Monthly Archives: June 2017

I hope you had the time of your life

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We are so close – SO CLOSE – to the end of the school year. Less than two hours to go for the elementary school, and – exhaustingly – one more half day for the junior high. I have a massive craving for the indolence of summer vacation but alas, I am not on vacation and nor will I be for some time. Although, the thought of not having to do the double morning drop-off and ensuing rush does feel vacation-like.

Remember back in the day when schools would give out actual academic and athletic achievement awards? Those days are long gone, at least in my kids’ schools. I remember getting many awards – all academic, certainly no athletic ones. Now, I guess it’s all one big theoretical “Participant” award, and to be honest, sometimes I wish I was the recipient of that kind of award today. Sometimes I feel like the very fabric of boring adult jobs would be much livened up by receiving an award; however, there are no awards for putting out the garbage on the correct day every other week, or always getting the recycling and compost out to be picked up. Maybe the lack of a gross overflowing garbage or disgustingly smelly compost is just universally understood to be its own award.

Still, an award would be nice.

Yesterday was the Grade Six Graduation, and I wondered how long into the ceremony it would be before I started crying. It turns out, negative thirty minutes. Half an hour prior to the ceremony, I popped into the main office to say goodbye to the beloved principal and administrative staff; let’s just say I am not good with goodbyes. I managed to pull myself together until the Grade Six procession into the gym, but the sight of all the dressed-up children that I have known since kindergarten – and even pre-kindergarten – not to mention my own child, had me reaching for the tissues. By the time the children sang True Colours, I was a complete mess. My friend’s daughter was in the choir, directly in front of me, and she kept shooting me very concerned looks.

The thing is, it’s not just the fleeting passing of time and my children growing up rapidly. I mean, that’s part of it, but even more so is the thought of saying goodbye to the elementary school that has been a significant part of my life, since 2009. I spent so many hours at that school, I invested so much of myself in it. I have made so many friends there and I spent an enormous amount of time with them, all of us getting to know each other on the playground. I can’t remember the last time I was at the playground, but I have many happy memories of standing with my circle of friends, chatting as our kids climbed on the structures or sledded down the hill in the winter. After all those lonely toddler years, it felt like a whole new chapter, and my girlfriends have created a community and support structure to be treasured.

I’m just not good with goodbyes.

I know, I know, my friends are still here and our kids are moving on to the same junior high together. And I do like the junior high too – I am ecstatic to have both kids at the same school, instead of different ones with a 70 minute difference in drop-off and dismissal times. I’m thrilled to have my boys at a school that has Phys Ed every day, that has a cafeteria for the occasional lunch purchase, that has fun option classes to take and a new community to embrace.

I’m just not good with goodbyes.

But onward and upward. Doors close, windows open, and to be honest, the world feels wonderful and wide-open right now. The kids are at this amazing age where they are independent and interesting and they love to hang out in the neighbourhood buying Slurpees and frozen yogurt, my friends and I are all diving into our interests and work and are still able to stay connected with our kids and each other, summer is upon us and it’s GOOD. Life is very very good and I am eternally grateful.

But you know, I’m just not good with goodbyes.

Let’s do the time warp again.

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A long time ago, a gas station within walking distance to my house was demolished. That demolition represented many hours worth of entertainment for my children; we would walk over there and watch as the large machinery tore down the buildings and removed the pumps. Then we watched, along with the elderly men of the neighbourhood, as they dug up presumably-contaminated soil, adding in truckloads of fresh soil, and smoothing everything down. At the time we also had the entire collection of Mighty Machines on DVD, and the boys would watch them whenever I needed time to shower, or prepare dinner, or otherwise needed thirty minutes of downtime. We had one that featured “The Demolition Site,” and inspired by this and the actual demolition site in our neighbourhood, the boys would play that game for hours. They would pile all their toys into the middle of a room and then use their toy bulldozers to push various items around. This, along with the requisite clean-up, would take up whole afternoons.

It’s funny to think that when they were little it was all about slowly killing the day; thinking of things to do that would keep them occupied. The days were so long back then, and now they fly by and there’s never enough time.

All of which is to say that there are only a few days left of school, and in the case of my junior high student, each of those days is a half day only. In some ways I wish they would just compress them all and finish earlier, but no.

On the other hand, while the grade seven students are doing ridiculous, make-work projects just to kill the day – even these half days must seem long to the teaching staff – the grade six students are writing Provincial Achievement Tests this week. So my house has been a strange combination of inappropriate stress over these so-called “fun end-of-term projects” – Mom, I need 150 pieces of coloured paper to glue together for Humanities, and do we have any Styrofoam, bendable straws, and aluminum foil? – and appropriate stress over the tests that prove their competence over the last year of elementary school. I will be breathing a sigh of relief next week, I can tell you that much.

In between teaching, grocery shopping, and busily preparing end-of-year cookies and teacher gifts, I’ve been spending time in my garden. I noticed the very first rose blooming just a couple of days ago; now the entire fence is abloom. Is abloom a word? I hope so.

My columbines have been seeding everywhere, and I know that technically if a plant is growing where you did not plant it, that makes it a weed, but in my books it just makes it a floral miracle.

The gardening season in Calgary is short and intense, so I am trying my best to savour it all.

Have a beautiful weekend, everyone! xo

 

Red wine and cowboy boots

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Well, hello there, Friday. You beautiful thing, come give mama a kiss.

I desperately try not to wish my life away but I have been looking forward to today. It hasn’t been a long week, not really. If anything, I feel like time is rushing by like one of those super speed videos; I can hardly believe that June is past the halfway mark, 2017 is almost half over, and life is just going by quickly. All the same, I have been looking forward to cracking open a bottle of wine tonight.

Speaking of which, last night I was in Superstore, which is my wont on evenings that the kids are in karate. Usually at that time – which is non-negotiable for me – it is a disaster zone. Things are unstocked, empty cardboard half-boxes sitting on shelves which previously contained my much-desired items. But not last night, dear reader, NOT LAST NIGHT. Last night I got every last thing on my list, including a three-pack of Romaine hearts, which they NEVER have in stock when I shop. I got everything I wanted and in record time, so I thought I’d pop into the liquor store to grab a bottle of wine.

That’s when I saw it: Wayne Gretzky Cab/ Shiraz, on sale for $13.77 a bottle. The friendly man working there asked if he could help me, and I just said “I’d like a case, please.” In and out, and then tonight I will be able to enjoy that delicious wine and revel in my (relative) thriftiness.

It’s been a busy week though, and I had a dentist appointment, which I always dread. It’s the scaling that gets me, every time. That scraping noise just gives me the chills. I floss daily and brush my teeth several times a day, and scaling is still a torturous process for me. Maybe it’s the red wine.

Honestly, given the choice I’d take a Pap test over dental scaling, even with my ham-handed doctor searching for my elusive cervix. The last time I had a test I endured what felt like hours of poky cervical torture, and then a week later the office called to say that they’d made a mistake with the sample and I had to come back for another test. I nearly cried. But cervical health – like dental health – is no joke, and so off I went, only to find out that the doctor needed to use a totally different speculum, for my special-snowflake lady-parts. “Remember to ask for the LARGE speculum next time!” my doctor cheerfully said, which was a hit to my already-beaten-up feminine mystique.

I’d still take that over scaling. However, no one wants to end up with a mouth full of dental issues, and so I shall soldier on.

Today was the elementary school’s Stampede Breakfast, our last one. I got all kitted up in my annual cowgirl wear; I was responsible for manning the syrup station. It was literally the easiest volunteer hour I’ve ever spent. I kind of wished I’d volunteered for that every year.

If you’ve ever wanted to dress up for the Stampede, or if you are not in Calgary and you – for reasons unknown – need Western-style wear, I refer you to my post of yesteryear, entitled How To Dress For The Calgary Stampede Without Looking Like An Idiot. Since the writing of that, I have actually purchased cowboy boots; I bought them last year for the Zac Brown concert. They were breathtakingly expensive, and so I justified the cost by promising myself I would wear them often and incorporate them in a cute way into my wardrobe. They are, without a doubt, some of the most comfortable footwear I have ever had on my tootsies, and so I thought that would be easy.

I have worn them exactly zero times since then. Well, except for today. I guess today really brought down the average-wear cost. At this rate I will be wearing them in the nursing home, in fifty years or so, when it’s Country Western Theme Day, just to justify the cost of purchase. I’ll wear them with my old-lady beaded and fringed cowgirl dress, my lipstick bleeding into the lines around my mouth. It’s going to be great!

Some people think of nursing homes as sad places they never want to end up in, but in my opinion, it sounds kind of nice. I mean, in fifty years do I really want to be worrying about my hot water heater or who’s going to mow the lawn? No! I do not! I want to be concerned with making my macrame owls or whatever happens during craft time; I want to have someone else make my meals and wash the floors. Bloom where you’re planted is my motto; I want to be like that 98-year-old yoga teacher when I grow up. With red wine and comfortable cowboy boots.

Favourite Outfits of My Teen Years

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It’s no secret I love clothes and fashion, and I always have. Every day is an opportunity to play dress-up, in my opinion, or at least to wear something pretty. Some of you may remember when I Kondo’d my house (and life), I discovered something important about myself: clothing sparks joy for me. I love my entire wardrobe; I love every last one of my twenty-plus black sweaters, my dozens of black tops, my twelve black bikinis, and my two shelves full of tightly rolled up yoga clothing, in varying hues. My friend Lyndsey (HI LYNDSEY) is a professional organizer, and I’m pretty sure she would faint if she saw my stuffed-to-the-brim closet. BUT I LOVE AND WEAR THEM ALL, LYNDSEY.

I’m at the point in my life where I am very comfortable with my own sense of style. True, I do like to keep up with current fashions, but I don’t feel the need to adopt them unconditionally. For example, I’m not a person who is flattered by peasant blouses or white jeans, and I’m literally too cold to wear the cold shoulder look. I’ve already done my time in pleated shorts and cut-off jeans, and so I shall leave the youth fashion to the youth for whom it is intended.

And yet, it is very fun to look back at the fashion I adopted when I myself was a youth. Last week, my friend Swistle (HI SWISTLE) wrote about favourite outfits in high school, and I have been thinking about it almost non-stop since then. I’ve been riding a wave of nostalgia for the late 80s/ early 90s, and the accompanying terrible fashions. I was at my parents’ place on the weekend and I thumbed quickly through a few photo albums. HOO BOY. Those were the days, my friends.

My own personal style really changed a lot from junior high to senior high, and it also changed a lot from year to year. I feel that the summers were a time of renewal and reflection about our own personal fashion, and that September was a time of new beginnings, clothing-wise. It was the time where we all decided what we wanted our look to be, for better or worse.

Grade Seven, 1987-88

My very favourite outfit was one that I have photographic evidence of, since I wore it on the first day of school. It was a long, full skirt that was meant to look like denim but was actually cotton. I paired it with knockoff white Keds, a white tank top, and a blue-and-white striped blouse that I tied in front.

I also had a denim slouch bag! And, if you look closely, light-blue nylons. I wore a lot of skirts in the beginning of grade seven; notably a light-blue bubble skirt, a beige ruffled skirt that I paired with an enormous white t-shirt, tucked in, and a pale pink skirt that I wore with a pale pink sweater and pale pink ankle boots. I was a sight in pastel, apparently. I wore skirts until I figured out that junior high boys were terrible and that they always tried to look up skirts when walking up the stairs, or flip them up when you were innocently standing at your locker.

Grade Eight – 1988-89

Once I figured out the terrible truth, I lived in jeans and gigantic sweaters. I had a few cable-knit sweaters that I begged for – and received – at Christmas. They were ENORMOUS. I wore acid-wash and other light-wash jeans, Levi’s with the red tab, rolled up at the ankles. Nothing is so terribly unflattering as baggy, high-waist jeans rolled at the ankles with a gigantically baggy, tucked-in t-shirt. But such was the fashion back then. I found this gem at my parents’ house and it cracks me up uncontrollably.

Ah, nothing says excitement like being fourteen years old and getting your photo taken for the no-cavity club at the dentist. Just look at the size of the t-shirt, with polka dots, no less. Look at the knockoff Swatch watch. LOOK AT MY HAIR.

A store had just recently opened up, in the spring of 1989, a store that was, to me, life-changing. It was called Freedom, and it sold many items like jeans and t-shirts embellished with peace signs. Oh, how I loved that store.

Grade Nine – 1989-90

Grade Nine was my year of predominantly black sweaters – a trend I have kept for a lifetime since – a ton of jewelry – ditto – and ripped jeans or long, multicoloured broom skirts. I also embraced band t-shirts from long-since-unbanded-and-usually-dead musical acts, such as The Doors.

Another dentist photo! I guess I’ve always been good at brushing my teeth. It is very hard to tell in this photo, but I have – in addition to a LOT of necklaces and my dad’s old watch, a long fake-silk scarf used as a belt in my jeans. My jeans would have, of course, been Levi’s 501s, and they would have been frayed at the bottom and, rather than rolled, pinned tightly at the ankles.

Grade Ten – 1990-91

Grade Ten was the year I fully embraced the dichotomous look of either ripped jeans or dresses. There was no in-between. I loved babydoll dresses, particularly crushed velvet ones, worn with tights, army-style boots, and a trench coat. It was the look of the early nineties, along with long, permed hair. Sadly, I have no photographic evidence of this in my possession, but I do have this lovely one with a classic Sulky Teen look.

Long, silver chains with crosses were my jam, along with silver hoop earrings and a mood ring. My mood ring was stuck on black, however, because even then I had terrible circulation and my hands and feet were always freezing. In fact, I remember a boyfriend I had around age 16, who looked at my bare feet and asked, alarmed, how I bruised them so completely. They were just purple from my lack of circulation, and were totally normal for me.

Grade Eleven – 1991-92

My very favourite outfit I remember so well, but I cannot find a photo of it. I wore it on my first day at my new high school, and it was red plaid HOT PANTS paired with thick black tights, a black mock turtleneck, and a black blazer. I also wore black loafers. God, I loved that outfit. Jeans, loafers, and blazers were very stylish at my school at the time, and I wore them all the time. Jeans were, thankfully, no longer pinned or rolled, but they were high-waisted and straight-legged, and t-shirts were oversized and tucked in. I found this treasure from my high school Europe trip, in which I’m wearing one of my favourite outfits, complete with Revlon’s Love That Red lipstick.

Also from that trip: my beloved leather bomber jacket, which I bought in a Florence market, paired with pink striped shorts and gladiator sandals.

Vogueing was popular back then.

I also had this outfit, which I absolutely loved and I would still probably wear today, mutton dressed as lamb be damned. I bought it at Le Chateau, and it was a short black skirt embellished with fabric daisies, and a swingy matching top. Oh, how I loved it. Note also my exclusive use of Love That Red.

Grade Twelve – 1992-93

Sadly, I cannot find ANY of my casual photos from grade twelve. I’m sure there are some in existence, but I cannot locate them at this time. Suffice it to say that by Grade Twelve, I had gone full-on Princess in my clothing choices. Kilts and turtleneck sweaters were my signature look, with my long, hot-rollered hair and Love That Red lipstick. I also seemed to have a lot of coloured jeans – high waisted and belted, naturally – and silk blouses. SILK BLOUSES, PEOPLE. It goes without saying that those blouses were also ridiculously oversized, as was everything back then. Although I don’t have any photos of these terrific outfits, I do have one on my graduation day of my hot-rollered hair:

That took SOME effort, let me tell you.

So now it is your turn – what were your favourite outfits in your teen years? Were your favourite clothes a sign of the times?

Small side note: I just realized that the song, Sign of the Times, is by Harry Styles. Guys, I like something by Harry Styles! I’m a modern girl! Proof positive that my husband is WRONG when he says I’m stuck in the past, in terms of music. Although it is true that my favourite genres are Motown, 70s soft rock, and “Fat” Elvis. Is that a genre? I don’t really know, but Kentucky Rain is my jam. xoxo

A very long confessional post about bathroom cleansers.

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Something very momentous happened this week, an event that is quality-of-life altering for me.

Before I get to that, a little background information. Most of you who have known me for a while know that my go-to cleaning solution is white vinegar. I am, you might say, a white vinegar fiend. At any given time my house smells like an odd cross between a bakery and a pickling factory. There is, in my humble opinion, no better nor more cost-effective cleaner than white vinegar. Occasionally I will mix it up by using a hippie essential-oil based cleaner, but for the most part, it’s all white vinegar all the time.

Well, most of the time. There is an exception to this rule, and that is the bathroom sinks and toilets. When it comes to that, I go all out; I like the kind of cleaners that boast of killing off 99.9% of germs, the old-school, scrub-free disinfectants. When it comes to the bathroom sinks and toilets, the harsher the cleanser the better, in my opinion. I feel fine about this because, as I mentioned, I only use these cleansers for relatively small area, and so one bottle of cleanser can last…well, I don’t really know how long it can last. Months, I suppose.

So it was several months ago that I impulsively bought a different cleanser; it was on a price rollback, it promised to kill off 99.9% of germs – including staph bacteria, which is not something I had thought of before but sure am thinking of now – and it advertised a “spring-fresh scent.” Now, I am not the kind of person who actually sniffs cleansers in the Walmart cleaning solution aisle, because a) I don’t want to look like a weirdo, b) who sniffs cleansers anyway? Certainly not me, and c) it doesn’t seem like too big of a deal what your bathroom cleaning solution smells like.

Oh, the naivete. It turns out that it DOES matter, it matters a lot, because this cleaning solution was, while effective at its job, terrible in the scent department. It smelled like a chemical factory mixed with formaldehyde, which is not a scent I enjoy, nor is it one that I associate with “spring-fresh.”

And yet, I kept on.

I continued to use the abhorrent-smelling-but-effective cleanser, and every time I did – three times a week, because that is how often I clean my bathrooms – I would hate it. The bathroom would smell like a chemical factory with formaldehyde for hours afterwards, THREE TIMES A WEEK. So for a large part of the week, I basically hated my ill-scented bathroom and everything else around it.

Now, at this point, you might be saying, But Nicole, when you Kondo’d your life, you realized that saying goodbye to things that do not spark joy is the key to happiness and tidiness. Why did you not just get rid of the bathroom cleanser and buy another one, in a non-offensive scent?

Why indeed? Well, as it turns out, I can get rid of lipglosses that do not suit me after only one use, I can get rid of ill-fitting clothes that originally cost a tidy sum of money, I can donate an entire lifetime’s worth of compact discs because of Spotify, but I cannot get rid of any kind of household cleanser. I know! It was $2.99 worth of cleanser, that I used for MONTHS AND MONTHS, and yet I continued to use it until the bitter end.

Sure, I could have poured it down the sink, and although eventually that is where the cleanser all goes, for some reason I felt like that was environmentally unsound to do so all in one shot. Ultimately, though, it is probably to do with my Scottish ancestry. I also keep using hand soap until the soap itself is a centimetre long and a millimetre thick, and my long-suffering husband throws it out. I flatten toothpaste tubes until not another drop can be extracted, I keep shampoo and conditioner bottles upside down, probably using a ton more water in the shower as I violently shake out the last drops.

Once, I was watching a Shark Tank episode with my kids, who love that show. On it was a woman who had invented something called the Spaddy Daddy. It was a long, thin spatula that could be used to scrape out every last ounce of body wash, conditioner, or liquid soap out of a bottle, and all I could think was Brilliant. This woman is a goddamn genius. She is my people. I do no think the Spaddy Daddy is available in Canada, but it is clearly the greatest idea of our generation.

Side note: why has no one ever invented a nail polish in which the brush goes all the way to the bottom? It is impossible, not to mention eminently frustrating, to get any nail polish out of the bottle once it is less than 1/3 full. What a waste. Someone told me that this could be solved by putting nail polish remover in the bottle to get the last bit out, but that seems to me that it would compromise the integrity of the nail polish, and so I have never tried. Instead I throw the bottle in the trash, 1/3 full, a little harder than is necessary.

All of which is to say that I could not, and would not, throw out the gross-smelling bathroom cleanser, but this week, I FINISHED IT. I have started on a new, citrus-scented one, and my quality of life has improved immensely.