Monthly Archives: June 2010

…and after we trash Bay Street, let’s go to McDonald’s. I’m hungry.

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My husband and I were watching the G20 black-clad anarchist protesters on TV. When the footage showed someone setting a police car on fire and then jumping around on it, he turned to me and said “If one of our kids ever did something like that, I would blow all their education funds and inheritance. I would buy a f**king Maserati and tell them, That’s what your stupidity bought, you little bastard.”

I suppose that’s one way to deal with it. In any case, it’s good to have a plan.

The thing about these so-called anarchists that really bothers me, other than, you know, the violence and destruction, is that all of them were allegedly anti-capitalism, meanwhile smashing things with rock hammers and nail guns probably bought from Home Depot. They were all wearing clothes and shoes bought from somewhere, and you just know that those who did not get arrested were later exhilarated and hungry, so ordered pizzas on their iPhones. I mean, if you want to live in a cabin made from logs that you yourself chopped down, heated by a wood-burning fireplace, eating only items you hunted or gathered yourself, and riding your homemade bicycle everywhere while wearing clothes you wove yourself from native grasses, then BY ALL MEANS be an anarchist. If you are not willing to do that, join society and stop smashing things.

Speaking of hypocrisy, this month’s O magazine has a section on different dietary choices, and there is a quote from someone who is a fruitarian. Did you know there are fruitarians? I sure didn’t. Here is the quote:

“I was already a vegan when I came to the conclusion that any form of cooking was killing; that’s when I decided to eat only raw food. But even that meant killing plants, and I’ve always believed plants enjoy their existence…Raw fruit is the perfect solution: The plant lives on even after you harvest the fruit…I’ve now been living happily on raw fresh fruit for 24 years.”

Huh. I stared at that quote for a while and the first thing that popped into my head, other than what the health implications of eating only fruit would be, was where would a fruitarian live? What kind of structure, and what would it be made of? How would it be heated? What kind of clothes would one wear? Would you still write on paper? I’m guessing that keeping a pure fruitarian lifestyle would be extremely complicated, unless you could somehow make clothes out of dried apple peels and avocado skins.

School’s Out For Summer!

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Ooh, I hate that song, along with most Alice Cooper songs – although I do think that Alice Cooper, himself, seems like a very cool guy, as far as celebrities go. While I’m on the topic, I also hate the musical stylings of Tom Petty and that atrocious Kim Mitchell, I Am A Wild Party being, in my opinion, the worst song ever written.

The boys marked the last day of school in different ways – Mark had a Sports Day, and Jake had a pre-kindergarten graduation which of course was very cute and filled with “Everyone is special!” messages. Hilariously, the kids sang a song entitled “We are Special Kids” to the tune of “We Will Rock You.” Side note: my husband feels about Queen the way I feel about Tom Petty, but I think he would have enjoyed the cute factor.

They also wore caps and gowns which I think is quite cute, if a bit ridiculous. A few months ago, the school had a professional photographer come into to take graduation portraits of the children in caps and gowns, which, frankly, crossed the line between cute and just plain stupid. I voiced this opinion and was chastised by my mother for not ordering any of the prints. I don’t know; I think graduation portraits should be saved for an actual graduation, which I do not think applies to simply going to kindergarten. I did keep the proofs though. Jake is awfully cute.

Mark seemed to really enjoy his Sports Day, but dissolved into sadness at dismissal. “I’m never going to be THIS happy again” he stated, which gave me a Citizen Kane-esque chill. What if it’s true? I mean, there are books and movies with that kind of plot line, the end of innocence and so on. Fortunately after we got home I applied the well established depression remedy of videos and chocolate cupcakes which was effective. In no time they were very loudly playing in the backyard, much to the delight of my neighbour, I’m sure, as she dozed in the sun in her lounge chair.

One of the biggest parenting mistakes, I think, is to not allow your children to be sad. I think that it’s a huge mistake, when your child is sad, to try to cheer them up endlessly with Pollyanna, look-on-the-bright-side, silver lining-type chatter. Sometimes it’s good to just wallow in sorrow, watching TV and eating treats. It’s like when you’re in the midst of teenage angst and you and your boyfriend break up, the last thing you want to hear are cheerful “There are lots of fish in the sea!” type comments, because all you want to do is be sad and listen to sad music (“I can’t live, if living is without you, I can’t give, I can’t give anymore…”) and eat ice cream straight from the container. It’s natural to want your child to be happy, but being sad is part of life and I think sometimes we all just need a cupcake remedy.

Just to clarify…

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I feel like I should apologize, somewhat, about my kids not tantruming anymore. To be honest, they were never huge tantrumers; they were more like constant negotiators, or sulkers, or providers of long streams of very annoying complaints. It’s always something, though, isn’t it?

This week, marking the last week of school, has been particularly trying. Evidently Mark’s life is OVER. He is very sad to be leaving kindergarten, and, in particular, to be leaving his very lovely kindergarten teacher. He is spontaneously-burst-into-tears sad. He’s clever, that boy, he realizes that once he leaves kindergarten, the party is over. It’s all business from here on in.

Last summer I made lists of plans of things to do and marked them in my calendar in a nice, structured, “and at 11:00 we will have fun” kind of way. This year I have much less structure in mind but a whole lot of fun things to do, so hopefully Mark’s sadness will be left at the school’s Sports Day on Friday.

Sometimes I look at pictures from before we had kids and I think how young I look in them. I think that I must have rapidly aged, then I remember that my oldest is now six and heading for Grade One and it’s not rapid aging per se, it’s just that time is going fast and I’m getting older. Here we are at the beginning of summer, with the long, long days just ready to be filled. When I was out shopping the other day, I observed countless young mothers, pushing strollers and carrying babies in Bjorns, and doling out sippy cups and snacks to toddlers while simultaneously feeding babies, and I remembered exactly what that was like. I remembered the days that just dragged, where I scheduled something for each day, an outing to the mall here, meeting a friend for coffee there, because I badly needed something, anything, to fill my days. Now the days fly by and I feel like there is not enough time, not enough hours in the day to do what I want to do, the kids are up and dressed and the next thing I know it’s time to start bedtime rituals. My children are heading to kindergarten and Grade One in the fall, and I want to say I don’t know where the time went, but I do know. It was scheduled, and tedious, and filled with child-maintenance activities, and now it’s summer and I want to fill it with happiness and good memories, and be a fun mother to my rapidly aging boys.
October 2005.

June 2010

Bad Wife!

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I spent much of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday doing a yoga workshop with Kino MacGregor, an amazing woman, and if yoga happens to be your thing, and she is doing a workshop near you, GO. GO TO IT. Even if it happens to coincide with a holiday for your baby daddy. It was a fabulous weekend, and I think I lost about ten pounds of water weight from SWEAT.


Isn’t she gorgeous? Please ignore the beads of sweat all over my face.

Of course, it was Father’s Day weekend, and so I felt vaguely guilty about spending so much time away from the house – Happy Father’s Day! Now, take care of the kids all weekend. – so I tried to assuage my guilt by making this cake:


Isn’t it pretty? Those are chocolate covered strawberries, and the cake itself was chocolate, so it was pretty delicious, believe me. I also tried to overcome my guilt by insisting that he golf after he dropped the kids off at school on Friday, which was the first time ever he had done the drop-off; I had to deep breathe and remind myself that he is not actually an idiot, and no calamity would occur, and the kids would make it to their classrooms. I think I have some control issues in this area. I also insisted he golf Saturday night, which ended up being a hilarious comedy of errors.

You know when your kids pass out of a certain stage, say the stage of having meltdowns and tantrums, and so you are not actually used to a meltdown or tantrum, and then one occurs? Well, it so happened that Saturday was the boys’ final soccer tournament, which meant they played two one hour games in the suddenly gorgeous sunshine. I stopped by to see their second game on my lunch break and also happened to come across the soccer mom/coach from hell, which is a very long story and one for another day. It was a busy day and apparently a very tiring one for Jake, because shortly after dinner he started to lose it. Here is what the boys’ conversation was like for approximately one hour:

“MARK’S NOT LETTING ME HAVE A TURN!!!”

“Jake, I said you could have a turn. You’re having a turn right now.”

“BUT IT’S NOT A VERY LONG TURN! AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!”

“Jake, you can KEEP having the turn.”

“BUT YOU SAID WE WERE LOOKING FOR LIONS AND I WANTED TO LOOK FOR MONKEYS!”

“Okay, we can look for monkeys.”

“I WANT TO LOOK FOR PENGUINS!”

And so on. Lather, rinse, repeat. Finally I decided to end whatever looking-for-exotic-animals-in-the-yard game they were playing and give them a bedtime snack and story. Everything was going wrong for Jake; he couldn’t spear blueberries with his fork without them squishing, he couldn’t decide on a story, he wanted to take toys into the bath but didn’t know what toys to take, he decided to take some superheroes and the entire box of superheroes slipped out of his hands, contents scattered on the floor. Then, while he was bathing, I made the grave mistake of letting Mark practice his reading with a Cars book. I heard a bloodcurdling scream from the bathtub and rushed in to see. “I’M MISSING STORIES!”

Sigh. When he finally got into bed – about 45 minutes earlier than normal – he passed out in seconds. I felt like I was out of touch with the tantruming world, I forgot what an overtired preschooler could be like. Do you know what I mean? Fortunately we are not having any more babies. I was using parenting muscles that I forgot I had; those muscles were sluggish and weak, but thankfully, as I discovered on Saturday, they are still there.

Everybody’s talking at me

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“I just wish I could one day watch the news in peace” my husband complained the other night, over the din of the kids playing and their varying sound effects. I emotionally answered that one day the kids would be gone and moved away and then it would be silent, and sad, and then he could watch the news without interruption. He replied with a curse which I will not repeat, and followed up with a comment to the effect that he wasn’t wishing the kids to move out, he was just wishing them to be slightly less loud for 30 minutes.

This is the fourth consecutive day of cold and rain, and the boys have been in astonishingly good spirits. They have played together, happily and without fighting, not even an argument – cue the chorus of singing angels – all afternoon. They have also been constantly talking all afternoon. I am not exaggerating when I say that there was not one minute of silence all afternoon. Not one minute. It was almost like the children are equipped with a chatter button, and it has been jammed into the “on” position, and the volume has been cranked to “maximum”. Even during activities that might be considered quiet activities, such as colouring and using the bathroom, there has been a constant stream of chatter, along with varying sound effects. Twice today I darted to the bathroom thinking Jake was calling for help, when he was actually just singing.

I’m not complaining though. The chatter has been pleasant enough, and has been nice background noise for my obsessive baking. I guess it’s the weather, but this week, in addition to my regular meal preparation, I have made the following: boule, granola, cinnamon loaf, banana bread, cookies, and three litres of roasted tomato sauce. It has been epic. I started off thinking that I will be out of the house most of the weekend, so perhaps I should prepare a few simple snacks for my husband to feed the kids. It then started to spiral out of control. Fortunately the rain is starting to taper off, as I’m running out of recipes. And room in the freezer.

Me, I want a hula hoop

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So here’s the thing: if you are trying to cut back on unnecessary consumption, and you decide on the third rainy, dreary day in a row to run to the mall to pick up some Father’s Day cards and also some teacher appreciation gifts, do NOT under any circumstances just “pop in” to Lululemon to “just look” because that “just looking” will lead to finding Tiffany blue yoga pants, and purchasing another pair of yoga pants is completely frivolous and unnecessary, but oh, look, they are TIFFANY BLUE and there is also a MATCHING HEADBAND and you have a yoga weekend workshop coming up in two days and aren’t they pretty? The next thing you know you will be leaving the mall with a bag full of cards, gift certificates, chocolate shaped apples, and a completely unnecessary yoga outfit, because you will inevitably find a top that goes with those pants, even though you were “just looking”.

Sigh.

Speaking of unnecessary consumption, the other day I was running errands and found myself at Wal-Mart. I know what you’re thinking: Wal-Mart, with its predatory pricing and suspicious business ethics and labour policies, but honestly, it’s a great place to stock up on shampoo and Kleenex. It’s also, apparently, a great place to buy hula hoops.

I may not be able to run very fast, and I may scream with terror and duck whenever a ball is thrown in my direction, and I cannot and have never been able to turn a cartwheel, but hoo boy, can I hula hoop. I can keep that baby going for a long time, and I can even do my childhood trick of starting the hoop at my waist,

keep it going on my knees,


and then skipping with it on my ankle.


The trouble with this youthful behaviour is that spinning a hula hoop on your legs and knees, when you have massive, bulging varicose veins leads to massive, purple bruises all over said veins. It’s just as attractive as it sounds. Sigh.

Sports, honesty, and mating…what are those dinos doing?

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Saturday morning a loud buzzing noise filled my head. It kind of felt like a giant swarm of bees had invaded. I was puzzled; after all, I had only one glass of wine the night before and I didn’t feel ill or dizzy in any way. “Do you HEAR that?” I asked my husband hesitantly, somewhat worried that I was just going crazy or something. Turns out it was just the background noise, from the World Cup and those weird vuvuzelas.

I always thought my husband was a total sports nut, a junkie, but then I met some REAL sports nuts and not I realize that he is just a fan, someone who follows a lot of sports and could tell you who placed first and who choked and who set a record, for pretty much any sport from football and hockey to horse racing and Nascar. He only watches a few sports very closely: American football, which I enjoy watching to some degree, and golf, which I do not enjoy at all thanks to the monotone-voiced commentators (“…and here’s the chip shot out of the bunker. Oh. Nice shot. Now it’s a putt for birdie…”) and also anything international, like the Olympics or the World Cup.

Mark, perhaps due to his participation in community soccer, has taken an interest in the World Cup. “Do you think I could play in the World Cup one day?” he asked. How honest is too honest? It’s hard to find the balance between being truthful and breaking your child’s spirit. “Um, maybe if you practice really hard, you could,” is the response I went with.

But really, how honest are you with your children? My friend sent me this article, and I am not prudish, I don’t think, but I was absolutely creeped out by it. For one thing, Mr. Purple? That’s what you call it? For another thing, your child was touching your sex toy? Ew. I couldn’t even get past those two pieces of information. Maybe I’m more prudish than I think I am. Mark had gotten a dinosaur book from the library, and apparently it was meant for a much older child, as it had a picture of Allosauruses mating. Mating! What are those dinosaurs doing, Mom? Um, let’s turn the page and see! Look! Baby Allosauruses! I have a feeling this is not the last of it.