Category Archives: Home Renovations

Zen and the art of child/ carpet maintenance.

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I am relieved to say that I was wrong or, at least, that my first instinct was correct: the insurance that was advertising to those whose “other car” has a siren on top is indeed aimed at first responders, police, and the like. I realized this when I saw another similar sign advertising to nurses, which leads me to believe that such professions are associated with lower accident rates. As someone who is not unfamiliar with the basic tenets of actuarial science, I find this fascinating. Which professions tend to make more insurance claims? Which professions are associated with high risk behaviours? I spent way too much time contemplating this, while driving and singing along to Girls Just Wanna Have Fun this morning.

I know, I know, I had you at actuarial science.

Last week was all about dental checkups and this week is all about the optometrist. Sometimes parenting feels like a lot of maintenance, like the kids are vehicles and I’m trying to maximize performance and longevity. I guess that IS what parenting is. Nevertheless, I find it infinitely satisfying when I’ve successfully made appointments for all these things (next week: haircuts). It feels like the actual appointments are nothing compared with phoning/ emailing to make appointments, scheduling them and figuring out the calendar and schedules. And I only have two children! I admire all of you who are making all the back-to-school appointments for more than two because honestly, two is challenging enough.

One thing I do need to make an appointment for is carpet cleaning. We only have carpet in the basement (does that sound dirty? It kind of sounds dirty.) and it’s reached reprehensible status, in my opinion. I remember when we ripped out the carpet upstairs and replaced it with hardwood, how disgusting it was to dig the dust bunnies out from under the TV and realizing that when the carpet was there, the dust just WENT INTO THE CARPET. It’s enough to make me want to rip out the carpet downstairs, but that is simply not feasible. Anyway, I do need to get someone to clean it but the thought of having to move all the moveable things, and then have someone in the house with a giant hose for several hours (okay, this really sounds dirty) is overwhelming. I keep looking at my calendar, and then at the carpet cleaner’s number, and I just can’t bring myself to do it yet.

It’s a hard knock life.

I’ve been reading a few books this summer that have garnered a lot of buzz and interest, and once again I feel like I’m an alien from another planet who dislikes things that seem to be commonly enjoyed. This is like when I read the much-acclaimed The Goldfinch, and ended up wishing that I’d never picked it up. What a downer of a book. Anyway, I read Hausfrau and I found it very disappointing. I should have known it wasn’t going to be my type of book. Sex addiction. Dissatisfaction with what appears to be a perfectly normal life. Boring sessions with a psychoanalyst. Multiple affairs. An affair with a man named Archie. VERY SAD THINGS THAT I WON’T GO INTO IN CASE YOU WANT TO READ IT. The whole thing was like a modern, less interesting Anna Karenina, which maybe was the point since the main character is named Anna. Have you read it? Did you hate it or am I all alone in this?

Then I read Little Children, which sounded light and interesting, and instead circled around the following: an affair, a pedophile released into the community, and bitchy moms. Doesn’t that sound great? In other words, I’m looking for some book recommendations, preferably something uplifting, or at least not depressing. Anyone? xo

Scaredy Nicole Wears Blue. This Was Not Part Of The Plan!

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This weekend I got on my bike for the first time since 2003. I know! It felt like quite the undertaking. I stopped going for bike rides when I was pregnant with Mark, and then I never started again. My husband rides with the kids, but the truth is I’m not a strong rider, I cannot ride in traffic without panicking, and I just can’t deal with worrying about the kids riding WHILE I’m riding. But the kids are now at an age where they are perfectly competent, and they’ve expressed interest in “family bike rides” and so I thought riding up at the lake, where there is little traffic and few things to worry about, might be just the ticket. I also remembered how shocked the kids were to learn that I actually know how to swim, and so I thought in some way I should show them that their mother is actually capable of riding a bike.

So my husband dragged my bike out of storage, and tuned it up a bit. I went out and bought a bike skirt because if I’m going to spend any amount of time doing an athletic activity, I want to do it looking nice.

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My friend Alice (HI ALICE) expressed concern about the colour. She thought the blue was too bright for me, and that I resemble a flower, and will get swarmed by marauding butterflies. If this happens, I will probably die. Or scream.

Anyway, I nervously rode with the boys and it was pretty fun, so I guess we are going on family bike rides now. It’s one of my goals to be more sporty and active with the kids, and as long as I have a cute outfit, I’m good to go. Right?

A friend (HI JOANNE) posted a long quote about embracing yourself as you are and I just have to share the last part:

 I don’t want to waste one more precious, livable moment being anything other than totally thrilled that I’m here! I’m alive! I get to live every day in this body that my soul chose and my only job is to honor it with a full life!”
~ Christina Vanvuren

So I guess I’ll be bike riding more often. I’m not sure if ANYONE is capable of being in a state of thrill every second of every day, but it’s good to remember that it is good to be alive.

Social media is a funny thing, isn’t it? For the most part, I love it, and not just because I have a job based on it. I really like to peek into other people’s lives and celebrate their little victories and happiness. I love photos of pets, kids, and vacations. I love selfies, recipes, pictures of what someone had for dinner, and links to funny or interesting stories. Most of all, I love personal stories. The other day, a woman I know from yoga (HI LAURA) posted an anecdote in which she and her one year old son were in Starbucks and were approached by an elderly lady with dementia. This elderly lady thought that Laura’s baby was her own grandson, and instead of correcting her, Laura sat down and had visited with her. Not one out of one hundred people would do that, I think. What a kindness. This has stayed in my thoughts and has given me a goal to be more open and kind. Think about it – what a gift she gave that lady, the gift of dignity and kindness. I want to be more like Laura.

Then there’s the flip side of social media, the passive aggressive updates, the angry link posting and the threads that follow, the invitations to express differing views followed by the total rage that results from people expressing differing views. I’ve actually seen friendships – actual, real-life friendships – disintegrate over vaccination discussions and political decisions. Just this weekend, someone posted a piece about the price of starter homes. The thread that followed was basically many people agreeing that no one but the very rich can afford to buy a house, and buying a house is stupid anyway. Then one of my friends very reasonably and calmly commented that, by making informed decisions and figuring out where one’s priorities lie, most people can in fact purchase a home. He also – very reasonably – pointed out that the definition of “starter home” is possibly flawed; a 2500 square foot house with all new appliances might not fit this description.

I strongly agree with this last point. My husband and I bought this house in 2000, and it was in terrible shape at the time. The living room was bright pink with shiny forest green trim, and featured a giant fireplace with gold-toned rock work. The basement was panel board and linoleum, the kitchen had five different – but coordinated! – patterns of wallpaper, and the bathroom had BROWN FIXTURES. The kitchen cupboards and drawers were homemade in 1962 and required a great deal of strength to open and close them. The linen cupboards smelled like ginger and garlic had gone in there to die and the gardens were completely overrun by weeds and grass. That, my friends, is a starter home.

But I digress. After my friend made these very reasonable points, and also drew on his own experiences and setbacks, he was immediately attacked by the other commenters. People said some really mean, cutting things, and THAT is what I hate about social media. I hate the pretence that everyone is open minded and can express opinions freely, but if someone does that, then they get attacked. I hate that people say things that they very likely would not say face to face, and most of all, I hate when people follow up a mean comment with a smiley emoticon and/ or an “lol!”. THE LOL DOES NOT CANCEL OUT WHAT YOU SAID, PEOPLE.

Well, we can’t control what others do, we can only control our own reactions and behaviour, and that’s why there’s the “I don’t want to see this” option. And in the meantime, I will be thinking to myself “What Would Laura Do?” Laura probably wouldn’t write a blog post about what she hates about social media. Hmm. Too late now, and so if I do get swarmed by marauding butterflies, it will be karma, I guess. xo

Old at heart.

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I had a hair appointment this week – thank god, something had to be done about the orange straw and grey roots – and as I was getting my colour rinsed out, an older gentleman came into the salon. He explained that he was Marjorie’s son, Marjorie being an elderly lady who gets a weekly hairdo every Friday morning. He had never been in the salon before, but he drives Marjorie every week. What a good son! Except that he had made arrangements for her to go out of town to visit her granddaughter this Friday, which meant that all was ashes. How could he take her out of town with undone hair?

And so this gentleman was coming into the salon personally to see if there was any chance Marjorie could be squeezed in on Thursday. The salon I frequent is a busy one – I book my colours months in advance – but they accommodated his request. After he left, my hair therapist smiled and said, “Oh, those old ladies. They hate to have their schedules messed with. It ruins their whole week!” I nodded sympathetically, all the while thinking, I can relate.

You see, I am not elderly, and yet I too find myself getting worked up when my schedule is thrown out of whack. I can only imagine me in forty or fifty years. Changing a weekly hair appointment would be akin to burning down the nursing home or running out of hot water and lemon in the dining room. We don’t have much time left, I am not leaving this earth with messy hair.

Digression: what kind of food will they have in the Home in forty or fifty years? Will it be things that are trendy and popular now, like kale and quinoa, or will we all just start eating mashed potatoes and veal cutlets? I cannot imagine that I will ever tuck into a plate of veal cutlets, but what kind of vegetarian options will they have for the elderly, circa 2060? Also, will we all naturally just slide into Sears’ “pull on” slacks and blouses, or housedresses? Or will we be clinging to the styles we like now? Will we be a generation of skinny jean wearing, kale chip eating old people? Will I still wear coconut-scented lotion or will I just start wearing Lily of the Valley talcum powder? I’d like to think I’ll go straight to Chanel Number 5 but really, who can tell?

In any case, I don’t do well with schedule interruptions or changes. Case in point: the painters. We’ve been talking about painting the kitchen and bathrooms. We’ve had a colour consult with the painter who painted our basement and exterior. The only thing we didn’t have was a firm date. Sometime in early April, was what had been settled on, when we got an email from the painter saying that he might have to change that around. Well, we had nothing firm anyway, so I blithely went on with my life.

At least, until Tuesday night, when my husband informed me that the painters were coming the very next day at 9:00.

In retrospect, this was the best possible scenario. I had a meeting, but not until 11, the kids were staying for lunch for Tech Club, and I didn’t have time to work myself up into a frenzy about omg people working in the house! I was able to be home to let them in, the day was sunny and warm and so I could lock the dog outside, everything was fine. The colours turned out beautifully – photos to come – and as of Thursday morning everything was finished.

And yet. I am the crabbiest person to have people working in the house. Maybe it’s my Type A personality, which makes me feel like an elephant is sitting on my chest when I see drywall dust on the kitchen counters and tiny scraps of paint chips on the floor, and the furniture all askew. Maybe this is a sign that I need to look into my control-freak behaviour when I physically have to leave the room so that I don’t implode and wither to the floor when everything in the house is chaos and I cannot even get to my water bottle or use the bathroom without explaining myself.

Well, it’s all over now, and as I said, it’s beautiful. My husband claims not to be a Type A person, but he is quite a perfectionist, especially when it comes to handy work. He is very handy – if you’re not handy yourself, you are best to marry someone handy, is my motto – and has done a great deal of work in our house with his own two hands. He’s the ultimate “measure 20 times, cut once” guy, everything has to be exactly leveled and exactly centred and there is no eyeballing involved. MEASUREMENTS COUNT, PEOPLE. It works out great, because he is very exact. The only problem is that if someone ELSE does the work, then he can find fault in about thirty seconds flat. He’s the one who spots the tiny piece of roller fluff that got painted onto the wall, or the slightly-less-than-perfect paint line. And the biggest problem about this is that I am the one who is at home, so it is my job to inform the person working on our house that their work is suspect. I don’t like that job. There was a not-great job done in a not-too-prominent part of the bathroom which resulted in some coloured paint being on our cream trim, but my husband threw up his hands, decided he was going to just repaint the trim and door himself, because he could do a better job. This kind of defeats the purpose of getting painters in, but maybe it’s for the best.

Princess problems, am I right? I guess it’s time for me to work on my mental flexibility. Either that, or just continue with my deep ujjayi breathing.

It’s the Ultimate Pi Day! And other fun topics.

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I’m so excited for tomorrow; it’s the Ultimate Pi Day! 3/14/15!!! ππππππππππ all day long. Maybe I should write this entire post in Greek letters for celebratory reasons.

We are having a celebration of another sort tomorrow; it’s Mark’s birthday party. This afternoon is dedicated to party preparation: Jake is tasked with cleaning up the Lego pile in the basement, Mark is tasked with putting together candy-filled loot bags, and I am taking the boys to the nearest Dairy Queen to buy a Treatzza Pizza. This Treatzza Pizza has been the subject of many a conversation and much excitement and anticipation. I can’t wait to try the Treatzza Pizza! one of the boys has said at least twice a day for the past month. I’m not sure where Mark even got the idea for one; to my knowledge he has never tried such a thing. Marketing! It works, apparently.

Anyone else ecstatic that it’s Friday? Friday the 13th notwithstanding, I am pretty relieved that this week is behind me. The week we switch to Daylight Savings Time is the most exhausting week of the year. I love that several people separately sent me this article, “Alberta Senior Hits Pancake Circuit To Petition Against Daylight Savings Time.” I love this on so many levels. I love that people see someone petitioning against DST, and THINK OF ME. I love that I have something in common with this Alberta senior. I love the term “Pancake Circuit” and want to insert it into every conversation from now on. “I ate a lot of pancakes last year because I went to every pancake breakfast I could.” That, my friends, is dedication. I especially love the opening paragraph:

An 81-year-old senior whose body gets thrown “out of whack” by the annual switch to daylight savings time hit the pancake breakfast circuit to gather signatures to petition the province to end her misery.

She goes on to talk about how difficult it is for staff in seniors’ residences to rouse residents in the morning to ensure they don’t miss their breakfast. YOU DO NOT WANT THE OLD PEOPLE MISSING THEIR BREAKFASTS. No one wants light-headed, grumpy seniors. It’s the same way with the kids – I’ve had to coax my own early-birds out of bed every day this week, and they are usually the bounce-out-of-bed type. Will no one think of the children or seniors?

I’m telling you, this woman is my people.

Also this week was my second-to-last School Council/ Parent Association meeting that I chaired, and that I was almost late for. My husband had a painter in to do a quote for us, and it required so many decisions and colour swatches that I ended up running out the door to make it on time. When I got home later that night I had a list of possible colours, but no actual paint chips, so I had to run to the paint store to figure out what, exactly, the painter had recommended. Right now I’m waffling between a very deep avocado green or a deep blue for the kitchen and a bluish grey or darker bluish grey for the upstairs bathroom. We have settled on a dark rust colour for the downstairs bathroom, which will be quite a change from the current baby blue. On the one hand I’m very excited for the change. Changing paint colours makes the house feel brand new! On the other hand, I’m tired just thinking about having painters in the house, with all the mess and disruption, and possible “dog-brushing-against-wall-and-getting-all-painty” issues. Princess problems, I know.

Here’s some fun news: I buy all my various vitamins and supplements online, and so I get a lot of “20% off! Free shipping!” emails from the company I patronize. Yesterday, I got an email from them with the subject line, “Nicole, slim down for spring! Save 20% on all fat burners!” Then, today I received an email with the subject line, “Nicole, crank up your libido with help from Supplements Canada – 20% off plus free shipping!” WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO TELL ME? This wouldn’t be so bad except for the newsletter I received in my in-box with the subject line “Why Your Husband Doesn’t Want Sex.” I swear, opening my email is becoming very damaging to my self-esteem.

Kitchen Love

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I know this isn’t exactly a shocking revelation, but I spend the vast majority of my time in the kitchen. But not barefoot (usually). And not pregnant (definitely). Ever since the Great Kitchen Renovation of 2012, I really love being in my kitchen. It’s so pretty and bright! Someone recently told me that stainless steel appliances and granite countertops are the Harvest Gold appliances and sparkly-laminate countertops of our generation, and while I don’t totally disagree, I am also of the opinion that all home décor dates eventually, so you might as well enjoy what makes you happy now. Unless you live in Downton Abbey, the décor you choose will at some point be used as an archaeological dating method. I mean, think of those country kitchens of the 80s, with duck-themed wallpaper and ruffly curtains. Think of the French Provincial looks of the late 90s. No matter what you think will be a timeless classic, odds are it won’t. This is a public service announcement for “living in the now”.

Here’s me making coconut whipped cream in my kitchen. See? It’s pretty!

So, I love my kitchen but there are elements I don’t love, some of which are changeable, and some of which are not. I wish it was bigger, for example, but that would entail moving house and that’s not something I want to do at this time. I hate how my miscellaneous drawer gets jammed because of all the stuff I mindlessly throw in there; this is something I CAN change. I hate how my spice cupboard is a jumble of jars and random containers; also changeable.

So I signed up for The Kitchn Cure to refresh and reorganize my kitchen a little.

Week One: Clean out the freezer and fridge.

Not to be boasty, but I recently obtained a full size, upright freezer and extra fridge and it has changed my life. For the longest time, I hemmed and hawed over getting a fridge and freezer for downstairs, until finally my husband got tired of me sobbing while jamming frozen foods into the freezer compartment of my regular fridge, and went out and bought them. Life altering. I can now batch cook! And buy giant bags of frozen berries at Costco! And put extra vegetables in the fridge instead of having to run out for groceries three times in a five day span! The only reason I bring this up is that I do not need to clean out my freezer, since it’s relatively new and unsullied. Look!

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See, it hasn’t had a chance to become messy and disorganized and YES those are frozen chicken fingers. What? Like I’m the only person who feeds my kids frozen chicken fingers on a Friday night. The week is long, people.

But cleaning the fridge was another story altogether. I’ve halfheartedly wiped down shelves and drawers in the two years since the Great Kitchen Renovation, but I’ve never done a really deep cleaning.

Exhibit A: Fridge Before Cleaning

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It’s not terrible. It’s a little jumbled. There are crumbs and grubbiness, but not too bad. Also – it is not on an angle, that’s my photography.

My assignment was to take everything out, clean all shelves and drawers, throw out anything that was bad, and put everything back in neatly. Now, my fridge was mid-cycle, grocery wise, so it wasn’t as full or as empty as it could be. I did the same for the freezer compartment. I washed everything and scrubbed everything and put it all back in…

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There was caramel goop on the bottom of that shelf that is not there any more.

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Usually there is a juice carton in that door; like I said, mid-cycle.

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I’m not sure if you can appreciate it from this picture, but oh my god you guys, the fridge is so clean.

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The crispers and the meat/cheese drawer were the worst in terms of gross crumbs that had fallen in from everywhere. Pepper seeds, old garlic peels, random twist ties. ALL GONE AND ALL CLEAN.

I did the same for the freezer compartment, but the pictures do not really look any different. Trust me, it’s way more organized and clean.

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Also? That fruit blend makes the best smoothies.

Lessons Learned From Week One: Kitchn Cure

1) I am completely obsessive. I can’t stop looking at the clean fridge. I keep opening the fridge just to gaze at the contents. My husband put a bottle of barbeque sauce into the fridge and I quietly went in and moved it. This has got to stop, but for now, I’m pretty excited about it.

2) I do a pretty good job of using up the food that I buy. In other words, all that obsessive menu planning and list-making has paid off. There was very little waste and very little to throw out. Here is what I threw out of my fridge during The Great Cleaning: a jar of strawberry jam from 2011 that had 1/2 inch of jam in it, a two-inch long dried out piece of ginger, a carton of vanilla almond milk that had about 1/4 cup in it, 1/3 of a very soft cucumber, and two empty Ziploc bags.

3) I have a bad habit of putting things in the freezer and then forgetting about them. Case in point: in the freezer I found a package of bagels, 6 bags that each contained one single pita, and a bag containing five freezer burned hot dog buns. I composted the buns, and vowed not to buy any more pita or bagel until the frozen ones have been consumed. I also found two packages of hot dogs that had each contained three freezer burned hot dogs, which ended up in the garbage.

I snuck a peek at this week’s assignments, and one of them is all about small appliances. Squee, this will be fun!

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

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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.

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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!

Going to the zoo, zoo, zoo…

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Are you ready for this?  The shower doors are finished!  Our renovations are completed!  Wheeeeee.  Pictures to follow, but for now I’m just excited and relieved and the teensiest bit annoyed that the head contractor wanted to come and pick up the final cheque immediately, without us being able to test things out.  Hey buddy, I’ve been waiting anxiously for the past three weeks to get these things installed, maybe you can wait a day or two until we’ve actually used the shower?  I don’t know.
The shower doors were supposed to be installed last Thursday, but at the last minute I was informed that there was a fire and kiln explosion at the manufacturer, and the upshoot of that alarming information was that our doors were not ready.  I moped for a second and then decided to seize the day and head to the zoo with the kids. 
I bought my first zoo pass when Mark was a baby, on the advice of my friend who had a one-year-old daughter and hence was my muse for all things mama.  At first, I would meet up with friends and enjoy wandering around the exhibits, all of us pushing our strollers while our babies napped or cried or chewed on their stroller toys.  Later we would get together more sporadically with our double strollers, all of us looking like zombie hunchbacks.  Eventually going to the zoo became really fun as the kids walked, and chose favourite animals, and played in the picnic areas. 
The zoo has a penguin display now, and although we waited in line during spring break for ninety minutes, this time we chose to just peek at the outdoor display and leave the waiting to others.
The boys wanted to walk through the dinosaur park, and I took the same picture I’ve been taking for the past couple of years.  There’s nothing like looking at old pictures to realize that the kids have grown – OMG! – and that time is flying and next thing you know they will be calling me once a week on Sundays.

In other news, the kids seem to have been stretched. 

Jake’s favourite animal at the zoo has always been Foggy the hippo.  Foggy is one of the oldest hippos alive – he will be 47 this year! – and his birthday is only two days after Jake’s.  Jake feels a deep kinship with him. 

Check this picture out from two years ago:

Jake’s longtime favourite colour is orange, in case you didn’t notice.
Mark prefers the Canadian Wilds part of the zoo.

But he also loves the dinosaur park, as he did two years ago:

I forgave the shower door people their kiln fire and explosion, since we had such a great day after all.  I especially forgive them now that we have shower doors that fit properly! 
“Hey Mom, we’ve been playing in this tree ever since we were little!”  Yes, you have, my sweeties.