i know some folks who truly believe that the world owes them something.  that they are entitled to some kind of free ride or something simply because they exist and consider themselves awesome.

and at first it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter at all that someone is generous or selfish because people are always on their best behaviour when they first make new friends.  so you don’t pay attention to or see the nickel and diming or the failure to give of themselves.

but then the relationship grows and you start to notice things. 

whether sexually or otherwise these people don’t share or maybe it’s that they don’t give.

it’s like the difference between people who like to give gifts and people who like to receive them.  personally i LOVE when i nail it with a gift; when i actually manage to surprise someone with something perfect whether it’s expensive or not.

and yet some folks prefer to count what they get.  to try to count what they give and what they get and think about whether the scales are balanced or what you owe them.

but what the counters don’t realise?  the crucial thing that they’re missing?

when you count you miss the fun part.  the part where you give without counting and receive with thanks and good grace.  where everyone gives what they will and tries to please the other without worrying about who owes what.

when people give without thinking, without worry as to the reward they make it easy to give in return.  so then what you have is a relationship between two people who take care of each other without regard to debt or payment or owing  and without demands.

and if everyone is generous with the people they love without thinking about a bill?  suddenly you have one of those magical lifelong friendships that nurture you when you’re down and hurting.

when you most need the world to take care of you someone actually might.

and if you do that with everyone in your life? 

give them the nice thoughts you think and the love you feel for them?

well then you have a circle around you to keep you glowing inside no matter what happns in your life.  people you love who love you back and care for you as you care for them.

there are some old proverbs out there that really do sum this up;

every thing you send out will come back to you three fold

and it harm none, do what thou wilt

do unto others as you would have them do unto you

say the nice things that you think and try to swallow the nasty ones

yes, that last one is mine. 

of course you have to be careful with your generous friends too.  it’s easy to get expectatious toward people who like to give of themselves and their things.

you can see how easy it might be right?

well you know … if he knew i wanted it he would make it happen right?  i mean what if i just drop a little hint?  what if i drop a big hint?hey why isn’t he getting the big fat hint that i’m dropping?  damn ungenerous bastard!

expectations, deadly things aren’t they?

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hi leanne

i was really sorry to hear about the fire at maitland street but i don’t seem to have your email address.  i assume that both you and faust are okay?

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i don’t seem to be blogging here much anymore, make sure to rss me instead of wasting time checking back…

i have a more adult blog, if you want to read it send me an email.

2. i am madly in love with my two cats: harriet and mouse. i am still
madly in love with their predecessors (athena and sappho) but it’s a
more mature and faded kind of love.

3. i am terrified of having a kid by myself… but far more terrified
of not doing it at all

4. i think a lot of these memes are lame but this one has been awesome
so far and i’ve really enjoyed reading them all.  i will, however,
fail to tag at least one person back.  furthermore, i think it’s possible i may have been tagged 25 times already on this one

5. i like myself a lot more since i started paying more attention to personal grooming

6. i really, really, really love my job; i just wish it had benefits
and steady pay

7. working in my living room is the best thing ever… and it sucks
because my space doesn’t belong to me alone

8. i’m trying to cook at home more but it’s really hard when good,
cheap, made by others food is *right* there

9. i love blogging but i’m doing it less often

10. i would like my next boyfriend to have a hot car/motorcycle… and
let me drive it

11. recently i bought a floor length skirt made of fleece. of course
i can now wear almost nothing else.

12. i try really hard to be the best person i can be but i still catch
myself thinking the nasty thoughts more often than i care to admit.

13. life really is what you make it. i know this and still i sit back
and miss so much of it…

14. i tried out for the canadian national swim team. it was,
unfortunately, one of the lousiest races i ever swam. ah well, i was
particularly young for my age at the time.

15. recently i was forced to toss my antique car (93) due to excessive
rust. said car corners like it’s on rails and got over 14km/L on the
highway (around 33+mpg) last summer. unfortunately the body is
totally rotten. so i have a new car BUT the guy who was supposed to
buy my old car for parts kinda bailed and i can’t seem to make myself
write the auto trader/craigslist ad.

even though i have a new car i can’t throw out my old one. it’s sad.
i’m sad, i expected it to last 2-5 more years.

16. someone kissed me recently.

17. i love my family more than anything… and they’re the hardest
people to be around sometimes. funny how that works isn’t it? the
more you love something the more it can get to you too. ah buttons.
ah family. ah loved ones. can’t live without them though, life
wouldn’t be worth living.

18. people in my family have no idea how often they are quoted by me
when i am asked for advice. it goes like “well, i have no experience
with this but my father/sister/mother/best friend/etc says: …”

19. i got played. i got played perfectly and i’m not even upset about it.

20. i want to buy a small but tall house that is within five minutes
of a downtown subway and then i want to put my studio in it.

21. i have a hard time saying no to people that i love. this is okay
except for when it breeds resentment. what’s not okay is the ones who
push me after i say no. saying no was hard, telling you to fuck off
for pushing? not so hard.

22. mostly i’m a shapeshifter. this is great except for dating where
it’s a problem. sooner or later real me reasserts herself. problem
with being a shapeshifter is that you often don’t realize that you’ve
done it until your real shape begins to reappear.

23. i eat carbs when i’m sad or depressed… and then it takes longer to recover because i also feel physically messed up by all the comfort carbs.

24. this (things i know to be true) is the best thing that i ever wrote… maybe :)

this (sticky fingers) is the followup
this (spark) is almost as good, or better

24a. i really want you to go read “things i know to be true” and maybe hang it on your fridge!

25. i was married once.

well, it’s official, i have a new car.

okay not entirely official as i don’t take delivery until this afternoon but you know what i mean.  it’s paid for (with some help) and the plates are off my old car and sitting in the windshield/back window.

i may have driven my old honda for the last time and i’m abjectly sad about it.

i understand that i will love my new car just as much and that i will be just as broken hearted when my mechanic says “it’s time, your car is dead” but that isn’t any consolation to me now.

there are a few reasons i’m unhappy about this transition, not the least of which is that i expected to get another five years about of my perfectly tuned, corners like a bmw, gets phenomenal mileage accord.  expected in vain because the body rotted out from under me with very little warning.

in fact i’m a little bit pissed off at my mechanic for not making me understand what was happening.  why was i fixing a rotten car?  why wasn’t i made to understand 3-5 years ago that i needed to spend some money on the body?

how was this a SURPRISE?

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there is something so *wrong* about throwing out something so perfectly tuned.  i know the body is rotten but the engine has another 200,000km in it EASY.

ah well, i think i found a guy who is going to find a solid body and use my parts to build a car… so at least he’s getting something out of it.

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so here i am all broken hearted right?

all sad about the passing of this beautiful machine…

and yet?

and yet there’s a little joy here.

i’m getting my very first NEW car!

not new to me, NEW.

as in no one but me has ever driven it (okay, on and off the truck and the broker is driving it to my house but you know what i’m saying) and i have to break in the engine.

as in i get to be the only person who cares for this car and i will know implicitly every bolt that gets changed and fluid that gets dirty and if it dies it will be entirely my responsibility.

it will be *mine* from the day it got sold until the day i sell it or my mechanic looks at me mournfully and says “it’s time, get a new car.”

and that’s cool right?

i should be excited to own my very first new car and i am… i mean i’m totally stoked and i am fully aware that i will fall madly in love with it in time… it’s just i’m having a hard time getting past the senseless waste of it’s predecessor.

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oh you wanna know what i got?

2008.5 mazda 3 sedan, five speed with no air… cause i like don’t like the air and the power anything…

i do like the ipod plug though… kind of an improvement over the tape deck

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in other news, what is with these idiots who get high performance cars in an automatic?

or worse, with a manual transmission and NO IDEA how to WORK IT???

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only thing worse?

porsche sport utility vehicle…

i mean really, isn’t that an oxymoron?

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oh wow oh wow oh wow

my car is almost here and the plates are off my accord…

god i’m sad for my accord.

man i’m excited about my very first new car…

wow wow wow.

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and for those of you who know how much i love old things?

yes, i really did basically buy the new car version of the old car i’m throwing out….

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anyone wanna buy a really good engine?

i am having the strangest week…

not strange bad, more in the sense of all over the place and utterly unpredictable.

for a long time my business has had one source of referrals other than my existing clients and this has bothered me; not enough to advertise or get a job in a gym but enough.  i never like being dependent on one thing because there is always the risk that the person doing the referring will suddenly decide that they don’t like me anymore.

i haven’t been particularly worried because i tend to be extremely competent and this leads to less trouble than the average self-employed pilates instructor might experience.

you see my clients send me their wives/husbands/best friends and with that kind of loyalty my business can do nothing but grow.  it might grow slowly but it will grow nonetheless.

anyway this week i met a gynecologist who asked for my card and promised referrals (one of my areas of specialisation happens to be post partum women with pelvic floor/incontinence/sexual health issues) and a personal trainer client asked for a stack of cards and in fact referred someone to me already.

so suddenly? 

i went from one to three referral sources in a week!!!

this is truly awesome, not to mention that my clients send me more and more clients each year.  hmm maybe i can stop working at seven thirty in the evening someday…

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in the meantime…

on thursday night i had dinner with a being who can make a million dollars on a ten minute phone call from a lounger on grand cayman (married, hush y’all)

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on friday night i met a woman who runs her own company and happens to be getting arthritis in her feet.  what does this mean? 

that none of her 40 years worth of shoes fit her anymore.

why does this matter to me?

i have TWENTY ONE!!!!! new pairs of high heels (well a few are flats) to add to my already ridiculous shoe collection. 

i was like a kid in a candy store i’m telling you!

god you guys some of them are SOOOO sexy.

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and on saturday?

on saturday my father enlisted my help to dig a hole. 

this would not normally be worthy of mention except for two or three little details:

it happens to be a measly nineteen below centigrade today (a mere minus two fahrenheit) and has been at least that cold for days.  it’s not traditionally known to be good hole digging weather.

of course we *were* in a steel structure, that raised the temperature at least 0.1 degree by removing the wind chill so it was really positively balmy in there…

furthermore he wanted us to dig the hole down several feet… (we gave up at the two foot mark and decided to wait for spring)

and still none of that would be worth mentioning except for this:

that is a real grin

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is that not the sexiest thing you’ve ever seen?

no like ever?

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the tragedy of my life is that i found hacking away at a frozen solid piece of earth with my father to be ridiculously fun.

best part was after we got down a foot or so he carefully positioned a space heater in the hole, covered it with a tarp, and headed in to the house for lunch.

i was sure the whole place would go up in flames but nope, back we come to a hole that is frozen solid except for three inches of mud.  you can see the mud in the pic.

even funnier is that about fifteen minutes after this pic was taken the hat was off, the scarf was gone and my jacket was hanging open… but the camera was frozen ;>

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i was *going* to do some cardio (aka ride mom’s stationary bike) but i decided that two hours with a pickaxe had to count and said screw it.

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and then tomorrow?

off to go skiing….

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you have to admit, it’s been kind of an up and down week…

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well mostly up.

oh yeah, i bought a car!

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for those of you who guessed that this ENTIRE post was so i could post the picture?

smart you…

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that may be my best fashion crime this year…

lately i’ve been thinking about trust and it’s applications among the intimates of a person’s life.

i’ve concluded that, at first,  most people either trust fully and wait to be betrayed, trust not at all and wait/ test before trusting or don’t trust at all.  personally, i’m more of the first category.

sometimes, like when someone has done me a nasty, i find myself wishing that i was the kind of person who didn’t live her life like an open book.  that i knew how to keep myself hidden away and protected rather than out there and open to anything.

but not for long.  i’ve just had so many wild and wonderful experiences that came nearly directly from my willingness to trust my instincts and the universe and the people around me.  yes i understand that this is ostrichlike behaviour.  no i don’t care to change it.

it gets harder to remember this when trust is betrayed at a later point in a relationship and real collateral damage ensues.

i recall the time a woman i had been friends with for several years and i had a falling out.  we were having a bad patch you know?  both of us in terrible life places and not taking care of each other properly.  anyway we got mad at each other and stopped calling.

our friends knew we weren’t hanging out and that we felt hard-done-by but that is all.  we didn’t really talk about each other or fight through our friends we simply ceased to hang out.

eventually, some guy on okcupid wanted to date us both at once and we reconnected with each other.  seriously, that’s what happened.  we are now fast friends again with really no harm done.

in fact maybe we’re better friends because we ‘broke up’ and ‘got back together.’

we’ve been really shitty to each other and we’re still friends; this adds a level of trust that wasn’t there before.  something about knowing we’ll come back you know?

the reason that we can still be friends is simple:

.we did not share each other’s secrets

.we did not say shitty things about each other to mutual friends

.we had told each other our grudges to our faces (or at least on the phone)

.we heard each other

.we genuinely like each other

.one of us actually told the other that it would be nice to hang out again

i’ve had friendships end in other ways, ones that involved significantly less pleasant behaviour.

i’ve had people announce my secrets to the world and others trash talk me to every single person we had in common and then wonder why i no longer felt that friendship was possible.

it’s simple really, i can’t trust someone who didn’t keep my secrets when they didn’t like me anymore.  especially if i kept theirs.

she and i? even though we weren’t friends anymore we had each other’s backs.  we would still have defended each other to others and been mildly offended if people were saying nasty things about one of us.

i think that that is somehow an essential truth, this having of someone’s back.

the idea that you won’t fuck with someone’s life regardless of how fucked your relationship with each other will get.  i stopped speaking to one of my exes for three years but all i ever said was that we had been cruel to each other and that i missed my friend.

okay i did some bitching too.

but never to *his* friends.  only to people who had barely met him if anything.  what i didn’t do was spread rumours and try to fuck up his life.

so i still trust him and i still trust her and i still trust a lot of people that i haven’t spoken with in years.

but those others?  the ones who have rendered themselves incapable of being trusted?

what do i do with them?

what do you do with someone you love but don’t trust?

how do you have them in your life.  how especially do you deal when they’re there and you have no choice but to have them around?

what do you do when you miss them but you don’t feel like you could ever have faith in them again?  like you can’t trust them with the truths in your heart because they won’t cherish them?

was the friendship always just imaginary?

trust… it’s a funny thing.