Okay. My first reaction on seeing this was:

WTF?

Whaddya think? Would you use it? It’s a Bemis Purité. And it’s not a bidet. It’s a Personal Cleansing Spa. (Kinda makes me never want to go to a spa again, actually).

Oh, and what’s the difference between “female cleansing” and “family cleansing”? Females aren’t part of the family? Huh? How come nobody told me?

Sorry, you’ll have to click to see the promotional video, but I promise it’s worth it. Really.

AAAAAHHHH!!!

I’m mad at the world today. Know why? I went shopping for long underwear for my daughters today. We’re avid skiers, and they start a weekly ski club in the new year. We’ll be going to Sunshine Village in Banff every Sunday for ten weeks, for the girls to ski all day in a club, and for Mom and Dad to ski all day all alone. Sounds fun, eh?

For sure. Super fun. But in case you’ve never spent a January day in the mountains in Banff, let me tell you, it can get cold. DAMN COLD. Imagine -20 C, on a chairlift, in the wind. Brrr…

So, yeah, long johns. For a 7-year old girl and a 4.5 year-old girl. Pretty straightforward, wouldn’t you think?

Not!

So, I go to the ski shop at Canada Olympic Park. It’s recently been renovated and they have tons of stuff…and what I thought was a really good selection of kid’s stuff. And actually, it is a really good selection of kids’ jackets, snowpants, gloves, mitts, helmets, hats, goggles…you name it. If you need ski gear for kids, they’ve got it. Except long johns.

Well, that’s not precisely true. They had one kind of children’s long johns. And they cost $39.99. A piece. That works out to $160 (before tax) worth of long underwear…that I was intending as stocking stuffers. Ahhh…no.

So I looked at Sport Mart. The 12-year old sales rep tried to tell me that Junior size is the same as children’s. I had to take out the Junior small long johns and hold them up and ask him “do you think these will fit a four-year old?” Actually, I don’t think he could tell, to tell the truth. Or, perhaps more accurately, I don’t think he cared. So then off to Sports Traders, and then Sport Chek. At Sport Chek, the sales girl showed me an XL shirt of the same $40 stuff from COP. When I asked “don’t you have anything else?” She replied, “not for girls. There’s just no demand.”

To which I felt compelled to reply, “they get cold just like everyone else.”

But then as I fumed in the car on the way home it occurred to me that what she possibly meant by “no demand” is that girls don’t go out and do things in the cold. But mine do.

So, tomorrow morning I’ll be at Mountain Equipment Co-Op (my inner voice told me I should have just gone there in the first place) to buy high-quality, made in Canada (fabric made in the US by Malden Mills, quite possibly the coolest company EVER!) long underwear IN GIRLS’ SIZES for $17.99 a piece.

I should have listened to my inner voice. MEC knows that girls are athletes, too.

Well, yesterday was the Canada Post deadline for express post packages within Canada, so I frantically put together boxes full of my signature peppermint bark, whipped shortbread cookies, home-roasted coffee beans and scrapbook layouts, nicely framed and ready to hang on the wall. A little nicer than class photos, I think.

Here they are…

This one above is for Poppa…it’s pics of the girls at his farm this spring/summer. They had so much fun…I thought this paper (Close To My Heart’s Caprice) was so perfect for both the colours of the photos but also the feel; very summer, very country, very floral.

This one (above) is for Gramma & Bobo (hey, you! no peeking G&B!) There’s 2 of ‘em, so they get a 2-page layout, LOL. Well, partly that and partly there were only 3 frames left at Michaels. And, most importantly, they’re MY PARENTS so when I make the gifts, they get preferential treatment!

I’ll admit it…Christmas has been getting on my conscience lately. See, back in the day when I considered myself agnostic — before I realized that I was actually not agnostic but an atheist — I felt okay celebrating Christian holidays, including Christmas. I guess I thought (if I thought about it at all) that I was carrying on family traditions, that said holidays had become secularized anyway, and I guess that if there was a remote possibility of there being a god, then celebrating a religious holiday in a similarly remote way was no big deal.

But now things are different. Now I have kids. And kids ask questions. And even if they don’t ask questions, they hear things and repeat things and absorb things. And their Dad and I like to be aware of what they’re hearing and absorbing. We like to talk about it with them. To help them process it, so they can make their own decisions.

And yesterday, our youngest told us, repeatedly, that “Christmas is Jesus’ birthday”. Which is true. I wouldn’t deny it. And I don’t ever have a hard time explaining to my children that Jesus was a person who probably lived, and had some really good things to say about how to live a good life; as did a bunch of other wise people who you should also learn about. And some people believe Jesus was the son of a god, and also the same as a god, but Dad and I don’t believe that. But we want you to ask questions and learn as much as you can so you can make your own decisions about what you believe.

It’s cool. I can do that. I feel good about it. But what I feel all niggly about is actually celebrating Christmas.

It’s because I have this thing about integrity. See, I prefer to have it and more importantly, to model it for my children. Now I’m not so high-horsey that I don’t realize I slip on this one all the time. I sometimes throw plastics in the garbage if I can’t be bothered to rinse them out and carry them down to the recycling box. I use Kleenex instead of handkerchiefs, I drive my car instead of walking when it’s really cold outside.

I know it: I AM FAR FROM PERFECT.

But still. I try. Which, I suspect, is a lot more than many. And that makes me feel a little uncomfortable at this time of year. Verging on hypocritical, actually. Because I don’t believe in God. I don’t believe Jesus (if he existed at all) was divine. I can’t in all honestly call myself Christian. So why celebrate Christmas?

I think about it a lot, and the best I can come up with is this: Christmas has already become very secularized. If it hadn’t, fundamentalist Christians wouldn’t feel the need for slogans like “Jesus is the reason for the season” or “put the Christ back in Christmas”. So, lil’ ol’ me celebrating it in a secular ho, ho, ho Santa-and-family-and-giving-presents kind of way isn’t doing anything that wasn’t already done.

In addition, it is at its core a midwinter festival; a celebration of the winter solstice. Rejoicing that the days have stopped getting shorter, things are turning around, the winter will end and spring will come. The cycle of life turns on and the time of renewal is at hand. Christians over the millennia have simply layered their own nativity myth as a veneer on top of an ages-old pagan festival.

So, from here and for now, it’s family and cultural tradition, secular Santa Claus and a solstice party.

How do you holiday?

Yup. It’s all about mind over matter.

This whole Sacred Heart Diet thing, it’s all about mental discipline. Physically, you can get by with a lot less food (both quantity and variety) than you think. But mentally. That’s a different story.

Have you ever noticed how much food advertising there is on TV in the evenings? I almost went over the edge when I saw an ad for this:

Does that seem as strange to you as it does to me? I’m dreaming about apples, rice and sauces. Not chips, or chocolate or cookies. Rice. Yow.

Anyway…here I am, ignoring said craving, waiting for Saturday when, in fact, all I can eat is brown rice and vegetables. I’ll let you know how great I’m feeling about rice around 5pm on Saturday!