I still kind of hate The Diary of a Wimpy Kid though.

Anyone else exhausted this week? I would blame it on the time change but I was gently chided by a few people – including my husband, for whom time change is meaningless and unimportant, apparently, despite the fact that it turns his wife into a rage-against-the-machine crusader – for complaining too much about said time change. All right then, I will blame it on the fact that I wake up at 4:30 am, which is really 3:30 am by last week’s standards. I will also blame it on the fact that the children are now giggly and full of mirth and hilarity at 9:00 pm and are having trouble falling asleep and then are strangely and uncharacteristically snappy with one another all day, and have been since the time change. I am sure these are unrelated phenomena. I admit, my rage against this outworn and useless concept is completely impotent and futile, and yet rage and complain I continue to do. Some people complain about government policies, some people complain about attitudes towards breast feeding and home births, still others complain about Lululemon, the education system, parking fees, animal rights, rescue dogs, and icy walkways. I COMPLAIN ABOUT TIME CHANGE.

I’m so tired. The battery died in the clock downstairs, where my office is, and I keep forgetting to change it. The clock is stuck at 10:37, and as a creature of habit I continue to look at it every five minutes throughout the day. Each time I am startled anew that it says 10:37, and then remind myself that it is incorrect. But then yesterday morning it actually WAS 10:37 when I looked at the clock, and I was completely disoriented for a while.

Every year for Mother’s Day my mom and I go together to get pedicures at our favourite spa, and every year I forget that I need to book early or the whole month of May is completely reserved and we end up getting our Mother’s Day pedicures in June. Not this year! I remembered to book early – although Mother’s Day weekend is completely full, I did reserve us a time in May. While I had the receptionist on the phone, I thought to confirm my wax appointment for next week. It was all settled. “Thank you!” I said cheerfully, “See you next Tuesday!” I hung up the phone, realized what I had said, and wondered what the receptionist’s reaction was, if any.

I just looked at the clock again. I really need to change the battery.

Time change did coincide with some lovely weather: suddenly the frigid air has disappeared and the snow is all melting into giant, lakelike puddles and rivers. I take Barkley for a walk and when we return the top half of him is huge and fluffy, and the bottom half is bedraggled and soggy. The water runs like a miniature river down the pathway at the offleash, and in the mornings it’s frozen and treacherous. I’m leaving the house wearing my lightweight winter coat and lined rain boots, and it feels like a miracle.

It feels like the days when the kids were little and the weather would finally break and I could take them outside. We would walk around the block, the boys wearing rubber boots and warm layers, and they would puddle jump. After a winter of being inside, it felt like a miracle to be out and walking around; those long endless days that ended.

That was what we would do for fun, on an early spring afternoon. And now I have these big little kids who greet me after school and then rush away into the slushy school field to play some obscure game featuring battlefields and snakes, who get just as soaked as when they were small but the difference is now I don’t have to carry them home, their wet boots leaving mud on my jeans. Now I have these guys who argue about the correct word for a seven-sided shape, who talk incessantly about Minecraft at the dinner table, who ask me serious questions about being popular and what is my favourite gemstone, who want to be black belts and grow up and make lots of money to buy a flashier car than the one their dad drives, but who still want me to read to them from The Diary of a Wimpy kid at bedtime. They still want me to give them brief, man-like hugs before they head to their line-ups in the morning, and they fist-bump me to say goodbye. It breaks my heart just the tiniest bit, but it also makes my heart grow when I see what they’re growing up to be. And when I’m tired, so tired like this, they tell me to take it easy, maybe go to bed early, and not worry about them, they’re fine. They really are.