Category Archives: Housewifery

I just want to eat my COOKIE!

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How was your weekend?  It has been painfully cold around here – so cold that I gave the boys the warm fleece pajamas that I was saving for Christmas – and so I spent a large part of the weekend pleasantly bustling around the house, baking things and making batch after batch of cookie dough in preparation for holiday baking.
Speaking of cookies, have you seen this video of the CEO of Alberta Health Services, refusing to answer media questions on the grounds that he was too busy eating a cookie?  You can’t make this stuff up.  I think the funniest part is how shrill his voice is when he says “I am interested in eating my COOKIE.”  Good times.  I think I’m going to start responding like that whenever anyone asks me anything.  “I am STILL eating my COOKIE.”  Maybe I’ll shove the cookie in the questioner’s face, just for fun.  Actually, since most people who ask me for things are my children, they probably would appreciate that.  To a kid, eating cookies is serious business.
While I was baking things and running errands and discovering that Lindor now makes PEPPERMINT CHOCOLATES – Mother of God, it is the most amazing discovery since frozen After-Eights – my husband continued his painting rampage that has been going on for the past few months.  This weekend he started painting Mark’s room a deep blue, a nice change from the dull brown colour it has been since before we had kids and that room was an office.  Anyway, he took everything out of Mark’s closet, which is apparently a catch-all for all kinds of things that we forgot we had.  Like a 1980’s version of Trivial Pursuit.
And this is where I say I don’t know why I bought the children any toys for Christmas, because if you give them an extremely outdated version of Trivial Pursuit, they will be occupied for hours.  And no, I am not boasting about my precocious children and their intimate knowledge of Arts and Literature and Geography and how they somehow knew who Phyllis Diller was in the Entertainment category.  No.  I just mean that Jake opened up his very own bakery and made pies all day long.



He made pies like a samurai!  While using the Chutes and Ladders board.

 While Jake was busy force-feeding the rest of the family pie, Mark set up the actual game board and started a complex game using wooly mammoths, sabre-tooth tigers, and pirates.

If that wasn’t enough excitement for one day, they also found a giant foam finger from my days as a working girl, as opposed to my days as a household drudge/ bon-bon eating housewife.

This picture is absolutely hilarious to me.  Worth a thousand words, I tell you.

And for those of you in more moderate climes, here is a view out my back door:

It looks pretty, anyway.  Check out one of my gardens!

There are leaves still on the shrubs!  Poor things.

So tell me, how was your weekend?  And do cookies trump serious conversation?  Discuss.

Conversation at the Breakfast Table

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Jake: Is today the day that Grandma is coming for a sleepover?

Me: No, that’s tomorrow.

Both boys, in unison: Awwwwww!

Me: Remember, Mom and Dad are going on Thursday, we’ll be gone all day Friday, then we are coming back on Saturday.

Mark: Can you come back on Sunday instead?

So apparently they are going to be just fine.

I got home from yoga practice at 6:55 this morning, and since that time, in addition to my usual morning routine (shower, breakfasts, get the kids ready, school drop-off) I have also accomplished the following:

Baked a cake.
Cleaned the kitchen.
Cleaned the bathroom.
Done a load of laundry.
Scheduled doctor’s appointment for Jake.
Freaked out.
Panicked.
Called husband and left terse message regarding doctor’s appointment for Jake.
Bought and put away groceries.
Washed fruit and put away in Tupperware containers for easy snacking.
Tidied up basement playroom where, apparently, a toy bomb exploded.

It’s only 10:15 a.m.

With regards to the latter job, last night the boys came upstairs from playing a loud and raucous game in the basement.  Jake informed me that they were playing a game entitled “Thomas’ Big Day”.  “But Mom”, he said, “His big day wasn’t his birthday or anything.  It was the day his engine exploded!”  I see.  That explains the state of the playroom.

So now it’s time to get things packed and, judging from the start of this day, continue on frantically performing semi-unnecessary domestic chores.  Enjoy your week, everyone!

T-9 to the Big K

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I have been fielding the following two questions of late: 1) Aren’t you SAD that your BABY is starting kindergarten?, and 2) Can you BELIEVE your BABY is in kindergarten?

Now first, I am not sad that Jake is starting kindergarten. In fact, I’m a bit worried that I’m not sad that Jake is starting kindergarten. I’m emotional about everything, so I don’t understand why I’m not more emotional about this. I was more emotional about a salesgirl telling me recently that grey washes me out; my drawers full of cozy grey sweaters are making me feel suddenly pallid and nostalgic. What is wrong with me? Am I broken? I wonder if I’m repressing something and that I’m going to end up one of those mothers curled up in the corner by the sandtable on the first day of school, sobbing. I HOPE not. In fact, my general feeling about school starting in one week Thursday is squee! The kids are going back to school! I’m going to miss them, certainly, the house is going to feel empty, but I am really looking forward to getting back into the routine.

One thing I’m also really looking forward to? Solo grocery shopping. I’m getting kind of tired of herding them through the aisles, remonstrating with them not to run and then scolding them for running and, inevitably, knocking into one of the more grumpy and elderly members of our community who will subsequently make a sour remark about my ill-behaved hooligans. The other day the boys spent an afternoon at my mother’s and I took the opportunity to go to Superstore. I felt so glamourous, like I was this fabulous woman of the world, strolling through the cereal aisle and blocking out the shrieking of children being pushed in carts by haggard looking mothers.

One thing I’m not looking forward to? The inevitable onslaught of illnesses. Hoo boy, just thinking about all the squeamy germs just made me shudder like the Howard Hughes I am. Also, I am not looking forward to the certain exhaustion and subsequent crabbiness of children going back to school.

And yes, it is hard to believe that Jake is going to kindergarten. Frankly, it’s hard to believe the summer is over, so YES, time flies, the cat’s in the cradle, pages are flying off the cartoon calendar, etc., etc. Mostly I feel excited and happy, but I’ll keep you posted if I find myself weeping, in the fetal position, snuggling with one of his newborn sleepers. It could happen.

I want a jungle room!

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I woke up this morning thinking that I was supposed to remember something about today when it occurred to me: it’s the 33rd anniversary of Elvis’ death. Festive! I love fat Elvis, and not just for his music. It takes a certain something something to be able to rock out a sparkly jumpsuit.


And capes! Wearing a cape when one is not, arguably, a superhero, really sends a message to the general public. A cape, I think, really escalates an outfit, especially one of the jumpsuit variety.


In general I love singing soulful and impassioned renditions of such musical masterpieces of Suspicious Minds and Kentucky Rain, and I felt that my performance would probably be greatly enhanced by playing the actual music, so I ran out to the car to find my most-loved Elvis CD. To find it, I had to dig through CDs by the following artists: Neil Diamond, Blue Rodeo, Kanye West, James Taylor, Eminem, Jay-Z, Gordon Lightfoot, Barenaked Ladies, and Hall and Oates. Rounding out the weird factor was a mixed CD called Pure Disco and the Starsky and Hutch soundtrack. I looked at those CDs for a minute and thought of arranging and photographing them for some kind of modern art piece, entitled, maybe, Study of Really Strange Mind Songs.

As an aside, I was at a pool today speaking with a lovely mother who mentioned that she had held a karaoke party and I was instantly filled with envy. Karaoke! I am AWESOME at karaoke! I want to go to a karaoke party. Of course, my 9:00 bedtime is generally unsociable and tends to preclude such events.

Anyway, I was indulging in the housewifely task of floor washing and singing, and as I passionately accompanied Elvis (“Maybe IIIII didn’t treat yooouuu…quite as good as I should have DUM DUM DUM! Maybe IIIIII didn’t LOVE YOU…quite as often as I should have…”) Mark quietly stole over to the CD player and stealthily ejected it. When I asked him about it, he said “I just kind of think that it was OVER, Mom.” Huh. That says a lot, really.

Everybody’s talking at me

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“I just wish I could one day watch the news in peace” my husband complained the other night, over the din of the kids playing and their varying sound effects. I emotionally answered that one day the kids would be gone and moved away and then it would be silent, and sad, and then he could watch the news without interruption. He replied with a curse which I will not repeat, and followed up with a comment to the effect that he wasn’t wishing the kids to move out, he was just wishing them to be slightly less loud for 30 minutes.

This is the fourth consecutive day of cold and rain, and the boys have been in astonishingly good spirits. They have played together, happily and without fighting, not even an argument – cue the chorus of singing angels – all afternoon. They have also been constantly talking all afternoon. I am not exaggerating when I say that there was not one minute of silence all afternoon. Not one minute. It was almost like the children are equipped with a chatter button, and it has been jammed into the “on” position, and the volume has been cranked to “maximum”. Even during activities that might be considered quiet activities, such as colouring and using the bathroom, there has been a constant stream of chatter, along with varying sound effects. Twice today I darted to the bathroom thinking Jake was calling for help, when he was actually just singing.

I’m not complaining though. The chatter has been pleasant enough, and has been nice background noise for my obsessive baking. I guess it’s the weather, but this week, in addition to my regular meal preparation, I have made the following: boule, granola, cinnamon loaf, banana bread, cookies, and three litres of roasted tomato sauce. It has been epic. I started off thinking that I will be out of the house most of the weekend, so perhaps I should prepare a few simple snacks for my husband to feed the kids. It then started to spiral out of control. Fortunately the rain is starting to taper off, as I’m running out of recipes. And room in the freezer.

It’s my dog’s birthday!

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I used to think that people who celebrated their pets’ birthdays were, how shall I say, a little bit lame. But! That was before we had Barkley, the wonder dog.


Mark is presenting him with his birthday treat. I tried to manually take out Barkley’s red eyes because the photo made him look like a one-headed Cerberus.


What a cute little treat for our little doggie-woggie.

So I also baked a cake. Not for the dog, obviously. The kids were adamant that birthday cake MUST be had. What kind of birthday is celebrated cakelessly? No kind of birthday, that’s what. So yesterday I baked a chocolate layer cake while the snow covered the grass and the wind blew and I wondered if all my flowers would survive or would I be making another trip to the garden center? It turns out they did survive but I was surrounded by a gloomy feeling all day, greatly exacerbated by walking the birthday boy in the blowing cold wearing my winter coat and boots on May 29.

In my twenties, I had a friend who was always sure she never wanted children and she would give her reasons for that decision at the drop of a hat, and one of those reasons was that once a person has children, they become very very boring. They talk about diapers and poop and all the non-unique things that their children do and say. This is probably true of me. I have been known to discuss diapers and poop and hey, I have a blog about my children, so I guess I am fairly dull. I do like being fairly dull, I prefer it to a more dramatic life, it seems.

One of the reasons I know I am fairly dull is that during yesterday’s snowstorm, I had a grand old time cleaning the house. My husband was out running errands, my children were very happily and peacefully (this is relative: they were playing predator and prey with dinosaurs) playing and instead of relaxing with some coffee and a book, I decided the entire house must be cleaned and all bedding must be laundered. How’s that for dramatic thrills and spills? When life gives me lemons, apparently I make lemon-scented disinfectant and scrub the kitchen cupboards. Woot! Anyone want to come over? The house smells like chocolate cake and Mr. Clean. It’s lovely.

The Opposite of Toyland, or My Basement is a Recycling Plant

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In honour of Mother’s Day, posted on the wall beside Jake’s classroom is a list of all the children’s names and their response to the question, what makes moms special? I was happy to see Jake’s response, she gives me lots of hugs, as opposed to some of the children who said she buys me lots of toys. Whew. As a matter of fact I do not buy the children lots of toys, or really any toys, with the exception of birthdays and Christmas, but of course they HAVE lots of toys. I don’t know why we even have toys when we have cardboard boxes.

We just had some new furniture delivered: a new table and chairs, and a hutch, and it all came in cardboard boxes. Is this normal? I have no idea. In addition to three huge boxes which have turned into a spaceship, a clubhouse, and an airplane, Mark gathered together a large amount of packing material for his special project: a battle ship/ trap/ gigantic weapon. In other words, our basement looks like a recycling plant. I am torn between being happy that the kids are playing creatively in such an old-fashioned childhood way and also being somewhat distressed at the extreme visual chaos this has caused.

Speaking of chaos, before we sold our old table, my husband disassembled it for storage and transport.

Surfing!

I have to admit I felt completely overwhelmed when the furniture was delivered and the house was littered with giant heavy boxes and the kids were bouncing off the walls with excitement and the dog was howling outside at the commotion. I was surprised to see the table was delivered in a large, very flat box, so I asked the delivery man if the legs were inside. He replied that they were, and I would have to attach the legs myself. “Like, with a screwdriver?” I said inanely, to which he smiled and suggested perhaps I could get someone male to help me. I’m doing wonders for feminism over here, people. Wonders.


Jake also really enjoys playing with eggplants. Bizarrely, he calls them his little doggies. I was slicing one up and he was shocked. No! Don’t eat my doggie!