Thinking big thoughts

I wonder a lot too, baby. But not about you. I don't have any doubts about you at all.

One of the things I wonder: where are you going to live, my dear little creature? The F-word has just been conditionally accepted for the awesome new job he applied for. His ultimate acceptance depends on student numbers next year. That makes it still very, very conditional. Being one of those awful people who think adult education courses are fun, I've signed up for several here, just to get knocked back when no one else signs up for them. So still very conditional for the F-word. But much less conditional than it was earlier this week. 

And if it's only for one year, by Christmas of 2013 we'll probably be looking for a new home, somewhere in Asia. Singapore, Taiwan, one of those clean places that won't give my child asthma or melamine poisoning. (Sorry, China. I like you a lot, but I've spoken to too many of your worried parents to trust you with my kid.)

So another thing I wonder: baby, how am I going to give you stability? How am I going to stop you from turning into the bourgeois equivalent of an army brat?

The only answer I keep coming back to is that I'll need to keep spending long trips in Canada. I would need to do that anyways; if we do stay in Australia four more years and I rip the kid from this, its incubator of a country, probably not to return for years if ever (it's really fucking far), the kid needs to feel some sort of base in Canada, and its extended family there. My memories of childhood are memories of love, of people AND of place, and in a sense of some people who were place. Looks like, however far I've run from north Ontario, that will be the best I can give my baby. Helpless, helpless, helpless. I didn't mean to still be shifting around like this in my mid-thirties. And since the F-word only gets a couple of weeks of holiday at a time, the price of that is gaps in Daddytime. He says he understands. I'll understand if he doesn't understand later. But what then?

What a mess. Sorry, baby. But there are benefits. I don't know what sort of mother I'm going to be to you, but I do know I've set things up so you get three passports waiting for you as soon as you're out of me. And they're good passports, too. Not the sort where you need a visa to go fucking everywhere. I do know that, whether you end up wanting it or not, I seem to be in a position that only a tiny percentage of the world's parents are in - and an even tinier percentage who aren't in the classes of the parasitically rich: I can give you the world, or something close to it.

Kicky little number

Kick, Ren, kick. I think Ren is enjoying the discovery I've just made that you can make pudding out of bananas if you blend them with cacao, condensed milk and boiling water. I certainly am. But a little provoked to be sitting here. This afternoon I have to settle down to a tedious session of reciept counting in a bid to keep my taxes ridiculously tiny, and I want a nice walk in the sun first to warm up a bit first. The weather is good here - the houses are fucking COLD. And, in the winter, full of mildew. It's important to max out the fresh air as much as possible.

Instead I'm waiting around to see if this new insurance company is going to cover me, and the F-word, and fucking tired of it already. They were meant to check with the underwriter and send the quote last week. There is some tedium involved in being a grownup. But when I remember with honesty, it's a fuck sight less tedious being a grownup than a kid. How poor Ren is gonna deal with school . . . I mean, I liked it well enough, but it was pretty much shit. Waking up early, sitting through mandatory classes, suffering teachers . . . Still, you don't know when you're a kid how much better everything is going to get when you have some money and self-determination and can use your words to negotiate.

Thinking more seriously about a move to Taipei. My boss wants it, and I could save retarded amounts of money in a couple of years. Wasn't really on my radar until realizing the awesome new job the F-word's going for might only last for a year, and since it's in arts education there's a healthy chance he'll be out on his ass again in a year.  There's no work in this area - it took him ages to find his present contract, which he'll be happy enough to leave - and the supply teacher existence isn't one that particularly agrees with him. But if we upped sticks to Taipei, he could slip back into ESL work in a manageable sort of way. And did I mention I'd be making retarded amounts of money there? Hmm.

Mustn't let my thoughts get away with me like this. Just because I fucking hate Australia these days. I do like money though.