Category Archives: Festivities

Summer, So Far

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Because of all the flood craziness around here, it feels like it’s been months since the kids were in school, when in reality it’s only been, officially, four days. It has been sunny, warm, and dry here which I am hoping will expedite the death of the billions of gargantuan mosquitoes in the city. The mosquito situation was crazy before the flooding; now they are epic. They seem to really love my bootiliciousness since they bite right through the seat and back pockets of my jeans. Forget the wisdom of wearing long sleeved shirts and pants to avoid getting bitten; these babies are so desperate for my apparently super succulent blood they go through sweaters and thick denim. My friend Nan mentioned that mosquitoes are attracted to dark colours – specifically black – which explains things somewhat. In other words, I need a whole new wardrobe. Watch for my new look, which will consist of pale pink items bought from Northern Reflections.

We headed up to my parents’ lakeside place this weekend, and on the way I saw a billboard advertising the World Plowing Championship. Before you think this is something pornographic, let me hasten to assure you that the World Plowing Championship involves tractors and other farm machinery. I immediately imagined something akin to the tractor scene in Footloose, involving non-Kevin-Bacon-like individuals. I wonder who are the winners of past World Plowing Championships and if that title is something that grants the holder of special privileges. Very special privileges, if you know what I’m talking about. I imagine this ratchets up the datability of the title holder in certain circles.

We had a fantastic weekend at my parents’, and now we are all somewhat petulant about being back in the city. My dad said something this weekend that struck me as fairly accurate, in terms of travelling with children: kids pretty much enjoy any holiday, wherever such holiday takes place. The majority of my childhood summers were spent a) visiting relatives in southeastern Saskatchewan, and b) attending Bible Camp. Neither of those things may sound all that thrilling, but I always looked forward to them with great anticipation and enjoyed them thoroughly. Spending my days with my cousins in the outdoor swimming pool that had myriad dead bugs floating in it, being evacuated due to severe prairie thunderstorms, were nothing except fun. Playing in the ice-cold lake and making crafts out of crosses and going to chapel morning and night, that was the height of summer camp enjoyment for me.

I think of my own lucky, lucky children and wonder what kind of summertime memories they will have. I wonder if they will remember the hours spent playing with a fishing rod with a stick tied to its line, christened “Sticky”, and how they made up a game and enormous backstory for humble Sticky. I wonder if they will remember how we spent our first day of summer vacation in the pool and I neglected to reapply sunscreen and they got their first (mild, I hasten to say) sunburns. I wonder if they will remember how I frantically sent their father out to drive into town to buy the cortisone cream that I forgot to pack when it was evident one of my children was having a weird allergic reaction to…something…and was covered with angry, raised red hives, and then their father got stuck in one of those severe prairie thunderstorms, unable to see the road in front of him, hail pelting the car. I wonder if they will remember the water gun fights, the trips to town with Grandma and Grandpa for ice cream, the small-town Rotary Club Canada Day celebrations. It occurred to me today that it might not be much longer that they want to play in those bouncy structured supervised by the glummest looking teenagers ever – in fact, one day perhaps they will be those downtrodden looking teenagers telling kids to slide down feet first. It’s hard to imagine.

Come to think of it, Superman is a douche

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There is this strange phenomenon I’ve noticed this winter: no matter what the weather is like at all other times of the day, it will surely become much, much worse at school pickup time. I’m not sure what it is about the 3:30-4:00 time slot, but lately it’s been nothing but gale force winds, snow, and icy cold. It’s a wee bit depressing to be standing out in the playground, bundled up like I actually am in the Arctic, watching kids walk backwards because the wind and snow in their faces is just too much.  Also, my finger-that-was-nearly-and-unknowingly-amputated-whilst-carrying-groceries is now doing this alarming thing where it spontaneously goes numb, and the cold is just not helping that. 

Today the sun came out – thank goodness – and although it’s still woolly mammoth cold and we have had snow on the ground since October and we probably will have snow on the ground for weeks to come, spring IS coming.  I think.  No, it is.  One day I will put on footwear that are not boots, and a top that is not a thick sweater layered over a long sleeved shirt, and I will wear a coat that is not big and puffy.  One day.  It’s coming.

Meanwhile, this morning Jake used the word “douchey” to describe Superman.  I was both impressed by his apt description and startled by the inappropriateness of a seven year old usage of the word.  We had a rather involved discussion about the time and place to use a word such as “douchey”; i.e., not at school.  It’s true, though.  Superman is a bit of a douche.  I’m more of a Batman girl myself.  Or Wolverine. 

When you live with a housefull of boys, these are things that actually come up in conversation on a semi-regular basis: the ranking and ordering of favourite superheroes and WHY, what foods lead to the most odorous of intestinal gas, which Pokemon character is the fastest and which is the strongest, and how double light sabers are far superior to regular light sabers.  And, apparently, how douchey Superman is.

One of my husband’s colleagues was in a Superman movie when he was a kid, and we recently watched a clip of it on youtube.  “Superman was here!” a woman exclaimed to Clark Kent, who looks totally different from Superman because he is wearing glasses and regular clothes.  Dude, at least all the other superheroes have some sort of mask on. 

Speaking of the Man of Steel, I’m in a bit of a swoony mood this week because Saturday is my wedding anniversary!  We will have been married for eleven years, and the traditional gift for eleven years of marriage is steel!  So I will be looking forward to the receipt of my new car, a la The Price is Right.  A NEW CAR!  Kidding, I will not be receiving a new car for my anniversary, but I may be receiving a piece of steel, if you know what I mean.

Some euphemisms just don’t work.

This week, in anticipation, I have been using my favourite set of dishtowels, because I am a total hausfrau who celebrates life events via dishtowel usage.  Remember this set I bought from anthropologie, that was likely meant for a wedding shower gift but I bought for myself because it’s so awesome?

This makes me as happy as a material item possibly can.  It makes me happy every time I look at it.  I am living happily ever after, I smile to myself as I polish an apple.  Not everything from anthropologie is so awesome though.  I get the catalogue in the mail, and this was on the very last page:

anthropologie.com

If you have been searching for that elusive blue toile romper, look no more!  It can be yours for only $168. 

anthropologie.com

Old lady comfort outfits, represent.  All this needs is a white cardigan with a tissue in the sleeve to complete the look.

Maybe I need an outfit like that.  I was looking swoonily at our wedding photos, and was struck, as I often am, at how very young I looked:

Eleven years later, and I look like this:

advanced style


Marriage has aged me!  Or maybe it’s all the talk about superhero douchery.

February and Friday Happiness

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It’s the first day of February!  January is over, for those of you who had a case of the January blues.  And here in Calgary, the weather today is unseasonably warm, the snow is melting, cars are filthy.  This warmth is in sharp contrast to earlier in the week, when it was minus 37 with windchill.  I went to pick the boys up at lunch – the boys who went to school wearing snowpants, parkas, neck warmers, hats, mitts, and boots – and was sadly disappointed with the sight of them sprinting across the icy playground to meet me, hatless and frozen.  Mark, in particular, cheerfully popped out of his school door wearing only his coat, and unzipped at that.  By the time he made it to the car he was blue, and I asked him what he was thinking.  “Well, the sun was shining,” he said, “So I thought it was warm out.”

The blue skies of Calgary in the winter can be deceiving.  There is a very special breed of Calgarian who ignores the information on the temperature gauge and instead dresses based on what the sky looks like.  You can see these purple legged people everywhere, running along the pathway system, wearing shorts despite the minus 20 temperatures.  It appears that I have birthed one of these people.

But hey, it’s Friday, it’s February, AND it’s a PD day, which I love.  I am still in my sweaty yoga clothes, the kids are in their jammies playing Poke Park on the Wii, and I’m trying to figure out what to do with the giant batch of vegan sour “cream” I made yesterday.  I was reminded after I made it why I avoid soy.  Possibly this can be used as an ingredient in some other recipe; it certainly cannot be used on its own because NASTY.  Oh well, either I salvage it or I forfeit $1.49 worth of soft tofu.  The consequences are not that dire.

I went shopping at Costco yesterday, which isn’t generally my favourite thing to do, but thanks to short lineups and the fact that only one person disparaged my choice of almond milk, it wasn’t too bad.  At least I wasn’t buying this:

 
Cocoa Pebbles!  I had no idea those were still in production.  I have never actually eaten these in my life: my mother, wise woman, did not believe in sugar cereals for children.  Once in a while we had Honey Nut Cheerios, but that was the extent of it.  Still, someone must be eating them.  At first the words “Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs” popped into my head, but then I realized that is advertising for a totally different cocoa-flavoured-cartoon-branded-cereal.
 
I’m not criticizing, mind you.  Critiquing people’s grocery choices is so not me.  Hell, for all I know this is a base for a Rice-Krispie-esque Square.  Perhaps a Valentine’s Day treat for that special someone.  Speaking of Valentine’s Day, I came across this on Facebook, and I wish I knew the creator:
 
 

These really leave those “Bee Mine” or “I Choo-Choo-Choose You” cards in the dust.  The dust, I say!  Quit Stalin, I shall say to my husband.  And he will shake his head at me, brow furrowed, probably wondering why his wife is such a nutcase.

For example, this morning I was scrolling through news headlines and saw “Ed Koch Died In The Closet.”  The first – the very first – thought that went through my head was how did he die in a closet?  Did he fall into the closet, and did no one find him?  Poor guy.  Then I read the article.  OH.  Light bulb.  I took that for a sign I needed more coffee. 

Then, to top off my nuttiness, I realized that there is a whole folder of messages in my Facebook account that I didn’t know was there!  A sweet note from a woman at the Yoga Shala, from OCTOBER that I had obviously never replied to since I didn’t know it was there.  Rude!  Also in that folder, this classy note from an unknown stranger:

Hello, I am Oscar. I am 45 year old and i am italian live California. I came across your profile and it would be my pleasure if we can be close friends…

Is this how people meet people these days?  It creeped me out – possibly unfairly.  I mean, maybe Oscar just needs a friend.  A CLOSE friend.  Anyone want to be Oscar’s friend?  Anyone?

You’re going down, bitch.

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Well hello, my friends.  I hope you have been making merry in the past few days.  It has been so frigidly cold here, but I’m kind of glad – it gives me an excuse to be extremely lazy and slothful.  Kids in their jammies into the afternoon?  Well, why not?  We’re not going anywhere in this weather, certainly.  I myself have been oscillating between frantic bursts of activity and the inability to rouse myself off the couch, watching episode after episode of, un-festively enough, Breaking Bad. 
 
Yesterday my husband left the house very early to purchase suits, ties, and dress shirts at Boxing Day prices.  He came home two and a half hours later to a house completely devoid of Christmas decorations.  It’s called Boxing Day for a reason, around here anyway.  On December 24th I idly thought that I would keep the decorations up until the weekend at least; by 8:30 a.m. on the 26th I was sprinting up and down the stairs with boxes, cleaning all flat surfaces obsessively, fueled by a pot of non-boozy coffee.  A therapist would have a field day with me and my clutter obsession.  I couldn’t control the thousands of Lego pieces in various stages of building.  I couldn’t control the piles and piles of chocolate and candy boxes festively and happily adorning my countertops.  But dammit, I could take down the tree and all the decorations.  Tree, you’re going down, bitch.
 
After all, four solid weeks of 24-hour-a-day festive spirit is probably good enough.  Now that the house is clean, I am happily sinking into holiday sloth, reading my new pile of books and having heart palpitations during Netflix episodes of Breaking Bad while the children build Lego and play Wii and laugh hysterically about the board game that my brother gave them, “Mr. Bacon’s Big Adventure”, wherein the worst thing that happens is that the bacon slice-shaped game pieces get sent to “Vegan Alley”.
 
The dog, though.  The dog.  Just when he had resigned himself to having a tree in the living room, he seemed to have a doggy nervous breakdown as I packed the ornaments back in their boxes.  He followed me around sadly, worrisomely.  The despair he felt when the living room was being put back to rights was nothing compared to Christmas morning despair, though.  Even the doggy beef jerky I bought him did not make up for the Christmas morning paper chaos.  The poor, long suffering dog.  He couldn’t bring himself to step on the discarded piles of wrapping paper, yet he couldn’t stop moving either.   
  
 



WHAT’S HAPPENING?  IS IT THE APOCALYPSE?

Meanwhile, I am enjoying the winter break with the kids, contemplating the annual chocolate dilemma – which is better: gorging with abandon, or making them last by eating them at a conservative rate? – playing Just Dance on the Wii and immodestly announcing to the world that I am awesome at the California Gurrls routine, and cycling through all my new pajamas:

 
SNOOPY!  Not pictured: the Miss Piggy motif pajamas, and the pink ones with hearts. 
 
How has your holiday season been so far?  Is your tree still up or should we split the therapist fees?  Did you receive some nice gifts?  Tell me all.  xoxo

Nicole’s Favourite Things: Holiday Edition, part 2

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Part 2 is finally here!  As is winter break; the kids are off school, it’s minus a billion outside, and I have nowhere to be and nothing particular that needs to get done, so I’m drinking Bailey’s and coffee and listening to Christmas carols.  Festive!  Without further ado, I present the random things I love about the holidays.

Nicole’s Favourite Things – Holiday Loving Edition

Booze

So, as I mentioned only a couple of sentences ago, I am drinking Bailey’s and coffee.  When else is having an alcoholic beverage at eight in the morning socially acceptable?  IT’S THE HOLIDAYS.  Bailey’s and coffee is my second-favourite holiday drink, the first being red wine.  It’s red, therefore festive.  Back in the day, my old roommate and I used to drink hot chocolate and Bailey’s, which is also nice, but significantly higher in calories and lower in caffeine zing.  Coffee it is!  I like having this with my mother, who drinks her coffee black and the Bailey’s ON THE SIDE.  She is the only person in the world that I know of who does this.  I’m old-school, glugging it right into my coffee.  Hence the somewhat randomness of this post.

Family Togetherness

Oh, hahaha!  I just thought of Christmas Vacation “Hallelujah, holy shit!  Where’s the Tylenol?”  But honestly, now that my kids are older and are at school all day, I miss them.  It’s fun having them home even if they talk my ear off about their pretend restaurant and what would I order if I was there, and if I ate meat, what kind of meat would it be?  Also, would I like a side order of cilantro?  And did I know that (something something something I’ve tuned this out) King Boo (something something) Yoshi in (somewhere something) Mario Kart? 

The other day I went to buy some dog food in the strip mall near my house, the parking lot of which is terrifying.  I always feel like I take my life in my hands whenever I venture into that parking lot: so many seniors blindly and without reflexes driving their gigantic boats of cars, mixed with super-impatient university students blazing past them.  It’s QUITE unnerving.  Anyway, I stopped in at the nearby drugstore after buying dog food, and there I witnessed perhaps the most entertaining elderly mother/ adult daughter argument ever.  The elderly mother was very loud and belligerent, and the daughter was trying in vain to shush her.  At one point, she shouted “Goddamn it, Susan, stop pushing a tree on me.  I don’t want a goddamn tree!”  “Ssssh, Mom.”  “I mean it, I don’t want a goddamn tree!” 

Oh, family togetherness for the holidays.  This brings me to the next point:

The Tree and Ornaments

We have a fake tree, because of various allergies in our house, and so the tree goes up December 1st or earlier.  It looks like Christmas threw up on it, and I love it:





The boys have their favourite ornaments.  Mark likes the Joy one, with the snowmen.  Sweetly enough, this is the ornament I purchased the year he was a baby, on his first Christmas!  Jake loves the purple sparkly reindeer, among many, many others (notice the Ben 10 one below it).  He likes to have all his favourites close together on the tree. 

That little tiny creche is one of my favourites.  I also bought that cute little gingerbread lady this year.  The tiny snowman in a Santa suit is left over from a set I bought with my roommate – of hot chocolate and Bailey’s fame.  When we left the apartment we shared, I got custody of the little snowmen.

This little set of penguins is cute.  They fit together like matryoshka dolls.  The boys set them up, and Mark put the baby in the middle because, as he said, “Babies like to be with their moms.”  Aw.  My heart exploded.

Years ago, my mother-in-law gave me this old glass bowl with feet.  It sits on my end table year round, with ocean-smooth rocks, seashells, and drifwood in it.  At Christmas, I put in some old ornaments from my husband’s childhood, also given me by my mother-in-law.

 
 
When I graduated from university, I took a trip to Mexico with a couple of girlfriends.  While shopping one day, I found these little nativity clay figures.  The little barn came later, from somewhere that I don’t recall.  But setting up the creche is a fun tradition in our house, especially since the kids have named the sheep and cows and like to play with them.  One of the sheep is named Mo, I don’t know what the others are called.  Oh wait, let me ask the boys.  Okay, the others are Eely and Blimblimblim.  What?  Aren’t all livestock named Blimblimblim?  It’s as common as Spot the Dog or Bessie the Cow.
 
 

Since our tree has a finite number of branches, but my ability to buy new ornaments each year is infinite, some end up in otherwise merely decorative vases.  Note the pine cones, those were collected years ago from my in-laws’ place.

Look at these cute little snowmen!  Even though the girl one is missing buttons, it brings me back to the days when we were starry-eyed newlyweds, instead of the staid old married couple we are now.  Kidding!  We still grope each other in public.

The bathroom – destination for broken ornaments everywhere.  More of those little snowmen!

I put a bow on our medicine cabinet, and my husband was not a fan.  Why?  No one knows.

Christmas Music

It’s no secret I’m a huge fan of such slutty festive favourites such as Santa Baby and Baby, It’s Cold Outside.  But did you know I pretty much love all Christmas music?  The exception being Simply Having A Wonderful Christmastime.  Even thinking of this song makes me stabby.  Last year I acquired Michael Buble’s Christmas album, and it is seriously fabulous.  I could listen to it all day long, and lately I have been.  It has the cutest male version of Santa Baby.  “Slip a Rolex under the tree.”

I also love playing holiday music on the piano.  I’ve had that Rudolph song book – which is completely falling apart – since I was maybe 12.  I still love it.

Food

Food!  I love festive munchies.  My mom makes something that used to be called butterhorns, but my husband started calling them honey buns, and Jake started calling them funny buns.  Semantics, people.  A rose by any other name, etc.  This is my favourite treat and I only eat them at Christmas.  I also love my mom’s chocolate Yule log, for which I am going to eschew my non-dairy thing.  I must have Yule log!  Sadly, I am facing my first Christmas without cheese.  I’m not sure what I will do to compensate for this: maybe lots of mixed nuts and bits and bites?  I don’t know, and at this point I’ve had enough Bailey’s and coffee that I really don’t care.  Food, what?  MOAR BAILEY’S PLZ.

So tell me, dear reader, what are your holiday favourites?  What do you love best about this time of year?  Tell Nicole everything.  xoxo

Pajama Jeans, Moose Mugs, and Strange Viruses

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Probably because I had So Much To Do and Remember with regards to Christmas, various school spirit days, the casino fundraiser, and other random things happening this week, I got terribly sick on Sunday.  That will teach me!  I had a strange virus that presented as severe abdominal pain and a fever, and also narcolepsy.  I was awake for perhaps four hours total on Sunday, and those “awake” hours had me lying on the couch, dozing, or crying.  My sole accomplishment was showering and putting on fresh pajamas.  Yesterday, with my husband going to work and me becoming, as usual, the Sole Responsible Adult in the house, I woke up with the hopes of just being able to do the bare minimum, i.e., making sure the kids got to school and back, and making sure they had food. 

It turns out when you set the bar really, really low, you will be amazed at even the minutest accomplishments.  I was so impressed with myself for showering and putting on what Lululemon euphemistically calls “Dance Pants”, but what are actually sweatpants, rather than pajamas that I felt like maybe I could conquor the world.  Sweatpants, or dance pants, are a step up from pajamas, even if they don’t feel any different.  I combined the sweatpants with fuzzy slippers, a long sleeved thermal t-shirt, and an enormous sweater my mother-in-law knitted for me twelve years ago.  What I lacked in style and attractiveness I gained in coziness.  Fueled by my immense accomplishment of showering and dressing, I further roused myself to do a load of laundry, and on investigation of the freezer and its lack of frozen meals, I even made my super-simple pasta sauce.  I’M KING OF THE WORLD!  Then I lay down on the couch to rest, and here’s a question: have you ever tried to watch television during the day?  It’s terrible.  I hoped for at least an episode of The Price Is Right, but no such luck.  No Plinko for me.  Thanks to my husband, who is a sports fan and so Needs Access To Many Different Stations, we have a couple hundred channels, all of which are completely useless to me.  I ended up watching an episode of MASH and falling asleep.  That BJ Honeycutt sure is dreamy.

Today I feel almost totally normal.  I even donned jeans today, albeit my oldest, softest, most broken in pair of boot cuts.  A huge step up from “dance pants”.  On days like today, I kind of wished I had Pajama Jeans, though.  Have you seen the advertisements for Pajama Jeans?  About a month ago, my husband was out of town and I was on the couch, alone with my wine.  I saw this commercial for Pajama Jeans and I became somewhat fascinated with the concept.  Jeans…that feel like pajamas!  Actually, I think they already have those: they are called maternity jeans.  I had a pair of maternity jeans that saw me through massive weight fluctuations, and that I continued to wear for a few months post partum.  They were below-the-belly style, with a giant elastic waistband, and I loved them dearly.  Here I am wearing them, and let’s just keep in mind that this is a full three months before I was actually due with Mark:

 

Three months!  I actually wore those jeans to the hospital three months later:


Not only did they last me through that pregnancy, but I wore them while pregnant and postpartum with Jake as well:

 
 
Those were some amazing jeans.  It makes me think that the Pajama Jean concept is just a rip-off of maternity jeans because hoo boy, those babies were comfortable. 
 
Anyway.  I’m feeling much better, at this rate maybe I’ll even step up to skinny jeans tomorrow.  On the bright side, it’s not the worst thing in the world to lose a few pounds before Christmas, right?  One week to go before I gorge on my mom’s chocolate Yule log.  Heh.  Yule log.  That reminds me of Christmas Vacation: “I don’t have a log.”  Which brings me to this brilliant website, featuring MOOSE MUGS:
 
 
I would buy an entire set of these for my sister-in-law if they weren’t so expensive.  $151 for a set of eight, plus shipping?  Robbery!  The thought is there, though, and that’s what counts, right? 

I’m singing! And I’m in the post office. And I’m SINGING!

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Hey, what has two thumbs and just made it in and out of the post office in less than five minutes?  THIS GIRL.  I had to mail a package to my in-laws – because I’m such a fabulous daughter-in-law – and I was psyching myself up for total mayhem and trauma.  I was even ready to start singing Christmas carols loudly, in the manner of Buddy the Elf, in order to make the post office much less of a “go postal” kind of place.  But – and share this with your friends! – it appears that 1:00 pm is the greatest time to mail things.  I guess the elderly are all having their lunches and/or naps at that time.  There was only me and one other person, a younger fellow who I witnessed almost being run over by a car in the parking lot as the driver backed out of his spot with considerable, and inappropriate, speed.  The whole thing vaguely reminded me of a story my mother-in-law once told me about her beauty parlor; an elderly woman drove at full speed right into the beauty parlor, her Lincoln and the accompanying driven-through wall debris surrounded by screaming old ladies sitting with their curlers in those old-fashioned hair dryers.  When questioned about the accident, the elderly woman said that she thought she had put the car in reverse, which didn’t quite explain why she had the pedal to the metal, but in any case no one was seriously injured, by some kind of beauty parlor miracle.

But!  Parcels are mailed, no one actually got run over in the parking lot (cue music: Grandma got run over by a reindeer), a miss is as good as a mile, and here it is, only two weeks until Christmas Eve.  Squee!  The kids had a three day weekend since parent/teacher interviews were on Friday, and so we spent a great deal of time with gingerbread and icing.

I decorated the vast majority of gingerbread people myself, because it took the kids forever just to decorate one single cookie.  What they lacked in speed and efficiency they made up for in creativity and detail.  Here are Jake’s cookies:

The rest were promptly eaten. 


Hey, it takes a lot of strength to put icing on half an inch thick, am I right?  Here are Mark’s:

 
 
 
Once the gingerbread people were made, it was high time to get them a home, and so began our annual fugly gingerbread house creation.     
 
 
He’s so excited.  He just can’t hide it.  He’s about to lose control and I think he likes it.  As always, our gingerbread house is just the right mix of whimsy and what-the-fuck-happened-here? 
 
 
A melted Frosty the Snowman!  A gargantuan purple window!  Random candies mixed with “Merry Christmas” messages!
 
 
 
So, it was a lovely weekend, marred only a little by the vast number of people calling me to cancel or change their shifts at our giant casino fundraiser next week (please pass the sedatives) and the fact that Jake’s seatmate had the stomach flu yesterday and is IN SCHOOL TODAY (pass the booze to wash those sedatives down with, and also some sanitizer).  Hoo boy, I had to take some deep breaths just from writing that.  Focus on the gingerbread, Nicole.  Focus on the gingerbread.