The first of the winter colds

Oh, hurrah. 

At the daycare potluck I noticed that a number of the small children had runny noses, and sure enough, my child did as well within a day. This morning I woke up with a throat that was a lot more noticeable than I really preferred, and I'm rather tired. The Boy is cranky and sleepy and needy and I'm trying not to remember that last winter he spent most of the time ill and cranky and -- most crucially -- waking up in the night. I seem to recall that at 18 months -- last summer -- he was starting to sleep pretty well at night, and that last winter blew that all to hell with the continuous daycare cold. 

However, if there's one thing I have learned about having a child is that everything changes. And this winter? We have TELEVISION. 

**********

It's a long weekend here so we are kicking back and relaxing. I am feeling terribly smug as well because I cleaned a bunch of boxes out of the house yesterday and organized a closet and am now feeling more than legitimately able to sit on the couch the rest of the weekend reading books and blogging. The Man is cooking, which is pretty much makes the weekend perfect -- French Onion soup tonight, roasted in the oven, and then falafel with pita and houmos and tabbouleh tomorrow. 

(Amanda! Look! We're eating more vegetarian. I am inspired by your blog!)

Of course tomorrow night we may be hosting six (6) cousins from England for dinner. For those of you not in the know we currently have four (4) dining room chairs. This could be interesting. Eight adults! One toddler! 850 square feet! I have no idea where I will put everyone. It's a good thing I cleaned out two (2) boxes. I'm sure that will make all the difference.

Nerds

This afternoon we had a babysitter. We went out at 2 for sukiyaki at the "new" restaurant. We ate lots and enjoyed the quiet of sitting in a restaurant without having to entertain a toddler. And then we went to the bookstore. We intended to buy two books and then go and read them. We didn't find anything we wanted, but then drove to the beach anyway and sat around talking, as we almost never get to do.

We went home, put the child to bed, and came out to the living room. I am blogging and reading. The Man is playing a logic puzzle and listening to a lecture on string theory.

We are both very happy.

It's possible that we are unbearably nerdy.

Daycare potluck

Yesterday evening was the annual daycare summer barbeque; I made dessert, given that that's pretty much the only thing I know how to make. It's been several months since the last meet-up of any variety, and in those intervening months many of the kids have left; this meant that there's a whole new crop of parents for me to get to know. Do I even need to say -- hey, introvert, here's a fun evening -- a whole pile of people you don't know!! Whee!

Anyway, it was not that bad. I can make small talk if I want to, and it's even easier when there's a steady stream of available banter: the children. 

I met the mom of a new little boy who is the same age -- older by a month -- than my own. You'd never know it, though -- he's tiny and never speaks. While we were talking, The Boy came over and said something to me and she looked at me in astonishment and said "He speaks!" and then went on to explain that her little boy only has a few words that he knows. She's an international student, so I posited that might be because if a child is learning two languages at once, they often find that hard and don't speak as early as others. 

"No," she said. "We just don't talk to him much." She laughed in an embarrassed way. She's a student, she explained, her husband is an adjunct lecturer, so they are very busy at home and do their own thing and don't talk to their two year old much. 

At first I thought ... uh, that's not that great and then I thought -- well, you know, I don't think that my own grandmothers went about their day with a running monologue, as I was told to do, so that my child would learn to speak. This mother was a very attentive, loving mother -- it just wasn't a focus for her. I think her little boy would have found it easier to settle into daycare if he spoke more, but that's just what worked for my child -- maybe it wouldn't have made a difference for hers.

************

Many of the families brought their older children with them to the potluck -- to this one, one of the little boy's fathers brought his two older girls, who were probably 7 and 5-ish. The Boy took a liking to the older one, a lovely dark haired beauty of a girl, and went over and asked her to play. She, being the polite and kind type, said yes and took his proffered hand. He then led her over to me and said proudly "This is MY mommy."

I think those are good instincts, really. The first thing you do with a nice girl? Introduce her to your mother. 

Comfort Food. In August. Oh, and an existential crisis.

Vancouver has decided that summer is unequivocally over, and had replaced the hot temperatures that we had fleetingly for three weeks ("summer") with cold, damp, rainy weather. I grew up on the west coast, and this weather doesn't faze me; in fact I admit somewhat sheepishly that I like it. It feels cozy and homey and bizarrely comforting. There's nothing I like more than listening to rain outside, while I am curled up inside with tea and a good book and warm food.

This was all possible before the Toddler arrived. 

But as much as I am not a fan of hot weather -- I burn, I've had suspicious moles removed, I am a walking advertisement for sunscreen -- even I have felt that this summer was somehow ... lacking. And as I sat in my office yesterday wondering what I wanted for dinner, I suddenly realized I was craving spaghetti and meatballs -- lots of carbs, in other words. OH. COMFORT FOOD. 

It's AUGUST. In August, I should still be eating salad. 

It's not so much really that I rue the changing of the seasons, it's more that I am sad about how fast the time is going. My child is two and a half! It's been over three years since I was nauseous and pukey with morning sickness! Three years! Where has the time gone? And as much as I feel exhausted by the constant needs of a child, I realize that in mere moments I will have a teenager who comes out of his room only for sustenance and never talks to me! And then an empty house with occasional visits for Christmas! How is it possible that the weeks seem to speed by faster and faster each passing year?? Where is my life going? AAAAIIIIIEEEE!!!!

*******

yes, I did get all that from spaghetti. It's possible that I project a leetle too much.

Moving

Throughout my twenties, I moved a lot. I liked it. The excitement of a new city, of discovering new things, of new possibilities. I think in many ways I was trying to find me, find who I am and where I fit, and I wanted to see if I would fit in any of those new cities. It was an adventure. It was fun. 

In the end, though, I never really fit. None of the cities I tried, as much as I liked them for their own reasons, was my city. 

I'm not sure Vancouver is my city, either. I really do like the city in many ways -- I like the weather, I like the atmosphere, I like the availability of organic food and yoga, I like the liberal-ness, I like the beaches, I like the restaurants, I like the shopping ... I don't like the people, who are pretty unfriendly, and I hate the cost.

The cost sucks.

I don't know why I'm thinking of this right now, but I'm bored at work and I'm looking at a bunch of plans for our future, and realizing that living somewhere else in this country would afford us a bigger place and less financial stress, and the possibility of a larger family and working fewer hours. I could quite possibly do work I want to do -- look at writing things I want to write more than things that need writing -- even though it would mean less money. There are so many advantages in living in another place, and most other places have good restaurants and yoga and organic food, and liberal folks and a nice arts scene.

No place has the sea, though. At least, no place we're considering. And I do like the sea. 

The fact is that I would never leave this city if it were cheaper. I like so much about it. And the cost seems like such a small thing, but the cost of living impacts pretty much everything about your life. What you can do, what vacations you can take, what jobs you can take, where you live, where your kids go to school, what kinds of opportunities your kids can have ... so much. And I don't know if I'm willing to sacrifice all those things for the four times a year I go to the ocean. Is it worth it? I don't know. 

And then on the other hand, as I yearn for a life that has less stress .... living in a place you don't like won't be less stressful. And there are always new stresses. So ... maybe better the devil you know. 

I just wish that we had another bedroom. That's all. Is that so wrong??

What that post was actually about

I read over the last post, and what I think has happened, really, is that I have just had to realize that my childhood dreams of Writer -- my childhood image of What That Is -- has just had to shift. I may not ever write The Great Novel -- I may never even write a novel, even a bad one -- but that doesn't mean I am not a Writer. For the longest time when people asked me what I did, and I would say "I'm a writer" I would feel like a fraud. I'm not a writer! I write proposals for a living! Speeches! Letters and correspondence and articles and webpages and long reams of information, but I am not a Writer. This is not what a Writer does. 

But the fact is, as I have come to realize, that making a living as a Writer and solely as a Writer will almost always involve writing what people want written, not I think needs to be written. Sure, many people do make a living writing things that are more to their taste than what I write now. It is possible. It's not happening for me right now, but it may someday. 

One writer who I used to read a lot was John Scalzi, at the Whatever (You can google him and find his blog), and he writes a lot about how he has made a living as a writer -- and a good one -- for years, and how he started off writing all sorts of things for other people, and now he is good enough that he writes what he wants to instead. And perhaps I am on that trajectory, that I will eventually write more and more what I want.

But maybe I won't. And that's ok. I'm still a Writer. My paycheque says so.

It is unwise to ignore the precepts of fate

When I was six I decided I wanted to be a writer. I spent a great deal of my time reading, writing, or otherwise creating the characters I wanted to write about. I had whole reams of paper on these people, their character, family, place they lived. I suppose it was in a way a type of imaginary friend, only there were many of them and once I had sussed out their person and reason for being, I moved onto the next one. 

One can also posit that this was in place of a sister who was present but lacking in general, shall we say, friendliness. But I digress.

Anyway. Sometime over the ensuing years, I became convinced that being a writer was Too Hard. That is was hard and rather impractical to make a living as a writer, so I abandoned that life goal. I don't even know where this came from, but it was unerringly accurate for such a young child -- making a living as a writer, particularly as a writer who writes only what they want to write, as opposed to writing for a specific audience, IS hard to do. It just hadn't occurred to me at that time that writing what OTHER people wanted might in fact be a reasonable career option. 

I opted instead to try being an academic. An Arts academic, which is really just a type of being a writer, for what does one do as a researching arts academic? Read. Research. Write about it. After completing my Master's degree I decided that this too was a hard way to make a living, especially being the academic that *I* wanted to be, and so I gave it up. (There's no work in writing all day, right?? Despite the fact that lots of people DO IT.) And went into publishing. 

I started off working in the Marketing department of an academic publishing house (seamlessly knitting together one failed career attempt with the new one, ha ha). And in a short while ended up ... reading and writing marketing copy. But what I really wanted was to be an editor, and kept hoping over the years that a position would open up. That was my new Life Goal.

After a few years of that, life blew up and I left publishing and the publishing capital of Canada for home, and decided to change career paths. I got a few jobs as an editor, which I was thrilled about. Woo! Life had imploded, but I had some good jobs! 

And hated them. I'm just not cut out for editing all day. I find I either read the stuff, because it's good, or it's so boring that I can't actually get through it. Another career option scratched.

Through a strange twist of fate and a few heretofore unpredictable networking events, I happened upon a job. As a writer. And desperate as I was for work, having not found anything suitable in the six months I had been in the city, I took it. 

See, I've never thought I am a good writer. I'm fair, I admit, I understand grammar and I have a few reasonable rhetorical tricks up my sleeve, but I don't think I'm necessarily better than many other people. For another thing, writing for a living is a pretty thankless job. Everyone thinks they can write, and so they don't tend to value the writer much -- if everyone can do it, then there's really no need to make the writer feel valued. There's always someone else. And what other job do you spend your day putting something together only to have everyone and their puppy criticize it when you're done? I mean really, this ain't a job for the faint of heart. So I took the job with the full intent of moving through it into something else.

So I have toiled around this job for a few years, working, in my mind, out of writing and into middle management. Perhaps not that much of a step up, but there you go. And earlier this year, about eight months ago, a management job came along that I was perfect for. Or so I thought. I applied, got an interview, and impressed them enough ... that they offered the job to someone internal and then offered ME the job of ... 

Senior Writer. 

I thought about it, and ultimately, I turned it down. There were lots of reasons for this, but the primary one was that it wasn't the way I wanted to go in my career. Plus my own boss was going on mat leave soon, and they would likely put our manager into her position leaving his open and there was really no one else in my department better suited for his position than me, so by just waiting a few more months, I'd get what I wanted. 

Fast forward a few months, and as predicted, the manager is taking over the director's job, and ... oh, and yet there's no manager's job. There are lots of reasons for this, none of which I need to go into here, but as a consolation prize of sorts, the director tells me brightly that she *has* arranged for a promotion of sorts for me, more money and more responsibility and isn't that great! She's sure I'll be pleased! And guess what? My new title is ... 

Senior Writer. 

It's been eight and a half years now. Eight and a half years through which I have spent the majority of my day writing for my paycheque. I may have no confidence in this career path or my ability in it, but apparently someone does.

And finally, with this last promotion, I have surrendered. This is something I have wanted my whole life, and I have it, I've had it for years. I've pushed it away for almost 30 years. Maybe it's time I just gave up and accept it for what it is. I'm not writing what I want to, I'm not writing any novels or the things I thought I would as a six year old, but the fact is that it is much easier to make a living as a writer when you write what other people want. And so I do. Day in, day out. And maybe some day I'll get round to those stories. But for the time being, I think perhaps I just need to accept that the universe has decided for me who I am. And I need to run with it, and see where it takes me. I am obviously not in control here. 

Plugging Massage

Many years ago, when I met The Man, he was living with a lovely woman who was, as I found out, a Registered Massage Therapist. She became a good friend over the years, and at one point many years ago, also became my massage therapist. It's fantastic for migraines, at least for mine, because I carry a great deal of stress in my shoulders and neck, which -- if not the cause -- certainly makes the migraines a great deal worse. 

It was a strange thing, I admit, being massaged by someone who I also ate dinner with once in a while, but she is so professional and casual about it that I ceased to worry. And now that, a few years back when we asked her to come to the birth of her child, I no longer have anything to hide from her given the unfortunate position she had at the moment of birth. She was traumatized, she said, for weeks afterwards. After that, touching my back and shoulders really is small potatoes.

It was during the pregnancy, though, that the efficacy of massage really came through for me. I had been suffering All-Day Sickness for a few weeks, sickness that would start around 11am and last until I went to sleep, and I was fairly miserable with it, refusing all dinner and feeling horrid when The Man would cook something out of starving desperation. One evening I went for a massage and for the first time in weeks I actually felt hungry -- not just lack of nausea, I actually felt hungry. 

We went out for a meal.

The migraines have been worse again recently, so I went this morning for another massage. An hour of nice conversation and muscle manipulation, and I spent the rest of the day feeling pleasantly pummeled. A good start to the weekend. 

And after all that, the reason my extended health covers this lovely process is because of the migraines. I guess it's true that every cloud does have a silver lining. 

What does THIS say about our parenting?

As I was writing the last post, sitting in my living room with my child, the doorbell rang. Without hesitation, The Boy leapt up with a great deal of excitement and ran for the door yelling "who is it? maybe it's CHINESE!"

I suppose we get delivery a little round these parts.

Powers of my mind

I woke up this morning in a bit of a funk, at 5:30am, and couldn't get back to sleep thinking about a situation at work which has been troubling me and which I knew I would have to deal with today, along with a few other things like meetings (ahhh! introvert in meetings! noooooooo!) 

I got to work at the regular time, puttered around waiting for my boss, and eventually early this afternoon had a moment to address the issue. I had been kind of nervous all morning about it, and I went in, and said what I wanted to (which is good for me, because asking for what I want when I know it will inconvenience people is hard!) and he was just like ... "ok, fine, no problem."

See, this is the problem with having a wicked good imagination. Things are pretty much never as bad as I fear. Because I can fear Pretty Damn Good. 

Now if I could just use this power for good instead of evil, think how many lives I could save. Or something. 

Things I wish I could say

I have avoided taking The Boy to get his hair cut for six months or more. It's not his favourite activity -- he dislikes sitting still, people touching his hair, any kind of even mild restraint of limbs and -- this ones the topper -- HATES having water on his head. Of any kind. So it does seem that growing his hair out really is the best alternative. But I persevere. He's a hot kid, I really don't think that long hair -- which we'd then have to take care of, through, you guessed it, sitting still, touching his hair, and washing it with water -- is really going to improve the situation. 

For the past few haircuts, I took him to a local salon. It's a ladies / family salon, but they aren't keen on little kids. Or at least, they sure as hell aren't enthusiastic when I walk in with him. However, there is a kids salon not far from here with the ride-on chairs, tv, the works. It's twice the price, of course but I thought ... what the heck. Let's give it a try. It can't be worse than the other salons. And what's a little money!

And I made an appointment for today, 10am, first appointment of the day. The Boy is almost always more affable in the mornings, things are less crowded, parking is easier. All great reasons. 

But this morning, despite having slept what I thought was reasonably well, The Boy woke grumpy. Touchy, sad, prone to tears. Rubbing at his eyes at 8:30 and looking sleepy. Honestly my first thought was ... this is a Very Bad Day to go get a haircut. But then again ... when *is* a good day? I can't always wait for a day that he wakes up happy and enthusiastic and well-rested -- you know that'll be a day when I need to go to work, or there won't be any open appointments, or something. So I figure the worst that can happen is that we have to go home, we may as well give it a try. 

The Boy is enthusiastic about the park outside, and about going inside the building, but the salon scores no points whatsoever. He does not want to sit on the horsie, he does not want to sit on the chair. Eventually, with the promise of possible tv shows, I sit on the chair and he consents to sit on my lap, but he does not want a cape, he does not want to be touched. He cringes every time the lady walks by, and whimpers piteously. I comfort him, he relaxes a little. The show comes on. He smiles. I figure we might as well go for it. 

Another woman is there with her two children and her nanny. Her little girl sits on the horsie that The Boy has spurned and is going to get her hair cut too. The woman looks over at me imperiously. "You're going to want to remove his jacket. And his shirt, probably, too." I look at her incredulously. Can she not see that he's already practically in tears? He's clutching his clothing and whimpering. Taking off his shirt is certainly not going to HELP here. 

"He's going to get COVERED in hair," she continues. "And you'll NEVER get it out of his clothes!"

At this I really want to say "No! Really! Is THAT what happens with a hair cut? Because I hadn't THOUGHT ABOUT THAT!" and also "NEVER? Wow, that's too bad that we will have to burn these clothes! Or, wait, perhaps you're DOING IT WRONG because a bath and a clothes washer have always worked pretty well for me!"

And she looks at me again. "I've Been There," she says ominously, and I picture her taking one of those sticky rollers to her children and stripping them bare to remove every last extraneous hair, shrieking in agony because that Hair! Will! Not! Go! Away! I cannot bring myself to get excited over this. We have three cats. It's a miracle we're not ALREADY covered in hair.

I smile politely and say none of these things. I simply say "well, I'm more concerned with getting his hair cut." and turn away back to my child. Who has, once they finally managed to get the DVD player to work, become wreathed in smiles for the shows. 

(Can I just note that perhaps, people who work there, you could learn how to put the shows on? It's not like this is something new for you. I'm pretty sure that you have to work this TV and DVD player pretty much every single day. I have a toddler who is near melting point here, and I think expediency would be GREAT.)

Anyway. She cuts and The Boy squirms and cries a little, and then gets distracted by the tv and starts smiling and laughing, and repeat, repeat, repeat over 30 minutes until we have some semblance of a hair cut. I'm happy enough; I really don't care if it's perfect, I'm more concerned with a.) is it better and b.) is he traumatized (answer: not yet, and considerably less so after we leave the salon, and get on every single ride-on car we can find, and then buy a toy as a nice bribe. GO parenting skills!) He's getting more and more unhappy because the hair keeps going down his neck, and as we turn to leave finally I hear the other mother say, in a very loud voice "It's because he's itchy!" 

Because I'm obviously new at this, both the parenting and the haircutting, and have no idea that hair down the back of your neck can be itchy. I ignore her and go pay for the haircut. I'm happy with the haircut, by the way. The woman was nice, she did her best with a squirming child and she was patient at all times. I couldn't have asked for more. The haircut itself is not perfect, but it's as perfect as you can get when trying to cut a child's hair with the parent in the way and with a child moving around. 

You know, the words were bad enough, but honestly the way she said them was just as bad. First of all, I don't need to be told these things, I can parent my child just fine, thank you. And secondly, that know-it-all tone really just gets my back up. 

I wonder if I shouldn't speak up more. I'm not the type to do this, I am always the turn-the-other-cheek person. But people's words make me angry, and then I come home and stew about it, and think nasty thoughts about HER parenting, judging HER as a mother, and I'm pretty sure that doesn't exactly make me the bigger person here. Oh, sure, I didn't SAY those things, but does that matter? really?

More to the point -- do I want my child to grow up not to be able to say things himself when he wants to? He is already that way, and I wonder if perhaps he gets it from me. It could, I suppose, be an inborn trait, part of being a shy person. But does he learn from watching too, watch me hold in my anger, watch me ignore barbs that I should really have said something about? It's not bitchy to look her calmly in the eye and say "Thanks for your advice, but I think we're going to do it my way." or something similar. I'd like him to know that he can stand up for himself, say what he wants to, defuse a situation and not spend hours thinking about these remarks and then blogging them for all the world to see. 

Not that blogging them isn't good therapy. I'm just saying. 

Inner monologue

Work, 11am.

God, another one of those days when I just get to wait on other people. I don't really want to start anything new, I'll just be interrupted. There's no one here to chat with. There's no good work-safe web surfing. God.

I'm bored.

Bored, bored, bored, bored. Bored. 

I wish I could blog.

God, I'd probably just blog about how bored I am.

I wish I could blog about work. There's so much to say about work. It's so not a good thing to say. It so sucks I can't blog about work, I spend so much time here, it's such a big part of my life, none of it is write-able. I mean how ridiculous is it that ... huh. What percentage would that be? Where's my calculator. ok. I'm supposed to work, what, 32 hours a week, divided ... by ... 

Huh. How many hours are in a week. Clear. 7 x 24 is ... ok, so 32 divided by 168. That's ... 

19%. Huh. That's not actually that much of my week. Well, no, when you take into account sleeping, which is, what, eight hours a night, so eeiigghht times sevvvennnn isssss 56 divided by 168 ... 

You know, I bet that would have been easier to figure out if you just realized that 8 hours is 1/3 of 24, and you do that every night. 

It's clear why I get paid for writing and not math. 

Although perhaps not today, it isn't.

Unpopular and long forgotten fairy tales

Once upon a time, a very long time ago, there lived a plant named Rapunzel. She lived in the living room in a gorgeous, high-ceilinged, expensive apartment in the downtown west-end. There was lots of sun, and lots of water, and her beautiful tendriled and leafed hair hung down seven feet to the floor.

Hence her name. 

That was four moves ago, alas, and Rapunzel was then moved to a small house on the east side, where she grew well but there was less sun; to another apartment in Mount Pleasant where her care was sporadic; and to another apartment in Kitsilano where water wasn't terribly plentiful. She never regained her former glory, alas, but she had the tenacity of plant life that has been on this earth longer than any mammal, and she fought valiantly for her life.

Until the final move. The one when there was a baby, and three cats, and unfinished renovations, and poor Rapunzel was left outside. She had always been an indoor plant, and when she was remembered after an entire west-coast winter outside, it was thought that her number was up.

Earlier this summer it was noticed that her tendrils once again were poking above the soil, and she was picked up, rescued from weedy interlopers, and put into a position of pride amongst the herbs. It was thought that the ready sun and ready water might restore her to some measure of life. 

The plan has been working, my friends. Her hair is oh-so-short, mere six inches from the soil as of yet, but she is looking green and hale and we are rejoicing for this yet another miracle return from the dead. We are delighted that the only plant in our possession for years hasn't been killed off; perhaps we ARE good parents after all.

Earlier this evening, The Man and The Boy stood in the back patio, watering the herbs. And The Man took it upon himself to tell The Boy the story of Rapunzel, both her own story and her namesake. It was a long and complex process, during which The Boy listened raptly, nodding, and taking in the story. The story of Rapunzel is, after all, a thrilled tale, with glorious victories and harrowing near death experiences. 

And then ... 

"Daddy? What's the story of mint?"

Playdate

Several weeks ago, the mother of one of The Boy's favourite daycare friends had herself another baby. I offered to have her son by for a playdate so as to give her a little break -- I cannot imagine having a two year old and a newborn, and I thought she would probably be desperate for a little time. She gladly accepted, and a few weeks ago I was run ragged by two little boys behaving crazily around the house.

Today I went to her place, and left The Boy with her. He and his friend had been very enthusiastic about the playdate idea, and in fact had talked it up a lot at the daycare, so we felt quite pleased by this idea of the playdate exchange -- once every few weeks at her place, once every few weeks at ours. A break! A fun time for the kids! What could be better?

When I mentioned to The Boy earlier this week that I had set up a playdate for him for today at the friend's place, he was quite pleased. We chatted about it for a while, and then I mentioned that I would leave him here, and I would go shopping. Or something. But something to get his head around the idea that I would not be there. 

This was not popular. He mulled it over for a while, and said that he wanted me to stay. I said no, I'd need to go shopping. He then offered to go with me. When I asked if he wouldn't rather play with his friend, he then offered the possibility that he AND his friend AND the friend's mommy could come shopping WITH us. I allowed as how the friend and friend's mommy probably weren't really in to that. 

We let the topic drop, but I wasn't feeling optimistic about my chances for leaving the house Sunday morning. After all, he is somewhat of a clingy child. He's fine if either me or The Man are with him, happy enough to go about and do his own thing, but he's not keen on us leaving. He hated daycare to start with, and has gone through several periods of bad separation anxiety about my leaving, especially around the time The Man was going on business trips a lot. This is the way it is with being two.

Today as we drove I brought the topic back up again, and it was met this time with anxious acceptance, but not denial, which I thought was a good sign.

And then we arrived, and I sat and chatted for a while, and he played, and then I stood up and said, "OK! Mommy's going to go now!" 

And he replied, "Ok! Bye!"

You just never can tell, right?

Cleaning Guilt

We've been without our house cleaner for four weeks now. Miraculously we are not mired in filth. The kitchen is clean, the laundry is done, and the floor has been regularly swept. The bathrooms are starting to look like they could use the attention, but my laziness has proclaimed that with one week until her return, they can wait.

I feel horrifyingly guilty, still, about employing someone to clean my home. My mother never did. But then, my mother didn't work when she had a toddler, and by the time she did start working full time I was 12 years old and cleaned the bathrooms for her. It's a different world, and a different time, and I need to stop comparing myself to a life that's 30 years old and which doesn't in any way mirror my own. 

But then aside from the "I don't measure up to my mother despite the fact that our lives at this stage are not comparable" guilt, I have even more guilt about having someone clean my house because it smacks of servantry and colonialism and I am but a product of our school system which convinced me beyond a shadow of a doubt that class systems and colonialism are Bad. Not just Bad, but BAD. 

And I'm not saying that's untrue, of course it is. The fact that my British ancestors used to routinely walk into other societies and take them over with no concern about their culture and their learning and their way of life is atrocious. 

But I think perhaps that employing a cleaning lady is a tad different. And not just because she's as white as I am.

No, I think the guilt comes more from the fact that this particular cleaning lady is more educated than I am. She's a doctor, from Russia. Yes, a doctor. And she comes once a week to clean my bathrooms. Her English is awful; we communicate largely by email, I suspect because her sons translate for her. And I feel terrible that she has come to our country -- a country in desperate need of doctors, might I add -- and she cannot seem to find a way to learn enough English to take the exams she might need to get qualification to practice. 

Is this my fault? Of course not. Is cleaning the only job she can get? Probably, given that most jobs require you to be able to communicate clearly. Are we paying her fairly? Absolutely; we're paying more than she asked for, because we have three cats and a toddler, and we felt what she asked for didn't accurately compensate her for the huge amount of work she'd find each week. In cat hair alone, especially in the summer, we can drown. I suppose in many ways it's good we're giving her some well-paying (if nasty) work so she can find those english classes, pay rent, buy food, and otherwise live until she can start practicing.

(If she can; Canadian terms for qualifying foreign-trained doctors not being exactly flexible and easy.)

I am so looking forward to her return; so looking forward to coming home on a Friday night after a long week and being able to sit down with my child and read a book without looking at the floors I will spend my weekend cleaning. 

But I will still feel a twinge of guilt about it, all the same.

It's not a tantrum without an audience

This evening as I was preparing the leftovers for dinner The Boy came in to watch. He brought his stepping stool, a device which we bought and congratulated ourselves on for our parental prowess -- he could wash his own hands! do his teeth in the mirror! Yay!

Congratulating ourselves on our parenting and then regretting it later is, I am afraid, becoming a recurring theme on this blog.

Anyway. He watches me cut cooked chicken for approximately five seconds before realizing that is, in fact, boring. He then takes the stool over to our kitchen desk area, upon which now rests -- ha ha, so stupidly I can't even say it -- our spice rack. It lost its bearings over the stove some weeks ago and we haven't replaced it yet. The spices are all out of The Boy's reach from the floor but not, I discovered, from the STEPPING STOOL.

Before I can even utter the words "no! stop!", there is cumin ALL OVER THE FLOOR. Might I just add that he knows what happens when he opens those things, having done it before, and he knows he's not allowed to, AND he knows it's a mess, given that he danced around it yelling "I made a mess! Look mommy! I made a mess!"

I leave the chicken. I clean up the cumin, and happily enough I then move ALL the rest of the spices out of his reach.

But not the recyling, which is also sitting there ready to go out. So he gleefully picks up all the aluminum cans and throws them on the floor, delighting in the clanging noise. I stop him when he reaches the glass, and "help" him pick up all the things he threw down. (By this I mean, forced him off the stool, and guided his hand to each of them, given that when I said "ok, now it's time to pick them up!" he just said "no! I won't!" Heh. I'm the mommy, kid. That's what YOU think.)

And then I took the stool out of the kitchen. I was done, anyway. 

And he was not impressed. He went out of the kitchen into the hallway and started his usual "I'm very unhappy!" moan. Completely undeterred, I continued into the living room. I cannot see the hallway from the living room. This, I thought, was actually ideal.

He stopped crying. He came into the living room. He said "come! come! take my hand! come! come! come!" and pulled and pulled until I actually thought something was wrong.

And we went out to the hallway, where he crumpled onto the floor again, and resumed moaning.

I know it's cruel, but honestly? It was all I could do not the LAUGH OUT LOUD.

And some days it's just a miracle I haven't killed us all

This evening I cooked chicken. The Man was a little later than I expected, and I called and asked how I should check and see if the chicken was done. He sensibly suggested I use the meat thermometer. 

But apparently he should have said " ... and then REMOVE THE DAMN THING BEFORE YOU MELT IT, YOU MORON."

Super-lady

There are days, like today, where I feel like I have finally Got The Hang Of It. Since this morning's burst of activity, I recouped my energy and then did a load of laundry, read to my child for a while, hung the laundry out, 

[I have to admit here that summertime brings with it an added feature to the chore of laundry: a great feeling of personal smug satisfaction. This is because we have added to our tiny townhouse and patio combination, a clothesline. And every single time I take the time to hang out our clothes, using the sun's energy instead of the electricity, saving energy, using solar energy, there's a great deal of personal back-patting. It's more than laundry. It's personal fulfillment.]

And then we went shopping for groceries, so that I can make dinner tonight. A new recipe! That I plucked from the pages of a nice magazine! Something healthy yet yummy! Does my amazingness know no bounds??

I feel absolutely like I am a better mom and person for this. And you know what? I shouldn't. I do, but I shouldn't. I have often said that my mother taught me that I could have it all, that I could have children and a family and run a house and have a career and have a personal life as well. And that this was great teaching, it taught me that I could have everything I wanted, that it was possible, that I didn't have to sacrifice. It made me strong. It made me work to fulfill my potential, to have as interesting a life as possible.

What it also gave me was a deep sense of inadequacy. Inadequacy for those days when I'm too tired to really work properly, inadequacy for those days my child runs rampant through the house while I ignore him in pursuit for just a moment of peace. Inadequacy especially for the days that the house is a total pigsty, that there are no clean dishes, the sinks are filled with vegetable shrapnel and dirty dishes, there are no clean clothes, when my husband gets home to a wife who is frazzled and about as far from sexy as is humanly possible, who goes to bed instead of spending time with him. Because if I *can* have it all, that means that this should never happen. I should be 100% all the time, at work, at home, as a mother, as a wife. 

Because my mother could. And I look up to her, still.

But at the same time, I don't think I need to stop congratulating myself on days like this. I think we don't have enough self-praise in this world. If I want to feel good about sweeping my floors, dammit I will. 

What I need to do is sit back and not condemn myself for those days when I just don't feel like it. To remember the dust piled high on my mother's stereo and my sister's coffee table, remember my mother breaking the frying pan one night and screaming "damn! damn! damn!" at the top of her lungs (although  the reason I remember this particular incident is because it was so shocking, so unusual for a mother who rarely lost her temper in such a dramatic fashion.)

The fact is that 'having it all' is a fallacy. Something has to give. So often for mothers, it's the mom. The mom stops taking care of herself. I do this. And this really isn't healthy. It needs to be ok that sometimes, the thing that falls through is the laundry. Or the dishes. Or work.

Or the damn floors. 

Which is why I'm sitting here during naptime blogging, and not tidying / cooking / cleaning / doing any more damn laundry, even if it does give me a smug smile.

Production

By 8:15 this morning I had:

* eaten breakfast

* made tea

* fed my child

* tidied the living room

* swept the floors in the house

* emptied the dishwasher

* filled the dishwasher

* done a few dishes

* cleaned the counters

* made a grocery shopping list.

It's a good thing there are SOME advantages to getting up at 6.

Of course, now I am spent and will spend the rest of the day lolling about trying to entertain a toddler. 

The Siskel and Ebert of toddler television

Now that's admitting just how old I am, isn't it? 'Cause I'm reasonably sure that one of those guys is actually dead. I can't remember which one, though.

Anyway.

So we have in the last six months entered the world of toddler television. Right now it's being used as a substitute for nursing after work -- part of the weaning process -- because apparently the long-slaving of one's mother and the fruits of her body, which is produced by depriving me of essential nutrients and energy, can easily be replaced by cartoon characters singing songs.

Ahem.

We don't have a television, so all our toddler programs come from DVD or borrowing, and we have found precious few programs that don't make us want to stab our ears with forks in order to stop the pain. Right now we have one -- just one -- that we are willing to play on any sort of regular basis. (Although I admit we're all fans of Pixar movies. However, there aren't that many that are really appropriate for two-year-olds. Plus they are a little long.)

While on holiday in Whistler in June we had not one but two televisions available to play Treehouse and PBS and all sorts of other channels for our child, and I was all a-quiver with anticipation that we would watch something new that we would all love.

I'll pause while you pick up your jaw from my naivety.

What we found was ... 

Barney: OH MY GOD. Could it get any worse? Seriously? This was about the dumbest thing I HAVE EVER WATCHED. And it was on ALL THE TIME. The only saving grace is that my child wouldn't give it the time of day either, and didn't care when we TURNED IT OFF.

Dora (and similar ilk): Ok, this is a great program when I want to whip my child into a crazed frenzy through screaming at the television. Which is ... oh, never. 

Blue's Clues: The Boy wasn't into this, and it made me want to scream in frustration ... COME ON! IT'S RIGHT THERE! Ok, I know this wasn't made for me, but I really am looking for programs which don't drive me batsh*t crazy.

Thomas the Tank Engine: I don't know about this, for some reason the voice over seemed ... just super annoying. Condescending, perhaps? Something about it made me want to run screaming.

Franklin: You know, Franklin is fine but it's the Three's Company of children's programs. Every single episode is some kind of situation that Franklin gets into a bind and then gets out of it. And usually there's some moral preachiness going on too. And you know? I don't mind it but I really am less interested in my kid watching moralizing programs. I feel in an old-fashioned way that *I* should be teaching him morals and values.

Little Bear: Just kinda dumb.

And then there was the Night Garden which was so psychotic I couldn't stand to have it on, some kind of show with a neurotic and annoying pig and an enormous monster with the body of an elephant and a HUGE HUMAN FACE which was really pretty freaky, and some nasty tales of bullies at school.

Are the offerings really as bad as I think??!

What I want for him are old episodes of Canadian Sesame Street, Mr. Rogers, Mr. Dressup and the Friendly Giant.

Classic case of "my childhood was rosy and all the stuff the kids have these days is crap!"

God, I'm old.

Any thoughts?

Dinner time

Monday's are The Man's day off from work, and today just as with many (most!) other Mondays, I got home to a dinner that was scrumptious. 

Food is something I adore -- The Man and I spoke of this during our courtship and were very pleased to discover how much we both love to eat (why yes, we both HAVE gained weight since we met. Why do you ask?!) And it keeps getting better and better. I used to adore my mother's cooking; then I thought my ex was a pretty good cook too. Then I met The Man.

He is a great cook. Great. There's no two ways about it. He is. And then he met Cook's Illustrated, and our evening meal times have been scrumptious. So much so that every once in a while he cooks a meal during which all I can do is moan with delight. (The vegetable risotto was one such dish; the creamy tomato soup was too. And the cream scones? I'm salivating just thinking about them.) Tonight's dinner was pasta salad with roasted asparagus and red peppers and herbs with a light lemony dressing. 

I might just head back to the kitchen and eat my lunch for tomorrow. 

Olympian

For someone for whom a walk in the forest is a Herculean effort, and for whom watching sports on television is the equivalent of watching paint dry, you'd think that watching Olympics would be last on my list of priorities. 

Bizarrely, it is not. I LOVE watching the Olympics. I have no idea why. I suppose it has a lot to do with the concept of 'watching', which means that I don't actually have to run that far / jump that high / lift that much, as well as the concept of the fact that it is merely a pleasure to watch people do things who are extremely, extremely good at what they do. 

The fact that they are often very attractive physically is a nice added bonus. 

But it got me to wondering -- is the idea of watching someone who is extremely good at something apply to everything? I work in an environment where I am surrounded by people who have spent years honing what they do, and I admit I get a certain frisson of excitement when I get to talk to them about what they do. It's not the watching them DO it, though -- it's more the way their faces light up when they talk about something they are very passionate about. 

Way back many years ago, I wrote a personal ad online and I believe that somewhere within that write-up was something about 'must be passionate about something -- I don't care what, but something.' A friend of mine pointed out that this could have led me down some very eccentric paths, given the online dating world, but the fact is that that passionate drive, that meditation-like fixing on a certain something is a trait that I love and value. I get that way when I am writing something, here or at work, that I know is great. When the words just come together just so, fitting together like a beautiful puzzle, tripping after one another, effortlessly coming, it's a beautiful thing. And watching someone have that experience is somewhat akin to having it yourself. 

Perhaps it's the same as the Olympics. That they do this for the very passion of it. There's no reward at the end, for many of them, save the satisfaction of doing something they love very much very very well. 

It makes me want to write more.

A secret is a knife

One of the many joys of having a child who talks -- beyond 'well NOW I can finally figure out what the heck is WRONG' -- is that they say some of the most bizarre things. The Boy has been talking well for a while now, and as he was one of those babies who babbled almost all day, almost as though he had a running narrative going, he now talks all day, and HAS a running narrative going. This is a strange thing to me; neither The Man or I are big talkers, and have spent many a very pleasant evening together on the couch watching something or doing our own thing, not talking. Early in my maternity leave I was quite happy to go about my day silently with my child strapped to me until I read something about child development that said that babies need to be talked to to learn, and so I started a running narrative ...

Oh. 

It's amazing how writing lets you figure these things out.

Anyway. Where was I?

Oh yes. Talking. We've had the usual stuff about "hey! there's a man!" and "Hey! There's a doggie!" while we're out walking, which provokes the inevitable smile from the passersby. So far we've managed to avoid the "That lady is very fat!" or "That man only has one arm!" or other comment that's slightly less appropriate. 

I had a "Noah pushed me off the climber and I fell down and cried and cried and cried." as well, after daycare one day, despite the fact that no one had told me he fell, and the child named Noah hadn't been there for two months at this point. (Further inquiry got me blank stares of bewilderment at the daycare ... I think he was either remembering an incident from long, long ago that wasn't outwardly traumatic, or he was imagining Very Well.)

And there are stories. Lots of stories. He has a great imagination, and tells me all kinds of things about how the kitty jumped into the bushes and the wind blew and he fell and cried and cried and cried (we had a theme on the 'cried and cried and cried' for a while, which I think the above incident was a part of). 

Lately the stories have all been about babies, because his BFF P just had a baby brother, and so this week's stories have inevitably been about "MY baby brother" and how he held the baby and it cried and it sat on his tummy, and it was nice. I figure that this is a good thing regardless, but I wonder just how much he and P TALK to each other. I guess two year olds communicate more than I thought. 

And then every once in a while he comes up with something quite insane. "at is a kind of cat" rings a bell. "Cod is a fish" is something that comes up from time to time, which I know, isn't insane, but it's a little strange after some silence in the car on the way home, with no mention (for days!) of cod OR fish, suddenly to hear such a statement piped from the backseat. 

Yesterday on the drive home he told me that he had a special box with a special message in it. I asked what the message was, and he said, very seriously, "A secret is a knife". I laughed, and told him that was very cryptic (yes, I did. This might be why he talks so much, we use strange words around him. It's just habit; I write for a living, it's my job to use exact terminology.)

And then I got to thinking ... you know ... that's really true. How many times have I found out secrets that have been really, really wounding? How many times have I kept secrets that would wound? I try not to, anymore -- I found it hurts me almost as much as it hurts the person I'm lying to. So ... yeah. 

I think perhaps I should pay more attention to his stories from here on in. They might just give me something to think about. 

Tired

How ironic is it that last night my kid, who does not count sleeping as one of his great skills, slept blissfully through the night, and I was awake from 2:30 onwards?

There is something to be said for all the severe sleep deprivation that parenthood brings. It means that normal sleep deprivation is actually do-able at work. Bizarrely I managed to actually work today.

Of course now I think I am in that chronic awake state where my body is so shocked by the fatigue that I am Wide! Awake! So! Wide! Awake! And breaking into hysterical giggles for something really not that funny. 

One good sleep. That's all I ask. 

Infestation by Strawberry Gnomes

Last night for dessert, I washed the last of a package of strawberries, trimmed the tops, put them in a bowl and placed the bowl on the coffee table for the enjoyment of The Boy and me. (The Man was out last night.) He ate one or two while I was puttering about putting things away and getting ready for bed.

In a bleary haze last night, I picked up the remains and put them in the fridge.

This morning I pulled them out and realized that the bottom tips of all the strawberries were eaten off. Each one, neatly bitten. 

Mental note to self: if you care about germs, don't leave toddler unattended with strawberries.

Today

Today my son ate macaroni and cheese with broccoli mixed in to give him some kind of healthy food, and he sat and ate the broccoli out of the bowl and left the macaroni. Who is this child?

+++++++++++++++++

Today it was 27 degrees outside AND in my office. Not exactly conducive to working.

+++++++++++++++++

Today I got to hold a colleague's baby. He's two months old. His mom was busy, and he started fussing. I took him, held him up to my shoulder, and started bouncing. He calmed. He eventually rested his head on my chest. And fell asleep. In about ten minutes.  And after he started getting hot, I put him in his carrier, and he did wake, or cry, or begin fussing again. 

I never had that baby. I remember bouncing and walking for literally hours some days. And putting the child down once he was sleeping always resulted in wailing within minutes. No matter how awake / asleep he was, at that age I always had to lie with him. I would have been completely mental without the ability to co-sleep. 

And every once in a while when this happens, I think, Thank God it wasn't me. I always said it was just the baby, it was just my son and that's how he was. But all along, when people told me I was just doing it wrong, I believed them. And this? This says no. This says I can soothe a fussy baby, and put him to sleep, and he won't wake from being put down. It's not that I'm doing it wrong. It's just that my son was the way that he was. And is. 

It's nice to have a little personal affirmation on a Thursday.

Good Lord, parenting is tough

Our Wednesdays together have been full of moments that I will treasure all my life, as well as moments that I cringe to remember as a parent. The shell moment was fantastic. This morning's wade around the rocks at the beach with my son was another. The weather was perfect, sunny and not yet too warm. The water was calm and beautiful, the view of the mountains, boats, and city was spectacular. There were rocks to sit on and water shushing quietly, and we both meandered around, feet pleasantly cool, rocks hard under our feet, the ocean creating a quiet peace. It's times like this that my otherwise constantly moving toddler will actually sit, and watch the waves, or look at rocks with me, and the nearness of his wee body and his breath on my shoulder as we lean over to look at something new and fascinating still takes my breath away with the wonder of it. This is my son. I made this person. And he's perfect.

This evening, however, The Man came home to a house of chaos. A dinner almost ruined through lack of attention. A cardboard box torn apart in the middle of the floor. The stroller upended in the kitchen, and the coffee table -- a huge, heavy wooden contraption -- lying upside down in the middle of the living room. He narrowly missed me corralling said toddler and fishing a coin out of his mouth, despite repeated warnings not to take that coin and not to put any coin in your mouth, ever.

The list actually goes on -- I don't think that there was anything that we've previously forbidden that wasn't taken on this afternoon. In desperation I sat down and nursed him, although we've been actively trying to wean my (yes, almost 2.5-year-old) son, and have restricted nursing to bedtime only. 

(As an aside -- wow, I never knew how hard this was going to be. I had heard -- both through family and through websites -- that there are kids who are just really, really attached to nursing and if you let them will nurse into preschool years. I was committed to nursing a good long time, but I thought the kid would give it up by two. Boy, was I wrong. And now, unfortunately, we've come to a place where I am simply too exhausted to keep up with the level of nursing that there was, and so cutting back is simply necessary for my own health, and wow ... he is not keen. To say the least.)

It helped. A little. 

I like to think I'm a good parent. I listen, a lot. We both do our best not to yell, and to remember the difference between a child whose behaviour reflects merely a lack of knowledge, or whose behaviour is the result of lack of food / drink  / sleep rather than one who is willfully being a pain in the rear. We try to have logical consequences for actions, and to not sweat the small stuff. But days like this -- it felt in the end that there was nothing I could do. I could sit down and pay lots of attention to him, and it didn't help. He had a nap, it didn't help. I fed him when he was misbehaving instead of getting angry, it didn't help. We could talk and remind about rules in a non-emotional, calm way ... and it didn't help. I could speak sharply ... that almost never helps, I don't even know why I try it. 

I have a level of patience for my child that surpasses anything else. I am a very impatient person, and yet I am constantly patient for him. I was patient through the afternoon, and only starting coming apart at the seams once dinner seemed ruined and there wasn't time to order or cook another one before bedtime and a toddler without dinner means for a bad night's sleep AIEEEEEEE. 

I comfort myself with the knowledge that this happens to everyone. It does. My kid is a good kid for the most part, and we only get days like this once in a while. But wow. Wow. This is pretty hard stuff. 

New Species Found: Teeny Tiny Deer

So Wednesdays are my day off work, to spend with The Boy. He's coming up two and a half now, and I'd like to say that this is a delightful stage but frankly --- it's not. Don't get me wrong, I love him to pieces, but two heralded the arrival of a child who knew his own mind, and had opinions, and wasn't afraid to show them. Long gone were the days of Wednesdays where we pottered around and did things I wanted to do ... now he gets BORED. 

I have had to, in other words, find things for him to do. You know -- be a parent and all. Sheesh.

I kid, I kid.

Still, the best thing I have found to do on Wednesdays is to get out of the house. And I did that, often, by going to the nearby playground and watching him go down the slide over and over, while I roasted in the hot sun and I am nothing but a delicate flower. And I began to like Wednesdays less and less until I had the mad epiphany of -- hey, how about doing something we might BOTH like?

So a few weeks back I decided that we should go to the beach. I live six blocks from the beach and never go, which is ridiculous until you realize that it's a steep downhill slog to the beach which means a steep uphill slog home carrying a 30 pound toddler, and see "delicate flower", above. So to assuage my guilt about driving there to avoid the climb we got in the car and drove to another beach, one with a duck pound in the park before it, and the beach beyond. 

We had a grand time. We walked / ran over the grass, went and found the ducks, and had a great time feeding them. (Oats, if you want to know. My park naturalist mother would never approve of bread, no matter how healthy the loaf was.) We saw ducklings and marvelled over their cuteness. We meandered on down to the beach.

It was 9am on a Wednesday, and so the beach itself was deserted. Well, almost. Perfect for me, the introvert -- I like people but just not too many of them at once. And once we had finished with the ducks we continued our meandering down to the beach part. We trundled slowly across the sand, as The Boy found a few rocks and other things that he was determined to throw in the water, and so to that end we headed towards the tide line which was clearly demarcated on the sand with rocks and shells.

The tide line is pretty much perfect. There are stones and seaweed and shells, and it's close to the water's edge but dry enough for me to sit down. Which I did. And The Boy took his time sitting, standing, walking, picking up one thing and then another, tossing them into the water, doing strange toddler things, the works. The shells were quite entrancing. The clam shells were in amazing profusion, white and purple along the sand, intermixed among the black small mussel shells. The Boy was thrilled -- shells! They can scoop! They can splash in the water! And sometimes they come in twos! And then you can break them apart!

At this point I came out of my sea-induced reverie and showed him a few shells and gave him a mini-biology lesson about how the shells used to hold tiny animals and that's why they were together like that, an animal lived inside. Which he took in in his usual toddler way, which was to continue merrily along throwing them into the water and taking little notice of what I said.

In any case, I returned to my reverie by the ocean. Now I pause here to note that I grew up on the west coast, very near to the beach, and it figures largely in many of my most pleasant childhood memories. A childhood girlfriend of mine had a cabin right on the shore of a small island, and I spent part of each summer there for years, and the sound of silence broken only by the sea washing softly against the rocky beach is the one sound which can reduce me to inner peace in mere moments.

So I sit and enjoy myself and run an inner monologue congratulating myself on my amazing parenting AND self-care tasks, that I can find this thing to do that entertains AND educates my child AND gives me a few moments of reverie -- seldom found while parenting a two year old ...

And I notice that The Boy keeps asking again and again for joined shells. And finding them. And breaking them apart. And I help him find a few, and I notice that he opens them, looks in them, and throws them down. And it finally dawns on me, after several more minutes of this, and some amount of increasing frustration on his part, and "N" I say. "Are you looking for the animals?"

"Yeah," he replies. "Maybe they're deer!"

The urge to write

I get this, from time to time, the urge to write. I don't even know what, I just know I want to sit down and create something. Alas this happens less often at work than I'd like. 

Ha ha.

But this was the reason I started a blog to begin with, lo several years and one typepad account later. I wanted to write something other than what I wrote all day, every day, at work. And for a time it worked. And then ... then I got pregnant, had a baby, went back to work, and got busy, and I just never updated anymore. 

And it got harder and harder to go back to the old space. It was like I had created an identity, and I didn't know if I was that person any more. And I couldn't keep writing there in that way, in that style, as that person. A lot had changed since I began that blog. 

I had, for instance, finished off a divorce. I had continued my career, and realized that I was, without a doubt, in the eighth year of doing so, a writer, a real writer without any need for a capital letter, since someone had been paying me to do this for eight years and I just couldn't deny it anymore. And I got pregnant, and had a baby, and my relationship evolved so that I stopped thinking about what I would do when it ended, given the last one, and began thinking about just being in the relationship.

And I became another person too. The last few months I've finally taken the time to look at myself, and decide that there are ways I can actively make my life better, and I want to do them now. I'm in a safe, secure place and I can actually make that decision, and move forward so that I can work on life and create the life I really want, and be the person I want to be. 

So here I am. A new space, for what is evolving to be a new me. 

I think I'm going to like it here. 

Starting all over

Some times its not enough to come back and try again. Some times you just need to start over.

So here I am. I've been thinking about this lately, wondering what to do about the old real estate, and having no earthly idea what to do with it, but just not wanting to visit. I thought perhaps I could find the old mojo in a new space. It's worked for me before, she-who-moved-eighty-leven-times-after-high-school ... and maybe now that I'm finally settled in person, I will get myself finally settled in a virtual way too.

Plus, let's face it, I was stymied by the fact that I was found. Ok, I know, it's not like the internet is actually private, but when you can google my real name and find my blog ... well, that's the problem, isn't it. If you blog anonymously, then you write things that you can't say anywhere else. I suppose I should just blog with my real name to start with, but that kind of wrecks the appeal for me, to be honest. I *like* being anonymous. Mostly. Or at least, I like being found by people I want to be found by, and left alone by others.

So we'll see if this works. 

Maybe.