How the Netherlands is slowing me down

Not in a good way, though. Not like, stop and smell the flowers slowing down. Not like, simplify your life slowing down. No. Not even like, I could be doing great things but the Netherlands is holding me back! (Although it is, and I might write about that some other time.) No, it's more of a Borg thing: We drive slow. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.

<Sigh> Resistance is futile.

So today I received another fucking speeding ticket in the mail. My crime this time? 4 km/h over the speed limit. 4. For which I am being fined 33 euros. Seriously. And if I don't pay, it will go up, first to 46 euros, and then to 85 euros. I don't know what happens after that and I don't intend to find out. I will pay my ticket. And complain about it.

I understand that the speed limit is 50 km/h. Really. I might not agree with it, but it has registered. It's just this zero tolerance thing keeps biting me in the ass. In Canada, my general policy is not to exceed 20 km/h over the posted speed limit. I have, on occasion, exceeded this. Yet never in my 18 year driving career have I gotten a speeding ticket there. Granted, this may well have to do with the failure/banishment of photo-radar and the vast area that traffic cops have to police, but the fact remains. 18 years, relentlessly speeding, 0 speeding tickets.

Fast-forward to the Netherlands. Soon after getting my new car, I drove some friends to the airport. Two weeks later, I received a fine in the mail. 56 euros for 8 km/h over the 100km/h limit. That's what you get for doing someone a favour here. <Sigh> To be honest, I was surprised I was only going 8 over.

Then in the summer I drove with some friends to Castlefest. I thought I got 'flashed', but weeks passed with no fine in the mail; I thought I was home free! Then, almost 2 months later I come home one day to find the fine at the door. 46 euros for 6 over. <Sigh> You will be assimilated.

This time, I was driving with my parents to Delft to get a souvenir. 33 euros for 4 over.

You can see how the Borg Netherlands is winning, though. I am assimilating slowing down. The Netherlands is financially forcing me into the Dutch mold: compliant drivers who promptly pay their fines. Resistance is futile.

Ultimately, what is the real lesson to be learned here?
a. Assimilate! Resistance is futile!
b. Know where all the cameras are. This is an expensive learning process, but will allow for continued speeding.
c. Stop driving other people. Apparently fines only result when carrying passengers.
d. Move to Germany. Glorious land of the unlimited autobahn. Avoid the Borg Netherlands at all costs!

More ninjas? The second baby dilemma

I am struggling with a lot of identity, purpose and direction issues right now. I feel torn. There are things that I want for myself, things that I believe I am meant to be doing, but I am held back by the life I have built for myself. I think that my purpose is to physically work towards saving the environment. And I feel that to do that, I need to be in a location that needs physical help. Like the desert. Or the rainforest. Or the tundra. Or working on things related to saving these areas, things I don't really believe I can do here, in the Netherlands. And I can't do any of it because I have built this life, this family, this home and I am stuck here.

I feel torn, because I feel a pull to be somewhere else, making a difference, when I am sort of trapped by responsibility, obligation and love, to be here with my family. It's also awkward, because I feel like I can't make a difference here. This may have something to do with the 'terrible twos' and The Little Ninja asserting his independence, but I feel like I am stuck in a constant battle with him. And I'm losing. I feel like I have no impact here at all. Like I am totally useless. No one even listens to me or pays any attention to me. This combines with my complete burn-out in the work sphere, where I also feel I am not making any difference in the world and am not even actually making any money, either. Which is sort of the whole point of a job. If I have to do something that completely bores and/or frustrates me, I should at least have something to show for it. And I don't. The only thing I have to show for it is a growing list of physical problems and internal turmoil.

So. Amidst all of this tension is the desire to have a second child. Logically, it is a stupid choice. I can barely handle the one-child family I have now. I hated being pregnant and I still remember how absolutely horrible delivery was. And pregnancy and delivery are really kind of necessary parts of having children. And I do consider that things will likely ease up a bit when The Little Ninja starts school in another year and a half. And I know that having another child would add to the stress, the responsibility, the workload and postpone any possible freedom for at least another 4 years.

And children are a gamble: you don't know what they're going to be like until they're born. I know that I might have another child (or twins!) that is (are) just as difficult as TLN. And that scares me, because I truly don't know if I could handle that. I mean, physically and developmentally, TLN is perfectly healthy and I am still driven to tears trying to deal with him.  I could have a child with health issues or developmental issues, which would force me into a role I could not thrive in and essentially deprive me of any possible sort of freedom in the future. And that would probably kill me. But delivery could kill me too. If it hadn't been for modern medicine, both TLN and I likely would have died during the childbirth process. I know that. Childbirth remains a major risk.

So, logically, the choice is simple. Deal with the one child I already have, keep on keeping on until this phase or whatever passes (please, please be a phase that passes), and be prepared to sacrifice yet another year of my purpose, drive, passion, and self, really, to this one child with the hope that after that, when he starts school, I can then get my own life on track and do something I feel is meaningful.

So where's the dilemma, right?

It's here: I don't believe that family decisions should be made with logic. I believe that these are the decisions that should be made with the heart. My heart knows everything my head knows. It knows how I constantly struggle with TLN. It knows that a second child may only add to my distress. But it still yearns for another child. It has faith.

And it is possible that a second child would be easier than TLN. I see it in families all around me; two totally different children, with totally different temperaments and personalities, one easier and the other more difficult to handle. And I hear regularly that delivering a second child is much easier/faster than the first. These things are all possible.

But I am afraid that it would be even harder. I am afraid it might kill me. I am afraid of being trapped in this current role and place. I already feel guilty for wanting a different life than I have. And yet I yearn to entrap myself even further with another child, another chain keeping me here, useless and unfulfilled. Unhappy. It is stupid. And I see that. Believe me. And yet, somehow, it STILL seems like the right thing to do. And this conspires to only add to the turmoil inside me. I want yet another thing that I shouldn't want.

Popular wisdom says that you should design your life around the things you want to have achieved when you die. So that if you were to look back on your life on your deathbed, you would be satisfied with the life you had lived and the achievements and contributions you had made.

I need to make a difference. I want to contribute. And I want a family. Are these things mutually exclusive? I don't believe they should be. But then I wonder if I'm just rushing too much. Why can't I take a few years from my purpose to have the family? I can't do it later. Time is running out as it is. If I am going to have another child, now is the time to do it. Now, when the likelihood of a chromosomal anomaly is still reasonably low. Now, while I still have most of the baby equipment needed. Now, so that I can stop sitting on the fence about this one issue and confidently move toward the future - freedom delayed by a few years, true, but not by indecision.

But what if my haste is some unconscious knowledge that I won't live to be 94 like my grandfather? What if time is running out in more respects than just fertility, and if I am going to make any difference in the world, it needs to be now? Then I need to focus on that. And forget family expansion.

But something inside me won't let me decide with any finality not to have another child. I can't do it. And yet I fear to move forward... My head is decided one way, my heart the other. And so I sit here, on the fence, torn, waiting for something to change, to shift the balance.

Sands of the Gobi

Today was a great day for memories.

We went to the beach this morning and played in the sand and a tide pool. I wish we could have stayed all day, but The Little Ninja had a dentist appointment at 2:30 so we headed home for lunch and then to the dentist. Apparently he has weak enamel on his molars so he's going to have to go for check-ups every 3 months because he's more susceptible to cavities and breakage. Hopefully it won't affect his adult teeth. We'll just have to wait a few years till they come in and see.

After that we biked over to a local ice cream parlour that we keep passing by and had a cone each. When we went home, I thought he needed a nap, even though it was quite late by this point, so in a last ditch attempt, I offered a choice: we were going to go home and lie down. Did he want to lie down in his bed or in his tent? Easy decision, right?
As you would expect, he chose the tent.

So I set up his toddler tent in the backyard and set it in a shady spot. I told him to go lie down and then I started to set up my tent next to his, because I wanted in on the fun and simply do not fit in the toddler tent.
He helped me put the poles in alignment and then I quickly set up the tent the rest of the way. He wanted to climb right in, but I could see it was filthy. It was covered in red sand. Gobi Desert sand.

When I was in Mongolia, I remember saying after my 8-days-without-showering desert adventure that I would never be rid of the sand. I'd be finding it for years. I was joking at the time, but now here I was, some 8 years later, spreading the Gobi over my lawn.

I carried my tent with me for my entire 2005 overland trip from Japan to Holland, mostly as an emergency precaution, and I ultimately only used it twice (not even in emergencies), in Mongolia. The gers on those two nights would have been pretty cramped so I broke out my tent. It was a horrible experience because I had no insulating layer beneath me and I shivered the whole night, only falling asleep when the sun finally came up.

Anyway, I guess I never even opened it again since. Accommodations were easy to find for my entire trip, really, and once I got to Holland, I was looking for a job and a place to live and train... I never seriously even considered camping. And then once I had a job and a place to live, well, I never really had any desire. I remember packing the tent into a plastic bag and putting it on a shelf in the shed when we moved to our house 5 years ago, and there it's sat until today.

All those grains of the Gobi were just sitting there, waiting to be discovered. And it took an afternoon backyard camp-out with my 2-year-old, 8 years later, to make it happen.

Killing ourselves

You might not expect such idiocy from a species named for its especially large and developed brain, but we are destroying our own habitat. In radically changing the face of the planet, as we continue to do, and by continuously releasing extreme quantities of pollutants into the environment, we are setting in motion our own (thoroughly justified) extinction. True, as a species we are ingenious and some will possibly manage to survive. Hopefully not as homo capitalis or homo prodigi (capitalist man or wasteful man, according to my Google-based Latin), but as some newer kind of man not bent on profiting from the rape of the Earth.

We are bankrupting ourselves and 'feeding the habit'. Consumerism and our credit-based society is putting large sections of society into an unsustainable position of ever-growing debt. Add to that that governments cater to the corporations and organisations largely responsible for that debt and the destruction mentioned above, you see that even those responsible for protecting us as a people are doing us in.

We are overfishing, overpolluting, overclearing and overusing. Sure, it seems like there are enough fish when you look at the fish in the supermarket. The sky and water look blue. It seems like there is forest aplenty around the world. Honestly, though, all is not as it seems. If we stop commercially fishing the oceans right now, the fish populations might recover. One day. The sky and water can look clean without actually being clean. And there IS a lot of forest. But those forests are responsible for filtering the air of the whole world, returning oxygen to the atmosphere so that we (and everything else) can keep breathing. Consider that not so long ago, most of North America and Europe used to be covered in forest and are now largely farmland, and look at how quickly forests are being cleared around the world to make space for more (poor) farmland. The scale at which we are taking away from the environment is immense. And the token efforts to compensate are negligible. Yet the rate of consumption is only increasing.

The 'developed' world is greedy and wasteful, 'buying' and claiming resources that belong to everyone in the name of profit, burning and disposing of vast resources to facilitate an addiction of bigger and better and more.

Here's a little doomsday scenario based on the forests mentioned above. Every person on Earth relies on those forests. We don't actually know exactly how much we need to survive, though, so we just keep on cutting it down. Because it's just forest. You don't have to pay for it. You can just take it. And what happens when oxygen levels in the atmosphere start to drop, and people start having symptoms of oxygen deprivation? Then what? The people at high elevations, where there is already less oxygen, would suffer first, of course. Typically these are not the richest or most powerful people in the world, though, so their voices would probably go unheard, while more forests are cleared. There wouldn't be a real fuss until it started to affect larger populations. So everyone who can afford it moves down to sea-level where there's more air and the people higher up just all curl up and die and maybe logging is halted. Maybe. But at that point there already isn't enough oxygen in the world for the people and the problem continues to get worse. People start planting trees, perhaps. But it's already too late. Plants need oxygen too. They can't grow without it. As oxygen levels drop, photosynthesis is less efficient, so less oxygen is released. Mass populations start feeling the effects. The rich start walking around with their own oxygen supplies and people start sealing themselves into oxygen-enhanced domes. But this can only work for a select few. There are too many people on Earth and something needs to be done about it. Wars start, in the name of survival, fighting over air. The poorer populations lose, of course, suffering from the tiring effects of oxygen deprivation, struggling to fight against the rich armies supplied with oxygen to make them active and strong. But no one knows what to do with all the bodies, of humans and animals dying all over the world. So they just retreat to their bubbles and let them rot in place. Unfortunately, decomposition releases even more CO2 and other pollutants into the air, which only contributes to climate change and pollutes the air even further. Meanwhile the world outside the bubbles is a toxic desert. Inside, there isn't enough food to go around. Not a nice scenario? Stop cutting down the forests! Stop taking! The  trees don't belong to everyone? Surely we can agree that the AIR does!

Oxygen is only one of the things we rely on the forests for, though. The Amazon rainforest in particular is considered one of the most important forests in the world, for its biodiversity and its influence on world climate and weather patterns. Seriously. And it is being cleared at a horrific rate. Why? To plant 'biofuel' crops - crops whose only point is to continue to fuel the fossil-fuel-based energy and vehicles we rely on today, two of the main sources of pollution in the world. 'Biodiesel' doesn't burn any cleaner than regular diesel, but since it comes from plants instead of oil, it's supposed to be okay. And since the rainforest is just there for the taking and people will pay ridiculous amounts of money for the oil crop, bye bye rainforest. Hello desert.

And this is just one of the many things we're doing wrong right now. Like good little scientists following the scientific method, we isolate problems and try to study just one variable at a time. And each one of the things may have horrendous consequences. But the total effect of all of the horrible scenarios I could describe right now would surely be even worse?! But that's not something that can be proven by 'scientific' experimenting; it's theoretical. So it isn't studied. It's not an actual 'environmental problem' in fact, unless/until society perceives it as a problem. Which it doesn't. Because right now it is just theoretical. The forests ARE still there right now. There ARE still a few fish in the seas. So you don't see a problem and don't think about it. And it won't change and we will continue on this path to destruction until we are all dead, and everything on Earth along with us.

Failing

You know how I was trying to be positive? Well, I haven't written in a while because I'm having a hard time with that. I feel like I'm failing. So I've decided to write about that because otherwise this blog will just curl up and die... So as a bit of a warning, this will probably be a rant, and if you're one of those gentle souls that doesn't believe in negative feelings, stop reading now.

First of all, despite my contrived list of things I like about the Netherlands, the honest truth is that I hate it here. I've been here almost 8 years and despite my 'integrated' life, internally I seriously doubt that I will ever feel like I belong here. I am not Dutch. I will never be Dutch. The list of things that annoy me here on a daily basis overwhelmingly surpasses, exceeds and outweighs the list of things I like. Yes, there are good days and bad days. But if I consider my entire experience living here, I wonder how I even manage to stay another day.

Yet obviously, I manage to stay because I have a life here and I can't leave. Even when I had nothing to tie me down, picking up and moving to another country was difficult. And now I have a mortgage on a house that drops in value every year, amounting to a burden that is quite literally a cage keeping me here. I have a Dutch husband (for the moment. I can't say our relationship is terribly healthy righ now either) who refuses to leave the Netherlands for at least the next 20 years. Leaving the Netherlands means leaving him (or waiting until retirement). And I have a Dutch son. If I were to leave, husband and country, would I even get custody of him? And if I did, how would I manage?! I don't make enough money to support the two of us, and I quail at the thought of looking after him all by myself without ever a break. Although, I suppose if I were to return to Canada, even just to regroup, probably meaning staying with my parents, they would be able to help me out a bit in that area. But anyway. These are hypothetical. The reality is that I'm trapped here and I hate it.

I am stuck at home every day. Essentially the only people I ever see are my husband and my son. I take The Little Ninja to daycare in the morning, then sit behind my computer procrastinating/working/worrying about not having enough work all day. At 5:30, when The Recyclist brings home The Little Ninja, I basically have to have dinner on the table. That or face screaming from one or both of them. Then I look after TLN until he's in bed. I can either watch tv with The Recyclist in the evening, or be relegated to trying to read over the background noise of the cursed tv. There's only one living room and my only other option is to go upstairs. Where I sit all day.

I don't make enough money because I don't get enough work and because I get paid too little for the work that I do. Despite my years of experience (ever increasing!) my clients continually force my rates down. I earn less every year. So I worry about not getting enough work, because it means we have less income. And while my rates are being forced ever downward, prices for everything else are going up. I desperately need some time off to just unwind, but I feel guilty for every assignment I turn down because that's income we won't have.

I also hate my job. I procrastinate because I don't actually want to do the work. I'm bored. I'm always on the lookout for other jobs, but my options are limited to engineering in Rotterdam 5 days a week, or some local part time job. Neither option really appeals. I was looking at some schools to see if I could retrain to do something more hands-on. Sadly, even training to be a construction assistant (to hold the bucket of nails and fetch coffee) takes at least a year, full time. And there's no work in construction anyway. Rather pathetically, the apprenticeships, if I could get one (unlikely, given that: I am female, I am 'old' and would therefore cost more - minimum wage is age-based, construction hours are not compatible with daycare hours, and, again, there are no jobs) look like they would earn me more than I'm making now (as a translator/editor with a degree and six years' experience). But I would go out of my mind doing something so menial.

I'm trying to figure out what I could do to fix my situation. What hands-on job requires real thinking? Because I really miss having to think. I used to be really smart. Seriously. The lowest I have ever gotten on an IQ test was 140, (and I blame the noisy environment when I took it). I was always in the 'enhanced/gifted' class at school. I love solving problems. I love thinking and coming up with new ideas, new ways to do things. I am easily bored and crave something new. Not like new employer; more like new career. This is extremely difficult to facilitate in the Dutch labour market, where you need a piece of paper to qualify you to do anything. Seriously. Work at McDonalds? Hospitality certificate. Plant trees? Gardening diploma. Secretarial work? Secretarial diploma. And I don't actually want to do any of those things, certainly not badly enough to go get a certificate for it. Those papers also limit you. I have a mechanical engineering degree, which here only allows me to do mechanical engineering (in theory, interesting. In practice: boring). I have excellent English skills, something that, considering the standard of English here, should be prized more highly. My Dutch is about as good as any foreigner is likely to get. I want to work with my hands on something tangible. I thrive on change. I feel completely confined here. And though I keep on keeping on, I hate it. I'm dying inside.

To continue my rant, I feel completely unappreciated. And unheard. Invisible even. The only positive feedback I get from my clients is that they keep coming back to me. Despite this, they keep pushing down my rates, implying that if I don't lower my rates, they'll go to someone else... and I know they will, too.  My husband's every word seems to be criticism of something I'm doing or not doing. You know 'defensive driving'? I seem to be defensive living. People seem to literally not see me. I have to watch out for cars, bikes, even people walking - they'd run right over me. (Part of this has to do with the inconsiderate nature of Dutch people, which I can go into at length. Don't get me started.) I live a photoshopped facebook life that almost exclusively highlights the positive, and my Dad still had the gall to criticize me yesterday for swearing in a comment on someone else's photo.  I can't even fucking swear on facebook anymore? I didn't invite my family to be my facebook friends. I felt obligated to accept their requests. I don't want them on there. I want to be able to post things that they can't read. I carefully filter my life for them already when I talk to them. Now I have to censor facebook too, my one link to my friends around the world? I almost unfriended him, right then, but didn't, because it would be unfair, since he's stalking me through his wife's account and she didn't say anything. I feel like I can't even live my life truthfully. Everything has to be great to the outside world. But I'm so tired of faking it. Of lying. Hence the rant here; this anonymous blog is my sole outlet. Can't I ever be honest to actual people who know me? Don't I have the right to say that I am unhappy and discontent with my life right now?

8... a sign?

I got an 8 on my environmental science exam (out of 10). I'm quite pleased. I guess the prof understood my Dutch well enough. Whew. (Or he didn't and gave me the benefit of the doubt. That could be it too.) In the bigger picture, this means I can take more courses, possibly leading to a degree at some point. In an even bigger picture, I wonder if it's a sign.

I don't mean to go all new-age on you, but I've read a lot about synchronicity and basically letting the universe tell you what you're meant to be doing. Recently I've started interpreting things in my life as signs that I am definitely going down the wrong path. Big things like I'm not getting much work as a freelancer and dreading actually having to do any of the work I do get, and little things like how nothing ever goes right, from bags of groceries falling over to tossed trash bouncing back out of the garbage can, my e-mail program constantly crashing right when I need it and burnt fingers from cooking.

So I wonder if this exam result is a sign pointing me in the right direction, in contrast to the useless signs around me that just tell me I'm going the wrong way.

A Memory of Caring (WoT rant)

Since I finished my exam, I've busy reading my reward for studying so hard: the final book in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series, A Memory of Light. It isn't quite living up to expectations. My 'reward' is seeming more and more like a punishment...

I'm not enjoying it as much as I'd hoped or expected. I mean, I knew this book would be about The Last Battle, as the entire series has been leading up to it. I guess I just didn't realize that meant the whole book would be battle. Battle, war, military strategy, tactics, fighting, dying... I'm 700 pages in. I don't care anymore. The battle is taking forever. I just don't care. I'm not one to skip ahead, but it's seriously dragging for me. I'm sure it's exciting enough if you're into that sort of thing, but I'm so not. Twenty pages of battle, okay. Seven hundred and it's still going? Come on. I'm a fantasy reader, not a general. This is not what I signed up for. I read 13 enormous books leading up to what should be the big payoff. Instead I get an epic battle. So epic I might never finish it. Let someone win already and tell me how it all wraps up! After 13 books and several years, the arc of this story needs a big resolution... a climax can't last 700 pages. Just get it over with already. The tension is dying, not building here!

Rejoining the world

I was studying for basically all of January for an exam that I finally wrote on Tuesday evening. It was my first written exam in a LOT of years, and it was my first attempt at writing a university exam in Dutch. Don't get me wrong; it wasn't an exam of Dutch, it was an environmental science exam, in Dutch. Hopefully I managed to get my thoughts across well enough to pass the course. Because I did really enjoy the course, so I'd like to take more, and the introductory course I took is kind of a prerequisite for everything else. We'll see. Surely the professor can tell that I'm not a native speaker and take that into account when my answers are maybe not quite as clearly expressed as he would like. I hope.

Anyway. I sort of withdrew from the world last month, and I'm just now slowly returning, picking up my non-study activities one by one. I went to another club for archery on Wednesday - the first in the regional series of friendly competitions - it'll move all over the area for the next several weeks. It gave me time to try out my car, though! Yay! My navigation system, too, which worked like a charm. It was great to not have to stand out in the cold waiting for public transport. Actually, without a car I wouldn't even take part in this competition - it's just too hard to get to most of these places otherwise. For archery, not having a car really limited me. It's not the main reason I bought a car, but it will certainly benefit from it!

I haven't started running again yet. I stopped when we got that dumping of snow mid-January and, well, let's face it, that only melted this week, so I've only REALLY missed a week of running that I should be sorry about. The other weeks don't count, in my book. It would not have been safe. Trust me. I fell getting off my bike - because my feet slid as I hopped off and down I went. I had to keep supporting the bike, too, because The Little Ninja was on the kid seat at the front and I didn't want to land underneath both him and the bike the bike to fall over with him on it. So I got a nice bruise on my cheek from where I essentially supported the bike with my face. I wasn't going to try running in that.

But I'm on the right path: back into my normal life! Work, archery, running, writing, socializing... and thinking about studying something new.

Definitely a Weather God

There are a lot of signs pointing to me being a weather god. But definitely not in the good way. As I believe I mentioned before, I seem to attract rain. As temperatures seem completely out of my control, I suppose I should say precipitation. And my 'powers' kick in right when I want such precipitation least. And conspire to ruin my life. Or at least my plans. Like the snowstorm that made me cancel my appointment to pick up my new car. The one that I've been waiting months for, and secretly dreaming of for years. So I rescheduled. And what showed up in the forecast for the new date? Another snowstorm. Luck arranged that my dealer eventually dropped off the car to me at my house. (Yay! Snow or no snow, I wasn't looking forward to bussing over to the dealership.)

It's now been almost two weeks and I still haven't driven my new car. First I didn't have a car seat, so I was limited by The Little Ninja, but that arrived a week ago. No more excuses, right? We planned a maiden voyage to Oma's house for Saturday past. And wouldn't you freaking know it? Another cursed snowstorm! Seriously!

I know some of you (likely Canadians and Americans living in the northern states) might be wondering what all the fuss is. A little snow (and yes, trust me, it's not really that much snow) and I refuse to drive? What kind of Canadian am I, right? But clearly, you've never been here when it's snowed. There are maybe a couple of snowplows in the country, which operate (as far as I can tell) during business hours, only clearing the highways. There are more salt trucks, which do salt the main roads, but obviously these are insufficient to combat a storm of my making. I really wanted to pick up my car = 25 cm of snow. Continuing cold means that, two weeks later, the local roads are still covered with hard-packed, slippery snow. That I obviously don't want to risk driving on with my shiny, brand-spanking new Clio.

Is it just when I make plans? The more I focus on a particular day, the more precipitation we must get? Must I stop making plans? Or stop caring about the plans?

On the plus side, now that it's warming up, at least I won't have to stand in the rain waiting for the bus or the tram, or biking. Maybe this is why the weather fought me so hard on the car pick-up. The car is my ultimate win! As long as it doesn't freeze, the car will defeat my weather powers! Mwahahaha...

Twinkle, twinkle, there's a ghost in the nursery

There's a ghost in the nursery. I think it lives in the musical Tigger that lives on the shelf in The Little Ninja's bedroom. Because nobody touches that thing and still at random moments during the day and night, it plays "Twinkle, twinkle, little star". Like just a minute ago. I am the only one in the house and I am sitting in the next room. I definitely did not press on the tigger. Or like last night when I was studying and everyone else was sleeping. No one is touching the thing, yet it sings all by itself. It's creepy, I tell you.

I think the next step in my investigation (or ghost-busting, if you will) is to remove the batteries and see if it still sings. Although to be honest I think I would totally freak out if it did, so maybe it's safer to just leave the batteries in and call it a fluke. What do you think?

My kid hates winter... can I trade him in?

The Little Ninja doesn't like the snow. Seriously. MY kid. Was he switched at birth? While all I read lately are messages from mommy friends enthusiastically reporting how much their kid likes the snow, complete with photos of said kid gleefully being pulled along on a sled, or rolling in the snow, or even skating, I jealously report that I can't say that about the Little Ninja. HE HATES WINTER. 

We've gone out in the snow. We dress up warm. He whines. He cries. He screams. He refuses to get on the sled, flailing about like I'm trying to drop him into hot oil or something. He refuses to try skating, kicking out at me to get the blades off his boots, almost maiming me in the process (Little Ninja remains an apt nickname). 

Now my question is this: is this a phase? Will he grow out of it? Will he like winter next year? Is he just showing his stubborn almost-two-year-old defiance of everything, particularly things that I obviously seem to want? Is that all this is? Or is there something fundamentally different about him, something he may have gotten from his father... Does he really hate winter? Will he always? Am I doomed to always ski and sled and skate alone?

Skating, Snow, Canada: a recap

Well. Sarnia turned out to be no problem at all because we basically didn't leave the house the whole time we were there. We arrived at my mom's at about 5pm on Christmas Eve. My brother pulled up behind me just minutes later, and with him came nightfall and snow. We were both RIGHT on time, in my view, especially as I'd never been to the house before and really didn't want to have to look for it in the dark. It snowed all that night. We had a white Christmas. YAY! It continued to snow all Christmas day. It stopped for a brief window of time on Boxing Day, which my brother wisely used to make his escape back to Toronto, before picking up again. So we did what anyone should do in such situations: we stayed inside for the most part, making good use of the Netflix streaming, and braving the elements only for such critical tasks as shovelling a path in the back yard for the dog and taking a walk down to the lake or around the block to see the Christmas lights. At some point the driveway also got cleared and snowmen were attempted. (Failed, sadly. The snow wasn't consistently of the good packing variety; I think it accumulated in layers that made it impossible to roll a snowman body but still enabled small amounts to be formed into snowballs.)

We made our own escape on Friday, the 28th. Luckily the snow had stopped by then and the roads were clear. The next storm was set to hit on the 29th. And it did. We had another get-together planned for that day at noon and woke up to far more snow than had been forecast. Snow that continued to fall, heavily, all morning. I'm not used to driving in the snow anymore. It was really stressful. Just at the on-ramp to the highway I saw a car off in the ditch and his skidmarks leading there. I almost turned around partway when the snow-covered highway intimidated me. The cars by the concrete dividers that were completely spun around to face into traffic certainly didn't help my confidence. But I didn't turn back. I trudged on and we made it to the restaurant right on time. By the time our lunch was finished and we headed back, the snow had slowed and the roads had been cleared, for the most part. Thankfully. I wasn't looking forward to driving it a second time.

Back in the GTA, we made good use of the fallen snow and took The Little Ninja tobogganing. My dad's ancient giant toboggan, though huge on memories, was nowhere near as good at getting you down the hill and halfway across the field as the new plastic ones we borrowed from a neighbour. The plastic ones had a definite weight advantage - as in, you could get the damned things up the hill while also carrying a toddler who couldn't walk in the deep snow because his legs are too short and he'd just fall over. Which was hilarious for us, but not so much for him. Still. Snow fun? Check.

New Year's Eve, on the other hand, sucked. In fact, it was so bad, it inspired a resolution: I won't be pressured into anything this year. Like staying up until midnight just because it's New Year's Eve. The new year will come whether I watch the shitty shows from New York and Niagara (I couldn't even make myself flip to the Toronto one it was so horrible) or am fast asleep in my bed.

We tried to go skating on New Year's Day. We checked the opening hours, got all dressed up for the cold, propped The Little Ninja into a borrowed wagon and trudged over to the local outdoor skating rink. It was closed. For New Year's Day. Booo. We drove over the next day. I got to try out my new blades and, much as predicted, The Little Ninja stood on the ice for about 4 seconds before demanding that the skates be removed. It was a good start, though, right?

That was about it, really. We saw some people, didn't get to see some people. Went shopping and got some stuff (like the mini eggs I'm stuffing my face with while I write this) and everything fit into our bags, which is always a plus. I guess this trip was pretty successful, all in all. Yay!