Author Archives: Nicole Boyhouse

Happy Homemaker’s Household Hints

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If I had posted yesterday, like I intended to, you may have been concerned for my mental state and perhaps you would have had all sorts of interesting suggestions to combat my case of the Januarys. Or perhaps not. Anyway, people, I have been BLUE. Blue and gloomy and so very very sick of being freezing cold all day long. But it seems that the weather has broken and so has my mood, and this is partly due to the application of my patented anti-sadness formula of…drum roll…housecleaning and bread baking!

Maybe I should rename this blog “The Happy Homemaker”.

You know that kind of activity that is known, when you are pregnant, as nesting but when you are not pregnant it is simply crazed maniacal cleaning? That’s what I have been doing. Crazed maniacal cleaning. Like, baby, I am going to town on those baseboards. I have my spray bottle of cleaner and I am scrubbing the hell out of my kitchen cupboards. All those weird little nooks and crannies are now appropriately disinfected. Or inappropriately disinfected. The problem with this kind of cleaning project is, while it is quite satisfying for me, no one else (read: my husband) can really notice the results. So while I’m showing him the fruits of my labour with a crazed glint in my eyes, he is looking at me in the alarmed and suspicious way that you might look at someone who just spent four hours in a 1950’s housewife stupor.

As an aside, several years ago I received an email, undoubtedly from my mother, entitled “Helpful Household Hints”. I don’t actually remember any of the hints except this one: “Stop throwing out that leftover wine! Instead, freeze it in ice cube trays to use later for sauces!” I am still baffled by that hint. Who has leftover wine? Don’t you just, um, drink it? Especially the amount that would fill an ice cube tray. If you have wine that would make one single ice cube, suck it up and, well, suck it up. That, possibly, is the worst household hint I have ever heard.

But back to the second part of my anti-sadness formula – bread baking. Just when you thought it couldn’t get more exciting than baseboard cleaning, here I am talking about bread. Today I made two baguettes, and they actually look like baguettes! And taste like baguettes! My New Year’s resolution is being kept, and it’s already the ninth! I know it’s a bit late, but maybe I will make another resolution: not to throw out any leftover wine. I’m just going to drink it. It’s going to go great with my baguettes.

A Bad Case of the Januarys

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The house is quiet. It feels strange to have a quiet house. The boys are both at school this morning, and yesterday I felt quite moony about it – the end of holidays, back to the routine of drop-offs and pick-ups and layering on piles of winter clothing, back to being chilled all day long from the constant comings and goings. January. Yesterday snow fell all day long and it was difficult to tell where the snowy ground stopped and the sad grey sky started. I think I’ll paraphrase the movie Office Space and say that I have a bad case of the Januarys.

Hoo boy, I’m gloomy. First of all I was gloomy because it was the end of holidays and the start of school. Now I’m gloomy because Jake cried when I dropped him off. All morning he kept saying, in that button-pushing voice, “Moooommmm, I’m going to miiisssss you. Mooooommmm, I’m going to be sad when you leave. Mooooommmm, I don’t want to go to school.” At first I responded with that bright, cheery voice used by mothers everywhere, that I would miss him too but we would each have a GREAT morning and he would see his FRIENDS and have FUN. After several of those choruses, my bright and cheery voice evaporated in a cloud of impatience. Later, I watched him file with his classmates down the hall to his classroom, wiping away tears the whole way. I should have felt sympathetic, but I confess I felt frustrated, and somewhat guilty. Like instead of dropping him at his happy little pre-kindergarten with his teacher who sings constantly and tells everyone that they are special just the way they are, I was actually dropping him into a Victorian orphanage where they will force him to eat lumpy burned porridge and beat him for fidgeting.

There’s just no pleasing me, is there? I’m sad because the kids are going back to school and then I’m sad because they’re not thrilled to be going back to school. Well, that’s not quite true – Mark was fairly ecstatic to be back. I worried a little because he has a new teacher, but he seems to have accepted the change with zero adjustment time. “I liked Miss T.,” he said, “But Mrs. T-S will be nice too.” Huh. His relationship with change resembles his father’s. I guess Jake – and his small aptitude for accepting change – is more like me. Jake and I? We are sad when things change, we are sad when people leave, we are sad when our routine is disrupted, but eventually we make peace with it and get on with our lives.

So hopefully there will be no more tears at drop-off. Otherwise, I fear I’m going to have to use my you-don’t-know-how-lucky-you-are voice, and start telling him about Victorian orphanages and the like. And no good can come of that.

New Year, New Me?

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There’s nothing quite like a fresh start, is there? I think that’s why New Year’s resolutions are so tempting. A New Year – A New You. Each and every time I open my mailbox, it is full of flyers from various companies salivating over Resolution People and their Willingness to Spend Money on Fresh Starts: fitness clubs, diet and nutritional programs, exercise equipment outlets, and health food stores. Today I received a four page flyer advertising various cleanses. Have you ever been on a cleanse? I once tried the Wild Rose 12-Day Cleanse and I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say it was one of the poorest decisions of my life. Really, what good can come of a cleanse, unless you exclusively eat KFC, Coke and gummy bears? And if that is your particular diet, then perhaps a cleanse isn’t going to solve all your issues.

But I do understand the concept behind resolutions: there is a feeling of openness, of new beginnings, of unlimited possibilities. I’m just a little cynical about the actual keeping of resolutions, especially when they are of the “complete lifestyle change” variety. People, if I were to make a resolution that said I was going to a) take up jogging, b) eat liver on a daily basis, and c) wear shorty-shorts and crop tops, you can bet that I would also not make it to the middle of January with resolutions kept. I would not likely make it one day.

So what I’m saying is I don’t really make New Year’s resolutions. Which is not to say that my life has no room for improvement. I do tend to make resolutions, but they are more daily resolutions, such as “Today I will play dinosaurs for at least one hour without becoming distracted and needing to leave the room after being violently killed and eaten by my fellow dinosaur players.” Or, “Today I will have a snack prior to picking the kids up at school, rather than simply drinking eight cups of coffee and having a blood sugar crash together with a caffeine high and then becoming incensed after tripping over the backpacks that have been left in the doorway and stepping with my sock foot in a gritty puddle left by the discarded snowboots and screaming at the boys for leaving their things lying around while they are themselves irritable and ready for lunch.” Sometimes I keep those resolutions, and sometimes I do not.

But I did make a New Year’s resolution, and it was to start baking bread. Hold onto your hats! Baking bread! I became inspired after reading this, and thought, I like baking things, and I like bread. What a great resolution!

There is a drawback, however. I bake all the time, I bake cookies and muffins and quick loaves. I bake those things because I like to send them in the boys’ school snack bags. It makes me feel like a Very Good Mother, to send them a snack that I Baked Myself, along with some cut-up Fruits and/or Vegetables. Very Good Mother. Also, no matter how many of those items I bake, I am not overly tempted to actually eat them myself. I can pretty much take it or leave it when it comes to most baked goods. Except fresh baked bread.

I love fresh baked bread; yesterday I made my first loaf of herbed cheese bread, and it was so delicious that I ate piece after piece, fresh from the oven. So, I am wondering, if I keep up with this whole “bake bread” resolution, will that necessitate a “stop eating the bread you bake” resolution? We’ll see.

Goodbye, decade

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Ah, New Year’s. Sometimes New Year’s feels like a bit of a weird competition, what with the fancy parties, and the resolutions, and the staying up until midnight, which is a mighty challenge for me. I tend to react to New Year’s somewhat indifferently. Meh, it’s New Year’s. Tonight I plan on celebrating Newfoundland New Year’s, which means that in Newfoundland it is midnight when it is 8:30 in Calgary. So I’m going to get my party on and still make it to bed by ten. So, if you’re someone who is feeling somewhat bitter about your particular celebration – it’s not quite fancy enough, or exotic enough for the ringing in of not only a new year but a new decade – you can think of my celebration and perhaps feel a bit better?

The truth is I like it that way. Also, it is an enormous improvement on my celebration last year. Last year I – by myself – drank a bottle of red wine, ate a giant plate of nachos, and watched Anne of Green Gables – The Sequel on Access. My husband and the kids were sick, so that’s why the wild solo party.

I wonder if I made any resolutions. I can’t really remember. Maybe I made a whole list and kept them all, and I don’t even know it. I know I accomplished things; for example, I got measured for my actual bra size, and when they picked me up off the floor from the shock of how deflated I am, I bought a bikini. I took both kids to a clay sculpture class, and I survived. I fixed the gutters! I made the world’s worst gingerbread house! So let’s just say that those were my resolutions, and I kept every last one of them.

Disjointed cinematic thoughts

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“What is with your health?” my husband asked, watching me blow my nose for the hundredth time. “Maybe you need more protein.” I looked at him silently, then raised my eyebrows lasciviously, and burst into giggles. Because I am all grown up and mature like that.

My sinuses feel like they are out to get me. My very lovely yoga teacher, who is also a nutritionist, advised me to stay away from sugars to obtain maximum immunity from illnesses. It was working really well until the Christmas season and its demands on me to consume my body weight in mint chocolate. So I’m back on my no-sugar plan because frankly, pressing my hands dramatically against my sinuses and complaining is getting old.

But back to my protein giggles. My standard of humour is very low. Someone slips on a banana peel? Hysterical. A wedding singer drops the F-bomb in the movie Old School? Side-splitting. But even I did not find The Hangover funny. In fact, I felt like I morphed into some prim elderly lady who is continually shocked by the downfall of society. “A baby in a car with no car seat? That’s just not funny. I mean, that’s irresponsible. I know it’s a movie. I know. But it’s just stupid.” I ended up going to bed mid-movie in protest, which is where I wanted to be anyway – it was past nine o’clock.

We’ve been watching a lot of movies over the holiday. It’s been great to catch up on films from the last decade or so. I gave my husband the X-Men trilogy for Christmas and I now have a small crush on Wolverine. “I can see why Hugh Jackman is so popular!” I kept saying, in step with people newly relieved and annoyed that the whole Y2K phenomenon was such a hoax.

My husband – without me – watched the new Star Trek movie. I have never once seen an episode of Star Trek, and it occurred to me that it is an entire cultural phenomenon that I know absolutely nothing about. Nothing! I grew up with two brothers, both of whom were into superheroes and Star Wars, so I have a whole untapped mental catalogue of information pertaining to those topics, but I have no clue what Star Trek is all about. “Are they like, aliens traveling around in space ships?” I asked my husband. He stared at me for a few moments, then said, “Yes, Nicole. That’s what it’s all about. Aliens traveling around in space ships.”

All of which is to say, I need some more sinus medication. And maybe some protein! Tee hee.

All is Calm

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The tree and decorations are all taken down and boxed away. I am enjoying the feeling of opulence that obtaining extra living room space, formerly occupied by said tree and decorations, can bring. I am no longer performing gymnastic feats merely to close the drapes. Last night I curled up on the couch with a glass of wine that I could set on the end table, which was previously banished to make way for the tree. The house has been decoration-free for twenty-eight hours now, which was twenty-four later than I wanted it to be.

It was a lovely Christmas, and I would post pictures of the many, many lovely moments that were captured on camera, had Mark not inadvertently deleted everything on the camera after he photographed the tree “one last time” before it was dismantled. I would be angry about this, but he was so unbelievably heart-broken it was all I could do to comfort his hysterical sobbing. “I can’t believe I deleted the Christmas pictures!” he cried, the personification of devastation. ME EITHER, I didn’t say, but thought sadly.

Oh well. I was so thoroughly spoiled with gifts – Pajamas! Yoga mat! Earrings! A robe that fits me and does not feel like burlap, unlike the relic I’ve had for 12 years that saw me through two pregnancies and massive weight gains and losses! – that even the loss of Christmas pictures can’t spoil my happy, post-Christmas feeling. Some of the pictures would have been frightening anyway, given that I spent a solid two hours Christmas morning building Jake’s Playmobil farm and swearing. I had to send the kids out of the room so they wouldn’t be forever scarred by my mental collapse. “STOP TALKING, I’M TRYING TO SET UP YOUR MERRY F***KING CHRISTMAS GIFT, G**DAMMIT!!!” That’s not so much the memories one wants to make, is it? So while I followed twelve pages of directions, soothing coffee and Bailey’s in hand, the boys played in the living room while Rob attempted his own acts of engineering, changing oddly complicated Transformers from vehicle to robot form.

I will leave you with a most amusing joke that my sister-in-law told me about. My nephew had heard this joke on the radio, and, not understanding, asked my brother about it. What is the difference between Tiger Woods and Santa Claus? Santa Claus stopped at three ho’s. My brother told my nephew he would explain when he was older, but yes, it is a good joke.

…and Merry Christmas!

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Thank you so much for reading this blog. It means a lot to me!

I hope you all have a lovely Christmas, whatever you are doing. I am crossing my fingers for a relatively healthy holiday, and I am also completely drunk with power as regards the opening or not opening of gifts. “Kids who complain get their gifts given away to kids who do not complain” is one such utterance from my mouth, as well as “Boys who don’t speak nicely don’t get to open gifts on Christmas morning”. Pretty soon I will have them mopping the floor and singing “The sun’ll come out tomorrow”.

Today I’ve already partaken in a few of my Christmas favourites: Bailey’s and coffee, bread with goat cheese and balsamic vinegar, watching the Holiday Fireplace on TV. It’s sure to get better what with a planned viewing of Elf later, along with a dinner made up of appetizers and a bottle of wine. Tomorrow it’s off to my parents’ for dinner and, more importantly, chocolate Yule log.

Merry Christmas, everyone!