Monthly Archives: September 2012

NOT DOCTOR SLOAN!

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Well, dammit.  I guess I’m never watching Grey’s Anatomy again. 

You know, I ALMOST stopped watching after Meredith’s near-death experience, and I ALMOST stopped watching when Denny had a recurring post-death role, and I ALMOST stopped watching when there was a hospital shooting – the swat team was right there, how did they not take down the shooter – and I ALMOST stopped watching when Christina went all nuts and she and Owen had a big fight about the pregnancy.  But through it all I kept watching because of Dr. Sloan and his pure unadulterated hubba-hubba-ness, and also with the hopes that he and Lexie would get it on again.  And now I have no reason to watch it, although, knowing Grey’s, he and Lexie might be getting it on beyond the grave which is frankly, just terrifying and creepy.

In other words, I have no reason to watch this show anymore and I am going to be freed up to do something productive on Thursday nights.

Kidding.  I totally won’t do anything productive on Thursday nights.  I probably will just take that opportunity to watch the Marky Mark video a few extra times, or maybe just go to bed at 8:30.  Or maybe watch that Marky Mark video and then go to bed, if you know what I mean, and I think you do.

Speaking of Grey’s Anatomy (grrrr) the other night Can’t Buy Me Love was on TV!  I made my husband watch a few minutes of it, and he couldn’t believe that was Patrick Dempsey!  I remember seeing Grey’s for the first time and thinking “Wow, that geeky guy from Can’t Buy Me Love turned out to be pretty hot.”  Because I have actually seen Can’t Buy Me Love multiple times.  Anyone else watch that movie and then learn to French braid their hair and become inspired to wear bomber jackets and tight jeans?  Or was that just me?

I got a phone call the other day from my hair salon telling me that my hair therapist got called into court, blah blah blah, my hair appointment got pushed back two weeks.  TWO WEEKS.  This is what is known as an epic princess tragedy in the Boyhouse.  Epic.  We are planning to do our family photos next weekend and I don’t want a year of looking at myself with an inch of grey roots, complemented by faded, orange hair.  I know, it sounds sexy, but believe me, it’s less flattering in person.  In any event, I headed out to Superstore to purchase home hair colour, among other things, and I had one of those moments wherein I marvel at the contents of my giant cart and what it says about my life.  I mean, it’s a strange still-life: hair colour and Rimmel Volume Accelerator beside whole milk and Nesquick Strawberry AND Chocolate syrups.  Coconut water and Daiya cheese next to pepperoni sticks.  Huge clamshell of organic spinach next to gigantic jar of peanut butter.  In other news, has anyone noticed the price of peanut butter lately?  Apparently there is a peanut shortage.  Peanut butter…is expensive…what alternate universe are we living in? 

Because it’s Friday, and nothing is funnier than unintentionally crude humour, here is what Jake borrowed from the school library yesterday:

“Welcome to the World of Beavers.”  And so the beaver saga continues.  Jake was reading in bed last night, and I asked him about his book so I could ascertain his reading comprehension.  “Did you know that beavers come in different colours?” he asked.  “They are usually brown, but sometimes black, and sometimes yellow!  Yellow, Mom!  Don’t you think it would be neat to see a yellow beaver?”  They’re called blondes, my dear.  And maybe in a few years.

SANTA’S COMING (in less than three months)

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Yesterday I kept hearing people say “It’s only three months until Christmas!” which got me to feeling like this:

SANTA’S COMING!  Of course, in three months from today I will be either a) taking down the tree and packing up the decorations because that is ENOUGH Christmas, or b) wishing I was taking down the tree and packing up the decorations and bitterly resenting those in my house who get in my way. 

I’m not sure why there seemed to be such a panic panic PANIC amongst my acquaintances when faced with the three months until Christmas thing.  After all, our answer to all Christmas problems came in August – the Sears Wish Book!

I have no idea why Sears sends its Wish Book out in August, but it sure did make for some enjoyable reading material.  When I was a kid, before there was so much child-directed marketing, the Sears catalogue was where our Christmas lists came from.  My favourite section – and it’s still my favourite section – was the “Gifts under $x”.  Some of those gifts, especially in the “under $10” category, are priceless. 

So I was flipping through the sections and, although my friends and I do not generally exchange gifts, I was immediately struck by an idea for my girlfriend who – and I say this with love – has a handbag obsession.  I found it!  The perfect handbag!  I think she’ll love it:

 
The only thing is I’m not sure what style.  Bunny bling?  Leo heart bunny?  No, I think etched leopard is the way to go.  Now, I shouldn’t be shopping for myself but…
 
 
 
mink collection plush cushion and throw?  YES PLEASE.  Again with the colour decision: pink seems more fun, but black seems more classy, no?  The satin sheets embossed with the Playboy symbol are also available, but satin sheets seem slippery.  It seems like you would be taking your life in your hands every time it was Business Time, you know?  Speaking of classy, here’s what I’m getting my husband for Christmas:
 
 
I can’t decide if he’d like the 1L glass or the 6-pack of shotglasses, so I’m getting him both!  Lucky guy.  Mostly for Christmas I think he’d like to get the real referees back in the NFL, but bikini babe glassware will have to suffice.  We can only control so much.  Speaking of control, have you ever been in a big snowball fight and just wished that your snowballs would be more uniform in size and shape?  Well, wish no more!  Perfect snowballs can be your reality for the low low price of $9.99!
 
 

It also features a long handle.  The Canada Survival Belt is what I’m going to get my father-in-law, unironically.  I think he would really like it.  It’s a fanny pack for beer! 

There are so many other items in the catalogue I would like to talk about – notably an interactive R2D2 – but they will have to wait for another day.  Well, okay, ONE picture of R2:


The kids really wanted this at first glance, but then I pointed out the excessive price tag.  “Well,” Mark said, “It IS a lot of money.”  “Yeah, we can probably get our own can of pop,” said Jake, before remembering, “But we aren’t really supposed to have pop anyway.  So it would be kind of a waste.  Hey, bobbleheads!”

Tony Romo and his huge boner

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My husband was watching Sunday NFL Countdown, when I overheard the commentator say “Tony Romo had the biggest boner in NFL history.”

Who uses the word “boner” interchangeably with “screw up” anymore? Or ever, for that matter?

In any case this, for me, surpassed the golf commentator’s use of “stroking”, the football colour commentator’s use of “penetration”, and the hockey announcer’s use of “slipped one past the goalie” as the greatest sports observation ever. I wonder if Tony Romo heard that, and I wonder if he felt a deep, misplaced sense of pride. “My boner is HUGE. Biggest in the NFL. You hear that, Ray Lewis?”

Speaking of “boners”, remember how in my last post I commented that since giving up dairy my premenstrual symptoms – sobbing uncontrollably, desire to REDRUM if certain people left their socks on the floor and/or coffee table, dead grass and leaves tracked in by the dog induced rage – had largely abated? Yes, well. Yesterday I suffered through a solid eighteen hours of screaming abdominal and lower back pain, all due to my ladies’ holiday. At one point I lay down on the couch as the children played with Jake’s brand new Jabba’s Palace made out of Lego – purchased proudly with his saved up birthday money and allowance – and, inexplicably, I fell asleep. I say inexplicably because the noise level was such that no normal person could possibly relax enough to drift off. However, drift off I did and I woke up an hour later to complete silence. That would have been unnerving years ago, but happily the children – the dear, dear children, who can leave their socks on the coffee table anytime – realized I had fallen asleep and quietly went downstairs to play on the Wii. Lego Star Wars Wii, no less.

Mothers of small children: there is hope.  One day, you too will be able to have a nap in the middle of the day and wake up to silence and not immediately assume that everyone is a) dead, b) kidnapped, or c) that the house is burning down around you and all the children are gone.  IT’S TRUE.  Someday soon you will be able to use the bathroom and the children will not clamour hysterically to get in, someday soon you will be able to serve a different dish for dinner and while they may not eat it, they won’t collapse to the floor, gagging and crying.  Someday soon – and I say this because it’s September, and it can be a tricky time of year for little ones – you will be able to leave your children at school and they won’t be sobbing with separation anxiety.

The other day I was at the school, which is nothing new. I’ve been at the school so much for the past couple of weeks with various Parent Association responsibilities – I’M THE CHAIR, ALL HAIL THE CHAIR – that a new teacher actually mistook me for someone who worked at the school.  Anyway, I was at the school and I ran into Jake’s old pre-kindergarten teacher.  “Nicole,” she said, “I’ve been telling my new parents about the goodbye routine you and Jake had.  It’s really been helping!”  I was a little surprised, being that it has been four years since Jake was in pre-kindergarten, and I didn’t think that our goodbye routine was anything out of the ordinary.

Now, you know me, people.  I do not generally give parenting advice, especially unsolicited parenting advice.  Part of that is because I think that smugly imparting advice is douchey, and part of it is because I believe strongly in karma and am superstitious.  I knew a woman who was extremely smug and boasty about her lamb of a firstborn, who was completely potty trained at eighteen months due to her superior parenting techniques.  Her second born?  A completely wild child, who was still in diapers at four.  COINCIDENCE?  It’s karma. 

But I know a few of you are suffering with your child’s separation anxiety right now, and so I will share with you the goodbye routine I had with Jake, that dried up any tears from school dropoffs, and that I kind of stole from The Kissing Hand.  As you may know, I rarely leave the house without lipstick.  When it was time to say goodbye, I would draw a circle in Jake’s hand with my finger, then I would kiss the middle of the circle, leaving a giant lipstick mark. I would then rub the lipstick into his hand, so the kiss would “stick with him” all day.  He would then do the same to me, minus the lipstick, of course.  It really worked, and we did that all through pre-kindergarten and kindergarten.  Now, of course, he doesn’t even allow me to kiss him in his lineup; instead we fist bump.  FIST BUMP, MOTHER OF GOD.  In any case, my heart goes out to you mamas dealing with school dropoff sadness; maybe my story will help, maybe not, but know that it gets better and one day you too may be fist bumping your child, and sometimes accidentally jabbing him with your rings.  Then you will only have your own sentimental tears to deal with, and to that end, I have no advice. 

Feeling the love

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It seems we all have very strong opinions on skinny jeans!  I do feel that we should have learned lessons from the eighties.  I will say this, my very worst hair decision ever – and this is even worse than my 1985 mullet that my mom had home permed – was to cut my hair like Madonna’s in her Papa Don’t Preach video.  And not when she’s dancing in her sassy little black outfit, I mean when she’s wearing her “Italians Do It Better” t-shirt.  Check out the video and you will understand why I will never again cut my hair short.  That very bad haircut took forever to grow out. 

Today I feel extremely self-satisfied.  Between the hours of 7:00 and 11:15 this morning I accomplished the following: showered, dressed, makeup and hair, baked two batches of blueberry muffins, made breakfast for the kids, cleaned the kitchen, cleaned the bathroom, walked the kids to school, walked home, walked the dog, baked brownies, and finished a task I have been working on for months – editing, uploading, and ordering photos.  I have not done this task in over a year.  I had Jake’s seventh AND sixth birthday photos to develop.  Good grief.  Now I only have to go pick up the developed prints and put them all into photo albums!  Perhaps if I didn’t put this task off for months and months I wouldn’t find myself going blind, editing and cropping 500 photos. To keep myself from going insane, I put youtube videos on to listen to while I cropped and cropped and cropped.  I somehow stumbled on this video and was reminded again why I watched The Fighter – I was sure hoping to see a lot more shirtless Mark Wahlberg than there was in that movie.  It’s such a good vibration!  Swweeeeeeet sensation!  I have probably watched this ten times already; there goes my productivity.  HE’S LIFTING WEIGHTS AND PUNCHING BAGS.  ONE OF THOSE WEIGHTS IS MADE OUT OF CINDERBLOCKS.  HE HAS NO SHIRT ON.  GRACIOUS.

I had to stop writing and watch that video again.  At this rate I will never finish this post.

Here’s a picture for my lovely blog friend Ciara, who would listen to him read the phone book (does anyone still use phone books?) in his Boston accent:



I KNOW, RIGHT?  If you ain’t in it to win it, then get the hell out.


Goodness, I am so distracted now, I almost forgot what this post is all about!  I’m supposed to be thanking Kerrie over at Family, Food, and Travel for the Liebster Award, and Rhiannon over at Happy Little Feet for the Versatile Blogger Award!  Thanks girls!  As part of accepting the award, I am supposed to give you seven or eleven facts about myself – but I’ll take the average and give you nine.  It’s a little daunting – don’t you all know everything about me by now?  I guess you didn’t know that I once had one of the very least flattering hairstyles ever and that I also have a thing for Mark Wahlberg.  So there are two facts, let me think of seven more:

1. Giving up cheese has made me so very sad.  But it also has pretty much made my premenstrual symptoms disappear.  I hardly ever want to mur-diddly-urder anyone during that special time of the month.  So, call it a break even?

2. I still kind of want to mur-diddly-urder people who misuse statistics or fail to understand that correlation and causation are not the same thing.

3. I am a huge nerd.  

4. The year my little brother was born I read A Little Princess over and over again, and wondered what it would be like to live a) in an attic in London, and b) in a gigantic palace-like place in India.  That summer I also read The Bobbsey Twins Visit The Farm many, many times and pretended that our backyard was a farm. 

5. I don’t ever want to live on a farm. 

6. I was an extremely anxious child, and I bit my nails until I was 24 years old.  Now I’m obsessed with having all my nails groomed to the same length.

7. Since giving up cheese, my standard lunch now consists of a tomato and pickle sandwich.  The humanity!

Thanks for the awards, Kerrie and Rhiannon!  Feeling the love!  It’s such a sweeeeeeet sensation!

Lucky Number Seven

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It was Jake’s seventh birthday yesterday!  For the past week I’ve been reminiscing about my pregnancy and his birth: how I craved and ate a jar of Cheez Whiz a week, disturbingly enough; how I became a completely crazed hormonal being the day before going into labour, alternating between being annoyed at everyone in the world and sobbing with terror that all of the twenty or so people I had as back-up babysitting alternates would simultaneously be unavailable to take Mark and I would have to take him with me, or, worse, have the baby in the bathroom; how I thought a second baby would be easy because I’d already had one, only to discover that nothing prepares a person for looking after a one-year-old and a colicky newborn.  Most of all, I remember how I felt that Jake completed our family.
 
Jake shares a birthday with Prince Harry, and I like to say that he’s OUR Prince Harry – the madcap younger brother who shows that sometimes it’s way more fun to be the spare than the heir, so to speak.  Jacob even means “second son”, which I thought was very cool.  I can’t ever imagine life without him, he’s a great kid, even if I’m kind of expecting naked Vegas party pictures to surface in a couple of decades.
 
Touchdown, age eight weeks.

In the stroller, age seven months

Hanging out, age one.

The least-terrible two year old.

LEAVE ME ALONE, age three

A four year old superhero.
 
Hanging at the playground, age five.

At Elbow River, age six.
 
Going out for a birthday dinner, age seven.

Batting 500

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It all started when I read my friend Swistle’s post about behaviours that are “mom-ish” and behaviours that are “old lady-ish”.  For example, referring to youth as “young people today”, fumbling for change while the grocery store lineup expands behind, and so forth.  Swistle said, and I quote:

“Have you noticed that each generation thinks they’ll manage to avoid seeming “old,” as long as they avoid the exact thing their own parents/grandparents did? A woman my age will say she doesn’t want Mom Hair or Mom Jeans—but what she’s thinking of are the current GRANDMOTHER hair/jeans: she’s filed her OWN mom’s style under “mom,” but a generational shift has occurred since then. Angled stacked bobs and cute-messy twisted-up hair with side-swept bangs ARE the Mom Hair! Cute dark-wash boot-cut jeans ARE the Mom Jeans! BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT THE CURRENT MOMS ARE DOING. Our daughters will speak of such styles with distaste, and will specifically avoid them. “Don’t give me Mom Hair,” they’ll tell the stylist, meaning OUR CUTE HAIR.”
An idea sprouted in my brain, my brain that was underneath my “cute-messy twisted-up hair with side-swept bangs”, and that idea was that I am now part of this generational shift.  I am no longer “young people” – which is not news, really – but I am part of the Mom Generation that will be dismissed as lame by our daughters (collectively speaking).  That idea started as a small, uncomfortable kernel and then exploded, like a piece of popcorn.
It exploded when I started flipping through fashion magazines, as one does when one is at the hairstylist getting one’s grey/white roots touched up.  I realized as I looked through that there was not a single pair of boot cut jeans on any of the pages.  I picked up another magazine; same thing.  I picked up an article on back-to-school shopping and saw that all the hottest outfits – worn by young people today –  involve clothing that I wore during my teenage years, distressingly enough.  But it was really the lack of boot-cut jeans on style pages that had me thinking; then I realized that boot-cut jeans are not worn by anyone on popular television shows anymore.
I understand now, perfectly, how certain women who came of age in the seventies could still, twenty years later, be wearing blue eyeshadow that had long gone out of style because they believed that the shadow brought out the blue in their eyes or what have you.  I understand now, perfectly, how a person can cling to something – a bad haircut, a low-fat or low-carb diet – because that was the style during their formative years.  I understand but I am in deep, deep mourning that dark-wash boot-cut jeans have become this to the current young generation:
Do you see what I’m saying here, people?  OUR JEANS have become MOM JEANS.  And, sadly, they are fast becoming passe.  I mourn this piece of knowledge and wish I could go back to not knowing it because really, dark-wash boot-cut jeans are the most universally flattering cut that there is.  It’s true.  There is just no way on earth that this
is more flattering to the female body than this:
And yet I will concede that skinny jeans are better for wearing boots, which I love, and that skinny jeans do look pretty good with a longer top, which is nice in order to hide the muffin-top.  And this is how I found myself in the mall last week, shopping for skinny jeans.
I was helped by a very sweet young thing named Ashley, who never once helpfully told me which jeans her mother preferred.  Ashley, I realized, is not a name I hear on little girls very often anymore.  Most Ashleys that I know are in their late teens or twenties.  There is a very strong trend right now to give little girls old-fashioned names, lovely names that until recently were reserved for our grandmother’s generation: Grace, Isabelle, Ava, Emma, Lily, Abigail.  These do not include my own grandmother’s names, which have yet – if ever – to come back into fashion.

I had a St. Paul on the road to Damascus kind of realization that, if those names that reflect our grandmothers’ generation are in style now, then in twenty years the names that will be in style are what I consider “Mom names” – meaning my own mother’s generation.  In other words, in twenty years, we will see a rash of Barbaras, Beverlys, Donnas, Corrines, Carols, and Lindas.  Can you imagine?  Our granddaughters may be named Barbara and Beverly.  Or maybe Susan.  This is mind blowing enough, but then twenty, thirty years or so after that, we can expect to see our own names come back in fashion as WE become the grandmother generation!  In 2062, top baby names may well be Jennifer, Julie, Michelle, Melissa, Heather, and MAYBE EVEN NICOLE.

My mind is officially blown by this.

After Ashley helped me pick out a couple pairs of skinny jeans, I went to Sport Chek to find, apparently, the only pair of size three boys’ shoes in the entire mall.  In front of me in line was a young girl wearing orange skinny jeans with an actual backless sweatshirt showcasing a completely visible bra.

 Is this the fashion on “young people today”?  Backless sweatshirt revealing not a bra strap, but an actual bra band, worn with orange skinny jeans?  Is this what is sweeping the fashion nation?

It made me feel that maybe, just maybe, my becoming-passe boot cut jeans are not that bad.  After all, they are flattering, right?  Not like this:

Right?  RIGHT?  Although I did notice that high-waisted shorty shorts were being worn by the young crowd this summer, which makes me wonder what is happening.  What is happening in the world today?

***************************************************************************************************

And what do I mean by “Batting 500”?  It’s my 500th post!  I can’t believe I have had so much to say!  And I am so very, very grateful to you, dear readers, for reading and commenting and being supportive.  Thank you.  Stay real.  Let’s wear our boot cut jeans with pride!  xoxo

A touch of the mitten-tip

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I have been reading the Little House series to the boys for a while now, and we are now almost finished that epistle of madcap gaiety, Little Town on the Prairie.  As opposed to the very depressing previous book, The Long Winter – everyone is going to die! – this book is full of exciting good times like the Friday night Literaries and the weeklong discussions following the Friday night Literaries and the anticipation of the Friday night Literaries, and also a New England Supper.  I’m not entirely sure what makes it New England, as opposed to South Dakota, but maybe it’s the baked beans and pumpkin pie?  I don’t know. 

The Friday night Literaries start out with a spelling bee, which puts the whole town into a competitive tizzy.  Pa wins the bee, naturally, since Pa can do no wrong, except for the whole moving his family into more and more isolated and dangerous places.  The spelling bee was pretty exciting, though, and I’m not just saying this because I myself was on the television show Spelling Bee, hosted by former Stampede Wrestling host and Calgary celebrity Ed Whalen.  I was quite the spelling star back in the day!  It made up for my complete inability to do anything well in Phys Ed.  Or, at least, I think it did.  Spelling’s more important than being able to do a chin-up, right?

Anyway, it’s been fun reading this book to the boys, what with all the wholesome – and also offensive – entertainments.  Minstrel show, I’m looking at you.  But this is also the book where the romance between Laura and Almanzo begins!  They exchange name cards, and Laura also accepts a ride to school from him, that hussy, and when she gets out of the buggy, they touch mitten-tips.  IT BEGINS.

My husband and I were talking about what it would be like to have an old-timey romance.  I use the term “romance” loosely since it seems like if you were of a certain age, and there was a man there also of a certain age, and neither of you had anything seriously wrong with you like a missing leg, then you would probably get married.  This seems to be the case with Laura and Almanzo – I mean, Laura was 15 and Almanzo was 25, which is a bit squicky, but likely there were no eligible females over the age 15 and he was tired of the bachelor life.  Think of all the marriages which would have started for similar reasons!  Romance would boil down to a buggy ride, and maybe a heart-pounding touch of the mitten-tips.

But real life romance is very different from movie romance anyway, isn’t it?  Real life romance isn’t all about rose petals on the bed or bubble baths for two with champagne.  It isn’t about getting it on while lying on a beach with ocean waves lapping at your feet.  Sand, ouch.  It isn’t even about him standing outside your window with a boom box lifted above his head, playing In Your Eyes, although that would be awesome.  Real life romance, in my mind, is personified by my husband checking restaurant menus to see if there are any good vegetarian options, even though he’s planning on having steak, or by my husband recording a late-night talk show just because the guest was Hugh Jackman.  Real life romance is my husband becoming worried about my bone density and ordering calcium supplements for women 50+, even though I’m not really close to 50+.  It’s sweet – he cares about my bone density!

What do you think?  What’s the most real-life romantic thing that you or your spouse has done for each other lately?