Fantastic Friday Fotos

at the street fair

Can I just say I love vacation? And I get to go one next week, and sit on a beach by a lake, with a book. There might be sangria involved. And possibly a mojito. Or two.

In the meantime, a recap of events from the last month or so - they say a picture is worth a thousand words, so here are some - which I am terrible at posting, so if there are any BloggerGenuis people out there, drop me a (life)line.

someone graduated daycare...

and someone passed her swimming level after only 7 tries

Someone was so tired, he slept like a baby. Okay, two someones.

gigantic  pirate ship being built as a climbing gym at the Old Port. It looks ah-maay-zing!

 Facepaint! Always a favourite around here.

 Jazzfest! Hanging out, catching some live music, chowing down the Chinese buns. Being mortally offended that the fountains are not working and therefore cannot be run through, and tearfully insisting to be taken to the swimming pool.

 

Impact!

Footie! Soccer! Football! Whatever you call it, my kids love it. To watch it, anyway, playing it is a bit more problematic, as Pickle doesn't understand the rules and Panda doesn't like all those people crowding her, and would rather sit and investigate the ants in the astroturf* than fight for the ball.

 Every year, the school board here gives parents a chance to buy reduced rate tickets to a pro match. Last year, my kids were a bit put off by all the noise and bustle, and Pickle begged to leave before it was over. But this year,  they loved it. The excitement, the hotdogs, the cheering, the hotdogs, the people-watching, the hotdogs, the stamping of the feet to encourage the team; it all entranced them. (Hotdogs may or may not have had a lot to do with that.) 

And we won too!

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April in Pictures

With cross country moves to plan and extra duties at work (as colleagues quite rightly jump from a sinking ship), kids activities to attend and packing to accomplish, time is at a premium around here. They say pictures are worth a thousand words, so here goes!

First, a trip to the cabane à sucre to see the maple syrup collected , and eat maple syrup candy. If you've never been, it basically consists of paying a set fee to sit in a huge room at a long table and  eat as many plates as possible of scrambled eggs, bacon, ham, cretons, pancakes, beans, back bacon, potatoes...well, you get the idea. Then you try to mitigate the arterial damage by chasing your kids as they run screeching on the playground, beg for face-painting, wagon, and pony rides; and terrorize the animals in the petting zoo. It's most fun in a large group, where you can chat with your girlfriends and let the men wrangle the kids.

Showing of the pace paintings, and S being silly on the wagon ride

It's playoff season! In my house, this means a lot of begging to stay up late to watch hockey, and then bombarding the adults with questions. "Who are the red guys? Who are the blue guys? Who's winning? What are the rules? What's that guy's name? How about that guy? Why did they stop playing? Is that guy a bad guy? What are the rules again?"  Usually, we make them a bowl of popcorn to keeps their mouths too busy to talk,  and then S escapes to the office while I try to explain offside rules to a four year old.  Of course watching leads to doing, so they put two Crazy Fort pieces together so they could whack a ball around. And since whacking a ball around leads to losing an eye to a pointy Crazy Fort piece, I broke down and bought them each a little hockey stick.

We also went to see "Home" in the theatre. They weren't too sure about the first part of the movie, but loved it once everyone made friends. Now Pickle wants to be a Boov. They had a blast playing in the arcade after the show - in fact, I think that is why they like going to the movies. I wish I'd taken a picture of them in the bumper cars, but I was too busy smashing into Panda and her friend G to get a good shot.

Panda Smashysmashy and Pickle riding the roller-coaster simulator

And this is Panda's drawing of a fly. It's so darn cute that I am half-considering getting it as a tattoo. 

And that's it. My April in pictures!

Sweet or Chicken? You decide! - (1/2) a Guest Post by S

Evidence as submitted by S:

"How I saved myself from humiliation in front of my children and a school friend.

Easter Monday: I have the kids home because school is closed and my wife has to work. I invite one of Panda's Gr 1 friends over because, as any parent knows, it's significantly less work to entertain your own kids (and keep the damn TV turned off) if one of their friends comes over for the day.

Around 11am, I corral them together to bake cookies, and they have a blast scooping, measuring, cracking the egg, mixing with the electric beater, etc, etc. Cookies are formed, fired into the oven, and I send them on their way. This, this, is my glorious day to catch up on housework. Oh yes, we've long reached that level of parenting glamour where you actually get excited to have time and energy to clean. But, I multi-task too much and burn the damn cookies. The timer was on but I ignored it. Might as well try one.. Hmm, just the bottom is black, still sort of edible...should I serve them? I consider this and immediately reject this dark path. She already never lets me forget the time that I biked her around on the child carrier seat without remembering to buckle her in. She'll never let me live this one down. I can hear her delighted voice at school for the next ten years: "...this one time, I had my friend over for a playdate, and my silly dad burned the cookies..."

HELL NO, am I going through that shit! The evidence of my crimes are quickly hidden away from view. Taking pains to keep them occupied outside of the kitchen, I made an entire second batch of cookies from scratch. Whipped by hand of course, the electric beater is too noisy and would certainly expose my sins... Lunch and subsequent cookies were served without incident, and my reputation was saved once again..."

As related by yours truly:

Panda had made a sign for our door on Easter, so that the Easter Bunny would know whose house he was at. She was very proud of it and wanted to show it off at school, but it had been kicking around the house for a few days (okay, fine, it was on the floor) and when it came time to put it in her school bag last night, it was of course nowhere to be found. After we'd reassured her we would look for it and tucked her up snug in her blankets, S shamefacedly admitted that not only had he recycled it, he'd crumpled it up in a ball, too. Once the kids were safely asleep, he fished it out and I ironed it - with mixed results. So this happened:

Yes, that is my husband painstakingly making an exact copy of her poster, so that she isn't crushed in the morning. Or to evade her wrath, I'm not sure which.


I can't decide if our kids have the sweetest Papa ever, or the most chicken. What do you think? Let me know in the comments!

Hippity Hop Hop, here comes the Easter Bunny

I love holidays - all of them. We celebrate every holiday that we have any connection to in our home - Chinese ones, North American ones, Hungarian ones; and if I knew of any Icelandic holidays, we'd celebrate those too. Nothing makes more sense to me than celebrating life- and nothing makes less sense to me than lining the pockets of corporate interests to do so. We tend to try to keep things small at our house, and for Easter, that always means a whole lot of hard-boiled eggs.

Panda and Pickle, making remarkably little mess.

 It's tradition. We did it with my mom, and  and for all I know she did it with hers. In fact, I did it even before I had kids - before I was even married, with room-mates and whoever else I could coerce into it. (Luckily for me, when almost everyone you know attended art college, it isn't too hard to find people willing to draw on stuff.) So, every year on the night before Easter Sunday, we gather our supplies: Wax crayons (washable ones won't work), egg dye (food colouring, vinegar and boiling water), drop cloth, smocks (in theory -we couldn't find any) and hard boiled eggs. Stickers and temporary tattoos are good too.

Finished product

 Once everyone is in bed, the Easter Bunny comes and hides all the eggs around the house. He brings a basket (well, bucket) for each child as well. Bright and early on Sunday morning, happy little bodies tumble out of bed and rush around screaming in delight and trying one-up each other on how many eggs they have found. When all are accounted for* and several have been breakfasted upon, at last it's time to tuck into the Easter basket; chocolate, jelly beans, and a new spring outfit.

the baskets

And that's it, Easter in an eggshell! Now, does anyone have a recipe that calls for sixteen hardboiled eggs?

*Do not forget to count the eggs before the Easter Bunny hides them. A late night and a glass of Cabernet have a way of turning an overlooked egg into a nasty - and stinky - surprise a few weeks down the road. That's also I lesson I learned from my mother.

Some of all of the things

Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday. ~ Don Marquis


Or last week. Or for that matter, the last entire month.

Procrastination is something that I am very good at (or bad, depending on your point of view) and a multitude of things are affected by it; Mt. Laundry, filing, unpacking, this blog....

So let me see if I can rectify that - the blog part, anyway. (My propensity to never fully unpack has come in handy, since we've only been in this house three years and we are already moving. So I'm now ahead of the game.)

Also, I've decided not to be so damn paranoid about privacy, so here is a pic or two of the kids, celebrating Panda's 7th birthday. She was pleased as punch with Pickle's gift of a singing Elsa doll, and all we've heard for a week now is "Mama, can I press the button?" followed by the chorus for "Let It Go." She has started using it as a reminder for herself and everyone else not to get upset by the little things - most notably when lil' bro is following her around imitating her. She just 'lets it go.'

Pickle is still working out the whole 'smile for the camera' thing

Westward, Ho!

On a cold and snowy Tuesday afternoon several weeks ago, our family got a much-needed and not wholly unwelcome kick in the ass. 

I and all seven of my departmental colleagues were called to an unexpected meeting with the VP. The company had decided to restructure, and our (clearly sales) department would now report to the VP of Logistics. Our entire department would be moved to our American location. The move itself isn't that surprising - they merged with a US company eight years ago and are gradually transferring everything there. The timing, though.... the timing sucks. First, we all thought we had a few more years. Second, they are closing our department at the end of the summer. Because no-one will need to move and no-one has kids starting school then <eye roll>.

My first thought was "I'm free!" My second was that I felt like I was back in high school, at 3:02 on a sunny summer day... "will he just shut up already and let us leave?" But Mr. VP droned on, and on, and on, explaining the reasons that everyone had, just five minutes prior, ceased to give a damn about. He seemed to be looking for absolution.

But see...here's where the silver lining shines.  S and I have been talking about moving west, but we were held here by my job and our daycare situation. We weren't quite ready to leave stable ground and leap into the unknown without a safety net. With my severance package, we have a safety net. We can leap...but leap where?

Our current plan is for S to get a job in his field and I will follow, and we will use my severance for a down payment.. That plan needs to locked down by the end of May, or we need to move to plan B, which is to look into the possibility of my company transferring me to a position out west. It's already been raised to me by two separate managers, so it is a distinct possibility- I'd get a paid move, a job I didn't particularly want, and no severance package. So bye-bye house ownership. Plan C would be to stick a pin in the map, polish our resumés, and rent a moving van.

So...yeah, that's where we are, with every thing up in the air. I HATE it when everything is up in the air. I like to have it all neatly laid out on a colour-coded spreadsheet that I will probably never refer to again once I enter a value in the final cell. Most of my big decisions may be emotionally-driven and somewhat sudden, but I like to trick myself into thinking I am being logical and well-informed. I hate that I can't even start lying to myself about this one until we know where we are going!

Of course, Panda is devastated. She doesn't want to leave her friends, her school, her life here. I don't either - I finally have some fantastic girlfriends and I'd like very much to keep them. Pickle, who's four, might be a little young to process it all, but he definitely doesn't want to go kindergarten next year (here he would have one more year at daycare, in any other province he will start school.) S is pretty excited, I think.

I guess am too. Nervous about the logistics of it all, but excited. We are long overdue for a change, and this will our last upheaval until the kids are grown.

Well, except for that whole foster/adoption thing! 

"Should I stay or should I go? If I go there could be trouble...

...If I stay it could be double." Thank you, Strummer et al for that elucidating argument.

So, S and I are contemplating a move, and we are having a hard time getting our heads around things.

A really hard time.

We currently live in the one of the most economically depressed provinces, and the only one that has a language barrier to overcome. We  will always be outsiders. Taxes are insanely high, infrastructure is post-apocalyptically bad, and S cannot find a decent, steady job in his field. Or really any steady job. Housing prices keep rising, and since we are working with my salary alone, we might eventually manage a mortgage on a little three bedroom home in a sketchy area. But we can’t quite get to the four bedroom we’d need to move forward with foster/adoption, and I don’t want to live in gangland, even by Canada’s milder standards.  I suppose we could find something on the edge of nowhere, but the commute already eats up a good two hours of my day, and we only live ten kilometers from my work.

We could move back west.  Right now we are far from our families, not that we’d necessarily be close, even if we lived next door – notably excepting our fathers.  And possibly our siblings, since the break between is less lack of love than lack of commonality. Okay fine, we miss our families. We’d like to be closer, in all the layers of meaning that phrase holds. S should have a much easier time finding work- his field is still very specialized, but at least there would be no language barrier. Taxes would be lower, and with two reliable incomes we could possibly buy a house, have a yard, make the commute  more manageable. We could foster.  Life could be rosy…. But yet….We’d need to start over. Housing could be even more expensive, and daycare would be forty to fifty dollars per day, per child. The kids would lose their bilingualism, even in immersion school. Life would be grayer, more culturally homogenous. I’d miss my friends, and making new ones does come easily to me. Not to mention all the hassle of moving a family of four across this ridiculously large country – finding housing, jobs, pediatricians, dentists, family doctors.... And then there are the moving expenses.

On the (infamous) other hand, we could stay here.  I have a decent, secure job. Maybe S could learn the language, find a way to retrain in a more secure field. We adore this city, with its plenitude of parks, festivals,  and free outdoor pools. The culture is diverse and vibrant,  the food is fantastic, and the public transit system is extensive and generally reliable.  It’s politically left-leaning, which suits us well. Daycare is seven dollars a day per child. Seven dollars. The school system is decent, and my children will grow up fully bilingual. When they eventually get to higher education, tuition costs for residents are about half what they are in the rest of the country, and we have some of the finest universities.  We've built a life here, surrounded by amazing, supportive friends.

I think …I think…I think... I need help with this one. On one hand, this:

“And the danger is that in this move toward new horizons and far directions, that I may lose what I have now, and not find anything except loneliness.”

― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

And on the other, this:

“I give you this to take with you:

Nothing remains as it was. If you know this, you can

begin again, with pure joy in the uprooting.”

― Judith Minty, Letters to My Daughters

 What would you do? Throw up your hands and head for possibly greener pastures, knowing that they could be full of gopher holes? Stay put and pour your energies into a better life here, and if sometimes you feel your pouring it into a pit, the rest of the time you are happy?

Tell me what you think in the comments!

It's 2015! We made it!

We made it! We made it to 2015!

Which is a great relief to me, because the last quarter of 2014 was hard. Not crushing-my-spirit hard, but grinding. "I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread," as Bilbo Baggins put it, sometime around his one hundred and eleventieth birthday. Now, I'm nowhere near that old, but you'd never know it by the way mornings feel these days.

So, Twenty Fourteen, let's tally up a little. You were well behaved for the first nine months (and I thank you, don't think I don't appreciate it) but then you threw this at me:

• 1 smushed front bumper and 1 misaligned frame on the car 
• 8 weeks of weekend-only husband, meaning 8 weeks of solo-parenting Sunday afternoon through Friday night - and he didn't get the permanent position
• 1 injured thumb, 5 stitches and 3 weeks healing time
• 1 thousand pantry moths
• 1 broken clothes dryer
• 1 more smushed bumper (same side) and 1 expensive garage door repair (thanks, winter ice. We'll reciprocate your love with a tonne of salt, next time!)
• 1 operation to repair nerve and tendon in thumb, resulting in x amount of stitches, 12 weeks healing time, 14 Occupational Therapy appointments, and 1 thumb and 1 wrist that have lost most of the mobility
• 1 insurance company that refused to pay for OT appointments
• 2 cats with fleas (How? They've never been outside!)
• 4 constantly runny noses (okay, now I'm nitpicking. But still....)

I'll forgive you though, because you balanced it out with a long visit with my dad, a lovely week at a cottage, S and our two amazing kids, and the love and support of a fantastic group of friends. So we'll call it even, okay?

And hello, Twenty Fifteen, you fresh-faced innocent! Come on in and let's have a look at you. We welcomed you with lots of good companionship and laughter and joy, but I have a feeling you might put me through the wringer a bit, too. So my promise to you, Twenty Fifteen, is to take better care of myself, both mentally and physically. That is going to mean less bad food and more good exercise. It's going to mean refusing to let the petty little tearer-downers into my headspace, especially at work. It's going to mean making some hard decisions about our future, and sticking to them. I don't expect a perfect year, or a prosperous one, but I hope it is a fulfilling one. I hope I can find my feet and lose my fear, love and be loved, support and be supported.

And I wish the same for all of you out there as well - May your year be fulfilling, replete with love and with clarity.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Image courtesy of Liz Noffsinger at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

'Tis the Season to be Jolly....

Falalala, lalalala

Did I miss a 'la' in there anywhere? It sure seems like I am missing something everywhere these days. Now, I love Christmas, but as I've mentioned before, it usually gets the better of me.

Buying gifts, wrapping gifts, making food, cleaning the house, working full time... I am ready to sleep for a week. I have managed to lose a few small gifts somewhere in our bedroom closet  (I'm becoming convinced there is a trans-dimensional monster in there that eats sweaters in lieu of children. Or maybe I just watched too much Buffy the Vampire Slayer back in the day.) Christmas cards entirely slipped my mind this year, and I although I thought I was being diligent in my planning, I ended up with a few extra gifts, and no bows or tags. I think I've fallen victim to the Dunning-Kruger effect.

And because there is just so much idle time to fill during the holiday season (ha!), this year we were inspired by Erin's  (No Bohn's About It) fabulous idea to make our own wrapping paper (although I'll save the bow-making for next year). We bought a few rolls of brown kraft paper, carved some potato stamps, and went wild with the acrylic paints. Some of us went a bit wilder than others, which is why Pickle is not wearing a shirt here. Panda managed more sedately. (Please ignore the hideous wallpaper if you can, we are too lazy to reno a rental place. Maybe we should paint it white and potato stamp it too!)

Pickle painting purple stars. There aren't any on him yet.

Panda carefully placing festive pine trees.

And here are some of our finished efforts!

Have a safe and merry holiday, everyone!

Thursday Thoughts

Christmas is nearly upon us, and I'm busier than a elf on a shelf. (A wagon which I will never ever throw myself under the wheels of, because a) those little critters weird me out with their shifty-eyed smirks and  b) I'm just too lazy for their shenanigans. Also, it's one more lie to the kids that I have to eventually own up to. The others I can justify - Santa embodies the spirit of love, gifts being but a symbol of our regard for one another and having nothing at all to do with the history of Coca-Cola Marketing campaigns; the Tooth Fairy eases the transition from little to big and lessens the trauma of having your body parts fall out by making it an event to look forward to, assuaging the fear with the promise of cash, blah blah blah and so on and so forth. The Easter Bunny needs no justification because he brings chocolate. But what can we say about the elf? It prepares them for an NSA police state? We're Canadian. CSIS can't be bothered to spy on us, and anyway it wouldn't be polite. I can just give them Orwell's 1984 if I want to turn them into paranoid conspiracy theorists.)

Where was I? Oh, yes, busy. Busy and scattered. What to get for my gamer sister who loves cats, yet does not need yet another WoW or cat-related object? Ditto for brother-in-law - same description? Or my father, who is the very definition of curmudgeon with a heart of gold - since he claims to have ten of everything and be halfway to the grave in any case, is it okay to just pay his Costco membership, or is that just too lame a gift? Here's an open secret- I suck at gift giving. I always have too many ideas, or none at all, and nothing ever gets to the recipient on time. This year, as always, I catch myself browsing through stores, thinking "mom would love that" before I remember that she has been gone nearly four years now, and I still feel curiously unmoored by it.
Don't get me wrong, I love Christmas, I'm just not very good at it. I still can't wait for it to come. 

Panda still believes in Santa, even though kids in her class have told her he's not real. I think she has made a conscious choice to keep the magic. I love that about her. 

I'll have this brace on my hand for almost three more weeks, that's 5 weeks post tendon-nerve repair surgery. By that time, I'll have been effectively one-handed for two months. That whole opposable thumb thing? Totally the reason that humans colonized every habitat and pushed aside all other species. Without it, we would never have sharpened a stick to bring down the mighty mammoth. I can't even open a damn jar. Hopefully I get the all clear to move it at the next occupational therapy appointment, because to the surprise of no person ever with health insurance, mine declined to cover them. So this next OT appointment will also be my last OT appointment. (Also, I should have gone into that field. Seventy bucks a pop for a half hour at best, and my therapist looks like he might be ready to start shaving soon. At his age I slurping back Mr. Noodles and fishing out couch change for the electricity bill.)

S and I are considering moving. Packing up and getting out of Dodge. Deserting our post. We can't decide where though, or if this is grass-is-greener kind of knee-jerk reaction to a recent disappointment (more on that tomorrow.) We can't decide where though; should we hightail it back to his hometown (a large city with a good economy) and just settle in for the inevitable family drama? Should we stay closer, and go smaller, trading the Best City Ever for The Biggest Yard Ever and hopefully a decent balance in the chequing account? What would your top concerns be, if you were moving? Or your non-negotiable needs?

Advent-ure in the house of God

Let's just get this out there: I am a life-long confirmed heathen. Never baptized, never catechized, and never gave it a second thought. Barring the odd wedding or funeral, church has always been one of those things with which other people ruin their lazy Sunday mornings. Not so for S, who has been so bludgeoned with eternal damnation that he runs the other way whenever someone so much as says grace. He's gradually coming around now, and will even say 'bless you' when someone sneezes (I argue that this is a cultural nicety so removed from it's (possibly) original religious connotation that it doesn't signify anything more than good manners.)

So it was quite a surprise to find all four of us, scrubbed, shining, and stuffed in a pew on Advent Sunday. It was completely accidental that it was Advent Sunday, S having apparently repressed all memory of the religious calendar and me being entirely ignorant of it. So why were we there to begin with?  Well, Panda wanted to go. She has a lot of questions. A lot of her school-friends attend on the regular, and they tell her aaaaaaaall about God and Jesus. (The nice parts. They totally gloss over all the plagues and floods and firstborn sons. But I don't know, maybe that stuff isn't approved for Sunday school, or it could be a recruitment plot. In any case, she believes God is all rainbows, unicorns, and sweet little babies in mangers.)

You know those promises you make to yourself as a new parent, the ones about how you will offer your precious squalling bundle every possible advantage, allow every reasonable risk, and support every initiative to learn? Those kind of promises are a lot easier to get excited about when lil' Boo wants to, say, join soccer, or sing in choir, or take up gardening. It's a bit harder to get behind when she decides she can't live another minute without skydiving lessons, or motocross. And it really takes a lot of parental nagging convincing when it involves giving up an hour and half of Sunday morning snuggles.  But after a thousand questions and much hinting and sighing, we offered to take her to church. We explained at length that they mustn't talk, stand or play during church. We waxed poetic on the rules about sitting quietly for a really, really long time, but no dice - she still wanted to go.

I didn't want to be stuck driving across the city for a three-hour mass somewhere - although I do confess that a large part of me whispered "make it as boring and weird as possible, then she won't want to go back." But I muzzled that voice and chose a United Church near our house, reasoning that if Panda became enamoured with it and insisted on going every week, at least it was close and had a message I could live with. 

We should have been warned by how enthusiastically we were received. The greeter hugged me. The lady sitting in front us welcomed us warmly. The minister announced our presence and complimented the children's choice of shirts...from the pulpit. It was an introverts worst nightmare- not only was I new, but they noticed. Of course, there were only about twenty-five people there, and it's hard to overlook a bi-racial family with two vocal children. I settled in as the service progressed, but then they came and took my children away. To Sunday school. For an entire hour of fun, games, colouring, and presumably all the talking and playing that couldn't do in actual church, but I can't say for sure because we weren't allowed to go with them. Instead,  S and I had to sit quietly for a really, really long time and weren't allowed to talk, stand or play, except those times that we popped up and down like mad whack-a-moles singing hymns we didn't know. Church has a lot more stand up-sit down-lather-rinse-repeat than I expected.

It's also really, really social. Afterwards, everyone wanted to meet us and make certain that we were coming back again. I get that they are trying to keep their church from fading to nothing, but it felt like a lot of expectation and pressure. Like the guy you just met yesterday, who already wants you to meet his mom. And I felt like I was lying to them by even being there,even though I was up front about why we had come. But i also feel like we all took something from the experience. I think it was good for S to see that religion isn't always used to condemn, and that there exists a wide range of interpretations of what it means to Christian. I learned some things about the church, and Panda got answers (or at least the beginnings of them) to some of her questions. Pickle got cookies and juice. Overall, it was surprisingly...okay. Fruitful, even.

Now, I'm not saying we will go every week (last week, Sunday snuggles won out) but we might go every so often. But next time I am sneaking into Sunday school for the cookies and colouring.

How we found the foster/adopt path

I realized the other day that I never really explained here how S and I came to consider foster/adoption.

I don't recall S and I ever  discussing in depth before we got married what our future family would look like. Or possibly even mentioning it all. Perhaps because we'd sort of been friends for quite a while, we skipped over a lot of those important conversations and kind of jumped right off the precipice without looking. We did this a lot with big decisions and yet somehow we always found a soft - or soft enough - landing. This was no different.

As it turned out, we both felt that there were already an awful lot of people cluttering up the world, and so the voluntary human extinction movement seemed to make sense. It fit with our crunchy granola tendency to tree-hug,  and after all, there are hundreds of millions of orphans out there needing families. We reasoned that when and if we wanted to raise a family, we would adopt a little girl from China. We’re an interracial couple anyway, so my lily-white ass would be the only odd one out. That was plan A,  and it seemed perfect until we realized how much it cost. What can I say- we were young(ish) and naive. And broke. So much for China.

We'd mentioned our plan to a few friends and family members,most notably a relative who had worked in social services. She assumed we meant to adopt domestically. She'd witnessed the struggles her colleagues had been through with their adopted kids, and she regaled me with every horror story she could dredge up. It worked; I was inexperienced and childless, and parenting is murky water anyway. I was convinced I couldn't handle it. With foreign adoption a lottery win away and the perils of domestic adoption fresh in our minds, it was time to develop plan B. (Of course, now I realize that all adoption is rooted in loss, domestic and international, and that is a traumatic event for every child...but that is a whole other post.)

Several years later, Plan B arrived, followed shortly after by Plan B Mark II. We thought we were done until the kidlets got much older, when we planned to foster. Then last year, I learned about foster adoption in our province. I read everything I could about the program. I haunted message boards, did some deep thinking and some obsessive googling. I realized that I still wanted this -really wanted this-  and that the relative who had warned me from this path years ago is someone who not only hates to be inconvenienced, but isn't actually all that fond of children. Of course that person would advise against it! Now I was excited. The murky parenting waters had cleared a bit. I mentioned it to S, who was cautiously on board and agreed to attend an info session with me. The information presented in that session made it clear to us both that this was probably the right thing to do for our family, but it was probably not the right time to do it. 

We think the right time is now, or coming soon. Tomorrow we attend the second info session. This is a sort of joint evaluation, I think - they are looking at us looking at them. If we all agree that we like what we see, then they ask us on a second date -they invite us to begin the application process. I’ve been told that is a mountain of paperwork (it can make  friends with Mt. Laundry ) and can take up to a year for approval once the application is in. Then we wait for placement.

We know this won't be easy, but we believe it'll be worth it. We know it’s a hard, long process –and I am not the best at waiting. I find I handle it a lot better if I can plan and research, so I've read anything and everything I can find that is related to adoption, attachment, trauma, and fostering. I am still looking for more. I find it's reawakening my old punk self, tempered now with more common sense but still passionate about advocacy for the overlooked and disenfranchised, the poor and the disdained. My husband’s passion (other than art-making) is  in the conversation  around the treatment of  Canada's First Nations and the residential schools truth and  reconciliation. It is all part of the same whole to us. I think we may have found our thing. 

There is a quote from one of my all-time favourite novels, JD Salinger's  Franny and Zooey:

In my opinion, if you really want to know, half the nastiness in the

world is stirred up by people who aren't using their true egos.

Take your Professor Tupper…. I'd lay almost any odds that

this thing he’s using, the thing you think is his ego, isn’t his ego

at all but some other, much dirtier, much less basic faculty….

Scratch an incompetent schoolteacher — or, for that matter,

college professor — and half the time you find a displaced

first-class automobile mechanic or a goddam stonemason....

Nobody who’s really using his ego, his real ego, has any time 

for any goddam hobbies.

I’m not incompetent at my job, but we want a life where we don’t have time for hobbies. This is one step toward that meaningfulness in our daily lives. Wish us luck.

Life's half full of silver linings, or something...

I am pretty determinedly having a 'glass half full' kinda of November, so far. It's unfortunate that glass isn't half full of wine, because I think I deserve some. In the last two weeks...

• S lost his beloved job by being passed over for the permanent position
• I cut my thumb badly enough to require stitches
• Pickle caught a nasty cold, resulting in continuous a snoterfall and persistent cough that keeps him (and me) up half the night. (But not S. A hundred roaring dinosaurs would not wake S.)
• my apartment-sized dryer is absolutely done for. We worked it to death. Mt. Laundry has erupted, and and we are all continually trying evade the lava flows of dirty socks. Apparently the washer is also nearing it's last spin, and the damn things are only seven years old. I have underwear older than the machines that clean it (I know, I know - don't judge.) But hey, it's nothing that fourteen hundred bucks for new ones can't fix!
• Pantry moths. It's buh-bye là to all my overpriced gluten-free dry goods....and an entire 10lb bag of Basmati rice.

I'm keeping my chin up though - all the better to see where the next blow is coming from. But  it ain't all bad...

• I have my guy back at home where he belongs, and he did manage to pick up a 'filler' job right away. Half the pay, but in this economy we'll take it.
• I need nerve-repair surgery on my thumb. Sure, they are going to slice and dice me just after it all healed up, but...wait, what was the silver lining there? Oh yeah,  a WHOLE day in bed, sans interruptions (except said surgery). Sure it's a hospital bed, but I'm counting it anyway. And I figure the added healing time should give me a free pass on cleaning the cat litter box for at least another three weeks, what with the risk of infection and all.
• Since Pickle is awake all night anyway, he comes in for snuggles. Nothing is better than sleepy warm little boy snuggles.
• Full size laundry loads and a dryer that doesn't wrinkle everything! 'Nuff said.
• My pantry is clean, shining, organized, and empty. Now I never need to come up with some way to use up a half-bag of barley and  graham cracker crumbs. Also, I found and smushed a a pair of love-moths. Oh yeah you little fluttery bitches, I bring the retribution DOWN. With a flyswatter.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I need to trundle off into the falling flakes and pick up some cooking and baking staples, and maybe some newer underwear....