Category Archives: When I said you were average I was being mean

Ketchup Chips are a Canadian Thing?

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Right this minute, there is a news story on TV, in honour of Canada Day, all about the words “eh”, “knapsacks”, and “washroom”, and how ketchup chips are a Canadian thing.  American friends, I must know this for true: are there no ketchup chips in the States?  Really?  If that is true, I am very sad for my friends south of the border.  I am also sad that this is the news channel I watch of my own volition.  Who needs real news anyway, when I can marvel over Americans calling them “candy bars” instead of “chocolate bars”? 

Related to the state of my mind right now: Jake and I just sang “Call Me Maybe” together and it was a proud, proud moment for me.

Also a proud, proud moment: on Thursday I took the boys to the local amusement park where we met up with friends, and the kids rode the log ride all by themselves.  For me, this is quite possibly the greatest developmental milestone ever, the fact that I never again have to sit in a big plastic log zipping down a big slide with slimy, possibly decades-old water splashing all over me.  And why was I feeling verklempt about the passage of time?  For no good reason, that’s why.

Speaking of the rapid passage of time, today I heard on the radio – not my usual oldies station, but an actual modern, for-the-young-people station – something disturbing.  For the long weekend, the station was playing various number one hits from years past.  One of the flashback years was 1995. 

Now, I don’t know about you, but to me, 1995 does not seem so long ago.  It doesn’t seem worthy of a flashback hit.  But then again, when they played the song, I could clearly recall dancing to it in the bar, probably while drinking a vodka slime out of a jug, and wearing a crop top and high waisted jeans, with my Rachel haircut.  I was twenty years old: a significant number of years have passed since those days.  All I’m saying is that I can really understand how old people say that something happened a couple of years ago, when the reality is that the relevant event really took place decades ago.

More on the passage of time: this weekend my parents took the kids up to the lake without me.  This is the first time such a thing has happened; my parents have looked after my kids overnight before, but this was the first time that they have been taken to a second location.  After typing that I realize that I just made it sound like my parents abducted the kids, but no.  A fabulous time was had by all.  They celebrated Canada Day by going to the nearby small-town parade, where they waved flags, ate ice cream, and went on bouncy castles and through obstacle courses.  They had a great time.  I, on the other hand, celebrated Canada Day by eating scrambled eggs and drinking coffee while watching episode after episode of Mad Men, nursing a little hangover since I was at a party the night before and I didn’t get home until almost 11:30.  See what happens when the kids are away?  NICOLE’S GONE WILD. 

My husband and I went up to the lake to spend the night and bring them home today.  When I asked them if they missed me, the answer was “Um, not too much.” and “It was kind of MORE fun with just Grandpa and Grandma!”  Well, I guess that’s to be expected.  I’m not exactly known as Super Fun Mom – I did, after all, just buy them math flash cards, some workbooks, and journals for the summer. 

Math Geeks and Pi Day and Blowing Things Up

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It’s Pi Day, the day that math geeks everywhere celebrate the ability to measure properties of a circle.  Hooray for Pi Day!  I don’t mean to boast, but I am awesome at math.  Oh sure, I would be a little rusty these days, but back in the day I rocked the calculus world.  I remember taking my very first calculus class and knowing at the onset that I loved it and knew what I wanted to do with my life – which at the time had nothing to do with the housewife lifestyle that I now live – and after that, I concentrated on math and economics and statistics.  I worked in a male-dominated field in a male-dominated company; I was the sole woman in my work group, and in the larger group, I had few female colleagues.  I mention this because stereotypically, women tend not to pursue careers in the fields of math and science, although this is changing, slowly. 

I’ve been thinking a lot about gender roles and stereotypes lately.  It’s been the buzz all over the internet, ever since Lego came out with their Friends line.  As an aside, had the Friends line been available when I was a child, I would have been all over it.  Which brings me to my next point: although I am a math geek and although I spent my career creating models and running mathematical simulations and loving every minute of it, I am also very feminine.  I wear makeup, scented lotion, and jewelry every day.  I spend a lot of time thinking about clothes and my hair.  When I was a child, my clothes were not all pink – because back then, you wore what your mother said you were going to wear, and there were much fewer choices in the clothing department – but I wished they were.  My room was painted pink, my bedspread was pink, and my favourite toy was a dollhouse.  So.  Does my being a girly-girl preclude my being a math geek?  Of course not.

My boys’ toy preferences and interests were apparent from a very young age.  I was distraught that my nine month old son would fuss in his stroller when I wanted to take him for long walks, until I realized that he would be happy in his stroller when I walked alongside busy streets.  Watching the buses, cars, and trucks was enough to make him happy.  At age two, he could name all the major car manufacturers; when we walked past a vehicle he could identify the make and model.  A friend suggested the “Mighty Machines” videos, and my two sons would watch them over and over again.

My youngest son’s favourite “Mighty Machine” video was one about a demolition site.  His favourite game was re-enacting a demolition site, and his chubby, angelic-looking toddler self would build up piles of blocks and toys merely to knock it all down.  When he and his brother were 2 and 3, they would play dinosaurs.  The dinosaurs were not friends.  They killed each other.  They fought each other.  They would unite against the bad dinosaurs and there would be much carnage.  And later, I would see the two boys snuggled together on the couch, my younger son’s head resting on my older son’s shoulder, and they would ask to watch “Mighty Machines”.

The boys are now six and a half and almost eight.  The games they play almost always involve a battle of some kind, something blowing up, death, and destruction.  In discussing boys and their games, my friend Beck articulated something that I had been struggling to put into words; she said that a lot of traditional male play has to do with safely channeling male aggression, and that it also has to do with little boys grappling with the ideas of justice and helping the innocent.  This struck exactly the right note with me.  I once was having a friendly discussion with another mom, and when I joked about my children and their fascination with blowing things up, she told me to watch out, lest I have a “Columbine situation” on my hands.  You can imagine how that made me feel.

I recently read an article in which the author complained about her daughter and her love for pink clothing and princess accessories.  She had encouraged her sons to wear pink and play with dolls, but she disliked her daughter taking part in the same type of play.  She was, she said, more comfortable when her children challenged gender norms than when they conformed to them.  This upset me in a way I could not articulate, and I still can’t, really.  I cannot imagine how I would have felt, as a child, if the only play available to me was of a “male” variety, or even of a gender neutral one. 

My children play games that would seem to be violent.  They don’t have dolls and they don’t wear pink.  They have friends who are girls.  After school, in the playground, they play games where they spy on the bad guys and then shoot them.  They love stuffed animals.  The bad guys get body parts chopped off in their games.  They turn off the TV when a sad story comes on the news.  This morning they saw an itinerant bottle-picker digging through the recycling in our alley, and when I explained what he was doing, Mark teared up and Jake looked worried, at the thought of someone with no job and no home going through other people’s trash for money.

My boys are compassionate, empathetic, and kind AND they are attracted to violent games and toys.  This does not make them violent.  They know the difference between a game and real life.  When we attempt to force children into a particular role, when we insist that boys have dolls and girls have trucks, we do them a disservice.  The world has room for everyone: tomboy girls and boys who play Barbies, as well as girly-girls and boys who stab each other with pretend light sabres, and everything in between.  Children are not what they play with or wear, just as my penchant for pretty things does not take away from my ability to solve an equation.

Boring, Useless, Who-Gives-A-Shit Information

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Many, many years ago, before my mother-in-law discovered email and all the associated animated emoticons that could be utilized therein, she used to send me actual written letters, usually accompanied by a piece of knitting she had been doing – the knitted dishclothes I prefer, for example.  In one such letter she had written all about her daily doings for about four pages, then abruptly concluded with the line “Well, that’s enough boring, useless, who-gives-a-shit information for today.”  It’s something that still makes me smile, and I often mentally refer to certain things as such: boring, useless, who-gives-a-shit information. 

That is how I feel about reality television.  I never watch it, except for sporadic episodes of American Idol and, although I am loathe to admit it, The Bachelor.  I don’t watch much television but when I do it is what I like to think of as escapist television; comedies such as Parks and Recreation, for example, or Modern Family.  Serious television programs don’t interest me much unless they involve Sipowicz threatening to beat down a perp to give himself up or Dr. Sloan doing anything at all.  If Dr. Sloan took to the airwaves reading a copy of Today’s Parent, I would avidly watch it. 

As an aside, I’m quoted a few times in this month’s Today’s Parent, on the joys and pitfalls of stay-at-home parenting.  Also as an aside, the other day I mentioned that I was a stay at home mom, and received the huffy response “It must be nice to be able to afford such a luxury.”  I was  a bit taken aback by the resentful and bitter tone.  I never know how to respond to such.  It IS nice, actually.

Anyway, back to reality television.  I don’t watch it and I most certainly do not find it tempting to watch, especially if the program involves a) children, b) domestic chaos, or c) dysfunctional families.  I have my own children, I have access to my own domestic chaos, and if I want to see a dysfunctional family I will go to my next family reunion.  And so I’ve never watched the program that features the Duggar family and their very large brood, but I am aware that there is another bun in the oven, so to speak.  I’m aware of this somewhat against my will, since it is all over the news and, relatedly, all over Facebook.  In fact, someone posted this picture just the other day:

Oh, ha ha.  Good one.  Except for a few little things: a) a clown car involves all the clowns being in there at the same time, which is clearly not the case given the wide range of ages, and b) the more correct terminology would be the UTERUS, not the vagina.  Even if the children were all clustered in this poor woman’s body at the same time, they would not be stuck in her vagina.  They would be in her uterus.  But it does not matter, it is an incorrect comparison anyway. 
I really couldn’t care less how many children other people have – I maxed out on two but I’m well aware that everyone is different when it comes to ideal family sizes.  However, when I did hear that this woman has birthed nineteen (soon to be twenty) children, the first thing that came into my head was “Wow, her poor vagina!”  I mean, there are not enough Kegels in the world, if you know what I’m saying.  Which brings me to a funny story.
When I was pregnant with Mark, I worked on a natural gas trading floor in a group of men.  It was an open environment which meant that I often had someone standing behind me, peering at my computer screen.  Since I was pregnant, I had a bit of concern about the impending birth and the subsequent effect it would have on my delicate feminine essence, let’s say.  So I put “Kegel Exercises” into my scheduler and twice a day a little reminder would pop up on my screen, after which I would dutifully perform them.  One day a young male colleague and I were working together, and, predictably, my reminder popped up on the screen.  I clicked “DISMISS” quickly, but not quickly enough, as his face turned red and he suddenly needed to get something from his desk, right now.
I wonder if he could tell I was already doing them.

Wide Open Spaces….Room To Make The Big Mistakes

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Yesterday I spent the afternoon volunteering in the boys’ class.  They had an in-class field trip where they have a visitor come in armed with materials and stories and enrichment activities – in this case, the activities were related to their “Building” unit.  Each child was to build a three dimensional zoo animal and enclosure – along the lines of a diorama.  Dioramas!  Fun!  They were looking for parent volunteers and so off I went. 

As a side note: I volunteer extensively for the school but I try to avoid field trips.  I tend to get anxious that I’m going to accidentally lose a child, or one of those calamities that are listed on the waivers will come to pass.  But an in-class field trip – that sounded more along the lines of where my abilities lie.  Also my kids wanted me to come, and since they make up over 10% of the class, I thought I had better step up.

Here are the finished products:

This is Mark’s rhinoceros enclosure. 

This is Jake’s lion enclosure.  There is a complicated explanation for all the string,
feathers, and nesting stuff.  It has to do with food and bedding.
After school, I was chatting in the playground with the other moms and we were all relating amusing anecdotes about volunteering with in-class projects.  I mentioned one little girl who kept using the glue stick on the materials to be glued, rather than on the cardboard to which the materials were to be glued.  The results were that a googly eye was shoved deep into the glue stick, by accident; that same glue stick became covered with cotton from a cotton ball, little pieces of nesting materials were stuck on the glue stick and also mysteriously stuck on my sweater.  One mom smiled and said “That’s what I love about letting kids explore things on their own.  That’s how they learn!  From making mistakes!”  I nodded, smiling, but inwardly I was not totally on side.  After all, I did encourage the little girl to use the glue stick properly, rather than smearing the gluey cotton all over the place. 
In theory, I do agree.  I do agree with letting children learn from their mistakes, and I do agree with allowing them to experience natural consequences of their actions.  However, I do not agree with this all the time.  I do not agree with this when three other children have to use the glue stick that is now covered with cotton ball remnants, rendering it unusable.  I do not agree when there are googly eyes jammed far into the glue stick, causing the glue stick itself to explode over its plastic tubing and result in the cap getting glued onto it, resulting in no one being able to remove the cap.  This is school property, people.  My job as volunteer is to make sure that the building materials are not ruined by the building project.  And yes, it is just a glue stick.  But in these days of education cuts, we need all the glue sticks we can get.
Obviously, I opted to put my children in the regular, rather than the Montessori, stream at school.
But I did think about it for a while.  Do I allow my children room to make mistakes?  Am I too rigid?  Should I be allowing them to suffer more consequences?  I like to think I allow them freedom to do so, but do I really? 
I tend to be a person who has rules for my children; rules that they are expected to follow in terms of behaviour, household chores, and manners.  But maybe I don’t allow them to make enough mistakes.  Maybe I’m hindering them in some way.  Maybe one day my kids will be seeing a therapist and complaining about my rigidity. 
But maybe not.  They seem to be okay.  Plus, check out the game they played this morning before school!
Can you tell what this is?

They are animal towers!

It might look obscene, but they were very complex and required balancing and spatial skills.  Creativity!  Maybe the kids are all right, despite my rules and regulations.  They figured out how to balance them all on their own, toppling a few towers in their endeavours.  So I guess they are allowed to make mistakes.  Maybe they won’t need therapy after all.


Dental Scaling or Pelvic Exam? Survey says…

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Last week I was at the dentist for a checkup and for scaling.  The word “scaling” gives me the chills.  I conducted a brief and informal survey among girlfriends, regarding which they would rather have: dental scaling or a pelvic exam.  The results were approximately 75/25 in favour of pelvic exams.  Of course, this isn’t a scientifically accurate survey.  The sample size was small and not representative of the total population, but I strongly agreed with the majority here.  I would much, much rather endure the awkwardness of the bright lights and scootching my bottom down a little, and even the weird retractor thing, than have my teeth scaled. 

People have a tendency to quote statistics, with absolute certainty, in order to prove a point.  I could say, forcefully, that 75% of women prefer pelvic exams to dental scaling, but I would be incorrect.  A survey of less than twenty of my girlfriends does not constitute an unbiased, random sampling, and the sample size is much less than what is considered statistically significant.  This is one of my all-time pet peeves: the quoting of inaccurate statistics.  Wow, I’m really a nerd.  It’s like I’m one step away from pulling out my mechanical pencil and pocket calculator in order to do my own calculations.  Show me the data behind your statistics.

Where was I?  Oh yes, the dentist.  I dread it every time.  My mouth resembles a crime scene afterwards, and while I realize that flossing more regularly would help matters, I still believe strongly that putting a sharp metal object forcefully against soft tissue is going to result in bleeding no matter what.  My real issue is that I’m a people pleaser when it comes to my hygienist, and I end up being less than truthful when it comes to my flossing habits.  There is a scene that I relate to in my friend Michal’s short film Arithmetic, where Annie is reclined in the dentist chair, blood spattered all over her paper bib, and the caption is something along the lines of “There are two people Annie lies to: the dentist and her mother.”  I’m like that.  Not that I lie to my mother.  (Hi Mom, if you’re reading this!).  Hey, did I mention I was an extra in that film?  I did?  Oh.

By the way, I KNOW I have to floss more, but knowing is not the same thing as doing, as anyone can tell you who has found themselves with a mysteriously empty bag of potato chips, a bloated stomach, and crumbs all over their shirt.

I also had to take the dog to the vet for a checkup and vaccinations.  Canine vaccinations are the only type of vaccinations I will ever mention on this blog.  Have you ever noticed that there is very little debate over getting your dog vaccinated?  Or maybe there is debate and I just haven’t noticed.  (Note: I don’t want to know.)  Anyway, I took the dog to the vet and – some of you may remember his weight struggles (he’s fat) – he lost weight!  He lost five pounds which is almost ten percent of his body weight!  I was so happy, and I expected great praise and accolades, which did not materialize.  Yes, the vet said, it’s good that he’s lost weight but he should really loose a couple more pounds.  I was completely crestfallen.  Where are my accolades?  The vet, furthermore, informed me that Barkley needs to have MORE dental chews (apparently he and I have plaque in common) but that I should deduct the number of calories from his dental chews from his total daily caloric intake.

I agreed with the vet, but internally I thought no fucking way.  There is no way I am going to start doing a calorie count for my fucking dog.  “It’s easy!” the vet said, giving Barkley a small treat, “These are ten calories each.  Just deduct that from his food.”  I spend enough time calculating my own calories, I do not need to worry about my dog’s intake.  The thought of dividing my dog’s food into little ten calorie portions in order to deduct that amount from his food total makes my head spin and, quite frankly, makes me fear for society.  Is this where we are going, people?  Are we going to expand our obsession with weight loss to include our furry friends?  Because I do not want to go there.  

Pretty Girls

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I turned the furnace on today; it’s been chilly and pouring rain -it even snowed in the mountains – and seems fitting, somehow, for the end of summer vacation.  Frankly, it’s a bit depressing.  But not as depressing as this:

This t-shirt was for sale at JC Penney – was, but not anymore.  Someone at JC Penney, after a public uproar, decided that girls sized 7-16 should probably not be advertising that they are too pretty for homework; something about their core values.  Regardless, the shirt was for sale, and someone, somewhere in the JC Penney corporation must have felt that it was at some point appropriate, just as someone at Old Navy decided that this shirt was appropriate for boys:

Similar idea, but without the public outcry, and also without the focus on physical appearance.  There’s the rub.  Celebration of idiocy and underachievement is socially acceptable, it seems, until we bring the cult of the pretty into the picture.

We like to at least give lip service to the idea that appearances don’t matter.  It’s what’s inside that counts – that is what I tell my children all the time, and of course it’s true – but also true is that appearances DO matter.  When I was in university studying economics, I read an academic article about how beautiful people earn more money, are promoted more often and more easily, and in general are afforded more advantages.  I was appalled, of course, I was outraged and angry, but I also knew that the restaurant in which I waitressed part-time would not hire anyone for their front-house staff who did not have a certain look.  Any applicants falling short of that would be considered for a job in the kitchen.

The ugly side to this is that pretty and smart are frequently considered to be mutually exclusive, as in the JC Penney shirt, or this one from Amazon:

If a grown, female mathematician was wearing this, I would consider it amusing in an ironic way, the same way I considered that guy wearing a Vagitarian t-shirt to be amusing in an ironic way.  But the thought of children wearing a shirt like this, children who see things in black and white and who may equate smart with ugly and therefore may be less inclined to strive for high academic achievements, the thought of that makes me ill.
There’s nothing wrong with being pretty, or striving to be pretty, but passing along the idea that pretty girls do not have to be responsible for homework, or math, or anything else requiring thought or effort, is pathetic.
The day I defended my master’s thesis, I had a celebratory lunch with several of my fellow grad students.  I had a 4.0 GPA, I studied all the time.  I prided myself on my work ethic.  As we sat in the lounge, I mentioned how exhausted I was.  A male student smirked at me and said “Why?  Did you sleep with the defence committee?  Is that how you get A’s?” 
It is possible to be pretty and do math.