Life is full of changes AKA The BIG announcement

Yes, Chris, I stole your last blog posts title. Cause it works for me.

So, up until now, I have been living in the best of both worlds. My very flexible 3 part time jobs have allowed me to work and socialize with adults while still staying home with the girls - they go to school three days a week, so I've been home on their days off, and sometimes on their school days.

This life has been a struggle financially, and scheduling can be a nightmare if one gets sick and it is the ONE day that week I HAVE to work. But it has been utopian in the sense that I have been with my kids, having pj days, going to the zoo in the middle of the week, deciding at 10 am to go bike riding in Sydenham, exploring Lemoine's Point on the only sunny day all week. I am so thankful that I had the good sense to construct this fairytale existence for myself and the girls. But all good things must come to an end eventually.

So, life being full of changes, in the spring the daycare I work at announced it was expanding - building an entire new centre- for everyone this was great news, everyone except me that is.

I knew the moment the announcement was made that my part time existence at the centre would cease in one way or another as my position existed because of specific circumstances at the centre itself. I have spent the last few months agonizing over how to handle the situation when it occurred. One thing was obvious - I would not be able to take a regualr full time teaching position with the centre for two reasons: #1 the kids, their schedule, and the fact that it doesn't mesh with the daycare's expectations of a full time staff, #2 SCHOOL, like the big deal school, not the online stuff I've been doing to catch up. One night a week I would need to leave for Ottawa by 2pm at the latest - no way would that fly.

My choices; hope for a permanent part time that worked with the schedule we keep here, move on to another centre (or back to an agency I worked for), or.....wait.... I see a light..... what if I cooked?

The cook position at the old daycare centre could be done in about 30-32 hours per week. If I could just convince everyone that I could still be on schedule while starting later on school days, it might work. Just might.

Hmmmm.......

Long story short, I applied for, was offered, and have accepted the full time cook position at my daycare. This will mean HUGE changes around here, as I still plan to keep my store job - every other weekend I work 12 hours- and my other part time job. I will also (hopefully they don't cancel it this time) be starting Canadian History in January. Then grad school/teacher's school in September.

How I am going to do it, I don't fully know yet, but I have lots of ideas. I already have been making use of the girls' one hour gymnastics lesson by studying in the parent room (and I'm not the only single mom doing that !). I will also have a 45 minute lunch break, and likely time after work before having to pick up the girlies, in which I will get groceries, study, SLEEP even. I think I can make this work, with the added support of my family, and close friends.

Stay tuned, I am sure to be posting more on this topic, as my first day, January 4 nears.

On floods and such

So, I'm watching the news yesterday, and they are covering the BC floods. I was so frustrated by the story that I tried to blog about it, and was too flustered to articulate myself properly.

Now I have calmed and had time to reflect and I have something to say.

#1. If you know an area floods regularly (and I don't mean every year, but has been a known flood plain within the last two decades) DON'T build your house there. Even the most undeveloped cultures in the world know this. Why is it, we, the most educated people on the planet cannot put 2 and 2 together and not build where the water flows? ( I am reminded here of Survivor 2 or 3 when one tribe built their camp in the path of a river overflow. First rainfall, swoosh, everything washed into the croc infested river)

#2. If you can't insure your house for the reason that it is built on a known flood plain, you should be shit out of luck. BUT did you know that in the case of these BC floods the government is giving the un insured flood plain dwellers 80% of the value of their losses? WTF. If the insurance tells you not to build there cause it'll flood, and you build there anyway, you shouldn't get the government paying you for your stupidity.

#3 If you have been told repeatedly that this house is on a known flood plain, and you can't insure it because it is on a floodplain, you don't deserve people being sympathetic about your loss. It's kinda like leaving the keys in your convertible on a busy downtown street, DUH, yo did it to yourself.

Frankly, after writing all of this, I am still disgusted with our society that feels sympathy for people who knowingly put themselves in the way of disaster, and then pays them for losing everything, despite the fact that multiple sources told them whatever they were doing was a bad idea.

The Bomb

So, I had planned to make some job changes over the summer, because the girls would be in daycare full time, then going to big kid school in September, meaning that the full time daycare would be caring for them before and after school.

Well, due to the expansion of our daycare, there are lots of changes happening, and unfortunately they are happening much sooner than I had expected.

Basically, my cushy, comfortable part time position will not exist for much longer, and a full time position that will allow for school time, and the girls' schedule until June has come up. It's a position I have done before, in a different way, but it is a position that I like.

So, about 6 months ahead of schedule, right about when I hope to be starting my history course, I will likely be starting to work full time as a cook for the daycare, and remain part time at the store on the weekends.

So, here goes the end of an era, having the best of both worlds. The advantages of being at home with my girls, and the income of having 3 part time jobs.

Now its time to get down to business.

Makes no sense whatsoever, but seems to have worked

So, this morning I am walking down the three stairs to our entryway. My daughter is sitting to one side putting on her boots. I slip, doing the semi splits, knocking my daughter into the wall next to her, and the pain in my ankle is excruciating.

My daughter has a little knock on her noggin, but is fine, just really scared.

Oddly enough, the pain in my ankle began to subside within 2 minutes. This was very disconcerting. Normally, when I fall like this, it hurts for days. When I was 11 I injured my right ankle badly, and have re injured it frequently since. The most recent injury was Dec 27 last year, when I was sure I must have broken it finally, but severely sprained it, earning me 10 days on crutches. Since then, despite the best efforts of my chiropractor, it hasn't been right and I have had a lot of pain when working out or being on my feet for a long time.

Today, it seems, whatever happened last December was reversed. After the pain subsided, I stood up and oddly, felt like I was finally standing normally. While the soft tissues are sore, and there is bruising, the joints feel like they are where they should be, for the first time in 11 months.

Who'd a thunk falling down the stairs would fix the injury I received the last time I fell down the stairs?

Sun Ceremony

So, the montessori tradition celebrates birthdays of children in the class in a very special way.

Its called the sun ceremony.

All the children gather in a circle, the sun is placed at the centre. The child (or in my case children) to be celebrated brings a picture of when they were born, their first birthday, second, and so on up to the last birthday they had. The child walks around the sun carrying the first picture, while the group sings a special song about the sun. This is done with each picture to represent each year of the child's life, each time the child has been around the sun. The final go round is without a picture, to represent the beginning of the next year of life.

The girls really love this ceremony, and tomorrow is their third, and last sun ceremony as they have been at Montessori three years now. How the time flies.

Breathing a huge sigh of relief.

So, in my life it seems that major events tend to lump themselves together, and while I take lots of time to prepare and schedule to make life as simple as possible, it can be exhausting.

This past weekend 3 major events took place. Keep in mind, normally my girls are with their dad on the weekends, but due to two of these major events, I had them home with me. My mom came early Saturday morning, with plans to take the girls out for breakfast and to get new pretty shoes for dressing up nice this holiday season. I headed out to write my three hour final exam for Children's Lit. While I was well prepared, I was not well rested, having fretted all night long about this final. It's the first exam I've taken since I graduated Trent. That was in 2002. I took almost all of my three hours and I know I passed. I left the dry exam room in agony despite the lovely executive chairs they have for us to sit in.

Then it was off to Amherstview to pick up the girls nut free Hannah Montana birthday cake.

I got home to find my mom folding laundry, my girls incredibly happy with their pretty shoes, and had the opportunity to quickly go get everything I needed for major event #3 before my mom went to meet my dad.

I took the time after my exam and before major event #2 to start cleaning and do some preparation for major event #3.

Major event #2 was my staff party at my boss' house. This is technically a three hour paid training in which we play with all the new machines and are educated about each product. Jean's an awesome boss who figures we all know what we're doing, and we all talk about the different products to each other when we find things out about them, so we went to his house, ate great food, and laughed and talked and had a great time. The girls came with me, and Jean's youngest daughter adopted them, and I barely saw them the whole time. She even sat with them to eat dinner, and helped them get more when they wanted more. This event was a nice relaxing time at the end of one very stressful day. We came home, the twins passed out immediately, and I wrapped presents for event #3.

Sunday morning was spent preparing for event #3, the twins 5th birhtday party. We had invited a family with two severe nut allergies. The game plan Sunday morning, lock all the nut containing stuff in a cupboard, and lysol everything within a three year olds reach. Then prepare the party food. The phone kept ringing, the girls were fighting and bugging and generally making things more difficult. But I had everything done before guests arrived, with a little help from mom who got the girls dressed and made up the food trays.

The girls really enjoyed their birthday party. Unfortunately our friends with the nut allergies didn't make it. All I can say is it feels great to be past the final exam in the most horrible course I have ever taken (that I couldn't drop), and the girls' birthday party cause that always takes a lot of preparation.

Tomorrow, pics of the two new additions to our family, Allison and Velia ages 20 months and 17 months respectively. The girls haven't left them alone since they opened them. They are getting them a year later than when I got my first one, but I couldn't find any that were the traditional ones last year in stores. As it was I had to buy these in July to make sure I had them.