Author Archives: Nicole Boyhouse

Read this post if you want to feel better about yourself

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I woke up Sunday morning still sick and achy, so I took my own patented home remedy: Daytime Relief Sudafed washed down with a pot of coffee. If that doesn’t get one moving, nothing will. So I was feeling quite energetic in a heart-racing sort of way, and thought that yes, it would be a good day to make our gingerbread house.

Now – I have probably mentioned this a few times – I am not artistic or crafty in any way. This is not my way of being falsely modest, either. Some women I know make the most incredible things – one friend in particular regularly shows up to Staff Appreciation Day or any other holiday-related function with the most amazing edible treats, the kind of treats which are practically works of art. “Oh, it’s nothing,” she’ll say casually, “I didn’t actually come up with the idea, I just copied it from a magazine.” If I attempted to copy anything from a magazine, it would look a lot more like crumpled up, tear-stained tissue paper held together with Scotch tape than Hershey’s kisses made into a bouquet of rosebuds, but whatever. The point is that I am not artistic or crafty.

Also, if this post rambles a little, it is probably because I am on Day Two of my patented home remedy.

Now, if I were to pinpoint exactly where things went awry, I would probably guess that I did not make the icing thick enough. I’m guessing this as none of the candies would stick on the roof and also any attempts to make windows or doors were thwarted by dripping icing. However. As I said to my husband in a very Zen way, “It’s about the experience, not the final product.” To which he responded, “That’s good, because our final product looks like crap.”

What do you think?

Front view. That red thing is a wreath, which kept slipping into the gumdrop door. Notice the inadvertent drips of icing.

I tried to cover up a window attempt with icing. All those random candies? They are gravestones, Mark informed me. Because this is actually Scooby-Doo’s gingerbread house. Gravestones. Very festive.


Back view. The window is awesome. My husband made a little candy fire pit but you can’t see it as the boys essentially dumped candies all over it. As I said, it’s the experience. And they were having fun.


I made gingerbread men last week. I think this one brings up the curb appeal for the house, don’t you agree?

I actually think we could win a contest for worst decorated gingerbread house. I’d like to blame it on the children, but even if they hadn’t been helping (i.e., pelting candies at the house to see them slide down the roof) I don’t think that the house would have turned out significantly better.

It’s a good thing I don’t get hung up on appearances.

We interrupt this Christmas spirit to bring you colossal bitchiness!

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This dress really wants to go to a party!

I look forward to my husband’s company Christmas party for months. I look forward to dressing up, talking to grown people, and eating food not prepared by myself and which is generally very tasty. I also look forward to the open bar. Months in advance I think about this party, because after all, there is no “stay-at-home mom” Christmas party, and even if there was it would probably just involve Starbucks and our nice jeans.

I even bought a dress for the party! I haven’t worn a skirted article for at least five years, since the appearance of my python-like varicose veins, but in the spirit of “love your body 2009” I actually purchased a dress, which I planned to wear with thick tights and boots to minimize the vein visibility. I was getting very excited.

You can probably see where this is going. Yesterday morning a monster of a blizzard began, complete with white-out conditions and massive drifts of snow, forcing us to cancel our plans. Boo. Around 2:00 yesterday it became apparent that no, we were not going to go, I started sulking and immediately donned yoga pants, a sweatshirt, and gigantic fuzzy slippers. Rob felt sorry for me and offered to watch When Harry Met Sally with me. Score! My favourite movie, which he will never watch due to my incessant need to repeat the dialogue throughout the film. (“They don’t make Sunday”. “Why not?” “Because of God.”)

So that was nice. Then this morning I woke up with a sore throat and headache due to the commencement of a minor cold, and also the general malaise that is associated with the commencement of my “ladies’ holidays”. I felt awful, so I did what any smart woman would do: attempt to make 6 dozen gingersnaps with the kids. Suffice it to say it was a bad idea. I ended up baking only half the cookies, putting the rest of the dough in the freezer for a more appropriate day. But then the kids wanted pancakes for lunch and, due to my guilty feelings for snapping at them more than once, I agreed. I mis-measured several times, burned the first couple, and then shrieked, “IT’S YOUR LUNCH!” in response to Mark’s innocent “What’s that weird smell?” query. So no Mother of the Year awards coming my way today.

Rob got home soon after this fiasco and I went straight to bed, passing out for a solid 90 minutes. I feel somewhat better but now the kids are jonesing to make a gingerbread house tonight! I need to channel my inner Christmas spirit. Help!

"…maybe Christmas – perhaps – means a little bit more…"

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Me, looking at Jake’s school schedule: “Oh, it looks like you will be writing a letter to Santa in class!”

Jake: “Does that mean I will be writing a letter to you and Dad?”

Yes, well. Let’s just say that Jake is feeling a bit confused these days. If you’re four, and you have a brother who is five and is a non-believer, then you will likely get tipped off about the non-existence of Santa earlier than your other classmates. But, if you are in a pre-kindergarten class where everyone is busy writing letters to Santa, mailing letters to Santa, and getting ready for Santa’s classroom visit, the issue may become cloudy for you.

I’ve read a few things in the past couple of days with regards to the de-bunking of the Santa myth and how terribly sad it is when children stop believing. Now, I don’t want to belittle anyone’s belief system here, or ruin anyone’s Christmas spirit, but I don’t really equate the belief in Santa barreling down one’s chimney to bestow gifts and eat cookies with the magic of Christmas. I don’t know. I love the Christmas season as much as the next person, in fact I might even love it more than the next person, but I have to say that it actually didn’t affect me when the boys stopped “believing”.

When Mark first spoke about Santa not being “real”, given his personality, I felt it best to be honest with him. I told him that Santa was something that little kids like to think about until they can understand that Santa is more than just a fat guy in a red suit with a flying sleigh, that Santa means goodwill and generosity and kindness, and that when you do something nice, it is like you become Santa. It’s an explanation I’m more comfortable with than maintaining a myth that I think is beside the point.

Nevertheless, we will hang our stockings and set out cookies and milk on Christmas Eve. Just in case.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

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I am someone who does not like to leave things to the last minute. I like to be organized and on top of things. So, I finish my Christmas shopping in the first half of November, I make and freeze dough for sugar cookies and gingerbread in November, I send all my Christmas cards out on November 30, and on Sunday last, we put up our Christmas tree. I also suggested making a gingerbread house this past weekend, but Rob nixed it. “Shouldn’t you leave something for December?” he asked.

I like not being rushed. The same can be said about Jake. I had to instigate a school-day rule that entails him getting dressed at 8:00, so that if it takes him 30 minutes to complete the task, we still have time to get our shoes and coats on in a relaxed manner. It also cuts down on the amount of deep breathing and gentle encouragement I need to do as I watch him slowly, slowly put his clothes on, then oops, his shirt is backwards, and uh oh, he is having trouble with his socks, and oh dear, his foot is stuck in his pajama bottoms. When we start early I simply leave the room, so as to remain mentally balanced, and come back 30 minutes later to a totally dressed Jake! A miracle! And one that does not require me grinding my teeth and saying, okay, come on, okay honey, JUST PUT YOUR DAMN SOCKS ON.

Where was I going with this?


Oh yes, the Christmas tree. It’s a bit of a Charlie Brown tree, actually. It was a cheap tree that is now a decade old, and every year my husband puts it together and swears a little, but once it’s decorated I just love it. Also – notice how squished it is against the furniture – we cannot possibly have a larger tree. As it is it is reminiscent of Jenga, rearranging our house for this five foot tree.

The downside to being super organized and not waiting until the last minute to do Christmas-related things is by the time Boxing Day comes around I am DONE with the Christmas spirit. It’s all I can do not to pack up every ornament at noon on Christmas Day. My Buddy the Elf persona quickly morphs into a Grinch-like attitude. It’s like, I just want my house back, you five foot tree that has taken over the living room!

So, while I’m still in the spirit, check out a couple cute decorations!

What a sweet little nativity scene, and the little house was the first decoration I bought the year we got married. To symbolize HOME. Awwwww.

I bought this Spiderman decoration this year for the boys. My brother informed me that this is the second most famous comic book cover of all time. I just don’t know what to do with that information, but okay. The boys like it.

A snowglobe! With my name on it! I got one for everyone in the family (except, as Jake disapprovingly said, for Barkley.).

Today it’s snowing and cold and I feel very Christmassy – even if it’s not even December!

Warning! This post contains an obscene amount of name-dropping.

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I saw Jim Cuddy on The Hour a couple of nights ago. Jim Cuddy. Sigh. Beck wrote a funny post about the potential husband material of certain Canadian TV stars and while I was hard-pressed to come up with any of those – Mark Critch? Nah. George Stroumboulopoulus? Nah. – I sure do have opinions about Canadian music stars. Jim Cuddy. I like to refer to him as “my boyfriend”. My husband really likes that too.

I actually met Jim Cuddy one year ago. My husband phoned me from work and said, in complete seriousness, “You wouldn’t really be interested in a gala dinner tomorrow night, would you?”. Now, believe me, BELIEVE ME, I do not attend gala dinners with any sort of regularity. Or at all. So of course I wanted to go. Then he revealed that his boss’ girlfriend’s firm had extra tickets. And it was an Olympic fund-raiser. And we would be sitting at a table with Sale and Pelletier. I immediately phoned my mother, “CanyoubabysittomorrowbecauseIamgoingtobeatatablewithSaleandPelletier!”

I watched Sale and Pelletier win the silver medal – later to be the gold medal – at a bar in Houston. There was one other Canadian girl there, also a figure skating fan, and when the scores were tallied a man leaned over to us and drawled, “Well girls, ah don’t know much ah-bout figure skating, but I think you Canadians were robbed”. I love Texans.

Anyway, at the gala we were enjoying a glass of wine when Rob’s boss’ girlfriend leaned over to me and said, “Hey, there goes Jim Cuddy. We should follow him and get our picture taken with him.” She was laughing but I’ve never been more serious. I grabbed her arm and we followed him, walking as quickly as possible without looking like actual stalkers. We followed him into a section where he was talking with Kelly Hrudy, who was hosting the event. Someone agreed to take our picture and here it is:


I love this picture. I am the absolute epitome of star-struck. You can almost see my thoughts, OMG, Jim Cuddy has his arm around me!!!! Meeeeeee!!!! The wine in my glass was vibrating like the puddle in Jurassic Park.

So that was a highlight. But truly the whole night was amazing. I enjoyed the delicious food and wine, alongside David Pelletier, who, it should be noted, is not the best tablemate as he is quiet to the point of surliness. I enjoyed the music (provided by JIM CUDDY). I looked around the room, and at least half of the people were working on their BlackBerries. Some were leaving to answer work-related phone calls. There I was, in the midst of a massively stressed-out crowd, a crowd which was there for duty but certainly not pleasure, and I was thrilled every second.


I thought about that the other night when I met up with some girlfriends, a couple of whom were former co-workers, and one of those was still at that firm. She talked to me a bit about my former workplace, and she was speaking a language which I recognized but hadn’t spoken in nearly six years. I was asked if I missed it, being at work. I thought about it, the ten hour days at a desk, the stress, the overtime, and at that gala dinner, the people who were so busy trying to juggle family and work that they couldn’t even enjoy food and wine and JIM CUDDY. I don’t miss it.
Me and David Pelletier. He looks really happy, probably because the gala was almost over.

GROSS

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When I got home early this morning, Mark met me at the door to inform me that he was “a little bit sick”. He certainly didn’t look sick, his colour was good, he ate a good breakfast, but my husband did mention that both boys woke up coughing. I thought about a reader comment about coughing and RSV and I thought I would keep them home for the day. Then they didn’t cough even once the whole day, which was fine. I took it as a mental health day. But after lunch Jake started acting strange. He didn’t want to eat much and was rubbing his head a lot. I started to worry. No fever. Still no eating. He was clingy and wanted to be hugged and held a lot. I started self-medicating. Don’t worry – I wasn’t stumbling around drunk or anything. I mean I ate a couple of chocolate chip cookies with leftover Halloween candy chasers. I was starting to feel a bit stressed.

Now, for the sake of readers who are not parents, or who may wish to become parents, or are maybe pregnant or with young infants, I will not go into great detail about the origin of Jake’s lassitude. I will only say that sometimes young children like to, shall we say, withhold certain body functions, and that sometimes leads to, shall we say, undesirable results.

Oh! Did I mention I also washed the floors today?

So now that it is past 7:30, I say screw the chocolate. I am going straight for the wine.

November

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November is a dark month. Even when the sun is shining, it is so low in the sky that it is still dark and grey. Every room in my north-facing house is dark, even when the lights are on.

This month has been flying by. I can’t believe it is already the 23rd. We are having an unseasonably warm November, which in Calgary means that the temperatures are soaring all the way up to 6 or 7 degrees, as opposed to 1 or 2. Not that I’m complaining, mind you, any time temperatures are above normal I am happy, but it seems like those couple of degrees are wasted in November. I mean, it’s still chilly, still dark. The sun is setting at 4:30, and rising after 8. December is, of course, darker and colder, but it doesn’t seem that way because of Christmas, and festivity, and my general feeling of goodwill and happiness that accompanies it.

Four children in my neighbourhood lost their mother and, while it is not my story to tell, the tragedy of that has left me low. But I’m not going to talk about that. The feeling of goodwill and happiness, that Christmassy feeling, I needed that feeling this weekend. So I broke my own rule about no Christmas decorations before December. I brought the boxes out of storage and the boys and I put out a few choice decorations.

The pinecones are from my in-laws’ place in the Okanagan. My husband and I gathered them the year my father-in-law was diagnosed with cancer, which he beat against all odds. The little balls in the bowl are from my very first Christmas tree after I left home. I didn’t have lights on that tree, and it was odd how many people commented on the fact. I honestly didn’t think that no lights was a big deal, but apparently IT IS. The cute little star snowmen? A woman I worked with once made them for the company Christmas party. She made about 150 of them. Have I ever mentioned that I admire people who are crafty? Because I am the opposite of crafty.


Mark’s favourite decoration is a little train station. Technically it lights up but I have a small fear of fire – and I think that decoration was made in China, so my fear of plugging it in and starting an electrical fire is probably justified. Notice the bowl in the background. The Christmas balls I set in there are from my mother-in-law – old ornaments from the 60’s.


This is my very favourite thing. I bought the creche figurines in Mexico 12 years ago, and I just love them. I always put the angel on the ladder – angels need a little help once in a while. This is also Jake’s favourite.

When something is heavy on your heart, sometimes the best thing to do is find the joy in your life and be thankful for your blessings. And I am so thankful.