Author Archives: Nicole Boyhouse

Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful.

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Did you know that Mercury has been in retrograde for the past twenty-four days, and that phenomenon is associated with a lack of energy and sluggishness?  Me either.  But it has, so perhaps that explains things a little.  I just assumed I was having a raging case of PMS.

Speaking of raging cases of PMS, the internet has been all abuzz lately, about women complaining about being too pretty, and about pregnant women being too fat, as well as the usual chatter about women being too thin and the subsequent speculation about eating disorders.  Enough already. 

I read this article, about the downside of being pretty, but I have not yet, and I will not, read all of the vitriolic backlash to it.  The whole thing makes me feel sad.  For one thing, I have NEVER had a pilot send me a bottle of champagne on a flight.  Dammit.  Mostly, though, I felt sad because the author is 41.  I don’t doubt that she has had issues with jealousy and mean-spiritedness.  If you don’t believe that woman-to-woman meanness exists, then you have never been a cute 21 year old in a C-cup working as a summer student for an oil company whose employees consist solely of “old boys” and female secretaries.  However, I would like to think that as we age our personalities also develop to the point that looks are secondary and that by age 41, even the most beautiful women have friends.  The fact that the author is still complaining about all the backlash to her gorgeousness makes me suspect that perhaps her personality has not evolved past the “Don’t you think I’m pretty?” stage. 

However, I don’t know her, so I can’t comment on her personality.  I do know this: looks do matter, in society.  We like to say that they don’t but they do.  They matter a lot in different ways – not just in the “men send me wine at restaurants and pay for my cab fare” way, but in that being beautiful can affect one’s personality.  I wonder if that is what has happened with this woman.  A sense of entitlement and the “don’t hate me because I’m beautiful” attitude can make for an unpleasant person.

The author says “So now I’m 41 and probably one of very few women entering her fifth decade welcoming the decline of my looks. I can’t wait for the wrinkles and the grey hair that will help me blend into the background.  Perhaps then the sisterhood will finally stop judging me so harshly on what I look like, and instead accept me for who I am.”  I can’t help but feel the obnoxiousness of that.  I have many beautiful friends.  I have never judged them harshly based on their looks.  I have never thought of them of anything but beautiful, kind, smart women.  But perhaps if they told me that they were looking forward to wrinkles and grey hair so that they wouldn’t be so beautiful, perhaps they would not be the sort of women I would want to be around.  OMG!  I can’t wait to get ugly! 

What I’m saying is, perhaps it isn’t this woman’s appearance that is leaving her isolated from the female community.

Speaking of the female community, apparently Jessica Simpson is pregnant, and apparently she is looking pregnant.  Good for her!  Live it up, is my motto.  My whole life, I have thought about my weight and thought about my calorie intake and my calorie expenditure, and I’ve said no to brownies and no to chips and I’ve looked at the scale critically and I’ve thought about my pant size and I’ve worried about my cellulite and when I was pregnant I thought NO MORE!  I ate and ate and ate.  It was such a relief.  I wore maternity pants when I was thirteen weeks along and I loved every second of it.  I looked like this:

and that was just when I was only eight months along.  I gained double the recommended weight.  That was part of the joy of being pregnant.  Sure, I had to watch what I ate afterwards, and sure, it was kind of hard moving around because I could only waddle, but I. Was. Pregnant. 

So Jessica Simpson is too fat, and Angelina Jolie, Kate Middleton, and that woman from Modern Family are too thin.  First of all, don’t talk smack about Kate Middleton.  She is fabulous, and I will throw down for her.  But second of all, when we criticize women for being too thin, we do just as much disservice to the female community as when we criticize women for being too fat.  We don’t KNOW these people.  At least, I don’t.  If you know Kate Middleton, could you introduce me?  But we don’t know them, we don’t know what their lives are like, no matter what the media speculates.  We don’t know if they are thin because their lives are so hectic that they forget to eat.  Angelina Jolie has practically a baseball team of children; sure, she probably has nannies and everything, but she’s probably pretty busy too.  When I had a one and a half year old toddler and a colicky newborn, and both my toddler and my husband both were ill with the Norwalk virus, I ended up losing all my excess baby weight because I essentially didn’t sleep or eat and had a nervous breakdown.  That was an effective, if disturbing, weight loss program. 

There is speculation about eating disorders, when a woman is so thin.  Does this mean we should mock them?  Should we ostracize them for having what amounts to a mental illness?  Of course not.  Real women have curves! we say, but really, real women come in all shapes and sizes.  Real women are all women.  My friend Eryn wrote a great postissues with food, for their beauty or their lack thereof.

While I did not like the “Downside of Being Pretty” article, and while I did not get a good feeling in terms of that woman’s personality, I also strongly dislike the backlash against her.  I hate that there is discussion of a pregnant Jessica Simpson being too fat, I hate that there is media hype around celebrities being too thin.  The only solution is for us women to STOP IT.  Stop beating ourselves up about our looks.  Stop beating up other women because of their looks.  Let’s be better than that.

Nicole’s Gone Kind Of Wild

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I got home at 8:00 last night from a weekend at the in-laws’, home to a mountain of laundry, an empty refrigerator, and the need to detox and/or go on a cleanse.  My poor body.  That is all I am going to say about that.   

This morning I reluctantly went to the grocery store, extremely dissatisfied with the continuation of my regular Monday routine: you see, during the spring break I went grocery shopping on a Saturday night.  Nicole’s Gone Wild!  People, I may never be able to happily go back to the old way again.  I have glimpsed perfection.  On Saturday night, I was the old person at the grocery store.  The place was filled with students: making complex decisions about prepared salads at the deli counter, cavorting through the produce section with just little handheld baskets, texting in the checkout line.  I felt like I had boarded a spaceship and had been planted on some far-off, strange planet where no one was complaining about the lineups or the price of eggs.  I eavesdropped on a young couple in the produce section, having a tense argument about which kind of tomatoes to purchase.  Which kind, field or roma?  There are pros and cons to both.  The discussion got a bit heated, and I headed to the cereal aisle, feeling footloose and fancy free since no one ever argues with ME about which tomatoes are superior.

I’ve been to paradise but I’ve never been to me.  It was hard to go back to the old way this morning, but, as I said, the cupboards were bare.

Have you heard about the Naked Face Project?  Here is what the women involved in this project are giving up for sixty days:

For sixty days, we will give up wearing any makeup, removing any body hair, altering our hair from its natural state (dying, curling, straightening), wearing uncomfortable feminine clothing (high heels, tight skirts), wearing jewelry (with the exception of wedding bands), painting our nails, using anti-wrinkle or anti-acne lotions, wearing deodorant, or styling our hair for reasons other than function.
I will not be partaking in this project, obviously.  Do not get me wrong: I deeply admire these women for doing so.  I have a number of friends who never wear makeup, who have hair that they wash and then leave it to dry naturally, and they look fabulous.  I peeked at the photos of the women involved and let me tell you, if I looked like they do, naturally, I would maybe – MAYBE – think about going sixty days without my regular grooming habits.  However.  I do not. 
1) Makeup.  The one time – the ONE TIME – I went to the school drop off with no makeup on, I had five separate people ask me if I was all right or if I was about to drop dead.  I prefer the general public does not immediately associate my makeup-free face with tuberculosis.
2) Body Hair Removal.  Oh, ha ha ha!  HA HA HA!  I can’t even go six weeks without a bikini wax, let alone not shave my legs or underarms!  I am a partial Scottish lassie.  Evidently my body was meant for the Highlands.  Not shaving for sixty days would pretty much have my neighbours wondering if a Yeti moved in.  Not to mention the unibrow and handlebar moustache that would result.  If ever I am incapacitated for some reason, I am going to need to hire out for a hair removal service so as not to terrify the children. 
3) Altering Hair From Natural State.  My hair right now has one-inch grey roots, and it’s only been five weeks since my last hair appointment.  My hair’s natural state is not good.
4) Wearing Uncomfortable Feminine Clothing.  Well, I might be able to do that one, but it depends on the definition.  I have lots of comfortable high heels – but would they be verboten?  They are comfortable but less comfortable than flats.  And what about tight jeans?  What about a bra?  The years have not been kind to my breasts.  Think partially-deflated water balloons.  Going braless is only acceptable to me if I am wearing a tank with a built in bra, but would that be included in the uncomfortable clothing category?  I have the depressing feeling that, with the exception of my pajamas and yoga clothes, ALL my clothes have some level of discomfort associated with them, yet I am so used to them that I don’t notice the discomfort.
5) Wearing Jewelry.  BUT I LOVE JEWELRY.
6) Painting Nails.  BUT I LOVE PAINTING MY NAILS.  Plus my nails are so brittle and dry that they peel right off without a good coat of lacquer.
7) Using Anti-Wrinkle or Anti-Acne Lotion.  Hey.  I’m almost 37.  I am at the awkward periomenopausal stage where I am in need of BOTH products.  I just found some miracle products that I love and that staved off a pimple prior to my in-law visit.  Since my mother-in-law is famous for gasping and pointing out any blemish that I may have, I am devoted to these miracle products and am planning an entire blog post to show my love for them.  (Spoiler alert!  Aveeno and Burt’s Bees!)  I would make out with these products if I could; that is how much I love and admire them.  In vain I have struggled.  It will not do.  My feelings will not be repressed.  You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.
8) Wearing Deodorant.  I think my yoga teacher would die, and I do not want to be the cause of it.
Naked Face Project: FAIL.  Nicole will never Go That Wild.

Just call me Flylady

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I have a confession to make that may make me unpopular or perhaps even shunned from the community.  I’m going to take a deep breath and be out with it.  Here it is, my dirty little secret: my house is always clean, neat, and organized.  Now please stay with me a moment – this is not meant to make anyone feel bad or for me to boast about my superior housekeeping skills.  If THIS is what my life has come down to – boasting about superior housekeeping skills – then I may as well end it all right now.  Just writing superior housekeeping skills in relation to myself makes me want to stab myself and/or curl up in a corner and sob with the grimness of it all.

No, my clean, neat, and organized house is more of a function of a rigid, Type-A personality mixed with an extreme distaste for mess, with a side of minor germophobia.  I have never once left dirty dishes in the sink overnight.  I set out my outfit the night before I wear it, I write down the week’s menu and grocery requirements in my agenda.  The kids put away all their toys every night.  I do laundry every single day and I clean the bathroom three times a week.  If my mother-in-law was to show up on my doorstep unannounced, I would certainly have many emotions but shame about the state of my house would not be one of them.

Believe me, I would like to be less like this.  When I have people over for dinner, it’s all I can do to not jump up and start scraping plates and running hot water as soon as everyone is finished.  I have to make myself drink another glass of wine, just so I can relax and carry on a conversation like a normal person.  Tragic, no?  DRINK MORE WINE TO DULL THE CRAZY INTERNAL CLEANING LADY.

But it’s not like I have the kids’ toys alphabetized and on index cards, and it’s not like I’m making hospital corners when I make the bed.  Esthetically, I like things to be tidy, and so when my friend Hannah mentioned Flylady and sink-shining, I thought I should check it out.  After all, I DID have gross crusty stuff around the kitchen faucet, and there WERE some hard water deposits around the filter, and, to be honest, I kind of coveted her shiny sink (go read that link, and you will see why I love Hannah so much – her shiny shiny monument to her own insanity).  So I went over to Flylady to see what all the fuss was about – Flylady, who has this thirty-one day recipe to get one’s life in order.

Well.

It turns out that I have inadvertently been following the Flylady’s methodology for years.  Apparently I AM A FLYLADY, but without the housekeeping-tips blog.  Although I don’t leave little post-it notes full of positive affirmations around the house.  Who would do that?  If one is attempting to get control over household clutter, why would one clutter one’s house with post-it notes?  I can barely stand looking at my kids’ toys – little post-it notes all over the house proclaiming my awesomeness would be the death of my sanity, for real.  I also do not put on lace-up shoes in the house.  Who wears shoes in the house?  How do you curl up on the couch with shoes on?  Plus I don’t own a pair of lace-up shoes.  Other than that, though, I discovered, somewhat depressingly, that I am an unwitting Flylady.

I don’t feel fly, though.  I thought perhaps that if I had a shiny sink – as recommended by the Flylady as the first step to getting one’s life in order – then I would surely be fly as fly could be.  So I followed all the steps, hot water and bleach, scrubbing with a scouring pad and baking soda, using a toothbrush and a butter knife, then buffing and Windex-ing the whole thing.  I stepped back to survey the job.

Huh.  The sink was shinier, sure, but it wasn’t remarkable.  It wasn’t life-changing or transformative.  I could see my reflection, but in a fuzzy, warped, big-forehead kind of way.  I felt very let down.  FLYLADY FAIL.  For the amount of time and resources involved, I expected much, much better.  Flylady, you have disappointed me.  Or perhaps I have disappointed myself.  I do not feel that my shiny sink is a reflection of the love I have for myself.  I feel that it is a reflection of my own rigidity and craziness. 

But that didn’t stop me, today, from buffing it all over again.

Eight! Eight! Eight is Great!

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Yesterday I was doing some things around the school (putting up posters asking for volunteers to help in the naturalization area.  Do you want to help?  No?  Yeah, neither does anyone else.) when I heard the kindergarten class singing their morning song.  It is a song familiar to me, since I heard Jake singing it all last year.  Hi there neighbour!  What do you say?  It’s going to be a HAPPY DAY.  It proceeded to wedge itself into my brain, supplanting Pinball Wizard (That deaf dumb blind kid sure plays a mean pinball!).
When my alarm went off this morning, I thought “It’s going to be a HAPPY DAY”, because not only is it my tenth anniversary – I did not receive any tin foil, sadly, but my husband did present me with a bouquet of my favourite Gerber daisies – but it is also Mark’s eighth birthday!  Nothing says romance like going into labour and delivery on your second wedding anniversary after being on bedrest for three weeks with pre-eclampsia and checking your own urine for protein twice a day! 
But it is a special and happy day in our house.  I have made a big gooey chocolate layer cake, there is the promise of TAKE OUT PIZZA tonight, and a nice bottle of red with my name on it.  Figuratively speaking.  The wine is not actually named Nicole.
Happy Birthday Mark!

The Tin Anniversary

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I don’t know if you remember what the weather was like nine years and three hundred and sixty three days ago, but I do, perfectly.  For a month it had been minus thirty and snowing, but suddenly the temperature turned warm and mild.  It was a beautiful day in Banff, and I was walking around with a sleeveless dress on:

To tell the truth, I was kind of freezing.  Then the wind came up, a little:

That was ten years ago, on this coming Friday!  That is a long time.  I looked up the traditional gift for a ten-year anniversary and discovered that it is TIN.  Can’t wait for my tin foil.  Maybe I will festively open up a can of chickpeas – or maybe not, since that seems to be typical of any Friday. 

I love being married to my husband and I did have a beautiful wedding, marred only by a slight breakdown ten years ago TODAY when I broke a nail and my esthetician at the time was not versed in acrylic nails.  What kind of esthetician is not versed in acrylic nails, you may ask?  I don’t know, but I cried hysterically.  My soon-to-be-husband tried to calm me down by a) pointing out that I was going to be wearing gloves, anyway, and b) calling his best man, who was married to an esthetician who promised to handle any subsequent nail emergencies.  I did get the nail fixed, thank god, because the hysteria from my single broken nail was threatening to overshadow the whole day. 

It’s funny that I would be that upset about a NAIL, because I was the opposite of a Bridezilla.  In fact, I may have been a different kind of Bridezilla, because I really didn’t care about most of the proceedings.  My poor mother was beside herself because I wouldn’t choose centrepieces for the tables.  I shruggingly said she could choose what she liked, which sent her into a spiral of centrepiece obsession.  My sister-in-law, in what can only be described as an act of incredible generosity and kindness, actually sat down with my mother and made centrepieces. 

But I was operating on the idea that there are only three things that people remember from any given wedding: what the bride looked like, if the food was decent, and if there was good music or if there were a plethora of boring speeches.  I prayed for no weird breakouts, I chose a crowd-pleasing meal that I did not actually consume but I heard it was tasty, and our DJ rocked it out with such hits as Old Time Rock and Roll and YMCA. 

We only had the bare minimum of speeches; my feelings then as now were that wedding speeches generally fall into one of two categories: the overly emotional (“Take care of my little girl!”) or the incredibly inappropriate (“So then he got totally hammered and streaked across the field, and then puked all over everyone, and she still married the guy!  Even after she found out the size of his dick!”).  Sometimes, unfortunately, speeches can belong to BOTH categories, which is terrible for the listener.  I was once at a wedding where there was an open mike, and guests were encouraged to share anecdotes about the bride and groom.  This is a very bad idea.  This is especially a bad idea when booze is involved and ex-boyfriends of the bride have been invited.  That is all I’m going to say.

But ten years of marriage!  In the spirit of the day, here are ten things I love about my husband:

1) He’s a great husband, and he allows me to live my life of luxurious housewifery.
2) He’s a really good father, even if he does allow the children to be flatulent at the dinner table.
3) He’s really hot.
4) He doesn’t like when I cry so he eats anything I make for dinner.
5) He would never forget my birthday, and always is incredibly thoughtful when purchasing gifts.
6) He loves to plan vacations, and so all I have to do is sit back and enjoy while he handles the logistics.
7) He is trying to teach me to be less directionally-impaired, so I don’t have to pull over to the road to sob because I’m lost. 
8) He shares my stupid frat-boy sense of humour, and always knows exactly what I mean when I say we’re having a “pretty nice little Saturday“.
9) He’s reliable, trust-worthy, confident, and smart.  He is so confident, he corrected me when I wrote about the ten sexiest men and FORGOT JOHN CUSACK.  It takes a big man to do that.
10) He makes me happy with myself.

Happy Anniversary, shmoopie.

Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.

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As we pulled out of the parking lot at the gymnastics centre, with my frayed nerves and cupcake-stained children, I silently vowed never to host another large children’s birthday party ever again.  Truly, I think we are now past the age where I can allow my kids to invite fourteen children and still expect to emerge from the party with my sanity still intact.  A group of fifteen kindergarteners, or fifteen first graders even, is much, much easier to deal with than a group of fifteen children ranging in ages from six to nine.  Apparently I don’t like children as much as I thought I did.  I stood impotently among the chaos of the party room, as sugar-addled children chased each other around the table, arms flailing, screaming at the very top of their lungs.  I was powerless to stop it.  At one point it felt like the room was vibrating.  One little girl sat on a chair, with her hands over her ears.  I gave her a goody bag, and announced that anyone who was as calm as she was would also receive a goody bag.  Eventually things settled down and parents arrived, only a few arriving after the specified pick-up time.  As God is my witness, I will never host another such birthday party again.

I am currently reading Anna Karenina, and I came across the following paragraph:

Between the Countess Nordston and Levin relations had
grown up such as are not infrequently met with in
Society, when two people outwardly remaining in friendly
relations despise each other to such an extent that
they cannot treat each other seriously, or even be offended with one another.
It occurred to me that this is the nineteenth-century Russian equivalent of passive-aggressiveness.  Oh, passive-aggressiveness, the ugliest of all negative character traits.  I feel this way, truly, but I find that I myself have taken on a very passive-aggressive attitude while shopping.
It’s the thing now for all stores, it seems, to ask for your email address every time a purchase is made, and that is something that threatens the remaining vestiges of my sanity.  My in-box is filled, constantly, with enthusiastically-worded newsletters from various corporations about there only being three! days! left! of whatever fabulous sale is going on right! now!  In a bid to control some of this raging-out-of-control in-box, I unsubscribed to all newsletters but am now in an awkward position whenever I am shopping.  At first, I tried a polite-but-firm tone with the salesperson, that no, I did not wish to leave my email address.  However, my polite-but-firm tone was overruled by the salesperson’s pleas, promises of good deals, and apparent need for demographic information; how that is obtained via email is beyond me but nevertheless I felt powerless to refuse.  I felt sorry for the salesperson who is just fulfilling their job requirements by asking customers for their emails.  And yet, I want no more emails. 
My solution to this problem is to give a false email address.  I feel a little skeevy about this practice, but yet, I have no better solution.  So I normally give a gmail address, usually with some variation of Nicole.  But then I started guiltily thinking about all the Nicoles on gmail who are, without their knowledge, being placed on various mailing lists.  I could just imagine some other Nicole opening up her in-box, thinking What the fuck, Old Navy?  I JUST unsubscribed from you!  Again!
I don’t know what to do.  Perhaps the next time I will use such monikers as onehotmama at hotmail, or babelicious at yahoo or maybe even milf at gmail.  Do you think they’ll be able to see through my ruse?

Up The Irish

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Today, in addition to making three dozen cupcakes and a loaf of banana bread, I am going to try my hand at Irish Soda Bread, in the festive spirit of the day.  I am also making kale chips and roasted asparagus, which count as festively Irish because of the green colour.  I am in general not a fan of potato dishes, so green veggies and soda bread is about as far as I go in the St. Paddy’s department.  I don’t even wear green, which is due to the fact that my wardrobe is almost exclusively grey and black.  This brings me to another point: it’s all the rage these days to wear a certain colour on a certain day to show support for various causes (purple for gay rights, pink for anti-bullying, etc.) and I’m sorry to say I almost never partake.  It’s not that I don’t support those causes – I am all for gay rights and anti-bullying, of course – but I don’t actually have the appropriate clothes.  So here’s what I’m wearing on St. Paddy’s Day:

Festive Irish wear – complete with fluffy dog!  This is also week four of my “growing out my goddamn hair” and I’m feeling pleased with it.  It’s growing!  Hair grows!  Regretsy no more!
It has been a very, very shitty week in the Boyhouse, but I am TIRED of being a little black cloud of sadness.  Last night I drugged myself and slept ten hours, and today I am filled with optimism! and cheer! and so instead I am going to transform myself into my usual ray of sunshine and tell you all the happy things about this week, as well as a few things I find cheering. 
1. Mark’s birthday party is tomorrow and of the fourteen children invited, thirteen of them RSVP’d by the date specified on the invitation.  This is surely a new record.  I’m taking an extra goody bag just in case but hooray for people adhering to basic societal expectations!
2. The boys’ class put on a play about the history of Calgary, and Jake was genius – GENIUS, I SAY – as Inspector Brisbois, head of the Northwest Mounted Police and builder of Fort Calgary.  He even wore a handlebar moustache.  Perhaps he is a future Movember participant? 
3. Report cards came out yesterday, and much to my surprise, Mark is apparently gifted at thermometer reading.  Several sentences were devoted to Mark and his ability to accurately read a thermometer.  He is the go-to person when classmates have questions about temperatures. 
4. This makes me laugh every time I look at it:
Although the other explanation is “rich” and/or “titled”.
5. I found this picture of Barkley when we first got him:
CUTE!!!  Wook at his widdle face.
And…that’s it.  I have been in a bit of a funk, so I would love, love, love it if you told me some cheering/happy things going on in your life.  xo