Five For Friday (and Figs)

 1. My sister's birthday is February 1st. For the past two years I've managed to get her birthday present to her on the exact day or before, which caused her to ask who I was and what I'd done with her sister. I like February 1st because it's her birthday and because it means January is gone. I have had a rough time mentally and sometimes physically in January for as long as I can remember - it was with my last doctor a few years after I'd moved to Ottawa that I figured out what a cycle it was (pre-blogging life, less chance to re-examine my life by season). Of course the January depression does creep into February, but it's still a sign that less difficult days are coming.

2. I almost cancelled my weekly date with my friend Jody (HI JODY) (fun fact, my sister is also named Jody!) because I did squats on Tuesday and then was on my feet all day at work Wednesday and then forgot to take my Gabapentin before bed and was awake most of the night with restless legs and nerve pain and felt absolutely wretched. But I did not cancel our weekly date - The Gilded Age and Edo Japan takeout - and we almost didn't make it through two episodes because we kept pausing the show to talk and laugh really hard, and it was medicinal.

Double Jodies! Sister is the tall one.

3. Monday I had slept badly and was a bit late leaving for work, and Matt was also disorganized and not ready on time (I drop him and the dog at my parents' house, he leaves the dog and either walks to work or borrows their vehicle) and then we got out to the first corner and the long slow train of snowbank-removing vehicles was there and I knew I was irredeemably fucked for getting to work on time. I just started laughing because really, it didn't matter. I don't have classes until a half hour after I get in, and I can easily stay a few minutes at the end of the day, I just don't like being late. Then my first class of grade ones came in and they could not have been more lovely. On the way out most kid in line thanked me individually (after their chorused group thank-you) and then the last little boy said "have a nice day!" Like, do you mind kid, I am TRYING to maintain a bad mood here.

4. Nicole's book finally got here, and I read it in one day and was almost late for bar night, and it was awesome. I don't read a ton of romance, but if I do I want it to be quirky and have humour and seem at least a little bit realistic, and this had all of that (the moms from the mom-and-baby yoga class! The lentil lasagna! Natural deodorant! I LOVE EGGPLANT). A lot of good relatable stuff about parenting also. I am so happy and only a tiny bit jealous.

5. Angus was contacted by someone from the Cleveland Guardians (formerly Indians) at the beginning of December who just said he'd been given Angus's name as someone who would 'be awesome to get to know', and he asked if they could set up a phone call. This led to many phone calls, some over the break while he was at home. Apparently in baseball this is a thing that happens, and you don't really know if you're in a job interview or what the job might be, and you just go with it. After so many phone calls that I was wondering if somebody was looking for a good husband for their daughter, they flew him out to Goodyear Arizona (just outside Phoenix) and there were more interviews and some practice stuff and he got gear.

Then nothing for a week and a half, and then a notification that they were going to make an offer for something. I talked to Suzanne (HI SUZANNE) and she was like omg, there are the Akron Rubber Ducks not far from me! But we thought the position was in Arizona. But we didn't know! But I really wanted a reason to go to Ohio! Then he thought there was one position in Akron and one in Arizona, and I was like oh right, like he's going to pick Ohio. THEN it turns out that the position is in Ohio AND Arizona. He is going to be an assistant pitching coach for the Akron Rubber Ducks, so he'll be living in Akron and traveling with the team from, I don't know, April til fall sometime? And then he'll be in Arizona working at the spring training facility for fall and winter. I feel like those are the proper times to be in Akron and Arizona, respectively

The Akron Rubber Ducks! Who knew all those times he sang Rubber Ducky You're the One in the bathtub would be so prophetic! Also, the Rubber Ducks are the double-A team for the Cleveland Guardians. When he was at the Little League World Series the announcers on TSN called him double-A! 

He texted yesterday and said he spent the warm, sunny day watching big leaguers play catch and putting mud on baseballs and he was loving life. He works for the MLB! And they called him!

Small Frustrations, Tiny Satisfactions

I generally make it a habit of grabbing my apron from the hook and putting it on on my way into the kitchen no matter what I'm going in there for. I am not a neat and graceful person and I don't enjoy changing clothes several times a day. This was amply vindicated just now when, without an apron, I turned around from the counter and decided to take the lid off the slow-cooker to check the pulled pork and got splattered with hot meat juice, burning a tiny spot on my chest and leaving brown spots on my pink tank top (sorry if this made you gag a little, Nicole). This was annoying, but the pulled pork smelled delicious, which is a not bad little microcosm of this whole day.

Angus talked quite a bit with his guidance counsellor last year when he was offered a spot on the Team Canada's roster for the Oklahoma Junior Sunbelt Tournament, which meant he would be missing a week of school right before exams. The guidance counsellor liaised with his teachers and everybody was quite nice and helpful in making accommodations so he could go and not have his marks suffer too much (we also realized how much he sucks at blowing his own horn since a couple of his teachers were like, "he plays baseball?"). We realized that we'd kind of been underusing the guidance person as a resource too, since she mentioned she could have worked with us to have his first semester loaded with heavier courses since baseball always ramps up from January to June. She said she could help him with that this year, but today when he went down to guidance following the regular guidelines, the person he ended up with could not have been less helpful, and none of the changes he needed got made, and we have to go in again next week. Which is frustrating.

As for me, even just getting ready to look for a job is setting my anxiety on fire, which is stupid, because it's not like we're looking at getting evicted or becoming food insecure, I just want to be a productive member of society and contribute a little to the education fund. But while the decision to wait until after the summer to look was right, I should probably have gotten my ducks in a row in some fashion before now, and I feel kind of dumb and obscurely ashamed for no good reason. I'm also thinking of just applying to work part-time at Indigo until I find something related to my diploma, which would probably be fine, but I'm already stressing about what happens if Matt's away and Eve has basketball and I'm working and I don't even know if they'd hire me yet. Deep breaths need to be taken.

Angus and I both have trouble with uncertainty. The teachers that understood him best in early elementary school would write the day's schedule on the board so he wouldn't have to constantly be asking "what are we doing after this?" Every time I go to the doctor for reassurance that something isn't dire or life-threatening, I know that what I really want is to be told that I'm never going to get cancer or ALS or whatever, and life just doesn't work like that. A year or two ago I came across a phrase that went something like "if it can be helped, there's no sense in worrying. If it can't be helped, there's still no sense in worrying". I'd like to say it changed my life, but it didn't, not hugely, because my neuroses are entrenched and intractable. But I try to remember it.

A few weeks ago, I noticed that something (Lucy, probably) had left a mark on the cream-coloured carpet in the doorway of our bedroom. I took our Bissell Little Green Machine out of the closet. Then I realized that it was cleaning day the next day, and there were a couple of other stains on the upstairs hallway rug (Lucy definitely) and that Matt was about to go away for a week and when he's away Lucy has the distressing habit of crapping on the rug on the landing even when I let her out late and get up early to let her out again, so I probably didn't want to deep clean until after that. And I left the Green Machine on the floor of our bedroom instead of putting it away, and it stayed there for weeks as I kept missing my window and thinking I'd do it soon. Well, today I finally cleared the piles of outgrown clothes and empty shoe boxes off the landing and deep cleaned all the spots I've been meaning to clean, and put the Bissell back in the closet. I think when I closed the closet door I actually said "There!" out loud.

So. Many things are unsettled, but one or two things have been set right. For now, that will have to do.

(On the off chance that the dreary minutiae of my day didn't turn your crank, there are tortoises making love on the Queen of Mediocretia's blog. You're welcome. Or I'm sorry.)

So this is just my life now?

Went into the kids' bathroom to tidy up for cleaning today. Put away some mouthwash and moisturizer and moved a shaving kit. Found this. Because why not?

May I Have a Re-entry Permit?

A lot of things suck about being really sick and out of it for a few days. I staggered around with laundry a few times, because baseball, and Matt needed underwear to take to France, so the piles aren't as bad as they would normally be, but the back yard was supposed to be dug up and planted by now and instead it looks like Day of the Triffids meets The Lost World back there. Eve was left pretty much on her own with her giant project on Mesopotamia, although I did manage to slowly and laboriously reload a tape runner for her. The hanging baskets almost died.

Photo from Flickr by Sean O'Neill

But the worst, I find, is this creepy and unshakable sense of strangeness. Like you don't quite fit into the world any more. Like you've lost the knack of syncing your actions to the people around you, and you feel like everyone's staring if you go out, which you'd really rather not, because, weirdness.

Me, looking in the mirror: Is that really what I look like? Did I look like that before? I'm sure that wasn't there before. Was my nose always that length? Why does my mouth look so weird? Am I holding it weird? What if I...GAH, NO, THAT'S WORSE!

Eve's best friend came over twice in two weeks, (Eve went over there five times in the same time period) and both times I was locked in my room throwing up. Now composing an email to her parents assuring them that I am not a) an alcoholic or b) allergic to their child.

Also, I haven't been able to read for five days.

No wonder I don't feel like myself.