Author Archives: Nicole Boyhouse

I Also Hate Camping

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 Two days ago, Jake and I were driving home from the grocery store when it appeared that my street was underwater.  An enormous ark-like flood of muddy water filled my street, and my first thought was that it didn’t seem warm enough to melt that much snow, when I noticed that the water was bubbling up from a water main break.
One thing you may not know about me: I have a strange and irrational fear of the water being turned off.  In the nearly eleven years that I have lived in this house, there has been a water main issue that has led to the water being turned off twice, and by “turned off” I mean “turned off for a couple of hours” and so my reactions to this slight inconvenience are absurdly extreme, even for me.  I’m not sure why having the water shut off elicits such panic in me, but it does.  I seem to believe that if the water is off, it may NEVER be back on, and I will morph into an itinerant hobo, wandering the street filthy and dehydrated, with greasy hair and dragging a garbage bag of dirty clothes to the nearest Laundromat, only to find I don’t have any quarters. 
So as soon as I saw the water gushing in our street, I raced into the house, turned on the tap, and sure enough, a low pressure trickle came out for a moment before completely shutting off.  Dammit. 
I couldn’t take the uncertainty.  I eyed the work crew assembling around the spill.  They seemed busy, but my need for information overcame my aversion to interrupting people at their work and possibly raising the ire of the work crew.  I assembled my secret weapons: my favourite lipstick, my saucy new wedge-heeled boots, and Jake.  Hand in hand we stood at the outskirts of the massive water spill, with Jake chattering and me smiling vapidly, until the foreman noticed us.  I commented on the work crew and their busyness and the enormous job before them, then asked sweetly how long the water would be turned off.  The foreman answered, only a little gruffly, that it would be two to three days.
I almost fell off my wedgy heels.
I asked, trying to keep the panicky tones at a minimum, if they would be sending out a water truck or something, to which he responded, “We haven’t even turned the water off yet.  We can’t find the main valve in all this mess.”  I told him my water was off, and pointed to my house.  Evidently the valve to the water supply on my side of the street had been shut in error, and the foreman smiled at me as he said he would rectify the situation as soon as possible.  He spoke to Jake, “How you doing, buddy?  Quite a flood, huh?”  You see?  Secret weapon.
Although he said the water would be on as soon as possible, I still didn’t know what that meant.  Would it be today?  An hour?  Tomorrow morning?  I didn’t feel I could prod for any more information at that point, and also I was nearly dizzy with relief that I would not be water-less for two to three days, unlike the poor souls at the other end of the street.  In any case it was time to pick Mark up from school, where my friends at the playground listened to my tale of woe very patiently and sympathetically.  I even wrangled some invitations from friends, should the situation necessitate Further Steps, to a) shower, b) come over and fill up jugs of water, c) bring the kids over for baths.  I accepted the invitations with much gratitude, although they were thankfully unnecessary as an hour or so later I heard gurgling in the pipes as the water came back on.
The second the water came back on I leaped into action.  I started to fill every water bottle in the house in addition to the bathtub.  By the time I was considering filling the second bathtub, my husband came home and asked why, if the water was back on, was I filling everything in sight?  I responded that I was preparing in case the water went off again.  This seemed perfectly rational at the time, although now it feels like perhaps I was auditioning for a role on one of those reality shows about people who hoard things. 
I’m happy to report that the water is still on and I didn’t have to resort to melting snow, as someone very unhelpfully suggested.  What can I say?  I would have been a terrible pioneer.

I once had a poster of a fish riding a bicycle.

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Yesterday, according to the internet – which is never wrong, correct? – was Booty Appreciation Day.  A moment of silence, please, while we all absorb that riveting information.
Strangely, Booty Appreciation Day is immediately followed by International Women’s Day – so happy girl power to all of us!  Fish on bicycles, women’s work is never done or is unpaid or underpaid, etc.  We all take many things for granted these days, what with our abilities to choose things or the recognition that we are actual people rather than chattel or property, so I am undyingly grateful to the many amazing women who have changed the world for all of us. 
You know what would be fabulous for International Women’s Day?  Kindness and compassion.  Here’s what bothers me: I’m a statistics girl.  I have a not-insignificant (heh, get it?) background in statistics, and here’s the thing: there is a difference between correlation and causality.  There is also something called statistical coincidence, which is an underlying problem with any statistical study.  There is ALSO something called political motivation to studies, which means that statistics can be interpreted rather liberally, or a statistical study can have a number of conclusions but if one of those conclusions meets the needs of a political issue, then that is the conclusion that will make the front page.  Consider these:
Children in Daycare Get Sick More Often: This was quite a comprehensive study that included not only large daycare facilities but also looked at nanny care and small home-based facilities, and the illness rate of school aged children, all of which had different outcomes.  But the headline informs working moms that they are subjecting their babies to plagues and pestilence.  BAD MOTHERS.
Children in Daycare Are Smarter: Again, another study that had varying conclusions but that is what made the front pages, signaling to stay at home moms that they were leading their children down a path of idiocy. Not to mention that their children will grow up without a strong career oriented mother and will think that women are only good for baby raising.  BAD MOTHERS.
If you want to add in some real excitement, talk about how breastfeeding babies are smarter, thus clobbering any mother who gave their baby a bottle and hence shaved off IQ points, or talk about scheduled C-sections versus VBACS versus home births versus epidurals versus no drugs versus water births versus OMG I ran out of time and had my baby in the back of the car on the way to the hospital.  Maybe put in homeschooling versus public school versus alternative programming.  Or perhaps locally grown organic seasonal meals versus I fed my child an Oreo.  Let’s just think about all the ways we can judge each other on our parenting skills and decisions and then resent and hate each other. 
No.
Let’s acknowledge that we are all doing our best as mothers, every single one of us.  If we have the privilege of choice, which most certainly not all of us do, then that is a blessing and something that we should support each other in.  This may be a little “I’d like to teach the world to sing”, but I really think that we have come so far as women, but we have so far to go, so let’s support each other and our choices.  Right?  Girl power.
Who reads those crappy studies anyway?  Most of us are too busy living our day-to-day lives to really care.  And if someone does care, they either have too much time on their hands or are so insecure about their own decisions that they have to be negative about someone else’s, or some combination of the two.  So for International Women’s Day and every day, let’s practice compassion and kindness, and instead of judging try empathy.  That’s really WINNING.

A Tale of Two Closets

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Well, it’s one closet really.  The other day I was making my bed and I looked up and saw this:
From this view it would appear that my husband has bogarted all the closet space.  All those shirts, neatly hung on the upper tier, meanwhile I have a couple of hoodies squished on the bottom tier alongside several neatly hung pairs of men’s dress pants.  It made me feel a little sorry for myself until I opened the other side of the closet to reveal:

There are three other shelves that look like that.  I think I probably have enough yoga clothes, what do you think?

I probably have enough sweaters, and more notably, enough black tops.  I have an intervention-worthy addiction to black tops.  If one is on sale, I must purchase it.  But it’s 50% off!  I know I have three other v-necked black sweaters, but this one has a pocket! 
I realized I had a problem recently while packing for our trip.  My husband and I were sharing a suitcase, and he had set out the clothes he was planning to take.

It’s slightly different from the pile of clothes I was planning to take.

After I took this photo, I completely panicked and added a third bikini and cover-up, and two more black tops.  My husband, on the other hand, looked at his pile of shirts and took one out, questioning whether he really needed two similar shirts.  I did actually wear all the clothes I took, even though some people have expressed doubt at my need for this volume of clothing, specifically all the similar black clothing.
It was a mere eight days ago that I was wearing one of those bikinis and sleeveless tops.  It feels like longer given that it has been -25, windy, and snowy all week.  We are now at that point where I have completely lost perspective and have forgotten that a season not involving giant boots and coats actually exists.  I have a nagging feeling that we are actually entering the Ice Age, and I keep expecting to look out the window to see a small woolly mammoth taking up residence in my backyard.
The problem with weather like this is that we all become completely boring; every time anyone opens their mouths a comment about the extreme cold comes out, and the worst thing about this is that talking about the weather becomes fascinating in a dull sort of way.  According to my blog, last year at this time I was working in my perennial garden; as I write this the snowflakes are falling from the dull, grey sky and the yard is completely frozen and snow-covered, which makes me feel like curling up in a ball with a blanket, staring at the walls and eating potato chips, which I am NOT GOING TO DO.  Instead, I’m going to focus on the happy.
Last night after several glasses of wine, I thought that if I ever cultivate my blog “brand” and really start marketing my blog “brand” instead of spending all my time writing inane posts about germ phobia, the crappy weather, and my old-lady varicose veins, I have the perfect tagline: “Putting the OM in OMG”.  I thought this was hilarious and also perfectly encapsulated all aspects of my personality and I shared it with my husband, who listened patiently as he usually does when I have a wine-fueled idea.  His response was lukewarm, “I’m not a chick, and I also don’t do yoga, so I’m not sure if it’s funny or not.”  In the cold and sober light of morning, I wonder if he’s right?  What do you think, dear readers?  Funny?  Perfectly “Nicole”?  Or just weird and confusing?   

At that moment I knew. I knew the way you know about a good melon.

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A while back, I read Gwyneth Paltrow’s GOOP newsletter, something I never do unless my attention is directed to it.  This particular newsletter – which I cannot find archived, for some reason – dealt with how to be organized.  I was particularly interested because, not to overly congratulate myself here, I consider myself to be a very organized person.  Hyper organized, one might say.  Insanely organized, even.  I write in my agenda daily, little to-do lists that really transcend what I think normal people probably write on their to-do lists.  For example, I write down “clean bathroom” on the same days that I clean the bathroom, week in and week out.  One might think that, hey, it’s Monday/Wednesday/Friday.  I always clean the bathroom.  I do not need to write that down.  But yes.  I do. 

That’s just day-to-day information.  If something really big is happening – and by “really big” I mean “really big in the life of a stay-at-home-mom”, so take that with a grain of salt – then I compile lists, normally on spreadsheets.  If there are three really big events occurring over a six week period, which is my situation right now, then the lights will be dimmed with my spreadsheet making. 

So when I read this GOOP newsletter I was struck by two things: a) Gwyneth Paltrow’s writing is somewhat difficult to read, but it seems that she is attempting to show the world that she is just a regular mom, which I contest given that regular moms do not normally shimmy on a grand piano at the Grammys with Cee Lo Green and a tribe of dancing Muppets, although I totally would if I had the chance, and b) she has a friend who she admires for her organization as she makes spreadsheets when she is packing to go somewhere. 

I read that and thought, really?  Doesn’t everyone just make spreadsheets while packing?  But no, it appears that they do not.  Also, not everyone makes a weekly dinner plan to avoid staring at the fridge and sobbing at five o’clock.  Neither do they carefully schedule grocery trips and other boring domestic activities into their daytimers.  It appears that I am just an anal weirdo.

Remember the scene in When Harry Met Sally (greatest movie ever) when Sally finds out that her old boyfriend, Joe, is getting married?

Sally: I’m difficult.

Harry: Challenging.

Sally: I’m too structured, I’m completely closed off.

Harry: But in a good way.

That’s me.  I am Sally.

The problem with being hyper-organized is that something has to give, and that something is sponteneity.  I have a very hard time just going with the flow, especially if I’m busy.  This week has been extraordinarily busy, for me, as I have been running our Scholastic book fair; in other words, this is the week I stand in awe of working parents everywhere.  How do you all do it?  Clearly I am just accustomed to a slack, slow-paced life as I am frantically trying to keep up with my regular life in addition to dealing with excited little people and their ravenous acquisitions of floppy covered books and fancy erasers.  I am TIRED, people.  And I think I need a glass of wine, Thursday be damned.

I need to learn how to go with the flow, I need to learn to be more spontaneous (perhaps I should write that on my to-do list: “LEARN SPONTANEITY”.)  I need to learn to take a deep breath and not get frustrated when (let’s say, for example) Jake leaves his mittens on the steps at lunch and then slips and falls down said steps thirty seconds before we have to leave the house, in order for me to be on time to open up the book fair.  Let’s say.  Or to be more empathetic when I hustle the children back to their normal routine after a ten-day vacation, and remember that if I am frantically rushing around it affects them, and to not completely snap when I ask Mark to please pick up his Legos and he responds with an “Awww!  What?  I never get to do ANYTHING!”  I also need to not be completely thrown off when I reach into the dog’s crate to retrieve his food bowl and subsequently thrust my hand into a pile of his own regurgitated food that he was trying to re-consume.

Well, maybe I can accept being thrown off by that.  What can I say, it’s been a bit of a crazy week.

Disneyland should sell booze.

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The kids were thrilled that we were going to Disneyland; so was my husband, who had never been before.  I was somewhat less excited given my mild crowd phobia and not-so-mild germ phobia, especially when I realized we were going to be there on President’s Day.  Eeek!  I was prepared for crushing anxiety and feelings of being overwhelmed, but I have to hand it to the good people at Disneyland, I only felt that way a couple of times.  One of those times was an early morning when the gates to Adventureland, home of the Indiana Jones ride, were opened and I looked up and saw a sea of people running towards the entrance, where I was standing with the kids waiting for my latte.  Did you know you can get a fairly decent latte at Disneyland?  I did not. 
Anyway, I was slightly concerned but I remembered the words of a friend when I confessed to her my fears: “Oh, you’ll love it!  Disneyland is so SHINY.”  And it’s true, it is shiny and clean and happy, and also a great spot for some quality people watching entertainment.  The Happiest Place on Earth is decidedly unhappy at times; parents walking briskly, wrought with tension as their toddlers screamed and backbended within the confines of their strollers, little girls dressed in various Disney princess gowns collapsing limply to the ground, sobbingly pulled along by agitated parents.  By my third day in Disneyland, I felt as though I had joined the ranks of those parents, feeling harassed and exhausted as my children asked to go on Buzz Lightyear, again, and they needed a drink of water, again, all the while It’s A Small World was going through my head over and over in a psychedelic manner.
I discovered I preferred the night visitors over the day ones.  I was much happier standing in line next to teenage couples making out, rather than haggard looking mothers scolding their offspring.  One woman said “Shut your mouth.  Just SHUT YOUR MOUTH” approximately once a minute for the duration of our long lineup to ride on pretend rocket ships.  “We are not coming back here for a long time.  Maybe never!”  “Noooooooo!”  “Just shut your mouth.”  Lather, rinse, repeat.
But I was fairly prepared for that.  What I was not prepared for was the hordes of adult women wearing Minnie Mouse ears.  Neither was I prepared for the sheer variety of said ears.  Styles varied from the traditional to the glow-in-the-dark, from ears attached to barrettes to actual bridal veils attached to the ears.  There was also a plethora of women in tiaras, some with both tiaras and Minnie Mouse ears.  No judgments here, whatever floats your boat, and if you can’t wear a tiara at Disneyland, then where can you wear one?  Although that is not quite true, because it is park policy to turn away anyone over aged nine wearing princess attire.  That is an actual policy.  Consider that your public service announcement for the day, just in case you are planning a trip and hoping to finally break out those glass slippers or mermaid’s tail or what have you.
With all the ears and chipmunk hats and Goofy hats, Disneyland felt like an alternate universe, and it sort of is one.  I have to admit I found adult men wearing Mickey Mouse ears to be vaguely disturbing.  I started to rank those men against men wearing Captain Jack Sparrow bandannas with attached dreadlocks, and men wearing Indiana Jones hats, but which costume I found most disturbing, I just cannot say. 



So excited, the first day at Disney, waiting for It’s a Small World.





Second day at Disney, still excited, on the Mark Twain steamboat.



Third day at Disney.  Make it stop.  Someone make the music stop.



I’m Back and I’m Stylish!

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I was vacationing in California for ten days, escaping the frigid cold back home.  However, since cold follows me like a puppy, temperatures were far below normal in Palm Desert and Anaheim, where I was.  Almost everyone I et commented on the absurdly cold weather, but since it was still comparable to an average ten days of summer in Calgary, I certainly wasn’t complaining.  In Disneyland, there was a wide variety of clothing styles: obviously native Californians wearing down jackets and toques, and people who had travelled to California, dammit, so they were going to dress as planned, in shorts and sleeveless shirts.  As for me, I wore my normal three or four layers and it was quite pleasant.

We were visiting my parents in Palm Desert, which is a haven for retired and semi-retired snowbirds and their visiting grandchildren.  The population is so aged that it affects the local economy: there seems to be a high concentration of medical centres and places to plan your own funeral, conveniently enough.  “Smart Cremation – It Just Makes $ense!” a billboard called to me, adding, “Ask About Our FREE Veteran’s Kit!” 

For some reason that seemed highly disconcerting to me.

The Palm Springs area is also home to some fantastic outlet shopping and so my husband and I ditched the kids for half a day andd took advantage of President’s Day sales.  I ended up with wildly cut-price Uggs and Sevens, thus cementing my cougar-licious status.

And so I’m feeling very stylish, which makes me even more happy to receive a Stylish Blogger’s award from Laila and Heather over at Significantly Simple.  Thanks girls!  The rules of receiving the award are a) to link back to the person who gave it to you, b) tell 7 things about yourself, and c) pass it along.  So here are seven things about me: I like wine, I practice ashtanga yoga, I like to garden, I love NYPD Blue and think that David Caruso was strangely hot in the first season, I have an addiction to black sweaters, I hate the trend towards 3D movies, and I really like music from the 70s.  As for passing it along, I give this award to my three bloggy besties: Bibliomama, Wrath of Mom, and Happy Geek – these girls are like my sisters, and they make me laugh all the time, even when they complain about my black sweater addiction.  I pass it along to my Canadian Mom girls: Kat’s Confessions, City Mom, Whispered Inspirations, Make Mommy Go Something Something, Pampered Patty.  I pass it along to my bloggy friends who have not blogged in a while (but they should!  they should.) Frog and Toad Are Still Friends and Literary Cacophony.  I pass it along to No Whey Mama, who took a break from blogging – I guess having four children takes precedence over blogging – but she’s back in the game and I’m so, so happy.  Finally, I pass it along to the awesome Mothering Mayhem, Lisa at This, That, and the Other Thing, and also to Marilyn at A Lot of Loves, since she’s so fun and gave me lots of hints about enjoying Disneyland, which she loves. 

Speaking of which, I am bursting with posts about that and the rest of my vacation, but I’m truly exhausted from travelling all day.  In fact, I’m not even sure how I managed to write this post!  But I missed you all and I’m dying to catch up. xoxo

It says "Let’s BEE Friends!" And there’s a picture of a bee on it.

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This weekend was our neighbourhood’s annual outdoor party, complete with skating, tobogganing, and barbeque, and by some incredible good fortune, the weather was very mild, making it a perfect day.  Mark built a snowman with his dad:
I’m basking in the glory of a snowman, whose existence I did not assist in.

Cute, right?  Until his head was knocked off by some random child, the evil murderer.

Good times.  I also baked and decorated FIVE DOZEN cookies, which I tried to photograph in an arty kind of way but either my camera lacks the proper arty settings or I lack talent in photography.  Either way, here is my non-artistic take:

Mark made me a Valentine yesterday:

So very sweet.  Not only does it include Valentine’s stickers, he also used some cute ones left over from Christmas.  Then Jake came home from school today with this:

You may not be able to tell, because of my awesome photography, but the front of the card says BEE MINE.  And there is a bee on it.  I can now die happy because – and I am not joking or being ironic in any way – I have always wanted a Valentine with a bee, saying BEE MINE, or alternately, Let’s BEE Friends!  So between those cards and the fact that my husband went to the grocery store specifically to buy me a mint chocolate truffle bar, this is the greatest Valentine’s Day ever. 

When the boys gave me their sweet offerings, I thought of that Tiger Mom and her rejection of the homemade birthday card, and in case you are unaware of this newsworthy story, the Tiger Mom’s family had forgotten it was her birthday until the very last minute, and one of her daughters made her a quick, last minute card.  The Tiger Mom was repulsed by this shabby offering and informed her daughter that she deserved better.  It was not good enough.  CARD REJECTED.  I have mixed feelings about this.  If my family forgot my birthday – which is unlikely to ever happen given that a) my husband is not a dick and he knows how much I love birthdays, and b) I practically institute a countdown and wear a sandwich board in the weeks prior to my birthday – I would be extremely angry and disappointed.  But a mother rejecting a child’s artistic endeavours is abhorrent to me. 

I, like the Tiger Mom, have high expectations of my children.  I expect them to behave well and be polite, kind, and respectful; I expect them to do well in school and do their homework and reading every day; I expect them to do their chores in the house and keep their rooms neat.  I think all of those things are reasonable.  But saying to a child that a card that they made is “not good enough” is akin, in my mind, to saying “YOU are not good enough”.  And that is a tragedy.

But on a happier note, Happy Valentine’s Day to you, my dear readers!  Let’s BEE friends!  Bzzz.