30 before 30: 4 months and counting

I've been chronicling a list I came up with three years ago entitled "30 before 30": a list of 30 things I wanted to do before I turned 30. If you'd like to see its progression click here for the original, and here for the follow-up.

I turn 30 in 130 days.

Let's review, shall we?

1. Take dance lessons again.
   Since I now head up the dancercession team that dances with the Freshwind Band when they lead worship, I think I can check this one off. Us in action.
   
2. Get my driver's license.
   I applied for my G1. Again. But I still haven't done my driving test.
   
3. Perform in live theater again.
   Does preaching count?
   
4. Visit ESL teacher-friends in B.C.
   They came to visit me...but we didn't connect. There's still time, I suppose, in 130 days.
   
5. Watch the Nutcracker live.
   I should have reviewed this list prior to Christmas. I still haven't seen the Nutcracker.
   
6. Organize and attend a 10 year DTS reunion at Holmsted Manor.
   Hooray! My first real "check"! We just pulled this off last weekend.
   
7. Attend a Coldplay concert.
   Viva la Vida tour: check!
   
8. Visit my grandparents in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
   Last Thanksgiving weekend: check!
   
9. Take vocal lessons. Preferably jazz.
   Still a goal of mine but doesn't look like it'll happen in the near future.
   
10. Upgrade my B.A. to an honours.
    I researched this not once, not twice, but THREE TIMES and didn't follow through with any of them. In the end, I'm now researching taking creative writing courses instead. Since I like to creative write.
    
11. Promote 24/7 Prayer (preferably a Boiler Room) in Toronto.
    Ran 24/7 Prayer room in 2008: check! On 24/7's provincial team: check! Still technically on their national base team, but MAN! it's been a while since I've been to a meeting...
    
12. See my grade 6 teacher, Miss Huberts, again.
    An email counts, doesn't it? Check!
    
13. Visit the twins I used to babysit, Dylan and Taylor, when I was a teenager.
    Adding them as Facebook friends and messaging them counts, doesn't it? Check!
    
14. Find my pearl earrings.
    What a weird list. Didn't find them, but my amazing husband purchased me new ones.
    
15. Finish my tattoo.
    Ouch. Forget it.
    
16. Get into the habit of saving regularly.
    We're practicing "10/10": 10% for tithe, 10% towards savings, every paycheck. And we're saving $20 from every paycheck and putting it in a baby account for the future. Check!
    
17. Write and publish a book.
    Writing one: check! Published: uncheck. Stay tuned.
    
18. Host a proper, large-scale house party. At my own house.
    Oh so many to count... Check!
19. Do a wine tasting tour in Niagara.
    This was the first one to be checked off: Andrew surprised me with a tour for our 1 year anniversary only two months after I made this list. Check!
    
20. Get a credit card. Use it wisely.
    Three! Check!
    
21. Spend one weekend in seclusion and silence away from the city.
    I've done Encounter weekends, camping weekends, bachelorette weekends, and trips overseas which were all away from various metropoliseseses, but they weren't spent in seclusion. Perhaps I can pull this off before my birthday?
    
22. See Venice and Florence.
    Sob. Not yet.
    
23. Do a day at the spa.
    Andrew and I spent the day at the Elmwood Spa just last month. Delicious. Check!
    
24. Read The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky.
    What th-? Why did I include this, of all novels? Uncheck. Uninspired.
    
25. Volunteer with a homeless ministry downtown.
    Over 20 hours of volunteering a week, but not with a homeless ministry downtown. More like a homefull ministry in North York and the Junction.
    
26. Do a Healing Week.
    As a premarital gift. Check!
    
27. Go on a trip with each of my brothers, specific to them.
    Hey. What a cool idea. Adding to my short-list for the next 130 days...
    
28. Scuba dive.
    Thought I would want to on honeymoon but, SURPRISE!, I ended up preferring lounging on the beach, sleeping, eating, and...other. Happily unchecked.
    
29. Promote and support local artists, musicians and performers.
    I suppose my good friend Nicole pulled this off better than I did. I'm going to check off it anyway. IT'S MY LIST. Check!
    
30. Get married.
    Checkity-check-check!
    

I'm at a 50% (generous) success rate but I'm happy with that. I've accomplished more than I thought I would (or could!) have by this age and I'm coasting into my 30s with a confidence, a joy, and a strength that I never had in my 20s. In the meantime, I think I'll try to knock off #2, #4, #21 and #27 before June 2, 2010. For fun.

Lists aren't simply for those who get a kick out of check marks (not that there's anything wrong with that...) but they're also a great way to gauge progress and the process that gets us there. If you feel inspired maybe you can write your own "30 before 30" list.

Just make sure Dostoevsky isn't on it.

"If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time."
- Zig Zigler

“If you set your goals ridiculously high & it’s a failure,
you will fail above everyone else's success.”
- James Cameron, via @andrewgazaneo

"Much stronger and wiser now I'd like to mention."
- Nicole Evans, candy store clock

older, wiser

I met 2010 whilst counting down over a microphone, on a stage, in front of a few hundred young adults at my home church, TACF, as Andrew and I emceed the final night of the annual conference Heavy Rain. As we "FIVE...FOUR...THREE...TWO..."ed our way into the new year I couldn't have thought of a place I'd rather be, an activity I'd rather be enjoying, or people I'd rather be with.

In just over a week I'll be celebrating another milestone, with a very different group of people: a few of us are meeting at the YWAM base where we did our January 2000 DTS in West Sussex, England. It's strange to think that I was 19 when I landed at Holmsted Manor and congregated in the leather room with 19 of my fellow classmates. I don't remember being nervous, but I do remember wondering how to portray myself. Witty? Charming? Analytical? Which Sarah would best suit this situation? Which Sarah would they like to meet?

Since then, and over the past ten years, all the Sarahs have come together to form a more integrated one. The guests at Heavy Rain received the same Sarah, more or less, as my husband does when I get home from work. As exhausting as it sometimes was, I'm happy to report that I've chased most of the Sarahs down and made a mosaic of them.

I find retrospect dizzying. How many times do we reinvent ourselves, over and over, to achieve more balanced, more holistic, more genuine versions of ourselves? Or, vice versa: how many masks do we handcraft to hide the version of ourselves that we rather we weren't?

How many incarnations have you been through, and how are you better for them? Do you like yourself better now or did you like yourself better then?

wifersize wednesday: I <3 you

I have mixed emotions about technology. I tend to glorify the era I spend the majority of my university tuition on: the Romantic era. Austen's books would whisk me away to a time before cell phones (before phones!), before computers, before electricity, before automobiles. Where heroines would read letters from their beaus by candlelight, once, twice, thrice times over and keep them, folded, with their handkerchiefs in a purse. Next to their dance cards, etc.

I signed up for my first cell phone contract at the ripe age of 26. I even survived a year in Korea without one. I figured, if people wanted to get me on the phone, they'd have to call during the hours that I was in my apartment. Or else it couldn't have been that important. And, in the case of an emergency, call the cops! or an ambulance! what am I going to do about it?

Once I found myself in a stable, long-term relationship, and with the idea of not being able to get in touch with me beginning to drive Andrew to acts of quiet desperation, I signed a three year contract with Rogers. If Andrew hadn't been with me at the time, I don't think I could have gone through with it. BUT WHAT OF READING LETTERS BY CANDLELIGHT?

Nearly four years and an iPhone upgrade later, I hardly think of my cell phone except to answer it, text on it, check my email by it, browse the weather on it, call from it, and amuse myself with games I have programmed into it. Recently, I completed Splume's level 20 in 54.8 seconds. EAT IT.

However, I still can't help but wonder if technology has taken its toll on romance. Anyone in a relationship can tell you that most of the Most Important Conversations you have with a partner grow out of times that there is silence and general inactivity: a car ride, a lazy afternoon, or right before bed. Don't you find these moment less frequent since technology has been squeezing its way into them? How many heartfelt conversations have never bloomed, or have been interrupted, due to a call-, text-, Ping-, Google-, or Wiki-related emergency?

And yet, without technology, Andrew and I wouldn't have flirted shamelessly by posting multiple comments on each other's blogs before we dated. I wouldn't have received the adorable emails in the beginning of our relationship, like this:
We wouldn't have the cell phone pictures of us eating take-out Chinese after moving me into my apartment:
We wouldn't have stories about our notorious beepy phones in the early days, we wouldn't have the DVD of our wedding, we wouldn't have the text-banter we now share as a married couple, we wouldn't know how many Rotten Tomatoes a movie had before seeing it for date night, and we'd never know who was right in a grammatical argument without the online OED at our fingertips.

I'd love to know people's thoughts on the subject. How has technology helped or hampered your romantic relationships?

wifersize wednesday: good times and bad

By now most of you will have already seen this year's Gazaneo Christmas card: a second installment in an annual tradition which we intend on keeping for the rest of our wedded lives. The kids don't know it yet, but they're already signed up to participate for as many years as we can use, coax, bribe, or force them. If we can get two 8-month old pets to pose perfectly, I'm sure kids will be a cinch. They will, right?

Since Andrew and I are speeding headlong into the holiday season with all the poise and balance of a kid running down a steep hill, gaining momentum, and realizing that the legs to torso velocity ratio is widening at a exhilarating yet worrisome rate...

...since we have already attended four Christmas events (three of which were church-related), have hosted two of our own, have a few more yet to go, are involved with the wedding of our good friends Jon & Melissa this weekend, have Christmas shopping still to do, and are preparing for an annual young adult conference at the end of the month...

...since our time, energy, patience, finances, and creativity are being stretched in new and (retrospectively) humourous ways...

...yes, since all of these things, and many more, have been a bit of a balancing act recently it's with great admiration and fondness that I reflect on the simple words exchanged last night after I may or may not have burst into a mild flood of tears because of the strain.

Andrew: [hugging me] "Don't worry, La. It won't do any good."
Me: [moping] "I'm already worried."
Andrew: "Well, then...I love you."

Wouldn't it be nice if everything was raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens? Or would it? On Sunday, I preached that the word advent came from the same Latin root as adventure. I guess there's a reason. Until I know the reason, it's nice to have someone nearby to tell me that I'm loved. Even if I'm willfully worrying, knowing full well that it won't do any good.

He's one of my favourite things.

When the dog bites
When the bee stings
When I'm feeling sad
I simply remember my favorite things
And then I don't feel so bad
"My Favourite Things", The Sound of Music

wifecize wednesday: bluetoothing

We had a Couple (WHO WILL REMAIN NAMELESS) over to our house for lunch on Sunday. Both of them are friends of ours, which made for amusing witty banter, and the lemon/thyme roast chicken + potatoes/carrots that Andrew made was deeeelicious (aren't I blessed? I know!).

After lunch we "retired to the parlour" (which is our way of saying "let's sit on the couches in our living room which are right beside our dining room table") to consume tea. Solomon, our 7-month chocolate lab, was busy inspecting our guests' crotches, so Andrew went upstairs to retrieve an old T-shirt. He came back down, tied it in a knot, and handed one end to me. We each pulled on our end, never breaking the stream of conversation we were having with the Couple.

Guy of Couple: "What...are you guys doing?"
Us: [pause]
Guy: "With the T-shirt?"
Me: "Oh, we're making a tight knot in the middle so Solomon can play with it. It's his favourite toy. T-shirt-in-a-knot."
[Andrew ties double knot and we resume tugging furiously]
Guy to Girl: "I think this is what we have to look forward to."

Guy was right, I realized. The dizzying phase of early dateship paves way for the romance of late dateship, which then turns into the domestic bliss* of marriage.

I can still remember the morning after Andrew and I reunited at a friends' wedding, danced all night, exchanged phone numbers, and went our separate ways, and I can remember the song playing in my mind as I woke was "I Hear Music" by Brisa Roché. I can remember the first time Andrew held my hand, in a movie theater, as he asked me if anything was wrong because he could feel my pulse pounding in my thumb. I can remember the first time he kissed me, outside University College, and tripping twice on the way back to the car because I felt lightheaded.

What we have now, however, outweighs all memories of what we had then. It's in the bluetoothing Andrew and I do every day together: gelling our thoughts, dreams, expectations, jokes, advice, anticipations, and prayers, until the two start to become one.

It's in silly things like wordlessly handing someone one end of a knotted T-shirt and expecting they'll know what to do with it.

* See this post's disclaimer.

2-in-1: wednesday wifersize & friday foto

Since it's been three weeks since my last post, here is both a belated Wifercize Wednesday and a Friday Foto.

Wifercize Wednesday Friday:
Poking around a blog I frequent (BUT CAN NOT CONDONE), I found a curious question posted on its community section:

If you have them, what are the three "nevers" of your life?

Ignoring the number of people that wrote "never say never" as one of their three...followed by two others (really?), I waded my way through until I found one that resounded: "Never marry a man unless you want your son to be just like him."

I had heard variations of this before - comparing a prospective husband to other influential people in your life, including your father, yourself, your male role models, etc. - but never in relation to a son. Fortuitously, since I did not know about this rule prior to marriage, I won. Andrew has so many admirable qualities and characteristics, I would be proud to have a mini-Andrew.

Understanding that people (even little people) make their own decisions and can choose differ greatly from their parents, and understanding even more than many of the flaws and generational garbage that Andrew and I have can and hopefully will be eradicated in their lives, I still believe in the power and blessing of posterity. In mulling over when and if it should be time to start a family (and, in essence, forever changing the two-person "us" factor of our first years of dating and marriage), I recently came to the conclusion that if our kids would be an extension, an amalgamation, of him and me: knowing him, wouldn't I see him in them every day? Wouldn't I, seeing them, love him more?


Friday Foto:
I'm happy to say I've completed a 10 year old goal. For those of you who commute via public transit, you will be familiar with the graffiti art displayed from Dundas West station to Keele station as the subway emerges from its tunnel.

At the age when I began to use the TTC I lived in the Beaches, in the east end of Toronto. My fascination with and ignorance of the west end was partially due to never exploring the city past Spadina station (that's where Kensington market was and, therefore, as far west as my teenaged heart could desire) unless it was from what I gathered from the window of a subway car, partially due to Old Mill station (I could spot the magical Old Mill itself, where my parents were married and which was familiar to me from old wedding photos), and partially due to this graffiti mural. I naturally assumed the west (especially between Dundas West station and Keele station) was a dark, seedy underworld of crime and violence, pitting itself against the majestic forces of Old Mill.

The trip from the Beaches to Kipling is long. You would not fault me for fanciful daydreaming if you knew.

Ever since those years I wanted to make the time to get off at Dundas West and document the mural on foot until Keele, but never did until recently. Unfortunately, the original mural that I grew up with has been painted over and this is a new incarnation.

There's something about graffiti - illegal (unless commissioned, which these murals no doubt are) and vandalistic - that transforms an otherwise drab city into a palette of colour. I mean, if you're going to break the law, there are worse things you could do.

From west (Keele station) to east (Dundas West station). Click on an image to see a larger version. Please try to ignore any obscenities. It adds to the colour!