Mind of a Mad Woman

Just over six and a half years ago, I was causing some concern in my little circle of friends. Hotty Hubby and others thought I was just a little bit crazy. They were right, of course, but not for the reasons they thought. I had been dreaming for weeks that I was walking down the road with a little girl. A blonde little girl. Strange, considering we had not yet had our spawn.

Two weeks later, I peed on that stick that forever changed our lives. Considering the fact that Hotty Hubby and I had only been together for about 3 months, and the fact that he didn’t want children til he was closer to 30, it took me 3 days to gather the courage to spring all sorts of wonderful on the man. Obviously, he stuck around. Whether he has ever regretted that decision is beyond me, but if my experiences with the hellions are anything to go by, chances are he’s considered the fact that trekking around Outer Siberia might occasionally be a better option.

Before I was a mother, I used to judge a lot. Now? Well. Those women you see in the shopping mall with two screaming children? That’s me. The kids that throw sand in your kid’s face? Those would be mine. They watch altogether too much tv, they eat way more crap than healthy stuff and they have an attitude that would rival the most devilish of teenagers. But they’re mine. They give me hugs and kisses at just the right moments, complete with snot trails and jammy fingers. They love almost unconditionally. I say almost because there are days when I wonder if they might walk out the door if I don’t get them that cookie.

It’s been rather a rollercoaster of emotions for almost 6 years, and it’s been totally worth it. There is no better way to experience life than through the eyes of a child.

It’s Mother’s Day today. A day devoted to me, my mother, my grandmother, and all of you other moms. My children have made breakfast in bed for me and I have some homemade surprise gifts sitting up waiting to be opened. I never thought I would be so thankful to see yet another piece of paper with handprints and a poem, but I am. I’m a sap.

Happy Mother’s Day to all of you. I leave you with a slideshow of my darlings. They make it all worth it.

Beautiful. Courageous. Willful. Strong. Steady.

Those are just a few of the words that I have used to describe my mother over the years. That’s her up there in the picture. She’s on the left of her mom and little sister. Born to a military father in Toronto, Canada in 1953, my mother is one of the most amazing people I know. She is the eldest of 3 girls and gave birth to two girls of her own. Because of my mom, I am the person I am today, like it or not. The good, the bad, and the ugly…..we learned how to deal with it all because of the way my mom dealt with life.

(That’s mom pregnant with me at Circus World.)

In the late 80s, my mom suddenly found herself a single mom. I have known many people to end up in this position who don’t cope very well. Granted, I don’t remember much of those years, but from my perspective it was ok. We were ok. My mom looked after me, worked, went to school and held things together as best she could. Then she met a man who would take us away.

She was so in love. He was a smooth British man in the Air Force who knew all the right things to say and he said them. I have pictures of my mom sitting in a field full of daffodils and she looks so happy. I have always loved seeing my mom smile. She married that Englishman and we lived all over Europe. By the time I was 11, I had a baby sister and got to see my mom do all the things she must have done with me, and more. She was gorgeous when she was pregnant. She was rather the size of a barge heffalump cow gloriously pregnant woman with a large baby inside her, but she seemed to take it all in stride as was her way.

My mom helped me learn so much. I love to read. I remember that if I couldn’t immediately get an answer from mom or find her, chances were she was curled up with a book somewhere. I swear the woman would have lived in a bookstore given half a chance. Some of my best memories involve just sitting around with my mom - reading.

As I got older, and became that hormonal, bitchy, moody, horrible teenager that I dread having in my own house, my mom dealt with me. Sure, I spent many a weekend grounded. I had privileges removed, friends turned away from the door and tv viewing time suspended. I screamed, I yelled - she screamed, she yelled. We drove each other crazy.

My mother trusted me, and had that trust broken. She loved me and had that love thrown back in her face so many times that any normal person would have thrown up their hands in frustration and walked away, but she continued to love me. For years, I never understood it. Then I had my own children.

When I was scared, my mom was there to comfort and protect me. When I got my heartbroken by yet another boyfriend, she was there to offer sage advice and tell me it would all be ok in the end. In recent years, as I watched my stepfather walk away, I wished that I could do the same for her, or at least on the same level.

I am sure that over the last 29 years I have disappointed my mother in many ways. The day I laid my head on her lap and cried and she found out I’d pierced my ears again. The day I wrote her a letter to tell her i’d lost my virginity months before. The day my “friend” stole stuff from a house I was babysitting at, when they weren’t meant to be there in the first place. (Yes, I’m a moron).

I’ve disappointed her, I’ve hurt her, I’ve screwed things up time and time again and my mom still loves me.

She is one of the strongest people I know and is a daily inspiration to me in the way she deals with life. Sure, we have had our screaming matches ups and downs, but I cannot imagine my life without my mother. When I need advice, I ask my mom. When I need someone to tell me I’m an idiot, I go to my mom. When I need someone to tell me whether I’m right or wrong, my mom’s the person.

Amazing. Inspirational. Role-model. My hero.

Those are a few more words for my mother. I’m sure it would come as no surprise to learn that I’ve had some other choice words for her over the years either, but I’m pretty sure she’s had some choice ones for me too.

It’s my mom’s birthday today. Technically she’s 55 but while she has the wisdom that comes from the experiences she’s had over the last 55 years, she still has the heart of a young girl. And the face too. My mom is beautiful.

We don’t always see eye to eye but one thing is for sure - if I can be half the woman, half the mother that my mom is, I will be happy.

Happy Birthday Mom! I miss you all the way over there in New Zealand and I love you so much.

Love always,

Meggers

I climbed a mountain today. Not only did I climb it, but I reached the top and then dug away at it til it was gone. No more mountain. Take that Sir Edmund Hillary.

Of course, when I say mountain, I am of course talking about Laundry Mountain. There are many mountains in this range but my house is built around just one. The size of this changes from day to day, and often from hour to hour, but it never ceases to amaze me how insurmountable the task of conquering it seems.

I think that my neighbours are sneaking into my house in the middle of the night and piling clothes in my laundry room, dirty dishes on my kitchen counters and papers on every other available surface. There really can’t be any other explanation. The spawn are little neat freaks whose rooms are never out of order, Hotty Hubby has never been known to leave his socks and underwear on the floor and me, well I am like the not so famous version of Martha Stewart. I just cannot figure out how they are getting into the house.

As I ran my 10th load of clothes through the machine (yes yes, it’s been that long since I did any laundry), I had yet another load in the dryer doing it’s second round. There seems to be some sort of issue with the heating element (??) and it takes 2 hours to dry one load of clothes. Bloody ridiculous if you ask me but at least it gives the gorilla that lives in my laundry room something to do.

My goal today, given how much I adore goals and the impossibility of meeting them, was to get my entire house clean. For any normal person, this might be achievable. For me? Far too many distractions. But I did my best. I even decided that for extra motivation, I would challenge a friend to a house cleaning race. This would have been fantastic if the traitorous wretch she hadn’t thrown me under the Molly Maid bus given up. Really Alison? One kitchen and you think you’re done cleaning. Ha! I laugh in the face of your intelligence.

I honestly had no idea how much dust one cat could create. I have come to the conclusion that the basis of all my home cleanliness problems boils down to this furry little creature and the two rugrats. Cat hair everywhere, it took me 30 minutes to clean CJ’s room. The rest of the house looks significantly better, but I really do wish I’d been as smart as my buddy and given up after the kitchen.

I think either I need to give my laundry loving gorilla something more to do, or I need to hire a cleaning lady. Either way works for me.

Anyone want to come keep my house clean for me so I can sit on my ass be productive in other ways?

Oh my lovely readers, if you could be where I am today. Or rather, where I was today. Although many of my fellow countrymen are still buried under inches of snow, and freezing their nads off in the cold, the weather here on the Island tends to be, well, a little temperamental. And yet, even on the wettest days, it is still nice.

Today, the weather forecast promised me sun. Did I get it? No. Of course not. That would just be far too lovely. Instead, it rained. More to the point it drizzled. Nothing really worth getting the umbrella out for, but enough to make the grass too wet to sit on, the playgrounds too wet to play in and the swings to wet to swing in. Unless of course you have no objections to a wet ass.

What is not too wet though, on a day like this, is the beach. Yes, that’s right, you heard me. Beach, beach, beach. I said it. And I’ll say it again - beach beach beach.

A friend and I took our clan of kidlets down to the beach this morning to explore the rocks and the waves and the gross seaweed. The beach is phenomenal place in the wet weather. Little tiny crabs scurrying all over the beach, purple seaweed washed up everywhere, and beautifully exquisite driftwood arrangements. As the kids played in the waves and combed the beach for seashells, my friend and I busied ourselves snapping pictures. When you have four children between the ages of 3 and 6, it can be incredibly difficult to get a good picture at times but when they are busy with that new shell or piece of beach glass, you get some amazing shots.

Sadly, the endless drizzle wears on the patience of the adults and kids alike and after 40 minutes of wetness, and having seemingly acquired every glass and shell that the tide had washed up, we were all ready to leave. We decided to brave the fast fading fuses (oooh alliteration) of the kidlets and go in search of ice cream. Clearly not the best plan we’ve ever had. Nor was the plan to go to McPuke’s to obtain said cold treat. I have recently discovered that when the young Barbie dolls at the golden arches do not feel like making anything that requires being within 2 feet of their ice cream machine, it rapidly becomes “broken”. (That’s right people, I’m onto you!) Today was one of those days, and we were informed it would be at least 25 minutes before we could have ice cream.

Oh crap. Brace yourself. We have 4 kids who all want ice cream and these idiots minimum wage flunkies people can’t be bothered making it. Alright, there’s a Timmies across the way, let’s go get a donut! My kids, thankfully, were all over that idea. Sadly not so much for the my friends children who were busily demanding french fries. I left her to the battle and sidled over to Timmies. It was at this point that my children were possessed. I’m serious - absolutely possessed by some evil, screaming, powerful force. As they bounced around the restaurant to the sound of my muted threats, I clenched my fists, gritted my teeth and promised myself that by the time we hit the front of the line everything would be peaceful.

I’m not entirely sure when I turned into this naive boob, but I do know that I refuse to be intimidated by anyone under four feet tall. Somehow I found myself dragging two screaming children out of Timmies and out to the car. The possession continued. They screamed non stop for the next 20 minutes. I have never in my life been so tempted to sell my children on eBay.

I’ll start the bidding at $200…any takers??

This evening, after much needed naps on the part of both children (yes, they still nap occasionally even at their ages), we dropped Ash at a friends house for a sleepover. I am still firmly ensconced in denial thank you very much. It just simply isn’t possible that my daughter is now old enough to be sleeping over at other people’s houses. She packed her own bag, got in the car and off we went. After hanging around like the anxious parent I’m not for about 20 minutes, she looked me straight in the eye and said “Can you go now?”. WHAT?!? No I can’t go. I can’t leave my baby at someone’s house and go home.

But I did. Hotty Hubby, CJ and I heading to yet another beach (beach beach) and sat around a bonfire with a bunch of wonderful friends who I haven’t seen in a while. My dear friend Jen was turning 35 and this was how she wanted to celebrate. CJ decided this was the opportune moment to wade into the water up to his knees and then promptly sat in the sand. That’ll make for some fun laundry.

All in all, it was a wonderful evening at the beach, roasting hot dogs and marshmallows, eating a scrumptious chocolate cake and carrying on mostly enjoyable conversation. We ended up with a lot of wet sandy kids, and had one small child fall into the fire (but Matt to the rescue!!) with no burns, and by the time we all went home we were fairly confident all the kids were tired enough that there would be no more evil possessions.

Happy Birthday Jen!!

I mentioned a few posts back that I had begged my friend Allie to teach me how to knit. That was perhaps a slight exaggeration. It was more like I mentioned a few times that I would like to know how to knit, she begged me to let her teach me, and I finally dragged my ass over to her house to learn. I’m happy I did. Not only am I a whiz at washcloths now, but I just finished my very first “big” project.

A Baby blanket.

It was a daunting task at first. I am not a crafty person in any way, shape or form. But this is something I seem to have taken to and gotten good at.

And so I present to you…..

That old saying “Karma’s a bitch” has never been more true. Except I say “Karma’s a freakin ho who need to keep her weather to herself!”

Yes yes, I was ever so smug and gloating as I posted all those sunny pictures of us having fun at the beach in April, rubbing it in your face like a seasoning. And you know what my reward for that was??

SNOW.

Yes, you may all sit and laugh now and think “that’ll teach her”. It’s very cold outside right now and the snow is still coming down. Nothing major, and nothing that will stick, but yeah.

#&*%&*%&$