But because my hands and brain are on auto pilot, I still do my daily check. These days it’s mostly to see which older-than-me celebrities are having babies, and, occasionally to snort at the celebrity quotes featured in the ‘mom said it’ section. Like yesterday’s gem offered by Michelle Monaghan (no idea who she is), who gushed that when you’re a mother ‘every day feels like Christmas‘.

I snorted, and filed it away to share with the professor at just the right time.

That time came a couple of hours later, after a trip to the Farmer’s Market and a subsequent stop at Camper’s Village to pick up a pocket knife for the Gort (he’d saved up for it.) Someone was in the throes of a tantrum; I honestly can’t remember who it was because, at least for this mother, someone always seems to be losing it over something completely arbitrary. ‘Just like Christmas,’ I muttered and told the professor about the celebrity-gem. ‘Maybe she meant it’s like Christmas…..without presents,’ he guessed. ‘Yeah,’ I laughed, ‘like the kids were all psyched for Christmas and then found out Santa hadn’t brought them any presents.’

Maybe that kind of Christmas?

And we went inside Camper’s Village so the Gort could get his pocket knife. And Percy fell in love with a hotdog roaster and decided he had to have a hot dog roaster. Followed by a terrific ‘lamentation’ inside Camper’s Village when I told him  he couldn’t get one.

‘Christmas,’ I told the professor, nodding my head in the direction of the flailing child.

Fast forward less than twenty four hours later, and it was Father’s Day. I asked the professor what he wanted to do, and he opted for a hike. Over breakfast, we discussed the hike with the boys and the professor, trying to drum up excitement, told the Gort they could look for sticks and ‘whittle’ them with his brand-new pocket knife. ‘What’s whittling?’ the Gort wanted to know. ‘I’ll show you,’ the professor explained.

Instead of waiting for a tutorial, the Gort apparently decided to teach himself how to ‘whittle’ because mere minutes later, as I was helping Percy get dressed, he came running in the house, screaming, because he had cut.his.finger with the pocket knife. I shifted into crisis management mode. The professor drove to Shopper’s Drug for gauze and more band-aids. The Gort lamented buying a pocket knife, crying ‘who even came up with the idea of pocket knives’ and ‘you should just give it to Percy because he would be more responsible with it!’ and it wasn’t even 10am.

Three hours later, we finally managed to load everyone in the car for the aforementioned hike. We stopped at Bragg Creek because someone needed a bathroom, which turned into five people using a bathroom, which turned into a stop at the Trading Post, which turned into Percy finding an axe and demanding that I buy him the axe.

‘Did you see what happened to the Gort’s finger?!’ I nearly lost my mind. ‘And that was just with a pocket knife, imagine what would happen if we let you have an axe!’ This exchange of logic led to another delightful, rather loud lamentation about ‘you never let me get what I want, and all I really want is this axe.’

And there I am, standing in the Trading Post, listening to a three year old yelling about an axe (or hache en francais – sometimes that bilingual labelling is so informative!) and all I can think is ‘what fresh hell is this’.

Instead, I say, ‘Christmas,’ to the map-perusing professor, and walk away.

And after what feels like yet another hour, we are back in the car – accompanied by three boys with three ice creams in the backseat – driving towards Sheep River Falls, contemplating the epic journey to the heartland that awaits us next month.

The older boys had already inhaled their ice cream, while axe-loving Percy had managed to make his last. Naturally, the brothers wanted to sample his, and our mini Paul Bunyon was happy to oblige. As long as they made the animal sounds of his choosing. ‘Now do monkeys,’ he ordered, and the 9 year old and almost-six year old happily squealed like monkeys for the privilege of sampling Percy’s pink and blue frozen treat. And the professor and I howled at the littlest tyrant calling the shots.

We kept driving for what felt like an eternity, and I couldn’t help but marvel that nobody can turn a 75km drive into a three hour ordeal quite like the Johnsons. ‘I’m so tired I could DIE,’ the Hen despaired from the back. ‘It’s practice for when we go to Indiana,’ we reminded the boys. ‘This is, like, three hours, but we’re going to have to be in the car for twelve hours a day for three days.’ (Or four. Or five. In a teal Volvo 850.)

Yay!

Finally, we arrived at the Falls; the Gort and the Hen both asleep as raindrops splattered on the car’s windshield. I glared at the sky. Had we come all this way only to walk in the rain? I passed out jackets and bug spray and we set off into the wilderness. Minutes later, the rain stopped. The boys happily threw rocks and sticks in the river. The Hen tripped and fell two or three times. Percy had four plop-down-on-the-ground-and-refuse-to-continue lamentations. The Gort mused aloud about how it felt like part of his finger had fallen off.

Remarkably, we kept going. For maybe an hour. Stepping over, and ducking under, branches. Bright sun and blue skies replacing grey clouds. Meandering along a made-up trail to the sound of the falls. Taking pleasure in putting one foot in front of the other, surrounded by some of the world’s finest scenery.

Later, as we drove (directly!) back to Calgary, I stumbled on a different interpretation of Michelle whatshername’s words. Maybe she meant Christmas in the fullest sense – the anticipation, excitement, and presents along with human foibles, unmet expectations, too much sugar and not enough sleep.

Yes, every day does feel like Christmas.

But sometimes my FB friends link to interesting news articles that I certainly would not have discovered on my own. And today, was such a day.

Meet the couple who’s been wearing matching clothes for 35 years.

The article is delightful, peppered with gems like: ‘Whenever I see flamingo fabric, I buy some and make us an outfit; we now have more than 40 in their own special closet.’ [Because Donald, the man-half of the matching-clothes-equation, designed the ubiquitous pink flamingo lawn ornament, hence the particular fondness of flamingo fabric.] And another smile-inducing quote: ‘whoever gets there first gets to choose what we’re wearing. It’s not a stampede, though; we’re both amenable to the other’s choice. If we’re going to a party, we’ll discuss what to wear like any other couple, except the difference is we want to look the same.’

Since it was kind of a slow, dreary day at home, and my only option for entertainment was cleaning my thoroughly obliterated house for the 4th time in as many days, I decided the professor and I needed to match, too.

It just so happened that I was wearing a blue and white striped t-shirt (which I may or may not have also worn the previous day) and he just so happens to have a blue and white striped t-shirt (stuffed in the back of a dresser drawer).

Ta-da. (Please note, I’m also wearing a pair of his Puma sneakers to complete the effect.)

[Without washing the processor.]

Because I’m kind of lazy.

I should make that my Facebook status update. Except maybe it will come across as one of those poorly disguised self-compliments or updates begging for validation. ‘I just made granola bars and banana muffins and didn’t bother washing the food processor inbetween. I’m so lazy.’

Except I made granola bars and banana muffins. Which makes me sound kind of awesome. Maybe I’m awesome and a little bit lazy?

I walk past the flowers my mom sent me for my birthday. They’re droopy now. Two days after I received them. Actually, I guess it’s Thursday. That’s 3 days later. She was disappointed that the florist didn’t send the flowers she requested. And then they were kind of droopy. So she complained and they asked for a picture of the droopy wrong flowers. And I said I’d handle it.

But watch out when I say I’m going to handle something. Because sometimes it means I’ll do it right away. [Sort of.] And other times it could be weeks……months.

Like once, my sister visited me in Minneapolis and we went to Target and she ordered a pair of eyeglasses. And then she flew back to Boston. And the eyeglasses came in and I picked them up. But then I didn’t mail them to her. For kind of a long time. Like maybe a couple of weeks. Mostly because I’m especially inept about going to the post office in a timely manner. And finally she got kind of annoyed so I forced myself to go to the post office and mail those glasses.

Except somehow I ended up mailing the case without any eyeglasses inside. I literally mailed her: an empty eyeglass case. Which is pretty amusing – years later – but of course it wasn’t at the time. I’m surprised she still speaks to me, now that I think about it.

Okay, so evidence suggests I might be more lazy than awesome. Though the professor, of course, tells me I’m awesome. [Sometimes.] But the other day, when I mentioned our seventeenth wedding anniversary was coming up, he said something like ‘ugh, has it really been that long?’

And the way he said it made it sound like maybe being married (to me) hasn’t been all that awesome. Which, fair enough, I do have an entire category on this blog dedicated to the subject ‘why you’re glad you’re not married to me.’

Even I realize that being married (to me) has its challenges.

Like the fruit flies buzzing around the kitchen table from the rather blackened bananas I’ve been saving for muffin-making. Little black things flying around is not really awesome, either. Maybe I fall squarely in the lazy camp.

Did I mention I’m making granola bars and banana muffins?

Maybe I could use this on the blog’s ‘about’ page: ‘I’m a lot lazy and a little bit awesome.’ Something slightly more interesting than the standard ‘I like chocolate and despise rollercoasters’ fare? Though that’s true, too.

I should update the photo on that page, but now I’m all self-conscious about ‘self-portraits’ after seeing several posts on Facebook today about the rules for posting ‘selfies’ on instagram.

Something about trolling for compliments, I think.

But really, if I don’t take pictures of myself, who will? Some day I would prefer it if there was photographic proof that I didn’t always look like I’d slept for 3 hours and hadn’t showered in days. I can just picture the boys flipping through old photos when I’m gone and muttering ‘wow, mom was ugly.’ Because the five pictures that I’m in? The shutter clicked as I blinked which makes me look half-drunk or seriously crazy.

And then there’s the matter of bad clothes and not enough sleep and the perpetually bad hair.

Freaking fruit flies. I really need to make those muffins. Now.

Maybe I’ll just mash the bananas by hand.

As if.

I used to think I wanted to live in Seattle. The comparatively mild climate. The coffee. The cool factor. The natural beauty. But the reality is, if I had to endure [consecutive] weeks of rain and/or gray, I’d probably go insane. My teeth would be scary-yellow from all the coffee. And I’d spend most of the day sitting on the couch eating….anything.

Because gray and rainy days call for hibernation – but not the sleeping-without-eating kind of hibernation. No, the watching-movies-continuously-with-a-hand-stuck-in-a-cookie-jar-while-everything-falls-to-pieces-around-you, kind of hibernation.

Oh, is that just me?

Anyway, the point is, it’s rained a lot and things have gotten somewhat dire chez Johnson. Because monsoon-week happily coincided with ‘no-screen’ week. Yes, during yet another of my irrational-impulsive moments, I decided that the reason the boys were crazy and grumpy was because they were having too much screen time. Not because they were falling asleep increasingly later every night courtesy of soccer and bunk beds and three boys insisting on ‘sleeping’ in the same room. No, it was because they were having too much screen time.

Sure, putting it into [those] words makes me sound all kinds of loony, but I had actually noticed a marked increase in their demands (and my concession) to watch Netflix or play wii or bizarre computer games. And more screen time…. means less playing and reading and drawing. (But less screen time means more whining and fighting.)

I’m not sure which is worse: more screen time or more fighting. Okay, truthfully: more fighting is worse. But I’m willing to consider the bigger picture and put aside my petty aversions to yelling and refereeing awesome arguments like ‘he’s looking at me.’

Oh, the horror.

On Day 1 of NSW, I happened to be gone most of the day. Perfect. (Though the professor disagreed.) On Day 2, I picked up the Hen from school and he refused to speak to me. Literally, the kid gave me the silent treatment because I’d put the kabosh on computer games for seven days. By Day 3, things had mellowed a bit and the boys were starting to count-down the days until they could be reunited with their screen of choice. On Day 4, I picked up the Hen from school and he was crying. Because of my failure to pack a sufficient amount of food in his snack for the two hours and thirty nine minutes that he was at school.

Apparently he’d been on the brink of starvation.

But we made it through Day 5 and 6 with shreds of our collective sanity still intact. The boys played outside (in the rain).

Note the too-short sleeves on Percy’s jacket. It has since been donated to Goodwill. 

And Percy tried to start sucking his thumb. (Maybe it’s the 3.75 year old’s version of coffee?)

We played a couple of rounds of Scrabble…..I read the boys a book (about Skylander Giants)……

And then it was Day 7. And it was still raining. And I started feeling a little bit like Noah in the Ark. (Mostly because the Gort or the Hen had referenced it the week before.) And the professor, who seems to have a new obsession with not-so-new Pandora, failed to notice that it was playing nothing but Bon Iver.

As one of his breathily-morose songs began, I racked my musical brain to recall where I’d heard it last: yoga class. A relatively peaceful memory. But then there was another and possibly another and finally I turned it off before I completely lost the will to live.

Shortly thereafter we left the house in the teal special and ran a few errands. Which did nothing to improve anyone’s mood. (Funny how Costco can do that. Or not do that, as the case may be.) And, two hours later, as we pulled up to the curb in front of our house with seven groceries in the trunk, and a chorus of are-we-going-home-now’s, I knew we had to do something.

‘Who wants to go for a walk in the rain?’ I tried to chirp cheerfully. Four reluctant Johnson boys agreed. And we set off around the neighborhood in search of something.

Worms, it turned out. Because a week of rain not only gives you a muffin top and yellow teeth, it also gives you a lot of worms. Ergo, there was a lot of stopping to stare and poke at worms. [And the professor literally paid his squeamish youngest boy-child to hold a worm in his hand for five seconds.] Poor boys: their mother thinks they should spend less time in front of a computer and their father thinks they should hold worms in their hands.

We returned home a good hour later, but it was still nowhere near bedtime. At 5:21, I glanced at the clock, ‘I’ve just lost the will to live,’ I sighed to the professor. ‘You’re about an hour behind me,’ he muttered by way of reply.

Just before eight we dispatched the younger boys for a bath whilst the oldest boy got creative with the masking tape. ‘Do I look like a robot or a skeleton,’ he wrote the question on a piece of paper.

Because he’d taped his mouth shut.

I haven’t summoned the courage to look at next week’s forecast.

[Insert mini blog post: 'On becoming my mother, part 3'.

In addition to adopting my mom's habit of finding something she likes in a store, and walking around with it for 20 or 40 minutes before ultimately returning it to the rack rather than purchasing it, I seem to have acquired her ever-lengthening arms as well.

Her main criticism of almost every article of clothing she tries on? 'It's too short in the arms.' And now, in the sunset days of my 30s, I find the sleeves on my shirts all end well above my wrist bones, and the shirts barely cover my long-torsoed navel. And, while I'm at it, how did I end up with a set of shoulders that rivals that of most linebackers?

The other day, I actually contemplated buying my clothes from the men's section.]

So as I was stuffing my ill-fitting, unworn clothes into a moving box, I briefly considered dumping said clothes into a bag and dropping it off at Goodwill, instead. And then I talked myself out of such impulsivity, because ‘what would I wear?’

How on earth would I do the school pick-up and grocery run if I donated that 3-sizes-too-big Banana Republic wool dress with spaghetti straps I’d bought on super-sale in 2000 with the vague ‘intention’ of ‘having it altered?’

Quelle horreur, so I stuffed my clothes in a box instead. And I moved them to yet another house. And one year later….I donated them to Goodwill. [Nearly] all of them.

The cashmere sweaters that I’d laundered instead of dry-cleaned, which consequently refused to skim my ever-lengthening wrist bones and navel. The black JCrew stretchy dress I wore once and kept for 17 years ‘just in case’. ‘The high-heeled shoes (most of them handed ‘up’ from my younger sister) that I hadn’t reached for since 2007.

I filled 3 very large bags and drove them to Goodwill. Eventually. And, once winter was officially over [as in, a few days ago] I stuffed two more enormous bags with unworn or ill-fitting shoes, jackets, snowpants, and the like.

These days, I’m on a mission to get rid of everything we own. I’m like a slightly aggressive waitress in a chain restaurant: barely asking ‘are you still workin’ on that?’ before whisking away my family’s [proverbial] plates. Here today, gone tomorrow has a whole new meaning in 2013. And really, other than the pair of ecru-colored Converse sneakers I donated despite the fact that I actually wore and liked them, I have zero regrets about my pared down wardrobe.

A week or so ago, I turned my attention to the buckets of hand-me-down clothes in the boys’ closet. In addition to making sure the clothes were still wearable (i.e. without holes or stains), I added another criterion that only mothers of same-gendered children will understand: ‘Do I WANT to see this again?’ As in, do I want yet another child to wear this [awful] shirt [that I cannot stand the sight of].

In 2013, the answer is No.

Perhaps you’ve seen that ‘Golden Boy’ episode from Seinfeld? I live in a house of Golden Boys. Truly, I’ve given up on separating the professor from his faded and overly worn t-shirt collection: the Commodore 64, the Bruce Lee, the B.A from A-Team and the 20 years-old ‘Ball Above All’ shirt courtesy of our alma mater. Instead, I’m focusing on his offspring, where I might still have a chance to affect change.

The Gort has a maroon and grey striped shirt that, despite the plethora of other, suitable shirts in his drawer, he wears at least three times a week. This particular Golden Boy has magical properties, in that it seems to grow with the Gort. Because he’s been wearing it weekly for the last two or three years and it still seems to fit him.

Dismissed! [Well, actually, I put it in a special 'holding cell' in the back of his closet in case he suddenly realized this shirt was missing and it turned into a major 'thing'. But I wanted to send it to Goodwill.]

And the Hen, he has been very fond of a grey striped shirt handed down to him from his older brother. Not only was he wearing it more often than he should, but he also took to sucking on its sleeves. A habit which was both unattractive and destructive, as the sleeves actually became frayed at the ends. [Observe darkened sleeve in picture below.]

Dismissed! [Though, admittedly, to the garbage rather than Goodwill. I'm sure they don't need shirts with frayed, gross sleeves, either. ]

Whilst editing the boys’ closet and drawers, I found something that made me laugh. Hard. It was an unlined notebook on their shared dresser. I flipped through the pages to determine if it could be thrown away, but instead I found this:

A Johnson boys’ joke page complete with points column; to tally the points awarded to each joke, of course. [To aid in determining which boy is the funniest?]

The Gort’s contribution: ‘What’s a Ninja’s favorite drink? Kara-tea’ (2 points)

The Hen’s contribution: ‘What type of cheese is not yours? Nacho cheese’ (2 points)

I kept the notebook.

But first, I had to get to my car.

To add insult to injury, I had managed to park in the one structure in Calgary that is accessible only via a single entrance: two blocks south of the actual garage. I couldn’t make this up if I tried. And I didn’t figure it out until after I’d circled the garage (which has many, many doors for exiting purposes. It’s little wonder I started humming Hotel California: ‘you can check out anytime you want, but you can never….get back in.’)

I finally had to ask someone how to get back in the parking garage and he told me I had to walk 2 blocks south. And obviously he didn’t design the structure or the entrance, but I was genuinely mad at him, at whoever did design the structure, at the City of Calgary and the Consulate-which-shall-not-be-named.

Because this day had turned plain ridiculous. And my patent leather loafers were not made for walking. And you try ‘encouraging’ a five year old to walk more than five minutes at a reasonable clip without complaining about how tired he is.

Eventually we found the teal special and I retrieved my cell phone hidden in the glovebox compartment to call the professor and inform him his presence was required.

We retrieved our party of two and got back on Bow Trail towards downtown and all I could think was ‘Look kids, Big Ben!’ because forget Groundhog Day, my life is a Chevy Chase movie.

This time I boycotted the parking garage and parked on a surface lot (nothing but entrances) three blocks south of the Consulate. I guess the irony in the situation is that I walked even more for the second appointment, but I was not about to patronize the entrance-less parking garage again.

Welcome to my world.

Back to the same office building and the same security guards and the same protocol. ‘Please line up against the wall,’ the Secret-Service-Agent-in Training ordered the seven of us standing in line. And then, he decided to make the most of his white shirt and bullet proof vest and give a little protocol speech to the minions against the glass wall.

He spoke as if addressing a crowd of hundreds, but there were literally four or five adults before him. And, in keeping with my habit of having inappropriate reactions to public situations, I felt an enormous snort-laugh coming on. And the professor was annoyed, muttering charming things like  ’the terrorists have already won’ and I’m pinching my nose and looking puzzled in an attempt to diffuse the laughter brewing in my belly. And the Hen is asking – out loud – ‘why can’t we have dynamite?’

Because there it is, on the verboten list. Dynamite. With a red diagonal slash running through the picture. No dynamite allowed.

I looked through the glass windows at the people sitting in chairs waiting for their names to be called. ‘There’s Yevgeny!’ I whispered to the professor, pointing to the bagless man with the purple shirt, looking somewhat defeated. Apparently the messenger bag stand-off had been resolved.

And then we were sent through to security (again) and my small red purse was checked (again) and I was airport-searched (again). And we checked in with the same receptionist (again) and she said ‘they found you,’ to the professor. And I had to laugh, because he was not looking his best, and when she said ‘they found you’ it made it sound like we’d pulled him out of a dumpster somewhere.

Minutes later we were escorted upstairs for another scan of our belongings and persons, before being allowed to enter the real waiting room. I paid the $105 for the passport and handed over the $25 photos of the kid with the dirty mouth and the $13 express envelope I’d purchased in the building’s lobby. ‘It’s going to be a $200 day,’ I muttered to the professor as we sat waiting for our number to be called to complete the application process.

Sitting in the row in front of us, was a well-dressed white-haired man. And a lawyer. People-watcher that I am, I considered the situation. Why would a man come to the Consulate with a lawyer? I strained to look at the binder in the lawyer’s lap.

Renunciation.

Apparently if you want to renounce your citizenship from a certain country, you can’t just go all Gerard Depardieu and write a letter to the paper and become BFFs with a guy named Vladimir. No, you’re going to need a lawyer and a very thick binder with colorful tabs. I’m guessing the white-haired guy’s day cost a lot more than $200.

After I solved the mystery of the man and the lawyer, I turned my attention to the news. It was a feature story about the woman who’d just had a face transplant after her ex-husband doused her with lye. The Hen was watching too. [Thank you, Consulate.] A barrage of questions followed: ‘What happened to that woman’s face?’ She got burned and then doctors tried to fix her face. ‘How did she get burned?’ Um….chemicals…by….accident?

Eventually it was our turn (again). The agent held up the Hen’s old passport. The one containing the picture where he’s three or four weeks old, with baby acne and a slightly alien look on his face. ‘You look a little different,’ he said. And I thought of the dirty mouth. Some day we’re going to get an earful about his less-than-stellar passport pictures.

We held up our right hands and swore that we’d been truthful on the application.

Five days later, there was a passport in our mailbox.

I was looking for the Hen’s immunization records a couple of weeks ago because he was due for a vaccine. The papers were nowhere to be seen, but I did find his passport and remembered it had expired in September.

2012.

As we’re hoping to re-enact our epic journey across the border this summer, I had to address the expired passport situation; this time there could be no ‘I’ll deal with that later.’

Now, if you carry a passport from the land not too far from here, things get complicated where travel documentation is concerned. It’s not a matter of stuffing your child in a carseat and hightailing it to the nearest passport acceptance facility. No, you must make an appointment. Online. And interface with an ugly, non-user-friendly website and read the fine print regarding what you may and may not do. And identify everyone who will attend the appointment, by name.

So I made an appointment. I printed out the ‘required’ appointment sheet and I made a mental note to take the Hen for passport pictures. A week went by and the day before the appointment, as I was chaperoning a gaggle of third graders on a fieldtrip, before coaching a gaggle of five-year-old’s on the soccer field, I remembered about the photos.

Crap.

I whipped out my non-smart-phone. ‘Can you take the Hen to get passport pics.’ I texted the professor who was on manny duty chez nous. ‘Sure,’ he replied.

And I patted myself on the back. Because this is what manager-types [aka adults] do. They delegate tasks. They don’t try to do everything themselves. They recognize their limits and ask other people to help, rather than running around like an over-committed crazy person.

I returned from the fieldtrip around the time the men-folk returned from their passport photo outing.

I looked at the $25 pictures. I squinted at what appeared to be a shadow, or possibly dirt, on the Hen’s face. ‘Twas not a shadow.

‘His.face.is.dirty!’ I fumed, flabbergasted that neither photographer nor father had noticed the hot chocolate on the kid’s face. And I had visions of the photo being rejected due to the Starbucks after-effects. And I feared for the professor’s safety if the 5 year old’s passport application was denied on the grounds of a faulty photo.

This was precisely why I run around like an over-committed crazy person.

The night before the 9:00am appointment, I gathered all the necessary documents and filled out the application. As I tried to remember my and the professor’s birthdates and official names, I stumbled upon a puzzling section of text:

‘The minor and both parents (or guardians) must appear in person to submit Form DS-11.’

Conundrum # 1: I’d only put my and the Hen’s names on ‘the list’ of people who’d attend the appointment.

Conundrum #2: This was a renewal of an existing passport, surely they only required both parents when a new passport is issued?

[This is the part where I should add I hated true-false tests as a child because I always managed to talk myself out of the correct answer by imagining extenuating circumstances in which the correct answer would be incorrect.]

I consulted the professor on the matter. He determined that since it was a passport renewal, it should be fine for one of us [meaning, me] to be there.

[This is the part where I should add the professor will do or say anything to get out of having to leave the house with his children in tow.]

So the Hen and I headed downtown where I spent a small fortune on parking the teal Volvo. I reviewed my belongings to ensure they met the verystringent requirements of the Consulate: small purse, no lipstick, no electronic car opening device, no cell phone.

All I had was a car key, a small handbag containing the necessary documentation, and my wallet and a pen.

The Hen and I arrived at the office, slightly out of breath from running all around the two-block radius looking for the entrance. A bulletproof-vest-wearing security guard ordered people to line-up against the wall. There was a purple-shirted man with a maroon passport a few people ahead of us. The guards had just informed him that his black messenger bag did not meet the size requirements for admission into the Consulate. The man, who I named Yevgeny (just for fun) was not happy.  Because he’d have to rent a locker for his belongings……in a hostel…..that was 2 kilometers from the building. 

Yevgeny voiced his displeasure. The guard ordered him out of the line ‘immediately’. Yevgeny decided to ‘secretly’ leave his verboten bag against the wall a few feet away and get back in line.

I waited to see what would happen, but the Hen and I were ushered inside for the first part of the screening process. Another vest-wearing security guard checked off our names, searched my small bag and wallet, all whilst talking to the other guards via ear and mouth pieces about Yevgeny.

How do you solve a problem like Yev-gen-y?

The Hen and I endured the airport-security-style search of our person and then we chatted with an intake person at the reception desk.

‘Do you have your passport application?’ ‘Yes!’

‘Do you have a birth certificate?’ ‘Yes!’

‘Do you have a photograph?’ ‘Yes!’

‘Do you have a method of payment?’ ‘Yes!’

And, as I’m flying through her questions, I’m patting myself on the back for being a-w-e-s-o-m-e. I got this! I thought to myself.

‘Do you have a postage paid express envelope?’ ‘No.’

‘Is your husband here?’ ‘No…….I thought since it was just a renewal he wouldn’t need to be here?’

‘Both parents have to be here.’

‘What should I do?’

‘Can you get him?’

‘Probably within the hour?’

‘Come back.’

“Today concluded my little experiment of eleven-straight-days-of-family-togetherness, otherwise known as Spring Break. Yes, it’s that magical time of year – again – when other people go to fun places and the Johnsons hang out in not-particularly-Spring-like Calgary.

This year, just to rub it in, the professor headed to San Francisco for four days. When I, not-entirely-jokingly, suggested we all jump in the teal Volvo and drive howevermanyhours towards the Golden Gate Bridge (you know, a little Spring Break roadtrip) he looked at me as if I were insane and mumbled something about how he wished he could if only he didn’t have work commitments and classes.

So the upshot is he went to San Francisco, on a plane, stayed in a hotel and ate in fancy restaurants, and I stayed in Calgary with the boys and treated them to one round of Happy Meals and 1/3 of a minty, electric green Shamrock shake. [Just because it's Spring Break doesn't mean you get your own Shamrock shake. And in case you're thinking it, yes, I know, I am the meanest mom in the world. Trust me, I've been told. Repeatedly]

But I felt at least a little bit guilty about the lack of diversity in our boys’ geographic surroundings, so I decided to treat each one to a wii Skylander Giant character. If you are a parent of young children and your offspring have miraculously escaped the conversationsuck that is Skylander Giants, pat yourself on the back right now, for you are both wise and likely have not yanked out every last hair on your head.

I, on the other hand, have spent the monetary equivalent of 10 delicious lattes on plastic figures that are placed on some kind of ‘portal of power’ (yes, even the 3 year old refers to it in those terms). The portal of power lights up, characters appear on the screen and, following a significant amount of boys-jumping-in-one-spot-whilst-yelling, something happens.

I’ve no idea what happens, but pretty much from the moment they get out of bed the boys want to either talk about Skylander Giants or play Skylander Giants.

The five of us were riding around town in our teal-special one day, and the entire backseat was regaling the professor with the intricacies of the game and the characters and whoknowswhatelse. He offered the obligatory ‘oh’s and ‘I see’s’ and I muttered under my breath ‘I’m going to quiz you later to see how much you actually retained,’ and he gave me a blank stare that spoke volumes.

But, lest you imagine the boys spent 11 days in the basement glued to their portal of power whilst eating preservative-laden fast food, allow me to reassure you there were other ‘moments of awesome’ during our Spring Break. Like the time I took all the boys to the grocery store. Or that moment when – frustrated by the Gort’s relentless pestering of his younger brothers with a balloon – I grabbed the balloon out of his hands and started whacking him on the head with it. Only to realize that it’s an entirely enjoyable activity; thoroughly ruining the parental-teachable moment when I exclaimed: ‘oh, this is actually really fun.’

Somebody, please take us to Hawaii. Or Iowa. Anywhere will do.”

I found myself showering, flipping through my Superstore-Target wardrobe and digging out my largely untouched makeup bag from the recesses of a bathroom drawer.

The occasion: a birthday gathering for a friend at a local winebar. An occasion that comes around roughly once every two years for this party animal.

I’d been instructed to arrive ‘around 8′ which, for someone with my limited nightlife exposure, was difficult to interpret. Did ‘around 8′ mean 8-on-the-dot, 8:15, 8:30, 9:00, none of the above? I considered the source of the invitation, my friend; an extraordinarily punctual individual, and settled on arriving between 8:15 and 8:30. A move that would serve two purposes: (1) creating the illusion that I am a very popular person trying to squeeze multiple engagements into my busy weekend nights and (2) avoiding the awkwardness of being the first one to arrive.

With painted lips and highly uncomfortable boots, I hopped in my teal Volvo just after 8 and drove to the winebar. As I skulked along the strip of bars and restaurants in desperate search of a parking spot, I mentally kicked myself for not getting there earlier, if only for parking purposes.

As luck would have it, I finally found one available, non-handicapped parking spot within a block from my destination. I parked my teal box and hobbled un-suavely in my obnoxious boots to meet my friend. I descended the bar stairs and opened the door of the subterranean venue, searching the candlelit room for a familiar face.

There were no signs of my friend, but I spied one woman sitting at a large table by herself. I decided to take a chance, and made eye contact with her whilst muttering my friend’s name, question mark. As in, ‘Susan?’ As if to say, ‘are you also waiting for Susan?’

She nodded and, relieved that I wasn’t the first one there, I plopped down across from her and introduced myself. She had a glass of red wine, and a plate of oysters on the way. We, two complete strangers, made small talk. The oysters came and I mentioned how I’d never had oysters. She insisted I try one. I insisted I could not. We discussed our mutual acquaintance, our kids, our husbands. She ordered a charcuterie plate and I followed suit; ordering a half-glass of Tempranillo and a plate of serrano ham.

We ate our respective cured meat and talked about work and where we were from, all whilst not-so-secretly wondering why our very-punctual friend wasn’t there.

‘Do you think she’s here?’ my new-friend suddenly asked. I imagined walking around the corner and finding our friend sitting at a table, wondering where on earth we were. ‘Let me take a look,’ I slid off my seat and stepped into the main area, trying not to look like I was staring at each of the eight tables to determine if our friend was, in fact, sitting thirty feet away.

It seemed she was not.

‘This is sort of like a blind date,’ I joked to my new-friend, attempting to make light of the fact that we two strangers had spent the better part of an hour in each other’s company on a Saturday night at a wine bar. [I should also add that my new-friend was wearing sunglasses because one of her children had scratched her cornea. So basically I was hanging out with a combination of Isla Fisher and Stevie Wonder.]

I imagined our absent friend scheming: ‘you know who’d really hit it off: Nicola and Isla-Wonder. I know, I’ll stage a fake-birthday-gathering, but not show up, and then they can get to know each other.’

Around 9:40pm, I called the professor. Because, in classic-Nicola fashion, my friend had emailed me her phone number, but I hadn’t actually entered it into my featureless, technology averse, non-smart-phone. ‘Can you check my email for her phone number,’ I asked my human-smart-phone.

He found the crucial ten digits and I called my friend.

‘We’re here,’ she insisted, ‘where are you?’ I looked around the room. Did I, in my myopic, glasses-less state, actually miss the fact that my friend was sitting a stone’s throw away? Surely not.

‘Where are you,’ I asked suspiciously.

‘I don’t know, the wine bar…..where are we,’ she seemed to ask a server.

They were sitting in the restaurant directly above the winebar.

They paid their bill and hustled downstairs to join me and Isla-Wonder, where we proceeded to laugh for the next four hours about the folly of it all.

[I really should get a smartphone.]

[I refuse to call them anything but.]

Perhaps it sounds ridiculous or at the very least overly ambitious – who arrives at 40 and is suddenly a near-perfect human being – but I haven’t been overly ambitious about anything else in my life [save craft projects that far exceeded my skill level] so let me have this….this illusion, pipe dream, whatever you want to call it.

Operation Get Ready for 40 [not at all what I call it] began last year, when I was ‘merely’ 38, with nothing overly drastic other than once-a-week yoga and the gradual abandonment of my most favorite thing in the whole world (save my family, naturally): preparing baked goods and consuming them. In large quantities.

I’m still kind of stunned about this development, to be frank.

And then 2013 hit, and along with it, the realization that the much-anticipated (dreaded?) 4-0 was but 18 short months away. [Or, as anyone living with young children will attest, 5 blinks of an eye.]

It was time to get a little more serious about OGRF40 which, for this loather of accelerated heartrates, meant exercise. Regular exercise. As in possibly 3 or more times a week.

Because 40-year old Nicola should be a self-disciplined individual who, though she does not love it, dutifully exercises on a regular basis for the purpose of staying physically fit.

True, I had managed to jog 32 miles in 2012 which was, almost certainly, an improvement over my output in 2011, but I had a strong suspicion logging the equivalent of not-quite-3 miles per month would not render me physically fit anytime soon.

That’s when Tracy entered the picture. I didn’t have any illusions of becoming the next Gwyneth Paltrow, but I figured her trainer might be able to ameliorate the ill effects of three years of high-intensity baking (and eating). Which, for the record, is not at all the same thing as high intensity aerobics.

And I have to say she certainly aided me in my quest, though I’m still slightly bitter about the one-hour-and-forty-five-minute nightly workouts. And the stress fracture I incurred in my left foot. But I digress….

After four five weeks of ‘letting my foot heal’ from the 22-day ordeal, I remembered about the whole ‘getting ready for 40′ business and roped the professor into doing a ‘challenge’ with me. He was, after all, going to reach the milestone 7 months before me.

So we got our ‘game on’ and for these last three-plus weeks we have had very inane conversations like ‘is this a fist full?’ ‘Do you think this is a palm full?’ ‘Do I have everything here – carb, protein, fat?’ Because every one of the five meals you consume per day (spaced no fewer than 2 and no more than 4 hours apart) must contain a fist-full of sanctioned carbohydrates, a palm-sized portion of low-fat protein, and a thumb-sized portion of good fat.

This took some getting used to, because apparently I quit eating meals when I had children and instead eat little bits of food all day long. So the first week I nearly died because I had to wait TWO WHOLE HOURS before I could consume any food. It felt like something akin to torture.

We’ve also had to do 20 minutes of exercise a day which, frankly, felt like notmuch after the whole Tracy Anderson craziness, and get at least 7 hours of sleep a night. Which meant sayonara 1:00am bedtimes, at least for me. [Which also meant sayonara blog posts.]

But the biggest change has not been the food or the exercise, or the early-ish bedtimes. No, it’s been the ‘bad habit’ you have to give up.

I gave up computer/wii games. Because in my mind, the future 40-year-old Nicola should not play things called Bubble Safari or Mario Bros. And she should really only play Words with Friends and Scrabble on an irregular basis, if at all. [Maybe.]

And, three weeks into this experiment of computer-game-restraint, I have to say I rather enjoy it. I’m sure other time-wasting avenues will continue to reveal themselves [ogling pictures of baked goods on Pinterest, for instance] but for now I quite like my game-less existence.

Next step in OGRF40? Acquiring more patience with my wonderboys.

I’ve got 14 months and 13 days.