Posts

Airing the Dirty Laundry

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Drifting off of Sarah s and Engie's laundry posts - from one end of the scale to nearly the other, a family of seven and a family of two. I am currently a family of one, more regularly a family of two, and still occasionally a family of four.  I was so relieved when Sarah said that she did everyone's laundry and, further, said exactly what I've always thought (but often been too chicken to say) - it's great if your kids can do their own laundry before they leave home, but if they don't, they'll learn very soon after. I actually think this about many things - I have half-joked (half-confessed) that I coddle my kids. I didn't work for most of their childhood, my husband worked hard and traveled much, the kids were often busy with school, sports and extracurriculars, and while I didn't act like a servant or expect nothing of them around the house, I didn't feel the need to be a hard-ass about making them 'pull their weight', when I was the one

Happenstance and Serendipity

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Things I planned to do on March Break: Buy paint and paint my bathroom Switch out my disgusting shower curtain liner Switch out my twenty-year-old shower curtain (it just took me a frighteningly long time to think "what is it called? Bath curtain? Bathtub curtain?)  for the cute new one I got from Redbubble Do a bunch of yoga Write a bunch of blog posts Things I ended up doing on March Break: Going out for lunch with girlfriends Going to see Journey and Toto Going to see a musical at our community theatre Walking Lucy over to my parents' place in the glorious sunshine and drinking a gin and tonic at one o'clock in the afternoon Having a lengthy nap after said gin and tonic Taking care of my sick, between-international-trips husband Reading a bunch of books No regrets, largely. Although I need to get back to the yoga. My back is better from all the physio, but I need yoga. And I need to go back to physio because my Achilles tendons and calves have been troubling me for over

Week With Laughter

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I have been having a bit of a stupid week. I am calling the week stupid to avoid having to apply the label to myself, but the truth is it probably isn't actually the week's fault. I'm not sure what the deal is - Matt's away, but that's not unusual. If it's a progression of the perimenopausal brain fog I have to do some seriously therapeutic levels of crossword puzzling or whatever the hell, because this cannot continue. Monday I woke up and got ready for work. I wash and dress and take my morning meds and then come down with my water glass and my phone, put my phone directly into my purse and then go to the kitchen, drop off my water glass and pack my lunch and grab my water bottle (except when it's my first day at a new job, but whatever, we're over that).  For many many years the garage was too full of crap to get a vehicle in. A couple of years ago Matt worked like crazy to get it empty enough to park the Rav in. This is completely awesome, so this is

Puzzling school situations, Puzzling dreams, Puzzling Puzzles

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 My husband is leaving this afternoon for a week (then home for a few days and gone for two weeks). For a nice change of pace, the massive snow dump happened just before he left instead of just after - bad for him, good for me. March Break is one week earlier than I thought it was, which is... neutral, I guess, I'm not gasping for it the way I was for the Christmas holidays. Funny thing about my Thursday school, I was almost ready to give notice and then I went in last week and it....suddenly didn't suck anymore. It's almost like it was my vicious winter depression that was the problem and not the school.  I do have to say, it's been startling and humbling working in a K-8 school (my other two are K-6). There's something about the boundary-testing and defiance and general VERY MUCH THERE-ness of pre-and-early-teens that I'm struggling with how to address. Part of the problem was that I was trying to act from a position of 'there are no bad kids', knowing

I Haven't Really Got a Right to Sing the Blues but Here We Are

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 Welp. Eve took the train back to school on Saturday. Week was too short. Hamilton is too far. I had a fitful, twitchy-leg, broken sleep the last two nights and I am sad and cranky. Eve and I went to Bluesfest for the first time the year she was 12, even though we both have anxiety, especially about crowded places ( Bluesfesting While Anxious , July 2015), and it became a tradition (which, let's be honest, happens with almost everything we do in this family and friend group that doesn't outright suck - our calendar of annual things is fairly crowded, which is cool because we are a family of lazy introverts, except Angus, he works out like five times a day, he's an un-lazy introvert). The day the lineup comes out is always exciting, and the two years it didn't happen because of Covid were weird and we missed it. Well, the lineup came out on Wednesday and it was...not exciting to me. This is kind of disheartening for obvious reasons, and also because a lot of my friends s

New Job First Day Report

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 I meant to take a picture of the library, and/or myself in the library, in my pink shirt for Pink Shirt Day, which I remembered just in time to not put on a not-pink shirt. I forgot. Pros: 1) The other library tech is very chill. I love my library partner at one school, but she's very particular and some of the stuff she requires stresses me out a little bit. This one is basically 'keep the library running, don't let someone with five books overdue borrow more books, otherwise don't sweat it'. 2) There seems to be a lot of volunteer shelving help, so there was nothing waiting for shelving when I came in and I was able to get everything that came in put away by the time I left. 3) There is a library office. I have one at one other school, and not at the other. It's nice to have the option to retreat for lunch and not feel like you're on display for any clubs or anyone that wanders in over the nutrition break or recess. One kindergarten teacher always comes i

And to All a Good Night

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I just sat here typing versions of Weakened, Week-end, Weekend, Week End, then had to google how you actually spell weekend, almost decided not to title the post at all, so here we are. I'm in one of those "but why on earth WOULD I blog right now?" periods, which is where not having much of a structure or schedule or.... here's where I talk myself right out of ever blogging again, along with spending half an hour trying AGAIN to figure out how to type accents on a Chromebook keyboard - raison d'̂etre - did I do it? I feel like the accent merged with the apostrophe. Resumé́? Is that right, or is it a speck on my screen? If it was, all it took was finally hovering the cursor over everything in my toolbar, which is a little embarrassing for me. Eve is on her way home for study break with my sister's family. They got a bit of a late start so they're due to arrive at my mom and dad's at ten p.m. or later. Usually this wouldn't be an issue for me, the i