Pandemic Diary, the Collection from Nothing By the Book

I am, of course, blogging the pandemic. What else would I be doing?

Below is a collection of my Pandemic Diary posts, from March 17, 2020 onward. I’d say, “Enjoy,” but they’re not really fun. Yet? Maybe eventually, I’ll get funny again? One can hope.

In the meantime: I’m documenting. You’re welcome. 😉 xo

OMFG IT’S 2021
AND I’M STILL DOING THE PANDEMIC DIARY

The Year of Hell, with the Good Bits, too (2019 Collection)

Life’s real troubles are rarely about a boy, but “survive” was definitely our family theme for 2019. We did, and we will even danced a little.

But it was an awful, awful year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBR2G-iI3-I

Game face on

Happy birthday (the war’s not over)

Suffering, loving, living… home

She danced, who is she?

Some words of wisdom from the House of Snot & Vomit

All the good things in the year from hell, or, conscious loving

I believe I can fly

“I’m crushing your head!”

Work, heroin, and a heroine named Clementine

Jane does Disney like this: no mouse, no rides, a hell of a lot of angst

But you don’t understand–I really am feeling stupid, or Arguing with the therapist and non-problem solving strategies

Deep Texting Conversation with My Teenager

So, yeah, I met Julia Cameron (in the flesh!): The power of story, dialectics and the creation of god

Heaven Hangover, or, thoroughly non-journalistic reflections on the Investigative Journalism Intensive, Banff Centre 2019

Manufactured Memories, for Suzie

If you want to save the world, fund libraries, use libraries, love libraries

Two in high school, one at home equals… I don’t know, I’m really bad at math

Confessions of an unreformable plant killer

Finding Water, grateful for Julia Cameron, kinda whiny anyway

The kids are all right, but you’re old and out of touch: a love letter to libraries inspired by Susan Orlean et al.

“You are amazing”—you are partly right

Her story, my story, our story

This is a happy moment

Halfway to 90: on flying, smashing the patriarchy, and other dreams (May 21, 2019)

We “celebrate” mothers but we neither value nor support them: if you’re not gonna walk the talk, take your hallmark holiday and shove it (May 12, 2019)

Kick like a girl (April 28, 2019)

Because laughing is good, even when it’s hysterical (March 30, 2019)

Privilege, burnt quesadillas, and betrayal (January 27, 2019)

Anger as Fuel: Latin History For Morons, Microaggression Defined, Calgary Artist Eman Elkadri’s Social Justice Art #raceissues (January 12, 2019)

 

52 Weeks Project (2018 Blog Post Index)

For 2018, I had set myself the goal of returning to regular–religiously weekly, actually–blogging. The only “rule” was that I had to post once a week. Otherwise, I was free to navel-gaze, freefall, freestyle, and freeform and be relatively incoherent.

The really terrifying thing about this collection? It reads so honest, doesn’t it? It fails to document–notice?–what was really going on in my family, my life, with my daughter.

It is a hard year to revisit. Nonetheless, I expect, some time in the future, I will be glad to have documented it.

Table of Contents for 2018: 52 Weeks Project

The year started with a Monday; so does every week (Week 1: Transitions and Intentions)

Easier than you think, harder than I expected: a week in eleven stanzas (Week 2: Goodness and Selfishness)

A moody story (Week 3: Ebb and Flow)

Do it full out (Week 4: Passions and Outcomes)

The Buddha was a psychopath and other heresies (Week 5: No Cohesion)

A good week (Week 6: Execute, Regroup)

Killing it (Week 7: Exhaustion and Adrenaline)

Tired, petty, tired, unimportant (Week 8: Disappointment and Perseverance)

Professionals do it like this: [insert key scene here] (Week 9: Battle, Fatigue, Reward)

Reading Nabokov, crying, whining, regrouping (Week 10: Tears and Dreams)

Shake the Disease (Week 11: Sickness and Health… well, mostly sickness)

Cremation, not embalming, but I think I might live after all (Week 12: Angst and Gratitude)

Let’s pretend it all does have meaning (Week 13: Convalescence and Rebirth)

The cage is will, the lock is discipline (Week 14: Up and Down)

My negotiated self thinks you don’t exist–wanna make something of it? (Week 15: Priorities and Opportunity)

An introvert’s submission + radical prioritization in action, also pouting (Week 16: Ruthless and Weepy)

It’s about a radical, sustainable rhythm (Week 17: Sprinting and Napping)

It was a pickle juice waterfall but no bread was really harmed in the process (Week 18: Happy and Sad)

You probably shouldn’t call your teacher bad names, but sometimes, your mother must (Week 19: Excitement and Exhaustion)

Tell me I’m beautiful and feed me cherries (Week 20: Excitement and Exhaustion II)

A very short post about miracles, censorship, change: Week 21 (Transitions and Celebrations)

Time flies, and so does butter (Week 22: Remembering and forgetting)

I love you, I want you, I need you, I can’t find you (Week 23: Work and Rest)

You don’t understand—you can’t treat my father’s daughter this way (Week 24: Fathers and Daughters)

The summer was… SULTRY (Week 25: Gratitude and Collapse)

It’s like rest but not really (Week 26: Meandering and Reflection)

It’s the wrong question (Week 27: Success and Failure)

On not meditating but meditating anyway, and a cameo from John Keats (Week 28: Busy and Resting)

Hot, cold, self-indulgent as fuck (Week 29: Fire and Ice)

In which our heroine hides under a table (Week 30: Tears and Chocolate)

Deadlines and little lies make the world go round (Week 31: Honesty and Compassion)

That’s not the way the pope would put it, but… (Week 32: Purpose and Miracles)

And before you know it, it’s over (Week 33: Fast and Slow)

Ragazzo da Napoli zajechał Mirafiori (Week 34: Nostalgia and Belonging)

Depression is a narcissistic disease, fentanyl is dangerous, and knowledge is power, sort of (Week 35: Introspection and Awareness)

I’m not gonna tell you (Week 36: Smoke and Mirrors)

Slightly irritable and yet kinda happy (Week 37: Self-Improvement and Self-Indulgence)

It’s not procrastination, it’s process (Week 38: Back and Forth)

Pavlov’s experiments, 21st-century style (Week 39: Connectivity and Solitude)

The last thing I remember (Week 40: truth and um, not really)

All of life’s a (larval) stage (Week 41: Stagnation and Transformation)

Damn you, Robert Frost (Week 42: Angst and more Angst)

Speaking of conflict avoidance… (Week 43: Fight of Flight)

Halloween, Samhain, All Saints Day, Day of The Dead, Candy (Week 44: Neither Here Nor There)

Again with the silver-tongued Persians, and other stories (Week 45: Silence and language)

War, Famine, Pestilence, Mornings (Week 46: Mornings and the Apocalypse)

Time flies but the Christmas tree is up (Week 47: Status quo and Change)

I didn’t kill anyone–it just smells like it (Week 48: Guilt & Poison)

You have a bad memory, while I want to rest on a flower (Week 49: Mothers and Caterpillars)

Atheism, Spirituality, Boundaries, Slytherins (Week 50: This and That)

When everyone’s a special snowflake… (Week 51: Normal and Narcissistic)

The year will end on a Monday (Week 52: Guilt and Gratitude)

one last thing…

Trio on benches at laundry park3

“Mittens?”

We come out of the warm YMCA building, the chlorine scent of the swimming pool still clinging to us. Ender, with the determination only a four-year-old possesses, drags his sled down the stairs. Clunk, clunk, clunk. Slam! It lands on the bottom. He looks over his shoulder. Scowls at me. He’s tired. Hungry. Probably, despite the snowpants, sleeping-bag-jacket, and over-the-face toque, cold, because it’s the coldest, snowiest December YYC has seen in 112 years.

He plops down on the sled in a Buddha pose.

“Mittens?”

I ask, kneeling down beside him.

“No! My hands are NOT cold!”

He’s tired. Hungry. Contrary. It’s at least -15 Celsius.

I shrug. Get up. Start pulling the sled.

It’s a beautiful, clear night. The air feels clean—sparkling—even as it hurts my lungs, bites at my exposed cheeks. I pull the sled on the cleared-of-snow-but-there’s-so-much-of-it-everywhere-I-kind-of-want-a-snowmobile paths. Look at the twinkling lights. The sleeping-bag-parka-engulfed people. Turn my head.

“Mittens?”

“No.”

I shrug. Start walking again, my hands warm in my mittens. I think of what 2013 was, and what 2014 might be. I think of milestones, real and artificial. I think of hope-despair-desire-acceptance-creation-destruction-reconstruction. A plot line emerges from all those thoughts, a fascinating one, and I hear a conversation in my head that sets it up, and I fall in love with it, but it doesn’t really fit into what I want to do, ultimately, with that piece of work, and then my thoughts leap to the unBloggers Manifesto I want to write for Nothing By The Book for January, a polemic that in its current form is not doing quite what I need it to do, and I know it’s because I’m pulling too much into it, going off on too many tangents, and for a piece of writing to work, it needs to be focused, and a polemic piece of writing needs to be brutally so, digressions and tangents only work if you pull them back, at just the right time, to the central idea, the theme… or the chorus…

I turn around.

“Mittens?”

“No. Not cold.”

Mittens Pin

I cross the bridge. The lights are beautiful and almost make me forgive Christmas its existence. And I think about… beauty, definitions of, abstraction of, and that thought takes me to my daughter-who’s-about-to-turn-nine, so beautiful in mind-soul-body that it makes me ache, so full of potential and wonder that it’s that thought, and not the cold air, that stops the breath in my throat for a second… and I think about all the ways that I think fail her as a mother, all the ways that I am not what she needs, and tears swirl in my eyes—but maybe I am what she needs? And, really, what a silly question, because I am what she has and she is what I must learn—and, tears still dancing in the corners of my eyes, I turn my head…

“Mittens?”

He shakes his head. I never imagined motherhood to be this—so full of such intense joy and such paralyzing pain. So full of summits and valleys. So glorious, so rewarding—so fucking heart-wrenching. And that thought takes me to twelve different places at once, and I’m not sure how much self-awareness I want to chase in this moment, so I choose to chase the idea that self-awareness, for all the pain it brings, is also a source of power and that takes me to such very, very interesting places…

“Mittens?”

His hands are folded in his lap, and he’s bent over them. Head bopping. Falling asleep. He bops up. Scowls at me.

“Mittens?” I repeat.

“No.”

I walk faster. Over another bridge. Through the steam rising from the cracks in the ice of the river. I look at the water, ice, snow, steam and feel a shot of resentment and fear. I try to see beauty… and not next year’s flood waters. And I grit my teeth and don’t chase that thought. Find another. Oh, this one I like… I smile—my nose runs, because it’s so cold—my mouth opens and I almost stop moving because all I want is that thought and, irreverently and irrelevantly, I also glory in the fact that it came to me in this moment when I am alone… except I am not, because I am MOTHER and I am never alone, even when I am.

I look over my shoulder…

“Mittens?”

“Not! Cold!”

I can’t really run in my boots and on the snow, but I walk as quickly as I can. Home, home. I cannot wait to be home, and not just because it’s cold, and I love that thought, that feeling. I want to get home.

“Mom? My hands are cold.”

I’m about… what? 200 meters away. Maybe less. I kneel down beside the four-year-old. His hands are pulled into the sleeves of his sleeping-bag coat. I blow on his fingers and slip on his mittens. Kiss the tip of his nose.

Do not lecture, and so, enjoy the brief victory of mind over impulse. Pull the sled the last 200 meters home.

…

I wish I could tell you that the next time we go out in the cold, he says “Yes” the first time I try to put on his mittens. But he won’t.

I wish I could tell you I will never again doubt that I am what my daughter needs or let my thoughts go to all those other unproductive, painful places.

I wish I could tell you that, somewhere between the YMCA and home, I found the answer to EVERYTHING. Because how awesome would that be?

But, I just want to tell you this: You can fight over the mittens. Cajole, badger, plead. Force.

Or you can wait for those little hands to get cold.

And when they do—put on the mittens. Silently. Without the “I told you so’s.” Or too many expectations for the next time.

Fuck, yeah, it’s a metaphor.

“Jane”

P.S. Happy New Year, beloveds. I am torn what to ask of 2014. In the closing weeks and months of 2013, I rather wanted a less eventful year. But now that it’s here… eventlessness is so boring. And unfulfilling. So, 2014—be eventful. Be FULL. I’ve got plans for you. And you’d better be prepared to rise to the occasion.

P.P.S. “Jane, why are you anthropomorphizing a calendar construct?”
“Because… Metaphors. So useful.”

Coming sometime this month: the unBlogger’s Manifesto. Minus all of its digressions. Or maybe not. Focus is key. But it is digressions that make life and thought interesting…

P.P.P.S. “I love this! I want more!”
“I am so pleased. Connect with Nothing By The Book on Twitter @nothingbythebook, Facebook, and Google+. Or, for a not-in-front-of-the-entire-Internet-please exchange, email  nothingbythebook@gmail.com.”

After the flood: Running on empty and why “So are things back to normal?” is not the right question

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He asks the question with a smile, as a casual opener before we move on to “real” issues, and is shocked and appalled when I burst into tears because, well—I don’t cry.

“Are things back to normal?” he says and immediately wishes he hadn’t said it, and doesn’t know where to go from there. And I’m shocked too—I don’t know where the hell those tears have come from, because I’m fine, we’re fine, everything’s just fine.

Except, of course, it’s not.

We had this flood in YYC and Southern Alberta back in June, you may remember (my flagship post about it was unLessons from the flood: We are amazing, and if you want facts, visit the evolving Wikipedia entry  or the Calgary’s Herald’s The Great Flood of 2013 page), that devastated my neighbourhood and so much of our city. An army of citizen volunteers turned out in the tens of thousands to respond to the crisis. It was amazing. It was euphoric. It had us walking on air and out of crisis mode in a couple of intense weeks.

People were asking a week, two weeks after the flood—as soon as the rivers receded, as soon as most of the debris that was our basements, our houses, our possessions, our lives, was taken off the streets and into the dumps—“Are things back to normal?”

And in late July, August, euphoric, proud, we could smile and say, “We’re out of crisis mode.” And maybe talk a little about insurance, and the Disaster Recovery Program, and plans for reconstruction. And laud our mayor’s leadership and bitch out the provincial government and, you know, do all those “normal” things.

I’m not sure when “normal” got harder to fake. Maybe in September, when we’d reconnect with people we hadn’t seen for a few months, and they’d say, “So—did you have a good summer?”

Funny—we are so socially programmed to be inoffensively happy and placating, the autoresponse to that question, which the mouth starts to form before the brain has a moment to reflect, is, “Yes. And you? That flood thing? A minor inconvenience. Moving on. Going to Disneyland!”

I did not have a great summer. We did not have a great summer. And things are not back to normal. What does that mean, anyway?

I look at him as if he can give me the answer, but of course he can’t. And he’s never seen me like this before, or under stress before, but he’s spend the summer ripping out friends’ basements, and they’re none of them quite “normal” right now either. But they’re not talking about it. “We’re fine, everything’s fine.” So what’s going on? What’s up with us, what’s tearing us up, as we move into month five after the flood?

I struggle to put it into words.

The obvious answer is that reconstruction is not going well. The rip-outs, it turns out, were the easy part. Putting things back… Well. We’re all at different stages. Sunnyhill’s probably further behind than many others because of our need to rehabilitate all 41 damaged units simultaneously. But I don’t know anyone who was affected who’s totally “done.” Most of us—all of Sunnyhill—have been back home for a long time. But we’re living in reduced, scarred spaces. An eternal mess. That’s hard. I know every time I walk in and out of my front door, every time I see the ripped door casings, the dismantled walls, the hole where my hall closet used to be, my jaw tightens.

So. That kind of sucks. But—really—I’ve been through renovations before. Who hasn’t? We are, I tell him, the mildly inconvenienced. We know this. Bitching and complaining about naked joists, drywall dust and “what the hell did the contractors do now?” seems like such a First World Whine. And that’s the other thing.

We feel bad—guilty—over feeling bad. Because. India. Colorado. Fuck, High River.

That sure doesn’t help.

He refills my glass. He tells me about his friend, whose house is fine but whose rental property was devastated, and how guilty she feels that her own personal loss wasn’t greater. That she was, ultimately, only financially inconvenienced, while her tenants lost—everything.

Stupid, I say.

Human, he counters.

I start crying again. He gives me his napkin to wipe away tears, snot. I hide my face.

We’re exhausted, I say when I can talk again. I’m the mother of three young children who all went through severe insomniac stages—and I’ve never been this physically exhausted. And it’s not from physical labour, the way it was during the crisis. We were entitled to be exhausted then, right? But now—others are doing the work (or getting paid to do work the results of which we’re not seeing, I snarl, and I laugh, and he does too, because that’s “normal” for me, much more normal than these uncontrolled tears). We’re just doing the everyday stuff—well, a little more, and so much of the everyday stuff is more difficult, but… Not entitled to complain. Not engaged in heavy physical labour. And, frankly, letting a lot of the everyday stuff go. Never did one thing to the flooded garden this year. Cleaning windows? Ha. I barely clean the kitchen. And my kids have never eaten so much take-out, ever. So what are we exhausted from?

Living? he says, gently.

I shake my head.

Frankly—I look at him through the wine glass, and it’s the refraction of light through liquid that blurs his features, not the water still swimming in my eyes—frankly, we’re exhausted from being so fucking positive and amazing. We know we pulled off a miracle. We were awesome. We were strong.

And now we’re really tired, and we’re done—except, of course, we’re not done.

Because things are not back to normal.

But tears aren’t swimming in my eyes anymore and I heave a sigh of relief.

Jesus, that felt good, I tell him. And then—I’m so sorry. We were supposed to talk about…

He interrupts me, waves my apology away. And he tells me—how he’s been struggling. Trying to figure out how to be a good friend to his floodster (we don’t do the victim thing in YYC, and survivor’s a rather dramatic term, don’t you think?) friends post-crisis, and feeling at a loss. And how he needed to hear this as much as I needed to tell it. And how he will never ask anyone in any of the affected Calgary neighbourhoods “Are things back to normal?” ever again.

We laugh. Order dessert. More wine.

In this moment, although things are not back to normal, I’m fine. We’re fine.

Or, at least—you know. Functional.

• 

The writer engages in overt emotional manipulation, both to achieve a level of release and to communicate that which is hard to articulate. My family and friends won’t finish reading this post—they’ll be texting me in a panic before they get to the end of the first paragraph. Chill. Although things are definitely not back to normal—and for the love of any and all of the gods I don’t believe in, do not ask your flooded (or otherwise whacked by life’s events) friends and neighbours if things are back to normal, ok? Just don’t—life is unfolding as it must. And in my own beloved little corner of the flood plain, we are all doing what must be done. And—because we’re a community—we’re helping each other through it. (And possibly drinking too much wine, but. So be it.)

But if you’re on the hills and edges of the flood plains—if you’re on the edges of any life affected by a traumatic event—and you’re struggling to figure out how to help your friends who are clearly post-crisis but equally clearly not-ok, do this:

  • Listen. Don’t tell us how strong, wonderful, amazing, or lucky we are. Just listen. Let us feel bad, sad, frustrated, furious. Tired. We know we’re amazing. We kind of need permission to be… whiney.
  • Connect us to help. If you’re a local reader and you need to help a local floodster, a good starting point is the resource list provided by Alberta Health Services here. But babe, remember how I was telling you during the crisis to see the need and fill it, how saying “How can I help?” isn’t enough when people are in shock? Sending your friend the link or telephone number may not be enough. Walk the line between empathy and obnoxiousness as best as you can, but a “May I call and make an appointment for you?” is likely more helpful than “Here’s a link I thought you’d find helpful” email. For your hard-core entrepreneur friends who don’t want to do stress-relief acupuncture and roll their eyes at sacrocranial therapy etc. etc., the Canadian Federation of Independent Business has some hard-core resources—that include getting connected with counsellors if that’s what you need.
  • Recognize that we’re not as… full, or resilient as we used to be. And so—take less. In a way, take more—we’re not as patient or tolerant as we used to be either. Nor necessarily as rational. Deal with it. And, if you can, look for ways to fill us up. (Preferably not just with wine. Although that sometimes does do wonders.)
  • Invite yourself over. Our scarred houses are difficult to love right now. Sometimes, company is difficult to seek out. But isolation really sucks. Come on over.
  • Invite us over, or out. Our scarred houses are a little oppressive right now, but suck us in with all their demands. Get us out.

•

For my neighbours, who are awesome, and doing all the things. But who are also exhausted and running on empty, and need to have those feelings acknowledged and respected. (Especially my beloved L. So much love and appreciation for all that you’re doing.)

For my friends, who helped so much, and who are always trying to help. In the most creative, occasionally disturbing, ways. (Yeah, I’m talking about you. I’m not saying it didn’t work… but that was really weird. Still. Thank you.)

And, for myself. Cause I really needed to cry.

Cheers.

photo (13)

“Jane”

Sat., Nov. 2nd P.S. You’re breaking my heart but also feeding my soul with what you’re sending to my in-box. Yes, you are free to share this piece wherever you think it needs to be heard. The private place to cry is nothingbythebook@gmail.com. Much love. J.

The AP Hair Style: I don’t brush my children’s hair. It’s a massive philosophical thing. Really

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When my kids were teeny-weeny—but already hairy—my friends and I used to joke that you could always identify the attachment-parented kids at playgrounds and playgrounds by the “AP Hair Style.” That is—unbrushed. Unkempt. Wild.

Now, ya’ might think that’s a granola-hippy-natural kind of thing.

It’s not.

And you might think—goddamn lazy attachment parents, not with it enough to perform the simple task of running a comb through their kids hair in the morning.

Screw you.

Or you might think—if you’re a self-identified AP mama, perhaps—that it’s because… well, it’s not important. And there are more important things. Sleep. Play. Breastfeeding. Perusing the fair-trade-all-wooden-no-plastic toy catalogue. (I’m not making fun of you. OK, I am, a little. But–I’ve had that catalogue too. Chill.)

Nope. It’s actually really important. The not brushing even more so than the brushing.

Ready?

I didn’t brush—don’t brush—my children’s hair when they did not want me to brush their hair—because it’s their hair.

Hold on.

I’m going to shout it.

IT’S THEIR HAIR.

Part of their bodies.

I do not assault it, when they are unwilling, with a hair brush, any more than I would assault, do violence, on any other part of their bodies.

THEIR BODIES.

Their own.

Under their own dominion—not mine.

Their wild, messy hair? Part of the lesson that they’re learning that no one—not me, not nice Mr. Jones down the street, not that creepy dude in the park, and not their first, over-eager boyfriend—has a right to do anything to their bodies that they don’t want them to do.

This is a lesson our children need to learn, repeatedly, while they are close enough to us that they will learn it, hear it.

But we don’t teach it with words. We don’t teach it with scary lectures or with fear.

We teach with how we treat their bodies. From their nose to their toes, and all the parts in-between.

And their hair.

Think about that next time you wield a hair brush.

xoxo

“Jane”

COMMENTS FOR THIS POST ARE NOW TURNED OFF, so we can all have a peaceful weekend. And for those of you continuing the debate on other fora:  a not-so-gentle reminder that name calling is not debating. Criticize the idea. I want you to. No name calling or being nasty to other commentators though, ok? Not cool.

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♥

Other People’s Awesome

For all the parents on the verge of *that* conversation with your daughters (and sons), here is a brilliant Dear Daughter, I hope you have awesome sex piece from the Good Men Project.

For the bloggers in the crowd having social media anxiety and overdose: Joel Comm’s I am leaving social media.

For the bloggers in the crowd who want an easier way to share my stuff and to have me share your stuff, come join me on Triberr, at Ain’t Nothing But a Blog Thing Tribe or, if you’re a homeschooling blogger, at Undogmatic Unschoolers.

My neglected (by me) blogging sisters have been turning out all sorts of awesome these last few weeks. Jean at MamaSchmama wrote a beautiful I can make it home  piece into which she sneaked some lovely introductions to some of her favourite (and mine—she is clearly a woman of immaculate taste) bloggers. Kristi at Finding Ninee wrote what I think is a love letter to her son titled Forgotten Loves  that will a) make you cry and b) make you hug that squirmy love in your live extra-extra-hard—and Rachel at Tao of Poop was clearly on the same page with I Used to Love.

And while I’m tugging at your heart-strings, let me turn you over for a few minutes to Jen at My Skewed View, who delivers a birth story so poignant I’m tearing up as I remember it, and I read it more than a week ago: Eight Years Ago Today.

Jessica at School of Smock wrote a great piece about why pregnancy books now piss her off  and Stephanie at Mommy Is for Real reminded us all why we never eat out anymore. With our children anyway.

And Sarah at Sadder But Wiser Girl was also full of advice last week. She tells you to always check your underwear (and then some… you might need to change your underwear after reading Sarah. Just a word of warning). Jenn at Something Clever 2.0 also made me pee this week. So maybe read this post before changing your underwear…

Deb at Urban Moo Cow made me really, really, REALLY happy I don’t have a toddler anymore. Can I admit that? I can. I’m good with that. I don’t want any more babies, either. EVER.

But I’m super-super-super happy that Stephanie at Where Crazy Meets Exhaustion is glowing. Really. (Note to my most beloved: Vasectomy. Now. No more babies. Ever. But that’s a topic for another post, perhaps…)

Last thing: new friends. I’m getting to know these people this week:

Dysfunction Junction

and you should come play with me.

-30-

P.S. Where the hell is your like button? I turned it off. Cause if you really liked it, I want you to tell me. And I don’t really need to ego stroke from the other. xoxo J.

unLessons from the Flood: We are amazing

I didn’t really panic until I hit the first police barricade and was told I couldn’t get into my neighbourhood. The police officer and I eyed each other through my window.

“We can’t let any more cars into Sunnyside,” he said.

“I need to go get my husband,” I said.

“And our dog!” Flora piped up.

“We can’t let any more cars into Sunnyside,” he repeated. Then looked at me again. Cut his eyes to the right.

He might as well have said, “But you know the area well, of course.”

I nodded.

Sharp turn right. How many other ways into Sunnyside? The main roads would be blocked off… but, yeah. Residential streets. Roundabouts. Alleys.

Text from Sean:

“Worst case scenario, park on McHugh’s Bluff. I’ll bike up the hill.”

It’s good to have a Plan C.

But Plan B worked: about 12 minutes later, after several not-entirely legal turns—one of them right in front of another police cruiser—I was in my driveway. The sky was blue, although the clouds south of the city were terrifying, and coming closer.

And I was home… and my neighbours were throwing things into their cars… and, yet, none of us really felt a particular sense of urgency, even though we got, at 5:45 p.m., the call to get out of our neighbourhood by 7 p.m.

See, our city’s two rivers, the Elbow and the Bow, get angry every once in a while. We get massive snow melt most years; every few years, they rip our riverbanks. And there was crazy flooding already south and west of the city—but… we were so sanguine. I mean, this is Calgary. One of Canada’s largest cities. Natural disasters don’t happen here.

Still. We’re responsible citizens.

“Are we going to flood?” Flora asked, in tears.

“No,” I said, firmly. “This is a precautionary evacuation. We’re just leaving so that the emergency crews don’t have to worry about us. Chill. Grab some books, your iPad—sleep-over at Grandma’s. No big deal.”

But. Those clouds. Disconcerting.

An hour later, with some clothes, computers, and Sean’s film equipment (our livelihood) in the truck, we were in evacuation traffic. But of course, right? What in a big city emergency doesn’t involve a traffic jam? Especially when you’re evacuating 100,000 people in a city of a million?

Texts from family and friends: “Are you guys high enough? Are you safe? Are you dry?”

Our response: “Evacuating. But safe. No worries.”

That was Thursday, June 20, 2013.

It was, honestly, kind of fun.

Ender’s commentary: “Does the river have a leak? Shouldn’t someone plug it?”

We laughed.

The rain that came down on us as we were navigating evacuation traffic and already flooded bridge and road closures to get to the safety of my parents’ house—providentially on very, very high ground—was a little scary.

But. You know. It was rain.

“Kind of an adventure, hey?” Cinder said. “Holy crap, look at that thunder!”

Kind of fun.

***

It stopped being fun in the morning when we saw what the rivers had done.

Our neighbourhood looked like this:

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… and, by comparison, we got off easy.

If you want your heart torn to pieces, google “High River flood images” and see what the rivers have done to our neighbours in High River.

Not that Calgary was unscathed. The damage was… astounding. Our downtown core—the financial core, the business centre of one of Canada’s largest, richest cities—under water. Paralyzed. Some 100,000 of our people—out of their homes.

The rivers—gone mad. Still flowing, ripping.

It was, we found out, not just the worst flood ever in Canadian history, but the worst natural disaster in Canadian history.

“Well,” I told Sean—who’s from Manitoba, a Canadian province famed for its rampaging waters and regular floods, “when Calgary and Alberta do something, we do it all the way. Even natural disasters. Eat your heart out, Winnipeg! Our flood’s more epic than yours!”

And we laughed hysterically. Because, you know. If you don’t laugh…

We spent the first day after the flood doing what our amazing mayor, Naheed Nenshi, told us to do. Staying home. Staying off the roads. Letting the emergency crews do what they had to do.

It was the hardest thing ever.

You know how you watch the reactions of survivors of natural and other disasters on the news, and there’s all these people clamouring to go home, even though it’s dangerous and stupid?

I will never mock them again.

We wanted to go home.

We wanted to see home.

On Saturday—day two after the flood—we broke. We started calling and Facebooking and connecting with the people in Sunnyhill—our immediate community—and we met in a safe area… to plan? Compare notes? Cry? I’m not sure why we met. I think we needed to see that we were all ok.

And then… we broke orders. We didn’t mean to, you know. We were just going to stop on top of the McHugh Bluff to look.

But.

Home.

We walked down.

Thigh-high water in our street, spilling over sidewalks, lawns, and the adjacent Curling Club parking lot.

Water everywhere.

No way of getting “home.”

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We looked.

The kids played on the playground—high and dry.

I let tears flow for the first time.

I don’t think the pictures really do it justice.

There was so much, so much water.

So much destruction.

It was overwhelming.

Our children—how resilient are children?—thought it was kind of cool. “Can we swim in it?” Cinder asked at one point. “Jesus Christ, no, it’s probably full of sewer water,” I choked out. They ran. Climbed trees…

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Cinder took this photo of our Common area from the Tall Pine.

… and skipped rocks in the flood waters. Ender earned himself a cameo in one of the flood videos:

 (That’s one of our neighbours kayaking through our Common. An experienced paddler, she was rescuing some of our people’s documents. You see, we didn’t really take that evac order that seriously. Some of us didn’t even take underwear, much less passports… The video is by Calgarian Bradley Stuckel and co.–did they not do a beautiful job? My filmmaker husband is uber-impressed.)

On Sunday (the flood waters came over Thursday/Friday night), Sean and I sold our children to friends, and, along with most of the flooded out Sunnysiders, waded into our neighbourhoods ahead of the all-clear from the city to see what the hell was going on with our houses.

It was, I’d like to say upfront, after seeing what we waded through, an incredibly stupid and dangerous thing to do.

But you see… it was home. We had to go see.

We reacted, all of us, in different ways to what we saw.

Sean went shopping for clean up and demolition supplies, and then to a community planning meeting.

I, unable to deal with the massive destruction on the ground floor, went up to our kitchen, and cleaned out the fridge—power, of course, was off, and had been since Thursday, and everything was rancid. And then cleaned, scrubbed the fridge. Because that, I could do.

And then…

And then, friends, my city’s people pulled off a miracle.

I think, in the future, the enormity of what the flood did to Calgary will be underplayed because of the rapidity with which the city stabilized and returned to some semblance of “normal” within a week.

We evacuated Thursday, June 20, 2013.

A week later, parts of our downtown were open for business.

The majority of the flooded houses in my neighbourhood had been ripped and disinfected: saved. All of the 41 (I said 38 in my earlier posts on calgarybusinesswriter.com: forgive me, numbers not a strong suit, ever) flooded units in my little sub-community of Sunnyhill were gutted, cleaned, bleached, demolded: saved. (Here’s my initial call for help to our friends, neighbours, and citizens; here’s the thank you and another thank you because one is just not enough—and here’s my take on why and how they performed this miracle.)

We lost, as a city, as a province, a mind-blowing amount of infrastructure. Roads. Bridges. Our beloved Zoo! Individual houses, and so many possessions (me: never buying anything. Ever again). But our response to this crisis, as a community, as individuals, has been amazing.

What grabs the headlines during so many other crises, and disasters? Looting. Riots. In Calgary, we had too many volunteers. And the Calgary Police Service wrote the citizens a thank you letter…

Our people opened their houses to evacuated relatives, friends and strangers. Started a laundry brigade for the evacuees. Fed displaced residents and the army of volunteers. Turned out in hordes to rip out basements, clean up debris, help any way they could.

Laughed in the middle of the chaos:

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We put up “Need Sewer, Need Power, Need Cute Firefighter” signs in our windows:

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(This isn’t my photo; it’s a FB/Twitter viral sensation–if you took it, tell me and I will happily credit you.)

Why our mayor is awesome and you should have nenvy too: “To all the people with the ‘Need Cute Firefighter’ signs in their windows’: We’re working on it,” he tweeted in response. And man, he delivered:

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Ender wanted to pose with the cute firefighters. It was totally Ender. Not his mother. Really. Um. Moving on…

We have a crazy amount of work ahead of us, as individuals, as neighbourhoods, as communities—as a city and as a province.

Are we back to normal? Not quite. But we’re “back.” And we’re working on defining our new normal.

But after what YYC did in these last two weeks—we’re gonna get her done. No question about it. Because—we are Calgary. We acted as a community, to save our communities.

We are amazing.

You want to see more pictures of how amazing we are? Of course. Here are a few more:

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“Please don’t give my daughter an eating disorder. But you will. You will…”

2011. Flora is six and lives in a bit of a bubble. There’s no TV—and thus commercials—in the house. No glossy magazines. The meme videos she watches on Youtube are big brother-tested and, while generally in poor taste, rarely an assault on the self-worth and identity of a young woman. She chooses her clothes among her favourite friends’ hand-me downs, and loves them because of who they came from. “Designer jeans,” to her, are an ethically troubling line of scientific research.*

She eats real food—and lots of delicious, sweet things. She never has to clear her plate. She can eat dessert first. Or never. For breakfast or in the middle of the day. She eats when she’s hungry, and does not eat when she’s not.

She loves herself.

And then, that stupid bastard, he tries to wreck it. When she’s six.

He’s not a bad man, you know. Just a guy. With a TV and without a daughter. I think he was just trying to be nice, make conversation.

This is what he said:

You’re eating a second ice cream? You are going to get so fat.

To my six-year-old daughter.

He moved on. Forgot. The effect on her? That evening, as she comes out of the bath, my six-year-old daughter looks at herself in the mirror—for the first time in her life, critically. She thrusts out her belly. And asks me:

Mom? Am I fat?

And I, who have spent much of my adult life struggling against the eating disorder and body image damage inflicted on my teenage self, I freak. But manage to hold it in, for her. And hear the story, what’s prompting this. And engage in a little bit of deprogramming. And tell her, that the next time I see him, I will explain to him why what he said was inappropriate and wrong and ensure he will never say that to another little girl again.

I figure by the time I see him, I will be… less angry. Because, you know, I know he’s not a bad man. Just a guy. With a TV. And no daughter.

But I’m still furious, seething. And so, what comes out of my mouth, instead of the rehearsed, rational statement I practiced, is this:

I understand you tried to give my daughter an eating disorder.

And he’s shocked—hurt. Doesn’t understand. Then, as I explain—a little appalled. Both at me, and I hope, at his lack of reflection? But perhaps not. I do think, however, he won’t call a little girl fat again. Or suggest she might be getting fat because she’s eating an ice cream cone.

But he hasn’t changed, he doesn’t understand. No, I don’t think I was that effective.

He’ll never do it again, because he’s afraid the little girl’s psychotic mother, who clearly has issues, is going to go medieval on his ass. As I did.

And you know what? That’s good enough. Not perfect. But good enough. That’s what I think in 2011…

Green tea (matcha) ice-cream with red bean.

2013, now. Flora’s eight and a half. A specimen of physical perfection: healthy, strong, athletic, beautiful. She kicks ass in Tang Soo Do. Does one-handed cartwheels for fun. Can outrun just about every boy on the Common, except for her big brother.

Eats when she’s hungry. Doesn’t eat when she’s not. Snacks on chickpeas. Loves ice cream. There’s no TV or glossy magazines in the house. She’s still lives in a bubble, at least some of the time.

But when she gets out of the bath tub, when she’s in the swimming pool change room—not always, but every once in a while, I see her looking at herself in the mirror—critically.

It rips at my insides.

I thought I could save her. But how can I? She has nine-year-old friends who talk about diets—who are on diets. Too many women in her life, around her torturing themselves, hating themselves. Unhappy with themselves. Passing the message on.

It’s everywhere. She’s learned “fat” is a horrible insult when thrust at a woman. She’s learned the look, shape of her body is what matters the most to too many people.

She’s not even nine yet. She still doesn’t know about designer jeans. But she knows this.

I thought I could save her.

But you won’t let me.

♠

Inspired by Urban Moo Cow‘s guest post on Finding Ninee in the This is Our Land Series: The Greatest Gift

* My kids are brilliant. Deal with it.

The Authoritative New Parents’ Guide to Sex After Children, Redux

(or, how to make sure you keep on doing that thing that landed you with children in the first place!)

Two Hearts

Ambitious title, but I bet I’ll deliver. Tell me afterwards. Two caveats. First, if you’re currently childless, don’t read this. It will either depress or embarrass you. Especially if you’re a guy. It’s the weirdest thing, really: when it comes to talking about sex and bodies, there is no creature more uptight than the childless male. Anyway, if you’re one of those, go read How I got deprogrammed and learned to love video games or Math + Gun = or … (I’m not being sexist, am I? You can read this if you really want to. But I know you’ll be mortified… Here’s a test: let me tell you about the time my bestest male friend first saw me breastfeeding. Where are you going? Come back!)

Second, if you’ve got young children and you’re having all the sex you want—really? Honestly?—you probably don’t need to read this. But you should anyway, because maybe at the end of it, you might be having more sex. And what could be better than that?

And thirdly—I said two caveats, right? Oops—in case you haven’t noticed, this post is going to be about sex. That’s how you get children. If reading about sex makes you squeamish, stop here and go read… how about It’s not about balance: creating your family’s harmony or 10 habits for a happy home from the house of permissiveness and chaos. Or that fabulous, famous They tell you, “It gets easier.” They lie post.

Also, mom, dad, mother-in-law, father-in-law, brother—um. Yeah. You’re excused. Go read how Cinder and Flora became Greco-Roman Pagans. And never, ever mention this post to me. OK.

The rest of you, come with me.

English: 3 of hearts.

OK. Here are the three assumption I’m making:

1. You have kids. Babies, toddlers, preschoolers, sentient school age kids. The babies need to be breastfed and rocked to sleep at all hours of day and night, the toddlers and preschoolers exhaust you, and them older kids stay up later and later and open doors and need help with homework and need you to feed them and take them places and…

2. You don’t have enough sex. Define enough as you will. You’d like to have more.

3. You’ve got a partner to have this sex with (if you don’t, I canna’ help you with that, but I hear there’s these dating sites…). The partner would also like to have more sex. The will is there. What’s lacking is time and opportunity AND STRATEGY. (If the will’s not there… well, I can help you with that a bit. There will be an addendum about that at the end.)

With me so far? Want to. Don’t have (enough) (at all these days). Don’t worry. There’s hope. Really. You’ve just got to rethink a few things.

Two Hearts Beat As One

First, there are three principles you have to internalize.

1. Sex is more important than sleep.

2. Sex is more important than cleaning.

3. Sex is more important than work.

Somewhere between child one and two—or maybe it was two and three?—my partner and I made the following pact: either one of us was free to wake up the other at any other time for some quick love making (stress on quick: I’ll come back to this point shortly)… unless the sleeper had a 6 a.m. appointment with the client from hell or some other such situation. We made this pact after the following conversation:

Jane: Dear God, do you realize this is the first time we’ve had sex in… oh my god, has it been three weeks? Four?

Sean: Well, by the time I come to bed, you’re always asleep. And I know you’re going to be up half the night with the baby, and then up super early with the toddler, and…

(This is why I love him so, by the way. What a guy.)

Jane: You can wake me up.

Sean: Really?

Jane: Yes.

Sean: You can wake me up anytime, too. I mean, if you’re ever awake after me. Well, unless I have a 6 a.m. shoot. Don’t wake me up then.

Jane: Deal.

Sean: Deal.

(And we draw the curtain so we can have some privacy.)

two hearts

So. Make this pact with your partner. Sex is more important than sleep. (Or watching that 10 p.m. show on HBO. Turn on your PVR, and romp. If you’re not drowsy after, then watch your show.) Agree to wake each other up when you’re horny. Agree to say yes—at least 4 out of 5 times. (I’m assuming you’re going to show appropriate discretion in when you’re doing the waking up. If partner’s got strep throat, you know, let the guy sleep. If the baby’s been going through a particularly tough phase—let the mama sleep. Find a different time for sex. We’ll get to that in a minute.)

Next: what do you do when that most miraculous thing of all happens and all your children are either simultaneously asleep, totally mesmerized by a movie or activity that doesn’t require your presence, or (gasp!) out of the house?

If you’re a mama, I bet in 9 out of 10 cases you clean. We can’t help it: the little monsters are messy, and if we clean when they’re out of the house, then at least we have the satisfaction of a clean house for a few minutes… an hour.

I’m not going to tell you to stop cleaning. But have sex first. The children are asleep—quiet—gone. Put down the vacuum cleaner, turn your back on the kitchen floor, and go fuck.

You can scrub the bath tub afterwards.

This is really easy for me, because I hate cleaning. However, if you derive some pleasure from the cleaning process, this may be harder for you. Do this: tell the messier partner to grab the initiative. When the children are asleep—quiet—gone, it’s his or her job to drag you to the bedroom, bathroom or living room rug. All you have to do is say yes.

Say yes.

Happy Valentine's day!

Sex is more important than work. In our case, we both work from home, so this is how it goes—one or the other or both of us is always on deadline. There’s always one more thing to write, edit, produce, revise, research.

There will always be one more thing to write, edit, produce, revise, research.

Have sex first.

Then go back to the computer. Have a project you took home, memos to revise, report cards to mark? Fine. They’ll still be there in fifteen minutes. Five, if you’re both properly motivated. Two, if it’s been as long as I think it’s been… Have sex first. Then work.

Now before you quote Dan Ackroyd at me,* it really is that easy. If you believe that…

1. Sex is more important than sleep

2. Sex is more important than cleaning

3. Sex is more important than work

…you will have more of it. Maybe not as much as you’d like to… but more.

To have even more, embrace the next three principles:

4. Foreplay is icing.

5. Beds are optional.

6. Matinees rule.

Valentine

Remember those hours and hours and hours of sensuous, languorous foreplay that went on and on and on and on…

Yeah, I don’t really remember either. It’s been 10 years… eleven. Well, there was that one night we sold the kids to the grandparents for the entire night exclusively for those purposes… but that might have been four years ago. Anyway. You now have kids.

That means foreplay is being alone in a room together.

Agree with your partner that foreplay is icing. Frankly, when you’ve got toddlers, it wastes precious time. You can after-play if the kids don’t barrel into the room. When you’re in one of those “OMG we never have time for sex” phases, this is your modus operandi:

A. Hey, we’re alone!

B. Clothes (but only the essential ones) off!

C. Coitus.

Everything else is icing.

Bed

Note how nowhere in the above did it say we’re alone in bed. Beds? Who needs beds to have sex? We’re alone in the bathroom. We’re alone in the kitchen. We’re alone on the landing. In the living room while the kids are in the bedroom… If you’ve got a family bed, the kids are always in the bed. Have sex somewhere else. Anywhere else. Just draw the curtains first.

Finally—especially when you’ve got teeny ones around—break the sex/night association. No law. Not mandatory. Repeat after me: you can have sex in the morning. In the afternoon. When the baby’s napping. If one or both of you has a regular Monday-to-Friday job, you’ve got less flexibility—but you’ve still got weekends. The hour before supper. You got the baby and toddler down for a nap on Saturday afternoon? Cancel the visit to Joe and Marla, and screw.

Be late for dinner at Mom and Dad’s. Don’t clean, don’t nap, don’t work until after.

“But Jane… you know… the truth is… I don’t really want to. I feel blah. Unattractive. Unsexy. Touched out.”

I know. I think every mother—and many a hyper-involved father, frankly—has been there post-partum. Babies and toddlers take a toll on you. (This part’s mostly for the mamas, boys, but read along to get educated.) Your hormones might be out of whack, and you might simply be exhausted. I’m going to send you to kellymom.com or Dr. Jack Newman’s breastfeedinginc.ca to look for some evidence-based research on how pregnancy and lactation might affect your libido, because I’m no doctor. From personal experience I can absolutely tell you this: I love my partner dearly and I love making love with him—and with each child I’ve gone through stretches where it’s just not been a priority and desire’s been hard to scrape up.

Here’s what’s helped me:

1. Exercise and sunshine. Bonus: if you do the Pavlovian “I have an orgasm after exercise” association, the motivation to exercise spikes.

2. Going to Mom’s Nights Out. Really. How does hanging out with a bunch of women help your sex life? Simple. You dress up and spend an evening with adults talking adult stuff and enjoying a meal without anyone throwing up on you. You go home—and if your partner played things right, the children are asleep. S/he’s not. Woo-hoo.

3. Put it on the schedule. OK. Least romantic thing ever, right? It sounds awful. Sex Saturday. You know what’s worse and less romantic? Not having sex at all.

4. Make it a habit. Here’s the weird thing about thinking you don’t want sex when you’re not having sex–as soon as you start having sex, your priorities shift. You think, “Sweet Jesus, this is great! Why don’t we do this more often?” Hold on to that thought… and do it more often. In the afternoon. Instead of cleaning. Before working on that work project. Quickly if you’ve only got five minutes. Hey, if it turns out you’ve got more time, you can always do it again…

Heart

Photo (Heart) by mozzercork

All right then. That’s it. To recap:

1. Sex is more important than sleep

2. Sex is more important than cleaning

3. Sex is more important than work

4. Foreplay is icing

5. Beds are optional

6. Matinees rule

Get off the computer, and go wake up your partner. And if you’ve got other tips for reigniting your sex life post-children, share them.

xoxoxo,

Jane

PS Veteran mamas, can you tell I just weaned the third? I bet you can…

PPS Play carefully, eh? Seems every time we have a frank sex post-children discussion on one of my groups or lists, someone gets pregnant. Once it was me…

English: Pregnant Elf

*(That’s Jane, you ignorant slut, the best SNL quote of all time, read about it here if you don’t know what I’m talking about, and no, it doesn’t show you how old I am, I saw it in re-runs.)

PPPS For a different point of view, visit my brilliant friend Dani at Cloudy, With A Chance of Wine and read Having kids kills your sex life, but then, pop over to when she changes her mind and tells you the 5 ways sex gets easier once you have kids. And then pop over to read Julie De Neen spew coffee all over her friend in Lying to your kids about sex toys.

PPPPS “Woman, I need an antidote to all the sex talk, cause I ain’t getting any.” I’m so sorry, babe. (But you know there are toys, right?) Go visit Wonderland by Tatu and read Hi, my name is T. & I am a screamer. Get your mind out of the gutter! Not everything’s about sex–she’s talking about something else. And, do pop on by The Sadder and Wiser Girl as she celebrates the one year anniversary of her blog–good on you, Sarah, and write on!

PPPPPS One more. The funniest thing from my over-crowded in-box this week so far comes from The Book of Alice: Wrongly Accused. It’s about boogers. And children. So you know it’s worth clicking on.

Jane out.

They tell you “It gets easier.” They lie

So there she is, stumbling down the block—walking circles around the playground—sleepwalking through the mall. The mewling baby inside a sling—a car seat—stroller. Glassy eyes, cause she hasn’t slept more than 45 minutes—no wait, two days ago, she got three hours in a row, score!—in four months. Wearing ratty pants—because they fit. And her husband’s sweater—because all her tops have been puked on and laundry, she was going to do laundry yesterday, but then the baby had a fever and…

So there she is. The new mom, the first-time mom, and she’s so exhausted and she so clearly needs—what? A hug, help, empathy, reassurance. And you—you’re a good person, and so you want to give it to her. So there you go. Run up to her. Smile. And you want to say, you’re going to say:

“It gets easier.”

Don’t. Just fucking don’t. Because, fast-forward two years, three, and there she is. Running down the block. Maybe another baby in sling. Toddler in stroller or running away. And maybe she’s getting more sleep—but maybe not. Maybe the toddler has night terrors, and wakes up screaming for hours on end in the night. Or maybe, even if Morpheus has been kind to her and the children sleep—she doesn’t sleep nearly was much as she should, because when they sleep, that’s the only time she can be free. To… think. To read. To be… alone.

The toddler makes a break for it and tries to run into the street, and she nabs him, just in time, and pulls him back, and starts explaining how streets are dangerous and he must hold Mommy’s hand, but he really, really, really wants to be on the other side, and he’s two, so self-will is emerging with a vengeance and soon he’s screaming and tantruming, and you, you can see she’s on the edge, about to lose it, because maybe this is the seventh time today—this hour—she’s had to deal with this, and you want to help. You want to give her a hug, help, empathy, reassurance. And you want, you’re going to run over to her and you’re going to say:

“It gets easier.”

Don’t. Don’t. Because a year later, there she is, with her three-and-a-half year-old. Before they left the house this morning, he put her iPhone in the toilet, cut his dad’s headphone cord into shreds, and threw $30 worth of grass-fed beef off the balcony in the compost pile. And now, his pants around his ankles, he’s chasing a flock of pigeons, penis in hand, yelling, “I’m going to pee on you, pigeons!” at the top of his lungs. And she’s trying to decide—should she catch him? Or should she take advantage of the fact that he’s distracted for five minutes, so she can change the new baby’s diaper? Because she hasn’t had a chance to even check it for the last five hours… And I swear on any of the gods that you may or may not believe in, if, at that moment, you come up to her, and you say—because you’re an empathetic, loving person who wants to help—if you come to her at that moment and say,

“It gets easier.”

she’s going to rip that diaper off the baby and throw it in your face. Followed by the tepid remains of her coffee (you’re lucky that she hasn’t had a hot, scalding hot, deliciously hot cup of coffee in three and a half years). And then she’s going to sob. And she’s going to say…

“When? When the fuck does it get easier? Because I’ve been waiting for it to get easier for two three five six years.”

I’m sitting in the middle of my living room—11 years into motherhood—and I’m in a brief picture-perfect postcard (Instagram for those of you born post-1995) moment. I’m stretched out on the couch, coffee cup beside me, laptop on my lap—and, for a few minutes at least, I’m chilling. Three feet away from me, my 11 year-old is building worlds in Minecraft, and Skyping with a friend. My eight-year-old is running with a pack of her friends just outside—I hear their voices, hers most distinct among them to my ears, through the balcony. Tucked under my arm is the three-and-a-half year old, taking a break from wrecking havoc and destruction on the world to play a game on the iPad.

I’m messaging with a friend a few years behind me on the parenting path. And she asks me, and I can hear the tears in her words even though she’s typing them (people who think texting lacks nuance do not text enough; she is weeping through the keyboard),

“When does it get easier? People keep on saying, ‘It gets easier.’ When? When?”

So, I wonder, is she ready to hear this? Is she ready to hear: It doesn’t get easier. All the people who say this? They’re all liars, every last one.

But I won’t say that. First, because I do not wish to make her despair. Second, because it’s not true. It does get easier. It really does. But when people say it, what you, first-time mother, hear it is not ‘It gets easier,” but this:

“Things will get back to the way they were before, soon.”

And that, my lovely friend, will never happen. Things will never be the way they were before. Never. Things have changed forever. Things will never get back to “normal”—as you defined normal when you were single—when you were childless. Never.

And so I tell her this, and again I hear tears in-between the words she types to me.

And now I have to deconstruct the lie to her. I have to explain. That they don’t mean to lie. It really does get easier—sort of. The stuff that’s killing you now—be it the lack of sleep, the aching nipples, the endless diapers-laundry-is-she-sick-is-he-teething or be it the toddler tantrums, potty training regressions, “She won’t leave the house!” “Getting him in and out of the car seat is hell”–all of that, it will get easier—and, in fact, end. They all wean. Toilet train. Stop drawing on walls (unless they in this house). But see, then, other stuff happens that’s really hard too. Ferocious Five. Sensitive Seven. Bullies on the playground—social issues with friends and ‘frenemies.’ Broken hearts. Explosive anger at things and issues much, much bigger than all those daily rubs that cause toddlers angst.

“It gets easier”: yeah, I suppose it does, because you figure it out, and adapt, and get coping strategies. But every time you “master” a phase—they change. Grow. Face new challenges. And you’ve got to change, grow and adapt with them. If only you could do so ahead of them…

But you can’t. And so, you see, “it gets easier” … it’s a lie.

And it’s the most destructive lie, the most life-damaging myth you can buy into. See, because if you keep on waiting for things to get easier—if you put living, changing, adapting, figuring out how to dance this dance, walk this path as it is now, with all of its bumps and rubs—if you put all that on hold until it gets easier…

Well. You’ll be fucked. Totally. And completely.

So. My dearest. It doesn’t get easier. It changes. You get better. You grow. Learn. And that little squealer—that awesome toddler—that slightly evil three-year-old—he grows. Learns. Changes. It gets better. When you learn and change and grow and all that—it all gets better.

But. Easier? No.

So. There she is. Frazzled. Exhausted. So fucking tired. And she sees you coming, and you have empathy poring out of your pores. And you want to help her. Offer her empathy. Support.

What are you going to tell her?

Hey, all, wow, thanks for all the sharing and massive Internet love. Bad day for my RSS feed link to break — this is it: RSS Feed https://nothingbythebook.com/feed/ — and even though there are a bazillion comments, I am reading and responding to every single one. Thank you so much, beautiful people. You can also email me privately at nothingbythebook@gmail.com. Or find me on Twitter @nothingbtbook. You know the drill.  xoxo “Jane”

♥

Two great things from my weekend in-box, from the #FTSF blog hop, that fit in beautifully with the theme of today’s post:

Kristi Campbell’s post on FindingNinee.com:  I blog because of you, I blog because of us, and

Katia’s post on I Am The Milk: Closest to Me

Flora Space Art

“I Give The World To You,” by Flora (May 2013)

unLessons from the Posse

Biking in Waterton Lakes National Park

Photo from the newspaper "Nogales Herald&...

As we come around the corner, the crowds scatter, jump, recoil. First one–two–three–flying like the wind, silver scooters carrying them along like lightening, legs pumping–and then four–five–bent lower over the handle bars, legs pumping even faster to keep up with the vanguard–and you think they’re all through, but no, here comes six, working harder than everyone else because he has to keep up. And me, at the end, with number seven in the bike. Calling out, “High traffic area! Everyone keep to the right!” But they don’t hear me, of course; of course, they don’t, because there is only speed, wind, the path, and the posse.

I love the posse. Three are mine, four are borrowed for the day. Four people have the temerity to ask, as we zoom by, “Oh-my-god-are-they-all-yours?” and sometimes, I would punish them with The Look, but today I am happy, so I just smile. One-half of one couple is so appalled by the procession that is us that the beautiful young woman turns to her husband-boyfriend and says, loudly, fully intending me to hear, “And this, honey, is why we always use condoms.” I’d give her The Look, but then I catch the husband-boyfriend’s look, and it is one of such joy-envy-lust that instead of giving her The Look, I give him The Grin, and we have a very quick, secret psychic conversation:

Him: Seven, eh? Six boys? Man. My own fucking hockey team.

Me: Imagine the soccer games you would have.

Him: Basketball. Camping!

Me: You’d just sit in the chair, and they’d set up the tent.

Him: The littlest one would bring me beer.

Me: You’d build them the best treehouse ever, right?

Him: Oh, fuck, yeah. Would I ever. So… um… you wanna have more kids?

Me: No, I’m done. Sorry.

Him: Okay then. Well, have a good day

Me: Good luck with her, eh?

Him: Yeah… not sure this is going to work out.

We move on. Along the river. Over this bridge. That one. I don’t even attempt to tell them to stick with me–they are a posse, The Posse, and The Posse don’t wait for no Mom. But I am wise in the ways of The Posse, so I don’t ask. I command. “Meet me at the Dragonfly!” I yell to their backs. “Go ahead–and wait for me at the crossing! We all cross together!” It doesn’t matter how fast I go–they go faster. It’s all about being alone, really. I can read the fantasy, in the three eldest anyway. As far as they are concerned, they are alone.

We stop. Regroup. Do a headcount.

Me: Fuck. Five. Who’s missing?

They: The twins.

Me: Your mom’s going to kill me. Where are they?

They: Who knows?

Me: Dudes! No man left behind! Find them!

Phew. Just fixing their helmets by some bushes. Onward. But now I have given them a new war cry. They push off:

No man left behind!

Flora scoots beside me. “Did they leave me behind because I’m not a man?” she whines. “They didn’t leave you behind,” I point out. “You came to visit with me.”

Up ahead on the path: wipeout!

Me: Blood?

Him: I’m okay.

You don’t show weakness in The Posse.

The Posse fractures. Its members fight. When we stop at a playground and they play a mad game of tag with rules so complicated it makes my head spin, my eldest gets his nose out of joint. The twins think they’re picked on. Flora feels left out. Mostly, I stay out of it. Sometimes, I nudge towards a solution. But mostly–I let them be The Posse. I’m there to make sure there is no real injustice … but they know most of the rules of engagement. They are learning how to work things out. This is not Lord of the Flies.

My final test as Mom-wise-in-the-ways-of-The-Posse comes when we hit an ice rink. The ice is melting, sloppy. But still slippery. I see the desire in their eyes. The two eldest look and do a risk analysis. Then decide to try to break their bones on the nearby playground instead. The littles dump the scooters and go to slip and slide on their feet. But he-who-will-test-me comes up to me and says,

“Can we scooter on that?”

It’s a test. Any mother in her right mind would say no, and he knows this. And I know that he knows this. We look at each other, take each other’s measure. And I say,

“I can’t fit seven kids in my car if we have to go to the Children’s Hospital… Look, keep your helmet on, and no whining or crying at all unless there’s massive amounts of blood, and you’ve lost more than two teeth.”

He looks at me. Mildly appalled. His mom would have said no, outright, his eyes tell me, and I’m clearly irresponsible. Criminally so. But I’ve just given him permission. Really. If he doesn’t go on the ice, I’ll know it’s because he’s afraid. Of blood. Losing teeth. He’ll lose face.

He puts the scooter on the ice. Scoots.

“It’s not slippery enough to be fun,” he tells me. Drops it. And goes off to join The Posse.

We pass another couple on the last block home. This time, I have a quick, secret psychic conversation with the girl:

Her: Is it hard?

Me: Fuck, yeah. But so worth it.

When The Possee’s split up, and four-sevenths goes home with Fishtank Mom, they are all exhausted. And not-a-little tired of each other. But next time–next time, they’ll gel together again. Feel the wind, the speed. Be the pack. Fight, fracture, learn. Is it hard? Fuck, yeah. But so worth it.

Photo from the newspaper “Nogales Herald” dated July 20, 1922 showing an American posse after capturing the Mexican bandits Manuel Martinez and Placidio Silvas (middle of back row) who killed or wounded five people at or around Ruby, Arizona in 1921 and 1922. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

♥

And a thank you to the fabulous Tatu from Wonderland By Tatu for including Nothing By The Book in the shininess of the Sunshine Award. As you may have noticed, I truly suck at passing these on adequately. Not out of any better-than-thouness, truly, just out of… what shall we call it… laziness.Pure laziness. But thank you muchly, Tatu, you made me all smiley and sunny on a hard day. Here’s the link to the last one of these that I’ve paid back “properly,” which includes some irrelevant facts about myself and some of my favourite bloggers.

The not-so-mysterious incident of the carrots in the milk carton

English: A photo of a cup of coffee. Esperanto...

I.

I sleepwalk into the kitchen in search of the first cup of coffee. Boil water. Fight with the grinder. Dump old coffee grounds all over the floor. Clean them up. Make the coffee. Inhale the smell of… sheer bliss, really. If you’re a coffee lover, you know what I mean–there is nothing like it, it is the smell of perfection, the birth and end of the universe in one olfactory sensation, the promise of everything. Ah. Pour the first cup. No cream in the fridge–reach for the milk carton.

Pour.

Discover there are two giant carrots in the milk carton.

Look at them uncomprehendingly, because, you know, I have just smelled and not yet drunk the coffee.

Pour the milk into the coffee carefully. Replace the milk carton in the fridge.

Go sit on the couch beside the 3.5 year old. Drink my coffee.

II.

Sean stumbles into the kitchen in search of his cup of coffee. Lucky man, the lag between his wake up time and mine insufficient today for the first pot to be empty. Pours himself a cup of coffee. Savours the smell. And, responsible father that he is, asks the 2/3 of the awake progeny if they want to eat something. (Their mother does not speak, or serve, until she has finished her second cup of coffee. She is still on the couch drinking the first…) The progeny want cereal.

He grabs bowls. Cereal. Milk. Pours.

“Why the fuck are there two carrots in the milk carton?”

Neither the milk nor the carrots answer. I look at the 3.5 year old. He grins a wicked grin.

“I put them there, Dadda!” he calls out happily.

“Why… why did you put carrots in the milk?” Sean says. His voice full of angst and despair–and see, this is why I do not talk until after the second cup. Why suffer? And make others suffer? Let the caffeine do its work first…

“Flora was peeing,” Ender replies promptly.

I am almost done my first cup of coffee, so I understand perfectly. What he wanted to do was to flush the carrots down the toilet. However, the toilet was occupied. What else could he do with them? Aha! Milk carton!

Sean is still just smelling the coffee. And trying to understand all this. And perhaps on the verge of tears.

And here is proof that I am an excellent, excellent wife and helpmeet: although the effort involved in this is Herculean, I lift myself off the couch, stagger into the kitchen, grab his coffee cup, and put it into his hands. He tries to speak–I shut his mouth with a kiss.

I’d say drink–but I do not speak until I’ve downed the second cup of coffee.

He takes a sip. Then another. The world is slowly becoming a better place, and the case of the carrots in the milk losing its power to ruin his day.

I pour my second cup of coffee. Pour the rest of the milk into it. Shake the carrots out into the sink. Rinse them.

“They don’t look like they’ve been in there very long,” Sean says. He picks up the empty milk carton and peers into it. To determine–by what evidence?–the length of the carrot milk immersion?

Cinder, our 10 year old, stumbles down the stairs. Stops, and stares at the tableau, dominated by his father, evidently distraught, peering into the milk carton. And says…

“Did Ender pee in the milk again?”

I draw the curtain on the resulting scene. Suffice it to say, Sean was never happier that he was lactose intolerant… and Flora may never eat cereal again.

More like this: The obvious correlation between crying over spilt coffee and potty training

♥

And some blogger love. Last week, Tirzah Duncan, the talented writer-poet-entrepreneur-cynical optimist-coiner-of-phrases-extraordinaire at The Ink Caster, passed The Versatile Blogger award on to me (which of course means someone gave it to her, congratulations, Tirzah). In addition to being a talented writer, Tirzah would be a great person to watch your back come the Zombie Apocalypse. If you don’t believe me, check out this post.

My head wasn’t quite done swelling when TJ, Sara and Jen from Chi-Town Mommy Mayhem — well, possibly just one of them, but I prefer to take the compliment from all three — handed off the Liebster Award to Nothing By The Book. Their blog is “dedicated to the uncensored mommies of Chicago” and their motto is “We don’t sugar coat anything here.” And they have kick ass tweets ( @MayhemMommyTJ).

I’m eight awards or possibly more behind doing the proper reciprocity thing, and with each passing day… Well. If you really want to know seven random things about me, read this my last Blogosphere Group Hug and find out how I once interviewed the prime minister of Canada sans underwear. For blogs that deserve to have the awards passed on to them–check out the blogs I follow, bottom of each page of the blog. Cause, you know, I only follow good ones.

♠

The naked truth about working from home, the real post

Showerhead

I’m in the shower when the phone rings, and I hear it through the water and the door, and I know who it is even before Cinder hollers, “Mom! It’s for you!” Shampoo in my hair and my eyes, I’m leaping out of the shower and out of the bathroom without turning off the water—where the fuck is the towel?–and skidding into the combination Lego room/Sean’s office that holds the only upstairs telephone.

“Hello, “Jane” speaking,” I say crisply, sharply. Out of breath? No way, not me–the phone voice kicks in ASAP. My well-trained eldest son—the ire of the mother for misbehaving on the telephone is legendary—hangs off the receiver. On the other end of the line is a VP of a blue chip Bay Street company (like a Canadian Wall Street, but less sexy and exciting) I’ve been stalking for a few days, and I need to talk to him today. He’s in an airport—“Houston? And how’s the weather?—he’s got five minutes, what do I need? I speak quickly and cut to the chase: this, that, and, above all, a comment on that mess. The door of the room creaks open, and my daughter comes in. She sees the phone at my ear and mouths, “Mom? Why are you naked?” I mouth back, “Towel! Paper! Pen!” I cast a desperate look around the room—full of Lego and an assortment of my husband’s crap, including a printer, why the fuck is there no paper here? Or pencils? How can there be no writing implements in the bloody office?

The VP’s already talking and I see, gloriously, buried under all the Lego, a purple marker. This is how the professionals do it, boys and girls—I grab that marker and… I move to start writing on the wall, but the two-year-old comes in, and I have a brief second thought. I make desperate hand motions at my seven-year-old, and—she’s well-trained in this this too—she immediately says, “Ender? Want to watch a show on the i-Pad?”

But their exit is too slow–they’re still in the room and I start to scribble. With the purple market. Not on the wall. On my leg. I start at the thigh and work my way down, to the ankle and instep, contort myself, and write on the inner leg. Then the other one… The VP’s a gold mine. He gives me exactly what I need, and I’m transcribing every word.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you!” I sing as I hang off. And become aware that

a. I’m naked in my kids play room

b. my legs totally covered with purple marker

c. the purple marker is a horrible, kid-friendly, washable piece of shit

d. the water from my hair is dripping onto my legs and smearing! Smearing my interview transcript!

“My laptop!” I scream, and Cinder bounds up the stairs with the lap top. “Um, and a towel!” I add. I’ve been anticipated: Flora’s in with the towel. I grab the towel, the laptop. Scrunch my hair with the towel before tossing it over my shoulders and torso. And I start to transcribe. From the top of the leg—never before am I so grateful for the remnants of the baby weight that give some heft to the thigh—down, up the inside. Down the other one.

And yeah. I got this, that, and the comment on that mess in particular. Fucking score. My heart beat slows down. I’m going to meet deadline, and the story’s going to kick ass.

What you need to know:

 a. It’s not supposed to be like that.

b. It’s like that much too often.

c. If you can’t handle life throwing that at you with regular irregularity, you shouldn’t even think about working from home with children underfoot.

I’ve worked as a freelance writer since 2000, and I’ve popped out babies in 2002, 2005 and 2009. They’ve all grown up in this: I managed three weeks off after Cinder, four days after Flora (I went into labour actually in the middle of an interview, and had to cancel another ), and with Ender, I blocked off a luxurious two-and-a-half months off… sabotaged about four weeks in by a favourite client.

What I mean when I say I’m a freelance writer: I churn out five-to-ten-thousand+ words a month for a variety on business publications and clients (my real life business portfolio here for the serious-minded in the crowd).

What you really want to know: what this means time-wise and brain-wise and child-wise. The time commitment is erratic: I’d say at least two hours a day spent in just keeping on top of having the work—that is, emailing back and forth with editors and key contacts, keeping on top of what’s happening, clearing up questions and details on what I’ve filed etc.—and anywhere from 12-40 hours a week in research-interview-writing mode. My target weekly work rate is 20-25 hours (12-low-effort-maintance, 8-12 high-effort research-interview-writing hours). Less than that, and I’m setting myself up for a hellish 40+ week down the line. (My target earn rate, by the way, is the equivalent of a full-time job within that 20-25 hours. But that’s a topic for another post…). Once or twice a year, I actively invite a hellish week or two because of a particular project, client, or painful state of the bank account.

I used to get the “How on earth do you do that with a toddler and a baby?” comment all the time; now I get the, “How the heck do you manage that with homeschooling?” And everyone who asks it is looking, if they’re honest with themselves, for a magic bullet. They’re looking for that instruction sheet, that secret, that has them visualizing me sitting at a desk typing away—or on the telephone conducting an interview—while my children quietly and peacefully play at my feet.

No such thing. How do I work from home with children underfoot?

The short, and really honest, answer is—in ideal circumstances, I don’t. My most productive and efficient output happens when another adult is in charge of them. My husband—my mother—a neighbour—a friend—a paid babysitter. That childcare and that focused time don’t happen spontaneously. I plan the hell out of my work weeks and work days. I schedule interviews for the days when the kids are planning to spend a day with Grandma. I swap child-care with my film-maker husband. I pay for it when I must. In a four-hour block of child-free time, I get two-days worth of work done. Perhaps more. On the days my mother takes the kids for a long 8-10+ hour day, I am so uber-productive my brain and fingers (and sometimes throat) hurt at the end of it.

That low-maintenance work—checking email, social media, initial research, screwing around on the Internet and calling it research—these are things I can do with kids underfoot, during the littlest one’s naps, while the older two are really engaged with something. These are things I can do in spurts, things that don’t require me to enter the flow or to fully focus. Telephone interviews? I never plan to do these without another adult in the house or the kids (under sevens anyway) out of the house. Writing? There are things I can write in spits and spurts, off-the-top-of-my head, and in 45 minutes after I put the kids to bed. A 5,000 word feature on the history of the Canada-US Softwood Lumber Trade Dispute? Or an analysis of what’s really at stake when it comes to the proposed oil sands pipelines? I need focused time and space to produce that, and I prefer not to sacrifice sleep for that.

Sleep-deprived writers produce second-rate drivel. (Unless they’re in the flow on the novel. That’s different. Right?)

So. In my ideal world, working from home still requires an investment—financial, or otherwise, in child care. But life is rarely ideal. No matter how well I plan, every story and every project has its share of surprises. A cancelled interview—spontaneously rescheduled just as the toddler needs to go down for a nap or the baby needs to nurse. An editor’s demand for a last-minute rewrite, due yesterday. A client’s panic attack requiring me to pull an all-nighter—or to rely on the house’s assortment of electronic devices to babysit the children while I pound away at the keyboard. A last minute “I shouldn’t take this story, but oh-my-god-I-get-to-fly-to-Montreal-to-interview-the-prime-minister!” assignment. And havoc reigns.

Planning allows me to ride out the havoc. The irregular regularity of the havoc trains the children. They know a deadline must be met. They learn by age four how to behave when Mommy’s on the phone (she doesn’t push it too much: tries to keep those unplanned interviews to under 15 minutes).

(Sorry, until age four—no guarantees. A DVD might buy you 15 minutes. Or it might not. The good news: with my almost-8 year-old and 10 year-old, I can handle whatever havoc hits with them taking it in stride. I now only have to outsource the three-year-old on the days when I have to write, write, write—or spend the day glued to the telephone. And increasingly, I can outsource the three-year-old to his siblings. Not for an entire workday—but for a decent stretch of time. So yes, it gets much, much easier as the kids get older. But when they’re little? It’s tough.)

And that, friends, is the naked truth about working from home with children in your life. Possible, rewarding, the only way I want to work.

But it’s work. It requires planning. It throws you curveballs. It don’t look like that sepia-postcard dream you’ve got rolling in the back of your mind in which you write an award-winning article effortlessly while a perfectly balanced and delicious meal is already simmering on the stove and the toddler is at your feet playing with dinky cars for two hours. It’ll have to racing out of the shower naked with shampoo in your hair at least once in your life, and teaching your children swear words nobody at the playground knows yet.

Think you can do it? Of course you can. Right?

More like this: The naked truth about working from home, the teaser

This post is being recycled as part of A Mother Life Hum Day Hook Up #33: 

A Mother Life

The most recent Nothing By The Book post is How we teach children to lie, without realizing it.

If it’s your first time here, I’d love to connect, in all the usual ways:

Follow me on Twitter: 

Add me to your circles on GOOGLE+: Jane Marshon

Send me a personal email to nothingbythebook@gmail.com

Like Nothing by the Book on Facebook.

(Split personality alert: If you are interested in my business writer alter-ego, you can find her portfolio at Calgary Business Writer and on Twitter .)

Thanks for visiting!

xoxo

“Jane”

Embracing Chaos

A61

or, unParenting unResolutions

“Mama? Big mama? Wake up, big mama. I love you so very very very much.”

This is how Ender sets up the mood for the day—ensuring that no matter what he flushes down the toilet or smashes into pieces with the meat mallet (“How the hell did he find it again? I hid it on top of the fridge!” “Judging by barstool beside the counter, and the stack of boxes on the counter, you don’t want to know.” “Oh, Kee-rist. How has this child not broken any bones yet?”), my first and most brilliant memory of the day is tickling butterfly kisses and expressions of love ultimate from the beloved beast who will spend the day terrorizing the house, the family, and if we let him outside, the neighbourhood.

He is who he is; he is three. He’s careening towards three-and-a-half (see Surviving 3.5 and 5.5: A cheat sheet for an exposition and some almost practical tips and tricks), and three-and-a-half for the boys I birth is the age of chaos. So as I prepare to say goodbye to 2012 and hello to 2013, I know that chaos and the Ender crazy will dominate much of the year.

And I make no resolutions to yell less. Or discipline more. I will lose my temper, and I will yell, and there will be days when, as I survey the destruction wrought by the whirlwind in the kitchen while I absented myself from his side for five minutes, I seriously ponder just how wrong it would be to put him in the dog’s kennel. Just, you know, for a little while. And there will be days—and weeks—when I’ll be counting the hours until bedtime from 11:15 a.m. And days when, as soon as Sean comes home, I will hand over the entire parenting business to him, and lock myself in the bathroom with a bottle—um, glass, I meant to type glass—of wine.

That’s part of the ride; part of the package. I’ve written elsewhere on that the ultimate secret behind parenting is; its close twin is this: every age and stage, every journey has tough stretches, challenging stretches. And they’re all necessary, and most of them are unavoidable, and happiness and peace lie in knowing that they just are. And not seeking perfection, from myself as mother, or from the child.

He’s so lucky, my Ender, my third. His eldest brother broke me in, thoroughly, and no sooner did I start to boast that I had “cracked the Cinder code,” Flora arrived, teaching me that I had learned absolutely nothing about the uniqueness that is her (bar that nursing every hour, every 15 minutes, or, what’s that word, constantly, is kind of normal) from my first years with the Cinder. By the time Ender arrived, all I knew, for sure, was this:

I love him, madly, fully, unconditionally, in all his guises.

He will exhaust me, challenge me, frustrate me, make me scream.

And I will love him still, and love him more.

As far as everything else goes? As he grows, I will learn him slowly, piece by piece, unique need by unique need. Sometimes well, sometimes badly. Sometimes I’ll fail him—and sometimes, I will do right by him even though in the moment he thinks I’m failing him completely. And maybe, at the end of it all, when he’s 30, 40, with his own children—in therapy—maybe he’ll despise me, blame me, reject me. I don’t know. All I know for sure, is this:

I love him, madly, fully, unconditionally, in all his guises.

He will exhaust me, challenge me, frustrate me, make me scream.

And I will love him still, and love him more.

More like this: Sunshine of Our Lives, or, How Toddlers Survive.

Blog Hop Report: I spent some of the weekend blog hopping at the TGIF Blog Hop hosted by You Know it Happens At Your House Too. What a fascinating variety of blogs, people and approaches to life, the universe and blogging.

I’d like to introduce you, if you do not know them already, to three mama-bloggers (but so much more) with attitude:

Jenn at Something Clever 2.0  (Twitter: @JennSmthngClvr)

Teri Biebel at Snarkfest (Twitter: @snarkfestblog)

Mollie Mills at A Mother Life (Twitter: @amotherlife)

And something completely different, a woman who took my breath away with her authenticity and boldness of voice from the first line of the first post I read of hers: Jupiter, “Eco-Redneck,Breeder,Stitch-Witch,Knittiot Savant & Whoreticulturist Extraordinaire” at crazy dumbsaint of the mind. I’m not going to attempt to explain her. If whoreticulturist is not a word that turns you off, the word sapiosexual turns you on, have a visit and get to know her. Otherwise, maybe not. Safe she is not.

Happy reading, happy blogging, happy living, and I will see in 2013. My year of chaos. Your year of… what?

xoxo

“Jane”

P.S. And if you’re having a slow New Year’s Eve at home with your kids and computer, check out Dani Ryan’s The Best of 2012 Blog Hop at Cloudy With a Chance of Wine.

How I got deprogrammed and learned to love video games

Cinder’s just shy of 10, and the big passion of his life is Minecraft. Or Terraria. Or both, but usually just one or the other. He loves them so much, he’s convinced his Mac-using parents to get him a PC laptop so he can play them more effectively. He loves them so much that his show of choice is watching Minecraft or Terraria videos on Youtube. (A digression for a Cinder recommendation: for Terraria, nothing beats Total Biscuit and Jesse Cox; for Minecraft, Antvenom is King, and Cavemanfilms is pretty good too. Now you know where to go.)

My boy loves video games. And this is a wonderful thing.

I never thought I’d find myself saying this. Video games were never a part of my childhood, and my experience of them as an on-looker—sister, girlfriend, wife—was, well, blah. Wasn’t interested. Didn’t understand the appeal. Could tell you one thing for sure: no kid of mine was going to waste his childhood playing video games. Could rattle of spades of research about how detrimental to the proper development of a child excessive (any) video game playing could be.

Well. What changed?

Simply this: My boy loves video games, and I love my boy. He started getting drawn to them about age eight, I suppose, meeting them at this friend’s house or that, telling us about them with excitement, in vivid detail. His game-playing father entered into his interest; his game-ignorant mother started to agonize. What to do? For what reason? With what consequences?

I spare you my internal angst, as first one online game and then another (“It’s educational, Mom!” Supported by Dad’s: “Really, Jane, it’s educational.”) got introduced. Then the X-box (“It’s Kinect, Jane—they’ll be exercising and moving while they play—isn’t that good?”). Then an iPad and all the apps and games that enabled. Here’s what steered me through it, though: I love my boy. He loves these things; he’s drawn to them. What’s he getting out of it? Why? How?

I love my boy, and if I love my boy, I can’t be dismissive and contemptuous of something he loves.

So, I’d sit beside him and watch him play. Listen to him talk about the games afterwards. In-between. Eavesdrop while he talked about with his friends. Watch while they acted out game scenes on the trampoline or on the Common.

I might tell you about all the things I’ve seen him learn from gaming another time (for one example, check out this salon.com piece about Minecraft ). Rattle of spades of research about how playing video games actually makes kids smarter (Here’s Gabe Zichermann talking about this on Ted Talks). But it really comes down to this:

I love my boy. My boy loves video games. His reasons for loving them are complex—but no less valid than my love for Jane Austen novels, or John Fluevog shoes. I do not have to love them just because he loves them—I do not have to make myself play them or enjoy them as he does, just because I love him. But because I love him, I can’t say—or think and believe—that what he loves and enjoys is a waste of time. Of no value. Stupid.

Flip it. Think of something you love. Knitting? Film noir? Shiny cars? Collecting porcelain miniatures? Whatever. Doesn’t matter what. I’m thinking of my Jane Austen novels, which I reread probably half-a-dozen times a year. Now think of how you feel when someone who’s supposed to love you and care about you—your partner, your best friend, your mother—thinks that hobby or activity is of no value. And takes every opportunity to tell you so. Do those interactions build your relationship? Inspire you with love and trust for the person showing such open contempt for something that brings you joy?

I love my boy. My boy loves video games. And I love that he loves them. I love that they bring him joy.

As I finish writing this up, Ender’s having the tail-end of his nap in my arms, and Flora’s listening to The Titan’s Curse. Cinder grabs his lap top, and sits down beside me on the couch. He pulls up an Antvenom video on Youtube. “I need to get this mod,” he says. “Cool one?” I ask. “Too cool,” he says. I watch him watching for a while.

I love my boy.

“Love you, Mom,” he says. “What do you want to do when my video’s over?”

Minecraft Castle

Minecraft Castle (Photo credit: Mike_Cooke)

Five is hard: can you attachment parent the older child?

It happens to the most attached parents among us. We’ve breastfed, co-slept, and slung our babes happily. It was easy—or, it became easy, once we got into the groove and shook off Aunt Maud’s disapproving glare. We saw our children grown and flourish, loved, connected, happy. But then, at some point, the demons of self-doubt return. Our child goes through a phase we see as difficult and challenging. Almost inevitably, this happens when we’re not at our best—pregnant, tired, stressed. And we wonder—is it possible to AP the older child?

Five seems to be the milestone when these demons attack most ferociously. Makes sense: it’s such a milestone age in our culture. The preschooler becomes a kindergartener. The stroller’s abandoned; first loose teeth come. The search for self becomes super-pronounced, and our five-year-old is frighteningly selfish. (I write about that aspect of five in Ferocious Five.)

It hit one of my friends very hard when her eldest daughter turned five. She asked our playgroup community for help, and she framed her struggles under this big question: “Is it possible the attachment parent the older child? This five year-old who’s driving me utterly, completely crazy every moment of every single day? Is it time to bring out the conventional discipline–punishment–toolbox?”

This was my response. I had seen Cinder through five pretty successfully. Not yet Flora. Bear that in mind as you read. Check out Ferocious Five for the lessons Flora taught me.

Five is hard. But so is two, three, four, six, sixteen–all in their different ways. Part of the trouble is that our children move onward and forward through the different ages and stages, while we, their imperfect parents, have just figured out how to cope with the preceding one.

Is it possible to attachment parent the older child? Possible, necessary, critical. And here is where the difference between AP “things we do”–co-sleeping, breastfeeding, babywearing–and the AP “things we are” plays large. We don’t carry our five year olds, the majority of us don’t breastfeed them any more, we’re not necessarily co-sleeping with them. The “do” stuff is gone. The “be” stuff is all that remains.

And how do we “be” with the older children? I think this is one of the points at which our paths can diverge quite dramatically. And I don’t know that there is one *right* answer. For what it is worth, based on my sample of one five-year-old shepherded through some challenging stuff to date, these are the principles that helped us:

1. Make their world larger.

At five, Cinder’s world got larger. We’re homeschooling, so the massive change that is five day a week kindergarten wasn’t part of it–but think of what a huge change that is for the average five-year-old, and how hard it must be sort out, everything so new. Still, even minus kindergarten, it was so clear to us that a five-year-old was very different from a four-year-old. And absolutely, we butted heads because while he had moved on, I was still mothering a four-year-old.

A huge breakthrough for me was to make his world larger–ride his bike on (safe!) streets, cross the street on his own, go into stores on his own, play a bigger role in everything. I can’t quite remember all the different changes we did, but they’re pretty much irrelevant–they wouldn’t necessarily work for your child. Talk with her. What would she like to do now that she couldn’t (or wasn’t interested) in doing a year or six months ago?

2. The only person whose behaviour I can control is myself.

The other thing I always come back when we run into “downs”: the only person whose behaviour I can control is myself. And if I am unhappy with how my child is acting, the first step is not to look for a way to change my child, but to look at myself, within myself, and ask myself what can I do to change how I am reacting and communicating with my children? What am I doing–reflexively, thoughtlessly–that I can change. Start with me. When I’m okay, when I’m balanced, when I’m grounded–well, very often, the problem goes away, because it was in me in the first place. My children mirror me.

And, if the problem really is in the other–if it is all my Cinder being crazy or my Flora being whiney–when I’m taking care of myself, reflecting on my behaviour, and acting from a place within me that’s grounded, well, then I can cope and talk and help them sort through whatever craziness they are going through at the time without losing it.

3. Re-connect, re-attach.

I strongly, strongly believe that any punishment–be it a time out, a withdrawal of privileges, or the most innocuous manufactured consequence–does not help these situations but serves to drive a tiny, but ever growing, wedge between the attached parent and child. The absolutely best thing I’ve ever read about discipline was in Gordon Neufeld’s *Hold On To Your Kids*–absolutely aimed at parents of older children, through to teens. We’ve talked about this before, but this is the essence of what I take away from Neufeld’s chapter on “Discipline that Does Not Divide”: “Is [whatever action you were going to take] going to further your connection to your child? Or is it going to estrange you?”

So what do I do when I kind of want to throttle Cinder? I work at re-connecting. I call them re-attachment days. Have a bath together. Wrestle (I’m not advising it for pregnant mamas 🙂 ). Go for coffee (for me) and cookie (for him) at Heartland Cafe, just the two of us. Really focus on him and try to enjoy him. So often, that’s what he’s asking for by being obnoxious–really focused attention from me.

Now if I could only ensure I always give it to him so that we wouldn’t go through the head-butting phase in the first place!

4. Remind myself of what I want to say and how I want to act.

What do I do in the moment? That’s way harder in practice, no question. When I’m really frazzled, I leave notes to myself in conspicuous places with “when Cinder does x–do not say/do this–say/do this instead.” (Fridge and front door best places. Also, bathroom door.) And I tell my children what they are–“Those are reminders to me of how I want to treat you and talk to you, even when what you are doing makes me very, very angry.”

5. Sing.

Sometimes, I sing, “I want to holler really loud, but I’m trying really hard not to, someone help me figure something else to do, I think I’m going to stand on my head to distract myself…” (This works really, really well with two and three year olds too, by the way.)

6. Forgive. Move on.

Sometimes, I don’t catch myself in time and do all the things I don’t want to do: yell, threaten (if there is an “if” and a “then” in a sentence, it’s almost always a threat)… and then I apologize, try to rewind, move forward.

7. Put it all in perspective.

And always, always, I remind myself that 1) the worst behaviours usually occur just before huge developmental/emotional milestones, changes and breakthroughs, 2) my child is acting in the best way he knows at this moment, and if that way is not acceptable to me, I need to help him find another one, and 3) I love the little bugger more than life or the universe, no matter how obnoxious he is. (This is a good exercise too: after a hard, hard day, sit down and make a list of all the things you love about your little one. From the shadow her eyelash make on her cheeks when she sleeps to the way she kisses you goodnight… everything you can think of.)

And, finally, if I want my children to treat me–and others–with respect, I must treat them with respect. No matter how angry or tired I am.

Lots of love and support, 

“Jane”

Jane Austen, Watercolour and pencil portrait b...

On regulation, desire and discipline

1

I’m in Toronto for the third time in two weeks. Living out of a suitcase. Disregulated. Frantic, overfull days.

I counter by creating mini-rituals. I leave the hotel room dressed to the nines — my version of, anyway — but not bundled up. I carry my winter coat down the creepy generic hallway, down the elevator, all the way to the lobby doors. Put it on just as I exit. Walk first on this side of the street, then cross over at precisely this point. Walk slowly. Stop at what, after the first Monday morning, I decide is my new favourite coffee shop. Order a decaf latte (get mocked by the barista, a little). Take a few slow, hot sips in the cafe. Ground myself in this way.

I don’t have time to do my full Morning Pages but I jot down a few thoughts. Play with one short concept. Draft a vignette. Arrive at the office with game face on.

Do all the things.

When I get back to the hotel room, I take off my shoes first. Then the coat. Hang it up. Jacket and scarf off. Then everything else. Put everything away carefully. Draw bath… make a note to self to bring a nice candle with me on future trips.

Stay in the bath until I’m a raisin. Then write a few words before climbing into bed. Make a note to myself to exercise more — at all — on the next trip. Walking is not enough.

2

I get a promotion and I’m stoked. But also, existential angst hits. Is this selling out? Or living my purpose?

3

A casual conversation during dinner with my VP about skills, sharp claws. I tell her about my practice of starting each day with writing three long hand pages. Every day? Even on weekends? She asks. She sounds incredulous. Every good day, I reply. When I skip, nothing else is as good. Think of it, I tell her, as practice — stretching, running, lifting weights. I need to keep those muscles working, improving. That’s how I’m able to productive a cohesive 90 minute script in a few days. That’s why I’m able to elevate a colleague’s work in a few minutes.

4

The most useful advice I offer to writers: Write. Practice, to a purpose. 

Nobody likes to hear this.

They want a hack.

A magic AI prompt.

5

In a dirty sheesha cafe — so dirty, I will not be coming back. But it’s all right, it’s what I need right now. Recalibrating. Full days. Busy days. Busy brain. I need to push the busy to the back so that I can rest. Set the ground work for a productive day tomorrow.

Can I apply the discipline I apply to my creative work to everything else in my life?

Yes. I think so.

6

Busy is not conducive to productive. To creative.

How do I sustain my ideal pace and cycle in a Monday to Friday corporate world?

How do I help to facilitate it for my team?

How do I write another novel while fulfilling this new role?

7

I want to write another novel. Finally.

The desire is there. I feel it percolating in-between thoughts about content strategy and actionable tactics.

8

Suddenly, an intense desire for silence.

9

Thought: White space also tells a story. Unoriginal, I know. But important.

10

Full days. Quiet nights. I miss home. I miss you.

I’m on my way back, full of desire.

But also, grounded.

This is good.

xoxo

“Jane”

Think-not-think: A tip for burnt out creatives

1

I hit Friday fried. By my last two meetings on Thursday, I can’t language. You know? I open my mouth and my tongue struggles to form the syllables that need to become the words that will give voice to the thoughts I want to express. I’m crossing into the zone where I’m about to start making stupid mistakes because I have no bandwidth left for thought.

The cure, for me, is pretty simple. I need, first, some down time and then some thinking time.

I start the downtime with some manual labour. I sweep and vacuum. I gather up the leaves. I do a load of laundry, start to finish. Get the body a little tired, get the mind focused on the body. Then I take a very long bath, with neither book nor show to distract me from the water, the bubbles, the dark.

I do nothing, I am nothing.

Then, I turn to the page. As writers, I think we’re so lucky that we can rest while writing. Not on the current WIP — now is not the time to torture the novel, speech or article. It’s time to play. Write a bad poem. Play with the cadence of a pretty, useless sentence. Journal — but not about the things that cause you pain. Find an interesting, warm memory. Take that weird overheard phrase — “But what would I do with a gallon of Cool Whip?” — and give it silly, imagined context.

Create that space within yourself.

Play.

Play is rest.

2

Successfully, sustainably creative people know how to play and rest. And, with practice, we learn how to do it before we burn out. We recognize the signs and course-correct before we crash.

Unsustainably creative people burn out. Frequently.

When I’m living my life right — and yes, there is a right way, of course there is 🙂  — I don’t get to the fried stage. I take that pause when I start to feel fatigue. That’s how I (used to) write a full first draft of a novel in three to six weeks: Stop when you still have juice. Recharge before that battery dies.

Work, deadlines and contracts sometimes make this difficult, sure. But it’s possible, attainable, practicable.

Do it.

Do it yourself, for yourself.

Nobody else will — or can — do it for you.

They’ll just tsk tsk when you crash and burn.

3

Rejuvenating rest and play look differently for each of us. Sometimes, I can reset in the arms of someone I love. Most of the time, I need silence and solitude. My notebook. The self-permission to play with the things I work with. Sheesha. A trashy novel. A pile of cookbooks full of recipes I’ll never attempt because seriously, four hours of active kitchen to time to put something on the table?

I’d rather write, sleep or, you know. Reset in your arms.

But looking at the pretty photographs makes me feel good.

4

After I write-play, I stretch out of my purple sofa and think-not-think. I look at my animals, the lazy cat, the dog who really wants another walk but knows she’s not getting one for a while. My bare toes.

I think-not-think about the WIPs now. The “not” is the most important part of this: I’m not actively rolling anything over. I’m not reflecting. I’m actually not thinking about work at all. Except that it exists and it’s inside me. And when I not-think about it, I think about it in that magical way that will let me think about it happily a few hours, days later.

Breathe in, breathe out. Watch the smoke. Listen to the breath. Look at the cat. 

Don’t think, but let the thoughts come.

5

We call ourselves knowledge workers or creatives now and they claim to value us… but neither they nor we give ourselves sufficient time, the permission even to do the thing that makes us sustainably creative:

Think-not-think.

Play and rest.

6

My homework for myself on that Thursday night is to play and rest, think-not-think.

My homework for what would be an unproductive, frustrating, burnt-out Friday: think-not-think. Lay on the floor. Stare at the ceiling. Feel the space inside. Delay responding to that non-urgent email. Reschedule the important, requires thought meeting.

It sets the stage for a fantastic Monday, fulfilling Tuesday. I’ll have words, thoughts.

But first, this: rest and play. Think-not-think.

xoxo

“Jane”

Anatomy of a week

Monday

I move between bed, bath and couch, book, audiobook and my show on Amazon Prime, occasionally eat leftovers, nap often.

In the evening, I’m picking up my lover and his lover but not my son and his father — one set of travellers is due to arrive nine’ishs and the other after midnight. I’m supposed to pick up the earlier arrivals and not the later ones.

But stuff happens, and I end up with all four of them packed into Darwin the beetle for the chaotic three-drop drive home.

This is a happy if slightly awkward moment.

True thing: When I see my son waiting there outside the airport, everything else disappears, nothing else matters, my lover disappears (he understands), my child is back.

Tuesday

Work. So much work. Also, am I getting a cold? No, I refuse to be getting a cold, but I work from home just in case. I don’t have time for my personal writing in the morning and I’m not right for the rest of the day.

In the afternoon, I pick up my son from his dad’s — teenagers on summer vacation sleep forever. I bring him home, feed him. He’s restless.

We walk downtown to the Value Village Boutique to look for jerseys, find none. On the way there, my crazy neighbour passes us on an electric scooter and swears at me. Fun times. I make a note in the “violations of the restraining order” log on my phone.

We walk back across the downtown, cross the river. I drop him off at his dad’s and continue walking on to my home. My body doesn’t appreciate the exercise. It would prefer to nap.

I skip Tuesday dance church to catch up with my love, back in town after a few days away. He’s fighting a cold. No kissing. How can you truly reconnect without kissing? We hold each other tight but I still feel very far away.

Wednesday

OMG so much work, why did I accept this 7:30 am meeting what was I thinking, it’s fine, it’s fine, I’m up and awake. I work from my lover’s house in the morning while he sleeps — it still feels, a little, like reconnection. I think with envy about the people who can pick up any connection, any relationship after a period of absence without effort. When I don’t see you, whether it’s for a few days or a few weeks—or few years—you fade, you get so far away, I forget how to be with you, I’m not sure if you are still there —if we are still there.

I look into the bedroom.

Still there.

Back to work, so much work.

Power Nap.

More work.

Tea and cookies with my sick love.

Tender goodbyes, but no kisses. 

Home via the local Somali butcher for some chicken.

So tired. Full work day but unfulfilled, I know why, I did not do any of my writing, will I be able to today, I can barely keep my eyes open.

Nap. Make food. Pick up sons.

Supper. Arbitration. The 15 year old and 23 year old do not get along super well these days. The 23 year old’s jokes don’t land well. The 15 year old’s moodiness likewise. And I’m a very bad referee.

The eldest walks to his dad’s, I drive the younger.

Back home, exhausted, I contemplate bath and bed.

But I haven’t written — for me — for two days.

I make tea and sheesha and pull out my notebooks and the laptop instead.

The writing isn’t good. But it is. For today, that’s enough.

Thursday

Up early enough to write, it will be a good day. And yes, the morning is magic — I slide from morning pages to creative writing to the first work task effortlessly and I’m brilliant, I feel brilliant, sharp, alive.

Mid-morning, I relocate to the office to keep on riding the wave — I do ok. I feel a crash coming and I ward it off with a coffee walk — but not coffee — with colleagues.

I check in with the youngest son to see if he wants to hang in the afternoon but he’s ditched me for friends and I’m relieved, to be honest — tired, so tired and I have plans in the evening.

I trudge home — so tired, you know that story about how if you’re feeling low energy you should go for a walk? Ha. No, you should nap, the walk takes forever, my legs are made of cement, my shoes are bowling balls and my head so so so heavy—and I’m asleep almost before I cross the threshold.

But I manage to make it to a (really bad) comedy night (like, really bad, has nobody told these children how to structure a bit? It’s really not that hard — jokes are hard and being funny is hard, but giving your performance the semblance of cohesion is so easy, I can teach you in 5 minutes, are you willing you learn?) with a cute girl, and feel like a functioning adult who goes out and does things after work and that feels good.

Oh, and do you remember, I wrote that morning? Yeah.

Friday

This is way too much work for a Friday, but I’m on it, I got it, I do all the things, I don’t drop anything. And I start the day with my own writing. I know this is, if not exactly the secret to a good day… ok, it’s like this: If I do my morning pages, I may or may not have a good day. It’s a crapshoot, you just don’t know what will come. But if I don’t do my morning pages, nothing feels right for the rest of the day and I ache.

Check in on sons. Uncoordinated schedules. I feed one at 5 and the other at 6. It’s all right, the one on one time with each is nice. 

After they’re gone, I try to tidy the house. Give up as the neglected middle child, living on her own in Vancouver, calls. Essay emergency. We talk themes, metaphors, narrative hacks. 

Torment the cats for a bit, then trudge up the hill to see my love.

He’s sick, I’m exhausted, we talk a bit and watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer in bed.

I sleep.

Saturday

Up early, man unconscious, woman restless. I pack up and tiptoe down the hill to my place, count the cats. Still three for a few more hours. I feel ungrounded, confused — stop.

Write.

Set up cute writing area on balcony. Decide to indulge with sheesha again (feel a bit guilty about it, because nicotine is a nasty drug but also, it’s been a rough week, and I’ve been caffeine and alcohol free for almost two years now, give me something to feel guilty about).

I sheesha. I write. I read.

Mid-day, I plan a picnic and capture the foster cats, return them to their people. There is much joy.

Then I picnic with my still sickly love at a park with a view. We eat, talk, read, nap (me), drink too much tea (me), need to find a place to pee in the bushes (again, me, also, seriously, what is it with the lack of public washroom facilities in this city, do you think I like peeing in the bushes? No. I would very much like to pee in a clean public restroom, thank you very much).

We pack up when the sun starts dipping behind the mountains and it gets chilly. My place first — check on the cat, unpack picnic leftovers, pack computer and clothes. Up the hill next.

I take a long bath while he putters. Then we parallel play: I read a Georgette Heyer murder mystery so clearly inspired by Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd that I know who did it from the first paragraph while he watches a show (ear buds in) and stitches his leatherwork project.

Still no kissing but we finally feel more real.

Sunday

I write.

I feel good.

I write some more.

xoxo

“Jane”

Donut delivery

1

I’m driving back to my house in the rain to pick up a donut I forgot to deliver to my eldest baby — wait, I’m telling the story wrong, because now it’s Monday, and the story starts on Saturday, when I drove 150 km to get what are supposed to be the best donuts in Alberta.

This, by the way, is an Alberta thing. I may live in a 1.3 million-person city, one of the largest in Canada, but let’s be honest, we are in the middle of nowhere. It’s a beautiful nowhere — Rockies to the west, Foothills to the south, Badlands to the east — but it’s not uncommon for us to drive three hours (one way) for a thing because, while everything in the city is close, nothing outside the city is.

Also, we have amazing highways.

Anyway.

The Donut Mill is a local tourist attraction.

Don’t mock. The donuts are sensational. Totally worth three hours in the car (round trip).

Especially with good company.

So I drive 150 km on a donut-getting date and of course, I get extras for my bae and the resident progeny. That’s Saturday.

Test of how good the donuts are — they’re still good on Sunday. But the eldest has excellent appetite control and eats a big supper, so only has room for one of his two donuts. (Of course I get ’em two each.)

He runs to his dad’s house after supper and I promise to drop the second donut over when I take his younger brother home.

But I forget.

No biggie; I’ll be back and forth with the younger one on Monday — I’ll drop it off then.

But, I forget again. I deliver the younger progeny back to his dad’s house minus donut for the older brother.

Text exchange:

Jane: I forgot your donut!

Son: 😦

Jane: I’ll be right back.

Son: Thank you!

Spoiled Gen Z kid and over-smothering Gen X mother? Sure. But I take the 18 minutes out of my day to deliver a two-day old donut to the 23-year-old. (6 minutes back to my house, 6 minutes to his dad’s house, 6 minutes back to mine.)

Not because the donuts are that good (although they are pretty good).

But see, I do it, because I said I’d do it and also, because I can.

2

My (adult!) kid does not expect me to do this. But also, he’s not surprised that I do it. And I think that’s pretty awesome.

3

One of the tricky things about raising securely attached kids is that they kinda take you for granted. But again, that’s ok.

When the neglected middle child was taking an extra semester of chemistry at a somewhat distant high school after graduation and before university, my lunch hours for five months consisted of driving her there (12-20 minutes one-way depending on traffic) and then driving back, three days a week.

She could have taken public transit.

But the ride gave me 24 to 40 minutes of time alone in the car with her — at that challenging age when teenagers don’t really want to spend time with their parents.

Similarly, during COVID, his dad and I routinely drove the eldest to his job at a really, really far away Home Depot. Not always — sometimes he biked, sometimes he took transit.

But when our schedules allowed, when the weather was crappy, we did.

For three years, I wrapped work twice a week at 2:30 pm so that I could be at my youngest son’s junior high school by 3:15 pm for school pickup.

He could have taken public transit, or car pooled with another kid. Or gotten picked up by Grandma — I leaned on her, and my partner — when work made its demands.

But most of the time, I did it. And I did it for that 20 minutes in the car and the after school snack and the shared transition from school to home.

The crankies call it helicopter parenting.

I call it remembering how tough it was to be a latch key kid — and how awesome it was when my mom was there to pick me up on cold days.

(And there are a lot of cold, crappy days in the middle of nowhere).

4

I’m a first gen immigrant child of first gen immigrant parents, who worked multiple jobs while going to school to upgrade skills.

I couldn’t really take them for granted. They had a lot of things to do.

I was probably in my 20s before I realized that my mom spent her entire nursing career in Canada working nights so that she could be home, waking up post night-shift, when we got home from school.

Or so that she could, post-night shift, drive us to school on those -20, -30, -40 — we don’t close schools for nothing in Alberta — mornings.

And I was in my 30s before I realized that she kept on working nights til retirement so that she could still be there during the day for me on the “Mom, I’m on deadline and I need help with the kids today” emergencies (there were many).

5

So it’s not about the two-day old donut, you see.

It’s just about being there. When you can.

6

Whenever I interrupt my work day to ferry a kid here or there, I’m very aware of my privilege. I have a job that doesn’t require me to be on a phone queue, behind a cash register, clocked in. I can often take that time, make it up later.

There are so many parents who can’t.

But I can.

Why would I not?

7

The donut delivery happens in the evening, so not on work-work time but on my writing-thinking-relaxing time. It’s an 18 minute chunk of a busy day. It also fuels me. And lets me sit down to my creative work with a smile. As I’m writing, my eldest — who is an adult now and doesn’t need me for most things — is sitting at his computer, munching on a semi-stale donut.

And probably not thinking about me.

But that’s ok. 

He might remember it in his 30s. When he makes similar choices to be there for his kids, his friends.

Right?

xoxo

“Jane”

Biking in Waterton Lakes National Park
From the archives: 2012 trip to Waterton.

Permission to be

1

It’s a low energy day — I have a lot of those these days* — and I’m in bed at 8 pm feeling I’ve done nothing, nothing. I sleep for 10, almost 11 hours. I crawl out of bed feeling rested but also very aware my well is about a quarter full, maybe less, and that quarter is quickly depleting, in no small part because I’m feeling I pissed away yesterday and I’m going to piss away today and so, why even bother getting out of bed at all?

There’s a hack for this feeling.

I know it.

I make myself use it.

“I’m not sure I belong here.” Comet aka Cosmo aka Grapefruit aka Pomegranate aka I think we will call him PomPom trying to settle in his new temporary home.

2

The hack: Write down everything you actually did on that low-energy, do nothing day. In order.

Stick to facts and try to keep commentary and judgement down to a minimum (but if you slip, whatever, don’t beat yourself up over it)

Ok.

Low energy day, yeah. What did I actually do?

Got out of bed. Did the wake-up , get moving things and ablutions (isn’t ablutions a great word, btw? And I never get to use it). The face got washed. The hair got brushed. Ditto teeth (I think).

Cleaned the litter boxes (two) and cuddled the cats (three). (I’m fostering two very stressed cats right now, whose people’s lives got turned upside down but that’s another story).

Logged in to work before 7 am. Miracle.

Checked to make sure last night’s minor’s crisis was resolved — it was. Victory.

Couple urgent emails.

Made coffee (decaf). 

Wrote Morning Pages. (There’s no wrong way to write the Morning Pages, says Julia Cameron, but some days feel less wrong than others. These pages felt good. They woke up my brain even though my body still felt as if a bus had hit it and they let me flow into the day’s first creative work task) (Emails don’t count).

(Emails should count—I really need to recalibrate the part of my brain that doesn’t think of emails and meetings as work… it’s work. I just have nothing to show for it at the end of the time though, you know? Anyway. Also a different story.)

(But, idea. Could I turn meetings into an art project. A meeting log that’s kind of a little practical but also fun and creative. I’m not drawing enough, at all, these days, and that would be kinda cool. And not take a lot of energy. Made even give me energy. Right?)

Wrote a thing. A little thing, a short thing. But important. It was done in 15 minutes. Had to remind myself it would have taken most other people two to three hours.

Answered some more emails.

Meeting. Participated, engaged, connected. Had to leave early to go to another meeting.

Second meeting: Participated, engaged, challenged. Generally contributed; begged off early, exhausted, when it became clearly further participation would be of limited value.

Ate. Not a good breakfast. Pie. But I ate. And it was calories. 

Felt stupid and lazy — can we reframe lazy as tried? No? It was genuinely lazy? Yeah, genuine lazy — so tried to use AI to help me write a shitty first draft for a thing. After 15 minutes of prompts and four drafts of crap, wrote my own shitty first draft in seven minutes. (Still debating whether the 15 minutes of having AI generate the shitty drafts that were unacceptable helped me write my own faster? Maybe?)

(I should maybe say here that I really like AI. But when it comes to the level of work I need to produce, AI writes like a first-year intern or third-rate college communication student who revels in cliches, uses adverbs to mask lack of real content, and obfuscates rather than clarifies.)

Refined it — the non-AI draft — to something publishable in about 20 minutes. Felt brilliant for 30 seconds. Sent in for approvals.

Took a pause to ponder AI, my future job prospects, employability, career. Got depressed.

Took an intentional  break and made tea and breakfast for my bae, who stumbled downstairs after a marathon morning meeting held in my son’s/the foster cats’ bedroom.

(Yes, the foster cats are currently sharing my son’s bedroom.)

Cuddled the foster cats and the one and only Disobedient Sinful Disaster, the resident Siamese queen.

Said goodbye to my bae.

Realized it was 11 am and I hadn’t eaten a proper meal yet.

Fridge was empty, so ate another slice of pie.

Responded to a “Hellos moms” text from the online summer school -attending teenager and picked him up from his dad’s house.

Responded to a couple of emails while in the car. (But not while driving. I’m responsible.)

Walked dog and made teenager get some Vitamin D via the sun (usually not a problem for this kid. But sometimes. Getting them out of the house can be an effort…)

Remembered there was no food at home (except maybe some pie crumbs). Took teenager to drive-through for a burger.

Did not get self a burger. Ooops.

Introduced dog to foster cats. Could have gone better.

Arranged for a couple of meetings.

Responded to more emails.

World on a video script for something complicated and interesting. Enjoyed.

Thought about eating something that was not pie but the only things in the fridge were carrots and cabbage. And raw pork. Had coffee (decaf) instead. With liquid whipped cream (=calories).

Emails. Just a couple.

Got green light on something, informed relevant people, drafted some notes related to it.

Checked on cats.

Returned to script.

Proofed teenager’s film study assignment and explained the difference between a short sentence and a sentence fragment — and tried to explain how to use sentence fragments effectively.

Returned to script.

Interrupted cat fight.

“That’s right. Get under that couch and don’t come back out.”
SinSin bullying PomPom.

Felt beyond exhausted — considered that even with my teenager-getting breaks and coffee and pie consumption, I had clocked 7+ working hours. Put computer away.

Had 30 minute Power Nap.

(How to Nap 101: Experience exhaustion so deep that as soon as you lie down and close your eyes, you fall asleep.)

Woke up to text from 23-year-old:

“When supper today”

Responded:

“When you get here”

Response:

“I’ll be there are 5.”

OMG, how was it already/only 4:30?

Crawled out of bed.

Checked on cats. And teenager.

Sliced and spiced pork, cabbage, carrots, rice.

Cooked.

Walked dog.

Fed sons. Chatted with sons (sort of).

Cleaned kitchen. Drove the teenager and the dog to their dad’s house while adult son ran home, because he’s stupid fit.

Pondered reviewing and deleting some old emails.

Got ice cream instead.

Ate ice cream and read book.

Checked on cats.

Had bath.

Thought thoughts, some of them work related. (Problem solving in the bath and shower is a real thing and should be billable…)

Separated cats for the night. (Introducing adult animals to each other is a pain in the butt. One forgets.)

Ordered groceries.

Signed tax documents.

Tried to watch a show.

Fell asleep instead.

“I’m pretty sure you won’t kill me.” Avocado testing her sense of safety.

3

You see what the hack is, yeah?

“I can’t believe you let two strange cats move into my house.”
Disobedient Sinful Disaster aka SinSin looking unimpressed.

4

Note to self: You kinda did a lot. You were 100% entitled to feel exhausted at the end of a 14-hour day, even if it did include a nap.

Also, woman, eat a proper breakfast and lunch. Not pie. You know it makes a big difference.

And don’t forget the vitamins.

“You may be feeding us but we don’t trust you yet.”
PomPom and Avocado dining.

5

Follow-up note to self: But also, you know. You don’t need to do a lot. You don’t need to justify your existence via a list of tasks. It’s ok to just exist. To just be.

(Is it? Honestly, I’m not so sure.)

“I don’t know how I got here and I don’t know how I’m coming down.”
Avocado learning new skills.

6

Note from cats: Meow.

“I’m not sure about this new living situation.”
PomPom and Avocado in deep conversation.

7

Low energy days sometimes happen for external reasons but sometimes — these days — mostly internal. Chemical. Hormonal. 

It’s very difficult, in this world we’ve created, to accept their reality. To say, “Today, I need to rest and just be.”

Because there is always so much to do.

“Given what you’ve just inflicted on me, I deserve extra meals.”

8

Cats don’t have this problem, hey?

Sigh. Stupid, stupid, stupid overactive monkey brain.

“This isn’t so bad.”

9

The low energy is followed by a mid-energy day. But also, I’m tracking what I’m doing and giving myself a pat on the back every time I achieve something. Also, I’m eating. Also, I had slept for 10+ hours. Also, the cats are cute, the teenager is loving, I’ve got a friend’s birthday party in the evening, all is well with the world, mostly.

When my energy flags, I look at the things I’ve done and give myself permission to rest.

To be.

“Why is there no food for me on your tray?”
PomPom getting bolder.

10

Final note from cats: Purr.

Xoxo

“Jane”

“Nobody forget this is my house.”

*Learning moment: “I have a lot of those these days” — that’s how you use those/these properly. You’re welcome.

Yelling at strangers and other cautionary tales

1

There’s a terrible commercial Amazon Prime is inflicting on me every time I watch my current binge fave — Bones, based on the books of Kathy Reichs, not unproblematic but decent brain candy for tired evenings — and the result of that commercial is that I will ever ever use Skip the Dishes, so, commercial AND commercial saturation fail.

Have you seen it? It’s the one where an extremely annoying man tells strangers that they “shoulda skipped it.” I think it’s meant to be funny… all I see is a someone being rude and sanctimonious to strangers. Hello, person carrying heavy bag of dog food, person in long grocery line, family in a car full of hungry, exhausted adults and kids  — your life decisions suck, let me mock you for them.

There was a different way of telling that story, selling that product than having an obnoxious dude mansplain my life choices to me.

Badly done, Skip the Dishes.

2

I did recently tell a stranger that he was making terrible life decisions. Yelled, actually. I was in a park on an awkward first date. We were eating ice cream and doing the awkward first date questions (“So what do you like to do for fun?” “Do you have any siblings?” Can I be perfectly honest? I don’t care if you have any siblings until, like, after we’ve know each other for a year and there’s a chance I might meet them. Can we talk about the books we’re reading instead or weird ass conspiracy theories we’ve… oh, you don’t read. Ok. Help.) while in the background a father was verbally abusing his son.

I guess he thought he was educating him. Disciplining him.

Maybe you’d think it was nagging, I don’t know.

I was hearing a barrage of undisciplined, emotionally disregulated, psychologically unsound comments on an eleven year’s old pretty normal, age appropriate — if annoying — behaviour.

I try really hard not to judge people’s parenting. Because parenting is really hard.

And when you see a mom (it’s usually a mom; because, statistics) lose her shit at a playground over some small thing — you don’t know what’s happened before. You don’t know how many times she’s had to redirect, distract, remind. How little sleep she’s had. You don’t know.

So I was trying very hard to not judge the man. And failing.

Because what I was hearing, watching wasn’t someone maybe having a hard day.

It was someone systematically destroying their child’s self.

Out of habit.

And I was just watching.

Until…

“You’re a lost cause!” The man screamed at his son. (His son’s crime was saying he did not want to play at the basketball court, because he did not like the kids who were playing there.)

I did not think.

“Hey, dude. Do you think that’s an okay thing to say to your son?” I yelled. And then I turned to the kid. “I think you’re pretty awesome, kid. I’m picky about who I play with too.”

The man did not acknowledge me. He stalked off. It’s probably just as well: if he had yelled something back, I probably would have lost it more. And hands would have been thrown (and I would have won and ended up in jail). But, let’s be honest: cowards who enjoy destroying children don’t know how to respond to a strong adult’s challenge to their bullying.

The kid looked at me, though. I don’t know what he thought. But I hope he heard me.

Funny thing—I’m not sure I did the right thing.

But it was the only thing I could have done.

Silver lining: my date thought I did the right thing.

Me? I’m not so sure.

3

I’m never sure I’m doing the right thing these days. It’s horrible and I hate it. Most of my life has been very black and white. Clear yes, clear no. Kick-ass executive function. Right, wrong. Act now. No moral ambiguity.

Today, everything is grey — and I can’t even use that metaphor, because a book I dislike ruined it for me. (Yeah, that one. Have you read it? Then you probably understand…)

4

The poet John Keats coined the very uncomfortable but beautiful phrase “negative capability” when he was just 23. (Lucky for us; he was dead at 25.) He defined it as “when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason.”

I recently found out that he had a hard time living in negative capability himself. In a letter to a friend, he wrote:

I am continually running away from the subject — sure this cannot be exactly the case with a complex Mind — one that is imaginative and at the same time careful of its fruits — who would exist partly on sensation partly on thought.

I guess this should reassure me? Maybe? But in my current state, it’s just depressing.

Still. One can strive. He did.

5

But suppose one wants to take a break from striving? And just be?

6

My youngest son is steamrolling through a five-week summer course of grade 11 English. I sit down with him to talk through outlines on Brave New World, Macbeth, then proof his essays and explain all the things teachers apparently no longer teach. Subject-verb-object sentences. Paragraph structure. Building an argument. Why phrasing a sentence like this makes it more powerful — why, if you get lost in your own thoughts and sentences, the simplest hack is to chunk them. Make them short. Use that sweet period. Knowing how to use it is the ultimate writer’s hack.

I’m in awe of how far his writing has come, this kid who didn’t really read until 11, 12 and struggled with writing well into his teens. Now, he can analyze Huxley and Shakespeare. He doesn’t enjoy doing it, mind you. I don’t think he’ll ever come back to these texts after high school. But he can do it. And he’s so proud of his achievements.

As he should be.

As am I.

7

Existing in uncertainty without negative capability makes you really, really resent people who are… sure of themselves, their position, their opinion, their path.

So I feel like maybe I owe a big apology to all the people I encountered during my black and white days. Man, I must have been insufferable. Sorry.

Really, really sorry.

8

Keats’ epitaph on his tombstone reads, “Here lies one whose name was writ in water.” 

He died before he knew he was immortal. 

In another letter, to his fiancee, he writes,

If I should die… I have left no immortal words behind me — nothing to make my friends proud of my memory — but I have loved the principle of beauty in all things, and if I had had the time I would have made myself remembered.

When I die, I will have left behind children who, I hope, know that they were loved. Beyond anything.

I hope.

But also… I would like to leave behind some words.

And not the kind I yell at a stranger at a playground.

9

Have you ever noticed that I like to write these posts in beats of 5,  7 and ideally 10?

Three is the most powerful writing number, but those additional three work very well for longer pieces.

Sometimes, though, the love of structure requires some slightly awkward creative gymnastics.

10

Hungry, I don’t skip it. I look in my refrigerator and scavenge, create a meal out of odds and ends. I eat it while watching Bones, reading Keats and trying to embrace uncertainty. Don’t fight the current. Let it take me… where? I don’t know. I hate it, can’t relax into it.

But I try.

In the end, that must be enough.

xoxo

“Jane”

Soul-searching, writer style

1

“I’m not sure how to examine my soul. I tried to do it by looking in the mirror but it made me feel all queer when I looked for too long. Hav you ever done that? Looked in the mirror and felt all queer?”

Elizabeth George’s character, Hadiyyah, age 8, in Playing for the Ashes

2

I most often examine my soul while looking at my toes.

I’m sitting, on a sofa, the floor, a chair with a footstool, a picnic blanket by the river, legs stretched out in front of me, notebook in my lap. I’m writing — and you’d think that I’d be examining my soul on the page, but no. The true introspection happens when the pen stops moving and I lift my gaze from the page to my toes. Then, the thought, the brief insight, the even briefer, more fragile truth.

On the page, I create my reality, craft and control the story.

Starting at my toes between paragraphs and sentences, I just am.

Most of the time, it’s easier to write.

3

I don’t mean that I lie when I write. But I choose: I choose what to tell, what to omit. Where to assign meaning. Where to deny it.

It’s not therapy but it is a fantastic coping technique.

4

“I’m fine with it and actually, it feels good so long as I don’t think about it too much.”

Me, to you, explaining that not very important thing that doesn’t bother me at all

5

I can write myself into peace. Or into despair, anger.

Most of the time, I choose to write myself into peace.

Sometimes, I let myself write the pain. But not too often.

It doesn’t feel good, you see. So why would I want to choose that?

6

Have I ever told you about my theory that nothing actually exists until someone imagines it? Like, there were no rainbows — or black holes — until a human imagined them them. And then — presto.

The spectrum of light, including indigo.

(Seriously, how take is the colour indigo? Fake.)

Her: Problem: Who imagined the humans?

Jane: Dumb question. The demiurge, obviously.

7

Sometimes, my love and I watch Esoterica together — a vlog about religion, magic and alchemy, hosted by a Jewish scholar — married to a rabbi — who is somehow able to fulfill his curiosity about all things esoteric without losing his faith.

Sometimes, I envy him.

Other times, I think he’s a liar.

8

I look at my toes, but there’s nothing there. This disturbs me; I go back to the page.

9

I think maybe what’s happened is my soul is on vacation. That’s why I can’t find it right now now.

Don’t worry. It will come back.

It usually does.

10

The dog and cat are chilling with me on the balcony. The morning sun feels good on my skin. A human I love sleeps upstairs. A few blocks away, my eldest son is probably still sleeping too, re overing from a 10-day adventure in British Columbia with childhood friends. Some 1000 kilometres across the mountains, the neglected middle child has finished her spring semester and is enjoying a visit from her dad and her youngest sibling.

Maybe there’s a reason my soul is not in my toes.

I close my eyes and let my thoughts touch the tendrils of the souls I love, near and far.

I sigh with contentment.

I write about it.

It’s not a lie.

xoxo

“Jane”.

But see, we’re all doing it all for the first time…

1

Today’s view: a sun-baked Cairo street, which I’m observing from a shady, cool Cairo cafe. I’m drinking Turkish coffee and smoking double apple sheesha as payment for electricity and wifi. The mid-day prayer is on the radio in the background. One of the waiters refreshes my coals, the other unobtrusively prays. The hostess leans against the front door, scrolling through Instagram.

Me, I’m writing, very much at peace, resting after a morning adventure of roaming the back streets of Mohandessin — the neighbourhood where I’m staying — and getting thoroughly lost — then found — in its slanted gird.

I won’t lie — I experienced a flash of panic at one point after my phone died, but oh, the exhilaration when I finally recognized a landmark and found my way back… Not quite as intense as the exhilaration that followed surviving the Blue Hole, but pretty close.

2

Last night, overwhelmed and overstimulated — Cairo is a lot — I open Instagram myself and get lost for a while in friends’ stories and strangers’ reels. The Instagram algorithm is confused or malfunctioning and throws me into Get Z/ young Millennial dating angst.

Get X dating angst exists, of course, but it must be different: We’re older, after all, and we remember (maybe) how to meet people offline and differentiate better between online and IRL. Also, those of us who were looking for the one true love, marriage and children have already done it and we’re now either unhappily married or happily divorced and in a very different place than a twenty-something looking for the one (or to increase their body count) (both laudable goals; no judgement here for either choice).

But maybe not — what do I know. Maybe it’s just me and my crowd and the rest of Gen X is as whiny as these Gen Z influencers. In any event, for me, my own angst at 50 is all professional and creative. As far as my heart goes, I’m at peace. And I really enjoyed dating in my 40s — enjoy it still in my 50s (that still feels so weird, btw, that I’m now in my 50s, how did that happen?).

And from this smug standpoint, I look at the Gen Z and Millennial dating angst — and advice — with amusement and compassion.

3

The Instagram algorithm throws mostly straight cis Gen Z men (I’m trying not to call them boys — they so desperately want to be men) into my feed. It’s not entirely broken so I’m ending seeing mostly dudes who a) are getting laid regularly (Congratulations!) and b) want to unpack toxic masculinity. The enthusiasm with which they offer advice to to other men and to women is… adorable. Yeah, I can’t think of a better word. Adorable.

(But also — is men giving dating advice to women mansplaining? Cause I sort of think it is…)

(But also — why is Instagram not showing me any women giving men dating advice? Cause I know it must be out there.)

(And also… why am I still doom scrolling Instagram? I’m in Egypt. I should be doing Egyptian things. Or Egyptians.)

Their advice to women, btw, boils down to, “Don’t date assholes.”

Their advice to men is, basically, don’t be an asshole.

4

Here’s some unsolicited dating advice from a queer Gen X women with no agenda: Think of dating as both exploring and building on existing connections. Date your friends. Meet your friends’ friends and families. Date your children — by which I mean, put as much effort and creativity into your plans and relationships with them as you would to a new romantic love. Do fun things with fun people, even if you don’t know them very well. Invite people to your home for coffee, for dinner, brunch, movie nights. Meet for work or reading dates in cafes. Go to art galleries and thrift shops as a group of friends.

Invite the strangers you’d like to get to know better to hang out with you and your friends.

Take the pressure off, you know? There’s no stress, no end-game, no agenda. Do fun things with fun people — build community in the process.

There doesn’t have to be an agenda.

There is no end game.

5

During my 2.5 weeks in Egypt, I meet many people, have lovely experiences and stay celibate.

This surprises me at first, because a) I’m very slutty, b) Egyptians are beautiful, and c) I’m here during my bad decision week (i.e., I’m ovulating). But I’m never tempted to escalate things and on reflection, it makes sense. I’m in a constant state of low-grade anxiety and hyper vigilance because everything is new, different, often overwhelming. As a result, my sex drive is suppressed. 

It’s not that I don’t feel safe — but there’s too much to navigate for me to feel sufficiently comfortable to want to get naked with a stranger.

Is that what’s happening with Gen Z? Too much to navigate all the time?

Maybe.

Back home in the wee hours of each morning (Egypt does not sleep), I check in on my kids, debrief with my partner, send photos to my loves and friends.

I feel at peace.

But I’ve already told you that.

6

Aging is weird.

It’s weird in an even more profound way that motherhood is weird.

Think about it — aging.

It’s inevitable.

Everyone gets older, more experienced — more physically fragile — eventually dead.

Everyone who’s older than you has been your age once. 

Everyone gets older.

But for each of us, every year, every stage — every day — is new.

This is the first time that I’ve been here, that I’ve been this me. Almost 51. (Or, as my daughter would frame it, basically dead.)

In a bizarre way — I’m new to me.

Isn’t that kind of weird?

I t feels weird.

Not bad.

Just, you know… new.

7

I finish my coffee, sheesha and writing. Grounded in myself and solitude, I get ready for the afternoon and night’s adventures.

I’m so grateful — for this experience.

For self-awareness. For Loops and low prescription glasses. For this feeling of piece in the midst of chaos.

And I wish I could tell the Gen Zs that it will come to them too, with time, with experience — when they take the pressure off — and they don’t have to go to Cairo to get it (but hey, if the Nile, the desert and the pyramids call you, you should definitely come visit).

Of course, they won’t believe me.

Because they’re doing it all for the first time.

xoxo

“Jane”

Writing is easier with a view

1

In On Writing, Stephen King describes how, after he faced up to his alcoholism, he rearranged his writing room, getting rid of the massive desk that used to dominate it, and replacing it with a smaller one, which sat in a corner of the room, while a couch and armchairs, where his kids could hang out, took centre stage.

It’s been a while since I’ve read On Writing, and the person I lent the book to never returned it so I can’t flip through it to check the details, but I still remember King’s moral in that section: “Life isn’t a support-system for art. It’s the other way around.”

Or, to put it less elegantly: Writing isn’t life. Life is life, and writing is part of it. Writing happens in the middle of life.

You can write anywhere. I can write anywhere: I’ve finished stories in hospital beds and on airplanes. As a professional writer, you would train yourself to write anywhere.

But still.

Writing is easier with a view.

The view isn’t about beauty or distraction. It’s about life — and what life provides for a writer is context. Connection. It reminds you of what what, the why… and the how.

Her: What does that even mean?

Jane: Hush. I know it’s nonsense. But I’m on a roll.

2

I’m in Egypt, sitting on a south-facing balcony in Dahab. Have you heard of Dahab? I hadn’t — it’s basically a resort town in Sinai, nestled between the Red Sea and a mountain range that includes Mount Sinai. Yeah, I’m basically a stone’s throw away from where Moses climbed a mountain to have a chat with a burning bush.

I’m here with a woman I met six years ago on a dating app and who is now a close friend of my heart. People here ask us constantly how we met and the conversation goes something like this:

Them: So how did you two meet?

Her: We met on a dating app. Six years ago.

Them: Oh, wow, I guess it worked out really well!

Me: Um, not really, we did not work very well as lovers.

Them: [Fall silent in confusion]

Us: Hee hee. Any more questions?

Disastrous as lovers, as friends, we are the secret ingredient. Also a little terrifying to the fabric of the universe.

Dahab was made for us.

We don’t really do much. We move from each cafe to beach cafe, drinking Bedouin tea and Turkish coffee, smoking sheesha, eating too much. At the end of each day, we swear we will never eat again. Every morning turns us into liars.  We’re starting to get concerned none of our clothes will fit by the time we get back to Calgary but who can you say no to street mahshi, enthusiastically sold to you on the street by a Bedouin woman with a TikTok account? Or baladi bread that’s made right in front of you and put into your hand scalding hot from the oven?

On the one that day we do do something, we snorkel through the Blue Hole, which boasts the most diver fatalities in the world. I don’t find this out until later — and we’re snorkelling, not diving. Free of this information, I still have the single most terrifying experience of my life.

So much blue. So much space. So much, so much, so much water.

My friend has a life changing experiences, becomes god, realizes she was meant to be a fish.

When we get to the shore, I sit on the steps and cry and shake for 20 minutes in sheer relief that I’m still alive.

She holds me and vibrates with joy.

3

The next day, my view is turquoise water, red sand, entrepreneurial Sinai children, wild German shepherds and the occasional sun burnt Russian tourist. 

I have random thoughts. About generational trauma, childhood imprinting and the freedom stray dogs and cats enjoy — and its price. And how the thing that travel should teach you is that no matter where you go in the world, people are the same: They love their children. They enjoy sharing food with their friends.

They want to be happy.

What travel seems to teach you instead: Tourists are evil. Also, why is it that Western cultures export the worst of themselves — rampant capitalism, conspicuous consumption, so much fucking plastic — to every corner of the world?

Still. In the middle of all of this: People everywhere love their children. Get joy from sharing meals with their friends — and strangers.

Want to be happy.

4

Writing when I’m away from home reminds me how easy it is to write at home. Also, how easy it is to get lazy about tit.

And it also reminds me how lucky I am. Since before I could remember, I’ve had two desires: To be a mother and to be a writer.

I am both.

How lucky am I?

5

It’s only been a day but, back in Cairo, I already miss Dahab. Cairo is beautiful and intense — overwhelming. Dahab, for all of its fantasy-like quality (seriously the blue of the Red Sea looks fake), feels like home.

But I won’t come back.

What I love about Dahab is already being spoilt by development — new mega hotels, new summer homes, everything on a lavish scale. I was lucky enough to get a glimpse of what it was, to still enjoy what it is.

I will not love it five years from now, I know this.

6

My view today is a soccer game on a TV screen in a sheesha cafe in Zamalek. I’m writing, thinking, reading, catching some solitude before joining my friend and her friends for a Cairo Friday night. There will be food and tea, enthusiastic conversations I can’t follow, maybe dancing, maybe Afghani vibes.

Afterwards, exhausted, I will sleep like the dead. Write in the morning.

Think about the discipline I want to bring back to my writing practice when I return home.

Life is not distraction.

It’s context.

It’s source material, an ever-changing view.

xoxo

“Jane”

.

That time nobody heard the tree fall

1

Today, I miss the privacy of public writing.

Not a paradox — if you write publicly but anonymously (or under a pseudonym no one’s yet cracked), you have a freedom that disappears as soon as you’ve outed yourself (or been outed). 

When your public writing is fully attributable — when you are identified in each and every word — you’re more accountable, sure, but also, your writing loses some of its edge.

I know that my first novel — the one that I thought no one would ever read while I was writing it — while in many ways my worst one remains my most honest one.

(Fiction can be honest; good fiction must be honest. You know that.)

I know that my blog can’t touch some topics, because it’s now read by my parents, occasionally kids and day job colleagues. I can’t go there, I won’t go there — you don’t get to know that about me.

So many experiences, ideas, rough drafts never leave my notebooks now.

Sometimes, I censor myself even in my notebooks.

It happens like this: I’m writing, maybe for myself, but suddenly, an audience obtrudes. I’ve written professionally for all of my adult life. It’s second nature for me to write for the reader. And a journal entry or morning pages rant morphs into a proto-blog post, an article. Honesty is replaced by craft, technique. As it should be — honesty without technique is a bad first draft of a confessional poem shared at a pub’s Open Mic.

Technique with compromised honesty though can become a lie.

Sometimes, I want to write — and share  — the truth. 

And I miss the anonymity of the 2009 “Jane” and my other pseudonyms.

2

The opposite argument: If you aren’t willing to sign your name to it, you shouldn’t publish it.

Should you even write it?

3

Younger me — journalist me — pre-romance novelist me — was all about the integrity of the real byline.

Older me has increasingly recognized the need for silence, anonymity, self-protection.

Fragile me, today, thinks art can be anonymous.

Exhausted, overstimulated me, who just wants to write stories and has zero desire to be a YouTube, Instagram TIkTok etc marketer and content self-promoter, is starting to think that art doesn’t even have to be shared.

Make it.

Put it in a drawer.

It exists.

That’s enough.

4

Her: You don’t really believe that.

Jane: It might be a self-protective lie. I don’t know. But it feels like the truth.

5

The force that doesn’t want to keep art in a drawer is ego. Vanity. But it’s so good. But it can help people. But I made it. But isn’t it special?

Can it be special in a drawer? In a notebook?

Fun fact: I never feel much angst over writing as other people. It brings me a lot of pleasure. And the work is still out there.

I know I’m not fully at peace with writing… and not sharing. If I’m not going to share — sell, publish — why am I writing it in the first place?

Seems unprofessional. Self-indulgent.

Story: I want to exist.

Jane: I know. Here you go. You are told, you exist.

Story: Are you going to show me to anyone?

Jane: Not you. Not yet.

Story: Then am I really here?

I know stories don’t have existential angst. Not really.

Do they?

6

Sometimes, I would like to tell you a story without you knowing that I’m the one who made that story.

Sometimes, that’s the only way to tell the full truth.

That’s why so many of our best, most enduring stories are such outrageous fairy tales.

Story: Is that what I am?

Jane: No. You, for now, are a secret. Isn’t that special?

The story does not believe me. But as I haven’t told it to anyone, it doesn’t even exist — so what does it know?

Xoxo

“Jane”

Talent dysmorphia, imposter syndrome, the Dunning Kruger effect and crawling up the slope of enlightenment while crying

i

Me, on every third or fourth Monday morning: Why am I even in this job? Today is the day they find out they made a huge mistake and shouldn’t have hired me. Have I been here long enough to get any kind of severance? Am I ever going to get another job?

Me, on the occasional Tuesday or Wednesday: I’m a f@cking genius, OMG, watch me soar, eat my dust, I win!

Me, the next day: It was a fluke, I’m never, ever going to pull it off again.

Me, last Friday: Why are you thanking me for this? An unethically trained monkey could do this. 

Me, today: Is it ever going to get easier? Seriously, at which point is my Super Ego going to let my Ego consistently feel that it’s competent?

Id: Never. This is why we should never listen to the Super Ego and just do what we want. Ice cream for lunch?

ii

“The worst people often think they’re the best. My dad calls it ‘talent dysmorphia.’”

Jack Danvers, Ted Lasso, Season 3, Episode 5

Does this make talent dysmorphia the opposite of imposter syndrome?

Image Source

iii

One of the most devastating experiences of my life took place after the Calgary flood of 2013. It wasn’t the flood itself — that was awful in its own way, of course — but one of its consequences. One of the volunteers cleaning out our main floor carted out one or two (or five, I don’t remember) boxes of my 1990s and 2000s clippings, newspaper and magazine stories, early manuscripts. They were soaked because I stored most of them in cardboard boxes. And on the ground. I know. Don’t judge. You weren’t planning for a flood either.

I told him to toss them. Sean, who had perhaps a better idea than I did of how important “writing” and “writer” were to my identity, rescued them and spent three weeks drying them out. (This is also why we had such a magnificent divorce. Life hack for divorcing well: Marry a good person, and never forget that they are a good person.)

Most of the clippings were not salvageable. But some were. And I slogged through more than 20 years of my writing, from age 13 onwards, to try to figure out what was worth keeping.

Nothing. It was all crap. Especially the stuff from the 1990s. I wept. Who published and bought this crap? It was terrible. And, OMG, at the time, I thought it was so good. 

Me, 2013: I’m never keeping anything I write ever again.

The Internet: Ha ha.

iv

Ok, some of it wasn’t utter crap. It showed… promise. But most of it was.

Pain.

Him: What you were writing in 1993 should be crap compared to what you were writing in 2013. How do you feel about what you wrote in 2015 now?

Me: Crap. Utter crap. I’m never, ever re-reading that first novel.

Him: Because you’re better now. Right? Wouldn’t it have been awful if, in 2013, you were looking at what you wrote in 1993 and wishing you could write like that now?

Yeah. Ok, that would be way worse.

But the other doesn’t feel that great either.

v

I don’t byline much anymore — it’s mostly ghost or corporate work. And I do a lot of it, so I can’t keep track, really, of what I wrote when. (Or for whom.) Sometimes, this happens:

Me: Ok, that source piece you sent me was brilliant. I basically just rejigged this and this, added this new development, and we can just use it again.

Her: You know you wrote that, right?

Me: What? I did? Let me look at it again.

It’s no longer brilliant; all I see are its flaws.

Id: Jane, baby, repeat after me: We do not listen to the Super Ego.

Me: But Super Ego has such a confident voice…

Image Source

vi

The Dunning Kruger effect, if you’re not familiar, was first described by David Dunning and Justin Kruger in 1999. Dunning and Kruger’s thesis was that people with limited competence overestimate their abilities. Later researchers added the flip side: High performers tend to underestimate their skills.

Adam Grant’s treatment of it in Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know is pretty brilliant:

Image Source

I spend much of my working and creative life in the Valley of Despair. How about you?

vii

Silver lining: On that occasional Tuesday or Wednesday when I know I’ve killed it… I know that I’m so good at what I do because much of the time I think I suck and so I work really, really, really hard to get better.

viii

Typical first date conversation:

Them: So what do you do for work?

Me: I write.

Them: Cool. So what do you do for fun?

Me: I write.

Them: Umm… and what else?

Me: Um… I read about writing. I go to workshops about writing. I teach workshops about writing. Um, and I read lots of fiction and stuff — but that’s also at least in part to study structure and rhythm and to get better at writing.

Ok, I also dance. But sometimes, when I dance, I wish I was writing.

ix

Me, on this Monday: Why am I even here? How many people did I totally snow to get this job? 

Id: I thought we agreed we were not going to listen to Super Ego.

Me: We also agreed we’d never reference Freud again, but here we are.

Id: You need to take a break and write some high class porn. Come on. You know you want to.

Me: I need to write this brief and I’m too stupid to form a single coherent sentence.

Id: Close your eyes. Let me write for a bit. I have some ideas.

Me: Fine. I’ll be here on the floor crying.

A couple of hours later:

Me: This is not terrible.

Id: I win! Now let’s go have cake. And oh, oh, oh, I have the best idea for a story. Remember that asexual you dated until you found out she did 60 to 80 Tinder hook ups a year?

Me: She also liked spiders. I mean, she really, really liked spiders. And, she was a dentist. She really liked being a dentist…

Id: Can we write that story? Does she keep spiders in her office at work? OMG, yes she does, that’s how she decompresses between patients: She goes into her office and plays with her tarantula. And then one day, the spider gets away and…

Super Ego: We need to work on the brief.

Id: I’m writing the slutty asexual who loves spiders story.

Me: Talk amongst yourselves. I’ll be on the floor crying.

Ego: Hello? Anyone even aware that I’m here?

Id, Me and Super Ego: Shut up!

Image Credit: Julian Schultz, UnSplash

x

My back, eyes and brain all kind of hurt, so I’m lying on my belly on the office floor, not working on the slutty asexual who loves spiders story (but, actually, it’s not a bad idea, I should totally write that story one day).

Colleague walking by with a visitor: And that’s Jane. Never mind her, she’s a genius. The rest of us use desks like normal people.

For about five seconds, I believe it. Genius. Juice.

That’s all it takes to finish the damned brief.

Id: Can we write my story now?

Soon, baby. Soon.

xoxo

“Jane”

The gift of creative practice

i

The thing about being an artist, a creator, a maker – you’re never really alone.

What a gift that is. A quiet moment, a lull, a boring party, your friend 20 minutes late for a coffee meet. A notebook, your sketchbook, the laptop. A few minutes for your creative practice. Don’t doom scroll. Describe the cafe. Imagine a backstory for  the person at the next table. 

Write a bad poem.

(All first drafts are your worst drafts, they’re supposed to be bad.)

ii

I’m too literal to be a poet. I write to be grounded. I like words and sentences to be unambiguous. Clear.

But here’s the thing – even the most unambiguous phrase is open to interpretation.

Even the most clear-cut sentence needs to make room for the reader’s reaction.

iii

We come back from the poetry reading full of thoughts about self-confessional poetry. You blame Sylvia Plath. I love Sylvia Plath – but I dislike, with passion bordering on hate, amateur self-confessional poetry.

It needs a ruthless editor. It’s too much about the poet – it has no room for me.

And I, like all readers – all people – am at my core a narcissist.

Why is that poem about you and not about me?

iv

You want to make art. Make art. Dream big.

But start small. In those unexpected spaces. Listening to a poem that doesn’t engage me, I start playing with an idea that does. I wish I had a notebook – why didn’t I bring my notebook?

I commit the idea to memory, anchor it to the moment. It will be there, waiting for me, the next time I have a lull.

v

I try to explain lulls to the “aspiring” writer who doesn’t have time to write.

I show her how much she can write in five minutes. Fifteen.

Her: I can’t do that.

Jane: Practice.

vi

Nobody wants to practice.

vii

I practice in the morning with my Morning Pages. They’re messy and chaotic, whiny and often bad. They’re not art. But they’re preparation for art. They’re part of my practice.

viii

Upstairs, my son is sewing. I hear the intermittent hum of the sewing machine. A short pause. A long pause. I smile. There’s a maker upstairs, practicing. Creating.

ix

It took me a while, as a writer, to recognize that my children – my sons specifically – create in different ways. One cooks. Designs on a 3-D printer. Daydreams about tattoos. 

The other hot-glue gunned and taped… everything. Now, he sews. 

Different technique.

Same end goal.

To make something, create something out of the flotsam and jetsam of life.

Desire, dreams, ideas given form.

What a gift.

x

The sewing machine whirrs. I write. 

My son and I are together and alone, but not.

We practice.

I’m full of gratitude for the gift.

xoxo

“Jane”

Time travel

Monday

It’s a travel day, and I’m at the airport by 5:30 a.m., on the airplane before 7. The plane is half-empty, which never seems to happen these days, and it’s glorious. There’s nobody next to me and I sprawl. Glorious.

I take the awkward “on the plane but no laptops” time to read a Simon Brett book – one of his newer ones, Guilt at the Garage, in which the 79-year-old male author’s heroines are mid-50s women. Neither Carole nor Jude are as attractive and fun as Charles Paris – the alcoholic, womanizing, often out of work actor who made Brett famous in the 1980s – but they’re fairly real. The Paris books are maybe politically incorrect now, as is Brett’s Mrs. Pargeter series (in which he writes a late 60s/early 70s heroine, and I don’t think he does this particularly well, but the series has other redeeming features, so I’ve devoured it all anyway). But as stories, as novels – they’re better. This makes me sad, because as a writer who’s occasionally achy in my bones and who sees the spectre of old age creep ever closer – and the possibility of that breakthrough novel creep ever farther – I don’t like evidence that suggests we reach our peak in our 30s or 40s.

Still. Brett is still writing. As am I.

Turbulence is nil so I open up my laptop 35,000 feet above the ground. Ever stop and think how crazy that is? Here, in this crazy time, in this crazy moment, I am in a metal tube above the clouds, hurtling around the globe at 850 km per hour, and while I’m doing this – I’m pulling out my laptop and working. 

I have a couple of workshops to facilitate on my whirlwind trip, and speaking notes for a big event to finalize before the end of day. I’m working on them while sitting in a pretty comfortable seat (thank you, Porter Airlines, please don’t go out of business), flight attendants intermittently bringing me coffee and cookies.

I feel so lucky.

The previous Friday

I’m, I suppose, a seasoned traveller. I’ve spent my childhood on planes. I pack light and I pack quickly. For my Monday morning flight, I pack as soon as I finish Friday’s laundry.

I want to treat myself to a work-free flight, so I start the day aiming to finish all the things before I log off for the day. But I hit my usual afternoon wall of brain fog. I know I have two hours, less, of work left. But it’s two hours of how I function in the morning or early afternoon, not the way I function in the late afternoon or evening. I can finish my work today. But it will mean working until 8 p.m. Maybe 9.

I log off, walk the dog, get Ender a sewing machine, feed the progeny, dress up, go dance with the Hot Dyke Party at the High Performance Rodeo.

I will work on the plane on Monday. I’m so, so lucky.

Earlier that month

It’s not a good day. Focus is hard and loving people is hard. Remembering people exist is hard. My work feels meaningless, the cats shed too much, there’s nothing good to eat in the house, I want a cookie, you’re not here, I want to cry, I can’t write.

Well. I can always write. I can’t write well.

I pull out a notebook and I write badly.

I switch to the laptop and I write some more. Maybe a little less badly. Hard to tell.

Ok, that part, that was actually ok. More like that.

Deep breath. One more scene? No. I’m tapped. I haven’t hit the wall yet but I see it. Today, I can’t deal with the impact.

There’s still nothing good to eat in the house and I still want a cookie. I eat some uninspired leftovers for an undefined mid-afternoon meal and promise to take myself out for dessert in the evening.

Maybe that Thursday, or the one before

She’s also a Simon Brett fan, and she also thinks Charles Paris is the best character Brett has created, although she also likes the de-cluttering series and its heroine, Ellen Curtis. I don’t – Brett tackles mental health issues in that one, and while he does so sensitively enough, I suppose, he doesn’t do it well. It’s all so contrived. And he may well be writing from the heart and from personal experience, I don’t know. I’m reading from the heart and painful personal experience too. It doesn’t ring true.

That’s the challenge of all writing: Can I dip into my darkness and make it real for you?

It’s pretty easy to do with joy. Joy, ecstasy – we can connect on those with almost anyone.

Grief, pain, horror?

We all think we suffer alone, our suffering is unique.

And even though it isn’t, that’s the way it feels. Always.

Sunday afternoon

I pick you up from the airport, and you’re my cookie and my dessert, and the wave of happiness that hits me almost drowns me, I can’t breathe.

(See? Everyone can relate to that. You can celebrate with me. Grieving together, that’s much harder.)

We stop at my house to check on Ender, who is on his third day to becoming a master sewer. I’m astounded by the progress he’s made since we got him the sewing machine on Friday. He’s made, like, pants. Also a toque. But pants! Three pairs – the last one is, he decides, wearable.

Children are astounding.

I look at this human who came out of me – seriously, how weird is this, I grew that thing, I literally made him inside my body and now there he is, coming up on 6 foot 2 and making pants on a sewing machine, how is that possible, how is that real, how is that life?

I feel so lucky.

I hold you tight.

Tomorrow and the day after

I have meetings, workshops, dinners, a full agenda. I’m 3500 kilometres from home and 4200 kilometres away from Flora – this always matters, from Calgary I can be in Vancouver within two hours if I need to be, from Toronto, it’s a harder, longer trip.

I anchor on the page every morning. Good morning and good night texts. Do you have a few minutes to talk? Maybe.

I try to remember that I’m so lucky. I’m here and you’re there and we can still talk. And I’ll be back soon.

In the evenings, after dinner, I curl up on the hotel room bed and pull out the laptop.

I write.

I’m so tired.

xoxo

“Jane”

I’m so lucky.

Working through decision fatigue, maybe

The diagnosis, I think, is decision fatigue. Forgive me — I’m jumping into the story in the middle but this is where it gets interesting. I need to decide a few things: What to make for supper tomorrow, what groceries to order, whether I want to go on a group trip to Egypt in the April, whether I’ll sign up for a dance class that starts, um, when, next Tuesday? 

None of these is a life or death decision. Or even that important. Only one is expensive (I’d be paying for Egypt with imaginary or future money, never a good idea).

I can’t make myself to make any of these decisions. I try. I can’t. Paralyzed. Left or right—I’m walking the dog and I pause at the intersection, frozen. I agonize. What’s the right direction? What are the consequences of choosing the wrong one?

Decision fatigue, obviously.

I know the cause, of course — pandemic hangover. Do you remember all those agonizing daily decisions? What to do, what not to do, who to breathe on? I think I’ve used up my life’s quote bak then. Also, I know: divorce, buying a house, career pivot (then another one, I probably need to rest a bit before I make any other decisions.

Unfortunately, life keeps on demanding I make them. The boys need to eat supper tomorrow and that means I need to decide what I’m making them and decide which groceries to order and…

But also, should I take that dance class?

You know what the worst thing about being a full grown and then some adult is? You realize that the people who runt he world — they’re just like you. Moody, petty, insecure, confused, anxious, exhausted, hangry, all the things.

And they set economic and social policy. And have armies and bombs.

Speaking of bombs — Egypt? What do you think? I want to go to Egypt, of course but I want to see it through my love’s eyes not on a group trip but also what a great opportunity but also, maybe the last chance because the world is scary but also group trip and I hate people right now and I don’t know most of these people suppose they are really annoying but also, if I don’t go, will I always regret it?

Yes. I should go. Go. Just GO. It will be amazing and if it’ snot, well, it will still be an experience. 

(Past me loved experiences.)

(Present me just wants security and safety.)

(I don’t really want to be present me.)

Egypt. Dance class, Groceries. Do it.

(It’s easier not to.)

Actually, that’s a lie. It’s excruciatingly hard to NOT make decisions. Excruciatingly. It’s exhausting.

Make the decisions. Move on.

(Can I hide in my pillow fort instead?)

Ok. I can do this. 

Egypt. 

Dance class.

Groceries.

Pickle soup and toast.

Done.

Xxoxo

“Jane”

January Blues, or 68 days until Equinox

January Blues and I don’t want to leave the house and do anything and the thing is, neither do you, so when I finally make the supreme effort and say, hey, you want to go do this thing and you say no, I want to die because I wasted all that energy I didn’t have on a rejection. January Blues and everything is dark again — the brief promise of Solstice that the nights are getting shorter seems like a lie, it’s still so dark.

Ok, it’s not so bad. Especially not in the afternoon, facing south, when there are no clouds…

Life is not so bad, even when there are clouds.

Life is pretty good.

Being alive is better than the alternative — most of the time.

The world is going to hell in a handbasket — who’s carrying the handbasket, by the way, and why a handbasket, and what is the origin of that expression, I want to know — but in my little corner of it, everything is ok.

Except it’s still dark and I want to hibernate.

Can you give me permission to spend January in a pillow fort?

Or in Cuba?

You: You could give yourself permission to do that.

Jane: We both know I won’t.

January Blues and a commitment to self to not cancel plans — very hard — I deal with it by avoiding making plans in the first place but also, if you ask, I’ll say yes, even though I don’t want to, because leaving the house is not a bad thing and being around other people is a good reminder that the outside world exists and that spring will come, eventually. (They all seem to think so.)

But also, it’s hard and noisy and I want my pillow fort. Why did I say I’d go to that party?

You: You could not go.

Jane: I said I’d go. I can’t cancel.

When you start cancelling plans, the world ends. True story. I refer you to March 2020.

Looking at the colour spectrum and wondering how much effort it would take to create January Yellows. I’d need to get through the Greens first, though, how is that possible?

Possible, if one is in Cuba.

I dream about Cuba.

I remind myself that life in Cuba s actually very hard. The socialist paradise does not exist.

I still dream.

January blues, but actually, not as bad last year or the year before. I can tell by March, I’ll be back to baseline. I buy red and yellow flowers for my sunny house, I wear bright clothes, I eat dessert.

January Blues but, hey, we’re a third through the month and then it will be February Slushies and then March Muddies but then April Yellows and May Greens.

I got this. You got this? We got this…

68 days until Equinox.

xoxo

“Jane”

PS According to the Grammarist.com, the earliest known documented usage of “going to hell in a handbasket” dates back to 1682:

“…that noise of a Popish Plot was nothing in the world but an intrigue of the Whigs to destroy the Kings best Friends, and the Devil fetch me to Hell in a Hand basket, if I might have my will, there should not be one Fanatical Dog left alive in the three Kingdoms.”

This discredits the common origin story that during the French Revolution’s Great Terror, when the bodies of aristocrats and enemies of the revolution were separated from their heads via the guillotine, their heads fell into handbaskets and also answers my question as to who is carrying the handbasket — the Devil, obviously (but also, why handbasket and not just basket?).

The unbearable pretension of writing about not writing

i

I’m sitting down with Julia Cameron at the end of an introspective day. Julia writes:

Creativity is a spiral path; we pass through the same issues over and over again at slightly differing altitudes. I have written twenty books, some more easily than others. My own perfectionism is not banished, just disguised. Now I call it “having standards.”

I recently threw away two hundred pages of work, judging it as simply “not good enough.” Perhaps with more patience, the work could have been improved. Perhaps with more self-forgiveness, the work could have been seen as promising. But perfectionism is not patient, not self-forgiving. 

…

Perfectionism doesn’t believe in practice shots. It doesn’t believe in improvement. Perfectionism has never heard that anything worth doing is worth doing badly – and that if we allow ourselves to do something badly we might in time begin quite good at it.

I feel I’m writing badly these days. Everything is pedestrian, flat, uninspired. I’m practicing – but am I practicing bad habits? I’m writing – but to what purpose? My mind feels fuzzy, my heart heavy, my body heavier. I am bone tired, broken. The words on the screen are dead, my career as a novelist is dead – why do I bother?

Then, suddenly – a hit of clarity. Sharp lines. Focus. A sentence. A sprint. A blessed moment of relief… Lost. Fuzzy again.

But I remember the clarity. I think I’ll find it again.

ii

I think. I don’t know. A decade ago, I probably could have written, “I know I’ll find it again.” Today, I doubt. As I read through Julia Cameron’s Finding Water, I feel Julia and I are working through the same dark valley. 

She’s telling me to trust. And also, to play more. Isn’t she?

iii

I’m back to work after an almost two-week break from all the jobs, two weeks of resting, reading, celebrating, parenting. Playing, too: I danced, I hosted, I laughed. I consciously and conscientiously did not work or write – beyond my morning pages – and I did not think about working (but I did think a fair bit about writing).

My work day is slow – no meetings, few interruptions, plenty of time to think and ground myself. It feels like an unproductive day. I have to remind myself that days like this are both a critical part of the process – and a gift from the heavens.

Take it. Think. Stare off into space and let the source material marinate. Creativity happens at the margins, at intersections. It needs quiet days.

iv

I’ve been sabotaging my quiet days for several years now. Today the temptation is strong. I resist. I know what I have to do. And it’s not write more, do more. It’s just this: Sit in this space for a little bit. Write a little, think a little. Rest. Read a few pages of my book. Write a few lines in the process journal.

I have a short story that I’m working on – well, thinking about working on, let’s be honest – so that I can make myself finish something that’s 10,000 words instead of 100,000 words. It’s unsellable but maybe an anthology will come around that it works for. Or I can throw it on Kindle Unlimited to compete with all the AI generated crap. The thoughts come: What’s the point? I don’t want to compete with robots if humans can’t tell the difference.

I push them away. I don’t have to publish. I don’t have to sell. I just need to finish.

Step one to finishing: Start.

v

I start. Well, I started a week or three ago. The plot exists on 15 sticky notes and I have one roughly drafted scene. The idea is good. My execution is awful. I have two options. Option 1: Plod through the awful execution and see if it gets any better. Option 2: Take a step back and see if the idea needs more marinating – more thinking – before I resume plodding and hope the plodding turns into flight.

When you don’t have a contract or a deadline, you can choose Option 2.

Unfortunately, choosing Option 2 looks and feels like inaction.

Even when it’s the right thing to do.

vi

I delay choice, which is another kind of inaction, and deal with the resulting ache by writing about not writing. The words are flat, uninspired. I put them on the page – but to what purpose?

“Because writers write,” Julia says (writes) and I hate her.

Then, suddenly – a hit of clarity. One strong line, so sharp (did you catch it?) – an anchor. I build around it. Relief.

“Not good enough, not what you should be doing,” whisper the demons.

Silence. I’m doing. It’s enough.

xoxo

“Jane”

Enjoy the silence?

i

The dark, by all the calendars, is on the retreat now. The nights are getting shorter and the days longer, even though we cannot see it yet. Every day, a few more minutes of sunlight. Less than three months until the Equinox. We haven’t made it yet, but it’s possible to think we will make it. 

Probably.

The holidays are over — New Year’s Eve isn’t a holy day as such, is it, there’s less pain and pressure around it. My body is stepping out of holiday stress and focusing on its season of pain. The shift comes, as it does every year (why can I not remember this): the pain isn’t pleasant, of course, but the suffering has an edge of both clarity and acceptance. This is what is, this is what matters.

What matters, when I have this clarity, always boils down to two things:

1. Are the children well, safe, secure — thriving?

2. Am I writing?

After that, things can get confusing and messy, fluid. It doesn’t matter. No life needs a dozen North Stars. Two can be too much, cause sufficient conflict.

ii

It’s a lazy holiday morning and we sleep in, you more than me. When you wake up and we begin our shared day, you ask what I’ve been up to. I tell you.

“You’ve had a whole adventure while I slept.”

You exaggerate, but I know what you mean. I woke up. I wrote my Morning Pages. Then I prepped breakfast, I had a long, long (hard-earned, but that’s another story) bath, I Duolinged, I read my book, I checked in on the children, I invited friends to a gathering, I tidied. I read again.

I didn’t get lost in Instagram reels or online shopping for lovers, ever-present dangers.

“I started with Morning Pages,” I tell you. “When I do my foundation, everything else flows.”

Not 100% true. But true on this day.

Beginning the day on the page is a writer’s prayer, meditation. Unlike Julia Cameron, who introduced me (and half the world) to Morning Pages in The Artist’s Way, I don’t think Morning Pages are a panacea for all and sundry. But they work for people like me — writers, story tellers, people with busy, expressive minds. Prayer, meditation, running, exercises or even a ritualized hot breakfast may fill the same role for others.

They are the foundation on which I build the rest of my day. First, the Morning Pages, then, everything else — pleasure or work. Whenever I skip the Morning Pages and jump straight into work or play, I am unmoored for the rest of the day.

Unmoored, despite knowing what I need, I don’t give it to myself later in the day. I know writing for a while would give m the anchor I need — but if I haven’t done it first, I do not give myself the time to ground myself on the page later.

(In my first draft, I write: “I don’t find the time.” But time is not lost. It’s there. All round us. It’s not a question of finding it, is it? It’s a question of giving it — to ourselves, to our writing practice — or to exercise, to whatever it is that we know we need.)

Unmoored, I don’t give myself the time.

I get lost in Instagram reels instead.

iii

I don’t make New Year’s resolutions but I like the opportunity each new year, each first of each month, each Monday for that matter, offers for reflection and action. 

The clarity that comes with the pain that walks with me this time of year tells me I need more silence.

For the past few years, I’ve needed to fill the silence — with audiobooks and cat videos and commitments and people. No guilt or shame about it (ok, maybe a little — the guilt is ever-present). I needed it. I did it, I’m here.

But I know creative work — good creative work — needs silence.

So in 2025, I need to turn down the volume.

I’m scared. Silence isn’t actually silent. It’s full of voices. 

I’m not sure I’m ready.

But I’ll try.

And if I need Rex Stout or Simon Brett to help me fall asleep or just not think in the middle of the night, I’ll use them.

But I’ll try to use them less.

Instagram reels, however, I think I can eliminate in their entirety,

Wish me luck.

iv

On Solstice, at a writer friend’s artsy, witchy house, we write down what we want to let go of in 2025 and what we want to seed, and then burn our intentions. (Of course we burn them, how else will they reach the gods we don’t believe in?)

I want to let go of guilt — I feel so much guilt right now, in so many different forms, including guilt of not having published or finished a stand-alone work for more than four years now.

What I want to seed is private and complicated. As I’m about to burn it, I realize that in a very full articulation of what I want, I don’t touch on writing. At all. Should I have? (Guilt.) I take my pen back to the page, hesitate.

I add, “I have not written anything about writing here. What does that mean?”

(Guilt.)

I burn the intention. I carry the guilt home with me. I tell you about it in the night.

You suggest writing is such a core part of my life, of who I am and what I do, that I didn’t need to create an intention around it.

But shouldn’t I want to write — or at least finish — another book? Isn’t it time?

Guilt.

Well. Letting go of things is a process.

v

The holidays are over but the New Year is not yet here, and we’re in that in-between time during which, if you don’t have to work, time loses all meaning. My past self is bleeding and in medically-assisted denial. The ER doctor has sent me home. “Wait and see.” When I come back, it will be too late but I don’t know that yet. I wait and see.

My present self feels her pain, fear — guilt. Can’t quite turn it into art, not today. But I also know that she has done so in the past — I have done so in the past. Repeatedly. This is the pain I tap into every time I craft the Dark Moment, every time I make you cry with a story.

Today, though, I can’t craft fictional Dark Moments. But, I write. Morning Pages first. Straight from that into this, an exercise in short-form creativity, a reminder that something doesn’t need to be 100,000 words long before it’s finished. Then, a pause for exercise, which I don’t particularly want to do but I need to do. Ok. Done. Now some time with Julia Cameron — I’m working my way through Finding Water: The Art of Perseverance. It helps.

Next, check in on the kids. The eldest is working, the younger two recovering from Christmas. Do they need me? They’re not sure. We might go to the mountains or thrift store hunting. Or just chill , separately or together. I don’t mind the uncertainty — I have written , I’m at peace, I can take whatever the day throws at me. 

I can even, today, do nothing. Spend a little bit of time in uncomfortable silence. Remember how to tune out the worst of the demons that eat me and tune into the deep voices that feed me.

I will try.

The dark is receding. I will try.

xoxo

“Jane”

Chaos in the cutlery drawer

i

“I’m out of spoons.”

“Let me check my social battery.”

“My ADHD brain…”

“It’s triggering my trauma.”

“In this economy?”

“Am I the only one who thinks…”

No. No, you’re not the only who thinks that. You’ve used a cliche to introduce a cliche. Stop talking. Stop. No more words. No more memes. No more noise.

Sorry. I shouldn’t be writing this post. You don’t solve the problem by being a semi-regular part of it.

I’ll say less, I promise. Match me?

Or at least… introduce a cliche-check into your language? Can you do that?

No. No, you can’t.

ii

The thing about cliches is that they have great origin stories. They become cliches because they hit that sweet spot, ya? They do a good job of describing a situation. Although, honestly, how that spoons thing caught on I don’t know. I love me a good metaphor, but why spoons? Who walks around with a jar or pocket of spoons? I have never, ever had an extra spoon, never mind a surfeit of spoons. Nor have I ever given my extra spoons to anyone. But ok, once upon a time, the phrase was useful. Now? I hear it seven times a day. 

(Hey, is this meta: I have no spoons for dealing with your overuse of ‘I’m out of spoons.’”)

(Mmm, not meta, just obnoxious. Sorry, not-sorry, joking not even a little bit.)

iii

I’m complaining because I like words and I like conversation. And while cliches, like tropes, are useful shortcuts, they make for bad conversations.

My social battery needs good conversation. Doesn’t yours?

“Cold enough for you?”

iv

The difference between a professional and an amateur is that an amateur thinks it has to be perfect. A professional knows it needs to be done. 

The difference between a professional writer and an aspiring one is that the professional knows a first draft has to be edited. Maybe seven times. The amateur can’t tell what’s wrong with their cliche-ridden first draft.

Cliches are unavoidable in first drafts. They’re easy. They creep in.

Purge them. You want to be a professional, don’t you?

Especially in this economy.

v

“This post is triggering my trauma.” It’s not, actually. It’s annoying you because I’m being obnoxious. Your negative reaction to this post and to that other bad thing that happened today? They’re just shitty moments in an average day. Or maybe even in a really bad day.

But traumatic?

Could we save that word for, you know, the actually truly, really, impactfully bad stuff?

And trigger… Want to give me a Christmas present, do this — go a whole day without using that word. Just try it.

It just might change your life.

vi

I’m not having a good work day and I don’t want to write or Duolingo so I take a break to doom scroll through Instagram. Mistake — the cliches bombard me and wreck the little bounce my brain had.

“Am I the only one…”

No! You’re one of millions, billions.

vii

“Wow, that must have been one traumatizing doom scroll session.”

Kill me. Kill me now. Scoop my heart out with a spork. What, you can’t? Ah. You’re out of forks and spoons. Too bad.

viii

Back to those spoons you don’t have — I’m sorry. Life is hard and talking is hard and words are hard. I get that you may not have spoons etc etc and the path of least resistance and all of that and I didn’t mean to (gag) traumatize you or invalidate your attachment to your phrase of choice.

The thing is, though, when we talk in cliches, we distance ourselves both from others and from ourselves.

We isolate ourselves. Become islands. (No man is, but actually, so many people are…)

I’m not saying using cliches is traumatizing (it is bad writing though).

I’m saying that it prevents us from having real conversations — with each other and with ourselves.

Also, I’d rather stab myself in an eye with a fork than have another conversation about metaphoric utensils.

If you don’t want to have real conversations — well, at least invent a new cliche.

Yes, in this economy.

xoxo

Cranky Jane

PS Clever or just mean? Sometimes, it’s hard to tell the difference…

Photo by Barb Landro on Pexels.com

Tis the season to sit with the pain

i

It’s December, the month in which my body remembers the loss of a child I never knew, never held and I don’t want to write about it, except to say all month, my body anticipates the loss and my mind can’t do anything about it. It’s worst between December 24 — the day I started bleeding — and December 29 — the night it was all over — that’s when I spiral and the world ends.

I physically anticipate the spiral all month.

Funny thing (well, not funny, but kind of interesting?) — this happened for almost 15 years without me knowing what was happening. My big epiphany — Oh, wow, this is why I now hate Christmas — which was triggered any another awful thing that happened in December, why do so many awful things happen in December — didn’t help or fix anything. The spiral is still there, pain on a scale to which only one thing compares — and hey, that’s another awful thing that happened at Christmas too. 

Point: Knowing the root cause doesn’t actually fix anything. 

Second point: I hate Christmas.

ii

Making this Christmas worse is the unlovely fact that I basically have no relationship with my father right now nor any hope of resurrecting it. We will all be together for Christmas Eve of course, because I don’t want to ruin a tradition they value and enjoy for my children. It will be awful because I have no masking bandwidth left. And I don’t want to write about that either, except for this: Children, however old they are, do not love parents unconditionally. They do not forgive everything.

Nor should they.

iii

Joyous feelings for Tis the Season to be Jolly, but here’s the thing, kittens, it’s not such a jolly season for many people, right?

It’s often a very difficult season. Also, in this hemisphere, it’s cold and dark and gross.

January, please hurry, December has also lasted too long.

iv

Sometimes — usually in September and October — I get fired up about crafting new Christmas traditions that hold space for my pain and encompass the beauty and complexity of my life. But then, the dark comes and all I can do is get through it — and give my kids a good Christmas.

Pain.

V

Advent calendars are delivered. The tree is up. Most of the shopping done — let’s not talk about the crass commercialism of the not-so-holy day.

But mostly, pain.

Vi

I don’t know where to find the joy this year. Not that there isn’t joy — there is much joy in my life. It’s all around me (you knew a Love Actually reference was coming, right? Here it is). But maybe, in December, I don’t have to. Maybe this is just my month to mope and suffer, walk with the dark in the dark.

And maybe January (let’s be honest, March) can be the re-emergence, the re-birth,

Maybe. Let’s do it like that this year.

Honour the pain.

Xoxo

“Jane”

And again with the existential angst

i

This is why people talk about the weather, I say, wiping my eyes.

I much prefer these conversations, you say, kissing my years.

Theoretically, so do I. Except when they hurt this much.

I can’t quite remember how we got to existential angst — except that all paths seem to lead there these days. Do you remember how we got here? You mentioned human trafficking and I talked about idiosyncratic causes — and cause fatigue, so many things to do battle for, what do you choose — my lack of the activism gene — I know there’s no such thing, one of my few brags is that I know how genes work, still, it’s a useful turn of phrase, I don’t think I have the activism gene — we inevitably went to end-stage capitalism, my brief (oh so brief) sting with an Antifa cell (don’t ask and don’t start a dossier on me, it was pathetic), your attempts to redirect my tears by talking about how small actions touch people, transform them, make life better for them, and surely that’s enough, that matters (but nothing matters and if nothing matters why does this matter) and then my navel-gaze, clumsily articulated, statement that I used to believe that the best way to make an impact on the world, to shape it, in however a small way, most effectively was to live the life we wanted to live.

And I lived that life — I lived in cooperative housing so my family would have community and housing security without me having the chain of a mortgage wound around my throat, I freelanced so that I would have the freedom — I choose the word freedom, not ability, consciously — to be my children’s primary caregiver and also not be dependent on any one employer (or any one person). I attachment parented and homeschooled my not-quite-neurotypical brood while paying rent and getting food on the table writing and it was a really good life.

No regrets about the past really — but regrets about this: What did it accomplish, really? It ended and now I have a mortgage. Children in school. A Monday-to-Friday, 9-to-5 (sort of) job-job.

I’m just like everyone else, I’m living the life I never wanted — in many ways, a life that feels out of synch with my core values.

I sold out. (And, if you think about it, not for very much either — for housing security. The end.)

Cue the tears, cue the existential angst.

ii

My eldest, who, to be painfully honest with you, has told me that he wishes he hadn’t been homeschooled because school would have “taken the rough edges off” his weirdness (I prefer the word uniqueness) (also, I don’t know how he thinks he would have survived school, especially the elementary school years, but, ok) (also, he’s not weird, he’s pretty much exactly like me — does he think I’m weird??).

And he thinks I homeschooled them all because of ego.

I suppose it’s true in so far as I thought I could do better than a random teacher with a class of 30-40 kids in a system I consider highly flawed. And it’s true that my angst right now is about ego. The path less travelled etc etc and at the end of it, what do I have to show for it? Long forgotten articles, books no one reads and that failed to pay the rent, a child who wishes I had made other choices — another who’s absolutely thriving in said highly flawed system, indicating he’d probably have thrived in it from day — how exactly have I changed the world, their lives, anything, by those early hard choices?

God knows I’m not changing it. Mortgage. Job. All the usual dependencies, restraints.

It is ego. Who am I, after all, to have these delusional ambitions?

An insignificant speck of dust on an insignificant planet in an insignificant universe.

You counter by pointing, again, to my children and repeating that it is the “peopling” that matters. The lives we touch, the children we raise, the people we help. True enough but not enough, you know? Especially when you feel that everything around you is on fire. During the prairie summers these days, literally.

iii

I try to bring myself back from the angst and the tears to the positive. I gave my children the childhood I thought would serve them best for as long as I could. I gave them love and security and freedom to be themselves, to find themselves. I supported my family — and myself — by writing for a living since I’ve been 17. Isn’t that something, isn’t that worth something?

You see all those “I” sentences above? Yeah. It is all about ego. My ego does not want to be unimportant, unnecessary.

And we know what the solution to that is, don’t we?

I really hate it when life throws up evidence that the Buddhists are right.

iv

I’m sitting in the sunlight-flooded living room of the beautiful townhouse I own via an extortionate mortgage that I could afford because of a Monday-to-Friday, 9-to-5 (sort of) job-job in which I’m still earning my living writing (and thinking, which is harder) and in which I do have an opportunity to touch people’s lives and hearts and make a difference. I start my days writing from the heart, I spend the day with lovely people writing from the mind. Sometimes, I write again from the heart in the afternoon and one or two evenings a week, I help people who want to write bring their stories to life.

And stories matter.

Even if I don’t.

v

There are still tears as I write and this time you’re not there to kiss them away. I’m not sure I’ve solved anything for myself. I have not dissolved the ego, I have not forgiven myself, I have no arrived at peace — or even glimpsed the way to peace.

But I remember that there are three children in the world who know that they are loved and that I’m there to drive them to school, work or the ER when they need me, no matter how bad the roads are. And that I always have snacks for them. And if I squint really hard into the past, there have been one or two articles in the past that shaped public policy and public opinion. And while my books don’t change the world, they do give their handful of readers pleasure. And maybe, occasionally, point the way to freedom.

Take that, ego, and be satisfied. Let me lead an ordinary life.

With fewer tears.

xoxo

“Jane”

PS The writing instructor’s notes to self: Bad headline, too may run-on sentences, chaotic structure. The CTA doesn’t really follow from the lead. Rewrite, tighten up and ramp up the positivity to give the reader something beyond your teary navel to focus on. Don’t hit publish until you do. What are you doing? Why are you hovering over that damn publish button.

Jane: Sometimes, the revolution/reframing starts sharing the shitty first draft from the heart. 😉