Completely inconsistent with my last post, I cannot stop laughing at this headline:

Frankly, I thought there was no way the actual story could live up to the headline, but it turns out that it does. The woman – who clearly lost her Peaceful Easy Feeling – kept pleading with her roommate to turn off the Eagles, and when he refused, she took a serrated knife and stabbed him several times in the arm.

“It’s unclear which of the band’s songs drove Bader over the edge, but police have narrowed down the possible suspects to “Witchy Woman”, “Take It Easy”, “Peaceful Easy Feeling”, “Take It To The Limit”, “One of These Nights”, “Tequila Sunrise”, and “Hotel California” on repeat.”

My money’s on Hotel California.

It’s noted that the suspect and victim were intoxicated at the time. You don’t say? I just feel relieved that my roommate never stabbed me in the summer of 1998 when I played Aretha Franklin’s Greatest Hits on repeat, and sang along. Call me…call me…call me the moment you get there, baby baby baby.

I needed this laugh today because yesterday I very nearly had a nervous breakdown in Michael’s craft store, saved only by “Cake Decorating For Dummies” texts from my very patient friend Liv (HI LIV). It was my New Year’s resolution to learn how to decorate cupcakes not by merely piling on frosting with a butter knife. Yesterday I dropped the kids at karate and drove over to Michael’s, to pick up some decorating tools, only to become immediately frozen with panic the second I walked through the door. That place is overwhelming. I literally stood at the door staring like a deer in headlights for a solid five minutes while women – because the clientele was exclusively female – zipped around me with purpose and knowledge, grabbing scrapbooking supplies and fabric flowers. After five minutes of blank staring I located the cake decorating section and was frozen, again. Do you have any idea how many different varieties of decorating tips there are? I stood in an aisle with dozens of them in front of me, taunting me with their slight differences. Finally I texted Liv for help, and it’s lucky I did, because I’d probably still be there, crying in the cake decorating aisle while people stepped around me to grab fondant scissors and cake levellers.

My feeling of being completely out of my element was not unlike my teenage experiences of going to the fabric store with my mother. My poor, long-suffering mother. She probably wondered what she did to deserve such a daughter. My mother is one of those people who you might refer to as someone who “knows her way around a sewing machine” and she was cursed with a daughter who once, when attempting to sew a button on a pair of pants, cut a giant hole in the seat of the pants and then accidentally sewed the pants together. For a button. The best case scenario for me is to attach a button with a less than one inch wad of thread jammed behind the button, the worst case scenario is the one in which I am sobbing because I have destroyed a pair of pants. I am not gifted in the sewing arts, and yet there I was, taking Sewing in Home Economics for three straight years. My mother had to take me to Fanny’s Fabrics, armed with a t-shirt pattern and instructions on things to buy; she bustled around, finding the thread and material and ribbing, while I followed dutifully, feeling like I landed on a different planet, one where people had opinions on McCall’s versus Butterick. These people knew how to thread a serger, and meanwhile I spent my Home Ec classes pulling out the stitches I had made, the crooked seams and the stitches that sewed the neck or sleeves together, until my t-shirt was entirely full of little tiny holes and I had to borrow a friend’s extra ribbing just to cover it up somewhat. I’m sure I only passed the class because my teacher wanted me out of the Home Ec system as soon as possible.

Reminiscing is so fun, isn’t it? Allison, Hannah, and I enjoy it so much that we started a whole new blog based entirely on reminiscences from our youth. Visit us over at Throwing It Back – new posts every Thursday about our varied memories of our wayward (and not-so-wayward) youths. So far, Hannah is reminiscing about Harriet’s Magic Hats – which, to be honest, I have never heard of but it sounds kind of amazing in a 1980s way – and I have my first of three posts up about Deenie. Remember Deenie? The book that made us all secretly long for a back brace.

Today is Friday the 13th! Be sure to avoid all black cats/ walking under ladders/ smashing mirrors. I’m not normally very superstitious but our spring broke on our garage door today, which feels a bit ominous. Only a bit, though. Because, after all, tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, and I wish for every single one of you one of these:

Happy Valentine’s Day, lovelies. Remember, even if your loved one plays Witchy Woman over and over again, it’s best not to stab them, even if you are intoxicated.

This morning I baked 97 sugar cookies, and they are sitting on my counter, nakedly waiting for a layer of pink buttercream and an assortment of heart sprinkles. Twenty-eight of them are circles, cut out from a plastic cup, and the rest are hearts; this is due to one of my children being desperate to bring cookies to his Valentine’s Day class, but way too cool for them to be heart-shaped, deemed by him to be “lame”. This does not stop him from wanting pink buttercream and heart-shaped sprinkles, however, and it hasn’t stopped him from eating three of the naked heart-shaped cookies.

Sunday morning I checked the online school messages, and was startled to discover that there is a bake sale at the school this week for Division Two children, and that donations were much needed. I spent a chunk of the day baking monster cookies filled with mini-eggs, and brownies covered with melted chocolate chips and sprinkles, just so the boys would be able to contribute. The sacrifices we make for our kids! Or, in my case, the enormous amount of dishwashing.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately – not baking, but sacrifices and decisions we make for our children. There’s a lot of buzz right now about disease resurgences, and vaccinations, and in my mind these things are not up for debate at all. There are clear facts, and there are clear outcomes, and there are also lots of grey areas that are not debatable, exactly, but that incite a great deal of anger.

It’s funny; we leave the hospital with our newborns in their car seats, or maybe the midwife leaves our house with her giant collapsible birthing tub, whatever, but here we are with our firstborn babies, that we know virtually nothing about. We’re suddenly the experts, and we try to go with maternal instinct, and we read every single child rearing book there is, from What to Expect to Babywise to The Baby Whisperer to The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding, and they all have different viewpoints and every little thing seems so important and so difficult. We’re expected to just make monumental decisions about what’s best for our babies, and we do this, trusting in research and reading and instincts. We all do the best we can, but sometimes things are cloudy and we’re not sure what that “best” is.

And nothing gets us, as parents, upset like the thought that we are NOT doing the best, that we are NOT making the best decisions, and maybe this is why the vaccination discussion – not debate – is so heated. We make a decision, and our kids are depending on us to make the best decision for them. Nothing makes a parent feel worse than the implication that we did the wrong thing. I gave up breastfeeding much earlier than I had initially planned, and although it felt like the right decision at the time, I have always questioned it, all these years later. But if you were to say to me, oh, maybe you could have done better if you only did x, or maybe you could have breastfed longer if you had this kind of support, well, I would be furious. I would probably cry with anger and sadness and frustration. But the decision was made, the milk factory was closed, and all these years later, it doesn’t really matter to anyone except me.

So I can imagine how someone might feel if, say, they declined the MMR vaccine for their child who later, on a sweet trip to Disneyland, ended up with the measles. And if that case of measles happened to be one that had complications, well. I can imagine how that parent might feel.

Personally, I very much dislike when my children get sick, even when it’s just a cold I find it to be a pain. At the very least, it’s inconvenient: kids have to miss school and activities, we go through a lot of tissues, and then we are fine. I do everything in my power to keep them healthy: we take vitamins and eat healthy foods, we drink lots of water and get proper rest, we wash our hands all the time, but occasionally we still get sick. If there is a way for me to opt out of them getting really sick, then I am going to take that option.

When I was a kid my mother took me to chicken pox parties, which is what people did back then. I never did get the chicken pox until I was nineteen years old, and when you are nineteen years old, the chicken pox is certainly no picnic. It’s pretty terrible to get a so-called childhood disease when you are an adult. It was just before Christmas final exams in my second year of university, and I have never been so sick in my life, before or since. The memory of that meant that when I was pregnant, almost ten years later, and I found out there was a vaccine for chicken pox, I didn’t even have to think twice.

Jake got the chicken pox vaccine at the same time that he got the MMR vaccine, at age one. A week after that he developed a mild case of the sniffles, and after that he had a mild vaccine reaction that I had been warned about, fever and rash. The combination was a bit much for him and he developed a double ear infection. Neither child had had an ear infection prior to this, and as I rocked him and walked with him and listened to him scream and scream and scream, I realized that I was out of my element. I didn’t know what to do. I took him to the emergency room at three in the morning, absolutely exhausted, and got the diagnosis at five in the morning: ear infection. The doctor gave him an antibiotic and a shot of codeine, and told me that I would be able to go home and get some rest. At that, I burst into hysterical sobbing because I had a two year old at home, and he would be awake for the day in short order, and god, I was tired.

In the end, Jake was fine, but I wouldn’t want to relive that. You can imagine I was pretty nervous to take him for his boosters prior to kindergarten, but I did it anyway. He did not have a reaction, he was fine.

One year I got the flu shot. The year prior, when the boys were 2 and 3, we all had the flu. It took me several weeks to get over it, and taking care of small children while having the flu was overwhelmingly awful. I got the flu shot, and I remember clearly the feeling of my entire arm slowly going numb, right down to my middle finger and up, up, up past my shoulder and into my ear and neck. I casually mentioned this to the nurse and the look of horror on her face is etched in my brain. I never got another flu shot; the kids and I take some homeopathic flu protocol in the fall, we wash our hands, we take our vitamins, and we haven’t had the flu since then. Clearly, I’m fine. But sometimes people aren’t fine when they get vaccines, and I think that glossing over that is not okay. We cannot dismiss the fact that even with the miracle that is modern medicine, sometimes things go wrong.

The thing about the vaccine discussion is that I know people whose children have had vaccine-related injuries, but I know even more people who have had issues with the diseases themselves. I know people who had polio, people whose family members lost their hearing due to measles, people who almost died or did die from pertussis. I know people whose children had seizures from chicken pox complications, and I know people whose children are growing up with health issues directly related to side effects from what is often dismissed as “normal childhood diseases”. All of those people – the ones harmed by the disease and the ones harmed by the vaccine itself – are of great importance to someone.

My friend Swistle recently wrote about her son, who has Crohn’s disease. Because of his Crohn’s, he needs to be on medication that suppresses his immune system; this allows him to thrive and grow, but it also means, obviously, that his immune system cannot fight off viruses. Swistle wrote about other people’s children being theoretical, but that those children are not theoretical to their families and friends, and that idea has stuck in my head. Some people can contract “normal childhood diseases” and end up just fine, but some people cannot. There were 122,000 measles deaths worldwide in 2012, and it’s perhaps easy to say well, those are mostly in developing countries, who knows what would happen if there was clean water and sanitation, but the fact is those people all had families. They are not theoretical people, they are actual people. They are actual people who died from a disease that is preventable.

My children are blessedly healthy. But there are many people who are not; people like Swistle’s son, people like my father-in-law who is undergoing cancer treatment, people like my friend’s daughter who has many health issues. And these people might not be important in your life, but they are important in someone’s life. We are part of a society, and the kind of society I want to be in is one that thinks about other people, one that thinks that other people matter, if not to you personally, then to someone. The kind of society I want to live in is one that recognizes that while 122,000 deaths from measles worldwide might seem minor as a percentage of the whole, people are not theoretical numbers, and each and every death means something to someone else. Each and every child that gets ill matters to someone. No one is theoretical.

It’s a grey and snowy day, the kind that makes me feel like taking a whole bottle of Vitamin D supplements in the hopes of perking up. Or perhaps a bottle of wine might work better, I’m not sure, but at least it is Friday and so the wine will be uncorked as soon as I don’t feel ashamed of uncorking it. The sun’s over the yardarm somewhere, as Hannah says, and that must be true even though the sun is currently not visible. The sun is still there, even if I can’t see it, even if it takes a few episodes of NYPD Blue and a bottle of Cabernet to bring it out, am I right?

So I’m feeling a bit blah and tired, and hopefully it’s just “blah and tired” and not “getting sick”, because on Monday morning I will be on the Trending on Shaw show (Calgary people, that’s Channel 10 at 10:00 am!) and I’d rather not be sneezing and sniffling. There seems to be something going around, although we’ve been lucky yet. Mark told me that several of his friends have been missing from school this week, and, not to sound the alarm, but one of them just got back from a trip to California. I’m trying to keep the music of doom out of the soundtrack of my life, and am just assuming it’s a bad cold. Right? IT’S JUST A BAD COLD.

I wonder if I can work a medical mask fashionably into my wardrobe.

In an attempt to feel strong and energetic I just made myself a green smoothie, and I have high hopes for this concoction. I’m hoping it’s the liquid equivalent of the calming manatee:

So far it isn’t.

Speaking of medical masks and fashion statements, yesterday I read an article about 24 pieces of clothing that no one over 30 should wear. I fall for those click-bait things all the time, even though I am well – WELL – over thirty and in fact will shortly be clicking on what not to wear when you are over 40. I was highly disappointed, however, in the fashion writer’s claims.

1) Graphic t-shirts. I am not walking around wearing a shirt saying Mrs. Timberlake or Save a Horse Ride A Cowboy, but I do have Goodnight Moon and I Love Ashtanga t-shirts that I wear in the summer very frequently.

2) Bedazzled anything. Hey! Why can’t we aged ladies bedazzle?

3) Blue eyeshadow. Agree. No one should wear blue eyeshadow.

4) Victoria’s Secret Pink. Well…I have an old Pink sleep shirt, but in general I agree that this is the Skipper to Victoria Secret’s Barbie.

5) Leopard print. My friend has a pair of leopard print leggings and she looks amazing in them. Also, I love the look of old ladies in leopard print. It’s very Blanche.

6) Sparkly pants. Um. Okay, agree. But I also think that sparkly pants aren’t the best of looks anyway.

7) Oversized sunglasses. I’m not sure what that means. Are people wearing gigantic sunglasses now?

8) Non-matching socks. OH I AGREE. But then I think that non-matching socks are ridiculous in general. Socks come in pairs for a reason, people. Of course, this is coming from someone who only wears black socks, so take that how you will, non-matching-sock-wearers.

9) Hoop earrings. What the what? Those are the only kind I wear! What kind of bullshit list is this?

10) Furry boots. Hey, I live in a cold climate. I will wear my faux-fur lined boots if I want to.

11) Furry anything. Ditto to my faux-fur lined hood on my gigantic parka.

12) Tube tops. Agree, agree, a thousand times agree. Come on, people. We are better than tube tops. Tube tops say “trash” in my mind.

13) Short dresses. Really? Why not?

14) Mini-skirts. Oh, I see what’s happening. Once we hit 30, we need to wear calf-length Country Casuals? Gotcha.

15) Overalls. NO ONE SHOULD WEAR OVERALLS, let alone grown women. Perhaps a young toddler can get away with it but otherwise, no. This is not 1991 and we are not Vanilla Ice.

16) Crop tops. Agree. Whereas I bristle at being told that short dresses and mini skirts belong to the young, I highly agree with crop tops. After all, Tina Turner rocked out the mini skirts long past thirty, but really, the midriff is a whole different ballgame.

17) American Eagle. I have no opinion on this, really, since I don’t think I’ve ever set foot inside one.

18) Booty shorts. Well. Yes. But I would also state for the record that very, very few people should wear them – if any at all. I would go a step further and explain my hatred for shorts in general, not just the booty-style ones, but that is a rant for another day.

19) Old Sneakers. But what do you garden in, if not old shoes? I have a pair of Skechers that have little flowers all over them, and they are my designated gardening shoes. Of course, if you have designated gardening shoes you may be aging yourself, so…

20) Cheap bras. The childbearing years and gravity itself is hard on the girls, and “boobs down to your belly button” or falling out of your cheap bra is not a good look. Agree.

21) Glitter eyeshadow. Do people still wear glitter eyeshadow?

22) Platform flip-flops. Here’s a confession: I cannot abide flip-flops. Sure, they are cute on other people, but the thought of having something between my toes gives me the heebie-jeebies. I can hardly bear it when the esthetician puts toe separators on my feet during pedicures. Ewwww things between my toes.

23) Abercrombie and Finch. My reaction to this is the same as for American Eagle – no opinion.

24) Scrunchies. Now, really. Did the writer just run out of things to say? Does anyone wear a scrunchie anymore? Can you even buy scrunchies? Didn’t they go the way of banana clips and crimping irons, or are they making a comeback? You know what I wish would make a comeback – the French twist. I wore my hair in French twists all the time back in the Nineties, and it was a good look. It was easy. It was a great solution to a bad hair day. You could make them messy or sleek, depending on your hair’s mood. A scrunchie, though. I’m shaking my head in a what is this world coming to kind of way.

Well, will you look at that? I finished my smoothie and my fashion-disaster list, and the sun is shining. Now I feel like I can last the rest of the day, or at least until the Calming Manatee brings me that bottle of wine he promised.

 Have a good weekend, lovelies. xoxo