Where ‘taxes’ is a dirty word

May 1, 2012

I filed my t*xes for 2011 on time yesterday, meaning I had a full day’s grace. My colleague rushed out of work today just before 5pm saying something that I didn’t quite catch and when she returned to the office she expressed her frustration that the post office closed by 5pm on April 30. I told her that particular post office always closed at that time; it wasn’t until she reminded me of the significance of today being the last day to file t*xes on time (especially if you owe money) that it hit me. So this is how normal people (who I not-so-secretly call keeners) feel when this day comes along: April 30 becomes just another day—how novel! I felt a bit smug I must confess and I kind of liked feeling on top of things (for a change)!

T*xes for 2010 were filed in a reasonable amount of time (after April 30 but given that I was getting a modest—not even enough to cover the cost of cable for a month—refund, at least I wasn’t penalized for it). But, um, this is where my smugness ends: there is at least one year, and possibly two, in the last five years that I need to catch up on. I’ve allowed fear of the unknown scare me into not tackling it but obviously if I owe money, putting it off for this long is the worst thing I could do. I’ll tackle this oversight. First, I need to get my hands on the forms (online I’m hoping) and fill them out by hand because it doesn’t look like I can use that handy t*x software for years-late filing.

I don’t deserve grace but I’m saying a prayer that I’m due for a refund, if only $.02.

Finding motivation

April 29, 2012

My preparation for the upcoming WALK/run hasn’t been the best because I’ve been using the cold weather as an excuse (even though I could have bundled up against it). Then my lower back started acting up two and a half weeks ago, and that hasn’t helped.

After spending some time looking at inspiring words on Pinterest, I decided to go out today, and even though my back is currently unhappy and I’ll be booking an appointment for a massage shortly, I’m glad I went out: the cool wind was nice and who doesn’t like sunshine? I always feel good after a walk so I don’t know why I resist it (though laziness comes to mind as a key reason). I’ll be going out at least every other day, preferably in the morning before work.

I was thinking about motivation today. I always think an outside motivating force is what I need, so when one of my colleagues who will be running the same race offered to run with me during our lunch break to motivate me, I agreed. However, I told her that because we’re at different levels of fitness (namely, she’s fit and I am not), we could walk out together, but I would prefer we go our separate ways. But guess what? I don’t like running at lunch time: the streets are crowded and even though I know no one is watching me I don’t like running with a bunch of people around. I’ll be setting myself up for success by getting to bed in good time and setting the alarm earlier than usual. I want my motivation to come from within.

Tomorrow I’ll tell my colleague that our Tuesday date is off…but I’ll also be able to tell her that I already went out earlier in the day.

Oprah’s Lifeclass Tour: the minutiae

April 25, 2012

I wish I had done a better job of recording the minutiae of the trip to Toronto and Oprah’s Lifeclass Tour but I’ll try my best to recall it. When Wendy and I first heard about the Tour, there was only one show planned (ours), and it was supposed to start at 4:00pm. Our plan then was to arrive in TO the night before (Sunday April 15), possibly drive to the location to see if anyone was breaking the rules and camping out at the site, then doing the same thing the following morning. However, once a second show was announced for 8:30am on the same day, we decided not to bother checking out the site the night before because if anyone was camping out, it would likely be for the earlier show.

Our Monday got off to a late start (I woke up just before 9am, and my partner in crime was having hair woes). Once Wendy got to where I was staying, we went to grab lunch (a delicious shawarma from Basha Middle Eastern Grill…yum yum) with Cynthia (my host), after which we headed back to Cynthia’s place to pick up my phone (yes, in my excitement I left my phone at her place!). Wendy and I took the subway to the Metro Toronto Convention Centre from there. When we got back on street level from the subway station, I asked a guy if he knew where the convention centre was and he asked if we were going to see Oprah. When we replied in the affirmative he laughed and told us we wouldn’t be able to miss the location because of the enormous lineup. He wasn’t kidding! The line went on for blocks and blocks and I wish I had taken the time to record it. We walked for ages before reaching the end of the line, and the number of people who joined the lineup behind us was staggering! We were in line for what seemed like a really long time (at least two hours). I’m a champ when it comes to waiting in line (remember: I voluntarily go to Black Friday and Boxing Day sales) but as I mentioned in my last entry (now with more minutiae!) I had recently developed some lower back pain. As a result even 30 minutes in line was too long.

Waiting in line

Wendy was a great person to be in painline with: she was cracking jokes and she’s just generally good-natured, so we laughed and engaged others in line. The line b-a-r-e-l-y moved for ages; it only started moving in the last 30 minutes or so. I had actually gone to buy myself a drink at Starbucks and when I came back to the line I found it had moved a few blocks and I now had to rush to suck back as much of my drink as I could before it was taken away from me (no outside drinks allowed in the convention centre!).

You could feel the excitement as we entered the convention centre and made our way to the hall: people were cheering and we started running (it really was like Black Friday sales!) and the staff kept telling us not to run. We had been told to keep our purses small and to be prepared for a purse check and security check. No outside food was allowed in the place (I had brought snacks with me because we had been told that there would be limited concessions for the 6.5+ hours that we’d be there and I knew I’d get hungry). Well, I guess they were running late or something because I and my snacks made it in without issue: there were no checks at all. I could have smuggled another person in!

When we entered the hall we were met with a shock: it was so FULL! As we tried to find a seat we were certain that the general admission seats which we had tickets for were closer to the stage than the section we were feverishly scouring for seats. We were wrong: that section was general admission. We were so disappointed with our seats! After grumbling a bit we accepted our fate and got settled. We joked that we were learning about forgiveness even before Lifeclass started!

We were so far back!

And then it started. Not the televised show—that wouldn’t start for a couple of hours—but the pre-show. All four of Oprah’s current pals—Iyanla Vanzant, Tony Robbins, TD Jakes, and Deepak Chopra—shared about 30-45 minutes of lessons with us on various topics. The goal of the pre-show was to fire us up and get us excited about living our best lives. It worked! I was trying to take notes at this point but between taking it all in and nodding in agreement and cheering, it was hard! As a result, my notes of this pre-show session are largely incoherent. We didn’t get to hear from Oprah before the actual televised show so that definitely made our screams of excitement genuine when she came on stage because it was our first time seeing her. She looked lovely in her green dress…and we were thankful for the large screens because otherwise we would have only seen a green blur on the far away stage.

During the commercial breaks Oprah engaged with the audience: she took off her left shoe to show someone who had inquired about her shoes. She answered a question about her score in Words With Friends, and she shared her average score and her highest score. People in the crowd were yelling to her and she was responding. She thanked those who went all out for the show, painting their toenails even though they knew no one would see it. She expressed her gratitude to us for waiting in line (she drove by our lineup after the first show ended!) and seemed genuinely humbled. At one point she said she’d come back to those sitting in the back so I was excited at the thought of hopefully getting a good picture of her.

The show was good. Wendy and I were disappointed when we learned the topic of the show was forgiveness, just one or two weeks beforehand, because we both felt we had a good handle on the concept. We wanted to learn something NEW. But not surprisingly we both had Aha! moments during the show.

You can actually see the show we attended online HERE. It was only when I watched the show from home that I realized even though we were seated far back, if we had been sitting on the other side we might have been captured on camera. Lessons learned!

TD Jakes and Oprah

Speaking of lessons learned, I’ve got an entry coming up on my other blog about those actual lessons. One lesson I do want to share relates to something I’ve shared before: the problems I’ve had with the elder of my two younger brothers. Someone asked the following on twitter:

How do you forgive a family member that you have to be in constant contact with. And though you forgive, the offense continues to happen. How do you manage that???

TD Jakes’s response was that you can’t forgive what you don’t understand. Understanding doesn’t excuse their behaviour or exonerate them, but it’s easier to cope if you know what’s behind the behaviour: maybe they’re an alcoholic, maybe they’re broken in some way. We can’t expect something that’s broken to function like its unbroken counterpart; this this applies to people too. Once you understand that, you must adjust your expectations to the capacity of the person. You can’t expect a person with a pint capacity for love to give you a gallon’s worth of love, for example. The world has gallon people and pint people and if you’re a gallon person you have to make sure you don’t have too many pint people around you or you’ll become frustrated. You’ll keep asking these people to give you more and they’ll resent you because they’re giving you all they can—which is true—but it’ll never be enough for you because you have a greater capacity than they can provide.

To relate this to my situation, I have to make sure that my expectations of Brother #1 do not exceed his capacity and I also have to make sure that I balance out his pint love for me with people who can give me the gallon love I desire. Thankfully, my family has other members who seem capable of giving me This.

Phew! This is a long entry! Thanks for reading.

Lifeclassing it!

April 16, 2012

I’ll be seeing Oprah in a few short hours here in Toronto! That sounds like Oprah has perhaps invited me to visit when that couldn’t be further from the truth (all attempts to get that personal invitation via twitter have been unsuccessful, alas!). Instead my friend Wendy and I paid far more than I’d like to sit in an audience and hear Oprah and her four BFFs this season (Iyanla Vanzant, Bishop TD Jakes, Tony Robbins and Deepak Chopra) share some wisdom with us. I may grumble about the cost but I’m already convinced that it’ll be worth it.

I woke up at the unprecedented hour of 7:41am this past Saturday (yuck!) to get to a hastily-scheduled 9:00am masseuse appointment (scheduled to help ease lower back pain that had developed on Thursday, seeing as there was ‘just a bit’ of driving in my immediate future). Then I dropped off cupcakes at my friend’s house, picked up luggage at my parents’ place, went to a hair appointment for a wash and blowdry (can’t be in Oprah’s sphere with raggedy locks!) at 11:30am (an appointment that didn’t end up starting until 12:20pm; boo!), dropped by the mall my mommykins works at to say hello in case I wouldn’t see her before my trip, and did some shopping (without success) for the perfect top to wear with my black pants for the show.

At 3pm, it occurred to me that I had not yet changed the winter tires on my car to my all-seasons, and with such a long upcoming trip it would be deliberately throwing the money I paid for the tires in the trash if I drove to Toronto with winter tires on. After calling no less than 10 different tire changing places, I found one that was still open and had time that day to change my tires. I waited 1.5 hours for a 40 minute job but I’m so thankful that it was done before the trip!

A room with a view

Our drive here was largely uneventful for me: Wendy, on the other hand found inspiration for her creative pursuit in a most unusual place! I am so thankful for my hosts, Cynthia of Delectably Chic! and her husband Adam, who have given me full reign over their guest bedroom, complete with its own ensuite. Given my love of saving money, this is an enormous help and the private space makes me feel like I’m in a hotel! Wendy is staying with her friend and she (friend) managed to finagle free underground parking for us in her building for the duration of our stay…hurray!

So, bring on Oprah, her pals, Aha! moments a-plenty, and all that good stuff…I’m ready!

Updated to add:

  • I had no trouble waking up on Sunday morning to get on the road
  • I bought the shirt that I ended up wearing to the show on my way to pick up Wendy. The fact that they matched earrings I had bought earlier in the week was serendipitous.