Generation Exhausted

The big '10'

Ten grand, that is. Hits. Here. Since late September. At least that's what Typepad says.

Yay me!

So how ironic that, on this momentous weekend, I take an itty break and um...forget to blog. For more than a day.

Ooops.

The weekend has been about as back to normal as I imagine a weekend can get. Between facing down impending deadlines and torturing myself with my own lack of self-esteem, I've been shuttling children to and fro and to and fro again.

Hubby and I had the chance yesterday to go check out the newly opened Superstore in town. It's a familiar grocery chain, only the new store doesn't stop at groceries. Just as department stores like WalMart have started to carry groceries, this is a grocery store that has started to carry departments. You can walk right in and pick up all your essentials, like milk, bread and a new bedspread.

No, I didn't buy a bedspread. I did, however, buy a new laundry basket and some cake pans. (it is completely un-necessary to mention that a cake has not been baked in this house since 1999)

Then we came home, and like any good writer facing a Very Important Deadline, I promptly spent two hours playing Q-beez.

"They" say it's important, when trying to avoid procrastination, to find a motivating reward. Something to treat yourself with once you've done what needs doing. So, since I'm facing that Very Important Deadline, I did what "they" suggest, and today I went out and bought me a new printer/scanner. Hubby is annoyed, more than a little, that the printer I had to have is sitting in the box in the dining room. He does not fully grasp the importance of motivation and its role in eliminating procrastination. He wants to set it up right now, and I won't let him, not until the Very Important Deadline has been met.

He doesn't understand why I play Q-beez either.

Tomorrow I'm "in the studio" so I'll spend the morning rehearsing. The nice thing about having your own office is that people can't hear you reading out loud to yourself, and you're spared the necessity of having to explain things. For those who asked, yes this is for the CBC, and as soon as I have an air date, I'll let you know.

You don't know Jack

But you will if you watch the Oscars on Canadian TV on Sunday.

From the Globe and Mail:

Ottawa — The New Democratic Party has dug deep into its wallet to buy TV ad airtime during this Sunday's Academy Award broadcast in a pre-election bid to introduce leader Jack Layton to Canadians who might normally switch the channel when political news hits the screen.

Read the rest.

Mr. Layton will also be appearing in commercials during episodes of Sex and the City, Queer Eye and during NHL hockey games. Oh boy.

It's how we do things here

Sure sign that February is affecting even the children...

Last night, they were playing baseball on the lawn. Only in Canada will you see children in winter boots and baseball gloves, so desperate for spring that the minute most of the snow melts, they're out there playing catch.

They were wearing toques too.

So while certain Southern Friends are rejoicing over a few flakes, those of us in the Great White North are enjoying the traditional February thaw. The sun is shiny, the snow has almost melted, and the mud is plentiful.

I have no idea what the temperature is, in either language, but it feels positively balmy.

It's enough to give you hope that Spring will come again.

Doing the happy dance

Finally...FINALLY! heard from an editor whom I had become convinced had decided to not like me anymore. Guess she still likes me - she's picking up an essay I sent her last month. Yay me, another national clip!

I needed that. I needed it badly, for my ego more than for the money. Amazing how my ego needs constant tending to.

Also, I'll be "in the studio" on Monday, recording my first national radio piece. Yay me again! I have no idea what "in the studio" will be like, and I'm terrified, but I will leave my fear at home and sally forth.

I'm draggy today, at a time when I can't afford to be draggy, but hubby reminded me that it's still February. That's all well and good, but...I can accept that February will suck the energy right out of me, but I can't exactly shut down for a month, now can I?

Three more days, and it's March!

What lies beneath

Was talking to a friend last night, and, as will often happen during the most depressing month of the year, our conversation turned to yards and gardens.

I mentioned that it would be nice, come spring, to plant some of the beautiful daffodils and crocuses (croci?) that Kim had sent, as well as some of the other spring plants that people have gifted us with over the last week. And as I stared out the window at my yard, I suddenly remembered the bulbs.

Last autumn, hubby went off to the hardware store for something small -a screwdriver or something. He returned with two large bags of bulbs, daffodils and tulips.

"Bulbs?" I questioned.

"They were on sale!" he announced joyfully. I couldn't fault him - I often do the same thing with shoes. But where, oh where, I wondered aloud, was he going to plant them?

He assured me that he had a plan, and that he'd take care of things, so I happily banished the bulbs from my mind. About six weeks later, the bulbs still sitting by the front door, I mentioned that if I had to move them to vacuum one more time, I was going to plant them - in the bottom of the trash can.

So Bulb Man went out one day, and planted bulbs. What worries me, as I look at the rose bed covered with snow, is that I have no idea where. And no idea what will come up. You see, gardening around here is the same kind of laugh riot that home renovation is. Something along the lines of, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions..."

Somewhere out there are a hundred tulips and daffodils, waiting to break ground and submit to the mercy of Mother Nature and the Xhausted family. My concern is not that they won't survive - it's that they'll thrive. The last time we planted bulbs and seeds, we ended up with daisies that grew to four feet tall and we ended up pulling the whole mess out.

My only hope is that the colours of spring inspire us to build the arbor we never got around to last year. In anticipation of the arbor, we purchased and planted some climbing roses, and they're going to be searching for something to climb by June.

Four more days

In four days this godawful month will be over, and maybe then the fog will lift a little bit. I've just blown a morning when I didn't have a morning to blow, fell asleep in the chair again. Damn chair.

I suffer no illusions that winter will mystically evaporate come Monday morning. But the end will be in sight...March means it's almost April, and May isn't far behind, and well, then it's warm, and....

Saturday morning, someone knocked my door and told me to move my car. The city was cutting down the dead tree and my car was in the way. I found it disturbing, since last April the city said they'd get to the tree as soon as they could.

Apparently, a snowy Saturday the following February was "as soon as they could." How sad is that?

It's Pancake Day!

Happy Shrove Tuesday! It's all about the pancakes today, unless, of course, it's about the paczkis. Which, for us, it isn't, we being a WASP-y bunch around here.

What's that? Never heard of a paczki? Here's a recipe. The pronunciation is often is question, but I've heard it most often as "poonch-key".

Truthfully, I've had exactly one bite of a paczki in my life, and nearly passed out from a fat-and-sugar overdose. But I know people love 'em. Go figure.

So what about you? Pancakes or paczkis?

So laid back I might fall down

Little Daughter woke me up today with the urgent news that "Mommy, IT'S EIGHT TWENTY TWO!!!!!" Which happened to be twenty-two minutes later than the last possible minute that we can all wake up in the morning and still be on time without experiencing major stress.

Sigh. I'm not Mother Of The Yeeeaarr.

However, it does verify that we are well on our way to "getting back to normal." I swear, I don't know what we'd do for excitement around here if everything worked out the way it was planned.

Teenager had fled the house earlier, being well on time and perfectly ready to greet the first day back to school. Poor kid. She craves and thrives on a well-structured environment, and I'm convinced that's the reason that, in spite of all the difficulties she's had over the years, she's never once asked to stay home from school. School gives her a framework she seems to desperately need, and on the homefront, there's little that resembles a framework.

Every day after school she greets me with the same three words: What's for supper? I suppose, in other households, they probably know what's for supper by that point in the day. Not here. And although I can tell you that we'll all be sitting around the table together for the evening meal most nights, I wouldn't lay any money on a specific time. Some time between 4 and 6 is about the best I can offer.

We're usually on time for things that we've committed to, and the children really aren't late for school more than once a month or so. But the reality is that around here, schedules don't work. While some people find that the road to success is paved with organization and time management, my road tends to be more of a winding country-type thing. I meander from obligation to assignment to task with lots of sightseeing in between.

I know that will horrify some people. I know it would shock them to know that while the pages of my daytimer are often blank, I still have appointments booked and interviews scheduled and assignments that need completing. I know some people would be bothered that one day I'll eat lunch at noon, the next day at two, and the third day possibly not at all.

I used to think there was something wrong with us that we couldn't seem to get it together. I fed my kids when they were hungry and I put them to bed when they were tired. Meanwhile, the other mothers I knew marched through parenthood purposefully, with feedings and nappings and changings happening according to a clock. "Children thrive on routine!" I was told, and godhelpme if I didn't have a routine.

So I tried. And tried again at various points in my life. Not only with my children but with my career as well. I tried planning my work by the hour and the minute, expecting that adherence to a schedule would lead to greater success. It didn't.

In fact, all it did was make me crazy. And the crazier I got, the more unhappy I got. And everyone knows - if mama ain't happy, etc....

So I gave up. Luckily, I'm married to someone who also thrives on flexibility and spontenaiety and take-each-minute-as-it-comes. Plans are apt to change from day to day, and it works for us. We have just enough routine in our life that the children don't go totally crazy from it, and the rest is gowiththeflow. Somehow, the things that need to get done get done, and the things that don't often turn out to be not so important after all.

How about you? Is it all about the schedule, or do you bend with the wind?

Yesterday, today and tomorrow

The days surrounding a funeral have an air of controlled chaos. It's a time of suspended animation, the bridge between before and after that gives us the chance to prepare ourselves, mentally, for what comes next. At funeral time, nothing else matters - work, play, it all stops for a few days while we say goodbye to what we've known before, and steel ourselves for what we'll do next.

It's a short period of time and there's a lot to do. The activity keeps you from thinking too much - there are phone calls to be made, arrangements to be tended to, a thousand different small tasks that need to be done.

And then it's over, and you're supposed to "get back to normal."

How do you do that? I stare at the words on the page, I look at the list things to get back to, all the stuff that just stopped on Wednesday morning, and I wonder - how do you do that? For five days my attentions and emotions have been totally focused on a life ending, and now I have to scramble not only to pick up where I left off, but also to make up for the fact that nothing's gotten done in the last five days.

So little by little, one step at a time, I'll knock things off the list. It feels a little like walking through a thick fog - I know what direction I have to go in, but things are murky and I can't seem to move any way but slowly.

Perhaps I'll have to learn to be as patient with myself as other people have been with me. Tomorrow starts, but slowly.

The quiet room

Off the family waiting room in the ICU is a small "quiet room", reserved for larger family groups needing a space seperate from the big room. It's very small - two couches, a love seat and a chair, all hospital-issue furniture. You don't sink into the furniture so much as perch upon it - these are seats you may spend a great deal of time in, but the time will be in bursts; sit, stand, pace, sit some more. The pillow and folded-up blanket in the corner acknowledge that people will be here overnight, though they won't sleep so much as rest their heads wearily and close their eyes for brief moments at a time.

There's a picture of an angel on the wall - a cherub type thing, I suppose intended to offer further comfort to those who have come to wait. For this is truly a waiting room - people come here to wait and see what happens next. The people that use this room are waiting for one of two things - they are either waiting to see if someone will live or waiting for someone to die.

The furniture frames a small table in the centre, bare except for a religious tract and a box of hospital kleenex. When we first gained admittance to the quiet room, there was a penny on the table as well. It was probably left behind by those who had used the room before us - their waiting had ended, though I didn't know how. Just a single penny - who remembers, or bothers, to take a penny?

All through the long day and night, the penny sat there. Coffee cups were brought in and taken away, kleenex was moved and moved back, a magazine was added to the table. Change from snack runs was casually tossed in the middle of the table, then scooped up as its owner went to use the pay phone, or pace the hall some more.

No one touched the penny.

It was left as it had started, alone and undisturbed by those who came and went and came again. It was as though the penny's place in the room was permanent; it was a much a part of the decor as the cherub on the wall.

While voices swirled around me, and tears flowed, and important matters were discussed in hushed and anxious tones, I began to see the penny as a talisman of sorts. If no one touched or took the penny, then perhaps we too might escape unscathed and undisturbed. Perhaps it gave good luck, or warded off the bad. If the penny's presence remained constant, perhaps it would give us the strength to endure what was to come.

Not quite 24 hours later, we left the quiet room behind. Our waiting was done, and we had reached the end of our journey. It was a sad end, but the one that was meant to be. And now, it was someone else's turn to use the quiet room.

We cleared away the coffee cups and magazines, and folded up the blanket. We left the penny behind.