And by quiet I obviously mean radio silent.

I last posted while on a prep period at MDS. I had just had a wonderful day of supply teaching, then after I wrote that post I picked up my sweet girl from our sitter and headed home.

Shortly after I got home my phone rang. Out of the blue I was offered an interview at a school I hadn’t taught at in two years. Two days later I drove to the school, quickly said hello to a friend that works  there, and made my way to the office. For the first time, I was given the interview questions in advance, and they were (by far) the hardest interview questions I have ever encountered. I had fifteen minutes to prep, then off I went.

I felt like my interview went okay, but I wasn’t feeling terribly confident. Luckily I didn’t have much time to dwell on it as the Hubster’s mom flew in the next day… which also happened to be my darling Ruby’s first birthday. Time flew, and suddenly it was Friday and as we were waiting to be seated at the Mandarin my phone rang. I knew it would be the school calling, and I braced myself for the rejection call.

Except that it didn’t come. The usual “I’m sorry but you were not the successful candidate…” line that I expected was replaced with “I would love to offer you this position”. I was so shocked I didn’t even know what to say, but I somehow stumbled through the call and what was supposed to just be a meal out turned into a celebration.

I started teaching immediately, and for three weeks I taught grade 9 and 10 English in the afternoon as the teacher I was replacing went down to part time before her maternity leave. After March Break I switched to full-time and added Grade 12 University English to the list.

It took me about a month to really believe that this job was real, and even as I am surrounded by mountains of marking, I sometimes still can’t believe it’s really true.

It took me four long years to land my first LTO… but it feels so good to be back in a classroom.

My classroom. It’s incredibly busy, sometimes stressful, and I constantly wrestle with guilt over how little time I now get to spend with my wee-bean… but it’s amazing.

I love my school. I have wonderful students. My department is amazing. I can honestly say that (aside from the mountain of marking that comes with Grade 12 English) I have absolutely no complaints.

I love my job.

While it makes me a little sad that I no longer get to spend the day with my small girl, I treasure the moments we have together as a family. She is… perfect. Right now she is rocking an amazing curly mullet, her smile lights up her entire face and she runs everywhere (and is into everything!). She is such a happy baby (can I still call her that?) and sometimes I honestly can’t believe that I am lucky enough to be her mom.

So, that’s where I’ve been. Work & spending time with my loves. I have to wake up at 5:30 every day to make it to work on time, so I’m usually a little brain dead by 8pm.

Which doesn’t really leave me much time for writing.

But I do think about it and miss writing all the time, and I’m going to try and work it in. I finally feel like I’ve found my rhythm with my classes, so I’m hoping it will be a little easier to weave back into my schedule.

Despite a rough start, 2013 is shaping up to be a much better year than I expected. :)

Right now I’m sitting in the staff room of one of my favourite schools on my prep period. As everything has already been prepared for me, and I wasn’t needed elsewhere in the school, I now have 76 glorious minutes of absolute quiet to sit and relax.

There are many things that frustrate me that I could complain about, but for now, these quiet moments momentarily overshadow everything else and it’s enough.

Especially after the craziness of last week.

You see, it’s birthday week! My beautiful girl turns one on Thursday, and we are celebrating all week long. We had my family over yesterday and ended up with 20 people in my little house. It was loud and crazy but so fun. It was worth the hectic preparations that went on for days ahead.

As we knew our home would be busy for a while, we decided it was time to fix up our entrance way. When we moved in, the front hallway walls were two-toned with a greeny-grey paint on top and a hodge-podged blue wall paper on the bottom, with a skinny white trim separating them in the middle. The wallpaper was ripped and glued on in pieces, and we think they were trying to make the wall look like stone.

(It didn’t look like stone.)

We’ve just left it as it wasn’t a priority, and my motto has really just been: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

It certainly wasn’t broken, it just wasn’t terribly attractive. But we finally bit the bullet and I spent every free moment last week stripping wallpaper and glue from the walls. It was a big job—especially with an extremely curious toddler who wanted to “help”—but I got it done and on Saturday we had someone come in to patch up our walls. Neither the Hubster or I are drywall experts, so we figured it was probably best to have someone come in and help us smooth them out.

We were hoping to have it all done and painted by yesterday, but the massive snowstorm that blew through set us back a day and the walls needed two coats of “mud” which was more than we figured.

So we we still rocked a two-tone entrance way at the party, it was just paint and drywall this time. (Which I still view as an improvement. ha) I decorated around it and honestly, I don’t think many people noticed or cared. We were up until after midnight the night before trying to get the house cleaned and decorated, and I learned that preparing food for 20+ people is no small task. But everything got done–my home was full, my heart is happy and Ruby had a blast.

And, she didn’t like the cake OR the icing. Part of me was so proud that she preferred her avocados to the cake, and the rest of me wondered how my kid didn’t like cake. haha

Painting starts this afternoon—ceilings first , then walls and trim. So excited!!

We have a full couple of weeks coming up. The wee-bean has her first birthday a week from today, and we are having a get together with my family this weekend to celebrate. The Hubster’s mom flies in on her actual birthday (Feb 14th) and most of his extended family is coming the following weekend to party again! We also have tickets to see The Wizard of Oz in the city, and I’m hosting another get together with some couples we know at the end of the month.

Like I said, busy busy busy.

I enjoy it though. I love when my home is full! So, we’ve been busy trying to get things in order to make our home look the best it can.

For the past two years we’ve been primarily focused on the functionality of our home. I decorated a little here and there, but we were so busy just trying to get things completed–lawn, deck, garage, shed, basement, etc–that we haven’t done much cosmetically. To date, we have only painted one room: our main floor powder room.

So, we decided to tackle a myriad of projects that we’re hurrying to complete before our month of parties and company. I’ve been busy stripping wallpaper for the past few days, and we have someone coming to repair the walls and paint on the weekend.

In the meantime, I’ve also been trying to tackle a few smaller projects to add a little fun in my kitchen.

In my family, the kitchen as always been the hub of all activity. We have always loved sitting around the table or working together to make food and clean-up. As I know my family will be in and out of my cupboards and drawers as we prep for the party this weekend, I’m trying to get things cleaned up and organized.

My kitchen drawers have driven me nuts since we moved in. They are all white and I can’t ever seem to keep them looking clean. The interior of the drawers show every scuff and mark and it makes them look dirty even when they aren’t. So I had a little idea and decided to give it a whirl.

I found some fun contact paper at Dollarama before Christmas and used a tiny bit for a gift I made someone. I ended up with a ton left over, and I wasn’t sure what to do with it.

So, I got creative.

Earlier this week I emptied out each of my drawers and cleaned them from top to bottom. As I looked at the scuffs and marks on the white surface, I decided to try lining my drawers with the contact paper and I am so happy with how it turned out!!

As it’s just Dollarama contact paper, I found the adhesive wasn’t great. So, after I cut the paper to size, I added strips of double sided tape to the drawer to help the paper stay down.

 See? Boring old white.

After I removed the backing of the tape, I carefully laid down the contact paper.

And… voila! I love how it turned out. It’s a very subtle, light pattern, but it just adds a little something to my once boring, scuffed drawers!

I still have loads left over, so I have another idea that I want to try in a much more visible spot.

I’ll keep you posted!

This year, we decided to try and actually do something for New Year’s Eve. I’m pretty sure that we didn’t even make it to midnight the two previous years, so in an effort to be a little more exciting, we invited some friends over.

We thought we’d order in some Chinese food, play some board games, watch a movie and try and stay up to watch the ball drop at midnight. We jokingly called it our “Old Married People Party”.

Now then. I am a planner. We spent NYE with my parents two years ago, and Big Dad ordered in Chinese for us that night. He said his restaurant was so busy that he had to call in and place the order a day ahead of time just to make sure it would be available when we wanted it. So, I thought I’d follow his lead and order our dinner several hours ahead of when we’d need it.

We decided to order from a great little restaurant that we’ve used in the past, and I had a menu on hand so it was easy to pick out what we wanted. After making my choices, I sent a message to our friends asking if there was anything extra that they wanted me to order. They had never been to this particular restaurant, so they asked me if there was a website they could look at to see what was available. I  looked at the menu and saw one listed there, so I thought I’d check it out before passing the info along.

The restaurant was called “Asian Delight”. I quickly glanced at the website listed on the menu, and it looked like it was just the restaurant name with .com at the end. So, I punched it in so I could see if the menu was online.

…the website that came up was not for Chinese food.

I’m a pretty conservative person… so when this website same up, I gasped out loud and fumbled to try and close the browser, all while wanting to wash my eyes out with soap. The Hubster heard me gasp and asked me what was wrong, and when I explained what I had done, he just about fell over laughing.

We took a closer look at the menu and realized that the restaurant had removed two of the vowels from their name for the website, as Asian Delight was clearly already taken.

But let me assure you–the website is not my definition of delightful. Ha.

Now that I think about it, “Asian Delight” does sound a little more like… something else.

Note to self: read web addresses carefully before trying to open them. Or just stick to paper menus.

The end.

I’m quite happy to have January behind me, and I already feel like things are looking up a little. Simply put: I had a really great day.

For starters, it was very chilly today… but the sun came out and it ended up being a beautiful, frosty day. I’ll take that as a win.

I also was able to go back into a school I used to spend quite a bit of time at–the school I originally started volunteering in before I got on the supply list. It was my first time back in over a year, and it was so nice to see some of the staff I love and visit.

While I was in the office catching up with some of the secretaries, a VP I know somewhat came through the office and stopped when he saw me. He looked at me for a minute, then said:

“You’re Shop Girl, aren’t you.”

When I replied that I was, I wasn’t prepared for what he said next. He looked at me and told me that I had just been highly recommended to the school by another VP. My face must have registered my shock, and he asked me if I had recently had an interview at MDS. When I nodded, he went on to tell me that the VP (who I was sure thought I was a total flop) had been in touch and told him that I had interviewed very well and was a strong candidate… and recommended me for any opening at their school.

I cannot even begin to tell you how surprised I was to hear that this VP had passed along a positive review completely unbeknownst to me, or how much I absolutely needed to hear it today.

For me, the very worst part of the interview process isn’t the moment when you hear you aren’t getting the job.

It’s the time waiting in between.

In this case, my interview at MDS was on Friday morning. I was told at the interview that I would hear one way or another by Monday. I didn’t actually get the call until Tuesday morning. That left me with four days to analyze, over analyze and over-over analyze everything that I said and the way I felt the panel reacted to it.

When I left the interview, I felt pretty good about everything. Within an hour I was retracing my answers and reflecting on ways I could have improved. By the end of the weekend I had ripped apart everything I said and was unhappy with the way I answered everything. By Tuesday morning I wasn’t even sure what I had said. haha!

I know I’m my own worst enemy. But after already feeling insecure about my performance, getting the call of rejection was a massive blow to my confidence. I was sure that the problem had to have been with me. How else could I explain losing out on a job that everyone was so sure I would get? I felt like I let everyone down, which added to my misery.

So, my confidence as a teacher was really shaken… but hearing that this VP was spreading the word–good words–about me, was exactly what I needed. It was validation that maybe I can still do this.

(Thank you!)

After getting a huge confidence boost, I made my way to my classes and had the best afternoon. My second period class was challenging, but my first group was a dream. Seriously. Best class EVER. We laughed, we learned–good times were had by all.

And then I got to come home to my wonderful little family. My beautiful girl just got her 6th tooth, and after today I think I can officially say that she is walking. Her confidence is growing, and more and more she is choosing to toddle on her feet rather than crawl. She is regularly taking multiple steps on her own and I don’t think it will be long before she abandons crawling for good.

So, it was a rough month and our home may be falling down around us, but I’m choosing to look for the good.

I may not be working as much as I would like, but I have a career that I love. Things in my house may be breaking, but I love my home. I am married to my best friend, and we have a beautiful daughter who lights up our lives.

And the VP at MDS didn’t think I was a complete failure. Ha.

So, here’s hoping February is a little smoother than January… but even if it’s not, I think I’ll make it through.

I have always, always loved Tom Hanks. He is my favourite actor, hands down. I have always felt this way for one simple reason: his movies always make me feel good. I know there’s the odd one that is just… off (Joe vs. The Volcano… really?), but for the most part, if Tom Hanks is in a movie, I love it.

I particularly love his comedies from the 80s and 90s, and my favourite of all is The Money Pit. If you haven’t seen it, go. Go now. It’s hilarious.

For the past couple of years, we’ve lovingly teased Doodle that he bought a “money pit” when he purchased his home. For a while it seemed like he encountered major repair after major repair as he settled into his new house. We didn’t have anywhere near the issues that he did when we moved in here, so we thought we were golden.

Until now.

Remember how I mentioned that I thought that this year would be a challenge for me? Well, I didn’t know that my house was also in on the game.

A few days before Christmas our main bathroom sink broke. And I mean broke. It was an original fixture and the drain completely rusted through. We ended up replacing the entire countertop as we tried to get our bathroom back in working order.

That should have been my first clue.

Last week the plumbing for our kitchen sink basically fell apart. I opened the cupboards to reach for something and discovered a puddle of water. When the Hubster took a closer look, he realized that the pipe had completely disconnected from the sink.

Awesome.

It took a late night and early morning trip to Home Depot, but luckily my Husbter is amazing and he was able to fix it on his own and it wasn’t a huge issue.

And then after dinner last night, I noticed that the “element on” light was still shining on our stove. I was a little perplexed I had turned the stove off over an hour earlier, but the elements on one side of the stove still felt warm. The Hubster was out until nearly 9:30, and he tinkered with it a little when he got home… only to come to the conclusion that there is a short somewhere in the panel.

*sigh*

So, in short (pun intended), my stove is now sitting unplugged and unusable in my kitchen.

Even though it seems like everything is falling down around us, I can’t help but laugh. I mean, really. Really? The stove too? At least we caught it before it really got warm, there was nothing on it and luckily, there was no fire. I just now feel like I’m walking on egg shells around my house, just waiting for the next issue to pop up and shout, “Gotcha, sucka!!”

Oy evay.

I will say one thing though… if my bath tub falls through the ceiling, I’m out.

Ruby is hilarious right now. She is so bright and inquisitive, she absolutely loves to play. In the past week she has taken huge strides in learning how to play independently, which has given me just another piece of my independence back. She’s sleeping better and eating well–life is pretty wonderful where she is concerned.

As I enter each new phase of parenthood, I continue to learn new lessons along the way. Right now I’m having a love / hate relationship with one particular thing: silence.

For months on end that was exactly what I longed for: complete silence. Silence meant that she was fed, happy, and asleep.

I’m now realizing that silence is a double edged sword: if she is in her bed, silence is golden. If she is awake, I’m quickly learning that silence usually means one thing: trouble.

My beautiful wee-bean is a bit of a talker. She babbles and giggles all day long. Even if I’m not right next to her, I always know exactly where she is and what she’s doing by her constant chatter. It gives me a bit of a chance to clean up or work around the house while she entertains herself.

When I see that she’s engaged with something, I try and sneak away to wash a couple of dishes or tidy up. I’m never far–if I can’t see her she is always within my earshot. I’ll listen to her babble while I work, then all of a sudden I’ll notice that the room has gone quiet.

Unfortunately, I know this kind of silence doesn’t mean sleep.

Ruby has acquired a new, wonderful skill–she recently discovered that things can open. She loves to practice on cupboards, lids, drawers, and her personal favourite: the garbage can. She knows that the kitchen cupboards, drawers and garbage are strictly off limits (you should see the guilty look on her face whenever I catch her… ha) but it doesn’t stop her from wanting to practice her new skill.

Any time that she realizes that I’m distracted, the babble stops and she quietly beelines for the “no zones”. She has a jolly time pulling the cloths from the bottom drawer and opening and shutting the garbage. Thankfully she hasn’t tried pulling anything out of that… yet. I know that the real day of reckoning is not far: that moment when she realizes that the toilet lid opens and that things can disappear there.

So, having spent nearly a year craving it, I now find myself apprehensive of that once wonderful silence.

*sigh*

Silly bean. What a kid. :)

P.s. It’s Miss Gentle Nudge’s birthday! WOO WOO! Who knows if I’d even still be writing without her gentle shoves every so often? haha! Have a great one!

It’s been a trying few weeks, and I just knew that the spark wouldn’t be in my writing, so I decide to take a time-0ut. Honestly, so far 2013 hasn’t been shaping up to be a banner year. I know it’s only January, but among other things, Ruby has already been sick twice, I was in a car accident and wrote off our family vehicle (no injuries), and today I just received news that I didn’t get the job I interviewed for last week.

I try hard to be a positive person, and really–there has been a bright side to each of the things that has happened this month–but getting the call telling me that I was not the successful candidate for a position at the school I’ve put my heart and soul into for two years was crushing.

And this morning I broke down.

The hardest part of all of this, is that with each new trial I felt my confidence chipping away. My confidence as a driver, as a caregiver and mother, and now, as a teacher. And this morning I had a moment where I doubted myself in all of it.

These past few weeks I’ve really been reflecting on the nature of life and how it continues to change as I progress further into adulthood. I feel… unsure of myself. Not that I ever knew what life had in store for me, but I felt like I had a plan. A path to follow. And these past few weeks have made me question the road I’m on.

Every so often it seems like I have a year that challenges me in every way possible. While it’s sometimes excruciating to go through it, I have always looked back on those trying years with gratitude for the things I’ve learned and experienced, as I know I can’t always see the bigger picture when I’m standing in the middle of it.

I have a feeling like I might be entering into another one of those years–I can feel something restless stirring deep within my bones. It’s moments like this when I cling to the mantra from one of my favourite books:

“I will persist until I succeed.” –Og Mandino

So, that’s where I’m at. It’s been a hard couple of weeks, but I know things can only look up from here.

{via: http://village14.com/files/2012/12/2013_new_year.jpg}

Is it really 2013 already?

It sounds a bit like some futuristic date that belongs in a sci-fi movie. Like it can’t possibly be real… even though my calendar tells me otherwise.

I’m not sure I have the right words to describe this past year. It has been the most amazing and rewarding yet also the most challenging and difficult year I’ve ever had. There has been so much joy that I thought my heart would burst, but also some challenges that have tested us and pushed us to new limits.

Ah, 2012. It began with an extremely pregnant me racing to finish work in my dream job before the wee-bean arrived. I am so glad that I was able to experience what full-time work is like, even if it was just for a short time. And then it was over, and my darling Ruby arrived.

*Just to clarify one last time, Ruby is not her real name. Just as I am “Shop Girl” around these parts, my wee-bean is “Ruby”.

Even though her arrival didn’t happen exactly the way I expected, it all feels like a fuzzy memory that has now been surrounded by a haze of happiness and love. While I’m pretty sure I was a bit of a zombie-mom for the first several months of her life, I had no idea that a person so small could bring so much joy into our lives. It took us a while to get the hang of things and find our rhythm as parents, and we’ve certainly had our ups and downs and hit a few bumps along the way, but I am so in love with my little family.

So, I suppose if I had to choose a word to describe my year, that would be it: love.

I took a minute to review the goals I set for this year, and I am pretty sure I completely failed at most of them:

1) Take care of myself. (If I learned anything from the last year, it’s that I tend to take on WAY too much, stress out and overwhelm myself, then forget to find the balance I need to be healthy and happy. With the wee-bean’s imminent arrival, I need to take care of myself in order to properly take care of her and the Hubster and enjoy the life I want. I know this will mean learning how to say “no” in certain situations, something I’ve never been good at.)
2) Express Gratitude.
3) Eat well.
4) Exercise regularly & feel good in my clothes.
5) Run a race.
6) Read often.
7) Write often.
8) Set aside time to spend with my Hubster, that doesn’t involve working on our house.
9) Read the Book of Mormon.
10) Be a good mom.

I’ll be honest–I don’t feel that I excelled at any of these. But I’m okay with that. For me, I feel that my biggest accomplishment of 2012 is acceptance. Somewhere along the way I accepted that my house will never be as clean as I want it to be, I’ll never look exactly the same way I did before the baby, and I may not ever win the mom-of-the-year award for making amazing things off pinterest for my kids.

But I’m okay with that. Because at the end of every day, I know that I have done my best. Ruby is thriving, the Hubster is still the love of my life,  and my family knows I love them. Everything else can wait. I’ve learned my limits, and while some days I can tackle the world,  other days it’s all I can do to get through in one piece.

And I’m okay with that. Because every day is a new day, with no mistakes in in yet.

That being said, I still feel it’s important to set goals and have something to work towards each year. This year my goals are a little more personal, but they are things I hope to work on and continue growing as a wife, mother, sister, daughter and friend.

1) Show my family that I love them every day.
2) Focus on the things I love about my body, instead of the things I want to change.
3) Go easy on myself. Instead of viewing challenges as areas I am failing in my life, accept them as opportunities for growth.
4) Read. Every day.
5) Find the joy in running again. Run for pleasure, not to lose weight.
6) Have a regular date night with the Hubster.
7) Make time to go out with friends, but stop feeling guilty if I can’t do everything I want to.
8) Be the best I can be–Mother, Wife, Sister, Daughter, Teacher, Friend.
9) Write something. Every day.
10) Love myself. Be patient, realistic, kind, understanding–try not to treat myself with less respect than I would someone else.

I spent a lot of time this year being very hard on myself. All I could see were the areas I where I felt I was failing, and I took those failures very hard. There were moments where I felt like I was a terrible mother, a terrible wife, and certainly a terrible friend as I navigated through the changes this year. I spent a lot of time feeling very alone, and feeling quite sorry for myself as a result.

It took me a while to really realize that those feelings were helping no one. It sounds so simple, but it took me a while to realize that I am in charge of my own happiness, and dang it, I’m taking the reins from here on out. I know life won’t always be smooth sailing, but I plan to enjoy the waves for what they are.

You know, it’s funny. I knew that motherhood would change my life, but I didn’t really realize just how much it would also change me.

So bring it on, 2013. I’m ready for you.

This morning I loaded Ruby in the car and we took a drive up to Btown to spend the day with my family. I thought for sure that I’d have a few free minutes this morning to hammer this out, but it was just so busy.

But it was the best kind of busy. :)

We had our pre-Christmas get together, and it was a day of laughter, presents, food and togetherness. Have I mentioned lately how much I adore my family?

Anyhoo. That’s not why you’re here, is it.

This morning my handy dandy randomizer spit out the winner of the holiday card giveaway. It’s always so exciting to watch it spin and wait to see the name that pops out!

Are you ready?? The winner is…

Congratulations!!

Please send me an email at iheartmyshoes@gmail.com and I can forward you the promo code to get your cards.

Now then: on to more important things.

Sleep.