This Same Day, I Heard “Hot Blooded” Playing On The Radio

Tags

babies, fever, teething

I went to pick up the Owl from daycare the other day, and instead of meeting me with a big grin and a delighted chortle, he looked at me sadly and just signed for “milk” (which also means “boob lady”).

The daycare lady said she had almost called me at work, because he had a fever. She couldn’t find her thermometer anywhere (even though she’s an RN and swears she owns three – but who CAN find their thermometer when they need it?) but she was sure he had a high fever. She had given him some tylenol and was bathing his head with a damp paper towel when I arrived.

She strongly suggested that we take him to the doctor, so we did just that.

After two hours of waiting at the walk-in clinic (I swear, the hospital would have seen a baby with a fever sooner), we were blithely told that it was “just teething”, but to give him more Tylenol because his temperature was THIRTY NINE POINT FREAKING FIVE (that’s a little over 103 F, to you Americams).

Okay.

I knew he was teething.

And it’s true that when the doctor shone a light in his mouth I could see not one but TWO molars trying to come through, in addition to the lower front tooth that is cutting through (no strawberry milk situation this time, at least!).

But that high a fever? Really?

So we carted our whiny, clingy, hot little Owl home and dosed him up good. We used his fever as an excuse to not go to work and stayed home with him, dosing him every 4 hours dutifully.

I guess it was teething, because it’s certainly gone now.

But jeez. You’d think the pain of cutting molars would be bad enough, without the universe throwing a fever like that at the poor little dude.

Well, That’s That, Then.

Looks like this will be a Vancouver blog for a while yet, at least.

Here’s what happened:

PH’s company said they couldn’t afford the full transition package (guaranteeing our house, covering realtor and legal fees, providing supplemental money for my having to quit work, us having to buy new groceries, etc etc etc) but offered us 10,000 bucks towards such costs.

PH worked it out and found that it would cost us between 16,000 and 25,000 in moving expenses, legal fees, taxes, travel costs etc etc etc.

He decided that we could probably do it for the minimum amount if we agreed to take on some of the travel expenses and realtor fees and such, if we got a realtor who took a low cut, like 1 or 2%, if we bought a house in the neighbouring county without land transfer taxes, etc etc.

So he emailed the company back and said if they offered us 6,000 more dollars, we could swing it.

But then we heard back from the realtor.

Now, we knew we’d be taking a loss on the house. This house was a speculation when we purchased it: It was selling for $50,000 less than similar units in nearby complexes due to maintenance and legal issues. So, once assessments and such are paid, and the outstanding issues are fixed, we should be able to come out ahead.

That hasn’t happened yet. Or at least, it’s started, but won’t be complete for three more years. Also, the people who couldn’t afford the assessment have foreclosed, which means that there have been a lot of court-ordered sales in our complex.

The upshot, according to the realtor, is that if we wanted to try and sell now, we could expect to make maybe $160,000 on our house.

We paid $215,000.

So… that’s that.

It seems ironic that we wouldn’t be able to afford a $100,000 house in Nova Scotia if we sold our current property for $160,000. However, it would mean that we would need a mortgage of $150,000 or so on a house that was worth only $100,000.

And no bank is that stupid.

We told ourselves that we would go if we could afford it, but wouldn’t if we couldn’t.

If we tried to sell now, we’d end up with nowhere to live on the other end, and an outstanding debt of $50-60,000 bucks.

Yeah, the saving on daycare wouldn’t be THAT good.

So here we stay.

For now.

I hope that an opportunity like that comes up again some day, when our house values have recovered.

In the meantime… we should buy Anton’s and celebrate getting to stay here with all of our friends.

We have a pool!

"Mmm, yes, more sushi please!"

"Do they have these in Nova Scotia, Boob Lady?"

…I’ll try not to think of the picture of working from home and saying goodbye to my job.

And hope to GAWD that our housing values improve… eventually.

Should I Stay Or Should I Go (Fear of Change Says HELL NO)

Tags

anxiety, change, jobs, moving, Nova Scotia, transfers, Vancouver

PH and I have always talked about going back to Nova Scotia some day.

After all, we don’t like that our son is growing up away from his grandparents and all of his cousins.

We don’t like that he may not know all the words to “Barrett’s Privateers” before the age of ten.

We don’t like that he may not know a Halifax donair if it fell on his shoe.

Most of all, we just think of ourselves as Nova Scotians, so obviously, SOME day, we want to “go home”.

But in the future.

You know.

Like, not right now, but maybe some day.

Sometimes, when I get really frustrated with living in the city, or when homesick for old friends, or for my mother, I have wanted to go home RIGHT NOW.

But usually it’s… “maybe in a couple of years”.

So when a job came up in Nova Scotia that PH would be perfect for, we didn’t know what to think.

I mean, what, leave Vancouver?

No more mountains? No more sushi? What about Owl’s awesome daycare? What about our diaper service? What about all of our friends, whom we would leave behind?

And yet…

The job was in a perfect location. Just half an hour away from my parents, and a little over an hour to his parents.

And then we looked at housing prices and we just started SALIVATING.

2,000 square feet and an acre of land for half the price of our current 1,000 foot townhouse? NO PROBLEM.

So we made a pros and cons list. It looked like this:

• PRO
• close to family
• cheap houses
• VERY cheap houses
• close to Carol’s old friends/boy cousins
• same salary, lower cost of living
• Carol either doesn’t work or does dog training at home
• No daycare/Nana Daycare
• Have we mentioned the house pricing?
• Cause it’s cheap, you know
• Seriously, $70k for a three bedroom HOUSE
• not condo, HOUSE

• CON
• moving expenses? How cheap is PH’s company?
• Negative equity in house currently YAY GLOBAL RECESSION PLUS SCREW YOU MORONS
• No Happy Nappy 
• All of our Vancouver friends go byebye
• Daycare lady would be sad 😥
• No vet tech job for Carol, probably
• Carol would have to take up prostitution
• or dog training
• one or the other
• but probably prostitution

Ultimately, we realized that the universe was calling our bluff. When fortune just hands you the thing you’ve always said you wanted, you have to go for it. We’d be chicken not to.

So PH applied.

Well, it turns out he’s the best candidate by a country mile and they really want him.

What they aren’t sure of is whether they can afford to help us move out there.

What WE aren’t sure of is whether we can afford to sell our house right now, because the housing values are down and we don’t want to end up in a negative equity situation.

All of this is causing me massive anxiety because you KNOW how much I love uncertainty.

And change. Don’t forget my love of change.

I keep alternating between dreams of a big house and a dog-daycare that I run out of my own home, and joy at the thought of leaving my job… and complete panic at the thought of leaving all the people here, not least my awesome daycare lady who had gone above and beyond the call of duty for me and Owl.

I waver between excitement and terror.

I don’t want to go!

I don’t want to stay!

I want to go, I just also want to stay!

And then, the next morning, I woke up in a sweat and shook PH awake.

“I just realized. We CAN’T go to Nova Scotia.”

“Why not?” he mumbled into his pillow.

“THERE’S NO ANTON’S IN NOVA SCOTIA.”

Vet Food – The Reprise

Tags

animal nutrition, Feline Lower Urinary Tract Disease, pet food, veterinary diets

So, remember this post?

Well, my cat (who still resides with my parents, because she is too high strung to try and move with me) has a tendency to anorexia. My parents were keeping her weight on with kitten food for a while, but even that wasn’t enough, so they had to supplement with the only thing she would eat.

Whiskas.

Or Friskies.

One of those brands. You know the type.

To her credit, my mother tried. She tried every vet diet out there, including the Recovery stuff which is practically kitty crack.

But no.

My cat would only eat the cat version of McDonald’s.

… Can you guess who now has a urinary tract infection?

Hint: It’s not one of the pets who are on exclusively vet-brand food.

Short and sour update

Work is god-awful. The scary-vet is so terrible to work with. The stress makes my heart feel like it’s going to explode sometimes. It’s so bad that when I leave, or when I hit a weekend, I don’t even feel much relief. It’s just like I’m still on the rack and my torturer has paused for breath.

I totally feel bait-and-switched – I met the sweet, gentle vet in the quiet, local clinic, and now I’m slaving away an hour’s drive from home for a scary, scary man. The boss spoke to him about being nice to me, and the pathetic thing is that he TRIES, but he fails. Spectacularly. And that has the added effect of making me totally freeze up and act like a complete idiot, which makes him snap at me even more. I’m pretty sure he thinks I’m an incompetent moron and I feel like one, around him.

I am getting lunches now (thanks to a staff member returning from vacation) but even though I have eaten McDonald’s EVERY DAY for lunch, my weight hasn’t gone up at all. It isn’t decreasing, but it isn’t going UP. That’s weird.

That’s stress, I guess?

And the Owl’s nose is running.

And I think he’s teething.

HOW ARE YOU?

My baby pants-dialled me.

THAT’S RIGHT.

I found a voice mail on my phone. I listened to it. This is what I heard:

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/29244760]

Anxiety Girl AND Working Mom – I’m Doubly Screwed.

Tags

anxiety, babies, family, GAD, jobs, work, working mothers, workplace

You know the effect – you learn a new word, and suddenly everyone is using it. A friend buys a new car, and suddenly you think you see her car everywhere.

Well, look what I’m seeing everywhere:

I GET IT, BABIES ARE BAD

 It was on the radio, too. I heard it as I was pumping away at work:

“A recent survey reveals that 80% of employers claim that they try to provide a family friendly workplace, but many admit that an employee is more likely to advance if they don’t have family commitments.”

I don’t know what to do. I’m not happy in my current job, but how hire-able am I with this baby in tow? What if the good places won’t want me? It doesn’t help that I am rusty at certain aspects of the job – I haven’t done surgery in years, for example, which gives the mean vet lots of opportunity to rake me over the coals.

I’m a good tech. I am great at lab work, I am fantastic with clients, I know animal nutrition and pharmacology, and even radiography. But I feel like all my workplace must see in me is my milky boobs and my sleep-deprived mental state.

PH still thinks I should leave if it doesn’t get better, but he also reminds me that a lot of this is my own inference. No one has actually SAID anything to me about my milky boobs, and no one has actually SAID (other than the mean vet that they all say I shouldn’t take personally) that they think I’m incompetant.

But they don’t make me feel like I’m not, either.

I don't usually like Natalie Dee, but damn, THIS IS ME

I’m pretty sure that just thinking about the upcoming week at work should NOT make me feel like my heart is going to explode.

You know I don’t ask you guys to “share” me around much. But if you could share my previous post a bit… tweet it or something… I would appreciate it. I am hoping for more encouraging feedback. The more stories I hear from women who found a good job despite a baby, the better I will feel…

In Which I Learn That Motherhood Is Bad For Business

Tags

breastfeeding, daycare, employees, employers, hiring, jobs, schedules, work, working mothers

Yes, I’m blogging about work because… well, I don’t care any more.

Work is…

…not going well.

While I always knew that motherhood restricts life in many ways, including in the workplace, I never really fully comprehended how much it damages me in the eyes of an employer.

I did know that employers look down on breastfeeding mothers, which is why I expressly (pardon the pun) avoided discussing my breastfeeding ways in the interview stage, and why I was so dismayed by my boss bursting in on me pumping guiltily in the bathroom on my first day.

But I didn’t really grasp how very undesirable motherhood is.

Good employees don't have one of these

Before I signed the employment agreement papers, I brought up my daycare’s hours.

It hadn’t come up in the interview because, well, it hadn’t come up. He didn’t ask, and I wasn’t even sure, at that point, what my daycare’s hours were.

But before I agreed to work there, I made it clear that my daycare closes at 5:30 pm, and that official policy is to charge me 5 bucks per 5 minutes that I am late. I asked if they had morning or afternoon shifts available.

I was told yes, there usually is an earlier shift and a later shift, leaving an employee alone in the clinic for the first and last two hours of each work day, and two in the hectic middle times. I asked if it would be okay that I could only work the earlier shift.

I was told yes, that it shouldn’t be a problem.

Ever since then it has been a problem.

Revenge of the Black Thumb

Tags

gardening, plants, weeds

Remember when I bought these new plants?

Well, it was actually the Fuschia that was first to go. Poor Wilma didn’t make it.

We thought that I had killed the mint good and dead, but then it sprang up from its own ashes. It turns out that mint is the perfect plant for someone like me, because it’s impossible to kill.

The sickly Basil is growing fine as long as I keep it watered, and it’s getting to be a bit of a problem because it just gets taller and taller. A friend of mine has a rabbit. I think I may present her with a mint-and-basil bouquet.

Outdoors, my yard is still struggling. A year ago my mother de-weeded that yard carefully, which resulted in the yard also being entirely stripped bare. Then we re-seeded it with grass and some clover.

The grass came in well, and in spring was high enough to be cut. But somehow, since then, it has… disappeared. Parts that were green and lush in spring are suddenly bare again, and being filled in with weeds. All the weeds my mother painstakingly pulled out are reappearing, and my grass has vanished.

I don’t even know what the weeds are.

seriously, what is this, and how do I get rid of it??

I thought they were dandelions, but on closer inspection I could see that they are not. The leaves aren’t jagged enough. So what is this that is taking over my yard? Where is the grass?

The clover is faring better so I re-seeded some more clover in the bare patches. It’s taking in places, but mostly, the yard is still filled with bald spots.

Is it possible to do a comb-over on a yard?

No So Smart Phone, The Reprise.

My mother is globe-trotting around Europe right now with her sister. She went out and bought an Android expressly for the purpose of communicating over-seas, because my Uncle refuses to check email, use Skype etc. She got it just a week or two before leaving.

So I don’t know if this is a carrier-problem, or the result of a 60 year old woman trying to figure out the latest in cell-phone technology, but the day she landed in Gatwick airport, I received 153 text messages telling me that she had landed safely. They were all identical. 

So Perfect Husband went through and deleted all the extras, which is not very easy on my not-so-smart phone.

That night, as I tried to get Babby to sleep at 2 in the morning, I kept detecting the sound of my text-message alert going off downstairs.

Again.

and

again.

…

…

AND AGAIN.

The next morning, I went downstairs, turned on the phone, and saw this:

GUESS WHAT? MY MOTHER LANDED SAFELY AT GATWICK.