Category: Spring
Wednesday, Mar 27, 2013 | Chores, Dogs, Exercise, Friends, Kids, Politics, Spring, Writing |
1. Children washing dishes. This will look like bragging, but trust me, it happens far too rarely for the parents to claim superior parenting skills. Basically, the dish-washing child was inspired by the promise of a “reward” after all the evening chores were done — watching old family movies together. I had laundry to fold, Kevin was making school lunches, so Fooey decided, all on her own, to speed up the chore process by doing the dishes. Actually, neither Kevin nor I thought she could do them quite so thoroughly, but she did. She washed all the dishes. And her brother was inspired to “towel,” as he put it. We should put this knowledge to use, and we may, if the schedule becomes as insanely busy as it promises to be next fall, but for now, I prefer just to enjoy the moment for what it was: kids working together toward a common cause, helpfully.
2. Spring! It’s coming. I know it. Evidence surrounded us yesterday evening as the little kids and I took the dogs for a walk to our tiny neighbourhood park. Along the way we met friends, and more friends, and even more friends, everyone feeling the call of the after-supper sunshine, despite the bitter wind and necessity for hats and mitts and coats. We spent an hour out and about, visiting, playing, and remembering what it feels like to emerge from hibernation and be in the beautiful melting world again. Yes, snow is forecast for today, but I can feel the spring. I can feel it!
3. Dogs. Dogs are awesome. Our dogs are especially awesome, because, well, they’re ours, I suppose. They’ve been part of our family for a little over six months, now, and we have watched them settle in to our lives and claim our house and yard as their own (we’ve got a winter’s worth of clean-up work to do out back, but that’s another story). Without the dogs to walk, I never would have left supper on the table and spent an hour outside yesterday evening — instead, I would have been cleaning up and prepping for tomorrow and herding children toward bed. But because the dogs needed walking, I set aside all of my perceived efficiencies and off we went on a discovery of spring and neighbours and fresh air. And you know what? The dishes still got done, the piano got practiced, snacktime was had, chapters were read before bed, and kids fell asleep. So it all worked out, with the added bonus that I was a happier woman for having gotten outside and socialized. So thank you, dogs.
4. Letter writing. An edited version of my letter, which I posted on the blog yesterday, appears in today’s Globe and Mail “letters to the editor” section. So it touched a nerve, and got through. I’m pleased. Now, when do I get my own column? After my (embarrassingly brief) retirement from blogging, two blog readers emailed suggesting I pitch myself as a columnist to a magazine or other news outlet. I can think of lots of obstacles in the way, one being that I would need a unique angle. Another obstacle is in my own head: it’s one thing to hold an opinion and quite another to state it out loud and take responsibility for the noise it creates. Disagreement, conflict, tension, debate. Would that be something I’d be open to? Am I less open to it because I am a woman? That bothers me, and I wonder. And now I’m off-topic.
5. Coffee in the morning. Tea in the afternoon. It’s the little things.
Monday, May 14, 2012 | Bicycles, Chores, Exercise, Kids, Laundry, Parenting, Play, Readings, Running, Spring, The Juliet Stories, Work |
party night
My thoughts are all over the place on this Monday morning. I’m wondering: should I blog our week in suppers? Skip over that and write about my weekend of solo parenting? Share news about upcoming events and unexpected Juliet feedback?
Last night, I set my alarm for swimming. I woke at 2am. I’d been dreaming about sleeping (again!). I decided to turn off the alarm and really sleep. I have three early mornings planned this week; given that I also have two evening readings, self-preservation starts to come into play. It was a little easier to turn off the alarm given that yesterday, late afternoon, I ran 12 pain-free kilometres, keeping up a good pace and plotting my return to distance running. That counts as my first real distance run since my injury in January. It’s short, as far as distance runs go, but it was a blast. Next week … 14 km??
Uh. Where was I? Oh yes, self-preserving.
Tonight, I’m ferrying children from dance to soccer practice while Kevin has an early soccer game. Tomorrow, I’m at the Starlight in Waterloo (come, too!), from 7pm onward. Readings start at 7:45. And on Wednesday I’m headed to Toronto for an event at Type Books called the “Short Story Shindig” with Heather Birrell and Daniel Griffin, and hosted by Kerry Clare; 7pm (come, too!). This is all very exciting, but doesn’t go terrifically well with excessive early morning exercise.
As I said to Kevin this morning, “This isn’t the year of the triathlon. This is the year of The Juliet Stories.” (Which may be the first time I’ve admitted that, even to myself. I really really liked the year of the triathlon. I felt so hard-core. Sharing my book feels less focused, less goal-oriented. Maybe I need to start thinking of readings as races. They definitely affect me in similar ways — I’m nervous before, wired and happy during, and it takes me a little while to come down afterward.)
So. Slightly less focus on exercise, slightly more focus on evening events.
Now. Let me tell you all about my weekend with my kids. We had so much fun! Why can’t we have this much fun all the time? Is it because I’m usually trying to get too many other things accomplished? That can’t be entirely it, because we seemed to accomplish quite a lot, even while finding time to relax. Our weekend included …
:: watching Modern Family on Friday night while sharing an entire bag of Cheetos (which were utterly disgusting, may I just add)
:: trampoline ninja jumping (everyone!)
:: a bike trip to the grocery store for picnic and party supplies, followed by a picnic in the park
:: reading outside while two girls rode giggling past me on scooters and bikes too small for them
:: hanging laundry on the line, baking bread
:: playing on electronic devices; taking lots of photos
personal pizzas for party night (the one with the olives, asparagus, and eggplant? yes, that’s mine)
:: “Party Night,” wherein we had homemade personal pizzas and punch with ginger ale while watching a movie, then gorged on episodes of Modern Family while simultaneously gorging on boxed cereal and utterly disgusting candy; the rules for Party Night go like this: everyone gets to choose one treat from the grocery store (under $4), and we stay up as late as we want; oddly, three of four children chose boxed cereal (Corn Pops, Frosted Flakes, and Froot Loops, for the record). We have never felt so collectively gross. I blame the milk. Maybe the sugar too. It was surprisingly easy to herd the children off to bed at a not entirely unreasonable hour (9:30ish) …
:: … though AppleApple and I got distracted searching for my old Grade One piano book in the basement, which we never found, but we did find one of my old and relatively simple classical piano books, and ended up staying up for another hour playing songs. The Wild Horseman. The Happy Farmer. One of Muzio Clemente’s simple Sonatinas (she’s learning it!). Minuets from the Anna Magdalena Bach notebook). Bliss!
:: sleeping in
:: making and delivering, on bicycle, invitations for an 11th birthday party (a week from today!)
:: more bike riding and trampolining and laundry hanging; hey, whatever makes us happy
Mother’s day was capped off by the return of Dad, and supper out at all-you-can-eat sushi with my mom, too.
And that is plenty for one blog post. Never got to the unexpected and lovely Juliet feedback. Well. More tomorrow.
Friday, May 4, 2012 | Blogging, Holidays, Sleep, Spring |
This is just to say I’ll be taking a breather this weekend. Therefore, no blogging planned. Hope you find time to rest and settle in to whatever you’re doing this weekend, too. Happy spring!
Sunday, Apr 8, 2012 | Backyard, Spring |
May you be renewed.
May you find what you came looking for.
And may there be chocolate.
Thursday, Mar 22, 2012 | Spring, Weather |
buds on lilac, yesterday
This hot weather has revealed a serious gap in my wardrobe. Where did I put all my not-ratty, not-stained, not-holey, not-unflattering t-shirts? I’m good with the jeans (refreshed on my birthday). I’m good with the sandals (footwear should last for years on end). But the t-shirts have up and left town. Actually, no, they’re still hanging around the bottom of my over-stuffed shirt drawer, crumpled and neglected and forlorn.
So here’s a fantasy or two. Or three.
1. Side fantasy to precede other fantasies: An IKEA-like organizer magically appears in my closet into which I can stuff all of my smelly sports-related clothing. Because I have a lot of technical shirts, sweaters, and tanks that are not appropriate for anything but exercise. And the drawer is too full. So I can’t see what’s actually in there. This would save on time and irritation.
2. Sticking with the drawer-clearing theme: Someone goes through my drawer and forces me to give away anything that a) I haven’t worn in a year or b) I shouldn’t be wearing and someone should please inform me. Maybe I’m fantasizing about a What-Not-to-Wear scenario. Without cameras.
3. Now that the drawer has been organized and emptied: Someone, who is my exact size, drops off a bag of cast-off clothes and I dig through and find at least THREE excellent shirts, new to me. (This is how we got all of our clothes as kids — we had lots of older cousins — and it is my preferred shopping method even now.)
Okay, back to reality.
1. I could do this. I’ve been meaning to for months. Why haven’t I?
2. Ditto.
3. The realistic and therefore less fantastic version: a super-fast t-shirt shopping session at a secondhand store. I hate shopping. But this version looks likely to come true, possibly as soon as this evening when I’ll be taking Soccer Girl to goalie training. Apparently the arena is located near a top-notch secondhand store. Girding loins now.
Thus endeth the fantasy portion of this post. Is it just me, or was that pretty lame?
The fears portion shall begin now, but really it’s just one Fear, an underlying anxious hum. This morning, I woke early. The clock said 4:34. The windows were open, and a machine was beeping the back-up beep somewhere down the street. And I couldn’t for the life of me get back to sleep, though there were still forty minutes before the alarm was set to sound. Finally gave up, and got up to scour The Weather Network’s web site for clues — because there is something about this sudden onset of spring/summer that is distinctly unsettling. I want to be glad to see buds and tulips and green grass. Usually it’s downright thrilling. We’ve survived winter! And here is our reward!
But this year, we scarcely had winter. And it feels like the reward is coming far too early and too easily. And whenever things come easily, I get suspicious. This must be a trick. Fool’s gold. Fool’s spring.
dewdrop
AppleApple sat in my office yesterday and with a concerned face told me she had a theory: “You know how some people think the world is going to end in December, 2012? What if it just keeps getting hotter and hotter and hotter until then? And the world ends?”
Sounds like the plot of a movie in which I’d rather we not star.
I reassured her that such a trend was highly improbable. And said that we should enjoy today, because we can’t predict the future. Like a character says in The Juliet Stories: You don’t control the weather. (Of course, there’s so much we don’t control. Not just the weather. What to do but take my own advice, enjoy today, walk barefoot in the new green grass, bend down and see the flower unfurling?)
Wednesday, Mar 21, 2012 | Spring |
tree branch with buds, March 21, 2012
Avoided yesterday’s restlessness and instead started the morning with a trek to the back yard. Camera in hand, of course.
Good heavens, what is happening? Buds on the trees? Red lettuce and chives sprung forth in a raised bed? The wading pool full of water? A smog alert in Toronto this morning?
haze
If it were just one day of unseasonal warmth, the buds wouldn’t think it safe to come out; but it’s been enough consecutive days to heat the second floor of our house to mildly intolerable — we ran fans last night. (And really, the flannel sheets seem ridiculous).
It can’t last; can it? We’ll need those flannel sheets again. The windows won’t stay open. It seems impossible.
fresh salad for supper tonight?
neighbour-watching
Given all this warmth, we’ve discovered a new favourite retreat — the upper level of our porch, which we didn’t get a chance to use last fall when it was first built. Already, AppleApple has tucked away there to read in late-afternoon sunshine. And Kevin and I took tea and snacks and a candle out after dark the other night. It was that warm. Venus and Jupiter shone overhead, and the Big Dipper appeared to be upside-down.
It’s not a quiet retreat, let me add. Our street is much too well-travelled for that. Cars are noisy machines. But it’s lively viewing, and the porch feels private. Reminds me of when I was four years old, and would climb a small tree in the backyard, high enough to see over the fence. Behind that house was an apartment building, and I would watch the happenings. Even at that age, interested in observing the lives of others. You have been warned.
