A new chapter

I have decided against making any New Year's resolutions this year. Like 99% of the population, I've made resolutions in the past and failed to keep them, so I figured that this year, I would avoid the inevitable and just not resolve to do anything.

Instead, I'm making plans. Big plans. Ginormous plans. Monumental plans. Plans that will (hopefully) change a lot of things in my life.

• Business - I am going to start my own business. I am going to take the $200 leap and get a business license so I can do all of *this* above board and legitimately as possible. 
• Organization - Keith gave me a wonderfully awesome day planner for Christmas and I intend on using it daily. I also plan to have my desk cleared off and organized by the end of the week. I can't live lurching moment to moment anymore.
• Family - Because I plan on working from home, for the most part, I don't want to spend my family time - pretty much anytime that Keith's not working - playing catchup with housework or dealing the inconsequential stuff that I've been taking on. I know that there's no way for us to spend all of our family time doing family stuff, but I want to spend more of it together and not doing laundry or dishes or running errands.
• Creative/Skill Building - I want to learn how to make jewelry this year. And I plan on making a lot of Maddy's summer clothes. I would like to either take a photography class or even just learn by trial-and-error how to take better pictures. No point in going overboard, but those three are on the 'must do' list this year.

I think 2010 will be a good year for me. Now that I'm not guided by a job, I have to think for myself and choose my destiny (ooooh, look at me wax philosophical...), and by doing so, maybe I'll learn a bit more about myself. This year was the year of some pretty massive changes, so why can't 2010 be the year where I apply what I learned from those changes?

The only thing holding me back from my plans is a lack of will. And a bit of disorganization. More the former than the latter, really... it's time to, as they say, put up or shut up. I think I'm ready for a bit of a fight this year.

Precipice

With less than 2 days of work to go (Friday is our company Christmas party and an early release from work afternoon), I've managed to keep fairly 'busy' doing 'things' at my not-as-ugly-as-I-remember job. I didn't have much to do with the last issue of the year last week during production and have spent the majority of my 8 days archiving and tidying.

The excitement. It never ends.

This is why tomorrow, I plan on spending my day doing as little actual constructive work as possible. I have one thing that has to be done - a wrap-up/to-do list for my replacement. If all goes according to plan, she'll be the one who's been doing my job for the last few months. And because my company is completely inept when it comes to being proactive about training and management, she's missing big chunks of how the office is actually supposed to run. It doesn't help that the previous manager is/was a moron and that the new one wants as little to do with the non-newspaper side of the office as possible. He (the new boss, who just strikes me as off in a way I can't quite put my finger on) has yet to realize that he's the one who is responsible for everything that goes on in the office and that he is the face of the office. He is expected to attend certain events; he is expected to do things that he is asked to; he has responsibilities that his staff can not, nor should not, do. And then there's his abject opposition to the weather...

Tomorrow is my last real day of work at the paper. I don't know if I'll ever work at another paper, but if I do, it won't be for a while. A long while. I think this job has done what every other newspaper job has threatened to do: change my approach to my career. I like designing. I like editing. I hate writing. I want to design and edit for a living. There are no jobs for designing editors around here, so I have to make one for myself.

My plan tomorrow is to have a cup of coffee (or several) and go through 50 of the world's best design blogs (found via Etsy's Twitter feed). I'm not sure if I'll find inspiration or discouragement by gorging myself on other people's designs, but I think it's a nice way to spend a day, trapped in a sunless office with a boss who barely speaks.

I'm still working on what I'm going to do after Friday. I have a list that I'm working on of what I can do, what I want to do, and what I have to do. I've been tossing around the idea of setting a deadline for myself - if I don't make $X by X day, I have to find a job - but I worry that doing something like that is only going to force me to either produce shit or give up and just get a damn job. I don't want a damn job, I want to work for myself. Problem is, what the hell am I going to do to keep from having to get that damn job?

Awe.Some.

I go back to my job next Monday, working 2 weeks at full-time hours in order to avoid repaying my employer the few thousand dollars they used to 'top up' my EI payments for 17 weeks. I am also starting the last 2 weeks at said job next Monday.

Because I work for a procedure and policy crazy company, I am not allowed to either be demoted or cut my hours for my position. So I quit. Not officially yet, though... I'm making them wait until Monday when I can access my work email to send the official word. This also delays their search for my replacement by a week, missing out on the ever-popular weekend help wanted ads. But I know, and they likely know, too, that the person who will get my job is doing my job right now as my 'replacement'.

Maybe this happened for a reason. I certainly was not looking forward to going back to work. Especially at this job. I've lost a lot of admiration for my job over the last 18-20 months. I like being a designer and editor, but not under severe restrictions and rules. So maybe this decision by my boss and his boss (and likely with heavy handed input from HR) is going to make my hopes to be self-employed move a little faster. I haven't really done anything beyond work on some designs and collect some graphics for the last few weeks, but now, with no job after the 18th, which also means no income, maybe getting back to work on actually legitimately starting this 'business' is something I should be doing.

Or maybe I should just go and find a part-time job for a bit to help with bills while I work on my plans. I don't want to assume that I'm going to find a job immediately - it is the Christmas season, but I finish at my job a week before Christmas, so it's pretty unlikely I'd start anywhere for a while - but I need to have a plan. Or several.

I have no idea what the future holds, but I don't plan on just throwing in the towel and taking whatever job I can. I need to keep my family in mind when looking and I'd like to actually like my job for a change, and if I can find something that's a little different from what I tend to end up doing (cooking, newspapers), even better. A little change of pace probably wouldn't hurt.

In a perfect world, I wouldn't go back to work at all and happily do my 'specialized stationery', as I've started referring to my projects as, staying at home, raising my daughter. Money wouldn't be an issue and it would be all sunshine and rainbows all the time. In reality, we have bills to pay, a house to maintain and a daughter to raise. I have a feeling that I'm going to lose this battle and end up working full-time anyway, putting my dreams on hold, yet again, potentially forever this time.

Garg.

As I head back to work in a couple of weeks (full-time for 2 weeks, part-time {27 hrs/week} after that), I've come across more than one debate on stay-at-home-moms versus working moms.

I plan on being a work-from-home-mom within the year. In the meantime, I will work part-time at my newspaper job while working on building my from-home business up to a point where I can still have a decent (ie. one that allows the bills to be paid) income. My boyfriend will be our daughter's main caregiver while I'm at work, supported by our respective mothers.

I do not, for one second, think I am lazy or inconsiderate of my daughter's future because I don't want to put her into daycare. The decision to not put her into care was an easy one - I never went as a child and turned out fine. Most kids I knew growing up didn't go into care. In fact, I don't think there was a daycare in my hometown until I was well into elementary school. Yes, we did attend nursery school and some of us were sent to relatives' homes to be babysat, but never an 8-hour child care situation where there are 8 kids for every adult.

I plan on putting Maddy into a few activities as she grows up. We want to get her started on swimming lessons soon; I have a few friends with kids around Maddy's age; we have nephews who, while 4-8 years older than Maddy - really like playing with her. I certainly do not plan on locking myself in the house with Maddy while I work from home. I'm not sure if that's the scenario a lot of working moms think of when they hear someone is going to be a SAHM, but that couldn't be farther from the truth.

Yes, there are days when we don't leave the house. But - and I can't stress this enough - it's not like I'm lying on the couch, eating chocolates while Maddy stumbles around the living room in a dirty diaper with a knife in her hand looking for an open electrical outlet. I have much, much fuller days now that Maddy is in my life. Today alone, I baked 7 loaves of bread, did dishes, portioned out the pears I made for Maddy's breakfast, made some apple-cinnamon pancakes for Maddy, and baked a ham. It is 3:30pm CST right now; I've been up since 6:30am. More often than not, the baking/cooking/cleaning is a typical day; and that does not include feeding, changing, and playing with Maddy, which is a fair amount of time.

I like to be active, and now that Maddy is more independent, I don't worry quite as much about her throwing a fit if I leave the room for a few minutes. I do most of my baking while she's asleep - I don't want to either burn her by accident or end up ruining whatever I'm baking. If I do leave her in the living room - we have this gate which has been a lifesaver - she can see me unless he goes on the other side of the room. And yes, I have been known to use the TV as a temporary sitter while I'm out of the room. I'm not happy about it, but here's how I do it (before I get labeled a bad parent) - Maddy enjoys Sesame Street a lot. Like A LOT. After her breakfast, she gets her face washed, teeth brushed, changed, dressed and I put her in the living room (where all of her toys are), check to see that there's nothing she can hurt herself with within her reach and go back over the gate to the kitchen where I spend 5 minutes doing dishes or tidying up. The entire time I'm in the kitchen, I talk to her - I can hear the TV and will ask her if a favourite character is on or comment on what might be going on. Once I'm done whatever I'm doing, back over the gate, throw a few pillows down on the floor so I can be on her level and play with her until her naptime.

Those 5 minutes I'm not in the room with her? Not the end of the world. At least in my mind. Leaving my daughter with people I don't know from Adam for 8+ hours a day? Big problem.

I may have mentioned it before, but in order for us to send our daughter to day care, I would have to work 2 full-time jobs. One to pay for life, one to pay for the care. So I'd likely be out of the house for at least 10 hours a day (some, probably closer to 15 or 16). What the hell was the point in having her if I was going to work myself to death if I was only going to foist her off on someone else to raise? I did say that we are going to have support from our mothers while I go back to work, but neither of them live here - my mom is 45 minutes away, Keith's is 3 hours away. We can't expect them to quit their jobs and come sit for us whenever we want them to. It's just the way it is.

What's been frosting my ass lately is the working parents/people in general who think that SAHMs or even WFHMs are lazy and are leeches on society. I can guarantee that the vast majority - at least based on my circle of friends - are not leeches. Nor are they lazy. Yes, we do get support from the government, but my $320 a month goes strictly to Maddy. Most parents I know do the same - the child benefits go to the child, no one else. There are a few ne'er-do-wells who have ruined the concept of staying home to raise your children to make them better people for the rest of us (ie. those parents who have kid after kid after kid and don't work as a personal choice). I am quite tired of explaining to people why I want to stay home and raise our daughter over working like a madwoman in order for her to be taught life's lessons by a virtual stranger.

I am well aware that I may end up working outside of home for longer than the next year. I am not going to put my family at risk of losing their home just to fulfill a dream I have. I have no problem (now, at least) of pushing things back a few months or even another year if it means we stay out of the poorhouse. I'm not that naive, but I would like it if people would stop looking down their damn noses at me when I say I want to stay home rather than working in an office while my daughter is growing up. Just because other people couldn't do it - or wouldn't do it - should have no bearing on me and my situation, but in this day and age of lightning-fast commentary, everyone has an opinion and thinks that it's the only right one.

One of these days... I swear

I haven't actually designed anything for over a year now. And suddenly, with less than 3 months until I go back to work, I'm finding myself wanting to design. I've been coming up with ideas for different things - finger puppets, desktop wallpaper, pillows, jewelry boxes - but haven't really done anything about it.

Yes, procrastination rears it's ugly head... again.

But this it's more than procrastination. It's trepidation and a realistic lack of time. I'm mom to a very active 8.5-month old, and while I don't work, I have very little time to myself to do anything besides housework.

The trepidation comes from the knowledge - and I admit this freely to anyone who asks - that I have no formal training whatsoever in design. I was working towards a Bachelor's degree in History (with minors in Political Science and Geography) when I quit 7 years ago. Not exactly an education that screams 'creativity'. Heck, it was barely an education to begin with - I only stayed in university so I could keep working at the student newspaper where I learned to write properly (take that, grade 9 English!), take decent photos and the basics of graphic design.

So, yes, I have experience designing, but no formal education, which has been my downfall when it comes to getting a decent job. But I have experience, which counts for something.

As an aside, I tend to over-rationalize some things, like this whole design thing. I know I can do it, but will I let myself? And what list of excuses will I use this time to prevent myself from doing so?

But back to the point I'm attempting to make (and if you've stuck it out this far, yay!) - there's a craving to start designing again somewhere in my head. The only thing I can realistically see holding me up (outside of the usual suspects of procrastination and trepidation) is the logistically problem of actually designing something. I looooove working with vectors and I've tried using some of the free programs out there and nope, can't do it. My only other choice is to go back to my 2002-ish iBook and use Illustrator. That'd be the one for the first edition of CS. I don't have the money to splash out on CS4 right now (or perhaps ever) and I'm technologically inept when it comes to getting it the **other** way.

And there's the fact that my laptop smells, too. That stinks. Ha. Ha.

I have a design for a desktop wallpaper that's been bouncing around for a couple of days, working it's way into something that I could theoretically do, if I have the right tools. And it looks like I've got the right tools... I just need a push (and time) to actually do it.

Life

Things have been crazy lately - Keith gone for a week, Maddy growing so fast, my computer dying twice, doctor's appointments, yardwork... so, of course, I've put off a few things, like this blog.

Every time I think I should post something, 'life' happens. Right now, we're dealing with our daughter's sleep issues by using the Ferber method to help both her and us get a good night of sleep for the first time in almost 8 months. There's also the ongoing battle to organize the laundry room, our filing system and our finances. I'm still working on a plan to make some extra money this winter so I don't have to work full-time. And yet, life continues to roll on.

I have a pile of coupons that have to be clipped for our monthly shopping expedition next week, there's a pile of envelopes sitting beside my computer waiting to be opened (no bills, though, thankfully), and I know there's a million other things that I have to do to try to stay sane. Yet, I keep putting a lot of that stuff off, leaving me feeling very overwhelmed.

And no matter how many times I try to get organized, I fail. I don't know if it's a lack of knowledge about how to organize properly or if it's just laziness and cutting corners, but something has to be done so things aren't constantly being put aside, to do another day.

Perhaps today's the day I get organized. A girl can dream, can't she?

Perpetually digging dirt from under my nails

I've always been a fan of gardening. I haven't had the chance to seriously garden for quite a few years - the last time I had the room to plant anything substantial was when I lived with my sister and her now-husband 4 or 5 years ago. Even then, it wasn't anything scientific or dramatic - I tend to think more practically when planning a garden. I'm not a frou-frou flower type; I like my veggies. There's actual progress when you plant vegetable seeds and raise them to maturity. With flowers, they grow, they bloom, they die.

We moved into our current house last summer, at about this time of year. When we looked at the house, there was almost nothing in the gardens. More weeds than actual flowers, the rose bushes had been left to their own devices, just general mayhem. I knew I had my work cut out for me this spring when the snow melted (finally... it was late April before it was all gone) - I wanted a vegetable garden, a flower garden, and to get the 4 or 5 rose bushes we had under control.

Like I said, I'm not entirely scientific about gardening. Heck, I'm barely competent. I know that you should always plant vegetables you eat together, together. So I did. I also had to keep in mind where the best sun was, and once we cut down a tree infested with mountain pine beetle, we had a lot of newly available sun. The vegetable garden runs east-west, about 45 feet in length, 6 feet wide. Before I even started planting anything, I had to weed and move and destroy what the previous owners had left for us. I ended up leaving a rose bush, a Bachelor's Button plant (that'd be the one up above, with the bee) and a Sedum plant. The latter two I plan on moving in the fall once everything starts dying off. But the weeding. God, the weeding. And the overabundance of crabapple tree sprouts threatening to take over my garden from our neighbours' yard. Grr.

So I started my year digging up old plants - including many, many, many lilies, tulips and daisies - and transplanting many of them to our perennial garden. Well, our current perennial garden - I have grand plans for this fall and next summer, but I'll get to that in a second. I had no idea what a lot of the plants were that I was dealing with and still don't, to be honest. I have 5 different varieties of ferns in the perennial garden. I just water everything equally and keep an eye on anything I'm unfamiliar with and try to figure out what to do if they start dying. Books and the internet (and the local horticultrual line run by the local university) are wonderful things.

I had no great intentions for my vegetable garden this year. I knew that there was a veggie garden planted previously - row stakes for spinach and carrots were still in the garden - but I knew it'd be a challenge to actually grow anything in my garden because of the random crabapple tree shoots, wall o'daisies and the 'is it a weed or a flower?' game. But I managed to get a fair bit planted, including:
-zucchini
-tomatoes
-2 kinds of cherry tomatoes
-green peppers
-yellow onions
-green bush beans
-yellow bush beans
-peas
And then there's the carrots, lettuce and radishes.

I decided to try something different this year with the carrots, lettuce and radishes. Because of the tree sprouts, I lost a fair bit - about a quarter - of useable land for my garden. So I planted the carrots, lettuce and radishes in containers. With little to no success. I starved the first batch of carrots and lettuce I planted; one of the first batches of radishes were growing fine and then started to drown. The other batch just didn't grow at all. Lesson learned - don't do this again. The cherry tomatoes, on the other hand... oh, sweet success.

I had tried growing cherry tomatoes directly in the ground before. No luck. So I tried them in containers - 3 plants to each 3-foot long container. I chose 2 different varieties this year as I had in the past and oh, wow... I don't know if they're officially cross-breeding, but the amount of fruit (and it is a fruit) they two plants have been producing is more than impressive. The two plants I have this year aren't nearly as high as the ones I grew in the first year I tried this - this year, they're maybe 4 feet high; first time, almost 7 feet. But the summer is not over... yet. As I've done with all my flowering veggies (which seems to be most of them), I've tried to keep some flowers in the general area for what pollination I can get. But this year's been slow for bees and other pollinating insects... and then there's the zucchini.

My poor zucchini. I've never grown zucchini before, but I did successfully grow pumpkins 13 years ago. And zucchini is perfect for baby food. And chocolate zucchini cake... mmm. So I started the zucchini in the house in late March so it would be ready for planting in May (or June, as was the case this year). Everything looked okay; some of the plants were a little weaker looking than others, but they all survived. They started flowering and perking up and growing... and then there were no little zucchinis anywhere. I tried to figure out what was wrong and the only thing I've been able to come up with is I have a whole bunch of male plants. No female plants at all. None. So this morning, in an act of desperation, I went out, armed with a dozen Q-tips, and pollinated my zucchini. We'll see if anything comes of my very desperate attempt to salvage my zucchini in a few weeks.

As for everything else, I have a couple of peppers, some peas (yay!), half a dozen tomatoes (beef steak) and close to a dozen yellow onions. The beans are still flowering, and if they're anything like the peas, they will be sprouting in the next few days and I'll be surprised when I see how big they've gotten. I'm hoping for a moderate harvest this year and if the weather cooperates - 10 days from now, the forecast high is 37C... crap - I should be able to use a fair bit of it for food for my daughter. And then I'll step back and figure out what to do next year to make the garden even better. We also plan on having the garden roto-tilled to try to take care of the tree shoot issue. I have no idea what else to do about them, beyond cutting the neighbour's tree down and that's not going to happen.

As for the flower gardens - the perennial strip garden in the back, the small garden on the north side, the garden under our picture window in the front of the house and the jungle on the south side - I have plans. I want to get more perennials, but have to deal with the south side jungle first. We have oodles of lilies and tulips, that while beautiful, are a bit overdone in such a small space. I plan on digging up the whole garden (14'x2' or so) and saving some of the bulbs. I'm going to try to find someone to trade bulbs with before just dumping them either in the garbage or trying to fit them into another garden.

I plan on taking up the lawn that's on that side of the house as well. We have a row of lilacs and caraganas between the lawn and the sidewalk that
provide some shade, but not a lot, depending on the day... and there's also a dogwood and an overwhelming vine at the west end of that stretch, too. I've been doing a bit of light research into English gardens to see if I could possibly do something like that in that space (14'x6-7'). But no final plans yet, outside of 'must remove everything there now'. I want something soothing and approachable, not something that is so overwhelming and frightening that no one wants to approach it.

We - or at least I, as this is my grand plan - are going to make some stepping stones, including one for our daughter along the same lines as those plaster casts parents do of their children's hands at a young age. I want to encourage her to get interested in gardening at an early age and totally plan on letting her have a small garden when she expresses interest. She's only 7 months old, so I'm pretty sure I've got a couple of years. We also have our rain barrell on that side of the house, too, which my dad wants to move in order to take advantage of both downspouts on the south side of the house. Rain barrels? Best ideas, ever.

But we plan on staying in this house for a bit so we've got some time to get everything done. There's also the vine we want to train in the patio. And the rose bushes I have to rescue and possibly move. And the potential hedge that will double as a fence in the front yard. And how I'm going to keep my lavender from being overrun by thistles. Sigh. I find gardening quite therapeutic, but also quite painful as I'm stupid and always forget to bend with my knees, so I end up paying for half an hour of gardening for a week. But it's nice to know that in the end, you grew something. Even if it's just a simple little flower, you still grew it. Makes one feel slightly omnipotent, really :)

My camera's a Nikon CoolPix P80.

Can't see the street for the grass

Recently in my little burgh, there's been a great debate on whether or not it should be a by-law to force homeowners to make sure the boulevards (def. 2) in front of their homes are cut regularly. Holy hell, did that ever go over well... kind of like a tonne of bricks.

For the last few years, homeowners - for the most part - have just cut the grass between the sidewalk and the street in front of their homes just because. To not do so would just be odd, I think. Prior to this - maybe 8-10 years ago - the city actually employed people, usually students, to go along with push-mowers and cut the grass. I know this because I was one of those students. I only lasted a couple of weeks, but I vividly remember having to cut 17 blocks (both sides of the street) of grass in a day. Oh, the fun.

So the mayor of this city (and I use that term loosely) decides that because 4% (or some random small percentage) of the city's boulevards aren't being taken care of by homeowners, there should be a law telling homeowners that they MUST cut the grass. In other words, the mayor wanted to force the 96% of the homeowners in this city to do something they already do, or face a penalty. Gee, Mr. Mayor, thanks for thinking the majority of the city is a bunch of incompentent fools. Oh, what's that - this debate is far more important than anything else going on in this city? Silly us.

I don't know why he couldn't have just come out and said, "Hey, citizens. I know that it's summer and sometimes we overlook the boulevards - how about you take care of those, too?" But no. Heavy-handedness is apparently the only way to deal with things in our city. But given most of the decisions that this mayor and his council have made in the recent past, not a shock at all.

Here's how I would have handled it, if I were in charge (this will be a recurring theme, I guarantee it):

• I would have tried encouraging people to take pride in their city for a change. There are few, if any, people who actually take serious pride in our city. For the most part - and I'm included in this number - people here like to bitch. ALL THE TIME.

• I would have suggested that if I was an unemployed 15 year old with access to a lawnmower, perhaps there was a business opportunity for a bit of extra cash for the summer (or for a future car). Why don't 15 year olds have lawnmowing businesses anymore?

• I would have come up with a completely new plan for dealing with this, which would incorporate Communities In Bloom. Our city (or at least, the Parks Dept.) is so hung up on this competition every year, that they put out view-impeding flower pots on the main streets. Why not take that idea - 'prettying up' the city, for lack of a better term - and work with the local greenhouses and offer citizens a grab bag of flowers, wild grasses, ornamental groundcovers for something like $20. They could use it either in their own gardens or - and this should be the real purpose - dig up the boulevard in front of their homes and replace all that grass with plants.

All he had to do was suggest that people take care of the boulevards, not be all totalitarian with this request. But, no. Yet another thing that's wrong with this city.

On the flipside to this whole 'must cut grass' story, Windsor, Ontario is going into it's 15th week of a city employee's strike. Because there's been no organized grass cutting of city property, wild grasses and flowers have returned, along with birds and wildlife that haven't been seen in the area for years. The biggest plus to this? The city has agreed to keep 100-200 acres of the natural landscape. I think it's an awesome idea and one that would never, ever fly in my city because 'it looks bad'. Yes, and grass shorn to within a millimeter of it's life, frying in the summer sun, is so beautiful.

Sigh.