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There’s nothing quite like the week after a semester finishes. I’ve been so productive the last few days. Rob and I have put doors up on two kids’ bedrooms so that leaves only one more. I just finished installing the doorknob on the second one and sawing off the shims. My taxes are done and filed (just in the nick of time). Wood for the fence was delivered on Monday and I’m planning to order dirt for the garden later today. Hopefully this weekend will be warm and I’ll get lots done in the yard (including having my family over for my daughter’s (gasp!) fourteenth birthday! Of course by next week all of this energy will be gone and I’ll be wondering what the heck I got myself into…

And the week after that I’ll be whining that my next paper is due at the end of May and I’ve got nothing to say or the research doesn’t connect with my topic or something like that…and then that paper will get handed in after a week and a half of much coffee and little sleep.

Ahh the seasons of a student.

Every time my kids go to their dad’s they ask me to take care of their Webkinz gardens. At xmas time they ask me to loot the NeoPets advent calendar for them. I do my best but times three kids it can add up to a considerable amount of time.

I try hard to get my kids comfortable on the computer, whether it’s through gaming, making their own levels on kGoldrunner, designing title pages and drawing pictures, writing stories, blogging, accessing the home network, troubleshooting, researching, and programming. I know how lucky they will be if they can understand and maintain their own computers and how important technology mastery will be as they grow up.

It doesn’t help the developing computer-love if they come home from their dad’s and their Neopets are dead and their Webkinz gardens have all withered and the food is rotten before it can be harvested. In this case the computer is just another thing that makes them sad. They see their investment as wasted time. They don’t have Internet access at their dad’s and we won’t get into what hardware he must have but there was this project my daughter brought home on a floppy disk. She’s saving for her own laptop but it’s going to be awhile still and that won’t help with the dying frogs and ponies.

Given that after school time is busy with homework and chores these online games should have an option for kids who only really have access to them every-other-weekend. (And that goes for games that offer a paid membership like Runescape). Neopets does have hotels and such where you can park your animals when you’ll be away but the cost adds up. As more and more kids face a double life with often a discrepancy in access to technology how will the technology adapt?

flickr photo by polar bots member mascott girl

I hate limbo. I like to have a general idea of where I’m headed, what’s next, where the groceries will come from next week. So I’m getting anxious because I haven’t heard yet if I’ll receive the funding I applied for to finish my master’s. I had planned to do this degree in one year but when all hell broke loose last fall I had to rethink that timeline. Now I’m sitting here, in need of two more courses and a major research project but funding for only one more semester. There are no courses offered in the summer so if I really and truly don’t receive funding I need an alternate plan. I’m considering taking a leave of absence, gearing up, and finishing everything in the fall somehow (umm, just as my daughter begins high school. Sounds like fun). It would be nuts — more work than I’ve probably ever attempted to tackle. School at this level just doesn’t mix with family. Or at least it hasn’t for me yet. Generally I feel like I’m barely keeping up so the thought of adding more school responsibilities on top of what I had these past two semesters really worries me.

The challenge then becomes how to support my family this summer — oh right, while finishing up my incompletes from last fall. Aarrgh… This degree has certainly not worked out like I thought it would. I dream of a simple life where during the day I go to class, go to the library, think about Big Ideas and write with clarity and grace. Nights are filled with deep films and philosophy and sangria. I go to the gym and eat salad with blueberries. On the weekends I code amazing and tidy projects that combine all of my diverse interests so that when school is all over I have a career path to pursue. A few months like that and everything is caught up, my soul is richer than it’s ever been, and the degree is complete. Sweee-eeet.

Of course, maybe a letter will come today saying I’ve got the funding and I can just keep on going as I’d planned. Then there’s no decision to make.

These may be obvious to others but I’ve recently discovered a few things that are making life a lot easier. Rob and I blended families last fall and it hasn’t all been a picnic. Some of it’s because of the craziness of our own particular situations but some of it is just because it’s hard when one family moves in with another.

Here’s what’s working right now:

• I signed my kids up for swimming lessons on Wednesday nights. Every Wednesday we go out and Rob’s got the house to himself. I hadn’t realized how rare an occurrence this was until we started a few weeks ago. I have time here alone during the day because I mostly work from home but when he’s home usually I’m home and/or there’s some combination of our kids here. Given that it’s his house we live in it’s been a big change from it being usually quiet to now, usually loud. I also went away to Toronto for a long weekend while my kids were at their dad’s and it gave Rob some time alone here with his daughter. For years it was just the two of them on the weekends and I think it’s been hard on both of them having me around all the time. They need their space and the chance to be together without a third wheel hanging about.
• Video game time for chore time. For the past month, every Tuesday night Rob and I go out for coffee/chai at a local independent coffee shop. We play World of Warcraft for a few hours and it’s lots of fun. I make time for this with him and on Saturday mornings we do housework together (specifically cleaning the bathrooms and vacuuming the stairs). These are the two biggest things that get me down when they’re dirty. If the bathrooms and stairs are clean I can mostly keep up (or overlook) the rest of the house. It’s become a great routine and the date night is wonderful. We’re actually having fun together. ;) Having fun is important for making a blended family work. If we’re not happy, then what was the point?
• A grocery list on the side of the fridge. There are way too many people here for me to keep track of who is out of what favourite food. Each kid is responsible for adding to the list if they finish off a food. If it’s not on the list it doesn’t come home from the grocery store. This goes for the grownups too.
• Rules that apply to everyone. This is something we’re still working on and will probably continue to struggle with. One of these rules is that school bags and other gear needs to go into bedrooms and cannot be left in the entranceway. For the size of the house I’ve always been frustrated with how tiny the entrance area is. Bags that get abandoned become tripping hazards and it looks awful. Unfortunately we’re all guilty of coming in and getting distracted. One reason is that the kitchen and computers are upstairs and the kids bedrooms are downstairs. Usually the habit is to come in, come upstairs. Later, when they’re ready to go down, they walk right on past the bags. My excuse is that usually I’m carrying in more than one load so it takes me a couple of trips to get everything where I’m going and I get distracted before I’m done putting everything away. Hopefully now that winter is over I can put the boots away and that will clear up a bit of space.

I hope I keep finding more things that I can add to this list.

I’ve known for years (almost 14 — the age of my oldest child) that breastmilk is the absolute best thing in the world. Now there’s one more reason why it’s awesome:

Breastmilk contains stem cells. Seriously. Check out that article.

flickr photo by Hoover Family Photos

Today is Family Day in Ontario. It’s a government initiative to help families with the crazy pace of life by giving everyone the day off so they can spend time together.

Except Family Day isn’t retrospectively applied to court orders signed before today. If your kids go to their dad’s on Mondays you are out of luck. Unless you want to go back to court…(Hah!)

And for the many people living in border towns and working in Michigan and other states, Family Day doesn’t apply to you. Get the kids to the sitter and get yourself to work already!

And if you work in retail, hospital, or at the university library you and some of your co-workers will be at work today.

And if you work for the school board and your contract was negotiated before Family Day was announced, you cannot go to work today but you will not get paid. You’re not entitled to any more days off this year. Sorry!

And if you’re a student, you’re busy preparing for mid-terms and writing major papers so keep in mind, if you take the day off today, you will probably FAIL!

But I’m not bitter.

We went to the pool last weekend. My daughter has always been a fish. She’s been swimming since she was an infant and has always loved it. I don’t think I ever taught her to go underwater, she just always could. She wowed the lifeguards with her butterfly stroke and I just wondered where she ever learned that and when did she get so strong?

My youngest decided he was going to learn to dive. He’s a decent swimmer — but better underwater than above. He’s so skinny that he doesn’t float very well. He set himself up on the side of the pool and tipped forward — a lovely beginner’s dive. He then walked around the pool and after just a little bit of encouragement jumped off the diving board. He was so proud (so was I) — and his older brother was jealous!

Moments later the middle one was on the edge of the pool, trying to convince himself to dive in. He was scared but didn’t want his little brother to be able to do something he couldn’t! Watching his brother going into the water head first just a few more times was all it took. Within fifteen minutes they looked like they’d been doing it all their lives.

As tough as life is, I have to remember that these are amazing kids. They are strong and healthy and can do incredible things. That makes me pretty lucky.

Many years ago I shared a house with 4-6 other adults (people came, people went). We shared a fridge, dishes, and kitchen appliances and the deal was that we’d each contribute to the common expenses (like toilet paper) and took turns on the chores like cleaning the bathroom, sweeping the floors, vacuuming, and doing the dishes.

There was one roommate who seemed to stretch her contribution as thin as was tolerable. Her turn to buy toilet paper usually meant she stole some from public bathrooms. Sometimes rolls of sandpaper-y stuff, sometimes a stack of those little individual squares. When it was her turn for dish duty she would wash some dishes, but never all. When she was done, the counter top would be unusable because of the dishes drying on it, and the sink would be unusable because there’d still be dishes in it. I never understood the logic of it, I just knew that whenever she was done there was still work for someone else to finish.

photo by Squonk11

She might have been using the strategy known as “if I do a really lousy job they won’t want me to do it next time.” Or maybe she thought hers was a legitimate contribution. It drove the rest of us crazy. There’s something about false helping. When you’ve done something, no matter how small, no one can criticize you for not helping. My roommate did in fact do some dishes. It’s just that her helping required the rest of us to do extra work. At her turn to clean the kitchen, we knew that who ever went in there next would get stuck finishing the job.

I have been collecting frames for the past two years or so. When I see a cheap or clearance frame I buy it and stash it away because framed photos make great gifts and because I’ve always wanted a home with treasured photos hung all around. I did that a little bit at my old house before we moved this summer but this past weekend was a photo marathon. I sorted through hundreds of photos, picking out my top favourites. I printed out about 30 of these and now they are hanging all over the place around the upstairs here at Rob’s.

Some are from our trip to Venice Beach a few years ago. We stayed in nearby Marina del Rey when we went to E3 in 2005. Hanging up the pictures of that and the Santa Monica pier at night bring it all back. There’s also a photo from Catalina Island near where we went snorkelling. That was a different trip — for E3 2006.

On another wall are photos from Vancouver, Pelee Island, and someplace in farm country between Windsor and Wasaga Beach. The trip to Vancouver was for NorthernVoice/Moosecamp 2007, Pelee Island was for beginning work in the archives there related to my history research project, and the farm is from the trip home from our two-family vacation this past summer.

In the kitchen there’s a picture of budding echinacea from a garden in Scarbourough where my dear friends Karen & Mitch live. There’s a picture of my grandparents’ Pelee farm that I have yet to hang.

Tucked in a collage frame is a small picture of me. Apple picking with two of my own children and a friend’s daughter, before my third baby was born. I am part of all of this too.

I’ve got one or two hanging frames left but I have some standing frames that I will probably adapt for hanging on the wall. It makes my heart sing to see all these wonderful things that I’ve done, all the wonderful places that I’ve been. It reminds me that I want more experiences like these in my life and that a goal of living is to do the things you enjoy.

It’s been a frustration of mine that so many digital photos sit on hard-drives, gathering virtual dust: unloved, unshared, un-experienced. Hanging the pictures on the walls opens conversations with friends and family about travel, adventure, people, other family, other friends, and all of our histories. It reflects who we are: the people that live here have identities and we can share that via what we choose to show on our walls.

A la Judith Butler, we communicate who we are through our representations of ourselves. I am more than a blank wall - I am Pelee Island, Vancouver, Venice; a boat, a barn, a bike. I am my children, my lover, my garden, my friends. I am me.

When you live with someone and they’re sad and not talking I guess it’s natural to think it’s your fault. But if the person is sad to the point that they’re not talking, not acting like they usually do, are withdrawn, sleeping a lot, maybe crying for no reason that you can see, it’s most likely not you. It’s probably something or many things in the person’s life that are crushing them. Their depression is not your fault.

Just like they say on the airlines, “Put your own mask on first.” You have to take care of yourself before you can help the person who is sad. There is a helpful page here from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health that might give you some ideas on relating to a depressed person. The highlights:

• Try to be as supportive, understanding and patient as possible.
• Speak in a calm, quiet voice.

Mariana originally uploaded by јad
• Stay focused on one subject at a time. It may be difficult for your relative to concentrate.
• If the person is quiet and withdrawn, break the ice with neutral, non-threatening statements, such as “It seems a bit warm in here.”
• Be patient and wait. It may take a while for your loved one to respond.
• Your ability to listen is a valuable resource to your relative or friend. Depression causes people to talk at length about how bad they feel, yet they may not be ready to discuss solutions to their problems. Listening and letting the person know, in a neutral manner, that you have heard what he or she has said, is a valuable and supportive contribution. You do not have to offer immediate solutions.
• If your relative or friend is irritable, you probably need to slow down, lower your expectations and use a very neutral approach. Neutral comments about the weather, what you are making for dinner or other routine subjects are the safest way to develop a dialogue. Listen for opportunities to acknowledge or add to your relative’s responses. At these times, conversations about important decisions or issues are unlikely to be productive. You may need to plan to discuss important issues at a later date.
• Whenever someone suffers from a serious illness, it is natural for family members to feel worried and stressed. In an effort to spend time comforting or helping their loved ones, family members may give up their own activities….Preserve your interests outside of the family and apart from your ill relative.

Beyond this I don’t know what else is helpful. If I figure it out I’ll be sure to post something. Sometimes when a person is depressed they feel awfully guilty about disturbing the lives of the people around them, which only contributes to their sense of worthlessness, causing them to further isolate themselves so as not to disturb others even more which leads to sadness over loneliness and rejection — which makes them feel even more worthless, etc etc etc. I don’t know that a fitness class or even a housekeeper can help at this stage. Maybe a counsellor?