A note from summer's end
25 September 2003Update: 26 September 2003. Pending reference checks (and all references have been alerted so they know what to say) I may have a full-time job with a big full-service new media agency anomolously located in the middle of nowhere (i.e. Calgary). This probably means I will write more, since the only true literary inspiration I've ever had is complaining about work, on company time. [On the off chance that HR people now google you as part of due diligence, I'm kidding.]
Technically, summer ended a few days ago, but really it ended last week when we endured thirty hours of constant snow, and I began speedskating on the ice at the Olympic Oval. So it's time for some manner of retrospective.
It's been an odd summer, a time of pleasurable limbo and nagging guilt. When I last wrote, at the end of May, I was working close to full-time hours at the bike shop, and not doing much else besides hanging about with my daughter and installing the odd plant in the garden. In mid-June I flew to Vancouver (bringing Mads along for some grandparent time) to meet the publisher of the book I was supposedly going to write, a glorified manual for an accounting software. We were all set to go in July: I extricated myself from the bike shop, kept Maddy in day care (a still-ongoing soap opera I won't bother going into) and waited for word on the proposal from the company that would fund the project. And we're still waiting. Three months more or less I've been idle, not wanting to commit to anything else, but not doing much either.
It's been pleasant enough, lots of time to ride my bike and skate and get back into shape, lots of time with the kid, not much to do on the house because we spent ourselves into a bit of a hole and can't spend anymore. I joined the public library and read voraciously: Primo Levi, the entire Alan Furst oeuvre, various bits of history and fiction and the inevitable Eric Ambler or two. For September we cut the day care back to three days per week, so I have enough time to myself to stay sane.
But of course there's the lethargic malaise that comes from doing next to nothing, and of course we're going quietly broke in the bargain, which has on occasion led to a righteously pissed-off wife. To that end I recently started looking for work, and may or may not have a line on something. Hopefully the job-hunt won't go as disastrously badly this time as it did earlier in the year. On the other hand, I hope I don't get trapped in something too time-consuming, as there are other priorities: the kid and the skates high among them.
Oh Madeleine. Our days together have been very pleasant (except for this morning, when she refused to put her clothes on so that we could go to the playground, and I refused to deal with her until she was clothed, whereupon I discovered that she will happily play naked, by herself, unattended, for almost three hours - enough time to read the latest installment in the adventures of Aurelio Zen - thus eliminating any possibility of going anywhere for the day). Currently she naps in our bed, where if previous afternoons are any guide, she will shortly urinate and wake up stuck to sodden, stinking sheets. But we're not going back to pull-ups, dammit.
Maddy will be three soon. She's more or less mastered the English language, I don't think there's much more I can usefully teach her. This only means that she's showing a renewed interest in German, aided by a healthy stock of videos and DVDs in her preferred second tongue. She's funnier than hell, happy as a clam, loves going to school and hanging around with her parents. Most of our circle, Annette's colleagues, are young, childless and immensely tolerant of the little beast, so she's just one of the crowd at any given social function and we've saved a fortune on babysitting. I really need to begin recording some of the things that come out of her mouth.
Annette survived her first year of teaching and has now embarked on a less hectic second, happy to recycle some lectures. I still hope we can leave Calgary once she has tenure, but that's her decision, not mine. At the very least we'll have the funding to spend next summer in Berlin.
Vita remains in excellent fettle. She is ageless, and sweet. Maddy loves her.
I still don't like Calgary. The city has little to recommend it beyond a bobsled track and a speedskating oval. I cope by "de-localizing" - I stay close to home, enjoying the coffee shops and bookstores and magazine shops in our little neighbourhood, and do my best to avoid watching the local news or reading the local paper, so that I can pretend that I live somewhere else. It's not one-hundred percent effective, but it's enough that I can survive. If we have money (i.e. if I earn something) we will go skiing and spend time in the mountains this winter.
At the end of the summer we drove back to Vancouver for a short visit, and for the first time in four years I was able to just spend time in the city, without a small baby to care for or a long list of Christmas presents to buy or a move to organize or a crippling, near-death cold to nurse. I'd forgotten what a beautiful city it is. More to the point, there's more genuine urban life in any one of a hundred streets than there is in all of Calgary. I almost wanted to move back, though I don't miss it as badly as Berlin.
In other spheres of human endeavour, work on the house is currently stalled, partly for financial reasons, partly because I am lazy and couldn't give a fuck. When the book contract looked close enough to certain we ran up a line of credit and built an enormous backyard fence and (almost) finished the basement - it's now painted and has new windows, with only some baseboards and window casing and other minor trim to go. It works quite well, we use it constantly. Once the fence went in Annette began planting the beginnings of a garden. We have plans to build a deck and patio and all that but it would require both money and my having the energy to do some work, both of which are dubious propositions at this point. And, as I keep pointing out, I don't actually want to be here in the summer, so why bother with landscaping. But somehow we'll find a way to improve the place without descending fully into suburban home-owning property-tax-paying madness.