Drunk Bloggin you in the mountains

So, hanging out in Canmore listening to Robbie Robertson’s Somewhere Down this Crazy River. I am nestled into mountains and the warmth of friends. Friends that supply you with yummy wine and great stories and sporadic guitar riffs and love. Listening twice to Robbie Robertson because it was that good and grateful to the brilliant friend that gifted it to me on Facebook and unwittingly became the giver of a weekend theme song. Much obliged.

I have had a hell of a time getting on to this blog to write. I try and try and erase and erase because it all seems so boring, drab, and gluttonous. But tonight I write. I will tell all that I wish I had backpacked though Europe and that I wish I weren’t getting older. About how the words of a stranger years ago encouraged me to “travel while I can” but I didn’t get very far and I didn’t appreciate what he meant until it was too late. About how Pink Floyd nailed it with “No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun” and how it sucks that I didn’t grasp that as a kid or that I didn’t listen to Pink Floyd early enough or with enough ability.

Sometimes I look at myself in this life stage and think “What the HELL am I doing here? I am still a kid. How can I be responsible for raising kids?” I wonder if this is some kind of weird Peter Pan syndrome or do you other adult parents wonder the same thing. Do you also feel like children raising children?

And you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it’s sinking.

Shorter of breath and one day closer to death.

Screw you Pink Flyod.

commetns about

You know those days…

when your head is wrapped in a Superstore grocery bag guarding your children and furniture from your ‘whatever was on sale’ hair-dye and you find yourself downstairs in the furnace room trying to locate ‘your’ suitcase in the matryoshka like suitcase storage configuration in hopes of discovering emergency feminine products?

AND, you are looking for those feminine products not in a state of panic really, more a sad resignation as you know they are there, for that is where you found them at the end of last month….

In the Trenches Sucking Mud

Sometimes as a parent I feel I am standing on top of a mountain and I can see for miles; all the pitfalls are plain to see. I feel on top of it. I have goals, plans, methods, and my unfaltering success is almost guaranteed. Most times as parent I feel like I am walking down a city street. I am aware of upcoming corners and can tell when there is a car behind me. Sometimes as a parent I feel like I am standing in some WWII trench and can’t see 100 feet in front of me. Today I feel like I am laying face down in that trench sucking up mud. How this happens is a mystery to me, but a glance around my life confirms my mud sucking suspicions. It is evidenced by total toy room disorder, piles of laundry, dirty dishes, and my endless giant sighs. It is evidenced by bite marks in siblings and tantrums and constant battles.

Now don’t placate me with “Honey, welcome to parenthood” because I don’t buy it. Deep down I know that I am burning out. I have let the “I need to start taking care of myself” come out of my lips to my husband. His response is that he simply does not know what that means. I know what that means, yet I find myself unable to make those demands on my family; the demand to just let me go. I need to go. Not on a three-day holiday, I need more than that. I need consistent me time. It sounds so cliché. It sounds so cliché. It sounds so cliché.

And then I feel pathetic because I don’t make those demands and all the power yoga guru marathon running super moms write about how they do it and how I should too. And then I feel worse. So I lay there with my face in the mud feeling shitty about myself, but comfortable, because this is the place I know. This is where the breath comes naturally. This is the chaos comfort zone and it is my old slippers on a cold morning.

But I am sick of this voice. I am sick of this pattern, this phase, this predictable wail from within. I imagine my friends believe I am a loser. I imagine my neighbours believe I am a bad parent. I believe the school secretary thinks I am insane. I imagine my husband believes I am weak and incapable. I believe my children will be irreparably harmed by my helicopter one day completely disassociated the next day inconsistent parenting style. I fear that deep down I have nothing; I am a surface player with no depth, nothing to contribute, uninteresting, and as a result insecurely obnoxious.

I fear placing this in the ether, not from shame, but from self-disgust. I fear the platitudes that will come because I won’t believe them. I wonder why no one else I know talks about this stuff. Is it because it isn’t happening to you? Is it because you find better ways to spend your time? Is it because you know that showing your weakness is a weakness? Is it because no matter how many times I hear I am not alone I actually kind of am? Or is it because you recognize that no one wants to read about your shitty problems? OR is it because when people talk like this they give everyone else around them the opportunity to feel better about themselves?

I was again reminded of another blogger’s post that said when you start speaking honestly other people will stop speaking to you and people will think  you want to kill yourself because every blog post looks like a suicide note. I have already referenced this in my blog. In fact I just copied and pasted that paragraph. I guess it happens this way because my impetus to write has always been as self counsel. It is where I turn when things get rough. The decision to publicize it is pure narcissism I suspect.

So, I am stuck in the trenches and I know I will make it out onto the street. I just wish there were a way to recognize when I was going to fall and a way to control how long I am down for. What is this thing? And how much self shit can I heap before I feel I deserve a break?

Kindergarten

Who is this person standing here with straight face and stiff limbs? Whose voice is speaking? Who is this person that looks into Wyatt’s face and deeply speaks, “No, you will not be coming home with me, Yes, you will be staying at Kindergarten”?

Where did the mushball go? How deep is she buried? Down. Deep down. The voice of the terrified is railing:

“Run Wyatt! Run! Come with me, out the door, down the halls, to the grass!”

These children look like monsters, especially that big red-headed kid. And those girls hitting each other with blocks. Where is a friend Wyatt? Look. There. The quiet one that is calm. I know you can’t see him right now as you are screaming, crying, hanging on to my leg. He’ll be your friend. A desperate look to another parent, not really a look, no eye contact here, a glance at some spot over her shoulder. “I don’t know how to parent this” I admit. Her sympathetic smile.

“Any suggestions?” I ask the teacher. I am ready to bolt out the door, ready to hear her say, “you go, we’ll handle it” but I know that is not coming.

“You should stay awhile” she suggests.

Of course, no problem. I will stay. Violette, Renee, I, and the stroller. We will stay until he is ready.

Only 45 minutes…

It went something like this.

“Oh My God, Jeff! Look at this. Is this a snail?” I am standing on the back porch on a hot summer’s day. I have just been pulling all the weeds out of a garden bed so that I could take … Continue reading →

180 in 365 PROGRESS UPDATE: The blog is way out in front

I sat down in an attempt to update my progress of 180 in 365. This led me back into the pages of this blog and down little paths of comments from amazingly incredible people. It seems to me that this project is taking on a life of its own and I haven’t seen it happening until now. Tucked quietly into the posts and comments is this guiding force waiting to be discovered. For example, I re-read my mission statement and thought perhaps I should have been doing that more often! What a clever way to stay on track…

My mission statement is this:

• Create a successful schedule which enables me to accomplish daily tasks, spend quality time with my children, and allow for time dedicated to learning
• Create a budget of my personal finances
• Have a more prolific knowledge of food including growing, preserving, cooking, and nutrition
• Increase physical strength
• Write as much as possible: keep blog alive!

So, I did create a daily schedule that no one in my family follows or remembers. It is woefully out of date as it does not include R and her monopolization of my time and my breasts. Also, W is now a Kindergartener and is gone 2.5 days a week, leaving V, R, and myself to ladies lives of leisure. This morning we all went to the library and V said, “This is like when we went to get me new shoes! It’s just you and me!” Poor little 3rd child…

I have not created a budget of my personal finances, but I do have two envelopes filled with two months worth of receipts! So I have that going for me…

My level of food knowledge has grown slowly. AND I canned 62 jars of pickles this fall SO THERE.

My physical strength has improved. I am able to carry V up the stairs since I have had R. But that is pregnancy comeback and not really what I had in mind. I have not started this process of iron-maning yet, but it is coming.

THIS IS WHAT I HAVE LEARNED:

1. My expectations are too high regarding what can be accomplished which historically has resulted in feelings of failure. This can be remedied by having realistic goals, or at least having short-term goals rather than expecting the long-term goal to be achieved immediately.
2. Number one is so huge that I want to repeat it here. Just re-read it and then I don’t have to repeat myself.
3. This blog is THE BEST way to stay on task. It provides a benchmark, a timeline, a sense of focus, and MOST IMPORTANTLY, it provides insight, encouragement, challenge, story, and humour in THE COMMENTS SECTIONS. What an amazing gift to have such brilliant people on this journey with me. I want to say THANK YOU.

I struggled in keeping the blog alive the last couple of months as life is too hectic with a newborn. I was not giving up husband time for blog time, and that was what would have happened. But now I have afternoon nap time and W in Kindergarten time 2 X a week, so Keep Blog Alive is back!

The blog is way out in front. As I was re-reading this thing I realized it does have a life of its own. There are nuggets of wisdom, humour, honesty, humility, and determination. This has occured through dialogue found in the posts and the comments. I have some reading to do to catch up with this thing and to be able to follow the guiding thread.

Thank you again brilliant people.

Arrival

This morning I made it! I made it into my old jeans. It isn’t pretty, a phrase I have thought in past post postpartums: “just because you can do it up doesn’t mean it fits” ran through my mind, but … Continue reading →

Holiday (think Madonna)

Well,

The end of summer is upon us and the beginning of fall is marked. I love fall days; cool sweater weather with crisp air. We ended our summer with an unanticipated holiday. Our family that loves to camp (every one of my kids have slept in tents before 12 months of their lives have passed) upped our campers lifestyle with the rental of a tent trailer. Without question the person this affects the most is myself. I have breastfed V and R in our tent and let me tell you this is not easy to do. The tent trailer on the other hand proves itself quite accommodating in that regard. Dr. J. proved himself worthy of my hand as he successfully hauled something behind his vehicle. This was his first attempt at this and he was amazing.

First time hauler, Dr. J. parks this baby on a dime…

Not captured in this photo are the trees on the other side that are just as close, the stumps found directly behind one rear tire, and the knowledge this was done at 9:30 p.m. on a night of a 30 degree day, after a 450 km road trip that took 8 hours, with a bitchy wife nursing a baby in the rear of a minivan with broken air conditioning. If conception was a certain impossibility Dr. J would have gotten lucky that night.

The holiday was nice. We were able to see much of my family which is always amazing. We are lucky enough to have some of the greatest hosts on the planet as family and take as much advantage as possible. W and V spent a lot of time rock hunting, and E flew through the trees on the Cypress Hills zipline.

When I was a kid we had The Zipper, not the Zipline…

E and Dr. J also managed to immortalize themselves on the Google Earth camera which was in town filming eco-adventure sites. Look for them sometime soon!

We spent some time in Alberta visiting family in Okotoks and ancestors in the Calgary Zoo

V’s close encounter with the gorilla who interestingly carried that burlap sack up a slope, laid it out perfectly on the ground, and plunked down on it. It was very cool.

Over all we learned a few things about what to do and what not to do on a summer holiday. We learned to have a single destination point when your trip is 7 days or less. We learned to cram as much family into it as humanly possible, while still maintaining nuclear family time. (HAHAHA we are truly a nuclear family now as Dr. J works in the uranium industry…) We learned that fixing the air conditioning prior to a road trip during summer’s last blast might be appropriate. We learned it is difficult to brush out hair knots created by 6 hours of 120 km hour window winds. We learned that 7 days is not nearly enough. We learned that tent trailers are the cat’s ass. We learned to feed your family at mall food courts to increase variety. We learned it is OK to pee barefoot in the woods as long as we are standing on a stump.

Free demo’s by big brother.

We learned that aunties are able to turn cereal boxes into toys and R into ‘robot baby’, the nickname given to R by W.

And we learned that we are madly in love with each other.

How to Build a Pickle

“How to Build a Pickle”  Guest Blog by: Billi-Jean Miller     Step 1: Find a Hutterite…… excuse the shot of his behind (no disrespect intended) but, the culture frowns upon photographs, so I was trying to take this shot both without … Continue reading →

Hello, is there anybody out there? Just nod if you can hear me….

Good God.

It is to overwhelming to even consider all that has happened in the last month (or two). I told a friend this blog has become my fifth neglected child. I have not fed or watered my little seedling and the threat of shrivel has become reality, it looks somewhat like my garden; overgrown, time forgotten, and disheveled. So much for garden learning in my 180 in 365. Well that’s not true, I learned to not try to plant a garden when  you are 8.5 months pregnant, instead get your friend to do it and then let the weeds choke everything out while you breastfeed.  AH HA! Lesson learned.

I had my fourth child on June 13th, 2012. SHE is a beauty and the quintessential fourth child in that she makes very few demands and seems to raise herself. I am sure when the time comes she will spontaneously play the piano and swim without every having a single lesson. Seven weeks into her life and I still panic pulling out of the driveway that I have forgotten her somewhere. Her name in the blogosphere is R.

Life has been interesting. Dr. J. got a new job and is now an industry man rather than a leisurely academic. At first blush I believed naively that he would have more time as his office hours are set and he can leave his work at that office rather than schlepping it home with him all the time (mental if not physical schlepping). I was wrong. I failed miserably in my underestimation of how he had used his work time. His morning time with W and V has been obliterated. I am amazed at how much freedom he had with his old job, although he seemed to be at work all the time. I am confused by how this has turned out and can only hope the family time benefits will be seen in the long run.

As a result of Dr. J’s new job, which was offered at around week 37 of pregnancy, is the hiring of a nanny to help over the summer. Her name is Mindy, she has been with us for a month, and I am already anxious about losing her. I have her until the end of August and then the support staff is gone…I highly recommend that all stay at home mom’s have support staff. My stress level is so low and I feel like I can actually see my kids rather than move them around with one foot as they constantly tug at my skirt.

The kids are all right. W and V love Mindy and view her as their own personal entertainment device. E has left for the lake with her dad’s side of the family and will be spending the next three weeks wake-boarding, water-skiing, and eating ice cream in her new two piece bathing suit that nearly gave me a heart attack as it foreshadowed a 16-year-old girl who is going to be a knock out. I tried not to let the panic show!

This is all I am going to write.