Monthly Archives: September 2015

NO COFFEE NO PRANA

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That’s something that Ashtanga yogis like to say a lot – no coffee, no prana – because it was said by Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, who was apparently a coffee lover. I say it to myself every day when I’m waiting for the coffee maker – no coffee, no prana. I also sing Linda Put The Coffee On, but with “Nicole” substituted for “Linda” which pretty much sums me up nicely.

All of which is to say that today is, apparently, National Coffee Day. One fun little perk about my job at Yummy Mummy Club is that I’m always in the know about what kind of special day it is. Did you know that every day is a special day, and not just in a Romper Room, Mr. Rogers, carpe diem kind of way? Every day celebrates something, which is fun, even if it’s totally random. It’s always National Drink Beer Day or National Love Your Dog Day or National Guacamole Day or National Weiner Schnitzel Day. September 4th is National Hug Your Boss Day, which seems kind of unprofessional, but it’s also National Newspaper Carrier Day. Every second Tuesday in September is National Ants on a Log Day, and tomorrow is both National Chewing Gum Day and National Mud Pack Day.

So today is National Coffee Day, although in my house, every day is National Coffee Day. If it wasn’t, it would be National Oh-My-God-I’m-So-Bitchy Day, so let’s just let me enjoy my coffee. Mmmkay?

As an aside, yesterday I was told that the term “Bitchy Resting Face” is an anti-feminist thing to say. Sure, we probably don’t say that old men with furrowed brows have Bitchy Resting Face, but we might think they look like jerky assholes, so I think we are probably even on that front. BRF just rolls off the tongue more than “wow, that guy looks like a jerky asshole who wants to burn the whole city down, maybe he should smile more.” Meh. I am not anti-feminist – obviously – but I have to tell you, there are reasons I smile in photos. Here’s the biggest reason:

BRF

 

You might say, no, that’s just your face, it’s not bitchy, to which I would respond that the above photo illustrates why I smile a lot. I look like I’m going to murder someone if they say ONE MORE WORD and the truth is, I was probably just looking at a tree. I don’t like looking like this on the outside when I feel like this on the inside:

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Photo from my very talented friend Lucas http://lucasramage.com/

 

You know who doesn’t have Bitchy Resting Face? Barkley. We went away for the weekend and when I picked him up from the “spa” he just couldn’t stop smiling.

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Just like me, smiling is his favourite. But I guess he wouldn’t have Bitchy Resting Face anyway, because he’s a male dog and as such is literally not a bitch.

But I digress. I meant to write about our weekend away and got caught up in drinking a pot of coffee and writing about National Coffee Day. Our trip was fantastic. We were on the very west coast of Vancouver Island, in Tofino. The weather was perfect. The travel was perfect. We had a hot tub on our deck and were right beside the beach. Even the flights were serendipitous – we had boarded our flight to the Island, and were informed we were going to be early when the pilot announced that there was an issue with the cargo door and we wouldn’t be able to take off. But! There was an EMPTY PLANE RIGHT BESIDE US, so we flew in that. That never happens, so I felt like it was a good omen for the weekend.

It’s great to go away and great to be home, and yesterday I caught up on all the laundry, and groceries, and work that had piled up, but it all feels good. The leaves have all changed colour, suddenly, and the city is a gorgeous mix of blue skies with yellow, red, and orange leaves. The cosmos I planted two years ago have self seeded and are in full bloom, amazingly, and all is well in the world. Many, many reasons to smile.

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Lessons to learn.

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When the boys were babies, it was so fun dressing them in ridiculous little outfits; tiny sweater vests, wee little golf shirts, khaki pants and those teensy running shoes for their fat, unused feet.

Come to think of it, I dressed my children like miniature Chandler Bings.

Anyway, when they were small getting them out of their precious little footie pajamas and into their outfit of the day was a great joy for me. If we were going out, I’d coordinate both their outfits and sometimes even my own, because a lonely, overwhelmed, stay at home mother of two under two entertains herself any way she can.

As they got older, I noticed something. I noticed that the selection of boys’ clothing was much, much smaller than that of girls’ clothing. What this meant was that a lot of the time, the boys would have the exact same outfit but in different colours, not because I was trying to coordinate them, but because that was what was available to me. Shoes, especially, were difficult: frequently the boys would have the exact same pair of shoes, and I would put coloured stickers inside them to indicate which pair was for whom.

This year I took the boys to Mountain Equipment Co-Op to get fall jackets. There were two styles available, and only one style had their sizes, which has resulted in the boys wearing the exact same jacket to school. They don’t mind this at all, but I find it kind of strange to see them walking together in their identical jackets.

All of which is to say that shopping for boys is a utilitarian experience. My children in particular live in jeans and t-shirts: long-sleeved for winter, short-sleeved for warm weather. When I shop for them I do it online; I show them the colours of t-shirts available and they choose a few. One of my favourite stores to shop online is Old Navy – they almost always have a discount code, they have “slim fit” jeans for my beanpoles, and their clothes are pretty durable. I normally order things in bundles a few times a year; this system works well and we are all happy with it.

But this week I realized that the boys had outgrown a good number of their jeans, or – in the case of one child who climbed over a fence and got his back pocket caught on the chain link – had a massive hole in the seat. They still had a few pair thanks to some bulk shopping I had done last spring, but they were desperately in need of a couple. I didn’t have time to wait the 7-10 days for free shipping, so yesterday, I ventured into the mall to buy some more.

As they say in Pretty Woman, Big mistake. BIG mistake. HUGE.

Old Navy online: easy, fast, organized. Old Navy physical store: a disorganized, soul-crushing experience.

First of all, the boys’ section is the smallest in the entire store. It’s tiny, and there are piles and piles of clothes stacked everywhere. And the jeans. THE JEANS. There is no sizing order, so I needed to dig through piles to find size 10 and 12, and because I wanted “slim fit” I had to dig even more. Finally I found a pair of slim fit size 12, but when I picked it up, it was clearly not what the tag said. I read the label actually inside the jeans and discovered it was a size 12 “husky fit” into which I could have fit two of my children. A solid fifteen minutes of going through every pair of jeans on the shelves, I found two pair in the appropriate sizes. Then I went to the cashier.

People, the cash register and surrounding area reminded me of a yard sale gone awry. There were clothes everywhere, stacked around the register, behind the register, and surrounding the “line up starts here” shelving. There were two girls working and they both looked extremely harassed. I felt sorry for them as they slowly worked their way through the lineup. Each person took forever to check out, and when it was my turn I discovered why: they were taking down and confirming email addresses for every single person in what appeared to be the least efficient process ever. I tried to bypass it – I’m already on your mailing list. I am! – but the girl would have none of it. Because I generally don’t want to make someone’s day harder, and I’ve worked in retail, I submitted to the process, feeling badly for the eight people behind me in line.

I don’t know why some lessons need to be re-learned constantly. The lesson for this week: shop online.

An obstacle is an unrecognized opportunity.

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I’ve come a long way throughout the years, and I’ve learned a lot from my mistakes. A person who never made a mistake is a person who never tried anything new was displayed on the wall of Jake’s old classroom, and I think that’s inspirational. I regularly tell my children that mistakes are learning opportunities, and that we become better as we learn from them.

All of which is to say that I do not shop at Costco without a list anymore. In fact, I go through my pantry and cupboards and make a very specific list, and I do not deviate from that list. If I don’t have vanilla extract on the list, I don’t buy it; the fact is I will not need to buy it for some time, since I have several Costco-sized bottles in my pantry as we speak.

Learning opportunities.

The last time I really went off the list, to my own detriment, was when I purchased a giant double-pack of plastic wrap. I rarely use plastic wrap, and I certainly did not need a gigantic double-pack. I purchased that double-pack in late 2013 and I JUST opened it a few weeks ago. Sadly, the quality of the plastic wrap is terrible, so I am doomed to decades of using crappy plastic wrap, since there is no way in hell I am going to throw it out. I will probably go to my grave with this plastic wrap still in my pantry. My great-grandchildren will come to clean out my apartment in the senior’s complex and they will look at the plastic wrap with wonder. What did Grandma think she was going to do with all that plastic wrap? Then they will take it upon themselves to use it up, and I just hope that it doesn’t have crazy monkey-paw powers.

Anyway, last week I went to Costco with my list in hand, and right at the door, right there, was a huge display of flower bulbs. As though struck by lightning, I stopped my giant cart in front of the display with wide eyes and palpable excitement. BULBS BULBS BULBS BULBS BULBS BULBS BULBS BULBS BULBS BULBS BULBS BULBS BULBS BULBS BULBS was going through my head to the tune of that old Meow Mix commercial. I literally could not move. People were steering their carts around me probably wondering what just happened to that insane looking woman by the bulb display.

Now, bulbs were not on my list. I didn’t even know that bulbs were an option. I decided to make an exception to my rule and dithered for several minutes between the varieties of tulips, daffodils, hyanciths, and crocuses before finally settling on a mix of apricot and deep purple tulips, and a variety pack of yellow, purple, and variegated crocuses. After putting them in my cart, I had to pull over by the watch display and regroup. I felt the way a toddler must feel when fed a package of gummy bears, brought into Toys R Us, and told to choose two things. I felt slightly unglued and totally unfocused, and I had to read my list several times just to become in a normal Costco-shopping state again. After some time, I felt equal to the task, and went looking for the tamari almonds.

When I got home I immediately texted my husband to tell him I bought a total of fifty tulips and eighty crocuses; my mother then phoned and I told her of my exciting day. She asked, quite reasonably, where I was planning to put one hundred and thirty bulbs in my already-full gardens.

As they say in Pinterest’s inspirational quotes and public school classrooms, an obstacle is often an unrecognized opportunity. A stepping stone, if you will. The weather last Saturday turned out to be beautiful and warm, and so Mark and I spent a few hours digging around my perennials and shrubs, looking for spaces. One such unrecognized opportunity was my hosta garden. The kitchen window faces this garden, and during July, August, and even, sometimes, September, this garden is a thing of beauty: giant variegated leaves, a dogwood and a giant spirea shrub, colourful impatiens, and an inukshuk made from large rocks collected at my husband’s childhood home.

At all other times of the year, however, it’s a depressingly dull strip of dirt with leafless shrubs and the inukshuk standing all alone in the soil.

It is especially depressing in May, because all the other plants and shrubs, in their sunny locales throughout the yard, are green and lovely and in some cases, even blooming. If I’m lucky, there might be a half inch of hosta growth poking out of the ground and the beginning of leaves on the spirea. Since I spent most of my time in the kitchen, staring out at this barren wasteland of a north-facing garden, I really wanted to change it somehow.

Crocuses are the answer! If all goes well, in May I should have about sixty yellow, purple, and variegated crocuses popping up in the garden, hopefully bridging the gap between snow melt and post-frost planting time. It’s something to look forward to, since there was frost on the grass and roof this morning and it definitely feels like WINTER IS COMING. But for now, I’ll just enjoy the fall and try not to think about it too much.

Tulips

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Hail the conquering hero!

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There’s just something so satisfying about conquering something that you had previously thought unconquerable. Climbing the mountain, running the marathon, or – in my case – going on a field trip.

As you know, over the years I’ve been incredibly adverse to field trips, with the single exception being the preschool trip to the fire hall. I think we all can understand why, without my getting into any details about the heroically strong firefighters. In fact, the last field trip that I chaperoned was nearly three years ago and I volunteered under extreme duress. It was just as terrible as I had thought it would be; given the sheer amount of volunteering I do at the school, I felt that it was perfectly acceptable to say no more field trips. Never again.

But there have been several changes in my life since the ill-fated trip to the museum. For one thing, I am no longer chairing the school council and parent association, which has left me with extra time. For another thing, my children are now in grades five and six, and children this age are much less likely to run away or get separated from the group, and that paranoia of losing someone else’s child has long kept me from chaperoning field trips. Buoyed up by my friends Catherine (HI CATHERINE) and Allison (HI ALLISON), who are seasoned field-trip veterans, I signed up for a walking trip to the nearby Whispering Woods, a nature park attached to a nearby school, which features an outdoor classroom, several pathways, and interpretive signs.

I was assigned a group of nine boys, and I am just going to go out on a limb here and say that my group was superior to other groups. For one thing, these nine boys were quite studious and full of information that they seemed to enjoy divulging to me, from their country of origin and interesting things about it to the house with big windows that was listed for sale that we all admired on the way to the woods. Other than one slightly hyper boy who enjoyed randomly squirting his water bottle on the sidewalk and then laughing hysterically, the group was – I thought – extraordinarily calm and well behaved.

As a small digression, I can’t help but note that the girl-heavy groups were the ones who were constantly eye-rolling and making sarcastic comments about the useless-ness of the information gathered and the field trip in general. Also, while we were in the outdoor classroom supposedly making notes about what defines a tree, a daddy-long-legs spider crawled beside one of the girls, who took that opportunity to FLIP THE FUCK OUT, thus inciting a general scream-fest with the other girls in the class.

So I was pleased with my group, and they were pleased with me, as I overheard a few of them say to Mark “You have a really nice mom! You’re so lucky!” which spurred me to rashly volunteer for more upcoming trips, including one in a few weeks with Jake’s class, in which I will have to ride on the school bus. I feel I will have much more to say on that topic at a later date.

The field trip itself only had one snag – other than the spidery scream-fest – and that is that it was evident, upon wandering through the paths, that some of the itinerant population seem to be camping in the little woods. It was further evidenced by the appearance of human feces, plus toilet paper, right on one of the middle paths, at which I could only think, really? We can talk about social issues and homelessness, but seriously? Right in the middle of a path frequented by children? In a woods attached to an elementary school and within walking distance to four other schools? Could we not go off the path to defecate, homeless people?

Anyway. I’m sorry to bring up such a gross topic, let’s take our minds off that with a socially awkward moment of mine. Last night was the Welcome Back BBQ at the school, which is a great opportunity to meet the teachers or – if you’re like me – just chat with all the teachers and parents in a casual, sunny setting. The boys had mentioned to me that the assistant principal had changed her name, to which information Mark added “I guess she got married.” Of course, as soon as I saw her last night, I said in my most effusive and excited tones, “Oh, I hear congratulations are in order!”

She looked at me somewhat blankly and asked why. At this point I knew. I knew exactly where this was going to go and what mistake I had made. I stumbled blankly for a moment, saying that I thought I’d heard, well, her name changed…at which point she said “Oh no, I didn’t get married. I got divorced!”

I had a deer-in-headlights look for a moment, considering my awkward social gaffe. She was extremely gracious, saying that it was a GOOD thing and that I probably COULD congratulate her on it, and everything was FINE, but still. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a rewind button? Note to self, check out left hand PRIOR to congratulating someone on their recent nuptials.

Back to school, back to school, to prove to my dad that I’m no fool.

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I know it’s the big “first day of school” for a lot of you, but we are already into our second week. The boys were pretty happy to start school last week; we are all enjoying that “back to routine” feeling. The children have been relentlessly quoting Billy Madison: back to school, back to school, to prove to my dad that I’m no fool. Over and over.

I, for one, have been incredibly productive and busy since they’ve been back at school, which is a good feeling. I mean, I miss them – and today I miss them more since they are staying for lunch for the first school patrol meeting of the year – but it’s kind of nice to get things done, too, and to hear later all about the exciting news of the day. “We’re going to be learning about Ancient Greece and the origins of democracy!” said Mark happily, along with “We’ll be looking for moss in our forestry unit!” Jake excitedly talked about the Math Question of the Week, which had to do with being trapped and tied up in a room with a ticking time bomb, and a rat chewing the knots on the rope, and would you be freed in time, or blow up? Jake loves math anyway but the semi-violent and gross Question of the Week took it over the top for him. Math AND explosions? How can one go wrong? Needless to say, the first week was pretty great.

Barkley’s not as happy with the change in season, though:

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Look at that sad, fuzzy face.

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Poor Barkley.

Other than Barkley’s depression, things have been fine so far; I’m thrilled with the boys’ teachers and classroom sizes, and they are too. I’m less thrilled that Mark has already had a cold and so spent the long weekend coughing and lethargic, although the weekend was cold and rainy – and even a bit snowy – so it could always be worse. He could have been coughing and lethargic on a nice weekend. As it was, we spent most of the weekend at my parents’ place for an early Jake-birthday celebration.

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This week I’m apparently going to be chaperoning a walking field trip to a nearby natural park, dubbed “Whispering Woods.” The boys’ teachers are really on the ball and are very technologically-oriented, and so I received a message detailing all scheduled field trips for the upcoming year. The upside of this is that the boys will both be exposed to some excellent learning opportunities, such as a week long trip to something called the “Open Minds” arts centre. The downside is that each of them will require parent volunteers for a week for the trip to the aforementioned “Open Minds” arts centre. I have a feeling my mind is going to be opened. Opened, like a gift, or a flower, or something.

In any case, I received the request for volunteers for this week’s field trip, and in a moment of weakness I capitulated. After all, as I told my husband perkily, now that I’m not chairing the School Council or Parent Association, I have extra time for these in-class requests. “Or,” he said ominously, “You could just say that you’ve done enough volunteering to last a lifetime and have someone else do it.” True.

In any event, I’m happy to say that the forecast is not for snow, nor rain, during the scheduled field trip, although I am wondering what I was thinking. Three hours in the Whispering Woods with 53 fifth-and-sixth graders? Looking at various plants and – if Mark is to be believed – moss? This doesn’t sound like the best idea I’ve ever had.