Category Archives: Fleeting Time

We’re all going to die

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Every morning when I drive home from my yoga practice, I see a sign that would be a balm for weary travelers. Travelodge: Your Room Is Waiting For You. What a nice slogan! Alas, it is meaningless, since the motel was demolished months ago, and now the sign advertises for an empty lot. It feels like there is some kind of symbolism there but I just cannot seem to make the leap.

Today I heard that the house featured on The Brady Bunch is up for sale in Los Angeles, and also that it is “one of the most photographed homes in America, with 30-50 visitors every day.” I guess we all have different interests, and the world is a rich tapestry, but still, that number surprises me. I am surprised that anyone at all visits it, but I must remind myself not to be close-minded. After all, I am a person who has a strong desire to see the Jungle Room at Graceland, and also the stained-glass peacocks.

Also, I do not think I have seen even one episode of The Brady Bunch.

We have been having such a beautiful summer, with great weather and lots of sunshine. I was writing down the date for one of my class sign-ins, and I had a small crisis when I realized that July was more than half over. The days are long but the years are short is something people say when you are home with little kids, but now it just seems like life moves pretty fast, if you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. (Thank you Ferris Bueller).

Speaking of life moving fast, I just finished reading this book:

This is a very silly title. We all have 100% chance of death; P=1. WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE.

Semantics, yes. But of course, the book isn’t about living eternally, or even Yoda-like, it’s about using nutrition to assist in the staving-off of premature-death-causing diseases. It is a very interesting book and written in a fairly compelling way, and for some of us who have been following plant-based diets for years, it’s a bit like preaching to the choir. I will say this though: the alarmist use of non-statistics is my least favourite part of the book, and that makes up a large part of this book. It’s quite misleading, and I say this even as a person who is plant-based. Statements like studies show that even one serving of egg per week can increase your chance of x disease by 30% are very misleading if you do not tell the reader what the original chance of x disease is. For example, if your current risk of, say, kidney cancer is 2%, and you increase your chance by 30%, then your new risk is 2.6%. Maybe it is the econometrician in me, but that kind of statement makes me crazy. Most people, I am sorry to say, do not have a particularly good understanding of statistics, and this kind of writing does not help. AND I AM SOMEONE WHO AGREES WITH THE WHOLE PREMISE OF THE BOOK.

The premise is decent, and I think that no matter if you eat an egg serving a week or not, we could all stand to increase our intake of fruits and vegetables, plant-based proteins, and flaxseed. My god, the author of this book is obsessed with flaxseed – that, and turmeric – so much so that you might wonder if he was being paid by Big Flaxseed. Or Big Turmeric. Well, I like and consume both of those things, so I guess I’m okay.

We go through a lot of fruit and vegetables in this house. I love vegetables and I have a big appetite for them; I personally can eat an entire head-and-a-half of roasted cauliflower at one sitting, and I do this weekly. I have been known to consume a full head of kale at a time, and once when I was preparing Sunday dinner my husband came into the kitchen and stared at me.

Mr: Nicole, no. NO. This is insane. No one can eat that much asparagus!

Me: Hold my purse.

All of which is to say that I eat a lot of produce personally, and so does the rest of my family. However, even for me reading the recommendations for the “Daily Dozen” was overwhelming. Like, I just don’t think I can fit all those things into my life. How much flaxseed can one person eat?

Well, as I said, it’s a good premise and eating more whole foods, fruits, and veggies are better than eating highly processed things of dubious nutritional value, if you can. It reminded me that I wanted to tell you about my favourite green smoothie, which is a really good way to get more leafy greens into your diet, if that’s something of interest.

Nicole’s Favourite Green Smoothie

I have one of these every single day, except when I am out of town and have no access to a blender. I usually have this at lunch, but I think most people would enjoy it more as a breakfast food. I, however, tend to have very little time for lunch, so this fits the bill. I use eight cups of spinach for this recipe, but I don’t recommend anyone new to green smoothies starting with that. Maybe start with ONE cup, then work your way up.

Someone once said to me, in a very unkind way, that they do not enjoy smoothies because they are not infants and prefer to chew their food. Hey, I like chewing food just fine. However, I usually have 10-15 minutes to eat lunch, and I just don’t think I could eat 8 cups of spinach in that amount of time. Plus, I LIKE this smoothie. I can chew food at the two other meals in a day. My jaw is not atrophying, believe me.

Anyway, here is the recipe!

8 cups baby spinach (this is a lot of spinach! I’m like Popeye. Start small and work your way up, or you will be completely grossed out.)

1 cup almond milk

2 tablespoons almond butter

1 frozen banana

a whole lot of cinnamon

The ingredients! Do NOT give me a hard time about the tetra-pak almond milk. Maybe when I have a lot more time in my life, I will make my own almond milk, but today is not that day. Note the red moose in the background – my older son made that in Industrial Arts class. It poops out gumballs! Although we have no gumballs so this is theoretical.

I’m strong to the finish ’cause I eats me spinach, I’m Popeye the Sailor Man.

Almond butter = food of the gods.

Mmmm. Liquified spinach. So, first blend the spinach with the almond milk and butter. THEN add the banana and cinnamon. Trust me on this. GET THE SPINACH BLENDED FIRST OR ALL WILL BE ASHES. I keep bananas individually frozen for this purpose, and I always break the banana into pieces before freezing. You don’t want to not do this, unless you want a blender tragedy, or even just unblended chunks of banana.

I have no idea how much cinnamon I add. I just shake it on until the top of the liquid is all covered, thickly. I like a lot of cinnamon. Hey, it’s anti-inflammatory!

This may not look appealing to you but it’s making me hungry.

So there you go! Even though every day we are one day nearer to dying, and I am on that slow journey to death just like everyone else, I swear that these green smoothies make me more energetic and healthy. Are you also a green smoothie lover? If you try this, let me know, I’m DYING to know what you think. Dying. Ha! xo

Letters From The Edge

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*cue Alice Cooper music*

What a weird week it has been; not really in a bad way, but in a what day is it again kind of way. In addition to the very weird half-day/ no school/ last day schedule, I had ten yoga classes to teach, and I spent much of the week reminding myself of the day. I swear I thought it was Wednesday twice and Friday three times, and now it IS Friday, so whee! School’s out for summer! As I write this it is 6:30 am and I have a cardio workout on the books and a class to teach but you can bet that when those things are finished there will be alcoholic drinks involved. Many alcoholic drinks. 

The weirdest part of the week was Wednesday, which was a PD day. Wednesday, the day before the last day of school. Doesn’t that strike anyone else as very weird? Why not just finish on the Wednesday, you might be asking, as I was. Well, it is in the past now, and let’s just keep moving.

Four years ago, my parents moved out of the city permanently, and they gave me a number of boxes that they had been keeping in storage for me, ever since I moved out of the house in 1998. I went through a couple of them and found some weird knitted childhood dolls, my old Care Bear (Cheer Bear!), a framed picture of young Elvis, some scrapbooks of the Royal Family, and, best of all, a letter from the Corey Hart Fan Club. Mostly, though, they were filled with junk that I recycled or trashed or – in the case of the weird knitted dolls – gave to my niece. I swear she liked them!

COME PLAY WITH THE BABY.

I did keep my Cheer Bear, for nostalgia’s sake.

*screams like a 1964 Beatles’ fan*

What I’m trying to say is that THESE were the childhood treasures I kept, which says something, I think. Something not great about my childhood treasures.

Anyway, once I had gone through two of those boxes – in 2014 – I got a little tired. I think maybe I was running a book fair, and it was almost Christmas, and so I thought I would deal with the other boxes later. I put them in my garage and promptly forgot about them. Well, I didn’t really forget about them, but years went by and they just became part of the garage landscape. I figured that they contained just more of the same, how shall l say this, unimportant things that were destined for the landfill. Sure, it was fun to imagine my husband’s reaction if I hung the Elvis picture above our marital bed, and sure, it was fun to read a mimeographed letter from Corey Hart about the Everything In My Heart video, but really. So years went by and I averted my gaze when I looked at the boxes. There just never seemed to be a good time to go through them, and also my husband mentioned that he hoped a mouse didn’t make its way in to live out its final moments; so on top of lazily not wanting to go through a box, I was concerned I would find a mouse corpse and subsequently would never stop screaming, until I myself followed in the mouse’s tiny footsteps.

This past weekend things came to a head. We need more garage space. My husband bought a lawnmower specifically for the boys; his lawnmower is a top-of-the-line, gigantic, self-propelled one that is absolutely impossible for anyone other than his muscle-bound self to use. Think about this: we have boys who are fourteen and almost thirteen, and my HUSBAND is mowing the lawn. This, I think you’ll agree, is tragic. Things are changing this summer, with the purchase of a much-smaller and not-self-propelled mower. We are now sauntering down Easy Street, people!

I say “we” but in reality, the number of times I’ve mowed a lawn can be counted on one hand.

In any case, with two lawn mowers, and space at a premium, I decided to finally go through the boxes in the garage. And let me tell you, it was amazing. They were chock-full of treasures: my childhood sticker album, with many scratch-and-sniffs, every Girl Guide badge I had earned, more Princess Diana scrapbooks, a box set of Sweet Valley High – expect some book reviews in the near future, what DID happen when Elizabeth broke the rules and rode on a motorcycle? Stay tuned – and this, from my candy-striping days:

More importantly, though, the boxes had stacks and stacks of letters. Apparently I had kept every letter ever written to me, and so I have letters from my grandma dating from 1984 to the late nineties, from camp friends, from pen pals, from far-flung cousins. And let me tell you, they are a hoot! Except for the ones from Grandma, almost every single letter is about a) the classes we liked, or, alternately, hated, b) boys we liked, or, alternately, broke up with, c) extra-curricular activities and the awards we gained from them. Sure, there was the occasional tidbit about things going on in the world, like activities pursued during summer/ Christmas holidays, or when my cousin/ pen pal from California wrote about an earthquake, but mainly it was “Are you still going out with X? Y and I broke up.” The letters were all written on stationary, usually embellished with teddy bears or hearts. It reminded me that Grandma gave me stationary for Christmas every year. Is that a hint, Grandma? If it was I guess I took it to heart, given all the letters.

There were also a number of notes from junior high friends, written surreptitiously during class time, exclusively written on foolscap. The theme of the letters was also largely boys, but also about how boring the class was and how mean our parents were.

It made me think a lot about how times have changed – I mean, letters? Who writes letters anymore? Now we just email, text, and – for us long-winded people – blog. It’s kind of sad; it was a little slice of my life, one that I had kind of forgotten about. I used to tie up the phone for hours, and spend time writing letters, and these days teenagers just text each other and like Instagram photos. Well, turn, turn, turn, and all that. I don’t want to be one of those In My Day people, but having those letters to read over has been really wonderful.

In any event, here we are at the long weekend, I hope you all enjoy it very much! xo

Fight the (flower) power

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Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to live in a non-volatile climate. What would it be like to know that spring and summer weather would stretch out, consistently, day after day? I suspect it would change my behaviour significantly. The past week we have had absolutely gorgeous, SUMMER temperatures, complete with sunshine and warm evenings, and all I can think of is this won’t last, carpe diem, CARPE DIEM. I have been spending every spare minute outside doing yard work and gardening and feeling somewhat resentful at having to come inside. The thing about Calgary is that this could end at any second; we could have snow any time now, enjoy this while it lasts!

The warm weather has made my garden suddenly explode with greenery; after this terrible winter it feels like a gift. My Mayday is apparently the Ferrari of trees, going from barely-there leaf buds to being in full bloom in less than 48 hours, a beautiful gift that is filling the yard with glorious scent.

Speaking of gifts, I hope your Mother’s Day was restful and lovely. Very early on Mother’s Day morning, my husband and I walked over to the Co-Op to buy hamburger buns for dinner, and there was a man with a baby in a bucket seat and a very small toddler, looking at the giant display of flowers and cupcakes set out for those last-minute shoppers. The toddler was very cute, suggesting the flowers that were PINK, DADDY, DESE FLOWERS ARE PINK AND PWETTY AND MOMMY WOULD YIKE THEM, AND SHE YIKES CHOCOLATE CUPCAKES THAT ARE PINK, DADDY. I smiled because it was very obvious that, in addition to the flowers and cupcakes, there was a mom at home who was receiving the gift of “sleeping in.” Throughout the day I continued to see men with small children walking around the neighbourhood and to the playground, giving Mom the gift of Time To Herself. Having been the grateful recipient of such gifts in the past, I felt a lot of joy for those women.

I have just finished reading Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom and I don’t think that I am exaggerating when I say it completely blew my mind. If you haven’t read it, it discusses women’s health issues in a very holistic way, but the author is also an OB-GYN and so it isn’t total hippie-dippie hoo-ha. More “complementary and preventative” than “alternative,” if you know what I’m saying. There is a great deal of discussion about honouring yourself and your body, treating your menstrual cycle in a sacred way – think “Red Tent” rather than “the curse” – and really acknowledging your feelings and moving on with your life, in order to achieve health and wellness. For example, instead of pushing through exhaustion and monthly stabbiness, acknowledge that you need time to rest and reflect; PMS symptoms are your body’s way of telling you to please slow down. Today’s patriarchal society rewards a stiff upper lip and being productive at all costs, but fight the patriarchy and rest when you need to!

And although I’m all about honouring my cycle and self-care – my whole life is one big self-care event these days, it seems – I am also a total hypocrite. I have been fighting a case of the sniffles since Monday and if you think I’ve slowed down, well, I haven’t. See above, re: warm and sunny weather. Yesterday I felt poorly enough to lie down for a few minutes, thinking I would have a nap. After lying in bed for five minutes I became too excited thinking about all my new plants I had purchased at the garden centre and so instead got up and planted twenty-five of them. Yes, twenty-five. In my defense, I knew that today would be rainy and I wanted to let them settle in with some good precipitation.

Maybe I should skip my cardio workout today, I said to my husband this morning while stanching the bleeding from my nose due to blowing it every five minutes or so. He looked at me silently for a moment, and then said You THINK? I guess that was my stab at Slowing Down and Resting. I am trying to treat myself in the same way I would treat a friend, with compassion, and yet I can’t help but think it’s just the sniffles, I think I can go on. Meanwhile I’m looking down the barrel of the neti pot and wondering what, exactly, constitutes an overdose of Advil Cold and Sinus.

Ah, but we are mere hours away from a glorious long weekend, two days away from a royal wedding, and there is sunshine in the forecast. Carpe diem, people, and also pass the Vitamin C.

I remember waiting for the school bus…

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Two days ago I decided to take an enormous leap of faith and wash my calf-length, super-warm parka. I put it in the downstairs closet, along with my Sorels, and I hope that I haven’t cursed us all. I did leave out my other giant, but shorter, parka just in case. It’s my birthday in a couple of days and I keep forgetting, because there is still so much snow and ice on the ground that it doesn’t feel like it’s as late in the year as it is. Don’t get me wrong; snow in April is nothing new, and neither is snow in May. The difference this year is that we still have snow on the ground that was there in October; winter snow, as opposed to spring snow, as my dad helpfully differentiated for me the other day.

Well, I finished Prairie Fires and I am gratified anew to a) not be a pioneer, b) not be the mother of a crazed Libertarian who destroys all relationships, and c) to live in the modern age. I am also gratified that my plumbing and running water issues have – knock on wood a thousand times – been resolved. As I mentioned, the very good-looking young plumber had fixed a lot of things but the water filter was leaking, which required a visit from the very specific Water Filter Guy. The last time the Water Filter Guy was here, said Guy was an older, kindly gentleman who has since retired and left his clients to a new, Startlingly Handsome Water Filter Guy. Seriously, people, I opened the door and wondered if I was on hidden camera.

I always find it interesting, the career trajectories of other people. Was Startlingly Handsome Water Filter Guy always such? No, he was once a high school basketball coach. My own career has changed so much over the years; I find it fascinating how people find themselves in different lines of work. Of course, often the trajectory is more pragmatic, more about paying the bills and flexible schedules and so forth, but still.

School bus drivers, for example. It’s a flexible schedule and probably not badly paid – I have no idea, really – but you would have to be a special kind of person to be able to be in a large motorized vehicle with dozens of insanely loud children every day. Every morning when I drop the kids off at school I see the line of empty buses at the end of the street, and beside one of them is a driver, having a smoke. He wears shorts every single day, no matter what the weather is, with a ball cap and a hoodie, hood up. As I watch him smoke, I think of Otto the bus driver on The Simpsons. The guy just dropped off a bus full of junior high students, he NEEDS that cigarette, people. Obviously it cannot wait, his nerves depend on it. And who can blame him? Not me.

Last week I volunteered on a field trip for the Grade Eight Environmental and Outdoor Education class. Often their field trips are – obviously – outdoor based, but this one was to the climbing wall, and so it seemed to be more up my alley. I am a fair weather volunteer, and the weather has not, as I MAY have mentioned, been fair. I stepped on the bus and did a double take: the bus driver looked EXACTLY like Kid Rock.

Hat, hair, facial hair, clothing, everything. It was really uncanny. I started to wonder if it WAS Kid Rock, and if I should ask him to turn the stereo up and roll the windows down but sadly, I did not. He was pretty calm with the mass chaos on the bus, the hooligan grade eights, and so I was a little disappointed that he wasn’t driving the return bus. Rather, it was an older lady who was the female version of this:

 

Which, frankly, is completely understandable. It is the exact feeling I get when I’m driving a minivan-full of boys around. Flexible schedule or not, it would be – in my opinion – a terrible job, navigating traffic, the noise level, driving a huge uncomfortable bus.

Volunteering for junior high field trips is very different from elementary ones. For one thing, the bus situation – despite all this – is much better. The elementary school used to have kids three to a seat, even in the later grades, which meant that the bus would be hot, crowded, and extremely smelly, grade five and six students not being known for their excellent personal hygiene. Junior high kids, thank god, wear deodorant and brush their teeth, for the most part, anyway. Secondly, the volunteer gig itself mostly involves just existing, since the kids don’t need help with anything at all. I think the extra parents are just there for insurance purposes, because there is literally nothing to do but stare at the kids for several hours.

I took a few pictures though:

That’s my boy! I don’t tend to be a worrier, but there was a moment when I saw him at the top of the wall, knowing that he was being belayed by another fourteen-year-old who had just learned how to belay twenty minutes prior…well. All was fine. It was like the moment I had in Huatulco, when we took a local boat tour and snorkeling trip. We spotted two whales and some dolphins, and the boat driver – the captain, I guess? – sped out towards them. I thought, here we are, off the coast of Mexico, in a nine-person boat, heading off into the Pacific Ocean with a giant sea mammal nearby that could theoretically capsize this tiny boat, and no one outside our group knows where we are right now…

Anyway, as we all say it doesn’t pay to worry about what MIGHT happen. All’s well that ends well, and least said, soonest mended as Ma Ingalls was known to say, although this is a blog. Least said, soonest mended does not seem to be my mantra.

The world is a magical sphere.

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Yesterday was Pi Day and I spent much of it thinking of the magic of mathematics and, by extension, the world. Just think about this – for every single circle in the world, every single one of them, if you divide the circumference by the diameter, you get pi. YOU GET PI EVERY TIME. Isn’t that just incredible? Life is beautiful, made up of so many magical moments, and we should never let a day go by without appreciating them. In eager anticipation of pi day, I made a strawberry daiquiri pie for Sunday dessert; this recipe, but I omitted the avocado and cut the coconut milk to one cup, and then I poured my homemade magic shell on top and let me tell you, it was a glorious celebration of the circle.

Speaking of glorious things and mathematical magic, my husband sent me what must be one of the sexiest texts a girl can get: he informed me that he will soon be able to collect PC Points at Esso. You know that feeling when someone just GETS you? That’s the feeling I had when I read that. For, dear reader, I have become completely obsessed with collecting PC Points and redeeming PC Points and making up my grocery list with PC Points in mind. One day I swept into the yoga studio and excitedly told the girl at the desk my main accomplishment that morning: getting 10,600 points IN ONE SHOP BUYING ONLY THINGS I NEEDED AND NOTHING FRIVOLOUS. She was duly impressed. It’s gotten to the point where I eagerly anticipate Thursday mornings, when I can load my new offers onto my app. More importantly, I have figured out the basic algorithm and can make my list with that in mind. For example, I can predict with 90% accuracy when a certain offer is going to pop up, and I shop accordingly.

Is anyone still reading this?

In case there is any confusion, I am not being paid by Loblaw’s or anything, this isn’t in any way sponsored, it’s just that whenever I’m not teaching yoga I’m grocery shopping or cooking. This is literally true. Having young teen boys who eat pretty much constantly, and being a person who likes to make everything from scratch, my life is entirely revolving around my yoga classes and going to the grocery store, which may explain why my main source of unhappiness in the world is due to grocery carts gone awry.

Slight digression: my younger son pointed out that we had quite a few blueberry-pomegranate juices in the pantry, commenting that they “must have been on sale!” For years I have been slowly turning into a female replica of my father, and now it appears that I am simultaneously turning into my mother.

Back to the point: life is beautiful, math is beautiful, and I’m trying very hard to just take the heavy snowfall event that is going on right now in stride. The snow had just started its slow melting process and now everything is back to square one; this is not atypical for Calgary, but it does feel like winter will never end and spring will never come and we will be stuck with snow drifts and treacherous roads until the end of time.

The first person to complain about the “heat” when it gets to be 25 degrees in Calgary is going to get stabbed.

Well, perhaps not literally stabbed. Maybe just stabbed with an angry glare, like the Care Bear Stare but with much more vitriol.

My childhood Cheer Bear! This is, generally, my spirit animal, except when thinking about snowfall warnings and grocery carts.

Last weekend I found myself at the mall – not to worry, I’m still on my One Year Shopping Challenge, unbelievably enough, with four and a half months to go and I have bought nary an item – but I wanted some compression socks for running. I did enjoy peeking at the window displays and looking at the young girls wandering around, young girls being my fashion barometer. It’s one thing to see items remembered from childhood back in style, but it is, frankly, quite another to see items worn in one’s twenties back in style. It reminds me of the fleeting nature of time; the nineties were actually NOT JUST YESTERDAY, PEOPLE. Crop tops are the thing now, and while I loved them in my step-aerobics youth, I do not feel a woman of my age can really wear them without looking, as they say, like mutton dressed as lamb. What a gross and deplorable saying, and yet, it can accurately describe the feeling I have when I mentally try on today’s styles. Pants with very high waists, distressed and ripped jeans, cropped tops, and the like – these were things I wore in university. I finished grad school twenty years ago this year, TWENTY YEARS. So it only makes sense that they are now on point again but still.

Well, my wardrobe these days basically consists of yoga wear, topped with a cozy sweater and finished off with warm boots. I rarely wear a bra anymore due to the handy shelf bras in yoga tanks, which is starting to feel like a slippery slope. But even my much-loved lululemon is reflecting the styles of the nineties. For one thing, they now sell what is called a Belt Bag but is, in actuality, a fanny pack. The day I wear a fanny pack is the day I die, but there you go. Also for sale: the scrunchie. The SCRUNCHIE. I did love a good scrunchie back in the day, but I don’t think it’s mine to revisit. It reminds me of the Sex and the City episode where Carrie criticizes her boyfriend for writing a novel featuring a woman wearing a scrunchie, which seems like a very specific detail for a man to write about.

Ack! I just browsed a fashion site and came across a photo of a young woman wearing a floral dress with ankle boots, which was half my wardrobe, back the nineties. I guess I’ll just go back to researching my wrinkle creams and I’ll tell you about my amazing vegetarian glucosamine supplements another day. xo

It’s December; what’s your Tree Decorating Personality?

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The other day my husband said that the month of November dragged and dragged and seemed to go on forever, and honestly, I felt like I couldn’t relate at all. November FLEW by for me, in that I keep thinking that it was just Halloween the other day, and now it’s December. I mean, I’ve been feeling festive for the past couple of weeks, as is my wont at this time of year, but I keep feeling like my life is a speeded-up cartoon of pages flying off a daily calendar.

On Wednesday I went to the post office to mail the Christmas parcel to my mother-and-sister-in-law, and as I walked through the parking lot I saw a man standing outside of the Tim Horton’s, having a cigarette. This would not be notable in the least, except that the man in question looked exactly like Santa Claus: he had a long, well-kept white beard, rosy cheeks, a generally round shape, and – this might be speculation on my part – a jolly demeanor. I wondered if he WAS the mall Santa Claus; although he wasn’t wearing a red suit, he was wearing a red t-shirt, and anyway it would be more than likely that he would change for his smoke break, so as to not disturb the young children who had just sat on his lap in the pretend North Pole in the mall. Nevertheless, I did wonder if he WAS the mall Santa, would children recognize him even without the suit, and if so, how would their parents explain this? Even Santa deserves a break, maybe, or Santa has a stressful job at this time of year. I thought about this all through the lineup at the post office, imagining this stranger, who had done nothing whatever to deserve this thought process, other than having a Santa-like appearance, was actually the real Santa, picturing his smoke breaks during toy-making supervision, and the elves smoking with him with their tiny elf-sized mugs of super-strong coffee, talking with a “HEY! I’m WALKING here!” New York accent. I thought about this until I got back to my car and then realized that I was letting my imagination run away with me, and speculation is just that, speculation, and most likely the fellow in question was not Santa in any shape or form, only a kind-looking, if hirsute, older gentleman.

Not that I’d begrudge Santa his smoke break – it would be tiring sitting there with screaming infants and parents trying to coax a smile out of their terrified toddlers, who intuitively know not to sit on a stranger’s lap and tell that stranger secrets for any amount of candy canes. Have you been a good girl this year? But a smoking Santa might be a little stinky for the kids.

Long story short, now is the time to visit the post office. The lineup was negligible and the clerks are not as downtrodden and exhausted as they will be three weeks from now.

What’s the gift-and-card-for-the-in-laws situation in your house? For what it’s worth, I take this task on myself. I know many people have a “your family, you do the gift” policy, but a) I find I’m probably more suited to shop for a seventy-five-year-old woman than my husband is, b) I have a much more flexible schedule, and c) broadly speaking, once two people are joined in holy matrimony those two people should – IDEALLY – consider the spouse’s family to be their own. Ideally. In any case, it’s all done and mailed now.

I am also the person in charge of holiday cards, for the very good reason that I am the only person who cares about holiday cards. I am the person who chooses the photo, the layout, and the inside message. I make sure to include “from Barkley too, woof!” as I do every year, and I write out and address each one. I do not let anyone near them – which, as I said, no one is really clamouring to help – because to say I’m particular about them is an understatement.

I mention this so you know that I am not judging the people involved in my next topic. I know we all have our things. Lately I have seen a lot of posts about women, exclusively women, who either a) redecorate their Christmas tree after their children decorate it, or b) do not let their children decorate the tree at all. No judgement here, but I cannot relate in the least. Decorating the tree is a full-on family affair in the Boyhouse and hoo boy, can you tell. I love it. I love our extremely eclectic collection of ornaments and I love to see the perfect arrangement of ornaments through my kids’ eyes. Every year I add one or two ornaments to our collection, something to remind me of the year that has passed, and so we have a lot of interesting trinkets; a tractor from when the boys were obsessed with John Deere, a beautiful ball with an Inukshut on it from 2010, a fat moose from the year I was pregnant with the oldest and was enormous.

Did you know that there is much spirited debate in the world about white versus coloured lights? I did not but never fear: our tree has a setting for both, and the lights oscillate between the two. See?

I love when the kids jam several ornaments on one branch; they do that because they think the ornaments want to be together, which melts my heart.

Clue – a gift from my parents – plus two homemade candy canes and, surprisingly, Superman.

A stormtrooper with Ben 10 and a few assorted Cars movie ornaments.

I bought this admittedly tacky Disney castle with Mickey Mouse last year, at Disney World. It reminds me of watching the fireworks show, and how wonderful and special that was. A dream is a wish your heart makes, when you’re fast asleep.

This came from Disneyland, back in 2011. The kids LOVED the Buzz Lightyear ride.

My mom had given the boys these ornaments when they were – as you may guess – four and five, and I love that they are together. Also: Scooby Doo and my marshmallow “Kiss the Cook.”

My mother-in-law gave me this bowl years ago. I keep it filled with driftwood, shells, and smooth rocks from trips my husband and I made to the West Coast, before kids. The vintage ornaments get added at Christmas, and they were also a gift from her. I love the 1960s feel of them.

My husband, bless his heart, spends at least eight hours putting up outdoor Christmas decorations. Not only do we have lights – white icicles and red bulbs – along with lighted deer, trees, gift boxes, a hippo, penguins, snowmen, a moose, and an entire candy cane lane – which he bought for me because I always wanted one – he also decorates our large Mayday tree with glittery ornaments.

Sadly, two of them detached from their hooks. I went to Walmart to buy Gorilla Glue, feeling like an I am Woman Hear Me Roar type. I went to the DIY section, giggling because DIY always reminds me of that line in The 40-Year-Old Virgin, “Do you like to Do It Yourself?” Anyway, there were many different kinds of Gorilla Glue but I chose wisely, I think. When I told my husband, expecting praise for doing what I would strongly consider a Blue Job, he nervously texted me to ask me to please wait until he got home before fixing the ornaments. I think he thought I would glue myself to the table, or perhaps glue my hands together or one hand to my face or something. Given my track record for fixing things, this was probably warranted.

My husband also strung lights on the garage so when I’m making dinner, I don’t have to stare out the window into the pitch-black abyss. It really brightens my mood. He also set the timer so that the lights come on just as I’m driving home from yoga in the wee hours of the morning, and it always makes me happy.

Happy December, my friends. I wish you a month of joy and festivity, and no fingers glued together. xo

Why do we have two Agent P? I don’t know, but I’m glad they’re together.

Tis the season to start shopping

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I know many of you loathe November with the fire of a thousand suns, and for those of you I offer you a big hug and also the not-really-news that it is already half over! It feels like it was just Halloween, just a day or two ago, and here we are, less than six weeks away from Christmas.

I officially finished my Christmas shopping yesterday; it’s the one task I like to accomplish early so as to not worry about the mall, or, more often, shipping. I will confess that the vast majority of my shopping is done online, because really, what could be easier? Click click click, and boxes show up on my doorstep. However, sometimes a trip to the mall is necessary, which is what I did last week, to pick up a few special gifts. It’s still early enough in the season that no one was road raging in the parking lot and the customer service people were not yet in the depths of despair; on that note, don’t forget to be nice to the people working customer service. It’s a hell of a job this time of year.

Digression: I have become obsessed – OBSESSED – with PC Points, to the point where I get really excited every week to view my new offers. Sometimes they are great – 200 points per dollar spent on cauliflower, 400 points for red wine vinegar – but often they are nothing I would ever buy, which is more disappointing to me than it probably should be. However, I am avidly collecting my points and, like my Type A personality might indicate, I try to be super-efficient and collect as many as possible while not going off my actual grocery list. It’s like a linear algebra equation!

Anyway, I was involved in a conversation regarding such things, along with in-store savings, and a woman I don’t really know said When a cashier says “you saved $25 today!” I say “No, I spent $200, YOU’RE WELCOME.” This person has clearly never worked customer service: a) cashiers usually have a script that they need to follow, in order to keep their jobs, and b) wow, why would you be so rude? I invite such people to spend one day working customer service; it’s no picnic. Too long, didn’t read, BE NICE, PEOPLE.

The past two weeks have felt weird and a bit hazy; I think it’s due to the time change and our sudden plunge into darkness. No, I know it’s theoretically the same amount of daylight, minus the several minutes of daylight we lose each day at this dark time of year, just shifted, but when the sun sets before five o’clock and it’s pitch black when I’m making dinner and I know there are still five weeks left before things start to get lighter, a little bit, well, it’s disconcerting.The last few days have been foggy and ice-crystally and the sky was the same greyish-white as the ground, and it was a bit gloomy. The hoar frost was pretty but that was the only visually redeeming quality.

Bringing a little bit of joy to the gloomy day was my afternoon spent finishing my shopping yesterday. No, I didn’t go to the mall, I visited my good friend who is an artisan and she makes the most beautiful malas and bracelets you have ever seen. She custom made a bracelet for someone on my Christmas list and I was just blown away by the craftsmanship and beauty of it, and all of her wares.

Gorgeous, right? She also has something called The Goddess Collection, and you can find her on Etsy right here. She’s a dear friend of mine and I’d love it if you’d check it out or let anyone who might be interested know about it.

The new Book Fair Lady at the elementary school (HI HAYDEE) had sent me a message about the fair going on right now; the first one without me since 2009! I was happy to hear that she answered “The posters are five dollars” several thousand times; the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Today was Parent-Teacher Conferences, and there was a book fair being held at the same time! The boys perused the offerings after the conferences and I spied this:

EACH. ONLY $5.00 EACH! We had this exact same sign in the elementary school and yet it did nothing to quell the steady stream of questions regarding the monetary value of each poster. However, once one gets to junior high, the comprehension skills must be more advanced; I did not hear any such queries during my short time at the fair.