Back to School at the YMC

I have a piece up at Yummy Mummy Club - all about back to school and being emotional and not emotional...if you can, leave a comment, pretty please? xo

Home Renos Part One: I do not do well with chaos.

Look what was delivered to my living room on Friday!





Not a six year old. Not a dog. It's 3200 pounds of hardwood!

I'm very, very pleased to be replacing our carpet. No matter how many times the carpet had been cleaned, it still looked pretty gross, given the abuse it has taken; two kids and a dog will do that. There was that time the dog ate potting soil and then barfed all over it, the times the kids had the stomach flu and were too small to make it to the bathroom in time, the many, many potty accidents from both dog AND children...not to mention the amount of dirt and dust tracked in constantly.

However, our house is resembling a disaster zone right now, and the installers have not even begun, and will not begin for another nine days. My husband, as I write this, is painting the walls behind the piano, which will be inaccessible once the hardwood is in and the piano moved. This is what the living room looks like.

And the front hall:

Notice that there is no room to move? This does not bode well for my long-suffering baby toe.

Friday morning was the expected delivery time for the wood, and so I rushed through my shower/getting ready routine, having already had the less than optimal experience of having delivery people arrive early. I have, unfortunately, answered the door a number of times in my robe and with wet hair, which is somewhat awkward and gives me the creepy feeling of being a specific type of bored housewife in a specific type of adult movie. Wanting to avoid that I was out of the shower and dressed much earlier than usual, and then of course the delivery guy was running late and showed up after lunch.

He was in his early twenties, and I would consider him attractive if I actually found guys in their twenties attractive - which I do not, I prefer men who are a bit aged, like my very handsome and beloved husband. However, I still felt a bit on the creepy side because the boys were somewhat fascinated by him carrying in forty boxes that were six feet long and about eighty pounds each. He carried them in, one by one, on his shoulder, bounding up our front steps. It was a bit amazing, really, and Mark commented on his evident strength, to which he answered, "Well, it saves me on a gym membership" and winked at me. Awkward. Maybe I am giving off some kind of bored housewife vibe? I HOPE not.

I can't wait to have the house back to normal. Of course, with all the flooring, then the painting, and baseboards, and trim, we have a goal to be finished before Christmas. Christmas! I'm just going to be happy to be able to move around the living room without dislocating my toe. Again.

What are they going to arrest me for, being awesome?

Because I’m always striving to be a fun – yet educational – mother, I decided to step up the science experiments and make a rocket out of vinegar, baking soda, and a film canister. I will admit I wasn’t totally prepared for the kind of rocketing explosion that followed and ended with the film canister on my neighbour’s roof. Fortunately no one lost an eye, since my safety precautions consisted of me saying “Everyone stand back!” Maybe I should give them one of those chemistry kits from the 70s, they could blow the house up or something. That would be very educational. Explaining to my slightly deaf neighbour that she had a film canister on her roof was a bit awkward, filled with suspicious looks and a lot of “What?” questions. Then she finished with the question everyone I have told this story to has asked, “Where did you get a film canister from?”

Next time I’m going to try this in a soccer field or something. If I ever get another film canister.

Also on the awesome front, I have stubbed my baby toe violently approximately a dozen times in the past two weeks, and I am just about ready to END IT ALL. MY WORD PEOPLE, my baby toe is suffering. I now fear walking through the kitchen, as if the chair is suddenly going to attack me again. Maybe I have post-traumatic stress disorder. I’m starting to fantasize about taking an axe to the offending chair and then burning the whole thing. Then I - and my poor, poor baby toe - will dance around the fire, singing maniacally.

Speaking of singing, I cannot get the song Empire State of Mind out of my head. I keep singing the chorus with as much heart as Alicia Keys, but with much, much less talent. I sound like someone auditioning for American Idol, the type of contestant hopeful that leaves the audition room huffily saying things along the lines of I’m going to be a star, and you missed out, so take a good look at my face, I’m going to be famous, bitches, while the judges smirk and stifle hysterical laughter.

Just to add to this randomness, I can tell you with perfect authority that the two worst places to have mosquito bites are on a) the arch of the foot, and b) the butt. I have both right now and while I can figure out how I got a) – I have been wearing sandals – I cannot figure out b). Did someone slip me an Ambien and then did I sit nudely in the grass after dark? I don’t THINK so. However, between my mosquito bites and my sad, sad baby toe, and my sleep deprivation – did I mention that Mark’s been a bit anxious about full-day school and so has been somewhat of an insomniac? – I’m pretty much ready to call it a day.

So I’m going to blame sleep deprivation for this completely random and possibly TMI post. Zzzzzz.

T-9 to the Big K

I have been fielding the following two questions of late: 1) Aren’t you SAD that your BABY is starting kindergarten?, and 2) Can you BELIEVE your BABY is in kindergarten?

Now first, I am not sad that Jake is starting kindergarten. In fact, I’m a bit worried that I’m not sad that Jake is starting kindergarten. I’m emotional about everything, so I don’t understand why I’m not more emotional about this. I was more emotional about a salesgirl telling me recently that grey washes me out; my drawers full of cozy grey sweaters are making me feel suddenly pallid and nostalgic. What is wrong with me? Am I broken? I wonder if I’m repressing something and that I’m going to end up one of those mothers curled up in the corner by the sandtable on the first day of school, sobbing. I HOPE not. In fact, my general feeling about school starting in one week Thursday is squee! The kids are going back to school! I’m going to miss them, certainly, the house is going to feel empty, but I am really looking forward to getting back into the routine.

One thing I’m also really looking forward to? Solo grocery shopping. I’m getting kind of tired of herding them through the aisles, remonstrating with them not to run and then scolding them for running and, inevitably, knocking into one of the more grumpy and elderly members of our community who will subsequently make a sour remark about my ill-behaved hooligans. The other day the boys spent an afternoon at my mother’s and I took the opportunity to go to Superstore. I felt so glamourous, like I was this fabulous woman of the world, strolling through the cereal aisle and blocking out the shrieking of children being pushed in carts by haggard looking mothers.

One thing I’m not looking forward to? The inevitable onslaught of illnesses. Hoo boy, just thinking about all the squeamy germs just made me shudder like the Howard Hughes I am. Also, I am not looking forward to the certain exhaustion and subsequent crabbiness of children going back to school.

And yes, it is hard to believe that Jake is going to kindergarten. Frankly, it’s hard to believe the summer is over, so YES, time flies, the cat’s in the cradle, pages are flying off the cartoon calendar, etc., etc. Mostly I feel excited and happy, but I’ll keep you posted if I find myself weeping, in the fetal position, snuggling with one of his newborn sleepers. It could happen.

E-evil Children!

It’s been a weird few days at my house; for example, yesterday it appeared that my children were auditioning for the role of worst children ever. Well, maybe not the worst children ever, I mean, they were not setting the house on fire or stealing the minivan for a joyride, but they were crabby and irritable all day. It was one of those days that I had actually set everything aside to just play with and enjoy them, and it turned out that they were just evil, and I felt kind of resentful in a “What is the matter with you, you ungrateful bastards” kind of way. Every single thing ended up in an argument, or tears, or very vocal unhappiness. I was ready to call it a day and start the bedtime ritual, but it was only 2:00 in the afternoon, so the day wore on. They did end up going to bed early and then slept for a solid hour longer than normal, waking up as their normal cheery selves, so perhaps that explains things.

I remember when the kids were small and they would have days of supreme irritability, and I would think that maybe they just had some kind of psychotic personality change, and then the following day they would come down with fevers or a cough, and I would feel badly that I wasn’t more patient. The children weren’t evil, they were just getting sick. So in that vein, I suppose that yesterday the children were not possessed by the devil, they were just tired.

So today, well rested, we headed out to the Market Collective where my friend was selling his fabulous bread. Remember him? He and his lovely girlfriend are back from their international jet-setting, bread baking, and filmmaking which is fantastic for me, but maybe less fantastic for my ability to zip my jeans, since I rapidly consumed five slices of sourdough in a row. My husband was slightly suspicious – “Market Collective sounds so socialist. Can’t they just call it a market?” – but it was very fun and filled with lovely arty things. Also there were two giant boxes filled with sand and sand toys, which the boys immediately began to dig in, and which I later learned was an art installation. That made me somewhat uncomfortable – are kids allowed to play with the installations? – but no one complained, so I guess that was okay.

Despite the fact that I told my husband that going to a collective would now qualify him as a hippie, he also seems to be his normal self, which is good, as he has gone on record to say that every single thing wrong with society today can be tied to what he refers to as the hippie generation. Or those damn hippies. Lately I’ve been seeing all these posts about being a hippie mama, and what that entails, and how to tell if you are one. My very strong feeling is that LABELS ARE VERY WRONG AND ARE DIVISIVE, NOT INCLUSIVE. Also, sadly, I like wearing makeup and shaving and waxing too much to be included in the hippie mama culture.

Do you ever label yourself? I find my own personal parenting style is made up of numerous types of parenting styles, and I like it that way. Of course, as I write this, my children are playing a game which entails them taking turns soaking their heads in the bathroom sink, then playing air guitar in front of my full-length mirror, despite the fact that there is no music actually playing right now, so what do I know, really, except that things seem to be happily back to normal.

It only takes a minute.

I wanted to write about something really funny today – there was a cougar sighting in the city! The resulting news stories have been hilarious: cougar spotted, if you should see a cougar you should be cautious and back away slowly. Did the cougar have botox, one might wonder. A fake orange tan? Did the cougar order an appletini and lasciviously ogle the twentysomething bartender?

I wanted to write about this and how I was out for dinner with a dear friend who was visiting from Texas and maybe we were the cause of the sighting? We were drinking martinis, after all.

I’m not in the mood though because I’m still feeling sick from something that happened this afternoon.

I took the boys to meet a group of friends at the outdoor pool today and it was a lovely afternoon, the kids all had fun, the moms had fun. The weather was warm, the water was warm, the kids were happy. My boys, however, are not what one might call strong swimmers. They wear life jackets in the pool at all times. Mark can swim in his life jacket and he likes to swim all over the pool, especially in the deep end.

About fifteen minutes before we were going to leave, Mark was sitting at the picnic table, a towel wrapped around him, having a snack. I had taken his life jacket off of him so he could dry off a bit. Jake was in the shallow end, so I was standing on the deck, watching him. I looked over to check on Mark, and he wasn’t at the picnic table. He was on the ladder, going into the deep end, without his life jacket. I screamed his name and ran down the deck but he had, by the time I got there, hopped off the ladder and was underwater. He was underwater for probably only a couple of seconds but it felt like an hour. I reached in and pulled him out.

“Sorry Mom,“ he said. “I guess I forgot to put my life jacket on.” He went to the picnic table, put it on, and got back into the pool while I stood there, shaking, my heart pounding. A good friend of mine came over to me and stood with me, saying “He’s okay. Look at him. He’s swimming, he’s happy. He’s okay.”

It only takes a minute for something to happen. I close my eyes and I can see his head under the water, his hair floating and spiky, and it only takes a minute.

I want a jungle room!

I woke up this morning thinking that I was supposed to remember something about today when it occurred to me: it’s the 33rd anniversary of Elvis’ death. Festive! I love fat Elvis, and not just for his music. It takes a certain something something to be able to rock out a sparkly jumpsuit.


And capes! Wearing a cape when one is not, arguably, a superhero, really sends a message to the general public. A cape, I think, really escalates an outfit, especially one of the jumpsuit variety.

In general I love singing soulful and impassioned renditions of such musical masterpieces of Suspicious Minds and Kentucky Rain, and I felt that my performance would probably be greatly enhanced by playing the actual music, so I ran out to the car to find my most-loved Elvis CD. To find it, I had to dig through CDs by the following artists: Neil Diamond, Blue Rodeo, Kanye West, James Taylor, Eminem, Jay-Z, Gordon Lightfoot, Barenaked Ladies, and Hall and Oates. Rounding out the weird factor was a mixed CD called Pure Disco and the Starsky and Hutch soundtrack. I looked at those CDs for a minute and thought of arranging and photographing them for some kind of modern art piece, entitled, maybe, Study of Really Strange Mind Songs.

As an aside, I was at a pool today speaking with a lovely mother who mentioned that she had held a karaoke party and I was instantly filled with envy. Karaoke! I am AWESOME at karaoke! I want to go to a karaoke party. Of course, my 9:00 bedtime is generally unsociable and tends to preclude such events.

Anyway, I was indulging in the housewifely task of floor washing and singing, and as I passionately accompanied Elvis (“Maybe IIIII didn’t treat yooouuu...quite as good as I should have DUM DUM DUM! Maybe IIIIII didn’t LOVE YOU...quite as often as I should have...”) Mark quietly stole over to the CD player and stealthily ejected it. When I asked him about it, he said “I just kind of think that it was OVER, Mom.” Huh. That says a lot, really.

Garmins don't work if you don't use them.

“I think fall is coming!” Jake said happily, looking at the orange leaves on the grass below our Mayday tree. It is weird that two weeks ago we were doing this:


And now I’m wearing a sweater. August in Calgary. My thoughts, since we returned from vacation, have been turning to back to school, specifically in the clothing department since my children are looking decidedly like hobos. Yesterday, though, I went to Mountain Equipment Co-Op to pick up a lined jacket for Mark – Jake, in the tradition of subsequent children everywhere, is the recipient of Mark’s old jacket: “Mark, this is the jacket you GAVE me” he says in a heartbreakingly cheerful way – and it was a trip filled with mental anguish on my part. I’ve mentioned, I’m sure, my absolutely terrible sense of direction. I Mapquest everything, both directions. I once got so lost driving through Houston in a rental car that I actually LEFT Houston and ended up in a gas station in Sugarland, where the attendant informed me I was in an entirely different location and I cried a little, then turned the wrong way to get back on the interstate and drove for twenty minutes before realizing my mistake and making an illegal u-turn on some strange Texan secondary road. It’s like I am destroying the women’s movement with every turn of my wheels; like I’m just begging for some man to ruffle my hair and tell me not to worry my pretty little head about it, driving is a man’s job anyway, and am I crying because it’s my ladies’ days? Then best not to go hiking in the woods. My husband, exasperated with what he perceives as mental laziness in the matter of directions – “How can you not know which way is north? You’re a smart person!” – bought me a Garmin, which seems to have only escalated my direction-related anxiety, since I’m sure that it’s going to give me weird directions and also I only remember to use it when I’m actually driving and certainly unable to locate it, type in an address, and affix it to my windshield.

So I was heading to the Mountain Equipment Co-Op, a place where I have been many, many times, and also used to live within walking distance to, and yet. And yet I was coming from a different direction and therefore I couldn’t picture where, exactly, I was supposed to turn to get there. True story. I used to live within walking distance to it and yet I could not figure out where to turn. I finally circled around to some streets that would surely lead me to my destination, only to find them CLOSED due to construction. Did I mention it was pouring rain and there was a tangle of traffic? And that my kids were in the back seat, talking, talking, talking. And then once we did get there no parking spots were available and I circled the lot, whilst children talked. And talked. And talked.

You know, it’s the talking that can kill you. So I was pretty much in need of a sedative/drink/box of cupcakes by the time someone pulled out of a parking spot, and I flipped on my turn signal. The man pulling out suddenly put his car into park, jumped out of his car, and headed toward me, hand outstretched. He handed me his ticket from the parking meter, with time left on it, and told me he hoped I was having a good day. And after that small, kind gesture, I was.

I'm With Stupid

My husband went back to work this week after two weeks off, and to be honest, I oscillated between looking forward to getting back to regular routine and dreading the kids’ emotional fallout from getting back into our regular routine. This week has been fine, anticlimactically enough, and so yesterday we went to an amusement park with a good friend and her daughters. We were standing in line, and I noticed the twentysomething guy behind us wearing a t-shirt proclaiming “Vagitarian”.

Ew. Also? Unlikely. I’m fairly certain that someone advertising himself as a Vagitarian is more likely to be living in his parents’ basement playing Wii and using his mother’s back copies of Glamour magazine instead of purchasing pornography than he is to actually have been ever involved in an intimate relationship with a woman. I’m just speculating here, but that seems the most likely conclusion. I mean, I cannot imagine any self-respecting woman seeing a guy in a Vagitarian shirt and thinking that she would like a piece of that action, yes please, and can you keep that shirt on for the duration? Seriously. I once saw a guy wearing a shirt that read “Yes, it IS that big!” Uh huh. Sure it is.

Of course, I am writing this while wearing a shirt that says “Harmony, Peace, Serenity”, so I’m not sure what that says about me as a person.

T-shirts with statements are strange things. On the one hand, I find them somewhat amusing when I see them in a store. When I see them actually being worn, I have the same feeling that I have when I see personalized license plates – somewhat LAME. Or worse. I saw a little onesie that said “All Mommy wanted was a back rub”, which is slightly amusing, I guess, but if I actually saw it being worn by an infant, I would be absolutely appalled.

No one is quite immune to the lure of the t-shirt, though. Recently my husband and I were in Banff for the night and immediately following a meal in which I was channelling my inner Carrie Bradshaw by drinking one too many Cosmopolitans we stopped in one of those tacky tourist shops. Right in front of me was a shirt that said “Too pretty for math”. Squee! I wanted that shirt right away and had I had two too many Cosmopolitans, instead of one, I probably would have purchased it on the spot, but as it was, I still was somewhat capable of rational thought: a) the population at large does not know me, so the irony of the statement would be unappreciated, and b) a woman in her mid-thirties with permanent forehead creases, grey roots, and varicose veins wearing such a shirt is pathetic at best.

So perhaps I should follow my own “Harmony, Peace, Serenity” t-shirt and give the “Vagitarian” the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps he was channelling his inner Frank the Tank when his t-shirt was purchased. Perhaps.

Bad Mummy!

Check out my piece up at Yummy Mummy - where I talk about not winning the Mother of the Year award. I coulda been a contender! I coulda been a somebody, instead of just a...mom? Huh. See you there, I hope! xox

Travelled down that road and back again

So I’ve been feeling blue and gloomy and then I realized this morning that in four weeks the kids are back at school, and a cursory glance at their dressers indicates that every single pair of pants they own have no knees. I’m not saying they have small rips, either, I mean that when they are kneeling on the ground large amounts of their legs are exposed. So I took my blue and gloomy self to the mall today, where I was immediately faced with the Gap, advertising – girls of the 80’s, are you ready for this? - jeans with zippered ankles. Zippered ankles! I stood and stared until it got weird, then I snapped out of my reverie to notice the mall was filled with young girls, all wearing jeans tight at the ankles with big, blousy tops and pointy-toed flats. What’s next? Acid wash denim? Bubble skirts? Going through a can of Salon Selectives hairspray every week to obtain rock hard four inch vertical bangs? Because I honestly don’t think the environment can withstand that kind of abuse.

If that wasn’t enough, I walked past the Apple store and the hundreds of people waiting for the new iPhone. There’s a new iPhone? My cell phone doesn’t even have voice mail. I feel like maybe tomorrow I would be shuffling around with a walker, wearing turquoise slacks and a floral blouse, with matching plastic jewellery and a gigantic purse containing a change purse and a roll of Scotch mints.

Then – I know! There’s more! – I walked by American Apparel and it reminded me of this article about the company’s sketchy hiring practices and the ensuing boycotts. Of course, that affects me not at all since American Apparel is not one of the two stores that I actually purchase clothing from, given my great dislike for going into different stores with different sizing methods and different clothing qualities.

When I was in university, I waitressed at a chain restaurant that had similar hiring practices. If a person was to drop off a job application, one was supposed to put a mark on it indicating that person’s “bar appeal”. If that person sat next to you in a bar, my manager explained to me, would you start up a conversation? If not, perhaps there was a position for that person in the kitchen. American Apparel’s hiring practices are not exactly unique, but they are distasteful. In a weird way, it made me think of that Seinfeld episode where George hires a secretary, passing up all the gorgeous, sexy women for the plain and hyper-organized and efficient one. Then – of course – he becomes insanely attracted to her efficacy on the job and they end up having an affair. The point, I guess, is that one should not judge a book by its cover? Or maybe that being a Type A is really really hot? I don’t even know what my point is, except that in writing this, I’m not so blue and gloomy. Even though I feel a bit like I’m one step away from getting a once-a-week hairdo at the local beauty parlour and finding a secondary use for bread bags.

Giselle Bundchen must be an awesome mother, because she breastfeeds.

I’m not sure what I would do without a supermodel’s parenting advice. Surely I would not be able to be a truly effective parent without it. Especially advice from the lovely mouth of one Giselle Bundchen. First, Giselle has advised me that my pregnancy weight gain was a direct result of my gestational evolution into a human garbage disposal, which is very helpful advice for anyone attempting to lose the baby weight. Now, it appears that Giselle is advising that there should be an international law stating that every woman should breastfeed for at least six months. Breastfeeding is best, and evidently, what is ultimately a personal choice should be made mandatory.

Well, lawdy, Miss Clawdy.

Is there anyone out there, in our generation, who does not believe that breast milk is the optimal choice for a baby? Of course it is. Does that mean that we should make mothers who do not breastfeed feel like inferior mothers? Here is my story.

My firstborn, Mark, was jaundiced at birth and was an indifferent feeder. He was not a strong nurser and matters were not helped by the fact that it took five days for my milk to come in. I supplemented with formula. When my milk did come in, I nursed him constantly. “Cluster feeding” was the term used by the public health nurses. When I stumbled on my nursing log years later, I started to cry, remembering the feeling of waking up every half hour to feed my baby who would fall asleep twenty minutes into feeding. He lost weight. My doctor sent me to the breastfeeding clinic, where I learned to nurse him for an hour, then give him a few ounces of supplemental formula, a ninety minute process that would start over again in an hour, twenty four hours a day. I rented a scary, hospital grade breast pump to increase production. I went on drugs to increase production. I started to lose perspective and began believing that life would always be like this, I would always be exhausted and sore and my life would revolve around feeding and recording diaper changes and worrying about infant weight gain.

I went to the public health clinic. I can see myself perfectly: hair in ponytail, bags under eyes, carrying forty extra pounds and wearing maternity jeans and a DDD nursing bra stuffed with bloody nursing pads from my cracked nipples. I stood next to another new mother at the change station, while we changed our babies’ diapers. She glanced at my diaper bag and the little bottle poking out of it, and started up a conversation. Boy, was she tired! She nursed her baby every hour. The public health nurses, they were amazed at her stamina. They couldn’t believe she could keep up! But she did. She did keep up because her baby needed her and that’s all that mattered, didn’t it. She turned to her baby and cooed, “You just LOVE mommy’s milk, don’t you? Don’t you? You love it!” Then she turned to me with a smile and said, “Remember, any woman can breastfeed. Maybe you just need to try harder.”

I smiled shakily and nodded, my eyes filled with tears. She was right. She must be. I wasn’t trying hard enough. I got a 4.0 in grad school, surely I could breastfeed. I just wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t a good enough mother.

What I didn’t know then was that breastfeeding does not make a good mother. I didn’t know that breastfeeding is just a blip on the map. I stood there and I let that woman, that woman who didn’t know me or anything about me, make a judgement on my ability to mother. I let her make me feel like I was a second class mother. So fuck you, Giselle. Fuck you and your judgements. Fuck you and your attempt at making millions of mothers, whatever their story, feel inferior. Go back to the catwalk and keep your comments to yourself.

Are we there yet...are we there yet...are we there yet...

I spent nine and a half hours in the minivan today! We’ve been on vacation for the past week, and this morning we left at six to get a nice early start. After less than four hours of driving, we pulled into Golden BC, which is approximately three hours from home. Wow, we said to each other, this is a record! Less than four hours to Golden! We’ll be home so early!

Immediately after that we came across a tragic, horrific accident that subsequently shut the highway down for over two hours. This is where my number one piece of parenting advice becomes relevant in the extreme: ALWAYS HAVE EXTRA SNACKS.

So, nine and a half hours. What is it about car travel? It’s not strenuous. I spent the time sitting, basically, and alternating between doling out sandwiches, changing DVD’s, and occasionally stretching around the back seat to retrieve errant Bakugan balls. It’s not that challenging. However, I look like I spent the day pulling a rickshaw containing an entire family in the middle of the rainforest: tendrils of hair wildly escaping the ponytail, harassed and exhausted expression on face, clothing inexplicably stained. I looked in a mirror and gasped a little, startled. Plus, there’s the little matter of the pimple.

On my (very lovely) vacation I developed a pimple on my jawline. Big deal, right? I would not have cared, really, except that Someone Who Shall Remain Nameless pointed it out to me. “What IS that horrible blemish on your face?” I don’t know about you, but if I notice a pimple on someone’s face, I most certainly don’t comment on it. I don’t know. Maybe that’s just me. Then, in a misguided attempt to soften the blow, the comment after that was something to the effect that I have a lovely complexion, really, except for the horrible blemish. Like instead of a pimple I contracted a particularly horrible strain of leprosy and was suddenly missing my nose.

Anyway, my vacation was lovely with the exception of the pimple and my irrevocably damaged self esteem. There was much sunshine and beach time and enough delicious food and beer to make me think that perhaps I should go on a cleanse to counteract all this eating, drinking, and being merry. I shall tell you all about it but for now I am going to relax with a glass of wine. Perhaps I will start that cleanse tomorrow.