Monday's child is a grump about turning 34.

Another year man. I have the (mis)fortune of being born just a few weeks after Christmas, when everyone, including myself, is beat down by miserable weather and the excess of the holiday season. Cheers to Capricorns everywhere, my brothers and sisters in January despair! I truly did not feel like celebrating this year, though after moping around on a family chat my sister convinced me that cinnamon buns at her house wouldn’t be so bad and mom would even bring the fruit. 

33 was uneventful for me. I got a new job, but seemed to fall into it fairly easily and the change didn’t cause much turmoil for anyone. I like the work, I’m still working for a lumbering bureaucracy and my pay is exactly the same, so it was a pretty safe transition. Max gets easier all the time (though more difficult in a way as he becomes his own person and continually demands more agency over his life). Kris and I spent our tenth year together and the predictabilities of our life this past year have been a great comfort. We’re solid. No real troubles except perhaps disagreeing on whether to cut The Big Bang Theory out of our schedule (I finally conceded that yes, it is an unfunny 21 minutes/week that has outstayed its welcome on television). We’re generally on the same parenting page and manage to trade off being the patient one when the other is not on a fairly regular basis. If I’m throwing my hands up in frustration and saying “fine, you can sleep naked and pee all over your sheets!” Kris will calmly slide into the room to complete the diapering of our son. Vice versa if that same child refuses to eat his breakfast or put on his winter gear. We take turns washing his hair while he screams and both took snips so neither could be fully blamed if the latest haircut turned out disastrously.

I am happy to have had a wonderfully boring year. Good too, because others I know had to contend with births, deaths, new jobs, house-hunting and all the other majors. 33 didn’t have any of that for me and I’m really hoping 34 will follow suit. Here’s to nothing at all!

An old bagel

I bought bagels. The 18 year olds working the counter both called me ma'am. Then one said my plaid shirt was cute. I left confused. Do they think I'm old? Do they really like my shirt? Kris solved it. He told me they thought it was cute that I was trying to be hip with a fashionable shirt. Joke's on him though because I'm pretty sure plaid hasn't been fashionable since 1996.

Small Victories

Sometimes, when you feel like an idiot or a jerk, it helps to remember the good decisions you’ve made in life. Like the time when I was 18 and I didn’t get off the train in Jasper and rent a car with a bunch of strangers to drive the rest of the way to Vancouver. That one middle-aged French guy really tried to convince me but I resisted. That was really smart of me. Good job Alex. The three-day food poisoning I got from eating a ham sandwich on the train later on was super brutal but I still feel I made the right choice. A little salmonella I will take over the risk of rape and death and disappearing forever into the Rocky Mountain wilderness. Small victories friends, small victories.

Things we text.

I found this text message exchange in my drafts. I don't know how old this is. Three years maybe. Clearly I felt it was important enough to save and then immediately forget. Here you go - a glimpse into our marriage:

Kris Foster: Griff just texted me that she farted on your pillow

Alexandra Foster: Ya

Alexandra Foster: Lol

Alexandra Foster: Well she sharted on yours

Kris Foster: She also liked all of your grapes

Alexandra Foster: Licked?

Alexandra Foster: Or liked as in ate them all

Kris Foster: Licked, grapes aren't good for her

Kris Foster: I don't have any grapes to shart on

Kris Foster: Infinity no return

Kris Foster: Ha

Kris Foster: I win

Alexandra Foster: You're crazy

Alexandra Foster: I'm putting this on the internet

Alexandra Foster: Also thanks for reminding me that I have grapes to eat. They're crisp and delicious.

Kris Foster: Not anymore

Alexandra Foster: Well she didn't get the ones I brought to work

A Baby for Griff

Our dog has some very bad qualities. She goes insane when people come to the house, or walk past it. She steals food from your hand. She eats any and all available lipbalms, lozenges and Legos and occasionally frozen poop and dead worms and slugs. She drags her bum around and wakes up EVERY day at 5:00am, shakes her head and jumps on my guts. Her ears stink and she sheds enough for five normal dogs. Seriously.

But Griff has a quality that makes up for all of that. She loves Max. She is gentle with him. She abides his pokes, prods and slaps with zero, and I mean zero, complaint. The kid poked her in the TEETH and she did nothing. If he is getting out of control, she leaves the room. She doesn't growl, she doesn't bite. She just takes a break. She would have been a great puppy mother. 

I try to remember how much this means when I discover her barf in the corner from eating too many raspberries in the yard. Turns out she is a (nearly) perfect family dog.

I have no title for this.

I haven’t written anything in a really long time because I figured my next post was going to be heavy and I’ve been kind of a chicken shit about it. Also, I’ve been too obsessed with it to find anything else to talk about, so I’m just going to do this and get it out of my system.

I’m a sharer. I naturally have almost zero filter for personal information. I will pretty much tell anybody as much about my life as they care to hear and sometimes more. I’ve learned to reign that in as I get older, but honestly I’ll open all chapters of my life to whomever wants to know it.

Last September Kris’ brother killed himself. It’s not my place or my right to share the details of Shawn’s life so instead I’m writing this comment about what it’s like to lose someone to suicide.

I’m pretty angry. I have lost a lot of people – to illness, accidents, old age. In every instance it is sad, sometimes tragic, sometimes unexpected, but always conceivable on an intellectual level. I understand that cancer can kill a person. So can falling from a building. So can being 95. I can’t conceptualize suicide because I cannot relate to it. I have, of course, had times in my life where I have felt hopeless and desperate, but I’ve never been in so dark a place that taking my life made sense. So, I don’t understand it and it makes me angry.

It feels intensely sad. I know that Shawn tried hard to live. He tried really hard for a long time but he couldn’t extricate himself from his despair. I know he had moments of happiness with his wife, with their girls, with his friends and with his family. But the overwhelming sadness he must have been feeling before he died is heartbreaking. It will never be anything else.

I feel guilty. There are things I wanted to say to him but didn’t and will never have the chance to tell him. I took him being present for granted and I haven’t forgiven myself.

It feels lonely. Suicide grief is a different kind of grief. I cannot describe how it is different, exactly, but it feels different. Maybe it’s because there is a lot of stigma associated with suicide. That the person was unloving, was selfish, was crazy, that nobody loved them enough or paid enough attention to stop them. It’s also something people make light of all the time. Every time a person says “I wanted to kill myself,” in jest or to make a point about how bored they were in a particular situation reminds me that Shawn is gone. Lord knows, I have said this or pulled a mock trigger against my head to indicate my displeasure with something I felt merited more than an eye roll and I never once thought I might be reminding someone of their loss. I am acutely aware now. No one ever says “I wanted to have a stroke and die,” or “I wanted to get cancer and die.” I guess the connection there is that people who commit suicide are thought to be in control of their fate. And it’s possible they are. Maybe it’s the only thing they can control. But I don’t feel it. In Shawn’s case, his depression was in control. It took his life.

It feels empty. We have a shelf with a small urn, a photo of Shawn and our son when he was six months old – the only time the two of them were together – and a clock Shawn gave to my husband. It’s our Shawn shelf. It’s in our living room. Our son looks at the picture of him and his uncle every day. It’s hard to know that he will never know Shawn. Will have no memory of him. I never met my father’s parents and I feel that I missed out on something really fundamental. I see pictures and hear stories and feel a longing. I know that our son will feel that someday and I wish it could be different for him.

I love Shawn. He’s my brother. He gave great hugs. He was generous and funny. There’s a lot of sadness and some regret, but there is a lot of love out there in the world and I’m grateful for all the love I have and am able to give. For the rest of my life, I will wish he was alive – something that will never go away and never come true.

Oh those beavers.

To be fair, the man who was KILLED BY A BEAVER was trying to grab the animal and it was defending itself. If someone was trying to kill me, I'd probably bite him too.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2013/05/29/belarus-fatal-beaver-attack.html