Back to work thoughts

Hard to believe it, but three weeks from this coming Monday, I’ll be back at work. If it weren’t for the fact that I’m fixated on the new plan to work a four-day week, there would be much wailing and gnashing of teeth going on right about now, but I’m actually feeling okay about the whole thing. Given my druthers, as my mother would say, I’d’ruther be independently wealthy and able to stay home with the boys full time. Since that isn’t going to happen, the four-day thing gives me at least a semblance of balance and allows me to enjoy the idea of going out and playing with the grownups again.

I know I haven’t updated at all about our nanny search, but that’s looking quite positive right now, too. Back in November, after some truly horrendous interviews (including my favourite, the young woman who looked at Lucas sitting quietly on the floor and asked, “So, what exactly does he *do* all day?” not once but twice!) we actually found ourselves with three good candidates from which to choose. We ended up selecting someone who has a little less nannying experience but a lot of daycamp and bible camp and daycare experience simply because I got a really good vibe from her personally. She’s sweet and easy to get along with, and seems quite taken with the boys. Yesterday, she came over for a test run with Lucas while I hustled off to the gym for a half-hour, and I came home to her sitting rather stiffly on the couch and looking quite uncomfortable trying to hold her posture while Lucas snored sprawled across her. Way too cute and a very reassuring start!

Since the work-life balance thing looks like it might work out just fine, and the nanny thing looks like it might just work out fine, you’d think I’d be golden. Ha! Not so much. The fly in my ointment is the six-week old transit strike that’s bedevilling the city. Back when the bus drivers walked off the job in early December, I spent many days thanking my lucky stars that the strike happened while I was on maternity leave and not beholden to OC Transpo. February seemed miles away at that point, and I couldn’t conceive of a strike that would leave the city without buses for eight weeks or more.

Those of you who live here know the story and those of you who don’t likely don’t care for the details, but the gist of it is that yesterday the drivers resoundingly rejected the city’s last offer, and they’re now saying that the strike could carry on for weeks if not (gasp) months. Not only do I rely on transit to get from my suburban home to the heart of downtown every day, but our lovely new nanny also relies on transit to get to work. Without buses, I’ll either have to carpool or drive myself, and we’ll have to pick her up and drop her off every day. With me starting as early as I do, we’re likely looking at Beloved having to load all three kids in the car, pick her up, drop everyone off at home, and then drive his usual almost one-hour commute to work while she walks the big boys over to school. What a nightmare!

On the bright side, aside from the ridiculous transit strike, things seem to be falling into place for a rather pleasant transition back to work. *touch wood* I happened to get to see a lot of my colleagues yesterday for a work-social function, and it really was nice to be able to see everyone again. I’m lucky enough to work with some truly great people, and I’ve missed them over the last year. And, right on cue, my 35 minutes of nap time are done and the world’s cutest baby is cooing himself awake upstairs…

On bad dogs and vampires: or, how hype influences your reading life

How does hype affect how you approach a book? The last two books I’ve read have been ridiculously overexposed and analyzed half to death in the last month or so, probably not coincidentally because they were both made into movies that were released in December.

Just before Christmas, I read most of John Grogan’s Marley and Me, the sweet story of one family’s life with the world’s worst dog. My dad gave it to me, after a friend loaned it to him. He has personal experience with the world’s worst dog, which is really a post for another day, but let me say this: at least Marley never ate anybody’s dentures. Twice.

Anyway, the book: I read it, but I didn’t get sucked into it. It took me more than six weeks to get through it, because I kept picking it up and putting it down again. I felt like I had to read it, partly because my dad had given it to me and my dad has never recommended a book to me before, but partly because it’s a story about a big yeller dog and my heart has endless space in it for big yeller dogs, especially ones with a mischievous streak.

I laughed out loud a few times, especially in the parts that brought me back to the days of wrangling my own impossibly stubborn golden-shepherd mix pest (who, by the way, turned into the world’s best doggie), but I didn’t cry once. That may have been, though, because I saw where the book was going about two chapters from the end and decided to bail. When you have a 10 year old dog that you love beyond words in your life, you don’t need to read about the demise of other people’s dogs no matter what kind of happy ending they try to wrap it up in. In the end, it was a nice book and I enjoyed the stories, but I really didn’t see why everybody was so gaga over it. It just didn’t catch me, yanno?

By contrast, I have been righteously hooked by Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight saga. Oh my good lord, how I am hooked. I can barely stand to take these rare minutes of calm quiet nap time to write this out, when I could be reading to find out what happens next to Bella and Edward and the rest of them. I’m halfway through the third book now, and after racing through the books to this point, I find I’m trying to slow down, knowing there’s only one book after this one and then I’ll be done. Whatever will I do then?

I’d asked for the books for Christmas, after waiting nearly two months to move from 600th to 350th in the public library queue for the first book alone. I wasn’t even sure, to be honest, that I’d like the books, but I’d heard enough from those whose taste I truly admire to think that maybe I’d enjoy them. Besides, even if they were a little too teeny-bopper sacchariney, as I feared they might be, I’ve always been a fan of a good vampire tale. Interview with the Vampire and Queen of the Damned are still among my favourite books of all time.

Now that I think of it, I think I’ll post my review of the Twilight books under a separate post. This one is long enough, methinks! But for now, I’m curious about the “Oprah effect” and how it affects your enjoyment of a book. I think I would have enjoyed Marley and Me a little bit more if I’d just stumbled randomly upon it, rather than having it saturated through popular culture. And yet, although the hype about the Twilight books is no less ubiquitous, I’m completely and utterly drawn in. I can’t even say that they’re more finely crafted. I expected to enjoy them, but I didn’t expect to want to put my life on hold until I finished them!

What do you think? Do you find that the “Oprah’s Book Club” stamp on a book is the thing that draws you in, or (like me) the thing that makes you say, “No thanks.” Do reviews and the recommendations of friends enhance or take away from your enjoyment of a book?

Poor baby

Be thankful you aren’t Lucas this week. Poor guy, not even eleven months old, is having a hell of a week. One week ago, last Tuesday, I brought him into a walk-in clinic because he had a fever and had been sleeping poorly. Diagnosed with an ear infection, and his first dose of amoxicillin.

Saturday night, he got the stomach flu I’d been dealing with since the day before. In one twenty minute span I had to change him into three separate sleepers, and change my own pyjamas twice. Good times.

This morning, the rash that had been on the back of his hips for a couple of days had spread to his entire body, looking alarmingly like measles. I figured it for a reaction to the amoxicillin, but we’d finished the full course of that on Sunday, so I called the ped to be sure. He called us in for an appointment, and said it’s possible that it’s a late reaction to the antibiotics (Beloved is deathly allergic to penicillin) but looked more like a viral rash to him. He also said Lucas has a lot of redness in his throat and some serious mucus building up, further supporting the viral theory. Here comes the head cold.

Sheesh, no wonder we haven’t been getting any sleep lately!

The good news is, the stomach flu made it to the fourth member of the family around midnight last night, so we’re four down with one to go on that count. And I feel like myself for the first time in five days. Here’s hoping for more restful nights ahead!

I promise, blogging of topics other than bodily fluids will resume shortly…

A post in need of an editor, if there ever was one

The problem with extended absences from the blog is all the posts I want to write that get tangled up in my head, so when I actually do get a couple of minutes to string together, I’m bloggily constipated. Too much to say, not sure where to begin!

It’s been a rough couple of days week, roughly surmized by Lucas’s first ear infection, followed by a 72-hour stomach virus on my part, which I politely shared in a milder version with Beloved and Lucas. Babies and stomach viruses are not a pretty pair, and that’s all I’ll say about that. And that baby of mine who slept through the night starting around (bless his little heart) around two months old is making up for it now, waking in the neighbourhood of six to eight times a night. Let’s just say that stomach viruses and sleep deprivation are another couple nobody wants to see together anymore.

Because I can’t get my mind to gel on any of the eight or nine other blog posts that I’ve been gestating between trips down the hall to sooth Lucas back to sleep, I’ll just take a minute to say this: where exactly did my baby go? It’s hard to believe it’s only been two weeks since school let out for Christmas break, because Lucas is simply not the same baby he was back then. He learned to crawl last month, and now cruises the furniture with ease. He’s got this bright-eyed awareness and curiousity about everything that’s nothing short of delicious. He’s relentless in the pursuit of what he wants, and adorable in his frustration when vexed. He wants nothing more than to get into whatever trouble his big brothers are in to, which is in equal measures charming and terrifying. And speaking of terrifying, he’d been crawling less than a month the first time he crawled all the way — with supervision, of course — to the very top of the stairs. Lord help us. He shows no interest whatsover in baby TV like Baby Einstein and the like, but loves to stand up and poke at the TV while the rest of the family plays Big Brain Academy on the Wii. And his very favourite thing right now is books, bless his little heart.

And even though Beloved is doing an admirable job of trying to distract him, in the time I’ve written this much I’ve had him climbing up my leg to “help” me blog at least three times, so I think it’s time to cut this short.

Just a quick second to squeeze in a couple of milestone acknowledgements, though. Happy 40th birthday to my dear friend Yvonne, the first of many of our crew who will hit this historic milestone this year. May the next 40 be twice as much fun!

And congratulations to Jojo and Jaimie, who welcomed their baby son Max into the world yesterday. I know Amelia would have preferred a girl for a sibling, but I can tell you from experience, Amelia, that brothers are truly a miracle. Kisses to all of you, to be redeemed in person when I’m sure I’m germ-free!

Finally, for family far away and anybody else who wants to peek, I put up some pictures from Christmas on Flickr.