here in my head

I head home tomorrow, which yay! Because I miss Mike like crazy. And the cats. And my own bed. But also boo, because it means that I have to leave my beautiful niece. There have been times this week when I have been homesick, when I have been frustrated, when I have been sad or angry or confused. But those times have never been when I’m with her. She is one of the happiest kids in the world, full of smiles, giggles, and unabandoned joy. Sure, there have been some tears, but they never last long, and usually are because she is hungry or tired. One-year-olds can’t help but be in the moment, and by virtue of being wrapped up in her every action, her every giggle (and let me tell you there is no better giggle than hers), her every smile, her every new word, I can’t help but be in the moment when I’m with her. With her, I wasn’t seeking out the computer for distraction. I wasn’t worrying about what waits in store for me at work on Monday. I wasn’t thinking about whether we’ll ever have a baby of our own, and why haven’t we had one yet, and what happens if we can’t and all those other thoughts that roll around my head these days. I wasn’t anywhere but there, in the moment with her. The challenge in leaving tomorrow is how to keep that sense of being in the moment and take it with me, even though I won’t have her with me, reminding me with her smile.

What I will also miss? How she whispers “App-ple” and “Haaat” when we read her ABC book. How she “woof”s everytime she sees a dog – real, picture or stuffed toy. How she imitates me everytime I cough. How she’ll bring me a book and then raise her arms up and say “up” so I’ll lift her on my lap to read. How she tries to imitate me when I sing. How she will hit the button on her toy until it plays “if you’re happy and you know it” and then claps along. How she starts shouting “Hi! Hi! Hi!” as soon as she hears her daddy come home from work. How she snuggles and cuddles into you when you take her up for her nap, or pick her up from her nap. And most of all, I will miss how she dances whenever she hears music.

In a few short hours I’ll be on the train making my way to Toronto to celebrate the first birthday of my niece. And then I get to stay for the rest of the week and play with her. I know, you’re jealous. Sure, I could have used one week of my vacation to go somewhere warm and exotic and relaxing and full of sun (which, now that I think of it, I really should have done, what with the incredibly cold temperatures we’re getting today…) but honestly, I don’t think anything warms me quite as much as this little girl’s smile.

Halloween Claire

See, isn’t she gorgeous? And no, I’m not biased…

Anyway, as I will be devoting much of my time in the next week to trying to entice giggles and smiles from a soon-to-be one-year-old (tomorrow!), I don’t anticipate spending much time in the land of the interweb. So in case you don’t hear from me for a while, you’ll know where I am. Overdosing on cuteness. It will be grand.

You’ve been in my dreams lately. You’ve grown from two lines on a stick, to waving at me via ultrasound, and yet you’re still just a dream. I’ve seen your face, your tiny thumb in your mouth. I long for you to be real. I can’t tell you how my heart soars when I’m dreaming of you, and how it sinks when I wake up and I realize that no, you’re not yet true, except in my head and my heart. How bittersweet it is to wake feeling both disappointment and hope. I have to believe these dreams will, someday, be reality. That you will really come to us when the time is right. Even if I want to make that time now, I will try to be patient. I will try to trust. I will continue to hope, each month, that this is the time you decide to make your way to me. And until you do, I’ll keep looking for you when I close my eyes.

Today was apparently the the most depressing day of the year, and, I don’t know how it was for you, but here it certainly lived up to it’s moniker. I awoke from a night of tossing and turning and very little sleep to dark grey clouds and absolute pouring rain. Which would have been fine, aside from the fact that it’s JANUARY and I live in Ottawa and therefore I shouldn’t be waking up to temperatures eight degrees above zero and massive amounts of rain. And because it is January and I live in Ottawa, I will awake to a skating rink tomorrow as temperatures cool and all that lovely rain that pooled over sidewalks and walkways (and the ski hill – I’m already dreading Thursday’s lesson) will freeze. Remind me again why I live in Ottawa…

So, the rain, on top of very little sleep, a stressful weekend, and unsettling dreams made for one very cranky Suze today. Luckily a long meander home after the rain had stopped and the sun had come out just in time to make the sky pretty as it set helped to put me in a slightly better mood. I can’t tell you how much I love that I can walk to work. How much I love that my walk home takes me through the Byward Market. How much I love my neighbourhood. How much I love that our lifestyle has shifted to one where the car remains parked much of the time and we walk to get the groceries we need, or to go to the movies or to our favourite Indian food place.

Despite the stressors of the last few weeks, I am all-in-all content. Happy.

On a completely separate note, this past Saturday night was date night. We went for dinner and a movie – Up in the Air. And I realized that I have had a crush on George Clooney since I was nine years old and he was on Facts of Life. Sure Mackenzie Astin would have been more age-appropriate, but it was George. Always George. I’m still crushing now. That’s 25 years of crush, people. 25 years. One hell of a crush commitment… I’m sure if he knew he’d care not a whit…

Yet another crappy week this week. The hits just keep coming, and now we have hospital visits to try and work into our already over packed schedule. It’s nothing we’ve not dealt with before – these hospital visits seem to be a semi-annual occurrence in fact – but it still is stressful each time it happens, and each time we’re blindsided, with no warning given.

I’m going to focus on the positives, and try avoiding dwelling in the negatives. Life, on the whole is good. Really.

Hell, even amongst all this stress my blood pressure was a perfect 120/80 when I saw my doctor yesterday morning, so really, I can’t complain…

So, me? I am no Julia Child. I’m not even a Julie Powell. I have never been much for cooking. Except now I have my dream kitchen (I didn’t even know I had a dream kitchen to have, having given kitchens very little thought, until we found this house, with this kitchen that is exactly everything I could want in a kitchen. Except, it lacks a broom cupboard…) and I’m also trying to take more responsibility for my health, and also I really want to make sure that the food I’m eating is gluten-free (which is easier to do when you cook for yourself). I also just finished reading Julie & Julia and I may or may not have been inspired somewhat by that (although, I will certainly not be attempting my own journey through Julia’s cookbook – killing lobsters and scraping out bone marrow are not high on my ‘must do someday’ list.) And so (short story long) I’m attempting to learn how to cook…

I also am doing a strength training course half way across the city, which means that most Mondays and Wednesdays I’m not home until at least 8 p.m. Mike usually cooks on these nights (and, let’s be honest, most other nights…) but tonight he was out with his friends and thus I came home to a empty and dinner-less house. Normally, that would mean calling a restaurant that does both gluten-free and delivery, but, like I said, I’m trying to learn how to cook. So instead, I decided I would try my best Julia Child/Juile Powell impersonation and make my own dinner. A simple shrimp in garlic butter white wine reduction over sautéed spinach.

Which would have been fine, but I crushed a little too much garlic, and I didn’t listen to Julia when she said I should use both butter AND olive oil in the pan (really? Both? The woman has no fear of fats, does she?) and we lack dried parsley. And then I might have ground a little more fresh pepper than was necessary. (I thought there was no such thing as too much pepper. I stand corrected.) And then maybe, maybe added a bit too much wine (to the glass I was sipping or to the pan, or both)…

This is why I tend to turn to the telephone to order in when I’m left to my own devices. But I’ll keep trying. I need to live up to this dream kitchen of mine, you know…

Sometimes you don’t know what you need until it’s sitting right in front of you. Or in the case of today, an email pops into your work inbox inviting you out for coffee. I had a lunch-time Starbucks escape today with my good buddy Mike Le.Sombre, aka ‘the other Mike’ as he signs his emails to me, or alternately, my husband’s french doppelgänger. (Mike’s wife Suzie would be mine…). It was soooo good to get out of the office and to have a long chat with a good friend. I didn’t know I’d needed that.

So, it’s been quite the week.

As mentioned a few days ago, on Tuesday, we found a leak in our basement. The more senior plumber who came out on Wednesday replaced the part that failed and we no longer have leaking – Hurray! But the walls that were damaged by the leaking now have to be fixed and the news from the contractors the insurance company sent over isn’t great… With a few days now to digest this news I am no longer quite in the panic I was on Friday when they first started describing how they might have to rip out a wall or part of the ceiling…

This house has not turned into the dream move-in-and-enjoy house we had hoped for. But it is still exactly what we were looking for, save for these few headaches. In the long run, the house will be better for these changes. In the short term, however…the stress is not fun. I keep reminding myself it could be much worse. We still have a roof over our heads. We’ll find the money some where to pay for this. And while having our house torn apart will be less than awesome, when it’s put back together the house will be good as new (knock on wood). (So not the post I would have written yesterday or Friday – it’s amazing what a good night’s sleep after a few vodka gimlets and a surprisingly fun night out with your in laws can do for your perspective…)

Guess what today is?

Yeah, so I just started this thing back up, but I know there must be a few of you reading…

So delurk already. Pretty please?

I’m getting tired of having strange men in my house putting holes in my walls. First we had the electricians who tore my house apart for two weeks, taking out all the old, uninsurable knob and tube wiring from the entire house and replacing it with new, up-to-date, yes-we’ll-give-you-homeowners-insurance wiring, leaving many, many holes in almost every room in my beautiful, new-to-me home. Then it was the idiot workmen sent to us by the company where we bought the in-wall speakers Mike so desperately craved. Who cut holes without measuring and tried to force the speakers into spots where they clearly wouldn’t fit. Two new workmen and four upgraded speakers later, the company made up for the initial blundering fools, but we still had much patching to fix the original mistakes. Then there were the weeks of dusting up the never-ending construction silt that settled on every available surface and clogged my sinuses. But really, it was a small price to pay for up-to-code electricity and delicious sound on the main floor.

And then we come to last night, when Mike, trying hard to hide the tremor of slight panic in his voice with little success, called up from the basement: “Um, honey. We have a leak…”

It turns out that Ottawa has some very good, very friendly, plumbers that will come to your house at 10:30 p.m. to check out why, all of a sudden, you have water dripping from the ceiling in your basement. And will scare you silly with words like “full pipe replacement” and “this looks like it’s been happening for a while” and “how long have you owned this house? Three months? Yikes.” Luckily, in the fresh light of day, when another plumber had the chance to really take a close look at what was going on (by punching new, big, fancy holes in my recently patched walls, and a few new holes in my previously untouched kitchen ceiling…) it was not a full pipe replacement that was needed, no, but rather just the replacement of the part that connects the tub drain to the main drain pipe. That was what had malfunctioned. But, while the “full pipe replacement” words turned out to be wrong, sadly the “this looks like it’s been happening for a while” words were confirmed. It looks like more holes will have to be made, once more. Whole walls may need to be replaced, in fact.

I guess I can be glad we didn’t get around to painting yet. Ah yes, the brightside…

In other news, I have discovered Vodka Gimlets. This couldn’t have happened at a better time.