It Seems I'm Wide Awake In This Dream

I once dreamed about Sesame Street gone horribly wrong. I'm not kidding. It was even a re-occuring dream. It was basically one of two different nightmares I repetedly had as a child. By now the details are a little foggy and disjointed; really only fragments remain.

Big Bird was there, and some Muppet girl with pigtails. The jist of it is that we're walking down the street and someone (I can't remember whether it is me or not) steps in a wad of gum. The bad news is that the gum has something terribly wrong with it, either a needle jammed in it, or it's poisoned. Which if course means the need for immediate surgery. We get pulled into the building we happen to be standing in front of, which just looks like a corner convenience store downtown (not any particular one, just in general). Inside however is basically an operating room. Random Sesame Street characters are ready to operate on us. It basically feels like every scary surgery you've seen on TV; bright lights, scalpels, medical paraphanalia (things like IV bags, assuming I was old enough to piece that together).

I think I always woke up before surgery got too in depth, but it was always a startling dream. Maybe nightmare is a little strong though. But definitely weird. Somehow it never seems to ruin Sesame Street for me, nor am I terribly afraid of ever having to have surgery, so it wasn't all that damaging. I guess I just find it surprising that it stuck with me for so long.


Creative Writing Prompt #259: I once dreamed about...

You Can Check Out Any Time You Like, But You Can Never Leave

(The following is something I wrote at school in mid-October, I just hadn't had a chance to get it typed up until now.)

I was driving to work this morning and on the on ramp to the highway, a girl sped by me on the right in the ending lane. She forced her way in front of me, forcing me to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting her as she cut me off. I honked my annoyance to her. In return, she rolled down her window and gave me the finger, checking her mirror to make sure I got the message before retracting her hand. The whole thing left me with an awful taste in my mouth and I am annoyed that I can’t stop thinking about it. I hated that I couldn’t stop letting myself feel lousy about it.

This summer, a somewhat similar occurrence that I couldn’t shake happened in downtown Toronto. Nick and I were venturing to MEC for the first time. Unfortunately there was a Jays game going on at the same time, so parking was non-existent. Anywhere. We decided to keep trying in the MEC parking lot, about 30 cramped underground spaces. We just kept circling, looking for someone leaving, but of course there was always several other cars doing the exact same thing. I finally decided to get out of the car and try to stand in a freed spot as it became open and wait for Nick to bring the car around to it. (We are not aggressive enough drivers to survive in Toronto!) So it wasn’t a terribly brilliant idea in any aspect, but we had been circling for parking for literally an hour. A car finally pulled out of a spot and I stood at the end of it. Nick was at the other end of the row but started to drive over to me. But of course another car got in front of him and wanted the spot. (I’ll point out that we had been waiting much longer in the parking lot than she had!) I politely told her I was holding the spot for my husband, who was right behind her and that we had been looking for parking for a long time (told you we would never survive in Toronto). She shrugged and said “So?” and inched closer into the spot I was standing in. Not being a fan of confrontation and sensing an impossible situation on my hands, I moved out of the spot. Not happily. I was incredibly irritated at her attitude more than anything, and noticing her 5(ish) year old in the back, sarcastically told her that she had a really nice attitude and to have a nice day with her son. I was furious. Was I in the right to be standing in a parking spot in a busy lot? Maybe not. But her attitude wasn’t exactly charitable to someone who was polite to her. Nor was my sarcastic comment particularly mature, but I was angry. Maybe she had been looking for parking for a while too, but I can’t imagine that if the roles were reversed that I would have done the same as her (again, Toronto=traffic death). I would probably be annoyed that I would still have to search for a spot, but I wouldn’t take that one. If I had been standing there for a while with no husband in sight, maybe. But Nick was just down the row, about 6 parking spots away. I truly don’t know what the ‘right’ action for either of us was, but the whole interaction put me in a horribly sour mood that I just could not shake for several days. I wasn’t proud of my own choices, but I didn’t think hers were fair either. And every now and then, particularly when things like this morning happen, I return to that sour feeling. Which brings me to my point of this long-winded diatribe.

Why do these useless feelings continue to haunt and plague me? I imagine partially because I feel somewhat guilty at instigating the situation; I shouldn’t have been standing in a parking spot, and I could have slowed down (on an on-ramp?!) to let the girl merge into my lane a bit less dramatically. But the reason I think I get so irate is because I fight with myself over what to do in society anymore. People are increasingly ride it seems, to perfect strangers, and part of me wants to let them know that they’ve done something impolite. Nick hates it, but I am prone to saying a very loud “You’re welcome!” when I hold a door for someone and don’t get the slightest nod or thank you. Do I do kind things for the recognition? No, of course not. I do them because I was raised to be polite and courteous. It seems that that’s not the norm anymore. I like treating people kindly and I like being considerate (or at least trying to be; none of this is an implication that I think I am perfect!). I don’t do it because I have to, I do it because I want to; I want to be that kind of person who is considerate of others. But that’s becoming increasingly hard to do anymore. It’s tough being the person that follows the so-called rules of society when everyone around you is breaking them. Or maybe the rules have changed, and I’m the one doing it all wrong.

Once I got into town, I was in a similar traffic scenario; someone wanted to merge from their ending lane into mine except they ran out of room. I slowed down a bit (wasn’t an on ramp this time) and was only somewhat cut off. But I felt much less irate than if I had sped up to try to prove him wrong and lost. (I didn’t get a thank you wave, but I didn’t get the finger either). The experiment was somewhat successful; I didn’t end up with irate feelings that will plague me months later, I was just mildly annoyed at the arrogant driver. The problem was that now I feel like a doormat. Anyone can take advantage of me because I’ll just step aside and follow the rules of politeness (apparently only as I see them) while you do whatever you want. And yet you’re the one that gets ahead.

So in the end, I’m torn. I feel like I have two options:

1. Continue the ‘good’ fight in attempting to win against (perceived) arrogant jerks who are neither courteous nor polite, and then feel like crap (often with residual feelings of general lousy-ness lasting for quite some time) when I invariable lose the battle, or
   
2. Give up and just step aside and ignore when someone does something that I think is rather socially unacceptable, feel like a doormat (albeit for a much shorter period of time) and continue to perpetuate the decline of a polite society.

I don’t see a winning option here. Thoughts?

Addendum 

December 14: 

I was certainly in a state when I wrote this, a bit melodramatic perhaps. I don’t revoke anything I said, but I am certainly willing to accept a bit more responsibility for these situations, rather than just blaming it on everyone else, who apparently I deem as so impolite.

I certainly believe that society has changed to be less polite. Are my interpretations of politeness always the right ones? I would assume not. Is it my job to ‘teach’ people how to be polite? Of course not. Should I just accept that people will be rude (based on my parameters)? I don’t know. That’s where I struggle. I don’t believe anyone should just have to sit by and let someone treat them poorly without putting up a fight, and when I hold a door open for you and you don’t say thank you at all, I see it that you’ve treated me poorly.

It's Coming On Christmas, They're Cutting Down Trees

(This was actually written with good old pencil and paper while at school November 25th.)

My poor neglected blog. My poor neglected goals. But fortunately not my poor neglected weight; my 60 day challenge has me down to 169.0 lbs. And I’m really liking that. 

As for the neglect, I’ve been insanely busy and fairly stressed over the last few weeks (months?). Training with Natasha kept me busy until a few weeks ago, but then add in organizing a float for the Santa Claus parade for the first time, hosting a book club meeting/Christmas party, and all the other Christmas events I like to do, and life has been purely chaotic. I am anxiously awaiting December 5^th, because it will all be over, including the 5km Santa Shuffle I signed up for, which falls on the morning of the parade. I know the stress is all self-induced, because other than the father-imposed float, I do it all of my own choice. But what’s life if you’re not busy? But after thinking about the last year and how crazy it’s been, I am truly looking forward to my two weeks off to do nothing but relax and be stress free, no plans, no commitments. It will be much needed. I won’t know what to do with myself. Although I’m planning on lots of cooking, reading and exercising. Here’s a recap of my crazy year:

Jan – plenty of supply at my fave high school

Feb – start extended supply at said high school; lasts until June

Jul – two weeks of summer school at same high school, two weeks at a local school

Aug – trip out east, several camping trips

Sept – start extended supply again at same school

Nov – extended supply (finally) becomes an official LTO

Don’t get me wrong, it’s all been good stuff that has kept me busy. But maybe it will be nice to have some time without prepping math classes from scratch and adding all my crazy weekend adventures to the mix. I’ll let you know.

As for my 60 day challenge, it apparently was just the thing I needed, despite my initial hesitation. I was having a hard time sticking to my weight loss plan for an extended period of time; I would do well for a week or two, lose some weight, then abandon the healthy eating for a few days and basically undo all the hard work I had done. I followed that pattern for a year; the end of last November I was at 169.0 at WW. I gained 10 lbs over Christmas and spent the majority of this year trying to get rid of those 10 lbs. So here I am, at the end of November again, and just where I was 365 days ago. I was getting frustrated at paying WW and a gym membership, for working so hard 75% of the time and yet not really progressing. The 75% effort wasn’t working well enough (probably because the not-so-good 25% was really bad). So I decided to enlist myself in a 60 day challenge. 

The rules are fairly simple; follow WW points strictly, measuring and tracking everything. If I go over in points (including my weekly points) I have one week to ‘earn’ those points back with exercise. If I didn’t, I had to give up completing one of my goals. That is a pretty intense consequence; I have no intention of leaving a single goal incomplete, and if I had to purposely not do one (or more!) I would be furious with myself. Nick was nervous too; one uncorrected week and I would have failed the challenge AND failed my goal list, and I would be a very big depressed mess that he would be cleaning up. I won’t lie, I wasn’t sure I could do it either, especially over Christmas. But it’s Day 21 and it’s going well. I’ve yet to use all my weekly points (and I aim to keep it that way) and I finally broke back into the 160’s (my visit to 169 after the cabbage soup diet was incredibly brief). 

Even though the worst of the holiday food is yet to come, I have confidence that I can make it work, and if I can make this work during the most food-obsessed month of the year, then I can easily make it work forever. I can easily see that for a regular week, it would be easy to eat well; it’s the weeks with more than one ‘event’ that become a challenge. This weekend will be tough; a baby shower, followed by a friend’s birthday dinner at The Keg, followed by Nick’s and my now-annual Christmas picnic. That’s a lot of difficult food choices. I’ve already perused The Keg’s  nutritional info online, and it was very difficult finding a reasonable meal choice. If it was the only food ‘event’ of the week, I could splurge a bit, but being only 1 of 3, I’m trying to be conservative. Which I think is smart and how people ‘normally’ eat; not like my old eating habits where every occasion was ‘special’ and meant a full out splurge no matter how many events came up.