Shrimps eh!

We were discussing dinner earlier and agreed that we should get the shrimps out of the freezer...without hesitation or translations we both said shrimps. We are assimilating and neither of us felt the need to say Prawns.  My husband realized what had happened and tried to argue that shrimps are larger than prawns so it wasn't a language thing but a anthropological thing. Nice try but no.  We are adapting.

But it works both ways. When I dropped small person at art class yesterday the owner told me to collect him at "harf past"...ha, I called her on it " you spoke English!" She laughed and said " I know, I hoped no one noticed eh!"

Small person and his little friend are upstairs playing lego something on the Xbox.  When I was a kid we didn't need a tv to play lego, we just built with our hands. They played Just Dance earlier.  I was in the kitchen cooking but it's all open plan.  The computer spotted me and added me to the game.  I'm not a great cook but when their game ended I had won!  They were indignant.  I guess my tuna pasta beat their One Direction best song ever.

Fathers Day today so small person and I made an effigy of daddy in pancakes, with maple syrup eyes.  Full concentration, tongue out as small person crafted the hair and nose. Then after breakfast daddy went out shopping...his best treat to be free of us for a few hours.  Small person was not impressed as in his head we should be doing " a fun family thing" all together. But as we are off on holiday in 10 days we need to save our pennies so as daddy has the car we cycled to the local froghurt shop and ate mountains of watery froghurt then cycled home.  I'm hoping the effort burnt off the calories but I doubt it.

I'm off to USA tomorrow for the week ( what happened in my life to make that statement not exciting ?). I guess I grew up, a bit. Anyhow the garden needed attention unless I wanted to return to a jungle, so weed whacking and strimming took place. Small person offered to help water the plants.  I nervously agreed and told him just to use the settings of Shower or Mist. "Not jet?" No, not jet.

Then I went to the front garden to tidy that ( another assimilation thing...in Canada it's all about kerb appeal. Everyone in our street has a pristine front garden so I comply with that norm.) When I go back to the back yard the fences are dark brown and dripping, the trees are dripping and a small person stands angelic with the hose on Shower. "did you use the jet spray?" No Mom, you said no Jet!  The face of an angel...with a twinkle in his eyes that confessed "I just blasted everything!"

When daddy gets back with the car I'm off out to buy orthotics...a damaged ankle and tendons see me hobbling every morning and sitting with my foot in a bag of ice every night. Birkenstocks are in my immediate future, then clumpy lace ups.  I have agreed to complete that "couch to 5k" app and have gotten as far as downloading the app...need to get some proper shoes so that it doesn't turn into couch to wheelchair in 2 weeks.

Happy Sunday, Happy Fathers Day especially to my dad who is in the wars at the moment. Thinking of you.

May ramblings

It's bloomin' hot today. Small person, exhausted from a weekend of cub camp and a late night trip to the Hindu Mandir is on full volume. He had to do a presentation on Friday, he tells me that he "did eye contact, straight back and level 3 voice". I think we are hearing level 5 at home.  Too tired to cook we went out for dinner and he ordered Pepsi. We are paying for that now.

So since I last blogged I have weeded and planted my 1200 sq ft allotment; worked for free for 20 hours each week...sadly not voluntary work although I may do some of that this weekend as the foodbank team are planting up a new garden along side mine. Small person has settled into his extra lessons after school with medium wailing. He continues to moan about what he does not have and not see what he does have, but he is only 7 and at that age things are very black and white.  He does have super sweet moments...at cub camp a "Harry potter man" gave the Cubs some powder that the threw into the flames after speaking a gratitude.  Small person was thankful for all of the new friends that he has made.  On a school trip today to an Art gallery he told the teacher that "my mom is an artist".

Last week as I was walking to the shops some youths in a jacked up car sped up the road like they were in a computer game, almost mounting the pavement.  I told small person about it and that they had laughed at me as I got well away.  They were clearly stoned, but I didn't tell small person that part.  Small person tells me " they laughed at you because you are fat". Really? "Yes, you do no exercise, you never work out, you sit on the phone all day"... Mummy's little angel!

So in the weeks ahead we hope to get our visa approved as it runs out in 4 days #immigrants. We have another trip planned to the water park; school breaks up in 4 weeks; we cruise to Alaska in 5 weeks.  I have to go to the gym; negotiate my way out of excess work hours; have a spa day and go into the office to gain access to the shared drive, and to participate in a community service knitting bee... Weird world.

 I have set myself some goals...that I will be back to part time hours by September, having relinquished  some of my work; I will also be a stone lighter at least and  will have bought a car #freedom. Oh, and I want a printing press!

Better shared or kept in my head?

Late last year I won a gift card in an online auction. It was for some hypnosis sessions.   They were pretty cool, very relaxing and they are helping me to lose some weight and break the cycle of fat, get thin, get fat, get thin.  I get to listen to CDs each day and I settled down yesterday evening to do that. "small person, I need 30 mins of peace to listen to my tapes. Got it?"  "Yes mom!"  No going out, no one comes in...got it?  "Yes mom"

15 mins later as I drift into relaxation ..."mom, can my friend come in to play? Mom! Mom! Mom, can you hear me? Can my friend come into to play? Mom, I'm talking to you".  Hmmm

Then stomp stomp stomp up the stairs, I hear two small boys open my office door..."mom, can my friend come in?"  I say nothing...so they proceed to tickle my feet to get me to wake up.  What's the point eh?  Maybe relaxation is for other people. Cd on Pause, life back on Play.

It's been an exhausting long long week, working 12 hours a day and whilst that is horrible there is another layer to it that made it nasty.  There were no emergencies, no one was trapped in a mine shaft, no one had 46 minutes of air left...it was just that a volume of work was some how cranked to very loud. I'm reminded of that story about the frog in a pot.  If you drop it in boiling water it will notice that for sure. If you put it in cold water and warm it slowly it doesn't notice it for a long long time. I think I am the frog in that pot and the water got my attention. It's a big pot and there are lots of us in it. I worry that frog soup is the future at work.  I did some stuff to turn the heat down for me and frogs around me but weekends do see me puzzling how to break this cycle...as you are readling now.

Before my live hypno session the hypno lady asked a question from nowhere that is rattling around in my head..."do you count summers?".  " sorry I don't understand what you mean" "do you count summers, how many more summers you might have on earth? Do you understand how little time there is in a lifetime? If you understand that you will focus on enjoying life, enjoying the summers. If you don't focus on that, and live busy, just doing the everyday and you miss an opportunity to enjoy life to the full"...do I count summers?  Yes, sort of I guess. For 20 years I have known that the pursuit of wealth and status will not bring me happiness. What brings me happiness is the joy in a single day, that adds up to a joyful week that adds up to a joyful month, you get the idea.

I have tried to articulate this to people for years to help them live life to the full.  I struggle to articulate it in a way that they can see past their concern that I am a anti establishment anarchist hippy...I'm not, I'm a hardworking person whose priorities include " me and mine" in equal or greater measure to paid work.  I guess it's none of my business how other people choose to live their lives  but having "got it" 20 years ago I feel compelled to pay that knowledge forward. Live your life, have fun. Sit in the sun and do nothing regularly.

So for today's joy small person and I are off to Niagara to ride water slides...not down the Falls.  Then off to the botanical garden to buy seeds for the season ahead. Happy days

Happy days to all
Namaste

8,000 and counting

We walked to the park today and I sat in the sun for an hour as small person played soccer.  Nothing too remarkable in that, other than that yesterday we woke up to an inch of snow and he had to do his egg hunting in a parka.  He came in half way to get gloves as it was so cold. Today, no snow anywhere, sun out, sun glasses on.  Energized by that burst of vitimin D I just popped into Home Depot to get some spring colour but sadly nothing to buy.  A few more weeks before a pansy or primrose appears.

It was strangely nostalgic to be looking for spring plants. Having spent the first 16 years of my working life in horticulture Easter has pretty much been the colourful, busy start to the season. But that was an ocean away as here everything is still sleeping, ready to wake up in a few weeks for 3 days of Spring before going turbo into Summer.  But still, the environment was reassuring.  I reminisced about how much less stressful life was when I was managing a garden centre. But nostalgia isn't real, those days were no less stressful if I'm honest, it was just that I had other problems to solve back then.

I have just announced to my husband that "I am ****ing sick of problem solving at work.  Why is everything so bloody complicated?"  And as I compare now to 25 years ago I can see the same patterns.  Maybe that's what drew me to Home Depot, maybe I was looking for a familiar less complicated environment?  Back then I had mountains of work to do, limited people to do that work, new stuff arriving all of the time and the challenge was to work out what would die first (plants that is not people, although...).  The days were long, days off were spent at work, or were frowned upon as Laziness.  So roll forward 25 years, same jigsaw pieces, new stuff arriving, not enough people, nothing dying persay but having to choose what to do and, most days, what not to do.

A year ago I was micro stressing that my inbox was approaching 2000 emails, most read but many unactioned.  Last week my inbox hit 8000 emails, around 80 unread, the rest read and waiting for someone to do something.  Maybe these emails are the Pansy's and primroses, fresh and eager when they arrive then gradually they die away, unloved, untended as I frantically squirt water at a fire elsewhere.  What does any of this tell me?  It tells me that I am drawn to jobs that cannot be fully completed; where the daily chore is not mostly doing the work, but is mostly arranging the work into piles and then doing maybe 3 key things each day.  It tells me that whatever hours I put in there will always be a mountain more to do.

So as I sat in the sun, in Canada...in Canada for goodness sake!...most days I don't even recognize tht I am here.  Life in conference calls has no sense of presence.  I sat in the sun and vowed that enough is enough.  I don't want to spend every night and weekend on email.  I do want to have the energy to drag my son away from the iPad, I want to live outdoors, feel the sun everyday, not just at weekends. I am reclaiming my life from that side of my personality that works non stop.  I am a part timer and from now on I am going to deliver that dream.  Let battle commence.

Why I love Canadians - Reason #42

Saturday morning, no wait, afternoon now.  Still in bed because I have a horrible cold.  It's visiting the North West region so Fiona Land, holidaying in my sinus track although indications are that week two will be a visit to my chest via a raw sore throat. I could get up and do stuff - I spent two days at work feeling like this, but maybe a day in bed with the cats is better. They certainly seem to think so.

That's an old picture, but still a goody. They are mahoosive now and still growing. There is talk of getting the a treadmill wheel thing so that they can get more exercise...we shall see.

Second day of Spring today.  Yesterday I spent 9 hours getting home form New York.  A journey that should take less than 3 hours.  A sloppy wet blizzard hit NYC just as my flight was due to take off.  The plane arrived two hours late, but hey, it arrived.  Some people were looking at 3 days to get home.  The lucky ones boarded the plane and settled in for the 55 minute flight.  We were still there three hours later.  Plane had to be sprayed with de-icer, then they found a fault that took 2 hours to fix by which time the de-icer was useless so they had to respray us. But it took off and we got back to Toronto.  Having left Manhattan at 11.30 I walked in the door of my house at 9.30.  

So is there a point to this blog?  Yes, it's another one of those gratuitous " I love Canadians" stories.  As we sat on the runway waiting for hours, I think it was close to 4 hours in all, no one complained. No one shouted at the aircrew, no one talked loudly expressing an opinion hoping for others to start a riot.  It was very polite, very civilized, very calm.  What conversation there was was " yeah, it's annoying but better safe than sorry".  I love Canadians.

Now off to sleep to let the snow bugs travel south for their week two vacation in my chest.  

Namaste.

Friday 13th. Hmmmmm

The sun's out, snow's melting.  I can't really ask for more than that.  Today sees the start of Spring Break, so no school for a week.  Small person is brewing a snotty cold, and having spent the day at school in his PJ's as part of festivities he has come home and taken to his bed with a cuddly Ipad.  He knows that he is not allowed to watch the American MineCraft videos on YouTube because the guys curse and swear, so what does he do?  He has shut his door "so you can't hear what I am watching."  Nice!

I had the day off today which is a misnomer for a home worker in this century I think.  When your home is also your workplace I suspect the only true way to get a day off is to leave the house.  I'm not grumbling, its all in my gift to control, its more of a realisation. I spent a very quite three hours tying up some loose ends at work, then an equally quiet hour filling in immigration forms so that we can stay in Canada a little longer.  Hard to believe that we have been here for 18 months already. 

Small person and I went back to the UK last month, just to check that it is still there.  It was physically unchanged and it felt compact and bijoux.  The bank has turned into Domino's Pizza.  We deposited some cash and withdrew a medium veggie feast pizza and he gave us a free Tex Mex.  I suspect he was trying to entice us back...sucker!

We had a great time seeing friends, colleagues, colleagues who are friends.  I had a few pangs of home sickness, mostly for the countryside and landscape as Kent is very beautiful and Ontario is very flat and dull in places. but 5 days into our trip we were both missing "home".  I was increasingly grumpy about having to get out of the car to get a coffee; and not being able to park near the shops that I wanted to go to.  I missed cheery shop workers and an automatic car.  Oh that poor rental car...the gear box cried real tears.  Small person missed his dad, TVO and the cats but I'm not sure I got the order right.

Without wanting to sound like UKIP'ers, who are screaming loonies with black shirts in their closets, it did jump out at me that most people working in the shops and restaurants that I went into were from Eastern Europe. It was very noticeable, and as an immigrant myself I say good on them but it just felt very different to be in England and to hear so many different voices.  Here I take it for granted - I really hope that the UK can get to where Canada is with newcomers.  Unless I am missing something everyone seems welcomed here and comes understanding the need to, and with a willingness to, contribute and join into society.  To be fair you kind of have to work hard here because there are no social handouts or tax credits like in the UK. 

One thing I do miss here is British TV.  I miss watching John Snow read the news on C4 and I miss programs that make you think and form an opinion. I watched a few "documentaries" I think they were.  Nothing Bafta nominated - one about people living on benefits in the UK and one about Romanian Gypsies looking for a better life.  I have to be honest - if I was handing out the money those kids in Romania would be getting the cash tomorrow.  The contrast between their lives was stark...penniless in a ghetto living in one room of a burnt out building vs. living in a rent paid flat, getting cash for nothing from the ATM twice a month and spending it all on booze and upgrading your iphone.  One couple moaning that they had to pawn the XBOX to get food.  One guy said "I'm only 18, I'm too young to settle down and get a job, I want to live a bit first."

There is something very wrong with a society that lets you leave school with hardly any education; a mindset that getting a job is a life choice rather than a necessity and give you money rather than help to get on a more self sustaining track.  I guess that's easy to say from here eh?

Curly Sue moments

I wrote this, sat in O’Hare airport as the sun set on a long, long but enjoyable week. 

It started well, arrived Sunday lunchtime and spent a calm 2 hours wandering around the Art Institute.  I’d love to sound erudite but in honesty I was very tired so just tried to absorb and get inspired by just being there.  I had my “go where your gut tells you” brain on…not hugely interested in Asian ceramics I ended up there in error and thought about turning back to the main corridor, but some thing told me to keep going.  So I did and that is where I found the coolest artwork.  In the Japanese section there is a darkened room with 16 identical square pillars (can a pillar be square?  Dunno).  It was calm, quiet and it had serenity and soul.  The art was the physical and the spaces in between.  Did I stumble on it by chance? Universe at work?  Planets aligned? ... there is something in this intuitive business.

Storms raged in the East so my trip to NYC didn’t happen.  I stayed in Chicago the whole week; had a great meal out with colleagues and then 4 great meals by myself in my PJ’s.  They were room service rather than a fashion choice in a restaurant.  My need to be in NYC was for a 2 day meeting so in order to participate I ended up dialing into that from Chicago.  Two days, in a windowless room, on a conference call speaker phone.   And then a saw it…the wall of the room was a white board.  14 foot wide and 10 foot high…it had to be done.  I drew a mandala…then it got bigger, then it became a flower.  By last night it was 8 ft high and 4 feet wide, with a flower pot at the base.  Then there was an elephant next to it – a request from a colleague in another State. 

Last night I wandered back to the Art Institute to get a gift for small person, both for my being away and for his achievement at school – he was given an award for his conscientious behavior – best in his year last month.  That’s huge progress from last year when he was miserable and struggling to find his tribe.   So I surfed the gift shop and got cool museum gifts and then I wandered back to the hotel via a different route.  Looking for a tech store, but also getting some air.  I turned right on instinct and saw what looked like a tech store 300 yards ahead.  It turned out to be a men’s clothes store but right next door was the biggest most fabulous art store ever...Blick.   All tech purchases became irrelevant and I had a great hour drooling and buying sale items.  “Look how much I saved!” being my mantra.

So today, back to work – same room, no window, day three.  The white board now clean and white - much to the disappointment of the team sat outside the room.  Earlier today a young guy stopped in the doorway, wanting to see it close up!  I had thought that I was doodling in private.  We had a chat, he asked me if I was an artist and I said “yes, I am” which was cool.

Then as he walked away it occurred to me that if they could all see through the etched glass office window, to see the doodle, then most likely they could see other stuff.  Had they seen those Curly Sue moments earlier in the week when I was wearing a dress and had to keep yanking up my tights like a six year old at a birthday party?  We shall never know.