But what was I talking about? Christmas, that’s what. I was talking about Christmas. I would like you to know that I am COMPLETELY FINISHED my Christmas shopping and now have to stay away from stores to stop myself from buying a thousand more things that the kids would love. The trouble with my kids is that they are equal-opportunity fans of … EVERYTHING. If nothing else is available, The Bun will beg on his knees for the chance to own a grey sock or a tire gauge. The Birdy will scream in outrage when told that she may not actually have a lingerie laundry bag or a bottle of spray cleaner. They really really DO like everything. And if you were to give them ANYTHING, they’d be thrilled and the fact that they are equally excited about a dollar store stretchy dinosaur with a scary face as they are about a $100 dollhouse with REAL LIGHTS makes me want to buy them more and more things (um, of the dollar store variety) because sooner or later they are going to get savvy to VALUE and then the gig will be up.

But your problem is not my kids. YOUR problem is your wife and just now you’ve looked at the calendar and realized that HOLY SHITMAS, IT’S ALMOST CHRISTMAS! I love how Christmas sneaks up on menfolk every year. I swear that my dad wakes up from his long winter slumber on December 24th, scratches his head and says, “Well, any ideas for your mum this year?” I cannot count the number of years that I fought crowds and snowstorms in the mall, not to do my OWN shopping, but for my dad’s last minute hoopla. Don’t let that happen to you!

Here you go, five things that your wife would LOVE for Christmas, but only if your wife is exactly like me. If she’s not, I’ve no idea why you’d come to me for advice. How would I know what your wife would like?

1. A cardigan sweater. That’s right, that’s what I said. A cardigan sweater is what EVERY SINGLE WOMAN IN THE WORLD* puts on when she gets home and puts on her comfortable clothes. A nice cardigan sweater says, “You deserve to wear a nice cardigan sweater when you are at home because I love you.” A cardigan sweater is a HUG, god damn it. Because I say so. Here are some of my choices for CARDIGAN SWEATER GIFTS. Buy one for your wife. In her size. Do NOT buy an extra large if your wife wears a size 6 because she will not feel kindly towards you. Go to her closet, check the labels in her clothes, and buy the sweater in that size. Seriously. This isn’t rocket science, people. These sweaters are all from anthropologie.com, who don’t sponsor me, although they should. Free advertising for them! Courtesy of me.

The Small Packages Cardi

All Wrapped Up Cardi — this one looks like crap on the mannequin, but trust me when I say it’s adorable in person.   Or it is on the person of the model in the catalogue.   Looking at it on the mannequin makes me wonder why I liked it in the first place, but I did, so it makes the list.

Hues Unfolding Cardi — Again, this looks like crap on the mannequin, but over this frilly pretty blouse?   Awesome.

Enough of the sweaters.

2.   A Roots Leather Bag.

Here’s the thing.   Roots leather bags last forever.   Long after you are sick to death of this bag, you will still have it.   And guess what?   You probably won’t get sick of it.   If you are Canadian, you can buy Roots at both, well, roots.com and at sears.ca.    I know what you are thinking!   You are thinking, “But how can something awesome, in terms of leather, come from Sears?”   It’s a mystery.   I do not know.   But lo, a bag that I covet.   From Sears.   The advantage to buying at Sears is that there are coupons to be found all over the place.   Roots often has coupons, too, so do not buy before you’ve searched for those.   Just a tip.   I am NOTHING if not a HELPFUL SHOPPING SERVICE.

Roots Venetian Leather Bag in Black (Sears) — Oh, and FYI, these are made to be worn across the body, not perched merrily on the shoulder of your awful puffed sleeve wool coat, as shown in the picture on the Sears website.   Way to take a nice bag and make it look like crap, Sears!

Village Bag in Rustler Leather

3.   I do not know a single woman in the universe who does not love this movie**.    I do not know exactly why that is the case, but it is.   AND it’s on sale right now at chapters.ca.    Very few women would actively HATE this movie.     It’s just a good movie.   Period.    Note, the Colin Firth Pride and Prejudice = good.   The Keira Knightley Pride and Prejudice = Bad.

4.  Lately, and I have no idea why, I’ve been craving letterpress business cards.   There is NO REASON why I want these, nor is there a reason why the fact that they are often called “calling cards” makes me want them more.   But I do.   Maybe if I had these, I would start giving them out to people in my business and they would begin calling me, although I hate answering the phone and hardly ever do it.   Probably if they actually want to talk to me, they should e-mail me.   Phones make me anxious.   So if one were to get me CALLING CARDS, one should also get me XANAX to counteract the stress induced by the ringing telephone.

These fancy ones with two colours and rounded edges are so pretty.

And these ones are classic and also witty if you’re a writer.   Or an editor.

5.   Which brings us to the LAST CATEGORY, which is a big category and basically a grab bag of a category that fits the list of everything I might ever want for any gift-giving occasion.   The category is:   PRETTY.

That’s right.   PRETTY.    Here are some things that fall into the category of PRETTY just to give you some ideas because I am like Santa’s little elves, all balled up into one big slightly-hairy-armed package.

The Pink Coat.   This coat is sold out so you cannot buy one for your wife, but I know SOMEONE who bought one for his wife and that wife is very happy about the Pink Coat even if her mother did say, “Gosh, won’t that shade of pink make you look even more sallow?”   As though ANYONE WANTS TO EVER BE DESCRIBED AS SALLOW.    The wife in question is going to feel pretty in the coat regardless of how SALLOW it makes her appear because she loves the Pink Coat and wants to be generally a happy person who does not run around obsessing about how SALLOW she may or may not appear to be in pink.

This necklace is just flat-out pretty.   I defy anyone to not like this necklace.   Search “bookends” on anthropologie.com.  I don’t know why their links never work, but they don’t.   In that, you can’t link to a specific anthro page, just the main page.    Why?  WHY?

Does your wife need reading glasses?   I actually don’t, not yet, but am sure it’s just a matter of time.   When I DO, I will get something pretty.   Like these Dash of Sparkle readers:

That about exhausts my list of  FIVE THINGS TO BUY FOR YOUR WIFE FOR CHRISTMAS.   And it was WAY more than five, so consider the extras just a bonus.   I could have come up with a lot more, trust me.   Fantasy shopping is actually my sharpest, most honed skill.    I’m not sure that will every translate into anything revenue generating, but that’s OK because I’m a writer and you KNOW how well-paid we are.   Ha.   Ha ha.   HA HA HA HA HA.   HO HO.   HO.   HO HO HO.    MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!   ***

*  i.e. Me.

**  Based on a survey of 1.  i.e. Me.

*** And I don’t actually care if you don’t believe in Christmas or not because you are Buddhist or whatever, just think of it as a day per year when you can buy pretty things for other people and feel good about it, and if you don’t want to do that, there are thousands of worthy charities that you can donate to in lieu of buying gifts and no one would fault you for that.   In fact, this year, I made the kids come with me to ToysRUs where we carefully selected gifts for a four year old boy and a two year old girl who were from families who are down on their luck and I totally recommend, all kidding aside, that if you can, you do the same.   It’s part of what Christmas is all about, whether or not you believe in characters like Jesus or Santa or the pope or whomever.

Anyway, it’s Friday and even though I just did a shoppy (is that a word?) post, I’m going to do another one. Because in spite of the fact that I just confessed that I buy all my clothes at J.Crew, that was really a lie for dramatic purposes. Not that there was anything dramatic about that post, I just felt the lie was necessary to, you know, make a point. What point? No idea. What does it matter? It’s just a blog, people, not a manifesto.

I actually don’t really know what the definition of manifesto is, I just like the word. FYI. I mean, I have a vague idea but if someone broke into my house and pointed a gun at my head and forced me to come up with the EXACT CORRECT DEFINITION, I’d probably end up being shot dead. These things happen.

Before I die in a weird, dictionary-related heist though, I would like to own these five things from the new Anthropologie catalogue. See, I buy J.Crew when I want to pretend that I live in Faketucket and have a house on the beach near long, waving grass and maybe also a dinghy with chipped paint that I row back and forth to a private little island for picnics involving tiny sandwiches and fresh fruit and a wide-brimmed straw hat. BUT when I want to pretend that I live in Icelandia — not actual Iceland, because I’m sure they don’t wear Anthropologie in Iceland (I think it’s and American outfit) — but the fake Iceland that they conjure up on their catalogue pages — a sort of overly-hip place where the backdrop is invariably grey and, well, frankly Icelandic, and although there are no children or men ever present, all the people are both exquisitely fashionable and casually chic in that “Oh, I threw it all together right before I posed in front of this daunting rock face near a haunted looking barn**” when you know they actually spent hours making it look just so, right down to the windswept hair and smudged makeup.

Don’t worry. Even I don’t know what I’m talking about anymore.

Note to Anthropologie.com: I USED to buy stuff from your website, jackholes, before you decided to get all “Canada friendly, eh?” and make a “Canadian” portal. NOW I no longer have access to sale stuff and the prices are so outrageously high through the “Canadian portal” that it’s actually cheaper to buy on the “US site” and pop for the duty myself. WTF? I mean, seriously. Thanks! For the site where we can PAY MORE MONEY FOR THE SAME ITEM! Awesome.

So here are the five things that I’m not going to buy but am seriously considering moving to the US so that I can own them and love them forever, like the furry little pets that I’m never going to own.

1.   Frye For the Ages Boots

Holy hell, those are perfect boots. For one thing, Frye boots are your best friends if your feet are like mine and reject other boot brands like an organ donated by someone with the wrong blood type. For whatever reason, my Fryes are the only boots I ever wear anymore. And I own several pairs of gorgeous boots that I will GIVE YOU IN EXCHANGE FOR ONE PAIR OF THESE LOVELY LOVELY LOVELIES. I would probably stalk these until I had a coupon or a sale or whatever but $298 US does NOT translate to $332 Cdn, Anthropologie, so now you can bite me. I’ll find them on Ebay. I will. Yessssss.

2. Sideswept Sweater Dress by Moth

I can’t help it. I like dresses. And drapey dresses especially. And dresses in this colour — which Anthropologie insist on calling “purple” but which we all know is “maroon” — because I have a sentimental attachment to this colour because when I went to the Grade 8 dress, I was allowed to borrow my oldest sister’s dress which was this colour and even though no one asked me to dance and now that I think about it, the dress looked a little like something a nun would wear to a Christmas party, I’m still drawn to it. Also, notice how the cafe in which the model daintily sips her coffee looks like it’s in Icelandia, if you’re with me and still believing that Icelandia is some kind of fantasy location where Iceland meets Paris and has a latte.

3.  Twist & Tether Cardigan by Splendid

I just spent longer than is healthy deciding which colour I would buy this sweater-like thing in. Why? I’m not going to buy it. SO WHY DOES IT MATTER? Because I am nothing if not obsessive about giving you highly accurate “what if” scenarios. What if I lived in the US and had a spare wad of money to spend on a new Icelandia wardrobe? Then what? I have to tell you that my favourite sweater of all time came from this site — the “string of lights” sweater, if anyone else reads the catologue and obsesses about it, they might remember it — and I’m feeling very cross about my access to such treasures being meddled with. But enough about that. I am usually opposed to dark grey things because they mostly look like they ought to be black but have been washed too often in non-black friendly detergent. This one is OK though. The other choices would either wash me out or just be too much scary colour for the likes of neutral me.

4.  Openweave V-neck by Sparrow

I would TOTALLY buy this if the site wasn’t so messed up, price-wise. $68? YES PLEASE. This sweater says, “I am seventies hip and so cool that my hair feathers itself while I sleep.” It says nothing about Icelandia and really doesn’t seem like something that would be in the Anthropologie catalogue, but who cares? I WANT. I’m so covetous. Isn’t that a biblical sin? Am I going to hell? And if I’m IN hell, do I shop on the US site or do I still have to pay extra for simply living in a different geographical location, Anthropologie? Hmmm????

5.  Flower Chain Bracelet

Since I let my earring holes grow over accidentally by not wearing any earrings for something like four years, I’ve taken to wearing necklaces and bracelets, specifically pretty clunky bracelets just like this one, only I don’t have this one and probably never will. I love the chunky clunkiness of them on my wrist and the random prettiness and The Birdy likes them to, which makes me think that even though I’m almost forty I still have the same taste in jewelry as I had when I was two so either I had really good taste when I was two or I have the taste of a toddler. I’m not sure what that says about me.

That about winds it up. I’m seriously obsessed with number one and number four. Why do you hate me, Anthropologie? What did Canada ever do to YOU?

*  It may be over, but it ain’t over in the press:   Is Ed cheating on Jillian?   Is she REALLY OK that he slept with two other women during the week that he skipped out of the program?   Is it possible that he is that much of an asshole and she is that much of a schmuck that she’d be all like, “Well, that’s fine!”   Because even though the premise of the show is insane and she’s sleeping with who knows how many people for the sake of “choosing”, the men (or women) are supposed to be ALL ABOUT THE BACHELORETTE (or Bachelor) and somehow if they’re not it just seems like a bunch of slutty people transferring STDs back and forth and not a romantic show about happy endings.   Well, not THAT kind of happy ending.   I meant the fairy-tale kind.   Get yer mind out of that gutter.

** Hey, maybe it’s like that weird Nicholas Cage movie where at the end they burned him and there was something about bees and a dead or not dead kid.   Remember that?    It wasn’t very good.

J.Crew makes decent clothes — as in pants with enough inseam that people who are not 5′5″ can wear them without looking like assholes — and some of my nicest clothes come from there including my wedding dress*. But that doesn’t change the fact that I’m always secretly embarrassed when I hit the “buy” button on the J.Crew final sale website. When I’m wearing stuff from J.Crew, I invariably lie to myself and pretend that I’m mixing and matching it in with my otherwise quirky and, let’s face it, downright Parisian wardrobe (read: older stuff from previous seasons of J.Crew) and I am a wildly creative fashionista and not just someone who appreciates the safe, unimaginative world of J.Crew and all that it represents, which seems to be a lot, depending on who you ask. I guess what it at least partially represents is mass-market American-ism. It used to be that J.Crew clothes were a bit unique and then BAM, just like that, they became ubiquitous, not quite so much here in Canada where we have no J.Crew stores but in the US certainly. And like everything else that is spread too thin (I’m looking at YOU, Gap), it’s almost tired before it even leaves the store because we ALL get the catalogue and we’ve all seen it already.

Bearing all this in mind, I gleefully opened my latest catalogue and fell in love with this:

**

Which you are no doubt looking at and going, “Huh?” but in the catalogue picture it’s shown with rolled up khakis and layers of these necklaces which I also NEED, long stringy necklaces with crystals in different shapes and sizes.   There is no reason for wanting this ensemble, in fact, it’s insane because I have no idea when I’ll need to be all decked out in bohemian preppy, but there you have it.   I’m waiting for you, final sale.

Inexplicably, I also want these:

And this:

***

And I want to wear them ALL AT THE SAME TIME with my favourite (new) beat up jeans.   I do!  But I won’t.   Because I must accept the fact that the models in the J.Crew catalogue are shockingly, alarmingly young and they can do this “look” and I cannot because I would look like a jerk with bad fashion sense and too much access to J.Crew.   BUT I will probably eventually get at least one or maybe two of those things.   On the final sale.   Because I can’t help it, the clothes speak to me and not just the pants with the long inseams, but all of it.    I’ve been wondering a bit WHY as I fancy myself to not be a sheep and you could argue that J.Crew dresses the sheep of the nation and I’ve realized what the answer is.   The answer, my friends, is Nantucket.

What the HELL are you talking about?  you may ask, and that would be a normal response.   Your normal response proves your normalcy, so yay for you!

Here’s the thing.   I’ve never been to Nantucket.   You probably haven’t either because really, who has?   Some people, certainly, but not EVERYONE.   Nantucket isn’t exactly Disneyland.   And I actually don’t even want to go to Nantucket, I want to live there.  But!   Better than that!  I don’t want to live in a Nantucket that actually exists, I want to live in Faketucket, which is a place that exists only in my head and on the pages of the J.Crew catalogue.    It’s like Nantucket, in that it’s an island (er, is Nantucket an island?) and there are beaches, but they are the wide sandy beaches featured in that movie with Diane Lane and Richard Gere which I didn’t watch but once saw a preview for.   And the beaches are fringed with those long grasses you get only on the East Coast and the houses are all covered with shakes and have white trim and… lilac bushes.   That’s right.   I said it.   Lilac bushes.  I’m allergic to lilacs, yes.   That’s true.   But I don’t care.   Maybe in Faketucket, the lilacs do not make me sneeze and inadvertently wet myself and throw my back out (again).   This is a fantasy, people, try to play along.

Along the beach there are run down cafes peopled with charming locals and sheds with the paint peeling off.    The locals are friendly and wildly funny, much like a colony of stand-up comics but without the chronic depression and alcoholism.   The summer people are not preppy assholes who wear madras because they are idiots with too much money and no taste, they are instead a fun bunch of hard-working entrepreneurs who wear madras in such a way as it looks fresh from the pages of French Vogue, except actually wearable instead of just being silly.   The weather is always nice, everyone is happy, the kids don’t scream and eat too much sugar and then throw up, instead they build elaborate sand cities on the endless beaches and ALL IS RIGHT WITH THE WORLD.

That, my friends, is what J.Crew represents.  Sort of.   I mean, not really anymore, they’ve really strayed from their preppy roots, but I think it’s why I started coveting J.Crew as a teenager and still have never let go.

I love you, J.Crew.   I’m sorry about the whole inward flinch thing I mentioned earlier.   Seriously.   It’s not YOU, it’s ME.   Totally.

* A dress that I bought before JCrew got into bridal and started making really really gorgeous gowns, it’s just a white dress, floor length, which I love but have YET TO WEAR for reasons that are too numerous to mention here. Oh, OK, it’s because I’m always pregnant and/or busy and we haven’t got married yet but we will very soon. Stay tuned.

** Although I would not buy this in orange for a lot of reasons including the one wherein orange makes me look like I’m recovering, but only barely, from tuberculosis or some kind of wasting disease or maybe cirrhosis AND the one wherein the other day The Bun said, “Why are you wearing an orange shirt?   You are not a kid.”   And although the J.Crew model IS probably a kid and therefore looks cute and such in the orange shirt, I would look less idiotic in the neutral option.    Also, I MUST have the orange (sorry, “copper”) sneakers and everyone knows that a bit of orange copper says, “I have a quirky zest for life!” but a lot of orange says, “Help me!  I have been victimized by fashion and need to be saved by TLC’s What Not To Wear, ASAP!”   Which wouldn’t be such a bad thing, come to think of it.   A trip to New York?   Shopping?   A makeover?   YES, PLEASE.

*** I realized after I posted this picture that it isn’t the jacket I was originally coveting but on closer examination, it’s a more grown up version of the one I had been eyeballing so probably a better choice as I am, you know, like totally, a grownup.    Sort of.

I hate you.

Let me backtrack a bit. I know you’ll be interested in how this day began, and who wouldn’t be? Well, let me tell you. It started off fine. Just. Fine. We got up at 7. Watched some TV. (Yes, I let my kids watch TV in the morning.) (Would you like to make something of it? Because I am RARING FOR A FIGHT.) (So bring it, dude. Just bring it.) (I’m serious.) We did some crafts and drawing and generally made a mess. It was OK. It was fun.

Then it started to go downhill, Samsung. It did. For one thing, I wanted to have a shower. Now this part is not your fault, but I blame you anyway because I blame you, Samsung, for all bad things. It’s a nice change because I used to blame Jason Mesnick. Jason will be relieved that he’s now off the hook. This “wanting to have a shower” coincided exactly with my stepson’s announcement and immediate departure for the park. Which would be fine, but while he’s at the park, the door must remain unlocked as he has no key. But leaving the door unlocked and then having a shower is like hand-writing an invitation to The Bun and The Birdy to go outside and play with the passing bus traffic, which is to say “Not a go”. We all waited for The Stepson to return, which he did an hour later, much too late to have a shower and still get to the Future Shop to purchase a Samsung LCD monitor for my mum for her birthday gift, which I then planned to install on her computer to replace the flickering, blurry box she had been using up until now, and so it would be a surprise when she got home from out of town tomorrow.

The purchase itself went surprisingly easily considering it was the Future Shop, which I’ve long considered to be the mouth of hell. They never have stock, what they have they cannot find, they don’t know anything about it, and they hate you AND are busy with someone else who doesn’t have toddlers dangling off her like those fish that swim around the mouths of sharks to pick up the detritus from their feeding frenzy. In this case, the salesman was nice, he had your monitor, and the purchase took ten minutes, tops.

My mood, at this point, was still OK, Samsung. I was a little irritated about the shower, but nothing I wouldn’t get over. Then we went to the park. The park was OK, a little crowded. It went downhill when the baby scaled a ten foot ladder and began crossing a twelve foot bridge that I couldn’t reach unless I was, you know, 12 feet tall. Then a much larger boy decided she was in the way and decided to remove her from the equation by pushing her through one of those convenient and random openings placed along the bridge so kids could fall to their deaths. She managed to not fall but I did not manage to have a myocardial infarction. That may have set us up, Samsung, for what happened next. Which was that I couldn’t get The Bun to get off the bridge, either, and he was oblivious to the same bullying bigger boys jostling and shoving until he also nearly fell and my myocardial infarction killed at least half of my heart.

I managed to lure them to the car with a promise of McNuggets. I figured a bit of junk food wouldn’t matter much in the bigger picture, i.e. in a world where Mummy was in ICU. Finally, at around 1:30, we arrived at my mum’s to install the surprise monitor. Which, given the wonders of technology, I figured would take an hour, mostly because the ad said it would take five minutes. I budgeted an hour, Samsung. And seeing as there was only one page of instructions which included translations into twelve separate languages, I figured it was set up to be “simple”.

This is where things went bad. Very bad. I would just like to say, Samsung, seriously, WTF? First of all, that disc that you include with the monitor? Is supposed to contain the drivers, Samsung, so that the PC can understand what the hell you are trying to install. It is not supposed to simply autoload a Samsung logo onto your screen that simply sits there, has no clickable access point, and freezes your computer. It’s not. And then when you delve into the files on the disc, why they contain things such as “cream” and “mckinley” is a complete mystery. I don’t want to know what is in those files, Samsung, but I can report that the autoexec file, when loaded manually, launched the arrival of a different Samsung logo that — guess what? — did nothing but sit there in the middle of the screen like — as my dad would say — a bump on a log. Thanks for that. If by “thanks”, I mean “____ you”.

After an hour or two of playing around with different settings, I discovered that your single sheet of instructions that indicates that a screen will come up to advise you what to do next is a blatant lie. It does NOT. There is no amount of tapping that stupid menu button that begets this information. In fact, NONE of the screens on your single sheet of information have ANYTHING AT ALL to do with the monitor that the sheet of paper was included with. NOT ONE. I must tell you, Samsung, that I began to wish I could speak TURKISH because maybe your TURKISH TRANSLATOR did a better job with the instructions that the obviously drunk, cream-lovin’ guy named McKinley who you fished out of the gutter to write your English instructions. NOT ONLY DID THEY MAKE NO SENSE, grammatically, THEY ALSO DID NOT WORK. MCKINLEY NEEDS TO BE FIRED. NOW.

So I did what any determined customer will do. I went to the website. Are you KIDDING ME WITH THIS WEBSITE, SAMSUNG? I AM SHOUTING NOW BECAUSE I THINK I MAY HAVE BURST AN ANEURYSM. THIS WEBSITE IS APPALLING. IT IS THE WORST, LEAST CLEAR, PIECE OF CRAP I’VE EVER RUN INTO IN ANY CONTEXT. After twenty minutes of clicking THE SAME THING OVER AND OVER AGAIN, I managed to find a driver which may or may not have been for the monitor that I purchased because the model number you refer to on THE BOX and ON THE MONITOR ITSELF did not apparently exist without a series of other letters next to it WHICH ARE KNOWN ONLY TO YOU or are PERHAPS WRITTEN IN LEMON JUICE AND REQUIRE ONE OF THOSE BLACK LIGHTS TO SEE.

By now, Samsung, the kids — who had wanted to go to Nature House, which closed at 4 — were getting difficult. And I’ll admit, my fuse was getting short. I shouted at them, Samsung. I did. I WAS REALLY REALLY CROSS. No one would listen. The Bun was listening to some KidzBop version of Van Halen in his headphones so loudly that it was beginning to give me liver damage. The Birdy was inconsolable. The Stepson was just keeping his head down, hoping to stay out of the line of fire.

I felt bad. I did. I was Shouty McEvil, and I admit it. I took them to another park. I put a bow on the monitor. I hope my mum likes it, Samsung, EVEN THOUGH I CAN’T SEEM TO MAKE IT WORK.

I HATE YOU, SAMSUNG, I REALLY DO.

I hope this doesn’t kill me, but if it does, you can blame yourself. I already do.

Love,
Karen

This week’s five things are, guess what?   Dresses.   That’s right.   I wonder if there is a word for a group of dresses, like a drama of dresses or a flurry of frocks.   If not, we should make those both officially the correct words for groups of dresses.   Someone add it to wikipedia, stat.

Without further ado, I give you the drama of dresses that I got for my birthday, which was entirely the best birthday I’ve ever had, and involved shopping (and actually trying things on, something I haven’t done for at least ten years and if you think I’m exaggerating, you are wrong), and eating out, and having blueberry ginger mojitos (spelled how?  no idea) at the pub, which is the only part which wasn’t as good as it sounds because actually I really am not a good drinker and instantly got a headache and felt like resting my head in a toilet.   Oh well, no day can be Totally Perfect, I suppose.

Well, hello there massive pile of dresses!   Having just discovered the (more…) feature of Wordpress, I’ve decided to just go ahead and use it so that my posts don’t look so intensely long, which they are, because I talk too much.   Oh wells.   Click more if you want to visit the dresses one by one, plus see three more things which aren’t dresses, but hey, they were birthday gifts, too.

1.   JCrew Dressy Jersey Twist Strap Dress in Dark Mushroom

Right after I posted this dress in my Five Dresses That I Covet post, it went on sale.   In combination with a coupon I happened to have, I paid $47 for this, so technically it wasn’t a birthday present, except I called it one in my head to justify the purchase.   This is the single most comfortable dress of all time.   BUY IT in spite of the fact that JCrew seriously needs to hire away Anthropologie’s catalogue writers so that this may be called something like Barefoot in the Park as opposed to the clinical tongue-twister it was christened with instead.   You will not regret it.   It is pretty because of the twisted straps, which makes it slightly dressier than the burlap bag you at first think it’s going to resemble when it arrives in the mail.   It is SO SOFT.   I am wearing it right now.   Yes, I have to alter it slightly so that the cleavage doesn’t end somewhere around the base of my sternum, which is not a good look for me, but I don’t care, this dress is worth altering.   I will wear it for every occasion that I can think of from now on, with my hair messily up and flip flops, so that it says, “I’m so casual and yet dressy and sexy and charming and hilarious and fun, all at the same time” so please invite me to something along those lines.   No, I don’t know what occasion that is, either, but we’ll come up with at least one so I can wear this for something other than typing this post.

2.  Oqoqo Strapless Convertible/Reversible Dress and Wrap

I love wraps.  I have no idea why.   It doesn’t make sense as they are traditionally the clothes worn by ballerinas and yoga enthusiasts over their perfect bodies when cooling down after an intense workout.   None of this has anything to do with my life, where the closest thing I do to ballet and/or yoga is when I stretch to pick up toys off the floor.   That does not stop me from worshipping the wrap, the perfect article of clothing.   This wrap came with a booklet of twenty different ways to wear the wrap, none of which I have tried but may just try one day in the future if I get tired of wearing it the regular way.   This wrap and strapless dress, which can also be worn inside out or as a skirt, came from Oqoqo which is part of the Lululemon chain of yoga clothing stores, which actually freak me out a bit because of all that stuff about how the employees have to do that training in whatever it is, like EST but not in 1970.   My two favourite dresses have come from this store.   They’re made of bamboo or something and so comfy.   I would have thought that a strapless dress made of bamboo jersey that was shorter than my knees would make me look like a jackass, but I put it on and Clayton swooned, so now when I wear this I feel pretty even if I’m probably too old to wear it.    Speaking of which, I tried on this other dress at a different store which was kind of a wrap dress made of purple linen but it had these strange vulcan epaulets on it and the saleswoman said, and I’m not making this up, “Oh, that’s too youthful for you.”   WHAT?  ARE YOU SAYING THAT I’M OLD?   BECAUSE I AM OLD BUT I DON’T LIKE FOR IT TO BE POINTED OUT.   I almost bought that one to spite her, but didn’t because the seaming on it showed exactly how crooked my spine is and it made me anxious because no one likes to be crooked, and if you are crooked, you really don’t want to look it.

3.  Point Zero Summer Dress

In addition to my Day Of Shopping with Clayton, my mother-in-law gave me a gift certificate to Winners.     I could write a whole post about how much I love Winners.   If I am going to shop, I invariably shop at Winners, which is the equivalent (I think) of TJ Maxx in the US.    It’s like treasure hunting and sometimes you can find the best stuff.   I buy all the kids’ shoes there for about a tenth of what they would cost at the fancy kids’ stores in this neighbourhood.   Toys?  Check.   Clothes for Clayton?   Check.   Lawn furniture?   Check.   Books?   Yep.   Kitchen stuff?   Definitely.   With my gift certificate, I found this cotton beauty, the only dress on this list that is not stretchy.   This dress says, “I am walking on the beach barefoot and maybe I’m going to go surfing or perhaps sit and read with the wind blowing prettily in my hair and my kids playing quietly in the sand by my feet while the sun sets over the Pacific.”    I love this dress.   When I saw it on the rack, I thought “Myenh, too much pattern.”  But huzzah, it FITS so entirely perfectly (which is a miracle because apparently I don’t have breasts anymore, I must have grown out of them) that I was forced to buy it.   It also helped that it was $29.99.   My mother-in-law had no idea when she bought that gift certificate that I would turn it into two dresses, a swim suit, a pair of jeans, shoes for the kids, a My Little Pony bag for The Birdy, and a Spiderman swim set for The Bun.    I love you, Winners.   SMOOCH.

4.  Calvin Klein Jeans Dress

OK, here’s a funny story about this dress, which isn’t that funny.   But how funny can dress shopping be?   Not very, that’s how.    So there I was at Winners, alone with no kids, trying on dresses even though I was almost out of money on the Gift Card.    I tried on this dress, and it was cute and comfy and I thought, “Great!”   It was only $29.99!   A steal!    As I was leaving the changing room, I noticed a size medium on the rack.   I’d tried the size small, which fit fine, but for some reason I thought, “I should buy the medium!”  I have no idea why.   If it fits, why mess with it?   Regardless, I bought the medium without trying it on and when I got home and put it on, I realized it was cut for Pamela Anderson.   Apparently the difference between a small and a medium, when you are Calvin Klein, is all in the ta tas.   Which are two things, ta and ta, which I do not have.   As a result, I spent two hours altering my size medium dress so that it fit as well as the size small had fit.   I did impress myself by managing to not screw it up, but still, why?   No idea.   Anyway, it’s a cute dress.   I wore it yesterday to get cupcakes with the kids.   I’m not sure what occasion the dress is for, so I’ve decided that it’s just an every day dress, and damn it, I WILL wear it every day because it was so much trouble.   But also, $29.99!    Thank you, Mr. Calvin Klein.   I love the tie-dye effect, which suggests that I really am a hippie on the inside, or even actually on the outside as well.

5.  Ralph Lauren Little Black Dress

I did not go shopping for a LBD.    I have one or two or three LBDs and I was shopping for a summer dress.   This dress is Clayton’s fault as he forced me to try it on and then made me buy it because he declared it “perfect”.  If you find a dress that your husband thinks is perfect, you must allow him to buy it for you because after all it is your birthday and if you own a perfect LBD, he will want you to wear it and will therefore take you out to fancy dinners where you can wear it and then you’ll live Happily Ever After just like in Disney films but with less singing and fewer bits of lace and shiny pink things on your dress and no soundtrack by Mr. Elton John.   We found this dress at The Bay, which is the same shop where the saleswoman said I was too old for vulcan-style epaulets, which just goes to show that the sales-staff are downright mean at The Bay.    Dresses were 40% off so if you are shopping for a dress and live in Canada, now is a good time to buy one at The Bay.   I’m just saying.    Anyway, LBDs rarely photograph well when posed gracelessly on the dirty ottoman in my living room, so trust me when I say this dress is v. cute.

Which rounds out my list of five things, for this, the inaugral post of Five Thing Friday.   But wait!   There’s more!   Because I took a picture, I will show you!   Because it’s my blog!  And I can do what I want!

Hello, pile of other lovelies that I got for my birthday:

Yes, this makes it eight things.   The purse caught my eye after three hours of shopping during which I’d found nothing I even wanted to try on apart from a seventies Pucci print Michael Kors dress that cost more than everything in this list combined that I’d wear while yachting on the Mediterranean, i.e. never.   The purse cheered me up.   Because, pretty!   The jeans (Earl) fit better than any jeans I’ve owned in my life and if there was a housefire, I suspect Clayton would run back into the house and save the jeans at the last minute.   Better yet?   $39.99.    Yep, Winners.   The swimsuit which I only now realize is stained with someone else’s deoderant, I bought because I haven’t bought one since university (which was twenty years ago) and last time I took the kids swimming at the pool, I threw out the old one because the fabric had disintigrated to the point that it looked like I had slipped on the outer layer of skin from an elephant, if there was such a thing as an elephant who was black and had the word “Roots” written across his/her chest.    By the end of the lesson, it was held together by only my intense humiliation and wish that it at least remained somewhat in place until I could get it to the nearest trash can.   It goes without saying that also at the pool at the time was a girl I went to highschool with who looked perfectly coiffed and dressed and twenty years younger than I know her to be.   It was like a reunion, if you can imagine being naked at a reunion while everyone else is perfectly coiffed and dressed.   I put this swimsuit on in the changeroom and The Bun said, “Wow, Mummy, you look so pretty!”   Which says something but also I should mention that The Bun likes to see a lot of skin and may have been commenting on the amount of Mummy that was showing vs. the cut of the suit itself but I was in a hurry and guess what?   $29.99.   Is anything at Winners NOT $29.99?   I thought not.

Whew.   This was more shopping than I’ve done probably ever and now I have a new wardrobe of dresses.   Quick, invite me somewhere!    Please?

To make a long story short, my mum and dad bought me a Canon Pixma MP620 for my birthday because I asked them to and even went to the shop with them and selected it and carried it to my car (which in itself was no small feat because carrying a printer plus managing two small tempermental beasts children in one of those stores where you have to pay for a shopping cart and you don’t have a quarter is, well, difficult.   To say the least.   I could say more, but I won’t because this is a quick post.   I have to have a shower while Mickey Mouse Club House is still on, so no time for small talk.

I brought the printer home and left it in the front hall for several days, which everyone knows is the first step to connecting any networked printer.    Buying the printer coincided nicely with my tax deadline and I needed to hook it up in order to print the spreadsheets which I haven’t done yet because why do them when you don’t have a printer to print them on?   Exactly.   Yesterday, being the last possible minute to do this, I decided to hook up the printer.   I assumed — because I am an idiot — that it would be easy because it’s a Mac and MACS JUST WORK and Mac recommends Canon printers so together they also must JUST WORK, except for the part where they don’t bloody well work together at all, do they?  The joke is on you.   Except, in this case, “you” means “me”.

The first step in setting up your new Canon Wireless nightmare is to remove 5000 pieces of orange tape that are applied on every single bit of surface inside and out of the machine to prevent movement during shipping.   I can only assume that the printers are shipped on refurbished Concord jets and simply dropped from near the atmosphere onto the shops which are to sell them.   There is no other explanation for the amount of movement that the Canon factory obviously expects the printer to have to endure on its voyage.    Or maybe motors are attached to the printers and they have to make the ocean crossing alone with only a single printer cartridge and a fishing line for survival.   Or maybe they feed the printers to whales and then have the whales vomit them up on North American shores.   That would explain a lot about why the whale population is shrinking, come to think of it.   I don’t know.   I only know that it’s a lot of tape.   And why does it need to be bright orange?  Is the printer expecting to have to redirect traffic?   At night?   It’s a mystery, people, and one that I’m not going to solve.

After twenty minutes of tape and plastic removal, the printer looked like a printer should.   I cleaned a little space on the kitchen counter which was formerly used to store a stereo with too-short a cord to reach the plug, which has been there since we moved in.   Everything was going so well.    Then I got to the part where I had to put the computer on the network.   All I can say is, “What the PLUCK?”   Except I didn’t use the word “pluck” in that sentence, I used a different word that rhymes with pluck but is not suitable for younger viewers or right-wing Christian fundamentalists.

Here’s what I did.  I put the disc (labelled DISC FOR MACS) into my MacBook.   So far so good.   I followed the vague instructions which included various different loops where you hit “cancel” when what you want is to “install” and you then answer the same question 42 different times, only to loop around to the question again before you get frustrated and stuff your entire MacBook into the garbage disposal while screaming “SERENITY NOW, PLUCKERS!”  I didn’t do that, but I wanted to.   Instead, I took the kids to the beach and let them play in the ocean in their clothes.   It was therapeutic.   Want to see?

I did not write the word Love in the sand. I actually didn't even see it until I was looking at the pictures later. Neat, don't you think?

Then we went home and I went back to setting up the printer by repeating all the things I’d done before, installing the same stuff that I’d already installed hoping for a different result, which I think is actually the definition of insanity.    Then I did it again, for good measure.   By the time Clayton came home from work, I was slumped in front of the TV with the kids, drinking wine.   Me, not them.   I’m pretty easy-going as a parent but I draw the line at wine.   Well, in combination with TV anyway.   It’s one or the other, kids.   You have to choose.

Clayton saw that I was in a fragile mental state.   He’s good at sensing these things.   Probably the foaming at the mouth and eye-rolling helped to drive the point home.   He made dinner and then escaped outside to mow the lawn.      I put the kids to bed by telling them stories about how MUMMY HATES CANON PRINTERS and MACS DON’T JUST WORK, DO THEY?    They like that kind of thing, especially when the story ends with the Bad Macs going to jail and being eaten by fire-breathing dragons.

At 10:00 pm, I came downstairs to install the drivers again because if at first you don’t succeed, you should totally do the same thing over and over again until you go insane.    Then Clayton took over because he really hates to relax in front of a movie at the end of the day, he prefers to undertake impossibly frustrating tasks which have already been performed multiple times to no avail.    Then we gave up and went to bed.   We both cried ourselves to sleep and had bad dreams about the Error 300 code we had seen 4,560 times in the last hour.

In the morning, I had the idea that maybe if I hooked the printer up with the PC that I never use, it would be easier.   And guess what?  It was.   It took five minutes and it worked swimmingly.   From the PC.   That I never use.    So then I thought it would be “fun” (if by “fun”, I mean “suicidally depressing”) to network the Mac on now that the printer itself was working.   It wasn’t fun.   I won’t bore you with the details, but I will bore you with the solution.   Ready?   Here it is:

Step 1:   Click the little Apple thing on the top left of your screen.

Step 2:   Click preferences.

Step 3:   Look for the preference that says, “I prefer PCs because the DO just work.”

Step 4:    Click the printers/faxes icon while making angry hissing noises between your teeth and shouting at your kids that breakfast has to wait for at least ten more minutes.

Step 5:   Click the little plus sign to add a printer even though the printer you want to use is already selected on the list.

Step 6:  Click something else and then something else, because at this point you are just randomly clicking for the sake of forward movement.

Step 7:   Find hidden somewhere a little drop down that says “Canon Wireless Printers”   and you will see two Canon Wireless Printers on the list, one which says “Canon WP620″ and one which has a bunch of gobbledygook after the words Canon WP620.    Add that one.   Delete the other one.

Step 8:   Exhale. You are done.

I’m not sure why somewhere in the 200 page manual no one mentions that when you install a Canon printer on a Mac, the one that populates itself into all your printer settings is actually a phantom printer that does not exist and that you must unearth the other one with the same sorts of skills used by archaeologists when they dig up the bones of a pterosaur in the tundra, but maybe that just didn’t translate well into English.   There.  I said it.   It’s what my dad says every time he is forced to read any kind of manual, “GUESS IT DOESN’T TRANSLATE WELL INTO ENGLISH.”   I have officially become my dad.

And I’m only 38!   At least for a few more days.

Here we go:

1.   From revolveclothing.com, the perfect seventies-style long dress for summer.   Wear this while sipping brightly coloured drinks poured over ice while you wait for your steaks or mung beans or whatever to be done on the grill.   Bare feet are required, as is a floppy hat and Simon and Garfunkel and some kind of strawberry fair.   Or Scarborough Fair.   Or something.

My laptop is burning my leg. Is that worrisome?

2.  This little jersey dress from JCrew.com may just be the perfect summer dress.   Long enough to cover the back of your knees if you’re me and have bad scarring and veins because one day you went for a walk with someone and someone’s two  dogs and you had the little dog on a leash and she had the big dog on the extendable leash and the big dog saw a squirrel and took off running and that leash wrapped around your knees and cut so deeply into your flesh that the backs of your knees are now ruined for short dresses forever.   Also, it hurt a lot even though the leash ran out so fast that it didn’t bleed, it actually self-cauterized from the friction.   Horrible.   The point of those leashes is that you press the button and it stops the dog from taking off after tree-dwelling rodents!   That’s the point!   There are brakes!    On the leash!   So no one gets hurt!

Where was I?   Oh, the perfect little jersey dress from JCrew.com.   If it ever goes on clearance, I will certainly buy one.

This colour is called Dark Mushroom. Who names these things? Nice colour, gross name. Or maybe I just think that because I'm allergic to mushrooms.

3.  I was spelunking around on eBay because I often do for no reason and I have old search terms including Frye Campus 8.5 (because they are the only boots that don’t hurt my maimed feet) and Velvet Graham Spencer Dress (because there was a dress they did last year that I loved like mad and never bought).   I also love this one.   It’s even in my size.   I am holding my own hands now to prevent myself from clicking that Buy It Now button because I would Wear It Never.   But in my imaginary life, I wear it at the beach, barefoot, and it billows prettily around my legs and nowhere are my children hiding behind it, wiping their Popsicle drippings or snotty noses onto its lovely greenness.

It also might look like a long green nightie but for whatever reason, I don't care, and also can't decide if it's "nightie" or "nighty".

4.  I actually don’t like the colour of this dress but I like the style because obviously right now for whatever reason I crave a long dress that I’d never wear.   I also want the life where I’m sitting elegantly on a low wall in the setting sun and my hair is all tangled and pretty and my kids are cherubic and it’s clearly the tropics somewhere and no one is shouting at me or doing what The Birdy is doing right now which is rubbing her brother’s shoes on my legs.    In the picture on the website, there is the model and the kid, in case you think I’m just babbling about nothing specific, which occasionally I do, but in this case I was referring to the picture on the site that I cannot link to because Anthropologie.com apparently does not want people to share or copy their beautiful imagery because heaven forbid that people might go to their site and actually buy something that they saw on someone’s blog.  

This dress is blue but it ought to be brown. Brown would make this dress closer to perfect. Or maybe green. Sort of an olive-y green, I think.

5.  I really don’t know what the deal is with websites that don’t allow you to link to their images or copy their images or whatever when they are actually SHOPPING WEB SITES.   Here is a PSA to people who design such things:   People covet and blog and link and list and other people SEE and covet and actually BUY because they click the link.   Bloggers are like free advertisers for YOUR PRODUCT!   When you make it so the images can’t be copied, you suck.  Sorry to be blunt, but it’s true.    You do.   Suck, that is.

Undeterred, I’ve found two dresses that I covet that fit my categories on Bluefly.com.   The first one is perfect in every way, if it were 1979 and I were Bo Derek.   But let’s pretend.   Let’s also pretend that I spend a lot of time running bare foot through fields of daisies, overlooking the fact that if I did that, I would likely step on a bee, go into anaphylactic shock, and die.   At least my dress would be pretty.   Oh, in this scenario, we are also pretending that I take a size XS, which I actually don’t, unless XS means excess.   Sadly, this dress is only available for miniature skinny people and not for real women like myself and Kate Walsh.  And Bo Derek, for that matter.  Who wears an XS?   Someone who should buy this dress, that’s who.

I would only be brave enough to pull off this much pattern if I lived in St. Lucia or was, in fact, Kate Walsh.

Because that dress wouldn’t actually fit me, I bring a second dress into the number 5 spot because it’s my blog and I have that kind of crazy power.   I will try not to go mad with it, but you know how it is, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

The runner up in this slot is this dress, also from Bluefly.com, different designer.   It has wide enough shoulder things to wear a bra under it, which is important.   Believe me.   It is.   And it’s pretty in a hippie kind of way.   Just like ALL THE OTHER DRESSES ON THIS LIST.   This one is made for rich hippies who are sitting by the pool sipping drinks brought to them by a man with a tray.   You must wear very large sunglasses while wearing this dress, and a large floppy rimmed hat.    Your nails must be manicured subtly and perfectly and you must be tapping them on the glass-topped table as though you are about to do something really important when in fact you have nothing pending and likely will sit there all afternoon getting slowly more drunk.   Until you take off the dress and swim a few laps, probably needing to be rescued by the drink guy because swimming and drinking is a pretty bad combination, regardless of how pretty your dress is.

This reminds me of a shirt that I got in Grade 7, which would have been 1981, and seeing as nothing about the 80s was OK in terms of fashion, it makes me wonder if I really like this dress at all or am just tired of looking at dresses that I'm not going to buy on the internet.

Let me know if you buy any of these dresses, in what size, and if I can borrow them if I’m ever partaking in the sort of activity that demands the wearing of any of these dresses.

Thank you.

I do not recommend that you purchase The Bridge for your wife for Mother’s Day. I also do not recommend you watch it if you spend any time in San Francisco because you will never again be able to disassociate “San Francisco” from the phrase “OH MY GOD SERIOUSLY DON’T JUMP OFF THE BRIDGE DID HE JUST REALLY JUMP OFF THE BRIDGE?” Or something like that. Did you know that the bridge is the number one choice of destinations for suicides in the world? If I were a travel agent, I’d be pretty depressed about any and all one-way bookings to SF. San Francisco, the Top Choice for Suicidal Travellers! Come and stay for a while and then jump off the second largest suspension bridge in the world! (I could probably get a job at the SF Tourist Board!)

But back to you and your gift buying dilemma. Here’s the thing, I don’t actually know the mother of your children who may or may not be your “wife” but I’ll use the word “wife” here to mean “mother of your children” because it’s much shorter. YOU know what she’d like. You do. Or you should. What would she like? Probably not The Bridge.

So without further ado, here are my thoughts. Please keep in mind that I slept for about three hours last night and already this morning have mopped up pee that spread from the kitchen through the dining room to the living room to the couch. Yes, that far. It’s true. No matter what you buy for your wife, you should also buy her a bottle of Urine-Off. (No, it wasn’t my pee.) (Although I did sneeze last night hard enough to throw my back out, I cleverly managed not to wet myself, which I’m feeling pretty good about in the big picture.) And note also that I’m only pretending to be some sort of Mother’s Day expert to see how many people actually take my advice or read my advice or care about my advice. Because I’m needy that way. Somehow it’s all about me.

1. How’s your budget? You should totally surprise your wife with a trip here! It’s a surprisingly uninspiring website but believe me when I say that it’s amazing because I have BEEN THERE. I have! And it was amazing! And we got an amazing deal which looks like it’s no longer available because holy crap, look how expensive! So when I suggest this, I’m assuming you’re rich. Because if you weren’t rich you wouldn’t be idly spelunking around the internet taking gift suggestions from exhausted strangers, you’d be working, wouldn’t you? Have a nice Caribbean vacation! Totally get a suite with a private plunge pool, that’s my advice. When I die, I now fully expect Heaven to come with private plunge pools. If it doesn’t, I’m going to the front desk and acting all affronted and demanding a room upgrade or else maybe next time I die, I’ll go to a DIFFERENT HEAVEN where the SERVICE IS BETTER and probably I’ll tell ALL MY FRIENDS and even TOTAL STRANGERS on my BLOG. (And I’ll shout those words, too, so that I’m basically random capping my conversation for extra EMPHASIS.) (That will probably WORK.) (God LIKES random caps.)

2. Flowers. Obviously.

I’m KIDDING. Don’t do that. Christ on a bike! If you’re going to buy her flowers, please buy her beautiful flowers. If you’re confused, I can help you by explaining that if there is a carnation in there, they are not beautiful flowers.

If your wife is a gardener, buy her something beautiful for the garden instead of a bunch of daisies and carnations jammed into a vase shaped like a gnome’s head. Or maybe those long planter boxes she needs for the sweet peas even though you don’t really know what she means by that whole planter/trellis/sweet pea idea to block the view of the neighbour’s barbecue. Just brainstorming here.

3. Art. Art is totally personal, so if you don’t really know what your wife likes, don’t get her art. But hey, I like art! And I’m every woman! It’s all in me! Etc.

From Kat Hannah, via etsy:

Or this by the lovely and talented and gorgeous and did I mention talented? Lori Nelson.

Or book a time and get a professional picture taken of your wife with your kids. It’s likely she is always behind the camera and does not have any lovely shots of herself looking lovingly at her children, something she might need to remind herself that she’s not always shouting “STOP HITTING HIM/HER/ME RIGHT THIS MINUTE OR YOU’RE GOING TO THE NAUGHTY CHAIR FOR FIVE MINUTES/AN HOUR/THE REST OF YOUR LIFE!” Even though your wife may have a hard time with having her picture taken because one of her eyes is bigger than the other (see: “Right Eyelid Retraction”) which always makes her look, in pictures, like she’s either drunk or has just suffered a small stroke and given her daily life, neither would be that surprising.

4. Instead of buying her something, do something thoughtful and time-consuming that she’ll never do herself such as recaulking the bathroom floor or putting some music onto the iPod she’s had for two years but still only has that one Gordon Lightfoot song on it about the sinking of the Edward Fitzgerald or Fitzpatrick or Fitzwilliam or whatever it’s about. A small thoughtful gesture goes a long way, my friends. Or even a big one, such as emptying the P-trap in the bathroom sink so that water drains. Actually that might not go over so well if presented as a “gift” so scratch that, I’m just thinking out loud because, you know, I have no idea either, I’m just trying to help at the same time as listing all the things that we never get around to doing at our house as though maybe a Mother’s Day fairy will descend and perform said tasks, such as finally painting the trim in The Bun’s room so that we can remove the masking tape that has actually probably by now become a permanent part of the wood floor.

5. Get the kids to make her a card. Getting handmade somethings from the knee-high demons who you chase around the house all day tidying up after and shouting at goes a long way to calming the beast that lives in Mummy’s head and sometimes scratches at her eyeballs from the inside. Into that card, put a gift certificate for something thoughtful, like a new Mercedes or a book or the garden shop or some kind of miracle babysitting service that you could call when you want to write a blog post without your kids dangling off the back of your neck and sticking their feet into your mouth while shouting MONKEY MONKEY MONKEY and trying to clean the ceiling with the Swiffer wet mop. Such a service probably doesn’t exist in real life but wouldn’t it be nice if it did?

There now. Hope that helped. As always, I’m here for YOU. To serve you, except not literally, because I’m busy and besides, what’s in it for me?

Or you could just buy her a card and write something so thoughtful that she’ll cry for a week because she’s so moved by your poetry. Or, I don’t know, make her a Halloween costume. It’s early, yes, but that’s the kind of thoughtfulness that says, “HOLY CRAP, I LOVE YOU SO DAMN MUCH I THINK I MAY HAVE JUST HAD A STROKE, DOES MY EYE LOOK HALF-CLOSED TO YOU?”

Happy Mother’s Day, peeps.

Other than the coughing, they seemed OK. The mad, crazy fevers of the weekend had eased, so naturally I thought that before the doctor’s appointment, they would probably like to go to the garden center with me so I could ogle plants, a trip I sold as “a visit to the place with the bridge”. Yes, there is a bridge. Sort of. I don’t think it’s what they were imagining but it wasn’t a lie, per se. Then out of guilt, I bought them a large cookie that was bigger than both their heads combined. Then I ate most of that myself because it turns out they weren’t that hungry due to the fact they were so sick. I don’t even know why I wanted to go so badly as I ended up buying just two tiny purple plants, which I only purchased because The Bun was so emotionally attached to them that he cried so hard when I suggested we leave without them that I thought he might throw up on the floor.

Somewhere around 3:10, I realized we were already late for the doctor’s appointment on the other side of town, which was too bad because I’d just sat down for the first time all day to drink a cup of tea. That’s how it goes when you’re me. Maybe I’m just bad at time management. Maybe.

By the time I’d raced across town, found parking, and hurled the kids into the waiting room, they were some unhappy. And when I use the words “some unhappy” here in the case of The Birdy I’m using it to mean “lying on the floor sobbing uncontrollably whilst flinging her body around like she’s trying to escape from a leg-hold trap in the forest that’s in the path of a hungry, large bear”. The Bun was more stoic. In fact, he continued to “read” a book to himself in a quiet voice as though there were nothing in the world going on on the waiting room floor, the fact he can’t read notwithstanding. I was tempted to pull out my iPhone and begin a soothing game of Sudoku knowing that when The Birdy starts nothing will interrupt the Force of the Tantrum, but sadly I cannot shake the whole “what will people think” vibe, so I picked up her flailing little self and attempted to pin her arms in a stylized “hug” such that she couldn’t punch me in the head. It’s these kinds of events that make everyone else in the waiting room ask the doctor for permanent birth control surgeries. Even the ones well past the age of fertility.

I digress. This doctor is new to us. He’s very nice, in fact, an old family friend. However, every time he speaks, I translate it in my head into LOL speak. I can’t help it.

Dr: Hai, how iz kidz?
Me: They have bad coughs.
Dr: They iz better?
Me: No, iz worse.
Dr (lifting The Bun): Bun iz heavy!
Me: Yes.
Dr: Glands iz swollen!
Me: Yes.
Dr: Iz better tho!
Me: ?
Dr: Birdy iz worse! Antibiotics iz gud.

You get the idea. By the time we left, The Birdy had stopped screaming and was actually pretty upbeat. Off we went to Safeway to fill the prescription and get groceries.

Sounds easy!

Not easy.

Safeway is one of the stores that have those giant grocery carts with a plastic car-like contraption with pretend steering wheels on the front where you can jam your kids, such that they are at the maximum allowable distance from you at the same time as being too close to each other to not poke each other repeatedly in the eye and then claim they didn’t do it. Sometimes the carts make the kids happy; however, more often than not, they try to push each other out of the thing while screaming the toddler-equivalent of obscenities. They had plenty of time for this while I waited in a line of two people for the pharmacy counter. I’m not sure why the guy in front of me thought that the pharmacist would care/understand/want to know about how back surgery would be better for him than continuing to feed his addiction to prescription pain killers, but after about twenty minutes, we were all pretty much up on the details. The Bun had escaped from the cart and was wheeling The Birdy around at high speed, made extra dangerous by the fact that those carts are about eight feet long and impossible to steer. Shoppers were darting out of the way and fixing me with steely glares, while I stared straight ahead and pretended they could not penetrate my invisible armour with their eyeball blades of red-hot anger. Then I pretended that my invisible armour actually rendered ME invisible! Then I pretended that I was leaping over the counter — invisible! — and grabbing the medicine I needed and running from the store! And that my kids were invisible, too!

Then it was our turn.

Insert boring story here about insurance.

Checking out at Safeway is always a nightmare because you are not allowed to push the eight-foot car-like cart extravaganza filled with recyclable (OK, I ADMIT it, I forgot them again. Just this ONCE.) grocery bags to your car. You must trade it for a regular cart. This is because the temptation to steal the two-hundred pound monstrosities is infinitely too overwhelming to most shoppers. I mean, who wouldn’t want to have one of their very own, perhaps in their living room?. After just one too many people wrestled one into their moving-truck car and made off with it, Safeway decided that shoppers can no longer be trusted to use the prized cart cars outside of the store, even accompanied by a Safeway-employed chaperone. Not even a uniformed chaperone. With a gun. Needless to say, prying the kids out of The Beast in the tight confines of the buggy aisle is a challenge at best. For one thing, after torturing each other mercilessly for an hour, they’ve finally decided that they love it in there and NOTHING IN THE WORLD is more fun. For another thing, they can hold the door-thingies so you can’t get them out, and watching you struggle amuses them, much like the words POOP and STOOPID and knock-knock jokes with unrelated punch lines. I finally extracted the hysterical Birdy, who was having none of it, and who then proceeded with a repeat of her above-detailed temper tantrum. Sadly, there was no room on the floor to deposit her, so I again had to hold on to her while she punched and kicked, screamed, sobbed, and interspersed the show with pathetic-sounding coughs which made me look like an evil ogre (who perhaps ought to be reported to Social Services for having her anywhere outside of tucked into a tidy bed, perhaps in a hospital). The Bun was instructed firmly (i.e. I shouted at him) to get out of the cart, which he attempted to do by somehow diving headfirst out the fake windshield, landing on his head/neck/bent-back finger somewhere near my feet. He commenced wailing. I tried to bend over to hug him, but with my destroyed discs I cannot bend while holding 30 pounds of flail’n'wail. While I received plenty of sympathetic/annoyed/enraged looks from fellow shoppers, the cashier seemed entirely oblivioius to the drama. I admire someone who can overlook so many moving limbs and outpourings of snot and tears. I’m sure he’ll make a good parent one day.

Finally back in the car, I shuttled my now-exhausted offspring on one more errand — picking up a package at Sears because they will only hold them for ten days and it was day eleven already. Loading them into the car for the last time, I realized that somewhere along the line we’d lost The Birdy’s jacket. I liked that jacket. My mum bought it in Hawaii and both kids had nearly worn it out and it was cute. Suddenly I was more emotionally attached to that missing jacket than to any other article of clothing ever. I felt like crying. Where is the green jacket? MUST FIND THE GREEN JACKET.

I called Safeway. No, they didn’t have the green jacket. It was likely somewhere in the store, they surmised, but they wouldn’t go look for it, rather they would wait for someone to turn it in. Then they would call me. If they found it. Which, by the way, was unlikely. Because people didn’t turn much stuff in, when it came right down to it, they were likely to keep my green jacket. Oh, and what colour was it again? Could I describe it? So that when they were flooded with jackets in the lost and found, they would know which was mine?

I had a vague memory of removing the jacket at the doctor’s office, so I called them, but they were gone for the day. Now desperate for the green jacket, I decided to retrace my steps in the car, in case perhaps one of the kids had hurled it out the window while we drove. And would you believe it? While driving down the street, we found the green jacket tied to someone’s fence. It’s true, internet. Sometimes, there are green jacket miracles.

I was so happy, I may have wept a bit. Or maybe I was already weeping. It was that kind of day.

When we got home, I realized that I only had a portion of my groceries. Where were the rest of the groceries? Once again, I called Safeway. If you want their number, let me know, I have it in my mental Rolodex now. Yes, we’d left a bag behind. Yes, they knew what was in it. Well, they knew one or two of the things in it, but they’d put it all back on the shelf. Yes, my husband could come and get it, but he had to ask for “Tim” after finding “Tim” at one of forty-seven checkout lines because “Tim” was the only one who had access to the mystery of my missing bag and what was in it ONLY TEN MINUTES BEFORE. Items that they had returned to the shelf with the kind of speed that superheroes use to rescue babies from burning eagle’s nests at the top of giant sequoia trees, because ONE OF THE ITEMS IN THE BAG WAS FROZEN. Apparently, there’s a rule. Whoever writes the rules at Safeway must really enjoy themselves. No carts in the parking lot! No looking for lost articles! No bags left behind for more than fourteen seconds without being dismantled if frozen fries are involved!

I carefully detailed the missing items, reading off the receipt. Yes, said “Tim”, the bag would be there for Clayton to pick up. How many bananas were in there, again? There were no bananas. Oh, right. How many apples? Er, no apples. Laundry soap, juice boxes, fries. Oh, OK. How many potatoes?

NO POTATOES. I was starting to contemplate adding random items to the list. Like wine. Or perhaps whiskey. If only you could buy those things at Safeway.

You know where this is going, right?

I wasn’t there, so I can’t provide details, but eventually, Clayton says he just grabbed the bag and ran amidst a fray of confusion: “Tim” wanted him to pay again, no one knew what was in the bag to begin with, the grey-haired clerk insisted he go home and get the receipt, etc.

Many hours and debacles later, I stumbled to bed. I was just drifting off when I heard The Birdy start to cough again. And cough. And cough. And… wait, that wasn’t a cough, that was a projectile vomit! Hello, middle-of-the-night bed-making baby-changing fun!

The good news is that our new dryer is supposedly arriving today sometime between noon and five. And tomorrow, maybe, or some other time, we’ll have it hooked up. And none too soon. I have lots of sheets to wash.

So how was your day?

Edited to add pics of The Green Jacket. Just so you can see why I’m so unreasonably attached:

The poor Birdy is sick and sick translates loosely to “inconsolable” if you speak toddler, which luckily I do. Well, sort of. Not well enough to know what she was screaming about all night, but enough to know that she wasn’t feeling well. The fact that holding her was giving me second-degree burns was also a bit of a giveaway. I medicated her and sang to her and whispered stories about ponies (OK, they weren’t so much “stories” but lists of different colours that ponies could conceivably be. I’m sure I’ve mentioned before how this soothes her. She likes ponies, what can I tell you?) This basically filled all those boring hours between “bedtime” and “waking up” when one normally nods off due to lack of better things to do. “Pink ponies, green ponies, yellow ponies, blue ponies,” I whispered. “Rainbow coloured ponies.” I know what you’re thinking! You’re thinking, “Rainbow coloured ponies! That’s wicked!” Or you’re perhaps thinking, “Rainbow coloured ponies? No wonder that poor kid was screaming.” Either way, it amounts to the same thing: regardless of the different manifestations of ponies I could conjure up in her imagination, she preferred to cry and occasionally scream random words like “MONKEY” and “PEN” (both a large part of her vocabulary, to be true) in a sort of baby-version of Tourette’s, while I seethed with visceral, slimy green envy towards all who may be sleeping anywhere in the world for any reason whatsoever. Occasionally, if I started to drift off, lulled into happy dreams by my own Little Pony imagery, she’d kick me really really hard in the sternum or the eye, which made it a bit tricky to be sympathetic, if I’m being honest. Eventually, I gave up and we just lay beside each other and cried, one of those mother-daughter things that brings us closer together.

Needless to say, at 6:30 a.m., I rose fresh and alert, looking like a daisy dipped in gentle morning dew, with a spring in my step and a twinkle in my eye. No, that’s a lie, too! I actually got up, dropped the screaming Birdy and the also-feverish-and-woke-up-too-soon Bun on Clayton and I went back to bed. It’s approximately the first time in this decade that I’ve gone back to bed after everyone else is up and frankly it was the most awesome thing ever. EVER. Remember your first Caribbean vacation? The one where you had your own private plunge pool? It was like that but even more fantastic. I’m not making it up. Sleep = nirvana. Period.

So the second time I woke up (overlooking the fact that I didn’t actually “wake up” the first time), I awoke feeling optimistic and less like I was paralyzed below the waist. (Due to a strange disc issue the details of which I will bore you with later, my limbs go sporadically numb, particularly when I’m tired). I was optimistic because today, dear reader, is delivery day of the washer/dryer/Fairy Godmother combo that we sacrificed our children’s future college education fund to purchase last week. Laundry! Machines!

Needless to say, these things never go as you plan. For example, the delivery guy was supposed to arrive between noon and five. So it made nothing but sense that at 11:00 a.m., the phone rang and the delivery guy cheerfully announced that he was early. Which was terrific for him, no doubt, but we had not yet cleared the area for the washer and dryer to land. Clayton got right to work while I sat blankly on the couch, ignoring the children, and fantasized about doing laundry — or rather, having my new Kenmore Fairy Godmother doing my laundry while I turned the appliance box into a garden cottage for the kids to play in — clutching my life-giving coffee in my hand. Eventually, I heard the loud clattering sound that indicates that a large truck is discharging an appliance on our front lawn and peered out the front door to see the delivery guys hunkered down beside what I assumed was meant to be our dryer, but actually looked like a CSI murder victim that should really have been cordoned off behind yellow police tape.

“You don’t want this,” the delivery driver accurately stated.

“Did you drop her, I mean, it?” I said, aghast, and also ready to start pinning blame right away because that is what I do.

“No,” he denied. “It was clearly a forklift! Look at the diameter of the dent and the DNA analysis of the chipped paint! It is Sears’ fault!” As obviously correct as his analysis was, this did not prevent me from giving him the steely glare of a wronged customer. Hey, I only slept for two hours. I can’t be nice all the time.

“Hmm,” I said, in a voice intended to convey Grave Displeasure, because that is what I was feeling.

Which really pretty much killed the conversation. What else can you say? The Fairy Godmother was gone. There was no use belabouring the point.

They proceeded to deliver the washer with no actual damage being incurred, which is a good thing and perhaps the silver lining to this story. I feel like this would be a better post if they’d brought the wrong one or dropped it on the way in or SOMETHING, but the didn’t. It looks fine. They brought it inside, removed the box, and took the box.

Took the box?

TOOK THE BOX.

What about my kids’ country garden cottage? I wanted that box.

“Can I please have the box?” I asked politely.

“Sure,” said Guy A.

They all disappeared. I stepped out the front door to receive my box.

“Sorry, you can’t have it,” said Guy B. “I need it to store my cardboard.”

“Uh?” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. “That sucks, doesn’t it? I know how kids love them.”

“?” I said. “????” It was like a whole flock of question marks was circling my head, randomly pooping in my eye. I blinked. “?”

“Maybe when they bring your dryer, you can have that one,” he said helpfully, if by “helpfully” I mean “not helpfully”.

And the zoomed off. With my box. My box! Basically my plan was to use the box to entertain the children for the duration of the week (don’t laugh, it would have worked, kids love boxes), so now our calendar is wide-open. If you’re looking for a playdate, call me. We won’t be busy playing in the backyard with the box, that I can guarantee. Actually, we won’t be doing laundry either, so I guess I have to worry less about what to do to entertain the kids while I’m catching up on clothes washing. Maybe it all balances out in the end.

We now are the proud owners of two washers and zero dryers and zero boxes, but I suppose that’s better than having no large appliances filling up the basement gym area and having all the gym equipment jammed into my office, which is giving me anxiety because it’s really really important to my general state of mind to have at least one room that is relatively tidy and not crammed full with items that do not belong in said room.

Apparently, another dryer/Fairy Godmother will be kept in a Safe House for its own protection until the 16th, whereupon it will be given a new identity and transported to our house in the dead of night in an unmarked car. We’ll see how that goes. Stay tuned.