october, 2005

october 20

wow, where did october go? what a blog slacker i've been.

my phobia is back to haunt me. toby has been off his food and complaining of a tummy ache. unfortunately, when he wakes me up with this at 6.30am i have to leapt out of bed leaving sascha to deal with him in case he's sick - even when it's just wind or something. arrrrggghh. anyway, my new year's resolution this year was to (a) do something about my IBS - which i've taken some steps towards and (b) do something about my vomit phobia. finally life has become just too stressful to resist (b) any longer. i've had the phobia since i was about 6 years old. it got progressively worse and in the last few years has become slightly better. i now only tremble for half an hour instead of an hour after any sight/sound/hint of anything happening and can use bathrooms where someone has been sick at some point in the last year. unfortunately, although it's become a little better, the number of incidents i have to deal with in a year have quadrupled since having kids. i always wondered whether i would actually be able to stay in the same house alone with my children when they were vomiting. thank god, it seems i can, but it's absolute agony to do so. if i'm brutally honest some of the appeal of going back to work was so that i didn't have to spend so much time stressing about this. anyway, the thought that it might happen takes up way too much of my life and today's panic about [what panned out to be] nothing at all was just the last straw.

i was very stressed when i turned up at work. fortunately i work in an office full of therapists so my boss flung open some windows, got me doing some breathing exercises and then called HER therapist to see if he could see me. anyway, i might still take her up on that offer but miraculously the stars aligned and i managed to get an appointment to see my doctor to see what she would say. my doctor said she would find out about richmond and vancouver wait lists for group therapy for phobics and someone would call me. in the meantime we debated the merits of beta blockers v's a valium-type thing. we were both pretty anti-valium since there was a good chance it would render me unconscious for a day or so - not helpful when faced with a sick kid by yourself. i now have on hand some beta blockers for emergency use. the pharmacist was telling me about the dizzy, drowsy, nauseation side-effects but since i was standing there experiencing all of the symptoms just through the stress of the whole thing i figure what the hell. i don't know if i'll ever take them, but it feels good to have them around!

ok, enough about vomit [which, by the way, i realise is just a physical reaction which is really not a big deal]. i'll keep obsessing about the whole thing and you can go on with your lives! so what else has been happening. finally a little more scrapbooking has been happening and there's a croptoberfest on saturday so i plan to do plenty there. last week, colin [sascha's dad] came to do some work for family place. the building of a small shed for a day turned into a 6-day giant shed building and map drawing extravaganza but it was great to see him and he very very kindly did a couple of different babysitting stints for me [hence me finally getting some scrapbooking done]. the big news is that we saw sascha for a whole weekend. of course, it was a weekend spent at my office, but that's not the point! aly and i went to the birthday/goodbye party of one of aly's friends from preschool last year. their family are moving to new zealand next month. they've also just found out they're expecting their 3rd child. i thought they were crazy for a minute or 2 until i realised that we moved to california from england [via japan] when aly was 11 months old and i was 5 months pregnant with toby - so obviously they're perfectly sane like us.

october 8

so here we are in our lovely new house. we have the majority of the basics unpacked and it's all looking pretty reasonable. this weekend is a long weekend [canadian thanksgiving] so i have high hopes that by the end of monday, the rest of the needed furniture will be out of the garage and into the house. it's still a little weird because the old tenant [a family of 3] are still living in our ground floor suite. it's v strange buying a house and arriving where someone else knows the rules [about trash, mail and laundry days - i have given them unlimited laundry days in the shared laundry room since they only used to be allowed in once a week - i've no idea how u manage that with a child in the house.] their lease runs out at the end of the month, but apparently they might move early. they seem like very nice people, but it will be good to get fully moved in.

anyway, we love the house. sascha and i both commented on how the family room instantly felt like home.

moving sucked [naturally] - the worst weather of the year so far i think - gale force winds, driving rain, a leaky truck and 4 sets of stairs [2 at the old house, 2 at the new house] to negotiate between the 2 of us. sascha only had one day off so although on the 2nd day there was a lot less rain, there was also a lot more work for me - with 4 or 5 minivan trips to make. i was VERY happy to have everything in the new house and to have signed off on the old place [at the last minute i decided to give myself an early birthday treat and pay for someone else to clean the old house].

in other news, we have a new car. actually, the dealer has our new car. i think i mentioned previously that we had ordered one of the new mazda 5s - a very mini mini van. anyway, after calling in at the dealership to see if it had arrived yet, we were met with the great news that it has indeed arrived and was even in our first colour choice. unfortunately, the dealer is unable to release the car to us because it has already been recalled [something important to do with the exhaust apparently]. we're not even allowed to test drive it and it will be 3 weeks before the repair is done since the people who already have their cars need to return them to be fixed and have priority. unfortunately this has served to remind us of the vow we had both taken years ago never to buy a new model of car after we bought one of the first releases of the jaguar s-type and it spent more time in the garage being recalled than it did at home with us. fingers crossed that mazda have their act together at least a little more than jaguar did.

my birthday was low key but happy. we spent most of the day spending far too much money in ikea on stuff for the new house. after that i headed to grocery store - exciting, i know, but i was by myself for once which made a nice change.

this week has been a bit of a nightmare. it started with toby throwing up on monday morning. i managed to persuade sascha to cancel a couple of meetings and stay home with him in the morning while i went to a meeting and fortunately by the time i got home, all the excitement and disgustingness had died down. i still went into a panic attack every time he burped for the next 2 days but he happily went back to school the next day. [i have a vomit phobia for anyone wondering what all the fuss is about]. the funny thing is, it's always a relief when one of them is actually sick because i get more and more nervous the longer they haven't because i know we must be due for something. i've been on high alert watching aly for any symptoms, but so far, so good.

work was also chaos this week - my boss was away a lot, i was catching up after a week of days off or days working from home, we started running a new program which i was coordinating and had a big thanksgiving party. i was looking forward to the weekend being a big relief but this morning we turned up to swim class only to find it had been cancelled and then sascha has had to spend the entire day in the office [this was supposed to be his first weekend at home for as long as i can remember]. oh well. i'll just have to go and work on getting my new scrapbook room set up to cheer myself up!

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