Tag Archives: musings

blogger, friendship, teaching, Wordsmith

Be Talking TO or ABOUT People

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I was a “full-on”, “on purpose” teenager.  I played volleyball, basketball and ringette.  I travelled all over western Canada for my sports. I played flute in the band as an out-of-the timetable course. I had a boyfriend in grades 10 through 12 and a large circle of friends in my neighbourhood and around the city. I enjoyed Wing Wednesday at Earls on the bypass and even went to park my car at McDonald’s to see what everyone was doing on weekend nights that I was in town.  I am not sure if I was oblivious to gossip, but I definitely lived on the outside of it as I was having too much fun living life. 

Lately, as I contemplate my last few years, I realize that there are two kinds of people in life: Those that talk TO you and those that talk ABOUT you. (I am not sure how I skipped learning this in high school, but perhaps I got lucky learning this now!) 

If you are saying my name and I am not physically within ear shot, yup that’s talking ABOUT me.  If you have an encouragement or thought about something I did and you tell me directly, with no third party involved, that’s talking TO me.  For me, there is not a grey area for talking about and to someone, even if you are praying for them.  One can build someone up and the other rips them apart, step-by-step.  

Why did I decide to write this today. Well folks, I am hoping that as you walk through life that you will have people around you that always talk TO you. I would rather be around people that are busy bodies than spend five seconds with a busybody.  

I hope this encourages you on your walk through life today. Have a terrific Tuesday and love what you do. 

Xoxo Joanna 

Boys, Teaching, Wordsmith

Be Driving a Jeep for a Week

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Growing up, did you have a dream car? Please let me know because I am genuinely curious about you.

My dream car: I have always wanted a Jeep, until last week. At my high school, there was young man a few years older than me who had a Jeep YJ. I can still imagine it ripping into the parking lot with music blaring every morning as I walked up the path to D.P. Todd Secondary. 

Ever since, I always thought that Jeeps were a “really cool car”. I wanted to own one until my car got rear-ended a few weeks ago and the rental company gave me a Jeep.

Yes, it looks like a “really cool car”, but it was a rough ride and remarkably uncomfortable. It’s amazing how you can take something for a drive and suddenly your whole life perspective can shift. I will never be able to look at a Jeep in the same light again.

Sidenote: Anyone guess the topic that I am using my Jeep metaphor to now talk to my boys about? Don’t judge things from an external vantage point, especially when choosing a partner for life.

Happy Thursday amazing friends. Love what you do.

xoxo Joanna

Aging, blogger, Grief, life, love, positivity, women

Be Having Grandma Hands 

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I was hanging out with twin three years old last week and one of the sweet souls grabbed my hand and exclaimed, “You have grandma hands!” 

I wanted to cry as I looked down at my hands. 

I realized in this moment that I have MY MOM’S HANDS! 

I almost bawled. 

I cannot even put into words the pure JOY that I felt. If I can pour a portion of the love that my mom poured into the world through her life AND her hands, I will be blessed.  

Grandma hands. 

To bless. 

To give. 

To share. 

To love. 

Thank you Jesus for giving me this vision about my hands. 

Thank you for the privilege to live long enough to have Grandma hands.

Happy Saturday lovely folks and love what you do. Xoxo 

Joanna 

Aging, health & fitness, musings, radical sabbatical, Wordsmith

Be Doing Five things for Fun! (Happy 2024)

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I love listening to podcasts when I fold laundry or am doing some other routine tasks. One of my favourites right now is Mel Robbins. I listened to this particular podcast on the weekend. The focus was on six questions you can ask yourself to have the very best 2024. I won’t get into the nitty gritty about what she shared because you can dive deeper and listen, if you are compelled, but I did want to convey that for 2024: I am going to bring the FUN! (And yes, I have a fondness for fine alliteration, so prepare yourselves for this linguistic journey..)

Here are five things that I want to do for pure FUN in 2024:

1️⃣ Fitness : This fall, Sexy Neck and I went back to the gym together for the first time since we lived in Bad Saulgau, Germany. YIKES! That was interesting to think about and realize how long again that was. For my personal fun fitness routine, I want to lift weights three times per week and then have fun adding in walking, cycling, skate skiing and downhill skiing. All just for fun!!!

2️⃣ Have Fun with Friends: I want to host, organize or become involved with a game night or book club again. When I lived in Vernon, I organized a wonderful book club with seven other very diverse, intelligent, fun women. We chose eight books to read and we met to talk about one per month. Once a year, we also met to do a retreat. Moving to KCity in 2013, while having a 2, 4 and 6 year old, plus supporting my mom with cancer, made the book club fall to the wayside. I simply lacked the mental space to continue to organize it. Let’s see what I can make happen for 2024.

3️⃣ Find Fantastic Fiction: I love reading books, but I often bend towards non-fiction as I love to grow myself. This year, I want to find some fun and fantastic fiction books to put into the mix. I already Gael 10 good old “mind candy” books on hold from our fabulous library.

4️⃣ Flourish in the Fine Art of Frosting a Fabulous Cake: My mom always made the best cakes for the boys’ birthdays. Two years ago, my goal was to simply make all the boys cakes from scratch. This year, I want to be able to decorate them well too! (Anyone know someone that could teach me? I don’t want to use fondant, but good old icing!)

5️⃣ Frolic across Canada (Yukon + Quebec) and perhaps even enjoy a far-flung trip to enjoy the beauty of skiing in Japan: These are three trips that are on our radar for 2024, on top of our regular jaunts to Vancouver for sports. I am wanting to do these three trips as JC goes into grade 12 next year and these are places we have always wanted to go together as a family. Bring on the 2024 frolicking!

And that’s it folks. Enjoy these last beautiful days of 2023 and pray about what the future of the year two thousand and twenty-four, since Christ, could bring. Our Heavenly Father loves you so much and has a beautiful plan and purpose to your life. My one ragged, righteous, and radical life is proof of that. I am skidding into the end of 2023 with a smile on my face at all the non-coincidences that have happened this year.

Happy Wednesday and love what you do.

xoxo Joanna

cancer, christmas, Family

Falling Snow and Fluttering Butterflies (10th Anniversary of the Legacy my Mom Left)

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Reliving ten years ago these last few weeks has been a very tender and vulnerable experience for me. I have cried more times than I can count. I have felt so much sadness seeing grandchildren with their grandparents as it has showcased such a profound loss that my sweet boys have endured these last ten years with losing both their Nana and Grandma alongside watching how their Papa’s grieved. I have felt like a failure as I have tried to weather all these big feelings while being a present wife, parent, employee, colleague, neighbour…all while preparing for Christmas. The circle of support around me, again, I have purposely made smaller so that I can show up entirely authentically, just as I am, in this messy human experience that we call grief. (Any other grief sojourners strongly dislike these three words: How are you?) Our golden doodle, Winnie, has been especially close to me, often with her head on my foot (or on my lap when she gets invited on the couch!). 

Today is ten years since I wrote these words below. My mom, aka Super Nana’s, presence is still felt on a daily basis and her legacy truly does live on through our five lives and many others who knew her. For this I am extremely grateful. Thank you to my “salty” friends who have walked these years with us step-by-step in person and with us from afar. You mean the world to us. Thank you to everyone reading my words today, I am incredibly grateful for you.

I love you,

xoxo Joanna

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Crisp fresh fallen snow as I step outside.

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Dad has been by her side throughout.

He watched her last breaths.

Dad greets me at mom’s door.

There are beautiful butterflies on the door. (This is hospice’s symbol that the room is not to be disturbed).

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My big cousin by my side.

We step through the door.

Peace enfolds.

Mom is warm and quiet.

She is wearing a shirt with butterflies on it. (I think I need to lie down with all these symbols of snow and butterflies!)

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Her body is at rest.

Death has come to her body.

Thursday, December 26th, 2013 at 7:00am.

Kisses, kisses and more kisses.

I lay my head in her arm in disbelief.

In peace.

I lap up her presence.

I am enveloped by her love.

Tears slide down my cheeks.

My sister arrives.

We walk to the hospice living room.

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We light a butterfly light.

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Place mom’s special card on the mantle.

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M reads Psalm 23.

Dad talks about his sorrow and gratitude.

The boys arrive to an empty room.

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OC says. “Nana with God.”

A red rose is on the counter.

We say our goodbyes.

On the memory Christmas tree we write Nana’s name and we take an angel home for our tree.

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Then we lace up our skates and head out into the outdoors that Nana loved dearly.

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I love you mama!

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author, blogger, writing

Be Multiplying in Multitudes in KCity

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This summer marked our tenth year of living in KCity. We chose a 1960’s fixer upper home in a beautiful older area of town which is 3.5 kilometres from downtown and the beach. In these ten years our property price has doubled, the traffic has become something you need to plan for/think about and the amount of portables at schools are often more than you could imagine that are allowed as they don’t have water or washrooms in them. 

The last five years in KCity has brought a serious housing shortage and an equal inflation of prices for every home and apartment. Our last two mayors and city councils have had a mandate to try and fix this problem. They have allowed secondary suites in most neighbourhoods and now they are choosing to allow homes morphing into grotesque cookie cutter monoliths called six story wooden framed apartments. (Yup, because of construction practices wooden frame apartment buildings can now go higher than four stories!)  

And this is why I chose to write my thoughts down today: Two years ago, City Council almost gave a building permit to a local chiropractor to change 3 homes, down the street from us, into an over fifty suite apartment building. It didn’t pass by one vote. From 3 homes to over 50!

Last week I saw this article: Enroute to our son’s trampoline gym, four homes are becoming 124 units AND there is a similar apartment building being built right across the street. The craziest part, which I have talked to one city councillor about, is that our city building code only requires 1.5 parking spots per apartment building. I am not sure why builders aren’t required to round up or even what 1.5 cars look like, but I do know the aftermath of this. More cars on the streets and less streets to bike on safely. Yes, as you know, we are a biking family. We love to bike as much as possible and this is why we chose where we live.

I am having a hard time with this city development and parking spot math. Properties are not simply doubling by adding a secondary suite, but they are growing more than 30 times the original vision and planning for our city with its roads, schools and parks. 

Things are multiplying by multitudes in our city, but I am not hearing anything about multiplying our current infrastructure that includes roads, parks, water, sewage, schooling or even how this is all going to impact our recycling program and garbage dump. 

I am concerned.

As one of the fastest growing cities in North America, how is this growth going to envelop and change our dry climate and mountain-bound valley?

How much growth would you want to see in your own city? What do my fellow Kelownites feel about this?

Happy third week of Advent my friends. I pray that God is bringing the JOY into your life. Love what you do.

xoxo Joanna

author, Boys, home learning

Be Destroying English for Another Generation

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Anyone that writes a blog, I would think loves to write. I know that I truly love to write! It is the way that I process. I truly having fun playing with words…

But, back in grade 11 English, I stopped writing. I was a flute-playing jock who spent most of their time in the gym, with friends or in the band room. In my free time, I loved writing down quotes I came across and writing in my journal. I wrote every single day as a 15 year old.

But, I had a grade 11 English teacher that shoved, pummelled, and used literature to criticize students at every turn. You were never “good enough” and you were called out when you weren’t. We were made to memorize and perform Macbeth out loud. As students, we had to read and reflect on the haunting and odd book, Lord of the Flies.

Can you imagine my heart as I now watch my grade 11 son, 32 years later, reading and experiencing these same two books? Week by week, I am watching his love of literature being sucked out of him and his love of writing being taken from him. Why must students’ focus on having the correct formatting for quotes? Why must students’ write down quotes verbatim from a book? Why must students’ write an essay with a hideous word count that would be more directed towards a student that wanted to study and deepen their understanding of English literature? Why must we use the same books as 1991?

Love a duck folks!

Love writing.

Love speaking.

Love communicating.

Share your words.

Share your story.

Share who you are.

And Google the rest!

Lord, please break the cycle of the use of literature that doesn’t bring insight or inspiration for this generation of students (nor my generation either).

And that’s all from me folks.

Happy almost December and love what you do.

XOXO Joanna

Christianity, Education, encouragement, Family, fun, God, musings, teenagers

Be Shifting a Grump

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🤔 Have you ever come across an Air Canada flight attendant that is obviously tired and grumpy? 

🤔 Do you have a relative that has an expiry date of one hour when your family visits and then they turn into a harsh, grumpy person? 

🤔 Are one of your teenagers waking up in a grumpy mood or bringing one home from school? 

💫 I have encountered all of these things and wanted to share some diddies today on what I like to do when coming across each of these grumps. 

✅ Ask them a question. This was my strategy for the flight attendant. I looked them in the eyes and simply asked: :Where is the best place you have flown?” She talked about when she used to live in Toronto and her trips to Boston, all with a smile. Boom shakalaka.  

✅ Remove yourself. Over the last 30 years as an adult, dealing with grumpy relatives has been a dance I have learned. Sadly, the best thing I have come up with has been to remove myself from the dance. I have tried asking questions or accommodating what they want to do or bringing gifts or food and try to be a lesser version of myself, but alas the removal from that person has been the best way to shift the grump.  A wise counsellor has also recommended meeting at neutral spots, (parks, coffee shops, restaurants etc.), but I have found that this only expands the expiry date by minutes not hours and is often not worth it.  Boo!  

✅ Smile and pray for them (or send them positive thoughts, if that’s more your jam). Ah teenagers. We are currently living with a tremendous trio of boys aged 16, 14 and almost 12. I feel as a parent, my job is to simply hold space for them as they deal with big emotions. Also, I want my teenagers to simply know I am here for them no matter what.  I really feel that a radiating smile and powerful prayers are like a force field that helps them and protects us as parents from being slimed by their “green, mucousy” grumpy ways. Yes, overall in life, I do think of grumpy people as being green and slimy. 🤣💚 

Don’t let anyone get their “stuff” on you.  

Random flight attendants. 

Relatives. 

Teenagers. 

All people that can slime you with their green grumpiness. 

As I say to my boys: Who’s in charge of your emotions? 

I am. 

I pray that my words will encourage you as you “live with” the people in your life with JOY and PEACE.  

Do you have a strategy for living a positive, joyful life no matter the emotional state of the people around you? Let me know. I always love to add tools to my emotional toolbox. 

Have an epic week folks and love what you do.  

Xoxo 

Joanna