My husband and I were watching the G20 black-clad anarchist protesters on TV. When the footage showed someone setting a police car on fire and then jumping around on it, he turned to me and said “If one of our kids ever did something like that, I would blow all their education funds and inheritance. I would buy a f**king Maserati and tell them, That’s what your stupidity bought, you little bastard.”

I suppose that’s one way to deal with it. In any case, it’s good to have a plan.

The thing about these so-called anarchists that really bothers me, other than, you know, the violence and destruction, is that all of them were allegedly anti-capitalism, meanwhile smashing things with rock hammers and nail guns probably bought from Home Depot. They were all wearing clothes and shoes bought from somewhere, and you just know that those who did not get arrested were later exhilarated and hungry, so ordered pizzas on their iPhones. I mean, if you want to live in a cabin made from logs that you yourself chopped down, heated by a wood-burning fireplace, eating only items you hunted or gathered yourself, and riding your homemade bicycle everywhere while wearing clothes you wove yourself from native grasses, then BY ALL MEANS be an anarchist. If you are not willing to do that, join society and stop smashing things.

Speaking of hypocrisy, this month’s O magazine has a section on different dietary choices, and there is a quote from someone who is a fruitarian. Did you know there are fruitarians? I sure didn’t. Here is the quote:

“I was already a vegan when I came to the conclusion that any form of cooking was killing; that’s when I decided to eat only raw food. But even that meant killing plants, and I’ve always believed plants enjoy their existence…Raw fruit is the perfect solution: The plant lives on even after you harvest the fruit…I’ve now been living happily on raw fresh fruit for 24 years.”

Huh. I stared at that quote for a while and the first thing that popped into my head, other than what the health implications of eating only fruit would be, was where would a fruitarian live? What kind of structure, and what would it be made of? How would it be heated? What kind of clothes would one wear? Would you still write on paper? I’m guessing that keeping a pure fruitarian lifestyle would be extremely complicated, unless you could somehow make clothes out of dried apple peels and avocado skins.

The boys have been reminding me, in a very earnest way, to reduce, reuse, and recycle, in keeping with their various school-related Earth Day activities. I think we do a fairly decent job of that in our house: we recycle everything we can, we use steel water bottles and reusable shopping bags, we try to keep our house from overflowing with plastic consumables, although this is fairly relative. The boys do have plastic toys, we did – due to Jake’s incessant talking about it – receive a landfill-destined Slap Chop for Christmas. The Slap Chop: thousands of years from now landfills will be studded with those monstrosities, possibly the best-marketed piece of junk ever invented. Vince, you liar. The Sham-Wow was a useful addition to our household, but the Slap Chop? Jake talked ceaselessly about it to his indulgent grandma and was thrilled when she gave it to us, and then was subsequently saddened when it became apparent that no, kids cannot use the Slap Chop and no, the Slap Chop doesn’t actually work. Don’t even get me started on the Graty.

Terrible plastic gimmicks and toys notwithstanding, we do try to minimize our environmental impact. However, there are many things I don’t do which I could do – I could walk the boys to school instead of drive, for example, I could xeriscape more and take shorter showers, I could use one of those Diva Cups if the thought didn’t make me totally squeamish.

It’s popular now to be a locavore, thank you “100 Mile Diet”. A friend and I were discussing the fact that people who you think should be compassionate and open minded are generally the opposite of that when it comes to food. Generally anyone who refers to their diet using the word “purist” is a zealot about it; however, I would probably be the world’s smuggest locavore if I lived in a different climate. I do purchase locally grown product when it is available, although I do not think that environmentally there is much difference between vegetables trucked from another province and ones that are grown in a hothouse in Alberta in the winter. For most of the year, if I was to eat only food produced within a 100 mile radius, I would be eating a lot of beef, pork, potatoes, wheat, and corn. My fruit choices would be Saskatoon berries and crabapples. Not to mention the fact that there are no nearby vineyards or locally grown coffee beans. So I think I will stick with my non-eco-friendly-more-than-100-mile-diet, with a side order of vague guilt.

What do you do that causes environmentally-related guilt?

I don’t know about you, but I am completely overwhelmed by the situation in Haiti. The images I have viewed are so incredibly unbelievable to me – people using their hands to pull bodies out of concrete rubble because of the total lack of heavy machinery, blocked roads, looted food supplies. Not to mention the children. I am just feeling completely overwhelmed by it.

For those of you in Canada, the Canadian government is matching donations up to a maximum of $50 million. Some companies, my husband’s being one of them, are also matching employee donations. Every little bit counts.

I just received some tragic news about a neighbourhood family. Please send thoughts and prayers their way. I am going to hug my kids and vow to be grateful for everything I have.

Mark ran in his very first Terry Fox run yesterday. It was such a gorgeous sunny day and it was so inspiring to see the kids bringing in Toonies for Terry, running their hearts out, proudly collecting their hand stamps for each lap completed. Privately I looked at the size of the field and wondered how many laps the kindergarteners would actually complete, but Mark ran seven, and I was so proud of him.

The remainder of the day, predictably, was spent discussing Terry Fox’s legacy. I don’t know about you, but I really struggle with finding a balance between being honest without being frightening, especially at this age, where kids tend to be so black and white. I myself was the type of child who would focus on imminent disaster and worst-case scenarios. I clearly recall Fire Safety Week at my elementary school, when a visiting firefighter casually mentioned a statistic that all Canadians would at some point be affected by a fire in their lives. He may as well have told me that my house was going to burn down tomorrow. I was terrified about fire for years after and had frequent nightmares. I also have a major thing for firefighters. Is it the uniform? The ability to save people? The bravery? I don’t know, but hubba hubba.

Back to the subject at hand. How do you talk to young children about death and illness? I told them that when Terry Fox was doing the Marathon of Hope, people gave him money which he then used to help sick people. The questions kept coming all day, including “How did he get cancer?” I had been fairly clear and honest about all previous questions, but that one threw me. I tried to focus on his heroism, but I found it impossible to keep from getting teary-eyed.

Terry Fox was someone’s son, someone’s baby. He was a true hero. Later, I watched the boys in the back yard running laps, playing “Terry Fox Run”, I looked at their healthy bodies, their healthy legs, and I cried with gratitude.

Alert! I am going to talk about the weather! I have become your grandma and I’m going to discuss the current weather conditions!

We are having a heat wave! In Calgary! In September! It’s glorious, I tell you. Other than spotting my neighbour shirtless, it has been one lovely day. For one thing, we are all back to our normal state of health, which is pretty nice. For another, I am wearing Capri pants, sandals, and a sleeveless top and it is SEPTEMBER! Given we had frost on Monday, that feels extremely luxurious, like if I wasn’t actually in my own house on a residential street, I might think that I had somehow hopped on a plane to somewhere exotic. Or at least somewhere that has pleasant weather conditions.

We spent the afternoon at a friend’s house. You know what’s really nice? When your friend’s kids are your kid’s friends. It makes a lovely playdate when you can catch up with a friend and your children are not squalling in the background, or asking when it’s time to go home, or some other such scenario.

So we had a lovely day, complete with sprinkler and sandbox, and despite the fact that the leaves are falling with rapidity, and there are frost warnings in the five-day forecast, I could pretend it was still summer.

The thing about back-to-school is all the back-to-illness that seems to come with it. “Hey, Mom!” Mark said gleefully, “You’ll never believe it! The school has water fountains and I can drink from them whenever I want to!” For someone like me – and I say this without pride – the knowledge that Mark has been drinking out of a public fountain practically necessitates the consumption of a tranquillizer. I could almost visualize the germy viruses entering his body via the water fountain. What I’m saying is that I have a teensy bit of a germ phobia. And by teensy bit, of course, I mean that I’m having a love affair with hand sanitizer. I love hand sanitizer so much, I want to take it out back behind a middle school and get it pregnant. On that note, anyone know when the season premiere of 30 Rock is on?

Anyway, Mark has been in school for almost a month and is sick, again. The first time was a very minor case of the sniffles, and the second time – the current incident – was a cold that morphed into a gross, hacking cough. It was worse on the weekend, but this morning he woke up pale and hollow eyed and said he wasn’t sure he could go to school today.

And I let him stay home!

By 9:30 he was playing happily with his brother, coughing only sporadically and making me feel like I just allowed my five-year-old to play hooky.

It seems that I have two little Nicoles on my shoulders: one who thinks, austerely, that unless a child is vomiting, feverish, or completely incapacitated, he should attend his learning institution without fail. The other one thought about all the other pale, coughing, hollow-eyed kindergarteners lined up for class and thought maybe everyone deserves a sick day now and then.

It’s a hard call, this middle ground. I mean, I don’t want to send a slightly sick child to school and then have it morph into a massive, feverish illness that makes me feel completely negligent, not to mention responsible for the infection of all his classmates, but I feel silly keeping home a slightly sick child who becomes, apparently, JUST FINE. I guess the latter scenario has much less dire consequences. Anyway, I will chalk this up to a day of rest and send him to school tomorrow – because the other Nicole? The little austere one on my shoulder? She’s killing me!