Dispatches from a happy Hullian

Going to the air-conditioned office and sending the kids to air-conditioned other place and the pool today for obvious reasons... stay cool out there if you're in this heat wave!

I did a flurry of picture-hanging and putting boxes a bit out of sight here. As we're settling in, my cousin is preparing to move north of Montreal, I brought the kids to a going-away street party by his place. It was fun to see some family, familiar faces and random strangers with the kids. Some knew about my separation and had supportive things to say, and some were just nice people to chat with. Found a union guy (now in LR) and talked shop, watched the younger ones sing their hearts out at the karaoke tent, and had a nice time.

Still feeling a mix of lightness and "what have I done?" on the separation front. Hoping the money actually works and the house I'm renting is good to us. Oscar asked if I was going to own a house again sometime and I didn't have a lot of answer — explained the benefits of renting and that we're living here for a year in any case. I didn't use the words "in this economy?" but they crossed my mind...

Have been booking things for Newfoundland with Ada — looks like we're going Economy on the train, all the berths were booked up. But we benefit from the Canada Strong pass! We'll sleep on soft beds in Halifax. I think it's going to be a blast of a trip.

Union-wise I am recently off 3.5 days of meetings — they were different levels of dense but we were meeting at the same time as basic training for 100 new stewards; we got to spend time with them in the evening and I got added to a few LinkedIns. In the meetings themselves we took a stronger stand on something than I was expecting. It's inside baseball and I should probably wait for the minutes to come out but it's stronger than I was expecting!

My rear wheel has a bit of wobble on my bike but I don't think it's the rims or spokes — maybe tire's a bit off?

Got out to see high school friends and parents last weekend — nice to see them all, the kids had fun and I don't think we overwhelmed anyone. The kids are travelling better so long as they can dictate the podcast audio for at least part of the trip.

I've had a few kind of big feelings talks with some of my people lately. I'm really happy to have them, but feeling a bit wrung out as well.

Renovations are going — drywall up and all the right things (plumbing, electrical, fresh insulation) behind it. Plaster on Tuesday! Barbecued for lunch (not the first time this year) but ate it out there (first time this year). Also, did dishes at the garden tap. At least it's nice camping weather now!

We finished our D&D campaign with polycule and kids last week — they defeated a dragon, improved the world, and called it done. It was a flagging game, but it was a fun final battle and they earned the win. Dragon was full of hot air, seemingly — she recharged her breath weapon twice, roasting party members three rounds in a row, fortunately they had divided into clusters out of range from each other!

Looking forward to reports of a mostly-open Gatineau Parkway to Champlain Lookout. Maybe I should line up people for a run at it next Sunday, after this week's forecast weather! Got in some good runs Monday, Friday and yesterday -- 31, 6, and 15 km mostly on trails. I think I'll have a pretty good spring marathon but I'm thinking I should sign up for a fall one too...

This summer's season of tents is wound down — dagrim's cottage, Taylor Lake, Kaleidoscope. This year it feels like the parenting responsibilities are less total — I was able to read in various outdoor chairs and hammocks at every campsite, and my KG involved going to workshops and rituals daily, for the first time in years (probably since about 2009). It still takes a lot of energy to prepare and camp, but it was pretty satisfying!

After coming home, though, we managed to test positive for COVID, four of five in our household, one by one from Monday to yesterday. Elizabeth must be lucky and/or have lingering immunity from the spring, but the rest of us are getting through it. The little ones seem mostly better, Oscar and I are still in bad cold territory but are on the mend — we'll probably resume normal life this coming week. I'm feeling a bit touch starved and wanderlust-y so that will be good! Also, I got the bed and Elizabeth got the couch mattress this time, I look forward to sharing the bed again.

My switch-over to the new position was a bit bumpy with the usual IT permissions/compatibility issues, some staff turnover and the unexpected drag of a household COVID outbreak, but I still feel like it was a good move. We have a two-week window to piggy-back on another project in a way that tests one of our creations, and I feel like the new colleagues and clients are going to be easy to get along with and fun to work with.

I'm looking at the volume of stuff — work and union — on the horizon and hoping I'll be smart enough to delegate/trim as new stuff comes in and things get inevitably complicated. I keep trying to filter my projects and ambitions through my Bullet Journal and talking with people and I think I'm making progress... but it's a significant project. Maybe one for my next year of life (after I turn 42 on Tuesday) but probably not so time-bounded as that.

The older two are going back to school next week — school is open to Québec kids for optional classes, especially for kids who need a bit of extra support, and ours are both square pegs in their own ways and are missing school. With Elizabeth and me both being home-based workers at the moment, we can end the experiment pretty quickly if we need to, and we are all pretty robust and not in contact with anyone in an at-risk population, so it seems like an acceptable risk and we can be a dead-end for any contagion coming from the classroom. We got a message from Vivien's teacher and her class will have 10 kids, with rearranged desks and staggered recesses and lunches to avoid big congregations of kids. As a political decision, the Quebec approach might be flavoured by a belief in reopening the economy, but as a project with important health aspects, I think the school is doing pretty well and the kids are starting to get squirelly. We have to come up for air eventually, and this seems like a lower-risk way to do it. I think it's ethical especially if we share that we're doing this with people we might have contact with.

Ada, at four-almost-five, can pronounce “social distancing” pretty well. She was really keen to go to Kaleidoscope (August) with social distancing in place… we’ll see. One can hope (but I trust the organizers will be vigilant and careful)!

Us grown-ups have been thinking a bit of how we’ll proceed when restrictions lift, too — clearly deliberately and with some fulsome conversations, but the bridges will open eventually, and it sounds like some jurisdictions are encouraging people to pair households for mutual aid and companionship. With our relationships, a pair would still leave people out and probably result in some lopsided reconnecting, but with any luck it will be safe for us to rejoin some loved ones outside the house and the rules and good sense will let me see my Vanier loves, Heather and Andrea, soon enough. We'll have talked about it inside our polycule before the rules change, too, so we'll be ready!

July has been an adventure! We started with a wedding in Cambridge (my cousin Mike got married to his girlfriend Caitlyn — now they will go back to wandering the world teaching). It was a grownups-only wedding (a first for us since having kids). My aunt Anne did a ton of groundwork, recruiting a babysitter and giving us a place to stay, and it was fun for us all! Then we staryed in the GTA as Elizabeth started some Waldorf teacher training — we stayed the first week and I touristed with the kids while she did her daytime studying, and we had family time in the evenings. We were staying with a family in Richmond Hill; their grandfather was unexpectedly there and enjoyed the kids, and various people were coming and going. They have had a nomadic life over the years and it was fun to see how they live. They have tried to give a bland rental house as much character as possible with what looks like barn wood dividers and musical instruments and art everywhere. It was Richmond Hill, so I spend a lot of time driving (but mostly to TTC stations: the kids find the transit almost as much fun as the parks and museums, it seems).

Originally I was steeling myself for a trip from Toronto to Ottawa alone in the car with three kids, but my cousin Mary had a plane to catch in Ottawa (to get to an icebreaker, so she could scoop up Arctic water for Science) so I had adult company on the ride home. I’m getting to know the route and good places to stop! Amazing Coffee in Madoc and The Hungry 7 in Perth are quickly becoming traditions. She crashed with us overnight, which meant she got to meet Heather, and then caught the plane up North (and the weather was merciful, so it only took one try for the airline to get her up there). We came home to a questionable fridge, so the evening was full of coolers and thawing and delivery pizza.

Elizabeth's training was three weeks, so for the last two Heather stayed over. She had to work during the day, so I did home-making and running the kids around: Oscar had day camp with the UQO kinesiology students and I found parks and people and errands to fill the rest of the days. Evenings were good — the kids accepted that bedtimes without Mama could happen for days on end, Ada started sleeping the night, and with a bit of videoconferencing and some cranky moments, we made it through missing her during the week. Sharing the routine and spending time with Heather was really nice. Elizabeth came in for a semi-flying trip on the weekend in between, with a pagan potluck and traditional Sunday pancakes.

Now we’ve got a week and a bit of homebody time before Kaleidoscope Gathering. Elizabeth has found some time to keep working on the back stairs with Oscar's help, and we've been having pretty unstructured days. Oscar has had a cold and ear infection this week, but he seems in better shape today. Elizabeth and I got to go out for supper and a walk last night while Heather fed and did bedtime with tired kids. It was a nice time to catch up on being a couple.

I saved the pictures for the end — here are some of the nicest ones from June and July. We generally unplug in the woods, so you'll have to imagine all the fabulous dress, campfires and various degrees of extravagant camping rather than getting photos…

Ada is such a kid.

On the grounds at the Slit Barn in Cambridge, for my cousin's wedding.

Oscar being adventurous at Edwards Gardens in Toronto.

Viv enjoying being in nature at Edwards Garden.

( six more… )

Posted on the Solstice, not about it (we were rushing the ritual to avoid getting rained on hard and to get the kids home to bed — and we don’t usually take pictures at rituals, anyway). Here are some pictures from late winter and spring. I managed to get back to work and do many fun things, so pictures just kind of accumulated.

These three adorn my office wall:

( fourteen more… )

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… )

My last picture post featured kids with pumpkins. I still haven't figured out how to do them easily from a mobile device, so here's a big raft of pictures curated and posted at the big computer. Woodgie away! We start covered in snow.

Christmas photo candidate.

( 26 more! See Viv almost double in age! )

We've been running around madly lately — two of my cousins have July weddings; we went up to the Kitchener-Waterloo area for one last week, and we'll be heading back to Montréal for another next weekend. Oscar is a hit with just about everyone; we met his slightly-older second cousin Owen up at the wedding. My dad observed that they're in very different places in terms of sharing: the world is still Oscar's oyster (and anything he can get his hands on is sort of his), but Owen is both working on sharing and developing a sense of justice. The clash of worldviews took some parental finesse here and there to restore good cheer and make sure everyone had something they liked to play with.

Here are a couple of photos:

( from the wedding and train )

Earlier in the month, we went up for a day and a night to dagibbs' family's cottage. Oscar liked running around the grounds, and he got to ride with commodorified on the paddle board and share a hammock with her (photo: fairestcat).

Back at home, we hired one of my friends from back in high school to install and wire up a bathroom fan and update our somewhat vintage outlets and switches. It's going to take a little while to get used to the fact that all the switches are right-side-up and take less effort to throw than before, but I'm sure I'll get used to it. He also moved the 220V outlet down a bit so that our stove isn't perched on bricks anymore. It's only been four years that we've been living with the quirks and bugs in this house; it feels good to get a bunch of them fixed. Next things on our house list: some scraping/patching/paint, a new electrical panel, and a fence upgrade. Not all of these things are likely to get done before #2 is born, but we might get a couple of them done!

Speaking of #2, next month is August! Due date! Crazy homebirth adventure (if all goes well and on time)! That went very fast.

So, Monday after I left for work, Oscar managed to face-plant into the dresser upstairs, tooth-first. Elizabeth brought him in to our dentist office, who is just across the street from work, and a nice dentist and technician took a look at the damage and decided that the (90-degree-tilted) tooth would need pulling. I got to hold Oscar (due to slightly less flappability with respect to other people's blood than Elizabeth, i guess). After a little bit of futzing around with topical anaesthetic, the dentist went for the quick approach and plucked the tooth out with gloved fingers. Oscar was highly disconcerted for a few minutes, and I was a little woozy from watching, but by the time we'd walked a few blocks to get some air and acquire some lunch, Oscar was almost back to normal.

Here's Oscar with seven teeth, down from eight:

Elizabeth and I were planning on having a date night on Monday, but having had surprise dentist dealings, we decided to put it off by a few days. In the end, we left Oscar with random and fairestcat Friday night, and went into Little Italy for supper, beer and creamy desserts. Pub Italia is tasty, gloriously decorated and very busy on a Friday — we had a nice meal, some good eavesdropping and a little walk in the chilly autumn air. Some couple time was really nice. Yesterday, Elizabeth's cousin came by for supper and I fired up the Turkish grill (now safely on a pad of a few inches of gravel in a dug hole) and grilled veggie burgers in an attempt to extend summer into September. It was the first time I really got to meet her, as meeting anyone at your own wedding never counts. She seems nice and fun — she had a daughter at 18, and one thing she mentioned struck us both: her daughter will probably be out of the house by the time she's 36, and she mused about "starting again" with another kid. It's unlikely we consider having another kid when Oscar is likely launched and I'm 48.

This week, I'm off to the Washington, D.C. area for a couple of days to attend a short course on disclosure control. It'll be my first time in the U.S. since 2004. I got a fresh passport, I'm partly packed, and I'm looking forward to my more-or-less-annual work-related trip. My mission is more or less to get the big picture and soak up best practices at the course, and meet other people working in the field. I'll try and explore a little bit, too: fairestcat suggests wandering in the National Mall, and if some fellow guardians of respondent privacy in released data decide to see something cool in the evening, I'll probably see what they're excited about.

Even when I'm not on the road, work is pretty stimulating lately — building and disclosure vetting small-geography cancer incidence tables, welcoming new people, agitating to get the computer infrastructure set up to do record linkage better, trying to prepare to help teach a one-day course in November. Part time — the reduced time and the paperwork — is a bit stressful, but for now it gives Elizabeth a bunch of margin to work, take on new students, and have shorter days holed up with Oscar on a regular basis.