Hello

I keep talking about the summer as though we are still in February.

“We’re going to try and make it to Ontario in the summer” I say, hopefully.

“Adam wants to make a trip out to Alberta in the summer” I say, happily.

“In the summer we’re going to…”

“when it’s summer we can…”

“Summer…”

“Summer…”

IT’s JUNE IN TWO DAYS. OR THREE. OR SOMETHING. WHATEVER. SOON! It’s June SOON! And June means summer.

SUMMER IS IN TWO (THREE?) DAYS!

What does this mean? Several things.

a) Adam and I need to sit down and figure out how we are going to manage three trips this summer/fall. One to introduce Olive to my granddaddy (he of Olive You ) and the rest of my Ontario relatives; one to a friend’s wedding in Edmonton shortly after Olive’s first birthday (NSJkfjhdsjbfjdnjdsknk!), and another to Mexico when my best friend gets married in mid-November.

This is a lot of travelling. This is especially a lot of travelling for two people who currently have zero income coming in and hey! We’re just going to blow our down payment on airfare, mmmkay?

So yes. A sit-down, counting our pennies, budgeting etc. meeting needs to be had. Or I could just win the lottery? Except I keep forgetting to buy tickets? But I have like, numbers and everything? Maybe someone could just gift me with millions? Like…now?

b) Olive is turning one soon. I know you might think I am early on this one, but I assure you, I AM NOT. She turns eight months in a few days. eight months is only four months away from 12 months, and I almost passed grade 12 math so I know that 12-8= WAY TOO SOON. She turns one way too soon.

I refuse. I protest. I am on strike from babies getting older and standing up on their own tiny elephant legs in their cribs, forcing us to lower their  mattresses and mygodjuststop. Stop.

Olive turning one means several things. i) I need to start planning her first birthday party because, I mean, this is THE birthday party. All other parties will mean nothing after this, the FIRST birthday. Also I will let her have cake, which will be her first taste of refined sugar and my god if she is anything like me she will go batshit insane for sugar. It’s going to be fabulous/horrifying.

and ii) I need to think about/ panic about/ cry about going back to work. I might need to do this a little sooner than four months, actually. It’s looking like it might be easier for me to find work here than for Adam, so we’ve been talking about me going back to work and Adam staying home with Olive, which, I mean the feminist in me is extremely happy about that. Gender equality and whatnot. But the mom in me, the woman who loves her daughter and can’t spend three seconds with her without burying my face into her neck and snuffling her warm smell, that part of me dies a little every time I think about it.

I can not imagine being away from her for eight hours a day, every day. It makes my heart hurt, and how incredibly ironic that we moved here to be closer to family, but I will be further apart from her than I ever anticipated.

c) We have been cooking things. And making things. Things without dairy, or soy, or sugar, or gluten. Adam’s sister has decided to try this eating style to see if it has any positive impacts on her family’s health, and in in the interests of solidarity, and because I love me a good old fashioned crazy-restrictive hippie food cleanse, we have jumped aboard.

Whenever I do shit like this part of me thinks “Madeleine, you are ridiculous and you are complicating food to the point that it’s not even enjoyable any more.” and another, more smug part of me thinks “Chapeau, Madeleine. You are eliminating all of the non-food crap from your diet and eating fruits, vegetables and healthy fats like nature intended.” and then the two parts glare at each other and eventually end up wrestling, one trying to shove cheese from a jar into the other’s mouth as she tries to fend her off by beating her about the head with a stalk of kale.

We (yes, we. ADAM TOO. Seriously I have no idea how this happened HE HAS GIVEN UP BEER! [replacing it with what seems suspiciously like equivalent quantities of gin, but nevermind]), we are trying it for three months. At the end of these three months if we have not become superhuman health machines, mass quantities of goat cheese are headed down my gullet.

Happy Thursday!