Monthly Archives: February 2018

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Growing Old Gracefully Edition

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This morning I went downstairs to switch the laundry, and by the time I came back upstairs – three minutes, maximum – it was snowing again. Clearly, it has been a long, cold, snowy winter when the dusting of snow feels like a complete personal betrayal by the local meteorologists. This wasn’t in the forecast! I thought indignantly. What are they DOING to us? Oh, it’s been consistently so cold for so long – mornings in the windchill-factor-in-the-minus-twenties and afternoons in the minus-teens – that I cannot even envision a time in the future that will not be cold and snowy. And there are months left to go before winter can be, definitively, over. Meanwhile I have friends in the States who are discussing their crocuses and having to put on the air-conditioning, and I feel like saying something mean about their government before bursting into tears, which is a very lame and unproductive reaction because if there is one thing no one can control, it’s the weather, and complaining about it is futile. Also, it’s boring and depressing. So let’s move on!

What I really wanted to talk about today is the idea of Growing Old Gracefully. My friend Jeannette (HI JEANNETTE) put the thought into my head. There is a fine line, I think, between Growing Old Gracefully and Giving Up The Ghost. There is also a line, maybe a thicker one, between Growing Old Gracefully and Pulling Out All The Stops. I hope I am growing old(er) gracefully; I recognize there are some things that will never change, unless I Pull Out All The Stops and get botox or some kind of surgery, my face is on a One-Way Street To Wrinkletown. And that’s okay, but I would like to look a little bit less Crypt Keeper, and so I think a good moisturizer and eye cream are key.

I am also – as you know – not ready to embrace my Old Grey Mare Hair, yes, I know it’s in vogue and yes, I realize I could save a lot of time and money if I just let things go au naturel. I am not ready and frankly, I may never be. I have girlfriends who have gone the highlights-to-gradually-go-grey route, and while I think they look amazing – seriously, you should see my gorgeous friend Amy (HI AMY) – it’s just not for me. I spent almost four decades being a brunette, and now I am embracing my feisty redhead years. This era may last until I am in my grave. Or urn.

I really love beauty products and makeup, and I think it’s very important to be putting my best face forward. I don’t leave the house without makeup or without doing my hair, albeit sometimes the makeup is minimal and the hair is in a simple bun. I want to be clear that I do this for ME first and foremost. I feel my best when I look my best, and even when I’m just hanging out at home doing housework, I still like to ensure that my scrubby yoga pants are coordinated with my sweatshirt. I know not everyone will agree with me here, but I don’t feel like myself without making some effort to look nice.

I know that this is controversial as well, but I also – this is secondary but important – like to look good for my husband. It’s definitely not in vogue to say, as a woman, that you enjoy looking good to a man, but it is the truth for me. I like that my husband finds me attractive, but there is something else here too: he puts in an effort to look attractive for me as well. This is not to say that my husband has a specific SAY in the way I look – I wouldn’t, for example, cut my hair into a funky style if he thought it was a good idea. I also discount his opinion about clothes that I like and he doesn’t, as in this top:

I think this top is very cute and flowy, but he hates – HATES – it. He’s not alone; my friend Jen (HI JEN) thought it looked a little Halloween-ish, and my friend Liv (HI LIV) sweetly said that she doesn’t love it. But I do and will continue to wear it, husband’s preference aside.

This is a long, roundabout way of saying that I realized today that I haven’t written a Nicole’s Favourite Things in a long time, and I have many favourite things I would like to share with you, particularly since many of these things are inexpensive drugstore purchases that are, frankly, amazing. Just a little reminder that this is not sponsored, I have not been paid to review these products, and I bought them all myself at full (or store sale) price. Without further ado!

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Growing Old Gracefully Edition

My Hair Therapist

June will mark my sixteenth anniversary with my beloved Hair Therapist, and since I will have been married sixteen years next month, I think this is significant. She is a magician. As an example, please witness my latest “before:”

And the “after.” God, I love that woman. I also love car lighting.

She has me hooked on this Loma Fortifying Repairative Tonic that I massage into my hair before blow-drying. It only takes a drop, and it makes a huge difference in the health and texture of my hair.

Even Tone Moisturizers

One of the greatest marketing moves ever, in my humble opinion, was that of the Neutrogena shampoo. Remember how they would say that your hair gets used to shampoo and if you switch it up every once in a while by using Neutrogena shampoo your regular product will work better than ever. How brilliant is that? You don’t have to switch from the stuff you love, just use ours every two weeks and your experience will be better. Well, you have to admire that kind of marketing. I ran across this Neutrogena Rapid Tone Repair at the drugstore (okay, it was in the beauty section of Superstore) and I thought I would give it a try. I will tell you this: it’s amazing. For anyone who has an uneven skin tone, blotchiness, old scars, this is like a miracle cream. It’s also supposed to work on wrinkles which may be the case, but I’ve really mostly noticed it on my skin tone. This is a night cream; they have a day version but I’m waiting until I use up the Garnier Clearly Brighter before making the switch. I’ve been using the Garnier product for a while and it’s okay, but it sure hasn’t given results like the Neutrogena one has.

Eye Cream

If you have been reading this blog for any length of time, you will know that I have been searching for a good eye cream FOREVER. I have used Kiehl’s, Clinique, Dr. Brandt, and even, yes, Rodan and Field’s. I have not been overly happy with any of them; the difference is minor in my eye bags, and often by mid-day the creams have made my eye makeup run so I look even worse. I picked up Garnier Ultra-Lift Miracle Sleeping Cream on a whim; it wasn’t very expensive in comparison to the other things I’ve tried, and also it’s meant as a night cream. I was a little skeptical BECAUSE it was a night cream, but I tell you, people, this actually works. I look significantly less exhausted, even though I get the exact same amount of sleep every night. This is me this morning, in my harsh bathroom lighting. When I took this I would have been up almost six hours, after getting approximately six-and-a-half hours sleep.

Do I still have eye bags and wrinkles? Yes! But they are so much better than they used to be.

Side note: do you love that necklace? My sweet thirteen-year-old bought it for me when he was on his Quebec trip. He really couldn’t have chosen better, I don’t think. Bonus favourite thing!

BB Cream

I love BB cream and my go-to is either Smashbox Photo Ready or Garnier, which I’ve discussed in detail. However, when I go to the gym, I get really sweaty and my makeup runs, which I hate. Enter this new BB cream – it’s expensive, relatively speaking, so I only wear it on gym days – Garnier BB Light, which somehow, through magic and/or science, matches your skin tone. It doesn’t run even when I (brag alert) run 6.405 km in 40 minutes and get so sweaty the treadmill has drips on it.

Sweaty, yes, but the makeup is still there!

I had much more to talk about today – food that makes you glow and age well, nail products, the very best thing I’ve ever done for my hair health – but it will have to wait for another day! Until then, let me know if you have any products you swear by and what your feelings are about Growing Old Gracefully. I’d love to hear from you! xo

Three Dozen Reds

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I often get pitches in my inbox to feature Tips/ Products That Would Interest My Readers, and I could have the Pleasure of Writing About Them Free Of Charge, and, of course, these are not things that I do. However, on occasion something pops in my mailbox that I find myself enjoying so much that I HAVE to share.

In the weeks leading up to Valentine’s Day, I received a few pitches to write about romantic things like dealing with late-winter plumbing issues or the differences between water softeners and water filters, and are these people actually spying on me? Am I on camera right now?

But the email that really stood out was the one with the subject title “Eating Pizza In Bed Is Top Relationship Deal-Breaker!” I stared at that subject title for some time; I didn’t want to click on the email because I desperately wanted that to be true. The TOP relationship deal-breaker. Not incompatibility, not infidelity, not differences in managing personal finances. EATING PIZZA IN BED.

Sadly, I did click on the link and further, this was a relationship deal-breaker in terms of pizza eating, not the intricacies of human partnerships, and although it’s been some time since I was in the dating world, I can’t remember having any issues with how people eat pizza and how pizza consumption would affect my feelings towards them. Unless, I guess, that person shoved an entire piece in their mouth and proceeded to have a conversation while chewing, but that applies to any kind of food, not just pizza.

The other deal-breakers were listed as picking the cheese off the pizza, not eating the crust, asking for anchovies and/ or pineapple on the pizza, and eating pizza with a knife and fork. I plead guilty to the last one, because I am one step away from becoming Mr. Pitt, but we order pizza about once every two years, so it’s a pretty moot point. We have homemade make-your-own-pita-pizzas weekly, though, and I always use utensils; my husband still likes me so I think I’m okay.

But really, who eats pizza in bed? Who eats anything in bed? This might be my own personal thing but I like my bed free of food particles. Those duvet covers are a pain to wash and I don’t want to be dabbing remnants of pizza or anything else off of my pillows. I swear, even if I was a married lady on Downton Abbey, I would prefer to come down for breakfast rather than be served a tray, although if that was the case, someone else would be dealing with toast crumbs or Kashi cereal in the blankets. Still, it’s the principle of the thing.

I would kick ANYONE out of bed for eating crackers, make no mistake.

Years ago I read one of those click-bait articles that was titled something along the lines of “The One Thing Successful People Do Every Day” and that one thing was making their bed. I am a huge proponent of this and my kids have been making their own beds for many years, which apparently bodes well for their future successes. I literally don’t understand why people don’t make their beds – no judgments here, I just don’t understand. It takes less than two minutes, it looks neat and tidy, and at the end of the day, I want to get into a nice neat bed, not a jumble of sheets and blankets.

To me, THAT would be a deal-breaker, since I don’t think a non-bed-maker and a bed-maker could really live together in harmony. Although, now that I’m thinking about it, maybe they could make it work, not unlike a gardener-and-flower relationship. I mean, my husband deals with the fact that I cannot handle the TV turned up past a certain quiet volume, and I deal with him folding the tea towels in halves instead of in thirds, so who knows? We all have our relationship crosses to bear, I guess.

Well, this post certainly went a different direction than I had intended. I had intended to write about Valentine’s Day, and how some people place a lot of importance on it and others scorn it, and what happens when the twain meet? My friend and I were talking yesterday of Valentine’s Days Past; she worked in a grocery store and remembers hordes of men rushing in at 5:30 pm on The Day to buy crappy grocery flowers. I remembered one year visiting my parents in Palm Desert and my mom and I went shopping. I wanted to buy some bras at Victoria’s Secret – this was before the chain came to Canada – and the store was flooded with men, with crazed, desperate looks in their eyes. I didn’t make the connection until I realized it was February 14, and noticed the salesgirls had their hands full choosing probably inappropriate items and ringing up gift cards.

For me, Valentine’s Day is a nice excuse to make heart shaped baked goods – this year, a raspberry cake and sugar cookies – and to relentlessly tell my husband I choo-choo-choose him.

This year, though, he ordered me three cases of red wine, which is probably the greatest gift ever given in the history of mankind. Unless, I guess, it was four cases, but that seems excessive. I sent him texts with the bee emoticon so I am just going to say that I got the better end of the deal.

Happy belated Valentine’s Day, my friends. May your wine be rich and plentiful, and your pizza be delicious and eaten with a knife and fork at a table, just like god intended.

Bonus Barkley-on-a-snowy-day picture, just because I love you. In the spirit of Valentine’s Day (a day late!).

Theory of Behavioural Economics and How It Applies To Shopping Carts

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We are having a Winter Storm and Snow Event in Calgary today; there is so much snow and the roads are treacherous, so my class today was cancelled. I am enjoying the novelty of having a forced day at home; my husband even took the kids to school as the van was stuck in the garage. It’s kind of nice to have to slow down and just putter around, but it will be even nicer to get back to regular programming, as it were.

Yesterday I went to Superstore for groceries – Wednesdays are my Designated Superstore Days – and it appeared that the entire quadrant of the city was there, stocking up before the Big Storm. It was a tiny taste of what must happen when there is a big East Coast storm or a hurricane; I couldn’t believe the craziness at 11:00 in the morning on a Wednesday.

As I laboriously shoved my heavy cart through the snowy parking lot, putting all my weight into it with my torso nearly parallel to the ground, I recalled a conversation I had with Jake during the Christmas break. He had accompanied me to Superstore, a rare occurrence, and he wondered, in passing and in a very casual, making-conversation kind of way, why we had to put a loonie in to get a cart.

I’m sure that Jake didn’t realize that his casual musing would lead to a Can Opened Worms Everywhere situation, but that was the result. I told him that if people are forced to make a returnable deposit on something, then they will behave in a completely different manner than if there is no natural consequence to their actions, see also: bottle depots. Without an economic incentive, people rarely behave in a way that benefits society; I was this close to describing the Invisible Hand And How It Can Be Applied To Shopping Carts, but one only needs to spend thirty seconds in a Wal-Mart parking lot to examine this phenomenon.

Or Costco. Costco! The Costco parking lot is constantly the Land Of The Lost Carts, but a few weeks ago I was startled to see this:

What is the appropriate punishment for this crime? I mean, the least that could have been done was to do what every other lazy Costco shopper does when eschewing common courtesy and morality and shove it to the side, rather than blocking an entire coveted parking spot. I took the cart myself and at the end of my shopping, lovingly returned it to its corral, thinking you’re home now with your family, in a not at all unbalanced way.

A friend of mine gently pointed out that possibly that cart was left there for my use by a postpartum-y mama with other crying children in the car. Another friend said that perhaps there was an emergency or illness. Certainly, those things could be true. I am not a monster. I realize that there are extenuating circumstances that could result in a cart not returned to a corral; when I am at the Co-Op I always offer to return or take a cart when I see an elderly person leaving it to the side, and I even keep the passive-aggressive tone out of my voice. Here, let me take that for you. I offer to help new mothers and I take carts back myself, not – obviously – for the glory, but for my own Parking Lot Feng Shui.

It certainly can be the case that it is sometimes not physically or emotionally possible to return the cart, even if the person got the full cart that far, and pushing an empty cart is much easier, particularly, in this case, when there is a perfectly clear and dry parking lot. So, my compassionate and empathetic friends may be right.

However, I don’t think so. I think that this cart is just the most egregious example of a terrible epidemic of laziness and thoughtlessness, given that the entire parking lot was full of errant carts. In fact, I think that there were more carts outside of the corrals than in them, and there are, I should point out, corrals conveniently located in nearly every section of the parking lot. True, there may be a small number of people who are just unable, but those people are not even a patch on the giant quilt of non-returners.

I weep for humanity.

Interestingly, this has even been studied by anthropologists, which makes me feel better about my own weird obsession. My friend Simona (HI SIMONA) sent me this article, and what stands out is this quote:

I don’t return my carts on principle. Although I also don’t block parking spaces – I put them on islands and curbs. My assumption is that if the cart wrangler could get a better job, he would. So I’m doing my part to keep him gainfully employed.

This sentiment is gross. It reminds me of people who throw garbage on the floor of a theatre so that the janitors have a job to do, or people who make giant messes of sweater displays so that the salesgirls won’t be bored on the job. Why don’t we all just pee on the floor of public bathrooms so that the cleaner can keep busy, or throw trash out the window so convicts will be able to pick it up on their work-release programs? LET’S KEEP A LITTLE HUMANITY, HERE, PEOPLE. The cart wranglers STILL HAVE TO TAKE THE CARTS FROM THE CORRAL INTO THE STORE AND THAT IS NO SMALL JOB LET’S NOT MAKE IT HARDER ON THEM.

It reminds me of when I was a teenager and I had a job at Pizza Hut. The two managers, I can see them still: Tim, with his sandy, curly blond hair and tiny stature, and Dave, with his slicked-back black hair and sweat stains on his shirt. Both enjoyed a general asshole demeanor. Neither of them could have possibly been older than 28, but they were both getting Managerial Bonuses for running the Pizza Hut with minimum staff, so every weekend was a complete gong show that would result in customers reaming out the cashiers (me) for their pizza taking too long or their table not being cleared quickly enough. Every single weekend we would deal with complaints that sometimes made me cry with their vitriol – and yet, we were always short-staffed. One might say that the short-staffing meant that the teenage staff was gainfully employed, but it was awful nonetheless. Tim and Dave, you were terrible.

But this brings me to a question: why doesn’t Costco retrofit their carts to be coin-operated? You can bet, with the certainty of Adam Smith, that the carts would be returned and peace would return to the parking lot.

Once, Twice, Three Times An (Old) Lady

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It is Groundhog Day, so is it okay to say that this week has been Crazytown Bananapants, even though I started out my last post in that exact way? Yes? Okay.

Something happened yesterday that got me thinking; what I wanted to write about today is not the topic that I am about to embark on, so my Theory of Behavioural Economics As It Applies To Shopping Carts will have to wait until next time. There’s a teaser for you! I just like to keep things fresh, and my readers on the edge. Next time, I promise.

What I want to talk about today is Aging.

I’m going to come out and say it: aging does not bother me. For one thing, I would rather age than be dead, which is the only other option. Also, I think life becomes more interesting, colourful, and nuanced with experience and age. Sure, my roots may be grey for two out of five weeks, sure, I might feel like the Crypt Keeper some mornings, but in general, I think with age comes not only wisdom, but interesting experiences.

Side note: my friend (HI DENISE) told me that I’m actually very lucky to be so grey, because “granny grey” is the hottest new colour trend. I looked at her with extreme skepticism, but it turns out that she’s right. I should have known, she’s actually one of the most fashionable people I know, you should see her shoes, for the love of god. My hair therapist informed me that many, many girls and women are opting for granny grey, and honestly, who knew I was so in vogue? Certainly not me. But I am not ready for that step. It’s one thing to be a sweet young thing with stylish granny grey hair, it’s quite another for me. This is not unlike wearing knee-length, round collared, floral-print dresses; if you are of a certain age it might look cute and hip, but if I tried that, I would look like my own grandma wearing a housedress and would only require a pair of sensible shoes to complete the ensemble. Maybe a strategically-placed pin so as to ensure no possibility of cleavage would be revealed. And a slip.

Do women still wear slips? I remember it being a little risque, at least in my family circle, to not wear a slip. Does anyone wear a slip anymore? Do they even sell slips anymore, now that Sears is no longer in business? I have so many questions.

Another side note: I had brunch with a group of women that I hadn’t seen in eight years. Eight years! (HI LADIES) The years have been exceptionally kind to them; not one of them looked any different from what they looked like eight years ago. All of them retained their youthful, unlined faces. In particular, one of the women who shall remain nameless for the purposes of privacy but who knows who she is (HI) is turning fifty this year and she does not look a day – NOT ONE DAY – over thirty-five, with her dewy, glowing complexion. This is in comparison to me, one step away from becoming an apple doll. Jealousy is an ugly thing and yet, I cannot help but be envious, and to stock up on retinol.

Ah, vanity.

But something happened yesterday that made me feel older; older than not really knowing who anyone is who is featured in People magazine or on awards shows, older than having a discussion about arthritis with some of my students, older than realizing I am now dependent on my daily dose of special vegetarian glucosamine, older even than when I realized my friends looked the same as they did eight years ago and I, most assuredly, do not.

I got called “young lady.”

Now, it’s not like I don’t get called “young lady” often – after all, I spend a lot of time at the Co-Op, and older gentlemen often refer to me as such. But there is something very different about being called “young lady” by an octogenarian who is thanking me for moving my cart so he can reach the high-fibre bran cereal, and a fellow who is much, much younger than me.

Frankly, it made me feel like I was in the nursing home and a nice intern referred to me in that jokey way that people do when it comes to the elderly, as a “sweet young lady.” Or maybe in a would you like to be wheeled over to the arts and crafts room, young lady? We’re making macrame owls! kind of way.

Don’t get me wrong, I was not in any way offended by the greeting. I would never be offended by a kind and heartfelt greeting, which is what it was. And anyway, what’s the difference between that and being called “miss” when you’re clearly a “ma’am?” Or being called Senorita when you are obviously a Senora? Technically, there is no difference, and YET THERE IS. I cannot put my finger on it but the difference is as gaping as a plunging neckline in need of a pin, or maybe a nice brooch.