Out of the bitter barn

I have been waiting all day to go to bed and now that it's time to sleep I can't so I thought I would post instead.

Today proved once again that the world is a very small place - I was in a kids' consignment shop and my neighbour was there for her strollercize class - we had a brief word about Julia's ALL DRESSES ALL THE TIME attitude (hence the consignment shop when we already have too much stuff in the house - the girl needs some dresses for nursery school). A woman standing next to us piped up with some advice on wearing jeans under dresses... anyhow, long story short (okay, as short as I ever make them), we get to chatting and it turns out that her best friend lives in Luxembourg. And that I know her. Not really well, but we were in the same Moms & Tots group and at some parties together. Weird huh?

I don't know if it was the whole talking about Luxembourg with someone who has been there several times (the woman lived in Grenoble until a year ago). Or the horrible sinus headache I had (first one I have had since we moved out of our house in Luxembourg - it really brought me down because after 6 months of constant headaches I hadn't had them for a month). But either way I sat down with Marc this aft and had a good cry about everything that is so horribly difficult and uncertain in our lives right now.

I feel very strange about being here - it's almost like the last 7.5 years didn't really happen. Like we're stuck in some episode of Star Trek where there is an alternate reality that is getting mixed up with ours. And talking to this woman made Luxembourg real again somehow, and I felt really homesick and displaced.

Our friend Hugh's mother put it really well when we saw her a couple of weeks ago. Her husband used to do sabaticals and when they would come back to Canada afterwards - it felt weird to just be normal people. You get so used to being "different" as an ex-pat that it feels strange just to be like everyone else again.

But you know what? I think the cry helped. But I also realized that I will only feel miserable if I let myself feel miserable, and me being crabby on top of the kids being out of sorts isn't going to make anything better (Only child syndrome - I am having a hard time dealing with the squabbling and bickering which seems to have reached an all time high).

Things are not going as expected at the moment, and the change is more difficult than we thought it would be, but it's time to just stop getting upset about things and just get on with it.

Not to mention that I seem to be making some new friends - I got to talking to a woman in the grocery store checkout the other day - I know, I sound like I just go around talking to anyone, but her daughter started talking to Julia, and it turned out they were born 5 days apart... okay, I must be tired, that sentence got completely away from me but I am too tired to try and reconstruct it. What I was trying to say is that I actually asked this very nice woman with a 3 year old daughter if I could give her my number and she gave me hers and two days later she called to tell me about a gymnastics class that they go to, which we are now registered for. Might sound normal to some people, but I am usually far too shy to do that type of thing. I am trying to be better about building a network here than I was in Luxembourg.

And now I am going to try and get to bed so that I am not ready for a nap when Julia has her first pre-school ballet class tomorrow afternoon. I am not sure who is more excited about her wearing a little pink leotard and tights - her or me!