Post Industrial Brambles

Ever since Trev turned two and a half he has been really easy to take care of. In part this is because he has become able to play on his own. This is a wonderful development but it does leave a mom a bit perplexed as to how to connect with the little guy. I suppose I could play Tonka Trucks with him, but that is just not my scene. My strategy therefore is to take him places that he is interested in and make toys that he (hopefully) likes. Since he showed some interest in spacial arrangement of houses as well as in the process of building houses, I decided that we should make a house model that takes this into consideration.

So, this is what we got so far: A diaper box with “insulation”.

I am about to start making the roof. Trev was really excited about the windows so we made some provisional ones. We will cut them out properly later

Red Guitar – Old Vine Temparanillo Gamacha Navarra 2007 – our house wine
Inniskillin – Varietal Series – Pinot Noir – 2008 – tasty
Strewn – Rouge’s Lot – Cabernet Franc Cabernet Sauvignon – 2007 – this wine is not too good, we will probably use the rest of the bottle for cooking

I am trying to get Eclipse settled on my laptop so I can work on my thesis. This is day three. Eclipse is fantastic when you use it every day so you remember what you’re supposed to do and you handle updates incrementally. If you use Eclipse once ever 6 months, it is poison. I am breaking out in hives.

At least it doesn’t throw up on me like some little guy I know.

The strangest thing happened to me last week. I started to miss work. No, I do not miss sitting at the desk for 8 hours at the time or the constant decreases in the size of the local workforce or things that irritate me. But I miss doing engineering, I miss the coworkers, I miss the lunches with Heather, I miss rolling my eyes at adversity, I miss the two loudmouth managers a cubicle row over whose comments on the state of their projects and the rest of the World make me spit out my coffee laughing every morning. I have been wondering how my team is doing since I left, but I am afraid of finding out.

This is the point where I usually talk about favorite moves of the past year, but I really haven’t seen too many movies, definitely not enough to make a list. The past year has been strange and though I managed to do some fun things, most of the time I was really tired, partially from work and school, partially from being pregnant.

I don’t really know what to expect for the next year and I do not want to make any resolutions. I will spend most of the time taking care of Owen and Trevor. Trevor loves being outside, and I want to encourage him so I will try and get him to be outside as much as possible. However, I will also have Owen with me, so this might prove to be difficult from time to time.

I want to work on getting back into shape. I did pretty well during the pregnancy, but I still have far to go. The challenge with this is that I do not want to overdo it and end up in physio like I did last time. I am hoping to do a lot of biking, which will be challenging because Owen will still be too young to take on the bike. I also want to do some cross country skiing, but how I am going to manage that, I have no clue. I probably won’t.

I need to finish my thesis. I have been making very slow progress over last six months.

What I will probably be able to do is spend time with my boys. I just have to make sure I am rested enough to be able to enjoy myself.

Yesterday was my last day of work. I managed to finish up my projects and leave everything as tidy as it could possibly be. I feel like such an Useful Engine.

So today is my first day at home. I made myself a to-do list but have not really accomplished much from it. It is just nice to be at home and enjoy some quiet time. My excuse is that I don’t have much of it left.

I have to decide whether to set up a separate blog for Owen or just hack him into Trevor’s blog. I am leaning more on putting him in Trevor’s blog because I suspect I will be writing about both of them at the same time. I guess I could always cross-post, but then people who follow the blogs through the Reader would get the same post twice or something.

I have been feeling pretty good considering how far along in the pregnancy I am. The lack of stress at work because I managed to close up all of my projects and ability to get enough sleep to get me through the day made everything so much better over the last few weeks. I am still tired and am eating like there is no tomorrow, but I think this goes with the territory.

We’ve had the first snow last week so it is definitely late fall. I am getting ready for the Season. I just finished the bulk of my Christmas shopping. I still have a little bit of sewing and a lot of knitting to do. I don’t really have to do any of it, but I find that knitting is very relaxing lately. It is much more convenient than reading when Trev is around. I can talk to him and play with him while knitting and when he is not around I am too tired to do anything else.

My pregnancy is going well so far. I am now in my 35th week. Five weeks away from the due date and two weeks away from the point where Trevor was born. I am feeling good, though, like pretty much all through this year, very tired. I still have three weeks of work left and it still looks like I will be able to wrap up my projects. I have a lot of things to get done at home, and unless Owen comes early, I just might be able to get those done as well. I am expecting Owen to be the polar opposite of Trevor, I don’t know why. Perhaps because he is sitting in the textbook position whereas Trevor was breach. Then again, before Trev was born I thought I was going to be the strict parent and Chris the softie, when it is actually the other way around.

I finished up my paper on Monday two full days before it was due. I then took two days to play with Trevor and go to sleep pretty much as soon as he did. I am starting to feel a bit more relaxed and the continuous slew of Holiday lunches at work is getting me in the festive mood. In fact, I am baking Christmas cookies right now, or I will, as soon as I finish this post.

I am not going to be working on my thesis until January, but I will spend some time getting everything set up. I want to install and configure CVS on my laptop and do a bit of clean up of the design.

Apart form that, I want to set up budget for next year, clean up the house, finish up my Christmas shopping, make my holiday crafts (I am making gift bags this year – goodbye stupid wrapping paper that people just rip and throw away!), bake and freeze a few bread loafs, catch up on reading, figure out how to make food in the slow cooker etc, figure out a new fitness schedule…

This is the first year that I will be working through holidays as my company changed policies. I used to look forward to the break because it forced me to relax right at the time when I needed it the most. I am sort of glad that I have more vacation days as a result of the change, but still feel a bit awkward about working during that time. I am bringing Trev to work on Christmas eve, because that’s the tradition in my department. There will be other kids there whose parents promised me they will entertain him.

There is so much snow out there it is a home weekend for us. Chris’ plans are to copy 10 records.

My plan is to tidy and play with the boy. The two are mutually exclusive and at cross purposes. I will be busy the whole weekend and still feel like I got nothing done.

Ever since Trev started daycare and Chris went back to work, life has been crazy. I don’t think I made it to any spinning classes in two months, I go to gym once a week at work if I can compass it. I do make it to school more often than not though my goal of submitting a paper for June would be much assisted by more free time of which I have none. To top it all I am going to Toronto for a week again. The hotel has a sorry excuse for a gym, so I just might get a workout.

I’m off to Toronto next week. I am a bit sad to be away from the boys for four days, but hopefully I will get a lot of work done to make it worth it.

I’ve been scoping out the public transit and I must admit that I miss living in a big city. My hotel and factory are in the middle of nowhere and there is a bus between them every 3 minutes. Drool. That never happens in Ottawa. On the minus side I don’t think I will get to visit too much while I’m there. I’ll try and work like crazy so I won’t have to go back too often during the next couple of months. Wish me luck.

To make everything more fun, I am currently reading “Brown Girl in the Ring” as a part of the Canada Reads program. It is a futuristic novel in which downtown Toronto core becomes so destitute and violent the rest of Canada builds walls around it and leaves it to be run by a mob boss from the top of the CN tower.

Google has broken my heart. I fell in love with the Google Calendar and now it doesn’t work properly any more. It stopped working earlier this summer and I thought it was just a phase, but I just sent out an invite and it looks like it is still not working. What happened to the “must not be evil” motto?

I am going get a tub of ice cream now…