Blood, black toenails and why you should always shovel your driveway

"What's wrong with your toenails?!" the paramedic said loudly enough that I could hear her upstairs.
She was in the top floor of our house, attending to my husband whose head was dripping blood on our floor. I was running around our kitchen, one floor below, trying to find my cellphone and where I'd dropped my car keys.
"He hurt his toes, too?" I thought.
"I'm coming!!!" I screamed as I ran up the steps to the paramedics and my sick and injured husband.
A few hours earlier, my husband and I had been enjoying a quiet day, relaxing on our one-year wedding anniversary. We'd celebrated with our family and friends the day before and, on our official anniversary, we were just taking it easy. After dinner, I tiptoed upstairs and put my husband's anniversary card on his pillow so he could open it when we were going to bed later that night. But a few minutes after dinner, he said he didn't feel good and went to rest on the couch. An hour later, he was much worse and so he went up to bed for the night. (This was really not the way I expected my anniversary night to go, but marriage is for better and for worse.) He'd put my anniversary card on my pillow, too.
"We'll open them tomorrow morning when you feel better, OK?" I told him.
I crawled into bed with my husband. He was clammy and restless - not feeling good. There was definitely no bow-chicka-bow-bow going on tonight.
Off to sleep I went, thinking warm thoughts about surviving our first year of marriage ...
BAM!
There was a loud thud in my house.
BAM!
Another one.
And then a crash.
I got up out of bed. In my tired brain, I thought my husband was crashing around in the kitchen, maybe do doing dishes – even though it just a little before 4 a.m. He wasn't there. He also wasn't in our bathroom.
And then I saw him, collapsed in the doorway of a bedroom.
His head was bleeding and he was unconscious.
I started yelling, screaming for him to wake up.
He didn't stir but my two-year-old son woke up.
I called 911. It was the first time I've ever had to do that in my life.
And then, probably from adrenaline, I went into a calm take-care-of-my-family zone.
I'd taken a CPR course a couple of years ago and I remembered the instructor said homeowners should always make sure paramedics can find their house, especially if it's dark and the weather is bad. I flew through my home, turning on every inside and outside light. Then I found my car keys and repeatedly hit the lock function on my keychain so my car's taillights would continually flash. I scooped up my son and put him on my bed with toys to keep him busy and then sat with my husband until the paramedics arrived (outrageously quickly).
(We got a good lesson in why you should always shovel your driveway. This was the weekend when Kingston had a major dump on Friday and then more snow Sunday morning and our driveway was full of snow, even though we'd shovelled it twice already that weekend. The paramedics could barely walk through our driveway and there was no chance of getting a stretcher up through the snow if there had been a serious problem.)
The paramedics checked out my husband and thought that he'd fallen and hit his head.
"So, he didn't have a heart attack? A stroke?" I asked.
They said they thought he was sick and had likely been lightheaded, fallen, and hit his head on a dresser. But they still wanted him to go emerg and get checked out.
Relieved, I set out through my home to find everything I needed to go to Kingston General Hospital - with a two-year-old at 4 a.m.
And then I heard one of the paramedics say: "What's wrong with your toenails?"
"I'm coming!!!" I screamed to everyone, bounding up the stairs, two at a time.
What could be wrong now?
And then, as soon as I got back to my husband, for the first time since the drama began half an hour earlier, I felt my family was going to be OK.
"Runner's toe," my husband said.
"It's from running a half marathon. Blood under the toenail."
"Well, that will teach you to do something silly like that then, won't it?" the paramedic said with a smile.
My husband smiled, too.
And I exhaled.
I've never been so happy to see his blood-filled, black and purple toenails.
In sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, in good toenails and bad.

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Sometimes we have to lie for Santa

This was the first year my son was really interested in Christmas. He is, after all, only two and a half. His first Christmas, he was four months old. He slept through it in his swing. Last year, at a year and a half, he sorta got it, but really just liked scrunching up the used wrapping paper. This year, he understood that a magical fat man named Santa Claus was going to slide down our chimney and bring presents. (And candy. He was quite persistent that Santa would bring candy, too.)
Of course, Christmas morning, my son didn't remember it was Christmas morning.
"Do you know what time it is?" I asked after he'd gotten up and had spent cuddle time (read: more time for mommy to sleep) in our bed.
"Cereal!" he screamed.
"Ah, no. What's today?" I asked him, again.
"Cereal. Mommy? Can I have the ones with marshmallows?"
Once we got past the fact that Dec. 25 is about more than Lucky Charms, we went to the fireplace to open our stockings - which is when I got myself in a bit of a Christmas pickle.
My husband and I had decided that because the economy is so fragile, we wouldn't give each other presents this year so that we could save money. But I couldn't resist and so I bought him a few things for his stocking. (I think stockings are separate from Christmas presents, so technically I didn't break the rules. And we all know that Santa only stuffs children's stockings so adults have to take care of themselves.)
I bought Daddy some chocolate covered almonds, orange-chocolate balls and some red licorice. It probably cost $6, but I did break the rules. Maybe. I'm still not convinced.
As my son tore open his stockings and looked at all the candy - Christmas M&Ms, NERDS, and chocolate covered raisins, he noticed in a very Sesame Street moment that one of the stockings was not like the others.
"Mommy? Where's your stocking?"
Mine was on the fireplace with my son's, his stepbrother and sister's and my husband's - all of them full of trinkets, candy and little gifts.
I told my son I had already opened my stocking.
He looked at me, his face all scrunched up trying to understand the situation.
"No it's empty, mommy!"
It was empty. It's true, I had broken the rules and put stuff in my husband's stocking even though we said no gifts, but still – no one had bought me even a $1.19 chocolate bar for my stocking.
Later that night, I told my mom about how my son had noticed my stocking was empty (yes, because, once again, I had chosen to break the rules.)
"Sarah," my mother said.
"Every year, I bought something for my own stocking. It's something mothers do."
Well, let me just say this: Next year Sarah's stocking is going to have some pretty good stuff in it then!





And here is the rest of it.

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Who wears short shorts? Who wears fat shorts?

One year ago, I got married in Las Vegas and one year ago, I packed on five to 10 pounds that I've been battling to get off for the past 12 months. Once my wedding was over, I relaxed a little on the strict intake of food and let up a little on the workouts. Why is it so god dang hard to lose five pounds? It's five teeny, tiny pounds. U.S. golden boy Michael Phelps can lose five pounds by breathing, Mr. Buff Pants Barack Obama probably can lose five in one of his six times a week 45-minute workouts and celebrities hire a personal trainer for one day and lose all 37 pregnancy pounds in one workout. But that's not real life is it? Sarah Crosbie is real life and I'm here to tell you that five pounds is freakin' killing me and I'm pretty tight-ass about what I eat - I only eat whole wheat and whole grain products, eat loads of lean protein, stay away from sweets, etc. Yawn. I bore myself thinking about it. That's why I have a new tool in my drop-the-last-five-pounds toolkit: skin-tight running shorts that make my butt look ass-some. They fit, but they show every lump, bump and chunk. I bought them for 50% off when our Reebok store was having a moving sale and I thought they'd look good one day. (Yes, I know you're never supposed to buy something that doesn't fit, but I did.) I wore them to the gym last night and they looked bad. I looked at myself in the mirror and thought "oh gross" but they worked. I worked hard on the stair climber. Then I climbed hills on the treadmill and then I did interval training on the bike. There's a little song Dorey the fish sings in Finding Nemo. When she's scared and she's swimming deeper and deeper into the dark abyss with Marlin, she sings: "Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, just keep swimming." Yesterday, with my too-tight shorts, I kept singing: "Just keep going, just keep going, just keep going, your shorts are too tight." So, I've made it basically through the Christmas indulgence period and now me and my tight shorts are hitting the gym. Am I going to finally lose those last five pounds? Assolutely.

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Merry Christmas – time to "makeup"

With children and teenagers running around with cellphones, Blackberrys and iPhones, it's a wonder they haven't learned to take over the world yet. Because, as we all know, children are smarter and more ingenious than adults - and it's proved year after year after year when it comes to the hiding/finding of Christmas presents.
Adults - me included - are twits when it comes to hiding things. All of our presents for the children have been stuffed in our closet for the past six weeks - partially out of busyness and partially out of laziness. My two-year-old son or teenaged stepchildren could have walked in, taken a survey of their treasures and known all before Christmas Day. But you have to hope that by the late teen years, some of the snooping stops. And my toddler? Well, he likes the Christmas wrapping cardboard tubes best anyway.
Sometimes though, present snooping will get you. It got me one year, back in the '90s.
My parents tried many hiding places. One year, in the late 1980s, they hid my She-Ra: Princess of Power doll (she was the sister of He-Man from Masters of the Universe, very 80s) under their bed. For a month, I'd get her out of the Zellers bag and play with her, pretending to stroke her golden hair through the protective plastic. That same year, they bought me one of those white charity teddy bears The Bay always used to sell - they had little red scarves. I played with him, too in the days leading up to Christmas because my parents hid him under their bed with She-Ra.
Love you mom and dad, but duh.
After that incident - because I confessed on Christmas I'd been playing with them forever - my parents started taking our presents to relatives' houses but that became a pain when you wanted to wrap them, or check them out to see what kind of batteries they took, so the gifts returned to our house. One year, when it was time to start snooping, I had a vision. I just instantly knew where everything was, so I went to the keys in our front hall and grabbed the one for the Volkswagon Jetta, an old car that was rusted to the ground in our garage that dad was always supposed to be doing something with, according to my mother. I popped the trunk open and there they were - the motherload. (If this was a TV show, a church choir dressed in burgundy robes would have popped out of the back seat and started to sing Hallelujah!)
And there, in the trunk, was a gift I hadn't asked for but one that was really creative and cool and useful, unlike so many other presents that parents buy teenagers.
My parents had bought me a professional-style makeup mirror, one with lights so that you could change the colour and brightness of the lights to office, or evening or daytime so that your makeup would be suited to your environment. I loved it. I was excited. I had great parents.
On Christmas morning, I opened gift after gift after gift, waiting for my makeup mirror. I got junky jewelry and bad turtlenecks and a nice hair brush set from my brother. I didn't mind these gifts because I knew the mirror was coming. But as the morning went on, there was no mirror. And then, Christmas seemed to be over. But I thought my parents were just tricking me.
"Christmas is done. Did you have a good one?" my mother asked.
I sat there looking smug, knowing they were going to pull out one last gift for my brother and me.
And then, so predictable, my dad reached behind his chair and pulled out another gift - it was the makeup mirror. I knew the shape of the box.
"Here you go," my dad said ...
... and he handed the box to my mother.

Crosbiemania wishes everyone a very merry Christmas and reminds everyone that snoopers never prosper.

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Nothing says Happy Anniversary like Chicken Paprikash

December 21st (or is it the 23rd?) was my one-year wedding anniversary.
We got hitched at Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas last year with some of our family, but not everyone could make the trip, so we decided this year to do it up and invite some of our friends and family we would have liked to have at our wedding.
Now, logically, a good place to hold a party would be our home.
Yeah, um, there's a problem with that. You see, I hate cleaning and my husband does most of it (I kid you not, and no, you may not have him.) But what always ends up happening is that the night before the party, I'm up until 3 a.m. madly scrubbing, throwing things in closets and blowing dust bunnies back under the couch so that it seems like I'm helping. And then I'd have to bake and make snacky snacks ... and then it would be more work than fun.
So, we decided to rent a room and throw a little party at a restaurant.
Where to go? We have so many favourites in Kingston, but then I had an "A ha!" moment: Amadeus Cafe on Princess Street.
It always shocks me when my husband and I talk about Amadeus (also known by some as the Schnitzel Haus) and someone will say they've never tried it.
It is one of Kingston's best kept little secrets, I think.
We asked for their back private room and I selected a menu of three entrees for our 25 guests: chicken paprikash, cabbage rolls and, for the youngins, a cheese quesadilla. (Though many people, including my mother, chose the quesadilla and it looked incredible.)
Our little back room was decorated by the restaurant in garland covered in twinkling white lights and our stockings were hung with care. (OK, jackets were hung with care. Twas the night before the night before Christmas you know, when I was writing this.)
The food was divine. Everyone loved the chicken paprikash - "I didn't think I was going to like it, but I loved it!" proclaimed one diner (my dad).
And the drinks were delicious and good on the budget for anyone who's trying to save some money in these trying times. (A frothy hot chocolate piled with whip cream is just $2.95 and a Coors Light $3.50. How about a glass of Shiraz for just $5.25? The same glass of wine would run you $8 in other local restaurants).
Our little soiree ended with everyone sharing homemade crepes stuffed with peaches and accented with whip cream. (Can you ever have too much whip? Well, maybe. See my previous post about my S&M Christmas outfit.)
Amadeus is a sweet little restaurant where my husband and I shared one of our most romantic meals when we were just lovebirds dating. And now that I have this wonderful anniversary dinner to remember, I'll get it in my brain that my wedding anniversary is the 21st and not the 23rd. (Truly, I swear I'm the girl and my husband's the guy, even though he's the one who cleans and always remembers the date).
Thinking of booking a little do? Crosbiemania gives Amadeus four stars. Call Brian there. He'll take good care of you.
And do try the chicken paprikash. It's warm, soft and red – just like love.

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Thanks Mom, Dad. I've always wanted an S&M outfit!

There's a universal truth in the Crosbie household about Christmas presents when it comes to clothing gifts.
If the piece of clothing is from my dad, usually we keep it.
If it's from my mother? It goes back.
The tradition of returning the clothes started when I was 12 years old and in Grade 6. I remember tearing into a gift box and pulling out a sweatshirt with a Scottie dog on the front. It wasn't so bad until I saw what was printed below the dog: "I love Scotties."
This was a problem.
When I was 12, I loved a boy named Scott. He was the best dancer at my school. (Bestowing such a strange honour on a 12-year-old boy always reminds me of bad girl Cha Cha Di Gregorio in Grease saying "They call me Cha Cha because I'm the best dancer at St. Bernadette's".)
It was only a few months before Christmas that I'd made my dad drive me to Scott's house so I could drop off a Secret Admirer card at his home – except, when I got to his house, someone turned on the porch light and started to open the front door.
I chucked the card on the front window of his family's station wagon and ran for my own wagon.
"Go, go, go!" I screamed at my dad once I was in the car, hiding on the floor.
I never knew whether Scott or his family saw me – which meant, of course, that I could not wear an "I Love Scotties" shirt to school.
So, back it went.
Years and Christmases went by. There were shirts, pants, jackets and blouses that all got returned on Boxing Day.
My mom always had a line though, pleading for the clothes' safety: "But Sarah! It's a Haggar!" she'd say.
"But mom, it's frilly," I'd respond.
Or, "But it's a London Fog from the petites section!"
"But mom, it's sooooo mommy!" I'd cry. "It's for an old person, a 30-year-old – not for a teenager!"
The flip side went something like this: "Oooh, cool jacket! Thanks dad. Love it. Love you!"
"How'd you know your father picked that out?" my mom would ask.
"Because I like it," I'd respond sarcastically.
But one Christmas, everything went awry.
My brother and I had ripped open all of our small stuff and now it was time to get to the big stuff – the good stuff.
I grabbed a box, tore it open and slowly looked inside. It was a … pleather vest.
Hmm. Not great. Not bad. But not great.
My brother went next and opened something – maybe a tennis racquet? It doesn't matter. All I know is that it wasn't pleather.
I grabbed another box …
Oh no... What was she thinking?
I slowly pulled out a pair of black pleather pants.
"It goes with the vest!" my mother shrieked excitedly.
"Uh huh. I can see that," I said.
A two-piece pleather outfit? Where would I wear such a thing?
Another gift for my brother, and then it was my turn.
I slowly pulled the paper off a box. This gift had to make up for the pleather ensemble.
But ... oh ... no....
It was a black pleather jacket.
My mother bought me a three-piece black pleather suit? Maybe it would look Ok on, I thought.
I ran upstairs and put all three pieces on, and then ran back downstairs to get a a look at myself in our full-length mirror in our front hall.
I looked like a burnt marshmallow. Or a suburban Catwoman who got her gear at a department store. Or a biker. Or an S&M wannabe.
This was a million times worse than the Scottie Dog sweatshirt.
"You love it, don't you?" my mother asked, as she watched me study myself in our mirror. (I was in shock. She thought I was in awe.)
"I knew you'd love it. Your father picked it out!" she said.

And here is the rest of it.

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Fishnets, knee-high boots and charity

A couple of days ago, when I was supposed to be working, I was actually out on a lunch date. The night before, my toddler son had asked me to draw pictures of him and his mommy and daddy. "What's dat?" he asked, pointing to a picture I'd drawn of myself, which, unfortunately for me, resembled an illustration of Star Trek's Spock. (I was a straight-A student in high school, who struggled to get 60s and 70s in art.)
"That's a skirt," I said.
"Skirt?" he asked.
"Yes, skirt," I replied.
"Mommy, you don't wear skirts! You wear hockey skates."
It was one of those smack-me-upside-the-head moments, where I realized that, in fact, I had worn skates more than skirts in the past month:
Skates: 3.
Skirts: 0.
So, with my fishnet stockings, mini black skirt and knee-high boots, I set off to work, ready to take my sweetie out for lunch and play hooky for a few hours.
We met up for lunch at Confederation Place Hotel, where we greeted by the delicious smell of hearty stuffing, loaded with herbs; moist, glistening turkey; and a view of Kingston's snow-sprinkled harbour that's fit for a snowglobe.
I was already seated when my husband came up behind me, put his hand on my shoulder to gently let me know he was there, and then bent down and kissed me, stealing some of my sparkly pink lipstick.
Ah, it was just the two of us …
… and more than 100 Kingstonians who also wanted to give underprivileged local teenagers a Christmas.
Operation Teen Christmas 2008 was a lunch with a silent and live auction to raise money so that teenagers can have a gift under the tree on Dec. 25. Teenagers are often overlooked when it comes to clothing and toy drives. Last year, the Salvation Army decided to do something about it and started this lunch. Tickets were $25. Money was also raised through the auctions. Diners had the opportunity to bid on 10, eight-person turkey dinners that would be delivered to needy families on Christmas Eve.
Fellow diners who attended last year said the gathering was much larger this year. And next year, like any three-year-old, it could be an event that's wonderfully out-of-control, because I tell you, it's only a matter of time before others learn about this event and it sells out.
Sure, you have to sneak out of work for a few hours, but how can anything be bad that feels sooo good?
After a delicious lunch, two cups of coffee, and a few bites of mini carrot cakes and Nanaimo bars – each table had their own platter of desserts with brownies and chocolate-covered strawberries – it was time for my date with my husband to come to an end.
Life is busy, especially this time of year, and everyone I know craves more time with their significant other. Next year, think about turning Operation Teen Christmas into your own lunch-time sneak-away.
It's better to give than to receive, but this event is a win-win situation: By buying a $25 lunch, you're raising money for the Salvation Army to give a teenager a gift so that she can still believe in Christmas magic and you get to go on a week-day date. And be a little naughty. Or nice.
Operation Teen Christmas 2009? I'd like to reserve two tickets, please.
Whoever said fishnet stockings and charity don't mix?

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Sarah Crosbie sucks, source says

Sometimes, all you can do is laugh, especially when times are trying: Economies are tanking, people are being laid off, and your shovel is calling you from the garage, taunting you that soon, it will be time to hit the driveway.

Late one night, a couple of weeks ago, a man was unloading his goalie equipment out of his car when another man approached him in the parking lot of a local hockey rink.

Now, this goalie does not usually play for this team. He was filling in for an acquaintance who was injured.

As the goalie unloaded his equipment, the other man started talking about how he knows the goalie works at The Whig-Standard and he had some thoughts to share about the paper's magazine, The Ticket.

The man told the goalie about how he'd heard that a former Ticket editor had left Kingston and gone on to a big paper in Toronto.

The man really missed the former editor, he said.

Really, really missed her. Really, really, really missed her. He told the goalie that he understood that the editor he liked so much had been filling in for the current editor (that would be me) while she was on maternity leave and The Whig was forced to give the current editor (me, again) her job back once she returned after a one-year maternity leave. (Isn't that nuts that women are allowed to have babies and return to their jobs?)

He said the fact that the paper had lost the former editor and had to welcome back the current editor was a stain on The Whig since the former editor was a genius, who was funny and smart and articulate and much better than the new editor (still me).

The goalie asked the man whether he knew the former editor, since it was odd to hear a reader heap such praise on an editor, especially one who'd left the paper. Was she his sister? His cousin? His friend?

No, no, no, the man said. He just loved her work.

The goalie happily chatted with this man and listened to him - like any good journalist would do. You never know where you're going to hear a good story.

The goalie wondered what he should tell this unhappy reader ... and decided to think about it.

(This tale reminds me of a great riddle my father told me once when I was a girl: "A boy is riding in a car with his father when they get in a car crash. The father dies. The boy is rushed to hospital. When he arrives at the ER, the surgeon refuses to do the surgery. 'I can not operate on this child. He's my son.' How can this be?" Now, back in the 1980s, in the days when no one could have foreseen a black man and a woman being two of the top choices to run the White House, it wasn't easy to come up with an answer.)

"The surgeon is a ghost who came back from the dead!" I shouted.

"No! The boy was a twin separated at birth and the surgeon is looking at the wrong twin!"

The answer, of course, is that the surgeon is the boy's mother. But, back in the 1980s, my little brain heard "surgeon" and I thought "man."

Now, in 2008, there's still an interesting gender stereotype that remains. People assume that women take their husbands' last names when they get married. But some do not. Like me.

As the goalie walked into the rink with the man, he wondered what he should say to him.

"Have a good game," the goalie said as they hit the change room.

"Wait until I tell my wife this one," he thought to himself.

(Have I ever mentioned that my husband is a goalie?)

And here is the rest of it.

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My $2 donation to charity

The saddest commercial I have ever seen is from my childhood. Children of the '80s and dog lovers will remember a spot where two male voices are coming from inside a house. One voice says, "Where's that puppy?" and another male voice says, "A puppy? He's not a puppy anymore. He stays outside now." Then, the commercial moves to a dog looking hopeful in his doghouse, but you can tell he's freezing in the wicked winter weather. And then a tear runs down his little doggy face. I felt like, at any moment, the homeowner was going to come out and rescue him - but he never did. Every single time I watched it, I thought it was going to end differently.

It made me cry every time I saw it. I don't even know what it was advertising - the humane society? Dog food? Windows? But it got me, because when I was little, I loved animals.

It was also a dog that got me to give my first charitable donation. Before there were Loonies and Toonies, we had $1 and $2 bills. When I was little, I saved up my allowance and Tooth Fairy money. I also got to roll my mom's pennies and sometimes keep a $1. One night, a telethon was on for the Toronto Humane Society. I remember seeing dogs alone in their cages, waiting for someone to love them, and dogs running down the road alone, searching for their owners who'd ditched them. (Remember The Littlest Hobo? That theme song can still make me cry, too.)

I told my mom I wanted to pledge my savings to the humane society so I could save a dog. I ran to my room and got my brown leather wallet out of my end table and pulled out 12 $1 bills. It was my life savings. I remember I called the humane society and told them they could have my $12.

Later, we got our pledge form mailed to us - and there was a horrible mistake. They'd registered me for a $2 donation, $10 short of what I really wanted to give.

I cried. Again. Two dollars seemed too little.

I don't know where that person went for many years. My teen years and my 20s were all about me. Yes, for years, as an elementary and high school student, I brought in my obligatory bags of food for the local food bank and I carried the Unicef box around my neck at Halloween, but I definitely lost that sense of devastation and charity that visions of suffering puppies once aroused in me. For a decade, I basically gave nothing and did nothing for other people. I can't take those years back, but I'm trying to make up for them now.

Every day, we are told times are not good and the world is in a recession. This week, the Kingston area lost hundreds of jobs. Charities are worried. The people who used to give are giving less and, in some cases, the givers may need to become the users.

Yesterday morning, the Kingston Frontenac Lennox and Addington United Way announced that it raised $2,848,000 for numerous local groups, including women's shelter Interval House, Canadian National Institute for the Blind, Kingston Youth Shelter and Kingston Literacy. I went to the celebration breakfast that recognizes the achievements of local giving people.

This area raised $48,000 more than the goal. It's good, but it won't be enough because it's never enough.

I scoured YouTube looking for the abandoned dog commercial. If I ever find it, I'll share it with you because I promise you, one look at the pup and you'll drain your bank account to help the world's most vulnerable creatures.

Don't even get me started on the 1980s McDonald's commercial where a group of children go skating with Ronald McDonald - but then one little boy gets left behind ...

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