Wrapped and Ready

I have neglected this blog for far too long, for all the right reasons. Life has been full of doing things I love, and there has been little time or need to stop and reflect.  However, it is a new year, and fresh, shiny new years are always a good time to reflect upon, and then walk away from, the old stuff.

2013 was a big year.  The twins turned four at the end of January, and four years old was completely delightful.  The girls are so damn much work, but so damn much fun.  They are astonishingly musical - great singers, enthusiastic dancers, and quite dedicated to banging on their electric piano and plastic food storage container improvised drum kits. They are abstract thinkers, and delight in twisting meanings and making up jokes. I love being their mom, although, I freely admit that when I consider my middle age, and think ahead to things like ushering them into and through puberty, I need to have a little sit down and rest - and that's just from thinking about it!

In 2013 MIL continued to slip into her other world, the one guided by dementia and delirium.  And then, in mid December, we got "the call." J was on his way into town to visit her as she was in a temporary respite stay at a great facility.  The phone rang here at home, and it was the case worker we have been dealing with saying a room had opened up, and MIL wouldn't need to come home again.  Now, I had been waiting for this call for months, and my first reaction was extreme relief.  I am well into my forties, and mothering two preschoolers while providing elder care and keeping house is more than a full-time job, and because I am resolutely committed to maintaining my professional life as a writer, and a visual and theatre artist, I have also been juggling contracts, doing shows, and keeping all those balls in the air. So, when I first put the phone down, I felt this wash of release and some amount of glee.  But then, something rather unexpected set in.  I felt what I suspect is a kind of mourning.  I felt sad.  I went downstairs into MIL's apartment, and all of her things had taken on a significance almost exactly how things that belonged to the recently deceased become symbols of a life rather than commonplace objects.  The sight of her hairbrush made me well up.  I looked around her cluttered, debris laden suite and thought about how I'd need to clean it all up. And then I realized there would really be no point to save anything, as she won't be needing it again.  She won't be coming back here, and she won't be moving anywhere else.  She is where she is now, until the end.  Life is so damned brutal.  Thankfully, the brutality is punctuated by beauty and joy. And most of the time brutality and beauty are all mixed up together.  So, we enter 2014 with one less resident in our house, more free time, a release from the burden of elder care, and two small children and a dog and two grown ups who are happy to be on this side of a profound episode; but who all feel the hovering empty space left by MIL's departure.

Professionally, 2013 was a welcome time of clarity when I was able to easily recognize which artistic associations to keep, and which to walk away from on good, happy terms.  I have been gradually working toward being much more in charge of my own work, and it feels solidly right.  For many years I have worked with and for others. Collaboration is a joyful, challenging part of artistry, but it can have interesting consequences. Some collaborations are fulfilling, respectful and enriching, others can leave one feeling used up and under appreciated.  I have been very lucky to have had almost exclusively the former collaborations with a few of the other creeping in from time to time.  But, even those good experiences can reveal themselves as having gone as far as they needed to go.  I have a history of being involved in situations where I have willingly allowed others to take some credit for my work, and although I do not resent those situations now, I have no desire to do that anymore.  So, I am entering a phase of being very picky about how I choose to work.  I have so many inspiring colleagues, and I know who I have learned from and can move on from, and who I will seek out for future projects.  If that all sounds annoyingly vague, it is because people read this, and I need to always be gracious about the opportunities I have had.  In short: I feel on track and excited about where my work is, and where it is going.  I am proud of the writing, performing and directing I did in 2013, and 2014 will be about furthering established projects and lavishing attention on my neglected child in terms of creativity:  visual art.  I am going to make things.  And I am going to turn my attention to starting the book I was asked to write three years ago, and vowed I would start when the kids were five. Which they are. In twenty-three days.

I spent quite a lot of 2013 in important friendships with other women. This might not be a big deal to some, but I have never been a big friend person. I have always found my need for social interaction is easily sated by my immediate family and a few periphery friends.  I have always turned away from anyone pushing me too hard toward intimate friendship.  But I am a mom now, and I need other moms.  I need other moms who are irreverent, mean in just the right way, hilarious, caring, supportive and have experience with the relentless complexities of relationships.  My mom friends save and sustain me. My mom friends are also, happily, many of my artist friends.  So, we get the place we are at in life, and when our eyes meet with a slight cocked eyebrow across a crowded room in the face of some absurd situation, all is instantly and wordlessly understood in a way that heretofore was only possible with my husband or my sisters.  I am also grateful for my woman friends who may not be mothers of small children, but who are constant sources of artistic inspiration and who make me gasp at what they can do.  All my friends make me want to be better at being myself.

2013 is a wrap, and 2014 is a week in and very much a so far so good venture.  I am grateful for, and proud of, the life I have.  I am still a cynical old neurotic, but I am a cynical old neurotic with a pretty good outlook on the coming year.

Lame Little Check In

I have not meant to ignore this blog, and the few people kind and stalwart enough to tune in.

The reason I haven't posted in months is because I have had a welcome string of professional obligations, one of which is: blogging! I have been contracted to be the official blogger for The Site.  So I am getting paid to blog elsewhere, and getting paid means I am obligated to meet my deadline every week.

Life is going very well.  I am doing a solo show one day a week at The Site, I have done a couple of directing and writing contracts, and have been able to travel a little, which is unusual for me in the warmer months as I am usually completely tied here by work.

The twins are doing so well.  MIL continues to fail, but we are now in the final months of waiting for her to get a permanent placement in an elder care home.

I will try to do better at posting here, as this blog has become important to me, and has been a great creative outlet in the long winter months.

Until next time.....

I Suspect I am too Fierce

I suspect I may be too fierce.

My birthday is in a month and a half and my astrologer of choice is telling me it is time for my personal evaluation of where I am and who I am and where I am going, etc. etc.  I woke at 4am and my brain started in on this torturous introspection directive.  Except, as a good disciple of the western philosophy of self loathing, instead of a swift and tidy examination of where I am, I twisted the exercise into "what is wrong with me?"  The list is pretty impressive, but boils down to this one observation I have lived with for most of my life: I am too fierce. 

I haven't always been fierce.  As a very young child I was painfully shy and quite nice.  But over the years I have dealt with my natural introversion by developing a toughness of which I am not ashamed, but kind of weary.  I'm getting old, and I am tired of the hard side of myself.

How does my hard side manifest?  Well, let's see....

I have a long track record of not letting people get away with shit.  My guilty pleasure film is "You've Got Mail"  in which Meg Ryan plays a woman who laments the fact that she can never think of the right snappy comeback to say when being insulted or patronized.  I do not have this problem.  I can always think of a comeback and I almost always let 'er rip.

I am happy to lodge a complaint in a restaurant, and I am okay with abandoning friendships and acquaintances that are toxic with nary a backwards glance.  I have a quick wit and I will take the joke over the consequences on many occasions.

But the older I get the more I understand that it is not up to me to right all the wrongs of the world.  And I am flawed, so why can't I ease up a bit on the flaws of others? 

Here is a truth I know about fierce people: we are often deep, deep feelers.  We experience the highs and lows of life strongly, and our instinct to lash out is part of or way of dealing with the brutal beauty of this world. 

Still, I am tired of holding on to anger and fear and ready to free myself.  Can I do it?  Will I be able to break patterns that have held me together like glue for so long?  I have no F*cking idea.  But at the very least I have isolated the biggest problem area.

Parenting with Two Hands.

On the one hand...

I'm pretty sure I don't brush their teeth well enough.
They scream when I brush out their hair.
I don't give them enough vegetables.
I only ever bake from a mix, and that is still almost never.
I don't sit down and draw with them, and I really should.
I get frustrated with them within seconds of trying to get them to print.
I let them watch too much TV.
I yell too much.
I try to read parenting books and I yell and throw the books across the room.
I pretend I serve veggies raw because it's healthier, but really I just don't want to cook.
I expect too much of them.
I expect too little of them.
I haven't started them in music or dance lessons yet.
I should have started them on a second language by now.
I am so bad at establishing routines.
I let them see my anxiety.
I look at celebrity gossip on the computer when I could be reading fat important books, and they see this.
I say: "No, I'm too tired" too many times.
I give in way too quickly.
I hold out way too long.
I place too much emphasis on having a clean house.
I hide the Playdough because I hate cleaning it up.
When they do crafts I hide the messiest stuff.
I snap at them to get away so I can finish a blog post about how much I love them.
I swear.
I swear a lot.

On the other hand...

I let them see me continue to follow my dreams.
I have given them an artist for a mother.
I tell them I love them at least 50 times a day.
I have complete respect for their weirdnesses.
I notice who they are.
I bring them to rehearsals.
I dance with them.
I sing with them until they tell me to stop.
I listen around the corners so I can hear the magic in their play.
I remember how it was to be little.
I talk to them.
I don't mock them.
I am their champion.
I come when they need me.
I take the hits and dirty looks from people who don't like kids to be kids.
I let them be kids.
We show them a loving marriage.
We show them how to fight and make up.
We don't worship at the altar of quiet or still.
I let them see that creativity is essential.
I encourage them to notice beauty in light and colour and sound and movement.
I respect their fear.
I surround them with art.
I surround them with artists.
I parent from my heart and my soul.
I listen to myself.
I listen to them.
And I love them.
I love them.
I love them.
I love them.
I love them.

Not a Love Letter

It is the eve of the twins' fourth birthday.  And in the great tradition I have established here (ie. I did it last year) my intention was to use this forum to write a little birthday love message to my beautiful babies.  But to be honest, this day has been one for the memoirs.  I am so spent my head feels hot and prickly. I am emotionally wrung out.  If I wasn't such a complete weakling I would punch a wall or something equally dramatic but childish and futile.  So I'll take the weakling's way out and blog about it.

J is away on business.  Last night, at 3 am, I was jarred awake by a slamming door on the ground floor of our house, which is where MIL lives.  I got up and met her on the stairs.  She was clearly shaken and wanted to know how to get a key to lock out all these people who keep coming into the house.  These people are, of course, conjured by her dementia.  And the detail in her delusions is impressive.

Last night there were, according to MIL, people in the gallery space we have on the main floor and they were looking at all her stuff.  There were men in her bed and women messing up her clothes.  But the really good part of the story was her insistence that she had followed the people down the hill to a trailer where  they were playing games like bingo and cards, but by the time she got in there everyone was asleep.  Now, it has been snowing for two days and I hadn't shoveled outside, so when I asked her how she managed to walk down the hill without getting any snow on her she said something about having really good snow boots.  I walked around the house several times with MIL, to reassure her that all the people were gone.  I brought her upstairs, gave her some water, tried all the techniques - going along with the delusions, explaining the medical details of her condition, trying not to belittle her no matter how tired and frustrated I might become.  I finally got her settled back into bed and was back asleep by 4:30.  At 6 am I was awoken by O and a nightmare about being bitten in the belly by a crocodile.  I was finally able to get back to sleep and Z woke us all at 8:30.

MIL is running dangerously low on meds and tomorrow is the twins' birthday, so our plan for today was to go into the bigger town to replenish the medicine and cake making cabinets.  But there was a "heavy snowfall" warning issued for our area, and I just couldn't risk the drive.  We stayed home instead and MIL continued to be agitated, aggressive and confused all day.

My patience ran out when MIL noticed a petticoat hanging on the back of my bedroom door.  I had this garment made for me as part of a really important costume.  I use it on stage and for special appearances.  MIL insisted the petticoat was hers, that I had taken it, that she has had it for twenty years.  I am working on two hours worth of sleep right now, and I just didn't have it in me to go along with this particular delusion.  "This is MY costume piece.  It has NOTHING to do with you!"  Every time my back was turned MIL would sneak back into the bedroom and say: "Sweetie [patronizing tone], I don't know how you can say that this is yours when I have had one just like it for twenty years.  I mean, it was a different colour.  You must've bleached it."

I decided to escape and take the kids down to our local eatery for a special tea event.  If you have ever had a high tea you will know that it consists of about a million percent of the recommended daily cream and sugar intake.  So by the time we left the restaurant I was dealing with two Tasmanian Devils.

Our walk home includes one steep hill with a dangerous blind corner.  The girls were just horrible as they insisted on running away from me on the hill, balancing precariously on the side of a steep drop, jumping in deep snow, and in an impressive final  move O decided that she wanted to "crawl" up the last bit.  I was so frustrated that I ended up half dragging her by her hood for a few steps to get her out of blind corner danger.

So perhaps this explains why I don't really feel like writing a love letter to my kids at this exact moment.  But it's in me.  I'll get to it.  Maybe later tonight once the party in the bingo trailer down the hill closes down for the night.

Struck in the Middle with You

The new year comes in like a lamb when you have almost four years old twins and a rapidly failing mother in law and your husband is away on business.  I spent the evening at home, fell asleep with the girls, woke at 12:12 to discover I'd slept through both the turn of the year and the fireworks that happened pretty much right outside my door.  The only clue I had that the fireworks had happened was my MIL's quivering poodle at the top of our stairs.

New Year's Eve has a fine tradition here in our little 1930s Town.  For many years the NYE dance at the Community Hall was an awesome thing - family oriented with kids, adults, the drunk and the sober all dancing into the wee hours and spilling out onto the road to dance under the streetlights and in moonlight and starlight.  In the past few years the dance became a shadow of its former self, but this year some of our long term residents worked their butts off to bring it back.  How I pondered taking the girls, but the thought of trying to stick handle the kids by myself waaaay past bedtime and leaving MIL for an extended time ultimately made me chicken the hell out.  Next year for sure you will find two almost five year olds dancing under the stars with their mommy and daddy.  But this year I stayed in and loved my time with the twins, and had much opportunity to reflect back on one crazy ass year.

When I look back on 2012 I will think of it as the year of three years old, and the year of sixty-seven years old.  The twins turned three and were as amazing and joyful and challenging as ever.  They are such wonderful little kids.  They crack me up and drive me nuts and make me want to laugh and cry constantly. And, my mother in law, at sixty-seven, began the process of sliding deeper into a place where we can no longer reach her.

Dementia is a horrible, heartbreaking, unfair thing - but in its own, very odd way, is often fascinating.

I wish I had understood, when MIL first came to Town to be with us, that she must have already been in the early stages of this thing.  But I didn't understand and so our relationship was contentious and strained.  I found her eccentricity reckless and juvenile.  I couldn't understand the laissez-faire attitude she seemed to have toward the craziness of her life (I will not go into too many specifics, but her finances and recently ended relationship were in some pretty serious places).  She found me cold and was endlessly frustrated by my inability to accept what she saw as her help.  She felt I patronized her, which I did, because I found her childish.  She was desperately lonely, and the only "way in" she could find socially was to seek the town gossips and feed their appetites by talking about me.  Which made things worse.  Every so often we would have a big blow up, and I would promise to try to be a better daughter in law.  And I would, for a while.  I would ask her to concede on some of the points I felt strongly about.  She kind of did.

Once she moved in with us properly (she had had an apartment of her own for a few months) we were  suspecting early stage dementia.  And once we began to investigate, our suspicions were confirmed.

For many months MIL was still so able that she would babysit the girls, cook for herself, take her dog for long walks, spend hours sorting through stuff for the store she wanted to open.  But our relationship was still strained.  She wanted to be a bigger part of our daily lives, I wanted to make sure I and J and the girls spent the early years of our family time establishing ourselves as a unit, and I didn't think it fair or necessary that MIL be involved in every minute of our days.  She thought I was mean and her public bitching about me hardened me to her even more.  This is a VERY small town, and being gossiped about - especially when it was one-sided - was hurtful and embarrassing.

By the summer of 2012 things were getting crazier.  And it became clear that MIL was not going to be able to handle running a business.  And then it became clear that she could no longer be trusted to care for the girls for more than an hour or so.  And then she started to lose language and memory.  And just before Christmas she started to retreat from life and hallucinate a reality that involved scores of visitors roaming about her apartment at all hours.

And now we are living with a shadow of the woman who raised my husband.  She is rail thin, sleeps most of the day, and sees people who aren't there.  On good days she still comes up and eats with us and plays with the girls, on bad days we bring her food and help her dress herself.  We are in the process of getting her into a care facility but there will be a few months still, with her here in our house.  So I guess now is the time for me to prove myself as a caring, loving person.  Because it is all so very sad.  Yet fascinating.

There are the sad parts - watching this once magnificent woman nearly collapse with frustration when she tries to dress herself, the loss of contact with reality, the extreme frailty.  And then there are the fascinating parts - the hallucinations of visitors from all walks of life - First Nations men, boy scouts and girl scouts, hospital patients, Indians discussing current events in India.  There has always been a part of me that believes old people and children have a much clearer view into other realities, and the fact that this 1935 building has been a boarding house, grocery store, pool hall, art gallery, etc. etc., makes it all the more intriguing.  What if she really is seeing people who once passed through this place?  Who am I to assert that it is all the product of a failing brain.  Maybe her brain is opening up to other realms?  Yeah, that's a crazy thought, but one I have all the time now.

I am surrounded by a very supportive community, many of whom ask how I am getting through this time in our lives, and I must admit, there are days when I wonder that as well.  But whenever it all begins to overwhelm I take a little step outside of myself and ponder how I will remember this time, years from now, when it all slides into part of our family lore and mythology.  And here is how I will  remember it - profound.  There is extreme profundity in beginnings and endings, and right now we are helping two souls into life, and one soul out of life.  And the responsibility of it all is a sacred trust that we are trying to get right.  Sometimes we do get it right, sometimes we don't.  But right now I am acutely aware that what I do and say will be the first experiences for the twins, and last experiences for MIL.  And that is pretty big.

So there it is - my musings for the new year.  Appropriately, I am thinking about the beginnings and endings of things.  And how my middle-aged ass is right smack in the middle of it all.

Bad Things Happen

Yesterday morning I was fixating.  The first thing I was fixating on was the fact that the weather, after several days of heavy snowfall, had broken, and I needed to get to town to get groceries and some other essentials. In order to get to town and back before dark I needed to do much shoveling, dressing of kids, warming of car, etc. etc.  The second thing I was fixating on was a conversation my children and I had been exposed to the day before, about how boys fight and get over it, but girls are devious and manipulative and mean and learn it from their mothers.  I was thinking about how much I had wanted to protect my daughters from these most unfortunate words.*

And in the midst of my fixating I heard the news about the school shootings in Connecticut.  And then I didn't care that much about the other two things. Because who cares anymore?  20 little kids, ages 6 and 7, are dead.  And yes, I know, I know - children are dying everyday, all over the world and we go on as if it is nothing.  I know we, as a society, demonstrate gross indifference to child labour, poverty, abuse, murder, when it is in the context of  "far away" and "not affecting my daily life."  I know all that, and yes, I understand  the reason I (and many like me) are so destroyed by the thought of this shooting and not about the other stuff that happens everyday all over the world is because this is something to which we can directly relate.  These parents sent their babies to school, and a bad guy came to the school and shot them dead.  This could be us, this could be me. I am right there.

I started the drive to town yesterday morning listening to CBC radio, as usual, but the girls said something they have never said before.  They said: "No, mommy, turn it off."  So I turned it off and didn't listen to the half-hourly news reports that would have informed me of  "what we know so far."  Instead, the girls and I pointed to the trees, and the horses we passed, and we talked about what we saw, and we sang about monkeys falling off beds and reindeer, and Santa.

We had a nice day in town, and when I came home I read all the comments on Facebook about what had happened.  I put away groceries.  I cooked dinner.  We ate dinner.  We watched a show about a kid with a purple crayon.  We had a bath.  And then the girls went to play by themselves in the bedroom and I opened my laptop and let myself read the news and sob.

I didn't say "How does something like this happen?" because it is a meaningless question.  Crazy people go get guns and use them to shoot people.  It happens.  We've seen it happen again and again.  And after it happens we analyze the shit out of the how and whys and who is to blames. (When I was in my early 20s the Montreal Massacre happened and for months afterward the debate raged on and on about whether it was a violence against women issue or a random act  of violence issue.  Are you kidding me?  A guy armed to the teeth walked into a classroom, released the men, shot the women, and left a manifesto about hating women.  I think we can close the case on that debate.)

I didn't obsess about crazy US gun control policy, or how mentally ill people are left to navigate the world with little support, or how we exist in a culture that glamourizes violence to the point that we hardly even notice it anymore. I was too busy thinking about the parents, and how they will ever be able to get through this.

I did have a Facebook chat with my friend who has two small children as well, and we discussed how hard it is, in the face of something like this, to NOT just start thinking about raising your children in a fortress surrounded by a moat full of sharks.  But we can't.  We have to let our kids have lives, even if it means sending them off to school when, every so often, horrid things happen at schools.

And I did let myself focus on the love that everyone was expressing for a community of people we have never met in a place we have never been.  Because, as awful as these things are, they make us stop and put away the little, daily fixations, and look to one another and say: "I don't know you, but I know you.  And I can't love you, because I don't even know you, but I love you.  And I can't possibly know what you are going through, but I know that you are going through it, and it means something that your unimaginable loss is causing a mom far, far away to think of nothing but you."


* One day I will write a post about Tina Fey (who is the undisputed goddess of all things), and how important I think "Mean Girls" is, and how important the message is and was, but how the importance of Ms. Fey's  important message has been (like PMS) twisted into a blanket stereotype that does so much more harm than good.  But that's a story for another day.

Acting, Learning and Getting Merry like Christmas

It's been too long since I've posted, and once again I do not have a specific idea spinning to hang a tidy essay on, so I'll just freelance some ideas, shall I?

I am doing a short run of one of my solo shows at the Site right now, and I went through my usual process during my rehearsal period - first I felt dread, then fear, and then I yelled at my husband for booking me when he knows full well that I hate, hate, hate doing these things. Then I did the first show and remembered how fun it is to perform and couldn't wait to get back again the next day.  My process drives J insane as he is a natural performer and does not go through the same agony that I do at the thought of getting up in front of people.  I can't wait to write, and paint, and direct, all manner of solo or behind the scenes creative endeavors, but performing scares the crap out of me every time.  And I am an actor.  Dr. Freud...care to weigh in?

I am having a tough mom dilemma right now in that, here in our tiny Town, there is a very small group of parents.  The preschooler parents have tried to run a play group for a couple of years, and my girls love going.  However, there is something I am having trouble with (I had written out details, but have subsequently deleted as too many people who know me read my blog now, and it's not fair to work out my shit on here in that way - but basically something happened that I am uncomfortable with - and it made me feel like my kids needed me to protect them.)  Anyway, suffice to say, I was eventually so annoyed by this situation that I pulled my kids from the play group last week (major stress as I know how much the girls love to play with the other kids), and am contemplating taking them out for good.  Ugh - such a tough decision.  And such a classic parent conundrum - do I remove my kids from a situation they love, because I have grown uncomfortable with it?  And all of this got me thinking about the girls' future options.

So now that I have deleted out the details, the next few paragraphs will make less sense, but here goes: a wise friend of mine said something like this to me:  "If you look for bad behaviour in children, you will find it, and if you look for beauty and creativity, you will also find it - often in the same behaviour."  Isn't that awesome?  Isn't that re-framing in the most perfect way?  I hope I have shown, so far in this blog, that I am a person who owns right up to my flaws, and who is pretty willing to sing my own praises as well.  Well here is something I know I do that I like about myself - I always see the beauty in other people's children.  I always see a running laughing child as a thing of sheer joy, and not a behaviour waiting to be "corrected."  I think little kids are so much better than adults - freer, more abstract, so much more divine.  And as my kids near school age I have been hit with a realization I did not see coming - I think school and organized education and blind adherence to the mantra that structure and routine are ALWAYS the right choices are wrecking kids and turning them into the mass of unhappy adults walking around today.  A couple of my friends are engaged in a movement called "unschooling".  I was sent some links and opened the literature and it was like the damn clouds parted and a choir of angels started singing just for me.  I hate the idea of my kids going to school.  I hate the idea of behaviour that I honestly, honestly adore becoming "bad" the moment they walk into a classroom.  I hate the idea that passivity is to be emulated and a child who naturally engages, and questions, and jumps in with both feet needs to be taught not to sing, not to dance, not to question.  So, unschooling is (sorry for all of you unschoolers, because I'm not sure if this is right, but it is my take on it) basically home schooling but in such a way that allows the child to lead the way, to discover their bliss early in life, to have the parent watch and gently guide according to the natural inclinations of the learner.  When I did my Masters degree I studied the teachings of a ground breaking drama based educator called Dorothy Heathcote, and have now woven her methods into my work.  A few years ago, while she was still alive, I had the amazing opportunity of watching her teach.  She was so damn brave.  She walks into a classroom with a general idea of what needs to be learned, and she trusts that, through drama, the kids will get there (and will without question make hundreds of other discoveries along the way, and will learn a bit more about what it means to be human).  I think Heathcote was an unschooler before there was a word for it.  She believed in the children, and in their wholeness, and did not see them as adults in training.  So that's where I am right now with the idea of sending my kids off to be "educated."  I want them to be the people they want to be, not the people they are forced to be.

What else?...

Oh, here is a huge thing.  My beloved J is a little bit sick.  Well, in a way he is a lot sick, but in a way it is a good thing.  He had some news from the doctor about his health, and he does have a serious condition that, with some very big lifestyle changes, can probably be reversed.  So we are going to have to pull up our socks around here and genuinely commit to good food, rest, less stress, less saying "yes" to every contract that comes up, less consumption of bad stuff.  In a way, getting the news was like the big excuse we needed from the universe to do what we really want to do anyway - pull back and spend way more time with our girls.

It's the Christmas season and I am a complete Christmas nerd and it's true what they say - having kids brings back all the magic of this season.  My kids are drunk with it - every night is "Christmas Eve." every shiny, sparkly bauble is "magic".  It's bliss to feel the wonder of it all again.  And our decision to keep them away from network television means that our girls really have no association of Christmas with mass consumption.  When I asked what they want from Santa at first they couldn't think of anything, and then they said "toys and paint." Toys and paint.  Not some specific electronic or princessy marketed in your face until you want to puke thing.  Just toys and paint.  God I love those two.  

Those are a few things that have been on my mind.

Scary Moment Cake

All parents worry about their children being ripped from their lives.  Even my most relaxed parent friends have that little black thought lurking somewhere in their heads, not too far from the surface.  What if something happens? What if they go away from me?

When the girls were about 6 months old I had a vivid dream that I had given O to a trusted friend who was carrying her in her car seat.  We were heading to a fringe festival play, and I had Z while my friend was somewhere else with O, but I knew we would all meet up at the theatre.  Once I had the tickets I went in to find my friend and there she was, but she did not have O.  When questioned the friend told me that she had just put O, and the car seat, "over with the coats".  I hurried over to the place where audience members had been tossing their coats in a pile, and O was not there.  She wasn't anywhere.  In the dream I frantically searched for my baby, told anyone who would listen that she was missing, and eventually the whole cast of the dream was searching, organizing candlelight vigils, etc. etc.  I woke up with my heart pounding so hard I could almost see it, jumped up, looked around and saw O right there, sleeping peacefully beside her dad.  The flood of relief was crazy. In my lifetime I have never known a comparable feeling of thankfulness.  It was a dream!  She wasn't gone.  She was right there.  Right there.

When I was pregnant with the girls I was part of another fear turned to relief moment.  I was working as a performer/storyteller at our provincial museum.  I decided to take my break in one of the two main lobbies.  I was sitting in a leather chair, absent-mindedly watching the crowds, when I noticed two moms walking across the big hall with all their kids trailing behind.  The youngest of the group was a tiny girl who was probably between two and three years old. As the little girl toddled along she had her face in  one of the museum guide pamphlets, happily looking at a picture of a big wooly mammoth.  She did not see the rest of the group swerve to go look at a showcase of stuffed birds.  She just kept walking forward and had soon passed through the big doors into the other lobby and was swallowed up into the snaking line of people waiting to pay their admission.  And in two huge lobbies teeming with people, I was the only one who had seen this happen.  The mom turned, did a kid head count, and then I saw the panic hit hard.  The mom began to spin, scan, call.  In the space of a few seconds I saw all of it flood into that mom - abduction?  No, please no. I was far enough away that it took me a few moments to get over to her but I got there and just said: "She's over here."  The mom followed me to the door of the other lobby.  There was a sea of people in there, but in an instant I saw the little girl, face still in pamphlet, far across the room. She had quietly wandered through the crowd unnoticed.  "There!'  I pointed, "Do you see her, by the totem poles?"  The girl was at least 30 feet away from us.  The mom saw her baby and said: "Yes!  There she is!"  She rushed forward and then quickly glanced back and said: "Thank you!" and then I lost sight of both of them in the throngs.  That mom and I never saw one another again.  But I bet we remember one another, and I imagine I am a character in her story version of the event just as she is in mine.  Only in her version a giant pregnant woman in a Victorian costume appeared out of nowhere to point her to her lost child.

Yesterday J, the twins, and I did the epic drive from my parents' apartment back home to our Town.  This trip includes a ferry trip, so the entire journey, if you do it in one day, takes about 13 or 14 hours.  And we had to do it in one day as J had to work today.  The entire province was experiencing horrid weather, and the southern to central half, which includes this whole trip, was drenched in rain.  J took on all the driving, and it was pretty darn scary.  We were being pummeled with the kind of rain with which windshield wipers can barely compete.  We hit patches of thick fog and puddles that were really small lakes.  It was all pretty crazy, but there was one moment that kind of took the scary moment cake.

We stopped in a small town to gas up, and just as we had gotten ourselves back into the car and on to the highway J said:  "Jesus."  I looked ahead to see, through the murky, darkening, world, that an on coming semi was passing a car right in front of us.  This was on a double solid line.  The semi was bearing down hard and fast, in our lane, and it was going to hit us head on.  J steered over so that one wheel was on the shoulder and the other was in the grass.  The semi squeaked back into it's own lane about the moment we passed it.  If not for J we would probably all be dead today.  That fast.   After it was over J and I agreed that neither of us had even had enough time to get scared or freaked out, because it all happened so fast.  But afterwards, for a few moments, I allowed the "what ifs" to creep over me.  What if J hadn't been in superhero mode?  What if I'd been driving instead and wasn't as clear headed?  But my biggest, most horrible what if is always this - what if I survived but.... nope, can't even type the rest of that thought out.

I've been reading a couple of blogs lately from parents who have had to face, or are facing, this horrible question: how do I, how will I, how can I, survive this?  One blog is that of a woman whose son drowned, and the other is that of a dad whose two year old has ravaging leukemia.  So I know that people can and do get through.  But I admit freely that a huge part of my life right now is lived in fear of these two perfect baby girls somehow exiting my life.

We are home today, safe and sound.  All four of us.  But yesterday I did look this great parenting fear right in the face in the form of a giant truck grill.

Love your kids, devote yourselves to them, and remember that no matter how slow that car in front of you is going, it is never worth it to reckless pass and almost wipe out a small family.

The Keys to Freedom

It's been a bit of a week, in a bit of a month, in a bit of a year.

Oh I know, I know.  Everyone has it rough, and tough, and we all have problems and blah, blah, blah.  But here's the thing.  I'm only human, and humans can be superhuman, and humans can be less than human.  Right now I feel like I am a bit of both.

J is away on a business trip, and once again I am here, in our house, with MIL, her dog, and the twins.  So, for all intents and purposes I am the only functioning adult in the house.  And all the other four beings need something from me pretty much constantly.

Living in a teeny town is great, and in the summer season there is so much to do.  But now it is the off season, and the limitations of living in a teeny town with twin toddlers and a failing mom in law are magnified as, aside from yet ANOTHER walk outside, there is often nothing to do to keep everyone occupied.

MIL is failing fast, and the stress of that alone is enough to push me to teetering.  The girls need me more than ever when J is away, and right now, far too often, that neediness presents itself in the form of whining, which is like pouring acid on already frayed nerves.  I am so behind in paperwork that I have become phobic about even starting to deal with all the papers stuffed in my file cabinets.  The idea of the amount of stuff I need to do this winter to get set up for next spring is stalking my subconscious.  And to top it all off I'm running low on food.

There is a small grocery store here, but it has a limited selection and, of course, a bit of a mark up so the owners can have a viable business.  Thank goodness we have the store.  But I have a few mouths to feed and I cannot rely solely on the little store so my once weekly trips to the bigger town for a full grocery shop are imperative and, aside from the stress of having to repeatedly get two toddlers in and out of the car, the town trips are a way to get out of Dodge and take a deep breath and remember what it is like to be in a place with traffic lights and strangers and restaurants that open all day and malls (even if they are lame malls).

So a couple of days ago I got me and the girls all up, bathed, dressed and ready to go to town.  I was trying to be really quiet as I wanted to leave MIL at home this time to make the trip go more smoothly, and if I could sneak out I would be home before she was even up for the day.  I used the auto-starter to get the car going, and then got us all booted and mittened and coated up, and went to grab my keys.  And they weren't in the drawer and they weren't in my purse and after tearing the house apart and reassembling it I am pretty confident they have evaporated into thin air.

My keys are MIA.  I haven't needed them for a couple of weeks, so I haven't had the need to look for them.  They are always where they are supposed to be.  Except this time. My best guesses are: they fell out in the locked car and are on the floor and I can't get to them because the car is locked, OR the girls were playing with my purse, OR my MIL took them as she gets mixed up about this life and her old life sometimes and maybe thought they were hers, OR I dropped them somewhere outside.  And J is out of town with the only other set.  So I am stuck here.  Stuck.  So stuck.

In a remote town like this, car keys equal freedom.  I have misplaced my freedom.  Shit.

Last night J put a new key on the Greyhound and it will get here some time today so by the time someone drives in and gets it for me and then drives back it will be evening, and tomorrow I agreed to watch a friend's kids, and then it will be Wednesday by the time I can get to town and J will be coming home that day anyway.

So this is one of those weeks when our blissful living arrangements seem like a messed up idea.  This week I want easy access to daycare, and public transit, and a spa, and a restaurant, and all the stuff that the big city can offer.

So I was deep in this place of self pity when Hurricane Sandy hit the east coast and managed to cripple New York City.  And it struck me that for a brief moment the most important metropolis in the world had fewer amenities than our tiny town.  Wow.  That is amazing and really should provide some glimmer of comfort and make me appreciate my own life.  But right now I am too busy feeling all sorry for myself to be that big and logical.  I just want my damn keys.

Holding the Hands of the New York Mom

Last night, after the kids were asleep and I was in bed looking at google news, I read about the woman in New York's Upper West Side who came home yesterday to discover the horror of two of her children murdered by their nanny.  I haven't stopped thinking about it since.  I woke up in the middle of the night thinking about it.  I woke this morning thinking about it.

That mom is a million years away from me in so many ways - affluent, American, urban - but in the one way that matters most, we are exactly the same.  We are mothers who love our kids and spend the majority of our lives protecting them from harm and always feeling like we are falling short.  She is a mom, just like me.

Last night, before I shut down my laptop, I read some of the comments people were leaving on the internet about this tragic thing, and I was sickened to see how many people (other moms in particular) were quick to jump to the heartless conclusion that the mom was to blame.  If she had been home, they coldly posited, this never would've happened.  She should have been home, they typed, because "I stay at home and never let my kids out of my sight."

What is WRONG with you people?  What is wrong with you people who could be this judgmental and smug  about a woman who has just looked into the face of our biggest collective fear?  Where are your hearts?  Where is your soul?

This is "blame the victim" once again.  This is what we do.  We see someone endure a horrific crime and we immediately look for ways that it was the victim's fault, because as long as we can blame the victim we can comfort ourselves with the notion that we would NEVER make the same mistake that led to this tragedy.  If a woman is raped we can say: "she never should have been walking alone at night and wearing a short skirt.  I would never do that, therefore I will never be raped."   We can say: "I would never leave my kids with a nanny, therefore my kids will never be murdered by the nanny."  This is the coldest, meanest, and most small minded logic.  This mom did nothing wrong.  She left two of her children with her trusted nanny.  I am a stay at home mom these days, and every so often I get a sitter so I can do something on my own.  Am I asking for it?  My friends here in our small town sometimes ask if they can leave their kids with me so they can have a few hours to get stuff done.  Are they making a grievous error by doing so?  Of course not.

This is a gender issue with a twist.  This is a gender issue wherein women are judging another woman. This woman is a rich, stay at home mom therefore it is her duty to be home?  Bullshit.  The facts so far suggest this mom was out with her third child and left the other two with the nanny.  So there you go, judgers, she was still being a mom while she was out, she was just doing what we all do - she was making things a bit easier (a bit) by doing something with one kid and opting for care for the other two so she didn't have to juggle three kids while out in the world.  And if she had been out on her own getting a pedicure or seeing a film she would still be completely innocent.  A mom gets to take a parenting break when she needs one.  If I could afford a nanny I would have one just so I could be by myself for an hour or so every day.  That wouldn't make me a lesser woman or a bad mom.  A full time stay at home dad would be allowed to have a night out or a beer with a friend on occasion.  This woman has money, and she was choosing to use some of it to make the overwhelming job of parenting three children a bit easier by employing a nanny.    And I'm looking at YOU women who judge other women.  Stop it.  I don't know what I would do without the support of my mom friends, and this morning all I want to be is a friend to that woman in New York who is living our worst nightmare.  She is my sister, and although she does not know I exist and probably never will, today I am making it my business to defend her, to metaphorically hold her hand.  I can do absolutely nothing to ease this woman's unspeakable grief, but at least I can, from afar, say over and over: "It is not your fault.  It is in no way your fault."  It's a small thing.  It's a tiny thing.  But it's the thing I can do.

Another Can't Sleep Stupid Blog Meme to Make up for Lack of Real Update

1. Grab the book nearest to you, turn to page 18, and find line 4.  All books in my vicinity have fewer than 18 pages.
2. Stretch your left arm out as far as you can, What can you touch? The side of the couch.
3. Before you started this survey, what were you doing? Surfing the net.
4. What is the last thing you watched on TV? Undeclared.  (that is the name of the show, not a description of my answer)
5. Without looking, guess what time it is 4:12 am.  
6. Now look at the clock. What is the actual time? 4am.
7. With the exception of the computer, what can you hear? fridge running, clock ticking, husband snoring.
8. When did you last step outside? What were you doing? Around 8 last night went out to see the northern lights.
9. Did you dream last night? Yes.
10. Do you remember your dreams? Some of them.
11. When did you last laugh? Last night.
12. Do you remember why / at what? Recapping the day for my husband and laughing at my kids.
13. What is on the walls of the room you are in? Art, clock, curtains.
14. Seen anything weird lately? Dead bear.
15. What do you think of this quiz? It is typical.
16. What is the last film you saw? Ironman 2.
17. If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you live? I need to check out more places before I could make that decision.
18. If you became a multi-millionaire overnight, what would you buy? My freedom.
19. Tell me something about you that most people don't know. I know sign language.
20. If you could change one thing about the world, regardless of guilt or politics, what would you do? Stop sexism.
21. Do you like to dance? Not in public.
22. Would you ever consider living abroad? Yes,
23. Does your name make any interesting anagrams? I assume so.
24. Who made the last incoming call on your phone? I think it was my husband's uncle.
25. What is the last thing you downloaded onto your computer? pictures.
26. Last time you swam in a pool? April.
27. Type of music you like most? Folk, musical theatre, pop.
28. Type of music you dislike most? Hard rock.
29. Are you listening to music right now? no.
30. What color is your bedroom carpet? no carpet.
31. If you could change something about your home, without worry about expense or mess, what would you do? Re-do the downstairs.
32. What was the last thing you bought? groceries,
33. Have you ever ridden on a motorbike? no.
34. Would you go bungee jumping or sky diving? no.
35. Do you have a garden? ummm...kind of, a neglected one.
36. Do you really know all the words to your national anthem? what? of course.
37. What is the first thing you think of when you wake up in the morning? what do I need to worry about today.
38. If you could eat lunch with one famous person, who would it be? David Letterman.
39. Who sent the last text message you received? Kara.
40. Which store would you choose to max out your credit card? Chintz and Co.
41. What time is bed time? Around 9pm.
42. Have you ever been in a beauty pageant? I just lol-ed.
43. How many tattoos do you have? none.
44. If you don't have any, have you ever thought of getting one? only kind of.
45. What did you do for your last birthday? worked. My mom made me a gluten free cake.
46. Do you carry a donor card? no.
47. Who was the last person you ate dinner with? kids.
48. Is the glass half empty or half full? vacillates. 
49. What's the farthest-away place you've been? Europe.
50. When's the last time you ate a homegrown tomato? Last week.
51. Have you ever won a trophy? yes.
52. Are you a good cook? marginal.
53. Do you know how to pump your own gas? one must.
54. If you could meet any one person (from history or currently alive), who would it be? Great, great, great grandparents.
55. Have you ever had to wear a uniform to school? no.
56. Do you touch-type? no.
57. What's under your bed? floor, sub-floor, .boards, insulation, basement ceiling, air, mom in law's suite, carpet, sub-floor, boards, crawl space, plastic, earth, rock, molten core, more dirt, China.
58. Do you believe in love at first sight? no.
59. Think fast, what do you like right now? peace of mind.
60. Where were you on Valentine's day? can't recall.
61. What time do you get up? when I wake up.
62. What was the name of your first pet? Ambrose.
63. Who is the second to last person to call you? Can't remember.
64. Is there anything going on this weekend? No.
65. How are you feeling right now? Okay,  Weary, a bit anxious,  Status quo.
66. What do you think about the most? Money, kids, getting organised.
67. What time do you get up in the morning? This is the same as question 61.
68. If you had A Big Win in the Lottery, how long would you wait to tell people?  I would only tell close family and friends, after a visit to a financial adviser.
69. Who would you tell first? My husband.
70. What is the last movie that you saw at the cinema? Footloose.
71. Do you sing in the shower? I rarely shower.  I bathe.
72. Which store would you choose to max out your credit card? Fuck off, another repeat question.
73. What do you do most when you are bored? Internet.
74. What do you do for a living? Act and write,
75. Do you love your job? I do.
76. What did you want to be when you grew up? Artist.
77. If you could have any job, what would you want to do/be? Artist and writer.
78. Which came first the chicken or the egg? Fuck off.
79. How many keys on your key ring? A few, soon to be 2.
80. Where would you retire to? Millionaire Acres.
81. What kind of car do you drive? Saturn.
82. What are your best physical features? Hair and hands.
83. What are your best characteristics? Wit and compassion and relentless creativity and a complete ability to not give a shit if people like me or not.
84. If you could go anywhere in the world on vacation where would you go? Right now, Maui, because people I respect say it is awesome and because I have never once had a vacation for pleasure and relaxation.
85. What kind of books do you like to read? Grown up books.  They all seem like a distant memory.
86. Where would you want to retire to? Hello, question 80.  Nice to see you again.
87. What is your favorite time of the day? When I am asleep.
88. Where did you grow up? In a nice, mid-sized city.
89. How far away from your birthplace do you live now? About a 9 hour drive.
90. What are you reading now? This question.
91. Are you a morning person or a night owl? Morning.
92. Can you touch your nose with your tongue? no.
93. Can you close your eyes and raise your eyebrows? wtf?
94. Do you have pets? no.
95. How many rings before you answer the phone? again, wtf?
96. What is your best childhood memory? all pretty good.
97. What are some of the different jobs that you have had in your life? kid photographer, actor, writer.
98. Any new and exciting things that you would like to share? no.
99. What is most important in life? love.
100. What Inspires You? Capital Letters On Every Word! 

Worrier Princess

When J and I were freshly engaged my mom said this to him: "She's a little worrier, J.  And she always has been." She would know.

Anxiety plagues my family.  Everyone on both sides seems to give excessive attention to all the things that could go horribly wrong in every situation.  There are only a couple of blood relatives I can think of who do/did not over-worry.  My paternal grandfather was pretty chill, and he lived to be 101 years old.  My niece, T, does not seem to stress as much as the rest of us.  Other than those two, we are all complete neurotics.

I once saw a special on the making of "Seinfeld".  Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David were being interviewed about the initial success of the series, and their reactions to the network ordering more and more episodes.  Jerry thought it was great!  Larry was paralyzed with stress with each request for another script.  He could not imagine himself able to rise to the task.  I saw myself in Larry David.  I would never be the Jerry, shrugging and all "it'll work out."  I am the Larry.  I want success, but when it is staring me in the face I am all: "I will NEVER be able to pull this off!"

I think our world is set up for Larrys not Jerrys.  Our society had become so complicated, fast paced and success-centric that we are all balls of stress pretending not to be.  There is a good reason that so many of us are searching for a simpler life.  There is a reason why downsizing, growing our own food, and  greening up our lives, has become so trendy.  It is my belief that we all suspect, even if only subconsciously, that something has got to give and we want to be ready with our bunker in the mountains and firewood and home canned food when we officially strive ourselves into implosion.

Lately I have been really fixated on a single issue in my life.  I won't go into specifics, because, obviously, that would stress me out.  But I think about this issue a lot.  And when I think about it just logically, I know it is really not a big deal.  But tell that to the little demon in my brain.  That demon always needs one point of fixation on which to survive.  Kind of like how the plant in Little Shop of Horrors needed human blood.  Because if and when I stop fixating on this ONE thing, that demon will immediately start to feed on something else.

One of the kids recently woke me in the middle of the night.  After I'd settled the baby back down I couldn't get back to sleep myself and immediately began to stress about the thing I am currently stressing about.  So, to distract myself, I started to think about my pattern of stressing out.  Here's a few episodes I thought of:

The first panic attack I can clearly recall happened in grade one when I realized I'd forgotten to return a stack of flashcards I'd borrowed.  I slept in bunk beds with my sister, and I can so keenly remember lying in the top bunk, my six year old head hot with anxiety about what would become of a kid who committed such an atrocity as this.  I schemed about how I might get to school early, before the teacher, and sneak the cards onto her desk.  In the end, I, in a state of pure terror, walked up to her desk, handed my teacher the cards, and she said: "Oh, thank you."  And that was that.  It was all fine.

When I was fifteen I settled in to study for my French final exam, and without warning I suddenly was pounded with the manufactured realization that I had waited too long to cram and I would surely fail and that there was nothing I could do to stop it.  This fear came out of mid-air, landed on me and I became paralyzed.  I could not study.  I was so panic stricken that I just turned out the light,   crawled under the covers and waited until the morning when I could march to the gallows and get it over with.  The exam was fine, and I passed the course easily.

When I was in my 20s, at university, I realized that the student loan people had neglected to send me a specific form that was standard procedure then - a confirmation that the borrower had worked in the summer and was also contributing to his or her own education financially.  I called and asked for the form to be sent and it didn't arrive.  I called again.  And then, one evening, I convinced myself that the lack of this form meant that I would not be eligible for the breaks the government was then giving to students who completed their degrees in a timely manner, and I would have to pay back the entire amount, and consequently my entire adulthood was now blown. Cue flop sweat, shakes, and an overwhelming need to lie down.  Of course the form eventually arrived in the mail, I filled it out and all was well.

Oh I could go on.  But those examples probably paint the picture well enough.

This pattern of sudden, brutal anxiety has etched itself into my entire life.  I don't ALWAYS react to adversity with a panic attack.  In fact, many of the situations that actually should cause panic I handle quite well.  I'm really, really good at many of the really big things.  I have been called upon to help people who are at the end of their lives and have found the experience profound and rich and fascinating and in no way scary.  I stand up in front of crowds and speak and perform on a very regular basis.  I have zero problem with confrontation, yet I am anxious every day when I have to get the mail because I am sure there will be some sort of horrible message that will turn my life on its head.  And  sometimes, with little warning, I fixate on something totally random and spiral and feel like Larry David facing a blank page on a computer screen.

I have come to believe that this kind of anxiety disorder (is it a disorder?) is so much a part of me that it must be somehow connected to the parts of me that I really like - my creativity, my wit, my ability to recognize the beauty in the ugliness of life.   So I accept it and try to do what I am doing now - to remind myself that it is, indeed, a pattern.  If I can show myself that this is me, and this is my own special crazy and without it I would be a lesser version of myself, then I can usually talk myself down and get on with things.

I think Larry David is brilliant.  I love him.  And ever since I saw that interview I always think of him as a kindred spirit.  He knows he has something to say, and work to do, and as much as his demon makes him doubt himself, he gets on with it.  So I am okay with being a Larry.  Larrys grit their teeth and get the job done.

Neurotic and Themeless

I have been feeling, as a blog owner, remiss at not having posted in earnest in some time.  Thing is, I haven't really had any burning subject to address.  There is much on my mind, as usual, but nothing that is shaking itself down into a single, neat little theme.  So for now here are a few subjects I have crowding my neurotic brain:

1. I HATE dealing with money.  Hate it.  And now that I have a house and kids and a reasonable income I have to get over my lifelong aversion to learning how money REALLY works in this complicated society.  Ugh.  The very thought of it all makes me want to have a little lie down.

2. One of my absolute, rage inducing peeves right now is second hand parenting - when other people decide to chime in and parent my kids.  I try never to do this to other kids, but yesterday I had to bite my tongue hard when other parents made me feel inadequate.  Their kids do stuff I don't like, or agree with, and I have never ONCE had to gall to say anything to their child.  In fact, I go out of my way to be loving to other peoples' kids, no matter what they do.  Because I remember so keenly how deeply affected I was by the admonishments of grown ups who were not my parents.  So there you go...I'm better than you!  (Ha - that was said very much with tongue in cheek.)

3. Now that the season is over I am reminding myself of rule number one of living in a town this tiny - do not let anything anyone else thinks or says about you in.  Don't worry about people who have opinions about how you keep your yard, or if you put up enough Christmas lights, or why you are no longer friends with someone, or where you park your car.  Don't worry about it, try not to think about it, and just try to be courteous and live peacefully among it all.

That's all for now.  A better post is coming.  I promise.  Soon.  Well, soon-ish.

Really Stupid Meme

I haven't had time to write a post for ages, and I have no inspiration, so I decided to copy the first meme questionairre I could find and without reading it over, to copy it and fill it out.  So here it is.  It's really stupid:

1. When you looked at yourself in the mirror today, what was the first thing you thought?

I should brush Z's teeth while she's peeing.

2. How much cash do you have on you?

180 bucks.

3. What’s a word that rhymes with DOOR?

Albacore.

4. Favorite planet?

I have never given this a second of consideration.  This will not change.

5. Who is the 4th person on your missed call list on your cell phone?

I have never had a cell phone.

6. What is your favorite ring tone on your phone?

Good grief.

7. What shirt are you wearing?

A white T-shirt that I have never seen before but surfaced in my laundry basket when I was looking for a T-shirt.  It is, clearly, the Laundry Basket of Requirement.

8. Do you label yourself?

WTF?

9. Name the brand of the shoes you’re currently wearing?

My feet are unadorned.

10. Bright or Dark Room?

Bright in day, dark at night.  What a stupid question.

11. What do you think about the person who took this survey before you?

I did not get it from another person.

12. What does your watch look like?

Silver, Anne Klein.  Pretty.  I'd rather have a large, silver man's watch because, clearly, cooler.

13. What were you doing at midnight last night?

I was asleep.

14. What did your last text message you received on your cell say?

Was this meme written by a cell phone company?

15. Where is your nearest 7-11?

About an hour's drive away.

16. What's a word that you say a lot?

"Clearly", clearly.

17. Who told you he/she loved you last?

J.

18. Last furry thing you touched?

A toy.

19. How many drugs have you done in the last three days?

I have taken much ibuprofen, as I have a migraine.

20. How many rolls of film do you need developed?

2001 called.  It wants this question back.

21. Favorite age you have been so far?

I do not play favourites with my own ages.

22. Your worst enemy?

There are so many...how could I ever pick just ONE?

23. What is your current desktop picture?

Kids.

24. What was the last thing you said to someone?

"Stop kicking the com-pillar!"

25. If you had to choose between a million bucks or to be able to fly what would it be?

Money.  No contest.

26. Do you like someone?

Like...or like like?

27. The last song you listened to?

"Tomorrow".  Performed by a three year old.

28. What time of day were you born?

Evening.

29. What’s your favorite number?

Why would anyone care?

30. Where did you live in 1987?

Victoria, BC.

31. Are you jealous of anyone?

I try not to be, but I sometimes am.

32. Is anyone jealous of you?

I think, probably, yes.  Maybe.

33. Where were you when 9/11 happened?

Langley, BC.

34. What do you do when vending machines steal your money?

Call the number and get my money back.  Not kidding.

35. Do you consider yourself kind?

Yes.  But I also consider myself mean.  Work that out.

36. If you had to get a tattoo, where would it be?

Never.

37. If you could be fluent in any other language, what would it be?

French.  It's such a beautiful sound.

38. Would you move for the person you loved?

We have moved many times, and always after discussion about what is best for all of us.

39. Are you touchy feely?

Can be.

40. What’s your life motto?

As long as it's funny.

41. Name three things that you have on you at all times?

Wedding rings and watch.  Except when I don't.

42. What’s your favourite town/city?

I love many.

43. What was the last thing you paid for with cash?

My grocery cart.

44. When was the last time you wrote a letter to someone on paper and mailed it?

2001.  But I just GOT a letter.

45. Can you change the oil on a car?

No I cannot.

46. Your first love: what is the last thing you heard about him/her?

That he is as much of a loser as I remembered.

47. How far back do you know about your ancestry?

On one side, very far back.

48. The last time you dressed fancy, what did you wear and why did you dress fancy?

I wear fancy costumes all the time, for work.

49. Does anything hurt on your body right now?

Jeezus - all of it.

50. Have you been burned by love?

I am in my 40s, so yes.  

In Praise of Not Having it All

Infertility sucks.  No two ways about that.  Being unable to conceive when you want to conceive is a nightmare.  But now that I have been on so many sides of this parenting thing - a non-mom, a woman suffering from infertility, a pregnant woman, and now a mom, I have had a little something to say turning over in my mind for some time now.  So I think I'll say it here.  On my blog.  I want to say this right, without sounding in any way patronizing or ungrateful or anything negative.

I want to lay some praise down on those who live, by choice or by providence, in a state of non-parenthood.

A couple of posts ago I wrote about the difficulty I have had adjusting to the negative associations society makes with motherhood.  But I have also been in this other place - the place of being an aging woman without kids.  And society does a whole different number on that demographic.

I believe we still, even in this amazing time of freedom to make our lives look how we want them to look, expect that someday everyone will break down and have a kid or some kids.  We look at people who are off living marvelous, adventurous adult lives and we say: "That's great. Get it all in before the kids come and shackle you down."  We hardly ever say: "Cool, they're having a great life without kids.  Good choice."

I'm guilty.  Years ago, when I was in my 20s, I had a really good friend who was a few years older than I.  She was in her late 20s and she knew she never wanted to be a mom.  She was married.  She told me how she, a few times, had booked appointments to consult about having her tubes tied.  Every doctor refused to perform such a drastic operation on such a young woman.  One doctor said: "But what if your husband wants children one day?"  She replied: "I don't ever want kids.  Neither does he.  But if he suddenly changes his mind he'll have to go find another woman to do it with."  She was still denied the procedure.  When she told me her desire to render herself infertile I also said: "But what if you change your mind one day?"  I found it hard to believe she could be so resolute at such a young age.  When she turned 30 my friend went to a new doctor, explained her position, and the doctor said: "Well, you're 30.  You're a grown woman.  Let's do it."  And they did.  And she has never regretted or questioned her choice to close up shop.  Motherhood never interested her in the slightest.

I also have friends who always assumed they would be moms one day, but all kinds of circumstances made it not happen.  One woman tried to conceive for 15 years.  She tried the less invasive fertility treatments, she tried the holistic approach, she looked into adoption.  And then one day she was done.  She was sick of the whole roller coaster and so she got off the ride and decided to accept and love her life as it was, and is.  Another friend, nearing 40, realized she had devoted herself to her career and hadn't had kids.  She had always, always imagined she would be a mom one day.  And just when she had made the huge decision to go for it and get herself some fertility treatments her career took off in a profound and deeply fulfilling way and she went with that instead.  She cancelled the treatments and trusted the amazing path that life was throwing at her.

One of the hardest parts for me about being an aging woman without kids was the things people would say to me. When my body was shot full of hormones in preparation for our first IVF attempt I was having to endure these questions:

"So, you decided not to have a family, eh?'

"Why didn't you ever have kids?"

"Are you guys going to have kids?  You're running out of time!"

The few times I opened up and admitted J and I had been struggling with infertility I got some interesting responses.  Here's a sampling:

"Wow.  I got pregnant the first time we tried!" (Great.  Good for you.  Thanks for letting me know.  That was SUPER nice of you.)

"You can have one of mine!" (Hilarious.  You should get into stand up.  I'm laughing so hard right now I might punch you in the face.)

"Have you ever thought about adoption?" (Wow.  Adoption....  I just told you I have been trying to have a baby for six years and you think, you honestly f*cking THINK, adoption has never occurred to me?  Oh, and by the way, we no longer live in the decades when young women were shamed into giving away their babies, so adoption is not as easy as you assume.  And nowadays things like foreign and/or private adoption take a massive bank account.  Or, if you think you can do it, you can adopt a child who is handicapped, or emotionally troubled, and the people who do adopt these beautiful children are freaking heroes but I don't want that.  I am not a bad person for not wanting that.  I am honest about it.  I have a desire to have my own baby.  That's it.  And besides, adoption comes with restrictions and most agencies would consider me too old and too low income, so... please feel free to stuff your question up your... well, you know.)

People are often casually insensitive about fertility issues.

One day, when I was in my late 30s and still trying to conceive, a woman at work walked into the full staff room and asked to the room in general:  "How old is too old to be a mother?"  And the whole room started weighing in with their opinions.  It was generally agreed that if you are over 38 and you try to get pregnant you are a selfish asshole.  That was a fun day.

A woman who knew full well I was trying and failing and brokenhearted decided to make her screen saver her sister's ultrasound image and whenever she had a chance she would squeal with delight and swivel her computer so I could see it and then give me updates on the pregnancy.  Also fun. 

I know a woman who was unable to conceive who one day came home to find that one of her neighbours, upon hearing the infertility story, had run out and purchased a stone angel and placed it on my friend's doorstep.  In a bizarre attempt to "comfort" this poor, barren soul, this neighbour had actually dared to express her misguided pity with a surrogate baby in form of stone doorstop.  What comfort did this neighbour possibly imagine this might provide?Unbelievable insensitivity.  Although the angel is, apparently, a pretty good doorstop.

After six years of infertility I chose a stock response whenever anyone asked me about my childless state: "I believe reproduction is a personal matter." And I really do.  It's none of your damn business why I do or do not have kids.

So now here I am, at the other end of my fertility adventure.  I have my beautiful twins and I am in love with them.  But I also miss the hell out of being a non-mom.  SURPRISE!  Did not really see that coming.

Now I look at the non-moms in my realm and I appreciate so much what they have, and what they do.

My non-mom friends have a personal freedom I can now only fantasize about.  They go to the pub... whenever they feel like it!  They go to work without a thought about who is minding the kids while they are away.  They go on trips and watch grown up shows at any time of the day.  They have breakables on low shelves and cream coloured furniture.  They live rich, full, happy lives.

Some of these non-mom women are surprised to find themselves over 40 and childless. Some are childless by choice.  Some tried hard, but it did not happen.  These women, I'm sure, are sick to death of the questions: "Why didn't you have kids?"  "Are you going to have kids?" "I guess you couldn't have kids, eh?"  They know, of course, that people ponder their childless state behind their backs.  The gossip ladies in our Town certainly will have had the: "Well, I heard she really wanted kids but...." conversations.  But I try never to mention their childless state.  If they want to talk to me about it, I'm all ears.  But I will never, ever look at them as women who missed out.  Being a non-mom is cool, wonderful and brave, no matter what path got you there.

As an over 40 woman I want to really, honestly, honour the choices and paths my peers have taken.  Non-moms have great lives, careers, adventures.  Sometimes they even babysit for me and I totally get the speedy manner in which they get the hell out of my house when their shift is over and they can go back to their own houses where toys are not the new decor and they can have beautiful, breakable objects right down low because no little hands are going to smash up their stuff.  Non-moms have no obligation whatsoever to help me out with my kids.  My kids were my own choice.  But they often do help.  Cool women.

So, not sure if I've managed to say what I set out to say at the onset of this post, but what I want you non-moms to know is, you're cool.  And in the same way that I am blessed to have a life full of Wonder Pets and stuffed dogs and bums to wipe you are blessed to have lives full of freedom and breakables and stairs without gates.  Non-mom on, sisters.  You have my full support.

10 Years Old

The 22nd of August is my 10th wedding anniversary.  J and I are 10 years old!  We have been together for 12 years, and we have known each other for 14 years.

When J came to work at the Site in 1998 I instantly liked him.  He is that kind of guy.  He is unfailingly personable.  This is such a fortunate quality.  He genuinely cares that other people feel happy and comfortable and appreciated.  He lacks the tough shell that I have, and it makes him very beautiful and very hard to resist.

14 years ago, when I first encountered the man I did not know I would marry, I found him sweet, charming and kind of goofy in his earnestness.  14 years ago J was a beautiful boy with inspirational tattoos and a penchant for white, flowing, poofy shirts.  I heard him sing in a comedy show one night, and discovered that he has a heartbreaking voice.  Dude can sing.  When I sat next to him at the opening night of the Theatre Royal that season he told me how he had already been married and was in the process of divorcing, he had already  lived and studied in New York City.  I said: "You've packed a lot into 24 years!"  Little did I know, at that moment, that this is a guy who packs about a year's worth of experiences into every single week of his life.  This is a guy who has a kind of eager need to make sure he does not miss out on any adventure or crisis or opportunity.  This is a guy who wants to be liked, but never backs down from a challenge even if it means he might fail, or fall on his face.  This is a guy who grabs life.

14 years ago J went through a series of girlfriends at the Site before falling hard for someone unexpected - a tall, brilliant, kind of awkward girl who worked for a local historical society for the summer (let's call her A).  I barley noticed A that season, except that she seemed to be wound very tight.  She held her body in such a way that it appeared her muscles were always tense and ready for some unexpected attack.  She dressed like an artist and one night I heard her sing in the pub and she was really good and charming.  And that surprised and delighted me.  She also had a one in a million smile.  Like Julia Roberts, you could forgive this girl for anything once she flashed that smile (although I'm not sure I can forgive Julia for "Eat, Pray, Love," but that's a story for another day).  A and J seemed to fall into quite a serious thing that season.

At the start of the next season, in 99, J returned to town but he and A had split over the winter and he was torn up about it.  A was somewhere else that season.  She didn't seem to be in town.  J, in his state of heartbreak, went through a quick series of flings and I got a kick out of watching him with a different girl (seemed like) every week.  And each of these girls, briefly, had his full attention.  He is not a jerk.  But he is a romantic. Then A came back to town.  She and J did not get back together right away, as he was with someone else, but they did become roommates.

That summer I was working on my first ever solo show that would premier at the Vancouver Fringe in September so I was MIA as far as being in the social loop that season.  I was obsessed with my show so I had no idea that J and a little group of our friends were dealing with something much bigger than building a show.

A was indisputably brilliant.  I didn't know it at the time, but she was so academically gifted she had already been accepted to Oxford.  The other thing I didn't know was that she, like many people blessed with a super brain, was plagued with mental illness.  She was haunted with thoughts of suicide.  One day that summer J came home unexpectedly to the apartment he was sharing with A and another friend (he had left work early) and walked right into a scene of A trying to take her own life.  J and A weathered a massively painful and dramatic evening, and then, after that night, they became a couple once again.  As it seemed they were meant to be.

Now, as I have mentioned before, the town we live in has a spectacular rumour mill.  But the small group of people who were involved with this event (neighbours, for example) all agreed to a pact of silence and stuck to it.  To this day I am amazed at the ethics and honour of these people.  A's suicide attempt was not reduced to ugly gossip.  It was honoured with love by her friends.  I still well up when I think about that.

In fact, A's friends were so careful with this secret that I knew nothing about it until the week she succeeded in killing herself.

It was  between seasons at the Site and I was working in an art supply store in the big city.  One day I looked up and saw one of my friends from our small town in the store.  I was thrilled!  He was thrilled.  We hadn't seen each other in months and here we were bumping into one another in my store.  We made arrangements to meet for drinks in a couple of days.

It was a Thursday when my friend and I went to a local bar for a few drinks.  Another friend who also spent his summers up here and winters in the city (as I did at that time) joined us as well.

We had only just settled down with our drinks when my friend from our Town said: "I talked to J last night and he had the worst possible news."  He made this statement so casually that I thought he was going to say that J wasn't coming back to work at the Site for the upcoming season.  But that's not what he said.  What he said was this:

"A killed herself on Tuesday night."

I remember putting my glass down, looking him in the eyes, and just saying: "What?"

I was sure I must have heard him wrong.

And at that moment I got the whole story of what had transpired the summer previous, how A had tried then, and failed, mostly because J arrived home sooner than expected.

I went to A`s funeral in the city.  J sang, and spoke, and was beautiful.  In retrospect, I may have suspected at A`s funeral that I would marry that guy one day.

I called J a few days later and we hung out a couple of times in the few weeks before we were to head back up here for the 2000 season.  And once we got here we basically became inseparable.

The 2000 season was also the season that my friend - the daughter of the people I worked for - was dying of cancer.  Our whole company was in a state of crazy high emotion as we helped the family get through a season where they were trying to keep shows up and running while at the same time guiding their daughter to the end of her life.  J and I came together in a moment of mutual crisis.  But, as I have come to understand, it is these moments in life - when you have just faced or are just facing the reality of death - when you truly cut the bullshit and just live.  That summer of 2000 was intense, brutal, sad and euphoric.  And it was all those things every single day.

J and I didn`t know where our relationship was headed, but we did know that it was something.

That winter J stayed here and I went back to the city and we traveled back and forth to see one another almost weekly.  And then in April of 2001 I moved here and moved in with him.

And on the 22nd of August, 2002, we got married here.  In the Community Hall.

During the course of our marriage we have had the usual amount of ups and downs, but I would argue that we have had more than the average number of adventures.  J has forced me out of my comfort zone over and over.  I think I have shown him a lot about resolve and I have been able to help him with follow through on projects and ideas.  We have had a very good record of having break downs at opposite times so that one of us is weak while the other is strong.

And we had two babies.  And now the babies have turned into kids.  And J and I have gone from a couple to a family.  We have grown up stuff now, like jobs and a mortgage.  But in almost every way else we are still the same two people we were 12 years ago when we first, in the midst of chaos, loss and a mind blowing Northern Lights show, decided to give it a go.  I still look at my J and see the wounded 26 year old in the poofy shirt, but now I also see years of life lived with a man I still love with everything I`ve got.  I also see a man who has yelled at me when I needed to snap out of my stuck place of fear, a man who has beamed proudly at me from the audience when I opened a new show, a man who has been my champion through thick and thin.  I look at J and I see friend, boyfriend, husband, actor, director, provider, partner, Daddy to my Mommy.  And every day I am so proud to be his wife.