Category Archives: Playtime

What does one need to wear to the Rapture?

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So apparently the term “whale tail” is not as commonly known as I thought.  Here’s a snapshot from Wikipedia:

It’s just as classy as a pair of Daisy Dukes and a crop top.

Do you remember that scene in The 40 Year Old Virgin where Andy and Cal catch a glimpse of the salesgirl’s whale tail while she is working in the bookstore window?



Andy: There’s something wrong with her underpants.


Cal: Yeah, they’re not in my mouth.

Speaking of showing your underwear to the neighbourhood and possibly earning the reputation as the creepy lady across the street, did you know that the world is slated to end THIS WEEKEND?  I don’t know how I went this long without realizing that Saturday is Judgment Day and, also, the Rapture, which I had erroneously thought was the Apocalypse until a friend corrected me.  Despite my Lutheran upbringing, from which I have clearly lapsed, I am actually a little unsure of the difference between the apocalypse and the rapture, other than the presence or otherwise of the four horsemen.  So anyway, mark it on your calendars!  World ending Saturday.  No need to stock up on groceries this weekend.


I’ve always wondered: if you predict the world ending, as has been predicted many times before, do you feel silly after the world does not end?  I think I would.

My long-awaited food processor arrived this weekend, in a very large box.  Jake immediately staked his claim on the box, which he named “Boxy”.  Or maybe “Boxie”.  In any case, Boxy has become part of his daily life.  He’s putting toys in it, rearranging its location, and spending hours a day sitting in Boxy.  This is all fine with me.  However, a game has emerged, and it essentially consists of Jake climbing into Boxy, closing the top, and calling to me.  Then, I am supposed to act surprised because Jake is not in the room; instead there is just a giant food processor box.  Failure to play along is not an option.  Along with this game is much one-sided conversation about the various Hero Factory characters that are inside of Boxy, which one I like best, and all of their different attributes. 


Here is my dilemma: on the one hand, there is less than six weeks left of school, then my afternoons with Jake will be over forever, as he starts Grade One in the fall.  I should be cherishing all of these moments.  One day, perhaps, he will not want to share every detail of his life with me.  But on the other hand, I think my eardrums are going to burst from so much loudly punctuated conversation.  “Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, can I tell you something MOM?  MOM?  Did you know that Furno MOM?  Did you know that Furno is very powerful MOM?  MOM?  Guess what MOM?  I have a Breez 2.0 in my MOM?  Mom, can I tell you something MOM?”  Two and a half hours of this constant stream of consciousness and I am a broken shell of a woman. 

Yesterday after an afternoon based entirely on Jake’s talking and my planting actual flowers to go with my metaphorical mind-flowers – my thoughts are my seeds!  Jake’s just sharing his life with me! – we went to pick up Mark after school.  Mark played with one of his friends on the playground for a while, then came up to me and indignantly accused me of never listening to him, ever.  I thought sadly that maybe, given the afternoon’s events and my possible exploded eardrum, I was tuning out everything my children were saying, and I bent down to listen to what he had to say, which was, somewhat anticlimactically, “There was a ladybug on the slide.”


He went on to say that he and his friend were trying to rescue it, because if someone killed a ladybug, then Jesus’ mother would be angry.  I was completely startled by this revelation, and said that I didn’t know about Jesus’ mother, but I would be sad if a ladybug was killed, as they are very helpful bugs.  Mark nodded solemnly, and said “I guess both my mom AND Jesus’ mom would not like anyone to kill a ladybug.”

Comparing me, the creepy lady showing her whale tail in a modern day Mrs. Robinson-type way to the young neighbour to Mary, Mother of God seems a little heretical.  Maybe I should be concerned about this weekend.

A New Kind of Groundhog Day!

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Friday evening my husband came home late from his golf game to find me on the couch in my pajamas, halfway through both a bottle of wine and the pilot episode of NYPD Blue.  “Hi sweetie,” I said happily, as if I hadn’t seen this episode many times before, “Sipowicz got shot!  Oooh, look: You tell Alphonse Giardella that John Kelly is looking for him.  JOHN KELLY.”  Which is to say, it’s the start of a new season: golf season.  Every golf season I opportunistically support my husband in his endeavours on the golf course so I can delve into my box sets of NYPD Blue. 
I then slept for nine and a half hours, since Mark’s cough has subsided significantly.  After this epic sleep I looked at my suddenly well rested face in the mirror and decided that I could not live another minute in my orange haired state, applied the temporary colour, and instantly boosted my own self worth.
My glowing feelings from rest and a non-orange hair colour were only exacerbated by the sunshine and suddenly seasonal temperatures.  It was so sunny and seasonal, in fact, that my neighbour appeared in all his shirtless glory to mow his lawn. 
A friend posted a cute quote the other day: “Your mind is a garden, your thoughts the seeds; you can plant flowers, or you can plant weeds.”  Brilliant, in its own saccharine way!  I read that and thought, YES.  I am going to plant a fucking ROSE GARDEN.  And I am, people, I am.
So when I saw my neighbour, clad only in red cutoff sweatpants, backwards baseball cap, and gigantic running shoes, I thought: ROSES.  It occurred to me that his shirtless appearance is Groundhog Day-like in nature; not like the Bill Murray movie, although I do seem to comment about his man boobs every single year.  No, I thought that he is like a groundhog himself, because when he emerges from his house with his lawn mower and his shorts, he is ushering in a new season, the season of sunshine and happiness and also golf and NYPD Blue box sets.  So I cheer him, my groundhoggy, shirtless neighbour. 
It also does not escape my attention that I am a complete hypocrite.  If he looked like, let’s say, Mark Wahlberg or even that Old Spice guy, I would not dream of complaining.  So, in the interest of not judging someone based on appearance, which is a very non-yogic and distasteful thing to do, I am going to applaud his tremendous self confidence and his prediction of a lovely spring.
Also, I am not faultless in inadvertent overexposure.  The other day I was bent over, gardening in the front yard, and I stood up and saw the young, awkward, twenty-ish fellow across the street standing beside his car, staring at me.  I smiled and waved and he said hello in a quick and strange way, before getting in his car and driving off quickly.  I thought not much of it, until I saw my reflection in the front window.  Two words: whale tail.  So I’m not really bringing up the classy in the neighbourhood. 
Roses, people.  Let’s plant some flowers.

I never slept through Money Never Sleeps

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The boys had a day off of school today, and it went the way such days often go: with happiness distributed like a double bell curve, peaking in the mid-morning while pajamas are still on, bottoming out in the early afternoon, and then peaking again, after some activities instigated by myself, only to start the slippery slope back down again.  Mark has a love-hate relationship with days off: on the one hand, he enjoys the freedom to just play unrushed, but on the other hand he really misses the structure of school.  And I run a pretty structured house, it’s not all hippy-dippy around here; meals are eaten at the same time, bedtime and rising times are kept the same, clothes are still expected to be worn, as opposed to pajamas.  Mark started to spiral downwards right after lunch, becoming irritable and high-needs until I suggested he make Valentines for his class.  Glitter and sticker backings soon overtook the table and happiness reigned once more.
On Saturday night I watched Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, which is remarkable for the sole reason that I watched it in its entirety and did not fall asleep.  I very rarely see the end – or middle – of movies because I generally fall asleep or, alternately, get bored and start reading, which means I have a very fuzzy view of most films released in the past ten years.  For example, the other night my husband was watching the movie Blow, which we had seen together a few years ago.  I watched a bit with him, unable to remember how it ended, only to discover that it has a very sad ending.  I watched the final scene with tears running down my face, while my husband reminded me that the man in question was a hardened, criminal drug lord, even if it was sad his daughter never visited him in prison.  It is surreal watching movies that you know, intellectually, that you have seen before but can only remember small snippets of.  The last movie I saw in a theatre was Pirates of the Caribbean Part Two, and I slept through nearly the whole thing, waking occasionally to see that weird guy with a squid head and a scene where Captain Jack was being chased around an island.  Although I may have dreamed that part.  Was Johnny Depp naked?  And feeding me grapes?  No?  Then I guess I dreamed it.
But Money Never Sleeps was an excellent movie; I would highly recommend it, especially if you are interested in financial markets.  If you aren’t, then I wouldn’t recommend it at all.  It was a very interesting and entertaining view of the 2008 market correction, and I found myself strangely attracted to Michael Douglas, which is nothing short of disturbing given that he is a senior citizen.  Evidently I’ve turned into my mother, who has always thought that Sam Elliott is the bee’s knees, and my response would be “Oh GOD, Mother, he is so OLD, how can you LIKE HIM?”  Well now.
My husband also loved Money Never Sleeps, which is not surprising given that the original Wall Street was a “motivating” movie for him.  Yes, my husband found Wall Street, greed is good, to be “motivating”.  I am not sure how I feel about that, but I guess it’s better than Rocky, or something of that genre.  Although a guy I once dated used to watch Rudy as a motivational movie.  He used to get so choked up in the part where the teammates bring their jerseys in “It’s for Rudy, Coach.”  I remember laughingly telling that story to a male co-worker, then noticed that HE was getting teary eyed as I talked about Rudy finally getting to play.  All of which is to say I just don’t understand.

International Hug Day! Smooch!

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Today is International Hug Day!  What an ending to a week that started off with the Saddest Day of the Year.  Here’s a question: how is the date of International Hug Day actually decided, and by whom?  Not that it matters; I plan on ambushing all my friends with giant hugs all day long.  Well, except the friend whose daughter had the stomach flu yesterday.  Germ phobia trumps International Hug Day.
I’ve been having somewhat of a strange week.  You know the days when your kids are annoying, your husband is a jerk, everyone is stupid, you are completely uncreative and will never accomplish anything, ever, the world is completely depressing and life is wholly unendurable?  And then you look at the calendar, do some back-counting, and it dawns on you.  Like St. Paul on the road to Damascus, it’s like the blinding light and suddenly it All Makes Sense.  It’s not you, it’s me and my hormonal derangement.  Throw a full moon in there and you have my situation, and now you can sit for a minute and let that Too Much Information just sink in and perhaps feel a pang of sympathy for the poor souls who share my living quarters.
This video pretty much sums it up.  Her face is actually a perfect replica of my facial expression.
Remember ParticipAction?  The word still strikes terror into my I-don’t-feel-well-I-have-my-period-I-have-to-sit-out-of-gym-class heart.  Years of ParticipAction and I only ever got those “Participant” stickers, never a badge.  Side note: my husband actually once won the Award of Excellence, and that is how I knew I had to procreate with him.  In fact, when he told me that I think I ripped off all my clothes right there, so arousing did I find that information.  Recently my kids asked me if there was anything I didn’t like at school, and “GYM” was my answer.  They couldn’t believe it!  How could I not enjoy gym?  When I recall gym class I recall doing the 4K run in the freezing cold, standing outside in the gusting wind in a dry brown field during Track and Field, a module in which there was absolutely nothing I was competent, let alone good at.  I recall the dirty, smelly gym, my inability to throw a ball and my screaming with terror and ducking when a ball was thrown my way.  Gym class and I did not get along.
But I saw this article about ParticipAction and its new approach to activity and personal goal setting, and truthfully I think it is a good idea.  It seems much less scarring than the old approach, and certainly it’s a step in the right direction in our childhood obesity, inactive, video game world.  I know that my kids do love gym class, and perhaps that’s because gym is much nicer now – no more “last-one-chosen” team selections, a lot more emphasis on fun things.  Or maybe the boys take more after their father.  That was my hope, after all.

Nicole’s 300th Episode!

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It’s my 300th blog post!  If this were a sitcom, I would totally make this a clip show.  As it is, I looked back through some of my archives and discovered the following things: a) I write a lot about being insane and germ-phobic, b) I talk about the weather as much as someone who is in their eighties, and c) my children have not changed much in the past three years. That’s weird.  I came across this post, which made me realize that my children’s speaking styles have really not altered since August 2008, which means that this is not a phase.

I wanted to make my 300th post profound and erudite, perhaps talking about the superiority or otherwise of Tiger Mothers (which I am not, sadly, being Scottish-Norwegian, a mixed heritage that combines the world’s worst cuisines. What could possibly be worse than haggis and lutefisk? Absolutely nothing.)  My friend Nan beat me to it with her post on Trekkie Mother Superiority, and although I have never watched an episode of Star Trek in my life, I still found this entertaining enough not to compete with.  I mean, what am I going to counter with?  Why Scottish-Norwegian vegetarian crazy germ phobic overly emotional flakey math geek yogi mothers are superior?  Because we carry around a lot of hand sanitizer, tissues, and fruit leather?  Because our kids say to each other “Uh oh, it’s a moon day! Be extra nice to Mom.”?  Because we tear up when our kids count by twos or say things like “Problem solving and arithmetic are the best parts of school!”?


Sigh.


As a side note, I recently said to a male friend of mine “I think you’re average.  No, I’m just being mean,” and then I started laughing at my own hysterical joke while he stared at me like I just had grown another head, one with much nicer hair.  After an awkward moment of silence, he said, absurdly, “Oh. I guess I was thinking of medians.” I felt like I had made a dirty joke at my grandma’s Bible study group. Actually, my grandma would totally laugh at dirty jokes. She’s pretty fun.

But speaking of flakiness, rather than awkward math jokes, my whole world is coming crashing down as we speak.  Of course I’m talking about the possible alteration of zodiac signs.  This is distressing news to say the least, as not only will I be an Aries – which I decidedly am NOT – I’m not even sure if my husband and I will be astrologically compatible anymore!  DOOM.  Fortunately a friend (whose birthday is today!  Happy birthday my friend!  Sorry you are cleaning up toddler barf instead of celebrating.) sent me a link regarding this very important issue and I have discovered that I can, happily, disregard any alterations due to star alignments, orbits of the earth, blah blah blah.  Whatever, I’m still a Taurus.  My marriage is still intact.  Thank you, birthday friend, for talking me down from my ledge.

So, it appears that my 300th post is not profound and erudite, but what can I say?  It’s Friday, I’m going to have a glass of wine and some chocolates, and toast myself!  Cheers!

I WIN!

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I have been having a very stressful and emotional week, and that was even before it became apparent that my stressful and emotional week was exacerbated by the fact that it was coinciding with my monthly stressful and emotional week.  You can imagine the tears and chocolate eating that have been going on around here.  And this is where I make a public service announcement: if you decide to stock up on the new Peppermint Lindor with the intention of passing them out to people in a Santa-like and also join-my-cult-like way, and that stocking up coincides with an emotional and stressful week, you can be assured that you will not pass along any of those Peppermint Lindors but instead you will attempt to consume them all yourself until you resemble Santa in a physical, rather than a metaphorical way. 

That’s how my week was going, so you can imagine my excitement when Kimberly from Make Mommy Go Something Something gave me this:

It’s an award!!  I’ve never received a blog award before!  I feel IRRESISTABLE!  Thanks Kimberly!

It’s Friday, and I’m all T to the G.I.Friday.  I need some laughs, so I stole the idea of “Funny Friday” from my friend Allison over at Bibliomama.  Hey, Allison, you’re irresistable too!  I’m passing that award along to you.

I wish I had the kind of witty, dry, British humour that people tend to associate with intelligence and higher breeding, but unfortunately for me I am Scottish-Norweigan and my sense of humour tends to the low-brow or gutter variety.  Which is to say, this is one of my all-time favourite movie scenes.  That whole movie is filled with many enjoyable moments and lines, such as “We’re going streaking!  Bring your green hat, let’s go!” or “Denver!  The Sunshine State.”  Last weekend I watched You Don’t Mess With The Zohan and, while it wasn’t as funny as one might think a movie about an Israeli commando-turned-hairdresser might be, it did have some good visuals, such as the scene where he goes clubbing wearing cut-off shorts and a silky shirt.  I tried to find that picture but all I found was this:

photo from RottenTomatoes.com

If you have a dog, you may really appreciate this post on moving with two less-than-gifted dogs.  I really could identify with the dog who magically made his own food.  Good times. 

So, if you share my kind of humour, enjoy those links and have a good laugh this Friday! 

I just want to eat my COOKIE!

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How was your weekend?  It has been painfully cold around here – so cold that I gave the boys the warm fleece pajamas that I was saving for Christmas – and so I spent a large part of the weekend pleasantly bustling around the house, baking things and making batch after batch of cookie dough in preparation for holiday baking.
Speaking of cookies, have you seen this video of the CEO of Alberta Health Services, refusing to answer media questions on the grounds that he was too busy eating a cookie?  You can’t make this stuff up.  I think the funniest part is how shrill his voice is when he says “I am interested in eating my COOKIE.”  Good times.  I think I’m going to start responding like that whenever anyone asks me anything.  “I am STILL eating my COOKIE.”  Maybe I’ll shove the cookie in the questioner’s face, just for fun.  Actually, since most people who ask me for things are my children, they probably would appreciate that.  To a kid, eating cookies is serious business.
While I was baking things and running errands and discovering that Lindor now makes PEPPERMINT CHOCOLATES – Mother of God, it is the most amazing discovery since frozen After-Eights – my husband continued his painting rampage that has been going on for the past few months.  This weekend he started painting Mark’s room a deep blue, a nice change from the dull brown colour it has been since before we had kids and that room was an office.  Anyway, he took everything out of Mark’s closet, which is apparently a catch-all for all kinds of things that we forgot we had.  Like a 1980’s version of Trivial Pursuit.
And this is where I say I don’t know why I bought the children any toys for Christmas, because if you give them an extremely outdated version of Trivial Pursuit, they will be occupied for hours.  And no, I am not boasting about my precocious children and their intimate knowledge of Arts and Literature and Geography and how they somehow knew who Phyllis Diller was in the Entertainment category.  No.  I just mean that Jake opened up his very own bakery and made pies all day long.



He made pies like a samurai!  While using the Chutes and Ladders board.

 While Jake was busy force-feeding the rest of the family pie, Mark set up the actual game board and started a complex game using wooly mammoths, sabre-tooth tigers, and pirates.

If that wasn’t enough excitement for one day, they also found a giant foam finger from my days as a working girl, as opposed to my days as a household drudge/ bon-bon eating housewife.

This picture is absolutely hilarious to me.  Worth a thousand words, I tell you.

And for those of you in more moderate climes, here is a view out my back door:

It looks pretty, anyway.  Check out one of my gardens!

There are leaves still on the shrubs!  Poor things.

So tell me, how was your weekend?  And do cookies trump serious conversation?  Discuss.