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enfinblue's Bluey (credit to Fifi for the nickname!) Diaryland Diary

"I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart." -Vinc3nt V@n Gogh

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All the world's riches are mine.

I am having an absolutely fabulous weekend.

I can't quite explain it, but clearly peace is staying with me.

I can't even quite remember what I did Friday night - oh yeah, posted some photos.

I slept rather lightly Friday night. Not sure why - I seemed to be excited to get up and get on with life.

Saturday morning I got up and went running along the canal. Afterwards I went to yoga, which was lovely as always. After that C. and Annie and I went to brunch, as usual. I had another chocolate milkshake. After that I went to the supermarket to pick up ingredients for the courgette and pea lasagne, but unforch I didn't take a list and so I forgot the sour cream. I also need to go to the Italian store in the market for some good parmesan. Oops - no I don't. Good God my memory is terrible. I think if I look in the fridge I'll see that I bought some last weekend. See, Anna, you're not the only one.

Actually, anxiety is a freaky thing. What freaks me out, and took some getting used to, is how an episode of anxiety can have effects on the brain that linger for a while (e.g. my episode with the Foreign Affairs interview). I've grown able to trust to be calm about this and wait for my sharpness to come back. For a while last year, when I was really stressed, I wasn't sure it would come back. That was scary. In any event, I'm training my brain out of it, and things are going swimmingly well. I'm very proud of the analytical/econometric paper of mine that went up the hierarchy on Friday. I'm building trust with myself. Most of all, I'm now able to laugh and let go when I experience a moment of weakness. This too will pass.

Here's a great article explaining the process, actually, which happened to be in the NYT yesterday. A very good read. Read to the end. :)

Not depressing. Read to the end!


So I didn't make the lasagne as I'm missing the sour cream. Today I will buy that. I've never used sour cream in a lasagne, but my friend assures me that the whole melange with ricotta is very good. I'm trusting the person.
I'll make it today.


So last night was great! I put on a nice outfit and went out for a girls' night with a colleague whom I really respect and admire. She's a single mom in her early 40s who is back from a posting in Paris. She is an incredible woman - very sharp (doesn't suffer fools), but quick to laugh and very competent. I like her honesty and her determination. She's a good mirror for me because she reminds me to be confident as a career woman, and she understands many of the negative experiences I have had in my career. I think that I can be good for her, as well, because where she is weak and I am strong is in body confidence. I'm hoping to help her a bit with her fitness goals and getting perspective on her body. I've invited her to yoga. I don't mean any of this in a preachy way or as in that I want to train her personally. It's just that she often brings up food and body issues and seems to be disappointed with herself re. her fitness goals. So I'd like to invite her to do some activities with me when she is able, and also to feel more confident simply with the body she already has. I'd happily babysit her son if she wanted to take a bike ride or go to the gym or whatever.

I was in yoga yesterday, actually, and I was thinking with gratitude about my own body confidence. Sometimes when I look back on my running years I do an inward eye roll - clearly I was in some sort of an obsessive loop. But in yoga, I was thinking about how I've gradually surrendered any notions or consciousness I had of "perfection" of my body. I'm not working out every day. I'm doing what I want to do and keeping a good standard of health, going intensely or softly when my intuition about fitness gives me the signal, but I'm not obsessed. I'm sort of "gracefully surrendering the things of youth," whilst evolving into a strong and healthy middle-aged person.

When I was younger I would have freaked if I had seen any cellulite on my thighs. I would have beaten myself up for not having run 10 miles the day before, or for skipping a second run on a particular day. It was nuts. It wasn't about the looks, per se, and I was never too thin as in anorexic, but it WAS a fear-based loop about keeping my identity as a competitive runner that I was in. Somehow I felt that if I'd stopped I would have lost the gains I'd made, and thereby my identity.

So what I was thinking in yoga yesterday was how grateful I am that I went through pushing my body to its peak performance when I was in my 20s. Now I understand my body and the beauty of what it can do. I can maintain a wonderful level of balance, mobility and strength, through the trust that I have that my body will do what I need it to do. I don't think I realized how precious a gift this was until yesterday, when I looked around at the obvious self-consciousness of other women in the room. I love my body no matter what now. It is a marvelous engine.

That's what I wish I could impart. You don't need to be perfect, but like the brain, you need to get to know the body - train it - to learn to trust its power. I look around the room in yoga and I think the women - young and old - are beautiful. I hope that they can see that, too.

So, body down. Brain still a work in progress.

I got off topic there. The movie was hysterical. I think I'm a bit of a foodie at heart because I now desperately want to get a copy of Mast3ring the Art of Fr3nch Cooking and make at least the beouf bourgignon.

I must say though that one of the most hilarious parts of the movie was the way that Juli3 Pow3ll could not pronounce "beouf." It was completely silly! I don't know why they didn't get a language coach, but possibly they kept the incorrect pronunciation for for effect? She kept on saying "boof" (pronounced as in "goof") and the crowd laughed hysterically every time.

But that aside, Meryl Str3ep was fantastic. I mean, that woman, as I read in one review "...eats young actresses alive." Oh and I loved Stanl3y Tucci! He was marvelous. I want a husband like that!

And then we went out to the market and sat on a patio and had cake and tea. There were so many flashy people out and about in the market on a Saturday night. It was like being in an unknown Ottawa. I doubt that I would want to be around the people milling about down there all of the time, but it was great to be a part of that summer energy.

Today: maybe a bit of biking or running, some drawing and some lasagne baking.

I feel so excited about the future. Things continue to get better and better.

Oh! K. got back to me and she's looking at Dec. 16-Jan. 5 in Paris and so I will likely be going for the Christmas period as well. That's kind of exciting, non? It's actually just about the least exciting thing in my current life, but I know I'll enjoy it. I half hope that Marco is not going to be in Paris for Christmas this year. That would be a bit weird. I haven't yet asked. Perhaps I simply shouldn't bother to tell him about my trip. It would be rather funny to run into him at the Marmottan or something though. Each time I look at the photo above I think of Marco and smile because nothing - not even he - can tamper with the charms of Italy for me. It's kind of the home of my own personal renaissance, I think because in Italy they value the idea of beautifying anything one can touch. I love that. "And around your image there is no fog." (Auden is useful for everything.)

In North America, in my opinion, beauty in every day things is perceived as too much of a luxury, an after-thought, a deviation from the objective of productivity/efficiency (or, worse, it's exaggerated, false/uniform (e.g. bleached blonde hair, fake boobs, face lifts, botox), and over-sexualized). And, most sadly, the good stuff - high quality food, for example, and nice architecture - is most often afforded only to the rich. The poor are left to live in some pretty bleak places. It's a disgrace.

OK. Now that I've ranted sufficiently off I go to enjoy the day.

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9:32 a.m. - 2009-08-23

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