Category Archives: Playtime

Knowing Me, Knowing You, The Time Change Edition

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With clock-like consistency, there are two times of the year that get me excessively agitated and stabby, and those times are the “Spring Forward” and “Fall Back” atrocities known as Daylight Saving-related time changes.  I may have mentioned this before.  I’m not going to bore you with the details, but I will say that, as I age, I myself seem to be more affected by this.  For example, I woke up at 3:30 this morning thinking that it was time to head over to the yoga studio.  I think my stomach is currently in danger of digesting itself, and it’s only 11:00.  My brain is a liquidy mess.  I can’t wait until I slip into a coma at 6:30 tonight – after it’s been dark for two hours, and I certainly can’t wait for the excitement of having two highly exhausted children at that time, when we will still need to finish our home reading and tidy up our rooms.  It’s going to be great!

Just pick a fucking time and stick with it, people.  Time change is an antiquated notion.  Let’s move on.

So as my brain liquifies and I sip my fourth cup of coffee, let’s play a game of Knowing Me Knowing You, shall we?  I picked up this meme from my very good non-lesbian-life-partner-she’s-just-a-friend Allison over at Bibliomama.  Play along – it’s fun!

1. What keeps you up late at night?
Oh, ha ha, this is such a funny question!  Nothing.  I have trouble falling asleep very rarely, and when I do it’s due to something ridiculously stupid like the guy who came to one School Council/ Parent Association meeting and raved about busing fees and the school naturalization area, but who actually did not want any involvement with the Parent Association because he is way “too busy”.  That guy irritated me so much I stayed awake until AFTER TEN O’CLOCK.  Travesty.  

2. Do you collect anything?
I have a lot of books, but I’m not sure I would say I collect them.  Clothes?  Yoga wear?  Boots?  At last count I have 10 pairs of black boots, and here is a (partial) look inside my closet:

My yoga clothes – sadly, I am doing laundry right now and so this is much neater and less crammed than usual.  Also note: I have a cowboy hat on my top shelf.  This is what living in Calgary does to you, people.

My sweater “drawer”.

My “drawer” dedicated to t-shirts of the long and short sleeved variety.

So I’m not sure if I can say I have a “collection”, but my husband would say that I have issues with clothing.  Hey, you can never have enough black tops and sweaters, am I right?

3. Are you addicted to Angry Birds?
I barely know what Angry Birds IS.  I have a flip phone.  I don’t even have voice mail on it.

4. What’s your idea of a perfect evening?
At the risk of sounding VERY lame, I love spending the evening on the couch, drinking wine and eating something made with cheese, and watching reruns of NYPD Blue.  Or Jeopardy.  I am so much fun to live with!

5. Are you looking forward to winter?
I live in Calgary.  It’s winter right now.  NO.  I like to be warm.  But at least the winter gives me an excuse to procure more black sweaters and boots. 

Jake-Z and Marky Mark

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Over the past six weeks there has been a hip-hop residency program at our school, meaning that the kids have been learning hip-hop in gym class.  I was interested to see how this would go since my children have a great love of music and – especially in Mark’s case – dancing.  This great love of music does not translate into talent, however, and so I was greatly amused when they would practice their steps at home.  And by “steps” I mean they mostly crossed their arms and bobbed up and down slightly, with intense scowls on their faces, with the exception of their two signature moves: gorilla and soldier.  Gorilla! they would shout, arms and legs bent, back curved.  Soldier! they would say, standing at attention and saluting.  With that kind of preview you can well imagine that I was eager to see the windup performance yesterday afternoon.

It was, hands down, the single greatest school assembly I have ever witnessed.  I’m not sure what I enjoyed the most: the Grade Ones and Twos who made up with enthusiasm what they lacked in coordination and body control, the Grade Threes and Fours who were enthusiastic AND coordinated, or the Grade Fives and Sixes who had the most coordination and complicated routines, but who had a singular lack of hip-hop joy on their faces due to the self-consciousness of performing a dance routine in front of the school and their parents, ick.  I also much enjoyed my fellow parents who turned into “Woo Girls” at the sight of their children performing their funky moves.  Myself included.  Woooooooo! 

The young male leader of this hip-hop residency announced that there would be something special happening after the performances.  What that was, he said, was something that we parents would surely remember: a soul train dance line!  Now, it’s true that he was much, much younger than all of us, but a soul train dance line?  None of us were actually clubbing in the 70s, so I’m not sure how old he thought we were.  Nonetheless, who can really resist?  It was great.  My own children did their patented dance moves: Jake did a couple of jumping spins and then mostly walked with great funky aplomb, Mark did a couple of John Travolta-esque moves and also, inappropriately, a couple of butt-smacks (his own butt).  Some kids walked grimly and in a deeply embarrassed way, some skipped with their arms waving, and some really got their groove on.  Me, I joined in when the parents were invited, despite wearing the world’s ugliest – yet most comfortable – knock-off Uggs. 

All of which is to say that we’re ready and excitedly anticipating Friday’s Halloween Family Dance.  The boys have even gone so far as to say they hope I’ll join them on the dance floor.  Of course I will.  It will be only a few more years until they are the deeply embarrassed, grim children walking quickly down the soul train dance line.

I’m going as a witch.

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My dog almost caught ANOTHER squirrel today in the exact same spot as the other day.  Either my dog has become an overnight hunting sensation or the squirrels that frequent our backyard are extremely dim-witted.

I have been busily preparing for our school’s Halloween Family Dance.  I’m happy to assist in this endeavor for two reasons: a) the coordinator is a very good friend of mine, and b) the Halloween Family Dance is, next to Christmas, the single greatest day of Mark’s calendar year.  He talks about it all year long.  Also, it IS very fun.  Costumes, dance music, and the whole thing is over at 9:00 pm.  That’s MY kind of a good time. 

It’s so fun to dress up.  Halloween is everyone’s favourite excuse to bring out the slutty wear and heavy makeup, which is, I think, a very fun activity.  But can we all agree that Halloween costumes have become TOO slutty?  I was searching for a Top Gun costume for my husband – SAUCY – which is unfortunately unavailable in his size and also unfortunately $72, which seems excessive to me.  Fortunately he promises to wear oil up his chest and wear tight jeans and aviators, as in the volleyball scene.  He also promises to walk in slow motion and flex a lot.  But not for the Halloween Family Dance.  For the Halloween Dance, he’s dressing up as a vampire.  But not a skanky vampire.  Just a normal one. 

Once I was on the costume website, though, I became interested in the costumes for women.  Almost all of those costumes seemed a little more appropriate for a private party, if you know what I mean.  I mean, I don’t think I could show up at the Halloween Family Dance wearing this:

although it would go nicely if I did actually purchase my husband a $72 Maverick outfit.  The market for slutty costumes is really mind boggling, to be honest.  Have you ever wanted to portray a skanky Wednesday Addams?  Here’s your chance!
The details are fuzzy here, but wasn’t Wednesday just a child?  This seems a bit perverse.  But what about this one:
What a feeling!  I think I’m going to wear this to the Halloween Family Dance, grab a chair, and start pouring water on myself.  That’s an appropriate thing to do, right?  There is a disturbing number of costumes based on Strawberry Shortcake characters:
This one is called Blueberry Muffin.  I will leave it at that.  But what about a character from that not-as-loved-as-the-Flintstones-but-still-kind-of-nostalgic TV show, the Jetsons?  Not Jane, not Judy, but ROSIE:
Rosie is the maid.  The ROBOT maid.  This is actually kind of amusing.  What if you’re more into Disney themes?  Yes, there are any number of slutty Alice in Wonderland costumes, slutty Queen of Hearts costumes, slutty Tinkerbell costumes, but this one is the winner, I think:

NEMO!!!

Dully enough, I’m going as a witch, and so I will not be purchasing any of those costumes.  On a final note, I have to share this with you:

Is there a market for this?  For a NOSE AND BEARD COMBO?  I feel violated on so many levels, just looking at this.  I mean, really?  I can almost see a nipple on this sexy Osama.  This sexy Osama with a NOSE AND BEARD COMBO.  I have a feeling that anyone purchasing this outfit would be instantly eligible for the no-fly list, as well as the OMG YOU ARE COMPLETELY TACKY AND HORRIFYING list.  If there is such a list.  There should be one.

The unknown can be a scary place for a squirrel

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On Saturday I woke up feeling tired and achy; everyone else in the house had more or less gone through this malady, and it finally caught me.  Let me tell you something: it pays to get sick on a Saturday.  I had a sick day like I have only dreamed of for years and years.  While my husband ran the ship, so to speak, I napped, grazed copiously all throughout the day, and lay on the couch watching two hours’ worth of Corner Gas reruns.  I rallied only long enough to make – and eat – a batch of guacamole, which I swear had a medicinal effect on me because I was feeling well enough to resume normal activities the very next day.

One of those activities was baking pumpkin loaf (which turned out beautifully – watch for the recipe to be posted over at the cooking blog, which I seem to be plugging a lot today).  As I stirred the wets into the dries, I idly looked out the window to see my dog chasing a squirrel.  The squirrel was on the wall of our detached garage; the dog was barking at it and running back and forth.  “Good luck, Barkley,” I sighed, “You’ll never catch a squirrel.”

If this was a movie about bloodthirsty hounds, ominous music would have started playing.  As Barkley chased the probably idiotic squirrel back and forth along the garage wall, my husband stood beside me watching.  “I think he’s got it cornered,” he said, “I think I should probably call him in.”  I did not realize that my mastermind of a Labradoodle actually was exhausting the squirrel as a hunting technique, until seconds after my husband uttered that remark, he yelled “He’s got it in his mouth!”

And there was my fluffy, Gund-like dog with a squirrel in his mouth, shaking it back and forth.

My husband ran to the door to call him.  I, always good in an emergency, started shrieking “BARKLEY!  TREAT!  TREAT!” as I shook the treat container frantically, hoping that he would let the squirrel go BEFORE coming into the house for a treat, which he did.  Nervously, I went outside to make sure that there were no squirrel corpses in the backyard.  Fortunately, no squirrels were harmed in this drama.  However, the squirrel had evidently decided that the best place for it to be was back on the garage wall.  Natural selection seems to be at play here.  Eventually it scampered back up a tree, evidently leaving its scent behind as Barkley spent the rest of the day circling around the yard, standing at attention at the bottom of the trees.

Beneath this fluffy, adorable exterior lies a bloodthirsty hound.  I’m actually kind of impressed.  I’m looking at him in a whole new light.  Perhaps this is not unrelated to my attraction to Dr. Hunt on Grey’s? 

Wide Open Spaces….Room To Make The Big Mistakes

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Yesterday I spent the afternoon volunteering in the boys’ class.  They had an in-class field trip where they have a visitor come in armed with materials and stories and enrichment activities – in this case, the activities were related to their “Building” unit.  Each child was to build a three dimensional zoo animal and enclosure – along the lines of a diorama.  Dioramas!  Fun!  They were looking for parent volunteers and so off I went. 

As a side note: I volunteer extensively for the school but I try to avoid field trips.  I tend to get anxious that I’m going to accidentally lose a child, or one of those calamities that are listed on the waivers will come to pass.  But an in-class field trip – that sounded more along the lines of where my abilities lie.  Also my kids wanted me to come, and since they make up over 10% of the class, I thought I had better step up.

Here are the finished products:

This is Mark’s rhinoceros enclosure. 

This is Jake’s lion enclosure.  There is a complicated explanation for all the string,
feathers, and nesting stuff.  It has to do with food and bedding.
After school, I was chatting in the playground with the other moms and we were all relating amusing anecdotes about volunteering with in-class projects.  I mentioned one little girl who kept using the glue stick on the materials to be glued, rather than on the cardboard to which the materials were to be glued.  The results were that a googly eye was shoved deep into the glue stick, by accident; that same glue stick became covered with cotton from a cotton ball, little pieces of nesting materials were stuck on the glue stick and also mysteriously stuck on my sweater.  One mom smiled and said “That’s what I love about letting kids explore things on their own.  That’s how they learn!  From making mistakes!”  I nodded, smiling, but inwardly I was not totally on side.  After all, I did encourage the little girl to use the glue stick properly, rather than smearing the gluey cotton all over the place. 
In theory, I do agree.  I do agree with letting children learn from their mistakes, and I do agree with allowing them to experience natural consequences of their actions.  However, I do not agree with this all the time.  I do not agree with this when three other children have to use the glue stick that is now covered with cotton ball remnants, rendering it unusable.  I do not agree when there are googly eyes jammed far into the glue stick, causing the glue stick itself to explode over its plastic tubing and result in the cap getting glued onto it, resulting in no one being able to remove the cap.  This is school property, people.  My job as volunteer is to make sure that the building materials are not ruined by the building project.  And yes, it is just a glue stick.  But in these days of education cuts, we need all the glue sticks we can get.
Obviously, I opted to put my children in the regular, rather than the Montessori, stream at school.
But I did think about it for a while.  Do I allow my children room to make mistakes?  Am I too rigid?  Should I be allowing them to suffer more consequences?  I like to think I allow them freedom to do so, but do I really? 
I tend to be a person who has rules for my children; rules that they are expected to follow in terms of behaviour, household chores, and manners.  But maybe I don’t allow them to make enough mistakes.  Maybe I’m hindering them in some way.  Maybe one day my kids will be seeing a therapist and complaining about my rigidity. 
But maybe not.  They seem to be okay.  Plus, check out the game they played this morning before school!
Can you tell what this is?

They are animal towers!

It might look obscene, but they were very complex and required balancing and spatial skills.  Creativity!  Maybe the kids are all right, despite my rules and regulations.  They figured out how to balance them all on their own, toppling a few towers in their endeavours.  So I guess they are allowed to make mistakes.  Maybe they won’t need therapy after all.


Boys and Guns

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My husband went back to work yesterday after a two week vacation and so it’s been just the three of us, getting back into our regular summer routine.  There are, I realized, only three and a half weeks left until school starts and I’m feeling a tad bit melancholy about it.  I decided today we would take advantage of the warmth and sunshine – seize the day – and head to a playground/wading pool.

In my younger, child-free days, I had fairly haughty opinions on kids and guns and violence, and so I smiled ruefully to myself as I found myself hauling three giant bags filled with a picnic, blanket, towels, and water guns.  (Another mom smiled at me and my bags and said cheerfully “I’m the family pack mule too!”).  I spread the blanket down in a sunny area, and marvelled how I am now at the stage where my kids immediately leave me to do their own thing, checking in only when they are hungry.

They also checked in, briefly and occasionally, to inform me how their battle was going.  After arriving at the wading pool with their bazooka-like water guns, they instantly joined up with a pack of similar-aged boys also with bazooka-like water guns whose goal was to destroy a group of older boys with bazooka-like water guns.  In earlier times, this would have worried me considerably, seeing the boys slowly wade through the pool, guns on their shoulders, looking for all the world like American soldiers in a Vietnam war movie.  I heard occasional shrieks of “ATTACK” and “RETREAT, RETREAT!” as they ran around shooting the ten year old boys.  I saw them crouching in the bushes and regrouping as they planned their attack.  It was a little unnerving. 

Our standing rule with water guns is no shooting little kids or those who are unarmed, and no shooting moms.  Especially not me.  I added a second rule, hearing another mom reiterate it, no head shots.  I was, as I always am, amazed at how much time boys – because they were all boys – can spend shooting each other.  When I met up with a friend and her two boys for the very first time last summer at another wading pool, the boys instantly formed friendships based on shooting each other and also pretending to arrest each other.  At that time, I noticed a few mothers with very young children raise their eyebrows at my friend and I, chatting away as our children pummelled each other with streams of water.  I recall feeling that exact same way, when my kids were young.

The thing about these seemingly violent games is that they aren’t really violent at all.  They are fun in a way I don’t understand, but I observe it.  As we were leaving, the boys, all of them, happily waved to each other, hoping they would see each other again, their nameless new friends, all united in battle.

Baby I’m-a Want You

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“I figured out what I’m going to buy you,” my husband said as I walked in the door, holding a piece of paper in his hand.  A present for me?  Squee!  It’s my tenth anniversary in seven months and there is a three stone ring coming my way; my husband is a far-ahead planner so I thought maybe, maybe….
I was a little crestfallen to discover the paper was a Lowe’s flyer, and the item indicated was a high-efficiency toilet.  Oooh, baby.  I’m-a want you.  Nonetheless, all four of us went to Lowe’s and, after what was possibly the world’s longest discussion about different toilets and installation methods between my husband and the incredibly helpful plumbing department guy, we were the proud owners of a new toilet.  It rode around in the back of my van for a while, then took up residence in the garage for a couple of weeks, and yesterday, my husband installed it.
Suffice it to say that if you want to bring extreme joy and excitement to a household with children, introduce them to the concept of “choose your own flush”.  I am now the unhappy recipient of an extraordinary volume of details regarding my children and their toilet habits.  
But you didn’t come here to read about toilets!  Perhaps you would like to know what I did on my summer vacation?  Mainly I read novels on the beach, occasionally becoming enthusiastic about building sandcastles and then going back to reading.  I drank a lot of beer with my father-in-law and also quite a bit of wine.  I read novels while my children swam in the pool, I swam with them, and went back to reading.  I ate a lot.  That pretty much sums things up.    



My favourite moment of the trip was this one.  Reading novels by the pool is fine and everything, but so much more fun to jump in.  The boys were swimming to me!  Both of them!  I am amazed at how quickly they learn swimming skills while just having fun with Mom and Dad.  Sigh.  Is it too much to ask for a pool in my backyard?  And hot weather to go with it?  Sigh.