Dispatches from a happy Hullian

I'm writing this from the kitchen table in my new place — I am in the process of moving out from the home I shared with Elizabeth since 2008. We got to a place where we had a big gulf between what each of us thought our relationship should be and I decided I needed some space and concordance between what our relationship had become and what the infrastructure looked like. So here I am, a kilometer and a half away in a little 1940s house with a bedroom for me and each kid, a woodstove (landlords promise to inspect and clean it before it gets cold) and a certain amount of distance. The kids seem pretty positive and practical about moving in; they'll be in on a supply run on the weekend to kit out their rooms while Elizabeth and Doug go to Toronto for a gig. Unless things go terribly, they'll have their first night here then, and then I'll get Vivien to the bus really early for her school trip to Quebec City.

What this all looks like emotionally going forward... is still up in the air. I was pretty unhappy with where things were going. Elizabeth seems to want to go straight to friends and I'm feeling more like getting the practicalities of co-parenting down, being fair while standing up for myself, setting some clear boundaries. I'm lucky to have a broad circle of support and some really good people close to me. Andrea says I'm brave, and has been there for me all through this. My parents are understanding. My peer group is proud I'm taking concrete action. Lots of people are offering help, even the kids (I'll make sure they get some choices about their space and also carry some boxes). It feels weird but maybe I do need to assemble some kind of separation registry and insist that people only contribute things they have doubles of or don't use -- partly to help get over the hump of expenses (and in to paying rents of the current era and child support) and partly so I don't just say "come to the housewarming" when they ask what they can do.

My supervisor at work had a tip for us to maintain work-life balance: keep some simple task you don't find fun for the end of the day &emdash; you will probably get it done and you will also probably not keep doing it an hour past when you wanted to finish. K. is keen to use some of our administrative time to upgrade our skills in managing ourselves, or minions and our bosses, and is pitching in herself rather than just sending us to take an online course or get on the waiting list for a classroom session. I'm all for it; I haven’t really had a manager who takes that tack on things before.

Elizabeth is doing music virtually &emdash; quite a few things are in the works and she
’s been posting things on Facebook. Keep your eyes peeled!

My phone has FaceID and it seems to rely on being able to see my nose &emdash; it generally works if I'm covering my mouth, but with a bandana over my nose for going out of the house I’m punching in my passcode more.

The chickens are coming, sort of: coop ready, city chicken permit procured, and now there just remains acquiring the chickens. Elizabeth has tried to contact a local farm but we haven’t heard back from them yet. My dad was saying that Montréal-area farms are a bit overwhelmed by demand, so it may take a little while…

I’ve got a month left in my secondment. I have good surges of productivity and engagement, and some low-traction times too. I think it’s been a good experience despite it not going anything like expected, and I hope the connections I have made will stick. It’s been work I really like and good people too. I hope I can carry some of the energy on back to my home position.

The bridges are opening between Gatineau and Ottawa on Monday — guidance is still essential trips only but it’s a step in loosening restrictions. We'll have to see what this comes to mean for our connections with Ottawa loved ones but it’ a sign we can realistically start figuring that out. I’ve found time to connect over phone, text and video with Heather, Andrea and Morgen &emdash; including kicking off a virtual D&D game and video story time with Morgen and the little ones here — but it’s no substitute for in person. Ada’s birthday weekend is two weeks away; maybe by then it’ll be okay to have some sort of cautious celebration? The older two have been back in school and even with quite a few restrictions and a little grumbling they seem to be liking it and in good spirits.

Going into the third week of distancing… my colleagues have made a big deal out of making it through each week of working from home each Friday so far.

I'm doing pretty well, have the home office set up and everyone close to me is healthy so far. I'm working, getting paid, getting fresh air, eating healthy food — we all are doing pretty well in this house.

But I'm missing people too. We'll probably be doing Easter in place for the first time in many years rather than going back to Ormstown to feast with my relatives. And I'm missing Heather, Andrea and Morgen — the Vanier end of my pod, who are hunkered down over there. Heather is continuing to read Watership Down to the kids remotely, and we try to keep in touch via the Internet. And I'm glad I got to visit them the weekend before we all went to ground, which was Heather's and my fourth anniversary. I've got lots of loved ones here, but also quite a few outside the epidemiologically sensible boundary. Households are a real thing, but they're definitely not the only thing.

Here's to getting through this, to reunions to come, to traditions we've adapted and to ones we'll have to pick up again. Here's to the couch runneth-ing over again.

I'm run pretty ragged lately… the constellation of stuff around work is exciting and chaotic.

I attended my union's annual general meeting a couple of weekends back and may have gotten a little famous for questioning the exaggerated bar graphs in our electronic voting system. I also had a chance to meet some neat people, speak on the Professionals Canada question that was in the news lately, and vote on things of substance and things deep down the procedural rabbit hole. It was enlightening, sometimes maddening, and worthwhile.

Last week I did even more standing up and speaking in front of people — I chaired one AGM and delivered the Treasurer's report and ran the elections in another. At the end of the week a bunch of scrambling around resulted in a good talk on statistics on gender under the Positive Space umbrella.

I was fairly convinced that something was going to go down in flames last week, and it didn't! Between good help and my grinding away at managing things, we got things done.

This weekend marked 14 years of Elizabeth and me kissing. Heather and Andrea took charge of the kids and we got to go treat ourselves to the nearby spa — baths and saunas and tasty food in among the carefully placed oaks and rocks :) The kids got to go sliding (Morgen got to slide while snoozing on Andrea… that totally counts) and drink hot chocolate, so they were only a little jealous.

I'm starting this week with delivering a pilot Positive Space orientation and then heading off to bargain for three days. In December I'm teaching the record linkage course for the last time, then a first teaching experience on data access and confidentiality in my new portfolio. Somewhere in there I put my name in for a promotion — the process is a little different each time and this one feels a little more streamlined than recent ones. I'm looking forward to things settling down a little before Christmas is really upon us. I suspect it won't, completely, but I think the most intense parts are behind me for now.

Body: I created this image from some with I was doing on interactive media way back in 2004, helping out a professor in the Communication Studies department at Concordia. It's a still from a Flash toy where the washers are all tottering around and responding to mouse presses and movements. The group was very interested in bodies and technology and this was one of my takes on the link between the two. I use it now when I'm thinking of my health and aging.



Beautiful: I saw this sticker on a magical, giddy first trip to Ottawa with Elizabeth back in 2005 — someone had stuck it to the inside of an OC Transpo bus. It was touching and positive and probably put there with some political intent.



Art or moving: this was from another want with Elizabeth, around Duluth or so in Montreal. I was taken with the idea that someone was making performance art in the street but Elizabeth pointed out that maybe they were just trying to hold on to the parking spot for moving. It's a nice silly icon.

If you want me to pick some of your icons, as amazon_syren did for me, comment below saying so, or with a non-sequitur.

The neighbourhood is covered in snow today. I took Ada out on a little errand walk and it was delightful.

Yesterday I celebrated thirteen years of kissing Elizabeth. We had a nice supper and kissed in a park — park kissing was how it all began :) Our date was brought to us by my two more recent loves, Heather and Andrea, who did supper and bed with the kids after dancing up a storm with me and the younger two at the Ottawa Family Dance. My life is full of love and wonderful people.

Friday I picked up my new bike to replace my stolen one. It felt really good to ride home on a fast, light bike that fits me nicely.

Thursday I attended a union consultation team meeting and got a new title of consultation VP … and managed to pass off a committee seat to keep my workload sort of constant.

I'm waiting for results in a promotion process at work. Wish me luck!

Here are some pictures from March to recently… we made it through the chilly spring, had a baby, discovered Vivien’s career aspirations, and hit the Ormstown Fair.

Vivien at the park.

( twenty-nine more… )

Yesterday was Elizabeth's and my sixth wedding anniversary. Woo for crazy married adventures and making things up as we go along!

Vivien composed her first three-word sentence today: "Doggie likes juice!" She was dipping her toy dog in her juice at the time. Earlier this week, Oscar decided I was like a Christmas tree. Why? Because I go around and around. Like a Christmas tree. I'm not sure where that came from...

Also, there is an "I am still here" meme going around LJ. I'm still here!

Well, I think I managed on average to floss about half of the days in year #33, and I've had a lighter touch with the filters online and in person. I think this was a four- or five- massage bar year and I got somewhat better at bringing back beer bottles. The mortgage breathed its last in May, and now our "make the house warmer and the kitchen fit us better" fund is growing fast and I'll be closing in on my RRSP deduction limit. We have a six-foot wooden fence with a gate that Oscar keeps figuring out as we secure it better (now he just wriggles under it), but at least he's down to one choke-point, and we did try! On the stuff I didn't do so well in from last year's list, I didn't get that check-up (no family doctor and not quite enough drive to get it done at a walk-in clinic), and I don't know that I made any big strides in relationship communication — appreciation, I think, and adventures, for sure, and some fine-tuning in timing and medium, but it's something I can still try to work on.

In the no-deadline parts of the list, we increased doctor coverage from zero of us to Vivien, and maybe Oscar in the fall. I started a new position, for which I'm learning a bunch of stuff and alternating between feeling competent and feeling like I just opened an overstuffed closet and the top shelf fell on me. My aches and pains had a good go at me in the spring, but I think I'm done with sciatica for a while and feeling generally as good as I was at last list time. In improving the house, we got a dishwasher, which might count, and I fixed the back stairs last week — their surprise collapse would've been hard on the comfort of whoever was on them at the time. The kids are gaining competence at a frightening pace and Oscar declared he wanted hugs and fire for his birthday party, so we're doing something right even as I feel I could use more patience and humour sometimes.

Here's what I would like to achieve in the next year:

• Keep up the flossing.
• Communicate better in relationships.
• Continue to wear through massage bars.
• Make the house cheaper to heat, either with insulation or a heating system upgrade, or both.
• Getting a GP and a checkup/vaccination update might be a tall order, but I will attempt to start allergy shots so I'm popping fewer antihistamines next summer. If I can do allergies and deferred maintenance, all the better.
• Somehow fix the Wike's stroller mode. As it is, the walking wheel doesn't hold up under our frequent use — three bolts to one frame member is no match for the leverage exerted by bumps and curbs.
• Give the promotion process this fall my best shot, and accept whatever comes of it gracefully.
• Reach out to a few more people at work in the hope of developing a new friendship or two.

Here are some longer-term things:

• Round out home heating improvements and make the kitchen suit us better.
• Raise competent, well-adjusted kids. Do so with good humour, love and trust in them.
• Take care of my body and try and make my list of aches and pains not increase monotonically.
• Get family doctors for all of us in the household.
• Continue to like my job, be good at it, and be worthy of the respect of my co-workers.
• Keep learning new things, and consolidate dabbling into competent in new areas from time to time.

I hope I'll do at least as well between now and next birthday as I did in the last year or so.

Six months ago today, Vivien was born. Now she has two teeth, is starting to be mobile, and is sticking lots of things in her mouth (but not eating complementary foods just yet).

( then )
( now )

Six years ago today, I proposed, in a horse shelter at my parents' place, to Elizabeth. She said yes.

Also, happy birthday to my cousin Erica, beable and to thebabynancy!