When I was twelve, the city I lived in elected its first female mayor. As a young girl full of geeky teenaged hopes and aspirations I stood by and watched in wonder as the gender barrier was broken and was only slightly miffed that time had not stood still and waited for me to grow up and claim that title for myself.

That lady’s political and social accomplishments inspired my young self to become politically active, landing my accomplishments in the local newspapers for an impromptu political rally I organized but also finding my arse in the principal’s office after the rally went rogue and property was damaged. I ended up on a three-day school suspension for my part in the rally gone wrong.

It’s hard being a fourteen-year-old politician, yo. 

My political career ended shortly there after but my passion for politics has burned brightly ever since. 

I make no secret of the fact I want my children to be as ardent in their political viewpoints as I am, what ever they may be. I will love them just the same even if they do grow up to be like minded with their father and morph into kitten killing Christian conservatives. 

After all, it takes all kinds to make the world go round. At least our family dinners will always be entertaining as we argue over political doctrines as we pass the mashed potatoes.

Yesterday I took the opportunity to share my passion for world politics with my kids and I yanked their little hineys out of school to make them endure the American presidential inauguration ceremony with me. 

While my children may not have been as enthralled with the magic of the moment as I myself was and I may or may not have had to threaten to sit on them and duct tape their mouths shut while President Obama spoke, I hope that my enthusiasm for the moment will be remembered by them when they grow older and begin to understand the historical significance of what they witnessed while their momma hushed them, turned the volume higher and threatened to hang them by their toenails if they didn’t pay attention.

After the big event was over and my children were getting ready to return to the prison they call school, I stumbled around trying to explain to them the magnitude of the events just witnessed. I fumbled around while trying to touch on all of the important issues highlighted with yesterday’s inauguration while trying to explain how all of this is relevant in their tiny little rural lives.

But it wasn’t until I dropped my children off at the doors of the school and sat in my car watching the wee children tumble about in a nearby park that I understood why it was so important to me to have my children witness the day’s events by my side.

As I watched the little children bundled up like abominable snowmen laugh and chase one another around with the frenzied energy of the young I caught myself imagining what young Obama himself must have been like as a small child. 

Once, not that long ago, he himself must have chased little children around in a game of tag or tried climbing the monkey bars to hang upside down or hurled himself up to the sky while pumping a swing for all it’s worth.

Once, not that long ago, he was not much different than any other child covered in dirt and sporting a grin full of awkward size gangly adult teeth as he laughed and played.

His parents had huge dreams and hopes for their children, like most parents do, but did they know they were raising the future hope of America? Did his grandmother know her grandson was destined not only for greatness but to be voted the future leader of United States?

I watched the myriad of children running and laughing like a pack of lunatics who had just escaped from the asylum and I marveled at how each and every child out on that playground has the opportunity to morph into greatness. Some children’s opportunities will be greater and more frequent than others but for right now, nothing is impossible for them if they believe and if they have someone behind them who believes in them and for them. 

Somewhere out there, a school teacher is teaching the world’s next great hope and may not even know it.

Somewhere out there, a parent is raising a man or a woman who will change the world with their passion and their intelligence and the choices they make.

As I put my car in gear and slowly drove away from the playground before some eagle eyed mother wondered who the pervert in the idling car was and called the cops on me, I wondered about my own children and who they could become, who they will become.

Watching President Obama being sworn to the highest office a man can serve for his country with his wife and children by his side reminded me of something that had started to fade around the edges. Something I once knew instinctively but had let time and circumstances erode.

Anything is possible. The future is fluid, determined only by the choices a person makes. Circumstances and hardships can be overcome with a combination of hard work and inspiration.

I want, need to be that inspiration for my children. I want the choices I make as a parent, as a person, as Tanis, to inspire my children to reach for their own destiny of greatness, whatever that may be.

I want my children to know I have never shied away from making hard choices in my pursuit to do what I feel is right for myself, for my family and for the world around us.

I want my children to know that I believe in them. I believe they will succeed in the choices they make. I want, need my children to believe in themselves. To see a future in the world where barriers like socioeconomic backgrounds, race and sexual preferences won’t hinder the pursuit of their goals. I want my children to know that if they choose to, they can shine.

And I will always be there to polish them and propel them forwards when they need a little boost.

President Barack Obama reminded me of this yesterday as he idealized his own dreams, stepped forward in his own future and rose above the challenges of his past. 

Yesterday, America reminded me, a Canadian woman, to hope and gave me grace to persevere in pursuit of my own goals and to strengthen the foundation for my children’s future paths.

As I slowly drove down the snow covered, unplowed streets of a faraway, insignificant rural Albertan town, I thought of all the children out there and the power of their futures just waiting for them to reach for it.

There are children all over this world destined for greatness. 

Yours and mine.

Thank you America for reminding me of this.

We have a cat. A cat my son named Wolf after my husband examined the kitten and pronounced him male. We deferred to my husband’s wisdom about such things for a variety of reasons. One, he was raised on a farm and schooled in the ways of animal husbandry. He’s located and snipped off more testicles in his time than I have probably even seen.

Two, my husband himself has a set of man grapes which I happen to know he has fondled a time or two and that fact alone should automatically grant him the authority to identify similiar looking objects, even if they are covered in fur.

Needless to say, if Boo said the cat was a boy, the cat was a boy. Except lately, this boy cat has been acting suspiciously feminine. More precisely, this boy cat has been yowling like a b*tch in heat who needs to get laid.

I may happen to be an authority on being in heat and this is something I can easily identify as my lovely Boo often works away from home for long stretches of a time leaving me and my needs entirely up to my own devices.

Unless Wolf was acting like a transgendered feline just to mess with our minds, the constant rubbing up against anything that was stationary and the plaintive cries for relief meant that our boy cat was in actuality a girl cat. With needs.

So I casually mentioned this to my husband who then proceeded to scoff at me like I’m some dumbass city slicker and said, “Nooo, Wolf is a boy, Tanis. I checked.”

Raising my eyebrow, I looked at the miserable cat and then looked at Boo and told him, “Dude, I know a horny pus*y when I see one. Show me these magical testicles you swear he has.”

Boo, not liking the idea of his wife so openly challenging basic Farm Skills 101…Identifying Testicles on All Fourlegged Animals…huffed over, snatched Wolf and spread his hind legs to show me his man grapes.

“Hang on a second, there is a lot of fur here,” he said as he searched for the invisible nuts.

“There may be a lot of fur, but there is also a kitty vagina,” I laughed.

“No. That’s the…” Boo flipped the cat over and then stopped in midsentence. “Shit. I swear I felt two little balls when I brought him home.”

With a big I-Told-You-So grin, I giggled, “Some manly farmer you are. Confusing fur balls with man grapes.”

Since the discovery of Wolf’s…er, Wolfee’s uterus, the mystery for her obnoxious screaming during every minute of the day has been identified. We have a cat in heat. A cat who wants a kitty daddy.

I, however, have no desire to be the mother hen to a den full of new born baby kittens. I can barely remember to feed my own children, let alone having to worry about the health and welfare of such wee furballs. Not to mention, new kittens mean cuteness which means I’d inevitably be sucked in to keeping even more cats in the house which would mean more shredded furniture and more scattered kitty treats found in the nooks and crannies of my house as the dog likes to scavenge from the litter box. 

NOT FREAKING LIKELY.

So I called the vet to get our newly discovered female cat fixed. Except he is on vacation and unless it’s an emergency I’ll have to wait until he gets back. Next MONTH.

My ears started bleeding just at the thought of listening to this cat screech at the top of her lungs as she demands somebody give her the. sex. right. freaking. now.

Still, I held tough. I could outlast this round of horniness, keep the cat from getting impregnated by a random tom in the sticks and avoid future kitten catastrophe. Or so I thought. It’s hard to stick to one’s guns when a yowling cat screams at the top of her lungs right next to your ear and whines that no one is listening to her plaintiff demands for the sexy times. 

The cat whined cried to me so I whined cried to Boo. Boo of course, was not sympathetic. That’s because the bugger took off for the North Pole. Far away from a hormonal puddy tat’s howling needs.

“How can I make her shut up?” I whined the other night when Wolfee was acting particularly obnoxious, screeching extra loudly and trying to rub her back end on the kid’s feet.

“Toss her outside.”

“No. I don’t want kitty babies.”

“Then live with it and talk dirty to me.”

Since neither option was particulary appealing to me at the moment I decided to google homeopathic rememdies to harmlessly shut the damn cat up.

Don’t do this people. My eyes are still burning.

Freaking internet perverts.

Still, the howling was incessant and I was seriously thinking about duct taping one of my sex toys to the cat’s ass and letting her go to town. This idea may have had merit but lost any appeal with the thought defiling my own private stash and wasting a good roll of duct tape.

That’s when someone on Twitter (God Bless thee Twitter and all my twitter peeps) suggested instead of using sex toys and duct tape I try a good ole fashioned Q-tip on her back end.

Sounded reasonable to my sleep addled brain.

But have you ever tried to shove a wet Q-Tip up the back end of a squirming, squalling cat? Even with someone holding the poor cat down it didn’t work. Apparently, this is one of those urban kitty legends. Picture me with my confused 12 year old daughter holding down a pissed off cat and asking me why I was trying to rape the cat with a cotton swab and you will understand why I’m saving all my money for her future therapy bills.

After releasing the cat, where she promptly jumped up onto my head and justly tried to rip out my eyeballs with her claws, I admitted defeat. I was going to have to either put in ear plugs for the forseeable future or do the unthinkable: Kick her outside to go have some x-rated fun.

Images of a kitten-free future seemed futile.

At about 2 a.m. that morning, when her constant moaning and crying for some stud service grated my last nerve beyond that of a frayed shoe lace, I swooped her up and tossed her out into the darkness of the great outdoors.

“There Wolfee! You won. Go have your fun. Don’t come back until you are satisfied and can keep your thoughts to yourself,” I said as she landed on the deck.

She shook her tail at me and wandered off into the woods under the cover of the starry sky.

“Try to remember to be safe!” I called after her. “Get him to use a rubber if you can!” 

And then I crawled back into my bed, free of all cat calling and slumbered on peacefully.

That peace came to a screeching halt when a bedraggled and decidedly haggard looking Wolfee dragged her sorry bottom back into the house the next day.

From the looks of it, she was a satisfied puddy tat. But from the smell of her, it was hard to tell if she met a Tom or just settled for the neighbourhood skunk. (Not that I’m judging. The girl had needs.)

While my ears were no longer bleeding my eyes were watering and my nose was threatening to walk off the job. Plus Wolfee was covered in kitty goop. Or skunk goop. Or some other animal goop. She was a stinky, satisfied mess who was in dire need of a hosing down.

Which I would have happily done outside had it not been for the fact that it is January in the middle of a Canadian winter around these parts. My hose is frozen solid. 

So I made an executive decision and locked the cat into the laundry room and waited for the children to arrive home for school.

Where upon I granted them the privilege of bathing the cat.

Snicker.

They of course, thought it would be great fun to bathe their beloved kitty. My own memories of trying to wrestle a cat into a pillow case served as a warning to make sure I stayed out of harm’s way.

It wasn’t long after the water started running that the howling began. Not Wolfee’s. But rather Fric and Frac’s. Then the cat’s claws came out and the shredding commenced.

Soon Fric and Frac were racing out of the bathroom being chased off by a pissed off wet cat and all I could do was try and hide my giggles as I commanded them to get the job done.

“But MOM!” Fric wailed, while looking at her bleeding arms. “She’s EVIL.”

“No, she smells evil. She is just scared. Talk nice to her and she’ll behave. I promise.”

I’m such a liar.

So I may have had to shove the three of them back into the pits of hell bathroom and hold the door knob on the outside of the door to prevent any escape as I listened to the sounds of terror emanating from the other side of the door.

I’m sure I could have waxed poetic to my children about the responsibilities and duties as a pet owner while they risked their lives to wash the skank stank off their cat, but instead, I grabbed my camera and laughed heartily at the sight of all three creatures in my bathroom.

All of them were dripping wet and angry and two thirds of them may have been bleeding from being torn to ribbons.  And all three of them were looking at me with murder in their eyes.

I’d have been scared if I had a lick of sense and wasn’t laughing so hard.

Parenting isn’t always rainbows and unicorns people.

Sometimes it means locking your children into a small room and letting the fur fly.

Bwhahahahaha!

***Caution. Proceed at Own Risk. This post is a graphic over-share of the Redneck life.***

It is no secret I have become a big collector fan of battery-operated toys. I may or may not have a wide assortment of various tools of self-pleasure at my disposal and an unending supply of batteries with which to operate them with.

Don’t judge me peoples, my husband is never home. Ahem.

To be honest, it was my husband who started the collection for me. He would tell me he was going grocery shopping and come home with a paper bag filled with treasures from a kinky store and smile and laugh when my mouth hanged open in shock and protest.

It took my husband a lot of constant persuasion and many bottles of wine to build up my liquid courage to even take one out of it’s packaging. For a long time, those plastic fun toys were kept tucked away in his sock drawer, mocking me whenever I put his laundry away.

I just couldn’t wrap my head around the idea of using a stimulus to engage in sexual activity. (Stupid me.) I had a hang up about it. I wasn’t that type of girl. Sure, I could get tattoos and pierce every known part of my body, but dude…a dildo that vibrates? What the hell is wrong with your ten fingers and tongue I’d ask him when ever he brought the subject up.

Then one night, too much mommy juice had been ingested and my husband sensed I was ripe for the pickings. You might say he surprised me with the soft buzz of a mechanical toy and you might say I was forever converted. 

My husband created a monster.

Since then, my um, mouse clickers have found a drawer of their own and may or may not be regularly used in our sessions of marital mattress dancing.

(My apologies to my mother-in-law. But just so you know, if you are still reading this, your son is very talented. *Waggles eyebrows.* You should be proud. Wink.)

Boo and I have even learned to put the dang things away after having the kids ask why there is a purple plastic penis in the bathroom sink.

Who says an old dog can’t learn a new trick?

This past Christmas, as I was wandering the stores of the mall, wracking my brain wondering what to buy my husband that would knock his socks off, I passed a local kink store where a group of horny 16 year old boys were standing by the opaque window with a sign that said YOU MUST BE 18 TO ENTER and daring one another to see if they could walk in the store unnoticed.

My first thought when I saw this rag tag group of boys was holy shit! These kids aren’t much older than my own darling Fric and Frac!! I’m so buying chastity belts and locking my kids in their rooms till they’re 40. My second thought, once I erased the lame motherly reaction from my brain was, hmm, wonder if they have anything interesting in there.  

So I pushed past the group of boys crowding the entrance while totally winking at one of them, because neener neener, I’m legal yo, and I can buy all the disturbing kink crap I want, (I’m at the height of maturity I tell ya) and I started perusing one sexually disturbing aisle of kinky toys after another.

There is a reason I never go into these shops. I am, for all my dirty talk, a prude. Some things are just best left to the imagination and what the hell does someone need a six-inch round, 18-inch long dildo for? And just how big a cooter does one need to use something like that?

(Please refrain from actually explaining that in my comments yo. Better left wondered about.)

Just as I was making my way out of the store while hoping and praying nobody I knew would be walking by outside and catch me coming out of the pervert’s delight, a small stand of colorful boxes caught my eye.

Laughing, I grabbed a box and giggled as I paid the bored, pimpled twenty-something cashier and smiled at the thought of Boo’s reaction when he opened his stocking stuffer Christmas morning.

Turnabout is fair play, and for all the toys he has bought me, I figured it was time for one of his own.

Christmas morning finally arrived and with the children ripping through their stockings like they were in a race, my husband leisurely started examining the contents of his stocking. I watched as he laughed at the book I bought him, cooed over the video game I surprised him with and rolled his eyes at the requisite soap, socks and toothbrush we give each other ever year.

Then his hand pulled out an unfamiliar package. I could see the puzzlement in his eyes as he wondered what the small box was. The kids had now finished flying through their stockings and were patiently waiting for their father to finish his so they could rip into the loot underneath the tree. Time seemed to stand still for the two of them and they all but chomped at the bit to get to the good stuff.

Boo did what he always does, which is to torture them by slowly unwrapping the unfamiliar present while drawing the moment out by trying to guess what it was.

The kids, knowing their father could not be hurried no matter how badly harassed, gamely played along as I just grinned, knowing what was in store for him.

Smiling, he had the tape carefully peeled off and he opened the paper when he realized what exactly his present was. His smirk was suddenly wiped off as he quickly bundled the little box back into his stocking and looked at me like I grew devil’s horns.

The kids, dying with curiosity, hounded him wanting to know what the present was. I laughed into my coffee and watched him squirm and try to think of something imaginative that wouldn’t make them even more curious.

“Um, it’s just razor blades,” he lamely replied as I snorted and whispered something about him being a chicken shit.

All in all, he recovered fairly well after receiving his very first cock ring.

After all the presents had been opened and the kids were busy examining their new found treasures, Boo and I shared a laugh over his reaction and then started cleaning up the Christmas mess. I never paid any attention to where put his new pleasure toy, I just assumed it had made it’s way into the drawer with all of our other naughty bedroom items.

Fast-forward to last week when my daughter was cleaning out the family bathroom and Boo was riding herd over them to make sure the house was clean for our American houseguest.

My daughter was under strict instructions to clean the bathroom properly, not half-assed like she normally does and that included straightening up the bathroom drawers she had littered with sparkle dust and pink eye shadows.

I was at the other end of the house supervising her brother straightening up the video games when I heard Fric call for her dad and me.

Wandering out of the bathroom she held a familiar looking box in her hand. Apparently, Boo had forgotten about it and just put it away with his new soaps and toothbrushes.

“Um, Mom? Dad? Where do you want me to put this?” Fric asked as she was staring at the box. 

Time stood still. Boo and I both realized at the exact same time what our innocent 12 year old daughter held in her tiny little hands and a look of horror crossed his face.

“Give that to me,” he half-snapped, half-persuaded as I just stood there frozen, thinking about how much it would cost in therapy bills to erase this scene from everybody’s minds.

Fric looked at her dad, then over to me, and then duly handed it over. A look of relief washed over Boo’s face as he tucked the small box into his pocket and told her to get back to work.

I tried to make eye contact with Boo but he was lost in his own maze of disturbing mental images and was silently wishing to fall into the earth at that very moment. 

Just as Boo and I turned around to get back to work, Fric popped her head out of the bathroom and asked the question no parent ever wants to hear their child ask.

“Dad, what’s a cock ring for?”

A split second of stunned silence and then I couldn’t help it. I doubled over laughing. The look on Boo’s face was priceless.

He stood there gasping for air like a fish does when out of water and tears started to streak down my face.

“Never mind and get back to work,” he barked while his face was beat red. That’s when he shot me a dirty look that all but blamed me for corrupting his children’s innocence.

Fric just looked at her dad and then the light dawned in her little brain.

“Oh, I get it. It’s like those other toys Mom has in the drawer. Ewwww,” she grimaced and then went back to cleaning the bathroom. “You guys are so gross,” I heard her mutter.

That was it, I was done. I couldn’t help it. I belly laughed. Boo, however, did not. He grabbed his jacket and growled, “It’s not funny Tanis!” as he stalked outside to hide in the woods.

Apparently, us old dogs still need to learn a few tricks. While our children are rapidly learning every one in the book.

Meanwhile, Boo is working double shifts to pay for his own damn therapy bills.

Good thing I have a few toys at my disposal.

Wink.