It's some fun and games

These days fall upon my skin like a rash, slightly nagging, but not altogether unmanageable. I think fear of the impending unknown weighs most heavily, although it is not as though we haven't faced that before. Uncertainty comes with the territory we have chosen.

As usual, motherhood is the constant(k) that stays with me and keeps me grounded. This child, still so wondrous with her lashes and curls and gravely voice. She teaches me something everyday and I feel genuinely sorry for people who are to busy to notice all that there is to learn from these marvelous little people. She picks up things, words, expressions like a magnet picks up metal filings. Little scraps here and there, spouted back at me for approval. Her latest thing is declaring herself to be 'ambidextrous' - something I explained to her a week or so ago and which she pulled out of her hat the other day as we were painting our holiday wrapping paper. Plonking away with her paints, she said 'Mommy, look - today I'm using me right hand. That means I'm ambidextrous' - and again, I am amazed. Not quite as funny as 'Look! These are my boobies, they're from China!' (don't know where she got that one). The other night, apropos of nothing she suddenly looked at me very seriously and exclaimed 'Boobs!', which naturally cracked me up and caused her to repeat it for about 20 minutes. Funnier still is that it took that long for it to actually stop being hilarious.

I'm in the throes of the whole Christmas thing - which is quite funny when you consider that I have been a hater for many years. Suddenly I am combing stores and doing research and have finished all my shopping - and it's only mid-November. All my fears and cries of consumerism seem to have been set aside and I am looking forward to Christmas is a way I haven't since I was 10 years old. I cannot wait to look at that child's face when she comes downstairs and sees the bounty before her. Who knows how the future will provide for us? But for this year, there will be more than enough for her and I know it will be wonderful.

The thumbsucking is improving, although I may be giving her a complex (why not, I have many to spare!). I heard her telling her monkey the other day that his teeth were crooked and I cringed. I have changed tacks and am working with the 'nasty germs' angle instead, in an effort to spare her worrying about orthodontics at such a young age. And I am trying to make peace with my imperfect teeth and not make that my first official crappy thing I pass onto my emotionally absorbent daughter. Whatever works.
Besides, natural teeth are beautiful too, right? (Please say yes, my complex is not fixed yet...)

All in all, even as we are in the midst of the next big who-knows-what, we feel pretty good. Some days I wonder where all my drive and ambition and relentless forward pace has gone, and some days, I just don't care. Some days I don't do any particular homework and I don't try to claw my way up to anywhere and I just live in the now.

It's not too bad.

The Long Slow Leaping of Things

This is the slowest leap off ever.

There are so many questions and very few answers. This is a difficult time for us - we are breaking new ground. Trying valiantly to figure out which way to turn next, where to look for our joy. Now it may seem obvious where joy lies, but I don't think it really is. Or you might see it, but the path is thorny and often perilous, mentally and physically. And there's all that damned real life to worry about.

I hear my friend, my old, often disappeared friend sermonizing that real life things mean very little next to joy, and while I agree, there are still realities to contend with. And questions. Yes, I know there is always more - but when?

I am struggling - though not unhappily - with what's next. Baby? No baby? Travel? Move? Leave the business? What then? What's next? How and how and how?

I have let far too many no's block me in my path, and while I certainly have no intention of letting that continue, I still feel as though I am fumbling around in the dark. The road less traveled comes with no convenient map (or GPS) and I wander around trying not to get lost. Not that being lost doesn't have its own aura of adventure, but after a while in the woods, you just want to find the inn and have a shower, you know?

I have been handling the latest round of cruel fate with more aplomb than even I knew I could muster. Some of it is simply the maturity that comes with age and motherhood, some of it is simply acquiescence. Somedays I just get tired of fighting the unfightable and I just surrender to where it is now.

Currently now is stuck at home, since Ez's truck has taken this unbelievably inopportune time to die. With no car and lamentable public transit (the other day it took me over an hour to go to family place - a 7-minute drive) Nahanni and I are plodding through tasks at home, tearing apart closets, wintering the garden. Today we raked sodden leaves and pulled the dahlia bulbs in fat wads from the dirt. When it finally got too cold we came in and I made hot chocolate with marshmallows which she got in her halloween bag. We sat at the table and I watched her pluck each tiny blob of marshmallow from its frothy chocolate bed and slurp spoon after spoon of the milky brew with a look of utter contentedness on her face. We chatted, we ate pizza left over from last night (not part of my new 'what-would-Dierdre-do' eating plan) and we laughed and had a lovely time which would we would not have otherwise had were we not stranded at home.

You could have worse days.