Category Archives: Black clouds in my brain

It’s Festivus Eve! Grievance time!

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All this Christmas sentiment is getting to me, I thought.  Two nights ago, I became increasingly irritable throughout the evening; everything was getting under my skin.  My husband was, I thought, an unbearable asshole and the kids were insane, obnoxious, and loud.  I crabbed around the house then said, at 7:45, that I was going to bed, much to the relief of everyone in my house.  I crawled into bed, only to tell my husband that I must be getting sick, since I was so tired and achy and sad.  My husband thought for a minute, then asked if it was possible I was getting my period.  Hey!  Suddenly everything made sense!

Pre-Christmas sentimentality plus upcoming ladies’ holidays equals a supremely irritable, weepy, emotional wreck.
I spent yesterday morning listening to White Wine in the Sun and Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas on repeat, and crying.  They’ll be drinking white wine in the sun…I sang along, chokingly, tears running down my face as I chopped vegetables.  Mercifully my fingers are all still intact.  This is not unlike when I was 14 and would be horribly depressed about the awfulness of life in junior high, and then sit in my dark room listening to Leonard Cohen, or Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here.  Cathartic?  Possibly.  Helpful?  No.

Fortunately my girlfriends suggested a nice long walk with our dogs in the afternoon, with the sun shining and the blue sky so lovely against the snow.  That, along with a peppermint Lindor, lifted me right out of my weepy lunacy.
Also somewhat cheering is the sight out my front window.  My single male neighbour seems to be exercising his artistic side by making snow sculptures:
Look closely.  The female snowman has giant snow breasts.  And even though my neighbour lives alone and possibly always will, the sight of this snowman couple, with the giant breasts and the coffee cup, makes me smile.  Actually, on another level it’s a bit depressing, but let’s just gloss over that for now.  A snow couple!  Happy!  Happy thoughts!  Let your heart be light….
Here we are on the eve of Festivus!  Festivus for the rest of us.  And in the spirit of Festivus, I shall air my current grievance – and no, it has nothing to do with the idea that maybe that snowwoman has had some work done.  It is that I was watching the news (or “news”) on Monday morning, and the caption for one of the breaking news stories was “Kim John Il Dead”.  JOHN.  Kim JOHN Il.  Global Calgary, try proof reading.  It’s awesome.  I expect better from you; you aren’t Breakfast Television. 
In general, spelling and grammatical errors are a grievance to me.  We all make the occasional mistake, but generally, I feel all HULK SMASH when words are used incorrectly or misspelled.  Especially if those words are in a Christmas newsletter.  It’s not spelled HOLLIDAY, extended family member who shall remain anonymous.  And it’s “oops”, not “opps”.  And punctuation is there for a reason! 
Time for some calming ujjayi breaths, I think.  But tell me, in the spirit of Festivus, do you have any grievances to air? 

Struggling

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For his birthday, my sister-in-law and brother gave Jake a number of easy-reader books, some featuring his new favourite character, Finn McMissile.  Jake picked them up and read them to me, only needing help on a few of the words.  What a smart little boy, I thought. 

He is a smart boy.  He can read and spell things phonetically and he has exceptional aptitude for numbers and patterns.  He has an incredible imagination, he builds interesting Lego structures and he can make up elaborate stories and scenarios.  He is very bright.

But he doesn’t think so.

He has trouble with his printing and his fine motor skills – his printing is very neat and accurate, but it is difficult for him and takes a great deal of effort.  He has seen occupational therapists and he has a tutor; he has hyper flexible joints and so pencil control is difficult.  I don’t know if you have had a child in Grade One, but the curriculum is very heavy on printing, colouring, and drawing. 

The first couple weeks of school have been fine; I’ve expected Jake to be more tired than he is.  I’ve expected him to have difficulty adjusting to the new routines, but he hasn’t.  But it’s coming out in different ways, I’m finding, it’s coming out as anxiety about doing well at school.  He seems to feel that if he cannot do something perfectly, the very first time, then he is not good at that thing and he never will be.

It’s very frustrating.  Even more frustrating is that I am kind of the same way.  I was a very anxious child; I needed to be perfect at everything I did, I bit my nails to the quick for two decades, I had problems sleeping,  I was constantly worried that some disaster would befall – maybe the house would burn down while I was in bed, maybe ferocious animals would escape from the zoo and eat me alive, maybe every one of my friends would move away and I would have no one to talk to.

I also remember erasing all my work and starting over because it didn’t look quite right.  I remember that feeling and I think about Jake feeling that way and it makes me feel ill.

When our children struggle in the same exact way we struggled, we have the tendency to forget important points: that struggles are character building, that struggles make us who we are, that struggles are part of life.  What I need to do is allow Jake to struggle – with help and support, of course, always with encouragement – but what I want to do is erase his struggles altogether. 

Don’t it make my brown eyes bluuuuueeee.

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So I’ve been blue, due to a number of factors, the most pressing being disappointment over not being offered a writing contract that I had my heart set on.  I’ve been in mourning about it, wallowing and eating all manner of bad things, and reading my most favourite comfort book, Diary of a Provincial Lady.  That book never fails to cheer me up.  It’s like chocolate cake and macaroni and cheese for the mind.  It is possibly the wittiest book ever written, and contains such gems as:

Move about after dinner, and meet acquaintance whose name I have forgotten, but connect with literature.  I ask if he has published anything lately.  He says that his work is not, and never can be, for publication.  Thought passes through my mind to the effect that this attitude might with advantage be adopted by many others.

Right?  Mark said “I’m sorry you’re sad you can’t write for those people.  But you can still write at home!  On your computer!”  True. 

Do you have a comfort book?  I once dated a guy who had a comfort movie.  Whenever he was feeling ill or down, he would watch Rudy.  The thought of it makes me snicker, and not in the kindest way.  Remember the scene – if you ever had the misfortune to watch said film – when all the players brought their jerseys to the coach.  “It’s for Rudy, Coach.” 

It just occurred to me: maybe I’m like Rudy.  I do have a lot of heart.  That’s depressing.

It also occurs to me that perhaps I just need an excuse, at this time of year, to have an emotional breakdown.  Remember last year?  When I had a complete breakdown at the fact that my printer wasn’t working and ended up sobbing, on the phone for hours with the Dell representative who kept speaking in soothing tones and asking if maybe I should get myself a drink of water and not to worry, he was going to to take care of everything?  I’m a mental case.

Not helping matters is the fact that we are all a tiny bit sick.  Nothing full blown, nothing major, but the boys both woke up Friday morning with slight runny noses.  Two things: a) that was fast, normally the first cold of the year occurs within the second week of school, not the second day, and b) five years old is NOT too young for a man-cold.  Jake became completely indignant that he was going to go to school, despite a tiny sniffle and slightly watery eyes.  “I can’t BELIEVE this,” he said, “This is the SECOND TIME I’ve gone to school like this!”  I related this amusing anecdote to my husband but ended up having to explain the concept of the man-cold to him, which was somewhat awkward.  I tried to make the explanation as general as possible.

And how was the first day of school?  It was excellent.  Both boys are, as anticipated, in the same class at school.  The benefits of this arrangement far outweigh the negatives, not the least of which is that I don’t have to be room parent for two separate classrooms and, with any luck, I will only receive ONE copy of all the notices that come home from school.  Also the boys are ecstatic to be together, and their teacher is fabulous, one in a million.

On the way home from dropping the boys at school, I saw a woman with a very small boy, standing on the sidewalk watching a wood chipper at work.  That brought me back, intensely.  I don’t know how many hours I spent watching various large machinery at work, boys in tow.  I don’t know how many times I would take them outside to watch the garbage truck pick up the trash, or watch sidewalk repairs, or to the nearby construction site where a large office building was being built.  “Diggies!  Diggies!  Happy!  Happy!” one-year-old Jake would say from the stroller, clapping his hands.  A gas station in our neighbourhood was demolished, and believe me, I spent days watching the machinery tear down the buildings and dig out the contaminated soil.  It got so that the crew would wave when they saw the three of us walking up the street.  My jeans would be caked with mud from carrying Jake, his muddy rubber boots bumping against my thighs.  I would be tired, so tired, but would stand there with my fascinated boys, daydreaming about other things.  And now we’re in a whole new chapter.

  

“What grade are you guys in?”

Friday the 13th, and Privilege Problems

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I just realized, now, that it is Friday the 13th!  Maybe that explains things, and by things I mean my state of crossness and irritability, although I really think that my attitude is more likely attributed to my lack of sleep and excessive worry due to my son having pneumonia, rather than the date.  I have been extremely irritable and plagued with what I refer to as Privilege Problems.  Don’t worry!  I’m not about to complain that my personal chef has been using just too much asiago, or that my housekeeper has been cleaning the bathroom so frequently that she is going through an excessive amount of cleanser, or that my stylist keeps putting me in Michael Kors, when I just want vintage, dammit!  I just mean that I have been having problems that are not actually problems, but are instead irritants that seem exceedingly important, but really are not.
Nicole’s List of Not-Really-Problems
1)      It is two weeks until my next scheduled hair appointment, and yet my hair looks and feels like straw.  Orange straw.  I have an emergency box of temporary hair colour in my bathroom cupboard but can I actually use it with only two weeks to go until my appointment?  I don’t know.  I can’t decide.  I am going to see my in-laws next week, and I don’t really want to see them with straw-like, orange hair, but is it silly and/or bad for one’s hair to apply temporary colour two weeks before permanent colour?  I JUST DON’T KNOW.  I could dither about this all day long, but fortunately I have other things to think about.  Such as avoiding breakouts prior to next week. 
2)      A few weeks ago my husband had the snow tires taken off the car, and today he asked if I would take it in to get the tires retorqued.  This was completely unreasonable, given that, other than filling it with gas, car issues are HIS department.  I do not deal well with car issues, even ones as innocuous as getting the tires retorqued.  I have been known to burst into tears when the “washer fluid low” light comes on.  I cannot, and have never been able to open the hood on my car.  I did take the car in but felt tremendously resentful for the entire day.
3)      My kids are going to be in the same class next year.  This actually seems like it might be a real problem.  Due to the school board’s budget cuts, the class that Mark was supposed to be in was eliminated, and instead they are going to be together in a Grade 1-2 split class.  My options are to a) suck it up, b) place Jake in the Montessori Grade 1 class (our school has a Montessori stream along with the regular program), or c) switch schools.  Neither b nor c seem like viable options to me, so I guess I’m going with suck it up, buttercup.
To counteract my irritability, I am going to list off all of the happy things from the past couple of days.
Nicole’s List of Happy Things, Complete With Pictures
1)      I planted a few very hardy plants!  They look pretty and it was so lovely to dig in the dirt again after such a long, long winter.
Does it look like Mark is saying “That’s what she said?”  Or is it just me?
Flowers!
This is what happens when I ask them to look at me and smile.  It does not go well.
2)      The new dog groomer did a great job on Barkley, and was less expensive than our old groomer.  The consult wasn’t even something weird, like I had imagined, although on the topic of the dog’s face, the groomer asked if I would like for him to have a moustache.  I laughed, but realized quickly that this was not a joke.  Um, no thanks.
3)      Mark is coughing much less, thanks to the miracle that is antibiotics.  I may – MAY – even get some sleep tonight.  Then I will surely be less bitchy and irritable.  Surely.

Cheerful thoughts for a crappy weekend

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It has been a dull, dreary weekend.  It started for me at 6:20 am on Saturday when Mark woke me up with the words no one likes to hear, “Mom, I feel like I’m going to barf.”  Fortunately no barfing ensued, but unfortunately he spent the weekend feverish, lethargic, and without an appetite.  Then the snow continued to fall, the endless snow in this endless winter.  I feel like Laura Ingalls in The Long Winter but without the actual hardships; no one is starving, freezing to death, or spending days either grinding wheat to make bread or twisting hay into fuel to keep warm.  I’m actually wondering if the snow will never stop.  Maybe a woolly mammoth will take up residence in my yard.  That would be interesting, to say the least. 
So I spent much of the weekend monitoring Mark’s temperature, staring sadly at the grey sky and masses of snow and obsessively refreshing the online weather forecast, and wallowing around nursing hurt feelings from perceived slights by a variety of sources.  Poor me!  It was like a little black cloud was following me around, and I spent many hours in a state of gloom.  When I feel gloomy like this, there are a few ways for me to turn things around: wine, yummy food, and thinking of cheering things. 
Here are the cheering things from this weekend:
1)      Yesterday, while I was getting my roots done in the salon, the perky, very young new shampoo girl chatted with me about her weekend plans.  She was telling me that she was going to go dancing that evening, and then proceeded to ask me, startlingly, if I ever went to her favourite nightclub.  When I responded, she exclaimed “Why not?  It’s so fun and they play GREAT dance music!”  I refrained from mentioning that the last time I “went dancing” was the last time bodysuits and high-waisted coloured jeans were in style; likely I was wearing those with my Rachel haircut, drinking $3 triple vodka slimes.  Probably the dance music was along the lines of “I Like To Move It (Move It)” and “What Is Love (Baby Don’t Hurt Me)”.  She proceeded to discuss the pros and cons of clubbing: on the one hand, if you get there before ten o’clock you avoid the lineups, on the other hand, if you go that early then the dance floor is dead.  Just completely dead.  I had an image of me completely asleep in a corner by the time the club started shaking; besides which I have no idea what people actually wear to clubs anymore.  Maybe bodysuits and high-waisted coloured jeans are actually back in style.  Nonetheless, I did appreciate her high-energy chatter even if I felt like I was ninety years old.  What do the kids like to do on Saturday nights nowadays?  As it was, my husband and I watched The 40 Year Old Virgin, which never fails to make me laugh.  “Now you let your seed blossom into a plant.  Then you fuck the plant.”  Good times.
2)      My husband was watching golf this weekend, and the announcer said “I’ve really been impressed by the way he stroked it.”  I’m sure Clarence Carter was very pleased.  Ah, there’s nothing like sports related unintended sexual innuendo.  Of course there’s curling – “Hurry!  Hard!  Hard! HAAAARRRRRRRDDDD!  WHOA.  Whooooaaaa.” – and football – “Now that’s some really good penetration” – but golf, I find, is the most amusing.  On a non-sports-related front, a friend mentioned that he finds the new “chip” credit cards entertaining – “Just go ahead and stick it in the bottom”. 
3)      A friend of mine wrote an article about undergarments, specifically shapewear, and just casually mentioned that nothing gets between Oprah and her Spanx.  That image is alarming, to say the least, but in the cover photo of this month’s O Magazine, you can really tell that it’s true!  Ewww!
4)      It’s my birthday in four days!  I can hardly believe it because a) it’s really really cold, and b) I missed about a week, mentally, due to my surgery so I keep thinking it’s only March.  No.  It’s BIRTHDAY TIME!  I need to find myself a tiara and dust off my “IT’S MY BIRTHDAY” sandwich board.  As an early gift, my husband made me a mixed CD – a mix tape!  Squee! – and it’s chock full of my favourite types of music, including, but not limited to, the Tina and Ike version of Proud Mary and the song Baby Come Back.  You can blame it ALL ON ME.  I was wrong, and I just can’t live WITHOUT YOU! 
And now you can blame me for putting that song in your head.  Tell me some cheering things, come on, tell me something good!

The Apocalypse? Or PMS?

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Yesterday I was so blue and everything seemed bleak and grim: my legs ache and hurt constantly, there are unspeakable tragedies all over the world, I need to do the soccer scheduling, I have to write an article for the community newsletter, the sky is grey, it’s been snowing for five days, it’s cold and damp and I have to wait outside for 30 minutes between the times that my children finish school at lunchtime, after which I can’t get warm or if I do I have to leave to stand outside again to pick up Mark after school, I stepped in dog poop while cleaning up dog poop, I have surgery next week and so much to do before then and it’s March break starting Monday, the dog stinks, what if I turn into a weirdo mother-in-law and my children become estranged to me in their adulthood, human atrocities do not seem to warrant international intervention unless such atrocities occur in an oil-producing nations, there is going to be an election and I don’t want one, I have to go to Costco, my driver’s license is about to expire and the province did not send me a renewal notice, which is the second time something like this has happened, which makes me believe that it was delivered to someone else and they didn’t bother to drop it at my house, despite the fact that I always, always drop off my neighbour’s misdelivered mail no matter how unimportant it looks.
Everything seemed overwhelming and glum.  I took extra Vitamin D tablets, made my favourite dinner – much to the disappointment of all other family members who do not share my affinity for Greek salad and pita bread – drank some wine and ate a piece of chocolate birthday cake, and then the sun came out for five minutes and I felt a little better. 

All those sad things are still sad today – except for the driver’s license part, which I renewed this morning thanks to the very kind man I spoke with on the government hotline who tipped me off that rates are going up effective April 1st – but I realized something: you know when you feel hopeless and depressed and loathing and like nothing you do even MATTERS, and ew, you have dog poop on your boot, and everything is so overwhelmingly sad but then you look at a calendar and do some back counting and then a lightbulb goes on and you realize – you REALIZE – that there is a reason, a very hormonal reason that you feel that way, and then you know you’re going to feel better soon?  Yes, that.

So I feel slightly more in control of things this morning.  Yes, I have no control over terrible things in the world but I can donate to relief efforts.  Yes, it’s cold and horrible but maybe it will stop snowing soon and March break means I do not have to do the pickups and dropoffs in the freezing cold.  Yes, my legs are constantly aching and swollen but maybe they won’t be in three weeks’ time.  Yes, I have to go to Costco but at least I can get one of those giant logs of goat cheese for five dollars.

I don’t like being sad.  That’s probably the most inane sentence ever uttered but it’s true.  My husband and I were talking the other night about how we used to like adventure travel and how I actually used to have a backpack to put my clothes in and how there were hundreds of places I wanted to experience.  Now, however, I said, looking out the window at the blowing snow “I don’t want to go anywhere cold.  Or anywhere that makes me sad.  I want to go where there’s nice fruit and it would be nice if we could go somewhere I can keep up with my yoga practice.”  My husband looked at me for a minute while I listed off all of my travel requirements then offered, “So you only ever want to go to Hawaii?”

Hawaii would be lovely, it’s true – who wouldn’t want to have a pretty drink with an umbrella in it and get to make “Getting Lei’d” jokes? – but even lovelier was Jake, climbing onto my lap, saying that he wished my operation was tomorrow so I could feel better right away, and if I needed anything he would get it, unless he couldn’t reach it in which case I may have to help him.  And I do feel better.  It’s Friday after all, I have a great yoga workshop to attend this weekend, I have an episode of Parks and Recreation to watch tonight, and Cadbury Mini-Eggs were on special at the grocery store. 

How about you?  Any plans for the weekend? xo

Screw you, Daylight Savings. Screw you.

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Edited to add: I just discovered that today is Pi Day!  I didn’t even know Pi Day existed, but the fact of its existence has made me so suddenly happy that I almost deleted this post.  Almost.  But now I feel like dancing around – PI DAY!  Please, a note of sympathy for my poor husband, as he has been listening to me rage about Daylight Savings; now he will have to celebrate Pi Day with me.  Hooray for Pi Day!

Here’s a sign of spring: yesterday I was walking the dog and saw, despite the fact that there are snowbanks everywhere and it was only 8 degrees, two men wearing shorts.  There is a special breed of Calgarian who just love to don their shorts the second the snow starts melting, which is bizarre to me but who am I to judge?  I wear shorts exactly never.  Let your freak flag fly, fellows.  Enjoy your shorts.

It’s also time for my semi-annual diatribe against Daylight Savings Time.  How I hate it.  Hate doesn’t even fully describe it; Daylight Savings Time turns me into a red-hot-rage-against-the-machine-bitch.  As you know, I’m not a violent person by nature, I’m all cheery and ahimsa, but I am telling you, people, time change makes me feel, as the beautiful and talented Allison says, all stabby. 
And don’t get me started on the amazing reasons for time change because there ARE no good reasons for time change.  Oh, it’s light late in the evening?  Fuck you.  I wake up at 4:55 a.m. and I like going to bed when it is dark.  No one needs the sun setting at 10:00 p.m.  NO ONE.  And the children, my god, won’t someone please think of the children?  We are all totally screwed up and crabby. 
Oh, but we get the hour back in the fall!  Do we?  Do we now?  Here’s what happens in the fall: the children wake up at their normal time, which is now one hour EARLIER than before, and not only is that excruciating from a psychological standpoint, but it also means that by dinnertime they are falling apart with tiredness, and can barely stay awake until bedtime, and then they are sleep deprived assholes.  In the spring, the children wake up at their normal time, which is now one hour LATER than before, so when it is bedtime they are not tired and also there is bright fucking sunshine, so they fall asleep later and are exhausted when you wake them up for school.  Then, since they are exhausted they are falling apart and crabby by dinnertime and they have turned into sleep deprived assholes.  You see?  No change.  Just a whole lot of crabby children and parents.  And, since it takes several days to fully adapt to a change in time, it is almost a week of crabbiness.  STOP THE MADNESS.
Let me tell you something, people, Saskatchewan has it right.  I know, I know, insert your smartass Rider Pride/ dog ran away/ paint drying/ pass the freaking wheat comments here, but they are leaders in this country with regards to time change.  We could all take a lesson from Saskatchewan.  And the next time someone erroneously tells me that we have Daylight Savings Time because “of the farmers” I will punch them in the face.
Whoa.  Where did all that anger come from?  This is what Daylight Savings does to a person.  Om Shanti.
On a more positive note (like I could get more negative, right?) thank you all for your kind words and comments.  I treasure all your comments and support, so thank you so much.
A happy picture to make up for my colossal bitchiness.  From the Happiest Place on Earth!  Pluto was the one and only character the kids wanted to see.  The rest, they said, were “kind of creepy”.  What can I say, I agree