The beaver is a proud and noble animal
Notes from a bemused canuck
I’ve taken the first steps into getting British citizenship. It should take about 6 months if all goes smoothly.
The main reason, in the long term, is that it will allow me to not have to worry about work permits and shit of the sort once I leave the EBI (if we decide to not go back to Canada). It also allows me to work anywhere in the EU without breaking a sweat.
Saw this one yesterday. It seemed appropriate :)
I guess I must be overly sentimental, but watching this made me choke up a bit this morning. I don’t know why.
There has been a fog of pestilence in the office for the last few days. We couldn’t find the source of the smell until today. Apparently, a huge rat crawled into our underfloor heating space and died. It was happily festering away when the maintenance guys found it.
Loverly!
If you can see this, LJ-crossposting works again. Also, if you can see this, there are a bunch of entries that you’ve probably missed on my new blog. Go read them.
Things have been happening that I haven’t had time to write about – real life butting in and all. I’ve been told that I haven’t been writing enough, so hopefully this will keep my reader(s) happy :)
Things on the home front have their ups and downs. My mom was here for the whole of last week. That was wonderful. We had been talking on the phone the week before and I told her how much we had been expecting their trip in February (which has since been pushed back to April) and that we were having a bit of a rough time with Mr Ben Ben and how much we wished she could be here. Her answer was “I’ll see what I can do”. The next day she phones up and tells us she’s coming the following monday :) I love my mom.
Her trip went very well. We made our first foray into Cambridge with Ben and that went rather well. We even managed to sit down and have some tea in Starbucks and he was brilliantly behaved. We also had our first visit from the Home Start volunteer that’s been assigned to us. She’s going to come for a few hours one day every week to give Katy a chance to have some down time. My mom was very impressed with the amount of services that are available to us (i.e. housecalls from our local doctor, weekly visits from our Health Visitor to track Ben’s progress – until he’s about 5! – and the Home Start volunteer services). Sue, our volunteer, is going to accompany Katy to a Mum & Baby group in Ickleton next Monday and apparently there’s a good one in Great Chesterford as well. We’re also going to attend a new mum get-together that is being organized in the village by one of the local ladies-who-organize. Apparently, there’s been a baby boom in the village and lots of new people have moved in, so this will give us all a chance to get introduced.
We’re hoping that all of this is going to make things a bit easier for Katy cause she’s been having a few rough days recently. It really doesn’t help that Ben’s developed colic that hits like clockwork at 6am (and a few times during the day as well, but the morning one is rather impressive in the amount of noise it generates). Katy calls BenBen a Jeckyll & Hyde baby. When he doesn’t have gas, he’s brilliant and smiles and coos and has very advanced motor skills for his age. When colic hits though, all hell breaks loose. We know that things should start clearing up in about a month, but it doesn’t make things easier at the moment.
What else is going on with us… Lemme have a think. We’re seriously thinking about buying a house in Saffron Walden. We’re fed up of our current house. It’s drafty. It’s getting a bit cramped. The boiler is so noisy that it’s become a running gag between us. There’s no one thing that makes it a deal-breaker, but the sum of little annoyances is finally starting to tip the balance. We don’t want to spend another winter there. We have our eye on a house that needs a lot of TLC – as in, new windows, new kitchen, new bathroom, new carpets, complete paint job and that’s all the things we can see from the estate agent details. We’re going to go see it this weekend. It’s listed at £170,000 but there’s no way in hell it’s worth that. We’d consider offering £150,000 if only because we think it’d need about £20,000 worth of work. But it would be ours, and we’d feel no remorse in ripping out the guts and making it look like we want it. We’ll see though. It needs a lot of work. We need to decide if it needs too much work. Watch this space.
Two Mexicans are stuck in the desert, wandering aimlessly and close to death. They are close to just lying down and waiting for the inevitable, when all of a sudden…….
‘Hey Pepe, do you smell what I smell?
‘Si, Luis eet smells like bacon to meee’.
So, with renewed strength, they struggle up the next sand dune, and there, in the distance, is a tree loaded with bacon. There’s raw bacon, dripping with moisture .. there’s fried bacon, back bacon, double smoked bacon… every imaginable kind of cured pig meat.
‘Pepe, Pepe, we ees saved! Eet EES a bacon tree!’
‘Luis, are you sure ees not a meerage? We ees in the Desert don’t forget.’
‘Pepe when deed you ever hear of a meerage that smeell like bacon…ees no meerage, ees a bacon tree’.
And with that …Luis races toward the tree. He gets to within 5 meters, with Pepe following closely behind, when all of a sudden a machine gun opens up and Luis is cut down in his tracks.
It is clear he is mortally wounded but, true friend that he is, he manages to warn Pepe with his dying breath.
‘Pepe…go back man,you was right…ees not a bacon tree.’
‘Luis Luis, mi amigo…what ees it?
‘Pepe…ees not a bacon tree…
Ees……….
Ees…
Ees………
Ees….
… Eees a Ham Bush
Being British is about driving in an German car to an Irish pub for a Belgian beer, then traveling home, grabbing an Indian curry or a Turkish kebab on the way, to sit on Swedish furniture and watch American shows on a Japanese TV. And the most British thing of all? Suspicion of anything foreign.
Heaven is where the police are British, the chefs Italian, the mechanics German, the lovers French and it is all organized by the Swiss. Hell is where the police are German, the chefs British, the mechanics French, the lovers Swiss and it is all organized by the Italian.
Woody Allen said it best:
In my next life I want to live my life backwards. You start out dead and get that out of the way. Then you wake up in an old people’s home feeling better every day. You get kicked out for being too healthy, go collect your pension, and then when you start work, you get a gold watch and a party on your first day. You work for 40 years until you’re young enough to enjoy your retirement. You party, drink alcohol, and are generally promiscuous, then you are ready for high school. You then go to primary school, you become a kid, you play. You have no responsibilities. You become a baby until you are born. And then you spend your last 9 months floating in luxurious spa-like conditions with central heating and room service on tap, larger quarters every day and then voila! You finish off as an orgasm! I rest my case.
2008 was, except for some bright spots that were few and very far between, a shit year. It started off with some drama over the Christmas trip that escalated into a full blown email shouting match between Katy, my sister and myself (that has only now started to resolve itself). We came back and went to fetch Reenie, our new kitten. That started off a bit rocky but she turned into a big, loveable furball. She’s one of the high points. I had to cancel a once-in-a-lifetime all expenses paid trip to Japan because of a health scare. We did manage to use my home leave allocation to treat ourselves to a nice trip to Canada, just the two of us (and Bobbles), which was another high point. My work productivity fell to an all-time low because I was so worried about complications all throughout Katy’s pregnancy (which included, in no particular order, three hospitalizations, high blood pressure, allergic reactions to medication, a recurrent boil that required massive doses of antibiotics, gestational diabetes, an emergency c-section – which subsequently became septic and required a call to 911 when it burst in a river of pus that took weeks to clear up – and having to deal with the shittiest bus service in town and spending a small fortune in cab fare). Katy’s dad had to have a quadruple heart bypass. Tolstoy got hit by a car and had to stay in a cage in our living room for close to two months.
Then, there was Ben. He counts for a big high point, because even though there was drama at his birth and he had to stay in Special Care for a little bit, he was born with all the right bits in all the right places and currently seems to be thriving. There were a few hiccups at first, while we were still trying to cope with the mechanics of taking care of a small baby. Our boiler broke down during the then-coldest weekend of the winter and we had no heating for 48 hours. Luckily, Will and Donna lent us a portable electric heater so we didn’t freeze to death. With the coldest winter in recent memory and with the shit insulation in our house, I don’t even want to think about what our energy bills are going to be like this quarter. Our main goal this year is to buy our own house because there’s no way in hell do I want to spend another winter in the house we live in. It’s so drafty that I had to buy some weatherseal so we could block out the windows and stop the wind from making our wind chimes tinkling – with all doors and windows closed!
Ben’s almost doubled his birth weight and is starting to settle down, but that’s not been the easiest road to travel. I can say that, without a shadow of a doubt, it’s been the hardest thing we’ve ever had to deal with. We hit rock bottom during the time we were in Leicester, over Christmas. I didn’t know what to expect when I became a parent, but I can honestly say that I never expected it to be this hard. It’s been an emotional roller coaster. The highs are when he’s happy and gurgly and smiles. He’s gorgeous. The lows are when he’s been crying for what seems like days on end, and you’re so tired and you don’t know what to do but you just want the crying to stop. You’re so very, very, bone crushingly tired. You have nothing left to give, but you have to. You try everything. All the books and the people give you conflicting advice. You’re physically and emotionally wrung out.
We’ve had moments where we keep telling ourselves that yes, we can do this and other moments when we think we’ve made the biggest mistake in our lives and we’re not up to the task.
He’s 8 weeks now. The only consistent piece of advice we’ve gotten from everybody is that things get better. Even though we have no clue what we’re doing from moment to the next, each little event should become less of a drama and more commonplace. Our Health Visitor, Jenny, was saying that we were doing well and that we were good parents. It’s very hard to judge, considering that we have very few reference points.
All I know for now is that we haven’t had a good night’s sleep since he was born. We’re both tired. We’re both emo. We both find life difficult at times. We’ve never been closer as a couple, because we can talk about things. We need to. Otherwise, we’d just break down.
Katy is having her 8-week post-natal health check this Friday. She’s gotten a referral for some counselling for her blues. I think I should do the same. I’ve lost over 20 pounds since mid-November. I’m back at work now, after almost two months at home with Katy and Ben. I consider myself very lucky in this regards, because I had a lot of holiday time accumulated and then the schedule over the holidays kicked in. I feel guilty about really looking forward to being back at work because I know it’s going to be hard on Katy, but it is how it is. I need to work. The bacon needs to be brought home.
We were talking about what our goals are for this year. I want to be productive at work, content with my family and buy a good, solid home for all of us. I want to stop being so anxious about everything. I want to get my bug phobia sorted out so we can have family outings in the summer.
I want to be happy.