This is my son.

When I made the mistakes new mothers make—too overprotective, too anxious, too caught up in milestones and schedules—he endured it with quiet resignation, as though he knew I needed to find my way.

This is my son.

Walking, talking, reading, writing…all of it came “late” for him. When his kindergarten teacher suggested summer school, we sought out alternatives for him and found a haven. A place where his quirky creativity is nurtured and he can thrive at a pace that suits his needs, rather than those of a school board bureaucrat. As a result, our once shy, awkward and lonely little boy has developed into a leader. A heart throb. A total ham.

This is my son.

For my birthday last week, he asked his teacher for the sheet music, practised while I was at work, and woke up early in order to serenade me with “Happy Birthday” on his cello at 6:30am.

This is my son.

When his friends gang up on each other—as nine-year-olds inevitably do—he refuses to jump on the bandwagon. Instead, he tells them he needs to think about things before making a decision. Then he goes to contemplate. Often in a tree.

This is my son.

Avoiding team sports at all costs, dressing as a saint for Halloween, finding greater comfort in the water than on land—all of these things make him different from many kids his age. It used to confound me. Worry me. Upset me. But now I see all that he is here to teach me and I am in awe of his gifts.

Happy Birthday, my son. Thank you for choosing me.

The rules are simple: state two true things about yourself (realsies) and one falsehood (whopper). The other person must discern the whopper from the realsies.

My eight-year-old son uses this game as an opportunity to confess his sins:

Him: “Ready, mommy?”

Me: “Yep.”

Him: “Number one: I once ate three large pizzas at once.”

Note: He has never eaten 3 large pizzas at once.

Him: “Number two: I was a rodeo cowboy.”

Note: He has never been to a rodeo.

Him: “Number three:”—deep breath—”I needed some of your goopy make-up to make experiments in the garage and spilled it all over the place.”

That little bugger.

My four-year-old daughter’s approach is more straightforward:

Her: “Number one: I was a mermaid. Second: I was a princess. Last: I was a princess who can turn into a mermaid.”

Not only has this game been useful in determining my kids’ latest obsessions (and transgressions), there’s been an added benefit of knowing what they really think of their mommy:

Me: “Number one: When I was a kid, we had 2 hamsters, 2 cats, 2 dogs, some fish and a lizard in our house. Number two: Daddy and I got married barefoot on the beach. Number three: I rode a rollercoaster naked.”

My son: “The animal one is the whopper. Definitely.”

My daughter: “Married is a whopper.”

Me: “You guys seriously think I would go on a rollercoaster naked?”

My son: “It’s a lot of animals for one house, mommy.”

My daughter: “You’re not married, are you?!?”

So. To recap: I’ll spend this Mother’s Day warmed by the thought that my kids think I’m a pervert.*

C’mon, spill it—what are your two realsies and a whopper?

*Note: They’re right of course, but not for the reasons they suspect.

Don't get me started on how unsanitary that seat would be...

The Day Before First Day
10:00 am-3:00 pm
Drag self all over town stocking up on provisions. The Serb works from home and will be taking over school runs, lunch making and dinner prep. He likens his new role to being “a vacation.” I fear he is being a tad optimistic and buy extra frozen lasagnas.

3:30 pm
When I tell The Serb I choked up while picking son up from school, he reminds me that I am not going on a tour of duty to Kabul.

3:35 pm
Hide lasagnas.

First Day Eve
5:00 pm
Daughter is feverish and refuses offer of ice cream—she is officially sick.

10:00 pm
I decide to let The Serb deal with the kid, lest she barfs on me in the night, and I retire to her twin loft bed.

First Day Morning
4:00 am
Wake up with seized hips. Realize daughter’s mattress is so uncomfortable that making her sleep on it is tantamount to child abuse.

6:00 am
Get up and work out kinks from poor sleep with some yoga. Congratulate self for exemplary planning and preparation in anticipation of my First Day.

7:00 am
Take a shower (four hours than I usually do).

7:15 am
Frantically search for make-up bag that hasn’t been in service since last New Year’s Eve.

7:20 am
Stab self in eye with contact lens. Vow to host Opti Free bonfire once newly-lasered eyeballs are in place.

7:25 am
Rummage through Tupperware drawer for water bottle and matching lid.

7:27 am
Pour bowl of cereal.

7:28 am
Glance at clock, realize bus comes in 10 minutes and bus stop is an 8-minute walk. Dump cereal in the sink and curse the day The Serb and I decided to ditch our second car.*

7:29 am
Panic that I forgot to make lunch. Throw mango, bag of almonds and brick of cheese in purse and sprint out the door.

7:31-7:36 am
Sweat off every speck of painstakingly-applied make-up.

7:40-8:10 am
Bang out a blog in new mobile writing office. Decide I love public transit.

8:15 am
Step through the front door.

8:16 am
And so it begins.

*RIP Stinky

Let the river run, baby…

I'm too sexy for my roots.

Hot, right?

Helen Mirren is a smoking hot Dame, but she’s also 25 years older than me and my husband. If she sashayed down the street on the Serb’s arm, I’m sure a chorus of “You Go Girl!” would follow.

My sidewalk-grey hair would look wiry and ashen and gross, and strolling with the Serb in all my grey glory would surely elicit comments more along the lines of “Check out the grown man taking his mother to a movie…” because I would look like this:

Switch out the pipe for a Slurpee straw and it's like looking in a mirror.

After he brought it up again last weekend, I was determined to show the Serb how ludicrous grey hair would look on me. I found a website that allowed me to upload my picture and superimpose hair of varying cuts and colours on my head. My particular shade of crematorium-residue grey was not available, so I chose a brassy silver hue. The results were…off-putting:

Would you like a hot tea with your lap dance, gramps?

I looked a bit too much like a stripper and there was a good chance the Serb would demand I go grey immediately. Instead I assured him that this was a more accurate representation of me with grey hair:

There was an old lady who lived in the 'burbs...

The Serb remains unconvinced.

She was not impressed with my answer (“I’m very disappointed in your words!”) but took it down a notch after I reminded her—as I’ve done since December 26^th—that the Easter Bunny was always watching to ensure she behaved herself.

Then we found him in our garden with his throat slit.

We regularly get bunnies in our backyard—I suspect that our garden is like their Club Med, since the greatest danger they’ll encounter is getting clunked on the head by a carrot thrown by my kid—and she was convinced the rabbits were doing reconnaissance in our yard for the Easter Bunny, casing the joint for candy-hiding opportunities.

My daughter was on our swing as I picked weeds on Saturday afternoon. I reached down and almost peed myself (no joke) when I saw a dead bunny poking out from under a shrub. The kid was hustled inside and the Serb dispatched outside to deal with the carnage.

I was unsettled. Had the dead bunny been an Easter omen? An homage to Fatal Attraction? Either way, I was slightly freaked out. The Serb didn’t help matters by setting up this little vignette when we hid candy later that night:

The Easter Bunny says "hi"

Rather than going to church on Easter Sunday (we all know how that would turn out), my family spent the day in jammies, trying desperately to stave off diabetic comas. My son was looking through some photos and found one from my acting days; specifically, Rocky Horror.

The Serb and I didn’t see the harm in letting him watch some YouTube clips from the movie, which led to a Time Warp tutorial, followed by an hour-long discussion covering such topics as pelvic thrusting and cross-dressing, and culminating in an old-fashioned-family-sing-along of Sweet Transvestite. All of this on one of the holiest days of the year.

The moral of the story? Without the church part, Easter is a weird holiday.

What I love about this woo woo place is that the woman who runs it is a typical mom and she looks it (everyone else is surprisingly normal-looking, too). I get my supernatural fix without feeling like I’m going to end up cavorting naked under a full moon (note: never say never).

As a lover of Tarot and all things woo woo, I adore these events and usually I can talk someone into accompanying me. Last week I was on my own and the topic was a doozy: connecting to loved ones who have crossed over in order to receive guidance and messages.

Over 40 people gathered at a local yoga studio and formed a circle around the perimeter of the room. We were led through a guided meditation meant to prepare us for the session. She gave us some basic instructions about what to expect—physical sensations, seemingly random thoughts/images coming to mind. More importantly, she also explained what likely would not occur—i.e. Great Aunt Sally who died in ’56 plopping down to have a chat.

Nothing of interest happened for me during the meditation except a tingling on my arms, near my biceps. Before I could explore this feeling further some dude started snoring, which completely disrupted my mystical mojo.

When the meditation was over we split into pairs to try and “read” each other. My partner was a lovely woman in her 30s who had done energy work in the past. She immediately picked up a male energy on my dad’s side and my biceps started tingling again.

“Your father’s father,” she stated. “He’s comforting you, proud of you. And he’s always around you, looking out for you. That’s what I’m sensing.” I had been the apple of my grandpa’s eye before he passed 20 years ago, and he’s the only person I’ve been very close to who’s died, so I thought it was interesting that he was the one who showed up.

Now it was my turn. I closed my eyes and waited, hoping something would come to me but definitely not holding my breath. I’m pretty intuitive, but this Whoopi Goldberg a la “Ghost” thing seemed a bit out of my league.

“An image of a really old lady just popped into my head,” I said. “She looks like one of those shrivelled up apple head ladies…but in Old World clothes…Eastern European or Italian.” My partner wasn’t saying anything, so I kept going. “She’s laughing, but all shrivelled up in her mouth…she seems really full of joy and is almost like a little imp.”

I opened my eyes and saw my partner had tears threatening to spill over. “My grandma died when I was only eleven and she was from Italy…she totally dressed in the Old Country clothes,” she began. “She used to take her dentures out to make me laugh.”

Grandma

I decided to keep going. Closing my eyes again, the image of Gargamel from the Smurfs came to me. Keeping in mind the instructions to not hold back on sharing information, no matter how stupid it seemed, I let my partner know.

“He’s leaning on a long wooden slab, almost like an old-timey bar…kind of looking down over everyone, surveying the situation,” I told her. “He’s not mean, but he’s very serious and kind of stoic, just checking everyone out.”

Again with the watery eyes from my partner. “That’s my Uncle Phil,” she explained. “He was a judge, and he was the closest person to my grandma.”

Uncle Phil

Our session was interrupted with the news that time was almost up. Everyone was asked to stand in two circles, facing each other. The outer circle would be giving messages for 30 seconds and then taking a step to the right, until everyone had been read. It was speed dating for dead people.

Apparently my supernatural savoir-faire cannot be rushed, because there was only one clear image that came to me. I told this guy that I saw a dog weaving through his legs and that he wasn’t small as much as he was low to the ground, like a Dachshund. The guy’s eyes widened and he told me his beloved Bulldog had passed away last year. He was always tripping over her because she would constantly be underfoot.

Not bad for a clairvoyant virgin.

*I mistyped this as “wiener dongs” which is equally awesome, but also kinda superfluous.

During a trip to Mexico last week, this clairvoyant connection may have saved my daughter’s life.

My husband is a stickler for showing up an hour earlier than necessary when we fly. This may or may not be a result of me once causing us to miss a flight after assuring him I could get us to the airport in 20 minutes or less (note: we live 40 minutes from the airport).

My internal alarm clock went off at 3:00 a.m. the day we left and I spent two hours in my basement reading Autocorrect Fail and waiting for my family to wake up. We arrived at the airport well in advance of our 8:00 a.m. flight only to learn that fog had left one runway operational at Canada’s busiest airport. As a result, our flight was delayed and we would miss our connecting flight.*

At this point, my body was ready for lunch.

Seven hours later, we arrived at our Mexican hacienda with one suitcase missing. Luckily, I’d divided our clothes amongst the suitcases, ensuring that all four of us would have an assortment of clothing should our luggage be delayed. Unfortunately, my share of the “assortment” consisted of a skirt and half a bathing suit.

By the time I fell asleep in Mexico that first night, I’d been awake for 22 hours straight (which is fine for a teenager on Spring Break in Cabo, but sucks balls if you’re a 41-year-old mother with no clean undies).

The following morning I stayed behind waiting for the suitcase delivery with my daughter while my family and our friends traipsed to the swim-up bar at a hotel down the road. My four-year-old offered to keep me company, but her true intentions—playing Barbies with me as she deplored Ken’s overly gelled hair—soon became clear.

The last thing I remember is Malibu Barbie and Metrosexual Ken using my stomach as a bouncy castle. The next thing I knew, the Serb was shaking me awake, talking so fast I thought he’d lapsed into his native tongue.

While at the pool, he’d been gripped by an urgent need to check on us at the house. Telling our friends to watch our son, the Serb had sprinted barefoot up a gravel-strewn road—where he found me passed out on the bed with a Barbie in each hand and our 4-year-old daughter chatting with the maintenance workers along the street in front of our house.

The trip had nowhere to go but up.

*I know—First World Problems…which could be the title for this blog if it wasn’t already taken…

I don't know what I'm holding, but I'm sure it was delicious.

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
1980*
I was a ten-year-old in Tijuana with my mom, dad and younger sister when Reagan was shot. The locals assumed we were American and swarmed around us to deliver the news, but my lasting memory from the trip is one of starvation. During our six-hour visit, my parents would only allow us to split one can of Pepsi, lest we contract Montezuma’s revenge. Now that I’m a parent, I totally get it: toddler diarrhea in Tijuana is not cool.

I couldn't possibly. I'm still full from my Dr. Pepper breakfast.

Leather and Lace
1987
This was another day trip with my family. Either we were allowed to eat actual food or we brought our own snacks, because hunger didn’t factor into the trip. Our sole objective was to shop and I spent the entire visit searching for the perfect leather belt for my then-boyfriend. While my parents procured beautiful tablecloths and my sister scored gorgeous jewellery, I had a belt that smelled. My suitcase reeked for the rest of our trip to California with what I suspect was a hide of funky origin.

It wasn't just the new belt that made Mr. Boyfriend the luckiest dude alive in '87. #bigasshair

How Lori Got Her Groove Back
1998
I’d just broken up with a guy (not smelly belt) and decided on a whim to visit Club Med in Cancun to mend my broken heart. This trip really deserves its own post because it had a little bit of everything: sneaking through someone’s backyard in the bowels of Cancun in an effort to evade armed guards; giving a former Cosmo Magazine Bachelor of the Month a haircut in my room; and dancing in an avalanche of foam.

Needless to say, the groove returned with a vengeance.

My Big Fat Serbian Anniversary
2001
For my first wedding anniversary with the Serb, I decided to surprise him with a diving trip to Cancun. Unbeknownst to him, I arranged time off from his work and the night before we left (which was also New Year’s Eve) I handed him a plane ticket for nine o’clock the following morning. I was so busy planning my clever caper (first year gifts are traditionally paper…like a plane ticket…get it?) that I didn’t stop to think if the Serb would enjoy such a shock. It turns out he is not a fan of vacations being foisted upon him last minute. For him, planning the trip is half the fun. Although we did enjoy ourselves, I learned a valuable lesson that has served me well lo these many years: surprising my husband is never a good idea. Tricking him into doing what I want is the way to go.

This was as bizarre as it looks. Spidey was part of the entertainment, and could be found traipsing around the grounds while his theme song played over the speakers. This picture is particularly notable because there's a poop stain on Spidey's ass.

Eat, Pray, Drink, Love Eat
2010
This was one of the best vacations our family has ever taken, mainly because we avoided a resort full of pool games and nightly discos in favour of a fully equipped condo with our own washer and dryer. Unless the Serb and I become swingers late in life, I suspect we will continue to go down this road of convenience over non-stop excitement. And as long as there’s a frothy drink within arm’s reach, that’s fine with me.

Ole, bitches!

*I originally typed this as “1908” and didn’t even flinch. #iamafossil

The night began with my eight-year-old son walking in on me getting dressed. He took one horrified look and ran from the room screaming, “THE HORROR!” (With his JFK-style inflection, it sounded more like “THE WHORE!” Either way, it was not my finest moment.)

I was due at the venue an hour before guests arrived, so the Serb stayed behind to get our kids settled when the babysitter, A, showed up. We hadn’t seen A. in over six months—a testament to our laziness when it comes to date night—and I’d found her phone number scribbled on the back of my 2010 tax return. After reminding A who we were, she had agreed to babysit.

People showed up that night in amazing costumes (feather false eyelashes!), the dance floor was packed and my Tarot card readings were a huge success. Being a devotee of all things woo woo, it should come as no surprise that I read Tarot. I learned about the cards from a white witch (as one does) over 20 years ago and have been reading friends, families and strangers ever since. The teachers and parents at the school had no clue about my Wiccan ways, but they were keen—I had a line-up all night.

I drove home afterwards feeling very impressed with myself; I had just pulled off a substantial shindig that people were sure to talk about for years to come. I was the kick-ass mom who could manage it all: event planning; taking care of the family; freelance writing…was there anything I couldn’t do?

Walking into the house, A came up from the basement to greet us. My mouth dropped open in surprise. This was not the girl I thought I’d called to babysit. I wasn’t sure who this was standing before me. The Serb seemed to know her and she appeared to recognize me, so I committed to the “fake it ‘til you make it” credo and acted like I knew her.

We got in the car and I asked her to remind me the fastest way to her house. Her response is what clued me in: the A I thought I’d called was the daughter of my friend’s co-worker, who charged seven dollars an hour. The girl in my car was also named A, but we hadn’t spoken in almost two years. Plus, she charged ten dollars an hour.

Snippets of our earlier phone conversation came back to haunt me:
Me (assuming I’m talking to a 14-year-old who’s on a ski team): How have the slopes been?
A (responding as the 16-year-old non-skier that she is): Ummm…
Me (see above): Say hi to your mom for me.
A (ditto): Okaaaaay.

After processing what had transpired, I took the whole incident as a sign: I should strongly consider a career in event planning/Tarot card reading; and I should leave the Serb at home with the kids.

I am a bohemian gypsy fortune teller. The Serb is a Hugo Boss model in a borrowed mask.

I texted this pic of my sassy, sparkly nails to a friend and she replied, "Are those fingers?" #jimmydeansausagefingers

Since my son’s BFF was the bearer of this news, it was accepted as fact. BFF can do no wrong in my son’s eyes—they’ve been inseparable since the first grade, refer to each other as “brother” and have alternating 8-hour play dates every weekend. BFF’s mom, A, has become a close friend of mine and even the husbands get along, so it’s an ideal situation for all concerned.

I emailed A regarding her son’s precociousness vis-à-vis the sexual arts, and then forwarded the email to my mom, sister and 89-year-old Grandma. The next day my Grandma called enquiring about A’s parents, whom I’ve met on numerous occasions—were they living in Brampton? (Not sure.) Were their names Joan and Mike? (I’ve only called them Mr. and Mrs. W.) Had they ever lived in Winnipeg? (Say huh?) Were they by chance vacationing in Hilton Head at this very moment? (Put the bottle away, granny.)

Now, as a Canadian, there are few things more clichéd than someone who assumes that, because I live in Toronto, I also know Sue from Winnipeg. Apparently it’s a cliché for a reason.

It turns out A’s parents lived in Winnipeg when my family did. And my Grandpa worked with A’s father for years. And A’s parents were guests at my parent’s wedding. And after my parents moved to Calgary and A’s family left for Vancouver, my Grandma and A’s parents kept in touch. And yes, A’s parents were in Hilton Head last week, a fact shared with my Grandma in their annual Christmas letter to her. And now, 40 years later, their spawn were best friends in the same grade at a school in central Ontario with less than 200 students.

We were all shocked, to say the least.

My Grandma said, “It warms my heart to know that their grandson is in the life of my great-grandson, because they are two of the most wonderful people I have ever known.”

My son asked, “Does this mean BFF and I are officially related?!?”

The Serb asked, “Did you set our kid straight on the spit thing?”

Just like this, but with boys. And less singing.