Andrea Mulder-Slater

by Andrea Mulder-Slater After she had spent several hours at the horse barn on a frosty December evening, I offered to make my daughter a hot chocolate to warm her up. Because she has food allergies, making a drink like this for my kiddo is a bit more complicated than simply pouring boiling water over a packet of Carnation instant mix. Instead, there’s a process which involves harvesting raw cocoa, sifting purified icing sugar and slow cooking organic milk all while burning sage and standing on one foot. Ok, well that’s not actually true. But, I do keep my daughter safe by mixing the right amounts of allergen-free sugar with allergen-free cocoa and allergen-free milk and bringing all of it to a boil in a pot on the stove. My point here is, once I’ve made a cup of hot chocolate, I need a nap. And a bag of chips.

by Andrea Mulder-Slater I drove into town with my mom to do some banking.  Because it was after hours, the plan was to use the machine to deposit a cheque and withdraw $200 to pay a guy for doing some work on my husband's truck. It was a simple errand. I went through the doors and walked over to the machine. Holding a cheque in one hand, I reached for the deposit envelope with my other hand. Only, there were no envelopes.

by Andrea Mulder-Slater There were two lines at the Tim Hortons kiosk - one for those ordering bacon, bagels and specialty drinks - and another for the rest of us. As the young man behind the counter handed me my tea, I began digging through the giant expanse that is my purse. Gloves. Princess stickers. Altoids. Chocolate bar wrappers… I was one customer away from my place at the cash register when I remembered the leftover taxi fare change in my pocket. When I looked over the railing, I could see that it was turning into a busy morning in the hospital so I was glad to have arrived early. I was tired, but anxious to find out if my mom would be able to come home after a frightening 38 hours involving a blood transfusion. “One fifty-five, please.” The girl behind the counter watched my money land on the counter. She began to scoop it up and then, she stared at me.

by Andrea Mulder-Slater On a day not so long ago, I was helping to hang an art show. It was a hot day – much warmer than what had been forecast - and as a result, everyone there was dressed in outfits better suited for a polar vortex than a lava rinse. At some point in the afternoon, I started to smell the faint stench of body odor. My mind was immediately transported back to the summer after I graduated from art school when I worked at a gallery with a woman who eschewed deodorant. It was a particularly challenging time of my life since the office was exceptionally small and had no air-conditioning. I mean honestly, walking into that place was like being surrounded by fifty 9 year old kids,  just developing sweat glands. My colleagues and I had so many questions about our co-worker. Did she not know she reeked like dirty socks soaked in fish goo? Could she not smell herself? Dear god, did we all stink? It was a superficial summer to remember. Meanwhile back at th...

by Andrea Mulder-Slater “I have a reservation.” I was at the front desk of the Fairfield Inn in Smithfield North Carolina – a welcome position after the day’s drive, which had taken us through states crippled by an early ice storm. “You are in room 106” , said the angelic young man behind the counter – who was most certainly fresh out of finishing school – courteous, well mannered and highly manicured. Sigh. The lobby was lovely, with soft colors and an accent wall behind the counter depicting tree limbs. Or a spider web. Or maybe capillaries. Photo: Fairfield Inn Either way, it was stylish and also hypnotic. I felt instantly in harmony with my guest services agent who - in the time it took to write down my license plate number - walked me through three of my past lives. Twice. Then the phone rang. Opposite to the check-in zone, was a seating area, plucked straight out of an episode of Mad Men, season 5. Very modish with a long low table, orange lounger, an...

by Andrea Mulder-Slater Traveling is exhausting, partly because ( as you already know ) I am unskilled in the art of packing light and so - much like an Asian Weaver Ant - I inevitably end up hauling 100 times my body weight. Only instead of dead flies, I carry luggage. Most of the time. Also, keeping a 747 in the air by using sheer mind power alone is exceptionally draining for me, especially around hour seven. As is watching each and every passenger. Did that guy ever come back from the restroom? Why is that woman pacing back and forth? Is that the pilot? Why is he back here? Where did Geoff get that croquette? Is that a child drinking whisky or is that just a remarkably petite man? Why does that flight attendant look worried? Is that man watching porn on his iPad? Did he just notice me staring at his lap? Grueling. Still, the holiday happened without a hitch ( except for the obvious ) and so we topped off our 4 weeks overseas with an additional multi day jetlag-fueled fa...

by Andrea Mulder-Slater For those who don’t know me, I’ll let you in on a little secret. I’m terrible at small talk. The thing is, I’m actually quite shy, plus, I misunderstand people. Constantly. It’s not so much that my hearing is poor, but more the fact that my fear of talking to others often manifests itself in an outrageously short attention span. The words I hear, and the words I comprehend don’t often meet up in the middle of the diving board that is my brain. Someone will begin talking to me and in an effort to try to stay focused; my mind will do the opposite. This is what’s going on inside my head during a conversation with a stranger at a dinner party: Ok Andrea, relax. Smile. Good. Now pay attention. Wow, her eyes are blue. Are my eyes blue? No, my eyes are hazel. Who came up with the word hazel? It’s a weird word. Hazel. Haze. El. I wonder why witches are named Hazel? Do witches really exist? They must. People can’t be making that shit up. Hey, who’s that g...

by Andrea Mulder-Slater Geoff and I dashed into WalMart, after having picked up a few groceries at the supermarket next door. It was getting late and we were treading dangerously close to “People of Walmart * ” territory. I was on a mission - a mission to procure a new hat and become awesome. I often have ill-planned notions and this one in particular involved me looking fresh and flirty in a fedora. You know, like Halle Berry , Reese Witherspoon or Jessica Alba . There was absolutely no way I was going to pull this off. I headed to the hat department and grabbed the first fedora I saw. It was super cute – straw colored with a sleek black band and - because we were in Walmart - it was sensibly priced at approximately $4.32, plus tax (and a smiley face). I lifted the hat from its cradle and held it in my hand. I could feel myself getting closer to nailing the chic “It” girl look I’d always tried to achieve. The excitement was audible – mostly because I was squealing out lo...

by Andrea Mulder-Slater When I was 14 years old, someone snuck into my mother's office, plucked the wallet from her purse and walked out the door. Evidently, the thief was a nomadic gypsy or a migrating goose, because for several months following the robbery, we received widespread phone calls from distant strangers who had stumbled across my mom's personal belongings in ditches, on sidewalks and in public restrooms. The whole experience made me queasy, angry and – apparently – supernatural. I say this because from that day on, I became a wallet magnet as the damn things started appearing around me like fruit flies in the science lab at my high school. My teenage years were spent tripping over lost pocketbooks – at the park, on the street and in parking lots. It was truly inexplicable. So much so, that my parents started to question my acquisitions. “Tell us again how you ‘found’ this wallet? (and please don’t say you took it out of someone’s car, back pocket or...

This is kind of like a sequel to my previous post about boobs . That is, if my posts were movies and I was an actor – or a producer or a screenwriter. Which I’m not. But I do have boobs. This is relevant.  I’m the first to admit that my body is not what it used to be, y’know, before the giant baby. That and the getting older. And possibly the consumption of massive amounts of chocolate. Whichever. Either way, I’m 20 pounds heavier today than I was in college. This is not entirely a bad thing considering that back then, I was once mistaken for a feather that had fallen off of a 3rd year jewelry student’s boa. Drinking coffee nonstop and eating nothing but dry popcorn will do that to a girl. My friend Sharon agrees. She too followed the supermodel waif diet back in the day. Caffeine and air with a side of nicotine. What were we thinking? Not much, because as it turns out, the brain requires fat in order to function properly. This might explain several of my choices during the 90s. ...

by Andrea Mulder-Slater I first saw the word babymoon printed in a guilty-pleasure - trashy magazine - along with photographs of a bikini-clad celebrity gallivanting in the sand during a pre-labor getaway with her pelvic affiliate and her diminutive ankles. It's kind of hard to ignore the concept, what with circulars like this shoved in every other newspaper.    But here's the thing. The babymoon trend has me feeling completely unconvinced. I’ll be honest here. When I was pregnant, the furthest thing from my mind was cherishing together time while experiencing a romantic fling on the beach - or anywhere for that matter. Reason being,  I was far too busy working out the logistics of ejecting a small-but-mighty organism through a part of my body I hadn’t been able to get a clear visual on for months. Between my ever-expanding feet, my wildly indiscreet chest and my puffy reality-television-star pout, I was more concerned with just trying to appear human while...

by Andrea Mulder-Slater I was sitting at the downtown art studio, on one of the comfy Adirondack chairs. The sun was low in the sky - the day drawing to a close.  I had dragged the chair to the side of the studio, so it faced the ocean. And, as it had been a rather warm day, a large bottle of Evian water was sitting on the ground next to me. As I contemplated whether or not to lock up a little early, a man wandered around the corner.  He glanced at me - several times - before gazing out on the view. Then he turned around, looked me up and down and asked if I would be okay with him taking a few photographs.  Here's what I thought: "Photos? Of me? I'm being discovered! This is just like in the movies!" Here's what I said: "Sure, okay." "I'll be back in a bit with my equipment," he said, "I hope you don't mind waiting." As soon as he disappeared from sight, I headed for the washroom to make sure I h...

by Andrea Mulder-Slater We went to a classical music event held at a community college this past weekend. No sooner were we in the door and someone had to pee. It might have been me. I left the 3 year old with Geoff and headed to the restroom. There were three stalls. The door on the left had an Out of Order sign taped to it and the stall on the right was wheelchair accessible - so I walked to the middle door, grabbed hold of the top edge and pulled. It was locked. "Oh, I'm sorry." I said, backing up. There was no response. I glanced under the door - because that's always my first instinct in a public restroom. I think it might be an inappropriate reflex. I saw no evidence of a shadow, so I assumed that it too was out of order. Either that or some college kid had locked it up and crawled out as a joke. I briefly wondered if I might fit under the metal partition - mostly because I’m weird like that. Instead I went behind door number three. Literally. Af...

by Andrea Mulder-Slater I had a “ What Not to Wear Moment ” the other day. As with most of these moments, I was convinced I looked remarkable – until a nasty flash of self-awareness hit and I realized I did look remarkable, but in a train wreck kind of way. The clasp on my nursing bra let go while I was placing a bag of heavy groceries in the back of my car. (There may or may not have been a watermelon involved.) Fortunately, my maternity t-shirt was snug enough to conceal my runaway boob, affording me the ability to discreetly clip myself back in place before grabbing a bag of chips and acknowledging the cigar smoking gentleman in the pickup truck next to me. Here’s what’s wrong with the previous paragraph. I stopped nursing my daughter more than a year ago and… I’m NOT pregnant. To make matters worse, the jeans I was wearing did not have a zipper and could easily be worn by someone in their second trimester. You know how some women (celebrities and other freaks of nat...

by Andrea Mulder-Slater Years ago - while on vacation in Ocean City, Maryland - a photographer approached me and asked if I would pose for a shoot he was working on. The client was a surf shop and all I had to do was sit on a board with a guy named Gabriel (or Mike, or something).  It was all very professional. I signed a form. My wardrobe consisted of my own jeans, a surf shirt, a hat worn backwards and a pair of Chuck Taylors. There was a crew, sort of. A girl was holding one of those aluminum foil umbrella things and there was a kid standing by to shoo the seagulls away. A tourist stopped to take pictures. I have to admit though; I figured the whole thing was bogus, until, a few weeks later when a copy of the ad (as it appeared in the The Baltimore Sun ) arrived in my mailbox. It was the beginning of a lucrative modeling career. Not for me you understand. But I think the guy that sat on the surfboard with me went on to do big things.  The problem is, I’m not...

by: Andrea Mulder-Slater When I began interviewing musicians, I never expected to be propositioned by one. I was 21 years old and had just graduated from art school. Full of confidence, I stepped through the doors of a local entertainment newspaper, looking for an opportunity to write art exhibition reviews. The scruffy editor sitting behind the desk reeked of cigarette smoke and sarcasm. He thanked me for my interest, gave a quick sideways glance at the essays I had arranged on his desk, and informed me that he was in need of a CD reviewer… and a good stiff drink. It wasn’t the first time I would see him hung over. Though it was not what I was looking for, the promise of free music in exchange for a few words of criticism seemed like a pretty decent deal to me, so I told him I would give it a try and I left the office with a Gary Clail disc in my portfolio case. It took some parental coaxing to convince me I could actually write about music, but once I got the hang of it, ...