Monthly Archives: September 2016

Black Moon Day

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We are all tired. Is there anything more boring that can be said than I’m tired. We are all in a permanent state of – at the very least – low-level tiredness. This is just a part of being an adult; if you had a room full of people, and asked them how they felt, the vast majority would say that they felt tired. The ones who didn’t are probably on cocaine.

So, there’s nothing particularly interesting about being tired; that said, this week has me feeling like a hollowed out shell of a woman. I was going to blame it on the Black Moon, but then I found out that, according to astrology, the week leading up to the Black Moon is supposed to be extremely peaceful. Well then.

I wasn’t feeling particularly peaceful yesterday, when I received an email from the school, addressed to the entire parent body. I wonder if our beloved principal, when she was preparing to embark on her career in academia, ever thought that she would spend her time drafting emails begging parents to not perform illegal maneuvers in the middle of the road in front of the school. I wonder if she, fresh-faced and eager, ever thought that she would have to put out constant reminders to parents not to a) jaywalk across the very busy road with children in tow, dodging moving cars and popping out between parked cars, b) park in the bus zone when there are nine school buses needing to access said zone, c) park in clearly-marked no-parking zones, d) take illegal u-turns in the middle of a busy road in front of the school, or, my personal favourite, e) try to pass the school buses by driving into oncoming traffic while all of the above were happening. I feel quite sure that when she was in university getting her teaching degree, she never saw that coming. I sure hope to make a difference to children, to educate them, to shape young minds and prepare them for the future; also, I hope to send semi-monthly emails to their parents to remind them to not do illegal shit with their vehicles that puts everyone in a dangerous situation.

In any case, the Black Moon is supposed to signify a change or shift, new opportunities, and a time of clarity. Plant those seeds of positivity, be the change you want to see, etcetera, etcetera. Put shopping carts away and try not to run over children in school zones.

I suppose I shouldn’t write about the changes I want others to make – seriously, my kid is a crossing guard, don’t run him over – but instead about the changes in my own life. At this very moment, we are getting our roof re-shingled, much to Barkley’s chagrin. They just started an hour ago and already the noise is making me feel a bit crazy. I feel a bit like the Grinch, and the noise, noise, NOISE!

I had another, less emotionally-impactful change this week; I had my hair coloured. Earlier I was talking to a young girl at the yoga studio; I mentioned something about when you have kids, it never stops, there’s always something to deal with – orthodontist appointments, meetings with teachers, homework, activities, there is always something. She looked at me with complete surprise and said, “Oh wow, you have KIDS?” I wasn’t sure of the implication; surely she didn’t mean I look too young to have kids.

While I was getting my totally grey roots coloured, I stared at myself in the salon mirror. I guess the lighting in a salon has to be a certain way in order for the hair therapist to see what she’s doing, but hoo boy. I found myself obsessively staring at myself, my undereye circles needing their own postal code, my deep horizontal rivets in my forehead, my marionette lines around my mouth. I kept thinking I guess this is my face now, I guess this is what I look like. I remembered my mother-in-law saying to me once that she felt complete and utter shock on seeing a photo of herself: an unrecognizable old lady on the outside, which was not consistent with the way she felt on the inside.

Now, I don’t think I’m an unrecognizable old lady – YET – but the salon mirror doesn’t lie.

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Well, we all know it’s a precious gift to be allowed to grow older, so I will embrace my face. I won’t embrace my grey hair though.

Before (smudgy, end-of-day makeup):

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After (the lighting in the car is much more flattering):

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Have a wonderful weekend, everyone. Enjoy this Black Moon and I hope you have lots of positive changes going on in your life. xo

This is fine.

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I consider myself to be a pretty upbeat, optimistic person, but this morning I read a post about being prepared for emergencies like possible rioting due to civil unrest and it made me feel a bit like this:

And a little bit like this:

 

So, anyway, let’s think of other things. Let’s not think of how I’ve been Kondo-ing everything, including donating all my extra towels and sheets, and working to NOT stockpile up on things, etcetera. EVERYTHING IS FINE WE ARE ALL GOING TO BE OKAY WORRYING DOES NOTHING EXCEPT DRAIN STRENGTH TAKE DEEP BREATHS HAKUNA MATATA.

What I really need to do is adopt my husband’s attitude of No Matter What Happens The Next Day Basically Everyone Will Just Get Up And Go To Work. Whether or not this is true, it’s good for my mental health, serenity now serenity now serenity now.

Speaking of serenity, Facebook Memories reminded me that it was three years ago today that I found mouse droppings in my kitchen. So, it was only three years ago that I had complete nervous breakdown and considered burning the house to the ground to start fresh, but really just cried a lot and spent hours disinfecting everything, buying pantry staples, and transferring all said foodstuffs into impenetrable glass and stainless steel containers. Three years! How time does fly. We haven’t had a mouse issue since and my mental state is much, much better for it. Serenity now.

I’m so glad we have the Facebook Memories feature, or the anniversary of that incident would have passed unmarked. What an age we live in.

Today is Picture Day at the junior high, and it is also the day the grade sevens start their swimming module in phys ed. Maybe the school gets a kickback for Picture Retake Day, I don’t know. I do know that grade seven gym is in second period on Tuesdays, so the likelihood of them all getting their photos done prior to being in the pool seems small. It doesn’t really matter to me, since my short-haired son looks pretty much the same no matter what happens, but I feel indignant on behalf of all those who might take pains with their appearance, only to have those pains be for naught. I think I would have ohmygod literally died when I was that age, because how could we ever have teased our bangs to appropriate height in the small amount of time given for changing? How could we have reapplied our coloured mascara and crimped our hair in only ten minutes?

To be totally honest, I never did have coloured mascara nor a hair crimper, but oh, how I wanted one. I had to be satisfied with a Toni home perm.

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Some brief updates: the carts are gone from the alley. I repeat, the carts are gone. They have either died in their gang turf war and their pieces are buried in the gravel, or someone took them away. We will never know the answer.

What I do know, however, is that there was an unknown black cat in my backyard yesterday. Jake and I were walking home and Barkley started lunging and pulling on his leash like nobody’s business. Nobody, that is, but the strange cat that was sitting in full view near our back door. Jake offered to go shoo it away while I held Barkley, and when he turned around it had disappeared. We looked all around and couldn’t see it, so we concluded it hopped over the fence. To be safe I put the going-insane dog in the house, and Jake and I followed suit. As we emptied his backpack and chatted, Jake suddenly yelled “THE CAT CAME BACK!” and instead of answering with the very next day as would be my instinct, I ran to the back door. We looked again and the cat was gone. We were just about to go inside and question our sanity, but Jake found it hidden underneath a potentilla. It escaped over the fence and we watched it scurry away, thankful for a few things: that Barkley was still in the house, albeit having some kind of dog-stroke, that there was a cat and it wasn’t just our imagination, and that it was GONE. I don’t know whose cat it was but I don’t need a) Barkley to attack anyone’s beloved pet, or b) Barkley to get scratched by some unknown cat and therefore get Cat Scratch Fever, which I assume is a real, tangible threat.

I mean, I have enough to worry about without that. Civil unrest, for one.

I’m not a cat person by any means; I never know what cats are doing, I find their sudden movements startling, and I much prefer the straightforward, tail-wagginess of dogs. However, it’s too bad that cat didn’t show up on my doorstep three years ago. I could have saved myself several bouts of hysteria.

Five Things For Friday

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Decorative Gourd Season

Everyone’s talking about the first day of fall, oh, the excitement of the crispness in the air and the leaves turning and pumpkin spice everything taking over the world like alien overlords. I don’t mean to be a curmudgeon about things but I swear, I thought it was going to snow last night. The rain had that sleety feeling and the already-changed leaves were rapidly being blown off of trees. You want crispness in the air? That’s crispness. Today is much more temperate but Winter Is Coming and also I loathe pumpkin spice. However. I do like sweaters and boots and scarves so I guess that’s something. The leaves that are still on the trees are also very pretty.

We’re Jamming

Today I really wanted to make peach jam but I didn’t have quite enough peaches. I wondered what would happen if I added pears, so I did. I was completely befuddled as to why the recipe, which I had cut in half, made over twice the amount of jam. Was it pear related? Was it some kind of jam-chemistry that I wasn’t aware of? Was I magic? Then I realized I cut the fruit in half without cutting the sugar. So I now have eight very sweet jars of jam. I am gravely disappointed in this.

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How Did I Get On This Mailing List

I received a catalogue in the mail today; I don’t know why or how but I am really not the target audience for it. It is almost entirely velour capes and “country classics” and is pretty much the opposite of clothing that I wear.

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There is an entire section based on Fall Leaf Motifs. As I flipped through I kept thinking wow, there are a lot of pajamas in this catalogue, but no. Those are not pajamas.

I Cannot Stop Staring At My Fridge

Yesterday I was having a conversation (HI SHARYL HI LINDA) and the words You Should See Her Fridge came up. My friend’s sister keeps her stainless steel fridge spotless, and because I am apparently Heloise, Queen of Household Hints, I immediately asked to be let in on the secret. Linda told me and I implemented within five minutes of walking in my door. People, it’s so simple, and yet so glorious. Fill your sink with very hot water and dish soap (wash the dishes later, so as to not waste it – Bonus Heloise Hint!) then scrub your fridge down with a sponge. If it’s really gross in parts, use the non-abrasive side of the sponge. Then – this is the key – dry it off with a flannelette cloth. I have a plethora of old flannelette receiving blankets I have kept since the boys were babies, and they work perfectly. They are decorated with puppies and giraffes, but they are effective.

Anyway. I must tell you that this has been life altering. For as long as I’ve had my fridge I’ve been trying things with vinegar and coconut oil and everything else, and the secret is hot water, dish soap, and drying with a flannelette cloth. I keep admiring my fridge in all its shiny glory.

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Five Fictional Characters That Describe Me

There’s a little meme that’s going around on social media and I find it fascinating, what fictional characters people identify with. I have always identified with Sally Albright on so many levels, but what about the other two? I thought about this for probably longer than I should have, as I sat in traffic and exercised on the elliptical trainer and stared at the sleet on the windshield as I waited for the kids at karate. Finally, I had it! I think we can all agree, it’s perfect.

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More magical journeys

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Strange things are happening in the neighbourhood. There was a Home Depot cart in my back alley. It’s not uncommon to see carts from Walmart and Co-Op, both of which are within walking distance, but the nearest Home Depot is at least five kilometers away. Did someone take a cart and walk all the way to my back alley with it, before abandoning it to its fate? How else would it have gotten here? What was its journey, what was it carrying? These are questions that I am seriously wondering.

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Note the Budweiser can at its wheel. I suspect there are more cans in its basket, but I didn’t actually get out of the car to investigate.

The cart was there for a few days, then it moved to someone’s front lawn. Currently it’s residing on a nearby boulevard. Just across from its original position, a different cart appeared. I think it’s from Canadian Tire. The carts are multiplying.

Maybe I find myself somewhat obsessed with the journey of these carts because of my own irritation about people not returning carts to the proper corral. Obviously these carts were used for different purposes, and that’s fine. But as we all know, the people who leave their carts in random parking spaces, or worse, mere feet away from the corral, are the worst people in the world. Okay, maybe not the worst. Maybe lazy is a better word. Or inconsiderate of other people. Or making the store employees’ lives that much worse, when the corral is RIGHT THERE JUST PUT IT AWAY FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. Tomato, to-mah-to.

Anyway, enough about the fascinating journey of the Home Depot cart and its new friend or possibly rival, the Canadian Tire cart.

I just thought of something. Maybe the Home Depot cart moved because of a turf war. Maybe this is a Sharks/ Jets kind of thing. Like this, but with carts.

Speaking of journeys, I have great news for those of you following along with my Kondo journey. The charity that was supposed to pick up my donations but didn’t called back and rescheduled. Hooray! Mark and my husband lugged all the bags back out onto the step early Friday morning, to the interest of a new addition to the neighbourhood: a skunk. Eeek! Fortunately the skunk scurried down the street and – possibly unfortunately – hid underneath a neighbour’s van. This neighbour has two noisy dogs, and I imagined the worst, but so far things have been non-stinky. Possibly Pepe le Pew found his way to an uninhabited-by-pets yard to stay in.

My life lately has been yoga, yoga, yoga, which is wonderful. Things are busy and hectic in the best way possible. We went to an information and Meet the Teacher night at the junior high, and the principal mentioned the active Parent Association, and the desperate need for a Treasurer, and my husband gave me a look that needed no verbal interpretation. I did NOT attend the subsequent meeting because we all know how that would have ended, and I really just can’t anymore.

We are having a real Calgary fall, which means that yesterday the dog park looked like this:

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Whereas today is freezing cold and rainy. I have brought out my warm, lined fall coat and I dub today’s Clothing Theme to be Sith.

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Come to the Dark Side! We have cookies.

Book Review: Do Your OM Thing

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You guys, I’m participating in a book tour! I received an email a while ago gauging my interest in receiving a book for review – the book in question being Do Your OM Thing by Rebecca Pacheco. Usually the emails I receive are pitches to try out a new kind of toilet paper and write up my thoughts on it, or to see if my readers would be interested in a coupon code for beef jerky, in exchange for my honest review of a dried meat product. So I was kind of excited that TLC Book Tours thought I might be interested in reviewing a new yoga book. I agreed because a) I will never, ever turn down a free yoga book, b) the premise – which you can read here – about fitting off-the-mat yoga into your day-to-day life is relevant and interesting to me, and c) I loved the title. Hey, I’ve been putting the OM in OMG since 2008, so I love a good play on words.

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This book is an enjoyable book that reads like a blog – and no wonder, the author is a blogger at omgirl.com. It covers everything from the Yoga Sutras to chakras to spirituality, but you don’t need to be a yogi to be interested in this book. I think that this is relevant for everyone, in that the focus isn’t on crazy postures like this:

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but rather on how to live an authentically beautiful life. True, inner yoga. Because as we all know, it doesn’t matter if you can do this:

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if you’re an asshole, then you are not a yogi.

I promise, no more gratuitous yoga photos. Okay, maybe one more:

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As I went through the book, I marked passages that spoke to me. Here are a few of my favourites; maybe they will speak to you too.

Brahmacharya: Abstinence

The chapter on Brahmacharya deals with promiscuity in a very unique way. Most of us have a particular definition about abstinence or promiscuity, and it has to do with sexytimes. But a modern approach to this is very interesting: what if we dealt with energetic promiscuity? What if we looked at how we commit our time and energy to other people: are we present in our commitments or do we spread ourselves thin without paying much attention to any one thing? This really spoke to me, as I have a tendency to take on way more than I should. I had to practically force myself not to check off all the boxes when my older son’s school volunteer forms came home. No, Nicole, you do NOT need to say you’re available for everything. I have a tendency to say yes to unimportant things, which leaves less energy for actually important ones.

Food For Thought: “Committing ourselves to too many people and obligations in which we’re not truly invested can be a form of energetic promiscuity, which runs the risk of making us feel used up and discarded after.” – Right? Who can relate to that?

Aparigraha: Greedlessness

Sometimes it’s hard not to be greedy, but the antidote to this is gratitude for what we have. Clearing out the excess in my house from my recent Kondo-ing extravaganza has actually left me feeling grateful and immensely happy with the things I kept. Interesting note: the author discusses jealousy as being spiritual greed.

Food For Thought: “Whereas other negative emotions like fear and anger can have positive and productive applications, jealousy is a wounded, lame creature that gnaws away at the heart and contributes nothing in return. It’s corrosive and crappy for the person who feels it and has no impact on the person to whom it’s directed.” Exactly. I need to think about this next time I feel those jealousy pangs.

The Body

The chapter on our bodies and how we take care of them is beautiful; often we conflate what a person looks like with what it must feel like to be that person. The author discusses how what we embody on the inside shows in our appearance.

Food For Thought: “If you want to embody beauty, you’ll have to do things that genuinely make you feel beautiful…they frequently include smiling or laughing…The ways in which we choose to move our bodies and nourish ourselves are two of the greatest gifts we are given every day.”

Vishuddha/ Throat Chakra

We all know that words have meaning, and the wrong words can be very hurtful. We’ve all been there, we’ve all said things we didn’t mean in the heat of the moment, we’ve misspoken, we’ve communicated badly – it happens to everyone. But being conscious of your words, tone, and thoughts is so important. It’s something that I strive for; to think before I talk or type. Is what I’m going to say kind? Is it useful? Most importantly, would I want to be spoken to in that way myself?

Food For Thought: “If we say the words, we’ve created their energetic vibration in the world. Even if we’re the only ones who hear the negativity, it has an effect. The language of our words, spoken and unspoken, profoundly affects who we are and how we feel, physically, mentally, and emotionally.”

This book is full of gems, and is lovely and thought-provoking too. Not everyone is interested in the physical aspect of yoga, but the off-the-mat aspects are relevant to us all.

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A slight blip in my magical journey

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“Things seem a lot busier with your yoga teacher training.” My husband said this to me over the weekend and it feels like A Massive Understatement. Saturday morning I got up early to bake a cake, then showered, bought groceries, took the kids to karate, and came home to frost and assemble the cake prior to heading off to the Saturday session of teacher training. Fifteen minutes after I got home in the late afternoon, the guests for Jake’s sleepover birthday party arrived. So things have been a bit hectic.

Happy hectic, though. The sleepover was a huge success; I really like the boys’ friends and we did get some sleep as well. The kids didn’t get much sleep, but I got a decent amount, so that’s all that counts, in my opinion. Everyone was in bed early last night and this morning we all felt pretty much rested for the busy week ahead.

I guess I’m not used to this level of busyness – there is something going on every night this week, except for tonight. Between karate, the Welcome Back Picnic, Meet The Teacher Night, and yoga teacher training, my evenings are all filled up. Plus, we have a very special day coming up – Jake is turning eleven!

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That’s one of my favourite photos, ever. And hey, I’m a brunette! And I have yet to develop those deep horizontal forehead lines. Please bear with me while I admire my youth for a moment, along with my super-cute Patriots fan.

So it was a busy, fun weekend, marred only by one little incident. As you know, I’ve been Kondo-ing my house, and all the bags and boxes of things to donate have been sitting in our pantry/ storage area. I gave a few boxes of my favourite things (older Lululemon, pretty sweaters, a dress) to a friend, the children’s outgrown winter coats, snowpants, hats and mitts are all going to the school for newcomers, and I had about twenty large bags and boxes that were slated for donation. My husband has been asking me every day WHEN those bags and boxes would be gone, to which I answered austerely, Saturday. Saturday they would all be gone.

A local charity, which regularly calls me for clothing/ toy/ household items had arranged to pick everything up on Saturday. I stipulated that it would be a large pickup, and they said that would be no problem, as long as I had the donations out by 8:00 am Saturday morning. For days I had been slowly bringing bags and boxes up every time I went downstairs, in preparation. Here’s a sample of what my front entry looked like, and this didn’t even include all of them:

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So when I got home on Saturday afternoon and the bags were still sitting on my front step, my husband was all sorts of unhappy. We waited…and waited…and waited…until finally, we reached a state of acceptance: the bags were not going to be picked up that day. One of my friends texted me to see if we’d had a pickup, because she was waiting for one as well.

Insert slight frowny face here.

Rain was in the forecast, and my husband was unwilling to have the tripping hazards back in our house, and so they are currently sitting in his truck, waiting to find a new home. In The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, Marie Kondo talks about wishing our possessions a happy journey as they find their way to new owners. In my case, the journey seems to be stalled. I hope my old sheets and the Ally McBeal soundtrack aren’t feeling sad that they are in limbo right now. Don’t worry, guys. Someone is going to love you again soon.

New (School) Year, New Me

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I have that autumnal Back To School Energy right now, that feeling that it’s A New Year, And A New You, and I’m brimming with goals and things to do and filling my days up with Productive Activities And Work-Related Things. Either it’s a coping mechanism for the house being dead quiet all day and my birds flying the nest, or it’s just a natural part of my yearly cycle; whichever it is, it’s a good feeling to Cross Things Off The Lists.

I am almost done Kondo-ing the entire house! I only have the kids’ schoolwork and artwork bins to take care of – things that probably should wait until AFTER the first week of school, because EMOTIONS – and I probably should take care of the storage room filled with old paint cans and, apparently, shoe boxes. Well, the paint cans can go to the firehall, and I think we can all agree that this will be a very pleasant task indeed, although not as pleasant as when the kids were small and the firefighters would kindly let them sit in the truck and give them fire safety colouring books. There’s a big, big difference in being an early-thirties mom with two adorable little boys, and being a forty-one year old woman lugging paint cans by herself. I mean, they probably aren’t going to give me the tour or let me sit in the truck.

That reminds me, I really should clean out the schoolwork bins sooner rather than later, because when Jake was in preschool I chaperoned the field trip to the firehall. I rarely volunteered for field trips, and so that probably indicates my feelings about the firehall. Anyway, the firefighters challenged two of the parents to a race, to see who could put on the firefighter’s outfit the fastest. Is it called an outfit? I don’t know. You know what I mean – the boots, overall pants, coat, helmet and everything. I was chosen to be one of those parents. Somewhere in one of those bins is a photo the preschool teacher sent me, of me in the firefighter outfit with Jake.

I should probably mention that I won the race. It was against the lone father who decided to chaperone. IN YOUR FACE, STEVE.

(His name may or may not have been Steve. It’s actually killing me that I can’t remember his name.)

My husband has been pretty busy these days, lots of regular stuff plus doing little things around the house like repainting the bathroom after filling giant holes in the wall. The contractors installed towel racks but didn’t use wall studs, and after four years one finally gave way, leaving gaping holes in the drywall. Luckily my husband is a handy kind of guy, but it still took a lot of work and a couple of trips to Rona and Home Depot to get new towel hooks. All of which is to say, I decided that I would take the car in to get an oil change, which is something – BLUE JOB – that he would normally do.

I know, I know, it’s totally retro of me to refer to vehicle maintenance as a Blue Job, but that’s the way it is in this house. I am totally cool with it.

Some of you may remember what happened the last time I took the car for an oil change, but this time, I thought, would be different. For one thing, there’s no nail bar at this dealership. For another, this dealership doesn’t require appointments but instead prides itself on quick oil changes. Or, express lubes.

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It sounds so dirty!

Anyway, my husband had informed me that there would be no charge, something about included with extended warranty, blah blah blah car stuff blah blah. When I got there, I confirmed this with the fellow who checked me in, and after Looking It Up In The System, he said that indeed, there would be no charge. Yay! I went to the waiting room to stare at the tropical fish tank, read Do Your OM Thing, and admire the chutzpah of a woman wearing the absolutely most colourful floor-length caftan I had ever seen.

You can probably guess the punchline here. When the lady at the service desk called me over, she charged me, and informed me that our two remaining free oil changes would not be free after all, for reasons which remain mysterious. I never know what to do in situations like this. I should probably be more assertive, and squeaky-wheel-ish, but I guess I’m not. When it comes to vehicle maintenance, I have absolutely no confidence in my ability to deal with things. I would have called my husband at work, but I knew he was on a conference call. So I paid it, went home, and texted my husband.

A livid phone call to the service manager, which I was not party to, has resulted in the admittance that the woman at the counter had made a mistake, a credit at the dealership, and much annoyance on my part. Why. WHY does dealing with vehicle stuff have to be so fraught for me? Why do I have no confidence in myself when it comes to cars? When am I going to figure out how to open the hood of my minivan? These are all very good questions and perhaps, in my quest for Kondo-ing everything, New Year, New Me, and reorganizing my life, I should work on this. Personal growth, the automobile edition.