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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Wanted: A jock strap to fit a two-year-old!

I swear we were looking for a rake.
We have a large red maple in our backyard that coats our lawn and another maple on our front lawn that blankets that grass, too.
My son was asking for a rake and so, I thought, it could only be a good thing to teach him some manual labour at the tender age of two.
When I was a kid (and a teen), I hated doing yard work with my parents. I always had this silly thought that the cool kids were going to be driving by my house at the same time I was raking and they'd think I was a loser. But here's the thing: from the yard, with a rake in your hand, it may seem like the cool kids are driving by in slooooomo mocking you, but when you're in a car, driving by someone's house, you don't have time to assess everything going on in the street, have time to mock the raker, and then look cool driving away. Plus, there's no shame in helping your parents.
Except, we couldn't find a toy rake anywhere, so we headed to the used kids' stores, where we've found some incredible deals.
The second we walked in the door of one of the stores, my son saw "them." They were on the floor, a little dusty, basically hidden under a rack of kids' winter coats and snow pants.
"Skates!" my son screamed.
For the past month, my son has been asking for skates. But he's two. Whose two-year-old has ice skates?
Ah, mine does.
If he wasn't my son, I'd think he had wacko parents who were forcing him to pick up a stick and wear skates in the hopes of being the next Sidney Crosbie, er, Crosby.
My son is an interesting study in nature versus nurture. I can't skate. His father, however, is a goalie and his 15-year-old brother plays rep hockey.
As soon as our toddler son turned one, he became obsessed with all things hockey and never left the house without a hockey stick. This isn't something we forced on him; it was something he wanted to do. In fact, I promptly put him in music lessons to counteract his obsession with the (outrageously expensive) game. But he persevered.
In the summer and fall, we played hockey in the driveway. In the winter, we were forced into the garage. Sure, he's had a wandering eye (he is male, after all). He had a thing for diggers and, for awhile, he couldn't get enough of screwdrivers, but lately, it has been all hockey all the time.
I don't know how he spotted these skates, but there they were: size eight skates and just $10.
We bought them and brought them home. He walked across our lawn in his skates to show the neighbours, ate his dinner sitting on the couch wearing them and went to bed with his skates on his night table so he could see them as he fell asleep.
When his father got home later that night, and went into our son's room to give him a good-night kiss, he woke up, pointed at his skates, and in his sleep whispered: "I bought skates!"
The next morning, my son woke up, got his skates and carried them to the breakfast table.
"Mommy. I need a homot." A what? "A homot."
So, there we were, first thing on a Sunday morning at Canadian Tire, with all the other hockey parents.
We grabbed a helmet, made for two-to-five-year-olds, (seriously, what two-year-old needs to skate?) and headed home. But when we got home, my son had one final request: "I need goves," he announced.
We told him no-no, there would be no gloves. A few minutes later, he appeared with an old pair of volleyball knee pads on his hands. "Goves!" he shouted with glee. I don't even want to know what he's going to do with his Winnie The Pooh sippy cup.
And here is the rest of it.

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Stuffing The Bra

Kids under the age of 18, listen up.

I've found the boy for you.

He's cute, he's sweet and he didn't blink when I hijacked a change room at SportChek from the BF the other day and ran in with a massive bag full of discounted Halloween Smarties and breast pads.

We'd gone shopping to get a jump on Christmas shopping.

Halfway to the mall, I started to think, "Darn, I feel thinner. My breasts feel smaller. Yup, all that working out is working out for me."

Then, I realized that for the first time since Aug. 30, I was without my pads.

I'd forgotten to tuck the oh-so sexy breastpads into my bra.

"Do you think I could take my socks off and stuff them in there?" I asked the BF.

His look said, "NO. NO. NO."

(It's not as if I haven't done it before around the house when I've been too lazy to go all the way back up the six steps to our bathroom but this was out in public. It seemed too risque. Still, don't tell anyone.)

I was in a panic about the pads until we got inside the shopping centre and I saw the setup for the Santa photographs. Soon, I was thinking only about putting my Little Man on Santa's lap and having all the elves coo about how my son is a cutie patootie.

Soon, we were in shopping heaven until I felt that familiar sensation. It's a dull throbbing that signals the flood gates are about to open in a few minutes.

I left the BF in the sock aisle (sorry, kiddies but everyone gets a pair of socks for Christmas) while I ran to get new breastpads.

Then, I got arrogant. I checked my shirt. Nope, no saucer-size stains.

"More shopping!" I declared.

It was off to SportChek. It was buy one item, get one for 50 per cent off.

Just as the BF picked up a few things to try on, I felt it.

Niagara Crosbie Falls.

My shirt - just on the left side - was soaked.

"Ask the guy if you can try something on!" I said to the BF.

"Now!"

The nice sales guy opened the door for the BF and I rushed in with my bag of orange and black Smarties and one massive purple box of breastpads.

I don't know what he thought I was doing in there. I didn't have anything to try on so I can only assume he thought:

A) I was going in there to stuff my face full of chocolate;
B) I was trying to shoplift something;
C) I was looking for a private place to, well, toot. (Hey buddy, you smelt it, you dealt it);
D) I was a new mommy who, for the very first time, soaked through her shirt in public.

I thought when I came out, and the BF went in the changeroom to actually try on some clothes, the sales guy would tell us to come find him if we needed any help. Instead, the guy took an interest in my baby. (What teenage guy is interested in some chick's child?)

"Cute kid."
"Thanks," I said, crossing my arms so the spillage wasn't visible, making me look very hostile for a woman out Christmas shopping and holding a very cute boy.
"Boy or girl?"
"Boy," I said.

"Maybe he'll be a hockey player?"
"Nope," I said, "his dad and older brother play hockey. Too many practices and games. And it's expensive."

"It won't be expensive if he uses his brother's equipment," he replied.

OK, normally I'm all for the chitty chat but the guy had to see my boob stain and you don't really want to talk when you're dripping milk down your shirt. So I decided to shut him up.

"Actually, I'm really hoping my son will grow up to be a flautist."

"Ha ha! I win," I thought.

The sales guy looked at me and smiled. I thought it was time for him to walk away.

"That'd be great," he said, "I love music. I'm a big jazz fan."

I smiled to myself. Yes, this was perhaps one of the most awkward moments I've ever had, but I also realized that I'd either found the most suave teenage sales guy in all of Kingston or a potentially hot boyfriend for a sweet kid.

He asked me about my baby. Engaged me in a conversation about children's hockey. Likes jazz music?

How to find him? He's the kid with the eyebrow ring.

(And kid? Thanks for not making me feel all weird and stuff. I'll buy my next pair of running shoes from you.)

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