I can’t believe this is happening! Happy 18th birthday @Tchizzle97! http://ow.ly/i/cux0b
1000 Pieces
Here’s a post I wrote a few years ago about a supposedly fun cottage activity! I still feel the same way!
“It’s not fair!” I complain, “This is stupid!” and I continue my incoherent muttering under my breath. I catch the satisfying smirk my 15-year old tries to hide, and the irony that I sound just like him is not lost on me. “What are you lookin’ at?” I lash at him, “Oh my God, Mom, just let it go!” and he gets up of the couch and moves to another room, safe from my frustrated tantrums. My 10-year old daughter ventures in from the gloomy, rainy outdoors. “Mom, what’s for lunch?” she asks. “Get lost!” I bark back at her. “She stands there eyes wide, undeserving of this sudden of rudeness, and retreats to her father for the basic necessities of life. “Maybe you should give up” offers my husband. “Give up?! What are you talking about, I can’t give up! I won’t give up. I started it; dammit, I’m…
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Movie Night, Old School
Last night, my fourteen year-old daughter returned from two weeks at camp. This camp of hers in Algonquin Park is a pretty classic one: no electronics, no electricity in the tents and cabins, and no flush toilets, so the need to catch up on Instagram and Snapchat (and the proper use of a toilet) is almost immediate.
She spent some time regaling us in all her camp fun including descriptions of cabin mates and their personalities, exceptional stories camp activities and sports and then promptly fell into a twelve-hour, post-camp coma which I believe continues to this hour.
She spent the most time very animatedly telling us about the camp theatre production for July, Beauty and the Beast. This is no let’s-look-through-the-dress-up-box-and-see-what-we-can-find camp skit but a well-executed musical with a very talented cast held in a dedicated outdoor theatre. Not that I have actually seen a production, other than a YouTube-posted version, but they’re impressive. (And I was a postulant in a small town amateur production of The Sound of Music thirty-five years ago so I know what I’m talking about!).
As soon as she got home, she and a neighbour wanted to rent the Disney version of Beauty and the Beast (not sure if it was for comparison or to just gloat at Lumiere’s accent) but I told her we already had a copy, and after an impressively short ten minutes of rummaging I returned to the family room and handed them a VHS.
Honestly, from the look on her and her friend’s faces you would think I just handed them the Saturday New York Times crossword puzzle.
“What is that?”
“It’s Beauty and the Beast.”
“What do I do with that?”
“You pop it into the machine and watch it.”
“Um, machine?”
“Yes, the VHS machine.”
“We have one of those?”
“Yes, we do. It’s a DVD/VHS combo.”
So we figured out the right input channel fairly quickly and the image soon appears on the screen.
“Ugh!” she cried, “What’s wrong with it?!”
“Nothing,” I replied. “We just have to rewind it”
“I have to what?!”
At this point, her friend then says, “Y’know, this sounds like a lot of work. I’m going home.”
However, soon enough though, we were fully rewinded and perfectly snuggled on the couch and watching a VHS-version of Disney’s 1991 release of Beauty and the Beast. (Which, by the way, you cannot actually get on iTunes, at least not in Canada.) My nineteen year-old soon joined in on the retro movie night and it was a party.
After the movie was over (and remember, Disney movies are only about an hour long!) I suggested to my son, “I’m sure I can bring out you old favourite from the same VHS box, dear.”
To which he replied, “I better go work on my Me Ol’ Bam-boo dance moves, then.”
All this to say, don’t throw away your old VHS tapes or your machine. You’ll never know when they’ll come in handy for a lesson in retro movie watching.
Next up on the marquee: Chitty Chitty Bang Bang!
Tuck Shop Austerity
(photo courtesy of rabble.ca)
Limit my daughter’s purchases? Well, I’ve never visited the camp tuck shop but I am just imagining all the dazzling trinkets and delicious treats it must sell. I mean, why else would my daughter’s camp require an additional $450 deposit on her tuck shop account, basically her spending allowance for the next two weeks. $450 for two weeks. Isn’t that roughly equivalent to the GDP of Greece?
As she was packing, I brought to her the camp’s Tuck Shop Permission Form. The conversation went something like this:
“Let’s go over this tuck shop permission form.”
“Sigh. Can we do this later?”
“Later? You’re leaving for camp tomorrow and soon you’ll be spending money at the tuck shop like you won the Loto649 or something.”
“I know, Mom, we went over this last year.”
And she’s right. Every year it’s the same-old-same-old conversation about budgeting because I just don’t think a 14-year old should have to participate in bail-out negotiations. But she and I rarely agree on a spending plan her creditors (ahem) would approve.
People, this is what happens when you limit a girl’s screen time, take her cell phone away and stick her out in nature. She’ll go nuts shopping at the camp tuck shop! Where or where are Angela Merkel and François Hollande when you need them?
It wasn’t like this at the camp my boys went to. Their camp tuck shop deposit was $60 a month – just enough to cover a few chocolate bars and a wooden spear. As my boys tell it, there was quite an efficient underground tuck currency system at their camp. Heavy-handed negotiations took place as part of some pretty sophisticated trades. As he tells it, my son was awarded extra five extra candy “tuck” by a canoe trip mate for his mosquito jacket during one particularly brutally buggy canoe trip (three is the weekly maximum for a camper so it was quite the windfall for my son). So maybe the tuck shop permission form is more harmless than this alternative and entirely covert barter system!
Her first year at camp she brought home various stuffed animals and assorted other souvenir purchases, most of which quickly cast aside and forgotten, until the following camp season when they were all summarily replaced. After ten years as a camper, I think we now possess everything listed on that tuck shop list. Yet our austerity battle continues well into the night.
Anyone need a waterproof notebook and pen with camp crest? Pewter camp necklace? No? Maybe there is an equally sophisticated underground camp tuck shop surplus distribution network. Somehow I doubt it.
She comes home Sunday. I can’t wait to see her – and her tuck shop acquisitions.
Are you raising a hockey brat?
Once in a while there is a kid in the dressing room that really deserves a good slap. I only kind of kidding, but you know what I mean, right? Sometimes that kid is even my kid.
Is your kid being benched and you don’t know why?
Maybe your kid teases kids for not playing a good game, for missing the pass, for letting the goal in,
Maybe your kid is the one who’s an attention hog in the dressing room.
Maybe your kid thinks it’s really funny to squirt Gatorade and water all over the floor, walls, equipment and people.
Read more about my take on why coaches might be short-shifting your kid in hockey in my latest HockeyNow.ca post by clicking here.
In the shape of an L on my forehead…
It’s Friday night and I’m at the hockey arena. It’s no big deal. Since becoming a hockey mom fourteen years ago, I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been to a hockey arena on a Friday night! What can I say? I have an impressive social life.
Only this time, I’m not here with one of my three kids; I’m here with one of my friend’s kids. Again, because of my impressive social life, I need to be at a hockey arena on a Friday evening.
This boy’s parents, our friends and neighbours, are off to a family wedding at an adults-only resort in the Dominican Republic and being fourteen, he’s too young to join them. I think he could have passed for an eighteen year old, but whatever. I don’t even think there was a wedding, but whatever.
Thursday evening, my friend drops off her son for his 10-day retreat Chez Astra with $50 and a list of his weekly activities. I tell her “Hey, not to be rude or anything, but I don’t think this is going to cover my weekly LCBO purchases” and she doesn’t think this is funny.*
At first it looks like I might get out of the Friday night hockey carpool gig because I have company coming to visit . Then my guests decline and I mention this at dinner Thursday evening.
“Oh! So you can take me to hockey then?”
Quick. Think of something.
Only nothing comes to mind, and I concede: looks like I’m spending Friday night at the hockey arena.
After a 30-minute drive during which any question I asked was responded by him pulling his ear plug out and asking, “Excuse me?” I should know better; I drop all efforts to converse. I leave him at the front door of the arena and tell him, “I have a few errands to run (like running to the LCBO) but I’ll be here to watch the last twenty minutes” and off he goes.
This hockey arena has four ice pads and I forgot to ask him which surface he was playing on. I quickly size up the place: Pad 1 has girls on it – moving on. Pad 2 has little tykes on I,t so I move on again. Pads 3 and 4 both look like they’re hosting groups of 14 year olds. I spend a few minutes checking out the teams on Pad 3 but I don’t see our underage, unemployed free loader. I move over to Pad 4 and see him chasing the puck down the ice.
I flash my best fake yeah-thumbs-up in his general direction, mostly because I sure as hell don’t want to have spent a Friday night at the hockey arena without him noticing my efforts! The game appears to end in a 2-2 tie, and I retreat to the foyer to await his return from the dressing room. I then run into another hockey mom I know from my daughter’s hockey team last season. After some chit-chat, she asks what team Emily is playing on tonight – because it would be normal for me to be here with my own child. I tell her that I’m here with a friend’s son and am just waiting for him to change, gesturing in the direction of Pad 4.
All of a sudden, my friend’s son comes up behind me and says, “Hey, I’m ready to go!” I wheel around and ask, “Where did you come from?” “My game. Over there” gesturing to Pad 3.
“You weren’t playing on Pad 4?”
“Nope”
“Oh. I see. So. You were not the one I gave a thumbs up to?”
Thank God I didn’t bang on the glass.
“Did you even watch my game?”
“No. I was watching the game on pad 4.”
“Who was playing on Pad 4” he asks, and it’s not a bad question.
“I thought you were.”
So, not only did I take a child not my own to a hockey game, I watch almost an entire game of complete strangers. Loserdom has my name on it.
“Let’s keep this between the two of us, okay?” I implore to him.
“Sure” he says. “Just like you’re going to keep the two chocolate bars before dinner between the two of us too, right?”
It’s a deal.
~~~
*Truth be told, she also dropped off all his lunches, and two or three meals for our entire family (which had just grown to six people) but whatever – it’s my story.
And just that like – it was over between us.
Yesterday.
All my troubles seemed so far away.
Now it looks as though they’re here to stay.
Oh, I believe in Yesterday.
Yesterday was not a good day for me. Yesterday was the day she broke up with me. Yesterday was the day she uttered a simple, “I think we’re done here …” and just like that, it was all over. I couldn’t believe it! What had I done wrong? Nothing; I had done nothing wrong. The truth was – and she even admitted it –I had done everything right.
My Achilles tendonosis is healed, and my physiotherapist discharged me from further treatments.
Obviously, our furtive lunch time meetings over the past three months meant much more to me than they did to her. I thought we had something. Apparently all we had was a case of tendonosis and now that was gone. I saw her as a saviour of my soul (and sole) but she saw me as just another Achilles – and not a very special Achilles at that.
Time with her passed so quickly and I shared so much more with her than with anyone else in my life. She’s the only one who seen my legs since last summer (well, my left leg for sure).
She was twenty years my junior, married to an elite Triathlete and they had a six-month old baby girl together. Despite these obstacles, it’s not surprising that I fell do hard for her – she made me feel young again. I worshipped her special brand of “love” (acupuncture, dry needling, deep tissue massage, joint adjustments) because they were just what I’d been aching for.
I should have known it would come to this. The signs were there. The most obvious sign being that my insurance only covers $500 of physiotherapy and I’ll already given her $460. Still, my Monday and Wednesday lunch hours are going to be just a little darker now, without me being able to see her and her bright yellow safe needle disposal box. She fixed the broken parts of me. She fixed the broken parts of me that I didn’t even know were broken. But apparently now the broken parts are fixed and I now have to venture out in the world, and run!
All I have left of my time with her is a memory – and post-treatment exercises. She said, “Run!” (she actually said, “you should try some running now” but whatever, it cut me to the core – which is another body part altogether).
And “run” I will. Baby steps at first but I will get over this – and her. She said I would and I will. But the ‘what if’ still lingers. She left me with one ‘what if’ – a glimmer of hope that perhaps not all was over between us. She said, “I’ll leave your file open for three months – call me if your Achilles flairs up again”
So a rebound (or recurrence) was still possible!
Oh, I believe in Yesterday.
Chug big or chug home…
An unsanctioned event organized by students at one of our local high schools has raised the ire of its principal. So much so that emails have been sent home warning parents of this event and its imminent danger. Parents have been urged to ask their children NOT to participate in this wasteful and harmful event and have been cautioned that local police have been asked to provide additional officers to enforce safety, should the event take place.
What is this undesirable event that parents should be so anxious about?
Is it an illegal swim party at a local quarry? Is it an unchaperoned bush party at one of the many local farm fields? Is it the private post-prom party across the border at a local ski resort (where most of the students will be of legal drinking age)?
No. In fact, these events (which have taken place or are about to take place on my son’s social calendar) have not been deemed sufficiently objectionable by anyone such that parents should be alerted to potential unsafe and/or illegal activity. The low-down on the street is how we get savvy to these events.
The appalling event that I am being warned about is the annual senior student-organized milk chugging contest.
This will be one of the most uncomfortably awkward and sensitive discussions I will have with my teenagers yet. There’s no way all those conversations about safe sex, drugs, alcohol, academic challenges, work and money chats will serve me for this one.
I’m not sure how to handle this one. Should I go the sour milk is bad for you-route? Or, that unpasteurized milk may make you sick-schtick? How about, milk that comes from cows who’ve been injected hormones have been fed is unacceptable-deal (oh, but that’s illegal in Canada, so will probably not be too effective). Or the time-tested, waste-not-want-not talk? No, I think I better stick to the fear tactic that always works best: “Do you have any idea how easy it is to get addicted to milk?”
This isn’t the first time we’ll be talking about milk-chugging contests, and I can assure you, it won’t be the last.
(Sorry. I couldn’t help myself. I hope I don’t get my son suspended).
Thawstruck
You can tell an awful lot about a woman by the contents of her freezer.
I have a friend who, despite having three kids, has a truly immaculate home, unlike my own home with three kids which seems to be rife with kid clutter and dog dirt. Whenever I come home from her place, I am inspired to tidy up just a little. If nothing else, to at least wipe the dogs’ drool off the patio door. Well, this time I went for broke: I cleaned out my bottom-drawer kitchen freezer!
There’s a certain je ne sais quoi about my kitchen freezer. In fact, a freezerful of je ne sais quoi. As I was cleaning it out, I was not at all surprised by the number of containers with unidentifiable contents, or the amount of food with freezer burn beyond rehabilitation. I was, however, a little grossed out with the amount of dog hair I cleaned out of my freezer – which seems to be immune from freezer burn. Pretty sure this explains the string of declines for any dinner invites I extend.
Delighted with my Saturday morning’s accomplishment, I gathered the family (except the dogs) around the kitchen frig and presented them with my handiwork. “Ta da!” I announced, to a primarily indifferent audience.
“What’s that?” asked my husband, pointing to a little square Tupperware container amongst the ice cube trays and frozen treats. “It’s Fishy” I whispered. “It’s fishy?” he asked. “Why does fish get its own corner of your freezer?” which would be a very good question in a normal household. “Shhh! Not fish,” I corrected, “Fishy.”
“Fishy’s alive?!” screamed my daughter jumping up and down. Sigh.
“No honey, Fishy is not alive. He is still very much dead. He just happens to be still very dead in our freezer.” A now thoroughly confused husband then said, “I’m going to regret asking this, but what is a dead Fishy doing in our freezy?”
“Well, when he died, we were on our way out the door and didn’t have time to give him a proper funeral.”
“Sooo, when exactly did Fishy die?” asked my husband, glancing over at the fish bowl on the kitchen counter that contained a very much alive Beta fish.
“Three years ago.” I answered “Give or take …”
Needless to say, after having her dead fish replaced with a new alive one, the urgency surrounding a proper pet burial had diminished, and we all sort of forgot about the whole thing – until today.
Despite the wasted food and a long-overdue funeral, I truly feel like I accomplished something that morning.
The patio door, however, is still covered with dog drool.
This essay was written for the Erma Bombeck Writing Competition. It didn’t win but was great fun to write. I put on my best “Erma”. As many of you know, I learned so much from the Erma Bombeck Writers Workshop held every other year in Dayton, Ohio, its faculty and most importantly its attendees. You can read the winning entries here.
Canadian Hockey Offers some Happiness ( or C2H5OH)
Hockey parents have this reputation for excessive drinking which I believe is unwarranted. The truth is, hockey parents do like to drink a lot but, come on, it’s not because we’re hockey parents, it’s because we’re parents. Period. I can assure you that I was drinking long before my kids strapped on their first pair of skates! For some reason, that does not seem to surprise anyone.
So you know who I think started this nasty rumour about hockey parents and their drinking? I think it was that it was those crazy little hockey kids who drove us to drinking in the first place – they’re the work of the devil.
My daughter asks me stuff like, “Oh, do you really need alcohol to have fun?” I pondered that this weekend as I looked around what passed for a hotel room smaller than my university dorm room and I answered, “Yes. Yes I do. It is way more fun to be stuck in a little run-down hotel in the middle of nowhere with a glass of chardonnay than being stuck in a little run-down hotel in the middle of nowhere without a glass of chardonnay. In fact, I think you’re having way more fun yourself when I’m here with my little glass of chardonnay, because you’re out there doing God knows what and I don’t even know where you are until I need another little glass of chardonnay and I find you in some random hallway with all your friends eating popcorn” and thankfully not my chardonnay (not yet anyway; I’ll give that a few more years).” She should know that hockey weekend would be way less fun for the both of us if I was without chardonnay.
How about this one: “I don’t know how you drink that stuff … it tastes terrible!” I don’t believe it has ever been – nor will it ever be – about the taste. Wait until you have kids – especially hockey kids – and I assure you that little glass of chardonnay will NOT taste terrible, it will be medicinal magic –so will the second glass. And so on …
And when she tells me that I don’t need my wine to have fun, I tell her she doesn’t need the $12 buffet to have fun either. What’s so fun about paying $12 to witness a couple hundred screaming little girls waiting half an hour for the one single waffle iron that every single one of them seems to “need” at 9:00AM on a Sunday morning?
I’d say we’re even.
Note: This is not a sponsored post, meaning , I was not offered any free booze to write this post. I had to buy it myself. And for you hockey parents, please rink dresponsibly.
From my book, “…at this very moment t
From my book, “…at this very moment there are at least 3 appliances in my house being held together with hockey tape” #OBAM #hockeymom
From my book, “…at this very moment t
From my book, “…at this very moment there are at least 3 appliances in my house being held together with hockey tape” #OBAM #hockeymom
From the chapter The House That Hockey B
From the chapter The House That Hockey Built, “we don’t have a growth chart, we have hockey-bag-scuff-marks-on-the-mudroom-wall chart” #hockeymom
From the chapter The House That Hockey B
From the chapter The House That Hockey Built, “we don’t have a growth chart, we have hockey bag scuff marks on the mudroom wall” #hockeymom
From the chapter The House That Hockey B
From the chapter The House That Hockey Built, “we don’t have a growth chart, we have hockey-bag-scuff-marks-on-the-mudroom-wall chart” #hockeymom
From my book, “Take for example, my nea
From my book, “Take for example, my near ex-communication from my family due to hockey commitments…” #hockeymom #thanksgiving
the dustbunny chronicles 