Monthly Archives: May 2016

Tea for Two (and more)

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Last week was the Volunteer Tea at the school. I go every year but I don’t really look forward to it, if you know what I mean. I don’t dread it or anything, but it has always felt like more of a duty than a great pleasure or celebration. With the exception of the year Jake was in kindergarten, my children have never been involved in the performances, and so it’s mostly just a morning of drinking bad coffee and watching other people’s children. Which is fine! I always like seeing my friends’ kids perform and I always, always enjoy the completely adorable kindergarten performance, but, well, you know.

This year was different. For one thing, I am VERY COGNIZANT of the fact that I have only one more year left at the school, which makes me enjoy things a lot more. For another, Mark was the emcee for the tea, which was the first time ever he had emceed. I was PRETTY EXCITED when he told me of his moment in the spotlight, although that excitement was slightly dimmed by the fact that he had already known for two weeks and hadn’t thought to tell me.

This is the conversation we had a few weeks ago.

Mark: Are you going to the Volunteer Tea?

Me: Of course, I go every year.

Mark: Oh good, because I’m the emcee.

Me: OMGOMGOMG THAT’S AWESOME I’M SO PROUD OF YOU AND I’M SO EXCITED! Did you just find this out today?

Mark: No, Ms. H. asked me a couple weeks ago.

Me: Why didn’t you tell me?

Mark: I AM telling you.

Mark and his emcee partner did a great job, and the highlight for me was winning a door prize and having Mark call out my name – he was so excited. The door prize, by the way, was a begonia. I had already put in all my bedding plants so I really had to squeeze it in, but it looks beautiful.

And, of course, the kindergarten performance was a delight. The three morning kindergarten classes filed in and it took way longer for them to get set up for their song-and-dance routine than the actual routine, which is quite entertaining in itself. Okay, you stand there, now we are making a circle, remember, face your partner. I just love how some kids get really into it, and others sort of stand there and mouth the occasional word.

Speaking of which, one of the Grade One/ Two classes performed a song about different Canadian coins, which is one of those tenacious earworms. I was humming along for days: the beaver, oh! The beaver! A little part of history…But I digress. I was mentally picking out my friends’ kids in the class and smiling at the enthusiasm of the hand gestures, when I noticed a boy in the back row standing stock still. I kept my eye on him as he looked side to side, and then began slowly edging back, behind the boy beside him, who was taller. It was super stealthy; he edged inch by inch until he was completely behind the other boy. I assume he thought he was hidden from view. The gig was kind of up when the other boy realized something was happening, turned around, and jumped a little to see someone right behind him. Since they were on the top row of risers I was a little nervous it would all end with someone falling off but luckily, no such incident occurred.

In addition to hosting the Volunteer Tea, later on the same day the school hosts a Senior’s Tea for the elderly in our community, of which there are many. All the morning’s performances were to be repeated in the afternoon for the seniors’ entertainment, and Mark and his partner were, of course, emceeing as well. As in most senior’s groups, there is a dearth of men; however, Mark mentioned that there was one elderly fellow who chatted with him for a bit. The festivities were about to start, and Mark asked him to take a seat. “Okay!” the old man said. “We’re a little short at home. Which one should I take?” Ah, old man humour. Who can resist it?

I knew for a fact that my sweet next door neighbour was at the tea, and so I asked Mark if he had seen her.

Me: Did you talk to Mrs. G?

Mark: I don’t know. Maybe.

Me: What do you mean, maybe?

Mark: Well, I said hi to everyone who came in the door.

Me: Well, did you SEE Mrs. G?

Mark: I’ve got to be honest with you, Mom. All those old ladies? They look alike to me. I can’t tell them apart.

Me: Oh.

Mark: Well, they all have short grey hair and glasses and they all had kind of the same clothes, so I just really didn’t know. And there were so many of them!

Well. At any rate, by all accounts the tea was a success. We followed it with one of those very busy, productive weekends that had me crossing things off the to-do list like crazy. I even helped my husband clean the eavestroughs. Every year, it’s the same. My husband briefly considers hiring someone to clean the eavestroughs. Then he says that he’s not going to pay “some asshole” $90 for something he can do himself. (Note: it’s always “some asshole.”) Then, midway through cleaning out the disgusting debris, while I hold the ladder and try not to get disgusting debris dripped on my person, he says Why didn’t I just HIRE someone to do this? By the time the job is finished, however, he says he is GLAD he never hired anyone, and it’s not so bad, while I scrub off whatever has dripped on me and track pine needles everywhere. Ah, it’s nice to know what to expect in life, sometimes, isn’t it? Just like an old man joke, it’s nice sometimes to know the punchline.

Wild Thing

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I just got back yesterday from an extra-long weekend at my in-laws’ house, and I have a question: how is it possible to have an absolute mountain of laundry when I actually DID two loads of laundry over the weekend? The answer is that there is no answer. There is only laundry.

I’m feeling a bit drained from all the driving, and then the rush to get groceries and prepare for this very short week, and…I guess I’m just feeling a bit drained in general. The weekend was nice, albeit a bit cool and a bit rainy, although it snowed quite a bit in Calgary and so I will not complain about it. Because of the cooler weather we took the kids to a movie: Angry Birds. It wasn’t the worst movie I have ever seen, but that’s about as positive as I can get about it.

Today I went to the garden centre to pick up my annual flowers, and let me tell you a secret: the Wednesday after the long weekend is PRIME plant purchasing time. I think they must get a big shipment in after the long weekend depletion (although – was anyone actually buying flowers in the snow? I don’t know.). In any case, “kid in a candy store” does not adequately describe my feelings when I’m in the garden centre. It’s all I can do to not gather up tables of plants in my arms and run out of the store. Even though I felt like I was spinning around and dancing like Maria von Trapp in the Alps, I was actually quite well behaved and kept reminding myself that I didn’t have enough room to take EVERYTHING I wanted home.

Well, technically I would have to remove the entire front lawn if I did take home everything I wanted, but that’s another story.

I love the garden centre with all my being. It feels like Christmas in there. I walk around with a huge smile on my face, talking to all the old people who shop there on weekdays. Just like with groceries, it’s me and the elderly. I love how all the old ladies dress up to go to the garden centre, in floral dresses or nice slacks, with tan nylons and open toed white sandals. Their white cardigans match their shoes and handbags, and their husbands push the cart for them, looking pained. Then there are the old men that are flying solo in the bedding plants; I always get into flirty chats with them regarding the newfangled wave petunias or those new impatiens that actually need part sun, rather than full shade. Good times. Flirting with the elderly seems to be a pastime of mine now; I feel quite youthful and a little bit wild, with my snapdragons and osteopermum that I might just plant together, I don’t know.

Anyway, enough of my depravity.

Despite the snow, the gardens and yard look so wonderful right now. For one thing, the lilacs all bloomed last week, which must be a new record:

lilac

The little yellow leopard’s bane, which my neighbour gave me years ago and which did not bloom at all last year, are in bloom:

buddha

And it’s almost Barkley’s birthday! He’s going to be eight on Monday.

barkley

I have much to tell you, mostly about weird comments regarding my eyebrows and also weird comments regarding my makeup, but that shall have to wait for another day. Those flowers aren’t going to plant themselves! xo

Shameless Name-Dropping Post

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I don’t pay too much attention to celebrities, it’s true, but I have to admit even I have a tendency to get star struck sometimes. If I very much admire someone, or if I think someone is incredibly talented, then all bets are off. I saw Colin Mochrie in Las Vegas in 2000 and I actually went up to him, introduced myself, and told him that “all of Canada was proud of him.” I once sat at a table with David Pelletier; I admired him greatly. I watched the whole gold medal debacle in a bar in Houston, and all the kind Texans assured me that Canada was robbed. I didn’t say this to David Pelletier, but then again, I didn’t get to say too much to him as he spent the dinner texting Jamie Sale about babysitting arrangements and, possibly, how lame his tablemates were.

David Pelletier

I met Jim Cuddy at the same function, in 2008, and I still refer to him as “my boyfriend.”

JimCuddy

My friend and I once specifically took our kids to the zoo just because Will and Kate were going to be there, and we took photos of their motorcade from the gorilla viewing area, which made it look like we were creeping in the bushes (we weren’t).

willandkate2

So when my friend and fellow YMC’er Ashley asked if I wanted to meet Catriona Lemay Doan, I pounced on it.

Well, to be totally honest, I was a wee bit more excited about seeing Ashley than I was to meet the three-time Olympic medalist and “fastest woman on ice.” You see, there are many, many benefits to working digitally from home with people all across the country, but there is a huge drawback: I rarely get to see those wonderful people in the flesh. So when Ashley – who lives in Halifax – said she was going to be in Calgary, and I was ALSO going to see her the following week in Toronto, well. I was pretty excited, is all I’m saying.

ashley

But there is something very cool about meeting an Olympian. For one thing, I am probably the farthest thing ever from being an Olympic athlete, i.e., I am terrible at all sports. So I very much admire people who devote their lives to sport and become elite athletes: a) they are incredibly gifted, and b) they are incredibly hard-working.

Catriona Lemay Doan is both of these things. She is also suffering from osteoarthritis in her toes – all those years on the ice! – as well as shoulder issues. She had partnered with Ashley’s company, InnoviCares, to talk about chronic pain management.

As an aside, I only just found out what Ashley’s company does, even though she’s been working there a while. It provides a free card for customers to get discounts on certain pharmaceuticals. Now, as any good economist knows, there is no such thing as a free lunch, so I questioned Ashley extensively about this. I mean, if it’s free to the consumers, and the consumers are getting free savings, someone has to be footing the bill. Who is it? It turns out that the pharmaceutical companies fund this, so if you already need these medications, this card would be a good idea. I do not have any specific prescriptions, but Ashley told me that they are starting to get into the vitamin and supplement market, and I do love a good supplement. It works with your existing drug plan, and I know that some of my relatives are on some of the covered medications, so I’m going to suggest it to them.

Anyway, I was pretty excited to meet Catriona, who is absolutely gorgeous in person – both physically and on the inside too. She is a warm, lovely person who immediately made me feel like a friend. We chatted for a long time, and although we started talking health care and how athletes usually have such a short term goal in mind that they often discount long-term effects of their sport on their physical well being, conversations turned to kids, schools, and food.

Things Catriona Lemay Doan and I Have In Common


1) We were both born in the 70s, although she’s a few years older than I am.

2) We are the same height.

3) We have kids who are similar age.

4) Her kids go to school with my friend’s kids; in fact, her daughter is in the same class as Mark’s preschool buddy. That’s like two degrees of separation!

5) She used to live in the next neighbourhood over from mine.

6) We both grew up on the Prairies.

Ways In Which Catriona Lemay Doan and I Differ

1)  She is an Olympic athlete.

2) She is not vegetarian.

3) I’ve never been a commentator at any Olympics, although I did get to attend a couple of events during the 1988 Olympics.

See? More similarities than differences! It’s a small world after all, we are all sisters under the skin, etc.

Also, medals are really heavy.

Catriona

 

Online Friends: They’re Real and They’re Spectacular

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Thank you all for your very kind words, and for sending thoughts and prayers to Alison’s family. I was reflecting this weekend on the nature of online friendship, and how such friends are real – and spectacular! – and how wonderful it is to be part of a community that is not limited by geography.

So it was kind of funny timing that I saw one of my online friends had posted a piece that was a “Dear Mommy Blogger” post. I don’t particularly feel like linking to it, because while the message itself has some merit, the delivery is vicious, mean, and shaming. Allow me to give you a screen-shot snippet:

mommyblog

It kind of made me laugh ruefully, because here I am, celebrating the relationships between bloggers and twitter-ers and such, and so happy about how the internet can bring people together from all over the continent, and feeling the loss of a friend and the warmth and love of other friends, and this woman wants me to know that our blogs fucking suck and nobody is reading my shit.

Which, well. I realize that this is directed towards sponsored posts and brand ambassadors and the like, but really. If you’ve been reading the Boyhouse for any length of time, you will realize that I do not write sponsored posts in this space. I do like to give shout-outs to my friends’ companies, as well as to giant corporations, but I don’t get paid for it, nor do I want to. I have, however, written sponsored posts on other websites, and, as I said to Hannah (HI HANNAH), I’d probably sell my soul for a Lululemon sponsorship if it meant complimentary Wunder Unders and Tri-Y tops. If they threw in a Ta Ta Tamer? Well. I would welcome my new Luon overlords, is what I’m saying.

Anyway. People have a right to make money, and we may not like the way some people choose to earn, but there’s no need to be an asshole about it.

I might be slightly sensitive because I had a friend, a real-life, have-coffee-with, chat-with-often kind of friend, who dropped me after I started writing for the YMC website. She thought I was selling myself out, which is a ridiculous idea if you know how much website writers make. If I was really selling myself out, I’d do it for more money, you know? Or maybe I wouldn’t have left my job, all those years ago, in which I worked as a quantitative analyst for a large multinational corporation.

Ah well, we all have our issues, I suppose.

How was your weekend? We spent ours at my parents’ house; it was my mom’s birthday, and we had a lovely time. My husband took me on a 16.5 kilometer bike ride yesterday morning, and when we got back the kids wanted us all to go out together. The upshot was that I rode 23.5 kilometers, and it was the first ride of the season. It felt great until I got into the car this morning – MY BUM. Yoga felt awesome until I got to my seated postures. I felt like I needed a cushion or something. The good news is that my actual muscles aren’t sore, which I thought they might be. But my poor behind, I am telling you.

Also – this week marks the 30 year anniversary of Top Gun! We all know how I feel about that movie. Wait, you don’t? I wrote all about Life Lessons From Top Gun on Throwing It Back last year. Damn, that is a good movie. Talk to me, Goose.

On Friendship

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When I was young, I had penpals. Some of them were cabinmates from sleepaway camp; we’d pledge our undying friendship during the last campfire, and we’d swear to write each other until the following summer brought us together again. I was penpal with a distant cousin who lived in California; we shared the same name and were the same age, and when we finally met each other in person, it was like we had always been friends. We exchanged letters for years after that; I told her things I couldn’t tell my neighbourhood friends. I wrote another cousin several times a month; we went through our teenage angst together and wrote about first cars and boyfriends and parties that got out of hand. I went through piles of stamps monogrammed stationary, given to me by my grandmother every year. Grandma got letters from me too. I loved writing letters and I loved receiving letters, and any chance I got I would pull out that scented notepaper with my name and address across the top.

I don’t write letters anymore. My monogrammed stationary has been replaced by an avatar picture and a cover photo. My penpals are the women in my Twitter and Facebook feeds, and my blog roll. We bloggers like to tell everybody everything, and we chat not about first cars and boyfriends and parties, but about our families and our celebrity crushes and our wine consumption. We talk about makeup and exercise and recipes, we talk about movies and books. Some I have met once or twice, some I have never met. Some become the kind of friends who lift you up when you’re down, who you can always count on for friendship and counselling. If we were thirteen, we would cut our fingers and become blood sisters, and then we would write letters until the next time we could be together.

three

I’ve been lucky enough to make connections – real connections – with women in every province in the country, and I’ve often dreamed of road-tripping across Canada, visiting those I know from Vancouver Island to PEI, from Southern Ontario to Flin Flon, Manitoba.

I was telling my husband about my dream of road-tripping, not only across Canada, but in the United States as well. When the boys fly the nest, I told him, we could drive all over the States and visit all my “penpals” who are scattered across the country. We’d visit Eryn in Washington State, Maggie in Oregon, and Mary and Terry in California. We’d see Sharon in Cincinnati and pop in to see Mike and Sandy in Michigan and Gretchen in Colorado. We’d see Kate and Leah in New Hampshire, Karen in Massachusetts and Cherie in Maine. We’d eat fresh vegetables at Trish’s farm in upstate New York, and go to Pennsylvania where we’d visit with Sarah and Sherri. In Maryland we’d see Steph and her family. We’d see the Washington monuments with Kimberly and have a coffee with Cara, hopefully when the cherry blossoms were in bloom. We’d spend ages at Liv’s in Georgia, exhausting her Southern hospitality and sipping bourbon, and we’d talk all the live long day about everything. We could see the goats and chickens at Stephanie’s in Alabama. We’d spend some time visiting my husband’s friends in Texas, but while we were there we would definitely make the time to go and see Alison.

But then, you see, Alison died this week.

Alison was one of my first friends on Twitter. She was a frequent commenter on this blog, and she wrote a blog herself, which I always enjoyed. She was a lovely, kind person who never had a bad thing to say about anyone. She was encouraging, she was positive, she loved talking about trends from our teen years, and she looked beautiful in bright colours. But she’s gone now, and I wish I had the chance to tell her that I valued our friendship. I wish, instead of talking about eye cream and tangerine tops, I had told her that she mattered to me, that she was a good friend, that I admired her.

I don’t think I ever did. So she will never know that her passing has left a gap in my life, and that I will miss her dearly.

After I turned forty, I realized that I needed to make more effort with people. We are all busy, we are all tired, we all have crazy schedules and hectic days. But as I told one of my dearest friends, if I can’t make time for one coffee a month with the girls in the neighbourhood, I need to re-examine my life. In six months I won’t remember what deadline I was working towards, but I will remember missing a friend’s birthday lunch. And just as I have strived to make more effort with the people I have the opportunity to see often, I am striving to make more effort to let the people I don’t get to see know what they mean to me.

When Alison passed, I was having drinks and laughs with my colleagues and friends in Toronto. I had spent the week prior to that busy, busy, busy. So busy I didn’t notice that I hadn’t heard from her in a few days.

Always make the time.

I care about you.

You are valued and you matter.

You will not be forgotten.

 

Tiny Handprints On Furniture And Walls

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How was your weekend? I know that Mother’s Day can be fraught with all sorts of emotions and mixed feelings for some people, and if you are one of those, I hope you had some peace over the weekend.

I had some nostalgic, emotional moments when I realized, late Saturday night, that I had not been disallowed from unpacking any backpacks this week. Steph had commented on my Throwing It Back post last week that she remembered when her son no longer brought home Mother’s Day crafts from school, and that comment resurfaced in my brain after I realized that no one had panicked when I opened up backpacks this whole past week. Now, rationally, I know that all things eventually come to an end, and just like it would be very weird to get one of those “Tiny Handprints” poems from a nine-year-old, so too would it be strange to get a Mom-related acrostic poem written on a doily from a teenager. I knew such crafts would no longer come one day, I just didn’t realize that this Mother’s Day would be that day.

Landslide.

It was apparent that my hunch was correct on Sunday morning. Every year for Mother’s Day, my mom and I get pedicures and I go to the garden centre and buy whatever I like and call it my “Mother’s Day gift.” In actuality, I do not want a physical gift on Mother’s Day, just this nice little pedicure-and-plant-buying ritual. But I’ve always had some kind of craft to look at and admire on Mother’s Day, so it did feel a bit strange. I realized that I would never again receive a Mother’s Day craft. Never again is a very powerful concept.

I went to yoga and while I ujjayi breathed, I thought of all the moms in Fort Mac, and how the boys helped me plant the garden the day before, and how everything is wonderful and I really don’t even have room on my dressers for more crafts anyway, since I’ve been displaying most of them since I was given them and things are a little crowded with construction paper. I left the Shala smiling and with renewed perspective.

People, I came home and the boys and my husband had cleaned the entire house. They even scrubbed the baseboards, mopped the downstairs bathroom, and vacuumed the stairs.

Fuck the doily crafts, this was the best Mother’s Day gift ever.

I was completely surprised and frankly, elated. It came to me that motherhood is just one long string of eras, and I am out of the crafting era and into the “acts of service” era and this era is awesome. Not that I didn’t love the preschool teas…

tea

They were adorable. I enjoyed the “spa day” that Jake’s kindergarten teacher had devised, and I wore my bright-pink nail polish with pride, or something…

nailskindy nailskindy2

What I’m saying is I love this new era, I really do. The boys helped my husband make dinner and they all cleaned up and it was kind of a Mother’s Day fantasy come true, to be honest. I used to long for moments by myself, to have a cup of coffee without someone needing help in the bathroom and to make dinner without someone crying in the kitchen, I used to just long for moments where no one was touching me or needing something or talking to me.

And now I have it. I have whole pots of coffee in peace, unless someone desperately needs to know what Reverend Lovejoy’s wife’s name is, or someone wants to expound on their theory that Star Wars could be real, we really don’t know, the universe is so big. No one ever cries when I am trying to get dinner on the table and when the kids get home from school they just hang out and don’t need a thing from me. I’m going to Toronto for YMC-related things tomorrow and it’s really not a big deal. Things will keep on ticking without me; they might be more slightly more complicated, but our little world will keep on turning while I’m gone. I’ll be missed, but not in a oh my god, the universe just imploded kind of way.

I didn’t mean to get all maudlin, but suddenly I understand those irritating old people who would say things like “Enjoy them, it goes so fast” in the grocery store when one kid would be crying in the cart and the other would be pulling things off the shelf. I mean, I’m not going to turn into one of those people because comments like that are in the Top Ten Least Helpful Things To Say To A Mother, but I understand them. And if I went back in time I’d still long for a cup of coffee in peace, I’m sure.

Still.

So to all you mamas of little ones out there, you are doing a great job. Keep on keeping on. And to all you mamas of older kids out there, well, I get it now. It actually does go fast and we can’t stop time, so we better enjoy the ride while we are on it. In the meantime, I’m going to enjoy my very clean house, and pack for my trip tomorrow, and plan to talk about Star Wars and The Simpsons nonstop at the dinner table tonight. xo

Northern Tragedy

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I had a happy, fun post planned for today, all about Music Monday and the garden centre and how the orthodontist told me Mark’s appointment would be fifteen minutes and it really took an hour, but everything has taken a backseat to the fires in Fort McMurray. If you haven’t seen the images, here is the latest. As of this moment, the entire city was evacuated – that is almost 90,000 people – and 1600 buildings have been destroyed. There is one highway out of Fort McMurray, and the images of bumper-to-bumper traffic while the flames raged within meters will stay with me forever.

My husband and I were watching the news last night, and when a photo was shown of vehicles trying to drive away with flames, smoke, and ash all around, he said, “I guess there are probably lots of kids and families in those cars.” We looked at each other silently, and then continued to watch.

Really, there’s nothing to say and do, being far away, other than to donate to the Red Cross and wait until the fire is out to see what else is needed. It’s a terrible tragedy and I personally know many people who work in, live in, or are from Fort McMurray. I cannot imagine what they must be going through.

The good news is that tragedy often brings out the best in people, as people in Northern Alberta opened their homes to people fleeing. No one has been hurt or killed, everyone in the city, including all in hospitals or acute care facilities, has been evacuated, and two babies have been born at worksite camps. People are working together and will continue to work together, I’m sure.

Sadly, tragedy also often brings out the worst in people. I have some advice for you: during times like this, the only thing that is acceptable to say is this is terrible and how can I help? Not acceptable: politicking and comments that indicate that the residents and workers are to blame for this tragedy. If you have reservations about the energy industry in general, and the oilsands in particular, then those reservations are best kept to yourself until the fires are out and the damage is assessed. Even then, compassion and empathy go a long way. Imagine what it would feel like to leave your home and all your possessions, which you may never see again, with your family in tow and your town burning to the ground behind you. People ran out of gas and were stranded on the highway, with nowhere to go. Unless you have been to that part of the world, you can’t imagine how isolated it is.

Anyway. Perhaps I should end on a more cheery note, the one on which I had planned for today. Music Monday was beautiful, and the children sang Is Somebody Singing, which never fails to make me verklempt. They also sang a bizarre song about a possum comin’ a knockin’, and each classroom had a verse to sing. It…seemed long to me, but it was my kids’ favourite part of Music Monday so I’m happy they’re happy.

For the first time in many years, I have tulips that are blooming! The squirrels didn’t eat those bulbs *knocks wood ferociously* and now look:

tulips3

I went to the garden centre today; it’s tradition in my house that for Mother’s Day (or thereabouts) I buy myself some plants. I thought I showed restraint:

flowers

I texted the photo to my husband, who replied “Not enough.” Is it any wonder I love the guy? I assured him that it was only my first trip of the season. After all, I couldn’t fit more in the cart!

Take care, everyone in Fort Mac. Our hearts are with you. xo