Tarable

* I love the feeling that I get from getting in my car... alone... and driving into the city with the music blaring as loud as I care to have it and not having to worry about damaging anyone's hearing except mine. And being free to yell at other drivers while using "industrial" language to describe how I feel about the guy who is driving 65km on the freeway while he sends a text. And then arriving at my destination, which happens to be my hairapist and being able to sit in the chair and relax while she works her magic on me and not having to be on edge, hoping little fingers don't grab ahold of the curling iron cord and yank it to the floor, or for a little mouth to start whining - causing my hairapist to rush through my hair cut (I suspect this is why my last haircut was not so flattering on me). And then after my haircut, being able to browse through the snooty, gourmet supermarket and take my time. And then driving home again in traffic, in the dark and not having to worry about the idiot who is turning left on a green light, waiting for 7 miles of clear space before he feels safe enough to turn while I wait impatiently behind him with white knuckles and gritting teeth because someone is crying for a bottle from the back seat. And then arriving home to have dinner almost ready to eat and the baby almost ready for bed.


* I love the attitude of my good friend Holly. Holly was diagnosed with a chronic illness at the young age of 16. She has been through many, many, many medical procedures including numerous hip replacements, a shoulder replacement, thyroid surgery, chemotherapy and a kidney transplant. She has had to adjust her lifestyle completely. She takes a pharmacy of pills everyday. And she is now facing yet another major surgery to replace a broken hip. And through all of this, she has never, ever had a "poor me" attitude and has always been the most perky and positive person that I have ever met in my life. I feel ashamed of myself to think of the wussy little things that I have whined and complained about in my life when I have never had to deal with a fraction of the shit she's been through, and all without feeling sorry for herself and usually with a smile on her face and always with a positive attitude. This is not to say that she never has bad days, I know that she had some really bad days - but it's how she deals with them that is different from most of us (me, anyways). Holly has a fantastic sense of humor and is truly a special person whom I love dearly and am thinking of on a daily basis lately. If we could muster up even half of the positive attitude that she has always held, we would all be better people.

Posted at 9:30 AM | 4 comments
Labels: T.I.L.T.

I've been slogging along lately, feeling kinda... meh... I consulted with my calendar yesterday while making a hair appointment (oh thank goodness, I can give the hat a rest) and I realized that yesterday was exactly 4 weeks until I am to return to work full time. Well I'll be damned if that didn't slap me in the face with a big dose of reality.

Wow. That went fast.

It feels like just yesterday I was gloating and being a smart ass about leaving all those schmucks at work behind and going on to live the glorious life of a stay at home mother.

And now, all too soon I will be back in the Land of the Schmucks. I will be one of those schmucks.

But in all honesty, I think I'm ready. I love my baby girl more than... well... there are no words to describe it - but I think it will benefit us both to get out there into the world and see different things and converse with different people, play with new toys, bite new people, put our brains into use for more than figuring out if that rash requires diaper cream or what to make for dinner or how many Cheerios you can throw on the floor before your mother loses her mind.

Not to mention a decent pay cheque. That will certainly benefit all of us.

So the countdown is on, with less than 4 weeks left to enjoy my current glamorous lifestyle. I am going to try to pull myself out of the little funk that I've been in and enjoy every last minute that I have with my girl before we both go out into the Big Girl World and live the life of the regular working Joe.

Posted at 7:57 AM | 3 comments

I'm bringing back the TILT. Although I can't make any long term commitments, I am doing this in an effort to bring back my blogging mojo and/or break through my writers block.

Posted at 1:56 PM | 4 comments
Labels: Life has changed, T.I.L.T.

I had a hard time falling asleep on Halloween night. The fireworks in the neighborhood had me on edge. I hate loud noises as it is and when they are coming from next door and are loud enough to shake the walls of my house, getting to sleep is nearly impossible for me.

In Steve's case, all I had to to was turn on a movie (Rocky Horror Picture Show! - little did I know I would have my own horror show in a couple of hours) and he was out in 15 minutes. Must be nice. Jerk.

So I lay in bed, skittish and jumpy and nervous at every BANG! SIZZLE! BOOM! POP!

Throw in nervous barking from our tenant's dogs in the basement (who are usually non-barkers, but they were scared like most animals during fireworks) and my chances of sleep were slim.

Throw in a street lined bumper to bumper with cars from the party going on next door and people wandering around the street yelling and shooting fireworks off at passing cars, and hooting and hollering coming from the neighbors back yard and I was one pissed off old broad. (Did I ever feel like an old broad) Even Sleeping Beauty Steve woke up from his usually dead deep sleep.

Finally around 11pm, things quieted down enough for me to fall asleep.

Ahhhhh....

But then the phone rang at midnight. That's never a good thing.

And it was our downstairs tenants. Oh god, I thought, what the hell do they want. This can't be good.

Steve took the call. Seconds in, he flew out of bed and ran out of our room into Ruby's room. From there he yelled out, "OH MY GOD!!"

At that point I was pretty sure that my worst fears had come true and someone had crawled through the window in the night and stolen my baby, or they were still in her room holding a knife over her body, or some other horrible scene. I flew out of bed grasping my heart saying, "What's wrong?! What's wrong?!"

It was then that I could smell the burning and saw the orange glow coming from outside.

Steve said, "Grab Ruby and get out of the house!!!" He then yelled out the window to our male tenant and told him to meet him in the front of the house. He then said something about getting the garden hose to start spraying down our roof.

I scooped Ruby out of her crib (while she laughed because apparently this was all hilarious to her) and ran out the back door. That is where I was greeted by a huge towering fire lighting up the neighborhood. The neighbor's 25 foot cedar hedges were ablaze. It was HUGE and bright and it was loud. Fire really does roar.

And the embers were floating over our house.

I am thankful to our tenants who I would have previously complained about for keeping late hours - but thanks to their late hours they were outside for a cigarette when they first heard, then saw the fire. They called 911 and then went and pounded on the neighbor's door and phoned us to get everyone out.

The fire department were there way faster than I could have imagined. They were able to get the fire under control within a few minutes. (Unfortunately it took much longer for me to get my anxiety attack under control). We were able to go back in our house and try to settle down and get back to sleep. Not easy for me since I was sure that there were embers sitting on my roof smoldering.

Now, I love a man in uniform. And firemen are probably my favorite. But I would prefer that maybe they come by in the daytime when I'm not in my pyjamas with my hair up in rollers (oh it might as well have been!), and when I could get a better look at them (two truckloads of them to be exact). And I would also prefer that they stop by to perhaps help a kitten out of a tree, instead of because the idiot neighbors who some years previously, had been unable to live in their house for two years because IT CAUGHT ON FIRE, had a fireworks party and were too stupid to clean up afterwards and make sure all sparks were out and therefore just about burned down the neighborhood.

I did however, very much enjoy watching the policemen in uniform showing up the next day to have a "discussion" with the neighbors and to take pictures of the damage.

I wish I had thought to get pictures of the fire while it was burning. Bad blogger that I am, I could only think of getting my baby out of the house safely. I did get a picture of what was left of the neighbors back yard the next day. Doesn't really do it justice - but those pretty green hedges to the right? They used to go right across. And those ugly, black, charred sticks poking out of the ground? They used to be pretty cedar hedges.

I hope the neighbors are on good terms with their neighbors behind them. And I hope they don't mind sharing their yard with the pit bull that lives behind them who is now going to enjoy his newly expanded roaming area.

Posted at 7:44 AM | 6 comments

Today we are trapped inside our house. Ruby and I have no car and it is pouring rain outside which means we cannot walk to Walmart to buy our Halloween candy. Perhaps this is a good thing as the less time it spends in my house, the more chance it has of actually reaching the bags of trick-or-treaters and not the insides of Steve's stomach. This also means there will be less tiny little candy wrappers for me to find hiding in bathroom drawers, under his pillow and in Ruby's diaper basket.

So in an effort to not go stark raving mad keep myself occupied, Ruby and I went looking for projects to do in the house to keep us busy.

First thing we tackled was my book shelf. I am completely anal about my books. They are lined up on my shelf with all the spines neatly aligned. They are also in alphabetical order by author. Unless they are self help books, in which case they are put in order of size on the top shelf where I hope nobody will ever notice them because I like for people to think that I have my shit together and never require any outside assistance.

My brother, who has always enjoyed driving me crazy, used to get immense pleasure out of nonchalantly pushing my books out of order with his toes while I wasn't watching. Making them all uneven and... just... WRONG. It drove me nuts.

And now, with Ruby on the go you can imagine how much this drives me to the edge of insanity:
(What was that about self help books??)
So today was the perfect day to rearrange the paperback shelf (my hardcovers are on a different shelf that she doesn't seem to notice or care about). I *think* I've rearranged things so the books are up high enough that she can't reach, or so that at the very least they aren't right at eye level for her to be tempted.

So far so good. I think...

Next up, we decided to do some baking. We baked some strawberry and cream cheese filled muffins. And by *we* I mean *I* baked the muffins while Ruby tore pages out of read my cookbooks quietly on the kitchen floor. You might say that perhaps my next project should be to move the cookbooks to higher ground, but you should know that the space where the cookbooks are currently residing is the exact space where my wine glasses were previously housed and that now the wineglasses are taking up valuable space in the places where little fingers cannot reach them and throw them on the tiled floor. You should also know that I quite possibly have the worlds smallest kitchen and storage space is limited. Wine glasses trump cookbooks and the cookbooks are taking a hit until I find a better resolution.

Back to the muffins. Muffins filled with cream cheese and strawberry preserves. They turned out awesome. We loved them. And by *we* I mean *I* loved two of them and Ruby loved her Minigo yogurt.

I think that having two home made, smallish muffins is equal to or less than the number of calories that I would have consumed had it not been raining and had I been able to stop in at Starbucks for a scone and a tea on my way home from getting our Halloween candy. Actually, I've seen the nutritional content for those Starbucks scones and I think I can have at least one more home made muffin and still be in the good.

As for our next project... I was thinking of carving our pumpkin. That is until I came back to my senses and realized that if I can't keep her from destroying my cookbooks while I mix up a batch of muffins, then my odds aren't going to be too good with sharp objects and pumpkin guts and seeds. The pumpkin carving will either have to wait until nap time or until Steve gets home and can distract her with a cell phone or television remote.
*Don't worry, the hatchet she's playing with isn't very sharp at all. Totally safe.

Posted at 12:30 AM | 3 comments
Labels: Baby Ruby, Life has changed, My Ball and Chain, No one cares what you had for lunch

Ever feel like your current situation is so unique and so personal that it makes you feel really alone? Because nobody could possibly understand what you're going through and anything you say makes you feel like you are just being a big whiner and nobody really wants to hear about it anyways because hey, everybody has their own fucking problems - just buck up and take care of your own shit and get over yourself already.

And also you know that you're really very fortunate in life so how dare you feel anything but grateful for where you're at? Anyone hearing your "woes" might mistake you for not being appreciative for what you have.

And so you are then in a situation where you are afraid to talk about your troubles because there is no way you could properly articulate what is really going on without being misunderstood?

Thus making you feel really, very alone.
And a little bit sad.

Posted at 11:13 AM | 4 comments
Labels: Mental Health

Ever wake up in middle of the night to go pee and when you get up and stumble to the bathroom you try to keep your eyes only barely squinted open and you don't turn on any lights and you don't flush the toilet in hopes of staying as close to that beautiful state of sleep as possible so that you can fall back into bed and right back into a nice deep sleep, only to find that by the time you get back to bed, despite your best efforts your mind has fully woken up and has somehow been slammed into overdrive?

And you start thinking about every little problem or issue or question that you have ever had and somehow you NEED to find a solution to them all at that very moment in time - preventing you from getting back to sleep until about 10 minutes before your alarm goes off (or in my case when the baby wakes up)?

And no matter how hard you try, sleep won't come. No matter how many times you tell yourself that these thoughts can wait until morning, you still can't get them to stop racing, willy nilly through your head.

That happens to me a lot. Last night was no exception. No, last night was a prime example of this occurrence. (I am so tired today)

But today, this morning - I made myself pick up where I left off last night and got down to thinking about some things that need to be taken care of. And I managed to find a solution. It's not perfect, no... but a perfect solution is rare and I accept that. I called Steve at work to share my thoughts (since it's something we've both been trying to figure out - I'm just the only idiot who stays awake thinking about it) He was happy with my solution and even added to it with some thoughts of his own.

So there. Problem solved. Now will I be able to sleep well tonight, or will some other nagging thought pop into my head, causing my brain to run another marathon at 2am? Possibly. But at least for now it feels good to have shot down one of the big ones, and to know that there will be one less robber in my head stealing from me my sleep.

Posted at 8:54 AM | 3 comments