“I went for a walk and found some wild animals. Oh! Were they lost? No, I’ll take them home tomorrow.”
I believe she’s looking for a venue to have her first stand-up comedy show.
Your life is easier than my life
12 AprThis 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.
Tags: appreciation, gratitude, ketogenic diet, kids, life is hard, philosophy
This is not a post about puke
1 AprI think my dad was trying to curse me yesterday, in the first sentence of the comment he left on my post. He remarked that although, yes, I had done a post on pee, and then one about poop, I hadn’t yet done one about puke. So, just to spite him, I am not going to blog about puke.
I will tell you that I went to check on Halia last night before retiring. She was sleeping so sweetly, breathing so gently, tucked under the beautiful quilt my friend Nita made for her. I’ll tell you how I tucked her in a little more securely and leaned in to kiss her on her sweet cheek.
But I certainly won’t tell you how my nostrils filled with the sour smell of vomit, or what my hand encountered in trying to tuck her in. And I won’t mention that this appears to be the third time this week that Halia has thrown up in her sleep. The other two times, I didn’t even discover what had happened until the next day. But I won’t tell you about that.
Nanuq has been doing so much better, too. For a while, I was worried there was something seriously wrong with him, as he was throwing up so frequently. Disgusting, too, since all he eats is raw fish. But after several vet appointments and making some changes to his feeding schedule, he’s been doing really well for several weeks. It’s been such a relief not to haul out the carpet shampooer every day. (Haha! Like I actually did that every time!)
This week, we ran out of Nanuq’s fish and I tried to get some more, but the place where we get it was closed. So last night I concocted a mixture of rice and tuna (which he has tolerated fine before) and scrambled eggs (an experiment). He ate it up happily. Isn’t that a nice story?
I won’t add any sour notes to that one by telling you just how many puke puddles I found around the house this morning. It was a bit of a treasure hunt for the kids, since Jade found two and Halia found one… but you won’t want to hear about that.
I absolutely refuse to do a post about vomit.
Now please, people, don’t leave any smart-aleck remarks about snot, blood, or other bodily fluids. I think I’ve had enough, both of blogging and not blogging about these things.
And now for a poop tale
31 MarI’ve had this deep philosophical post planned out in my head for weeks now, but haven’t got round to committing it to, er, pixels. These things take time. But here’s a post about this morning, as told to my sis via Skype. Because I notice the last post I did was about pee, so of course we’ve got to up the ante. Be sure to picture it all clearly in your mind for maximum comedic effect.
So Nem and I were just chatting about summer plans, like so…
[8:08 AM] {blah, blah, blah, plan, plan, plan, plot, plot, plot}
[8:09 AM] Fawn: hang on – poo emergency
[8:09 AM] Nemmy: I keep telling him the Dempster will still be there later 
[8:09 AM] Nemmy: we’ll discuss it over breakfast… and no problem, poo comes first haha
….
[8:19 AM] Fawn: well, that was fun 
[8:20 AM] Nemmy: the poo emergency?
[8:20 AM] Fawn: yeah
[8:20 AM] Nemmy: what happened?
[8:20 AM] Nemmy: (baby just knocked the castle over… she’s such a brute… lol)
[8:20 AM] Fawn: Halia was in the bathroom crying and I asked her if she was okay
[8:20 AM] Fawn: She said, “Waahhhh, I got poo on it!”
[8:20 AM] Fawn: brb – bacon needs flipping
[8:21 AM] Fawn: Okay, so I go into the bathroom, and there’s runny yellow poop all over the floor in front of the toilet
[8:22 AM] Fawn: Halia’s upset that she didn’t make it to the toilet
[8:22 AM] Nemmy: awwww
[8:22 AM] Fawn: there was no toilet paper left on the roll
[8:22 AM] Nemmy: awwww
[8:22 AM] Fawn: (all in the toilet)
[8:22 AM] Nemmy: bahahaha
[8:22 AM] Fawn: and so she took a brand new roll out
[8:22 AM] Nemmy: wait, she put the toilet paper in the toilet???
[8:22 AM] Fawn: Yes, she tried to clean up the mess
[8:22 AM] Fawn: by herself
[8:22 AM] Fawn: and the poop was smeared everywhere
[8:23 AM] Fawn: got it all over herself, of course
[8:23 AM] Nemmy: lol
[8:23 AM] Fawn: and on the newspaper that was on the floor that I hadn’t had a chance to read yet
[8:23 AM] Fawn: (darn you, Michael!)
[8:23 AM] Nemmy: ah, the glamour of motherhood
[8:23 AM] Fawn: and the brand new roll of toilet paper was in the puddle of poop
[8:23 AM] Nemmy: lmao
[8:23 AM] Nemmy: a perfect storm
[8:23 AM] Fawn: 
[8:23 AM] Fawn: Poor Halia
[8:24 AM] Nemmy: ok, i better get baby all dressed
[8:24 AM] Fawn: K – ttyl
[8:24 AM] Nemmy: give her a hug from me
[8:24 AM] Fawn: Okay
[8:24 AM] Nemmy: loooove you
[8:24 AM] Fawn: Looooooooove you more
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?
Tags: kids, laundry, nocturnal activity, parenting, relationships
Stuff I posted elsewhere
5 MarWhew, I survived February. I wasn’t sure I would. Here’s what I’ve been up to at other places online since my last blog post.
On my music blog…
I posted about my hair. And how I got it to behave in proper 1940s fashion.
On Facebook…
(Feb 12) ”Mama, can I have a square of honeydew?”
“You mean a cube?”
“Yes. A tube.”
(Feb 15) Halia’s first day at Judith’s Day Home. She asked to go from the moment we got up and when I told her I was leaving she said she was too busy playing to hug me.
(Feb 20) Maybe there are times telling someone you’ve been hurt serves no useful purpose. Sometimes, you’ve just got to suck it up, learn the lesson, and move on. You think?
(Feb 21) Nothing like sitting down to dinner, one’s first proper meal of the day, and landing one’s tush in a puddle of apple juice.
(Feb 21) Halia just wrote her name all by herself in pink marker. 
.
(Feb 25) Well… booked the flights to Norway and from Finland in May… (!!!)
(Feb 27) Boil water for tea. Forget to make tea. Re-boil water. Forget again. Perhaps I should just stand by the kettle and focus on one task at a time? Life’s little lessons…
(Feb 28) RELIEF!! Except for one teensy detail that will have to wait until business hours tomorrow, I finally finished that gargantuan report I’ve been working on. Okay, it’s only 20 pages, but it felt huge to me.
(Feb 29) Halia (sobbing): “Mama! I hurted myself!”
Me: “Aww, Halia, you hurt yoursef?”
Halia (wailing): “The wall hitted me!!”
(Mar 2) Had leftover salmon, so made a dairy-free salmon paté. Yum!
(Mar 4) A great morning with the girls at the ski hill. Jade went up on the tow bar and skied down ALL BY HERSELF. Twice. I think that already qualifies her as a better skier than me.
(Mar 5) Finger-painting this morning. I can’t think of a better way to illustrate the difference in personalities (and ages). Jade got ONE finger paint-y, and wiped it off each time she changed colours. She painted an orderly row of smiling people. Halia got in there with both hands and mixed it all up. Then she got the bathroom counter covered in paint when she went to wash up.
And on Twitter…
(Feb 29) I like the Facebook me better than the Twitter me. The blog me is neglected. There are too many mes. Or not enough of me.
(Feb 29) Eating PB straight from the jar. Because I can.
(Feb 29) Both my girls are giggling their heads off. Best music in the world.
(Mar 4) If I follow someone on Twitter, and they follow me back… aren’t we going in circles?
