I'm a creature of habit, as uncool as that sounds. And there is no time of day when I appreciate a routine more than first thing in the morning. I will never be the person who wakes up one day and decides to mess with the schedule and, like, all impulsively decide to curl my hair and go out for croissants. Not this bear. It's down to a science and I don't like to eff with the flow - especially not before 10:00AM.


Aside from the necessities (brushing of teeth, donning of clothing) there are a few daily musts I need to get the day off to a good start:

[+] breakfast. A no-brainer, but so many people skip this step, and frankly, I don't understand those people. I actually get excited to go downstairs and eat breakfast, and if I have to delay it for whatever reason, I feel like throwing up. I'm OK with eating the same breakfasts for two straight weeks. Give me a toasted English muffin with peanut butter and banana, a bowl of oats with berries and walnuts, or a poached egg on toast.

[+] coffee. This is not optional! I like to bring my travel mug of coffee in the car with me in the mornings. I swear it makes the commute easier.

[+] angry driving music. Everything has its place, including Dave Matthews and Jack Johnson, but my car at 7:30 is not the time for those mellow fellows. In the morning I want loud, fast and offensive. You can't navigate Magazine Hill singing along to Banana Pancakes - it just doesn't work.

[+] BB cream. One product that serves three purposes can't be beat. I like being able to slap one thing on my face and get moisturizer, sunscreen, and coverage.

[+] advance prep work. Every evening after dinner I pack my lunch for the next day and pop it in the fridge, pack my gym bag, and set the coffee maker. In the morning, I can just kind of roll around in a fog and know that I have a bag of food, a piping-hot beverage, and all my gym gear ready to go. It's so much easier to do this at night. The less I have to do in the morning, the better for me.

[+] hugs and kisses. I can't leave for work without big hugs and kisses from both boys. It's the best way to get the day off to a good start and I look forward to seeing them again all day long.

What do you need in the morning to kick-start your day?

I haven't felt like blogging lately. Nothing's wrong, and it's not a lack of having stuff to say, but posting has just been really hard. Finding the time to put a coherent post together is impossible and on my list of 100 things I should be doing, blogging falls somewhere around #29,234. Every time I start a draft, I read it over about two-thirds of the way there, and think, "but WHO CARES?" and it stays in draft-land, forever and ever.



I could write about starting my new job last Monday. It's going well so far. It's a LOT to learn, from in-depth stuff like the way the company operates and the science behind the products, to the things that are common to starting any new job, like learning how to operate the coffee maker and remembering everyone's name. I like it. I can't remember the last time I had so much new information to process, but it's all genuinely interesting and inspiring.

I could write about running the Blue Nose 10K yesterday - my first 10K race ever. I finished in 52:42 and am happy with that time. The weather was perfect: sunny but cool. The race was well-organized, the volunteers were awesome and the course wasn't anywhere near as hilly and scary as I'd been told.

I could write about today, which is a holiday and a complete and total write off. I went to the gym this morning and folded some laundry and those were the only non-lazy things I've done all day. It's cold and rainy outside, and while sitting on the couch semi-watching a baseball game I don't care about and looking at the Internet feels like a sinful waste of a holiday Monday, it's not like there's anything else I need or even particularly want to be doing. I rarely have an unabashedly lazy day, mostly because I don't enjoy being lazy.

I could write about The Great Gatsby, which I'm reading and loving. About the doughnuts I made yesterday (Cinnamon. Delightful.) How much I can't wait for summer: the beach, ice cream, tennis, fresh strawberries, bonfires.

I could...but I don't want to.

Back to the ball game.

Three years ago, I still wasn't a hundred percent sure I wanted to be a mom, but we were starting to think about it. We had just bought our first house and there were all those empty bedrooms upstairs. We turned one into a guest room and one into a mishmash of random furniture and objects - think spare bookcases, a little TV, and yoga mats. We never made it a permanent space for anything because I think we both knew sooner than later it would be a room belonging to a little someone.

Two years ago, we started telling people our big announcement - that our family would be growing by one in November 2011. A year ago I celebrated my first Mother's Day, and yesterday, I celebrated my second. It rained all day so it was a quiet day, but a nice one just the same, started off with homemade waffles with my boys and wrapped up with perfectly cooked steaks and baked sweet potatoes for all of us and glasses of wine for two of us. We took a trip to the greenhouse for some new flowers for the yard and split a huge cookie three ways on the drive home.

Before Eli came along, Mother's Day was just one of those holidays that required participation. I would gift my mom with something but not really think about it at all. Now it's one of my favourite days of the year. It's a day to relax with my favourite people and a reminder of how lucky and happy I am to be a mom. (Not that I don't think about that every day, but having waffles to celebrate sure doesn't hurt.)

So thank you, Eli, for giving me a reason to look forward to Mother's Day and for making being a mama such a delight.

I don't talk about work on the blog too often, but it seems appropriate now since it's been on my mind 25 hours a day lately. I'm starting a new job Monday. I'm excited, nervous, sad about leaving my current team, and looking forward to something new, all at once. I have all the feelings one normally has about starting a new job, with added sadness about leaving my current crew.

Without getting into too much detail about the new gig, I'll still be doing online marketing, but switching gears and going "client side". I've been working with agencies since 2006 so it's a big change.

My first job was in Grade 10 at McDonald's. I worked the front counter and then got "promoted" to drive-thru after several months. I worked there after school, on weekends, and throughout the summer until I graduated. I went to college, studied journalism, worked as a reporter for a bit, progressed into PR, and then moved into the big bad world of advertising. In total I've worked at nine different places.

I also just realized I've spent half my life working. UNNNNHHHHHHH

For someone my parents' age, the thought of having held nine jobs by the age of 32 is outrageous, but I think things are a lot different now. You don't graduate and go to work and stay at the same job until you retire anymore. I don't know if that's a good or a bad thing. I do think it's good to grow. For someone like me who hates being bored, the thought of going to work every day and doing the exact.same.thing. is frightening. I need routine and familiarity, but I need to be challenged too. I guess that's why I like online marketing so much - there's never a dull moment and always something new to learn.

Deciding to leave my current job wasn't easy, since I love the team and it's been such a good experience. In a way, I think it would be easier to leave on a bad note, so I could be like, PEACE OUT, blast Free Bird on my computer speakers and go out in a blaze of glory and no regrets. But I'm going to genuinely miss the office. It's scary to leave a good job that you know you enjoy for something unknown - if you've gotta spend half your waking hours at work, it certainly helps to like who you're with and what you're doing - but it felt like a good time to take the step.

For me, this move is about growth and being able to focus more exclusively on the things I like most about the industry, which I'll be able to do in my new position.

So that's that. The next couple weeks will be all about settling into my new office, learning a bunch of new names and routines, figuring out where the bathrooms are, and desperately trying to make a good impression.

I've been slack blog-wise lately - it's not that I don't have anything to say, it's more that I'm lacking the time and/or attention span to put a proper post together. I have at least a dozen posts started and abandoned over the past two weeks.

We've been BUSY. On top of the usual working-full-time-with-a-toddler-and-obnoxious-dog routine lots of other stuff has been happening, which I'll delve more into later (not pregnant, still married, not moving away - just to clear up the three obvious conclusions.)

But April whizzed by at breakneck speed, starting with Easter, throw in a few birthdays, including my own, plus some other excitement, and yeah. Here we are.