Ach, it’s a Bonnie life!!

It’s now been a month since we started this program and we had our final workout with Jeff Johnson and Fabian Rayne last night… in the cold and the rain and the mud of the Argonaut’s practice field.  It wasn’t a hugely strenuous workout (mainly due to the weather I think), but we ended up soaked and muddy from head to toe – to the point where rolling in the mud and puddles wouldn’t have made a difference.  It was a lot of fun (except for the push-ups in the mud…), and both gentlemen remarked at the huge change in us over the past 4 weeks – both in terms of our “form” (ability to do lunges without falling over, etc) and our stamina.  We compared the end of the 2 workouts as well … the first one (which I think was not as strenuous as last nights’ workout) where we limped off the field and were stiff, sore and achy for 3 days afterwards, to last night where we sauntered off quite happily into the evening.

We have both lost some weight – sensibly and slowly, but the progress is there, and we both feel that we’ve achieved a lot of muscle development and started some wonderful habits.  We also had our youngest son with us last night and he was right there with us – running, stretching, doing chin-ups from the centre of the uprights and push-ups in the mud.  He had a great time!!  It was also very fitting that he was with us as it illustrated to me very clearly how much these changes we are making for ourselves are positively affecting our children.  As we eat better, so do they; as we exercise and incorporate fitness into our daily lives, so do they.  When we had our consultation with Rita the dietician, she remarked that teaching and demonstrating these positive habits for our children would inevitably result in them continuing those habits as a matter of course once they are grown and on their own.

The dietician consultation also resulted in us fine-tuning our dietary habits a bit more – using different oils for different purposes in our recipes (cold-pressed olive oil in anything that won’t be heated for it’s cancer-preventing properties as well as its cardiovascular benefits, and canola oil for anything that will be heated for its health benefits (here is what Wikipedia had to say about Canola oil:

“Canola oil has been claimed to promote good health due to its very low saturated fat and high monounsaturated fat content, and beneficial omega-3 fatty acid profile. The Canola Council of Canada states that it is completely safe and is the “healthiest” of all commonly used cooking oils.^[12]It has well established heart health benefits ^[13] and is recognized by many health professional organizations including the American Dietetics Association, and American Heart Association, among others.^[14] Canola oil has been authorized a qualified health claim from the US Food and Drug Administration ^[15] based on its ability to reduce the risk of coronary heart disease due to its unsaturated fat content.”

So we’re paying more attention to WHICH oils and fats we consume as much as the quantities.  We’ll be eating even more fish and keeping up our habit of having home-made foods as much as possible rather than pre-packaged foods.

With only a few days to go before the end of the contest (but definitely NOT the end of our new lifestyle habits), we’re feeling terrific and seeing tangible positive benefits of the program in ourselves and in our children!! 

My husband is ambitious.  Not work-ambitious (he’s been a stay at home dad for the past 8 1/2 years), but life-ambitious.

A few months ago he entered a contest where he had to write a 100 or less word essay on why he needed to improve his cardiovascular health, with the prize being a trip for two to the Gray Cup in Montreal.  Little did I know that this action was going to impact ME …

As many of you know, he “won” that contest and we are now one of eight couples across Canada competing to reduce our cardiovascular risks and win that trip to Montreal.  It’s been a lot of fun, a lot of pain and a lot of effort so far and the organizers have asked us to blog our experiences so far with the Making the Connection / Pairs Edition - CFL Challenge.   I’m going to post my “draft blogs” here and hope that you guys will tell me what works, what’s interesting and what isn’t — the “final” blog entries will (eventually) be posted at http://5stepmtc.wordpress.com/about/

So….

This has been quite an eye-opening journey for us so far. We thought we were in pretty okay shape – Stewart is a stay-at-home dad. He tries to be active playing with the kids – taking them for bike rides, etc.; he plays soccer when his knees allow, coaches an Under-8 soccer team, and also volunteers in our community as a baseball umpire. I work full-time and I have a 2-hour commute in each direction, so I knew that I was getting quite out of shape – my daily exercise consisted of walking the equivalent of about 5 blocks a day. The first week we worked out with personal trainer Fabian Rayne, and Argo Running Back Jeff Johnson was fun but surprisingly exhausting. Then there was the next 3 days of pain and stiffness. Clearly we were not in such “pretty okay” shape after all!

In the ensuing 3 weeks, we’ve met with Fabian weekly for increasingly tough workouts, and we’ve had a program to follow at home on our own. There’s a lot of work with weights, and a lot of cardio work – walking, jogging, whatever we can do. We started a “walk to school” program – our oldest son walks to the high school, and we walk our youngest child to elementary school and back, so that was an easy way to get out and get moving a little and to start to form good habits with the kids. We’re now almost 3 weeks into the program and I’m very pleased that we’re now able to do the circuit training workouts without too much pain afterwards. It had been an embarrassingly long time since we’ve done much of anything in the fitness area and we both found that there have been a lot of changes in the “conventional thinking” since then. Remember “no pain – no gain”? Well, not anymore. Remember “stay away from carbohydrates and anything white (rice, potatoes, bread etc.)”? Not anymore. Remember granola and sunflower seeds as good snack choices? Not so much anymore. This was a larger re-education than we thought it would be.

We also thought that we ate very well, especially after Stewart’s 2 heart attacks about 3

½ years ago; we tried to be very conscious of what we ate and what we fed our children. Then we got the guidelines in the package for the program. Uh oh! So much for cheese, Caesar salads, liver, pepperoni, bacon and popcorn!! In tracking the foods we eat for the program we discovered that we drink much more wine and beer than we had thought, so we’ve made a conscious effort to scale that back and to make sure that we drink as much water as possible every day. We have talked at length with the kids about making healthy choices and taught them that vegetables are not the enemy. In fact, one of their favourite dinner “sides” is broccoli pancakes! We have discovered some wonderful ways to make spinach, brussels sprouts, and squash. We have signed up for the monthly box of “fresh local produce” that a local group puts together. We have also tried not to skip so many meals anymore. Stewart has even started to discuss heart-healthy choices with other shoppers in the grocery store and I’m pretty sure that sales of butter have declined and sales of non-hydrogenated margarine and low-fat cheese have increased in our town because of it.

I had quit smoking before the start of the program, but going through this has made it pretty easy to stick to that decision. Using the Daily Activity log on the Making the Connection web site has also helped keep me on track. It’s helped me to see the positive pattern and to make sure that I keep on working hard. I started out in week 1 (September 10^th) averaging about 51 minutes of exercise per day. Week 2 saw that increase slightly to 53 minutes/day; and then 78 minutes/day last week. Hopefully I can keep this from falling back again!

So, I guess at Week #3 we’re making good progress — I’m only down 3 pounds but on the positive side I am seeing a lot of muscle and stamina development, if not a lot of weight loss … yet.

I was going to try to stick to the topic here, but I have a huge urge to just skip ahead… I haven’t blogged in the last few weeks because I’ve been having a lot of difficulty with depression.

I’ve suffered from depression for a long time - since my first pregnancy (14 years ago now, isn’t that scary??). It was a terrific pregnancy right up until the end. My husband and I were extremely excited about the birth of our first child. We were fairly recently married (just over 2 years), we’d just bought our first home and a new vehicle and life was wonderful. (Isn’t that always about the time when life decides to kick you in the teeth?) We were sitting around at his parent’s cottage after a day of skiing (or for those of us too pregnant to ski, we relaxed in front of the fire and practiced the fine art of “chalet skiing”), and I noticed a birthmark on top of his head. I didn’t recall seeing it before, so I asked him about it and he insisted it had always been there. His brother (the Doctor) happened to be beside me and he looked at it and told us that whether or not it had always been there we needed to have it looked at and removed right away. So he reluctantly went in to have it removed, only to be told a week later that it was cancerous. What followed was 7 weeks of pure torture. We were told that we had caught it so early there was nothing at all to worry about. He went into the hospital a week later for chemo, and it made him so sick that he ended up staying in the hospital most of the time. By the end of 2 rounds of chemo and 1 bout of radiation therapy he had been feeling well enough to be home for 4 whole days (not in a row). Okay, maybe I should say 3 days, because I did end up having him taken to ER by ambulance for severe dehydration and then transferred back to the cancer hospital on one of those days. Both of our families were extremely supportive. The doctors were wonderful - my OB even offered to do a C-section “on demand” if there came a point where he was well enough to be transferred to “my” hospital for a few hours (part of the point being that we could increase his insurance coverage on a “life event” like the birth of a child without answering medical questions, but given the situation we couldn’t increase it otherwise…).

In any case, after 7 very exhausting weeks, he passed away in my arms in the wee hours one night. And precisely 10 days and 1 hour later, my son was born. It was a rather eventful birth - the family had been hovering horribly, to the point where I wasn’t even allowed to drive myself anywhere. It made me crazy. A girlfriend came from Vancouver to stay with me for a few days (a less “obvious” babysitter than the rest of the family I suppose…) In any case, while she was visiting we were listening to the radio and we entered a contest they had on. Figures I’d win - I never win anything. And of course I didn’t think I could use the prize (2 front row, centre tickets to the Eagles concert … this was in 1994 - 1st time they’d toured in 16 years….). Anyway I had my regular OB appointment that day and after she had examined me, I casually mentioned the tickets. She said “Go!! You’re not going to have the baby today — go!” Well she was right, the baby wasn’t born until the wee hours of the next morning… But in any case I still got to see most of that wonderful concert!! And being front row, means you have easy access to security when your water breaks all over everywhere in the middle of a concert. They lifted my friend and I over the barriers, took us backstage, called an ambulance and even loaned me a cell phone to call my brother-in-law (last minute labour coach) to swing by my house, pick up my suitcase and meet me at the hospital. After that a quick bit of “fast talking” with the EMTs to get them to take me to “my” hospital and not the closest one … (aw, c’mon guys … if you drive that extra 15 minutes, then you just have to dump me on the 4th floor because I’m pre-admitted - no triage, no waiting, no nothing … whaddya say???)

So I welcomed my son to the world on July 12, 1994 at about 5:45 in the morning. It was a very emotional time. Then the next morning, I was supposed to call the radio station to tell them about the concert (part of the “deal” of winning the tickets). Well, did I ever have a story for them … The next thing I knew, I was getting calls from every morning radio show I could imagine - of course, “baby brain” has erased a lot, but I do remember Calgary, Ottawa, Halifax, London & Toronto. There were others I just don’t remember them. Then the TV crews started showing up at the hospital (2 of them), and then the President of the hospital came to tell me that they were keeping me for 4 days (instead of the regular 24 hours) - partly because they wanted to try to “filter” the inundation of press and just people who heard the story and wanted to offer help, baby clothes, toys, food, whatever; and partly because they were probably worried about the state of my mental health with two “huge” events happening so closely together.

Well they were probably right about the mental health thing. I had a pretty bad case of baby blues, although I tried very hard to ignore it and be there for my son. I ended up running away to Germany and Vienna for a month with him to visit with my friends there and it was probably the best thing I could have done.  But in retrospect, I know that I really had a bad case of depression, not just the “baby blues”.   So, fast forward a couple of years and I’ve started dating DH#2 by then. After having the “other half” of my semi-detached house go up in flames one night, we got engaged. Fast forward another couple of years and baby #2 brings another bout of a very deep depression. This time I saw a doctor about it and ended up on meds. They helped. A lot! I could function. I wasn’t angry/irritated at the entire universe all the time anymore …

Well the past 3 or 4 months have brought that crashing back down. Stress at work. Stress at home. Stress, stress, stress. It’s very bad for you, let me tell you!

This is a quote from the start of a new post today in the CPO Insider blog:

“I’d like to congratulate our dedicated Child & Family Therapist, Sara Dimmerman on the release of her first book, Am I a Normal Parent?, the definitive guide to figuring out what’s normal for parents in the 21st century.”

There’s a quiz you can take here and after taking the quiz, I really had to sit back and think a bit. I posted my comment to that blog but I’ll put it here again because I think that some of it really bears repeating and thinking about …

Wow, some really thought-provoking questions there.

The difference between LOVING your child(ren) and LIKING them … luckily both of my boys seem to be developing into wonder, caring human beings (although some days I sure question the “human beings” bit!!) and even though they are radically different, I really do like them both (most of the time).

“Be there in a minute” (or ten?) - that’s another hard one - we are pulled in so many different directions at once and we’re trying so hard to multi-task, that getting side-tracked or being “rushed off your feet” is a common ailment. No wonder when I tell them that they only have a few minutes left of video game time they take 1/2 hour or more … they’ve learned to “stretch” time from me … arrgh!!

I’ve often thought that Normal is nothing more than a town in Illinois … and this seems to underline that. I’ll watch for your book in the local stores/library - I think it will make a very interesting read!!

As I commented above, there were some questions in that quiz that really made me think. Do I LIKE my children as well as love them? When I say “I’ll be there in a minute” and it takes 10 minutes - did I really mean to say “Give me 10 or 15 minutes” or did I really mean 1 minute and I just got sidetracked? My husband will tell you that I have no idea about “mornings from hell” (because I leave the house at 5 am every day to go to work…), but he could probably write a book about those kind of mornings!!

This is a really great subject for Sara to have written about - so many of us have found CPO in the first place because we were looking for reassurances about our parenting - and really those assurances are mostly about “normal”, aren’t they?

There really IS a town in Illinois called “Normal” … it’s southwest of Chicago and where the Illinois State University is located. But is “Normal” more than that? To paraphrase a bit, is one person’s “normal” just another person’s “weird”? I really don’t think that there is just one state of “normal”. What’s normal in my home may not be normal for other families homes.. So how does that allow us to define normal if it’s different for everyone??

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about my last post … Zen Bliss and being the “Ultimate You” … these are hard things to define, and even harder to find. I’ve also been procrastinating on getting a bunch of work done that I really need to either have finished already or at least have a good handle on. I’m an excellent procrastinator. I could teach a course in it, but I’d probably never get the course outline finished…

The Ultimate Me … well, I was a lot closer about six months ago than I am now, but I think I’m making some positive changes to try to get back there. I’ve struggled so much in the past few months and have gone from absolutely loving every moment of my job to detesting everything about it (or very nearly everything). The change has brought on a very deep (and frankly, very scary) depression, panic attacks and has very seriously affected my health. But, I’m working hard on a business plan with a former coworker and we will start our own business (”consulting” … how original, eh?) in the next couple of months. I took a very deep breath and filed an official harassment complaint with the HR department at work, and I can only hope that might bring about some positive change. Or at least it will bring about a definitive ending. I just know that something has to give very soon on the work front. My doctor is worried enough to want to see me every other week - I haven’t seen him this much since I was pregnant… I’ve also been seeing a personal counsellor regularly although now I think it’s time to turf the counsellor and get a referee (aka marriage counsellor) to help us both deal with the “ripple effects” that all the negative changes in my work have caused. With some hard work, maybe I can at least become the Penultimate Me by the end of the summer??

My best friend was writing a book for about a year and she was happy doing it. I don’t know why she stopped, but I know she’s not so happy anymore. It was a fairly small part of her life, but it’s absence seems to have made a huge difference. Why is it the little things that always seem to derail everything?

I remember talking to her one night on MSN about her story. I suggested that the story was a string that she (as an author) had to unravel neatly with just enough hint of tangles that it kept the reader interested — that the story was not “created” from scratch so much as guided into being. You know the beginning and the end, and probably a few points in the middle, and after that you just follow the string as the story struggles to come out. Does this make sense? Or is it really a case of inventing every moment as you go along. Does the author impose him/herself on the story or does the story emerge in it’s own way?

I’ve been viewing my business plan very much as she viewed her story. At times I feel it’s an unraveling ball of string and I’m just here to type it out and keep it from going off on too many tangents, and at times I feel that I’m struggling to form an idea and get it onto the screen. It seems to be the former sections where my partner reads it and just says “wow” and the latter sections where we both know there’s a lot of rewriting to be done there. With the new meds for the panic attacks I feel like I’ve lost my ball of string and I know that forcing the story (business plan) isn’t going to produce good results. I guess that’s writer’s block, isn’t it?

And here I am, with writer’s block, procrastinating on my business plan with my blog, and plotting further procrastination … most likely with pogo for a while (bearing in mind that it’s already 10 pm and I do have to get up at 4 am…) Oh well, maybe I’ll think about that a little later.

Zen Bliss — have you ever heard of this?  I think it’s something my best friend made up — well, the name anyway, not the actual feeling.  I was reading one of her old blog entries today and thinking about several recent telephone conversations that we’ve had.  Her definition of Zen Bliss is “being comfortable in ones own skin”.  She is lucky enough that she knows where to find her Zen Bliss.  I know what makes me happy, but being happy is not finding Zen Bliss.

I envision Zen Bliss as a fleeting moment where you’re completely at peace with yourself — ALL of yourself …  Inner Peace is something that I don’t have a lot of … probably comes with the depression, who knows.

I also caught the end of Freaky Friday (the new one with Jamie Lee Curtis & Lindsay Lohan) while channel cruising the other night - which is where this entry’s title comes from - the song she sings at the end…  After reading her post about Zen Bliss, I started thinking about it and the song was playing and wondered how you would become the “Ultimate You” - and would this also be a fleeting thing, like her Zen Bliss — is it maybe Zen Bliss or is it like another side of the same coin?  Things to think about …

I also know I haven’t posted on my blog in a while.  I was blocked.  I had stopped wanting to tell the story I was telling and I did not want to tell the story that I was living at the moment.

I’ve had difficulties with depression for years, and some difficulties I’m experiencing at work have just made it worse right now.  So Zen Bliss is something that’s completely missing at the moment, but something I think I’ll try looking for again soon.

What do you envision Zen Bliss as being?  Have you ever found it - even fleetingly??  These are questions that it’s very difficult to answer, even in the privacy of your own mind…

My mind, not the game … I’m in the middle of preparing a Business Plan for the next year (or so) and every time I think I have the framework down and can start fleshing out the various components, I think of another HUGE factor that needs to be taken into account. My mind is just boggling at the moment with all of it.

So to give my poor brain a bit of a break, I’ll start with a “recap” of this Bonnie Life… some know my story and some don’t but it’s been a roller coaster ride, I’ll tell you…

I grew up “a townie” in Niagara-on-the-Lake … a beautiful place to visit (provided of course that you’re over 19 (drinking age) and if you have a driver’s license and a car), but a really boring place to grow up. There was “nothing” in town. There were (and still are) a lot of cute touristy stores, but otherwise?? Nada, zip, not much at all. There was no mall to hang out at, there’s no McD’s (or any fast food places at all), there’s no movie theatre, no record store, nothing really for a teen. Is it any wonder we used to play “Capture the Flag” on (and in) places we probably shouldn’t have been? Last time I was there I noticed that a McD’s had opened near the high school, but that’s a few miles outside of town, I’m sure it wouldn’t be allowed in town. Of course, as an adult, it’s wonderful to go back and visit - go to the theatre, shop in the Christmas Store, hit a few wineries and the lovely brewery in Virgil, but this is now and that was then …

As soon as I graduated from high school I went to London to go to University to take a B.Sc. degree in computer programming. I loved computers. I discovered that I loved “playing” with computers, but programming??? No thanks. So .. what to do? Rather than waste money I didn’t have going to university, I decided to move to Toronto, get a job and think about it. When I knew what I wanted to take at School, I’d go back. Simple, right?

Well, the first thing that brought that crashing down was my mother. Apparently if I moved to the big, horrible, Evil City, I’d be murdered, mugged, and raped (not necessarily in that order) within the first 5 minutes. While mother was lamenting the impending death of her only daughter to her friends, she hit upon another idea for me. Why didn’t I go to Germany and live with her friend Inge? I could learn German, see Europe, work for Inge’s company and it would keep me out of the Evil City.

Hmmm. Let me think here. I’m 19. My choices are to (1) move to The Evil City and struggle to find a job & apartment and figure out what to do with the rest of my life or (2) have a free trip to Europe for a year or so? What to do … what to do… So the next thing I knew I was applying for residence/work permits and packing for my European adventure.

This seems like a good stopping place for the moment (and I really should get some work done today…), so stay tuned all!!

My first Blog .. so exciting, and so NOT something I ever thought I’d do.  I’m a pretty simple person - I prefer books to movies, I prefer CDs to MP3s, and I prefer most foods to be homemade over store bought.  Don’t get me wrong, I like technology, I just don’t necessarily think it has to be everywhere…

But let’s back up a bit here and introduce myself.  I’m Bonnie.  I’m a wife and mom, as well as a professional career woman.  My husband is a Stay At Home Father to our two boys who will be turning 8 & 14 this summer.  As they’re getting older, my Darling Husband is now thinking that after 8 years of “retirement” he’ll go back to work.  So he has enrolled in a College course - taking the Registered Home Inspector’s Certificate & Licensing course.

I commute.  Such a long process for such a short sentence … I leave my home at 5:15 every morning to arrive at my desk for 7:30 am.  And my 3:30 departure from the office gets me home for 6:00 pm.   I figure that my kids don’t notice whether I leave at 5 am, 6 am or 7 am, but they sure do notice if I can manage to be home for dinner at 6, or if I don’t get home until 7 or 8 (or 9 …)

Oh, and we have pets… several pets.  There are two kittens named Mack Truck & Princess Ebony Wednesday, 2 Rainbow Boa Constrictors named Kahn & Suzi, 1 canary named Tweetie Bird, 5 rats named Jack & Annie, Max (Jack & Annie’s 2 newborns don’t have names yet), and several tankfulls of fish.

I work as a Manager for a large Canadian firm and am presently thinking about that a lot.  I’ve been approached to set up a consulting firm with a person that I have worked with before and whom I respect a lot.  But I have a really good job, and making the leap to self-employed from having that certain paycheque every other Thursday … that’s a scary thing.  One of the many really wonderful things about my husband is that he really supports my career.  Heck, he quit working for over 8 years to look after the house & kids so that I could concentrate on my career.  That’s support!!  And it’s worked well for us.  He is really supporting this new concept for me.  Of course, there’s a lot of work to be done before a decision can be made - business plans, lining up a couple of clients to start us off, and figuring out how we’re going to keep the mortgage payments up while this gets off the ground. You know, little stuff like that…

My kids are terrific.  The little one is very sweet, cuddly and loving, but at the same time he’s a human Tasmanian Devil … he’s ALWAYS on the go, preferrably with a ball being thrown or kicked at the same time.  He recently discovered that his name means “Messenger of Destruction”, and how appropriate that is!!!  His favourite subject at school is math and he’s a really smart kid - he just needs to learn to Stay On Task!!  This is a frequent phrase in our house.  My older son is very quiet and sensitive.  He excels in French, English and is a talented artist.  He’s happiest when sitting at the library with a book… or two.  But he also loves going to summer camp every year and canoeing, snorkeling and horseback riding all day.

Okay, speaking of Staying On Task .. it’s the first of the month, one of by busiest days and I need to get to work!!  But I’ll check back again and update more soon!!