Category Archives: My failing sanity

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.

The only way out is through

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Yesterday I was having a fabulous hair day, which is not something that happens frequently at the best of times, and especially not when it’s T-3 days until my appointment at the hair salon.  Generally, at this time in my hair cycle, my hair resembles a cross between straw and the fur on the old grey mare eating said straw.  But yesterday, due to some random act of kindness from the universe, my hair was soft and bouncy and wavy in all the right ways.

I tell you, I felt like I had it going on, even though it was kind of a wasted good hair day.  I was only planning on writing and cooking the whole day, and except for my usual drives to the school and dog walking, I wasn’t going anywhere or seeing anyone.  Nonetheless, I felt fine and saucy with my excellent hair and my giant woolly sweater and my long winter coat, because it is COLD here. 

I always feel better if I’m looking well.  It’s the reason I do my hair and makeup every morning and put on a cute outfit, because it is a slippery slope when one is a stay-at-home mom.  It’s a slippery slope to sweatpants and ballcaps and running shoes.  Rightly or wrongly, I feel like if I look good, then I can face the day with confidence, and so I slicked on some lipgloss, pulled on my tall winter boots (did I mention it’s really, really cold?) and headed to the dog park with Barkley.


Ah, Barkley.  Barkley my sweet, cuddly dog who looks like a Gund, a soft and huggable stuffed animal.  My adorable ball of fur.  My fluffy friend.  I’m guessing that, perhaps, a mouse had found its way into our yard.  Perhaps due to the recent warm day and subsequent cold snap, this mouse may not have been as quick on the draw as mice usually are.  In any case, the mouse ended up meeting its maker.  Barkley acted on his superior position in the food chain; the circle of life, enacted in my backyard.

How do I know this?  Because, at the dog park, the mouse got stuck on the way out.  The way out, after being digested.  And I, I was the only one who was able to help.  I had that terrifying realization that all the responsible adults are gone, no, wait, I am the responsible adult.  There is no one else.  IT’S ON ME TO SOLVE THIS.

And I will confess to you that I hesitated, wondering if perhaps the universe wouldn’t solve this itself.  The universe that had blessed me with such a fabulous hair day with only three days to go until my hair appointment.  If we were in the wild, if Barkley wasn’t some pampered and beloved pet but an animal fending for himself to survive, wouldn’t there be some natural solution?  Save yourselves! 

No.  I realized, philosophically, that the only way out was through, so to speak, and I fashioned a glove out of one of the little blue bags I keep in my coat pocket.  I solved the problem and then I looked at his cute, fuzzy, brown face and briefly hated him and his carnivorous ways. 

And just like that, the universe was back in balance.

The toll of shopping at Costco

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Congratulations to Maggie, for winning the random draw!  I picked up the prize yesterday on my trip to Costco.  Can you spot it in my minivan?

No, silly, it’s NOT the case of tetra pak almond milk.  Nor is it the giant family size package of Snapea Crisps – those are ALL for me, family size be damned.  I don’t share my Snapea Crisps (although, this isn’t a point of contention in my house.  I am the only person who appreciates their snacktacular attributes.)  You’ll just have to wait and see, Maggie!

A few weeks back I was shopping with a girlfriend and she reached into her bag to pull out her wallet, when something popped out and fell onto the floor.  We both reached for it and started laughing hysterically when it became apparent that said object was an o.b. tampon.  You’d think we were in junior high, gauging by our level of merriment.  Although, truth be told, if that had happened in junior high, we would have probably died of embarrassment.

I thought of this incident with amusement yesterday while shopping in Costco.  I was in the feminine products aisle, and the gigantic boxes of Tampax Super were stacked underneath the gigantic boxes of Tampax Regular.  I selected a box of Regular but I also needed Super – SUPER!  I know, my feminine mystique is going to take a bit of a beating here – and so I tried to shimmy a box from beneath the flats of Regular.  Slowly and nightmarishly, all the Regular tampons started to tip over onto me.  Now, as a person who has a (probably irrational) fear of being crushed to death in a warehouse setting, this was a bit alarming.  I tried to push the boxes back but several still tumbled to the floor.  Fortunately for me, a box of Super also fell to the floor so I had only to replace the gigantic scattered Tampax boxes and wheel my giant cart away, relieved that I now possessed a two year supply of tampons and that I probably would not have to endure narrowly missing death by tampon crushing until early 2015. 

There are a few more humiliating ways to die – I’m thinking specifically of death via heart attack while on the toilet, Elvis-style – but death by crushing in a warehouse would be one of the worst.  Especially, somehow, death by crushing by giant pallets of tampons.

I actually really like grocery shopping, but the loading up of the van and the unloading of the van and then the putting away of the groceries are big negatives to me.  You may be saying to yourself why don’t you get your kids to help? but they are generally in school when I shop (see also: why I like grocery shopping) but even if they weren’t, the baskets that I load the Costco offerings in are probably half their body weight.  Yesterday was cold and snowy and grey, and by the time I had unpacked my giant cart into the van, driven home, and started to bring the groceries into the house, I was pretty cold.

Slight digression: remember, people, that I have what is called Raynaud’s Syndrome, which is characterized by poor circulation and cold, somewhat painful, purple hands and feet.  By the time I reached home my hands were numb and cold, but since that is their normal state in the winter, I kept calm and carried on.

Once everything was neatly put away, everything in its place, I washed my hands.  Hmm, I thought, my right index finger sure must be cold.  Even the warm water isn’t helping.  Then I looked at my right index finger, which was enormously swollen, purple, and had a giant dent in it.  It started to feel like it was going to explode.  Huh.  I realized that I must have pinched it somehow, bringing in the baskets of groceries, but my hands were so numb I didn’t even realize it was happening. 

If that isn’t reason enough to move to a warm climate, I don’t know what is.  I am a Delicate Flower who needs warmth and sunshine to bloom, people.  Or at least for me to not accidentally and unknowingly injure myself.  It’s still pretty painful today, but what was more alarming is that I was typing away this morning and it spontaneously went completely pins-and-needles numb and tingly.  And I tell you this: do not google these symptoms or you may think that you have somehow become gangrenous or the like.  Is my finger going to fall off? you may nervously ask yourself.  Fortunately I have feeling in my finger now, thanks to me turning up the heat and anxiously washing the floors, on the belief that moving around might increase circulation.

Last night while I was waiting for the boys at karate, I tried to take a picture of my finger.  I discovered that a) it is very hard to take a picture of one’s right hand when one is right handed, and b) I’m not going to become a hand model any time soon.

There’s an old adage that you can tell the age of a woman by looking at her hands.  By this picture, one might think I’m one hundred years old.  The waiting room at the karate dojo DOES look a lot like a nursing home.  I’m just watching my stories, dearie.

Lego, Eyelashes, and an IMPORTANT QUESTION

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This morning Jake was playing with his Star Wars Lego when I heard a frustrated yell.  The back window had fallen out of his Palpatine’s Arrest set, and when he tried to fix it, a couple of other pieces came off.  There was no time to figure things out before school, and so I decided I would try to fix it before he came home from lunch.

This is not, by any means, the first time I had attempted to build or fix Lego.  I will start by saying that I am not gifted in the Lego area.  I can barely build a simple box house, and those Star Wars sets are very complicated.  This is probably somehow related to my complete inability to catch a ball without flailing my arms and shrieking.  However, I remembered where all of the instructions manuals were kept, and so I flipped to what seemed to be the appropriate page and bravely began.

Shortly after that, I burst into tears. 

Happily, when Jake got home at lunch and I showed him my attempt, he said cheerfully that I did a great job, and he didn’t really need the window to open anyway.  He never really used that window anyway!

What a sweetheart.  I have a School Council meeting tonight, and I have a feeling his dad is going to be kept busy fixing the window.

Speaking of bursting into tears and having to subsequently fix my mascara, the other day I was shopping and saw a display for a mascara called “The Falsies”, and although the word “Falsies” makes me think of bra-stuffing, I was intrigued.  I had read a few reviews about this mascara and I thought I should try it.  I am going to have amazing, traffic stopping eyelashes, I thought, although to be honest I’m not sure how eyelashes would stop traffic, especially if a person has light sensitive eyes and wears sunglasses all the time, as I do.  Nonetheless!  I have a few girlfriends who regularly get false eyelashes applied – the kind that last for a few weeks – and they look amazing.  So amazing that when I’m talking to them I get completely distracted by their eyelashes and forget what we are talking about.  I’m like one of those guys who can’t take their eyes off your breasts, but with eyelashes.  I briefly thought about getting them myself but decided against it.  Although I’m high maintenance that is a line I just cannot cross, so this mascara called out to me.

Isn’t it funny what you think buying a product is going to be a glorious, life changing experience?  I get that sometimes.  A new pair of panties equals a new lease on life!  New lipstick?  Transformative.  I am a new woman because of this scented hand cream!  So I could hardly wait to try out my new mascara which would give me false lash glam instantly. 

People.  Building hopes up too high can only lead to disappointment in the end.  I wish I could say I was fluttering my enormous eyelashes at you right now, but I’m not.  I mean, the mascara is fine.  Possibly slightly better than my regular mascara.  There is nothing inherently wrong with the mascara, although there might be something wrong with me in falling for the advertising.  I tried to take a picture of my eyes, but have you ever tried to do that?  I looked like I was preparing to make my own tinfoil hat, or that I lived in a small apartment with one hundred pets who were all named Pookie.  So you will have to take my word for it; my eyelashes look nice, but not LIFE CHANGING.  Certainly not traffic stopping.  No one is going to become distracted by my eyelashes while talking to me.

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Some of you know that I’m currently working on a cookbook, filled to the brim with lovely vegan and vegetarian recipes.  It’s an exciting project, and now that Justin Timberlake is singing the praises of coming on down to Veganville, I hope it will be a popular project as well.  Nothing like a little advertising by JT.  In any case, I realized I have a very biased and warped view of the world since I have so many vegetarian and vegan friends; it’s like I live in my own little meatless bubble.  As my husband said to me the other night, most people actually eat meat, Nicole.  Not everyone loves beans as much as you do.  I’m beginning to realize this is true!  So my question for all you meat-eaters is this: how often, if ever, do you cook/serve/eat meatless meals?  If never, why not?  Please leave your answer in the comments.  Maybe we can make it a giveaway!  Random person will win a prize!  Prize to be determined, I promise it won’t be a can of beans, or a tube of mascara.

Mildly Annoying Things

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You know when it’s the week leading up to your ladies’ holiday, and you feel all raw and emotional and sad things are unbearably sad and mildly irritating things are making you ragey and you’re reading the Diary of a Wimpy Kid with your children and you didn’t realize how very mean spirited and awful it is, and it’s two days until your hair appointment and your hair looks and feels like orange straw, but with grey roots, and you have impotent rage about the impending time change and your husband thinks time change is “no big deal” and it’s “crazy to get all worked up about it” and Monday is a new moon and Mercury is in retrograde and why don’t we keep snack food in the house, omg, want snacks right now?  That’s the kind of day I’m having.

I realized yesterday that Barkley is going to be five soon, which means he is approaching doggie middle age, and I myself am approaching human middle age.  Or maybe I’ve already reached middle age, although I hope not.  I have an ultimate goal of being one of those sweet yet crazy little old ladies in the nursing home, wearing tons of lipstick which will bleed down into the lines around my mouth, and I will colour my hair orangey-red, and I will wear so much Chanel No. 5 that everyone will know I was in a room twenty minutes after vacating it.  I will wear jaunty little silk neck scarves in bright colours to hide the wrinkles on my chicken neck, and will paint my nails to match.  I will force the cafeteria in my nursing home to offer a vegetarian option and I will always have a bowl of hard candies in my room.  I think that would be fun, but I envision myself to be in my nineties, or late eighties at the very least, and so I do not think I have technically hit middle age yet.

Speaking of being an old lady, I do not want to be one of those mean ones who ram their shopping carts into people at the grocery store or complain about the lineups to the cashiers, and so I will blog about the things that have been irritating me today.  Although, technically, they aren’t irritating me so much anymore since I went to my beautiful friend’s restorative yoga class this afternoon so I’m actually feeling pretty relaxed.  Still.  Here is a list of the mildly annoying things on this sunny, blue-and-white day:

1) It snowed for about ten hours straight on Sunday; there is about a foot of snow on the ground.  This is nothing unusual since March is typically a snowy month.  However, by the level of complaints about the snow, you would think we were all living in the tropics and it suddenly and unexpectedly turned into the Arctic.  Also, the city road crews did an amazing job cleaning up the streets, all things considered, and yet the complaints about the city road crews were endless.

2) Because of the snow, I am dropping the kids off at the front of the school after lunch, rather than the alley.  First, people dropping their kids off for afternoon kindergarten park in the alley like they’ve never seen traffic before; they double park and park on blind corners and leave their cars and it is – in good conditions – a mess.  And so I tried to just avoid the situation by dropping off the kids in front of the school, but then my zen state was ruined by witnessing three people jaywalking with their small children across the busy street.  People: darting out between parked cars into traffic and expecting said traffic to stop for you is not a good lesson for your kindergarten aged child.  THEN one of those small children got stuck in a snowbank on the side of the road.  There’s nothing quite like watching a parent standing in the busy street trying to dislodge her child from a snowbank, meanwhile the younger siblings are darting around ON THE STREET.  I’m having heart palpitations just thinking about it.  It’s the same visceral reaction I get when I see pictures of babies on those Bumbo seats sitting on elevated surfaces.  Get the baby off there before it falls and breaks its little neck!!!

3) My friend Nan wrote about this today, but whenever anyone mentions the Paleo Diet I immediately picture that person with a club and wearing animal skins, hunting down sabre-toothed tigers and the like.  I find diet trends – when they are spoken about with fervour as they often are in the born-again dieter – to be annoying in general.  I mean, awesome if you’re into the Paleo Diet or low-carb or gluten-free or whatnot and it works for you.  What I find annoying are the attempts at conversion.  Hey, I’ve been a vegetarian for years and I have never once said anything derogatory about my carnivorous friends.  Particularly since I live with four of them (I am counting the dog).

4) The boys have another make up karate class today.  The oversharing, overly talkative woman will be there.  That right there should be enough but now she’s talking to ME.  God help us all.  She told me that outdoor sports – like spring soccer – are the only way to REALLY teach children about sports, and while I agree that there is something character building about playing soccer with snow on the ground, in the howling wind and sleet, I am ecstatic that my children are not playing this year.  I can’t wait to see what we will talk about tonight!

Speaking of which, I must go get ready to pick the kids up and head to the dojo – they got new belts this weekend!  White with the yellow stripe!  Excitement all around – and so I will sign off, feeling much better about everything.  What would I do without you to listen to me, dear readers?  I guess I would turn into Mean Old Lady.  xoxo

"And then I posted that as my status, and three people liked it."

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Remember that old Simpsons’ episode where Apu went without sleep for several days and then thought he was a hummingbird?  I feel like that, except for the no-sleep thing.  I mean, I haven’t been sleeping that well but I have been sleeping; during the daylight hours I have been flitting around exactly like a hummingbird, going from task to task in a frantic kind of way.  I have lists everywhere and every time I cross something off I do not get my usual feeling of accomplishment; instead I feel like I need to add five items.   

The boys are sick with colds; Jake has a massive headcold and is currently lying on the couch watching Looney Tunes.  Mark has a cough and any time he has a cough I get something like post-traumatic stress disorder from that time he had pneumonia.  He coughs and my heart starts pounding, my entire body gets tense.  Last night I heard him cough, ran into his room – nearly passing out in the process, due to the excellent combination of my super-low blood pressure and jumping out of bed – and asked if he needed his emergency inhaler.  He was sound asleep.  I stood there in the doorway, my heart pounding, feeling like a ridiculous hypochondriac of a mother.

In an interview prior to the Super Bowl, Ray Lewis said “I’m too blessed to be stressed” and I decided to adopt that as a motto for my life.  I thought I should work that thought, in a zen-like way, into my everyday life.  Which means I was practically screaming “I’M TOO BLESSED TO BE STRESSED!  SERENITY NOW!  NAMASTE MOTHERFUCKER!” today, for reasons too ridiculous to go into. 

Oh well, they are sick, they’ll get better.  The other day the boys were at a make-up karate class, on a different day than usual.  On their usual day, all the kids get dropped off and picked up later, but for me, it’s too far to drive home and back, so I normally sit in the waiting area by myself.  At the make-up class, the kids were younger and so there were a number of moms also waiting.

Here I must interject.  I am the chatty, small-talky mom you might meet in a waiting area.  Chances are if we just met I will find out your kids’ names, ages, activities, and favourite movies.  But on this day, in this waiting room, there were three moms that obviously knew each other and settled in for what I assumed was their weekly chat, and I smiled at them and then, not wanting to interrupt them, continued writing in my notebook.  

It turns out that I couldn’t have interrupted if I had wanted to.  One of the moms started talking at 4:15 and didn’t stop for the next forty five minutes.  It was something to behold.  I looked up at one point, and noticed one of the moms she was talking at was busily crocheting, and the other was simply nodding and murmuring “Um hmmm.  Hmmm.” at intervals.  I guessed this was business as usual for this group.  The woman talked nonstop about the following topics: her son’s hockey practice and the schedule they keep, her hairdresser, the frequency with which she speaks to her mother-in-law, the frequency with which her mother-in-law visits or with which she visits her mother-in-law, her Italian lessons and the expense incurred, the Kiwanis music festival at which she was accompanied by someone not musically talented, her son’s field trip to the Calgary Opera and how she was the single greatest chaperone on the trip, her own vast musical talent, fondue, and the weekend hockey tournament that took place at a wonderful venue in Edmonton and the cost of their hotel room.  She told the other women what she posted as her statuses on Facebook for the past week, and how her family liked to spend their time in a relaxed manner at Disneyland.  One of the other moms, at this point, began to talk about her own recent trip to Disneyland, and was instantly cut off when she said she liked to get to the gates early and then stay until close.  “That must be because you’re Asian!” the woman said.  I looked up, startled and horrified.  The crocheting woman was still crocheting madly.  The Asian woman, with what I thought was extreme self-control, nodded politely. 

With the boys being too sick to go to their karate lesson today, I am not particularly looking forward to taking them to the make up class and being subjected to this kind of asinine one-sided conversation again.  Although I’m kind of curious: will this obnoxiousness be a Groundhog Day-like occurrence?  Does this verbal spewage happen every Tuesday from 4:15 to 5:00?  If I flit around the waiting room like Apu the hummingbird, will it be noticed, or will everyone be too busy listening to “And then I posted on Facebook that happiness is a family marshmallow fight.”? 

February and Friday Happiness

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It’s the first day of February!  January is over, for those of you who had a case of the January blues.  And here in Calgary, the weather today is unseasonably warm, the snow is melting, cars are filthy.  This warmth is in sharp contrast to earlier in the week, when it was minus 37 with windchill.  I went to pick the boys up at lunch – the boys who went to school wearing snowpants, parkas, neck warmers, hats, mitts, and boots – and was sadly disappointed with the sight of them sprinting across the icy playground to meet me, hatless and frozen.  Mark, in particular, cheerfully popped out of his school door wearing only his coat, and unzipped at that.  By the time he made it to the car he was blue, and I asked him what he was thinking.  “Well, the sun was shining,” he said, “So I thought it was warm out.”

The blue skies of Calgary in the winter can be deceiving.  There is a very special breed of Calgarian who ignores the information on the temperature gauge and instead dresses based on what the sky looks like.  You can see these purple legged people everywhere, running along the pathway system, wearing shorts despite the minus 20 temperatures.  It appears that I have birthed one of these people.

But hey, it’s Friday, it’s February, AND it’s a PD day, which I love.  I am still in my sweaty yoga clothes, the kids are in their jammies playing Poke Park on the Wii, and I’m trying to figure out what to do with the giant batch of vegan sour “cream” I made yesterday.  I was reminded after I made it why I avoid soy.  Possibly this can be used as an ingredient in some other recipe; it certainly cannot be used on its own because NASTY.  Oh well, either I salvage it or I forfeit $1.49 worth of soft tofu.  The consequences are not that dire.

I went shopping at Costco yesterday, which isn’t generally my favourite thing to do, but thanks to short lineups and the fact that only one person disparaged my choice of almond milk, it wasn’t too bad.  At least I wasn’t buying this:

 
Cocoa Pebbles!  I had no idea those were still in production.  I have never actually eaten these in my life: my mother, wise woman, did not believe in sugar cereals for children.  Once in a while we had Honey Nut Cheerios, but that was the extent of it.  Still, someone must be eating them.  At first the words “Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs” popped into my head, but then I realized that is advertising for a totally different cocoa-flavoured-cartoon-branded-cereal.
 
I’m not criticizing, mind you.  Critiquing people’s grocery choices is so not me.  Hell, for all I know this is a base for a Rice-Krispie-esque Square.  Perhaps a Valentine’s Day treat for that special someone.  Speaking of Valentine’s Day, I came across this on Facebook, and I wish I knew the creator:
 
 

These really leave those “Bee Mine” or “I Choo-Choo-Choose You” cards in the dust.  The dust, I say!  Quit Stalin, I shall say to my husband.  And he will shake his head at me, brow furrowed, probably wondering why his wife is such a nutcase.

For example, this morning I was scrolling through news headlines and saw “Ed Koch Died In The Closet.”  The first – the very first – thought that went through my head was how did he die in a closet?  Did he fall into the closet, and did no one find him?  Poor guy.  Then I read the article.  OH.  Light bulb.  I took that for a sign I needed more coffee. 

Then, to top off my nuttiness, I realized that there is a whole folder of messages in my Facebook account that I didn’t know was there!  A sweet note from a woman at the Yoga Shala, from OCTOBER that I had obviously never replied to since I didn’t know it was there.  Rude!  Also in that folder, this classy note from an unknown stranger:

Hello, I am Oscar. I am 45 year old and i am italian live California. I came across your profile and it would be my pleasure if we can be close friends…

Is this how people meet people these days?  It creeped me out – possibly unfairly.  I mean, maybe Oscar just needs a friend.  A CLOSE friend.  Anyone want to be Oscar’s friend?  Anyone?