Every morning on my drive to take H to school my sister, Stephanie calls to chat with H and me. Mostly H but once she’s at school I get to chat with my sister. One morning as I was driving and Stephanie was making her way out the door to go to work –

Stephanie – Alexa turn down the music.…. ALEXA turn volume down two. ALEXA! PLEASE turn the music done.
Me – Alexa listens well.
Stephanie – Alexa turn the music down. She is not listening today.
Me – That is because she is too busy eavesdropping on your conversations.
Stephanie – Why? So she can send me stuff to buy?
Me – Yes, that is exactly why.
Stephanie – pft.
Me – Just like your smart TV watches you.
Stephanie – nervously laughs.
H – 🦗🦗🦗
Stephanie – continues to nervously laugh.
H – Wait. Do we have a smart TV at my house?
Me – Yep!
H – So it sees me?
Me – Yep!
H – ARE YOU KIDDING ME!?!?!?!?!?!??! I GET DRESSED IN THE LIVING ROOM SO IT SEES ME NAKED!
Me – YEP!
Stephanie – bursts out laughing – THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT I WAS GOING TO SAY!
Me – I know you were. You were looking for a G rated way to say it.
Stephanie – still laughing – I WAS!

Driving home from picking H up from school.

Me – How was your day!?
H – Can I tell you something?
Me – ALWAYS!
H – There is no field trips at my school until grade three!! NONE! I need to go back to my old school. This sucks.
Me – 🤦🏻‍♀️

Another after school pick up…..

Me – So glad to see you! How was your day!?
H – Terrible.
Me – Oh tell me about it.
H – Once we are in the car.

I assume it has to do with a disagreement with a friend at recess. We get in the car.

H – Can I tell you about my terrible bad day?
Me – Yep.
H – Pasta day was today.
Me – Okay?
H – It was late so we had to go outside for recess and THEN come in to have lunch.
Me – 🤔 – Pasta being late made it a terrible bad day?
H – Yes.

Safe to say she was probably hangry and did not want to wait any longer for her pasta lunch.

H new hobby is to go out back and pick up dog poo… 🤦🏻‍♀️
Matcha (her protector) is never too far, keeping watch for coyotes…
Moo is just there to hangout and annoy H.

No clue of why I bought all the cereal. The chocolate almonds barely lasted a week…. I have ate most of them…. No shock there.

H is staying strong in her opinion.

Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, I slept through the night. I slept so deep I swear I could have slept through a train going through the bedroom. Then…. I had a baby and never slept again. Not unless I had ear plugs in, or medicated myself. Maybe one day I will sleep again, unaided.

Nice of Jared to confirm Dharma was not dead…..

I have been feeling a lot of grief the past few weeks. When Macchiato passed away in September I was at peace with it. She was very ill, I could have continued treatment and hoped she got better, but her lil face looked tired and defeated. The vet and I agreed it was time to let her go, so I did. The days following were tough but I knew I made the right decision.

I was busy packing and moving, kept busy and didn’t have a lot of time to miss Macchiato. Here we are six months later and I have been missing her. Her sassy attitude, her floofy fur and how sweet and snuggly she was with me but standoffish with everyone else.

My heart has been filled with so much sadness I almost got a puppy. A FREAKING PUPPY! Good grief I am glad that was a fleeting moment. Ok….. several fleeting moments.

Reading these posts have brought me some comfort.

If you are mourning the loss of a beloved pet, friend or family member, you are not alone. 💕

With a very long story behind it.

On January 29, 2024 I wrote about the crazy few (eight) months we had.

H broke her femur.
Venti died.
Nine weeks later Yeti died.
Cheeto joined our crazy fam-jam.
Don and I went to Costa Rica.

Sounds Peachy eh…. The facts were true, the emotion / tone was false. It was the start of my bout with depression.

Costa Rica I did my best to “be happy”. I cried every time I was alone.
Trip to Puerto Plata with my parents, Don and H, was a week of hiding my pain.
Posts about our road trip East was a great distraction to what was going on in my head.

Every post after January 29, 2024 was a fluff piece. I hid what was really going on. I look back on my last post on August 11, 2024, and it was full of sadness. I had two more draft posts to share, and couldn’t bring my self to post it. It felt too fake. Not true to my voice. I could not keep up the fake bs. Anyone who knows me knows I tell it as I see it. No bs. No sugar coating. No time for it. I just stopped.
I stopped everything.
My life felt like it was crumbling around me.

I felt like that game from the 80s, ‘Don’t break the Ice’ Waiting to fall through.

What got me to this point? Yeti died November 25, 2023, turned me sour about Christmas. Hating Christmas, my favourite holiday, made me realize I needed help. I started therapy, it rocked everything I thought I knew. It sent me down a very dark hole. Next up one of my very best friends decided we could no longer be friends and she moved (with her family) to the west coast without saying goodbye. I spent months trying to figure out what I did to her to cause the abrupt ending to a 20 ++ year friendship. I went back to work full time. I struggled to work full time, work on Dons business, help with H and have a personal life.

Due to going back to work I had to stop going to dance, and my schedule did not allow for me to get H to dance. I thought I was friends with my dance teacher, but do to the way Dharma and I relayed H not going to dance (due to not having anyone to get her there) for the current year, my danced teacher stopped being my friend. I apologized, however it wasn’t enough to repair a blip in a very long relationship.

Christmas 2024 I was not ready to celebrate the holiday season to the fullest, so I took the family to Disney for Christmas break. Nothing like going to the happiest place on earth to avoid your favourite holiday.

The job I took on was intense and high stress. It was exhausting. I was there for 9.5 months. Don and I sold our house, bought a new house and when the deals closed I quit my job in the most epic way.

Selling our house and moving was a turning point in my depression. It also gave me my time back. I felt like I could finally breathe.

That was a fucking lot to digest….. Wow. Sorry about that.

So here I am, a year later. Feeling more like myself. I now have time to focus on sharing My Effing Life with all of you, although Don wants me to rename it Our Effing Life since he is a main character of my stories, however unless he is going to sit down and write, no name change.

What has happened since I quit my job:
– Don spent four months renovating the house we bought, getting it ready for us to move in.
– Dharma and Jared did not move with us…. The idea of Dharma and H not living on the same property as me was really hard to accept. But Dharma and Jared had an opportunity to buy his deceased grandfathers house. What a milestone to celebrate, my mini me buying her first house!
– Don and I took H to the cottage for a week. She had a blast…. I came home exhausted 😂
– My sweet lil Macchiato passed away September 24, 2025. She was months from turning three, sadly she was diagnosed with Addison Disease and the vets office couldn’t get it under control. She faded away quickly. A mere 20 days from diagnosis to when she passed.
– We moved. Dharma and her fam moved the same weekend.
– 8 our of 10 Christmas trees went up! Our holiday celebration looked a little different since Dharma, Jared and H don’t live with us, but it was a great transition back into the holiday season.
– H switched schools, so I am back on before and after school care. Makes my heart happy to have her everyday.

Thank you for sticking with me!

In memory of my sweet floof Macchiato.💕 December 2022 – September 2025