Sundries

Two posts in two days for me - a record!

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In the interest of staying disciplined, relatively in-shape and sane, I have commenced running at 6 a.m. on all weekday mornings except when Kirk is working nights and on Fridays, when I start teaching at 9 and would have to start running at 5:30, which is too dark and, well, too early. Though I am thinking that if I could wake up at 5:30, maybe I could write for half an hour. Throw down the gauntlet. Challenge me!

This morning I appreciated two things: first, I was running in a tank top and dripping buckets of sweat because of the warmth (+15) and humidity. Second, in the quiet of morning, I could hear the crunch and scuffle of red, red maple leaves under my feet.

I came home to Anja, who had been sleeping when I left, looking for me out the window, screaming for a "mummy-hug" and Kirk fast asleep upstairs in bed. Concerning.

Of course, getting up that early means going to bed early. I'm exhausted at the end of the day anyway and what I usually do is look bleary-eyed at the computer and eat ice cream or cookies. So, to bed by 9 at the latest. And no ice-cream out of the carton. I have survived two evenings with hugely reduced, almost-non-existent sugar intake (4 ju jubes don't count, do they?). I will lose my summer "I can eat what I want in excess because I'm painting and had a miscarriage and it's summer - who gains weight in summer?" pounds.

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On the topic of self-discipline, I have yet to purchase a pregnancy test this month, even though I am in the window of time a First Response test would work. I can hardly believe myself. I have even logically thought through occassional bouts of nausea (anxiety due to the fact I actually don't like getting up in front of people and now have to do so every day, the resumption of folic acid just in case), gagging through my oceans of sinus rinses (it really does just suck), and sore breasts (they really can just hurt if you squeeze them hard enough looking for meaning-filled tenderness).

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After proudly toilet-training Anja last year without the use of bribes, I, the mighty, have fallen. She now gets a sticker on a calender after every night she falls asleep "nicely" - that is, without asking for more food, and without screaming and crying, and on her own. After three and a half years I could not take another night of shenanigans and managed to get Kirk past both his and Anja's first few nights of "resistance to change"

Also, she saw some of the afore-mentioned ju jubes in the pantry and asked if she could have some after dinner. Fortuitously, this was after a week of major temper tantrums involving kicking me, doors, etc, etc, etc. So, I thought to reply "Yes, if you don't scream or whine or argue with me the rest of the day and you eat your vegetables all up." We have since had three temper-tantrum free days in a row and in increased vegetable intake.

I know I am going to parenting hell.

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Query at the risk of offending the unlikely male reader of this blog: how is it that multi-tasking is so impossible to the male species?

For instance, how can I, on my "day off," i.e. Saturday, change the sheets on the beds, wash, fold and put away 7 loads of laundry, go for a run, shop for two weeks worth of groceries, clean up the flower bed, put out the chrysanthemums, play with my child, feed said child 6 times, clean up the kitchen 6 times, bathe and put to bed said child, do three hours worth of prep work for school, catch Henry the cat mid-barf, throw him outside, let Henry and Alice the other cat in and out and in and out and in and out, etc, etc, etc, etc

while

On Kirk's day off, with a to-do list of many items that have been awaiting his attention for several weeks now (including revisiting our taxes because for the 4th year in a row we are being audited -- why? why? -- and repairing the holes he has made by banging his bicycle into my newly painted walls and finishing the goddamn baseboards) he manages to scratch one item off: clean cat litter.

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And now to sleep. And I will sleep with my pet Zeep. Today is gone, today was fun, tommorrow is another one. From near to far and from here to there, funny things are everywhere.