Category Archives: Life’s Little Moments

Impending D40M

Growing Up, Issues for Women, Life's Little Moments

The problem was really the size of the snowflakes. They were so big, they demanded emotion. My eyes filled with tears and before I knew it, I was crying. 

Disclaimer, 40 is inching its way towards me, and I am acutely aware of how quickly time is moving forward. I feel like a young woman, full of life and feeling, often stuck in nothingness. I feel full of wonder, empty of purpose. My knuckles are rudely expanding, I have deeper wrinkles, and more questions. I have fewer friends, more needs, and a curiosity about what’s left of my life. I work out. I empty myself. I fill up on love as much as I can. I search for more, I ask for less, and hope for what I have to be enough. I listen to music constantly, read endlessly, and have become disenchanted with Netflix. I worry about the future, suffer the present and reflect on the past, hoping there is meaning hidden in these timelines. No wonder a slow snowfall unravels me. 

I walk the dog through the neighbourhood, the street lights shining on the snow as it floats down, then make a right and head to the park. I huff over snowbanks and make my way toward a tree. There are 3 small pumpkins in the snow, neatly sitting in a row next to a cedar shrub. The oddity of them being there gives me pause. I make it to the tree and can’t help it – I sink to the ground and lay down, the winter air against my skin, the cold flakes melting on my face. The dog absorbs the flakes, lifting her nose to the sky, I lift my face to the stars. The dog sits. My raised knees lift the bottoms of my pajama pants and snowflakes land on the bare skin of my ankles and I memorize the sensation. A quick scan to check for an episodic mental illness crisis but I give myself a clean bill of health. The river is in sight, the smell of wood stove is in the air, and so I let myself indulge in feelings. 

The truth is, my outer world is the product of a concerted effort to not live my passion. I worked hard to leave an area of my life that made me feel intelligent, valued and connected so that I could work 9-5 and not carry the weight of passion around. It’s a heavy load, and with kids and trying to sort life out with no roadmap, it was too much. But this lack of outer passion is creating a disalignment that I am feeling more and more each day. I feel crooked, bent, like I’m at odd angles and trying to maintain my balance.

Of course my inner world is bursting with life, colour and spirit. I notice everything, and I memorize it for easy retrieval. I imprint moments so minuet it might seem useless to keep them, but why wouldn’t I want to remember that smile while that song was playing at volume 32 in the car and the headlights behind me burned into the rearview mirror but there was something beautiful about the pleasure inside our car juxtaposed with the aggressiveness outside of it? 

My inner world is so busy I get tired throughout the day because there is so much to sort through. It is so vibrant I need sunglasses to protect my heart’s iris for fear of blinding it with emotion. I journal, I write, I share. I used to think that feeling things so deeply was boring, or a skill that was superfluous. But when I read the works of people who feel things as deeply as me, or meet people who use words that reflect the depth of my heart, I feel a pulsing ache pump through me and I remember that I was meant to be here. But now that I am so far away from my passion, how do I get it back?

Does every woman approaching 40 feel this way? Will I be in an introspective trance for the next 4 months, make a wish on 40 candles and then be okay? I’m suspicious of such an easy resolution, so I gather my strength every day and brace for a long stretch of crisis.

A Valentine’s Morning

Growing Up, Life's Little Moments, Motherhood My Way, Story Telling, Universal Topics, Personal Opinion

The alarm goes off at 5am and I’m out of bed at 5:05. It’s easier if I get up earlier so that I have more time to drink my tea. This is simple math, but it has taken months to learn and it’s still a challenge. Get up on repeat until I have my jogging pants, socks and sweater on. The dog hears me and her bag lady nails tap on the hallway floor to the bedroom. I worry about the noise to our sleeping downstairs neighbours. She paces while I dress, pee, put water in the kettle. My husband is in bed, but will be getting up soon for an early morning yoga class. We kiss, and wish each other a good day. We both forget it’s Valentine’s Day.

It’s special-weather-warning cold out, but the dog doesn’t notice. We get to the field and she waits while I de-mitt and unhook her leash. She has 15 minutes off leash and she bounds and buries herself in the snow. She tries to find sticks. We talk. I’m no longer angry at these early morning walks. Her happiness makes me happy and even in the cold I enjoy her goofy lopping and begging for a game of fetch. When we get home, we pass my husband on the stairs. Another kiss. He has poured my tea.

In the time it takes to let my tea steep, I moisturize my face, judge how old I look, and massage my face hoping to remove some years. I feel trapped in wanting to stay looking young but wanting to age gracefully; hating my face, can I really look this ugly? Is it the mirror? I need a jade roller, but at least my hair is okay. I feel guilty for spending energy on such selfishness and then fuck it, I turn off the light.

Sitting on the couch I drink tea and scroll through the news. Suffering, fear, anger all in tidy headlines. The quiet of my little living in contrast to the headlines makes me feel grateful and guilty. My beautiful children sleeping without a care in the world thanks to dumb luck. The older I get, the more I realize that silence is wealth. I read about displaced families and think about how little it would take to break our sense of security. I read about protests and promises, scams and suicide and think about the world my children will grow up in. I shove my worry away for tomorrow morning.

I look at the clock and have 15 minutes to say my goodbyes. I hate waking the kids up, but after trial and error we have discovered that everybody’s morning fares better if the kids get a goodbye from mom.

I step lightly into my son’s room, hoping to avoid the LEGO I asked him to move out of the way last night. I climb the ladder. Some mornings I feel like a nimble cat and feel so proud of my health and agility, other mornings I feel like I weigh 300 pounds and that climbing the IKEA ladder is dangerous. I can feel his sleeping heat as I round the top of his bunk bed, and I lift my knees over his duvet and find him at the top of his pillow. He smells like sleep and some would say it’s morning breath, but I kind of like it because he’s only 6 and there is still a sweetness to it. Call it a placebo effect but I start to smell his baby breath, the smell of sleep and breast milk and I can feel him in my arms while he nursed during those long nights and I knew he had the safest, warmest, coziest place on earth being on that couch with me for months, and because of that we were the richest people in the world.

My arm slips over his hot body and he grabs my hand to hold to his chest. Sometimes he whispers ‘hi mom’ and I reply ‘hi darling’. We rest. My brain races between gauging how many minutes I have to stay like this before I have to get up, and how to best alchemy the moment into a memory. This morning he rolls over and tells me about dreams he had. There were pirates all lined up at the edge of a boat, all standing one by one and then one of them fell into the water – they were all bad guys – and then the next one and next one – Like dominoes?  – Yeah like dominoes, and they all fell in –  Oh my goodness – and then one of them slipped and there was a door and another door and I thought he was dead, but there was actually a tube connecting the doors – Oh my goodness – and so I went through the door and there was another door –  Wow –  Mom, don’t say wow like you’re bored –  Sorry, I’m just trying to follow along –  

I rise up on my elbow and he says ‘no please lie back, for one more minute’ and I lay back down and say ‘one more minute and then I have to go to work.’ He finishes his dream and we start to move off the bed. Halfway down the ladder, ‘help me down mom, I have to pee so bad’ and I lift his 6 year old body off the ladder and he stumbles on some LEGO. ‘Mom, I stepped on LEGO’ he says with a laugh cause he knows, and I enter my daughter’s room. I find my daughter in the dark of her room and have an elaborate conversation with her. Hi honey. Hmmmmm. Have a good day okay? Hmmm hmmmm. I’ll see you after work. Hmmmmm hmmmm. Text me. Hmmmmmmmm. Pre-teen.

I feed the dog, check the fridge for anything easy to grab and say one last ‘bye everybody’ to no response but I know they heard it and that’s why I say it. I open the door and head out into the cold.

Saturday was a Mistake

#mommyfail, All About My Kids, Growing Up, Life's Little Moments, Motherhood My Way, Story Telling, Universal Topics, Personal Opinion, ,

It’s -26 on a Saturday morning. Before I know that though, before I check the numbers on my weather app, I foolishly tell my son we will go skating today! This is my first mistake. There will be no skating.

My second mistake is deciding that because of the freezing weather, I might enjoy reading in bed for a bit longer than usual. A second cup of tea, a few extra chapters. It seems harmless, but it’s a mistake. Kids demand me to get out of bed, I feel lazy for being tired, protesting their protests and I remember why the term ‘week-end’ is misleading if you are a parent.

Somebody said ‘Well read women are dangerous women’ and these days I’m more inclined to think ‘Well read women are miserable women’ because is it just me or does the more you read make you a tiny bit more angry, a tiny bit more antsy, a tiny bit more frustrated at the uphill battle in all areas of life on this doomed planet? This sudden dark turn is arguably my next mistake, but anyway, as the day inches toward 9am, I make my 3rd mistake by looking up a book a friend had recommended. Fed Up by Gemma Hartley. The subject of the book speaks to me so loudly I read multiple reviews and watch an interview while simultaneously regretting having this additional knowledge in my brain. What’s the subject of the book? Something about emotional labour…

My next mistake, Mistake #4, is holding a family meeting with my children where I impart partial wisdom from Mistake #3 onto the kids in order to avoid children who grow up into adults who perform emotional labour for free. Although I don’t use the word emotional – I use observational. Also thoughtful. Also organizational. I focus on housework. The mistake is in not really planning what I want to say, so currently the kids have multiple definitions in their head about what observational/thoughtful/organizational labour means and after the meeting, we spread out and practiced my preaching by observing what needed attention/cleaning in the apartment.

Mistake #5 is letting loose my keen sense of observation and a tally of all the things I will tend to.

  • The toilet paper rolls that never get replaced in the little toilet paper stand
  • The weird slurping sound the dog has made for days because her water needs to be refreshed
  • The soap/hair scum in and around the sink/toilet
  • That piece of garbage that has been sitting in the middle of the hallway for 4 days that needs to be picked up and moved to the garbage
  • The leftovers that need to be thrown out
  • The sweater under the kitchen table that has fallen and stayed there for over a week
  • The Christmas presents that don’t have a home, or that need to be mailed
  • The picture that is hanging on an angle
  • Watering the plants, tidying the pillows, vacuuming, picking up the tumbleweed hair balls that collect in corners, making the grocery list, taking out the frozen meat for dinner, planning for the following day so that it’s full but marginally restful, encouraging the kids to turn off Netflix, then having to do something with them, walking the dog, making lunch, having snacks ready, reading half a page of my book and feeling guilty, doing 50 leg lifts on one side and worrying that I won’t have the opportunity to do 50 leg lifts on the other side, and now I’m just going through my day, planning and watching myself and thinking about all the things that always have to happen.

Mistake #6 is the thought that it would help if I wrote all this nonsense down.

By 1pm, I face the afternoon, having promised my son we would paint his toy chest. Mistake #7 is choosing to listen to music (my music) while we paint, which sends my 11 year old into her room with a huff and leaves my son to comment on every. single. song. But the music makes me feel semi-independant, and levels my mood when things inevitably go sideways.

By 3pm, I have played two separate board games with two separate kids at separate times. I have completed three puzzles, finished two coats of paint on the toy chest, had a cup of tea, written a few sentences here and there, and journeyed with Pearl Jam, Arcade Fire and Leon Bridges. I look to the evening, where surely mistakes # 8, 9 and 10 are waiting. I have dinner to face, a dish I am uneasy about and I’m starting to snap at the kids because it’s been too many hours, and there are too many left.

By the end of the day, my only hope is that my mistakes don’t leave any lasting marks, and that perhaps on Sunday I will wake up wanting to keep track of Triumphs, and find time to do those 50 leg lifts on the other side.

The Best Friend Tier

Issues for Women, Life's Little Moments, Personal Opinion, Universal Topics, Universal Topics, Personal Opinion
Best Friend isn’t a person Danny, it’s a tier. 
Hitting nails on heads since 2012, Mindy Kaling crushes it. This tier is a cherished haven, and usually spans years of fortitude, is emotionally cultivated and is rooted in time, honesty and deep challenge. It’s a winning lottery ticket, a rotating panel keeping the influx of emotional wealth ever flowing. Depending on the day, the situation, the need, I can reach out to the person that my guts need.
I cannot manage finances, take out the garbage and giggle on the couch with moisturized, smooth legs draped over my partner’s lap. I cannot laugh at his jokes, pay bills on time and offer our kids a healthy dose of discipline. What am I, a 1950’s housewife? At a time when we search, swipe and date looking for the one to be our best friend, lover, co-parent, financier, home cleaning company, impulse controller/instigator, life coach, and sounding board – it’s a matter of survival for me to have a stash of individuals that can energetically come to my aid when my partner is tapped out. The idea that one person can fulfill all our needs is a deep insult to me, and has created far more stress in my relationship than necessary. If only our vows had included “Within this sacred union of marriage, we will outsource support and not solely rely on each other because neither of us is capable, nor deserving of such an impossibility”.  If I go for too long without connecting with my BFT my wifing starts to falter. My mothering starts to fumble. The correlation is obvious, and this aspect of my health must be a non-negotiable.
Getting the quality time to interact with these precious people who live on this sacred Tier is paramount. Like any garden, the Tier needs tending, watering, sometimes weeding. It keeps the bowels of my soul healthy. As an extravert, I am at my best when my heart is tethered to the heart of others. I am at worst when I float aimlessly without these anchors. Finding the time is a challenge. Coordinating the time is near impossible. A trip without the kids here, a coffee with the baby there. A post-bed-time beer every 4 weeks, or a flurry of text messaging mid-day for the serious stuff. We get creative, focussed, serious about the need to make it happen. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t. When will I learn that it must?
It never happens often enough. I always want more and need replenishment at a faster rate than my depletion. I feel guilty for needing more, even though I know it would make me better, keep me sane. I struggle to remind myself how important this is, to accept that these heart strings don’t snap. It’s hard to explain to my partner that sometimes it’s specifically not him that I need. When the BFT is populated with the right people, the demands of every day are manageable, the laughter flows easier and my ability to give back is strengthened. How is something so simple, so goddamn difficult at the same time?
Can we just agree that we are soulmates and have an open relationship? 
That’s kind of what we are doing.
Great, we are always on the same page. 
                                                                                    Gotta go, somebody is screaming my name.
Stay strong. At least we have each other.
                                                                                                                                                        Totes.

 

 

Growing Up Plants

Life's Little Moments, Personal Opinion, Simple and Mind Blowing Observations

It started in early spring. I’d stop in at a plant shop and flirt with the greenery. I wouldn’t buy, only touch. I’d rub my hands along leaves, stems, picture them pot-less, wondering what was happening beneath the soil. I’d go home and fantasize about them, about them belonging to me, and me satisfying them.

I’d visit the shop again, maybe inquire about some of their likes and dislikes, get to know a few of them a little better. I’d play ini miney mo in my head Will you be the lucky one? How long will we will last? Right when the unknowing got unbearable, I’d buy one. I’d cradle it home, pick a spot for it, and place it gently. Here you go. Now we try to make it work. Please, let’s make this work. 

First it was one, then two. All of a sudden I was picking up new beauties every week. In the course of 2 months, I acquired 8 new obsessions.

 

A long time ago, I had a bit of a green thumb. I was even somebody who bought discounted plants and could bring them back to life. But more recently, I’ve discovered I’ve lost my undeniable touch, and it’s shaking my self esteem. How could I be so good at something 10 years ago, and now be void of skill? Is this something I should prepare for when it comes to motherhood, wifehood, friendship or something else? No thank you.

And so I fight.

The Creeping Ivy – beautiful and touchable with miniature oak leaves that started to die. I was horrified and touched it more, panicked and watered it more, but continued to watch it wilt. I changed the lighting (candle light my sweet?), played Jann Arden for her, touched her in places she’d forgotten about and watched her bounce back to life. But then one morning I wept quietly beside her and decided desperate times called for desperate measures. I removed her from her pot and performed an impromtu surgery. I cut her in half and tried to decide which side had the best shot of surviving. I repotted the more lively side and said goodbye to the brown, miserable side that had peaced out. She toys with me. The side I saved hasn’t died. It hasn’t thrived. It is a zombie plant, stuck somewhere between life and Darryl.

The Bamboo plant from Canadian Tire ($10) – violated by my cat. The leaves were nibbled or eaten entirely and yet she stands proud in her…beer glass (?) and continues to green the crap out of the rainbow spectrum. She gives all the other plants a run for their money when it comes to colour. A survivor. Don’t don’t care what she looks like. She’s bad ass.

The Kangaroo plant – doing well. She gives me hope. There’s nothing wrong me with me, I tell myself. If she can be happy here, then the others are being picky. 

The Orchid. The Geisha of house plants. I knew it wouldn’t last. With the beautiful orchid, I enjoyed our time together. She wooed me, gave me pleasure. Our shared time was beautiful, memorable, but there was no lasting power there. We were not soulmates, we were in love for a night and I was relieved when it was over. She left her expensive pot and I still don’t know what to do with it.

The Aloe. Omigod the Aloe. What am I doing wrong? I look around and everyone, I mean everyone seems to be able to keep an Aloe alive. I’ve seen the craziest people host the heatlthiest aloes, meanwhile I’m starting to use my Aloe as material with my therapist. Sometimes it stands up straight, sometimes it wilts.  At times I think it wants more from me, and I cater. I touch the soil, I stroke the tentacles, one time one fell off into my hand. I was mortified. I came home the other day and a new juicy arm was developing. Playing hard to get, clearly.

I don’t know what my relationships with these plants mean. It feels important, it feels like a test, like a calling. Please need me I whisper. Please make me your number one. Your North. I’ll provide everything if you keep loving me.

And so, I keep growing up plants.

20171002_165837

 

 

 

The Chronicles: DAY 1

All About My Kids, Life's Little Moments, The Chronicles

1.i) Do not compromise on cleanliness. Pick up, wipe down, wash, dry, fold and hang immediately so as to avoid feeling like things are falling apart. If the apartment is sticky, messy and smells bad – people will worry. Personal hygiene also applies.

1.ii) Stop whatever you are doing – driving, showering, performing open heart surgery – to take off the Power Ranger suit that is now unbearably uncomfortable for the toddler. By-pass all your parental discipline morals and just end the screaming. Hear the tsk tsk of others at your jellyfish spine and be thankful you know how to give in when necessary. You’re a winner.

1.iii) Carefully explain to your daycare provider that the bungie cord around your son’s chest was put there voluntarily and that the term ‘Hooker’ was conjured up by him, because of his observant nature and the fact that there are hooks on either end. Comment briefly that it was part of a Power Ranger suit and leave the establishment confidently, but quickly.

1.iv) Heed your husband’s advice and ensure the right element is on when you make dinner (it might take 3, or 4 checks). Use your newly learned skills to make a smoothie for the kids, and promise to play Horsie from the living room to the bathroom to get the toddler in the bath. Brace yourself for sore knees.

Day 1 was a complete success.

A) Enjoying the euphoric facade of Day 1, convincing myself that every day will be just like this one. Also, in bed at 9:30.

B) Grateful that my daughter is old enough and wise enough to sense my tension and knows how to diffuse any situation. I’m going to owe her big time after this…screen-shot-2017-02-28-at-7-01-00-pm

Chronicles of a Single Parent

All About My Kids, Life's Little Moments, Motherhood My Way, Story Telling, The Chronicles, Universal Topics, Personal Opinion

INTRODUCTION

Successes, mistakes, regrets and lessons are the themes of this chronicle. It will be a month long project, aimed at keeping me creative and armed with a sense of humour. It’s not a long time, I recognize that and I’m excited for the challenge, I’m excited for the change. As my mother texted, ‘A change is almost as good as a rest’.

My goal will be to write every day, an odd thing to fool myself into thinking I will have time for. I will be transparent, ruthless and will record 2 things each day that were awesome. I am hesitant to make it more than 2 – anything more than that seems wildly unrealistic.

To set the stage, I dim the lights, draw the stage curtain and invite you into a minimalist scene, where 4 people stand centre stage. A family. Tired, but well fed. A slideshow of images, cataloguing the last few months plays behind them. The typical: family tensions, relationship woes, toddler power struggles. The unusual: a couple of car accidents, depleted bank accounts, a job laid off. The slideshow ends with an audio text of a young man asking the man of the house to leave for a month and help him with his new business. Lots of work. Good money. The man walks off stage, waving and downloading new apps on his phone to make video chats easier. The woman of the house and her two kids stand in the spot light. Their faces grow in tension and the light fades just as all three are about to wail into the darkness….screen-shot-2017-02-28-at-5-20-47-pm

Lucky Girl

Life's Little Moments, Motherhood My Way, , ,

I love this.

I love this. That my son is sick and needs to be up every hour in order to have his nose wiped, to be held in an upright position and that I have nowhere to be to. I love that I can be exhausted, at the end of my rope emotionally and physically, and I have no boss to answer to, no co-worker to get along with and no customer to satisfy.

I love that my apartment is messy with toys and clothes everywhere. I love tripping over scooter cars and hearing a battery powered animal call from the living room while I make my tea. I love that everything sort of smells like wet towel and that the garbage reeks of dirty diapers, the dishes are stacking up on the counter and the recycling needs to be taken out. I love that as each of these things get taken care of, I feel lighter and more capable. I love the look of an empty garbage can, I love the smell of clean clothes, fresh towels and I love having a counter clear of clutter.

I love this. I love picking up after my daughter who leaves her clothing lying on the ground after furiously pulling out all the possible outfits in the morning and finding socks under her bed, under her carpet, strewn on a jewelry box. I love re-hanging all her shirts and and re-folding all her pants and re-pairing all her clean socks. I love making her bed, making it just the way she likes, the top folded down so that the covers don’t ride up too high onto her face while she tries to fall asleep. I love picking up hundreds of tiny elastics from her Rainbow Loom set that her brother or the cat stuff in their mouths and putting them all in an old baby bottle tightly sealed and out of harms way. I love finding markers and crayons absolutely everywhere and placing them in the garbage so that one day we will have to start fresh again and buy a full set and begin all over again. I love that we can argue about cleanliness, about responsibility and about learning to keep things organized. I love that we have come so far.

I love paying off debt. I love paying it off because all my demons and all my bad habits have a huge party in my head and try to get me to do things like buy new boots and new sheets and a new watch and they throw things at me like ‘you’re so irresponsible’ and ‘you’ll never amount to anything’, and I ruin their fun by kicking them out of my head and all of a sudden it’s quiet and I’m left sitting with myself. I love it because sitting with myself is really hard and it makes me eat a lot of chocolate and I evaluate every square inch of my life and I’m a Taurus so I remember everything which means evaluating everything takes a long time, but time is what I have.

I love having a pimple on my neck. I love it. I love it because it makes me feel like 16 years old again and I’m almost about to cover it with make-up and then I remember that I’m not 16 and I have nowhere to be. Fester away.

I love nursing my 16 month old. I love not feeling conflicted about nursing past a year, and I love how surprisingly loving it is. I love that my son is old enough to know when something funny is happening and can laugh while at my breast and we giggle together. I love that he is aware of what he needs and can point, hop or clap for it. I love what he needs is something physically provided by me, and will wait if I’m busy, or will laugh his way to the sweet spot if he gets it right away. I love that I think by nursing him longer, he is learning more about sharing than he would if he was sent into a playground and told to share all his toys. I love that I watch him restrain himself when he gets very excited and has to remember not to get so excited that he accidentally bites, and I think he is learning about self regulation and having respect for others regardless of his own feelings.

I love not having everything I think I want right now. I love watching my jealousies and insecurities battle it out and I love knowing that so much of what I want has nothing to do with me but has more to do with all of you and how I want you to see me. I love removing that hold over myself, and seeing that I make things very complicated by hosting a civil war. I love the image of myself at war with myself and then I can see how wasteful it is and I choose wholeness for a moment and I think to myself “I’m going to live from this place more often” and the moment passes and I watch myself get split down the center again, but it’s okay because over time wholeness will last longer than a moment and there will be less inner conflict.

I love winter. I love it. When temperatures drop to -30 and I have to bundle the baby up and push the stroller through snow because the city hasn’t cleared the sidewalks, I remember how much I love it. I love when my lungs ache and the cold triggers my asthma and I feel out of shape and embarrassed that I’m not tougher, I remember that I’m tough in a different way. I love when strangers don’t move over for me and the kids but instead plough straight into us and I’m forced to move to the side because I take the opportunity to explain to my kids that that is the perfect example of how not to be. I love getting inside and the mad dash of removing outter wear and the snow on the stroller melts into salt puddles and kids are crying and cold and look to me to take off mitts and boots and I’m cold too but I remember how much I love the feeling of sitting on the couch with a cup of tea and seeing my kids faces bright red with cold and they look healthy and happy and I love that.

I love it.

Winter Parenting.

Growing Up, Life's Little Moments, Motherhood My Way, , , , ,

Facing 10 days in a row alone means fending for myself against the likes of my children. You know you have hit a new phase of life when your kids legitimately scare you and you imagine hiding from them for realsies, because you know what they need from you is likely going to kill you. Parenting in the winter is a different kind of hell than parenting in the summer. It’s something that should offer support groups and safe words for when you are at your wits end. As a general rule, I do not like to be cold, so the winter offers challenges that I am not always up for.

Today my daughter foamed at the mouth when she learned that the canal in our glorious city is open. Skating! Can we go skating? I neeeeeed to go skating!  Much like a hostage situation, I had no choice, and I didn’t want to make her mad. She can be unpredictable when she’s mad. I looked at the clock, did some quick nap math, and decided that we had a small window of opportunity to head to the canal and do the traditional winter fuck outdoor skate thing.

You know what the best part about going skating on the canal with two kids is? Nothing. We have to drive closer to the canal because having grown up doing this as a kid, I know that at the end, there will be tears and signs of frostbite, so it’s imperative that we get the fuck out of there when the time comes. But driving means dressing the baby in sweater layers for the car ride and putting on his  snow suit on the side of the road so he will be warm in the stroller. Driving means finding parking, which means likely having to walk anyway so that’s what car dumb means. You get a car, you get dumb. I don’t have skates. I don’t care for skating and I refuse to spend money on skates. The baby can barely move in his huge snowsuit so here we are, bundling and unbundling and peeing and re-bundling all so that my daughter can skate while me and the baby walk behind her. Talk about low status. But you put on your stupid parenting hat and you do it.

You know, even when it’s good, it’s bad. Yes, I had a moment when I felt like the world was a tiny bit okay because a stranger offered to help me and the stroller down the stairs. Yes, I had a moment of feeling grateful that the sun was shining and it wasn’t freezing. But I’m not fooled. I know that in about 30 minutes the whining will begin, the toes will ache and that’s not even including my stress that the baby won’t stay docile, but will scream or be too cold, so I snap with my awful mom voice “When I say it’s time to leave, I don’t want to hear one single word of protest. We leave. Do you understand?” Oh mom, you’re so fun.

So my daughter skates. I walk. The baby strolls. My black heart experiences a tiny bit of remorse for being so impatient when I see my daughter smiling and laughing even though I’m shooting her death glares. The innocence of childhood. She seems to barely notice my foul mood and I think it’s probably a survival instinct. Children must have a way of blocking out their shitty parents’ behaviour in order to enjoy life a bit. We make it to the fence, the barricade that means we have to turn back. I’m about to tip my hat off to myself for not insisting we turn around sooner, but then we change directions, and it becomes clear why the skate/walk there was manageable. Now the wind is slapping us in the face and what seemed like decent weather was actually just shoving us along making the skate/walk seem nice and now we have to walk the 3km against the wind. Any minute now.

Her ears are freezing cold, and the baby has had enough. She wants to stop.  My face is frozen. It’s now that I notice all the people. Of course I notice them because they’re all skating toward me, with the wind, and they don’t know what’s coming. I see the 12 year old girls in matching coats. Skate clubs. I see the older couple in stride unison. The speed skaters that truly make the rest of us look like fucking idiots. I see the confident woman skating forward while her confident boyfriend skates backwards and I feel sort of aroused. I see the university guys in their hockey gear and sunglasses and I kind of hate them but I also really love them. I see the tourists, who have skates on, but lets be serious, aren’t skating. I see the functional skaters, the ones with those tiny backpacks on that are definitely filled with bottles of water and solar blankets or something and they are literally skating from one side of the city to the other as transportation. I see the families. I see the singletons. I see the paramedics.

By the time we get off the canal, lifting the stroller up the stairs on my own because the world is not so okay anymore, my daughter is crying because her ears are so cold and the baby is screaming because it’s nap time. Now we undress him so he’ll fit into the carseat but I don’t take off his snow pants so I drive home with him unbuckled, and I hear the whimpering of my daughter in the back who between breaths asks if she can have a bath when we get home, and I know this is just the way it will be forever. It will always be hard. But we did it. We did it and we get to say we did it. But lets not pretend it isn’t the hardest fucking thing in the world.

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Omigod I’m Just Going to Give you a Standing Ovation Right Now

Get A Little Perspective People, Life's Little Moments, Personal Opinion, , ,

I binged on youtube videos when I should have been showering and cleaning.

On a healthy day I think celebrity culture is insane, and we would all be better off just living our own lives instead of checking in to see what our favourite actor was wearing or what they said about anything at any time. My personal experience with it has led me to believe that too much of it can cause a huge gap between real life and the tactfully projected life through pictures and statuses, and can make one feel lacking in just about every aspect of life.

Today I saw celebrities get standing ovations for raising their kids without the use of a nanny. I saw women clap and cheer at a man who was working, while his wife stayed home to raise their new baby at home. I saw Ellen Degeneres learn that an epidural didn’t mean ‘natural’ in the birth world. I heard people with more money than some countries talk about the hardship of planning for their kids’ future. I watch these videos like I’m watching a train wreck – I want to look away out of respect because what I’m watching is so terrible, and nobody should be seen like this, and yet I’m forced to look because it’s so unbelievable that it’s hypnotic.

I imagine that if I were a celebrity, after having lived my non-celebrity life up until now, I would likely be too embarrassed to talk about some of these things as though they were so novel. If somebody cried because I discussed my decision to have a home birth, I might feel more compelled to send them some information on continuing education rather than the remarkableness of my decision. If Ellen Degeneres learned that my husband and I had decided to raise our kids on our own without money, but with a blind understanding of the importance of quality of life, I fear she might fall off her chair and give away more iPods than she’s allowed. I wonder if being at a gala of great importance would be overshadowed by a cluster of people hanging on to my every word as I explained things like grocery shopping without a car in a Canadian winter, or nursing in public or my daughter asking if she can wear a head scarf one day because she has so many muslim friends at school. I’m not sure I would be able to take all these people seriously if parts of my life that seem so simple, so necessary would be celebrated as though I was the only person in the world doing it.

I’m sure there are celebrities who grin and grit through their teeth at these stories they have to tell, knowing that a great many people have also opted to not have nannies, in less comfortable circumstances, and I have a lot of admiration for them. It can’t be easy to talk like you are the first person to discover that breastfeeding can speed up weight loss after pregnancy, but there she is, enlightening the audience, and you have to hand it to her for having the balls to maintain the interview rather than get serious and tell Katie Curic that her questions are stupid.

All of this to say, today if you are working and budgeting, or raising some kids or getting into a fight with your partner, just imagine the applause an LA audience would have for you if you had more money, a couple of red carpet pictures in People Magazine and had dated Chris Pine. As I scrub the slow cooker and try not to slip in the oily bathtub because my daughter decided it would be fun to put baby oil in her bath last night, I will be imagining the reaction of a room who can’t believe I live this way, and how hard they would be clapping at my strength and endurance. If I have a room of applause following me around in my head all day, I might actually be able to get through it a little easier. God Bless LA audiences.

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