I love it here. Halifax is a beautiful city, it’s right on the ocean, and in the summer I can be at the beach in about 20 minutes or less. Swimming in the Atlantic, being on the coast, it’s all a wonderful and amazing thing. Also, the people in the Maritimes are generally just as nice and friendly as the stereotypes claim them to be.

You know there’s a “but” coming though, right?

But.

Photo via montreallimo.ca

I miss home sometimes. I miss our families, I miss our friends, I miss the old school and the community I had there, I miss being at home with my kids, I miss the dog we had to leave behind, and I even miss the silly “should be inconsequential” things like Chinatown, the Biodome, and good poutine.

I know that sometimes it takes time to get settled and feel at home and for awhile I thought I had, but lately I have an ache that won’t go away no matter how much I love it here.

I’m homesick and there’s very little I can do about it except breathe and wait for it to pass.

Here’s the thing; George and I are both creative people and we will always find an outlet for that creativity in some form or another just like anyone else. For me it once came out in writing and lately it’s in using my phone to take pictures while I’m out and about. George primarily lets his creativity out with music (did you know you can buy the album he did with his friend James over here?) but in recent weeks he’s been channeling it into food.

He makes delicious suppers, many of them in the crockpot, which is something I appreciate since it then translates into a supper for me the next day at work. He’s been making good use of the bread machine too, baking up fresh bread a couple of times a week. However, his latest endeavor has been to make coconut bread like his mother makes and it’s just as delicious as it sounds.

Here’s the tasty recipe:

Coconut Bread

Sift flour and baking powder, and combine with sugar, coconut, and spices. Add in the butter or shortening, and use two knives or a pastry blender to combine. Add milk and mix gently.

Pour into a greased and floured loaf pan.

Bake at 350 degrees for one hour.

My shift at work is somewhat awkward as far as meal times are concerned. I leave at a few minutes past 11 each morning to catch a bus that gets me downtown roughly 45 minutes before I’m due to start. Because of this I eat my breakfast – usually two pieces of toast with peanut butter – at 10 am.

The problem is I then don’t get a break until about 2:30 or so, and that’s too long to wait before eating lunch. If I tried that I’d be shaking and having a low blood sugar crisis. On top of that, I only have 15 minutes for my break, not giving me time for more than a quick snack.

(We don’t discuss the fact that I eat “supper” at 4 or 4:30, which means I am then a raging, starving stomach on legs by the time I arrive home at 9:30.)

To avoid the hunger crash due to my lack of a proper lunch time, I take advantage of the fact that I’m so early for my shift by heading to the lunch room and eating before work starts. I’ve brought sandwiches and I’ve brought cheese and crackers, but my absolute favourite is to bring hearty, filling soups with some bread or crackers on the side.

The best soup of all is the one George has made for me a few times. It’s filling, it’s the perfect winter soup because it warms you from the inside out, and it’s absolutely delicious.

Curried Sweet Potato Soup

Place the sweet potatoes, carrots, onion, curry, salt, pepper, cinnamon, and ginger into a crock pot. Add the broth. Stir carefully to mix well. Cover and cook it on low for 7 to 8 hours.

After that time frame, puree the soup one cup at a time in a blender and return to the crock pot. You can also use an immersion blender but I think the blender works better. Add the maple syrup (the real deal, not the CRAP imitation stuff) and half-and-half. You can add extra salt and pepper now to taste as well. Stir, cover, and cook on high for an additional 15 minutes to heat through.

It is so very good. It’s not ridiculously spicy but when you eat it the curry really warms you up quickly. It’s my favourite lunch to have after a cold or rainy commute to work.

Enjoy!

For a variety of reasons my headspace has not been at its best lately. One of the best things to do in a case like that is to take your head and move it somewhere else. Today would have been a good time to head to the beach or even Point Pleasant Park just to see the ocean but it wasn’t in the cards so I did the next best thing and got the kids, some of their toys, and we headed to the park for an hour.

It was a little above freezing, technically, but when you factored in the wind chill it was a little, er, brisk out there (-2C or 28F). Still, it just seemed like we hadn’t been spending enough time outside and even the kids had been stuck indoors for recess at school a fair amount because of rain. An hour was all I could handle but it was good enough to give the three of us some fresh air, a little sunshine, and some exercise.

I took my camera and two lenses with the full intention of taking pictures and then spending some time this evening editing them while watching the SAG awards, but when we arrived I discovered that thing that annoys me to no end – I turned my camera on and got the dreaded “no card” message. I HATE when I forget that my memory card is sitting in my laptop’s card reader. Boo! Luckily cell phones have some pretty decent cameras these days so I captured some photos anyway, courtesy of my wee HTC phone.

They brought their doll strollers with them. I love that Hayley is 9 and still loves dolls. Too many kids her age grow up way too fast.

It was cold but it was fun and it was exactly what we all needed. Too bad the fresh air didn’t completely help since it’s now almost 10 pm and yet they haven’t fallen asleep yet. Sigh. Tomorrow should be fun when it’s time to drag them out of bed for school.

As for me, I have high hopes for this week. I came down with the flu back on January 20th and even stayed home that day, even though I hate calling in sick on Friday or Monday (because I worry people will assume I’m just stretching out my weekend). I just felt completely run down and unable to function. By the time I went back to work on Monday I was mostly fine but I had a very annoying cough. On Friday I all but completely lost by voice and by the end of the day I was pretty much just squeaking at everyone. Not my idea of fun, that’s for sure.

Luckily my voice seems to have returned and so I’m hoping the week will go well for all of us.

I hope you had a great weekend! Stay tuned – tomorrow I’m going to post a recipe for my favourite thing to take for lunch before my shift starts!

I enjoy my job. I do. I’ve mentioned it many times. This week I’ve been working on some development things and it’s made me enjoy it even more.

That doesn’t mean that going from working as a freelance writer to a full time out-of-the-house employee has been all easy. There have been adjustments galore and one of my hardest moments came today.

Breanna had a terrible stomach ache and after she cried that she couldn’t go to school, we decided to have her stay home since George was able to be home with her. Breanna loves school like nobody’s business and looks forward to it constantly so I knew that if she didn’t want to go she wasn’t kidding about not feeling well. I remembered Hayley having a bad stomach ache before Christmas, staying home, and then throwing up and how relieved I was that we had kept her home, so I thought we’d err on the side of caution. Luckily it didn’t end up going that far but Breanna was in pain and I was glad she could stay home.

I got myself ready for work, snuggled her on the couch for a bit, and then left for work. As is my usual habit, once I got downtown and reached my building I called George to tell him I had arrived and also to check on Breanna. He said she was okay but wanted to say hi to me.

When she got on the phone, she burst into tears. “I want you to come back and stay at home with me,” she wailed. I took a deep breath, told her I had a meeting today and couldn’t stay home but that Daddy was there and that the next time she was sick I would take a turn staying home with her. I told her I loved her and would talk to her later, and asked her to pass the phone back to George. After saying she loved me too, she passed the phone off and George came back on the line.

Well. It’s a ton of fun being in the middle of a very busy area with people bustling back and forth, blubbering into a phone, crying because I wanted to be immediately transported à la Star Trek back to my home so I could take care of Breanna. I knew George was more than capable – she was in good hands with her father, not a random babysitter, so she was fine. But I just really wished in that moment that I could be there.

That’s the hard part. Loving where I work and missing what’s at home all at the same time.

Once I got up to my own office I saw one of my co-workers, a great girl who is also a mother and I told her what had just happened, tears filling up in my eyes yet again. She smiled with understanding, having been there herself too, and she joked, “what were you thinking? You never call home! Never EVER call home, then they can’t break your heart!”

I told her I’ve only been doing this whole working out of the home thing since July and I just haven’t gotten used to this yet. She smiled again and said, “I don’t think you ever do. I haven’t.”

I probably never will. I’ll keep reaching for that balance and most of the time it works, but as I’ve learned from doing yoga for two years, sometimes you balance topples and you’ll never ever control that 100%.

I guess I’ll just have to get used to THAT instead.

So the ball dropped, the fireworks blasted, and we bid adieu to 2011 and said a big hello to 2012. Here’s hoping the Mayans simply got bored and that the end of their calendar doesn’t mean the world ends in December!

That cracks me up every time I see it.

Anyway! To end the old year and ring in the new one we invited two good friends over to hang out with us for a few drinks and lots of appetizers. Meanwhile the kids had their cousin sleep over and they had their own party down in the basement (we won’t mention the post-apocalyptic disaster down there the next morning. Sigh!) and a good time was had by all.

We’ve had these same friends over several times now since we moved here and each time is more fun than the last time. My friend and I have known each other online for at least ten years, possibly longer than that, and finally met when we moved here. Her husband is equally awesome and we enjoyed a gut-busting-laughter-filled evening. I can’t think of a better way to usher in a new year than to do so with a big smile on your face.

Even their two awesome dogs, Alice and Chloe, joined us for a bit which made me happy. The landlord may have said we can not HAVE a dog, but he didn’t mention anything about not being allowed to have tail-wagging, four-legged visitors!

It was a great time. The kids crashed at 1:30 (Breanna and the cousin) and at 2:30 (Hayley), and our friends stayed until 3 am. So much fun!

We spent the first day of the year chillin’ mostly. Hayley had gotten a Snuggie from my parents for Christmas, so she put that on, crashed on the loveseat, and her and I watched most of the Star Wars trilogy (we missed the first half of Star Wars so we’ll watch that one next weekend) and she was completely enthralled.

Supper consisted of Aztec Beans because I like the tradition of eating beans for the new year for good luck, then we all slept like the dead later that night.

I really hope the world doesn’t actually end; it’s a pretty nifty place.

How was your new year’s eve?

This was, obviously, a very big year for our family. I always enjoy looking back on what happened over the course of a year, but this one in particular.

January:

It got so incredibly cold that we made boiling water freeze instantly.

February:

George and I go out on a real date to celebrate twelve years together.

March:

I spill some really big news.

April:

Our van dies but we make the most of it and have a lovely evening with good friends.

May:

I get to enjoy a nice laid back Mother’s Day and then was relieved to not be a part of the Rapture that wasn’t.

June:

The joy of finding a place to live in Halifax was drastically offset by the sadness of saying goodbye to my puppy.

July:

We move in to our new place and by the end of the month I re-enter the work force for the first time in over nine years.

August:

I spent a fair amount of time enjoying some yoga on the beach, taking full advantage of living so close to the ocean.

September:

The kids started school with Hayley attending a new school and Breanna going for the very first time.

October:

Hitting the beach in October?! Hell yes, why not?

November:

Always working on the yoga of course. And we headed out to the Festival of Lights to watch a great parade.

December:

We had our first Christmas in Halifax.

I also put up several videos over the year, all of which can be seen over on my YouTube channel. I’m hoping to do more videos in 2012.

Happy new year to you all, I hope that 2012 brings all of us peace, joy, happiness, and no apocalyptic post-Mayan calendar end to the world. See you next year!

Christmas was very different this year in many ways. We missed our families back home as well as our friends. The up side was that we had no running around to do and got to spend Christmas at home, just enjoying gifts and the day. We also had our very first turkey dinner that we did ourselves.

On Christmas eve the kids had their bath and popped into their traditional Christmas eve pajamas (I have no pictures but they wore them most of Christmas day anyway so I have plenty of pictures after the fact!). Some family dropped by briefly for a nice Christmas eve drink and the kids were so happy to see their cousin for a bit. Then we set out treats for Santa and his reindeer before I shooed them off to bed with a reminder of where Santa was on the NORAD tracker (I believe he was off the coast of South America at the time!).

I had finally finished wrapping so we got everything stashed under the tree with the stockings waiting for Santa and then George and I headed off to get some sleep ourselves.

In the morning I re-enacted a tradition from my own Christmas mornings; every year my sister and I would wake up at my grandmother’s house and we’d have to wait in bed, craning our ears to listen for the sound we needed to signal it was time to wake up. The house would be cold so my grandmother would get up, turn the heat up, and start a fire in the wood stove in the kitchen. Once it was suitably warmed up, she would turn on the radio, blasting Christmas carols. At that point we’d pop up and wake everyone else up. I made the kids wait for the same here, coming down to plug in the portable electric heater, boil water for coffee, and make sure my camera was ready. Once I was set up, I turned on the Galaxie station on the television that was playing round-the-clock Christmas music and they came tearing down the stairs.

They weren’t impressed with the wait, but I told them at least they didn’t have to go through what my sister and I always did, where we’d run down and then have to stare down our other grandmother who insisted on eating a bowl of Rice Krispies before heading to the living room!

Another thing that reminded me of being a kid was the pile of presents under the tree. Growing up there were the two of us as kids, our parents, and our grandmothers, so there was an insane amount of stuff. This year everything had been sent out here by our families so we had everyone’s stuff under the tree at once. It was nuts.

Everyone got great gifts. George and I got some nice clothes from our families, and the kids got some cute outfits too. The presents the kids got all went over very well. Most notably, Santa brought Hayley the baby elephant she desperately wanted and Breanna was thrilled that he brought her the art set complete with easel, canvas, palette, and paint brushes that she had asked for.

They got other fun stuff too, including Bendaroos, cozy blankets, a Wii (ours died in the move), and an awesome live-action table top Angry Birds game. However, their “big” gifts from us went over best of all.

Breanna got this:

And Hayley, in keeping with her lessons at school, got this:

Both were noisily ecstatic.

After an afternoon of them playing with their various toys, George and I set out our first big holiday dinner. I give George full credit for the turkey. All I did was baste it, he prepped it all, courtesy of his mom’s tips. It was DELICIOUS. Once it was just about ready I made the mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, extra stuffing, green & yellow beans, carrots, and gravy (whew, never made so many sides all at once!). It was such a great meal, and we followed it up with warm apple pie for dessert.

Before eating, we put our plates on the table and George called his parents and put the receiver on speaker phone. He then asked his dad to say grace, as he always has before a holiday meal. I must confess, I was glad that I closed my eyes because I felt them filling up almost immediately. Like I said, it was great but I really missed our families.

Eventually we got the kids into bed and George and I finally indulged in our very favourite Christmas tradition of all – our habit of watching the most non-festive movie we can possibly find. This year we watched World of Zombies: The Zombie Diaries and it was full of good old fashioned undead fun.

On the 26th we started over again when my sister, my brother-in-law, his parents, and of course my niece all showed up for dinner and present exchanging. George served up his curried beef and we also had leftover turkey and all the fixin’s for anyone who isn’t a fan of spicy food.

I was very happy because they got me a set of hand weights and a Magic Bag, just what I had suggested when Amanda asked me for ideas. The kids each got a Barbie set too, and they spent most of today playing with them (and mostly playing well, to boot!)

Today was low-key. The kids, as I said, played Barbies and then played on the Wii. George worked on some music, and I caught up on my sadly-neglected yoga. We also ended up with a surprise when the doorbell rang and one of our friends was at the door with a bag containing two fresh (i.e. live, wiggling) lobsters. Well, that solved the “what should we eat for supper?” dilemma!

I’m now waiting for the over-stimulated and possibly over-sugared kids to fall asleep so George and I can relax on my last evening home before I have to go back to work. As much as I like my job I do wish I had more time to enjoy being home, but I only have three days to go before a three-day weekend for the new year, so it’s really not so bad.

I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas, I know we sure did!

(You can see all the Christmas photos over here!)

Yesterday was my last day of work until next Wednesday and I’m so happy to be able to spend the next four days with my family. I’m having a little trouble believing that it’s actually Christmas tomorrow, but here we are on Christmas eve. I still have some wrapping to do and we’ll be cooking the turkey later so that it only needs to be heated tomorrow when we cook up all the sides.

Santa is being monitored closely on the NORAD site, a lovely fire is “burning” on the fireplace station on the tv, and there’s a full carton of egg nog sitting in my fridge. Cookies are ready to put out for Santa, along with some carrots for the reindeer, and the kids were roused early in the hopes that they’ll settle down somewhat easily for sleep tonight.

All that’s left is for me to watch “Elf” and “Christmas Vacation” (the latter being my favourite Christmas movie ever) in a little while, along with getting the kids bathed so they can open up their traditional Christmas eve pajamas.

They saw Santa yesterday while I was at work; tonight they go to sleep so he can come slip gifts under the tree and stuff the stockings.

I may or may not pop online tomorrow, so in the meantime Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Back in 1989 on this day, Marc Lepine gunned down and killed nine women in what became known as the Polytechnique Massacre in Montreal. He also injured dozens more in the attack before killing himself. His motives were that he was “fighting feminism”; it was an engineering department and it enraged him that women were learning “his” trade and taking jobs.

I was 15 years old at the time and it was the first time that I ever realized that someone might ever hate me just because I’m female. It was a sobering realization and more than just a little scary too. Every year I like to remember the names of those who died for no other reason than they had a uterus.

In memory of Geneviève Bergeron, Hélène Colgan, Nathalie Croteau, Barbara Daigneault, Anne-Marie Edward, Maud Haviernick, Maryse Laganière, Maryse Leclair, Anne-Marie Lemay, Sonia Pelletier, Michèle Richard, Annie St-Arneault, Annie Turcotte, Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz, may you never be forgotten.

What became the anthem of the Polytechnique Massacre: