Category Archives: Luckiness

My Favourite Cup

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The handle broke off of my favourite mug a couple of weeks ago.  It was a tall, lidded, blue ceramic cup with flowers on it that I had received in a gift basket from my husband’s colleagues when Mark was born.  I have used this mug every day since then, and now it is broken.  This feels like a metaphor for something but it isn’t.  It’s just a mug.

It is sad how attached I am to this mug, and it’s also sad that I went through several folders of digital pictures to see if my mug would be pictured in the background somewhere.  Since this mug was part of my everyday life and a large contributor to my caffeine habit, one would think that there would be photographic evidence of it but no.  I spent some minutes going through old pictures, becoming increasingly nostalgic as I looked at my children’s baby pictures.  My children, who have – not including today, when Jake is possibly being trampled by rampaging peacocks and escaped wild animals on his zoo trip as I write this – only two days of school left. 

I’m not at all melancholy about Mark leaving Grade One, but Jake leaving kindergarten?  I’m very mixed.  On the one hand, he’s such a big kid now, no more half days and missing his brother all afternoon, no more freezing to death in the playground where we while away the twenty five minutes between Jake’s and Mark’s lunchtime dismissals.  On the other hand, no more Mother’s Day spa treatments, no more performances of Robin in the Rain complete with air trumpets, no more adorable kindergarten program. 

But!  We cannot get caught up in it.  We must soldier on, bravely watching our kids get bigger and bigger and enjoying it.  Speaking of enjoying the changes, my husband thought that it would be a nice idea to get each boy a small gift for end of year celebrations, and for Jake, that meant fulfilling a several-months-long dream of obtaining a Lego NinjaGo Turbo Shredder.  He ordered it online and Jake waited and waited and WAITED and looked out the front door several times a day and FINALLY it arrived. 

I did not think, quite frankly, that Jake would survive the rest of the day if we waited for his father to get home to build it.  I thought he might spin off the planet.  So I took a deep breath and went outside my comfort zone and decided to build it myself.

People.  I am not exaggerating, not even a little, when I say that there were moments that I looked at the gigantic pile of Lego pieces in front of me and the thick instruction manuals on the floor and I thought of lying on the floor and saying “Bring Mom that wine bottle over there.”  But I did not.  I did not.  Two hundred and ninety eight pieces, two instruction manuals, and ninety minutes of intense focus and concentration and we now have a Turbo Shredder.  I listened to my seventies’ radio station and hummed and sang along, trying to maintain a calm exterior.  You’re having my baby!  Where the fuck am I supposed to put this brick?  What a lovely way to say how much you love me. Is this supposed to be on the third or fourth hole?  You’re having my baby!   Dammit, that was supposed to be a black piece, not a grey one.

But!  There was one missing piece, which turned out to be a crucial piece because the Turbo Shredder is missing one of its tires.  I looked and looked and swept under the couch and moved furniture and we still have one missing piece.  Did you know that you can contact Lego and have them send you any missing pieces?  YOU CAN.

After finishing this project, I felt as though I deserved much more accolades and perhaps even a parade in my honour but somehow that did not happen.

When my mug broke, I received two offers of redemption from my children.  Jake said that if I drove him to the store, he would use his allowance to buy me a new mug.  Mark said that he would register himself in a clay class and sculpt me one.  I hugged them for both of those suggestions and then dug through my cupboards to find an old, unused travel mug.  I went to take a shower and then I came back to see that Jake had taken a Sharpie to it.

“I Love You” he had written in his shaky, kindergarten printing.  That’s better than a parade, I think.

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I-I-I-I’m Still Alive!

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So here it is, May 23, and we are still here.  I guess the rapture didn’t occur after all, or, if it did, I was seriously excluded.  I wore my special Judgment Day panties for nothing?  NOTHING?

I spent the weekend celebrating the birth of Queen Victoria by way of a road trip to visit my in-laws, and as of today I am on a cleanse because, let me tell you, no one needs to consume that much booze and ice cream over a sixty-five hour period.  HOO BOY.  Today we made the trip home in a record seven hours, as opposed to the usual eight-to-ten-depending-on-road-construction.  Here’s our little family secret for “making good time”: if you get on the road by 6:30 am, there will be very little in the way of traffic.  We like to get an early start, and theoretically, the children will be so tired from our waking them up an hour early that they will fall asleep in the car.  HA HA HA.  This almost never happens, but today, by some miracle, it did.  Mark and Jake both slept for ten and twenty minutes, respectively. 

They are good travellers though, despite their penchant for asking if we are almost there, even when it was explained five minutes ago that there are six more hours left of travel time. 

It was a lovely trip, and I am struck, as always, by how much nicer other places are than the city in which I reside.  There are many benefits to my home city – employment and standard of living topping the list – but climate and vegetation are not among them.  I came home to see that my beautiful, well-established clematis is not even up yet – Is it dead?  How? – which was a touch depressing given the sight of lilacs, fully in bloom and growing wild around the perimeter of my in-laws’ property.  

Ah, but the long weekend is over and now it’s back to the old grind.  Which, for me, means pretty much nothing.  The life of a lady of leisure!  I suppose it means groceries and running back and forth from the school, and also attacking a weird mountain of laundry, weird due to the fact that I actually DID laundry, twice, within my sixty-five hour vacation period, so I’m not totally sure where all this laundry is coming from.

Also for this week: I wasn’t going to bring this up due to the fact that it makes me sound like I’m going to slip on my heels and pearls and start vacuuming, but I have NEW SMALL APPLIANCES to play with.  Last week I got a food processor – my dreams have come true! – and today my new stand mixer, coffee maker, toaster, and microwave arrived!  I am so excited about them that my younger self probably wants to slap me in the face, enraged with my domesticity and housewifery.

A New Kind of Groundhog Day!

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Friday evening my husband came home late from his golf game to find me on the couch in my pajamas, halfway through both a bottle of wine and the pilot episode of NYPD Blue.  “Hi sweetie,” I said happily, as if I hadn’t seen this episode many times before, “Sipowicz got shot!  Oooh, look: You tell Alphonse Giardella that John Kelly is looking for him.  JOHN KELLY.”  Which is to say, it’s the start of a new season: golf season.  Every golf season I opportunistically support my husband in his endeavours on the golf course so I can delve into my box sets of NYPD Blue. 
I then slept for nine and a half hours, since Mark’s cough has subsided significantly.  After this epic sleep I looked at my suddenly well rested face in the mirror and decided that I could not live another minute in my orange haired state, applied the temporary colour, and instantly boosted my own self worth.
My glowing feelings from rest and a non-orange hair colour were only exacerbated by the sunshine and suddenly seasonal temperatures.  It was so sunny and seasonal, in fact, that my neighbour appeared in all his shirtless glory to mow his lawn. 
A friend posted a cute quote the other day: “Your mind is a garden, your thoughts the seeds; you can plant flowers, or you can plant weeds.”  Brilliant, in its own saccharine way!  I read that and thought, YES.  I am going to plant a fucking ROSE GARDEN.  And I am, people, I am.
So when I saw my neighbour, clad only in red cutoff sweatpants, backwards baseball cap, and gigantic running shoes, I thought: ROSES.  It occurred to me that his shirtless appearance is Groundhog Day-like in nature; not like the Bill Murray movie, although I do seem to comment about his man boobs every single year.  No, I thought that he is like a groundhog himself, because when he emerges from his house with his lawn mower and his shorts, he is ushering in a new season, the season of sunshine and happiness and also golf and NYPD Blue box sets.  So I cheer him, my groundhoggy, shirtless neighbour. 
It also does not escape my attention that I am a complete hypocrite.  If he looked like, let’s say, Mark Wahlberg or even that Old Spice guy, I would not dream of complaining.  So, in the interest of not judging someone based on appearance, which is a very non-yogic and distasteful thing to do, I am going to applaud his tremendous self confidence and his prediction of a lovely spring.
Also, I am not faultless in inadvertent overexposure.  The other day I was bent over, gardening in the front yard, and I stood up and saw the young, awkward, twenty-ish fellow across the street standing beside his car, staring at me.  I smiled and waved and he said hello in a quick and strange way, before getting in his car and driving off quickly.  I thought not much of it, until I saw my reflection in the front window.  Two words: whale tail.  So I’m not really bringing up the classy in the neighbourhood. 
Roses, people.  Let’s plant some flowers.

Friday the 13th, and Privilege Problems

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I just realized, now, that it is Friday the 13th!  Maybe that explains things, and by things I mean my state of crossness and irritability, although I really think that my attitude is more likely attributed to my lack of sleep and excessive worry due to my son having pneumonia, rather than the date.  I have been extremely irritable and plagued with what I refer to as Privilege Problems.  Don’t worry!  I’m not about to complain that my personal chef has been using just too much asiago, or that my housekeeper has been cleaning the bathroom so frequently that she is going through an excessive amount of cleanser, or that my stylist keeps putting me in Michael Kors, when I just want vintage, dammit!  I just mean that I have been having problems that are not actually problems, but are instead irritants that seem exceedingly important, but really are not.
Nicole’s List of Not-Really-Problems
1)      It is two weeks until my next scheduled hair appointment, and yet my hair looks and feels like straw.  Orange straw.  I have an emergency box of temporary hair colour in my bathroom cupboard but can I actually use it with only two weeks to go until my appointment?  I don’t know.  I can’t decide.  I am going to see my in-laws next week, and I don’t really want to see them with straw-like, orange hair, but is it silly and/or bad for one’s hair to apply temporary colour two weeks before permanent colour?  I JUST DON’T KNOW.  I could dither about this all day long, but fortunately I have other things to think about.  Such as avoiding breakouts prior to next week. 
2)      A few weeks ago my husband had the snow tires taken off the car, and today he asked if I would take it in to get the tires retorqued.  This was completely unreasonable, given that, other than filling it with gas, car issues are HIS department.  I do not deal well with car issues, even ones as innocuous as getting the tires retorqued.  I have been known to burst into tears when the “washer fluid low” light comes on.  I cannot, and have never been able to open the hood on my car.  I did take the car in but felt tremendously resentful for the entire day.
3)      My kids are going to be in the same class next year.  This actually seems like it might be a real problem.  Due to the school board’s budget cuts, the class that Mark was supposed to be in was eliminated, and instead they are going to be together in a Grade 1-2 split class.  My options are to a) suck it up, b) place Jake in the Montessori Grade 1 class (our school has a Montessori stream along with the regular program), or c) switch schools.  Neither b nor c seem like viable options to me, so I guess I’m going with suck it up, buttercup.
To counteract my irritability, I am going to list off all of the happy things from the past couple of days.
Nicole’s List of Happy Things, Complete With Pictures
1)      I planted a few very hardy plants!  They look pretty and it was so lovely to dig in the dirt again after such a long, long winter.
Does it look like Mark is saying “That’s what she said?”  Or is it just me?
Flowers!
This is what happens when I ask them to look at me and smile.  It does not go well.
2)      The new dog groomer did a great job on Barkley, and was less expensive than our old groomer.  The consult wasn’t even something weird, like I had imagined, although on the topic of the dog’s face, the groomer asked if I would like for him to have a moustache.  I laughed, but realized quickly that this was not a joke.  Um, no thanks.
3)      Mark is coughing much less, thanks to the miracle that is antibiotics.  I may – MAY – even get some sleep tonight.  Then I will surely be less bitchy and irritable.  Surely.

Just This

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On Friday Jake’s kindergarten class had a Mother’s Day Spa Day, in which all the moms brought in deck chairs and lounged in the darkened classroom to the sound of soothing spa music while their five year olds rubbed lotion into their feet, rubbed their shoulders, and brushed their hair.  After untangling the brushes from our hair, we were treated to manicures.
Lovely!  The photos don’t quite do it justice. 
In addition to the spa day, Jake also gave me a “hug book” filled with pictures and sweetly phonetically spelled sentences about me (“My mom is so pritte and wundrfl.”) as well as a very scented lilac made out of purple tissue paper.  Mark, not to be outdone, made a construction paper card with a picture of an elephant on it – my favourite wild animal! – and we all went out for brunch at my husband’s golf course.  My ego got a boost when my husband told me that I got “checked out”, and my ego only deflated a small amount when I discovered that the man “checking me out” was close to seventy.  A lovely day, and a lovely end to the weekend, which was slightly marred by all the nocturnal coughing being done by Mark. 
Each year I remind myself that Mother’s Day is not a day that is met with fanfare and celebration by all, despite the many commercials implying that failure to purchase flowers, jewelry, or spa gift certificates will result in a direct trip to hell in a handbasket, or at the very least, will show your mother/wife that you don’t actually love or appreciate her.  Mother’s Day, while a joyful and lovely day for me, can be terrible for some.  For those who are estranged from or have strained relations with their mothers, for those suffering infertility, for those who have lost a mother, wife, or child, Mother’s Day can be complicated and painful, and I try to remember that with sensitivity each year.  I once stumbled on a website that discussed all the ways family members had disappointed their mothers on Mother’s Day, from forgetting altogether to not getting the lavish gifts that these women had anticipated.  Reading the stories, I felt the same way that I felt when I found out about “push presents”; a feeling along the lines of you are missing the point. 
When the boys were babies, and my days were filled with chaos and crying, diapers and drudgery, all marked with vast underlying exhaustion, the gift I wanted most for Mother’s Day was just a few hours to myself.  I wanted a few hours of silence, of time to do anything I wanted to do without someone crying or asking me for something or fetching a snack or feeding someone or having a small person stuck on my body like a barnacle to a ship.  And now every day I have long stretches of time to myself, whole mornings of complete silence and solitude, hours to run errands alone.  Those days that seemed endless have ended.  This is such a golden time, this time of crafts and drawings and uninhibited hugs, and I know it too will end one day.  I look at my boys and this life that I never thought I wanted but now I see that it is perfect for me, and I can’t believe my good fortune.

Just this.

STRIPPING! Boom chicka wah wah! UPDATE

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So here’s what you may not know about getting your varicose veins stripped: it really, really hurts.  I know!  News flash!  But honestly, I was unprepared for how much it would hurt and how difficult it would be to walk afterward.  I am happy to tell you that today I am moving around and even getting up out of bed by myself without thinking that a crane and/or hydraulic lift would be handy. 

My strongest – and yet still vague and fuzzy – recollection from the recovery room is whispering to my nurse that I didn’t expect it to hurt so much.  “I just didn’t think it would hurt like this,” I whispered sadly as the nurse upped my morphine dosage.  The nurses kept asking me to rate my pain on a scale from one to ten, and I kept saying, passionately, SIX.  It is a SIX.  Mentally I rationalized that I’d had two babies with no pain medication, and that hurt way more, so I could not go above six on the scale, but I did not explain that to the nurse who I assumed could understand that SIX IS AS HIGH AS I WOULD GO. 

Good times.  So the last few days have been marked by my stumbling around the house – “walking” to avoid blood clots and the like – sleeping a lot, and counting down until it’s time to take pain medication again.  My husband has been handling things amazingly well, making meals and even keeping the house clean.  The kids have been good and have made me several dozen pictures in the past couple of days.  I was sent a gorgeous fruit bouquet by some girlfriends and one lovely friend dropped off sourdough and scones just today.  So I feel very thankful for my wonderful friends and family.

Here’s my complaint about convalescence: it is very boring.  Daytime television is atrocious.  We have a couple hundred channels and almost everything is either a) some sort of strange reality program, b) a crappy talk show, or c) sports.  Since it’s spring break and the kids are around, I can’t really watch reruns of NYPD Blue, either, or not without fear of scarring the children.  I did watch Chris Rock on David Letterman and laughed so hard at his criticism of foreign policy – “There’s a guy over there having a heart attack!  Let’s go kick him in the balls!” – that my stitches hurt. 

Thanks everyone for your well wishes.  xo