Cottage Life

Yesterday, May 2, 2012, work on our cottage began in earnest.
Nothing was built or anything, but the boys (my husband with our contractor and his 2-guy crew) went up and cleared the trees off of the building site. On May 21 a fellow is coming to install our septic system (yes, this cottage will have a septic system due to our being way too by-the-book and sticking to the letter of the law) and clear an access road down to the site. He will also be flattening out the site a little bit, so our cottage doesn't have to soar up into the sky on its piers.
Soon after that, we are having the piers put in. We will be using these things called 'Technopiers' as our foundation – they are like big metal screws that are drilled about 5 or 6 feet into the ground, with metal posts welded on top. Then you put wooden posts on top of those. It's relatively easy peasy to install; apparently it should take two days due to the welding.
After that, the floors go in. Soon after that, the walls go up.
Sheesh.
A few months ago all of this was giving me a slow-mo heart attack, like how on earth can I set myself back another 100k or so in debt when we've come so far in clearing what we've already got? I find it crazy. I think it's a bit irresponsible. I think we're flying by the seat of our pants a little bit finance-wise. But what's life without risk? Other friends of ours have risked more on their projects, gotten themselves deep into holes for various passions and outcomes. It's our turn now to leap into the void.
This cottage we're building is not to be a palace. I estimate it will be approximately 800 square feet on the ground floor, plus a sleeping/playing/storage loft. Two bedrooms, one bathroom, a great room that comprises the kitchen, dining, living, and entry areas, a screen porch and a deck. Our floor plan is a sort of wide T-shape, simply because our hilly site makes it easier for us to go wide rather than deep. This plan was arrived at after I(and hubby) mock-designed about 658 different floor plans, finally made official by my architect brother-in-law, so if it works out I will feel a great deal of pride in my design. It will require a lot of elaborate stairs to get to, because of said hill, but it is my hope that we will eventually get to the point where one will be welcomed by lovely (natural, woodland – natch) paths and steps and plantings rather than just steep wooden stairs.
Hubby and I are not the kind of folks who enjoy clearing land and chopping down trees. On the contrary. We would have built a treehouse if it had been at all feasible. We want to leave a band of trees between us and the neighbors (our septic bed clearings are sort of beside each other) for privacy etc., but luckily the neighbors are family. The builders and septic-installers will need an access road in order to reach the site, so there will be some destruction there, but as soon as we move large furniture into the cottage (hopefully late July) I can start healing that land with small local tree transplants. We are fortunate in that no difficult decisions really have to be made with regards to trees; only one nice tree was taken down in yesterday's adventure: a maple that went super red every fall. Aside from that the forest in that spot is a dense mess of little trees that have choked out the light for so long that the only thing that grows there are mushrooms. We are trying not to clear too many trees overall but the reality is this: the trees we've got down there are kind of shitty. They are nasty birches – most of them dead on top – and a bunch of small hemlocks. Without some more cutting, that lot is going to be a nasty blackfly-and mosquito-infested mess and a safety hazard. The forest floor was just a pile of fallen branches and decades-old garbage from ancient campers. Once the building is complete, I am going to replace all that scrubby crap with some nice small white pines and junipers, abundantly available along the roadside that leads to the property, and lots and lots of blueberry plants. Near the water we have a stunning giant white pine tree that will be preserved (we aren't building at the water's edge) so as long as that's standing, I'm happy.
An interesting factor in all of this is that the cottage lot is off-grid. Not necessarily because we wanted it that way (though it is an advantage in my mind), but because nobody on our private gated road has power – the nearest hydro pole is 5 km away, beyond the gate. This impacts everything we do, both minor and major. All appliances we have to buy have to be propane, and man alive, propane fridges are freaking expensive. Hot water has to be supplied through a propane on-demand tankless heater, from water pumped out of the lake and stored in a tank. Lights will be propane, and we will read by the glow of solar lamps from Ikea. Eventually we want to invest in a solar panel to run some lights, at least 12v lights, but for right now the budget doesn't allow for that system. Having no power also means we won't be able to make normal decent toast, so we are currently looking into investing in one of these babies because we like toast with our eggs. There is, ironically, better internet and cellphone reception at our cottage than there is at our house.
The cottage will be an interesting construction project to watch: technopiers in the ground, then SIPS panels (dense Styrofoam/plywood sandwiches) become the entire floor, then on top of that go the walls which will all be interlocked square logs. They go up like Lincoln Logs – corners are simply chopped off with a chainsaw, windowholes cut out with a chainsaw and windows popped in – so my builder estimates the entire thing could go up in as fast as six weeks. The longest parts will be the roof and the ceiling, because the insides will all be tongue-and-groove and angles and this and that and it's finicky. My builder does fantastic work, though – he is a real wood artist. He's 26 going on 56 and I trust him to do a beautiful job.
So we are biting the bullet and building this thing. The idea is to have it paid off by the time I'm 45 or 50. It is to be Nora's inheritance and our Plan B, in case our everyday house crumbles into the ground or is carried off by ants someday. It is also to be a spot that we want our friends and family to enjoy, as the normal rigors of everyday living will hopefully be lessened – or at least that's the idea. It will need to be cleaned and maintained, secured and insured, like everything else but at least it's small, it's wood, it has no elaborate systems which can fail, it costs very little to run, and it's on a lake.
I want to go there right now. I have booked off two weeks in mid-August and our intention is to go there and enjoy ourselves. Some work will still need to be done, but hopefully by that time we'll also be ready to cook, eat, swim, play games, sleep, listen to the loons, talk, drink coffee, relax and stare at the water through the trees.

The Tyranny of Stuff

I have written before in these pages how I have an ongoing battle with the stuff that fills up my home. If it isn't food hiding in the back of my fridge or cupboard, it's junk accumulating in my basement or shed. I'm not quite sure why this happens, but I collect stuff like a damn magnet.

Every year around this time I get a kind of panicky frantic feeling, like I am getting short of breath and can't concentrate. I have to fight the urge to call up one of those construction debris places and rent a big garbage bin – the kind that has to be brought and taken away via flatbed truck – to park outside a window, and just start turfing. Imagine the freedom. If I could somehow be assured that someone will go through that bin at the other end and remove all of the re-useable and recyclable stuff, recycle it all properly and donate the rest of it to a good cause, I would sign up immediately.

I once read link after link after link about the phenomenon of hoarding. One thing stuck with me: that often the hoarding behavior starts with an uncertainty about how to properly dispose of something. I would add to that that it's not only uncertainty, but also laziness, because it often takes a lot more effort to dispose of something than it does to acquire it. Especially since in most cases, the bloom is off the rose; it's an object that we no longer want to deal with in any capacity, so we toss it into a corner and try to forget about it.

Sometimes I admire the people I see in magazines or whatever, who live in homes free of knickknacks. I think "wow how liberating, look how much space they have to breathe and think, how relaxed they must feel. Look at how much potential there is. Look at the well-placed objects on those mostly-empty shelves." But then I feel kind of sad for them, that they're not surrounded by the things they love or that make them happy to look at. I imagine they too must have closets or storage lockers full of old school assignments and stuffed toys missing eyes and clothes that don't quite fit anymore.

A lot of our problem lies in knickknack acquisition. When you have interests and those interests are made public, people latch onto them and that becomes the thing they know about you. And they shop accordingly, for all birthdays and Christmases forever into eternity. Take, for example, my husband's love of fishing. Hubby is a world-class fishing nut. He thinks about fishing about 78.5 times a day, I'm sure. When people meet him and talk with him for more than an hour, they come away with the knowledge that he is a man who loves fish. However, this does not mean that he necessarily loves fish boxer shorts, fish notecards, fish xmas lights, fish carvings, fish poems, fish pens, fish keychains and the BigMouth Billy Bass™. A short list of fish things that he actually likes could include: nerdy vintage fish science textbooks that are impossible to find, actual smoked fish, fish t-shirts that he picks himself (to wear fishing), very very very specific fishing lures that are also impossible to find, and fish taxidermy. Similarly, people know that I like dogs (more recently) and cats (formerly). So I have a ton of humour books about cats, cat notepads, a Crazy Cat Lady doll set, etc etc the list goes on.

Here is a list of things that I am actually into: storage containers, household organizers, high-end vacuum cleaners, garbage cans, and my kid.

I have recently discovered a whole new angle on this stuff-acquisition problem: having a child. People LOOOVE to shop for kids, myself included. Every week at least one new thing enters our home, aimed at Nora. Admittedly a lot of the stuff I acquire is clothing – I never in my life imagined how much clothing we could go through. Sometimes I think "enough! She has 1,800 pairs of pants and that is enough!" but then all of a sudden I go to get a pair and there are only 2 in the drawer, both of them too short. Then I feel the pull of Old Navy tugging at me. The seasons change and I realize that for this short in-between season we actually need hoodies, cardigants, splash pants, bigger rain boots, a rain coat, and toss in an umbrella for fun. Summer is coming. Great right? Smaller clothing, less of it? Nope: new bathing suit, life jacket, water shoes, sandals, sunscreen, a larger sun hat, etc etc etc.

I also realize that about half of all clothing I got for her before she was born is redundant and fits the wrong season. A lot of the things we received as gifts have never been worn or worn only once, because it was too big last summer and this summer it'll be way too small, or it just never suited her at all (too girly, too squat, etc). That's the way it goes. I kind of have to get her clothes 'à la minute' because I never can tell when the spurts will happen. I feel badly that a lot of these things have been wasted. It keeps bringing to mind the big question of 'will I have another one?' but that is another topic for another day. I save the clothes in case I or someone very close to me has a(nother) baby, and it makes me weepy and sentimental to go through them, but some of the less-special things can be given away. Because, after all, it is super fun to buy new baby clothes.

However, the toys are officially out of control. She's starting to get to the point where she can't possibly play with them all and some of them are being forgotten. The cottage is the solve-all for this and other storage issues – she will need to have a small set of toys to play with up there during quiet times away from the lake and the great outdoors. Stuffed toys for her room, a ride-on toy for the deck, a selection of books - I am not hauling toys back and forth so this venture will inject some novelty into the whole thing. Some of the toys are really 'baby' toys and can be put away under the cover of night, when she will never notice they are gone. Lately all she wants to play with are rocks and pinecones anyway.

Ultimately, I think this is the answer to my problems: forget the spring cleaning. Wait for the cottage. Stock the cottage full of stuff I've already got, that we've been hoarding for years in anticipation of this moment, and then re-assess. In the fall, rent that garbage bin and be mercenary about the whole thing. Stick to my guns. Donate household stuff to the local community centre's second-hand 'shop', clothes to value village, books to the library. Pitch the old computer. Recycle old magazines I'm not going to 'get to later ' and cancel the subscriptions (keep Martha for inspiration). Make a pact that when we buy a new thing we get rid of the old thing, don't just put it downstairs and forget about it. Try on clothes before buying them so I can see if they really don't fit or flatter. Buy good products instead of many products. Don't acquire things we won't definitely use within a year. Don't buy anything without assessing whether or not I already have that thing or something that can be used in its place. Don't pick up other peoples' garbage. I am going to make a list of these points, print it out, and leave it all over the house.

It's going to be an uphill battle but I think we can do it.

Helloooo Internet

So the thing with having a blog is that you actually have to WRITE in it once in awhile.

I'm not going to apologize for not showing the love to my blog lately. I have been busy. I have been a busy little bee and you know what? I have also been sick for 48 years. Never mind that I am only 36, they are 48 figurative years. 48 long, long, figurative, very sick and snotty years.

I knew Nora would get sick a lot, and she has (she is sick again right now, as a matter of fact!) I was smug enough to assume that since I'm an adult with an adult immune system and I go to work every day and do adult stuff (not that adult stuff), I wouldn't get sick as often. I was partially right, because while I haven't been sick often, the illness I did get has had a stranglehold on me for about 3.78 weeks now. And that's no exaggeration. I think I have actually had three colds in that time, that keep cycling through my bent and battered body. My immune system has started to wave the white flag, the flag that says "enough! I know you are self-righteous enough to believe that the medical establishment is kind of up to no good, but girl, it is time to seek out antibiotics!" The left side of my face wants to be rescued. I want to taste food again, and my coworkers want to stop hearing the sounds of snot exiting my body.

Through this illness, I managed to host a 'jury' at work. When I say I'm in jury people get excited and expect me to give juicy details of gory trials or something, but really they are meetings at which groups of artists decide which other groups of artists get to have money for their projects. They are, nonetheless, intense experiences, where we sit in a darkened room for 8 hours at a time, 5 days in a row, and discuss/debate/lightly argue about art and I am tasked with the duty of keeping pace and keeping peace. Also tasked with the final process of who-gets-what. I like it, but this time around, I was so sick that already on Monday afternoon I was picturing what it'd be like if one of my committee members (who I'd only just met) had to suddenly give me CPR. I could not breathe. I had to take frequent bathroom breaks to blow my now-raw-and-zitty nose, and in the dark I was holding my forehead just so, to try to 'break' the pain somehow. It was kind of miserable.

Also, we have been pushing through to the end of winter. It's decently warm outside (some would say dangerously unseasonable but I'll take it this year, I hated winter so hard) and the snow is melting, and I feel like the end is in sight. The last bit has been a tough slog, as Nora went through a stomach flu, a cold, then gave me the cold, then got the cold again (along with my father and hubby), and now she's getting over THAT cold but I am still sick. Or sick again. I have been taking care of illnesses for what feels like forever.

We've been making some progress on this cottage project, however, despite the illness. Through February, we've been meeting with our builder and have finally settled on a bunch of things that needed to be settled before we begin (cost, timeline, final design). I have also received the septic evaluation, so we can move forward with the building permits etc, which (fingers crossed) are ridiculously easy to get in our municipality. Rick, the guy in charge of that sort of thing, is super affable and knows me from my brother-in-law's build, and he likes me. So that should go pretty well. I have a meeting with the bank tomorrow, and have made some adjustments to my insurances etc. to save some dollars here and there. I will present this project to you in full detail once we're further along. We hope to get started in May.

I have discovered, in the past few months, the joy of carpooling. It has its drawbacks as well, of course – I am less flexible when it comes to leaving work early, taking days off, and running errands after work - but I carpool with a super nice gang of locals and we have formed our own little group. For a couple of us, it has sadly become our social life, this coming and going from work. Other advantages include reduced cost of parking, reduced gas usage, reduced mileage on my car, and we get to take the carpool lanes, which allow us to zoom past traffic and get to and from work pretty quickly. I love my carpool. Highlight of my day (my workday, that is). Our kids all kind of go to daycare together too, so it's a double-nice community thing, this carpool.

And then there is Nora. Sweet Nora, who can now talk quite a bit and is really super hammy. I love the personality she has become. She is small and feisty and stubborn and knows what she wants, but at the same time she's quiet and has a wisdom about her that I appreciate. She isn't noisy. She doesn't complain much. She sort of quietly processes stuff and then throws it back out at you later, when you least expect it. She has the wisdom of the ages that one. You get the impression, when communicating with her, that she doesn't suffer fools and can see right through your crap. She definitely sees through all the tricks I use to try to get her dressed and fed. She is also currently embroiled in a deep love affair with Elmo. Elmo has been helping us motivate Nora to do things she might not otherwise want to do, like eat her supper, or have her diaper changed. It's often the first thing she says when she gets up in the morning ("Elmo?" as in 'are you there Elmo?') often followed by "Oma?" because my mom bought her an Elmo doll. So now it's "Elmo? Oma?" and then when I explain that yes, Oma gave you Elmo, and Oma is at her house with Buppy (my dad), she says, nodding, "Elmo. Oma. Oma Buppy?" She is starting to sound like David Letterman hosting the Oscars – "Uma – Oprah – Uma – Oprah."

I have been spending lots of time online, even though I haven't been good at this blog-writing thing. I discovered Pinterest, which holds my attention for about a half hour a day. I use it mainly to collect ideas for this cottage we want to build. I have also been spending time on facebook (of course, mostly chatting with my mom. Hi Mom!) and on Gawker, which is where I choose to get my news. My snarky news. I surf Etsy quite a lot since I discovered it has a vintage section. It is way more up-market than Ebay, which is now like the equivalent of those flea markets full of people who sell bags of socks and bootlegged DVDs. I read a great blog on www.Babble.com written by Samantha Bee and Alanna Harkin called "Eating Over the Sink", and March Fug Madness has begun on www.gofugyourself.com. That, in addition to all the regular news and gossip sites, pretty much makes up my internet profile of late.

That's a snapshot of me at this moment. I am wearing a grey-striped boatneck sweater, black dress pants with an awkward and unfortunate tie-belt situation in the front, and black socks, and am sitting at my desk with my legs folded under me, chewing gum because I forgot to brush my teeth this morning. My hair is up in an "I need a haircut" clip, disguised as a messy French twist. I have no makeup on, as it would interfere with the aforementioned nose-blowing. Pretty huh? So that's where I'm at right now, internets. See ya next time.

The glory of speech

It's finally arrived: the phase I've been waiting so impatiently for: Nora is talking. I mean, she's had words for awhile now – mama, daddy, Sasha, and random ones like knee, door and moon – but lately she has so many words that I feel like she will soon start stringing them together, that she's merely being coy and economical with them.

For a long time now, she has eerily understood everything we say. She will pick a word out of our sentences and go with it, like if she recognizes a word from one of her books she will run and get that book. If I say "do you see that caterpillar?" she will solemnly nod and then scamper off, returning with her Ten Little Caterpillars book. If I quote a line from Dr. Seuss, which I do with some frequency now that Dr. Seuss is being drilled into my head many times daily, she will run away and come back with that exact book. She recognizes them by the spines even, and will with one precise finger pull the correct book off of the shelf.

But lately she has really started to get conversational. I mean, they are short conversations, to be fair. I say a bunch of stuff to her and she will say one relevant word back at me, often the last word I said. If I ask her a question, she will either (and usually) say 'no', or she will repeat the last word, which is a vague indication of yes. She doesn't actually say 'yes' yet. Sometimes a fuzzy little 'yeaaahh' will come out but it's still not definite. So if I say 'do you want a bottle?' she will either say 'No', or she will say 'Baba', usually urgently, eyebrows raised.

The other day she was looking into a little evening bag I'd given her to play with, and when her Daddy asked her 'what's in your purse Nora?' she replied, clear as day, 'nothing!' And it was true – there was nothing in that bag.

But back to the topic of 'No'. I knew it was inevitable, I know that all toddlers get into a 'no' phase, but I don't think I expected it to hit so soon. Everything you ask her (almost) is answered with a 'no!' but it's not only the word itself, oh no. She says it in a tone and body language that indicates that I am being completely ridiculous even asking her that silly question. She scrunches her chin into her chest and rolls her eyes up and smiles and goes 'nyoooo'. It's pretty cute. I don't usually internalize her 'no's anyway, sorry to say. I realize she says it constantly (indeed she can often be found walking around just yelling 'NO!' at the top of her lungs to nothing in particular, and very often she chases the dog around yelling 'NO!' at her), and sometimes I suspect she means 'yes' but says 'no', so I usually just proceed anyway. If I get a second 'no' then I back off somewhat. In our house, right now, no doesn't always mean no.

I will admit that while she is speaking, I suspect that I am the only one who fully understands her. A lot of her words sound the same – Daddy and doggy require context to untangle, and movie, monkey and Mommy are pretty close. Movie is 'moo-me', monkey is 'mah-mmy' and Mommy is 'mummy.' In that category we also find mango, which is 'may-mo.' But she is trying, she is trying so very hard. She is chattering and vocalizing and figuring it all out. I know when she points to her sled and says 'wheee!' she wants to go for a ride, and I know that water is 'wa' and more is 'mo.' Also she knows most animal noises. What more does a girl need?

This comes at a very interesting time for me, because I took up my employer's offer to take American Sign Language classes, for two hours once a week. Not only has it been really cool to realize that you can indeed teach an old dog new tricks, but it has given me a small perspective into Deaf culture, which I'd never before stopped to consider, I'm sad to say. Learning about all the ways in which humans can communicate non-verbally has made it really interesting to come home and watch Nora, who is starting to use all of the tools available to her to make her needs known. We never taught her baby sign language – mostly because I never really felt we needed it, we understood each other from day one and between pointing and early words we are doing just fine – but I guess I can see how it would be beneficial with pre-verbal babies. I think it would benefit the parents almost as much if not more than the kids, because it really teaches you to pick up on their cues and pay close attention. I admit to having a bit of a problem with teaching babies sign language because I do feel that if they are able to be verbal, it behooves you to reinforce using language so that they pick it up and it doesn't become optional. I wouldn't want my three-year-old squeezing her hand together to ask for milk if she's perfectly able to say 'milk.' At a time of life when language skills are just being formed, I do feel it's important to encourage their tongues and palettes to work at forming words, as it takes practice practice practice to get those motions right.

All that aside, Mommy is loving sign language. Nobody around me seems interested in it, so I find myself signing in the kitchen, in the bath, on the toilet, in the car, etc. I hope I get to use it and the knowledge doesn't fade away like an unused muscle, because I feel it's been a real mind expansion learning about this exciting culture and way of being. It definitely takes you out of your comfort zone, and teaches you to consider language as being not only things that come out of your mouth but also your body language, actions, facial expressions and relationships. The first class was daunting, realizing that my instructor is Deaf, wondering if I would ever get the hang of it and be able to understand anything she's talking about. The hardest part of it for me has been learning to fingerspell, and making those movements flow naturally. I think it takes a ton of practice and I wish there was a way I could keep it up, a way that also fits my lifestyle (living far from the city, home with a baby, always tired). I don't want it to become another one of those interests I've had in my life that have come on with some intensity and then faded away. Like crochet and Vikings.

So Nora and I both continue to learn how to speak, and every day we take for granted how much we've learned and how far we've come.

I Don’t Like Mondays

It's 9:04 a.m.

I am at work, sitting in my office in comfortably low light, looking at a photo of my beautiful daughter taken back in the summer. I have just finished a bowl of oatmeal, garnished with blueberries, dried cranberries, and coconut.

So far, this has been one of those days that I will think about later on when I'm wrestling with the work/life balance question. When I look back at "that January when Nora was 16 months old."

Nora has been sick lately. She caught a cold right after Christmas and this manifestation came with a croupy cough and morning stuffiness. I feel for her, because I have been fighting it as well. The cough is now going away (two weeks later) but she still coughs for a bit after waking up – understandable, as all that snot from her nose has likely run down there through the night. Last night, she woke up screeching at 1 a.m. and could.not.be.consoled, until I realized that the whole front of her sleeper was soaked in pee – another diaper breach, which is happening more and more lately. She doesn't like it. After struggling to change a hysterical twisting Nora in the dark, and hubby getting her a nice little bottle of water (I know, counterintuitive but she loves it), she settled back down. Half an hour, all told, which isn't too too bad.

I hauled my butt out of bed four and a half hours later, after hitting snooze a couple of times. Had my shower, and then went to the basement to get the second half of my outfit, which was still in the dryer. I saw a red blob at the bottom of the stairs and was concerned, since I knew it had something to do with the cat (the dog can't get down to the basement), and she's diabetic with recently questionable health. By the time I got all the way to the bottom of the stairs, I realized it was a barfed-up half-digested mouse. I know this, because I found its face, staring up at me whiskers and all. I pulled my clothes out of the dryer while suppressing my own barf, and tiptoed back upstairs carefully avoiding the pile of yuck.

Next I prepared a bottle – a bit larger than normal, maybe 1.5 oz more than she usually gets in the morning - and went up to Nora, who was still sleeping in full jellybean mode (on her tummy, hands tucked under, bum in the air – it is the cutest thing and getting her out of it breaks my heart). I pulled her out of bed and gave her her bottle, which she took eagerly. Her stomach was making hungry groans and her slurping was noisy, mostly because her nose was stuffy. She finished the bottle fairly quickly, and sat up, still sleepy. She does this cute thing where she sits up, rubs her eyes, then puts her arms around me and her head on my chest. It melts my heart. So I held her for a delicious minute, smelling her hair, then picked her up and took her downstairs to change her diaper and get her dressed. I always lay out her clothes the night before, so I have the time to wrestle her into them, which lately takes a good 15 minutes all told.

I put her down on the change mat and got her diaper off, wiped her bottom, and she coughed. Just a small cough, nothing crazy, but it caused a bit of spit up to come out the side of her mouth. Understandable, ok, I go to wipe it up with the arm of the pyjamas I was taking off. I was halfway to her mouth when a bit more came out. Uh oh. Then BLAAAAAAAAGGGGHHH the stream issued forth, out of her mouth, her nose, and possibly even her ears, I can't be sure. Barf has now sprayed all over the mat, her hair, the books that were lying nearby, a couple of toys, and the adorable clean outfit I'd prepared. Curdled milk all over everything, puddling on my nice wool rug. I'm pretty sure the entire bottle ended up outside of her body.

So she is very (understandably) upset, I'm flipping her over trying to clear her airways while also selfishly trying to keep her barf off of my own clean work outfit. She is giving me a horrible "mama help me!" face and I make her sit there, miserable, naked, while I run for some clean washcloths to wipe up the mess but I don't really take the time to make the water hot, so I had to wipe her with a cool washcloth, which I imagine feels miserable at 6:45 on a January morning. The poor little bean. I wiped off her books and propped them up to dry. I managed to diaper her and put her undershirt on and thankfully Daddy woke up at that point and came down to be with her while I went up to pick out new clothes. I bundled all of the barfousness (change mat, pyjamas, cute fresh outfit, two washcloths, 6 oz of barfed up milk), and headed back down to the basement, around the mouse face, and tossed everything into the washing machine, set to wash. Back upstairs, upstairs again to get clean clothes, and finally dressd Nora who protested – as usual – and would only put her pants on when I convinced her that she can't go outside and visit Frosty (our snowman) without pants.

I bundle us both up and am heading out the door when hubby yells that we have no water. No water. No freaking water. Here is the sum total of the water used so far today: I flushed the toilet once. I had a 7-minute shower. I soaked two washcloths, and started a load of laundry. It's my feeling that our well ought to have enough water in it to handle these small tasks. What this means is A) we have a plumbing issue somewhere or worse, B) we need a new well/our well drilled deeper, as well as C) the load of barf laundry is sitting there with only a drizzle of water on it, for the entire day. In the mouse-facey basement. This also means that hubby has to go over to my parents' place to shower, since he has not cleaned himself since Saturday afternoon.

Anyway, I dropped a pretty-cheerful Nora off at Oma's, then encountered a huge asshole driver on the road to wakefield, where I met my girlfriend in pretty good time. We got in slightly late, but the roads were a bit greasy and traffic was bad. I had my oatmeal, and got an email from a friend with some nice news. I am almost ready to greet my day.

My hand still smells a bit like barf, so I am off to the washroom. I do not like Mondays.

Cleansing vs. Cleaning

I have a number of facebook friends who, on this New Year's Day of 2012, are proposing cleanses, lifestyle changes, resolutions and the like. I applaud them! I really do, I really hope they can make positive changes in their lives if that is what they are inclined to do. And if I were a different, more motivated kind of person, I too might take this opportunity to make some kind
of statement of intention to make positive changes in my own life. Only I know myself too well.

I once did the stereotypical join-a-gym-in-the-new-year thing. I signed up, bought running shoes and loaded up my mp3 player, and gamely went to work with a gym bag of dopey clothes and good intentions. I think I lasted 3 weeks. My problem wasn't that I didn't enjoy it (ok I found it boring as shit to tell you the truth, I think there's nothing at all interesting about staying in one
place trying to move constantly), but that I hated my gym clothes and felt phony. Every time I put them on I thought "I have the ugliest old gym clothes in this place" but I was unwilling to invest any more money in the venture, and I felt like a fraud in anything more jazzy/lululemony. I am not an athletic person and I do not feel comfortable dressing like one.

So I found various reasons to quit. I'm not sure what my exact justification was.

And I often come across lists (because I like to make lists, and I have books of them) of foods that I at one time or another pledged to eat or not to eat FROM NOW ON. None of these lists were adhered to. I have similarly found lists of budgets that I should stick to, books I should read, and activities I should take up. Once I came upon a list I'd made of things to do before I die, where I'd written numbers 1 through 50 down the left-hand column, but only came up with about five or so activities. I aim low.

So I resolve once again to make no resolutions this New Years. Phew it feels so good to be let off the hook by myself so early in the game. Oh sure, I vaguely pledged to worry less, be nicer to my husband, and keep my house cleaner but we all know that none of that is likely to change overnight. I yam what I yam: a messy paranoid meanie.

However, I did kick off the new year by doing one onerous cleaning task: I sorted out my kitchen cupboard. It's the cupboard (actually two doors, covering three shelves) over my main prep area, where I keep basically all of my smaller ingredients, spices, baking stuff, etc. For years I have just piled things on top of other things and let them accumulate, wedging miscellaneous spices and crap into the front one inch of shelf space as it came along. See? A mess. So the other day I was irritated by it and I tackled it.

In addition to discovering that many of my herbs and spices no longer had any recognizable scent besides "dust" and that I was storing a few empty jars in the cupboard, I found the following ridiculousness:

- two near-full bags of shredded coconut
- 4 bags of dried thyme
- 3 bags of icing sugar
- 3 bags of rock-hard raisins
- 2 full cartons of molasses
- a HUGE jar of 'ground amchur' (mango powder?) that I bought once for
an Indian recipe that required, like, a teaspoon of it. I have had
approximately six pounds of mango powder hanging around for 11 years.
- 2 full jars of instant coffee (we do not drink instant coffee)
- a big jar of green flakes that I at first suspected might be someone's
stash of marijuana, but turns out to be a pile of real green loose-leaf tea
- no less than 5 jars of honey. For this I blame the Austrians and the Germans - every time they come and leave whatever place they have rented/occupied, they bring us their unused food, and they like honey. We always get the leftover honey (and pasta, pounds and pounds of it). Same with pesto - I must have 7 jars of pesto in my fridge.

I also found about four half-bags of rice so old that it had yellowed, about 7 different kinds of lentils, various jars of mystery powder (don't get excited, most came from the bulk barn), and two unopened boxes of salt that are hard like bricks. There were a lot of 'what the hell is this?' moments, where I sniffed a jar or a bag and set it aside.

Here is a shot of my cupboard, taken AFTER the great cleanse. Hubby says "this still looks like a 'before' shot." har har. Note: shelves are still sagging, though they are propped up behind that middle bar. Don't worry, my lentils are safe.

I realized a few things during this process: 1. I am a food pack rat, and 2. I have weird friends. How many friends do you have who have gifted you with strange bundles of herbs for asian soups and packets of agar agar powder? A giant bag of loose green tea from China? Three different friends. Lumps of cane sugar? Part of Christmas gift 2006 from friend #2, may have come with the agar agar powder. I feel like some kind of minor deity, with all these food offerings. I guess my friends also know that I am a food pack rat. I was just given several lovely foil-wrapped packets of Korean tea and from this paragraph you may surmise that I am into tea, but actually I am not. Sorry friends. I drink really mundane coffee from a crappy percolator, hate to disappoint.

As I write this I am plowing through a baggie of Christmas-issue jelly belly jellybeans. Just ate one that tasted suspiciously of barf.

So I am not making any resolutions, just taking this break as an opportunity to start fresh with certain things, get some chores done, try not to disgust myself anymore with my gross food hoarding. I may make a minor promise to get through the 7 jars of pesto and 18 kilos of pasta, to prepare all of those lentils somehow and to stop buying things in bulk and forgetting
to label them.

Here's to 2012. I promise to follow all of your exploits in self-betterment with mild fascination from my spot on the couch. Cheers to you all.

Gennyland's Modest Financial Tidbits

I have been thinking about money more than usual lately. Partially because I returned to work, with all of its attendant costs, and tried desperately to figure out if we could ‘make it work’ on one salary, and partially because we made the sudden decision to buy a new, not-so-cheap car, but mostly because the financial news these days is all doom and gloom. Between the business in Europe and the Occupy this-and-that movement, hubby and I have been thinking and talking about money quite a bit.

The other night he admitted to me that he was a bit worried, that he was afraid of the future. It’s the first time he’s told me this, and the first time I’ve kind of had to talk him down from financial worry. And here’s a bit of background info on the financial life of gennyland and Mr. gennyland: money is something we never, ever, EVER fight about. We see 99% eye-to-eye on all things financial, even though we may fight like cats and dogs at times about how the household recycling is managed. When we set out on this shared life together, hubby wasn’t doing so hot financially (bad student loans, terrible credit, had never had a credit card, wasn’t really 100% employed) but I was ok. I had a safety net, whereas he never had, and I had a job that paid me a decent amount for my lifestyle – living at home driving a crappy old car.

As soon as he got some solidity in his life, things really turned around for Mr. gennyland. He surprised me by becoming the better of us at saving money, at managing debt, and at figuring out how to work the system to our advantage. Add to that the windfall that we got when his aunt passed away, and I have to say (and remind him) that financially we are doing sort of ok.

In talking him down from the ledge the other day, I really started to think about what it is that we do to keep ourselves afloat. I am always fascinated when I am able to talk with people about how they manage their finances, especially couples, and what systems people put in place to make sure things are equitable and the bills get paid. Turns out, everyone does it differently. Everyone has a different balance of financial responsibility within their relationships and what works for one couple may not work for another. People are often surprised when they find out that Mr. gennyland and I keep all of our expenses separate. We have always done so; when we moved in together, he was less gainfully employed than I was, had some rotten debt that I wanted no part of, and our relationship was relatively new. He had just returned from six months in Thailand and we moved in together (partially) out of practicality, so we wanted to ensure that we didn’t become too complicatedly entangled in case things went funny. So every two weeks, I recorded our expenses and listed our purchases (keeping receipts is essential to our system) and balanced them against one another. Since I was the better of us two at remembering stuff and figured out internet banking faster than he did, I paid the bills, so usually what ended up happening is I’d balance all of our receipts and bills against each other and he’d have to pay me whatever I was owed.

Thirteen years, a house, an inheritance, five cars and a baby later, we still operate on the same system. Sometimes I go “are you sure you want to keep going this way?” because it is admittedly a lot to manage and sometimes we slip up, but the answer is always yes. I think we believe that since we make quite different salaries, someone would feel slighted if we shared an account. Bad blood might arise, and this system we’ve got going now works and keeps things neutral.

Anyway, onto the point of this overlong post, which is to share my modest financial wisdom with those of you who might be looking for alternative ideas, or starting out in a new co-habitation situation, or on the brink of a large purchase or life change. Humour me. This is more about recording my ideas for my own future reference than for educating the masses, because I am hardly a banking wizard or a millionaire:

1. Live within your means. I mean duh, right? In stating the obvious here, I am thinking of those people who stretch themselves to live in a certain kind of house or drive a certain kind of car. I bought my house when I was 26. Would I have rather had a larger house with radiant floor heating and three bedrooms? Yes. Would I rather have had a large kitchen with a breakfast bar, a window seat and butcher block countertops? Yes. But we didn’t have the money for it, so we bought a house built in 1976 that cost us $112,000 and had a kitchen I like to refer to as “pirate-chic”. We capitalized on timing, meaning that the real estate market in our area boomed just after we bought (18 new houses have gone up on our road in the 9 years since we moved in) so we were able to get in while the getting was good. Also some bad experience to draw from: we drove crappy second-hand cars for years believing that they were cheaper overall. What we learned (and continue to learn) is that you really do get what you pay for with cars, and while they are initially cheaper, it’s not worth the stress and ongoing expense of constantly repairing a shitty old car. It’s just not worth it, so unless you are a mechanic, and have that kind of money and energy, it’s not within your means to buy an old jalopy. A good compromise is to buy a used car from a reputable dealer, as they’ve been vetted already. Our 2005 Vibe has so far given us zero hassle, apart from regular maintenance.

2. Keep an emergency fund. When we bought our house, hubby and I agreed that we’d keep the two-party financial system going BUT that we would get ourselves a savings account that is shared. That way we both have online access to it, and we set up an automatic deposit system so that on each of our paydays, an agreed-upon amount went automatically into the emergency account. And it racks up. This money was to be used for all things house-related, major purchases, emergency expenses and such. We also use it as a bounce-over account for when hubby pays me his balance owing every two weeks – he transfers it in and I transfer it to my account.

3. Double-pay where and when possible In 2008 when the markets crashed and the banks yanked the interest rates down, we were able to capitalize on our variable rate mortgage. Since our day-to-day salaries and expenses didn’t change, yet our mortgage went down to like 2%, we decided to start paying it as aggressively as possible, to get a leg up for the future. We approached the bank and asked if, in addition to making our payments bi-weekly, we could increase the amount paid. Turns out we couldn’t just bump up the amount BUT there was a little-used rule that said we could double-pay, meaning that each payment is mirrored every two weeks. It’s an easy way to do it because if the rates go up again, we don’t have to negotiate a lower payment amount, we just cancel the doubling. Our mortgage is so low (see the aforementioned note about the $112k house) that after two or three years of this double-paying, we are set to have it paid off within the next two years – 11 years after buying the house. Sometimes I feel badly for capitalizing on a bad situation (the collapse of the global financial markets) but personally, it has worked out fine so far, enabling us to pay a 25-year mortgage in 11 years.

4. Balance your savings against your debt This would also seem to be a no-brainer, but somehow I have a problem with it. Like, I have a Tax-Free Savings account racking up a not-very-impressive 2% interest, yet I keep spending on my line of credit which sits at 4% and WORSE, my credit card which is like 19%. There’s a mental leap to be made in using your savings to pay off your debts, but it makes zero (maybe less than) sense to keep paying 19% interest when you’re only making 2% on your savings. Better to be at zero overall I say. Zero savings, zero debt. Then avoid the credit for awhile so you can rack up your savings again.

5. Tuck money away into hidey holes. To amuse nobody but myself, I opened a savings account with a separate internet-based bank, and have been ferreting money away into it whenever I have a bit extra. (This works best in our two-party financial system, as it could otherwise raise trust issues). I don’t use it much, and I often forget I have it. I never check it, but sometimes I will delight myself by remembering it’s there and then looking and being surprised that hey, I have a couple of thou saved up and I didn’t even feel it. I buy Canada savings bonds through work and don’t feel that either, but they’re there, which I always forget until I get a statement in the mail. Now it’s a bad idea to REALLY forget these things, as they’re all a part of your overall portfolio and personal worth, but it’s good to have some places to hide money from yourself.

6. Maximize free opportunities to save Hubby’s work has this great system where they don’t have a pension plan per se, but they have a great really terrific (as in, how do I get a piece of that action?) group investment plan. They make crazy interest. It comes off of his paycheque in agreed-upon amounts, and all contributions (up to a certain amount) are matched by the company. So it’s relatively painful, doubles your original investment, and gets an awesome rate of return. His investments through this company in the ten years he’s been there have climbed just about as high or higher than my RRSP has, and I’ve had it at least 3 years longer, much of that time in a quote-unquote “aggressive” portfolio (read: they make more money off of me for some reason) through the VERY USELESS Investor’s Group. (I do not recommend Investor’s Group. Go with a bank, they’re much more reliable). As well, he has signed up for a cash-back Visa, which gives him 2% cash back on specific purchases. It carries a monthly (or annual?) fee, so he ensures that he A) pays his balance off right away, and B) spends enough on it that the cash he gets back more than covers the annual fee. So he’s winning and the credit card company’s losing, because he makes sure to pay it just in time to never pay interest. This is the relationship you want with your credit card, though you do have to be on top of it. I am not that good, I am sloppy with my card, racking up interest and then paying it off in bulk when I can.

7. Compartmentalize this is more of a mental trick than a financial tip. Hubby gets easily overwhelmed and will sometimes indicate that we can’t, for example, order a pizza for dinner because we just paid $700 for firewood or some kind of thing like that. I like to compartmentalize my spending into everyday small cash-type amounts and large purchases. As long as one doesn’t completely overshadow the other, I feel pretty comfortable ordering that pizza. It keeps me from feeling cheated.

8. Minimize bad investments Examples of bad investments include cars (though see above, sometimes you have to bite the bullet. Just know that it’s never a moneymaking venture), technology, RVs, and things like gardens and other ephemera which you might think raises your property value but in fact unless you’re selling your house, are just an expense. Not to say that you shouldn’t have one, just don’t go into it thinking you’re making an investment, because a crappy badly-maintained garden has less curb appeal that flat grass in my books. This is obviously a sore spot with me lately. Examples of good investments include bathroom renovations (for the same reason, only not), land, your house, and anything that will make you comfy in the future. I would say art for obvious reasons but so few people are aware of ins and outs of the re-sale market that the chances you will actually re-sell it someday on anywhere but ebay, or through some shuckster auctioneer, are slim unless you are a professional collector or very rich person.

9. Want to donate money, but you’re not that flush? Try Kiva (www.kiva.com). These are microloans, so while you might be out of pocket for a bit and you don’t get a tax receipt, the money is repaid in installments and you get to feel great knowing that you’ve helped, say, some poor Nicaraguan single mother put a new roof on her house. It also helps very much to put things in your own life into perspective.

10. Speaking of perspective, a friend of mine posted this link to his facebook page last week, in light of the recent “Occupy Wall Street” and copycat protest movements. It’s sobering. http://www.globalrichlist.com/

So there, I babbled for four pages about money and now I feel so cleansed that I’m gonna go out and treat myself and a good friend of mine to a fancy lunch. Food is never a bad investment. See? Compartmentalize!

Feeling kind of itchy.

Every morning that I send her to daycare, I feel like I'm throwing Nora into a cesspool.

Don't get me wrong; Sue's place is relatively clean (as clean as any place which is overrun by toddlers every day) and Sue runs a fairly tight ship, making sure dishes are washed and anything that goes into mouths is scrubbed regularly. I've seen her confiscate soothers and I've seen the pile of toys sitting by the sink waiting to be cleaned. There are no untoward smells and Sue is very keen to change Nora's clothes at the first sign of a mess. Often she undergoes two wardrobe changes in a day, which is two more than I would give her at home barring a catastrophic event (i.e. barfing, shitsplosions, etc).

But the very nature of a daycare ensures that the children will get sick. And oh they get sick. Since starting daycare a mere 5.5 weeks ago, Nora's had a stomach thing, a terrible cold, and now she's got a mysterious nighttime cough.

Not only do they get sick, but there are also the unexpected (by me) side consequences of all this wonderful socialization; today Sue told me that the older sibling of one of the toddlers came home with nits. Lice. Head lice. And Sue said that she has to make sure to check all the little ones. Since we are in a relatively small community – which has definite benefits – the threat comes from three sides: Nora's in daycare with this little gal's baby brother (who is so far nit-free) but the poor little one with lice (J) is also in the same class as two of the other little girls who go to Sue's on Mondays and Fridays (V +E). One of those little girls (V) has a baby sister (C) who is with Nora at Sue's every day. And then we move up a generation: the little gal's (J's) father drives in with us some mornings, us being myself and the mother of the two sisters who go to Sue's (V +C).

So this is how it happens. This is the community illness effect. I never realized it until I had kids, but someone said to me "oh yeah, one person sends their kid to daycare sick, and hundreds of people end up catching it" and it's true, it's really true. Take a cold, for instance. You send your kid to daycare sick but maybe you didn't know it yet, maybe it was only a little sniffle when you dropped her off in the morning, but by 5 pm it's a torrent of green snot. That means that even if you keep her home the next few days, the rest of the kids could have already caught it, passed it to their siblings, their parents, classmates, the daycare provider, etc. Meanwhile you're thinking "I'm not sick yet, I can leave her with someone else and go to work" but then oh – by 5 pm you are a wreck, your skin hurts, your head is stuffed up and you have to squint to see clearly. Even if YOU take the next day off, you've likely given it to all of your close coworkers and smeared it all over the phones and keyboards, so there it is. Hundreds of people are sick. It's even worse in diseases with long, contagious incubation periods, like chickenpox.

Argh. It takes a village, but sometimes that village is beseiged by illness and needs to batten down the hatches.

That brings me back around to head lice. I hope to god my Nora doesn't get lice on her sweet little beautiful-smelling head, in her golden silky hair. My (bald) coworker told me I could always just shave off her hair but oh that thought nearly made me cry and cry. No way. Nuh-uh. If I have to buy a gold-plated lice comb and take a week off of work so I can comb her hair 12 hours a day, I will do it, but I will not shave her head. Nor will I dump pesticides all over it. I would rather quarantine her for five years than treat a baby for head lice, so I'm really not too sure what to do at this juncture. I am going to try adding a few drops of tea tree oil to her shampoo and see if that prevents them but that's not really a proven scientific method, I don't think.

My mom tells me neither my brother nor I ever had head lice. I see this as a positive by-product of being kind of a loner – maybe I never got close enough to other kids' heads to catch anything from them. And since my brother and I are 6 years apart, we didn't really stick our heads together much either. Small blessings.

I have to go now. Writing about this is making my head itchy. Tonight I am going to wash and boil everything our heads come into contact with, just in case, and spray my house down with tea tree oil.

Mama’s got a new ride.

I used to be the kind of momma who drove a pickup truck. I'm not sure what that means exactly, but I just know that it felt kind of cool to hoist the baby into the carseat and take off in our powerful truck, maybe with a bed full of cargo in back for some project or trip or something like that. It felt kind of rough and tumble, safe, powerful and kooky at the same time. Not your average baby-mobile.

Last week a mechanic told me not to invest more money into repairing my truck. This news came at a particularly bad time, as I have recently (as you know) re-entered the work force and started commuting to the city with my girlfriend. We share the driving – two weeks on, two weeks off – and we were just coming on my weeks when the truck noises led me to the mechanic's door.

There followed approximately a day and a half of research, comparison shopping, asking around and scoping out every car on the streets. Hubby and I came up with a list of vehicular requirements which included:

• Safety
  


• Cargo space
  


• Freedom from worry (i.e. a new model)
  


• All-wheel or four-wheel drive
  


• Power
  


• Towing capacity (for the fishing boat etc)
  


• 
  
  Fuel efficiency
  
  
  

  
  

And after filtering out all of the too big, too expensive, too weak, too small, and too ugly options, we came up with the idea that we'd go for a Hyundai Tucson.

When we got to the dealership a couple of things happened. Firstly, we looked at the Tucson and realized that the 2012 model is quite a lot like a large Pontiac Vibe, which is what we already drive. The car had been subtly redesigned so that the back end is less boxy, which means the 2012 has a hatchback that is more rounded than straight up-and-down, which means that the upper area of the cargo space is limited. There is no way we'd fit coolers, backpacks, fishing equipment, Nora's porta-crib, bedding and potentially our dog in that back space. If we ever decided to have a second child and the back seat space became occupied, we'd have a pretty hard time fitting our 80-lb Labrador in there let alone all of the necessities for a quick weekend at the cottage.

In the end, we allowed ourselves to be up-sold a bit. Coming in at just a hair over the price of the 2012 AWD Tucson was a 2011 AWD Santa Fe, which had all the cargo space we'd ever need in the interior of a vehicle. They just happened to have one on the lot that they wanted to get rid of (yeah right, I believe nothing) so we were able to negotiate the inclusion of a nifty cargo mat, a gas card, a tow package, four winter tires on rims, and 10 free oil changes.

I picked it up three days ago. It's black. It has bum-warmers in the front seats, and I can control my radio on my steering wheel (which I strangely find much more distracting than doing it the old-fashioned way). If my cellphone has its Bluetooth activated, I will be able to make phone calls simply by speaking loudly into the car. I have a remote lock on my keychain that goes "Woop woop!" so I no longer have to pretend by actually yelling "woop woop!" when I approach my car in parking garages. The seats are comfy and the engine purrs softly. It is AWD and has a v6 engine so it's nice and perky to drive – indeed, this car wants to go fast. Sorry officer! Not my fault. My car wants to go fast.

Now I am a mom with an SUV. I have a ginormous top-of-the-line carseat in the back seat – rear facing, natch – and when I blow-dry my hair and wear my pressed work clothes, and drop my toddler off at daycare with her little lunch baggie of wholesome breakfast food and overpriced bottles, I no longer recognize myself. At some point in the last year I became a full-fledged yuppie without even realizing it, but oh well, I see how it happens. My urge, when choosing a car in which to drive my baby around (and everything else to do with baby, of course), was to get the biggest protective bubble I could possibly find.

Today I wore my black converse sneakers as compensation. I may have to go out and get an edgy haircut and some funky sunglasses to disguise my newfound yuppiedom. I am avoiding Starbucks at all costs.

But I am now a momma with a hot new ride, no doubt about it.

Week Two.

Back at it, week 2.

This morning I dropped a very-unhappy little Nora off at daycare. She was fine as I unstrapped her carseat - she was even ‘whistling’ at the birds she saw on the power lines (going ‘ooo ooo ooo’ with pursed lips it’s the cutest thing) – and even as we entered Sue’s house. She started giving Sue the stink eye a minute later, and when I handed her over I got the baby chimpanzee clutch and the earfull of protest. When I waved bye-bye and left, I closed the door behind me and listened for screaming, and it was all I could do to keep putting one foot in front of the other and keep walking towards the car.

I just called just now (9:39) and apparently after I left, she sat down and barfed up her breakfast yoghurt, and then was fine. Hm. This is the second time Nora’s been to daycare, and the second time she’s barfed on Sue’s rug. Methinks she’s going to get herself a wee reputation. So not only is she no longer in the totally adorable outfit I put her in this morning (brand new t-shirt, new purple stretchy pants), she’s been changed into the emergency outfit I brought along – the shirt that’s covered in tomato stains that I noticed too late and pink pants that don’t totally fit anymore. Then she spilled water on herself in the highchair and Sue mistook it for a leaking diaper, so she changed her pants into daycare-issue hand-me-downs. My little urchin is now playing happily, dressed like shit, and this seems to be all I can focus on.

Let it go momma, let it go. She’s happy and playing with the other kids. So she doesn’t eat so well three mornings out of the week; she’ll make up for it at lunch and again at dinner, and then eat her fill at Oma’s on Mondays and Fridays. I don’t like the barfing but I’m not surprised; neither of her parents can stuff our bellies immediately after waking up, so why should she? I have to figure out this breakfast thing though. It’s not her favorite meal at the best of times, when we leisurely cruise in for breakfast at 9 a.m., so to expect her to wolf it down at 6:45 is asking a bit much.

What I really can’t take about this whole back to work routine is the mistrust. She now looks at me with a look of mistrust that breaks my heart. It’s a look that says “are you staying with me today, or are you leaving again? Where are you leaving me today?” and I can’t dwell on it as much as I do because it renders me non-functional.

Last week during my many moments of desperation I did all of the circular thinking around this change; I calculated how much it costs me annually to go to work ($12,000, including food, gas, parking, and a wee clothing allowance to be realistic) and figured out that it’s not financially worth quitting. I read a very interesting article about how Dutch women are doing exactly what they want to do, which usually includes working part time and spending the rest of their time being with their families or friends, and the ridiculous feminist hand-wrenching around the issue. I thought about our expenses and our revenues, and whether or not we could make it work on one salary and delay our dream of building a cottage until a time when Nora goes to school and I can re-enter work life with a more clear conscience, but that’s not quite do-able or right either. I considered whether or not my own job could be done from home or part-time (obviously it could, here I am writing this blog entry) but it would never fly with my boss or HR department. While my workplace is friendly, they are remarkably inflexible when it comes to arrangements like that. I thought about having a second child, so I can take another year off and spend it with Nora (and whassisname too, obviously). What my thinking exercise came up with is this: I am going to grow out my hair, so that I can just clip it up every day, and spend my blow-drying time in bed with Nora. There it is: I gained an extra 5 minutes a day and will look 8% crappier. And! I will save money on haircuts.

Which doesn’t solve my main problems, which are thus:

1. I miss Nora. I miss her so powerful much that it’s almost a physical response, like my guts are missing or something really dramatic like that.

2. It feels wrong to drop a one-year-old baby off at someone’s house for the day, as though all three of us are off to our respective locations every day. Like it’s her baby job. I drag her out of bed before she’s really ready and she’s all like “what the hell man?”

3. I have a hard time with the idea that for three days a week, Nora is on someone else’s routine, and ours is out the window. I have worked so hard to set a routine that works, and now it feels all loosey goosey and wrong. I worry about her food intake and her nap timing, and I worry about these things all day long. I try to impress upon Sue the importance of my routine and of jamming food into Nora, but all this barfing is leaving her unconvinced I’m sure.

4. Regarding said routine, I have a really hard time figuring out what to do about breakfast.

What I have to remember is what the Doctor tells me: she’s no longer a tiny baby. I no longer have to count millilitres of formula and tablespoons of food, I have to let her regulate what she wants and trust that she will get enough. I have to let go and realize that she’s big enough to make her own way in the universe a little bit, to hang out with other kids and develop socially in a way that she just doesn’t get by hanging out with me and the dog all day. I don’t want her barking before she can talk, after all. On Thursday she spent the day at daycare with 5 other little ones and on Friday, at Oma’s, she decided to try to walk all day. I also have to think that we avoid a lot of anguish when it comes time to start school, as she’ll already be used to a morning get-up-and-go-somewhere-else routine.

Deep breaths, deep breaths. When I had the baby, it was the most difficult thing I’d ever done in my life. As it turns out, leaving her is a hundred times harder.

Rationalization Exercise

Benefits of returning to work:

- I can wear nice clothes again. I mean, I could’ve worn my nice clothes while on mat leave, but why bother cleaning barf and dog hair off of them unecessarily?

- I can go to the washroom all by myself again, and take my time. No longer do I have to watch that the baby doesn’t fall headfirst into the bathtub while I’m on the toilet (if you saw me, I’d be sitting there leaning over holding onto the back of her pants), or listen for sickening thuds from the other room.

- Today I wrote a note with a pen and nobody was grabbing it while I was writing. Also, all the keys on this computer are intact because nobody has flicked them off with their little fingers. Yet.

- I ate a portobello sandwich with goat’s cheese on a ciabatta bun for lunch, and someone else made it for me. Disadvantage: it was $8.

- I get to ride with one of my oldest friends. Today we talked about pig slaughtering!

- If I need to buy something, I don’t have to dress two people, carry one out the door while she’ s grabbing my sunglasses off of my head and sticking them into my eyes, buckle her into the carseat, and do the same thing in reverse on the way home. I just grab my wallet and step out of my office for a minute.

- Grown-up talk.

- My mom/daycare lady gets the morning poop.

- Nora eats really well at Oma daycare so I worry a lot less about her intake on these days.

- I don’t have the dog whining at me all the damn time.

- There are some pretty fun people working here. Part of me looks forward to the office craziness and missed all of the gossip.

- They give me a substantial amount of money to be here.

Disadvantages of returning to work:

- 5:30 a.m. wake-up.

- I am expected not to smell badly.

- Public washrooms.

- There will be days when I have to work late, or even travel for short periods. I am not looking forward to those days.

- I feel like I’m handing the parenting of my child over to someone else.

- I am worried that Nora will not be happy at daycare. When I left her there last week she cried and cried, until she fell asleep.

- I have to stay awake all day long, and interacting with humans all day is exhausting. Last night I fell asleep on the couch before 9:00.

- Some colleagues are still annoying after all this time.

- Nora is tired by the time I get home, so I don’t get her at her best. She falls asleep at 7:30 so I really only see her for two and a half hours a day.

- Dear god I miss that child.

Happy Birthday to Us

Yesterday my little muffin turned one year old.

I can’t explain to you exactly why that had me feeling maudlin all week. Part of me is excited that she’s a big girl now and is becoming more and more self-sufficient, but the rest of me is worried that I’m losing the baby bit by bit. Also, the one-year mark means that all the fun is over in terms of time spent at home with Nora – in a week I have to hit the pavement and get back to work. I feel like it’s the end of it all, even though I know evenings and weekends will be just as fun as they are now, and that we’ll still have plenty of snuggles and playtime.

Another thing about the one-year birthday is that back when I had a tiny baby, like when Nora was four and five months old, it felt like one year was a million miles away. I really thought that by the time she is a year old my worries about feeding, weight gain, all of that would be solved, and I could just sit back and enjoy the fruits of my labours. Not so. Just when I think we’ve got it all figured out, something happens (gastro, teething, general malaise) and we get set back again – like walking in snow: two steps forward, one step back. She still only weighs barely 19 pounds, which I think is just fine but according to the numbers game, she’s on the small side. She has a delicate frame. It is however true that I can now feed her almost anything. The other night, at her birthday party, she kept helping herself to the basket of baguette slices on the coffee table and I think she put back half a loaf without my noticing. She was standing at the table wearing a Hawaiian lei (would not remove it) with hunks of bread hanging out of her mouth, playing her new casio keyboard. She is a funny one, my kid. On her actual birthday hubby and I took her out for lunch and ordered off the kids’ menu for the first time ever – a pita pizza with mozza and sauce, which she liked quite a lot (she ate about 1/5 of it. The dog helped herself to the remains later on).

Anyway, all to say, I guess when you’re a parent you’re never out of the woods. My new thing is making sure she doesn’t fall and hit her head too much. The other day I made a call to the emergency health line (a fabulous service if you are a parent) which went something like this:

“Hi, I’m calling about my one-year old daughter. She fell off of a cooler and hit the back of her head on the electric baseboard heater and I’m wondering if I should be worried about head injuries.”

“Okay, well, is she bleeding?”

“Well, not from her head. You see, about two hours later she was sitting in my knitting basket and as she made to get out, she smacked her face against the leg of my ironing board and bled everywhere. Now she has a fat lip and I think her gum may be cut.”

“Alright (the nurse said slowly while typing, undoubtedly a quick e-mail to Child Protective Services), does she have any bumps or bruises?”

“ Weeeelll (sigh) not from that fall. She also fell while standing at the edge of the sofa, looking at the dog. She just fell over randomly, and hit the corner of the footstool on her temple. So there is a bit of a blue bump there, yeah.”

And on and on. That was one day. Turns out, after four days of carefully watching her, that she likely doesn’t have any brain damage. My intrepid baby is a bit too fast for her slow-witted mommy, and often I will watch helplessly, slowly, as she falls and injures herself right in front of me. The cooler incident happened as I ran upstairs to get a t-shirt. I was gone thirty seconds, and had left her in the back room (the play room, full of her toys) while I bounded upstairs to change. I heard a horrible BANG and then screaming and there was the scene laid out before me: the cooler on its side, Nora laying across the hallway with her arms out to her sides and her head up against the heater, bawling. Man alive. And she doesn’t yet learn from these mistakes, because while she may not climb that particular cooler again, she climbs everything else within range. I am beginning to see some real advantages to having wall-to-wall plush carpeting in one’s home. Hardwood and laminate are not forgiving. The biggest hazard is footie pyjamas – if they don’t have rubber dots on the bottoms of the feet, they are dangerous. Forget the flame retardants in kids’ clothes, just make sure they have rubberized feet.

Nora has a few new quirks. She has decided to be a stylish lady now, and she motors around the house in her sun hat and random necklaces. Yesterday she put on one of my necklaces and draped it around the back of her neck, so hubby did it up, and she wore it all day. We went out for lunch and I didn’t realize why people were kind of giving us the side-eye. I assumed they thought me negligent for ordering my tiny baby a cheese pizza, but really I’m sure it was the large splashy beaded necklace that got their attention. The other night she was wandering around in her pjs, wearing her orange sun hat and her pink heart-shaped glasses. This was really really cute, but not as cute as when she picked up my camera and made as though she was looking through it and taking pictures (upside down). She looked like a damn tourist. Like a crazy lady tourist. I love it. The real irony of it, however, is that I bought the sunhat to use as an actual sun hat, and while she loves wearing it around, she refuses to wear it outside.

Another quirk: if Nora decides she doesn’t want to eat something, she makes like she’s dramatically barfing, then hands it to me quietly. It’s quite funny. She’ll fake-retch, then gingerly pick up the offending item (either off of her t-shirt or the tray of her highchair) and hold it out for me, as if I should now eat it. Then she will not eat another one of its kind in that meal. When Nora is finished eating, she will mechanically hand each bit of food to the dog, which waits eagerly beside the chair. They are perfect for each other because Rosie is very gentle with baby fingers in her big mouth, and Nora finds it hilarious to jam her hand down Rosie’s toothy gullet.

She got a baby dolly for her birthday. I recommended it as a gift idea to my sister-in-law and she came through with the perfect one, though it had this horrible noisemaker inside that sounded like Chewbacca and scared the crap out of Nora. It actually sounded like a baby screaming and then choking to death. So babydoll had its first surgery after Nora went to bed last night. It has a soother attached to its neck, though, which confuses Nora as she’s never had a soother of her own. She tries to suck the doll’s, which is tiny, and the resulting look on her face is like “what the hell?” Yesterday (day 2 with the dolly) she decided dolly was hungry and fed it a bottle. Sometimes via its mouth and sometimes via its eye, but still – genius right?! She likes to hug the dolly and try to wear the doll’s clothes on her own body, like the doll sock that ended up on her toe. It’s watching her do things like that that makes me realize that while she doesn’t yet talk, she is picking up on everything and understands more than we think.

Speaking of talking, we’ve had some successes in this department but also some regression. There was a time when I swore she said “asha” for the cat and “tick” for stick, but now she is focused on making O sounds. She will pucker her face dramatically and go “OOOOOOOOowwwwww” over and over. She said “atcha” again at the cat this morning (the cat’s name is Sasha) so that’s good, but right now she mostly points – points at everything. And is very very good at making herself understood by pointing. She’ll point at the patio door to go outside, so we go out, then she points at the hanging tomato basket, so we walk over to the tomatoes, then she wants to pick all the green ones. I don’t let her and the she screams. Every day. I let her pick the red ones, which she holds tightly in her hand until her grip gets so tight that she pops the tomato, and then she eats it, seeds and juice dripping everywhere.

Anyway, one year old. Fastest year on record. I have enjoyed most of it and the rest of it made me stronger. I am a different person now – more grey hair, sharper reflexes, etc. I am mother to the cutest little monkey around and I could not be more in love.

All Growed Up

Recently we passed a couple of minor emotional milestones in Nora's continuing progression from baby to toddler. We went to visit Sue, Nora's new daycare provider, to check out the scene and get the ball rolling on paperwork. Sue is a very nice lady from the area whose three girls I used to babysit (they are now aged 26, 29 and 33 – I didn't really babysit that last one per se, she just wasn't old enough to do it herself), and Nora seemed to enjoy being there. Sue's got some fun toys that we don't have, so now I'm off the hook a bit where that's concerned. The other kids were all pretty sweet, though man boys are rough, and I feel pretty good about bringing Nora there three days a week. She will spend Mondays with Oma and Grandpa, Tuesdays to Thursdays with Sue and the gang, and then Fridays with Oma and Grandpa again. She seemed so tiny when I brought her in there to play with the other kids but she keeps up in her way, and found her footing pretty quickly. Sue didn't foresee any problems. I will bring her one more time before heading back to work, and I'll leave her for a few hours to see how it goes. Fingers crossed.

Later on that same afternoon, my good friend came over to take some of our baby things off our hands. She is due in November and we offered up all of Nora's old equipment (the Bumbo, the carseat, the beloved Jolly Jumper, the excersaucer) for the new little guy, with the agreement that if Nora ever gets a baby brother or sister, or cousin even, we will take it back. She also took a good pile of baby clothes, and the process of going through every piece was bittersweet. It felt like so long ago that we used them, yet so recent as well. Some of them are unbelievably tiny, but others look like they still could work today (I know they won't – I bought some new sleepers last week which are already tight in the toes). My friend said she'd write my name in them all but I told her I will remember them, and I will. I will remember every single piece, fondly.

Also in the past week Nora started misbehaving. Up to now she has been a perfect sweet angel. She has a bit of a temper but it passes quickly, and she's usually fairly compliant and reasonable. Lately, however, she has decided she does not want her cereal at breakfast, and spits it out at me. I am not impressed. I reprimand her and let her know it's not acceptable behaviour but I think she thinks she is all hilarious. I hope it's not a trend. Her other misbehaviour is more of a developmental inevitability – she now climbs everything, and is FURIOUS when you pull her off. She can climb her wee chair (she has stood up on it, not a great idea) and the Rubbermaid in the kitchen, and is working on climbing the bread maker and the sofa. She is unstoppable in her determination. It would all be fine, except for the fact that she doesn't know how to get down, and is indignant when you try to teach her to go down backwards. Someday, under closed conditions (i.e. a short distance, pillows on the floor), I'm just going to let her fall to see what happens. Maybe then she'll decide for herself that going down on her tummy is a better idea.

Before supper tonight, I had a headache and lay down for 20 minutes in the hope it would pass without Tylenol. While I was upstairs, apparently Nora and her dad were in the kitchen, where her forehead just reaches the lower sill of the open window. She was hollering nonsense out the window, in the baby version of 'HEY YOU THERE! GET OFF MY LAWN!' - to nobody in particular. Hubby said all the neighbours likely heard it - wee Nora telling them what's what, loudly. Who knows, maybe she was yelling at the cat? Birds? Passing cars? She has found her voice for sure – once she learns to speak English, I'm sure I'm in for an earful. She kind of talks constantly, to me, to Rosie, to the cat, to herself…she's trying it all out for sure.

As of tomorrow I am no longer on maternity leave; I am on vacation. Technically I should be returning to work, because I took a bit of extra time at the beginning of my leave, but I just could not bear to go back just yet. I know it's only another three weeks, but every one of those days is important to me – I need to adjust the daily routine quite a lot before I can subject myself, and Nora, to the new reality. I had to take a bite out of my vacation stockpile, if only to get the landmark first birthday out of the way. Emotionally I am not prepared – either for going back to work OR for my baby to be one year old already.

Anyway, I don't want this post to become maudlin. Before I go back to work, I still look forward to time at the lake, hubby's two-week vacation, a roller derby, a party with some of my favourite people, a wee birthday party for Nora, a possible trip to Montreal with my sister-in-law, a new deck outside of my bedroom, and quality time with my babe.

I am going to wring everything out of this three weeks that I possibly can, before we all have to grow up and get moving.

50 Days

That's the amount of time I've got left at home with Nora. I am awaiting this deadline with dread, because not only does it mean that I will have to separate from her for the majority of our days, but it means that I have to get my head back into work. It seems unfathomable to me that I am choosing to spend 47.5 hours a week away from her (including travel time), when currently I find it difficult to steal even 5. It seems unbelievable also that I will be expected to jump into work mode, as though this past year never happened. The people with whom I will be interacting won't have a clue what a magical year I just had, and I will resent them for it. It might be immature but mea culpa. Nora is the most important thing in my world, bar none.

I know some mothers who have suggested that in order to maintain sanity it is essential to take breaks from motherhood, to leave the baby with someone once in a while and have some time to yourself. My doctor insists upon it, and other people seem to enjoy it too. I don't. Once in a while I'll do something with my husband that Nora wouldn't appreciate, like downhill skiing or a Soundgarden concert, but during those times I'm picturing her tiny face and her wee clapping hands. I can't wait to see her again. And I have had to go to appointments and left her with my mom throughout this past year, which has been ok. When I'm without her, I walk down the street all preoccupied thinking "I am a mom. I have a baby. I have a baby daughter at home. I am her mom" over and over in my head, as though I have to remind myself that nothing is the same as it used to be. I enjoyed Soundgarden, but we're buying baby earmuffs and bringing Nora to Jane's Addiction.

And I know that it will all be fine, that Baby Nora won't be a wee baby forever and that daycare will be good for her. I know that. She's social and she's going to a trusted place, in the care of a very kindly woman I've known for years, spending her days with the children of my good friend. Parents I trust rave about this daycare and I'm really lucky to have won a spot, even though we're only using three out of five days of it. Nora will have two days with Oma (grandma) and then weekends, holidays and (cough cough) sick days with us. She will learn things by leaps and bounds. She will come home at night with new words and new illnesses and new skills. She will have her own set of friends and her own life, independent from us. She will grow and change from a baby into a little kid, and I will just have to be very observant during the two or three hours a day I will spend with her so I can catch her Nora-ness whenever I can.

I miss her already.

She's become such a little monkey. New skills include: eating (certain foods) by herself without choking, clapping her hands, cruising along the furniture, and dancing. She loves to smack the dog lightly on the nose and giggle and play with her CD player and eat anything she finds on the floor, including dead bumblebees and unidentified plant matter (the bumblebee never made it down the hatch). She has lovely soft golden curls and a very mod short little hairdo. She's long and slim with perfectly-shaped ballerina legs and slender piano fingers. Last week we survived our first serious illness – she went from a cough to a spotty viral rash to high fever for three days to a possible double ear infection to an all-over body and face rash and still the cough. It was a rough ride for about a week there, but now she has emerged unscathed and unmedicated. The bottle of amoxicillin sits unopened in the fridge – my week-long insurance policy. Nothing heavier than Tylenol was required. I'm sure this is all just practice for when she starts daycare and gets every single thing that flies around.

There are certain aspects of going back to work that I am looking forward to. I like my co-workers. I anticipate some fun lunch dates and gossip. I can't wait to go out for lunch – the luxury of being able to choose a different kind of cuisine every day will blow my mind for the first little while, as I've been surviving on lunches of crackers and baby food for the past several months. I look forward to dressing like a grown-up again, and I want to go on a wee shopping spree before my return and pick up some basics, because my wardrobe is a bit played out and I am (ahem) a little bit bigger 'round the midriff. Throughout the process of preparing for these renos, I have accumulated two truckloads of stuff to bring to Value Village – and I am being brutal, so I hope to have a sharp pared-down wardrobe when I hang it all back in my new closet.

I have to keep thinking of the silver linings. And the paycheque, always the paycheque.

This Year’s Loot

Well Great Glebe Garage Sale, once again you did not disappoint. Hubby and I left Nora with Oma and off we went, without our child, into the wild yonder on a semi-rainy day. We had been worried that the rainy weather (it was sort of drizzly, to be fair) would keep people and sellers away and cast a gloom on the whole adventure but oh no, it was as much of a zoo as every other year.

Over the years we seem to have developed a strategy, which I will generously share with you here: we park the car at the north end of the Glebe, where the quieter more well-heeled houses seem to be, and we work our way in from there. Since it's a bit quieter, the crowds are sparser, parking's a bit easier, and we get at the really interesting finds before the hordes make it over. There are much fewer students in this part of the neighbourhood as well, so the stuff is of a higher calibre. Each year we seem to find our most memorable treasures in this quadrant and since we've just gotten there, the cash flows more readily as well. We're not yet overburdened or fatigued from looking at too much junk. We are fresh and raring to buy. It's so far been a great strategy.

Herewith is a list of this year's finds:

• A petite brass antique fire extinguisher. We realized when we got home that it's still full of carbon tetrachloride – a nasty chemical that now needs to be properly disposed of.
  
• A wrought iron triangle and accompanying iron stick – a 'come and git it' bell for the cottage. "Clangalangalang! Dinner's ready!"
  
• An old duck decoy for my brother-in-law.
  
• A game of 'Clue' for my brother-in-law.
  
• A fully-equipped Spirograph set. The pens are dried up but otherwise it's perfect.
  
• A very old Milton Bradley cribbage board.
  
• Very old chicken-and-chicks salt and pepper set.
  
• Very old 'asian couple' salt and pepper set (every year I buy some kitschy old ceramics. I love them).
  
• A wooden-bead-on-curly-wires toy for Nora, overpriced. It's not old – it's from Ikea.
  
• A bag of magnetic letters and numbers for the fridge.
  
• Four very cute little board books for Nora.
  
• Some wonderful wooden pull toys for Nora – a snail and a snake, articulated, and they wiggle when they are pulled. Made in Thailand and very very colourful.
  
• A plum tree.
  
• Chives.
  
• Two little bowls from a chinese food restaurant.
  
• An old (1959) Tintin 'Journal des jeunes'.
  
• A red and black mid-century modern-looking enamel squirrel brooch.
  
• A great little turquoise wooden lamp for Nora's new bedroom (I have a problem – I cannot stop buying lamps).
  
• This neat set of make-your-own paper toys, from Germany. It appeared unused but on closer inspection, I discovered that one of the toys had been made. But there are about 6 or 7 left and they are cool.
  
• A book called "Vivre en fôret" which I bought because of a funny illustration of a man fighting a lynx in his lean-to. It was a quarter.
  
• Hubby bought a jigging rod for ice fishing and a gang troll for lake trout fishing.
  
• Two horrible cookies sold to me by two adorable little girls. Hucksters.
  
• A very old U.S. postal scale. Not sure what we will use it for but it's pretty cute. The crazy lady who sold it to us told us it had crossed two oceans so we spent some time trying to figure that out as we walked away. Did she move to Japan and come back the other way?
  
• A game called "Carrom" (sp?) which we spotted from the truck on the way out.
  
• Hubby bought a fridge magnet that says "Let's Eat Out!" from a church lady.
  
• An old creel.
  
• Two hot dogs from the Boy Scouts (one for each of us).
  

While garage saling, there are some categories of items that I rarely if ever buy: clothes (it'd have to be something really special), kids' stuff (broke my rule this year for obvious reasons), CDs and cassettes, novels, and appliances. I generally go for the old esoteric things, things that I think have a story behind them, things that would go well in a cottage or in my garden. I usually look at the plants, though it makes me laugh to see the ladies in tilley hats out there trying to foist their invasive perennials on people. I saw so much lily-of-the-valley for sale yesterday it was hilarious; I guess if I could turn a profit from ripping out my weeds I'd do it too.

Every year there's also a category of items that stick out in our minds – the things we almost bought but left behind. This year that list includes a cute set of square teak or teak veneer nesting tables, a crazy-looking houseplant that I've never seen before, a gas-fueled space heater that looked like a space ship, an old framed picture of a saluting boy scout, an offensive sculpture of a very curvy African-american woman with her thong hanging out, from Cuba (hubby wanted this – I used my veto on it), an old gumball machine (it was overpriced at $55), a ceramic vase of a woman's head complete with real dangly earrings, a neat old wall-mounted shelving unit that had a subset of tiny cubbies, a book of pervy obscure symbolist art (Felicien Rops – look him up it's crazy stuff). I am still haunted by things we didn't buy in past years, like the church pews one guy had stuffed into his garage. But that is the glory of the Great Glebe Garage Sale – some other wacko will come up behind you and snap up that stuff, because in a crowd like that there's bound to be someone else with your taste. You have to make fast decisions.

The people-watching at this event is top-notch. Everyone is in a great mood. You overhear hilarious conversations, like the one hubby caught the tail end of "….that's really cool – oh wait, is that blood on it?" and the father I heard warning his children "walk straight ahead. Don't touch ANY ceramics." A guy picked up and tried to buy hubby's travel mug, coffee included. Last year my husband bought a mannequin leg and was the talk of the town, but this year every single person asked him if he was going fishing (raincoat – check. Creel – check. Jigging rod – check). I took one picture – of a guy walking around with a basket on his head, a lady's apron on backwards, carrying a blue baseball bat (I can't figure out how to get it off my phone). I could have taken more. I was nearly run over by a man on a bike carrying cross-country skis and poles.

So Great Glebe Garage Sale, even though it was drizzy weather, you did not disappoint. The people of the Glebe put on a great show and we are sated until next year. À la prochaine.

                                                            

Spring is in the Air

Do I write a post with that title every year?

Well it's currently about minus 40, but there is something about the light out there that tells me that true spring is right around the corner. The weight is lifting in all respects: I see a little patch of grass showing through the snow on my lawn and it is green. The light is rich and warm, no longer the harsh blue light of winter. The birds seem happier. And it looks like 1982 at the end of our laneway, as my husband has agreed to discard a number of things from our basement in our first movement towards spring cleaning.

Big plans are, as always, afoot; I was slowed by the baby for a little while but I'm back in fighting form. The only difference is that I am now using my poor husband as my arms and legs where the heavy lifting is concerned.

I have just completed a mini-renovation of my back office. For years it was the zone that everyone had to walk through to get to the bathroom so it received heavy traffic, yet was the one horribly untouched area of our house. We painted one wall and re-did the floors, but left the nasty barnboard siding on the other wall, threw our big ugly desktop computer back there, stacked up a bunch of junk and never really thought about it again. A few years ago I ripped the barnboard off of most of the wall and realized too late that the nails holding it on were 4" long and tore the crap out of the dark-purple drywall underneath. It was a mess. Spider webs covered the ceiling, the baseboards were long gone, there were holes all through the plaster, and we'd for years just stuck thumbtacks all over it indiscriminately.

So over the past month I tore the remaining barnboard off of the arch, patched the holes, painted the ceiling, bought the craziest light fixture off of ebay, painted the wall a lovely deep plum/chocolate colour, bought, painted and installed new baseboards, painted the light fixture pumpkin orange, bought and installed some shelves from Ikea, and bought a bunch of new officey storage containers in bright colours to hide my junk. It looks marvellous if I do say so myself. Makes me want to sit at the desk and play office.

Next up, we are re-doing our basement, switching the bedroom (currently holding my project-type stuff and baby things from other people) and the main room (currently hubby's fishing room). Hubby will install his stuff in the bedroom so the door can be closed to contain the spread of fishing stuff throughout our basement, and the main room will become a kind of rec room where we can do crafts when Nora gets older and hang out when it's too hot outside. As well, it can be used as a spare room when and if people ever visit us again, since there's an adjacent bathroom. We'll see how this goes.

Before all that happens, this week I am converting the space in our kitchen where our wall oven used to be into a proper pantry with six shelves. I can hardly wait. I've bought shelving material, new doors and hardware, but the first step – hopefully completed tomorrow – will be the demolition. I am taking away the cupboards above and below the oven hole and making it a full-height pantry, so we'll see how it goes. Oh I am so excited by the prospect of new storage space you have no idea.

About two weeks ago, Nora and I planted this year's crop of veggie seeds, and now we have a little garden going on in the grow-op – two varieties of tomatoes, hot yellow wax peppers and basil are up. Thai basil didn't happen this year, and I haven't started the squash etc. yet. Before all of this goes into the ground, I am going to till the entire veggie garden – scraggly perennial plants be damned – and add in some compost and peat moss. I do the compost/peat moss thing every couple of years or so and it seems to make zero difference; my soil is still hard clumping clay. I don't know where it all goes.

And then onto the big kahuna of projects. When Nora was born, I laboured under the impression that her crib would stay in our room for the first 6 months, and then she'd move to her room downstairs on the main level. We decorated it and moved the t.v. out and have been hanging out back there all day every day since. However. The reality is, I'd like her to be in our room for a year or so. I still reach over and check her about 4 times a night. After that year is up, I have discovered that I'm just not comfortable having her on a different floor, for a number of reasons: fire, intruders, I can't hear her down there, and it's just too darn far for night terrors, potty training and other after-dark needs. So. We are considering turning our large master bedroom and two large walk-in closets into a smaller master bedroom, small nursery-style bedroom, and powder room, all on the upstairs level. We would have to live with a normal closet (shared! The horror!) along one wall of our room, and we'd lose some circulation and furniture space, but I have been dithering about it for a few weeks and I just don't see another way around it without breaking the bank completely and changing the structure of our house. If we weren't planning on building a cottage next year, we'd probably sell and buy a larger house, but that's not currently in the books as we wouldn't be able to do both financially. Funny thing is, my childhood home is for sale and it would be close to perfect. Its pros include having four bedrooms, two bathrooms, an office, a dining room, a large sunken living room and a separate garage, not to mention the comedic value of buying my childhood home. Its cons include the Vietnamese-run grow-op in the condemned house next door, a crazy woman who I would rather avoid living down the street, and the house possibly being haunted. Hm Hm. I think we're going to just go ahead and live with a smaller bedroom.

Also on the books this spring: mapping out the placement of our cottage and starting to cut down trees, probably fixing up our trailer a little bit, doing a bit of work around the brother-in-law's cottage (planting wildflowers, rescuing his errant dock), pruning the apple trees in front of our house, and getting rid of the old Saturn in our yard. Holy mac we are busy. The advantage is: I am home full-time, so I can manage the gardening and act as project manager for the upstairs reno. People yet-to-be-hired will do the work upstairs. Hubby can do the cottage stuff on the weekends and between fishing trips. Nora is going to learn that her mummy and daddy are active, and there's always some kind of project on the go.

I have one more big project in the wings, but I'm saving that post for another day. Suffice to say, it is a very busy spring for all of us, but now that the grind of winter is over, everything seems doable.