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Posts Tagged "marriage"
I had the opportunity this week to stay at Toronto’s Drake Hotel and we had a fantastic time. I had never heard of the Drake Hotel although it has the sort of name that sounds familiar to me. I found it on Trip Advisor and every other hotel in Toronto was full. I never did figure out why everything was booked, but the Drake Hotel seemed like a good fit for us. I picked up my chef daughter from her job in Muskoka and we spent 2 nights and 3 days together in Toronto. We checked in on Sunday afternoon. The hotel is small, charming, and has multiple restaurants and bars full of trendy, interesting people. We were given a room on the 3rd floor. We were surprised to find out there is no elevator so we trekked up the stairs and found a lovely but small, very cool guest room. We were greeted with complimentary sparkling wine on ice and the room was full of interesting items for purchase as well as a fun “mini-bar” area full of tasty beverages and snacks. The design concept really stood out and we felt like we were not quite cool enough for our hip accommodations. That said, Jonathan the manager greeted us warmly every time he saw us and made us feel incredibly welcome. He hugged us when we left–we felt loved and cared for in this fun hipster hotel. I am not sure we were cool enough for our surroundings, but we felt welcome and enjoyed its charm. We ate breakfast twice in their cafe and the food was fantastic. I only wish we had the energy to explore more of what was going on. There is a roof-top bar that looked very fun. We heard happy people partying late into the night. This didn’t bother us, it was kind of fun–like falling asleep on the couch during a really great party. During our stay, there was an open mike and a pickle contest...
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I took a course from a guy named Larry Byrum in Boulder, Colorado years ago. He teaches classes on relationships and how to find the perfect partner at the Higher Alignment Center. His work is quite interesting and the system he uses has served me well. One of the aspects he talked about was “pace.” Larry used a scale of 1 to 100 to describe pace. I took courses there over 10 years ago, so apologies if I misrepresent his current teachings. He said that for a romantic relationship to work, one needs to be within 20 points of their partner on the “pace” scale. After 20, he said he didn’t recommend it. In our society people make more money if they are faster paced. Those who are slower paced make less money and are sometimes perceived as “lazy” by people who go through life at a faster pace. We have a lot of judgment about pace in our society. Those who are slower paced may wonder if they “should” be doing more. This kind of “should” pops into my work with clients fairly regularly. It is my perspective that there are no “shoulds”–simply lives full of choices, victories and gratitude. I am fairly sure Mel and I are about 20 points apart. When Mel and I are alone together we are fine. We vacation well. Sometimes he gets up early and goes off to do things while I am still hanging out. We are fairly active on vacation so it suits both of us, then I come home tired and rest. Throwing in all the kid stuff can be challenging for me. I am the slowest paced person in my family although Xander may be similar to me in his pacing. The myriad of kids’ activities leaves me exhausted by the end of the school year. Mel does more driving in the evening than I do but the constant comings and goings drain me. I give myself permission to say no to “one more...
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Some days I am overcome by love. When I pull up at the school and let my kids out, I watch them tromping off with their lunch boxes and backpacks and my heart fills up until it overflows and fills my eyes with tears. I love being married and seeing how good we can make it and how fast we can recover from when we make it bad–when we mess up and have to fix it or get over it. I read a friend’s blog recently. He was describing the death of his lover. His raw words of love touched me deeply. It was as if he opened his heart on the page–splayed open for everyone to see. It was just love. I loved him for the open-hearted love he shared. I watch my parents aging and I want to ease their way. I want them to stay eternally young like they are in my mind. I want to be able to spare them the agony of growing older. I want to protect them from the elements of time and my heart fills with love and compassion for their humanness and frailty. I love them so much and yet my love can’t keep them from experiencing their challenges. I think of two family members who got mad at me and don’t talk to me anymore. On bad days I protect myself with anger and on good days I remember that their anger can’t make me stop loving them. Memories of them fill my heart and I surreptitiously send loving thoughts their way and wish them well. I love dinner parties. There is something about the echo of laughter over food that fills my heart. I love the people I laugh with. Especially if they think my jokes are funny. I love saying I love you to friends. It was something I realized years ago. It did once go bad when I told my friend Mara I loved her in a phone message. Her husband listened...
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I didn’t ever really get the Christmas spirit this year. I come from a long line of women who love Christmas. Every year, I get excited about the holidays. I am touched by the music, I love doing the decorations, I love the presents, I love entertaining. I usually love it all. This year, I never caught that holiday spirit. I tried. We had a big party, we decorated the house, we had presents, we spent time together as a family. But somehow, it felt like work this year and I kept waiting for the hallelujah chorus. Is something wrong with me? Is it because I am getting older? I have been trying to figure out what happened. I don’t really know what it was, except maybe I am tired–I have been doing my yoga challenge since October 15th. Because of an ice storm, our party was smaller than usual and we had too much leftover food–it really bugged me and I didn’t want to throw it away so we ate too much stuff I usually don’t eat. We lost power for 24 hours after the party because of the ice storm and I got really worried about our family. I don’t want to be a whiner, but I FEEL like a whiner. I am so incredibly blessed and I love my family so much and somehow it all just overwhelmed me this year. I long for simplicity and love and quiet. It is hard to find it in the midst of all these people I love. I think next year I want to change some things. I think after 11 years of having a giant Christmas party, I am ready to change it. I want it to be different. I hope next year Christmas will feel different. I want to feel the wonder of the season. My love of Christmas feels like a treasure I should love and cherish–protect in some way. As I wrote that, the tears came, so I figure I...
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On August 30, 2013 we celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary. This is obviously a big deal for us. We never had a honeymoon, so we went to Europe for a month this summer. Also, we decided to take our kids. We figure we have about 5 more years before they’re teenagers, and we didn’t want to leave them behind. I find that even though our 10th anniversary has passed, I am not quite done with it yet. For whatever reason, this 10 year anniversary date had lots of meaning for me. Maybe more than any other date. I am not a person that remembers all the important dates. I remember birthdays for my family and my anniversary. I don’t connect to death dates although I know other people do and try to be aware of those days. My mother connects with those days and she is the family archivist. I am reassured that she has all that information even though I don’t always want to know it. Anyway, I wanted to post a few pictures from our wedding and I wanted to tell you a little bit about it. We got married right after same-sex marriage became legal in 2003. We had been in Canada about a year. We knew we wanted to get married. We had even talked about me establishing residency in Belgium by living there for 6 months so we could marry there. Marriage was an extremely important value for us and if there was a way to marry, we were going to do it. My brother visited in June, right after it was legal in Ontario, and we would have done a small intimate wedding while he was here, but since I had a foreign divorce (we were shocked to find that the USA divorce needed a written legal opinion from a Canadian lawyer), we had to submit the necessary paper work and wait. That led to planning a wedding later in the summer and then we figured we might...
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