TurbulentFlow

Primary activity for this International Women’s Day is cleaning bathrooms and doing laundry. I wish I were kidding, but thankfully it is in service of an upcoming vacation so must be done regardless of how my feminist self feels about optics. I can laugh at the optical irony of today because I spend every work day of my life leading an engineering firm and mentoring women in a male dominated field.

As a Canadian I’m thankful our family trips for this year were all planned for in country so no need to make last minute itinerary changes like so many our fellow Canucks cancelling trips to Florida while the US president threatens to economically destroy us and then annex our country… it wasn’t funny the first time he made that ‘joke’ and has only gotten less hilarious as the weeks go on. 

And so I’m doing the things I can to support Canada in this ‘economic wartime’. Grocery and shopping choices are Canada first (have always aimed for this one, but now I’m paying more attention), followed by ‘anything but US made’. US made used to be my #2 choice, but things change and clearly I’m not alone in this approach because many grocery stores have started clearly marking Canadian goods and offering more produce from Mexico and other parts of the world. I even found sunflower oil that was clearly marked as 100% Ukraine produced.

Our household has also cancelled our Netflix and Disney streaming. The teen reports commiserating with other friends similarly cut off from their entertainment supplies. I’ve also stepped away from all Facebook and Instagram activity, which has been as much about improving my overall mental health during this time of insanity as it is about not supporting the Meta corporation.

No training video this week because I came down with the plague and spent most of the weekend in and out of a fever fugue. Husband is deep in the grant writing trenches so we’ve been eating a lot of takeout and using our limited combined free energies to walk the dogs. Thankfully the teenager can fend for themself and had covid earlier in the week. Kid had such a mild case we didn’t even think about testing for it until I got walloped. Partner received a different variation of the Covid vaccine last round which seems to be protecting him from the one that broke through the vax kid and I got.

I’m now on the upswing side of the recovery curve, but still doing battle with the wads of cotton that keep getting jammed into my sinuses. Partner claims to be on a similar trajectory with the grant so we have hopes of getting him to the grocery store and eating something for dinner tonight that does not include tipping the driver.

Fuzziheadedness combined with a photo of an ex on social media sent me down a rabbit hole of sentimental thinking. I dated a lot in my teens and twenties (am poster child for what is now termed ‘serial monogamy’). Not sure they would say the same about me – ‘indecisive’ is a kind way of saying that I was a generally terrible girlfriend until my late 20s. Essentially, I ran an extensive catch and release program in the dating pond and looking back can see I must have fantastic fishing skills because there are very few that would ever count as a regret. Lots of top notch humans at least from what I can see on social media and the odd time we are able to meet up in person. 

But returning to the specific one that showed up on my feed today, I would never think of him as the one that got away. I purposely placed him back in the pond, but he was one of the first that I seriously considered keeping. He was (and almost certainly still is) a huge personality who wears his heart on his sleeve and showed me what it is like to be in a relationship with someone who says exactly what they mean and asks for what they want. Ultimately though, we had desires for fundamentally different career and family paths that made us incompatible. I’m always thrilled that the glimpses I see on social media suggest that not long afterwards he found someone who did want those things.

Fast forward to current life and it doesn’t take much to make me schloppy and sentimental about where various bifurcations in this chaotic system of life landed me as well. I have a partner that makes me feel like I won the relationship lottery, but I can also see how it might not have worked out if we had met 10 years earlier. Or maybe it would’ve/could’ve/might’ve worked out differently and 2024 me doesn’t want that either. I’m happy to be right here on the sofa with one dog on the floor under my feet, another splayed and snoring on the couch kitty corner. Teen sleeping upstairs and in another room squinting at his monitor is the person I look forward to having next to me while we navigate through whatever comes next.

Currently Reading: 

Hard book: The Pact by Jodi Picoult

Audio book: To Say Nothing of the Dog: Or How We Found the Bishop’s Bird Stump at Last by Connie Willis