Category Archives: Playtime

Rock and Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution; Twenty-One Weeks In

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Turn Down For What

We have officially reached a new milestone. My younger son was practicing with his band in his buddy’s garage, so they could have the door open, be physically distanced, and in general follow Covid-style health guidelines, like the responsible 14-and-15-year-olds they are. His buddy’s dad is in a band, and so has a complete drum kit and set-up, and since it is a garage, it is much cooler than my basement, which is also a practice area, given that we have drums and they are not a portable instrument.

The neighbours did not enjoy their free concert, as evidenced by the noise complaint lodged and the police showing up to shut them down. In the middle of the afternoon, no less! Did you know you can lodge a noise complaint at 2:00 in the afternoon? Neither did I!

Evidently the officer was very nice – my son, the drummer, was the one who had to talk to him – and “no fines will be pressed as it was their first offence.” I am trying VERY HARD to feel compassion for the individual who a) called the police instead of walking twenty steps to the garage to ask them to maybe lower the noise, and b) are that bothered by teens who are not getting into trouble but instead are making music together in the middle of the afternoon that they lodge complaints. Well. Some people are just generally unhappy and in the meantime, I guess practices will take place at my house, as the basement is quieter from the street and also my neighbours are very nice and would never complain.

After they got shut down they apparently went into the field and played golf with tennis balls, which seems to have more potential for damage than playing Stone Temple Pilot covers.

Where The Wild Things Are

Speaking of fields, there is a little green space behind my house. Longtime readers will remember it as the scene of the crime where we found Manny the Mannequin, and not infrequently, a passed-out individual. But not these days! These days it is the hangout of a gang of coyotes. Right behind my backyard, where my elderly dog spends his days. I guess this explains the decline in the wild jackrabbit population.

The Wolfie Dynasty

The older gentleman who lives across the alley and down – just down from the coyote hangout – had a wonderful golden retriever named Wolfie. Barkley, in his spoiled life and advanced age, doesn’t love all other dogs, but he and Wolfie were, insomuch as we can anthropomorphize a couple of dogs, friends. Sadly, Wolfie passed away this winter, but the gentleman has a new puppy now. A sweet golden retriever, and when I asked his name, he replied “Wolfie.”

I was speaking of this phenomenon to my husband, and he recalled, many years ago, that the gentleman had a German shepherd, and he thought that THAT dog’s name was also Wolfie. It turns out, upon questioning, that the current puppy is Wolfie Number Five. The gentleman has, he said, had a Wolfie since the Sixties.

It’s a dynasty of Wolfies! I guess the dogs wouldn’t know the difference anyway, and it sure would take away any confusion over calling the dog by its name.

Summer Breeze

As per usual when we get our 7-14 days of summer, there have been many complaints about the Heat, and Heat Warnings Are All In Effect, the Heat being defined as being 28-29 degrees Celsius with very little humidity. Heat Warning! Is the warning that you may get a little sweaty while walking around outside? Possibly.

Anyway, the complainers are now vindicated, as the weather has turned. In Calgary, when the weather turns, it TURNS. You can actually feel the fall-like chill in the air. The nights are very chilly and even the warm days have that fall feeling. Complainers, you got your way.

Why doesn’t it work that way when I complain about the cold? When I complain about the cold it doesn’t magically get warmer, we just get snow for another six months.

Before it turned, my husband actually had a day off work, my god, a day off, and he accompanied me and the boys on a 13.4 km, 900 metre elevation hike. It was a great day – and we did, in fact, get sweaty.

Note! As per my Favourite Things post, I wore my Routine deodorant and I was perfectly fresh-smelling even after that hike on a warm day.

Pandemic Reading

This was a fun reading week!

This was such a fun read. If we were going to a beach this year, I’d call it a Beach Read, but alas. It was a great Sunny Backyard Read. Part murder mystery, part detective story, part Scooby Doo, this also had a really good theme of body acceptance and the dangers of believing everything we see on social media. Plus, lots of fashion descriptions, which I am HERE FOR.

Ooooh, this was SO GOOD. It’s been a while since I read something that made me want to not do anything else at all, just read. Ooooh, I can’t say anything about this without spoiling it, so I won’t. Just. It’s so good.

I think Suzanne recommended this? Suzanne? Was it you? (HI SUZANNE). It was fascinating, all about children’s television as an educational medium and – spoiler alert! – how Elmo saved the day.

Have a great week, everyone! Rock on. xo

What Day Is It? Twenty Weeks In

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Very late to the party, but last night I finally watched Hamilton and it was worth staying up an hour past my bedtime to do it. The music! The costumes! The entire cast and ensemble! Normally I fall asleep within minutes of watching, well, pretty much anything, but this felt like an EVENT.

Watching Hamilton on a Sunday night did not help my complete disorientation with regards to time. As I mentioned, last week was our week of summer and we spent some days at my parents’ place up at the lake. This feeling of festivity and holiday, along with my husband STILL WORKING EVERY SINGLE DAY, has left me feeling like this:

The other day I squirted dish soap into the sink full of dirty dishes and turned the hot water on full blast. I puttered around, putting things back in the fridge and wiping the countertops, and when I turned back to the sink, anticipating it to be nearly full, I was startled to see it empty, just a couple of bubbles sadly resting on the dishes. I went into full panic mode that something! Had happened to our sink! And we are in a pandemic! And my husband is working EVERY SINGLE DAY! And I’ll have to call Tony The Hot Plumber to come and fix it and it’s just one more thing to schedule into the week that I don’t know what day is what! And then I realized that I didn’t actually PUT the plug in.

Well. I was at Superstore last week, and at the entrance is a giant bottle of hand sanitizer and a giant bottle of spray with which to wipe down carts. At the Co-Op – which I rarely frequent these days, given my enormous once-weekly routine – there is a bottle of spray that is meant for both wiping carts and sanitizing hands. Like I said, I am rarely there these days so it’s not like that is the routine I’m used to. I am used to Superstore. So I don’t know why I sprayed both my hands and the cart with the same bottle, belatedly realizing that the bottle contained BLEACH. I stood there in the entrance way, masked people zipping around me to grab the actual hand sanitizer, while I realized that I bleached my own hands and waited for my skin to dissolve.

That incident did NOT help the dried-out old-lady appearance of my hands.

Peas from my parents’ garden! If there’s anything better than eating them straight out of the pod, I don’t know what it is.

In addition to fresh garden veggies, we spent time paddle boarding and lots of time on my dad’s boat. It was warm enough to swim, although the water – like any Alberta lake – is NOT warm. The boys had a great time jumping from boat to water until, in what can only be described as a testosterone-fueled attempt to jump the furthest, my older son sliced his toe open on the edge of the boat. Oops. I hope Grandma’s not upset that I got blood all over her towel. Luckily it wasn’t deep enough for stitches, and also luckily, we take butterfly bandages with us wherever we go.

Well, we had a great week and it looks like there will be MORE sunshine and warm weather this week too! I can hardly believe it.

Pandemic Reading

I picked this up on a whim at the library and was glad I did; on the surface it’s about how we live our lives online, and what that means. What does it mean if someone likes your post? Or doesn’t? But deeper than that, it’s about systemic barriers for women of colour and trans women in the music industry, white privilege, and how the world tries to pit women against each other. A timely read, that’s for sure.

I picked this up because it was touted as uplifting, but I frankly found it just extremely sad. It’s a memoir written by a man dying of a very strange and debilitating neurological disease, and as he wrote about his childhood, I was reminded of the theory that painful and traumatic childhoods are associated with chronic health issues and illness in adulthood.

That’s it for me this week – August, my god, it’s August – I’m off to enjoy the next few days of summer. Next week…an update on my herb garden! I bet you can’t wait. xo

Leaning Out; Nineteen Weeks In

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I am at that weird point in the summer, but also in the pandemic, where I really struggle to know what day it is. The boys and I went for a fun little hike last Monday, and when I think about it, it seems like months ago. Thank god for blogs, because I have no concept if something happened in April or last week, and I find myself looking it up and being constantly surprised.

There was a worldwide Garmin outage due to hacking, and it really begs the question: if you do a physical activity, but your watch doesn’t track it, did it really happen? If you do not have a Garmin watch or similar, you might think – as I did, people, as I did, karma on every judgement every time – that such a question is ridiculous. However, millions of users, myself included, were all completely lost. Sure, there’s a global pandemic with millions sick and dying, there are terrible social injustices happening all around the world, there is massive government corruption and countries are all facing mind-boggling national debts and unemployment, small businesses are closing up while the Walmarts and Amazons are thriving. BUT WHAT ABOUT MY RUN, WILL IT BE RECORDED.

The boys were up at my parents’ for a few days, helping my dad with a few things, and my husband and I looked at each other across the table, wondering what day it was. It’s Wednesday, I said with great authority. I thought it was Thursday the whole day, he said. We stared at each other for a minute – it WAS Wednesday, but disconcerting as who really knows, time has lost all meaning and feels like a false construct – and then went back to our salads.

The boys paddling at 15 degrees and windy; they are pretty hardened to cold weather, but melt a little in warmer temperatures. Luckily, they live here.

As a digression, when my younger son was in kindergarten I often chatted with his little friend’s grandma, who cared for her granddaughter while her parents were at work. This woman was a real inspiration to me; so energetic and vibrant, and interesting to talk to. She was the woman who really pressed me to look into getting my varicose veins removed, saying that I was so young with so many years ahead of me, it was too much to go through life with pain that could be easily remedied. Longtime readers will remember that I did get them stripped; unfortunately, according to my doctor, I am a “very unusual case” as I have since developed NEW varicose veins, and I cannot have anything done with them as, well, no more veins can really be removed from my body.

ANYWAY. If you’re interested in varicose veins, by all means, go search my archives. The grandma, however, talked to me once about how one day the kids will leave home, and I would be sitting across from my husband at the table, and it would be like, “Oh, hello.”

At the time I couldn’t picture it at all; dinners were hectic and evenings were filled with reading stories and supervising baths and cutting up fruit for snacks before collapsing, exhausted, on the couch. It’s not like the kids haven’t been away before, far from it. But it occurred to me suddenly: it won’t be long until the table-set-for-two is the rule, not the exception.

Last week I finished the book Lean Out by Tara Henley, and if you haven’t read it, I really recommend it. It really resonated with me and what I’ve been thinking about these last few weeks – this whole pandemic, really. The books centres on the physical and mental health issues that stem from our culture of overwork, overscheduling, overdoing. Don’t get me wrong; I love to be busy and productive and to get things done, but there’s a limit. It’s something I have known for years: there has to be yin where there is yang. Otherwise, your body forces you to be yin; in other words, you become sick, exhausted, depleted. If you don’t take rest, your body takes it for you, and it is much less pleasant than just sitting and reading for a while.

I am writing this as my husband has been working nonstop, every single day since June 29, evenings, weekends, holidays. He’s on a big project and there is an end in sight, but it is making me nervous in terms of health. Hoo boy. Anyway, during this whole month – and the whole pandemic – we have gone for walks every single day and I think that’s the yin that’s going to save us all. I’ve watched the lawns and gardens in the neighbourhood go from snow covered to bleak to tiny-signs-of-life to full blown flowers and grass. One garden in particular is my favourite to look at, owing to the gorgeous flowers and also their enormous collection of garden gnomes and tchotchkes. I call it the Happy Yard, with all the smiling ceramic ladybugs and what have you.

My own garden is in full swing; the roses are as late as they have ever been, and – perhaps owing to the super-early frost and snow last year – none of the old wood greened up, so I had to prune it all back. IN JULY.

But this week, the first of the roses started blooming, and it felt like a little breath of hope.

Pandemic Reading

I was out running errands when I got a text from my husband to let me know the library had called, and that one of my holds was ready for pickup. He followed up that text with this: Stop ordering books. I don’t know why he said that.

So I have a few things to read. Anyway, I AM making my way through the pile; I read two other books in addition to Lean Out this week.

This is about the woman who wrote The Velveteen Rabbit and her child prodigy daughter, Pamela. Pamela was a famous artist at a young age, and like most geniuses, suffered mental illness. Probably this was exacerbated by the pressure she was under thanks to her exploitative dickwad of a father.

This book was interesting and disturbing; it was well done but I don’t know that I’d across-the-board recommend it. If you like bizarre internet stalker-type books, and very well done and interesting twists, this is for you.

Have a beautiful week, friends. It’s the last week of July! Just a reminder for those of you who – like me – are completely messed up in terms of time. xo

Be Thankful For What You Got; Eighteen Weeks In

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You guys, I have a new toy!

It’s a Peloton!

Me, six months ago: Those Peloton things are ridiculous. I mean, if you want to spin, go to spin class. Half the fun is being around other people!

Me, six weeks into global pandemic: Do we have room for a Peloton?

I probably should have known; it’s karma. Every single thing that I have ever judged in my life, even silently, especially silently, has come back to haunt me. This should be a lesson to us all. Judge not, or walk a mile in their shoes or any other pithy saying.

Anyway, the Peloton. I love it so much. I can now pretend I’m in a Peloton meme any day of the week.

In terms of having ROOM for the Peloton, well. There was much rejigging and reorganizing of the home gym, and I feel like we literally cannot fit anything more in this house.

The book I read a few weeks ago, Success and Luck, talked about housing sizes and how they have increased enormously relative to real median incomes over the past fifty years. I live in a 1960s bungalow; it’s 1100 square feet on the main floor, with a finished basement of the same. If you popped my great-grandparents, immigrants from Norway and Scotland who lived on the prairies farming, into my house, I am sure it would seem very large and luxurious. But yet this same house might feel unsatisfying to someone today, someone used to ensuite jetted tubs and guest suites and those ubiquitous “bonus rooms.” Do not get me wrong, I love my house. It’s home and I love it very much, but let’s think about how our ideas of a modest house have changed, even since growing up in the 1980s.

It’s interesting to me because I think as time goes by we are collectively going to want a simpler life. A number of friends have whispered to me that secretly, they have been enjoying the slower pace of quarantine life, that really, they don’t miss the hustle and bustle and constant go go go. Late night ice times, early morning swim times, weekends devoted to meets and tournaments and evenings spent in the car, driving to activities, scarfing down whatever sandwich or take-out was available on the way to activities. It’s not a healthy way to spend a life and I think we are all collectively discovering this.

For me, my days used to be spent driving to and from different studios, squeezing in the demands of the household and quickly walking the dog and running to get groceries, wondering if I have time to fold laundry between classes, timing my day down to the minute, always going. I would have never, ever taken the time to walk around the neighbourhood for an hour, and now I do that daily.

I guess what I’m saying is that if anything comes out of this, I think it should be that we take time to examine all the optional things in our lives, to see if they are actually serving us in a way that is healthy and smart.

Friday will mark exactly 14 months since my hip injury, the injury that meant I couldn’t walk without considerable pain – in fact it was months before I could walk without a limp – and I thought my running days were over. I was talking to a friend about adversity, and how we come through it with a new understanding, a new peace, a new appreciation for everything we have.

When I injured my hip, while going through my yoga practice I could not transition between downward dog and warrior 1. I could bring my foot forward but I couldn’t take my hands off the ground; it was far too painful and felt impossible. Now when I go through my sun salutations, every single time I do that transition, I send “thank you” thoughts to my legs and hips. Thank you for holding me up. Thank you for healing and being strong.

As women, we are conditioned to be unhappy with our bodies. I wonder if this is connected somehow to the constant pressure to always push more, to go more, to do more. We are conditioned to disconnect from what our bodies need, and instead we punish them. I bet if you asked a million women, only one would say she was truly happy with her body. There would be women dissatisfied with the size of their thighs, the shape of their butts, their stomachs. But really, our bodies are incredible and deserve our love and gratitude.

I was thinking that this week when I was hiking with my friend Taryn (HI TARYN), how last summer I could not have taken this 16 km hike with lots of elevation, not without considerable pain, anyway. Thank you, body. Thank you, legs. Thank you, hips.

Taking the time to enjoy nature, to not be always worrying about the next thing – if this is what comes out of the pandemic for me, then I’m happy.

Pandemic Reading

I finished two books this week, Primates of Park Avenue is a re-read but it’s really excellent look into a whole different world. If we want to discuss relative wealth and happiness, well. It is worthwhile and fascinating.

Eleanor and Park was recommended to me by my dear friend Allison (HI ALLISON) and I finally read it and understood the hype. It’s great!

The library is open now and god help me, I need an intervention.

Have a beautiful week, my beautiful friends. Be kind to yourselves. xo

Lots of Adventures; Seventeen Weeks In

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Dental Adventure

I had a dental cleaning scheduled for Monday afternoon and I was a bit nervous, due to the thought of having someone’s hands in my open mouth but you know what, all my nerves evaporated when the hygienist came into the room in full hazmat gear. Mask, face shield, hair covered, medical gown over all her clothes, and gloves.

Apparently there are “Marches To Unmask” going on around the country, and I keep reminding myself that it is very bad karma, very bad karma indeed, to wish ill on the participants, especially to wish a deadly Covid outbreak that would occur as a result of those marches. Bad karma, and therefore I am NOT wishing it to happen.

It is also wrong and bad karma to I hope a giant anvil drops from the sky and squashes every single marcher. However, if my dental hygienist can cheerfully don a hazmat suit every time she cleans someone’s teeth, certainly we can all put on a mask to get groceries.

I’m really leaning into the pretty mask thing; it’s taking all of my willpower not to order a different mask for every day of the week. There are so many cute ones to choose from! Lean in! Make it work! Match it with your outfit! They really bring out your eyes.

Costco Adventure

Speaking of groceries, the exciting news in my life is that there are no longer lineups to get into Costco. In fact, last week I went to Costco and Superstore and a) almost everyone was masked, particularly in Costco where they give you masks at the door if you do not have your own (super cute and outfit-matching one), b) there were no shortages of anything that I could see or was shopping for, and c) I am finally getting back joy in grocery shopping. It no longer feels like a grim and possibly deadly task; it feels like the happy, food-obtaining job that I have long enjoyed.

Friend Adventures

We saw our dear friends, who are more like chosen family (HI GUYS) this week for the first time since February, and it felt joyful and wonderful and almost normal. Well, except I wasn’t able to hug them; god, I miss hugging. The book I just finished reading talks about the importance of touch to our physical and mental health, and there was some study done about the optimal number of hugs a day; my family is getting the brunt of my unspent hugs. HUG MEEEEEE.

I also saw my dear friend Lyn (HI LYN) for the first time in a long while, and she is NOT a hugger, so I am sure she’s getting joy out of not being physically affectionately attacked by me.

Actual Mountain Adventure

I went on a beautiful hike with my very good friend Janet (HI JANET); we went to Lake Louise and hiked the Plain of the Six Glaciers, along with a little detour up to Lake Agnes, for a total of about sixteen kilometres and lots of elevation. It was an adventure; there had been a snowslide across the path and we had to go over it, discovering after the fact that it was completely hollowed out underneath. Oops. At the Glacier Lookout, there is an outhouse, and when I was using it I heard a great loud noise and felt a lot of wind. This was the culprit:

If you’ve ever wondered how they empty outhouses in remote mountain locations, wonder no more!

If you don’t strike a yoga pose when you are hiking in the mountains, are you even a yoga teacher?

Lake Louise is usually chock full of tourists at any given time, but the cold drizzly morning, and our early start, meant I actually was able to get a people-free photo.

The top of that mountain, the Big Beehive, is where my husband proposed to me, lo these many years ago. Aww! Shmoopy.

Pandemic Reading Adventure

You guys, the library is open, not just for curbside hold pickups, but actually open! I think I need an intervention:

I read a real variety of books this week, variety being the spice of life, etc.

Suzanne (HI SUZANNE) recommended this as a fun, light read, and it really was. Fun fact: the wardrobe budget for Clueless was only $200,000 – think of all the costumes! – and so they thrifted or made all the clothing in the show. Another fun fact: the actor who holds Cher up by gunpoint was essentially called an hour before to get the job. The original actor was being a dick about getting to the set for the call time so they fired him and just started phoning random actors they knew to play the part that afternoon. Remember my last post and all the talk about luck and timing?

This is the last of the Lives of the Saints trilogy; you may recall that I LOVED Lives of the Saints, but the second book I actively loathed. Why would I even bother reading the third, you may ask? Well. It’s a trilogy. I kind of had to. You get me. Anyway, it was not as good as the first but much better than the second, and because it’s Nino Ricci there is a gross, disturbing, and frankly disgusting plot line. However, I’m still glad I read it. I had to finish the trilogy, don’t judge.

My lovely friend Twyla (HI TWYLA) recommended this to me; with this type of book, I take what I need and leave the rest. I mean, I’m not going to stop using shampoo, drinking coffee, wearing a bra, or vaccinating. I’m highly unlikely to start smudging with sage or burning salts. But here’s the thing: I am a big fan of modern medicine, I love modern medicine, but I also am a huge proponent of complementary and preventative medicine; I truly believe in mind-body connections and that negative thoughts and the inability to forgive and let go can be toxic. If we have learned nothing else from Star Wars, it’s that anger and hatred lead to death. Well, everything leads to death, probability of death equals 1, we are all on a journey to savasana, but it would be nice if that journey was as long and as healthy as possible. Anyway, what I really liked about this book was the theme of self-love and self-care, and to practice loving-kindness towards yourself first, and also to others. What we send out in the world is an echo, and it comes back to you. It’s all about karma!

On that note, I am sending you all thoughts of loving-kindness, I hope you have a week full of wonderful adventures and much joy. xo

DIY Orthodontia; Seven Weeks In

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On Saturday morning, my “Born to Run” playlist started with Crazy Train and It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (and I feel fine), and ended with Don’t Stop Believing, and it felt all very symbolic.

Back when Calgary had the terrible flood in 2013, I remember a very strong feeling of dissonance. On the one hand, all the news was about the flood, showing footage of ruined homes and the downtown core underwater, familiar spots like the zoo and the river pathways obliterated. But then, I would step outside my house and everything was normal. It was a very strange feeling, this knowing that something was terribly wrong and yet in my bubble, everything was fine.

In a way, this is how the Pandemic feels. I’m hearing about people refusing to social distance, refusing to stay home; I’m seeing actual protests – people literally protesting – from the States over closures, people going to the beach, people refusing to wear masks in public. And it’s bizarre. Again, in my bubble, everything is fine. I go for multiple walks a day and I run a few times a week, and so I encounter many people out enjoying their constitutionals, and always, we give each other space. People – myself included – step into the street or cross the street to avoid going into someone else’s 2 metre bubble. Runners and cyclists – myself and my kids included – give at least two to three times the recommended berth when passing others. I do see people socializing, but at huge distances: friends having a chat, one person on their front step and the other on the sidewalk, friends having a drink together twenty feet away in a different driveway, moms in their minivans in empty parking lots, all parked ten feet away from each other. In the grocery store, at least eighty percent of shoppers have masks on, maybe more. Shopping is slow because each person waits until their fellow shoppers have made selections before approaching the shelf and making their own selection.

Sure, I have had the occasional person get too close to me in the past eight weeks, and I have seen the occasional people out walking together who don’t live in the same house, but by far that’s the exception. The vast majority of people are following protocol.

So I have hope that this will continue as Alberta starts slowly opening things up this week. I do not feel in any way ready to start going places, other than the grocery store and maybe also the garden centre, in a few weeks. Maybe.

The one thing I’m very glad of is that orthodontists are starting to reopen, and I feel that of all places, they will be able to keep things clean and sterile. My younger son is a month overdue for his appointment; just after it was cancelled one of his brackets started to loosen. I didn’t think that constituted an emergency, but the office was still open for phone calls. The nice lady assured me that indeed, it wasn’t an emergency at all and even if the bracket fell off his tooth entirely, he could just leave it dangling on the wire. If that bothered him, then I could just cut the wire myself and remove the bracket. I was extremely startled by that revelation and asked her with what I could cut the wire. The answer was even more disturbing: if I didn’t have wire clippers then toenail clippers would be fine. Just be sure to wash them first! she said perkily.

Well, yes.

I’m not sure at what point I would be desperate enough to poke around in my son’s mouth with wire clippers – or, god, toenail clippers – and I don’t think there is any level of sterilization that would make me comfortable with taking the tool that cuts my husband’s toenails and putting it in my son’s mouth to cut a metal wire near his throat opening. What could possibly go wrong. Apparently there are a number of YouTube videos that show how to take off your own braces and well. Thankfully, we are nowhere near that point. We can wait, thank you.

So I’ll be glad to get that professionally taken care of, whenever that should occur. The office is NOT taking phone calls at the moment; they were probably immediately flooded with calls the minute the news came out. I myself phoned and was greeted with a message to the effect that they are not making appointments and that THEY will call in the order in which our appointments were cancelled. Hopefully this will happen in the next month or so.

Today is cold and rainy but we have had a beautiful stretch of weather, so there has been much yard work accomplished along with some weird, adrenaline-fueled cleaning projects, like cleaning both fridges prior to the weekly grocery shop, washing the insides of the windows, and cleaning the kitchen cupboards – again. Apparently with everyone home all the time, things get dirtier than usual, who knew.

Pandemic Reading

Out of the blue I remembered one of my favourite Alice Munro stories, Tricks, that features a green dress. I haven’t read this collection for years; Alice Munro is one of my favourite writers and this might be my favourite collection of hers. Then again, every time I read Munro I think this is my favourite! so…

Judy, I love you, but I did not love this. It is, however, a very interesting timepiece about marriage in the 70s, the expectations for women, and swinging.

I studied this in first year university English – all the symbolism, all of it – and it’s very good. Hooray for Canadian literature.

Pandemic Fitness

A kind of negative aspect of my personality that not many people see is that I have a tendency towards competitiveness. I try to keep it on the down low. I joined a community group that is tracking kilometres walked or ran during the month of May and I am killing it. I already am at almost 28 kilometres for the month and it is 7:30 am, May 4.

Yummy Things

For dessert this week I made a chocolate mousse pie; I had baked peanut butter cookies earlier in the week and they disappeared pretty quickly. I haven’t been baking many cookies lately – I’ve been on more of a loaf/ muffin spree – and my sons requested my “classic OG cookies” which, apparently, is code for chocolate chip.

It’s been nice enough for drinks in the back yard as well.

May the Fourth

And it’s Star Wars Day! Here’s a flashback from 2015, me not practicing social distancing with Chewbacca:

He was so soft and silky! Happy Star Wars Day everyone! I hope your week is lovely and full of virtual soft and silky hugs. xo

Brass Monkey, that funky monkey

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All high schools in the city, it seems, have a reputation or something that they are known for. Some schools are known for their excellence in fine and performing arts, some schools have fabulous vocational programs, some schools excel at sports. The nearby Catholic high school, for example, has won the city championships in football pretty much every year since its inception. Our high school has a reputation for academia, and the demographics in the school reflect that.

So it was with interest that I attended Math 10 Parent Info Night on Tuesday. We are a very mathematically-inclined family, and even though I couldn’t imagine what the info night would cover – I already had the course outline, complete with weighting for each unit, test schedule, and information about notes-for-purchase and the required graphing calculator – I wasn’t going to miss it.

It turns out that, hilariously, in addition to a discussion about different streams of math and the various avenues available for academic assistance, the math department felt the need to give a somewhat prolonged lecture with an underlying message to parents to just calm the fuck down. It was priceless.

I consider myself to be, in many ways, a very strict parent. I have high expectations for my children in terms of academic performance, work ethic, and general behaviour, but in that crowd, I looked like a lax, overly permissive hippie.

My son’s math teacher got up to speak; he is an older, very formal gentleman who is of Ethiopian descent. He began with a very long story about how he is actually a physicist, he loves teaching high school math but his first major was physics. This went on for some time, causing me to tilt my head and think where is he going with this. Eventually he revealed that his daughter, in high school, was struggling in physics. More than struggling, she was suffering. And so, after some discussion with the teacher, he withdrew her from physics. In the car on the way home she sighed with relief and said “I didn’t think you would let me drop physics.”

At this point the teacher appealed to the parents, saying that he did not know WHY she would think that she had to take physics, just because HE was a physicist. That was HIS dream, not hers. I half expected him to start reciting Your children are not your children, but instead he stated that, as parents, we may have dreams of our children being engineers or doctors or what have you, but there are many, many different paths to success in the world.

He concluded by saying, with much pride, that his daughter is now a high school band teacher. I smiled, and looked around at my fellow parents, expecting a certain smiling reaction to a man who has revealed with pride and joy that his daughter chose her own path, one that has led to success.

The room was silent. All the parents were leaning back in their chairs with their arms crossed, and a look of bemusement mixed with horror on their faces.

Well.

After that the presentation opened up to a Q and A session, which was equally ridiculous. One mother kept pressing to see what SPECIFIC grades a university engineering program required for entrance, a question literally impossible to answer. A father asked which math stream was appropriate for a student who has career aspirations of being an astronaut. Sir, if your child is going to obtain a PhD in Astrophysics, probably that child should pursue the more RIGOROUS math stream?

At that point I booted it out of there, and when I got home and relayed the story my son pointed out that I did, indeed, look a little bit like a hippie with my yoga pants and mala, which seemed a bit aggressive on his part. It’s not like I was wearing Birkenstocks or sporting leg and armpit hair.

I do very much value academics, but I am also very happy that my son is taking drama this semester. I played Amanda Wingfield in our high school production of The Glass Menagerie, and I can still do a mean Southern accent. I also played – bizarrely – Shelly in Grade 11 when our school did Buried Child, and if you do not know this play, I suggest you google it and sit in awe that a high school actually put on such a thing.

Anyway, the current unit in my son’s drama class is lip-synching, and he and a friend have chosen Brass Monkey as their assignment.

As a slight aside, during the week the boys work out in the “dungeon” after school; they alternate days and if I didn’t already know their workout schedule I would be able to ascertain it based solely on the playlist blasting from the basement. My younger son’s playlist is almost entirely Guns and Roses, interspersed with some dreadful death metal and – strangely enough – Elton John. There’s something weirdly unsettling about having Tiny Dancer follow Mr. Brownstone. My older son’s playlist is similar, except that it is Van Halen with Led Zeppelin, with the occasional Michael Jackson tune.

I am not judging, here, my own workout playlist is similarly eclectic, with everything from Rob Base and DJ EZ Rock to the Pointer Sisters to Jimi Hendrix to Eminem.

Because of the impending Brass Monkey performance, my son has been working out to the Beastie Boys exclusively this past week, and let me tell you this: if I thought having Honky Cat in my head for six days straight was bad, it was NOTHING compared to Brass Monkey. Honky Cat, at least, has lyrics that I know and are varied. Now I just keep mentally yelling Brass Monkey, that funky monkey, Brass Monkey junkie…over and over in my head.

Yesterday my son was working out and I was inspired. I ran down the stairs and screamed at him “WHAT’S THAT NOISE?”

He stared at me for a moment – I’m not a screamer, especially not for no apparent reason – and then it dawned on him. “Mom, you’re just jealous, IT’S THE BEASTIE BOYS!”

It was as proud a moment as could be. I felt like his math teacher, beaming with pride and joy. I also felt like this:

Well, this Cool Mom is off to do some cardio and maybe I’ll add the Beastie Boys to my playlist today. Happy Valentine’s Day everyone! xo