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~ the musings of a left wing left hander with two left feet

If By Yes

Tag Archives: work

The Time Draws Nigh (In Which I Agonize About Going Back To Work And Am Both Successful And In Deep Trouble Simultaneously)

15 Tuesday Mar 2016

Posted by IfByYes in Damn Dogs, Fritter Away, Life and Love, Me vs The Sad, Perfect Husband

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

anxiety, depression, dog training, maternity leave, parenthood, Perfect Husband, work, working mother

How has it been nearly a year since Fritter was born? Where did the time go?

  
I have spent the last month or two slowly gearing back up to work mode, because in a month I am going to have to go back into the world of unmet expectations and absolutely no down time which is the life of the working mother.

I don’t wanna.

I don’t want my cuddly baby to get bigger.

I don’t want to leave her at daycare because she has some stranger issues (which I will discuss at some point).

I don’t want the stress of having to meet people’s expectations, avoid judgement, etc.

I don’t want to lose the hour and a half of down time I get every day during Fritter’s morning nap while Owl is at school.

I don’t want any of it. I LIKE maternity leave.

 
But, since it isn’t a choice, what I really want is to get my dog training business going, and going HARD. Because training dogs pays between 40 and 70 dollars an hour and working at the vet clinic… doesn’t. Also because it’s one of my life dreams, along with being an author.

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In Which I Find Everything Unnecessarily Difficult And Fight Hormonal Reactions To It

17 Wednesday Dec 2014

Posted by IfByYes in How is Babby Formed?, Life and Love

≈ 17 Comments

Tags

anxiety, doctor, hormones, ob-gyn, pregnancy, prenatal care, stress, work

My friend Hannah from Hodgepodge and Strawberries recently said to me that ‘pregnancy is like 9 months of non-stop PMS’ and I thoroughly agree. Life is hard enough on general principle, but when you’re trying to do it while surfing on a wave of irritation and overreaction it becomes just that much more difficult to navigate.

Picture trying to hold sixteen different items in your arms at once, while sobbing.

I have become a ball of horrible crippling anxiety and tears.

On top of the two jobs not to mention the “gee I haven’t bought any presents and now there’s no time to mail them back to Nova Scotia in time for Christmas” stress, I’ve been trying to deal with my medical situation.

So, you won’t have forgotten the mysterious disease of May/June. Well, a month or more ago I went back to the specialist because the itchy rash kept coming back. It usually starts on my chest and neck, burning and red, and then fades away while the itchiness spreads over my whole body and causes me to scratch my skin off for days. Antihistamines don’t help. Cortisone cream doesn’t help. So I went back to the internist. I was thinking that maybe this thing was autoimmune after all.

The internist listened carefully, and narrowed her eyes. “I think you should go back to the opthamologist and see if your optic nerve swelling is back,” she said. “If it is, we should probably do a lumber puncture, and you might need to talk to a neurosurgeon.”

I’m sorry, what now?

Yeah, it turns out that itching which isn’t soothed by cortisone or antihistamines can sometimes be NEUROLOGICAL.

I hadn’t mentioned it to her, but the wooshing noise in my left ear had returned a few times, too.

So I went back to the opthamologist, having spent the last three days at work saying “I MIGHT NEED A BRAIN SURGEON” whenever someone asked me a question I couldn’t answer.

The opthamologist looked in my eyes and said, “Yeah, the swelling is back again. Not nearly as bad as the first time I saw you, but definitely worse than the last time I saw you.”

Then, when I went in to my family doctor, she said that the bloodwork that the internist had done showed that my CRP (inflammation) values were up again, too.

So… what does this mean? Lumbar puncture? BRAIN SURGEON (FUCKING  BRAIN SURGEON OH MY GOD)?

Well, I don’t know! Because NO ONE SEEMS TO KNOW.

I called the internist’s office on Monday and was like “Uh, what do I do now?”

And they said “We don’t know… doesn’t say in your file… we’ll ask the doctor tomorrow.”

Today is Wednesday. I still haven’t heard back. So I called and left ANOTHER message asking what the hell I do now.

And that ain’t all.

The internist also apologetically told me that I should be considered a high risk pregnancy because they have no idea what’s wrong with me. Better safe than sorry.

That means that I need an OB, not a midwife.

I decided the last time I was pregnant that I wanted a midwife this time around. Midwives are covered in British Columbia, and you can still have a hospital birth and epidural and all that wonderful stuff. The big benefit to a midwife, as I saw it, was that she will come to your house and check your dilation so you don’t need to go back and forth to the hospital UMPTEEN TIMES and wait for two hours just to be told that you haven’t dilated in the slightest EVEN THOUGH YOU’VE BEEN HAVING CONTRACTIONS EVERY 3 MINUTES FOR THE LAST 18 HOURS.

Not that that wasn’t wonderful and all.

Besides, it sucked that I saw one or two doctors throughout my prenatal care and then my baby ended up being delivered by a stranger who didn’t even remember me when I went in for my 6 week post delivery checkup.

So I got a midwife for my last pregnancy and had all of one appointment with her before the baby died in the womb and all that stuff happened. 

This time I held off for a while – partly because I was half-convinced that the baby would die again so I didn’t want to jump the gun and partly because my doctor was like “let’s make sure your weird disease doesn’t cause any problems.”

So I’ve been seeing my family doctor for prenatals which she said she could do through 20 weeks of pregnancy.

Then the rashes and the head wooshing started and now the internist has officially said that I should be considered high risk.

Which means that I need to have an OB.

Which sucks.

So I asked my family doctor to refer me to my previous OB clinic. After all, if I have to have an OB again, it might as well be the place that gave me a healthy baby last time, somewhere I am familiar with and with some faces that I’ll recognize.

Does that seem too much to ask? DOES IT?

APPARENTLY IT IS.

Continue reading →

Sucking It Up Starts Now. Right After I Whine For A Bit.

10 Monday Mar 2014

Posted by IfByYes in Life and Love, Me vs The Sad, Perfect Husband

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

depression, determination, love, the second shift, tiredness, whining, work

So, PH has been worrying lately about my mental health, probably understandably.

I’m not particularly depressed PER SE. My self esteem is okay right now – could be better, but I’m not suffering the crippling shame that I had back in the crash of ’09.

I’m just… beat.

Part of this is because I’m a spoiled Princess. PH has known from day one (hell, from day -730, because he knew me when I was in another relationship and he could tell even then) that I am what you might call “high maintenance”. I like to be cared for. I don’t like too many responsibilities. I love to have things to care for – pets and children – but I need someone doing the same for me.

But now I have all the responsibility.

From the moment I get up almost until the moment I go to bed, I am needed by someone for something. Owl needs me in the morning to dress him and get him breakfast and then force him into the car to go to daycare.

Then work needs me for 8 hours straight with no lunch break – chatting with clients, getting patient histories, wrestling dogs, cleaning up poop, and trying to squeeze in 10 hours of extra job responsiblities in between appointments. If someone schedules appointments poorly, I get in trouble for it. If someone’s estimate is higher than was quoted, then I have to deal with that. If we have fewer new clients this week than last week, then that is SOMETHING I AM RESPONSIBLE FOR.

Then Owl needs me again  – bring him home from daycare, play with him, put him to bed.

“Play with me? Play with me, Mommy!” is a constant refrain whenever I try to sit down, from the moment I get in the car with him until his second trip to the potty at night.

Except on the nights when I train dogs, when I bring him home from daycare, play with him, and then go and talk and yell things like “YAAAAY PUPPEEEE!” for an hour and a half straight.

Once Owl is asleep, I get some time to collapse. But this is basically my only chance to interact with PH who seems to, you know, want to interact with his wife occasionally.

I avoid going to bed, because the time when PH is asleep and so is Owl is basically the only time I can get true solitude – something that I desperately need to recharge.

It’s not enough. I’m not recharging.

I’m in constant energy-saving mode. I’m not washing dishes any more. I’m not cleaning the bathroom, or sweeping the floors.

I’m not really even interacting with poor PH any more, who clearly misses his wife. I’m having trouble keeping from snapping at people at work. I AM snapping at poor Owl, who is the most innocent party in all of this.

I find myself obsessively fantasizing about being locked alone in a white room with a window.

And PH sees it, and it makes him feel bad. He blames himself for putting such a load on me. He feels guilty, which he shouldn’t, because he’s not well.

But the problem is, he’s better than he was.

When he was in crisis, it was obvious to both of us that I needed to take on as much of the load as possible. I was wage earner – working two jobs – primary child caregiver, dish washer and garbage emptier.

But now he’s a bit better – not well, but not in as much crisis – and he feels like he should be able to do more. He IS doing more, in fact, but that gives us both the illusion that he actually is better. So he takes on more, and I expect him to continue taking on more. But he isn’t all better, so when I forget and lean on him, half the time he falls over, which does neither of us much good.

He told me today that basically, my own exhaustion/near-tears aura of defeat is probably one of the most significant contributions to his current level of depression.

He told me this not in a way to induce guilt, but simply to be honest about his level of concern for me.

His wife is falling apart, and that makes him feel terrible. 

The problem is, I’m falling apart because he can’t reliably take on more of the load. He can’t commit to putting Owl to bed every night, so that I can rest on the evenings when I’m not training dogs.

He can’t even commit to HELPING put Owl down on the days when I’m not out training dogs. He can manage Owl the couple of nights a week that I’m out training. Anything more is asking too much.

I know, because I asked.

So, this puts us at what Terry Pratchett would call a Klatchian Standoff.

His depression is made worse by his awareness that I’m sinking. He can’t stop me from sinking because his depression prevents him from taking on as much of the load as I need him to take on.

So. Three options exist.

Either I push him to do more than either of us feel he can really do, and take the risk of him going back to crisis mode… or we stand there and hug each other while we sink like Atryu and Artax in the Swamp of Sadness….

artax-2

…Or I suck it up.

I’m not depressed. Not really.

I’m just really, really, really tired. Tired of being the responsible one. Tired of having everything be my job by default. Tired of knowing that there’s no one to help if I sink.

swampofsadness

But my life is not THAT bad.

There are tons of single mothers out there who work two jobs and have to do everything. I’m better off than they are because really, PH still does a decent amount. He handles laundry, and he can cook most days, and he plays with Owl when he can.

Hell, he took Owl for most of this morning, just so I could get a good sleep in.

I don’t do everything. I just do a lot more than he does. Because he’s sick.

So it’s not THAT bad. I’m just being a wuss. I just got tired of being brave. I just started to feel like PH should be able to help again, because he’s clearly doing better.

But when I asked him about committing to helping put Owl to bed every night, I saw the look on his face.

And I knew that he is not as much better as we pretend he is.

I really want him to be better. I’m afraid to push him, afraid he’ll go into crisis mode, afraid that if he pushes himself, he’ll go off the edge entirely and Owl will grow up without a father.

And then I’d REALLY have no one to help  – I would really learn what being on my own would mean then.

I won’t let that happen.

So I need to stop thinking that he’s better. I need to stop waiting for someone to step in and save us.

I need to find a whole new battery pack.

And I’m going to do it.

Because I don’t want to see that look on his face again. I don’t want to feel disappointed like that again. I want to shut up the voice in my head that keeps waiting for things to be “fair”. Because life isn’t fair. My husband is sick. I need to work more than him, carry more load than him.

This is PH we’re talking about. That man wouldn’t ask me to work harder than him. That man wouldn’t expect me to work a full day and then pull the second shift unless he physically had no choice.

When he’s well enough, he won’t be asking me what he can do, only to tell me that I’ve asked too much.

When he’s well again, he’ll just do it.

And until then, I can do this.

self-motivation-cat-meme

Warning. Warning. Introvert Levels Dangerously Low.

20 Saturday Jul 2013

Posted by IfByYes in From The Owlery, Life and Love

≈ 21 Comments

Tags

extroversion, introversion, introvert, life, overwork, play, setting limits, toddlers, work

So, basically everything I said here still applies.

I am not depressed. I’m not even taking antidepressants any more.

But some mornings, in the first half hour or so that I am at work, I struggle to fight back tears.

It’s not sadness, per se, although I still feel like my life got derailed back in May, and often catch myself moping over might-have-beens.

But I think that that is more a symptom than the real disease.

The fact is that if I were a car, my fuel light would be blinking and the fuel gage would be dipped below the E line. Pretty soon I’m going to make a scary clunk and just stop altogether.

It’s no one’s fault except, arguably, my own.

Continue reading →

Hiding

05 Wednesday Jun 2013

Posted by IfByYes in Life and Love, Me vs The Sad, Perfect Husband

≈ 26 Comments

Tags

depression, dreams, miscarriage, work, writing

Life is… challenging right now.

Perfect Husband is depressed. He has always been prone to it, and I think the miscarriage and the lack of support at his work and who knows what other factors have helped spur it on. I haven’t seem him this bad in years, so I am trying to give him breaks wherever possible. He does as much as he can, but he doesn’t have much emotional or physical energy right now. What he does have, I want him to devote to getting better.

Luckily, I think I started taking my antidepressants again in time, because I am not depressed.

But I am sad at times.

I get sad thinking about how, a month ago, we were happy and expecting a baby.

Now I have no baby to expect, and a damaged husband, and we are focusing on getting through life one day at a time. We’re short on money, because we’ve been eating out a lot rather than trying to summon the energy to cook. We’re trying to stay cheerful for Owl, but it exhausts us and when he is asleep we collapse into introverted silence.

I had a midwife appointment booked for today. In a parallel universe, maybe I will cheerfully attend it.

I am worried about my husband. I am worried I won’t get pregnant soon, that I’ll never have a second child or that Owl will be half grown by the time I get pregnant, when what we really wanted was a playmate for him.

I am worried that I WILL get pregnant but that PH’s depression won’t improve and I will be functionally a single parent with two kids.

Thinking about life scares me right now.

So I’m hiding.

When Owl is asleep, I spend a lot of time re-reading and editing my NaNoWriMo story, which is now complete with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Working on it helps me dwell in a dream world where I become a rich author, can stay home to write all day, and support PH so that he doesn’t have to go to work in that poisonous environment. Instead he could coach children’s soft ball and soccer teams, umpire sporting events, practice his curling skills, and do the other things he loves to do but has no time or energy for.

If I could just become a paid writer… do what I love and need to do and get paid for it… stay home all day on the computer…

So I dream.

Even though I know that it is just a kind of a joke of a story and unlikely to ever make me a penny.

What I should be focusing is on reality – washing the dishes that PH can’t wash, folding clean laundry so we can stop living out of a hamper, and pursuing new dog training clients to replace the money we have frittered away.

I need to stop hiding in dreams.

A Miscarriage Of Justice

10 Friday May 2013

Posted by IfByYes in Life and Love

≈ 33 Comments

Tags

attitudes towards pregnancy loss, baby loss, gender inequality, miscarriage, silent miscarriage, work

What I have been hearing:

“I’m so sorry, honey, let me give you a hug.”

“Carol! What are you doing here at work? Go home! I would be at home curled in a ball with some Valium right now.”

“I can’t believe they couldn’t get you a D&C before Tuesday! Making you wait like that… That just seems… inhuman.”

“I’m so sorry, I know what you’re going through, truly – the same thing happened to me.”

“I miscarried, too. I woke up one night and the baby… well, it was an embryo but you could tell what it was… fell right into my hand…”

“I hemorrhaged for days after my D&C… I was devastated and hormonally crashing. You’re going to need a few days to recover.”

“Just remember that it is a surgery, so don’t push yourself too hard after.”

“Don’t let anyone tell you this isn’t a real loss. Take time to grieve.”

What HE has been hearing:

“If your wife lost her baby yesterday, I don’t understand why you won’t be in on Tuesday. I need more details before I can approve the time off.”

“I’m told you were a little rude with your boss yesterday when she asked you for more details about your absence. It really hurt her feelings and I think you should apologize.”

“You took off yesterday and you’re going to be gone again next week?”

“A D&C is a nothing procedure. What do you need Wednesday off for?”

“Don’t you think you’re milking this a little?”

What I have been getting:

20130510-203814.jpg

20130510-203754.jpg

What HE has been getting:

Dirty looks

Scoldings

Passive aggressive remarks

Newsflash, World:

We BOTH lost our Christmas Baby on Wednesday.

No More Purple Pills

20 Thursday Sep 2012

Posted by IfByYes in Life and Love

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

anxiety, busy, depression, generalized anxiety disorder, motherhood, stress, time management, welbutrin, work

I have been off of my Welbutrin for about three months now. I started to wean myself off in June, skipping the occasional day, until I actually forgot to take it at all for a week.

Then, when we went the the states, I left the pills behind, and I haven’t touched them since.

I’ve been doing fine.

I had a happy summer, loving my husband, liking my job, training dogs, writing on Elance.

I’ve been very tired. I feel very extroverted out.

I wish that I didn’t have to juggle work AND dog training AND Elance, but I’m not willing to give up any of these. I need them.

I need the work, the dog training is my insurance for the future when we have a second kid and full time work will no longer cover daycare costs, and Elance is extra money in my pocket while building my writing credits, which is REALLY part of my long term plan.

I spend my mornings trying to shepherd Owl into his clothes and into the car, I work for 9 hours with no break, and then I pick Owl up and entertain him while PH makes dinner. By the time we get Owl to sleep it’s 9 pm and I’m exhausted.

PH wants me to take more time to myself, to hand him the baby and say “YOU deal with it, I’m out of touch for an hour” but I rarely take him up on it. First of all, because I hand him Owl and then disappear training dogs a couple times a week as it is, and second of all because I want to spend time with my husband and son.

But PH thinks all this work is adding to my anxiety.

I haven’t really noticed it (maybe fish don’t notice water, much) but PH thinks it has been worse lately. I don’t know if fall coming on is beginning to activate my SAD, but that seems hard to believe, because it’s been warm and sunny an gorgeous outside lately.

So maybe it’s just all too much.

But I’m not quite sure what to do about it. We need money, and I need to make money while building a way to make money with fewer hours in the future. So I think this is just how it is right now, and I’m not unhappy or miserable.

Just a little stressed.

That’s within normal range, right?

A Day In The Life

27 Wednesday Jun 2012

Posted by IfByYes in From The Owlery, I'm Sure This Happens To Everyone..., Life and Love

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

babies, schedules, sleep, toddlers, work, working mother

I thought I would transcribe my last 24 hours or so for your perusal. Behold the glamorous existence of the working mother of a toddler. It’s going to be exciting. Are you excited?

4:02 AM

Perfect Husband brings Owl to me in bed, as neither of us feels able to deal with another wake-up. Owl nurses and I go back to sleep.

5:19 AM

Awoken by a heavy weight bouncing up and down on my neck, the musty scent of a pee-filled diaper, and a tiny voice going “Mama Horsey! MAMA HORSEY!”

Go back to sleep after giving a quarter-hearted “neigh…”

5:23 AM

“Mama up! MAMA UP!”

“It’s still sleepy time, Owl.” He may or may not understand me, because I am speaking directly into my pillow.

5:26 AM

“MILK! MIIIIIIILK!! PEEEEASE!”

6:35 AM

Perfect Husband walks into the room to find me lying prone with Owl nursing upside down on top of me, with most of his body sprawled on top of my face.

6:38 AM

I am slapped repeatedly on the head.

Continue reading →

Why We Don’t Want Our Son To Think He’s Smart.

25 Wednesday Apr 2012

Posted by IfByYes in From The Owlery, Life and Love, Perfect Husband

≈ 41 Comments

Tags

10 thousand hours, child rearing, children, effort, intelligence, IQ, parenting, problem solving, self esteem, success, work

My new boss made us all go to a sort of business seminar thingy, which was a little weird because it was run by Scientologists. But I heard something there that really struck home with me:

The coach said that you need to put in 10,000 hours of work before you become truly expert at something.

Now, I’m sure there’s nothing magic about that particular number. I Googled it and the author of Outliers, who made this claim, bases this on examples of people who got famous after doing something a LOT, including the Beatles who logged 10,000 hours of playing time between 1960 and 1964, and Bill Gates, who logged around 10,000 hours of programming time as a kid. What the number does do is give a general bookmark, a rule-of-thumb, which helps to define “A WHOLE LOTTA TIME”.

10,000 hours. That’s 9 hours a day for 3 years, or 3 hours a day for 10 years, or 1 hour a day for TWENTY SEVEN YEARS.

Not just to become good at something. To become GREAT at something. 

It sounds impossible, but that also explains why there are so few true experts in any particular given field.

Then again, Mozart probably hit 10,000 hours of music playing before age 10, and Sidney Crosby, who used to shoot pucks at the washing machine in his parents’ basement before he even learned to skate, probably hit 10,000 hours of hockey before his teens.

I haven’t logged that many hours in dog training, yet, but I’ve probably logged about 5,000 if my estimates are close to accurate. So I’m half expert. I’ve certainly done enough to become competent.

The 10,000 hour rule makes sense to me and is actually quite liberating. Obviously, one needs an aptitude to do really well, but even if you do have an aptitude, you still need to practice.

The problem is that we don’t tend to grow up with this mindset, especially if we were considered “smart” as kids.

The western world places a lot of weight on innate ability. We think that either we have a gift for music, or writing, or art, or math… or we don’t. We test our pre-schoolers for genius, and weed out the “gifted” from the average kids long before their brains are even close to mature.

In fact, many kids who test as gifted at age 3 average out by the time they’re 6, and many kids who test as normal at age 3 end up re-testing as gifted later on.

But by then it’s too late – the gifted programs are already filled.

Why do they spend so much time talking about how to challenge the smart kids, instead of teaching kids how to meet a challenge?

More and more research is coming out showing that telling our kids that they are smart may actually be damaging their self-esteem and chances in life.

While that sounds ridiculous to start, those of you who DID grow up being “smart” may already be nodding your heads.

When you are a “smart” child, school is easy. You are told that it is easy because you are so “smart”. So what happens when something is suddenly challenging?

Research is beginning to show that those of us who believed that our success in school was due to our innate intelligence actually give up faster and feel worse about ourselves than people who believed that life is something you have to work at.

Researchers gave a class of average children an easy aptitude test. In private, they told half of the kids “You did really well, you must be very smart”. They told the other half, “You did really well, you must have worked very hard.”

Then they offered the kids to take another, more challenging test.

Interestingly, the “smart” kids almost always turned down the opportunity. Having already achieved a “smart” label they didn’t want to risk failing and no longer looking smart.

The “hard working” kids, on the other hand, almost always accepted the challenge, because they wanted to keep looking like hard workers.

Even more interestingly, the “hard working” kids persisted at difficult questions longer than the “smart” kids, and when asked later on which was their favourite puzzle, usually chose the most difficult one.

“Smart” kids gave up very easily, saying “I guess I’m not good at this one” and when asked which puzzle was the best, chose the one they found easiest.

If any of you “smart” kids out there weren’t nodding your heads in recognition at the beginning, I bet you are now.

I recognize myself in these studies, so does my friend The Farm Fairy, and PH is a perfect example of the “smart” effect.

PH is a genius.

He was accepted by Mensa when we were still in University and they told him that he was probably the 16th smartest person in the province.

But he did not get good grades in University.

He had never had to work before.

his parents say he began recognizing words at 18 months old

Even though his parents held him to very high standards, PH coasted through the public school system.

He never had to exert himself in order to achieve a good grade.

Even when his own mother was his English teacher, and marking him as strictly as she could, she was forced to give him the English award, after taking his work to her fellow teachers and saying “my son has the top grade in the class…” they looked through his work and agreed  – she had to do what no teacher ever wants to have to do with their child – put him at the top of the class.

PH is smarter than 99.9% of the people he walks past on the street, and when you’re that smart, you don’t have to try very hard to do better than the others.

The problem is that when you are told again and again that you are innately more gifted than other people, and your success is put down to that (even if it’s true), it changes how you approach problems.

When you suddenly come up against something that is difficult, you think, “uh oh. My innate abilities don’t seem to be helping me with this one,” and you give up because you don’t have any other tools in your mental toolbox. Either you’re brilliant at something, or you aren’t.

So PH holds himself to ridiculously high standards.

He loves curling and did very well in junior leagues as a kid. But when he rejoined a curling league a couple of years ago he came home every Tuesday night in a foul mood, because he hadn’t thrown as well as he expected.

He hasn’t played softball in years, but if he joins a charity softball event, he curses himself for every missed hit.

When he finds himself in the vicinity of a piano, he lays his hands on the keys and beautiful music floats into the air. After a few minutes he hits a wrong note and curses, and stops – he used to be able to play that piece perfectly.

I took longer – I was reading by age 3, though

I got off a little luckier in life than PH did.

…First of all, I’m not as smart.

I was a bright kid with an aptitude for English – I remember that in the IOWA exams I scored well into the 90th percentile for language, and people are still impressed that I can spell chrysanthemum off the top of my head. But I’m no genius.

Secondly, I was in private schooling up until grade 8. Every year my teacher would be impressed with me for a week or two, and then would start raising his/her standards. It wasn’t good enough for me to be better than the other kids. I had to be better than myself if I wanted a good grade.

I remember getting a D (the lowest grade I had EVER received by a country mile) on a test that I hadn’t bothered to study for, because I knew the book inside out. I am willing to bet you money that it was still better average, but my teacher knew that I hadn’t put a drop of effort into it, and she wasn’t afraid to give me a D to shake me up a bit.

So I did have to work at school, up until we moved back to Canada and I got put into the public school system. The teachers there were too busy, too jaded, and had too many kids who couldn’t read at all to bother with trying to demand higher excellence from me. They were just pleased that they didn’t have to worry about me.

I coasted the rest of the way.

Nevertheless, before I moved North, my demanding private school teachers taught me how to take notes, how to study, how to write a difficult test, and how to meet deadlines.

I did fine in University… with a lot of hard work.

But generally, I have always given up easily. When I try something, and fail, I think “I can’t do it” and that is it. I place a lot of my value as a person on my intelligence, and when I start feeling stupid, I get really depressed. I fear failure. Failure is my enemy.

…just like those “smart” kids who declined the more challenging test.

I should have the 10,000 hour rule stapled to my brain.

I have always wanted to be an author, but when I sit down to write, I start thinking about how much my writing sucks (if you think I’m hard on Stephenie Meyer, you should hear me critique myself…) and the page stays blank.

The Domesticated Nerd Girl recently made a post about her love of drawing, and how she gets discouraged when genius doesn’t flow instantly from her pencil.

We had to wait until our thirties to discover it, but we’re learning – that (shock and surprise) talent takes effort and time.

So PH and I don’t want Owl to be “smart”. We want him to be “hard working”.

So far, it could go either way. Owl IS hardworking. He loves a challenge, whether it’s the daily failure of trying to put on his own shoes (on the wrong foot and backwards) or the challenge of climbing every piece of furniture, every chair, and every rock he can find.

But people are already starting to tell us that he’s smart.

Mind you, parents are always told that.

But Daycare Lady says he focuses longer than the other kids his age (19 months), and is starting to outdo the two year olds on counting, identifying objects and so on.

Maybe he is smart, but his chance of success in life is much more closely tied to his love of the challenge.

So we try really hard to not tell Owl that he’s smart.

Oh, it happens occasionally, because somehow “congratulations, you did it through hard work and determination and not through innate ability!” doesn’t slide off the tongue as easily.  But we’re really trying not to overdo it.

We’ll raise him on the 10,000 hour rule, instead.

And meanwhile, if I want to become the famous author I’ve always wanted to be, I’ve got to log more writing time, otherwise I’ll be eighty before it happens, if I live that long.

Owl’s First Scholarship

23 Monday Jan 2012

Posted by IfByYes in 30 Posts To 30, From The Owlery, Life and Love

≈ 27 Comments

Tags

child care, compassion, daycare, guilt, unemployment, work

PH and I can’t decide what to do about Owl’s child care situation.

Perhaps it is typical of us that we are turning such a non-issue into an issue.

Reasons why Owl’s care should be a non-issue:

1. Daycare Lady was the first person I called when I got The Infamous Email, because I was shaking and upset and Owl was clinging to me and going “maaaaamaaaaaaaaaaa” and I have never been so close to putting him through a wall as I felt at that moment. So she said to bring him right away, of course, and please, not to worry – that no matter what, Owl would never lose his spot with her.

2. When PH and I came to pick Owl up at the end of that day, she spent fifteen minutes trying to persuade PH that we didn’t need to pay her while I was out of work. That she would not charge us until I found a job again. PH of course refused to consider that.

3. Daycare Lady and her older daughter (who has been known to CRY on weekends because she missed Owl) both pleaded with us to continue bringing him. PH and I assurred them that we would, because has developed an attachment to them (he now calls Daycare Lady by name and has invented a sign for her, which is tapping his chin for some reason) and we wouldn’t want to yank them out of his life like that. They basically responded with “yes, please, please don’t take him away from us.”

4. When I picked Owl up after my interview on Thursday, Daycare Lady again tried to convince me to accept Owl’s care for free while I searched for work: “Carol, I know how men are, they are stubborn about money and their pride causes problems, but Carol, please believe me when I say that I want you to keep bringing Owl and I don’t want to charge you. This can just be between you and me. Don’t try to give me money for this. I want you to bring him.” When I said that maybe we could “figure something out”, like taking Owl down to part time, she insisted again and again “Carol, please. You are like me – your family lives far away. Owl is like my family now. Please. I want you to think of us as your family. Please, bring Owl tomorrow. Bring him every day. We want to see him. When you get work again, then you can pay again, but until then, I feel it is wrong to charge you.”

5. It is undeniable that Owl would prefer to continue going. How PH and I ended up with such a little extrovert, we have no idea, but there is no arguing his extroversion. He hates being housebound. On the day that I kept him home, between The Day Of Infamy and the job interview, he kept bringing me his boots and signing “coat”, and then, if that didn’t work, he’d haul MY boots over to me. Despite the fact that it was freezing cold outside, he loved walking in the snow because HE LOVES A CHALLENGE. He just wanted to be out, out, out. We took three walks that day, one of which was all the way to The Esso, which is a half a kilometre away. Yes, HE WALKED all the way there. In the snow. Tiny step by tiny step. He wanted to walk back, too, but I carried him for time reasons.

So, to sum up:

  • Owl loves daycare.
  • Owl’s daycare loves him.
  • It won’t cost us money.
  • It would make people sad to actually refuse.

 So where’s the problem?

Well, seriously, how do you accept something like that from someone? At what point does it just become taking advantage of someone’s generosity?

It didn’t help that when PH dropped Owl at daycare today, intending to reopen the “please let us pay you” conversation, Daycare Lady met him at the door with a heaping plate of food for us – rice with some kind of lamb curry on top – lest we grow faint in our house-cleansing efforts.

At what point does it become too much? How can we get her to accept our money? 

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