In between the fits and bursts of producing 5000 words these last 36 hours, I:

- ate cauliflower steak on the couch in front of the TV
- caught up on this season’s The Bachelor (get rid of Courtney Ben, she’s bad news!)
- drank so much coffee I couldn’t fall asleep for hours
- chain-snacked on gummy bears
- checked Facebook constantly
- got so bored that I cleaned the toilets

Reminding me that the best part of a business trip is coming home.

Love Lucie

My hubby has seen the signs, picked up on my cues, perhaps even read my blog and given me two days of solitude at our cabin in Whistler, BC.

The view from my "office" today

Two days of not yelling at my children to hurry up/remember this/flush the damn toilet/I don’t know where your homework is. And two days of without the grumpy feelings that reverberate in both the yeller and the yell-ee. Two days where I can actually hear a pin drop – if there was anyone here to drop a pin, that is.

Two days of not being a short-order cook. I won’t be making lunches, snacks or dinners – I will not have to referee the best piece of chicken in a tug-of-war nor will I witness the vegetables being scorned and dumped into the trash. I have two days of eating what I want, when I want. In the cabin’s fridge, I have a nearly full bottle of pinot grigio, half a wheel of camembert and a giant head of cauliflower threatening to go bad. I’m actually looking forward to cauliflower steak with cheese sauce tonight and I have no one to complain about the off-gassing this inventive combination will inevitably produce.

For two days, I will not enter the laundry room. I will spend two days living in my pyjamas, taking writing breaks by singing along to all the sappy love songs on my iPod, unperturbed by that canned laugh track that follows the Suite Life of Zack & Cody around.

I have three essays due by the end of the month that could launch my nascent writing career and my husband has taken away all my excuses for not getting them done by giving me these two days.

I’m giddy over this gift of me-time, and I know that the reason I’m giddy is because I get my crazy beautiful life back in just two days. And I know that they’ll miss me, especially when looking for the peanut butter tomorrow, because I took the jar with me.

Absence really does make the heart grow fonder, I promise to savour every delicious minute of it!

Love Lucie

Looking at our family’s time as a (delicious chicken pot) pie, I noticed that my husband get first dibs on time – he has to go to work in the morning and he comes home around 6 for dinner. He has to go on business trips, networking functions and conferences. He goes to the gym in the evening and sometimes he works late. The kids get second dibs, they have to be at school by 9 and then picked up at 3 and chauffeured to various lessons, birthday parties, swim meets and playdates. And then there’s me – a stay-at home mom who gets just 5.5 hours each day to clean, cook, shop for groceries, do laundry, pay the bills, volunteer, organize, shower and write. I do have my book club and dinners out with girlfriends, but these too have to fit among the leftovers or its up to me to find a babysitter. This realization even makes me wonder if my new career – writing – has been chosen because it fits so well among the leftovers. Except when it doesn’t. Like when I’m working on a particularly moving scene in my novel in between life’s interruptions and I end up with a sentiment that could only dream of gracing a Hallmark greeting card.

So it’s time to step up and take the first piece of the (mmm, apple) pie for me. Not all the time, mind you but definitely some of the time. As a good friend reminded me, I am not the glue holding my family together. They would survive without me. I am not irreplaceable. And as brutally honest a statement that may be, it’s incredibly freeing to give myself permission to choose my own adventure. I encourage my kids to live up to their potential, why shouldn’t I?

Love Lucie

Being raised a good Catholic girl, to me the morning of January 1st feels a lot like coming out of the confessional freshly purged of my sins. I’m 3 Hail Marys and an Our Father away from heaven – hooray! That is, until I sin again. But until then, I feel…perfect.

Outside the catholic church (where I now reside) it’s not often we get the chance to start over, but on a wall calendar, you get to do it every 12 months. As we say goodbye to the previous year’s missteps and mistakes, we pledge, perhaps high on champagne and the promise of a new year, that we’re going to get it right this time. That this year, we’re going to be thinner, prettier, nicer, funnier, happier, or most simply put, better.

The only problem with this clean slate approach is that I’m the same old me – the same soft, dimpled (not in a remotely cute way), perpetually sleep deprived, grumpy that I’m a taken for granted wife/mother/friend/ sister/daughter/chauffeur/volunteer that I always was. I still waste too much time on social media and reading People.com, I still obsess about getting rid of my stretch marks, I take on too much, I fall short, I’m vain, I envy, I begrudge, I yell, and I’m slow to forgive. And I realize this is true shortly after the champagne wears off and I have another 353 days before I can wipe the slate clean again.

So this year, on January 17th, I resolve to be good enough. That’s it. To be me and (this is the tough part) to be happy with it. No 30 day challenges for me – fitness, dieting or otherwise. No more saying no to shortbread. These are things I know I can accomplish. I have, in fact said yes to shortbread 3 times today. The trick is, and will continue to be, to not beat myself up about said shortbread. And to continue to do the things I love with abandon – run, write, hang with my family and friends.

Perfection is a lonely place, frequented by skinny, hungry and therefore, grumpy people. I think I’m finally realizing I’d rather be fat and happy.

Love Lucie

So enter Urbandig. Urbandig is a cool new app that delivers “off the beaten path” city experiences right to your smart phone and these experiences have been “curated” by hipsters in the know. I knew I had to get on board.

As for my curator credentials, I’m a born and bred Vancouverite and as mentioned, I love to shop. In fact, I believe I am a pioneer in the shop-tourism sector – having travelled to London, Paris, Milan, Tokyo, Marrakech, Toronto, NYC, Chicago, and San Francisco to name a few – like a UN Goodwill ambassador, only I’m spurring local economies. Secondly, I have four sisters and our favorite holiday of the year is Boxing Day. After the tree is trimmed, the turkey gobbled, doodads purchased, wrapped and then unwrapped for every member of our extended family, we wake up at 6AM, zip to Caffé Artigiano for a latte to go and then shop till we drop (dollar bills obviously!) And finally, living as I do, with 4 boys under my roof, there is not much I won’t do for a day out with my girlfriends. And so, as often as we can, my girlfriends and I come together to brunch, shop, spa, shop some more, drink & dance – and as such, planning Girls Days Out are somewhat of a specialty of mine.

With the malls of North America so cookie-cutter boring, there are really just two shopping destinations in Vancouver that I love to waste a day away at – Main Street and South Granville Street. For my Girls Day Out tour, I chose Granville Street as it caters to foodies, shoe lovers, and all shoppers who love good style as much as they love good labels, plus it ends at a world-class spa. Everyone’s a winner on Granville Street!!

So grab a girlfriend (or eight) and follow my Girls on Granville Tour on Urbandig. Meet over brunch at Café Barney or Luke’s Corner Bar (but don’t eat too many breakfast potatoes or you won’t fit into those skinny jeans you covet!) and take a wander down beautiful, historic South Granville Street, I’ll bet you’ll find just what you’re looking for!

Love Lucie

Obvious priority adjusting jokes aside, it makes me wonder why everyday for the past 6 weeks, I choose to tackle the minutiae that comes along with being a stay-at-home mom instead of focusing on what’s really important to me as my own person. While the low hanging fruit (do laundry, tidy house) offer easy (and gratifying) check-marks on my bulging to-do list, it leaves the tougher and so much more rewarding projects to go unpicked day after day.

To illustrate my point, this was my to-do list on Monday, which I keep track of my Things app for iPhone:
- Run
- Coffee w/ Grade 3 moms
- Buy Groceries
- Shower
- Talk to Lawyer
- Book haircut for eldest son
- Book doctor appointment for eldest son
- Book babysitter for Thursday night
- Write in middle son’s birthday book
- Buy birthday gifts for nanny, niece & nephew
- Send baby gift to friend in London
- Make lasagne for dinner
- Pick up kids
- Meet with youngest’s son’s teacher
- Take middle son out for birthday treat after school
- Write blog post

And despite my detailed organization, I somehow forgot that I had double booked my eldest son on an after school playdate. One at my house and one at another boy’s house. Plus I got so involved chatting with the other moms after school, I forgot all about my meeting with my son’s teacher. At the end of a long and stressful day where I was short with the kids and quick with my friends, I got it all done…aside from the blog post. And that has been the daily pattern for the past 6 weeks and perhaps even longer. This post I wrote in May 2009 suggests that some habits die hard, or at least, very, very slowly.

This is my Things to-do-list today:

With less minutiae and my most important task already behind me, I can look forward to the rest of my day. What are you going to do today?

Love Lucie

There was just one thing standing in my way. Rookie moms.

Many of the sweet children in my son’s kindergarten class are first borns, or as I prefer to call them, guinea pigs. Being a veteran mom, I know from experience that saying that first goodbye cuts like a knife. Many a rookie stay-at-home mom’s secret fear is that our kids don’t actually need us and will head into the classroom with nary a backwards glance. And these kids, those sneaky devils, smell that fear in our hearts and use it to masterfully manipulate us. They wail, as if cued in a chorus, the moment the kindergarten teacher presents herself to steal our children. Veteran moms know that those first goodbyes need to be ripped off a band-aid, a quick kiss & a hug and they’re off to the land of learning. Some first-time moms however, do a Sally Fields, basking in the glory of “my kid really, really needs me” and joins the class for a kindergarten refresher.

After my first princess year drop off, I went running. As I ran, I vacillated between being joyous that I finally had “me” time and miserable that my baby was a fully competent and capable kindergarten kid. When I shared this with my husband later that evening, he thought it was time to see my therapist again.

On the third day of school, my son decided that he wanted his mommy to stay at school like all the others. So, he cried, clinging to my body, rubbing his luscious tears and dripping nose juices all over my new Lululemon pants. And being a veteran mom with my personal trainer waiting for me at the gym, I dragged him to his teacher so she could pull his little body off of me while I ran out the door. I was tough on the outside but inside, I was crying too, yet narcissistically reassured that he did actually want me to stay.

After a weekend at home, things got worse on Monday, as the other kids caught onto the crying game and more parents were being sucked into this loud emotional vortex. At her wits end, the kindergarten teacher had a chat with her little charges and announced that “mommies and daddies are no longer allowed in our classroom.” And so every day after that, my obedient son would stoically wait for the morning bell, his lower lip protruding, while tears would start to pool in his eyes. Feeling as though he was being betrayed by his own body, he would then stick his two fingers into his tear ducts (Three Stooges style) in an attempt to stop the flow. Pained, I would tell him that I could walk him into the classroom, but he would just shake his head and whisper “You’re not allowed”, and march down the corridor with the enthusiasm of a death row inmate. He was that good.

This push/pull on my heartstrings was causing me serious heartache. How was I to enjoy my Princess year if my Princes were not happy to give it to me? My older boys in Grades 3 and 5 didn’t want to be associated with me on the playground, but this was my baby, my parenting Mona Lisa. I couldn’t just leave him there with his fingers embedded in his eyeballs. What was I to do?

A dear friend recommended that we read The Kissing Hand by Audrey Penn. This is a lovely story about Chester Raccoon who doesn’t want to go to school, so his Momma plants a kiss on his hand to take with him to school so that he can feel her love whenever he needs it. We read it that night and the tears stopped immediately. I think we both realized that I was going to be okay and that he didn’t need to make me feel loved by crying. And I have his kiss on my hand for whenever I need it.

I’m baaaack!!
Love Princess Lucie

So the kids are out of school and refuse to go to anything that smells like structure and/or has a teacher, ie. summer camp. And since we spending our first summer in Whistler, we are devoid of playdates and babysitters. So, in the meantime, I’ve become a Denny’s, open 24/7, peanut butter & jelly sandwiches at the ready, squeezing lemons upon lemons for their lemonade stand for which I’ve not yet seen a dime (I swear they are drinking their profits!), wiping counters and sweeping floors to keep the ants at bay. On a daily basis, I’m fending off the inevitable, “Mom, I’m bored,” or “MOM! He hit me!” or “MOOOOOMMMMMMM! He farted on my pillow and won’t say sorry!!!” with encouraging words to work it out for themselves and large glasses of pinot grigio.

There is no time to workout, no time to shop, no time for a much needed pedicure, no time to write, no time for me. As lovely as summer is, I’m counting the days till I get my beautiful life back.

Twenty-four.

See you in September!
Love Lucie

I cannot believe how much gear you need for to camp! I realize now that getting away from it all actually means taking it all with you. I’m talking sleeping bags (X5), tents, tarps, chairs(X5), bungee cords, propane stove, propane, matches, rope, flashlights(X5), an axe, stuff for s’mores and beer (X alot) – these are the necessities, without which, it’s not called camping. Add to that some stuff to make the experience actually bearable like pillows (X5), outfits made entirely of fleece, toothbrush & paste, blow-up mattresses, iPod & speakers, personal insulated Bodums, Baileys, box of pinot grigio, changes of underwear, a soccer ball and suddenly my SUV hatch won’t close and I need to pop the Thule box on top!

Over the three nights of rain, rain and more rain, I learned to make a good campfire and how to put it out without water. I learned to enjoy the freedom of not putting on makeup everyday – hell, I didn’t even wash my face some days. I learned that my boys are most cooperative with each other when they are building a sandcastle. And I learned that nooky in a tent is more than I can handle.

Maybe next time?

Love Lucie

Being the only female in a house of boys, there are some things I simply don’t do, like taking out the garbage, killing insects, and until yesterday, camping. I simply adore my king size bed, my snore-reducing pillow and my down duvet. But somehow, I got tricked into taking my boys camping this year. They are 5, 7 and 10 years old, and I guess I simply ran out of excuses to deny them, as my husband puts it, the ultimate Canadian experience.

Nature calls suddenly as it does in 40+ year old women and I struggle to sit up and move onto all fours toward the “front door” of the tent, causing my husband to pitch into the center of the mattress in the process. He moans in protest. I unzip the inner tent and then the outer tent, and voila, I pop out head first into the wilderness, fervently hoping that I don’t see a bear at the picnic table. The coast is clear and my bladder nearly bursting, so I do my best Charlie Chaplin impersonation to the bathroom one campsite away.

Making my way back to the campsite, I encounter a few fellow bedraggled campers. Eager to hide the most heinous morning breath (didn’t brush after those s’mores last night, did I?) and spectacular bed hair imaginable, I mumble good morning and scurry back. It’s just after 6AM, an ungodly hour for pleasantries, but those damn Blue Jays are awake and so are we. But thank goodness for my Mom and Dad, they’ve got the fire roaring already!

It has rained all night as the small lake by the foot of our tent will attest and the flat style tarp roof my husband Macgyver’d out of bungees and plastic sheeting served only to collect a good amount of rain before the tree bough gave way, loudly dumping it’s load every 5 minutes or so. But my kids loved it, splashing about as if their Dad had given them their very own waterpark. Thanks again to my Mom and Dad as soon everyone is happily munching on croque monsieurs and I’ve splashed some Baileys into my coffee, and so the world is good again.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

We are at Green Point campground in the Pacific Rim National Reserve, just outside of Tofino, British Columbia. Perched on very edge of the Pacific Ocean, it is a paradise to many – surfers, artists, foodies, whale-watchers and yes, virgin campers.

Where else can you wake up to this?

I think this must be what heaven must look like.

Love Lucie