Today was a better day in terms of productivity. The heat let up a little, allowing for more focus and concentration as well as making it possible to sit at the computer without sticking to the chair. I got a fair bit done and plan to spend some more time on it later tonight. I hope the heat doesn't return before I get through the modules I need to finish writing.
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I talked on the phone with my mum for a couple of hours tonight. Her mammogram turned out okay and she was told there was nothing of concern to the doctor. Great relief.
Things are getting better in my relationship with my parents, especially with my mother. The moment when it clicked and I realised that I had to make the first steps, the first moves toward her, things changed. We've been getting closer and talking more often. And when we do talk, we talk more about real things instead of just making chit chat.
Somehow all this has made it easier to empathize with what it must have been like to be a parent, a mother in particular, raising children in the seventies, trying to prove that it was possible to maintain a full time career while having babies, keeping the house clean, and making homemade meals while keeping the cat's-eye eyeliner looking perfect. Heh. What I mean is that I think I can understand better now than I ever did why she wasn't always so easygoing.
What's more, listening to Shawn describe life with his father and stepmother and half-sisters, underlines the thing my parents believed in; children do have to be taught to be self-sufficient. Shawn's sisters have been raised by parents who dote on them, chauffeuring them about willingly while they were younger, and buying them new cars when they turned eighteen, paying for their entire postsecondary education, and so forth. These girls, at nineteen, have become unbearable to live with, ungrateful for all the gifts their parents have bestowed upon them, and helpless to do anything for themselves. At nineteen, their mother still does their laundry and makes their lunches and neither of them knows how to take a bus.
I didn't always like the feeling of being left to make it on my own, but I am glad for the things that it taught me. Like how to earn my own living. How to be resourceful and how to take care of myself. Somehow there has to be a good balance to strike between leaving your children to the sharks and making them into invalids.
In the end, will children all still blame their parents anyway?
Things are getting better in my relationship with my parents, especially with my mother. The moment when it clicked and I realised that I had to make the first steps, the first moves toward her, things changed. We've been getting closer and talking more often. And when we do talk, we talk more about real things instead of just making chit chat.
Somehow all this has made it easier to empathize with what it must have been like to be a parent, a mother in particular, raising children in the seventies, trying to prove that it was possible to maintain a full time career while having babies, keeping the house clean, and making homemade meals while keeping the cat's-eye eyeliner looking perfect. Heh. What I mean is that I think I can understand better now than I ever did why she wasn't always so easygoing.
What's more, listening to Shawn describe life with his father and stepmother and half-sisters, underlines the thing my parents believed in; children do have to be taught to be self-sufficient. Shawn's sisters have been raised by parents who dote on them, chauffeuring them about willingly while they were younger, and buying them new cars when they turned eighteen, paying for their entire postsecondary education, and so forth. These girls, at nineteen, have become unbearable to live with, ungrateful for all the gifts their parents have bestowed upon them, and helpless to do anything for themselves. At nineteen, their mother still does their laundry and makes their lunches and neither of them knows how to take a bus.
I didn't always like the feeling of being left to make it on my own, but I am glad for the things that it taught me. Like how to earn my own living. How to be resourceful and how to take care of myself. Somehow there has to be a good balance to strike between leaving your children to the sharks and making them into invalids.
In the end, will children all still blame their parents anyway?
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Shawn's stepmother has several sisters who teach in Vancouver in the same district in which we will be living. They seem to think I won't have a problem finding a job once I get through this initial screening process. I hope they're right.
I have found a program at Simon Fraser University that could allow me to teach and work on my Masters degree simultaneously. I have missed the deadlines for application this year, which is probably for the best, but if all goes well, I could apply for the following year and be done in two.
That puts ??babies?? on a three year schedule, which would make me thirty-six. Seems kind of crazy to be making babies so late in life, and yet it seems like every year that passes puts things more in perspective that makes the possibility of not completely ruining an innocent little human being more likely.
I have found a program at Simon Fraser University that could allow me to teach and work on my Masters degree simultaneously. I have missed the deadlines for application this year, which is probably for the best, but if all goes well, I could apply for the following year and be done in two.
That puts ??babies?? on a three year schedule, which would make me thirty-six. Seems kind of crazy to be making babies so late in life, and yet it seems like every year that passes puts things more in perspective that makes the possibility of not completely ruining an innocent little human being more likely.
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