Category Archives: Illnesses

What makes a happy couple? Not outdoor soccer.

Posted on by
Last week I was applying makeup while wearing my robe and Jake peered over at my exposed legs.  “Mom, you should go put your stockings on,” he said in a voice of concern.  I assured him that I didn’t need to wear my stockings anymore!  Happy news!  He repeated his request, slightly louder.  I repeated my response in a slightly different way, simplifying it as I thought he didn’t understand, like maybe he had an issue with comprehension of the English language.  Finally, he tearfully snapped.  “MOM!  Please just put your stockings on!  Your legs are creeping me out!”
Ew!  And this is after a week of healing.  It’s like Frankenstein’s monster’s legs, but paler.
I went and put on yoga pants.
Yesterday was a lovely day and I spent the majority of it bundled up and sitting out in the sun, reading, like the elderly person I have now become.  The boys rode their scooters and bikes and dug holes in the dirt while I wondered how much longer it will be until I can clean up the yard a little, plant a few things, cut back the old dead perennials.  There is still snow on the ground although it’s trying to melt.  My husband watched the Master’s, and for those of you who are not golf fans – I suspect that I’m talking to most of my readership here – it is being touted as the most exciting Master’s EVER.  At one point there were six players who were tied for the lead, which is evidently quite rare.  Tiger Woods even was a contender – I coulda been a contender!  I coulda been a somebody, instead of just a nobody. – but he did not win.  It is a little amazing to me that he still has a large fan base and that people were clapping (in the muted, golf way) for him.  I guess this gives hope to Charlie Sheen.
It’s funny about relationships.  I’ve been reading a few articles lately that have addressed the issue of how to “keep the spark alive”, and while I have a hard time keeping the ribald jokes to myself (Blowjobs! Pornography!  Alcohol!), I think it’s an important topic.  My husband is, obviously, an avid golf fan and an avid golf player, while I, most clearly, am not.  I am a yoga practitioner, whereas my husband, most emphatically, is not.  But yet, I find that our separate interests are part of our keeping said spark alive, even if we frequently “parallel talk” – i.e., “I shot a birdie on the tenth hole, then bogeyed the eleventh.”  “My back’s a little stiff from Kapotasana.  I think I should stretch.”  There is no way that we are ever going to be a “golf couple”; I am never donning one of those little hats and killing myself with frustration.  We are also never going to be a “yoga couple”; my husband is never going to “inhale happiness exhale peace.”  We’re a happy couple, though.  Even if I know, against my will, that Rory McIlroy completely fell apart on the back nine.
Tonight is soccer evaluations, and the single greatest email I received last week informed me that the evaluations would take place indoors this year, given the plethora of snow.  I was almost hysterically happy with this news.  Next week the season starts and let me tell you a little secret: outdoor soccer in this city is terrible.  Every year I sit on my little folding chair dressed for a blizzard, with a giant cup of tea and a sleeping bag wrapped around me, and it feels like, indeed, hell has frozen over and I am living in it.  But the kids are happy out there in the fresh air and light evenings, running around, and that’s what matters most.  Now, if only that snow would melt.

High Maintenance Girl

Posted on by
Sally: Which am I?
Harry: Oh, you’re the worst kind.  You’re high maintenance, but you think you’re low maintenance.
Sally: I don’t see that.
Harry: You don’t see it?  Waiter, I’ll have the house salad, but I don’t want the regular dressing.  I want the balsamic oil and vinegar.  But I want it on the side.  Then I’ll have the salmon with mustard sauce but I want the mustard sauce on the side.  On the side is a very big thing for you.
Sally: Well, I just want it the way I want it.
Harry: I know.  High maintenance.
Once again, I feel that movie is actually all about me and my life.  My husband is constantly telling me that I am high maintenance and although I protest, my protests are weak because I know that this is an accurate way to describe me.
I’ve been feeling somewhat guilty about complaining so much about my surgery because really, what am I really complaining about?  Things could be so much worse.  My beautiful, very active and sporty neighbour and friend was hit by a car while riding her bike, and ended up with a broken back.  A broken back!  She was out of commission for a long time, unable to do the things she loved.  And not just the sporty things she loved, but things like getting in and out of cars unassisted.   Another friend of mine had surgery in which her chest was cracked open and she couldn’t care for her two small children for many weeks, and a year later she still is feeling the effects of it.  So I feel a bit spoiled and high maintenance for complaining about something that is making me walk like I’ve been riding a horse for the  past month non-stop and is making me unable to wear anything but yoga pants.  I mean, a week ago I was clad in only pajamas and tensor bandages, so yoga pants are a very large step up. 
I’m still going to complain, though, and this one might be filed under an excess of information, but if one cannot impart an excess of information on one’s readers, then why have a blog to start with?
Here’s the thing: I can’t shave my legs.  I’m not sure when I will be able to shave my legs.  I feel like a sasquatch, or, alternately, a hippie.  You know, dear readers, I am all about peace, love, and happiness, but pass the damn razor.  And also the lip gloss.  Did you see the picture in the previous post?  That is what happens when there is no makeup.  I would have been a terrible hippie.  When I think about Woodstock I immediately get shivers thinking of all those people, all that rain and no toilets.  Not to mention the brown acid.  And all the guys wearing leather fringed jackets with no shirts underneath and without a doubt no showers or deoderant. 
But back to the issue at hand.  I feel like an actual yeti.  I don’t even want to hear from you people who regularly do not shave your legs because you don’t feel the need to.  Almost everyone I know who doesn’t shave a) is blond, or b) has little body hair anyway.  At the risk of disgusting everyone, I am not only fair skinned and brunette, but I am also of partial Scottish ancestry, and apparently my body still thinks that I need to keep warm in the Highlands. 
That’s that.  I’m not going to complain anymore, I promise. 

When I am an old woman

Posted on by

When I am an old woman, I will wear an excessive amount of Chanel Number 5.  I will wear thick, bright layers of lipstick that will feather and bleed into my papery skin.  I will make wildly inappropriate jokes and sexually harrass all the male orderlies at the home and earn the reputation of being the creepy old woman in room 14. 


What I have discovered about myself, disturbingly enough, is that when I am an old woman I am going to relentlessly discuss my various health complaints.  Yes, I’m going to be one of those horrible old people who talk about my less savoury ailments to random passerby.  I’m discovering this about myself as right now it is all I can do to not roll down my thick, dark beige compression stockings to show people my stitches.  “Want to see my scar?”  Anyway, my legs have become somewhat fascinating to me, and so I must think that they are fascinating to everyone else, despite the fact that my long suffering, beloved husband turned slightly green at the sight of my unbandaged, revolting legs. 

Speaking of my long suffering, beloved husband, he went back to work today and I think he was quite relieved to do so.  Not only has he had to take care of me and my random, irrational fits of sobbing – But I don’t WANT my legs to hurt anymore! – he has also been running the house and dealing with the children.  I do not think that he has a glamourized view of the stay at home parent.  If any of you are feeling underappreciated these days, I totally recommend complete convalescence and to have your husband do load after load of laundry and wash sinkful after sinkful of dishes to really get some drudgery based recognition.  Or maybe I don’t.  Because it’s kind of depressing to realize that this is how I spend my days.

Anyway, back to my fascinating legs.  Other than the stitches scattered over the length of them – Do you have bugs on your legs, Mom? – they look, disturbingly, as though someone has taken a crowbar to them.  I’m like Nancy Kerrigan!  Why?  WWHHHHYYYYYYYYYY?  I feel a kinship with Nancy.  Perhaps she and I could hang out, discuss the pros and cons of Minnie Mouse ears. 

I ran out of my good drugs yesterday.  This is good and bad.  On the good side, as much fun as it was sleeping sixteen hours a day and being in a state of non-pain, my brain was just completely fuzzy.  I could barely concentrate enough to read a Candace Bushnell novel.  As it was, I did finish Mockingjay and I’m not sure if it was me or the book, but I couldn’t really get into it.  I kept wondering if this was a different battle scene or the same one, or what area they were in, or if anyone important died.  When I finished the book I was just totally confused.  Did Gale die?  What actually happened?  I tried going back and re-reading and just became more confused.  So I think that was me. 

On the bad side, of course, is the pain.  It’s like the House of Pain around here, but without the jumping around.  But you can still take Tylenol, I was told, which to me is the same as saying You can take nothing.  Bitch, please.  Tylenol?  Unless I can down the whole bottle, Tylenol is doing nothing.

So there’s that.  This weekend it snowed, thirty centimetres, and I stared out the window in drugged-out bliss while Mark enjoyed it:

Those are almond eyes, a carrot nose, and a banana smile.

See?

And lest anyone accuse me of only posting flattering pictures of myself.  Here I am, completely high on Percocet, enjoying the lovely fruit bouquet sent by my girlfriends.  Note my awesome hair and pajamas.

The Hunger Games versus Harry Potter

Posted on by
I’ve been unwell for the past couple of days; I’ve had the cold that has been going around the kids’ school, and while it isn’t devastating, it is annoying in one of those “I just went through an entire box of Kleenex” sort of way.
Yesterday was spent in a cold medication-induced fog, the kind of day that not only gets in the way of any kind of productivity, but also gets in the way of basic functioning.  I spent the afternoon dozing in and out on the couch while Jake watched TV – active parenting, no? – and woke up to find his stuffed Quatchi on my face.  “I thought you might want to snuggle him!” Jake said happily, which made me happy although somewhat leery of being smothered.
I couldn’t even focus enough to read.  On the weekend I read The Hunger Games, which Mark’s teacher had lent me with a high recommendation.  I didn’t pick it up for a week or so, because it just didn’t seem like my type of book, and also I realize that the trilogy is very popular and the last time I tried to read something that popular – Harry Potter – I hated it and found myself alone on an island of non-enchantment.  I still avoid mentioning that I dislike Harry Potter in certain circles, due to the emotional tarring-and-feathering I received from my feelings.  So I worried that I would try to read this and hate it, and then I would be all alone again.  Here I go again on my own…
But I loved it.  I couldn’t put it down.  It greatly surprised me and so if you, like me, have been putting off reading The Hunger Games because you think it looks terrible, it might surprise you!  I took it to my hair appointment on the weekend because I couldn’t bear to pick up any of the usual tabloid magazines. 
Last Thursday I was grocery shopping and I came upon two checkout lines: one with a senior couple who had only a few items left to unload in their cart, and one with a woman who had a full-to-overflowing cart, and so I lined up behind the seniors.  I soon realized my mistake as the woman sped through the other lineup, and several other people after her, while I stood there waiting, waiting for the elderly woman to SLOWLY take one small item at a time out of her cart and the cashier SLOWLY rang it through and SLOWLY set each item with the utmost care in a shopping bag.  I kept thinking to myself, be patient, it’s only five minutes out of your day, then be patient, it’s only ten minutes out of your day, then OMG how can it take fifteen minutes to unload six items, no, be patient, finally TWENTY MINUTES!  IT’S BEEN TWENTY MINUTES ALREADY!!!  While I was deep breathing and focusing on not shoving everyone out of the way and bagging all the damn groceries myself, I started looking at the magazine display.  “Bachelor Brad Betrayed by Emily!” one magazine screamed, and went on to reveal that “engagement to dead Nascar driver was a lie!”  Okay.  Since this was last Thursday, and I know with 100% certainty that the Final Rose was only given out two days ago, I idly wondered if the network would be upset at this very important security leak.  Another magazine claimed to be the Cellulite Edition.  On the cover were various celebrities in various skimpy outfits, with circles around various body parts.  Yippee.  “Guess Who?” the magazine asked about someone in a bikini with “flabby love handles.”  I wondered if people actually buy this magazine.  They must, I guess, but how depressing.  How depressing would it be to be someone who writes those “articles”?  Even more depressing, those were the only two magazines that did not have Charlie Sheen’s and his crazy face splashed across the cover.  When I finally left the store twenty-five minutes later, I felt like I had lost actual IQ points from just reading magazine covers. 
And today I appear to be oscillating between being completely high, jittery, and unfocused due to cold medication, or completely foggy, slow, and unfocused due to having a cold.  Apologies if this post makes no sense.  But The Hunger Games!  You should try it; you may like it!

All the cool kids are doing it!

Posted on by

And so will I – a Year in Review.  Yes, I know it is the sixth of January and most year in reviews have already been posted, but I was far too busy writing about people who eat toilet paper and watching When Harry Met Sally.

So what happened in 2010 over at the Boy House?

January

I made a resolution to learn how to bake bread, and did so immediately, learning two important things: a) baking bread is not as hard as I thought it would be, and b) the key to New Year Resolution Success is to aim low.

I also ranted about the weird things people say to pregnant women and posted a picture of me with an extra seventy pounds to love.

Yowza.  I still had seven weeks to go at that point.  SEVEN WEEKS.
February
We got really, really excited about the Olympics.  We also went on our first ever winter vacation and became a parody of Canadians as the kids got off the plane wearing t-shirts emblazoned with Team Canada logos, and instantly started running around shrieking in amazement, “Mom, look!  There are FLOWERS!  And they’re REAL!  And the grass is GREEN!  And there’s no SNOW!”
March
Mark turned six!  I had my usual crises with regards to birthday party planning and Daylight Savings Time.  I cleaned out the office and found a whole box of mix tapes, some labeled “Party Mix” and one that was made for my husband from one of his old girlfriends that included songs from Richard Marx.  Hee.

April

I turned 35!  I celebrated by chaperoning on a field trip to the firehall, and cemented my cougar-like status by volunteering to try on the firefighter outfit, discovering just how heavy said outfit is, and actually saying to the young and attractive firefighter “Wow, you guys must be in great shape.”  Coo-coo-coo-choo, Mrs. Robinson.  It also snowed a lot and I wrote about attractive movie characters who would be terrible to be married to, i.e., Ralph Fiennes in the English Patient.


My friend lent me a tiara for my birthday, fulfilling my lifelong dream of birthday crown-wearing.

May
Jake’s pre-Kindergarten class had a Mother’s Day tea in which they sang a song that went “May there always be sunshine, may there always be blue skies, may there always be mama, may there always be me”, and I still tear up thinking about it.  I also cried a lot thinking about this Tim Horton’s commercial and I got way too excited about the woman with the MBA with a concentration in economics winning Miss USA.  Clearly May is an emotional roller-coaster of a month for me.
It was still snowing in May.
June
It was really cold.  On Father’s Day weekend – and Super Soccer Saturday weekend – I attended a yoga weekend workshop.  Happy Father’s Day!  Now take care of the kids all weekend.  The kids finished school and my husband came up with a plan in case my kids ever decide to be protesters at a G-20 Summit. 
My two favourite pictures of Mark ever taken.  He’s getting his groove on at the end-of-school-Stampede-breakfast.  Note that it is June and Jake is wearing his fleece jacket.
July
It was raining and cold and I decided to make yarn octopuses, which turned out as well as any craft I make does.  Terribly.  We went to the Okanagan for some sunshine.  The cold and rain made me become Miss Carpe Diem, and so any day with slightly above average temperatures had me running the kids to the pool.
The yarn octopuses, Moppy and Bum, doing a duet of Heart and Soul.
August
It was still cold and rainy.  I wrote a lot about fashion, especially the jeans with zippered ankles that came out that made me feel like I was wearing turquoise slacks and a coordinating blouse, hobbling around with my walker and my Scotch mints, with a tissue in my sleeve.  Also – and my friend just reminded me of this yesterday – I saw a guy wearing a t-shirt that said “Vagitarian”.  I still laugh evilly thinking about it.  Vagitarian.  Says the guy who lives in his mom’s basement.
September
Mark started Grade One and Jake started Kindergarten.  We got hardwood installed by two attractive young whipper-snappers which led to many “hardwood” jokes.  Also I came home to find that they had taken out my drawers to move my dresser with ease, and my panty drawer was proudly on display for all to see.  So I had to show my panties to get hardwood.  Hee.  Also, Jake turned five!
Too cool for school!  Note the boxes of hardwood at right.
October
In typical October fashion we seemed to have a lot of viruses, dead squirrels, and excitement about Halloween.  Also I went on a two-night vacation with my husband and no kids!  And we all survived!  Actually the boys had the time of their lives and still talk about how awesome it was that Grandma picked them up at school.
Boo, I’m a scary witch!  For real.
November
It snowed a lot, I got ready for Christmas, I ran the Scholastic Book Fair, Mark barfed.  That pretty much sums up November.
A foam finger!  It says “We’re #1 – bp”.
December
I blogged almost exclusively about Christmas, Christmas songs, Christmas baking, and my new awesome sexy bitch boots.

Whew!  If you’re still reading this, thank you!!!  So 2010 was a great year, and here’s to a wondeful 2011 for all of us.

Baby It’s Cold Outside, aka The Holiday Date-Rape Song

Posted on by
I was sick this week with a weird little illness that manifested itself as a sore throat, tight chest, and overwhelming exhaustion.  Today is the first day I haven’t felt as though if I closed my eyes for more than a blink, I would succumb to narcoleptic urges.  Unfortunately I woke up with no voice – NO VOICE; how to communicate with children? – but it has started to come back now so I can issue commands without the children ignoring me unconsciously (as opposed to the conscious ignoring) or having them answer “What?  WHAT?  I can’t hear you!”
The boys have been in swimming lessons with their school all week, and this always seems perverse to me: swimming in the frigid city-run pools, then walking back to the school in sub-zero temperatures.  The boys seem to be completely depleted by these lessons, or else they have what I have, because this whole week they have become progressively more and more tired.  At lunchtime yesterday, Mark started asking if he had to go back to school in the afternoon; he was soooo tired.  Normally I would have just kept him home, as it was very cold out and the thought of getting everyone dressed and out the door, again, was just too tiring.  After all, how much actual schooling gets done on a Friday afternoon (which is only 80 minutes long) one week before winter break?  This is where homeschoolers have the win.  THE WIN.  However, both his snowpants and backpack were still at school, the boys had haircuts after school, then we had to pick the dog up from the groomers…and I convinced Mark to “just keep going” and promised that after all of that we would just curl up on the couch and watch The Charlie Brown Christmas.  As it turns out, Mark’s class just went to his Grade Five “Buddy” class – the school pairs up older kids with younger ones in a buddy system – and watched Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.  Clearly a LOT of schooling goes on a Friday afternoon one week before winter break.  While Mark was learning about reindeer and their exclusionary tactics, I set Jake up with Starfall on my laptop and proceeded to make all the beds with flannel sheets fresh from the dryer.  Is that a good idea when one is exhausted?  No, it is not.  It took every ounce of willpower not to crawl between those sheets, those cozy, fuzzy, warm-from-the-dryer sheets.
I’m happy to have some energy back today. 
I have great holiday mojo, holiday chores do not get me down, with one exception: gift wrapping.  I decided that I must wrap gifts today, and THREE HOURS later, I finished.  I considered throwing in the proverbial towel and forcing my husband to do it, but he was busy repainting our bedroom, so I kind of felt like I should be doing something productive.  So I wrapped gifts for three hours.  The issue isn’t the number of gifts I have to wrap, it is that I am completely incompetent with gift wrap.  It looks like a three-year-old wrapped my gifts and I don’t even have a three-year-old in the house.  In fact, the two gifts that Jake helped me wrap look significantly better than anything I did on my own.  I don’t know what my problem is.  I always have way too much paper, or not enough, and my hair evidently falls out from the strain because strands of it are always stuck in the tape, or the tape gets stuck on my nails and takes off my nail polish, and then the ribbon.  My word, the ribbon.  How does one make a bow that doesn’t look like something my dog chewed on or, alternately, some kind of poky, pointy, Sputnik-like object that one stuck on an oblong, weirdly shaped, strange cornered parcel?  WHAT IS THE SECRET TO TYING A PRETTY BOW???  By the time I was nearing the end of the gifts, I was pretty much like “FUCK THIS.  NO MORE BOWS.  I HATE ALL OF YOU.  NO BOWS FOR ANYONE.”
So maybe not the Christmas spirit.  I really need my voice to come back full force so I can start with my White Christmas rendition, or Mele Kalikimaka, or even Baby It’s Cold Outside (or as I like to call it, the Holiday Date-Rape Song!).  After all, the best way to spread Christmas cheer is by singing loud for all to hear!  And maybe having a glass of wine.  That should bolster my spirits.

The Elderly and the Fireplace Channel

Posted on by

So no one died or was dismembered from the swim lessons yesterday, happily enough.  They froze, because our lovely city seems to be practicing the utmost frugality when it comes to heating municipal swimming pools, and also it is December, but they are still in one piece.  So that’s a win.

To warm ourselves up, apparently, we have been watching the holiday fireplace channel.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s not the channel that plays festive music; it is JUST a fireplace, making crackling fire noises.  It’s actually quite relaxing, or would be if the boys didn’t go insane whenever the guy’s arm appears to poke the fire or add another log.  “HE’S POKING THE FIRE!  THERE’S THE NEW LOG!  AAAAHHHHHHH!”  They also like to wonder aloud what would happen if he poked the fire with his bare hands?  Or wouldn’t it be neat if his sleeve caught on fire?  Ah, the warmth and love of the holidays. 

Speaking of festive music, I cannot help myself – I always sing along.  Even, evidently, while shopping at Superstore, like I did today, realizing only when a woman smiled at me that I was singing audibly.  The question arises: what am I going to be like when I am old and crazy?  I read an article in this month’s O magazine that was truly disturbing.  I always thought of my eventual foray into the home for the elderly with fondness: I would be surrounded by other women wearing support hose and feathery lipstick, I would eat lots of soft foods, I would sexually harass the male orderlies.  Maybe I would even learn how to knit or play shuffleboard.  Who knows?  The world will be my aged oyster.  However, according to this article, the foray into the home is riddled with high-school-like hierarchies, depending on one’s level of mobility and ability to match one’s socks with one’s cardigan.  I read that article and felt strangely out of sorts.  Could it be that senior’s residences are not all they are cracked up to be?  Will I really be unable to choose what table to eat my 4:30 dinner at if I have a walker?  Disturbing on many levels.

And what, you may ask, was I doing at Superstore on this fine day?  Shopping for the holiday necessities, of course: booze and cheese.  So I’m all ready for the holidays; if only I hadn’t mentioned to some girlfriends yesterday that we hadn’t been sick for a while…because today it seems I have a sore throat and the tendency to snap at minor issues like my children saying “Mom!  Mom!  Mom!  Mom!” followed with “Um, I forget”.  But I’m sure it’s nothing a little booze and cheese can’t solve!  And maybe an early bedtime.  Good night!