Yet Another Weekend
03.12.03Monday
Work appears to have settled into a more or less stable routine. The early mornings are not so tough anymore, I roll out of bed at a quarter past seven, roll out the door at a quarter to eight, eat breakfast in the "bistro" while reading, hit my desk by eight-thirty. I quite like the rides in. The weather is cold but there's been no new snow and the paths are mostly bare. (The old snow hasn't melted at all - I haven't seen grass in over a month.)
We've given up on the idea of my taking Mads to school in the morning, it's just too painful prying her out of bed before sunrise, then I'd be coming to work conspicuously late and having to leave inconveniently late. So instead I'm going to pick her up four afternoons each week, which means I absolutely must leave the office at the stroke of five, which suits me fine. Once again, the possibility of working overtime in all but the most exceptional of circumstances will not even be contemplated. Luckily I'm assigned to a great meandering mastodon of a client, so deadlines are never really an issue.
I've been missing two things rather badly of late: (i) my daughter; (ii) Berlin.
I know that Madeleine is perfectly happy spending forty hours in day care each week - she rarely wants to leave when I come to pick her up - but I am suffering. I miss having more time to spend with her. I skipped skating last week just because I was tired of dashing off after work. While she didn't exactly reciprocate my feelings of clingy, needy dependence, it was nice to just spend the evenings near her. In fact she seems to sense when her parents require some kindness and tenderness, and chooses those moments to throw things at our heads or otherwise be as irritating as possible. But then it's our fault for showing weakness.
I hope that we can reduce the day care hours at some point next year. I figure I'll need to work full-time through the end of April to clear off various debts (it would have been end of March but we bought ski equipment) then I'll try to switch to almost-full-time until we leave for the summer. If I could regularly combine part-time, full-time and no-time-at-all work to make up two-thirds to three-quarters of a year's normal hours I would be quite happy to remain here for as long as we remain in Calgary (which could be anywhere from a few years to a lifetime, though hopefully not). I have no idea if my employer will agree to this, but apparently the "content skillset" is not that easy to find here so I may have some ability to establish myself as the go-to guy who wants a flexibility rather than security, without requiring the independence and hustle of a freelancer (which I utterly lack). Remaining a contractor allows me to maintain an arm's-length relationship with my workplace that I find psychologically preferable. This avoids the dreaded "C-word" and all that it implies.
As for missing Berlin, well, nothing new on that front. In the short term, it's something I can easily cure with Radio Eins on the headphones and a little imagination. In the medium term, we haven't made any firm plans yet but there's a chance (who knows how good a chance) that we may be able to arrange a house-and-office swap (and hopefully also car-and-day-care-spot swap) with a professor in Potsdam who wants to come here and teach a summer course. Potsdam would be a very agreeable place: lots of parks and gardens, palaces and museums, lakes and rivers, a decent little Füßgangerzone like every decent little German town, an interesting urban culture in its own right, but quiet and leafy and pleasant, yet only fifteen or twenty minutes from the center of Berlin on the RegionalBahn trains. Close to the Grunewald; perfect for skating and cycling. I'm not sure I'd want to spend an entire year there, but for a summer, one could do worse. In the longer term, I haven't yet conceived of a cunning plan that sees us moving back permanently.
The preceding weekend was typically hectic, and not much need be said save that I am not feeling particularly refreshed this Monday afternoon. On both Friday and Saturday nights we arranged baby-sitting (paid once, familial once) and disappeared for social functions in honour of faculty friends who were recently married. We could have seen Oh Susanna on Saturday but we could not extricate ourselves (i.e. I could not extricate Annette) from the party in time. (I am slightly bummed about this; a friend just saw her in Berlin and said it was a great show, with a bit of a band this time, and there was a possibility of being on the guest list. Oh well, next time.) I was up early both days with Mads, watching the Skeleton World Cup at the track on Saturday morning, going for the swimming lesson then watching speedskating at the Oval on Sunday (both efforts to keep the little beast out of the house while Annette was marking papers). I felt pretty worn out by Sunday afternoon, both from lack of sleep and time spent on duty. Hauling her around is fun, and while not hugely stressful, it's not hugely relaxing either. The situation is not helped by Annette being hellishly busy marking, leaving me in charge of all matters domestic. I don't mind, but it becomes wearying.
The only other thing I really feel like grousing about is the lack of exercise in my life right now. For one reason or another, mostly mental fatigue, I only skated once last week (very short mass-start races at which I sucked, because I cannot sprint). Given that I was too tired to skate much on the Sunday after skiing, I've really only had one decent workout in two weeks. (Thank god for those fifteen-minute sub-zero rides to and from work.) This is not enough, and I am growing increasingly crabby. Time to get back on the wagon. Except that with the World Cup skating at the Oval, all our training's been canceled for the week. So it will have to be the bike until the weekend, when we head to the mountains again for skiing.
Wednesday
Over the weekend, wearily, I was complaining that I never had time to just waste an afternoon with Mads, wandering around Kensington, shopping and drinking coffee and enjoying each other's company, in no particular hurry, with no particular place to go. Like manna from heaven, yesterday I was presented with precisely this opportunity.
A little after nine Annette called me at work to report that Maddy was feeling shitty and would likely soon puke. (This she did, rather spectacularly, a few minutes later.) I arranged to leave the office at noon and take over the second shift, Annette having to be on campus for the afternoon. When I came home Mads had been sleeping since ten; the nap continued until two, when she stumbled out of her room completely soaked in urine. Child into the bath; sheets and clothes into the wash. But she was fine, totally healthy and happy, in the best mood we've seen for weeks. Once I had her cleaned up and dressed we set off for just the sort of aimless, wandering afternoon I'd been wanting: bought a Kinder-Surprise chocolate egg at the drugstore; consumed said egg at the coffee shop; wandered round to the bike shop where I found an even cooler tricycle that the one I ordered for her this summer, which I simply must have for her christmas present; poked into the used bookstore where I found the Eric Ambler I've been looking for all year, The Mask of Dimitrios (a.k.a. A Coffin for Dimitrios), while Mads read aloud to her doll for a good ten minutes. Then home for a quiet, pleasant evening watching one of several new German kids' DVDs we had a graduate student bring back for us, and a monster Alberta-style grocery trip (sixteen bulging bags).
So evidently she didn't have a stomach bug. (Though it's a good warning to go out and get a damn flu shot.) What we suspect is that several days' accumulated sleep deficit finally caught up with her - I'd woken her shortly after seven in a desperate effort to roll her bedtime back from it's customary eleven, which is really cramping our style. When she slipped and bumped her head on the floor when attempting to scale her mother, a complete system collapse ensued (and the full regurgitation of a litre of apple juice).
She really has a hell of a time falling a asleep before eleven. (It doesn't help that she's so damn funny. She's recently tricked me into (i) bringing a flashlight into the bed and making shadow animals on the ceiling and (ii) a hysterical, giggling dishtowel-snapping fight in the kitchen, despite the ridiculously late hour.) We'd cut out the naps both days on the weekend, to no avail. She doesn't go to bed earlier, she just gets crazier. It will take at least a week of consistent seven o'clock wakings to cycle things back a bit. We really need to lose the naps. She just doesn't need them every day. The other major project is night-time housebreaking, which is resulting in a lot of pee-soaked pyjamas and bedding. Not fun, but it has to be done eventually. I just hope it goes faster than the day-time housebreaking: six hellish months of quasi-intentional "accidents" that haunt me still.
Other random noteworthy (?) things:
It's been Week of the Contractors. Jobs I booked ages ago, before the big snows, are suddenly being done. On Monday I had the busted gutter replaced and a diverter installed for the rain barrel: $300. Today the heating guy who did our new furnace and water heater last fall is coming by to install a proper humidifier: $325. I suppose I could have done that except that (a) I cut myself and bleed everywhere whenever I attempt to work with sheet metal and (b) the installation is so tight that he's going to need to kink the flue around the humidifier unit. Money, money, money. Add on a $200+ grocery trip last night (the first one in about three weeks, however) and cash is once again flying out the door.
I won a gift in the Christmas fund-raising draw at work: a $90 pedicure. Lucky me. I suppose it will be re-gifted to Annette, though if her last haircut is any indication, she'll buy another $60 worth of salon-quality toe-care products while she's there. I'm tempted to use it myself, what the hell, but then I still pick at my toenails so there wouldn't be much pedi to cure. Or as I put it when someone asked what I was going to do with the thing, if I were spending almost a hundred bucks on toe-related services, it wouldn't just be a pedicure. There would have to be licking and sucking involved.
I finished High Fidelity and am simultaneously (not sure why) reading Dark Star, On the Natural History of Destruction (both predictably excellent) and Herr Lehmann (in German, but readable-by-me German). Not sure why I've bitten off so much; curiosity perhaps. Herr Lehmann is really very funny. Possibly I'm just laughing in relief at being able to understand the jokes, but in any case, I'm laughing.