The secret cure to your common cold: Nostalgia

I cut Shira's hair the other day. It was daring, I know, but it was getting out of hand and something had to be done. Since she screams murder at the hair dresser I figured I'd take my chances here at home. (All you hair dressers out there in the world are shaking your collective heads right this very moment, aren't you?) I'm sure I'll get a lecture the next time we visit the children's salon with airplanes and horses for chairs (because I always get a lecture), but I think I did a great job. It doesn't hurt that she looks this delicious to start with. I'm posting these before and after shots for my mum who never checks facebook. She ditched facebook when I started this blog.

Our house has been overwhelmed by sickness these past couple of weeks. Chest colds, sinus infections, non-specific fevers, you name it. I even took Shira to the doctor hoping they would give her something to lighten her misery, but nothing. It's just a bad cold. The upside is that she sounds like Kathleen Turner. The downside is that she looks like this:

Poor sweaty Shira. I've also been miserable, but I managed to dull the pain last week with a little nostalgia. Head cold and all (because you can't quarantine yourself forever), I packed my bags and headed to Waterloo to see a Sloan concert. This wasn't just any concert, but a homage to their Twice Removed Tour, which I saw the first time when I was sixteen. That's right, I relived my teen years last week by singing and dancing (more like bouncing, but with great feeling) my heart out to the band that more than anything defined my years at high school. I used to have Twice Removed on tape, and I would listen to it in my mum's old car with my best friend Angie over and over and over again, taking my hands off the wheel to clap in all the right places. I loved Sloan then and they didn't disappoint last week, almost twenty years (good lord) later. The difference was that I now have less patience for drunk twenty-two year olds and eventually watched most of the show from the back of the room. Where it was less loud. With less people. And now I am officially the oldest person I know.

The best part was seeing the concert with Angie, still one of my closet friends after all this time. The photo below was taken the same year we first saw Sloan together, the one below that was snapped in the dark last week. Growing older is a strange business, but no matter the complaints it's kind of magical to do so alongside your good friends. Nineteen years ago we were watching Sloan together for the first time, probably having misled my mum into thinking that it was legal for newly licensed Angie to be my supervisor while driving to the concert with my beginner's license. I think I can trace my love of live music back to that concert, especially after I slammed my head on the stage and was pulled up by lead Chris Murphy to enjoy the rest of the concert from a seat next to Jay Ferguson playing guitar (that's right, I pulled my very own Monica, but with less dancing). Last week Angie and I were a bit more subdued, her standing next to her husband, both of them happy to be out for a night without their three little kids. I'm sure I'm the first person to say this, but isn't growing older just the craziest?

1994

2012

How do you cure a cold? What concert would you attend to relive your own youth?

Why I don't want you to call me a girl

I have a vagina. There, I've said it.

I love being a woman. I'm sure being a man is fabulous, too, but I know nothing of being a man. I also loved being a girl. Sure, there were some downsides, like the pressure to be thin and having to put up those obnoxious guys in school who rated your sex-worthiness as you walked down the hall between classes (note to self: fix the world so that doesn't happen anymore), but there were so many other wonderful things about my years as a girl. I got to wear dresses and pointe shoes, have slumber parties, fall in love, and have girlfriends. You know another great thing about being a girl? Dreaming about all the things you'll be and do when you grow up. At various points in my own girlhood I considered paleontologist, flower arranger, ballerina, doctor, lawyer, ballerina, and professor. Scratch that last one.

And I still love girls, especially MY girls. I completely lucked out having two perfectly delicious daughters who, I hope, will also come to love being a girl, however that looks to them. While it seems that Alyce has planted herself firmly on the side of princess, maybe Shira will enjoy being a girl because of the sports she will play or mountains she will climb. Either way, Alyce will still probably make her wear a Cinderella dress while she does all these marvelous things. 

However.

I am no longer a girl. And this post is dedicated to the man in my office who continues to call me one as he passes by my desk each day. "How are you girls doing today?" he asks me and my temp-mate (we're both on a short-term contract with the company), probably unaware of how my blood boils with each passing question.

I am no longer a girl. I have worked for years in school, earning two degrees (and some of a third). I have grown and birthed two babies. I have a family and I am responsible for them. I worry about how to put food on the table and clothes on their backs. I am a grown woman who deserves respect for all the things that I've done and all the things I might do. I might be temp who enters boring data all day into a computer, but I am not your office girl. I am also about ten years older than you, so zip it.

I am struggling with so many things right now. I still can't find permanent, non-terrible employment. Matt still can't work outside the home and faces his own challenges staying at home with the girls each day. What I don't need to struggle with is this condescending crap at work. I have earned so much more than that.

Less adventure, more sulking

I'd like to interrupt all this talk of adventures with a little sulking. I know, fun for everyone! Gather around and prepare yourselves for some complaining, and maybe even a teeny-tiny pity party. Still here? Good.

I have had some incredible days with my family lately, and we're planning on having a few more of those this weekend (camping!). There have been many days where you'd have found me wishing that I could maybe just stay home with The Children, and maybe even homeschool them. Yes, I actually consider that some days. I even snoop around a few homeschooling blogs every week, just in case. Sometimes I imagine us taking walks in the woods or playing in the snow, learning about all kinds of everything. (Like just this morning Alyce and I tried to feed some sour crab apples to a spider and an earwig. We learned that they do not enjoy crab apples, and I accidentally squished the spider in the process. But, still.) But when I think about it a little longer I realize two things: first, Alyce loves going to preschool more than just about anything. She loves her friends, her teachers, the toys, the slide, the toys, and her crafts, and when she has been enrolled in a school she always comes home telling us all about her exciting days. (Me: "Alyce, what did you do today?" Alyce: "I played". But she says it with great conviction and depth.) She's very excited about Junior Kindergarten, which begins in two weeks. She's the kind of excited where she's sleeping with her new lunch box in bed at night.

Second, I both want and need to work. I want to develop new skills and discover new interests (and old passions), though for the moment my need to work is outweighing everything else. I am excited to sponsor dear Matty for permanent residency, but the reality of his Canadian move is that he can't work in this beautiful country until all his immigration is done (which could be as early as December or as far as next May). So while I'm hoping to find a job that I enjoy, that keeps me away from the house all day doing things I'm good at and things that challenge me, we also just need a pay check. And it needs to be big enough to cover the expenses of a family of four.

So I find myself in a position I've never really experienced, and while I knew coming in that finding a job isn't easy, it never occurred to me that September would come and find me still unemployed. I've had some very wise friends remind me that summer is a terrible time to find a job--especially August, with all those employed people taking vacations, the nerve--and I'm so very grateful for the help I've been offered by those friends who themselves had trouble finding a job back in the day. I have not given up all hope and I remind myself to be patient. But lately I'm frustrated, impatient, scared, and a little sad. Especially when that recruiter told me last week that I should just go home because she had nothing. She actually told me to go home. In case that hasn't happened to you, believe me when I tell you that it sucks.

So I find myself, as one does, questioning a lot of things. What is it that potential employers aren't seeing in my resume? Why am I not standing out? Dear god, did I include the wrong phone number (oh yes, I've checked just to be sure)? I might not have any direct business or management experience, but it never occurred to me that my two degrees (and half of a third), five years of teaching experience, and a whole bunch of time spent volunteering my time with social services groups, faculty committees and boards, wouldn't help me stand out to an organization or business. Three months have gone by and I'm left in virtual silence. Maybe I should check my phone, just to make sure it's working. Or maybe I'm just naive and you'd like me to stop complaining.

I also find myself wishing that I could go back and time and have a little talk with my eighteen year old self. I would tell her to stop worrying about her weight already, and also not to major in the Humanities. This might not be a popular opinion among the Humanities-loving people I know, and of course I agree that learning for the sake of learning, learning how to think critically, and learning how communicate are vital to a healthy society. I have spent years developing these skills and I don't want to give them back. But it wouldn't kill my degrees to do a little bit more for me. Seriously, Master of Arts? You've got nothing for me? I gave you a THESIS. And of course if I hadn't wound up in a graduate program in the Humanities I probably wouldn't have met Matt from Alabama, and then where would I have found Alyce and Shira? So yes, yes, it's good and all that I chose the Humanities, but that doesn't change my frustration today. I feel extremely qualified to apply for another graduate degree, and that's about it. And another graduate degree won't pay the bills right now. And plus, didn't I just leave one of those? I know that I have a lot to offer an employer, but it seems that first I need an employer to trust my education. I need an employer who can see the potential in my skills as a researcher and writer (and, evidently, as a complainer).

And now we come to the end of my pity party. I will put on my big-girl panties and get back to it.

Our Ladies of Pain

I always knew I had a thing for roller derby, but I always thought it was just because of my crush on Drew Barrymore. As wonderful as Drew Barrymore is, it turns out that I love roller derby for other reasons. One reason is my friend, Angie, otherwise known as Blister Sister, who completely rocked my world last night. The last time I had roller skates on I was going at a snail's pace to a Tiffany song, probably with a banana clip in my hair. The image I have of myself at age ten is decidedly different from the  image I saw last night as I watched Angie (in a killer pair of fishnets) skate with the Royal City Roller Girls. I am completely hooked.

Blister Sister

Our Ladies of Pain

Violet Uprising

My future Royal City Roller Girl

Sorry, Monday, but Sunday had it going on

So that was big news. I had been thinking, very quietly, about picking up and moving back to Canada for a little while now, but I hadn't really said it out loud. But when I mentioned it to Matt it took him all of three seconds to say agree that it was a gone idea.

But more about that later. If I don't stop talking about moving I'll never get to tell you about the amazing Sunday I just had. In the rank of Sundays, it was definitely in the top two or three, after our wedding and maybe that really amazing Sunday brunch I had this one time. It was looking to be a good day from the minute it started, since it was only the night before that we had decided on Canada. I certainly awoke with a bounce in my step. I started the day by taking Alyce out for pancakes, just me and Alyce, and it doesn't get much better than listening to her chatter with a mouthful of pancakes. It was seven in the morning and the 24 hour IHOP that just opened up down the street (presumably to cater to hoards of drunk students at three in the morning) was completely empty. The food was terrible, but the company was divine.


My breakfast date was quickly followed by my escaping to Philadelphia for my first sewing class. All by myself. Without children. Just me. I can't remember the last time I drove for more than five minutes without a child in the backseat. Being the party girl that I am, I picked up a coffee and cranked NPR. My sewing class, inspired in part by one of my mother's thoughtful gifts, was incredibly fun. How could it not be at a store like this:


This is the fabric I chose for the reversible tote we're making over a two-week class. The walls of this store are lined with bolts of the most beautiful fabric I've seen, and we were given the task to choose any fabric we wanted for our first sewing project. I know I've faced some difficult decisions lately, but this was one of the toughest. I think I made a good choice. The class was taught by a woman with years and years of experiences sewing and designing textiles, and in addition to her being a very patient teacher, she reminded me of a wonderful friend I haven't seen in three years. She had the not only the same mannerisms, but seemed to possess the same general bad ass-ness as my friend. It was a lovely treat. I even bought the pattern for a dress I'm going to make for the Children. I'm sure it's way beyond my skills at present (that is, if it requires more technique than threading a machine), but by summer I'll be all over this pattern. I think you'll agree that this dress is adorable:

Image from Spool

Sunday got even better after my trip to Philadelphia. We had booked a sitter and had planned a date. An actual date. We don't do this very often (usually only when my mum is around to look after the girls), so this was a real treat. Alyce was over the moon at the possibility of showing off her room and baby sister to Carrie, our sitter, and Matt and I were over the moon about leaving the house alone. Everybody was winning! Dinner was fantastic, but my date was even better. We spent two hours making plans for our move, making each other laugh, and only talking about the Children for a few minutes. It was one of those nights we used to have all the time and that I had been missing lately. This needs to happen more often. It's good for me to be around such a handsome guy.



Like I said, it was a great Sunday.