Labour day!

All weekend (when I've been home-I've spent a fair amount of time cat-sitting at my sister's apartment) I've been having a 'good clear out'. I'm the type of person that finds cleaning and organizing fun, and relaxing. In fact, sometimes it's hard to stop! Among the many things I've switched my backpacks (getting rid of the crumbling, falling apart one), put away a large pile of music that had gathered on my desk, rehung my calender (the nail fell out about a month ago...BEHIND the filing cabinet that it hangs above), gotten all of my school things ready for friday, dug into the far back of my closet (it doesn't usually see the light of day because one of the sliding doors is broken and my shoe organizer makes it difficult to reach that area), and gone through my clothes-sending a bunch of them downstairs to the Salvation Army donation bag. It's not that they didn't fit anymore-it's that over the past two-three years my clothing requirements have changed a little bit. In high school, like most teenagers I tended to dress mostly in jeans, long and short sleeved t-shirts and hoodies. That was my 'every-day wear', and I then had a bunch of 'weekend clothes' that were even less classy (think a few old hand-me-down sweatshirts, a few very large arctic fleece-type shirts and t-shirts that were either waaaay too large or had stretched weirdly). Well, now that I'm in university and such, how I dress has changed. Now, my weekend attire is some of the jeans, t-shirts and hoodies (the nicer ones that I used to wear during the week) and my weekday attire is things like blouses/shirts, nicer jeans and cords/pants, some skirts, blazers, and of course, my sweaters (some of my favourite clothing articles!). I realized as I went through my closet that I had clothes that I hadn't worn in more than a year, and probably wouldn't wear. In other words, they were just taking up space and gathering dust when some woman or girl could be making use of them. It was a little hard to part with a couple of my favourite old shirts, but they were much too young for me now (I'm small, and they were bought from the girls' department...enough said) and it was time to send them on. Hopefully some girl about ten years younger than me will love them as much as I did.

My mom's had a really rough weekend, but she was able to give me some directions in making one of my favourite breads ever. The recipe is such that you really need to do it with someone who knows how to really understand and have good results. My attempt went pretty well, although I put a little bit too much flour in (it's a zen thing according to how humid the room is) and it maybe could have cooked for a minute or two less-but other than that, it made a very nice bread. I'll post the recipe at some point, because it is truly delightful. All except two people (two kids who are known to be somewhat picky eaters) loved the wacky cake that I took to the daycare, so I will post that recipe as well!

Tomorrow I have a dentist appointment and hopefully the dreaded doctor's appointment with my family doctor, but I won't known until I phone when the office opens tomorrow. In preparation though, I'm fasting. The not eating part is easy...it's the abstaining from green tea that's hard. Though, I think I've had about 6 cups of green tea today and for a while I was on a bit of a caffeine high, so maybe it's a good thing that I can't have anymore today. I'm not really looking forward to the doctor's appointment at all...well, I'm okay with everything except the scale, and the possibility that my doctor might make me have an EKG, because it means taking off everything from waist up (at least at her place-I've had EKG's elsewhere and haven't had to strip like that). Now, I'm a very modest person-I don't like to show any cleavage, I'm always cautious about buttons, and I never show my stomach except perhaps about an inch between the bottom and top of my modest two piece bathing suit. So, that's one reason that even though both my doctor and the technician are female and I've had this same doctor since I was 3 1/2 I dread the possibility. Another is that I'm also very, very self-concious of my chest area. I feel disgusted by it and naturally then don't want to share it with anyone. The final reason is that when I was 12 years old-right at the very start of that development-I was touched inappropriately more than once by a boy in my grade at school who claimed to like me. Perhaps he did and just didn't know how to show it properly. Whatever the case, I was very, very happy when he dropped out after christmas that year. Most of the time I'm okay with what happened, I've moved on-except for when I encounter his picture in the yearbook, or when I start getting touched there.

I think that things might have been easier for me in this respect if I hadn't buried what happened. About a couple of months after the boy left, and he stopped being news, I just put him at the back of my mind. I didn't really think about it again until I was doing an assignment for history at the beginning of grade eight-making a time-line of our lives without words. Pretty much without even realizing what I was doing, I ended up drawing a picture of my violation on the timeline. Later, when it was handed back, my teacher pulled me aside and asked about it-wanted to confirm what it was on there and wanted to make sure my parents knew. Now, this teacher is a wonderful man and a great teacher and I feel blessed to have had him for both grade eight and nine history/social studies classes and then later on in grades ten and eleven for gym class. BUT at the time, I could not tell the truth. This led to one of the only lies I have ever told a teacher. I lied and said that my parents knew and everything was fine. Later, right before parent-teacher interviews, when I found out that my dad had signed up to see this particular teacher, I slightly panicked once again and asked my teacher not to mention anything about this-that it was something we didn't talk about. I guess I was convincing in all of this because my parents, to this day, do not know... I have considered writing to this teacher and thanking him for his wonderful teaching and human-beingness...but also confessing that I lied to him, not once but twice, but that in the end things have worked out-and that I did talk about it with a professional (never mind that this didn't happen until I was 17/18). He knows a little bit of my story-he knows that I spent two weeks in hospital after my suicide attempt, and that it had built up for a long time beforehand, and perhaps he even guessed about my eating problems. I don't know. Hard to say...I think about my high school teachers a lot, but they have hundreds of students that they have taught-I wonder if some of them even really remember me. Of course, my band teacher would-six years of being a flute section leader and involved in every musical thing the school had to offer will do that! Plus, my band teacher even came and saw me at the hospital. But who's to say about the rest? It has, after all, been more than two years since I graduated now. I have been wanting to write thank-you notes to them for a long time, but I still haven't gotten to it. It's something that's really important to me though, and to be honest, I think it's important for me to do...to have closure on that part of my life. Besides, teachers never get enough thanks, and I know that learning of specific ways that you impacted students is not only helpful for continuing excellence in teaching but is also heart-warming. I know this much from my five months of working in daycares! It's always very special when a parent will come up and say "Thank you for doing such-and-such. My child just loves this and talks about it a lot!" or when a kid will say "I love doing this with you".

My, this was a somewhat random post. Sort of like my random-ish cleaning and organizing. My mom is really trying to downsize things-go through her things so that the rest of us won't have to-but she often needs help to do so. I decided that I'd put off washing some finished cross-stitch pieces for waaaay too many weeks and that today I was FINALLY going to do it, so I had to get the white wash bin that's only ever been used for handwashing from her closet. For years now it has help things to be repaired-a couple of baby clothing articles, and some other clothes as well as a couple of barbie things she started to knit and never finished. Well, I had to empty the bin, and so when I was finished with my washing, my mom decided that we would go through it. So that was our little downsizing project for today.

Tomorrow in addition to my appointment(s) I will get down to the university with my fee payment, buy a gym pass at the university athletic centre (a wonderful deal for students) and hopefully drop off my resume for a TA/Marker position for the professor of the basic skills class (things like ear-training and sight-singing). HOWEVER, I have yet to create that resume, so I should stop babbling on in this post and do so! Plus, I still have a bunch of things on my bed from my 'good clear out' and need to take care of that before I go to sleep!