Monthly Archives: October 2018

Hashtag: No Filter

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On the weekend the guys put up some – but, thankfully, not all – of our outdoor Halloween decorations, mainly the smaller items that hang from our eaves and our big Mayday tree: bats, spiders, corpses, and the like. Cheerful things, you know. Remember the giant snowfall from a few weeks ago? The arborist we had hired was supposed to work on our large trees, but because of the snowy circumstances his team was running a few weeks behind. Yesterday they came to prune the trees and naturally had to move our spooky decor out of the way. I’m not sure I love what they did with the skeleton who was attached to the Mayday:

I think I would have preferred having Mr. Bones facing away from the window. As it is, I feel watched.

Speaking of which, the other day I was walking Barkley and it occurred to me – not for the first time – that I am exceedingly grateful for many things, but particularly that I am not a celebrity. It’s not that I dislike the spotlight – quite the contrary – nor is it that I would turn down the material rewards that often accompany celebrity status. Sidebar: did you know that Sofia Vergara is the highest paid TV actress at $42.5 million? I would not turn that down. When discussing the big lottery that happened last week with friends, I realized that they are all much, much better people than I am, judging from their I would establish affordable housing/ a recovery centres/ free daycare for teen moms wish list. Is it bad that my first thought was that I’d move away from Planet Hoth and buy a tiara? Yes, of course I would do much good with that money too, there are many causes dear to my heart. But first on the list: a tropical home and a tiara.

Back to the original point: I am glad that Girl in a Boy House has not attained celebrity status for the simple reason that I would not want to be followed by paparazzi. Sure, it would be fine if they were following me to, say, yoga class, or even on one of my many trips to the grocery store, although if I was a celebrity I would likely have a grocery store person. I would not, most emphatically, want to be followed on my dog walks, because I am a complete idiot when I speak to my dog. He has a disgusting tendency to eat discarded tissues from the sidewalk. I know! He’s been doing it since he was a puppy and realized that discarded tissues were the one thing that I wouldn’t remove from his mouth on our walks. Discarded. Tissues. First of all, WHO are these people who use a tissue and then THROW IT ON THE SIDEWALK? You people are appalling! Put the used tissue in your pocket like a normal person and then throw it in a garbage can when possible! And while I’m on the topic, people who buy chicken wings from 7-11 and then throw the bones on the ground for every Spot, Rover, and Barkley to pick up are also the worst. Listen, I realize that you must be very drunk to be walking around the neighbourhood eating chicken wings from 7-11, but won’t someone think of the doggies?

Anyway, the other day I was walking with Barkley and every time I noticed a tissue I said sternly, “LEAVE IT” and when he did, I praised him like there was no tomorrow. Who’s a good boy! You’re a good boy! Yes you are! Yes you are! Who’s a good doggy? Barkley’s a good doggy! Yes he is! As I was speaking like this for the fifth or sixth time on the walk, I realized that there was someone walking behind me. They passed me with a sideways glance and I felt, not for the first time, that conversations between myself and the dog, one-sided though they might be, would be terrible if recorded for the public.

It’s a good thing I’m not a reality star.

The excessive praise thing does seem to be working, although we came across a dead magpie on the sidewalk, a really gross crushed corpse of a bird, and I immediately screamed “LEAVE IT!” to which Barkley responded by quickly snatching a nearby tissue and eating it. I was too deflated to scold him.

Paparazzi recording conversations would be one thing, but another would be the unflattering candid photos. We are used to seeing our celebrities photoshopped and filtered within an inch of their lives, which is also what things look like on Instagram. Then, when a candid photo shows up – or when we see someone in person – we are all shocked. What stars look like with no makeup! How So-and-So has let herself go! Best and worst beach bodies! I was speaking with a friend about this today (HI JAN) about how we might compare our own faces to those of our counterparts, and how THEIR Instagrammed youthful glow and smooth skin might make us wonder where we went wrong in our skin-care regimes. I have said it before and I will say it again: I am emphatically anti-filter. The more we look at filtered photos, the more we get a distorted view of what people actually look like.

I swear, Instagram filters are the social media equivalent of a facelift, except that when you see people in real life, they don’t look like their photos. Let’s all agree to just embrace our faces the way they are, wrinkles, uneven skin tone, and all. By all means, use good lighting and makeup and what have you for your photos, if that’s your jam, but filters that make you look twenty years younger than your counterparts are just…depressing. For the good of society, let’s stop with the filters!

Social media is where we get the idea that everyone is living this perfect life, except for ourselves. We see cute pictures of dogs, without the background information that the dogs are eating tissues off the street. We see good hair days:

But we don’t see what happens before the good hair days:

(does anyone else blow-dry their hair upside-down for extra volume?)

We see smiling faces and perfected makeup:

But we don’t see the hot messes we are first thing in the morning.

Those two photos were taken in the exact same spot, two hours apart.

To you I say, you are beautiful just the way you are. No need for filters.

Yard-work fashion on point

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I admit that I’m very surprised that several of you have tried growing your own cilantro with no success, for the reason that I have had very little success with other herbs, but for me cilantro grows like a weed. Is it the super-dry climate I live in? Is it my basement grow-op that is never warmer than twenty degrees, and is frequently as low as 14 degrees in the winter? Is it the extreme love I put into it? No, the latter can’t be true – I’m sure you all were beaming your hearts like Care Bears at your own cilantro seeds.

Honestly, I can’t explain it. The only other herb that I’ve had any success with – and “success” is very loosely defined here – is basil, and even that was finicky and difficult and never amounted to much. Cilantro though! Here is my current crop:

And here is the set-up, from a distance:

I have two sets, and one I allow to lay fallow, like I’m an actual farmer. Then when my cilantro plants are at the end of their little life spans, I plant the other set so that I can smoothly dovetail between old cilantro and new sprouts and so that I am never – save for this summer’s incident – without.

Anyone still here? I didn’t really come here to talk about cilantro, although I COULD. I could talk about cilantro all day long. I could also talk about how happy I am that the snow is melted and we are suddenly into FALL, like an actual autumnal season that people in normal climates have. Who knows how long it will last, and so carpe diem, carpe diem all damn day. I’m just thrilled not to be wading through the snow for a few weeks. I managed to rake up the still-soggy leaves and I had enough spring in my step to make my sole contribution to Halloween decorating:

Aren’t they the most perfect pumpkins? This weekend the house will be transformed into something haunted, but it won’t be me doing the work.

What I really wanted to talk about today is current fashion, specifically one facet of current fashion: ripped denim. About a month ago I was at the mall shopping for a birthday gift for my dad, which was notable in itself as this was well in advance of my dad’s actual birthday. For some reason, I am usually scrambling at the last minute, like my dad celebrates on a lunar calendar and it is not actually the same date year after year.

Small digression: my dad is fantastic to shop for. He is the kind of gift recipient who immediately incorporates the gift into his life to show his appreciation, which I in turn appreciate very much. His gifts from me are strictly in three categories: shirts, golf balls, and aftershave, and I cycle through those categories throughout the year.

Another small digression: the last time I bought him aftershave, the woman at the counter – despite my clearly stating that I was shopping for my father – kept trying to steer me towards all sorts of pheromone-type sexy aftershaves with names like SEXUAL and similar. Lady, I am shopping for my DAD. I will leave the pheromones to my mom, thank you very much.

Back to the story at hand. I was in the Bay – an excellent dad-place – and I noticed a clearance rack of ladies’ clothing. I am not made of steel, and so I took a peek. This is what I found:

Further down the aisle:

I would have LOVED those when I was the age my own kids are now.

“I hate milennials!” my 14-year-old said to me just yesterday, and when I reminded him that he himself would be considered such, he replied, “I know, but still, we are terrible.” I was laughing so much I didn’t even get the context in which this statement was made. Note: I do not share this opinion, mostly because I do not like making sweeping statements about entire groups of people. Also, to quote my dad, we shouldn’t HATE anyone.

However, kids these days do have a lot of things easier than we did, that’s for sure. For one thing, google. If you wanted to know the primary export of Argentina or the capital city of Ethiopia or Tom Cruise’s height or the calories in a Reece’s Pieces Blizzard, you had to either a) look it up in the Encyclopedia Brittanica, which your parents had purchased volume by volume, b) hope for a Tom Cruise expose while paging through your mom’s copy of Star magazine, c) buy one of those calorie counting books and hope for the best, or d) spend time in the reference section of the library.

When I was in university, I had an actual preference between microfilm and microfiche.

Now, all kids have to do is grab their phones and google things. They don’t know what a busy signal is, they can shop for literally anything they want online, and, these days, they can buy their denim pre-shredded.

Back in MY day, if you wanted ripped denim – and who didn’t? – you had to do it yourself. There was none of those artful tears and frays that are sold at a premium. Back in MY day, we took scissors to our jeans and spent hours fraying them so it looked natural, and we LIKED it that way. Goddammit.

I am not one to revisit my youth, particularly in terms of style – BEEN THERE, DONE THAT – but this week as I was raking leaves I considered my yard-work outfit: old Skechers that have flowers on them (my special garden shoes!), my old Goodnight Moon t-shirt that I bought for Blissdom 2013, and these:

Look! I’m on point, fashion wise! This is what happens when you have the same jeans for six years. I earned that! Kids these days, sheesh.

Spoiled

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It occurred to me yesterday, as I was baking muffins at 6:30 in the morning, that my children are exceedingly spoiled. I might go so far as to say that my husband is, as well. Of course, anyone who knows me would think that is probably a rich statement, coming from such a princess, but just because I am incredibly spoiled doesn’t preclude my family being so as well.

There is a difference, I think, in being spoiled and being a spoiled brat, and I will say that the latter is not the case. And, as one of my students said to me as I mentioned that my dog has become much more spoiled with age, that is on me. It’s true! It’s my fault. I don’t really think the kids are spoiled in terms of material things, not really, but they certainly are in terms of food. Hence, muffins at 6:30 in the morning, so that the kids will be able to have a delicious homemade snack when they get home from school.

Delicious homemade snacks and fresh fruit are my two must-have-at-all-time-items, which certainly explains why all my free time is spent grocery shopping and preparing food. I was just telling a friend that I have two refrigerators and one refrigerator-sized freezer, and all of those appliances are chock-full of food all the time. Doesn’t food go bad though? she asked, and no. Nothing goes bad in our house, ever, with the exception of the odd mini-cucumber. This is because we never go out to eat, and I make all our meals, and most things, from scratch.

Side note: whenever I say I make something from scratch, I think of my beloved late Grandma Fern, who used to say about cakes allegedly made from scratch, Scratch your ass and reach for the mix? Oh, Grandma. I was a little skeptical about Hedy’s spice cake at the church potluck too.

Anyway, I do make most things from scratch – no ass-scratching involved – and so now my family is so accustomed to homemade things that store-bought or restaurant items “taste weird.” This includes but is not limited to: ice cream, muffins, loaves, cookies, cakes, brownies, pasta sauce, and, strangely, hummus. It is a problem of my own making but sometimes I’d just like to buy a container of hummus from Costco without everyone wondering what’s wrong with this hummus, it tastes weird. 

ICE CREAM, you guys. A few years ago my husband bought me an ice cream maker, after we were at a dinner party at which the hostess served her own homemade ice cream. One thing led to another and now I have no fewer than three flavours of homemade ice cream in the freezer at any given time. And I don’t even eat ice cream! But I digress.

I am not one to talk, though, as I recently discovered my own “it tastes weird” scenario and that is store-bought cilantro. A few years ago, as a Valentine’s gift, my husband bought me my own indoor grow lights so I can grow HERBS NOT THAT KIND OF HERBS ACTUAL FOOD HERBS. I almost exclusively grow cilantro because a) it’s easy to grow and b) no one else in my house will eat cilantro, and I hated how quickly a bunch would go bad in my refrigerator. The only thing I will accept going bad is the single mini-cucumber every two weeks. So, for the past few years I’ve grown my own cilantro, loving how I can just easily harvest the exact amount I need when I need it.

Over the summer, though, we were out of town and so I took a cilantro-planting break. I didn’t feel I’d be around enough to give my little plants love, and also I am deathly afraid of fire and wouldn’t want to leave the grow lights on lest a cilantro plant weave its way into the fluorescent lights, dry out, and suddenly burst into flames, eventually leaving the house to be a smoking hole in the ground while we were off on vacation.

My two greatest fears in life are, in this order, my husband and/or children being diagnosed with a terminal illness, and fire. I cannot even contemplate having little scented candles in the house, I will never run the dryer if I’m going to step out of the house for even five minutes, and I look nervously at the allegedly harmless little tea lights that are lit in the yoga studio. What if someone knocks it over, and the whole studio goes up in flames? I think, extremely irrationally, given that the tea light would most likely just extinguish itself before such a scenario would ever happen. I even was anxious during Christmas Eve candlelight services, although that fear I think has much more basis. I mean, some of those little kids holding actual flames? What if one of them set my hair on fire? I would think, as a teenager. Given the fact that it was the eighties, and I went through a bottle of Salon Selectives a week, this was a pretty rational fear.

When I was a kid my maternal grandparents had a lamp that rotated, and when it was lit, it looked like a forest fire. A forest fire! God help me. No wonder I’m so crazy. I was obsessed with looking at the forest fire lamp, which probably explains a lot.

Anyway! Enough about fire. Back to the cilantro story. When we returned from vacation, I replanted some seeds, but in the interim, as I waited for them to sprout their little green deliciousness, I needed my favourite stir-fry garnish and so purchased a bunch from the local Co-Op.

People. I thought I had actually bought the wrong herb. It tasted…weird. Is this parsley? Or what? I thought, then looked at the little labeled twist tie. No. It’s cilantro. It tasted weird and off and I thought it must be the bunch. I threw it out – breaking my own rules – and bought another bunch at Superstore. I looked carefully – yes, it definitely is cilantro – and when I got it home it was the same thing. I have spoiled MYSELF for regular cilantro. After growing my own I cannot go back to conventionally grown cilantro. I can’t. I won’t. No wonder my kids look askance at bakery goods and regular ice cream. IT ALL TASTES WEIRD.

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Thankful Edition (sort of)

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Yesterday I learned that it was National CB Radio Day – 10/4! That was a cheering discovery, and if I was a trucker in the 1970s, my handle would be Red Pepper.

Speaking of which, it’s funny; the song Personal Jesus by Depeche Mode, a song I listened to and enjoyed back in 1990 or so, has come on the radio every single time I have gotten into the car in the past week. Every single time. Is it enjoying a resurgence in popularity? I am sure I haven’t really heard it much at all since the early nineties, yet, here we are. Did all the radio stations suddenly collaborate to pull it out of obscurity? A few years ago I witnessed a similar phenomenon with I Just Came Back To Say Goodbye, which is a terrible song to have going in a loop in one’s head. It’s even worse than Your own. Personal. Jesus. Someone to hear your prayers. Someone who cares. over and over.

I have felt like I needed my own personal Jesus in the past few days, mostly because of this:

That was my backyard first thing Tuesday morning, and then about six hours later it looked like this:

I stopped measuring after we hit twelve inches, because I only have a foot-long ruler, and I didn’t think the measuring tape would work.

I’m not going to complain about the weather, I’m not going to complain about the weather, we can’t control the weather, we can only control our own reaction to the weather…I kept up with this mantra over and over, even while I wondered why I live in actual frozen hell. Complaining about the weather is very boring, not to mention depressing, and weather talk in general is only interesting to those directly affected, and so while I’m sure you would all be fascinated by my dog walk that featured snow-laden branches completely giving way and dumping snow all over me not once, not twice, but five times in a thirty-minute walk, and how I actually calculated the calories burned by shoveling snow that felt like it was 100 pounds per square foot, I will abstain. Sort of.

It’s almost Thanksgiving! This is as early as it can possibly be, and I really do want to take the time to be mindful and thankful, even while I am completely depressed about the fact that I live on Planet Hoth and all of my frozen plants are covered in snow and probably will be for the next nine months. That was not being mindful and thankful, Nicole.

Positive thoughts! Positive thoughts! Let’s segue into Nicole’s Favourite Things, shall we! I missed September, so will smoothly combine it with Thanksgiving which is, in my humble opinion, kind of a lame holiday. I dislike pie in general; pumpkin pie is particularly abhorrent to me. Even when I did eat meat, I never liked turkey dinner; as a plant-based person, it is now, how shall I put this, very un-fun. But it’s not all about the food, is it? Well, it kind of is. I do like the thought of being thankful for things, which is something we should do every day, and Thanksgiving gives us a good reason to remember all those things for which we are thankful. So, here we go!

Nicole’s Favourite Things, the Thanksgiving Edition

Leaves

I’m sure glad I took this photo last week, because those same shrubs are now sagging under the weight of the snow. Sorry! I can’t seem to stop complaining. But they are pretty, aren’t they?

Boy, those leaves are going to be a bitch to rake up. Moving on! Positive thoughts!

Apples

I know all of you people are all about the Honeycrisp, but for me, there is only one kind of apple, and that is the McIntosh. Have I mentioned this already? Yes, I have. Many times. But Macs are so good, they are the perfect texture and the perfect tartness and the perfect taste. My older son was begging, literally BEGGING me to make an apple pie, and although I consider it to be an abomination, and a grievous waste of the perfect fruit, I bought a few extra apples specifically to make pie.

I am not gifted in the “making baked goods look pretty” department, so this is as good as it gets, in terms of pie crust. I read the shortening box, and one suggestion was to roll out the crust between two pieces of waxed paper and WHY HAVEN’T I BEEN DOING THIS SINCE THE BEGINNING? What a game changer. I highly recommend it; it makes it so much easier to roll and to transfer into the pie plate, and it is so much less messy than cleaning up flour that gets scattered everywhere since the dough keeps sticking to everything.

By the way, do you like my apron? My parents brought it back for me from their recent trip to Scotland. My youngest niece calls aprons “cooker capes” and forever that is how I will think of them.

Pears

As much as I love apples, I love pears a teensy bit more. Their season is so short that our whole family ends up bingeing on pears for the few weeks that they are really good. I have been buying them in six-pound bags; the first one contained pears of all the same greenness, so they all ripened at exactly the same time. We were a family of pear bingers for a few days; the next bag I bought had a few that were almost-ripe, so things have smoothed out around here, pear-eating-wise.

Inhale Smoothies, Exhale Love

After my one-year shopping challenge finished, I wasn’t actually going to buy much of anything; I really do have a lot of clothes. But I saw this tank and I could not resist:

It’s like it was made for me! I do both of those things! I had to have it and it makes me happy every time I wear it.

This Sweater

One of the nice things – I guess? – about living on Planet Hoth is that I have a number of gorgeous, warm sweaters. This one I bought right after my shopping challenge ended – it was on clearance for TWELVE DOLLARS, PEOPLE. I love the way it looks! But it is NOT the most practical item, as the sleeves droop into everything while cooking or washing dishes or doing any of those household tasks that seem to take up a large percentage of my life.

Barkley is wondering what is UP with those sleeves.

Happy Thanksgiving, my friends. I hope you have many things to be thankful for this weekend. xo