Category Archives: Black clouds in my brain

I’m in a bad mood!

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Mark, after a weekend of seasonal allergy-related coughing, woke up this morning pale and listless, brushed his teeth, and promptly threw up. Poor guy. By mid-morning he seemed to recover, and as I write this he is playing a loud game with his brother, one of their favourites in which they are brainstorming different and exotic ways to destroy their arch-enemy, Mickey Mouse.

Fortunately we are not planning a trip to Disneyland anytime soon.

It was a tough weekend for Mark. We had Visitors, and one Visitor made it perfectly clear that, how shall I say this delicately, this Visitor has a strong preference for one of my children, and that preferred child was emphatically not Mark. It’s hard to see your child dissolve into a puddle of hurt feelings, especially when the hurt feelings are caused by a person who should, I think, not have such strong preferences.

So I was stewing about this, and I’ve come to the following conclusions:

a) Much as I would like to, I cannot control other’s behaviour, I can only control my own;

b) I also cannot control how other people feel and force them to behave more equitably;

c) If I was actually to bring this up to said person, the situation would not change perceptibly but then there would be awkwardness and emotional outbursts added to the equation;

d) I had better just blog about it rather than bring it up, which has limited upside as far as I can see.

Very, very unsatisfactory conclusion.

In other news, I received a flyer for a nearby estate sale. One of the treasures, as advertised in the flyer, is an antique cookie jar in the shape of Mammy from Gone With The Wind. Hoo boy! If that is one of the highlights, I just can’t wait to get to that estate sale! That would go so great with all my other completely inappropriate and racially-offensive cookie jar related items.

Sigh. That failed to cheer me. Anyone want to share their stories about children being treated inequitably by a “Visitor”? Or a good story about a cookie jar? Either way I need cheering up.

Some Days

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Some days it feels like my life boils down to a basket of unfolded laundry, and a trip to the grocery store, and correcting behaviour. It seems my life revolves around food preparation and then cleaning up. Some days it seems like someone always, always, always needs something from me. The dog needs a walk, and a brush, and fresh water. Dinner needs to be made, and then cleaned up. The kids need me to read to them and to get out the craft supplies and to zip zippers and to pretend to be a triceratops – No! A Transformer! No! We’re playing dinosaurs! But I want to play Transformers! – then they need me to help them compromise on a game. They need me to tell them not to scream at each other, then they need hugs. They need to be near me chattering away every second and they need me to listen to them. Some days it feels like I’m too stretched, I can never, ever fill all their needs because their needs are expanding indefinitely. No matter what I do it’s not going to be enough. Everyone needs something and right now. Some days it feels like this is it, this is all, which is wrong and ridiculous and I know I have a great life and I know I have nothing to complain about, I know, but there it is, a sea of domestic drudgery and I’m drowning in it.

Then my husband senses what kind of day I’m having and takes the boys out and returns with three perfect Gerber daisies, my favourite, and I feel small and petty and I think, well, it’s a full moon, maybe, maybe I will feel better tomorrow. And I do. I do feel better tomorrow.

Happy Homemaker’s Household Hints

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If I had posted yesterday, like I intended to, you may have been concerned for my mental state and perhaps you would have had all sorts of interesting suggestions to combat my case of the Januarys. Or perhaps not. Anyway, people, I have been BLUE. Blue and gloomy and so very very sick of being freezing cold all day long. But it seems that the weather has broken and so has my mood, and this is partly due to the application of my patented anti-sadness formula of…drum roll…housecleaning and bread baking!

Maybe I should rename this blog “The Happy Homemaker”.

You know that kind of activity that is known, when you are pregnant, as nesting but when you are not pregnant it is simply crazed maniacal cleaning? That’s what I have been doing. Crazed maniacal cleaning. Like, baby, I am going to town on those baseboards. I have my spray bottle of cleaner and I am scrubbing the hell out of my kitchen cupboards. All those weird little nooks and crannies are now appropriately disinfected. Or inappropriately disinfected. The problem with this kind of cleaning project is, while it is quite satisfying for me, no one else (read: my husband) can really notice the results. So while I’m showing him the fruits of my labour with a crazed glint in my eyes, he is looking at me in the alarmed and suspicious way that you might look at someone who just spent four hours in a 1950’s housewife stupor.

As an aside, several years ago I received an email, undoubtedly from my mother, entitled “Helpful Household Hints”. I don’t actually remember any of the hints except this one: “Stop throwing out that leftover wine! Instead, freeze it in ice cube trays to use later for sauces!” I am still baffled by that hint. Who has leftover wine? Don’t you just, um, drink it? Especially the amount that would fill an ice cube tray. If you have wine that would make one single ice cube, suck it up and, well, suck it up. That, possibly, is the worst household hint I have ever heard.

But back to the second part of my anti-sadness formula – bread baking. Just when you thought it couldn’t get more exciting than baseboard cleaning, here I am talking about bread. Today I made two baguettes, and they actually look like baguettes! And taste like baguettes! My New Year’s resolution is being kept, and it’s already the ninth! I know it’s a bit late, but maybe I will make another resolution: not to throw out any leftover wine. I’m just going to drink it. It’s going to go great with my baguettes.

A Bad Case of the Januarys

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The house is quiet. It feels strange to have a quiet house. The boys are both at school this morning, and yesterday I felt quite moony about it – the end of holidays, back to the routine of drop-offs and pick-ups and layering on piles of winter clothing, back to being chilled all day long from the constant comings and goings. January. Yesterday snow fell all day long and it was difficult to tell where the snowy ground stopped and the sad grey sky started. I think I’ll paraphrase the movie Office Space and say that I have a bad case of the Januarys.

Hoo boy, I’m gloomy. First of all I was gloomy because it was the end of holidays and the start of school. Now I’m gloomy because Jake cried when I dropped him off. All morning he kept saying, in that button-pushing voice, “Moooommmm, I’m going to miiisssss you. Mooooommmm, I’m going to be sad when you leave. Mooooommmm, I don’t want to go to school.” At first I responded with that bright, cheery voice used by mothers everywhere, that I would miss him too but we would each have a GREAT morning and he would see his FRIENDS and have FUN. After several of those choruses, my bright and cheery voice evaporated in a cloud of impatience. Later, I watched him file with his classmates down the hall to his classroom, wiping away tears the whole way. I should have felt sympathetic, but I confess I felt frustrated, and somewhat guilty. Like instead of dropping him at his happy little pre-kindergarten with his teacher who sings constantly and tells everyone that they are special just the way they are, I was actually dropping him into a Victorian orphanage where they will force him to eat lumpy burned porridge and beat him for fidgeting.

There’s just no pleasing me, is there? I’m sad because the kids are going back to school and then I’m sad because they’re not thrilled to be going back to school. Well, that’s not quite true – Mark was fairly ecstatic to be back. I worried a little because he has a new teacher, but he seems to have accepted the change with zero adjustment time. “I liked Miss T.,” he said, “But Mrs. T-S will be nice too.” Huh. His relationship with change resembles his father’s. I guess Jake – and his small aptitude for accepting change – is more like me. Jake and I? We are sad when things change, we are sad when people leave, we are sad when our routine is disrupted, but eventually we make peace with it and get on with our lives.

So hopefully there will be no more tears at drop-off. Otherwise, I fear I’m going to have to use my you-don’t-know-how-lucky-you-are voice, and start telling him about Victorian orphanages and the like. And no good can come of that.

Back to normal – sort of

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I have been off my game, people. I have had one of those energy-sucking colds that, coupled with the copious amount of cold medication I have been taking, has left me wandering in a fog of my own making. I’m wondering, what day is it? What time is it? Oh, do the kids need to eat? Maybe I should make lunch. Things that come naturally are coming to me very slowly. Also I have been sleep-deprived, and, irritatingly enough, not because of the kids. For two nights in a row I took “nighttime relief” cold medication. I should know better. I’m always lured by the medications’ claims “so you can get some rest”. More like, “so you can have hallucinogenic dreams that will have you waking every hour or two wondering what the hell is going on in your brain, and then keep you up for a couple of hours only to crash 20 minutes before it is time to get up.” I haven’t taken NyQuil for years because I once had a NyQuil-related crazy dream about leprechauns and unicorns-turned-flesh-eating-monsters and dancing trees that caused me to wake up screaming when my husband absent-mindedly patted my back.

I feel better today.

Monday was a bad day. It was minus 25 and there were enormous snow drifts everywhere, one of which claimed my car when I dropped the boys at school. After trudging through knee-deep snow, helping the boys out of their 10 pounds of winter clothing, and trudging back, a couple of moms helped push my car out (thanks ladies!). Then, because that clearly was not enough excitement for one day, I drove to Wal-Mart. I needed more cold medication, but more importantly, I had to get stickers for Jake’s class sticker gift exchange which was to take place the following class. I chose a gender-neutral sheet of puppy stickers.

Later, I noticed Mark with all his craft supplies. He was making a picture, and had opened the stickers, the ones, as I said, seething with rage, I HAD GONE OUT IN THE FREEZING COLD AND SNOW TO GET FOR JAKE’S SPECIAL CLASS.

Big deal, right? Except for me, in my cold-addled state, it really was a big deal. I had to take deep breaths. I had to say, with my teeth gritted, that next time, please ASK before you use stickers. I used every ounce of self-control to not spiral into a screaming, shrieking, bad bad mother. I remained calm but inside, I was a mess. Because of a 99 cent package of stickers. I could see myself, in the moment, and I was struck at how ridiculous a situation it was, that I was so enraged by my child using stickers that he thought I had purchased for him.

I managed to go out again, and purchase another package of stickers. I decided to gift wrap them, as instructed, immediately. I gathered the gift wrap and noticed something in the bag with the gift tags.

Stickers. A package of stickers I had purchased a month earlier, thinking that I should buy them for the sticker gift exchange, so I wouldn’t leave it to the last minute.

You can imagine, then, how I felt.

We interrupt this Christmas spirit to bring you colossal bitchiness!

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This dress really wants to go to a party!

I look forward to my husband’s company Christmas party for months. I look forward to dressing up, talking to grown people, and eating food not prepared by myself and which is generally very tasty. I also look forward to the open bar. Months in advance I think about this party, because after all, there is no “stay-at-home mom” Christmas party, and even if there was it would probably just involve Starbucks and our nice jeans.

I even bought a dress for the party! I haven’t worn a skirted article for at least five years, since the appearance of my python-like varicose veins, but in the spirit of “love your body 2009” I actually purchased a dress, which I planned to wear with thick tights and boots to minimize the vein visibility. I was getting very excited.

You can probably see where this is going. Yesterday morning a monster of a blizzard began, complete with white-out conditions and massive drifts of snow, forcing us to cancel our plans. Boo. Around 2:00 yesterday it became apparent that no, we were not going to go, I started sulking and immediately donned yoga pants, a sweatshirt, and gigantic fuzzy slippers. Rob felt sorry for me and offered to watch When Harry Met Sally with me. Score! My favourite movie, which he will never watch due to my incessant need to repeat the dialogue throughout the film. (“They don’t make Sunday”. “Why not?” “Because of God.”)

So that was nice. Then this morning I woke up with a sore throat and headache due to the commencement of a minor cold, and also the general malaise that is associated with the commencement of my “ladies’ holidays”. I felt awful, so I did what any smart woman would do: attempt to make 6 dozen gingersnaps with the kids. Suffice it to say it was a bad idea. I ended up baking only half the cookies, putting the rest of the dough in the freezer for a more appropriate day. But then the kids wanted pancakes for lunch and, due to my guilty feelings for snapping at them more than once, I agreed. I mis-measured several times, burned the first couple, and then shrieked, “IT’S YOUR LUNCH!” in response to Mark’s innocent “What’s that weird smell?” query. So no Mother of the Year awards coming my way today.

Rob got home soon after this fiasco and I went straight to bed, passing out for a solid 90 minutes. I feel somewhat better but now the kids are jonesing to make a gingerbread house tonight! I need to channel my inner Christmas spirit. Help!

November

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November is a dark month. Even when the sun is shining, it is so low in the sky that it is still dark and grey. Every room in my north-facing house is dark, even when the lights are on.

This month has been flying by. I can’t believe it is already the 23rd. We are having an unseasonably warm November, which in Calgary means that the temperatures are soaring all the way up to 6 or 7 degrees, as opposed to 1 or 2. Not that I’m complaining, mind you, any time temperatures are above normal I am happy, but it seems like those couple of degrees are wasted in November. I mean, it’s still chilly, still dark. The sun is setting at 4:30, and rising after 8. December is, of course, darker and colder, but it doesn’t seem that way because of Christmas, and festivity, and my general feeling of goodwill and happiness that accompanies it.

Four children in my neighbourhood lost their mother and, while it is not my story to tell, the tragedy of that has left me low. But I’m not going to talk about that. The feeling of goodwill and happiness, that Christmassy feeling, I needed that feeling this weekend. So I broke my own rule about no Christmas decorations before December. I brought the boxes out of storage and the boys and I put out a few choice decorations.

The pinecones are from my in-laws’ place in the Okanagan. My husband and I gathered them the year my father-in-law was diagnosed with cancer, which he beat against all odds. The little balls in the bowl are from my very first Christmas tree after I left home. I didn’t have lights on that tree, and it was odd how many people commented on the fact. I honestly didn’t think that no lights was a big deal, but apparently IT IS. The cute little star snowmen? A woman I worked with once made them for the company Christmas party. She made about 150 of them. Have I ever mentioned that I admire people who are crafty? Because I am the opposite of crafty.


Mark’s favourite decoration is a little train station. Technically it lights up but I have a small fear of fire – and I think that decoration was made in China, so my fear of plugging it in and starting an electrical fire is probably justified. Notice the bowl in the background. The Christmas balls I set in there are from my mother-in-law – old ornaments from the 60’s.


This is my very favourite thing. I bought the creche figurines in Mexico 12 years ago, and I just love them. I always put the angel on the ladder – angels need a little help once in a while. This is also Jake’s favourite.

When something is heavy on your heart, sometimes the best thing to do is find the joy in your life and be thankful for your blessings. And I am so thankful.