Is it quiet in here, or it is just me?

Blogs are a strange thing sometimes.

I began writing this blog because I wanted to write, and I wanted to join a community of other people who liked to write. It's not just about the writing, of course, but about the sharing. I could write in a journal or a private file, but instead I have this space, where some people stop by, where I write for anyone to read. And by anyone, I mean people I know, and then some. (I am still amazed when Blogger tells me that someone in Indonesia or Latvia is a faithful reader. Hello there in Indonesia! Hello Latvia! I do hope you'll say hello yourself one day.) So I'm writing, I'm sharing, and a few people are reading it. The internet is a crazy place.

Is it just narcissism that makes me want to spill all my thoughts? (Don't answer that). Is it just run-of-the-navel gazing? (Probably.)

I have a voice, but sometimes I feel as though it's been quiet for too long. It's not that I'm quiet, exactly, because honestly, I rarely stop talking. Just ask my husband, or my mum, or that unsuspecting woman at the store I was snooping around in the other day, who learned--without asking, of course--how excited I was for Alyce to have her first day of Junior Kindergarten. And that I was torn between the butterfly and the fairy tale lunch bag (I didn't get either because I need more time to snoop out my options). Talking isn't my problem. Sometimes, though, I still feel quiet, as though I'm not saying what I want to.

I have my suspicions about why I lost my voice. I used to feel so confident about how I saw the world. I felt strong and passionate and I shared my feelings with anyone who would listen. I was younger, and braver, and I truly felt the world open up for me just a little bit more each day. I had some fears, some anxieties, but nothing that stood in my way. I really do wonder sometimes how people didn't get more annoyed with me, with all that confidence. But if they had asked me to take it down a notch, I'm not sure I would have listened to them. It was too much fun to speak my mind, to feel excited and passionate and ready to tell the world.

So I feel like I've lost that voice a bit. I share a few things, and what I do write in many ways faithfully reflects my little piece of the world, but so often I want to share much more. I tend to spend some, ahem, time reading blogs and articles online, and when I stumble on a great post or debate my first response is that I want in on the action. I'm a reader and writer by trade, and so much of me wants to stand up (so to speak) and add my own take. For example, I come across some incredibly thoughtful pieces on motherhood and identity that make me want to jump in and say Ooh ooh ooh. Me, too! Or, Here are all the reasons that this doesn't make any sense to me, or This is making my brain hurt it's so messed up. But as soon as I decide to turn my reaction into a post of my own, I feel quiet. I become a little afraid, that my voice is wrong. I worry that I'll offend someone, or that I'll bore them. I worry that I've forgotten how to craft an argument. I worry so much that I never raise my voice.

Other times my fear involves a different kind of sharing. What has surprised me since beginning this blog is how much I would enjoy writing honestly, in the wide open space of the internet, about my life.  I'm in the centre of quite the transition right now, and all I want to do is share how I feel. I want to complain about not being able to find a job, about wanting to start a dream job but having to wait just a little bit longer, about the stress of starting over new, with very little money and a whole lot of responsibility. About the fact that my work-loving husband can't work because of his immigration status. But again, I don't. This time my fear is that kind of fear you can really touch, those practical things that a worrier like me will worry about. If someone googles me will they find this blog? Will they dismiss me? Will someone reject my application for a job because I'm some crazy over-sharer who spends too much photographing her kids and then imagining that anyone else actually wants to see them?

I feel a bit ridiculous, as one who blogs, saying that I can't find my voice sometimes. And seriously, I annoy people daily with how much I can talk in a single day. But I don't know how else to describe it. Beginning this process of trying to write honestly about my life, in such a way as to join a community of other people online, has brought me face to face with this shrinking voice of mine. In graduate school I always felt like a fraud, but I know from speaking with other graduate students that most of them felt the same way. A constant sense of inadequacy is par for the course in graduate school. But to sometimes feel like a fraud now, in a world of my own making, feels unbearable to me. All the photos and stories I post now, mostly about The Children, mean a lot to me, and I have no intention of slowing down on those. This blog is in part a way to document our lives as a family and I'm already grateful for it.  It doesn't have to be more that that, but I want it to be.

For those of you blog, how do you deal with this? How do you create your boundaries for sharing with all of us? I'd love to hear your advice on this.

Wherein I want to make-out with the goodness of people: Stroller found!

It's home, our stroller is home. Back where it belongs. With Alyce and Shira, and me and Matt, and the cats, IT'S HOME! Some dear, sweet, kind, library patron brought my sad and abandoned stroller inside the library, where Matt and Alyce retrieved it this morning. I am slightly relieved.

Thanks, internet, for letting me freak out with you this morning. And thanks, dear, sweet, kind library patron. I'd like to make you a pie. Or twenty.

And so I've completely lost my mind

So we wake up this morning and discover that Shira has a rotten cold (which would explain why she fell asleep sitting up twice yesterday). Our plan for this morning had been to all head out to Oakville for a bris (he finally arrived!), but a virus seemed a terrible gift idea for an eight-day-old little boy, so we changed the plan. Matt and Alyce would go the bris, while I'd stay home with Shira the Sick. We're adaptable.

In honour of these changed plans, I decided that Shira and I would go for a long walk. Maybe she'd nap in the stroller, and I'd get some exercise while enjoying the beautiful grey morning (I'm officially sick of the sun and the melting heat). I asked Matt to grab the stroller from the car before he left, but he came back in the house, puzzled. And then he told me: "The stroller isn't in the car or in the garage." The stroller isn't in the car or in the garage. I didn't even really understand him, because of course that's where it was. That's were it always was. Always. Then I got mad, thinking that maybe someone stole our stroller. I was ready to start fuming, ready to begin my rant about how dare someone take my beloved double stroller.

And then I realized.

Rewind to yesterday afternoon. I took both girls to the library, on our way to visit my grandparents. I drove to the library, but once I got there I put both girls in the stroller. Alyce doesn't need the stroller anymore, but when it's just me and both girls I usually use the stroller as a way to keep Alyce in one spot while I'm taking out books. After getting what we needed and spending some time playing upstairs in the children's library, we headed back to the car. You might already suspect what happened next. Being three and one, both girls immediately, out of nowhere, started whining for snacks (oh, the horror of thirty minutes without grapes), and all of a sudden I found myself trying to balance buckling them in their seats, getting snacks, making sure that Shira got enough before Alyce inhaled the rest, and putting the books and my bag in the car. They finally both seemed happy and I declared that we were now on our way to the grandparents! I felt accomplished. But it seems that I also forgot to the put the stroller in the car.

I forgot to put the stroller in the car.

My beautiful, comfortable, durable, double-seated Phil and Ted's stroller.

The stroller that cost a lot of money, that we bought when we both had jobs.

Now we both do not have jobs.

This was yesterday afternoon, and now it's in the next morning. I'm pretty sure that someone else is enjoying my stroller right now, but I'm holding out a tiny bit of hope that someone brought it into the library. I've already asked Matt to see if by chance it was still on the sidewalk in front of the library (no such luck). So I'll call the library when it opens in a couple of hours, because maybe, just maybe, it's there. I'm holding on to this tiny bit of hope before I begin sobbing, which I will have to do, if I'm forced to accept that I'm a total moron who left her stroller on the sidewalk and drove away.

Send your best thoughts for my dear stroller. It needs all of us right now. I'll keep you posted.

Update: Our stroller is back home. I repeat, our stroller is back home!

A Monday reminder

 

In the middle of the job searching and the figuring out of life, I am reminded why we decided to make this our home again. Sunday afternoon baking with Nana makes up for a lot of the other little headaches. 

So with this in mind, it's time to attack my Monday. Here is what is on my list for today:

• Find job
• More realistically, contact recruiter to set up interview Done and done!
• Apply to three jobs
• Make Shira's fifteen month well-baby appointment 
• Enjoy some cream of tomato soup that I made on the weekend
• Get excited for my weekly CSA box to arrive tomorrow
• Clear the evening schedule to watch last night's True Blood

What are your Monday plans? I'm feeling awfully motivated today, myself.

Scenes from a long week

It's felt like a week that wouldn't end, one long week of not having found a job, figuring out how to make ends meet in our new jobless world, of melting in the heat of summer that just won't give up. But our week was also filled some rather lovely details, too.

There was nursing. Always a lot of nursing.

There were snacks at big kid tables.

There were friends tucked in for naps.

Alyce is always very thoughtful to include a book and a toy.

 There was Lucy helping me job search.

There were swings, thoroughly enjoyed.

As Alyce explained, many, many times over, there are swings for "even even really big kids, so she can swing on it, because she's an even even really big kid. Shira is not."

She is certainly an even even really big kid.

We got older

I came across this photo today, of one of my dearest friends who was visiting from Seattle. Barbara and I were roommates at university (along with Kaylie, another incredible friend), and like me, she now has two kids. Fifteen years ago we were doing all the things that you are do university: laughing, stressing, procrastinating (that was just me), eating, drinking, planning, smoking (again, just me). Today we are reading to each other's children. Can someone explain to me how that happened?

I was, and still am, amazed at my good fortune in meeting these friends. It must be said: I have excellent taste in women.

My life, illustrated

Except her drawings are so much better than mine.

Have you found Amber Dusick's blog, Parenting, Illustrated With Crappy Pictures? It's as though she's describing my life (especially with this post. And this one).


Does this look familiar?

From Parenting, Illustrated with Crappy Pictures