Category Archives: Uncategorized

The time that seemed as if it would never end seems as if it never was.

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There is exactly one week left of summer vacation, and I have to tell you, I’m a little glum about it. It’s been an epic summer, really, with great weather and lots of sunshine and water and happiness. And I know that I’ll be happy to get back into routine and I’ll be happy to be able to write more than a few words without hearing prolonged discussions about imaginary characters named “Dim Sum” or “Marmoy” – or worse, be asked to watch a YouTube video made by some guy named Blitzwinger who has apparently attained fame and fortune by making videos of himself playing video games and showing his audience cheat codes. I will, however, be unhappy to give up our lazy mornings, and I’m not exactly looking forward to my usual plethora of volunteer activities. But time marches on, and meanwhile I’ll be enjoying this last week of summer.

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Nature walk!

 

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At the top.

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Sunshine.

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We even saw deer, and my dog proved his intelligence by NOT running after them. Way to go, Barkley.

We had been planning this nature walk today, but I was considering just being completely lazy and staying home, for the very valid reason that I’m exhausted today. I am exhausted because of television. Yes. I considered not taking the kids and dog for a walk because I was too tired due to the television show I’ve been watching, just in case you wanted to feel better about your own life decisions.

The thing is, I’ve been watching a miniseries called Sensitive Skin, and I watched the final episode of the season last night. In case you don’t know, the show is about a fiftyish woman having a midlife crisis, and the episode I watched yesterday was so very sad. It was so sad I kept thinking about it, and couldn’t sleep, and then I started thinking about The Good Wife. I know, you’ve been watching The Good Wife for years, but I just started and I’m finding the whole backstory concept to be devastating. She had a perfect marriage and life and house and the whole time her husband was a horrible cheating bastard. So I lay awake last night, my mind flitting between the two shows, wondering why I don’t just stick with watching Downton Abbey and NYPD Blue DVD’s. Watching Sipowitz bust a perp by rolling down the blinds and threatening to beat him to death is much less disturbing, apparently.

My cousin posted a fun game on Facebook, wherein you post your favourite line from a book. Because I am a huge nerd, I immediately ran downstairs to my bookshelves and grabbed an armful of titles. Then I realized that I would completely hijack her account with my ramblings, so why not blog it? Is that not what a blog is for, like a really long Facebook status?

Here’s the thing: I don’t want to be left hanging. I’m going to expose myself to you via favourite quotes, and I hope you can leave your favourite quote(s) in the comments. Let’s make a game of it; I’ll do a random draw…next week? Winner gets a random prize! Prize to be determined, contest closes September 5. It’ll be fun!

Favourite Line Ever: I thought Jem and I would get grown but there wasn’t much else left for us to learn, except possibly algebra. (To Kill a Mockingbird)

Favourite Line About Career Aspirations: Move about after dinner, and meet acquaintance whose name I have forgotten, but connect with literature. I ask if he has published anything lately. He says that his work is not, and never can be, for publication. Thought passes through my mind to the effect that this attitude might with advantage be adopted by many others. (Diary of a Provincial Lady)

Favourite Romantic Line: “In vain I have struggled. It will not do. My feelings must not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.” (Pride and Prejudice)

Favourite Old-Timey Romantic Line: Taffy. He thinks about taffy. He thinks about how it would take his teeth out now, but he would eat it anyway, if it meant eating it with her. (Five People You Meet In Heaven)

Favourite Line About Motherhood That Goes With My Landslide-y Mood: I had to sleep close beside them at night and sit with them climbing around me in the daytime; my body felt bruised by their knees and elbows and feet. I did think then that it would be lovely to be a woman traveling alone, able to sit after a meal drinking coffee and looking out the window, able to go to the club car and have a drink…now all that time of care and confusion that seemed as if it would never end seems as if it never was. (The Spanish Lady)

SOB.

Your turn: is there a line from a book that affects you so that you close the book and stare at the wall?

Three Things

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After an entire summer of beautiful, sunny, warm weather, it is suddenly cold, dark, and rainy. There are a few red leaves on my Mayday tree, and the heat clicked on this morning. Brrr. I bit the bullet yesterday, and donned socks and ankle boots, instead of the sandals and ballet flats I’ve been wearing all summer. The boys willingly put on their fleece-lined jackets to take the dog for a walk, which is really saying something.

In the face of all this damp chill, tomorrow is my brother’s wedding, and it’s an outdoor ceremony. I have only one thing to say, and that is that outdoor weddings are for the very optimistic, especially in Alberta.

A friend of mine had posted “Three Weird Things” on her Facebook yesterday, and I was suddenly inspired to do the same. I’m going to share three strange facts about myself, and I would love it if you did the same!

1) When I was very young, I apparently thought that growing up was a metamorphic free-for-all, because I wanted to be a flower. Repeat: I wanted to be a flower when I grew up. I can remember feeling actually devastated when I realized that flowers DIE in the winter. Yes, they might be perennial, and they might self-seed, but they DIE. After this terrible realization, I amended my life goals.

2) My favourite childhood treat was Pink Elephant popcorn, which my dad would buy for me when I’d go with him to run errands. I loved those boxes of pink popcorn; pink was my favourite colour and I believe there was also a prize inside.

3) When I was sixteen, I was in a play called “Buried Child”, which was all about incest and infanticide. It was staged at my high school, which seems alarming and unbelievable. I played Shelley, and in one of the scenes I carried a prosthetic leg around. There was an awkward scene where a character shoved his hand in my mouth; thinking of the hygiene of high school boys, I shudder.

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A photo taken from my high school yearbook – I was in rehearsal.

 

Your turn! Tell me three weird things about yourself – the weirder, the better. Can you top wanting to be a flower? xo

Kitchen Love

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I know this isn’t exactly a shocking revelation, but I spend the vast majority of my time in the kitchen. But not barefoot (usually). And not pregnant (definitely). Ever since the Great Kitchen Renovation of 2012, I really love being in my kitchen. It’s so pretty and bright! Someone recently told me that stainless steel appliances and granite countertops are the Harvest Gold appliances and sparkly-laminate countertops of our generation, and while I don’t totally disagree, I am also of the opinion that all home décor dates eventually, so you might as well enjoy what makes you happy now. Unless you live in Downton Abbey, the décor you choose will at some point be used as an archaeological dating method. I mean, think of those country kitchens of the 80s, with duck-themed wallpaper and ruffly curtains. Think of the French Provincial looks of the late 90s. No matter what you think will be a timeless classic, odds are it won’t. This is a public service announcement for “living in the now”.

Here’s me making coconut whipped cream in my kitchen. See? It’s pretty!

So, I love my kitchen but there are elements I don’t love, some of which are changeable, and some of which are not. I wish it was bigger, for example, but that would entail moving house and that’s not something I want to do at this time. I hate how my miscellaneous drawer gets jammed because of all the stuff I mindlessly throw in there; this is something I CAN change. I hate how my spice cupboard is a jumble of jars and random containers; also changeable.

So I signed up for The Kitchn Cure to refresh and reorganize my kitchen a little.

Week One: Clean out the freezer and fridge.

Not to be boasty, but I recently obtained a full size, upright freezer and extra fridge and it has changed my life. For the longest time, I hemmed and hawed over getting a fridge and freezer for downstairs, until finally my husband got tired of me sobbing while jamming frozen foods into the freezer compartment of my regular fridge, and went out and bought them. Life altering. I can now batch cook! And buy giant bags of frozen berries at Costco! And put extra vegetables in the fridge instead of having to run out for groceries three times in a five day span! The only reason I bring this up is that I do not need to clean out my freezer, since it’s relatively new and unsullied. Look!

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See, it hasn’t had a chance to become messy and disorganized and YES those are frozen chicken fingers. What? Like I’m the only person who feeds my kids frozen chicken fingers on a Friday night. The week is long, people.

But cleaning the fridge was another story altogether. I’ve halfheartedly wiped down shelves and drawers in the two years since the Great Kitchen Renovation, but I’ve never done a really deep cleaning.

Exhibit A: Fridge Before Cleaning

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It’s not terrible. It’s a little jumbled. There are crumbs and grubbiness, but not too bad. Also – it is not on an angle, that’s my photography.

My assignment was to take everything out, clean all shelves and drawers, throw out anything that was bad, and put everything back in neatly. Now, my fridge was mid-cycle, grocery wise, so it wasn’t as full or as empty as it could be. I did the same for the freezer compartment. I washed everything and scrubbed everything and put it all back in…

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There was caramel goop on the bottom of that shelf that is not there any more.

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Usually there is a juice carton in that door; like I said, mid-cycle.

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I’m not sure if you can appreciate it from this picture, but oh my god you guys, the fridge is so clean.

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The crispers and the meat/cheese drawer were the worst in terms of gross crumbs that had fallen in from everywhere. Pepper seeds, old garlic peels, random twist ties. ALL GONE AND ALL CLEAN.

I did the same for the freezer compartment, but the pictures do not really look any different. Trust me, it’s way more organized and clean.

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Also? That fruit blend makes the best smoothies.

Lessons Learned From Week One: Kitchn Cure

1) I am completely obsessive. I can’t stop looking at the clean fridge. I keep opening the fridge just to gaze at the contents. My husband put a bottle of barbeque sauce into the fridge and I quietly went in and moved it. This has got to stop, but for now, I’m pretty excited about it.

2) I do a pretty good job of using up the food that I buy. In other words, all that obsessive menu planning and list-making has paid off. There was very little waste and very little to throw out. Here is what I threw out of my fridge during The Great Cleaning: a jar of strawberry jam from 2011 that had 1/2 inch of jam in it, a two-inch long dried out piece of ginger, a carton of vanilla almond milk that had about 1/4 cup in it, 1/3 of a very soft cucumber, and two empty Ziploc bags.

3) I have a bad habit of putting things in the freezer and then forgetting about them. Case in point: in the freezer I found a package of bagels, 6 bags that each contained one single pita, and a bag containing five freezer burned hot dog buns. I composted the buns, and vowed not to buy any more pita or bagel until the frozen ones have been consumed. I also found two packages of hot dogs that had each contained three freezer burned hot dogs, which ended up in the garbage.

I snuck a peek at this week’s assignments, and one of them is all about small appliances. Squee, this will be fun!

Super Controversial Opinions

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Last weekend we went to see Guardians of the Galaxy, where I found out that there is a 20 year anniversary screening of Forrest Gump, and also a remake of Annie. This is delightful news on all fronts. Forrest Gump was probably my favourite movie of the nineties; best scene ever was the one from the Black Panther party, with Hey Joe blaring in the background. And Annie – what’s not to love? A modern day remake that still includes Hard Knock Life? I’m sure it’s controversial but I say bring it on.

Guardians of the Galaxy, though. We seldom see movies in the theatre, and even more seldom do I enjoy those movies. For every delight like The Lego Movie, there’s a snore-fest like Man of Steel, or a movie that’s completely baffling and incomprehensible to me, like Thor. Going to the movies as a family means that the movies are almost always way too violent and action-y for my taste. But Guardians of the Galaxy was funny and entertaining, with a great soundtrack and a surprising revelation. Chris Pratt, shirtless. In that all-too-brief scene, I actually gasped, and then looked at my husband. I think he’s been working out I whispered loudly. Whatever his workout regime is, it seems to be effective. This is not Parks and Rec.

Speaking of excellent soundtracks, today marks the 37th anniversary of Elvis’ death, and although I think it’s a little creepy to commemorate a celebrity’s passing, I always remember that. I know it’s controversial, but in my opinion his greatest song ever was Suspicious Minds, followed closely by Kentucky Rain and Always On My Mind. Fat sweaty jumpsuit-and-cape-wearing Elvis is much, much greater than fit, leather-pant-wearing Elvis. I’ve always loved all his music, though. I remember taping songs from records onto cassettes, using the family’s crappy old tape recorder. When I was 11 I read Elvis and Me until it fell apart. Does anyone else remember the made-for-TV movie, Elvis and Me? I was obsessed with it. Wait…I just googled it and it’s available on YouTube!  Beehive hairdos for the win.

Other Controversial Opinions I Hold

Making The Bed

I cannot sleep in an unmade bed. I don’t need hospital corners, but I do need the sheets, blankets, and duvet to be pulled up nice and neat every day. I also need to have the pillow shams on the pillows and decorative pillows on the bed during the day or my equilibrium is disturbed.

Richard Scarry

Richard Scarry is my favourite children’s book author. My favourite book as a child was Busy Busy World, and the kids have a library of his books, although they don’t read them anymore. I’m sure there’s something unsavoury about him – there seems to be something you don’t want to know about every children’s author – but I love his books and illustrations. I also used to love when the kids would watch Busytown Mysteries when they were small.

When Harry Met Sally Contains The Answer To All Of Life’s Problems

When in doubt, ask for it on the side. They don’t make Sunday underpants. Men and women can never really be friends. It’s really fun to say Waiter, there is too much pepper in my paprikash.

That “Have Sex Every Day” Lady Is Crazy

Every day? Seriously? We aren’t teenagers anymore, people. I’m tired just thinking about it! Doesn’t absence make the heart grow fonder (but not too much absence!). Hey, my husband is the sexiest guy ever. He’s a zillion times sexier than shirtless Chris Pratt. And yet, EVERY DAY? No.

Puppies Are Cuter Than Kitties

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Now. Here comes your part – where do you stand on these controversial issues? Don’t worry, we can still be friends, even if we disagree! xo

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.

Back in my day…

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Today was cool, windy, and drizzly and so I decided we would have a lazy indoor day, as opposed to the playground afternoon I had planned. Jake wanted to show me something on the Wii and so I acquiesced, sitting down in the armchair to watch him. Apparently I promptly fell asleep and woke up a while later, drooly and disoriented. “Wow, Mom!” Jake said pleasantly. “You were sleeping for a long time!” He didn’t seem at all put out that I’d missed whatever it was that he wanted to show me.

Falling asleep during the day is so unusual for me that, when I related this to my husband, he immediately wondered if I was well and also which chair it was I fell asleep in, a detail that seemed irrelevant at the time but, upon further reflection, is actually quite important. Falling asleep in a comfortable armchair with the soothing tunes of Star Wars: The Clone Wars playing in the background is significantly different than, say, passing out at the table or computer desk.

It’s been a fairly uneventful week. I had planned to take the kids swimming but it was a bit chilly this week; instead we went to the library. I picked up a copy of The Tipping Point and I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in socioeconomic phenomena and epidemiology, which I am. Lest you think this sounds terribly pretentious, I just finished reading the Anne of Green Gables box set, which was lovely, excessive ejaculating notwithstanding.

The boys wanted a book for me to read aloud, and so we chose a Beverly Cleary book; Henry Huggins and the Paper Route. I had to field some difficult questions: what is a paper route? I was a little startled, but realized that, other than at their grandparents, the children never see actual print newspapers. I had to explain that that was how kids primarily made money, back in my day, that and babysitting. It was also a little startling to realize that no kids ever would have a paper route now, because who gets the paper?

BACK IN MY DAY has been something I’ve been thinking a lot lately; there’s so much press lately about free-range parenting and people getting arrested for leaving their kids in the car or leaving them at the playground all day. So many sad stories and so many people pretending to be Good Samaritans when in reality, they are Bad Judgmental Unhelpful People. I mean, back in the 80s it was pretty common for elementary school-aged kids to run to the corner store to buy cigarettes for their parents, and now I feel like I cannot leave my almost-nine-and-ten year olds in the car while I run into the grocery to get a loaf of bread, lest someone be filming me as a negligent parent. When I was a kid all the adults in the neighbourhood knew what the kids were doing, but in a “keep you safe and be sure you’re not being an asshole” kind of way, not a “let’s arrest your mother” kind of way. It’s a different world; mostly that people seem to be less inclined to help out their neighbours.

Speaking of neighbours, one of the elderly men down the street was straining the decorative rocks beneath his fir tree, to rid them of the fir needles. It seemed like a massively arduous task, and made me imagine my husband twenty years hence. Would he be shovelling decorative rocks onto a gigantic homemade sieve? Maybe.

Yesterday we went to the zoo, and it was lovely as usual. What caught my eye was this adorable little topiary:

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I am now trying to figure out how to get this into my own garden. I’m also trying to figure out what to do this lovely Friday night – I’m so rested, thanks to my impromptu nap. I’ve actually watched TWO movies in the past week – one was “I Give It A Year” which was a witty British comedy, and the other was “Despicable Me 2”. This exactly sums up my entire cinematic desires: either witty British humour or complete slapstick. All I know is that I’m not going to fall asleep before nine o’clock tonight, so I’m starting off the weekend with a bang.

 

What to expect when you’re expecting tween boys.

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You know when you’re a new mama, and you have all sorts of ideals in your mind as to how you’re going to raise your children. You imagine the summer days full of dappled sunlight where you are cannonballing into a turquoise pool with your children, or maybe eating homemade freeze pops on long, warm evening walks? Those days are great, to be sure, but what I never imagined was being schooled by my children in Cars 2 racing games on the Wii, or having intense conversations on which model of car will be best for which race track.

Also things I’d never thought I’d deal with: saying things like “Don’t put your foot on other people’s faces”, “Don’t elbow your brother in the crotch”, and “No farting or talking about poop at the table”, listening to a litany of complaints about the unfairness of a video game that blew up someone’s car just moments before the finish line, and finding papers in the recycling bin that are divided down the middle with “Marmots” on one side and “Haters” on the other, “Marmots vs. Haters” scrawled across the top. What is going on here? I don’t know.

After the busyness of last week, this week seems to be all about staying in our pajamas/ sweaty yoga clothes as long as possible and taking things slow. Monday I went to Costco with the kids so that felt like a gigantic accomplishment. There were the customary arguments about who gets to put that item into the cart so I had to ridiculously instigate a rule in which the children had to take turns being helpful. I also had to rule against the children trying to pick up flats of sparkling water that was half their body weight. As per every mother everywhere, I got talked into buying a few things that weren’t strictly necessary. Unlike every mother everywhere, those items were blankets. The boys fell in love with “Sherpa Throw Blankets” and it’s been a struggle to explain to them that this does not mean that Sherpas are being thrown around in these blankets. They’ve been walking around the cool basement wrapped in these soft blankets, the blankets trailing behind like they are medieval royalty. Another thing I didn’t expect would happen.

Lately in order to fill that hollow space in my heart left from Mad Men and Breaking Bad, I’ve been watching House of Cards. I oscillate between fascination and curiosity as to whether or not politics is really like that. I’m inclined to believe that it is, sadly enough. The kids, on the other hand, are obsessed with watching Wheel of Fortune. It’s considered to be a huge treat to watch Wheel of Fortune before bed, and I don’t know if you’ve watched it recently, but it’s pretty much the same as it was 30 years ago, except that occasionally Vanna White wears pantsuits. Pat Sajak is exactly the same as he always was. I also discovered that Alex Trebek is 74 years old! Isn’t that incredible? I would have never guessed.

I just said “If you guys are going to wrestle, don’t mush each other’s face in the carpet” and “Don’t kick the exercise ball into the air!” so it is time to close for the day and reflect on the strangeness and unexpectedness of daily life.