• In bullet points

    Date: 2010.07.29 | Category: Uncategorized | Response: 4

    Because it’s the only way I’ll get anything written here:

    • We moved! We own a house! We have new pretty floors upstairs. No I don’t have pictures. Yet. I will. Eventually.
    • It’s been a heck of a summer and I kind of want to curl up in a ball and sleep for a month.
    • But I can’t, because we are going to New York.
    • For BlogHer’10! Yay BlogHer!
    • I’ve never been to NYC better and neither has Lee.
    • We are going early and staying after, thinking that we’d have all this time to play tourist. Reality? We have 2.5-3 days to play tourist. That suddenly seems like nothing.
    • I keep reading posts about BlogHer prep. My BlogHer prep consists of unpacking my clothes and putting them in my new closet so that I can then pack them. If you are lucky I might iron things. You do not need to buy new clothes for BlogHer.
    • In addition to not buying new clothes I am also not a. getting my hair done (I don’t have time, also spent the money on new business cards and stickers) b. freaking about what shoes to bring (much, I’m worried about bringing appropriately comfy shoes that won’t give me blisters when I’m playing tourist) c. getting a pedi/mani/whatever because I never do.
    • Lee has a party pass. He is stupidly excited that one of the parties is the Cheeseburger Party. It’s exactly what you think it is but with more people wearing McDonald’s bags on their heads.
    • We have no idea what we are going to see in NYC. We know we won’t be doing much shopping. We’ll see what we see and be fine with it just as long as one of those things is the Museum of Natural History (otherwise I shall have a fit).
    • I ordered my stickers and business cards at the last minute. Business cards will make it in time. Stickers? Maybe. I’ve got a 50/50 chance at this point.
    • I’m behind in pretty much everything and so freaked out about being behind in everything that I actually can’t get anything done. It’s a vicious cycle.
    • I like bed. I’d like to be in bed right now.
    • There is a maybe stray cat at our new place. We’re not sure if he (we think it’s a he) has a home or not. Seems to be well fed, only a little skittish and likes to hang out on our front porch and desk. He occasionally just appears out of the bushes. The fake cat does not approve and hissed at me to display her disapproval after she saw me petting the interloper.
    • Every day should have built in nap-time. Or at least an hour or two where you can do nothing or watch tv or read a book without the weight of all the things you should be doing weighing down on you.
    • I’m kind of freaked out that we have no idea what we are going to be doing in NYC when we are playing tourist. This is the most unplanned trip we’ve ever taken as a planned trip (ie. we didn’t just hop in the truck and decide to go somewhere).
    • I should be working.

  • Mommies, Community and Me, the Non-Mommy

    Date: 2010.07.12 | Category: Blogs, sometimes I ramble | Response: 19

    A tweet passed through my stream a few months back that caught my attention. It was from a local blogger to a bunch of other local bloggers about how great it was to meet up with everyone. “Oh,” I wondered. “Did I miss an event?” Scrolling through I realized I did… and that I didn’t. There was a local meet-up but it was mommies, of which I’m not. “Oh,” I thought. “Oh, I wasn’t invited to hang out because I’m not a mommy.” Such is the life of a non-mommy.*

    I know these women and I know that they didn’t exclude me intentionally. I know that they were a bunch of moms just getting together to hang out with their kids. I know that if I could ping them and say, “Hey guys, I know I don’t have kids or anything but I’d really like you hang out with you guys next time.” I know that they’d all say, “Absolutely!” I know they never gave a thought to excluding anyone, it was just a meet up of local moms. How could that be exclusionary, right? I know this but I won’t lie — the unintentional exclusion still stings a little.

    I’m not a mother. I’m not, nor have I tried, to have children. Currently we’re still saying that we probably won’t have children, though we’re keeping a foot on that fence. At this point, my non-mommy status is by choice. (At least as far as we know. We’ve never tried to have children so we’re only assuming that we can.)

    I’ve blogged about the fact that I’m child-free by choice. I’ve blogged about the fact that I’m really not great with children. I’ve also blogged that I don’t hate children and that I’m perfectly fine hanging out with women and their children (though preferably not at Chuck E. Cheese).

    I’ve been the only non-mommy at events. I will watch your kids while you go the bathroom. I’ll keep an eye on your kids while they are running around the playground and if they fall while you are at the other end of the park I’ll go and check to see if they are ok. I’ll hold your baby while you are tending to another child.

    I’m a non-mommy, not a child-hater. I’m not going to sit there and “preach” about the benefits of a childless life. No, I’m not going to tell you how you should raise your children. Yes, I will sometimes offer an opinion if it is something you’ve asked for an opinion on it or for which I have a strong opinion. (I’m pretty darn good with book recommendations for kids, for example.) If you mention something about parenting that you are looking for input on and I’ve read a blog post about it I may send you the link if you aren’t familiar with it. I’m not going to tell you how to live your life any more than I’ll let you how expound on how I should live mine.

    I know that I can be a bit of a curiosity at times. I know that I am a non-mom who doesn’t want to be a mom and yet wants to hang out with moms and sometimes their children. What people sometimes don’t see is that I don’t necessarily want to hang out with moms; I want to hang out with women. I want to hang out with smart women who are interested in the same things that I do and happen to be active online. These women, and many of my mommyblogging friends, happen to be all those things. They also happen to be mommies. Does that mean we should exclude each other?

    I’ve been told that I don’t have the same experiences as these women. I’ve been asked if there’s not a “better” community for me to join. I’m confused.

    I’m confused because I’ve heard many of these women that I know and love (and who are not the ones asking me this) say that they aren’t just mommies. They are women. They don’t want to be defined solely by the label of “Mommy.” They don’t drop their friends that don’t have kids when they have theirs. Should I not want to be friends with them after they have children? I think if that were the case it would make me a pretty crappy human being.

    I don’t want to be part of the mommyblogging community, exactly. I want to be part of community of women and mommy or not, we’re all women. Whether or not we have children is one part of our lives. Yes, a big part, but mommy or non-mommy is not all that we are. I have good friends that are moms. I have good friends that are not moms. I have good friends that would very much like to be mothers.

    It’s a fact that cannot be ignored that most women my age either having children or want to have children. If I exclude everyone who fits those two categories from my life there would not be many people left.

    I fail to see why I should not participate in the conversation on a mommyblog and if I participate why I should not consider myself a member of that community. I did, once upon a time, say that I wasn’t part of the mommyblogging community. Someone quickly corrected me. They reminded me that I support mommybloggers (which is easy as they are pretty awesome), that I participate on their blogs and that I am friends with them. Why wouldn’t I consider myself part of their community?

    Why indeed. It’s not whether or not we have children that forges the connection between us. It’s who we are as people and women.

    But maybe I’m wrong. Can a childfree women be part of a community of women that have children? Can a blogger without children be part of the mommyblogging community?

    *Please note that this is not about these lovely, lovely women who I know would drag me along if I so much as hinted to a glimmer of a thought of not being included. This all comes from this conversation on BlogHer about non-mommies, mommyblogging, and community.

  • I’m not excited

    Date: 2010.07.12 | Category: Uncategorized | Response: 0

    There’s only two sleeps until we get they keys to our new house and everyone keeps asking me if I’m excited. I have to truthfully say no, I’m not excited.

    I’m pleased we bought the house. I’m glad it’s almost ours. I’m relieved that it’s almost time to move in (and move out of where we are now). I’m thrilled that I’ll no longer have to think about the fact that my neighbour can most likely hear me pee. I’m happy that I no longer have to deal with my apartment smelling like pot because new neighbour is lighting a doobie downstairs (it’s a non-smoking building, I guess she figures that doesn’t apply to joints). I’ve even been keeping my old friend stress at bay for the most part.

    But I’m not excited.

    I’m tired. I’m trying to figure out how to grieve. I’m coping.

    It was going to be a busy summer. We had trips planned the last week of June and the first week of August. Trips that we put money down on and would not be cancelling. We knew it was going to be an even busier summer when we bought the house and set the closing date for smack dab in the middle of those two dates. We knew it was going to be hectic when we decided to try to get flooring installed between the closing date and move in date. We knew all this.

    We didn’t know that my grandmother was going to have another stroke and pass away in early June. I wasn’t prepared for it and I still haven’t reconciled myself to it. We didn’t plan on my little health issue the week after my grandmother’s funeral that sent me to the ER for a day. (I’m fine. No, we still don’t know what was wrong but I’m fine.) We didn’t plan on the heat wave in the week before we closed keeping me from getting a decent night’s sleep for a week (no air conditioning).

    Life likes to throw the unexpected at you. I know this and overall I’ve been doing surprisingly well for me. No real meltdowns. I’m managing my stress. I’m not losing a lot of weight (perhaps a bit but I have a buffer). I’m a tad crankier than normal but at least I’m mostly aware of it (and apologize to Lee frequently).

    I’m tired. I’d like to sleep. I’d like to wake up without having a to do list longer than my arm. I’d like to not feel like I was dropping balls because I’m trying to juggle too many.

    I’ve heard it said that moving is secondary to the death of a loved one in terms of stress. But the end of the month I’ll have experienced both this summer. I’d like to figure out how to allow myself to grieve.

    I’m focused on keeping my head above water and I’m paddling forward. I’m trying really hard, sometimes more successfully than others, to keep the stress monkey off my back. I know that the next four weeks will be every bit as busy and stressful as the last four, if not more.

    I’m many things at the moment but no, excited is not one of them.

  • I need shoe help

    Date: 2010.07.08 | Category: Uncategorized | Response: 9

    You see these shoes? They need your help. More accurately, I need your help in order to wear them.

    I have never, ever worn them outside the house and I’ve owned them for years. How long? Well…I was still living in Toronto. I think it was 2006. I’ve since moved them to Montreal and I’ve lived in Ottawa for two years now so um, yeah. It’s been awhile. I fell in love with them at the store and I still do love them except one itty bitty thing…

    The heels? They are rock hard. They are cut your ankles hard.

    I’d just toss them in a Sally Ann donation bag but this is the thing — they are leather. If I wear them in they’ll soften and I’m sure I’ll wear them every single day. I just can’t bring myself to blister and cut myself to get there. I know there have to be tricks for how to soften them up, I just don’t know them.

    This is where you come in. How do I soften these puppies up? They are too cute to still be gathering dust in my closet.

  • Head out on the highway, lookin’ for adventure

    Date: 2010.06.24 | Category: Things that are made of awesome | Response: 5

    Tomorrow morning at 4am the alarm will go off. We’ll stumble around in the dark trying not to make too much noise. Don’t want to disturb the neighbours. We’ll pet the cat and give her extra love before feeding her breakfast and then adding a few extra scoops to get her to Saturday when my FIL comes to feed her. (She does not need the extra scoops – it’s called guilt.) We’ll run around the apartment grabbing last minute items and then rush out the house in a whirlwind of bags, coolers, and “Honey, did you remember to pack…”

    We’ll hit the road as the sun rises, stopping on our way out of town to grab coffee from Tim Hortons. You cannot have a road trip in Canada and not stop at a Timmy’s. We’ll drive toward the rising sun, squinting and wondering if we are nuts to start so early and then we’ll think of Montreal morning rush hour traffic and decide no, we’re not crazy. We’re darned smart.

    We’ll grab leftover homemade pizza out of the cooler and snack on that for breakfast. We’ll have lunch at a truck stop, probably someplace just past Quebec City.

    We’ll pee in dubious roadside bathrooms.

    Driving through New Brunswick we’ll reflect on how the scenery off the highway simply does. not. change for hours. I’ll lament how the old highway was scenic and then remember on the new highway you don’t get stuck behind someone driving 70km/hr in a car that looks like it would fall apart if a strong wind hit it.

    We’ll hit construction. We don’t know where yet but we’ll hit it.

    By dinner time we’ll have (hopefully) rolled into our hotel in Fredericton and say, “Yes, we really could have done the drive in one day.” “Yeah, but who wants to waste a day of cottage time in the car trying to get there.” “Good point.”

    We’ll go out in search of a hot meal and debate whether we want to have a sit down meal or if I should introduce Lee to East Coast donairs (real donairs, not these whacked out Ottawa ones).  We’ll go back to the hotel and take a dip in the pool, dry out in the sauna and then head back to the room.

    The next morning we’ll get up early, check out early and hit the road again. As we get closer and closer to the coast we’ll roll down the windows so we can smell the salt air. We’ll drive across the world’s longest bridge that spans ice-covered water only there won’t be any ice. We might see a boat or a seal if we’re lucky and that’s only because we have an SUV and not a car. If you are in a car you only see cement.

    At the end of the bridge we’ll see red dirt and green, green, green fields. We’ll drive east until we hit a familiar town. We’ll stop to pick up the lobsters that will have been cooked and cleaned just for us and then another 10 minutes and we’ll take left at the fork in a road and drive along the coast. Another left and around the bend and we’re there — the last cottage by the ocean and our home for the next week.

    Over the next week we’ll visit family. We’ll play by the ocean and get sand in places where no one wants sand. We’ll eat good, simple food. We’ll recover from this month of June that has kicked our asses. We’ll let the ocean take our troubles away.

  • Grief

    Date: 2010.06.20 | Category: Things I Don't Understand | Response: 5

    It’s kind of funny. I hadn’t seen her much over the last ten years. I don’t live there anymore and our visits were limited to the odd hour here and there when I was home for a visit. But there’s a hole in my life and in my heart because she’s not here anymore.

    It was the knowledge of always knowing that she was there. When I was a kid she was always in her kitchen. Or at bingo. After my grandfather died she lived with us for awhile. We even shared a bedroom. Then she bumped around, staying with my aunts and uncles until settling into her retirement home seven or eight years ago.

    She was present. She was the glue that bound us together. She was the matriarch.

    Now she’s gone and I’m feeling lost.

    I don’t think I’ve let myself grieve.

    While she was in the nursing home, while we sat vigil, I decided it was not the time for tears. Her room in palliative care was not the place for me to breakdown. It was place for remembering her strength and pulling on some of it for myself. I was there for my mother and sister as much as I was there for myself and my tears had no place there. My mother didn’t need to deal with my tears on top of everything else. I didn’t know whether to wish that she’d go quickly or if she’s defy us all, doctors included, and wake up and tell us all off for thinking she’d leave us.

    I didn’t allow myself to cry at my sister’s place when I was home alone there. I was scared that once I started I might not stop. I didn’t want my puffy eyes to betray me when I went back to the nursing home to sit with my grandmother and pick up my mother from her overnight shift of sitting with her. If my mother could sit with her all night, getting by on just three hours of sleep a night for a week, I could hold to my tears.

    We were called into the room for the last moments of my grandmother’s life. I couldn’t stay. I couldn’t stand. I couldn’t breathe. I ran outside and sat on a bench and sobbed, alone in my grief. A few minutes later I pulled myself together and returned inside. Later, before the undertaker took her away, I kissed my grandmother goodbye for the last time.

    I allowed myself to cry a little during the funeral. I allowed myself to cry again driving to the airport, alone on the highway. When I told Lee that when we are in PEI I want to put flowers on the grave that she and my grandmother share my voice cracked. And I’m crying now.

    I don’t know how to grieve. I never have. To grieve feels selfish. I feel the need to be strong, to push the tears down and fight grief.

    Perhaps it’s because if I grieve it really means she’s gone and I can’t imagine a world in which she does not exist, except in our memories and hearts.

    I just know that sometimes the thought that of her being gone hits me so hard that I don’t know how to breathe. I feel like I wasted so much time and I wonder if she knows how much she was loved.

  • June and I are not on speaking terms

    Date: 2010.06.18 | Category: Uncategorized | Response: 2

    First June took my grandmother. I flew home to PEI to sit vigil with her and then was there for the visitation and arrangements.

    It rained the whole time I was in PEI, clearing up to a beautiful sunny day when I left. When I got to Ottawa I flew into…rain.

    I’ve been scrambling around trying to smoosh a month’s worth of work into two weeks and I end up urgent care. Short story – we thought I had appendicitis. I didn’t. It was a mystery event that looked and felt a lot like appendicitis with a side of blood pressure crashes that had me oozing out of my chair (something they solved by putting me on a stretcher – fun!). I’m fine now. Really.

    But June, you are on notice. I leave for vacation in a week. I want sunshine and daisies or we’re getting a divorce.

  • Thinking of Granny

    Date: 2010.06.01 | Category: Things I Don't Understand | Response: 6

    When my cell phone rang while I was in the office and I saw the familiar area code and unfamiliar number I figured something was wrong. After answering it and hearing my mother’s voice I was pretty sure that something was wrong. I was right. My grandmother has had another stroke. She’s unconscious and they don’t expect her to wake up this time. The family is gathering. I’m not on a plane or in an airport right now because they don’t know how long she’ll stay. It could be days, even a week. So I’m staying here, trying to be normal while on high alert and waiting for the phone to ring. Pretending that everything is normal.

    I’ve looked into flights. I’ve looked into car rentals. Lee and I have already discussed that I’ll be going home alone this time because we’re already booked to go home at the end of the month and my work schedules are much more flexible than his. I was looking forward on this trip to visiting my grandmother at her nursing home. I’ve been told that since she had her strokes last year she’s started swearing like a sailor. My grandmother never, ever swore and it was amusing to everyone. I’m glad that Lee got to meet her on my last trip home. (At the end of that visit she still tucked a $20 in my hand.) But all there is for me to do is sit here and pretend that every thing is normal. And so I think.

    When I think of my grandmother I think of her in the kitchen of the house she lived in until I was in my early teens. It’s been close to twenty years since she’s really lived there but it’s where I remember her, even though we briefly shared a bedroom when she moved in with us after my grandfather died. The kitchen was the first room in her house you walked into. It was large and really had three different areas. There was a sitting area by the bay window where she could watch people drive by. She knew almost everyone who did drive by, many who waved or honked at the house because they knew she and my grandfather would be there. There was the cooking area with both a regular stove and wood stove that helped heat the house in the winter. And there was the dining area with the large formica table where you could easily sit eight people, or 10-12 if people were willing to squish. You couldn’t see the sitting area from the dining area.

    I spent a lot of time in that kitchen as a kid. I’d often stay with my grandparents during the day during the summer. I particularly remember being there during pickle making season. My grandfather made dills, which really only he and I ate. Together they made mustard pickles and occasionally bread and butter pickles.

    I remember her making biscuits. She kept hers in one of those tall Tupperware containers on the counter. There were biscuits at every meal. Sometimes she’d take leftover roast meat and chicken and make a pot pie out of it, topping it with biscuit dough. Her meals were simple and homey.

    She was always feeding people. A number of family members worked at a local fish plant and she’d cook a full meal for their lunch – meat, potatoes, biscuits and pickles. Sometimes she’d even have pie. She could hear the foghorn that indicated the break work breaks from her house and when it went off at lunch she knew she had five minutes to get the food on the table. The table would be set and people would file in, eat in a rush and run back out to get back before the final foghorn. She’d be left with a mess of dishes to clean up.

    During the right season I’d find leaf lettuce from her garden in a bowl of cold water in her refrigerator. It would be shaken and dried a bit before being put in a bowl with a pinch of sugar and a splash of white vinegar. I don’t see lettuce like that here so it’s been years since I’ve had it. She almost always used to send me home with some.

    Almost every Saturday night my mom and step-father went there and played cards. We almost always ate dinner there, again my grandmother’s simple but delicious meals. Almost every meal I had at grandparents contained one thing – sliced cucumbers in a bowl of icy cold white vinegar. I guess you could call them table pickles. I was always a bit of a cucumber fiend and could eat the whole bowl by myself if anyone would let me (they didn’t).

    I still do this sometimes. Lee doesn’t really care for cucumbers this way but it’s homey to me. Tonight when I sit down to a dinner of steak and asparagus I’ll put a dish of cucumbers in vinegar on the table. Lee might not eat any, I’ve gotten used to eating the whole dish myself — just like I always to do as a kid. I’ll think of her in her kitchen and try to imagine her swearing like a sailor.

  • Happy Birthday To Me

    Date: 2010.05.14 | Category: Things that are made of awesome | Response: 2

    Today’s my birthday! Happy birthday to me!

    I do plan on having a fantastic birthday and you can help. It’s easy, I promise. It doesn’t cost you anything and you will be making a young reader’s day as well.

    All you have to do is go to this BlogHer post and leave a comment telling everyone what book has had the greatest impact on your life (or you know, what books since it’s hard to pick just one). You can even sign in with your Facebook account. For every comment left on that BlogHer post BookRenter will donate a book, via First Book, to Head Start.

    Your comment over there means a child gets a book. Can you think of a more perfect birthday gift to me? So what are you waiting for? Go comment!

  • Life without a microwave: month one

    Date: 2010.05.10 | Category: sometimes I ramble | Response: 2

    I don’t miss the microwave. At all.

    Really.

    There’s actually room to prepare real food and I swear way less while making dinner than I did before. It’s kind of awesome.

    Lee, on the other hand, claims to miss having the microwave. However he is hard-pressed to say why he misses it. He’ll tell you that he misses being able to heat up the all-natural peanut butter so that it spreads easier. However it took him three weeks to realize that he couldn’t do it so I tend to disagree.

    Maybe it’s just me but I feel like we’re wasting less food. We are cooking slightly smaller portions because it’s slightly harder to heat food up. It takes a bit more thought to figure out how we’re going to reheat pasta for example, when we can’t just throw it in the microwave for a minute or two to reheat.

    Life without a microwave means we have to have a bit more patience (um, never a particular strong suit of mine to be honest). That we need to think about our food a bit more but it’s not a huge change for us really. We hardly ever had microwave meals in the house. It was pretty much a reheating device for us. We didn’t use it to actually cook.

    It’s not radical to live without a microwave. As I found out when I originally twittered that I was thinking of it I found out that many of you already do. So why is there so much resistance to the idea? Why do so many people look at us as though we are off our rocker when they find out?

Older posts Newer posts