Category Archives: Travel with kids

NEVER AGAIN

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My husband has taken three consecutive weeks off of work this summer. Such a thing has never happened before. The result was we spent five days at the lake with my parents – during which we left the kids for a night and road-tripped to Jasper, just the two of us – then after less than 20 hours at home, we left again for ten days with his parents. It was a lot of fun, but I am definitely glad to be home again, not the least because I put on jeans this morning and had to jump around just to get them on. I have Post-Vacation Too-Tight Pants Syndrome. Thank goodness for long shirts, is all I can say at the moment. Who knew that averaging four drinks a day over a two week period would cause weight gain and bloating?

We got home yesterday, and I was a bit distressed at the state of my garden; the city had been hot and dry while we were gone, and my plants were a bit crunchy. We put the sprinkler on for a few hours, rotating it carefully around the yard, when a gigantic thunderstorm hit and we received several hours of steady rain. The garden is no longer crispy.

This vacation marks the first time ever that I have under-packed, and I shall never do it again. I packed three skorts, a few tank tops, two beach dresses, and some bikinis, along with a pair of knee-length yoga pants and some very light t-shirts. I figured the weather was going to be too hot to need pants or sweaters, and things are pretty casual on the vineyard. Wouldn’t you know, the first two days were cooler than normal, rendering my light pants-less wardrobe insufficient, AND we got invited to a fairly dressy function, to which I wore a striped beach dress and sandals dating from 2009. Never again will I travel without my usual five pairs of shoes and little black dress just in case. Packing light is not for me. NEVER AGAIN.

I was largely unplugged for the vacation, save for a few things I had to do for work. I did, however, witness outrage about the killing of Cecil the lion, followed by outrage about the outrage, followed by photo memes that dealt with the following: a) why should we be outraged by a lion’s killing when there are so many human rights violations in the world, b) photos of farm animals captioned “If I was a lion, would you care about me?”, and c) photos of fetuses captioned “If we were selling lion body parts, would you care?”

HONESTLY PEOPLE. Mass outrage and then mass outrage about mass outrage and then MEMES about mass outrage about mass outrage showcases everything that is wrong in the world today. I love the internet and I certainly do not want to go back to the days of the rotary phone and looking things up in the Encyclopedia Britannica, but this – what my friend Swistle calls The Giant Internet Hand of Spanking – is one of my least favourite things. And to top it off, there is an election coming up. Two elections, if you happen to have friends in both the US and Canada. God help us all.

I don’t know how you feel, but the prelude to an election makes me long for the days when you didn’t really know where acquaintances’ political sympathies lay, unless you noticed a campaign sign on their front lawns or a pointed letter to the editor in your local newspaper. To me, politics is just too intimate to discuss; I find conversations about elections to be awkward and uncomfortable, not unlike someone telling me about their partner’s proclivity for porn or their own fantasies of being the girl in 50 Shades of Grey. These are things that I don’t want to know, it’s information that I just don’t want to have. Just like I don’t want to hear someone’s husband’s name and the words “loves anal” in the same sentence, I don’t want to know anyone’s voting preferences, unless we are very good friends, and then it is okay but I still prefer not to talk about it. I prefer my Facebook feed to be filled with photos of pets, kids, vacations, and what you ate on the 30 Day Shred. More puppies, less politics – maybe I should make it a hashtag.

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Lazy pants and life mottos.

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You guys, did you know Ashley Madison was a thing? I always feel badly for hacked websites but I had no idea this was a thing and I am as shocked as a little old lady learning for the first time about Brazilian bikini waxes. They do what?

The boys now have a two week break from karate; last Friday they had a mini-tournament to finish off their camp week, and then there was a shiah on Saturday. I was a bit worried since Mark had what I thought was the beginning of a cold, but which I now think was maybe a bad allergy attack. Thursday night he was up coughing much of the night, and for those of you who have known me for a while, I have some kind of PTSD from when he had pneumonia at age 7, and so I didn’t sleep at all. This also coincided with my hormonal pre-ladies’-holiday insomnia, so I felt like I had been run over by a truck on Friday.

Does anyone else suffer from this? I find about a week or ten days before Ladies’ Holidays, I have a few nights where I can hardly sleep at all. This is very unusual for me since I’m generally a solid sleeper, albeit one who wakes up at four in the morning. Anyway, I find this hormonal insomnia very annoying and it makes me fear for my menopausal days.

Thursday and Friday were terribly cold – 8 degrees Celsius – and rainy and windy as well. One of my heavy lawn chairs blew over and rain came down in sheets. Therefore, I was a bit surprised to hear that they went swimming at the outdoor pool at camp on Thursday. I feel fairly sure this didn’t help Mark’s cough, but after almost twelve hours of sleep on Friday night he was basically recovered and full of his usual energy.

Hilariously, because of the cold, the boys had to forego their shorts for track pants. They wear track pants very rarely; basically only for long plane trips and not much else, but they were perfect for cold days at camp. Mark sighed a bit when he came home, and said “I like track pants, but they really make me feel lazy.” I thought this idea could be extrapolated to any elasticized pants: yoga, track, sweat. In fact, maybe this could be a classification system: lazy pants versus non-lazy pants. I am currently still wearing this morning’s sweaty yoga pants. I know of what I speak.

Speaking of camp, my husband took the kids actual TENT CAMPING yesterday. He is a fairly outdoorsy kind of guy, and being married to me probably doesn’t help his outdoorsy-ness. A few months ago the boys decided that an annual boys’ camping trip would be a fun idea, starting now and continuing, apparently, for the rest of time. It sounded good to me, especially since I wasn’t really invited. They’ve been preparing for this for the past few weeks, gathering the things that they need and making lists of the food they wanted (all meat, all the time). Amidst all this merry chatter, my husband looked at me with concern and wondered if I was feeling sad or left out. Um. No. It’s no hardship for me not to go camping.

It is a hardship for someone in our house, and that someone is Barkley. Poor puppy. They’ve been gone less than 24 hours and they will be coming home soon, but such a sad thing has never happened to him in his life. WHERE IS EVERYBODY. Every weeknight at 6:30, Barkley sits at the top of the steps and stares out the back door window, waiting for my husband to come home. He did this yesterday, slowly slumping to the floor by 8:30 pm, when I decided enough was enough and put him to bed. This morning he went to all the empty bedrooms and flopped sadly back into his crate. It’s heartbreaking!

Meanwhile I’ve enjoyed my solo time by eating food no one else really likes (kale salad and roasted chickpeas), watching TV shows no one else wants to watch (NYPD Blue), and reading Gone With The Wind. I last read Gone With The Wind in 1989, when I was fourteen, and I can safely say it reads very different now. For one thing, when I was fourteen I had zero concept of US politics, the economy, or industrialization. I mostly just focused on the sexy romantic parts, of which there are many. I’m finding that I feel a bond with Scarlett, which is something I have sort of mixed feelings about. It’s not like we are the same person, but the line “Even if you think such things, why do you say them? If you’d just think what you please but keep your mouth shut, everything would be so much nicer.” speaks to me. I feel like that could be the entire basis of a life motto. Maybe Margaret Mitchell was clairvoyant, seeing into the internet age and the comments sections of sociopolitical columns.

In the spring, an elderly woman’s thoughts turn to rage.

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It’s that amazing time of the year when the sun is still out when I go to bed (granted, this isn’t that late) and the sky is lightening up when I go to yoga at 5. The drive home at 6:25 requires sunglasses, the sky is blue and the mornings are calm. The wind picks up in the middle of the day, bringing forth that age-old dilemma: lip gloss or no?

The greatest thing about this time of year is gardening! I was at the garden centre yesterday, purchased what I felt was an appropriate amount of plants for the backyard, and am now contemplating taking out even more grass to accommodate my purchases. I have already edged my gardens, taking out some grass along the way, but I might have to do it again before my husband notices.

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“Is that the display or the contents of your cart?” he asked. Well.

Sadly, I did not get flirted with by any elderly men on my garden centre trip. Maybe I just don’t have it anymore. The entire garden centre was filled with seniors, and me. One lady got incensed at another lady leaving her cart in the middle of the aisle. “Excuse me? EXCUSE ME!” she said sharply, and I looked up. “Oh, not you, dear,” she said, patting my arm. “There’s just too many damn seniors in here. Probably forgot their hearing aids.” This lady was seventy-five if she was a day, so I just smiled and nodded. Don’t piss off the old ladies.

Honestly, elderly ladies are a strange lot, and I hope that when I’m an octogenarian I am one of the “sweet old things” rather than the “horrible embittered women without a filter.” I was grocery shopping at my usual senior-infused Co-Op and I witnessed an elderly woman having a meltdown on the produce manager. She wanted three pounds of potatoes. She came all the way here, a special trip, for three pounds of potatoes. But they only sell potatoes in five pound bags! Five pounds is too much! When the produce manager directed her to the display where one can choose which potatoes in whatever quantity they want, she was incensed. SHE WASN’T GOING TO WEIGH HER OWN DAMN POTATOES. The produce manager received a star in his heavenly crown for carefully weighing out exactly three pounds of potatoes into a bag for her, while she eyed him with suspicion. Were the prices going to be as good as they would be in a three-pound bag of potatoes? She didn’t know. She just didn’t know. She has shopped here for years and they’ve always had the three pound bags and now they don’t and this store is just going downhill, DOWNHILL.

God, I hope I don’t turn out like that. For one thing, potatoes last forever. Did she think she was going to die before she’d be able to consume five pounds of potatoes? Maybe. You don’t buy green bananas at that age, and at any rate, her blood pressure is probably through the roof. Her doctor is probably never going to allow her to grocery shop ever again. I have great admiration for the long-suffering produce manager; a lesser man might have pummeled her with the five pound bag.

Just for interest’s sake, this is a poster that was RECENTLY on display in my Co-Op. I am not sure what year it was taken, but I think it says something about my choice of grocery establishments.

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How was your long weekend? We spent it with my in-laws, and although it apparently snowed while I was gone, it was absolutely gorgeous out there. We visited friends and the boys enjoyed swimming in their pool with their kids (THANKS SAMMI!) and we spent a lot of time just enjoying being outside.

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We also did some shopping while we were there. My husband spent the better part of the day at the car dealership getting a new car for my mother-in-law – a star on HIS heavenly crown – and on Saturday morning we decided to buy a new bed. The bed that we sleep on when we visit is very soft and squishy, and makes me move like I am an irritable 100 year old woman. Friday night I actually got up and slept on the marginally more comfortable couch, which is when we decided that a new bed would be a good investment, since we spend a lot of our vacations out there.

People, I will cut to the chase. We bought a bed from a man whose last name was Wood, and on his business card, he is listed as a “Beducator.” I feel that I need offer no further comment.

Bringing Happy Home

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I flew in from Maui yesterday and boy, are my arms tired!

Sorry. I’m still pretty tired from a) flying the red eye on Monday night and b) dealing with an overtired child who was too tired to sleep last night and then had nightmares every hour or so that I’m having that weird thing where I don’t even really know what I’m doing. Yesterday I looked in the refrigerator for salt, for example, and I stared at the shelves for a good two minutes before I realized that on Planet Earth, we don’t refrigerate salt. I am less tired today – I’m not looking in the refrigerator for spices – but still in fog brain mode.

But who cares, right? I just spent twelve days in Maui and it was the best vacation we have ever had. Everything was perfect. Although it already feels like months ago when I was hanging out on the lanai drinking vodka and vitamin water:

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or wearing a giant hat

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or reassuring one of my children that the other one would not get close enough to a blowhole and get killed.

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So it’s back to reality, I guess. I’m trying to get back in the swing of things without complaining about the absence of palm trees or afternoon boozing. WHAT IS THIS BULLSHIT PLACE WITHOUT OCEAN BREEZES? It’s weird getting used to wearing socks and pants again, but here we are.

There’s been a lot of talk lately (forever?) about women wearing bikinis and getting your body bikini-ready and you know what? This was my fourth visit to Maui and I would say that 95% of the women on the beach are in bikinis, regardless of age or body shape. This is how it should be! I mean, really, look at men – they generally shirtless on the beach and we never, ever say a word about it. We don’t say “that guy has too big of a gut to wear those board shorts,” now, do we? Maybe we get a little weirded out when the elderly man wearing a brief-like swimsuit bends over near us and we see his testicles, but that doesn’t happen often (although when it does, we cannot unsee it). So why do we have a debate over whether or not women can wear bikinis?

From personal experience, I think bikinis are much more comfortable than any other kind of swimsuit. I’m kind of tall, and one-piece bathing suits never fit right. Tankinis don’t work for me for swimming because they ride up too much. So I opt for bikinis, although I’m less than three weeks away from being forty and the bottom part of my belly is a bit wrinkly from having babies and the “girls” are not what they used to be, believe me. But who cares? Why do we feel the need to look like Gisele Bundchen on the beach, or snark at other women for also not looking like Gisele Bundchen on the beach?

Maybe I’m feeling snappy today, but I’m making a vow, and that is to stop with the negativity. Not just for myself, but I’m no longer going to silently stand by while women tear down other women. We’d all love to be perfect, but no one is, and we aren’t going to get any closer to perfection by being mean and negative. Maybe, just maybe, instead of discussing someone’s flaws, we can inspire people to be better by discussing positive, happy things.

And on that note, I leave you with this: no makeup, swim hair, bug bite, and reapplied sunscreen. When I look at this photo, all I can think of is how happy I was at that very moment. xo

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 bikini

And the cat’s in the cradle and the silver spoon.

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Yesterday I was so melancholy; the summer was just so full of fun and sunshine and it felt, yesterday, like a plug had been pulled. Suddenly, it’s fall. Suddenly, it’s back to school. Suddenly, my children are all grown up with gangly limbs and giant teeth and floppy clown feet.

Of course, none of this was sudden at all. There’s been a slight chill in the air for the last ten days, the kids have had gangly limbs, giant teeth, and floppy clown feet for a while now, and as for back to school, well, it’s not like I didn’t know it was coming. Fortunately getting back into routine is exactly like riding a bike; we have all adjusted exactly as if summer never happened. The only one in our family who hasn’t adjusted is the dog, who is moping weirdly around the house and then flopping sadly on the floor. Or maybe I’m projecting here.

It’s gloomy and drizzly, and so I decided to work on a savoury new pasta sauce. I turned on the radio to eliminate the creepy silence in the house, and as the warm smells of garlic and mushrooms filled the kitchen, Landslide came on the radio. LANDSLIDE. On the first day of school, as I live and breathe. Maybe the radio programmers have a maudlin sense of humour, because right after that was Talking In Your Sleep by Gordon Lightfoot, and really, what could be more melancholy than that combination? At least it wasn’t Cat’s in the Cradle, I guess.

This past weekend we attended another wedding, and a few days prior to that I took the kids up to stay at my parents’ place at the lake. Rarely do I do a solo road trip with the kids; I don’t like highway driving as a rule, and the QEII is a crazy speedway at the best of times. I headed out Thursday around lunchtime, and the light drizzle quickly turned into pouring rain. Two hours of driving in pouring rain with almost no visibility pretty much did me in. By the time I arrived at my parents’ place – at which the sun was shining and there was no rain whatsoever – my hands hurt from white-knuckling the steering wheel and I felt like I was going to have a nervous breakdown. The kids, on the other hand, were completely oblivious to my plight, having donned their headphones to watch a movie in the back. I felt somewhat virtuous for shielding them from my driving angst, so immediately accepted a nice vodka cooler and a seat on the porch. I had to make the return trip all by myself a few days later – having left the kids with Grandma – and happily, it was completely uneventful.

So ends the summer, I guess. The first morning of Grade Four and Five seemed to go off without a hitch; everyone is happy with their teachers and their classes, so hopefully it’s a good omen for the year to come!

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The first time ever they have “dressed up” for school.

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Who’s excited? THIS GUY. Also the other guy.

Wardrobe Malfunction

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In case you’re wondering how scintillating I really am, let me tell you about my recurring dream in which I am folding laundry. That is all that I do in the dream; fold laundry. Even my dream self gets bored as I patiently fold shirts, towels, etc., and sort them into neat piles. Sometimes I’m able to wake myself up, like a person having a nightmare, by saying to my dream-self you’re having that boring dream again – wake up! Unfortunately, when I go back to sleep I often have my second recurring dream in which I’m making soup. Just me, stirring a large Dutch oven full of soup. Often the soup in question is eggplant soup, and sometimes I wonder if I should leave it chunky or puree it, and then I get out my blender. At this point I usually wake up.

If dreams indeed do mean anything at all, I wonder what these say about me. I’m afraid it wouldn’t be flattering.

But who needs exciting, anyway? The house has enough excitement without ME being a thrill-a-minute. While we were on vacation, I realized – not for the first time, nor for the last – that my husband truly is the fun parent. He’s the one cannonballing into the pool with the kids while I lazily float by, only in the water long enough to cool off before resuming my poolside book reading. He’s the one who could spend hours with them playing in the wave pool while I need to go warm up in the hot tub after ten minutes. He’s the one who takes them on epic bike rides and stages legendary water fights while I drink wine and gossip with my mother.

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Me, hanging out lazily while my husband takes the kids on an epic ride in the utility vehicle.

It might be weird having two fun parents anyway; I mean, someone has to be the grim-faced harridan who oversees sunscreen application and adequate hydration and proper nutrition even while on holiday. So that someone might as well be me.

On occasion, I can be actually fun. I will go down any waterslide at a water park, I will go on any rollercoaster, and I even buy the kids the occasional sno cone or cotton candy, considering that all that sugar and food colouring is PROBABLY okay in moderation. We were at a very fun aquatic centre while on vacation, and the kids had a blast. They finished the afternoon by jumping off the diving board several times, and they urged me to join them. I declined, but then started to think that maybe I should. I should TRY to be fun, I want the kids to remember me as being occasionally adventurous and cool. I watched my husband do a spin jump off the diving board, to cheers from them, and so I decided yes. I hadn’t jumped off a diving board in thirty years but dammit, I can be fun too, I thought. I removed my hair band, patted my braid into place, and stepped onto the diving board. I jumped, then swam to the side. My husband looked at me for a moment, then informed me that my bikini top had not stayed where it was supposed to. Wardrobe malfunction! I fixed it and said that I hoped no one witnessed my embarrassment. He was silent for a moment, while I was briefly encouraged that I was right, that no one saw my nipple. Eventually he broke it to me; several people, including the lifeguards and the parents at the side of the pool, DID see. Oh.

Fun and exciting, it’s overrated. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some laundry to fold.

Honey, I’m Home!

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I’ve had nearly two weeks of vacation – here, there, and everywhere – and I’m basking in the feeling of accomplishment that can only be achieved by unpacking everything, starting laundry, and grocery shopping. I am a person who needs to unpack immediately upon setting foot in the house. I get tense at the mere thought of unpacked suitcases, partially-emptied toiletry cases, and mountains of laundry which makes me a joy to be around. In related news, a very dear friend JUST emailed me about woolen dryer balls, knowing that I would enjoy that information in a hausfrau kind of way. And I do! I do enjoy household tips because I am apparently – and non-ironically – some kind of Heloise person.

The vacation itself was lovely, full of sun, water, and many alcoholic beverages. Also related: I need to go on a cleanse. Travel was smooth but profanity-laced, as always with any kind of road trip that my husband undertakes. In general, I tend to sing to myself while staring out the window blankly like David Putty and the airplane seatback, while my husband says things like “Mother-FUCKER. Get off the goddamn road, you cock-sucking moron. What the FUCK. No, don’t use your signal, you ASSHOLE.” Repeat as needed. It seems that the drivers that enrage him the most are: a) people who drive under the speed limit on two-lane roads and curves, but speed up so as to be unpassable while in passing zones, b) people who are doing a) while driving gargantuan recreational vehicles, and c) people who do not use their signal lights while changing lanes.

I actually became concerned about his blood pressure, what with all the swearing, however, he assured me that such vehement exclamations actually lowered his blood pressure and made him feel better. I myself feel that this is a zero-sum game, since my stress level seems to be affected by this, in what I call “Post Traumatic Swearing Contractor Syndrome“. I should probably mention that my children during these times are either completely oblivious due to their headphones, or extremely sympathetic. “That guy is a bad driver, right Dad?”

Also – I don’t know how it is in your house but my husband likes to make “good time”. On the way to my in-laws’ he decided that he had a goal to get there by noon. This goal was established at about 11:00 am, and was achieved, but not without much profanity. I tried to convince everyone in the car that no one was expecting us that early, and anyway arriving at 12:10 or even 12:30 would still be excellent, but no. We arrived at 11:59 and piled out of the car, where I immediately took my father-in-law up on his offer of a frosty alcoholic beverage.

I have many more tales to tell, but someone around here (ME) needs to make dinner before the kids get back from karate. Hey, when you leave at 5:30 in the morning, the happy result is that you have much of the day ahead of you when you arrive at your destination, and the kids were able to “relax” Frank Underwood-style for a while before heading to their class. I need to figure out how to incorporate zucchini into everything. My dear mother-in-law is the type of generous person who, when you say you like something, gives you massive amounts of that item. So, when I said “Sure, I’d love a couple of zucchinis!” I received twenty-one, in varying sizes. Fellow zucchini-lovers, please tune into Yummy Mummy Club over the next few weeks as I deal with my surplus zucchini.

Speaking of vegetables, on the way home I initiated our usual game of “Let’s pretend we’re 1970s truckers; what would be your CB name?” I chose Red Pepper for myself but then had to continually explain my choice, which was disappointing and tedious. What would you choose? Please tell me, I’ve missed this blog terribly!