Category Archives: Romance

Cultivating the Relationship

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How was your weekend?  I spent Friday night here:

which is to say I had a pretty fabulous weekend.  My parents stayed at our house and took care of the children, and I will say this: I always fret a little about leaving them, even for one night, and they always wish that I stayed away longer.  Hum.  It’s nice to have time with just my husband and not be completely distracted by the kids, as I often am.  A friend’s mother was talking to me about when her girls left home and she found herself sitting across the table from her husband, just the two of them; how strange it was and how important it is to cultivate that relationship.  Not that I’m panicking about the empty nest just yet, but still.  Another friend, who is a pharmacist working with cancer patients, told me that incidences of the human papillomavirus spike in teenagers AND in women in their fifties – empty nesters who leave their husbands and engage in promiscuous activity.  Where am I going with this?  IT’S IMPORTANT TO CULTIVATE THE RELATIONSHIP, PEOPLE.  And so I had a great time in Banff.  We walked to downtown Banff for dinner and met up with an elk on the way:

Cute!  It’s not so common to see elk in the townsite anymore, and so I got my picture taken with it.

Look, he’s showing his bum.

After dinner we went back to the hotel and hung out in the lounge, getting drunk, listening to a fabulous blues guitarist, and meeting people at the bar.  That’s always fun.  We met a couple from Boston who were also Patriots fans, so there was much “Gooooo Pats!” talk and more drinking.  I stayed up until – wait for it – MIDNIGHT.  I had the teensiest bit of a headache the next day.

I had made a full recovery by Sunday and was persuaded by the children to put up all the Halloween decorations and carve pumpkins.  Carving pumpkins is one of those family fun activities that actually end up being NOT SO MUCH family fun.  I mean, the end result is fun.  The ideas about what the pumpkins should look like, that’s fun too.  But the actual carving?  My husband gets the glory of using a very sharp tool that’s designed to cut drywall.  I get stuck cleaning the goop out of the pumpkins and trying to save the seeds for roasting, which only I eat anyway.  The kids refuse to assist in the cleaning process, and only wish they could assist in the cutting process, and so pumpkin carving is really not much of a family fun project.  They turned out well though:

Doesn’t that one look like Gru from Despicable Me? 

Happy, Happy Birthday Baby

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It’s my husband’s birthday today!  Ssssh.  He doesn’t like a big fuss made about his birthday, something I totally do not understand since I enjoy wearing a birthday tiara and a sandwich board with “BIRTHDAY GIRL” written on it.  However, he and I are going to Banff for the night tonight – squee – with no kids – double squee!  We haven’t even gone out for dinner, just the two of us, for months and months, and so I’m pretty excited.  Bring on the wine!  Bring on the appetizers!  Bring on the cosmopolitans!  I used to work with a guy who had a date night with his wife every single Saturday night.  That actually sounds kind of exhausting to me, but a night out without kids should probably occur more often than once every six months.

Speaking of Saturday night, remember The Simpsons?  (Yes, I know it’s still on TV, but I haven’t watched it in probably ten years, so this is a dated reference.)

Homer: Saturday night?  But that’s our special night!
Marge: What’s so special about Saturday night?
Homer: What’s so spe…oh, I don’t know.  A little so-called Dr. Quinn?  MEDICINE WOMAN?

For the record, I LOVED Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.

But since we are going out tonight, I baked this yesterday:

Nom nom nom.
The boys made cards for their dad using their brand-new Smencils.  Are your kids into Smencils?  They are very strongly scented pencils made out of 100% recycled newspaper.  The boys worked very hard on these cards yesterday after school, and I inspected them when they were done.  Jake’s had drawings of Ben 10 aliens on it, along with coloured circles for him to smell.  Mark’s had elaborate animal drawings, the animals floating in a sea of bubble gum.  In very small print on the front were the words “Have a happy fart.”
Oh, farting.  It is just so funny.  I really was unprepared, prior to having little boys, for the number of hours I would have to spend a) listening to discussions about farting, b) being in rooms that have been farted in, and c) making up rules that no one, save myself, follows with regards to farting, such as no farting at the dinner table.  I am the only one who complies.  The other day while we were eating dinner, Jake put his chin in his palm and looked at me sweetly.  He smiled softly, and I half expected little hearts to be in the place where his irises are.  “What’s up, sweetie?” I said.  “I just farted.” he replied.  Jake is also famous, in our house, for suddenly yelling “Mom!  Mom!  Moooooooommmm!  I farted, and it did NOT smell good.”  This happens frequently.
His brother is no better.  Mark likes to stand beside me, fart noxiously, and then move away, giggling at my protests.  He also informed me that he farted, very loudly, in his yoga class.  I suppose that happens to the best of us.  After this confession, Jake said, with great pride in his brother’s achievements, “I know!  I heard you! You were so loud!”
Life with boys.  It stinks, literally but not figuratively.

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. 



What makes a happy couple? Not outdoor soccer.

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Last week I was applying makeup while wearing my robe and Jake peered over at my exposed legs.  “Mom, you should go put your stockings on,” he said in a voice of concern.  I assured him that I didn’t need to wear my stockings anymore!  Happy news!  He repeated his request, slightly louder.  I repeated my response in a slightly different way, simplifying it as I thought he didn’t understand, like maybe he had an issue with comprehension of the English language.  Finally, he tearfully snapped.  “MOM!  Please just put your stockings on!  Your legs are creeping me out!”
Ew!  And this is after a week of healing.  It’s like Frankenstein’s monster’s legs, but paler.
I went and put on yoga pants.
Yesterday was a lovely day and I spent the majority of it bundled up and sitting out in the sun, reading, like the elderly person I have now become.  The boys rode their scooters and bikes and dug holes in the dirt while I wondered how much longer it will be until I can clean up the yard a little, plant a few things, cut back the old dead perennials.  There is still snow on the ground although it’s trying to melt.  My husband watched the Master’s, and for those of you who are not golf fans – I suspect that I’m talking to most of my readership here – it is being touted as the most exciting Master’s EVER.  At one point there were six players who were tied for the lead, which is evidently quite rare.  Tiger Woods even was a contender – I coulda been a contender!  I coulda been a somebody, instead of just a nobody. – but he did not win.  It is a little amazing to me that he still has a large fan base and that people were clapping (in the muted, golf way) for him.  I guess this gives hope to Charlie Sheen.
It’s funny about relationships.  I’ve been reading a few articles lately that have addressed the issue of how to “keep the spark alive”, and while I have a hard time keeping the ribald jokes to myself (Blowjobs! Pornography!  Alcohol!), I think it’s an important topic.  My husband is, obviously, an avid golf fan and an avid golf player, while I, most clearly, am not.  I am a yoga practitioner, whereas my husband, most emphatically, is not.  But yet, I find that our separate interests are part of our keeping said spark alive, even if we frequently “parallel talk” – i.e., “I shot a birdie on the tenth hole, then bogeyed the eleventh.”  “My back’s a little stiff from Kapotasana.  I think I should stretch.”  There is no way that we are ever going to be a “golf couple”; I am never donning one of those little hats and killing myself with frustration.  We are also never going to be a “yoga couple”; my husband is never going to “inhale happiness exhale peace.”  We’re a happy couple, though.  Even if I know, against my will, that Rory McIlroy completely fell apart on the back nine.
Tonight is soccer evaluations, and the single greatest email I received last week informed me that the evaluations would take place indoors this year, given the plethora of snow.  I was almost hysterically happy with this news.  Next week the season starts and let me tell you a little secret: outdoor soccer in this city is terrible.  Every year I sit on my little folding chair dressed for a blizzard, with a giant cup of tea and a sleeping bag wrapped around me, and it feels like, indeed, hell has frozen over and I am living in it.  But the kids are happy out there in the fresh air and light evenings, running around, and that’s what matters most.  Now, if only that snow would melt.

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!

Marital Strain

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You just know with a title like that it’s going to be a juicy post.  On Modern Family – do you watch Modern Family?  It’s very funny. –  the other night, Claire was looking through the Tupperware and wondering how or why the containers and lids get separated.  Phil replied, built-up resentment, financial issues, met a younger lid.  Heh.
In our house, the chief source of marital strain comes from a little electronic item known as a clock radio.  My husband brought this clock radio to our marriage.  It is probably about twenty five years old; they don’t make things like they used to, do they?  Anyway, this clock resides on his side of our king sized bed.  Every morning at 4:58 my alarm goes off, and I stumble around the bed to turn it off and set it to my husband’s alarm.  Frequently my husband voices his displeasure at the fact that he did not get back to sleep after my alarm went off.   
After years of this, yesterday my husband finally announced that he cannot take it anymore.  We need to get separate alarm clocks.  For marital harmony I agreed.  Also I was getting tired of stumbling around the expanse of our bed at 4:58.  We had the following conversation:
Me: I’m going to Costco today.
Husband: Do you want to pick up a clock radio?
Me: Oh my god.  OH MY GOD.  You want me to go to the electronics department?  In Costco?
Husband: (sighs deeply) Fine.
Me: (thinking, I’ll show him) Fine.
If there is something I find more overwhelming than shopping at Costco, it is walking through an electronics department.  But nonetheless, that is where I found myself, yesterday morning, pushing a gigantically heavy Costco cart full of groceries.  As I wandered through aisle after aisle, looking in vain for a clock radio, I started to lose hope.  I started to feel as though I was lost in some kind of electronics vortex.  The minutes ticked by and I started to feel despairingly like I was wasting so much time.  I still had to get home, unpack the gigantic volume of groceries from the car, and walk the dog prior to picking Jake up at the school at 11:35.  I started to feel extreme resentment towards my husband, Costco, and clock radios in general.  I wondered if maybe they don’t make clock radios anymore.  I was reminded of the scene in Borat, where the most coveted luxury item in the village is Borat’s clock radio, and when he leaves for America the village criminal whispers “Say goodbye to your clock radio”.  I started to think that it would have been easier, although not, maybe, from an ethical standpoint, to break into my neighbour’s house and steal her clock radio.  She’s a senior.  Surely she would have one. 
Finally I saw a small man in the signature red Costco vest and managed to ask him, somewhat anxiously, if he had a clock radio.  He led me to the only model they carried, an eighty-dollar one that had a docking station for an iPod.  I don’t have an iPod.  Crestfallen, I left with only my groceries, calling my husband to tell him of this travesty.  And by calling him, I mean I informed him that I had been in the Costco electronic department under extreme duress, and I had undergone severe mental strain and trauma for nothing.  NOTHING.
Last night when my husband came home from work, he was carrying a clock radio, purchased on the way home.  We are now a two clock radio household.  Marital harmony resumes.

Finally Scaredy Squirrel decides that nothing horrible is happening in the unknown today.

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My neighbourhood is, for some reason, a squirrel graveyard these days.  I take my dog for a walk and there are squirrel carcasses in varying stages of decomposition everywhere.  It is quite disconcerting.  Also disconcerting is the fact that dead squirrels are to my dog what giant bags of potato chips are to me: not part of my regular diet, certainly, but irresistible when within a two-foot radius.
Disturbingly, my current favourite children’s book is Scaredy Squirrel, and when I saw a fresh squirrel corpse today I thought, calmly, that maybe it was just Scaredy playing dead.
All the dead squirrels made me a little nervous to rake the leaves.  I kept scanning the yard nervously, but thankfully my yard was corpse-free.

Unfortunately, I can’t guarantee that the leaves were free of dog urine, but some things are better left unthought.

I read a post by the Bloggess about that episode on Little House on the Prairie where Ma is all alone and has some weird infected gangrenous cut on her leg and then she reads in the Bible something to the effect that if a limb is bothering you then you should cut it off, and so she attempts to do JUST THAT.  Perhaps a less literal interpretation would be in order here.  But it reminded me of another disturbing Little House episode wherein some random girl gets raped, and is subsquently pregnant, and everyone blames her for her loose morals and her grandfather says ominously “You reap what you sow.”  Then Albert wants to marry her to, I don’t know, SAVE her, but in one of those odd Little House happy endings, before they get married she falls off a ladder and dies.  Intense!  Does anyone else remember that?  It doesn’t seem like particularly family friendly programming to me.
And what does that have to do with dead squirrels?  Nothing at all.