Category Archives: Blessings

Settling Into 2011

I am so very tempted to just say, “Yo, in 2010 WE BOUGHT A HOUSE, that trumps everything else, also it is both the best thing that happened but the three months leading up to it were the worst” but I owe it to myself to be more in-depth than that. At some point however; today is not that day.

The Tooth Fairy came the other night, so we know she has our new address after all. The boy was somewhat dejected when he got up. “The Tooth Fairy didn’t come,” he said. “How do you know?” HRH asked. “The little bag is still there,” the boy said. (We’d put the tooth (the tiny, tiny tooth) in one of my little velvet jewellery pouches.) “Did you look inside it?” HRH said. The boy blinked at him. “She doesn’t need the bag,” HRH added. So the boy scrambled to pull the pouch out from under the pillow, upended it, and said, “SHE GAVE ME A MONEY! I have a two dollars!” He’s back at school today after his first all-day playdate yesterday, and I have no doubt he will be brimming with news about his other friends when I meet him at the bus stop this afternoon.

There is now a new wall in my office, complete with what will be the closet eventually. The room is definitely smaller; three feet is more space than one thinks. We’ve had to move one tall bookcase downstairs into the hallway as a result, which means I have to rethink where all the books get shelved yet again. I keep reminding myself that I used to do this for fun. It is not as much fun when you have to do it, nor when the books in question are spread out over two floors of the house. And then I keep realizing that we’re going to have to do it yet again once the upstairs loft is finished and we move the offices into the attic, and that will be spread out over three floors.

So there is a wall; it has been framed, there is drywall up, the seams have been plastered, and today it gets sanded, primed, then painted. I am told there will be a louvered folding door on the new closet door, too. The boy was actually a help instead of a hindrance in the framing, HRH says. My parents had a set of toy construction tools put away in a closet somewhere, so they sent those home with us and the boy got to open them Tuesday morning. He wore the hard hat and the ear protectors all day, although the tool belt kept falling off. HRH gave him a pair of safety glasses, too, and taught him how to use the power drill. ( “Do they make safety shoes in kids’ sizes?” he said in aside to me. I’m mostly sure he was joking.) The boy is very excited about having to wear a mask when sanding happens, and he was a bit disappointed that it was happening today while he was at school. He has been promised full involvement when the drywall gets plastered and sanded in the attic, however. They both wrote their names on one of the 2x4s of the new wall, which I think is a charming tradition when you add to a house, and I’m glad they did it.

HRH found the original maple hardwood under the floating laminate floors. It’s very thin, though; it couldn’t have taken another sanding.

In the meantime, all my bookcases are RIGHT BEHIND ME when I am at my desk and it is quite claustrophobic. I’ve been doing a lot of my editing work downstairs in the family room on the antiquated and borrowed iBook. On one hand that’s frustrating, because I can’t check the Internet quickly for facts as it’s running Panther and the oldest version of Safari I’ve ever seen, which freezes if you look at it wrong and won’t run or load a lot of current web stuff. On the other hand, I can’t lose time in wander around the Internet in search of distraction. It’s too old to use a Twitter client, too, so I use the web-based version; it loads the old Twitter web page but not the new. It’s essentially a word processing machine now.

And a quick gift summary: My wonderful yarn swift, two cookbooks and a novel I’d asked for (all read before 2011 hit, sigh), a pair of excellent loungy pyjamas from both sets of parents, a beautiful pair of leather gloves, gift certificates to bookstores and iTunes and Tim Hortons, an owl mug and owl notepaper and an owl blank book, a lovely little whisk and mixing/dip bowl set, kitchen stuff like two new non-stick pans and Teflon utensils and a new cookie spatula, socks, and a pretty tiger’s eye lozenge pendant. No chocolate. (I KNOW. I think everyone remembered that I have problems with dark chocolate and decided to play safe, and also that HRH gives all his chocolate to me so they didn’t get him any, either. I have been sneaking Lindt reindeer and snowmen that theoretically belong to the boy.)

Serene

We had a beautiful Christmas day. It was just the kind of celebration I love: quiet, subdued, good company, good food, and a sane amount of thoughtfully chosen gifts of good quality. The boy’s present selection consisted mainly of Lego, Star Wars, and in one case Star Wars Lego (thank you, MLG!), plus a side of books and Hot Wheels. He was thrilled that Santa brought him the Jedi starfighter he had specifically asked for and extra excited about the droid slot into which he can actually put his R2-D2 action figure. I was so pleased with his behaviour, but then, he’s never known an insane Christmas morning. We’ve always allowed him to open his stocking when he wakes up, but then we all wait until family arrives at 10:00 to open our other presents. He thanks people for the gift before he’s opened it, and then again afterwards. My MIL pointed out that HRH and I can take credit for that, but watching him work slowly through taking gifts out of their packaging and playing with them one by one over the afternoon made me very happy regardless of where he learned it.

His fever is hovering around 101. He’s fine other than a bit of a runny nose and the occasional cough, so it’s just a virus. We’ll keep track of it. He finally got a nap yesterday, and has already agreed to another one today after lunch.

My best gift, hands down, was this one from HRH:

Fibre buffs will recognise this as a handmade adjustable yarn swift, which comes apart into four crosspieces, four movable pegs, three washers, and a central bolt. HRH made it himself, and I am thrilled with it. I just need to sew a case for it.

It’s a lovely, sunny day again today. We’re putting away the good china, and giving the good silver one last buffing before tucking it away in the silver chest. The only rough spot yesterday came when I went to get the tablecloth from where I distinctly remembered placing all of the table linen and only found one there, with a big stain in the middle of it. HRH did a bit of sleuthing and found all the good Irish linen on the top shelf of our bedroom closet. We’ve now stored it in the bottom drawer of the linen cupboard/armoire in the laundry room, and we both know where it is.

This afternoon the tree comes down. We’re doing a last bit of laundry and sorting, then some packing before our holiday peregrination.

Weekend Roundup: Yule Edition

On Friday, we went and chose our tree. Hearing that local trees were $60, we chose to investigate the Boucherville IKEA for the first time, where we got an excellent 6-foot pine for a very satisfactory $20. It was pretty frozen in its wrapped shape even when we cut off the twine, but by the next morning it had thawed and the branches had opened beautifully.

On Saturday, while HRH helped a friend move in the morning, the boy and I made gingerbread:

When HRH got back home that afternoon, we decorated the tree:

On Sunday, we went to visit Santa. We ended up going back to LaSalle to Angrignon Mall for this, because despite there being three major malls around our new house on the South Shore, none of them listed enough information to actually schedule a visit. Either they didn’t post hours ( “call this number during business hours for info” is not entirely helpful when one is attempting to make a schedule for the next day) or they posted hours but didn’t post where Santa was set up (Dix30 being an outdoor shopping complex with no obvious central indoor location on its maps). So back to Angrignon we went, expecting our usual Santa, but we got a different one who was very jolly regardless. We had the brilliant idea of lining up before Santa opened for business, but a billion other families had the same idea and so we waited for an hour. Thank goodness the boy is at an age where that kind of wait isn’t hellish. We did have a bit of technical issue with the photo, though; he was very determined to be serious, but Santa had other ideas and tickled him. Every time the photographer took a picture the boy either stopped smiling or his eyes flickered past the camera to look at the sea of people behind her, and she got very cross at one point. But we have a good photo, which is proof that the boy actually sat on Santa’s lap, something he hasn’t done since he was two years old:

When asked what he wanted for Christmas the boy told Santa about one specific item. “You don’t want anything else?” Santa said, surprised. “No,” the boy said. “Just that, please.” He’d listed four things in his letter to Santa and specifically requested one of them in person, figuring that if he asked for one he’d run a better chance of getting it. And Mama patted herself on the back for buying it last month.

We did a bit of last-minute shopping, then went home and packed up for our annual Yule musical afternoon with the Preston-LeBlanc household. We made a stop at HRH’s parents’ house, because they hadn’t been able to come by on the Saturday as we’d hoped, then ran into awful, awful traffic on the Mercier bridge while trying to get back onto the island. The boy fell asleep, thank goodness, because it took us an hour to cover what should have been a fifteen-minute drive. We were very thankful to get to Jeff and Pasley’s warm and cosy home to share finger food, drink, songs, joy, and the company of chosen family.

It was a very long day indeed, mostly very enjoyable, but I was really wiped by the end of it.

Thoughts on the Return of the Light

I’m at a bit of a loss. In the past couple of days we’ve been hit by news about friends whose health has taken a turn for the worse, whose health issues have created emergencies that require hospitalization and bedside watches, or whose treatments have come to an end and they’ve chosen to return home to live the rest of their days in a place they love. Statistically speaking, I know bad things happen to people all year round. It just seems extra unfair when they happen at Christmas.

At the Winter Solstice we’re told to look toward the sun, to embrace its return, to cheer the vanishing dark. It’s hard to do that this year. I can turn it around and use the returning, strengthening light as a symbol of health returning — and indeed, I intend to use this symbolism for certain of the issues family and friends are facing right now — but for many people, it can’t be done. The best I can do is gather the rays of the sun and twine them gently around the vines that are my friends and acquaintances whose health cannot improve, to give them warmth and peace as they move westward. I can offer those rays to their families and closer friends, to use for strength and courage as they work through the challenge of supporting a loved one facing the end of one cycle of life.

I’m not feeling particularly Christmassy today. It’s probably not a bad thing our Yule celebration was cancelled as a result of some of this news.

However, when one has a five-year-old on board, one cannot retreat entirely from the Christmas season and magic. His joy and excitement are doing a lot to keep us on an even keel. This morning, when I was returning from what ought to be the last pre-Christmas grocery run, I remembered that the boy used to call the season “Kissmas” when he was just learning to talk, and it made me smile. Kissmas, indeed. Love your families and your friends, gentle readers. Tell them you love them not just at festive gatherings like those of the season, but every day. It ought to be Kissmas all the time in our lives.

Major Milestone; Or, Reading Achievement Unlocked

Since the beginning of kindergarten, the boy has been enthusiastically experimenting with letter sounds and word recognition (especially repeated words within a large block of text, my favourite of which has been ‘gizzard’). Yesterday, however, he accomplished something huge, something that was the key to so much more.

He read an entire book to me.

He had two ped days at the end of last week, and woke up with a dreadful cold on Thursday. He was home with me on Thursday, spent Friday with his local grandma while HRH got the brakes changed on the car (all four, ouch ouch ouch), and had the weekend at home as usual (a lovely afternoon and dinner were had with HRH’s parents on Saturday, supplemented by the joy that Highway 30 is now 90% open between here and there, cutting our travel time by about twenty minutes!). Then despite all my efforts and prayers to the contrary, I had to keep him home from school yesterday because the cold just wasn’t fading quickly enough. His poor nose is a mess of chapped and cracked skin because we’ve been blowing it so often. Vaseline and Glysomed lotion are our friends. Anyway, I managed to get him to nap on Thursday, Saturday, and yesterday (possibly Sunday as well, but it’s such a blur I really don’t remember), although it was a battle each time. He kept insisting that he wasn’t tired; I pointed out over and over that more rest meant getting better faster. I resorted to easing into it step by step. He’d protest; I’d suggest snuggling and reading; then we’d turn out the light and snuggle and chat; then the chatting would get quieter until we were just snuggling; then the boy would pass out and I’d slip away. Each time he woke up with smiles and hugs and admitted to feeling better.

Yesterday he still wasn’t going to nap without a fight, despite yawning. “That’s my morning [meaning wake-up] yawn, not my tired yawn!” I was told indignantly. “Choose a book and we’ll read,” I said, and gave him a time limit within which to do it. When I got back, he was sitting on his bed waiting for me. “Mama, I’m going to read to you,” he said. “All right,” I agreed, and pulled the cover up over us, expecting him to do the first sentence then hand the book to me to finish as usual.

And he opened Lego City Adventures: All Aboard!, a level 1 reader, and he read the whole thing to me from cover to cover. I helped him with a word or two, but otherwise he sounded out the words he didn’t know on his own.

When he got to the end (even reading the advertisement in the back for other books in the series) he looked at me and said, “Mama, when I read you a book, can you not cry?”

How could I not? I was so proud of him, and so overcome by the thought of the freedom that now lies open to him. He can sound things out; he can learn anything, anywhere. With concentration he can read cereal boxes, street signs, books, flyers, magazines, letters. There is so much he now has the ability to do. And it’s that “so much” that overwhelms me. He’s been teetering on the edge, and now swoosh, here he goes into an entire universe of information and communication. It won’t be easy; he’ll get frustrated, and he already has, because blocks of letters in English aren’t pronounced consistently and his ear for discerning slight differences hasn’t fully developed yet (as demonstrated by his insistence that train starts with a ch sound, not helped by a picture of a train under the words “choo-choo” in more than one book). But it’s going to be a wild and wonderful ride.

It’s been a tough five days here. He’s been sorry for himself because he’s sick, I’ve been trying to fit work in while he’s home which never works, and we’ve been butting heads and rubbing one another the wrong way. We’ve had good times, too, of course, staying in jammies till noon, building train layouts and watching Sesame Street and Sid the Science Kid together (thanks be to all the gods for having PBS again!), making lunch together, and ‘working’ in my office together (he never stops drawing, it’s astonishing). I was very close to breaking yesterday when I was given the gift of my son reading a book from start to finish. No deciding he’s too tired and pushing the book at me to do it instead; no getting angry and slamming it shut; just a simple, focused recounting of the story. It was beautiful, and made up for a lot of the frustration we’d been experiencing together.

And then last night I lifted the calendar page to write something in December, and saw that he has YET ANOTHER PED DAY this coming Friday. That nearly broke me again, because Ceri and I had scheduled a trip to the yarn store to knit together that day (or rather, Ceri shall knit, and I shall spin or something) and I was kind of looking forward to a day off without him. But he can come with us, because he loves the yarn store, and I have promised to pack him a lunch. And there are the toys he usually plays with there, plus we’ll pack our usual going-out bag of his own toys and books, and I would not be at all surprised if Ceri, Ada, Molly Ann and whoever else may happen to be there are treated to a live reading of all 189 words in Lego City Adventures: All Aboard!. We happen to be going to the bookstore before the yarn store, and I suspect I will be buying him a new Lego City reader as a reward for reading the first one all on his own. Because the best thing to do when you finish one book is start a new one, of course.

Wedding And General Weekend Roundup

I conducted my sixth rite of passage ceremony of the year this past weekend. (The current score is two weddings, four baby blessing/namings, if you’re filling in a scorecard.) It was a particularly meaningful one, as it united two dear friends whom I’ve known for a combined total of about forty years in front of 120 people, and it was beautiful in several respects. The wedding party (and some of the guests) chose a medieval/Renaissance theme for their dress, and the effect was very pretty. We told the boy everyone was dressing like knights and ladies and he got very excited, so I found him a small basic shirt and HRH made him a wooden sword and shield that he painted and varnished, which were a huge success. Had we more time, I would have tracked down some Buchanan tartan fabric and made him a tiny kilt to match HRH’s, but my local fabric shop yielded nothing but every other tartan under the sun and I didn’t have time to go into town to track some down.

It was really special to conduct a ceremony for an audience of that size. The compliments we got on the ceremony were very gratifying, and went beautifully apart from one or two minor hiccoughs. I’m used to being in the north for a ceremony, so of course west is to my right, yes? Except I was in the west, so south was accidentally designated west, and west was, well, west prime. I believe the two pieces of music for the attendants’ entrance and the bride’s entrance were switched, but it worked very well. And in general, it was just wonderful to be able to priestess such a special ceremony for people whom I love dearly, and then to see so many old friends and spend time with people I don’t see often enough. Also, it’s always great to see one’s friends all dressed up. The boy had a wonderful time running around with a small army of children, too.

There was car drama this weekend, too. We had a nor’easter hit Friday afternoon and evening, and our car chose that particular time to die. The battery, we discovered, was the original one, and no longer held enough of a charge to turn the engine over, even when boosted by another car. What was curious was that all the accessories such as headlights and radio still worked. Fortunately HRH’s parents were on their way over to stay with the boy while HRH and I went to the wedding rehearsal, so they rescued us from sitting in a parking lot in the storm and took us home, then helped call a tow truck for the car (who hooked its leads right up to the engine in the back and kicked it into operation, though it tried to die whenever HRH slowed for a stop sign). HRH bought a new battery but we didn’t have time to install it before we left (very late!) for the rehearsal in my inlaws’ car. The next morning HRH installed the new battery and everything worked perfectly. As the tow driver had said, seven years on the original battery is a pretty darn good run. As much as it played havoc with our schedule this weekend (we had to cancel the boy’s follow-up appointment with the behavioural psychologist researchers at McGill on Saturday morning, which disappointed both of us) we’re very, very thankful that the battery didn’t decide to roll over and die on our Thanksgiving drive either to or home from southern Ontario.

I finished my proposed table of contents and a sample chapter for a book project my editor asked if I’d be interested in writing, and she likes it, so we shall see if it’s ultimately approved. It’s a relatively short book that would be due in May of 2011, it’s a topic that interests me, and it would require research, something I love to do. I’m in the home stretch of the repurposing project as well, due on November 15.

The boy is doing splendidly. School is doing exactly what it’s supposed to do, get him excited about discovering new things and giving him tools to do it on his own. He sounds words out everywhere, and makes lists of words that begin with the same sound. His drawing skills have gone up a level or two as well; he uses a pencil to draw an outline and then colours it in carefully, and his art is getting ever more recognisable. He loves taking different things and mashing them together to make something new and creative, and that goes for three-dimensional building toys as well as two-dimensional art. He’s coming home with poems and songs, French words and rhymes, and it’s wonderful. He has even done two book reports; the kindergarten version, anyway, consisting of drawing a map of the places in the story or a picture of something he learned from the book. These reports are kept, and they eventually form a record of all the books the child reads from the school library. He loves school, and I love that he does.

I’ve arranged to buy a friend’s used iPhone in January. It just makes sense. It will replace my iPod, my cellphone, I will be able to make voice memos with it (something I dearly wish I could do easily while driving), record cello lessons and practice sessions with it (something I can’t do with my first-generation iPod Touch), play podcasts away from the computer without having to find speakers to wire into it (again, the first-gen Touch doesn’t have a built-in speaker), and take decent photographs with it. All I need is a pay-as-you-go voice plan, because I work at home and use wifi, so a data plan would be pointless. It means I don’t have to buy a Mac-compatible microphone that the Mini will recognise or a new camera (I may want a better camera than the iPhone eventually, of course, but it will serve my basic needs as well as or better than the eight-year-old borrowed camera I’m using now, and the battery will last longer!).

What else? I think of things to journal about now and again while I’m doing stuff but don’t have a chance to make a note before I forget them.

It’s getting colder and colder. I got an earache from the wind at the boy’s bus stop the other day, so I am knitting a hooded scarf. The house seems to be holding heat pretty well. I’m about halfway through spinning the 8oz of wood violet-coloured fibre, and I’d better get a move on if I’m returning Lady Jane in a week and a half. I pulled out a piece of fabric I’d woven early this year and laid it over the middle of the white chair in the living room, because it’s getting coffee drips and crayon marks on it as well as general dirt from cats and people, and I quite like how it looks. So does HRH, who, when I said I would weave a wider piece to cover the whole chair, suggested I weave another matching one to go on the settee. (The sheepskin is currently on it, and Nixie won’t touch it; she stretches and contorts herself to step around it. Odd little cat.) Good thing the yarn is a Zellers standby. This time, though, I’ll use the same yarn for warp and weft and weave it on the 32″ rigid heddle loom, and make the weave a bit less loose.

I had a cello lesson today, and orchestra is tonight. I’ve tried to avoid driving out there twice in one day, but it’s an exception; my teacher’s substitute schedule went haywire. Cello is going all right. I feel like I’m on the verge of grasping something and I can’t quite do it, or even put it into words. I feel as if I’m juggling a trillion tiny balls — rebalancing bow hand, rebalancing left hand, minute shifts with thumb, practising vibrato, minute movements of the left elbow to readjust left hand, large movements with right elbow to propel the bow while not allowing the wrist to get the upper hand (so to speak), minute adjustments to extensions from one position to another… and then handling subtle dynamics, being musical, and precise with phrasing on top of it all. Sometimes I almost get it. Then I have to think about one of the balls and a bunch of others drop. I”m trying to get into the habit of playing the cello first thing in the morning before turning the computer on to handle correspondence and news, and it’s tricky because it takes my hands and fine motor skills a while to rev up in the morning; always has.

Okay; that’s all I’ve got right now. Time to go meet the boy.

Out Of Step

I’m having a lot of trouble finding my rhythm these days. I’m tired, my focus is spotty, I’m panicking at to-do lists of sensible, manageable length, and oh, how I ache.

Nice things are happening, of course. The boy loves school. We have friends coming over for Settlers of Catan tonight. We have a Harvest ritual and feast on Saturday that someone else is organizing and hosting. On Sunday, we get to go see the Guardians of Ga’Hoole movie. Nothing wrong or drastic is happening. I’m just having a lot of trouble dealing with the fact that the fibro is really, really bad right now. I can’t seem to get a grip on it, and I think that’s what’s really driving me crazy. I feel like I have to pull up my socks now that the move and settling in are done, and I can’t. I’m chipping away at my current contracted project, but I haven’t signed back on to my previous freelance pool because I know it will knock me dead if I try to do both at once. Reading is difficult, because I’m having trouble sinking into the worlds in the books (except for the latest Diana Wynne Jones, Enchanted Glass, which is brilliant and just the thing I needed). And I guess it all comes down to feeling frustrated and useless, something with which I do not deal well at all.

A lot of my day is taken up figuring out what’s the most important thing on my to-do list and doing that and perhaps the second-most important. For example, despite a long to-do list today, I know that I have to go to the bank for a bank draft, to the post office to mail it out, and to buy the ingredients for tonight’s dinner and Sunday’s entertaining. Everything else, like anniversary gifts and present-shopping, can slide to tomorrow morning. In fact, now that I think about it, I may let the bank draft slide to Monday, because I have to buy two and I haven’t heard back from the second individual yet with a confirmation on the exact cost, and making two trips is a dumb idea for me. Actually, yes; that is what I will do. I feel much better, now.

Enough of that.

In brighter news, I was completely blown away yesterday by a friend’s generous offer to lend me her Schacht-Reeves Saxony wheel for a month. I was talking to her about my indecision regarding purchasing a double treadle or single treadle Saxony when the time came, and out of the blue she offered to not only lend me her double-treadle wheel to work with to help me decide, but to drive it over to me from southern Ontario this Sunday. I am continually stunned by the generosity and thoughtfulness of my friends. And I’m so incredibly thrilled to have the opportunity to work with a Schacht-Reeves for an extended period of time. They’re such high-quality, classy wheels, and I could never dream of owning one; they’re just too expensive. This will be a real treat.

All right. If I go do the groceries now, nice and slowly, I will be able to rest once I get home.