Some people have an amazing ability to quietly sit while the idiosyncracies of other’s behaviour jumps up and down on their last nerve. They can answer the same question repeatedly without steam emerging from their ears. They smile, nod and appear to care when a small child rambles on about the events of their day. They pick-up after babies and coo gently in their ears.

I am not one of those people.

The smallest things have been known to annoy me and set me off on monumental bouts of ranting and raving like a crazy lady. I’m amazed steam doesn’t flow freely from my ears on a near daily basis.

In fact, my monumental lack of patience is one of the main reasons I decided I never wanted to be a teacher when I was at university. As a child, I dreamed of being a teacher; molding young minds, developing the leaders of tomorrow, making a difference and all that good stuff. Within a few short weeks I’d discovered that not only had I wanted to be a teacher – I wanted to be a good one. I just didn’t have the patience to hold someone’s hand through each step. It annoyed me if someone couldn’t pick up something I was showing them as quickly as I did. It drove me nuts when others didn’t make the same leaps of logic (or whatever my odd mental ramblings can be called) and arrive on the other side of the equation with me.

Occassionally I’m jealous of those who have this infinite well of patience from which to draw upon. Then, I wake up and realize that attempting to change who I am to please others always gets me in a tonne of trouble and misery. If my hubby can manage to put up with me, everyone else will just need to learn to love me as I am too.

My mother is under the delusion that I’ll learn patience by living at home and caring for dad. Boy, is she in for a surprise…

Technorati Tags: patience, personality trait

While over at small dead animals yesterday I saw an old familiar face. Well, actually, I saw a graphic and link to Stupid Comics (which Kate got via Colby Cosh). My, what an incestuous little bunch we Canadian bloggers are.

I’m sorry to say that as I child I distinctly remember being provided a copy (or perhaps multiple copies) of this comic and reading it enough times to remember segments of the story line and some of the graphics. Since Kate and Colby are older than I am, I’m having a hard time imagining them reading this the first time round. Kate might have been in her early teens and likely way too swave to be victimized by the packaging of Canadian Governament propaganda in comic book form. Colby, being only a few years older than I, might have fallen into the trap.

I wonder how much influence this comic had on my recycling/save the earth phase I went through in the mid-80’s. Perhaps it wasn’t brought on by an early rise in consciousness, but by the residual leftovers of the contents of a comic book sloshing around in my head.

With the giant rise of parents screaming about just about anything that might “hurt the childruuuun” and the emphasis on self-esteem over attempting to complete a task I see in schools today, I have to wonder where our parents were when this comic was being handed out to small children in the 70’s and 80’s? Perhaps they were too busy dragging us to the library to read books, helping us with our math homework, building tree forts, or chucking us out of the house to go play to notice what the government was passing around…

Technorati Tags: superkids, canadian, comics

Have you ever wondered what the little recycling styled icon is on the sidebar menu? It’s a link to BookCrossing, a free book exchange program. If you’d like to learn more about it, check out the FAQ’s at http://www.bookcrossing.com/faqs.

I’m a book junkie. I love to read and tend to make my way through 5-20 books a week. How much I read at any one time depends on how “into” the book I am, how much free time I have on my hands, etc. I tend to keep a good 40% of the books I purchase new or used, and used to return the rest to a local used bookstore or hand them off to anyone who expressed and interest in it.

In our previous house, it was easy to keep a tonne of books, as we had our own separate library room. Since the move to the mouse house we just don’t have the room to keep books that we won’t be continuously re-reading. I’m having to learn to be more particular in my choices of books that land (and remain) in the permanent collection.

The downside of trying to return books to a local used bookstore is that they don’t always accept the books you have to return. Trying to give away books to friends is often limited by a need to share the same taste in reading material. Since I’ll read just about anything, I often have something for everyone. If only everyone would come visit our boxes of books that need new homes…

To resolve the situation and ensure that our house doesn’t become overwhelmed with books we won’t be rereading, I’ve joined Bookcrossing and hope to start slowly releasing some books into the wild. The first few books were released in Edmonton and now that I’m in NB, I expect I’ll be releasing some books in Saint John over the next few months. The hubby has a small stack of books to continue to release in Edmonton during my absence. I can’t wait to find out where he drops them off!

Technorati Tags: BookCrossing

We often take our friends and neighbours for granted. I’m sure it’s not intentional. We’re just so used to them being around that we forget the mutual dependance nature of the relationship.

Nothing changes your view of friends or family faster than an emergency or long term terminal illness. It’s amazing who will step out from the woodwork and into the spotlight to assist on an almost daily basis. It’s equally amazing how many who you have assisted in the past will slide back into the shadows after mouthing the expected platitudes and offers of assistance but who have no intention of actually providing any assistance.

People you’d always considered casual acqaintences – those who you’d speak to over a backyard fence, but never spend any additional time with – will arrive at your doorstep with a fully cooked meal on a bad day when you couldn’t imagine trying to get a meal together. They will drive to airports in the middle of night to bring returning family members home. They mow your lawn when doing their own so you don’t have to worry about forgetting to get around to it when there’s free time. They are amazing, wonderful people who you often forget to acknowledge and without whom you couldn’t survive. Saying “thank you” just doesn’t seem to be enough.

Colour me bitter, amazed, grateful, confused, sad, lonely and tired today.

Technorati Tags: friends, nature of friendship

There are birds in the domestic departures lounge (through security) in the Edmonton International Airport.

Not being much of a birdwatcher myself, I can’t tell you if these are little sparrows or not. The ones I’ve seen are delicate looking brown birds. Of course, that’s an overly simplistic definition. To add shame to my lack of bird identification abilities I completely forgot I had a camera option on my cell phone and didn’t get a picture of any of them.

I remember noting that there were birds flying around in the domestic departures area when I flew to NB a few weeks ago. There were a number of small children delighted to see birds hopping around the floor and flying away when approached. I’d completely forgot about them until I landed back in the lounge to head back to NB yesterday.

I don’t recall ever seeing birds in the US departures lounge.

Technorati Tags: Edmonton Airport, birds