why selling a bunk bed to buy a new set of bunk beds made sense...kinda

A few months ago I sold the bunk bed my younger 2 kids had in the room they share. By that time only my boy was using his bunk because the girl had long since moved out of hers in favor of her own bed, saying that his constant jostling kept her up at night.

I had been holding onto the bunk bed thinking if we had a sleepover the extra bunk would come in handy. The irony is that because we live in an apartment that big black framed bunk bed made the room feel so crowded and blocked so much light,that it felt like there wasn't enough room for anyone extra. So: no sleepovers.

(Why was I keeping the bunk bed again?!)

That said my boy still needed a bed so naturally I went to Walmart looking for a simple bed and after pricing around found myself purchasing another set of bunk beds. Yes, bunk beds. These ones are better than the old ones though because they come apart. That is to say that they can be used as two separate beds where the other bunk beds were one huge solid metal frame.

In classic fashion, it took me probably a week to get around to putting the boy's bed completely together. All leftover parts were carefully stashed and stored in the kids closet for the next day when I would take apart the girl's bed and put together the new one for her. The room would look so much better with matching shaker style beds, I reasoned. The next day, I hit a road block, when I realized that my boyfriend at the time had put her bed together. He had made certain it was sturdy for her and to do that, he had used tools...

I have a drill with 2 bits and a hammer and while these are in fact considered to be tools they are not the right tools for the job of dismantling the old bed. In the meantime the boyfriend became an ex and I had to replace other things in the house as a result, plus life got busy and between kids and school and surviving I kind of forgot why I never tackled the bed issue, until the other day.

This being Christmas vacation I now had the time to tackle the bed issue. I had stripped and removed the mattress and that's where my renewed vigor for home improvement stopped. Christmas had past, I never got any tools.

My mission today is to purchase a ratchet set, take one bed apart and put the new bed together...I'll let you know how it goes.

Old Friends

The tree and the garland are twinkling with white lights. The dishes are basically done (there aren't many left anyway). There are a couple of presents to wrap. The kids and the cat are chilling out in their respective spots.

I am waiting for an old friend to arrive who is home for the holidays, thinking how so much has changed in the past year and a half since I last saw her. I doubt we will get the chance to catch up on even half of it but it will be nice to see her and her little ones.

How many close friends do we really have in life? The kind of friends that pass in and out of your life almost imperceptibly, that know you and your habits and quirks and tho they must judge, they really don't allow changes to affect the long haul of the relationship. These friends can tease you about stuff you had forgotten about and remind you of where you once were. Friends that are like adopted family fully accepting and acceptable are a rare and special breed.

Tis the season to appreciate these nomadic members of our extended family, to catch up, and check in then send them packen' back to their regular lives as we get back to our own, refreshed with renewed understanding and acceptance of ourselves.

I can't wait to see my friend and play with her kids, dish a little bit about others we once knew, and give her a big hug but if I don't go have a shower and brush my teeth she may not have a full appreciation of the visit...but she'll have a little something extra to tease me about.

I am off to the tubby1

Merry Christmas!

Last night, despite:

1. the free beer from my favoritest boss ever,
2. the stranger-I-kinda-know who stopped to chat in the middle of the night when I was just about to cry,
   
3. the brief moment I got with someone for whom I care deeply,
   
4. the multitude of Facebook exclamations to have a "Merry Christmas,"
   
5. the card and heart-felt hug I got from a colleague,
6. the snow ball formed with old affection intended for me that missed,
   
7. the unseasonably awesome weather last night,
8. my beautiful snowflake tree,
   
9. excitement evident on the kids faces that overflowed in every stammered word,
   
10. the stranger who carried my Budweiser all of the way to the cash through the whole line up of 20 people that snaked through the liquor store all the way into the walk-in cooler,
    
11. the hot landlord that left a party to unlock my apartment door because I had locked myself out,
12. the knowledge of all the great and beautiful things my kids and I would be receiving on the following day, and
    
13. my car shovelled out by a kindly neighbour. The very same neighbour who also makes sure my garbage-can makes it to the curb whenever I forget it, all the year through.
    

My heart was lonely and sorry for itself and half blind to all of these beautiful gestures and experiences.

Once my kids arrived rosy cheeked, dressed in new pj's from my ex husbands mother (zzz's a tradition she started with her own 3 kids 35 years ago of giving the kids new pj's on Christmas Eve so that they were sure to be wearing something decent for pictures the next day) and the pile of gifts were unwrapped and enjoyed, I started baking. The kindly shovelling neighbour is a single man who lives alone who probably won't get anything home baked this Christmas so I thought I would fill a festive tin for him and address a card to him as well, thanking him for his efforts.

That's when I started to feel It: The magic of the season.

Around the time that I set the final mixing bowl in the draintray, shiny and clean, it occurred to me that I would write about the bits of magic I've witnessed just in the past day in this blog. Which lead me to understand that the blogs ahead of me and the blogs already posted are like roadsigns on my quest for self improvement. Haha hopefully most of them leed me in the right direction...

It has been a Merry Christmas!...and we haven't even had dinner at the farm yet!

You Gotta Make Magic Happen

If you can only get into the Christmas Spirit when there is a pile of snow everywhere you should be feeling pretty merry right about now, at least if you live in the Maritime corner of Canada.

Christmas is for giving and sharing and loving and let's face it, this year I am alone. The kids are with their dad and there is no special someone.

Since winter sports are what make winter enjoyable and are only possible with a lot of snow, I can understand where these snow lovers are coming from. Besides that there are few things as beautiful as quietly-falling, glittering snow. If that sight is not a bit of magic, I don't know what is...but for me (and I imagine for many) really, truly, absolutely getting into the Christmas spirit is a combination of many things. It is like a chemical formula or witches brew: if the right ingredient is missing, it just isn't the same.

Most of what is missing in my life is of my own creation, the bottom completely fell out of my motivation at some point in November and it has been a real effort to get it back.

I have taken time to include several of my preferred ingredients for the recipe of Holiday Spirit but there are several missing as well...The tree is up. Presents are wrapped. Everyone is bought for. I feel particularly good about some of them. Bills are paid. Snow is blanketed upon Freddy Beach.

Then there's the missing list: haven't sent cards again yet. My kids won't be with me that special morning. Santa won't be coming to my house. I still have to finish truffles, shovel myself out, get last ingredients for baking, pick up the gift tags, and visit Nanny (probably how I should have planned my evening anyway but didn't). I am sad to report that I didn't do as well in the last 2 weeks of school as I had been all along and therefore disappointed a few people (especially myself).

Trying hard to get that sparkle, that magic back. My life has shown me that wishes do come true but we don't get full appreciation of them without a little effort on our part. Sometimes a lot of effort.

These last days of 2009, I am looking backwards and forwards, inwards and out, formulating my resolutions for a better year to come.

2010, by next week, I will be ready for you!

In Pursuit of Happiness

While the snow fell, and Christmas parties rocked last night I curled up with my girls on the couch to watch a movie. Julie and Julia was not the best movie I have ever seen; however, the moral of the story hit close to home for me.

Julie, a woman struggling with an undesired career change and a move to Queens, New York realizes with the help of her husband that the one thing she truly enjoys doing is eating. Julia Child becomes her unknowing mentor in Julie's new goal to cover Child's entire recipe book of over 500 recipes over the course of a year and to blog about them all. Perhaps this is a wild and unrealistic goal but Julie's pursuit of her passion has reminded me that in order to achieve a goal, it is important to go after it.

I am going to write every day here on this spot for a year...your encouragement in this pursuit will be appreciated.

As I wrote this a great calamity occurred here in the apartment, Jesus and the entire manger took a header off the table which my boy knocked over in his great concentration with his game. The crash broke my concentration and his but it's all cleaned up now and this post is done so it is time to get back to the business of the day: present wrapping, baking, and of course the ever present: DISH WASHING.

Until tomorrow,
Jenn

Think-Isms

When you ask a question, be receptive to the answer. Jennifer Hay

People tend to surprise you, especially after you give up on them ever surprising you.

The biggest mistake we can make in our lives is not making enough mistakes.

A good teacher (besides Life itself) explained to me this month that we are all politicians.

When I was a teenager, my step father was a Member of the Legislative Assembly, of New Brunswick. I have always been proud of his accomplishment in becoming MLA. I've always respected the fact that he pursued what he felt was important but I didn't and don't necessarily agree with his particular politics.

That said, I don't think of him as the P-word [pssst you know: politician]. To my mind the word politician denotes a liar, someone out for themselves, riding on the shoulders of the people. In that vein of thought I never conceived of myself as having potential to be or of being a politician either.

Now assuming this bit about how we are all politicians, is true, if every interaction we have with another human being is indeed a political act, well sir, I have been a terrible politician indeed.

After all, if my teacher is to be believed, a politician's role is to lead in an attempt to control and resolve conflict. They have to be able to push an agenda. Except for my dad and a few rare others, I always thought of politicians as hypocrits. How can a person believe and say one thing and do another? Well now!

So worried have I always been about how everyone might feel about things and so difficult it's always been for me to see any one choice in things above another, that I've always had a difficult time stating my own case. Often I have a hard time even figuring out what my case is.

The greatest revelation in all of this to me is that my not being willing or often not capable of picking a side, has been my greatest downfall and has been perceived as a lack ambition and lack of character. This came as somewhat of a shock to me. I had always seen my ability to empathise as a strength. Indeed an empathetic parent is a good thing but an agent in the universe, in need of leaving a positive mark on the world, must pick a side therefore choices are necessary. By not making a choice I have often made the worst choice of all.

In the last few weeks I've had the opportunity to do something that I've never really felt at Liberty to do. I've had the chance to drive around and take wrong turns in a new town, in this case two towns that I have visited but really don't know them very well, Woodstock and Oromocto. Sometimes I took the same wrong turn (haha several times) over but eventually I learned which turn was the right one.

Here's the point: Unless her choices run parallel, a woman has to be impossibly flexible to walk down more than one path at a time. In life we have to pick a path, pursue it with all we've got, and do our best to learn from getting lost.

A girl I know is a good, kind-hearted, well-meaning young idealist who happens to inhabit the same building as a bunch of other young people, who all happen to be young men, who (although they may well be kind and good hearted themselves) are not quite so considerate concerning a particular habit.

Now fortunately for my young friend she does not have to share a bathroom with the young men. She also has her own room and due to strict rules in this house there's not a lot of visitor traffic or music late at night. No parties in the house either.

All these rules suit my young friend just fine but there is one thing in particular that is really getting on her nerves: the boys are constantly cussing. My friend is particularily bothered when they take the Lord's name in vain. I mean this REALLY bothers her.

Personnally there are many many habits that would really annoy me faster than cussing, being a few years her senior, I learned a long time ago, boys will be boys and there's not much you can do about their language use. My young friend, however has not learned that lesson.

She repeatedly (probably to their great annoyance) has asked that they stop using those words but (surprise, surprise) her efforts come to no avail and every day she's more frustrated with them. But what can a person do, really? My most sage advise comes from a prayer I remember repeating as a child: accept that which cannot be changed. But apparently that's not her style. I suggested she look for another place to live, one that might be a better fit for her sensibilities.

No she likes the location and her rent is paid several months in advance.

Understanding human nature in a way she clearly doesn't and slightly apathetic about her plight I advised her to do one of two things:

1. Either get more creative than simply harping at them;

2. OR back off a little because they may gang up on her and start playing nasty tricks like scrubbing the toilet with her toothbrush. Just ignore them, as my mother used to say.

The following day she had employed the Silent treatment accompanied with door slamming. I'll admit this sounded a little childish to me BUT (and this really was a surprise to me) it got results! Within the day she received a text from one such room-mate: "Please say something," it read.

While it may not seem like much she definitely got their attention which was more than I would have expected.

While boys may well indeed be boys and bound to mischief they are also hardwired to please and protect the women in their lives. And at the risk of generalizing nothing is harder or more confusing for a man to deal with then realizing that a woman is mad at them.

Koodos to my young friend for keeping in mind who or what she was dealing with.

Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,
Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home.

John Howard Payne
US actor & dramatist (1791 - 1852)

We've taken to calling it The Money Pit.

This is the main door to the house my great grandfather built in 1923 after the old one burnt, on land that had been in our family since the 1790's which if you do the math means that my family has called the same plot of earth home for more than two hundred years. Back in 1991, about 2 years shy of that bicentennial, my mother sold the property to strangers, in pursuit of a promotion in Northern Ontario. As a lonely 15 year old, at the time, I was nothing short of traumatized and it took me a long time to forgive her---along with our home she sold our hope, our place in world, my grandchildren were someday going to play here, or so I had always thought--- but forgiveness comes with time and it came easiest to me the summer before last when she bought it back.

The old house has seen much better days. Mom's investing every dime she's got into bringing it back to it's former Craftsman inspired charm, however she's got her work cut out for her: the front of the house has been painted while the sides and back are the same old white they've always been (Mom did this before she realized it would be a better idea to reside the whole house). Since it already has what my step father would call a mother-in-law-door all it needs now is a bunch of cars rusting in the back yard to make it a red neck special.

In case you wondered, I'm not sure what possessed her to paint the front door red, but through that front door is a sun porch. My uncle Pat once drove a snow mobile through it. Going forward through another door is the kitchen, where I said my first word, "happy," and in which I stood just yesterday and was less than happy as I gazed about the room which was gutted and full of old building materials. The old floor planks were bare to the elements.

So finding myself in the middle of what can only be described as devastation I was snapping pictures left and right and I could not help but feel as though I were documenting a third world operating room where a dear old friend lay splayed upon a shabby old table with all his precious organs set out upon a tarnished tray, awaiting not just for a good heart but kidneys as well.

The fact is that this whole section of the house needs to be made level before any lasting and worthwhile change can take place, and that is just not something that is in the budget, meanwhile the house is not livable with no kitchen and no bathroom so my mother is renting. Hence the monicker: the Money Pit after the 1980's comedy flic about a couple who purchase a so called fixer upper mansion and it's just one 'hillarious' and expensive catastrophe after another as they attempt to build a life in a building that should have been condemned.

Don't get me wrong the old house is still Home to me, a member of the family, but for the life of me I can't figure out how we'll ever get her ticker going again.

Starting to figure it out

Over the past three years I've spent a lot of time contemplating Life from every angle, because my life like most peoples did not turn out quite the way I thought it would. Everything I've put effort into has taken sort of a left turn off the beaten path and all of a sudden I had to re-figure-out everything I thought I knew. Have you ever reached that point? A rock bottom? A sudden unexpected opportunity? Is that what it takes for everyone to make meaningful change or just meatheads like me?