Monthly Archives: November 2012

Did you know November is Gratitude Month?

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Well, it is!  I don’t know who comes up with these specialty months; probably the same people who come up with “Grandparents’ Day”.  For the record, every day is Grandparents’ Day, just like every month should be Gratitude Month.  Right?  It’s like I tell my kids when they are coveting something new immediately after a birthday, we should be grateful and enjoy the things we have, right now.  And then I go and spoil it all by purchasing a new black sweater or a yoga top.

But truly, I have so much to be grateful for, every day, and not just the obvious things like health, family, drawers full of black sweaters, etc. 

Things I am grateful for:

1) Jake can sing Gangnam Style, and his mastery of Korean lyrics is comparable to his mastery of English ones.  Heeeeyyyyy, sexy lay-day.  His rendition is equal, if not greater than, his rendition of I’m Sexy And I Know It.  There’s nothing quite so inappropriately cute as a seven year old boy singing “I’ve got action in my pants and I ain’t afraid to show it”.  He is pretty fly. 

2) The boys both like to dance Gangnam Style, although it is really just their regular dance moves, which leads me to believe that Psy stole their moves.  Imitation, sincerest form of flattery, etc. 

3) I went to an assembly at the kids’ school yesterday where there was a visit from several Calgary Stampeders and cheerleaders.  I wasn’t going to go but I ran into a friend who was going and she totally peer pressured me.  It turned out to be hugely fun, complete with student MC who, in a completely robot-like monotone, said how exciting it was to have the football players visit our school, and Go Stamps.  Then the Ralph the Dog mascot pretended to lick the principal, and hilarity ensued. 

4) Prior to attending the assembly, I was at the school photocopying things for next week’s book fair – what else do you do with a Master’s in Economics these days? – and a kid ran down the hall and barfed all over the hallway, because, as he said between retches to a teacher who was passing by, he couldn’t make it to the bathroom.  I am very grateful that child is not in class with either of mine and we have – so far, knock wood and knock back more vitamins – not had the barfing plague hit our house.

5) I am ever-so-grateful for PVR technology.  It is the technological advancement of our time.  Better than sliced bread, voice mail, and the printing press, although not superior to automatic washers and dryers, email, or the wheel.  I recorded Top Gun on TV and I’m thinking of watching it and live-blogging.  While drinking wine.  Don’t you think that would be fun?  Son, your ego is writing cheques your body can’t cash.  In any event, my husband noticed that I was recording it and asked why.  NO REASON.  I like the dialogue?  Now, where is that aviator suit? 

6) People is going to come out with it’s Sexiest Man Alive, which means BLOGGING MANIA.  Remember my list from last year, and the accompanying addendum?  Well, my friend Nan just took it to a whole new level.  Her post made my whole entire day.  And my day started off with a friend buying me a soy latte with sugar-free vanilla so it was already pretty damn good.  Go read it, and just think – NICK NOLTE won?  Whaaaa?  Where were all the other men in the world that year?

To be fair, his win was prior to this sexy photo, but still.  Still.

7) I heard Rock Me Amadeus on the radio today.  AMADEUS AMADEUS AMADEUS AMADEUS AMADEUS.

8) I bought a new cocoa-butter handcream for my hands which are so dry and cracked that clothing snags on them.  The cream works a treat, and it also smells exactly like a cocoa-butter stick I used on my giant pregnant belly back in the day.  The scent takes me back, in a very good way.  I know it’s unpopular to say so, but I loved being pregnant.  I wasn’t ever sick, and I loved getting Princess Treatment.  I loved how people would express concern over me lifting a finger doing anything, I loved how the guys I worked with constantly brought me snacks and worried about me working too hard, I loved how people opened doors for me and helped me cross the street like a whale-like octogenarian.  The cocoa-butter smell makes me feel all the warm fuzziness about being pregnant, without the inconvenience of actually being pregnant.

9) I am so grateful my kids are old enough to have normal, and frequently actually interesting conversations, they are old enough to do most things independently, and yet they still like to receive hugs, albeit not in public.  I am grateful I can look back at pictures like this with nostalgia:

Remember the days that sitting up was too much effort due to massive sleep deprivation?  I’m grateful to sleep.  While I’m in the business of cute old pictures:

Jake has a wee little Tom Brady jersey on!  Death by cuteness!

Look at the cute little bookworm!  We seem to have the same facial expression, and it’s saying “Fuck off, we’re trying to read here.”  And we can’t forget Barkley-when-he-was-a-puppy:

He is watching the Dog Whisperer!!!!

10) I am ever-so-grateful for you lovely readers, as always.  xoxo

So tell me, darlings, what are you grateful for?

Hot Carl

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Twice a year I find myself commenting that I am in awe that we, as a society, still deal with such an antiquated notion as Daylight Savings Time, and twice a year my husband tells me that I am starting to sound crazy when I launch a diatribe against it.  And yet, although my children are older and they actually DO sleep in if they are kept up late, I feel it is my duty as a mother, and in solidarity with parents of little ones who are now waking up at 4 in the morning, sobbing for lunch at 10, and practically disintigrating with exhaustion before dinner, to steadily rail against time change.  After all, when I’m a senior I expect to still pay education taxes even though my own children will not be in school, and so I expect that I will have something angry to say about time change for many years to come.  However, I have probably said it all already; you can read about my feelings on the subject here and here and probably elsewhere but I cannot find it.

My husband was away for a couple of days, and I don’t know what you do when your significant other is out of town, but I seem to drink a lot of wine, eat a lot of guacamole, and watch movies that, while excellent, generally don’t interest him.  This weekend I watched Little Women, which in addition to being an excellent portrayal of the book, also features two of the world’s sexiest men, at least in my opinion.  It also contains one of my favourite movie lines ever: “Over the mysteries of female life, there is drawn a veil, best left undisturbed.”  I think of this whenever I am doing some personal grooming or surreptitiously eating (the somewhat sad snack of) Snapea Crisps and rice-milk chocolate during my ladies’ holidays. 

I also watched Say Anything, which – not coincidentally – also features one of the world’s sexiest men.  I have been watching that movie on a semi-annual basis over the past 24 years, and I never get tired of it.  I never get tired of seeing that guy wearing shorts under his graduation gown belting out The Greatest Love of All.  I never get tired of the line “I gave her my heart and she gave me a pen.”  I never get tired of “Diane Court is a show pony; you, my friend, are a stallion.” 

I think I’m a show pony.

As a general rule I have a strong distaste for personalized license plates.  They remind me very much of Bruce from Sweet Valley High, with his license plate 1Bruce1.  Did you read those books when you were a kid?  I sure did, and I will tell you this: I had a very distorted view of high school based on those books.  In any case, due to my reading of the entire Sweet Valley High series in fifth grade, I have always thought that personalized license plates belong to douchebags, like the aforementioned Bruce.  However, parked in my neighbourhood is a vehicle with the license plate Hot Carl.  This has altogether changed my view, although maybe it’s more of an exception that proves the rule.  Hot Carl!  It’s fabulous on so many different levels.  I’m dying of curiosity; who IS Hot Carl?  I suppose camping out behind the vehicle to discover Hot Carl’s identity would be wrong, and would probably only serve to elevate my “crazy” status. 

November 1st equals Christmas

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There have been a number of Very Sad, Moderately Sad, and Mildly Sad things going on in the Boyhouse and in the world at large this week.  Happily, general Halloween festivities and related sugary and non-sugary joy have cheered me, as well as the fact that as of 11:00 this morning, I have finished my Christmas shopping, aside from a couple of stocking stuffers and teacher gift cards.  I AM FINISHED MY CHRISTMAS SHOPPING!  Hilariously, as I was leaving the mall, a very flamboyant Bay employee was busily setting up a large Christmas tree, and as he was doing so he was flamboyantly berating his fellow employee for not putting the decorations on with pizazz.  PIZAZZ.  I didn’t realize that word was still in general circulation but nonetheless it cheered me nearly as much as finishing my Christmas shopping prior to the Bay’s Christmas tree being set up.

I am famous in my circle for being an early shopper, mostly because I dislike crowds and the opposite of the Christmas spirit that pervades the mall starting in late November.  I dislike the feeling that someone is going to road ragedly run me over in the parking lot, or that I’m going to witness some kind of murder over a parking spot, or that I’m going to be crushed to death in a stampede at Toys R Us.  I met a very dear friend for coffee a few weeks ago, a friend who I’ve known for 23 years, and she asked me very seriously if I had finished my shopping yet.  “Almost!” I said cheerfully, and she smiled at me like the pathological early bird I am.

But why am I talking about Christmas when we’ve just finished Halloween?  I hope your Halloween was lovely.  We had a grand total of seven trick or treaters, all of whom got handfuls and handfuls of fun-sized M&M’s from me.  My own kids were, as usual, overly indulged as they are the pets of the neighbourhood, the only little kids on our street.  I love our neighbours.  Our doorbell rang at 5:30, and I opened it to find not a trick or treater, but an elderly lady who told me that since she and her husband were going out for the evening, she was dropping off candy for the boys.  Sweet!  In addition to that kindness, the boys went up and down our street and came back loaded with treats – tons of candy, full-sized chocolate bars, big buckets of candy popcorn, and funny treats purchased just for them.  So much kindness!  Also – so many Rockets!  I’ve only snuck one package out of their bags, so I’m congratulating myself on my own inner strength.  Like a rock, I am.

A few of my friends in milder climates posted photos of their children in JUST Halloween costumes, and I stared at those pictures with envy and mild disbelief.  It was minus six degrees here, and kind of snowy.  But what kind of Calgary girl would I be if I didn’t know how to fashion a Halloween costume that incorporates winter wear?

Puffy! 

Today, in addition to going to the mall, I went to Wal Mart, which is never particularly fun but is often interesting from a sociological point of view.  I needed a few snack items since I have some girlfriends and their children coming over tomorrow night.  If I stepped back and looked at my cart with someone else’s eyes, I would be judging the hell out of my purchases.  Here’s what I had: Gold Bond hand lotion, three bags of fun-sized Hershey bars, a box of Sleep-Eze pills, a package of Angry Birds bandaids, five “family-sized” bags of assorted potato and tortilla chips, a 2L bottle of Coke Zero, and a double pack of toilet bowl cleaner.  Fortunately I did not see anyone I knew.  I did, however, see a very large man at the pharmacy wearing fleece pajama pants in a Papa Smurf motif, and I swear I have seen that same man, in that same outfit, at that very same pharmacy before.