I have Thursday guilt.

2 Comments October 30, 2018 drworobec

You see, I don’t “work” on Thursdays, at least not officially, not at the clinic. In fact, I haven’t worked on Thursdays for many, many years. And at the clinic, we’ve built our practitioner schedule around that; on that day, my treatment rooms are free for the taking by other staff. Over the years, the clinic has grown into such a busy place that we’re bursting at the seams, and the reality is that we’re now at a point where I wouldn’t be able to work on Thursdays even if I wanted to, because my rooms are full with other practitioner’s patients.

When my daughter began full-time Kindergarten in 2016, joining her older brother in the all-day-school world, I envisioned lazy Thursdays of long runs and naps, hot coffee and newspapers. Fast forward more than two years and I think I’ve taken a nap once. Once in about 112 Thursdays. Because the reality is, Thursdays are usually my busiest day of the week. They’re the days that I get groceries, tidy the house, squeeze in appointments for myself, run errands, arrange coffee dates, and do all the things that my other days do not allow; they’re the days that I do life.

But inevitably, when a patient asks to book in on a Thursday, and I reply that “I don’t work Thursdays,” guilt nags at me. I’m a people-pleaser, by nature or nurture, and it niggles at my brain when I can’t be all things to all people. A character fault for sure, and one that I’m working on, but part of me wonders what they think when they hear that my work-week doesn’t include a traditional Thursday. Now, logic will tell you (and me) that I work more evenings than the traditional work-week and more Saturdays than the traditional work-week, but logic doesn’t always win. Logic will also point out that I have very carefully constructed my practice life to align with my values, and Thursdays off have given me the space to find balance for both myself and my family. But again, logic can be easily strong-armed by guilt.

Is guilt a mom thing? A female thing? Or just a me thing? Perhaps it’s a bit of all three, rolled up and exponentially powerful, a wasted emotion that has no positive value.

Do I work Thursdays?

I sure do.

(And even if I didn’t, that would be okay too.)

Sundays, puppies, baseball, and books.

1 Comment October 16, 2018 drworobec

I had a moment on Sunday. Life is moments strung together, isn’t it? And this one was a moment for the top of the string.

Sunday was a beautiful Fall day, one of those crisp air days, with blue sky and sunshine and the crunch of Ontario maples beneath my feet. It was the second day of an atypical under-scheduled weekend, two full days in which my family of four spent no more than a couple of waking hours apart. Just how I like it. After an early Sunday dinner, we decided to wander over towards the library to return some books and play some baseball. We grabbed the bat and the ball, the books and the bag, the pup and the dog treats, and away we went.

It’s a short ten-minute walk from my house to Burlington’s Central library, located on a huge urban greenspace with ball diamonds, soccer fields, and a playground just outside the library doors. As we wandered along, the sky began to shift towards an early sunset, another reminder that Winter is on its way. We entered the park, and my daughter and I headed towards the book drop bin, while my husband, son, and puppy headed for the baseball diamond. We called the dog back and forth, a few hundred metres separating ourselves, practicing her recall command, marvelling at her temperament, and showering her with praise and treats. At the book drop bin, I passed pile after pile of Berenstain Bears books, as my daughter happily loaded them into the drawer, waiting for the thump of a book deposit success. Job done, we headed back across the expanse of grass, towards the baseball diamond and our family game.

And that’s when the moment happened.

“Mom,” she said, her six-year-old hand in mine. “I……. I……. I,” she stammered, searching for her words. I could hear the emotion in her voice and see the depth of her feelings splayed across her face. “I love you Mom,” she said as she turned towards me and reached her arms up, her unspoken signal to be picked up. At fifty pounds and four feet tall, she’s not a toddler anymore, but she’s still my baby, and I’ll happily take a wrap-around hug anytime she’s giving them out.

I picked her up, breathed her in, squeezed her tight. And as her little cheek pressed up against mine, I felt the moment overwhelm me too.

Bliss. Gratitude. Joy. Presence. Whatever you want to call it, we felt it.

Green grass under our feet, pink sky above our heads, a puppy at our side, a baseball in our hands. It all came together on Sunday night.

A moment, that’s all.

But a big moment for us.

Saving/Spending/Charity

2 Comments September 18, 2018 drworobec

I need to throw in a plug for the remarkable people that my children are becoming. Every once in a while, I turn up the sap on this blog and make some of you cry on the GO train. Today might be one of those days.

Let’s start with a little back-story…..

Since my children were very small, we’ve piggy-backed an idea from my sister-in-law in regards to their money and finances. We use a three-jar system; one jar for “savings,” one jar for “spending,” and one jar for “charity.” Any money that comes into my kid’s hands, everything from birthdays or shovelling neighbour’s snow or the quarters that Grandma and Grandpa hide around the house when they come for a visit, gets divided into three equal parts and put into their jars.

The “savings” jar gets taken into the bank a couple of times per year and they see their bank balance grow. The “spending” jar can be used for whatever their hearts desire, from Beyblades to Pokemon, video-games to candy. And although I encourage them to think long term and “save up” for a special purchase, they are young enough that the spending jar rarely gets above $15. The third jar, arguably the most important, is the “charity” jar. They know that this is the jar that we use to help others, and it’s another tool that we, as parents, are utilizing to try to grow our children into compassionate, caring adults. This weekend showed me that it’s working.

We were watching the news coverage of Hurricane Florence. I have a close friend who lives in North Carolina, so Florence has been at the top of my mind for awhile now. As we watched, I was texting with my friend, and was relieved to hear that she was safe and relatively unaffected. My kids sat there watching the devastation on TV, whispering to each other on the couch before heading upstairs conspiratorially. They came down with their charity jars in hand: “Mom, we want to give our charity money to the people affected by the Hurricane,” they said.

In years past, we’ve donated to whatever cause is closest to our hearts. My husband and I have a “charity jar” too, and a few times a year, depending on the circumstances of our world, we give it out accordingly, usually pooling the kid’s charity money in with ours. We’ve given to friends fallen on hard times, needy families at Christmas, natural disasters, the Canadian Cancer Society, the Food Bank, and most recently, to the Humboldt Broncos tragedy. We always talk about this giving with our kids, putting our money where our mouths are, and my son has taken to asking if we can bring our “charity” money whenever we go to BlueJays games so that he can pass it out to those in need along the PATH system. So when they came downstairs with their jars, my heart swelled with pride; $86 is headed down to the Hurricane Florence rescue efforts, but there’s been far more than $86 worth of lessons learned.

Good job, my babies.

Be kind. Always.