Category Archives: I’m turning into Howard Hughes

Hello November!

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Yesterday a friend asked me how much Halloween candy I had eaten while waiting at home for Trick or Treaters, and I will tell you this: zero. My secret? I buy the candy that I don’t like, which is for me a giant box with a mixture of those little Kit Kats, Coffee Crisps, Smarties, and Aero bars. The new young couple down the street – who reminds me of my husband and I many years ago – came by with their two little ones. This is their first Halloween in the neighbourhood, and the woman told me enthusiastically she had bought 100 little bags of chips and hoped that would be enough. I was loathe to tell her that we have never had more than 20 Trick or Treaters, and that she would be munching on chips for some time to come. See, that is a mistake I would never have made – it’s not that I don’t buy hundreds of tiny chocolate bars, it’s that I would never buy that many potato chips, for the simple reason that I cannot resist them. For me, salty beats sweet any day.

Next year I think I’ll buy full size chocolate bars, because I want to feel like one of those fancy ladies; a princess distributing largesse to the populace, as it were.

Thursday after classes I took the Halloween decorations down, with the help of the boys. Normally this is something I would leave to my husband but a) it’s completely dark by the time he gets home and b) today is supposed to be a “rain/snow mix” which would be a bit disastrous for our animatronic thingamagigs. Electric shorting out might add to the creepiness though:

The kids went Trick or Treating with all their friends; I was very happy to see them come back candy-laden and happy, with no one commenting on their giant statures. Does it seem to you that EVERYTHING is a divisive topic nowadays? You name it, everyone has a STRONG and IMMOVABLE opinion on it. Teens trick or treating is definitely one of them. I am of the camp that would give candy out to literally anyone who comes to my door; they could be in university – hell, they could be senior citizens and they would still get a handful of Kit Kats from me. As for my own kids, they can Trick or Treat for as long as they want as far as I’m concerned.

So here we are in November, and I for one am happy about it. Our house was hit by an absolutely deplorable virus, and I seemed to have gotten the worst of it. I recovered enough to be on my feet but the residual exhaustion has been something else. It’s been a week of just setting one foot in front of the other, and occasionally bursting into overwhelmed, exhausted tears. Today I’m finally starting to feel like myself again; I spent some days last week wondering how on earth I usually had the energy to do my normal day-to-day things. Here’s how poorly I felt: I haven’t had a sip of wine in two weeks. Dark times, people.

This morning, after napping all yesterday afternoon and sleeping ten hours last night, I felt well enough to return to my usual Saturday morning spin class. You know how they say the first time back is the hardest? I certainly hope that’s true. All during the class I kept looking down at the little orange warning on my bike: Over exercise can result in serious injury or death. Death! It seemed like a terrible portent. Usually I am filled with all sorts of personal-best goals during the class; this morning my aim was to just make it through without death. If I have a choice in the matter, I would rather not Meet the Maker while wearing sweaty padded leggings.

Fortunately, I am still here to tell the tale.

The kids are in that teenage phase where every morning, they seem taller than the day before. This has resulted in them completely outgrowing their single beds; my older son in particular is several inches longer than his bed, which has led to some uncomfortable nights. We decided to buy them both extra-long-full-size beds, which is more complicated than you might think, given we live in a 1960s bungalow. There has been much jenga-like moving of beds, and there were twenty-four hours when the new beds were delivered into the front entry, in which the entire entryway and front door were completely blocked off. The chaos of this has not added positively to my mental and emotional state this week, but the final result is extremely satisfactory. At one point I looked at all the wrappings and cardboard and craziness and repeated to myself the only way out is through over and over. Happily, after much rearranging and quite a bit of purging, things are looking up! The only problem is that I lay down on one of the beds and damn, it is way more comfortable than my own bed. The only thing keeping me from surreptitiously bed shopping is the thought of going through all this chaos again so soon. Maybe I’ll feel well enough for a glass of wine tonight, to give me some courage. Let’s hope!

Hallelujah, where’s the Advil Cold and Sinus?

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I’m going to preface this post by saying that I’m on my eighth cup of coffee and I have taken two Advil Cold and Sinus, so things could get interesting. Also we are at less than eight hours of daylight, it’s almost a new moon, and holy moly things are dark. I’ve been fighting this virus that we all seem to have this week; it’s the first time I’ve been sick since sometime in 2015, so I have kind of forgotten what it is like to be incapacitated. The great news is that the whole-body fatigue that had taken me down is gone; in its place is a bit of a stuffy head, but since I feel okay being upright, I think I am on the mend.

Me: I think I’m almost totally back to normal!

My husband: You realize that you are totally out of breath just walking up the stairs, right?

I have a tendency to overdo things a little and I am really trying not to. I am trying to take advice I give friends, which is to rest and recover. Apparently it’s easier to give advice than to follow it, who knew? But yesterday I knew I had to do something and so I took the whole day off. I did literally nothing except watch The Price Is Right and five episodes of The Crown.

Princess Margaret looks like I feel.

Looks like Drew Carey got new glasses, I said to myself, despite the fact that it’s been a few years since I’ve watched The Price is Right and who knows, really, how new those glasses are. There was a Canadian fellow on and I became very invested in his progress. Sadly, he only spun $0.10, followed by $0.65 on the big wheel and so was not eligible for the Showcase Showdown. This might have been a blessing for him though because the Big Prize on one of the Showcases was a Trip To Canada. Yes, a trip to “Toronto, Canada” where the winner would enjoy a three-hour sailing tour of Lake Ontario. A three-hour tour started dolefully repeating itself in my brain. But really – it’s December. Who wants a trip to Toronto, let alone a sailing tour (a three-hour tour) on Lake Ontario IN DECEMBER. Although maybe it was taped earlier in the year, who really knows.

I feel like I have more to say about my television watching but it’s not coming to me right now.

Oh, I know, the bananas. I have a banana update for you! At three weeks post-purchase, the bananas were a strange mix of green with blackened stems:

But disturbingly, today, all is ashes. 24 days after purchase, here is where we are:

I’m getting quite a few “When are you going to throw those things out?” queries, and the truth is, I don’t know. I’m tempted to just freeze them all for later banana bread, but they are kind of grody looking, so I’m not sure if it would affect the baking or not. The peel, while still yellow with the exception of the one banana which went completely black and feels like it will disintegrate at any moment, looks weird and is strangely dimpled. The correct thing to do, probably, is to just throw them in the compost, but I don’t know if I can. Maybe it’s the Advil Cold and Sinus talking, but that seems like a decision I cannot make at this time. I have become attached to these bananas.

Recently I saw an article saying that Christmas really sucks for moms, because we are so busy making magical memories we don’t have the time to experience any magic ourselves. I cannot speak for anyone else but I will say that Christmas does not suck for me, in fact it is the opposite, and if it is sucking for you, then back off the throttle a little. Christmas was amazing for me as a kid and you know what my mom did? She bought gifts, sure, she made a metric tonne of baking, yes, and that was pretty much it. AND IT WAS AWESOME. I was thinking about this the other day as my kids enjoyed their super-luxurious Lindor advent calendars, purchased at Costco, naturally, that have not only the usual amazing truffles, but also chocolate icicles, angles, and Santas. They each have one and you know what I had as a child? Those waxy tiny chocolate calendars that I shared with my two brothers.

Side note: if anyone wants to stock up on waxy tiny chocolate calendars, they are still available at Superstore for a very low price.

This was taken nearly three weeks ago, now they are thirty-eight cents each.

Anyway, not to victim blame here, but I think we put way too much pressure on ourselves to be all magical and elvish and whatnot. I feel like our kids will have great Christmas memories no matter what, even if they have to, god forbid, share an advent calendar. Wait, I wrote about this before! Hold please.

Here it is, How To Enjoy The Holidays Without Losing Your Mind. I won’t repeat the sentiments here, but let’s be kind to ourselves. I mean, one year my mother’s oven broke on Christmas Eve and she ended up making Christmas dinner in the microwave and on the barbeque, and it was kind of awesome. So really, all will be merry and bright, so long as we don’t lose our minds like Clark Griswold. Hallelujah! Holy shit. Where’s the Tylenol?

Actually I can really relate to that right now because I think my Advil is wearing off. I will leave you with these offerings: my children’s and my gingerbread men. Which ones do you think I made?

Yes, that one is exactly what you think it is. Welcome to life with boys!

Hello darkness, my old friend.

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Can you even believe it is August already? We were on vacation last week and since I’ve been back I’ve noticed the huge change in daylight. Before I left the sky was light when I left the house at 5:00 am; now I have to turn on the outside light to go to the garage. I don’t need to close the blinds tightly when I go to bed because it’s already dark.

I know in many, many places in the world, August is still considered “summer” but to me, it begins to feel like fall. The air feels cool and crisp, and even though we have had the warmest, most beautiful summer I can ever remember, I am not ready for it. One thing to note about this city: our summers are short and once the weather turns, it turns. There’s no going back.

Don’t go, summer! Don’t go.

One thing about August is that it’s time to prepare for school; one of my tasks today is to figure out what clothes still fit the boys and what needs to be purchased. Spoiler alert: nothing fits and the children currently have bare drawers where once there were jeans and long-sleeved shirts. It is also the time to think of winter gear – no, it’s not too early, technically we can have snow any time now.

Recently a friend finished a one-year non-shopping challenge, in which she bought no clothes for a whole year. A whole year! I wondered if I myself could – and perhaps, looking at my overflowing closet of much-loved clothes – should take that challenge. Readers may recall that I did a challenge like this last year after I Kondo-ed my closet; I vowed not to buy any clothes for approximately six months, and I did it. Could I do it for a whole year? I was thinking August 1 might be a good start date for that, keeping in mind that asking for clothes for Christmas and my birthday would still be acceptable. Technically speaking, that is. If there is one thing my husband loves to buy for me for such occasions, it is Lululemon wear. What’s not to love? He knows my size, my style preferences (Wunder Unders, Power Y tanks, and long flowy black sweaters) and he can order it online. I shall not take that joy away from him/ I need an out in case a really cute top comes on “We Made Too Much.”

Anyway, I’m considering it. A whole year, though! I wonder if I could do it. I certainly wouldn’t do it for the boys, since their pants are currently in the “capri” zone and their shirts are inadvertently “three-quarter length.”

Speaking of which, does anyone actually like three-quarter length shirts? As a long-limbed girl, they make me feel like an ape or an orangutan wearing human clothes for some kind of animal-based sitcom.

We were on vacation last week, visiting family and friends, and for the most part it was very lovely; lots of long walks, pool time, sunshine, and tasty drinks. This week has been all about getting back to routine, such as it is in the summer.

Someone mentioned to me that my life looks pretty sublime, at least according to Facebook, which is kind of a funny metric. I mean, my life IS pretty sublime, I certainly have no complaints; the vast majority of my time is spent teaching yoga, preparing food, or grocery shopping, all excellent endeavors that I enjoy very much. But of course we rarely talk about the dreary parts of life, like washing dishes several times a day, or cleaning the yard of previously-digested dog food, or pestilence.

Yes, pestilence. We arrived home from vacation to discover that some young people in this house had improperly disposed of Freezie wrappers in the downstairs garbage can, leading to sticky fruit liquid on the floor, and an infestation of ants. Ants! Fortunately one of those young people redeemed himself by googling DIY ant traps, and so we mixed a cup of sugar with half a cup of water and a tablespoon of Borax, and I highly recommend this route. We soon had a Gone With The Wind-like scene featuring ants in the place of wounded soldiers.

Later that same evening, my husband and I were watching Game of Thrones and I found myself staring off into the distance as a coping mechanism during a particularly grim scene. I saw…something. Something black and long and…it disappeared into the useless little cupboard over the staircase. I looked, and my alarmed husband asked what exactly I was looking for. I said that I thought – maybe – it could be a mouse. My husband looked at me and said, “OH NO” in the manner of someone who has to deal with the fallout of a major disaster. We looked but couldn’t see any signs of previously-digested mouse food, and so I said maybe it was just my imagination.

You know how you say something, but you really don’t believe it? That was me. I just knew there was a mouse in the house but had no proof. Sure enough, the next day I took out the kitchen compost bin and underneath it was a sure sign. I called my husband, who asked me, in a very worried voice, why I sounded so calm. He was remembering my near-breakdown after The Moustastrophe of 2013. That evening I went out to teach a class, and my husband and the boys set traps. Later, after I was in bed, apparently there was a snap and then there was much jockeying and arguing about which boy would get to dispose of the mouse carcass. Another trap had to be set on the off chance that the deprived child would be able to act as Mouse Undertaker, but happily, this has not yet come to fruition.

A very long confessional post about bathroom cleansers.

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Something very momentous happened this week, an event that is quality-of-life altering for me.

Before I get to that, a little background information. Most of you who have known me for a while know that my go-to cleaning solution is white vinegar. I am, you might say, a white vinegar fiend. At any given time my house smells like an odd cross between a bakery and a pickling factory. There is, in my humble opinion, no better nor more cost-effective cleaner than white vinegar. Occasionally I will mix it up by using a hippie essential-oil based cleaner, but for the most part, it’s all white vinegar all the time.

Well, most of the time. There is an exception to this rule, and that is the bathroom sinks and toilets. When it comes to that, I go all out; I like the kind of cleaners that boast of killing off 99.9% of germs, the old-school, scrub-free disinfectants. When it comes to the bathroom sinks and toilets, the harsher the cleanser the better, in my opinion. I feel fine about this because, as I mentioned, I only use these cleansers for relatively small area, and so one bottle of cleanser can last…well, I don’t really know how long it can last. Months, I suppose.

So it was several months ago that I impulsively bought a different cleanser; it was on a price rollback, it promised to kill off 99.9% of germs – including staph bacteria, which is not something I had thought of before but sure am thinking of now – and it advertised a “spring-fresh scent.” Now, I am not the kind of person who actually sniffs cleansers in the Walmart cleaning solution aisle, because a) I don’t want to look like a weirdo, b) who sniffs cleansers anyway? Certainly not me, and c) it doesn’t seem like too big of a deal what your bathroom cleaning solution smells like.

Oh, the naivete. It turns out that it DOES matter, it matters a lot, because this cleaning solution was, while effective at its job, terrible in the scent department. It smelled like a chemical factory mixed with formaldehyde, which is not a scent I enjoy, nor is it one that I associate with “spring-fresh.”

And yet, I kept on.

I continued to use the abhorrent-smelling-but-effective cleanser, and every time I did – three times a week, because that is how often I clean my bathrooms – I would hate it. The bathroom would smell like a chemical factory with formaldehyde for hours afterwards, THREE TIMES A WEEK. So for a large part of the week, I basically hated my ill-scented bathroom and everything else around it.

Now, at this point, you might be saying, But Nicole, when you Kondo’d your life, you realized that saying goodbye to things that do not spark joy is the key to happiness and tidiness. Why did you not just get rid of the bathroom cleanser and buy another one, in a non-offensive scent?

Why indeed? Well, as it turns out, I can get rid of lipglosses that do not suit me after only one use, I can get rid of ill-fitting clothes that originally cost a tidy sum of money, I can donate an entire lifetime’s worth of compact discs because of Spotify, but I cannot get rid of any kind of household cleanser. I know! It was $2.99 worth of cleanser, that I used for MONTHS AND MONTHS, and yet I continued to use it until the bitter end.

Sure, I could have poured it down the sink, and although eventually that is where the cleanser all goes, for some reason I felt like that was environmentally unsound to do so all in one shot. Ultimately, though, it is probably to do with my Scottish ancestry. I also keep using hand soap until the soap itself is a centimetre long and a millimetre thick, and my long-suffering husband throws it out. I flatten toothpaste tubes until not another drop can be extracted, I keep shampoo and conditioner bottles upside down, probably using a ton more water in the shower as I violently shake out the last drops.

Once, I was watching a Shark Tank episode with my kids, who love that show. On it was a woman who had invented something called the Spaddy Daddy. It was a long, thin spatula that could be used to scrape out every last ounce of body wash, conditioner, or liquid soap out of a bottle, and all I could think was Brilliant. This woman is a goddamn genius. She is my people. I do no think the Spaddy Daddy is available in Canada, but it is clearly the greatest idea of our generation.

Side note: why has no one ever invented a nail polish in which the brush goes all the way to the bottom? It is impossible, not to mention eminently frustrating, to get any nail polish out of the bottle once it is less than 1/3 full. What a waste. Someone told me that this could be solved by putting nail polish remover in the bottle to get the last bit out, but that seems to me that it would compromise the integrity of the nail polish, and so I have never tried. Instead I throw the bottle in the trash, 1/3 full, a little harder than is necessary.

All of which is to say that I could not, and would not, throw out the gross-smelling bathroom cleanser, but this week, I FINISHED IT. I have started on a new, citrus-scented one, and my quality of life has improved immensely.

Accomplishing Things and Reading Motivational Quotes

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You guys, the Mayday tree is budding, the tulips are up, all sorts of hardy plants – yarrow, daylilies, ornamental sage – are making their appearance in my backyard, and today it RAINED. Do you know how rare it is to get rain in Calgary in April? Usually it’s snow. I feel like I’m in some exciting new world where winter doesn’t last eight months.

Now that I’ve said that, it will probably snow tomorrow.

Similarly, I realized that it has been over a year since I was last ill. I made it through the entire winter – including close-quartered yoga teacher training when a number of my fellow students were hacking up lungs and feverish – without getting sick. I thought, perhaps I should write a post about that, but then decided that was hubris, and in doing so I was guaranteeing I would be immediately struck down with the bubonic plague. So this brief mention is all you, dear reader, will have to endure. In any case, my “stay healthy” regimen consists mainly of daily smoothies containing 8-10 cups of spinach, washing my hands like a surgeon, never directly touching doorknobs, and having children who are no longer mobile petrie dishes.

I currently have five library books piled up on my side table; four of them came in within two days of each other, and the other one was a title I picked up on a whim, so I’ve been reading a lot. I finished What Alice Forgot, and while it wasn’t my favourite by that author, it was certainly thought-provoking. The premise is a woman falls and hits her head and is suddenly missing the past ten years of her life; she doesn’t remember her children, her friends, her impending divorce.

If you woke up tomorrow with no memory, none whatsoever, of the past ten years, and had to just reintegrate into your regular life, can you imagine what that would be like? Imagine if you still thought you were the same person you were in 2007. It boggles the mind. I had only just started practicing yoga in 2007, I wasn’t 100% vegetarian, I didn’t have a blog, and I looked a lot like this:

Well, I FELT like that, anyway, since I hadn’t slept through the night since 2003, and by that point I was pretty tired. I really looked like this:

Whatever happened to that denim jacket? I guess I donated it; I barely remember it.

Anyway, it’s an interesting thing to think about, if you just erased the past ten years. All the friends that you would have made in the past ten years, you’d have no memory of. The children’s school years, family dramas, deaths, home renovations, etc., all of those would be GONE. My god, I wouldn’t even remember Barkley. I would just suddenly be thrust into a home with a super cute fluffy dog who insistently nudges me when he wants to be petted, and begs for carrot ends.

Well. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen.

It’s been a real Get It Done week in the Boyhouse. I don’t know if it’s post-vacation energy or the fact that I’m reading motivational quotes, but I have been Down To Business around here. You know those little jobs that take hardly any time, but are annoying and you hate them? I’ve been doing all those jobs! And I have to say, it is incredibly Empowering (motivational quote-inspired) because damn, now those stupid little things are Done. Going through the pile of mail and filing things and recycling others, picking up boring items at Walmart, vacuuming the stairs. That kind of thing. I feel a vast, and probably greatly overstated, measure of accomplishment in doing those little chores.

I will confess to one of the stupidest jobs that I always put off; I hesitate to even call it a “job” because really, it’s almost nothing. I don’t think this can even qualify as a job, but here goes: Sunday nights I make a big dinner, and usually there is gravy. My gravy boat resides in the cupboard above the fridge, and every Sunday night after the dishes are done, I just let the gravy boat sit on the counter for a day or two before I put it back, because it seems like too much work after all that cooking. Because pulling a chair two feet and then getting on the chair and putting the gravy boat back in the cupboard is just a Bridge Too Far. But having the gravy boat on the counter is incredibly annoying to me, and I keep thinking to myself, all Monday and Tuesday, I need to put the gravy boat away, I need to put the gravy boat away, I need to put the gravy boat away, before I finally do it.

This is a long and boring way to say that last Sunday I just PUT THE GODDAMN GRAVY BOAT AWAY ON SUNDAY NIGHT and honestly, it was – is Life-Changing too dramatic? – Life-Changing. I mean, I have to do it anyway. It takes literally thirty seconds. Why do I aggravate myself by not just doing it? This thought spiraled into other areas in my life. Why put off something that can be done right now, and get it off the Giant List of Things To Do? Why have something as stupid as a gravy boat hanging over me? FREEDOM.

So, I urge you, dear reader: go DO IT. Do whatever it is hanging over your head. Do the thing on your to-do list that will take no time but you don’t want to do it. Make the phone call. Schedule the appointment. Just Do It And Then It Will Be Done, is my new motto. It is incredibly Freeing, I tell you.

Just in case you’re wondering, no, no one else in my house will put away the gravy boat because I have somehow created a Reign of Terror around putting things away incorrectly in the kitchen. I know! I need to figure out how to rectify this issue but in the meantime, Gravy Boat Serenity rests on my shoulders.

God Bless The Bus Drivers

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For weeks, it seems like everyone around me has been sick with this weirdly debilitating cold that’s been going around. Everywhere I go, there’s coughing and sneezing and nose-blowing. So far I’ve been able to stave it off with my signature trifecta of near-obsessive hand-washing, over-the-top vitamin intake, and homeopathic hoo-ha. Today Jake is home with it and I feel an impending sense of doom, like my healthy days are numbered. In the meantime, I will continue to scrub my hands like I’m going into surgery, all the while downing weird concoctions with a side of Vitamin C.

Things feel a touch gloomy because it’s completely dark and snowy outside, although I’m pretty relieved that the snow held off until today. Yesterday Mark – along with the entire Grade Seven body – went to the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller, which was, from all accounts, EPIC. It meant a four hour round trip on the bus, however. God bless those parent volunteers, is all I can say. Not to mention the teachers and bus drivers.

Mark told me that a few kids screamed hysterically, in that Grade Seven Humour kind of way, every single time they saw a dinosaur statue, so we should have all probably invested in ibuprofen stocks prior to this field trip.

In any case, yesterday was warm and sunny so it really was a good day for a field trip. I took under-the-weather Jake for his own field trip, to Superstore, for groceries, pumpkins, and Halloween candy. Somehow we have ended up with 250 little chocolate bars, which will surely be more than enough for the eight to ten Trick or Treaters we are sure to have.

Speaking of which, the guys set up all the decorations on the weekend, and although they haven’t yet put up the animatronic ones, I have noticed a number of people stop and look at our creepy, creepy house. I have gotten used to it, but at first I was pretty startled every time I would go to the living room and see this out the front window:

view

Gah! There are two of those guys in our front yard.

scaryguy

Not to mention zombie dogs:

zombiedogs

A number of bats:

dsc_0657

In this house, we bury our secrets:

rip

And we hope no one is arachnophobic:

spider

At least we have pity for the poor mail carrier who has to make his way through all our festive creepiness. He only really has to deal with this guy, swinging in front of our mailbox.

pumpkinhead

This is the first year that I haven’be been really involved in the creation of the kids’ costumes. They are making some kind of weird mash-up (a MONSTER MASH, perhaps? It was a Graveyard Smash!) of old costumes and by old, I mean things they wore when they were in first and second grade. I’m not one hundred percent sure what the result will be, but most likely they will be wearing their parkas and toques to Trick or Treat anyway.

I wonder what the reaction will be to them Trick or Treating. Most of our street is filled with elderly people who have, by and large, known the boys since they were small, and they usually give out tons of candy. However, I know some people have a problem with older kids Trick or Treating, particularly those whose costumes are somewhat suspect. Personally, I don’t even care if someone is dressed up or not, or is a toddler or nearly-legal. I have 250 chocolate bars in my house, and you can be damned sure that I am going to give away as many as possible. Especially since one box contains Wunderbars, which are one of the greatest chocolate bars ever invented, in my humble opinion. I don’t need that kind of temptation just sitting around in my cupboard.

At least I had the fortitude not to buy Rockets! That would have been debilitating in every way, and since sugar is bad for immunity, I would be sure to be on death’s door by next week. As it is, I JUST sneezed! Time for an orange and some more of that weird echinacea tea. Have a great weekend, everyone! Happy Halloween. xo

Is this day thermal-spray-worthy? Probably not.

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Remember the Seinfeld episode where the contraceptive sponge was discontinued, and Elaine stocked up on them but had to screen each of her potential sexual partners to ensure that they were worthy of a sponge? I’m having that issue right now, but with hair products.

I haven’t written a “Nicole’s Favourite Things” in a while, but I wish I had sung the praises of Abba’s Thermal Styling Spray, because I’ve been using it for years. You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone. This is the single greatest styling product of all time, but when I was in the salon a few weeks ago, my hair therapist mentioned that there seemed to be a Problem With The Supplier and she thought it might be Discontinued. She mentioned it to me with some degree of urgency, and said she was looking into Alternatives But Had Yet To Find A Good One.

Panic At The Disco.

I have one bottle in my possession, and I am hoarding it like nobody’s business. I’m now wondering what occasions will be important enough for me to use it. Coffee with the girls? Volunteering at the school? Visit with the in-laws? Good-looking plumber coming over to fix my kitchen tap?

The answer is “none of the above.” I’ve been only using some kind of flexible hold spritzer that I got at the drugstore as a stop gap measure. I’m not sure what occasion will warrant me using the thermal spray, but I sure hope that my hair therapist finds a good alternative soon, or it will be a lifetime of merely-adequate hair days.

Speaking of hair, I was at Costco the other day, and the man who checks the carts and receipts at the exit gave me a big wink and a smile. He was sixty-plus, with a friendly face. “Red hair is my favourite,” he said to me, “And I love yours!” Well, I thanked him very much, to which he responded, with a nudge and raised eyebrows, “I suppose you’re going to tell me it’s all natural.” People, I was moments away from making a “carpet and curtains” joke, when my “inappropriate” siren went off. Note to self: making a ribald joke about matching the carpet to the nearly-retired cart-checker at Costco is inadvisable. Instead, I responded with a laugh and a comment about the feistiness being natural, anyway.

The whole reason I was in Costco, besides getting frozen fruit, was to look for sheets. You know how there are some areas of your life that you just find yourself being overly frugal? That’s me with sheets. I may have enough yoga wear to clothe the entire studio on any given day, but when it comes to sheets, ours were so old and had been laundered so many times that they were literally starting to fall apart. The edges of the sheets and pillowcases were frayed, and the sheets themselves were getting worn to threads. And yet, I kept thinking to myself, they’re still good. They’re fine, really.

Long, boring, and completely “who gives a shit” story short, I bought some new sheets and they have been life affirming. Every night I say to my husband, “Look at the sheets! Aren’t they glorious! They’ve changed my life!” And because he’s a patient man, he nods and says “Go to sleep now, you’re starting to not make sense.”

My reluctance to buy new sheets is probably related to my reluctance to throw out the one-centimetre-square piece of soap in the soap dish, because I can still wash my hands with it if I lather hard enough. I know. I know. I blame my mother, whose ability to repurpose freezer bags is legendary.