Warsaw Mommy Blog

Oh, boy. I am sitting here, staring at the big old blank white screen and imagining just how in HELL I am going to explain any of this. There’s just so much! Thank goodness I am wordy and you guys are fabulously patient. Yes?

OK, let’s go back about a month (yes, really). My whole life at that time was revolving around the fact that my Mom and my brother were arriving for a three-week vacation on July 21, and so I was quite literally going completely crazy trying to get all my work done before they got here. I had deadline after deadline, a never-ending series of really important meetings, I was writing and editing and translating, I was trying to work around my staff’s and clients’ holiday schedules; I was also trying to get some sleep and spend time with the boys. All of this would be quite enough to keep anyone on their toes, but I had this One Big Stress-Inducing Problem, otherwise known as The Client. This is a huge international business, with important people running it – these people could open doors upon doors for me. If I impress them.

Obviously, I would be out of my head to name this client, but let me assure you that the client is absolutely and crucially pivotal to my financial position over the next six months. As in: after the third and final invoice is issued and paid later this month, I will have earned about nine months’ average Polish salary (and over a year in some cases) in just under three months. As most of you know, I have my own business and so I am always accepting pretty much any assignment that comes my way – and lately, I have had no shortage of people calling me and saying they heard about me or that I was recommended by a friend or former client. Word of mouth, y’all. Never downplay its importance. Anyway, this hugely important client (‘The Client’) signed a contract with me to do lots of work for them: a full corporate identity, in fact, including a new logo, a new website, business cards, letterhead, all written texts and PR materials (in English and Polish) and all ads. In other words, this is a great opportunity for me and my little company, and I will be damned if I will screw it up. But the week my family was arriving, there was an excellent chance that I was going to be fired. The Client was beside themselves with anger and disappointment. Quite justifiably, I must add.

Now, I wish I could say that I screwed up, or that they were furious with me. I wish I could say that, because if it had been about ME, as in me Michelle, then I could have done something about it. It would have been my screw-up, and so within my power to fix it or make it right. But – and here comes the problem – I outsourced the logo design to a guy (who shall also remain nameless), and kept the texts and PR and several other things in-house. Now, he was not just some random ‘guy’: he was recommended to me by my husband, who knows him well, and a quick perusal of this guy’s company website shows very high-quality logo design. So, really. Safe bet, right? Ha ha. Oh, just wait for it.

So, the agreement with The Client and This Guy (yes, we all met up and The Client totally knew about This Guy and they had a long discussion about logo ideas) is that my company will provide them with three logo projects within two weeks, and they will choose the one they like best, and then modifications will be made. This is quite standard, completely normal in fact, and although two weeks is not a lot of time, it is totally doable. Especially – and mark this – if you are professional logo designers and you have years and years of experience in this area. Ahem. Here we go.

So, This Guy sends me three logo projects. The first was quite good, but the last two (sent the morning of the big meeting with The Client) were awful. I mean… just so awful. I was very worried immediately, but I had no choice as I had no time to do anything about it: I had to take the projects to the meeting with The Client and present them. I did my best, and imagine my relief when everyone in the room agreed that Logo 1 was the best, and they approved it, and they loved it, and we could move on with the business card design and website and so on. This was Thursday the 15th of July, and my plan was to get the ball rolling between The Client and That Guy with any modifications necessary, and when my family arrived one week later, things would be under control and I’d have an approved logo for my staff to start using for business cards and letterhead and the website and so on. The plan was, you see, for my Mom and brother and Piotr and the boys and myself to fly to the seaside on the 24th, so I would be out of contact for one full week. But if That Guy was working well, and he was willing to act as a Project Manager and handle communication with The Client directly (he was), I would be able to fly off to the beach without a care in the world. Wah-ha. Oh, boy.

So. On Thursday they approved the logo; on Friday I get a phone call. They have re-thought. They realised – quite legitimately, I must add – that the only reason they liked Logo 1 was because Logos 2 and 3 were complete and utter shit (true) and so it was not so much a matter of having three fabulous logos to choose from; it was more like selection by default. I had to agree and offered to have That Guy design one more logo by the following Friday (for those of you who do not have a calendar in front of you, that Friday was the day right before we flew up to the seaside. At 6:00 in the morning). I told That Guy he’d need to design one more logo – a GOOD ONE. He balked and harrumphed and finally agreed. And I looked at my husband and I said to him, “I have a very bad feeling about this.” He looked back at me. And agreed.

So. For three nights, after we put the boys to bed, my husband and I – we who have plenty of design and PR and marketing experience between the two of us, but almost ZERO logo design background – sat down at the computer with some books I bought for ideas and inspiration and designed two logos on our own. We were kind of playing around with the whole thing – I guess we were holding out hope that That Guy would come through in the end, and pull a rabbit out of his ass – but by Wednesday (the logo was due on Friday), we got an e-mail that he still hadn’t started, and he sent an e-mail to The Client asking all kinds of inane questions and offering all kinds of bizarre suggestions. Based on this, Piotr and I finalised the two logo projects and then also designed some alternative logos (horizontal versions, and black and white) as well as business cards and letterhead. And then on Friday morning – I was due to present the logo to the client at 1:00 that afternoon – I got That Guy’s final logo proposal. And dear God. It was AWFUL.

Imagine me heading in to this meeting: one day before I am leaving for a week-long family vacation. The Client is already furious with me, and I am presenting them with what I KNOW is yet another crap logo. I love the logos Piotr and I have designed, but am really nervous about presenting them, as he and I have no formal logo-design experience and so I am not fully confident in what we had done. I am inches away from losing The Client due to lack of professionalism – and remember that whole thing about word of mouth? It works both ways, baby.

Oh, and my Mom and brother had arrived two days earlier, and on Thursday – one day after she arrived and the day before this very important meeting – my Mom fell and broke her elbow. I’ll get back to that later, shall I? But I was very worried, and had spent hours the day before at the medical center with her. My head space was not good, I can tell you.

So, in to the meeting I go on Friday afternoon. I started by showing That Guy’s logo, since I had paid him 30% of his fee up-front (non-refundable) and after all, we did promise The Client another logo from him. They. Hated. It. With a passion. They stared at me like, “Are you seriously offering us this crap? This is what you have done with the extra week we gave you?” Again, I couldn’t muster much of a defence, though I refused to crumble in the face of their open scorn. I calmly and clearly explained That Guy’s thinking behind the logo, and they considered it, discussed it, and then continued to hate it. So I pulled out our two logos.

Well. They loved them. LOVED THEM. Both of them. I almost sagged in my chair with the relief – also, probably, from sheer exhaustion – and while I sat quietly freaking out in my head and thanking God that my husband is so amazingly great and supportive and fully acknowledging that he saved my ASS with his design software skills, they embarked on a long discussion about the merits of the purple logo versus the red logo – and they had a very hard time choosing one over the other. I was so damn relieved that I couldn’t even feel happy, you know? That came later, when I called Piotr after the meeting and I told him that they chose the red logo. And best of all? (Well, depending on your perspective, I suppose): when I told them that my husband and I had designed the last two logos, and that I could get That Guy to make any modifications while we were at the seaside for a week, The Client said they’d wait for us to return – that they did not want to work with That Guy at all anymore. That the REAL logo designers were Piotr and I, that we had the vision and the creativity, we had the skill and the ability. They preferred to delay their deadlines by a week – well, two, if you consider they gave us an extra week to come up with another proposal – and work with us, than deal with anyone else. We were The Ones, and that was that.

Huge vote of confidence. Huge sense of pride and accomplishment. Huge relief that we could now head off to the seaside and not worry about finding a computer to monitor things and that everything would wait until our return.

Oh, but hold on, y’all. There is still the broken elbow… tune in for Part Two – The Pain.

Hey, y’all.

I can see from my lovely and wonderful stat counts that you guys keep checking in! Aw. Feel the love, right? I see from a few comments that my MIA status has been noted, considered and fretted over, and a few e-mails have said things ranging as wide as, “Hey! Is all OK?” to “Hey! If you’re dead, tell us, OK?”

Sadly, I cannot go in to it all right now. Just know one thing, the MOST important thing: we are all fine. Nothing has happened to me, or Piotr, or Max, or Alex. But lots has happened, and the saga will have to be broken in to sections. Many many sections. MANY.

Stay tuned…

I LOVE Max’s play school, even though it is a bit pricey. Here is why:

They have special week-long ‘units’, where they learn about other countries… so far, they’ve done Japan, Holland, Egypt and (as evidenced above) England.

Riding on the cutest damn mini-horses that I have ever seen. And I don’t even LIKE horses (sorry, Mary!).

They visited an ‘Indian Village’ and although every fibre of my Canadian being was screaming, “They are not Indians! They are Native Canadians slash Americans!” I calmed my PC self long enough to appreciate the kind of amusing fact that some blond guy taught my son to shoot a bow and arrow outside a teepee. With some Port-O-Potty thingy in the background.

Paper making, which necessitated ripping up all my dried flower arrangements. Turns out? Dried rose petals look awesome in paper handmade by a three-year-old.

And this is what I love best: after all the tea-drinking and horse-riding and village-visiting and paper-making, the kid is exhausted on the bus on the way home.

LOVE IT! Money spent with a smile…

Hi Jowita!

Here’s a little shout-out to a friend of mine back in Toronto: a writer, a photographer, a Mom and a stunning brunette. Oh. And Polish!

Oh, man. I don’t get headaches. I just don’t. And if I do, it’s some minor little thing which isn’t so much an ache as a kind of mildly annoying bit of ’something’ which I notice is happening in my head. No real pain or discomfort.

But today, oh boy. OUCHIES! I have no idea how people survive migraines – I think I am such a headache novice/ wimp that if I ever had a full-blown migraine, I’d just rip my head from my shoulders. Turns out: I can handle labour pain beautifully – no epidurals! Either time! BY CHOICE! – but not in my head. If my husband were home, I’d be lying dramatically on the sofa, cold cloth across my head and shrieking, “Give me the drugs!”. Seriously. But I am here alone trying to focus on a text for a client, and so I just dragged myself into the kitchen and popped two anti-headache kind of pills. And I am going to make a cup of hot chocolate. It is sweltering outside, but I figure that the combination of pain killer and chocolate just may do the trick.

OK, break time is over. My head still feels like it’s trapped in a vise but the crunching pounding pain is diminishing and is now feebly bleeting and pulsing. So I guess it’s back to work… yuck.

UPDATE: OK, no lie, people. 10 minutes and four sips of chocolate later, the headache that has been plaguing me since this morning IS GONE. I love drugs. I love chocolate. For reals.

Huh. So you all remember how Max was so cool about the great green ghost? Telling me ‘it’s not real’ and ‘it can’t get in to the house’ and ‘can’t hurt us’? Well, yeah. It seems that this rule does not apply to the witch in ‘Hansel and Gretel’.

Yesterday, Max watched an animated version of the fairy tale on You Tube. And I’m not talking about the sugary-sweet, watered-down, PC version of the story – oh, no. I am talking about the full-on, Brothers Grimm original. With the evil step-mother – is there any other kind in fairy tales, though? – telling Hansel and Gretel’s wimpy boob of a father to abandon those damn kids deep in the forest, since they are just too expensive to feed in these hard times. And the dolt does, of course, since that is the power of evil women who are stuck with kids who are not their own, I suppose. Anyway, y’all know what happens next: the children come across the house made of candy and go inside and a witch lives there and she throws Hansel in a cage and Gretel has to cook her tiny heart out, cooking for him so he can fatten up and the witch will bake him in the fire and eat him. Yeah. Great stuff, right? I had forgotten quite how horrifying the whole thing actually is – I vaguely remembered something about the house and a witch and the kids escaping – and I have now sworn to be much more selective about Max’s fairy tale viewing habits.

But. The damage was done: he was terrified. Not of the kids being abandoned, though, or of their mother dying. Not of that idiot man, their father, just leaving them to die, nor of the dark woods. Not of the kid being fattened up as food, and not of Gretel shoving the witch into the fire and burning her alive.

No. He is scared to death of the witch. Red eyes, green skin, long nose, cackly voice, the whole bit. He is so scared of her, he woke up at 2:30 this morning, crying that she was going to get him. Max NEVER has nightmares, and he NEVER sleeps with me – that is one of my cardinal rules – but last night I made an exception. And he was so freaked out, he clung to my hand for over an hour, all the while he was settling and falling asleep. And I got about an hour’s rest before he woke up again at 5:00, crying about that damn witch and her eyes.

What can I say that I haven’t already? She’s not real? It’s just a moving picture on a screen? Mommy is here, so that witch can’t hurt you? I love you, and I will take care of you? How do I calm the terrors in the sleeping mind of a 3.5-year-old?

I know very well the power of seeing something scary, something which just hits you a certain way and has an effect on you, making you afraid of this certain thing, when millions of other things just bounce right off. I mean, I can barely watch that trailer for ‘Paranormal Activity 2′ since there is a baby in the preview. If I close my eyes, I can SEE the bedroom, the crib, the demon-thing in the doorway and the baby gone. I know it’s not real, it isn’t happening in my house, it can’t hurt me. But it scares the hell out of me all the same.

And let’s face it: the world is full of people who would hurt Max given half a chance… how can I tell him there are no monsters? That bad people aren’t real?

But I’ll get up in the night for as many nights as it takes, and go to him when he’s crying, and I’ll hold him until he sleeps. And I’ll be an exhausted wreck the next day – you do NOT want to know how much concealer I put under my eyes this morning, and how worried I am about a very major meeting at 1:30 this afternoon, since I am having trouble focusing right now at 11:30 – but I’ll do it. He’s my little boy. I will make him feel safe.

Damn you, Brothers Grimm.

The scene: Max and I are watching ‘Casper The Friendly Ghost’ on TV (with a monotonous Polish voice-over guy to boot). Some huge green ghost with red eyes and a James Earl Jones-esque kind of voice shows up and starts terrorising all the uber-nice ghosties.

Me: Wow! That green ghost is scary!

Max: Do you think so?

Me: Sure… big teeth, red eyes, bad attitude. Scary, huh? Does he scare you?

Max: No.

Me: No? How come?

Max: Mommy. He cannot get into our house. He cannot hurt us. This is a movie.

Me: So…

Max: So. It isn’t real.

Me: Oh, right. Thanks for explaining that to me.

Max: (clicking his tongue) Honestly.

I have no idea what is going on in Poland lately in terms of the passing of really hard and tough laws, but I am loving it. Normally I’d be all, “Well, there is an election coming up!” and although there is, it’s the Presidential election, not the Prime Minister/ party election which determines all the real power in this country. So I guess it’s not so much about gaining the popular vote, and maybe (just maybe?) it’s actually about trying to make Polish society safer for non-criminal-types. What a novel concept, huh?

So, as of today here in Poland, a new law goes into effect concerning drinking and driving. And oh, boy… it’s a ‘zero tolerance’ kind of thing. First: if you are caught driving with more than the legally-permitted amount of alcohol in your system (and actually, Poland’s legal limits are among the lowest in Europe), you will lose your license forever and be entered on the national criminal register for the whole of your life. Second: if you cause an accident – no matter how minor – whilst driving drunk, you will lose your license forever and if someone is seriously injured or killed, you are looking at one hell of a long prison sentence – like 20 years. Third, if you drink and drive and cause an accident – no matter how minor – and flee the scene, you lose your license forever and get to see the inside of a prison cell for a decade anyway.

I don’t know about you guys, but I APPLAUD the Polish politicians for this one… the sad fact is that in 2009 alone, there were over 180,000 drunk drivers apprehended in this country. It makes me wonder how many got away with it. A shocking statistic, for sure, and there was quite obviously a need for swift and decisive action.

So, to summarise: Poland is rocking the breastfeeding and the passing of tough laws, but continues to really suck in terms of the acceptance and discussion of PPD.

Ah, well. I guess one can’t have it all, right?

And speaking of loving a country: Happy Canada Day to all my fellow Canadians, both at home and abroad. Our beautiful country is now 143 years old!

You’d think that someone who has moved countries and continents as often as I have would just have some kind of in-built ‘editing my stuff’ system, wouldn’t you? I know I keep meaning to install such a system, because every time I have to pack up my whole damn life (again) and stack the boxes into towering piles not unlike skyscrapers and I have to haul 96 garbage bags of crap to the garbage (yet again), I think to myself, “WHY do you never throw anything away? Why why why?” And I swear up and down and back and forth and until I am blue in the face that I will do massive clean-ups and -outs of stuff twice a year without fail, and I promise that I will not let stuff get one up on me and I double-pinky-swear that I will never ever again hold on to stuff that seems to serve no purpose. And then I embark on said bi-annual clean-up and I come across loads of stuff! that seems to serve no earthly purpose… until I start to consider throwing it away. And this, you see, is my downfall: I tell myself that I will only keep things that are worth keeping, that I will need/use again, that justify their space on my shelf by their validity and helpfulness, etc. But the issue is that I have one heck of a fantastic imagination, and I can imagine the most crack-pot, unlikely scenarios whereby I will NEED THIS STUFF! AGAIN.

OK, here’s an example. True story, I swear. I was cleaning out my box of personal papers and stuff upstairs and came across my bank card from the HSBC. Used when I lived in Hong Kong (I left HK over 8 years ago now) and had an account at this bank. I closed this account before leaving HK, yet I still have (a) the bank card and (b) the bank books (BTW, do you remember bank books? Paper? You’d take it in to be updated and the printer would make that sound as it printed off all your transactions? Also: if you really want to depress yourself, take a look at your HK bank book that was used before you had children, or a mortgage, or nannies and play schools to pay for. Look at how much money was just sitting there at all times to buy plane tickets and shoes and go for facials. JUST LOOK. And yes, even as I sobbed over my HSBC bank book and contemplated throwing it away, I did not. I justified this by saying that I needed SOME proof that I used to actually have some money. Once).

Ahem. I got sidetracked; apologies. Anyway, I decided to keep the bank book but was going to throw the bank card away since, hey! The account no longer exists! But then, I had one of my ‘this just may happen’ scenarios go through my head: what if one day five years from now, the HSBC branch I banked with is going through its history and finds out that the bank owes me money? And what if they ONLY take the bank card as a form of identification (well, also my passport, duh)? And what if bank books are not accepted? What then? Huh? I will be so sorry to not have my bank card, won’t I? When I am refused my several thousands of Hong Kong dollars? Right? Right? So – my HSBC bank card is upstairs, waiting for the e-mail (they don’t have my e-mail, BTW) which will hand me oodles of money owed to me by that bank which has simply not yet realised its mistake. So. You see my problem.

The other issue is that quite often – like maybe six times year – something DOES actually happen and I thank God that I kept that stuff, whatever it may be. For example, I had this amazing pair of earrings that I bought here in Warsaw. Plain silver, round, about the same size as a penny, with delicately sketched flowers. Loved them. They were perfect for jeans-and-shirts and for when I went to the grocery store and wanted to look nice but not put on all the fancy. And I lost one of the earrings. I have no idea how, but I looked high and low for the thing and I was so irritated, because when I went back to buy another pair, they were sold out. And I looked and looked and just could not find a pair of earrings that walked that fine line between casual/ fancy in a way that worked for me. In the end, I bought a cute pair of kind-of-Celtic-inspired round silver earrings which are quite a bit fancier but still quite OK. But did I throw the earring away? No, I did not. Every once in awhile, I’d be pawing through my jewelry, deciding what to put on for a meeting, and I’d come across this lone flower earring, all sad and lonely in the box, and I’d get all peeved again. But I wouldn’t throw it away.

Then one day, I was going through the laundry basket looking for Max’s other sock (next story), and in frustration, I just dumped the whole thing out on the washroom floor. And? My earring fell out! It had been caught in the folded material of the basket itself for months and months, snagged so completely that even when there was no laundry in the basket, it was impossible to see. I squealed and ran to my bedroom and reunited the earrings and put them on immediately, all the while thinking, “Ha! This is why I never throw anything away!”

Other victories and triumphs to add to that list: Max’s OTHER sock (which Piotr thought they lost at the swimming pool two months ago, but which mysteriously resurfaced yesterday; they are now a happily-joined pair of dinosaur socks), a business address requested by a former colleague (one I have not seen for almost 10 years), a postcard as proof that someone’s boyfriend WAS actually in the country he said he was (thereby saving the relationship) and bills and coins from my trips to India, China, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Cambodia and Thailand (to loan to a former student who was doing a project on Asian currencies).

So, as I stood there this morning, contemplating the mess under the stairs, I heaved a sigh: I know it has to be done – and soon – but I get the feeling that all I will accomplish will be a shifting around and reorganising of the mess without any real progress… rather like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. But I’ll do it anyway, because hey! Maybe I’ll find a vitally important something, like a keychain with my old house key on it (that opened the door of the house we sold over 20 years ago. But you NEVER KNOW!).

Right?

So, everyone? Please admire the bunny ears. This is Max and I walking home from the end-of-the-school-year show; he was delighted with the ears and wore them the whole way home.

And! Max loved the things so much that he wore them back to school the morning after the performance. Here he is, at 8:00 on Friday morning, wearing the bunny ears on the bus to school. Yeah, he can be pretty funny sometimes.