Lying to Yourself

I was in a Tim Horton's today and the guy behind me ordered a double double. Then he corrected himself.

"I mean, triple triple," he said.

At what point should you just let it go and admit you don't like drinking coffee?

Deep Thoughts

Help settle a debate currently raging around here:

"Promenade" - is it pronounced promen-aid or promen-ad?

Keep in mind, the debate was sparked by the daily reading of a book that features a cow dancing with a pig.

When people say parenthood is fulfilling, they don't mean on an intellectual level.

How Sweet It Is

Has it really been more than a month since I last posted? Yikes. It honestly doesn’t feel like it. I kept coming up with things to talk about but then I’d sit down and write about them and suddenly they all just seemed silly and pointless. Do I really have anything interesting to say? For the most part, probably not.

Well, just this once I do have something interesting to say. I am so very, very, very happy to announce that I GOT A JOB (!) and I am now working full time again.

A few weeks after I was first laid off, my husband and I went to hang out with some friends (a couple) and the wife said she’d known someone who’d been laid off and it had taken them six months to find a job. I remember being horrified and saying something to the effect of “God I hope it doesn’t take that long!” But it did. Well, almost. I was unemployed for five months almost to the day I was laid off. Quel nightmare.

To be fair, I found out that I got the job three weeks before I could start, so if I wanted to stroke my ego I could say that I was only unemployed for four months. But seeing as I spent those three weeks at home working (minimal) freelance and desperate for my situation to change, I really don’t think they count. Actually, if I'm going to be honest, those were probably the three worst weeks of the whole summer. Just imagine - finally finding out I have a job, that someone deems me worthy, but still being stuck at home doing NOTHING! Many tears were cried, much vodka was consumed and an addiction to a vampire-related book series (and TV show) that can best be described as "soapopera trash" was developed.

The three week delay was because the job was conditional on government funding and naturally there were delays on the government’s end crossing their Ts and dotting there Is. But it’s over now and I am back to the good old days of struggling to get out the door on time.

And boy have things changed in those five months that I've been gone. I no longer have a 13-month old who walks slowly and just stands there as I feed and dress him. I’ve now got an 18-month old who screams when I try to take his PJs off against his will (Fashionista? Overly heightened sense of personal space?) and who feeds himself very well . . . but at a snail’s pace. A snail who hasn’t yet had his morning coffee. A snail who took too many sleeping pills the night before and has a nasty, groggy medication-induced hangover.

But you know what? I don’t care. I much prefer the juggling act required to manage a toddler and household than I did having the summer “off”. I would have failed in the 1950s as a women and a wife. It seems my love for Mad Men only extends to its glossy exterior of sexy tight suits and slick words. The reality, as it turns out, is NOT for me.

But I'll save my essay titled "Guilt I feel for being happier outside of the home instead of inside of it" for another day. For now, I'll just do my best to look back at the summer of 2009 as a learning experience and not the vast cavern of nothingness that it really was.