It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

I am someone who does not like to leave things to the last minute. I like to be organized and on top of things. So, I finish my Christmas shopping in the first half of November, I make and freeze dough for sugar cookies and gingerbread in November, I send all my Christmas cards out on November 30, and on Sunday last, we put up our Christmas tree. I also suggested making a gingerbread house this past weekend, but Rob nixed it. “Shouldn’t you leave something for December?” he asked.

I like not being rushed. The same can be said about Jake. I had to instigate a school-day rule that entails him getting dressed at 8:00, so that if it takes him 30 minutes to complete the task, we still have time to get our shoes and coats on in a relaxed manner. It also cuts down on the amount of deep breathing and gentle encouragement I need to do as I watch him slowly, slowly put his clothes on, then oops, his shirt is backwards, and uh oh, he is having trouble with his socks, and oh dear, his foot is stuck in his pajama bottoms. When we start early I simply leave the room, so as to remain mentally balanced, and come back 30 minutes later to a totally dressed Jake! A miracle! And one that does not require me grinding my teeth and saying, okay, come on, okay honey, JUST PUT YOUR DAMN SOCKS ON.

Where was I going with this?


Oh yes, the Christmas tree. It’s a bit of a Charlie Brown tree, actually. It was a cheap tree that is now a decade old, and every year my husband puts it together and swears a little, but once it’s decorated I just love it. Also – notice how squished it is against the furniture – we cannot possibly have a larger tree. As it is it is reminiscent of Jenga, rearranging our house for this five foot tree.

The downside to being super organized and not waiting until the last minute to do Christmas-related things is by the time Boxing Day comes around I am DONE with the Christmas spirit. It’s all I can do not to pack up every ornament at noon on Christmas Day. My Buddy the Elf persona quickly morphs into a Grinch-like attitude. It’s like, I just want my house back, you five foot tree that has taken over the living room!

So, while I’m still in the spirit, check out a couple cute decorations!



What a sweet little nativity scene, and the little house was the first decoration I bought the year we got married. To symbolize HOME. Awwwww.



I bought this Spiderman decoration this year for the boys. My brother informed me that this is the second most famous comic book cover of all time. I just don't know what to do with that information, but okay. The boys like it.



A snowglobe! With my name on it! I got one for everyone in the family (except, as Jake disapprovingly said, for Barkley.).

Today it's snowing and cold and I feel very Christmassy - even if it's not even December!

Warning! This post contains an obscene amount of name-dropping.

I saw Jim Cuddy on The Hour a couple of nights ago. Jim Cuddy. Sigh. Beck wrote a funny post about the potential husband material of certain Canadian TV stars and while I was hard-pressed to come up with any of those - Mark Critch? Nah. George Stroumboulopoulus? Nah. – I sure do have opinions about Canadian music stars. Jim Cuddy. I like to refer to him as “my boyfriend”. My husband really likes that too.

I actually met Jim Cuddy one year ago. My husband phoned me from work and said, in complete seriousness, “You wouldn’t really be interested in a gala dinner tomorrow night, would you?”. Now, believe me, BELIEVE ME, I do not attend gala dinners with any sort of regularity. Or at all. So of course I wanted to go. Then he revealed that his boss’ girlfriend’s firm had extra tickets. And it was an Olympic fund-raiser. And we would be sitting at a table with Sale and Pelletier. I immediately phoned my mother, “CanyoubabysittomorrowbecauseIamgoingtobeatatablewithSaleandPelletier!”

I watched Sale and Pelletier win the silver medal – later to be the gold medal – at a bar in Houston. There was one other Canadian girl there, also a figure skating fan, and when the scores were tallied a man leaned over to us and drawled, “Well girls, ah don’t know much ah-bout figure skating, but I think you Canadians were robbed”. I love Texans.

Anyway, at the gala we were enjoying a glass of wine when Rob’s boss’ girlfriend leaned over to me and said, “Hey, there goes Jim Cuddy. We should follow him and get our picture taken with him.” She was laughing but I’ve never been more serious. I grabbed her arm and we followed him, walking as quickly as possible without looking like actual stalkers. We followed him into a section where he was talking with Kelly Hrudy, who was hosting the event. Someone agreed to take our picture and here it is:

I love this picture. I am the absolute epitome of star-struck. You can almost see my thoughts, OMG, Jim Cuddy has his arm around me!!!! Meeeeeee!!!! The wine in my glass was vibrating like the puddle in Jurassic Park.

So that was a highlight. But truly the whole night was amazing. I enjoyed the delicious food and wine, alongside David Pelletier, who, it should be noted, is not the best tablemate as he is quiet to the point of surliness. I enjoyed the music (provided by JIM CUDDY). I looked around the room, and at least half of the people were working on their BlackBerries. Some were leaving to answer work-related phone calls. There I was, in the midst of a massively stressed-out crowd, a crowd which was there for duty but certainly not pleasure, and I was thrilled every second.

I thought about that the other night when I met up with some girlfriends, a couple of whom were former co-workers, and one of those was still at that firm. She talked to me a bit about my former workplace, and she was speaking a language which I recognized but hadn’t spoken in nearly six years. I was asked if I missed it, being at work. I thought about it, the ten hour days at a desk, the stress, the overtime, and at that gala dinner, the people who were so busy trying to juggle family and work that they couldn’t even enjoy food and wine and JIM CUDDY. I don’t miss it.

Me and David Pelletier. He looks really happy, probably because the gala was almost over.

GROSS

When I got home early this morning, Mark met me at the door to inform me that he was "a little bit sick". He certainly didn't look sick, his colour was good, he ate a good breakfast, but my husband did mention that both boys woke up coughing. I thought about a reader comment about coughing and RSV and I thought I would keep them home for the day. Then they didn't cough even once the whole day, which was fine. I took it as a mental health day. But after lunch Jake started acting strange. He didn't want to eat much and was rubbing his head a lot. I started to worry. No fever. Still no eating. He was clingy and wanted to be hugged and held a lot. I started self-medicating. Don't worry - I wasn't stumbling around drunk or anything. I mean I ate a couple of chocolate chip cookies with leftover Halloween candy chasers. I was starting to feel a bit stressed.

Now, for the sake of readers who are not parents, or who may wish to become parents, or are maybe pregnant or with young infants, I will not go into great detail about the origin of Jake's lassitude. I will only say that sometimes young children like to, shall we say, withhold certain body functions, and that sometimes leads to, shall we say, undesirable results.

Oh! Did I mention I also washed the floors today?

So now that it is past 7:30, I say screw the chocolate. I am going straight for the wine.

November

November is a dark month. Even when the sun is shining, it is so low in the sky that it is still dark and grey. Every room in my north-facing house is dark, even when the lights are on.

This month has been flying by. I can’t believe it is already the 23rd. We are having an unseasonably warm November, which in Calgary means that the temperatures are soaring all the way up to 6 or 7 degrees, as opposed to 1 or 2. Not that I’m complaining, mind you, any time temperatures are above normal I am happy, but it seems like those couple of degrees are wasted in November. I mean, it’s still chilly, still dark. The sun is setting at 4:30, and rising after 8. December is, of course, darker and colder, but it doesn’t seem that way because of Christmas, and festivity, and my general feeling of goodwill and happiness that accompanies it.

Four children in my neighbourhood lost their mother and, while it is not my story to tell, the tragedy of that has left me low. But I’m not going to talk about that. The feeling of goodwill and happiness, that Christmassy feeling, I needed that feeling this weekend. So I broke my own rule about no Christmas decorations before December. I brought the boxes out of storage and the boys and I put out a few choice decorations.

The pinecones are from my in-laws' place in the Okanagan. My husband and I gathered them the year my father-in-law was diagnosed with cancer, which he beat against all odds. The little balls in the bowl are from my very first Christmas tree after I left home. I didn't have lights on that tree, and it was odd how many people commented on the fact. I honestly didn't think that no lights was a big deal, but apparently IT IS. The cute little star snowmen? A woman I worked with once made them for the company Christmas party. She made about 150 of them. Have I ever mentioned that I admire people who are crafty? Because I am the opposite of crafty.

Mark's favourite decoration is a little train station. Technically it lights up but I have a small fear of fire - and I think that decoration was made in China, so my fear of plugging it in and starting an electrical fire is probably justified. Notice the bowl in the background. The Christmas balls I set in there are from my mother-in-law - old ornaments from the 60's.

This is my very favourite thing. I bought the creche figurines in Mexico 12 years ago, and I just love them. I always put the angel on the ladder - angels need a little help once in a while. This is also Jake's favourite.

When something is heavy on your heart, sometimes the best thing to do is find the joy in your life and be thankful for your blessings. And I am so thankful.

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.

TGI Friday!

I actually really hate the term TGI Friday. I hate it almost as much as LOL or LMAO. Nonetheless, TGI Friday! This has been a long week – not in a bad way, just in a long way. The boys’ school had a Scholastic Book Fair this week which I was helping with, which was quite fun as volunteer opportunities go – the other volunteers were wonderful and I liked getting to know them, and it was great helping kids find books that they enjoy. The downside? I am somewhat of a Scholastic book addict. Those catalogues are temptation enough, but being surrounded by those books? It was a recipe for disaster, or, if not actually disaster, than for spending more than was necessary. I am an avid reader, and so I like to buy books for the kids – especially if they show interest in those with an educational component. (“You had me at educational.”)

Unfortunately, the first book that Mark chose when his class came through was one of those horrible Scooby Doo Early Reader mysteries. Damn you, Scooby Doo and your eerie tales which have perfectly reasonable explanations! Damn you and your stupid jokes that make the children want me to read you again and again (as when Shaggy says to a lion, “Quit LION around”. Oh, ha ha HA.) Damn you!

Speaking of rereading books, I am currently rereading The Mists of Avalon. If you haven’t read this book, you should, it’s excellent, even if you are not particularly interested in the Arthurian Legend. Hoo boy, just writing “Arthurian Legend” makes me want to paint a big L on my own forehead. Anyway, it is a great book, one that I read obsessively in my long-vanished youth. Reading it makes me want to become a priestess of Avalon. I would totally smite the guy who created the Scooby Doo Early Reader mysteries.

I NEED HELP! I am supposed to be making a Christmas wish list of books to send to my mother-in-law. I’m supposed to be doing this right this minute. Instead I’m blogging about my Scooby Doo loathing and my fantasy of becoming a medieval priestess. (Note: I would not want to be one of the queen’s ladies-in-waiting. I believe my lack of manual dexterity would count against me. All those women seem to do is spin and weave things.) Please, please, please send me book recommendations! What are you reading, what would you recommend? Help!

Is it really only Tuesday?

I’ve been in an absolute flurry of activity the past couple of days, the details of which are much to boring to divulge, but believe me: flurry of activity. I will share with you two major accomplishments from the past couple of days: a) I finished my Christmas shopping, and b) I was in and out of Superstore with everything on my list in only twenty minutes! Much as I dislike shopping, I love grocery shopping, and if you put me in a situation where there are not only groceries, but also cosmetics, vitamins, and Christmas ornaments, I’m sure to get distracted and spend more time and money than is absolutely necessary. Therefore, the twenty minute trip is an accomplishment in my world. By now you’re probably thinking, I thought she wasn’t going to divulge boring details? Ha! You should see how boring the other hundred accomplishments were, that my quick Superstore trip is considered NOT boring.

Have you ever read The Nanny Diaries? There is a great scene in which the nanny visits FAO Schwartz a few days before Christmas, and it is just total chaos with children shrieking and lying on the floor, and a big voice over the loudspeaker “Welcome to our world of toys” and grim-faced parents with a “let’s just get through this” expression. That scene perfectly describes my feelings about the mall. I went to the mall on Saturday night – yes, Saturday night – to finish my Christmas shopping and I felt like I had blasted off and landed on some other planet. The moisture was being sucked out of my skin by the hideous recycled air and children were crying and I was staring at the Hot Wheels Colour Shifters in a befuddled way: sports car or rescue vehicle? But! I’m finished shopping, so hooray.

This week feels long already. I can’t believe it’s only Tuesday. But I heard that “I’d Really Love to See You Tonight” song this morning and it made my day. This is when it really pays to listen to a radio station geared towards old people: the sheer volume of 1970’s light rock love songs. It is a genre – I feel I must mention – that my husband abhors. I may as well stick pins in his eyes, as force him to listen to light rock from the 70’s.

Speaking of my husband, poor dear, he is very upset these days. I don’t know if you live with a New England Patriots fan, or maybe you are a New England Patriots fan yourself, but they lost to the Colts on Sunday night. It was, as my husband said, the game of the year, and they lost. My husband is still somewhat scarred from Superbowl 38 (I think it was 38?) and so Sunday’s loss has made him VERY UPSET. If you see a Patriots fan, give them a hug. They need it.

So, enough random thoughts for one day. I have a flurry of activity to keep up! But don’t worry! I’ll save only the exciting, juicy, Superstore-like details for you.

I have an article up over at Yummy Mummy. Go check it out and read all about my penchant for non-exciting travel. I also allude to a really gross intestinal bug I once contracted. If that doesn't get you reading, I don't know what will! See you there!

Will I be pretty, will I be rich?

One thing I find very entertaining about children – especially small children – are their career goals. Very small children have somewhat abstract ideas about what they will be when they grow up; I clearly remember wishing to be a flower. And now I have a flower profile picture on my blog! Profound. Anyway, both of my boys went through a prolonged period in which their burning ambition was to drive a garbage truck; I don’t want to sound snobbish here, we all know the importance of sanitation workers and the difficult job that they do, but I was kind of glad when that phase passed. As of today, Jake’s career ambition, strangely, is to be a mountain climber. Does that mean he wants to be a vagabond? Or maybe he will be a mountain climber and write books, like that guy who wrote Into Thin Air. If so, cool. Mark alternates between a path of paleontology and being a “business man”. We went to visit my husband at the office one day, and Mark stretched out on his swivel chair and said luxuriantly, “Is this where you make all the money, Dad?”. I could just imagine what he thought the world of work was like. I guess it was not unlike my experience in grad school, where I thought that with my economics degrees I would somehow change the world for the better, and then I ended up working as a quantitative analyst in natural gas option trading. Totally NOT changing the world for the better, but an interesting job nonetheless.

Anyway, the kindergarten is doing a Community Helpers unit at school, better known in my day as “What will I do when I grow up?”, and I was helping in the classroom. I had a group of four to cycle through the various work centers and in a slow moment at the dentist center (an awesome craft of painting a yellow paper tooth white with the help of toothbrushes and a mixture of corn syrup and white paint) I asked my group what they wanted to be when they grew up. The group consisted of two sweet and well-behaved girls, a disruptive and somewhat hyper boy, and a boy who the teacher euphemistically informed me “requires extra assistance with the activities”. One girl, predictably, wanted to be a ballerina, the other wanted to be a mom. I was a little surprised; I didn’t know girls said they wanted to be moms anymore. Nonetheless, I praised their decisions with enthusiasm. Disruptive and Somewhat Hyper Boy told me he wanted to be a cop and shoot all the bad guys! Bang bang bang! I answered that police officers are very important Community Helpers. Then I asked the Boy Who Requires Extra Assistance what he wanted to be. His answer: a princess. I was, momentarily, speechless. He looked up at me, smiling, waiting for the positive commentary I had given his classmates. One of the girls said “He can’t be a princess! He’s a boy!” - to which I rallied, and said that anyone can be anything they want to be when they grow up, if they work at it.

It’s something I tell the boys all the time, but I don’t entirely believe it. I mean, if you work really hard at something AND you have some degree of aptitude, then yes, you can be what you want to be. But really, no matter what amount of effort I put into it, no matter how hard I work, there are some career options that are forever closed to me: becoming a supermodel, say, or an Olympic shotputter, or a NASA scientist, or anything at all requiring artistic ability. I could, as the hockey players say, give it 110%, and I would still achieve minimal, if any, success in those fields.

But who wants to quash the kindergartener spirit? Certainly not me. Even if the Boy Who Requires Extra Assistance wants to be a princess, well, it’s probably only marginally less likely to occur than his classmate becoming a ballerina. So I guess we all can dream.

Poppies

I wrote the following last year on Remembrance Day. My husband’s friend is heading to Afghanistan in March, for a riskier assignment. My oldest son is now enthralled with the military. He is obsessed with all things army. He is five. It breaks my heart on many levels. I want to instill respect and honour in my boys, but I struggle with discussions about war and the role of the military. I cannot watch any war footage without noting how very young the soldiers are. I am, as always on November 11, remembering.







I don’t want to discuss the politics of war, not today. I don’t want to discuss egos, power struggles, or strange ulterior motives. I don’t want to discuss how looking at the young, young faces in war footage makes me sad or how images of rows of white crosses makes me feel physically ill. I am fully cognizant about how wars begin and about both sides of the story. My husband has a dear friend in the military who has already completed one tour of duty in Afghanistan and may be sent for another. But that is not what I want to discuss.

What I was thinking about today is that I have two boys. If they were growing up in a different era, say an era of conscription, maybe I would have none. Or maybe I would still have two boys, but they would be scarred for life, mentally or physically. Maybe I would be waiting months for a letter, only to get a censored one with little information. Maybe the boys would be suffering in ways I can’t even imagine, for reasons that start small but grow to be bigger than life. When I see the wreaths being laid by the mothers and families of the fallen, that is what I think of.

The boys came home from preschool with their poppy crafts and lots of questions. I tried to answer with honesty, yet who wants to be too honest with children that age? How do you discuss war with children who don’t comprehend why so-and-so hit another kid in their class or so-and-so called someone else a stupid-head? I used words like bravery, respect, standing up for what you believe in, but the explanations are too vague even for such young children.

When I see an elderly man in a parking lot, getting out of his car with a veteran license plate, I swallow hard and think about the mother who cried with joy when her son came home.

Clutter

You know when you wake up in the morning, and you realize that you are actually drowning in clutter, that your entire household is one big clutter pile; this despite the fact that all the clutter is contained in cute little baskets, because now instead of being drowning in clutter, you are drowning in baskets that are filled with clutter, and you just can’t stand it one more minute? That is how it was with me yesterday. As far as I can tell, there are only two options at this juncture: a) buy a bigger house and fill it with even more clutter, or b) stay in the existing house and get rid of the clutter. I guess there is also a third option, c) maintain the status quo, but yesterday, that seemed like a death sentence. Death by clutter, I guess.

And so, armed with a pot of coffee I decided to attack our house. I went through those cluttered baskets and made three piles: donate, recycle, and garbage. Here is the sad part: the garbage pile was the largest of all. The thing is, we don’t buy our children many toys, but they seem to have a lot of toys from birthdays, Christmas, indulgent grandparents. Some of them last a long time, but a lot break easily and are not recyclable. This is what I was dealing with yesterday: a giant garbage bag full of broken plastic toys that are destined for a landfill.

It makes me sick. You know what else makes me sick? The article I read the other day about a six-year-old girl’s birthday party and the myriad of gifts that she received. The author – a fairly famous author – detailed the FORTY expensive gifts she had received and expensive loot bags that were given out at her party. In the end, the author weighed in that there was a possibility that kids receiving so much stuff could become spoiled and unappreciative, but hey, what’s a birthday without a ton of presents?

It’s not like I want my kids to be all Little House on the Prairie, being ecstatic that they received a pair of mittens and their very own tin cup in their stocking, so now they don’t have to share a cup between two people anymore, how amazing, and also, a stick of candy! WOW! But I do want them to appreciate the things that they have and although they certainly get nowhere near forty gifts on any occasion, they do have a lot of toys. With Christmas coming up we are talking a lot about charity, about giving, but still I worry about them being spoiled and unappreciative. I especially worried about that today, Mark’s balloon that he was blowing up burst, and he fell into a fit of sulking because we had no more balloons in the house, and why didn’t we have more balloons, and HE REALLY WANTED A BALLOON. The house is filled with games, books, puzzles, toys, but HIS LIFE WAS OVER BECAUSE WE DIDN’T HAVE ANY BALLOONS. I really struggle with this kind of thing, with instilling appreciation and values, and sometimes it just feels like I’m not doing it right.

Besides the fact that our household just contributed a giant bag of plastic crap to the local landfill. It makes me sick.

The pediatric dentist is HOT

Was that me who was bragging about how well my children adjusted to the end of Daylight Savings? After only one day? I think in Greek mythology that would be known as hubris.

I am going to spare you the tearful, fighting-with-one’s-brother, collapsing into a teenage-angst-type-sulkiness details and instead talk about something pleasant. I took the kids to the dentist yesterday! Did I mention that their dentist happens to be quite attractive? Like, hot? I’m always somewhat surprised that the waiting room isn’t full of slavering moms in various stages of cougardom, with various degrees of cleavage showing. I myself dressed up to take the kids; by dressed up, I mean I wore my knee high boots with heels and my toffee lipstick, as opposed to the more neutral shell shade. And…we got there and were informed that the dentist was sick today, and would we mind seeing his colleague? His much older, unattractive colleague? Of course we didn’t mind.

Now, I had promised not to write about the “f” word until I actually get the “f” word, and I’m not going to, but I’m just going to say that if you go to the pediatric dentist and he is sick and every single toy and book that they use to distract kids and make the dentist’s office a happy place is being sterilized, and one dentist is doing the work of two dentists, well, you may be waiting a while doing low-tech games like I Spy and repeating silly rhymes over and over. Which is exactly what we did. And because I have boys, a lot of silly rhymes were of the gross bodily function theme. Anyway, the checkup itself went just fine, despite the fact that every time we go there seems to be at least one child being ax-murdered in the background. At least that is what it sounds like. But now that I’ve written that down, it will probably be my child doing the child-from-The-Exorcist impression next time – because that is called hubris.

Weekend Update

1. I purchased 250 candies for Halloween, and lovingly made up twenty little gift bags with an assortment of goodies. If we got more than twenty trick-or-treaters, I thought, I would just give out the mini chocolate bars and bags of Sour Kids separately. The boys headed out to trick-or-treat and I stayed home to hand out candy, happily watching a recording of John Cusack (hubba hubba) on Jay Leno. I waited. And waited. I started to feel like some sad little debutante waiting for her date, who had obviously stood her up for a better option. (“He cometh not”, she said.) In the end I had two trick-or-treaters and now I have a plethora of candy with no home. Since trick-or-treaters were in short supply on our block, you can probably imagine the volume of candy amassed by my little pirate and dinosaur, who, technically, was an Allosaurus, not a T-Rex, because he was living in the Jurassic period, whereas the T-Rex lived in the Cretaceous period, just so you know. In addition, two very lovely neighbours actually went out and purchased special large treats just for them! Very kind, especially the neighbour who gave them candy popcorn, which the children have generously shared with me.

2. Another neighbour suggested that kids were not trick-or-treating much this year due to the swine flu, either because they had contracted it or because their parents were wary of them contracting it. If this is true, it is the last straw for me. I have reached saturation point with regards to information about the swine flu. This may or may not include helpful emails from certain people which detail that a) if you contract the flu, we are all going to die, or, alternately, b) if you get the flu shot, we are all going to die. I will write about the flu only if and when I or my family contracts the flu, and then I will simply whine about my symptoms, and NOT about conspiracy theories regarding the government, the pharmaceutical companies, and the sellers of hand sanitizers. I bet you are looking forward to that.

3. In years past, I dreaded the end of Daylight Savings Time, and not just because shortly it will be completely dark at 4:30 pm. I had the kind of children who would wake up at the exact same time every day no matter what time they went to bed, and it would take about a week – a cranky, sleep-deprived week – to adjust to the new time. There is something psychologically very bad about having a toddler wide awake at 4:58 am. “How did your kids do with the time change?” I blearily asked a mom at a playgroup, who subsequently looked at me like I was a little slow on the uptake. “Fine,” she said, “I just put them to bed an hour later and then they slept an hour later.” I looked at her, slack-jawed, like that was the most unbelievable, incredible piece of information I had ever received. But, huzzah! I am now part of that demographic! I put my kids to bed later, and they wake up later! It’s a miracle! They are not waking up at ungodly hours and morphing into crazed, sleep-deprived little goblins! And as a result, I am not a crazed, sleep-deprived, mid-thirties goblin! Hooray indeed.