Author Archives: Nicole Boyhouse

Women’s Health Week in the Boyhouse

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You guys, it is Wednesday already, and in one week, February will be over. Over! February feels like it just started, I have four months left before both of my children are junior high students, one month before I have a teenager, and six days until my very last book fair, all of which are good reminders that Time Stops For No One.

It has been a busy week already, even with Monday being a holiday; lots of lovely classes to teach, things to do, children’s dental appointments to sit through. For some reason I booked dentist appointments on the same day that the orthodontist office is closed, and woe, the cleaning will have to take place with wires still in place. The receptionist who called me to confirm sternly said that it would be okay this once, but next time would I please book the cleaning NOT on a Friday. Her tone made me feel like the consequences would be much more dire than they probably are.

It’s also, apparently, Women’s Health Week for me – I had my physical yesterday, and I appear to be fit as a fiddle, as they say in old-timey books about healthy individuals. I had my Pap test and I was not accidentally inseminated, which is my new bar for such things, thank you Jane the Virgin. I did, however, have to endure the usual Where’s Waldo game my doctor plays with my cervix. My cervix is apparently like a toddler in a clothing store; only one doctor has been able to locate it with precision and minimal discomfort. I feel like my cervix is starring in its own drama; like it’s a reclusive Greta Garbo, shying away from the public.

After my physical, I was given my usual requisition forms for blood work and a mammogram, and I went downstairs from the doctor’s office to book the latter. Now, I do not know what is going on with medical imaging in Calgary, but I have to tell you, I like it. For some reason every year that I’ve had a mammogram (this would be my fourth), it’s been in a different location, because the previous location “doesn’t do mammograms anymore.” Why? Why do they keep moving all the mammogram equipment around? I went to book it and was told that they didn’t do them anymore but fortunately, I was able to get an appointment at an even more convenient location. Score! Now, the first time I had a mammogram I had to wait several weeks for an appointment, and they ran late, and I had to sit shirtless, covered only by a paper robe, in a freezing room for thirty minutes before testing, the whole thing taking over two hours to complete. Yesterday, the woman at the clinic offered me an appointment that very afternoon. I was completely unprepared for that, so I declined, instead getting an appointment for nine-thirty the following morning. What is this magic? I don’t know if it’s a new imaging firm that has the contracts, but I LIKE IT.

This morning I trundled over to the imaging clinic, deodorant-less but with a book in my bag and several articles bookmarked on my phone. I was preparing for a hefty wait, when the receptionist told me “Your check-in is at 9:30, but your actual appointment isn’t until 9:35.” Talk about precision! I had barely made it into the waiting area, and taken my book out of my bag, before my name was called. I was literally in and out in fifteen minutes.

The technicians that do the mammograms must be specially trained for sensitivity and kindness; without exception every one of them has been lovely, especially when you consider the bizarre nature of their job, squishing and squeezing the girls to get them in “just the right position.” Getting a mammogram feels a lot like being part of the weirdest photo shoot ever, with the technician telling me to “place my hand here” and “turn my chin up and to the right” and gently fixing my hair just so.

My favourite thing about the new location is the style of medical gown they use. Remember last time, how I awkwardly had the gown on backwards, proving my ability to misunderstand basic instructions? There was no room for such issues today, as the robes were kimono-style, and one would have to be REALLY confused to not figure that out. In fact, I felt a little bit fancy in my gown, all ready for my squishy-breast photo shoot.

I have one simple request: to have sharks with fricking laser beams attached to their heads.

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This week has been a seemingly endless series of irritations, both of the minor kind and of the more sweeping variety, and I have been – possibly due to Female Cyclical Emotional Upheaval – unable to keep my usual Om Shanti outlook and am instead empathizing with Cersei Lannister. Yesterday, I felt that I, too, could happily burn the whole city down while pouring myself a glass of wine.

I won’t go into the sources of all my various irritations, just know that they ran the gamut from pinprick to outright rage-inducing, and yes, I am putting some of the responsibility on myself and my Lady Emotions, but honest to god, encounters like I’ve had this week make me despair for Common Sense and Logical Thought Processes. How does one not suffocate from having one’s head up one’s own ass all the time?

Anyway. Deep breathing and on to less rage-inducing subjects. It is Teacher’s Convention right now, and Family Day is Monday, so the kids are home from school. Yesterday I took Mark to get a haircut at the barber shop in our neighbourhood that we have been frequenting lately (and by “we,” I mean “the kids.”). I walked inside and went to sit down and lo, on the table next to me was a large pile of pornographic magazines. I have so many questions. For one thing, why is porn in barbershops still a thing? It’s pretty awkward when walking in with your twelve-year-old son, who is, happily, oblivious to it. Or so it seems. But really, how many people are going to the barbershop for porn and a haircut? It’s always made me wonder, who are these men (I assume men) who walk in, ask for a trim, and open Penthouse to the centrefold, tilting their heads to get the full view? For another thing, who buys porn anymore? Has the barber never heard of the internet?

Coincidentally enough, I was driving home from yoga and I had the News Talk Radio on, for reasons that I do not understand myself. The radio host mentioned that Playboy is going back to nudes now. Going back to nudes? I thought – and honestly, I am not a person who has ever bought or even really looked at a Playboy, so it could be my own naivete – that Playboy was all nudes. I know people used to say they “bought it for the articles” but I always thought that was just a weird excuse to look at Kaitlyn, age 21, who likes margaritas, movies, and walking on the beach. But I could be wrong, and I probably am, and in any case it was pretty early in the morning so I could have misheard the whole thing. I am not about to look it up, you can believe that. I don’t want anything like that on my search engine and I most certainly don’t want that kind of advertising popping up in my Facebook algorithm.

Last week I was at Costco, and when I was leaving, the older man who checks the carts – and flirts with me – said I had the healthiest cart he had ever seen, and that compliment has been a source of pride and happiness all week. All week. Clearly I have issues that go far beyond the excessive amount of fruit and vegetables I load up with. In a week of annoyances, the memory of that exchange has made me stand straight, with my head up high, even more so than when the drunk guy in front of Walmart said that I sure am a pretty lady.

Well, we all like a good compliment, don’t we? Even when the giver of the compliment is inebriated at 10:30 in the morning.

I was at the salon getting my hair cut and coloured – my hair seems to be growing more rapidly now, which is gratifying but also results in more startling roots – and I spent much of my time reading The Opposite of Loneliness by Marina Keegan. If you haven’t heard about it, the backstory is that Keegan was a rising star in the literary world, and had just graduated from Yale when she was killed in a car accident. When I say “just graduated,” I mean that she died FIVE DAYS after graduation. This book is a compilation of her stories and essays, and is tragic in that she was a beautiful, thought-provoking writer already, at age 22. It’s worth a read, although I found I liked her non-fiction essays much more than her fictional stories. Perhaps I am too old to appreciate the type of fiction that she was writing.

In her title piece, that went viral after her death, she says, quite poignantly in retrospect, “We’re so young. We’re so young. We’re twenty-two years old. We have so much time…What we have to remember is that we can still do anything. We can change our minds. We can start over.” Despite the fact that I am NOT so young – in fact, I am two decades older than the stated age – this spoke to me, as someone who has reinvented her life a number of times. We can do anything, you guys. We can.

And on that note, I am going to get my Friday started, and hopefully it will be less angst-filled than this week has been. It will definitely end with wine though, and I haven’t yet burned the city down OR commissioned sharks with laser beams attached to their heads, so things are looking up. Have a good weekend, my friends. xo

Renaming The Boyhouse to The Sugar Shack, at least for today

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There is no question that I am not gifted artistically. I am a person who couldn’t, say, draw a car without having a car directly in front of her and even then it would be a strange, stickman-like car. Things that normal people might find easy are terrifyingly difficult to me, like gift wrapping or sewing a button on a pair of pants. Actually, the last time I attempted to sew a button on a pair of pants, I accidentally cut a hole in the butt and also ended up with a thick snarl of thread behind the button. When the kids were little, the kinds of crafts we did were things like “decorate this paper heart with stickers” or similar non-difficult ideas. I was always more of a “make your own playdough” mom, rather than the kind would would make pine cone reindeer, if you know what I mean. I know a number of women who have taken up things like knitting or crocheting or even cross-stitch as a way of relaxation, but to me that would be akin to checking myself into a rubber room. That adult colouring craze from a while back? No. I can’t.

So when I do something that requires hand-eye coordination and it actually does work out, it is viewed in this house as next thing to a miracle. Therefore, there was much excitement about this:

My husband came upstairs from his workout and said “My god, it’s actually a heart!”

I know, babe. I know.

We aren’t really Buy Each Other Gifts For Valentine’s Day people; fifty percent of us are allergic to flowers and pollen, I don’t really like having big boxes of chocolates to consume, and I have enough jewelry to last me a lifetime. To be honest, even before kids we didn’t really celebrate Valentine’s Day (except…well…you know…) but these days I just like to bake all the things for every commercial and non-commercial Hallmark and non-Hallmark holiday.

Sundays are a big cooking day for me; I usually bake some snacks (which last maybe a day or two in this house) and I always make a big Sunday dinner, complete with dessert. I decided I wanted to make a heart-shaped cake but my skills in this department are, as mentioned before, seriously lacking. So I used this tutorial from my friend Maija (HI MAIJA) which is so easy even I couldn’t mess it up. I thought about making a red velvet cake – I hadn’t made one since I helped a friend with a baby shower, and that baby is now going into kindergarten – but the excessive use of red food colouring is unappealing. Instead, I made a strawberry cake with a cream cheese icing, tinted just a little bit. It was a major hit, and very easy.

The most important thing here is to make sure your pans are the same size. Otherwise, super easy.

Have I mentioned that my grade seven student is super into the “Circles and Area” unit of math? Have I also ever mentioned that at one point in grade twelve I was known as the “Conics Goddess” for my mastery of the conics unit? I told my husband that and he was less impressed with my conics prowess than I would have hoped. I think his exact words were “That is the nerdiest thing I have ever heard in my life.” Well, I never.

If I can do it, you can too!

I also made and frosted 112 sugar cookies. Why would I make so many, you ask? I really have no idea. I wanted to send some in to the grade six class, but the teacher suggested that since the class is conjoined with another, it would be better to either send in no treats or enough for both classes. Since I realized that my years at elementary school are rapidly coming to a close, I could not and would not send zero cookies. This is my last chance to send Valentine’s Day treats to school and I am going to go out on top I was thinking to myself in a crazy, semi-hormonal way. I had some dough in the freezer left over from Christmas, but with all the frenzy surrounding November and December this year, I hadn’t marked if it was a full batch or not. I made an entire full batch, and used the frozen dough which was, I soon realized, indeed a full batch. One hundred and twelve cookies.

I realized that I have been asked for this recipe many times, so I am going to put it here. I am not going to be modest, because it’s not my recipe, it’s actually my mom’s. They are the best goddamn sugar cookies you will ever have in your life. They were the best cookies when I was a kid, and my mom made these for us and our friends, and they are the best cookies now. They are the cookies that I always get complimented on. Ten-year-old boys have stopped me in the playground to ask me to send their mom the recipe. THEY ARE LITERALLY THE BEST COOKIE EVER. I make them at Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Halloween, and for school birthday treats in lieu of cupcakes. They are easy, foolproof, you can make them with your kids, and you can freeze the dough for up to six months. I make the dough ahead of time so I only have to roll it out when I’m baking.

Now, they are not vegan. They are not, by any stretch of the imagination, remotely healthy. But these are TREATS. You could probably sub in coconut oil for butter and maybe aquafaba for egg replacement, but I don’t. They are for my kids, they love them as-is, and it’s nice to make a recipe that was my mom’s. One day I will say that this has been handed down over the generations, but I think I need at least one more generation to do that.

Nicole’s Mom’s Sugar Cookies

1 cup butter, softened

1 1/2 cups sugar

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

2 eggs

1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

3 cups flour

Cream together sugar, butter, and vanilla. Add eggs and beat well. Mix in baking powder, salt, and flour.

Make the dough into a two or three balls, wrap with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for at least two hours. You could also freeze the dough for later use.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees (or 325 if using convection oven) and line baking sheets with parchment paper. This is an important step! Don’t forget the parchment paper! Roll out chilled dough on a floured surface. Cut into shapes. Bake for ten minutes for the perfect, soft cookie.

When cooled, frost and decorate as desired. Since I am kind of lazy, I like to just spread a delicious buttercream on top and add sprinkles.

Nicole’s Buttercream Frosting

1/2 cup very soft butter

4 cups icing sugar

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

2-3 tablespoons milk

colour, if desired

Cream butter, then add icing sugar in 1/2 cup increments. Add vanilla. Add milk until desired consistency is reached. Whip it on high for a minute to get a really fluffy frosting. Enjoy!

 

Sweatin’ to the Oldies

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I was driving home from yoga on Tuesday when I heard on the radio that Southern Alberta is under an extreme cold warning; Calgary is NOT included in this warning. I looked at the dashboard and the temperature read minus 26. What does a city have to do to get an extreme cold warning around here?

It’s already started to warm up, thankfully, and the streets are merely a mess of mushy snow and frozen-over ridges, which is much better than the sheer ice/ snow piles that they were. This morning I decided to wrap up warmly and take Barkley to the dog park since it was minus 15, which is my personal cut-off. I regretted the decision upon arrival but powered through, because this fuzzy little face was so happy.

Who’s a good doggy? Barkley is! Barkley’s a good doggy!

The grade seven gym class, having completed the Dance Unit, with their foray into the Cadillac Ranch and Cotton Eyed Joe line dances, are now in the Cardiovascular Health unit. Yesterday they participated in Tai Bo. Tai Bo! With Billy Blanks! The general consensus was that the video used was “creepy.” Creepy or not, I would have loved to be a fly on the wall to see 12 and 13 year old kids doing Tai Bo.

I do not know how the curriculum is created, but it seems to have a very large Nineties push. I wonder if step aerobics will be next. Oh, how I loved step aerobics. I would probably still love step aerobics, given the chance. I remember going through the group workout schedule in university and being able to attend such classes as Step and Pump, Interval Step, and Boxercise. Those were the days, when I would don my sports bra, shorts, and – inexplicably – ball cap for a workout between actual academic classes.

I just now remembered why I wore a ball cap to work out in. It was because of my extremely layered Rachel haircut; it was impossible to keep the hair out of my face otherwise.

Continuing with the video workouts, perhaps Sweatin’ to the Oldies will have a chance to make a comeback. I earnestly, and without irony, like Richard Simmons. Although for these kids, “The Oldies” could be defined as anything between 1995-2005, songs which often seem to me as “just released.” Maybe he has a “twerking” workout. A twerkout, as it were.

Discovery: the entire collection of Sweatin’ to the Oldies is available on Amazon for $282.53, which seems like a lot, but there is only one left in stock, so I guess Amazon knows what it’s doing.

Have a wonderful weekend, everyone! Stay warm. xo

http://giphy.com/gifs/richard-simmons-rCSeweOMD0v2o

 

Glory days

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The other day I had just finished showering, preparing to teach an evening class, when the dryer finished its cycle. I brought the basket upstairs, in my bathrobe, and pulled on a pair of socks that were on top. I am now ruined for non-dryer-warmed socks. Regular socks are just a sad imitation of a superior product. However, it would be pretty bad, ecologically-wise, for me to run the dryer every time I put on a pair of socks, and yet it is a very tempting prospect, especially on a day like today when we are in “winter storm warning;” at minus 21 with a ton of snow I wish I could just live in the dryer. Or maybe have clothes made out of electric blankets.

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Brr!

Speaking of ecological warriors, because of changes – FINALLY – made by the CRTC, I was able to actually see Superbowl commercials yesterday! For those of you not in Canada, this is a huge thing. Local stations would take over and instead of seeing the big-time commercials, we would see locally-made commercials for a furniture warehouse, or commercials for the actual television station that we were watching. Normally my husband would just record the whole game, start late, and zap through the commercials. But not this year! This year I got to see this one with Melissa McCarthy and this one, which is my new favourite thing and, proving that advertising really does work, I am going to look into this hair care line.

My hair has reached critical “it’s winter” dryness and that, coupled with my grey-root situation that is typical in this stage of my hair-colour cycle, is making me feel a bit dreary. I am trying to reconcile my I-Am-Woman-And-Growing-Old-Is-Beautiful-Screw-The-Youth-Culture mentality with my Eeek-Don’t-Look-Too-Closely-In-The-Mirror mentality. Know what I mean? I want to not care about my marionette lines and my undereye circles and my forehead ridges, but vanity, it is the last to die. I wrote this piece all about self-care and I love it, I really do. I think it’s one of my favourite things I’ve written in recent memory, and I believe every word I wrote, and yet it is HARD sometimes, to smile while looking in the mirror. I mean, in some ways it’s not, because I suffer from a mad case of Bitchy Resting Face, and smiling alleviates that.

Ah, I should not focus so much on appearance, am I right? My friend and I were having tea the other day and talking about exercise and keeping in shape, as we grow older. “It’s not about aesthetics,” I said, and then, for the sake of honesty I added, “Well, maybe it’s a little about aesthetics.” I wonder what age I will be when I stop caring about my appearance. Death, maybe?

Does anyone else suffer from this internal struggle? I don’t want to care about my appearance, but I do. I want to celebrate my aging self, and I do, but I also am starting to fully understand why celebrities get plastic surgery. Can you imagine being an actress, seeing yourself in reruns? For the vain – scratch that, for anyone – that would be difficult. And in this time of filters and Instagram and photoshopped everything, it’s hard to remember what real people actually look like. And for me, I feel very strong and healthy, and so it’s sometimes startling to see myself in the mirror, pre-makeup in the morning.

On that note, I was half-watching a movie with my husband on the weekend: Fifty Fifty. It is a very touching – and, apparently true – movie about a young man with cancer and a fifty-fifty chance of survival. No spoilers here, except that we were 95% of the way through a movie when I realized that the mother was played by Anjelica Huston. She’s aged, I thought, then mentally slapped myself because of course she’s aged! She’s not dead. We should all be lucky enough to age. What a terrible way to think, especially while watching a movie of such content.

Am I alone in this? Anyone else struggling a bit with this whole “looking our age” thing? Come here and let me hug you and pat your back with my knobbly, veiny old hands. xo

I, for one, welcome Shakira Law and look forward to much dancing in the future.

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This morning I was at the barber shop with my youngest, and I popped on to twitter for only a moment. That moment was long enough to see this:

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YOU GUYS.

I laughed and laughed because a) I am not and never have been a Tolkien fan, but even I know the Lord of the Rings reference, b) STARBUCKS is giving out FREE ISLAMIC DONUTS, and c) SHAKIRA LAW.

I, for one, would welcome Shakira law, because my hips don’t lie either. We would all be dancing and hip-swiveling until the end of time.

The whole thing is so funny and ridiculous, and it really amused me until the realization hit:

Someone spent time and energy to make an anti-Muslim meme using a photo of a doughnut that was probably created on Pinterest for some kind of Hobbit party. Someone took the time to do this and also conflated Sharia with the fabulous Shakira, which, while funny, is the reason checking spelling is so important. This person also evidently had a grudge against Starbucks, probably because of their red cups.

This right here is the problem with memes. Anyone can say anything at all, and if that meme catches on, it’s passed around Facebook and Twitter and immediately becomes the gospel truth. This is how things like “Irish people were the real original slaves” happen.

Side note: the Irish were undoubtedly mistreated by Americans during their wave of immigration and were certainly, collectively, plagued by hardships. However. If ANYTHING this should be a warning to the public about the dangers of xenophobia.

So I’m sure that doughnut meme probably had a bunch of people up in arms, people who were not interested in Our New Hip Swiveling Overlords, people who immediately boycotted Starbucks and called the police about their brown-skinned neighbours’ suspicious activity of bringing doughnuts to the neighbourhood potluck. I am going to say this once: DO NOT JUST BLINDLY PASS THINGS ALONG IF YOU HAVEN’T DONE ANY CRITICAL THINKING OR RESEARCH REGARDING THE TOPIC. This goes for “news articles” and the like.

Oh, and this isn’t limited to people of a certain political background, because mass meme hysteria can come from any side of the spectrum. For example, the other day I saw one circulating about a certain famous football player who shall remain nameless and it made him look ridiculous. Well, since my husband has had Superbowl talk on all week, I actually saw the interview that the quotes were taken from, and I can tell you that they were not only massively taken out of context, they were not even correct. However, the meme generated a lot of hate for this love-to-hate-him player, which is the goal of the meme-maker, I suppose.

Remember So I Married An Axe Murderer?

Charlie: Hey Mom, I find it interesting that you refer to the Weekly World News as, “The paper.” The paper contains facts.
Charlie’s Mom: This paper contains facts. And this paper has the eighth highest circulation in the whole wide world. Right? Plenty of facts. “Pregnant man gives birth.” That’s a fact.

This should be obvious, but strive not to be like Charlie’s mom.

Actually, maybe it would be kind of fun to make my own meme, like Colonel Sanders Puts An Addictive Chemical In His Chicken To Make You Crave It Fortnightly, and then see how many people immediately boycott KFC. No, that’s not harsh enough. I would have to say that KFC uses kittens that they get from the pound, instead of chicken. Or fetuses*. Because this is what the world has come to.

*KFC does not use fetuses or kittens in their chicken. They use chicken in their chicken. They are still pretty gross, in my humble vegetarian opinion.

Ooh! I know! I could circulate a meme saying that KFC is a front for crystal meth distribution and money laundering*! That’ll get them, those kitten/ fetus fryers!

*That was Los Pollos Hermanos, from Breaking Bad.

The moral of this story is that we should all do our research because in this age of social media, information and misinformation can travel fast. Do your part and do your research. And only pass along memes like this:

Best-funny-Memes-Funnies

Because that is HILARIOUS.

Her name was Lola, she was a showgirl

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This morning I heard Copacabana on the way home from yoga, and it set the tone for my whole day. I have been doing the merengue and the cha-cha all day, humming about yellow feathers in my hair and a dress cut down to there. At least I know all the words to Copacabana, which makes it a little less crazy, unlike the time I had Fancy by Bobby Gentry stuck in my head. I only really knew the words Here’s your one chance, Fancy, don’t let me down so I basically had that on repeat for a few days. I would much rather sing about the hottest spot north of Havana.

My friend and I were walking our dogs and talking about the vast amount of food our sons consume each week. We joked that food preparation, in a house with pre-teen and teenage boys, is the equivalent of a part-time job. Since I have the irritating personality trait of needing to empirically quantify any such claim, I actually started noting down how much time I actually do spend grocery shopping, planning and preparing meals, baking, doing dishes and cleaning up the kitchen. The number of hours I spend doing those things per week was actually astonishing and I wish I hadn’t had the urge to do the math.

For one thing, I realize that this job is just going to get bigger and bigger for several years, and then, when the boys leave home, it is going to be gone, completely GONE, and I am going to be left in my empty kitchen, singing Landslide softly to myself while wondering what to do with all these cookies.

That, right there, is the reason I cannot wish away time, even if every single Tuesday I think to myself What? It’s only Tuesday? I don’t want to wish my life away. It’s already the end of January and life often feels like it’s a cartoon of pages flying off the calendar.

Anyway, with all the awful, terrifying, and disheartening things happening in the world, I am choosing to focus on my own backyard. There are lots of opportunities to make the world a better place, and as I said to my neighbour the other day, efforts that seem small in the grand scheme of things are actually not small at all to the people being helped. It’s a good reminder.

I am also focusing a bit on my literal backyard, because this happened:

 

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We have a huge backyard and when the kids were small they would spend hours out there, playing with Barkley and shooting water guns and running around. They are past that stage now, and I convinced my husband that a trampoline would be the cure for all that ails us.

tramapoline

It arrived in pieces on Friday and my husband and I spent four hours on Saturday putting it together. FOUR HOURS. It was well worth it though, since it has been fairly mild for the past couple of weeks. We’ve all enjoyed it so much already and I’m looking forward to summer, when our house can become the neighbourhood hangout. I’m sure my kitchen time will increase substantially with a group of teen boys in my backyard, but it will be well worth it.

Be well, friends. xo