When Carl got home I did not yell or even cry but I did describe the afternoon without gratuitous commentary. We spent the evening together, although Avalon got the lion’s share, and it was nice. Just in case anyone wondered. :)
Liam is lying in a sun spot playing. An hour and a half ago we were outside in the sunshine playing in front of the house with him in a plastic car our neighbours handed down to us, and then he was on his tricycle. It is a beautiful spring day.
Noah is across the street. He was at a birthday party there for the younger sibling, despite being the age of the elder with whom he has been in daycare and public school since we all can remember at this point, and when, after 3 hours, he had not crossed the street to return I went over and the mum said “oh, everyone went home but the cousins and they’re all about to crash watching a movie. Noah’s basically family anyway.” So there he is until the movie is finished, which should be soon.
Carl is at martial arts for hour 5 and 6 today. Long-time readers of this blog will know that Carl has had phases where he kind of leaves-but-not-really. This new phase is kind of like that, but not. He is very present when he is here. He’s fit and pretty grounded. Because he has found something he totally loves, and that is martial arts – the philosophy, the working out. He’s lost over 80 lbs, did I mention? He is so happy. I am so happy for him.
And yet 45 minutes ago I was crying and crying, because Carl has been gone all day, because he does hours and hours and hours of workout and that is how he does things, it’s all or nothing, and right now it’s all. By all I mean 2 hours a night 5 nights a week, except the night that he is there for 4, and not counting the hours he takes Noah sometimes (and sometimes they overlap.) Usually the hours are 7-9, or 8-10 at night, and that means I am home alone. Well, I have lovely people to hang out with online, and last night was wine night so I had 3 awesome friends here until 11:30.
And that’s all to the good, but it means it is 4:45 on Saturday and while Carl took Noah to martial arts, I have been on toddler duty alone, shopping alone, cleaning up alone, and the fact is that today, despite my usual independent and cheery nature, I feel wretched and alone and abandoned. A part of me knows this is a little overblown. And the other part of me is furious that Carl will be getting home just in time for me to make dinner and put the kids to bed and then it will be Sunday and we will have all our chores, many of which I could not address with Liam around, and then it will be Monday again.
I am a little burnt out.
What is more I think I am experiencing some of what it was like growing up and alone, in that there was no one at home that I could go to with my problems.
I know this is not really Carl’s fault or the martial arts and I know that in a couple of hours it will look silly.
Liam got so upset I was crying and gave me hugs and I stopped, because he was upset. And then I started again and he was upset, so I stopped again. And then he said “there there” and brought me a banana.
I mean my life is so good. But this hour, man. I don’t know.
I am writing this not to say how things are. How Things Are is just how they are. I am just writing down the moment, sticking with my feelings, and trying not to freak Liam out again. He is playing with my power supply and singing the alphabet. And now I will go play trains.
I know, I know. I won’t be boring; we’re just…not in a blogging phase, at least not this kind of blogging. But! Today we are! So! Updates!
Family life: Liam is talking up a storm, with sounds coming in as they do. The lastest is k at the end of things: booKUH snacKUH etc. I have zero worries about this child’s development.
Noah is really a boy now, not a little boy. He is developing into a pretty private person so to get a chat with him is starting to require a particular kind of space. Drives in the car, tuckins at night. I was at a potluck this week where some parents of early-20s sons were saying that they got information about girlfriends, but not emotional content, and I saw my future flash before me. Noah’s school experience this year is amazingly better, and his imagination is out of control amazing. He loves clay and takes a pottery class and makes his own action figure out of Fimo on a weekly basis. He’s still into martial arts all-out.
Carl is obsessed with martial arts and has lost, I may have mentioned, about 80 lbs. He’s buff. And centered. And doing a lot of the evening parenting heavy lifting as I struggle through to 5:45 + drive home to show that yes, I am taking my job seriously.
Work…highly competitive. More to be said but perhaps not here, not yet. We’re doing pretty well, but I’m not sure pretty well will cut it long-term and it is an odd feeling, that there are slightly younger people nipping at our heels, especially on metrics like “face time.” That said, I really feel the expertise sitting under me and it’s nice to feel…experienced.
Friends…wine night last night was awesome as usual; had a potluck this week with another group of colleagues/friends from my old brand. My former boss’s transplant did not go ahead and she is trying to get into a clinical trial. So there is that. It is…hard. Hard. I am reinstituting Sunday dinners soon to catch up with other people. It was a rough winter that way; the job change just kind of left me struggling to find balance in the regular way, including chatting online at night, and a bit less tolerance for anything cooking & cleaning based.
The system…I would say we are in a high love, high change season. Mags and San are still together. Avalon is seeing someone in San’s system named Llew. She is not seeing David, but she is not precisely not seeing David. Both possibilities are currently on the table and she says she will know when she has to tip to “really over” if nothing changes in between. Just because life was not complicated enough, she also is dating Nicholas (that would be my Nicholas). They are both death lords after all. I have very odd feelings about all that, which is glad for them, largely.
Nicholas and I are astrally moving in together, into a Victorian with room for my twins and Sylvan and my twins’ wolves (yes, WOLVES) that Lohr gave them as pets (consider that: MY ex gives my twins wolf pups. Which I will admit they needed.)
Everyone is sharing a lot – pictures of life, recipes, books…it all is kind of in flow. Carl still doesn’t come hang out on the game with everyone but I think it is coming. He is definitely more looped in than in the past and I’m glad we’ve gotten there. He took Avalon out for dinner recently when we had a babysitter (!)
Avalon whose name keeps appearing here is just a force to be reckoned with at all times. There are plenty of people in a multiple system who are totally important, each and every one. And then there are those flamboyant people who stand out and make your life crazy but good. I have been one of the top people of that sort in our system but I may have met my match in that Avalon is – ambitious, loves people, has good taste and is into life. She has trounced me at work by creating content that outperforms mine (although it goes to us on the balance sheet of course). We now mainly dress in her wardrobe and it gets me a lot of compliments. She does our nails, people, and like does not let them go around chipped. She wants to be a funeral home director, or similar. Who knows…who knows. Honestly I do not know. I am glad to have her around, mostly. Sometimes I feel like we’re in a cage match for control of our life but…there are other people anyway. She is still kind of helping the kinderlynn out, and so is David, which is one of the complications in the non-breakup-break-up.
Speaking of other people, Magdalynn and Lynn are rolling through massive change. It started years ago and although San sometimes complains that Mags changes for Mikael and not him, it’s more that the cumulative effect is really starting to become visible. This Easter there wasn’t any internal wrangling. There was some memory sharing. It makes me deeply sad and even I think kind of depressed us – not the chemical sort you need to medicate but a human reaction to awareness of stuff. I write that laughing a bit because really, I am not there – I haven’t done my emotional work around it. But Lynn and Mags are, in their own odd way. Mikael is dating all of Lynn including Mags. Just to keep that all straight here.
Dominic…whoa. He cooks. He kind of…I don’t know. He is another force in the system, although at home and inside more than in my work sphere. He makes gnocchi from scratch. Or ham. Which he then serves to my parents. He and Avalon recently had a meal with my parents where the rest of us were not entirely invited. They played a game of who could be more outrageous without being impolite.
How did this work? I will give an example, in public even, because it bothered me. It was Easter. My mother chose to have a big monologue about a relative who is a neonatologist, but the riff was on how her job is so hard and we cannot possibly understand it because of…[insert description of three NICU deaths in graphic detail.] In March. With no consideration of her audience, that is, Carl and I/we and my MIL. Attempts were made to change the subject, but it did not work…until…Dominic launched into a discussion of a zombie trilogy (Mira Grant’s) and mused on how in her world you don’t have zombie NICU babies but imagine if you did.
That kind of brought that discussion to a halt. He won, but only by one point, which may give you some indication of what Avalon was up to.
My parents didn’t appear to notice. Maybe we were more like this as teens, I don’t know. Well, I do know we weren’t. Dominic is not precisely a teen, he just doesn’t give a shit about certain things. And people in David’s system encourage him. Including David. Well, you know, gay…ish. I am leaving someone out who likes privacy but Dominic is not precisely only gay either.
David’s name got back in here. Well, David and Lyria had the original astral child, Marai, who didn’t age quickly like the other astral kids. So here what I find both surreal and cosy…when Friday schedules permit, which isn’t _that_ often considering wine night etc. etc., they do the Sabbath thing, candles, prayers and all. It cracks me up in a loving respectful way every time to watch our most pagan fairy become Jewish for an evening but in some way that probably relates to the idea of “being magic vs. performing magic” idea, but she does and they have a family dinner. Don’t ask me.
Lyria and Carl are kind of in tune, burning through our savings account on Carl’s life ambitions and eyeing our to-be-invested account for various small business goals, long term. She, and all of us but I’m using her as the example in this overly long entry, is really enjoying Noah and Liam. They are just a lot of fun. Parenting has become automatic enough that it is actually fun, and although we had snow (snow!) this week, before that we had some playground weather we all took advantage of, and I got a run in.
The other astral kids are around too. If we stay in the web world, we will be taking some more graphic design/video stuff. Well we probably will anyway. Right now it’s a time/money thing but you know, Liam won’t be 2 and in crazy expensive daycare forever. We still are in love with our Montessori and if Noah needed it, Liam really needs it. He is a very very busy active guy.
I would say in summary…roots and wings are all a go right now. :-)
Lately I have been working on the fairy book, although I am kind of in the rotten writing-through stage where I know what I am writing is to get to what I really should write.
We all have been hanging out online with various friends and sweetpeas and beloveds.
Carl and we are honeymooning all over again, sometimes actual people honeymooning. He knows what he wants to do next and we just have to fund it. (Open a dojo. He also has to get his black belt, so, 5 year plan.)
We have been raising Liam, who is hell-bent on causing injury to himself and others, and Noah, who is becoming an increasingly private little boy and so space needs to be made for him to communicate and attention paid at the moment he is ready.
My new job…has bruised my ego, which is probably a good thing. I am working at it and still not quite sure why the pieces don’t connect up right for me. In some ways I feel really, really old and classically midlife crisis’d. In other ways I feel like this could be a great thing and new and freed and fresh. The jury is out.
My ex-boss was all set for a transplant yesterday, except they put it on hold to figure out some test results. Frankly it does not look good.
Yesterday was Emily’s death day.
I have been being tested for a lot of things due to the problems with my hands and feet. I do not have MS. I am not likely in the early stages of Parkinson’s. I am switching specialists with the hopes that it really has been a back issue all along. Meanwhile, I run and I am putting a good deal of time into building my core muscles; this spring, summer and fall that will be a big priority. Because even if it is my back, which is the most minor option, I am about 15 years ahead of my chronological age in its deterioration. Since I don’t want to be hobbling around with a walker any time soon, I am working on that. I have little kids!
Typing can be hard, and this is an issue in a lot of areas.
In some ways I feel like I am back in an earlier stage of life where being multiple takes extra energy, where things that looked settled are not, where I have no idea what I want to do when I grow up. The difference is I am kind of tired, and a reboot on my career looks tough (ah, the irony that I lost my job about midlife and it pushed me into a midlife crisis! Although I am grateful for the current situation.)
I am not saying that in a doom and gloom way, just that the whole last few years have left me with a certain degree of brittleness in my mental outlook. I know it won’t last, but the getting there is a bit tough. I think this is so normal and yet, really hard.
I went for a run Thursday with the sun on the lake as it set and it was gorgeous.
I take Liam up the path to Montessori and we play a game where he says “more hugs?” and I hug him. We get inside, change to indoor shoes, hang up his coat, kiss and bye.
Coming back down the path I think well, if he has a terrible accident at school at least we will have had that.
And then the real fear hits. And I write this in the car while I cry, so I’m not crying and driving.
[Original date: Jan 10.]
I cannot tell you what has been going on; it’s too much but I’m going to try. Hello blog! Even my other blog is failing to launch. We have been in the midst of massive change and psychodrama, mostly of the pleasant variety, some not so pleasant.
This is long, there is a cookie at the bottom.
While we were in Jamaica, one of the great fun things we got to do was play in a beautiful waterfall. We were having such an amazing, amazing time in the sun and ocean and running the race and everything, that the whole system really was on board soaking it in, as well as working.
Unfortunately part of the playing in the waterfall was to be shown how to stick our heads under the flowing water and back into a really pretty little stone area where you can breathe and look around. Supposedly.
I wouldn’t know, because we tilted our heads back, went through the unique cold sort of pounding wash of a waterfall, got back to the rock and – had a complete, invisible meltdown. It has been years, possibly a decade, since anything like that happened to us. In all fairness, how often do you get put through a waterfall? But it was a moment where there is a before, and after.
Lynn means waterfall and her site is by the waterfall.
On the outside I think we just looked a little freaked out jumping down off the waterfall into a pool, and then luckily we had a bus ride back to the resort. Since we were not staying at the same resort with the other journalists and I had made some very short-term friends who invited me to try some shots, I/we got a little tipsy, said goodnight, and headed back to our (gorgeous) room.
And lost it. (Not visible on the outside, unless you are Carl really.) Over several weeks. I am not sure I want to get into the information I got but it is ridiculous abuse nonsense where at best, someone convinced us that we would die or have to kill someone. And some weird hallucinations.
~~~
That night, Avalon was the focal point for it, because she is the connection to the kinderlynn’s bad memories. And she was all feeling awful, so we kind of threw her at David and suggested maybe he could, you know, distract her with some romantic stuff. I mean…they were dating. So take it to the next astral level.
Which set things a lot in motion.
I cannot tell you if it was the energy from the waterfall kind of rising up from the past through Avalon and making things go wonky or if it was that we picked a very old solution, run to a guy and try to get him to fix things, or if it was simply time, but starting then Avalon and David had the kind of issues you have to probably have had dysfunctional family stuff or abuse in your life to get.
Where you start rubbing against each other’s sharp bits and then complain, and pull apart, and state your love, because it is there, but something happen and when you try to get close again it works until you poke each other with your thorns, and so on. And I think the rest of us were really trying to put that back to a fairytale sometimes (at least Avalon and David agreed that we, annoyingly, were.)
With Avalon and David the close bits were…really close. It makes some of the rest better and some of it worse.
~~~
It’s funny how you can write eighty percent of an entire book, literally, 67,893 words, and workshop parts of it and everything with Famous Canadian Authors the summer after your baby dies, that is about someone being gay but messed up enough to get involved with a girl who just loves him, mostly truly, but partly out of him being First Boy to really love her for her actual own self, and have that relationship unravel them both, and then have him finally say he’s gay, and then have them agree there’s love but it’s not a R-Relationship, and still (if you are us) ignore Lyria’s book and set the entire situation up over again.
With the exact same First Boy.
[Jan 19: Well, actually we don't know. It's complicated. And it's fine. Most days. :)]
~~~
During the whole fiasco we learned a few things. First, we & sweetpeas all rule. There were some moments where someone (*cough*) might have been essentially screaming at someone else to take some fucking responsibility for their lack of transparency and having to keep cleaning up messes with system mates. But somehow we have become decent enough at managing things to (mostly) back off when necessary and use I-statements and all these lovely things.
Second, San (why yes! San is back in this blog, apparently!) is a pretty rocking father when it comes to statements like…you all need to just BE and stop fucking around with my daughter’s emotions. He and Magdalynn had to let a lot of it happen but they also made Avalon show up for dinner.
Thirdly, it is really hard to have aspects of your identity be things with which you are so profoundly uncomfortable that you cannot really sit within your skin with them. You add this to a dysfunctional family past (this is our new code phrase apparently) and it can take a lot of work to start…taking some fucking responsibility. However, if the people screaming at you about it genuinely love you like family, the real kind, not the abusive kind, then you might be able to start doing so.
Fourthly…Avalon.
The aptly named Avalon. And no, I never really read the Mists of Avalon. I did read 40 other Arthurian books for a class project and practically memorized Mary Stewart’s Crystal Cave trilogy though.
Avalon during this thing was about as upset as you would expect a daughter who was crucified, unfortunately astrally literally by her mother and left by her father and whose mentor is in partial remission with leukemia (yay, more to go, but still going) and who lost her job to be at this dire state and abrupt removal of her Significant Person. And it was messy. Not as messy as it could have been.
Anyways as if this was not weird enough…so.
One night after a kind of tense discussion with David, she paid a visit to Nicholas’s um, spot. I almost want to say schema but I think that is too in of a joke to leave without the spot. And she slept in this cave that was full of skulls.
For a while I have known my dear Internet Boyfriend is not just a scholar. He also was (I thought) sort of a bird-of-prey-lord ’cause of the ravens, but you know. Actually he’s kind of a…death lord. Not like, causing death or ruling hell or anything like that. Well I’m not sure about the hell part, but it wouldn’t be like the whole hell or anything like that. But – what can I say? Tarot death card. But cuter. Well, when Avalon landed in his space it was kind of like…every fantasy book ever when you find your true talent. Eureka!
Avalon realized she didn’t have a home that is hers-alone. I mean she’s 16 (oh, she’s 16 now) and sure she has a room at Magdalynn’s and the cabin all the astral kids share and all that but she didn’t have a home.
(I promise this does return to regular life…sort of…at some point.)
So last week (see? We were moving through time there) Avalon and David had a terrible argument, the kind where you just know things are crashing down. David said he needed space to think, which we kind of took as a break up.
And Avalon retreated and retreated…I don’t know how to explain it, do other people sort of curl up inside when they are hurt? She went back and down (all these words are terrible) until she hit her ground and then she made it her own. It’s a pretty rocking archetypal beginner death lordess spot. Not as far as I know any entrance into the underworld but she has a living room/kitchen that takes after the Sedlic ossuary, a room of seeing, and a bedroom.
When she did that, something happened in my brain. My poor brain. And my house. I call it the bubble, but I really don’t know what it is.
What I do know is…Carl and I started talking really, really deeply about his martial arts and how his special lessons are energy work. And he shyly kinda admitted that he might really believe in chi or energy or spiritual energy or whatever. You have to realize that Emily’s death shut down most of this kind of conversation 8-ish years ago. And while we were talking about energy I talked some more about this astral stuff.
I have before but not like that. To be egoistical, like this blog is, it was kind of like he took up tennis and as we (he, Lyr, me) started talking he realized that game we play over there? Is at Wimbledon.
We talked about Emily too.
Meanwhile, the same day, Lynn got her organ back. (The instrument. Not a heart or something like that.) My parents bought it for us in 1987 and we have given it away several times and it has always come back. The boys love it and she hasn’t really played yet but she will.
~~~
Since then, although I assume it will fade, everything seems enhanced to me. If I sound weird in this post it’s ’cause I am. I suppose I’m seeing some of what Lyria sees all the time.
I wonder a little bit if I’ll end up on a street corner yelling about Jesus, but so far I seem relatively in touch with reality, it’s just the kind of reality where you really have to figure out how to do some good in the world because it has some meaning. Not out of fear of heaven or hell or anything like that…hey, I have an in with a couple of death lords.
But because you see that you are connected to everything else.
Monday I went to the neurologist. Something is actually going on with our nerves, probably just troubles in our neck. More MRIs are lined up. Avalon asked the neurologist (in a joking way) if stigmata would count as trouble with your hands or if that would be more of a cognitive issue. He did not really seem to get the joke, so who knows what his problem is, but he seems really competent and he gave me such a thorough explanation of why he doesn’t think it’s something like MS I am very relieved.
~~~
I don’t love my new job, but we’ll see. I like it.
~~~
Tuesday (was it?) evening and night we got into a really bad spot. I am not sure I want to get into details, but Avalon decided at one point that if she were dead, she wouldn’t have to feel things and David could have space to figure out who he is without hearing about her sorrow and pain and everything. Dominic participated.
I’d like to say all hell broke loose but that sounds like a bad idea.
Anyways, Avalon, being a death lordess (death lady doesn’t sound right) did not internally die. She said One of the nice things between life and death is that it is quite still: the moment between breaths to see if the next will come.
In that space David and I had the argument we had to have. (I think I stood in loco fucked parentis.) That was not the big deal or moment but it definitely helped push him to where he has to decide to be David, not the-David-everyone-wants or the-David-that-he-had-to-be-to-survive or the-David-he-fears-he-will-be. (I have simplified his story. He may be mad. But the thing is, if he wants to be the protagonist, he has to write his own.)
Unfortunately it kind of failed. But a little Hope and a next morning after sleep went a long way.
In the morning San yelled at Avalon for doing that, and us for letting her. Agreed. I am kind of hopeful this is the last kill-or-be-killed thing in our system.
Since that night Avalon has been calmer. Accepting. She’s sad and confused.+ But Avalon. You don’t want her to be, and you think she’s going to give up, and then she gets up and complains that something happened to her hair.
[+ Or it is the night of January 17, when she was very not-calm, so. Or the morning of the 18th. Ahen.]
~~~
I think I realized that Avalon is going to hold us to account for the damage done by what isn’t childhood. Well. The things we should be able to do better for now.
She is very clear that her mother hurt her and she has issues because of it, that her dad left and she has issues, and now that her boyfriend was gay she is at loose ends and probably will be messed up about that. Our job will be to address that. For now, we decided she will apprentice in death lording with Nicholas, and while she is an apprentice…no dating. She says, fine, but not if she hates the uniforms. She is still the girl who loves clothes.
She’ll have dinners at home with San and Mags sometimes. Their home anyway. Maybe hers. They have visited.
It’s funny…looking back, she was saying she wanted to study thanatology all along. And she bought this shirt with skulls on it before Christmas (and was so pleased she took this shot in the dressing room). And really what is between death and life but reckoning?
David and Dominic are going to hang out.
[Jan 19: I had to delete a whole bit here about how David might tell us he's gay soon 'cause...who knows? Who. knows. There are other things to work out about identity. Despite the book mentioned above.]
As for me and Nicholas…Queen of the Day and the Lord of the Night. Yum.
Some people got left out. Sorry guys, this is like Tokien already.
~~~
We turned 42 today. Forty-twooooooooo. Got our towel.
~~~
In case you are wondering about the children, that is, Noah and Liam, they are great. Liam turns two next week. Noah’s teacher wrote him a thank-you over the winter break and he was happy to go back to school.
Christmas was fun: We played, we made cookies and cupcakes and rolled around in the snow. The drama was not so high then and actually, we were all here in our body doing things. It was lots of fun.
The wine night posse had a Lord of the Rings marathon (that is the One Cookie there, although Lyr made 6 of them, with edible marker…Carl told her her Black Tongue of Mordor is not bad for a fairy…) and Carl and I saw The Hobbit. My parents came over for dinner, My MIL came for a while and helped give us actual breaks by watching the boys. We went to Frida and Diego at the AGO (oh god…Frida and Diego during this David and Avalon thing.)
I cannot explain any of this to you, but luckily I am not a philosopher or a scientist, I’m a writer and a warrior queen, relaying information back at the pub. Hey remember the owls?
[I was waiting all this time to publish this, Jan 10-19, to see if David would decide he is gay so I could be right, but it's really not about me. Really not. I decided to go ahead and publish it anyway 'cause the idea of rewriting this gave me a massive headache. In case it is not clear, we love him and who cares?]
~~~
We have Lynn, or the lynns. And we have the kinderlynn or child-Lynns. Avalon and Dominic, being not-original-Lynn and not-not-Lynn are something else. We’ve decided to call them the hinterlynn, hinter being after. There was another Germanic root choice: uberlynn. But no one liked that.
Wow was 2012 a trip. All this holiday I have been drafting posts in my head, and then getting dragged away by toddlers, friends and so forth. I know I have promised a bunch and not delivered. I’m dividing things up between below and here.
First, business. I will still be writing here and kind of focusing on multiple stuff. But I am launching another blog that is still kind of in development over here: Feminist Love Advice. Despite the err, anti-establishment tone of the first post, I’m planning to actually try to get good at blogging over there and eventually hook it up to my real name (but being me, I am going to go slow on that bit…the Internet being both my total playground and my job.) I would be happy to see you there! It will probably be actually launching around Valentine’s Day, although posts will be going up in between.
Nicholas asked me who the audience is, because he asks marvellous questions, but I am not sure yet. Which goes to show I’m going about it backwards as usual.
~~~
I drafted a post about the boys because that was what I did not update last post. They are crazy wonderful. Noah is an actual boy now, well settled into seven. Seven! When did that happen? He has discovered a passionate love for clay, both pottery (via a class he asked to sign up for) and polymer clay. His second grade teacher doesn’t consider him a giant among men (what is her problem? :)) but is really great anyway. He comes home excited about what they learned, and has gone off to school without complaint. He’s still sliding through and has learned to pitch himself to the middle. I have mixed feelings about that…I want him to simultaneously be brilliant and do his best work always, and navigate complex social issues, and be relaxed and happy. Ahem. So, I don’t know. This is a recovery year and then we’ll see. Noah is also a kind and generous kid, not just with his brother but with his friends and the other kids at the dojo and in daycare.
Liam…is a crazy nutcase of a toddler. And I mean that in the best possible way. On a scale of engagement with the world from 1 to 10 he still operates at an 11. His language is coming along really well; it’s hard to understand him with lots of syllables missing, but if you can, he’s talking in sentences from time to time. His approach to toys is completely different than Noah’s: He’s mostly still a gross motor guy who likes to dump toys out, build and knock down towers, and fill up the play shopping cart Santa brought him. However when it comes to other people’s toys he can effectively find anything in an i-device YouTube history and empty wallets, cupboards, toothpick dispensers, anything with anything dangerous and recycling bins quickly. Sometimes I feel a bit old as I sprint down the hall because I have heard either silence or “uh oh” but – I cannot imagine life without our family the way it is.
~~~
With the two trips in November, and the new job, Carl has been doing the heavy parenting lifting during the week. It has been great to see, but I admit I finally hit a feeling that I had lost my balance a bit. This holiday I have both had a bit of “time off” but also really took time to play on the floor.
I had more to say but Liam is yanking at my arm so I’m just hitting publish! Have a wonderful first day of 2013!
My new job, plus toddler, please everything else have all combined to completely kick my ass. I have been leaving work at the very last minute to cruise home for dinner, working at night some nights, etc.
But now I’m off for 11 days. Today it hasn’t really sunk in, plus my house: disaster! Christmas shopping: Finished this morning! Food: Augh! Hit stores yesterday and today!
I think I might be able to chill out a bit.
Goal 2013: A bit more balance, please. I mean…it’s great and all but my salary has not changed and I still can’t afford cleaners. At least not while Carl is taking so much martial arts. :)
~~~
New job? Not sure yet. I love the nuts and bolts work but it is really different on the big train.
Jamaica? Can’t wait to find the time to really tell you all about it. I don’t think I’ll be going on any trips in the near future so it will have to sustain my soul for a bit.
The system? Bursting out all over, which is a weird mix with a new job. Ahren is loving the SLR, or did in Jamaica and we are taking a class with it sometime at the local crack depot camera store. We had so many arguments (good natured ones) about food that I have a turkey AND a prime rib AND full freezers and it’s like…we are going to eat past January 2, you know? But I get it.
San and Mags? Dating again. My thoughts are both a little dark on the subject and I don’t really care, as long as it stays limited in time and effort. Lohr has seen the girls which went okay except, to prove astral divorce works like other divorce, he gave them wolf pups that I have to live with. I’m not really that grumpy about it but…wolf pups. I may have mentioned this, I don’t remember and I am rushing while Liam is with Carl getting wipers.
Us and sweetpeas? Lots going on with Lynn and Avalon and everything but it is excellent and Nicholas and I are excellent.
More depth sometime, hopefully over the break. Enjoy the holiday prep!
Sweatpeas added us to an Igen Weyr nostalgia group on Facebook. It’s kind of a weird timing coincidence because I’ve been thinking a lot about being (or more accurately, starting off as) Weyrwoman as I get into my new job. Obviously that was eons ago but a few things are similar – mostly to do with a mandate for change. And since in my early twenties I made so many mistakes, mostly not listening and going too fast I have been mulling them over so I can at least make new ones.
Having arrived at the group though, I am confronted with its being Facebook. I did make us and sweetpeas Facebook-official within the group, mostly because well, it was fun.
But my head exploded. People Lyr played with are on there, as well as someone Mags had a close relationship with (which ended in tears for Mags – in hindsight probably in a very sensible, boundary setting way, but at this end there was a lot of lovesick poetry which Carl had to read.)
Facebook is not a place for open multiplicity, so. Huh.
I added Carl and D. to the group, ’cause I am merciless. :)
Thoughts to the families. Wow sometimes something horrible hits close to home and school violence, after the 19 person shooting (2 dead) up the street, is one of them. But this is those families’ story, or stories. My heart goes out to them and all the other kids that were in the school and everyone directly impacted.
