wordless wednesday::hallow’s eve

hallow's eve

me time.

Steve and I are were chatting the other day and he casually said something like “well, we both get the same amount of downtime every day” to which I snorted. Or maybe said “ha!”. The conversation went something like this:

Steve: “What? We do.”
Me: “yeah, no. We don’t.”
“Once the kids are in bed, it’s our time”
“Once the kids are in bed, I am still folding laundry, tidying the house, doing dishes, etc, etc. I’m still working.”
“well, you need to make more me time.”
“True.”

And that is true. I am terrible at demanding Amber time. Then I started to think about it, really think about it. In that same conversation Steve mentioned how I had skipped several boxercise classes (my current exercise of choice) indicating that I needed to make that me time a priority. Right. I shouldn’t skip my exercise times, I absolutely agree 100%. Except you know what? The first one that I missed was because Steve forgot. I was ready to go, I had dinner on the table, had pre-washed every dish I could pre-wash. The house was clean*, but he didn’t walk through the door until after 6 and you can’t really show up half an hour late to boxercise class. I mean, you could, but then there’s no warm up and you’re in the middle of the routine and I’m not a show up in the middle kind of person. At least not to an exercise class. If it were a wine-drinking class then sure! I’d be late. To be honest I show up to everything late but an exercise classes. I called him the next day and made him put my boxercise class in his calendar, which he did.

The other two times? Anna was sick. Not just your run-of-the-mill the kid has a cold. No. Anna was super sick. She slept terribly for 8 straight nights. By that I mean I have been up in the middle of the night for hours. Two Saturdays ago she was basically glued to me and completely miserable. She wouldn’t sleep unless she was draped across my chest, she was croupy and was having a hell of a time breathing. By Tuesday night I was so damn tired and worn out that the thought of even putting on my running shoes just about made me cry.

So while I hadn’t been to the class in a while, I don’t think that makes me lazy.

This got me thinking about it all a little more. Exercise, for someone like Steve and many others, is meditative. It is stress relief, it might even be truthful to say that Steve looks forward to it. He has considerately arranged his schedule so that it has very little impact on my life which I appreciate tremendously. When he’s training heavily he is gone Thursday evenings and Sunday mornings, the rest of the training he does during his lunch hour. I give him a gold star for this (that isn’t sarcastic; I really do think it’s awesome that he has done that). But his training schedule doesn’t come with a consequence, mine does.

When I go to boxercise, I don’t come home, hit the shower, pour a bowl of cereal, and tell Steve about my day. I often come home and put a child to bed. Then I do the dishes. Then I tidy up the living room. Then I sweep the kitchen. Then I have a shower (if I’m quick enough and it is before Steve goes to bed). Even to get to boxercise I first have to time it so that dinner is ready and on the table and that I have all my shit together to walk out the door.

To which one might respond “so what?”. Right. I’m prepping to go work out while doing my day job. I work out to come home and finish up everything that isn’t maintained while I’m not at my day job.

And I’m doing all that to go out and do something that I don’t particularly enjoy. Exercise is not meditative to me. Exercise is just one more damn item on the “to do” list. Something I’m supposed to do because I’m supposed to be perfect. I’m supposed to be thinner, stronger, healthier (well, healthier is a solid reason). I’m supposed to have sweet kids, a clean(ish) house, figure out a way to provide some income, keep my kids safe, and GOD DAMMIT, I also need to be thinner.

Exericise is not meditative for me. Knitting is. When I’m moving heaven and earth to make this happen I would so rather sit on the couch and knit. Or create something new. Or draw. Exercise is work, both physically and mentally. It’s annoying.

So, yeah, I’m probably not going to move mountains to ensure that no matter what I get in that sort of “me” time, because it isn’t “me time”. It’s just another asterick on the to do list.

Although I might start moving heaven and earth to get in a little knittin’.

doesn't have a damn thing to do with this post, but here's Callum's cake. Cute, yes?

*it should be noted that Steve cares NOT AT ALL if the house is clean. I care. Actually, I don’t care if it’s clean. I care if its tidy. If I don’t pick up after our day I find that 1. things get out of hand remarkably fast, and 2. it prevents us from doing creative things. Clutter discourages creativity.

randomness

• Steve is wanting me to either password protect the blog, or prevent people from downloading pictures, or not post about the kids (or even just shut it down) so I am having a hard time being in this space.  I don’t really know how to prevent people from stealing the pictures, and I am not interested in password protecting the blog (because then, isn’t that just facebook?) and well, not posting about the kids seems ridiculous considering the whole at-home Mom gig and so what the hell would I talk about!  Hence the lack of posting.
• I had grand plans today to just sit, relax and create.  My girls have grand plans to climb all over my persons and whine.  It’s messing with my creative mo-jo.
• Callum’s birthday was a roaring successs.  Literally, he had a jungle safari (I know it makes no sense, safari animals don’t live in a jungle, but safari decore isn’t as interesting).  The cake was adorable.  I should post a picture.
• Actively working to get a handle on Christmas so I’m all organzied and ready to roll by the end of October.  We’ll see….
• The salmon are a running up the rivers.  Plan to go and take a peek tomorrow.
• It’s cold here.  It’s weird.

the stubborn

Three year olds are awesome. And also completely exhausting. I have no idea where the term “Terrible Twos” came from because, in my experience, two year olds are the cutest damn things that have ever walked the face of the earth. Two year olds are edible. Two year olds rock. Actually, at 16 months I am pretty sure there is no other soul on earth as delightful as Anna. Seriously. NO OTHER SOUL. The time between 1 and 3 years is pretty swell.

I don’t know if I have mentioned this but I am Mama to The Most Stubborn Girl On Earth. And she’s three.

that would be Claire

That would be Claire.

oh, this girl. She will be the most delightful thing in one minute, then you’ll ask her to wash her hands and she WILL COMPLETELY LOSE HER MIND. Which is fine. She’s three and three year olds don’t make any sense and we all know cleaning poo off your hands is highly over-rated. I know I like to keep a little poo on my hand for its moisturizing properties. I’m experienced with all this insanity having already had a three year old. Except Claire? Well, Claire doesn’t let up. Claire will continue to lose her mind about washing her hands for an hour, then when you just give up and wash her damn hands because let’s face it, I’m bigger and can ensure the poo is removed from said hand, she will still rage about not wanting to wash her hands for another hour. BUT HER HANDS ARE ALREADY WASHED SO JUST GET OVER IT.

I was talking to my neighbour on the phone the other day, and he had happened to see Claire earlier that week and commented on how tall she was. So we got to talking about The Bear, and I mentioned that she’s a bit stubborn and can sometimes carry on. His response “oh yeah, I’ve heard her. You’re very patient.”.

My neighbour doesn’t live THAT close to me. I live on 2.5 acres, and while he certainly isn’t 2.5 acres away he’s not mere feet away either. Kid can scream. At least he knows I’m not beating her. Unless you consider my singing a form of abuse. Some might. (Singing has been known to calm her down, so I sing. A lot.).

The Most Stubborn Girl On Earth

All this is fine and dandy, but the stubbornness rears its ugly head in other ways. Like potty training. Claire is potty trained. Except when she isn’t and that would be when it suits her to not bother.  This isn’t a huge deal to me because I sort of don’t care.  She will eventually always use the toilet or she will never have a boyfriend and I’m willing to bet that the toilet will win out.  The problem is that preschool is going to care.  Unfortunately Claire doesn’t care that preschool will care so this should prove interesting.

The other awesome thing about three year olds is that they’re still little snuggle-bums.  At least Claire is, and every night I hear her slide out of bed then stomp to my room, climb into bed and wrap her little arms around me.  Sometimes she’ll even give me little love pats.  If I get up to carry her back to her own bed, she is like a leech and attaches herself to Steve in a heartbeat (and he then wrap her up in blankets and snuggles her some more).  There will come a day when she will not be wrapping her arms around me and covering me in snuggles so I plan to cherish this.  I do not care what the Parenting Experts say.

Well, I’ll listen to any suggestions on dealing with The Most Stubborn Girl Alive, though.  In that respect, I’m all ears.

She's totally cute, though

Kid has us totally wrapped.   Maybe that’s the point of this post?  Let’s call it a random Claire Update.

local tourist::sooke potholes

The Sooke Potholes are these sweet little swimming holes on the Sooke River just outside of Victoria.  The area is part of a plan to create a green belt between Victoria and the coast and the campground sits on land that The Land Conservatory (and others) have been buying up.

When we arrived it was this big ordeal to get through the heavily monitored parking lot in the regional park (where the entire city of Victoria apparently hangs out on a hot summer’s day).  As campers we got to go to the front of the line and keep driving which got us honked at even though we were GIVEN PERMISSION from the folks monitoring everything.  It’s not like we just started running over the parking patrol.  Jerky honky people annoy me.

Anyway.

When we got to the campground, which is on the other side of the regional park, I  wasn’t that impressed.  All the sites looked ridiculous in their small size, and there was a set of rules as thick as the bible (including only having  4 people in a site so I guess we really should have put Anna to sleep on a picnic table on the site next us?  We ignored that rule.  That’s what you do when you’re a family of 5 in a lot of situations).

Once we got settled, though, it was really very pleasant.   Turns out I have a really terrible sense of space and the tent and vehicle DID fit on the site.  We got a wicked site free of dangerous cliffs or sharp, huge rocks.  We were brilliant in our decision making on this one, and showed up on a Saturday and stayed until Monday.  So Saturday we hung out at the campsite, chilled with rottens, checked out the beach that was just steps away, and thoroughly enjoyed it all.  Sunday the campsite cleared out, so we spent all day on a very quiet beach and didn’t have to deal with people.  People annoy me.  I’m happy to have nothing to do with them if they aren’t my chosen few.

Monday we packed up, then headed down to the regional park and spent the day on the river there.  It was totally awesome.  Warm and sunny, a beautiful river, fish jumping and another group joined the same beach we had chosen, but they brought guitars.  And they were good, so we had lovely guitar music while we froze our asses off in the incredibly cold, but lovely, river.  What more do you need?

chillin in the river

on the rocks

building, building, building

splashing, splashing, splashing

a rock of one's own

Well, a little less whining from the wee ones would always be welcome, but I’ve got mad skillz and can tune that out.

recrafted::mason jar chalkboard tags. And a tutorial!

tag-a-licious

Last Christmas I did one Craft Sale.  I’m hard core like that.  Especially when you consider the fact that it was put on by my friend so the extent of my research into craft fairs and all that jazz was bar none.  Assuming bar none means having coffee with said friend and handing over $15 for the table.   oh!  And I showed up the day of the craft sale with crafts!  To sell!

I even sold stuff.  In fact, I made more money at the craft fair than I did at my paying job (I was on maternity leave, but WHATEVER.  STILL COUNTS, STEVEN.).

One of the things I had at the fair were mini chalkboard Christmas tags.  I thought these were brilliant.  Only one other person shared my passion for the brilliance, though, and bought any.  The rest were doled out to family and friends as Christmas presents.  I’m thoughtful AND hardcore.

The other day another friend inquired if I had any tags leftover because she was hoping to use them to label some mason jars.  That first batch of tags all had Christmas designs painted on them, so they wouldn’t have been very pratical for mason jars, unless you’re storing Christmas Food, then they would be the most practical.  They were also wood and I was having a hard time figuring how that would work on a mason jar without being annoying.

Since I can’t sleep these days I spend a lot of hours lying in bed thinking about random shit.  During that time I came up with the idea of painting chalkboard paint onto cereal boxes, and then using an elastic to put it on the mason jar.  Cereal boxes are like perfect cardboard.  Stiff enough to be sturdy, but not so damn thick that they can’t be flexible.  Cereal boxes would win gold in the cardboard olympics.  I was also confident that a cereal box would hold up to being spray painted with chalkboard paint.  I was so right.  I AM A GENIUS.

if you were a genius, you would have thought of THIS.

Yes, I know normal people just slap a sticker on their mason jar.  The girl wants a chalkboard and I want to make things.  It’s win-win.

It wasn’t until after I spray painted the cardboard did I bother to do a google search.  Turns out you can buy chalkboard contact paper.  OF COURSE THERE IS CHALKBOARD CONTACT PAPER.  But that’s still a sticker.  A fancy-ass sticker with a lot of glam and sparkle, yes, but still a damn sticker.

Besides reusing cardboard helps save the planet.  We’re going to conveniently ignore the paint in an aresol can and the fact that I bought the elastic at The Dollar Store.  I REUSED CARDBOARD.

Here’s a tutorial so you can make your own!  Because I know how complicated painting cardboard can be!  Very Complicated.

Step 1: Paint the cardboard.  I did this outside.  In a $70 skirt.  Without first testing the direction of the wind.  Be ye not so stupid.

Step 1: paint

Step 2: Cut out your desired shape.  I tried a few on for size, and prefered the oval.  I don’t have a fancy cutter so I went old school.  Those in the know will recognize the Creative Memories Cutting System.  That makes me Super Cool.  I ended up with 30 tags from 1.5 cereal boxes (the other half had a $5 coupon for gas.  I wasn’t so stupid that I painted over free money!), two granola boxes and a fruit rollup box.  What?  We went to the lake this weekend.  That’s weekend food.

step 2: cut

Step 3: Measure 0.5 cm in from each end for the elastic holes.  Don’t be banging those holes right away if its the middle of the night.  The rest of the family doesn’t find that amusing.  Not even for Genius Tags.  They’re no fun, those guys.

step 3: measure

Step 4: Jazz up those labels!  For my dots I used the end of the toothpick, and then had to redip in paint every second dot.  How’s that for detail?  It ain’t perfect, but it did the job.

step 4: pizzazz

Step 5: Go to bed.  In the morning, pound out some holes.  I have this fancy eyelet kit with a handy tool for hole making.  I used it, despite the fact that getting this box out is a guarantee to having three children suddenly appear out of no where and be deeply interested in whatever it is you’re doing and desperate to help. My kids really like hammers.

step 5: hammertime

Step 6: Tie on the elastics.  I have no pictures of this.  The first 5 pictures were boring enough.  I used a dollar store roll of clear jewelery elastic, cut to about 10″ which gave me a generous length to tie with, and then I cut off the excess.  I did a triple knot.  Safety first!

oh yeah, that looks slick.