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Is this day thermal-spray-worthy? Probably not.

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Remember the Seinfeld episode where the contraceptive sponge was discontinued, and Elaine stocked up on them but had to screen each of her potential sexual partners to ensure that they were worthy of a sponge? I’m having that issue right now, but with hair products.

I haven’t written a “Nicole’s Favourite Things” in a while, but I wish I had sung the praises of Abba’s Thermal Styling Spray, because I’ve been using it for years. You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone. This is the single greatest styling product of all time, but when I was in the salon a few weeks ago, my hair therapist mentioned that there seemed to be a Problem With The Supplier and she thought it might be Discontinued. She mentioned it to me with some degree of urgency, and said she was looking into Alternatives But Had Yet To Find A Good One.

Panic At The Disco.

I have one bottle in my possession, and I am hoarding it like nobody’s business. I’m now wondering what occasions will be important enough for me to use it. Coffee with the girls? Volunteering at the school? Visit with the in-laws? Good-looking plumber coming over to fix my kitchen tap?

The answer is “none of the above.” I’ve been only using some kind of flexible hold spritzer that I got at the drugstore as a stop gap measure. I’m not sure what occasion will warrant me using the thermal spray, but I sure hope that my hair therapist finds a good alternative soon, or it will be a lifetime of merely-adequate hair days.

Speaking of hair, I was at Costco the other day, and the man who checks the carts and receipts at the exit gave me a big wink and a smile. He was sixty-plus, with a friendly face. “Red hair is my favourite,” he said to me, “And I love yours!” Well, I thanked him very much, to which he responded, with a nudge and raised eyebrows, “I suppose you’re going to tell me it’s all natural.” People, I was moments away from making a “carpet and curtains” joke, when my “inappropriate” siren went off. Note to self: making a ribald joke about matching the carpet to the nearly-retired cart-checker at Costco is inadvisable. Instead, I responded with a laugh and a comment about the feistiness being natural, anyway.

The whole reason I was in Costco, besides getting frozen fruit, was to look for sheets. You know how there are some areas of your life that you just find yourself being overly frugal? That’s me with sheets. I may have enough yoga wear to clothe the entire studio on any given day, but when it comes to sheets, ours were so old and had been laundered so many times that they were literally starting to fall apart. The edges of the sheets and pillowcases were frayed, and the sheets themselves were getting worn to threads. And yet, I kept thinking to myself, they’re still good. They’re fine, really.

Long, boring, and completely “who gives a shit” story short, I bought some new sheets and they have been life affirming. Every night I say to my husband, “Look at the sheets! Aren’t they glorious! They’ve changed my life!” And because he’s a patient man, he nods and says “Go to sleep now, you’re starting to not make sense.”

My reluctance to buy new sheets is probably related to my reluctance to throw out the one-centimetre-square piece of soap in the soap dish, because I can still wash my hands with it if I lather hard enough. I know. I know. I blame my mother, whose ability to repurpose freezer bags is legendary.

NO COFFEE NO PRANA

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That’s something that Ashtanga yogis like to say a lot – no coffee, no prana – because it was said by Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, who was apparently a coffee lover. I say it to myself every day when I’m waiting for the coffee maker – no coffee, no prana. I also sing Linda Put The Coffee On, but with “Nicole” substituted for “Linda” which pretty much sums me up nicely.

All of which is to say that today is, apparently, National Coffee Day. One fun little perk about my job at Yummy Mummy Club is that I’m always in the know about what kind of special day it is. Did you know that every day is a special day, and not just in a Romper Room, Mr. Rogers, carpe diem kind of way? Every day celebrates something, which is fun, even if it’s totally random. It’s always National Drink Beer Day or National Love Your Dog Day or National Guacamole Day or National Weiner Schnitzel Day. September 4th is National Hug Your Boss Day, which seems kind of unprofessional, but it’s also National Newspaper Carrier Day. Every second Tuesday in September is National Ants on a Log Day, and tomorrow is both National Chewing Gum Day and National Mud Pack Day.

So today is National Coffee Day, although in my house, every day is National Coffee Day. If it wasn’t, it would be National Oh-My-God-I’m-So-Bitchy Day, so let’s just let me enjoy my coffee. Mmmkay?

As an aside, yesterday I was told that the term “Bitchy Resting Face” is an anti-feminist thing to say. Sure, we probably don’t say that old men with furrowed brows have Bitchy Resting Face, but we might think they look like jerky assholes, so I think we are probably even on that front. BRF just rolls off the tongue more than “wow, that guy looks like a jerky asshole who wants to burn the whole city down, maybe he should smile more.” Meh. I am not anti-feminist – obviously – but I have to tell you, there are reasons I smile in photos. Here’s the biggest reason:

BRF

 

You might say, no, that’s just your face, it’s not bitchy, to which I would respond that the above photo illustrates why I smile a lot. I look like I’m going to murder someone if they say ONE MORE WORD and the truth is, I was probably just looking at a tree. I don’t like looking like this on the outside when I feel like this on the inside:

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Photo from my very talented friend Lucas http://lucasramage.com/

 

You know who doesn’t have Bitchy Resting Face? Barkley. We went away for the weekend and when I picked him up from the “spa” he just couldn’t stop smiling.

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Just like me, smiling is his favourite. But I guess he wouldn’t have Bitchy Resting Face anyway, because he’s a male dog and as such is literally not a bitch.

But I digress. I meant to write about our weekend away and got caught up in drinking a pot of coffee and writing about National Coffee Day. Our trip was fantastic. We were on the very west coast of Vancouver Island, in Tofino. The weather was perfect. The travel was perfect. We had a hot tub on our deck and were right beside the beach. Even the flights were serendipitous – we had boarded our flight to the Island, and were informed we were going to be early when the pilot announced that there was an issue with the cargo door and we wouldn’t be able to take off. But! There was an EMPTY PLANE RIGHT BESIDE US, so we flew in that. That never happens, so I felt like it was a good omen for the weekend.

It’s great to go away and great to be home, and yesterday I caught up on all the laundry, and groceries, and work that had piled up, but it all feels good. The leaves have all changed colour, suddenly, and the city is a gorgeous mix of blue skies with yellow, red, and orange leaves. The cosmos I planted two years ago have self seeded and are in full bloom, amazingly, and all is well in the world. Many, many reasons to smile.

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Back to school, back to school, to prove to my dad that I’m no fool.

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I know it’s the big “first day of school” for a lot of you, but we are already into our second week. The boys were pretty happy to start school last week; we are all enjoying that “back to routine” feeling. The children have been relentlessly quoting Billy Madison: back to school, back to school, to prove to my dad that I’m no fool. Over and over.

I, for one, have been incredibly productive and busy since they’ve been back at school, which is a good feeling. I mean, I miss them – and today I miss them more since they are staying for lunch for the first school patrol meeting of the year – but it’s kind of nice to get things done, too, and to hear later all about the exciting news of the day. “We’re going to be learning about Ancient Greece and the origins of democracy!” said Mark happily, along with “We’ll be looking for moss in our forestry unit!” Jake excitedly talked about the Math Question of the Week, which had to do with being trapped and tied up in a room with a ticking time bomb, and a rat chewing the knots on the rope, and would you be freed in time, or blow up? Jake loves math anyway but the semi-violent and gross Question of the Week took it over the top for him. Math AND explosions? How can one go wrong? Needless to say, the first week was pretty great.

Barkley’s not as happy with the change in season, though:

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Look at that sad, fuzzy face.

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Poor Barkley.

Other than Barkley’s depression, things have been fine so far; I’m thrilled with the boys’ teachers and classroom sizes, and they are too. I’m less thrilled that Mark has already had a cold and so spent the long weekend coughing and lethargic, although the weekend was cold and rainy – and even a bit snowy – so it could always be worse. He could have been coughing and lethargic on a nice weekend. As it was, we spent most of the weekend at my parents’ place for an early Jake-birthday celebration.

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This week I’m apparently going to be chaperoning a walking field trip to a nearby natural park, dubbed “Whispering Woods.” The boys’ teachers are really on the ball and are very technologically-oriented, and so I received a message detailing all scheduled field trips for the upcoming year. The upside of this is that the boys will both be exposed to some excellent learning opportunities, such as a week long trip to something called the “Open Minds” arts centre. The downside is that each of them will require parent volunteers for a week for the trip to the aforementioned “Open Minds” arts centre. I have a feeling my mind is going to be opened. Opened, like a gift, or a flower, or something.

In any case, I received the request for volunteers for this week’s field trip, and in a moment of weakness I capitulated. After all, as I told my husband perkily, now that I’m not chairing the School Council or Parent Association, I have extra time for these in-class requests. “Or,” he said ominously, “You could just say that you’ve done enough volunteering to last a lifetime and have someone else do it.” True.

In any event, I’m happy to say that the forecast is not for snow, nor rain, during the scheduled field trip, although I am wondering what I was thinking. Three hours in the Whispering Woods with 53 fifth-and-sixth graders? Looking at various plants and – if Mark is to be believed – moss? This doesn’t sound like the best idea I’ve ever had.

See you in September

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Today is the very last day of summer vacation and I’m simultaneously melancholy about the fleeting nature of time, and excited to get back into routines. Every single platitude about time and children getting older (I’mmmmm getting older toooooooo) seems more poignant every year. I don’t want to be all “My BABIES” or anything, but I keep being reminded that I only have a limited number of summers to spend with the kids, and at some point they are not going to want to go bowling or watch Downton Abbey with their mom, so I Must Cherish Every Moment. Of course, all that cherishing gets tiring after a while, and so everyone is getting excited about back-to-school. I am, especially, looking forward to not working frantically between 7 and 9 am to get things done so I can Cherish My Darling Children All Day Long.

At this very moment, Cat’s in the Cradle came on the radio. Nice timing, 70s on 7.

The boys will be in Grades Five and Six this year; I have nice memories about Grade Six, but Grade Five was unequivocally the worst of my entire school career, due to typical ten-year-old Mean Girl Syndrome. I’m trying not to project, though, and Mark tells me that Grade Five Was The Most Epic Year Ever, so hopefully it’s equally epic for Jake.

Part of the back-to-school excitement is coming from actual certain knowledge of the kids’ new classes and teachers. Last week I received an email confirming a) each child’s teacher, b) each child’s classroom number, and c) the door at which each child is to line up at. This might sound like nothing to you, but it is certainly a big deal to me. In previous years, we wouldn’t know who the teachers would be or what classroom the kids would be in until 8:45 on the first day of school. Is that not a ridiculous system? Arriving at the school at 8:45, milling around the courtyard with hundreds of kids and their parents, looking for a teacher with a clipboard who would look up names and then finding the appropriate lineup. It was inevitable that there would be sad looking, teary-eyed children discovering that they’d been split from all their friends, and parents trying to Make The Best Of The Situation. I cannot imagine why it’s taken so long to implement such a normal strategy such as emailing parents to disperse information about teachers and classrooms so that kids can be prepared on the first day, but, continuing with platitudes, Better Late Than Never.

Filing under Other Things The School Rocks At, each fall parents pay a fee and school supplies are purchased by the school and distributed throughout the year. I cannot emphasize enough how appreciative I am of this policy, especially when I hear of my friends in other school boards frantically shopping for three lined notebooks in blue, green, and red or twelve number two pencils, yellow, all appropriately labelled, or a ridiculously unrealistic number of Elmer’s glue sticks. Unfortunately I often forget that not every school is the same, and I inevitably find myself thinking, on the first week of school, hmmm…I should go pick up some toothpaste and then ending up in Walmart feeling like I should just probably burn the whole store down and everyone in it, just to end the misery.

What is it about Walmart? Why is it so agonizing there? The boys and I briefly stopped in there last week to pick up some Benadryl and hand lotion, and it was a soul-destroying experience. It didn’t help that we were there on what appeared to be Shelf Restocking Day, and so the aisles were clogged with giant dollies full of product, and no product on shelves, along with people stocking up on sheaves of paper on sale for ten cents each. There was a giant lineup snaking into the “jewelry” department, along with six empty cashiers for 12 items or less. Fortunately that was us, and I wondered, if Walmart has some kind of conspiracy to keep people coming back multiple times just to get in the 12 items or less lineup. Why punish people who get in excess of 12 items? It makes no sense, but it must make sense to someone at Walmart Headquarters. It’s a puzzle for sure, but the bigger puzzle is if it’s really worth it to me to save $2 on Benadryl or if next time, I should just pick it up at the much-less-chaotic old-people Co-Op.

Also known as banana hammocks.

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I had so many plans for this last week of summer vacation – the pool! the zoo! the amusement park! – and the weather has been beautifully warm. It would be a perfect week for all those things! Unfortunately, the city is hidden in a giant cloud of smoke, courtesy of the wildfires out west. The air quality is so bad that we’ve been housebound for days; five minutes at the dog park on Monday, and we all had burning throats and eyes, and Mark was wheezing a bit. It doesn’t smell exactly like being downwind of the world’s largest campfire anymore when I open the back door, but the boys and I just walked down the street to get their hair cut, and now I have a screaming headache. Well, maybe tomorrow will be better. Hold on for one more day, and all that.

Over at Throwing It Back, Hannah wrote about Pump Up The Volume, and it has thrown me into a flurry of nostalgia for movies of my youth. Oh, how I adored Christian Slater. Oh, how I loved that movie. Isn’t it interesting how movies back in the 80s and 90s would never be made today? Think about Heathers: accidental murder, suicide becoming trendy, and homophobia. Oh boy! Just last night my husband and I were talking about Vacation. Can you imagine that being made today? Family road trip ends with enraged man holding Wally World employees at gunpoint so that he can ride all the rides. Well, possibly this movie would be made today but it wouldn’t be a comedy. It would probably star Nicholas Cage and end with the promise of a sequel; a pumped-up and tattooed Clark Griswold, looking like Robert DeNiro from Cape Fear.

Side note: I do know that there is a remake of Vacation – I haven’t seen it yet, although Chris Hemsworth in his underwear is enough enticement, really. I feel fairly sure there isn’t the “holding employees at gunpoint” plotline though.

Meanwhile, the boys and I are still tucking in for our daily episode of Downton Abbey. All this re-watching of it had me puzzled about – of all things – underarm hair. While discussing plot lines of feudalism, estate planning, male heirs, and rape with the boys, I have been secretly thinking about underarm hair.

Nicole says: Well, the reason that note is so important is that Lady Mary actually didn’t have any rights to the Abbey, because she’s a woman. I know! But that’s the way things were back then. Everything went to the boys.

Nicole thinks: They are all wearing sleeveless dresses. Was shaving a thing back then? Or did they all just let it all hang out?

After literally YEARS of wondering about when shaving underarms became a thing, I finally remembered that there is this handy thing called the Internet, and on that Internet is this handy thing called Google, and I could probably stop wondering and get some answers about this very important issue.

The great thing about the Internet is that there is not only a Wikipedia article for practically everything, there is also a website or blog for every single thing. I found a whole article devoted to when women started shaving their underarms, and indeed, it was in the 1920s when sleeveless dresses became popular. Hooray for Downton Abbey and their attention to detail.

Interestingly, leg shaving wasn’t really a thing until the 1940s, what with women wearing longer skirt lengths until that time, which makes sense. Apparently, bikini waxes were first popular with Muslim women in North Africa and the Middle East, when brides would get all their body hair removed pre-wedding night. I had no idea. And here I thought waxes became popular with the rise of the string bikini.

Speaking of which, my friend Candace over at Life in Pleasantville posted a discussion about Speedos, which spurred a comment along the lines of if we say anyone can wear a bikini, why can’t anyone wear a Speedo? This is an interesting point. Why indeed? On the beach in Maui, I would estimate 95% of women are in bikinis, and I think that’s awesome. Rock that bikini, sister, I would say if anyone asked. I celebrate women of all shapes and sizes embracing their figures and wearing any kind of bathing suit they feel comfortable in. And yet, my first response to a man wearing a Speedo is revulsion.

Is this a reverse sexism thing? I don’t know. I mean, there was an incident in which I was sitting by the pool and an older gentleman in a green Speedo bent over in front of me and I got a full glimpse of his testicles, which was disturbing. As much as I want to be open minded, I do not actually want to see a strange man’s testicles. And yet, I have accidentally flashed a nipple while swimming, so the same could be said about me. Maybe I disturbed someone’s inner peace that day, in the same way that gentleman very innocently did to me.

So what is it about Speedos that get us ladies all riled up? Not everyone is flashing their testicles, although the suits do leave very little to the imagination. Of course, bikinis – and, for that matter, most bathing suits – do as well, hence the popularity of the bikini wax for those itsy-bitsy bikinis. Why do we hate Speedos so much? I can’t reconcile my to-get-a-bikini-body-put-your-body-in-a-bikini self with this. In the extremely unlikely, hypothetical event that my husband buys a Speedo, I would burn it, and yet if he did the same to one of my bikinis, it would be mur-diddly-urder around here. HYPOTHETICAL SITUATION, MY HUSBAND WOULD NEVER BUY A SPEEDO OR BURN MY BIKINI.

I don’t know. Maybe I need to work on my open-mindedness. Om shanti.

All depressing subjects covered in one blog post.

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Perhaps in a foreshadowing to Black Monday, it snowed on Friday! Snow in August isn’t unheard of, but it isn’t exactly typical either. Well, snow melts and markets move and the world keeps on spinning.

Fortunately we didn’t have any snow actually stick at our house and my flowers are still alive and well, despite it being 3 degrees for much of the day. The weather has definitely changed and it feels like fall. Even though the afternoons are warm and sunny, there’s still a crispness to the air. School starts next week and despite my excitement about wearing boots and scarves, I’m feeling a bit melancholy about it. We’ve had such a wonderful summer that I’m loathe to have it end. We are trying to fit in as many fun things as possible during this week – the zoo, the pool, the amusement park – so hopefully the weather will cooperate.

Last week I took the kids to see Inside Out. In retrospect, this might not have been the best idea since I has hormonal and emotional, and I had a giant lump in my throat for the whole movie, and actual mascara-wrecking tears at the end of Bing Bong. What a good movie that was. I highly recommend it to everyone as it was probably the most clever and entertaining children’s movie since the first Shrek.

Remember when Shrek first came out, and what a delight it was? I remember seeing it in the theatre with my then-boyfriend-now-husband and just wanting to watch it over and over to catch all the little jokes again. I feel this way about Inside Out – that it’s a many-times-re-watchable movie.

Speaking of re-watching things, the boys have developed an interest in Downton Abbey. I know! I can’t believe my luck either. It all started last year when we were visiting my in-laws; the television at our disposal doesn’t actually have any channels available, and so I had brought my Downton DVD’s with me. The boys started watching with me, and now we are working our way back into Season Four. I’m starting to feel a little uneasy, though, because although the boys have dealt with the storylines involving war, pregnancy struggles, death, and murder, I’m not sure if I’m ready to explain rape to them. Although, a few weeks ago I did have to explain child sexual abuse to Mark, who was completely stunned that such a thing could happen. Aren’t we all, though.

Let’s see: market crashes, snow in August, the death of childhood imaginary friends, and now rape and sexual abuse. I think I’ve covered pretty much every depressing subject available to me today. Quick! Let’s think of something cheerful! How about puppy Barkley sleeping in a Thomas the Tank Engine chair?

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 Ah. That’s better!