Category Archives: Hello Calgary

Sweep, sweep, hurry, hard!

Posted on by

You won’t believe it, but it has been actually hot here the past couple of days.  Not just warm, but HOT.  It’s beautiful.  Nothing teaches you to carpe diem like a hot day in Calgary.  It’s like the whole city is well aware that such a gift may not ever happen again, and so everyone is outside frantically enjoying the sunshine.  Seize the day, goddammit!  I’ve noticed a lot of sunburned faces around, which is also typical of this city where people take a few weeks to realize that yes, there is such a thing as sunscreen. 

A lot of those red faces were at the school.  Yesterday was Music Monday and I went to watch 430 students singing on the hill behind the school.  It couldn’t have been more perfect, and as a side note: is there anything that Chris Hadfield cannot do?  The guy is the whole package, moustache and all.  He writes songs, he orbits in space, he plays the guitar – seriously, what an amazing man.

I brought freezies to the playground yesterday after school and enjoyed feeling the sun while the kids played.  I checked Mark’s agenda and in there was a note reminding all parents about appropriate clothing for warm weather, reminders about hats, sunscreen, and water bottles.  There was also a reminder about shorts – how short is too short? – and that there are no spaghetti straps permitted in the classroom; tank top straps must be two-finger-widths at minimum.  I’d never received this particular note before, and I didn’t get one from Jake’s class, so I have to assume Grade 3/4 is the age when these rules start to be enforced.  After all, I’ve seen plenty of kindergarteners in sundresses with skinny straps. 

It reminded me so much of Swistle’s Middle School Dress Code post that I had to go read it again.  This is my very favourite paragraph from that post:

I can HEAR in the newsletter that the middle school staff does not WANT to make a dress code. They want to say, “Wear REASONABLE clothing, please, and let’s get on with the day.” But no: the children push and Push and PUSH, until the staff is FORCED to say things such as “Shoulders of tops must be at least three (3) inches wide.” I’m sure that in the beginning they were thinking, as I am, “What’s wrong with a tank top?” And many VERY HEADACHEY days later, it’s “three inches” and then needing to spell out that “three” = 3.

I just didn’t realize I would be facing this in Grade 3.  Of course, I can be as flip as I like about it, since my own children are wearing t-shirts that have the 2010 Vancouver Olympic mascots on them and nearly knee-length cargo shorts.  I am not likely ever going to have to worry about them wearing spaghetti straps and short shorts to school, and because of this I feel very fortunate.

Slight digression: I’ve always found sleeveless shirts on men to be kind of vile, outside of a gym or yoga studio or athletic activity.  I think it’s the armpit hair.  Anyone else feel this way, or is this going to be another of those issues that divides us, like shorts?  We can all still be friends, no matter what our view on shorts are.  This isn’t O Magazine.

There is one thing that is very trying about this weather, and that is the very dry dead grass that is everywhere.  Green grass is only just starting to sprout, and so the dead grass is literally everywhere.  It was all over my blanket that I took to Music Monday, it’s inexplicably all over the kids’ clothing, and the dog, the DOG keeps rolling around outside and bringing in vast quantities of it.  The dog isn’t due for his day at the groomer’s for another two weeks, and so his giant fuzziness is constantly shedding dead grass all the live long day.  I cannot stand the sight of it, which means I am sweeping the floor constantly.  “I’m in a battle with the grass,” I said casually to the boys, who immediately jumped on the word “battle”.  They immediately began describing the video game that could be based on my life.  Mom versus grass.  My weaponry is a broom and sometimes the vinegar-and-water spray bottle and mop.  Level up!  I swept up the grass.  There’s more grass!  I’m losing lives!  Get out the broom! 

Anyone want to get in on the lamest, most housewifely video game idea ever?  Anyone?  I was a little saddened by the apparent turn my life has taken here; I mean, my superpower is sweeping up dead grass with a broom.  This is what my life has come down to. 

Sears and Anthropologie: Reunited and it feels so good.

Posted on by

It’s snowing, again, huge fluffy flakes that would fill me with appreciation for their beauty if it were not mid-April.  But!  I am not going to focus on that.  Instead, let me tell you about receiving the “Hello Summer!” Sears catalogue. 

I love clothes and fashion.  I love browsing through fashion magazines and thinking about what new styles might work for me, my body type, and my own personal style, and what, most emphatically, would not.  Bright colours, patterns, and off-the-shoulder prairie blouses – no.  Dark colours, tight pants, flowy tops – okay.  I love to flip through the Sears catalogue to see how the company is marketing itself.  We all know Sears as a store that appeals strongly to older demographics, but they are also trying to get a piece of the hip, young audience.  So it’s kind of fun to see items like this:

juxtaposed with items like this:

 

I will spare you my Adam Glassman-esque diatribe about shorts and how they are an abomination to society unless worn for particular athletic and/or lifestyle reasons.  In any case, I think we can all agree that Sears is trying to be everything to everyone. 

My favourite mail days are when I get the Sears catalogue AND the anthropologie catalogue at the same time.  I like to do a contrast and compare between the two; anthropologie is a company that definitely caters to the “young, hip, moneyed” crowd but oftentimes I will find clothing that really screams out “older demographic”.  I find this very entertaining.  View Exhibit A:

To me, this $168 dress says “cabana wear”.  This one as well:

 
Man, that is one unflattering dress.  It is not doing this woman’s figure any favours, and what hope does that give the rest of us?  This dress is not dissimilar to this one, for $100 less, in the Sears catalogue.
 
 
 
What I found entertaining was the vast amount of floral skinny pants available in both catalogues.  I’m not exactly sure of the target audience, but can you guess which pants are from which catalogue?
 
 
 
 
 
If you said anthropologie, Sears, anthropologie, Sears, then you’re right!  Honestly, those pants are a BAD idea no matter where you buy them.  There is just no way that those pants will flatter anyone.  No cute shoes, tops, or scarves are going to save an outfit that contains floral patterned pants.
 
Other items of note:
 
 
 
This whole outfit is terribly fattening in every way – the way the skirt hits the widest part of the calves, the skirt itself, the cinched waist – but what I find funny is how the horse’s head hits right in between the breasts.  The horse is looking at my boob.
 
Speaking of horses:
 
 
Jeans: cute.  Booties: cute.  Red plaid top with horse sweater?  Well, I’m from Calgary.  This outfit puts me too much in mind of bad Stampede wear.  Plus, the sweater alone is $118.  If I want kitchy western wear I may as well buy this very ugly denim dress from Sears for $29.99:
 
 
 
Not that I would, mind you.  It’s pretty ugly.  Item of note: there are NO horse sweaters in the Sears catalogue.  There are many with floral or snowflake appliques, but no horses.  There is one owl sweater:
 
 
That model finds her owl and the pretend elbow patches really saucy.
 
Now, lest you think I’m a hater, I found some items that I love, from both Sears and anthropologie.  This dress, OMG, this DRESS!  If I had somewhere to wear it I would buy it in a heartbeat.  It’s gorgeous.
 
 
Someone PLEASE get married and invite me to the wedding so I can have an excuse to buy it.  This one, too:
 
 

Isn’t it adorable?  So zhu bisou bisou.  Now, Sears, don’t feel left out.  I have love for you too.  This dress is very cute and much more reasonably priced:

 
The only thing is the name of this dress.  It’s called, and I quote, “Boat Neck Slinky Dress”.  I’m not sure I can get down with that label.
 
**********************************************************************************
 
All images from www.sears.ca and www.anthropologie.com
 

Hippos and Spring

Posted on by

Important Boyhouse update for those of you who have been reading for a while: we visited the zoo yesterday for the first time since the tragic (for us) euthanasia of Foggy the Hippo.  There is a new hippo; his name is Ghost, courtesy of his Halloween birthday, and he is Foggy’s grandson.  I wasn’t sure how the zoo visit would go, since Jake still tears up at the mention of Foggy and he started crying in the car a few weeks ago because a song came on the radio; apparently it was the very song we heard driving home from the zoo after Foggy’s death.  A zoo trip was in the works however; we had a day with no plans, we were all excited to see what turned out to be a very underwhelming “Penguin Walk”, and the day promised to be sunny and mild.

After visiting the penguins and the Canadian Wilds, we started our death march towards the hippo enclosure.  Jake was completely silent, while Mark and I chattered on about how nothing could ever take Foggy’s place in our hearts, but maybe Ghost was a nice hippo, and anyway, there were other animals to see in the African Savannah display.  Giraffes!  Meercats!  Giant pythons!  Jake silently entered the enclosure and peeked through the glass barrier at the hippo pool below.

And – I kid you not – Ghost the hippo immediately poked his head out of the water, turned to Jake’s direction, and wiggled his ears.  He then, in a surprisingly agile move, spun around in the water, looked in Jake’s direction again, and sprayed water out of his nose.

Jake assumed that this hippo behaviour was solely for his benefit, and of course I encouraged this.  Ghost then dove underwater and surfaced in the middle of the pool, directly in front of us.  Sparky, the other hippo, joined him.  “I guess he really likes me!” Jake said happily.  What’s not to like?

All is well in the Boyhouse.  You may notice that Jake is wearing his winter coat.  The sun was shining, the snow was melting, and it was about eight degrees Celcius which was enough to prompt many, many people to wear shorts, t-shirts, and flip flops.  FLIP FLOPS.  A few hardy individuals were seen to be wearing tank tops; meanwhile I felt pretty footloose and fancy free to be wearing my “light” winter jacket.

Mark’s coat is unzipped!  Spring!

I have started, slowly, to bring out spring/fall weight jackets and footwear.  I set out the rain boots and put winter boots in an easily-accessible-but-still-kind-of-away location downstairs.  Yesterday, after the vivid success of the dehydrated pineapple, I went to the grocery store to pick up five more pineapples in my bid to look like someone who needs more tropical things in her life, wearing only a spring weight coat and kicky little ankle boots in place of my usual knee high ones.  I felt slightly naked; my calves especially felt exposed, despite my jeans.  There are buds swelling on the lilac bush, my tenacious daylilies near the back door are pushing their little green sprouts through the thawing earth.  It feels, ever so tenuously, like spring is in the air.  I know, I know that there will be more snow, I know that it will be below freezing at night for many weeks to come, but at the moment everything feels fresh and new.  It feels like spring is poking its head up and wiggling its ears at me.  It’s enough.

Come to think of it, Superman is a douche

Posted on by


There is this strange phenomenon I’ve noticed this winter: no matter what the weather is like at all other times of the day, it will surely become much, much worse at school pickup time. I’m not sure what it is about the 3:30-4:00 time slot, but lately it’s been nothing but gale force winds, snow, and icy cold. It’s a wee bit depressing to be standing out in the playground, bundled up like I actually am in the Arctic, watching kids walk backwards because the wind and snow in their faces is just too much.  Also, my finger-that-was-nearly-and-unknowingly-amputated-whilst-carrying-groceries is now doing this alarming thing where it spontaneously goes numb, and the cold is just not helping that. 

Today the sun came out – thank goodness – and although it’s still woolly mammoth cold and we have had snow on the ground since October and we probably will have snow on the ground for weeks to come, spring IS coming.  I think.  No, it is.  One day I will put on footwear that are not boots, and a top that is not a thick sweater layered over a long sleeved shirt, and I will wear a coat that is not big and puffy.  One day.  It’s coming.

Meanwhile, this morning Jake used the word “douchey” to describe Superman.  I was both impressed by his apt description and startled by the inappropriateness of a seven year old usage of the word.  We had a rather involved discussion about the time and place to use a word such as “douchey”; i.e., not at school.  It’s true, though.  Superman is a bit of a douche.  I’m more of a Batman girl myself.  Or Wolverine. 

When you live with a housefull of boys, these are things that actually come up in conversation on a semi-regular basis: the ranking and ordering of favourite superheroes and WHY, what foods lead to the most odorous of intestinal gas, which Pokemon character is the fastest and which is the strongest, and how double light sabers are far superior to regular light sabers.  And, apparently, how douchey Superman is.

One of my husband’s colleagues was in a Superman movie when he was a kid, and we recently watched a clip of it on youtube.  “Superman was here!” a woman exclaimed to Clark Kent, who looks totally different from Superman because he is wearing glasses and regular clothes.  Dude, at least all the other superheroes have some sort of mask on. 

Speaking of the Man of Steel, I’m in a bit of a swoony mood this week because Saturday is my wedding anniversary!  We will have been married for eleven years, and the traditional gift for eleven years of marriage is steel!  So I will be looking forward to the receipt of my new car, a la The Price is Right.  A NEW CAR!  Kidding, I will not be receiving a new car for my anniversary, but I may be receiving a piece of steel, if you know what I mean.

Some euphemisms just don’t work.

This week, in anticipation, I have been using my favourite set of dishtowels, because I am a total hausfrau who celebrates life events via dishtowel usage.  Remember this set I bought from anthropologie, that was likely meant for a wedding shower gift but I bought for myself because it’s so awesome?

This makes me as happy as a material item possibly can.  It makes me happy every time I look at it.  I am living happily ever after, I smile to myself as I polish an apple.  Not everything from anthropologie is so awesome though.  I get the catalogue in the mail, and this was on the very last page:

anthropologie.com

If you have been searching for that elusive blue toile romper, look no more!  It can be yours for only $168. 

anthropologie.com

Old lady comfort outfits, represent.  All this needs is a white cardigan with a tissue in the sleeve to complete the look.

Maybe I need an outfit like that.  I was looking swoonily at our wedding photos, and was struck, as I often am, at how very young I looked:

Eleven years later, and I look like this:

advanced style


Marriage has aged me!  Or maybe it’s all the talk about superhero douchery.

Back to life, back to reality.

Posted on by

The house is SO QUIET.  I had gotten used to a certain level of excited chatter all day long and now the kids are back at school and my husband is back at work, and it’s just me, with not even the dog for company as he is at the groomer’s.  Back to reality, I guess.  As the very flamboyant man who sold me a pair of sunglasses in Maui said, “Being in paradise doesn’t pay the bills!”  Truth.  I had also gotten used to being warm.  What is this thing called a sweater?  Jake stood at the top of the stairs for two solid minutes this morning, unmoving, until I reminded him that he needed to put on his coat and boots before we left the house.  Coat and…boots?

I’m kind of tired this morning because I actually watched the Oscars last night.  I stayed up past 10:00, which is like 2:00 in the morning for normal people.  I recorded the show so I could watch it in the same manner my husband watches the Superbowl – starting late and then fast forwarding the parts I don’t like, such as the speeches, the commercials, and the honorary awards.  Basically I just watch it to see the presenters and what people are wearing and to get glimpses of Hugh Jackman being his usual awesome self.  Doesn’t he just seem like a great guy?  Who else would run over to help someone who had tripped up the stairs?  Who else would excitedly applaud when the other guy won?  Who else looks like this?

 
 
RAWR.  Or this:

The lady will have two tickets to the gun show, please.

Speaking of attractive men, if it wasn’t bad enough that the Oscars ran overtime and foiled my plans for an early bedtime, I ended up having a minor after hours debate with my husband.  The topic? Resolved: Bradley Cooper is attractive.

Me: I just don’t think he’s very good-looking.

Husband: If you polled one hundred women, ninety-eight would agree with me. 

Me: I don’t see it.

Husband: You’re wrong.

Me: It’s not like he’s George Clooney.  THAT is an attractive man.  He even looks good in a beard!

Husband:  It’s GEORGE CLOONEY.  One hundred percent of women think he’s attractive.  You can’t compare them.

Me:  Bradley Cooper’s hair is weird.

Intellectual late-night conversations are where it’s at in my house.  And by late-night, I mean 10:05.  It’s probably good that my husband is back to work and I will only see him for a couple of hours a day at best, given where our conversations go when we’ve actually spent time together.  What’s next, a disagreement about Halle Berry’s shoulder pads?

My neighbour picked up my mail for me while I was gone, and so I was very excited to see the eclectic collection of magazines and catalogues that had amassed.  Canadian Living and Golf Digest, together at last in traditionally-defined gender roles, magazine style.  The anthropologie catalogue together with the Sears Fun in the Sun edition.  Hoo boy.  So many floral dresses and horse sweaters, but at massively different price points.  Spoiler alert: post forthcoming. 

In any event, it’s shaping up to be a busy week what with me running the school book fair – yes, again – karate makeup classes – I sure do hope that woman is there again, can’t wait to hear what she posted to Facebook this week – and the usual day-to-day activities.  What have you been up to, dear readers?  Anyone watch the Oscars?

February and Friday Happiness

Posted on by

It’s the first day of February!  January is over, for those of you who had a case of the January blues.  And here in Calgary, the weather today is unseasonably warm, the snow is melting, cars are filthy.  This warmth is in sharp contrast to earlier in the week, when it was minus 37 with windchill.  I went to pick the boys up at lunch – the boys who went to school wearing snowpants, parkas, neck warmers, hats, mitts, and boots – and was sadly disappointed with the sight of them sprinting across the icy playground to meet me, hatless and frozen.  Mark, in particular, cheerfully popped out of his school door wearing only his coat, and unzipped at that.  By the time he made it to the car he was blue, and I asked him what he was thinking.  “Well, the sun was shining,” he said, “So I thought it was warm out.”

The blue skies of Calgary in the winter can be deceiving.  There is a very special breed of Calgarian who ignores the information on the temperature gauge and instead dresses based on what the sky looks like.  You can see these purple legged people everywhere, running along the pathway system, wearing shorts despite the minus 20 temperatures.  It appears that I have birthed one of these people.

But hey, it’s Friday, it’s February, AND it’s a PD day, which I love.  I am still in my sweaty yoga clothes, the kids are in their jammies playing Poke Park on the Wii, and I’m trying to figure out what to do with the giant batch of vegan sour “cream” I made yesterday.  I was reminded after I made it why I avoid soy.  Possibly this can be used as an ingredient in some other recipe; it certainly cannot be used on its own because NASTY.  Oh well, either I salvage it or I forfeit $1.49 worth of soft tofu.  The consequences are not that dire.

I went shopping at Costco yesterday, which isn’t generally my favourite thing to do, but thanks to short lineups and the fact that only one person disparaged my choice of almond milk, it wasn’t too bad.  At least I wasn’t buying this:

 
Cocoa Pebbles!  I had no idea those were still in production.  I have never actually eaten these in my life: my mother, wise woman, did not believe in sugar cereals for children.  Once in a while we had Honey Nut Cheerios, but that was the extent of it.  Still, someone must be eating them.  At first the words “Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs” popped into my head, but then I realized that is advertising for a totally different cocoa-flavoured-cartoon-branded-cereal.
 
I’m not criticizing, mind you.  Critiquing people’s grocery choices is so not me.  Hell, for all I know this is a base for a Rice-Krispie-esque Square.  Perhaps a Valentine’s Day treat for that special someone.  Speaking of Valentine’s Day, I came across this on Facebook, and I wish I knew the creator:
 
 

These really leave those “Bee Mine” or “I Choo-Choo-Choose You” cards in the dust.  The dust, I say!  Quit Stalin, I shall say to my husband.  And he will shake his head at me, brow furrowed, probably wondering why his wife is such a nutcase.

For example, this morning I was scrolling through news headlines and saw “Ed Koch Died In The Closet.”  The first – the very first – thought that went through my head was how did he die in a closet?  Did he fall into the closet, and did no one find him?  Poor guy.  Then I read the article.  OH.  Light bulb.  I took that for a sign I needed more coffee. 

Then, to top off my nuttiness, I realized that there is a whole folder of messages in my Facebook account that I didn’t know was there!  A sweet note from a woman at the Yoga Shala, from OCTOBER that I had obviously never replied to since I didn’t know it was there.  Rude!  Also in that folder, this classy note from an unknown stranger:

Hello, I am Oscar. I am 45 year old and i am italian live California. I came across your profile and it would be my pleasure if we can be close friends…

Is this how people meet people these days?  It creeped me out – possibly unfairly.  I mean, maybe Oscar just needs a friend.  A CLOSE friend.  Anyone want to be Oscar’s friend?  Anyone?

Fun with the Sears Catalogue

Posted on by

This was the view out my back door last week:

It has been cold and snowy forever, I think.  In reality it has been more like three and a half weeks, but it feels like forever.  At least the sun came out yesterday, which makes me feel less like stabbing people who complained about the summer heat, and more like taking the kids sledding.

 
 

I am someone who is hyper-organized when it comes to winter gear.  All outerwear is tried on, and necessary items purchased, by the first week of September at the very latest.  This is normally a very good thing: I am ready for when the weather drops twenty degrees overnight, I am not scrambling to find matching mittens, I know that my kids will fit into their designated snowpants.  But recently it backfired: the children’s feet had a sudden growth spurt in late September, and it was difficult for them to get their giant flipper feet in and out of their boots.  Rather than search the mall and become frustrated at the lack of sizes, choices, and temperature ratings, I always order winter boots online from Sears.

I went to pick up my order on the weekend, and there was a lovely cross-section of Sears shoppers at the catalogue office: a young couple buying a bedroom suite, a woman talking excitedly about the arrival of a new grandchild and the need to purchase a crib, a crotchety old man, and me.  The old man at first endeared himself to me by referring to me as “young lady” but then made things uncomfortable by lighting into the lady at the counter about an $0.81 discrepancy on his bill.

It was minus 24 with windchill last Friday, and yet I allowed myself to be peer pressured into walking my dog with my much hardier friends.  I felt somehow that I deserved some sort of medal for trudging through the heavy snow in the cold.  Or maybe I just need a better coat.  The one I have right now is very warm and huge; wearing it is like being wrapped in a comforter, as shown in this (old) picture:

but yet it isn’t quite long enough.  I was mentioning this to my friend, who suggested that perhaps I have reached the stage of womanhood of wearing ankle length, pastel coloured puffy coats, with ruched sleeves.  It occured to me then, not for the first time, that clothing really goes in stages of life, and I am sliding down the slippery slope from “fashionable” to “practical and I don’t care what I look like.”  The next step after that is wearing caftan-type nighties and matching velour housecoats.  




Although maybe not.  I’m more of a pajama girl, anyway. 

It’s funny, though.  I was thinking about my teen and university years, when I would wear miniskirts and crop sweaters year-round, with light jackets and no scarves.  Now I’m wearing the down-filled equivalent of a burkha.  I saw a young girl walk by my house last week, in the bitter cold, with an open jacket, a skirt and BARE LEGS.  I had to hold myself back from running outside and bundling her up.  I see girls like this and I say things – out loud, and directly to said girls – like “Oh dear, you look cold.  Don’t you have some mittens?”  In other words, I have turned into my own grandma.  I sure hope the next step isn’t wearing these:

The first sweater is advertised as a “face-framing” sweater for ultimate face-framing flattery.  The other two are called “fooler” sweaters, and I would like to know why.  Wait.  I just answered my own question – it is due to the “double cross-over collar” which “fools” people into thinking that you are wearing two “shirts”.  I got a little crazy with the quotation marks there, but can you blame me?  That poor blonde woman is staring at me with angst, probably because she is modelling a sweater with cardinals on it.

I’m pretty sure I’ll never wear one of those sweaters – they don’t come in black – but I can’t be sure I won’t be rocking the nursing home in one of these:


That model is WAY too young for a leopard-print tunic blouse.  I can see myself wearing this, with my bleeding lipstick and my super artificial red hair, my open-toed pumps, and these slacks:

There are a lot of pluses to being in the “slacks” stage of life, the biggest one being elastic waist bands.  Although that’s kind of a moot point for anyone who is often found to be wearing yoga pants.  The only difference between these slacks and yoga pants, really, is the fabric.  Another plus to these slacks is that you would never have “whale tail”.  Of course, I’m not sure thongs would be the undergarment of choice once the slacks stage of life has been reached.  I’m guessing the appropriate panty would be more like this one:

 
Or this one, for less fancy occasions:
 

Those are touted as “anti-static panties” which I find very, very amusing for very, very inappropriate reasons.