if i had a blog…

Amy seems a bit preoccupied with death these days. Not sure where it’s coming from, but she’s mentioned a few times that she doesn’t want to die. She isn’t very upset when she talks about it, she says it rather matter-of-factly. My response has been that she’s not going to die for a very long time, and she’s got a lot to look forward to. That seems to satisfy her.

Then this morning when Amy was eating breakfast, both my mum (who is 78) and I were in the kitchen. Amy asked how old Mum was, and Mum told her. Amy’s response was: Wow, you’re old. You’re going to die soon aren’t you? Mum and I burst out laughing. As I write this down I’m thinking that perhaps you had to be there…

Thankfully my Mum was not offended in the least, and Amy, in her typical fashion, quickly moved on to something else.

But it’s an interesting feeling, as a person who is quite terrified of dying (and would rather just forget about it), to be talking with my four-year-old daughter about death. I mostly think about it at night, and my fear comes from the sheer inability to imagine myself not being here.

I’ve talked to my Mum about it over the years, and learned that she felt the same way as me (I’m sure we are not alone). But she says as she grows older and more tired, she is less afraid. Not sure I’ll ever get there, but I hope to.

Nice subject matter to send myself off to bed with.

A sure sign that things are not going well at work is my abrupt change of mood at about 9 pm on Sunday nights. I had a fantastic weekend that included visits from both my mother and Greg’s mother, a fun night out with Elliot, some really enjoyable time on Saturday with the kids, first at a birthday party and then at Tall Tales Books, an amazing concert with Greg and some friends on Saturday evening, followed by yummy Bin 4 burgers, and a sunny Sunday that included a nap.

Then BAM. I start prepping for Monday morning and my mood takes a big fat nose dive. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt this way…years I think. But the last few months have been really hard, and it’s starting to take its toll. I’m hoping that things will sort themselves out come January. It kind of puts a damper on the December cheer.

Maybe I just need a vacation. And not the Christmas break kind of vacation, but the kind where you go away and leave all the crap behind.

I’m heading out to a Wil concert with my man. That’s all you’re going to get from me tonight. 🙂

Tonight was “Parents Night Out” at Elliot’s school, which meant you could pay a small fee ($10), drop your child off at 5:00, pick him/her up 9:00 and do whatever you wanted in between. Me, being a glutton for punishment, decided to volunteer to be one of the chaperones. Partly because they were only taking school-aged children, so Greg and I would have had Amy anyway, and partly because Elliot didn’t want to go. This is typical for him. Something new, something with lots of kids, not his scene. But I was pretty sure he’d have fun if he did go, so we decided to go together.

We fed the kids dinner (pasta, sauce and meatballs), everyone decorated a cookie, did a craft and then the plan was to watch a movie. Everything was going along fairly well until about 30 minutes into the movie. It was “Elf”, perhaps not the best choice to keep kids’ attention, although no movie is guaranteed to keep 100 kids quiet.

Thirty minutes in kids started to get restless. Very restless. And it wasn’t just some kids, I’d say it was about two thirds of the kids. They were running around the back of the gym, having pillow fights and generally being loud. The vice principal was there (thankfully), and she managed to keep things under control for a while, but it became apparent that things were going south.

The VP stopped the movie and gave the kids the option of sitting quietly and watching the movie or going into one of the classrooms to colour. An alarming number decided to go to the classroom. I stupidly followed them, and once in, could not leave. I couldn’t leave the other parents knowing we were on the brink of chaos. One child in particularly was acting up a lot, and one of the parents told me she was not supposed to be talking to him. Not sure what that was all about, but I became responsible for him. He was a handful. After a few minutes of telling him to not do whatever he was doing, I asked him if he wanted to play hangman. That led to about 50 games of hangman and tic tac toe with him and four other kids of varying ages. We all survived.

At 8:40 the movie ended and all the kids piled back into the gym. The VP took over again and ran a game of British Bulldog as the parents slowly started to arrive. I breathed a sigh of relief.

In hindsight it all worked out, but there were about 45 minutes there when I was quite uncomfortable. I’m not sure how the other parents felt — those more used to a lot of kids in one place may have been more relaxed. Me, I got home and had a drink. But I didn’t break my November drinking rules – there were other “19 pluses” in the house.

And Elliot did have a good time, until the game of British Bulldog. I think he was done by then, and that many kids running around and shouting was too much. I am glad we went, despite the chaos, as I think it’s good for him to push his boundaries a bit.

And I know I missed yesterday. I’ll make up for it another day.

I just spent the last hour “cleaning up” our basement for my mum, who, as mentioned previously on this blog, will be staying with us for a few days. Our basement, as it stands now, will never be clean. We moved from a house with a garage to a house without a garage. A good portion of what was in our garage, including four bikes, now lives in our basement. We do have a crawl space, but it’s not very accessible and it floods periodically. We have stuff down there, but it’s all up on shelves and it’s stuff we don’t use very often. (Invariably, if I’m getting something out of the crawl space, I hurt myself getting out. The latest was getting the kids camping chairs out for the Santa Parade. I was backing out of the small opening and cracked my head on the overhang.)

I often get frustrated by the state of our house. And it’s not limited to the basement. Our bedroom always has stuff lying around in it that shouldn’t be there. Some of the stuff has a home and Greg and I are just too lazy to put it away, other stuff doesn’t have a home and ends up in our bedroom, for lack of a better place (usually because the basement’s too messy to fit anything else).

I wish it didn’t bug me. There are times when I’m fine with it…I can ignore the clutter and recognize that my priorities are elsewhere right now. Some day I’ll have the time to find a home for everything, and some day Greg and I will have the money to actually build a home for everything, but right now is not that time. I do know that when I’m 80, I’m not going to look back on my life and wish I had a tidier house. I just wish that at 41 I could let it go.

I struggle every year I do this NaBloPoMo thing. Mostly because I do have the odd reader and if I’m going to write something that other people are going to read, I want to write something good. A lofty goal.

So why do I do it? I like the challenge, or at least I like the idea of the challenge. And so far, in four years of doing it, I’ve never quit. Sure, I’ve missed days (especially this year), but I make up for it and the end result is 30 posts in November. And that’s more than I do for the whole rest of the year.

I also think it’ll kick start me into blogging more regularly. Which is a dumb reason because what it does is make me sick and tired of blogging, and when December rolls around I just want a break, and then January rolls around and I realize I haven’t blogged for a month, and then on it goes.

And the last reason, probably the most important one, is I like to write, and I love to read what I’ve written. Especially months and years later. Every night this month before I post, I have taken a look at what I’ve written on the three previous years on this day. Sometimes the posts bring back fond memories (I just read one about Yoshi). Sometimes they make me laugh. Sometimes I read the comments and am thankful that people took the time to not only read the post, but add a comment. And sometimes I read something about one or both of my kids that I’ve forgotten, and I’m so thankful I wrote it down. I’ve actually read some of my posts about Elliot and Amy to them, and they love it.

So that’s why I do it. But really what I wish I did instead is blogged regularly throughout the year. I’m not sure how to make that happen, but if I can blog 30 times in one month, surely I can figure out how to blog every couple of weeks throughout the year.

I got an email from my mum this morning with the subject line “Disaster”. She managed to flood her house overnight (how is a different story that perhaps I won’t share publicly, to save her from even more people knowing), which resulted in significant damage to her bathroom, bedroom, kitchen, family room and dining room. Sounds like her whole house, right? Her other three bedrooms, two bathrooms and her storage room were spared.

She lives in Langley and it was really hard for me to be here, a ferry ride away, feeling pretty helpless. I could have taken the ferry and gone over, but what would I have done? I suppose provide some moral support but she was remarkably calm about the whole thing and seemed to be holding it together. She was also exhausted as she did about four hours of clean up on her own, so perhaps she was too tired to care. To give you an idea of the amount of water, the bottom drawer of her stove was FULL, and part of the ceiling in her kitchen had collapsed.

Greg also offered to go over, and I thought he actually might be a bit more helpful from a practical point of view (and perhaps emotional as well, since all I succeeded in doing over the phone with her was to point out the electrocution hazard).

Anyway, thankfully she was able to contact the insurance company, and a representative from both the insurance company and the restoration company were there this afternoon assessing the damage. They assured her that twice a week they get calls from people who have flooded their house by accident. I thought that was a nice thing to say.

They are drying the house out now, but then they are kicking her out for a week, so she’s coming over here. I’m glad we can do something. But this is a prime example of a situation where, if we lived in the same city, we could be that much more available to help her. She is in the process of trying to sell her house and move over here (and the facelift the house is going to get may help that!), but it can’t happen too soon for me!

I just asked Greg for some blog post ideas. His responses?
– Living with a dog that licks your face
– My cool new last name
– Your bike ride

First off, how much material can you get from a dog that licks your face? Most dogs lick. We happened to have a lovely dog for about eight years who never licked and we took it for granted. We have a dog that licks now, and it’s annoying. As soon as you bend down to put on your shoes, she comes up to you with her tongue a waving. That’s about it.

My cool new last name. Those were his words. Yes, it’s a cool last name, but new? Hello, dear husband, we’ve been married for seven and a half years. It’s not very new. I think he’s just jealous because I get way more comments on it than he does, and he’s had the name all his life.

As for “your bike ride”. My response to him was that I’d gone for a run, not a bike ride. But he reminded me that I’d rode with the kids down to Elliot’s school. It would have been fun, if we hadn’t gone during the windiest, coldest part of the day. Actually, it was still fun. The plan was to play at all three playgrounds, which we did. Five minutes at the first one, five minutes at the second one, and then we spent a little longer at the third one. We were playing Little House on the Prairie. Elliot and Amy were Pa and Ma, and I was Mary. I kept having to stay in our house and look after my sisters while Pa got wood and Ma did who knows what. (Pa actually brought back leaves, pretending they were wood, Ma would just go sit on a different part of the playground doing nothing. Maybe she needed time away from her children.) We played that until the (real) wind blew away our (fake) wood, and I announced our fire was out and we needed to go home. Thankfully everyone was happy to oblige.

We rode home in the wind with Amy struggling, but she did it. Sure, there was whining, but it was freaking windy. I would have whined too, if I thought someone would listen.

Thanks Greg.

The kids and I were at a birthday party today and some of the parents were talking about the Santa Parade that was going on tonight. We all agreed that it was way too early for a Santa parade, and the conversation moved on to other things. Fast forward four hours, and where do I find myself? Walking over the Blue Bridge in the dark, carrying three blankets, four hats, four sets of mittens/gloves, one chair and two umbrellas, on my way to the parade with the kids.

Greg and I were tentatively scheduled to see the Bond flick tonight, but our plans hinged on getting a babysitter. She unfortunately had plans with her family (note to self: we really need a backup babysitter). When I texted Greg to let him know (he was at a conference all day), he sent back a note asking if we wanted to go to the parade.

Oh heck, why not. I fed the kids an early dinner, bundled them up and away we went. I forgot that we wouldn’t be able to get over the Blue Bridge, and when I saw the traffic on the Bay Street bridge we made a quick decision to park and walk. A definite benefit of our kids getting older is they can actually walk for longer than two minutes without whining. We booted it over the bridge, met up with Greg and found a spot about ten minutes before the parade started. Excellent timing.

November 17 IS way too early for a Christmas parade, and I totally do not feel Christmas-y, but it was fun. There were some great floats, the kids loved it, the rain held off, and we got some fresh air and exercise.

The bedtime reading routine in our household has evolved over the years, as I’m sure it does in any household containing children. We started reading to Elliot from a very young age because he seemed to enjoy it. Amy was different, and we tried to read to her early on, but often it would just be one very short book because she wasn’t interested. It wasn’t until we moved into this house that I remember her actually sitting on our laps for any length of time for books, so she would have been about eight months old.

We almost always did books separately, partly because Amy went to bed significantly earlier than Elliot, and also because their attention spans were so different (rightly so given the age difference). Both had their “book jags” where they’d want the same book over and over, but Elliot could usually be easily convinced to read something else. Amy not so much. I think I sang “The Aunts Go Marching” to her about 100 times straight (thanks Tia K!).

Even as they got older, when their bedtimes got closer together and Amy started really enjoying books, we still mostly did them separately because their taste in books was quite different. Around the time Elliot turned four, we received a few light chapter books and started reading them to him, and he loved them. And Amy had absolutely no interest in them because there were no pictures in them, or very few. Amy often requested that we do books together, and I’d start with dread, knowing it would end badly. Amy, totally not interested, goofing around on the bed, interrupting the story and generally being a two- and three-year-old, would be dragged from the room by whichever parent was not reading. So Greg and I would often divide and conquer and each read to one child. Gradually Elliot got into more sophisticated chapter books and I was in heaven, reading him full-on novels like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and The Borrowers.

And then that all changed, and I don’t exactly know when. Some time in the last six months, maybe? Now we read books together every single night. Amy is fine with chapter books, but likes to be alerted when there is a picture. She doesn’t comprehend them as well as Elliot (again, rightly so given the age difference), but she listens and asks the occasional question about the characters. We usually start by reading two or three of her books (which are sometimes lighter chapter books like Geronimo Stilton or Arthur, and sometimes picture books) and then we read a chapter or two from whatever Elliot has on the go (which is usually several books, as Greg and I don’t read from the same books, and Elliot usually has one or two that he’s reading on his own).

The other thing that’s changed is the length of time we read to them. It used to be for about 15 minutes, but now I’ve noticed that both Greg and I often read for about 30 minutes. And I’m still thoroughly enjoying it, because I’m getting to read all the books that I loved as a child, and both my kids are cuddled beside me. It’s a really nice way to end the day.