Overheard at the breakfast counter this morning when the kids were eating breakfast as I was trying to rub the cobwebs out of my brain and drag my arse out of bed.

“I wonder what Mom got you for your birthday today Frac.”

“As long as it’s not underwear or a button up shirt, I’m cool.”

I’m totally giving him thermal underwear and dental floss.

“Maybe she’ll get you makeup, pretty boy.”

“Whatever She-Hulk. You’re just jealous you need makeup to resemble a human. What’s that like?”

There was some good-natured punching shoving as they tried to push one another off their stools and a few yelps before they settled back in to slurp the milk from their cereal bowls.

“So, what’s it feel to be twelve, little brother?”

“Same as it felt like yesterday when I was eleven. ‘Cept now I’m two years closer to getting to learn how to drive.”

“Suckah. You are so going to cry when I get to learn NEXT YEAR. Big baby tears will fall as I wave from the drivers seat.”

Oh, my lovely daughter. You still haven’t figured out that your little brother is already two inches taller than you and will one day be stronger than you. And when he finally clues into the fact he will be able to throw you on the floor, pin you down with his weight and threaten to hork a loogie in your eyeball like my brother always did, I probably won’t be much help. I’ll be too busy laughing. Plus, I’m pretty sure the years of sibling torment you have lovingly gifted on your little brother will have earned a loogie or two.

“Whatever. So you were born first. That only means you are closer to death than I am.”

Score for the birthday boy!!

More pushing and shoving ensued, which to children who were only born thirteen months and a day apart, is as necessary to their well-beings as oxygen.

“Just think Frac, once upon a time, Mom and Dad were twelve.”

“Weird. I can’t imagine what they were like as kids.”

We were cool, buddy. Like ice cool. At least in our imaginations.

“Dorky I bet.”

Damn, I hate it when my kids are right.

Mutual snickering and some mumbled joke that I couldn’t hear had them howling with laughter as Fric and Frac high-fived one another.

“You should get Mom to tell you the story of your birth like she did on my birthday. That was cool,” Fric suggested to her brother as I finally sat up and tried to motivate myself to walk to the bathroom.

“Nah. I don’t want to be reminded I came out of Mom’s vagina, thanks.”

Neither do I kid, neither do I.

“You just don’t like the word VAGGGIIIIINNNA,” Fric snickered.

“You’re gross. I just don’t like hearing about my MOM’S.”

“Baby.”

“She-Hulk.”

“Don’t worry Frac. You’ll learn all about vaginas and sex education now that you are twelve.”

“I KNOW all about that stuff, thank you very much,” my wee boy huffed.

At this point I was about to break into the conversation before it digressed even further.

“Then you know that Mom has sex and that’s how YOU were made.”

Frac stopped and looked at his sister as I stood up to put on my slippers. “No. Mom HAD sex. Now she’s too old. I don’t think they do that stuff anymore. It takes too much energy.”

Oh my sweet delusional offspring. 34 isn’t old, my lovelies. It only feels that way when I listen to the two of you.

As I wandered into the kitchen to wish spread the birthday cheer, I realized years ago, when I was being ripped in half trying to bring forth the life of my second child, I never once thought that in 12 years I’d be eavesdropping on my kids talking about my sex life before I even had my morning coffee.

But then, 12 years ago, I was the same chick who got knocked up only months after giving birth to her first child. I wasn’t all that bright back then.

I shudder to think what I’m going to wake up to in another twelve years.

Especially if he grows up to be anything like I was.

Ugh.

*Note to self: Don’t let kids live on your couch when they are about to turn 24. My mom still reminds me of the time she found a pair of panties hidden in the couch cushions.*

*I’m not telling if they were mine.*

Quit giving me grey hairs, dammit.

This past weekend up here in Canada land we celebrated Thanksgiving. Besides stuffing our faces with dead bird and pumpkin pies, we huddled around our wood stove in a bid to keep our extremeties from falling off. This is what happens when one chooses to live near the North Pole. Mother Nature mocks us and delivers two inches of snow as a side dish with our cranberry sauce.

My husband, the romantic fool er, man, he is decided to surprise the four of us with his presence so that he could partake in a tryptophan-induced comas alongside us. He’s sweet like that.

The weather had us all shivering and cussing under our breaths as we tried to remember what the hell we were thankful for. The best we could come up was polar fleece and flannel sheets. Oh, and those wool socks Gramma made us a few years back for Christmas. Note to self: Never turn a snooty nose up at wool socks because one day you may find yourself fighting with your children over who will get to wear them.

In a bid to stay warm and a shallow attempt at family bonding, the children decided the best way to kill a long weekend would be to gather around the television and watch the entire series of Heroes, seasons one through three.

It was a real Norman Rockwell type of weekend.

Somewhere between the haze of two large family get togethers and pants that no longer buttoned shut, we found ourselves in front of the telly with the snow softly falling outside our living room window and barking orders at Fric to hurry up and change the disc to start season two of our marathon Heroes weekend.

My daughter opened up the case and noticing the lack of discs asked why season two didn’t have as many episodes as the previous season.

“Oh, that’s because season two happened the same year as the writers strike,” I explained as I burrowed deeper into the comforter keeping me warm on our couch.

“What’s a writers strike?” Frac asked.

My husband, sprawled out on the love seat across the living room, decided that as our family’s token union man he would field this question and piped up before I had a chance to answer.

I hate when he does this. I keep reminding him it’s not in his job description to answer our children’s questions and instead should defer all answers to my wisdom but he keeps rolling his eyes while telling me to shut it. The man needs to learn his place in our familal pecking order, me thinks.

“That’s when the pansy asses who write the scripts for the entertainment business decided they would throw a big temper tantrum and stop working because they are a bunch of self-important idiots,” said Boo as he snorted.

“Excuse me? This coming from a UNION man himself?” I volleyed back at him. I turned to our children to erase correct this erroneous explanation while shooting daggers with my eyes at their father.

“Don’t listen to your father. He doesn’t know what he was talking about. The writers strike was when the writers stopped writing because they felt they weren’t being adequately compensated for their creativity. Eventually the contract was negotiated successfully and the writers started working again when they felt they were being remunerated fairly,” I clarified.

To which my husband snorted and replied, “Ya, bunch of money grubbing babies.”

“Are you kidding me Mr. Union Man who has sat in on contract negotiations himself?”

My children sat down to watch the ping-pong of their parents while grabbing for the bowl of popcorn. Who needs over-produced prime time drama when they live with two pompous opinionated parents?

“Sure but the difference is, that unlike the writer’s union,” he said in a tone dripping with sarcasm, “my union actually is for people who work. People who bust their backs every day to provide a necessary service. People who don’t just sit around crafting pretty stories all day long while eating bonbons.”

“Um, I happen to be one of those people who sit around all day crafting pretty stories and I don’t eat bonbons. I eat pistachio nuts, thank you very much,” I shot back.

“My point exactly. I work for a living while writers pretend to work. The reality is what you writers like to call work is actually just playing. Those writers should never have went on strike. They’re lucky someone is willing to pay them at all,” my fantastically delusional and twattish husband rallied back.

“Are you kidding me? Writing isn’t work?” (I may have shot upright on the couch and been screeching at him at this point but I’ll never tell.) “I’d like to see you do what I do for one day, do it as well as I do it and see how successful you are. If writing was so easy more people would be successful at it.”

“Gimme a break. All you do is sit on the couch and pull words out of your ass. Sure you are good at it, sure you’ve seen some success. But it’s not like you could support our family on your earnings. Any monkey can do what you do all day long. Except I bet the monkey would be able to fold the laundry before you ever got around to it.”

Oh, the gauntlet had been thrown. The white glove had been smacked across my cheek. The challenge was issued.

My children of course, were lapping this shit up.

“Don’t listen to your father kids. He’s wrong. He’s wrongly asserting that monetary compensation determines the value of a career. He’s being arrogant and trying to confuse the issue because he knows he can’t do what I do. He doesn’t have the talent or the skill or the dedication.”

“Oh please,” Boo laughed. “Don’t listen to your mom. She’s being irrational. She can’t help it. She is a woman. And a writer. Writing is not work. Any one can write once they are literate. Writers just sit for a few hours a day, spew out whatever crap their imaginations can spin and hope someone is dumb enough to believe it or like it. You’re damn right I could do what you do. If I wanted to waste my talents. But you couldn’t do what I do for a living. Which is real work.”

Funny, neither of us needed to huddle under neath our respective blankets to keep warm any longer. Between the two of us we were shooting off enough energy to heat a second home.

“Whatever dude. Ever look at your industry and the people in it? Most of them don’t have a high school education and aren’t much higher on the evolutionary chain than a chimpanzee.”

“Ever look at your industry? It’s filled with the emotionally crippled and the clinically insane. Most writers, such as yourself, aren’t stable enough to do a real day’s labour in their lives so instead hide behind their imagination as a way of pretending to be productive and useful in society.”

“Did you just call me unstable? Did you seriously just tell our children that I am incapable of working a real day’s labour? Are you forgetting that it way my employment that paid for your post secondary education and my income from my real day’s labour that paid for our down payment on our mortgage?? Do NOT listen to your father. Apparently, he’s drunk on turkey or something.” Steam may have actually been pouring out of my ears at this point.

“Well it was good you contributed something to our family. Because while you ‘blog‘ it’s been me busting my ass bringing home the bacon which you like to eat as you ‘work‘,” he shot back.

“Whatever. It takes a lot of skill to stand around and push a broom,” I hit below the belt. “This from the man who needs me to spell check his emails and can’t remember simple sentence structure. I’d like to see you craft a post for thousands of blog readers and entertain the masses. I’d like to see you do what I do. Then we’ll talk about whose job is more labour intensive.”

“Please,” he guffawed. He GUFFAWED. “Years of post education and student loans so you can talk about your boobs on the internet. That takes training. And hard work. Riiight.”

“More so than standing around monkeying around on a company walkie talkie. I bet I could walk on to your job site and do your job just as well as you do within a week. You? You’d never be able to do what I can do no matter how much time you tried to do it.”

“You think you could learn my job in a week? Are you taking your meds?”

“Honey, I push a broom every day at home. It can’t be much different whether it’s my kitchen floors or the floor of a work office.”

“Really? I sweep? I’ll have to run that past the guys on my crew. Who are busy removing and reinstalling demister pads. When they aren’t busy stabbing and rolling tubes in a mud drum and steam drum. You don’t even know what that means.”

“I don’t need to know what they are. I’d just do what you do. Stand around and bark orders. Pass the buck. It can’t be much different than trying to get the kids to clean the bathroom.”

“You’re so cute when you are wrong. You couldn’t pass grade twelve math yet you expect to be able to do element change outs, burner rework and safely and correctly rig and duct through a boiler house all in less than a week? It’d take me one hour to write a blog post yet you’d need years of training to do what I do for a living. Real work.”

“You manage to do it. Can’t be that hard,” I bluster. It’s easy to bluster back at him since I have no real concept of what he’s talking about. Years of tuning him out when he yammers on about his job have only painted a fuzzy picture of his actual job which involves steel and hard hats. “You couldn’t identify a preposition or past particle if your life depended on it let alone correctly use an adverb. Heck, I’m not even sure you know your alphabet.”

At this point our children were getting whiplash from watching the back and forth repartee of their very mature parents and my daughter stood up and declared we were both right.

“Neither of you could do each other’s jobs. Now can we get back to watching Heroes?” she pleaded.

“No.” Boo and I answered simultaneously.

“I want your father to admit that what I do, what a writer does, is real work and as such, we writers deserve fair compensation for our efforts. Just the same way other industries fairly and adequately compensate their workers.”

“And I want your mother to admit that she doesn’t have a foggy clue as to what she’s talking about and that writing is nothing but a glorified hobby. Those that can’t, WRITE.”

“Bite me.”

“You wish.”

“Ya, well you can kiss any romantic notions you wanted to do with this writer goodbye.”

“No worries. I’m too tired from actually doing real work to actually hold any romantic ideas.”

“Good.”

“Great.”

“Man, when I grow up, I hope I turn out more mature than either of you,” Frac piped up.

“Oh be quiet and press play. Let your father enjoy the fruits of someone’s hobby.”

And that is how we Canadians celebrated the Thanksgiving weekend.

Setting a fine example for our children on how to successfully get one’s point across in a mature and thoughful manner while agreeing to disagree.

And if you are reading this at work, dear husband, perhaps you should get back to your job and start sweeping.

Once upon a time there was a girl who used to be very physically fit. This chick could crack walnuts between her thighs and hurl coconuts clear to the moon. Then the girl grew up to be me.

I don’t know what happened to my competitive drive but I lost it about the same time I gained the jello roll around my middle.

It’s not like the jelly rolls appeared over night. They took some time making their presence known. It was a slow transition from firm and fit Tanis to soft and sloth-y Tanis. Heck, I managed to harbor three baboons babies in utero and squeeze back into my regular sized jeans within days.

*Yes. I was one of those annoying broads who looked like she never had a baby moments after giving birth. I have made up for this by now walking around looking like I’m five months pregnant permanently.

When Shale died I lost a crapload of weight. I was already thin, but I got thinner. Gaunter. Sickly looking. Apparently a child’s death is not conducive to eating. Within a year I was down to almost a hundred pounds. I made Tori Spelling look fat.

It wasn’t till my husband told me he was getting tired of feeling like he was poking a bag of bones when we engaged in carnal activities that I noticed how thin I was. It was hard to see anything other than a haze of grief let alone how I had suddenly transitioned into an over-sized prepubescent 12 year old boy. Minus the dingle berries of course.

So I began to eat.

And eat.

And eat.

While sitting on my laptop typing out glorified stories of blue bushes and beaver fever. Contrary to personal delusion, sitting on one’s duff pecking at a keyboard while slurping back cans of soda and munching on pistachio nuts is not exercise. No matter how hard I try and sell it as such to my darling Boo.

Eventually I gained back all the weight lost post death and packed on about 25 pounds more. That’s when the jelly roll appeared. It’s fantastic. I can hide a burrito in the cavity known as my belly button. This baby has back. And back fat. And a jiggle in her wiggle.

Now my husband, the man who can’t make up his damn mind, tells me he’s scared to poke me and get lost in my rolls. Or wake up to find himself smothered by the growing girls on my chest.

There is no pleasing the man.

But since it would be nice to fit into the wardrobe I have thoughtfully purchased over the years which is now just hanging in my closet collecting dust, I decided it time to de-jiggle. Not a lot. I like actually having curves. Just lose enough to be able to bend over and put my socks on without wanting to duct tape the roll of flesh around my middle so that it doesn’t get in the way of my knees.

Or maybe, set my goal a wee higher and not break into a full scale sweat and start wheezing when running from one end of the house to the other when trying to find the cordless phone my children seem to like to stuff under their pillows or in mounds of laundry.

It’s a health thing. Really. It has nothing to do with the fact my father recently commented to my husband that I used to be thin and attractive and now resemble a pasty marshmellow stuffed into a too tight sausage casing.

(Oh yes he did say that.)

So I took the proverbial bull by it’s horns and I cowgirl’d up. Taking into account my over active schedule of chauffeuring my children between here and there and the fact I paid for a gym membership only to go twice and have the old people laugh me out of the gym, I decided the best way to get fit was to try to do it at home.

On my own terms where no scarily fit geriatric people will point and laugh at the middle aged mom I’ve become.

So I emptied out my refrigerator of all things soda related and fed the pistachio nuts to the dogs.

And then I bought my very own personal overpriced clothing storage system treadmill.

To which my husband rolled his eyes and explained that owning a treadmill won’t get me fit unless I take the clothes I’ve tossed on it off the dang thing and actually get on it myself.

He literally spoke slowly when explaining this to me and offered to illustrate his point. It was then I hurled a pillow at his head and threatened to sit on him and smother the life out of him with my giant jelly rolls.

He promptly shut up but he was still smirking.

Like the road to good intentions, my road to fitness and healthy self-esteem is a miserable trek to hell. This body? Is not as young as it once was. Age and a few too many cheese burgers have caught up with me and the once physically fit machine I called my body.

I find myself no longer motivated by picturing myself in a bikini or wanting to fit into a svelte pair of jeans.

I’m old enough to know I don’t need to base my self worth on my waist size. Although it would be nice to be able to see a bowl of cottage cheese and not be immediately reminded of my backside.

Still, I was am determined. I figure I got myself into this larder, I can sweat my way out of it. Which would be infinitely easier if I enjoyed the trickle of boob sweat that springs up whenever I take three steps on the damn machine.

My children aren’t much help either. Encouraged by their father to help inspire (and by inspire I’m sure he secretly meant mock) me on my path to glory and health they’ve taken it upon themselves to demonstrate how physically superior they are to me and run marathons on the damn machine while I start huffing out of breath just watching them.

They haven’t figured out that showing me how it’s done isn’t inspiring me to try harder. All it is inspiring me to do is to think of creative ways to make them work harder since they apparently have so much energy to burn off and rub in my face.

I’ve now banished them from watching me run after a few elephant comments were made and my son decided to bring in a skipping rope and use it as a faux-whip. Every time I started to slow down he thought it would be hysterically funny to flick it at my arse and tell me to ‘giddy up.’

Funny he wasn’t laughing when I chased him out of the house and threatened to give him a wedgie moments later. I would have too but my lungs exploded and I saw stars.

Still, I’m persevering. Slowly. One treadmill step at a time. It’s not pretty. I have to keep a fire extinguisher nearby at all times for at any moment the friction of my thighs rubbing together could start a small fire, but I’m doing it.

I’m 34 years old and I’m running in circles on a treadmill. Oh how the dreams of my youth have evaporated with time and fat. I no longer dream of winning Olympic medals or climbing mountains while flirting with a sherpa.

No.

Now my dreams include being able to buckle up my pants without feeling like I’m about to lose circulation in my lower half.

How far I’ve fallen.

But I’m not going giving in to middle aged complacency all together.

No. I’m going to do what women all over are doing to fight off the doldrums of getting fat and old.

I’m going to buy some damn Spanx. After all, I have a treadmill I can store them on when I’m not using it.