Author: charlestess

read in slow speed

i wish there were more hours to spend on the blog. not mine necessarily, although learning to put links to all the blogs i like reading would be a good thing to do.

instead of reading the daily offerings from the blogs i like each day, i usually end up reading a week or months posts when time allows. and even then, i probably don’t leave a comment, especially when i feel that someone else had said what i wanted to express. (i can usually rely on boulder to voice what i was thinking pretty well, thank you for that miss bee.)

and then there are the people who write me, or post comments, that i usually do not write back. i know they understand, and when i can i send them a quick note, but there are only so many hours a day i can spend infront of the computer. and that’s not a lot.

are there shortcuts to reading blogs that you want to share with me? confessionals? you can send those to my email or post them here. any suggestions on how to be most efficient with reading other people’s blogs, when you comment, when you dont…i’d love to hear them.

how many blogs do you read per day? week? how many comments do you leave? if you don’t leave a comment, why not?

nadia comaneci times deux and the couch potatoe

fridays are a full day for the triumverate. playgroup in the morning tires them out, and i am tired tired tired of a weekfull of parenting by this point. it has been a long week, and knowing the weekend is coming, which is in this case means no charles and tonnes of social obligations, means no rest for the weary is ahead. there are also other details, sebastian said something really hurtful, and takes so long eating his lunch that i have to veto his playdate with adam and annie and order him to have a nap instead. terrible mummy. i sit down and do a bit of reading.

after lunch and nap, everyone gets up and a friend, harry comes over to play for a bit. today, i went up to visit harry’s mum while the kids played here. oh how grateful i am to have help. and then at 4pm, i announced to the kids, "it’s time for gymnastics class!" and they started yelling and running about the place. disciplined sebastian for the 801th time this week for saying a hurtful phrase, and wonder why i even bother.

off to gymnastics.

i watch them climbing, feet bare and teeth gritted in determination as they climb up a ladder, tongue poking the side of their cheek as they walk a bench, eyes looking downwards as they find their way from the box horse to the ground, the nervy laughter before they jump. the girls are so enthusiastic, and even though lazy jasper would rather be watching everyone, he has fun as well.

the kids love gymnastics and i love this class as well, because i see them moving and climbing and challenging themselves and falling and achieving and i know, despite the tiredness of a long week, how incredible this is. how amazing my children are. seeing the triumph on their face, i remember that these kids know struggle. and determination. the parallels are too obvious to go into, so let’s just say despite the fact that i race around for an hour, i leave gymnastics a refreshed mother.

i need that time. it all seems so worthwhile to see them there.

it also makes me feel good, becuase in the guesswork of patches that make up the parenting quilt, i know that i have struck gold with gymnastics. they love it. other things, they’re not so fond of. gymastics, they love.

i love that they’re happy there and that they try really hard while having a good time. i love that i try so hard too.

so despite several slips, the judges have awarded tess a 10.

which means i should be asleep by 10pm.

muscrat love

sebastian has always had a liking for the ladies.

not in a jasper sort of way. jasper is my brother 30 years later, coy looks out of the corner of long lashes, smiles, adorable burbles of laughter, and come hither glances. a few weeks ago jasper made a pregnant friend of mine blush with the blatant looks he was sending her way. she was screaming with laughter as she watched jasper flirting with her, making him smile even more winningly and his eyes sparkle a little more magnetically.

back to seb. seb has been blessed to have annie and adam in our building. the three are within five months of each other. and even before annie started developing bewitching golden curls and calling him "sabbie", master caldwell thought miss annie was pretty great. sebastian, adam and annie are like siblings. they scream and fight and make up and laugh, they are so intense and familiar with each other. sebastian is by far the most intense of the three…it makes me ache to see him sometimes struggling to keep up with them, or when he comes up with a suggestion and says, "hey guys, follow me!" and they don’t…or when he wants to play with annie but she is having a special playdate with another friend. and he does stuff like that to them all the time as well.

we have a picture of sebastian and annie playing together taken when they were barely two years old. they are behind a bush and annie is smiling at the camera, and seb is looking at annie and grinning. his adoration is evident.

when kindy started, i sent him off to school knowing that all would be well. nemo had taken the school bus…so would sebastian. that was our mindwashing and he bought into it. good stuff.

a couple of weeks after school began, i took him to his trampolining class. adam was there as well. as seb waited his turn as we all stood around the trampoline, he kept whispering something, "ajoolee…ajooliee" and shooting little glances.

finally i asked the instructor, "what is this all about? what is an ajoolee?"

and another mother spoke up, "my daughter’s name is anjali. i think they are in the same class"

after the class i was putting on sebastian’s shoes, and he was sitting beside adam and anjali came and sat down with them. she and sebastian smiled at each other. adam started chatting, and anjali and seb stayed silent. he whispered her name a couple of times.

enter anjali. a gorgeous little girl with a froth of dark curls. very shy. very polite and lovely.

anjali quickly became a favourite with sebastian and adam, and was over at ours for playdates and birthdays. two years in school, and anjali is the girl he likes most. he knew it from the start.

(i don’t remember having those early crushes. i remember really liking bob, or was it gordon? from sesame street, but there was no marriage discussion)

i love watching seb’s puppy love encounters, and suffer a little when love leaves him crestfallen.

about three months ago, my mum and i took seb to his gymnastics class. we were getting to the end of the class, and seb was racing around the gym with a friend of his rajdeep. kids started walking in the door in preparation for the next class.

one of the girls, wearing a pale blue leotard, placed her bag next to me. just at that point, sebastian rounded the corner, and started saying, "mummy i want…" , and i never learned what. because as sebastian caught sight of this girl, he stopped in his tracks and went slack jawed.

he stared at her, taking in her curly long hair tied in bunches, her sweet face, and was unable to move. stood and stared. no smiling, no talking. no moving.

have some pride, man! i wanted to say, but was so fascinated, i couldn’t.

sebastian continued to observe. finally, the girl turned away from her friends and made eye contact with sebastian. he could have fainted, he could have turned and run away, but instead he just kept staring, and she smiled and continued her conversation with her friends.

and he kept staring, gob smacked. by now his teacher was calling, but it took him a few more seconds to compose himself before he could move his feet again.

i didn’t mention the girl and his obvious infatuation, nor did i want to. i didn’t want to make him feel silly, because it was something that was obviously really important to him.

re-reading this, it sounds stupid describing it, seb either comes off sounding like a moron who will be unlucky at love his entire life, or like a moonstruck dork. and that’s not it. the sight of this girl rendered him unable to move. when he does love, he will love amazingly. i think that is great.

and in the meantime, the other day anjali, annie, adam and sebastian were here for lunch. and the conversation came round to marriage, and apparently sebastian now has two wives. and an adam/husband?

how millenium

weekend was pretty much what you would expect.

but today i am a proud girl, all because of one person. and a loving gesture.

as a parent, sibling, wife, daughter..i am probably way too quick to point out the negative and remember the negative done to me. at times, i find it hard when people make 180 turnabouts, and i think to myself, "i wish they had had that revelation and change of attitude when i was going through the same thing. woulda helped, dude."

considering scarlet fever and sticky vomit have been recurring themes in my life this past week, i am surprised how quickly i could process not only the compliment but the compliment and gesture.

but i did and here i am smiling. because in between cleaning barf buckets, and slapping my hair into yet another ponytail (or even, ahhh, how daring,…pigtails!), i have been able to be a good friend.  and my friend completely reciprocated, by telling me. just when i needed to hear it.

merci.

the root of all evil?

if not, certainly the root of much disagreement.

last night right before we turned out the lights, charles and i played a little game. 

we pretended we had won $10 million dollars.

what would we do with it?

we drowsily threw out some options, things we would like to do, and very quickly realised we had blown the cash.

so i propped myself up, grabbed the back of an envelope and started writing.

okay, one million to the church. but…all to one church? that didn’t seem fair. so we had to debate who got how much money. was it fair to support canadian churches? or give it all over to churches that also provide medical care in third world countries. what about homes for unwed mothers? oh the debate began.

then relatives. we decided we wanted to pay for charles’ nieces and nephews education and get them cars so they could be independent. (you can see that never having had a driver’s license has really stayed with me). so that was a cool $500,000. then charles said that we should get his dad a new vehicle. i mentioned that he had just bought a car he was really happy with. and charles said, "well, maybe he wants another one!" okay, calm down.

he decided that he wanted to go on a kick butt cruise with his dad. a long one. no costs spared. we allotted $70,000 to that one.

and then we decided to buy a summer home somewhere nice, on the water. easily $1m US. somewhere that families could come and hang out year round, so it had to be near skiing as well. so we didn’t choose a location, but we did put the money towards it, as responsible adults do.

and we wanted to take charles’ family back to antigua, flying business class, and have another great reunion.  if the girls needed to be working, we would pay them what they would have been making had they been at their jobs and probably a bit more.

oh, how about trust funds for our kids? this was a tough one. how much? can’t make them think they never had to work again…they needed jobs and focus. entitlement really bothers me. there is a difference between self confidence and that sense of entitlement.

and what about a house for us? we don’t own a house….let’s get a house? where? in hong kong? hard to say, would we be retiring?

then we finally got to my family. decided it was manipulation to offer my parents money to leave yellowknife.

want to do something really nice for gran, but what? someone to come in every second day and take her places, to the beach, to the shops, someone who wouldn’t be intrusive but letting my 91 year old gran have some freedom.  to pay for pam’s flights when she heads out to see gran and take care of her in much the same way. gran already has a housecleaner, etc, and she doesn’t need long term care, but just someone who could take her out more. and we would love it if she came to hong kong. she loves her little jude.

so a trip with my family. but to where? i could just hear the arguments (loud) that my family would have in this debate. and then it would get like an episode of survivor, each plotting with another. ( i will vote against hawaii, if you join in with me, we can take our choices to the final two.)

i wasn’t looking forward to that debate, let me tell you. then i remembered we don’t have the money.

putting my family aside for a moment…we realised we would be getting lots of letters from universities, etc starting with…

dear charles

we have been meaning to write you this handwritten directly addressed letter since you left the school. we wanted to reinforce how much you contributed to the school and what a pleasure it was having you here. your professors all remember you as an astute, intelligent young man with great plans. how wonderful to know you have achieved many of them, and as well, have received so many.

one of the best aspects of receiving is giving back. and where better to share your good fortune than with the school that first sparked your intellect, that fed into your desire to know the world…

bla bla bla.

would we give them anything? okay, sure, but how much?

i wanted to give a huge chunk to the veteran’s organisations, and charles agreed. heart foundation, cancer society.

and suddenly, we had spent all our money. my family had a trip, but their descendants had no education funds (a sign they won’t go to university?). charles would still have to work because we had no savings.

so the fighting began. and first we were easy going and laughing about it, it’s not like we have the money… but then we were serious. why buy in hong kong? it is so expensive. sure the money we spent on renting would be good, but why not buy in canada? so what if nicaragua is the new hot spot with tax free deductions everywhere, do we want to be so far away from family?

and on and on it went until we decided that we didn’t want to play anymore so i crumpled up the envelope and tossed it into the bin. and was relieved we could do that. the money would be great, but the responsibility (and expectations) i could definitely do without.

Meanwhile, click here for cute video of Sela praying.

what did elton john say again?

I’M STILL STANDING

yah yah yah

jasper has now reached the vomitting stage of scarlet fever, and the fever has also worked itself up. today i stayed home with him (when i wasn’t taking carys to her endocrinologist appointment…for some reason the outshot of that appointment is that she needs to see an orthopaediatric surgeon) while the other three went to the beach. jasper was so feverish and disoriented after his nap, his eyes were so droopy, his manner so lethargic, all he wanted was to lie on the sofa, take the occasional sip of water and watch the wiggles. so we did. he’s my hot potato (ha ha, wiggles humour).

it’s a bit of a competition now, not even jasper vs scarlet fever, but tess vs scarlet fever. wading through kids illnesses can be like wading through depression, one step at a time. isolation isn’t much fun, but we will manage. i will probably get sick when this is all over, but until then, i’m walking down the yellow brick road, medicine and barf buckets in each hand.

(the fact that magnificent lets me have a lie in in the mornings helps tremendously)

although the dr is not 100 per cent certain (swab will confirm), he is treating jasper like a SCARLET FEVER patient.

you are right, joe, i am getting elderly and forgetful…i didn’t mention that jasper had all those symptoms not me.

thankfully, scarlet fever is not the terrible thing it was 40 years ago, thanks to antibioltics the heart isn’t as much at risk, etc. however, it passes from child to child very easily, but not from child to adult. so, given that we have a plethora of children, i think it is safe to say we will be in isolation for a while.

tired. missed every single appointment i had today, and last night’s. which means i have more work to come.

will post later, right now i am so tired i am seeing red? scarlet?

if it isn’t one thing. . . .

well hello from rash-land.

hypothetically speaking…

if red measles immunisations are given in two doses and you have had one, is it possible that you can catch red measles during that time between the first immunisation and the second?

can you have hand foot and mouth disease and only have the mouth ulcers and blisters around your mouth? ie: nothing on hand or feet? is there something called mouth disease?

what does a red raised rash surrounding the nose and mouth mean?

it has been a heck of a week and it is only tuesday. i have had this same disgusting lower GI issue for the past week. sometimes it is fine, but for the past five days it has been yuck. and then of course i now have a mouth ulcer and am wondering if i have hand foot and mouth. i had this stupid blister like thing on my hand last week…

other areas of life aren’t going much better, there are disappointments and anxieties, and that is just the beginning of it all. mark 5.36 tells us, "don’t be afraid, just believe" and i am trying to believe that my children won’t grow up to be juvenile delinquents who hit and scream to express their opinions, that i get the opportunity to know them, and that we actually stay healthy for a while.

so very tired and the reality is, i won’t be slowing down for a while.

thank you for the pictures, mc.

NEW PICTURES!

Click here to see the latest pictures from April, or go to the April photo album at right.

baby’s got blue eyes

before moving to hong kong elton john’s name did not figure prominently among my favourite artists. remember…all elton managed to produce during the 80’s was a wife (!) and the song nikita, which didn’t do much to endear him to me.

but then magnificent charles came on to the scene, and his love for elton john quickly became my own. you know that intoxicating stage where you are trying out each other’s food fave’s, music, books and movies? (mc had never seen the shawshank redemption before he met me..i have converted him there but he still doesn’t love groundhog day…pity that.)

in those early days we liste his greatest hits cd had just been produced, and charles had it. the hits were dreamy and in love, and we couldn’t afford any other new cd’s. in this romantic and mysterious time just before the handover, early romance time, my dancing tunes weren’t appropriate, although my mama’s and papa’s cd was. i nixed charles’ british invasion cds, he laughed at the 80’s stuff. (but the relationship survived!)

the humid heat, these two new cats we had adopted, and the knowledge that mc and i were finally together and God willing, we could be for the rest of our lives….if it wasn’t for the unemployment we would have been laughing. but we had love, and days to spend together. and elton john in the background.

my favourite elton john song would have to be blue eyes. even if charles only had one eye and it was brown, blue eyes would be my favourite song. or so i thought.

two years ago, elton john toured asia. charles was thrilled, and our friends stuart and lucy got tickets, and we headed off to the concert. i haven’t seen many concerts, and prior to this, the rolling stones was definitely my fave. lots of energy.

elton could not have been more different. no more strutting across the stage in platform shoes filled with goldwish, no mawkish attempts and rearing the crowd into a frenzy by shouting "hello hong kong!"…this was a man singing about love, to those who knew love. and he sang blue eyes, and i thought it was just for me. the crowd was respectable, we screamed during the beginning of songs, but didn’t want to miss a word he sang. the crowd was invited to join along in crocodile rock, and we sure did.

naaaahhhh na na na na na….

and all too soon he left the stage. it had been a great concert, he had played what the audience knew and wanted to hear. i don’t like hearing new stuff, i go to a concert to hear what i love.

we knew there would be an encore, so no one moved. everyone started clapping and a few minutes later he came out again. we stood and applauded, no one sat down.

the day i saw them, the stones ended their concert by launching into "you can’t always get what you want". it was an extended version that had the audience participation at full max.

as with the entire concert, elton john was different. he sat down at the piano, and spoke into the microphone, saying, "this is my last song tonight, and it is my wish that everyone here in the audience has someone they can sing it to."

and then he started into "your song".

charles and i had our arms wrapped around each other, as did lucy and stu. having another couple with us also in love made it better. and it was quiet, and he serenaded us all, and watched us kissing each other’s hands as he declared,

"i hope you don’t mind, i hope you don’t mind, that i put down in words, how wonderful life is, while you’re in the world."

come home soon, charles.