Author Archives: Nicole Boyhouse

Slow Boat to Nowhere

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The kitchen renovation was slated to begin at 11:00 this morning.  Yesterday, I frantically cleaned out all the bottom cupboards and removed things from the countertops, pausing only to wonder when I bought Gorilla Munch, as its best before date was over a year ago.  All items are now in big Rubbermaid containers and/or on my table and/or under my coffee table.  I was ready to go!  And…now it’s 11:30.  I received information that they will start this afternoon, which is fine, that makes the lunch rush much less awkward, but I feel a little lost.

In order to assuage my lost little girl feelings, I decided it was time for a field trip to the garden centre.  Stocking up on plants prior to the long weekend seemed like a good idea, although I certainly will not actually plant them yet as it is supposed to snow.  Good times, YYC.  Good times.  I had full intentions of only buying a few plants for my containers, but ended up with a cart that looked like this:

I was powerless to stop myself.  Right now they are all on the deck, just waiting to be covered up before the snow flies. 

I just credit myself for not purchasing one of the many beautiful bird houses on display.  I almost put a very lovely one in my cart, but then I remembered: my dog likes to kill birds!  Wheee!  Perhaps a bird house would be ill-advised.

Speaking of my murderous dog, I almost had an experience that would strain neighbour relations in a significant way.  These neighbours, a few doors down, have very pampered indoor cats, one of whom likes to escape a lot.  I was working downstairs and came up to fill my coffee cup for the fourth time when I noticed the cat – whose name is, and I am not making this up, Beeps – in the backyard.  Barkley was also in the backyard.  I bolted for the door, just in time as Barkley took the opportunity to pounce.  He was mere centimetres away from the not-so-bright cat, when I called and collared him.  As I shuffled him into the house, I noticed my neighbour, standing on the other side of the fence, looking completely unfazed.  “That was a bit close,” I said to her.  “Oh, no.” she smiled at me vacantly.  “They were just playing.  They’re friends!” 

Now, I am the first to admit I don’t know much about cats.  However.  I am aware of the saying “fighting like cats and dogs” and also I am aware that the cat is much, much smaller than my dog and is declawed.  If I have to bring a cat corpse over to my neighbour’s house one day, I am not going to be happy on a number of levels.  My friend suggested that should there be a cat corpse in my backyard, perhaps it should be BURIED in my backyard, in order to keep neighbourly relations.  Not a bad plan, although it makes me feel a little bit like I would be starring in a less-interesting version of Rear Window.

Perhaps I should have purchased one of these at the garden centre:

Animatronic owls! 

I just got off the phone with the plumber.  I am going to be without a working sink until FRIDAY.  Friday of the long weekend.  Anxiety is looming.  It feels like SO MUCH could go wrong.

I will take my mind off this.  Cute kid anecdote: my kids were playing Star Wars before school this morning, and the characters they were portraying were Anakin (Mark) and Luke (Jake).  Now, Anakin DID chop off Luke’s hand, but it was by accident and it was to save him because he was trapped.  Luke forgave him.  Then they went to Planet Hoth to go snowboarding!  Good times in Utopian Star Wars.

I felt I had to share this cute anecdote as I have been talking so much about my dog lately that I was starting to feel that I was portraying myself as a crazy dog lady.  Which…I might be.  Dammit.  I should have bought that owl.

A Whirlwind of Boring Activity

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I have been in a whirlwind of activity the past few days.  A whirlwind, I tell you!  Since Friday I have had more errands and social outings than I probably do in two weeks.  I would describe them in detail but I fear that may be boring, and I fear it may also be less impressive than it feels right now.  So I will simply say that we are, evidently, renovating our kitchen.

Let’s pause for a moment here while I deep breathe.

Things snowballed when we realized that soon our dishwasher will need to be replaced.  Well, if we replace the dishwasher, why not all new appliances?  And countertops?  And sink?  And backsplash?  And flooring…and suddenly a new project is on the horizon.  I’m not sure how my dog – or I, myself – will deal with the upheaval but I have been assured that this is a quick and easy project.  Oh, hahaha!  I am going to be insane and/or liver damaged by the end of it, I just know it.  Chaos is not a happy thing for me, although I will be very happy to have a new kitchen. 

I’m especially excited to get a new range, since I loathe mine and yet it is in near-constant use.  My husband and I went to the appliance store, where we were helped by the strangest, most vacant salesman ever.  Perhaps he was new at his job; I don’t know.  All I know is that whenever I said anything at all about the features I desired, he would stare at me silently for about fifteen seconds prior to responding.  It was very unnerving.  Then he would respond in this manner “Do you cook?  Or do you LOVE to cook?”  Whatever, buddy, just show me the hood fans.  He proceeded to describe how much he loved his own convection oven because it gave him crispy chicken wings, just like the deep fried ones in restaurants.  This one-sided discussion about cooking various meat products went on for at least five minutes.  In the meantime, I completely zoned out and wondered if a dual oven is worthwhile or not, and I still haven’t decided.  Do you have one?  Do you like it?  Help a girl out, dear reader.

Then, of course, it was Mother’s Day, and I hope yours was lovely.  I received cards from the boys, that they made themeselves with no intervention on the part of my husband, which struck me as very sweet and thoughtful.  It was actually a warm and beautiful weekend – no snow! – and so I spent quite a bit of time in the garden, and some time at the park where the boys rode their bikes and I realized that the bike Jake is riding is ridiculously too small for him.  He looks a bit like a clown riding a miniature bike.  A skinny, unmade-up clown. 

Are you “mom enough” to hang out with these two characters?  Oh, mass media.  Fueling the “mommy wars” since…well, I don’t know when.  Can’t we all just get along?

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Hey, speaking of mommy stuff (no, not wars, because that is MADE UP CRAP), check this out: I was listed as one of “24 Mom Blogs You Should Read” over at Yummy Mummy Club.  There are some seriously fabulous blogs on that list – Dinner with Julie, Crib Chronicles, Little Miss Mocha, to name but a few – so I am thrilled to be on that list!  Thanks!  xoxo

Barkley, the high maintenance dog

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“Oh, you’re the worst kind.  You’re high maintenance, but you think you’re low maintenance.” – Harry Burns, and/or my husband.

Every day, I set out two sets of clothing for the following day: my yoga clothes, and my regular clothes.  I need to set out my yoga clothes in order to dress quietly and sneak out at the crack of OMG o’clock, and I need to set out my regular clothes because I need to set out my regular clothes or it will be endtimes.  I set out my clothes based on the next day’s weather and activities, and I do not deviate from that outfit. 

The other day it turned out to be unexpectedly rainy and foggy, and so I needed to wear my hair up, so that I wouldn’t look like a bedraggled mess by the end of the day.  That meant – since I’m on week eleven of Operation Growing Out My Hair – I needed certain hair accessories to hold back the multiple layers.  However, the hair accessories did not match my outfit, and so I had to alter my plans and wear a different shirt.  This may not sound like much to you – and now that I’m writing it down it doesn’t sound like much to me, either – but it threw my day off, just a little bit. 

You know how people say that after a while, dogs take on their owner’s personalities?  Actually, I don’t know if that’s a thing or not, but my dog has taken on MY personality.  For one thing, he freaks out if we don’t put him in his crate by 9:00 pm.  If he could speak, he would be saying It’s bedtime for the love of god!  Put me to bed, already!  Do you want me to be tired all day tomorrow?  I’m just saying, I understand. 

When we were recently redoing the basement, I was prepared for confusion on my dog’s part.  This is the dog who lay outside the bathroom door crying because he had accidentally wagged a shampoo bottle off of the side of the tub.  Something’s different.  The shampoo bottle is on the floor.  Everything is wrong!  When the boys play too noisily for his liking, he would go down to the basement and curl up on the green-and-white fabric sofa down there.  I knew we would be giving away that sofa, and so I went out and bought a cozy new dog bed, along with a new squeaky toy and some of his favourite chew treats.  When the sofa was gone, I put his new dog bed in the usual spot by the fireplace upstairs, and took the old one downstairs, along with the squeaky toy and the treat.  He followed me anxiously, eyeing the treat.  Here, Barkley, I said, here is a cozy new place for you!  I made him sit in the old dog bed, gave him a treat, and then witnessed my dog and the mental anguish I made him suffer. 

He took the treat and ran upstairs.  He dropped the treat in his new bed and stared at me.  Then he started whining.  Loudly.  He refused to eat the treat, which alarmed me because a) he eats everything vaguely edible, including his own fecal matter if it is left unattended, b) he consumes everything in his dog bowl within 90 seconds of receiving his dog bowl, and c) he has never before NOT eaten a treat. 

Me: It’s okay, Barkley. Have your treat!  Now you have two cozy places to sit! 

Barkley: WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIEEEEEE.

He contined to cry and whine, loudly, for the next hour.  Once in a while he would settle down enough to LICK the treat, but then it would make him cry all over again. 

Barkley: Why are you so cruel?  Why do you hate me?  What have I done to deserve this?

Then he would sit in the new bed in such an awkward way that the bed itself would tip over sideways and land on top of him and believe me, this did not help matters.  Finally he gave up, took the treat, and hid in his crate, surreptitiously eating it.  He eventually forgave me the mental pain I had put him through; he is a dog after all.

I understood.  Change is hard.  Different things are difficult.  WE ALL NEED TIME TO GET USED TO NEW IDEAS.  So I get it.  And yet sometimes I feel like there is a reality TV show, just waiting to be made, with my name on it. 

Good Vibrations (not THOSE kind of vibrations)

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Hey, I’m guest posting for my dear friend Kimberly, who is recovering from gall bladder surgery and easing her way back into the world of the eaters, over at All Work and No Play Make Mommy Go Something Something.  Kimberly is an amazing woman and I’m not just saying that because her blog name is so very awesome.  She is one of the strongest, bravest women I know, but not only that, she’s FUNNY.  Like as in I think about something she wrote over two years ago and I still get the giggles (it was a metaphor of back hair, Italian heritage, and stallions).  So go over and check out my post, pretty please.  Check out the rest of her blog while you’re at it – she’s a lot of fun.  Thanks for letting me guest post, Kimberly – and get better soon!  xoxo

For Cinco de Mayo, I’m building a snowman

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Festively enough for the fifth of May, huge, fluffy snowflakes are falling right now.  It’s kind of depressing.  The boys were slated to start a junior golf program this morning, but since there is a minor blizzard going on, we are all at home in our jammies. 

Speaking of sports, because of all the rain that has been falling over the past few weeks, Mark had his first soccer game of the season on Thursday night.  It was not raining, but it was cold, and I wore my giant winter parka and two pairs of mittens.  After the game, Mark was coughing a lot, which threw me into a state of despair and panic.  Last year Mark developed a cough during the freezing, wet soccer season, which eventually turned into pneumonia, which led to months of subsequent incessant coughing during the night and following any kind of physical activity.  Giving him his inhaler – which we haven’t had to use all winter – seemed to help.  I am not going to be sad in the least that this will be our last year playing soccer.  Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to live in a climate in which I wouldn’t get the shakes just thinking about outdoor spring activities. 

I had an epiphany this week.  I realized that extreme, overwhelming dissatisfaction with my appearance is one hundred percent correlated to my menstrual cycle.  This may seem obvious to the rest of you, but to me it was a relief.  The next time I find myself glaring at myself in the mirror, wondering if I could possibly avoid all contact with the outside world, I am going to take a look at the calendar.  If I tracked my expenditures on beauty products and makeup on a calendar, I would surely find a huge spike in the days leading up to my ladies’ holidays.  This should have been obvious when I found myself in buying a jar of special hair masque alongside three different kinds of dark chocolate.

Adding to my “look away, I’m hideous” attitude, there has been a visiting yoga teacher this week.  She’s fabulous, and I love it when she’s here, but I always get up a little bit earlier when she visits, to give me a little extra time with my practice, and to get as much instruction from her as I can.  Getting up ten or fifteen minutes earlier doesn’t seem like much, but by the end of the week I’m an hour short of sleep, which – I apologize to those of you new mamas who aren’t sleeping at all – makes me a little stabby.

But I had a couple of glasses of wine last night, ate some of the aforementioned dark chocolate and watched Grey’s Anatomy – did you see it?  That’s what happens when you have premarital sex, APRIL – I slept well, and now this morning all the stabbiness is gone.  The kids are busy playing Star Wars Wii, as they have been since yesterday – “It’s Star Wars Day, Mom!” – I can hang out in comfy yoga pants all day, and the snow will surely melt soon.  So life is good.

Psst. Wanna come see my basement?

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Oh!  You guys!  It has been so exciting around the Boyhouse this week!  Not just because I’m going to be rich, rich, rich from the class-action lawsuit for Nutella (not really).  Not just because it’s raining so hard that I think soccer practice MAY be cancelled for tonight (I hope).  Not just because of the fabulous visiting yoga teacher who helped me grab my own ankles in a backbend today (that was pretty cool).  There are many, many other exciting things, not the least of which is that I am home alone in a silent house blogging with only my dog nudging me (he doesn’t realize that it is way too rainy for a walk.  No wet dog smell, thanks!).  But also: our basement is all done.  Painted, reorganized, and I now have a storage room and shelves, so that my Costco purchases are not scattered in six different areas of the house.  So come with me, on a tour!

First, here is our new upstairs couch:

Complete with dog, wondering why I’m taking pictures when I could be walking him in the pouring rain!  This couch is shockingly big.  All four of us can sit on this couch without touching or squashing one another.  Did you know couches seem smaller in the showroom than they do in my little old living room?  We got a matching chair too:

It’s HUGE.  It’s my new BFF.  I curled up on it and finished, finally, Anna Karenina.  It was a slug, I will say.  I liked the romance and all but wow – that was a whole lot of information on Russian politics and farming methodology from the 1800s.

So before I show you the new basement, I will show you the “before” pictures.  Here is where the office was:

And here is the main area:

Another angle:

And here is the Wii/toy area:

And now for the “After” pictures:

I always have wanted a wall of books, and now I have one!

And here’s where the boys can play Wii and where our exercise equipment is:

Complete with sniffing dog!

And the office (i.e., computer and desk) has been moved into this living space so that when the kids are playing Wii and desperately want me to see them slay Stormtroopers/ win a Mario Kart race/ whatever, I can just look over.

There is a big book on that shelf, from 1912, called “The Woman’s Book: Contains Everything a Woman Ought To Know” and it’s one of my favourite things ever.  There are many chapters on housewifery, how to hire servants, and on personal grooming and child rearing!  Speaking of housewifery, check this action out:
Shelves!  Shelves!  Shelves!  Are you the type of person who secretly always wants to peek inside your friends’ cupboards?  Don’t worry, friends, I don’t actually do this.  But I’m always curious.  Well, here is your chance to see what’s in my new storage space which used to be an office!
Lots and lots of cereal, and lots and lots of soap and toothpaste, given my penchant for “just picking some up while I’m at Costco” which leads to excessive amounts of soap and toothpaste.
These items are no longer jammed in my hall closet along with booze and towels (what?  Storage space is at a premium here).
Baking supplies!  Condiments!  Paper products!  Mass amounts of sparkling water (that’s for my husband.  He rarely drinks.  His sparkling water habit far outweighs my wine habit, is what I’m saying.)
What happened to the toys, you might be asking.  What did I do with all the toys?  I PUT THEM ON SHELVES, HURRAH!

Wow, that’s a lot of pictures.  Well, I’m excited.  It’s like I have a brand new house and I didn’t even have to move!  Stay tuned for the next thrilling episode, wherein my dog does not do well with the change.

There is sugar in Nutella? What?

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We should all be relieved to know that the makers of Nutella have lost their class-action lawsuit and are now slated to pay $2.5 million to consumers who thought – misled by the company’s “part of a healthy breakfast” claim – that Nutella was a healthy food.  Because it was purported to be “part of a healthy breakfast”. 

Sock it to the man! you might be saying.  Down with the big corporation misleading the public! you may cheer.  Occupy the breakfast table! you say as you raise your clenched fist.  Or, you may be responding the way I did: weary acceptance of the stupidity of the general public, and expecting to see many, many more of these kinds of lawsuits.

I know.  I’ve written about this before, when the lawsuit was just being launched.  Personally, I think that Nutella is as much part of a balanced breakfast as Cocoa Puffs or Froot Loops – i.e., it is worthy of being a very occasional treat, but it is not a healthy, everyday item.  Full disclosure: I buy Nutella maybe once every couple of years, usually as an ingredient for a decadent dessert or baked good.  I never buy things like Cocoa Puffs or Froot Loops because in spite of their claims of being part of a balanced breakfast, I have the ability to read the label and conclude that no, those foods do not provide the kind of energy that I want my children to have first thing in the morning.  I’m empowered due to my ability to read labels.  So are you.  So is the general public, even if they are too swayed by advertising to see it.

And this is what I find especially infuriating: parents being too swayed by advertising to make intelligent, informed decisions about the optimal foods to feed their children.  The issue being that Nutella, while similar in nutrition to peanut butter, is very high in sugar, leading to obesity and Type 2 Diabetes, and that, of course, is never mentioned in the commercials.  There’s sugar in Nutella?  But they don’t say that on TV!

Well, it is a chocolate spread.

As I see it, commercials are an opportunity to discuss with your children that not everything is as seen on TV.  When my kids were little, they became obsessed with a certain Hot Wheels track set commercial.  The tracks fed into dinosaurs, which, in the commercial, chomped the cars and launched the cars and it was amazing.  Amazing!  My children coveted these tracks so very much.  Then Mark received this track set for his birthday, and was eventually gravely disappointed in the flimsy plastic tracks and the easily-broken snapping dinosaurs.  Wait – the cars don’t fly through the air!  The commercial was WRONG.

This sparked many discussions about how not everything is as cool as it seems on TV.  Until the day that there is 100% truth in advertising, it is up to us as consumers to decipher and make informed consumption decisions, and it is up to us as parents to educate our children about this.  This is true for children’s toys, for Happy Meals, for products purportedly intended to make our lives easier, healthier, and happier.  

We need to take responsibility for our choices.  What are we teaching our children, if we simply throw up our hands and say we were lied to, despite the easy-to-read label on the jar.  They said it was healthy!  It’s not!  Now I will sue!  What we are saying is that we have no personal liability; our choices are someone else’s fault. 

I want to shake the people who are actively wasting resources that could be much better spent, the people who are participating in this suit.  I want to say: read the label.  Make a choice.  Take responsibility.