For the first week away.

While I was walking the dog as I do every night at about 11pm, I took this photo with my phone.  It’s hard to grasp the intensity of this light from a photo, but it is mind bogglingly bright and dizzyingly high.  A giant light sabre that goes all the way to space.

Probably a lot of pictures of this being posted today.
I’d visited the memorial site on previous trips, and still don’t think I’ll ever really grasp the horror of what something like this represents to human nature…
We are capable of amazing and horrendous acts…

Walking the dog on our new ( not sure how permanent) early morning walk/run routine, I stopped in front of the Freedom Tower- it’s in our new backyard.
I tried to imagine what had really been there, tried to imagine the shock, the confusion, the hurt, the anger, the fear, and the dust that must have consumed the entire city, let alone our new neighbourhood.
I tried. But I still don’t have the capacity to really understand it.
There were police and firefighters everywhere already at 6am… I’ve done this walk now 4 times, and haven’t seen that presence, but maybe I wasn’t aware or looking for it.
I’ve lived in this city for 5 minutes, and already I feel a millionth of the protective nature proper New York natives must feel for this crazy place.
I’m not too naive to suggest that this was an act against a purely benevolent, innocent nation. But many of the real people affected by this act were exactly that. Doing their thing. Living in their city. Being citizens with their heads down.
And their world was rocked.

It’s gross and it’s sad.
And it’s complicated.
But you see people moving and building and repairing.
From my 5 minutes it here seems like that anyway.

It was really weird.  Packing up my gear in our teeny apartment, walking down the long hallway, taking the elevator, having the doorman look at me like I’m crazy, hailing a cab at 9:00pm with about 100lbs of gear, not knowing where the f_ck Sky Rink is in the MASSIVE Chelsea Piers complex, more walking, taking another elevator up to the rink, entering the public area of the rink and seeing a goalie dressing in front of everyone, me thinking “man, that dude is weird”, walking into the east rink to play for the Dougies, realizing that all of the dressing rooms have been converted into locker spaces to generate more revenue, seeing guys with their bags strewn in the stands and keeping bags on the bench, walking back into the public area and seeing more guys stripping down to dress with wives/girlfriends watching and walking around us, me feeling crazy uncomfortable because I have to dress in front of said women, finally meeting the guy that called me out for the game, meeting another goalie that tells me this is the best ice I’ll find in NYC or any Borough, stepping on the ice late because I don’t know WTF I’m doing and missing the warm up, playing with a bunch of expat Canucks against Columbia University alumni, lamenting that I still have dish soap my water bottle, wiping the floor with Columbia University 11-2, my contact asking me to come out again, undressing in public again, showering in a weird little locker room, hearing guys shooting the shit about their jobs, one was working in sales for a cut-throat israeli startup and the other was on set running something or other for the new Tina Fey show, getting dressed in public again, walking like 500m with my dumb gear to find another cab, riding home while texting Mark in Calgary, attributing my victory to training at higher altitude, getting home and having another perplexed doorman ask me if I play or if this gear was my son’s, walking back down the CRAZY long hallway to our place, airing all of my gear out in the living room(LOL), sipping some scotch and retiring to bed.

After speaking more with my fellow goalie, I found the holy grail of skate sharpening in Manhattan as well, located here.  This is good because my 3/8 sharpening is much too sharp for the quality of ice at Chelsea Piers.  I think I’ll have to go down to 1/2.  I’m going to miss Gus at Breakaway Sports in Calgary.

We’ve got it easy and awesome back home, but I’ll it try again next week.

So- we all arrived where we needed to this morning. Somehow.
I got up extra early to take the dog for a nice stroll on the esplanade and was again amazed at how busy it already was at 6am. Adjusting to the fact that we will really not have alone time outside for a few years could take a bit…! I don’t mind having company at all times- it’s just different.

The kids took the drop-offs today harder than we’d hoped, and I did the classic cheese-ball 50’s housewife move and included a smiley-face heart-filled picture in each of their lunch boxes last night, with the hopes that that might provide a bit of a lift at lunch time today….

We were really worried about Eli as he was pretty upset, even after riding his strider bike to school today (which Brett had to carry back to the apartment as there’s not storage space there either. damn).
He emailed the director and she wrote back this heart-wrenching, but appreciated note. I’ve read it about 86 times and it still gets me…

“Eli is doing well today. Tomorrow he will probably be extremely upset when he realizes he has to stay here without you again. Day by day the center will look better and better though. I’ll try to be in Eli’s class in the mornings to help him transition more easily.

We acknowledged that he is sad and told him that it is alright to feel that way. He drew a picture with a sad face for you, but he said he will draw a picture with a happy face before you return because he is feeling better. We told him that you are sad also because you miss him and that made him feel better.

This is the tough part, but soon he’ll be really enthusiastic about coming! Check in anytime you would like, I hope this report was helpful!”

Milestone milestone milestone.

Our stuff arrived Saturday and my amazing Aunt and Uncle spent the day with us. Not only was it helpful, but it was comforting to have their familiar faces here with us, so quickly after we’ve moved here.

We’ve got the apartment at 85% functionality (the last 15% is reserved until our damn bikes have storage outside of the living room and the remaining 3 cupboards that are overflowing can be properly ‘container store’ organized by me….

Last night we celebrated (maybe we’re rewarding ourselves too much for these little milestones- i’m not sure) by ordering in Lomardi’s pizza and watching Muppets Take Manhattan. That is still a quality movie, i insist. Pretty neat watching it IN Manhattan.

And now- we are at work. Real live work.
We likely will be fairly nomadic in here until we move to the new office space in November, so this week I’m camped at someone’s desk who likes Vans, Scotch, and Costa Rica. It’ll work…

Feels a bit like a calm before the storm of work once people realize we are here for real and functioning, so trying to brace for that…:)

And repeating the mantra ‘I can do this.’ A lot. To silence the ‘WTF are we doing?’…

Finally.  Watching Netflix on an inflatable bed can only last so long.

We have the elevator booked from 9am to 1pm and I really hope the movers show up on time.

Pretty sure that my first exposure to a full on legit PTA in Calgary would have been enough. But no- it happened here today in Manhattan, and it was intense. A letter was sent home in the folder. And I thought I needed to do what it said and join the ‘welcome back’ meeting hosted by the PTA.

I shuffled down from kid drop-off too awkwardly early. Surveyed the tables to find out where the front of the cafeteria would actually be, and then sat at the back.
It was actually generally informative and again encouraging, but intense for me. No longer is parenting just something that Brett and I will manage , sometimes well, sometimes actively, sometimes with enthusiasm when we are properly focused and motivated and responsible… With this transition to the age where our first child enters the school community , we too enter this community. From this community we get support and guidance and encouragement. And to this community we now must be accountable in some way…
We’re exposed in a whole new way… Nothing unique, I realize that. But it’s a big transition in my mothering head…
Exposed and challenged and accountable.
So that was this mornings’ realization. Along with Eli adjusting initially much more positively to his new preschool than we’d thought… He continues to surprise us…

This afternoon- the final mission before starting work was to find out how New Yorkers really grocery shop.
I do a full head shake in dismay and take absolute responsibility for this afternoon’s fail…when every article I’ve read talks about this cheese shop, this bakery, this produce market, this butcher… and doesn’t talk about hauling the entire family to Trader Joes’ in the UWS to compare against our neighbourhood Whole Foods ( which is going to bankrupt us), it’s a bad, bad idea. But I was panicked to get kid lunch supplies sorted and dinners for next week sorted. Kid lunches- a new thing, but manageable. Dinners for next week- an entirely un-New York thing to do. I realized both after our disastrous journey. Sigh.

Upon arriving with TWO stupid strollers, because Nora wanted one to push her stuffie and we agreed to it, we found the line up to be an hour long to check out. An hour.

Brett took Eli back on the subway and I decided to walk to another trader joes in Chelsea with Nora in her stroller. 50 blocks. Read- we all needed some space. In NYC. Wow.

I ended up buying beer and wine and mint chocolate ice cream at the original Whole Foods, and we are all on speaking terms again.
Ups and downs…:)

Mixed emotions on this one!

This whole experience has been like a series of hurdles. And that’s not meant to suggest that hurdles in this context are entirely bad. Sometimes they are. Sometimes you bang your shin or your toe and you fall hard. Sometimes the hurdles seem endless and frustrating.
But keeping things in perspective, more often than not the hurdles are expected and laid out in a pretty decent order, easily enough to navigate with focus, precision, and calm. Run, run, jump. Run, run, jump. Go, go, go. We can DO this!
We ARE doing this!
But they’re still hurdles… And maybe some days they truly feel like hurdles ( in the shitty sense), and on better days, or better moments, for that matter, they feel like milestones.

Yesterday we met two big milestones.
Both kids were registered for their new schools, Nora at the public school on our same block, PS89, and Eli at a preschool a 10 minute walk from our place called Bright Horizons.
Again, having not seen either facility or met anyone in person had me very, very anxious.
I knew Brett would have made a good choice, but I had the gross ‘first day of school jitters’ but in an insanely maternal way for the first time…
Upon walking into Nora’s school, I was overcome… Thankfully I held it together in front of the amazingly warm and welcoming principle, but I was on the verge of cracking the entire time…. Overcome with relief. Relief that my kid would be in a safe place. A happy place. A really, really great place!
Neither kid was thrilled during their visits, but since then they’ve each talked excitedly about tomorrow, their first official day….
We’ll see…