cancun and back again

we arrived home from cancun last night. our flight was at 14:50, so we had the morning to hangout. after i packed up our stuff, it was so hot that just sitting still was making me sweat profusely. so i unpacked eamon's and my swimsuits and we went for one last dip.

after we arrived in toronto, went through customs, picked up our luggage and our car, it was dark and was raining quite heavily. i have this thing about passing transport trucks on the highway. before, when i was the primary/only driver, i didn't mind them so much. but now, when i'm mostly a passenger, passing transports freak me out A LOT. i think it's because they feel as though they are inches, or at the most 2 feet away from me. it's usually upsetting, but even more so when brendan drives faster than i'm comfortable with, considering it's raining so much that visibility is bad. so we just had to reach an agreement that i would have to shut my eyes. not a great system. i honestly had serious doubts that we would make the drive home. and on more than one occasion i thought "so, this is how i'll die". it felt ironic enough to be real.

but we made it home. we had a super super super great time. and i'm so thankful. it's good to be home too though. although, we sure missed having someone do our cooking and cleaning today :p

more later!

possibilities abound

man, i am full of ideas.

i have so many interesting ideas that i surprise even myself.

here's my latest thing...

this morning, our downstairs tenant of 18 months gave his notice. after that, we got thinking about whether to find another tenant or be done with that. but after realizing that we really don't need that space yet. eamon isn't old enough to play down there on his own. he likes to be close to us. when he is 6 and otis is 3, i think they'll definitely be ready to have a real play space. so we decided we would rent it out again. then i thought, if we rent it out furnished, we could charge more, plus, we'll need to furnish it eventually anyway. so that's what we'll do, starting in september. 

but wait, there's more! this is where my interesting idea comes in. maybe over the summer, we should list it on airbnb! over 4 weekends we could make the equivalent to a months rent. kingston is touristy, and in a good location between many other major cities. i think this could work! i'm excited. i think it's a good financial decision, AND a new experience we've never done before :)

fingers/jammed

at some point since otis was born, i changed my food habits. i don't even remember when that was. maybe new year? but i think it was earlier than that. maybe november. it has gone well, and i'm proud of myself.

this wednesday, we're leaving for our vacation in cancun. usually i do well with a new routine until there is a disruption. so i am curious to see how i manage there and upon returning from this break from routine. i feel that i have been significantly changed enough that i won't be negatively impacted by this, but i'll have to wait and see.

packing for myself and 2 small children is an interesting experience. under normal circumstances, i would have eamon pack for himself with brendan's help. i think that he is old enough to do that now, but since we are taking limited luggage, we have to be crafty with what we choose, so i'm doing it myself. i think i've reached the point that i need to take a break until wednesday, because we need to use everything else up until then.

this afternoon, all three lorimer males were napping. so i sat down with a cider at the kitchen table. yes, i WAS drinking mid afternoon :p unfortunately, otis woke up the moment i got comfortable. c'est la vie.

helmo

my friend helen died.

i found out this afternoon on facebook, when someone i don't know wrote on her wall and included 'RIP' in the message. my mind was reeling when i saw that her profile had switched to a 'remembering' page.

she was so loving and warm. i was always so touched by how she included and reached out to me, even when she didn't have to. she was so smart, and often times far to smart for me to follow everything she was saying. i have so much respect for her marriage to terrence. they have been together for so long, yet each had a strong sense of personal identity. they were different, and complementary. like different flavours in cooking. my heart breaks for him. i can't imagine his life without her.

i'm glad that brendan got to meet them. we had dinner together a year ago last summer (august 2015).

i'm tempted to say things like "life is so short" and "life is so precious" or "tell your loved ones you love them". but it all feels trite. so instead, i'm going to go brush my teeth, and get into bed with my warm body who i'm grateful for every day. be thankful and relish all the good stuff.

someone i used to know

i bumped into someone from my past the other day. well, bumped into is a bit of an overstatement. i saw this person from a distance. it was the first time in over 10 years that we've crossed paths in this small town. i immediately seized and back-tracked to brendan to regain my composure. i'm not really sure if b understood the significance of this sighting, but he was there for me nonetheless. that relationship is something that i simply choose not to talk about. in fact, in my early blogging days, 12 years ago, i set some blogging ground rules, which included never discussing said events. at the time, that was really important for me. choosing not to talk about it was a way to empower myself. i was not, and am not defined by those experiences, and i would not let it be part of my new reality. but i think at this point, it is more empowering for me to acknowledge it.

here's the long and the short of it...

i had my first boyfriend when i was 15. it was rough and rocky. a bad start into boy-girl stuff. from there, i had a series of 5 boyfriends, over an 9 year period. each relationship was more intense, dramatic and screwed up than the last one (with the exception of joel, which was healthy, but simply not a good fit). by the end of my last relationship when i was 24, i was a hollow and unwell person. and as an unwell person, i pinned all my hopes for wholeness, worth, belonging and identity on one person (who happened to be that last boyfriend). it took about a year and a half (probably shortly before starting my blog) for me to be fully over that break-up. although, at some point, it really stopped being about that one person and/or relationship, but an imaginary version and projections that i had developed in my head. those were ugly years for me. and painful, because the process of emotional and healing is not an easy one, and there are no shortcuts.

after all that, two distinct things happened:

1) i buried everything. i took those experiences and buried them like old-timey garbage disposal. i gathered up that personal history and recognized that i did not want it. it was not who i am, it had no place in my personal narrative. so i buried it with a massive mound of earth. if i don't talk about it or acknowledge it, than it didn't happen. period.

and this has worked well for me. it really did help me to leave it behind and not bring that baggage with me. sometimes it will briefly come up in conversation or in passing, but i am very intentional to not linger on it. i'm certain that i change the subject very quickly. with one exception... one time, when we had first started dating, brendan and i laid on my bed, holding hands and staring at the ceiling, while i told him my whole 9-year dating saga. just so he'd know, and i wouldn't have to gradually tell him stuff over time. he's in the loop.

2) i have grown angry. i've felt protective and outraged on behalf of my younger self, who was so damaged by life's experiences that i ended up in a bad bad place. i have demonized one specific person, so much so that i have literally daydreamed about seeing him in public, and confronting him with swear words and curses. not because i was done wrong by him (i'm actually super glad and thankful that he ended that relationship. so much so, that i owe him a thank you). no, just because (and not surprising) that part of me that i've buried has festered.

spotting him in the grocery store left me unsettled. and i couldn't understand why. it didn't stir up positive or negative feelings. so why did it impact me? well, because my buried mount of personal history was exposed to me. it was like the earth had shifted, and i could see all that crap that i had buried. it was still there, and i saw that it was still real. my emotional time capsule had been uncovered.

this has been troubling me for the last 2 days. and i decided i needed to write about it. not in a private journal, where it could remain hidden and buried. or to a friend, where it could remain mostly hidden and private. or to brendan, would be personally brought into that story and unintentionally have those burdens placed on him. no, i decided i needed to blog about it. i needed to return to my source. the place i decided to bury it and properly deal with it. i don't need to bury it anymore, but i also don't need to hang on to it either. i'm truly done now. the last thing for me to let go of is my residual shame. i know that i'm not that messed-up 20-something anymore. and i don't need to convince you of that either, because you know who i am. i don't need to bury that part of me for me to be free from it. i acknowledge that i am not proud of that time in my life, but it does not have the final say on who i am. i don't need to hide to prove that i am better than i was then. i am well loved, i am whole and complete, i am part of a community, valued and respected, and not despite my past damage. i have grown strong out of that brokenness. whole, holy, complete, competent.

there. that's it. my therapeutic blog post :p

regrets collect like old friends,
here to relive your darkest moments.

stripes and patterns

buying a post-baby bathing suit is always a challenge. but last week i found one that i'm very excited about. i have very specific preferences with swimwear, and it was difficult to find something that met my requirements. 

today, i took the fellas swimming, and i felt good. it supported me in all the right places. 

i'm really looking forward to our trip. we'll be doing a lot of swimming, so i'm glad i have something to wear that fits properly. 

scans

i've picked up some freelance work. i'm enjoying it. the main challenge is that i'm not skilled at properly quoting a job. today i overlooked a large portion of the job and way under quoted for it. thankfully, my client was very gracious about it, and even told me that my quote was ridiculously low. i hope to get better at that part sooner than later. 

phillips

this year with my tax return money, i bought myself a bluetooth speaker. i've been wanting to be able to play music on my computer and hear it in different rooms in our house. shannon told me the other day "it'll change your life". well, it arrived in the mail today, and i can say it's already doing that! i actually cleaned the kitchen today because i wanted to listen to music. i danced, cleaned and sang. it was great.

i've thought often about how i used to dance in the kitchen at my pine street house. and i used to dance in my bedroom at our york street house. but i haven't really done much dancing in recent years. i wondered what had changed in me. but it wasn't me at all! i just didn't have music handy!

brendan is currently at a john mayer show in toronto. he's so funny because he called to tell me that he'd arrived in toronto. turns out he got super lost trying to find the ACC. he is not much of a navigator, and that does not bother him in the slightest. me on the other hand, i take a lot of pride in my ability to navigate and be an efficient driver. i get this from my dad. funnily enough, my dad was here when brendan called, and we were both gobsmacked that b had missed the DVP. it's a big highway. i'm pretty sure the face my dad made when i told him that brendan wanted to know if the DVP was before or after yonge street is the same incredulous face i make all the time. 

anyway, so i'm enjoying the evening watching netflix on brendan's computer using my new bluetooth speaker so everything is louder and easier to hear. usually we have to use the captions on shows because the laptop speakers are so quiet. 

bluetooth

life is funny and strange. yesterday, i was expecting one thing to happen, but then another thing happened instead. a big life-changing thing that didn't happen. so i'm still in the same-old same-old sinking ship. BUT on the other hand, since nothing changed i'll just continue as usual. no impact on the big picture. sometimes i'm just a coward and want to get out of doing hard stuff the easy way. i'm just going to have to muster up the courage to say 'no thanks' when the time comes.

all crypticness aside...

otis has started sleeping much better again. for 3 whole months, he slept quite badly. his first 4 months were unbelievable (he only woke 2 times a night, most of the time), but since christmas it was many, many times. often times it was hourly. however, this week, i started giving him baby cereal before bed, and that has made a HUGE difference. he's back to waking 1 to 2 times a night. i'm VERY grateful.