It’s been a while, hasn’t it? I very much apologize for my absence.
AND!
I very much apologize even more, if said absence lead any of your to believe that some kind of tragedy had befallen either myself or my loved ones.
The truth of the matter is – life happened.
And it happened a lot.
This summer has been one of intense happenings – change, growth, learning, happiness; sadness, athletics, adventure, beauty, love, and, of course, fun.
All the fun has been had.
But I am also at this point where I feel the need to pack a bag, head to YVR, grab Marc’s hand, and buy a pair of the farthest away one-way plane tickets we can afford.
We’ll fly off into the wide-blue yonder with nothing but a change of undies, our running shoes, and a bag of peanut butter M&M’s (purchased from Hudson News. It’s a tradition.)
POOF.
We’ll be gone.
It’s weird.
I often forget about the aging process.
I think much of this has to do with the fact that Marc and I have now been together now for ten years. (August 16 marked this milestone in our relationship.)
I was eighteen when we first got together, and there is a strange little part of me that still thinks that we are still those same people: that I am still that silly and starry-eyed first year undergraduate student, and he is the suave, and self-sufficient third-year classics major.
And sure, there is some truth to that – those people still very much make up a part of our characters, our souls.
But any way you slice, it – we’ve changed.
We are changing.
We are maturing – both inside and out.
And it’s something that is happening every single day of our lives.
And I don’t begrudge this happening.
In fact, I love it.
I like life a heck of a lot more now than I did as that undergraduate student.
It’s just that I don’t ever really reflect on these changes unless I am confronted by this fact – maybe I’ll see someone I haven’t seen in quite a long time; or I’ll start to realize that I am outgrowing older friendships.
Outside of my immediate self, I notice this most when I see the other loves of my life also changing, and adapting.
I see it when people have babies.
When people get sick.
When people get married, and when they get divorced.
When they buy property, when they move away, when they stop eating meat, when they start reading Kant –
And it’s good.
Because without this movement, this incessant striving, this going forward – we just die. We become stagnant and morose; we stop asking questions, we stop engaging in dialogue, we stop progress.
We can’t properly appreciate life.
The only trick of the matter is – how to find a balance between this constant striving and the ability to sit back and enjoy the aging process?
How do I keep moving but not to the extent where I feel the need to run away because life has reached a new level of overwhelming activity?
This is, of course, a topic I’ve written about quite a bit here at Rant and Roll, but seeing as though I have yet to answer this question, it will most likely be something that I keep revisiting as we head into the Autumn months (and no doubt beyond.)
There are so many good things to look forward to: Powell River in the Fall, running the Fall Classic 10k, Nova Scotia in November, playing soccer with Marc, fireside nights with a good book and our beauty cat.
But before we get too ahead of ourselves, I want to make sure that I take the time to appreciate everything this summer had to offer.
Currently I am missing Birmingham, UK something fierce. In the fall of 2009 my husband and I spent four months in the city. I was on academic exchange for my graduate program, and during our time overseas I attended classes, travelled the country, taught English at a school for young Afghani asylum seekers, spent a week in Switzerland – in short, I had the most amazing and profound adventure of my life.
As we crawl closer to September – the month we departed for the UK – I cannot help but reflect on our time spent in Brum.
Here is a brief snapshot of the start to what ended up being a truly brilliant, beautiful, and life-changing time:
Day three/four in Jolly Ol’ England. Baaaaaahhhh.
Yesterday we moved into our new place. The night previous Marc had seriously destroyed his stomach (the tragic mistake? Purchasing a can of Carlsberg lager on our way home from dinner as an accompaniment for six individually wrapped cake pastries that were amazing, yet deliriously rich and quite heavy on the tummy) and spent most of the night in agony, pacing around the hotel room. This, coupled by the fact that we had spent a good portion of the day walking around the city left us completely knackered (in the parlance of our times, or at least country) and we managed to not only sleep in past breakfast, but past check-out.
Hotel room!
Stress was had.
And we had ALL of it.
Also I’m not sure I would do very well as a regular student at the University of Birmingham. The campus seems to be run in a “laissez-faire” kind of way, which does not sit well with neurotics and obsessive compulsives (aka-me.)
I met today with my tutor, who was lovely and personable and we discussed my course sign up, but mostly we chatted about the campus and how easy it is to sit in on other professors’ courses as long as you contact them first.
There is a PoliSci introduction this Friday from 11-12 that will cover everything course-related and although I didn’t want to make her go through everything that I would be hearing in two days’ time, it was all I could do not to jump up from my seat and yell out “WHY THE CAN’T WE DO ANYTHING BY A STRICT SCHEDULE I AM NOT GOOD WITH BLURRY LINES.”
She was so calm as she sat there telling me that as long as I had signed up for my courses by the second week of term (bloody October 10th or there around) I would be okay.
My guts were roiling just thinking about this.
The campus is phenomenal, with lovely red brick buildings that stand in sharp contrast to the velvety green of the grass that spreads around the campus like a deranged serpent in pursuit of higher learning (or maybe just to munch on the ankle of an undergrad or two.)
Campus clock!
I am excited to explore the European Research Institute and attend the guest lecture series available to all students.
I am excited to attend classes where I will actually be interested in the material in hopes to rediscover why I actually fell in love with academia in the first place.
I am excited to ride my bike along Norfolk Road wearing my chunky boots and pink tuque, daydreaming about the city’s Christmas market while trying not to get killed each time I forget which way the cars are coming.
Christmas market!
I cannot believe that Marc and I will be here for but four months. The city is powered by a maddeningly seductive electricity that I have yet to discover anywhere in Vancouver. This spark runs through the multicultural signposts standing at each street corner, and in the form of head scarfs and turbans and skin colours that range from the palest pales to the deepest blacks. It is present in the bustling how-to-do of New Street and the downtown core, in the cheap but flavourful takeaways that take up space on most street corners (and often in between), and the men selling fresh dairy products down at the open air market, bellowing over and over about their jumbo sized eggs, sold either in a half or one dozen cartons.
This country is also bloody fantastic due to the amount of candy available EVERYWHERE. As I sit typing this I am eating a package of “Quarter Pounders” drinking a class of Diet Cherry Coke.
I feel a bit of existential angst every time I set foot in a grocery mart: there is so much to choose from I find myself asking “what’s the point? I’ll never be able to try all of these products!”
Further, I used to think that I drank quite a lot of tea and only now realize how silly I was in my naivety. M and I drink somewhere between eight to ten cups of tea a day, more on days that we spend time in the company of friends. It will be running through our veins in no time and I’ll find myself transformed into Kevin McDonald’s Tetley addict, imagining that Dave Foley dressed as a giant tea bag is chasing me around my flat shouting “COME ON…DUNK ME! DUNK ME!”
I keep saying that I am going to get back into the regular routine of things – writing, reading, and commenting on the regular – but life keeps getting completely out of control and I find that I have zero time to do anything (like tie my shoes!), let alone sink back into this wonderous blogosphere and get my rant and roll on.
So please forgive my absence – or as it has been of late, my hot and cold presence.
Please know that I am thinking about all of you, and am taking the time (whenever it comes up!) to take pleasure in all of your musings, insights, photographs, and updates.
I miss this place terribly, and am doing my very best to get back to a regular rhythm.
And until the time when I regain my blogger mojo, some snaps:
So many people, who mean so very much to me, are getting married this summer!
Tomorrow I celebrate the marriage of my amazing sister in-law (also Vanessa!) and her fabulous fiancé Joe.
It’s going to be a day of magic and marvel, of love, laughter, and light.
(I am also pretty excited to be emceeing the reception – all the jokes and witticisms are belong to me! Plus I just can’t wait to lead a toast to the happy couple.)
So in celebration of all the nuptials that currently make up my life, I encourage you all to give your special someone a extra tight hug, an extra long kiss, and just let them know how brilliant it is to have them in your life.
Because what, if nothing else except love, makes this world go round?
Bootleg chocolate bars.
North Korean poems for children.
All of the soccer (shenanigans).
Post-date rainbow.
Rant and Roll 