Author Archives: Nicole Boyhouse

Knowing Me, Knowing You, The Time Change Edition

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With clock-like consistency, there are two times of the year that get me excessively agitated and stabby, and those times are the “Spring Forward” and “Fall Back” atrocities known as Daylight Saving-related time changes.  I may have mentioned this before.  I’m not going to bore you with the details, but I will say that, as I age, I myself seem to be more affected by this.  For example, I woke up at 3:30 this morning thinking that it was time to head over to the yoga studio.  I think my stomach is currently in danger of digesting itself, and it’s only 11:00.  My brain is a liquidy mess.  I can’t wait until I slip into a coma at 6:30 tonight – after it’s been dark for two hours, and I certainly can’t wait for the excitement of having two highly exhausted children at that time, when we will still need to finish our home reading and tidy up our rooms.  It’s going to be great!

Just pick a fucking time and stick with it, people.  Time change is an antiquated notion.  Let’s move on.

So as my brain liquifies and I sip my fourth cup of coffee, let’s play a game of Knowing Me Knowing You, shall we?  I picked up this meme from my very good non-lesbian-life-partner-she’s-just-a-friend Allison over at Bibliomama.  Play along – it’s fun!

1. What keeps you up late at night?
Oh, ha ha, this is such a funny question!  Nothing.  I have trouble falling asleep very rarely, and when I do it’s due to something ridiculously stupid like the guy who came to one School Council/ Parent Association meeting and raved about busing fees and the school naturalization area, but who actually did not want any involvement with the Parent Association because he is way “too busy”.  That guy irritated me so much I stayed awake until AFTER TEN O’CLOCK.  Travesty.  

2. Do you collect anything?
I have a lot of books, but I’m not sure I would say I collect them.  Clothes?  Yoga wear?  Boots?  At last count I have 10 pairs of black boots, and here is a (partial) look inside my closet:

My yoga clothes – sadly, I am doing laundry right now and so this is much neater and less crammed than usual.  Also note: I have a cowboy hat on my top shelf.  This is what living in Calgary does to you, people.

My sweater “drawer”.

My “drawer” dedicated to t-shirts of the long and short sleeved variety.

So I’m not sure if I can say I have a “collection”, but my husband would say that I have issues with clothing.  Hey, you can never have enough black tops and sweaters, am I right?

3. Are you addicted to Angry Birds?
I barely know what Angry Birds IS.  I have a flip phone.  I don’t even have voice mail on it.

4. What’s your idea of a perfect evening?
At the risk of sounding VERY lame, I love spending the evening on the couch, drinking wine and eating something made with cheese, and watching reruns of NYPD Blue.  Or Jeopardy.  I am so much fun to live with!

5. Are you looking forward to winter?
I live in Calgary.  It’s winter right now.  NO.  I like to be warm.  But at least the winter gives me an excuse to procure more black sweaters and boots. 

Here Comes Santa Claus!

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It’s snowing right now, big huge flakes that are sending the city into a panic, traffic-wise, as always happens for the first serious snowfall.  DRIVE SLOW, HOMEY.  I should be more irritated with the snow, but it gives me an excuse to stay home and drink hot beverages, rather than take a trip to the leaf-and-pumpkin recycling depot.  The pumpkins have been sitting on our steps for weeks now.  They are probably disgustingly soft and mouldy, but I do not have the heart to bag them up, so I think I will leave them for my husband tomorrow.  It seems more like – not to be anti-feminist or anything here – a blue job, you know?  I was talking to Allison the other day and we decided that we would be the worst lesbian couple ever, given both our lack of talents in vehicle maintenance and ability to find the fuse box.  The latter is just Allison, I for one know exactly where my fuse box is located.  But I have been known to burst into uncontrollable tears when the “low washer fluid” light has come on.  Sorry, Allison, we are JUST going to be friends.

So instead of bagging up the disgusting pumpkins, I’m drinking a warming cup of tea.  I purchased a package of Yogi brand tea – because I’m pretentious like that – without realizing that there is the added bonus of an inspirational saying on each teabag!  Today’s saying: To love is to live for each other.  Actually, that’s kind of nice.  I can’t really say anything about that.  But yesterday the saying was Let your mind dance with your body.  I think my mind is doing the white-man’s overbite.

On November 1st, I started feeling excessively festive and dug through my drawers until I could find my special green pajamas with reindeer imprinted on.  Then I did some Christmas shopping, culminating with a trip to the post office/ Hallmark store yesterday.  I had to pick up a package anyway, but I thought I would get a head start on my annual Christmas letter.  I asked the man working there if they carried any Christmas stationary.  “WHAT?” he asked, frowning.  I explained to him what I was looking for – printer paper, with a Christmas or winter-like motif.  “No.” he said, shaking his head in a very disapproving way.  “No, we don’t have that.  And I don’t know anyone who would.”  O-kay.  I went back over the conversation in my head, wondering if I had accidentally asked for something completely obscene and inappropriate, like maybe an inflatable Santa Claus complete with erection.  No.  I had just asked for Christmas paper. 

Then I went to pick up my package and asked the woman at the post office counter if I could purchase Christmas stamps.  “Christmas stamps?  No.  They are not AVAILABLE yet.” she said, looking at me like I was maybe the most insane person ever.  I guess she and the other guy were in cahoots?  I don’t know.  People, I was in a Hallmark store.  Three-quarters of the place was filled with Christmas-related items and probably had been for the past three weeks.  I don’t think asking for Christmas stamps was THAT strange.  But maybe it was.  Maybe it was.

My 400th Post!

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This is my 400th post!  Four hundred posts!  I certainly have had a LOT to say.  Maybe I should start writing something meaningful, like those people who spout nothing but inspirational sayings.  After all, the other day I was having a cup of Yogi brand tea, and on the teabag it said “The only tool you need is kindness.”  I thought this was beautiful, somewhat flawed, and also Ha!  You said Tool!  So maybe I have not evolved enough to the point where I will be writing and/or quoting inspirational sayings.  Although, here is a lovely quote from the painter Bob Ross:


“Just a little bush, and here’s another one. This one hangs right over the edge of the cabin. He’s watching everything … make up little stories about the plants and think about the little creatures that would live in here. There’s probably all kinds of little squirrels and rabbits and just a multitude of things that you may never see, but they’re here. They’re here …”
Again, maybe I’ll just stick with my regular programming.
Here we are in November, with the excitement of Halloween behind us.  The kids went out trick-or-treating with their dad, and came back with an enormous haul of candy.  Do you have rules about candy consumption?  When it comes to Halloween, what works for us is the tried-and-true rule that there are no rules, also known as gluttony is self-regulating.  I essentially let my kids go to town on their candy and I find that within a couple of days they are not interested in it.  The problem is, we often have Halloween candy last us until Easter.  I am going to follow in the footsteps of some of my friends and freeze the little chocolate bars and/or chop them up for baking.  I also encourage the spirit of giving and sharing with others, which is how my friend ended up with those horrid little toffees that only she likes.  “Are these the gross candies she likes?” Mark said, holding up the orange and black wrapped toffees.  “Let’s put them in a special pile!” Jake encouraged him.  Also on the way out: Cheezies for their grandpa and for a friend with Celiac, plain potato chips for their teacher, and Wunderbars for their dad.
Check out our spooky decorations!  They managed to lure in eleven trick-or-treaters, which is high for our street. 
Jake with his booty.  Am I the only one who kind of dislikes when the kids get miniature Play-Doh?  Also, notice that Jake got Old Dutch Salt and Vinegar chips and I DID NOT steal them.  I think I deserve a reward.  He also got one of these: 

It’s a hard-core Christian tract!  Hey, I don’t have a problem if someone has a good relationship with old JC, but I WAS a little startled to find this in the candy bag.  Also I am dying of curiosity as to which neighbour was handing these out. 
I was at my parents’ house on the weekend and made off with some old pictures, notably of me in Halloween costumes.  Here is me at age six dressed as a gypsy:
Check out the crock pot and mug tree in the background!  Not to mention the dark brown fridge.  Remember the days of making costumes out of household items and ending up as a gypsy or, in the case of my husband, a hobo?  The days of dressing up festively as itinerant fortune tellers and/or the homeless are gone, I guess.  Gone with the days of having ceramic frogs to hold SOS pads.
This is the first year I have ever purchased a costume for my children.  Normally, my mother – who is handy with the needle, whereas I am decidedly NOT – makes them, but I felt kind of sorry for her with Jake’s request to be Spider Monkey from Ben 10, and so I bought them.  It felt a bit like the end of an era.  
Here are the boys trick-or-treating together for the very first time.  They are one and two years old.  CUTE. 
How was your Halloween? 

It was a graveyard smash!

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It snowed today!  The little dusting is, I believe, positively correlated with the comment I made yesterday regarding the unbelievable fact that we had made it through September AND October with no snow.  But, dear readers, we had NOT made it through October, and so now we have snow.  It’s not much though and it is mostly melted, but I feel silly for having mentioned it. 

I also feel a bit silly for having thought – although not spoken aloud – that we have eluded illness quite successfully so far this school year.  Mark now has a very, very minor version of the sniffles which has the unfortunate yet usual side effect of THE COUGH.  This means that he is waking up to cough in the night, which gives me post-traumatic flashbacks to his bout with pneumonia and the subsequent months of nighttime coughing.  I gave him a shot of his steriod inhaler this morning and he responded by saying “Wow, my chest feels all crazy!” which led me down a spiral of worry.  But he seems fine.

He really was just fine until the morning after the Halloween Family Dance, which is, quite honestly, the highlight of his calendar year, right after Christmas.  And it was a fabulous time for all of us, although I’m happy that it’s all done.  I cleared my calendar last Thursday specifically to make these:

Ninety sugar cookies!  They are almost completely devoid of nutritional value, yet are a consistent crowd pleaser.  I was taking three dozen of them for the bake sale/ concession at the dance and was pleased to see that they sold out fairly quickly. 

Nothing sells like a choice of spooky shapes and lots of sprinkles.

The dance itself was so much fun, augmented by a flash mob performance from a local studio – teenage girls dressed as zombies, dancing to Thriller.  My kids were dressed in their finest spooky wear:

A vampire and Spider Monkey from Ben 10!  My husband and I are in the background, and we are also dressed up, although my neighbour did not realize it.  I walked over to the school early to help set up, and as I left the house with my makeup gun set to “whore” I fervently hoped I would not run into anyone I knew.  No sooner than I had thought that, my neighbour got out of his truck and started talking to me in a casual, awkward, elephant-in-the-room way.  I mentioned I was on my way to set up for the school Halloween Dance, and he said “Oh!  Halloween!  I thought you were just going out with some girlfriends!”  That was a little disheartening.

For the record, I do not look like this when I go out with my girlfriends.

Near the end of the dance, the DJ was inspired to play a number of “oldies” for the parents’ listening pleasure.  I was a little wary – after all, this was only days after the soul train – but the very last song was Don’t Stop Believing by Journey, which is pretty awesome, if you ask me.  I was belting out Hold on to that FEEEELLLLININNNNGGG for the next couple of days.

There was even – hold on to your hats! – much Grade Six Girl Drama, complete with mediation (“She’s upset because you said you didn’t want to dance?  But then she saw you dancing with Sophie?”) and crying in the bathroom.  A few years ago my niece was at a school dance and my sister-in-law asked her how many girls were crying in the bathroom and my niece was completely flabbergasted.  How did you know girls were crying in the bathroom?  Because girls have always and will always be crying in the bathroom at dances until the end of time.

There is something very comforting in that.  When my children are chaperoning their own children’s dances, and Party Rockers in the House Tonight is the golden oldie played for the parents, girls will still be huddled in a group in the bathroom, surrounding and comforting one of their sobbing compatriots.

Jake-Z and Marky Mark

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Over the past six weeks there has been a hip-hop residency program at our school, meaning that the kids have been learning hip-hop in gym class.  I was interested to see how this would go since my children have a great love of music and – especially in Mark’s case – dancing.  This great love of music does not translate into talent, however, and so I was greatly amused when they would practice their steps at home.  And by “steps” I mean they mostly crossed their arms and bobbed up and down slightly, with intense scowls on their faces, with the exception of their two signature moves: gorilla and soldier.  Gorilla! they would shout, arms and legs bent, back curved.  Soldier! they would say, standing at attention and saluting.  With that kind of preview you can well imagine that I was eager to see the windup performance yesterday afternoon.

It was, hands down, the single greatest school assembly I have ever witnessed.  I’m not sure what I enjoyed the most: the Grade Ones and Twos who made up with enthusiasm what they lacked in coordination and body control, the Grade Threes and Fours who were enthusiastic AND coordinated, or the Grade Fives and Sixes who had the most coordination and complicated routines, but who had a singular lack of hip-hop joy on their faces due to the self-consciousness of performing a dance routine in front of the school and their parents, ick.  I also much enjoyed my fellow parents who turned into “Woo Girls” at the sight of their children performing their funky moves.  Myself included.  Woooooooo! 

The young male leader of this hip-hop residency announced that there would be something special happening after the performances.  What that was, he said, was something that we parents would surely remember: a soul train dance line!  Now, it’s true that he was much, much younger than all of us, but a soul train dance line?  None of us were actually clubbing in the 70s, so I’m not sure how old he thought we were.  Nonetheless, who can really resist?  It was great.  My own children did their patented dance moves: Jake did a couple of jumping spins and then mostly walked with great funky aplomb, Mark did a couple of John Travolta-esque moves and also, inappropriately, a couple of butt-smacks (his own butt).  Some kids walked grimly and in a deeply embarrassed way, some skipped with their arms waving, and some really got their groove on.  Me, I joined in when the parents were invited, despite wearing the world’s ugliest – yet most comfortable – knock-off Uggs. 

All of which is to say that we’re ready and excitedly anticipating Friday’s Halloween Family Dance.  The boys have even gone so far as to say they hope I’ll join them on the dance floor.  Of course I will.  It will be only a few more years until they are the deeply embarrassed, grim children walking quickly down the soul train dance line.

Cultivating the Relationship

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How was your weekend?  I spent Friday night here:

which is to say I had a pretty fabulous weekend.  My parents stayed at our house and took care of the children, and I will say this: I always fret a little about leaving them, even for one night, and they always wish that I stayed away longer.  Hum.  It’s nice to have time with just my husband and not be completely distracted by the kids, as I often am.  A friend’s mother was talking to me about when her girls left home and she found herself sitting across the table from her husband, just the two of them; how strange it was and how important it is to cultivate that relationship.  Not that I’m panicking about the empty nest just yet, but still.  Another friend, who is a pharmacist working with cancer patients, told me that incidences of the human papillomavirus spike in teenagers AND in women in their fifties – empty nesters who leave their husbands and engage in promiscuous activity.  Where am I going with this?  IT’S IMPORTANT TO CULTIVATE THE RELATIONSHIP, PEOPLE.  And so I had a great time in Banff.  We walked to downtown Banff for dinner and met up with an elk on the way:

Cute!  It’s not so common to see elk in the townsite anymore, and so I got my picture taken with it.

Look, he’s showing his bum.

After dinner we went back to the hotel and hung out in the lounge, getting drunk, listening to a fabulous blues guitarist, and meeting people at the bar.  That’s always fun.  We met a couple from Boston who were also Patriots fans, so there was much “Gooooo Pats!” talk and more drinking.  I stayed up until – wait for it – MIDNIGHT.  I had the teensiest bit of a headache the next day.

I had made a full recovery by Sunday and was persuaded by the children to put up all the Halloween decorations and carve pumpkins.  Carving pumpkins is one of those family fun activities that actually end up being NOT SO MUCH family fun.  I mean, the end result is fun.  The ideas about what the pumpkins should look like, that’s fun too.  But the actual carving?  My husband gets the glory of using a very sharp tool that’s designed to cut drywall.  I get stuck cleaning the goop out of the pumpkins and trying to save the seeds for roasting, which only I eat anyway.  The kids refuse to assist in the cleaning process, and only wish they could assist in the cutting process, and so pumpkin carving is really not much of a family fun project.  They turned out well though:

Doesn’t that one look like Gru from Despicable Me? 

Happy, Happy Birthday Baby

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It’s my husband’s birthday today!  Ssssh.  He doesn’t like a big fuss made about his birthday, something I totally do not understand since I enjoy wearing a birthday tiara and a sandwich board with “BIRTHDAY GIRL” written on it.  However, he and I are going to Banff for the night tonight – squee – with no kids – double squee!  We haven’t even gone out for dinner, just the two of us, for months and months, and so I’m pretty excited.  Bring on the wine!  Bring on the appetizers!  Bring on the cosmopolitans!  I used to work with a guy who had a date night with his wife every single Saturday night.  That actually sounds kind of exhausting to me, but a night out without kids should probably occur more often than once every six months.

Speaking of Saturday night, remember The Simpsons?  (Yes, I know it’s still on TV, but I haven’t watched it in probably ten years, so this is a dated reference.)

Homer: Saturday night?  But that’s our special night!
Marge: What’s so special about Saturday night?
Homer: What’s so spe…oh, I don’t know.  A little so-called Dr. Quinn?  MEDICINE WOMAN?

For the record, I LOVED Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.

But since we are going out tonight, I baked this yesterday:

Nom nom nom.
The boys made cards for their dad using their brand-new Smencils.  Are your kids into Smencils?  They are very strongly scented pencils made out of 100% recycled newspaper.  The boys worked very hard on these cards yesterday after school, and I inspected them when they were done.  Jake’s had drawings of Ben 10 aliens on it, along with coloured circles for him to smell.  Mark’s had elaborate animal drawings, the animals floating in a sea of bubble gum.  In very small print on the front were the words “Have a happy fart.”
Oh, farting.  It is just so funny.  I really was unprepared, prior to having little boys, for the number of hours I would have to spend a) listening to discussions about farting, b) being in rooms that have been farted in, and c) making up rules that no one, save myself, follows with regards to farting, such as no farting at the dinner table.  I am the only one who complies.  The other day while we were eating dinner, Jake put his chin in his palm and looked at me sweetly.  He smiled softly, and I half expected little hearts to be in the place where his irises are.  “What’s up, sweetie?” I said.  “I just farted.” he replied.  Jake is also famous, in our house, for suddenly yelling “Mom!  Mom!  Moooooooommmm!  I farted, and it did NOT smell good.”  This happens frequently.
His brother is no better.  Mark likes to stand beside me, fart noxiously, and then move away, giggling at my protests.  He also informed me that he farted, very loudly, in his yoga class.  I suppose that happens to the best of us.  After this confession, Jake said, with great pride in his brother’s achievements, “I know!  I heard you! You were so loud!”
Life with boys.  It stinks, literally but not figuratively.