Once a year whether I need it or not

So, it's been a while. Probably a year. I feel like I'm standing up in an AA meeting and saying, 'hi, my name is Susan and I'm an infrequent blogger'. Seems trivial, although everything seems trivial when you live in a city still in a state of emergency in a flood zone where you suffered no damage. Maybe I just needed a big fat natural disaster to knock something loose.

I live in the high and dry NW burbs and I work downtown, but in the middle of downtown where the only thing wet is a Starbucks latte. The worst thing I can say is my train commute is slower so it gives me more time to read and my office closes early every day so I'm forced to go home to my family.

I feel like I'm watching a TV series when they show the ruined homes, the submerged parks and golf courses and the Stampede Grounds where water polo might be a more viable option than bull riding.  I jest, but it's because you could cry if you don't laugh. Driving around the city, you realize how much of it is underwater and how much work lies ahead.

I have a friend at work who used to live in High River so she's collecting donations. It felt good to clean out my closet and my kids' closets to donate clothing to people whose entire life is a muddy wreck. We went to London Drugs after work the other day to buy toiletries, towels, sheets and feminine products for my friend to drop off at a community centre where an entire town has decamped.

My friend in Canmore had a boil water advisory and a town cut off when part of the highway eroded with the flood waters. She's safe, thankfully, but it makes you thank your lucky stars that despite being an insignificant barnacle on Earth's backside that at least Mother Nature missed me this time (2005 flood victim here).

So, I will try to blog more often and I will help out my fellow soggy Calgarians. I will write when I have something to say, I just hope that it doesn't take another natural disaster because we've had enough for now thanks....

Goodbye lazy days of summer

It’s that time of year again, when we come back from the cottage, put away our sandals and grudgingly cram onto commuter trains with returning students. Ah, fall. I do enjoy the colourful leaves before they die and fall off the trees. However I don’t enjoy the loss of freedom and the nostalgic pining for the feel  of sand between my toes.

But I do like getting back to work on my writing and blogging. All summer I had the guilty pleasure of doing nothing but a few edits here and there on a mostly completed novel. Last night I reined myself in and re-focussed.

I signed up to take a class through the Alexandra Centre for Writers. The Novel Approach meets every second Monday until June so hopefully that means I will do my homework and complete a first draft of a new book. It also means I get to rub elbows with other writers – those poor slobs like me that toil away in anonymity (in fall, winter and spring that is) and occasionally come out of the shadows to bond with like-minded individuals. I get the impression that, like me, they have coasted for a few months and are eagerly getting back to their computers.

Should be fun reading each other’s work and commiserating  about the shortening days and the lengthening list of things we have to do.

Ode to Gleniffer, my sick friend

Would you want to vacation at a resort whose lake captures oil from a spill? I would because I own at Gleniffer Lake Resort and Country Club. So far I haven’t seen oil, but I have seen the oil booms snaked across the lake and the 24/7 bright lights shining down on the far end of the lake where the operation’s headquarters buzz with activity.

My husband and I visited our cabin last weekend. In the pouring rain, we slowed as we crossed the dam. On our left the murky lake’s surface rippled in the rain. To our right the water gushed in a waterfall down the dam and out into the Red Deer River. We were one of a few people taking pictures and when we reached the resort, we were one of fewer who bothered to come. With the lousy spring weather and the oil spill looming, why come to the resort except to check on our cabin, escape the city and enjoy the solitude, take a stroll to the store for after dinner ice cream, to gaze out at the lake and the water birds landing, to sit on our porch and look through to the empty golf course where the ducks bob in the pond?

I will go up this weekend with my sons. Plains Midstream has trucked water in so we can drink from the tap and maybe even enjoy the indoor and outdoor pools still. On Saturday I will take them to the Medicine River Wildlife Centre to meet ‘Oily’ the baby beaver rescued from the Red Deer oil spill and a few of the luckier water birds. I will take my boys down to the lake to see if we can detect any oil on the water where normally at this time of year we’d throw sticks for the dog so he can exhaust himself swimming. He’ll be on leash this weekend just like we are.

I’ll attend an information session in the Landing, our community/entertainment hub at the resort. I don’t know what more I can find out besides the fact that Midstream is doing the best they can just like the residents who are making the best of a bad situation.

I guess I can use this as an educational moment for my kids. We need to protect the environment in balance with responsible oil extraction because realistically I wouldn’t be coming to my lake resort without a car that I fill up with fuel in Calgary. Although I don’t work in the industry, a lot or residents at the lake do. Maybe I can teach my kids about responsible stewardship of the environment. Maybe I can motivate myself out of sadness by pretending I have power to do something.

Of course it’ll be a whole lot easier if the mess is cleaned up by the time summer hits and we buy a boat or jet ski, and my husband looks to fish in the river. I’m not sure how much we’ll like our oil if the weather improves and the water is still in quarantine.

I’m pretty sure ‘Oily’ the beaver doesn’t like his name or the substance that landed him in a wildlife centre for humans like me to gawk at. But, I’ll take my kids, donate to their cause, and then head home to the resort where I’ll walk down to the lake. I will say a little prayer because, like a valued friend, I hope 'my' lake will recover soon.

http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/alberta/Gleniffer+Lake+resort+community+gets+crude+awakening+from/6786043/story.html

Cross Pollination

I'm having fun with this guest blogging gig...check it out!

http://alexandrawriterswritenow.blogspot.ca/

Sick Day

My oldest son woke with a sore throat and hot forehead, so I slouched out of my work clothes and into stay-at-home attire, called the office, gave him drugs and put him back to bed before driving my younger son to school.

My patient slept for four hours so I edited my novel, I journalled, I even sent out a query I've been avoiding for months. My son rose at noon. We had soup and crackers together then he felt well enough to kill aliens and zombies from the safety of the couch, so I gave him more drugs (after telling him 'just say no to drugs') and retreated back to my office. I am guilty of enjoying my son's sick day, of actually having a productive fulfilling time while he sucked on lozenges and wondered what his friends were doing without him.

The dog enjoyed it too, since he got not one but two runs today. Here's Bear at the park afte we abandoned my son at home for a while. The snow turned to rain, then the sun came out and I cleaned up the backyard. The grass is green and thick, almost too long to cut now with the mower. Then I picked dandelions for the guinea girls who love the sweet yellow taste of spring.

I did my Jacquie Warner video so for sure tomorrow I will have 6-pack abs (or I want my money back). Although I did eat a DQ icecream sandwich after lunch so I'm pretty sure that cancels out any good the exercise might've done. But, my son needed me and icecream made him feel better, and I didn't want him to have to suffer alone, or feel self-conscious for pigging out with me watching so I joined in. I may just win mother of the year.

After all day lounging, my son felt better, so we went to pick up his younger brother from school. They got slurpees because those make everything better. Now it's dinner (Taco time) and then we have soccer.

The son with the cold feels well enough to play so I've done something right. And I feel like I've had a day well spent, at home, with my son and just doing what I like best.

Back to work tomorrow, just in time for the long weekend and more mental health time to come.

The sun will come out...

I was having a BAD day yesterday. My manager came to me late in the day and confronted me about a trading error that could cost the firm thousands. He wanted to know why I hadn’t come to him, why I had tried to fix it myself, why I had screwed up in the first place.

He barked and I retreated, wanted to crawl under my desk, considered quitting then realized this job is actually the reason I get those regular deposits to my bank account. So I swallowed my anger over the fact that it was a system issue not an ‘I’m so dumb issue’, went home and did yoga. Tried to find my ZEN when really I should’ve worked my boxing heavy bag. My husband is in Edmonton on a business trip and my boys went for dinner with their Dad so I was alone except for my dog Bear.

I was dressed in a gauzy spring shirt and thin pants. The dog raced out of my car and up the green space between houses leading to my boys’ school. As the arctic wind picked up and it started to rain I thought, “perfect. What a nice finish to my wonderful f*ckin$ day”.

Then I saw my sometime dog park buddy, an older gentleman who works at the university. His tall, blonde lab to my shorter darker lab, bounded up to greet me then tried to wrestle my gentle giant to the ground. My friend had a health scare recently and required a shunt in his heart. He looks good though, rosy cheeked and still the tall, solid man he was  and he continues to travel. He is headed to Kosovo this summer to study the effects of conflict on school children, now grown. The UN is sending in more troops to Kosovo these days so it’s still a hotspot that makes Canada look boringly safe and my job look insignificant.

I bid him farewell, packed up my dog, and headed to the hospital to visit my Dad’s cousin who just had double hip surgery. The wind turned my umbrella inside out as I struggled against the deluge of rain to navigate my way from pay parking to reception. I bought her an orchid in a delicate pink teacup that I promptly dropped  and broke on my way to the elevator. I cursed and stood there looking at the jagged pieces of my gift and the water seeping onto the floor. A young couple behind me stopped their stroller and helped me pick up the bits. They were on their way to visit Papa as the child in the stroller kept saying.

Hospitals are not happy places and not the place I wanted to be after the day I had, but my Dad’s cousin is family and isn’t that what we do, hang together in times of need?

She looked tired and sickly. I tried to cheer her up, but ended up commiserating with how crappy life can be some days. But she will be up and walking again soon and she will regain her freedom and head home. Floral arrangements crowded her window sill and I left her some trashy magazines to fill the hours.

I got home to my boys, then my husband called. They make me feel loved and supported. Even so I didn’t sleep well and came into work this morning thinking that my career may be over. Maybe I didn’t want this stupid job if I get nothing but grief.

I opened my email and saw a message from my manager to our head office explaining the system problem that occurred. Then the broker I work with talked to my manager and I felt maybe I wasn’t so alone and out on a limb. It turns out that my manager wanted me to come to him first with my problem, not try to fix it myself. We do work better as a team.

So when I think life sucks and maybe the universe is out to get me, instead of withdrawing to safety maybe I need to look outward and realize that I’m not alone but part of a team - at work and at home. Maybe I don’t have it so bad. We’re all in this together and some days will be better than others, but all days get better when we hang together or maybe just hang in there.

Besides the sun is shining again….

Hurry Up and Wait...a blast from my past...kids now 10 and 12, but still smarter than me.....

“Hurry up” is my mantra every morning. Every morning I strive to leave by 7:15 a.m. so I can make it to work on time, but every morning something or someone slows me down.

            The other morning I had risen early to have half an hour to myself to write before I had to shower, primp and wake the kids. My suit lay on my bed, carefully coordinated with shoes and jewelry the night before. I blew my hair dry and applied my makeup.

Turning on the light, I entered my four-year-old son Maclean’s room to wake him a half hour before we had to leave. Next it was his younger brother, two-year-old Blake’s, turn. He still likes a bottle in the morning so that sat warmed and ready in the microwave.

            We descended to the living room, the dog still snuggled on his mat upstairs being the only member of the house that didn’t have somewhere else to be. I flipped the cartoons on and bolted back upstairs to get dressed. As I stared at the bright red 7:05 on my night stand clock, I groaned. I’d forgotten to call the automated tee time booking service that opened five minutes ago, after promising friends that I would arrange our golf game for Sunday morning.

            While holding the phone with one hand, I shimmied out of my pjs and into my bra and undies trying to avoid the open window. Shifting the phone to the other shoulder, I hopped on one leg shoving the other into my skirt.

            Blake finished his bottle and submitted to wardrobe. Maclean wanted to watch one more cartoon, eat a snack prepared by me when I had NO time left, and pick a toy for the day home before getting dressed.                    

            Checking my watch, I tried the “hurry up, or we’ll be late” adult reasoning. He stared blankly at the TV and shrugged. I turned it off and said “upstairs now please. Time to go potty and get dressed,” in a singsong preschool teacher’s most optimistic voice.

Maclean retorted with ‘no’.

Short of carrying him up the stairs and stripping him against his will, I didn’t see how I could  make it to the day home and then the train to get downtown in a reasonable facsimile of punctuality.

            Blake sat ready to go.   I stood buffed, polished and starting to perspire.

“Let’s go buddy.”

             “No!” Maclean crossed his arms over his heaving chest.

            The tug of war began and I could see myself sliding helplessly towards the mud puddle. My blood pressure rose and my cheeks flushed. I pictured a pink slip on my desk with the words ‘chronically tardy’ slashed across in red pen.                     

            “Hurry up,” I shrieked, then remorsefully added “I’m sorry buddy, but please cooperate with Mommy”.

            “No.”

            The dog lumbered down the stairs, wiped his drooly muzzle across Maclean’s face in a morning kiss before stopping to stare at the back door until I could attend to his needs.

            Painfully, slowly, Maclean rose. Grabbing a toy like a last request from the floor, he plodded up the stairs.

            With Maclean dressed and back downstairs I instructed, “Pick your toys for the day home and Mommy will go get the car. When I’m back, we’ve gotta go.”

            Pressing the garage door opener incessantly while juggling my briefcase and the boys’ backpack, I willed the ancient motor to whir into warp speed. I crouched to sneak under the creaking door, threw the bags in, cranked the engine and wheeled the car out to idle in the driveway.

Blake had a Thomas the Tank Engine video instead of a toy. Maclean had disappeared.  “Let’s Go!” I cried cheerily.

            “Mommy, come here,” came Maclean’s reply from the kitchen.

            “Can’t buddy. Hurry up.”

            I kicked my shoes off and marched into the kitchen. I had let the dog out and promptly forgot about him. He glared at me, tired and disgusted (brown labs can say all that with their droopy golden eyes).

            Maclean wasn’t looking at the dog though. He stood transfixed, staring at the screen on the outside of the door. Perched on the black mesh was a dragonfly, its still wings reflecting a rainbow of colours in the early morning light.

            My sister, tenant and part-time child wrangler, emerged from the basement.

            “Look Auntie,” Maclean beckoned her over to see his prize.

            “That’s nice honey, gotta go.” I reached for the door handle to let the dog in. Maclean watched the dragonfly take flight.

            Auntie helped Maclean put his shoes on before we ran for the car, which was probably down a half-tank of gas by now.

            As I strapped them into their car seats Maclean said, “Mommy that dragonfly was neat.”

            “Yes honey.” I jammed the gearshift into reverse and flew down the driveway, fiddling with the radio to find the traffic news.

            As we sped up the road, a small voice from the backseat said, “It was waiting for us”.

            I eased my foot off the accelerator, turned down the radio and with a smile at him in the rearview mirror replied, “Yes honey, it was.”