2008: a retrospective

thinking back, it's hard to remember what i did this year. nothing, mostly. a lot of sitting around. i'm usually too tired to feel capable of anything, so i sit in this chair and read blogs and webcomics and message boards. it's not a good use of my time, but what else can i do? i end up frustrated and angry when i try to challenge myself when i've had very little sleep. so a lot of this year was pissed away. that sucks, but it's not something that i have a lot of control over.

a year or maybe a bit more ago i realized that this whole stay-at-home gig wasn't about to end anytime soon and bitching about it was only making me depressed. in 2008 i tried to make the best of it and be the best goddamn housewife the world has ever seen. i knit, cooked, canned, butchered, gardened, wiped asses, read stories, came up with activities, cleaned... you name it, i tried my hand at it in 2008. i learned a few things about myself in the process.

i hate doing childcare. hate it. my kids are great in small doses, i can read to them and tickle them and wipe their tears... but all day, every day, and every night? fuck, no. keeping them fed and clean(ish) and entertained and mediating their conflicts wears away at me and pisses me off. i spend a lot of time just wanting them to go away. unfortunately, childcare is my primary activity. fuck. all i can really do about this is wait as patiently as i can for them to get old enough to start school and, hopefully, one day start sleeping through the night. i hate that i have this attitude because one day they won't be so small and cute and they won't want to snuggle with me. i don't want to waste these years with my impatience and irritability. i don't want them to remember me as the mama who just wanted them to go away. so i really do try hard to be a good, attentive mother. but as i read them the same stupid book for the ten millionth time, i keep an eye on the clock.

cooking, cleaning and laundry i can handle. they're mindless activities that need doing. cleaning is a pretty quick way to get satisfying results. cooking can be fun, if no one is pulling at my legs. laundry... whatever. it's fast and i like clean undies. i can't stand cleaning the kitchen, so it stays dirty. problem solved!

gardening, canning and knitting make me happy. i love making things, especially useful things. these aren't often considered to be serious art forms, but they're the closest i get these days. i don't miss painting and doing metalwork when i'm gardening. canning is a little more tedious, but the resulting rows of jars fill me with as much pride as any ring or painting ever did. knitting is sort of a mix - i liken it to making jewelry. the conception and planning of a project is where the creativity is - choosing materials and a pattern or design. then comes the drudgery, where i use the skills i have and acquire whatever new ones i need to create the object. the finishing touches and cleanup always make me feel glow-y. unless the project didn't work out the way i wanted, and then i walk around muttering curses for a while, then start over.


metalwork is more prone to creating income, but it takes lengthy, formal training and a lot of expensive equipment. knitting is less impressive to an outsider, but it's a more affordable art, and one that i can practice while my kids play. and it doesn't cause serious health problems in fetuses. one day i hope to get back into jewellerymaking, but until then knitting is an acceptable substitute.

a whiny list

6 - six days of constant crying from the boy. he's in agony. all i can do is give him nyquil and hope he cries himself to sleep. and by 'constant crying' i mean constant crying. he only stops to sleep. and he often screams in his sleep. all day, every day, he ranges between a droning cry and piercing shrieks of pain. to say my nerves are shattered is a vast understatement. oh, and his face smells strongly of rotting meat. yum.

5 - the number of firemen that came over yesterday. not for tea and crumpets. our house filled scarily with smoke and we called 911. the firemen came and hunted all over the house for the source, then figured it must have been a dust bunny that got into the furnace, and left. not coincidentally, i didn't sleep well last night. and not just because my kids were up and down like screaming, crying yoyos all night.

4 - four projects i've made with my dishcloth cotton. these socks,


a pair of baby legwarmers, and two dishcloths. actually, the legwarmers are 3/4 done. i am so sick of this yarn. sure, it's washable, hypoallergenic, cheap, and soft, but it's also deadly boring, a pain to knit with, and makes this squeaky feeling with the needles. i am craving some other yarn - any other yarn. i'm rushing through the last of that last legwarmer so i can make a hat or a slipper. i have one slipper, and i'd like another. my left foot gets jealous of its counterpart. but my toque is boring and navy blue, i'd rather look a little more stylin' when i shovel the mountains of snow that build up, making the front gate unopenable.

3 - the boy has lost at least three pounds in the past week, thanks to his inability to eat. it has taken him a couple of years to get to the point where he doesn't feel like a skeleton with some skin, but he's back to that point. he literally looks like the famine victim kids you see on infomercials for world vision. send this kid some body fat, somebody, please.

2 - two days that the baby has been healthy for. prior to that he was scarily feverish, couldn't breathe, and was performing nonstop crying duets with his brother. also he puked like some sort of crazy puking machine. i'm glad that machine hasn't been invented. my parner would probably get it for me as an ill-advised joke. the baby is still a fountain of snot, but i can handle that.

1 - one day left until we celebrate the holidays. my partner is working over the actual holidays, so we've fooled the gullible minions into thinking that santa is coming tonight. we've cut out most of our plans so that we don't rush the sick, miserable boy around trying to cram in all the christmas cheer. presents and food and hopefully naps. oh, and a bottle of wine. and some rum. sounds good to me.

everything grows

my baby has his first flu. he's burning hot to the touch and pouring puke, tears, snot, drool and shit from all the right orfices. the poor little man is miserable. he wants to be held at all times and only sleeps in my arms. by 'sleep' i mean he takes restless naps for no longer than ten minutes. i'm in a fog of exhaustion, unable to even fathom keeping up with the making of food or cleaning of the home. the boy has mostly been left to his own devices, and he's been really good. mostly.

my garden has been bursting at the seams. most of it remains unphotographed, (so far) but i have mountains of black beans, massive beets, a few cukes, a good showing of carrots, some peas, several sunflowers, ripening yellow peppers, a huge, brilliant hot pepper, and a flood of tomatoes. this is less than 1/3 of my tomato harvest so far. there are 5 varieties here. if it doesn't look like much,bear in mind that my garden would fit in most peoples' bathrooms. and tomato season is just begun. (it runs for another 3 weeks, until the first frost)


today i went with some friends to an amazing organic greenhouse. they had everything. herbs, trees, flowers, etc. almost everything was rare or unusual. apricot orange trees, patchouli plants... you name it, they had some obscure variation of it, organically grown, suited to these bitter canadian climes. i wandered around touching leaves and calling out my discoveries to my friends (also trying to keep the boy from destroying the place, it was his first time out of the house in days and he had some energy to burn)
in the end i limited myself to three plants. a banana stalk, a hot pepper, and a guava tree. (not pictured) all of them fruit. i'll be one of the few canadians eating local, organic bananas and guavas this winter. sweet!

"it's a shitty job"

the other day i was carrying the baby down the basement stairs and missed the last step. i could have dropped the baby onto the cement floor and stopped my own fall, but instead i fell and deliberately landed so the baby wouldn't get hurt. i'm not actually trying to sound all heroic, i'm just trying to explain why i'm now on crutches after falling a foot and a half. my foot hurts like someone smashed it with a sledgehammer then lit it on fire, and my baby toe is sticking out at a funny angle, but the hospital says it's not broken. no matter what's wrong with it, i can't walk on it. or bend it. or brush lightly against it. or think about it. writing this paragraph is painful.

so my partner has had to do everything around here. changing babies, making meals and coffee, helping me get to the bathroom, supervising the boy... at the moment the boy is really interested in his cornhole and his poop, so my poor man is flipping out on a regular basis. last night the baby wasn't ready to sleep until 1 am, then the boy got up at 7. my partner got freaking cranky and was stomping around crabbing at all of us. i made him come talk to me.

'relax. getting worked up over no sleep doesn't help.'
'i only got SIX HOURS of sleep! and now he's going to be up all day, doing stuff!!!'
'i do this every. single. day. the difference between how much sleep you got and how much i usually get is that i have to wake up to feed the baby a few times a night. sleeplessness is part of the job.'
'it's a shitty job'

no freaking kidding.

excuses, excuses...

i haven't posted in a while. i'm having trouble forming coherent thoughts, what with the sleep deprivation and all. but i plan on posting about my hopes for the coming year and doing a book review or two. but this post is long enough and i need to return to staring blankly at my solitaire game, trying to remember where i am and what i'm doing.

to the end of my rope and beyond

two hours of sleep. three, tops.
see how active she's being and how involved she is with her kids?
yeah.
that'll teach them to take turns keeping me up all. fucking. night.

my 11th post

there are ten posts previous to this one, and here are the tags they bear:

• about the boy (4)
• avoiding housewifedom (1)
• ethical clothing (1)
• exhaustion (4)
• filth and squalor (2)
• gf cooking (2)
• housekeeping (2)
• navelgazing (2)
• pastafarianism (1)
• personal appearances (1)
• piss-poor parenting (2)
• vomit (3)

as you can see, 40% of them are about exhaustion, 40% feature my older son, and a third of them mention vomit. i'm actually surprised that vomit didn't get mentioned in more posts, since it's the main feature in my life lately. but there you have it. this blog is exhausted and puke-infestd, mostly thanks to the boy. take a bow, son.

weekend of a thousand pukes

all weekend the boy was pukey, droopy, weepy and sleepy in turns. i got thrown up on at least seven times. the baby has recently become a night owl, too, so it was not the best weekend of my life.
on the other hand, we came out of the weekend with a much tidier house than we started it with. our beautiful midwife/ friend and her kids came for dinner so the punky papa and i took it as an excuse to get our act together and haul 8 bags of garbage & recycling out of our dining room. i washed the floor by hand, even. it was a shock the first time i walked through the kitchen without my feet sticking to the floor.
after the puke and the scrubbing and the complete lack of sleep i deserve this:
or maybe about twenty of these:

eau de puke

last night the baby cried from around 10 (when we went to bed, being party animals on a friday night) until midnight. so we finally made it to bed. it's been a long week so we were more than ready. then, ten minutes after lying down, the boy projectile vomited all over himself and his bed. it was lovely. the kid was lying in a pool of his own vomit. so we got him cleaned up and suggled back into bed - then he puked again. this time all over both of us. the poor kid was shaking and his eyes couldn't focus so i spooned him while my partner slept in the other bed. then he puked again. each time he waited until everything was tidied up before puking everywhere. all told he puked 6 times, the last time at 5.30 am. he and i both have dried vomit in our hair and on our skin. we're going to take a bath soon, then i'm going back to bed.
we actually have a really busy day today, watching my midwife-friend's kids while she's at a birth. we need to get moving. and no one in this house (except the baby) has slept. urg.

pathetic.

today i did almost nothing. i played around on the laptop, played sims2, tolerated countless tantrums, and lactated. i have no energy. actually, that may be because
a. i have had almost no sleep for 3 nights in a row, now
b. i haven't eaten anything at all
no wonder the coffee isn't helping.
tomorrow i'll be productive and all that shit. for now i'm going to put an elmo video on and drink more coffee.