Author Archives: Nicole Boyhouse

T-9 to the Big K

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I have been fielding the following two questions of late: 1) Aren’t you SAD that your BABY is starting kindergarten?, and 2) Can you BELIEVE your BABY is in kindergarten?

Now first, I am not sad that Jake is starting kindergarten. In fact, I’m a bit worried that I’m not sad that Jake is starting kindergarten. I’m emotional about everything, so I don’t understand why I’m not more emotional about this. I was more emotional about a salesgirl telling me recently that grey washes me out; my drawers full of cozy grey sweaters are making me feel suddenly pallid and nostalgic. What is wrong with me? Am I broken? I wonder if I’m repressing something and that I’m going to end up one of those mothers curled up in the corner by the sandtable on the first day of school, sobbing. I HOPE not. In fact, my general feeling about school starting in one week Thursday is squee! The kids are going back to school! I’m going to miss them, certainly, the house is going to feel empty, but I am really looking forward to getting back into the routine.

One thing I’m also really looking forward to? Solo grocery shopping. I’m getting kind of tired of herding them through the aisles, remonstrating with them not to run and then scolding them for running and, inevitably, knocking into one of the more grumpy and elderly members of our community who will subsequently make a sour remark about my ill-behaved hooligans. The other day the boys spent an afternoon at my mother’s and I took the opportunity to go to Superstore. I felt so glamourous, like I was this fabulous woman of the world, strolling through the cereal aisle and blocking out the shrieking of children being pushed in carts by haggard looking mothers.

One thing I’m not looking forward to? The inevitable onslaught of illnesses. Hoo boy, just thinking about all the squeamy germs just made me shudder like the Howard Hughes I am. Also, I am not looking forward to the certain exhaustion and subsequent crabbiness of children going back to school.

And yes, it is hard to believe that Jake is going to kindergarten. Frankly, it’s hard to believe the summer is over, so YES, time flies, the cat’s in the cradle, pages are flying off the cartoon calendar, etc., etc. Mostly I feel excited and happy, but I’ll keep you posted if I find myself weeping, in the fetal position, snuggling with one of his newborn sleepers. It could happen.

E-evil Children!

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It’s been a weird few days at my house; for example, yesterday it appeared that my children were auditioning for the role of worst children ever. Well, maybe not the worst children ever, I mean, they were not setting the house on fire or stealing the minivan for a joyride, but they were crabby and irritable all day. It was one of those days that I had actually set everything aside to just play with and enjoy them, and it turned out that they were just evil, and I felt kind of resentful in a “What is the matter with you, you ungrateful bastards” kind of way. Every single thing ended up in an argument, or tears, or very vocal unhappiness. I was ready to call it a day and start the bedtime ritual, but it was only 2:00 in the afternoon, so the day wore on. They did end up going to bed early and then slept for a solid hour longer than normal, waking up as their normal cheery selves, so perhaps that explains things.

I remember when the kids were small and they would have days of supreme irritability, and I would think that maybe they just had some kind of psychotic personality change, and then the following day they would come down with fevers or a cough, and I would feel badly that I wasn’t more patient. The children weren’t evil, they were just getting sick. So in that vein, I suppose that yesterday the children were not possessed by the devil, they were just tired.

So today, well rested, we headed out to the Market Collective where my friend was selling his fabulous bread. Remember him? He and his lovely girlfriend are back from their international jet-setting, bread baking, and filmmaking which is fantastic for me, but maybe less fantastic for my ability to zip my jeans, since I rapidly consumed five slices of sourdough in a row. My husband was slightly suspicious – “Market Collective sounds so socialist. Can’t they just call it a market?” – but it was very fun and filled with lovely arty things. Also there were two giant boxes filled with sand and sand toys, which the boys immediately began to dig in, and which I later learned was an art installation. That made me somewhat uncomfortable – are kids allowed to play with the installations? – but no one complained, so I guess that was okay.

Despite the fact that I told my husband that going to a collective would now qualify him as a hippie, he also seems to be his normal self, which is good, as he has gone on record to say that every single thing wrong with society today can be tied to what he refers to as the hippie generation. Or those damn hippies. Lately I’ve been seeing all these posts about being a hippie mama, and what that entails, and how to tell if you are one. My very strong feeling is that LABELS ARE VERY WRONG AND ARE DIVISIVE, NOT INCLUSIVE. Also, sadly, I like wearing makeup and shaving and waxing too much to be included in the hippie mama culture.

Do you ever label yourself? I find my own personal parenting style is made up of numerous types of parenting styles, and I like it that way. Of course, as I write this, my children are playing a game which entails them taking turns soaking their heads in the bathroom sink, then playing air guitar in front of my full-length mirror, despite the fact that there is no music actually playing right now, so what do I know, really, except that things seem to be happily back to normal.

It only takes a minute.

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I wanted to write about something really funny today – there was a cougar sighting in the city! The resulting news stories have been hilarious: cougar spotted, if you should see a cougar you should be cautious and back away slowly. Did the cougar have botox, one might wonder. A fake orange tan? Did the cougar order an appletini and lasciviously ogle the twentysomething bartender?

I wanted to write about this and how I was out for dinner with a dear friend who was visiting from Texas and maybe we were the cause of the sighting? We were drinking martinis, after all.

I’m not in the mood though because I’m still feeling sick from something that happened this afternoon.

I took the boys to meet a group of friends at the outdoor pool today and it was a lovely afternoon, the kids all had fun, the moms had fun. The weather was warm, the water was warm, the kids were happy. My boys, however, are not what one might call strong swimmers. They wear life jackets in the pool at all times. Mark can swim in his life jacket and he likes to swim all over the pool, especially in the deep end.

About fifteen minutes before we were going to leave, Mark was sitting at the picnic table, a towel wrapped around him, having a snack. I had taken his life jacket off of him so he could dry off a bit. Jake was in the shallow end, so I was standing on the deck, watching him. I looked over to check on Mark, and he wasn’t at the picnic table. He was on the ladder, going into the deep end, without his life jacket. I screamed his name and ran down the deck but he had, by the time I got there, hopped off the ladder and was underwater. He was underwater for probably only a couple of seconds but it felt like an hour. I reached in and pulled him out.

“Sorry Mom,“ he said. “I guess I forgot to put my life jacket on.” He went to the picnic table, put it on, and got back into the pool while I stood there, shaking, my heart pounding. A good friend of mine came over to me and stood with me, saying “He’s okay. Look at him. He’s swimming, he’s happy. He’s okay.”

It only takes a minute for something to happen. I close my eyes and I can see his head under the water, his hair floating and spiky, and it only takes a minute.

I want a jungle room!

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I woke up this morning thinking that I was supposed to remember something about today when it occurred to me: it’s the 33rd anniversary of Elvis’ death. Festive! I love fat Elvis, and not just for his music. It takes a certain something something to be able to rock out a sparkly jumpsuit.


And capes! Wearing a cape when one is not, arguably, a superhero, really sends a message to the general public. A cape, I think, really escalates an outfit, especially one of the jumpsuit variety.


In general I love singing soulful and impassioned renditions of such musical masterpieces of Suspicious Minds and Kentucky Rain, and I felt that my performance would probably be greatly enhanced by playing the actual music, so I ran out to the car to find my most-loved Elvis CD. To find it, I had to dig through CDs by the following artists: Neil Diamond, Blue Rodeo, Kanye West, James Taylor, Eminem, Jay-Z, Gordon Lightfoot, Barenaked Ladies, and Hall and Oates. Rounding out the weird factor was a mixed CD called Pure Disco and the Starsky and Hutch soundtrack. I looked at those CDs for a minute and thought of arranging and photographing them for some kind of modern art piece, entitled, maybe, Study of Really Strange Mind Songs.

As an aside, I was at a pool today speaking with a lovely mother who mentioned that she had held a karaoke party and I was instantly filled with envy. Karaoke! I am AWESOME at karaoke! I want to go to a karaoke party. Of course, my 9:00 bedtime is generally unsociable and tends to preclude such events.

Anyway, I was indulging in the housewifely task of floor washing and singing, and as I passionately accompanied Elvis (“Maybe IIIII didn’t treat yooouuu…quite as good as I should have DUM DUM DUM! Maybe IIIIII didn’t LOVE YOU…quite as often as I should have…”) Mark quietly stole over to the CD player and stealthily ejected it. When I asked him about it, he said “I just kind of think that it was OVER, Mom.” Huh. That says a lot, really.

Garmins don’t work if you don’t use them.

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“I think fall is coming!” Jake said happily, looking at the orange leaves on the grass below our Mayday tree. It is weird that two weeks ago we were doing this:


And now I’m wearing a sweater. August in Calgary. My thoughts, since we returned from vacation, have been turning to back to school, specifically in the clothing department since my children are looking decidedly like hobos. Yesterday, though, I went to Mountain Equipment Co-Op to pick up a lined jacket for Mark – Jake, in the tradition of subsequent children everywhere, is the recipient of Mark’s old jacket: “Mark, this is the jacket you GAVE me” he says in a heartbreakingly cheerful way – and it was a trip filled with mental anguish on my part. I’ve mentioned, I’m sure, my absolutely terrible sense of direction. I Mapquest everything, both directions. I once got so lost driving through Houston in a rental car that I actually LEFT Houston and ended up in a gas station in Sugarland, where the attendant informed me I was in an entirely different location and I cried a little, then turned the wrong way to get back on the interstate and drove for twenty minutes before realizing my mistake and making an illegal u-turn on some strange Texan secondary road. It’s like I am destroying the women’s movement with every turn of my wheels; like I’m just begging for some man to ruffle my hair and tell me not to worry my pretty little head about it, driving is a man’s job anyway, and am I crying because it’s my ladies’ days? Then best not to go hiking in the woods. My husband, exasperated with what he perceives as mental laziness in the matter of directions – “How can you not know which way is north? You’re a smart person!” – bought me a Garmin, which seems to have only escalated my direction-related anxiety, since I’m sure that it’s going to give me weird directions and also I only remember to use it when I’m actually driving and certainly unable to locate it, type in an address, and affix it to my windshield.

So I was heading to the Mountain Equipment Co-Op, a place where I have been many, many times, and also used to live within walking distance to, and yet. And yet I was coming from a different direction and therefore I couldn’t picture where, exactly, I was supposed to turn to get there. True story. I used to live within walking distance to it and yet I could not figure out where to turn. I finally circled around to some streets that would surely lead me to my destination, only to find them CLOSED due to construction. Did I mention it was pouring rain and there was a tangle of traffic? And that my kids were in the back seat, talking, talking, talking. And then once we did get there no parking spots were available and I circled the lot, whilst children talked. And talked. And talked.

You know, it’s the talking that can kill you. So I was pretty much in need of a sedative/drink/box of cupcakes by the time someone pulled out of a parking spot, and I flipped on my turn signal. The man pulling out suddenly put his car into park, jumped out of his car, and headed toward me, hand outstretched. He handed me his ticket from the parking meter, with time left on it, and told me he hoped I was having a good day. And after that small, kind gesture, I was.

I’m With Stupid

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My husband went back to work this week after two weeks off, and to be honest, I oscillated between looking forward to getting back to regular routine and dreading the kids’ emotional fallout from getting back into our regular routine. This week has been fine, anticlimactically enough, and so yesterday we went to an amusement park with a good friend and her daughters. We were standing in line, and I noticed the twentysomething guy behind us wearing a t-shirt proclaiming “Vagitarian”.

Ew. Also? Unlikely. I’m fairly certain that someone advertising himself as a Vagitarian is more likely to be living in his parents’ basement playing Wii and using his mother’s back copies of Glamour magazine instead of purchasing pornography than he is to actually have been ever involved in an intimate relationship with a woman. I’m just speculating here, but that seems the most likely conclusion. I mean, I cannot imagine any self-respecting woman seeing a guy in a Vagitarian shirt and thinking that she would like a piece of that action, yes please, and can you keep that shirt on for the duration? Seriously. I once saw a guy wearing a shirt that read “Yes, it IS that big!” Uh huh. Sure it is.

Of course, I am writing this while wearing a shirt that says “Harmony, Peace, Serenity”, so I’m not sure what that says about me as a person.

T-shirts with statements are strange things. On the one hand, I find them somewhat amusing when I see them in a store. When I see them actually being worn, I have the same feeling that I have when I see personalized license plates – somewhat LAME. Or worse. I saw a little onesie that said “All Mommy wanted was a back rub”, which is slightly amusing, I guess, but if I actually saw it being worn by an infant, I would be absolutely appalled.

No one is quite immune to the lure of the t-shirt, though. Recently my husband and I were in Banff for the night and immediately following a meal in which I was channelling my inner Carrie Bradshaw by drinking one too many Cosmopolitans we stopped in one of those tacky tourist shops. Right in front of me was a shirt that said “Too pretty for math”. Squee! I wanted that shirt right away and had I had two too many Cosmopolitans, instead of one, I probably would have purchased it on the spot, but as it was, I still was somewhat capable of rational thought: a) the population at large does not know me, so the irony of the statement would be unappreciated, and b) a woman in her mid-thirties with permanent forehead creases, grey roots, and varicose veins wearing such a shirt is pathetic at best.

So perhaps I should follow my own “Harmony, Peace, Serenity” t-shirt and give the “Vagitarian” the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps he was channelling his inner Frank the Tank when his t-shirt was purchased. Perhaps.