kinship we stumbled upon) yesterday through my efforts to sell some skin and neck cream I bought on impulse to battle this "Do you qualify for the Senior's discount?" syndrome that has become my own.

It seems very strange and ominous to write such a paragraph. "You started writing to someone through a Kijiji ad?? Seller BEWARE!"

This lady belongs to the over 50 club with me and we were comparing notes on this thing called aging. She asked me why I was selling the product. This was my reply:

"I purchased this cream in the wee hours of a sleepless night, shortly after taking my mom out for Mother’s Day brunch. The waitress asked ME if I was 65 or older, to qualify for the senior’s special. I am 54 years old. I laughed at the time but it was still in the back of my mind that sleepless night while I was watching one of those paid infomercials on TV. I was just contemplating the idea that if it did work for me, I would be stuck paying at least $50/month to keep me stocked with enough cream to last “forever” when I received this 3 month shipment. And to top it off, shortly after THAT one of the clerks at Co-op asked me if I qualified for the “Senior discount”. Just to be sure, I asked how old you had to be to qualify. You guessed it. 65 years old. A month of using the cream and I was still getting asked if I was 11 years older than my actual age. So I phoned and cancelled my subscription. And the rest is for sale on Kijiji!!

Now you know my whole story!"

Funny how a too-much-information response like that strikes up a conversation among strangers. Her response to my answer had me laughing out loud as I sat in a quiet room all by myself at the end of a long day.

Allowing yourself to be open and honest with your words and generous with the little stories which are a small part of your life are like an open invitation.

I started my day by messaging a friend-I-don't-know to tell her how she inspired me. I lived my day and ended it on a different variation of the same way it began.

In between all of that was a daycare day that had its share of good, bad and everything-in-between moments. I received a call that has the potential to change my weekend plans in  the time it takes to make a phone call and see if an appointment can be booked. I spent the evening with friends and ended my day with a smile.

Life just doesn't get any better than that, does it?

Friends I Have Not Yet Met

I suppose I should get out of the house more often, but as it stands at the moment I am savoring the fact that "home" is where I most want to be and I must be subconsciously seeking inspiration wherever I can find it.

Facebook and I have become pretty good pals. It brings friends, family, inspirational quotes, ideas and friends-I-have-not-yet-met into my world on a regular basis.

I know there are pitfalls in getting wrapped up in the world of Facebook statuses. I guess we all find what we are looking for when we scroll down the feed. Different people notice different things.

When looking at holiday photos, it is less about "Where people go" and more about "Who did they go with?" That is what matters most to me.

I notice how different people socialize differently on Facebook. Some share thoughts, others share pictures, many share inspirational quotes, some comment, others don't, some "like" most everything, others dole out their "likes" sparingly so it means a lot to be "liked" by someone who is usually a quiet observer.

I like that Facebook draws friends and family into my days so I see a piece of the world outside of these four walls without having to open the door (this could explain a lot, maybe if I didn't have the world come to visit me on my computer screen I would crave face-to-face contact more! Point to ponder for another day).

I smile at the collection of friends I have accumulated on Facebook. Apparently I have collected a whopping thirty nine friends now. For years, it hovered in the twentyish range. I must have become more popular. Not!!

I don't tally up my Facebook friends and value the number I have amassed. I scrolled down my list of friends and half of them are family. I have a sprinkling of friends from different aspects of my life (dancing, my daycare, Zumba), a few of my Forever Friends, a penpal I have not yet met, a friend I found from my childhood and a few of her friends.

I collected one of these friends purely by accident. I wasn't familiar with the ways of the touch screen on my phone and I accidentally sent out a "Friend Request" to one of her friends. When this friend accepted my request, I was embarrassed. I immediately sent her a message explaining what I had done and told her she didn't have to be my friend. She responded with, "I am going to keep you as a friend.  My thoughts are people come into your life for a reason, there is a reason you accidentally sent the request and a reason I accepted, we just don't know what it is.  It will present itself  when the time is right.  So, welcome new friend." I smile whenever I read this accidental friend's updates and bits and pieces of the storyline of her Facebook life.

Then there is the friend of my friend who "friended" me because she read something I wrote. It touched her, she commented, we became "virtual friends" and have corresponded sporadically ever since.

This friend-I-have-not-yet-met impresses me with every word she puts out into the Facebook world. In a place where people are cynical and unkind, she offers a different perspective to shed a little more light on a subject which is being attacked one-sidedly. Her comments are kind, compassionate and come from a deeper sense of "knowing". She has shared a few paragraphs from a handful of "chapters" of her life with me via private messages and with every sentence she writes, I begin to realize where the depth behind her words stems from.

I have another friend-I-have-not-yet-met and her Facebook persona is different, yet the same. Some people are writers, other people are "feelers". They feel life deeply, they live life deeply, they speak of life deeply but this deepness doesn't come out in the written word. It matters not. I "see" beyond the words because of the letters and correspondence that goes beyond Facebook.

Then there is my friend from real life, who I haven't "known" since junior high school. I love how her Facebook presence is so consistent with the friend I know and remember. The two friends I have "collected" from her friend list mirror a quality about my original friend that I value. My thoughts are people come into your life for a reason ... we just don't know what it is.  It will present itself  when the time is right. There is a reason we have rekindled an old friendship from long ago. Our paths will cross when we are destined to meet again.

I have friends on Facebook that are real life friends and our Facebook friendship doesn't begin to reflect that.

Then there is my family. Facebook cannot begin to encapsulate who my family are to me. Last week, Facebook brought both of my sons into focus as each of them updated their Facebook page with pictures that spoke volumes. I cherish "being there" and "seeing that" when it is fresh and the excitement is new.

My virtual friends, my real life friends, my family and the bigger-than-life-celebrities who I follow - you inspire me, you enrich my quiet little world, you brighten cloudy days.

Thank you, Facebook for enlarging my world. It is up to me to follow through and extend real-life invitations. "Will you be my friend?" is so easy to say on Facebook. Not so easy in the real world. But isn't that a question that rings true to all of us, going back to when we were in Grade 1 and just starting to branch out and meet the world face to face?

"Will you be my friend?" "Would you like to come over to my place?"

In real life, I have to "clean up" before I extend those invitations. The house needs to be cleaned, I should have a shower. Then there is the offering of refreshments...

Yes, I am seeing why Facebook friending appeals to me. I can sit with my morning cup of coffee and I don't even need to brush my teeth if I don't want to. I like to sit still, be myself and not worry about physical appearances. Then again, isn't that what real friendship is all about??

So, to my real life friends who are coming over tonight, if my house isn't perfect and I don't look like I just stepped out of the shower, please accept that as a compliment. It means I trust you with my "real self" and that is harder to do than it appears.

Lightening the Load

Decluttering has never been this intense for me before. Is it because I am sifting through at least five years worth of excess? Am I out of practise? Overwhelmed? Belaboring the task? Am I being too picky? Or am I just being thorough?

My son cleared out and cleaned out our garage in June of 2010. I wasn't around when he did it but I gave him full reign to do what he thought best with the contents within the garage. After he was done, it was like a white tornado had ripped through our garage and left the bare bones. It was so clean that we held a party in it.

He wasn't emotionally attached to any of the contents so he had a good eye for what was garbage, what may hold value to someone else and what we really needed within sixteen years of accumulation of "stuff".

I am not sure but I think I remember him telling me he put everything he deemed unnecessary onto the driveway, placed an ad on Kijiji "First come, first served, free-for-all". And what was left over at the end of the day went to the dump.

Quick, efficient, to the point.

He must have got rid of at least two truck loads of "excess". He swept out the garage, hung some Christmas lights, we rented a few tables and voila!

He did the same thing in our downstairs "play room". Whoosh! I stepped out of the house for the day and when I returned, I could barely recognize it was the same place. 

Granted, I lost a few items I thought I "needed" (or could at least still use) during these massive house/garage cleaning frenzies but I promised my son if he took on the job for me, I would not hold him accountable. 

He did the job and he did it swiftly. Like ripping off a band aid. The faster you do it, the less painful it seems.

My son seems to have little trouble paring his belongings down to a bare minimum. He lives in a 750 (?) sq ft home and if it isn't necessary, it doesn't come in the house. End of story.

My sister and her husband downsized to a much smaller home and by extension, their belongings. She also has a grasp of "what to keep and what to throw/give away".

My brother is the same. He even keeps his computer files clean as a whistle and deletes the excess as he goes along. 

I think I'm a little more like my mom. She is a product of the Great Depression. You don't just throw things away that are still usable. Waste not, want not was the motto as they grew up. You don't have to open too many closets within her home to see she still holds onto that belief.

Thus, my conundrum.

I know I have too much "stuff". I know it with every fibre of my being. Whenever I open a drawer or closet or the garage door, I am overwhelmed. I am weighed down with material belongings.

Yet there is so much I have that I cannot simply donate to Value Village. "Household items and clothing" barely scratch the surface of what I am finding. 

Impulse purchases, As-Seen-On-TV extravagances (that I regret "the morning after"), best intentions gone awry, Not to mention all that I have found within the garage and playhouse. None of this stuff fits within the confines of what they are looking for when they ask for donations.

So I have turned to Kijiji. Not like my son, who most likely does it in the most effective manner by just having a free-for-all on the driveway. I don't want to put my address out there for the world to see, nor do I want a collection of window shoppers wandering aimlessly on and off my property.

Instead, I have written numerous ads with pictures, descriptions and "like things together" so my customers get a package deal of things I deem to be related (and thus, get rid of a lot of items with one pick-up).

My excess is finding a suitable home. Someone who has taken time out of their day to seek out and find these items and then come and pick it up. I find this ever-so-much-more rewarding than dumping this off somewhere and abandoning said items. 

I still have a box of household items and clothing that I will donate. I have another pile of toys I plan on putting on an auction site, with a starting bid of $1.00. These items hold some value and this way they go to the home who wants it the most. I have other miscellaneous items listed for sale. 

I have soooo much farther to go in this downsizing event of the year but I find that making a game of it, finding homes for unwanted articles and making a little bit of cash on the side is pushing me forward.

Yes, I could have moved mountains yesterday, instead of only shifting the dirt around. Considering how impossible even this feat felt a few months ago, I will take this as a win. I have found a middle ground between turning into my mom and becoming as efficient as my son (and others) at keeping the excess down to a minimum.

One person's garbage is another person's treasure. As I make my way through the drawers within our home, I am finding lots of treasures. I am so glad to share them with the world!

Star Gazing Verses Facebook Scrolling

It is 8:30 on a Sunday morning.

I was scanning through my Facebook feed and as I was doing so, I noticed the exact moment a friend post a video to my timeline.

I was gazing at a picture of my son, standing beside his hay bales and just as I was taking note of the people who "liked" his new profile picture, the names changed in front of my eyes. My sister liked his picture at the very same moment I was looking at it.

Oh what a feeling it was, knowing that I was sitting still in the quiet of my Sunday morning with my coffee at my side and I knew a friend and my sister were doing exactly the same thing I was doing, at the very same time.

I "turned on chat", on the side of my Facebook page and saw at that exact moment in time two of my cousins, my cousin's daughter, my nephew, a friend and my sister were all on Facebook at that very same moment.

I remember thinking how romantic it was, to know that two people could be separated by thousands of miles, yet look up at the same sky and see the same moon at the same time. 

It doesn't seem quite the same, knowing all of those who happened to be scrolling down and reading our Facebook feed at the very same moment in time.

Facebook is closing the distance within this great big world of ours. But I still think staring out into the skies above, knowing we are all looking out the same "window" into the vast universe, puts life into perspective better for me.

It is comforting to feel connected despite the miles and time we have been separated from those we know well. I give Facebook credit for re-establishing several connections I thought I had lost. I just hope I never lose sight of the myriad of ways I can keep in touch with those I wish I saw more often.

Don't forget the value of a phone call, a note or letter, an email or stopping by for a cup of coffee. Pick up the phone, gaze out into the sky at the same time as the person on the other end of the line.

It's a small world. Keep yourself connected and engaged with those you value. You'll never regret it.