Andrea Mulder-Slater

by Andrea Mulder-Slater Several weeks ago, I received a letter of request from an organization, written by me, sent to me, yet signed by someone else. My words, my writing style, my heartfelt pleas were all there - in black on white. They were staring at me. Taunting me. As if to say, “Look, I’m sorry. You gave us up sweetheart, and so now we belong to someone else. Someone with better hair than you.” You know that feeling you get when you think you’ve lost your keys and so you look around the house frantically until you finally give up and make yourself a cup of coffee only to realize, once you’ve sat down to drink your brew, that you don’t have any coffee cream in the house and worse yet, you still haven’t found your damn keys and so you get up to look again and by the time you find them a full hour later you feel like a perspiration-drenched fool because your keys were in the bottom of your purse the entire freaking time? Yeah, that’s how that letter made me feel. Irritate

by Andrea Mulder-Slater It was the first time Geoff and I had ever stayed in such luxurious surroundings. Ornate furnishings, a marble sink and endless lengths of cascading fabric filled our Paris hotel suite. Of particular note were the plush velvet curtains that reached clear up to the 14-foot ceilings. After our first full day of sightseeing, we were eager to get some sleep. We tucked ourselves under the blankets and turned off the bedside lamps only to find the room still flooded with light. We must have missed a switch, I thought while getting up to find it. Then I realized… the light was coming from outside our room. As it turned out, we were positioned at the precise location of the hotel sign, which was awash with intense, white light. It was so bright; we could have performed open-heart surgery (had we the tools, knowledge or patient). “It is the city of lights,” Geoff joked. I was not amused. Because he knows me well, Geoff pro

by Andrea Mulder-Slater Because not everyone enjoys impromptu discussions about poop, our local coffee shop features a not-so-secret upstairs room where mothers of toddlers congregate to have conversations punctuated by phrases like, “What happened to your other shoe?”, " How long has that worm been in your pocket? " and "Can you please take that dolphin out of your brother's ear?" without disturbing the street-level caffeine imbibers below. The other day, after a chance meeting on the sidewalk, my friend Sharon and I made tracks to “the room” to swig copious amounts of coffee while our kids ate giant ginger cookies. Two seconds in, our children asked if we had any toys. You think they would know us better by now. The only remotely kid-friendly items in my purse were a marble, two Band-Aids, a hotel pen and a miniature Spirograph toy that can only be operated by someone with Barbie doll sized hands. So, you know, I’ve given up on any aspirations of beco

by Andrea Mulder-Slater The arrival of a new Sears catalog is usually loads of fun at our house. We all love looking at all the items we don't need, at prices we can't pass up. But this catalog was different from others we've received in the past. For one thing, the models appear as though they are dead. Or rather, undead. Which begs the question... WTF Sears? Am I wrong? I'm not wrong. Be afraid. Be very afraid. No, really.

by Andrea Mulder-Slater While cleaning out my purse this morning, I found the usual items... Receipts, tissues, wipes, marbles, one sock, a mystery toy from a Kinder Surprise egg and other assorted bits of stuff were mingling amongst the spare change and raisin box escapees. Then, I discovered a small plastic bubble - a forgotten gumball machine acquisition, the contents of which had remained unknown. Until today. I’ll admit it. I regularly fall prey to the lure of gumball machine booty and I’ve passed my  penchant on to my 3-year-old daughter. I blame my mother. Time and again she and I have dropped quarters into the colorful contraptions at the supermarket in the hopes of obtaining a hacky sack, a glow ring or a tiny porcelain mug emblazoned with the face of an ex-President. Instead, we typically end up with plastic mummies, temporary tattoos or little alien figurines playing soccer - all of which delight my daughter to no end. However, inside the forgotten plastic bubbl