23
April
Balance
I woke at the crack of dawn this morning, even though I had been up way past my bedtime. As I crept past the lils bedrooms, I glanced in to see their sleeping faces lit up by the sun’s first rays. They weren’t awake, but I knew I didn’t have long, so I couldn’t linger. Lunches were made, clothes set aside, a really quick shower, lil faces kissed, and I was out the door. Time for me to go to work.
My return to work has been gradual over the last few months. I did nothing for the first three months that we were home; then I started teaching an online section of a course for a local post-secondary institution, and finally started working part-time from home in early March. It’s very part time, but it is a huge adjustment for me, bigger than I thought it would be.
I have noticed in the last few weeks that I have started to juggle, and that my juggling skills are not what they used to be. Those balls are starting to fall, and some of them even rolling away. Last week’s ball was the menu plan; we had pasta for dinner four days and ordered in at least one night. This week I have played shuffle the appointment: move the dentist to get the car in for service, move the car appointment for the lils assembly at school, rejoice when someone else cancels so that I have time to do the work I need to do. I just need to find the right balance between what I want to do, and what I can do.
Finding that balance is important, as working is important to me. I love the agency that I work for, and the work that we do. Having others to chat with stops me from talking to myself every so often, and business meetings that lead to lunches with old colleagues and friends are tonnes of fun. Most of all, I want to find that balance as I like using my brain again, even if it is just part time. Last night’s late marking and this morning’s missed walk to school are part of finding that balance. It’s elusive, but I’ll get there.
17
April
Still in the bubble
As the afternoon went on yesterday, I went about my routine as I always do. I wanted the lils to see normal, even though I was not feeling it on the inside. They didn’t need to know that I was upset, so I fed them their snack and talked about their day as I prepped the veggies for our stir fry. I listened to the radio, because we always do, but I discretely turned it off to “hear them” every time the news came on. They didn’t need to know what was going on.
There are terrible things that happen in the world every day, and I gloss over them too. It was just a little harder yesterday. The bombs that were set off at the finish line for the Boston Marathon were a terrible thing; impossible to avoid, to hide because of the event, the location that was attacked. The lils aren’t ready, I rationalized.
It was the cancellation of last night’s hockey game that forced me to tell them a bit about what happened. They knew that there was to be a game, were hoping to be allowed to watch a few minutes of the first, or be called out of bed to see a goal for the Sens if they scored. They would realize that something was up when there was no game, and would want to know more. As I told them that there were some explosions in Boston, and that the game was cancelled to ensure that everyone was safe, I kept thinking that this was a silly reason to be telling them about this, that they would want to know more. In the end, they were disappointed about the game, but had no real questions about anything else. Thankfully they had one more day where they were still in that safe little bubble where all is good in the world, and their biggest worry is that they have to wait a day to do something they enjoy. It’s days like yesterday that I want to crawl inside that bubble with them.
10
April
Drawing my line
My sister has a nack for finding things that should not be offered up on Freecyle. My favourite was the time that she found someone offering a thong (because who doesn’t want someone else’s buttfloss), but I can’t find the link to that post. She has also found people offering toothbrushes, what was essentially a bomb, and a random assortment of other gross stuff. Most of it makes me laugh, but also shudder.
I was a little taken aback when she sent me email about a freecycle post that she had found this week. It was for bras – six of them – and they were in my size. I hesitated a few minutes before responding to her, as I wasn’t sure if this was another post that could become blog fodder; bras are undergarments, after all. The fact that my size is notoriously hard to find, and that the woman posting them claimed that three of them were brand new with tags won me over.
I emailed the poster and let her know I would take them. My theory was that worst case was I was getting three brand new bras that I knew would fit; for free. Bras are expensive! The woman responded and she was lovely, explaining that she had only worn them a couple of times, but her size had changed and they didn’t work for her anymore. We confirmed details, and I picked up them all up. When I looked at them at home, I realized that the only thing that differentiated them at all was the tags on three of them. I ripped those tags off and threw them all in the wash, where they mingled. I have no idea whether the bra that I am wearing is brand new or not, and I am ok with that. Guess I know where I draw the line.
9
April
Bedtime confusion
Willy and I have been together for the better part of fifteen years, so you would think that we would have figured out the business of sleeping in the same bed. My shocking confession from the fall aside, it would appear that we still have a few issues to work through. I always thought that the “we” who would be working through these issues referred Willy, but something happened this week that has made me reconsider.
The crux of the issue is that Willy is a hot sleeper, and I am a cold sleeper. He likes to cover himself in sixteen layers in a warm cocoon, I like to be covered by one layer and have my arms and feet hanging out. Given that he is a bed hog, I sometimes get sucked into the cocoon, and escape by invoking the seven bars rule, which refers to the fact that there are fourteen vertical bars in the headboard and he needs to keep his warmth on his side, his seven bars. It’s a silly little thing that rarely works, but always makes us laugh.
We’ve spent most of the winter with two duvets on the bed, but as the weather has gotten ever so slightly warmer, I find that I need to sleep under just one layer; the thinner of the two duvets. It means that I fold one duvet over to his side, and bunch up the sheet in the middle. This was working out pretty well until Willy got into bed the other night and started adjusting the bed covers. I was just drifting off to sleep when next thing I knew, he grabbed a hold of my underpants and YANKED. I yelped at the wedgie, and he apologized profusely, stating that he thought he’d grabbed the sheets.
Great. He confuses my underpants with bed sheets.
2
April
Short stories
Goose got her finger shmushed in a door again this weekend. I say again, as this is the third time that this has happened in the last year. It wasn’t as bad as the first time, when we were in India, but it was bad enough. I finally got her calmed down enough to see that the damage was minor and that she was not likely to lose the nail. We put a bandage on the small cut, and cuddled while she iced it.
As we cuddled, she talked about how this hurt, but it wasn’t so bad, as Woo had “gently” closed the door on her finger. The damaged digit was her middle finger, and she kept pulling it out from under the ice pack to look at it. I tried to reassure her that it would be OK, but she kept looking down.
“It’s my favourite finger,” she said, holding it up and flipping me off. “Good thing I have another one,” she followed up with, then giving me the double bird. She had no idea why I laughed so hard.
~ ~ ~
We went to the sugar bush with some good friends this weekend, friends who happen to have lil people the same ages as ours, which makes hanging out together extra awesome. Shortly after we arrived, we saw that there was to be a walking tour in a few minutes. We waited at the starting point, and by the time that our guide arrived, there were several other families and children there. He started to give us a little history of maple syrup production, and asked if we knew why only Canada and the US produced syrup. I started to ask if it was because sugar maples only grew here, but the guide started speaking at the . I stopped, just as I got the “sh” in sugar out. He then stopped, looked a little taken aback, and asked loud enough for all to hear, “did you just say SHIT?”
I laughed because it was funny, but then looked around, and explained that I tried not use words like that in front of all those children. Poor kid was only 17 or 18; I think he only asked because he was shocked that I would have said it there. Good thing he doesn’t know about the swear jar…
~ ~ ~
As the Easter Bunny’s helper, I was tasked with filling and hiding the eggs on Saturday night. We left our plastic eggs for a friend in India last year (plastic eggs are not so common in India), so I bought a new bag this year. Given that it was new, I knew that there were 46 treat filled eggs to be hidden that night. While I did most of it while sitting on the couch with a glass or two of wine, I recruited Willy to help with the hiding. We made short work of it, trying to mix the relatively easy to find eggs with the tricky and clever spots. Satisfied that we had the makings of a good hunt, we went to bed.
The next morning was a flurry of lil people, loving each and every spot that they found an egg. The hunt took about fifteen minutes, and ended with Woo counting the eggs to ensure that they each had the same number. When we were short one, we searched all the spots but still came up empty handed. The lils split the last egg, and we figured it would turn up eventually.
Six hours later, Woo raced into the kitchen with the last egg in his hand. “Look what I found in the chandelier!” he shouted. That is the last time I drink wine before hiding eggs.
~ ~ ~
Willy spent a large chunk of time over the weekend working on my laptop. We’d bought a new SSD, so it meant that stuff had to be backed up, partitions moved around, and hardware tinkered with so that my OS and software would run off this new drive, and all of my non-archived pictures (the ones that I still tinker with) could live on the old drive. They were spread across two drives, and I only had access to one, so this news made me extra happy.
By Sunday morning, I had been without my laptop for over a day, and was beginning to get a little twitchy. I walked into the office as Willy was moving some of the images on to the machine, working on the back-ups, and doing some tidying before handing the machine back over. He asked a few questions about some files, then went back to work. I was about to ask for a status update, when something started rapidly scrolling across the screen and Willy frantically started wailing on my keyboard, yelling “FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!” I backed out of the room, and it was quite a few more hours before I got my laptop back.
