Category Archives: Uncategorized

Empty Nest Overcompensation

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The kids are in karate camp this week, which means that I am kid-free for SEVEN HOURS A DAY. This is not something that happens ever, even during the school year, since they come home for lunch. I seem to be compensating for this empty nest by DOING ALL THE THINGS. I have been unbelievably productive, to the point where I’m starting to question my sanity. I mean, do I really need to be frantically busy every second that the children are not here just because they’re not here? Do I need to seize every single moment to do something useful or work-related? It’s not like they are toddlers; I can actually accomplish things when they are at home.

In the face of all this me-time, I did what any girl would do: book an appointment for a dental cleaning and check-up. Perhaps not the most hedonistic thing to do but my dental experience has improved exponentially by the introduction of an electrosonic dental-scaler. Maybe it’s hydrosonic. I don’t know, in any case it’s so much better than the old-school scalers of yore which would leave me with bleeding gums and in a foul mood for the remainder of the day. (note to self: floss EVERY day). I used to think that a Pap smear was highly preferable to dental scaling but the advent of this electro/hydro thingy, and my recent experience with a substitute OB/GYN who could only be described as “ham handed” has me singing a different tune. I mean, it wasn’t exactly a trip to the spa, but then again I’m not desperate for me-time pampering, given that I just had a weekend at my parents in which I was completely spoiled. For one thing, my mom and I had pedicures and lunch out; for another thing, I spent hours like this:

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And watching this:

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And also consuming lots of wine and chips and other tasty things. So, I’m feeling pretty relaxed going into this nearly kid-free week, with the only stressors being a) packing lunches and b) making sure the kids are covered in sunscreen before 8:30 am. This is more challenging than it sounds; apparently I’m off my school-year game.

Another thing I’ve saved to do this week is bra shopping. My very favourite black bra finally gave up the ghost, as I uncomfortably discovered when the underwire broke loose. I had to walk around wearing my ridiculous “for special occasions” push up bra. I just wanted a regular bra, not one that would “add two cup sizes”, not one that is described as “sexy” or “flirty”, just an everyday bra to wear under everyday tank tops. A trip to Victoria’s Secret was in order! You all know how I love Victoria’s Secret: the pretty, generous, and nicely lit change rooms, the fancy displays, the sweet and business-like salesgirls who don’t yell at you for wearing the wrong bra size like the ladies who work in The Bay. Now, I know it’s not for everyone, but for us run-of-the-mill B cups, Victoria’s Secret is excellent. Plus they have this Body by Victoria collection, and it is amazing. Super soft, non-ridiculous bras.

Speaking of ridiculous, look what I saw at the mall:

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A one-piece, strapless, DENIM short set. Why. WHY.

These are the people in my neighbourhood.

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Proving my theory that every single day is special, yesterday was International Kissing Day, followed by today’s festivities – International Chocolate Day. I think I can get behind this romantic turn of events. Just this morning as I was opening up my drapes, I noticed my across-the-street neighbour walking his girlfriend to her car, kissing her goodbye. Awwww! Sweet! My across-the-street neighbour is not exactly the grand prize to womanhood, so I’m very happy to see him with a lady friend. In related news, I am now in the running for the nosy neighbour on the street. I’m in competition with all of the octogenarians in the surrounding houses.

Years ago, one of my across-the-street neighbours was a man in his eighties, and he had a girlfriend who was probably about 65. They were both widowed, and every Saturday night they would go to 5:00 mass together, then to the Legion for dinner and dancing. It was one of the cutest things ever. One Sunday morning I was opening the drapes to witness Henry walking Frieda to her car and kiss her goodbye; moments later Henry’s adult children pulled up for a visit. It made the romance a little more illicit in my eyes. The moral of this story is that romance is ageless. This is good to know for those days in the future when I’m an orange-haired old lady with bleeding lipstick in my slacks-and-pumps with plastic white purse containing a roll of mints and a change purse.

Ah, romance. It’s everywhere, from the sanitation worker across the street to the teenaged ride operators at the amusement park, from the elderly man down the street who told me his secret to over half a century of happy marriage was saying “Yes, Dear” right to my own home. Yes, the romance is alive at the Boyhouse, even if no one appreciates my kale chips or my version of The Greatest Love of All.

I’ve been re-reading the Anne of Green Gables series, which I haven’t read since I was a kid. I love them as much now as I did then; maybe more. I love the old-timey romance and the descriptions of the college girls entertaining their gentleman callers decorously in the parlor, I love the descriptive details of the landscape and the furniture, but most of all I like how it follows a woman throughout what is really quite an ordinary life. All of us ordinary people are stars of our own stories; everybody’s life is book fodder.

The only thing that’s not great about the Anne books is all the ejaculating. “Anne, what do you think you’re doing?” Marilla ejaculated. Awkward!

It’s been warm and sunny here, happily enough. I’m driving around with the windows open in the car and wearing sleeveless shirts, and it feels wonderful. A man riding a motorbike was stopped in front of me at a red light, and he was wearing a shirt that said boldly, across the back, “Go Big Or Fuck Off”. It made me think of my across-the-alley neighbour who frequently wears a t-shirt that has a picture of a clock on it and the words “Fuck The Time”. I was driving the kids to school one day when he was wearing that shirt, having a conversation with the elderly lady from three doors down. He cheerfully waved; the boys were fascinated. Did you see his shirt, Mom? Do you think that Mrs. D noticed what it said? Yes, I did, and maybe? Then again, maybe she has cataracts.

The other day I was working in my back garden, and I could hear my next-door neighbour talking with her next-door neighbour – that’s Beeps’ “daddy”, for those of you who have been reading about the Boyhouse for a while. My ears perked up when I heard my name mentioned. Did Nicole change her hair? Beeps’ “daddy” asked loudly. Because it sure looks different. Was it always that colour? It seems awfully…red. I thought of Anne Shirley, and how she would flip whenever her hair was referred to as “red”, rather than “auburn”. I’m just glad mine wasn’t being referred to as “orange”. I wondered if I should make my presence known, but then I decided to stay quiet just in case they started gossiping about me. Sadly, the conversation moved on to tree pruning and the weather, so I never did find out about my hair’s approval rating in the neighbourhood.

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For the record, I did not change my hair. But my roots ARE out of control.

A 1970s Summer, But With Helmets and Seatbelts and Sunscreen

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It’s hard to believe that one week ago today was the last day of school. It feels like much, much longer, but not in a bad way. We just got back from three nights at my parents’ lake house and it was wonderful. But of course! How could it help being anything but when everyone – including me and the dog – gets insanely spoiled by Grandma and Grandpa? If anyone needs me I’ll be detoxing from my wine and chip consumption.

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There’s a lot of buzz around a certain theme this summer – a give your kids a 1970s style summer theme. I read the original article, smiled nostalgically, and was only a little surprised to find out a few days later that this idea, the idea of a free-range, lots-of-TV, drink-from-the-garden hose kind of summer had been taken very seriously. I didn’t realize that it was meant to be taken any way but as a heart warming nostalgia piece, but evidently, I misjudged the internet.

I don’t remember too much about the seventies – I was still pretty young – but I do remember watching The Dukes of Hazzard as a child. Age-appropriate shows weren’t exactly a thing back then, but fortunately, the law-breaking, moonshine-running plots went over my little bowlcut-sporting head. I was twenty-three before I realized that the underlying theme for Three’s Company was that Jack was pretending to be gay so he could live with two girls. I literally had no idea. I just remember feeling mild resentment that I, as a brunette, was forced to be on Team Janet. Add that to the Little House on the Prairie books – Beautiful Golden-Haired Mary versus Very Bad Brunette Laura – as well as the fact my best friend had thick, wavy, white-blonde hair, and it’s no wonder I have hair issues.

But back to the Dukes of Hazzard: while at my parents’ place, we went into town for the Canada Day festivities. A few blocks off the main street is this amazing place:

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I did not go in, despite the exciting claims of “Daily Food” and “Patio Pool Table”. But oh, how I wanted to.

Sunday had pretty much the worst possible weather imaginable for late June – high winds, pouring rain, and a high temperature of thirteen degrees Celsius. And here’s where the 1970s summer comes in: in the absence of video games and other technological distractions, Mark and I played approximately one million games of Go Fish, only one of which I won. Jake and I played a 40 minute game of War, and the only reason it ended at 40 minutes is because I eventually put a time limit on it. It was like playing a low-rent version of Risk. Mark made up his own games by drawing Pokemon and making little cards, and Jake played a game racing various Hot Wheels against each other.

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Eventually the rain stopped and we sent the boys OUTSIDE.

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Clothing wise, it does seem like we are having a 1970s summer. Last week I took the boys to the local amusement park, and I felt like some kind of fashion anthropologist, pinning the year onto the styles all the kids were wearing. We arrived at the park and there were busloads of teens from surrounding rural areas, clearly on an end of school celebratory trip. The temperature was about eighteen degrees, but the girls were almost exclusively dressed in Daisy Duke short-shorts and tank tops. A few had sweaters around their waists that their mothers probably forced on them. The only thing that was confusing to this fashion anthropologist was that I counted four pairs of overall shorts and one pair of acid-washed short shorts, which seemed more eighties than seventies.

Since there were so many people arriving at the park, the boys and I made a beeline for one of their favourite rides, the Dream Weaver, which is basically a bunch of swings that go around in circles high in the air. The boys jumped into the very short line, and I snapped a picture of their angelically happy faces. Look at those angels!

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They must be so excited and happy to get on the ride, one might think from looking at this photo. In reality, they are looking in an amused way at the swings that were stuck high up in the air. “EVERYBODY STAY CALM!” screamed the operator. “STAY IN YOUR SEATS WITH THE SEATBELT SECURELY FASTENED!” I’m not sure if anyone was about to quickly unbuckle and jump thirty feet down just to be free of the Dream Weaver, but in any case, we steered clear of the ride for the remainder of the day, even after the maintenance people deemed it ride-worthy.

With the Dream Weaver off our radar for the day, the boys chose to participate in a water gun activity in which they were paired against a couple of teen boys, and let me tell you, nothing gets my kids’ spirits up like the idea of a battle challenge. They didn’t win.

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They were happy with their efforts, and didn’t complain at all about spending the day in soaking wet clothes. Later we had peanut butter sandwiches and bought cotton candy, which seemed ridiculously expensive. What is the markup on a $5.50 bag of cotton candy? I’m guessing $5?

Cotton candy, card games, and broken carnival rides – maybe it’s going to be more of a 1970s summer than I thought! In any case, a great first week. xo

Christmas came early!

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You probably know this already, but I pride myself on my organizational skills. Meal planning? Yes. To-do lists, long and short term? Yes. School and activity schedules? Yes. At the beginning of the year I take the Important Dates To Note handout from the school and I write each and every Important Date in my calendar, in a different colour, so that I can See At A Glance all the Important Dates for the year. Last September I wrote Last Day – Early Dismissal! on Thursday, June 26. At the time I thought it seemed late; generally the last day of classes is on a Wednesday, not a Thursday.

This morning I was chatting with a friend at the playground after drop-off and I casually mentioned the slog that is the last week of school. “Oh well,” I said cheerily, “Only three and a half days left to go!”. She looked at me strangely. “You mean two and a half,” she said, “Last day is Wednesday.” LO AND BEHOLD. The date had been changed on the website and it’s true, it’s TRUE. Wednesday is the last day and now I suddenly feel like Christmas came early this year.

Which is not to say I wasn’t a little unsettled by the reception of this new information. I scrambled to rearrange an appointment I had made for Wednesday afternoon and I rushed home to make the chocolates for teacher’s gifts. It was on my to-do list today anyway, but I felt like I was doing something totally last minute instead of being smugly early. I do better when I’m smugly early, I guess.

What are you doing/ did you do for teacher’s gifts this year, if anything? I normally give gift cards for the mall, along with some nice chocolates, and the kids make cards. Normally I buy the chocolates but this year the boys thought I should send some of my dark chocolate truffles, so that was my morning: rolling, dusting, and packing up three dozen little chocolates. I tied an ingredients list to the mason jar in an attempt to be Pinterest-y, but unfortunately I am unable to tie a decent bow to save my life. Hopefully the chocolates make up for my lack of artistic ability.

Our home phone is on the fritz, which isn’t generally a big issue – who uses land lines anymore anyway? – but this morning the telephone repairman was scheduled to come and fix it. It’s one of those rare Calgary days where it’s actually warm, and so today I am wearing a skirt and tank top. Making truffles is a bit of a messy business, and so I grabbed an apron and set to work. After I finished I made a pasta salad for dinner, then wandered off to do some work. I forgot to take off the apron and so I was a little startled when I looked at myself in the mirror:

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I’m just going to say that I’m actually pretty glad the telephone repairman never showed up, even though no one can call me still and I’m worried I’m missing some important reminder that only comes via land line. Because seriously, nothing says “Adult Filmstar Awaiting Arrival of Telephone Repairman” like wandering around your house wearing an apron that covers your entire outfit. Plus that’s the apron my mother gave me for Christmas, that she bought in a lingerie store. Oh, nothing, just wearing my lingerie apron while anxiously awaiting you, Telephone Repairman.

It was a pretty lovely weekend all-round; my husband and I separately decided that the constantly-aphid-infested golden ninebark in the back yard had to go. I looked at it and looked at it and phoned my husband to say that we needed to get rid of it – the golden-green leaves always looked sickly instead of interesting, and it was always full of aphids – and he was simultaneously preparing to tell ME that we should dig it out. It was a very O Henry moment. Or maybe the opposite of O Henry, since we were both happy at the end, I don’t know. In any case, it’s gone and in its place are some beautiful purple and pink annuals. An unexpected trip to the garden centre for more flowers is always a happy thing, I think. Other than gardening, we also had some friends over for dinner AND went to a friend’s 40th birthday party, which is more plans than we usually have in a month of weekends.

This also happened:

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Orange belts! I’m so proud of them!

What do Count Almasy and Elaine Benes have in common?

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You know how some pop-culture moments stay with you for many years after their relevance has dissipated? Nothing dates a person faster than saying something like “Where’s the beef?” or “How YOU doin’?” and yet, I find myself unable to stop. If I’m making lasagne, I constantly say “VEGETABLE LASAGNE” like Elaine Benes, if I’m making hummus I say “This hummus is amazing. God bless the chickpea.” Probably right now you’re thinking how awesome it must be to live with me. I’m a barrel of fun! Just ask my husband and kids.

*note: my husband and kids would not say I am a barrel of fun.*

On this vein, when something occurs more than a few days in a row, I am reminded of Count Almasy in the English Patient, when he leaves Katharine in the desert to go get help. “I have been walking…I have been WALKING…for THREE DAYS…I do not want to spell my name.” Today I looked out the window at the pouring rain and said to myself in a fake Hungarian accent, It has been raining…FOR THREE DAYS…I do not want to walk the dog.

It’s been pouring rain here; the house is completely dark and no matter how well I wipe Barkley’s feet there are paw prints all over the floor. There’s only one week left of school and as always during the last week of school, it feels like a lot of effort, just putting one foot in front of the other. Just keep going! One more week! On the upside, the hostas are looking great and the grass is really green! I had optimistically written “weeding!” on my list of things to do today, but it looks like that is going to be a tomorrow job. Hopefully.

The sun is supposed to come out tomorrow, and so today I’m going to focus on Things That Make Me Smile.

Search Terms For This Blog

Nothing cheers me up faster than seeing how people come to read this blog *waves at all of you*. Here are popular search terms for this blog from the past 30 days:

jaminals – well, I can see that. I did write a post featuring jaminals.

why is a man’s forearm sexy – I’m not sure where this came from.

naked woman gardening in house – ditto. I don’t garden naked in the house. I don’t even have plants in the house.

huge boners – um

play in soccer in the freezing point of rain with pneumonia – sadly, this was an actual topic of a post back in 2011 when Mark had pneumonia and still wanted to go to soccer practice.

fat whore – huh

I drink green smoothie my tongue swell – CALL THE DOCTOR IMMEDIATELY!

and my personal favourite:

I watch my neighbor’s boyfriend wear panties outside.

Godspeed, internet searcher. Godspeed.

This Video With Little Hamsters Eating Little Burritos

I dare you to watch this and not be instantly happy.

This Amazing Internet Commentary

My friend Annabel posted this about a rainbow cake recipe that inspired an apocalypse of commentary, and it is pretty much my favourite thing I’ve ever read. I laughed until I cried and had stomach pains. As an economist, I appreciate how Keynesian economic theory gets mentioned, along with some uncivil discourse on the etymology of the word “liberal”. As one commenter so aptly says, “Shit’s getting real up on the recipe comments.”

Ah, I can only dream of the day when one of my recipes inspires a fascist versus communist, helicopter versus free-range parent comment war. You just never know what will set people off. I’m a member of several vegan discussion boards and often one member will casually mention “honey” or “owning cats” and ninety comments later you wonder what just happened. Whoa nelly. I remember several years back when a friend casually mentioned Esperanto on her personal blog, saying it was a silly, made-up language. She was instantly inundated with comments from the Esperanto Society. There are people who will argue anything, and that includes, apparently, a rainbow cake with numbers in it. As one of the commenters said, “Lmaooooooooooo”.

The 2010 Olympic Mascots, Four Years Later

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Approximately fifty-two months ago, something magical happened; that magical thing was the 2010 Olympics. The kids at the time were in pre-kindergarten and kindergarten, and they were extremely interested in the Olympics: the events, the location, and the mascots. Especially the mascots. At one of my myriad book fairs, there was a book about the mascots called “Miga, Quatchi, and Sumi: The Story of the Vancouver 2010 Mascots”, and since the purchase of that book it has been perused approximately one million times. But back in early 2010, the boys expressed interest in purchasing one of those mascots. A miserable afternoon trip to The Bay yielded absolutely no results save a few gigantic versions of Miga, but my husband looked online and bought a four-pack of the stuffed animals, which included Muk-Muk, the mascot sidekick. Those mascots went with us on our first plane trip to Palm Desert, and have gone with us on every single trip since then.

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Mascots enjoying the warm air of Palm Desert. So far from their homes of Whistler, Vancouver Island, and “The Mysterious Forests of the North.”

Then my husband actually went to Vancouver while the Olympics were on; he lived there in his long-ago youth and went to stay with some friends for a few days to take in the Olympic vibe. He found two kids’ t-shirts that were unavailable at home, that featured the mascots in all their glory. Mark put his on and basically wore it every week for the next forty-three months.

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He wore it while blowing up balloons.

 

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He wore it at the duck pond.

 

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He wore it while learning to scooter.

 

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He wore it while hanging out under a shady tree when it was 35 degrees.

 

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He wore it while laughing about the meat market.

Jake wore his too, sometimes, but without the same zeal or passion.

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Seaside Quatchi.

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Note that Mark is still wearing his.

 

But alas. All good things must eventually come to an end. For one thing, what was an oversized t-shirt for a kindergartener was now practically a crop top for a 10 year old, and I am not one of those mothers who will stand by while her sons wear a half-shirt. By god, if they want to wear mesh half-shirts and cutoff shorts, they can do it under their own roof. Plus, the shirt was really showing its age due to nearly four years of washings.

He still loved the shirt, as worn out and faded as it was, and I knew I would never donate it or give it away. I read somewhere about making a favourite shirt into a pillow, and so I asked my mom – who is pretty handy with the needle and thread – if she would do this.

Small digression: my children would never, ever ask me to do anything that required basic sewing skills. They know this is not an area in which I excel. In fact, I almost failed Grade Nine Home Ec because of the sewing component. I would sit next to my best friend, humming away at the sewing machine, making her outfit that she was actually planning to wear, while I ripped out stitches over and over until my “project” was cheesecloth-like in appearance and I had to borrow someone else’s different-coloured ribbed material to try to patch things back together. I cannot sew a button on clothing without disastrous results, and the one time I made a yarn-based craft it turned out like this:

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Those are supposed to be octopuses, or octopii? I don’t really know.

In any case, my mother agreed to this project, so on the weekend we took the beloved green shirt over to her house where she whipped it into a pillow in approximately three minutes. On the way home Jake mentioned how soft Mark’s new pillow was. How cool it was. How amazing it was and OMG JEALOUS. A quick text to my mother, who pretty much would do anything for her grandkids, and the wheels were in motion.

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Proud pillow owners.

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Action shot!

 

The idea did not originate with me, so thank you to whoever came up with this fun parenting idea of the day: turn a favourite shirt into a pillow. If only I had saved all my concert t-shirts from the eighties! I could have a whole bed full of Depeche Mode, Midnight Oil, Grapes of Wrath, and INXS t-shirt pillows! It would add a certain je ne sais pas to my home decor, that’s certain.

Maybe Bed, Bath, and Beyond. I don’t know. I don’t know if we’ll have enough TIME.

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Did you know that Father’s Day is THIS WEEKEND? I know! First the May long weekend is “early”, now Father’s Day is on the 15th, and I feel like I’m in some weird time warp. Which means, of course, that my father-in-law’s card will be late – as usual – and that I’m scrambling to figure out what to get my own dad. I don’t know how things work in your house, but in mine, I’ve somehow become the default person for buying cards for my in-laws. If I don’t, then no cards will be bought, written in by the children, and sent. On the one hand I feel a bit resentful about this turn of events, but on the other, the thought of my father-in-law walking to get the mail and getting no card from the kids is just too sad.

Yesterday I went out to purchase a gift for my husband. We don’t usually go crazy with gifts on Mother’s Day or Father’s Day. Typically, the kids make cards and I go shopping at the garden centre as my Mother’s Day gift, which somehow turns out to be MUCH more expensive than, say, a bouquet of flowers. Two minivan-loads of plants later, my Mother’s Day gift is fulfilled. But Father’s Day tends to be a bit trickier; the kids want to give a gift, but my husband has, literally, everything. How many subscriptions to Golf Digest and boxes of Pro-V1s does one man need?

But we had a big barbeque on the weekend, with my husband making ribs for the guys and a butternut squash and vegetables for me, and he announced that he would really, really like a big platter with which to carry ribs/ giant steaks/ other meat in to the house, rather than having to make several trips with our normal plates. A big platter! That shouldn’t be hard, I thought. I’ll go out and look, I thought. How difficult could this be, I thought, ridiculously in retrospect.

Sometimes we need a sign from the universe to show that the paths that we take are the right ones. In my case, I normally shop online, with only a few exceptions. I love online shopping; I can clearly see what items are in stock and what are not, generally you can get a coupon or sale code, and my purchases magically show up right at my door. Unfortunately, with Father’s Day coming up in a mere five days, I didn’t really have time to wait for shipping and I didn’t want to pay extra for expedited shipping. So I slicked on some lip gloss, slipped on my fancy non-dog-walking shoes, grabbed my purse and headed for The Bay.

What is it about The Bay? I will keep to myself my opinions on the Jessica Simpson line of clothing that included denim overall shorts, but I will not keep quiet about the disaster that is shopping at The Bay. Why is it so disorganized? Why is it so cluttered? Why is there never any stock, or staff to help? Why do they make it so difficult? I circled around the Housewares department several times, perking up at the barbeque accessories only to be disappointed again and again. I looked through each and every aisle, wondering why the electric razors and suitcases were right beside the kitchen linens, and why there was every kind of kitchen gadget imaginable but no platters. Why were there barbeque accessories but no outdoor dining accessories, save for bright green plastic plates and plastic cups with a floral motif? Was a simple platter so hard to find?

I gave up and went to Bed Bath and Beyond, the name of which store I can never say without silently repeating, a la Frank the Tank, “I don’t know. I don’t know if we’ll have enough TIME.” But Bed Bath and Beyond was worse. That store is like a sensory explosion; walking into it I find I can barely remember what I went in there for – was it this Jelly Belly Slushee maker? Or maybe this “Roll-a-Lotion Body Lotion Applicator”? How about a spiral vegetable cutter? That whole store is like an experiment in how quickly we as a species can make a landfill overflow.

Suffice it to say I did not find a platter, although I was directed to a section with cheap-looking floral plates and clear plastic platters, which already looked stained and scratched. I looked at my watch, realized that the afternoon was half over, went home, and found something online that will be delivered in 7-14 business days.

Better late than never, and sign from the universe taken to heart: next time, skip the store.