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.

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.

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.

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.

Brother #2 has been a wonderful cheerleader over the last year (when we aren’t fighting, an occurrence that is rare between us, thankfully!), and especially in the last few months when I’ve finally started fleshing out The Idea so that it was more concrete. We’ve attended two seminars together this year and both were inspiring. I actually happened upon the first seminar and asked if he wanted to go with me. It was a free seminar given by the local library on starting your own business and the information provided was useful. At the time I wasn’t really sure which of the many ideas I had considered in the past were viable, but this seminar got me thinking about being in business for myself again. I knew that when the time came it would be handy to have the information.

I attended a second seminar on branding at another local library by myself (Brother #2 is a PR major so he didn’t need this seminar). We attended our second seminar together two days ago and it was given by William Mougayar, the founder of two startup companies (Equentia and Engagio). He came to share his insights and explain the process that took him from where he was (comfortably employed) to the life of a startup founder which is anything but comfortable from a job security point of view. There’s clearly a lot of satisfaction in doing something that you feel you’re meant to be doing. Again, I was inspired, but I felt like Mougayar’s simple story of going from idea to startup could be my own. A startup isn’t a complicated entity; if it is that’s a problem. Simplicity is key and this resonated with me because I complicate everything in my life thanks to my insatiable tendency to overthink and overanalyze everything: a simple email or blog entry can take me hours to craft (current entry included) because each word I choose plays an important role in conveying a message and I care about how my message is shared. I also have a fear of doing anything that’s out of the norm for me (too many things!). These are all qualities I possess that make a terrible startup founder, so if I ever want to go that route I have a lot to let go of.

In addition to letting go, I also have to Just Do. That’s not easy but it’s gotta happen.

What touched my heart was that my brother was the one who found this second seminar and paid for my attendance there. He didn’t know the speaker any more than I did but he knows me and he felt like this guy had something to say that I should hear and he was 100% right. I won’t go so far as to say Mougayar has changed my life but I was so glad I had a notebook with me to capture so many of the things he shared. I found myself nodding all through the presentation and when I say “I’m inspired!” a certain way, with a certain smile, Brother #2 and my sister always laugh because I’m an inspiration junkie but honestly? I’m inspired, y’all!

I’ve had a headache each of the last three days which is unusual for me. I’m hungry but with the exception of last Thursday when I wanted a hamburger, I haven’t been able to put my finger on what I want food-wise, even though I’m hungry. I feel on the verge of tears first thing in the morning and in the evening before bed. Poor Jummy! :)

That’s my silver lining up there, a bible verse that was shared during a church service I attended a couple of weeks ago. A friend also shared this particular verse with me when I told her how I was feeling. I know the sun will come out tomorrow…or the day after, or the day after that. This is just a blip on my lovely life and thinking that way really puts things in perspective. And also, despite feeling like this, I’m so thankful that I have multiple things to smile or laugh about every single day. Some people have real problems that cast a shadow over every minute of their day. My problems are not so serious and I really appreciate that.

The answer is no.

I’m lazy and I resist anything that is hard or painful—unless it’ll save me money (not paying someone to design my sites is an example of this). It’s far easier to plead fatigue while doing 100s in Pilates class and rest than push through it. It’s easier to slow to a walk after a burst of running than to see what would happen if I forced myself to run just a few feet further. I’d rather eat as many sweets as I crave than deal with the uncomfortable feeling of wanting something that isn’t good for you in such large quantities. It’s easier to visit gorgeous websites and admire the graphic design rather than open a blank document and attempt to create my own graphic, even if I know will be inferior to the ones I was just admiring.

How do I shake off this tendency toward sloth? How do I become one of those people who work tirelessly to achieve a goal, who endure pain and exhaustion? I have a great brain, full use of every body part, so what’s my excuse?

I don’t have one.

Maybe this is what life coaches are for? Or maybe that’s just typical me, trying to avoid facing what needs to be done and just doing it.

My financial story isn’t scary, thanks to my upbringing (a lot more about that on this entry on my other blog). I inherited my love of a good deal from my mom, but even she thinks I take the quest too far, especially because years after making a purchase, I’ll still check to see if I paid less than any subsequent sales price on the item–insane! My dad is all about moderation, and laying a good financial foundation today so that your tomorrow will be secure…he’s definitely a delayed gratification type of person. He’s also very practical: to him waiting for hours in the freezing cold to save even 75% on something is lunacy and does not make sense from the point of view of the value of one’s time. He also doesn’t see the value in cross-border shopping after you factor in gas prices, duty, and the transportation time. I’ve explained to him that Boxing Day and Black Friday sales, and cross-border shopping are equally about saving money and the adventure of the trip. He doesn’t see the fun in it but he now respects it as a form of entertainment for me.

On a somewhat related note, here’s a video I made last Black Friday, when I went shopping with my friend Rich:

I took a hard look at my finances recently. Years after Rich shared his awesome spreadsheet and after Rich and Gen shared their budgeting philosophies with me I introduced myself to The Financial Spreadsheet (I’m using Google Documents so that it’s always accessible). The left side of my spreadsheet has my income while my expenses are on the right side. I have a lot more fixed expenses than I thought. Because all the expenses have different pay schedules (biweekly, monthly, bi-monthly, biyearly, yearly), Wendy recommended I divide up each expense on a biweekly basis to match my pay schedule, so that way I can be saving a part of each paycheque for my expenses, most of which are paid less frequently than biweekly. It’s a good idea, even though the exercise left me horrified at how little money I have left for each two-week period to buy all my food, pay for any entertainment, gifts, and the latest credit card bill. Yikes!

I recently finished reading The Automatic Millionaire, by David Bach. My dad has a few of Bach’s books and although Bach didn’t coin the term I’ve always associated the Latte Factor with him. The book was a great starting point: it motivated me and reminded me that I don’t have to be content with being a homeowner with a 25-year mortgage that I’ll be paying off in 22 years thanks to biweekly payments. I can dream bigger than paying off a house in 22 years. I can dream of paying off a house in less than 22 years, buying a bigger house, and renting out the first property. The stories in Moneysense about people who pay off their mortgages in 15 years could be my story.

I also read Rich by Thirty (I’m obviously too late for the promises in that title!) and it’s a good read for those who need to learn the basics of budgeting and investing (me!). I started reading Rich by Forty but I was turned off by the fact that the book is quite heavily geared toward young married people with kids. I wish that was my story! Once I get over that hangup I’m sure I’ll get a thing or two out of the book but for now it’s on hold. I’m happily devouring Automatic Millionaire Homeowner (also by Bach), then it’ll be on to Debt-Free Forever, which I’m curious to read from the point of view of cash budgets and those jars she encourages people on her show Til Debt Do Us Part to set aside.

My philosophy with money and food is the same: I don’t want to have to pay close attention to my consumption of either one (How’s that working for me, right?). I worked hard with my finances (by trying to get a deal on everything, and by avoiding debt) so that I could have the illusion of having bottomless bank accounts, but now I know I was fooling myself: my savings account was constantly bailing out my chequing account to the point where the former is nearly empty. There’s some room to improve my retirement savings. My savings account needs to be rebuilt. I need to be more aware of what I’m spending and why, and I need to see if any of my regular expenses (Latte Factor stuff like eating lunch out five days a week and afternoon coffee breaks) can be trimmed or sliced in half. I don’t necessarily have to budget away every penny but awareness is power. By setting up as much as I can to be automatic according to Bach, I’ll make sure I’m saving for those important things in my life and they won’t be left to the mercy of whether or not I have a few spare pennies in my bank account.

There will definitely be more posts about personal finance in this space…I never thought this would be something I’d be interested in talking about.

Since Jov had her babies it’s been harder to make time to hang out and catch up with each other. Our schedules aren’t compatible: her nights leave her exhausted after a day of kid-wrangling while her weekends are full of kid-focused activities. My weekends are sometimes busy and my days are spent working. That’s why I suggested I find time to see them during the day and it worked well.

There was a time when it was difficult hanging out with Jov because so many aspects of her life represented things that I wished for myself, things I mentioned recently as thoughts of turning 33 have begun to dance in my head. The pain came not because I wanted to switch spots but because I wanted to be experiencing those things too. I really like how nicely things happened for her: she and her husband dated for four years and have been married now for six and a half years; they got plenty of dating life and married-without-kids life, which I always wanted. However, I’m certain that things happen for a reason, my time will come, and the way things end up working out will be exactly what I need. I plan to enjoy the ride in the meantime. I’m also glad that our friendship has withstood these life changes.

I laugh when I think of all the incomplete conversations we had yesterday. In fact, I need to send Jov an email to finish those conversations and ask her to finish some of the thoughts she started but couldn’t complete. We’re also planning a pedicure in the near future to give us some interrupted time and I’m looking forward to that.

Updated to add: the things I’ll remember are Mateja’s smiles, how well Luka knows Adele’s 21 album, dancing around in the living room to Adele’s Rumour Has It, playing pretend with Luka.

(Oh, and I don’t think my destiny is sugar consumption…that was a joke!)

I’ve been wanting to vacuum my house for two weeks. A couple of years ago, I inquired on Facebook about how late is too late to be vacuuming when you have a neighbour who lives below you and I think people had said 9pm at that time. In my head, over time, that shifted to 8pm (I actually love vacuuming; I just felt bad because the lady who lives below me is probably in her 60s), and given my tendency to get home late from work, the vacuuming wasn’t getting done. Saturdays would be ideal, but I was too busy sleeping in, washing my hair (really), leaving on the conditioner for an hour then rinsing it out, doing laundry, and slothing (not a word but it really should be) about to add anything else to my schedule. And on Sundays I’d head to my parents’ place after church so I’d get home too late to vacuum (if I didn’t sleep over).

Everything changed this past Friday: I got home (late, but before 8pm) and instead of unwinding (which can take anywhere from 30 minutes to “the rest of the evening”), I immediately vacuumed. And instead of doing the upstairs on Saturday as I told myself I could, I just did it all on Friday evening. And instead of telling myself I could do the laundry on Saturday like I usually do, I put in a load as I was going to bed on Friday night. And when I woke up frightfully early on Saturday (anytime before 11am is truly frightful, but this was before 9am!), I allowed myself to stay in bed until 9:30am but then I kicked myself out of bed, put that laundry in the dryer, did my hair routine and used that hour with my hair in a conditioning cap to clean my kitchen. It felt great, and even though this is a long weekend I already feel like I was extraordinarily productive.

As I look around my house, there is still so much that is out of place: papers need to be filed (doing that once this entry is complete), same with receipts, Christmas decor needs to be put in the storage room (ditto), and two of my succulents are dying to be transplanted (I really want to put this off but I have no good reason to, especially since I have two new, larger pots). By doing things right away, I’ll save precious brain space that I used to use to unsuccessfully keep track of my unending to do lists.

Win-win.