A Warm Welcome

We are so happy to be in our new home. One of the greatest things about moving back to Saskatchewan is getting to know old friends again. We've all been away for a few years and returned from worldly adventures and reunited as if no time has passed. Thank you to Ryan, Ashley, Chris, and Brenda - for all of the help and the warm welcome to Whitmore Park!

Altercation

I'm not at my best in the morning. I know that. I've tried to work on it, but until I get a morning cup of coffee in hand I'm pretty much useless...and mean. It's only gotten worse since I've caught a case of the pregnancy.

This morning while I was half asleep in the shower, our doorbell rang 14 times. I counted. I figured it was for our basement dweller and just ignored it. I got out of the shower and heard more banging and ringing and thought that maybe there was some sort of an emergency so I answered the door in my towel. Sexy.

It turned out to be a burly City of Regina roadworks employee. Hot. No, this isn't the start of a porno. The City employee told me I had to move my car because they were re-paving our street in 10 minutes. I snarled and told him I was leaving for work in half an hour and he would have to wait since we received no letter notifying us of this and there has been no signage on the roads...nothing. He was very nice, but told me that my car was about to get grated over. I rolled my eyes and swore and slammed the door.

When I got to work I wrote a nasty email to the city...then I had a coffee...and I hope they still fund the Symphony.

The No Dad Club

Stephen and I, our siblings, and some of our friends are already card carrying members of a really dumb club. We don't want any more members for another 20 years or so. Our thoughts are with our friends who joined the club today, much too early.

Riders

It was our Annual General Meeting at work tonight and I left Stephen to enjoy the delight of painting on his own. The meeting went quite quickly because we were competing with a Rider game and many of our members were eager to get to the game before halftime. I decided to drop by the house after to see how things were going. As I walked inside, I heard the Rider Game blasting on the stereo. I thought to myself how impressive it was that Stephen was taking such an interest in his new culture and listening to the game. Well...not quite, Ryan was over helping him paint which led to the choice of radio station, but I'm quite pleased with the influence on Stephen and know that soon he will be transformed into a good SK boy.

Just Another Arggggggggggggh...Monday

Ever have those mornings where your bed is so deliciously comfortable, your shower is so hot and luxurious, your breakfast is so delicious, and you just want to sit around and drink warm beverages and read books all day?

Yeah, so I lured myself into work with the promise of a latte from Stone's Throw.

I had a couple real barn burner meetings followed by a two hour lunch meeting which drained all energy. So I headed in for more comfort. Another latte from Starbucks...I know I know...supposed to be cutting down on the caffeine, but I really really needed it today. I treated myself to a couple of quick phone calls to Kate and Karen. Karen gave me the best Orchestral come-back line of all time, "Why don't you stick your bow up your...and lube it up with some rosin..." Oh dear.

Post work, I dragged myself to Sobey's to "make supper" which consisted of "Ukrainian Meal" (heats up in only 2-4 minutes in your average microwave) and "Greek Salad". Then I drove ALLLLLLLLLLLLLL the way over to Whitmore Park and taped around our trim for about an hour. Ate supper with Steve. Primed trim while Stephen painted it. Just painstaking work, but it got better when we started singing along to Kenny Rogers' greatest hits and as I ate 3 popsicles...yeah, that helped.

We are so not in to renovating this house. It's great, but we don't love it like our other house. I hope it can't sense that from us. It's hard to believe we'll be moved in less than a week...particularly since we haven't started packing yet.

Where did my positivity baton go?

Pride Weekend Regina Styles

Last night Stephen ended up doing sound at The Club, Regina's only gay bar, for one of my favourite Regina bands, Jeffrey Straker and the Handsome Strangers. If you don't know him, you can check him out here http://jeffstraker.com/ and note that his song/video Hypnotized just hit #6 on the Much More Music Countdown.

It was a fun and intimate concert with lots of singing along, clapping, snapping, and included a game show in the middle of the concert with pride week trivia. The highlight of the evening (other than the fabulously mixed sound) was when Jeff commented on the heat in the room and encouraged the audience to remove articles of clothing. No one took him up on the offer other than his bass player who stripped down to his briefs...and his dancing just got so much better as he freed himself from the restraints of his jumpsuit.

...what a night!

Father's Day

It's hard to escape the fact that tomorrow is Father's Day. "We're Related" on Facebook keeps sending me emails to tell me that I should send my Dad some love on Father's Day by inviting him to their application. Home Depot tells me as I enter its glorious four walls that I have come to the right place to buy a Father's Day gift. A friend forwarded me a beautiful article about a son realizing through his own children that he hadn't said "I love you" to his Father since 1983. Last night our new neighbour was telling Steve and I about taking the morning off and going to his kid's school for a Father's Day celebration.

Having a Father is something that I only got a small taste of on weekends and a few weeks each summer. In many ways I was lucky because I always got the best of him - anticipated and planned weekends packed with fun and attention. Strangely though, I can't remember one actual Father's Day with my Dad, but the day itself isn't the point. Father's Day makes you think about your Dad. Since he died in 2001, I'm usually able to either ignore the holiday or it grates on me for the weeks leading up to the holiday until the tears come pouring out, usually waking me up and surprising me in the middle of the night...like it did about an hour ago. Grief can be so vivid even years later.

Yesterday afternoon, we were working on our new house and Stephen called me to the front window to look outside. The view was of the most stereotypical moment between father and son - our neighbours were playing catch in the middle of our street. We were both touched by it and I think we were both envious of the bonding we were witnessing.

Stephen's Dad passed away of cancer just weeks before Stephen turned 16. I love the stories that his family tells about him and I have tried to piece together an idea of what my father-in-law was like, but it makes me sad that I never got to meet him. It makes me sad that he never got to see the many amazing things Steve has achieved since he was a gangly teenager.

Back in March, as I stared in awe at the results of my home pregnancy test and after showing it to Stephen and seeing the huge smile on his face, it made me ache how much I wished I could tell my Dad the news because he loved children and would have been so excited to become a grandfather...it suddenly hit me that our child would not have any grandfathers. And then, I realized that there was something else to look forward to, that by June 2010 Father's Day would finally be a happy day that I could celebrate because Stephen was going to be a great father.