Stacerella

It’s been two weeks since I last blogged. In that time, we’ve celebrated Thanksgiving and my husband’s birthday. I have photos on the HD Flip as well as on the new digital camera he won from one of our suppliers, but I haven’t had time to process them. I have some photos (I think) of the delicious dinner rolls I made for our Thanksgiving dinner with Joe’s side of the family. When I get some time this weekend, I will throw them up here along with the shots of the roasted vegetables I brought to dinner that night.

And when I haven’t been cooking and/or baking, I have been consumed with cutting up video footage to make my brother some kick-ass how-to cooking DVDs. And last night I took an hour out to make a tribute photo montage video for the first anniversary of my nephew’s passing at the cruel hands of cancer. So, yeah… I’m bit all over the map these days.

Bare with me, everyone. Tomorrow is a very tough day I need to get over. I will see what I can do for you all after that.

Sue got me thinking about labels and how they are applied to us, from others in our everyday life and strangers all the down the rung to ourselves. I have had a blog post in me for awhile about someone I used to work with when I first moved to Toronto that I haven’t been able to formulate or take the time to really think out until now. This may end up being a two part blog post, but for now, here is a scenario that clearly illustrates how labels can mislead us and others about who a person is and what they’re capable of.

There are things in life we state that we feel absolutely resolute about, that we stand behind for decades without fail or flinching. Things that make others equally admire us for our stance on one issue and repel them because of that very stance. A long time ago I worked in a two person office with another woman who was very anti-children, and often took the time to mention how she could easily see me married with kids of my own. I was amused by this because, despite my love of kids I never felt I wanted any, while she maintained she went to great lengths never to get pregnant because she didn’t want any of her own and was constantly bothered by children out in public. Like a cat who gets its back up in the presence of evil, she would bristle at the very thought of being around children.

Let me paint you a picture of what and who she was back then: 5′5″ or so, red curly hair, very pale skin, very skinny (bitch), liked to wear funky thrift finds, hated that the only well paid jobs were in the corporate world, hated corporate life, wanted to leave the industry we were in within a few years after paying off her massive student loads, worked as a part-time book editor and as a part-time DJ along side her boyfriend of a billion years, eschewed much of the blights on society like sky-high office buildings and massive consumerism, disliked her family and family culture in general, made fun of the lemmings in the office every chance she got, despised the thought of hierarchy but understood it very well and could fake a bit of it whenever need be, very socially and environmentally ethical, very intelligent, very accomplished in her areas of study and interests outside the office, very well read and very much in love with all kinds of offbeat and underground music. She had many passions that gave her a full, fun and often busy life outside of the office. She inspired me to develop my own interests that I never had the chance or opportunity to do when I lived back home. She and I talked a lot about different stuff, and I learned a lot from her on all kinds of different subjects, and she was supportive of my wacky choices and decisions despite the little twinges of skepticism I would occasionally see across her face, like the time I first mentioned I didn’t want to get pregnant and how gross I thought the idea of an alien growing inside of me was. She laughed it off and said I would change my mind someday sure as she was sitting there. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think to say the same thing to her. When she stated her views and stances, I accepted that she would probably never waver from them because she just wasn’t flighty or flaky. So, basically she was very much UNlike me.

Imagine my total surprise years after I was let go from that job that she was off on mat leave. Wow! My head spun. I had no idea she was even in a relationship (to be honest, we don’t talk as often as we did back then) let alone thinking of getting pregnant. It never occurred to me that by leaving the man she was with when we worked together that she would hook up with someone who would inspire her to change her mind on the subject and go for it. I thought she was hardcore (while I was simply softcore… in the head)! I always thought I would get married, but was very unsure about whether I could be talked into children. As it turns out, I couldn’t be, not that any man really tried hard to be honest (I guess they either wanted me all to themselves or they were trying to tell me something about my gene pool and I wasn’t listening hard enough). No matter. Life for me worked out the way it was supposed to and the way I always felt it would since I was 16.

I am also very surprised to find her still working for that same corporate hellhole over 11 years after she first begrudgingly took the job to pay off her massive student loans. Guess she either got really good at corporate life or she needed to hold onto the job because a lot of her publishing dreams dried up. Dunno which it was, but I always felt a little sad that some of her bigger dreams didn’t take her away from that job like she and I both hoped it would. No matter, I guess. Life for her worked out the way it was supposed to in the end despite all of the labels she gave herself long before she showed up for her first day of work in our office. I’m not sure if those are all changes she made to adapt to life, or if they were conscious choices to survive, or if she grew to love the life and company she worked at after all in the face of all the ideals she held so dear and revered.

I have always been fluid and adaptable where employment is concerned, and never really started to hate bosses or jobs till I worked with her. After she opened my eyes, mind and code of ethics, I started to feel differently about my personal time, my personal life needs and privacy. I can’t ever go back to who I was when we first met, but that’s okay. I’m sure she would agree that I’m a much better person now than I was back then. I have grown, stretched and soared since leaving that office, and her, behind. I don’t care much what anyone thinks of my life choices, but I’m sure she would be pleased with how well things have panned for me. Whatever she was lacking, seeking or wanting… I’m sure she got it in the end. And, really, that’s all that important and all we should want for people we label our “friends,” right?

Windows 7 debut in 2009? Another reason to skip Vista by ZDNet’s Adrian Kingsley-Hughes — If Windows 7 really is scheduled to make an appearance during the second half of 2009, does this mean that making the move to Vista is now a pointless effort?