Category: House
Monday, Mar 23, 2015 | Family, Holidays, House, Kids, Organizing, Parenting, Siblings |
New games room/study/parent-free zone.
I think my body needed a holiday. From Wednesday, March 11 until Sunday, March 22, I slept in every morning. And with the exception of a very fun welcome-back-to-health family soccer game on Friday afternoon, I did not exercise. This morning, I’m back to the usual schedule, up early, etc. I was happy to be back this morning, but also happy to have taken time off. (Although next time, I should just take a holiday and skip the getting sick part.)
Games room. Kevin even painted! No more stripes.
My energy returned with a roar over the past few days, and we did a massive spring cleaning, rearranged rooms, and opened up new space for the kids to make their own. We’ve got six people in a four-bedroom house. Not everyone can have his or her own room. Them’s the facts. We also don’t have the money or the desire to renovate in order to add more space. People have to share. If we weren’t living a life of ridiculous North American privilege, we wouldn’t even question the sharing of the rooms. You suspect that you’re hearing a version of my lecture to the kids right now, aren’t you. Why, yes, yes you are.
Boys’ room. This is as tidy as it’s ever gonna get.
The main problem is that three of the four kids strongly want(ed) their own room. The fourth kid was like a refugee being moved from fiefdom to fiefdom, grudgingly granted space to pitch his tent, but essentially unwanted. But we’re not a household of kingdoms or mini-nations, we’re more like a socialist democracy. Okay, without the elections. Basically, we have to share the resources in a way that benefits everyone, and privileges no one.
Girls’ room. With bed sheet divider.
So the dictator’s solution (yeah, that’s me), was to make everyone share, and free up one bedroom as a communal games area/study/parent-free zone. Although I’d really prefer if they didn’t eat chips in there. Unless they want to clean it themselves. In that case, eat all the chips you want, kids. I’m not an unreasonable dictator.
Yeah, so I had to get back to my regular schedule, lest in my renewed energetic state, I move us right across the country or something. I’ve got the spring itch for adventure and change. This morning, I heard myself saying (mostly to myself), “Hey, a year ago at this time I was getting ready to go to London. I miss London! How can I miss London when I was only there for a week? Maybe I should go there again this spring! What’s stopping me? Nothing’s stopping me! I’ll go spend a week at the British Library …”
“Why would you want to go to a library, Mom?” (Okay, CJ was listening.)
Anyway. What’s stopping me?
I’m not sure. Maybe it’ll be the early mornings.
xo, Carrie
Wednesday, Jan 28, 2015 | Dogs, Exercise, House, Swimming, Writing |
This morning, when the plumber arrived to hopefully fix our toilet before our annual scotch party this Saturday, I was on the couch by the fire with the dogs, enjoying the last minutes of my nap. I answered the door, trying to appear not to have been recently asleep. We exchanged pleasantries and I showed him the problem, then removed myself to chastise and crate the dogs, who had threatened to remove the plumber from his leg. Then I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. Now, I tell myself that the plumber has no idea what I ordinarily look like, so perhaps he wasn’t as frightened as I was by the sight of me.
My hair had dried funny and a sizeable clump was standing straight out over my left ear.
And I looked approximately a decade older than I actually am due to raccoon-like, circular, darkish, bruised-looking dents around my eyes. Goggle eyes!
Evidence of early morning swim. It lasts longer some mornings.
The good news is this: I got up to swim.
I’m managing to rise early every single week-day to exercise. More good news: I was able to run intervals at an indoor track yesterday. Very very slowly. When I tried out the running a couple of weeks ago, it’s possible I was going way too fast. Oops. That’s not like me at all. Ahem. But even a slow run is thrilling when it’s pain-free. Add in the daily walking at my treadmill desk, and I’m actually covering a lot of kilometres these days.
And I’m trying to meditate, just the tiniest bit. Ten minutes a day. It reminds me of swimming laps. I do a lot of counting and controlled breathing while swimming laps.
Today, AppleApple wondered why I don’t swim faster; this was not exactly a critique. Despite being a quite damning critic of the inefficient swimming styles she observes in the lanes all around us, she says my stroke actually looks like it’s being done correctly. But with such a proper-looking stroke, she thinks I should be going faster, and I agree. So perhaps there are unseen inefficiencies. Next time, on her suggestion, I’m going to try rotating my shoulders more — stretching forward on the glide like I’m making myself as long as I possibly can. (Why do I always imagine that I can improve, no matter what I’m trying to do? Is that a really irritating trait?)
The plumber has left. The dogs have calmed down.
It’s time for meditation, followed by walking and writing. Nobody will be here to see the goggle eyes or to judge the sticky-out chlorinated hair, not even me. I’ll be gone too; that’s what it feels like when I’m writing, like I’ve left the room, left this season and place and time. Away: inventing imaginary memories for imaginary people who seem so strangely real.
(Note to self: check mirror before picking up kids for piano lessons.)
xo, Carrie
Thursday, Oct 9, 2014 | House, Teaching |
I’m reading and marking my students’ poetry assignments today. And tomorrow. In hopes of being done before Thanksgiving weekend, when I’m looking forward to hosting family, and cooking up at least one enormous feast.
I was going to treat myself to croissants … or something similar … to help sustain and encourage me through the marking. Instead, I’ve found myself rigidly plunked at the dining-room table with a glass of water as accompaniment. Currently stopping to eat a bowl of leftover soup for lunch. I need to get better at this “treating myself” thing. Instead, I fantasize about croissants magically appearing before me, or husbands delivering sustaining take-out lattes. Lazy. But true.
Back at it. Dreaming on.
Monday, Aug 18, 2014 | Confessions, Family, House, Kids, Photos |
Sunday morning soccer, Owen Sound, Ontario
The house is so quiet.
You know when you wish for something and then it arrives and you wonder why you were wishing for it? That’s what this morning feels like, and it’s a taste of the months to come, after the kids return to school: house empty during school hours, just me and the dogs, no one dashing into my office to demand/beg/complain/tattle, no need for ear plugs, no discoveries en route to the bathroom of kitchen disasters and the remains of lunch. Just me.
Interrupted by my own distractions, demands, hunger, anxieties.
This week, one child is at a friend’s cottage. Two are at overnight camp. The fourth is home, but is at a soccer camp during the day.
Here he is at supper last night, playing the part of only child without apparent effort. “I can’t see without my glasses,” he joked. He helped Kevin clean the back porch, which we are finally painting after years of neglect. He was affable, talkative, and snuggly after supper, playing a game with Kevin, brushing teeth, putting on PJs, reading a story with me.
But then it came time for bed. And suddenly the emptiness of the house struck him too. His lonely room, no sister reading by flashlight or humming her “Suzi dog songs” in the bunk overhead. Couldn’t he sleep with me? At the end of the bed? On the floor? Here, or here?
It’s kind of how I feel this morning. I can’t quite settle. After longing for alone time, I miss the mess.
I don’t know how someone so strongly inclined toward solo pursuits got so lucky as to acquire a life filled with chaos, but lucky I am. And oh how I appreciate the gift of disruption in this quiet quiet house. Kevin and I took advantage of having built-in babysitters home on Saturday, and slipped out to see Boyhood. We loved it. It’s the parents who stick with me, complicated, loving, mistaken sometimes, sometimes wise, trying even while they know they’re failing in some profound way, but that’s what we do as parents–try even while we see ourselves being clumsy, repeating mistakes. The scene that haunts me today is the mother crying in her kitchen as her son packs up his room to leave for college. “This is the saddest day of my whole life,” she says (or I remember her saying). “I knew it was coming, but I didn’t know you’d be so happy to be leaving.”
The other piece that sticks with me is how much advice the boy is given by well-meaning adults over the course of his boyhood. And how rarely that advice is what he wants or needs. Yet how compelled the adults are to offer it. Makes me want to hold my advice-giving-tongue and instead listen, ask questions, be around.
xo, Carrie
* A note on the photos: these are #unedited #cameraphone. My photo computer died last week, and until it returns to life, I am without editing options, or the ability to download pictures from my Nikon. So for the meantime, I’ve exchanged quality for spontaneity. There’s always an upside to the down.
Tuesday, Aug 5, 2014 | Blogging, Books, House |
Welcome!
I am posting to you from my new home in Blogland! If all has gone according to plan, the transition has been seamless and you’ll find yourself here even if you’d gone looking for my former address. If I’d moved houses in real life, the same could not be said. This is much easier.
As with all moves, I expect there to be a few glitches as I figure out the plumbing, so to speak. I welcome your comments and thoughts, and hope you’ll feel just as much at home here as you did in the old blog. If you take a look around, you’ll see there’s more space now, rooms upstairs for events listings and news and information about my books, and the pictures are bigger, but the light feels the same to me. And the colours. And the faces. Just look at those faces.
Plus, I’ve brought along ‘most everything from the old place. All posts and photos are here too, going right back to the beginning. You can still subscribe via email, if you don’t already. Recipes and books-I’m-reading-now can be found in “Extras.” Packing up and moving all those boxes was easy too: my brother Cliff did the heavy lifting. (His company 10AM.ca does great work, if you’re considering a digital renovation, redesign, or move.)
So c’mon in. Keep your shoes on, we’re not fussy (even if we’re dressed up in this post; trust me, this is not the new normal). Stay awhile. And please come back and visit again soon. I’m really excited to share the new place with you. (Enough with the extended metaphor! Enough, I said! Okay. Stopping now.)
xo, Carrie
Tuesday, Jul 22, 2014 | House, Summer, Work |
I seem to be happiest when in motion. I can’t say why this is, but contentment seems to derive from a sense of continuing, a stream of mostly humble activities rolling one in the next into the next, overlapping, flowing always forward and pulling me along.
I’m wary of inertia.
I ward it off with projects and lists, with the demands of parenting, and the urgency of getting to the right place at the right time.
This sense of urgency can make me feel drawn, tense, running on pure adrenalin. Or, oddly, it can make me feel calm, serene, like I’m being swept along rather than having to propel myself. This summer feels like a bit of both, but mostly, I’ve been feeling calm about where I’m at. I’ve been feeling buoyed and buoyant and not overwhelmed, even as I’m whirled from task to task.
Kevin and I accomplished something major on the weekend. We rented a dumpster and cleared eleven years of why-are-we-keeping-this junk from our attic, basement, garage, and many closets and cupboards. We filled it to the top. It felt cathartic and it was a ton of labour, squeezed in around three soccer games on Saturday (only we would think a mere three soccer games on a Saturday is an invitation to rent a dumpster), a long run on Sunday morning (me), and a soccer practice on Sunday evening. The resulting purge of possessions was like preparing for a move, without the necessity of actually moving anywhere.
My conclusion: we should do this at least once a decade. I’ll put it on my to-do list for 2024.
And the things we got rid of. I put anything that looked even moderately appealing out on the curb. We may have a hoarder in our neighbourhood because boy, did items go fast. At one point, I set out a miniature crockpot, then realized it was threatening to rain. “I’ll just bring that up on the porch for now,” thought I, heading back out for the rescue — but it was already gone. Vanished. It felt quite remarkable, like discovering a black hole or something, a vacancy down which to toss all those things that still seemed useful, not junk, but no longer wanted by us. I imagine it, now, somewhere nearby, stuffed into the corners of someone else’s life, while our lives are somehow lightened by the space that’s been cleared.
::
On the schedule this week …
one child at musical theatre camp, with performances on Friday
one child at horse camp
several soccer practices + four games
one story contest to help judge (done, this morning!)
one book launch party to plan
many kilometres to run (training for the Run for the Toad in October)
one wedding to celebrate (my little sister Edna is getting married! and I get to call her little because she’s twelve and a half years younger than me)
On, on, on we go. Even when I’m really tired, I feel the tidal pull, carrying me along, and I’m glad for it. I’m glad for being at a stage in my career where I’m being invited to participate. You won’t catch me complaining about being too busy. It means: wealth of experiences. It means: my cup runneth over. It means, for me, a constant source of replenishment.
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