The Toothless Hoards

I was getting a lovely facial the other day by the most amazing eastern European aesthetician. When she is done working her magic on my face it glows for days and is soooo soft.Delish.

 

This lovely woman,I will call her M, was lamenting of the lack of culture and shopping out here in the ‘burbs.

Here’s where what she said gets really good: she, ‘M’, was at a restaurant opening in our small town the other night and she was telling me about the crowd. According to ‘M’ all the women were badly dressed, drinking, smoking, toothless and eating nothing but Chicken wings. I giggled. The description was too good. I can really relate. After all, I am one of those toothless women. The reason for my acid washed jeans and stained t-shirt is not entirely my (our) fault.

I am the mother of a small child and shopping is something I only do in places that sell milk. If there is a t-shirt or two on the same isle that I purchase no name oats and honey, I pick it up. Costco has become my salvation from walking around completely undressed. (how’s that for an image ?) It is so easy to pick up whatever looks good in my size while walking by the clothing tables. The piles of t-shirts and jeans all sorted by size. I usually grab whatever is in the middle of the piles and keep going. No stopping. Walking, practically running by the tables of clothing. If I stop for just a moment and contemplate a color or size, my small tyrant will start to scream, whine, or curse. Most of my shopping is done while walking really fast. You know those game shows where women have 1 minute to fill their grocery carts? I would win. I could fill two carts. Easy. With my small child prodding me on with his screams for every new toy/movie/shiny thing that catches his eye, laser focus and speed are my specialty.

The well dressed city dwellers wonder why the culture, shopping and food is lacking out in the ‘burbs’. It’s not for lack of trying or wanting to look fabulous and have fabulous things to do and eat. But, Until someone invents a (safe, guilt free) place to lock up our small children and shut them up (or maybe it’s me that needs the pink padded room?) long enough so us mamas can think and pause while shopping for something other than milk and chicken wings we may be shit out of luck.

Here’s to the toothless hoards, mamas, my wings are ready to come out of the oven and the beer is icy cold. Cheers!

Beach Day

This morning my sister Elizabeth and I packed up the kids and went to the beach. We pull into the parking lot and unpack our load of provisions. We pile the mass of stuff onto a large wagon, perch a child or two precariously on top and drag the whole mess to beach. One of the children start to whine about the heat. My sister and I are getting snappish from the morning packing and getting the children ready. I tell the whining child to please zip it until we get to the water in two minutes.

To make matters worse, the hat I stuffed on my head is making my head itchy and sweat has started to pour down my face. I can't scratch the itch or wipe off the dripping sweat because both arms are full of blankets and towels. We are a bedraggled noisy bunch. As I walk behind my heavily pregnant sister and watch her pull the wagon piled high with all of our beach day 'stuff'. It occurs to me that we look like victims of some natural disaster carrying all of our worldly possessions. All that's missing is the red cross on my van.

We look for our friend Crystal and she is easy to find. She has a large shade tent set up with a beach umbrella and a King size quilt. We put up our umbrellas and lay out our blankets. We Pull the sunscreen,hats,bathing suits, water shoes, beach toys, floating devices and other odd and sundry items out of our large beach bags. The coolers are set onto the beach and we start discussing who has brought what food and how much. As fellow disaster survivors having enough food to last until labour day is not an anomaly.

Now that we have set up base camp we start to apply sunscreen on the children and hand out food. The kids eventually start playing in the water and us mamas get to gossip, with one eye on the kids, and we get to work on our mama tans. It's what I call our tans. It's a fun perk of being a stay at home mom. The mama tan. While most are slaving at the office we get the 'slave' at the beach. At my recent 20 year high school reunion my dear friend Dianea got an awesome dark spray tan. Looked great. Me, I saved a few pennies at the tanning salon and showed off my mama tan. I like it, the tan, it hides the dark circles under my eyes. If it's not my small child waking me up at night it's my teenage son coming home in the wee hours of the morning ringing the doorbell because he forgot his key.

I digressed . . . my point? And I do have one. If I'm going to walk around like some sad disaster survivor I might as well look good with a politically incorrect non fake melanomious (is that a word?) tan.

The New Car

The first car for most, means freedom and independence. For me, no more 5AM Saturday morning wake up calls to drive my darling son to work. I'm not sure who was happier. Luukas, my 17 year old son, or me. After two months of glorious freedom Luukas wrote off his car on a rainy evening. He rear ended another car. He was fine, everyone was o.k.. His poor car was headed for the auto wreckers and Luukas and I wondered if he would get a decent penny for it from the insurance company so he could buy another. And here, my friend, is where the story begins:

When we were buying Luukas' first car I asked the seller if we could tell a small white lie on the tax/transfer form so we wouldn't have to pay as much tax. We paid $3600 for the car. Couldn't I just put $2500 on the form and pay less tax? I was paying cash. Who would know, and really, what's the big deal? The less money the government gets the happier I am. The seller, Sarb, kindly said no. Sarb told me he preferred to be honest. He told me: "If your son writes off the car it's important to have proof of how much you paid for it."

We got exactly $3556 and change for the wrecked car. Thank you Sarb. I had to call him and thank him personally for acting with such integrity. Sarb was happy to hear from us. He had recently bought another civic. The car had white shelby stripes, was lowered, new rims and a nice stereo. He thought this new civic would be perfect for Luukas. He told me he had often thought about making Luukas a new deal and exchange the white (read: boring) civic for the much cooler and sportier car.

Sarb had put some work into the new Honda Civic and was ready to sell it. The milage was good, he had all the service records and was kind enough to drive out from Burnaby so my mechanic could give it the thumbs up. We bought the 'cool civic' for a wee bit less than the other car. We didn't have to go through the hassle of calling and looking all over hells half acre for another reliable car. Yay.

Luukas loves his new car and yes, his insurance rates goes up (%55) in May 2010. However as far as lessons learned it didn't cost an arm and a leg figurativley and literally. Luukas may learn to slow down and me, I was reminded again how important it is to act with integrity. Always.