Happy (and Hard) Things Friday: 9 May

This week was not my favourite. Nothing objectively terrible happened, but it felt like walking around with pebbles in my shoes. (For people I care about, it was more like giant boulders.)

If you’ll allow me to complain lament for a few minutes…I promise there are Happy Things ahead; I did read Laura’s post yesterday!

The Hard Things section includes reflections on aging parents and disturbing global news. Feel free to skip ahead to Happy Things if you need to focus on lighter topics today.

Hard Things

Sleep hygiene gone awry. In an effort to improve my deep sleep, I queued up an audio track from The Sleep Reset. So far, so good. I could feel myself relaxing. Then came a fairly standard visualization exercise. I was asked to think of a specific place that was a safe, happy retreat. The spot I envisioned was the exact vantage in the photo above — looking out over the lake where my parents converted their tiny cottage into a retirement home. I’ve spent a portion of every summer of my life at this lake. Still great. Until the exercise prompted me to turn around and take in my surroundings. There they were: my aging parents, sitting on the beach around a bonfire. Suddenly, my happy place felt bittersweet and I could not shake the sudden onset of dread/sadness. I got out of bed, made toast with peanut butter and chocolate (delicious, as expected), and tried to calm down. The result? Less than six hours of sleep. Total backfire.

The neighbourhood situation. It’s still not resolved. I’m not sure what to call the current state of affairs, but resolved isn’t the word. After years of blurred lines, there are now very clearly defined lines and the difference is staggering…but during the summer months, those lines start to overlap. I’m not on high alert or overly vigilant, but I’m observant. And it’s those fleeting observations, happening more frequently now that the days are longer, that leave me slightly on edge in a complicated, virtually unavoidable sort of way.

Illness and suffering. A friend’s family member is going through a sudden, incredibly difficult illness. Someone I oversee at the university wrote this week to tell me her elderly mother had passed away. Another day I had lunch with a dear friend who works out of a children’s hospital supporting refugee families who have experienced severe trauma and fled active war zones — the scope of what she sees is utterly heartbreaking.

The state of the world. I read a BBC article about infants on the verge of dying from malnutrition in Gaza (*warning: the pictures in this news article are highly distressing*). I want to race to my local pharmacy and buy every case of formula on the shelf and get it into the hands of these desperate mother’s who have nothing to do with the current conflict and just. want. to. feed. their. babies. In the same article there was a picture of the back of a boy — he looks about Indy’s age — and you can see every single rib. It made me want to scream. And weep. How is this the state of the world? That could be my boy. He’s someone’s son! And my son gets to sleep in a soft bed at night and eats three meals a day and copious snacks and has fresh, clean drinking water whenever he needs it. It’s utterly heartbreaking. Even more so when one stops to remember this is just one of many regions in the world where basic human rights are being jeopardized right now.

There is no good way to transition back to my inconsequential pebbles…this sentence will have to suffice.

• And at the end of one long day, I was elated to take a shower. The water pressure was virtually nonexistent. What is going on?? (Still haven’t figured it out, and the water pressure – in the shower only – is still not atrocious.)
• John was away on a work trip, including all last weekend, and most of the previous weekend. The kids were great but still…it can grow wearisome to be the only adult in the house.
• Our very old, very reliable, hasn’t-broken-once dishwasher is starting to fall apart. The metal spokes on the bottom rack are breaking off one by one. This thing is a workhorse and I know when we eventually have to replace it with something new that dishwasher won’t last for decades.
• We have a floor drain in our basement that’s hard to access (requires crawling in through a tiny hole), but needs to periodically have some water poured in to make sure the P-trap is full. We’ve had a lot of rain and I could smell sewer gas in the basement and I know I need to crawl into the tiny space and pour some water down the drain and it would solve the problem. And yet, I chose to silently retch instead of do anything.
• Groceries needed to be purchased and food needed to be prepared and laundry needed to be washed and dried and appointments needed to be made and bills needed to be paid (I paid car insurance for the year — which is $$$ — and that same day both vehicle registration bills arrived) and I STILL haven’t dealt with the giant pile of winter gear I threw into a heap in our storage room last week.

Tuesday was a hectic day with lots of moving parts. I thought I was on top of things. I had soup bubbling on the stove — enough for leftovers and maybe even some for the freezer. It’s Belle’s favourite and I thought it would be nice to come back from the orthodontist to soup waiting and ready (before we headed out the door for Indy’s soccer practice).

I was on the phone with John and made the whole soup while chatting. I thought I turned off the stove (cue ominous music), but uncharacteristically left the pot on the element so the carrots could soften a bit more. I headed back to the basement to work in the office. Thirty minutes later, I heard loud beeping.

The smoke detector.

Turns out I had NOT turned off the element.

I consulted the internet to see how to salvage scorched soup. I poured it into two glass containers, stirred in peanut butter (why?? I knew this wasn’t going to get rid of the burnt taste, but it’s what the internet told me to do). Then I decided I should actually put it into the slow cooker. No sooner had I transferred the soup…the handle on my crock pot (a wedding gift over 15 years ago, so it doesn’t owe me anything) broke.

Did I mention I needed to be AT THE SCHOOL collecting Belle for her orthodontist appointment.

But then I made a list of all the good things:

• The smoke detector worked!!!!!!!!
• I hadn’t left the house. What if I hadn’t been down in the office? Or what if I’d had noise cancelling headphones in?
• I was able to clean out the pot — it took an hour and lots of elbow grease, but I love my pots and am relieved it survived my negligence.
• I hate food waste, but even though I had to throw out a huge pot of soup *sob*, I didn’t have to worry about my kids missing a meal.
• Subway coupons had arrived in the mail the day before. So…we went to Subway for supper and it was HILARIOUS and a highlight of my year for various inside-family-joke reasons.
• It was spring and the weather was mild enough I could open all the windows to get rid of the lingering burnt smell.

Moving on to Happy Things.

Ice Cream

I crossed another fun idea off my list! On the way home from soccer last week, John suggested we stop for ice cream. No one disagreed. Of course I picked mint chip. Was it as good as the gelato in Portugal? Not even close. Was it still delicious? YES!

Another night — again, after soccer (oops, this is verging on being a habit) — I asked Indy if he wanted to stop at Burger King for a soft serve. Months ago someone mentioned Burger King has the best vanilla soft serve ice cream. I’d never had their ice cream (or their burgers, for that matter), so this was all in the name of research.

The ice cream was fine (nothing earth-shattering) but it was a fun and unexpected one-on-one memory with Indy.

Movie Night

John left for his work trip on Saturday which is typically one of our at-home date nights. I pivoted and the kids and I spent the evening watching a movie (Ocean’s Eleven — more profanity than I’d like but SO up my kids’ alley and I’ve long adored this movie.)

Belle and I worked together to make Peanut Butter Lava Cakes and *chefs kiss*.

Also, wow…I had a lot of ice cream this week!

Formula One – Miami Grand Prix

This has become another family “thing.” We all have our favourite drivers and teams and take the whole thing quite seriously (we’re even hoping to make a family trip out of attending a race at some point). It was a sprint weekend, meaning there was the regular race, plus a shorter “sprint.”

The main race was Sunday at supper time and we made grilled cheese (I had a salad on the side), and cuddled up to watch people drive cars maniacally fast. If you’d told me a few years ago I’d care about any of this, I’d have flat-out denied the possibility. Now I’ll quickly admit I love it!

Salad

Speaking of salads…here are three new things I’ve added to my rotation:

• Olive Feta. You know how Feta is usually dry and crumbly? This version with olives is soft and creamy and SO good.
• I bought a new salad dressing (Hope Blooms) at a local farm market. It’s made locally and has an incredible back story with 100% of the proceeds going back to this worthy initiative!
• Pickled asparagus. I picked this up on a whim. When I got home and ate a spear I wasn’t sure…but then I chopped some up and added it to a salad. Shut the front door. SO GOOD.

BONUS HAPPY THINGS

• A long Sunday afternoon nap.
• John got home early yesterday evening! He managed to catch a flight that landed three hours earlier than his original scheduled arrival. Three hours makes a big difference at the end of an exhausting trans-Atlantic flight.
• Postcards in the mail from Anne and Engie! Thank you both for brightening my day!
• The kids singing Disney songs at the top of their lungs before bedtime.
• Peanut butter and banana toast. This is my ultimate comfort food.
• Birdsong in the morning.
• Delicious dark chocolate. (85% Laura Secord – highly recommend!)
• Magic bags at my feet.
• Mint gum.
• Listening to a classical music playlist while I did some deep work.
• Hot showers. (Even if the pressure was pitiful.)
• Electricity.

• There was a half day of school on Wednesday and we ended up with three extra kids at our house. The entry-way jumble of shoes made me smile. As did the fact Belle abandoned her phone behind for the whole visit.
• Getting caught up on laundry.

• I walked with SHU!! Okay, okay — it was a walk-and-talk via WhatsApp, but after years of hearing her voice on podcasts, it was such a treat to get to talk back.

Okay. That’s a wrap on my week. The world is full of pebbles and boulders — but thankfully also birdsong, postcards, and mint-chip ice cream.

Your turn.

• When’s the last time you burned supper?
• Tell me what I should start adding to my salads?
• Any Hard Things/Happy Things to share?
• Who wants to join me for a walk-and-talk?