Monthly Archives: November 2015

Hashtag: Boner Killer

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In lo, these many years since my children have been in the public school system – and even before that, when they were in a privately-run preschool – I have seen my share of Spirit Days. From Twin Day to Olympic Day to my much-loathed Dress As Your Favourite Story Book Character Day and it’s equally-loathed Dress As What You Want To Be When You Grow Up Day, I’ve seen them all. I am a veteran of Spirit Days.

Having said that, my children have never once participated in Crazy Hair Day.

Do not get me wrong; Crazy Hair Day is greatly preferred to Crazy Hat Day. Crazy Hat Day was almost always followed by Lice Notice Day, which is no one’s favourite day. We have been very lucky; the boys have less than an inch of hair at any given time, and have – so far, knock on wood and throw salt around – never been afflicted by lice. I’d like to keep it that way.

Yes, the boys have haircuts you could set a watch to, by their own choosing. Once, Jake thought he’d grow his hair out a bit; by the time he had 3/4 of an inch of hair on his forehead he was begging to get it cut. They go into the barbershop like they’re ordering Chinese takeout: I’d like the number 2 on the sides and number 4 on top, please.

But today they decided they would participate in Crazy Hair Day, so they went into the bathroom with a bottle of gel and after a solid twelve minutes of effort, came out looking like this:

crazyhairday

 SETTLE DOWN THERE, BOYS. No need to get so wild.

Speaking of wild, a set of Golden Girls panties came out on the market, and I was notified by no fewer than six people. God, I love my friends: people see “Golden Girls panties” and they immediately think “Nicole would like those.”

 goldengirls

NOTE: The Blanche ones are crotchless.

I ALMOST want to shell out the $160 for the set and then get some boudoir photos taken to give to my husband at Christmas. Sssshhh…don’t tell him. I’m sure he would be thrilled.

georgecostanza

Rod Stewart performs Sound of Music favourites, and other reasons to live.

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This weekend I got so much done; in addition to all my usual things, I also made sugar cookie dough, gingerbread dough, gingersnaps, banana muffins, and squares. I cleaned the house and we put up the Christmas tree and decorations – no, it’s not too early! – and I was about to finish up addressing my cards when I suddenly started feeling very unwell. I was feeling so unwell that my husband commented on it. Are you okay? Because you don’t look okay. You look terrible.

I’d be insulted if I wasn’t so grateful that he noticed my plight. It turns out that I had suddenly come down with the virus that had the rest of the family down a week earlier: sore throat, tight chest, and fatigue.

Fatigue! Yesterday I felt like I was in a fog; I wandered around the house for five minutes trying to figure out what I needed to do. It turns out, I needed to put a load of laundry in, but the thought process to get there was so taxing I wasn’t sure I could make it. I actually napped, which I never do. Ninety minutes of napping, and then it took me several minutes to figure out how to use my vegetable peeler while I prepped dinner. I was, alarmingly, reminded of Still Alice. It’s just a cold, I’m not coming down with early onset Alzheimer’s…or am I? I thought this over and over until I forgot about it and stared blankly at the sink for a while.

Happily, I feel much better today. I shovelled the snow from the sidewalk and only felt a little bit like dying.

This whole weekend, while I was in festive production mode, I was listening to the Sirius Holly channel, that I mentioned previously. For the most part, it is delightful. I can easily hear multiple renditions of the same song in a three-hour time period, and I will sing along with all of them. I even enjoyed ROD STEWART singing My Favourite Things, which is one of the more bizarre sentences I have written. Me, rolling gingersnap dough in sugar: Brown paper packages tied up with string, these are…hey, this sounds like Rod Stewart. It IS Rod Stewart! That’s weird.

Until this weekend, I would have said that I enjoy all Christmas music immensely, with only one exception: Paul McCartney’s Simply Having A Wonderful Christmastime. That song, to me, is the festive equivalent of Might As Well Go For A Soda. I start to twitch like someone is scratching their nails down a chalkboard. Does anyone actually have chalkboards anymore? You know what I mean.

Anyway, I had always thought that was the worst ever Christmas song. I have a very high tolerance – nay, adoration – of cheesy Christmas songs such as Barry Manilow’s White Christmas or Neil Diamond’s Little Drummer Boy. But once that “Simply having…OH GOD MAKE IT STOP” gets in my head, I feel like I need some kind of medication/ alcohol to remedy the situation. However, from listening to Sirius Holly, I have discovered something even worse.

It’s called Christmas Wrapping.

It is the most tuneless song ever with the most insipid lyrics – and this is coming from someone who goes NUTS to hear Last Christmas by Wham! so I know a little something about insipid holiday lyrics – and it is six and a half minutes long. It also is played on Sirius Holly FREQUENTLY.

My weekend with Christmas Wrapping:

Me, the first time I hear it: Is this song still playing? Wow, it’s really long.

Me, the second time I hear it: Oh god, it’s that song again. What the hell is this song?

Me, the third time I hear it: What the hell? Why are they playing this again?

Me, the fourth time I hear it: THAT IS IT. I AM WRITING AN ANGRY LETTER TO SIRIUS. RIGHT AFTER I FINISH THIS GINGERBREAD.

Me, the fifth time I hear it: I’m losing the will to live.

Me, the sixth time I hear it: *changes channel*

So I’m a little slow. Clearly, I should have gone with step six in the first place. But then I might have missed Bruce Springsteen’s Baby Please Come Home, and that would have been tragic.

Friday Fun

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It’s a PD day. It’s 9:09. I have had approximately nine cups of coffee. In related news, this post will be in point form.

COPA Cabana

As many (most?) of you know, I work at Yummy Mummy Club, or YMC, both as a writer and a twitter-er. Imagine my excitement when, at the Canadian Online Publishing Awards, YMC won GOLD for Best Use of Social Media! Look:

COPA

So that was pretty happy news. YMC also won gold and silver for two online campaigns: Dove Beautiful You, and Elmer’s Freestyle, along with gold for Independent Publisher of the Year. I think I will crack a bottle of amarone tonight, to celebrate!

Holiday Music

Sirius radio has a fabulous holiday channel, called Holly, and I haven’t stopped listening to it since I discovered it. It has everything from Harry Connick, Jr. to Barry Manilow; in other words, it is my dream holiday channel. In the past twenty-four hours, I have heard no fewer than five different renditions of “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas,” which is my favourite Christmas song EVER. Except, maybe, the terribly politically-incorrect Baby It’s Cold Outside.

Spectre

Until very recently, I had never seen a James Bond movie in my life. When one is completely outnumbered, one watches the movies that everyone else wants to watch, and so we’ve been watching the most recent James Bond movies for our Friday Family Movie Nights. I normally fall asleep at some point in the movie, because explosions and whatnot bore me. What doesn’t bore me, however, is a shirtless Daniel Craig.

After we’d watched three Daniel Craig movies, we were ready for the newest: Spectre. My husband was very excited and he booked seats for the opening weekend. We all went and were kind of underwhelmed. For one thing, it was at least thirty minutes too long. For another, he was completely clothed for the whole movie. THE WHOLE MOVIE. Why am I here? I kept thinking to myself. This isn’t interesting at all.

It reminded me of when the boys made me go see Avengers: Age of Ultron. Not only was it a terrible, terrible movie, but it was tragically low on the shirtless men factor. All that talent, and the only guy who takes his shirt off is Bruce Banner? WHAT KIND OF MOVIE IS THIS?

Action movie makers, take note: if you want the “mom vote,” maybe throw us a little bone, here? Does Chris Evans need to chop wood with a t-shirt on? No, he does not. He is Captain Freaking America, and he can chop wood with no shirt on, thank you very much.

Greek Mythology

Mark has been obsessed with Greek mythology for the past while, and I used to be PRETTY knowledgeable in that area myself. However, the student has far surpassed the teacher, and now every single day he asks me questions that are unanswerable. For example, who is my favourite demigod? Do I know which animal/ plant symbolizes which Greek god? If I could have any power bestowed upon me by any god, which would it be and why? It makes for interesting dinner table conversation, sort of. Jake mentioned that he would like to never die, to which Mark responded, “Immortality is not always a great thing, Jake.” Then he went into this depressing spiel about it, and how sometimes it’s just better to die, which reminded me of this terrible biography my husband watched about Kurt Cobain. Good lord, what a mess. I felt like this conversation warranted a drink if it were to continue, but thankfully the subject veered into the following debate: Was Persephone happy to be in the Underworld? Discuss.

I am the Walrus

Jake has been walking around saying “I am the Eggman” and laughing. “Eggman! Who would want to be an eggman?” Mark asked if it was true that The Beatles had a song called I am the Walrus, and that, my friends, I could answer. This spurred a long discussion about a) why anyone would want to be a walrus, b) what exactly is an eggman, c) why were The Beatles so popular when they are obviously so lame?

I told the boys that their music was the first of its kind, and very innovative. I explained how, way back in the 1950s, Elvis Presley was considered scandalous because he danced too sexily. The boys looked at me in silent disbelief and dropped the subject.

“What?” I asked. “Elvis was considered VERY sexy, back then.”

“Mom, please stop saying Elvis and sexy in the same sentence.”

Everything’s Coming Up Milhouse

The term “growing boys” has taken on new meaning, as they have both grown almost an INCH since September. I looked at Mark in his nearly brand-new karate gi yesterday and thought he looked like he was ready for The Flood.

milhouse2

Happy Friday, everyone! Have a great weekend. xo

And three more…let’s go, ladies!

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Remember that Seinfeld episode where Kramer had one line in a Woody Allan movie – “These pretzels are making me thirsty!” – and George co-opted that line to be a metaphor for his life which, at the time, consisted of a lonely man with no job, no girlfriend, and who was incompetently and temporarily moving cars around the block for money? THESE PRETZELS…ARE MAKING ME THIRSTY!

I thought of that episode a lot last Thursday when I was at the book fair. “The posters are five dollars.” I said this so many times that it truly felt like a metaphor for my life, or maybe my tagline in the made-for-TV movie in which I play the Book Fair Lady Who Encourages A Young Child To Purchase A Lego-Themed Book Rather Than A Highlighter Set That Looks Like Ketchup And Mustard. If this sounds like a less-than-stellar movie, well, I would counter with there have probably been worse films. Waterworld, for example, or Howard the Duck. THE POSTERS…ARE FIVE DOLLARS!

It took me all weekend to get my hands to recover from the incredible amount of hand washing I did on Thursday. My hands are not as yet fully recovered, as they still have a sandpaper feel and the cracks keep catching on my sweater. But oh, the germs in an elementary school in November. The coughing and sneezing into the hands which held the treasured book fair funds was enough to send me into surgeon-scrubbing mode, but there were a few incidents that horrified even seasoned old me.

First, a perfectly pleasant young boy wearing a knitted toque purchased a couple of books and pencils, and after I added his total, he removed his toque to reveal a mop of sweaty hair and a small baggie full of money. I gingerly accepted it, running through my emails in my mind, wondering if there had recently been a lice notice or not. I supposed the money was in the baggie and so it couldn’t have been penetrated by lice anyway, and I wasn’t rubbing my own head with it, but still.

Next, a boy purchased a book and a poster ($5) and when I told him the total, he reached down, took off his shoe, and handed me a moist $10 bill and a damp $2 coin. I stood there with the sweaty goods, horrified, while he smiled and bid me adieu.

Are these children out to get me? Maybe, but in any case, we raised a lot of funds for the library ($3700! Yay!) and I have three more to go! I feel a bit like I’m on the 20 minute workout, but with book fairs instead of leg lifts, and eighteen months instead of twenty minutes. And three more…

The slow slide from Mother to Crone *

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“I actually can’t believe it,” my husband said to me last night. “You actually ARE stepping back from things at the school.”

It’s true. This week is Book Fair, and for the first time since 2009, I am not spending all day every day at the Book Fair. I have a lovely co-coordinator (HI HAYDEE) who is going to take over when I leave the school, and we are each doing half of the shifts. Therefore, today, when I normally would be repeating “The posters are five dollars. That one too. They are all five dollars. No, that’s not nail polish. It’s a highlighter. The posters are five dollars.” over and over, I am in front of my computer, doing work – and writing this. I’ll be repeating those phrases on Thursday, of course, but as of right now I’ve had an incredibly productive day.

Last Friday was the Family Dance, and again, for the first time I was not intimately involved with the arrangements. In fact, I did virtually nothing whatsoever except donate a batch of cupcakes topped with cookie crumbs and gummy worms.

wormsanddirt

Is there a child alive who does not enjoy worms and dirt? I think not.

It turns out that all these years of bake sale-ing, I’ve been doing it wrong. Children don’t care if you create something with all natural, organic whole ingredients. They don’t care that you lovingly made dye-free frosting or used organic coconut oil to make caramel corn. They want pizzazz! They want style! They want candy on cupcakes, and they don’t care if the cupcakes came from a mix and the frosting came from a can. Realizing this was a revelation to me. I slapped these babies together and they were gone as fast as they were set out. We are all winners in this situation.

But back to the dance: for years I’ve been very involved, assisting the organizer and arranging the bake sale table, and volunteering for every shift for the entire night. This time, my husband and I went with the kids and paid the family rate, I clapped my hands and said “It’s my jam!” to my embarrassed husband when the DJ played Bust-a-Move, and then we ensured the kids each had money to spend and we booked it out of there. Yes, during the Family Dance my husband and I walked up the street and had a drink at the pub, coming back 30 minutes before the last dance. WINNING AGAIN.

It seems that I am starting the slow decline from Enthusiastic Young Mom Who Is Involved to Tired, Embittered and Cynical Pre-Menopausal Woman Whose Children Are Going To Junior High. I mean, I’m not there yet. I’m definitely not totally embittered and cynical and the kids are not yet in junior high. Yet, I can see myself going down the slope from I’m going to rejuvenate the School Council and we are going to have the best year ever! to I’m just going to make some cupcakes from a goddamn mix and throw some fucking gummy worms on them. But, you know, in my trademark cheerful and happy way.

I need to keep that cheerfulness and happiness, because I sure don’t want to turn into a Bitter Old Crone. Remember the Potato Lady? The old lady at the Co-Op who I witnessed yelling at the produce manager because she wanted a three pound bag of potatoes, not a five pound bag of potatoes, and goddamn if she was going to weigh those potatoes herself? And the produce manager was so kind and patient, it was kind of inspirational for everyone?

SHE IS BACK. I repeat, THE POTATO LADY IS BACK. I was at the Co-Op on Saturday, and I heard a shrill, old-lady voice aggressively ask one of the produce stockers where the manager was, and when he’d be back. The stocker left and returned with that same, patient produce manager, and because I am nosy, I listened in on their conversation while intently looking over the red peppers.

People, it was almost the same exact conversation from six months ago. The Potato Lady had an issue with the bags of potatoes, the five pound potatoes were too much, the very kind produce manager agreed to choose and weigh the potatoes for her, did she want Yukon Gold or red potatoes? And I wondered if maybe, maybe the Potato Lady does this regularly – maybe even weekly –  to get special service in the potato department, in a Squeaky Wheel Gets The Grease kind of way. Perhaps the Potato Lady is incredibly crafty; maybe she loves getting attention from the much-younger produce manager. Maybe it makes her feel young and beautiful to have a man bring her potatoes, rather than having to choose her own.

And then I thought, maybe that will be me one day, except that I don’t really like potatoes. Maybe I will be using all my wiles – but hopefully not shrill and aggressive ones – to get special attention from the men in my life, the men being the produce managers and the long-suffering interns at the nursing home. Maybe one day I will be wearing my bright lipstick bleeding into my lip lines, asking the produce manager to reach that kale for me, wink wink, and while he was at it, could he help me choose a zucchini? Not that one, the BIG one. And then the produce manager will go home and crack open a beer and shudder at the implications.

In any case, I think the produce manager has earned an entire crown of heavenly stars for his kind and patient behaviour. He’s going straight to the same place as the marketing people at Starbucks who designed the 2014 holiday cup, complete with snowflakes and ice skates.

*many thanks to Allison for letting me borrow the term “Mother to Crone,” even though she doesn’t know I’ve borrowed it yet. (HI ALLISON I LOVE YOU)

The mall in early November is glorious.

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Ahhhhhh. I JUST finished the last thing on my “to-do” list for the week – other than writing this post – and I feel the way you do when you’ve been on your feet wearing super high heels all day, and you get home, and you take them off. It feels exactly like that. Ahhhhhh.

This week has been very busy with deadlines – baking, photographing, and writing – and preparing for next week’s book fair. I was kind of running a bit behind on Wednesday, what with one thing and another, but I thought if I buckled down enough Wednesday afternoon, I would be back on track. Wednesday at 11:52, not 3 minutes before I was leaving the house to pick up the boys for lunch, I got a phone call from the school. It was one of my children, who said he wasn’t feeling well. On further questioning, it turns out that he had thrown up.

CUE OMINOUS MUSIC.

I immediately went into batten-down-the-hatch mode, recording when each subsequent barfing episode took place (only twice more), spraying doorknobs with bleach and washing my hands until they started to crack. So far – SO FAR – no one else has gotten it, and the sickie recovered very quickly, but my to-do list took a bit of a beating, which is why I feel so relieved to actually accomplish everything I needed to this week.

Plus, did I mention it’s book fair next week? A stomach flu is really going to cramp my style.

Today I went to the mall to do some Christmas shopping, and although I’m not one hundred percent done, I’m pretty close. Before you say how can that be on your to-do list this week, well, it is. For my own mental health I need to have my shopping done by mid-November. After mid-November, the mall turns into the seventh circle of hell, what with the parking lot road rage, and the crowds and the horrible people, and the completely defeated seasonal staff.

The mall in early November is a very pleasant place to be. The feeling is festive and happy. People smile. The clerks and cashiers have not hit the “I hate everyone” wall that everyone who has ever worked in customer service hits. Some of the stores play Christmas music, but many are still on the regular radio stations, which had me humming along to “Brian Wilson” this morning. “I love this song!” I said to the sweet young thing at one store. “It reminds me of being sixteen again.” She blinked a couple of times, probably a little unsure what to say – maybe wow, that’s a long time ago, or, my mom likes this song too! – but she just smiled and said, “I like it too!” Bless you, child.

I have reached the stage in my life where, when asked by the cashier at Bath and Body Works if someone had helped me with my selections, I reply “Oh yes, that cute little girl with the blonde hair! She was very helpful.” CUTE LITTLE GIRL. She was probably twenty if she was a day and I just referred to her as a “little girl.” I think I’ve turned into my own grandmother, and next thing you know I’ll be asking for Isotoner slippers for Christmas.

I saw the sweetest thing today. I was behind an elderly couple on the escalator at The Bay, and the old man groped his (presumably, although not positively) wife’s bum. She smiled at him and said – wait for it – “Oh, YOU.”

I was so close to either dying from the cuteness or high-fiving both of them, but, of course, I did neither. It just made me so happy, and I hope it makes you happy too. Have a great weekend everyone!

Monster Mash Aftermath

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So how was Halloween? My husband got home from his business trip on Friday, and so Saturday was a whirlwind of activity: in addition to the usual Saturday morning karate/ workouts/ grocery shopping, we carved pumpkins and the boys helped my husband put up the finishing touches in our yard. The front yard was filled with giant ghouls, skulls, and gravestones, as well as a number of animatronic motion-sensored ghosts, spiders, and shrunken heads. It was very spooky! In the words of a tiny Ariel who came to our door, “Your house is TOO SCAWWY.”

pumpkins

The pumpkins weren’t the scary part. Can you tell which is mine?

In fact, we only had eight trick-or-treaters, which is really average for our old-people street, but of the eight, one refused to climb our steps, and two of them cried in terror. A tiny, nervous Minnie Mouse accepted my offerings of a giant handful of chocolate bars, at which inopportune moment an animatronic spider and shrunken head began to descend, cackling loudly. Minnie Mouse burst into tears and started screaming for her daddy, while her older brother rolled his eyes at her and said, “It’s just PEE-TEND.”

The upside to only having eight trick-or-treaters is that when my kids go out, they really clean up. All the people in our immediately neighbouring houses dote on them, and so they came home loaded down with candy and chips. Oh! So many chips. It is TORTURE. The only reason I haven’t eaten them all is that the kids really love them too, and know how many they have. It’s hard to be a chip thief under those circumstances, which is good news for my pants.

Their haul was the best I’ve seen in a long time – a huge variety of candy, and no random handfuls of unwrapped peppermints like last year. Also no ecstasy or razor blades! I have always thought that was an urban legend anyway – who would spend money like that to put in trick-or-treat bags? – but then someone told me she once found a rolled joint in one of her kids’ bags, so I guess it could happen.

I related the story of the worst item I ever received on Halloween to my kids. I was about six years old, and dressed as a mouse. At one door, a man – who I now recognize was most likely inebriated – came to the door, laughing hysterically. When I said “Trick or Treat!” he told me to hold on for a moment. I was brought up to be very polite to adults, and if an adult told me to hold on a moment, I would wait. Wait I did, for several minutes until the man came back to the door, still laughing, and handed me a banana.

A banana! My husband, who grew up in a fruit-growing region, said the worst houses were the ones that handed out apples. But I say a banana is way worse. For one thing, there’s no chance it would survive the walk home, in a pillowcase filled with candy, bumping my legs the whole way. For another thing, it’s a banana.

After trick-or-treating and discovering no joints nor bananas, we headed to a party at a friend’s house. I had thought long and hard about my costume, and I was so excited about it. I drew a P on a plain shirt, and then coloured one of my eyes black with an eye liner pencil. A black-eyed pea! I was just overcome with the cleverness. Except that it was a total bust. Not one person got it, and in fact, it seemed like some people weren’t even sure if they should comment on my black eye. At first I wondered how shitty I look in daily life – I mean, how big are my undereye circles? – but then I realized that NO ONE WANTED TO MENTION MY BLACK EYE IN CASE IT WAS AN ACTUAL BLACK EYE.

blackeyepea

I AM A BLACK EYE PEA

“I tried to warn you it wasn’t a good idea, but you didn’t listen,” my husband said to me. “And now people are looking at me weird.”

I posted this photo and I got everything from politely startled comments about my husband to an actual hashtag #batteredwife. Now, I was shocked for a couple of reasons: a) that people would think that dressing up as a victim of domestic abuse was a socially acceptable idea, and b) that people would think that I THINK dressing up as a victim of domestic abuse was a socially acceptable idea.

In any case, it was a bust, and for the Costume Family Dance on Friday, I’m definitely digging out my non-slutty pirate costume or my witch’s hat, because I just can’t go through that again.

costumes

At least everyone understood their costumes.