Blue Sky

So, all 1 or 2 of my readers may have noticed that I haven't written on my new-found blog for a few days. I clearly haven't been in the right headspace. Sadly, on Tuesday, February 3rd, a beautiful, sunny, blue-sky day, I was let go from the company that I had worked for for 10 years. I had been through cycles of people being let go over the years and always thankfully and humbly avoided the dreaded "white envelope". However, on Tuesday, the white envelope had my name on it.
As I play and replay this day in my mind, I recognize that I most definitely experienced all of the emotions one might feel when they are let go. It kind of went something like this:

Disbelief
"What? Me? Really? Wow."

Anger
"Seriously, is this happening? After all that I have done for this company for 10 years?"

Sadness
"This is really sad. I so didn't want it to end like this. I am really going to miss this place and all of my friends"

Rationalization
"I get it. I understand why this had to happen. I know it isn't personal"

Confusion
"What do I do now? How does this work"

Hope
"Maybe this will be ok. Maybe this is the start to a new adventure for me. It will be ok"

I actually landed on "Hope" pretty quickly. Thanks to an amazing group of co-workers (or, former co-workers!), friends and family I have been able to get through this time fairly smoothly. However, the turning point for me, was when my two young children, in unison, yelled "Yippeee! we get to have a mummy day today, tomorrow, the next day and the next". How could you not hang on to hope when your ears are filled with this music.

Fried-Day

I am starting to think that Friday's are cursed. But is it all in my head or are Friday's truly turning into FRIED-DAYS?
When I returned to work after my first daughter was born, I was fortunate enough to work for a good little company who understood and supported a flex schedule. I was able to return to the office for four days a week and then work from home for a few hours each Friday. This was perfect. With one child, this schedule fit like a glove.
Enter child number two and an office that allowed me to continue with this schedule upon my return. What a blessing...except that through a combination of factors, the Fridays of old have gone the way of the Do-do Bird.
I now have two children, neither of whom nap, who want my undivided attention on Fridays. They call it their day. And so they should. Except that the office now seems to lay claim to this day as well. The struggle to answer calls, write emails, ichat, update, confirm meetings, conference call while making grilled cheese, untangling elastics from hair, putting on shoes, wiping noses or bums seems to be getting the best of me.
Last Friday, I was down for the count and couldn't get myself up for anything...today, a week later, I found myself awake at 6:00am with a migraine to end all migraines and the knowledge that it was Friday. My day with the girls. Coincidence? Chance? I'm starting to wonder.
Sophie came upstairs at 2:30 to my darkened room and snuggled me, while trying to pop some medicine into my mouth and then she said very tenderly "you told me last night you were going to have breakfast with me and today we would have a playdate - But you didn't".
My head still ached but my heart strings were now twanging too....

mind the gap

This blog is coming from the steamy, loud, rather damp bathroom in our little house. The girls are making potions in the bath and I am perched atop the closed toilet trying to get this blog written before the the arguing starts along with the the waterworks.

Once the girls were safely in the tub and before writing this blog, I quickly grabbed my toothbrush and did a quick post-dinner brush. I was reminded as I brushed my teeth, that on Thursday of this week, I get to pick up the whitening trays that I have had made at my dentist office. That's right, I am bleaching my teeth and I am as excited as I was when I got the gap in my front teeth fixed at the age of 16.

I have always been a teeth person. It is one of the first things I notice when I meet someone. Being a tooth-gal, the fact that my own adult teeth were far from perfect was a constant niggle in my teenage life. Sure, they were straight and not a terrible colour but they weren't sparkling white and worst of all, I had a large gap between my two front teeth. I willed that gap away from the time I was about 12 until I finally got them fixed when I was 16. Not only did I will that gap away but I resorted to some pretty new-fangled torture to fix the gap myself.

My favourite "fix" was when I would take little elastics and put them around both front teeth as tightly as I could and leave them overnight. In the morning, when I would take the elastic off, I would swear that I could feel that my teeth had moved closer together. They would always hurt a little bit. This was a good thing, wasn't it? It was strange that the gap didn't ever look any smaller. My other fix, not as saavy, but certainly something I thought made me look far more appealing, was the "chewed-up-piece-of-kleenex, tucked-between-my-teeth" plan. I was sure that with that carefully placed softened Kleenex between my teeth that everyone would see me with perfect ivory Chicklets not the "spit-gap" teeth that stared back at me every night in the mirror.

When I was 16 my parents, who clearly did not understand how horrible my life had been because of my teeth, said that I could have my gap filled with a new technique the dentist was doing. Within an hour of being in the dentist chair, my gap, my albatross, was gone. I could not stop smiling. When I returned to school with my new becoming smile it was all I could do not to smile at the water fountains.

The realization that we are our own worst critic was my lesson at this time in my life, since all the people I smiled at with my new teeth finally started saying "what are you smiling about?" to which I replied "My teeth!! They are fixed! Don't you see??!". The answers from every single person and even a couple of water fountains was "really? I didn't notice that you had a gap?!"

name that pig

I was reading some Richard Scarry to my youngest daughter, when I came across something that made both of us stop and giggle. I had just started reading about Sergeant Murphy and his daughter "Bridget" (Richard Scarry "dogs"), followed quickly by little Sophie Humperdink (Richard Scarry "Pigs"). How was it that I had named both of my children after two animal characters in the same story in a Richard Scarry book?

Of course, this just got me thinking, again, about names. I think about names a lot. When I was pregnant with my first daughter, I would sometimes have a physical heaviness, a weight, knowing that my husband and I would have to choose a name that our child would either pour themselves into, or not.

When we named our first daughter the whole thing felt organic and easy. We just knew, when we looked at her, moments after she was born, that she wasn't a Scarlet or a Esme but she was most definitely a Sophie. It felt good to be so sure. It still feels good. Sophie loves me to tell her about all the names we had picked out for her. She "yuks" or "yums" after each name that I list off but always looks contented and impish when we finally talk about how she is our Sophie and has been our Sophie from the moment she arrived.

When I was about 5 months pregnant with our second child we had a list of names that we were thinking about. We asked Sophie how she felt about all of the names (for both girls and boys since we didn't know what we were having) and, true to form, she "yuked" and "yumed" her way through the list and eventually paused and said, "I am calling the baby, Bridget" and that was that. The baby, whether it had been a boy or a girl would have been called Bridget. Things have a funny way of working out and Bridget couldn't be more Bridget if she tried.

Oh, and I am thrilled to know that my children, AKA Sophie Humperdink and Bridget Murphy, a pig and a dog, will live forever in the pages of the Richard Scarry, Please and Thank you Book.

What's that on your face?

When do you finally know or accept that something is over. done. no more.

You see, more than a year-and-a-half ago a blush (yes, this whole blog is about a blush) that I had used for more than 15 years, was discontinued. Now, I understand that products eventually run their course and are replaced or discontinued, but what I don't understand is how an International Company, can claim to have a Customer Service Department, when clearly, they don't.

As soon as the blush (True Complexion, Honey Brown Luster) that I had used for many years was no longer around, I went to the Revlon website and found an email address AND phone number for their Customer Service Department. I wrote and called. I wrote and called again. And, you guessed it, I wrote and called yet again. Nothing. Not even one teeney-tiny bit of a Revlon earlobe to hear me. If it was just me being a complete idiot and not taking the right approach to connect with the Service Department, I probably could have let the whole thing go.

See, the thing is, I am a makeup artist, or I used to be (BK, "Before Kids") and I had introduced "Miss Honey Brown" to a number of people, including my Mum and Sister-in-law. Like me, the notion of not having a perfect blush for those shimmery, smooth cheeks, was enough to create a wee bit of panic in all of us. Independently, both my Mum and SIL emailed and called Revlon's Customer Service department. Guess what?
...you already know the answer.

All of this, told and retold, still doesn't make me feel any better. Not only have I not been able to find another blush (my cupboards and drawers are full of "slightly" used but "not quite right" blushes), but I have no closure. I have not heard a human voice tell me "Sorry Miss, that product has been discontinued". Is that too much to ask?

Apparently, according to Revlon, it is.

So, every morning, before I start my 55-minute commute to work, I get myself a coffee. It sounds so cliche, but I actually think about my coffee like someone might think about a prada purse or a coach bag. I get a little bit "giddy" when I actually think about the coffee I get to drink in the morning.

I think that it has not only been the coffee that I have enjoyed for the last 3 years but the whole experience that unfolds when I actually drive into a parking spot outside the Gas Station (that's right...I get my coffee at a Tim Horton's counter, inside a gas station).

You see, 3 years ago when my daughter was almost 2 my husband and I crunched some numbers, groveled, begged, sold some stuff on Criagslist and bought ourself a nice, old house in the Suburbs. We had lived in the city for over 10 years but only in rental apartments. We really wanted our own house where we could stay for 20 or 60 years.

So, we made the move to the suburbs and my morning coffee from a trendy South Granville Coffee bistro turned into a double-double from the Tim Horton's in the Esso Gas Station on the corner.

So what. Who cares where I get my coffee. Right?

Since going to the Tim Horton's for my coffee in the morning means that I stand in line with no fewer than 8, 16-year-olds on their way to school, I am always entertained. One of the most entertaining parts of my wait comes from my crazy idea that "hey, I don't seem so much older than them? Do I?". OR how about this one "I wonder if any of the 17-year-old guys think I am kind of cute?". WHAT? Am I crazy? It dawned on me the other day that I could actually, physically, have a child who is 17. Crap. I am not young. I could not pass for a teenager. I am 36 and have 2 children, a husband, a house, a job and a mortgage.

This thought alone, made my normally delicious large double-double taste curdled. Sour. It took my an entire day, and evening, to make myself feel better about this realization. I could have a 17 year old child. Its ok. I think I still look ok.

Now, here I am, the next morning, standing at the front of the line, ordering my coffee, and the Tim Horton's guy, Alex, looks at me as he passes me my coffee and says in the monotone voice that he has mastered, "you look about as tired as I feel". Seriously. He really said that.

Alex is probably 17.

He is also right. I do look tired.