Monthly Archives: October 2017

Spooky stuff!

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Happy Halloween! After years of elementary school rules wherein costumes were only allowed after lunch on October 31, we have entered the realm of junior high. Every day this week has a theme – yesterday was Pajama Day, for example, and Thursday is Twin Day – and today, happily and appropriately enough, is Costume Day.

What could possibly go wrong? On the weekend the eighth grader had quite a lot of homework, including making his own water filtration system to be brought to school on Tuesday. Tuesday, Halloween. “Mom, where do we keep our activated charcoal?” is a question I never thought I’d be answering, but here we are. Fortunately my husband has a charcoal grill, and although I’m unsure if it will be effective, the filtration system now has smashed up pieces of charcoal in it. Just getting the system there in one piece while wearing a headless horseman costume and carrying all the usual school paraphernalia seemed like an enormous undertaking, fraught with all sorts of issues, but it is now 1:00 pm and I haven’t been alerted to any major issues, so I suppose all is well.

I just had a feeling of sympathy for all the teachers today, and tomorrow. Let’s have a positive thought for them, bless those brave souls.

Speaking of scary, it is supposed to rain tonight and the snow is starting tomorrow, so I am thankful that I am the home base candy person. My husband is only going out around our block, though, and then the kids are meeting their friends, so it appears a new era is upon us. I’m just glad we have a white stormtrooper to be the reflective person in the group, and am trying not to be too nervous about it. DRIVE SLOW, HOMIES.

Scary movies and sleepovers involving horror flicks were a big part of growing up in my generation, it seems. I have never liked horror movies at all, and I must have blocked them mostly out because while I remember watching some of the Nightmare on Elm Street ilk, I don’t remember any details of them. I do, however, remember two television shows from my youth that scared the bejesus out of me, and neither were Halloween or horror related.

First, when I was very little, I remember watching a show about a bear that stalked people and, presumably, killed them. I’m fuzzy on the details; I was pretty young. It would have been set in “settler times” because the cast was dressed in Little House on the Prairie-like clothing and the houses were small cabins in the woods. I remember only one scene, and it terrified me for life: the people being stalked were in the safety of their cabin, when the camera panned onto the door. Underneath the door, a claw slid through. It was so creepy then, and it’s creepy now, and I have no idea whatsoever this program was or why I watched it. I guess there was nothing else on – but that doesn’t explain it, really, since I was never much of a TV-watcher. Anyone?

The second terrifying television program WAS Little House on the Prairie. Ma had – somehow – gotten a cut on her leg, which became infected and practically gangrenous. She was alone in the house for a few days, and became feverish with this infection. She picked up her Bible and read a passage about cutting off and casting away a limb which is causing problems, since it was better than having the entire body go to hell. Obviously Ma was crazed with fever and pain to not realize the symbolism of this verse, and she actually got out her big old carving knife in preparation to saw her own leg off. I know it ended with Ma NOT becoming the One Legged Woman Of Walnut Grove, but I don’t remember how exactly because I ended up becoming far too invested in the story and freaking out entirely. I think, probably, Pa came home and Ma had already passed out from pain before she could do the unsedated old-timey amputation.

Other terrifying childhood memories include a visit from the firefighters about fire safety, with a warning that “everyone will be involved in a fire sometime in their lives,” leading six-year-old me to believe that the house would instantly combust and I would burn to death in my bed, leading to nightmares for years, getting lost at a large Canada Day festival and ending up in the cold, grey, concrete Lost Children Room with a CLOWN, and watching Bruce Banner change into the Incredible Hulk with my older brother, who would always tell me that the worst was over and I could look, now, WHEN THE WORST WAS MOST DEFINITELY NOT OVER.

And now it’s your turn – what spooked you, when you were a kid? Tell all, it will be like therapy, but much less expensive. xo

Dressing like a gypsy fortune-teller – one of the more popular costumes back in 1981.

This year’s festive carvings – can you tell which one is mine?

Hubris

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Hubris. Definition: excessive pride or defiance towards the gods, leading to nemesis. See also: bad karma. I try very hard not to anger the gods; my husband was sick with this weirdly tenacious virus, for the better part of a month, and all the while I kept dosing myself with vitamin C and oil of oregano, and ensuring I had proper rest and liquids, because I did not want to anger the Virus Gods. So far it’s worked and I am suppressing all thoughts about my superior immune system, instead just thanking the Virus Gods for looking past me this time. Hopefully.

But hubris is a real thing, as any mother who has boasted about her angelic newborn sleeping through the night or young toddler who potty trained completely by eighteen months knows. Everything you say can and will be held against you by the gods and all those things you silently judge others for will certainly come to pass.

And so it is that I have angered the Toothpaste Gods, for writing my last post. Early this morning when I went to brush my teeth before yoga, I noticed the tube of toothpaste – that had been squeezed from the bottom AND middle – was very sticky. It was 4:30 in the morning, so I blearily wiped the excess toothpaste off the tube, wondering who made such a mess of things. Only a few hours later, when I went to brush again, I noticed something strange. The tube had come apart at the seams.

Never in my four decades of diligent brushing has such a thing occurred so I can only think that this is due to my excessive pride. You think you can just squeeze the toothpaste tube any way you like? We shall see about that. I wasn’t even sure what to do with this situation. Should I keep using the toothpaste by scraping it out, like someone brought up during the Great Depression? Should I duct tape the whole tube back together? WHAT HAPPENS NOW. It didn’t even occur to me to throw out the half-used tube, probably due to my Scottish heritage, but when I got back from teaching this morning I noticed that it was in the garbage, my husband probably thinking that such a thing would not send me into a spiral of “we just wasted $1.75” shame. But we did. We might as well have thrown seven quarters in the trash.

Let me tell you, I am taking this “for best results” thing seriously. When I wash my hair with coconut oil shampoo, if it says for best results use the matching conditioner, you had better believe that I AM GOING TO USE THE MATCHING CONDITIONER. Who knows what might happen otherwise! Maybe my hair will fall out, maybe it will change colour, maybe it will become so dry it will spontaneously burst into flames, I don’t know and I am not going to tempt the Hair Gods.

Speaking of tempting fate, yesterday I was preparing to leash up the dog to take him for his daily constitutional, when I got a notification from my neighbourhood Facebook group. Normally I don’t really give the neighbourhood group more than a cursory glance; more often than not, it’s just an advertisement for a local business’ craft night or happy hour, or information regarding a new building or redevelopment plan. Lately, though, it’s been a bit more interesting – there is a bobcat with two cubs residing in our neighbourhood. In our urban neighbourhood. The latest buzz was a video of the bobcat in a yard, only a few blocks from my house, in the middle of the day. Since my usual walk meant that I would be strolling past that particular street, I wondered if maybe I should skip it. One look at Barkley’s fuzzy face changed my mind; after all, we were probably not going to get attacked by a bobcat when there are so many rabbits and squirrels in the neighbourhood. What self-respecting bobcat would attack a person and a large, chubby dog walking along a busy street? The only thing we have to fear is fear itself, I told Barkley, who looked at me and nudged the leash in my hand. Off we went and we are still here to tell the tale.

In other Borderline Stupid Things I Have Done Lately, I picked up a book at the library that was on the “hot new picks” display. It had a picture of a dog on it, so, like I might have done 40 years ago, I immediately picked it up. It has a dog on the cover. I took it home even after reading the back and with pertinent information about the storyline. People, the next time I think that it might be a good idea to read a book about a dying dog and her extremely lonely owner, gently remind me that this is never a good idea. I am not a person who enjoys books about the compassionate ending of a sick dog’s life; there is more than enough sadness in the real world, we do not require it in the literary world. Or, I do not require it. Now I am reading What She Left Behind, which I understood from reading the back cover that it would be about Germany in the Second World War. Again, not a happy topic, but one I still feel is an important one, particularly in this day, age, and political climate. However, the back cover reviews were about a different book by the same author. This one is about, oddly, a woman committed to a state insane asylum against her will; not a cheery topic by any stretch. I am trying hard not to think symbolically or read too deeply into my unintentional book choice, because I certainly do not want to anger the Fictional Novel Gods.

For best results

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On my tube of toothpaste is written the following:

For best results, squeeze the tube from the bottom and flatten as you go up.

For best results? First of all, I do not think that how an individual squeezes a toothpaste tube is going to affect, in any way, the efficacy of said toothpaste. I am absolutely certain – absolutely certain – that the cleaning, freshening, polishing, or whitening power of the toothpaste is not going to change regardless of my squeezing methodology. Second, isn’t it just common knowledge that squeezing from the bottom and flattening the tube is the most effective way of extracting the toothpaste? Third, the toothpaste tube is not the boss of me. If I want to squeeze my toothpaste tube from the middle until it gets awkward and THEN squeeze from the bottom and flatten as I go, I will. I am not at the mercy of Big Toothpaste.

Lately the bananas I have been purchasing have been embellished with a sticker that claims that I can “win a banana costume” which makes me simultaneously want to go to the banana website for my chance to dress up as a giant banana, and wonder if anyone out there is really doing this. Do you think that a banana is this year’s hot new costume? To be sure, I have not yet seen a “sexy banana” costume advertised anywhere, but then again, I haven’t really been looking either.

Thanks to social media, I was made aware of a sexy goldfish costume, which, well. It is astonishingly expensive, but then, maybe one could wear it on more than one occasion.

PEOPLE, I JUST GOOGLED SEXY BANANA COSTUME AND IT WAS MORE DISTURBING THAN I EVER IMAGINED. My google search led me to many, many obscene looking men’s costumes, plus a couple of women wearing strapless yellow minidresses with white detailing at the neckline, I suppose to mimic the white inside peel.

This is a timely reminder to never google anything unless you are prepared for the results.

There has been a lot of talk about emotional labour, and how women bear the brunt of it, and that is certainly true in my house. Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of things that happen in this house that I do not have a thing to do with, and they are deeply gender divided. Wrapping up the air conditioner in a tarp, putting up seasonal outdoor decorations, cleaning gutters, lawn maintenance, leveling the strangely-mobile washing machine, and anything at all to do with vehicle maintenance are a few examples I can think of. Not only do I not have anything to do with those activities, I also actively avoid learning how to do them myself. Not today, sir.

However, when it comes to the Departments of Health, Education, and Welfare, well, I am those departments. I am the person who knows exactly what is in the fridges, freezers, and cupboards, and what will be the lunches, dinners, and home-baked snack foods for the week. I am the person who schedules all doctor, dentist, and orthodontist appointments, along with parent-teacher interviews. I know the email addresses for every single teacher the kids have off by heart and I know when their homework is due and when they have exams and what their marks were. I know clothing sizes and when the towels and sheets were last changed, and where all the winter gloves and hats are. Just today I bought pumpkins and Halloween candy, without which the upcoming holiday would not be the same.

Starting last year, though, I drew the line at Halloween costumes. I feel that at this age, the kids can either come up with their own thing, or ask their dad for help. This is my new line in the sand. I AM DONE. If I am going to spend time and mental energy thinking about a Halloween costume, it will be for idle wondering if anyone actually goes to a party dressed as a sexy M&M and if so, why.

My god, I just saw a “sexy nun costume” and I feel like somewhere, we went terribly wrong. Just like with the US president opening his mouth, every time I think something can’t go more downhill, IT DOES. Oh, it does.

Kitchen Reno, Five (plus) Years Later

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Hoo boy, has it been a long week or what? I know it’s technically a short week, but it feels…trying. Trying and LONG. Last Thursday night my son got home from Quebec, and early Friday morning we got in the car for an eight-hour drive to visit my mother-in-law for the Thanksgiving weekend. In order to do this, between getting home from the airport and getting in the car, the following had to be done: a) laundry, b) pack all of said son’s clothes and personal effects, and c) pack up the car. I’m just going to say that I am very happy to be home, but exhausted by the laundry. I always feel a little strange complaining about laundry – it’s not like I am personally scrubbing lye soap into clothing on a scrub board, or using a wringer washer, or even hanging things (other than Lululemon) to dry, but my god, the laundry. I think it’s because, to paraphrase Newman from Seinfeld, the laundry never stops. Even when you are caught up, you are immediately behind again because people change their underwear, there are towels to be washed, and sheets to be changed. No matter what, I will be folding clothes until I drop dead. Hopefully one is not correlated with the other.

Anyway, laundry aside, it’s nice to be home and eating normally and being back into normal routine. It was an unsettled eleven days, what with the Quebec trip and then the road trip, but we are home, home, home. Home with a great deal of grapes and apples, so all is well.

As a side note, it’s hilarious to me how people always say, when I mention I have thirty pounds of apples in my cold room, that I’ll be able to make so much pie and apple sauce! I tend to look at them blankly, because to me, that is a WASTE of an apple. If you don’t think I can single-handedly consume thirty pounds of apples before they go off, then you are vastly underestimating my abilities. Maybe it’s the Alberta Girl in me, but it never, ever occurs to me to use fresh fruit to make pies or jam – I buy frozen fruit in bulk from Costco, and I use that. Fresh fruit is for EATING, in my humble opinion. Also, I find apple sauce to be a bit…unappealing. No offense to all you apple sauce lovers out there, but I cannot think of why I would need more than the occasional jar from Co-Op to make hippie-style-fruit-sweetened muffins.

Perhaps I would feel differently if I lived in a place in which the fruit crops were more than crabapples and saskatoon berries.

The one exception is my stash of Concord grapes, because my generous mother-in-law gives me so many that it is actually not physically possible to eat them all before they turn. In that case, I make fruit leather. Here’s my un-recipe: make thick, pulpy grape juice using a juicer. Peel, core, and slice apples (I often save my tree ripened ones for eating, and buy bulk bags at Costco to use for this. I know! I’m terrible at sharing apples). Put both in a food processor until they reach a smooth applesauce-like-consistency, then pour onto parchment paper-lined sheets in the dehydrator for 10-12 hours, depending how thick you pour it. As for quantities? I don’t know. What am I, a food blogger? Oh, right. Anyway, I don’t really measure here, I eyeball it. Fill your food processor with apple slices, add grape juice until it’s purple and smooth but not runny, and run with it.

So other than doing laundry I spent quite a bit of time in the kitchen this week, and speaking of kitchens…

Nicole’s Kitchen Renovation Five (plus) Years Later

I know, I wrote about renovating back in August, planning to write the kitchen installment “next time” and if I put it off any longer, it will be Nicole’s Kitchen Renovation Six Years Later. I’m sure you were on the edge of your seat! Does Nicole still enjoy the kitchen renovation of 2012? Does she have regrets? What would she do differently? I’m sure you have been dying to know, so here goes.

When we bought the house, the kitchen was, for lack of a better word, disgusting. The cabinets were homemade, and the fellow who made them was not an artisan craftsman. The drawers were always stuck, the hood fan was completely coated in grease, the countertops were a pale yellowish green with swirls. The walls, in keeping with the pink-and-green theme of the house, were covered in five different but coordinating patterns of wallpaper. The dishwasher had once been a rolling mobile one, but someone had cut out a part of the cupboards and wedged it in, so it stuck out at an angle, and it also had a wooden cutting board on top which was pretty grim from years of use. The linoleum was an ugly pattern from the early 80s; in short, it was perhaps not the ugliest kitchen in the world, but it was a contender.

When we bought the house we couldn’t afford a big renovation, so we did the best we could. We scraped off the wallpaper and painted the walls a butter yellow, we painted the cabinets a warm white and changed out all the hardware. We did our best and then in 2003 we did our first of two kitchen renovations. Yes, we have renovated the SAME KITCHEN TWICE. We replaced the homemade cupboards with white Shaker-style ones that actually opened and closed on demand. We redid the floor and the countertops, put in an island, a proper dishwasher, and repainted everything. In a bid to save money we did most of the work ourselves and, because we both worked full (and more than full) time, it took four months to finish.

Back in 2012 when we made the decision to renovate, I wanted this NOT to happen. I wanted my renovation, and I wanted it quickly. Fortunately Ron and Don, the brother team, were also of the mindset that the sooner they finished the better, and they set to work. We didn’t change the cupboards because I still liked the white Shaker, but we put in granite countertops, stainless steel appliances, hardwood to match the rest of the house, and the World’s Biggest Sink.

I’m going to tell you right now that I love my kitchen. I also want to point out that it took 16 1/2 years from the time we moved into the house to the time we put a window covering on that window. The original was a cheap brown plastic blind and I planned to replace it when we took it off, back in 2000. And replace it we did, in January of 2017. It improved my life immensely since that is a southwest-facing window, and the sun would blind me in certain seasons when I was trying to make dinner.

One huge regret I have about our kitchen renovation is the range. It’s a Kitchen Aid, and it works just fine, but it has a fan that goes constantly whenever the oven is turned on, and about thirty minutes after it is turned off. It is loud enough to be very intrusive; music has to be turned up, I can’t hear the kids when they talk to me if the oven is going, etc. Also it takes forever to heat up. Huge regret but since it is very functional, I cannot justify buying another.

Another thing – this is not a regret, per se, but more of an observation – while I like the giant square double sink, it is a bitch to clean. The corners tend to get dirty and it is annoying, but on the whole I do like the look of the square sink. Other than the dirty, need-to-be-cleaned-with-a-toothbrush corners.

I’m still happy with the granite we chose, although if we were to do it now I might think about quartz instead. That wasn’t an option back then, and I do like how the granite matches the bathroom (and, foreshadowing, other parts of the house too).

Banana stages: a study. That’s part of a banana loaf in the background. How many bananas do you go through in a week? Our banana usage varies between 14-25 per week, which means there are usually many bananas in various states on my countertop.

When you were a kid, was there a chore that you detested and you swore you would avoid it like the plague as an adult? For me, that chore is drying dishes. Hence the sturdy dishrack on which are always many containers, that air dry so I do not ever have to. On nights when dinner creation has led to more dishes than the rack can hold, one of the kids dry them. Note the wine bottle in the background, and also my favourite small appliance: the Vitamix.

In terms of large appliances, I love my dishwasher. Here’s one major reason why:

A silverware rack! No more putting all your mucky silverware in gross little cup holders, this baby keeps them separate, clean, and easy to put away without getting your fingers on the parts of the silverware that go into people’s mouths.

A peek inside my fridge because, frankly, I love seeing the inside of other people’s fridges and pantries. This is not a euphemism! My friend Joanne (HI JOANNE) posted a photo of her pantry that her daughter had recently organized, and I stared at it happily for longer than is probably normal or healthy.

So there you have it – I still love my kitchen reno, save for the noisy range, so I would say that it was a success! What do you think? xo

Don’t throw the rocks in your glass house

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Sometimes it feels weird, writing when there are so many tragic, horrific, and frankly depressing things going on in the world. It seems strange to complain about the astounding difference the subtraction of one child from the household makes in terms of noise, activity, and general household mood. This is not a particularly important thing in the world, but it is an important thing to me. I was in a state of low-level worry, but my young traveller actually phoned me yesterday, and all is roses and happiness, and to say that the phone call lifted my spirits would be a tremendous understatement.

All of our spirits were a bit low this week; there was an honest-to-god, Pa-sings-his-sunflower-song blizzard on Monday, complete with snow, high winds, and general despondency. Well, we had a good run.

I learned an important lesson yesterday, speaking of general despondency, and that is that choosing to shop at Costco on the day after a blizzard is not an optimal choice for anyone wishing to retain any semblance of sanity. A few months ago my friend Janet (HI JANET) told me about the magic time to shop at Costco, which is 2:00 pm on a weekday, and when I switched my shopping schedule to that time, the experience was better, albeit some days marginally so. But marginally better is still better, and so yesterday I pulled into the parking lot at 1:35, and I do not think that I am exaggerating when I say that I wondered if I was taking my life into my hands. There was much road rage, people randomly and rapidly backing up perilously close to my and other’s cars. There were people swerving around pedestrians wielding giant carts, nearly making contact with my and other’s cars. I am surprised I didn’t seem random people flattened like cartoon characters in the middle of the lot, and I hoped I could get out of there without loss of life or limb, or at least without having to make an insurance claim.

I made it inside the store and the lineups to the checkouts snaked all the way around the aisles; I despaired of reaching the toothpaste section, and I had a coupon for $4 off a five-pack of that 3D whitening toothpaste I like. Don’t make this coupon go to waste, people. I vowed to take a photo when my turn for the checkout came, so I could send it to Janet to let her know that her magical time wasn’t magical after all, as if Janet was the Costco-whisperer and this entire herd of people with their giant carts was somehow her fault. I went to fetch everything on my list, keeping a slight smile on my face, because in the words of Diane Court’s mother, “Smile, dear, because when you don’t your mouth turns down.” I grumpily noted that they did not have the giant can of cocoa powder that I wanted, but they did have some nice strawberries. I wondered if I would even make it out of the refrigerated produce section alive, but when I got there, it was empty with the exception of one woman looking at every single clamshell of strawberries and a man staring blankly at the kale salads.

People, by the time I wound my way around to the checkout, the crowds had dispersed and there were only a few carts in each line, at 1:55. Janet, I am sorry I doubted you. You are indeed the Costco whisperer. The parking lot had plenty of open spaces too. JANET IS RIGHT, IT IS MAGICAL.

Speaking of checkouts, do you ever notice those tabloid magazines that have incredibly unflattering photographs of celebrities with captions about beach bodies or the lack thereof, or the weight of the photographed celebrity with a caption about letting themselves go or eating themselves to death? These unflattering photographs must be a part of a very successful business plan, since the magazines have been doing this for many decades; obviously they sell the magazines. I always feel a wave of pity for the celebrities; clearly they are photographed without their knowledge or consent, and even though there is a little bit of caveat emptor, being in the public eye and all, it still is fairly vile. We have all taken those accidental selfies with our phones on our lap; imagine if those selfies were being used to sell magazines? Double chinned, wrinkly, and ruddy: Nicole is letting herself go! 

Imagine also if there was a photographer trained on you at all moments of the day, and that any moment – any moment at all – could be posted for all the world to see. Well, I have news, dear readers: this is already happening. You may remember a while back there was a meme going around with a photo of a woman at an airport; she was looking at her phone and her baby was lying on a blanket on the floor. SHAME, the internet said, SHAME THAT SHE ISN’T PAYING ATTENTION TO HER POOR BABY, I’M SURE HER PHONE IS MUCH MORE COMPELLING.

*I know, I didn’t really pay attention either. But the internet did, fortunately.

Well, that woman has released a statement – A STATEMENT – that saying that she was exhausted, her flight was delayed, and she just needed to put the baby down for a moment while she texted her family. I have a huge problem with this.

SHE SHOULDN’T HAVE TO SAY ANYTHING.

In today’s society, we seem to feel that we can view a snapshot of a person’s life, one single second, and make a sweeping judgement about them. She’s a bad mom, she doesn’t like her baby as much as her phone, she is making terrible choices and we are all a nation of zombies. I have more news: we can’t make these judgements. Until we are comfortable with someone tracking our every move and posting photos for all the world to see, maybe we should keep our snap judgements to ourselves. If you haven’t been exhausted and looked away from your baby for a moment, then you probably don’t have a baby. I did not have a smartphone when my kids were small, but I did take them to the playground and would often sit on the bench reading a book or O Magazine (don’t judge, I was living my best life). My eyes were not on them for every second and frankly, it would be weird if they were.

I also saw someone online berate this woman for having her baby on the germy floor, but honest to god, everything is germy. Airplane seats and seatbelts, public change tables, the key pad where you use your credit card – all of those are covered in filth, that’s the world, we have to deal with it. In any case, the baby was on a (presumably clean) blanket, and babies are much safer on the floor than lying on an elevated surface that they can roll off of. God, I’m all worked up again. LEAVE HER AND EVERY OTHER MOTHER ALONE, YOU PEOPLE WITH YOUR GLASS HOUSES AND GIANT ROCKS. NONE OF US ARE PERFECT, LET’S STOP PRETENDING THAT WE ARE, AND MAYBE STOP LOOKING AT YOUR OWN DAMN PHONE IF YOU’RE ONLY GOING TO SPREAD STUPID PHOTOS.

Hoo boy, I need to take a breath here. With all the awful things happening in the world today, let’s all be kind. Be nice. Be understanding and compassionate. And let’s not assume everyone else is the problem with society. If you want change, make a change within yourself first. xo