Ugly Spring is Here. When Will Pretty Spring Show Up?

When most people hear the word “spring,” they think about warm sun, birds chirping, sprouting buds on the trees, flowers breaking ground and beginning to bloom. In my part of Canada—Edmonton—those joyous things come, in what I call “pretty spring.”

But first we must endure weeks of what I call “ugly spring.”  The air still chills, especially when the wind blows, which is often. The temperature still goes below zero at night, and flurries are still sometimes in the forecast. Some parts of the grass are still buried under snow. Other parts are over-laid with fuzzy grey snow mold or are brown and beaten—except where they are submerged below melt water puddles. The roads and sidewalks are covered in puddles, ice, mud or gravel. No matter which of these things greets you, alone or in combination, the mess gets tracked everywhere, even into your house. There is little to cherish about ugly spring. It’s simply one more insult from nature for us to bear.

After our especially long winter in Edmonton this year, including last week’s 30+ centimetres of snow,  all I can say now is this: “Pretty spring, please hurry. We have missed you. We have waited long enough for you and for your friend summer.”

Sleep Cravings from Daylight Savings

In many locations tonight, including here in Edmonton, we will shift to Daylight Savings Time (DST) with the traditional “spring forward” change of the clock. The theory behind DST, of course, is that adding an extra hour of sunlight to the evening brings many benefits:

• fewer road accidents and related injuries
• more evening social time
• boosts to tourism from increased outdoor activities
• electricity savings from needing fewer lights at night

These benefits are increasingly debated, especially electricity savings. Some studies show the savings exist. Other studies show they do not. I believe that although the evenings are lighter, the mornings are darker, at least at the beginning of the DST shift. In my opinion, any energy saved at night is simply moved to mornings instead. I am no scientist, though, so I could be wrong.

What concerns me are the harms associated with DST, especially its effects on sleep. I have always dreaded the idea of losing an hour of sleep each spring. Some argue it’s not really a sleep loss because you don’t actually sleep any less. The time is different, but you still sleep the same number of hours you normally would. I am not sure if that’s true or not. What I am sure of is that I feel like I slept less. And I am not alone.

Many people feel DST affects sleeping patterns and body clocks. They complain of sleepiness, headaches and stress. Sleep deprivation is known to have a negative impact on health, particularly heart health. A 2008 study, Shifts to and from Daylight Saving Time and Incidence of Myocardial Infarction by Imre Janszky and Rickard Ljungand, found heart attacks increased significantly for the first three weekdays after we spring forward. The same study, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, found DST interrupts our biological rhythms, which affects quality and length of sleep. This impact lasts for many days. It’s no wonder many of us get sleep cravings from Daylight Savings.

These sleep cravings are similar to the negative impact of jet lag that I have become too familiar with from my years of world travel. I wanted to know if there are any ways to help my body make the transition to DST, so I looked it up. It turns out some of the tips for jet lag can also help with your sleep cravings from Daylight Savings.

Here are some simple, natural suggestions.

• Take a walk or a run. Exercise stimulates serotonin and other brain chemicals connected with sleep.
• Take in some bright natural light. An hour or two should do.
• Trick the body into thinking it’s later than it is by eating dinner early.
• Avoid caffeine and alcohol—well known sleep disturbers— in the afternoons and evenings for the next several days.

Ultimately, the best solution would be to eliminate Daylight Savings Time. Since that is not likely to happen any time soon, at least not for this year, I will have to live with my sleep cravings and the return to near darkness when I go to work in the mornings—and enjoy the only practical DST benefit for me—my extra hour of sunlight in the evenings.

Do you love or loathe Valentine’s Day? Part 2

Last year, I took a course in rhetoric. One of our assignments was to write two arguments about one topic, an invective (against) and an encomium (for). My topic was Valentine’s Day. Yesterday I posted the first argument. Here is the second.

Valentine’s Day is the “day of love.” Since we value love above all else, we must value Valentine’s Day with equal passion.

February 14 is a holiday that celebrates love, not just romantic love but all kinds of love: love for pets, love for friends, love for family. The date may seem like it is all about flowers, cards and candies, but it is about our passions, our hearts and our souls.

The Day of Valentine is believed to have begun in the third century.  Roman Emperor Claudius outlawed marriage because he believed single men made better soldiers than married men. A Catholic priest named Valentine believed in love so deeply that he secretly married young couples anyway despite substantial risks to his own life. Claudius soon discovered Valentine’s secret ceremonies and sentenced him to death. The “day of love” was later named after Valentine, whose birthday was believed to be February 14. In honour of this lovely story of one young saint’s belief in love, we celebrate this sacred emotion with this special holiday even today.

Valentine’s Day is wholesome, pure and good. It is peaceful, joyous and heart-filling. Valentine’s Day is everything a holiday was meant to be.

February 14 gives all of us the chance to let our feelings be known and shown. It gives all of us the chance to remove ourselves from our hectic lives and share special moments with the people connected to us in our hearts. Most days of the year, we get up and propel ourselves through the day without much thought about those around us. Our only goal is to make it through the day and do what needs to be done. Valentine’s Day is the one day in the year of crazy days when we take the time to slow down, appreciate our loved ones and—most importantly of all—show them how much we appreciate them. Without it, we might never share these sentiments with the most important people in our lives.

This special holiday is like Christmas. It only arrives once a year, but when it does, we are given a precious gift: love, the most priceless gift of all.

February 14 is a day to look forward to, a day to open your heart and share your feelings with those you love. The essence of Valentine’s Day is love, so it is the essence of ourselves because we are love.

If you read both posts, do you know which one reflects my true attitude about Valentine’s Day?

In theory, if I have argued well, you should not be able to tell; I should be able to argue each side as well as the other.

So did I manage that? Or is it obvious whether I love or loathe Valentine’s Day?

 

Do you love or loathe Valentine’s Day? Part 1

Last year, I took a course in rhetoric. One of our assignments was to write two arguments about one topic, an invective (against) and an encomium (for). My topic was Valentine’s Day. Here is the first argument.

Valentine’s Day is a day of love—or is it a day of disappointment? Talk to any single person, and she will tell you that Valentine’s Day does not bring thoughts of love. Instead, it brings thoughts of despair and questions of desirability. Talk to any coupled person, and he will tell you that Valentine’s Day does not bring romance. Instead, it brings disappointed expectations and deferred gratifications.

Valentine’s Day is built on guilt. It is simply another occasion, falsely deemed a “holiday,” that is created and perpetuated by businesses for the sake of sales. Your partner expects that you will show an appropriate level of appreciation of the qualities you admire. You feel you must purchase a gift or make a grand gesture that approximates your level of admiration. Your guilt at not wanting to let your partner down makes you rush out and make that expensive purchase or grand gesture. And the jewellery stores, chocolate boutiques and flower shops rejoice to the sounds of this cash register sonata.

The Day of Valentine is believed to have begun in the third century.  Roman Emperor Claudius outlawed marriage because he believed single men made better soldiers than married men. A Catholic priest named Valentine believed in love and thought this decree was unjust, so he secretly married young couples anyway. Claudius soon discovered Valentine’s crimes and sentenced him to death. The “day of love” was later named after Valentine, whose birthday was supposedly February 14. This lovely story of love, though, is nothing more than an unsubstantiated myth.

If Valentine’s Day was merely a commemoration of a saint who believed in love, that would have been acceptable. Instead the concept has been corrupted. Nowadays, it is a commercial machine with greed at its heart. It cares nothing for romance or love; it cares only for currency and profit.

Valentine’s Day is a disappointment waiting to happen. No matter what you do for your partner, it will never satiate the hunger hiding in her heart. No matter what your partner does for you, it will never satisfy the longing lurking in your soul. Valentine’s Day is a lose-lose situation for every couple—and even more so for the uncoupled, who are guaranteed disappointment because they are alone.

Like the meaning of Christmas, the meaning of Valentine’s Day has been corrupted. When you don’t get what you hoped for on Valentine’s Day, it is like a child waking up on Christmas morning to find that Santa Claus has left coal in your stocking or worse—never stopped by at all.

February 14 is supposed to be a day to look forward to, a day to open your heart and share your feelings with those you love. Instead, it has become a day to dread, a day to open your wallet and buy things for those you love.

Stay tuned tomorrow for “Do you love or loathe Valentine’s Day? Part 2.”

What about you? Do you love or loathe Valentine’s Day? Share your thoughts here.

Sunday #53: December 30, 2012 – The End

When I decided to do 52 Sundays as my “bloject” for 2012, I admit I didn’t actually count the Sundays this year. I assumed 52 weeks in a year would equal 52 Sundays. Perhaps because this year is a leap year or because the year started on a Sunday, it turns out there are 53 Sundays in 2012. Although the original 52 Sundays have passed, I have decided to write Sunday #53 so that I can still say I wrote a blog every Sunday for the year.

As the last entry for 2012, I decided to reflect back on the first one to see how I fared this year with my Wishes Not Resolutions. This quote from that first blog shows why I chose wishes:

Truly, I start out with the best intentions—and then life and responsibilities get in the way and stop me from doing much about my resolutions after the first few weeks. Later in the year, certainly by the end, my unfulfilled resolutions have often become my regrets, and I scold myself for my lack of follow-through.

This coming year, 2012, I have a different plan. I am not making resolutions; I am making wishes. By doing it this way, I hope that if my wishes don’t come true, I will be less hard on myself next December 31.

Let’s see if my personal wishes for 2012 came true.

• Health

No much really changed for my health this year. My weeks in the pain program came to very little at the end, and my gluten-free diet trial seems to have had little effect on anything but my digestion, my taste buds and my appetite. A long-term decision about that will have to be made in 2013, once I get the appointment with the dietician that I am waiting for.

• Weight

With little change in my exercise ability and not much improvement from the gluten-free living, my weight loss wishes have not come through either. A few pounds have dropped but nothing significant. To some degree that’s maybe my own fault; I have been eating a great deal of junk food to replace my beloved gluten and the satisfaction I used to get from eating it. If I am going to lose more weight, I am going to need to reduce the junk food habit.

• Travel

Roland and I have still not managed an out-of-country getaway (I feel like I am in withdrawal from that as well). Once again we are not on the same holidays except for the week after Christmas, which is the most expensive week in the whole year. We decided we didn’t want to pay double or more, so we stayed home again.

We did however have a lovely trip to Vancouver Island in the summer to visit friends. Highlights include a lovely canoe ride in Victoria, being followed in our kayak by a seal at Goose Spit near Courtney/Comox, Cathedral Grove’s old growth forest en route to Port Alberni and watching a young bear dig for his breakfast in the inlets around Tofino.

• Relaxation

The first part of the year offered little in the way of relaxation or time to write my own projects or to read, but the middle and later parts of the year did. I took only one course this fall, in poetry. It gave me the opportunity to read poetry and write poetry for pleasure, which was truly a delight. For 2013, I wish to continue to find time to relax, to write my own projects and to read for pleasure not just school. With undertaking my work placements before graduation, those things could be tricky, but writing this blog every Sunday for a year has taught me how to prioritize my writing, so I hope not to back slide.

• Freelance work and publishing

This year, I did find some paid freelance writing and editing projects, so that was one mission accomplished—and something I found quite pleasurable. On the other hand, I did not get any of my work published in a paid venue (newspaper or magazine). That remains a wish for 2013. It’s a focus goal for my work placement homework assignments, so I hope that will help me along.

• Joy 

I wished for more joy and less sorrow in my life and the lives of those around me. Unfortunately, that was one wish that was unfulfilled in a huge way this year when my best friend’s son was killed in February. All I can do is hope for better this year for all of us.

Here’s an update on some of the general wishes I had for the world around me…

• Weather

I got the mild winter and hot, dry summer I wished for, which was not only a delight but also a huge surprise. The weather in 2012 in Edmonton was quite to my liking for much of the year, certainly more than any other year before (at least that I can recall).

However, the early start to winter with snow on the ground since early November has been hard and unpleasant; it has left me mentally weary and physically drained. My weather wish now is that the winter from January onwards will ease up and be milder, with more sunshine, less snow and fewer grey days. Once again, I wish for an early and mild spring, a hot summer and a beautiful fall, followed by a mild November and December. I know that in Edmonton that’s asking a lot, but then if you don’t ask, you won’t receive.

• Edmonton Eskimos

My wish for “an awesome mystery quarterback” did not come true to say the least. I can only reiterate the wish for this year and hope that our new General Manager Ed Hervey can find us one. I can’t take another humiliating, frustrating football season!

• Others’ Wishes

I wish that all my friends and family and their friends and family (and so on and so on) have all their wishes come true in the coming year.

May 2013 bring you peace, prosperity, health and happiness!

P.S. This will be my last weekly Sunday post. In the future, I will continue to write posts when something strikes me as important or interesting enough to write about. I have learned that if I set aside the time, I can dedicate myself more to my writing. I send my thanks to those who read and followed me this year and to those who left “likes” or comments.

 

Sunday #52: December 23, 2012 – December Gifts

The weeks before Christmas are always busy. Last minute preparations and shopping take up energy and time. In December, people tend to get obsessed with gifts: who to buy gifts for, what to buy, how much to spend. We focus so much on the things of gift-giving that we become part of the commercialism we claim to hate. So this year I have bought my gifts like everyone else, but I have also thought about the concept of “a gift.” What I have realized is that the December gifts that mean the most to me are not things; they are gifts from the universe for my heart and soul.

Roland

For me, Roland is a December gift. We didn’t meet in December; we met in September. But it was in December of the year we met—1994—that I realized he was not just a colleague (at the school in China where we both worked) or a friend, but someone I was developing romantic feelings for. I clearly remember the moment I realized it…

The Canadian teachers at the school—eight of us, plus the Canadian principal—planned an elaborate series of Christmas celebrations for our Chinese students and the Chinese staff we worked with who’d never experienced Christmas before. We had a traditional school Christmas concert with carols for the students, a party where the kids got to sit on Santa Claus’s (Roland’s) lap and a traditional dinner, complete with turkey and the trimmings, for the Chinese staff. In the weeks before the dinner, Roland spent hours organizing the meal. He ordered groceries through the kitchen, ran around our town (Rong Qi) to get a tree, lights and decorations, and even took a long night-time trip by taxi to Macau to hunt down a dozen turkeys, which were not readily available near where we lived. On party day, he spent hours in the kitchen helping the Chinese cooks to prepare the foreign food to feed us all.

As the staff, Canadian and Chinese, gathered in the cafeteria before dinner, Christmas music played in the background, the room lights were lowered and colored Christmas lights gave the room a warm glow. People laughed and visited. The spirit of excitement and anticipation in the room was magic as they waited for this unique dinner, and we waited to see if they would enjoy it. For us Canadians, it was lovely to see our Chinese colleagues have these new experiences and get a taste of our culture as we had been having of theirs since our arrival in the country months earlier. As dinner was about to be served, Roland came out of the kitchen wearing an apron and carrying a huge turkey on a platter. In the moment that I looked up from my conversation and saw him coming towards the table, I realized what a wonderful, caring man he is and how much other people’s joy brings him joy. I also realized that I was falling in love with him. That I’d fooled myself into believing that he was just my “buddy from work” for all those weeks before suddenly struck me as ridiculous.

In a fairy tale, of course, our eyes would have locked, we would have run into each other’s arms and we would have whispered, “I love you” at the same moment. Things didn’t happen quite that way as they rarely ever do outside of fairy tales (plus I’m no princess—although he is a handsome prince, with flaws perhaps, but a prince nonetheless). Eventually though we did eventually get up the courage to admit our feelings (one December later, but that’s another story…) and create a lovely life together. So every year around this time, I remember that first moment and think how lucky I was to receive this December gift.

Bailey

Almost exactly two years later, my other awesome December gift came into my life, our dog Bailey.

In December 1996, Roland and I were back in Canada and living together. One hectic Saturday afternoon, we went to West Edmonton Mall to do some Christmas shopping. I went into PJ’s Pets “just to look” at the puppies, never intending to get one. At the time, it seemed like no big deal; I used to stop in and look nearly every time I was at the mall. In the store, I strolled past the glass and gazed at the puppies. “That one’s cute.” “Oh, look at this one.” “How sweet.” I was attracted to some and not to others, but none tugged at my heart.

Then I spied these two puppies together in a cage. One was a black and white something or other; the other was a little caramel colored cutie dozing in the corner.

When I was little I had a caramel colored poodle, Misty, and I adored her. When I got older, I decided I wanted another dog the same color. When I saw this little one, half asleep, I didn’t resist the urge to ask to cuddle him, which I had never done in all the dozens of times I’d been in the store. I should have known then that this choice would lead me down a different road… but as is clear from the previous scene, I am not always that in tune with myself.

Anyway, I asked to hold the dog, and Roland and I went into the back room while someone brought me the puppy. I cradled him in my arm with his sweet little face tucked under my chin and his little brownish bum in my arms, and I stroked the soft fur on his head. I was wearing a fleecy with three little buttons up the front. The little dog found the top one, closed his eyes and begun to suck on the button. That was it. My heart was gone.

To be fair, I did give him back to the clerk and try to walk away. I didn’t get very far, though, before I turned around, marched back to the store and told the salesman I would take him home. Thus little Bailey—who is now an old man at 16 years old—became a December gift I gave myself. And he has given me the gift of laughter every single day we have spent together (and many when we were apart).

For many people, including me, the holiday season is about giving and receiving gifts. For me, it’s also about remembering Life’s gifts—and I have been blessed by two amazing ones that came into my life in December.

Merry Christmas, Everyone!

Sunday #51: December 16, 2012 – I’m Dreaming of a Green Christmas

Today I took a pre-Christmas road trip to visit a friend about an hour away. In the car on the way, bundled in my winter coat, scarf and gloves, I looked out over the land covered in snow and the trees stripped of their leaves. All I could think was how I’d rather be almost anywhere else for Christmas than here in the snow and cold of winter. I thought about how lovely it used to be to have Christmas in Abu Dhabi and sit on the outdoor terrace to eat my turkey and feel the warm breeze off the Arabian Gulf. I am not nostalgic about much of my life in the UAE, but I do miss the loveliness of the winters. I also miss the frequency with which we used to be able to get away and take a trip. Those days are long behind us now, and I feel wistful for them right now, after we have already had 6 weeks of winter, and it’s only mid-December.

So, as I drove back from Wetaskiwin, in the dark at 6 p.m., I thought to myself that, unlike Bing Crosby, I am not dreaming of white Christmas; I’m dreaming of green Christmas. That thought led to this poem about my wishes for the holidays.

I’m dreaming of a green Christmas
Just like the ones I used to know
Where the trees tops sway
And the adults play
With straws in their frosty drinks

I’m dreaming of a green Christmas
With every Christmas wish I dream
May your days be warm and serene
And may all
Your Christmases be green

It’s perhaps not a classic that will catch on, but it is where my heart is today.