Category Archives: Travel with kids

Breaking News: Woman Finds Python In In-Laws’ Toilet, Says It Was The Best Visit Ever

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The long weekend was so early this year! We drove out to see my in-laws, and witnessed the aftermath of so many avalanches and mudslides. There is something very unnerving about driving down the highway which is surrounded by piles of rocks, broken trees, and other debris. The water rushing out of random holes in the mountains didn’t seem too reassuring either. I felt like I was a very old person, constantly commenting on the amount of snow still on the ground. In my day we never saw four feet of snow at this time of year.

I don’t know how you travel, but we like to get an “early start” which is becoming earlier and earlier all the time. On Monday we left for home at 5:30 in the morning. 5:30! Waking up at 4:30 is normal for me, but the kids were pretty tired; they ended up sleeping for over an hour, which never happens. They woke up, disoriented and wondering how long it would be until we were at Tim Hortons. Ah, nothing makes me feel so patriotic as driving through the mountains, early in the morning, with a cup of Tim’s and the kids hepped up on doughnuts.

Our “early start” theory also has the very nice side effect of “being ahead of the traffic”. Unfortunately, my husband is now of the mind that if 5:30 is good, then 4:30 must be better. At this rate, we will soon be defeating the purpose of the early start, because we will be driving in the middle of the night with all the drunk people.

Last summer we got a new minivan, and it has all sorts of neat features like reclining bucket seats with footrests in the back and a DVD player with wireless headsets. It’s a far cry from how I used to travel, as a kid: ten hour road trips across the prairie squished in the back of the sedan with my two brothers and the dog, with our bags of books and other car activities at our feet so that our knees were approximately 6 inches from our chins, with my mother periodically doling out Life Savers as our only diversion. In some ways I feel our children are ridiculously spoiled, all stretched out in comfort, watching their Phineas and Ferb videos and munching on their Tim Hortons’ doughnuts. All the same, I like it. The wireless headsets mean that my husband and I can gossip freely in the front seat, without worrying about big-eared little pitchers in the backseat, absorbing all the information and then questioning us incessantly. “Mom, who is so disappointed? Why are they disappointed? What’s an affair mean? Who’s pregnant?” I should probably make mention of children being good reminders of moral living, and how gossip is undesirable and inappropriate anyway, but all the same I’m glad of the wireless headsets.

We had a very enjoyable weekend, in any case. It’s always nice to go somewhere that has flowers in bloom in May. The Lilac Festival is happening here this weekend, I believe, and my lilac bushes currently have 1 inch leaves on them, and no flower buds whatsoever. Whose idea was that, I do not know, but I did enjoy my mother-in-law’s flowers and the greenery.

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The boys enjoyed many, many rides on their grandpa’s utility vehicle. I practiced a lot of “off the mat” yoga, if you know what I mean.

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This is what yoga looks like while in jeans and on a utility vehicle.

“Off the mat” yoga is code for “being a nice person”, not “trying to put one’s leg behind one’s head on farm equipment”, FYI.

All in all it was a great long weekend, even if we did find a giant python in the bathroom, just like that lady in Texas:

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TERROR IN THE TOILET

 

The Long and Winding Road to Hana

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Oh, you guys, the sun has come out. The glacier in my back yard is shrinking, the boys are wearing t-shirts, and there are teeny tiny sprouts of green coming up in the warmest and sunniest part of my garden. Daylilies, those tenacious little sweethearts. I think they would probably survive nuclear fallout, but nonetheless I’m always ecstatic when they appear in the spring. It truly feels like spring around here and yes, I’m sure we’ll get a few more snowstorms, and yes, the ground is still kind of frozen, but SPRING.

The first time we went to Maui, my very good friend Joanne and her family were there as well, staying in the same complex as we were. One day my friend and I decided that we would make the trip to the other side of the island to practice yoga with Nancy Gilgoff. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the Ashtanga tradition, Nancy is basically the mother of Ashtanga yoga in the Western world, and is the personification of “maitri”, or loving-kindness. She really embodies the whole yoga tradition, but she isn’t your typical modern yogi. She isn’t on social media, she doesn’t advertise, and in fact, you cannot even find the address of her studio on her website.

Joanne’s husband drove us across the island to the studio early in the morning so we could take practice with Nancy. We drove through a town and then down a little two-lane road and then turned onto a dirt road, after the sign for “Organic Tomatoes”, which was our only marker. When we got there we all sat silently for a moment, until her husband broke the reverie. “I’ll just wait here to make sure you aren’t going to be eaten by cannibals or something.” For the studio was really a barn on stilts in the middle of a deserted field, with wild vegetation all around. When I used the washroom I noticed a hand-written sign that reprimanded any woman practicing while menstruating, and that feminine products should never be left in the garbage can but wrapped up and taken with you, because otherwise they attract rats. Rats – eeek! I took my non-menstruating self and had a lovely and memorable practice with the lovely and wonderful Nancy and my dear friend Joanne.

It’s funny: I live in a quiet little neighbourhood in a big city, and it’s easy to be insular about other ways of living. Nancy, for example, could be a book-writing, YouTube video-starring, social media yogi darling, and yet, she isn’t. She lives a quiet life pretty much off the grid, except when she’s travelling to teach. She basically built her life the way she wanted it and I love that about her.

I was thinking about this because when we were recently in Maui, we decided to drive the celebrated Road to Hana. We read up on it and were warned that it was very curvy and windy. Ha! We laughed at that. After all, we drove the back way to Whistler, once, and also to Nelson, and would it really be that bad? YES. Yes it was. I lost count of the number of one-lane bridges and literally hairpin turns. It was exhausting and yet, some of the scenery we saw was the most beautiful I have ever seen.

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Waterfalls! Black sand beaches! Mysterious caves with legends about murdered Hawaiian princesses! It was pretty amazing and worth the tedium of the drive.

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We drove the extra ten miles to see the “Sacred Pools” – waterfalls cascading into several “swimmable” pools. By the time we made the extra ten miles, which took forty-five minutes, we were all hot and bedraggled and pretty excited for a swim. Off we went on a short hike to the pools!

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Alas! When we got there I read a sign that said the pools frequently harbor a certain bacteria that is especially prevalent after rainfall – and rain had been falling – and that bacteria could cause flu-like symptoms or DEATH. Well. We were only halfway through our holiday, and I certainly wasn’t going to risk flu-like symptoms or DEATH. There were a number of people swimming but we stayed out, sweatily photographing the lovely scenery.

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Pretty! Although, the water even looks bacteria-y.

While we drove that long and winding road, we would see little houses every now and then, with a fruit stand or a flower stand nearby. These were people living off the grid, truly in the middle of nowhere. They made Nancy Gilgoff look like a Wall Street broker.

Speaking of Wall Street, I read The Wolf of Wall Street on vacation, and it was hands down one of the most terrible books I have ever read. Gross, disgusting, and left me with a feeling of self-loathing because I had BOUGHT the damn book and CONTRIBUTED to the author’s wealth. The author should rot in jail, or burn in hell, although he’s now making tons of money with his book, movie rights, and career as a motivational speaker. (I live in a van…down by the river.) Not only was the author a criminal who made millions by ripping people off via stock market manipulation, he also ratted out his employees who he demanded loyalty from, which as we know from every mafia movie ever made is the worst crime one can commit.  The book itself was so bad I kept reading it only because I thought with all the hype that it would get better. I also thought there would be some semblance of explanation for his rise from call-connector to Wall Street superstar but no. If you’re thinking about reading it, DON’T. Learn from my mistakes.

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The scenery was nice, at least.

Sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy

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I hear that it has been the coldest, longest, grossest winter since 1978, nation-wide. I think all those people who cheerily say how much they love winter are even down in the dumps about it. So I’m a little shy to say that I skipped out on the last two weeks – missing snow and minus-double-digit temperatures – to go on vacation.

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I flew home on the red-eye last night and I’m playing the Eye of the Tiger in my mind to JUST KEEP GOING. So far, on VERY little sleep, I’ve managed to unpack, put away the suitcases, buy groceries, get the boys to school for the afternoon, go to the bank, pick up the dog, do some laundry, and return a few urgent phone calls. Is it me or does anyone else find it strange to answer phone calls in this day and age? Don’t we just text?

We got home to a depressing icy grey fog in the air, the grey sky matching the grey ground and my hands are already cracked and peeling. However! It was a wonderful vacation in the sun, the best yet, and I feel very blessed to have gone. It was wonderful and warm, and this is the vacation that the children will remember that their mother a) boogie boarded, and b) swam underwater. I know! Crazy talk. Evidently I need to do these things more frequently not only because they are fun, but also because my boys were amazed at my mad swimming skilz. “I didn’t KNOW you could swim!” they kept saying, like I had just crossed the English Channel, rather than swam under their legs in a pool.

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I’ll have lots of things to share with you but quite frankly I’m having a hard time stringing two words together. We got to the Maui airport at 7:15 last night and were in line for an hour waiting just to drop our bags, since we’d already checked in online. The lineup for people checking in was insane, and one sunburned man in a pink golf shirt with a giant fanny pack emblazoned with the Masters logo tried to cut the queue. He was sent back, much to his chagrin, and then started yelling at the OTHER people in the lineup to GO GO GO when it was their turn. Later I saw him screaming at an airport employee because it erroneously said that our flight had already boarded and departed, although clearly it had not. Imagine my alarm, then, when that same man sat in the seat next to me and Jake. However he was extremely cordial and jovial with me, which is when I could smell his breath. He was obviously very drunk which really explained his erratic behaviour, although it did not lessen my alarm. Whenever Jake shifted in his sleep and got too close to Mr. Goodtimez, I startled awake to ensure that he didn’t accidentally kick him or raise his ire in any way. It was not restful in the least, especially when Mr. Goodtimez fell asleep with his hand clutching a drink. I couldn’t imagine the results being very pleasant if Jake happened to wake him up by accidental elbow nudging. In fact closer to our arrival at YYC, he ate a couple snack bags of Cheezies, licked his fingers grossly, then threw the empty balled up bags at his wife in the row ahead of us to get her attention.

I was very happy to land, although I am now exhausted. My to-do list for the day is mostly done, however, and part of it is that I packed lightly so naturally there is not much to unpack. Of course, my definition of “pack lightly” is a bit different than my husband’s.

 

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Can you tell whose pile is whose?

And I did not buy either of these shirts, but I wanted to, so very badly.

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Oh! And I had an Elvis sighting.

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One Size Fits All

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For those of you who follow such things, the federal budget contained an intention to legislate an end to the price gap between goods sold in the US and Canada. It’s about time! In this day and age I find it ridiculous to find an online price that’s 30% higher on Canadian websites compared with the same item, from the same corporation, in the US. If this goes through, however, it will be the end of an era.

When I was growing up, the thing to do was cross border shop. I clearly recall driving down to Montana, or sometimes even Washington, to buy back to school clothes. Things were significantly cheaper in the US at that time, and the dollar was about par, and so even with travel costs it was a better deal to shop “across the line”. Not only that but the US was home to many stores and brands that were just not available in Canada. My husband recalls trips down to Washington in the 1970s when he would happily partake in A&W Root Beer, which was not sold in Canada, even though there were A&W restaurants. For me, the item that was shrouded in mystery was the Twinkie.

Twinkies and Hostess Cupcakes were not sold in Canada when I was a kid, but I knew all about them from Saturday morning cartoons and advertisements in Archie comics. They looked amazing and delicious and I clearly recall the first time my mother bought them, on a shopping trip to the States. The anticipation! The excitement! The…anticlimatic feeling when I bit into it and it was just a weird spongy thing with weird cream on the inside. How disappointing. The cupcakes, I thought, were better on account that they had a nice chocolate coating on them, but the Day of the Twinkie Reckoning was the day I realized that not everything lives up to your dreams. When the world never seems to be living up to your dreams, it’s time you started finding out what everything is all about.

A pivotal moment in my life.

The Great Twinkie Incident Of My Childhood did not, however, cure me of coveting exotic items not for sale in Canada, specifically those found in a little chain you might have heard of: Victoria’s Secret. Four years ago, when I finally decided I was ready to travel with the children, we flew to Palm Desert to visit my snowbird parents.

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This photo has nothing to do with the story. It’s just my favourite from that trip. The boys had just gotten off the plane and were amazed to see flowers! and grass! in February! WHAT KIND OF MAGICAL PLACE IS THIS? And look at their little shoes.

 

That trip, my mother and I ditched the kids with my dad and husband, and went shopping. We went to Victoria’s Secret which was everything I had dreamed of, and more. The selection of bras! The gigantic comfortable change rooms complete with disposable panties and t-shirts to test out the bras! The businesslike salesgirls walking around in their black clothing with tape measures around their necks! Prior to this I had always done my bra fitting at the Bay, with older Eastern European women sharply admonishing the fit of my current bras. You are vearing ze vrong bra! Look at zis! Zis is terrible. Terrible fit. You need different. But these girls were gentle and sweet and very earnest in their suggestions. Maybe the Dream Angel? I don’t THINK you’d like the Bombshell.

The best part about that shopping trip, other than all the underwear I brought home, was that it was actually Valentine’s Day when my mom and I were shopping. Have you ever been to Victoria’s Secret on Valentine’s Day? It’s pretty entertaining. There were literally dozens of men, some of them wandering around wide eyed, some standing motionless and overwhelmed in the middle of the store, but most of them lined up to purchase gift cards. Those men were no fools. There are too many (literal) booby traps in buying lingerie as a gift. There are just too many ways that can go badly; gift cards are probably the safest way to go.

So I was happy to cross-border shop for sexy and good-fitting bras and panties, until the magical happened – a store opened up in my city! It opened to huge fanfare but I still didn’t visit it very often, because it was in location very inconvenient to me. But then! To much less fanfare and women walking around with angel wings, a store opened up NOT FIVE MINUTES AWAY FROM ME. Hurray! I received a coupon in the mail for $10 off a bra and off I went.

It was the same great shopping experience, with the same earnest salesgirls. When I got to the counter with my Dream Angel, the cashier asked if I would like the free Valentine’s Day thong panty. I’m not made of stone, OF COURSE I wanted the free Valentine’s Day thong panty. I chose hot pink, as being something exotic and unusual for me, and the girl started to wrap it in tissue. Wait, I said, What size is that? The girl smiled at me kindly and said the thongs were one size fits all. The bees are doing what now? A one size fits all THONG PANTY?

Since then I’ve found out that Hanky Panky – home to, apparently, the world’s most comfortable thong – also sells their thongs as a one size fits all, and I have to say, I cannot wrap my head around this phenomenon. How is it possible? What kind of miracle fabric is this? I can understand how a caftan at Sears can be one size fits all – “fitting” not being synonymous with “looking the same” – but a thong panty? I just cannot understand. I need the physics explained to me.

And yet I got home and tried on the one size fits all thong, and it was the most comfortable pair of underwear I have ever worn. My mind is blown. There are a lot of things I do understand: advanced calculus, visual basic coding, economics, but this is the most mind-bending concept of them all. One size fits all thong underwear. It feels like NASA had a part in it.

Summer’s Almost Gone, Almost Gone

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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.

“Smile!” “We ARE smiling.”

 



IT’S COLD.




Exploring the “shoreline”.

 

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:
Good god, do not perform this naked. Ew. Gross.

 
 



Nor this, unless you want to slip and fall and break your face.

The Opposite Of Extreme Makeovers, and a Giveaway!

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Lawsy, I’ve been busy – relatively speaking – since returning from vacation. It’s amazing how much piles up after an eight-day hiatus from the homefront. I’ve been multi-tasking like a motherfucking riot; taking the boys to the playground while mentally composing posts, responding to constant “fun facts” about animals while making 16 litres of tomato sauce, preparing frantically for my solo trip to Saskatchewan while photographing plates of tomato-based dishes. Did I mention I have a whole lot of tomatoes in my possession? My mother-in-law supplied me with “a few” tomatoes; “a few” meaning “fifteen pounds”. It’s a good problem to have, all these sweet and delicious tomatoes.

Although it’s been warm here the past few days, there is a slight change in the air and I realized there are only three more weeks of summer vacation left! Cherish every moment goddammit. In addition to cherishing moments and tomato preparation, I am also beginning my usual August routine of thinking about back-to-school items and festive things like snowsuits and boots. The children are sweltering as I force them to put on their boots and mittens to ascertain fit and what is needed for the imminent winter. In Calgary, you never know. WINTER IS IMMINENT PEOPLE. Cue music of doom; perhaps an instrumental version of Patio Lanterns or maybe The Devil Came Down To Georgia.

The music of doom was also playing in my mind as I found myself in the mall at 5:00 on Saturday night. Unfortunately earlier in the day I was getting my old grey mare roots coloured, necessitating the late-afternoon mall shop, which is – as we all know – is the most spirit-crushing time to attend to all your shopping needs. Why is that? Why are there so many crowds, screaming children, rude people, and despondent employees at that time? And why do I never learn? There were two lights at the end of this tunnel of consumerism: Sport Chek had sales on running shoes, which I liked since we had to buy the boys each two pairs, and we had dinner at the food court, which is the kids’ favourite, as I have undoubtedly mentioned before. A teenage girl and her boyfriend sat at the table next to us, along with this cute fellow:

Speaking of the old grey mare and giant orange bears, I decided that I was going to make a dramatic change in my hair colour, and so I took this photo to my hair therapist, who looked at me quizzically. “Okay,” she said, “But it’s kind of the colour you already have. It’s pretty similar.”  No no! I said cheerfully, explaining that I wanted something more coppery. She made a change to my formulation, coloured my hair, and…it’s marginally different. Dramatic overhaul fail.  It looks pretty much exactly like this photo, taken poolside last week, pre-colour. Note: my dad makes this exact same face when he’s thinking, leading me to believe once again that I am an actual younger, female, and artificially red-haired version of him. Thanks for the grey hair genes, Dad!

It’s giveaway time! Prize yet to be determined but sure to be awesome. Or at least kind of fun. Leave a comment and let me know what you’re up to this August. Or what colour your hair is. Or at what point in the year do you start thinking about snowboots? Ah, who am I kidding – leave a comment about anything and I’ll enter you in the draw. Name to be drawn August 22!