I’ve been singing in my head wake me up when September ends because this month has been crazy, and here it is, almost over. Of course, I don’t see October slowing down significantly. Wake me up when October ends. I’ve been busy in a silly kind of way, with things that are not terribly important world-wide but are kind of important in my world, and so I’m like a hummingbird on speed. Vrrrrooooooooommmmm. My husband asked, plaintively, if I could possibly start sleeping in a little later than 4:30 am and I realized I have turned into a boring sort of person who says things like “But I have to bake macarons and write about it and I have to call all these people for the silent auction and I want to wash all the sheets and clean the bathroom and I need to get the agenda posted for the SC/PA meeting and…” and by the time I say “bake macarons” he has tuned out from my dull monologue. I’m even boring myself, just writing this.
But oh! There have been a number of other things happening this week, other than school council meetings and baked goods. Today was the Terry Fox run and I was a little worried about it since it was 4 degrees this morning and Jake called me from school to ask to come home yesterday afternoon, which has never happened. He has a cold, that’s all, but for him it presents as red, watery eyes and the kind of misery that goes along with not being able to see anything as a result. He seems okay today and is back to class; in any case, my husband reminded me that being able to perform and work while not feeling 100% is actually a very useful life skill. It is, isn’t it? It’s not like we can call it a day every time we have the sniffles, and spend the day lying on the couch eating cinnamon toast and watching terrible daytime television. It’s probably good that kids learn to suck it up, buttercup, at least when it’s something minor and not a FEVER or BARFING or something gross and contagious, in which case I always keep the kids home.
We’ve been having many what do you want to be when you grow up conversations lately, and I am telling you, it’s very entertaining. The main goal in this mercenary household is to be wealthy, or, more specifically, to “Make more money than you, Dad, and get a nicer car.” That would be my eight year old talking, who has decided he wants to be a trader. Given his math skills and his generally dickish attitude, I think this would be an excellent career choice for him. Mark wants to be an engineer, which he is also very well suited for. He has what I fondly think of as an engineering personality; those of you who know any engineers will know exactly what I mean, I think. This is the part where I’m supposed to say, passionately, that I just want them to be happy, which is true, of course, but I do think a person is happiest when pursuing a solid career, and so I will continue to cheer on their engineering/ trading/ finance interests while doling out more math worksheets.
When I was a child I wanted to be a concert pianist and/ or a great theatre actress; I ended up with two economics degrees and working on a trade floor as a quantitative analyst. What I did not envision was my current career, at least this week, of being an old-timey dentist. I have been pulling out a lot of teeth in the past seven days, just like one of those dentists in the wild west, except with a decided lack of whiskey. The kids have suddenly developed two things: an alarming number of loose teeth and a complete lack of patience with said loose teeth. I’m getting really good at pulling them out, I have to say. Wham, bam, tooth out. And then there’s the little issue of payment. In lieu of my husband donning a tutu and a wand with a tooth on it, he simply doles out whatever change he has in his pockets when he gets home. This led to Mark’s receipt of nearly $5 in change for a molar. I heard him telling a friend this, who lamented that HE only gets $2 a tooth, to which I said gently – because I didn’t want anyone to feel bad or anyone to whom I have given birth to be boasting – that case was just because that was what Dad happened to have in his pocket. To which the little friend said “His Dad? The Tooth Fairy brings me the money.” Mark gave me the wide eyed, raised eyebrow look I usually give to the children for such verbal slipups, and later said to me, sharply, that his friend still believed in the Tooth Fairy and I shouldn’t have said anything at all.
Parents. We just don’t understand.
Category Archives: Testosterone-y
13 Month Old Baby Broke The Looking Glass
Anyone superstitious out there? I am not, generally speaking, except for believing strongly in karma and the zodiac. Say what you will, all Leos I’ve ever met have been show-offs, and all Tauruses I’ve ever met (myself included) are stubborn as the day is long. But Friday the 13th? Meh. My friend Hannah will probably disagree with me, but I have no adverse feelings about it. If someone chases after me with a hockey mask and a chainsaw, I might change my tune but for now, it’s just the day Jake brought in three dozen cookies to school to celebrate his birthday, which is on Sunday.
Three dozen cookies. For his class. Because he has thirty-one kids in his class. I’ll leave it at that. I will not go into details about how I drilled my homeschooling friend Nan about the materials she uses and then promptly ordered them, not because I’m planning on homeschooling but because I’m planning on Tiger Mom-ing* the hell out of the kids since there’s no way they will be able to get what I want them to get out of school in a class of thirty-one. Mark has over thirty kids in his class too. But here I can feel myself working my way up into a frenzy again, and so I will let it go. OM SHANTI.
*I’m not really going to become a Tiger Mom, but I am going to have to supplement what they are doing in class, because as one friend said their math work seems like a cross between Sherlock Holmes and Yo Gabba Gabba. 5 x 6 = ___. Explain your work.
I need to get off this topic, quickly, lest I explode. Cookies. Here are the cookies Jake took to school – stars for the birthday star!
You know me, guys, I’m all natural ingredients and made from scratch and spinach smoothies and kale chips but when it comes to birthdays, I don’t fuck around. SUGAR COOKIES ALL THE WAY. They are made from scratch but they also have food colouring in them OMG. How else does one make “turquoise” frosting, I ask you?
I was doing some shopping earlier in the week. Mark’s idea for Jake’s birthday gift was to buy five of his favourite chocolate bars, wrap them up, and then hide them around the house. Clues will be given for this delicious treasure hunt. It’s very sweet, literally, and also I need to remember to put the dog outside for this activity.
I also looked in my favourite sleepwear/ lingerie store for new pajamas. The Blissdom Canada conference is coming up in less than three weeks, and on the last night they are having a wrap-up pajama party. PAJAMA PARTY SQUEE. I haven’t been to one of those in many years, but since my sleepwear verges on the ridiculous – pink and white pajamas with a hummingbird motif, recently – I thought maybe I should look for some new ones. This is what I look like on a typical Friday night, and yes, my husband is super lucky:
So I wandered into La Vie En Rose and walked out without pajamas – they were all either a) super sexy and therefore not really appropriate for a conference with women, at which I am going to try to maintain a somewhat professional aura while drinking copious amounts of wine, or b) kind of like the hummingbird pajamas, but with puppies, kitties, or ice cream cones on them. I did not go in there to buy hippo sock-slippers, but hippo sock-slippers I did buy.
It would take a stronger woman than me to look at those hippos and walk away, especially considering the emotional attachment to hippos around here. Poor Jake, yesterday he realized that next Tuesday would have been Foggy’s 48th birthday. There was much weeping and sadness, which was an inauspicious start to the day. I felt very, very sad for him as he cried softly into his Shreddies.
After I bought the hippo socks, I looked for a new lipgloss, and I found a shade called Wine Stain. I did not buy it. I feel that, while that may be a natural weekend look for me, I would rather have a lip colour that does not look like I’ve been a lush. I went for the cutely named Maple Sugar instead.
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The winner of my giveaway is Lynn! Hope this gift makes you feel better about the whole ant/ hornet thing you went through this summer (the bug-phobic of you will not want to click that link. It will make you want to burn your own house down.) Lynn, I’ll send you your prize soon – if I survive the next week (details to follow if I survive it….) Thanks everyone for playing along! xoxo
FYI for teenaged girls, don’t date the Hall boys.
I’m really glad my ladies’ holidays aren’t coming up anytime soon, because my goodness I am an emotional girl this week; it would be pretty bad if I threw some hormones into the mix. Part of it, maybe, is the fact that my kids are now in the “big kid” section of the school, far away from the office so it’s really hard to just casually saunter past their classrooms and sneak a peek at them, which, looking at it objectively, is probably a good thing because they do not enjoy me sneaking a peek at them. I shouldn’t group them together, really, because Mark doesn’t actually mind. Jake, however, does. “Why did you WAVE at me? I’m supposed to be WORKING, not getting distracted.” Even in lineup in the mornings, I fist bump him and then back the hell off, because that kid does not want any extra attention from his mother, JAY-SUS. If I do attempt a wave while he’s lined up, he raises his chin slightly in what I take to be the world’s smallest head nod in acknowledgement. What is he going to be like as a teenager? A total dick, I’m guessing. I said this to my friend this morning who answered cheerfully, “Well, you always predicted that!” True.
I was grocery shopping yesterday and found myself teary-eyed and verklempt at the sight of young mamas with their babies and toddlers in the produce section. I heard the mamas talking to their little ones in the same way I did, in a previous era, when I had to put lipstick marks into the palms of small hands instead of fist bumping while walking through the compound. This is a lemon. It’s yellow! Look at this pretty red apple. It’s so red and round! Let’s put five in the bag. 1…2…3…4…5…I stared at the banana display for a while, swallowing hard. Thank god no one picked up a cucumber and pretended to tickle their toddler with it because if that had happened I would STILL be curled up on the floor singing Landslide* to myself. And if you see my reflection in a snow covered hill…Fortunately later in the day I found myself buying printer paper in Walmart and witnessing a complete toddler meltdown in the school supply aisle, complete with flopping boneless body and ear-piercing shrieks. I smiled sympathetically at the frazzled young mother and tried not to click my heels in joy as I went to pick up my big kids at the big kid doors at school.
Well, they’re not that big, I guess, since I haven’t yet started writing blog posts about teenage girls and the behavioural standards required to date my sons. Eeee. Can you imagine what kind of mother-in-law that woman will be? Here’s an FYI for teenage girls: do NOT date one of the Hall boys. RUN THE OTHER DIRECTION if one of them asks for your phone number. Do boys still ask for your phone number these days? Or do they just look you up on Facebook? But I digress. Truly, just think how overbearing poor beleaguered Mrs. Hall must be, and I can only guess that this is not something that will improve with time. Girls, if you become a “young Mrs. Hall”, you will be doomed for a life of in-law misery. You will never be able to vacuum often enough, is what I’m saying.
Things are tough for teenage girls these days, what with the striving to be the hottest bitch in this place and the expectation that one must stay up ALL DAMN NIGHT to get lucky. In my day, we just expressed ourselves or Vogued. Speaking of which, last night I was cleaning up the kitchen and Papa Don’t Preach came on. I cranked the volume and sang along; the boys reacted with complete and utter silence. Perhaps they were struck mute with awe? Moments later they went outside where they climbed our big Mayday tree and jumped down repeatedly. I didn’t think my singing was that bad.
*see, Sarah, I think we’re even on the Landslide references
I’ll be making another to-do list after this post.
As I sat down to write this, I realized that this is my 600th post! My gracious, I have had a lot to say. I’ve been writing this since 2008, when the boys were both in preschool and the first day of school looked like this:
And now it looks like this:
And just to be sure you appreciate how much they’ve stretched:
I feel like I should say something emotional and touching about the fleeting nature of time, but damn, I’m feeling like I’ve been flung into a first-day-of-school-suddenly-huge-to-do-list tornado. How did that happen? Just yesterday I curled up on the couch to read a book for hours; currently I’m feeling like a hummingbird on speed. MUST DO ALL THE THINGS IMMEDIATELY.
Speaking of to-do lists, my husband was reading something on personality types, and he hilariously realized, after eleven years of marriage, what “type” I am.
Mr: Wow, you’re really a Type A.
Me: I know.
Mr: You and all your lists. You’re exactly a Type A.
Me: I know.
Mr: No, I mean, you have every trait on this list.
Me: I KNOW.
Mr: “Obsessed with time management”, “rigidly organized”, “want people to get to the point”, “always try to help others”, “impatient”.
Me: I’m not impatient!
Mr: *hysterical laughter*
It’s true, anyway, which is why I’m making lists upon lists about every little thing I have to do over the next six weeks and it seems like a lot right now. It’s the September rush, I guess, and we’re all into it. This happens to me every year, and it’s why I learned after Mark’s kindergarten year that I should say no to being on every single committee.
In any case, the boys are pleased to be back at school. They are in conjoined classrooms, which is nice for them – they can see each other but still be fairly autonomous. They are with the exact opposite teachers that I thought they would be with, but that’s okay; they each have good friends in their classes. So far, so good.
The dog, though. The poor puppy. He’s slumped into his usual back-to-school depression, with the realization that going forward his days are going to be spent exclusively with the least interesting person in the house. When I came home after drop off, he went outside and lay in the sun for a few hours; a squirrel was in our yard and even made it out alive, that’s how depressed he is. Not to worry, if history is any indication of the future, Barkley will perk up soon and find many small animals and/or birds to kill/ eat/ and have me pick up in various forms, crying.
Since it’s my 600th post, I feel like I should do something to show my appreciation to you, my dear readers. Another giveaway, perhaps? I do not know what the prize will be. A Starbucks gift card? Chocolates? An old economics textbook? Kidding, the shipping on that would be murder. To enter this random, prize-to-be-determined giveaway, leave a comment about any of the following: what personality type you are, what topics do you like to read about on this blog, do you prefer sweet things or salty things, or just say hi! Name to be drawn September 13! Friday the 13th….spooooookyyyy. xoxo
Summer’s Almost Gone, Almost Gone
Here it is, the very last week of summer, and I’m trying to squeeze every moment out of it. I always feel kind of gloomy at the end of summer – I’m a summer-tastic kind of girl – but the gloominess is getting overridden by my excitement about September. My social life, which seems to be hinged on dog walking and hanging out at the playground during pickup and drop-off, is about to take off. I, like the kids, miss the friends I don’t see during the summer and so it will be nice to catch up with all of them.
My husband took this week off work and it’s been nice. We were up at my parents’ place at the lake for a couple of days, which is always fun. The boys refer to it as Camp Grandma, where there is always lots of ice cream and popsicles, and not much in the way of rules. It was also – and this is unusual for this part of the world – quite warm, and so they went swimming in the chilly lake.
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“Smile!” “We ARE smiling.” |
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| IT’S COLD. |
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Exploring the “shoreline”.
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My husband also swam with them for a bit; I refrained, not wanting to get hypothermia. They went for an evening swim/ shoreline exploration while I sat on the deck chatting with my parents. Barkley came bounding across the grass with what I presumed was a flat stick of wood in his mouth. Something about the way he was holding it, and the little white protrusions sticking out of it made me look closer. Hmm, I thought, maybe it’s a root from one of the plants on the shore…aieeeeeeeeeeeeee! It was a dead fish, a fish that had met its demise some time ago. I screamed and screamed while the dog dropped it in alarm at my distress and my dad scooped it away with a shovel, taking it to an unknown destination (“DON’T PUT IT IN THE GARBAGE!” my mother screamed.) That was a bit of gross drama that I didn’t need in my life; however, it’s not the first time Barkley has found and/or done something revolting, and I’m sure it won’t be the last.
It hasn’t all been lake time and hating my dog this week – my husband and I took the kids on an exciting family trip to Costco. I had been hoping that my last Costco trip would have lasted me the whole summer, and it would have, but my husband really “wanted” to go. It’s fun, he proclaimed. Fun. To go to Costco. With the kids. I will tell you what was “fun” about it, and that is that I didn’t have to push the million-pound cart around, nor unload the groceries by myself. I did have to play a bit of Tetris to fit all of the food into the cupboards, fridge, and pantry, but on the upside I probably am stocked up to last for the next three or four months. Currently I would be ashamed to show anyone my pantry, as it looks like an episode of Hoarders. But it was such a good deal.
Speaking of “good deals”, did anyone read the Fraser Institute’s report on the cost of raising children in Canada? I am no stranger to the Fraser Institute – I have a master’s degree in economics – and so I read it with some interest. It’s funny, because living in an urban centre, with children in sports, and attempting to buy quality food and other clothing items notwithstanding, $4000 sounded pretty skimpy to me. Interestingly enough, childcare was not included. Aha! Apparently the Fraser Institute doesn’t include childcare as a cost of raising a child, nor the opportunity cost of lost income from having a stay at home parent. Well then, that explains that. Knowing the Fraser Institute, there is some kind of policy implication here that states that the poor can EASILY raise their children with no assistance of any kind. Well, thank you for that conclusion, Fraser Institute! This study addresses a couple of my pet peeves: misuse of statistics (“most” people don’t require childcare) and being obstinate about the cycle of poverty. Speaking of which, my friend Hannah wrote about the costs of back-to-school and how they can be more oppressive in the long and short term for the impoverished.
On a much less serious note, did you know there’s such a thing as naked yoga? Well, there is. I don’t think I can adequately convey in a blog post how revolting I find it. Not as revolting as my dog chewing on a dead fish, but pretty damn revolting. Then again, possibly I’m prudish because I found it shocking – actually shocking – when we went into town at the lake and there were girls walking around in only their bathing suits. It’s like I’m 80 years old. In my day we wore coverups when we left the beach. At least an oversized t-shirt. It’s funny how many people have the perception that yoga is this very sexy thing to do. Most of the yogis I know go to bed super early and eat lots of mung beans and quinoa and whatnot. We also generally have strained, rather than sexily blissful, facial expressions during most of our yoga postures:
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Good god, do not perform this naked. Ew. Gross. |
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| Nor this, unless you want to slip and fall and break your face. |
It’s the end of the school year as we know it (and I feel fine)
Hello there! It feels like a long time since I’ve posted, so I’m hopping right back in the saddle. Things have been busy around here. I’ve oscillated from overwhelming love for the city and all the generous and kind people in it, and overwhelming despair that it will never be enough, no matter how hard I try, I will never be able to help. It’s a silly feeling because of course change is the sum effort of individuals, and every little bit matters, and with that attitude I bake more cookies and muffins, buy more diapers, offer to do laundry, etc., etc. Things are improving, but it’s taking time, of course.
Because of the flood school was cancelled until today, which is a half day merely to say goodbye, clean out desks, and pick up report cards. It was very strange to go back to school today; almost as strange as not being in school for four days just before summer vacation.
As usual at the end of the school year I’m a little verklempt at the thought that they are now FINISHED another grade, in this case Grade Two and Three. On the one hand, it feels like all the awesomeness of having older kids, who I am closer and closer to launching into the great big world, and I feel like I’m doing well with preparing them for that. On the other hand, time makes you bolder, children get older, I’m getting older tooooooooo….
A while back I read this fantastic post by my friend Swistle that really summarized how I feel. It’s ALWAYS the Best and Worst of Times is extremely apt when talking about children, right? There has been some discussion lately about favourite ages and least-favourite ages and I can say, firmly, that I don’t have a favourite or least favourite. Part of this is because I don’t remember the stages very well. I think this is due, in part at least, to extreme sleep deprivation over the years 2004-2010. You would think that such sleep deprivation would lead me to say that those years were not great, but you would be wrong. Such memory lapses means that I can be like one of those sweet old ladies who only remember nice things and not the horrible ones. Sure, there were gross diaper blow outs and incessant crying and no sleep and terrible worries about introducing vegetables before fruits and would that ruin their eating for the rest of their life OMG he is trying to eat playground gravel. But there was also this:
And this
Also this
Actually, that last picture reminds me of the baby screaming while I tried to bathe him and the very young toddler falling off the stool while trying to help and everyone crying and…well…I like my biggish kids very much.
In any case, we can’t stop time so we may as well enjoy it! Here’s to another great summer!
Denim skirts, non-Mama-Duggar-style
If you can’t beat them, join them, is the somewhat defeatist attitude I took up this weekend when I went shopping to Lammles’ Western Wear. I am a Calgary girl, I’ve lived here my whole life, and yet I just can’t get behind the concept of western wear. This is an attitude I felt needed adjusting, since I always have a few Stampede events to attend every year, events that become more and more important to attend as my children get older and embrace the Stampede spirit. One such event is the school’s annual Stampede Breakfast, which is coming up in less than two weeks and at which I am going to be flipping pancakes. I have two items of clothing that regularly come out at Stampede: a straw cowboy hat, and a denim shirt dating from 1997. I felt that my Stampede “look”, such as it is, needed an update and that is how I found myself in Lammles’.
Now, I’m no Tom and Lorenzo, but I did feel a little part of me die a little as I looked through the racks of ladies’ wear. Everything was either a) too colourful, b) too plaid, c) too see-through, and/or d) too covered in rhinestones to suit my taste. If I am going to pay $60 for a shirt, I would like it to be one that I wear more than a couple of times a year and that doesn’t make me look like I’m competing in the barrel racing competition, given that I am not actually a barrel racer. I found what appeared to be a plain black button-up shirt, but on actually taking it off the rack I discovered that it was covered with rhinestone lassos.
I was feeling rather disconsolate about the whole experience, and then I saw an item that had my name all over it:
It literally has my name on it! So how could I refuse? It’s a denim skirt, by the way, not in the style of Mama Duggar but this:
Cute, I think. Plus, it’s called a NICOLE. I figure I will get some actual wear out of it, unlike a rhinestone-lasso-encrusted shirt.
I got home and realized that my closet runneth over, but fortunately I had also lost track of what day it was, and that I had a clothing donation pickup scheduled this week. This, accompanied by the realization that the clothing pickup was for TODAY, gave me great motivation to go through my closet and purge 3 (garbage) bags full. I was filled with a bit of disappointment in myself and my consumerism – does anyone need so many clothes? – and became ruthless in my purge. There was none of the oh, maybe I’ll wear this again, this is kind of cute, it doesn’t fit well but it’s still in great shape feelings I normally have.
The other thing of semi-importance that happened this weekend: my husband briefly activated the multiplayer setting on our Wii, which led to our family becoming torn apart. It was probably the single worst idea in the history of our family’s video games. The kids have played multiplayer in Mario Kart and Wii Sports, which is evidently VERY DIFFERENT from the murder and death that came from multiplayer Star Wars Force Unleashed. By the end of the afternoon all three of the boys, including my husband, were not on good terms, and I was miffed that no one wanted to be Johnny to my Baby in Just Dance. It was not the time of my life, let me tell you. I instigated a rule that never again would the multiplayer setting be activated, and peace reigned in the Boyhouse galaxy.