Author Archives: Nicole Boyhouse

Online Friends: They’re Real and They’re Spectacular

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Thank you all for your very kind words, and for sending thoughts and prayers to Alison’s family. I was reflecting this weekend on the nature of online friendship, and how such friends are real – and spectacular! – and how wonderful it is to be part of a community that is not limited by geography.

So it was kind of funny timing that I saw one of my online friends had posted a piece that was a “Dear Mommy Blogger” post. I don’t particularly feel like linking to it, because while the message itself has some merit, the delivery is vicious, mean, and shaming. Allow me to give you a screen-shot snippet:

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It kind of made me laugh ruefully, because here I am, celebrating the relationships between bloggers and twitter-ers and such, and so happy about how the internet can bring people together from all over the continent, and feeling the loss of a friend and the warmth and love of other friends, and this woman wants me to know that our blogs fucking suck and nobody is reading my shit.

Which, well. I realize that this is directed towards sponsored posts and brand ambassadors and the like, but really. If you’ve been reading the Boyhouse for any length of time, you will realize that I do not write sponsored posts in this space. I do like to give shout-outs to my friends’ companies, as well as to giant corporations, but I don’t get paid for it, nor do I want to. I have, however, written sponsored posts on other websites, and, as I said to Hannah (HI HANNAH), I’d probably sell my soul for a Lululemon sponsorship if it meant complimentary Wunder Unders and Tri-Y tops. If they threw in a Ta Ta Tamer? Well. I would welcome my new Luon overlords, is what I’m saying.

Anyway. People have a right to make money, and we may not like the way some people choose to earn, but there’s no need to be an asshole about it.

I might be slightly sensitive because I had a friend, a real-life, have-coffee-with, chat-with-often kind of friend, who dropped me after I started writing for the YMC website. She thought I was selling myself out, which is a ridiculous idea if you know how much website writers make. If I was really selling myself out, I’d do it for more money, you know? Or maybe I wouldn’t have left my job, all those years ago, in which I worked as a quantitative analyst for a large multinational corporation.

Ah well, we all have our issues, I suppose.

How was your weekend? We spent ours at my parents’ house; it was my mom’s birthday, and we had a lovely time. My husband took me on a 16.5 kilometer bike ride yesterday morning, and when we got back the kids wanted us all to go out together. The upshot was that I rode 23.5 kilometers, and it was the first ride of the season. It felt great until I got into the car this morning – MY BUM. Yoga felt awesome until I got to my seated postures. I felt like I needed a cushion or something. The good news is that my actual muscles aren’t sore, which I thought they might be. But my poor behind, I am telling you.

Also – this week marks the 30 year anniversary of Top Gun! We all know how I feel about that movie. Wait, you don’t? I wrote all about Life Lessons From Top Gun on Throwing It Back last year. Damn, that is a good movie. Talk to me, Goose.

On Friendship

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When I was young, I had penpals. Some of them were cabinmates from sleepaway camp; we’d pledge our undying friendship during the last campfire, and we’d swear to write each other until the following summer brought us together again. I was penpal with a distant cousin who lived in California; we shared the same name and were the same age, and when we finally met each other in person, it was like we had always been friends. We exchanged letters for years after that; I told her things I couldn’t tell my neighbourhood friends. I wrote another cousin several times a month; we went through our teenage angst together and wrote about first cars and boyfriends and parties that got out of hand. I went through piles of stamps monogrammed stationary, given to me by my grandmother every year. Grandma got letters from me too. I loved writing letters and I loved receiving letters, and any chance I got I would pull out that scented notepaper with my name and address across the top.

I don’t write letters anymore. My monogrammed stationary has been replaced by an avatar picture and a cover photo. My penpals are the women in my Twitter and Facebook feeds, and my blog roll. We bloggers like to tell everybody everything, and we chat not about first cars and boyfriends and parties, but about our families and our celebrity crushes and our wine consumption. We talk about makeup and exercise and recipes, we talk about movies and books. Some I have met once or twice, some I have never met. Some become the kind of friends who lift you up when you’re down, who you can always count on for friendship and counselling. If we were thirteen, we would cut our fingers and become blood sisters, and then we would write letters until the next time we could be together.

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I’ve been lucky enough to make connections – real connections – with women in every province in the country, and I’ve often dreamed of road-tripping across Canada, visiting those I know from Vancouver Island to PEI, from Southern Ontario to Flin Flon, Manitoba.

I was telling my husband about my dream of road-tripping, not only across Canada, but in the United States as well. When the boys fly the nest, I told him, we could drive all over the States and visit all my “penpals” who are scattered across the country. We’d visit Eryn in Washington State, Maggie in Oregon, and Mary and Terry in California. We’d see Sharon in Cincinnati and pop in to see Mike and Sandy in Michigan and Gretchen in Colorado. We’d see Kate and Leah in New Hampshire, Karen in Massachusetts and Cherie in Maine. We’d eat fresh vegetables at Trish’s farm in upstate New York, and go to Pennsylvania where we’d visit with Sarah and Sherri. In Maryland we’d see Steph and her family. We’d see the Washington monuments with Kimberly and have a coffee with Cara, hopefully when the cherry blossoms were in bloom. We’d spend ages at Liv’s in Georgia, exhausting her Southern hospitality and sipping bourbon, and we’d talk all the live long day about everything. We could see the goats and chickens at Stephanie’s in Alabama. We’d spend some time visiting my husband’s friends in Texas, but while we were there we would definitely make the time to go and see Alison.

But then, you see, Alison died this week.

Alison was one of my first friends on Twitter. She was a frequent commenter on this blog, and she wrote a blog herself, which I always enjoyed. She was a lovely, kind person who never had a bad thing to say about anyone. She was encouraging, she was positive, she loved talking about trends from our teen years, and she looked beautiful in bright colours. But she’s gone now, and I wish I had the chance to tell her that I valued our friendship. I wish, instead of talking about eye cream and tangerine tops, I had told her that she mattered to me, that she was a good friend, that I admired her.

I don’t think I ever did. So she will never know that her passing has left a gap in my life, and that I will miss her dearly.

After I turned forty, I realized that I needed to make more effort with people. We are all busy, we are all tired, we all have crazy schedules and hectic days. But as I told one of my dearest friends, if I can’t make time for one coffee a month with the girls in the neighbourhood, I need to re-examine my life. In six months I won’t remember what deadline I was working towards, but I will remember missing a friend’s birthday lunch. And just as I have strived to make more effort with the people I have the opportunity to see often, I am striving to make more effort to let the people I don’t get to see know what they mean to me.

When Alison passed, I was having drinks and laughs with my colleagues and friends in Toronto. I had spent the week prior to that busy, busy, busy. So busy I didn’t notice that I hadn’t heard from her in a few days.

Always make the time.

I care about you.

You are valued and you matter.

You will not be forgotten.

 

Tiny Handprints On Furniture And Walls

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How was your weekend? I know that Mother’s Day can be fraught with all sorts of emotions and mixed feelings for some people, and if you are one of those, I hope you had some peace over the weekend.

I had some nostalgic, emotional moments when I realized, late Saturday night, that I had not been disallowed from unpacking any backpacks this week. Steph had commented on my Throwing It Back post last week that she remembered when her son no longer brought home Mother’s Day crafts from school, and that comment resurfaced in my brain after I realized that no one had panicked when I opened up backpacks this whole past week. Now, rationally, I know that all things eventually come to an end, and just like it would be very weird to get one of those “Tiny Handprints” poems from a nine-year-old, so too would it be strange to get a Mom-related acrostic poem written on a doily from a teenager. I knew such crafts would no longer come one day, I just didn’t realize that this Mother’s Day would be that day.

Landslide.

It was apparent that my hunch was correct on Sunday morning. Every year for Mother’s Day, my mom and I get pedicures and I go to the garden centre and buy whatever I like and call it my “Mother’s Day gift.” In actuality, I do not want a physical gift on Mother’s Day, just this nice little pedicure-and-plant-buying ritual. But I’ve always had some kind of craft to look at and admire on Mother’s Day, so it did feel a bit strange. I realized that I would never again receive a Mother’s Day craft. Never again is a very powerful concept.

I went to yoga and while I ujjayi breathed, I thought of all the moms in Fort Mac, and how the boys helped me plant the garden the day before, and how everything is wonderful and I really don’t even have room on my dressers for more crafts anyway, since I’ve been displaying most of them since I was given them and things are a little crowded with construction paper. I left the Shala smiling and with renewed perspective.

People, I came home and the boys and my husband had cleaned the entire house. They even scrubbed the baseboards, mopped the downstairs bathroom, and vacuumed the stairs.

Fuck the doily crafts, this was the best Mother’s Day gift ever.

I was completely surprised and frankly, elated. It came to me that motherhood is just one long string of eras, and I am out of the crafting era and into the “acts of service” era and this era is awesome. Not that I didn’t love the preschool teas…

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They were adorable. I enjoyed the “spa day” that Jake’s kindergarten teacher had devised, and I wore my bright-pink nail polish with pride, or something…

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What I’m saying is I love this new era, I really do. The boys helped my husband make dinner and they all cleaned up and it was kind of a Mother’s Day fantasy come true, to be honest. I used to long for moments by myself, to have a cup of coffee without someone needing help in the bathroom and to make dinner without someone crying in the kitchen, I used to just long for moments where no one was touching me or needing something or talking to me.

And now I have it. I have whole pots of coffee in peace, unless someone desperately needs to know what Reverend Lovejoy’s wife’s name is, or someone wants to expound on their theory that Star Wars could be real, we really don’t know, the universe is so big. No one ever cries when I am trying to get dinner on the table and when the kids get home from school they just hang out and don’t need a thing from me. I’m going to Toronto for YMC-related things tomorrow and it’s really not a big deal. Things will keep on ticking without me; they might be more slightly more complicated, but our little world will keep on turning while I’m gone. I’ll be missed, but not in a oh my god, the universe just imploded kind of way.

I didn’t mean to get all maudlin, but suddenly I understand those irritating old people who would say things like “Enjoy them, it goes so fast” in the grocery store when one kid would be crying in the cart and the other would be pulling things off the shelf. I mean, I’m not going to turn into one of those people because comments like that are in the Top Ten Least Helpful Things To Say To A Mother, but I understand them. And if I went back in time I’d still long for a cup of coffee in peace, I’m sure.

Still.

So to all you mamas of little ones out there, you are doing a great job. Keep on keeping on. And to all you mamas of older kids out there, well, I get it now. It actually does go fast and we can’t stop time, so we better enjoy the ride while we are on it. In the meantime, I’m going to enjoy my very clean house, and pack for my trip tomorrow, and plan to talk about Star Wars and The Simpsons nonstop at the dinner table tonight. xo

Northern Tragedy

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I had a happy, fun post planned for today, all about Music Monday and the garden centre and how the orthodontist told me Mark’s appointment would be fifteen minutes and it really took an hour, but everything has taken a backseat to the fires in Fort McMurray. If you haven’t seen the images, here is the latest. As of this moment, the entire city was evacuated – that is almost 90,000 people – and 1600 buildings have been destroyed. There is one highway out of Fort McMurray, and the images of bumper-to-bumper traffic while the flames raged within meters will stay with me forever.

My husband and I were watching the news last night, and when a photo was shown of vehicles trying to drive away with flames, smoke, and ash all around, he said, “I guess there are probably lots of kids and families in those cars.” We looked at each other silently, and then continued to watch.

Really, there’s nothing to say and do, being far away, other than to donate to the Red Cross and wait until the fire is out to see what else is needed. It’s a terrible tragedy and I personally know many people who work in, live in, or are from Fort McMurray. I cannot imagine what they must be going through.

The good news is that tragedy often brings out the best in people, as people in Northern Alberta opened their homes to people fleeing. No one has been hurt or killed, everyone in the city, including all in hospitals or acute care facilities, has been evacuated, and two babies have been born at worksite camps. People are working together and will continue to work together, I’m sure.

Sadly, tragedy also often brings out the worst in people. I have some advice for you: during times like this, the only thing that is acceptable to say is this is terrible and how can I help? Not acceptable: politicking and comments that indicate that the residents and workers are to blame for this tragedy. If you have reservations about the energy industry in general, and the oilsands in particular, then those reservations are best kept to yourself until the fires are out and the damage is assessed. Even then, compassion and empathy go a long way. Imagine what it would feel like to leave your home and all your possessions, which you may never see again, with your family in tow and your town burning to the ground behind you. People ran out of gas and were stranded on the highway, with nowhere to go. Unless you have been to that part of the world, you can’t imagine how isolated it is.

Anyway. Perhaps I should end on a more cheery note, the one on which I had planned for today. Music Monday was beautiful, and the children sang Is Somebody Singing, which never fails to make me verklempt. They also sang a bizarre song about a possum comin’ a knockin’, and each classroom had a verse to sing. It…seemed long to me, but it was my kids’ favourite part of Music Monday so I’m happy they’re happy.

For the first time in many years, I have tulips that are blooming! The squirrels didn’t eat those bulbs *knocks wood ferociously* and now look:

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I went to the garden centre today; it’s tradition in my house that for Mother’s Day (or thereabouts) I buy myself some plants. I thought I showed restraint:

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I texted the photo to my husband, who replied “Not enough.” Is it any wonder I love the guy? I assured him that it was only my first trip of the season. After all, I couldn’t fit more in the cart!

Take care, everyone in Fort Mac. Our hearts are with you. xo

Watch out for the carnies.

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Do you ever look at the contents of other people’s grocery carts and wonder what they are going to do with those particular ingredients? I do, all the time. Not in a judgy way, obviously; I don’t care if someone has a cart filled with fruit chews and pork rinds. To each her own, I say. But I do often wonder if someone’s having a party or a barbeque, or if those frozen Dr. Oetker pizzas are actually good. Sometimes it’s obvious: tortilla chips, salsa, sour cream, onions, peppers, and cheddar, for example, means that all signs are pointing towards Nacho Night. I once saw my neighbour with an entire cart – and I mean THE ENTIRE CART – filled with store brand bacon. I could only imagine that it was either on sale or he really likes bacon, or both. Hopefully he has a chest freezer.

But the other day the fellow in front of me had dozens of cucumbers, 3 bags of green apples, at least ten bunches of kale, and some lemons. I wondered if he was on some kind of juice cleanse because really, who is going to chew their way through that many cucumbers? But then I saw that he also had stacks and stacks of Centsibles brand bologna and a few jars of Cheez Whiz. I was actually dying of curiosity because it was such study in opposites. Maybe he runs a lunch program AND he also really likes green juice? Maybe it’s nothing to do with green juice and he really likes kale salads along with this bologna and Cheez Whiz sandwiches? Well, we will never know now but I will always wonder.

People are so interesting, aren’t they? Everyone has a story. I was at Walmart buying my hayfever-ridden son some allergy medication, and there was a fellow standing in the aisle near the family planning section. He was wearing cut-off shorts and a tank top, despite the chilly day, and he was picking up and reading the back of every single lubricant on the shelf. Now, it’s been some time since I’ve bought lube, so I really don’t know what attributes make for the different brands, but this fellow was determined to make an educated decision. I picked up my packages of Reactine, did a little more shopping, and then I remembered I also needed some Motrin. Back I went to the pharmacy and he was still there, reading labels.

Well, if you’re going to spend money you may as well do your research, I suppose.

This week has flown by; in fact, this month has flown by. Sunday is May, which frankly seems ridiculous. This whole week has been a whirlwind of work and yoga and to-do lists, and here it is Friday and I’m feeling DONE. We have some friends coming over for dinner tonight, which I’m very excited about. One is a vegan and let me tell you, it is VERY fun to cook for someone who is going to be as excited as I am about a cauliflower taco dish. I’m also making this dessert, which I haven’t made in so long I had to do some calculations to find out what eight ounces of chocolate is in cups (it’s about 1 1/4 cups, give or take).

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Yum!

It’s also my dear, dear friend Hannah’s birthday today. As a gift to her, I am re-posting this amazing photo of us with the third in our trio, Allison, at Blissdom in 2014.

Carny

Aw, this photo brings back so many wonderful memories. And is a little creepy. Where did the carny come from? Well, it was a lentil-themed carnival, and we shall leave it at that.

Hannah sent me this post, which happens to sum up all my feelings about moths. “Just shudder until I died.” I laughed until I cried and my stomach hurt. I tried to read it to my husband, but I was laughing so hard that he just looked at me in a concerned and pitying sort of way that I stopped reading, and he went off to work, probably wondering about my mental stability.

Happy Friday to everyone, I hope you all have a wonderful weekend! xoxo

“Look out, world. I have a giant cart.”

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Maybe it’s a function of age, maybe I’m just busy, but lately it seems like the days are speeding by, like one of those cartoons where each daily calendar page is flying off in super fast-motion. Yesterday I noticed a work deadline of April 29. April 29, no problem! That’s tons of time, I thought, until I looked at the actual calendar and realized that April 29 is Friday. Where did April go? I don’t know. I just don’t know.

So work is busy and classes are busy and everyday life is busy but everything is good, good, good. Yesterday was another PD day and, in contrast to Friday’s zoo day, I took the boys to the optometrist. One child had been complaining that he was unable to see the Smart Board at school, and the other boy was on the “watch list” in terms of his vision, and to make a long story short, I bought two pair of glasses yesterday. One child is thrilled with this, and the other is not, so it’s a bit of a roller coaster around here.

I will say this, though: children’s glasses and glasses in general are much, much more attractive than they used to be. When I was in grade six I got my first pair of glasses, and let me tell you, they were as ugly as fuck. Or, ugly AF, as the kids say. The frames were pale pink and were gigantic, and a few years later they were replaced by burgundy frames similar to those worn by every teen girl’s idol, TV host Sally Jesse Raphael. What thirteen year old girl doesn’t want to look like the fifty-something host of a tabloid talk show?

Our friend and optometrist said that it seemed like in the Eighties, people really wanted you to KNOW they were wearing glasses. It wasn’t enough to have glasses, they had to take up half your face in a statement that said “Look out, world. I have glasses.” Sort of like how we all teased our bangs so the tips of them were several inches off of our foreheads. “Look out, world. I have bangs.”

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All I’m saying is that kids these days do not know how lucky they have it.

My other exciting PD day activity was a giant Costco trip. I had a thought when I was leaving the store, as my entire upper body was practically vertical pushing the cart, and it was taking every ounce of effort in my body to control that cart and not accidentally run into anyone, that an interesting concept that Costco should adopt would be a cart weigh scale, similar to those that they have for large transportation vehicles. Wouldn’t it be interesting to see how much your giant Costco cart actually weighs? I mean, it’s not like it would change anything, but it would give me empirical data for when I tell my husband about my day. My husband is a wonderful man, but he does not view Costco trips in the same light that I do. For example, he thinks they are “fun.” I think they are “a chore.” I go to Costco approximately every three weeks with the hypothesis that more frequent trips mean lighter trips, and for the most part this is correct. Every so often, however, I find myself inexplicably out of all the heaviest/ most expensive things at once, and then my Costco trip takes on the properties of an epic journey, or a Sisyphean task.

If there were weigh scales, I could quantify the effort that is put into the actual Costco shopping trip. Because it’s not just about the time in the store, is it? I don’t know if I’ve ever spent more than about forty-five minutes actually in the store. I’m pretty efficient at filling my cart and then getting the fuck out of there. The actual effort involved is a) pushing the cart through the parking lot and silently cursing the people who leave their carts everywhere but in the cart corral, b) loading the groceries in the car, c) unloading the groceries from the car and bringing them into the house, d) putting all the groceries away, and, finally, e) separating out all the items from the gargantuan value packs for individual freezing, washing grapes, slicing strawberries, etc., etc. I mean, you can’t just put a giant pack of chicken breasts in the freezer as-is. I can’t just put the grapes in the fridge unwashed because that defeats the purpose of having a quick and easy healthy snack for the children on hand. Also, I’ve seen those videos where strange insects/ arachnids are hiding in the grape bunches and I would like to avoid that if possible. Strawberries will disappear quickly if they are washed and sliced but a clamshell of strawberries is doomed to either go bad or I am doomed to be asked at very inconvenient times if I would help with the washing and slicing of said strawberries.

Very very long and fairly dull story short, it is always better to deal with all those little things at once than to let them go, which means that a large Costco trip takes hours to complete. Again, a weigh scale would be nice, so I could tell my husband/ write in my fitness journal that I carried however many pounds down the stairs. It’s all about celebrating your accomplishments, isn’t it? And yesterday I accomplished both a Costco trip AND the selection of glasses for two boys, so I feel that I deserve some praise and adulation indeed. Or maybe a Costco-sized treat, at the very least.

The Mayday is blooming IN APRIL

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It’s been quite the eventful week! Today is, somewhat inexplicably, a PD day and so the boys and I decided a zoo trip was in order. We hadn’t been since last summer and, as usual, it was a great time. The boys always force me to walk through the aviary, which is terrifying. This guy gave me a look that I took to heart, and we left shortly after snapping this photo:

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Eeek! It was a bit chilly today, as opposed to the massively above-normal temperatures we have been experiencing. It has been unbelievably gorgeous here, and I can’t help but wonder, is this what people in normal climates feel like in the spring? I mean, it is incredible. This is the first bloom on my Mayday tree – taken on Tuesday – and now the entire tree is in full bloom. It’s beautiful.

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My Mayday blooming in April? It’s like a gift from the universe because yesterday was my birthday. I spent the bulk of the afternoon working in my rose garden…IN APRIL. This is a climate in which it’s not unusual to see May come and go without the lilacs blooming, and tulips are more often than not beaten down by five inches of snow. Not to say this cannot happen still, but just look at my Nanking cherry:

cherry

The boys have been eating freezies in the backyard; lately they have been going for little runs after supper and this week they have been cooling off afterwards in the sprinkler. IN APRIL.

Well, today was more like an average April day; cloudy and cool, with a sharp wind. We were dressed warmly and it was still cold. At the zoo, it seemed like people had simply assumed that the past was the best indicator of the future, in terms of weather. There were purple-limbed people wandering around in shorts and tank tops, and it was seven degrees. I saw one little girl with what looked like a fleece baby blanket wrapped around her shoulders, and I’m sure people were flocking to the African exhibits just to warm up.

Anyway, my birthday was just lovely. Thanks to everyone for your kind wishes. I love birthdays – everyone’s, not just mine – so I like to extend the celebration as far out as possible. Yesterday was mostly just a regular day, with the addition of our newly-hectic Thursday night schedule: getting the boys to karate and then driving through rush-hour traffic to yoga teacher training. Being able to garden felt like a special birthday treat, though.

A few weeks ago we were at my parents’ house and my mother baked me my favourite strawberry cake. I was sure to leave one candle burning, just so my husband wouldn’t feel slighted.

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(photo credit: my dad)

The boys, including my husband, had given me some lovely cards and also some new yoga clothes, which I am always happy to receive. And this weekend we are going to see The Jungle Book, which I’ve wanted to see since seeing the trailer at The Force Awakens. All in all, very lovely.

I know many people do not enjoy birthdays, viewing them more as a step towards the grave than something to celebrate. I, obviously, do not share this view. My thoughts on birthdays are Hey, I’m still here! It’s a great excuse to eat cake and drink wine (which I will be doing very very soon). So cheers to all of you and thank you, as always, for your readership and support. xoxo