Friday, November 21, 2014

{friday night stream of consciousness}

I am tired. I'm sitting here eating chocolate chips and blankly staring at the computer screen, listening to a podcast, wondering if my hands are larger than normal for a girl or if they're just regular-sized. I kind of want to go to sleep, but the bed is all the way over there, and Barclay will be home any second, and, besides, there's still 14 minutes left of this episode, which I have been unintentionally tuning out and will have to listen to all over again tomorrow.

Also: it's only 9:16. On a Friday night. There is a crazy part of me that feels like Past Me will somehow know that Present Me went to bed at 9:16 on a Friday night and feel really let down or something. And I just can't do that to myself.

Sullivan hates sleep, as I've mentioned. People ask all the time how he's sleeping, so I feel like I'm constantly talking about it. I'm not trying to complain or steer the conversation there, but there it goes. Like a shopping cart with a wonky wheel that just keeps veering off into the shelves and into other customers. (In this simile, you are the other customers, I guess, and I'm sorry about that.) It's probably because I walk around with my eyes half shut and a fine strand of drool pendulating from my lower lip. Gross. I know. I'm sorry.

Not only am I constantly talking about it, I'm constantly thinking about it. I obsess over it. I dream (daydream) about it. When I finally get a couple of hours of it in a row, I think about it the way a person thinks about a recent vacation to a white beach. I want to go back, but I know that I probably won't be able to anytime soon. And when you tell me about your recent vacation, I'll try so dang hard to muster up feelings of joy for you, but I admit right now that it's getting harder and harder to do that, because my son only usually sleeps for 30-90 minutes at a time, night or day. A friend posted on Facebook recently that her five month old has been sleeping through the night since he was six weeks (#soblessed), and it made me cry twice: once right when I read it, and again at midnight that night as Barclay and I were trading off rocking Sullivan for four straight hours because he seemed to think that his crib mattress was made of molten lava instead of soft crib mattress-y mattress material.

(I feel bad when I cry over it. It's not the end of the world, it's not a big deal. Tears just kind of fall out of you, I guess, when your eyes are propped open with toothpicks. Another gross visual; I'm sorry.)

Anyway, I've been napping when he naps and following a bunch of carefully curated advice and someday hopefully it'll all work out so that I can be a rational human being again. And somehow, being a mom is still my favourite thing. I suspect this has something to do with love and oxytocin.

A thing to be thankful for, though: today, the temperature climbed above zero, so I went for a walk. Someone said this to me the other day and I was thankful for the reminder: sometimes exercise is even better than a nap. It's weird, but true.

I didn't know where to walk to, so I just went over to the grocery store. I bought some cream cheese and some cottage cheese and some cheddar cheese (cream cheese for me, cottage cheese for Barclay, cheddar cheese for TO PUT ON EVERYTHING).

In the check-out line, I saw a tabloid magazine with some trashy headline about a celebrity couple who was trying to survive some kind of horrible marital tiff, and across the top of the cover I read, "OVER $16 WORTH OF COUPONS INSIDE". Really? Do people really buy tabloids for the coupons? I feel like the kind of person who cuts coupons is not the same kind of person who wants to look at pictures of celebrity cellulite and relationship train wrecks. Unless the coupons are for TV dinners. Then maybe.

I might just go to sleep, actually. 

Wednesday, November 19, 2014

{swallow your dreams}

I had two dreams last night, both of which I think might have been fairly significant, in a This is Going to Happen in Real Life sort of way. I don't normally think that about dreams, but I think that about these dreams. Definitely.

In the first dream, I was standing in my dimly-lit kitchen, dressed in all black. There was a smoky vignette around the picture, which I soon learned was coming from the stove. I looked down at the counter in front of me, and there were plates and plates and plates of french toast.

I opened the fridge and pulled out three eggs and three bricks of cream cheese, which I threw into the stand mixer with a half a cup of sugar and some caramel sundae sauce. Cheesecake. Of course I was making a cheesecake.

But instead of baking the cheesecake, I spooned the batter onto the open-faced french toasts, topped the sandwiches with more french toast, and grilled them in the frying pan in butter. 

I woke up then, and when I fell back asleep the french grilled cheesecakes were gone, and I was standing in front of the stove frying chicken thighs in BBQ sauce and garlic. In my grad dress.

There was a glass baking dish lined with cooked lasagne noodles on the counter, and I emptied the frying pan into it. There was a small saucepan on the oven with melted butter in it, so I added some flour, some Parmesan, some grated cheddar, pepper, salt, and cream to it and poured that all over the meat, adding more lasagne noodles and grated cheese on top of that. 

I baked my BBQ chicken lasagne until it was a beautiful golden brown, but the buzzer on the stove was also Barclay's alarm clock, so I woke up before I could taste it.

Drat.

I have heard that it's good to document those dreams which feel important though, and now I understand why. These are dreams I don't soon want to forget.

What is it they say? A dream is a wish your heart makes when you're fast asleep? 

Friday, November 07, 2014

{5 ways that road trips are different for me at 27 than they were at 19}


I'm coming atcha (yes, 'atcha') from a gas station in Swift Current, Saskatchewan tonight. Barclay is fueling up, and I'm making a list of 5 ways that road trips are different for me at 27 than they were at 19, which I will share with you...now:

1. At 19, I spent the week before a road trip making mix tapes (CDs, really, but it is cooler, I think, to say 'mix tapes' than it is to say 'mix CDs') for the road trip. Each mix would be so stinking carefully thought out and contain the following: a few of my current favorite songs, a mainstream song that was popular at the moment but which I thought was laughably awful (past the point of hating it right back to the point of listening to it on repeat and actually kind of loving it), some music from "the past" to stir up all kinds of nostalgia and sentimentality, and then a whole bunch of poppy, fluffy, beaty, dance-y songs that could be yell-sung to.  

At 27, I grab my iPhone on the way out the door and play either Slacker Radio or podcasts or just whatever happens to be in my iTunes library. 

2. At 19, my partners-in-road-trip were usually a bunch of really excitable girls, eager to stuff a car to its full capacity, hence saving on gas, and yell-sing along to my carefully-crafted mix tapes. And talk about relationships (ours and each other's and everyone else's. Relationships: The Topic to Delve Into On Roadtrips). 

At 27, my main road-trip partners are Barclay and Sullivan. Barclay does not like to yell-sing; Sullivan only likes to yell. 

3. At 19, a road trip was an excuse to eat everything. I packed snacks, and bought snacks at every gas station stop, and drove through all the drive-throughs (that is what they are for). 

At 27, if I think of it, I pack maybe a couple of healthy snacks (an apple! An orange?) and...yeah that's it. Maybe, maybe I'll buy a mini chocolate bar at a gas station if I'm dying, but nothing more. Because I am now concerned about things like health and money.

4. At 19, road trips had big shiny destinations: music festivals and best friends' weddings and stuff like that. The excitement of where you were going carried you there, and the excitement of what you had done and seen carried you home.

At 27, my road trips have almost always the same destination: home to visit my parents. Which is great, because I like my  parents. (Hi, parents!)

5. At 19, I and my obnoxious car o'girls could only go as far as our limited collective funds will allow. Sometimes we had gas enough to drive to Manitoba, sometimes we had gas enough to drive to Swift Current. Sometimes Calgary! 

At 27, road trips are fewer and more purposeful, not as much dictated by funds as by necessity. Also, if my destination is farther than 10 hours away, I'm flying.

Wednesday, November 05, 2014

{halloween 2014}

So Halloween happened, as it does.

Did you know how expensive baby costumes are? I almost slapped someone when they admitted to spending upwards of $70 for a fuzzy glorified sleeper with cat ears.

I think I actually felt my wallet cringe.

And I guess it's never been a holiday that I've been that 'into'. (As a kid, I lived in a small town and even the years that I didn't go out trick-or-treating, the neighbours sent "my candy" home with my little sister. That quickly became one of my favourite traditions.) But this year, Karlie was taking her little girl trick-or-treating at the mall and invited me along, so I figured I'd dress Sullivan up too. I had a hat with antlers lying around (don't we all, though?) so I stuck it on his head, coloured his nose brown (while he tried to eat my eyeliner pencil), and he was a deer. I added a little plaid sweatshirt, like the kind hunters wear. For irony. Like, "Oh, he's a deer and he's a hunter!"

But everyone was like, "Oh, cute! He's a little...lumberjack deer?"

"Yeah. That's what he is. A lumberjack deer."

After the mall, we went trick-or-treating at Barclay's office, where he scored a KitKat bar and a box of Smarties. Both of which I pried out of his hands and ate. Don't worry though, I took him to see the office fish to make him stop crying. He loves the office fish.


Barclay's sister came to town that night, so we went over to the Krause house and partied with the cousins. Man alive, there are a lot of them now (not all pictured here). The little Charlie Brown (whose name in real life is also Charlie) is the newest one - born just a couple weeks ago.


I kind of want him to wear his deer hat every day.