Why I should sleep in.

I love to sleep. I will sleep all day if you left me to it. Ive been blessed with a baby who also loves to sleep. And she has never given us an issue in sleeping through the night, twelve hours straight. Its bliss.
This morning, however, I woke up at 5:30. And not just woke up, looked at the clock and rolled over, but like. WOKE. UP. But it was so early that I forced myself to try and fall back asleep. An hour later I finally let myself get out from under my warm duvet and greet the day. I figured it was a perfect chance to enjoy my morning coffee in silent solitude. And it was. It was bliss.

We have been semi organizing Maddy’s room because I have a vision of how I want to redecorate it next month when she graduates to a big girl bed. We had been using her closet as mainly storage, so I figured since I was up I would sort through some of the big rubbermaid bins of crap. I snuck them out of her room and hunkered down in the living room sifting through memories I had been hauling from house to house since I moved out of my moms house when I was nineteen.

And the memories flooded. Jee-sus.

So, here’s the thing… when I was growing up my mom and step dad moved a lot. Like, once a year for many many years. When I say a lot I mean that by the age of 23 I had moved 25 times. And it seemed to always fall in the middle of a school year… so I got pretty good at making new friends, and at becoming aloof and standoffish my first few weeks at whatever the school dujour was. Sometimes growing up all over the place makes a person come out of their shell, be outgoing and exciting and confidant. Not me. Moving made me awkward and shy and lonely. I very strongly recall feeling like I was always leaving behind my friends. I was always the one having goodbye parties and writing letters to my ‘best friend’ in four different cities. I remember feeling very lonely a lot.
It took me a long time to start to act like myself and become comfortable enough to be me with my new friends. Usually that happened about a third of the way into our time at our new home town. And then by the time we were moving away again I had full blown best friends. If you have ever heard me tell stories about people I knew growing up you will notice I refer to a lot of people as ‘my best friend when I was a kid”… thats because they probably were. For a brief moment in my life those people were so important to me and the place I called home at the time.

So, back to the bins.

It struck me, as I read through old notes and yearbooks and scrapbooks Id been given my some of the sweetest people. I missed a lot of what could have been with some of those people. Some of those friends meant SO much to me. A lot of those friends I should have done a better job of keeping in touch with. I sat there this morning realizing I missed the lives I had before, and the simplicity of small towns and close houses.
I feel like I never really HAD that. I dont even know if I can describe THAT, its not what I was just listing of… its ALL of it… I just know I missed out on something big that a lot of my friends had. Stability. Growing up with people. I never had that. I had a chunk of my life with these friends, and then a different chunk of my life with those friends, and so on and so on. We moved away and I kept touch with a couple people with letters and phone calls, but when you’re 15 and your parents have moved you twice since you lived in the same town as your 13 year old best friend…. things start to change. And I missed out on the same group of friends moving through junior high school and senior highschool and graduation and beyond. It made me really sad to think about it.

I guess… I dont really know where I was going with this, if anywhere. I told Jeremy I want to move. I want to leave Victoria and all its snobbiness and cold people and constantly out of our reach lifestyle costs. I want to move to a small town where Im not afraid of Madelyn walking to her friends houses. I want to bake my own bread and give loaves to all my neighbours. I want to have drinks and dinners with our friends every Friday and have all our kids playing upstairs. I want what I remember, even so briefly. Because I miss it. And I want Madelyn to know it.

Reading.

The video is shotty, sorry, its from a blackberry, but it gets a little better. But this is how we know FER SHURE she’s mine, because that’s me as a child.

Repetition.

I said I was going to start again. And then I did. And then I quit again.
And then… I said I was going to start again. And then I did again. And then I quit again.
So now? I’m going to start again all over again.

I’m a stay at home mom again! I love it.
Maddy and I have done essentially nothing since I lost my job, except color, cook, build and read. Its been amazing. I feel like she actually LIKES me again.
I know, that sounds so ‘whoa is me’, but that’s not what I mean by it… Shes a Daddy’s girl, always has been, that’s just a reality. When I went back to work after my year of mat leave it seemed like she almost harbored ill feeling towards me for abandoning her. I only really saw her for a couple hours every day and that was really hard on both of us. But, like I said, shes a Daddy’s girl, and my separation from her only made that stronger, and more apparent. But now? It feels like she is slowly moving back to the middle.
Like last week, when we were downtown trying to find a restaurant to hide from the rain and fill our bellies, she was running as fast as her little legs could carry her, and slipped and cleaned a good half a block with her tiny nose. And she wailed. But the first word out of her wet, bloody little face? ‘Mooooooooooooommy!!’
Or yesterday, when we were reading books before her nap in her bedroom, cuddled on the floor, and she stopped in the middle of ‘Gruffalo’s child’, pushing her sucky to one side (yeah, yeah, she has a soother still, I’m the worst mother in the world, blah, blah, blah – sue me, its comfort, and shes not even two)looked at me and said ‘I laffa Mama’, then kept reading, as if she were simply describing the snake on the page to me. An unprompted ‘I love you’ is usually reserved for Daddy only.
And today. Today she was playing with Nana as I was getting ready to meet Jeremy for a rare child-free lunch, and she stopped what she was doing to run to the door and give me a full body hug and a kiss goodbye, without my requesting it first.
So, I feel like its safe to say she might like me a little more than she did a month ago. Even though I will never be the parent who gives her life savers (pacapers) first thing in the morning, no matter how sweetly she asks. She likes me now. And I don’t mind a bit.

Airborne.

There is a song I cannot get enough of lately. I sit at my desk, pushing paper, or drive around, or dance with Madelyn, constantly hitting ‘back’ on my ipod to listen one more time. It makes my spine tickle. It starts with a heavy throbbing orchestral whine. It ends the same way too. I love that. I love when a song is crashing into your ears, heavy with rock, and then is intertwined with an achy violin. Oooooh.
Today is my last day at work. In less than an hour I will come out of my branch director’s office, layoff notice in hand, and walk out the door past our horribly annoying security guard for the last time.
The. Last. Time. After four years.
It feels surreal actually. It feels like… Hmm. I can’t explain it, really. Let’s look at it differently.
If this were a movie, as I imagine so many moments in my life to be, there would be music playing as our protagonist picks up the four years in this office she has reduced down to a file room box. There would be a swell of an orchestra wrapping around her shoulders, down her leg and between each finger as she casts a glance around the room which leaves our audience wondering aloud: is she sad? No, she’s happy. Wait, I don’t know… what is she feeling? I can’t tell.
And she walks out the door. She’s hesitant. She’s moving very deliberately, very slowly. Maybe she is just as confused as the audience. She can’t decide what feeling is stronger. She is sad that she is leaving, and she is scared that she in uncertain about her future. But she is exhilarated that maybe, for the first time, she is making the absolute right choice for her. She isn’t picking the safe route, or the easy one. She won’t sit at a desk in a mediocre job surrounded by people who make her feel bad for being one of them. She might actually get the chance to have a fulfilling career; a job she is in love with, and excited about.
That song will be playing in my head when I leave here today and go into the unknown of my life before me. It feels emotional. It feels romantic It feels overwhelming. It feels good. It feels sad. It feels perfect. It feels like it’s the right decision.

Im coming back!

Im going to start blogging again. I dont even know when I actually ’stopped’… I just did. But Im going to start again. After all, my impending layoff next week will provide many hours in the day I can flit away writing. Mmm.

But for seriousness, a real blog post will come this week, followed by more. I miss it, even if no one reads it!!

A broken voice. A broken door. A broken choice. That I broke some more.

It seems like we were both trying so hard to break each other. You be the first, no you, no you. We both wanted to badly to win. To make the other one stumble back, eyes widened, and say ‘oh, i finally see.’ To fix the other. To make them understand. All we needed was to break through. Break in. Break out. Break… We broke. Maybe not each other, but we broke something. The opportunity? Maybe. Who knows that answer.
I know that I cant write. Not like that. Not anymore. And that makes me feel broken. So… maybe you did break me. Maybe you won.

And the rain is falling/And I believe my time has come

Its funny, well, not funny… but all day bits and pieces fall into my head and scream to be written down. But then the moment always comes, and I sit… and I have nothing.

Food, Inc.

Food, Inc. is coming out this summer. I am so unbelievably jazzed for this movie. Please go see it. Please be aware of what you eat, and maybe start to make our society change and be aware of what we allow to be put into our bodies, and our childrens bodies. Be aware of what you are eating. Nothing is going to change until we start to demand it. Im not, in the slightest saying dont eat beef. Eat beef. Eat grass fed healthy non-industrialized beef. Im saying dont eat beef that has been fed grain and remains of chickens, dogs and other cows. That shit? Is so not right.

And also, if you never have, read this book. Theres more books, but this one is a good start.

Frick, shes cute

Horrible Quality (thank you, Blackberry) but man, I freaking love this child.

Bwa ha ha