Happy New Year! Now, what am I going to do with the rest of my life?

Back in September I interviewed for a part-time research assistant position. I was turned down, told I was their 'number two.' At that point I decided I wasn't going to apply to any other jobs unless it was a perfect fit.

Instead I was going to do aerials, write, and sew (and take care of my daughter, of course). I was going to train lots, work on my new story idea, and start building a homemade wardrobe.

I also needed to do some deep thinking. I spent sometime researching decision making techniques, making note of several I thought could be helpful. I made an unofficial deadline of September 2018 (when Ruth starts JK) to decide if I was going to take more courses in librarianship/research or instructing aerials.

I was going to put on my big girl pants, and make some decisions about what I really want in life and what makes me happy.

At the end of November I was contacted again about the research assistant position. Certain circumstances had led the first pick to find a different job, was I still interested?

Well crap. I hadn't expected that change of events. I'd put the initial disappointment behind me, and had settled into the idea of staying at home and working on things at my own pace. The trouble was, what if by the time my deadline came around, I decided I needed to find a regular job? It would be 5+ years since the last time I'd worked in a regular office setting. I'd have no up-to-date experiences or references for a librarian/research job.

I've taken the job. Besides the issues above, it is, in fact, a fantastically important research project dealing with mental health and the work place (put very broadly).

As the holidays came to an end, I was looking at my official, up-to-full hours (full, part-time hours, that is), start date of January 2nd, and I was (and still am) kind of panicking. I feel like my plate is full, boarding on over flowing.

In the 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks in a year I have for the next 3 years I need to:

1. Work (up to) 21 hrs/week.
2. Teach aerials 4-6 hr/week (offering to do more day-time hours next fall).
3. Train aerials 4-6 hr/week (at least)
4. Exercise (cardio/strength conditioning) 5-6 hr/week.
5. Write (ha!).
6. Sew (ha! x2).

Then there's the general life stuff of: taking care of/being present for my family, making home cooked meals (most of the time), making sure there's clean laundry, keeping the house tidy enough that it won't drive me nuts (I'm looking into a cleaning service)...anything else? Getting enough sleep, I suppose.

Oh Boy.

Now, let me circle back to something from before.

Above all else, what I must do over the next 3 years is think about what I want to do with my life, and this is in fact that actual point of this post.

My New Years resolution is to spend the next year thinking about what makes me happy, and what I want to do as a job/career. Aerials, write, sew, or librarianship/research. Maybe a combination of 2 of these, but not likely more. By the end of 2018 I would like to have an action plan for 2019. What do I focus in on? What do I re-train in? I'll still have until the end of 2020 before things come into full effect, but I need to know what I'm doing once my present contract is up.

Not only do I need to put on my big girl pants for me, but I need to put them on for Ruth. I need to demonstrate to her how to lead a happy and fulfilled life no matter what career path I choose.

Happy New Years everyone.

Ciao,

Andrea

Awesome photograph by the Awesome Alexa Baker, who some how manages to make me feel like a model.

Family Emergency, Update

This is a short post to update you, gentle reader, on my family emergency.

It's on going.

That's it. I would like to write about a couple of the aspects of this situation (for educational purposes), but I feel like I need to wait until we've reached something more of a conclusion before I do that.

Here's what I'll say for now:

When we flew back to Ontario in June, the state of the emergency was probably at a 9.5 out of 10. We thought we were coming to say goodbye. For much of the following week we continued to think that was the most likely outcome.

At this point I'd probably dial the emergency rating back to about a 5 or 6 out of 10. My family member isn't well. They are slightly better, but there's still no immediate expectation of them being discharged from the hospital.

Finally, I want to encourage everyone to consider being an organ donor, and then make sure you discuss your decision with your family.

I hope everyone's have a great summer.

Ciao,

Andrea

Anger and other possibly inappropriate emotions

Andrew tells me that in our current situation, it's normal to feel anger toward the person in your family who is sick and the cause of throwing your life off kilter.

I'm not sure I'm actually angry at my sick family member, but I certainly am ticked off at the world at large. Could the timing of this emergency have been worse?

Only slightly. It could have happened last November to coincide with Ruth's birth. That would have been a certifiably worse time to have to deal with a sick family member in a different country. Learning how to take care of a brand new baby who was a slow gainer and took over an hour to feed, while spending hours in a hospital waiting room would have been horrendous. As it is, this emergency has occurred just as we were moving back to Canada, are trying to find a house, and were to go on vacation.

Of course you can't pick the timing of emergencies. That's kind of what makes such an occurrence an emergency, right?

As I mentioned in my previous post, Andrew had to deal with the move more-or-less on his own. He managed. Most everything was taken care of successfully--except for our car. Since our car was purchased in the US, we have to import it into Canada, and to do that you have to file paperwork with US Customs 72 hours before you plan to cross the boarder. Apparently Andrew missed the deadline by a minute or two. Seriously, a minute or two.

We have to go back to the US with our car for 72 hours so we can import it. That's great. Just what we needed, to figure out when to make it back to the US to import our car with everything going on.

In some ways, this emergency has helped our house hunt, in that we're here and can look at more houses (so far we've seen 31). In other ways it only adds to the stress we're under. We saw a house we liked last Thursday night, but ultimately we felt we couldn't deal with trying to put in an offer. There was too much going on in our lives. The outlook for my family member didn't look good. How could we rationally contemplate the purchase of a house?

So we didn't. We let the house opportunity slide  by.

Then there's our vacation. We were supposed to be in England right now. We should have visited Lyme Park (aka Pemberly) on Saturday, and spent Sunday in Manchester. On Monday we were to travel to St. Bees in order to begin walking the Wainwright Coast-to-Coast trail today (Tuesday). That's what we were supposed to be doing. I've wanted to do the Coast-to-Coast for, oh, I don't know, 5 years? At first we didn't think we could do it this year either (because we now have Ruth to take care of), but then people kept telling us to go for it. The only thing Ruth cares about right now is whether or not Mommy and Daddy are around. And she loves being outside.

This is where most of my anger and despair is concentrated, the lost vacation. I'm trying not to mope about it, but it's hard. We haven't taken a vacation since I graduated from library school--5 years ago. Plus we lost most of the money we spent in planning the trip, and we don't know when we'll have time to take a holiday later in the summer or fall. Andrew starts work in mid-July and my mat leave ends in November before Christmas break. The need to travel back to the US in order to import our car feels like a booby prize.

And then I remind myself how I shouldn't be whining about my lost vacation when my family member is extremely sick.

Then I feel like I'm a bitch.

So that's where I am. I'm grumpy, annoyed, and overall stressed-out. I'm trying not to be, and I'll get over it, but it will take a while.

I'll try to find something more cheerful to post next time.

Cheers,

Andrea

Family Emergency

Without going into any details, a member of my family is very sick.

Andrew and I had to scramble to find tickets on the earliest flight out of Boston (that we thought we could reasonably make) last Monday (June 8th) morning and get back to Ontario. Have you ever had to find a flight last minute? It sucks. 'Compassion' tickets don't really seem to be a thing. When I explained we needed to fly due to an emergency there wasn't much response from the customer service agent, and there was definitely no adjustment in cost. It didn't help that we needed to transport our cat, too, as we had no idea when we'd be back to Somerville.

I'm, in fact, not going back to Somerville. We didn't want to drag our daughter and cat back and forth from Somerville to Ontario twice more in such a short period of time. Our move out of the US had been planned for this week anyway (June 15th and 16th), but now Andrew has to take care of everything on his own. We're relieved we'd always planned to hire professional movers to pack up our apartment. At least that means Andrew doesn't have to box things up on his own. It does mean, however, that he's had to run around like a mad man to finish up things we'd meant to do together.

So, now I'm in Ontario with Ruth, and Tabitha (our cat) waiting. Waiting for things. Waiting for illness to run it's course, waiting for Andrew to join me.

I don't know what to do. I'm no good at offering emotional support, as I have a strangely detached view of illness. I get emotional over a lot of things: Ruth's refusal to sleep, rejection letters, music, but death I do not. Andrew thinks it's because of my stint in nursing; that I've seen illness and old age in ways many people haven't, but that might be the nice way of saying that in instances such as this I'm a cold, hard...well, let's just say I'm cold and hard.

And I'm getting tired to talking to people and being around people that aren't my daughter and Andrew. I'm especially getting tired of making small talk with people who insist on oogling Ruth--which is happening a lot at the hospital. I get she's cute and all, and most people aren't trying to touch or interact with her, but I have to do a lot of: "She's 6.5 months," (people often ask how old he is as Ruth is usually dressed in green, blue, or white), and saying "Thank you," when people comment on her appearance or her big blue eyes.

Today I'm hermitting. Owing to a bad sleep night for Ruth (and therefore me), I'm staying in. I think I'm going to have to spend less time at the hospital in general, as it's not doing anything good for Ruth's sleep and stress levels, Hopefully today's rest will help me rejuvenate, and then Andrew will be back tomorrow.

So, that's all I feel like I'm at liberty to say right now. It helps to get a few of these thoughts off my chest. There are many more, but at this time they're not for sharing on the internet.

Ciao,

Andrea

Visit to the Island

If you follow my Twtter feed, you may know that I was in BC for most of last week. First, I attended the 2011 Canadian Cochrane Symposium, then Andrew and I took the ferry across to Vancouver Island to visit family. I will *try* to get around to blogging about both (which mostly likely means I'll blog about the vacation part of my trip and never get around to commenting on the business part), but we'll see. We've got our first ESO concert of the new year coming up this Friday, so I may get distracted.

The ferry ride from North Vancouver to Nanaimo takes approximately 1 hour 40 minutes. Last Friday afternoon when Andrew and I made the crossing the trip was rather pleasant (albeit a little late to depart). The sky was clear (until the sunset--then it was just dark) and although an announcement was made to alert passengers to the choppy water conditions, neither of us found the ride rough. When we reached Nanaimo we were picked up by my brother-in-law and his wife, and then we drove to Duncan where they live (or close to it--they aren't actually in the city). Being dark by this point I couldn't see much of the landscape we passed, but when we reached Duncan we hit up a local brew pub for dinner. After a pretty decent meal (I had a tasty 'Santa Fa' veggie burger before over-indulging in a rich chocolate brownie) we drove out to the farm where my brother-in-law lives. Again, having arrived at night, we couldn't see much of the farm. Even though it wasn't terribly late upon our return we were all tired and opted to head to bed.

Saturday morning started off with beautiful sunshine (and remained sunny all day). After breakfast we took a short stroll around the area with the farm dog, somewhat unfortunately named, Bobo. The area around Duncan is far more picturesque than Edmonton, what with the mountains and lakes in the background. Plus, we were able to walk along a groomed gravel trail that had once provided a railway connection between Duncan and Victoria (apparently it goes on for ages--I'd love to walk it further sometime). Upon returning to the farm we (eventually) set to work. Before our trip Andrew had been quite keen to help prune the raging grapevines growing along one side of the house (they were quite the mess) and took the job with gusto--although not without reservation (there was some lingering concerns regarding just how much should being cut away). I helped clean up the trimmings for a while until my sister-in-law and another one of the farm roommates went to shovel chicken maneuver--oh the glamorous life of farm work. I didn't really mind as I'd come to help out and I had gloves and rubber boots to wear so it wasn't a big deal.

After lunch I was a little less enthusiastic to work. I hadn't really brought enough warm clothing (I had primarily gone to BC to attend a conference, after all), plus we were expecting Andrew's sister and her husband to drive up from Victoria for dinner, so I wanted to whip together a desert and help get a start on dinner. Before setting to work in the kitchen I assisted in digging up the last remnants of the winter beets and turnips in hopes of finding something suitable for dinner. The beets weren't in great shape, but there were enough to make cake--yup beet cake. Yum! The turnips seemed to have weathered better. There were plenty for dinner plus several more meals to come. Dinner was delicious with a plethora of veggies and a roasted chicken (raised on the farm).

Our last day in BC, Sunday started almost exactly the same as the previous day--glorious sunshine. It's much easier to get out of bed in the morning when it's sunny, rather than still dark or gray and rainy. The plan for the last day was to drive down to Victoria and have brunch with the family. The drive from Duncan to Victoria took an hour, made all the more enjoyable by the abundance of beautiful scenery (I may be living in the wrong province). When we arrived at Andrew's sister's apartment it was decided that we should head out to the beach and pick up some picnic fare on the way. Although the sun was out in full force it was still a trifle cool on the beach. Lots of families seemed to have the same idea as us; however, and we wandered about the nearby playground as our young nephew played on the swings and a octopus slide/climbing structure. Shortly before noon we piled back into the car and were dropped off at the ferry terminal to return to Vancouver, and then to Edmonton.

All in all I had a great week and weekend. Our summer vacation plans for this year are to return to the farm for a week and help out picking fruit/vegetables and doing anything else we can help out with. Suggestions were also made that we should try out 'disk golf' (apparently this is an island, low-key variation on golf that requires players to have a beer in their free hand at all times...) and possibly go sailing.

Ciao,

Andrea

Three weeks in review

Somehow time becomes a void during the holidays. Andrew and I fly home to Ontario to spend the time with friends and family, and I lose track of the days of the week because my schedule and usual way of living is totally shot. I barely manage to check my email, facebook or twitter and I don't manage to sit down long enough to write a blog post. Therefore, here are my last three weeks, in review.

Sunday, December 13th, 2009
The Sunday prior to flying out Andrew and I attended the men's curling final at the Olympic trial at Rexall Place in Edmonton. Unfortunately, it wasn't a great game. Kevin Martin (the eventual winner) was in control pretty much the whole time. Even when mistakes were made, team Howard seemed unable to capitalize. Oddly, the more Howard and his team struggled the more I wanted them to pull through, but unfortunately things didn't work out. The final score was 7-3 for Martin.


Friday, December 18th, 2009
On Friday evening Andrew and I got together with my university friends, as we always do at Christmas time. We met at Caroline's place as they have a new house in Oakville. We had a wonderful time, with lots of food and drink.


Saturday, December 19th, 2009
This afternoon we got together with Michelle and Mandy to play Bridge. Mandy and I had extremely bad luck with cards that day.


Sunday, December 20th, 2009
Sunday afternoon we got together with some of Andrew's high school friends. We had a delicious lunch (cooked by Cassandra) and played cards for much of the afternoon. All of us are married, none of us have children, but all of us have cats. What did much of our conversation centre around? Answer: Our cats.


Monday, December 21st, 2009
Andrew's grandmother died on the December 14th, 2009. The funeral was delayed until all of the grandchildren (since many of them now live out West) could return home. Here Andrew's dad, David, talks about his mom, Nancy.


Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009
For the last several years I've cooked a dinner for some of my family and friends at Christmas time. Since I can't hold holiday events at my own home (being in Edmonton) it's a nice way to get together (and I can show off my cooking skills). We played Wii for a while afterward and I got a chance to entertain with my nephew Alexander (14 months).



Saturday, December 25th, 2009
Christmas day, of course. We played lots of bridge in the afternoon and evening with John (brother-in-law) and his girlfriend Cindy, who he proposed to that evening.

Sunday, December 27th, 2009
The Olympic torch went through my hometown. The torch bearer waiting to receive the flame was very friendly and took pictures with several of the people in the crowd, including me.


Wednesday, December 30th, 2009
Andrew and I split for a day and a bit so he could go to North Hatley, QC for our other nephew's baptism and I stayed in KW and got together with Michelle and Josh. We spent much of the night playing the new Mario game on Josh's big screen t.v.


Thrusday, December 31st, 2009
New Years. Some people care, some don't. I like to get together with friends, although I think this was the first night I went out somewhere to do it. We went to the Whale 'n Ale in Kitchener. They held a casino night (with fake money). I had a great time, although was quite happy to go to bed at the end of the night.



Now I'm home in Edmonton, ready to start normal life again.

Ciao,

Andrea

Weekend accomplishments

I passed my skating test.


We visited with family (this is my nephew, Alexander, who is as cute as the proverbial button).


Caroline and Giancarlo were successfully married.



And we made it home again.

That's all I've got time for now.

Ciao,

Andrea