Category Archives: Fleeting Time

The show is about NOTHING.

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Another book fair in the books! For those of you playing along at home, that was number fourteen, and it was by far the most successful book fair ever! We raised over $4700 for the library, home reading program, and English as a Learned Language program, which means that the total for THIS SCHOOL YEAR is $8200, far and beyond what our fundraising has been in the past. Yay for book fair! Now that I’m slowly coming to the final chapters of my years as Book Fair Lady, I’m starting to already feel nostalgic for it. The posters are five dollars, I said starting at 9:10 on the first day and then repeated that mantra many times over; this isn’t unusual, but it was unusual how unbothered I was by the question. Is this one hundred dollars? a child asked, holding up a highlighter shaped like a bottle of nail polish? No, I assured him, It’s one dollar.

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But it has two zeros at the end of it and that means one hundred! the child argued. Not wanting to get into a whole decimal point explanation with him, I sold him a pencil sharpener shaped like a fish.

I ran into a friend on the way into the book fair, and we laughed about the nail polish highlighters. But you can polish your nails with the highlighter! she joked, unwittingly foreshadowing the very first conversation I would have about those highlighters. How did she know?

Anyway, I’ve been feeling pretty good about the success about the fair, or I was until someone mentioned to me that it might be worthwhile to run another one, so we could have three a year. I stared blankly for a minute. Blink. Blink. I don’t think so…

In addition to the great excitement surrounding the book fair was Pink Shirt Day. I always, always vow to finally find or make a pink shirt for my kids, and I always, always forget until the day before, when it’s too late. Do your kids have Pink Shirt Day at school? It’s an anti-bullying movement sparked by a boy wearing a pink shirt. I feel that it’s a great thing to raise awareness about bullying – of course – but I have to tell you, it’s the bane of my existence. As I said, I never remember to buy/ make a pink shirt. I feel slightly weird about the whole thing, kids wearing their pink shirts with pride while I meanwhile know about certain girls pulling that emotional bullying stuff that only tween girls do so well. Also, one year one of my sons burst into tears at his lack of pink shirt; he assumed that everyone would consider him a bully for not having one. That year I had to pin a piece of pink paper on his shirt, frantically, because explanations were just not working. I also feel weird about the families who maybe cannot afford to buy a pink shirt that will go unworn for the remainder of the year. And yet, I don’t want to be the person who is NOT for Pink Shirt Day.

Our amazing principal saved the day, however, declaring that red and purple shirts were just as good as pink. Now that is some good leadership. I was relieved…until I discovered that for Jake, blue and green are the new black. What my drawer is for black sweaters, his is for blue and green waffle weave. We had to improvise with a karate t-shirt that had a red flag on it.

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Yesterday after school, Jake came out saying he couldn’t find one of his mittens. We do have spares at home, but these are not cheap mittens, and so I hustled him and Mark back to the school. We grabbed a door as someone was coming out just before it closed – the doors are locked for safety reasons – and as we waited for the kids to come out so we could go in, Mark leaned on the closed double door. The door snapped open with a child eager to get the funk out of school, smacking Mark directly in the face. Eeep! He had a huge lump on his forehead and has had a headache since then, but otherwise seems okay. I’m just happy it didn’t hit him in the nose, because it would have probably been broken. Small mercies, but with the help of Tylenol, an ice pack, and an episode of Seinfeld – which he currently professes to love – the swelling seemed to go down a bit.

Now, about this Seinfeld thing. I’ve seen every episode ever made, and I love that the kids are interested enough to watch with me. They think Kramer, Newman, and George are the funniest characters on TV – which they just might be. However, there are some adult themes (“It has come to my attention that you and the cleaning lady had sexual intercourse on your desk.”) that are slightly awkward, but the kids aren’t interested. Ew. If this is about sex, can you fast-forward? Yes. Yes I can.

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Happy weekend, everyone. I for one will be enjoying my wine, and also the new season of House of Cards! xo

The Horror

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Is it too early to put up the Christmas decorations? According to everyone in my house, YES IT IS ARE YOU INSANE? However, just as retailers used to be before they started putting up festive trees in July, the second the pumpkins go into the compost I start thinking about Christmas. Well, technically before that because my shopping is three-quarters done, and I did sneak out and buy a few new decorations when I was supposed to be buying a birthday card for my mother-in-law. I also have been planning my Sears Catalogue Wish Book post since the end of August, when I picked it up.

I’m getting ahead of myself – how was Halloween? On Thursday I was volunteering in Jake’s class to carve pumpkins. Since I had volunteered in Mark’s class the week before, I considered myself an expert. I brought in my husband’s drywall knife and was applauded by all since I cut all the pumpkin tops off in less than five minutes. Seriously, people. Drywall knives are the way of the Halloween future. There was no school on Friday and so the class was all dressed up, and I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a class full of costumed third and fourth graders excited about Halloween and pumpkins, but it wasn’t exactly a relaxing afternoon.

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Yesterday was a very long day. It was a PD day, and a PD day with the prospect of Trick or Treating is a long day indeed. I did what I could; I took the boys to Colour Me Mine, a pottery painting studio, and I watched the very excellent Phineas and Ferb movie, Night of the Living Pharmacists with them, but that still left a lot of day to kill, especially since my husband did not get home from work until almost six-thirty, when the children were pretty much insane with excitement. Since I am the not-fun parent, my husband takes the kids to Trick or Treat, while I stay at home to hand out candy. We had a record number of thirteen Trick or Treaters, including an adorable barely-walking pumpkin and two tiny Elsas. This also includes two girls from Mark’s class who asked if Mark was there or if he was Trick or Treating somewhere in the neighbourhood? Complete with giggles and batting eyelashes. We have reached a new era!

My parents have officially moved, and are now no longer ten minutes away from me. The upshot of this is that while they were cleaning and packing their old house, they came across four storage boxes with my name on it. I’ve been slowly going through them, and wondering what to do with the contents. The contents themselves are worthy of a whole series of posts; my husband has dubbed them “Nicole’s Childhood Boxes of Terror”. I don’t want to give too much away but here is a preview:

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The baby wants to cuddle.

How’s THAT for a scary Halloween post?

Royal Baby Watch Outweighs Snow In September

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It isn’t every morning you wake up to find out that you are on Royal Baby Watch! I love happy news, and a new baby – especially a sibling for the Prince of Cuteness – is wonderfully happy. The only thing that makes me a little misty is that last time I was on Royal Baby Watch, I was on Royal Baby Watch with my grandma. Grandma and I would have very involved, serious chats about pregnancy, maternity clothing, boys versus girls and how one carries them, and, after the birth, the question of the Royal Baby Name. I was strongly on Team George but Grandma thought Charles might be the name, and when the name was revealed I practically broke my leg running to the phone to call her. “GUESS WHAT GRANDMA IT’S GEORGE IT’S GEORGE IT’S GEORGE.”

It also isn’t every morning that you wake up to see this:

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It begins…

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Does white go with purple?

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The plants are not happy.

 

September 8 is a wee bit early for snow, even for Calgary, so the entire city is ensconced in a mixture of gloom and also that special kind of martyrdom that comes with snow in September. Sure, things might be bad where you are, but WE HAVE SNOW ON THE GROUND ON SEPTEMBER 8. Well, at least it gives us something to talk about. Remember when you were a bratty teenager and you couldn’t imagine why people would spend their precious time talking about something as pedestrian as the weather? It’s so boring, GOD, MOTHER, why do people always TALK ABOUT THE WEATHER. Complete with eye-rolling, I did pose this question to my long-suffering mother, once upon a time, who gently informed me that people discuss such topics because they affect us all, and sometimes talking about dull and trivial things – without eye-rolling – shows that you can behave in a socially-acceptable manner. Not every conversation has to be ground-breaking and/or profound.

Yesterday I took Barkley for what should have been a fifteen minute walk, which turned into a forty-five minute one due to three separate non-ground-breaking-nor-profound conversations with my neighbours. In addition to the weather we also talked about different dog breeds, Barkley’s excellent behaviour around children and his ability to be a guard dog, the fleeting nature of time, the public parking situation on our street, tomato plants, and how Barkley and the neighbour’s cats really are friends, deep down inside. This latter topic was met with some opposition by me, and possibly by Barkley, who was rearing up on his hind legs and lunging at said cat, who was temptingly dangled over him in my neighbour’s arms. I need offer no further comment, I think, except that possibly some people spend too much time thinking that Barkley is actually a stuffed animal, rather than a bloodthirsty hound in a fluffy and cute disguise.

On that topic, the walk was also a bit longer than necessary because I had to scold and coax poor Barkley, who found a) a dead bird on our front sidewalk, who had possibly knocked himself dead on the front window and who looked, to Barkley, like the most appetizing of snacks, and b) a dead squirrel who appeared to be sleeping peacefully on the sidewalk, but was, in fact, dead. Barkley seemed to think that this squirrel would be a more substantial but still very appetizing snack, and since I was so mean about the bird, he thought he should have it. It took some leash-pulling and coaxing to make our way around it. The cause of death was not obvious, but it isn’t every day you see a non-squashed squirrel just lying in the middle of the sidewalk. See what happens when you leave the nut tree, Scaredy Squirrel? BAD THINGS. Snow in September!

Roh-roh. That’s not a Scooby Snack.

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Yesterday I heard a story on the radio about a Great Dane who had gotten very sick. The owners thought that he had eaten something strange, and so took him to the vet, who performed exploratory surgery. The vet found in the dog’s stomach 43 socks. Happily, the dog is on the mend and is expected to make a full recovery, although one would hope that the owners will find a way to lock up the dirty laundry.

This image stayed with me all day, the image of a Scooby-Doo-like Great Dane furtively sneaking into the laundry bin and munching down every sock he could find. It was sort of like when Homer Simpson was caught on tape eating tulips. Gulp. Gulp. Gulp. Although, when I told Jake, he was not amused. “Who has 43 socks lying around?” he demanded. “Why did they keep buying new socks?” He has a point. One would think one would notice 43 missing socks, although who knows how long it took to eat so many. Or perhaps they had a very large family with lots of stray socks, but in any case Jake’s question did add a new angle to it. And a little child shall teach us.

Speaking of the little children, yesterday Mark applied to be a school patroller, and if that wasn’t “sunrise, sunset” enough, today Jake got his first phone call from a girl. So it begins!

Also beginning: the countdown to Christmas, apparently. I picked up my copy of the Sears Wish Book and I cannot wait to open it. I’ve been saving it for just the right moment, which I suspect is coming very soon, given that it’s Friday and I have a glass of wine in my hand. Expect many Sears Wish Book posts to come, dear reader.

One might think that I’m a little premature with the countdown to Christmas, but I might as well resign myself to the fact that winter is coming because next week’s forecast calls for snow. Snow! I thought I could hold off another week without buying Mark winter boots – his old ones fit Jake – but no, that cannot be. Today I took the boys to get boots, and I discovered that Mark is now in the last possible children’s size. Next year, it will be MEN’s boots. I will be shopping in the men’s section for him. I need offer no further comment.

Thank you to all who played along with my book game. I haven’t done a giveaway in a while so I decided to draw not one, not two, but three names: StephLove, smothermother, and Valerie Dunsmore – you are all winners! Your prizes will be sent to you as soon as possible (but probably not until later next week).

Happy Friday everyone! I’m throwing a baby shower tomorrow – a baby is in my circle! – and so I’ll be doing lots of baby snuggling and eating, which is a pretty nice way to spend a Saturday, don’t you think? xo

And the cat’s in the cradle and the silver spoon.

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Yesterday I was so melancholy; the summer was just so full of fun and sunshine and it felt, yesterday, like a plug had been pulled. Suddenly, it’s fall. Suddenly, it’s back to school. Suddenly, my children are all grown up with gangly limbs and giant teeth and floppy clown feet.

Of course, none of this was sudden at all. There’s been a slight chill in the air for the last ten days, the kids have had gangly limbs, giant teeth, and floppy clown feet for a while now, and as for back to school, well, it’s not like I didn’t know it was coming. Fortunately getting back into routine is exactly like riding a bike; we have all adjusted exactly as if summer never happened. The only one in our family who hasn’t adjusted is the dog, who is moping weirdly around the house and then flopping sadly on the floor. Or maybe I’m projecting here.

It’s gloomy and drizzly, and so I decided to work on a savoury new pasta sauce. I turned on the radio to eliminate the creepy silence in the house, and as the warm smells of garlic and mushrooms filled the kitchen, Landslide came on the radio. LANDSLIDE. On the first day of school, as I live and breathe. Maybe the radio programmers have a maudlin sense of humour, because right after that was Talking In Your Sleep by Gordon Lightfoot, and really, what could be more melancholy than that combination? At least it wasn’t Cat’s in the Cradle, I guess.

This past weekend we attended another wedding, and a few days prior to that I took the kids up to stay at my parents’ place at the lake. Rarely do I do a solo road trip with the kids; I don’t like highway driving as a rule, and the QEII is a crazy speedway at the best of times. I headed out Thursday around lunchtime, and the light drizzle quickly turned into pouring rain. Two hours of driving in pouring rain with almost no visibility pretty much did me in. By the time I arrived at my parents’ place – at which the sun was shining and there was no rain whatsoever – my hands hurt from white-knuckling the steering wheel and I felt like I was going to have a nervous breakdown. The kids, on the other hand, were completely oblivious to my plight, having donned their headphones to watch a movie in the back. I felt somewhat virtuous for shielding them from my driving angst, so immediately accepted a nice vodka cooler and a seat on the porch. I had to make the return trip all by myself a few days later – having left the kids with Grandma – and happily, it was completely uneventful.

So ends the summer, I guess. The first morning of Grade Four and Five seemed to go off without a hitch; everyone is happy with their teachers and their classes, so hopefully it’s a good omen for the year to come!

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The first time ever they have “dressed up” for school.

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Who’s excited? THIS GUY. Also the other guy.

The time that seemed as if it would never end seems as if it never was.

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There is exactly one week left of summer vacation, and I have to tell you, I’m a little glum about it. It’s been an epic summer, really, with great weather and lots of sunshine and water and happiness. And I know that I’ll be happy to get back into routine and I’ll be happy to be able to write more than a few words without hearing prolonged discussions about imaginary characters named “Dim Sum” or “Marmoy” – or worse, be asked to watch a YouTube video made by some guy named Blitzwinger who has apparently attained fame and fortune by making videos of himself playing video games and showing his audience cheat codes. I will, however, be unhappy to give up our lazy mornings, and I’m not exactly looking forward to my usual plethora of volunteer activities. But time marches on, and meanwhile I’ll be enjoying this last week of summer.

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Nature walk!

 

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At the top.

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Sunshine.

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We even saw deer, and my dog proved his intelligence by NOT running after them. Way to go, Barkley.

We had been planning this nature walk today, but I was considering just being completely lazy and staying home, for the very valid reason that I’m exhausted today. I am exhausted because of television. Yes. I considered not taking the kids and dog for a walk because I was too tired due to the television show I’ve been watching, just in case you wanted to feel better about your own life decisions.

The thing is, I’ve been watching a miniseries called Sensitive Skin, and I watched the final episode of the season last night. In case you don’t know, the show is about a fiftyish woman having a midlife crisis, and the episode I watched yesterday was so very sad. It was so sad I kept thinking about it, and couldn’t sleep, and then I started thinking about The Good Wife. I know, you’ve been watching The Good Wife for years, but I just started and I’m finding the whole backstory concept to be devastating. She had a perfect marriage and life and house and the whole time her husband was a horrible cheating bastard. So I lay awake last night, my mind flitting between the two shows, wondering why I don’t just stick with watching Downton Abbey and NYPD Blue DVD’s. Watching Sipowitz bust a perp by rolling down the blinds and threatening to beat him to death is much less disturbing, apparently.

My cousin posted a fun game on Facebook, wherein you post your favourite line from a book. Because I am a huge nerd, I immediately ran downstairs to my bookshelves and grabbed an armful of titles. Then I realized that I would completely hijack her account with my ramblings, so why not blog it? Is that not what a blog is for, like a really long Facebook status?

Here’s the thing: I don’t want to be left hanging. I’m going to expose myself to you via favourite quotes, and I hope you can leave your favourite quote(s) in the comments. Let’s make a game of it; I’ll do a random draw…next week? Winner gets a random prize! Prize to be determined, contest closes September 5. It’ll be fun!

Favourite Line Ever: I thought Jem and I would get grown but there wasn’t much else left for us to learn, except possibly algebra. (To Kill a Mockingbird)

Favourite Line About Career Aspirations: Move about after dinner, and meet acquaintance whose name I have forgotten, but connect with literature. I ask if he has published anything lately. He says that his work is not, and never can be, for publication. Thought passes through my mind to the effect that this attitude might with advantage be adopted by many others. (Diary of a Provincial Lady)

Favourite Romantic Line: “In vain I have struggled. It will not do. My feelings must not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.” (Pride and Prejudice)

Favourite Old-Timey Romantic Line: Taffy. He thinks about taffy. He thinks about how it would take his teeth out now, but he would eat it anyway, if it meant eating it with her. (Five People You Meet In Heaven)

Favourite Line About Motherhood That Goes With My Landslide-y Mood: I had to sleep close beside them at night and sit with them climbing around me in the daytime; my body felt bruised by their knees and elbows and feet. I did think then that it would be lovely to be a woman traveling alone, able to sit after a meal drinking coffee and looking out the window, able to go to the club car and have a drink…now all that time of care and confusion that seemed as if it would never end seems as if it never was. (The Spanish Lady)

SOB.

Your turn: is there a line from a book that affects you so that you close the book and stare at the wall?

Christmas came early!

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You probably know this already, but I pride myself on my organizational skills. Meal planning? Yes. To-do lists, long and short term? Yes. School and activity schedules? Yes. At the beginning of the year I take the Important Dates To Note handout from the school and I write each and every Important Date in my calendar, in a different colour, so that I can See At A Glance all the Important Dates for the year. Last September I wrote Last Day – Early Dismissal! on Thursday, June 26. At the time I thought it seemed late; generally the last day of classes is on a Wednesday, not a Thursday.

This morning I was chatting with a friend at the playground after drop-off and I casually mentioned the slog that is the last week of school. “Oh well,” I said cheerily, “Only three and a half days left to go!”. She looked at me strangely. “You mean two and a half,” she said, “Last day is Wednesday.” LO AND BEHOLD. The date had been changed on the website and it’s true, it’s TRUE. Wednesday is the last day and now I suddenly feel like Christmas came early this year.

Which is not to say I wasn’t a little unsettled by the reception of this new information. I scrambled to rearrange an appointment I had made for Wednesday afternoon and I rushed home to make the chocolates for teacher’s gifts. It was on my to-do list today anyway, but I felt like I was doing something totally last minute instead of being smugly early. I do better when I’m smugly early, I guess.

What are you doing/ did you do for teacher’s gifts this year, if anything? I normally give gift cards for the mall, along with some nice chocolates, and the kids make cards. Normally I buy the chocolates but this year the boys thought I should send some of my dark chocolate truffles, so that was my morning: rolling, dusting, and packing up three dozen little chocolates. I tied an ingredients list to the mason jar in an attempt to be Pinterest-y, but unfortunately I am unable to tie a decent bow to save my life. Hopefully the chocolates make up for my lack of artistic ability.

Our home phone is on the fritz, which isn’t generally a big issue – who uses land lines anymore anyway? – but this morning the telephone repairman was scheduled to come and fix it. It’s one of those rare Calgary days where it’s actually warm, and so today I am wearing a skirt and tank top. Making truffles is a bit of a messy business, and so I grabbed an apron and set to work. After I finished I made a pasta salad for dinner, then wandered off to do some work. I forgot to take off the apron and so I was a little startled when I looked at myself in the mirror:

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I’m just going to say that I’m actually pretty glad the telephone repairman never showed up, even though no one can call me still and I’m worried I’m missing some important reminder that only comes via land line. Because seriously, nothing says “Adult Filmstar Awaiting Arrival of Telephone Repairman” like wandering around your house wearing an apron that covers your entire outfit. Plus that’s the apron my mother gave me for Christmas, that she bought in a lingerie store. Oh, nothing, just wearing my lingerie apron while anxiously awaiting you, Telephone Repairman.

It was a pretty lovely weekend all-round; my husband and I separately decided that the constantly-aphid-infested golden ninebark in the back yard had to go. I looked at it and looked at it and phoned my husband to say that we needed to get rid of it – the golden-green leaves always looked sickly instead of interesting, and it was always full of aphids – and he was simultaneously preparing to tell ME that we should dig it out. It was a very O Henry moment. Or maybe the opposite of O Henry, since we were both happy at the end, I don’t know. In any case, it’s gone and in its place are some beautiful purple and pink annuals. An unexpected trip to the garden centre for more flowers is always a happy thing, I think. Other than gardening, we also had some friends over for dinner AND went to a friend’s 40th birthday party, which is more plans than we usually have in a month of weekends.

This also happened:

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Orange belts! I’m so proud of them!