I did a reading today, asking about what’s going on right now with the house and money and the decisions we’ve made and whether we’re going to be screwed or not (we chose our mortgage options today if you can see where this train of thought came from). I’m not sure what to think about it, because I’m so close to the situation, but I do my best.

Self – 7 of Swords – getting the drop on the competition, questions of motivation
Crossing – 8 of Swords – feeling restricted/bound, closed mind, freedom lies ahead if eyes are opened
Foundation – 7 of Wands – preparedness for the situation ahead
Past – Knight of Cups – confidence, rushing into a situation/relationship, eagerness
Present – 10 of Swords – completion
Future – Hierophant – new course of study, organized spirituality/education, mentor
Inner Self – Ace of Cups – new relationship/project to nurture, beginning
Environment – The World
Hopes/Fears – King of Cups – generally I take to represent Ken, for obvious reasons
Outcome – 8 of Wands – fast moving situation, new job, journey/travel

So while mulling over the cards I put them, in the order drawn, in a pile and started talking my way through them (instead of studying the entire spread as a whole). It made sense that way along the lines of *inner dialogue* 7 of Swords – getting the drop on the situation… like asking the divine through my cards? well yeah! 8 of Swords – feeling bound and having my eyes closed to the “way out”… yeah, but what’s the way out? 7 of Wands – preparedness – so we’ve been ready and are ready for this new financial/life burden, good to know. Knight of Cups – eagerness, rushing in – maybe we rushed into the whole “build a house” thing, true. 10 of Swords – completion – well duh! Hierophant – study/spirituality – now that the house thing will be concluded there’ll be more time for us and for personal projects and for personal re-centering. Good. Ace of Cups – new relationship/project to nurture – already gotcha on that. World – yes, this card plus the 5 of Pentacles were the cards drawn for June during my yearly spread (very fitting). King of Cups – Ken – so where does that leave some other stuff? 8 of Wands – oh, that’s where maybe. Huh. No rest for the weary?

All pending that the Occupancy Permit comes in within the 1-2wk time frame our builder told us (“10 days typically, never longer than 2wks”, he said), here’s our schedule for the month of June:

June 1 – Final Inspection of house

June 2-8 – make house pretty and real estate showable

June 9 – Realtor coming by to see house

June 10-15 – make house cleaner

June 16-17 – (hopefully) have keys to new house (all ours!) and paint paint paint… and install ceiling fans and child safety stuff (I’ll show you the paint colours I picked once I’m sure, tomorrow, they’ll match the carpets).
June 18-22 – make nightly trips to new house hauling as much stuff as can fit in the car

June 23 – MOVE!

June 24 – have nervous break-down, unpack

June 25 – sign contract to sell old house (HOPE!)

Well, we’re getting there.  It always sucks, as some of you know, to have to re-set up your o/s and ALL your programs and settings and such.  We’ve got a long way to go, but at least our files are safe and email and internets are working.  The next important things I need are the preferred configuration of my mouse buttons and our torrent downloader of choice to pick up the last two episodes of Heroes.  PRIORITIES, people!

After the last birthin’ I did, I’ve noticed a fairly regular change to my monthly cycles.  Every month, within 1 day of a week before I “start”, I have the freak-out day.  I cry.  All.damned.day.long.  People, I am *not* a crier.  Today was the cry day, and for the life of me I haven’t a clue what the problem was.  Ken and I could both do without this since it’s just plain stupid and annoying as heck.  I’ve been considering going onto the Mirena IUD, and wonder if these monthly freak-outs would cease if I did.  I’m due to see my gyn in a little over a month, and she’s got one and loves hers, so I’ll ask then and maybe make my arrangements.

Besides crying, we’ve had some good things happen.  The program Ken bought, from the lovely men from Mississauga, WORKED.  You guys prayed great!  Give yourself a hand!  All our data was saved, except for image thumbnails (who cares) and the main inbox of our email (which I’m regular about sorting through email so there was nothing there anyways).  Right now Ken’s reinstalling Windoze and all our programs and sundry.  He thinks the mobo was the original problem, so we may be rebuilding it… making it stronger… faster… sometime later this summer.  At the very least we’ll be scheduling frequent back-ups from now on, that’s for sure!

Otherwise things are going well with the house, though having the kids means we don’t get as much done during a day as we’d like to.  Ken goes back to work tomorrow, so things will be back to normal again.  That is, as long as the smell of the doors Ken stained today fades.  Why does wood stain have to smell like partly rotted vegetation?

OY!!!

*le sigh*

It’s been… rough. I won’t go into details beyond that I was able to handle the boys alright, it was the being away from Ken that was the hard part – for us both. Well, that and the fact that Victor decided sleeping any longer than 1.5hrs at a time was just silly and why would I suggest that to begin with? Thankfully Sharon came to visit halfway through the time and her company was an enormous help and very enjoyable.

So. Hard drive. Raid broked. Desperately trying to fix since *everything* is on these drives (and wouldn’t you know but we set them up to both mirror *and* stripe the info so… yeah). All the boys photos, all the videos, all our many many gigs of anime series that we do/have watched and kept because we enjoyed them and they’re no longer available to download, all the house photos, Ken’s games, my bazillion links of favourites and banking/financial links. Possibly all gone. We’ve un-storage-ed the windoze cd’s and are hoping to recover the raid setup from there. We’ve also picked up (at a good price) a 500gb external hd (with a necessary usb) that we’ll end up using as backup since Ken found a program that may save our butts and at least let us access the information (through the usb). Pray to the digital Gods, people. Please pray for the life of our data. There’s so much irreplaceable stuff on there … I’m doing my best to not freak out about it.

Hurdles, or more aptly milestones. Victor is now sitting like a CHAMP. He’s the King of sitting. No more propping, grabbing/reaching for things beyond his reach and *not* toppling over, swinging his arms around like a mad man and staying vertical. It’s super-cool. I have many photos and video but you can’t have them until the computer is fixed so PRAY, PEOPLE! He’s also spinning himself in a circle, doing almost-push-ups (getting his midsection…which is substantial…off the floor) and is certainly going to be crawling soon. Yikes!

Houses…. the “old house” is so not ready. Ken’s trip to HK (which went well, btw, and he hardly did any work and it was 99% waste of time) came at a horrible time for us and there’s still a long list of things to do to get this place fixed up and ready for market. The “new house”, however, won’t wait as we’re scheduled for the Final Inspection. The.house.is.done. TOO FAST!

So that means they’ve finished Phase 5:

Phase 5
* Floor coverings
* Appliances
* Bathroom fixtures
* Light fixtures
Home Orientation Walkthrough
Targeted Date – 5/9/07

We’re doing it on June 1, and assuming everything goes alright they’ll be sending off for the occupancy permit which takes approx. 10 days (1-2wks) and then the keys (and house) are ours. June 10th. It’s ours. *thud* So since that’s like 2.5wks away we’re likely going to be moving into the new house before the old one is even on the market. *le sigh* At least it’s the right time of year for us to take advantage of Father’s Day sales at the hardware stores since we’ve got 6-7 ceiling fans to buy. Thank goodness we’ve got good relations with Ken’s co-workers and have helped several of them move. U-haul’s cheap and so’s pizza and beer.

From everything going on the past few months – new baby, crazy toddler, lemon house to fix, house to sell, house to throw money at, house to move into, spousal separation, yada yada yada – we’ve recognized that we need to get the hell out of here. Pronto. I told Ken, before he left, that I’d like to finally go on our honeymoon. We talked about a cruise or an all-inclusive place – somewhere that we don’t have to do too much and that’s already paid for – and about possibly going somewhere in the fall. You know… hurricane season in the Caribbean and cold weather time in the Mediterranean. Sharon had the suggestion that we maybe do a long-weekend away somewhere, B&B style. I’ve always wanted to see Maine, and Ken’s in favour of that, so we’re going to do a long-weekend in Maine sometime around August/Sept and save the week-long trip/cruise for sometime between January and June. We’ll try to keep it affordable, and yes it’s money we could be sinking into the Fix Up The New House project, but we need the vacation more, much more, than we need drywall in the bonus room or shelving in the office.

So that’s about it for now. I’m going to be using Ken’s work laptop for occasional internet useage until the computer is fixed – which means very little since laptops are a pain – but I’ve got email and I’ve got this blog up and running for now. Sorry I can’t show you The Adorables, but be patient (and pray).

Kelly said the computer won’t start up this morning. We tried a few things to fix it, but it’s not working. With me in China, I won’t be able to look at it until next Friday. So, you won’t be hearing form her for a while, sorry to say.

Hi from China!

(Isn’t murmur a cute word?) This morning’s spousal call went much better. 20-odd wonderful minutes of talking to Ken have me in a much better mood than before. He now agrees with me that Gravol the kickass at getting you to sleep and giving you deep sleeps. I’m especially looking forward to tomorrow since tomorrow is when things will be “all down hill”. It’ll be single-digits til Ken comes home and one day away from Sharon visiting (which will be a huge help and company). Not the halfway point, but after Sharon leaves it’ll be 3 little days til the day Ken comes home. I can *so* handle that.

I want to knit. WANT SO BAD! But I’ve packed all but a single pair of socks that I don’t especially feel inspired by (therefore they’re ripped and sitting in the bottom drawer of my bedside table) and my lovely gigantic skein of ebay yarn which I can’t do anything with until it’s balled and I need a swift for that. Grr.

Uhoh… baby squacking. He’s gotten *REALLY* good at that the past week or so.

Yesterday I heard his version of “I don’t like you right now”.  “Want goodbye Mommy?”  Ethan-ese for “I’m mad at you GO AWAY!”

Oh man.  Last night kicked.my.ass.  He didn’t give me more than 1-1.5hr chunks of time to sleep before waking up.  This morning, when I first woke up, I was sure my blood sugar was super low because when it is I feel essentially drunk and that’s also, apparently, how sleep deprivation feels like these days.  I’m a bit perkier now… shower, coffee, food… but my plans of stopping sleeping during afternoon nap time have been smashed to bits.  I’d thought of stopping in order to sleep sooner at night, but that just ain’t happening today.  The extra sucky part is that since Victor didn’t sleep, neither did Ethan sleep well and he’s going to be a crankybutt today too.  *le sigh*  10 more days.

The shopping trip went well, though I felt foolish wandering around the store with one child in a stroller and one strapped to my chest in a carrier. I ended up getting shorts a size too big for Ethan, so we’ll be going back sometime to return them for the right size (though the weather will be fine for pants the next few weeks). I restocked our Ghiradelli chocolate supply, so it all worked out well. The boys waited til we got home to freak out, which was helpful of them. Victor’s not sleeping all that well, so nobody is, and everybody is therefore cranky. We’re dealing, though, and I’m managing to keep up with things as normal.

I emailed for a bit with Ken last night once he was able to get into the office in China (where he’ll be for the week, then back to HK for the weekend). His flight went fine, though he didn’t take anything to help him sleep so he cat-napped the way there and then couldn’t sleep once he got to his hotel and tossed and turned most of the night. Yesterday he ended up drinking a lot of coffee. He’ll be calling me momentarily, which has me as excited as a school girl.

Edit: Bittersweet.  6.5 minutes of hearing how truly exhausted he is.  6.5 minutes of wanting desperately to just glue the phone to my head and leave the connection between us open the rest of the day, even just to hear him sleeping.  Hearing the slight difference in tone, than usual, of how he tells me he loves me.  The difference that speaks volumes of how much he misses me and wishes he were home and loves me.  The dozen or more times a day that we tell each other “I love you” squashed into a few repeats of those words.  A conversation ended on one of those, and the ache from lack of closure because it’s a telephone.  11 more days…

Ken has arrived, so says the airline website.  Now I just wait til tomorrow morning to hear from him.

It’s off to the store for us.  Here’s hoping it all goes well!

Those words make me think of Jann Arden – a great Canadian singer/songwriter that I was into in the mid-90’s and lost track of when my life got a little crazy.  I think about those words, and until now they applied to my own Mother who was so much more than “Good”.  However, I’m starting to allow myself to think in terms of my sons, and whether I’m their ‘Good Mother’.

I’ve never really known, for certain, what I wanted to be “when I grow up”.  Even now, though I have options that I’d like to explore, I’ve never been a “career girl”.  I have jobs, I have work, but work has never embodied who I am.  Then I became a Mother, and found my career.  They’re annoying and loud and confusing, they infuriate me and astound me, they crack me up and drive me nuts and I love being their Mother.  Motherhood has definitely come naturally to me.  My Dad told me, when I was pregnant with Ethan, that he always knew I’d make a good Mom because of the way I used to “mother” my friends when I was little.  I hope he still thinks I’m a good Mom and I hope my Mom is proud of who and what I’ve become.  Most of all, though, I hope my sons think I’m a good Mother.  Now, and years from now.  I know they won’t always, but when summed up, I hope they count me in the positive.

I know a lot of good Mother’s.  Women who’re friends and relatives or who’re women I read about on their blogs.  Women who are intelligent and thoughtful.  Women who don’t take for granted what they have in their children.  Women who cause me to try and be a better Mother.

I’ll be going out alone for the first time with the boys on Mother’s Day.  I need to get some things from the store, and I may as well do it sooner rather than later this week.  I’m optimistic we’ll all survive the adventure.  It’ll make me a tiny bit better of a Mother, I think, to know that I can do one more thing with them; that I’m one bit stronger and more competent.  That, perhaps, is the best part of being a Mother.  All these little things… these little moments to treasure; even the mundane ones.  I’m so grateful for my sons and for who they’ve helped me become.  I wish you, and your Mother, a happy day today.

Ken and I haven’t really been talking about Mother’s Day this year.  He won’t be here, so we’ve both been acting like it’s going to be just another day.  I figured, maybe, we’d simply push it off for a few weeks.  In one aspect, Ken thought otherwise.

We like doing logic puzzles, and tend to have two magazines on the dining table of them at any given time.  While bouncing Victor to sleep for his naps, they’re enjoyable to do.  I was doing such, and got tired of being frustrated by the one I was working on so I grabbed the other magazine to see what I had last worked on in there.  I opened it up and found a red envelope inside with my name on it.  Though tempted, I’ll leave opening it til tomorrow.  I had a sneaking suspicion he might get me a card, and that he did and hid it where he knew I’d find it…

Though, this time it overfloweth *as* he was leaving instead of being able to wait til the taxi drove away, which certainly made it harder on Ken to leave. We both laughed at me, and he knows I know how stupid it is to cry, yet I still do. There’s no logical reason – I know we’ll be fine, I’m not worried about him being away or upset at the extra work I’ll have – but simply because I love him and hate being away from him. It’s just the way we are. We did our best to explain to Ethan that Daddy would be away for a while but that he’s coming back but I expect Ethan thinks Ken’s just gone to work and will be back tonight or here tomorrow morning along with the sun and breakfast. I hope he can understand. At the very least they can talk on the phone in the mornings, and Ken has pictures and video of the boys from the past little while if he wants them.

So now I’ll be watching his flight carry him to HK. 3pm to 6:50pm tomorrow. He’ll call Monday morning and be calling me in the morning daily afterwards.

Oh, and the extra stupid thing?  Even now, hours later, every time I hear a car drive by I pause.  Just in case.  It could never happen, but maybe…?  I did this last time, too, and I’ll keep doing it until he calls me Monday.  Stupid, blind optimism.

I’m starting to think this house was built on some ancient, native ant-ian burial mound or something because seriously. W.t.f! Not carpenter ants this time… yet. This time it’s sugar ants. In the dining room. Ok, I’ll grant that I wasn’t prepared to have to clean up every last little crumb off the floor (didn’t with the linoleum, so…), but this morning we found little islands of sugar-punch-drunk ants gorging on a few stray granola bar crumbs and happily traveling back to home to tell all their pals about their new find. I hate this house.

I mopped the floor, we cleaned up/killed as many as we could get, and then Ken wiped their entry location and along the baseboard they were traveling next to with vinegar. I went outside their entry point and lo and behold there’s a whole slew of them outside too. Mixed up some sugar/salt and made them some little death mounds. They found that real quick so I’m hoping they’ll die soon and take their colony with them.

If the new house has this kind of problem with ants/wasps/bugs at least we’ll know it’s the area that’s cursed, and not just this crap-ola of a house.

Inspired, partly, by the ants I’m going to use up the last of my Swiffer wet cloths and then start using diaper cloths and vinegar/water (1c:1gal) to wash the floors.  Vinegar’s better than the ammonia based Swiffer stuff, and it’s *way* cheaper and works on everything (especially windows, which I’ve used it on many times to better success than Windex).  We have tons of diaper cloths and they’re a bit stained by now, after two kids, and they’ll work on the Swiffer thing as well as anything else will.  It’s also better for the environment, which I’m trying to do.  Having kids certainly makes you more aware of how many chemicals there are around us.