I’m going to confess right off the bat: I did not take this picture. It’s a great shot and the RRBB looks exceptionally happy in this particular moment when his French Canadian father pumped up his French Canadian blood and dropped him full throttle onto the field by the park to just get out of the house. And, I missed it. I get to live my son’s life through the photographs that my husband takes to show me the moments that pass while I’m away at work. Oh, he’s comforting — consistently telling me I’m not missing all that much, but I am, and it’s overwhelming.
Then, I’m at work and it’s crazy busy and really stimulating these days, and actually kind of exciting. I have a number of giant projects, which means the days fly by, no lunch, no gym, no fresh air, and then on Mondays and Tuesdays, it’s racing to get the RRBB from daycare, racing home, and then dropping on the couch after he’s been fed, bathed, storied and deposited in bed. And, it’s overwhelming.
So, more so than usual, I think because everyone has been endlessly sick, and not the disease-kind of sick that I endure on a daily basis but a runny nose, achy, coughing, stuffed up, miserable, feverish, snotty, daycare-plague that haunts us from one weekend to the next. I don’t think we’ve ever had a Saturday or Sunday since I went back to work that all three of us have felt at our best. I’m sick. The RRBB’s sick. The RRHB’s sick. No one is happy. There’s a lot of whining. There’s not enough fresh air or fresh food because who can cook when their head feels like it’s going to explode. And, it’s overwhelming.
Things that I used to excel at — keeping our budget organized, our money sorted, our bills paid — were falling by the wayside. I paid our gas bill twice and forgot entirely to pay the cable bill (which, TWO DAYS after the bill arrived in my mailbox Rogers started calling me like they were a collection agency and I have never been so mad at a poor telemarketer. This is the ONLY time I have ever forgotten to pay that bill. Shut the flapjack up Rogers, seriously). We’re more broke than we’ve ever been in our lives — but still, we have a beautiful house, food on the table, clothes on our backs, a happy, well-adjusted little baby in private daycare — so I would better classify us as monetarily challenged at the moment, going from one salary to two, and from two people to three. You know, it’s overwhelming.
And my other work, my book, some short stories, things that have been percolating for decades, keep getting pushed aside, and a tiny little part of me, the me who I think I really am inside, gets lost in the shuffle. And that is, well, overwhelming.
So, I’ve started breaking my life down into manageable pieces. I pay the bills on any computer the moment they come into the house. I take the car in on daycare days even though it’s $13.00 to park because the baby is happier when we get home earlier. I run errands on my lunch hour when I’m not working through it. I’ve been doing okay with my New Year’s Revolutions — making soups with the slow cooker on the weekends that are good for lunches and at least one dinner. Making meal plans, fitting in grocery shopping wherever possible to make sure we can make meals at home. Now, we’re only ordering once a week — usually on Mondays because my RRHB has been working, and we’re all out of the house — instead of two to three times a week. That’s a win. We dusted off the bread-maker and my RRHB has been making delicious bread at home, which I think is terrific because we’re saving all that packaging and the RRBB loves his bread. And I’ve taken something to heart — a good friend of mine with two kids used to describe his life as “choosing tired.” In order to squeeze in the parts of himself that got lost in the daily back and forth and up and down that is parenting small children, he stayed up too late, and “choose” to be tired. So, I’ve skipped the last few naps with the RRBB on the weekends and sat down at the computer and wrote, and it was amazing. I started a new project. Found some new life in an old one, and was glad to have done it. It’s only once, but it’s a start.
That’s the key — to use the skills that I’ve learned in this new life to try and feel less overwhelmed minute-by-minute. And I think it’s working. However, I was up with a seriously cranky RRBB at 4:45AM this morning, trying so very hard not to get angry when he whined and moaned, knowing he was so very tired and just needed to go back to sleep, yet refusing the rest at every turn. We read books. I steamed him up to help with his cough. I cuddled him when he allowed it. I lay down on the floor in his room when he bawled at the thought of being in his crib. And I did all of this because at the end of the day I love him so much it hurts. I barrel through my life during the day so that I can get home and spend a lovely evening with my RRHB, whom I adore, even when I’m fighting with him tooth and nail. Because at the end of the day, I might be overwhelmed, but I am loved at every turn and, in that, I am lucky, so very, very lucky.
There is nothing that this wee toddler likes more than this old, old, old rotary phone. It’s my grandmother’s from when she worked at the Ontario courts (I think that’s correct; she was a stenographer; I think). I’ve had it since university, and it’s been in every place I’ve lived since, and it still works. We’ve been through three different iPods, the phone still works. We’ve been through three televisions, the phone still works. The zombie apocalypse could happen and that damn phone would still work. That is, until the RRBB drops it on its head for the umpteenth time. And it’s not that he’s just obsessed with this phone — he’s obsessed with all phones. Fussy on the TTC: hand him my blackberry. Grumpy at home: RRHB gives him his phone. He holds them upside down and backwards and says, “Hi!” It’s hilarious.
