My very dear friend just informed me that the “obscure” band I had mentioned is actually the Irish Rovers, and they are Canadian, and so SHAME ON ME!!!! I am appropriately shamed.

Ever since Beck’s post about music yesterday, I’ve had the following child-inappropriate songs stuck in my head:

1) Wasn’t that a party, by some obscure band in the late 70’s. You know the song: “Could have been the whiskey, might have been the gin, could have been the three or four six packs I don’t know, but just look at the mess I’m in”. I remember this song from my own childhood, and I remember asking my mom why the guy’s head was like a football. I don’t remember her answer, but I’m sure it was somewhat vague.

2) Gold Digger, by Kanye West. In terms of child-inappropriate songs, this one is the gold standard. It has it all: misogyny, overt sexual references, and extremely offensive language.

3) Why Don’t We (get drunk and screw) by Jimmy Buffet. I don’t really think I need to expound on this.

Why or how these songs got into my head, I don’t know. What I do know is that when I got into my car today the oldies’ radio station that I listen to was playing “I want to kiss you all over” and all I could think of was the scene in Happy Gilmore where Adam Sandler was singing that into his ex-girlfriend’s apartment intercom. TIME TO GROW UP, NICOLE.

It has been pouring rain all day, and it’s four degrees outside. The sky is dark, but I’m strangely happy…because that means that the soccer practice will be (OMG, hopefully) cancelled tonight!

I hope.

Every soccer night so far this year has been either a) freezing cold, b) incredibly windy, gusting up to 70 km/hour, or c) snowy or rainy, but not snowy or rainy enough to cancel.

I want a night off, and I think I’m going to get it! Yippee! A silver lining to a rainy day.

You know the kind of Saturday evening where you nobly encourage your husband to golf nine, after all he is supportive of all your yogic pursuits, but after you pick the kids up from their afternoon birthday party they are insane with post-party excitement, birthday cake, and they unfortunately have received as party favours giant FOAM SWORDS with which they have been beating each other and their little friend whom you also drove to the party, and then after supper it stops raining long enough to send them outside to burn off steam but the dog, unbeknownst to you, eats a bunch of potting soil then comes inside to barf all over the carpet, then when you are cleaning up the muddy barfy mess the boys try to help by carrying sopping wet rags all over the house, and suddenly it’s past bathtime and now the three year old is an exhausted mess and begins sobbing hysterically when you try to take him out of the bathtub and the five year old, oblivious, keeps talking and talking and TALKING about dinosaurs? You know that kind of Saturday evening? I had one this weekend!

Moving on.

I hope you had a lovely Mother’s Day. Mine was filled with all sorts of things I love: snuggles, yoga, dog walking, gardening with the kids. Although I have to say the apex of my Mother’s Day was the tea party at the preschool last Wednesday. Really, is there anything more precious than a classful of preschoolers in various stages of singing and not singing songs about sunshine and blue skies and mamas, then presenting you with a plateful of treats that they prepared? I don’t think so.

I don’t know what your favourite books are, but I can tell you what mine aren’t: Scooby Doo Early Reader Mysteries. I made a grave error in ordering a package of nine (nine!) from Scholastic Books and as a result have been reading the most boring, mind-numbing series of books that were ever written. Oh no! Ghosts! No, it’s just some leaves blowing in the wind. Fortunately I also ordered a book about volcanoes, which has proved popular but not as popular as Shaggy and the gang. However, I want my boys to be readers, so whatever boring tripe (ahem, I mean stories) catch their attention is really fine with me.

I love reading; I have always been an avid reader. However, sometimes it’s hard for me to get into a mindset to read a new book. Lately I’ve just needed the comfort of an old favourite, and so the past three books I’ve read have been just that. I have Slumdog Millionaire sitting on my bookshelf, just waiting for me to start it, but I just haven’t been in the mood for something new. This is what I have been reading in the past few weeks:

The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood. This may be my favourite book of all time. I always get caught up in the love story, the historical drama, and the complex plot. There is just something so pleasing about the privileged, married, rich girl having an illicit affair with the communist/ pulp fiction writer-on-the-run. Sigh. My favourite line in the book is when Iris, looking at the painting of her grandmother, thinks “I bet you were alleycatting all along. I bet you had a secret life. I bet it kept you going”.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. I picked this up the other day as I took a Facebook quiz – Which Jane Austen Character Are You? – and my result was Jane Bennett. Damn! I had been hoping for Elizabeth; I always thought of Jane as kind of a drip. P&P is probably the wittiest book ever written, I never tire of it. Also, Mr. Darcy. Ah, Mr. Darcy. “You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you”. Rrrr. Rrrr in that whole repressed, nineteenth century way. My opinion of Jane Bennett hasn’t changed though, she’s still a sap. Well, as my sister-in-law said, at least my quiz result wasn’t Marianne Dashwood, the mentally unstable, dying-of-consumption-since-Willoughby-married-someone-else heroine who ends up a broken-spirited wife to the old Colonel. Of course, that old Colonel was very attractively portrayed by Alan Rickman in the film version, so that wouldn’t have been all that bad.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Isn’t this the classic of all classics? I never read this in school; in fact I didn’t read this until I was in my twenties. The descriptions of the town, the people, and especially the living conditions are fascinating and depressing at the same time. I get a lump in my throat every single time I read the ending. Best line? “I thought Jem and I would get grown but there wasn’t much else for us to learn, except possibly algebra”.

Your turn! What have you been reading lately, and what would you recommend?

Here is what has been happening since my husband left for a business trip:

I took the dog to the groomer’s, and found out his adult coat is coming in and matting with his puppy coat. Exceptionally fluffy dog is now shaved, and as a result is acting QUITE bizarre.

I took both boys to the soccer field for practice last night. 70 km/hour winds kept blowing stray balls and unattended folding chairs down the field. I listened to a soccer dad tell me all about his self-published book on Taiwan, but couldn’t hear half of what he was saying because of the howling wind. I have a feeling I didn’t actually miss much.

Discovered, yet again, that the boys are always fine for two days when their dad is gone, but on the third day (i.e., TODAY) they turn into evil goblins who feel it necessary to shriek and whine the day away.

I complained to a very lovely woman about my husband being away, and picking up the slack, etc., to which she replied that she is a single mom and does that and more all the time. I felt like, and still feel like, an asshole.

Have you ever heard of a “mommy makeover”? There is a plastic surgery clinic in Los Angeles that caters to “mommies”. Remember my (strange, non-maternal) aversion to the word “mommy”? It is NOTHING compared with the revulsion I feel at the marketing towards mothers and the supposed dissatisfaction with a child-bearing body. Philosophically, I feel that mothers should feel more beautiful after having children, not less. Each stretch mark, every inch of loose skin, or, in my case, every giant ropy varicose vein, should be testament to your enormous gift to the world, in terms of your wonderful child and your exuberant entry into motherhood. Right? Well, maybe not totally. But I do feel that our obsession with appearance and need to erase all signs of bodily stress due to child bearing is quite…unattractive. It’s the same feeling I have when I see a picture of Joan Rivers or similar, someone who in their quest for eternal beauty has become a hideous beast. (As my neighbour so succinctly put it, “It doesn’t make you look younger, it just makes you look stranger”.) I’m all for acceptance that yes, your body may be different after childbirth, but it is just as beautiful.

This website advertises procedures running the gamut from face lifts, breast lifts and enhancements, body sculpting, and tummy tucks, all the way down to labiaplasty (ewww). You could get a total renovation! There are before and after pictures, and as I clicked on them, I started to feel, instead of revulsion with the concept, revulsion towards my own body. You see, despite my strident feminist feelings against such marketing and even against such plastic surgery, I am a vain person. I mean, I put lip gloss on to walk the dog: that kind of vain. So as I looked at the pictures I felt a genuine dissatisfaction with my own body.

To say I was disappointed with my reaction is an understatement.

Part of it is, and I’m almost shy to say this, I used to have a GREAT rack. I had a nice set of 36 C’s, that expanded to a triple D when I was pregnant. And now…well, I got measured by the bra-fitting specialist at the Bay, and the result was 32 B. And B is a bit of an overstatement, because the actual measurement was somewhere between an A and a B. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. “YOU ARE VEARING THE VRONG SIZE BRRA” the bra fitter admonished me. Um, you think? So as I looked at the pictures of the women with breast lifts and enhancements, I thought, hey, that DOES look good! Dammit!

Marketing that targets the insecurities of moms is wrong on many levels; I guess that is why it is so effective. So what I’m saying, ladies, is let’s stand up for our post-partum, different-but-still-beautiful bodies! Let’s celebrate what we have and think of the changes not as flaws, but as amazing and miraculous evidence that we came, we had babies, and we conquered.