Sunday, August 11, 2013

Mid-August odds & ends

  • Thank you for your comments, good wishes & virtual hugs on my last post about Katie, 15 years later.  
  • Since I only got back to work on Aug. 6th after two weeks off (including a long weekend) -- and I will be off again for three days next week -- I decided not to take Aug. 7th off.  Huge mistake. It was horribly busy at work, I was stressed thinking about the upcoming party we will be hosting and all that needs/needed doing, and I was still in a post-vacation daze, nevermind trying to cope with the dead baby daze stuff. I had e-mails piling into my inbox one after the other and I just could not keep up. I was floundering. I was making mistakes. I was cursing like a sailor under my breath, something I seldom do anywhere, let alone at the office.  Needless to say, my mind was not on my job that day -- and it needed to be. And then, as the cherry on top of the sundae of my day, I forgot to swipe my transit pass before boarding the train home that night. (Luckily I remembered in time, and managed to go all the way back downstairs into the terminal, swipe my card, get back upstairs to the train and still get a seat before the train left).  Lesson learned. Never again. (And hopefully not something -- i.e., working on Katie-significant dates -- I will have to worry about for too many more years.)
  • Dh picked me up at the train station & we headed straight for the cemetery after work. He had already bought the traditional bouquet of pink roses.
  • The two weeks prior, we were visiting my parents -- being lazy, reading lots of books (if not blogs), eating fresh garden vegetables (yum!) and being royally entertained/enchanted by The Princess. We have many memories of her mom (Parents' Neighbours' Daughter) at the same age, and now here she is, a little Mini Me, history repeating itself. I will never have my own Mini Me or granddaughter to marvel over, but this is probably the next best thing. : )  We are grateful.
  • My parents (72 & 74) are making noises about selling their house & downsizing to something smaller, perhaps a condo, in the next few years. My mother has been talking about this for awhile now, but it was the first time I heard my dad admit that their big (and immaculately kept) yard is becoming too much effort for him. It made me enormously sad. I don't like to think of my parents getting old(er) -- they can still run circles around me & dh ; ) -- but I have noticed them slowing down ever so slightly in the past few years.  Also, although it's not the house I grew up in, they have been there for 30 years, and I did live with them there for about a year, after I finished university but before I got married. It's a nice house, and there are a lot of memories there.
  • It also made me nervous, because I still have a ton of stuff from my childhood & school days at their house that I need to sort through and either toss or bring here before they do...!  
  • The royal baby arrived while we were there & we got to watch little Prince George's first public appearance live on TV. I am an unapologetic monarchist, and I loved seeing the continuity of family and history playing itself out yet again. I loved that Kate wore a polka dot dress in tribute to the mother-in-law she never knew, and I loved that she didn't try to disguise her post-partum belly. But I was relieved to have an end (if only temporary) to all the hype.
  • On the other end of the spectrum, while I was visiting my parents, a young mother in the nearby city apparently drowned both her children in the bathtub and then disappeared. They found her body in the river a few days later. She had been diagnosed with postpartum depression. You may have heard about it;  it was widely covered in the Canadian (if not the American) media.  My aunt knew her family -- they were from the a small town close to where she lives and are related to her sister-in-law -- and of course, in small towns, everyone knows everyone anyway -- and did some baking for the funeral reception. So very sad. :(
  • Dh & I went to see a financial planner, as part of his severance package. The good news is that we are still on track for a Freedom 55 retirement for me, if I want to retire then. I may stick around one more year to make it an even 30 years with my company (assuming I don't also get a pink slip :p). Dh had run the numbers over  & over and was certain it was do-able, even after his release from work, but it's nice to have neutral third-party confirmation that you're on the right track.
  • Less than one week to go until the big party!  We have been busy getting ready -- albeit not as ready as I would like. :p  My impatiens died a horrible death while I was on vacation & I spent this weekend digging up the scrawny remnants  -- so much for my plans to dazzle my guests with my gardening prowess. Hopefully the food will be good enough to distract them. ; ) The weather forecast looks good. Fingers crossed & knocking wood that it continues. I have a big back yard but I do not have room for 45 people in my house!
  • Future posts in the works (in draft form or in my head): reviews of the two books I read before vacation, the four books I read during and the book I've read since then ("To Kill a Mockingbird" -- next week's selection in Melissa's GRAB(ook) Club).
  • I've also been musing about the recent TIME magazine article on The Childfree Life and the ensuring media & blogger buzz. So much good/interesting stuff out there! ...so little time...!

3 comments:

  1. Deep breath ... wishing you a reunion that is as stress-free as possible! People always end up trampling the garden anyway, so perhaps the premature death of your impatiens was their effort to avoid an inglorious demise later on. :(

    I'm sorry that the 7th was so difficult ... and wish that you could have had that day to tend to yourself, and to Katie, without the world intruding.

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  2. It sounds like you've had a lot on your plate! So sorry for how difficult the 7th was (*hugs*)

    I'm glad your on track for retirement. I was pretty excited to see the royal baby, and Kate's dress was awesome, with the belly and all. Like you I'm also relieved the hype/media obsession will die down some. For now at least. It can be hard, and I'm in America so it probably wasn't anywhere near as covered as it might have been!

    The news story about the woman with PP depression... that is so sad :(

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  3. I do like your updates, even though They are not always all easy reading. Neither are our lives, so I love your honesty. Hoping you are feeling back on track, and I'm terribly envious of your ability to retire in a few yesrs. (Rather than being on a sabbatical I'll have to work to pay for till I'm 65!)

    It will be hard seeing your parents move, but if I can say one thing, it is that they should do it sooner rather than later. My In-laws have talked about it for years, but never done it, and now simply packing up and leaving would be difficult, even though they've both had falls, and dealing with maintenance and garden is too much for them. And they won't accept that they can only stay ghere if they are prepared to get people in to help. Sigh.

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