Fawnahareo’s Place

I got a neighbour to come over for an hour tonight so that I could go to Canadian Tire and Wal-Mart.  Sadly, Wal-Mart had to suffice because the Canadian Tire garden centre (the main object of my outing) had closed for the evening.  I picked up a few things at Wal-Mart and just managed not to be tempted into getting any food at the McDonald’s there.  Quite a feat considering it was 9:00 p.m. and I hadn’t eaten supper yet.

I came home and put some leftover pasta in the microwave.  Then it sat there for a good 15 minutes while I finished reading the blogs in my feed reader.  I had plans to change my Facebook status to read: “Fawn Fritzen must like eating all her food cold, since she never gets it out of the microwave when it’s ready.”

Well, I discovered that it was still plenty hot.  I got my bowl, brought it back to the office, and sat down sideways on the love seat where my laptop currently resides.  I also promptly slopped the bowl sideways and the contents of the bowl — damned gravity! — slopped all over my legs and feet.

Talk about an idiotic way to injure yourself.  The skin on my left foot is still tingling from the pain.

Then I had the fun of cleaning up all that pasta (Nanuq agreeably helped), including getting all the sauce out from between the cushions.  Which are permanantly fixed to the loveseat.

At least they’re leather.

Michael has been travelling a lot, and his travel schedule is about to get busier.  Before the end of July, he’s planning to go to Ross River, Old Crow (again), Beaver Creek, and Trout Lake, NWT, for about a week each time.

I hate it when he goes out of town.

Michael being out of town means having to find the time to walk the dog — usually with kids in tow — for an hour every day.  (Except, of course, when there’s a small child on the walk, the usual distance one can cover in an hour is drastically reduced, which is no good for the dog.)  It means not eating balanced meals because it’s too much work to bother with cooking and too much to think about after having made special food for Jade and special food for Halia.  It means trying to get through the most challenging time of day — bedtime — either with a baby crying of exhaustion or a suddenly-emotionally-needy young child crying about being left alone for longer than five minutes.  It means facing the night’s wake-up calls alone and with little hope for a nap the next day.  And half the time it means having no car, which in Whitehorse is really not a good thing. 

I know there are things I could do to make life easier: batch-cooking Halia’s food, preparing Jade’s keto meals and snacks the evening before, making sure I wash the dishes so the kitchen doesn’t become a disaster, making a meal plan for myself, giving up on staying abreast of my online life.  I also know that at least weekdays I have support, with Amanda being there, which is certainly better than millions of single parents out there who do this gig full time with nary the prospect of a break.  And all this travel is good for our finances, of course. 

And, the truth is, I’m really very proud of Michael for being so sought-after; he is in demand because he does good work, and he’s genuinely interested, which allows him to build great relationships with his clients.

But I still hate the travel.  I’m torn between “I’m putting my foot down, this really doesn’t work for me, there’s gotta be another way” and “suck it up, sister, and stop being so whiny and so selfish”.

Michael doesn’t like to hear me complain about bemoan his schedule because he says it’s hard enough to be away without my saying things to make him feel guilty.  When he was in Old Crow, he chided me for Skyping to him “Wish you were here”. But I draw the line at pretending I don’t mind at all.

I guess I should at least be thankful that I’m on maternity leave.  Because, in my experience, the only thing more exhausting than being a single stay-at-home parent is being a single parent with an 8-hour-a-day job.  My hat goes off to all the single moms and dads out there.  Talk about everyday heroes.

(But I still hate it.)

Last night I was working in the home office and some really obnoxious jerk kept gunning his engine every 10 to 15 minutes over the course of an hour.  I assumed it was some punk on a 4-wheeler whooping it up in the greenbelt behind the house, but around midnight, I opened my front door to see a black truck stop at the end of our road, then FLOOR the accelerator, leaving a wake of noise pollution thick enough for me to choke on.  (Though possibly that was indignation.) 

I live in a very small residential neighbourhood and the road is barely two lanes.  That kind of driving and that kind of noise?  Dangerous.  And damned aggravating.

I reached for the phone and dialled 911.  It had rung once when I heard Jade through the monitor, having been woken up by the particularly violent blast of noise while I’d had the door open.  Knowing that she would work herself into a frenzy during the time it took me to make the complaint, I hung up, with the intention of calling  again after getting Jade back to sleep.  A frenzy at midnight is not a good thing for Jade to have, not if we are trying to eliminate seizures.

I went down to her room and she wanted me to sleep with her.  I told her I could only stay for a minute, and that satisfied her.  As we lay there, I heard the phone ring.

“I bet that’s the emergency dispatcher,” I thought, knowing that emergency services can tell what phone number called in.  I listened hard, but didn’t hear anyone leaving a message.

As soon as I knew Jade would stay calm and go back to sleep, I went back to the kitchen, which, by the way, was a total and complete mess from my single-parenting (non) efforts over the weekend.  By now it was about 12:20 and I realized I still had to prepare Jade’s breakfast before I could go to bed.  The idiot driver hadn’t come around again, so I figured he was done for the night.  With the distraction of Jade’s keto meal prep, I forgot about my 911 hangup.

A few minutes later, there was an authoritative knocking at the door.  I glanced out the window and saw a white sedan, so I wasn’t exactly surprised when I opened the door and found an RCMP officer standing there.  Oops.

911 hangups are automatically treated as distress calls, so the officer had to come in and check all the rooms to make sure nothing bad was happening.  (He was very good about being quiet so as not to wake the sleeping girls.)  I’m grateful that the police would take the call seriously, though I felt bad about wasting his time.

But what’s more, I am so embarrassed that he saw my house looking like that.