I am taking the summer off around here.  I may post something again once fall comes.

On Sunday, my brother-in-law Lee invited us over a barbecue at his place.  He also wanted to give Ollie his birthday gift.  The fun started long before we got to Lee’s place.  On the way over we were driving along Idylwyld Drive and noticed a navy blue Aerostar swerve into our lane.  He was swerving to avoid a guy on a mountain bike.  We never thought anything of it until at the next light, the biker swerved over and kicked the van.  Then the van caught up to the bike and tossed what looked to be a lid at him.  Then a guy in the Pontiac Bonneville slammed on his brakes to make the guy on the bike wipe out.  The guy didn’t wipe out but it left all of us in the car scratching our heads over what we saw.

We got over to Lee’s and he gave Oliver a Laugh and Learn Puppy from Fisher Price.  Ollie loves it.  It’s kind of funny in that after you are done playing with it, it is silent for a couple of seconds and then it asks for a hug and to start playing with it all over again.

Since Lee specializes in spoiling our boys, he had something for Mark, a giant X-Wing Fighter kite which we will take out to the cabin this summer.  We will see how powerful he is with the Force since some of the reviews say this is a hard kite to fly.  Lee is coming out to the lake at the end of July so he will get to experience the kite flying himself.

Other than eating too many hamburgers, it was a nice night with the family.

To put some context around my last post.  I have been struggling more and more with depression lately.  I really shouldn’t post anything online when I am feeling this overwhelmed but in the spirit of Dooce, here goes nothing.

A couple of years ago my home life was a wreck.  Things were simply spiraling out of control.  As Jordon and I were on a vacation in Victoria, B.C. I told him I wanted a divorce for no other reason that I thought he just deserved a better fate than living with me.  Luckily he disagreed with my assessment of the situation. We came home and I got into counseling. The counselor helped me figure out a lot about my past and my present and things improved for a couple of years.  Then two years ago things went out of control again at home.  I was lying to Jordon, confusing Mark, and hating who I was, and confused on what was going on.  This time I went to my doctor and she put me on some mild anti-depressants.  They seemed to help for a while and then when I had Oliver, the combination of my normal depression and then postpartum depression made it a lot worse.  On top of that, I stopped taking my medication regularly which is the worst thing I could have done.  It wasn’t intentional, I just didn’t remember.  Jordon suggested I get my medication bubble packed (like many mental health patients do).  That just got me enraged until I went over and noticed I had more medication in my bottle then I should have.  I just cried when I saw that.   I went over and called the pharmacist and had my medication bubble packed (and apologized to Jordon) which has helped me keep my medication on track.

That has helped a lot but I still have days/weeks/months which are still chaotic.  One of the things I do is try everything I can do to hide the chaos from Jordon and handle it but of course I have a zero for a lifetime of getting out of the binds I get myself in and then I dump it on Jordon’s lap and he has to deal with it.  This was one of those weeks.  These weeks tend to come at the worst possible moments.  Right before Jordon’s birthday, Christmas, Father’s Day, vacations and other important dates.  It’s complicated but around here we call it the Hardinge Version of Reality.  It’s a quite derogatory comment that reflects that in our experiences dealing with my family.  It boils down to what they want to happens changes what really did or needs to happen.  In other words what I want to happen becomes so overwhelming to my priorities that it often messes everything else up.  For some reason I see this happening and instead of stepping back, asking for help, or just stopping everything, I tend to become more focused and do what was causing the problem even more.  Eventually Jordon catches on and has to stop everything and fix things.  The end result is that on a lot of Christmases, birthdays, and special days things get canceled, Mark is disappointed, and Jordon is probably wondering why kind of crazed idiot he married.

That is often the last thing I want to do and so it means more conflict for Jordon who often is the one who has to break a promise to Mark because of it.  Of course this makes me feel like I need to fix things but when I am in this state, the last thing the family needs is more involvement from me.

Jordon handles chaos really well.  Working at the shelter he sees a lot of things.  The Salvation Army is in a tough neighborhood and there are knife fights, drug fights, domestic violence, people drinking solvents, drug overdoses, and gang activities all happening on that block at times.  He also deals with a lot of people who are struggling more than I am.  Where it stops being fun for him is that he puts in 10 hours at the shelter and then comes home to more problems and chaos.  Of course I know that and so I tend to want to keep things from him which perpetuates the cycle.   I tend to be conscious about what a pain that I can be and try to keep things off of Jordon’s plate and I kind of don’t tell him certain things about Mark, Oliver, our finances, the noise the van made, or the strange twitch Maggi does once in a while.  That is kind of where we are at again.

This is made a little bit worse by the fact that Jordon isn’t controlling by nature.  He hates to check up on me.  He hates to not take my word for things and it hurts him a lot to have to say, “This doesn’t make any sense.  I need to see some of this for myself.”  I still remember sitting with him in counseling and him going to the counselor, “So what you are saying is that I have to trust Wendy a lot less?!”  Since then he has gotten a lot better at asking questions and he can tell by my voice when I am struggling.  He also has done a good job in helping me figure out a work flow solution for my life.  Keeping a daytimer and Moleskine with me at all time has made a big difference.  At the start he wouldn’t talk to me if I didn’t have my books until I got in the habit of keeping them with me.  Now it is second nature to grab a pen and my journal to keep track of things.  I write more and more down now than I ever have in my life.

On a positive note, we are still married.  I know of friends who have left or were left because of depression and we have made it this far.  We are celebrating 12 year of marriage this fall with a family trip to Victoria.  In his former life as a pastor and now as manager at a shelter, Jordon deals with a lot of people who are losing it.  I also have some wonderful friends who are going through the same stuff or have gone through it in the past.  They see what Jordon sees as well and like Jordon, they see it earlier now as well.  It isn’t as bad as millions of others of people either.   The other positive side is that work doesn’t seem to be affected by it.  I am told that is normal and many people who have horrible depression at home operate comfortably at work.

On the bad side, my side of the family isn’t any help at all.  If there was a list of things my counselor has told me to avoid to make things worse, those things are brought our in every conversation I have with them.  The solution is simple, I haven’t had a real conversation with any of them in years but it does make life feel lonely at times.  It’s a bizarre paradox of being lonely and yet better off being disconnected than connected.

I have learned a lot during the last five years battling this thing and that is that it too will pass and that the guys will all be there for me if I let them.  I just need to do a better job of remembering that when I am going through this.

I haven’t felt like posting much lately.  I am too busy wrecking our lives around here to blog that much about life.

Jordon has a great series of photos from the last year of Oliver’s life.  Happy Birthday Ollie!

I spent some time looking online this weekend for how to grill the perfect steak.  Have fun with it and let me know what you think.

We had planned to head up to the cabin this weekend but a combination of cold weather at the cabin and Jordon feeling absolutely exhausted (he went 48 hours without sleep because of work last week) was a bad combination.  Oliver also got a bit of the cold.  As Jordon posted here, we chilled out around the city and ran some errands.  Jordon picked up a really cool old free standing cupboard.  I have no idea what it was designed to be used for but it will be a great microwave stand and pantry at the lake.  It did need some painting to bring in line with the other decor at the lake so we went to Saskatoon Co-op and picked up some paint.  One coat is on it now and while it looks good, I think I will add another one tomorrow.

Hopefully the weather breaks and we can enjoy part of the weekend outside but if it doesn’t, there is always some cleaning to do.

Mark is a part of the Saskatoon Traditional Karate Club and he had a chance to train with Sensei Katsumata, a seventh degree black belt last weekend.  I took Oliver and Jordon along and we took some photos of the weekend.  My photoset is here and Jordon’s can be found over here.

Mark has a karate seminar with a seventh degree black belt last weekend.  Karate blackbelts from all over western Canada came to see Sensei Katsumata which meant that Mayfair School was probably the safest place in all of Canada for a couple of days.

Jordon and I have been planning out our summer.  It’s is actually a lot easier with tools like Upcoming and Jordon is also using Dopplr which is a fun tool to plan your travel with.  We made a list of the festivals, events, and shows we wanted to take in and made a big list.  A lot of the stuff is free and the other stuff like the EX gets budgeted in like a mortgage payment or utility bill.  I doubt we will see it all.  The crowds of Folkfest often scare us away and as Jordon has said, multiculturalism in Saskatoon is often expressed as beer and perogies.   I will take a pass on car racing and will leave that to Jordon and Mark.  If you know of any good events to take in this summer in Saskatoon, let me know in the comments.

Most of our travel will be the cabin although there is a trip to Regina to see the Roughriders play the Eskimos.  The cabin is only an hour away from the stadium so it will make a quick trip down and back to the game.   Jordon had to cancel a trip to Hamilton so we are heading to Victoria for a weekend in October over our anniversary.  Mark hasn’t seen the ocean yet and desperately wants to fly on a trip with his dad.  One of the plans is that Jordon and Oliver will fly into Vancouver and then take the ferry to Victoria while Oliver and I fly directly into Victoria.  We will see how it all plays out.

I spent most of the weekend at the lake with a friend of mine and her daughter.  Jordon did the math (two women, three kids, and a dog) and decided to chill out at home with some books and Maggi.  I posted some photos over at Flickr and documented our weekend at The Cooper Cabin weblog.

Jordon was supposed to be in Hamilton this weekend but fate intervened and he had to stay at home.  The good news is that we were able to get the ticket changed and we booked a vacation to Victoria in October for a weekend.  Mark will be able to see the ocean for the first time and we will be able to connect up with some good friends.

So while I was expecting to be husbandless this weekend, I had invited a co-worker of Jordon’s and a friend of mine to the cabin with her daughter for the weekend.  Jordon decided to stay at home and do some reading and catching up on some sleep.  His health has sucked and a lot of it has been because of exhaustion over the last couple of months.

So while he chills at home and reads Liar’s Poker and the Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008 I will be chilling out at the lake, barbecuing up some good food and watching a couple of kids race by.

Jordon posted a photo about Mark’s new bike up at the lake.

As some of you know, we spent Mother’s Day at the cabin.  Most of the weekend was spent trying to do some painting and cleaning up after making a MASSIVE mess tearing down walls and painting the last time up but we did find some time to do some cleaning while we were up there.

The chaos started last week when our resident gift shopper got called in to do a midnight shift after pulling a regular shift the day before and then having to work the next day.  By Thursday night, he had worked 24 out of 32 hours and was exhausted.  I took Mark and Oliver to Wal-Mart and let Mark pick out some Mother’s Day gifts.

• From Oliver he picked out a basketball for the cabin.  We have a basketball court just down from the cabin and he knows the only sport I can still beat him at is basketball.
• For Jordon he picked out a bowl set for the cabin.  Jordon also managed to get me a candle and holder for the cabin as well.
• From himself, he gave me some new ear rings.

Jordon obviously trained him well.

On Friday the plan was to leave by noon but I was left in charge of packing and to make a long story short, we left by 4:00 p.m.  On the way out of town, I had to stop by Home Depot to get the paint and Jordon ran into Wal-Mart where he came out with some lacrosse sticks for Mark and some toys for Ollie.  It meant that the weekend was full of Jordon and Mark trying to keep the lacrosse ball away from Maggi which they had mixed success doing.

While it did snow on Friday and it was pretty cold inside the cabin (especially after we blew a breaker in the middle of the night) We did bring up Mark’s new bike which he spent hours riding around with.  There was also some time to go for some walks along the beach, install a drying rack, enjoy a fire, and also install some landscape lights around the cabin.  All in all, it was a pretty productive weekend at the lake.

I am pretty biased but I am pretty sure Jordon was misquoted by the CBC in this article which suggests there has been discussions in the Salvation Army about the merits of wet shelters.

My well placed source tells me that Jordon told the reporter to talk to those who manage those services like Larson House and the Saskatoon Health District and not the Salvation Army (which runs dry shelters).   He also pointed out that since the Salvation Army is a dry shelter, they don’t even have that much of a request for one.

The other day I made the phone call to the fine folks at Service Canada to see how long I had left in my maternity leave.   Then it was the long walk down to my local Safeway to tell them that I was coming back to work and work out my schedule.  My leave comes to an end at the end of the month and then I am back to work.

The difference between now and a decade ago is that I am leaving Oliver with Jordon and Mark, Oliver is a year old instead of just six months, and I am really looking forward to be working within two blocks of home.  I am also going back to better hours, some more responsibility, and a sitter that is a block away.  Life seems more compact now.

The bad part is that I won’t be able to help out at the Centre as much.  I really enjoyed the opportunity to help out down there.  We’ll see what happens with how work meshes with Jordon’s schedule as well.  We have worked opposite schedules so much over the years that I dread the idea of going back to never seeing him again.

Well the SSO Book Sale is on this week at Confederation Park Mall.  Jordon, myself and the boys went over tonight and we got a bunch of books for $30.00

Jordon got

• Settling the West by Pierre Burton
• The Collapse of Globalism by John Raulston Saul
• A box set of One Canada by John G. Diefenbaker
• The Final Days by Woodward and Bernstein
• Readings in Christian Theology edited by Peter C. Hodgson and Robert H. King

Mark got

• 3 Hardy Boys
• 2 Choose Your Own Adventure
• Boredom Buster
• Reading
• 2 Harry Potter books
• Adventures of Tom Sawyer
• Calvin and Hobbes

I also got Jordon two copies of A Father’s Legacy so he can give them for Mark and Oliver.  You know because the 10,000 different blog entries over at jordoncooper.com don’t tell enough.

One of the frustrating things in my life has been the inability to resolve the issues with my family.  It doesn’t bother me that much any longer as I have come to accept the inevitable.  Jordon just doesn’t care any longer although I imagine if they decided to stop by in Saskatoon or the cabin, he would escort them off the property.  They are not a topic of conversation so Mark doesn’t really miss what he doesn’t know.  He had a stronger connection to Jordon’s deceased mother Marion than he would to anyone who is on my side of the family which is fine.  He also sees some of our friends as family and they treat him like that as well.  Lee is also a very good uncle to both Mark and Oliver.  I think what I have is nostalgia for a nicer time that will never ever happen again.

How does it get to this point?  Lately I have been wondering this but as I have spent more time with those that have made enormous mistakes in their lives, I have learned is that not all people have self-awareness of what they do and who they are.  They simply do not have the ability to understood what they do or why they do it beyond their own basic urges.  On one extreme you have this being expressed in an extremely negative and often violent ways.  In other degrees you have things being said and done that are just based on emotion with no control on it or no understanding of how people are hurt or affected by those actions.  It makes it almost impossible to have a relationship with them because deep down they don’t care past their own immediate needs.

How do you move forward with people who don’t understand what or why they do things?  The answer is that you don’t.  They need to figure things out and there is no guarantee that they will.  Not only that but I can’t be a part of that process, because I only make it worse.

Of course I was in my mid-20s when I started this journey and I am almost 40 years now.  Once you go past a couple of years of this garbage, you are a part of the same family in DNA only and that is really depressing and stupid because it never had to be that way.

I haven’t blogged a lot lately.  Life has been too busy to do much more than live it.

• Oliver has been sick lately.  Another bad cough.  We have him on antibiotics and he is doing better.
• Over spring break, Mark got himself in a little bit of trouble by slacking off on some school work.  The last week was getting him up to speed and redoing some tests to make sure he gets 100% on them.  The secret to this was that Jordon bought him a PS2 game on the condition that he got his school work done this week.  He did and is enjoying the game.
• This spring Jordon made the decision that he needed to get Mark and nice new bike.  We looked around all over the place and of course Mark liked all of them.  After Mark decided he wanted a BMX bike rather than a mountain bike so he could jump it.  Jordon explained to him that he wasn’t allowed to jump his Kuwahara or he got in trouble.  Mark asked what he did.  Jordon said, “I jumped my bike and I got in a lot of trouble.”  He now has a great looking new BMX bike and is thrilled with it.  I assume he is jumping things already.
• I am still helping out at the Centre several days a week.  It’s been a great experience for me and the people I work with are great.  Of course it does cut back on my blogging time.

Jordon blogs about the ongoing renovations at the lake and the progress that we have and haven’t made.