Bedtime for Bozos

"COME ON GUYS! Get. Dressed!" I'm increasingly agitated. I can feel the clock heading past 8pm and they are fucking around. I know what J would think if he could see this nonsense. You're riling them up Nad, calm it down. They need to get to bed.

But Loogoo is in only a pull-up and shaking her booty and saying Gord-knows-what over and over. She recently cut her own hair into a mullet, which I've slowly cropped into a po-mo Dorothy Hamill in an attempt to even it out. N-dog is rolling on the floor in his holiday pajamas that should have been packed away after Armenian Christmas. He's holding his sides, missing teeth making him look older, but still quintessentially a kid. Peels of laughter reverberating from both of them, shaking the ground I stand on. And I give in to the moment. I laugh, because, heck, this isn't forever.

Guest editor at Dealuxe.ca

I miss my old job at the sweet place. I miss what it was like when we were new and full of ideas and possibility. Not that I don't love my new job. Not at all. I'm over the moon at the experience I'm gaining, where my career is heading, how much I get along with my boss and my editorial team. Love doesn't even cut it. Most days the new job doesn't even feel like work. It's certainly different, less writing and editing at the moment, but I'm growing and it feels grand.

But I miss the sweets. I miss the giggles we had which only people who bathe in pop culture and fashion and the humour in things vapid might understand. I am fully immersed in the mom right now, at work and home, and while it's lovely in its own way, I do miss having that daily dose of pink.

So when my friend Sari asked me to be guest editor at Dealuxe.ca, the fabulous new shopping site of one of my mentors, Joanna Track, I obliged. Because of all the things I thought I'd miss, who woulda thunk it would be fantasy shopping and sourcing? I got to pick out 12 items that I love on their site and write about six of them. To say I had a lot of fun with it would be like saying I only like the chef salad at Lola's a little bit. I think the end result really reflects my personal style, something I've cultivated and honed for years. That's the great thing about being 37 -- you don't have to guess about what might look good on you, you just know.

Anyway, if you feel like a bit of fantasy and frivolity, go peruse my picks. I chose mostly what I could afford and what I might splurge on should my tax return be generous. But I also chose items that I genuinely wear and use daily. I promise you'll have at least one giggle. http://www.dealuxe.ca/en/magazine/2012-01-w3/guest-editor-nadine-silverthorne

Daddy Dearest

So many times I've started to write about him. I can never bring myself to do it. There must be 14 drafts on here started and never realized. Because I'm scared. Because I don't want to give him the satisfaction.

If you've grown up in a house with someone who's not "normal," you've probably longed for just that. For just a bit of boring. For just a bit of a 1980s TV sitcom life. For just something constant that isn't pain or abuse or loathing.

He made me mad today. Actually he made me sad. He hurt my baby sister like when we were little, but this time with words not kicks. I had to step in, be the shoulder, be the clown. I felt 14 again. I hated 14.

I am working through lots of gunky stuff. 2011 was a nutty, life and death in your face kind of year and it's brought up a lot of shit. I want to blog, want to spill, but I'm guarded, protective. I don't know how to blog like this. I want to tear open the scabs and spill, raw, festering, oozing...

So I put it in a journal, the old kind, with lines and ink. There's no audience, it's not as satisfying, but in the end there will be The Work. The Work is all I dream about, all I long for. Yet I am afraid that The Work will not change anything, will not provide the fulfillment I seek.

And as I type this I know that I must provide that satisfaction for myself -- right now. That I can't put so much expectation on the future, which doesn't exist. So I write, in the now.