Oh hey, it’s blizzarding again. The news anchor mentioned that Saturday is the First Day of Winter! and I stared at the television in confusion. I think seasons should actually be defined differently here in Canada. We’ve had tons of snow on the ground since before Halloween, so I THINK I know a little something about winter. This morning I drove home from yoga in almost zero visibility, feeling like a modern day Laura Ingalls in The Long Winter, without all the icky starving to death and freezing to death and slowly going insane sitting in the dark listening to the wind because Pa’s frozen dead hands can no longer even play the fiddle and we might as all just go to the barn without a rope, if you know what I mean, and I think you do.
Anyway, as my sweet new yoga teacher said to me this morning, these are the most yin days of the year, what with the darkness and the cold and the holidays approaching. I am going to take her at her word and hibernate, eating the plethora of chocolate truffles and peppermint bark I have in the house.
I THINK IT’S TIME FOR CHRISTMAS VACATION.
There are only one and a half days of school left, including today, and – despite the fact that yes, we did just have a PD day two weeks ago – we are all ready for a nice big break. The children are hyper and spazzy, and it appears that as of yesterday, all work is finished for the calendar year. Today they were requested to bring in candies to decorate the graham cracker “gingerbread” houses that they are making for, apparently, a Social Studies project. The tie into Social Studies is pretty shaky, but after all who can concentrate with Santa coming and all. Tomorrow is pajama day and they are watching movies, wheeeee academia.
I’ve been seeing my hipster chiropractor nearly every day this week, and I can’t help but feel a little smug about my “progress”. Dr. Hipster keeps telling me how impressively “self-aware” I am, which makes me giggle a little. Self-aware. Is there a douchier term? I don’t think so. Dr. Hipster is also very impressed with my “flexibility and range of motion” and every time he tells me this, it takes everything I have not to go into show-off mode and whip my legs behind my head or something. You think that’s flexible? Get a load of this. But I don’t because I like to behave like a normal person in public, generally. GENERALLY.
In any case, Dr. Hipster was warning me about re-injuring my back and informing me that I am NOT allowed to shovel snow, which is actually kind of nice. He also warned me about stress and tension adding to lower back troubles. “Although,” he said, “You don’t appear to be the type of person who is high-strung or under a lot of stress.” NO KIDDING DOC. I have as low a stress level as is physically possible, I think. Maybe it’s because I’m so “self-aware”? I don’t know.
Even with my super low stress levels, I have been a complete idiot this week. I’m blaming it on the week before Christmas – and maybe because these are yin days and I’m being more yang? I don’t know. Yesterday I wrapped up a bottle of wine for our school secretary and put a card on a box of Lindors for the office staff, and put them both in a bag to take to school. It was Mark’s last day of swimming lessons, thankfully, since his lessons end at 11:50 and in no universe can 25 fourth grade boys make it in and out of the change room in time for lunch. There’s just a zero percent chance. So I’ve been rushing to the school, picking up Jake from his classroom, walking over to the pool, and picking up Mark, which really cuts into our 52 minute lunchtime. Anyway, I was planning to take the gifts with me to school, but forgot them and only realized I forgot them when I was actually physically in the office, wishing the school secretary a Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas, here’s a…oh shit. I forgot it.
Continuing with this theme, yesterday I realized I was out of coconut milk. A while ago I realized I had 48 canned good items in my cupboard, including 6 coconut milks, 11 cans of various types of beans, and – weirdly – 4 cans of pumpkin. I vowed not to buy anything until I was actually out of something, and finally I realized yesterday that I had used up all the coconut milk. I headed for the grocery store, and decided to do my weekly shop as well. I hummed Christmas carols to myself as I filled my cart, went home, unloaded the groceries, and realized I didn’t buy any coconut milk. I even had a list with me and remembered to buy odd things like compost bags and hemp seeds. But no coconut milk.
However, this is all a drop in the bucket compared with Monday. Our usual morning routine is that I leash the dog, make sure the kids are appropriately dressed and that they have their backpacks, then I unlock our (unattached) garage, and open the van’s sliding door. The dog jumps in, the kids pile in, we go to school, and then I take the dog to the off leash dog park. On Monday I took the kids to school, met my friend who walks with me, drove to the dog park, met our other friend with her dog, and I opened the van’s sliding door to get Barkley. THE VAN WAS EMPTY. And I will say this about myself: I am terrible in a crisis. I am not at all good in an emergency. When I realized the dog wasn’t in the car, I kept saying “OMG OMG OMG BARKLEY’S NOT HERE WHERE’S BARKLEY HE’S NOT HERE OMG OMG” until my girlfriends calmly told me to go home, look for him, and to text them when I had more information. Off I went. I turned into the alley, opened the garage door…and out came Barkley. He apparently was in the garage for the half hour or so that all this took to happen. Poor puppy! And also that experience – the thought that my dog could be lost, wandering the neighbourhood – ratcheted up my stress level. Good thing Dr. Hipster didn’t see me at that moment. My self-awareness was taking a break.
Category Archives: My failing sanity
Skinnygirl Drinks and Kazoo Amazingness
It’s book fair this week, and due to all the lovely women I’ve coerced into volunteering to help me, I do not even feel my usual high level of despair/ regret/ tension that I usually get prior to the event. I’m having a teensy bit of volunteer fatigue lately, and really, I have no one to blame but myself. I’m sure it will all feel worth it when my children have a copy of the new Diary of a Wimpy Kid in their hot little hands; although I loathe those books in no small way, they love them, and isn’t reading for pleasure one of those things we should be encouraging? Even though the characters are revolting and the plot lines a depressing view of society? I guess I shouldn’t be so uppity; I clearly recall reading all the Sweet Valley High books when I was in fifth grade. If there is anything that will give a girl a skewed and unrealistic view of high school, I believe it is the adventures of the Sweet Valley High gang and the inevitable self-questioning: am I an Elizabeth or a Jessica?
Does anyone still have those books? I kind of want to re-read them now.
In addition to the book fair, there are lots of exciting things going on at the school right now. For one thing, in celebration of the school’s fiftieth anniversary, there is going to be a very special assembly at which my children are going to be playing kazoos. Just go ahead and let that sink in for a minute. Kazoos. I’m of mixed emotions about this: gratitude that it’s not a medley of recorder music, undeniable curiosity about the nature of this performance, pride that the children will be involved in such an important milestone, and kazoos. Kazoos! Kazoos.
We had dinner guests this weekend, and so in preparation for this event I dropped the boys off at karate on Thursday evening to run to the liquor store. Normally I sit in the waiting room, reading and making notes and sometimes being sternly reminded by the caretaker to turn out the lights when I leave. I sweetly, yet emphatically, assure him that I always DO turn out the lights, to which he suspiciously makes reference to SOMEONE who is always leaving the lights on. It’s not me! I swear! In any event, on Thursday I peeled out of the parking lot to get to the liquor store and back within the short time frame. I will confess that I was worried I would run into traffic issues and would arrive late to pick up the children, who would be standing in the windy, freezing parking lot in only their uniforms since they insist on leaving their coats in the car, holding their giant bo staffs and frozen water bottles, and my only excuse would be that I was at the liquor store. Happily this did not come to pass.
While at the liquor store, I discovered something called “Skinnygirl White Cranberry Cosmos”, a premixed beverage. On a whim I picked it up, and decided to try it the night before our guests arrived. You know, to make sure it was appropriate for guests. Two glasses in and I was moments away from drunk dialing all my girlfriends to tell them how much I love them. And then my husband came home from work. I’m not even kidding, all this drunkenness happened before my husband came home from work. “I was having a cocktail while I made dinner!” I giggled aloud. “Hee hee, cocktail.”
All of which is to say, if you see such a bottle in the liquor store, buy it.
What’s my excuse? Boy humour.
The boys and I were having dinner together this evening, and the topic that dominated most of the conversation was as follows: a friend of theirs hit himself in the testicles with his own Styrofoam airplane. The hilarity involved in relaying these details to me was immense. Apparently the only funnier than someone being hit in the testicles is someone being hit in the testicles by launching their own Styrofoam airplane and having it curve in just the right way. An unintentional groin shot to oneself by one’s own efforts? Evidently hilarious.
Some days, I find it difficult to string two words together. At times, my head feels like it’s going to explode with things like the Halloween Dance, and would tahini and chocolate go together, and what am I going to make for the bake sale and when, and why can’t I get “Don’t Stop Believing” out of my head? I think my intellect is FAILING, is what I’m saying, people. I’m sure we’ve all heard, by now, of that “What’s Your Excuse?” woman, and I have two things to say: a) she looks pretty awesome, and I like to believe that she set out to be inspirational, not condemning, and b) my excuse for my rapidly fading mental capabilities is dinnertime conversations about self-inflicted groin shots, punctuated by reminders to please not fart at the dinner table. Yes, that is a valid excuse.
The kids have been working on making musical instruments out of recycled materials at school, and some of their friends have shown me the items that they chose to make: a harmonica made out of popsicle sticks and rubber bands, a drum made out of a coffee can and waxed paper. Jake decided to make a guitar, because “girls like guys who play guitars”. True that, but they also like guys who have good jobs, so get that math homework done, sweetheart. Here is Jake’s guitar in all its glory:
Not bad, even if the tape on the fret (is it a fret? I don’t really know my stringed instruments that well) is kind of coming off. No matter! It’s a decent effort.
Mark brought home his instrument too.
It is a bass guitar. Allegedly. He did not specify if there were once other parts. He did not specify whether it looked differently at some point prior to suffering some kind of fourth grade destruction. He did not specify the level of effort put into this project. In the spirit of not asking questions to which I do not necessarily want to know the answer, I am not inquiring further about it.
Full Moon, and Nicole Smash
I think I’m becoming one of those obnoxious people who can tell when the full moon is upon us without looking at the calendar, or who can just tell that Mercury is in retrograde or what have you. So I will blame it on the full moon that yesterday I was in a bit of a rage all day. Looking back on it was like looking back on the days when I had small children. The rage was somewhat akin to when a small child spirals out of control because it’s bathtime and he just wants to take his favourite stuffed animal into the bathroom and then drops it into the tub accidentally and then it has to go into the dryer, stat, but then the child needs to be bathed and keeps drinking the bathwater, and then becomes hysterical when taken out of the bathtub, even though he didn’t want a bath in the first place, and then realizes that his favourite pajamas are in the wash and cannot be retrieved and then due to exhaustion falls over and hits his head on the floor and then is tucked into bed but the story you read was all wrong and the stuffed animal is still in the dryer and nothing will ever be right in the world again and then the child passes out after sobbing about the injustices of life.
I remember those days and in the heat of the moment, in the thick of things, there is nothing at all funny about the situation, but looking back, it’s kind of ridiculous. It’s hard to believe that a rational person could get caught up in the soaked-stuffed-animal-drama, but these things happen, don’t they? And so it is that I’m looking back on yesterday, thinking about all those little metaphorical paper cuts.
I should have known something was up – the full moon! – when I got home from yoga yesterday morning, plugged in the coffee maker, and then, for the first time in history, forgot to turn it on. I made my bed, collected my bathrobe and set out my various moisturizers, makeup, and deodorant the way I do every morning before my shower, and then I went to get a cup of coffee. People, when you get up at 4:30 in the morning, it is imperative that the coffee be made when you need it to be made. I actually picked up the empty coffee pot and was astonished that nothing came out because I forgot to turn it on. I remedied that, stepped into the shower – and this I blame on the lack of caffeine – started to wash my hair with conditioner. I kept wondering what was wrong with the shampoo. Why wasn’t the shampoo foaming? I added more and more conditioner, until I realized my mistake. It’s not the shampoo. It’s me. Suffice it to say I had very soft hair all day.
Between the hair and the coffee I felt a little thrown off for the whole morning, and so maybe, perhaps the customer service people I encountered during the day were not, in retrospect, quite so awful as I think, but maybe they were. One of my errands was to the homeopathic medicine shop.
Bear with me for a moment. I am not, I repeat, AM NOT, inviting a discussion about the flu shot here. I do not want to hear arguments for or against the flu shot, or any discussion about vaccines in general. I am merely stating a fact: I cannot get the flu shot; in lieu of this for the past four years I – and my family – get a homeopathic flu protocol that has protected us from getting the flu.
And again I will interrupt my own discourse for a moment for a public service announcement: the FLU is not the same thing as a STOMACH VIRUS even though people universally refer to STOMACH VIRUS as the STOMACH FLU or sometimes, incorrectly, as the FLU. A stomach virus is not the flu. And so when I say “the homeopathic flu protocol has protected us from getting the flu” and you say “but remember last year when you were barfing and sick and lost all that weight and then the boys got it?” NO. It is not the same thing. NOROVIRUS IS NOT THE FLU. No amount of homeopathic flu protocols or flu shots or whatever hoo-ha you may do to avoid the flu will help you avoid NOROVIRUS AND/OR OTHER STOMACH VIRUSES. Sorry for yelling, but really. Public service announcement over.
Where was I? Oh yes, I was obtaining a homeopathic flu protocol. In the past there have been two parts to this protocol, and one of those parts, apparently, has changed this year. I asked the lady at the counter, who you would think would be eager to supply information to someone who is IN the homeopathic shop and who is obviously (or obvi, as my kids say) on board with the whole homeopathic thing. The woman was, shall we say, less than forthcoming with information. I kept pressing her, “But what does this DO, specifically?” She had a bit of a frown on her face as she kept saying, sternly, “It STRENGTHENS your IMMUNITY.” Now, I am a sucker for anything that STRENGTHENS my IMMUNITY – you should see how many vitamins and supplements I take on a daily basis, hoo boy – but if I’m going to be paying $40 for a tincture, I would like a little more information about said tincture, especially since this tincture was never used before with the flu protocol. I JUST WANT TO KNOW HOW IT WORKS. I recognize that customer service people often have to deal with the lowest common denominator, but some of us CAN comprehend more difficult concepts. I feel this same way when those dreadful people come to the door trying to get natural gas customers to sign up for fixed rates, and then they get all dismissive when I say I’m not interested. I used to work in the structured products market, I’m not just some idiot of a kept woman, here, I know how hedging works thank-you-very-much. Go try your luck on the elderly.
After my extraordinarily frustrating experience at the homeopathic shop, I went to Future Shop to purchase a movie. Now, I rarely, if ever, purchase movies at actual stores, I do online shopping whenever possible. However, my husband’s birthday is coming up quickly and Jake wanted to buy his dad a superhero movie they could watch together. I didn’t have time to waste with shipping, etc., and so I headed to Future Shop, also known as The Worst Place For Customer Service Ever. First of all, I will admit to my own errors. I did not realize that the movie I wanted to buy – and yes, I do have my OWN reasons for wanting this movie in my house (Hugh Jackman) – was not yet in stores. I should have done more research. However! I walked into Future Shop, was greeted by a young man. I looked around the overwhelming store for a few minutes, wondering if the single aisle of “movies, TV shows, etc” was really all that giant store had. One aisle. Finally I approached the young man.
Me: Excuse me, I’m looking for a movie. I’m wondering if you could help me find it?
Douchey Employee: *points*
Me: Yes, I can’t find what I’m looking for. I’m not even sure if this is the right section.
DE: The movies are RIGHT THERE. That HUGE display? RIGHT THERE.
Me: *sharply* YES. I see. But I cannot find what I’m looking for. The Wolverine movie. Do you have it?
DE: The movies are right there.
Me: I DON’T SEE IT THERE.
DE: I GUESS I could look it up. *goes to computer, types in “Wolvierene* There’s no movie.
Me: *looking at the screen* I think you misspelled it.
DE: Well, how DO you spell it?
Me: W-O-L-V-E-R-I-N-E
DE: Oh. It’s not available in stores. You can pre-order it online.
Me: *sets store on fire*
Later, the day would redeem itself, but only when I picked up my calendar, counted the days, realized that it’s not just the full moon that’s affecting my mood, decided that since it was a full moon and there was no yoga the next day, I could indulge in a couple of glasses of wine, even if it WAS a Thursday. That turned things around.
Parents Just Don’t Understand, or How I Killed The Tooth Fairy
I’ve been singing in my head wake me up when September ends because this month has been crazy, and here it is, almost over. Of course, I don’t see October slowing down significantly. Wake me up when October ends. I’ve been busy in a silly kind of way, with things that are not terribly important world-wide but are kind of important in my world, and so I’m like a hummingbird on speed. Vrrrrooooooooommmmm. My husband asked, plaintively, if I could possibly start sleeping in a little later than 4:30 am and I realized I have turned into a boring sort of person who says things like “But I have to bake macarons and write about it and I have to call all these people for the silent auction and I want to wash all the sheets and clean the bathroom and I need to get the agenda posted for the SC/PA meeting and…” and by the time I say “bake macarons” he has tuned out from my dull monologue. I’m even boring myself, just writing this.
But oh! There have been a number of other things happening this week, other than school council meetings and baked goods. Today was the Terry Fox run and I was a little worried about it since it was 4 degrees this morning and Jake called me from school to ask to come home yesterday afternoon, which has never happened. He has a cold, that’s all, but for him it presents as red, watery eyes and the kind of misery that goes along with not being able to see anything as a result. He seems okay today and is back to class; in any case, my husband reminded me that being able to perform and work while not feeling 100% is actually a very useful life skill. It is, isn’t it? It’s not like we can call it a day every time we have the sniffles, and spend the day lying on the couch eating cinnamon toast and watching terrible daytime television. It’s probably good that kids learn to suck it up, buttercup, at least when it’s something minor and not a FEVER or BARFING or something gross and contagious, in which case I always keep the kids home.
We’ve been having many what do you want to be when you grow up conversations lately, and I am telling you, it’s very entertaining. The main goal in this mercenary household is to be wealthy, or, more specifically, to “Make more money than you, Dad, and get a nicer car.” That would be my eight year old talking, who has decided he wants to be a trader. Given his math skills and his generally dickish attitude, I think this would be an excellent career choice for him. Mark wants to be an engineer, which he is also very well suited for. He has what I fondly think of as an engineering personality; those of you who know any engineers will know exactly what I mean, I think. This is the part where I’m supposed to say, passionately, that I just want them to be happy, which is true, of course, but I do think a person is happiest when pursuing a solid career, and so I will continue to cheer on their engineering/ trading/ finance interests while doling out more math worksheets.
When I was a child I wanted to be a concert pianist and/ or a great theatre actress; I ended up with two economics degrees and working on a trade floor as a quantitative analyst. What I did not envision was my current career, at least this week, of being an old-timey dentist. I have been pulling out a lot of teeth in the past seven days, just like one of those dentists in the wild west, except with a decided lack of whiskey. The kids have suddenly developed two things: an alarming number of loose teeth and a complete lack of patience with said loose teeth. I’m getting really good at pulling them out, I have to say. Wham, bam, tooth out. And then there’s the little issue of payment. In lieu of my husband donning a tutu and a wand with a tooth on it, he simply doles out whatever change he has in his pockets when he gets home. This led to Mark’s receipt of nearly $5 in change for a molar. I heard him telling a friend this, who lamented that HE only gets $2 a tooth, to which I said gently – because I didn’t want anyone to feel bad or anyone to whom I have given birth to be boasting – that case was just because that was what Dad happened to have in his pocket. To which the little friend said “His Dad? The Tooth Fairy brings me the money.” Mark gave me the wide eyed, raised eyebrow look I usually give to the children for such verbal slipups, and later said to me, sharply, that his friend still believed in the Tooth Fairy and I shouldn’t have said anything at all.
Parents. We just don’t understand.
Sing a song
I don’t know if it’s because of the full moon tomorrow or what, but I’ve been having one of those super productive days in which I actually amaze myself. I had a pan of vegan peppermint brownies (minties, maybe) in the oven before 8:00 am, and a separate pan of vegan non-peppermint brownies baked a few hours later. Why all the brownies, you may ask? It’s parent-teacher interviews tomorrow night, and I am bringing (apparently a lot of) brownies and pasta salad to the teacher potluck. I may have to sample them, though, just to ensure quality control. The house smells amazing; brownies are a nice project on a rainy and cold fall day.
I also went to the grocery store, and much to my delight I made it in and out prior to the arrival of the seniors’ bus. If you do not think that is something of note, then you have never had the back of your legs nudged vigorously by an old lady behind you in the lineup who is sure that she is going to miss the bus back to the lodge, despite the fact that said bus doesn’t leave for another forty-five minutes. You have never had to navigate around carts left randomly in an aisle, three wide, while a gaggle of elderly women talk about the virtues of store brand bran flakes versus All-Bran. You have never had to turn your cart around in the produce section because the lineup at the pharmacy is blocking the aisle where they keep the mixed greens. And none of these things happened to me today because I made it there before the bus even pulled up. It’s a small victory, but a victory nonetheless.
While in the baking aisle, I noticed this:
Now, I know that sometimes we all need something quick and easy, but this seems really kind of icky to me. Cans of plain frosting, add your own flavour with the little artificial flavouring packets. People, it’s VERY EASY to flavour your own frosting; you do not need to do this. I IMPLORE YOU. Frosting is one of the easiest things to make in the history of the kitchen arts. The hardest thing about making frosting is ensuring that you remove the beaters from the mixer before licking them, lest you accidentally turn the mixer on and have something terrible happen to your tongue. I just wrote about how to make different kinds of frostings over at Yummy Mummy Club – check it out if you want a quick and easy cupcake recipe.
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| Jake with his birthday cupcake. |
Last night my husband was watching Shark Tank (I KNOW) and there were two ladies on there who had started their own company, called Wicked Good Cupcakes, shipping cupcakes nationwide in little mason jars. It seemed to be the most adorable thing ever, and I briefly considered trying this – cupcakes in mason jars, not shipping nationwide – but then I became puzzled on how one would actually get the cupcakes in the jars without them getting squished or crumbling to pieces. It is one of those Pinterest-y ideas that seems So! Awesome! but ends up with someone crying and/or having a major self-esteem crisis.
Speaking of wicked good things, did you read that Mark Wahlberg has just recently graduated high school, after originally dropping out in ninth grade? Hooray, Marky Mark (and hubba hubba). It’s nice to see celebrities doing good things, instead of making moronic political/ societal/ vaccination-based comments that make me despair for the state of the world. Mark Wahlberg instead wrote that he wanted to be a good example for his kids. What a guy!
I KNOW.
Completely unrelated, I have had Elton John’s Levon stuck in my head all day. At this point I am pretty much begging any other song to take over, since I’ve caught myself singing out loud several times. He was born a pauper to a pawn on a Christmas Day when the New York Times said God is dead and the war’s begun….HE SHALL BE LEEEEEEEEEVON. I desperately need something, anything else to take up this space in my head. I will take any earworm suggestions at all. ANYTHING. He shall be Levon, he shall be a good man…MAKE IT STOP PLEASE.
FYI for teenaged girls, don’t date the Hall boys.
I’m really glad my ladies’ holidays aren’t coming up anytime soon, because my goodness I am an emotional girl this week; it would be pretty bad if I threw some hormones into the mix. Part of it, maybe, is the fact that my kids are now in the “big kid” section of the school, far away from the office so it’s really hard to just casually saunter past their classrooms and sneak a peek at them, which, looking at it objectively, is probably a good thing because they do not enjoy me sneaking a peek at them. I shouldn’t group them together, really, because Mark doesn’t actually mind. Jake, however, does. “Why did you WAVE at me? I’m supposed to be WORKING, not getting distracted.” Even in lineup in the mornings, I fist bump him and then back the hell off, because that kid does not want any extra attention from his mother, JAY-SUS. If I do attempt a wave while he’s lined up, he raises his chin slightly in what I take to be the world’s smallest head nod in acknowledgement. What is he going to be like as a teenager? A total dick, I’m guessing. I said this to my friend this morning who answered cheerfully, “Well, you always predicted that!” True.
I was grocery shopping yesterday and found myself teary-eyed and verklempt at the sight of young mamas with their babies and toddlers in the produce section. I heard the mamas talking to their little ones in the same way I did, in a previous era, when I had to put lipstick marks into the palms of small hands instead of fist bumping while walking through the compound. This is a lemon. It’s yellow! Look at this pretty red apple. It’s so red and round! Let’s put five in the bag. 1…2…3…4…5…I stared at the banana display for a while, swallowing hard. Thank god no one picked up a cucumber and pretended to tickle their toddler with it because if that had happened I would STILL be curled up on the floor singing Landslide* to myself. And if you see my reflection in a snow covered hill…Fortunately later in the day I found myself buying printer paper in Walmart and witnessing a complete toddler meltdown in the school supply aisle, complete with flopping boneless body and ear-piercing shrieks. I smiled sympathetically at the frazzled young mother and tried not to click my heels in joy as I went to pick up my big kids at the big kid doors at school.
Well, they’re not that big, I guess, since I haven’t yet started writing blog posts about teenage girls and the behavioural standards required to date my sons. Eeee. Can you imagine what kind of mother-in-law that woman will be? Here’s an FYI for teenage girls: do NOT date one of the Hall boys. RUN THE OTHER DIRECTION if one of them asks for your phone number. Do boys still ask for your phone number these days? Or do they just look you up on Facebook? But I digress. Truly, just think how overbearing poor beleaguered Mrs. Hall must be, and I can only guess that this is not something that will improve with time. Girls, if you become a “young Mrs. Hall”, you will be doomed for a life of in-law misery. You will never be able to vacuum often enough, is what I’m saying.
Things are tough for teenage girls these days, what with the striving to be the hottest bitch in this place and the expectation that one must stay up ALL DAMN NIGHT to get lucky. In my day, we just expressed ourselves or Vogued. Speaking of which, last night I was cleaning up the kitchen and Papa Don’t Preach came on. I cranked the volume and sang along; the boys reacted with complete and utter silence. Perhaps they were struck mute with awe? Moments later they went outside where they climbed our big Mayday tree and jumped down repeatedly. I didn’t think my singing was that bad.
*see, Sarah, I think we’re even on the Landslide references