I blame Gina

It's a well-documented fact that I love 70's (and 80's) AM gold.

So it should come as no surprise that when Total Eclipse of the Heart came on the radio yesterday, I was in The Zone.

What you don't know is that I am taking singing lessons from a wonderful teacher here in town named Gina.

I am loving the lessons, and while I may not have reached, say, Patsy Gallant status, I have noticed a huge improvement since I started.

So I blame Gina for the fact that I was really nailing the song, which was of course supported by video-worthy arm movements, a LOT of emoting, and some hair flips thrown in for good measure.

It was during one such hair flip (at a red light) that I glanced in the rearview mirror and made eye contact with one of the two gentlemen in the car behind me, smiling broadly.

So I blame Gina, but they can thank her for an entertaining drive home.

Too soon!

We went bowling yesterday.

I sprang for a super healthy lunch (french fries and a pop).

I kept reminding the girls to use the little wooden fork thingies when eating the fries, so the bowling balls wouldn't get greasy.

After several reminders, it also occurred to me that there was another concern:

"Guys, please use the forks...after you've had your hands on the balls, you don't want to touch your food."

And there was a pause.

And the girls looked at each other and at the floor, and tried not to giggle.

Noooooo!

I am not ready for them to get ball-related humour.

Mostly because it means that I'm going to have to rethink my whole repertoire.

Well, she's not wrong

We've been watching the Food Network a lot lately. I suppose I'm hoping that the children will be inspired to learn to cook, and then I won't have to.

To give you an idea of how important cooking is in our house: on one show someone was having trouble with a pressure cooker; our girls were confused, and one of them said, "I thought a pressure cooker was a kind of fart?"

And with that, we wrap up 2015.

As you've noticed, the posts have been sparse this year -- mostly because the girls are savvy enough now to say "don't put that in the blog!" when they say something hilarious/embarrassing. (Embarious? Hilarrassing?)

However, on the same day as the sincere pressure cooker question, I was showing the girls a new pair of pants I got, and one of them said, "Awww, you got new mom jeans!"

So maybe the blog will now evolve into a place where I can record all of the horrible teenagery things they're going on unload on us in the next few years. 

Wherever it goes, thank you for coming along for the ride.

All the best to you and your loved ones in 2016.

I'm just a really great influence, basically

Today we marked our seventh celebration of an annual tradition - the Picture Day Meltdown.

We did get out the door fully dressed, but there had been much yelling, some tears, and I was in a full-body sweat by the time I got in the car.

After school, one of the girls passionately declared: "Mummy! When I get older and live on my own, every day when I get home I'm going to whip off my pants and sit on the couch and watch TV."

I'm sure a Tiger Mother would have something to say about that, but I just thought "Damn, that sounds like a good life goal."

But the good news is, tonight I went to the gym for the first time in months!

Right after I ate four slices of pizza for dinner.

I was going to type 'thin crust pizza' in that sentence AS IF THAT FREAKING MATTERS.

So I ate the pizza, and shortly after, as one is wont to do in that situation, I cut some heat.

DH: "Did you just fart?"

Me: "Yes. It's.....not good."

DH: "It's not going to be good for the other people at the gym, that's for sure."

It's all in your perspective

E commenting on someone's behaviour: "She sure is worried about fitting in..."

K agreed, and exclaimed, "That's the LEAST of my worries!"

Me: "Oh? What's your biggest worry?"

E, immediately: "Spiders."

K, after a thoughtful pause: "Coming face-to-face with a Dalek or Cyberman."

                                     ----------------------------

This morning, S wore the first summery skirt of the year.

Me: "Oh, you look super-cute!"

A minute later, K finished dressing and presented herself to me, running her arms up and down her sides, displaying her outfit.

K: "How do I look? But DON'T say super-cute."

I looked at her Blue Jays shirt and shorts.

Me: "You look super-sporty--"

She cut me off.

K: "I look awesome."

It's not only about having a different perspective, it's about me wanting theirs!

I was being helpful

Approaching the near-empty bag Ziploc bag of home made chocolate chip cookies, I thought:

"Oh good, there are only two left! I can eat the last ones without feeling guilty, because the kids would just fight over who gets the last two anyway."

I took another step closer.

"Oh, there are three left...

Well, they would never go for each just getting one little cookie (and one was that sad bottom-of-the-bowl cookie that only had a single chocolate chip in it!).

Three isn't that bad. They're small. Still mine."

I reached in to claim the cookies.

"Oh. There are four left...

Four is too many. I am not going to eat four cookies. That would be gross."



(I ate four.)

So near and yet so far

Last Friday night, the girls were invited over to their friend's house.

When I told them about the invitation, two of them jumped at the chance. One, however, was looking forward to a night of 'just staying in'. Because apparently she's 40.

I mentioned this was on a FRIDAY NIGHT, yes?

So I suggested, I coaxed, I cajoled...I tried everything in my arsenal to convince her to go.

Sure, I could've played it cool, but let me review: All 3 kids. Out of the house. Friday night.

Finally, she burst out, "What is UP with you? Usually you're like 'that's fine, you don't have to if you don't want to' but tonight you're all 'go, go, GO!'"

There was a pause.

She squinted.

I squinted.

Somewhere, the theme from The Good, The Bad and the Ugly played.

And then...

I blinked.

"No reason," I sighed.

And the three of us curled up on the couch. She, on her tablet. He, watching The Curse of Oak Island (I'm assuming). Me, looking through the flyers.

Somewhere the 'you lose' music from The Price is Right played.

Great Moments in Parenting, number 643

As we were dropping off the kids before school today:

"Mummy, I didn't get my agenda signed because you were swearing and I didn't think I should disturb you."

Just a matter of geography

So, we're into Doctor Who now. We're Whovians.

Which is awesome, because it means we've reached a point where the entire family can agree on what to watch (so long, Disney channel sitcoms!). 

But we may be getting a little too obsessed....some members of the family more than others. It's pretty much all we talk about at the table, and the kids are constantly drawing Doctor Who pictures, and one of us may have been a little too excited to find, when she googled David Tennant, that he was born in 1971, because that means he's only one year older than me, which means that if we ever did meet and fall in love (inevitable), there wouldn't be an awkward age-gap.

This is similar to my early-90's certainty that if John Cusack just MET me, everything else would fall into place.

I just need to make sure that Amy Adams pops by on the same day, so DH gets his wish, too.

You may not recognize me

I joined a gym.

And I've actually gone to it. Like, 3 times.

So if you pass me on the street and don't recognize me, I'll understand. Pretty major transformations goin' on over here.

Speaking of major transformations, you know that cartoon where the elderly woman is walking down the street, but her shadow is her as a young ballerina? I pretty much lived that moment when I caught sight of myself during Sh'Bam class. I almost didn't recognize the old lady shimmying away in the mirror, and then I realized she was wearing the same clothes as me.

Sh'Bam, by the way, is one of the most delightfully ridiculous workouts I've ever done. (I keep calling it Sha-Boom, but that would something else. Very slowly doing jazz squares to old doo-wop songs, I would guess.)

But back to Sh'Bam. Remember how excited I was when Just Dance had that song on it that made me feel like a Solid Gold dancer? Now I get to do moves like that IN PUBLIC. Seriously, there's actually a move where you kind of do a tiger-growly-swiping at the air move. One step away from the Solid Gold dancer patented crawl-seductively-towards-the-camera move. I may start wearing a head band and leg warmers to class, just to get the full effect.

Also, there was a part when we were doing the MC Hammer dance (seriously, I couldn't make this stuff up) and I looked in the mirror and wondered who was dancing so close behind me. Then I realized that it was just my butt, taking up way more real estate than it ever did before.

Still, I walk out laughing, which is more than I can say for any of the people working on the machines. Unless they're watching me Sh'Bamming away through the windows, in which case we're all getting a good chuckle.

This is a test.

This is a test of the emergency parenting system.

Child comes out of the bathroom and says, "Something weird is going on. My underpants are all pink."

Mom and Dad exchange a significant look as Mom leaps off of the couch towards the child.

Dad beats a hasty retreat upstairs.

Mom realizes she is completely unprepared and has no idea what the next words out of her mouth should be.

Mom: "What do you mean, your underpants are all pink?"

Child shows Mom.  Her underwear is pink. As in, they went through the laundry with something red, and the underwear is now pink.

This was only a test.

If this were truly a parenting emergency, bottles of wine would have lowered from the ceiling, and Carol Brady would have been immediately dispatched to your home. 

Don't you hate it...

...when your kids teach you stuff you should already know?

We came home from swimming lessons on Saturday morning to find DH in a bit of a lather about the state of the house.

(We've kind of let the housekeeping slide over the last few weeks. And the 15 years before that.)

So DH had made a list of chores for everyone to do.

Seriously, he had written it all down on a piece of paper.

So, we finished eating, then scattered to every corner of the house to get to work.

As I cleared off the kitchen table, I picked up the list. 

S had edited it - or, as she wrote at the bottom of it, the list had been "S"-ified.

She had drawn hearts all over it, and at the end of the list of chores, she had written:

"Everybody relax.

Have fun."

Happy Mother's Day to all of you out there who, like me, have to keep relearning the same lessons over and over again. Thank goodness 9-year-olds are good teachers.

Choose your words carefully

It's not so much miscommunication, as it is people's minds skipping ahead a few grooves in the conversation.

• I'm getting my gall bladder out. I explained to the girls that it is being done 'by a robot' as the doctor will be in one corner of the room, and he will remotely control the scope going in through my belly button. (Crazy!)

But a few minutes into the conversation, one of the girls looked at me worriedly and said, "So, how does the robot get out of there after?"

• I got a summons for jury duty. I know!

After doing what I thought was a pretty good job of explaining it to them (including "and then you decide if someone is going to have to go to jail"), one of the girls looked at me worriedly and asked, "But, could you end up going to jail?" 

• We were talking about a dog that got hit by a car in our neighbourhood. 

DH: "I remember the woman was sitting there on the side of the road, with the dog's head in her lap, just crying..."

Pause as we all think of how sad that must've been.

K: "Wait a minute. The dog's HEAD in her lap?"

Me: "No, no...it was still attached to the dog."

And this last one was more about wanting the conversation to skip ahead a few grooves, so it would just end.

The subject of puberty came up during dinner the other night. After a lot of moaning and gagging and eye rolling, K and S beat a hasty retreat as soon as they could.

E, bless her heart, stuck around.

But after a few minutes, Pop launched into "Isn't it amazing, though, that you will be able to create a life inside your own body?"

She nodded half-heartedly, looked down into her folded arms, and did a long, slow, exhale.

It was truly a deep, cleansing breath. Like she was just steeling herself for the rest of the conversation.

But then we were laughing too hard at her reaction to continue.

And I said, "Pardon?"

Conversation over breakfast.

DH: "Are you going to eat your waffles?"

Child: "I will not eat my butthole."

DH: "What?"

Child: "I will not eat my butthole."

DH: "I said are you going to eat your waffles."

Child: "Oh."

DH: "Are your ears plugged?"

Child: "Yeah."



The thing is, there was no real reaction to DH saying such a thing. It was a very calm and measured response.

DH, later: "It's not like it's out of the realm of possibility that I would say something like that...but in that context? On a school day over breakfast? It's not like--get up, get up! Eat, eat! Clear your plates! Are you going to eat your butthole? Pack your lunch!"

No appreciation for the classics

DH heard Meghan Follows being interviewed on the CBC the other day, and we're highly suggestible, so we ended up watching Anne of Green Gables.

The movie was wrapping up, the girls had already looked at me to check if I was crying when Matthew died (and to laugh at me) (no, not all the girls, I have blessed/cursed S with the inability to sit through almost any show without tearing up about something), Anne had announced that she wasn't going off to school, and she was walking dreamily through another field.

Sorry, I guess that last paragraph should've had a big spoiler alert before it, but really, the book has been around for 100+ years and the movie was broadcast 30 years ago, surely to goodness you all know by now that Matthew dies...

Anyhow, so Anne was walking through the field, Gilbert was approaching on horseback, the music was swelling...and DH and K started giggling. So I gave them the stink-eye. And they giggled again. So I said, "Guys, it's the last, like, two minutes of the movie, can you just NOT?" And they giggled AGAIN.

Movie ended, I was in full happy ending afterglow, and DH explained to the other two (who, of course, just kept saying, "What are you laughing at? What are you laughing at?" for the rest of the movie) that when Gilbert was approaching on horseback, he had leaned over to K and said, "Imagine how different this scene would play out if Gilbert was riding a giraffe?"

Which led to a full five minutes of:

"Imagine if he was riding a monkey?"

"Imagine if he was riding a pig?"

"Imagine if he was riding an ostrich, holding on for dear life?"

And finally, "Imagine if he was riding a unicorn Pegasus? And then the Pegasus was pooping rainbows?"

Missed Opportunity

I was at a stop light the other day, and a girl pulled up next to me with her windows down and her crappy thumpy music BLARING.

You know the kind, where your windows are all the way up, but you still can't hear your music because of the THUMPA THUMPA.

The light turned green, and suddenly my dear 101.3 (the heartbeat of South Western Ontario) played Tie a Yellow Ribbon!  And I really, really, really wished it had come on 15 seconds earlier, so I could've rolled down my windows and cranked it, and then given my traffic neighbour this face:

Serge Thomann/WireImage

To show her that I was also rockin' out. In the loser cruiser. To Tony Orlando and Dawn.

Parental Guidance

I've been out at rehearsals lately, so the girls have been spending some quality time watching TV with DH. So luckily I missed these two conversations.

1) DH got hooked on a show called Naked and Afraid. There was a marathon on, or something. If you're not familiar with it - this is a show where strangers are dropped in some remote location - naked - and they have to survive for some ridiculously long period of time. Also, DH couldn't recall if there is money on the line. People would do this for kicks?? Anyhow, the important thing to note here is that everyone is naked, but their private bits are blurred out.

So, they were watching an episode with a guy who, in DH's words "must've had a gigantic package" because S finally had to ask, "Pop, why do they keep blurring out that guy's butt?"


2) DH and E were watching a show on Discovery last night, and a commercial came on. They watched in silence, and at the end she said, "Pop, I don't understand - why is that boy getting a car, and what's Cialis?"

Cross that one off the list

Thanks to another mom's status update on Facebook, I found out the girls were learning about where babies come from.

(They certainly weren't offering up this information on their own.)

When I asked them what they'd learned at school that day, they casually mentioned that they'd started learning about it, but there was more to come.

Oh, did I mention that one of them was sick that day? So I practically shoved her out the door the next day, not wanting her to miss any of this, because God knows I was in no rush to have this conversation...

So days go by, and nothing is mentioned.

Finally the other day we were driving somewhere and I asked what they learned at school that day.

Silence.

"Did you learn about where babies come from, and that's why you don't want to talk about it?"

"Yes."

Later on, they started to tell me more about it.

"And then someone asked if you can choose to have a baby, or how you end up having a baby."

"And?"

"And then the teacher TOLD us! And we giggled. Because he even used the word!!"

"What word? Penis?"

"No!"

"Sex?"

"YES!"

Pause.

"So....we know, Mommy."

Pause. Meaningful look straight at me.

"We know....."

How the other half lives

I went to a work event the other day, and one of the presenters was a person I recognized from high school.

I knew he had gone to an Ivy League school after high school (with a scholarship, I think)...when I read his bio, it turns out that yes, he got his undergraduate degree from Harvard, and then he got his Ph.D. from Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.

I was telling all of this to DH last night over dinner, and we were marvelling at how intelligent and focussed one would have to be to achieve such things.

At which point S said, "May I please change the subject now?"

Me: "Sure, what would you like to talk about?"

S: "M was telling us about this video of gymnasts at the Olympics where someone has dubbed it to make it look like they're all farting..."

DH: "Oh, man, we've gotta see that!"

I'm 97% sure that the same conversation was not happening at the Rhodes Scholar's dinner table last night.

Free labour!

I had two goals yesterday: get groceries and clean the bathroom.

(Spoiler alert: I accomplished neither.)

The second goal was especially important because, when I tried to remember the last time I thoroughly cleaned the bathtub, the best answer I could come up with was "before Christmas."

But when I realized it probably wasn't going to happen, I did my best impression of a multi-tasker and put the kids to work. Before each of them went in for a shower, I sprayed the cleaner on the tub, threw a washcloth on top, and told them to skate around while they were in there and get cleanin'.

Also, fun fact about me: if I get out of the shower and put my hair in a Turbie Twist,

and then get distracted by cleaning the damn tub, and my hair ends up drying completely in the Turbie Twist, when I eventually take off the Turbie Twist, I look like this guy: