Monthly Archives: September 2019

Paparazzi

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Do you ever wonder what it would be like to be a celebrity, photographed by the paparazzi at the most inopportune times? I imagine it would feel like running into an ex for the first time in decades when you have dirty hair and no makeup and you just needed to get one ingredient from the grocery store, but times a thousand. I’m not pitying the famous, not really, because I’m sure the piles of money would help the pain go away, but still it would be very weird to be photographed constantly, with people speculating pregnancies when really you just had a big lunch. Imagine going out for groceries, and then later seeing a photo of yourself with a headline about how you’ve let yourself go, or speculation that you have a terminal illness or drug problem, when really, you were just tired.

As is the usual order of business in September, a cold virus has visited our house. It’s just an irritant, certainly not debilitating, but yesterday I came down with it and felt plagued by general malaise and total exhaustion. Luckily for me I had no classes to teach; I did, however, have to get groceries and that in itself felt like I had accidentally entered myself into the Ironman competition. It didn’t help that Superstore is currently rearranging things in the cosmetics and skin care section; I stood staring at the four aisles filled entirely with tissue boxes and – oddly – cotton balls, wondering what happened to the liquid soap. I was probably frozen in space for a good three minutes before a woman wheeled her cart up next to me and stared around her. It’s good to have a companion in this kind of thing. Where do you think the deodorant is? she asked me, snapping me out of my Where am I what happened reverie. Eventually we both came to our senses and started to slowly mill around, finding deodorant in with the shampoo and liquid soap with the toothpaste.

If I had to teach yesterday, I think it would have been entirely one long savasana. I briefly wondered if it wasn’t so much LUCKY to be sick on a day with no classes, but rather my body letting down its guard. I’m a big believer in yin and yang, and when you’ve had a lot of yang, your body craves yin. In other words, adrenaline can keep you going when you need to, but then your body revolts and makes sure you get the rest that you need, after a busy period. It’s why, I think, I always would get sick right after final exams in university, or after any kind of period when I burned the candle at both ends.

Fortunately today I am almost back to my Energizer Bunny self; two nights of ten hour sleeps and a totally unexpected afternoon nap will do that. I say totally unexpected because I sat down to rest after bringing in all the groceries and woke up an hour later. I am not totally back to normal, but neither do I feel like crying at the prospect of folding a basket of laundry.

Circling back to my original point: yesterday I found myself too tired to get dressed before taking the boys to school, so I left the house in my pajamas. I know many people will be like what is the big deal, I do that every day, to which I say I do not. As much as I love my pajamas, leaving the house in soft grey pants that have pictures of mice on them is not something I want to do. I mean, I rarely leave the house without lipstick on, let alone unshowered and undressed. As a slight digression, I posted a photo of myself and my younger son, a few months ago, when he surpassed me in height. One of my friends immediately commented “You’re not wearing lipstick!” which shows that, other than the 5:00 am yoga crew, no one really sees me without My Face On. For someone who put makeup on before going to the hospital to give birth, leaving the house in pajamas is a non-starter. Honestly, how hard is it to put on pants? Well, yesterday that felt like a bridge too far, and I briefly thanked the powers that be that I have never achieved celebrity and so there were no paparazzi hiding out behind the garage to photograph me with circles under my eyes, unwashed hair, and pajama pants. Drug problems? Sources close to Nicole say yes. 

I often feel like walking with Barkley is like walking with a celebrity because it is rare that I go unnoticed. Or, rather, it’s rare that HE goes unnoticed. This is what it’s come down to: if I only have twenty to thirty minutes for a walk, like I have to quickly zip one in between classes, I try to take quiet sidewalks in the neighbourhood that have little foot traffic. I am a person who at the very least nods and smiles when passing people on the sidewalk, and frequently that means I get into extensive conversations with strangers about what breed he is, how old he is, and how he is a very, very good dog. Sometimes these conversations turn to the heartbreaking, like the many lonely seniors I encounter who pet Barkley and talk about how very much they miss their old canine companions, and then I can never break off the conversation because it’s just too wrenching to pull away. Often, though, I will run into a group of kids and then things get wild. The other day I walked by a school group apparently walking back after swimming lessons at the local pool, and of maybe sixty kids, at least fifty-five of them squealed and waved at me. “Hi! Hi! Hi! Your dog is so cute! Hi! Hi! I like your dog!” ad infinitum. My very favourite are teenage girls, as they often unintentionally turn into the little girls from Despicable Me, “Oh my godddddd your dog look at your dog he’s so flufffffffyyyyyy! Oh my goddddddddd!”

Not that I am one to talk. Today Barkley and I were out walking, and he tried to chase and capture a leaf blowing on the sidewalk. “Oh Barkley!” I squealed, “You’re such a Silly Billy! That’s just a leaf! Yes it is! You’re a good doggy! It’s a leaf!” At that moment, I looked up and saw a man standing in his driveway, holding a rake and a compost bag, with the kind of look on his face you might imagine someone to have after witnessing a mid-forties woman talking in a high-pitched baby voice to her dog about chasing a leaf.

Speaking of leaves, I am enjoying the fall colours very much right now. I think that if I lived in a place that had three months of sunny, crisp days with warm-coloured leaves and – while I’m fantasizing – actual non-crab-apple trees, I would be one of those women who embrace fall with open arms. As it is, it’s supposed to snow tomorrow, so we can bid these colours adieu for now, and look out the snow shovels and toques. Happy Fall, everyone! xo

 

To grow out my hair or not grow out my hair, that is the question.

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I love being a woman, make no mistake about it, but sometimes I wonder what it would be like to be a man. I know, objectively, that men do feel concern about their appearances, just like the rest of us. I’m sure men harbour feelings of dissatisfaction with their looks; perhaps they look ruefully in the mirror, noticing thickening waists or thinning hair. But one thing I know for sure is that they do not spend a week every four to ten weeks wondering if they are getting their period or if they are as hideous as they think they are.

It’s just not fair, is it? As if it is not enough that we spend that week bloated and exhausted, irritable and emotional, but we also apparently develop vision issues that cause us to look in the mirror with self-loathing, or, at the very least, Extreme Dissatisfaction. If you polled ten million women on the week before their periods, and asked them to rate on a scale of one to ten their satisfaction with their appearance, only one woman would say Very Satisfied, and that woman would be Giselle Bundchen. The rest of us would oscillate between Somewhat Dissatisfied and I Hate Everything Especially My Stupid Hair.

As a note, I do NOT Hate My Hair. In fact, as my layers have grown out over the past ten months, I have felt Very Satisfied with my hair, for the first time ever. My hair therapist is a brilliant woman who has made this Life Journey with me not only painless, but very pleasant. However. HOWEVER. This past week – pre-ladies’-holidays – I have going back and forth in my mind about – get ready – possibly growing my hair long. Or longer. You would not believe the amount of brain power and energy I have put into trying to answer the question Should I grow my hair longer or should I keep it this length? I feel like I could put this to a team of debaters at the high school. Resolved: Nicole’s Hair Should Grow Another Three Inches.

It’s not like the consequences are particularly dire either way. Intellectually I know that a) I like it this length, and so if I left it like this I would be happy, b) if I grew it longer I might like it like that too and as an added benefit, would require fewer bobby pins to put it in a bun, and c) if I grew it out longer and I DIDN’T like it, I could have it cut back to this length. In all cases, the end result is Happiness and Being Very Satisfied. And yet it feels like a Major Life Decision That Will Affect Everything And Possibly Have Disastrous Results. For the amount of thought I’ve been putting into this, oscillating back and forth between Grow Longer and Status Quo, I could have penned the Great Canadian Novel, written a mathematical proof for game theory from first principles, and finished an entire book of Sudoko puzzles.

I probably would even have energy left over to figure out how to change traffic behaviour around school zones, which would be the most complicated thing of all. I breathed a sigh of relief when I no longer had children at the elementary school; people would pop out from between parked cars or buses, kids in tow, to jaywalk right through traffic to get to school, rather than use the clearly marked, patrolled crosswalk less than twenty metres away. Cars would stop in bus zones or do u-turns in the middle of traffic, to much honking and distress. Harried drivers would speed through said marked, patrolled crosswalks nearly missing pedestrians and my children, who were school patrols. At least, I thought, when I got to junior high things would improve. Reader, they did not. The junior high is on a hill and there are still people parking in bus zones and doing u-turns, but on the hill it is so much worse. A friend witnessed one woman taking a u-turn in the middle of winter and then losing traction, she slid sideways down the hill, narrowly missing several parked cars before hitting a snowbank, which was thankfully high enough to protect the people on the sidewalk. Not to mention that school starts at 7:50, and so it is dark much of the year. There’s nothing like wondering if a kid dressed all in black is going to pop out in front of you as you careen down an icy hill.

Now that my older son is in high school, the only real hazard appears to be the teens themselves, travelling in herds across the street, heads down, looking at their phones. I seem to have more patience for them than I do the weirdly illegal driving maneuvers.

Speaking of sons, the birthday party on the weekend was a huge success. All of his friends are really great kids and they all seemed to have a good time. I find it much easier to have a houseful of teen boys than younger kids, that’s for sure. At one point they all headed to 7-11 for Slurpees and I could have really done without the information that there were more shopping cart races, and I could have REALLY done without one of my sons showing me a VIDEO they had taken of said races. I had to do some deep breathing, thoughts of concussions and broken teeth and everything else in between going through my head. Om shanti. There are only so many times you can bring up CONCUSSIONS and BRAIN INJURY and WE SPENT MANY THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS ON THOSE TEETH AND IF YOU BREAK THEM I AM GOING TO BE VERY UPSET.

That reminds me of when I was just a sweet young thing at the bar, and a friend of my then-boyfriend was dancing with a very attractive girl. This friend ended up being punched in the mouth by that girl’s boyfriend, and as a result, he lost one of his front teeth. Being twenty-one and toothless was bad enough, but this guy had braces in his teens, so imagine how his poor mother, a single mom who would have scrimped to pay for braces, must have felt. In a small-world coincidence, I ran into this guy only a few years ago, at junior high orientation night. He had a full smile so I guess the tooth implant worked out in the long run.

My main activity this weekend – other than post-party stress about shopping cart races and extreme relief that no kids were concussed and/ or left toothless – was baking. I baked cupcakes for the party and then a fancy layer cake with strawberry filling and chocolate ganache for his actual birthday dinner. They turned out well!

Hope your week is just as sweet as birthday cake, friends. xo

Reality Bites

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My husband got home from work and turned on the television. I heard familiar music and turned to look at the screen.

Me: That’s weird. What kind of football is on Tuesday nights?

My husband: Um, Monday Night Football. It’s Monday.

Who among us has not woken up Thursday morning, thinking it was Friday? It is rare, for me at least, to be that confused about the day of the week so early in the week. It felt like an ominous sign.

I think we are all there this week; it’s the week that we go from the frying pan to the fire, so to speak, and for me things have been hectic. Full school schedules! Lunches! Being An Involved Parent And Listening To All The Stories! I have picked up two new classes for the fall and while I love them so much, it has required an even higher level of organization to just keep things running smoothly. I was thinking about writing a whole series of posts on getting organized, and I may still do that, but the main takeaway is WRITE EVERYTHING DOWN. It’s all about the list, baby.

Did you ever read Still Alice? I maintain that it is the most beautiful and terrifying book I have ever read. For weeks, maybe even months after I read it, I would have low-level anxiety every time I went to the pantry and forgot what I was looking for. I no longer have this panic, but I can’t help but compare my endless lists to Alice’s sticky notes and Blackberry reminders. It is just a good coping mechanism, it does not mean I have early-onset Alzheimer’s. 

As an aside, I had told my mother about this book when I had first read it, and not too long ago she said that she had taken it out at the library and “wondered why I recommended it to her, it was so sad.” Mom, I said NOT to read it!

Wednesday is now my designated Get Everything Done Day and last weekend I realized, with a start, that I was running dangerously low on wine so today I went to the liquor store after buying ALL THE GROCERIES at Superstore. They had one of their crazy specials in which a very tasty Shiraz was on sale for – get this – $8.98 a bottle. I immediately stocked up with two cases, justifying my purchase with the thought of the eleven teenage boys who will be at my house on the weekend for my son’s birthday party. This is what I looked like fourteen years ago:

I was clearly not drinking any wine at the time.

Fourteen years, and this is what I look like today:

I kid, I kid, except not about the lipstick and there is a strong possibility that I will get reading glasses soon. Back in 2000, I had laser eye surgery and it worked perfectly, but at the time they mentioned that I would likely need reading glasses sometime in my forties. Reader, at age 25 I had no concept of what it would be like to be in my forties, except “old.” Now in my forties, I consider “old” to be anything north of 80, and I’m sure when I hit 80 that line in the sand will move again.

Speaking of awkward, let’s file this one under Things You Couldn’t Do Even If You Tried. I always wear silver sleeper hoop earrings; I never take them out except for fancy occasions when I replace them with larger and slightly more ornate silver hoop earrings. The other morning I was taking off my yoga top in preparation to shower and somehow got the spaghetti strap caught in my earring, which apparently opened and closed just to accomplish this, like a Venus flytrap. It wasn’t until I went to drop the top on the bathroom floor that I noticed that, instead of dropping, it was heavily hanging off my ear. It is not easy to open a sleeper hoop with one hand while supporting the weight of a yoga top so as to not rip the aforementioned earring right out of ones earlobe with the other. However, I did it, and I felt like I could easily take on the world, which is why I ended up taking my car for an oil change. I am woman, hear me roar. People, for those of you with flexible schedules, apparently 12:30 midweek is a perfect time to get your oil changed. There were literally no other cars and the entire process took less than twenty minutes.

I know everyone the world over is in love with fall and yes, I do like cozy sweaters and boots and all that, but honestly, mostly I just feel cold. I know that in a few months 8 degrees will be considered an amazingly happy turn of events, but right now it just feels cold. Even in the sun the air is sharp, not that we’ve seen the sun much lately, it’s been so cold and grey and damp, which is a bit depressing, particularly if you find yourself thinking of the fleeting nature of time and how there are not that many back-to-school days left in your future. OR MAYBE THAT’S JUST ME. Perhaps that’s why I’m eating my apple-flavoured feelings; possibly the best thing about fall, in my mind, are McIntosh apples. There were some “orchard run” Macs last week at Superstore, but they have since disappeared, so I’m waiting in eager anticipation. My mother-in-law always talks to me about apples and how she makes them into pie filling and applesauce, which is always sort of horrifying to me – it’s a waste of an apple! I would never put an apple I liked in pie. Of course, she lives in the land of orchards, whereas I am in the middle of the Prairies, and so I view things differently. Fall is also the season where everyone in the city who has crabapples or ornamental apples are now trying to give away the excess, which is always kind of funny. No one wants them. No one. I’m sorry for your luck of having a crabapple tree, but for the love of god please don’t try to give them to me. That isn’t real fruit, I am sorry, people. It’s like a much kinder and fruitier version of multi-level-marketing; everyone avoids eye contact and makes excuses about not having time to go to the party. xo

Happy could have totally made that shot.

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I’m in that First-Week-Of-September-What-Is-With-This-Schedule mode right now, and it’s only Thursday. It’s only Thursday and I’ve had a light week, class-wise, which means that next week, with a full roster of classes should be very interesting. With everyone gone last week, I feel like I didn’t get enough closure on summer. The long weekend was dreadful, weather-wise, with actual thick fog and drizzle and cool temperatures, and so I would like an end-of-summer do-over, please. Is that too much to ask?

As an aside, the guys had The Greatest Time camping in the Yukon and Alaska, and my husband has gone so far as to describe to me “how much better campgrounds are now” which feels like he’s preparing to pop the question: will I go on a northern camping trip with him? There are showers and everything! You get to meet so many people! he said in a coaxing way and well. This is a thing that currently feels undesirable but life, as we say, is unpredictable. Who knows what the future may hold? Maybe in our golden years I will happily acquiesce to RV living, although this seems unlikely at this juncture.

The first couple days of school have gone really well; the boys are enjoying their classes so far, which bodes well for the semester. I was reminiscing with a friend about dropping the kids off on their first day of kindergarten. I remember the teacher reading The Kissing Hand to my older son’s class, and then all the children gave their parents (well, it was exclusively moms, as I recall) little pink construction paper hearts to keep for the day. I think I still have that little heart somewhere. My younger son’s kindergarten teacher was almost a parody of a kindergarten teacher, she was so wonderful and lovely with a crinoline-lined dress, long blonde hair, and a speaking voice that could only be described as “soprano.” She gave all the parents (moms) a little paper bag that had some cute things in it to symbolize the kindergarten year, but what those things were has disappeared from my memory. Ah, the kindergarten drop-off. So emotional.

Back then I was involved as involved could be, volunteering for every committee and to help cut pieces of milk cartons for bird houses and baking snacks for class celebrations. Comparatively, my younger son informed me that Meet the Teacher night is next Thursday, but “we don’t have to go.” Oh, thank GOD, I said, because honestly? I’ve done my time, listening to the principal talk about the importance of parental involvement in education and how to check your child’s progress online. I’m fine, thanks, I’ll talk to you at report card time. If then. How the mighty have fallen. And I only have two kids, one grade apart! Imagine how jaded I would be if I was my friend who is now entering her eleventh year at the elementary school with her youngest, with seven years still in front of her. I’m not sure I’d even slow the car down before allowing the kid to jump out.

Perhaps this is nature’s way of preparing me for their eventual flight from the nest?

Every year at Back to School time I get the song from Billy Madison stuck in my head for literally DAYS: Back to school, back to school, to prove to my dad that I’m no fool. It probably speaks volumes that my household got into a tense argument about which movie is more realistic: Billy Madison or Happy Gilmore. Usually we argue about which movie is BETTER, but for both questions my answer is Happy Gilmore. It’s just silly to think someone could go through a grade every two weeks, no matter what the stakes! Also that woman would never go out with such a loser, I said, to which my husband replied that no one could ever take a running leap and make that golf shot to win the tournament. Deadlock has been reached and as with any debate, no one’s mind has been opened or changed.

The thing I notice most about Back to School is that we go through much more food. School is hungry work, apparently, and adding that to the Growing Teen Boys thing that I have going on, my grocery needs have skyrocketed. Yesterday I spent hours going to both Costco and Superstore, and I can tell you that doing that is a very good way to get your steps in. Feel the burn, I thought to myself as I went up and down the stairs myriad times to put everything away. Maybe I should market this as a fitness program; it could be the next CrossFit or Legree! And lift! And turn! And push! And now return the cart, you lazy bastard!

That last one just slipped out. I swear. xo

Some of us are really, really sad about Back to School.