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Pondering Life’s Mysteries

Amber on May 21, 2013 Leave a Comment

Sometimes being a parent is totally awesome. Other times it’s a whole lot of work, and maybe even a little (or more than a little) icky, but for today I want to focus on the awesome parts.

One of the things that makes being a parent awesome is the way that it forces you to look at the world through new eyes. As my daughter Hannah gets older, I find that her perspective changes and matures. No longer is she a lisping toddler who mispronounces words and believes that I know everything. As an eight-year-old she has insights she didn’t have before, asks questions she didn’t ask before, and considers how I’ll react to her words before she shares them.

Recently, Hannah told me that she’s been thinking about questions with no answers. She’s pondering life’s mysteries, my child. For example, she’s wondering:

“Why am I me, and not you?”
“How come you’re my mom, instead of someone else’s mom?”
“Why do the mountains go up, and not down?”

There really are no answers. It’s humbling to me that my child is now sophisticated enough to understand that.

There was a time in my life when I pondered the same sorts of questions. I wondered if what I think of as blue is the same thing that other people think of as blue. Did some people see blue as orange, and vice versa? I wondered about worlds that were too small, or too big, for us to see. I wondered why some names were girls’ names, and some names were boys’ names, and some names were both. I wondered what a soul looked like.

The truth is that I don’t ponder those questions so much anymore. The petty details of grown-up life take up all of my mental space. Instead of thinking about life’s mysteries, I think about what I have to buy at the grocery store, what appointments are in my calendar this week, about the fact that it’s Hannah’s library day tomorrow so we need to put her books in her backpack. I think about home renovations and cooking dinner and how much money I have in my bank account. I think about work deadlines and summer vacation plans and on and on and on. I am always thinking, but I am very rarely pondering.

Spending time with my daughter right now forces me to slow down and shift my thinking. It reminds me of all those questions that filled so many of my thoughts as a child. The questions that were just as much about who I am and how I exist in the world as they were about the fathomless mysteries of an infinite universe. When we contemplate the vastness of life, time and space, we can’t help but consider our place in it, and remember how very small we really are. These questions are the stuff of wonder and majesty and the divine.

And so, as my daughter shares her questions with me, I agree with her and say Yes, you’re right, that question doesn’t have an answer. And just for a minute, I see beyond myself, and into a much larger world. In doing that, I am once again thankful for the gifts that parenting brings, slipping into my life and enriching it in so many ways.

2013 Victoria Day Garden Tour

Amber on May 20, 2013 4 Comments

It’s Victoria Day here in Canada, which is officially considered the kick-off to both summer and the high season of gardening. In honour of that, today I’m sharing my annual Victoria Day garden tour.

Up first, I have lettuce and potatoes in planters. The lettuce is there to protect it from pests until it’s big enough. The potatoes are there because I’m trying to cram more into my garden. If you’re curious, I bought the potato planters from West Coast Seeds, and they work really well. They’re not too heavy, either, so I can shift them around as needed. Plus, they fold down for storage when the potatoes are done. I’m happy with this purchase so far.

Up next, in the warmest spot in the garden I have herbs. In this photo you can really only see the sage, but there’s also rosemary, thyme, bergamot and oregano hiding in there. Also, my tomato plants are in the back, and they’re very happy so far. I had an excellent harvest when I planted them here a few years ago, and I’m hoping for something similar this year. With a fairly warm spring so far, things are looking good.

In the narrow, sunny bed in front of my sunroom window, I have peppermint and some beneficial flowers, as well as peppers, broccoli and cauliflower. Down at the very end you can see the strawberries. Last year my peppers and broccoli both failed, but this year they’re doing much better. Once again, I credit the warm spring.

Peppers, broccoli, cauliflower, strawberries

My raspberries, rose bush, and blueberries are ticking along as well.

I’ve had mixed success with the garden bed that extends down the side of my house. The plants here seem to be especially prone to pests, as it’s not the sunniest spot, and it’s right up against the house where bugs like to hide. I’ve been using slug traps this year, with some success. It seems to have saved my basil, which didn’t survive in the past. My onions and bush beans are also pretty happy here. However, most of my amaranth seedlings have disappeared, and so I’m considering starting them in a planter like the lettuce.

In the final garden bed alongside the house, in addition to the weeds you can see some volunteer potato plants, spinach and kale. I’ll be transplanting my lettuce here once it’s big enough as well.

My raised bed is currently home to some beneficial flowers, carrots, melons, tomatillos, eggplant, the first of my corn seedlings, and pumpkins. The pumpkins seem to have been confused by the early good weather, putting out flowers long before they ought to have. I planted some extra pumpkin seeds when I put the plants out, in the hopes that if these ones fail then the younger ones will succeed. This is the third year I’m trying melons, and they haven’t succeeded yet, but with the good weather the plants are doing pretty well so far, so I’m hopeful that this year will be different.

Melons, tomatillos, eggplant, carrots, pumpkins and more

If you were to visit my garden today, though, what you would most likely really notice are all the bumblebees. They’re buzzing around the strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and sage flowers, doing their pollinating. I’m glad to see them, and I hope that they bode well for a good summer ahead.

What does your garden look like right now?

Filed Under: Enviro-Mama Tagged With: Enviro-Mama, Gardening, Victoria Day

Little Boxes, Full of Me

Amber on May 17, 2013 2 Comments

I keep my life in little boxes inside my head. This box contains my multiplication tables, which I learned in elementary school, standing beside my desk and clapping out a rhythm. Five times six is thirty. Five times seven is thirty-five. Five times eight is forty. Five times nine is forty-five. That box contains advertising jingles. Another box contains old locker combinations and computer passwords. It’s a little dusty, and sometimes hard to find. A small opalescent box contains barely conceived fragments of dreams, which I’m not quite ready to give voice to.

Sometimes, a trigger I wasn’t expecting causes me to trip over a box, and long-forgotten feelings and memories come spilling out. Like yesterday, when I heard Garth Brooks singing The Dance.

In 2001 my only cousin died. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that he was murdered. He had just turned 21, and his life had taken several wrong turns, until he found himself in a place he couldn’t get out of. He was shot, and after spending a few days in the ICU he passed away.

At his funeral my uncle stood and shared some memories of his only child’s early years. Lying on the grass, looking at clouds, asking questions. Playing together. Full of life and full of promise. And then my uncle played The Dance, which is of course the perfect choice in so many ways.

I’m glad I didn’t know
The way it all would end
The way it all would go
Our lives
Are better left to chance
I could have missed the pain
But I’d have had to miss the dance

When the song came on, I was standing in my kitchen washing dishes. As the box that contained all my memories of that June day 12 years ago opened up, I started to cry. I thought about my cousin, four years younger than me, and what he’d been like as a child. I recalled sleepovers at my grandmother’s house when we were kids, and I pulled him and my sister along in a wagon. I thought of how happy he was then. And then I thought about my own children. Can I save them from the same fate? Can I keep my own happy little boy from taking too many wrong turns?

Life is funny, though, and people are resilient. I’m resilient, too. I know how to bend and not break. So I shed my tears, and remembered the people who I loved and who aren’t here anymore. The people who helped me become who I am. The people who got lost, and the people who just couldn’t bend anymore. The people who lived good, full lives, and then moved on. And then I wiped my eyes on the sleeve of my hoodie, and rinsed the pot I was scrubbing, while the memories disappeared back inside their box, and the box receded back into its place in a small corner of my mind.

So many boxes, so many pieces of me. Big pieces and small pieces. Happy pieces and sad pieces. Old pieces and new pieces. All of them just waiting for a cue to open, and remind me of what this particular piece means to me. How it contributes to making me the person I am, full of life and full of memories.

Filed Under: Random Awesomeness Tagged With: Memories, Navel Gazing

The First World Problem of Choosing a Tablet

Amber on May 15, 2013 2 Comments

My husband is an early technology adopter. This means that he had a CD player before I did, a computer with internet access before I did, a DVD player before I did, a cell phone before I did, a smart phone before I did, and a tablet before I did. He had his first-generation iPad for well over a year before I even considered dipping my toes into the tablet waters. For the longest time, I just didn’t see what all the fuss was about. I liked paper books, I preferred to type on my computer, and my iPhone offered me lots of apps if I wanted to play. Why did I need a tablet?

After watching Jon’s love affair with his tablet, though, I slowly started to come around. I could see the convenience of being able to keep a whole bunch of books, magazines and even newspapers on a single small device. Plus, I could see that it would be easier to do things like surf the web, look up a recipe while I’m cooking or answer email on a tablet vs. a smart phone or computer. So, last Christmas I asked my husband for a tablet. I couldn’t decide between a Google Nexus 7 and an iPad Mini – a thoroughly first world problem, I’ll concede – so I left the ball in my husband’s court. As an iPad devotee, he stuck with Apple, and I’ve really enjoyed it. However, I’ve always wondered.

When the folks at Staples.ca got in touch with me recently and offered me a complimentary Google Nexus 7 for review purposes, I admit that I was intrigued. I wanted to see what it was like, and how it compared. So I seized the opportunity, and then eagerly awaited my new tablet.

When it arrived, I tried my best to clear out all of my previous tablet experiences from my mind, so that I could evaluate the Nexus 7 on its own merits. My first impressions were that it was very pretty, packaged in a box like a present. It was already charged when it arrived, so I was able to play with it right away. Since I am already on the Google bandwagon, with my email provided by Google Apps, my life driven by Google calendar, an active Google+ account, and so on, setting up my tablet was as easy as logging in. I actually have two Google accounts – one personal account and one work account – and it was relatively straightforward to add both, so that my whole life was on the tablet within a couple of minutes.

My first order of business, once the tablet was synced to my Google IDs, was to check out Google Play. This is the app store, where you can download books, music, movies, games and so on. I found almost all of my favourite apps were there, and many of them were free. I was able to get all the tools I use without shelling out. I decided to buy a book, just to see how that worked. I chose The Painted Girls by Cathy Marie Buchanan (aside – I really enjoyed the book). Since I already have Google Wallet set up, the purchase was very easy.

The truth is that while I tried not compare the Nexus 7 to the iPad Mini, it was impossible not to. In fact, even if I were to purchase one, I would likely be comparing my perceptions of the two products. What I found, though, was that there were both upsides and downsides to the Nexus 7. After using the Nexus for more than a week, I honestly can’t say which one is better. I think it comes down to how you want to use it. So, if you’re facing your own first world problem and choosing which table to buy, I’ll lay out my experiences for you.

What I loved about the Nexus 7:

It easily supports multiple user IDs. I created a separate ID for my daughter Hannah with her email info and some apps that she likes, and added a simple password to my ID. This means that if my kids are using my tablet they’re not messing with my settings, and I can remove access to apps I don’t want them using. This is a big upside.
The app icons are smaller, and you can place them where you want them. I’ve always found the app icons to be oddly large on the iPad, as compared to the iPhone. With the Nexus 7 you can fit more icons on a single screen, and they’re still more than big enough that I can see them. Being able to place them where you want on the screen, with gaps in between, also allows casual grouping on a single page.
The free e-book reader Aldiko is better with PDFs than iBooks. I’ve been reading some books on the Google Nexus 7 rather than the iPad for that reason.
It auto-updates software and apps. As someone who likes to stay up-to-date, this is easier for me than having to take the step of upgrading.
Google Maps! I love Google Maps, and while there’s an app for the iPhone, I was really sad when they removed it as the default map app for my phone. The Nexus 7 still uses it, obviously.
Google’s voice search works well, and is better at understanding my children than Siri.

What I would like to change about the Nexus 7:

Since I have an iPhone, integrating my two platforms is challenging. For instance, I can easily sync text messaging and share apps between my iPhone and iPad. If I had an Android phone, I could easily sync text messaging and share apps between that phone and my Nexus 7. However, I can’t easily share and sync between an iPhone and Nexus 7.
I don’t love the native books app, which only reads books you purchase through Google Play, and doesn’t allow you to download those books to your computer. To read other books, you need to get a free e-reader app, like Aldiko.
The Nexus 7 has a narrower screen than the iPad, and is a little heavier.
I miss FaceTime. While you can use Google Hangout or Skype on the Nexus 7, since the rest of my family is all on the Apple bandwagon, this would present a challenge for me if I wanted my kids to be able to chat with their grandmothers on Mother’s Day using the Nexus 7.
The Nexus has only a front camera. I don’t take a lot of photos with my tablet, but if you want to take a photo or video of anything other than yourself, you’d have a hard time doing it with this one.

See? Upsides and downsides.

My final verdict is best demonstrated by the fact that I’ve been using my Nexus 7 heavily for the past few days, since I’m reading a book on it right now, and I haven’t touched my iPad since Sunday. I’m not giving up either, which is a little ridiculous when I’m carrying around one smart phone and two tablets, but I can live with being ridiculous. I’ve already conceded my first world status, after all.

While Staples.ca gave me the Nexus 7, the thoughts and opinions expressed are strictly my own, and no other compensation was received.

Filed Under: Random Awesomeness Tagged With: Google Nexus 7, Reviews, Tablet

The Contents of my Purse

Amber on May 14, 2013 Leave a Comment

They say that you can learn a lot about a person from the contents of their purse. Actually, they say you can learn a lot about a woman from the contents of her purse, and to be fair, few men carry purses. Of course, male clothing almost always has pockets for holding things like wallets and keys, while dresses and skirts rarely do.

In fact, back when I was an engineer I went rogue with my ID badge. When I originally got my ID badge from my employer, it came with a company-issued lanyard. And then, one day, we got a message saying that we shouldn’t wear the lanyard anymore for safety reasons. The lanyard could get caught in something and choke us. Instead, we should use the belt clip that we were also issued. For my predominantly male co-workers, this wasn’t an issue. They clipped the thing onto their jeans and went on about their days.

For me, however, it was a different story, especially because I was pregnant at the time. I still wore jeans a few days a week, but they were maternity jeans, with massive tummy panels and fake pockets. I kept using the lanyard. Luckily, my co-workers had the good sense not to call me on it or report me to the health and safety committee. They may have been a little bit scared of me. Given my rampant mood swings, I wouldn’t have blamed them.

This is not actually my purse – mine is WAY BIGGER

Back to the point of this post. Supposedly the contents of your purse provide some massive insight into who you are, gender issues notwithstanding. So I thought it would be fun to share the contents of my purse with you. Here’s what you can find in mine right now:

Band-Aid blister cushions.
My daughter Hannah’s wallet, which she asked me to carry for her the last time we went shopping.
Coupons from Great Clips.
My own wallet.
Four old receipts, for pizza, a local cafe, gardening supplies and Mother’s Day gifts.
Four reusable nylon bags.
Two pens.
A small red plastic recorder that doesn’t really work.
Business cards – mine and others.
A packet of crackers, which has been completely crushed to the point that the crackers are more powder than cracker.
Random assorted garbage – an old lollipop stick, a crumpled napkin, an empty cellophane packet, a sticker that’s lost its sticky.

That’s it for now – normally, I’m carrying a lot more. I’m not sure what that says about me, either way. But if you want to prognosticate on my personality, I’ve given you all the tools you need.

What would I find in your purse, diaper bag or coat pockets?

Filed Under: Random Awesomeness Tagged With: Navel Gazing

Finding Abundance on Mother’s Day

Amber on May 13, 2013 4 Comments

I’ve had a mixed relationship with Mother’s Day since I became a mother myself. While there are lots of things about this particular Hallmark holiday that are lovely, there’s also a whole lot that’s not. Mother’s Day can easily devolve into an occasion that’s all about guilt and unrealistic expectations and overly-flowery poems that don’t actually reflect what it means to be a mother at all. However, yesterday may have been my best Mother’s Day to date, and I have former British Columbia Premier Gordon Campbell to thank for it.

The way provincial elections used to work here in British Columbia – and the way federal elections still work in Canada – is that they’re called when Parliament dissolves. This can happen either at the pleasure of the Prime Minister (or Premier), or when Parliament fails. While there’s a maximum term for a Parliament to remain sitting, there isn’t a minimum. What this means is that Prime Ministers who’ve had the ability to do so have tended to schedule elections for times when their parties are enjoying a surge of popularity. If it’s been three years and three months since the last election, but things are looking good, they’ll dissolve Parliament and begin a five-week sprint to an election. While there would be a whole lot of speculation about when the next election would happen, you’d never really know until it was called.

(If I’m getting any of this wrong, I trust my more-informed Canadian readers to correct me. However, I believe I’ve captured the essence of how federal elections work in Canada.)

Things changed here in British Columbia in 2001, when former Premier Gordon Campbell instituted fixed election dates. Since that year, provincial elections have happened every four years, on the second Tuesday in May. If you’re doing your math, you know that this means the election is happening here tomorrow. What this also means is that my husband, who works in TV news, has been spending the past week or so working long hours, building graphics packages and rehearsing and whatever else goes into preparing for an election broadcast. Because of this, I knew that Mother’s Day this year would be a bit of a dud.

Paper Mother’s Day flowers

The surprising thing, however, is that yesterday may have been my best Mother’s Day so far. Given my husband’s work commitments at the moment, we had absolutely no plans whatsoever. The kids woke up, and I set them up in front of PBS Kids so that I could get an extra hour of sleep. Once I was up, I fed everyone the last of our cereal, which will all too soon be a thing of the past as I seek to cut down on our sugar consumption. The kids gave me their handmade gifts from school, and the card they bought with their father. My husband gave me chocolates and a card. We headed to the first farmers’ market of the season. When we got home we ate leftovers for lunch and the kids and I cleaned and vacuumed, while Jon went to work.

I had absolutely no expectations of the day, and in the end it was lovely. In reflecting on it, I realized that I usually get caught up in what isn’t going well on Mother’s Day. I get annoyed because I have to get up with the kids since my husband isn’t a morning person. I get caught up in the guilt trip of worrying that I’m not doing enough for all the other mothers in my life (my own, my husband’s, our grandmothers, and so on). I feel sorry for myself because all of my Facebook friends seem to have been on the receiving end of breakfast in bed and gorgeous floral arrangements and spa treatments, while I’m refereeing fights and cleaning up spills.

By having no expectations, I was able to focus on the good parts of my day. The sweetness of my four-year-old’s pride at having glued sparkly decorations to a cardboard picture frame. The way my daughter came stayed up late on Saturday night to make me two extra gifts. The gorgeous local greens that I bought at the market and ate for lunch alongside leftover pizza. The fact that my kids helped me to clean, and afterward I just felt better.

Perhaps the secret to happiness – not just on Mother’s Day, but every day – is to spend less time focusing on what we don’t have and more time focusing on what we do. At the risk of going all Pollyanna on you, life’s abundance is all around us, if we only look for it. Yesterday, I found mine, in two little people who mean the world to me, sticky hands and all.

Happy belated Mother’s Day to you!

Filed Under: Random Awesomeness Tagged With: Mother's Day, Navel Gazing

Feelings … Nothing More Than Feelings

Amber on May 10, 2013 4 Comments

My son Jacob is four and a half years old. Right now, he’s learning a lot of tricky lessons about handling his feelings. This is all pretty normal stuff, and I know that. I’ve been through it before with my daughter Hannah. Knowing it’s normal doesn’t mean it’s easy, though. Learning to handle strong emotions is challenging for my son, and for the people who live with him, too.

This is why, when I was offered a review copy of Happy, Sad, & Everything in Between, written by Sunny Im-Wang, Psy.D., S.S.P. and illustrated by Alex McVey, I jumped at it. Aimed at kids four through eight years old, the book aims to increase emotional literacy.

The main character is named Kai, and with ambiguous features my son swears that Kai is a boy and my daughter swears that Kai is a girl. This made the book easy for both of them to relate to. Kai is very obviously white, however, so I’m not sure if that would impact things for children with other racial backgrounds. I appreciated the gender neutrality nonetheless, because it also underscores that feelings are universal.

The book itself is more of a resource book than a story book. We did read it cover-to-cover, but it took us several nights to cover the whole thing. There’s an introduction, and then each page addresses one of 15 different emotions: happy, loving, scared, anxious, worried, tired, jealous, excited, sad, shy, embarrassed, lonely, calm, frustrated, angry and silly. There’s an explanation of what the motion feels like and some questions to consider (What embarrasses you? What do you look like when you’re feeling lonely? What thoughts do you have when you’re feeling angry?). Then, a box offers suggestions for how to help yourself handle the emotion.

book review happy sad everything in between emotional literacy

The book covers mindfulness in an easy-to-understand way, talking about sitting quietly and focusing on your breath. There’s an emphasis on how to feel calm, which appears throughout the book, especially when dealing with very strong emotions. Frankly, I can always use a refresher on that stuff myself.

I’m mostly using this book as a situational aid. For instance, sometimes when Jacob is upset now he’ll bring me the book and search out the page to describe how he’s feeling. Seeing Kai looking frustrated, and then reading through the suggestions for how to deal with frustration, is actually helpful for both of us. It lets him know that it’s okay to feel this way, and it gives me ideas for how to help my son when he’s overwhelmed by feelings.

While the age guideline is four to eight, I found it was more helpful for my four-year-old than my eight-year-old. My daughter Hannah has better vocabulary, more self-control and greater emotional literacy. While she enjoyed the book, I wouldn’t say that she got as much out of it as Jacob. I would suggest this book primarily to parents who can see that their children are having a hard time dealing with some of their feelings.

How did you help your kids learn to deal with strong feelings? I could always use more tips!

Filed Under: Kids and Parenting Tagged With: Books, Kids, Monthly Review, Parenting