I have mixed feelings about today.
The real estate lawyer who is the primary person I work with quit without notice. He and the managing partner have been squabbling a lot, and I knew it was coming, but still. DID NOT WANT.
Between the server clock issue and an unexpected writ that turned up at registration, NEITHER of my two no-prob deals closed today. One closed in escrow, one extended to Monday. On another six deals that I was working with another clerk on (a block of six houses in London), I found out this morning that my boss, in consultation with the client, intended to extend for a week. They haggled all afternoon, and by six pm hadn't settled, so the agent is talking to the clients over the weekend and will work towards an agreement by Monday. I was completely left out of the loop, which is frustrating in the extreme.
My boyfriend, who is wonderful by anyone's standards, does not get that I need some quiet. He helped out today with banking on our closings, and had a good day, so he's chatty. At the best of times, he could talk the leg off a f**king table. Right now, I just want him to stop talking, but I don't have the heart to tell him.
On the plus side, a wonderful friend RAK'd me on a gift thread on Ravelry with two patterns I've been dying to knit, and beyond grateful, I've bawled a couple of times.
"I can’t speak of the excruciatingly sh*tty day that I had, but
periodically peeking in on this thread made it easier to get through the
day without running naked into oncoming traffic while tearing my hair
out and screaming uncontrollably."
I'm going to go to sleep soon, and tomorrow I'm going to see Life of Pi and I can't freaking wait. And on Sunday, I may just break ranks with my usual day and go meet people to knit at the Purple Purl.
Yeah...that kind of day.
Friday, 30 November 2012
Thursday, 29 November 2012
The trials and tribulations of a small real estate law firm
I had a post started for tonight and I fell asleep on the couch after dinner, and reading it now I can't get back into the flow I was in when I started. So...substitute post. Kind of sleep-stupid. NO JUDGING MY PUNCTUATION.
We had a technology problem at work today. It's not the first time, nor do I imagine it will be the last, but each time, it's a gut-wrenching, nauseating experience.
I work in a primarily residential real-estate-based law firm. We do litigation, wills & estates, but real estate pays the bills, and keep the doors open.
There are some things about our firm that are a little different. One of the things I like is that most of our clients and business are very local. When we get in agreements of purchase and sale, most of them are on streets I am familiar with in the immediate neighbourhood, from the Annex through to High Park. Our clients enjoy the ability to make appointments in the evenings, or on the weekends, one of the main differences between being a small boutique firm versus a big Bay Street office. We're a street-front office, so we take walk-ins for notarizing documents and people who decide they might need a will before they go on vacation in two weeks.
We have two real estate lawyers who work in satellite offices, and remotely connect to our office. If you call our main line, we can still connect your call through the phone system to the lawyer's extension, whichever office he's working in. We have a cloud server, VOIP phone and fax lines, and many of the documents we require for daily business come in via either fax or the internet.
I've talked to lots of people who say they'd never get a VOIP line (voice over internet protocol) because what if they lost their line and had an emergency? My home phone is a VOIP line, and I very rarely lose my connection, or perhaps a better way of describing it is that I very rarely have a problem that rebooting my router can't fix.
Imagine then, if you will, having your business get phone and fax over VOIP, and losing your connection for a few hours. Awesome, right? Can't receive new deals, which means we might not know we're actually representing a client. Can't get mortgage instructions if the fax doesn't work, because a bank won't get a message that the fax line is down. Worst of all, no incoming calls.
Internet's down. No email. No Teraview, which is the online land registry office. Most of our clients connect with us via email or text message, and not being able to receive or respond to messages can be devastating.
In a real estate law office, the hour between four and five o'clock is both endless and far, far too short. A technology problem can compound the stress of that last hour of the day and ramp it up into the stratosphere.
Today, our conveyancer software (the database software we use to keep track of and work our real estate transactions) needed to be tweaked - the customer service representative said, I just need to re-key your system, and that should fix the problem you're having, where your system stalls for thirty seconds, several times a day.
Rekeying crashed our brand new server. Fortunately I'd already closed all but one of my real estate deals...sales clients had gotten their funds and their mortgages were paid out, and purchase clients had gotten the keys to their new houses. We had one deal that was going to close later, because their mortgage was a last minute affair, so we knew it would be later in the afternoon. No sweat, that one-thirty server crash.
At four o'clock, I started to feel differently. You can only register a document in the land registry office until five pm, so a real estate closing has a hard deadline before you start getting into breach of contract territory. Most times, you're on the same side as the other lawyer...you both want the same thing. Purchasers want their keys, vendors want their sale proceeds.
Today, my last closing was an eager first time home-buyer who'd been rejected by his first mortgagee, and got his mortgage at the eleventh hour, the day before closing. I signed him yesterday at six-thirty (commissioner of oaths for the win), but we didn't get funded until after 2pm today. The other lawyer called me at 4:49pm and said, can you go into Teraview and make your land transfer tax statements, then I can sign for release, please?
I had noticed after the server crash that my computer clock had gone back to 9am, and that despite changing it a couple of times, it reverted back to what it regarded as the correct time, which was quite a bit earlier in the day. How awesome if it could be that easy...to turn back time and just let it roll.
Teraview, however, has its own internal clock. A clock which didn't jive with my (or K's) computer's reckoning of time, and which dug in its heels and said, uhn-uhn, can't do that. K and I worked frantically for ten minutes before we finally had to give up, and I had to call the vendor's lawyer.
Depending on the other lawyer, there can be a huge process after 5pm when a real estate transaction doesn't get registered. Many lawyers will say, I've got your funds, you've got my keys, let's close in escrow, give everyone their stuff and register in the morning. Some will say, after 5pm I want you to pay for another title search ($20 for a local search, more if it's out of your area) to show that nothing new has been registered on title before I commit to an escrow closing. A few will say, suck it, the purchaser can stay in a hotel and the vendor doesn't get their sale proceeds and we'll extend till tomorrow. I never know what attitude I'll get on the other end of the phone, especially if the reason the deal hasn't closed is a problem that originates with our office, so the call is always made with hat in hand.
Today I was lucky. The vendor's lawyer and I had agreed earlier in the day that we were both on the same side, wanting the deal to close. Her clients had no problem releasing the keys, and in turn got to deposit their sale proceeds today instead of tomorrow.
Our IT guru will fix the server's internal clock overnight. In the morning, I'll update the land transfer tax statements to enable the other lawyer to release the deed for registration, and then we'll register. Another weekday, and a bunch more closings, as befits the last day of the month.
As much as I'm disappointed by having a hold-over closing, that disappointment is hugely mitigated by the memory of my client's face when he accepted the envelope that held the keys to his very first home purchase. It's the very best part of my job.
We had a technology problem at work today. It's not the first time, nor do I imagine it will be the last, but each time, it's a gut-wrenching, nauseating experience.
I work in a primarily residential real-estate-based law firm. We do litigation, wills & estates, but real estate pays the bills, and keep the doors open.
There are some things about our firm that are a little different. One of the things I like is that most of our clients and business are very local. When we get in agreements of purchase and sale, most of them are on streets I am familiar with in the immediate neighbourhood, from the Annex through to High Park. Our clients enjoy the ability to make appointments in the evenings, or on the weekends, one of the main differences between being a small boutique firm versus a big Bay Street office. We're a street-front office, so we take walk-ins for notarizing documents and people who decide they might need a will before they go on vacation in two weeks.
We have two real estate lawyers who work in satellite offices, and remotely connect to our office. If you call our main line, we can still connect your call through the phone system to the lawyer's extension, whichever office he's working in. We have a cloud server, VOIP phone and fax lines, and many of the documents we require for daily business come in via either fax or the internet.
I've talked to lots of people who say they'd never get a VOIP line (voice over internet protocol) because what if they lost their line and had an emergency? My home phone is a VOIP line, and I very rarely lose my connection, or perhaps a better way of describing it is that I very rarely have a problem that rebooting my router can't fix.
Imagine then, if you will, having your business get phone and fax over VOIP, and losing your connection for a few hours. Awesome, right? Can't receive new deals, which means we might not know we're actually representing a client. Can't get mortgage instructions if the fax doesn't work, because a bank won't get a message that the fax line is down. Worst of all, no incoming calls.
Internet's down. No email. No Teraview, which is the online land registry office. Most of our clients connect with us via email or text message, and not being able to receive or respond to messages can be devastating.
In a real estate law office, the hour between four and five o'clock is both endless and far, far too short. A technology problem can compound the stress of that last hour of the day and ramp it up into the stratosphere.
Today, our conveyancer software (the database software we use to keep track of and work our real estate transactions) needed to be tweaked - the customer service representative said, I just need to re-key your system, and that should fix the problem you're having, where your system stalls for thirty seconds, several times a day.
Rekeying crashed our brand new server. Fortunately I'd already closed all but one of my real estate deals...sales clients had gotten their funds and their mortgages were paid out, and purchase clients had gotten the keys to their new houses. We had one deal that was going to close later, because their mortgage was a last minute affair, so we knew it would be later in the afternoon. No sweat, that one-thirty server crash.
At four o'clock, I started to feel differently. You can only register a document in the land registry office until five pm, so a real estate closing has a hard deadline before you start getting into breach of contract territory. Most times, you're on the same side as the other lawyer...you both want the same thing. Purchasers want their keys, vendors want their sale proceeds.
Today, my last closing was an eager first time home-buyer who'd been rejected by his first mortgagee, and got his mortgage at the eleventh hour, the day before closing. I signed him yesterday at six-thirty (commissioner of oaths for the win), but we didn't get funded until after 2pm today. The other lawyer called me at 4:49pm and said, can you go into Teraview and make your land transfer tax statements, then I can sign for release, please?
I had noticed after the server crash that my computer clock had gone back to 9am, and that despite changing it a couple of times, it reverted back to what it regarded as the correct time, which was quite a bit earlier in the day. How awesome if it could be that easy...to turn back time and just let it roll.
Teraview, however, has its own internal clock. A clock which didn't jive with my (or K's) computer's reckoning of time, and which dug in its heels and said, uhn-uhn, can't do that. K and I worked frantically for ten minutes before we finally had to give up, and I had to call the vendor's lawyer.
Depending on the other lawyer, there can be a huge process after 5pm when a real estate transaction doesn't get registered. Many lawyers will say, I've got your funds, you've got my keys, let's close in escrow, give everyone their stuff and register in the morning. Some will say, after 5pm I want you to pay for another title search ($20 for a local search, more if it's out of your area) to show that nothing new has been registered on title before I commit to an escrow closing. A few will say, suck it, the purchaser can stay in a hotel and the vendor doesn't get their sale proceeds and we'll extend till tomorrow. I never know what attitude I'll get on the other end of the phone, especially if the reason the deal hasn't closed is a problem that originates with our office, so the call is always made with hat in hand.
Today I was lucky. The vendor's lawyer and I had agreed earlier in the day that we were both on the same side, wanting the deal to close. Her clients had no problem releasing the keys, and in turn got to deposit their sale proceeds today instead of tomorrow.
Our IT guru will fix the server's internal clock overnight. In the morning, I'll update the land transfer tax statements to enable the other lawyer to release the deed for registration, and then we'll register. Another weekday, and a bunch more closings, as befits the last day of the month.
As much as I'm disappointed by having a hold-over closing, that disappointment is hugely mitigated by the memory of my client's face when he accepted the envelope that held the keys to his very first home purchase. It's the very best part of my job.
Wednesday, 28 November 2012
That (un)satisfying crunch
Up until ten minutes ago, I was having a stellar day. The kind of day that, when you look back on it, you say, DAYUM, I did good!
Proof number one. I woke up just before the alarm and hit snooze before the cacaphony seriously damaged my calm, enough to get the whole nine minutes of drowsing.
Proof number two. Our first appointment brought me a perfectly toasted, still warm bagel with butter and swiss cheese on it, just when I was contemplating a run to Tim's.
Proof number three. I had one real estate closing today. The mortgage money was in the bank when I checked the bank account at 9:15am. The redirection came before 10am. My runner was back from the bank buying drafts and depositing our cheque for fees and land transfer tax before 10:45am. I called the courier to send the closing package, which was delivered by 1pm. We registered before 2pm, and when the client came to pick up her keys at 2:30pm, I had her final report ready for pickup. Shazaam. That almost NEVER happens.
Proof number four. Three last minute signing meetings, with all documents, including teraview transfers and mortgages, prepped super-fast, and flawless first time around. This means that my sixteen closings on Thursday and Friday should theoretically be smooth sailing. This rarely translates into fact, but today it was hard to believe that the world wasn't an awesome place.
Until ten minutes ago. Steph isn't home from his three day kitchen-wrecking extravaganza, so I was on my own for dinner. I knitted on a project I impulsively decided to start for giftmas, made excellent progress, and decided at 8:15pm that it was time to have something to eat. I made myself an omlette, cheddar cheese, mushrooms and red peppers, sauteeing the vegetables first, then beating the eggs till fluffy and swirling them in a perfectly hot frying pan, adding the cheese and after it melted, the veggies. Flipped it without it going everywhere. Edges sealed with cheese.
First forkful, dripping with cheese, fragrant with black pepper. I put this heavenly forkful into my watering mouth, only to crunch on a giant piece of eggshell.
How the hell did I miss that?
I am going to go sulk now. Or something.
Proof number one. I woke up just before the alarm and hit snooze before the cacaphony seriously damaged my calm, enough to get the whole nine minutes of drowsing.
Proof number two. Our first appointment brought me a perfectly toasted, still warm bagel with butter and swiss cheese on it, just when I was contemplating a run to Tim's.
Proof number three. I had one real estate closing today. The mortgage money was in the bank when I checked the bank account at 9:15am. The redirection came before 10am. My runner was back from the bank buying drafts and depositing our cheque for fees and land transfer tax before 10:45am. I called the courier to send the closing package, which was delivered by 1pm. We registered before 2pm, and when the client came to pick up her keys at 2:30pm, I had her final report ready for pickup. Shazaam. That almost NEVER happens.
Proof number four. Three last minute signing meetings, with all documents, including teraview transfers and mortgages, prepped super-fast, and flawless first time around. This means that my sixteen closings on Thursday and Friday should theoretically be smooth sailing. This rarely translates into fact, but today it was hard to believe that the world wasn't an awesome place.
Until ten minutes ago. Steph isn't home from his three day kitchen-wrecking extravaganza, so I was on my own for dinner. I knitted on a project I impulsively decided to start for giftmas, made excellent progress, and decided at 8:15pm that it was time to have something to eat. I made myself an omlette, cheddar cheese, mushrooms and red peppers, sauteeing the vegetables first, then beating the eggs till fluffy and swirling them in a perfectly hot frying pan, adding the cheese and after it melted, the veggies. Flipped it without it going everywhere. Edges sealed with cheese.
First forkful, dripping with cheese, fragrant with black pepper. I put this heavenly forkful into my watering mouth, only to crunch on a giant piece of eggshell.
How the hell did I miss that?
I am going to go sulk now. Or something.
Tuesday, 27 November 2012
Some of my favourite pics
I found yesterday's post emotionally exhausting. Consequently, have a few of my favourite pictures.
Maddie, dancing on the dock at the cottage in Algonquin Park. I love that I caught her in the air.
Monday, 26 November 2012
Every other Sunday, we do a big breakfast. Pancakes, eggs if you want
them, baked beans, bacon, hash browns with mushrooms, onions and
garlic. Sometimes we fry up some tomatoes with fresh basil and shredded
parmesan, or slice up some fruit. Cocoa with petite marshmallows for
the kids, coffee or tea for the adults, usually followed up with the
water of life or a nice hoppy beer while we're cooking. We generally
sit down to this extravaganza between twelve and one. Sometime in that
hour, I always get the sense that time is moving too fast. We have to
eat by six thirty, be out the door by eight at the latest to meet R at
the appointed time. There isn't enough time to fit
everything in...almost always, someone wants me to colour their hair,
paint their nails, read to me, ask me for help with homework, put songs
on an iPod. Never enough time for the hugs and the cuddling and the
moments of stillness where you're afraid to speak, afraid to break the
contented silence that connects you to the small head under your chin.
A few of Sundays ago, Steph & I indulged in some quiet time, movies and knitting and solitaire, when suddenly there was a loud crash, the sound of a raised voice. My neighbour next door was yelling at his girlfriend, loud enough to hear the words, feel the angry vibration of them. The chihuahua was barking. My hands froze, mid-stitch, and my entire attention was focused on the noise of the angry voice. Thigh muscles beginning to bunch, the onset of rapid breathing, eyes going in and out of focus, the beginnings of dizziness, self-hugging. F**k you, you stupid f**king c*nt. You f**king stupid tw*t. You don't like it, you should get right the f**k out of here, there's the door. Long minutes, but in reality really only two or three. I was staring at Steph with wide unseeing eyes, and when he looked up from his computer screen, saw what was happening to me, in one simple smooth motion he took the broom and drove the end of the handle into the wall three times. The voices stopped.
I wish at some time that someone had made a point of hearing or noticing R yelling at me, had interrupted his anger. Many times over the years, I used to say to myself, he didn't hurt me, not really, but if I'd ever really believed that, belief would have crumbled in the face of the reaction I had to the brief spate of yelling and swearing next door that weekend. I'll probably never lose that gut reaction; it caught me totally off-guard.
There was a thread started on LSG yesterday, where the original poster wanted to initiate a discussion about conflict, and why there were so many stories about people, mostly women, who accept the unacceptable from people in their lives, how they didn't understand how that could happen to someone. The thread was only two or three posts old when I saw it, and I haven't read any of it since, but I wanted to try to articulate a response, at least from my own perspective.
Yesterday would have been my eighteenth wedding anniversary. We had smoking hot chemistry right from the start. We dated for a year and were engaged for a year before we got married. We never had a real argument that whole time. In hindsight, that could have been a red flag, because our first real argument happened three days into our honeymoon, where I locked myself into the bathroom to get away from him yelling at me, and where when I came out and crawled into the bed he wasn't in, he was out of bed with his face in my face, asking me if I felt stupid for being three days into a marriage with someone I was going to end up hating, assuring me it wasn't too late to turn back and tell everyone I'd changed my mind. He always told me he was sorry the next day. There were always periods of quiet, of him seeming like he adored me the way he said he did before that first fight. Periods of laughter, of flowers and passion and promises. Then, without warning, I would suddenly find myself on the wrong side of his temper. There would be swearing, mocking, name calling, derision, contempt. Breaking plates, throwing books, overturning a table. Sometimes there was more. He knocked my glasses off. Put his hands around my neck and threw me into a wall unit in our living room. Slapped me so hard I dropped to the kitchen floor. The worst time? I thought we were about to have make-up sex after a terrible, confrontational night, when suddenly his hands were twisted into my hair and he was pressing my face into the bed, telling me I had no privilege or privacy that he didn't grant me, and that what he gave, he could take away, because I had no rights....before he raped me anally and then pushed my face into his crotch, so I could lick my own sh*t off him.
I didn't start out walking on eggshells. I didn't start out agreeing that I was wrong or stupid or ignorant to keep the peace. I didn't start out with my head bowed so he couldn't see my eyes.
Once you say yes, it's okay for you to talk to me like this...call me names, put your hands or your words on me in anger and know that you can't say sorry and make the memory of it go away, or give me back the peace of mind I had before you did....you become less human. Once you're afraid to say no....to deny having your own opinions, your own dreams, your own thoughts...you become less human. Once you start losing those little pieces of dignity and self-respect and pride and self-worth...that humanity becomes harder and harder to take back. You don't give it up all at once. It's peeled away from you in strips and chunks as you try to hold onto as much of it as possible, and you lick your wounds to take away some of the sting when it's gone, and you try to gather the shreds of your humanity around you, and survive another day, another month, another year. I've said to different people when I try to explain, eventually, I felt like I was dying on the vine.
Sometimes, you get another chance, another choice. The stories from people who look back on those lives and wonder how they could have done things differently, how they became people they never intended to be, those sock puppet accounts set up by people who are too embarrassed or too genuinely afraid to reach out to people to find some reassurance that they're not asking for too much...they're my story too, the same way that a happily married person goes to a wedding and hears their own vows instead of the ceremony being performed. It's an uphill battle, learning to take back my humanity in bits and pieces, small decisions and big ones, putting the brakes on, learning to say no, and also saying, full speed ahead, yesyesYESYESYES, but I'm worth it. My kids are worth it.
This weekend, we made homemade waffles with our big breakfast, and gorged ourselves. In the afternoon, we played Chickenfoot and drank hot chocolate and listened to K-pop. Nothing special...and yet everything special. Ordinary. Quiet. Contented. I'll never take those things for granted. And when the kids disagreed, they lowered their voices without me raising an eyebrow, and used their words to resolve the problem. Of all the lessons I have to teach them, this one is imperative. Not negotiable, even.
I never want my girls, or my boy, to think it's okay to talk to someone that they love that way, or to be talked to that way. They have a choice too.
- To hell with this. I'm gonna live!
Kaylee Frye to Simon Tam, Firefly
A few of Sundays ago, Steph & I indulged in some quiet time, movies and knitting and solitaire, when suddenly there was a loud crash, the sound of a raised voice. My neighbour next door was yelling at his girlfriend, loud enough to hear the words, feel the angry vibration of them. The chihuahua was barking. My hands froze, mid-stitch, and my entire attention was focused on the noise of the angry voice. Thigh muscles beginning to bunch, the onset of rapid breathing, eyes going in and out of focus, the beginnings of dizziness, self-hugging. F**k you, you stupid f**king c*nt. You f**king stupid tw*t. You don't like it, you should get right the f**k out of here, there's the door. Long minutes, but in reality really only two or three. I was staring at Steph with wide unseeing eyes, and when he looked up from his computer screen, saw what was happening to me, in one simple smooth motion he took the broom and drove the end of the handle into the wall three times. The voices stopped.
I wish at some time that someone had made a point of hearing or noticing R yelling at me, had interrupted his anger. Many times over the years, I used to say to myself, he didn't hurt me, not really, but if I'd ever really believed that, belief would have crumbled in the face of the reaction I had to the brief spate of yelling and swearing next door that weekend. I'll probably never lose that gut reaction; it caught me totally off-guard.
There was a thread started on LSG yesterday, where the original poster wanted to initiate a discussion about conflict, and why there were so many stories about people, mostly women, who accept the unacceptable from people in their lives, how they didn't understand how that could happen to someone. The thread was only two or three posts old when I saw it, and I haven't read any of it since, but I wanted to try to articulate a response, at least from my own perspective.
Yesterday would have been my eighteenth wedding anniversary. We had smoking hot chemistry right from the start. We dated for a year and were engaged for a year before we got married. We never had a real argument that whole time. In hindsight, that could have been a red flag, because our first real argument happened three days into our honeymoon, where I locked myself into the bathroom to get away from him yelling at me, and where when I came out and crawled into the bed he wasn't in, he was out of bed with his face in my face, asking me if I felt stupid for being three days into a marriage with someone I was going to end up hating, assuring me it wasn't too late to turn back and tell everyone I'd changed my mind. He always told me he was sorry the next day. There were always periods of quiet, of him seeming like he adored me the way he said he did before that first fight. Periods of laughter, of flowers and passion and promises. Then, without warning, I would suddenly find myself on the wrong side of his temper. There would be swearing, mocking, name calling, derision, contempt. Breaking plates, throwing books, overturning a table. Sometimes there was more. He knocked my glasses off. Put his hands around my neck and threw me into a wall unit in our living room. Slapped me so hard I dropped to the kitchen floor. The worst time? I thought we were about to have make-up sex after a terrible, confrontational night, when suddenly his hands were twisted into my hair and he was pressing my face into the bed, telling me I had no privilege or privacy that he didn't grant me, and that what he gave, he could take away, because I had no rights....before he raped me anally and then pushed my face into his crotch, so I could lick my own sh*t off him.
I didn't start out walking on eggshells. I didn't start out agreeing that I was wrong or stupid or ignorant to keep the peace. I didn't start out with my head bowed so he couldn't see my eyes.
Once you say yes, it's okay for you to talk to me like this...call me names, put your hands or your words on me in anger and know that you can't say sorry and make the memory of it go away, or give me back the peace of mind I had before you did....you become less human. Once you're afraid to say no....to deny having your own opinions, your own dreams, your own thoughts...you become less human. Once you start losing those little pieces of dignity and self-respect and pride and self-worth...that humanity becomes harder and harder to take back. You don't give it up all at once. It's peeled away from you in strips and chunks as you try to hold onto as much of it as possible, and you lick your wounds to take away some of the sting when it's gone, and you try to gather the shreds of your humanity around you, and survive another day, another month, another year. I've said to different people when I try to explain, eventually, I felt like I was dying on the vine.
Sometimes, you get another chance, another choice. The stories from people who look back on those lives and wonder how they could have done things differently, how they became people they never intended to be, those sock puppet accounts set up by people who are too embarrassed or too genuinely afraid to reach out to people to find some reassurance that they're not asking for too much...they're my story too, the same way that a happily married person goes to a wedding and hears their own vows instead of the ceremony being performed. It's an uphill battle, learning to take back my humanity in bits and pieces, small decisions and big ones, putting the brakes on, learning to say no, and also saying, full speed ahead, yesyesYESYESYES, but I'm worth it. My kids are worth it.
This weekend, we made homemade waffles with our big breakfast, and gorged ourselves. In the afternoon, we played Chickenfoot and drank hot chocolate and listened to K-pop. Nothing special...and yet everything special. Ordinary. Quiet. Contented. I'll never take those things for granted. And when the kids disagreed, they lowered their voices without me raising an eyebrow, and used their words to resolve the problem. Of all the lessons I have to teach them, this one is imperative. Not negotiable, even.
I never want my girls, or my boy, to think it's okay to talk to someone that they love that way, or to be talked to that way. They have a choice too.
- To hell with this. I'm gonna live!
Kaylee Frye to Simon Tam, Firefly
Sunday, 25 November 2012
Metaphorical
These days,when I pick the kids up or drop them off, Ren tends to have a
bag of my junk, as he calls it, to hand over. There was no way I could
locate everything that was "mine" when I was packing, so that doesn't
surprise me. Sometimes there are nice surprises, long lost treasures
that were carefully put away. He handed me a gigantic Christmas bag on
my birthday this year, and the kids were convinced that it was a
birthday gift that Daddy had gotten for them to give to me, and I felt
bad when I opened the bag, with a bit of a flourish, only to show them
some second-hand books I'd bought in university - Ben Johnson and Ernest
Hemingway and Henry James. The last bag he gave me had a gift I'd
given him to commemorate our first Christmas in our new house, a tiny
gold-framed copy of Thomas Kinkade's "Home Sweet Home", originally
sitting on a matching easel, which did not come back to me. The glass
was cracked. What a lovely metaphor.
Last week I had asked to borrow a waffle iron that we'd gotten as a wedding gift. I used to make waffles all the time for the kids, same as I used to bake with them all the time. I took some of that gear with me, and left some, which I replaced for myself. The waffle iron was one thing I figured they'd use, but when I took it out of the bag, it had a thick film of dust on it. I couldn't find the recipe for yeast raised waffles, so I got one off All-Recipes, which was a little more elastic than the one I used to use. I'll have to find that one again. It made me kind of sad, after the kids whooped at the sight of waffles and the different ways they like to dress them - syrup, chocolate chips, raspberry jam, honey, Nutella, mango slices - having to wipe it clean and put it back in the bag to take back to him.
He shrugged when I handed it to him at dropoff. You might as well keep it. I never used it after you left. Or before you left, when it comes right down to it. It was never really the kind of thing I'd think about wanting,or using. That was weird to me. Did I just imagine all the times we sat down, as a family, to fresh, piping hot waffles, redolent of vanilla? Did I just imagine he'd enjoyed it as much as the rest of us did?
Today would have been our eighteenth wedding anniversary.
What a lovely metaphor.
Last week I had asked to borrow a waffle iron that we'd gotten as a wedding gift. I used to make waffles all the time for the kids, same as I used to bake with them all the time. I took some of that gear with me, and left some, which I replaced for myself. The waffle iron was one thing I figured they'd use, but when I took it out of the bag, it had a thick film of dust on it. I couldn't find the recipe for yeast raised waffles, so I got one off All-Recipes, which was a little more elastic than the one I used to use. I'll have to find that one again. It made me kind of sad, after the kids whooped at the sight of waffles and the different ways they like to dress them - syrup, chocolate chips, raspberry jam, honey, Nutella, mango slices - having to wipe it clean and put it back in the bag to take back to him.
He shrugged when I handed it to him at dropoff. You might as well keep it. I never used it after you left. Or before you left, when it comes right down to it. It was never really the kind of thing I'd think about wanting,or using. That was weird to me. Did I just imagine all the times we sat down, as a family, to fresh, piping hot waffles, redolent of vanilla? Did I just imagine he'd enjoyed it as much as the rest of us did?
Today would have been our eighteenth wedding anniversary.
What a lovely metaphor.
Saturday, 24 November 2012
Part of my job description
Mel is coughing up a lung today. She told me on Thursday that her dad
had let her stay home from school that day, but didn't intend to let her
stay home the next day, whether she needed to or not, because he didn't
want her to feel sorry for herself. She said she was looking forward
to coming over, if for no other reason than she knew I'd baby her a
little.
I woke up at 2am to get her a glass of water, rub Vicks on her back and chest, give her some cough syrup and hug her while she cried, till the remedies kicked in and she dozed off. She's been bundled up on the couch today with kleenex, cough drops, ginger ale and a cool cloth. I've indulged her grumpiness, as have we all, and she's feeling a little more spirited, now that we've eaten some dinner. She managed to choke down some Buckleys, and even suffered a joke from Steph about how if she could swallow that, she could swallow anything. Eww...that's my daughter. There was laughter, and hugs all around.
She hugged me earlier and said, thanks for letting me be a suck. I hugged her back and said, it's part of my job description. I'll NEVER not want to do this for you.
Now that the coughing has settled down a little, we're going to put on some music and play Chickenfoot, and hope we all get a full night's sleep.
I woke up at 2am to get her a glass of water, rub Vicks on her back and chest, give her some cough syrup and hug her while she cried, till the remedies kicked in and she dozed off. She's been bundled up on the couch today with kleenex, cough drops, ginger ale and a cool cloth. I've indulged her grumpiness, as have we all, and she's feeling a little more spirited, now that we've eaten some dinner. She managed to choke down some Buckleys, and even suffered a joke from Steph about how if she could swallow that, she could swallow anything. Eww...that's my daughter. There was laughter, and hugs all around.
She hugged me earlier and said, thanks for letting me be a suck. I hugged her back and said, it's part of my job description. I'll NEVER not want to do this for you.
Now that the coughing has settled down a little, we're going to put on some music and play Chickenfoot, and hope we all get a full night's sleep.
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