Category Archives: My failing sanity

I’ll be making another to-do list after this post.

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As I sat down to write this, I realized that this is my 600th post! My gracious, I have had a lot to say. I’ve been writing this since 2008, when the boys were both in preschool and the first day of school looked like this:


And now it looks like this:

And just to be sure you appreciate how much they’ve stretched:


I feel like I should say something emotional and touching about the fleeting nature of time, but damn, I’m feeling like I’ve been flung into a first-day-of-school-suddenly-huge-to-do-list tornado. How did that happen? Just yesterday I curled up on the couch to read a book for hours; currently I’m feeling like a hummingbird on speed. MUST DO ALL THE THINGS IMMEDIATELY.

Speaking of to-do lists, my husband was reading something on personality types, and he hilariously realized, after eleven years of marriage, what “type” I am.

Mr: Wow, you’re really a Type A.

Me: I know.

Mr: You and all your lists. You’re exactly a Type A.

Me: I know.

Mr: No, I mean, you have every trait on this list.

Me: I KNOW.

Mr: “Obsessed with time management”, “rigidly organized”, “want people to get to the point”, “always try to help others”, “impatient”.

Me: I’m not impatient!

Mr: *hysterical laughter*

It’s true, anyway, which is why I’m making lists upon lists about every little thing I have to do over the next six weeks and it seems like a lot right now. It’s the September rush, I guess, and we’re all into it. This happens to me every year, and it’s why I learned after Mark’s kindergarten year that I should say no to being on every single committee.

In any case, the boys are pleased to be back at school. They are in conjoined classrooms, which is nice for them – they can see each other but still be fairly autonomous. They are with the exact opposite teachers that I thought they would be with, but that’s okay; they each have good friends in their classes. So far, so good.

The dog, though. The poor puppy. He’s slumped into his usual back-to-school depression, with the realization that going forward his days are going to be spent exclusively with the least interesting person in the house. When I came home after drop off, he went outside and lay in the sun for a few hours; a squirrel was in our yard and even made it out alive, that’s how depressed he is. Not to worry, if history is any indication of the future, Barkley will perk up soon and find many small animals and/or birds to kill/ eat/ and have me pick up in various forms, crying.

Since it’s my 600th post, I feel like I should do something to show my appreciation to you, my dear readers. Another giveaway, perhaps? I do not know what the prize will be. A Starbucks gift card? Chocolates? An old economics textbook? Kidding, the shipping on that would be murder. To enter this random, prize-to-be-determined giveaway, leave a comment about any of the following: what personality type you are, what topics do you like to read about on this blog, do you prefer sweet things or salty things, or just say hi! Name to be drawn September 13! Friday the 13th….spooooookyyyy. xoxo

I can see for miles and miles

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Last weekend I went to Saskatchewan to visit with my grandma, as well as with my cousins, aunt, and my brother who moved from the big city to a small town and is now realizing that everyone on his block knows what he is doing at any given time. He has also nicely transitioned to small town life by describing his whereabouts using the Home Hardware as a landmark.

My kids stayed with my parents at the lake, and due to some awkward scheduling on my part this meant that I had to drive there to drop them off and then drive back home that same afternoon. I am usually the cheery passenger, not the responsible person, and so I was pretty exhausted when I got home. I rolled all the windows down and listened to music full blast, re-living some kind of lost youth in which I was speeding down the prairie highway with the wind in my hair, breathing in the scent of hay and diesel. Later I had to spend a lot of time brushing out the tangles. Next time I’m wearing a Jackie O scarf. Baby we were born to run.

I didn’t want to arrive at my grandmas looking like a tramp – tramps like us – and so when I picked up my rental car in the Regina airport I decorously put on the air conditioner. Knowing now what I didn’t know then, I would have foregone the air conditioner, being I spent the weekend shivering under Grandma’s high-powered cooling system, wishing I had brought wool socks, or at least pants, rather than the summery skirts and tank tops I did pack.

It’s important to learn from one’s mistakes. For example, last year when I went to visit Grandma I didn’t bring any CD’s for the two hour drive, and so I ended up listening to a lot of AC/DC and talk radio. This time, I brought some great mixed CD’s – I’m a mixed tape girl at heart, but more technologically advanced – but unfortunately the CD player was not working properly. All music was played at high-speed, which was extraordinarily agitating. Everybodywaskungfufightingthosekidswerefastaslightening. Happily, the car was equipped with satellite radio. Unhappily, there were only four stations available, and one of them was Country. The other three were a) Classic Vinyl, which heavily leaned toward Grateful Dead, b) 80s on 8, and c) Margaritaville, a station entirely devoted to Jimmy Buffett music. I have nothing at all against Jimmy Buffett and I like to Get Drunk and Screw as much as the next person, but an entire station? I wish I had a pencil thin moustache. The Boston Blackie kind. Three songs in and I was kind of done.

Of course I ended up listening to mostly 80s on 8, with detours into the other two – I took off my flip flops, stepped on a pop rock – and I noticed something I hadn’t before: saxophones were very popular in the 80s. On the way back to the Regina airport on Saturday morning, Classic Vinyl was playing a live recording of a Grateful Dead concert, Margaritaville was playing live recordings of Jimmy Buffett songs, including the witty and somewhat drunken repartee he had with the audience, and the 80s on 8 was doing a top forty countdown of music from 1986. Score! That was a pretty fun year for music, I must say. I used to listen to the countdowns on a popular music station back then, and I can remember staying awake until midnight to hear that the most popular song of 1986 was The Greatest Love of All. If I fail, if I succeed, at least I lived as I BELIEVED, no matter what they take from me they can’t take away MY DIG-NI-TYYYYYY.

It’s a good thing I’m not a long haul trucker. I would surely be insane from singing saxophone-infused songs over and over, and my hair would be terribly damaged from driving with the windows down. Also I would have to get a CB handle, and I just don’t know what that would be. How does one choose a CB handle? Or is it assigned to you when you get licensed to drive rigs? I don’t know. All I know is Rubber Duck and Big Ben are taken already.

The Opposite Of Extreme Makeovers, and a Giveaway!

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Lawsy, I’ve been busy – relatively speaking – since returning from vacation. It’s amazing how much piles up after an eight-day hiatus from the homefront. I’ve been multi-tasking like a motherfucking riot; taking the boys to the playground while mentally composing posts, responding to constant “fun facts” about animals while making 16 litres of tomato sauce, preparing frantically for my solo trip to Saskatchewan while photographing plates of tomato-based dishes. Did I mention I have a whole lot of tomatoes in my possession? My mother-in-law supplied me with “a few” tomatoes; “a few” meaning “fifteen pounds”. It’s a good problem to have, all these sweet and delicious tomatoes.

Although it’s been warm here the past few days, there is a slight change in the air and I realized there are only three more weeks of summer vacation left! Cherish every moment goddammit. In addition to cherishing moments and tomato preparation, I am also beginning my usual August routine of thinking about back-to-school items and festive things like snowsuits and boots. The children are sweltering as I force them to put on their boots and mittens to ascertain fit and what is needed for the imminent winter. In Calgary, you never know. WINTER IS IMMINENT PEOPLE. Cue music of doom; perhaps an instrumental version of Patio Lanterns or maybe The Devil Came Down To Georgia.

The music of doom was also playing in my mind as I found myself in the mall at 5:00 on Saturday night. Unfortunately earlier in the day I was getting my old grey mare roots coloured, necessitating the late-afternoon mall shop, which is – as we all know – is the most spirit-crushing time to attend to all your shopping needs. Why is that? Why are there so many crowds, screaming children, rude people, and despondent employees at that time? And why do I never learn? There were two lights at the end of this tunnel of consumerism: Sport Chek had sales on running shoes, which I liked since we had to buy the boys each two pairs, and we had dinner at the food court, which is the kids’ favourite, as I have undoubtedly mentioned before. A teenage girl and her boyfriend sat at the table next to us, along with this cute fellow:

Speaking of the old grey mare and giant orange bears, I decided that I was going to make a dramatic change in my hair colour, and so I took this photo to my hair therapist, who looked at me quizzically. “Okay,” she said, “But it’s kind of the colour you already have. It’s pretty similar.”  No no! I said cheerfully, explaining that I wanted something more coppery. She made a change to my formulation, coloured my hair, and…it’s marginally different. Dramatic overhaul fail.  It looks pretty much exactly like this photo, taken poolside last week, pre-colour. Note: my dad makes this exact same face when he’s thinking, leading me to believe once again that I am an actual younger, female, and artificially red-haired version of him. Thanks for the grey hair genes, Dad!

It’s giveaway time! Prize yet to be determined but sure to be awesome. Or at least kind of fun. Leave a comment and let me know what you’re up to this August. Or what colour your hair is. Or at what point in the year do you start thinking about snowboots? Ah, who am I kidding – leave a comment about anything and I’ll enter you in the draw. Name to be drawn August 22!

Gazing at you, I get the beat.

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It turns out I am easily unmoored.

My parents took the kids up to the lake yesterday, and I was faced with thirty childless hours in which to get some things done. Productivity! It’s actually amazing how much can be accomplished when the children are not around. It’s also kind of startling how much of my time is spent preparing food and washing dishes. My husband wanted to take me out for dinner – to a restaurant, on a Tuesday night, the apocalypse – and so I really had a vast amount of time on my hands. What does one do with the hours between 4:00 and 6:00 if not make dinner, eat dinner, clean up from dinner, supervise children’s cleaning of the table? If you’re me, you guiltily curl up on the couch and watch an old episode of Mad Men, read an Alice Munro short story, and feel despair because you STILL haven’t written the article for the community newsletter but DAMN you really don’t want to write about the bridge club and senior’s tea.

It’s strange not having the kids around, and the dog seems to have lapsed into a depression. When the kids are at school, Barkley generally has the air of someone who has been left with the world’s most boring person, but who is bravely making the best of it: namely flopping bonelessly on the mat outside the door or the dog bed, perking up only to go for a walk. The kids being gone overnight, though, is a whole different story. Barkley is currently lying at the top of the steps, with his head hanging over the top step in what appears to be a terribly uncomfortable position but possibly represents all the effort he is currently willing to put into life.

Yesterday I had finished quite a bit of writing – not about the senior’s tea, mind you, but quite a bit – and buoyed by my no-adult-responsibilities lunch of grapes and popcorn, I started pruning the giant spirea shrub beside the garage. This shrub had grown fairly out of control, such that anyone of any height coming out of the garage would get hit in the face by a number of branches, and so I grabbed the pruning shears and went to town. I looked down and there was Barkley, standing silently, covered with leaves and branches that he didn’t even bother to shake off. Poor puppy! I vowed to take him for a walk immediately but then realized that I was still in my sweaty yoga pants at 1:30 in the afternoon, my yoga practice having ended five hours prior.

This is what happens when I have no kids and no schedule, apparently. Another day like this and the next thing you know I’ll be a total unwashed hippie, busted flat in Baton Rouge, putting daisies in bazookas, dropping the bad brown acid at Woodstock, and contracting STD’s from all that free loving. Because it’s a slippery slope, don’t you know. One day a person wears sweaty yoga clothes all day long, the next day that person is on an acid freakout and passes out in a field of mud, with chlamydia and syphilis. TIME TO SHOWER.

For a trippy Woodstocky experience, check out this “director’s cut” of The Who’s See Me Feel Me. I love that song and I think this video is quite awesome, but yet I find myself obsessed with the fact that Roger Daltry is shirtless underneath that enormously fringed leather jacket. You can practically smell the body odour, just watching that video. Ah, the Sixties. So much musical talent. So little personal hygiene.

Ooh, I just discovered this Jefferson Airplane clip from Woodstock, and if you want to see some REALLY HIGH people with some funky-ass hair, check it out. Fun fact: Grace Slick is still alive and is 73! Man, that’s remarkable on a number of levels.

All right, enough about Woodstock (how did I get on that topic? Oh yeah, showers.) My life will resume regular programming tout de suite, since I’m heading out to pick the kids up today, albeit a little nervously, since there are severe thunderstorm warnings in the direction I’m driving. “Significant storm activity” is not something I want to be driving into, especially since I am not, exactly, someone who loves highway driving. Wish me luck! Also wish me luck on actually finishing this article on the bridge club. It’s not going to write itself. xo

I said selzer, not salsa!

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We took the boys to see Man of Steel yesterday, which means that my husband and I have gone to a grand total of four movies in a theatre since 2005. Three of those are from 2011 and on, so I really feel like we’re bringing up the average here. Annual movies! Man of Steel was pretty good – kind of explosion-y and action-y for me, but after all it is a superhero movie. The boys loved it, even if they were a bit freaked out by the very freaky Coming Attractions. Hey, I realize that we were there for Man of Steel, not some romantic comedy or historical drama, but seriously what is up with the super-violent futuristic trailers?

We were comfy in our seats near the middle of a row, when four women came in and sat down directly beside me. There were ten completely empty rows in front of us, many, many empty rows behind us, and even more seats to the left of my husband. But no, these women sat directly beside me, the one nearest taking up our shared armrest immediately. Is that strange? Maybe my scented lotion was attracting them like moths to a flame? Maybe they wanted to be near my children and their whispered questions and hilariously obvious statements – Is that guy Zod? I think that guy IS Zod. Who’s that guy? I think that baby is actually Superman! – although I cannot imagine why, frankly. I ended up feeling like a princessy asshole as I made my family move down a couple of seats so I didn’t have to share an armrest.

Today is pouring rain and 12 degrees, the sky is dark grey, the house is gloomy, and I’ve been baking muffins and roasting tomatoes in the hopes that constantly running the oven will negate the need to turn the furnace on, today being July 8. What better thing to do on a rainy day than take the children to Costco?

I know what you’re thinking, but actually it was not bad. I haven’t taken the children grocery shopping with me in so long, I wasn’t sure what to expect. It turns out that they were very helpful, if a little too encouraging with regards to buying perfectly reasonable items. “Do we need two of those? Because then we can each put one in the cart!” More often than not my answer was, well…okay. I mean, who wants Costco related sibling rivalry when I know for a fact that we WILL use all that salsa? In any case, I now have enough items in my pantry to guarantee me a spot on that deplorable show about hoarding, or at least to get me through the summer without having to take another trip to Costco.

One small onion in the ointment was our checkout lady. This poor beleaguered woman had the exasperated air of someone who has been doomed to deal with complete morons, now and forever, amen. She sighed audibly several times, muttered under her breath at how she had to tell the lady packing the carts “the same thing a million times, goddammit”, and I thought she was actually going to have a nervous breakdown when a customer pushed his cart too hard which had a domino effect for all the other empty carts lined up, ultimately resulting in her thigh being nudged by one. Poor girl. I’m sure she does have to deal with idiocy on a daily basis, but all the same next time I’m choosing the line with the hyper friendly guy who looks like Ryan Stiles. But not until September, hopefully. We should at least be able to cruise into the new year with our salsa reserves, as I realized on unpacking that we really didn’t need to buy any.

Field Trip Extravaganza

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Just to set the stage, here, it is 3:24 pm and I’m considering opening my SECOND beer.  Listen, I’m just impressed I made it until Friday to start drinking.  It’s been a very involved week, parenting wise, and by that I mean that I was chaperone to an all-day field trip to the museum on Wednesday, and I was volunteering for an in-class field trip all morning today. 

Let’s first discuss the Wednesday field trip.  There were two upsides to it: a) Mark was thrilled that I was on the field trip, and b) it was indoors.  The rain was coming down in sheets when we boarded the muggy, hot school bus.  I was instantly appreciative of two of the other parent volunteers: one, a dad who yelled at all the kids to shut up so the driver could talk, and two, a mom – and a friend of mine – who told two little screaming girls that their high pitched squeals were completely uncalled for and distracting to the driver.  These two were field trip veterans, and I was to become just like them before the day was through.

My group of five children seemed fine and normal until 50 minutes before lunch break, when the museum curator informed us that we now had “free time” to “explore” the museum.  I like exploring museums, with my two children who stay with me and who don’t, let’s say, try to ruin all the exhibits and/or run away and/or refuse to move when there is an educational film playing.  But with five children, including one who kept running ahead of the group and getting lost and one who kept getting distracted and lagged behind, also getting lost, it was pretty much the exact opposite of enjoyable.  The one consolation I had was that if I did actually lose two of my group of five, at least they would still be in the building.  The happy news is that all the children, under my watchful eye, ended up on the school bus at the end of the day.  The unhappy news is that I felt like I was going to lose my mind saying “Don’t touch the artifacts.  Keep up with the group.  STAY WITH ME.”  At one point I gave my group two options in a VERY FIRM VOICE: either listen to me and stay together, or stand silently and without moving for the remaining ten minutes until lunch break.  As we headed for the tipi display, I warned that anyone not listening to me would be left behind.  Yes, I threatened to leave the children behind for their misbehaviours.  It worked.  They all listened.  Possibly they also had nightmares about spending the night in the museum.  Wasn’t there a movie about that?

Did I mention that I have been – TMI ALERT – extremely premenstrual this week, to the point of “if my period doesn’t start soon, someone is going to get stabbed”?  So being at the museum with seventy children, riding a crowded school bus in the rain, and then supervising 35 children eating lunch on the floor of a tiny room, plus being responsible for four children who were not my own, two of whom seemed determined to get lost, was probably not the best plan for maintaining good mental health.

And then – THEN – today was an in-class field trip for Jake’s class, where the students would be learning about the ear and how hearing works.  It is just as fascinating as it sounds, and three hours later I was pretty tired of explaining about sound waves and pitch and OMG this is so boring I think I need another drink.  Also?  The volunteers today were the same volunteers from Wednesday’s trip, which means I think we all need a medal.  OR ANOTHER DRINK.  There are thirty-five children in Jake’s class, and quite a number of them are very behaviourally challenged, to the point of needing extra educational assistants, and all I could think of was how impressive it is that the teacher seems sane and is not an alcoholic.

Last week I told the kids that there was only three and a half weeks left of school.  Whee!  We were counting down excitedly to summer vacation when I realized, tragically, that I was a week off.  Ooops.  NOW there are three and a half weeks left of school, not last week.  We are all somewhat devastated by this information. 

I feel like I have more to say, but no more mojo with which to say it.  In other words, happy Friday, beautiful people!  Play nice, have fun. xoxo

So stabby.

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I feel like I must be mere minutes away from the start of my ladies’ holiday, given my current state of stabbiness.  It is a good thing for the world that I am not walking around with a knife tied to a broomstick, a la Peggy OIsen, elsewise everyone I encounter today would find themselves impaled.

I won’t go into enormous ranting details, except to say that I am going to be chaperoning a field trip to the museum tomorrow, under duress.  This is in addition to volunteering for Jake’s in-class field trip on Friday, and also in addition to the approximately one hundred hours I have spent volunteering this school year.  I understand that not everyone can volunteer, not everyone has the resources to volunteer, but dammit, do I have to volunteer for everything?  I mostly feel put-upon about the field trip, given that I hate – HATE – going on field trips, being responsible for groups of children that are not mine, and riding on the deplorable school bus.  Well, there’s nothing for it except to lay in a supply of Advil and start my ujjayi breathing now, and to impotently shake my fist at the world at the thought of spending the day with seventy seven-to-nine-year-olds. 

Whew, just writing that made me think longingly of a bottle of wine.

There are lots and lots of happy things in my life, however, and so I will go through them now, so as not to become a bitter old woman who runs people over at the Co-Op with her cart, and complains viciously of slow service and the price of butter.

1) My girls’ night away was fantastic, even if my husband has dubbed it the “world’s lamest girls’ night ever” because we went to see a display of the late Princess Diana’s dresses.  What, it was awesome.  Also we had some good food, good wine, and went hot tubbing, during which activity we were apparently checked out by men twenty years younger than us.  I say apparently because I tend to be oblivious when it comes to these situations, and was only informed of it later, but I always welcome the chance to feel like a chaste Mrs. Robinson.

2) Chalking this up under the “even filial love is blind” category, I was watching The Avengers with Jake and he told me I look JUST LIKE Black Widow, who is played by Scarlett Johansson.  JUST LIKE HER.  There ARE undeniable similarities: we both have red hair and we both wear all black.  However. On a related note: Jake can have any dessert he wants this week.

3) After our poor fireblighted tree was taken down, we were left with a stump and the contact information for “The Stump Doctor”.  The Stump Doctor came last night and ground up our stump.  I don’t know why, but just saying The Stump Doctor gives me a fit of the giggles.  Thank you, Stump Doctor, for grinding my stump.

4) Despite my husband’s assertions that I bought too many bedding plants, I managed to plant them all in an attractive manner.  This occurred between rainstorms, so I’m happy that I don’t need to “water until established”.

5) One very, very kind person told me that my hair reminded her of an old Finesse commercial, and since I have, shall we say “issues” about my hair, this was a very welcome compliment.  It also reminded me of the shampoo line called Gee Your Hair Smells Terrific.  Remember that?  Man, I wish I had some.

 

 
 
Just looking at that makes me feel much less stabby.  Hardly stabby at all, actually!  I feel much less like this and much more like this.  IT’S MY JOB.