Life in the hutch

Over the last few months, I have noticed that my creative inspiration has been slipping away from me. It’s been hard for me to try to overcome, as I never really thought of myself as a creative person until I realized that I wanted to write, take pictures, to create as I had in the past, and I could not force myself to do so.   I’ve wallowed, ignored, forced myself, and tried new projects, but have had limited success.  While I am certain that it will come back to me in some form, I am surprised at how this funk seems to blanket every aspect of my life.

One of the places where everyone in my family seems to notice the rut I am in is the kitchen.  Meals have become boring and predictable.  Each week’s menu plan is reminiscent of the week prior, and the smalls in particular are getting a little frustrated.  They have even asked me to stop cooking some of their favourites, for a while, because they were sick of seeing them every week.  This was the sign that I needed to mix things up.

One of the reasons that I was sticking to the family favourites is that we are not the easiest family in the world to feed.   While the lils are very adventurous eaters, we all have our likes and dislikes, none of which overlap.  Add in the fact that Woo and I both have severe allergies and that I am a vegetarian, and you get a certain amount of chaos. I try to make meals that appeal to most of us, or that can be easily adapted for their carnivorous tastes, but I have struggled in the last few weeks.  There have been too many nights where I have run out of food for some of us, forgotten to cook anything for me, eaten just mashed potatoes and salad, or had to cook three or four different meals, because I realized too late in the game that the menu I had planned didn’t really appeal to any of us.

I’m fed up with the confusion that I have created for myself, and the rapidly rising grocery bill that has accompanied it.  Yesterday was the first day of my renewed efforts to take control of the kitchen. I planned the meal perfectly, beef stew for the family and vegetarian chili from the freezer for me, both accompanied by a loaf of homemade bread.  We sat down to eat, and everyone dug in.  Goose, in particular, was eating with much enthusiasm.  This surprised me, as her number one nemesis, the onion, was plentiful in her bowl.  She had munched on happily for about ten minutes, when I noticed that she was really digging in her bowl.  “Mama”, she cried, “there are NO BEANS in my chili!!” It seems that knowing I was having chili for dinner made her think that she would be getting it too.

Happy that I was not the only one who was mixed up in the kitchen, I explained that that she got the stew because it was non-veg, and that I was the only one with chili.  She got a cross look on her face, noted that my bowl was empty, and declared that she was finished, as the stew was not to her taste.  I sighed, and went back to the drawing board on the menu plan.  Confusion reigns for another day.

When our family travels, we tend to just blend into the background.  If we ever get noticed, it is generally because of our super cute lils (as was often the case in India), or how unbelievably pale we, as a family, are.  Almost every trip down south has us explaining that this IS a tan for any member of our family, and in my case, it most certainly counts as a tan when all of my freckles connect together. For the most part, though, we tend to be just another series of faces in the crowd. 

It is almost never Willy who attracts any sort of attention.  There was that one time in Jamaica, when I am sure that the airport authorities suspected that he was a drug dealer, given the looks that he was getting in the airport.  In the end, I was the one that attracted the attention on that trip, as my luggage was searched three times before we were allowed to leave.  I guess they just assumed that the long-haired hippie was using me as his drug mule!

He was quite surprised on our trip last week, when one of the employees at the hotel let him know that another guest was certain that he was a movie star!  He laughed and denied it, then thought nothing of it.  He didn’t even mention it to me; he was so sure that it was a joke.  Then, on our last day at the resort, he was walking on the beach and someone came up to him and said “Hello, Mr. Movie Star.” Willy and I had a good laugh over this, and are quite stumped as to who people thought he was, looking like this:

The past few weeks of this winter have been characterized by some freakish weather and storms in our region and those adjacent.  Ice, snow, wind, we’ve had it all.  While very little has affected our family directly, the weather has both played havoc with travel for many people that I know, and made me really appreciate the fact that we are heading to the beach this week. 

At some point over the last two weeks, those two points connected in my brain and started to stress me out.  Our flight is the first flight out of the airport, is routed through Toronto, and has a connection time of just over an hour.  I began to play the worst case scenario game in my head, and came up with us losing every time.  I knew that even the slightest delay on Friday morning, even for something simple like de-icing, could cause us to miss out connection to the south, and that the next flight on Air Canada arrived two days later after some funky, circumnavigate the globe type routing.  I didn’t like the odds.

Much obsessive watching of the weather, complete with constant verbal updates must have had an impact on Willy, as he randomly offered to call the airline tonight and see what it would take to have us fly to Toronto on Thursday night. I sent him off to make the call, and finished putting the lils to bed. When I checked in with him, he’d been unsuccessful for over ninety minutes, as there was another storm working its “magic”, and Air Canada’s lines were constantly busy.  We decided to call try one more time, this time to Air Canada Vacations, and happily he got through.

Once Willy was connected to an agent, he explained our fears, and the fact that we were travelling with young children, and asked if the first flight could be moved.  “I’ll see what I can do”, she said, as she put Willy on hold. We fully expected to be charged for this, as was clearly stated on our agreement.  While on hold, we talked about how much we were willing to pay, an amount I was mentally referring to as the value of my sanity in my head.*

When she came back, she named a price that couldn’t be beat – the change was to cost us nothing, even though there is no terrible weather forecast for the remainder of this week.  We happily accepted and raced to make hotel reservations in Toronto, and plans for dinner with family.  I am now super excited for a vacation that is starting one day earlier, and will last one day longer… except the part about having one less day to pack.  Guess I should get started with that!

* FYI – it turns out that Willy was willing to pay more for my sanity, which is nice to know.*