Monthly Archives: April 2016

Watch out for the carnies.

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Do you ever look at the contents of other people’s grocery carts and wonder what they are going to do with those particular ingredients? I do, all the time. Not in a judgy way, obviously; I don’t care if someone has a cart filled with fruit chews and pork rinds. To each her own, I say. But I do often wonder if someone’s having a party or a barbeque, or if those frozen Dr. Oetker pizzas are actually good. Sometimes it’s obvious: tortilla chips, salsa, sour cream, onions, peppers, and cheddar, for example, means that all signs are pointing towards Nacho Night. I once saw my neighbour with an entire cart – and I mean THE ENTIRE CART – filled with store brand bacon. I could only imagine that it was either on sale or he really likes bacon, or both. Hopefully he has a chest freezer.

But the other day the fellow in front of me had dozens of cucumbers, 3 bags of green apples, at least ten bunches of kale, and some lemons. I wondered if he was on some kind of juice cleanse because really, who is going to chew their way through that many cucumbers? But then I saw that he also had stacks and stacks of Centsibles brand bologna and a few jars of Cheez Whiz. I was actually dying of curiosity because it was such study in opposites. Maybe he runs a lunch program AND he also really likes green juice? Maybe it’s nothing to do with green juice and he really likes kale salads along with this bologna and Cheez Whiz sandwiches? Well, we will never know now but I will always wonder.

People are so interesting, aren’t they? Everyone has a story. I was at Walmart buying my hayfever-ridden son some allergy medication, and there was a fellow standing in the aisle near the family planning section. He was wearing cut-off shorts and a tank top, despite the chilly day, and he was picking up and reading the back of every single lubricant on the shelf. Now, it’s been some time since I’ve bought lube, so I really don’t know what attributes make for the different brands, but this fellow was determined to make an educated decision. I picked up my packages of Reactine, did a little more shopping, and then I remembered I also needed some Motrin. Back I went to the pharmacy and he was still there, reading labels.

Well, if you’re going to spend money you may as well do your research, I suppose.

This week has flown by; in fact, this month has flown by. Sunday is May, which frankly seems ridiculous. This whole week has been a whirlwind of work and yoga and to-do lists, and here it is Friday and I’m feeling DONE. We have some friends coming over for dinner tonight, which I’m very excited about. One is a vegan and let me tell you, it is VERY fun to cook for someone who is going to be as excited as I am about a cauliflower taco dish. I’m also making this dessert, which I haven’t made in so long I had to do some calculations to find out what eight ounces of chocolate is in cups (it’s about 1 1/4 cups, give or take).

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Yum!

It’s also my dear, dear friend Hannah’s birthday today. As a gift to her, I am re-posting this amazing photo of us with the third in our trio, Allison, at Blissdom in 2014.

Carny

Aw, this photo brings back so many wonderful memories. And is a little creepy. Where did the carny come from? Well, it was a lentil-themed carnival, and we shall leave it at that.

Hannah sent me this post, which happens to sum up all my feelings about moths. “Just shudder until I died.” I laughed until I cried and my stomach hurt. I tried to read it to my husband, but I was laughing so hard that he just looked at me in a concerned and pitying sort of way that I stopped reading, and he went off to work, probably wondering about my mental stability.

Happy Friday to everyone, I hope you all have a wonderful weekend! xoxo

“Look out, world. I have a giant cart.”

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Maybe it’s a function of age, maybe I’m just busy, but lately it seems like the days are speeding by, like one of those cartoons where each daily calendar page is flying off in super fast-motion. Yesterday I noticed a work deadline of April 29. April 29, no problem! That’s tons of time, I thought, until I looked at the actual calendar and realized that April 29 is Friday. Where did April go? I don’t know. I just don’t know.

So work is busy and classes are busy and everyday life is busy but everything is good, good, good. Yesterday was another PD day and, in contrast to Friday’s zoo day, I took the boys to the optometrist. One child had been complaining that he was unable to see the Smart Board at school, and the other boy was on the “watch list” in terms of his vision, and to make a long story short, I bought two pair of glasses yesterday. One child is thrilled with this, and the other is not, so it’s a bit of a roller coaster around here.

I will say this, though: children’s glasses and glasses in general are much, much more attractive than they used to be. When I was in grade six I got my first pair of glasses, and let me tell you, they were as ugly as fuck. Or, ugly AF, as the kids say. The frames were pale pink and were gigantic, and a few years later they were replaced by burgundy frames similar to those worn by every teen girl’s idol, TV host Sally Jesse Raphael. What thirteen year old girl doesn’t want to look like the fifty-something host of a tabloid talk show?

Our friend and optometrist said that it seemed like in the Eighties, people really wanted you to KNOW they were wearing glasses. It wasn’t enough to have glasses, they had to take up half your face in a statement that said “Look out, world. I have glasses.” Sort of like how we all teased our bangs so the tips of them were several inches off of our foreheads. “Look out, world. I have bangs.”

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All I’m saying is that kids these days do not know how lucky they have it.

My other exciting PD day activity was a giant Costco trip. I had a thought when I was leaving the store, as my entire upper body was practically vertical pushing the cart, and it was taking every ounce of effort in my body to control that cart and not accidentally run into anyone, that an interesting concept that Costco should adopt would be a cart weigh scale, similar to those that they have for large transportation vehicles. Wouldn’t it be interesting to see how much your giant Costco cart actually weighs? I mean, it’s not like it would change anything, but it would give me empirical data for when I tell my husband about my day. My husband is a wonderful man, but he does not view Costco trips in the same light that I do. For example, he thinks they are “fun.” I think they are “a chore.” I go to Costco approximately every three weeks with the hypothesis that more frequent trips mean lighter trips, and for the most part this is correct. Every so often, however, I find myself inexplicably out of all the heaviest/ most expensive things at once, and then my Costco trip takes on the properties of an epic journey, or a Sisyphean task.

If there were weigh scales, I could quantify the effort that is put into the actual Costco shopping trip. Because it’s not just about the time in the store, is it? I don’t know if I’ve ever spent more than about forty-five minutes actually in the store. I’m pretty efficient at filling my cart and then getting the fuck out of there. The actual effort involved is a) pushing the cart through the parking lot and silently cursing the people who leave their carts everywhere but in the cart corral, b) loading the groceries in the car, c) unloading the groceries from the car and bringing them into the house, d) putting all the groceries away, and, finally, e) separating out all the items from the gargantuan value packs for individual freezing, washing grapes, slicing strawberries, etc., etc. I mean, you can’t just put a giant pack of chicken breasts in the freezer as-is. I can’t just put the grapes in the fridge unwashed because that defeats the purpose of having a quick and easy healthy snack for the children on hand. Also, I’ve seen those videos where strange insects/ arachnids are hiding in the grape bunches and I would like to avoid that if possible. Strawberries will disappear quickly if they are washed and sliced but a clamshell of strawberries is doomed to either go bad or I am doomed to be asked at very inconvenient times if I would help with the washing and slicing of said strawberries.

Very very long and fairly dull story short, it is always better to deal with all those little things at once than to let them go, which means that a large Costco trip takes hours to complete. Again, a weigh scale would be nice, so I could tell my husband/ write in my fitness journal that I carried however many pounds down the stairs. It’s all about celebrating your accomplishments, isn’t it? And yesterday I accomplished both a Costco trip AND the selection of glasses for two boys, so I feel that I deserve some praise and adulation indeed. Or maybe a Costco-sized treat, at the very least.

The Mayday is blooming IN APRIL

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It’s been quite the eventful week! Today is, somewhat inexplicably, a PD day and so the boys and I decided a zoo trip was in order. We hadn’t been since last summer and, as usual, it was a great time. The boys always force me to walk through the aviary, which is terrifying. This guy gave me a look that I took to heart, and we left shortly after snapping this photo:

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Eeek! It was a bit chilly today, as opposed to the massively above-normal temperatures we have been experiencing. It has been unbelievably gorgeous here, and I can’t help but wonder, is this what people in normal climates feel like in the spring? I mean, it is incredible. This is the first bloom on my Mayday tree – taken on Tuesday – and now the entire tree is in full bloom. It’s beautiful.

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My Mayday blooming in April? It’s like a gift from the universe because yesterday was my birthday. I spent the bulk of the afternoon working in my rose garden…IN APRIL. This is a climate in which it’s not unusual to see May come and go without the lilacs blooming, and tulips are more often than not beaten down by five inches of snow. Not to say this cannot happen still, but just look at my Nanking cherry:

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The boys have been eating freezies in the backyard; lately they have been going for little runs after supper and this week they have been cooling off afterwards in the sprinkler. IN APRIL.

Well, today was more like an average April day; cloudy and cool, with a sharp wind. We were dressed warmly and it was still cold. At the zoo, it seemed like people had simply assumed that the past was the best indicator of the future, in terms of weather. There were purple-limbed people wandering around in shorts and tank tops, and it was seven degrees. I saw one little girl with what looked like a fleece baby blanket wrapped around her shoulders, and I’m sure people were flocking to the African exhibits just to warm up.

Anyway, my birthday was just lovely. Thanks to everyone for your kind wishes. I love birthdays – everyone’s, not just mine – so I like to extend the celebration as far out as possible. Yesterday was mostly just a regular day, with the addition of our newly-hectic Thursday night schedule: getting the boys to karate and then driving through rush-hour traffic to yoga teacher training. Being able to garden felt like a special birthday treat, though.

A few weeks ago we were at my parents’ house and my mother baked me my favourite strawberry cake. I was sure to leave one candle burning, just so my husband wouldn’t feel slighted.

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(photo credit: my dad)

The boys, including my husband, had given me some lovely cards and also some new yoga clothes, which I am always happy to receive. And this weekend we are going to see The Jungle Book, which I’ve wanted to see since seeing the trailer at The Force Awakens. All in all, very lovely.

I know many people do not enjoy birthdays, viewing them more as a step towards the grave than something to celebrate. I, obviously, do not share this view. My thoughts on birthdays are Hey, I’m still here! It’s a great excuse to eat cake and drink wine (which I will be doing very very soon). So cheers to all of you and thank you, as always, for your readership and support. xoxo

Taco Tuesday and Toasters

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Last Friday, I came across a Jimmy Kimmel clip and realized something quite shocking: in the world of emojis, “eggplant” is code for “penis,” “peach” is code for “ass,” and “taco” is code for “vagina,” which makes all those recipes I’ve posted, complete with cutesy emojis, kind of offensive. When I realized this, I heard from one person who went so far as to say that she had NEVER seen anyone use those particular emojis for the food which they are modeled after. In other words, all those Taco Tuesday posts take on a very different meaning from what I had intended.

I feel like one of those old people who use “LOL” as “Lots of Love!” and who horrify their children by saying they want to Netflix and Chill with the whole family. After all, it was a mere six months ago when my dear friend Allison (HI ALLISON) tipped me off as to the Netflix and Chill meaning, and who really knows what hip new saying I will find out is a horrifying double entendre in another six months. After all, I’ve been using eggplants and chili peppers all over the place ever since such emojis were made available to me.

In other exciting news, we got a new toaster this weekend. I had been waiting for my old toaster to die for years. I hated it immediately; it was so finicky with the dial that the slightest movement would take the bread from the “dry bread” stage to the “completely burnt and inedible” stage within seconds. Toasting one slice of bread only was a complete act of faith, and the “Cancel” button never worked, so that when I could see the toast going into the “OMG it is going to burn” stage my only option was to unplug it. When it died this weekend I actually cheered. The great satisfaction I have for our new toaster is matched only by the satisfaction I got from getting it 40% off on Bay Days, and makes me think that I probably could have done this sooner.

I read a piece this weekend entitled “Memo to parents: Your adult children don’t want your stuff.” The premise was this: we all have our own style and tastes, and limited space, and we don’t want to fill that limited space with your “heirlooms.” The whole piece gave me massively mixed feelings; as someone who lives in a small bungalow that is entirely filled with my own furniture and artwork of my own taste, I understand the author’s point of view.

But on the other hand, it really made me sad. It made me sad to think about people of my grandparents’ generation, saving up to buy something good and lasting, and then have no one want it. And I get it, I really do, but I still think it’s sad. People are not their things, and the world is about more than just possessions, but still. I have a few things that belonged to my grandmothers, and I treasure them very much.

In terms of our old toaster, I held onto it because I didn’t want to waste money on a new one when the old one still worked, however substandardly, but I also knew that it wouldn’t last forever. Things are made to be disposable now, more’s the pity. My mother-in-law still has the chest freezer that she had when she was first married; they just celebrated their 54th wedding anniversary. Back then, things didn’t get thrown out. Now, we are lucky if our washing machine lasts more than five years, or if our dishwasher doesn’t need to be replaced twice in a decade.

Part of what I think is sad is that there is a huge disconnect in thinking between generations. Back in our grandparents’ day, you took pride in your possessions, and you assumed you would pass them on when you died. Part of that was because our grandparents didn’t really have much in the way of “stuff.” Today, we have way too much stuff, and we take great joy not in passing it along to beloved family members, but getting rid of it in trash bags at the Goodwill. So it is an entirely new way of thinking, in this world of more, more, more.

Of course, the dark side of taking great care of and pride in your possessions is the propensity to not use it. I was thinking of this when I read my friend Swistle’s (HI SWISTLE) post about using the “good stuff.” How many of us have boxes of things that we never use because they are too precious? I have my grandmother’s china, a full set, that was given to her on her 40th anniversary. It was saved for me, the only granddaughter on that side, and given to me at my wedding shower. It is absolutely precious to me, it is beautiful, I love it, I am happy to have it, and yet, I never use it. Each piece is carefully wrapped up and stored.

This. This is ridiculous. Why DON’T I use it? I should not need an occasion to use the beautiful china. Sure, I don’t have the cupboard space to store it properly, but wouldn’t it make an everyday dinner kind of special, and worth the effort? I don’t even need to worry about it getting broken because I cannot remember the last time one of my children broke a plate or anything. And if it did get broken, at least it would be used and enjoyed.

But here’s the thing: life is brief and fleeting and we shouldn’t waste it eating substandard toast, so to speak. My husband has given me two beautiful diamond rings; one is an anniversary ring for our tenth, and the other is a solitaire for my 40th birthday. They are fancy and yet I wear them almost every day, taking them off only for gardening or rolling out cookie dough or similar. They make me feel happy and sparkly. If we have pretty clothes, or expensive shoes, or a gorgeous handbag, why should these things hide in our closet when we could use them every day and make ourselves feel fabulous? What are we saving these things for? If our generation is indicative of future generations, no one will want these things when we die so we might as well use them now. How sad would it be to die with boxes of super-fancy soap and unused guest towels? So let’s agree to drink the wine, use the truffle oil, and set out the china for pizza night. Or Taco Tuesday.

When I am 41, I shall wear purple.

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Here’s a PSA for you: the Alberta government no longer sends out renewal notices for car registration or driver’s license updates. Now, this is a bit of a moot point for me since I haven’t received a renewal notice for YEARS. Each time I go to the registry office, they tell me it was returned because of “address unknown,” and yet, my address is correct in the system and always has been. This is a mystery that has never been solved. Address correct. Postal code correct. Renewal notice received? No. At one point I had the hypothesis that perhaps it was delivered to the wrong address, and the recipient decided not to drop it at my house but instead marked it “Return To Sender.” However, this has happened too many years in a row, for that and only that document, and so I think that hypothesis is incorrect. But what is the answer? No one seems to know.

In any case, it doesn’t matter now. A friend emailed our circle to remind us that renewal notices are no longer mailed out, which was a timely reminder for me. Both my license and registration were about to expire, and so today I popped over to the registry office – where the lady helpfully mentioned that my renewal notice was returned as “undeliverable” – and took care of business. Mercy, I forgot how awful it is to get a driver’s license photo. Passport photos are worse, to be sure, but my new driver’s license photo makes me look like a cross between the crypt keeper and Lizzy Borden.

I’ve been a bit tired this week, which is hell on my undereye circles. In retrospect it would have been better to get a photograph done after a great night’s sleep, but what can you do. Fortunately it’s in black and white, so my grey roots will not be as obvious.

Speaking of grey roots and undereye circles, my birthday is coming up! Last weekend we went to my parents’ house to celebrate, and my mom took me shopping as a birthday gift. Among other things, she purchased me a flowy, long, beautiful, PURPLE wrap. It’s very pretty, and did I mention it’s purple? I know. I KNOW. I wore it yesterday on a field trip, and I had a few girls tell me that “my purple cape was very pretty.” Aw! My boys, as well, had nothing but compliments for it, and they are not the kind of kids who notice what I’m wearing at any given time. I’m trying to wear colour slightly more often, even if I do feel like a bit of a peacock when I wear something other than black or grey. I did wear a black top underneath the wrap, in an attempt at normalcy.

And yes! That’s two field trips in five days, which includes the weekend. The field trip was the same as the one last week – the Police Interpretive Centre – so at least it was interesting and engaging. It was almost exactly the same in content, but this class forewent the “Bullying” module in favour of the “Drugs” one. I worried that it might be a bit old for the class, but it turns out it wasn’t at all. It was “scare them off of drugs” without being nightmare-inducing.

The field trips are done for the year now, which means I did it! Some of you may recall that this was my goal for the school year; since giving up my responsibilities as School Council/ Parent Association chair, I had decided I would volunteer more in the classroom and on field trips. Every opportunity that arose I took it, and I’m so glad I did. I’ve realized that Grades Five and Six are actually fun to go on field trips with: they mostly stay on task, they stay together, and they are fairly responsible. No one tries to run away or get separated from the group, everyone makes an attempt to complete the assignment at hand. And I even get my ego stroked with compliments on my outfit! It doesn’t get much better than that. Mental note: for next year’s field trips, wear purple wrap.

Thumper’s mother was right.

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Last night was Orientation Night for my yoga teacher training and oh, you guys. You guys, I am so excited. I haven’t felt this way for YEARS. I remember picking up my university calendar to choose classes for each semester, and then I would go through the syllabus of each class and it never failed – NEVER FAILED – to thrill me. Everything about university was exciting for me; all the course outlines, all the new information, everything. Now I feel that same, beginning-of-the-school-year excitement, and I just can’t wait to get started. I’m taking it slow because, well, life, but for the next three months I’ll be studying anatomy, yoga spirituality, Ayurveda, and Sanskrit. YOU GUYS I AM SO EXCITED. It turns out I am the same keener nerd that I always was because even the thought of doing the pre-reading is thrilling to me.

I have to settle down a bit though, because I can feel my competitive, Type A nature coming out a teensy bit, in a I am going to CRUSH this kind of way, which is not a very yogic way of thinking. Hey, we are all works in progress, right? There’s nothing wrong with taking the course seriously since I really do want to teach afterwards. Not everyone who takes yoga teacher training actually wants to teach, which is cool. But teaching is in my ultimate plan, so I shall embrace my serious student nature.

Yesterday was an especially hectic day since I was on a field trip for the whole day with Mark’s class. We went to the Police Interpretive Centre and let me tell you, it was the best field trip I’ve ever been on by far. The leaders were engaging, the information was relevant and timely, and all of the displays were very interactive and interesting. I get to do it all over again next week with Jake’s class, and I am looking forward to it. Looking forward. To a field trip. That’s how good it was!

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They also had this sign in the washroom, and all I can say is “Strongly Agree.”

The morning featured a forensics lab, where the children were shown how detectives solve crimes using fingerprints, footprints, lasers, blood splatters, maggots versus flies, and composite sketches. It sounds a bit morbid but it was extremely well done and sensitive. The children also got to learn about the K9 unit, and I found out that they choose puppies based on how much a puppy loves a ball. If the puppy won’t give up a ball, or won’t stop looking for a ball, that is the puppy that they want in training. Each dog on the K9 unit had its own profile, and I loved looking at the random facts: favourite snack, favourite place to be scratched, favourite TV show (how do they know?), how often the dog is bathed.

The afternoon was all about online safety, bullying, and healthy relationships. Grade 5/6 is the perfect age for these discussions, in my opinion. There was a lot of discussion around this and also about making good decisions. The bullying unit had me thinking about an incident that happened a few years back to a colleague of mine. She had a similar Twitter handle to another woman, and they both had a similar blogging niche. This other woman – who had many thousands of followers – took umbrage that my colleague had the gall to have a similar name to her, and started writing terrible things about her. Her thousands of followers/ sheep started tweeting equally awful things and some were really scary. A few people were particularly threatening, in a “I hope I see that bitch at x convention so I can cut her” kind of way. It was quite terrifying and also unbelievable, that a grown woman would act this way about someone else on the internet.

Unbelievable, and yet believable. The anonymity of the internet is a weird thing. Just yesterday, a friend posted on Facebook about her child bringing home a great report card. Yay for good report cards, right? Well, no. Because there was a strange string of commentary about how report cards have no meaning and the world is going to be ruined by these children and their useless report cards. Wait, what? At what point do we think it’s okay to take someone’s celebration and shit all over it? We talk so much about bullying and behaviour of our children, but some people apparently transcend these social conventions. There is ONE response to someone’s good news, and that is congratulations. I am happy for you. If you cannot say that, then do not say anything at all.

Practicing non-attachment, except when it comes to clothes.

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Have you ever had one of those weekends where you are just so super-productive and motivated that you find you are marvelling at yourself? That was me, this weekend. I don’t know if it’s a Spring Cleaning Urge or a Nesting Without The Pregnancy thing, but I just had that feeling that I needed to Do All The Things. I probably would have accomplished even more, had it not been for the necessity of meal preparation and sleep. I had one of those wash the windows, scrub down the kitchen cupboards, clean every possible surface kind of weekends, and I’m still riding the wave a little bit.

The boys and I cleaned out their drawers and donated everything that they didn’t like or didn’t fit, and then Jake and I cleaned out his bookshelves and toys. Let me tell you, that kid is a good purger. Maybe he was just in the same mood as I was, but we have bags and bags of donations, with a sparkling clean room to boot. I have started to do the same for Mark’s room, which is much more difficult as he has slight pack rat tendencies.

Well, I can’t fault him too much. I was at a gathering with friends over the weekend, and we were talking about the Kondo Tidying-Up Method. One of my girlfriends (HI JO) cleaned out and donated three-quarters of her wardrobe. She told me she has something like four t-shirts and five tank tops now, and upon hearing this my face looked exactly like this:

I mean, I tried the Kondo method for my wardrobe and it turns out that everything I have “sparks joy.” YES I DO NEED TWENTY-FIVE BLACK SWEATERS WHAT OF IT? When I did go through the process again recently, I ended up getting rid of a couple of pairs of shoes and two workout t-shirts that I SWEAR gave me body odour. I am not kidding – they were made of some kind of “sweat-wicking” bamboo, and every time I wore them I actually smelled like some teenage kid’s gym locker. Right now you’re probably thinking Sure, blame the t-shirts, but it’s true! Any other t-shirt I wear just smells like deodorant after a workout, but these smelled like actual body odour. Not wanting to smell like some kind of feral hippie, I gave up and donated them.

I just had a thought – what if that’s bad karma? What if someone else now has those shirts and is wondering why they suddenly have BO? What if this is a monkey paw situation?

Well, it’s too late to do anything about it at this point.

The point is, I love my wardrobe. I feel like I’ve been cultivating it for years and I love every garment in it. This was the entire motivation for my twelve pound weight loss since August. I know I haven’t been talking about it much, but last summer I had put on a “few pounds,” and that was in addition to a “few pounds” that had been slowly creeping on with time. It’s funny; if you saw me every day you might not have even noticed, but my clothes  were gradually getting tighter. My right hip was bothering me a lot, and that was affecting my yoga practice, which in turn was probably negatively affecting my weight. My energy levels were lower, but it was gradual so I didn’t really realize it. It wasn’t until after I came home from my in-laws’ house after consuming way too many Palm Bay coolers, and snacking mindlessly, that I really noticed. I had been wearing stretchy skirts for most of the summer, so it was a bit of a shock when I put on my jeans and…well, they buttoned up, but the button was a potentially deadly weapon, if you know what I mean.

Then I got on the scale and I saw a number that I hadn’t seen since Jake was a baby. That was a bit of a wake-up call; it’s so easy to slowly put on pounds, and there are obvious health implications to it. I thought, if I gained five (or more) pounds every year, things would start to add up and none of my clothes would fit. Also, as we all know, with weight gain health, energy, etc., suffers but MY CLOTHES.

I’m happy to say that those “few pounds” and more (TWELVE!) are now gone; it was a combination of much more mindful eating and also adding in three cardio exercise workouts a week. I have dessert only once or twice a week, I don’t snack after supper, and I have a spinach smoothie every day. I have so much more energy now – even on weekends that I don’t decide that I need to clean the whole house top to bottom. I still have wine on the weekends, because life isn’t worth living without a glass of Cabernet, in my humble opinion. I mean, I have to draw the line somewhere.

The important thing? My clothes fit again. I don’t have to re-buy my wardrobe and my favourites are still my favourites. Which is good, because if you don’t want to part with any of your clothes, you need to be sure those clothes fit.

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