Category Archives: Hello Calgary

You don’t have to go home but you can’t park here.

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I’m going out on a limb here, but I would venture to say that if you polled any random number of parents and asked them what issue do you hate the most about the school your children attend, most of them would say the parking. The ones that wouldn’t say parking would be the ones whose children are bussed to school and who do not have to endure the daily clusterfuck of school drop-offs and pick-ups.

We have 600 students at our school, and many of them come via bus. A few walk, and a lot are driven. We do a mixture of walking and driving, depending on weather conditions and what I’m doing after I drop off the kids. When I drive, I park about a block away, and we walk. It works well because I avoid the insanity that is parking close to the school: people will make u-turns in the middle of the very busy street, in front of oncoming traffic, just to get a spot near the school. They park across the street and then jaywalk into busy traffic, rather than walking the extra thirty seconds – literally, thirty seconds – to the crosswalks on either side of the front of the school. This month’s school newsletter had a whole section on “please do not park in the school bus zones” because that is actually something that needs to be told to people. Don’t drop your precious snowflake off in the bus zone because BUSES ARE USING THAT ZONE. We all have precious snowflakes, let’s model good behaviour by not a) parking like an asshole, b) turning u-turns in the middle of a busy road like an asshole, c) jaywalking across the busy street while also holding babies and small children like an asshole.

And then the alley, my god, the alley. The alley beside the school is filled, constantly, with people parked on either side, creating a narrow one-lane passage. People park on blind corners and in no-stopping zones, because they are too damn lazy to park elsewhere. I feel sorry for the people who live there because people are always parking in front of garage doors and on garbage days, the garbage trucks get stuck in the melee.

Since the kids come home at lunch, I usually drive through the alley. I park in a legal zone, wait for them to come out, and drive them home. Always, always, there are people parked in insanely illegal ways further down the alley. These are kindergarten parents who are letting their kids have a little playtime on the playground before taking them home. Every single day, I fume a little as I slowly drive past the cars parked on either side of the corner, which makes a terrible blind spot in which I cannot see oncoming traffic. Kids pop in and out of the playground, which makes me nervously drive about 3 km/ hr. Yes, I could change my own behaviour, but the kids come out of their respective doors, run to the car, and we go home. In a perfect world, I would be able to drive through the alley normally. And until this year, I did. This year, every day I think that if there were bylaw officers around the school, they’d make their fiscal year in about two days.

Then yesterday, I saw a man parked on the wrong side of the road, on a corner, in the no-stopping zone. It was like the trifecta of illegal parking. He was in his car, on his phone, while – I assume – his kindergartener played on the playground equipment. And I don’t know if it was the full moon or the fact that the guy was too lazy to get out of his damn car and do his internet-surfing on the playground bench in the sunshine, or if I had just been pushed too far, but I thought, goddammit, I am the Chair of the School Council and this is unsafe and I AM GOING TO CONFRONT THIS MAN. Those of you who know me know how very unlikely it is for me to actually confront someone, rather than ujjayi breathing and thinking he had a good reason to do what he did.

I drove over there – with kids in the car, on the way home for lunch – and gestured to him to roll down his window. He did so, and I said, politely and perkily, that he wasn’t allowed to park there. “Well, where am I supposed to park then?” he asked me, and I just looked at him for a moment. Blink. Blink. I said he could park anywhere that wasn’t illegal, and pointed out the no-stopping sign that he was RIGHT BESIDE. “Oh, so none of these cars are supposed to park here?” he said a tad bit belligerently. Well, I said, not the ones that are parked between the signs that indicate NO STOPPING. Reading comprehension: it’s a skill we can all work on. We stared at each other for a moment, and then I felt an impasse had been reached. I shrugged, said that I thought I should let him know, and drove away.

Last night I was waiting for the kids at karate and got an email from the school. It outlined, in detail, alley parking bylaws! I didn’t even complain to the school; I didn’t bring it up, I didn’t make any phone calls, IT JUST HAPPENED THIS WAY. I guess I’m not the only one who broke.

Photo of my rack

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Well, okay, since you ALL want to see my amazing rack:

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It’s beautiful!

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Look at the well-designed cutlery section. GAZE AT THE BEAUTY OF PRACTICALITY.

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There are lots of benefits to living in a senior-heavy community: my children are doted on by my neighbours because they are novel on our street, someone is always peeking out their window and willing to report suspicious behaviour and/ or unsafe parking, and lawns and gardens on our street are generally very well maintained. One of the main drawbacks: parking lots. Parking lots in my community are terrifying: there’s always some old man in a giant boat of a vehicle who can barely see or walk backing aggressively out of his handicapped parking stall at the Co-Op, and if you’re not constantly on high alert your chances of getting run over are close to one. I am loath to patronize certain shops that share a parking lot with the nearest Safeway/ London Drugs/ chiropractor, because driving through that lot feels like I am taking my life into my hands. The combination of elderly drivers and impatient university students feels deadly. But when the parking lots are snow-covered, well, that’s when shit gets real.

Today I went to the nearest lab services to get some routine blood work done. As I drove around looking for a spot, I realized something strange. Instead of rows of vehicles two deep, there were vehicles everywhere. Some rows were one car deep, some were two, and all of them slanted off in strange directions. There was really no rhyme or reason to it. Some cars were parked in the middle of what should have been two front-to-back parking spots. It was the least efficient parking I have seen in my life.

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This photo does not do it justice. Can you see how tight it is for the car to drive through, and then how the line sort of shifts over to prevent people from parking? It was weirdly chaotic. Now add a bunch of elderly drivers in the mix and you get terror in the parking lot.

The parking lot was small potatoes compared with the actual lab. It was full of irate old people and three very ill-looking young women. I actually considered taking one of the medical masks offered at the desk for people with cough and fever. There is a dad at school pick-up who has lately been showing up wearing one such mask, and I’m curious to know if he’s ill or just trying not to get ill.

Anyway, the way the lab works is that it takes appointments, which can be made online or over the phone, and if there is time they will take walk-ins. I am fairly risk-averse, and so I always make appointments, and cannot for the life of me understand why anyone would try to walk into a lab with such a policy. And yet! One should never underestimate the anger of the old man who is forced to wait for his blood work. One such fellow was shouting at the receptionist because he phoned at 10:30 and they said they had space for him at 11:00. It was 1:30, and the receptionist was trying to explain that they did have a cancellation 2 1/2 hours ago, but now there was a wait. Another old man kept loudly muttering that his daughter had made an appointment for him at 1:20, and now it was 1:30, and why the hell did anyone even make an appointment if they had such a casual disregard for his valuable time. At that point, he did get called in, and I could hear him complaining about the ten-minute wait all the way down the hall.

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Did you watch the Super Bowl on the weekend? I sure did, and I deserve the Good Wife Award because I wore this:

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And then the Patriots won. Coincidence? More importantly, there has been a ruling from the CRTC that bans Canadian broadcasters from simulcasting during the big Super Bowl commercials starting in 2017. Those of you in the US are probably puzzled right now – you mean you can’t see the multi-million dollar commercials that are an integral part of the Super Bowl experience? That’s right. Instead we see commercials for the local plumber who is famous for his tiny dog, Dino the Toilet Dog, or “live on location at a furniture warehouse” commercials, or commercials for syndicated television programs running on that channel. And while that might not seem like an issue in the grand scheme of the world, it is an annoyance nonetheless. My Super Bowl prediction for 2017: at least 50% less yelling at the television by my husband and others like him. There will still be yelling, but it will be game-related.

 

Middle Sister

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Wow, what a week! It wasn’t a bad week, just a very long and hectic one. On Wednesday afternoon I wrote “liquor store” on my Thursday to-do list, which is kind of telling. I dropped the boys at their karate class and hot-footed it to the liquor store. I browsed around a bit, and noticed that a wine I like was on sale. I opened up a case to make sure it was the type I wanted – for whatever reason I didn’t see the information on the case itself. The cashier looked at me strangely, and said, in a bit of a snippy voice, “That wine is on the display! You can just take a bottle!” I smiled sweetly and informed her that no, I wanted the whole case, which caused the entire lineup of people to swivel around to look at the wino in aisle 2. What?

After hauling my case into the car, I texted a friend a photo of a cute bottle of wine that I saw.

middlesister

The Wild One! That’s me! Even though I went to bed before eight last night.

Isn’t that the cutest? I texted it to my friend because she has three beautiful girls, and I feel a particular kinship with the middle one. I am a middle child myself, although I don’t have sisters, and so I decided to go back into the liquor store and pick up a couple of those bottles.

Nothing says “stability” like going back to the liquor store 90 seconds after leaving it.

Anyway, I was in line to pay for the three more bottles of wine I had somehow picked up, when I overheard the conversation from the other lineup. An older man was paying with cash, and the cashier asked him if he had five cents, so as not to have to give him a pile of change. He didn’t. “Oh! I have five cents!” I blurted out to this complete stranger, as I dug through my wallet for a nickel. As he was leaving, he said to me, “Thanks again, young lady, that was very kind.” Now, I don’t know how kind it is to give someone five cents, but it was worth many times that to hear the words “young lady”.

It was nice to hear, since I watched myself on the local television program I was on this week. I realized, suddenly, why I am so wrinkly. Not only do I talk with my hands, but I really talk with my face. I am like a female Jim Carrey, but without the…well…most of Jim Carrey. I have a lot of expressions, is all I’m saying. Also, my mouth is huge. I laugh and smile a lot with all teeth showing. This isn’t a bad thing, just an explanation for the forehead wrinkles and smile lines.

wrinkles

This is WITH filters.

It’s been freakishly warm here – I am certainly not complaining; any day in January that is not minus 30 is a win, as far as I’m concerned. But it has been ABOVE ZERO for a few weeks now! Someone suggested that perhaps this is due to my recent boot purchase. Hey, if I knew I could alter weather patterns via my clothing purchases, I would have bought ALL THE BOOTS years ago. Who knew I had so much power?

Ma’am, that is not a bunion.

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Today has been one of those crazy-hectic days that make me feel that if I stop moving, all will be ashes. Do you know what I mean? I am quite proud of myself, though, because this morning I managed to exercise, shower, have breakfast (and several cups of much-needed coffee), and get the kids to the dentist, all before 8 am. Please, no one try to talk to me after 8 pm tonight, though, because I will likely be in a semi-coma.

So, it’s been that kind of day, and I have exactly 10 minutes to write this post before picking up Mark for a podiatrist appointment. I cannot say the word podiatrist without giggling, thanks to my friend Janet (HI JANET). The other day I was complaining about a gynecologist; my scheduled gynecologist was sick, and I had to settle for her partner, who could be best described as “ham handed”. The man couldn’t find my cervix with a map and compass. He actually kept complaining about it; my mysteriously hidden cervix, which really made me feel like I was some kind of cavernous wasteland of womanhood. I mean, I’m pretty sure my cervix is at the end of my vaginal canal. I HAVE a cervix, it has to be in there somewhere. Isn’t that, to quote Miss Cornelia, just like a man? I don’t know about you, but if there is a missing item in my house, my house full of boys, then it is up to ME to find it. Maybe it’s a testosterone thing. Men in general seem to be lacking the ability to find missing household items; either that, or it’s a wretched learned behaviour. In any case, having a male gynecologist jabbing his speculum aggressively in my nether regions is unpleasant at best.

In any case, I was telling Janet (HI JANET) about this un-fun experience, and she suggested that perhaps the gynecologist was really a podiatrist, and was just too embarrassed to say anything. This is awkward, but ma’am, could you please put your underwear back on? That is NOT a bunion.

This morning I was listening to the radio, and there was a commercial about New Year’s Resolutions, Weight Loss, and Quitting Smoking via hypnotism. They were advertising for Raveen. Remember Raveen? I clearly recall Raveen commercials of my childhood, probably while watching The Price is Right. It seemed weird to me that Raveen would still be performing hypnotism, so I looked it up when I got home. People, Raveen died in 2013. What is up with the radio commercial? Is there a Raveen Junior? Is Raveen helping people from beyond the grave? I don’t know.

In any case, my ten minutes is up and I need to go to the podiatrist – or maybe the gynecologist, who knows? – so I hope you all are having a lovely day! xo

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For local people, I will be on Shaw Trending tomorrow morning from 10:00-11:00 am, on Channel 10. I’ll be talking parenting: free-range, helicopter, and toboggan hills. If you’re around, I’d love it if you’d tune in!

Boots and songbooks: where have you been all my life?

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It’s cold here, but not unusually so, by which I mean today was -22 without windchill and that is the coldest it has been all week. The rest of the week sat around -15 without windchill, which is certainly par for the course for January in Calgary.

My usual morning routine is to drop the kids at school and then meet friends at the off-leash with our dogs. (Who’s a good doggie? Who’s a GOOD DOGGIE? Barkley’s a good doggie!). After our dog walk, I couldn’t feel my feet, which is something that’s been occurring more and more often lately. Lest you think I was underdressed for the weather, this was my outfit: turtleneck sweater underneath a thick wool sweater, jeans, thick woollen legwarmers, two pairs of socks, ankle length parka with hood, earmuffs, gloves underneath thick mittens, and my Joan of Arctic Sorel boots.

Remember when I bought those Sorel boots, years ago, and how it was a revelation to me? They no longer are the godsend they once were. I don’t know if it’s a factor of lots of wear or if my Reynaud’s and circulation issues are just getting worse, but in any case, I’ve been really suffering lately. After spending most of the day in foot agony post-walk, I decided that it was high time for new boots. And I went to MARK’S WORK WEARHOUSE.

End times are nigh.

I went into the store and spoke to the very young male associate. I informed him that I wanted the warmest pair of boots available. These are pretty warm, he said, to which I responded, No. I want your WARMEST pair. Whatever your warmest pair is, I will take them.

I came home with marginally ugly but OMG MAGICAL boots.

snowqueen

They are called Snow Queens, which makes me feel regal.

I feel like my life has changed, with one trip to Mark’s Work Wearhouse. Previously my trips there have been only to purchase Christmas gifts for my father-in-law.

In other where have you been all my life news, I had ordered a piano song book and yesterday it arrived. It may be the single greatest song book of all time.

songs

Look at that lineup! And it doesn’t even tell the whole story.

I’ve been playing the piano for almost thirty years – I was quite serious about it for many years, but now I just play for fun.

Digression: how many of us were into something like a sport or an instrument in a very serious way, but now as adults we say “now I just do it for fun”? I have friends who were competitive figure skaters, gymnasts, divers, hockey players, and swimmers, as well as those of us who spent hours daily at an instrument. Question for another day: was it worth it? Are the intangible lessons from that kind of discipline enough to outweigh the time, money, and energy spent? I like to think so, but honestly I am not sure. Thoughts? In any case, I was very happy to be able to spend hours a day at the piano, back in the day, and I’m very happy now to be able to play. I wish my kids had some interest in playing, but they can barely summon up the wherewithal to play their recorders.

Anyway, for the past few years I’ve been feeling a little stale at the piano. Other than Christmas music, my general repertoire was Fur Elise, followed by New York State of Mind or Piano Man, ending with Solfeggio in C Minor. Occasionally I’d plunk away at something new but would be mostly bored.

I tell you this: my new songbook has revitalized every feeling I’ve ever had about piano. Because look!

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OMG

I had initially ordered the songbook for Don’t Stop Believing, but THIS was the first song I chose. I played it for my husband last night, who was nonplussed.

Mr: I don’t even know what you’re playing.

Me: It’s Islands in the Stream!

Mr: *goes back to reading about the NFL*

So that was disappointing. However, as I flipped through I saw the music for Stairway to Heaven and started to play.

Mr: Now THAT’S a good song.

Other gems: Wish You Were Here, Open Arms, Love Lift Us Up Where We Belong, and EYE OF THE TIGER. I’m not sure how that will translate to piano, but ever since I heard that guy play Sweet Child of Mine on the accordion, I’ve been inspired to think outside the music box. Heh. Music box.

Cherry Cherry

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Sometimes, in order to get motivated, one needs to have a period of complete sloth, and that was me last week. I didn’t exercise. I didn’t work. I did the bare minimum around the house. Basically I spent a lot of time on the couch, with a glass of wine and this:

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Between my kids, husband, and mother-in-law, I received fifteen books for Christmas. My husband had wrapped them all but when we got an Amazon delivery on December 23, he decided he had enough of wrapping paper and tape and just handed me the book. It has essentially taken up every spare second I have had since then. I will have much to say about this – the Ingalls family saw much more scandal and poverty than one might think from reading the children’s books – but it will have to be at another time.

On Christmas morning, my husband handed me a small package, saying in a discouraged tone that he wasn’t sure I would like it, and that he did keep the receipt. It’s very unusual for him to be so unsure about a gift, since he normally bats things right out of the park. For example, this was in my stocking:

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Santa sure knows how to stuff MY stocking.

Anyway, my husband was uncharacteristically filled with insecurity, but when I opened the gift I couldn’t understand why. This choice shows how well he knows me!

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I’m not going to say it’s the greatest Christmas album ever, but it’s definitely close.

So I was mostly slothful and busy eating lots of snack mix and drinking lots of wine, but I had to haul myself off the couch on Christmas day, because I was hosting Christmas dinner. It was my very first that I hosted, and I think it went really well.

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After all this relaxation and festivity, I woke up on Boxing Day with a bee in my bonnet. I was filled with my usual urge to rip down the tree and

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But for reasons unknown, I had agreed to go Boxing Day shopping with my husband. Every year he takes advantage of the sales to purchase new suits, ties, and other expensive work wear. I had, for some reason – marital harmony, perhaps – said I would go with him while the kids stayed at home and played with their new video games. And I will tell you this: it was a huge mistake. For one thing, since Jacob closed its doors, every other clothing store means nothing to me. NOTHING. While my husband was busily fitting new suits, I was wandering from store to store amongst hordes of people who were foaming at the mouth. I wandered into Guess only to be completely shocked by the clothing. I wandered into H&M and wandered back out when I was confronted by the same black acid wash jeans I had in junior high. I was a person without a destination, which is not the way to Boxing Day shop, as evidenced by the stampede of people at Aritzia. In the end, I was bitterly regretting the one hour I spent at the mall, and by the time my husband was done I was pretty much ready to run home, just so I could clean the house.

The second we got in the door, I took off my “nice shopping clothes” and put on yoga pants, fuzzy socks, and an old waffle-weave shirt and began boxing things up. All Christmas-card glitter and dust was wiped away, the floors were washed, the bathroom scoured, the laundry done. It was, as always, a most satisfying project, Project End Christmas On Boxing Day.

And once again I will remind everyone that there are two types of Christmas Elves in the world, of which I belong to the latter category: 12 Days of Christmas Elves, and Advent Elves. We Advent Elves start Christmas festivities early. We are the ones who finish shopping in November, dig out our Christmas CDs the second Halloween decorations are put away, and fight the desire to tear down the tree at 10:00 am on December 25. 12 Days of Christmas Elves are the ones who keep their trees up into the New Year, who wrap gifts on December 24, and who think Advent Elves are insane. It’s okay! We think you’re kind of crazy too. We can still be friends!

As an important side note: the 12 days of Christmas START on Christmas. They do not start 12 days prior to Christmas.

In any case, around the Boyhouse things are pretty quiet this week. It’s terribly cold, so we are in hibernation mode: the kids playing with their new things, I’m enjoying my new books and clean house, and Barkley is just happy to have things back to normal.

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Clark, that there is an RV.

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Today is not only a no-school day, but it is also a moon day, meaning that I have had a slow, lazy day with the kids, making truffles, roasting squash, and pulling teeth. In the interest of veracity, I should say “pulling one tooth”, rather than giving you the image that I’m spending my day with a pile of baby teeth. In any case, it’s been a great day, punctuated by the excitement I’m feeling over being nominated for the Canadian Weblog Awards in the categories of humour, life, and parenting. Not to be all, it’s an honour just being nominated, but it is, actually, an honour being nominated.

It’s a nice cap to what has been a very strange week. After last week’s bake sale, I swore that I wasn’t going to volunteer for anything for a while; after that decision I immediately signed up to provide a main dish for the teacher’s potluck dinner. What is wrong with me? In fact, I had three dishes to make for three separate potlucks in a 48 hour span, so I’m feeling a bit fatigued. I am attending the Ladies’ Advent Dinner with my mother at her church tomorrow, so I’m hoping the elderly ladies will enjoy my quinoa dish. Years ago someone brought hummus to the Ladies’ Advent Dinner and it caused a bit of a stir. I’m hoping a funky quinoa dish will show that I’m just as much a rebel as I used to be. It has quinoa and kale in it – and that is how you spell wild and crazy.

Other than cooking a lot of things, I’ve also spent a lot of time standing in lines this week. I went to Costco, on a Tuesday morning, and I was reminded why I hate going anywhere in the month of December. Costco is especially terrible, what with the hundreds of giant carts blocking the aisles and what seems to be a company policy against plowing the parking lot. I had to position my entire body at a 45 degree angle just to push the cart back to the car, and I felt like I had been actually run over by a stampede of giant carts by the time I got home. It was like when the kids were small and I had to walk two blocks to the grocery store with them in the back-to-front double stroller on snowy sidewalks. It was an epic workout, just going to the store for some crackers or milk.

After the exhausting Costco trip I headed to the post office for stamps. It’s December. People are mailing things. There was one employee working, and the lineup snaked around the post office. Twenty five minutes and a long, detailed conversation with the elderly woman in front of me about her grandchildren and the price of stamps later, I purchased my stamps and went home, where I was immediately faced with a “Missed Delivery” notice from Canada Post. I was instructed to pick up my parcel the following day at the post office that I had just left.

What can you do? The following day I headed for the post office, notice in hand. After standing in line for 20 minutes at the post office while the single person in front of me – an elderly man – had discussed every single option for sending a package to Manitoba, and asked about delivery estimates for what seemed like every possible location across the country, I decided to stop at the photo centre next door to the post office; I had received an email that the photo calendars I had ordered were shipped. I stood in line for another twenty minutes, only to be told that “shipped” did not mean “in store”. We’ll call you when it’s in, the lady at the counter said cheerfully, to which I very consciously smiled and answered as pleasantly as possible. I went home and one hour later received a phone call that my photo calendars were in.

So it’s been that kind of week. At least this is no longer parked in front of my house:

cousineddie

I looked out my window one morning and there it was. Clark, that there is an RV. I guess, technically, that a somewhat decrepit fifth wheel is not an RV.

When I was in university, I was taking a special statistics tutorial from a guy who, when he used “RV” for “Random Variable”, began discussing the actual recreational vehicle that one of our professors owned. It was the most simultaneously interesting and disturbing digression from statistics ever, since he talked about how he once peered into this professor’s RV (the recreational vehicle, not, obviously, the random variable) to see what was housed inside. I do not remember the result of this RV peeping Tom, but all these years later I remember wondering a) how the tutor knew where the RV was, and b) why he would want to see what was inside. Now, though, I understand his compulsion to look past the little frilled curtains, because I wanted to see if the mannequin was inside. I did not look, however, because the only thing weirder than me looking inside the strange fifth wheel in front of my house would be to find something like the mannequin. OR WORSE. In any case, the mystery of the RV’s appearance and disappearance – in the middle of winter, no less – will remain unsolved, just like the mystery of the mannequin.