August, 2010

Jenn Kastner – plate5964, originally uploaded by mkgphotoatgmail.

Today is a “home day”. The daycare collectively collects itself and scrubs the nooks and crannies with politically and environmentally correct bleach… like…. liquid.. or some sort… or something.

I don’t know.
Personally, I think they get together with beer, perogies and sausage while they try to NOT talk about children.

Anyway, I was looking forward to this day. I’ve collected overtime and took the day off to hang with Eliza and Franklin.
… and Franklin’s friend, Victor.

Have you ever listened to two 8 year old boys play together? It’s awesome. It’s also very loud.

Have I mentioned that it is raining outside? Pouring. It is so wet that going outside is not really an option. We are having an inside day. Inside with Clone Wars and finger paint.

Franklin and his friend watch Clone Wars while playing with action figures and eat the smorgasbord of food I placed before them because I’ll be damned if I send anyone’s kid home hungry (eat that pizza/broccolli/veggie dog/raspberry/plum/apple/pita/houmos, my little one!)

Meanwhile, as Eliza and I have already eaten (and returned and eaten and returned – sigh), I am painting rocks. I am also painting an egg carton and according to the this daughter of mine, we are “saving the mountain people from a world with NO COLOUR!”

Ooooo-kay.

Fun Times.

At the moment, I am reliving maternity leave as she is napping and I can hear the familiar sound of Lego being pushed aside in the search for that elusive “grey claw-thingy, you know?”

So nice.

Okay – off to do the dishes, check on the salmon, start some rice, pay some bills, clean out the camping cooler and finally get up the nerve to locate that monster ass spider in the bathroom.

Fun Times.

Looking Into The Past, originally uploaded by H.R. Hatfield.

If this year has a theme, it seems to be all about leaving. Every place I turn I am either learning that dear friends are leaving the city, neighbours are moving away or I land on a garage sale because the residents have decided to move to another province.

The reason everyone is leaving?
It’s too expensive to live here when you have children.

At first, I thought it was just a matter of a few acquaintances who perhaps had gotten fed up with being house poor. To tell you the truth, the people I know who are house poor seem to be the ones who are most insistent that Dix and I jump into the housing market. I’m not quite sure why this is except that perhaps misery loves company. I’m not anxious to deal with a broken water heater or a leaking basement at the same time as paying for daycare. Call me crazy (might as well, many others do).

In fact, it’s more than just being house poor. There are people in our complex, co-workers, friends from other walks of my life that rent and are also leaving this city. Why? Cost of living.

It seems that whether you are renting or not, the cost of raising a family in Victoria is too much. Daycare is too hard to find. Jobs are scarce. Income is not rising with the rest of the market. Family cannot afford to move here to share the burden.

Is this an old story? I’m not sure. Perhaps it is. Whatever the case, I’ve noticed a sharp increase lately – particularly this summer.

And I’m sad.
I love the life we’ve carved out here. We live close to work (my work, anyway) and school. We have wonderful friends (at least, those who are still slugging it out with us here). The climate is beautiful. The air smells sweet. People recycle like it is second nature. I don’t have to explain why I’m against pesticides. Eliza doesn’t know what a cigarette is and Franklin is shocked whenever he sees someone smoking.

This place suits us.
We love it.

But the truth of it is, as every single one of the people I’ve spoken with over the course of this year have said, you just can’t get ahead in this city. You float. If you are lucky, you float. If you are not, you sink deeper and deeper until eventually, the exorbitant cost of moving your entire family to another province, uprooting your life, becomes your only solution.

Will this happen to us as well?

.

You could stand, swathed by groups and mobs or hold hands with your partner, look both further and farther for the endless quest for company. But no one’s in your head and by the time you translate your thoughts, some essence of them may be lost or perhaps it is just kept.

Perhaps in the interest of loving oneself, perhaps all those sappy slogans from preschool over to high school’s groaning were tokens for holding the lonely at bay. Cuz if you’re happy in your head than solitude is blessed and alone is okay.

When Dickson and I were dating he told me that for him, no matter what relationship he was in or who he spent his time with and for how long, he would always be alone. No matter what happened.

I remember being shocked when he said this to me. I only nodded and squeezed his hand but inside, my heart and head fully understood. I had never known anyone else to feel this way. At least, no one had ever expressed this to me as honestly as he had just done. I once told a few of my roommates that this was the way I felt and I got odd looks and suggestions that perhaps I was only unfulfilled at the time, that I hadn’t met the “right guy” quite yet.

But that just didn’t seem quite right because I kind of enjoyed the feeling of being alone – with my thoughts, with my body and with my spirit. I remember quickly finding out how insulting this statement was when expressed to friends and lovers. I wasn’t talking about appreciating the stillness when one is alone. I was explaining to them that no matter who you decide to make a long term commitment to you are always alone. The concept of “my other half” is both patronizing and frightening.

I really liked that I was one in a sea of other ones. The difference, at the time, was that I was young and unsure of the feelings. As I looked for discussions on what this meant, I was met with opinions that made me feel like I was either immature or unsatisfied – when in fact, I was neither.

Interestingly, one of the reasons I knew I would enjoy spending my life with Dickson was because he was also alone, and understood this feeling. As a result, he wasn’t upset or hurt with the way I felt and therefore acted. We are both very separate people. Funnily enough, even though many years have gone by (13 since we met!), expressing this is still not easy for fear of making people (family) worried about our marriage or our friendship.

The fact is, I’ve been mulling this over for awhile. The poem has been going around twitter and facebook for about a month now and each time I see it I am struck at how wonderfully accurate it is, how sweet it is to be alone with yourself. I don’t see her poem as a tribute to singleness but rather a tribute to being comfortable with oneself.

To not be dependent but instead, to choose to live with someone because you love them, not because you need them.

To understand that you can’t understand how they are feeling, no matter how long you talk and how much wine you drink.

To celebrate your thoughts without having to articulate them in order to make them real.

To be comfortable with being alone in a sea of others, who are also very wonderfully alone.

I understand that not everyone feels this way. I’m not saying that this makes them less enlightened or less independent. Some people operate better as a unit – a unit of two or even more. That’s just not me and this is not Dickson.

No matter how you are most comfortable swimming through life, I hope you find as much calm as I seem to find just hanging out, alone in my thoughts, no matter how many people are swirling around me.

Grumpy Smurf, originally uploaded by It’s Meng!.

We are all grumpy over here.

Well, Franklin isn’t grumpy. He has finally made it to his long anticipated sleep over – the sleep over that seemed doomed because whenever the two parties were free, there was something contagious going around. I think the fact that it has been delayed so often has heightened his anticipation of this night. He was bouncing around the doctor’s office like a child that had been fed birthday cake for breakfast.

No, he hadn’t been.
Yes, we were in the doctor’s office this morning.

Eliza caught what Franklin had a few weeks ago. Strep A.

For Franklin, he felt fine. Other than the odd looking rash all over his torso, I wouldn’t have known he was sick. He felt fine, had no fever and was in the same energy and spirits as always. They swabbed his throat only because they wanted to rule out Strep. It was quite surprising to get the results back as positive.

Funny side note: When the nurse informed me of the result over the phone I asked her quite innocently how often a child has Strep Throat with only a rash and no other symptoms and no discomfort. She didn’t answer my question but went into an excited lecture of the history of antibiotics and their need for them in our society. I had a good laugh. Seems she’s had a few non-believers of the stuff lately. I’m a believer. Prescribe it when needed (a lab result is a good reason in my books) and administer it properly is how we roll in our house. No history lecture needed, lady.

A few weeks later and we seemed to be in the clear.
What the hell were we thinking?!?
OF COURSE! The Germ Magnet hadn’t had a go at it yet. The two kids were all kissy-kissy that weekend we went camping. Tents make them get along famously, apparently. Why didn’t I figure this was bound to show up in Eliza?

So…
- the camping trip this week is now postponed.
- it’s raining on and off over here.
- Eliza is the most grumpy, leech when she is sick that I’m ready to camping on my own.
- I started my period and I can’t find my cup (tmi, sorry but I’m pouting).

I need a bright side; a silver lining….

It was my birthday yesterday.
Dickson bought me a bag from She She Bags. It is mustard yellow (perfect!), gorgeous and large enough to hold a coil bound sketch pad, a slr camera, a few diapers and a change of clothes.

Today, Dickson asked me today if I felt 38.
I’m 37.

I’ll excuse him because of the bag.

Forest Path, originally uploaded by Bryn Tassell.

In a few days we are off again. I can’t believe how wonderful it has been this summer to camp as a family. Many moons ago, many , many, many moons ago, Dickson and I used to camp quite often. There was a time when most of the gifts we received were camping equipment – because that was what we did. We camped.

Our last hurrah! as a couple without children was an attempt to winter camp up in Tofino – but everything was closed due to the horrendous winter weather. We didn’t even think about how others might not want to camp in sideways rain. We just wanted to go camping. We ended up sleeping in a closet size bedroom in the back end of a hotel with an amazing view of the ocean. Pretty awesome… but not camping.

Now, we are camping again.

We. Are. Camping. Again.

I have no idea why it took us this long.

Our Holly Hocks Today, originally uploaded by Betsy J….

It’s been since 2006 that I’ve had our allotment plot and each year gives me new surprises and challenges. I’m more confident and I’m a hell of a lot wiser about what I grow and how I try to keep it alive. However, nothing compares to that first season. That first season gave me cantaloupe, for goodness sake.

Cantaloupe.
In Canada.
On the west coast of Canada.

I thought gardening was a piece of cake.

Turns out gardening can be tough. There is nothing like trying out a crop that is purportedly a perfect plant for “beginner gardeners” and watching it shrivel up and die, slowly and painfully, before one’s very eyes.

Ahem, quinoa, I’m looking at you.

I like to look at flickr photos of what the mature plant will look like so that I can plan where to plant it, how much room to give it and what I can look forward to once it is all big and healthy like…

My quinoa doesn’t look like this:

Instead, I mistakenly planted it in the Spring when it is actually a cold weather plant. Sometimes, when I do this, the plant will still grow as long as I keep the roots cold. I water from below and my broccoli seems to thriving so why not the quinoa?

I’ll just have to try again.
Although it seems my family isn’t all that fond of the stuff so why I’m torturing myself over something that only I will be eating… screw it, I’ll eat it for goodness sake.

My kuri? Well, I’m hoping it will eventually turn out this beautiful:

Right now it’s only producing flowers. Will I have enough time to grow a few of the fruit? It’s a winter squash. Perhaps I’m being too pessimistic. I’m holding out for it. I’ve given it sea soil, manure, compost, loads of water and I’ve cut back my gorgeous lavender plant to give it more sun. That sucker better appreciate my dedication.

Aside from all this negativity and my father warning me for the second year in a row that something is wrong with my plot that I won’t be able to fix unless I actually physically replace the soil, I am having some success.

Earlier this year I got down on my hands and knees and protected what soybeans I had left with little toilet paper roll cardboard. The roots were safe from the cut worms this way. I was smug.

Then the rains came and the entire slug population of Victoria seemed to descend on my garden – well, not the entire population, but a hell of a lot. I was again on my hands and knees, delicately pulling pin head sized slug babies from the folds of the seedlings and crushing them mercilessly between my finger nails. Franklin has never seen me kill anything, even a spider, and all of a sudden his mother was fanatically massacring slug babies.

Now we can look forward to this (photo of my plants last year) very, very soon!

.

Of course, that brings me to why my first photo is one of a beautiful holly hock. Last year, I planted a flower. I like to add flowers to the garden because I’m a novice in this department and if I add one here and there then I feel like I’m not pretending to know what I’m doing (as in knowing anything about them) and yet I’m still attracting bees to the plot who will hopefully come across a squash flower or two. Last year, I planted a holly hock from seed. You can see it in the photo above of the soy beans. It’s in the background, all blurry and tiny.

This little blurry and tiny thing survived the winter, survived my compost, my sea soil and my leaf dumps. I wasn’t careful. I thought it was a dud. I didn’t think it was going to do much of anything (remember I know nothing about growing flowers, even less than I do about growing vegetables). Surprisingly, this year it shot out of the ground. While everything else (save the artichoke) was struggling to survive the slugs and the rain, this holly hock was thriving.

The thing is, I didn’t know what the heck it was. I had forgotten what I had planted and was just entertained at this growing “thing” that could have been a weed for all I knew but had nice leaves and was looking suspiciously like a legitimate plant (as in, not a weed). I left it alone.

It grew over my head.
It grew over Dickson’s head.
I think it’s even taller than my friend’s Sarah’s husband who I believe is about 6ft8 or something ridiculously tall (when you are short, everyone is 6ftridiculous).

I asked another gardener yesterday what it was.

“Holly Hock!” she says, like I was insane.

Slap to the forehead.
Riiight, that was what I planted.

So, after a full year it comes to greet me; to remind me that flowers are beautiful, powerful, proud and determined – just like me.

Our plot as of July 31st, 2010: