Dispatches from a happy Hullian

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.

Played D&D with the kids, Elizabeth and (video-linked) Heather today… we're all still getting our sea legs in 5th edition (or in D&D in general) but the party is doing well — offering to help NPCs, working together grumpily, blasting and stabbing undead in the fen…

I'm adapting an ancient second-edition adventure and some of the tropes and gender politics are iffy but I think their drive to fix them will lead to further adventures. I hope they learn to keep the wizard away from the front lines!

After three weeks of hunkering down and working from home, mu managers all managed to agree on an extension of my secondment — with any luck by the time my extension runs out mid-June, we'll be back to the office or at least good enough at telework that bringing me back will go more smoothly than in less than a month. We're still trying to figure out just what we can do and getting upper management to pick some priorities but I think our team is adapting pretty well.

I'm feeling… variable. Finding our feet at work and the new routine here is tiring. Some days I feel like we're rocking it and other days there's a lot of just spinning our wheels. Vivien is a bit cranky and Oscar lets use know they find the whole situation unfair. Their understanding and desire to talk about how various parties can make things fairer about cancelling stuff and travel restrictions makes me think of my kid self. Ada is mostly unflappable but a little clingy and mischievous by turns. I think the heavy-handed orders (checkpoints, now) are something Elizabeth was dreading and I was hoping we'd avoid. The quickly changing rules and uncertain length of the return to normal are wearing on me and us, like everyone.

On the other hand, our neighbourhood is full of rainbow signs saying "ça va aller" and there are little painted rocks with smiley faces scattered in our neighborhood and the early flowers are poking up and it smells like spring and we're not completely bored yet.

So for me, there's a bit of "we're managing pretty well" and a bunch of tired and anxious — real anxiety from uncertainty, from changing rules and from missing people and hoping they stay healthy, plus the anxious that we're all swimming in.

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.

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This week has been hard on toothpaste stores as Ada seems to like dumping toothpaste in the toilet — especially my high-end remineralizing stuff.

It was also a week where a bunch of us Positive Space volunteers and senior managers handed out Rockets (rainbow-coloured, everyone can eat them, inexpensive) and flyers on how to contact us for listening and referral or to help out to people coming in to work in honour of the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia. It went well and made me happy.

I also have some pictures!

Ada ready to roll in the fall.

Christmas crowns and big smiles.

Chairs!

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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:

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Here are some pictures from summer and early fall. Oscar is in school, Viv has had a busy schedule of activities, Ada is growing with great enthusiasm…

Viv rocking Grandpa’s reading glasses

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Ada is now over two months old! She has been camping, is starting to stick her hands in her mouth, babbles a bit and still sleeps pretty well.

( lots of entry )

I feel pretty content lately and settled into the new normal of three little ones and parental leave. I hope the next few months continue this!

Ada is ten days old today. She's 10% heavier than at birth, doing all the infant things, looking around a bunch, and has completely skipped "newborn" as a clothing size. I think I have the transition to parental leave more or less down this time — a few days of leave before the birth were a nice ease-in, and now I'm definitely coffee-powered but I've more or less hit my stride. I've been getting out on errands and park adventures with the kids and look forward to hanging out with lovely people (and their kids where applicable) in local parks. The older kids are having some adjustment pains — Viv is angling for mama cuddles and frustrated when there's a baby in the way, and both of them require a long wind down to sleep at the end of the day.

We have a nice steel roof! We had our moments when we thought we'd get a baby first, but the contractors pulled through and got it done. We had a stressful week or so where work had disrupted electricity to most of the upstairs including our phone and Internet plug — we had a solution involving an extension cord to the kids' room, but we weren't going to leave it plugged in while they slept, so we had greatly reduced communications — in a situation where we might've wanted to round up midwives and child care on short notice, it wasn't the best time for forced simplification, but in the end the contractors' electrician got things working before we really needed them.

The garden delay due to workers was actually a boon to us as the tomato plants weren't in the ground on those chilly nights after Victoria Day. Now we have a nice variety in (thanks for the swaps, wisewomanjudith!) as well as some fancy peppers and eggplant and some humdrum-but-tasty squash (bought from Sarah's new outfit, Beat Greens Gardens).

One small downer is that my allergies are pretty wild lately, even with desloratadine and drops. Maybe it's time to switch meds. What're people finding good these days? Drowsiness hasn't been a side effect I get; Reactine kept me up.

In general, I'm in a groove — a tired one but a good one — and life is pretty good and full of possibilities.

We tried out the trail-a-bike with Oscar a couple of weeks ago, and so long as we're not going uphill, he can pedal for the both of us so long as I steer and provide a bit of balance. Now he is really keen to tag along on trips with me — he's done the ride across Gatineau Park for groceries a couple of times now and has pedaled intermittently and been pretty good about staying on and being safe. I took Viv on some errands yesterday on foot (with the carrier) and she made it almost all the way across the viaduct into the park before I scooped her up and the rested in the carrier the rest of the way to the Plateau. We took the bus back and she sat really well like a big kid while we made faces at each other and took the milk run to get us within walking distance of home. Woo, mobile kids!

Hallowe'en:


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