You'd Think I Wouldn't Have to Learn This the Hard Way

Sometimes it amazes me that a person as dumb as myself could have given life to someone as smart as Captain Chaos.

Folks, never try to curl your eylashes with one hand while holding a squirmy, curious, almost - toddler on your hip.

Wordless Wednesday...on Thursday

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.

Wordless Wednesday

Road Trip! (or, Ten Days Without my Laptop)

Only fifteen years till he's doing this for real!!

Ten days days ago, I threw Captain Chaos in the carseat and took off  a road trip. ( I did not literally throw him. Put down the phone.)

After much deliberation, number crunching, nail biting, and forecast checking, I decided on a Wednesday night that, on Thursday afternoon, I would start out with my 11 month old son on a camping trip. It would span three provinces and nearly two weeks. The only destination I had was Starbelly Jam, a music festival in Crawford Bay, BC. There, I was to meet up with some old friends for a weekend of music, sun, swimming, and general hippie-ness.

Chaos at Starbelly

Starbelly Jam covered the first weekend. After that, I had no idea. I had vague notions of meeting up with other road-tripping members of my family somewhere in the mountains. Possibly we would make it all the way to the coast. Maybe I would visit far-flung friends in various places between here and there. Who knew? All I knew was that I really wanted to meet and reconnect with my friends in a place that was near and dear to all of our hearts, and I would figure the rest out from there.

Wednesday night and most of Thursday were spent in a flurry of packing food and baby items into the car. The camping equipment was no problem, as it lives in my trunk most of the summer anyway. I did, however, nearly forget to pack clothing for myself. Captain Chaos had a duffel bag full. For being such tiny human beings, babies sure travel heavy.

My family was supportive, and sweet. I think they realized that, with baby #2 due this winter, there was a good chance that I wouldn't be able to do this sort of thing again for quite a while. My father checked the fluid levels in my new-to-me car and taught me how to change the tire if the need arose. Grandma rushed off to CAA under the ruse of getting Alberta and BC maps for me. When she came back, she also had a CAA membership for me. An early birthday present, she told me. I am a lucky girl to have a family such as mine.

With the sun already creeping westward, we were finally packed and ready to hit the road.

West! (and a little bit south..)

As we headed west on the #1, a feeling of anticipation and elation gripped me. My first road trip in the driver's seat, and I was lucky enough to have my favorite person in the whole world riding along with me!

I won't go into a whole lot of detail about our trip, except to say it was by far the best thing I've done for myself in a long, long time. I got to hang out with old friends in old haunts and new situations. I got to ride around my old hood and reminisce, and I got to check out some cool new things in my hometown.  Baby and I got to bond in some really beautiful parts of the country, and Cap'n Chaos got to be nekkid on many different beaches. ( Trust me, it's important to him.)

A few of his favorite things

The Captain's first boat ride!

I got a chance to show my beautiful son off to many friends and family members who, until now, have had to be content with nothing more than pictures. And, needless to say, the little guy cleaned up on our trip. He got just about all the attention, love, and loot that he could handle. I'm pretty sure dragging all his cool new stuff back home across two provinces cost me an extra tank of gas!

Uncle's favorite nephew!

Most importantly, I got a chance to reconnect with myself. I found a little piece of me that's been missing for a while now; something that I didn't even realize was gone until I found it again. When I came here two years ago, it was to help another person. Then, before I knew it, I was in another highly unadvisable relationship with someone who did nothing but take from me.  So, without even realizing what had happened, I found myself giving everything I had to other people, and not leaving anything for myself. Again. It's not a good place to be.

I am lucky enough to have one beautiful child who takes everything I give, wraps it in love and affection and general amazingness, and gives it back to me one hundredfold. And OMG I have another one on the way! I need to be the absolute best I can be for these two little blessings, so that I can give that to them. And that means being the person I was meant to be, not changing who I am for some loser who doesn't appreciate it anyway.

I think that's a pretty rad thing to come away from a road trip with. When I was young, all I ended up with after road trips was a wrecked tent and a hangover!

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. :)