Suzy Says

Kelly gave me a great tip for dealing with the fear I’m currently experiencing. I’m going to pick it up as soon as I can. It’s time to start working on that confidence!

It’s amazing that a lifetime of experience can be cancelled out – at least temporarily – by something that only takes a few seconds. I guess the same is true when you catch your spouse cheating or someone you love dies, and you’d think if there was one lesson I had learned over the past couple of years, it would be that your life can change so suddenly and when it does, it’s rarely for the better.

I told my trainer about The Incident yesterday (last week being too occupied with work and sickness to go to the gym) and she was horrified. She said, “Of course you’re upset! Someone invaded your personal space in an aggressive and sexual way against your wishes. I mean, he violated you!” I wonder if I would have freaked out as badly if he had grabbed my arm. I don’t know. All I know is, it wasn’t at all like the time I was in France and a passing guy swept off my hat and kissed my cheek, or even being chased all over the roof of the Milan Cathedral in the pouring rain by Italian schoolboys (who, it turned out, only wanted to give me a rose, though carrying one around just in case seems odd. Or possibly just Italian).

Anyway, I’ll get the book and take the next self-defense course offered at the gym – they have had them before – and try to renew my shaken faith in human nature, or as it might be, mankind, since I don’t fear my sister women.

Other than that, I’m treading water at work and the treadmill at the gym, so there ain’t a whole lot to report these days. I have to get everything done by the self-imposed deadline of May 30, when John and I leave for Toronto, SARS be damned.

I have decided that having a single day to celebrate one’s birthday is wholly inadequate and completely unfair. Even someone as math-challenged as I am can see that having only 1/365th of a year dedicated to the celebrating of one’s existence is insufficient. So the week of June 1 is officially my Birthday Week.

I never work on my birthday, that being one of my few principles, and since I will have that week without work at all, it makes sense to celebrate all week. I’ll be surrounded by friends and I won’t have to get up early, so why not?

Also when I turned 40 last year, it was horrible. Not only did I have to face being an old bag, but it was the first birthday without my father, and I spent most of the day crying instead of celebrating. So I’m going to make up for it this year.