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Your life is easier than my life

12 Apr

This attitude is a pet peeve of mine. It annoys the hell out of me when I hear comments like this, whether it’s directed at me or at someone else. That other guy over there has it better because he’s got more money. She’s got it easier than me because she’s so pretty. He’s got a cushy job. She’s only got one kid.

WHATEVER.

Image from believe-toachieve.tumblr.com

EVERYBODY’s life is hard. We all take on as much as we can, and then we take on a little bit more, don’t ask me why. Even if you live the simple life, there’s not enough time in the day to do everything you want to do, and there are always outside demands. We are all struggling to find balance. We are all battling our own particular demons. We’re all fighting to stay on top of the day-to-day stuff. Even the kids. They are busy learning their own hard lessons.

Occasionally, I’ve encountered the opposite, with someone telling me she feels better about her own life because mine is so hard. Particularly when Jade was suffering countless seizures in a day, it was kind of a silver lining to know that some people might appreciate their own blessings a little more. And there are families I feel the same way about, who make me draw my girls a little closer and send up a little prayer of thanks.

I just recently had an epiphany, though.

Although I was doing a good job of reminding myself not to compare my life to anyone else’s, I was still falling into the trap.

Jade has been on the keto diet for over three years now. It’s done amazing things for her. And I am grateful. So grateful! I remember thinking, when we were in the thick of things, “If only we could make the seizures stop, life would be so much better again. Things would be easier again.”

And it’s true. I am so glad we aren’t holding our breaths all the time, waiting for the next seizure to hit. There is a lot of tension gone.

But guess what? Life isn’t easy right now. I have all sorts of new things to worry about these days. Not complaining: that’s just life.

And until this epiphany hit me, if you could read my thoughts, you’d have heard this one a lot, “Things will be so much easier when we can finally be off the keto diet.” In other words, I was looking at my future self and thinking “Her life is easier than my life.”

It’s true. There are things that the diet is preventing us from doing. Like taking Jade to Germany or to Taiwan to visit my family, for example. Or even going on extended road trips because I can’t bear the thought of all the preparation that has to be done in advance.

When keto becomes history in our daily life, I will not be sad to let it go. And life will be easier. In one sense. But I’ll bet there’ll be new things to balance and new challenges to forge through. Because that’s life.

So maybe I need to stop wishing we could be done with the ketogenic diet and just start appreciating, a little bit more, the blessings I have in my life now.

And thank God I am the capable person that I am.

The definition of good timing

9 Mar

…when your daughter, who is drinking way more than she ever has in her life (in an effort to prevent kidney stones) crawls into bed with you in the middle of the night and snuggles up, only to wake you an hour later because she peed in your bed.

…and the arm of your pajamas are soaked, so you strip her, and you strip yourself and put everything in the washing machine, and freeze a little as you dig a set of freshly-washed PJs out of the dryer.

…and you head back to the bedroom to check out just how bad your mattress is.

Then you’ll be glad you didn’t get around to changing the sheets on your bed this week. Well, that’s good timing, I guess, you might think to yourself.

Then…

…you wrestle with the heavy mattress, which has just one slightly-damp spot on it, because it really needed to be flipped and rotated, anyway.

…and you wonder where the heck your husband disappeared to as you grunt and sweat to flip the darned thing over.

…then you put fresh sheets on, and while you’re at it, change the pillowcases, too.

…and you trip all over the clothes lying about the floor as you switch from one side of the bed to the other, tucking the fitted sheet under, lining up the flat sheet, noting that it’s taking you a good 10 minutes to get it just right so that the scratchy Hudson’s Bay blanket is encased in the flat sheet so that it won’t grate your face in the night, thinking this would go so much faster if only another adult were around at the moment.

…and you finally, finally, settle back into bed, in those cool, crisp sheets, read the alarm clock (4:55), and switch off the bedside lamp.

Then…

…your husband walks in, having snuggled a very distraught girl back to peaceful sleep in her own bed.

Then you might tell him he missed all the fun of helping you change the sheets on your bed, and doesn’t he have excellent timing?

Ctrl + Alt + Delete please

3 Jan

Art by Anne Taintor. I totally borrowed this image without permission, so I'm linking to the store where you can buy these awesome sticky notes. (Click image.)

It’s one of those Murphy’s Law days, where it feels like anything that could go wrong, is going wrong.

I had a long list of stops to make today, with Halia in tow, so I wanted to be out the door by 9:30.

The van wouldn’t start because it never does when the thermometer dips below freezing. Stupid battery. So I hooked up the booster pack and then proceeded to break my fingers uninstalling Halia’s carseat from the back row for reinstallment in the middle row. Now that her cousin’s carseat is no longer in the van, Halia insisted we move her seat back to its rightful place.

After successfully moving the carseat, I tried starting the van again, in vain. I had to interrupt Michael’s client meeting to get him to boost the van from the truck.

As soon as I got the van started, it dinged at me to remind me the gas tank was close to empty.  I’d had to drive around for a few things on January 1st, when no gas stations were open, so the tank was getting down to its last fumes.  I was halfway out of the neighbourhood when I remembered the banking paperwork I had to take with me, so I drove home. Then down to the gas station. (Made it! Whew!) Where the van wouldn’t restart.

A gruff old guy was kind of enough to give me another boost (after I’d dropped my keys in the gas station garbage, fished them out again, and made a fool of myself trying to untangle the booster cables) and he even peered into the engine to tell me the alternator was working, but it looked like one cell of my battery had boiled.

Every month I have to go to the bank to take care of some business that is stuck in the dark ages and can’t be done online. I walked into the bank and was delighted to see there was no lineup.  One teller was just coming free, hurrah, and it was… oh no, it was the guy I dealt with last month who had no clue what he was doing and caused me to be in the bank for over 45 minutes.  I will say he was a bit quicker this month, but I’m sure the long line of customers that formed behind me didn’t appreciate that I was taking up two tellers after he got stumped.

Then there was the soaking of my jacket sleeve by the faucets at the library bathrooms, forgetting things at the grocery store, and the frightening cost of Nanuq’s medication refills, but the coup de grâce was when I decided, after all the other tasks were over, to let Halia have a snack in the van while I quickly ran into the pharmacy to buy her vitamins.  I left the van running this time, to keep it warm and to prevent the need for another boost, but when I got back outside, the van was locked! This never happens.  The van doors only lock when the van hits 30 kmph, or when it’s manually locked, and I sure as heck did not lock my kid into the running van.

I phoned Michael, who was on the road heading for another client meeting.  He had to turn around and go home to get the other van key for me, making him late for his meeting. Thank goodness Whitehorse is so small; I think it took only about 20 minutes for him to get there, maybe less, but I was freezing my buns off by the time he arrived.

Halia was fantastic through it all. I hope it wasn’t just because I’d promised her a chocolate-chip cookie if she kept her listening ears on all day. But you know, on a day like today, I’m not at all above bribery.

And I’m not above having a chocolate-chip cookie for myself, either.

That year-in-review thing

31 Dec

I’ve been trying to hold onto the holidays. Dishes have been languishing, laundry (mostly clean, but still) has been piling up. I’ve let a lot of things slide over the holidays: our strict daily schedule, playing music, any kind of caloric restraint, not to mention blogging, but that’s not a new thing this year, is it?  My sister and her hubby and their adorable babe have been visiting, and I’m sure my sister thinks I’m the laziest homemaker on the planet.

It’s not really possible to be on full holiday mode as a mom, of course. The mornings are still early, the meals still must be prepared. We have been eating well. And we’ve had a wonderful time visiting; talking late, playing cribbage, rummoli, and even a round of The Game of Life. Halia has been trying to get her fill of hugging and kissing her little cousin.  Michael even took Uncle Mikey bison hunting.  They just missed the bison, but they got some great stories, and we got some bison steaks at the Super A and grilled them up tonight.

In the German tradition, there are jelly donuts (Berliners) awaiting me. Nem is offering me a Boston Cream, and I’ve got to wrap up before the next round of crib starts.  Below, my traditional end-of-year summary, comprised of the first sentence of my first post of each month. I know I’ve been a hit-and-miss blogger this year, so I guess I shouldn’t be shocked that I missed the entire month of August.  I guess that’s what happens when there’s so much living to do.

January: It’s a shameful almost-secret that once upon a time, in the dark ages of the blogosphere, I started my blogging career at MSN LiveSpaces.

February: I wanted to tell you about Jade’s fabulous birthday party, but we all had such a good time that we totally crashed and burned the next day.

March: My throat is sore, I’m tired, and I’m vaguely achy in my joints.

April: I have news.

May: I just got Halia to bed.

June: There are so many awesome things going on in my life right now, but I’m spending a disproportionate amount of time feeling anxious and overwhelmed.

July: I’m in Ottawa.

August: (Gasp! I made NO blog posts in the whole month of August.)

September: I went to The Medicine Chest yesterday morning to have a prescription for Famiciclovir filled.

October: It’s noon and I’m still in pajamas.

November: Tonight is the final rehearsal for the concert I’m giving at the Old Fire Hall on Thursday.

December: It’s midnight.

It’s been a pretty great year overall, a year of big changes for me. I’m proud of myself for deciding to give up my government job (and grateful to Michael for supporting me) and for taking big steps with my music.  I’m looking forward to 2012 with lots of excitement and anticipation, and I am wishing you the same joy, with many blessings to come.  Happy New Year!

That kind of day

31 Oct

The house is a disaster.  As usual.  I had to go downtown with Halia to pick up receipts from seven restaurants at which I helped organize music for last week’s BreakOut West weekend.  But first I had to drop off some paperwork at an office, then duck into Home Hardware to get some red tape to finish off Jade’s clown shoes.  The cashier gave Halia a green sucker.  I hesitated, recalling the chocolate mousie fiasco, but I hate having to say no all the time.

I buckled and unbuckled Halia, then did it again.  And then again.  One cafe couldn’t find the receipts right away so I bought a macaroon as a treat to share with Halia while we waited.  After I got it, the server said, “Oh, it’s not vegan like I thought.  There’s dairy in it.”  Too late, I had already bought it.  Halia had to go pee (of course) so we rushed to the bathroom, me stressed out that my parking meter was going to run out.

We stopped to give a busker a twoonie and he smiled and gave Halia a bag of Cheetos.  I let her have a few before I realized they have wheat AND dairy in them.  Argh.

Back at the van, I breathed a sigh of relief that there was no ticket, as the meter had run out a couple of minutes earlier.  I plugged the meter and we ran down for a 5-minute visit to Arts Underground.  It’s the last day of my friend Jesse’s art installation there and I hadn’t had a chance to see it yet.  It was a quick visit because I still had restaurants to get to and had to run home before Jade’s school bus arrived.  I was glad I got a chance to see it, though.

I let Halia have a 30-second ride (for 10 cents!) on the mechanical horse.  She loved it.  Then it was back into the van.  But what was this?  A $25 parking ticket!  There were still 7 minutes left on the meter.  Furious, I re-buckled Halia and we drove over to City Hall to make a complaint.

The gal there couldn’t do anything, but put me on the phone with bylaw so I could talk to them.  The bylaw receptionist said she’d get the bylaw officer to call me when he got back to the office.

I had to skip the rest of the restaurants because Jade’s school bus was heading for home.  I stewed about the ticket on the way home.

At a red light, I looked at the ticket again and realized the time on it was 2:50 p.m.  2:50 p.m.?  That meant I got the parking ticket between the first time I plugged the meter in the second, in the five or so minutes that the meter had expired.  I just hadn’t seen the ticket on the window when I put the next quarter in.

The worst feeling, when you’ve been righteously angry and indignant at someone, is the realization that the only person you have to blame is yourself.  Or at least, the almost-three-year-old whose bladder needed emptying at an inopportune time.

*sigh*

I’m still waiting for the bylaw officer to phone me back.  I guess I’ll have to serve up the humble pie.  It goes well with Halloween treats, doesn’t it?

Favourite quotes

13 Jan

Thursdays totally kick my ass.  I’m at work all day (with all the keto prep done ahead of time) and Michael has to leave for band rehearsal at 6:30 which means supper has to be ready early.  And also that I put the kids to bed by myself.

Wah, wah, wah, cry me a river.  I’m not looking for sympathy here. I’m just sayin’: Thursdays are looong days.

And therefore, I don’t have enough brain power to segue gracefully into this next part, which is a small collection of quotes that I decided to pull together simply because I likes ‘em.

 

Decide that you want it more than you are afraid of it.  ~ Bill Cosby

After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music. ~ Aldous Huxley

You must do the thing you think you cannot do. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

When choosing between two evils, I always like to pick the one I never tried before. ~ Mae West

I can live for two months on a good compliment. ~ Mark Twain

 

I’ve gotta say, that Mark Twain impresses me.  I go through compliments much faster than that!

Do YOU have any favourite quotes?

Bulgy went a-walkin’

3 Jan

You get to do a lot of people-watching when you have to wait in a grocery line-up for 30 minutes.  You also get to read all the headlines on the magazines in those racks by the cash registers.  I rather enjoy reading the gossipy titles of articles I’m not that interested in, often regarding people I’ve never even heard of.  It’s the literary equivalent of a potato chip.  Some of the titles are so tantalizing, even though the contents are undoubtedly fluffier than cotton candy.

While in the interminable line-up today (WHY did I go grocery shopping on a holiday Monday?!) one headline seemed to smack me upside the head:

“GET RID OF EMBARRASSING BACK AND BELLY BULGES”

it screamed.

Guess what?  I was at a party last week and was asked by two people if I was pregnant.  (I’m not, just in case you wondered.)  Clearly, the clothes that I was wearing combined with the delicious mom-cooked supper I had eaten combined to create quite the belly bulge.  Happily, I’m comfortable enough in my own skin that I wasn’t mortified.  In fact, I was highly amused.

Okay, maybe I should exercise a bit more — that’s true for most of us.  But telling me that my totally normal-looking body should embarrass me?  Is infuriating.

There’s no real point to this little rant.  We’ve all seen this headline and its five thousand and one variants.  And I’m certainly vain enough that, yes, I do spend time on my hair and makeup (not to mention clothes and jewellery).

But, to me, this kind of headline just sounds like bullying.  It makes me want to scream right back,

“STOP MAKING MY GIRLFRIENDS FEEL BAD, JERK!”

Hmm, if only problems could be solved by screaming, I’d have the whole world fixed by now.

2010: The end-of-year (re)view

31 Dec

I’m not an ardent fan of the year-end retrospective, but I do like this little meme, where I copy and post the first sentence of the first post of each month in 2010.  It’s been fun going back through the archives and reliving some of the highlights of the year.  (The post from May made me laugh out loud — I’d forgotten about that!)

Going through the archives also made me realize it’s been so much harder to actually write.  With Hurricane Halia coming into her own, Jade taking on new activities (and generating medically-related paperwork!), and me picking up new hobbies, going back to work, and pursuing music more seriously… well, I guess it shouldn’t be surprising that posting has become spottier.

So here’s my 2010 sampler:

  • January: The day, it has come.
  • February: Jade uses a soother.
  • March: I will tell you all about my weekend soon, I promise, but today is March 1st, which marks the first day of Epilepsy Awareness Month in Canada.
  • April: Holidays can be challenging when someone in the family has food restrictions, but this Easter Sunday was one of the loveliest family days we’ve had in a long time.
  • May: I have a sore throat tonight, and I may have seriously injured my vocal cords.
  • June: Remember these?
  • July: Michael asked me the other day why I get so stressed out about making sure supper is on time right at 6 o’clock.
  • August: My Oma berated me for neglecting my bloggy duties.
  • September: Jade keeps amazing me.
  • October: Halia started biting her fingernails a couple of months ago.
  • November: Back in March, I meant to introduce you to Jesse.
  • December: A couple of months ago, Jade had a routine hearing screening at her preschool.

A few more favourite posts, just because:

  • My new sewing/upcycling hobby resulted in some fun new-again clothes for a slimmed-down me: Part I and Part 2
  • Halia imitating Dennis the Menace in: The Sunscreen Disadvantage
  • First video of Halia talking: Yaya and Me
  • Jade almost causes a kitchen fire: Siren Song
  • Performing, falling off stages, you know, yer everyday antics: It’s Not This
  • And here’s one of my favourite stories of Halia, who asked me for stars again last night: Seeing Stars

There’s so much more to tell you, but we’ve already started the last day of 2010 and I haven’t gone to bed yet for the second-last day.  So, if I don’t see you all until the New Year: “Guten Rutsch!”

The best of times, the worst of times

30 Nov

For four days now, I have skipped putting Halia down for her afternoon nap.  The first two days, she slept for 12 solid hours.  Last night she woke up once at 3 a.m. and wanted some boobing.  Tonight I’m hoping for the 12-hour miracle to repeat itself.

Now if I could just get myself to bed at a reasonable hour, I might become a productive member of society again.

No, really, I am sooo happy with my set of problems right now.  Balance is a hard thing to find.  Working, even half-time, has added a lot to my plate, so that fitting in parenting (single parenting a lot these days, with Michael on the road), keto cooking, music, advocating for Jade, blogging, and sewing are all jostling for attention, and they can’t all win.  Or else they do, but then I’m a cranky miss crankerpants to everyone around me.  Let’s not even talk about stuff like exercise because that just doesn’t happen.

But even though it is exhausting, it is good.  Jade has gone six months seizure-free. (!!!!!) Halia makes magic everywhere she goes.  What more could I ask for?

But! Yes.  It is exhausting.

I was talking to a good friend the other day; she has two grown sons just a little younger than me, and one of them had some very strict food allergies as a young child, and also required some accommodations when he was going to school.  When I talk to her, I feel she understands a lot of what I’m going through now.

“I don’t want to complain,” I said to her.  “I know plenty of people who’ve got it a lot harder than I do.”

“Yes,” she said.  “That may be.  But you can still acknowledge that your life… your situation is a lot harder than most.”

That made me pause.  Thank you, friend. Thank you for letting me feel that I am allowed, at least once in a while, to not like being exhausted.

There are lots of reasons why I don’t want to complain, lots of reasons to feel that it’s ungrateful to do so.  Everyone lives with the same reality of 24 hours, seven days a week, and the miracle of tasks that expand to fill every last square inch of time.

But maybe today I’ll try not to feel ungrateful just because I’m not glad that Jade has to be on a ketogenic diet.  I can be grateful for the miracle it has wrought without liking the daily consequences.

Maybe today I’ll acknowledge that leaving the dishes for tomorrow morning — or even tomorrow night! — might just be the best thing for me to do.

Maybe today I’ll go to bed at a reasonable hour.

(And maybe, just maybe, Halia will sleep through the night.)

Kill the beast

3 Nov

Back in March, I meant to introduce you to Jesse. 

Jesse is a friend of mine from high school.  We were good friends at the time.  He taught me how to play trombone at our evening music classes.  (Our high school in Iqaluit was so small, there was no time during the day for a regular music program, so we had to do it at night.)  At 6′ 6″ (or thereabouts), he towered over me, and could slide his trombone slide right off, which always made me giggle.  He wrote stories and poetry and we had awkward moments because he had a crush on me and I was already someone else’s girlfriend.  But he was too sweet to let that get in the way.

He was a year ahead of me at school and when I started Grade 12 (my last year of high school), I lost touch with him.  He and his mom, who was my favourite English teacher ever, had left Iqaluit over the summer.   Although I tried, I was never able to find an address for them.

Last year we reconnected through the magic that is Facebook.  I was shocked to learn that the summer after he left town, he’d started having seizures.  And he’d been living with epilepsy ever since.

So last March, which is epilepsy awareness month in Canada, I was thinking of doing a series of educational but light-hearted posts about epilepsy.  I was thinking about interviewing Jesse and writing his story here, to let you meet a real person living with what many of us call The Beast.

I’m sorry that I only thought about doing it and never got around to actually doing it.  Because today, I learned that Jesse died on Monday.

I don’t know exactly what happened, and I don’t want to add to the family’s pain by asking.  All I know is that his status message on Facebook,  posted by his mother and sister, says: “…after years of living bravely with epilepsy, Jesse is finally free.  He passed away on November first.”

When Jesse told me last year about his 16-year battle with epilepsy, he told me that he was just about at the four-year mark of having gained control.  (I will share his own words with you another day.)  He had gained enough control to pursue a career in Heritage Carpentry (which includes stuff like restoring all the fine details on old houses) and just this year started his apprenticeship.  But the seizure control started to slip.  He had a seizure in September that tumbled him down the stairs.  Or maybe his seizure control didn’t slip.  Maybe “control” for him meant “they hardly ever happen anymore”.  I don’t know.  I’m angry at myself that I didn’t ask the questions.

I can’t even put into words what I feel.  There is certainly anger.  He was just a few years older than me and his death is just so unfair.  Why do we still lose people to epilepsy?  Why are so few resources dedicated to eradicating it?  Curing it? 

My heart breaks for his mother.  He suggested in an online exchange once that his mother and I have a connection because we are both mothers of children with epilepsy.  But I feel like a fraud somehow because despite all the terrible times we’ve had with Jade’s epilepsy, having a grown son fighting seizures seems like a different thing altogether.  And I feel like a fraud because when I posted on my Facebook status that I’d lost a friend to epilepsy, I was offered condolences, and I think, oh no!  I’ve lost a friend, but his mother!  His sister!  I don’t deserve any sympathy.  I feel — not guilty, exactly, but I don’t know what word could be better… just bad and wrong that we seem to have Jade’s seizures under control (OMGtouchwood)(andpray) but Jesse’s mother has now lost her son.  His sister has lost her brother.  His baby nephew has lost his uncle.

Jesse was hard-working and he was thoughtful.  He had a goofy sense of humour.  I wish I could have seen him in person again.  So many wishes.  I hope, I hope, wherever he is, that he truly does feel free.

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