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I’m willing to get my head chewed off by Greenpeace or whomever when I say this: it doesn’t always pay to be environmentally conscious.
In fact, you may (indeed, will) have to pay to be environmentally responsible.
Case in point: the now infamous pair of pale corduroy pants I bought for Jason a year or so ago. Which I converted to a lovely navy (purple) color for the low price of $10 plus tax.
Rather than risk having a husband who walks around town in purple pants, I then had to shell out an additional $15. For a box of color remover and two boxes of brown dye. Total cost thus far: $14.99 for the pants and $25 for its various color treatments. And, of course, tax.
Which means, until this afternoon, the pants had cost me roughly $40.
That is, until I washed a load of clothes with a shirt I’d also thrown into the aforementioned purple dye bath. With nary a thought that the white stripes on Jason’s black sweater would….turn purple. A splotchy, faded weird color – clearly a ‘mistake’. And clearly noticeable. The sweater is old and from Target – but it will have to be replaced.
Unless I cut off the sleeves and make Jason a summer sweater t-shirt……
To be continued.
A year or so ago, I found a pair of men’s Calvin Klein corduroy pants at TJ Maxx. They were exactly Jason’s size and the tag read ‘$14.99′ so I snapped them up.
I took them home where Jason tried them on. They fit very well. It was a good purchase, or so I thought.
But he’s worn them exactly one time since that day.
During a recent closet clear-out, I hoisted the pants into the air – ‘exhibit a’ for the invisible jury. ‘What about these,’ I asked. Since he never wore them, I assumed they no longer fit. But he tried them on again, and they fit just fine. So what was the problem?
‘It’s the color,’ he confessed.
I may have neglected to mention these corduroy pants are on the pale side of the color spectrum. Certainly not white, but much too light to be considered ‘khaki’. Apparently Mr. Johnson felt self-conscious about wearing ‘white’ pants in the middle of winter and worried he’d be the recipient of snickers and stares from colleagues and students alike.
‘Well, why don’t we try dyeing them,’ I suggested, figuring it would be a cheap way to try and save a pair of perfectly good pants from the Goodwill pile.
Many weeks, possibly months, later I found myself at Michael’s in the fabric paint etc. aisle. I saw the boxes of RIT Dye and leaned forward to choose a color. As I’d mulled over possible color choices in my head, I’d settled on ‘charcoal’. A benign choice…very little could go wrong.
But of course RIT either doesn’t make a ‘charcoal’ dye or Michael’s doesn’t carry it. So I went with ‘navy’ since I figured the ‘pearl gray’ they did offer would still be fairly pale. And then it would just look like Jason was wearing dirty white pants in the middle of winter.
The process was easy enough – I loaded the pants into my washer (in this instance a top-loading washer would have been much better) and, after a while, poured the dye mixture into the soap dispenser. An hour and a bit later….the pants were blue.
Ish.
I’d followed the instructions and bought two packets of dye (for using dark dye on very light colored items). In the basement, the pants looked fine, if a little denim-y blue. When I got to the bathroom to hang up the wet pants, I took another look. In the different light, they appeared more purple than blue. Not quite Barney purple…but definitely a blue-ish puce.
This morning I took another look at the pants. ‘You’re not going to wear these either, are you?’ I asked the picky pant-wearer. ‘Well, I didn’t realize I had to wear them first thing this morning,’ he stalled.
Then he played his trump card. ‘Would you walk down the street with me if I wore these pants?’
It’s back to the dyeing board. Maybe a nice ‘orange’.
Perhaps Mr. G and his wardrobe choices will soon require their own blog. But until he can write or type, I will have to tell the stories.
It was community helper day at preschool last Friday. You were supposed to dress as your favorite community helper. Personally, I thought it was lame – but no one asked for my opinion. Beyond the obvious – fireman or policeman – what is there?
Well, G decided he wanted to be a teacher. Just like his daddy. Now I wasn’t entirely confident that a teacher is technically a ‘community helper’ but far be it for me to dwell on technicalities. His mind was made up – he was going to be a teacher. He also talked about going to work with his dad – ‘one day when he got big’ and taking along some snacks in case he got hungry. Apple sauce and raisins. I’m not sure Jason has ever taken apple sauce or raisins to the university, but in G’s mind, those are the must-have snacks for teachers.
Thursday night we talked briefly about what a ‘teacher’ might wear. I referenced Jason’s workday uniform: black sweater and jeans. ‘I think a teacher would wear a sweater and some pants,’ I suggested. ‘And maybe a backpack.’
We woke up on Friday morning and I figured I’d start generating excitement about ‘dress-up’ day since, after all, Mr. G was the only kid in his class who refused to wear pajamas on pajama day; the one who could scarcely be coerced to wear green for St Patrick’s Day.
‘I got dressed all by myself’ he announced as he came down the stairs. I looked up. Argyle sweater vest over a long-sleeved t-shirt. Nice touch, I thought. Strange short pants. What?
Upon closer inspection I discovered these were the same pants the Hen had worn on Monday. Size 18-24 months. In the nicest way possible I tried to let G know that he was wearing his little brother’s pants. That they were actually too small (short!) for him. He wasn’t budging.
We got to school where I was due to volunteer for the day. One of the moms tried to suppress a smile when she saw my oldest walk through the door. ‘He’s wearing his brother’s pants’ I whispered in her ear. ‘Oh,’ she nodded. ‘I thought they were lederhosen…but I didn’t think you were German.’
Another mom was taking pictures of all the kids dressed as ‘community helpers’. There was a cowgirl, and a farmer, and a doctor, and a rockstar. And of course our ‘teacher’. The mom looked at the Gort and got her camera ready. ‘I think I know what you’re supposed to be,’ she declared.
Oh, I’m sure you don’t, I thought privately.
‘A golfer!’
The day started off auspiciously enough; or no less auspiciously than any other day.
My oldest asked me to construct a digger for him out of his IKEA Bygga construction set. The one he’s had for more than three years; which currently has about a fourth of the pieces it started with in December 2005. ‘I can’t make that for you, we don’t have all the pieces,’ I explained. ‘We’ll have to go to IKEA and buy another set.’
That was all the incentive he needed. He jumped up and got dressed in about two minutes. ‘Let’s go to My-kea!’ he announced.
So we went to ‘My-kea’ to pick up another construction set. When we were there a few weeks ago, I actually thought: ‘we should just buy another set’ – knowing how depleted ours was, and knowing how much both boys like playing with it. If only I had.
When we arrived at the toy section of the gargantuan store today they were completely out of Bygga construction sets. The shelf that was filled to the brim with said items just two or three weeks ago, was now bare as a communist grocery store.
You’ve got to be kidding me: what are the odds?
Luckily the boys – mainly the big one – got distracted by the plethora of other toys nearby and no tears were shed. I asked ‘Aga’, the helpful IKEA employee if they were planning on getting any more sets and she said they should have more by the end of the week. Fine.
Suddenly, quite possibly due to the proximity of the IKEA restaurant, my boys developed an intense thirst that could only be quenched by IKEA juice. So we stopped and got some juice, and a couple of cinnamon rolls. And a cup of vile coffee.
I grabbed some straws for the juice bottles and seated my sidekicks at a nearby table. Due to the absence of a booster seat, I placed the Hen upon my lap so he could reach the table – and his juice bottle more easily.
Well, the Hen treats any container of liquid as he would a sippy cup. He tilts the container toward his mouth in order to drink. Even if there’s a straw inside; even if the lid of the bottle has been removed.
When one does that with a glass bottle of juice, the juice will spill. Everywhere. On the child, on the parent holding the child, and on the floor. After attempting to wipe off most of the damage, we moved to the other - juice-free – side of the table. At which point I mysteriously knocked over the cup of vile coffee in front of me, spilling coffee all over the table and floor. Our table looked like a disaster zone – like it needed those yellow plastic signs: ‘caution, wet floor’ that they put in supermarkets when someone has spilled an enormous bottle of something in the middle of the aisle.
I cleaned the top of the table as best I could, and we hustled out of there.
After dropping Mr. G off at preschool, the Hen and I went for a walk. When we returned to our domicile, I handed him a snack of blueberry applesauce. When I denied him access to his brother’s (used) cup of water left over from lunch, he got mad. Threw his purple applesauce to the floor. The beige carpeted floor. I strapped him in the naughty chair, gave him all kinds of glares and rants, but he didn’t care. I was the one who had to clean the purple sauce from the rug.
‘Are you guys coming to the gallery opening tonight,’ my husband asked me this morning. I wanted to say ‘no absolutely not’ but it somehow turned into ‘what time is it’ when the words came out of my mouth. I surveyed Mr. G, thinking he might put the kabosh on yet another boring, child-un-friendly gathering at the university. ‘Do you want to go to a party at Daddy’s work tonight,’ I asked. ‘Will there be snacks?’ he asked. And the matter was settled. We were going to the 5pm reception.
When G arrived home from school, he found a few items passed on to us by a kind Calgarian. ‘Are these for me?’ he asked, motioning to the bright yellow lifejacket and green rubber boots. ‘Yes,’ I replied.
Before the ‘yes’ had left my mouth, he’d already put on the life jacket and boots. He walked around the house as if he’d hit the veritable clothing jackpot. ‘You look so handsome,’ I made the mistake of saying. He did look adorable, but, in hindsight, I should have told him that later. After the reception.
It was nearing time to leave and he was still wearing his water gear. ‘What do you want to wear to Daddy’s party,’ I asked, even though I knew the answer. ‘I want to wear my life jacket and boots,’ he replied. ‘So I can show Dad.’
I gently tried to dissuade him, but it didn’t work. I couldn’t tell him not to wear the items, so I thought I’d try a more subtle approach. But subtle and the age of almost five don’t go together. He was oblivious.
As we walked out of the house, I patted myself on the back for letting my child ‘march to the beat of his own drum’. But when we got to the car I could hear the (older) boys across the street: ‘he’s wearing a lifejacket to play outside.’ Oh, geez. I felt my nonchalant, ‘could-care-less’ facade falter.
When we got out of the car at the University, I could see the students and faculty members smirking as they looked at my child wearing a bright yellow life jacket. It was a long walk to the building. I thought I was keeping it together pretty well until I actually looked at him.
He was wearing a life jacket. Over his clothes. In the middle of winter. No boat or body of water in sight.
I tried to muffle my snickering unsucessfully.
So some things seem completely unnecessary to me. Like Boss’ Day, the layers of packaging on kids toys or the show Two and a Half Men. But these things pale in comparison to the national holiday the boys and I awoke to this morning. CBC radio kindly informed us that it was 10 below and today was Hockey Day in Canada. This would be highlighted with hockey games all over the country matching retired hockey greats against members of the armed services, children with no teeth against children with fewer teeth and an entire town dressing up as Don Cherry. I found myself wondering what the heck every other day since the first flake hit the ground here has been. This is Canada where the junior hockey team leads the news broadcasts when it announces its lineups. Were the minor league teams can play in the same arenas as their NHL big brothers and still pack the place out. You can smell the stench of sweaty hockey gear every time a minivan/SUV door opens for crying out loud. Declaring a Hockey Day in Canada is like declaring a Fast Food Day in the US or a Fat Customer Day at Walmart. You had them at hello and there is no need to rub it in. OK well now that I have offended pretty much the whole of NAFTA, let me get to the only reason several of you are tuning in.
ARE THE CHILDREN STILL ALIVE? Yes I have gotten the urgent emails, ignored the caller ID, and tried not to be offended by the insinuation that we are probably just rolling around in piles of macaroni and cheese boxes. We are all fine thank you. Like any good Canadians we bundled up and headed down to the local pond to take in some aforementioned hockey and underwhelmed by local talent, we wandered over to the playground and proceeded to play for 20 minutes with the only patch of exposed earth and rocks the boys have seen in months. We wandered home, basking in the insanely bright and warm sunshine that seems to charactize even the coldest of days here in Calgary and stumbled upon the newly exposed sandbox in the front yard. Ice was removed from the “digger” and trucks and the boys spent another half hour bulldozing snow and pine cones around the yard. Finally their desperation for being outside gave way to the complaining of their cold fingers and we headed inside and trashed the house while I prepared the last of our provisions. Over tomato soup and grilled cheese we debated whether tomorrow would be a “school day, a church day with snacks, a big church day, or just a play day”. The answer was not well received since due to the lack of certain womanly qualities, I skipped the woman’s “coffee break” at the local church and G missed out on his Thursday snack.
So now that we have used up all the food prepared for us by the “beautiful one who travels abroad”, we will be the Three Stooges in a supermarket near you, my fellow Canadians. I only hope we can score some sweet deals in the after Hockey Day Sales.
Through some fluke of eavesdropped conversation, I learned that some schools in Calgary require parents to register their children for the next academic year as early as January. (Next month!) It pays to eavesdrop sometimes, because I was certainly NOT thinking about where to send G for Kindergarten. Not in December. I figured we had until May, at least.
Luckily we live in a city where there are a lot of options for schooling. Language immersion, arts-infused, Waldorf, Montessori and private schools that charge gazillions of dollars each year. So G can hang out with kids driving mini-Lexus’ and wearing mini-Rolexes on their tiny wrists; who probably bring catered lunches to school in gold plated lunch boxes.
One of the ‘cheaper’ educational possibilities nearby is a Spanish immersion school, which sounds like a nice option. Since Spanish is, after all, spoken by a few (million) more people than French. Of course there are also French immersion schools aplenty, but I can’t justify sending G to school to learn the language… just so he can read the bilingual labels in the grocery store. He could just turn to the English side.
I asked the little man where he might like to go to ‘big school’ and the conversation sparked huge interest on his part. Now, when we drive in the car, he pipes up from the back seat about ‘how [he] wants to go to big school’ and ‘when can [he] go to big school,’ and ‘[he]’s going to ride his bike to big school…and take the bus.’
Now my oldest son, for all his ’smartitude’ as Mallory quipped in an episode of Family Ties, has shown little interest in acquiring some of the skills he seemingly requires to go to school. For instance, he can’t – and doesn’t seem to want to – ride a bike. His interest in the particular method of transport was so marginal we didn’t even bother bringing his bike to Calgary. So there is much work to be done in this area. If one could get to school by naming different kinds of excavators, or making two-dimensional models of the Big Dipper….he’d be set.
He’s also shown little interest in dressing himself. Something his pediatrician never failed to bring up during his annual well check. ‘Is he dressing himself?’ Well, no, not really. ‘Well, he should. And he should want to.’ But he doesn’t and it’s so much faster if I do it. And I’d leave the office ‘promising’ to ‘work’ with him on dressing himself.
But a few weeks ago, as I observed a girl – nearly a year younger than he – remove her own shoes, coat, hat and gloves with great skill and carefully stow them in the appropriate place…..I realized it was, perhaps, time I forced the issue a bit.
I had leverage, after all.
‘You know….you can’t go to big school if you don’t dress yourself,’ I casually mentioned one morning.
And, that was it. That was all the incentive he needed to start picking out his own clothes and dressing himself. And unveil a style that is….out of this world. (Photos on the flickr feed since our computer has died and I no longer have access to Photoshop.) I managed to capture his first unusual outfit on camera: grey cords with dark grey stripes, a red and navy striped rugby shirt with white collar, and a blue argyle sweater vest over it. His dad, a crazy dresser wannabe, swelled with pride. I didn’t quite know what to say when I saw him, mostly because I couldn’t decide if the outfit was ‘cool’ or just ‘off’.
Another day yielded a royal blue long-sleeved polo shirt with a red and grey striped t shirt over it. Which was clearly cool. Today’s combination was a greyish shirt, with a bright green shirt over it, paired with brown cords. As he pulled the last shirt over his head, he said: ‘I need to go downstairs to show my outfit to dad….because I look cute.’
Kindred spirits, those two.
I decided I needed to kick my own outfit up a notch. So I put a black and white striped t shirt underneath a muted orange sweater. Which, in the end, was probably more ‘Halloween’ than ‘cool’. I’ll keep watching and learning from the master.
G walked by our wedding picture last night (apparently this was the first time he noticed it?) He pointed to it and said: ‘look mom, you’re wearing your princess dress….and dad’s wearing his work clothes.’
Now since dad’s ‘uniform’ pretty much consists of jeans, a black zip-up sweater and a baseball hat, it’s pretty far fetched to think a morning suit with stroller jacket could ever be considered his ‘work clothes.’
On a semi-related note. I flipped through the latest issue of Vogue this afternoon and found this wedding dress which I believe does qualify as some kind of princess dress.
It may have cost about $200,000 and it may have required over a thousand hours to make….the article is necessarily coy about such vulgar details. Obviously a commoner such as myself cannot possibly comprehend that level of opulence…..but it is the stuff of fairy tales.
