Requires Ice Cream #1

So, funny story.

One of our local papers put out an ad looking for a creative story writer to do a weekly column, the description of which sounded a lot like blogging with a local spin. I was terrified but I decided to apply. A friend helped me comb through the archives on my blog and we chose four samples to tweak and submit and I spent an entire day emailing my mom back and forth in the quest of the perfect cover letter. I finished it, printed it all, got dressed up, had Hugh come home from work mid-day so I could drop it off in person rather than email it and....the editor wasn't in. The receptionist put it on his desk and even though I didn't get to speak to the editor I walked out feeling very good about my submissions.

Early the following week I wanted to call and touch base and just make sure the editor had seen my application so I went to the yellow pages and looked under newspapers and had a minor stroke. See one of the things I thought was so great about my cover letter was how I showed that I read the paper in question by commenting briefly on how much I have enjoyed their Ask The Experts section. What gave me the minor stroke was seeing Ask The Experts in the phone book. With it's own number. On a separate line. As in not a section of the paper I was applying to.

So.... Not so much funny ha-ha....
They could still call right? Right? To slightly mangle Shakespeare, "the road to publication never did run smooth."

2010

In elementary school I read a poem about New Years that went something along the lines of: exercise books half-full, pencils half their size, erasers down to nubs, backpack straps are broken but Happy New Year anyway. I remember coming back to school every year from Christmas break and feeling like what's so new about this year? Now, as an adult, I love a new year. Is there anything more exciting and inspiring than a calendar full of blank pages? It feels like anything is possible! A new calendar is always another reminder for me to be intentional about what I do (and don't) want in my life. I am, as always, determined not to simply react to the world around me. At the end of this year I want to be pleased by how my calendar filled up - pleased at the growth, friendships and fun I planned into my life. I know I cannot control everything. I know that this year will bring it's challenges but I will take responsibility for every thought, every action, every emotion and carve a learning and growth out of every situation. The definition of responsibility is simply the ability to respond. I have the ability to respond to everything in my life so the greater question is, how will I respond?

All in all I'm starting 2010 off better than I began 2009. I lost the 15 pounds I gained last year not by running or doing my 10-minute trainer but by having an emergency appendectomy being on a broth diet for three days and then being completely turned off of food for over a month afterward. Easy, non? Now if only I could figure out a way to market it...

I have a few things on my "want to accomplish" list for 2010, one of which is getting something published. Which should be no problem since breaking into the publishing world is notoriously easy. Sigh. Just thinking about all the rejection I'm likely to face in this pursuit makes me crave ice cream.

2010 will also bring a whole new dynamic to our family as Tristan and Ava will start full-day, five days a week Kindergarten and I am determined to make these last months count, these last days special. The years of having young kids at home go as fast as everyone says they do yet I remember clearly days that seemed to have no end, nights when morning came all too quickly and I didn't know if I had it in me to begin another endless round of feedings, bum wipes, and baths. It really has gotten easier as my children have grown and I am thankful that I also have a wealth of memories of adventure and laughter and fun but there are still things I've never done with my kids that I always thought I would. So this is the year I'm going paint outside with the kids, do treasure hunts and tea parties and maybe, just maybe find a fairy.

What about you? What do you want out of 2010?

She does NOT like surprises!

I have two younger sisters. My youngest sister Jane does not like surprises. Every year at Christmas she turned our house upside-down finding all the presents hidden and on Christmas Day as you were about to open a present she would say things like, "you're going to really like this one!" It got to the point where before you opened anything you'd glance at Jane and she would give you a slight nod or a shake depending on whether she thought you'd like it or not.

Another of our Christmas traditions was to do a sister-sleepover on Christmas Eve and Jane would wake up hours before Erin or I and dump all the stockings out and to see what everyone got and to high-grade the candy and gifts that we all got slightly different versions of like watches or socks. In her later teen years Jane decided she was tired of always knowing what everyone got every year and she decided to shake things up and be surprised. She announced this one day at dinner to a stunned silence and so Mom went out of her way to surprise Jane that year, even going so far as to not hide a single gift at home, just in case! And wouldn't you know that was the year Jane happened to walk out of the library, which was kitty-corner to the office where my Mom worked, at the same time Mom happened to be taking Jane's gift inside her office to hide. Even when she wanted to be surprised she couldn't be. This might be genetic as apparently my Mom's brother, Cam, was always like that.

Now I'm the Mom and it's my job to do Christmas. This year, in the midst of all our holiday busyness Hugh and I are refinishing a hutch we bought off Kijiji. Cuz there's nothing like adding a bit of unnecessary stress to an already stressful season, right? Last weekend we went downstairs to prime it. (Our basement is unfinished.) Hugh went down a few minutes before me and I heard him say, "You guys get out of there! You know you're not allowed to play in there!" Which made me run down the stairs immediately because I knew the "there" Hugh was talking about was the furnace room which besides being off limits due to the potential for danger and destruction, is also where I hid the boys' Christmas presents. I could immediately tell from the looks on their faces that Tristan had no idea what was in the bags in the furnace room and Ava knew exactly what was in the bags. I took her upstairs for a little private convo where I used my best mom voice. You know the one right? It's the one guaranteed to get truthful answers because although quiet and controlled, it sounds like the wrath of God is about to fall and holds just a hint of the promise of the end of life as we know it.
"Ava what did you see in the bags?"
"Toys."
"What kind of toys?"
"Little People."
The Little People are just a little add-on gift in the spirit of keeping things even between all the kids. Can I just say right now that I wish kids this age understood evenness in terms of cost and not how many presents they have to open? Anyway, the point is the Little People were sitting on top of the boys' main gifts, Bounce Back Racers, which Tristan has asked for two years in a row.
"What else did you see?" I demanded.
"Ummm, ummm, ummmm," she said with quivering little lips. "I saw, um, I saw hot things and sharp things and dangerous things." And then she fell sobbing into my arms while I breathed a HUGE sigh of relief that I did not have to start my Christmas shopping over. When she calmed down I said, "Ava do you know you're not allowed in the furnace room?"
"Yes."
"Well then why did you go in there?"
"Because I wanted to see those toys again."
Again.
"How many times have you been in that room?"
"Um, maybe about like five times?"

Sometimes you just can't fight fate. Or genetics. I sure hope Ava can keep a secret.

Can you call cursing a talent?

I don't swear a lot. I don't swear never either but I try to save it for moments of extreme aggravation or humour. The only time I have ever come close to that moment where your child repeats something you said under your breath at a really inopportune time is when Ava said in a very irritated tone of voice, but also under her breath, something with the word "damn" in it. She was 3 and damn sounded very strange coming out of her mouth. Although it's nowhere near as strange as hearing your two-year-old take almost any word in the English language and turn it into the F-word.




He is talented, non? The newest addition is blanket, excuse me, f**kit, and I just about had a heart attack when I was putting him to bed two nights ago until I realized he was trying to pull the covers up.

Why I would like time to stop

Over the years I have noticed that each of my friends when their children approach school age ask themselves if they should homeschool. These same friends all went through public schools themselves and talked about public schools when their children were babies and backpacks and No. 10 pencils seemed like a star in another galaxy when daily life revolved around eating schedules, diaper changes and tantrums.

But as the star in that other galaxy drew closer these moms looked at the sweet, shining faces of their children, remembered some of their own not-so-great elementary school experiences, pictured the real world hitting like a large bucket of ice water dumped on their heads, and wondered if perhaps homeschooling wasn't such a bad idea after all.

I was a few years behind most of my close friends and I heard the agony of separation in those conversations without fully understanding. Well, now it's my turn. Our twins did not start Kindergarten this year. They could have, they turned five in the early Fall, and in fact most people assumed we would send them this year, but we chose not to. Firstly, our city only offers a full-day Kindergarten program and up until a couple of weeks ago they still napped for 2 or 3 hours everyday and in fact have fallen asleep on the couch while I write this. Secondly, the proverbial "They" recommend boys start school at the age of six. They recommend this for many reasons, one being "They" did a study and found that the language area in the brain of a five-year-old boy looks the same as a three-and-a-half-year-old girl. Boys brains develop at a different rate and trajectory and that extra year makes a big difference. And thirdly, I didn't think the kids were ready for school. They have a later birthday and waiting a year means they'll be that much bigger and that much more emotionally mature and I want them to have every advantage available to them to make it in the rough and sometimes cruel world of the playground. But mostly, I just wasn't ready to let them go.

This week I was a parent helper on a field trip the kids took with their playschool. One of the things we do as a family is clap every time we go underneath a bridge. Well, I was partners with my kids and another boy (who I will call X) and on the way there we clapped while X ducked his head, which is what his family does. An interesting thing happened on the way home. At the first bridge X, Ava and I clapped and Tristan ducked his head. At the second bridge, Ava and I clapped and X and Tristan ducked their heads. At the third bridge, I clapped alone while all three ducked their heads. As I looked at my head-ducking children sitting on bus seats twice as tall as them, legs stuck straight out and barely hitting the seat ahead, I felt inexpressibly sad.
This is why I'm not ready to let go yet.

How do you explain to a barely-five-year-old about peer pressure and knowing yourself and liking yourself well enough to not follow the crowd? How do you encourage your children to be who they are without fear or shame or apology? A day or so later we had a talk about how it's really neat that other families do special things too but that we don't have to change what we do just because someone else does it differently. Ava's response to that was, "But Mom, I don't like clapping anymore."

You know what? Maybe homeschooling isn't such a bad option after all...

Are you there God? It's me, Heather...

Typically Fall here is long and warm. Last year at this time we had just put in the sod for our front lawn. Last year at this time I was wondering if it was ever going to get cool enough for me to wear my new winter boots (they just don't go with capris). This year in the span of two weeks we've gone from t-shirt weather to snow so deep it required toques, Sorells and shovels and back to today which is supposed to be a high of 22.

I'll tell you what is the same as last year. My family is sick. Last year the entire month of October was spent indoors (excluding the time I spent going to the doctor), while a stomach flu, hand foot and mouth disease, and finally colds ran through our household. It was so awful I have become the mom that won't go places if I know anyone has been sick there and I won't let sick kids come over.

This October also reminds me of October two years ago. Two years ago after a brutal delivery where I lost half my blood, spent an hour being internally stitched and had a D&C to get rid of the placenta bits that had attached themselves to my internal C-section scar, Sebastian was born. Two years ago I left the hospital feeling knocked-down and dragged-out and unable to sit without a donut pillow. I got out of the hospital this year on October 6th, the day before Sebastian's second birthday feeling knocked-down, dragged-out and like I had entered a time warp.

It has been two weeks since my surgery and on Thursday, just two short, blissful days ago things were looking good. I was thinking with great satisfaction that no one had been sick in a while (excluding my appendix episode which was an isolated incident and not contagious), and I felt like I had turned a corner in my own recovery and was looking forward to a weekend with Hugh home and the kids playing outside and me not having to sleep all the time. And then Thursday night Hugh said his stomach felt off and immediately I began to hyperventilate. I went to bed with fear and trembling and sure enough was rudely woken up an hour later to the sound of retching. But it wasn't Hugh. Tristan was puking up lasagna all over our bedroom carpet. And then he proceeded to throw up about every 20 minutes from midnight until 5:00am. The next morning Hugh went to work and after finishing up the carpet cleaning from the night before and wiping down every conceivable surface in my house with vinegar we limped through the day from Treehouse show to Treehouse show. Hugh made it through the day feeling fine but bolted out of bed in the wee hours and spent the night hugging the cool porcelain. When I checked on him later this morning I asked if I could get him anything and he said, "I'd like my Saturday back."

Today Hugh was going to take advantage of this good weather, since who knows it might be blizzarding next week, and finish off the top pieces of our fence. This summer while he wasn't working would have been a great time to do that but it's hard to buy lumber when you're not getting a paycheck. We really need to finish the fence so we can paint it. It's starting to turn grey which from an aesthetic point of view I find pleasing but from a rotting wood perspective isn't good, and now that the sprinklers have been blown out it would be a good time. Were it not for the fact that Hugh is currently lying on the couch hoping to keep down his last two sips of water. I am living in such dread of the rest of us getting it that I can't tell if my stomach is off because of nerves or because I already have it.

Do you know what I want? I want October back.

The long and short of it

Hey. So. Got a stomach ache on Friday afternoon. Thought I was hungry. Ate 3 pieces of pizza, you know, to make sure I was really full and so my stomach really wouldn't hurt. Didn't work. Went to lay down. Writhed in agony on my bed for a while. Had a bath. Writhed in agony in the tub. Puked up my pizza. Drank some peppermint tea. Puked it up. Writhed in agony on the floor of my bedroom for a while. That was uncomfortable. Went back to writhing on bed. Went to hospital. Was immediately admitted and hooked up to IV combo of Gravol and Demerol. Spent the night in a hospital bed in Emerg. puking but doing slightly less writhing thanks to the Demerol and then no writhing when they switched me to morphine. Had a CT scan. Went to the OR. Had a nurse press my throat till I passed out. Woke up without an appendix. The End.

Except it's not really the end is it? Not when the doctors told me I'm not allowed to lift my children for 4 weeks and I have to sleep sitting up and take antibiotics that make me smell like a nursing home. At least the twins are at good ages and will be able to bring me breakfast in bed and feed me grapes all day long while I lounge on the couch. Sigh. And Sebastian? Good thing he loves his crib, cuz I can't lift him out of it!