Back to Ohio

Yesterday I made the 11 hour trip back to Ohio for a couple of reasons.
1) my best friend is leaving for the peace corps NEXT WEEK!
2) American thanksgiving is this week and HOW could I miss an opportunity to PR on my time from the turkey trot last year?
3) my mother has been getting antsy about the thought of waiting until December to see me, so maybe this will hold her over?

I've got a week full of activities that include eating a lot of pumpkin-sage risotto, running a race, hanging out with my BFF as much as possible until she leaves, and spending time being a big goof with my wonderful family. I really look forward to it!

The Nanny: Week 1

This week started off bizarrely. The nanny mom said to me Sunday afternoon, as the girls smiled shyly at me while we walked the neighbourhood, "Things might be a little awkward at first. The language, I mean."

I really wasn't sure how much English "not much" actually meant...and to be honest, I still don't really know! Monday morning before I went to work, I made three pages of "cheat sheets" for myself to look over when I needed to say something to the girls and inevitably went blank. I practiced the few phrases I thought I would need on our walk home from the school. "Hold my hand," "stay o the sidewalk," and "how was your day?"

I automatically said everything in English first, as a native speaker is wont to do, and received as my response a very, very confused look. I wasn't sure how much of it was my accent (which I largely try to mask but comes out when I am comfortable) and how much of it was that they just didn't know any English.

This first week was very quiet, with the kids doing a lot of drawing and coloring when we arrived at home while I cooked dinner. I feel pretty positive this will change by next week, considering their own parents described them as "boisterous."

Already by the end of this week I could see some of the novelty of a nanny was wearing off - they whispered to each other in French, realizing that my comprehension is somewhat limited, and giggled quietly when I spoke in French. At the beginning of the week, my English was met with inquisitive looks, by the end, it was "quoi? Quoi? QUOI?" followed by fits of laughter. Ohhhhhhh boy, I think I will have my hands full.

At any rate, it is great to be around constant French and I can honestly FEEL a difference in my pronunciation after only five days of daily contact. My tongue moves a little more freely around the R in livre, the nasally sound of bien, and I have learned some...very important vocabulary. Garbage, for example, as well as the phrases "really need to go to the bathroom," "how many more streets do we have," and "will you buy us a treat at the bakery?"

There has not been any English learning yet, other than the simple fact that they are being exposed to it because I literally have to say everything in English and then slooooooowly translate it for myself into French. So there's that.

Like I said, I am still a novelty, but that will wear off quickly and I have a feeling that the coming weeks will be very different. This is not at all what I thought I would be doing, but it is, and I am so far enjoying the bizarreness of it all.

Hired!

Hired! Next week I begin my quest to become quite possibly the best. nanny. ever. Caring for a set of kids, cooking, and teaching them English and music! 

If you need me, I'll just be here channeling my inner Julie Andrews a la Mary Poppins all weekend, with some Mrs. Doubtfire thrown in there to help with the meal planning.

Edit: I guess I should add some back story to this post! Maybe six or seven weeks ago, when I was in one of my slumps of desperation and frustration, I signed up with a semi-legit looking website for Nannies. I completely forgot about it. Until last week, when out of the blue I got a phone call...someone saw my profile and wanted to interview me to be their nanny! I was totally caught off guard and hadn't thought that anything would ever come of me going on that website, but I set up an interview anyway. Three days later, I rode my bike about twenty minutes to their home and talked with them for about half an hour. The next morning, they phoned to tell me they want me to start on Monday! Pretty amazing. The children don't speak English. This...is going to be interesting!

Update on food and budgeting

A few weeks ago I mentioned a new plan I had for cooking, which was actually planning my meals ahead of time. I determined that in order to get the maximum bang for my buck, to reduce waste, and to reduce stress, I would come up with a number of meals to cook over a period of 10 or so days, then shop for those meals.

I guess it's time for an update, right? Somehow a month flew by in the interim, and I'd say the plan is going pretty well.

Let's go down the list.

Planning:
Once every ten days or so, I sit down and flip through my plentiful cookbooks, bookmarked recipes, and favourite food blogs, and write down 10-12 meals I'd like to make, ranging from super simple (tacos with beans and rice, baked spaghetti and broccoli) to a little more involved (soup, brioche sandwiches, really, anything that requires more than an hour from idea to belly). My choices have been based on partly what I'm craving in the moments when I'm making the list, partly what the predicted weather looks like, and partly what we still have in the fridge. (More on that in a second.)
Underneath my listed meals, I write out all the ingredients I will need for that meal. I then take a second piece of paper and make my shopping list from that, notating (x2) if I need something for two meals. All of this sounds needlessly complicated, but I can assure you that it is helping A LOT.

Maximizing bang for my buck:
At this point I feel like I pretty much know where in the market to go for each of my favourite foods. I have a broccoli and cauliflower guy, whose heads of produce dwarf anything you would find in a conventional grocery store and who always tells me to pick the one I want, then says "excellent choice." I have an egg guy. I have a bargain apples woman. (Usually 7-8 pounds of "#2 apples" for $3-5!) and I've found all of this out (bargains, friendly folks) by continuing to shop at the market, even though it is a little intimidating and way out of the way AND out of the anglophone bubble when compared to the grocery stores in our very (very, very, very) anglophone neighbourhood. So my adventuring and forging on is a win-win-win-win: I'm practicing my French and overcoming my fears, we are saving money, I am meeting the people directly in contact with my food (I mean, for the most part - as long as I continue to live in places where it snows, I'm afraid I'll never meet the people who grow my food through the dead of winter or pick my bananas all year long), and we are eating great food.

Reducing waste:

This has been a huge change for us. Things are no longer rotting in our fridge because I "had" to have that giant bag of xyz then didn't know what to do with 2/3 of it. As much as I loved being in a CSA program, it was hard for me at the time because I wasn't in a place in my life where I could a) spend hours every week cooking and b) plan meals. Other than when I lived and cooked in the coop, planning meals just wasn't something I was accustomed to, so it wasn't something I was going to start doing when I was incredibly busy and going out of my mind.

So. Now that I have taken that step back and envisioned what I wanted to accomplish in the kitchen and in my belly every week, there is less waste happening. I can still buy things in bulk, (the way my Midwestern upbringing has drilled into me so well, and the way that city life is so not suited for) but the catch is that of I want to buy that 15 pound bag of carrots because it is only $1 more than the 5lb bag, you'd better believe I've got 7 recipes that call for carrots over the next 10 days, and I'll be eating carrots for snacks. I've also started paying attention to shelf life, because I do bargain shop and that often means buying the produce that is not the, shall we say, "freshest." No, guys, it's not like I'm buying moldy food, but seriously - why not buy that basket of bell peppers for $3 when a couple of them are soft but the rest are basically the same as those that are $3/pound? My trick is to keep an eye on them in the fridge, and when things start to look like they're nearing or past their peak, I either use them immediately, or prep (deseed, chop, grind, whatever) and freeze.

If I had to put a number on it, I'd say we're down to 3% waste around here.

Reducing stress:
I go to the market for all produce and eggs, and where I was once wondering around for hours, trying to figure out what I need and how I can ask for it in French without looking like a total tourist fool, I now feel calm cool and collected. My list allows me to plan ahead, and because I spend about half the time doing shopping that I did before, I enjoy the trip a lot more. And more importantly, when I am able to coordinate the trip so he can go with me, B enjoys it too. He is a true trooper when it comes to the idea of shopping, but he tires of it rather quickly. Getting our produce quickly and easily (and in French!) makes the whole trip more fun!

In terms of mealtime stress, I have definitely felt a reduction. I don't wait until we're both hungry for dinner to start brainstorming. I usually have stuff at least partially prepped in the fridge, so all I have to do is pick something off of my menu and go for it!


Long story short, the plan is working so far. Still figuring out the trick to getting the dry goods, dairy, etc. that I need without breaking the bank at the grocery store here. That's my next goal!

Canadian Thanksgiving

First of all, sorry about the major lack of photos in all of my posts. I haven't taken many pictures recently, and as a result my blog has been extremely word heavy. Hopefully this will remedy that!

Well, the weather has been lovely, steadily heading into those mid-fall temperatures. Leaves have been changing, running on the mountain has been incredible, and last weekend we had a chance to get out of the city and go to our place in Ontario for the long holiday weekend.

There was no turkey involved, but the cooking was pretty great nonetheless. I'd say the only hitch was the night we headed out of town when a) we got stuck in long-weekend Friday afternoon traffic, and b) once we arrived at the lake at 11pm, we couldn't get the boat to start and were stuck outside, drenched in the pouring rain. We had to call in a favour from a friend in the village. Oof. Not off to a great start. However, the rest of the weekend was great. Little bit of rain cooled everything off, perfect for cozying up by the fire.

B did some composing, I did some practicing, Christian (a friend from Oberlin who also lives in Montreal now) did some recording, and everyone had a nice time hiking. I'd never been to the cottage at this early fall time, and it was a sight to behold. The colors were on full display, the lake was empty, and it was still navigable by boat.

I was sad to leave on Monday morning, but I was happy to have the weekend away! As much as I love living in the city, sometimes you just want to get away. It could also simply be the siren song of my favourite place in the world being just a few hours away, calling to me. Either way, it was just what we all needed.

Frustrations

I'll admit it. I find not being employed incredibly frustrating. Maybe it's not so much being unemployed as it is a combination of being unemployed, disengaged, and disconnected. I haven't been in Montreal long enough to really feel like it is my home, and yet here I am.

I thought that perhaps, after five years of full time school, then six months of balancing teaching full time plus attempting to hold on to the life of a student, perhaps I would enjoy some down time. But I never thought that not having anything to do could be so difficult! I find that without any obligations or commitments, I don't get very much done in terms of what I want to do or what I should do. I feel like I'm wasting my time and talent. That every moment spent out of a classroom, out of an office, out of a studio...is a moment that I am disintegrating as an artist, teacher and business person.

It's not all bad, honestly. For one thing, I can safely say that I am getting more sleep every night than I got in two average nights combined while I was in school, especially during my masters. That is a HUGE perk, because I feel like I'm able to think about everything in at least a level-headed way.

That said, I've applied for two dozen jobs...since I got my work permit.
Good news: I was called for two interviews at nonprofits!
Bad news: I couldn't take the interviews because it turns out that most nonprofit jobs are funded by a government program that targets hiring Quebec citizens. Citizens and permanent residents. Although I have a work permit, that's not me. Talk about frustration!

I want to DO something! When I wrote my Lifelong Learning post a few weeks ago, I mentioned all of the things that I'm doing to keep myself busy, things that I previously wouldn't have necessarily considered doing...and truth be told, I AM enjoying doing those things. I just need to figure out how to spin all of this for myself. B spends so much time talking me down off of this cliff of going stir crazy, telling me that spending a year doing things for myself is more than fine, great in fact!

This is all going to take time, and I need to work on coming out of my shell and exploring the city. I've always wanted to live in the city, and now I am, so I need to take advantage of this. I plan to continue to apply for jobs here, but I am going to try to spend my down time being happy rather than moping. We'll see how that goes.

Freelancing, an ongoing story

I began my journey as a freelance xyz as early as age 12. Born to two entrepreneurial parents, my siblings and I were raised with a fierce sense of responsibility to do two things:
1) Find our paths in life by being leaders, not followers and
2) Give back to others and our community through volunteering time, talent, and resources.

Our parents demonstrated these ideals to a fault. My father owns a small business that likely does as much work as an in-kind donation as it does for profit each year, my mother has served as the advisor for far too many student organizations through her school, and both parents continue to serve on the working boards of several nonprofit organizations.

My siblings and I shared and operated a small lawn care business, spanning almost 15 years - beginning when my brother was old enough to drive, and ending when my sister left for college. We had several clients, but we also mowed the lawns of people who could not pay us the going rate, or at all. We were also incredibly involved in many of our parents' philanthropic efforts. Most of these organizations were focused on social efforts, but it was no surprise when each of us took this combined entrepreneurial/volunteer spirit and carried it in out own ways into our adult lives.

Beginning in high school, I taught lessons to students younger than I, and when I learned that my senior year involved no classes on Fridays, I offered myself as an aide to the music department at the middle school doing the same thing pro bono. At Oberlin, there is absolutely no shortage of opportunities to volunteer and to market one's skills, but it is a difficult thing to break into as an 18 year old, fresh from high school and trying to figure out one's place in the world.

It wasn't until after my third internship that I finally figured out a way for my loves of words, music, independence, and nonprofits to collide. After returning from a hugely successful month at the National Endowment for the Arts, I took a course on grant writing and started sending out my feelers to see if there was a way to write for other people. I started small, working on projects for my mother's school and spending a lot of time researching grant organizations and signing up for email newsletters. Grants that I wrote were awarded some small amounts of money from various foundations.

Then, this year, I took on some larger projects. I'm feeling great about what I've accomplished with regards to my projects from 2012. I'm actually still working on finishing up the largest components from working in Alaska, a huge video project to be submitted with grant proposals.

For the time being, my teaching lessons is a bit on ice. It's tough to find students in a city with two universities with well-known music colleges, and so far none of the applications I've put in to community music programs have gotten any response. I'm planning to teach some lessons to my old students when I visit the states, and when I do, I know it will be a great time. I really miss my students from back home! I had a happy little studio of maybe 9 students that I saw each week, and I was so delighted to see them make progress each week. It's something I look forward to doing on a regular basis sometime soon.

For now, I'm piece-mealing work, talking to everyone I can talk to, and finishing up outstanding projects. Keep on fighting and keep on writing!