Exit Stage Left

 “If you're being bombarded with information, the act of looking for patterns – not necessarily finding them – is what going to give you psychic refuge, a sense of sanctuary.” 
― Douglas Copeland


Decisions decisions…elusive decisions. I hate making them. S is no better at it, and if there were an international procrastination Olympics , we’d take gold in Fence-Sitting.  (And a silver in Retirement Planning. Possibly in Photo-Organizing as well. Hell, we’d OWN that Olympics. And now I want someone to plan one, just not me, because it wouldn’t take place until 2050.)

 If  every exit is an entrance somewhere else, as Tom Stoppard would have it, then an exit means a closed door behind me. Making an entrance elsewhere  and I might never get a chance to walk through any of those other doors I can see off down the corridor. I am much better at thinking about making decisions. I can spend many soothing hours weighing risks, making lists, MS Excel-ing my brainwaves into an alpha-state somnolence. Which is stupid, because not deciding anything is itself a paralysis, a fence. But stepping through that door? Uh uh. No thank you.  I'll just stand out here and ring the door bell, thanks. Maybe peek through the windows.

But every so often, doors open in front of you whether you will or no, and something pushes you through. First, circumstances led us to decide  to move back to western Canada . Having got that far, we needed to pick an actual destination.  No problem! Easy peasy lemon-squeezy! After all, there aren’t actually that many cities to choose from out west. Somewhere not too far from family, said S. There must be a Costco, said I. S wanted a  decent economy. I wanted decent restaurants and a French Immersion school. S insisted on a shorter commute and lower housing prices. You’re darn right, I agreed, because if it’s somewhere with a high cost of living and a long commute, I am staying put right here, where I'm happy.

So we made our checklists, perused the maps, and googled extensively. After many hours of debate and discussion, we stuck a pin in map and called it good came to a well-thought through and reasoned answer. In late August, we will arrive at our new home; a place where we can grow fruit in the summer and ski in the winter,  send the kids to école, and still get to Costco in about 15 minutes.

I just have to buy a Vietnamese cookbook and I’m all set.

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! 

Thursday Thoughts

Thoughts for the week.... I had some, but the ol' brain just isn't working so well right now. Too many late nights I guess.

My phone was stolen on the métro on the way home from work Friday. It was really crowded, and I was being jostled a lot, and I think whoever it was just unzipped my purse and took it right out. I know, right? I KNOW. Apple-picked. (Well, more like kimchi-picked. Or bulgogi-picked. Dammit, now I'm hungry.) I was so oblivious I didn't even feel it, but I sure felt the six-hundred dollars needed to buy out the contract and replace it. What bothers me most is my own negligence in not putting a tracking app on it, and not having backed up the photos. Good-bye, Christmas 2014.

We have no land-line, so  I couldn't text my husband to get his thoughts on buying a ridiculously high-priced bundle of happiness for Panda's birthday gift. Can you believe that I waited up until after midnight just to get his agreement for Frozen on Ice tix? Yeah, me either. It's not like there would suddenly have been a  rush on seats at 11:07 pm on a Tuesday, but I get these things stuck in my head and I have to do them NOW. I'm glad I got on it though, because that daughter of mine eats, breathes, and sings Elsa.

Of course there is always a silver lining to life's small setbacks, and losing my phone is no exception. I'd no sooner activated the new one than some pre-installed app popped me up on an old friend's Google+ feed.  G and I go back almost twenty years, and have a surprisingly uncomplicated history considering we once lived together as a couple for two of them. We always remained good friends, but with the curve balls life likes to throw, we've gone long periods without emailing. Last night I got to chat with him for over an hour.

We are moving apartments. I think. I don't know. I really need to sit down with S, decide our course, and make a blood pact to keep it. We can waffle on any decision, I tell ya. If we do move, we need to stay in the neighbourhood so Panda doesn't need to move schools. We need a four bedroom, so we can apply to foster. And we need a yard. All that adds up price-wise, and I find our neighbourhood isn't that reasonable to begin with. So, for the price of a rental, we could own. We could have a nice yard and get a dog. Settle down. But what if the market crashes? What if S gets a dream job in another city and we have the hassle of selling a house? So I guess we are better off renting.
See? Waffling. Belgium's got nothin' on us.

Sigh.

Thursday Thoughts

A day of worry is more exhausting than a week of work.

-John Lubbock

And it's been a one of those weeks. One of those weeks when I would have sold off Panda to the travelling high-wire act just to avoid the homework drama, except Cirque Du Soleil is no longer returning my calls. Then the child came home with a note in her agenda that 'she said she was too tired to do her classwork.' Which is complete nonsense, since she got her regular amount of sleep, and even if she were feeling tired, is still not a valid excuse for slacking in class. Also, SO not my problem, lady, you are the one with 'classroom management' in your job description. I'd have been surprised, but it lines up completely with the intrusive and passive-aggressive notes to replace her headband because the school feels it is too large for her or that short sleeves and a cardigan are not appropriate winter attire. They're helicoptering the living daylights out of that girl and I do not appreciate it.

Also, I may not have completely outgrown my dislike of authority. (It's hereditary.)

It's been one of those weeks where our whole future feels like a high-wire act. We have vacillated between S retraining, working away, looking for a job-job here, or staying with freelance work so any times now I'm beginning to feel dizzy. There are just so many damn variables! If and when we finally nail that one down, we need to decide if we will move apartments, neighbourhoods, or not at all. Not at all means we can't move forward with fostering for another year at least. That's very much not okay with me, since we have been working toward this first step for a year already. Sometimes it sucks being a fence-sitter. Life would be a whole lot ...faster...? ... if S and weren't the type of people that will put off procrastinating until tomorrow. 

But there were some fun,  funny bright spots too!

overheard conversation....

Panda: Papa, I need another hooker.

S: A hooker?

Panda: yeah, I want another hooker. I don't have enough.

S: (totally nonplussed)

Panda: Hookers, Papa, HOOKERS! You know, for my closet? For my dresses?

S: ah... You need more hangers, honey?

Panda: Hookers, hangers, whatever. 

S: Actually, this is a pretty important one. It's 'hangers', alright?

And Pickle on the crowded bus...

(Points at lady beside us on bus) 'She has a baby in her belly, Mama. How did it get there? Did she eat it? When will it come out? But she didn't eat it, because then it would be poop. Panda says babies come out a mama's vagina. Does that Mama have a vagina? How did the baby get in there? Did she stuff it up there?" 

Et cetera. For five minutes or more, because that child's mouth-motor has one speed and it ain't neutral. He didn't pause for breath long enough for me to get a word in edgewise, much less answer a question. And he is LOUD, good heavens is he loud. A word of warning - this is what happens when you give honest scientific explanations to your children. I should have just busted out the stork story and let them sort it out at puberty.

How is your week so far? Are you a procrastinator too, and if you are, how do you talk yourself into making life's big decisions?

Thursday Thoughts

Is it just me, or is the first week back to school after holidays always a complete mess? Meal planning has totally gone out the window, laundry is piling up, even with the fancy new large capacity washer. This is partly because I don't have enough whites to make a full load, unless every piece of white clothing in the house needs washing. The house is a total tip, but on the plus side, I think the fleas are gone. It dropped to -36 C last night so it's possible that they all died of cold.

Ah, homework, that dastardly scourge of modern education. Nothing puts parents and kids more at loggerheads than studying for spelling tests, except possibly the science fair. (S was the one who signed Panda up for that, so I am just going to hide in the bedroom with a book and box of chocolates until it's over.)  I am not sure how we are going to make it through the next 10 or so years, if spelling 'play' is so traumatic. I have never heard a child wail so desolately over remembering the order of four little letters.

Turning four has somehow reset my sweet Pickle's factory default from 'amiable' to 'auto-argue'. Nothing in the world will convince him that yes, orcas are indeed whales, and no, there is no such sport as skate car, where the object of the game is to kick a soccer ball through the window of a car (apparently no skates are actually involved.) He insists on being signed up for a weekend league. Yeah, I'll get right on that.

Speaking of misconceptions, there is clearly still some confusion regarding how the whole God thing works. We may have to take a trip back to Church to let the authorities weigh in, since she is  convinced that kids can increase their chances of getting awesome gifts from Santa by praying to him. She's already working on next year's list.

My thumb is finally healed from my mishap with the wineglass! Technically, at least. Yesterday the surgeon removed the 'button' stitched onto the top of my thumb that he. Oh, how I hated that button! The tendon is  reattached but still stiff  enough that it is frozen in position. It is still all swollen and weird. It looks like a fake thumb. Next time, I will drink the wine first. Then my reflexes will be dulled and I won't be able to catch the falling the glass.

Why hasn't anyone invented snow tires that have little retractable stud crampons that pop out and stick in the ice when you push a button? Like cat-claw tires?

I guess my heads not that full this week, because I've run out of things to say. I have no real way to end this post though so I'll do it with punctuation.

the end.

"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

Fostering Frustration

Remember when I said we were waiting for a letter in the new year to see if were accepted for fostering? Not going to happen - I got a phone call instead. Apparently, we need to have a bedroom available for every child even though our two kids have chosen to share. Now, I sort of get that. I agree that the foster child should have a separate space that's just for them. What I don't get is what that has to do with my kids, who share a room not only quite happily, but tenaciously, stubbornly, and resisting all efforts the contrary. Even though their beds are only two feet apart, we still end up with this....

(It's a wonder anyone fits in there with all those stuffed animals, much less two kids and a cat!)

It's frustrating, because we have the space in our hearts and the space in our home right now. We plan - and  have always planned - on looking for a place with a yard. Now that place needs to be larger, and in the meantime our application is stalled. We can't move until after the school year, and that is assuming we can find a reasonably-priced house in a decent area. Our contact did make a point of saying more than once that space was the only thing that stood between us and applying, and that as soon as we had a lease or a mortgage, the application would be in the mail.

It's frustrating, because at no point during either meeting were we told that every child needed to have a separate bedroom. I feel that this kind of restriction has the effect of heavily  favouring the chances of the rich or the childless in the selection process. It limits people who already have young children and want to grow their family to one child at most, because how many people have a five bedroom house?

It's frustrating, but I have to let that go and focus on the positives. They think we are good candidates.  Yay! It gives us a push to make a big decision, and since we are the king and queen of fence-sitting we need a good shove now and then. Yay! Because since would have to move, we are seriously considering making it a big one, and starting all over again in another province - one with a better economy.

How far would you go to put yourself in a position of being able to apply as a foster parent? Would you move to a larger home, knowing that your application may still be rejected? I'd love to hear your thoughts!

First Date

So, I promised you all out there on teh interwebz (because I prefer to labour under the illusion that people actually read this thing, thankyouverymuch) that I would write a little bit about our first selection meeting for foster adoption.

This is how it works. First, you call the office and they ask a series of qualifying questions, mostly to make certain that you aren't a lunatic living in a hovel - where do you live, do you have enough space, has anyone official (so, not your kids or your mother-in-law) ever told you that you aren't fit to raise a chicken, et cetera. If you can tick all the boxes, you are invited to attend an informational session within the following three months.

After a number of weeks and some (okay, a lot of) obsessive googling on fostering, the evening arrives. Three or so social workers ply you with sugar, caffeine, and heart-breaking statistics until all your defenses are offline, and then they hit you with the horror stories and the worst case scenarios to see if you'll break and run. If you hang tough, they'll see you the following week (or, you know, whenever you get your shit together.)

This is where the selection process starts. At our meeting, we all had to stand up and say who we were, what we did for work and leisure, and to say what our experience with children was, and our motivation for attending. The hardest part was to describe ourselves as parents in one word. What? As you may have noticed, I can't describe anything in just one word. Apparently a lot of others felt the same, and since there were about forty of us, it took some time to get through us all. Of course I was last, so I had a lot of time to build up all that public-speaking anxiety we all know and love. Naturally S nailed it, and I muttered something incoherent about how all I really do is read and aren't epigenetics interesting, then got red in the face and sat down. All the words I wanted to say in a clear and logical manner got tangled up in my larynx and fell over their feet before making it out of my mouth. The social workers were taking notes the entire time and I'm sure the ones on me say something like "??? couldn't understand a word, no apparent hobbies. Husband bright and articulate."

We moved on to a questionnaire, and let me tell you, that was definitely designed to weed out the crazies. Because, you know, my one year old baby is totally able to keep himself safe around dangerous objects, and my four year old always meets me at the door with a perfectly mixed Manhattan after a hard day at the office. Not. Some questions were harder for me because my answer really depended on the kid, because you parent the child you have, not the ideal one you expected, right? Right. So I wrote a paragraph on a few of them before we even got to the essay  questions.

Which were actually pretty easy; I just answered them all with examples of how I would  deal with my own kids. So I guess if we aren't passed to the next level, maybe I am not fit to raise a chicken! I felt like a high school kid again when we handed in all our 'tests' - nervous and just hoping for a passing grade.

But we won't find out until the new year, so here's hoping for at least a B.

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.

Thanks, Life – and I’m sending you the therapist’s bill

The last few weeks have been a rollercoaster. Not a huge, Disney-worthy one, but one of those little ones at the country fair, you know the kind. Shaped like a dragon, they rattle and shake your shrieking preschooler to what seems like a great height –uuup the learning curve, doooown the learning curve. And away we go again.

Losing out a dream job to a union guy only because of time served just stinks.  It sucks to be young and less experienced.  This would feel a lot less unjust if S were actually a) young, or b) inexperienced.  Boo. Unlike.  Down the rollercoaster.  So he’s home for good and slowly reintegrating into life with the family full time, but feeling sad and displaced.  Me, I ranted a bit to the grrl posse and invented a few new and elaborate curses to adequately express my indignation. I’d  like to say that I followed  my family motto – “Don’t get mad, get even” – but planning and  grudge-holding  just takes so much energy (sorry, Dad.) I’ve got better things to spend that energy on.

Like Hallowe’en! Yay! We had a lovely quick dinner and less-quick trick-or-treating session with our fantastic friends and their three lovely and rambunctious kids. Since they live pretty much all the way across the city, we all stayed over and had a grand ol’ time.  Did you know that there actually isn’t a weight or volume limit to the amount of candy that one small almost-four-year-old boy can carry? I swear, they're like the little Spanish grandmothers that can carry a cord of firewood and a burro up a mountain path.  Also,  a quick slice of pizza, some carrot sticks and whack of candy is not, in fact, a solid enough base on which to stack three glasses of wine and a cocktail.

On Sunday I did something that almost certainly puts me as frontrunner for this year’s award for Most Idiotic Error Resulting in Injury, which is saying quite a lot considering that my highly-distractible husband works with power tools all day.  We were just putting the finishing touches on a birthday dinner for Pickle. I was wiping down the counter and bumped a glass - I felt more than saw it start to fall. Of course I tried to catch it. One broken glass, a bucket of blood,  one visit to emergency, one  severed artery, one  damaged nerve,  five hours and five stitches later....  The doc told me to fast from midnight and come back to the hospital at seven in the morning for the plastic surgeon to repair the nerve damage. I waited there all day with no food, no water and no surgeon. Ain’t medicare grand? So now it is heal and wait for an appointment for surgery, where they get to cut my hand open again. Yay stitches. I guess I should invest in more band-aids.

So what did I learn this week? That you never count your chickens before they hatch, that candy is not a food group, and that housework is not only never-ending, but downright dangerous. That I need to take life as I find it and squeeze all the goodness out of it- hilarious, loving,  Halloween-obsessed friends; fantastic kids,  and a husband who washes the dishes and hands you a sippy cup of wine, because he says that everyone needs one whole hand to work with. Smartass.

I am pretty sure I knew all that at one point, but sometimes I need reminding. 

I am slowly going crazy, one two three four five six switch...

crazy going slowly am I one two three four five six switch

Does anyone remember that old kids song? It's how I feel lately, eleven days in  with no word back on the interview for S, and no idea if we will be moving (and yes, I am totally counting weekends.) The more that I need to wait the antsier I get, not knowing when or where we will start our fostering/adoption training. I kind of wish I had some faith so I could lay it on all God, but I don't think leaving it in the hands of random chance and the laws of physics is likely to have the same calming effect (at least, I assume that is one reason why people have faith.) So maybe I need to look into that whole thing. I wonder if Hestia is taking new patients.

Countdown...

S has been ‘working away’ for four weeks now, which means that Netflix and I are getting along famously, and that the house could use a good scrubbing. (I have two kids, a full-time job, and a streaming plan; I have no time for more than a lick and a promise attitude to housework.) He does get to come home on weekends though, which means that the house get messier, dirty socks start showing up in the most unlikely locales, and the kids are really disregulated. From like, Thursday night to Monday night  Tuesday (and counting). Tears erupt over the slightest slight, Panda gets downright ornery, and there are a lot of feel-better cuddles and snuggles being dispensed. Pickle especially is having trouble sleeping, which means I am having trouble sleeping, which means…more Netflix. 

BUT – we are getting closer to The Day Everything Changed (Or Didn’t) – the job interview is tomorrow! Soon we will know if the family will be together again, or separated for the remainder of the school year, or something in between. We’ll have a better idea of  where we will be going through the entire foster/adopt process as well  (we’d have a choice of two provinces and about three different paths….it is complicated.) We’ll know if I get to sleep sometime in the next six months, or if we should just increase our internet package and buy shares in Tim Hortons. Life ™, because you haven’t got enough to worry about already.

So to avoid thinking about all that, I am instead thinking about this. The Attachment and Trauma Network has been hosting a free onlinewebinar on educating children with complex trauma and attachment issues. It is completely absorbing (and my reaction is further proof that I got completely the wrong degree, and need to go back to school….) There is so much good information in here, whether you are a parent, or educator. They cover special education, virtual education, legal matters, IEPs , brain function and neurology and more. So now, I am feeling like I am prepared to take on  therapeutic parenting (said the chick who hasn’t even gotten her future address straightened out, not to mention the rest.) And of course I also feel that I can never really be prepared, that I know just enough now to be dangerous.

On an up note, Pickle has informed me that he wants two more sisters and another brother. Panda has put an order in for an older sister. We haven’t even mentioned adoption to them yet….

wheels on the bus go round and round...

I have been thinking a lot lately about truth and narrative, about the ongoing curating ourselves and our histories. My husband S is up for a job soon that could possibly be game-changing for us. He has to go through a second interview and present his best face, even though he already knows the interviewers through other work. We want to adopt a child from the foster system, and to do so  we will need to go through the homestudy. In either case, we want to be open and honest, but how do we decide which information is relevant? How much of what we present is factual in any case, when we get to questions of attitude and aptitude? How much of the curating is even conscious?

What I am trying to say is... presenting any aspect of yourself to the world leaves out so much complexity that it is exceedingly easy to be misjudged. And no one ever remains unjudged. Let's start with social media, since that is an easy target. Everyone curates a (best?) version of their self on social media (at least I hope, otherwise there are a lot of wine-swilling mamas and extremely humourless feminists in my circle...not to mention one individual who seems to think about the pending Illuminati takeover all day, every day.) You can post, 'like', quiz, etc and build up the version you want to show. It is pretty easy to decide - and control- what you want out in the world.
Not so easy when it is a face to face interaction, like an interview or a homestudy. S thinks he is the God Of All Wooden Arty Things, and I believe him, but will the interviewers? I believe we are even-tempered, supportive, loving and not-to-mention-superfun parents to Panda and Pickle, but will a child services worker see us the same way?
Okay, now I have thought myself into a corner.

What I am trying to say is...narrative is important. It builds our identities inside as much as outside. My sister is a master of this - she has been reinventing her past (relentlessly, and in the face of photographic proof to the contrary and not to mention I was there) for years. She has built the perfect self, the self she wants most. Now, I think most of us want to live (buzzword alert) 'authentic lives', but what is that really? Is it more authentic to recognize the journey that brought her to the person she now is inside, or is it okay to for her to retrofit her history to match her current self, because she feels she will be judged on mistakes of the past, even though to the world at large those mistakes were minor and easily understandable?
Okay, no- that isn't what I want to say; this isn't about my sister at all.

What I am trying to say is... we are all a story, written by us, but read by others in their own private language. We each have our own arc, and our own denouement. In the best cases our story is interesting to us. In the worst cases it is a policy manual ghostwritten by outside expectations.

None of this is really what I am trying to get to the heart of, though some of it is in some part. If anyone knows what I am trying to say, drop me a line....

Of Life & Coffee

Can I live without caffeine? Nope.

But that doesn’t have anything to do with the title of this blog. There is an old story of uncertain provenance that goes something like this*:

A young woman went to her mother and complained about how life was so hard. She was tired of struggling and was ready to give up.  It seemed that as soon as she solved one problem, a new one dropped in her lap.

Her mom took her to into the kitchen. She filled three pots with water and when they come to a boil, she put carrots in the first pot, eggs in the second, and coffee beans in the third.

“Wait.” She told her curious daughter.

Twenty minutes later, she pulled out the carrots, eggs and coffee and put them each in a separate bowl.

"What do you see?"  She asked her daughter.

"Lunch?” she replied.

Shaking her head, she asked her daughter to feel the carrots, and tell her what had happened to them.

“Well,” said her daughter  let’s call her Jane.) “Well,” Jane said, they’re cooked.”

“How can you tell?” her mother asked.

“They are soft now,” she replied.

“And the eggs, what happened to them?”

“They are hard cooked now … Mom, what’s the point of all this?”

Her mother smiled.

“Have some coffee,” she suggested.

“Look,” she told Jane when her daughter was seated with a fragrant cup, “all three of these things were thrown into a pot of boiling water. Not so fun for them. One went in hard and got soft inside, and one went in flexible inside and got hard. The boiling water changed them. But the coffee, it changed the water.”

“So, honey, which are you going to be when you get tossed in hot water? A carrot, an egg or a coffee bean?”

I, my husband, and our two little ones are about to embark on a new adventure, one that could bring us a lot of joy and happiness, but also a lot of adversity.

I choose to be a coffee bean.

*rewritten for de-treacling