Category Archives: Festivities

Tiny Handprints On Furniture And Walls

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How was your weekend? I know that Mother’s Day can be fraught with all sorts of emotions and mixed feelings for some people, and if you are one of those, I hope you had some peace over the weekend.

I had some nostalgic, emotional moments when I realized, late Saturday night, that I had not been disallowed from unpacking any backpacks this week. Steph had commented on my Throwing It Back post last week that she remembered when her son no longer brought home Mother’s Day crafts from school, and that comment resurfaced in my brain after I realized that no one had panicked when I opened up backpacks this whole past week. Now, rationally, I know that all things eventually come to an end, and just like it would be very weird to get one of those “Tiny Handprints” poems from a nine-year-old, so too would it be strange to get a Mom-related acrostic poem written on a doily from a teenager. I knew such crafts would no longer come one day, I just didn’t realize that this Mother’s Day would be that day.

Landslide.

It was apparent that my hunch was correct on Sunday morning. Every year for Mother’s Day, my mom and I get pedicures and I go to the garden centre and buy whatever I like and call it my “Mother’s Day gift.” In actuality, I do not want a physical gift on Mother’s Day, just this nice little pedicure-and-plant-buying ritual. But I’ve always had some kind of craft to look at and admire on Mother’s Day, so it did feel a bit strange. I realized that I would never again receive a Mother’s Day craft. Never again is a very powerful concept.

I went to yoga and while I ujjayi breathed, I thought of all the moms in Fort Mac, and how the boys helped me plant the garden the day before, and how everything is wonderful and I really don’t even have room on my dressers for more crafts anyway, since I’ve been displaying most of them since I was given them and things are a little crowded with construction paper. I left the Shala smiling and with renewed perspective.

People, I came home and the boys and my husband had cleaned the entire house. They even scrubbed the baseboards, mopped the downstairs bathroom, and vacuumed the stairs.

Fuck the doily crafts, this was the best Mother’s Day gift ever.

I was completely surprised and frankly, elated. It came to me that motherhood is just one long string of eras, and I am out of the crafting era and into the “acts of service” era and this era is awesome. Not that I didn’t love the preschool teas…

tea

They were adorable. I enjoyed the “spa day” that Jake’s kindergarten teacher had devised, and I wore my bright-pink nail polish with pride, or something…

nailskindy nailskindy2

What I’m saying is I love this new era, I really do. The boys helped my husband make dinner and they all cleaned up and it was kind of a Mother’s Day fantasy come true, to be honest. I used to long for moments by myself, to have a cup of coffee without someone needing help in the bathroom and to make dinner without someone crying in the kitchen, I used to just long for moments where no one was touching me or needing something or talking to me.

And now I have it. I have whole pots of coffee in peace, unless someone desperately needs to know what Reverend Lovejoy’s wife’s name is, or someone wants to expound on their theory that Star Wars could be real, we really don’t know, the universe is so big. No one ever cries when I am trying to get dinner on the table and when the kids get home from school they just hang out and don’t need a thing from me. I’m going to Toronto for YMC-related things tomorrow and it’s really not a big deal. Things will keep on ticking without me; they might be more slightly more complicated, but our little world will keep on turning while I’m gone. I’ll be missed, but not in a oh my god, the universe just imploded kind of way.

I didn’t mean to get all maudlin, but suddenly I understand those irritating old people who would say things like “Enjoy them, it goes so fast” in the grocery store when one kid would be crying in the cart and the other would be pulling things off the shelf. I mean, I’m not going to turn into one of those people because comments like that are in the Top Ten Least Helpful Things To Say To A Mother, but I understand them. And if I went back in time I’d still long for a cup of coffee in peace, I’m sure.

Still.

So to all you mamas of little ones out there, you are doing a great job. Keep on keeping on. And to all you mamas of older kids out there, well, I get it now. It actually does go fast and we can’t stop time, so we better enjoy the ride while we are on it. In the meantime, I’m going to enjoy my very clean house, and pack for my trip tomorrow, and plan to talk about Star Wars and The Simpsons nonstop at the dinner table tonight. xo

Getting VD from naked yoga

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Yesterday my husband realized that he did NOT have another month’s worth of blood pressure pills in the hall cupboard, and he had exactly one pill left. I went to the Co-Op pharmacy to get refill his prescription, and on the way out I saw a display of “long-stemmed strawberries.” These strawberries were sold in regular clamshells, and they were $12.99 for a one-pound container. $12.99! There were one-pound containers of non-long-stemmed strawberries right beside them for $3.99, which seemed much more reasonable. Now, I love strawberries, and if someone presented me with a pound of them for Valentine’s Day I would be perfectly happy, but I’m not sure the long stems would be worth the extra $9. I guess you could do some kind of Pinterest-worthy bouquet with them or something, but it seems wasteful to me, considering the strawberries themselves looked exactly the same as the $3.99 ones, just with long green stems poking out.

Whatever floats your boat, right? On the radio yesterday I heard an advertisement to get a divorce for Valentine’s Day. “For Valentine’s Day, get what you’ve been wanting – a divorce! Only $700.” So I guess the Valentine’s market has really expanded to include everyone.

And while we are on the topic of inclusiveness, there is a yoga studio in Calgary that offers naked yoga – which I’m sure I’ve written about with horror before, my god, think of the MATS – and it is offering a Valentine’s Day special as well. Naked Couples Yoga. I find this even more horrifying than Naked Non-Couples Yoga. Then again, I’m not exactly a “let-it-all-hang-out” kind of girl; I don’t even like practicing in pants that are not tights or non-fitted tank tops, the thought of my own breasts not being completely constrained is extremely uncomfortable, let alone seeing a non-husband penis in downward dog. GOD. I just shuddered.

The other day, I saw a meme on Facebook that said “Can you think of a name that starts with O? 99% of people will fail!” Wait, what? How hard is that? I mean, there’s a whole O magazine devoted to Oprah, for one thing. For another thing, there are a LOT of names that start with O. Whoever comes up with these memes probably get a kick out of making up statistics about people. 99% of people will fail? At finding a name that starts with O? Or just in general – is the human race doomed to failure? Maybe, but I’m not sure a Facebook meme really has the empirical data to back that up.

Have a happy weekend, everyone. Don’t forget that I choo-choo-choose you to be my Valentine!

Bumper Stickers and Big News!

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It’s almost Valentine’s Day, and because there is no semi-holiday that goes by uncelebrated by sugar cookies, I spent some time this morning cutting out round cookies. Heart-shaped cookies have been deemed too embarrassing for words, but round cookies? With bright pink buttercream and heart-shaped sprinkles? Perfectly acceptable. I was getting ready to frost them when I realized I was almost out of powdered sugar, so I popped over to the grocery store and was almost sidetracked by this:

fundip

Fun Dip! They still make Fun Dip! I haven’t seen Fun Dip for decades! And this Fun Dip – it magically changes colours! I’m sure the child bringing in Fun Dip would be super-popular amongst peers, but perhaps less so amongst parents and teachers. I stuck with the cookies and they turned out nicely, even if a round cookie cutter seems to be an elusive item, necessitating the use of a small plastic cup instead.

heartcookies

Speaking of things unseen for decades, yesterday Mark and I were walking home from the library, where he had cleaned out the entire section on children’s Greek mythology reference books, and I had picked up a delightful little read entitled “Fishbowl.” Slight digression: if you have the chance to read “Fishbowl,” do, because it is just wonderful. A truly fun read.

Anyway, we were walking home and parked along one of the side streets was a van, covered in bumper stickers. We stopped to look because one of us noticed the sticker saying “My Other Car Is A Dino-Bot” and I immediately regretted our decision. Along with “Oral Sex: The Best Last-Minute Gift” was a bumper sticker that I hadn’t seen since the early Eighties, at best: “Grass, Gas, or Ass: Nobody Rides For Free.” The sad thing is that this bumper sticker was not an old one from the Seventies; it was obviously newly purchased and affixed to the back of the van. In other words, you can still, somewhere, purchase a Gas, Grass, or Ass: Nobody Rides For Free bumper sticker. And here I thought hitchhiking was a thing of the past. I’ve never hitchhiked, and I most likely never will, but if I did, I probably would NOT want to take a ride from the person driving that van, especially with all the not-so-subtle messages plastered all over the back, Dino-Bot notwithstanding. Anyone who watched Silence of the Lambs in their formative years would feel the same way, I’m sure. One moment you are taking a ride from a person who encourages prostitution in exchange for a lift to the next town, the next moment you are in a giant hole in the ground being forced to lube up so some sicko can make a skin suit out of you.

I mean, maybe the owner is perfectly normal and just likes distasteful bumper stickers, but why take the chance?

In any case, Mark and I stood in awkward silence for a moment before heading for home and resuming our discussion about the twelve labours of Hercules.

Completely unrelated to any of the above, I have big news! After nearly nine years of yoga practice, I have decided to take yoga teacher training. I’m pretty excited about it! With the kids getting older, the timing just seemed right, so in April I will be starting my 200 hour program. My goal is to work with people with pain and limited flexibility/ mobility, and perhaps seniors. It’s been a while since I’ve been in school, so I fear I might be a bit like one of those mature students who asks all the questions and discusses the role of Life Experience and its Real World Implications. I’m like Grandpa Simpson! But maybe a bit more stylish.

Clean all the things!

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How have your holidays been? Mine have been a lovely mix of sloth and good food, along with my usual post-Christmas frantic cleaning and reorganizing. All last week I hardly worked at all, and then I fell into the Christmas cheer. We visited with some of my husband’s family on Christmas Eve, and if they ever decide to go on a sunny vacation together, I’m thinking of tagging along because these people are FUN. Christmas Day we headed to my parents’ for a couple of days, which was lovely.

Usually my tree and decorations come down on Boxing Day, but since I was actually not home on Boxing Day, the annual CLEAN EVERYTHING fiesta waited until Sunday, when I had been home for approximately three minutes. I love Christmas and all its glorious sparkly decorations, but I also love that clean, uncluttered look too.

Barkley4

The house looked like this for a brief moment on Christmas morning, and then I started the cleaning process. My husband gave me the side-eye a little because I’m sure he thought I was going to start de-Christmassing, but no. Not on Christmas Day, no matter how tempting.

Yesterday I decided that just de-Christmassing wasn’t enough; I had to reorganize everything in the bathroom and hall cupboards. And honestly, it was pretty bad. There were a number of items I hadn’t used or gotten rid of: several shampoo bottles with 1/2 an inch of shampoo left in them, lip glosses that were discovered to be unflattering, and many bottles of expired medication. There was also a package of gigantic, extra-absorbent sanitary napkins that I had purchased for post-partum bleeding back in 2005, and then never used again, alongside a box of slim, light days tampons. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that no woman who has given birth vaginally is going to use slim, light days tampons. I think we can all admit that in those cases the feminine mystique takes a bit of a beating and those tampons are best left to others.

I also found a number of strange items in the hall cupboards, including a bottle of golden corn syrup. For one thing, I cannot remember ever buying corn syrup or even what I would have used it for. For another thing, it was far from golden; it was dark brown and sort of sludgy looking.

Today the big job was to reorganize my dresser – a big task, given that it was getting difficult to close the drawers properly. I was in the perfect mood to do it; if I didn’t LOVE an item, it went into the donation bag. At this rate I’m going to mow through the house by the time the kids go back to school. It’s a very satisfying process; I hope I don’t lose my ambition. NO HALF-MEASURES, NICOLE.

Speaking of binge-watching things, my husband and I have been watching Game of Thrones. He watched the whole thing last year, and I joined in around Season Four. Let me tell you, things make MUCH more sense when watched from the beginning. I was previously so confused and constantly texting my friend Hannah (HI HANNAH) questions about who was who, why was that guy like that, what’s with all the incest, and OMG ARE THOSE ZOMBIES? Finally, I understand – sort of.

I see your Elf on a Shelf, and I raise you a group of snowmen on the bathroom counter

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After a fairly warm fall/ early winter, the world is suddenly covered with a thick blanket of snow and very, very cold. It looks very pretty and of course the children are delighted with the festivity of fluffy snow a week before Christmas, but on Wednesday I had an early-morning spot on the news and I woke up to 10 cm of snow and traffic in a snarly mess. This happened the last time I was on the news, which filled me with slight foreboding. Fortunately, I got there safely and the spot went off without a hitch. However, I have been incorporating all the appetizers I made for the show into dinners since then, so as not to waste them. It’s filling my entire family with puzzlement. You know that you’re a rigid person when your husband is completely SHOCKED to discover tortilla wraps for dinner on a Wednesday, and tacos on a Thursday. “What next?” he asked last night as he warily filled a taco shell, “Are we not having pitas for dinner tomorrow?” He almost fell over when I told him no, we weren’t.

Today is the last day of school, and all pretence of academia is long gone. Speaking of which, I forgot to mention the added-insult-to-injury of Jake’s week-long field trip: each child was required to pay an extra $50 for the honour. $50 so that the kids could be bored out of their minds and learn nothing, with the only highlight being the indoor garden. OUTRAGE.

Anyway, it’s pajama day at school, and after many years of shunning pajama day, my children trudged through the snow with their flannel bottoms tucked into their boots. I’m not the biggest fan of it myself – but at least the kids will be comfortable as they watch movies and eat party treats. Mark is watching the Polar Express with his Grade 1/2 buddy class, which he says is lame, but okay for the buddies I GUESS.

It’s a tradition of mine to send festively-shaped sugar cookies to class for every special occasion: birthdays, Halloween, Valentine’s Day, and Christmas. I’ve been doing it so long that now the boys’ longtime classmates ask if I’m going to send cookies. Frankly, it makes me feel a bit like a rock star when I see them in the halls and they tell me that my cookies are superior to every other cookie they’ve ever had. I mean, you cannot hear that kind of compliment without it going to your head a little bit.

041

Between appetizers, cookies, and making peppermint bark and truffles for teacher gifts, it’s been a busy week in the kitchen. Main teachers also get gift cards, but I like to send chocolates to the office staff and the teachers who supervise the crossing guards. My kids are both crossing guards and the supervisory role is a stressful one, given the asshole way people drive through the crosswalks.

So the boys went loaded down with cookies, teacher gifts, and snowpants, since they are going to be sledding with friends after early dismissal this afternoon. And just to make my life even more awesome, they are at the age that I don’t have to stand in the snow and wait for them. I’m dropping off the sleds and then going back to my cozy house; they will sled and then WALK HOME, IT IS A CHRISTMAS MIRACLE. I mention this to give hope to all you mamas out there who are working up a sweat wrangling your children into winter gear, freezing to death watching them narrowly miss the brick walls of the school, and then managing both the tears when faceplants in the snow occur and sudden meltdowns because snow is in the mittens. One day soon your children will walk home when they are done, carrying their own sleds, with no supervision. IT IS GLORIOUS.

Another glorious thing: we got a Roomba. Someone was mentioning the other day how hard it is to really “wow” teens and tweens at Christmas. I mean, at a certain age they are just not going to be as excited getting a video game/ books/ shirts/ new gloves (all things my own children are receiving this year) as they were when a Thomas the Tank Engine table magically appeared in the basement. That’s part of the growing-up process UNLESS you decide to do something incredible like BUY A ROOMBA. We ran it in our carpeted basement this morning and two things occurred to me: a) our vacuum is clearly too old to be effective anymore because the filter needed cleaning twice, grosssssss, and b) watching a Roomba maneuver around furniture and exercise equipment was more fun than anyone could have imagined. We were all cheering the Roomba, giving it positive reinforcement (GREAT JOB, ROOMBA!), and projecting human feelings onto it (YOU’RE SO SMART, ROOMBA, WE ARE SO PROUD OF YOU!). No need for a late-in-life baby, we are all embracing the Roomba like the Christmas miracle that he is. Who knew we had an empty space in our hearts, filled only by a robotic vacuum cleaner?

Also filling empty spaces in our hearts is our tiny snowman collection. When I had a tiny light-less tree in my first apartment, I bought a set of tiny snowmen to decorate it. They were cheap, from Wal-mart, but very cute. Almost twenty years later, all their hooks have fallen off, but I put a handful of them on the bathroom counter to make showering and other bathroom activities super-festive.

Santa

One morning I finished my breakfast to see that my husband had rearranged all the snowmen, so that instead of the dull little groups of two or three I had them in the bathroom was transformed into a snowman hide-and-seek game.

hide and seek hiding snowman

And, like Donkey Kong, it was on. We have all been switching the snowmen to different vignettes and then seeing if anyone else can guess what they are doing. I admit, my ideas run towards the dull – a yoga class, a conga line, everyone in a circle singing Christmas carols – but the testosterone in the house has led to slightly non-Christmassy themes.

Younglings

Such as, Anakin brutally slaying the younglings so that his power, Herod-like, would be unchallenged.

The other day Jake said “I call the snowmen today!” and busily rearranged them. It was a bit later when I went in to see the initially startling result:

lightsaber

Before you express concerns that I have a Rosemary’s Baby kind of situation around here, it is a LIGHT SABER. Just a light saber. We are going to see The Force Awakens tomorrow, and excitement is through the roof and coming through extensively in our snowman-vignette game. Light saber. Not work of the devil.

Snap back to reality

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Oh, you guys, it is SO DARK. It’s still a week away from the shortest day of the year, and the sun rises at 8:32 and sets at 4:28. There has been low-lying cloud and fog, and the other day I went to pick the kids up from school at 3:30 and the streetlights had come on. On Thursday it got so dark AT NOON that my light-sensing outdoor lights went on. At NOON. I’m popping Vitamin D and listening to Michael Buble, Neil Diamond, and Elvis sing Christmas carols on repeat. I think it’s especially hitting me because a week ago we were in Florida, and I was feeling a bit amused seeing people wearing down jackets and gloves, at 24 degrees Celsius.

I feel like we’ve really hit the ground running, since our holiday. The kids have caught up on their schoolwork and were back at patrols and karate last week. I had volunteered to chaperone the last day of Jake’s class’ week-long field trip, which was Friday. Week-long field trip. I know. It was, we were told, a huge privilege to go on this field trip. Of hundreds of applicants, only a few were chosen, and Jake’s class was one of them. However, after discussing with the other parent volunteers, and then being on the trip itself, I can only say this: I think it would have been a bigger privilege NOT to go on the field trip.

I wasn’t sorry that Jake missed the first two days. According to my friend (HI REBECCA) who chaperoned one day, the kids had the privilege of sitting in on a school board trustee meeting. As an adult, I cannot imagine anything more boring, and I’m pretty informed on the school board’s policies. As a child, though? It seems like staring blankly at the wall for six hours would have been more interesting. I was just happy that I chaperoned on Friday, which was an early dismissal day. Something I thought I’d never say: the bus ride there was the best part. At least the kids were cheerfully singing Christmas carols for the whole time, and there was only one class so I didn’t have to share my seat with two children.

The vast majority of the field trip was spent at the Calgary Board of Education building downtown, and the woman running the program was not exactly someone who I thought excelled at working with children. We were ushered into a room that was completely white and grey, with absolutely no colour or artwork. The kids were given a big lecture on funding, and community collaboration, and then were given a small exercise to do. FUNDING and COMMUNITY COLLABORATION. I was dying of boredom, and I’m an economist. I felt deep sympathy for the children, who were then supposed to write a journal entry on what they’d learned this week. According to every student, the best part about the whole week was the one hour they spent touring an indoor garden and looking at a fish tank.

You know, there’s learning enrichment, and then there’s complete waste of time and resources.

Mark’s class has the privilege of a week-long field trip in January, but his is at the Arts Commons so hopefully it will be more interesting, or, at the very least, not a totally useless week.

Well, it’s the last week of school before the winter break, so I’m taking advantage of this time to get a lot of work and writing done. I want to spend the holidays with the kids watching Price is Right and holiday specials, maybe with a giant mug of coffee and Baileys. I have gingerbread men to bake and a gingerbread house to decorate, which I’d normally have done already, but I’m holding off so we have extra activities to do over the break. With a week off school before Christmas, I think a few extra activities will not be amiss.

By the way, if you’re feeling stressed out, I have a few links for you: How To Enjoy The Holidays Without Losing Your Mind and Avoid Holiday Stress and Put The Zen In Your Holidays. To that end, I’m not going to feel stressed that I haven’t – yet – written my usual Sears Catalogue post. It’s coming! It’s coming! I think. Have a happy Monday, everyone. xo

Rod Stewart performs Sound of Music favourites, and other reasons to live.

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This weekend I got so much done; in addition to all my usual things, I also made sugar cookie dough, gingerbread dough, gingersnaps, banana muffins, and squares. I cleaned the house and we put up the Christmas tree and decorations – no, it’s not too early! – and I was about to finish up addressing my cards when I suddenly started feeling very unwell. I was feeling so unwell that my husband commented on it. Are you okay? Because you don’t look okay. You look terrible.

I’d be insulted if I wasn’t so grateful that he noticed my plight. It turns out that I had suddenly come down with the virus that had the rest of the family down a week earlier: sore throat, tight chest, and fatigue.

Fatigue! Yesterday I felt like I was in a fog; I wandered around the house for five minutes trying to figure out what I needed to do. It turns out, I needed to put a load of laundry in, but the thought process to get there was so taxing I wasn’t sure I could make it. I actually napped, which I never do. Ninety minutes of napping, and then it took me several minutes to figure out how to use my vegetable peeler while I prepped dinner. I was, alarmingly, reminded of Still Alice. It’s just a cold, I’m not coming down with early onset Alzheimer’s…or am I? I thought this over and over until I forgot about it and stared blankly at the sink for a while.

Happily, I feel much better today. I shovelled the snow from the sidewalk and only felt a little bit like dying.

This whole weekend, while I was in festive production mode, I was listening to the Sirius Holly channel, that I mentioned previously. For the most part, it is delightful. I can easily hear multiple renditions of the same song in a three-hour time period, and I will sing along with all of them. I even enjoyed ROD STEWART singing My Favourite Things, which is one of the more bizarre sentences I have written. Me, rolling gingersnap dough in sugar: Brown paper packages tied up with string, these are…hey, this sounds like Rod Stewart. It IS Rod Stewart! That’s weird.

Until this weekend, I would have said that I enjoy all Christmas music immensely, with only one exception: Paul McCartney’s Simply Having A Wonderful Christmastime. That song, to me, is the festive equivalent of Might As Well Go For A Soda. I start to twitch like someone is scratching their nails down a chalkboard. Does anyone actually have chalkboards anymore? You know what I mean.

Anyway, I had always thought that was the worst ever Christmas song. I have a very high tolerance – nay, adoration – of cheesy Christmas songs such as Barry Manilow’s White Christmas or Neil Diamond’s Little Drummer Boy. But once that “Simply having…OH GOD MAKE IT STOP” gets in my head, I feel like I need some kind of medication/ alcohol to remedy the situation. However, from listening to Sirius Holly, I have discovered something even worse.

It’s called Christmas Wrapping.

It is the most tuneless song ever with the most insipid lyrics – and this is coming from someone who goes NUTS to hear Last Christmas by Wham! so I know a little something about insipid holiday lyrics – and it is six and a half minutes long. It also is played on Sirius Holly FREQUENTLY.

My weekend with Christmas Wrapping:

Me, the first time I hear it: Is this song still playing? Wow, it’s really long.

Me, the second time I hear it: Oh god, it’s that song again. What the hell is this song?

Me, the third time I hear it: What the hell? Why are they playing this again?

Me, the fourth time I hear it: THAT IS IT. I AM WRITING AN ANGRY LETTER TO SIRIUS. RIGHT AFTER I FINISH THIS GINGERBREAD.

Me, the fifth time I hear it: I’m losing the will to live.

Me, the sixth time I hear it: *changes channel*

So I’m a little slow. Clearly, I should have gone with step six in the first place. But then I might have missed Bruce Springsteen’s Baby Please Come Home, and that would have been tragic.