MUSINGS on ON LIFE IN GENERAL this week

Friday, August 21 was a super busy day for me.

First, it is the 7 year anniversary of the death of my paternal grandmother - or "Grams" as I call her!

This person, next to my mother, was (still is) "the" most important person in my life. I love, love my grandmother who always somehow seem to "get" me without me ever having to explain it all to her (and believe me, there was potential for lots and lots of explaning!!!).

My grandmother was religious, but not in a frenzied way. She was always trying to get me to go to church (we are catholic). My grandmother died a few weeks before I turned 40 and, at that time, I still thought that I had it all figured out - so going to church was a definite NO! However, my grandmother always told me that when she died, she would still be praying for me from above and I always thought that she thought that since she would be closer to God, she would have a more direct line to him/her.

It must have worked, because my grandmother died on August 21, 2002 and I turned 40 ub September and went into recovery from my eating disorder on October 13, 2002! one day, I woke up and I could hear a voice inside my head saying "you need to go to OA (overeaters anonymous)" which was pretty amazing since I had never even heard of OA before - THAT was definitely my grandmother talking directly to me. Once in recovery, many things (other than food) became more clear to me - and one of them was that I could be spiritual without being religious.

Its been a long battle with many setbacks - but I was happy to go to church on Friday - to honour my grandmother's memory (and i kept thinking that she was having a great time watching me actually voluntarily walking into a church! he! he!). I LOVE YOU GRAMS!!!!

Wow! I think I am a little overly sensitive today!!!

After that, I had lunch with my two favorite career coaches! we were celebrating my new job!!!

and then I hit the USA with my ex-boyfriend (some ex-boyfriends are great for this type of thing) and headed straight to the mall in the USA to hit Borders bookstore and, of course, the great supermarkets they have in the USA (I am always, always on the lookout for flavored decaf coffee which is next to impossible to find in Quebec).

First off - Borders - the picture you see at the top of this post was taking there - in the YA section which, I actually had to ask the manager for. This store use to be so easy to naviguate, but they changed stuff around (why do they do this?) and the YA section was in the center of the store in a kind of zig zag shape - it was a little stupid! nonetheless - I found it and bought one book in that section:

Ruby Unscripted by Cindy Martinusen-Coloma

I love going to bookstores outside of Canada because they always have a different selection than we have here and BONUS!!! every book is in English - instead of half French and half English - which just uses up precious space that could be used to store more English books!!!

Then I tried to find the chick lit section, which is a section they use to have on its own - but now they just incorporated it with the regular fiction - what a pain. I did not find anything in the general fiction but I did find this great diet book that I had heard about, but for some reason, could not find in Montreal.

Dietgirl by Shauna Reid

So, all in all, not so bad. My ex knows full well how long it takes me when I get into the bookstore (he is extremely patient) and found a nice chair and installed himself. We were in there for over two hours and I would have stayed longer but I was starving. I told him that his technique for getting me out of the store is interesting - he gets me in the bookstore around meal time and he knows that when I start getting hungry I have to eat quickly - so if he times it just right, I will ge so hungry that my need to eat will win out on my need to read!!!! Clever.

I also love to read Publishers Weekly magazine (THE most expensive magazine in the world) and I have only ever found it at this particular Borders - I have never found it sold at any other bookstore!) so I picked up a copy of that one also at $12.00 a pop!!!

Then, we went to eat at FRIENDLY'S - I like eating there because I always see the TV commercials and its always funny for me to eat at a restaurant that I have seen so often, often advertised on TV (except that all those Ice Cream Sundae's floating around were a challenge to ignore).

Then it was off to Price Chopper. Can I tell you how much I love US supermarkets where you can get your food, wine, book or movie and condoms for the evening! All in one shopping. Although, frankly I did not buy any wine, movies or condoms on this trip. Rather , I came back with $100.00 worth of Decaf Green Mountain flavored coffee and Grape Nuts cereals - both of which are IMPOSSIBLE to find in Canada. Also picked up "You won't Believe its not Butter" (yeah! remember THOSE tv commercials?) and some Weight Watchers sliced cheese.

I ended up spending $250.00US in about 6 hours! Not bad - which ends up being about $7,859.00 Cdn (kidding) the exchange rate was actually really good!

Getting to Canadian Customs - there was a 50 minute wait! (on off peak times of the year its about a 5 minute wait). Its weird because getting into US customs took about 10 minutes (and why are the US border guards so scary? even when I was answering their questions truthfully, I felt guilty!). Anyway, on the way into the US, we saw the Canadian Customs side of the border and the cars waiting to get into Canada were scary - at that point there must have been a 3 hour waiting period. We kept praying, all the time we were shopping, that by the time we got there (later at night on Friday around 11:00 p.m. that the line would be shorter - it was - but still 50 minutes!!!!!!!!!!!).

I thought for sure the Canadian border guard would tell us that we had to pay duty on the stuff we bought, but we were lucky and we were not asked to do so. I always declare everything I buy when I go to the USA - its better to be honest anyway!!!

Well, I think that's my long saga of last Friday. I had a great time!!! its weird how some days you can be boring to death and then some days, everything is going on at the same time. The other good thing on Friday is that between my goings out and coming back in, I was actually lucky enough to be in (and I was not home much on that day) when Fed Ex delivered a parcel with two books that I had been dying to read!

All in all a great day.

PS: Ex boyfriends CAN come in handy once in a while :)

PSS: Now, bring on the new job!!!! I am all ready - I have books to read, coffee to drink and cereal to eat!!!