Monthly Archives: December 2017

Boyhouse Year in Review 2017

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It’s Friday, right? Yes. It’s Friday. I’m in that happy state of mind that occurs between Christmas and New Year’s in which I’m not one hundred percent sure of the day or what I’m supposed to be doing, but it’s FRIDAY. Yes. It is.

It’s also time for the Boyhouse Year in Review! Political weirdness notwithstanding, 2017 was a happy and healthy year; there were ups and downs, lots of changes, the requisite busyness, lessons learned and resolutions mostly kept. Here’s what was the buzz around here:

January

I resolved to focus more singularly on tasks rather than becoming a multi-tasking hummingbird, I recalled my childhood ambition of growing up to be an actual flower and then being devastated to learn about plant cycles, and we bought a trampoline!

February

A “Shakira Law” doughnut (Shakira, heh) prompted me to mention that researching facts before stating strongly held opinions is underrated yet essential, I admitted to my internal struggle between self-love and my Resting Bitch Face, and I discovered that the 7th grade physical education curriculum included learning the Cadillac Ranch AND Cotton Eyed Joe line dances, which made me hope that they would also Sweat to the Oldies.

March

I finished my very last week as Book Fair Lady before handing over the How Much Are The Posters reins to my successor, I read The Life Changing Magic of Not Giving A Fuck and was kind of disappointed, and I went bathing suit shopping.

April

We went to Mexico for spring break and I became immensely spoiled (or, more immensely spoiled), I realized – not for the first time – that being mentally flexible is much harder than being physically flexible, and, relatedly, I realized that walking the walk is very, very difficult.

I also turned 42!

May

The squirrels ate all of my bulbs, all of them, gardening season started with a bang as I bought a ton of plants from the school fundraiser, and the neighbourhood had a coyote problem that I secretly hoped would take care of the squirrel problem. 

June

I wrote a weirdly long post about bathroom cleaners, if you read nothing else please read this post about favourite outfits of my teen years, and I talked a lot about red wine and cowboy boots.

July

Summer started off with lots of heat and fun as I realized – not for the first time – that time is slipping away, I discussed how I really don’t mind cargo shorts but I think the poop emoji is an abomination, and I realized sadly that if I was a character in Pride and Prejudice that I would probably be Charlotte Lucas.

August

My closet was bursting at the seams and so I started the one-year shopping challenge, I talked about my bathroom renovation, five years post-renovation, and my husband and I went on a trip WITHOUT THE KIDS. 

September

The kids went back to school – both in junior high – and I quit my work-at-home job to focus on yoga teaching, it poured rain at the first cross-country meet and then snowed, and my 13-year-old left for a week in Quebec. 

October

As we adjusted to not having the 13-year-old at home, there was an honest-to-god blizzard and I went to Costco despite that, I laughed about “for best results” on a tube of toothpaste, and I was reprimanded by the universe for laughing.

November

I finished Christmas shopping, I prepared for the festive baking season by posting the best sugar cookie recipe ever, and I aired grievances a month prior to Festivus.

December

I talked about my Tree Decorating Personality, I bought bananas at Costco which turned out to be a weird mistake, and I talked about Shopping Cart Karma.

So that was 2017, in a nutshell. Happy New Year to all of you, and all the best in 2018. See you in January! xo

Winter Solstice, a.k.a. The Day The Vitamin D Supplement Was Meant For

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Happy Winter Solstice! As of today, we will have exactly seven hours and fifty-three minutes of daylight, which is NOT VERY MUCH. However, at least we aren’t in the Arctic! And days start getting longer tomorrow, so there’s that. Also! We are in the Final Countdown To Christmas, so there is much excitement around the Boyhouse. I have two more classes to teach before I have a week off, and let me tell you, as soon as I get home from class tomorrow, I am (finally) cracking open that Almonde Baileys I bought, putting on a pot (YES A POT) of coffee, and watching Christmas Vacation with the children. I have been looking forward to that moment for weeks now. It’s going to be glorious.

The boys – including my husband – will also be decorating their traditional gingerbread house tomorrow. We are a bit later than normal but I shrug my tired shoulders at the notion of a gingerbread house schedule. I was reminded by Facebook of the house they made eight years ago:

Nothing can top that baby. Nothing!

For those of you in the throes of festive stress, come here, sit beside me, while I make you an Almonde Baileys and coffee. It’s a stressful time, although I am currently feeling like a motherfucking boss since I zoomed over to Superstore as soon as I dropped the kids at “school” (no actual academic activities will take place on this day, thank god, since no student has any focus at the moment) and, people, I managed to rack up 9,500 PC Points. LIKE A BOSS. And it was all buying things that I would normally buy, rather than weird one-off things that will sit in my pantry for years to come. I AM THE QUEEN.

On Monday I drove past the mall on my way to get a wax (TMI? Sorry, I am literally on my second POT of coffee and my filters, as it were, are blurred) and there were cars lined up along the road just to get into the parking lot. I can’t imagine what the parking lot itself was like, but I did see a lot of very slow moving vehicles. My god, the mall. If you or someone you love is heading there any time this week, my thoughts and prayers are with you. GO WITH GOD, PEOPLE. And don’t forget to be nice to the people working the checkouts.

Hmm, I had more to say but in my coffee-fueled haze I cannot remember what. Oh yes! The banana update. Were you all on the edge of your seats, waiting for an update? Well, wait no more because here it comes: the bananas went from greenish to completely black-and-brown in a matter of 24 hours.

But, Dear Reader, you need to know that when I took off the gross peels, with the exception of the very tip, inside was a firm, yet ripe, banana.

That photo looks a little “not safe for work” and also that is what Reynaud’s looks like.

All of which is to say that while I do love Costco and all of its outsized goodness, I will never buy bananas there again.

Happy Holidays to all of you wonderful people. I wish for you a time of joy, happiness, and peace, and if anyone wants some banana bread, I have a freezer full of bananas for you. xoxo

Can you spot the Barkley?

Miracle on 34th Street, the Costco Version

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“Why? Why would you do that?” my husband asked me, looking at me like I had just escaped the asylum and was planning to sell all our possessions, move into a circus tent, and eat my own shoe. The shocking thing I was planning to do, in fact, was to go to Costco on December 19, the Tuesday before Christmas.

Truthfully, I wondered a bit at myself, but there were a few things I wanted to get and I was in that awkward spot of either a) going now, b) waiting until after Boxing Day and before New Year’s, or c) waiting until January. I couldn’t see how any of the above would be different from one another so I blocked off the whole afternoon and steeled myself for the job. I taught my usual morning class and then headed over there right away, thinking in my mind if I get there at 11:30, I’ll probably be done by 1:00, and then home by 1:30…it’s going to be okay, Nicole, it’s going to be okay. I thought if the lineups were crazy then I could practice my mindfulness, wherever I go, here I am, I repeated to myself as I drove into the parking lot.

I parked far from the doors and noticed that there were several spots to choose from. I chose the one near an abandoned cart, the sight of which usually fills me with impotent rage but I kept breathing and thinking zen thoughts. I took the abandoned cart myself, hauling it over the median and thinking of the cart like I would an abandoned dog, who needs love and attention. The parking lot was a little Frogger-like but I made it into the store without being flattened like Grandma Who Got Run Over By A Reindeer – albeit barely.

Inside the store was a pleasant surprise; I don’t know where all the people in the parking lot were, but they were not in the produce section or the shampoo aisle, nor choosing olives or almond butter. Sure, there were the requisite crowds around the sample tables, but all in all, the store seemed quiet. I walked around smiling at everyone like a friendly lunatic, hoping to shine a light that my resting bitch face does not emit, and, delightfully, people smiled back at me.

Finally, it was the moment of truth. I took a deep breath and headed for the checkouts…and there was no lineup whatsoever. People, six days before Christmas and I was in and out of Costco with a full cart in less than thirty minutes. It is a Christmas miracle! I thought happily. My entire afternoon was empty and available for chocolate bark-making.

My friend Alice (HI ALICE) swears by shopping cart karma, and I am a believer. If you rescue an abandoned cart, or you tidy up the cart corral, good things will happen to you while shopping. IT’S TRUE, PEOPLE, JUST TRY IT.

I did witness something distressing, something I hadn’t seen before so close up. I walked past a car that was backing out of its spot, very near the door. There was another car waiting with its signal light on, and behind it several cars stopped for this. As the car backed up, another car came from a different direction and very quickly – and not exactly safely, since it was icy and slippery – zoomed into the spot. It was, I will tell you, shocking. More than that, the woman in the passenger seat was looking at the patiently-waiting-signal-light-on car who was angrily honking the horn, and she was LAUGHING. Laughing, people. I shared a raised-eyebrow moment with a fellow pushing his cart and I wondered what would happen next. I didn’t wait to see the carnage though, but you can bet that Good Shopping Karma was not awaiting that woman.

Hallelujah, where’s the Advil Cold and Sinus?

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I’m going to preface this post by saying that I’m on my eighth cup of coffee and I have taken two Advil Cold and Sinus, so things could get interesting. Also we are at less than eight hours of daylight, it’s almost a new moon, and holy moly things are dark. I’ve been fighting this virus that we all seem to have this week; it’s the first time I’ve been sick since sometime in 2015, so I have kind of forgotten what it is like to be incapacitated. The great news is that the whole-body fatigue that had taken me down is gone; in its place is a bit of a stuffy head, but since I feel okay being upright, I think I am on the mend.

Me: I think I’m almost totally back to normal!

My husband: You realize that you are totally out of breath just walking up the stairs, right?

I have a tendency to overdo things a little and I am really trying not to. I am trying to take advice I give friends, which is to rest and recover. Apparently it’s easier to give advice than to follow it, who knew? But yesterday I knew I had to do something and so I took the whole day off. I did literally nothing except watch The Price Is Right and five episodes of The Crown.

Princess Margaret looks like I feel.

Looks like Drew Carey got new glasses, I said to myself, despite the fact that it’s been a few years since I’ve watched The Price is Right and who knows, really, how new those glasses are. There was a Canadian fellow on and I became very invested in his progress. Sadly, he only spun $0.10, followed by $0.65 on the big wheel and so was not eligible for the Showcase Showdown. This might have been a blessing for him though because the Big Prize on one of the Showcases was a Trip To Canada. Yes, a trip to “Toronto, Canada” where the winner would enjoy a three-hour sailing tour of Lake Ontario. A three-hour tour started dolefully repeating itself in my brain. But really – it’s December. Who wants a trip to Toronto, let alone a sailing tour (a three-hour tour) on Lake Ontario IN DECEMBER. Although maybe it was taped earlier in the year, who really knows.

I feel like I have more to say about my television watching but it’s not coming to me right now.

Oh, I know, the bananas. I have a banana update for you! At three weeks post-purchase, the bananas were a strange mix of green with blackened stems:

But disturbingly, today, all is ashes. 24 days after purchase, here is where we are:

I’m getting quite a few “When are you going to throw those things out?” queries, and the truth is, I don’t know. I’m tempted to just freeze them all for later banana bread, but they are kind of grody looking, so I’m not sure if it would affect the baking or not. The peel, while still yellow with the exception of the one banana which went completely black and feels like it will disintegrate at any moment, looks weird and is strangely dimpled. The correct thing to do, probably, is to just throw them in the compost, but I don’t know if I can. Maybe it’s the Advil Cold and Sinus talking, but that seems like a decision I cannot make at this time. I have become attached to these bananas.

Recently I saw an article saying that Christmas really sucks for moms, because we are so busy making magical memories we don’t have the time to experience any magic ourselves. I cannot speak for anyone else but I will say that Christmas does not suck for me, in fact it is the opposite, and if it is sucking for you, then back off the throttle a little. Christmas was amazing for me as a kid and you know what my mom did? She bought gifts, sure, she made a metric tonne of baking, yes, and that was pretty much it. AND IT WAS AWESOME. I was thinking about this the other day as my kids enjoyed their super-luxurious Lindor advent calendars, purchased at Costco, naturally, that have not only the usual amazing truffles, but also chocolate icicles, angles, and Santas. They each have one and you know what I had as a child? Those waxy tiny chocolate calendars that I shared with my two brothers.

Side note: if anyone wants to stock up on waxy tiny chocolate calendars, they are still available at Superstore for a very low price.

This was taken nearly three weeks ago, now they are thirty-eight cents each.

Anyway, not to victim blame here, but I think we put way too much pressure on ourselves to be all magical and elvish and whatnot. I feel like our kids will have great Christmas memories no matter what, even if they have to, god forbid, share an advent calendar. Wait, I wrote about this before! Hold please.

Here it is, How To Enjoy The Holidays Without Losing Your Mind. I won’t repeat the sentiments here, but let’s be kind to ourselves. I mean, one year my mother’s oven broke on Christmas Eve and she ended up making Christmas dinner in the microwave and on the barbeque, and it was kind of awesome. So really, all will be merry and bright, so long as we don’t lose our minds like Clark Griswold. Hallelujah! Holy shit. Where’s the Tylenol?

Actually I can really relate to that right now because I think my Advil is wearing off. I will leave you with these offerings: my children’s and my gingerbread men. Which ones do you think I made?

Yes, that one is exactly what you think it is. Welcome to life with boys!

Yes! We have no bananas! We have no bananas today.

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Is Mercury in retrograde or is this the prelude to Ladies’ Holidays, I wondered blearily to myself yesterday, conceding my tiredness could also be due to general busyness, I-guess-I’m-that-age-now interrupted sleep cycles, and the pervading darkness of December. A quick check to the calendar pointed to all of the above. But that was yesterday; what a difference a day makes.

I am having a fabulous day, no thanks to the hour and a half I lay awake last night after Roomba mysteriously started by itself and woke me up at 2:00 am. After shutting off the phantom robot, I lay awake with Baby, It’s Cold Outside running through my head, only to fall asleep for an hour before awakening for the day. By all rights, that should have left me crabby and tired but, in fact, I have been oddly energetic and pleasant.

Just when you feel despair for all of humankind, something wonderful happens to restore faith in humanity, and for me that was the elderly lady I saw yesterday in the Costco parking lot, neatly rearranging all of the jumbled carts in the corral. I very nearly threw the car in park and jumped out, but there were several cars behind me and I didn’t want to evoke road rage. So I will just say here: Madam, you are doing the lord’s work.

Then today – because grocery shopping never ends for me, apparently – I decided to stop in the Superstore liquor store after picking up my usual weekly groceries. A young woman stocking the shelves smiled at me and said “Oh my god, I love your hair, it looks so fabulous” and that is a thing I do not hear often, and so I, like the Virgin Mary, treasured that and pondered it in my heart. If that wasn’t enough joy, the Superstore liquor store had this:

Dairy-free Baileys, you guys! Honestly, everything is coming up Nicole today.

Not unrelated, I want to talk about something important: bananas. We – as you might guess – go through what I feel is an insane amount of fruit and vegetables each week. In a good way. Bananas are a staple in this house, even though only three out of four of us eat them. Well, four out of five, if you include Barkley. I have a frozen banana in my smoothie every day, and the other two banana eaters average a banana a day. I also make banana bread and muffins, and so our average weekly banana intake is 21-24 bananas, sometimes more. I like to buy a variety of ripeness as I like ripe bananas for my smoothie, extremely ripe and kind of gross looking bananas to freeze for later muffin/ loaf making, and then, of course, we need some that are a bit greenish and just nicely yellow for raw consumption.

Exactly fifteen days ago I bought bananas from Costco. I hadn’t bought them there before but all their other produce, with the exception of peppers, I have found to be exceptional, so I assumed bananas would be no different. However, they were very green. I bought two large bunches, thinking that within a day or two they would be fine for raw consumption. I had already had a surplus frozen for smoothies.

This is what the bananas looked like after a WEEK on my counter.

Still completely inedible. That one yellowish banana I placed in a paper bag with an avocado, which ripened. The banana did not. At this point, desperation was setting in and I went to Superstore and bought more bananas. At that point I had forty bananas on my counter.

Forty bananas, you guys. The ones on the left are the Costco ones, the ones on the right from Superstore: as you can see, in a variety of ripeness.

The days passed and yesterday marked two weeks since the purchase of the original Costco bananas.

One bunch, STILL GREEN, HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE? WHAT KIND OF BANANAS ARE THESE? The others ripened with the notable exception of the one that was in a paper bag, which made me wonder if I was in some kind of banana bizzaro world.

This morning the greens are still green but the yellows are deteriorating at an alarming rate:

I am becoming really invested in the fate of these bananas; like it’s my own personal science experiment. Will the greens ever ripen? Or will it be like a McDonald’s hamburger that – allegedly, I’ve never tried this – will never mould even if left on the counter for months.

Meanwhile, I am digging up all the containers I can find to freeze the bananas as they devolve into brown-spotted mush. For those of you interested, I freeze super-over-ripe bananas in groups of three, and when they thaw they are disgustingly perfect for baking. And if you’re looking for the easiest banana bread recipe ever, here it is! It’s from my friend Maureen’s mom, and I always think of it that way.

Maureen’s Mom’s Banana Bread

3 ripe bananas, mashed (or if using frozen, thawed)

6 tablespoons vegetable oil (I always use grapeseed)

1 tablespoon vanilla (this is a deviation from Maureen’s mom’s recipe, I just like a lot of vanilla. Original quantity is 1 teaspoon, if you’re not into a tablespoon)

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 egg, lightly beaten (or use a flax egg)

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 1/2 cups flour

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray or grease a loaf pan. Mix together mushy bananas, oil, vanilla, and sugar. Add egg, mix well. Stir in the dry ingredients. Pour into pan. Bake for 45 minutes. Voila! I usually use my stand mixer and the whole thing comes together in under ten minutes. Super easy, and delicious!

It’s December; what’s your Tree Decorating Personality?

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The other day my husband said that the month of November dragged and dragged and seemed to go on forever, and honestly, I felt like I couldn’t relate at all. November FLEW by for me, in that I keep thinking that it was just Halloween the other day, and now it’s December. I mean, I’ve been feeling festive for the past couple of weeks, as is my wont at this time of year, but I keep feeling like my life is a speeded-up cartoon of pages flying off a daily calendar.

On Wednesday I went to the post office to mail the Christmas parcel to my mother-and-sister-in-law, and as I walked through the parking lot I saw a man standing outside of the Tim Horton’s, having a cigarette. This would not be notable in the least, except that the man in question looked exactly like Santa Claus: he had a long, well-kept white beard, rosy cheeks, a generally round shape, and – this might be speculation on my part – a jolly demeanor. I wondered if he WAS the mall Santa Claus; although he wasn’t wearing a red suit, he was wearing a red t-shirt, and anyway it would be more than likely that he would change for his smoke break, so as to not disturb the young children who had just sat on his lap in the pretend North Pole in the mall. Nevertheless, I did wonder if he WAS the mall Santa, would children recognize him even without the suit, and if so, how would their parents explain this? Even Santa deserves a break, maybe, or Santa has a stressful job at this time of year. I thought about this all through the lineup at the post office, imagining this stranger, who had done nothing whatever to deserve this thought process, other than having a Santa-like appearance, was actually the real Santa, picturing his smoke breaks during toy-making supervision, and the elves smoking with him with their tiny elf-sized mugs of super-strong coffee, talking with a “HEY! I’m WALKING here!” New York accent. I thought about this until I got back to my car and then realized that I was letting my imagination run away with me, and speculation is just that, speculation, and most likely the fellow in question was not Santa in any shape or form, only a kind-looking, if hirsute, older gentleman.

Not that I’d begrudge Santa his smoke break – it would be tiring sitting there with screaming infants and parents trying to coax a smile out of their terrified toddlers, who intuitively know not to sit on a stranger’s lap and tell that stranger secrets for any amount of candy canes. Have you been a good girl this year? But a smoking Santa might be a little stinky for the kids.

Long story short, now is the time to visit the post office. The lineup was negligible and the clerks are not as downtrodden and exhausted as they will be three weeks from now.

What’s the gift-and-card-for-the-in-laws situation in your house? For what it’s worth, I take this task on myself. I know many people have a “your family, you do the gift” policy, but a) I find I’m probably more suited to shop for a seventy-five-year-old woman than my husband is, b) I have a much more flexible schedule, and c) broadly speaking, once two people are joined in holy matrimony those two people should – IDEALLY – consider the spouse’s family to be their own. Ideally. In any case, it’s all done and mailed now.

I am also the person in charge of holiday cards, for the very good reason that I am the only person who cares about holiday cards. I am the person who chooses the photo, the layout, and the inside message. I make sure to include “from Barkley too, woof!” as I do every year, and I write out and address each one. I do not let anyone near them – which, as I said, no one is really clamouring to help – because to say I’m particular about them is an understatement.

I mention this so you know that I am not judging the people involved in my next topic. I know we all have our things. Lately I have seen a lot of posts about women, exclusively women, who either a) redecorate their Christmas tree after their children decorate it, or b) do not let their children decorate the tree at all. No judgement here, but I cannot relate in the least. Decorating the tree is a full-on family affair in the Boyhouse and hoo boy, can you tell. I love it. I love our extremely eclectic collection of ornaments and I love to see the perfect arrangement of ornaments through my kids’ eyes. Every year I add one or two ornaments to our collection, something to remind me of the year that has passed, and so we have a lot of interesting trinkets; a tractor from when the boys were obsessed with John Deere, a beautiful ball with an Inukshut on it from 2010, a fat moose from the year I was pregnant with the oldest and was enormous.

Did you know that there is much spirited debate in the world about white versus coloured lights? I did not but never fear: our tree has a setting for both, and the lights oscillate between the two. See?

I love when the kids jam several ornaments on one branch; they do that because they think the ornaments want to be together, which melts my heart.

Clue – a gift from my parents – plus two homemade candy canes and, surprisingly, Superman.

A stormtrooper with Ben 10 and a few assorted Cars movie ornaments.

I bought this admittedly tacky Disney castle with Mickey Mouse last year, at Disney World. It reminds me of watching the fireworks show, and how wonderful and special that was. A dream is a wish your heart makes, when you’re fast asleep.

This came from Disneyland, back in 2011. The kids LOVED the Buzz Lightyear ride.

My mom had given the boys these ornaments when they were – as you may guess – four and five, and I love that they are together. Also: Scooby Doo and my marshmallow “Kiss the Cook.”

My mother-in-law gave me this bowl years ago. I keep it filled with driftwood, shells, and smooth rocks from trips my husband and I made to the West Coast, before kids. The vintage ornaments get added at Christmas, and they were also a gift from her. I love the 1960s feel of them.

My husband, bless his heart, spends at least eight hours putting up outdoor Christmas decorations. Not only do we have lights – white icicles and red bulbs – along with lighted deer, trees, gift boxes, a hippo, penguins, snowmen, a moose, and an entire candy cane lane – which he bought for me because I always wanted one – he also decorates our large Mayday tree with glittery ornaments.

Sadly, two of them detached from their hooks. I went to Walmart to buy Gorilla Glue, feeling like an I am Woman Hear Me Roar type. I went to the DIY section, giggling because DIY always reminds me of that line in The 40-Year-Old Virgin, “Do you like to Do It Yourself?” Anyway, there were many different kinds of Gorilla Glue but I chose wisely, I think. When I told my husband, expecting praise for doing what I would strongly consider a Blue Job, he nervously texted me to ask me to please wait until he got home before fixing the ornaments. I think he thought I would glue myself to the table, or perhaps glue my hands together or one hand to my face or something. Given my track record for fixing things, this was probably warranted.

My husband also strung lights on the garage so when I’m making dinner, I don’t have to stare out the window into the pitch-black abyss. It really brightens my mood. He also set the timer so that the lights come on just as I’m driving home from yoga in the wee hours of the morning, and it always makes me happy.

Happy December, my friends. I wish you a month of joy and festivity, and no fingers glued together. xo

Why do we have two Agent P? I don’t know, but I’m glad they’re together.