So we began the 2013 under a little bit of a worry cloud. May had just found out, like, two weeks previous that she was pregnant and I knew with the job I had that we'd simply not be making enough to get by once the second baby came. Moreover, our two bedroom apartment in downtown Ottawa was cramped enough as it was, that a fourth resident would make it a little more difficult. Not that a baby takes up a lot of space, mind you, it'd just have been more clutter to an already pretty cluttered apartment.
At any rate, May was physically unable to march Adam to and from daycare as a result of the pregnancy and that task fell to me. After a couple of extremely unpleasant experiences with the daycare provider, showing up for work late and getting slightly reprimanded by my supervisor, I was starting to get on edge. The daycare opened it's door at 7:30am and my shift started at 8:00am. That gave me 30 minutes to get from the daycare to the bus stop (a 15-20 minute walk), catch the bus to work (20 minutes) and walk from the bus stop to work (at least 10 minutes). Needless to say, I ran late every now and then. At first, the daycare allowed me in so that I could prepare Adam to be left in the room at precisely 7:30am, which meant we came in 5 minutes early, I took off his boots, put on his shoes, took off his jacket, etc, and we'd wait in the stairwell, sitting down, until 7:30am came and the daycare lady could take over. Apparently this small 5 minute allowance was simply too much for the daycare and I started showing up to a locked door in the morning. The reasons they cited were for insurance reasons, but realistically, it brought my piss to a real boil that they would have us waiting out in the cold until 7:30am on the dot came around.
A simple solution, obviously, was to change my shift. But, not so, as in the early months of the year, I'll also work at H&R Block. I usually have an hour to get from one job to the next and lessening that by half an hour would've been difficult. Well, why not start later at H&R Block? Yes, that's certainly an option, but then I have to forego half an hour of wages each shift to accommodate the daycare. So, really, it was a case of stubbornness vs stubbornness, stupid vs stupid or, as it was, service provider vs customer. As far as I'm concerned, as long as I'm paying someone to do something for me, they should be able to manage to do it on my terms. As they were unable to provide me with the 5 minutes it took me to prepare Adam for a drop off and then still show up for work late, I was just about ready to pull him out of daycare completely. Fortunately, I suppose, cooler heads prevailed. My sister Joanna graciously came up to Ottawa to essentially lodge with us from February to April (she ended up staying longer) charged with getting Adam to and from daycare. As the asshole I tend to be, I didn't want to have anything further to do with the daycare after an early morning 'exchange' with one of the girls there. I won't go into the details about that, but needless to say, I was incensed. At the time in my life, too, with the additional worries being piled on, I was losing my cool more often, but ... let's just leave it there. My sister came and helped us out. Thank God.
Nothing of any real note occurred from that point on. I managed both of my jobs, with the private insurance company and H&R Block. Joanna was with us and she managed to get part time teaching with some of the daycares herself. I might've dropped my French classes and May was in school pretty much as a full time student with 5 courses.
In May, during the lunch break of another tedious day at work, I checked my personal email to see a job offer for a posting in St. John's Newfoundland. Wow, I thought; an opportunity. To escape! Something had finally come through! While I won't go into the details of the job opportunity, I'll simply say that I couldn't not take it and continue with the life we had been living in Ottawa. The only problem was... everything! May was taking courses throughout the summer as well, forced to, in a way, by myself, she was due in August and the job was set to begin on June 10th. We discussed it together and despite the obvious hardships we expected it to give us, we made the decision to have me take the job. Wow! Which meant that I would be moving to Newfoundland two and half months earlier than May, Adam and our new new baby, but it would give me time to set up suitable accommodations for us there.
As it turned out, due to paperwork, etc., whatever, the start date was pushed back until June 17th. I'll tell you, it felt extremely good to give my two weeks at my old job. Again, nothing I'll go into with great detail, but essentially I was just off a six month contract with no sick time or vacation and just had been put on... another 6 month contract with all the same crap. I wasn't pleased and was much glad to go. I actually got extremely sick in March with this massive flu, perhaps the sickest I've ever been in my life, and it killed me to have to scramble to find the finances to cover the two days I missed at my day job as well as the two shifts I missed at H&R Block as a result. I missed three days in total, which was seriously, the longest I had ever been sick consecutively. With a flu, anyways.
I left on the Friday and started my new life in St. John's the following Monday. I flew out on a Saturday, arrived early Sunday morning, had breakfast with the cab driver and found a room in a bedsitting house until September. Then, on Monday, I went to work.
The new job is great. It's perhaps some of the most challenging work I've ever done and I'd be lying if I said it didn't cause me any stress. However, the move to Newfoundland has definitely had a calming effect and I appreciate that I can now meet monthly expenses and if I get sick, I won't need to worry about where rent money is going to come from. And that's really a real source of contentment in my life right now. Compared to others, I'm perhaps a worrier, but I don't know how others worry.
The next major thing to happen was, as you may have guessed, the birth of our new daughter! She came three weeks early on July 24th, at 1:29 in the morning; precisely 3 years, 2 months, 1 week, 1 hour and 11 minutes after Adam had joined us in life! We named her Claire Julia Crosby Yuan Chen, with Chen being her surname at birth. This was pre-agreed between May and myself that all boys would bear my family name and all girls could bear her family name. It's not the commonest thing in the world to do, I understand. With Claire's early arrival, I actually flew back to Ottawa for a weekend to take care of things in Ottawa. May was expecting her parents to come, but they only came over the weekend after the birth, so it was I who was able to greet them at the airport. The trip was unplanned, cost about a grand but, let me assure you, it was well worth the trip!
With everything taken care of in Ottawa, I went back to St. John's to continue working and waited for everyone to join me in St. John's.
During the Labour Day weekend, the moving company called to say that they were arriving early. Great news! I moved into our new house on August 30th, and May joined me the next day, flying into St. John's with Claire. The reunion was touching ;) Adam and May's parents actually drove across the island courtesy of my Dad and Mom and they arrived a day or two later. It was certainly a treat for both Adam and myself to see one another again. Of everyone I missed, I felt he was in the position to least understand where I was and why I was gone, so I missed him a little bit more dearly than May or Claire (not to say I didn't miss them! It's just that May could understand why I was gone and Claire didn't even know who I was to begin with!)
And so, we started our life here in St. John's, Newfoundland. The city is peaceful, quieter and more natural than downtown Ottawa (d'uh, eh?). Consumer prices are slightly higher here, although fish is understandably cheaper. I can say that we're very happy with our new life here in St. John's and, while we value our time in Ottawa, near the end it was fraying us at our edges. Ultimately, 2013 was a year of drastic change in our life and, I think, it was all for the better. We managed through some tough times and pulled through. May was kept company by my sister Joanna for the months I was away, as well as some other friends in Ottawa, Tom and Gwang. We appreciate our time there, but certainly, my feeling is that St. John's has been, on the whole, a much healthier experience for us. I'm not sure what 2014 will have in store for us, perhaps some calamities, who knows, but as of right now, all is well in the mind of Mark Crosby... (which is, to be honest, a rarity!)
Reviewing my 2013 resolutions, let's just take a quick looked at how I fared:
(you can make reference, literally, to my last blog post for the list, but I'll post it here anyway)
- Proper job - find one. : Check!
- Quit smoking - : Uncheck!
- Work term with H&R Block - Did it; tidy bonus that I wasted on the National Geographic Geno 2.0 Genographic Project as well as some new pants.
- Study French - This has unfortunately fallen by the wayside, this year. With all the activity, I was simply unable to fit in the time to study French. Obviously, the best time would've been when I was in St. John's alone, but I was unable to push myself to do much of anything during that period.
- Continue reading to Adam - After the work term with H&R Block, my father will be very happy to hear that I stopped doing this. Again, I had hoped to pick it up once again, but it's gone too long. Instead, I read him children's books now.
- Books - Last book I read I fnished during the summer; The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. It was a great book. Before that was a actually four books by Stoic and Epicurean philosophers (which goes to show where my mind was at the time). I've been trying to start a book called "Ten Days That Shook the World" which is about the Russian Revolution, but haven't made much progress yet.
- Try to get to church at least once a month. - Since moving to St. John's, I've certainly made more trips to church. However, with the recent snow falls, I haven't been making it up the street. Adam joins me and seems to like it. It's more for inner peace and contentment that I go.
- Prepare mentally for August. ... Well, that has to have been done as I made this resolution in preparation for Claire's birth!
- Write more. - You'll see by the dearth of blog posts just how on top of this resolution I had been.
- See what can be done about other languages. - I looked, but saw nothing.
- Write some goddamned cover letters - I actually did a couple of these. And didn't do a couple more. As it turns out, I heard back from the job opportunities I didn't do the cover letters for. They told me to write a cover letter in future.
- Hmmm. This last one I'd prefer to keep confidential, but it has something to do with joy. - I'm not entirely certain what this was, but I have a feeling it may have been a bit sappy and/or emotionally charged. I believe it may have been in relation to my feelings of little joy in life at the time and my embarrassment to admit it. Thankfully, I can reflect on this and be further grateful for how events transpired in 2013. It helps to look at things differently when one's finances are constantly being eroded into oblivion!
Well, that sums up 2013. For 2014, I'm already taking the lazy way out and curtailing my list of resolutions to one: identify areas of weakness and improve upon them while maintaining areas of strength. Easier said than done, mind you. Moreover, harkening back to 2012 for a moment, I made a resolution to become more involved at the community level. I've already taken some steps to do just that here in St. John's. For the most part, though, I may come forward with another blog post for resolutions. It may happen and it may not. We'll just have to wait and see.
To everyone who took the time to read this; may your 2014 be blessed with health, wealth, glory and a harmony! Much love to you all!
....
And now, because I am a sufferer of superstition, I'm going to share something I actually wrote in the wee hours of the morning on January 1st, 2014 in relation to a dream I had the night before. If you take the time to read it, you will most likely be disappointed. I had to write it because at the turn of each year, if I have a dream with some sort of emotional charge connected to it, I'll relate it. This was the first dream like this in a while, so I feel compelled to include it with my 2013 Review / 2014 Update. Note that I wrote this when I was still pretty groggy and I haven't taken any time to review it, I'm just cutting and pasting from Word.
Imagine living in a society that not only tolerated and
accepted differences, but actually encouraged and celebrated them? It’s a
gradual process, going from toleration to acceptance, from acceptance to
encouragement and from encouragement to celebration. Toleration means,
essentially, to allow the existence or, in more common words, to put up with
something. Acceptance reaches beyond that as it allows for validation of
existence. Encouragement takes a further step and creates an active role from
one participant to another while celebration, if you will allow me to use the
term in a clinical sense, is the participants coming together in their
acceptance and encouragement, feeding off one another’s joy of simply being.
I had a dream last night of a country that lost its way.
It’s not easy to describe, but in the dream, I felt I was dreaming of being in
New Brunswick in a future time where there had once been a cultural exchange and
harmony but had since disappeared. In this New Brunswick, the landscape was
dotted, specifically, with beautiful works of art created by Aboriginal people.
The art was not simply aesthetic in nature, but utilitarian as well – the art
was the homes that the Aboriginal people built to house their families. In my
dream, apparently, Aboriginal people had a tradition that when a man starts his
own family, he must build a beautiful house for that family. I’m not entirely
sure if this aligns with reality or not; all being said, it was only a dream. Furthermore,
in this place, there was a sincere love of French Canadian culture as well as
what can only be described as English Canadian culture. In simple terms, there
had been a healthy blend of mutual acceptance, recognition and celebration
between these three peoples and, for whatever reason, only the Aboriginal
houses remained as a testament to that former glory. It made me think of how
disastrous Quebec’s current governmental drive to secularism would be. And then
I woke up and realized that this celebration of culture; this harmony that we
seek…. it is perpetually right in front of us, but we basically choose not to
grasp it. We are all human beings and we are all inherently different from one
another. The only harmony we can ever hope to reach is harmony through these
differences.
