Category Archives: Flower Power

You’re also never fully dressed without eight pounds of clothing.

Posted on by

On Monday it warmed up all the way to minus 17, so I carpe diemed the hell out of that and took the dog for a walk. Poor fluffster, it’s been a while since he’s had a proper walk, and it probably will be a while before he gets a proper walk, because two minutes into it I started considering what kind of fashion statement wearing a balaclava would make. On the plus side, I wouldn’t feel like I would die by face-freezing; on the minus side, it would totally ruin my makeup. I eventually abandoned the idea; vanity, as usual, winning out over practicality.

The winter has been so long and so cold that I have entirely lost perspective about the weather. A few people have mentioned that it’s “March” and so it should be “springlike already” which filled me with bemusement. Isn’t March still winter? Isn’t it always this cold? I truly cannot remember what “other seasons” are like. It has come to the point that I apparently think, with all honesty, that it is always this cold and it will never get warm, forever and ever, amen. I met up with an elderly German man at the off-leash park, who told me that he has been in this city for fifty-eight years and he can only remember three other winters that were like this. Well, I guess that proves me wrong. I shall not cross the friendly elderly German man. I expect he knows what he’s about.

Someone just reminded me that Daylight Savings Time starts this weekend. I need offer no further comment.

Ah, but resistance is futile, isn’t it? We cannot change the weather and – unfortunately for all involved – we cannot change the mandate for Daylight Savings Time. No – really, we can’t. Lord knows I’ve tried, if complaining and rabble rousing on this blog counts as “trying”. ENOUGH OF THE BELLYACHING, as my long-suffering mother would say, possibly in response to some kind of teenage angst or similar, as I moped around the house in my Depeche Mode concert t-shirt.

There are some people who claim that winter is their very favourite season, and while I applaud anyone hardy enough to fully enjoy the season’s frigid splendors, I really have a hard time understanding. I want to understand, but I cannot. I understand fall lovers: the leaves and crisp air, the promise of Christmas around the corner. I understand spring lovers: the sprigs of green, the buds on the trees, the mild air and freshness. Of course I understand summer lovers, being one myself: the ease of getting dressed in the morning, the warmth and unscheduled days. However, I shall try to understand the winter people by remembering all the lovely things I enjoy about our 6-8-month-long winters. I toyed with the idea of making a Nicole’s Favourite Things post, but then I remembered that these things are not exactly my favourite. The Nicole’s Favourite Things posts cannot contain lies!

Nicole’s Not-Favourite-But-They’re-Okay Things, Frigid Winter Edition

1) Since it’s too cold for the kids to play outside, I haven’t been standing in the playground, shivering, for an hour after school.

2) Since it’s too cold to do much of anything, I am super productive in the housewifely arts. I am kicking ass and taking names, if by “kicking ass and taking names” you mean “accomplishing a lot of domestic tasks in record time”. Yesterday I had baked a banana bread and washed the floors before 8:00 am.

3) Inspired by Allison I tackled the boys’ sock/underwear/pajama drawers today. They haven’t closed properly in months. Mark’s drawer was more in need of reorganization than actual purging, but Jake’s was full of treasures: four newborn infant hats, a bib, socks that had a Transformers motif, circa 2010, two pairs of size five pajamas, and three pairs of Hot Wheels underwear, possibly from his kindergarten year. Tomorrow we tackle the t-shirt drawers!

4) Baking in this weather makes the house feel warm and cozy; it also smells terrific and as an added bonus, I can leave the oven door slightly ajar after the baked goods are done and warm my frozen purple hands over it, making me feel like Laura Ingalls coming in from twisting hay, but without the starvation and chamber pots. My hands are chapped just like hers, and I bought a pretty new fig-and-shea-butter cream for them. You all know how I love a new beauty product.

5) Aubergine is THE hot new colour this year, and although I don’t see myself wearing it, my hands are naturally on-trend!

6) I love the look of long sweaters, tall boots, and skinny jeans. Not only is it a saucy look, but long sweaters also nicely conceal the muffin top resultant from indulging in so much baking.

7) There’s no need to worry about sunscreen!

8) I do like a good bowl of soup, which I don’t bother with in the summer. Unless of course it’s a typical Calgary summer with chill temperatures. Soup: the all-season gustatory pleasure of my hometown.

9) Walking while wearing my heavy winter boots is akin to walking with 1980s-style ankle weights. It’s like I’m having a retro workout every day!

10) When the sun is out it’s actually really pretty. Not as pretty as, say, green grass and flowers, but pretty.

Barkley3

Barkley doesn’t mind the cold. He’s furry!

In the spirit of keeping one’s expectations low so one will not be disappointed, I’ve been avoiding the weather forecast. However, I keep hearing that warmer weather is coming “soon” and I’m holding on to that “soon” like it’s the key to the universe’s secrets. SOON. Soon it will get warmer. I don’t know what “soon” means but maybe if I channel my inner Wilson Phillips and my inner invincible summer, I can hold on for one more day. Don’t you know, don’t you know things can change, things can go my way if I HOOOOLLLLD on for ONE MORE DAY.

One Size Fits All

Posted on by

For those of you who follow such things, the federal budget contained an intention to legislate an end to the price gap between goods sold in the US and Canada. It’s about time! In this day and age I find it ridiculous to find an online price that’s 30% higher on Canadian websites compared with the same item, from the same corporation, in the US. If this goes through, however, it will be the end of an era.

When I was growing up, the thing to do was cross border shop. I clearly recall driving down to Montana, or sometimes even Washington, to buy back to school clothes. Things were significantly cheaper in the US at that time, and the dollar was about par, and so even with travel costs it was a better deal to shop “across the line”. Not only that but the US was home to many stores and brands that were just not available in Canada. My husband recalls trips down to Washington in the 1970s when he would happily partake in A&W Root Beer, which was not sold in Canada, even though there were A&W restaurants. For me, the item that was shrouded in mystery was the Twinkie.

Twinkies and Hostess Cupcakes were not sold in Canada when I was a kid, but I knew all about them from Saturday morning cartoons and advertisements in Archie comics. They looked amazing and delicious and I clearly recall the first time my mother bought them, on a shopping trip to the States. The anticipation! The excitement! The…anticlimatic feeling when I bit into it and it was just a weird spongy thing with weird cream on the inside. How disappointing. The cupcakes, I thought, were better on account that they had a nice chocolate coating on them, but the Day of the Twinkie Reckoning was the day I realized that not everything lives up to your dreams. When the world never seems to be living up to your dreams, it’s time you started finding out what everything is all about.

A pivotal moment in my life.

The Great Twinkie Incident Of My Childhood did not, however, cure me of coveting exotic items not for sale in Canada, specifically those found in a little chain you might have heard of: Victoria’s Secret. Four years ago, when I finally decided I was ready to travel with the children, we flew to Palm Desert to visit my snowbird parents.

PalmSprings

This photo has nothing to do with the story. It’s just my favourite from that trip. The boys had just gotten off the plane and were amazed to see flowers! and grass! in February! WHAT KIND OF MAGICAL PLACE IS THIS? And look at their little shoes.

 

That trip, my mother and I ditched the kids with my dad and husband, and went shopping. We went to Victoria’s Secret which was everything I had dreamed of, and more. The selection of bras! The gigantic comfortable change rooms complete with disposable panties and t-shirts to test out the bras! The businesslike salesgirls walking around in their black clothing with tape measures around their necks! Prior to this I had always done my bra fitting at the Bay, with older Eastern European women sharply admonishing the fit of my current bras. You are vearing ze vrong bra! Look at zis! Zis is terrible. Terrible fit. You need different. But these girls were gentle and sweet and very earnest in their suggestions. Maybe the Dream Angel? I don’t THINK you’d like the Bombshell.

The best part about that shopping trip, other than all the underwear I brought home, was that it was actually Valentine’s Day when my mom and I were shopping. Have you ever been to Victoria’s Secret on Valentine’s Day? It’s pretty entertaining. There were literally dozens of men, some of them wandering around wide eyed, some standing motionless and overwhelmed in the middle of the store, but most of them lined up to purchase gift cards. Those men were no fools. There are too many (literal) booby traps in buying lingerie as a gift. There are just too many ways that can go badly; gift cards are probably the safest way to go.

So I was happy to cross-border shop for sexy and good-fitting bras and panties, until the magical happened – a store opened up in my city! It opened to huge fanfare but I still didn’t visit it very often, because it was in location very inconvenient to me. But then! To much less fanfare and women walking around with angel wings, a store opened up NOT FIVE MINUTES AWAY FROM ME. Hurray! I received a coupon in the mail for $10 off a bra and off I went.

It was the same great shopping experience, with the same earnest salesgirls. When I got to the counter with my Dream Angel, the cashier asked if I would like the free Valentine’s Day thong panty. I’m not made of stone, OF COURSE I wanted the free Valentine’s Day thong panty. I chose hot pink, as being something exotic and unusual for me, and the girl started to wrap it in tissue. Wait, I said, What size is that? The girl smiled at me kindly and said the thongs were one size fits all. The bees are doing what now? A one size fits all THONG PANTY?

Since then I’ve found out that Hanky Panky – home to, apparently, the world’s most comfortable thong – also sells their thongs as a one size fits all, and I have to say, I cannot wrap my head around this phenomenon. How is it possible? What kind of miracle fabric is this? I can understand how a caftan at Sears can be one size fits all – “fitting” not being synonymous with “looking the same” – but a thong panty? I just cannot understand. I need the physics explained to me.

And yet I got home and tried on the one size fits all thong, and it was the most comfortable pair of underwear I have ever worn. My mind is blown. There are a lot of things I do understand: advanced calculus, visual basic coding, economics, but this is the most mind-bending concept of them all. One size fits all thong underwear. It feels like NASA had a part in it.

A peek inside my house, or the snowball effect of cleaning.

Posted on by

You know when you have one of those days where you wake up totally normal, and you seem totally normal, and you go to do a little housecleaning like a normal person – bathroom cleaning here, a little dusting there, ooh, maybe should sweep the floor – and then suddenly you become an obsessive cleaning machine who starts rearranging the children’s shelving units amd scouring bootracks and the mudroom floor on your hands and knees? I had one of those days yesterday. But look how great Mark’s shelves look:

It feels like I should have taken a “before” picture just to illustrate the impact. The impact is immense! I was worried that Mark was going to be a future star of one of those hoarding reality shows, but it turns out he has little to no emotional attachment to anything obtained prior to age seven. He was just too lazy to purge craft items, Kinder surprises, and strange Lego creations from said era. The number of dried out, unused miniature Play-Doh containers obtained from years of trick-or-treating at earnest households was enormous. I felt gloomy as I chipped out the Play-Doh to recycle the tiny containers like the earnest hausfrau I am.

I really should have taken a “before” photo because prior to this rearranging all of these were on the floor:

 
It was getting a little hard to sweep around all that Lego, and I was especially worried I would break something and have to fix it, and as we all know, building Lego is not my forte. I had to fix something off of Jake’s Palpatine’s Arrest and I nearly had a nervous breakdown over it. It seemed, at the time, like so much was on the line, besides putting on a movable door.
 
 

There’s Jake’s collection, including the giant Muk-Muk-Atron that is the colourful creation in the background, made yesterday with the discovery in Mark’s room of a basketful of smaller creations, made years ago and then forgotten.

In the interest of sibling fairness, here is a photo of Jake’s fairly neat shelves. Note that his room is painted orange and blue. Home decor note: orange is a bitch to paint.

Besides obsessively cleaning, I did some gardening and the boys played in the sprinkler. I’ve got some pretty blooms happening right now:

This is the daylily that, like love, will go on. About twelve years ago my husband accidentally sprayed it with weed killer, seven years ago we paved over the flower bed with stamped concrete, and somehow it has grown into a four foot long patch of daylilies with dozens of blooms. Lazarus in flower form, if you will. Isn’t it pretty?

My much-loved and pampered clematis, which is blooming and filling up the entire trellis.

Summer breeze, makes me feel fine. Most of the other flowers are done their blooming, with the exception of the annuals, of course, and the blue sage and yarrow which apparently NEVER stop blooming. The leaves on my front Mayday are starting to turn, already. I’m starting to feel a bit glum that summer is almost gone (cue Doors music) and that the kids are back to school in twelve – TWELVE – days. Once they’re back I’m going to be thrilled to have a quiet house in which to get ‘er dun, but I’m going to miss those crazy kids and their constant chatter about Animal Jam and Star Wars.

****************************************************

The winner of the giveaway was Kat! Congratulations Kat, and thanks everybody for playing along! The next giveaway will be…whenever I think of one!

Nicole’s Favourite Things: Summer Loving Had Me A Blast Edition

Posted on by

My roses are blooming, and that is not a euphemism of any kind.

Well, maybe it’s a bit of a euphemism. I came across this hilarious piece about ludicrous things said by yoga teachers, and thank goodness none of them have ever been said to me, because “Let your anus blossom” is something no one should hear, ever.

Do I look like a flower? A blossoming one?

When I was a kid, I loved the book Eight Cousins by Louisa May Alcott, and the follow up book, Rose in Bloom. I still love it – it’s a charming picture of a privileged 19th century New England family – except there is one teensy onion in the ointment, a wedding between two first cousins. Ew. Still, I like to gloss over that part in my head. Lalalala. I can’t hear you!

This is probably a strange segue into Nicole’s Favourite Things – Summer Edition. Incest! Blossoming anuses! Let’s move on!

Nicole’s Favourite Things: Summer Edition

For those of you new to the Boy House, I like to periodically talk about some of my favourite things, things that are making me feel happy these days. This is not sponsored and I have not received anything free for writing these posts – I’m just sharing the love for things I think are fabulous.

My Garden

We had a tree taken out this year, and in its place my husband planted grass seeds. I’ve been carefully watering the little patch, which I refer to as “his grass”. It’s “his grass” and “my flowers” and every year I dig out a little more of “his grass” to make room for “my flowers”.

The rose bush that I planted a few years ago is now covered in blooms, and is very popular with my neighbour’s bees:

Bzzzzz….look at those bees go! My neighbour’s bees are also responsible for the most delicious honey I have ever tasted.

I know I should pull it out, but I find it charming how this one sprig of yarrow has found its way into the blue sage.

Colour Me Beautiful

This may shock and stun some of you, but I’m trying to add colour to my wardrobe. Colour! To my wardrobe! And not just to keep the mosquitoes away – most of the radioactive mosquitoes in Calgary seem to have died off, happily – but because I find I get a startling number of compliments when I wear colours. I guess I’m a whore for compliments, but I have to think maybe they are on to something. Don’t get me wrong; black is still my go-to, but I’m trying here, people. I’m trying.

Yes, this is a recent picture. Sweater, jeans, scarf. Summer in Calgary!

Beauty Products

I’ve recently discovered Organix hair products, and I’m in love. My hair – my overprocessed, heat styled, sad sack hair – really loves the Coconut Milk and Biotin and Collagen lines. I highly recommend them if you have a close relationship with hair colour and dryers, and also if you like sitting out in the sun with no hat on.

 
I’ve also recently discovered L’oreal Colour Riche lipstick in Sienna, and may I suggest it for anyone looking for a nice daytime neutral?
 
 
 
 Here’s me having a good hair day due to Organix, and also wearing L’Oreal Colour Riche in Sienna! Wait. It’s kind of depressing to have all these sweater shots. Here’s one from today – I’m wearing a tank top because the temperature is over 20 degrees, yayyyyy!
 
 
 Also using Organix and wearing my new BFF lipstick.
 
 
I tried to duckface just like all the young girls are doing these days, and it’s immediately apparent that a) I’m not a young girl, b) duckface is unflattering and makes me look like a 50 year old smoker, and c) I also strangely look like I have a moustache. Which I don’t. Immediately after taking this photo I ran to the bathroom armed with tweezers just to be sure.
 
This is supposed to be about my favourite things! Not about my very unattractive duckface. Moving along.
 
Summer Food
 
It’s berry season! Well, I guess it’s berry season all the time somewhere in the world, but currently it’s semi-local berry season. Hooray! I’ve been eating giant bowlfuls of strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, and blackberries every day for weeks. I also like to use them as dessert garnishes, on top of waffles, pancakes, and this amazing coconut French toast, and with lemon mini-cakes and coconut whipped cream. I’m also loving the summery excuse of “heat” to just have salad for dinner, which is my favourite. Check out my recipes for pasta salad, quinoa salad, and Greek salad here.
 
Because I’m not ALL about shameless self-promotion, let me tell you about Dinner With Julie’s Cinnamon Bun Pancakes. I made these the other day even though they are not vegan and are really more of a delicious dessert, and they were absolutely amazing. I had to cut down on the sugar due to my husband (he’s sweet enough! Awww.) and still they were incredible. Try them, you’ll love them. If you love cinnamon buns, that is. If not, this probably isn’t the recipe for you.
 
So tell me, lovelies, what are your favourite things about summer? xoxo
 


So stabby.

Posted on by

I feel like I must be mere minutes away from the start of my ladies’ holiday, given my current state of stabbiness.  It is a good thing for the world that I am not walking around with a knife tied to a broomstick, a la Peggy OIsen, elsewise everyone I encounter today would find themselves impaled.

I won’t go into enormous ranting details, except to say that I am going to be chaperoning a field trip to the museum tomorrow, under duress.  This is in addition to volunteering for Jake’s in-class field trip on Friday, and also in addition to the approximately one hundred hours I have spent volunteering this school year.  I understand that not everyone can volunteer, not everyone has the resources to volunteer, but dammit, do I have to volunteer for everything?  I mostly feel put-upon about the field trip, given that I hate – HATE – going on field trips, being responsible for groups of children that are not mine, and riding on the deplorable school bus.  Well, there’s nothing for it except to lay in a supply of Advil and start my ujjayi breathing now, and to impotently shake my fist at the world at the thought of spending the day with seventy seven-to-nine-year-olds. 

Whew, just writing that made me think longingly of a bottle of wine.

There are lots and lots of happy things in my life, however, and so I will go through them now, so as not to become a bitter old woman who runs people over at the Co-Op with her cart, and complains viciously of slow service and the price of butter.

1) My girls’ night away was fantastic, even if my husband has dubbed it the “world’s lamest girls’ night ever” because we went to see a display of the late Princess Diana’s dresses.  What, it was awesome.  Also we had some good food, good wine, and went hot tubbing, during which activity we were apparently checked out by men twenty years younger than us.  I say apparently because I tend to be oblivious when it comes to these situations, and was only informed of it later, but I always welcome the chance to feel like a chaste Mrs. Robinson.

2) Chalking this up under the “even filial love is blind” category, I was watching The Avengers with Jake and he told me I look JUST LIKE Black Widow, who is played by Scarlett Johansson.  JUST LIKE HER.  There ARE undeniable similarities: we both have red hair and we both wear all black.  However. On a related note: Jake can have any dessert he wants this week.

3) After our poor fireblighted tree was taken down, we were left with a stump and the contact information for “The Stump Doctor”.  The Stump Doctor came last night and ground up our stump.  I don’t know why, but just saying The Stump Doctor gives me a fit of the giggles.  Thank you, Stump Doctor, for grinding my stump.

4) Despite my husband’s assertions that I bought too many bedding plants, I managed to plant them all in an attractive manner.  This occurred between rainstorms, so I’m happy that I don’t need to “water until established”.

5) One very, very kind person told me that my hair reminded her of an old Finesse commercial, and since I have, shall we say “issues” about my hair, this was a very welcome compliment.  It also reminded me of the shampoo line called Gee Your Hair Smells Terrific.  Remember that?  Man, I wish I had some.

 

 
 
Just looking at that makes me feel much less stabby.  Hardly stabby at all, actually!  I feel much less like this and much more like this.  IT’S MY JOB.

Dogs and flowers and not much else.

Posted on by

Did you have a nice long weekend?  Despite our original plans falling through, we managed to have a lovely one.  We spent a night at my parents’ cabin – the “cabin” that is three times the size of my house and has twice as many bathrooms, which is my idea of camping – and played in the garden a lot.  My husband has been trying to get action shots of Barkley to make me a “Barkley calendar”, but so far the shots have been a bit blurry:

 
 


Besides “camping”, I’ve been in a frenzy of gardening and yard work over the past couple of days.  I didn’t get enough plants on my first trip to the garden centre:

Such a teeny cartful!  I headed out yesterday to stock up and also to enjoy that feeling of youth that only can be attained by being the youngest person in a place by thirty years.  I had to make TWO trips into the store, and it’s lucky I drive a minivan:


But even so one of the containers had to ride shotgun.

I came home eager to get started, but just as I pulled into the garage, our arbourist pulled up, chainsaw in hand.  Our beautiful old hawthorn tree had contracted fireblight – which sounds dramatic, no? – and was, essentially, dead.  We’d been waiting for a couple of weeks for the arbourist to work his tree removal magic.  My plans had to be put on hold, on account of me not wanting to be crushed to death by falling branches; I went to go check my email, came upstairs, and the tree was now several piles of wood on the ground.  It was so fast, I forgot to mourn the loss of the tree.  On the bright side, our yard seems HUGE.  I feel like I’m living on an acreage.  In any event, I did get some, but not all, of the planting done.  Today it’s pouring rain and it’s forecasted to continue for a while, which is great for my new plants but puts a little cramp in my gardening plans. 

The house is dark, and it’s dark and rainy outside, but it feels cozy, like a nice morning to get some writing done and drink coffee and bake something delicious.  And occasionally stare out the window at the plants on the deck, waiting anxiously to be put into the ground and spread out their roots.

Speaking of spreading out roots, my arbourist asked how long we’ve been in this house, and I realized with some shock that it’s been thirteen years.  Thirteen years!  Long enough for us to renovate our house not once but several times, long enough for me to dig out all the old neglected gardens and replant everything, long enough for me and the boys to become fixtures in the neighbourhood, long enough for my next door neighbour to finally stop calling me “Michelle”.  This same neighbour was out doing yardwork on the weekend, along with his wife.  His wife, who was mowing the lawn and wearing a man’s oversized muscle shirt and NOTHING ELSE.  Literally, nothing else.  What has been seen cannot be unseen, if you know what I’m saying here.  And no, this neighbour is not related to the one who is famous for gardening in only his red cutoff sweatpants and nothing else.  Wow, what is going on in my neighbourhood?  Every day is interesting, let’s leave it at that.

Naked Shuffleboard

Posted on by

My weekend plans got kiboshed, and so yesterday I decided that since we were staying home, I may as well get a little bit of gardening done.  It’s too early to really plant anything, I thought to myself, So I’ll just get a couple of really hardy plants.  I walked into the garden centre and immediately forgot everything except LOOK PRETTY FLOWERS WHEE.  Honestly, I almost forgot my own name for a few minutes as I meandered among the aisles, completely overstimulated and humming along to the Carlos Santana tune playing over the speakers.

I was flirted with in that jovial, harmless, elderly way by five – FIVE – old men while I filled my cart to overflowing with annuals and perennials.  It occurred to me later that none of the old men had carts of any kind, and in fact none of them actually appeared to be buying anything.  This indicates one of two things: a) the old men drive their wives to the garden centre, and then wander off looking for people to chat with, or b) the old men go to the garden centre to pick up women.  My god – is the garden centre the meat market for old people?  Think about it: who is actually shopping in a garden centre on a Thursday afternoon?  Me, a couple of extremely harried-looking moms with little ones in tow, and OLD PEOPLE.  The more I think about it the more likely it seems; after all, if an old man was there with his wife he would probably be choosing plants WITH HIS WIFE, no?  I wonder how many old people relationships start out in garden centres.  We all know that old men make out like bandits in retirement homes, almost entirely due to numbers being in their favour, but maybe garden centres are known for the place to meet the swinging singles.

I bought some eye cream a couple of months ago, given I am getting older and when one wakes up at 4:45 every day, one has a tendency to look like a crypt keeper.  I went out and chose this cream out of many others, thinking that this would be a transformative event in my life.  Eye cream!  You would think that two months would be long enough to make a difference, however, it has not.  This is probably because I constantly forget to apply it.  This is my evening beauty routine: remove eye makeup, use special exfoliating cleanser, rinse well, use tissue to remove what I hope is residual eye makeup but is often just an undereye circle, apply toner with cotton ball, brush teeth with whitening toothpaste, stare at teeth in the mirror and wonder if I should give up coffee, decide (related to undereye circles and waking up at 4:45) that this is not a feasible option, apply nighttime lotion, rub extra hydrating cocoa butter into my cracked, dry excuse for hands, fall into bed and pass out.  I seem to be unable to add eye cream to this routine. 

I ran out to the grocery store today to pick up a few things, plus some whitening strips (see also: coffee consumption.  And red wine.)  While looking for whitening strips, I noticed something extremely disturbing: right next to the denture cleansers and accessories was a display of condoms, lubricants, and medications for yeast infections.  Ew.  Now, the patrons of my grocery store are largely elderly, due to the senior’s mecca of a neighbourhood that I live in.  I thought about the garden centre and felt that this was just too much.  The signs are everywhere.  KY jelly right next to the Polident tablets?  Ultra sensation-like wearing nothing- ribbed for her pleasure multipack of condoms right next to the Fixodent?  A whole row of Monistat next to the Seabond?  Do you see a pattern here?  Life, apparently, begins at seventy.