Category Archives: Hello Calgary

Five Things For Friday

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Decorative Gourd Season

Everyone’s talking about the first day of fall, oh, the excitement of the crispness in the air and the leaves turning and pumpkin spice everything taking over the world like alien overlords. I don’t mean to be a curmudgeon about things but I swear, I thought it was going to snow last night. The rain had that sleety feeling and the already-changed leaves were rapidly being blown off of trees. You want crispness in the air? That’s crispness. Today is much more temperate but Winter Is Coming and also I loathe pumpkin spice. However. I do like sweaters and boots and scarves so I guess that’s something. The leaves that are still on the trees are also very pretty.

We’re Jamming

Today I really wanted to make peach jam but I didn’t have quite enough peaches. I wondered what would happen if I added pears, so I did. I was completely befuddled as to why the recipe, which I had cut in half, made over twice the amount of jam. Was it pear related? Was it some kind of jam-chemistry that I wasn’t aware of? Was I magic? Then I realized I cut the fruit in half without cutting the sugar. So I now have eight very sweet jars of jam. I am gravely disappointed in this.

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How Did I Get On This Mailing List

I received a catalogue in the mail today; I don’t know why or how but I am really not the target audience for it. It is almost entirely velour capes and “country classics” and is pretty much the opposite of clothing that I wear.

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There is an entire section based on Fall Leaf Motifs. As I flipped through I kept thinking wow, there are a lot of pajamas in this catalogue, but no. Those are not pajamas.

I Cannot Stop Staring At My Fridge

Yesterday I was having a conversation (HI SHARYL HI LINDA) and the words You Should See Her Fridge came up. My friend’s sister keeps her stainless steel fridge spotless, and because I am apparently Heloise, Queen of Household Hints, I immediately asked to be let in on the secret. Linda told me and I implemented within five minutes of walking in my door. People, it’s so simple, and yet so glorious. Fill your sink with very hot water and dish soap (wash the dishes later, so as to not waste it – Bonus Heloise Hint!) then scrub your fridge down with a sponge. If it’s really gross in parts, use the non-abrasive side of the sponge. Then – this is the key – dry it off with a flannelette cloth. I have a plethora of old flannelette receiving blankets I have kept since the boys were babies, and they work perfectly. They are decorated with puppies and giraffes, but they are effective.

Anyway. I must tell you that this has been life altering. For as long as I’ve had my fridge I’ve been trying things with vinegar and coconut oil and everything else, and the secret is hot water, dish soap, and drying with a flannelette cloth. I keep admiring my fridge in all its shiny glory.

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Five Fictional Characters That Describe Me

There’s a little meme that’s going around on social media and I find it fascinating, what fictional characters people identify with. I have always identified with Sally Albright on so many levels, but what about the other two? I thought about this for probably longer than I should have, as I sat in traffic and exercised on the elliptical trainer and stared at the sleet on the windshield as I waited for the kids at karate. Finally, I had it! I think we can all agree, it’s perfect.

sally

monica

buddy

More magical journeys

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Strange things are happening in the neighbourhood. There was a Home Depot cart in my back alley. It’s not uncommon to see carts from Walmart and Co-Op, both of which are within walking distance, but the nearest Home Depot is at least five kilometers away. Did someone take a cart and walk all the way to my back alley with it, before abandoning it to its fate? How else would it have gotten here? What was its journey, what was it carrying? These are questions that I am seriously wondering.

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Note the Budweiser can at its wheel. I suspect there are more cans in its basket, but I didn’t actually get out of the car to investigate.

The cart was there for a few days, then it moved to someone’s front lawn. Currently it’s residing on a nearby boulevard. Just across from its original position, a different cart appeared. I think it’s from Canadian Tire. The carts are multiplying.

Maybe I find myself somewhat obsessed with the journey of these carts because of my own irritation about people not returning carts to the proper corral. Obviously these carts were used for different purposes, and that’s fine. But as we all know, the people who leave their carts in random parking spaces, or worse, mere feet away from the corral, are the worst people in the world. Okay, maybe not the worst. Maybe lazy is a better word. Or inconsiderate of other people. Or making the store employees’ lives that much worse, when the corral is RIGHT THERE JUST PUT IT AWAY FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. Tomato, to-mah-to.

Anyway, enough about the fascinating journey of the Home Depot cart and its new friend or possibly rival, the Canadian Tire cart.

I just thought of something. Maybe the Home Depot cart moved because of a turf war. Maybe this is a Sharks/ Jets kind of thing. Like this, but with carts.

Speaking of journeys, I have great news for those of you following along with my Kondo journey. The charity that was supposed to pick up my donations but didn’t called back and rescheduled. Hooray! Mark and my husband lugged all the bags back out onto the step early Friday morning, to the interest of a new addition to the neighbourhood: a skunk. Eeek! Fortunately the skunk scurried down the street and – possibly unfortunately – hid underneath a neighbour’s van. This neighbour has two noisy dogs, and I imagined the worst, but so far things have been non-stinky. Possibly Pepe le Pew found his way to an uninhabited-by-pets yard to stay in.

My life lately has been yoga, yoga, yoga, which is wonderful. Things are busy and hectic in the best way possible. We went to an information and Meet the Teacher night at the junior high, and the principal mentioned the active Parent Association, and the desperate need for a Treasurer, and my husband gave me a look that needed no verbal interpretation. I did NOT attend the subsequent meeting because we all know how that would have ended, and I really just can’t anymore.

We are having a real Calgary fall, which means that yesterday the dog park looked like this:

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Whereas today is freezing cold and rainy. I have brought out my warm, lined fall coat and I dub today’s Clothing Theme to be Sith.

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Come to the Dark Side! We have cookies.

Game of Thrones Syndrome

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So here we are, the first day back at school. It’s a BIG day; one of my kids is in junior high now, and the other is finishing his last year at our much-loved elementary school.

Or maybe

The kids are more like this:

But for the most part, all is roses and happiness and only slight disappointment over the assignation of option classes that were not overly desired.

For the most part, it does feel good to be back into the swing of things. I am not generally a huge fan of fall, mostly because I love summer, and because fall in this part of the world is a brief interlude before the long, long winter sets in.

Speaking of which, my husband and I watched the Netflix series The Get Down, which deals with kids in the Bronx in the 1970s. If you are a fan of hip-hop, rap, or disco music, I highly recommend this series. I am a fan of all three genres, and so I really enjoyed it.

Well, I mostly enjoyed it. A lot of the time I kept saying to my husband that I thought something awful was going to happen. Was their apartment building going to burn down? Was someone going to get shot on the subway? Was everyone going to meet the end in the most tragic way possible? I kept worrying and worrying as I watched the show, in an awkward, unsettled way. My husband was feeling the same way, and when the series ended on a happy note, I couldn’t figure out why I was stressed out watching a cheerful television series in which the young people are not the problem, they are the solution.

It is what my husband and I have dubbed “Game of Thrones Syndrome.”

Watching Game of Thrones has conditioned me to expect the absolute worst outcome in everything. Sure, that girl is singing beautifully, but someone is probably going to cut all their throats like in the Red Wedding. That kid who has the bootlegged tape of another MC? He’s probably going to have his penis cut off and mailed to his loved ones. Those two are romantically involved? Someone is probably going to poison one of them and then put the other secretly on a boat, floating down the Hudson River.

Anyway, I’m determined to enjoy fall – even if it is so very brief and is only a harbinger of WINTER IS COMING – and so this morning I dug out my tall boots, my scarves, and my long black flowy sweaters. I am eagerly anticipating the return of the Macintosh apples, and crunchy leaves and blue skies, but you can keep your pumpkin spiced anything. Blergh. That stuff is nasty.

Winter Is Coming

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My gracious, it’s been a hell of a week, and it’s only Wednesday. We were having a lovely time up at the lake with my parents, boating and swimming and tubing, enjoying what felt like the last blast of summer, when Barkley got sick. He got sick in the middle of the night, and after the sixth time of letting him out, I gave up all pretenses of sleep and just curled up on the couch. He seemed to be better when we got home Sunday evening, but worsened through the night. I’ll spare you the gross details but by Monday morning he couldn’t keep down water. Too long, didn’t read: he ended up overnighting in the animal hospital, but now his sweet fuzzy self is home with us. Exhausted, on medication and a special diet, but home. I didn’t realize how many dog commercials are on TV until he was not there. I didn’t realize how much companionship he provides me, until he didn’t. But! He is home and we are all happy.

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Besides being worried, and spending my nervous energy doing things like scrubbing down the oven door and cleaning grout with a toothbrush, I’ve also been preparing for back to school. We’ve been busy buying school supplies for the first time – everything is provided at our elementary school, so this is new territory – plus winter coats and pants that actually fit. I took the boys shoe shopping, which is something that never fails to break my spirit. Just stepping through the door at Sport Chek makes me feel like I’m losing the will to live, and that’s before I look at the prices of running shoes. As I was leaving, a random lady said to me I feel like I’m hemorrhaging money at this time of year, which is an apt statement that no one can disagree with.

But, we are all ready for school to start – in less than two weeks! – and I have been continuing with my Kondo-ing. One huge benefit of Kondo-ing everything is finding things I haven’t looked at in years. I found the arty, black and white album of engagement photos that we had done back in 2001. Well, I had them done, I think my husband could have done without them. To be honest, I never liked those photos; it turns out I do not look good in black and white, and also I didn’t like the artistic shots. There was one where we were kissing, with a C-Train speeding by in the background. I guess the photographer was going for the Hello Calgary look, I don’t know. Oh look! A northbound train! Let’s kiss!

Along with the photos, I discovered hundreds of CD’s, including, bizarrely, the soundtrack to Ally McBeal and a copy of Please Hammer Don’t Hurt Them. At this moment, I have eighteen bags and boxes slated for donation, not to mention a ton of recycling and – unfortunately – several bags of garbage. I still haven’t gone through the children’s school and artwork; that part is going to be an emotional landmine, so I need to wait a little bit for that.

Meanwhile, we all have haircuts this week, plus we are going to try to squeeze in some fun activities between the arctic-like weather that seems to have settled in. Yesterday I wore boots and a blanket scarf and it snowed in the mountains. Winter Is Coming! I just hope we get a few weeks of fall first.

Kondo-ing My Life

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I consider myself to be a very self-aware person. I know that I can be very easy to live with, in some ways, but very difficult in others. I can recognize my faults along with my positive character traits. So I recognize that at the end of the summer, I become a bit of an emotional mess. Landslide, and all that.

My end-of-summer melancholy is always tempered by my excited-to-start-fresh-in-September attitude, so I’m not trying to say that I become a mopey, weeping person by mid-August. I’m just saying that in the past I’ve had to choke back tears all through Inside Out, which turned into full-blown sobbing about Bing Bong. The year Jake started kindergarten I cried so hard while on hold with the printer Help Desk that the gentlemen on the other side told me that maybe I should go get myself a drink of water, and he would take care of everything. Then he sent me a new printer. 

Anyway, I know myself. And Mark is starting Junior High and Jake is in his last year at our beloved elementary school, where we have spent the last eight years and where I have made a wonderful circle of friends and volunteered at extensively. I’ve been afraid of changing…because I built my life around youuuuuu…

But, as they say, Time Makes You Bolder and so I have taken charge and have redirected all my energies into a complete household reorganization.

I’ve had The Life-Changing Magic Of Tidying Up on my library hold list for a while, and last week it came in. I devoured it. I know, I know, it’s 2016, and KonMari/ Kondo-ing things is so last year. I may be a day late and a dollar short, but let me tell you, I love that book. IT IS LIFE CHANGING MAGIC, PEOPLE.

For those of you who haven’t read it – I can’t be the only one who hadn’t read it, right? – the premise of the book is simple: surround yourself with things that bring you joy and get rid of everything else. Ask yourself why you are holding on to certain things; if it is something that doesn’t bring you joy, then send it on its way, expressing gratitude for the role it has played in your life. For example, don’t feel badly throwing out that lipstick that doesn’t suit you. It taught you a lesson, and that was worth the price you paid for it. That sweater that you don’t like, someone else might love. Send it on its journey.

This, my friends, is exactly the kind of hippy-dippy, non-attachment, Let The Sunshine In kind of thing that I love. Bring in the good energy, block out the bad.

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Now, let me be clear: my house is pretty clean. I am a very organized person by nature. I also live in a bungalow that – including basement and storage area – is 2200 square feet. I don’t really have the room to be a hoarder, and I don’t have a lot of clutter. If you were to stop by unexpectedly, I would not be worried about the state of my house, because the state of my house is always clean. Well, truly, if you were to stop by unexpectedly I’d never answer the door because I don’t want to be murdered by a random stranger, or, in the best case scenario, I don’t want to be solicited for money/ talked to by politicians/ offered lawn services by someone who is scary looking but is probably harmless.

But you take my meaning.

However, there are areas in the house that could definitely be improved on. I have kept so much of the kids’ schoolwork and art work that the bins I purchased for such items are overflowing. I have whole shelving units that were filled with stuff I didn’t know what to do with. The downstairs closets are a disaster, and my hall cupboard was so jammed with stuff that the doors didn’t always close. I have baskets and bins that have loose papers and magazines that I have yet to deal with.

And so I started to Kondo the house, and while it isn’t the very most satisfying thing I’ve done in my life, it is right up there. Every day I’ve been rampaging through the house, like a Kondo machine, bagging things and boxing things and reorganizing things all over the place. In fact, I’m planning to write about this whole experience, so lucky you, you will get to see photos of organized drawers and re-purposed shoe boxes.

It hasn’t all been rabid purging around here though; this week has been all about doctors and dentists and check ups and orthodontists…there was so much non-fun going on that I took a break from my frantic pace to take the kids to the local amusement park. It turned out to be the best day ever; the kids were chosen to be “park openers” which was a thrill in and of itself, and then they were second in line for the log ride. Tons of fun were had by all, but I think my favourite moment was when the park official was telling them what they needed to do, and asked “Are you brothers or friends?” “Both!” they answered, and I swear, I got a little teary.

I guess Kondo-ing everything doesn’t totally keep me from being a bit of an emotional mess. But my house sure is clean.

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Spoiled children and first seven jobs

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In my last post, I promised a photo of me looking disapproving at the amusement park, and today was supposed to be that day. Except that the sky is grey, again, and threatening to thunderstorm, AGAIN, and so I am just looking disapproving in my kitchen:

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The thought of packing up snacks, bug spray, and the children, and then driving twenty-five minutes, only to get rained on or electrocuted is disheartening to say the least, and so it looks like another somewhat indoorsy day.

I read a piece in the New Yorker called Spoiled Rotten, in which an anthropologist studied families in Los Angeles and in an Amazonian tribe, to see the difference in the role children played in the family structure. Predictably, the children in LA were complete spoiled brats who refused to tie their own shoes or fetch their own silverware from the drawer, whereas the Amazonian children were significantly contributing to the household, and society in general. In the natural order of things, of course, the LA children turn into thirtysomethings whose moms are still doing their laundry while they make YouTube videos in the basement, and the Amazonian children turn into functioning adults who go out in the world to seek their fortune, just like fairy tale heroes of yore.

It really made me think, being that it was a think-piece and all. Of course, for narrative purposes, the author would have chosen to write about the absolutely worst LA children and the most self-sufficient Amazonian tribe in order to get the starkest contrasts. However. It had me wondering if my kids could be doing more, if I expect too little of them.

Don’t get me wrong, I feel like I expect a lot. I expect excellent behaviour wherever we go. I expect them to get good grades and work very hard year-long, including summer worksheets and writing projects. I expect them to look people in the eye when they are speaking, to shake hands when meeting someone for the first time – and to put some meat into those handshakes, no dead fish hands please – I expect them to introduce themselves and say “Nice to meet you.” I expect them to make their beds, put away laundry, help with yard work and household chores, set the table, clear the table, load the dishwasher, and feed the dog. They often help chop vegetables and they help my husband put up and take down exterior decorations for Christmas and Halloween, Jake knows how to change a tire and jack up the car and Mark helps with the pre-winter maintenance of the air conditioner and shovels the sidewalk.

So they aren’t like the LA kids in the essay, and – PLEASE GOD – they won’t be living in my basement in 20 years. But there are a lot of things that I knew how to do at their age that they don’t. For example, I used to babysit a lot, and I would cook lunch for my little charges all the time, mostly Kraft Dinner or Zoodles, but I knew how to do it. Only yesterday did I show the boys how to turn on the stove. They have never cleaned a bathroom and their ability to sweep the floor leaves much to be desired. Also, much to be picked up by Roomba.

Speaking of Roomba, he continues to be the naughty little pet that we all love. We love his industry, and we laugh when he bumps into a side table and ends up with a piece of paper jauntily riding atop his little body. Roomba is wearing a hat! we say joyfully. A few times Roomba somehow got tangled up in the toilet paper, leading to a giant shredded mess all over the basement. Oh, Roomba! we shake our heads at his well-meaning but disastrous attempt. Just a few days ago, the boys ran upstairs in a state of excitement. Roomba, they said, had tried to eat the laces on my husband’s trainers, and had dragged the shoe all over the basement.

I feel like this could be the start of a very exciting reality show, or maybe even a sitcom. It would be at least as entertaining as any of the ones currently on air. The Adventures of Roomba! Roomba would surely be a contributing member of society, not like those spoiled children in LA.

Speaking of (semi) spoiled children, I must now send them to the Co-Op by themselves to buy a loaf of bread since we have, inexplicably, ran out. Never mind that we all were buying cigarettes for our parents at the corner store at age seven, and the six-year-old Amazonian children are catching and cleaning all the shellfish for the tribe to have for dinner, I am PROUD that my children can go to the Co-Op by themselves, armed only with a fiver, my Co-Op number, and a reusable bag. And then – AND THEN – they can take that damn loaf of bread and make sandwiches from it for their lunches because I am raising my children to be competent adults, and also they don’t eat Zoodles or Kraft Dinner.

Oh! But I had forgotten what I had been actually planning to write this post about, and no, it wasn’t actually the New Yorker piece. What can I say, I digress easily. There has been a meme going around about Your First Seven Jobs and I thought it would be fun if you could play along too. What were yours? Here are mine:

  1. Babysitter (this should be obvious from the entire post)
  2. Page at the public library, where I shelved books and impressed the interviewers with my knowledge of the Dewey Decimal System and my volunteer work as a candy striper at a nursing home.
  3. Pizza Hut employee, where I did all jobs from bussing tables to answering phones to making pizza to being a cashier. It was a fun job in that I had a lot of friends there, but it was also a terrible job because people LOVE to scream at the teenage employees when their pizza does not arrive in a timely fashion.
  4. Salesgirl at a ladies’ clothing store, where I discovered I did not want to sell anything, ever again.
  5. Waitress at Moxies’ – another fun job where I also discovered that working in customer service is very hard. This job made me empathetic every single time I had a meal out that went awry for any reason.
  6. Beer sample girl. If you want a job where you get hit on by disgusting, much older alcoholics, and everyone treats you like a brainless idiot, this is the job for you! I finally quit in a fit of rage when the company got a contract with Busch, and I would have been required to wear a Busch bathing suit to hand out samples. In a freezing cold liquor store. NO THANK YOU, YOU MAY KEEP YOUR SEVEN DOLLARS AN HOUR.
  7. Summer student at a petroleum company. This was my first taste of corporate life, and I got to use my linear programming skills, so it was great. It ended up leading to my first “real” job that didn’t involve food, customer service, or bathing suits.

Please play along! What were your first seven jobs? All of these jobs took place within the span of a decade, which seems amazing for some reason.

My Face Says I’m Disappointed, But My Heart Says I’m Happy

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Well, hello there! So much has happened in the last two weeks; my husband took time off work and we Vacationed Like Nobody’s Business. First of all, the boys finished off their week of karate camp with a mini-tournament, and all I can say is that I really get Aly Raisman’s parents. I really do. I cannot imagine the nervous breakdown I would have in the highly unlikely event that my children were Olympic medal contenders, because I find myself sweating, with heart palpitations, just watching the karate kids sparring in a fun-tournament-that-has-no-real-consequences. Johnny, you’re a cream puff. It’s not just for my kids, either; I find myself all tied up in knots watching ANY of the students.

Happily, the mini-tournament went well, and the boys did not have to compete against each other too much, which was a huge relief. They are in the same belt and age group and so this has happened in the past; it is just as much fun as you might imagine.

Just as a quick side note: the only summer Olympic event I actually am interested in watching, albeit briefly, and never very closely, is women’s gymnastics, and unfortunately this is the only summer Olympic event my husband is NOT interested in watching. This means there is a lot of Ooh, look at that! kind of commentary, followed by total disinterested silence from the other spouse. Occasionally there will be a polite Ah! in response, but those Ah!’s are few and far between.

After karate camp, my husband took the boys Camping For Real, which meant that I stayed home and made avocado fries and kale chips and watched back-to-back episodes of NYPD Blue before falling asleep at 8:45. I also tried to soothe Barkley, who had apparently fallen into a deep depression after hearing the truck being packed up and being left behind. Poor puppy. Who can blame him? NYPD Blue isn’t everyone’s taste. He sat outside in the backyard, staring at the garage for hours, until I tempted him in with treats, only to go back outside again. It was like a less-sad version of that movie where the dog waits for his deceased owner at the train station until death finally releases him from this heart-breaking hopefulness.

God, now I’m depressed.

Vacation! Back to vacation. We spent a few days at my parents’ place, and the weather cooperated enough for us to not only go boating, but for the boys to go tubing and swimming as well. My dad snapped this photo of me, and it cracks me up.

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I look like I am Deeply Disapproving of all this Fun In The Water, but really, this is just what my face looks like in repose. I was fully approving of the aquatic good times, I swear.

We then spent eight days at my in-laws’ place, where we had not one but two lovely dinners with friends, I enjoyed a Girly Afternoon With The Girls complete with mani-pedis and lunch, the boys went swimming several times, my husband and I took not-sad-anymore Barkley for long walks along the creek, and we went bowling twice.

BOWLING

Notice anything about this photo, other than my saucy bowling shoes? My shirt – which I chose while shopping with my mother, who thinks I wear Too Much Black – is not only colourful, it is long sleeved. It seems the below-average temperatures like to follow me wherever I go this summer. The chilliness didn’t really kill my summer buzz, but I would like more opportunities to wear my cute summer clothes before fall sets in.

To be honest, it kind of feels like fall has already set in; soon we’ll be doing things like wearing socks and sweaters and non-flimsy scarves. August is a bit of a funny month for me; for example, I spent this morning at the orthodontist, and next week the boys have appointments with both doctor and dentist. I need to make optometrist appointments, and I have to buy a LOT of clothes. I had the boys try on every clothing item they have, only to discover that Mark has zero pants that fit. Jake now has three pair of Mark’s old pants – the only ones that weren’t worn completely out – and nothing else. There’s only three weeks left of summer vacation!

Well, I need to cram some fun times into these final three weeks, as well as all the important health-and-clothing related business. Maybe I’ll take the kids to the amusement park, so I can look Deeply Disapproving there.