Sold!

Oh my, it seems my infrequent blog posts means I've lost some of my readership! Ah well. I never meant for the thing to become as popular as it did. I guess at one point I ran out of stuff that was stored up in my mind, and had to rely on things that were happening in my life. And sometimes things just don't. Happen, that is.

But something has happened. We sold the house conditionally. I have to say, without giving out too many details of the whole experience, that it has given me pause for future home purchases. The realtor's job on the other side is just to make your house sound like a complete piece of shit so that you agree with them that it is worth nothing. Less than nothing. That they are doing you a favour by buying. Slimy slimy. Doesn't help that Toronto is a shark's game. Anyway, all told we made a profit. Not bad for only one year of living there, really.

Ok, this is a short entry because I'm tired. More soon though, I promise!

Back to food again...

Ah, Nova Scotia. I can practically hear the crashing waves in the distance, the squawking seagulls and smell the briny air. A place where you can wait in a drug store line for ten minutes and no one gets mad. Real estate is reasonable, and people are friendly.

BUT

Ingredients are sorely lacking. And while immigration has started to flesh out the restaurant choices in Halifax, the grocery store items are limited, at best. So I've begun an enterprise to cook all the weirdness out of my system before we go. At the moment, I'm in a Japanese phase, and have stocked the fridge with two kinds of seaweed, daigon radish, lotus root, kimchi (Korean, but delicious), wasabe mayo and miso paste.

Bye bye, dr. Atkins.

The Atkins diet worked great, by the way. It taught me a lot about the way I eat, and I lost 20 (!) pounds in total over a month. Now, I am challenging myself to make healthy choices within a reasonable range of foods. Permanent changes? Less sugar and refined flour in general. I never realised how much I relied on starch to replace veggies, and my love of baking didn't help! I also learned that fruit doesn't unequivocally equal healthy. It has tonnes of sugar in it, and should be eaten in moderation. Gone are the days of gorging on a bag of oranges.

Speaking of healthy eating, my reluctant little eater is making huge steps. He'll shove things in his mouth now and give a look of joy at the strangest foods. Tonight's menu was bitter melon, which is an aquired taste, but he ate it with relish, looking for more. He also ate a whole strawberry, quite politely, while watching the end of a movie with my brother and sister in-law. I love my son. He is fantastic.

On real estate

Sometimes, I'm glad that I am me. Recently, while perusing this endless library that is cyberspace, I discovered something wonderful. Instructions on how to make your own dressform out of duct tape! Pretty much all it involves is putting on an old t-shirt, covering yourself in duct tape, cutting yourself out, stuffing it with batting and putting it on a stick held up by an x-mas tree holder. I always knew that thing would come in handy. A dressform on average runs around 400 dollars, and isn't likely going to be a very close approximation to your body type. Especially if you're a six foot one vixen like myself (hardy har) who can hardly find any clothes that fit properly (my natural waist is about two inches lower than everyone else's), let alone a mannequin that represents me.

So I've bought all the supplies I need, two rolls of duct tape, a giant bag of polyfibre fill. I'll post pictures when I'm done, hopefully. I say hopefully because I've been unreasonably exhausted lately. I'm staying at my in-laws house with husband and child, whilst they vacation for the month and we try and sell our house. Big houses mean more stairs. More walking. More cleaning. More pinchy cupboards and death-traps of magazines stacked taller than my standing child. Like I said, exhausting. I take back anything I ever said about wanting a house of more than 1500 sqft. I wouldn't be able to handle it.

Our home has now been on the market for approximately a week. We've had eleven showings, which as far as I can tell is good. The realtor warned us it was a slow time of year to sell, and that the last home he sold this time of year in our neighbourhood he was lucky to get four showings a week. So eleven is pretty good. I think we chose a good realtor this time. No offers yet, but we're hoping for some next week. We're pretty much raring and ready to go, so unless the offer is unreasonably low, we're going to take it. We are ok with not making a lot of money. After all, we only lived there for a year! Our maximum time on the market is a month. If it doesn't sell before that we're going to rent it out and keep it as an investment property. This, in the long run, is a lot more work and therefore not the best option, but it is a real possiblity.

Mike has chosen his courses for art school, as have I. We're starting to let ourselves get cautiously excited. The process of cleaning out our home for showings means we're a couple of weeks ahead in the whole packing/moving thing. We've hired movers, which is a huge relief. We still need to find a place to live, which will be decided in July with a trip out to Nova Scotia after the house does or doesn't sell. Lets say does, as it sounds more positive.

Hmmm. I think that's all for now. I'm going to put my baby to bed and have some more wine.

The Tyrant

I've heard about it before, but never experienced it in real life. Suburbanites with the most sturdy belief you've ever seen that there is ONE right way of doing things, ONE right way of raising a child. If I had heard the circumstances from a third party, I would have just told them to ignore it, or to cut the unsupportive persons out of their lives. I would have been wrong. Nothing is that simple.

I know that this viciousness comes from a place of hurt and regret. It was a confluence of an old world view, and my decision from the outset that those who didn't respect my choices as a parent would not get to babysit. How could I let them, in good faith, when I knew that everything that was important to me would be dismissed as foolish? And so, from there, it grew into an uglier thing. Despite the hundreds of thousands of people who are parenting the same as me, those who have told me I'm doing a good job and the best I can, it still stings. Despite the way they treat their children, and the many ways I disagree with it, it still makes me momentarily lose faith that my choices have been the right ones.

I've heard of people like these. The ones who conditionally support their children in their endeavours, giving some love, but not all. It is alien to me. Affection is as necessary to me as air. I breathe this same life, this same love, into my son. I am not sure how that could ever be wrong.

All I can do is try and follow my own advice: brush it off, move on. I know I will get the last laugh, as I see my son blossoming under our unconditional love and attachment. I know I am not "raising a tyrant" just because he wilts beneath the force of their need to be needed. This waivering faith must be bolstered by the knowledge that I am mother, I am goddess. There is no way that I can be totally downtrodden. I can only weep for the pettiness that others hold against me, and continue on.