COVID19 in-house Day 8: What is Normal?

Well it's been a week. Does it feel normal yet? Not at all! Our family is still spread around the globe, and although we talk most days - and way more often than when we are not going through a global fucking pandemic, and although we have a hilarious family "spicy meme" group, I still worry about my five chickadees and their partners. I leave the house to chase my shadow for a few k and that always puts things in a better perspective! Here are my thoughts from these days...

This week's challenges: realizing that we have to close the cafe for longer than we anticipated. Way longer. And although we have been given a green light by the government to provide take-away, I don't yet feel comfortable sourcing food, cooking and delivering it until we are sure that contagion is over. I worked for twenty years in health care, and I always approached every single one of the women I worked with "as if" they were infected with a blood-borne disease. Because that's the way you have to do it, because if not you're targeting groups who you've decided will be more likely to be carriers. That's how personal protection in the health sector works. So ... I have to know that I could be carrying it or ... anyway you get the picture.

... realizing that my retreats this summer in Italy are not going to happen. That is hard: two losses: fun and financial.

... living at home in our house with two sons, a husband and a nephew has its ups and downs. Ups? Everyone pitches in, lots of cooking, games every evening, company, also the house is large so everyone can indulge in "fuck-off hour" and find a private space. We have a yard. We have lots of food, booze, and books. Downs? Well, everyone needs to have a melt-down every once in a while and that happens. Luckily we all haven't had one at the same time.

... looking at the government sponsored financial assistance for small business owners like me and realizing there's not a lot happening. If I have a big company I can get a loan. If I've been laid off I can get benefits... I'm stuck in the middle...

This week's joys: talking to my three sons who live far away (nowadays even Ontario seems far away - and he's the closest!).

... organizing a women's retreat with my daughter-in-law for sometime-in-the-near-future, and talking with her most days.

... practising my saxophone, when I have the inclination... I'm learning but I want it to be fun...I know I should practice every day but hey! I want to take it easy. It's a lovely, friendly instrument and I'm just starting to make friends with it. My family banded together and gave it to me at a surprise birthday party when it wasn't even my birthday.

... being able to continue my Runstreak 2020 ... I started running at least a mile a day on Dec 31, 2019 ... and I've kept it up Every. Single. Day.

I am grateful to be healthy and to live in a place where I can still go outside to run (otherwise I would have to do a marathon up and down my stairs since I don't have a balcony).

--- eating so much good food! My husband is a great cook, and the wizard chef moved in to stay with us for the duration so ... every dinnertime is a feast!

Lastnight we had a family meeting about how we are going to live together given the recent changes in rules and regulations... here in Quebec things have gotten real very quickly, the way it's happening everywhere, I'm guessing. Now, we have to stay home and we can't meet with more than one other person. If you're a group of more than two you are either performing an essential service or you're living in the same house. We've been asked to not go out to do anything unessential, no visits or visitors, no playdates, no dates.

So we sat together, the five of us: myself as the senior, husband, adult son, young adult son and young adult nephew, and we decided what was essential and what was not. Essential: pharmacy (essential meds), groceries, and going to the cafe to pick up groceries from there. Non-essential: SAQ (booze), picking up a laptop from work, meeting a friend, having a friend over. The biggest deal was for my youngest son who can't see his girlfriend until this is all over.

Carefree summer days

We made the choice to follow the rules to the letter, and we hope that everyone does, so that we can minimize the spread and cut the pandemic as short as possible. It's still spreading. It needs hosts. Stay home! Connect online! Call your friends and family, don't visit. Here it is, clear and simple, from the Chief Public Health Officer of Canada

#Everybody - we must #PlanktheCurve for 🇨🇦!
➡️#SocialDistancing: keep 2 metres away from others; no visitors, no playdates
➡️#Washyourhands well & frequently
➡️Disinfect surfaces & high touch objects#COVID19 #StrongerTogether#FlattentheCurve

— Dr. Theresa Tam (@CPHO_Canada) March 23, 2020

COVID19 in-house Day 2: We Are One

When my youngest was maybe four years old, that meant I also had a six, nine, and eleven year old, we lived on a farm. Some would call it paradise: we lived in a beautiful old stone house, with a wood stove, terracotta floors, and a view of the fields and a huge old oak tree and a big cherry tree. We had a duck pond, with ducks and geese, and hens, a vineyard, a huge vegetable garden, a dog and a cat. We ate food from our own land, drank wine from our vineyard. I would walk down the path about 50 meters and carry 18 litre jerry cans of drinking water back to the house from the spring. On the down side, it was a project that involved a hell of a lot of work, and time and energy, without any financial reward, so we were pretty tired by the end of each day. It was a good, healthy, solid life.

One fall, my oldest came home from school with a bad case of head lice. Back in those days, in Italy, you didn't get the sucky letters from the school about how to treat it and how to isolate or whatever. You just dealt with it. Two of our family of six didn't get them. My husband clearly was not on their menu, and one of my sons. But I did, and all three of the other kids did. I have long curly hair, and my youngest did back then as well.

For a while, I tried to treat us individually. I used separate everything, I got all stressed about isolating, hard when they all slept in the same room. I carefully did all the things you're supposed to do. Nothing. The insect world was clearly winning.

Then one day, well into the winter, I realized that I was going about it all wrong. This was a case of the insect world against the human world! If I killed a louse on one head, the rest of them would just move to another head! I needed to look at the family as a whole, and engage in all-out, across the board battle against these creatures.

I went back to one hairbrush. I washed all the laundry together in hot water and hung it out for 24 hours. The brothers went back to rough-and-tumbling together with their heads touching. I reduced my intense stress and anxiety. I continued intensive hair washing and cleaning but smaller brothers bathed together as before.

I was victorious! By realizing that we were one, by reducing my anxiety and concentrating on the matter at hand, and by lessening useless restrictions on having fun, I finally managed to vanquish these tiny creatures who were making our collective life miserable.

Ya, so? COVID19 is a killer virus, not just an embarrassing insect. True. Even more reason to look at how we are reacting to the crisis, and to understand better what our most effective tactics might be.  I'm not an epidemiologist, although I've been saying for a few years now that if reincarnation is a thing, then I'd love to become one next time around. But then again, I probably won't remember or I'll be a squirrel. What I have understood, though, is that the more people stay at home and limit their contacts with others, the less people will get infected all at once, which will lessen the global severity of the pandemic. So, if I'm staying at home with my family, there are five of us here. If we all get it, or if we all have it already, we are staying home and not infecting anyone else. If we all go out because we feel great, then that number of possibly infected people grows exponentially. And a certain percentage of those people will need medical care. So the more people out and about, the more really sick people will crowd the hospitals.

If we all stay home, the infection stays home too. The number of new infections is reduced, and the hospitals and health care workers can better manage the load. If we look at Italy as our example of what not to do, their population and their government ignored this simple rule for far too long, and so the virus spread like wildfire. We need to recognize that every single one of us is part of a bigger whole. I'm staying home, my kids are staying home, I hope you are staying home too.

And if you're not staying home because you're a health care worker, or part of our essential services, then thank you! Stay safe, stay healthy, stay happy.

Stay happy? I'm not actually an extrovert. I think I may be a little Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. I do love people, I love a party, I love chatting with people, I love running my cafe and making jokes and finding out about peoples' lives. But damn! Give me the four hour solitude of a long Sunday run! Put me in the mountains on my own and let me wander! Leave me at home alone for days on end! I do appreciate my own company as well.

Yesterday was a challenge. I got up early to have a little alone time, which was fabulous, except I wasted a large part of it on my phone looking at funny covid memes. Then the day just blistered by. We had a mid day crisis when my nephew was trying to decide if he should drive back home with friends (long car ride, not a good idea). The day filled up with worry and anxiety. I spoke to two friends who are over 70 and in isolation. My family is around the world and I miss them. What's going to happen? I felt out of control and extremely worried. What the hell? My cafe that I worked so hard for, stricken down by a fucking VIRUS? Where do we draw the line with our social isolation rules? Can we go to the workplace to pick stuff up? Use the copy machine? Can we go buy booze? Can my son visit his girlfriend? Damn, I don't know...

Good Stuff
So, I did intervals yesterday. My fastest pace was 4:34. Ha! Getting fitter at least... I am planning  a virtual book club. I sent some money to a friend in Greece working with the migrants. I kept my shit together.

Love you all!

COVID19 in-house Day 1: Tie Your Camel

Pray to Allah, but tie your camel to a tree. What does this mean? For me, simply, it means that we should trust that everything will work out for the best, more or less, but that we should also be active in our own destinies as far as possible.

Being born is a hugely dangerous activity, because it means you're gonna die, bruh. 100% mortality rate for those of us who are alive. That said, it's always nice if you can find a way to live longer, hence tying your metaphorical camel to a tree instead of relying on Allah to take care of it for you.

When I was just fifteen, I ambled up to the Trans-Canada and started an epic trip across the country. I vividly remember wearing a light blue windbreaker, and having a pencil and nine dollars in my pocket. Hitchhiking is never a good idea, not even in 1972, but I survived, and I collected some mind-blowing memories along the way.

Being the only vertical thing for miles and miles in Saskatchewan and watching a storm come overhead, being rained on, and then watching it leave was a memory that I still rely on when I'm thinking about life.

Standing on the side of the road for hours and hours in Manitoba, feeling very hungry, thirsty and a little bit scared, watching all the bigs cars and trucks pass as the passengers looked at me, a skinny kid with Janis Joplin hair and a light blue anorak. And then the most tumble-down truck in the world, that contained the biggest family I'd ever seen, stopped and gave me a ride to the next Nowheresville destination and crammed two dollars into my pocket as I jumped out of the truck.

And the guy who was so drunk he could hardly talk who only stopped because he wanted me to drive, and I'd never driven before but I managed ok, until we got to a city, then I parked the car, got out and left him sleeping like a baby, as he had done since he picked me up.

So, these are probably stories about when I should have tied the camel a little tighter, or perhaps my parents should have. Either way, I survived, with a healthy respect for Allah, and for rope.

Last week I was trying to balance trusting in God (fate, Universe, whatever you want to call it), with being cautious. I decided that it was safe for me to wipe down the tables at my cafe with disinfectant and to be more conscious about normal safety rules in the kitchen. I didn't touch the handles on public transport. We decided not to eat out.

Then things moved very quickly: I closed the cafe for in-house meals, switching to delivery. I stopped using public transit. We had a family pow wow about washing hands. And then, and now, things moved even quicker and I decided, as many of you have, to stay at home, to avoid unnecessary outings, and to bide my time at home.

My camel is tied very tightly to the tree. And I am praying, in my own way, that this crisis will pass soon. I'm lucky. I have most of my family around me, and I'm healthy, and we have lots of food and... of course I have my saxophone to play and I can still run outside and and and .... sending you all love. Take care of yourselves and each other.

Italy 2020 Trail Running Retreat

This has been a long time coming. Back in 2003 when I was completely culture shocked by my experience in Montreal, we bought an old ruin of a shepherd's house in Northern Tuscany. It was so cheap we got the money out on our credit cards. 
Here it is, the year after we bought it. Before then you couldn't even see the house.

We went back every summer to build and finally, around 2009, ended up with this:

and we're still building! Last summer we put a roof on the barn - seriously? It's a huge stone structure but we thought we could do it and we did.

I've had a dream about this place for many years, that I want to share it with others and open up this beautiful spot as a retreat centre. We always had volunteers visiting, bartering their skills for board and lodging, so we're used to a crowd... but finally two years ago I hosted a women's healing retreat and it was wonderful!

This year, I am hosting a women's rest and recharge retreat (one spot left!), and for the first time we are hosting a Plant-Based Trail Runners Retreat! 

I am very lucky to have a great coach on board: Coach Kyle coaches runners around the world. He will be offering a one-on-one session with each runner, and of course will lead the daily trail runs and supervise strength work, stretching and other work (gratitude practice, breathing techniques, plant-based nutrition advice). I also have a guest yoga teacher joining us... the one and only Julia Gordon...here is what she has to say: 

"Hello runners and fellow adventurers! I am looking forward to meeting you all in the Tuscan hills!

About me: I completed my Yoga Teacher Training Program at Anamaya Yoga School in Costa Rica in 2016. I discovered my own practice in 2006 while completing a three year contemporary dance program and came to yoga with a passion for expressive movement. Over the years I have found that yoga helps me to maintain a sense of freedom in a fast paced world. By connecting to my body I remember my own strengths and individuality and feel more confident in my place in the world. In my class I’d like to invite people to do the same. During this retreat we can address specific concerns that come up for runners, but also focus on increasing a sense of openness and fluidity in the body in general. I will offer a mix of strength building asana and yin practice, as well as guided visualizations, that will have you up and running through this beautiful Italian landscape."

Our meals will be plant based and abundant. Our menu is designed by the chef at my very own cafe in Montreal, where we serve delicious vegan and vegetarian food. Accommodation is basic and shared, but comfortable and I guarantee you will sleep well. We have a million stars in the sky every night, and a night time silence broken only by the occasional scuffle of the boar roaming in the chestnut groves.

Are you into something different this summer? Challenge yourself! Come along and run with us! Visit us here!

Woman Centred Birth

https://www.feministcurrent.com/2020/01/20/using-gender-neutral-language-regarding-women-and-childbirth-is-about-more-than-semantics/

Seek Peace

It is the time of year when a lot of people are thinking about the future: the darkest time of the year, in the northern hemisphere, and the coldest. I, for one, am hoping that in 2020 I can be a better person and I hope my friends and family stay healthy and get joy during this coming year.

I just started my new agenda for 2020. Passion Planner is my favourite agenda: it helps keep me focused, lets me multitask and still be organized, and I can write all my dreams, hopes and ideas in it and keep everything in one place.

Last Passion Planner (was in 2017, I skipped a year and feel I got disorganized), my main goal was to build up my cafe. I wanted to get to a place where I could make a living from it, instead of working for free and watching every penny. I had a secondary goal for 2018, to run a marathon. I achieved both of those goals that year and felt very proud.

This year, I have a few goals for 2020. I have pretty specific goals for my cafe. I want to grow my retreat project, WorkInProgress Retreats. I want to run a marathon in May, and my first trail race in October.

But the goal that I realized was my most important one for the start of this new year was "regain and retain my inner peace". I lost my centre this past year, and I'm not sure why. Partly from overwork, and a sense of fatigue. Partly from feeling like my "good works" - the projects I have put hours and hours of my life into - are such a tiny drop in the ocean ... it's almost not worth it. Partly from my intense sense of disillusion and concern for the political and social climate we live in. Anyway, my centre walked away, and I want to run after it.

One of the most interesting things about getting old in this culture is that there isn't a lot of value placed on having lived on the planet for a long time. In fact, the general feeling I get (apart from the lovely young people who offer me their seats on the metro) is that when you're over 60 you gain a certain stupidity, a certain slowness of mind and dullness of brain.

And, the fact is, my body is changing. So is my mind, and my heart. In fact, I am experience this change as much more radical than several of my previous ones. I slid into pregnancy, birth, breastfeeding and child-raising like a fish into water (well, giving birth was tough...). I felt myself, I was alive and centred in my skin. Adolescence, on the other hand, was awful. I was already shy, I spoke with an accent, my hair was frizzy, I had crooked teeth, and I was smart ... AND two years younger than my classmates. I didn't feel at home in my skin for a long time. Poetry helped, and copious amounts of beer and other mood stabilizers.

Now I feel the same. Where did this frizzy grey hair come from? Why do I look so old in the mirror? How did my body get shorter? My knuckles are bumpy. I have arthritis in my knees.
This is not rational stuff: I know I am incredibly lucky to be as healthy as I am. I run marathons, for God's sake. But it feels like adolescence, all over again. And the difference is, this time I'm older and wiser. And I know how to regain my inner peace, and retain it.

So, a list for the coming year:

run every day, even if it's just a mile with the dog
be master of my devices
do a meditation retreat in 2020
say no if I want to (if it's not a big deal)
be kind
take proper care of myself
turn away from evil and do good
seek peace and pursue it
don't nag the kids
lower expectations
have lots of parties

I'll be letting you know how it goes. In the meantime, stay well everyone, keep joy, be kind, do good.

Competition vs Compassion

I had a super fun race last week. It was a 21 k and leading up to it was tough. I ran a half marathon a month ago (Rock'n'Roll Montreal). I didn't have fun, the race organizers were cheap, the route was boring, I was grumpy. No one came down to meet me, greet me, or brunch me. So I decided to get faster for my next one, but I just didn't have time, I had a weight on my shoulders of heavy cares and worries... anyway, I decided to suck it up and last Sunday morning I got up early and headed out to a beautiful spot: Oka National Park.

I got to the race and realized I'd forgotten my earphones! I use music for pleasure, for inspiration, for pace when I'm running. I decided I would take the opportunity to think about things during my race. I divided the 21 k up into 5 k sections and assigned tasks to each section.

First five k: The first five kilometers are tough. I forced myself to be in my body, completely, and to not think; just to feel my body, be conscious of form and breath.

Five to Ten: I allowed myself to think about my writing projects, and to organize things in my head a little. I revisited some thoughts I'd been having about compassion: compassion towards others, and compassion towards oneself. Life has been teaching me that it's important to be grateful for whatever people are capable of doing. Be compassionate, try to see things from their point of view. But recently I've been thinking about applying that to myself: be compassionate towards myself, remember that I am capable of doing what I'm doing. Don't push it. But, if I don't push it, who will? Isn't my goal to be a better person?

Ten to Fifteen: I imagined angels with each step. Angels were flying over to my friend Kimberley's place. She's been my running buddy for a few years, and recently she's been having a struggle with cancer. We're not running together for now, although just a few days before her surgery we went on a lovely 7 k up on the mountain. I digress. Every step produced little angels that I imagined were floating off to Kimberley to do good. I hope they do.

Fifteen to Twenty: was supposed to be Happy Thoughts. I focused on emptying my mind of worries and thinking about fun things. But then, at around kilometer 16, we had a loop back and I passed facing the runners that had been behind me. The 2:30 bunnies were there, good. Also a guy who looked to be about my age. We gave each other a thumbs up. I continued with Happy Thoughts until I realized that Older Dude was gaining on me. By k 18 he was running about three meters behind me. Then two kilometers before the finish line he gained on me and was just about a meter in front of me. I thought to myself, for a microsecond, "Poor old dude, he deserves to get in ahead of me. After all, its not a race..." What??? Yes it is!

At 19 k I started running faster, and faster, until by about 50 meters from the finish line I was well ahead of Older Dude. I crossed the line well ahead of him, happy that I beat him, happy that I sprinted the end of my race.

So, Twenty to Finish Line? Pure, unadulterated competition. It felt good! And, of course, after we picked up our medals, me and Older Dude and his wife shared a high five and a chuckle about how it all went down.