Category Archives: Weather or not

Polymer Anarchy – a guest post

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One of my very favourite blog friends is Marilyn, at A Lot of Loves.  She’s awesome and funny and has a really great site.  When she asked me to guest post, I was thrilled and started a post on non-Newtonian liquids.  That’s fun to say.  Non-Newtonian liquids. 

This morning I woke up feeling all stabby from a very frustrating school council meeting last night (have you ever dealt with a school board?  Then you would probably understand.  Those people are from a completely different planet.) and the arrival of fifteen centimetres of snow on the ground today.  I took one look outside this morning at 5:00 and decided that, in lieu of going to the yoga studio, I was going to go back to bed.  Sivasana! 

After some extra sleep, giving myself some exercise by shovelling the wet, heavy snow, and making a snowman with the kids before school – a snowman who was immediately pummeled to death by those same children – I feel much better.  I’m going to make the winning combination of kale chips and chocolate chip cookies today, which makes everything better.  And to top it off, my guest post is up at Marilyn’s, and I would really appreciate it if you could check it out!  I’m going to blind you with science!  See you there.  xo

What makes a happy couple? Not outdoor soccer.

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Last week I was applying makeup while wearing my robe and Jake peered over at my exposed legs.  “Mom, you should go put your stockings on,” he said in a voice of concern.  I assured him that I didn’t need to wear my stockings anymore!  Happy news!  He repeated his request, slightly louder.  I repeated my response in a slightly different way, simplifying it as I thought he didn’t understand, like maybe he had an issue with comprehension of the English language.  Finally, he tearfully snapped.  “MOM!  Please just put your stockings on!  Your legs are creeping me out!”
Ew!  And this is after a week of healing.  It’s like Frankenstein’s monster’s legs, but paler.
I went and put on yoga pants.
Yesterday was a lovely day and I spent the majority of it bundled up and sitting out in the sun, reading, like the elderly person I have now become.  The boys rode their scooters and bikes and dug holes in the dirt while I wondered how much longer it will be until I can clean up the yard a little, plant a few things, cut back the old dead perennials.  There is still snow on the ground although it’s trying to melt.  My husband watched the Master’s, and for those of you who are not golf fans – I suspect that I’m talking to most of my readership here – it is being touted as the most exciting Master’s EVER.  At one point there were six players who were tied for the lead, which is evidently quite rare.  Tiger Woods even was a contender – I coulda been a contender!  I coulda been a somebody, instead of just a nobody. – but he did not win.  It is a little amazing to me that he still has a large fan base and that people were clapping (in the muted, golf way) for him.  I guess this gives hope to Charlie Sheen.
It’s funny about relationships.  I’ve been reading a few articles lately that have addressed the issue of how to “keep the spark alive”, and while I have a hard time keeping the ribald jokes to myself (Blowjobs! Pornography!  Alcohol!), I think it’s an important topic.  My husband is, obviously, an avid golf fan and an avid golf player, while I, most clearly, am not.  I am a yoga practitioner, whereas my husband, most emphatically, is not.  But yet, I find that our separate interests are part of our keeping said spark alive, even if we frequently “parallel talk” – i.e., “I shot a birdie on the tenth hole, then bogeyed the eleventh.”  “My back’s a little stiff from Kapotasana.  I think I should stretch.”  There is no way that we are ever going to be a “golf couple”; I am never donning one of those little hats and killing myself with frustration.  We are also never going to be a “yoga couple”; my husband is never going to “inhale happiness exhale peace.”  We’re a happy couple, though.  Even if I know, against my will, that Rory McIlroy completely fell apart on the back nine.
Tonight is soccer evaluations, and the single greatest email I received last week informed me that the evaluations would take place indoors this year, given the plethora of snow.  I was almost hysterically happy with this news.  Next week the season starts and let me tell you a little secret: outdoor soccer in this city is terrible.  Every year I sit on my little folding chair dressed for a blizzard, with a giant cup of tea and a sleeping bag wrapped around me, and it feels like, indeed, hell has frozen over and I am living in it.  But the kids are happy out there in the fresh air and light evenings, running around, and that’s what matters most.  Now, if only that snow would melt.

Soccer Moms: not just about tracksuits anymore.

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So, after a flurry of activity this weekend, I am much more in control and not so sad, despite the fact that it is still snowing.  Still snowing.  It’s been a week now of snow, blowing snow, and the sky matching the snowy, snowy ground.  Someone who lives in a much, much nicer climate than I do phoned this morning and complained about the lack of green grass where she lives.  I was overcome with hysterical jealousy given that a) it will be a minimum of six weeks before green grass appears here, and b) it will be a while before brown grass appears given the plethora of snow.
But I digress.  I wasn’t even going to complain about the horrible, horrible weather, but instead inform you perkily that I have finished several things on my gigantic to-do list (although not the Costco trip.  That’s tomorrow but my mother is very kindly taking the kids for a few hours meaning I can have my usual Costco-based nervous breakdown without hearing “Mom?  Mom?  MOOOOMMMM?  Can we get a snack?  Can we?  MOOOOOOMMMM.”)  The biggest accomplishment for me this weekend was finishing the soccer schedules.  It is my third year of doing the soccer schedules for our community and the two surrounding, and happily, at no time did I resort to heavy drinking, crying, or trying to stab myself in the heart with my mechanical pencil.  Since I am now a jaded veteran of the world of soccer scheduling, I fully expected some sort of complaint or change as soon as I sent it out to the officials, and so I was not at all thrown off by the almost immediate reply that the number of U10 teams was going to change. 
What I have found about being a stay-at-home mom with kids in school is that the number of volunteer commitments that I sign up for tends to snowball at particular times of the year and then I feel like I have a full time, albeit unpaid, job.  It’s not like I don’t like being involved with the school or soccer community, although being a soccer mom makes me think that I need to go buy a neon windbreaker tracksuit.  I mean, sure, there’s the glory of being known as the “Book Fair Lady”, and the warm feeling of being appreciated when I get accosted at the volunteer appreciation dinner by someone drunkenly thanking me for taking on the soccer scheduling, but sometimes it just feels like a lot of work.  Although maybe it was me being drunk at the volunteer appreciation dinner.  After all, I won a gigantic set of French White Corningware and decided to walk home alone carrying the very heavy box, much to my husband’s dismay when I arrived, stumbling on the doorstep.  “LOOK WHAT I WON!”
But the big news of the weekend was that I attended a few sessions of a yoga workshop with this man, and it was fabulous.  Strenuous, but fabulous.  I have discovered some muscles that I did not know I had, and now I’m moving around like I’m an arthritic ninety year old.  Getting up off the couch is taking some serious effort.  The timing may not have been great given that it’s only three sleeps until my big day, after which I may be walking like an arthritic ninety-five year old.  But well worth it anyway.
How was your weekend?

The Apocalypse? Or PMS?

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Yesterday I was so blue and everything seemed bleak and grim: my legs ache and hurt constantly, there are unspeakable tragedies all over the world, I need to do the soccer scheduling, I have to write an article for the community newsletter, the sky is grey, it’s been snowing for five days, it’s cold and damp and I have to wait outside for 30 minutes between the times that my children finish school at lunchtime, after which I can’t get warm or if I do I have to leave to stand outside again to pick up Mark after school, I stepped in dog poop while cleaning up dog poop, I have surgery next week and so much to do before then and it’s March break starting Monday, the dog stinks, what if I turn into a weirdo mother-in-law and my children become estranged to me in their adulthood, human atrocities do not seem to warrant international intervention unless such atrocities occur in an oil-producing nations, there is going to be an election and I don’t want one, I have to go to Costco, my driver’s license is about to expire and the province did not send me a renewal notice, which is the second time something like this has happened, which makes me believe that it was delivered to someone else and they didn’t bother to drop it at my house, despite the fact that I always, always drop off my neighbour’s misdelivered mail no matter how unimportant it looks.
Everything seemed overwhelming and glum.  I took extra Vitamin D tablets, made my favourite dinner – much to the disappointment of all other family members who do not share my affinity for Greek salad and pita bread – drank some wine and ate a piece of chocolate birthday cake, and then the sun came out for five minutes and I felt a little better. 

All those sad things are still sad today – except for the driver’s license part, which I renewed this morning thanks to the very kind man I spoke with on the government hotline who tipped me off that rates are going up effective April 1st – but I realized something: you know when you feel hopeless and depressed and loathing and like nothing you do even MATTERS, and ew, you have dog poop on your boot, and everything is so overwhelmingly sad but then you look at a calendar and do some back counting and then a lightbulb goes on and you realize – you REALIZE – that there is a reason, a very hormonal reason that you feel that way, and then you know you’re going to feel better soon?  Yes, that.

So I feel slightly more in control of things this morning.  Yes, I have no control over terrible things in the world but I can donate to relief efforts.  Yes, it’s cold and horrible but maybe it will stop snowing soon and March break means I do not have to do the pickups and dropoffs in the freezing cold.  Yes, my legs are constantly aching and swollen but maybe they won’t be in three weeks’ time.  Yes, I have to go to Costco but at least I can get one of those giant logs of goat cheese for five dollars.

I don’t like being sad.  That’s probably the most inane sentence ever uttered but it’s true.  My husband and I were talking the other night about how we used to like adventure travel and how I actually used to have a backpack to put my clothes in and how there were hundreds of places I wanted to experience.  Now, however, I said, looking out the window at the blowing snow “I don’t want to go anywhere cold.  Or anywhere that makes me sad.  I want to go where there’s nice fruit and it would be nice if we could go somewhere I can keep up with my yoga practice.”  My husband looked at me for a minute while I listed off all of my travel requirements then offered, “So you only ever want to go to Hawaii?”

Hawaii would be lovely, it’s true – who wouldn’t want to have a pretty drink with an umbrella in it and get to make “Getting Lei’d” jokes? – but even lovelier was Jake, climbing onto my lap, saying that he wished my operation was tomorrow so I could feel better right away, and if I needed anything he would get it, unless he couldn’t reach it in which case I may have to help him.  And I do feel better.  It’s Friday after all, I have a great yoga workshop to attend this weekend, I have an episode of Parks and Recreation to watch tonight, and Cadbury Mini-Eggs were on special at the grocery store. 

How about you?  Any plans for the weekend? xo

Spring has sprung!

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Well, not really.
I grew up here and March is not, to me, a spring month.  It’s a WINTER month.  My birthday is in late April and that is when spring begins for me, which is not to say it won’t snow after said birthday, but it’s spring snow, rather than winter snow.  Big difference.  In the event that I move out of this city into a milder climate – one day, please, one day! – I will be stunned, surely, by flowers and grass and leaves in March but for now, it’s all about shovelling snow.
It’s easy to get down at this time of year, the sky is grey, the snow is on the ground and has been for five months, magazines everywhere are advertising spring fashions that I might be able to wear in another three months or so, if I’m lucky and it doesn’t snow, but yesterday I was walking the kids to school and I looked at their fleece toques.  The snowflakes on them were perfect; they were perfectly formed, I could see all the individual designs, they were beautiful.  I felt almost poetic, it was a lovely moment.  I showed the boys each of their brother’s toque, and we all marvelled for a moment.  I talked about every snowflake being unique; although truly that is not something anyone could ever prove, no matter how many resources you pumped into that kind of hypothesis, you could never, ever prove it.  Although I suppose you could never disprove it either.  It makes me feel someone like a snowflake agnostic.
Having a positive outlook is so important.  That’s not to say we should all walk around chirping annoyingly about every! great! thing! in! the! world! because wow, would that be annoying.  But I was reading (in O magazine, don’t JUDGE me people, I have a subscription, it was a gift subscription from my mother-in-law) about four things people have control over in terms of their health: not smoking, having a healthy diet, exercising, and having a positive, optimistic outlook. 
I love that!  I also truly believe that positivity and optimism can heal.  My father-in-law, ten years ago, was diagnosed with colon cancer.  He was a man typical of his generation; he had not been to the doctor in probably forty years, and he had been experiencing symptoms for many years prior to his diagnosis.  At the time his tumour was the size of a grapefruit, it had started to metastasize, it was encroaching on organs, he was given six months to a year to live. 
He didn’t believe it. 
He went through aggressive treatment and all throughout he kept saying, “I am going to be healthy at your wedding.”  When we got married – nine years ago tomorrow – he was healthy.  You would have never known he was ill.  Amazing the doctors, he recovered and regained his strength and until recently was cancer free.  But that’s another story.

Screw you, Daylight Savings. Screw you.

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Edited to add: I just discovered that today is Pi Day!  I didn’t even know Pi Day existed, but the fact of its existence has made me so suddenly happy that I almost deleted this post.  Almost.  But now I feel like dancing around – PI DAY!  Please, a note of sympathy for my poor husband, as he has been listening to me rage about Daylight Savings; now he will have to celebrate Pi Day with me.  Hooray for Pi Day!

Here’s a sign of spring: yesterday I was walking the dog and saw, despite the fact that there are snowbanks everywhere and it was only 8 degrees, two men wearing shorts.  There is a special breed of Calgarian who just love to don their shorts the second the snow starts melting, which is bizarre to me but who am I to judge?  I wear shorts exactly never.  Let your freak flag fly, fellows.  Enjoy your shorts.

It’s also time for my semi-annual diatribe against Daylight Savings Time.  How I hate it.  Hate doesn’t even fully describe it; Daylight Savings Time turns me into a red-hot-rage-against-the-machine-bitch.  As you know, I’m not a violent person by nature, I’m all cheery and ahimsa, but I am telling you, people, time change makes me feel, as the beautiful and talented Allison says, all stabby. 
And don’t get me started on the amazing reasons for time change because there ARE no good reasons for time change.  Oh, it’s light late in the evening?  Fuck you.  I wake up at 4:55 a.m. and I like going to bed when it is dark.  No one needs the sun setting at 10:00 p.m.  NO ONE.  And the children, my god, won’t someone please think of the children?  We are all totally screwed up and crabby. 
Oh, but we get the hour back in the fall!  Do we?  Do we now?  Here’s what happens in the fall: the children wake up at their normal time, which is now one hour EARLIER than before, and not only is that excruciating from a psychological standpoint, but it also means that by dinnertime they are falling apart with tiredness, and can barely stay awake until bedtime, and then they are sleep deprived assholes.  In the spring, the children wake up at their normal time, which is now one hour LATER than before, so when it is bedtime they are not tired and also there is bright fucking sunshine, so they fall asleep later and are exhausted when you wake them up for school.  Then, since they are exhausted they are falling apart and crabby by dinnertime and they have turned into sleep deprived assholes.  You see?  No change.  Just a whole lot of crabby children and parents.  And, since it takes several days to fully adapt to a change in time, it is almost a week of crabbiness.  STOP THE MADNESS.
Let me tell you something, people, Saskatchewan has it right.  I know, I know, insert your smartass Rider Pride/ dog ran away/ paint drying/ pass the freaking wheat comments here, but they are leaders in this country with regards to time change.  We could all take a lesson from Saskatchewan.  And the next time someone erroneously tells me that we have Daylight Savings Time because “of the farmers” I will punch them in the face.
Whoa.  Where did all that anger come from?  This is what Daylight Savings does to a person.  Om Shanti.
On a more positive note (like I could get more negative, right?) thank you all for your kind words and comments.  I treasure all your comments and support, so thank you so much.
A happy picture to make up for my colossal bitchiness.  From the Happiest Place on Earth!  Pluto was the one and only character the kids wanted to see.  The rest, they said, were “kind of creepy”.  What can I say, I agree

A Tale of Two Closets

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Well, it’s one closet really.  The other day I was making my bed and I looked up and saw this:
From this view it would appear that my husband has bogarted all the closet space.  All those shirts, neatly hung on the upper tier, meanwhile I have a couple of hoodies squished on the bottom tier alongside several neatly hung pairs of men’s dress pants.  It made me feel a little sorry for myself until I opened the other side of the closet to reveal:

There are three other shelves that look like that.  I think I probably have enough yoga clothes, what do you think?

I probably have enough sweaters, and more notably, enough black tops.  I have an intervention-worthy addiction to black tops.  If one is on sale, I must purchase it.  But it’s 50% off!  I know I have three other v-necked black sweaters, but this one has a pocket! 
I realized I had a problem recently while packing for our trip.  My husband and I were sharing a suitcase, and he had set out the clothes he was planning to take.

It’s slightly different from the pile of clothes I was planning to take.

After I took this photo, I completely panicked and added a third bikini and cover-up, and two more black tops.  My husband, on the other hand, looked at his pile of shirts and took one out, questioning whether he really needed two similar shirts.  I did actually wear all the clothes I took, even though some people have expressed doubt at my need for this volume of clothing, specifically all the similar black clothing.
It was a mere eight days ago that I was wearing one of those bikinis and sleeveless tops.  It feels like longer given that it has been -25, windy, and snowy all week.  We are now at that point where I have completely lost perspective and have forgotten that a season not involving giant boots and coats actually exists.  I have a nagging feeling that we are actually entering the Ice Age, and I keep expecting to look out the window to see a small woolly mammoth taking up residence in my backyard.
The problem with weather like this is that we all become completely boring; every time anyone opens their mouths a comment about the extreme cold comes out, and the worst thing about this is that talking about the weather becomes fascinating in a dull sort of way.  According to my blog, last year at this time I was working in my perennial garden; as I write this the snowflakes are falling from the dull, grey sky and the yard is completely frozen and snow-covered, which makes me feel like curling up in a ball with a blanket, staring at the walls and eating potato chips, which I am NOT GOING TO DO.  Instead, I’m going to focus on the happy.
Last night after several glasses of wine, I thought that if I ever cultivate my blog “brand” and really start marketing my blog “brand” instead of spending all my time writing inane posts about germ phobia, the crappy weather, and my old-lady varicose veins, I have the perfect tagline: “Putting the OM in OMG”.  I thought this was hilarious and also perfectly encapsulated all aspects of my personality and I shared it with my husband, who listened patiently as he usually does when I have a wine-fueled idea.  His response was lukewarm, “I’m not a chick, and I also don’t do yoga, so I’m not sure if it’s funny or not.”  In the cold and sober light of morning, I wonder if he’s right?  What do you think, dear readers?  Funny?  Perfectly “Nicole”?  Or just weird and confusing?