Snow and all things Sad

Strange title perhaps, but pretty much the way things are around here these days. Dallas had a historical snow fall last Thursday/Friday, which left many delighted as they went outside to have traditional snowball fights (something some had never done), made snow men and snow forts, and generally awed in the beauty of it while the cold temperatures allowed the trees to remain portrait like for hours. I would have included some stunning photos, but my new camera was in the shop. Instead, as life continues around us, the above photo held strong in the minds of others dear to me.

My friend of 20+ years has been supporting her mother through years of battling cancer. A few times we thought we were getting close to losing her, and then she'd rally back with clean work ups. My friend was exhausted, as even on a good day, mothers can be draining. In October, her father came home with a not so good diagnosis and was ball parked a few more years. He hadn't been feeling well for some time, but also suffered from arthritis, so no one expected such a rapid decline. The made family trips as best as they could given his pained condition, and she worked diligently to get all the affairs in order. Slideshow for her dad, long talks, letters, quiet moments and hours together. He lived just down the road, so it was easy to stay close.

Two weeks ago she called and said they were meeting with hospice counselor and such as he was fading fast. The following week she found a lump in her breast. Given the double sided family history (going back generations), her doctor has her pegged as "urgent" for needing an ultrasound/mammogram. Of course, with the awesome Canadian medical system (ie: wait lists) "Urgent" means three weeks from now. Then the call came late Saturday that dad has passed away in her arms. He is gone and she is devastated, despite having had all the prep.

I am close to her family, as the "adopted" daughter/sister over our university years. A whisper of a call came on Sunday - "When can you come?" and I booked my flights. It is time for me to go be her strength for a while, but I am scared. Not afraid of the stuff in the moments to come, but in the moments to follow as we wait for her own diagnosis. Thus my photo for today. The Breast Cancer cell. Put it on you dart board; rip it to pieces; burn it. Make it go away.

Who would think a book could change your world?

I thought I’d explained it clearly before. Bella, I can’t live in a world where you don’t exist. Edward Cullen, New Moon, Chapter 23, p.509

And now I'm wondering how I'm going to live in the real world after drowning in theirs . . . with the last third of the last book to go, my heart is heavy. I can't believe the pain and anguish my own memories have locked away: first love, forbidden love, lost love and found love. I want to stay on an eternal high. I'm not sure how I'll go back to the mundane, even when my own life is far from mundane. This series is a drug and I am an addict. I understand addiction far better than I have in the past - I feel it at every level of my being. I don't want to return to sobriety - ever.

Are you kidding me????

Did I mention I moved from Calgary, Alberta, CANADA . . . land of the frozen tundra . . . to hotter than H:LL, Texas??? You'd think I would know what to do come winter and freezing temperatures and an irrigation system. Obviously not. Part of the reason being it never gets cold enough here long enough to worry about such things. Enter, the big freeze of 2010.

As if the year wasn't already on a roll with exciting adventures beginning, the day before we are about to leave town for a much too quick return trip to the great white North (well, wet and grey actually, in the case of Vancouver), the auto fill quits working on our pool. Not an issue when the weather is mild, as one just places the garden hose in and fills as needed. But when you aren't thinking about such things, you also don't think to disconnect the frozen hose from the wall in the event you may randomly need it. Imagine my face when I suddenly realized the pool is NOT filling after I've turned it on twice, the afternoon prior to our 6am departure, and I have about 4 hours to figure out a plan for getting a massive amount of water in to the pool pronto. This is a problem because given the severe cold temps as of late, the pool has to circulate 24/7 to prevent pipe damage . . . and in order to circulate it needs to maintain a certain level of water to prevent the pump from exploding (read big bucks in above mentioned cases) . . . which wouldn't be a problem if the water wasn't evaporating as quickly as possible because the system isn't set up to accommodate weeks of sub freezing temperatures!

At 3pm, irrigation dude tells me he'll stop by and take a look and I figure it is a no brainer for him to quick fix. An hour later he tells me he'll be by on Monday with the part - the underground part they need to find - not a help in the moment. My neighbor was prepared for pool duty, but she was thinking "Hit the auto fill", not devote an hour a day to filling by garden hose via the kitchen sink. Off to Lowe's and then Home Depot I go, only to spend more than a precious hour hunting down the piece I need. I finally get the frozen hose detached and thawed from outside via a candle torch and hot bath, and get the water flowing just as the pump begins to suck air. My kids have eaten cereal for dinner; I am frozen for all my outdoor trips in my t-shirt thinking my now texan Cdn skin can handle the shock, and I move on to getting kids to bed before the big 6:30 departure/10 hr/2 plane, customs and rental car trip. FUN.

Rather than my usual night before prep, in my exhausted state, I decide to just download and update the iphone/itouch combo to make above mention travel detail survivable with a 6 and 4 year old. I must have seriously gotten brain freeze because for what ever karma make up I was being handed, I ended up sleeping on the play room sofa in intervals of 30 minutes between midnight and 2am getting the download and software situation rectified. A few hours later I was scrambling to do something I had done many times over, making it to the airport with only the charger and snacks left sitting on the kitchen counter. Thus came a Starbucks airport load up and a trip to the store upon arrival to Vancouver, as the trip home was even longer, and without a charger, I was doomed.

So all is well until the next morning, yesterday, when we get the 7am call (9am at home) from neighbor to say the back yard has flooded since her check last night, which means her driveway as well, as I forgot to turn off one of the valves (the one the irrigation geek TOLD me to turn off after he was right there looking at it!) but as I was dealing with my pool drama, allowed it to slip my mind, resulting in a big ol' burst. Ha Ha. The Canadian who knows to blow out her irrigation system in the winter is the on the street with the busted pipe. Nice.

I am grateful that her husband risked his fear of frost bite to stick his hand into the few inches of icy cold water to turn the valve off for me, and then I gave up (from my spot in bed) and tried to get back to sleep, which was NOT happening as my kids were bouncing off the hotel walls by this time.

Despite all the drama, we had a fabulous, albeit short, visit with Grandpa Walt, who is unfortunately very ill, and were up at 3am this morning heading back. We dropped Daddy off at a dinner meeting in down town Dallas, right at the peak of rush hour, and enjoyed the near hour drive home that normally takes about 25 minutes. At least we were able to get the phones charged up, and had a decent enough layover to get the kids well fed and steamed burned off before the second leg of the journey.

On that note, the kids were amazingly well behaved given the travel time they put in, both on their best behavior as they have been told they are still on trial for being "well enough behaved" to take on the sailing adventure. The earned their spot on board with flying colors this weekend, although I'm not about the 'fess up until the last minute. Arrrgh Matey! Oh crap, I've left the hose on and now the pool is overflowing. Are you frickin kidding me! Gotta go!

When all else fails . . .

go on vacation! For those of you barely in the know, as I've been too crazy busy with life to keep in touch, my sweet husband has taken a few months off work to contemplate life. He is an avid sailer (at least was pre wife and kids), and has been chomping at the bit to get back out on the water with the kids to teach them a love of sailing. I have an extensive number of boating hours clocked from my own youth, so time afloat is time well spent in my eyes - but imagine the look on my face when we were discussing taking a week off, just the two of us, to regroup after Xmas and plan for the next few months, and he said "Let's just take the kids with us." Granted, 24/7 child care does not come cheap when you have no other option but to use a babysitting service, but a week on a sail boat with a 4 and 6 year old? My anxiety had already peaked to an unhealthy level with the post Xmas transition, so I was in a less than optimum state of mind to contemplate three flights and life at sea . . . however, over the course of 48 hrs and multiple pro/con lists, I am genuinely excited to report that we are leaving FREEZING Dallas for the BVI to do nothing but lay back, island hop, snorkel and explore. Most of our time will be anchored in a bay somewhere with only a few hours under sail per day, so it isn't as bad as initial the thought of being trapped in a closet with 2 kids for a week. The kids are over the moon excited, with one believing she may actually turn in to a mermaid once her legs hit the sea water, and the other asking if he can be a pirate on his "aventure". When I ask little man what he is most excited about regarding the trip, he repeatedly replies "Seeing my bed, and no one better disturb me when I'm having my naps." Ah yes, spoken like a true son of mine! Then again, this is the same kid who at 3 spent most of his time at the resort in Mexico lounging on beach chairs and sipping "drinks." If you don't hear from us after Feb. 1, perhaps we've decided just not to come home . . . the real world if far over rated!

Happy New Year Tomorrow

In preparation for tomorrow and a fresh start on a tumultuous year, I have ordered and received the above book. After a few returns to momagenda.com, in search of the perfect organization system, I have concluded that the best system for me is the one I create all on my own. I have hooked up with a few blog/sites such as Simple Mom , The Organized Parent, and List Plan It, and hope to have my world in order by the end of January, if not sooner! Today (New Year's Eve) begins with unloading the play room and kids' rooms with a ruthless vengeance not seen around here for years (or the last time I got on a purge kick!) which will carry over to the sleeping hours when my innocent children are not around to tell me they can't live without the item they haven't touched in years.

My previous OCD kick with getting organized lasted for a few weeks, and although was great in concept, became over ruled by a combination of old habits, life events and lack of a total system (ie: having other partners in the house contributing to the system!) That being said, we're starting the new years with some new habits. And since DH is now home for minimum of 6 months to share the house with me, I'm on an even bigger mission to get things sorted out and him trained from the get go. We sent off the last of the Xmas visitors this morning, have the last load of laundry in the dryer and are about to tackle the "toys". Wish me luck while I attempt to clean out a LOT of stuff.

This afternoon, rather than my old way of wandering through the Container Store looking for a system to pop out at me, I'm going to spend the time to read through my book, spend this week making the purges then making a list of items I need to complete the task of TOTAL organization, and training the troops to help out. Rather than New Year's Resolutions, we are simply starting fresh - tomorrow - hopefully without a hangover :)

Time for a new perspective

We have been trying to find a book lately for Darien to get inspired about. Magic Tree House has come and gone, the Disney fairy series was last year, and Junie B Jones (thank goodness) was a one afternoon wonder. Even the American Girl series books kept her in the moment, but she wasn't so inspired to read them on her own. I finally convinced her to listen to me read her the first chapter of this one, a book I had bought at the book fair months ago - and alas - we have a hit.

I think the draw for Darien is that she swims like a fish herself, and often refers to herself as a mermaid. This tale starts out with a girl entering water for the first time and feeling her legs start to fuse together. D fills with anticipation with each few paragraphs and seems to have finally clicked with something - perhaps the hope that she is secretly a mermaid as well.

The reason I'm thinking about this so much right now, aside from her jumping in to my bed this morning to tell me that Emily had met another mermaid last night after I left, is that we are facing some big changes here as well. Similar to the character Emily in D's new book, the house hold/marriage is about to under go a metamorphosis. Unsure of what these new changes will mean for our family, I'm feeling a little like Emily: apprehensive and excited all at once. When my husband looked at me last night and commented that I "didn't look too sure" about things, I later tried to explain where the roots of my apprehension may be sprouting from, only to fall in to the familiar trap of defensiveness/fix it rather than acknowledgement. He was looking for me to be in the next chapter already, having embraced all the change himself, while I was, for the moment, feeling a little more unsure of what might be happening to my "legs" . . . . I'm going from being a land walker to a tail flapper having my workaholic husband join me full time and although very excited about the new things out there to discover about my husband and my relationship, still processing the transition phase before swimming off in to the deep blue sea. In the meantime, I'll enjoy hearing my sweet girls excitement as she get's lost in the imaginary world she is discovering in literature.

Norman Rockwell moment - or is it?

The traditional turkey dinner. Fancy table, fancy clothes, fancy food . . . it really was a wonderful day. I am so thankful for all the gifts of life bestowed upon me. I am blessed. And then this morning arrived. The kids argued. They fought. They ignored. Refusals. Hitting. Backtalk. How do things shift so quickly? A few days and blissful moment is transformed to lunatic mother (and no, I don't look that amazing when I'm pulling my hair out and screaming!). Maybe it is too much to ask given all my blessings, that my kids just do what I ask without reducing me to a bundle of tears hiding behind closed doors over something as simple as trying to get out the door to school in the morning. Maybe it is just hormones. It is a thankless job, sometimes, even when we are ultimately thankful for the honor!