We’ve signed on for another year. In the apartment Brett found. That I didn’t see. Before moving here. It’s a corner unit with lots of nice light. On a steerage-like floor that ‘let’s us use the stairs’. We negotiated a lower rent increase and felt good. Until we recalled again how expensive rent really is here.Things are going well for everyone. The kids are making friends and generally really happy. And it just sort of happened that we extended our original contract.
It’s odd to pause and lift your head and look around at what life looks like right now.
We jumped at this opportunity 2 years ago for very obvious reasons.

We were itching for some kind of a change. We didn’t know what that meant, but we could feel that we wanted to change direction. But in which way, for how long, with the intentions of it leading to what? We really didn’t think that far ahead.

An amazingly exciting and different and challenging opportunity had been handed to us, in a salad bar line up, quite literally, and by the point of handing over my $8.00 for my bland and soggy salad, we knew that this was the change that we’d wanted.

Not New York, specifically. Hell, we’d only been here a handful of times, and all well within the expected framework of bewildered and overwhelmed and anxious tourist or business visitor. Most certainly not through the lens of actually setting up camp, establishing routines and living ‘normal’ life here.

And we’ve made it nearly 2 years. Later this month I’ll think back to the blurry last few days in Calgary, and even blurrier, and yet remarkably sharply-imprinted-in-my -memory, first few days in NYC.

Packing up and saying goodbye, and then unpacking and saying hello to our old and new homes.
We entered into this with no expectations of what was ‘next’. But we safely held a foot on our old home, leaving a home for rent and an enormous storage locker full of ‘stuff’… As thoughtfully as we could getting rid of things that ‘the kids would outgrow by the time we returned in 2 years.’

And 2 years have come and gone, and we’re here. For another year for now.

Such a gift, really, to have these options in our lives. And it comes with such responsibility, again, to make the most of it, to take advantage of it for us all, to not f*%# it all up, and to not f*#+ our little babies up in the process of it all.
We are wrapping up this week at work before 2 glorious weeks of holiday time.

It’s tempting to enter into holidays as a chance to really ‘focus’ and ‘figure stuff out’ and ‘make a plan’… Perhaps it’s my own age, or the age of my kids, or just pace of life right now, but I am so happily excited to try to relax and enjoy as much of the holiday moments as I can. I have fewer expectations than I might have previously. I have done the minimum amount of planning. And I’m happily looking forward to this time of resting, reading, playing, lounging, sipping, and snacking. So a few expectations then I suppose…but really, nothing of consequence other than to be.

I was eager to return home today to hear about Crazy Hat Day at camp- . we decided that the day and our amazing representation (f*%#ing  remembering at 9pm the night before that we needed to craft something and actually pulling it off with substantial support) called for Mexican out.

Our dinner conversations revealed that Nora had worn a Velcro suit at the Camp Fair today. While wearing her awesome Mother-in-the-clouds-dragon hat. And was tossed to a wall. And we learned that Eli was put into a rolly-polly friendly plastic Zorb ball thing at the park after camp by the babysitter. And they both loved the shit out of it.

And then, as I sipped my margarita, Nora told me how she asked their babysitter whether she would be voting for Hillary or Trump.

Brett has one expectation of our holiday thanks to my second margarita.

What kind of a goalie can’t juggle?

It’s on.

And on and on and on…