Monthly Archives: June 2013

It’s the end of the school year as we know it (and I feel fine)

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Hello there! It feels like a long time since I’ve posted, so I’m hopping right back in the saddle. Things have been busy around here. I’ve oscillated from overwhelming love for the city and all the generous and kind people in it, and overwhelming despair that it will never be enough, no matter how hard I try, I will never be able to help. It’s a silly feeling because of course change is the sum effort of individuals, and every little bit matters, and with that attitude I bake more cookies and muffins, buy more diapers, offer to do laundry, etc., etc. Things are improving, but it’s taking time, of course.

Because of the flood school was cancelled until today, which is a half day merely to say goodbye, clean out desks, and pick up report cards. It was very strange to go back to school today; almost as strange as not being in school for four days just before summer vacation.

 
 
As usual at the end of the school year I’m a little verklempt at the thought that they are now FINISHED another grade, in this case Grade Two and Three. On the one hand, it feels like all the awesomeness of having older kids, who I am closer and closer to launching into the great big world, and I feel like I’m doing well with preparing them for that. On the other hand, time makes you bolder, children get older, I’m getting older tooooooooo….
 
A while back I read this fantastic post by my friend Swistle that really summarized how I feel. It’s ALWAYS the Best and Worst of Times is extremely apt when talking about children, right? There has been some discussion lately about favourite ages and least-favourite ages and I can say, firmly, that I don’t have a favourite or least favourite. Part of this is because I don’t remember the stages very well. I think this is due, in part at least, to extreme sleep deprivation over the years 2004-2010. You would think that such sleep deprivation would lead me to say that those years were not great, but you would be wrong. Such memory lapses means that I can be like one of those sweet old ladies who only remember nice things and not the horrible ones. Sure, there were gross diaper blow outs and incessant crying and no sleep and terrible worries about introducing vegetables before fruits and would that ruin their eating for the rest of their life OMG he is trying to eat playground gravel. But there was also this:
 
 
 

And this

 
Also this
 
 


Actually, that last picture reminds me of the baby screaming while I tried to bathe him and the very young toddler falling off the stool while trying to help and everyone crying and…well…I like my biggish kids very much.

In any case, we can’t stop time so we may as well enjoy it! Here’s to another great summer!

Update on the flood, and what you can do

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I’m sure everyone is well aware now that Calgary has been in a state of emergency due to extensive flooding. Approximately 100,000 people – or one tenth of the city – were evacuated from their homes. Damage is incredible. I am learning that flood insurance is not something that is available in Canada, and so I cannot imagine the pain that some people – including people who are my friends, people who I am close to – are going through. Not only have their houses been damaged and their beloved possessions destroyed, but then there’s the sticky business of paying for all this damage. I can’t even begin to fathom it. Although the water is receding now and the city has turned a corner, the image of streets turned into rivers, our much-loved zoo being underwater, and water coursing through houses and neighbourhoods won’t leave me.

Here in my neighbourhood, and in other neighbourhoods far from the rivers on higher ground, it’s hard to believe anything has happened. The sky is blue, the streets are dry. We are so lucky. We are doing our best to help out by staying off the streets as requested by Calgary Police, and trying to help out friends affected. There is not much to do at this time except bake treats for the nearby police station and firehall, host people who need it, and wait until it’s appropriate to do more.

The great thing about Calgarians is that they really pull together. This city has great heart. Everyone wants to help. The city has not asked for cleanup volunteers yet, but when they do I’m sure there will be no shortage. Click here for frequently asked questions and click here to donate to the Red Cross to help out.   

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Here are some things going on as a result of the flooding:

1) School Closures. Schools were closed on Friday and will be closed tomorrow. Since the last day of school was supposed to be Wednesday, this feels a little bizarre. Will the kids be back at school before school’s out for the summer? Telling the kids that there is no school tomorrow was less satisfying than I thought it would be. I expected excitement; instead I encountered deep sadness that the (make-work) projects that they had been working on over the last few weeks would go unfinished. The solution: a few make-work projects of our own. Mark is going to write a research paper on jackals and Jake is going to create some three dimensional objects out of construction paper. Ah, my little nerds.

2) Shopping Crises. After finding out late Thursday night that there would be no school on Friday, and also that the entire downtown was flooded and therefore no work for my husband, I decided to zip out to the nearby old-people grocery store to pick up my usual weekly groceries (I usually go on Saturdays). The store was packed. I got the second-last cart in the corral, and slowly dodged people with carts packed full of flats of bottled water. Drinking water was – and is – still excellent quality, but as a precaution I had filled the bathtub, kettle, and every single water bottle in the house. As yet I have not had to use them but Friday morning I felt, frankly, kind of silly being in the grocery store and not packing my cart with water bottles. I felt like maybe I SHOULD buy some water although I didn’t really need it. Then I noted that the shelves were being cleared of bottled water, at which point I started to feel panicky. What if the water did get turned off and I ran out of my home-filled bottles? I did buy a few single bottles although at this moment I feel kind of silly about it. I think I’ll donate them – the Morley reserve is in desperate need of bottled water, along with many other items. Don’t forget that we need to limit water use where possible to ease pressure on the treatment plants: short showers, running washing machines and dishwashers only when necessary, and – OBVIOUSLY – no watering of lawns, plants, etc., no washing cars. 

3) Non-Profiteering and Non-Looting. The police have been working overtime guarding evacuated neighbourhoods, and because of that reports of looting have been negligible. Also – and this speaks to the amazing power that is social media – one liquor store had been selling ice at $20/bag in an affected neighbourhood, and photos of this went viral. Ha HA. Another store was offering free ice to anyone in need, and that photo also went viral. Karma, crisis-style.

So that’s what is going on around here. Thanks to everyone for your concern and good thoughts. Ways to help if you’re local or not: Say thank you to the first responders. Help a friend in need. The need will go on for a long time after the waters recede. For those of you who have the means to do so, donations to the Red Cross will go a long way. The Boyhouse will resume its regular silly and frivolous posting later this week. Possible topics: mosquito infestations and fashionable rubber boots. Also – how to style your hair while anticipating a downpour. xoxo

Reasons I’m Losing My Mind, or How Did Lee Garner Jr Make You Hold His Balls?

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There have been, strangely enough, tornado warnings around here.  Tornadoes!  Where AM I?  In any case, yesterday the rain held off all day until the moment I had to leave to pick the kids up from school.  I stood in the playground, in a torrential downpour, while I waited for them.  The rain tapered off and the sun came out five minutes after we arrived at home.  I cannot help but feel somewhat slighted by Mother Nature.

Ah, June in Calgary.  The sky is pitch black and the house is completely dark in the middle of the day; this in spite of the fact that the sky is bright when I get up at 4:45, and the sky is bright long past my bedtime.  The local meterologists swear that the average June temperature is 20 degrees Celcius, but to my mind of thinking, the meteorologists are either in possession of some very flawed data or they do not know how to calculate an average.  There is no way the average temperature can be 20 degrees Celcius, I demand you show me your data source.  These are actual thoughts that go through my head every time I see a weather forecast.  It is possible I have lost my mind.

This derangement is also apparent with regards to my feelings about my neighbour across the street, who has in recent weeks set out a collection of garden gnomes beside his front door.  I am tempted, every time I look out the window, to run across the street and steal one, and then take pictures of it in various locales and costumes, leaving photographs in his mailbox.  I think about this all the time.  It’s not a passing thought, I seriously consider what kind of clothes I could dress the gnome in, how I could take him to Menchies’ and photograph him with a fro-yo with gummy bear toppings, how I could strap him into the front seat of my minivan and take him for a ride. 

What is wrong with me?  I also find myself giggling uncontrollably when I think about Mad Men and the scene with poor pirate-y Ken, talking about Chevy, and the pain-in-the-assedness of clients in general.  “A client once cupped my wife’s breasts,” says Jim, helpfully, immediately followed by Roger’s earnest statement, “Lee Garner Junior made me hold his balls.”  WHAT.  Wouldn’t you love the backstory on that one?  It’s just so random.  The conversation is so casual, yeah, this guy sexually harrassed my wife, oh, and this guy made me hold his balls.  How does that happen?  What sequence of events have to occur before a guy holds another guy’s testicles, and how does that come up in casual conversation, like it’s totally nothing?

Maybe it’s the end of school looming near that has me collapsing in near-hysterics about everything.  I don’t know how else to explain it, but this article about embracing the furry au naturel look rather than waxing has me laughing until I cry.  Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against the furry au naturel look, although for me personally I would be more likely to don a knee length, sleeved, 1910-era “bathing costume” than my regular swimwear while brazenly displaying a lack of a bikini wax.  What can I say, I like my esthetician. However, this has nothing to do with – as a young man quoted in an article suggests – heightened expectations due to pornography viewing.  Women of the world, take note: if a man has an expectation on how you should look in the nude based on what he’s seen in pornographic films, then probably he is not a man you should consider sleeping with.  It’s all fun and games until he wants you to pretend he’s the pizza delivery guy.  I mean, that might be fun and all, but if his entire outlook about the female body is based on porn, then he’s probably watching too much porn.  

But why am I laughing until I cry, as I mentioned before?  It’s because of this quote, and honestly, TRUTH SISTA and fist raised in the air:

“I think most guys are so delighted that they’re about to get laid they wouldn’t notice if you had a full-on Zach Galifianakis-style beard down there.”   

Something about the term “full-on Zach Galifianakis-style beard” makes me think of the dog-beard trend, but with Zach Galifianakis in a Michael Douglas-esque, um, situation.



My best attempt at dog-bearding.  Even Barkley thinks I’m lame.
 
 

Willie Wonka’s Factory of Near-Death Experiences

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I’ve been having a lovely day, despite of an inauspicious moment this morning when I was getting dressed and wondered what happened to my sweater.  I wondered if I had somehow shrunk it, which seemed unlikely since I never put sweaters in the dryer.  The usually long, drapey sweater was fitting bizarrely like a crop top.  I finally realized – and don’t think too hard about how I achieved this – that I had put it on upside down. 

The boys and I have been reading Roald Dahl books lately, and it occurred to me while reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory that no book of that type could be written in today’s cultural climate.  For one thing, Charlie and his family are starving to death and take much joy and salvation in being offered a lifetime supply of candy.  I need not reference the obvious objections to excessive sugar intake, childhood obesity, etc., but I will mention that throughout the book I kept thinking lawsuit waiting to happen.  I mean, the children constantly going missing and then ending up a) stretched b) emaciated c) blue?  I kept thinking that Mr. Wonka had better have a good lawyer, and then I recalled that back in the day of Charlie’s inception the children’s downfalls due to their own gluttony, greed, and general assholishness would have been considered just desserts (see what I did there?).  In any case, the dramatic conclusion was much cheered by my own children. 

Speaking of chocolate, I managed to get all of the teachers’ gifts purchased and arranged today, and chocolate featured strongly.  I also stopped by my local Planet Organic to buy hazelnuts, and realized I also needed raw cashews, and hey, that’s a great price for tofu, and wow, coconut milk is $1/can less than at my regular, old-people, non-pretentious grocery store.  I went to the cashier with four cans of coconut milk, two packages of tofu, and two large bags of bulk raw nuts, and I felt a bit like a pretentious douchebag.  Then I realized where I was and felt that probably there were many, many more people who were many times the pretentious douchebag that I am, and so instead I just felt the kind of excitement that only comes from buying so many thrilling ingredients for various vegan recipes.  Because yesterday I made the most delicious dessert from coconut milk, dark chocolate, hazelnuts and – of all things – dates; it was so scrumptious that my husband, my red meat loving husband, said it was the single best thing I have ever made.  Honestly, he probably high-fived himself for marrying me, it was THAT GOOD.  Or maybe he was just saying that to get me into bed; either way.  Everybody wins!  And nobody, hopefully, meets their maker in a violent ending a la Willie Wonka’s factory of near-death experiences.

Okay, by now everyone who watches Mad Men has seen this week’s episode, right?  So I can say this without fear of spoiling it for anyone?  OF COURSE BOB IS GAY.  I called that weeks ago, based entirely on his short shorts.  Also, was I the only one who loved the line “Imagine if every time Ginger Rogers jumped in the air, Fred Astaire punched her in the face!”?  I giggle every time I think about it, which seems to be more often than is appropriate.  That is quite the mental image.  Also fabulous was the scene when poor demented Mrs. Campbell talks about her nurse, Manolo, awakening feelings in her loins and Pete snaps “Do NOT be more specific!”  Hee hee, I feel like the line do NOT be more specific could be used in so many different situations.  I’m saving that for later.  Not to mention “Diplomacy Club is just another excuse to make out!”  I have to disagree on that one; having been in Model Parliament in high school, there was no making out that I could discern.  Although I could be wrong on that front; I may have been too absorbed in backcombing my spiral permed hair to notice.

Happy early Father’s Day to all you daddy-o’s out there.  Hey Daddy-O.  Don’t be a square.

Denim skirts, non-Mama-Duggar-style

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If you can’t beat them, join them, is the somewhat defeatist attitude I took up this weekend when I went shopping to Lammles’ Western Wear.  I am a Calgary girl, I’ve lived here my whole life, and yet I just can’t get behind the concept of western wear.  This is an attitude I felt needed adjusting, since I always have a few Stampede events to attend every year, events that become more and more important to attend as my children get older and embrace the Stampede spirit.  One such event is the school’s annual Stampede Breakfast, which is coming up in less than two weeks and at which I am going to be flipping pancakes.  I have two items of clothing that regularly come out at Stampede: a straw cowboy hat, and a denim shirt dating from 1997.  I felt that my Stampede “look”, such as it is, needed an update and that is how I found myself in Lammles’.

Now, I’m no Tom and Lorenzo, but I did feel a little part of me die a little as I looked through the racks of ladies’ wear.  Everything was either a) too colourful, b) too plaid, c) too see-through, and/or d) too covered in rhinestones to suit my taste.  If I am going to pay $60 for a shirt, I would like it to be one that I wear more than a couple of times a year and that doesn’t make me look like I’m competing in the barrel racing competition, given that I am not actually a barrel racer.  I found what appeared to be a plain black button-up shirt, but on actually taking it off the rack I discovered that it was covered with rhinestone lassos.

I was feeling rather disconsolate about the whole experience, and then I saw an item that had my name all over it:

It literally has my name on it!  So how could I refuse?  It’s a denim skirt, by the way, not in the style of Mama Duggar but this:

Cute, I think.  Plus, it’s called a NICOLE.  I figure I will get some actual wear out of it, unlike a rhinestone-lasso-encrusted shirt.

I got home and realized that my closet runneth over, but fortunately I had also lost track of what day it was, and that I had a clothing donation pickup scheduled this week.  This, accompanied by the realization that the clothing pickup was for TODAY, gave me great motivation to go through my closet and purge 3 (garbage) bags full.  I was filled with a bit of disappointment in myself and my consumerism – does anyone need so many clothes? – and became ruthless in my purge.  There was none of the oh, maybe I’ll wear this again, this is kind of cute, it doesn’t fit well but it’s still in great shape feelings I normally have.

The other thing of semi-importance that happened this weekend: my husband briefly activated the multiplayer setting on our Wii, which led to our family becoming torn apart.  It was probably the single worst idea in the history of our family’s video games.  The kids have played multiplayer in Mario Kart and Wii Sports, which is evidently VERY DIFFERENT from the murder and death that came from multiplayer Star Wars Force Unleashed.  By the end of the afternoon all three of the boys, including my husband, were not on good terms, and I was miffed that no one wanted to be Johnny to my Baby in Just Dance.  It was not the time of my life, let me tell you.  I instigated a rule that never again would the multiplayer setting be activated, and peace reigned in the Boyhouse galaxy.

Putting on my married lady pants

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Yesterday I had one of those days where I had amazing feats of accomplishments, one after another, except that the accomplishments themselves were so boring that they practically brought tears to my eyes.  I wanted to share my amazing level of accomplishments with my husband, and so I started to list off all the things I had done, and yet before I even had listed a quarter of the things I noticed his eyes glazing over and his head nodding.  I could practically see that he was thinking about work, or a meeting, or possibly an episode of Top Gear while I described my day: I walked the dog and then I went to Costco and then I put everything away and separated all the chicken breasts into individual containers for freezing…oh wait, before that I stripped all the beds and washed the sheets…and then I went to get the kids for lunch…

My husband’s head did snap to attention when, between describing “preparing vegetables for dinner” and “weeding the garden” I mentioned that I washed the windows.  I a) got the ladder out of the garage and b) got ONTO the ladder, both ALL BY MYSELF.  He, for some reason, found this information alarming.  And yet I still have both legs and an uncracked skull and also I can see out my window without rage about all the water spots and dust, so it’s a winning situation all around. 

I did not mention to him that I may have hit the minivan with the ladder whilst fetching it from the garage and also that I may have put a dent in the garage doorjamb whilst putting it back in the garage.  I DID clean the damn windows myself.  I feel like I need an award.  Maybe a badge for my sash.

I think what I will do is pour myself a large Friday-style glass of wine and put on what my sweet young girlfriend calls “married lady pants” – a certain kind of comfortable pants that give off that vibe of “we have a legally binding contract”, as opposed to “Let’s listen to Barry White and get it on all night long”.  In my case, such pants are pink pajamas that sport a hummingbird motif, although I’m pretty sure my husband finds said pajamas to be sexy as hell.  He probably thinks “Wow, those hummingbird pants are hot.  Can’t wait to see what they look like on the floor.”  Or so I tell myself. 

The other night I was sitting on the couch in my pink hummingbird pajamas with a mud masque on my face and whitening strips on my teeth, and I felt a teensy bit sorry for my husband.  My friend Clara wrote a post about the secret to a good marriage is accepting that the two of you make an engine, part gasoline, part spark.  Cannot help but think that my whitening strips that make me lisp a little bit is NOT doing my part for spark.  Freshly whitened teeth are nice though, so I’m going to go ahead and give myself half points.

Life Lessons from the Eighties

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Two things happened in the last couple of days that have got me thinking about aging and hairstyles and beauty in general.  First, I was at a reunion on Saturday night with people I went to school with for grades 1-10, and the most popular comment of the night was You haven’t changed a bit!  This is a very kind, though untrue, thing to say.  I believe the sentiment behind it is not that a person hasn’t changed but that a person hasn’t aged.  Which is also untrue – everyone ages, some gracefully, some not – but is a very kindhearted sentiment all the same. 

The second thing is that a friend posted a photo of me on Facebook, a photo dating back to the late eighties.  I was thirteen in that photo, and I was reminded that we all go through very awkward stages in our lives.  I was also reminded that the trend back then was to wear one’s bangs vertically, with enough hairspray to make a solid and unmovable wall.  Possibly my circle of friends was singlehandedly responsible for climate change, given our penchant for Salon Selectives. 

My first instinct on seeing this photo was unparalleled horror – I felt I must untag myself from that train wreck immediately; I’m pretty vain and I was not flattered by this picture.  Upon further reflection though, I feel that embracing our awkward stages is an important part of our development as people.  After all, one must be an ugly duckling before one becomes a swan, am I right?  One must be veiled in a cocoon prior to blossoming as a butterfly.  Etc. 

I felt like I looked nice this morning – I’ve been using a new shampoo and conditioner that is improving my poor heat-and-colour-damaged hair, and before you tell me to be proactive and stop damaging my hair with heat and colour, well, not going to happen in this lifetime.  I’m going to go to my grave with heat and colour damaged hair; likely it will be that orangey-red skimpy hair seen on women of a certain age, paired with bright lipstick bleeding into my liplines.  No matter.  I felt good this morning.  This is what I looked like this today before school dropoff, forehead and undereye lines and all:


Compare and contrast with this photo, from the same era as the one posted on Facebook:

 
 
Good gracious.  Although those glasses are probably popular in the hipster community right now, I feel that nothing but improvement can come from that time period in my life.  In other words, I want to have changed and aged.  I want to look different than I did back then, for many reasons.  For one, I didn’t know how to pluck my eyebrows back then and so I went through many years with Martin Scorcese-style brows:
 
 




Those are SOME eyebrows.  What I’m saying here, people, is that we should EMBRACE the aging process because the vast, vast majority of us look much better now than we did as teenagers.  You know the old saying that a woman at twenty has the face she’s born with, and a woman at forty has the face she deserves?  I feel like hugging all the young teenage girls I know and telling them that it gets better, it really does, and one day you will look back at your eyebrows and bad skin and cringe-worthy hair and your horrible fashion decisions and you will feel like you have improved immensely with age, like wine. 

Speaking of cringe-worthy hair, I have had emotional issues about my hair for my entire life.  My entire life I believed that I had uniquely awful hair.  In fact, I had such insecurity about my hair at such a young age that I took to wearing wigs that were lying around:

In answer to the inevitable question, no, I do not know whose wig that was.  I just know that I rocked it out.

Looking back at photos I realize that my hair, while not quite shampoo-commercial worthy, was really no worse than anyone else’s, hardened bangs and spiral perms not withstanding.  Well, maybe it was worse for a brief period in 1985:

I don’t know either.  Sadly, this Toni home perm was a turning point in my life, hairstyle wise, since before that the majority of my young life was marked by a variation on the Dorothy Hamill style cut which I hated with a passion:

I always wanted long, long hair, and I briefly achieved this between the ages of seven and eight:

Notes: I am reading Little Town on the Prairie, and probably dying with excitement at the old-timey romance, and also – EYEBROWS.  For some reason, shortly after I rocked out a pink frilly puffed sleeve dress, I allowed my hair to be cut short yet again, only to grown out and home permed a few short years later.

There are lessons to be learned here: a) although I was horrified at finding a photo of myself and three girlfriends and our collectively spiral permed and sprayed hair sitting on Santa’s lap on Facebook, such photos keep us humble, b) we become the people we are through the mistakes we make, notably in the hair department, c) youth is a time of experimentation, also notably in the hair department, d) AGE IS OUR FRIEND.   

Let’s all agree to stop saying you haven’t changed, and instead say you’re beautiful.  Because it’s true – the beauty inside us shines through, and only gets better and better.  Plus, as we age, we learn important life lessons such as how to wield tweezers properly and that perms are not a good idea, and also that hair clips and earrings should never match one’s lipstick.  Age before beauty?  Age IS beauty.