You know when it’s the week leading up to your ladies’ holiday, and you feel all raw and emotional and sad things are unbearably sad and mildly irritating things are making you ragey and you’re reading the Diary of a Wimpy Kid with your children and you didn’t realize how very mean spirited and awful it is, and it’s two days until your hair appointment and your hair looks and feels like orange straw, but with grey roots, and you have impotent rage about the impending time change and your husband thinks time change is “no big deal” and it’s “crazy to get all worked up about it” and Monday is a new moon and Mercury is in retrograde and why don’t we keep snack food in the house, omg, want snacks right now? That’s the kind of day I’m having.
I realized yesterday that Barkley is going to be five soon, which means he is approaching doggie middle age, and I myself am approaching human middle age. Or maybe I’ve already reached middle age, although I hope not. I have an ultimate goal of being one of those sweet yet crazy little old ladies in the nursing home, wearing tons of lipstick which will bleed down into the lines around my mouth, and I will colour my hair orangey-red, and I will wear so much Chanel No. 5 that everyone will know I was in a room twenty minutes after vacating it. I will wear jaunty little silk neck scarves in bright colours to hide the wrinkles on my chicken neck, and will paint my nails to match. I will force the cafeteria in my nursing home to offer a vegetarian option and I will always have a bowl of hard candies in my room. I think that would be fun, but I envision myself to be in my nineties, or late eighties at the very least, and so I do not think I have technically hit middle age yet.
Speaking of being an old lady, I do not want to be one of those mean ones who ram their shopping carts into people at the grocery store or complain about the lineups to the cashiers, and so I will blog about the things that have been irritating me today. Although, technically, they aren’t irritating me so much anymore since I went to my beautiful friend’s restorative yoga class this afternoon so I’m actually feeling pretty relaxed. Still. Here is a list of the mildly annoying things on this sunny, blue-and-white day:
1) It snowed for about ten hours straight on Sunday; there is about a foot of snow on the ground. This is nothing unusual since March is typically a snowy month. However, by the level of complaints about the snow, you would think we were all living in the tropics and it suddenly and unexpectedly turned into the Arctic. Also, the city road crews did an amazing job cleaning up the streets, all things considered, and yet the complaints about the city road crews were endless.
2) Because of the snow, I am dropping the kids off at the front of the school after lunch, rather than the alley. First, people dropping their kids off for afternoon kindergarten park in the alley like they’ve never seen traffic before; they double park and park on blind corners and leave their cars and it is – in good conditions – a mess. And so I tried to just avoid the situation by dropping off the kids in front of the school, but then my zen state was ruined by witnessing three people jaywalking with their small children across the busy street. People: darting out between parked cars into traffic and expecting said traffic to stop for you is not a good lesson for your kindergarten aged child. THEN one of those small children got stuck in a snowbank on the side of the road. There’s nothing quite like watching a parent standing in the busy street trying to dislodge her child from a snowbank, meanwhile the younger siblings are darting around ON THE STREET. I’m having heart palpitations just thinking about it. It’s the same visceral reaction I get when I see pictures of babies on those Bumbo seats sitting on elevated surfaces. Get the baby off there before it falls and breaks its little neck!!!
3) My friend Nan wrote about this today, but whenever anyone mentions the Paleo Diet I immediately picture that person with a club and wearing animal skins, hunting down sabre-toothed tigers and the like. I find diet trends – when they are spoken about with fervour as they often are in the born-again dieter – to be annoying in general. I mean, awesome if you’re into the Paleo Diet or low-carb or gluten-free or whatnot and it works for you. What I find annoying are the attempts at conversion. Hey, I’ve been a vegetarian for years and I have never once said anything derogatory about my carnivorous friends. Particularly since I live with four of them (I am counting the dog).
4) The boys have another make up karate class today. The oversharing, overly talkative woman will be there. That right there should be enough but now she’s talking to ME. God help us all. She told me that outdoor sports – like spring soccer – are the only way to REALLY teach children about sports, and while I agree that there is something character building about playing soccer with snow on the ground, in the howling wind and sleet, I am ecstatic that my children are not playing this year. I can’t wait to see what we will talk about tonight!
Speaking of which, I must go get ready to pick the kids up and head to the dojo – they got new belts this weekend! White with the yellow stripe! Excitement all around – and so I will sign off, feeling much better about everything. What would I do without you to listen to me, dear readers? I guess I would turn into Mean Old Lady. xoxo
Monthly Archives: March 2013
Nicole’s Favourite Things, Aloha Edition
The book fair is done! All loose ends are tied up; everything is finished until next November, when I will be relating my book fair sob stories once again. For those of you who have asked WHY I do this to myself, over and over like one of those fifty-shades types of girls, well, I ask the same question of myself when I find myself photocopying, cutting, and sorting 420 draw forms, or answering “The posters are five dollars. Yes, that one is five dollars too. They are all five dollars” a thousand times, or handling all that warm, sweaty money. The answer is, of course, that my kids tell me that they are so excited I’m in the school doing the book fair, and when I walk down the halls I get random hugs from children, and the school librarian tells me how happy she is to be ordering more books for the learning and literacy program and the ESL students. I even got thank you cards made for me by a couple of students, which makes the memory of sorting through the reorder forms fade significantly.
This week is flying by; book fair, make up karate classes, and, of course, readjusting to regular life after vacation. Yesterday my girlfriend who was volunteering with me asked me to tell her all about our vacation, and I had that far-off feeling that I was on another planet some time ago, and now the memories are all that remain. I’m trying to keep that aloha feeling going, so without further adieu I give you…
Nicole’s Favourite Things, Aloha Edition
As always, my favourite things are just things I love and I think you might too. These posts are never sponsored, I received nothing for free, and I was not compensated by any companies to write this post.
Lulu Bands
Not to be confused with lululemon, these are essentially ponytail holders that don’t damage your hair and don’t leave those annoying ponytail bumps in your hair when you take out your ponytail.
I know what you’re thinking: what is that, a scrunchie? Is this 1990? But no, they are not scrunchies, they look cute and non obtrusive in your hair, and you don’t need to worry about breakage, which is especially important for us fine-haired girls with over-processed, brittle hair. I’m wearing one in this picture – see? Not scrunchie-like at all.
Cheap Pedicures
Normally, the term “cheap pedicure” gives me visions of gross things like foot fungus or similar. I prefer to go once or twice a year to more expensive spas to get pedicures; where I live prices of these kind of services (and everything else) are fairly inflated, and so generally getting a pedicure doesn’t even cross my mind. However, I failed to recall the priniciples of supply and demand. In Maui, there seems to be a nail salon on every block, and the prices are insanely low. How could I resist? Plus during my pedicure I got to sit next to an older gentleman from Arizona who talked to me about dog breeds and golf. You just can’t buy that kind of entertainment.
Old Navy Swimwear
Last summer I bought some bikinis from Old Navy for $5-8 a piece. A steal! I also bought some skirts during the Boxing Week sales for $8 each, and they are cute, wrinkle free, and super comfortable. Their regular prices are not bad, either, and there is usually some kind of online discount to take advantage of.
Cute skirt, and perfect for travel. Also – Fern – shout out to my grandma! Love you, Grandma!
Sunglasses
My husband has always hated my old sunglasses. He’s had a vendetta against them for years. So, on this trip, we popped into a Sunglass Hut where I was helped by the most flamboyant man ever. This guy knew his sunglasses, and he fitted me out with these lovely things:
as well as a set of aviators so I can pretend I’m actually in Top Gun. Can I just give a shout out to that flamboyant man? He gave me a totally mouth-turned-down frowny face every time I tried on a pair of glasses that didn’t suit me, shook his head, and said “Um, NO.” I kind of fell in love with him a little bit, especially when he told me that his “friend” was in town from Las Vegas, and they had some champagne on the beach watching the sunset. He also said, when I told him we were leaving soon, “Well, being in paradise doesn’t pay the bills, am I right?” Truth.
Coconut
We were on holidays! And so the freezer in our condo was kept well stocked with all sorts of frozen treats. I was feeling a bit sorry for myself as the boys ate sundaes and ice cream sandwiches, meanwhile the rice milk ice cream I had purchased for myself tasted exactly like sadness. Then I discovered So Delicious Coconut Milk products, and OMG people. OMG PEOPLE.
I used to think that I disliked coconut; it turns out I dislike artificial coconut flavour and also shredded coconut, the texture of which resembles old dried-out dental floss to me. GOD BLESS THE COCONUT. I use coconut milk in my cooking and baking, coconut oil, and now I am a coconut milk “non-dairy frozen dessert” convert. Speaking of coconut, the one thing I regretted from our last Maui trip was that I didn’t bring home any coconut scented lotion. “Really, you REGRET not buying a bottle of lotion?” my husband said, confused at my use of the word regret. Yes! I regretted it! So I made amends to myself:
I’m wearing it right now and I keep sniffing at my coconuty hands. Smell my finger! Really, it smells like coconut.
Side note: the more times I type coconut, the weirder the word looks to me. Anyone else have this experience?
Speaking of smells…
Routine Natural De-odor-cream
I know, I know, I’ve extolled the virtues of Routine De-odor-cream before, but here’s another plug. It’s all natural deodorant, my friend makes it, and it WORKS. I spent my mornings at the beach, my afternoons doing my yoga practice and then going to the pool, and even with all that hot sun and sweating and activity, I STILL SMELLED FRESH. My very favourite is Sweet Jane, but I took Lucy in the Sky with me to Maui, thinking the lavender would be a bit, um, fresher. I was right! I did not smell in the least like a feral hippie. So, if you’ve ever been concerned about using natural deodorant – as I was in the past – FEAR NO MORE. This product really works.
Ah, it was a great trip. Now we are into March, my goodness, and it’s Friday! Which means wine time, also one of my favourite things.
