Life Update - March 2020

It's been a while since the last time I posted something other than a game review. Today, I bring you an update on the current goings on in my life!

Wife

Carley is still doing fantastic since starting her new medication back in January. If not for now being 7 months pregnant and looking after a screaming toddler, I'm sure she'd be one of the happiest people on the planet. Recently she's been finding herself to be more tired than usual and even being sore without having done too much physically. I know she hasn't been able to do as much around and out of the house as usual, so she's been going a little bit stir-crazy... not because she can't leave the house, but instead because she can't user her body as much as she wants.

So instead of going out and running around Carley has been putting more of her effort into cooking amazing meals for our family to have us eat well and keeping the finances under control. I really don't think we've ever been so organized before. We have new artwork going up around the house, things being beautified to look more bright and wonderful, and I really think this is the best we've ever been doing as long as we've known each other.

Daughter

She's going to be three later this month! I've been thinking of her as being three for quite a while now and I think that is making it seem like it's taking forever for her to actually turn three for real. She's been telling us more and more stories each day. Sometimes her brain is trying to go so fast that her mouth can't keep up and she stumbles over words and sentences until we get her to slow down and take a breath! I'm looking forward to the inevitable never-ending stream of works that come as she gets older... though perhaps she'll learn to be a little bit quieter every once in a while instead of constantly yelling her tales at me.

No matter what she just gets cuter and cuter as time goes on and I love her more and more with each and ever day.

Dogs

They're still alive and adorable! Maybe a little bit spoiled though.

House

Has there been a big update to the house? In a way, yes. We decluttered A TON of stuff from the house. Bunches of things we weren't using were donated and a ton of other junk that wasn't useful was discarded thanks to the help of a very awesome guy who made a couple runs to the dump for us.

Surprisingly, I've also managed to be somewhat handy and not only fix a broken wire in our alarm system, but also change an outlet from 2 to 3 prongs in our bedroom WITHOUT shocking myself or starting a fire! Yay!

ME!

I've tried a type of antidepressant before that didn't seem to make much of a difference if any at all. Recently I've started taking an antidepressant once again to see if it has a quality impact on my moods, though of course this one is a different one than last time. I'll admit that I'm a little bit surprised that I feel so great compared to how I've felt previously. I didn't really think about it too much but I've had anxiety over starting a day of work before where now I have none. Something that I'm quite used to, talking to people over the phone and online, and yet I was feeling anxious over it.

Now I feel wonderful! So wonderful that I'm even doing work on projects that I had pretty much stopped working on altogether such as my making videos, live streaming, and even working on my blog. Not only that, but I've started writing and colouring again. I'm even beginning to draw every once in a while. Life feels so wonderful that it's difficult to be annoyed and angry with anything or anybody. I'm getting fresh air whether it's walking with the child, the dogs, or just myself. It's so perfect!

At this point I don't even have goals that I'm all concerned about hitting other than to just have fun and live a little.

~ Kyle Welykholowa

Sick News!

Hey everyone, I have sick news! Carley isn't sick today! :D

Okay, now I don't want to make this into too big of a deal too soon, but we MAY be over the hump of sickness!!!

You seriously have no idea just how big of a deal this is for us to be at a point like this even for only one day because Carley hasn't had a single day of not being sick since like back in August when she first got pregnant. We tried all sorts of different options including Diclectin / Gravol, sleeping in all day, getting up at the crack of dawn, eating, not eating, and so much more! The result? Nothing worked. Only sick sick sick was found each and every day and it was weighing down upon her beginning to cause depression and anxiety.

The past couple days though... has been a miracle. See, Carley recently took herself into the hospital because she didn't know what else to do. She was feeling so sick and depressed that she felt she needed their help and was admitted into the mental health ward for assistance. The service there was absolutely fantastic, they listened to her and sought out a medication which would be safe for pregnancy which would help out with her depression and anxiety. She wasn't sure about taking any kind of medication but having trouble sleeping during the night drove her to try the suggested medication as it was supposed to help with sleeping at night as well.

This choice led Carley to waking up the following morning in the hospital with less than 8 hours of sleep, but feeling well-rested, mentally better.... and NOT SICK! Crazy, right? Now we won't know FOR SURE if this is a miracle solution until more time passes, but I'm pretty sure if this is still working after a month from now, we're probably in the clear. I know so far she's super happy even to have just a couple days of peace from puking and let me tell you I've seen such an improvement over only two days of happiness that I'm so hopeful for her to continue to feel amazing because I've missed seeing such a big smile on her face.

What have your experiences been like with pregnancy? Good? Bad? Share with me your stories and solutions of pregnancy and parenthood!

~ Kyle Welykholowa

What A Trooper

Back to Family / Life

My Wife Is An Absolute Trooper!

For anyone who doesn't know, my wife is the most absolute trooper ever!

You may ask... "Why is your wife so awesome? What makes her so tough and amazing?" Well first of all, she's pregnant; that's enough right there that she has to go through that process and make it out the other side! Let me tell you it was pretty bad with the first one on the way how sick my dearly beloved Carley was feeling each and every day... pretty much like morning sickness on crack! This one will be our second child together and oh my goodness, I didn't possibly think it could ever get worse!

It's a special thing when your wife isn't able to get around and do as much as she wants to... not because it's hard to move around when pregnant, but because she's just so sick that she can't get out of bed without puking almost every morning. Medications don't make the sickness go away; they only serve to make her tired and keep her locked in bed like a caged animal instead of spending good time with her family as she would prefer to do. I can't imagine what it would be like to go through that each and every day, but I would gladly share the burden with her if I could even up to the point of taking the full sickness upon myself if for nothing else than to give her a much needed break.

Now of course we can't be sure of the final result, but perhaps the reason for the increased sickness is due to this child being larger than the last? Our first daughter was quite small... I believe 4th percentile if I remember correctly? And... based on the ultrasound results from recently, this one MIGHT.... be around the 94th percentile mark. Of course there's still a few months to go before we find out the end result, so maybe that size will level out to be closer to her older sister, but I do still think that an increased size may be the cause.

So here I am trying to help out by doing dishes, laundry, transport the child to daycare, and make enough money to get by... only hoping that I'm able to do a fraction of what needs to be done to make it all the way. I can't imagine where I'd be without such a tough woman in my life right beside me each and every day.... that I wake up in bed.

Wish us luck with our upcoming second child. I've heard it gets more difficult when more come along and I haven't yet figured out whether I'm excited or scared for what's in store for us.

~ Kyle Welykholowa

UPDATE

Back to Family / Life

Being Sick SUCKS

Holy man, let me tell you guys, being sick SUCKS. It's hard to get a good night's sleep, difficult to get up in the morning with your perfectly wide-awake child, and the worst part is keeping yourself up and motivated to do things you know need to be done. Even washing the dishes feels nearly impossible when sick.

And it's all thanks to this little thing here:

I have never been sick so much in my life since Isabelle started going to daycare and now she happily brings home every bit of germs and sickness that she can and spews it everywhere either by coughing all over things, or in my face, or by putting her mouth all over the stuff that we touch all the time. On the bright side... I SHOULD (in theory) become a healthier person with her strengthening my immune system. On the other hand, I still have this cough that I haven't been able to get rid of since... I don't really remember anymore, it's been more months than I can think of. I just can't seem to stop coughing ALL THE TIME. Now there's probably something to do with "Kyle needs to drink more healthy liquid water with no sugar in it..." Or.... Uhh..... No, that's probably something to do with it. IT'S A WORK IN PROGRESS!

If that wasn't bad enough, in all the kerfuffle my wife got sick as well. Now, Carley getting sick is something that happens from time to time and I'm quite used to taking care of her including the additional requests when she's not feeling well, but something about this sickness was a little bit different than usual. I just couldn't put my finger on it, but I knew something wasn't quite right... is it true that she's really just that cranky and annoyed with everyone only because she's sick?

As it turns out we were hit with the unexpected inconvenience of Carley's doctor being away during the time when she needed to go in to renew her prescription for Concerta. If you don't know what Concerta is, it's a slow-release medication for ADHD which really helps her focus and not hate everybody. So because the doctor was away, we couldn't get her prescription renewed which meant she had to do without her medication for a week. Something we didn't expect which never occurred to use as a possibility is that she went through some withdrawal. As it turns out, taking Concerta daily doesn't make you think much about it other than notice how much it helps with day-to-day life, but quitting it cold-turkey actually causes a withdrawal period which would be similar (though likely not as bad) as quitting something like heroin so suddenly. Insane, right?

So needless to say, dear little Isabelle was happy as a clam the past week or so, Carley got sick and went through withdrawal which made her tired and want to stay in bed but also get out of the house because she couldn't stand anybody (while also needing to go out for a walk due to excessive energy levels), and I just held on to sanity while being sick and having to cater to the demands of two ladies who were so very in need... oh, and of course the dogs still needed to go out and in and out and in and out and in and out and in all day long again. No rest for the weary as they say.

Anywhos, now that I'm pretty sure I'm over the majority of being so very sick, and now that I've finished watching the Netflix show "Strong," I'm feeling much like I should start getting back into producing blog posts and new content to keep you all entertained. I have so much in my brain brain BRAIN, that I want to get out there and share with you all!

Keep an eye out for more stuff coming up very soon! ^_^

~ Kyle Welykholowa

I Lost My Job With HGS

So for those of you who aren't aware, I lost my job. Crazy, right? I know!

I've had a lot of time to reflect on things with all of this unexpected spare time I now have which as led me to come to some realizations about working from home: Though it is convenient to be able to work from home and not require a second car, the scheduling is quite difficult to deal with. When I first started working for HGS (or Rogers as per my position), the scheduling was fine. I was able to schedule myself for 12-hour days earning myself much overtime and giving myself more time to spend with Carley and Isabelle because I'd have three whole days off! Every once in a while things would change a bit with how much hours were offered, but for the most part it was pretty consistent; then things changed.

It was around December when things went sour for a bit with myself and Carley. Between December, January, and February I used up all of my sick days by being depressed and not wanting to go to work. You'd be surprised how much an event like that could make a person not want to work even when working is as easy as walking downstairs and sitting at a computer where you never meet a person face-to-face. Luckily I was able to get through that and there was still plenty of hours to work at the right times that I pulled through. Being able to schedule yourself for 12-hour days at that point is quite nice for dealing with a situation like that where you need as many days off as possible.

After that event everything was good again and continued on quite well up until Carley got her job. Now I was (and still am) quite proud that she managed to find a job working at a care home and found what it is that she wants to do with herself moving forward into the future career-wise. The hard part with that is transitioning into having two full-time working parties in a relationship; this wouldn't be so bad if there were no child involved, but we do have a lovely little girl to take care of as well. So our little Isabelle needed to be enrolled in full-time daycare and we had to coordinate ourselves to having Carley working evenings (right up until 11:00 PM) and getting Isabelle to daycare as early as possible the next day (6:45 AM) so that I could then work during the time she'd be at daycare and then be done in time to pick her up. Now that would be perfect if not for two problems...

1) I'd have to schedule myself to start at 6:30 AM to be "done" by 3:00 PM. Now when I say DONE, what I mean is, I'd be done *IF* I didn't get a phone call that would last beyond that time. Of course if you get a phone call, you can't just hang up on a person and that call could potentially go overtime by an hour or more if it was a customer with a lot of questions or possibly an angry customer who wanted escalate to a manager. Hence, I had to be "done" by 3:00 PM to ensure I would have enough time to go get Isabelle before daycare is closed.

2) The part where I had to schedule myself for 6:30 AM. Carley is sleeping because of how late she was working and then able to get to bed after finally getting home late at night, and daycare doesn't open until 6:45 AM. Now we did manage to transition into being able to deal with this with Carley able to get up to take Isabelle then come back and go back to sleep (naturally there would be a bit of an adjustment period when not being used to working shifts like this).

There was a bit of another problem as well which sort of started to come up, but we didn't quite get around to that before I was let go. Carley was hired to work evenings at her care home, but wasn't being given consistent days to work, her schedule came out late, and she was starting to get a couple random day shifts; not too much of a problem... except where I'm working 7 days a week early in the morning to fit in all my required hours and there's no daycare on weekends. See the problem with that? Not able to just leave Isabelle locked in her room for a few hours while she's awake, huh?

So they let me go because I missed enough days and was late enough times that they felt it necessary to do... followed by immediately posting jobs to hire more employees. Now... I understand what happened and that it's obviously not great to be late so often and miss so much work, but the combination of knowing that I put out good scores in my work each month (amazing scores even), but then they're fire me due to absence and then immediately want to hire more people... hurts a little. I'm alright with it, and I've certainly learned my lesson from it; we need to work together to make sure everything is covered between us and care for our child.

So... now we're here. I have no job right now. Little update on Carley is that she's now working a new job as a housekeeper at a hotel which is a bit less pay and a bit less hours, but it's CONSISTENT hours. You really don't realize how important it is to have such consistent hours as a parent until you start having two working persons, requiring daycare, and having to coordinate with each other to get everything to work properly.

Wish me luck everybody as I figure out what to do with myself and how to get there. There's much job-hunting going on and I'm looking to keep myself busy while keeping the house in order during the time that I have.

~ Kyle Welykholowa

The Honeymoon Adventure - Day Two - Calgary Zoo BONUS

Now what adventure would be any good without a bunch of selfies and a surprise event that we were lucky enough to be there for? Lucky enough for you, I am giving you exclusive access to these bonuses at the Calgary Zoo.

First thing's first. Look at this lovely place we found to enjoy the scene once we were running wandering through Eurasia.

Ooh, pretty. :)

Let's take a selfie! ^_^

Now that that's out of the way: They had shops in like every area and this is something that I had to take note of because you just don't get to see that sort of thing happen all too often.

The quality of that picture didn't turn out that great for some reason. Luckily, I don't think clarity is REQUIRED to see what's wrong with these items on sale.

Also... Fish. There were some indoor places around that had LOTS of fish. Carley has always wanted an active fish tank at home. Do you think this would be overkill?

Now for some pictures of Carley with animals. I've never seen someone so brave, getting that up close and personal with the animals. I guess they've been trained really well.

Wow! Even getting right up next to the cubs! How crazy is that? Actually... speaking of bears...

No wait, that's not an animal Kyle... it's just a log... let's try that again.

For those of you who aren't sure what that is... it's a bear. No, not a polar bear just a regular brown bear. Only... it's not quite brown. I didn't know they could come in different colours, but it turns out that they can! I mentioned the white bear in a previous post along with the bear training that we were lucky enough to catch if you're interested in reading about that.

I don't know about you, but I'm having fun. What about you Carley?

Oh... Uhh... is that giant petrified tree stump? That's right it is, and there's more where that came from.

There's my tough girl, being all tough and stuff after so bravely approaching those creatures. Hmm... I wonder what else we can find around here if we wander some more? Has Carley found something? Let's go follow her and find out!

Hey, what are you doing back there? Come out so I can take some beautiful pictures of my new wife!

That's better.

Wow, looking great in all the places. And rockin' those space pants!

Wow! Wait... aren't those penguins a little bit....... big? I'm getting a strange feeling here.

Now we've had a great time looking around and enjoying the views. and things, but I think it's time to find our way out of here. We've been here at the zoo since it opened this morning and I'm thinking we should find somewhere else to explore or something else to do for a little while before supper.

Now... how to we get out of here...? Wait... is that...?

Uh oh, looks like we've stumbled into the Prehistoric Park.

Yes it's pretty, but we should be careful we don't want to get trampled or eaten, right?

Really Carley? don't you think you're a little bit close?

No really though... shaking hands with them?

Alright, alright, I'm not mad, you can come out of hiding now.

Alright, but did you have to kill it?

Okay, I'm glad you had fun, but now it's time to go for real.

So that's everything. For serious this time. No more bonuses. We did really have a lot of fun though. We managed to get there at opening time and with how much we looked around, we basically went through the whole place twice by the time we left... and I think that was around 3:00 if I remember correctly. We even got some souvenirs from the shop (everything is probably way too expensive just because of the location) including Carley's panda sweater and my stuffed wolf which has been happily added to my collection of stuffed animals over the years.

Now, believe it or not, we're finally done with the Calgary Zoo. Time to move on to other parts of the adventure.


~ Kyle Welykholowa

Back to Honeymoon Adventure

The Honeymoon Adventure - Day Two - Calgary Zoo Five

Today I bring you to the final area of the Calgary Zoo: Eurasia. As you can imagine this areas has creatures which one would find in the area of Eurasia, and let me say, there is no shortage of cool creatures there that I would likely never see if not available to witness in a place like this.

I've seen all sorts of cartoons of camels, and probably seen a couple in movies as well, but actually witnessing one for real is something entirely different.

I'm not a big fan of lizards, but I have heard of Komodo Dragons before thanks to The Kratt Brothers and Zaboomafoo. They really are as big as seen on TV.

Now I know Carley really liked THE WHOLE ZOO, but this may have been her second favourite part right here:

That's right. Real. Live. Pandas. Now she wasn't quite in awe as she was earlier with the Giraffes, but she was still pretty much pressed up against the glass to see them. And I will admit, they are kinda cute; I don't normally think bears are all that cute, but Pandas seem to be an exception for me. Also, I wasn't able to get a good picture of it, but they have much bigger teeth than I would have ever imagined.

Now the trail we were on which led inside to see the Pandas then went outside and into The Panda Market. I cannot describe to you the number of things inside that place that are ALL panda themed. Seriously... everything. Carley got an awesome hat inside which... is.... somewhere around the house right now. You'll see what I'm talking about in some following pictures.

Back outside we go to see the rest of the creatures. Turns out some cats LIKE to climb trees.

Now I've said before that other areas were my favourite and as I think about it more and more, I realize that I have favourite things in every area. In the Canadian Wilds, it was the wolves. In Destination Africa it was the Lemurs. In the Dorothy Harvie Gardens, it was the amazing butterflies. Here in Eurasia it is without a doubt the Red Pandas. I didn't even know there was such a thing as a Red Panda before I saw them on this trip... isn't that crazy? Here's a look at how adorably cute they are!

It may be difficult to see in this picture, but they have their own treehouse to hang out in.

Isn't that so cute? It's like... I don't know... a dog / cat / raccoon thing.

These were nearby the Red Pandas. I don't remember what they're called... but isn't Carley's Panda hat real cute like all the pandas we've seen? I MEAN TOUGH.

Finally at the end of the Eurasia trail there was a Tiger.

And that covers everything there was to see at the Zoo. What a lovely place it was to visit. I'm really looking forward to the trip we have coming up in July 2019 when we're going to Winnipeg (there's a zoo there too I hear). I will absolutely be taking tons of pictures and telling you all about that as well once we go on that trip.

(I plan to be a little bit quicker with telling the story of our adventure next time though.)


~ Kyle Welykholowa

Back to Honeymoon Adventure