If You Don't Fall, You're Not Learning.

*When I was twelve, my snowboarding instructor told me "If you don't fall, you're not learning."
It's stuck with me through all these years.*

Hi y'all. Hi NaBloPoMo. Did you miss me?

No?

Well, I guess it was only yesterday that I copped out. That doesn't give much time for the heart to grow fonder.

Well, I missed you.

I stayed up all night thinking about what I had done. Questioning my decision to back down in the face of adversity. That's not really me. To be fair, I stand by my not wanting to post a bunch of crap that I really don't care about on my blog, but seriously. I just can't throw my hands up and walk away when the going gets tough.

I mean, I'm a single mom, for Chrissake. I would never give up on that. I'm a caregiver to an elder. How would that have gone down, after a few months of being here and realizing how fucking tough that job is, to just walk away? "Sorry, grams. I know I told you I'd help you stay in your home as long as possible, but I didn't realize how hard it was going to be. If I can't do it perfectly, I don't want to do it at all. See you around."

C'mon. I can hardly bring myself to write that, let alone do it.

I'll give you the shirt off my back if I love you. I'll bend over backwards making sure you have what you need to be happy, healthy, and comfortable. I'll push my own needs aside for you.

That's all fine and good, but I need to do those things for myself too. I tend to give up on the things that are important to me, simply because I'm too fucking busy doing things for everyone else, and I don't have the time or energy (or divinity) to do it perfectly, the first time around. I don't like fucking up. Especially not in public. And that's not cool. It kind of stands in the way of being open and learning.

NaBloPoMo was important to me because I set myself a goal that I knew would be difficult. Attainable, for sure, but out of my comfort zone.I've enjoyed being forced to think of things to post about every day. I've loved writing every day. I may have grumbled, but I knew I was working towards that goal. And dammit if some of that stupid novel that's been writing itself in my head, but nowhere else, hasn't been rearing it's (ugly) head. That was exciting, even if it does read like a damn harlequin romance right now. Sigh. It'll get better. That's the whole point of writing every day.

So anyway, here's me, copping out on copping out. I'm gonna make spelling and grammatical errors that I may not catch right away (omg I think I just threw up a little bit), and my blog may look like a scratch pad for the next twenty-two days, but damn if I'm gonna give up on this.

Wish me luck. And finely honed editing skills.

This Post is Just a Vehicle for Pictures of My Kid

Autumn, while sometimes spectacular around these parts, can often be a little cold and drab.

It makes it a little difficult to get off the computer and get outside, especially when dressing Captain Chaos for inclement weather is a full-on Battle Royale that can take upwards of half an hour. Hell, just getting pants on him has been my undoing some days.



He prefers surfing nekkid...ish.

 Today, however, Chaos was clearly interested in getting out. I, too, was climbling the walls.

After reading this post  from Lindsey at A Crunchy Life, I was inspired. Let the battle begin! Soon, I had wrestled the little man into three layers of clothing and we were off!

He starts squealing every time we roll up to his playground.

Let the wild rumpus begin!

Up the stairs....

Across the bridge

Back again

And down the slide

Up the slide

And down the stairs

And down the slide

Again!

There are some playground concepts he's still a little unclear on.

I'm sure I rocked this very same look in 1993 - with parade boots instead of Robeez.

Then he saw these stairs, which heretofore had not been climbed.

He's nothing if not determined.

Playground (and staircase) conquered and Chaos corralled, we settled in for a nice nip and a stroll through the hood.

I took pitchers

Late bloomers

Even on the gloomiest of days it's pretty around here.

Home sweet home.

Layers are shed,

And Chaos is off on another adventure.

A Deep Breath Before the Plunge

I grew up swimming in cold, clear lakes, rivers, and creeks in the mountains; glacial runoff that never seemed that far removed from the ice it had once been.

During long, hot summers at grandma's place, we cooled off by splashing in the murky waters of the dammed - up  Saskatchewan river.

On epic canoe trips, the icy waters of Northern Shield lakes served as both pool and bathtub.

On the Coast, the cool salt embrace of the north Pacific lures me and I cannot resist the call.

I love the water, and I know the only way in to our frigid Canadian birthright is headfirst, or feetfirst, fully committed.

I know the deep breath before the plunge.

I am well into my third trimester now; Chaos will soon have a little brother, and I will have two boys under 18 months old. I'm on my own, broke, and terrified at the thought of the sheer amount of energy it is going to take to keep it all together.

I am up to my waist in glacier water, trying to gather the courage to just dive in.

There are going to be days in the months ahead when I cannot conceive of getting out of bed, or off the floor. Days when I'm feeling alone. Days when I don't know how I'm going to make it.

I am concentrating on that headache-y moment when I first go under. The cold stealing the breath from my lungs.

I am forgetting what happens after the splash subsides and the water calms, and I'm floating cool and refreshed and relaxed. The feeling of weightlessness, of being held aloft by something other than myself.

After the deep breath, after the plunge, the joy of swimming. The exhilaration of opening up, challenging myself to go further, faster, and be better than ever. The feeling of accomplishment, seeing how far I've gone and how well I've done. The satisfaction of overcoming the fear of deep water, of the unknown.

I know that, for the rest of my life, I am going to be blessed with two wonderful boys, who will grow into two amazing people. I know the challenges will be there, and boy howdy do I know the next year especially is going to be tough. But I am surrounded by a loving, supportive family. I have a job that takes really, really good care of me. I am blessed with the most awesome friends a girl could hope for. And, I have an astounding will. ( I come from a long line of stubborn women. Just ask my grandma.)

In these closing weeks of my pregnancy, life has slowed. Yoga, long naps with the baby, and enjoying as much time with Chaos as possible are my main focus on days when I don't work. I'm sewing cloth diapers to soothe the nesting beast and at least partly calm my financial panic.

I need to remember that it will all work out.

I will be taking many deep breaths before this, the biggest plunge of my life.

Best Friends are the Shiz

Man, I am having a shitty shitty night.

I'm feeling the full weight of this pregnancy for the first time, and working the night shift ain't helping any. I hurt all over and I'm more tired than I've been in months.

Of course, being tired puts me at the mercy of my hormones, which are running wild tonight. Where normally I'm strong, tonight I am weak. Overwhelmed with the enormity of the task before me, feeling lost and lonely and abandoned. And of course, positive that my future holds nothing but an endless string of users, abusers, and straight up losers in the man department.

And I was going to come home and tell y'all all about it. Break my own rule about bemoaning the shitty hand I've been dealt. I just want someone to hear me whine, dammmit!

Lucky for you ( and for me too )  I got on the horn with my best friend in the whole wide world before I sat down to unleash the self pity on my blog. She let me whine and even cry a little, listened as only a best friend can do, and agreed with me on many points.

Then, in the nicest, sweetest possible way, she told me to pull my head out of my ass. 

Yes, she said. You deserve to feel sorry for yourself every once in a while. You've been put through the ringer. That's when you call me. And I will tell you what a dumbass you're being.

You are not weak. You are strong. You are not overwhelmed. You are dealing just fine and you will continue to kick ass and take names, because that is what you've done all the twenty years that I've known you. What you are right now is tired, and hormonal, and in need of a shoulder to cry on. And that's okay.

I'm here for you, and
You will be okay.

Best friends truly are the shiz.

What. Everrrrrr....

Firstly, I should clarify. Those are not boogs hanging out of my son's nose in the header pic, but grains of sand. We were at the beach. Maybe I should have thought of that before putting it up there, but I've become very enamoured of that pic and, well, it's summery. So there.

Now, to the post at hand. If I have any readers at all, they ( or she, as the case may well be ) will have noticed the posts are coming slow and low these days. It's not that I don't have anything to say. More like I have too much to say and not really that much time to edit what comes out.

Adjusting to single parenthood is demanding. On top of the daily struggle to figure out what goes where and what happens next (and where food and rent and gas are coming from), there's also all the ugly emotional shit one has to deal with when it comes to breaking up. It can be a little overwhelming at times, and it's tempting to do nothing but bemoan the shitty hand you've been dealt.  I've thought seriously about shutting this whole blog down. No one wants to hear a bunch of whining, and I sure as shit don't want to write it.

I've found a rather welcome surprise through this whole thing, though. There are a bunch of really positive feelings that come along with single parenthood.  I know, it may sound strange, but there are.  For me, the things that really stand out are the feelings of strength, of self reliance, of groundedness, and most importantly, a sense of freedom and possibilty that wasn't there before.

So, from here on in, this here blog is all about celebrating the awesome side of single parenthood.  I got no time for self pity, and neither do you.

Mmmm..Beer....

Tonight is my first night without Captain Chaos. If I went to sleep right now, I might actually get eight or more hours of sleep in a row. That hasn't happened since he was born. That's right, in the past ten months, I have not gotten more than five hours of sleep at any one given time. I can hear all you moms out there going "so?" but I'm pretty sure that the research I've read on sleep deprivation mentions going fucking crazy after a certain amount of time...

So, you ask, why the hell aren't you sleeping, princess?

I am not sleeping because I am blogging. I am blogging because I want a fucking beer. And a smoke. And a cigarette.

And none of those things are going to happen because A. I'm pregnant and B. I made a commitment to myself and to Captain Chaos that those things would not interfere with us. (At least, not till he's fifteen or so. I'm not a total idiot.) Anyway, under no circumstances will he be raised the way I was, and that's that.

Where I come from, there is a vein of addiction that runs deep and wide, and everyone I know has been affected by it in one way or another. I want to veer as far away from that vein as possible so that, hopefully, my kids have a fighting chance at a somewhat normal life.

The thing that I wasn't prepared for is how hard it is to do that. I mean, I'm no saint. I haven't got a lot of practice at this whole abstinence thing yet. Captain Chaos himself was concieved in a haze of beery, shot laden, cigarette smokin party-ness. It was only after I found out that he was coming into the picture that I toned it down. He's not showing any signs of FAS yet...(fingers crossed..)

 Since then, it's been a pretty easy ride. I mean, I was pregnant for the first time and obessessed with doing it right ( and by right I mean perfectly, because that's who I am). Then bam! I was a mom and god knows I haven't had much of a chance to think about tying one on, what with most of my time being taken with trying to keep Cap'n Chaos alive and the house from burning to the ground....

But tonight was different. As soon as I dropped him off with Baby Daddy, I could tell I was going to have trouble. I was already talking myself out of a beer two blocks from BD's house.

It didn't help that I dropped a couple of friends off at an outdoor concert after that. Man it took me back. Dressed up on a Friday night, a case of beer and a pack of smokes in the purse, going to see some live music. That's pretty much how I grew up. Shit, when I heard those bottles clink together, I thought I was going to die of thirst.

Someday I will be able to drop my kid off for the night without obessing over this shit.

Someday I will be able to go see a band again without wanting a beer and a smoke, but until then, I guess I'll just sit right here, writing it all down until I'm tired enough to just sleep.

Which is what I am now.

Which makes this a very

Good night. :)

Well, at Least it's Not Boring

Well helloooo there. My, what a few weeks it's been. That may sound like an excuse to you, but check this shit out.

Baby Daddy and I are now living in separate abodes. That's right, it's ovah. It's okay, it was inevitable, for the best for everyone involved, and Captain Chaos still gets to spend lots of time with the old man.

I'm not done yet.

Also, it turns out that Captain Chaos will be welcoming a little brother or sister in a few short months. (Or, if I'm to believe my friend, brothers or sisters. She seems to believe that I am going to be blessed with twins. I keep telling her to shut the hell up.)

so...

Because I'm just finishing up my first mat. leave, I also need to try and squeeze in 23 weeks of work before I squeeze the next kitten out or else no benefits for mommy. Yay!

Anybody got any hot ideas for working from home?