January 2, 2019

Happy New Year

No one got sick on our holiday—no pneumonia, or strep throat, and even the colds were fairly unspectacular. No one threw up on Christmas Eve, which is the first time ever that such a miracle has transpired in recent memory, and could be down to the fact that we ate bread and chicken noodle soup for dinner that night, because it had occurred to me that there could possibly be a correlation between the rich foods we eat every December 24 and the inevitable puking, although it’s embarrassing that it took me so many years to figure this out. With bread and broth, however, all the stomachs were settled, and it all has been a very low-key, relaxing, restorative and pleasant holiday.

Mostly, I just read books, so many books, barrelling through titles on my To-Be-Read shelf, and also getting rid of other books that have been sitting there for years and that I’m never ever going to reading. True confession: the piles of books I had before me* have been overwhelming for quite some time, and reading should never feel that way. *These aren’t necessarily the books I’m sent by publishers, because I’m less responsible for these. Instead the ones that I’ve been picked up on my travels, and have not made enough time for. So I skipped the used book sales this fall, and made a point of reading the books I had this holiday, and now I feel much less likely to die in a book avalanche, which is an excellent way to start off the new year.

The downside to this, however, is that now I’m going to around telling everyone about this amazing novel called Beloved, by Toni Morrison, which only came out and won the Pulitzer Prize 30 years ago, so I’m really on the cutting edge, right? So hip and current. But oh my gosh, the book is extraordinary, and I can see how it ties right into the contemporary Black women writers whose work I’ve been loving these last few years. Another buzz worthy pick was The Age of Innocence, by Edith Wharton, which is not quite a new release, instead 97 years old, but I did get the spectacularly designed new edition from Gladstone Press, and it was gorgeous, and such a pleasure to read.

I also really loved Barbara Kingsolver’s Unsheltered, which I asked for for Christmas after reading this profile in The Guardian in October. It starts off kind of clumsily and didactic, more about ideas than being a novel proper, but the ideas were so interesting that I didn’t mind, and I also loved how well the two different storylines worked, that I was interested in both of them. And then partway through the book, the narrative grew legs, and I’ve been thinking about it steadily ever since I finished reading.

But I wasn’t only reading. And how can a person read this many books and not only be reading, you might ask? The answer being: I turned off my wifi for a week for my biannual holiday from the internet. It was glorious. I don’t have data on my phone anyway, so no wifi rendered me entirely internetless, and while I love the internet, since I’ve returned to it it’s only occurred to me that Twitter is wholly joyless, Facebook is pointless, and I like Instagram a lot still, but want to make our relationship more casual. And I want to focus on my blog instead, an online space that as ever is in transition. I’m going to be writing more about this in the coming weeks, about what blogs might be turning into. I’m not sure, but I think that for me, mine might be my online salvation. Stay tuned.

While I wasn’t reading, I was ice skating, checking out museums and galleries, playing card games—we got Rhino Hero for Christmas, and I love it with all my heart. I was knitting and delighting in Fargo Season 3 and watching Mary Poppins Comes Back,  and going to for walks down residential streets and through ravines, and making turkey leftovers into all kinds of different things, and seeing friends, and even cousins (which I don’t have enough exposure to and which have always been my favourite part of Christmas), and also reading. Every day when I woke up, the first thing I did was turn on my bedside lamp and pick up my book, which is my very favourite way to start the day, and sometimes people even brought me tea.

And now it’s a new year, and my house is really tidy, after a marathon clear-out on Sunday (including a thorough pruning of my shelves to make space for the books I read on the holidays). I also have a new coat that doesn’t make me look like a hobo, and bought new bras, which was an errand that was three years overdue. Plus, I am currently in the midst of my ideal state of being, ie I am awaiting the arrival of a teapot in the post. What that I could be suspended in this reality forever, but when it ceases I will have the consolation of a teapot at least.

July 5, 2018

Writing With Children

So it seems that I am writing a novel this summer, and we’ve been here before. I wrote my first draft of Mitzi Bytes during the summer of 2014, when Iris was one and Harriet was five and would sit beside me on the couch watching Annie while her sister napped. Two years later I wrote Asking for a Friend in the same way, except that no one napped anymore, but what I did do was close the baby gate on our door and sit out on the porch with my laptop while the children were barricaded indoors with a bin full of snacks. They were allowed to watch movies, but only after they’d earned it with an hour of imaginative play—and then in the afternoon we’d head out into the world and do something fun or interesting.

I don’t know what it is about summer—when I have limited childcare and the world is calling with its sunshine—that imbues me with inspiration. It’s really quite impractical and inconvenient to decide to spend a summer writing a book, but it’s also exhilarating. For me, summer is about stretching anyway, about pushing limits. How far can we go, is a thing I wonder in summer, as the days go long and the children get filthy, and there’s sand in everything, and we’re so tired, but we keep going, because summer only lasts so long, and a terrible thing would be to give up before it did (and it always does eventually…).

So what follows is a list of what works for me with writing and being home with my children. And naturally, I recognize that I am privileged that I get to be home with my children in the summer, but before you assume it’s all too cozy, remember that I make my living from work that I must fit in around fiction writing and my children (and dentist appointments, and laundry, and shaking sand out of things) in the summer, and it’s all very busy and a juggle, but I also wouldn’t want it any other way.

1. Write first. In the summer I have to work in the evenings after my children are in bed to make it all happen—but I never ever save my writing for that time. Because the writing is the work I’m accountable to no one else for but myself, and it would be so easy to just decide to wait until tomorrow. So I make it my first priority.
2. Set a word count. This is why I like first drafts, because it’s quantifiable and finite. 1000 words a day works for me, and I’m experienced enough by now to know that those words don’t even have to be good—that’s what subsequent drafts are for. But this one is just to show me where there the story is going.
3. Make my children part of the process. I make my writing a family affair, and my children know that by giving me the time and space to get my 1000 words done, they’re helping to make my story happen. When Mitzi Bytes came out, it was a big deal for both of them, because they knew they’d played a part in the book’s creation.
4. Don’t talk about it until it’s done: I love Instagram, and take my #todaysteacup photo every day—see photo above. But I don’t post the photo until my writing session is finished—it’s a reward to myself. Don’t be #AmWriting unless you’ve written.
5. Keep going: I’ve talked before about how I took up jogging the same summer I wrote Mitzi Bytes, but that I quit jogging because I hated it, right after I burst into tears in Queen’s Park because I hated it so much. Except for the hating part, for me jogging and writing a novel are pretty much the same. JUST KEEP GOING. One foot/one word in front of the other—it’s as simple as that. It’s such a little, manageable thing when you break it down like that. Don’t stop. You can do one more word, and then another and then another. (Although if you find yourself bursting into tears in the middle of a sentence because you hate it so much, remember that you’re also allowed to quit. To do otherwise would be stupid.)
6. Read: I had nostalgia last weekend because I remember reading Emma Strab’s The Vacationers on the July long weekend just as I’d started writing Mitzi Bytes—I loved that book, and it inspired me. And then I went back to my blog to see what were the books I’d read just before it, and they were Based on a True Story, by Elizabeth Renzetti, and Mating For Life, by Marissa Stapley, neither of whom were my friends at the time, although now they are, which isn’t the point, but instead that I wrote a better book because I was inspired by books that were doing the kinds of things I wanted to do.
7. Shut the door. As I’ve written before, I don’t actually have a door, but there is a metaphoric one that my children have learned to observe and respect. I also continue to make sure the snack bin is full so that their needs are taken care of. But in the meantime, I’m busy, and they know that, and they’re cool with that…
8. …Because they’re really happy watching Teen Titans Go on Netflix!
9. Day camp! They’re doing a week of full-day camp and two weeks of half-day camp this summer, and I’ll be motivated to use that time like nobody’s business.
10. Keep it low key. We do fun and local (and often free!) free things in the afternoons once I’ve met my word count. Truth be told, we are a bit boring, but summer is about boring, in addition to Netflix, and as long as the freezer is stocked with popsicles, nobody seems to mind.

April 12, 2018

The Soup My Children Eat

Having children is a challenge to any notion of living in the moment, not just because children rarely sit still, but also because a moment in the life of a child is as changing as a garden in May. And so the closest I’ve come to really being present is looking back on five minutes previous and saying, “Well, thank goodness that’s over, and isn’t it amazing to be here right now.” Which is basically what I’ve been saying for my children’s entire lives, the first six weeks of their existences notwithstanding.

Of course, it helps that I am an insufferable diviner of silver linings. I also know that it’s not always going to keep getting better and better, this experience of raising children. Life is complicated. Although I am so insistent when it comes to those silver linings that I might possibly end up deluding myself into thinking this is the case—I’m an unreliable narrator. But still, here we are, with my children on the cusp of being five and nine, and we’ve never had it so good. Sometimes we go out for dinner, and I don’t even need to be bring crayons. All those terrains that were unnavigable by stroller are now ours for the taking—I look forward to a summer of walks in ravines. And when we wet our pants, it’s a special occasion instead of a regular occurrence. We’re capable of having interesting conversations that 35% of the time don’t descend into an in-depth analysis of farts. We can all go to the same movie and enjoy it, and even Iris has been following along with our reading of A Wrinkle in Time. But what makes me happier than anything else is that finally everybody likes soup.

It has taken years to get here. I don’t know why. You’d think that soup would be child-friendly, as it doesn’t even require teeth to eat it, but my children were soup-intolerant from the get-go. And in some ways, I understood—small children like food to be straightforward and not touching, and soup was everything mixed up in a bowl. I would puree it, but they always claimed it tasted terrible. Chicken noodle they would tolerate, but only because they’d just pick out the noodles. And all of this was very hard on me, because soup is one of the things I love best in the world. Warm and comforting, full of nutritious goodness, handy for leftovers, and how it warms the house and steams everything up so you can draw hearts on the windows. I really love soup, and I never gave up serving it to my children in the hopes that one I’d finally succeed at making them love it too.

The tide finally turned about a year ago. I remember the night it happened—I served the soup thinking, “Will tonight be the night?” As I’d done numerous nights before, but this one did the trick. Everybody ate the soup. The blandest soup, it was true, but I was not going to quibble about details. Soup was soup and we were eating it together, and I kept serving it, gradually adding flavour. Originally it was sweet potato and I started using butternut squash instead, but not telling them. They kept eating it. I added a bit of curry—nobody complained. And now I serve it weekly, and everybody’s the teeniest bit sick of it, but they indulge me and also they don’t get a say because I’m the one cooking. We like to have our soup with a loaf of oatmeal quick bread and hummus and cheese on the side, as well as a drained can of chickpeas roasted in the oven with salt and olive oil as the bread is cooking.

The Soup My Children Eat (Adapted from here)

Ingredients: 

2 tablespoons coconut oil

1 onion, chopped

4 garlic cloves, minced

1 teaspoon curry powder

1/2 teaspoon chilli powder

3/4 teaspoon salt

1 butternut squash, peeled and diced (or 4 sweet potatoes)

6 cups of chicken or vegetable stock

1 can of coconut milk

Instructions: 

Melt olive oil in a stock pot. Add onion and garlic and let them soften, then stir in spices. Add diced squash, and then stock. Bring to boil and simmer for 20 minutes (or longer?) and then add coconut milk. Puree with an immersion blender.

June 14, 2017

We Love Huron Playschool

I honestly don’t remember who I was before playschool. When I had one child, when I’d never published a book, when I was a bit lost wandering around the neighbourhood without a destination. These days we meet friends every time we step outside the house, but it wasn’t like that then. My friend Nathalie lived in the neighbourhood (even though we met first on the internet) and she had three children, had been a mother for a while. It was Nathalie who told me about playschool when Harriet was two, and I registered her for the following year. That summer we came by to visit while playschool summer camp was in session, and as we walked in, an actual pig came down the stairs behind us, noisy and oinking. From our first moment there, playschool was remarkable, and this has never ceased to the case.

The pig hasn’t come back to visit. And the Ministry of Education has since prohibited visits from farm animals for public health reasons (BLAST!) but the pig was really only emblematic anyway. Of the fact that playschool was never boring, always fun, and the things you think will never happen there are never the things that do…in the best possible way.

Our family has spent five years at playschool, five years in which we’ve become us as a family, a family of four, a family tied to our community, supporting our neighbours. Everything I know about the world I’ve learned from playschool, the challenges of working in a co-op, and the rewards as well. I’ve learned so much about people, and sharing, and what it means to be friendly (and that it’s not nice to bite). Our children will carry the lessons learned at playschool all through their lives, and I know that I will too.

On the playschool blog, I’ve written a little post about what the community there has meant to me and us over the last five years, and about how much we’re going to miss it. It’s a truly extraordinary place, and we’ve been so lucky to be part of it.

September 9, 2016

And then there were two

And then there were two—kids in school, that is. And now there is one, which is me, home alone for the first time in nearly two months. Not alone for long though—I had a co-op shift at Iris’s school this morning, and so it’s just been for the afternoon. Yesterday Iris and I had a special last-day-before-school day together, and the two days before that we had orientation and cleaning at the playschool (where I mopped under carpets and cleaned out garbage bins—it’s non-stop glamour for me). And so this week has been busy, definitely not regularly scheduled programming, and I’ve had deadlines and have had to work in the evenings to get it all done. But it’s all done now, and next week the new routine begins and…it’s so good I want to swoon. Starting Monday, Iris will be a playschool from 9-3, and so my days will be free to focus on my work (as well as swimming! I’m getting a membership to the UofT pool and am intending to swim every day…) and every evening I don’t have to do anything but read books and go to bed at 11:00. The thought of such things makes me want to start whooping with joy.

I will be doing my freelance work, and will have lots of time to focus on 49thShelf, and other writing projects I’ve been meaning to get to—short stories that need revising, essays I’m intending to write. I have also been writing a novel all summer and would like to finish a draft this fall. And my blogging course starts in a few weeks, so I’ll be freshening up that material. And I know that soon 9-3 won’t seem like time enough, the same way our apartment seemed really spacious when we moved in 8 years ago, but I am going to luxuriate in it for a little while.

PS Check out my baby. When Harriet headed out into the world, I remember thinking, “World, be kind to her.” With Iris, I’m thinking, “World—watch out…”

July 3, 2016

Summer Starts

There is no better way to travel then on trains, where the leg room is ample and there is so much time to read. When we booked this weekend away, the train journey itself was the destination, but we had to arrive somewhere, so we chose Ottawa, where we have best cousin-friends and even other friends, and cousin-friends who were kind enough to offer us a place to stay. And it was Canada Day Weekend, so what better place to be…even if the place we mean to be specifically on Canada Day is our cousin’s beautiful backyard across the river in Gatineau. And it really was amazing.

As we’d hoped, the train journey was a pleasure. I had more time to read than I’ve had in weeks. I finished Rich and Pretty, by Rumaan Alam, which I liked so much and will be writing about, and started Signal to Noise, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, which was lovely and so much fun. They also had my favourite kind of tea on sale (Sloane Tea’s Heavenly Cream) and so all was right with the world.

It was such a nice weekend—the children had children to play with and I got to spend time with some of my favourite people. We had an excellent time with our cousins, and met up with my dear friends Rebecca who took us to the Museum of  Nature, and last night I got to visit with my 49thShelf comrades who I’ve been working so happily with for years but have only ever hung out with a handful of times. Apart from one traumatic episode of carsickness (not mine) and the night the children took turns waking up every twenty minutes, it was a perfect long long weekend. I also learned that it is possible to eat my limit in cheetos and potato chips, which I had never suspected. Also that it is probably inadvisable to start drinking before noon.

We came home today, another good trip, this time with me reading Nathan Whitlock’s Congratulations on Everything, which I am really enjoying, I also started reading the graphic novel of A Wrinkle in Time with Harriet, which we will continue this week. And we arrived home to find that our marigolds have finally bloomed, third generation. We planted them a couple of months back in our community planter, and have been waiting for the flowers to emerge. (Sadly, our lupines didn’t make it.) Summer is finally here proper, what with school out, and even 49thShelf’s Fall Fiction Preview being up (which is my main project for June), and my work days shift with the children being home. I’ve also decided to write a draft of a novel this summer, which is only going to make a tricky situation trickier, but who doesn’t like tricks? We shall see. We will do our best. And there will also be ice cream and holidays and barbecues and sand between our toes, and splash pads and ferry rides and picnics and pools and flowers. It will all go by so fast.

November 13, 2015

A very good day?

This morning not long after 6:00, Harriet woke up coughing. Waking up her parents in the process, and as I adjusted to consciousness (and her much more morning-person father went downstairs to get her a glass of water), two thoughts occurred to me: 1) there was nobody left in my bed. Not a single person. Not a single person who is small and insists on sleeping whilst burrowing into my body, thrusting her little hands down my shirt, and kicking me in the abdomen, and lately has been joining me nightly around 2 or 3 am. And 2) I had had enough sleep. As in, I could open my eyes and sit up, get out of bed, open the curtains and begin my day, coherent sentences and all. I feel like this perhaps once a month, if I’m lucky. (See previous note about resident kicker in my bed.) It was extraordinary. My first premonition that this was going to be a very very good day.

It also meant we had two hours before we had to leave for school, instead of the usually scramble. (Most days, I am lucky to drag my sorry self out of bed by 7:45, and my husband does everything—breakfast making, bag-packing, children-dressing/brushing/etc. He is our resident Hero.) And because I make a point of being useful in wholly impractical ways, I decided that I would make us french toast for breakfast. It was to be sweet potato french toast from How to Feed a Family, but we were low on sweet-p’s, so I used acorn squash instead. And it was delicious. And then Stuart proceeded to do everything as usual while I sat at the table drinking tea and browsing twitter until it was 8:15, leaving me a quarter of an hour to shower and dress. We were out the door before the 8:30 news turned to sports, and ages before The Current started (which is always how we know we’re late).

Today was a PA Day so there was to be no grade 1, but I had a co-op shift at Iris’s playschool, and Harriet was coming with us. Along with a group of other children who partake in the playschool’s after-school program normally but needed full-day care today. So that the classroom was packed with kids of all ages, playing together and have such a good time, and it never got too crazy. It was a lot of fun having Harriet there, and it was a distinctly unboring co-op shift in which time flew by. And then home to leftover pizza for lunch, and I got dinner in the oven already (a chicken, leek and sweet potato casserole). Which means that we’ll be eating early, dinner finished before our super-babysitter arrives at 6pm (which is to be a new bi-weekly arrangement—early Friday night dates so that Stuart and I can go out together often but STILL go to bed early, which is best of both worlds). And we’re going to see Mavis! at the Bloor Cinema around the corner—getting home in time to catch an episode of Raised by Wolves before bed.

So it’s looking good. Just past the day’s midpoint, it’s still too early to say whether this qualifies as a very good day proper, but from where I’m standing now, the outlook seems pretty bright. Friday the 13th has a habit of working out for me—it was on another one, 12 years and eleven months ago exactly, in fact, that I met my excellent husband, after all.

Update: I had the feeling as I published this post that I was tempting fate, that I was sure to be struck and killed by a westbound bus sometime just before dinner. But the trouble turned out to be farther away and so much worse—not a very good day on the whole, for sure. Which made me thinking about a post like mine and about the point of blogging in general, and while surely my acorn-squash french toast doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, the darkest parts of the world are all the more reason to celebrate the those small and perfect moments of light. Thinking about Solnit and Woolf’s darkness as well: “To me, the grounds for hope are simply that we don’t know what will happen next…”

October 12, 2015

My grandmother’s china

“I have your grandmother’s china for you,” her mother said. “She took good care of it.”

I highlighted this line from a story in Kelli Deeth’s The Other Side of Youth when I read it, the china emblematic of all the ways in which the lives of women my age have failed to progress in the manner that previous generations might have foreseen. All these boxes of china wrapped up in paper and boxed up in basements, and it means nothing now. I grew up in a house with a china cabinet, is what I mean, and it is very unlikely that I will ever have such an item myself, let alone a place to stand it.

Which is not to say that the domestic has no hold, that we don’t give any value to stuff. My Pyrex fixation certainly speaks to that (and I realize now that since the photo in the link was taken, I’ve acquired a set of turquoise Cinderella bowls, and also put a halt on all non-essential Pyrex acquisitions to keep things from getting too out of control). But what I don’t need is a massive collection of dishes and cups to be hauled out on special occasions, just the same way that I don’t need a parlour for afternoon callers. What I like about Pyrex is its usefulness, and then it occurs to me that there is a similar way around the grandmother’s china as well—what if I actually used it?

I have no recollection of ever seeing this china before—I didn’t pay attention to things like plates as a child, particularly if they were patterned with wildflowers. It is also possible that my grandmother didn’t set the table quite so formally when I was coming to visit. Although I do know my own mother’s wedding china intimately. I have no wedding china, but I have a vast collection of cracked and chipped dinner plates that it’s starting to seem shameful to feed my children from, and so I asked my mother if perhaps I could take a look at my grandmother’s china. If we could use them for everyday. Would that be more or less troubling, I wondered, than the plates remaining boxed up until the end of days, or else given away to a consignment store (where I would have totally bought them if I’d happened upon them)?

And so we took them, and now they’re here, unpacked in the kitchen. Some of them need cleaning—the gravy boat is still stained from some dinner more than a decade ago. But for the most part, the plates and cups are in excellent condition. Plates of various sizes, 10 of one, 8 of another, 11 side plates, 11 saucers and 9 tea cups. I wonder what they started with? Only 2 soup bowls—what happened to the rest of them? Or was soup more an intimate course, something best suited to a couple?

Predictably, I’m now a bit obsessed with my grandmother’s china. Who knew? Spode China in the cowslip pattern with a chelsea wicker design. There turns out to be a busy online marketplace for fervid Spode collectors, and now I’m lusting after Spode eggcups and a teapot. I also admire the buttercup pattern (seen here). The former curator of the Spode Museum Trust blogs about all things Spode here (and this is why I love blogs so: there is almost nothing under the sun that has not been blogged about yet).  Spode was founded by Josiah Spode in 1770 in Stoke-On-Trent—Josiah Spode was almost an exact contemporary of another pottery-maker called Josiah but instead of a Spode he was a Wedgewood.

We spent this morning at the museum, which re-enlivened my delight in the thingness of things, and it occurs to me how much of my boredom with and dismissal of my grandmother’s things has to do with the idea that this is baggage, something to be carried and put somewhere. (My grandmother never ever put her china in the dishwasher, my mother tells me. We don’t have a dishwasher, so we will quite easily be able to continue in the same tradition.) But with the idea that these things could be used rather than put up on a shelf to be dusted—it changes everything. The best part about things in museums is what they tell us about ordinary life, and so it seems fitting that my grandmother’s china should become part of our ordinary life as well.

Which ensures, I suppose, that each piece will be eventually get broken and never be passed down to anybody, leaving nothing for us to be known by, our ordinary life an enigma to those who come after us, should they even care to wonder. A paradox—the Pompeii exhibit is case in point; does it matter if your frescoes are preserved if you’re dead? But I wonder if it isn’t better to simply live in the moment after all. From a person’s point of view, I mean, if not from that of an archivist.

September 10, 2015

It begins.

I got pregnant at nearly the exact same time as Harriet started playschool three years ago, when she was three years old. And I so vividly remember those precious mornings, the time, rushing home to rescue my tea from under the cozy and sit down to get some work done, not wasting a single moment. To be alone. Although the time did not seem so luxurious: I was in my first trimester and would pass out every night not long after Harriet did. If I hadn’t had those mornings, I would have had no time to get any work done. After Christmas when my energy levels had returned, I got a job writing a book about Arctic exploration, the gold rush, mountain climbing, and parkas, and by then my days of freedom were numbered anyway. So I spent that winter reading Pierre Berton on the Klondike and listening to Iris by the Split Enz over and over again, dreaming of my baby as she kicked away inside me—so you see, I was really not so alone at all.

It seemed like the smallest window, that year. I knew that with our new baby, we’d soon be thrown back into newbornland and babyhood, and we’d have to find our way out again. That it would be a long before I once  more found myself at home alone at 9:30 in the morning, the teapot still warm. I edited an entire book as the baby slept on my chest, for heaven’s sake. And now, here I am. And dare I say it: it all went by so fast?

This morning I dropped Harriet off at Grade One, which she is enjoying immensely so far, and then Iris and I trekked down the street for her to begin her first day of playschool. The playschool she has known since she was a fetus: she spent her first year in her carrier as I did co-op shifts three times a month. By the end of the year, she was scooting around the room like a champion. It has always been familiar to her. We love the teachers. Last year when Harriet was no longer a student there, we still visited our playschool friends often, and we’d play with them at the park.

Drop-off was not without its drama. Iris was not happy about my departure, and while I wanted to get out of there and trusted she was in very good hands, I’m a bit worried about the teachers who’ll have to deal with her. Though I assure myself that perhaps like all parents, I’m imagining that my child is more unique and particular than she actually is. I’m crossing my fingers that they’ve seen it all before. And that she’ll have a wonderful morning.

And now here I am, right back where I’ve been before except that this is the way forward instead of just a blip. It’s even time to put the kettle on. It’s time to get some work done. To figure out this new routine, just what to do with all this space and this quiet.

See also: “When I got home again, I didn’t know what to do because there was so much that I wanted to do.” 

June 30, 2015

Summer Plans

There was a while this weekend when summer plans weren’t looking good. On Saturday I made a soup that featured the uncanny flavour of actual dirt, which was devastating. And it rained and rained all day, and even the next day, so our plans to go for a hike were ruined. All melodrama heaped on by the fact I was premenstrual. We decided to go to the board game cafe instead of the hike, but when we got there, there was a sign on the door explaining that they were closed due to flooding. We ended up going out for schnitzel instead, which was kind of consoling, but the weekend was mostly disappointing all around, and the children reached a state of maximum solid gold 100 karat bonkers. By Sunday evening, Stuart had stopped telling me that he was jealous that I was the one who got to stay home with them all summer.

Fortunately when Monday arrived, it delivered the sun. We went to the park and built castles, moats and fortifying walls, which Iris wrecked and we tried not to get annoyed about. And then the girls practiced climbing, drawing on their inner-monkeys, all the while satisfying my agenda which was basically to get these children as exhausted as possible. Fresh air and physical exercise! Scurry up the play structure. Faster, faster, go! Which might turn out to be the theme of the summer entire, except for the afternoons when Iris naps, Harriet watches movies, and I get my work done. Everything slows right down at nap, and the challenge then is to strike a balance between the two. Between go and stop, between fun and relaxation, between doing stuff and doing nothing.

This summer, as with all summers, I become busier than usual just as my time disappears to the children being home and weekend getaways. And so the days are full, full, full, and I need to stop adding to the fullness by baking strawberry pies at 10pm because I end up staying up too late and the pie turns out looking like a bloodbath (even though it was very delicious). This summer is going to have to be about the store-bought pies, and hotdogs for supper, no more dirt soups and choosing my priorities. Which include meeting my deadlines, doing well at my work, not ignoring my children to the point of neglect, and hanging out with my husband (which is hard to do when the prime time of one’s workday begins at 9pm). To help with this, I’ve hired a babysitter one morning a week, and look forward to that solid block of three hours to work, which will feel positively luxurious as it goes by so fast.

But it won’t go by as fast as the summer itself will seem to, which is the lesson I learned last year. I really do like being home with my kids, providing I get ample time to do my own thing during our days, and I feel really lucky that my home and professional lives merge so seamlessly. When the children (both of them! I know!) head off to school in September, I will miss them dreadfully…even as I begin to delight working in the daytime and the possibility of evenings of leisure (a stretch, perhaps).

So in the meantime, we’ll be visiting the library, reading books together, hanging out with friends, going to visit my parents, frequenting local cafes, Harriet will be doing a few daycamps, Iris will be taking long naps (I hope!), and I will be doing my darnedest to tire them out so that bedtime occurs before 9pm. We’ll be spending a week away at a cottage, a long weekend camping, and we’re looking forward to fun weekend adventures in the city too. Plus spitting watermelon seeds, wading in local pools, forgetting to put on sunscreen, and gathering our freckles while we may.

• See Rebecca Woolf’s “Surviving Summer as a Work-From-Homer Part 2: LOL Boogaloo“