Fun in the Spring Sun

(I've been awake since 5:45am.  I couldn't get back to sleep because I'm too nervous/excited about my ultrasound this afternoon.  I'll be glad when it's over!  Because of the early wake up, I decided to get a blog post done before Noah wakes up.)

Besides that one incredibly hot day a couple of weeks ago, the weather here has not been very summer-like.  The temperatures most days are in the teens (I always have to look up conversions since the majority of my readers are American... that's in the 50's or low 60's, fyi).  However, when it is sunny, our backyard is a lot warmer than any temperature reading you'd find online.  For one thing, the little town where I live is almost always 5 degrees warmer than the city where our parents live 20 minutes away.  They have the lake, which cools them down.  And then our backyard is usually at least a few degrees warmer than our front yard, simply because it's so sheltered.  This is exactly why I wanted a pool, by the way.  In summertime our backyard is absolutely unbearable.  In fact, our whole town is pretty much unbearable.  But my backyard is worse.

I digress.  The point is that despite the still coolish temps we've been getting, our sheltered backyard has allowed us to pretend it's already summer!  And boy, have we been busy pretending!

The water was 57 degrees this day, but that didn't stop Noah!

This picture slays me:

I love the way he blows bubbles:

"Look at my bubbles!!":

"I wanna feel it...":

"It's cold!":

On another day I decided to bust out a kiddie pool, as I'm not too fond of going in frigid water (although it is up to 64 degrees now!):

Noah still thought it was pretty cold:

Those last two are iPod pictures, hence the poorer quality.

Anyway, days like we've been having are one of my very favourite parts of being a stay at home mom.  Having no "schedule" I have to follow, going outside when Noah wants to go outside, running around in the grass in bare feet because we had no shoes by the back door, getting about 10 sunburns already by May 11 (man that sun has been strong!)... I am loving life lately!  I am looking forward to a long summer growing our baby and hanging out with the most awesome toddler ever created.  Cherishing my last days as a Mom of One.

It Doesn't Stop, Does It?

For the most part I live a fairly stress free existence.  This is in large part due to the fact that I'm a stay at home mom.  This has it's own stressors, because we are a single income family, but my husband works hard to provide for us, and always spends his "vacation time" from teaching to privately train clients.  Without that money we would be seriously strapped.

Anyway, sometimes when I feel like life is going really well (like when I get pregnant during my first round of fertility treatments, instead of my 6th, and when it's only one baby, instead of 6), the rest of the world decides that it needs to crap on me.  Or us, rather.

There are a few things in particular that are really weighing on Justin and I right now.

First, we put in a pool last summer.  We used 80% of our savings to do this, so we really hardly have anything left.  It was a decision that we really felt was best after weighing it carefully.  We told our pool guy (Steve) that we wanted to spend XX amount, and asked him what exactly would not be included in that price.  His reply was, "Pool toys?"  But seriously, he said, everything is included.

Well, after excavation was done, and the pool was assembled, we were informed that we would need to get an electrician to come.  This was not news to Steve, but it was to us.  I was concerned, and asked how much it would cost.  Steve made it sound like it was no big deal, maybe a few hundred dollars.  Steve was also supposed to get the electrician he uses to come do this last year when the pool went in, but he didn't.  That's another story.

So I finally got ahold of the electrician, 6 months later, who seems like a really nice guy.  He came to give us a quote.  He was not too happy with Steve, since a lot of the work he has to do should have been buried under the concrete, but he didn't come last summer, so it wasn't.  Steve also didn't leave much for him to work with (whatever that means).

Anyway, he called today with our quote.  Was it a few hundred dollars?  Ummm, no.

$1770.

What. The. Eff.

The guy said the fact that Steve didn't tell us about this cost in the first place is really brutal, because yes, we are being charged a few hundred dollars more (since the fact that he didn't do this before the pool was completed makes it more difficult), but the price would never have been a few hundred dollars.  Never.

So, this is stressful.  We have to dig into the miniscule amount of savings we have left (seriously, our savings account hasn't been this sad in a long time) to pay for this.  There goes the pool heater we were hoping to put in this summer.

Oh, but the pool heater?  Before we even found out about the electrical bill, we were already thinking we might not be able to afford to put it in this summer.  Because the problems don't stop there.

Ontario's premier, Dalton McGuinty (I'm honestly not sure what the equivalant is actually called in the U.S., but it's the equivalent to whoever runs each state) is crapping all over public sector workers.  As a teacher, Justin happens to be a public sector worker.  Its a new contract year for the teachers, as the last collective bargaining agreement was from 2008-2012.  McGuinty, the liberal leader and head of Ontario, who has always been great to teachers in the past, is completely disregarding the proper channels of collective bargaining and is shitting all over teachers.  I'm not going to get into everything right now, but the biggest issue is that he wants to completely restructure the pay grid AND give everyone a 2 year pay freeze.  As in, not just freeze the grid, but literally not let people move up in years experience and get the raise they are supposed to get each year until they hit 11 years of experience.

This is brutal.  We COUNT on that raise each year, and we are adding a child to our family in October, so we need it.  It seriously really sucks that a pay freeze is just being dictated at us like this.  I'm not even understanding how they are getting away with this.  And freaking McGuinty just got voted back in in 2011 (by the teachers, in large part, because he is supposed to have our backs)!  So we are stuck with him for the next four years.  You can almost guarantee he won't be getting back in, but that doesn't help us right now.

So, because of all this crap, the majority of which I'm not even getting into, a strike is probably pretty likely.  And if the teachers strike, they don't get paid.  And if my husband doesn't get paid, we have ZERO money coming into our house.  Remember how small our savings account is?  It literally doesn't even cover a months worth of living expenses.

Should have thought of this before putting in a pool?  Well, my husband has enough seniority that he would pretty much never get fired (plus he's fabulous at his job), and this came totally out of left field.  Everybody in education thought that all the strike crap got out of the way a couple of decades ago.  Teachers had to fight really hard to get where they are today, and things have been pretty good.  The last collective bargaining agreement was fantastic, so the fact that this is happening now is pretty much unfathomable.

Oh, but it doesn't stop there.

At the end of last week Justin's principal came to talk to him.  Apparently their school is losing a lot of kids next year.  A lot of kids.  Enough kids that they are in serious danger of losing 4-6 teachers.  They will lose some, but the principal doesn't know how many yet, and he didn't seem very hopeful about the situation.  Justin, who has 4 teachers underneath him in seniority at his school, is on that list.  He's number 5.

There are four people beneath him!  We thought he was guaranteed to stay there!  What school loses FIVE teachers in one school year?  That is absurd!  Justin would hopefully still have a job in the board (he would just be surplus at the school, not redundant with the board - I think this is a given, but right now I'm feeling like nothing is a given anymore).  But he would be moved to a different school.  And the board he teaches in is geographically enormous.  He could get put anywhere.  He could be an hour and a half away.

People, one of the reasons we put in a pool was because Justin was never. going. to. leave. his. school.  I wanted him to.  I wanted him to transfer to a school in the city we grew up (25 minutes away), where our parents live, where our church is, where the beach is, where he'd have to coach less, etc.  He said no way.  He was never going to leave.  Well, I pretty much hate living so far from my parents (25 minutes is far away when you have babies and little kids and live in a small rural town where there is nothing to do), but knew I would just have to make the best of it.  So one of the things we did to improve our quality of life was put in a pool.

We spent all our savings to put in a pool.  Now my husband's salary is being frozen and he is quite possibly being moved to a different school.  The closest he would be is 25 minutes away, but that would be too lucky. It wouldn't happen.  He'd probably end up at least 45 minutes away, maybe 90 minutes.

So what was the point in putting in a freaking pool in a house that we're probably going to want to move from if he gets transferred??  We're not movers!  There is nothing about the moving process that excites us, even the buying a new house thing.  We just want to stay in the same house for the majority of our lives.


When I think about this too much I get really overwhelmed.  I don't even understand how this is all happening.  I feel like everything was going so well, and things were so stable, and we knew what our situation was, etc. etc.  Now everything is up in the air.  I mean, the $1770 electrical bill sucks, but it's nothing compared to the pay freeze, which feels like nothing compared to the fact that my husband might get transferred up to an hour and a half away.

But put it all together?  Sometimes it feels like my world is spinning.

Actually, right now it's actually literally feels like my world is spinning.  No, really.  I have the spins.  This pregnant lady hasn't been feeling too hot today.

Still Suffering

The Bad News:

I am still pretty sick with my colitis flare up.  I have been strictly in bed for 5 days now.  Saturday and Sunday Noah and I were taken care of by Justin.  Monday to Wednesday my Mom has been here taking care of Noah and me and the house.  Tomorrow she has to go to work, so my Dad is coming out.  That means I will have to do a little more than I've had to for the past 5 days.  My Dad will play with Noah - that's about it.

I have gotten quite a bit better, though.  Ibuprofen is helping with the swelling, which is making it easier to pee.  Saturday to Monday were torture.  I had one or two "good" moments during the day where I didn't feel like someone had sewed my waste-excreting orifices shut.  These moments lasted maybe half an hour.  On Tuesday I felt like that from about 9am to 2pm, and then got some relief.  Before and after that period of time I was like a geyser.  Today I've felt like that maybe only half the day.  But it wasn't as severe as it has been, so that's good.

I am doing ozone therapy everyday and taking as many helpful supplements as I can.  I need to get more.  I am waiting to get my appointment with the surgeon.  I'll need another colonoscopy very soon, I'm sure.


The Good/Neutral News:

Justin and my parents have really stepped up to the plate, and I am so thankful for all of them.  Justin voluntarily stepped back from training and coaching this week, even though it was a bad week for that to happen.  One or both of my parents have been here everyday, and my Mom has fed or made us dinner for the past 4 days.  I don't know what I'd have done without them.

Also, the pool is almost done!  It feels like it's been a long road, and there have been some annoyances on our end, like the fact that it is being finished almost a week behind schedule.  This is partly because of crappy weather forecasts that were never actually fulfilled (it's very stupid to pour concrete if there's a chance of rain), and partly because they just didn't do some things they could have been doing while they weren't pouring the concrete because of the chance of rain.  Therefore they had to spend all day today doing those things, when the pool could have actually been completely filled and ready today.

I had a huuuge freak out last night when we got home from my parents' house (where I do the ozone therapy) and discovered that the new five foot "railing" on our already 6 foot tall deck was literally a fence.  You could not see the pool at all from the deck or the kitchen, which houses the sliding door leading onto the deck.  Not could you see onto the stairs or deck from the pool area. It was such an unsafe situation, not to mention aesthetically disappointing.  It's not that the railing looked bad.  But it would be nice to be able to actually SEE the pool we sunk all this money into.  And if my kid(s) somehow managed to get into the pool area unsupervised, I would like to be able to SEE HIM before he drowns.  And when you have toddlers playing in the other part of the yard where the playground is, it'd be nice to be able to SEE them if they decide to climb up the long flight of stairs to go up onto the deck.  And when I have older kids who are allowed to be in the pool as long as I'm nearby in the house (doing dishes or whatever), it'd be nice to be able to supervise them from that distance and easily look out the door and windows for that exact purpose.

I seriously flipped.  Adrenaline was pumping through my veins.  I wrote a nice but very firm email to the contractor and told him I don't want to cause problems, but that is completely unacceptable.  He was very accommodating, and said we would discuss it first thing in the morning to find a solution.  His response made it so I was able to sleep.  We discussed it as soon as he got here today and they fixed it.

Anyway, everything looks good, they did everything they promised (and more, frankly), everything is ready for the inspector, and the pool should be filled up by the end of tomorrow.  It's supposed to be a sunny weekend, so hopefully Justin and Noah will be able to enjoy some time in the pool.  And maybe I'll be well enough to go down onto the patio with them.

I'll post some pictures sometime soon.  I'm so glad we made the decision to do this!  Even if we'll only get a few good pool days between now and when we close it for the winter.

This is Absurd

-I am still sick.  And I keep adding symptoms to my repertoire.  Right now, on top of everything else (my mom is convinced I have strep throat), I feel like I am in early pregnancy.  If I didn't have a full on period at the moment (not helping) I would be taking a test.  I feel terrible.  It's hard to take care of Noah.  And right now Justin is cooking dinner because I can't stand long enough to do it.  I feel bad, because he works such long days.  But he is being a good sport about it.  I guess it's good practice for when I actually DO end up pregnant.  If my next pregnancy is anything like my last one, I won't be able to do anything.

-Thankfully, Noah and Justin feel just fine.

-The weather this week went from 110 degrees to like 60 degrees in the matter of two days.  So it's not like we're roasting.  But my pool guy has not shown up for the past two days, which really ticks me off.  Granted, yesterday it rained lightly all day.  But today it hasn't rained a drop.  And he hasn't even called.  My backyard is still a mess, so Noah can't go back there.  The pool was supposed to be completely done at the end of Friday, which was already a full week later than it could have been done.  Now there is zero chance of that happening.  There is still no concrete around the pool, and that was supposed to be poured on Tuesday.  There is no liner in the pool, no fence up, no new railing on the deck, the electrical still isn't done... and the pool takes two days to fill with water.  The whole thing could be done if they had worked a full day every work day since they started, instead of many short days or one or two proper length days.  I am seriously annoyed.  What the heck are they doing?

-I'm hoping sometime soon I will feel better and my backyard will be finished and my head will be in a better place.  These two things are really just clouding my ability to write about anything positive.

Backyard, Pool, Sickness, and a Funny Kid

-It's my 11th day of being sick today.  I still feel terrible.  I don't think I've ever been this sick this long.  I've been sicker than this, for sure, but I've been fairly sick with no letting up for 11 days now.  It's really getting on my nerves.  And it's keeping me from getting a decent night's sleep, which in turn makes my nerves easier to get on in the first place.

-My backyard is a disaster.  The guys are off for the next three days because of the long weekend.  In the meantime, my backyard looks like this:

They're killing the grass we have left, which was previously quite nice.  And there is no usable space for Noah to play in.  Meanwhile, it is freaking 110 degrees outside (literally), and my pool, which would be so wonderful right now, looks like this:

Not exactly swimmable.

Everything looks so small in those pictures.  Granted, the pool isn't enormous.  It's only as big as the town's bylaws will allow because of how far it has to be from the fence on all sides (and we are putting a fence down the middle of the yard).  But the pool seems much larger in person.

It's hard to believe it will be up and running in a week.  And after watching them work for the past 5 days, Justin and I are actually shocked at how little we are paying.  It's shocking to see everything that is involved in installing an inground pool. 

-The swimming pool fencing bylaws in my town are very strict.  You can see in the one picture that my deck is 6-7 feet above grade  It then has a 42 inch railing.  We were going to put a 5 foot fence all the way across the middle of the yard.  Apparently this is not good enough.  Apparently the deck has to have a 5 foot railing. Personally, I think this is ridiculous.  If someone can manage to scale the railing as it is, they will plunge to their death by falling 10 feet onto concrete.  They will definitely not be drowning in the swimming pool.  

My contractor was trying to find some way around this new section of the bylaw, like having an alarm installed on the sliding door.  Apparently that was rejected by the inspector.  So their new plan is to create a new 5 foot railing to go along the one side, only bring the fence up to the bottom of the stairs, and then skirt the one side of the deck that faces the pool, using fence boards.  I am crossing my fingers that this doesn't cost me extra money.

-We also have to install child safety locks on the four windows that face the pool.  Apparently it doesn't matter if they're second story, main floor, or basement.  I find this annoying, and I will not be keeping them on once the pool is finished and the inspector has come and gone.  They're supposed to prevent the windows from opening greater than 10cm (about 3.5 inches).  That is ridiculous.

I just want this to be done with.  This has been a long week and this coming week feels like it's going to feel like a month instead of 7 days.  Blaaaah.

-This post is most definitely coloured by the persistant throbbing in my head, which, as I mentioned, has been going on for 11 days.  I've taken 1000mg of tylenol four times today, and have not been able to get rid of it.  And I'm pretty sure I have PMS, as I'm expecting my period in 3 or 4 days.  Which also sucks.

-The good thing is always this:

His new thing is standing still for pictures (but not necessarily smiling) if I tell him he can see them afterward.  This facial expression cracks me up:

"Ok, I'll stand still, but I don't like it.  And I really want to see the picture right now."

He makes me laugh every day.  And he is starting to obey much more, which makes it much more tolerable when he doesn't obey, since that's no longer the 'rule'.  Time outs really have worked wonders in this house.

-We had a family photoshoot done on Wednesday.  We've never had out pictures done professionally before, and our photographer does amazing work.  I am very excited to see the pictures!  

Alright, I'm out of here.

A Pool!

Earlier today I spent 25 minutes writing this big long post about the big decision we were making, how we might possibly be getting a pool, but we were waiting for the contractor to come over to discuss the final price, so I didn't feel like it was final, yada yada yada.  I spoke of my fears, along with my reasons for wanting to do it despite my fears.

I wrote all this while Noah was playing with Justin.  Then he came upstairs before I could finish.  Then the contractor came over.  And the blog post never got finished.  It is now moot, because the decision is made.

We are getting a pool!

We are using 80% of our savings, which is freaking me out a little.  Okay, a lot.  But I decided that we need to make the best of where we live (ie. in the sticks), since we will probably never move.  And I didn't want to be so concerned with paying off the mortgage a little faster (which is what we've been using our savings for so far) that I would deny us the opportunity to bring something into our lives that would give us so much entertainment and enjoyment.  For 4 months a year, anyway.

Construction is set to start Monday.  Although it may start as early as Saturday.  The pool will be open the first week in September.  Of course, I really wish we had done this in May or June.  But oh well.

I'm excited!