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ON BALANCE by Kathy Buckworth
The Envelope Please...
2008/12/20
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There are awards for everything -- even “Best Awards Show”. And on the red carpet, the women look skinny and the men look hot and did I mention the women look skinny? If they don’t, a “belly-watch” is immediately issued to ensure that a horrific five-pound weight gain is due to (hopefully) an unplanned pregnancy, and not just an unfortunate encounter with a cheese plate.
I believe the awards we really need to give out are not to the actors (hello, they’re just acting, they’re not actually living heroic/admirable moments), but to real-life women for their own acts of heroism. For example, where are the awards for:
➢ Going to the gym, exercising hard for an hour, and then not blowing it all by having a Hot Fudge Frappacino on the way home. First Place, Sanctimonious Calorie Burn.
➢ Your BlackBerry buzzes during hour two of the school assembly (the part where the Grade 3 class stages the play they wrote themselves, “Celery is Your Friend”), and you don’t sneak a peak at the message. Your kid isn’t even on stage. Winner, Extreme Willpower.
➢ Your husband takes your young son on a three-hour road trip to see Grandma and forgets to pack his special blanket. You only reminded him 14 times to take it, but you still greet him with a sympathetic “I should have put it in the car for you”, without a trace of sarcasm. (It’s worth it to get them out of the house.) Champion, Tongue Biting.
And just like the really big stars, you don’t even have to be there in person to collect the award; which is a good thing because you’re out at Starbucks, reading emails and enjoying the husband- and kid-free afternoon. That’s the real prize.
Just Eat It
2008/12/09
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“What’s for dinner Mom?” Argh. The most frustrating words I hear every night of the week besides anything that starts with “Can you drive me to…” I’ll admit that for years I didn’t learn, and kept answering honestly, which always elicited a response of “Ew gross”, or “Are you trying to be mean?” from at least a couple of the kids.
I also used to make the amateur’s mistake of saying “I’m not sure yet” as well, which would result in a cacophony of voices yelling over top of each other: “Tacos!”; “I don’t eat meat! Vegetarian lasagne!”; “Let’s have take-out!” or my favourite “Can you make something good for a change?”
But now I have discovered the secret to avoiding that particular problem by utilizing my second most favourite kitchen appliance (the first being my telephone which is pre-programmed with an extensive list of restaurants who deliver)…my crock pot. There are many benefits to this delightful counter top cook, including the fact that I get the difficult decision about what to make for dinner over with early in the day. Usually the recipe requires that it cooks in the pot for 6-10 hours, so it’s well on its way to grossing out the kids before they come in the door from school.
It’s also a commitment – they have little rational argument (assuming that ever really stops kids from speaking) for pitching out what’s already cooking and starting with something they “really like”.
I can be a hero by saying “Well maybe you don’t like that, but if we have toast with it, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
It smells terrific when nosy neighbours come by and not only distracts them from the 107 pairs of shoes lying in my front hall, it also gives them the false illusion that I have been slaving over a stove preparing a fine home-cooked meal for my lucky family, when in fact I might have dumped in a can of beans, some ground beef and a past-its-crisp-stage onion.
And, it cooks all day while I’m out racing around trying to find other ways to torture the kids by buying clothing they don’t like, making doctor’s appointments for flu shots they don’t want to have, and creating “Days I’ve kept my room clean” charts.
Now you’ll have to go excuse me while I add some ketchup to the pot – it needs that extra little touch the kids love. I’ll be sure to leave the bottle out on the counter.
Wireless Versus Wired
2008/11/30
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I heard today that there may be a bill passed outlawing the use of handheld electronic devices while driving – including BlackBerries, cell phones, and GPS systems. The reason being that they are too distracting.
Ummm hello? The most distracting things in my vehicle are, in fact, not these wireless fiends (although trying to surf the net while negotiating through the school parking lot can be tricky), but rather the four hard-wired-for-sound units in the back of my mini-van. From the cries of “quit kicking my seat” to “MOM! Nicky spilled his slushy all over my seat” to “Get that hockey stick out of my face you freak!” and the ever popular “But I need to go NOW!”, I can barely concentrate on whether I’m stationary or not. And let’s not forget the Japanese plastic exploding weapons which seem to zip by my face on a regular basis.
Since we can’t ban our children from riding with us or utilize a creative deployment of duct tape (no really, I checked…some constitutional/child-safety rule or something), and the automobile companies seem hesitant to install my oft-petitioned sliding glass partition, we’ll have to find ways to ignore this biggest diversion of them all.
Things I have tried to alleviate the problem, but have had little success with, include:
• Turning the radio up full blast – any six year old worth their salt can out-yell that (and it does tend to result in the aforementioned toy launching)
• Popping in a video “suitable for all ages” which doesn’t result in the little kids learning some new colourful language to share with their Grandparents (normally the words “Yo”, and “Booty” are involved), or the big kids teaching alternate lyrics to the SpongeBob SquarePants theme song which includes copious reference to death, drugs, and hooking up.
• Feeding them to keep their mouths otherwise occupied. Refer to the above slushy example, and try driving even five feet with the stench of last week’s leftover onion rings permeating this enclosed space. Talk about diverting.
On the positive side, I suppose the benefit of transferring to the hands-free option on my BlackBerry means that I’ll have a hand free to catch some of those toys.
A Pain in the Pilates
2008/11/11
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It should come as no surprise that the creator of Pilates was in fact, a man (Joseph Pilates). I was first introduced to this “sport” a couple of years ago, just after the birth of my fourth child. Okay, my baby was technically a pre-schooler, but that's not the point. The point was that I found myself in a classroom full of young, limber, toned and flexible women who seemed to have no trouble at all lying on their backs and lifting their legs over their heads…as a warm up exercise. Over. Their. Heads. I discovered that 99% of the exercises which make up Pilates are in one way or another associated with your “core”. Apparently this is located somewhere in your stomach and apparently at one time we all had muscles associated with this organ.
I've been at Pilates for a few years now and I can just about execute that move…with a complicated towel-pulley system I've rigged.
If you're new to Pilates, besides the over-the-head move, there are “roll ups” (not the fruit kind, the sit-ups-without-the-fat-gym -partner-holding -your-feet-down kind), “leg extensions”, Pilates' push ups (a new, more painful way to do push-ups as goodness knows the old ones were getting too easy), all done while an instructor with a simultaneously soothing but strict voice commands “Lock in your core!”. Baby, if I could lock in my core, I wouldn't need this class in the first place.
I'm thinking of trying yoga next. I can be a tree. Or a dog. And I can breathe. How hard can it be?
Yoga-size Me!
2008/10/06
Yoga pants. Yes that’s right – an activity/sport/philosophy/way of life so special, there are pants for it. Okay, so I got the yoga pants. After all, every woman knows the best part about starting up a new type of exercise is buying the clothes that go with it. I have the tennis whites, the golf shoes, ski jacket and riding boots to prove it. So armed (or legged) with these pants, I made my way to the yoga studio. Which is disturbingly decorated in mostly full-length mirrors (which I discovered during a Downward Dog are for seeing sides of your own and others’ rear ends that you’ve never seen before. Or want to again.). I could see that my shoulders are in fact naturally positioned up by my ears, a fact that the instructor actually took a few minutes to point out to the rest of the participants as an example of “not letting go”. Listen fella, I gave birth to four kids – I know “letting go”. Just not here in these new yoga pants.
I inflexibly made my way through the Warrior Pose, the Goddess Pose, the Mountain Pose; I’ll admit that when I was asked to put my hands in the prayer position what I was praying for was that the instructor would eventually lead us to the Pinot Pose, at which I knew I could excel.
I made it through the class, one ill-executed move after another, until it was time for the meditation period which marked the end of the session. As I lay on the floor contemplating my week’s grocery list, the children’s hockey schedule while courageously fighting the urge to turn my BlackBerry on I wondered if there was a cute top to go with these pants. And then I let it go.
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