I am in misery, there ain't nobody who can comfort me, why wont you answer me, the silence is slowly killing me

I guess the title says is it all. Just add in the words frustration, agony, desperation and any other negative adjective you would like. It seems like things just like getting worse before they ever get close to getting better. Like the saying goes, when it rains, it pours. Where do I even start?

So I guess I will start with my back. I don't remember if I mentioned it before, but I've been seeing a chiropractor since July (Dr. Carrie Johnston at Re:Form Body Clinic ) I was referred by my friend Rahim who is a chiropractor in Toronto, he and Carrie went to school together. At my first appointment she gave me a req for x-rays. It took me two weeks to go and then after that Carrie went away for 2 weeks and then all kinds of things were going on and I never got a chance to go back. Until this week. I got my results on Monday. To be honest, it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be, but they aren't good. By a long shot. I have 4 things wrong with my back. 2 I found out from my appointments with Carrie, which are the least serious. The first is from when I was pregnant. The ligaments in my back stretched, just like everything does when you're preggo, and they haven't gone back to normal, and at this stage, 14 months later, if they haven't they probably wont. Because they are so loose the bones move and thats what causes the pain. After that there are little joints in your vertebrae and when I move in certain positions these joints pinch the coating on a nerve. After that there are two structural problems which showed up on my x-rays. The first is I have degenerative disc disease. Not fun. The disc in my L5-S1 is thinning. Chances are it will get much worse. After that I have an over exaggerated curve in my back which is causing a flattening in my vertebrae. The curve is kind of like the opposite of scoliosis (which my youngest brother Marc-Andre has). Instead of the curve going to the side, it goes inwards (towards my stomach if that makes much sense). At this point, its not bad enough to need surgery, but chances are in the future I will. Which means it will get worse. There isn't much that I can do. I have physio exercises to do, and I have to change my job to a sit down one otherwise I could end up in a wheel chair. Yea.

Speaking of job. We have a new chef at work, Roberto Mochi. He's Italian. He's a jerk. The first time I was there, I showed up for my shift at supper and he looked a Jocelyn and asked if I was going to be by myself and if that was wise. As if I needed a baby sitter. Yea. I did 2 years in cooking school, Jocelyn didn't even finish high school. Anyways. This week he called me into his office to speak. Everyone knew my x-ray results and someone mentioned it to Roberto. One of the first things he said to me when I went into his office was that he didn't believe my doctor gave me good advice on what to do concerning my future and my health. He said if I lost weight, my back would be just fine. Well that meeting went downhill from there and at one point I was pretty much ready to quit right then and there. I made a complaint with the director, Roberto said he said none of this (including other complaints which I had) and Marc (the director) suggested it was just a misunderstanding. When someone says, and I quote pretty much word for word, If you lose weight, your back problems will get better. I walk 30 minutes a day and my heart problems got better because of it. It's kinda hard to misunderstand that. Just sayin. And then Roberto had the audacity to say, I will forget to you wrote this letter, as if I was lying. Lovely. Make me hate you even more why don't you? My schedule has changed as well because of this. I got stuck with all the crap shifts. I will never get to see Jonathan. And no one is calling for jobs. And I can't go to school to get the experience I need because I don't have the money because I don't have a different job and I need the school to get a different job. See the vicious circle here? It's possible I mentioned this already. I'm just bitter and upset about this whole thing. I'm dreading work now. I get anxiety attacks and depression whenever I think about it. Like right now. It's putting me in a lovely mental state I tell ya.

What else this week? Well. Last night I went to bed pretty early, before 9, because I wasn't feeling well. I woke up at 10.30 with Ollie crying. And crying. Nothing Jonathan or I did helped. Finally he fell back asleep. Only to wake up 30 minutes later, crying again, even harder. It went on like this all night long. I think Jonathan and I got 3 hours of broken sleep all night. At one point I was so desperate I took Ollie out for a drive, at 1 am, to get him to fall asleep. He did, 3 times. And woke up crying, 3 times. At 7 he got up for the day. And cried and whined and fussed. He took a 3 hour nap with Jonathan this morning while I laid on the couch watching The Killers (really funny, I recommend it) with my 3rd cup of coffee. All day he was cranky, until some point this afternoon when he was only semi cranky. He has a bit of a cold but nothing worse than he's had in the past (he's had worse actually) and he had a fever again (by now we are fever experts). So far tonight he's doing good, but we haven't reached 10.30 yet so I'm not holding my breath. He will be staying home with me tomorrow though. And I will be keeping the car just in case. One of my bff's Dylan says I worry too much, but I can't help it.    

So I'm going to end this with a little positive. Yesterday we went to Bayshore to get Ollie his clothes for fall at the Childrens Place and Old Navy. I have to say, my kid has the most stylin clothes ever. I would kill to have as good of a wardrobe has he does. Here are a few pics I took yesterday (before the sickness turned him into the devil child) when we went to go rent the movie!

When you smile, the whole world stops and stares for a while

Ok so I've been pretty bad this summer about keeping this thing updated but it seems like we are always busy or I just haven't felt like updating. I've been in those kinds of moods lately.

I've been looking for a new job. Applying like crazy because I need to make more money and hours. I'm trying in entry level positions in offices and the government but everyone wants me to have at least some classes in business, but I dont have the money to pay for them and to get that money I need a better job. It's a vicious circle really. I even looked at a part time loan for school but the province of Quebec doesn't offer the part time loan to any out of province schools and none in Quebec offer distance education in English. It sucks bad because although I would like to go back to school full time to be able to get the degree faster, I can't because student loans and working wouldn't give me enough money. It sucks hard. But I need a new job because last week at work I had a mini breakdown, that was not a fun day.

Yesterday I had off because I  worked all weekend and Chantal and I took the kids to the beach because we are going through a heat wave again. It was the first time Olivier went into the lake. At first he wasn't too sure and then a minute later he was sitting in my lap splashing around. He loved it.

This weekend we are going to visit Jonathan's mom in Quebec, it will be nice to get away, and its supposed to be nice and cool and we're going to go apple picking and then there are a few little events going on in the city so we may check out a few.

And so I am going to end this post with some pictures!

Competition? Doesn't that mean we compete? How does that work when I always win??

Well I got sent home today from work. My first day back and I get sent home after 3 hours because I don't look too well and I am hacking up a lung and people think I am contagious. Whatever.

It's pretty much official now. I will be going back to school part time in the fall. Nights. One or two classes depending on the amount of hours (some are only once a week, others are twice). I'm excited, while I like my job and the people I work with, it's definitely not what I want to be doing in 5 years that's for sure, let alone in 15.

Jonathan and I have been talking about what we want to do this summer. We don't have a lot of money at the moment so we are just thinking a long weekend someplace. I want to go to Boston. My friend Dylan is there, and I love him to death, he's like a brother to me (and I have several so its not like I'm lacking in brothers either lol) or to New York, maybe Syracuse, where my friend Shawna lives with little Miss Ireland (who was born 2 weeks before Ollie). I don't know, we shall see what we come up with. I'd like to do both if I can get away with it, one in early summer and one in late summer maybe. But I still have to find out when my dad will be here because I don't want to go away when he is here, plus he wants to see the baby I'm sure (right dad? I know you're reading this lol). And as the title implies, I usually win so it just may happen

Sleep you say? I don't know that word, what does it mean?

 

 As the title of this entry implies I am not sleeping. Ollie is sleeping (for the most part) but I am not. Why you ask. Because my son cries in his sleep. But there is no difference between his awake cry and his asleep cry so I have to get up and check and make sure he isn't awake. Last night I had a grand total of 2.5 hours of uninterrupted sleep because every 20 minutes or so he would cry. He even got up 2 times between 10 and 11 last night which is pretty rare now. Ollie woke up for the day at 5.30 and I had 3 cups of coffee by 7.30 when he fell asleep for a nap. 

Not a whole lot has happened in the last 2 weeks (I hadn't realised how long it had been since I wrote!) the Olympics have started (yay!!) so we've been watching that non-stop only watching other things when we have certain shows (like survivor, amazing race and greys anatomy) to watch. I've seen all the medal winners live as they happen and we were quite excited when Canada finally got its first gold at home, in one of my favorite sports to watch. I think Ollie is going to be an alpine skier because we were watching the downhill a few days ago and he was sitting there on the floor with me and kept raising his arms in victory! I thought it was pretty cute. He did it again watching the men's first hockey game but only once or twice so I think his destiny is to be a skier. 

We are going to start collecting the special coin collections for Ollie, starting with the Olympic ones, I already ordered his free collector coin card from the Mint and tomorrow me and Ollie are walking to the Royal Bank just up the street from us to get his coins! My parents and grandparents collected for us when we were younger and I have a few sets at my dads still that I think I am going to give to the baby so he'll have a pretty good collection!

I go back to work in a little over a month and I am dreading it. I want to stay home with Ollie. I am going to go into my work next week and talk to them and see if there is a way for me to work days during the week and thats it, maybe the occasional weekend, once a month I wouldn't mind, and have holidays off, but I don't think they will go for it, so I guess I am going to be looking for a new job. If I must work (and I really do have to, we can't afford for me not to work, even thought half of my salary will go to daycare, fingers crossed we can find a cheap place or if Chantal moves here she can watch him, we'd pay her of course, because I would feel a million times more comfortable with her watching him than with some stranger I don't know watching him) I want to be able to spend time with BOTH Jonathan and Olivier at the same time, not end up with Olivier spending time with just one of us at a time. Today or tomorrow I am going to try and send my resume to some agencies. Plus I am going to be doing some classes part time as well, in the evening, the new course calendar comes out on Mar 16th so I will be able to see what is available in April.  

Getting bigger!

So we had Ollie's 6 month appointment with Dr. Besnare today. I love Ollie's doctor, she's young and really nice, and always listens to all my worries and doesn't make me feel like and idiot. Ollie now weighs 17 lbs and 7.5 oz (50th percentile) and is 26.5 inches long (just under 50th percentile). He's coming along great with his development and he's strong. She was a little worried to hear that he's been coughing and doesn't have a cold, and that his reflux is back, she told us that if it continues this week to call her on Monday and she would make an appointment with the pediatric specialist at the hospital that we saw back in October for Ollie's reflux. I also asked her about asthma because it runs in my family, me, Whitney and Stephane all have it and so does my grandma and some of my aunts and extended family, and she told us that under 6 years of age they call it something else, but not asthma, for now though she doesn't think it will be a problem but I think she's going to keep an eye on it for sure. As we were leaving we ran into a woman we know from our prenatal class, she was there with her twin girls, Aurélie (one of my names I loved for a girl) and Jasmine, they looked nothing alike, one had blond hair and blue eyes the other had dark hair and brown eyes! We spoke with Isabelle for a few minutes before we left.

I go back to work on Mar 29th. I'm not looking forward to it all, partly because I don't want to work at my work anymore, I want a job where I am off on the weekends and I don't work on holidays, and partly because I don't want to leave Ollie with a day care (they cost a fortune here until you get off the waiting list for a 7$ a day but that list is like 2 years long) and someone I don't know. We have a feeling we will have to go with an in home day care because the centers have long waiting lists. I really didn't want an in home one because you just don't know for certain what the people are really like, and there is usually just one adult so you just don't know what happens there, but on the positive side there are less children therefore Ollie would get a little more attention (depending on how many kids are there). Maybe if Chantal and Tony do end up moving here I may ask her if she would watch Ollie for us during the day.

Because  I want my weekends and holidays off I am going back to school part time for Financial Management. Its a 13 course certificate and some of the classes can exempt me from a few different certification classes which is nice, and I can work in either the government or a private company. I'll take a class or two each semester (depending on the schedule maybe a 3rd), even in the spring and summer, and I should finish it pretty quickly I think. I'm really looking forward to it.