In addition...

...to going to school full-time, raising my children, volunteering at my kids' school, writing, and, of course, wasting time, I now have my own website, a website created in order to give myself more of a professional presence on the web. If you know my first and last name (and how to spell them) you can probably find it without no problem - it's my name .com. I am really happy with it... but it does spell almost certain doom for my blogging here. I don't have time (well, I do have time, but I'd rather waste it watching hockey and going to bed early!)

Emotions

I went through a brief and much needed emotional release at the end of last week. Tears were right there, near the surface, a place I rarely find them. There was undoubtedly a time in my life in which I was very emotional, but that time is not now and has not been now for quite awhile.

That said, I probably am somewhat more emotional than your average, um, accountant, let's say. I feel big. But for the last long while those big feelings have been ones, generally, of contentment, even joy. Every once in a while my self-esteem takes a dive, every once in a while I wonder if I will ever meet a fabulous man who thinks I am fabulous in return, every once in a while I worry that I will be living hand to mouth for the remainder of my life. Mostly, however, mostly I am good.

This was not the case last week. Last week I cried. I think all the intense stresses of the last, oh, seven years were letting themselves out. It didn't scare me particularly, although I admit to a moment of wondering if I would ever stop crying, now that it had begun. It reminded me of how, when one loses one's child in the grocery store, one doesn't fall apart into tears until after the child is found in the game aisle. In the moment of searching, you're too riveted by panic and action to dissolve. So, I think, is it with me. Now that we're here - now that we're good - now the emotions start to let themselves out.

That means periodic falling apart, it appears.

I found movies and pancakes really helped.

Single

Occasionally I write about being single, and the word "occasionally" may be key here as clearly the frequency with which I blog has dropped off dramatically now that I am in university. There is much to be said about being single, or rather, about being single again, being single after a marriage and more significantly, single after children.

My children's father lives a long way from us, so I am truly a single parent. In 2008 I had my children for all but seventeen days. This is not one-week-on, one-week-off parenting, no Tuesday nights and weekends. This is it. I am all they got. And likewise, my time is their time.

This, it should be noted, is not a bad thing. I adore spending time with my children and by all appearances they adore spending time with me. We're a little short on routine in our house but heavy with "chill-axing", as my brother put it to me last night on the phone. We like to hang out and snuggle and read and watch movies and talk about things and make up stories. This is not, for one second, a negative.

It is, however, from time to time, a little relentless. I get worn out. I occasionally miss having time to think, or time to stay up late, or even time to, say, go out with a man. I am not unique in this. All married couples I know go out on dates, usually with each other. In fact, I know a couple who are planning a week long trip away together and are just trying to line up childcare so they can make it happen.

Hold on a sec. Let me ask you something. If I did that - if I found baby-sitters so I could fly off for a week with my lover, would you condemn me? Would that be irresponsible parenting in the eyes of society? Single Mum leaves children with baby-sitters while she jets to the Mayan Riviera with boyfriend.

But a married couple doing exactly the same thing is socially acceptable?

Really?

Huh.

Why is that? I wonder why as a society we are so hell-bent on condemning single mothers for exactly the same behaviours that we ourselves as married people engage in? When Britney Spears went out and partied she was condemned (rightly or wrongly) for partying as a mother, for having left her children with nannies. And yet when Kevin Federline went out and partied while his rapping ability was called into question his parenting never was (at least, not on the front covers of gossip magazines). It seems much of the time we don't expect men to parent and so when they do we get all excited, like they've done something truly exceptional, and we expect women to only parent. And if you think I am wrong, take a good look at how you and your community react to single mothers versus single fathers, stay-at-home mothers versus stay-at-home fathers.

When I jet off to Vegas with my lover for a week, leaving my children with the neighbours, exactly how will you treat me? And yet your very good friends may be headed to Hawaii for a get-away leaving you to watch their kids, and all you will ask for is some of those nice chocolate covered macadamia nuts. Think about it.

How will you think of them and how will you think of me?

Hana's Suitcase

I have just read the devastating book "Hana's Suitcase" by Karen Levine, the true story of a little girl named Hana who was killed in Auschwitz and her suitcase, which fifty-five years later came to be in Japan. I cried. But good tears, the book is beautifully written and the story is beautiful, too, yes, even though it is about the worst in the human spirit it is also about the absolute best, the tenderness and the compassion of the human heart.

CBC Revisited

The very lovely people at CBC Radio's The Sunday Edition will be airing another essay of mine this Sunday, March 22nd, in the first hour of the show. I talk about returning to University as an old woman with two small children; a situation I rather love.

Attitude

Here's a crazy idea. How about you don't bitch about your job? How about, unless you're being used as slave labour in a Louisiana Plastics Factory, you recognize that your job is an agreement you make, every single day. You recognize that every day you get up and go to work and in exchange for that you get a paycheck, and if you don't like the job you, of course, can choose not to go, or to quit and look for something else, or look for something else and then quit if you want to get all responsible about it. If you need the paycheck to pay your mortgage, to pay for your girlfriend or your wife or your wife and your girlfriend, or to keep your kids in private school, then that's part of the bargain that you make, every day. You decide the 3000 square foot house is important, more imporant, presumably, then your work happiness, and so you go to work to keep your income where it is. If you change your mind, you can always downsize. In the meantime, stop bitching about your job. You don't like it? Change it. No one is making you be there, I'm pretty sure.

How about you don't get plastic surgery/botox/whatever. Here's what I'm thinking. If we all just stop, if we collectively decide, never, no more, will I hate myself or other people to the point I want to go under the knife to fix these miniscule imperfections; if we decide that human beings are beautiful, as we are, with big noses and big bums, small breasts, things drooping that didn't used to droop, lines in our faces that mark our moods and our years, the scars that trace our histories; if we see at last that our differences make us beautiful, our different coloured eyes, our height or our petiteness, our selves so rotund we have our own gravitational field; that aging is natural and gorgeous and far, far better than the alternative; if we collectively agree, all of us, 100% participation, to embrace as us we are, funny, imperfect, saggy, then it is just possible - just barely, barely possible - that my grandchildren and yours will grow up not hating themselves, not peering myopically into the mirror with regret.

We could do it, you know. We could all, just,

stop.

University

I love being a student, although I confess my studenthood has taken a toll on my blogging to what I am certain is the chagrin of my one faithful reader. My studentdom has also given rise to the long lost "stress dream", which I admit I hadn't really missed. Still, they are back, and they involve history most of the time.

When I was ill with stomach flu and having auditory hallucinations a couple of weeks ago, my auditory hallucinations came in the form of Nellie McClung and the FLQ - separately, mind you, although I admit Nellie McClung and (as in, with) the FLQ might have been entertaining. Last night, not ill, I awoke started from a dream in which my beloved professor had held up a paper in front of the entire class, a paper I recognized from afar as being my own. On it was written in large red ink: 16/81, as in: sixteen out of eighty-one.

Not, I am certain, a very good mark.

I hope I get said paper back tomorrow so that I might stop worrying about it.