Author Archives: Nicole Boyhouse

What makes a happy couple? Not outdoor soccer.

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Last week I was applying makeup while wearing my robe and Jake peered over at my exposed legs.  “Mom, you should go put your stockings on,” he said in a voice of concern.  I assured him that I didn’t need to wear my stockings anymore!  Happy news!  He repeated his request, slightly louder.  I repeated my response in a slightly different way, simplifying it as I thought he didn’t understand, like maybe he had an issue with comprehension of the English language.  Finally, he tearfully snapped.  “MOM!  Please just put your stockings on!  Your legs are creeping me out!”
Ew!  And this is after a week of healing.  It’s like Frankenstein’s monster’s legs, but paler.
I went and put on yoga pants.
Yesterday was a lovely day and I spent the majority of it bundled up and sitting out in the sun, reading, like the elderly person I have now become.  The boys rode their scooters and bikes and dug holes in the dirt while I wondered how much longer it will be until I can clean up the yard a little, plant a few things, cut back the old dead perennials.  There is still snow on the ground although it’s trying to melt.  My husband watched the Master’s, and for those of you who are not golf fans – I suspect that I’m talking to most of my readership here – it is being touted as the most exciting Master’s EVER.  At one point there were six players who were tied for the lead, which is evidently quite rare.  Tiger Woods even was a contender – I coulda been a contender!  I coulda been a somebody, instead of just a nobody. – but he did not win.  It is a little amazing to me that he still has a large fan base and that people were clapping (in the muted, golf way) for him.  I guess this gives hope to Charlie Sheen.
It’s funny about relationships.  I’ve been reading a few articles lately that have addressed the issue of how to “keep the spark alive”, and while I have a hard time keeping the ribald jokes to myself (Blowjobs! Pornography!  Alcohol!), I think it’s an important topic.  My husband is, obviously, an avid golf fan and an avid golf player, while I, most clearly, am not.  I am a yoga practitioner, whereas my husband, most emphatically, is not.  But yet, I find that our separate interests are part of our keeping said spark alive, even if we frequently “parallel talk” – i.e., “I shot a birdie on the tenth hole, then bogeyed the eleventh.”  “My back’s a little stiff from Kapotasana.  I think I should stretch.”  There is no way that we are ever going to be a “golf couple”; I am never donning one of those little hats and killing myself with frustration.  We are also never going to be a “yoga couple”; my husband is never going to “inhale happiness exhale peace.”  We’re a happy couple, though.  Even if I know, against my will, that Rory McIlroy completely fell apart on the back nine.
Tonight is soccer evaluations, and the single greatest email I received last week informed me that the evaluations would take place indoors this year, given the plethora of snow.  I was almost hysterically happy with this news.  Next week the season starts and let me tell you a little secret: outdoor soccer in this city is terrible.  Every year I sit on my little folding chair dressed for a blizzard, with a giant cup of tea and a sleeping bag wrapped around me, and it feels like, indeed, hell has frozen over and I am living in it.  But the kids are happy out there in the fresh air and light evenings, running around, and that’s what matters most.  Now, if only that snow would melt.

High Maintenance Girl

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Sally: Which am I?
Harry: Oh, you’re the worst kind.  You’re high maintenance, but you think you’re low maintenance.
Sally: I don’t see that.
Harry: You don’t see it?  Waiter, I’ll have the house salad, but I don’t want the regular dressing.  I want the balsamic oil and vinegar.  But I want it on the side.  Then I’ll have the salmon with mustard sauce but I want the mustard sauce on the side.  On the side is a very big thing for you.
Sally: Well, I just want it the way I want it.
Harry: I know.  High maintenance.
Once again, I feel that movie is actually all about me and my life.  My husband is constantly telling me that I am high maintenance and although I protest, my protests are weak because I know that this is an accurate way to describe me.
I’ve been feeling somewhat guilty about complaining so much about my surgery because really, what am I really complaining about?  Things could be so much worse.  My beautiful, very active and sporty neighbour and friend was hit by a car while riding her bike, and ended up with a broken back.  A broken back!  She was out of commission for a long time, unable to do the things she loved.  And not just the sporty things she loved, but things like getting in and out of cars unassisted.   Another friend of mine had surgery in which her chest was cracked open and she couldn’t care for her two small children for many weeks, and a year later she still is feeling the effects of it.  So I feel a bit spoiled and high maintenance for complaining about something that is making me walk like I’ve been riding a horse for the  past month non-stop and is making me unable to wear anything but yoga pants.  I mean, a week ago I was clad in only pajamas and tensor bandages, so yoga pants are a very large step up. 
I’m still going to complain, though, and this one might be filed under an excess of information, but if one cannot impart an excess of information on one’s readers, then why have a blog to start with?
Here’s the thing: I can’t shave my legs.  I’m not sure when I will be able to shave my legs.  I feel like a sasquatch, or, alternately, a hippie.  You know, dear readers, I am all about peace, love, and happiness, but pass the damn razor.  And also the lip gloss.  Did you see the picture in the previous post?  That is what happens when there is no makeup.  I would have been a terrible hippie.  When I think about Woodstock I immediately get shivers thinking of all those people, all that rain and no toilets.  Not to mention the brown acid.  And all the guys wearing leather fringed jackets with no shirts underneath and without a doubt no showers or deoderant. 
But back to the issue at hand.  I feel like an actual yeti.  I don’t even want to hear from you people who regularly do not shave your legs because you don’t feel the need to.  Almost everyone I know who doesn’t shave a) is blond, or b) has little body hair anyway.  At the risk of disgusting everyone, I am not only fair skinned and brunette, but I am also of partial Scottish ancestry, and apparently my body still thinks that I need to keep warm in the Highlands. 
That’s that.  I’m not going to complain anymore, I promise. 

When I am an old woman

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When I am an old woman, I will wear an excessive amount of Chanel Number 5.  I will wear thick, bright layers of lipstick that will feather and bleed into my papery skin.  I will make wildly inappropriate jokes and sexually harrass all the male orderlies at the home and earn the reputation of being the creepy old woman in room 14. 


What I have discovered about myself, disturbingly enough, is that when I am an old woman I am going to relentlessly discuss my various health complaints.  Yes, I’m going to be one of those horrible old people who talk about my less savoury ailments to random passerby.  I’m discovering this about myself as right now it is all I can do to not roll down my thick, dark beige compression stockings to show people my stitches.  “Want to see my scar?”  Anyway, my legs have become somewhat fascinating to me, and so I must think that they are fascinating to everyone else, despite the fact that my long suffering, beloved husband turned slightly green at the sight of my unbandaged, revolting legs. 

Speaking of my long suffering, beloved husband, he went back to work today and I think he was quite relieved to do so.  Not only has he had to take care of me and my random, irrational fits of sobbing – But I don’t WANT my legs to hurt anymore! – he has also been running the house and dealing with the children.  I do not think that he has a glamourized view of the stay at home parent.  If any of you are feeling underappreciated these days, I totally recommend complete convalescence and to have your husband do load after load of laundry and wash sinkful after sinkful of dishes to really get some drudgery based recognition.  Or maybe I don’t.  Because it’s kind of depressing to realize that this is how I spend my days.

Anyway, back to my fascinating legs.  Other than the stitches scattered over the length of them – Do you have bugs on your legs, Mom? – they look, disturbingly, as though someone has taken a crowbar to them.  I’m like Nancy Kerrigan!  Why?  WWHHHHYYYYYYYYYY?  I feel a kinship with Nancy.  Perhaps she and I could hang out, discuss the pros and cons of Minnie Mouse ears. 

I ran out of my good drugs yesterday.  This is good and bad.  On the good side, as much fun as it was sleeping sixteen hours a day and being in a state of non-pain, my brain was just completely fuzzy.  I could barely concentrate enough to read a Candace Bushnell novel.  As it was, I did finish Mockingjay and I’m not sure if it was me or the book, but I couldn’t really get into it.  I kept wondering if this was a different battle scene or the same one, or what area they were in, or if anyone important died.  When I finished the book I was just totally confused.  Did Gale die?  What actually happened?  I tried going back and re-reading and just became more confused.  So I think that was me. 

On the bad side, of course, is the pain.  It’s like the House of Pain around here, but without the jumping around.  But you can still take Tylenol, I was told, which to me is the same as saying You can take nothing.  Bitch, please.  Tylenol?  Unless I can down the whole bottle, Tylenol is doing nothing.

So there’s that.  This weekend it snowed, thirty centimetres, and I stared out the window in drugged-out bliss while Mark enjoyed it:

Those are almond eyes, a carrot nose, and a banana smile.

See?

And lest anyone accuse me of only posting flattering pictures of myself.  Here I am, completely high on Percocet, enjoying the lovely fruit bouquet sent by my girlfriends.  Note my awesome hair and pajamas.

STRIPPING! Boom chicka wah wah! UPDATE

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So here’s what you may not know about getting your varicose veins stripped: it really, really hurts.  I know!  News flash!  But honestly, I was unprepared for how much it would hurt and how difficult it would be to walk afterward.  I am happy to tell you that today I am moving around and even getting up out of bed by myself without thinking that a crane and/or hydraulic lift would be handy. 

My strongest – and yet still vague and fuzzy – recollection from the recovery room is whispering to my nurse that I didn’t expect it to hurt so much.  “I just didn’t think it would hurt like this,” I whispered sadly as the nurse upped my morphine dosage.  The nurses kept asking me to rate my pain on a scale from one to ten, and I kept saying, passionately, SIX.  It is a SIX.  Mentally I rationalized that I’d had two babies with no pain medication, and that hurt way more, so I could not go above six on the scale, but I did not explain that to the nurse who I assumed could understand that SIX IS AS HIGH AS I WOULD GO. 

Good times.  So the last few days have been marked by my stumbling around the house – “walking” to avoid blood clots and the like – sleeping a lot, and counting down until it’s time to take pain medication again.  My husband has been handling things amazingly well, making meals and even keeping the house clean.  The kids have been good and have made me several dozen pictures in the past couple of days.  I was sent a gorgeous fruit bouquet by some girlfriends and one lovely friend dropped off sourdough and scones just today.  So I feel very thankful for my wonderful friends and family.

Here’s my complaint about convalescence: it is very boring.  Daytime television is atrocious.  We have a couple hundred channels and almost everything is either a) some sort of strange reality program, b) a crappy talk show, or c) sports.  Since it’s spring break and the kids are around, I can’t really watch reruns of NYPD Blue, either, or not without fear of scarring the children.  I did watch Chris Rock on David Letterman and laughed so hard at his criticism of foreign policy – “There’s a guy over there having a heart attack!  Let’s go kick him in the balls!” – that my stitches hurt. 

Thanks everyone for your well wishes.  xo

I’m used to nice things!

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I had a plan to write a really funny post about how yesterday’s Costco trip destroyed my faith in humanity, but my neighbour restored it; and how the entire city suddenly got over their collective seasonal affectedness disorder because the sun came out and the temperature got above freezing and this was the actual, number one top news story on the six o’clock news.  I was also going to talk about how we got a new garage door to replace our terribly long-suffering forty nine year old garage door and how it has brought me joy as I have had to park on the street – ON THE STREET! – for the past few weeks and while this might not sound like a big deal to you, it is to me.  To quote Cameron from Modern Family, “What am I going to do?  I’m used to nice things!”  I’m not happy scraping several inches of ice and snow off the windshield at five in the morning and then tracking it accidentally onto my seat so that I have a soggy wet butt by the time I arrive at my destination.  The new garage door is a miracle of garage doors.

Anyway, I had some posts planned but I have been unable to focus because my operation to strip my varicose veins is tomorrow at one o’clock, and I have to be at the hospital at 10:15.  I’m a little mixed about this time; on the one hand it will be nice to sleep a little later, my parents don’t have to come over at six in the morning to take care of the boys, and I can shower in the morning.  I also thought, happily, that I could clean the bathroom before leaving for the hospital, and the fact that occurred to me in a cheery way just goes to show I need to get out more.  The problem with this time is that, since I can’t eat after midnight tonight, and the surgery is a couple of hours, that is a long time to go without eating. As those who know me can attest, I do not do well not eating for extended periods of time.  I become even crazier than normal so please, your sympathies for those who have to deal with me tomorrow.

Soccer Moms: not just about tracksuits anymore.

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So, after a flurry of activity this weekend, I am much more in control and not so sad, despite the fact that it is still snowing.  Still snowing.  It’s been a week now of snow, blowing snow, and the sky matching the snowy, snowy ground.  Someone who lives in a much, much nicer climate than I do phoned this morning and complained about the lack of green grass where she lives.  I was overcome with hysterical jealousy given that a) it will be a minimum of six weeks before green grass appears here, and b) it will be a while before brown grass appears given the plethora of snow.
But I digress.  I wasn’t even going to complain about the horrible, horrible weather, but instead inform you perkily that I have finished several things on my gigantic to-do list (although not the Costco trip.  That’s tomorrow but my mother is very kindly taking the kids for a few hours meaning I can have my usual Costco-based nervous breakdown without hearing “Mom?  Mom?  MOOOOMMMM?  Can we get a snack?  Can we?  MOOOOOOMMMM.”)  The biggest accomplishment for me this weekend was finishing the soccer schedules.  It is my third year of doing the soccer schedules for our community and the two surrounding, and happily, at no time did I resort to heavy drinking, crying, or trying to stab myself in the heart with my mechanical pencil.  Since I am now a jaded veteran of the world of soccer scheduling, I fully expected some sort of complaint or change as soon as I sent it out to the officials, and so I was not at all thrown off by the almost immediate reply that the number of U10 teams was going to change. 
What I have found about being a stay-at-home mom with kids in school is that the number of volunteer commitments that I sign up for tends to snowball at particular times of the year and then I feel like I have a full time, albeit unpaid, job.  It’s not like I don’t like being involved with the school or soccer community, although being a soccer mom makes me think that I need to go buy a neon windbreaker tracksuit.  I mean, sure, there’s the glory of being known as the “Book Fair Lady”, and the warm feeling of being appreciated when I get accosted at the volunteer appreciation dinner by someone drunkenly thanking me for taking on the soccer scheduling, but sometimes it just feels like a lot of work.  Although maybe it was me being drunk at the volunteer appreciation dinner.  After all, I won a gigantic set of French White Corningware and decided to walk home alone carrying the very heavy box, much to my husband’s dismay when I arrived, stumbling on the doorstep.  “LOOK WHAT I WON!”
But the big news of the weekend was that I attended a few sessions of a yoga workshop with this man, and it was fabulous.  Strenuous, but fabulous.  I have discovered some muscles that I did not know I had, and now I’m moving around like I’m an arthritic ninety year old.  Getting up off the couch is taking some serious effort.  The timing may not have been great given that it’s only three sleeps until my big day, after which I may be walking like an arthritic ninety-five year old.  But well worth it anyway.
How was your weekend?

The Apocalypse? Or PMS?

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Yesterday I was so blue and everything seemed bleak and grim: my legs ache and hurt constantly, there are unspeakable tragedies all over the world, I need to do the soccer scheduling, I have to write an article for the community newsletter, the sky is grey, it’s been snowing for five days, it’s cold and damp and I have to wait outside for 30 minutes between the times that my children finish school at lunchtime, after which I can’t get warm or if I do I have to leave to stand outside again to pick up Mark after school, I stepped in dog poop while cleaning up dog poop, I have surgery next week and so much to do before then and it’s March break starting Monday, the dog stinks, what if I turn into a weirdo mother-in-law and my children become estranged to me in their adulthood, human atrocities do not seem to warrant international intervention unless such atrocities occur in an oil-producing nations, there is going to be an election and I don’t want one, I have to go to Costco, my driver’s license is about to expire and the province did not send me a renewal notice, which is the second time something like this has happened, which makes me believe that it was delivered to someone else and they didn’t bother to drop it at my house, despite the fact that I always, always drop off my neighbour’s misdelivered mail no matter how unimportant it looks.
Everything seemed overwhelming and glum.  I took extra Vitamin D tablets, made my favourite dinner – much to the disappointment of all other family members who do not share my affinity for Greek salad and pita bread – drank some wine and ate a piece of chocolate birthday cake, and then the sun came out for five minutes and I felt a little better. 

All those sad things are still sad today – except for the driver’s license part, which I renewed this morning thanks to the very kind man I spoke with on the government hotline who tipped me off that rates are going up effective April 1st – but I realized something: you know when you feel hopeless and depressed and loathing and like nothing you do even MATTERS, and ew, you have dog poop on your boot, and everything is so overwhelmingly sad but then you look at a calendar and do some back counting and then a lightbulb goes on and you realize – you REALIZE – that there is a reason, a very hormonal reason that you feel that way, and then you know you’re going to feel better soon?  Yes, that.

So I feel slightly more in control of things this morning.  Yes, I have no control over terrible things in the world but I can donate to relief efforts.  Yes, it’s cold and horrible but maybe it will stop snowing soon and March break means I do not have to do the pickups and dropoffs in the freezing cold.  Yes, my legs are constantly aching and swollen but maybe they won’t be in three weeks’ time.  Yes, I have to go to Costco but at least I can get one of those giant logs of goat cheese for five dollars.

I don’t like being sad.  That’s probably the most inane sentence ever uttered but it’s true.  My husband and I were talking the other night about how we used to like adventure travel and how I actually used to have a backpack to put my clothes in and how there were hundreds of places I wanted to experience.  Now, however, I said, looking out the window at the blowing snow “I don’t want to go anywhere cold.  Or anywhere that makes me sad.  I want to go where there’s nice fruit and it would be nice if we could go somewhere I can keep up with my yoga practice.”  My husband looked at me for a minute while I listed off all of my travel requirements then offered, “So you only ever want to go to Hawaii?”

Hawaii would be lovely, it’s true – who wouldn’t want to have a pretty drink with an umbrella in it and get to make “Getting Lei’d” jokes? – but even lovelier was Jake, climbing onto my lap, saying that he wished my operation was tomorrow so I could feel better right away, and if I needed anything he would get it, unless he couldn’t reach it in which case I may have to help him.  And I do feel better.  It’s Friday after all, I have a great yoga workshop to attend this weekend, I have an episode of Parks and Recreation to watch tonight, and Cadbury Mini-Eggs were on special at the grocery store. 

How about you?  Any plans for the weekend? xo