This is Not Respect

In Which

I was unreasonably proud of figuring out how to put the microwave on power three while Zarah was in the shower. Less proud of how long it took me to find the microwave. 

Zarah’s House Which is House Goals

Except that last thing, that freaks me out

Day 4

Heartbreakingly beautiful fall day to drive four hours and fifty minutes to Hamilton, arrive in the hotel parking lot at the exact same time as Zarah who was coming from a whole other city, wash my face and change clothes in ten minutes, pick up Eve and head to campus for my professor’s retirement reception (where Eve was the only current student invited), then take Eve out for dinner (with crayons). Now hanging with Zarah for the rest of the weekend. 

Day 3

 I had to take a break from de-crapifying today because my back is done - usually it's okay when I get up and gets gradually worse as the day goes on, so when it hurts when I get up it's not good. 

Anyway, have a shot of my piano, which used to have a pile of cloth masks, a dozen defunct pairs of sunglasses and a bunch of photographs piled on it.

Also, everyone saying that they want to do this, if you have kids still living at home or work full time, DO NOT EVEN TRY IT. My kids are gone and I work extremely part time and it's still really fucking difficult. Plus I'm trying to blog every day. As I said to my friend Hannah (HI HANNAH), "I just keep reminding myself that it doesn't have to get done well, it just has to get done". Of course, it doesn't even HAVE to get done. This is all self-imposed! I am in a hell of my own making! 

Okay, that's being dramatic. It's not hell. I'm starting to really enjoy the de-crapifying. For the pleasure of so much less clutter in my visual field, for the satisfaction of having places for more things and more things in their place (not "everything", it's NEVER going to be 'everything'), for all the things I'm finding that I thought I might never see again. I am a little worried that when I get back from Hamilton the impulse will have fled. I hope not. 

I should schedule posts for when I’m away this weekend. Or just post a weird selection of pictures on the fly and have you make of them what you will,

A is for Angus

 Because well, duh. My Alpha baby (who is SO not an Alpha male, which thank all the gods), the one who made me a mom. 

I never try to write dedicated posts about my kids because I suck at them. I am bad at sentimentality (ask my husband), and of course everyone thinks their kids are special and wonderful. So I'll just tell you some things about him.

He is kind. When he was two years old he would get me a pillow for my back when I sat down on the floor to play with him. When he started playing hockey, the first time he knocked a kid down, he skated over and tried to help him up (in all fairness, he did get over this impulse quickly). 

He is witty. At three-thirty or so, I was usually in the kitchen when I heard the front door open, and I would always yell "which kid" because they got home at slightly different times. Once he yelled back "the slightly dumber somewhat more athletic one". I texted to show him I got a shirt with baseball stuff on it once and said 'I got a new shirt' but there was a lag before the picture posted and he replied 'I would hope so, once in a while'. 

He is smart. In grade ten he got the highest mark in geography, which resulted in him getting to meet MICHAEL PALIN, which was of course wasted on him and he didn't even mention it until we saw it in the community paper. He graduated from high school and university with top honours while playing a lot of baseball (although there were kids who did hockey AND baseball, and I don't know how that is even possible with anyone in the family keeping any degree of insanity - I remember one playoff baseball game where some kids would slide into home and keep running and land in the backseat of the family car to be driven at breakneck speed to hockey tryouts). 

He is humble, sometimes annoyingly so. He led his baseball team to the Little League World Series. He was chosen to attend the Man Up city workshop, an initiative aimed at combating toxic masculinity, and the letter we got specifically said it was because he was a leader in his school community. When I met one of Eve's friends and he found out who her brother was, he looked at me in awe and said 'you gave birth to ANGUS?' And then once when Matt was telling him that he could do something because of his leadership qualities Angus said 'Dad, you're crazy - no one sees me as a leader'. Dork.

He is a dope. Matt texted him a job opening with the Toronto Blue Jays and Angus said "wow, looks right up my alley. How the heck did you find it?" Matt said "I googled MLB jobs". (I just realized I am using quotation marks and inverted commas inconsistently and with no rhyme or reason. I'm too lazy to go back and fix it). There was the time he showed up to have lunch with us at the hotel the day before his graduation and realized he was too hungover to come to lunch so had a nap in our hotel room instead. And then started the gathering that night with a shot of limoncello. 

This was my Facebook status update when Angus left for school after Christmas holidays his first year away at school: "Matt and I took a hands-off approach to Angus getting his shit together to go back today (he got picked up by a teammate fairly early this morning). A hands-off you're-old-enough we-trust-you (even though you had friends over until midnight) approach... This was a mistake." (He left an immense pile of stuff behind, including a glove and two bats. While returning to the school he SPECIFICALLY WENT TO TO PLAY BASEBALL).

And, well, this.

He is a pretty okay dude to have around (ish. In a 'far away being independent and forging his own path' kind of way) and I love him immensely.

I'm Not Ready

 I never am, am I? Let's take a look at past November 1st posts. Oh look, last November 1st my mood was "unremittingly hideous". Two years ago I just posted a picture of a bare, frozen shrub. I believe the words "mired in suckitude" have been uttered. 

Should I stop trying to make NaBloPoMo happen? Is it never going to happen? (Eve and I recently saw the Mean Girls musical). When I Google it, it still comes up as a "month long writing exercise" that occurs each November. Well, I always did sort of torture the actual definition of exercise, so why should blogging be any different?

Maybe I shouldn't be all defeatist. Maybe it will be awesome. After all, I took Lucy out for a walk today fully expecting to be rained on, and instead the sun came out and made the path to our park look like all magical and shit. 

Truthfully, I'm feeling pretty good today. I am still engaged in the nearly full-time pursuit of de-crapifying the house, and I have come to a place in the process I feel like I've never been before, where I actually can see the light at the end of the tunnel and I still have time before guests arrive or my children come home or there's a holiday I have to prepare for, so I don't have to chuck the remaining piles into the closet or storage space before I'm ready to deal with them.

I'm heading to Hamilton for my professor's retirement reception on the week-end, which will probably be a good forced break, because this is a back-breaking pursuit and I'm at the point where I keep telling myself to sit down for ten minutes but instead I keep compulsively doing one more thing that leads to ten more things, and then it's 3 a.m. and I can't straighten up. My husband needs to come home from California and make me go to bed on time.

I also had kids in one of my libraries for the first time this year yesterday - there were major class re-organizations going on and we couldn't make a schedule until they were finished. I had classes in my other library, and although we cleared out and sorted a whole roomful of books (my personal leitmotif right now, I guess) and got a lot of cataloguing done, I was a bit weary of being alone. The kids were very excited to be coming in finally, which made me very happy.

Our friends' annual Halloween party was on Saturday. Not only were my kids far away, but this year my husband was also absent, and I told our family group text that it was kind of bullshit that I had to tape myself into the gift bag ALL BY MYSELF. I felt tired and a little weird (which is my usual state, to be perfectly honest), but it was still fun, although PSA: gift bags don't breathe at all. Also, once I was in it I couldn't bend over at all - I went to get Lucy's kong from her bed to fill with peanut butter and nope - fortunately there was one on the edge of the sink. I knocked a key onto the floor while getting my car keys out and it had to stay there until I got home. The actual driving? Let's not talk about it - fortunately my friends live twenty seconds away.

I'm wondering if this year I should try a theme or structure rather than just posting randomly. Something alphabetical or something. But fiddle-dee-dee, I'll think about it tomorrow.