Today marks the start of the 7th week that I have been going to First Choice Fitness. I go twice a week for 2 hours each day to work with a personal trainer. I absolutely love it. Richard Burr is an awesome trainer, great to work with, sets the bar really high and on top of all that he is a big reader. I love it!!! I started taking my two oldest with me last week, one on one day and the other on the second day. D of course had already been there last year for a month. It was her tennis coach who had suggested First Choice to us. She is very mature and grounded and I knew she would have no issues meeting the coach head-on for whatever tasks he has in store for her. She loves going and would go both days if I would take her. I wasn’t sure how things would go with K. He enjoyed fitness in Florida, but I wasn’t sure how he would handle the 11/2 – 2 hours on his own with a trainer. However today, as usual, he really impressed me. He lasted the 11/2 hours and was eager to try things he saw others doing. The great thing about it was the trainer accommodated him and away he went. The thing that most impressed me was this thing called sleds. Richard has me do a lot of exercises where the exercise is designed to tax your whole body (many muscle groups). One of these exercises is pushing and pulling sleds.  The sled is 50 Lbs, and then you can add weights to it. When I first pushed it, I had to do it empty and it was tough. Now, I’m starting to find it easy to do an additional 50 Lbs 5 lengths (50 m) pushing and the 5 pulling. K has heard me talk about these sleds over the last few weeks and when he saw them, he immediately asked to try it. I was sure he wouldn’t be able to push it at all because of course it was hard for me the first time and after all he is only 54 Lbs, but I am a firm believer in letting the kids do, without limiting them by my pre-conceptions. Well, was I ever surprised and thoroughly impressed to see him push it for two lengths (I’m sure he could have done more, but someone else was supposed to be using it and so we left them to it). I was happy that I had chosen to keep my preconceptions to myself, that I had not tried to dissuade him from at least making the attempt at his vision of conquering the sled. He never doubted for a moment that he could do it and it was such a beautiful thing to see him accomplish it. When I reminded him how hard it was for me at the beginning,  there was a noticeable spring in his steps as he left with his trainer to go and challenge himself with other new and exciting things. I was quite thrilled to know him, he put a special smile on my face and a glow in my heart.

What do these three things have in common? Well, they would all need to be present for my ideal personal holiday. This would be a retreat just for me, a meditative space. I would love to go away for at least two weeks by myself. I would take minimal things, most important in my luggage would be my books to read, journal to write in, sketch book to work in and computer on which to work on my children’s books.

My first experience with the French language was when we had a teacher from Togo come to my school in Nigeria and teach us a little bit of French. Togo is a neighbor of Nigeria’s and while Nigeria is an English speaking country, Togo is French. I fell in love. I cannot even remember what we learned now, but I still remember the feeling of love at hearing the first beautiful lyrical sounds of French.

The comments on my previous article about the importance of girls learning and doing the ‘manly’ stuff and boys learning and practicing what the old paradigm would call ‘woman’s work’ so that none of us need be unduly dependent on another made me think of another story I want to share with you.

No, your eyes are not deceiving you. I did not mean to write resolutions and by accident typoed revolutions. I have been working on these revolutions for the last few years. Read Chris Brady’s article to gain a fuller understanding of why I am doing this. I want to grow and become different,I want to be a mover and a shaker in an important movement. These are some of my past choices.

1. Colors: burgundy, mango and avocado;
2. Activities by myself: reading, writing, and dancing;
3. Books: Leadership books written as parables such as Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson;
4. Heroes: Gandhi, Buddha and Jesus;
5. Thing to do: dream, visualize, make things happen, then teach my children those principles;
6. Gifts: something someone has made for me with a lot of thought as well as nice clothes and jewelery ;
7. Sports: tennis, volleyball, and rowing;
8. Food: sushi, palm oil chop, groundnut stew, spicy seafood and eggplant curries, brussel sprouts (the way my mom makes it);
9. Fruits: pomegranate and raw or ripe mangoes;
10. Miscellaneous: Thunder storms, sandy beaches, clear water, fragrant flowers, dancing in the rain, love stories, love letters, high quality chocolate, and romance.

On Thursday, July 24, 1997, Chuti woke up early and made me a delicious breakfast at his place. That really made my day. He‘s a great chef.

I told my husband about a paper I wrote in 1988, in the beginning of grade 9, while I was in French Immersion. It was titled ‘Les Qualités d’un bon Epoux’, which translates to ‘The Qualities of a good Husband’. I wrote this over 21 years ago, two and a half years after I came to Canada, and eleven days BEFORE Chuti moved to Canada. And I got exactly what I described. I just found it and I thought I would share it with you.

We had a lot of great things going for us. After all, we had known each other practically our whole lives and had been dating for 8 years before we said our “I do’s”.  So, how were our early days? Well, I guess I would say it was a mixed bag. There was that whole honeymoon period, so that was great. We had fun and all that. However, the differences in our personality started to have an impact on living together day to day. Read my blog on personalities to fully comprehend what I am going to describe. Chuti is a high C/S combination and I am a D/I combination which means we butted heads on certain things. The main thing was housework. Yeah, you read right…. HOUSEWORK. I was never up to snuff. This battle started during our honeymoon. So, what`s a girl to do? The worst part of it was of course I wasn’t very good at it. I tried, but as Yoda says ‘Do or do not… there is no try.’ This went on for a few years until two miraculous things happen.

The first time we met was in Nigeria. I do not know exactly how old I was, but it was around the age of 4. Our parents were all teachers working in Nigeria. We lived about 45 minutes apart and saw each other often enough.