Author Archives: Nicole Boyhouse

Is this day thermal-spray-worthy? Probably not.

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Remember the Seinfeld episode where the contraceptive sponge was discontinued, and Elaine stocked up on them but had to screen each of her potential sexual partners to ensure that they were worthy of a sponge? I’m having that issue right now, but with hair products.

I haven’t written a “Nicole’s Favourite Things” in a while, but I wish I had sung the praises of Abba’s Thermal Styling Spray, because I’ve been using it for years. You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone. This is the single greatest styling product of all time, but when I was in the salon a few weeks ago, my hair therapist mentioned that there seemed to be a Problem With The Supplier and she thought it might be Discontinued. She mentioned it to me with some degree of urgency, and said she was looking into Alternatives But Had Yet To Find A Good One.

Panic At The Disco.

I have one bottle in my possession, and I am hoarding it like nobody’s business. I’m now wondering what occasions will be important enough for me to use it. Coffee with the girls? Volunteering at the school? Visit with the in-laws? Good-looking plumber coming over to fix my kitchen tap?

The answer is “none of the above.” I’ve been only using some kind of flexible hold spritzer that I got at the drugstore as a stop gap measure. I’m not sure what occasion will warrant me using the thermal spray, but I sure hope that my hair therapist finds a good alternative soon, or it will be a lifetime of merely-adequate hair days.

Speaking of hair, I was at Costco the other day, and the man who checks the carts and receipts at the exit gave me a big wink and a smile. He was sixty-plus, with a friendly face. “Red hair is my favourite,” he said to me, “And I love yours!” Well, I thanked him very much, to which he responded, with a nudge and raised eyebrows, “I suppose you’re going to tell me it’s all natural.” People, I was moments away from making a “carpet and curtains” joke, when my “inappropriate” siren went off. Note to self: making a ribald joke about matching the carpet to the nearly-retired cart-checker at Costco is inadvisable. Instead, I responded with a laugh and a comment about the feistiness being natural, anyway.

The whole reason I was in Costco, besides getting frozen fruit, was to look for sheets. You know how there are some areas of your life that you just find yourself being overly frugal? That’s me with sheets. I may have enough yoga wear to clothe the entire studio on any given day, but when it comes to sheets, ours were so old and had been laundered so many times that they were literally starting to fall apart. The edges of the sheets and pillowcases were frayed, and the sheets themselves were getting worn to threads. And yet, I kept thinking to myself, they’re still good. They’re fine, really.

Long, boring, and completely “who gives a shit” story short, I bought some new sheets and they have been life affirming. Every night I say to my husband, “Look at the sheets! Aren’t they glorious! They’ve changed my life!” And because he’s a patient man, he nods and says “Go to sleep now, you’re starting to not make sense.”

My reluctance to buy new sheets is probably related to my reluctance to throw out the one-centimetre-square piece of soap in the soap dish, because I can still wash my hands with it if I lather hard enough. I know. I know. I blame my mother, whose ability to repurpose freezer bags is legendary.

My new identity

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Back when the kids were small, I wondered what would happen when they started school: would I be bored, or would I find things to do? It turns out that once they started school I was the opposite of bored; I started volunteering a crazy amount at the school and working from home part-time, and my days were busy and full. Then, when I resigned as the School Council/ Parent Association chair, I wondered if I would have a bit of an identity crisis; I had performed the role for so long I wondered if I would adapt to not being the “go-to” person at the school.

Apparently not; it seems when there is a change in my life I tend to hit the ground running, and then I continue to run. What I’m saying is that now, I’m a Field Trip Mom.

Last week I went on a field trip with Jake’s class to a nature preserve within the city. This field trip was to tie in with their “Forest” unit in Science, and so we were going to be looking at trees. It sounded like a snore, and there was the dreaded bus ride to deal with, but I’m Field Trip Mom now. This is my new identity, come what may.

The field trip itself was a success. I was pleased to discover that two of the other parent volunteers were good friends of mine, which is always pleasant. The bus ride wasn’t too terrible as my friend and I were able to sit in the front of the bus, chatting, while Jake and his buddies sat behind us. I learned that at school, he talks even more about Star Wars than he does at home, and his friends – who were in my group – are similarly obsessed.

As an aside, it’s really gratifying to meet your children’s friends and discover that they are really nice kids. I’m not even saying that because one of them said “All hail Jake’s mom!” when it was time to go to our small groups for an activity designed to identify local trees and shrubs.

But there’s always something about a field trip, isn’t there? This isn’t a negative thing, but our guide on this trip around the nature preserve was exactly what you might imagine a person whose entire life circulated around forest cycles to be. She had a stiff British accent which made some of the things she said even more bizarre.

First, the guide – whose name rhymed with Mrs. Devil, so that is what all the children referred to her as – informed us all that once we left the parking lot, there were no washrooms. She gestured to the washrooms in front of us and said that if anyone had to go while we were in the preserve, they would have to go behind a tree. Further, if anyone pooped, they would have to use one of her doggie waste bags to pick it up and then carry it back at the end of the day. I cannot imagine any fifth or sixth grader actually doing this; I’m guessing they would all die of intestinal explosions before that happened. All the children looked at her in horror, then they went to use the facilities prior to the start of the tour.

The guide then took us to the edge of a very, very steep slope overlooking the beautiful valley of colourful trees and streams. Unfortunately, it was basically a cliff, and there are a couple of children with impulse-control issues and I felt like I was going to have a stroke, worrying about them. One little boy would seem to be fine and then suddenly dart quickly towards the edge, while the teacher and aide took turns grabbing the back of his sweater. Child falls to his death during school field trip; parent volunteers incredibly ineffective. After fifteen minutes of this, the guide finished her long monologue about tree habitats and started walking the group down a paved pathway. Unfortunately, the paved pathway was shared with bikes, who sometimes sped down the hill with incredible speed. My friend told me a story about a field trip that ended badly with a collision between a bike and a student, earlier in the week.

Suddenly, all those waiver forms I’ve signed in the past seemed much less crazy.

At the bottom of the hill was a sign, written on which was a description of the use of natural areas for weapons testing during past wars. Sometimes, the guide said, grenades and other explosives wash up on the shore. If we see such explosives, we should not approach them. “At least once a year someone gets blown up, absolutely blown to pieces, by handling such explosives,” our guide said, alarmingly. Now, I would think that “at least once a year” did not mean in this area particularly. Personally, I’ve never heard of such a thing happening in this city, so I’m hoping the guide meant “somewhere in the world.” That would make much more sense, but now we will never know.

Her morbid turn of mind did not stop there. We were examining a white spruce tree, and our guide informed us of all the incredible uses for white spruce. Spruce sap is antibiotic and antifungal, and if we ATE it, we would be very healthy indeed.

Note: do not tell fifth and sixth graders that they can randomly eat things in the forest; more on that later.

Anyway, we found out that the white spruce is an incredible tree, not only because of the antibacterial/ antifungal sap, but also the nuts inside of the cones are edible. “So,” our guide said, in her crisp British accent, “If you are ever involved in an horrific plane crash, and you are the sole survivor, what you will need to do is find a spruce tree, and you’ll be able to find everything you’ll need to live.”

Survival skills 101: find a spruce tree if everyone around you has died in a plane crash. Then all will be well.

After lunch – and after several children had to go behind trees and one got chased by an illegally off-leash dog – we were busy in our small groups, identifying different trees and shrubs using a descriptive key. Several of the shrubs have berries on them: silverberries, we were told by the guide, are edible. The same kids who were interested in eating spruce sap suddenly got very into harvesting silverberries. I was pretty alarmed by this, since these kids weren’t actually experts on which berries were which. I was right to express my alarm, since the guide seemed to remember that silverberries look very similar to snowberries, which are poisonous.

Telling children that some berries are perfectly fine to eat, as long as they know what the shrub’s leaves look like, was not perhaps the guide’s finest moment. After probably twenty minutes of random children sneaking random berries into their mouths, the guide thought it was right to inform the kids that snowberries, as opposed to silverberries, will cause vomiting and diarrhea. Better late than never, but we were less than an hour from being on the bus for thirty minutes, and the thought of children suffering vomiting and diarrhea ON THE BUS seemed like too much to bear. Thankfully, this did not come to pass, at least on my watch.

The hike back to the parking lot was very long, and the path dotted with several piles of bear scat, which was a bit unnerving. We all made it to the bus in one piece, with no one being poisoned, eaten by a bear, or run over by a bike, so I guess the day was a success.

NO COFFEE NO PRANA

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That’s something that Ashtanga yogis like to say a lot – no coffee, no prana – because it was said by Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, who was apparently a coffee lover. I say it to myself every day when I’m waiting for the coffee maker – no coffee, no prana. I also sing Linda Put The Coffee On, but with “Nicole” substituted for “Linda” which pretty much sums me up nicely.

All of which is to say that today is, apparently, National Coffee Day. One fun little perk about my job at Yummy Mummy Club is that I’m always in the know about what kind of special day it is. Did you know that every day is a special day, and not just in a Romper Room, Mr. Rogers, carpe diem kind of way? Every day celebrates something, which is fun, even if it’s totally random. It’s always National Drink Beer Day or National Love Your Dog Day or National Guacamole Day or National Weiner Schnitzel Day. September 4th is National Hug Your Boss Day, which seems kind of unprofessional, but it’s also National Newspaper Carrier Day. Every second Tuesday in September is National Ants on a Log Day, and tomorrow is both National Chewing Gum Day and National Mud Pack Day.

So today is National Coffee Day, although in my house, every day is National Coffee Day. If it wasn’t, it would be National Oh-My-God-I’m-So-Bitchy Day, so let’s just let me enjoy my coffee. Mmmkay?

As an aside, yesterday I was told that the term “Bitchy Resting Face” is an anti-feminist thing to say. Sure, we probably don’t say that old men with furrowed brows have Bitchy Resting Face, but we might think they look like jerky assholes, so I think we are probably even on that front. BRF just rolls off the tongue more than “wow, that guy looks like a jerky asshole who wants to burn the whole city down, maybe he should smile more.” Meh. I am not anti-feminist – obviously – but I have to tell you, there are reasons I smile in photos. Here’s the biggest reason:

BRF

 

You might say, no, that’s just your face, it’s not bitchy, to which I would respond that the above photo illustrates why I smile a lot. I look like I’m going to murder someone if they say ONE MORE WORD and the truth is, I was probably just looking at a tree. I don’t like looking like this on the outside when I feel like this on the inside:

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Photo from my very talented friend Lucas http://lucasramage.com/

 

You know who doesn’t have Bitchy Resting Face? Barkley. We went away for the weekend and when I picked him up from the “spa” he just couldn’t stop smiling.

BarkleySmile

Just like me, smiling is his favourite. But I guess he wouldn’t have Bitchy Resting Face anyway, because he’s a male dog and as such is literally not a bitch.

But I digress. I meant to write about our weekend away and got caught up in drinking a pot of coffee and writing about National Coffee Day. Our trip was fantastic. We were on the very west coast of Vancouver Island, in Tofino. The weather was perfect. The travel was perfect. We had a hot tub on our deck and were right beside the beach. Even the flights were serendipitous – we had boarded our flight to the Island, and were informed we were going to be early when the pilot announced that there was an issue with the cargo door and we wouldn’t be able to take off. But! There was an EMPTY PLANE RIGHT BESIDE US, so we flew in that. That never happens, so I felt like it was a good omen for the weekend.

It’s great to go away and great to be home, and yesterday I caught up on all the laundry, and groceries, and work that had piled up, but it all feels good. The leaves have all changed colour, suddenly, and the city is a gorgeous mix of blue skies with yellow, red, and orange leaves. The cosmos I planted two years ago have self seeded and are in full bloom, amazingly, and all is well in the world. Many, many reasons to smile.

boys boys2 forest splash sun tofino tofino2

Lessons to learn.

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When the boys were babies, it was so fun dressing them in ridiculous little outfits; tiny sweater vests, wee little golf shirts, khaki pants and those teensy running shoes for their fat, unused feet.

Come to think of it, I dressed my children like miniature Chandler Bings.

Anyway, when they were small getting them out of their precious little footie pajamas and into their outfit of the day was a great joy for me. If we were going out, I’d coordinate both their outfits and sometimes even my own, because a lonely, overwhelmed, stay at home mother of two under two entertains herself any way she can.

As they got older, I noticed something. I noticed that the selection of boys’ clothing was much, much smaller than that of girls’ clothing. What this meant was that a lot of the time, the boys would have the exact same outfit but in different colours, not because I was trying to coordinate them, but because that was what was available to me. Shoes, especially, were difficult: frequently the boys would have the exact same pair of shoes, and I would put coloured stickers inside them to indicate which pair was for whom.

This year I took the boys to Mountain Equipment Co-Op to get fall jackets. There were two styles available, and only one style had their sizes, which has resulted in the boys wearing the exact same jacket to school. They don’t mind this at all, but I find it kind of strange to see them walking together in their identical jackets.

All of which is to say that shopping for boys is a utilitarian experience. My children in particular live in jeans and t-shirts: long-sleeved for winter, short-sleeved for warm weather. When I shop for them I do it online; I show them the colours of t-shirts available and they choose a few. One of my favourite stores to shop online is Old Navy – they almost always have a discount code, they have “slim fit” jeans for my beanpoles, and their clothes are pretty durable. I normally order things in bundles a few times a year; this system works well and we are all happy with it.

But this week I realized that the boys had outgrown a good number of their jeans, or – in the case of one child who climbed over a fence and got his back pocket caught on the chain link – had a massive hole in the seat. They still had a few pair thanks to some bulk shopping I had done last spring, but they were desperately in need of a couple. I didn’t have time to wait the 7-10 days for free shipping, so yesterday, I ventured into the mall to buy some more.

As they say in Pretty Woman, Big mistake. BIG mistake. HUGE.

Old Navy online: easy, fast, organized. Old Navy physical store: a disorganized, soul-crushing experience.

First of all, the boys’ section is the smallest in the entire store. It’s tiny, and there are piles and piles of clothes stacked everywhere. And the jeans. THE JEANS. There is no sizing order, so I needed to dig through piles to find size 10 and 12, and because I wanted “slim fit” I had to dig even more. Finally I found a pair of slim fit size 12, but when I picked it up, it was clearly not what the tag said. I read the label actually inside the jeans and discovered it was a size 12 “husky fit” into which I could have fit two of my children. A solid fifteen minutes of going through every pair of jeans on the shelves, I found two pair in the appropriate sizes. Then I went to the cashier.

People, the cash register and surrounding area reminded me of a yard sale gone awry. There were clothes everywhere, stacked around the register, behind the register, and surrounding the “line up starts here” shelving. There were two girls working and they both looked extremely harassed. I felt sorry for them as they slowly worked their way through the lineup. Each person took forever to check out, and when it was my turn I discovered why: they were taking down and confirming email addresses for every single person in what appeared to be the least efficient process ever. I tried to bypass it – I’m already on your mailing list. I am! – but the girl would have none of it. Because I generally don’t want to make someone’s day harder, and I’ve worked in retail, I submitted to the process, feeling badly for the eight people behind me in line.

I don’t know why some lessons need to be re-learned constantly. The lesson for this week: shop online.

An obstacle is an unrecognized opportunity.

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I’ve come a long way throughout the years, and I’ve learned a lot from my mistakes. A person who never made a mistake is a person who never tried anything new was displayed on the wall of Jake’s old classroom, and I think that’s inspirational. I regularly tell my children that mistakes are learning opportunities, and that we become better as we learn from them.

All of which is to say that I do not shop at Costco without a list anymore. In fact, I go through my pantry and cupboards and make a very specific list, and I do not deviate from that list. If I don’t have vanilla extract on the list, I don’t buy it; the fact is I will not need to buy it for some time, since I have several Costco-sized bottles in my pantry as we speak.

Learning opportunities.

The last time I really went off the list, to my own detriment, was when I purchased a giant double-pack of plastic wrap. I rarely use plastic wrap, and I certainly did not need a gigantic double-pack. I purchased that double-pack in late 2013 and I JUST opened it a few weeks ago. Sadly, the quality of the plastic wrap is terrible, so I am doomed to decades of using crappy plastic wrap, since there is no way in hell I am going to throw it out. I will probably go to my grave with this plastic wrap still in my pantry. My great-grandchildren will come to clean out my apartment in the senior’s complex and they will look at the plastic wrap with wonder. What did Grandma think she was going to do with all that plastic wrap? Then they will take it upon themselves to use it up, and I just hope that it doesn’t have crazy monkey-paw powers.

Anyway, last week I went to Costco with my list in hand, and right at the door, right there, was a huge display of flower bulbs. As though struck by lightning, I stopped my giant cart in front of the display with wide eyes and palpable excitement. BULBS BULBS BULBS BULBS BULBS BULBS BULBS BULBS BULBS BULBS BULBS BULBS BULBS BULBS BULBS was going through my head to the tune of that old Meow Mix commercial. I literally could not move. People were steering their carts around me probably wondering what just happened to that insane looking woman by the bulb display.

Now, bulbs were not on my list. I didn’t even know that bulbs were an option. I decided to make an exception to my rule and dithered for several minutes between the varieties of tulips, daffodils, hyanciths, and crocuses before finally settling on a mix of apricot and deep purple tulips, and a variety pack of yellow, purple, and variegated crocuses. After putting them in my cart, I had to pull over by the watch display and regroup. I felt the way a toddler must feel when fed a package of gummy bears, brought into Toys R Us, and told to choose two things. I felt slightly unglued and totally unfocused, and I had to read my list several times just to become in a normal Costco-shopping state again. After some time, I felt equal to the task, and went looking for the tamari almonds.

When I got home I immediately texted my husband to tell him I bought a total of fifty tulips and eighty crocuses; my mother then phoned and I told her of my exciting day. She asked, quite reasonably, where I was planning to put one hundred and thirty bulbs in my already-full gardens.

As they say in Pinterest’s inspirational quotes and public school classrooms, an obstacle is often an unrecognized opportunity. A stepping stone, if you will. The weather last Saturday turned out to be beautiful and warm, and so Mark and I spent a few hours digging around my perennials and shrubs, looking for spaces. One such unrecognized opportunity was my hosta garden. The kitchen window faces this garden, and during July, August, and even, sometimes, September, this garden is a thing of beauty: giant variegated leaves, a dogwood and a giant spirea shrub, colourful impatiens, and an inukshuk made from large rocks collected at my husband’s childhood home.

At all other times of the year, however, it’s a depressingly dull strip of dirt with leafless shrubs and the inukshuk standing all alone in the soil.

It is especially depressing in May, because all the other plants and shrubs, in their sunny locales throughout the yard, are green and lovely and in some cases, even blooming. If I’m lucky, there might be a half inch of hosta growth poking out of the ground and the beginning of leaves on the spirea. Since I spent most of my time in the kitchen, staring out at this barren wasteland of a north-facing garden, I really wanted to change it somehow.

Crocuses are the answer! If all goes well, in May I should have about sixty yellow, purple, and variegated crocuses popping up in the garden, hopefully bridging the gap between snow melt and post-frost planting time. It’s something to look forward to, since there was frost on the grass and roof this morning and it definitely feels like WINTER IS COMING. But for now, I’ll just enjoy the fall and try not to think about it too much.

Tulips

Tulips2

Hail the conquering hero!

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There’s just something so satisfying about conquering something that you had previously thought unconquerable. Climbing the mountain, running the marathon, or – in my case – going on a field trip.

As you know, over the years I’ve been incredibly adverse to field trips, with the single exception being the preschool trip to the fire hall. I think we all can understand why, without my getting into any details about the heroically strong firefighters. In fact, the last field trip that I chaperoned was nearly three years ago and I volunteered under extreme duress. It was just as terrible as I had thought it would be; given the sheer amount of volunteering I do at the school, I felt that it was perfectly acceptable to say no more field trips. Never again.

But there have been several changes in my life since the ill-fated trip to the museum. For one thing, I am no longer chairing the school council and parent association, which has left me with extra time. For another thing, my children are now in grades five and six, and children this age are much less likely to run away or get separated from the group, and that paranoia of losing someone else’s child has long kept me from chaperoning field trips. Buoyed up by my friends Catherine (HI CATHERINE) and Allison (HI ALLISON), who are seasoned field-trip veterans, I signed up for a walking trip to the nearby Whispering Woods, a nature park attached to a nearby school, which features an outdoor classroom, several pathways, and interpretive signs.

I was assigned a group of nine boys, and I am just going to go out on a limb here and say that my group was superior to other groups. For one thing, these nine boys were quite studious and full of information that they seemed to enjoy divulging to me, from their country of origin and interesting things about it to the house with big windows that was listed for sale that we all admired on the way to the woods. Other than one slightly hyper boy who enjoyed randomly squirting his water bottle on the sidewalk and then laughing hysterically, the group was – I thought – extraordinarily calm and well behaved.

As a small digression, I can’t help but note that the girl-heavy groups were the ones who were constantly eye-rolling and making sarcastic comments about the useless-ness of the information gathered and the field trip in general. Also, while we were in the outdoor classroom supposedly making notes about what defines a tree, a daddy-long-legs spider crawled beside one of the girls, who took that opportunity to FLIP THE FUCK OUT, thus inciting a general scream-fest with the other girls in the class.

So I was pleased with my group, and they were pleased with me, as I overheard a few of them say to Mark “You have a really nice mom! You’re so lucky!” which spurred me to rashly volunteer for more upcoming trips, including one in a few weeks with Jake’s class, in which I will have to ride on the school bus. I feel I will have much more to say on that topic at a later date.

The field trip itself only had one snag – other than the spidery scream-fest – and that is that it was evident, upon wandering through the paths, that some of the itinerant population seem to be camping in the little woods. It was further evidenced by the appearance of human feces, plus toilet paper, right on one of the middle paths, at which I could only think, really? We can talk about social issues and homelessness, but seriously? Right in the middle of a path frequented by children? In a woods attached to an elementary school and within walking distance to four other schools? Could we not go off the path to defecate, homeless people?

Anyway. I’m sorry to bring up such a gross topic, let’s take our minds off that with a socially awkward moment of mine. Last night was the Welcome Back BBQ at the school, which is a great opportunity to meet the teachers or – if you’re like me – just chat with all the teachers and parents in a casual, sunny setting. The boys had mentioned to me that the assistant principal had changed her name, to which information Mark added “I guess she got married.” Of course, as soon as I saw her last night, I said in my most effusive and excited tones, “Oh, I hear congratulations are in order!”

She looked at me somewhat blankly and asked why. At this point I knew. I knew exactly where this was going to go and what mistake I had made. I stumbled blankly for a moment, saying that I thought I’d heard, well, her name changed…at which point she said “Oh no, I didn’t get married. I got divorced!”

I had a deer-in-headlights look for a moment, considering my awkward social gaffe. She was extremely gracious, saying that it was a GOOD thing and that I probably COULD congratulate her on it, and everything was FINE, but still. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a rewind button? Note to self, check out left hand PRIOR to congratulating someone on their recent nuptials.