Monthly Archives: July 2020

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Sweat, Baby, Sweat Edition

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This is the truest statement I have ever seen. It’s this week! This week is summer! Celebrate!

Calgary gets approximately 5-10 days of warm weather per year – and by “warm,” I mean above 25 degrees Celsius – and those 5-10 days are not always consecutive. Once the temperature hits 25 – and let’s recall, people, that Calgary is essentially an urban desert and we don’t really get humidity – within hours people will be complaining about the heat. The one-to-two days that we get 30 degrees or over? You may as well have thrown the city into an actual inferno. Everyone is dying of the heat.

Not me, though, I love it. I’m sure our friends to the south – actually, our friends everywhere except maybe Iqaluit – are hysterically laughing at our definition of HEAT.

Anyway, summer is here! This week feels festive and holiday-ish, and so I’m doing things like switching up the weekly meal plan – enchiladas on a Tuesday! Pasta salad on a Wednesday! What’s next? Who knows! – and spending as many hours as I can outside.

Which brings me to…

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The “Sweat, Baby, Sweat” Edition

Deodorant

This cracks me up. I know a surprising number of people who either wear Tom of Maine-style deodorant or eschew it altogether, which, in my humble opinion, is the same thing.

I know, I know, aluminum, chemicals, etc., but I have a solution for you if you are not a fan of the antiperspirant/ traditional drugstore deodorant. Longtime readers will remember me talking about Routine Deodorant; it’s been in my Favourite Things several times over, it is made locally – in fact by a friendly acquaintance of mine whose kids went to my kids’ elementary school – and it honestly works. I remember when she used to sell her deodorant in the school playground; now it’s renowned internationally. I mean. How can you not be excited about something like that? I love when women I know really make a name for themselves; let’s celebrate and lift each other up and shine on, you crazy diamonds.

Anyway. Routine! For the most part, when I hear “natural deodorant,” I think “feral hippie,” but this is something that honestly works. My favourite scents are Whoa! Blackberry Betty and Cat Lady.

If you want to know if they REALLY work, this is what I look like after my workout:

Note the drips of sweat on the floor:

Can I just briefly tell you how much I love my new Peloton? I LOVE MY NEW PELOTON. I feel like I’ve joined a cult, I’m so excited about it. I just did a “70s Ride” and it was awesome.

After I took these photos I sniffed my own armpits, and they still smell lovely. ACTUALLY LOVELY. Plus, since it’s a deodorant it does not inhibit the actual sweat itself, which I like, and which feels healthier.

HOWEVER. Not always do I want to have soaking wet armpits. For example, when I’m teaching or otherwise around people (I mean, I might be around people sometime in the future?). In this case I have to shout out for Nivea Black and White. This is an actual antiperspirant, and it is the only one I have ever found in the last three and a half decades that does NOT leave white residue on my black clothing. Since I wear black clothing most days, this is important. I can also go for a walk in the “heat” of the day, in full sun, and still smell like actual flowers.

Skirts

All right, that’s probably enough about how I combat body odor. Onto clothing!

The last time I wore actual shorts for anything other than exercise – and even that is rare – was probably 1997 when I was super into crop tops and Daisy Duke-style denim shorts. That’s right, I rocked those.

Since then I’ve never found a pair of shorts that fits correctly, or looks good, or is comfortable. Sure, I could probably dig out those Daisy Dukes – and if you’re a short-short kind of gal, go you! – but honestly I feel like that ship has sailed. However, one cannot always wear pants. My go-to, then, is the kind of skirt that has little shorts built in underneath; I can do all my normal day-to-day activities without traumatizing my children/ people on the street who would rather not see a 45-year-old woman’s thong underwear.

This photo was taken two years ago in Vancouver. That skirt is one of my favourites. I buy them from Lululemon – I know, I know, haters going to hate but their stuff lasts forever, I have things still from 2007 that are still going strong – and for day-to-day purposes I buy them a size bigger and in the “tall” length. I am 5’7″ and I like to have a little extra length.

I do have one skirt that’s in my actual size and regular length, which I use for running on warm days. It makes me feel like I’m running in an actual tutu, which is quite motivational. Look at me, I’m a ballerina.

Yoga Mat Cover

If you practice yoga, and find your hands slip during downward dog, may I suggest a mat cover? I always practice with one, due to hand slippage, but also because it’s much easier to clean. Just throw the cover in the wash when it starts to get sweaty! I like the ones from Manduka or Lululemon that advertise that they get sticky when wet; they work the best, I think.

My early morning practice studio! A little squishy but it works.

Water

I drink an average of 3-4 litres of water a day, depending on my activity levels. That, along with my morning pot of coffee, makes for a lot of bathroom breaks, it’s true. However, I like to be hydrated and I find if I don’t drink that much water, I get headachy and bloated and tired.

An easy way to drink that much water is to have a pretty water bottle to drink from. This one is from S’Well, which maintains the water temperature for something insane like 24 hours. I prefer my water at room temperature, so I fill it with our not-cold water filter tap.

Anyway, isn’t it pretty?

White Wine

You all know I’m a big red wine drinker, but when the temperature goes above 25 degrees, and that happens on a Friday or Saturday, I break out the white wine. Well, sometimes I do. This is a shout-out to Tantalus, which I’ve talked about before, and if you are interested in my husband’s family history, go read this post.

Photo is from March, at the start of this pandemic. Ah, what a crazy four months it has been.

Well, that’s it for me. I am going out to enjoy the summer for the next three or four days that it lasts! Catch you on the flip, lovelies. xo

Leaning Out; Nineteen Weeks In

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I am at that weird point in the summer, but also in the pandemic, where I really struggle to know what day it is. The boys and I went for a fun little hike last Monday, and when I think about it, it seems like months ago. Thank god for blogs, because I have no concept if something happened in April or last week, and I find myself looking it up and being constantly surprised.

There was a worldwide Garmin outage due to hacking, and it really begs the question: if you do a physical activity, but your watch doesn’t track it, did it really happen? If you do not have a Garmin watch or similar, you might think – as I did, people, as I did, karma on every judgement every time – that such a question is ridiculous. However, millions of users, myself included, were all completely lost. Sure, there’s a global pandemic with millions sick and dying, there are terrible social injustices happening all around the world, there is massive government corruption and countries are all facing mind-boggling national debts and unemployment, small businesses are closing up while the Walmarts and Amazons are thriving. BUT WHAT ABOUT MY RUN, WILL IT BE RECORDED.

The boys were up at my parents’ for a few days, helping my dad with a few things, and my husband and I looked at each other across the table, wondering what day it was. It’s Wednesday, I said with great authority. I thought it was Thursday the whole day, he said. We stared at each other for a minute – it WAS Wednesday, but disconcerting as who really knows, time has lost all meaning and feels like a false construct – and then went back to our salads.

The boys paddling at 15 degrees and windy; they are pretty hardened to cold weather, but melt a little in warmer temperatures. Luckily, they live here.

As a digression, when my younger son was in kindergarten I often chatted with his little friend’s grandma, who cared for her granddaughter while her parents were at work. This woman was a real inspiration to me; so energetic and vibrant, and interesting to talk to. She was the woman who really pressed me to look into getting my varicose veins removed, saying that I was so young with so many years ahead of me, it was too much to go through life with pain that could be easily remedied. Longtime readers will remember that I did get them stripped; unfortunately, according to my doctor, I am a “very unusual case” as I have since developed NEW varicose veins, and I cannot have anything done with them as, well, no more veins can really be removed from my body.

ANYWAY. If you’re interested in varicose veins, by all means, go search my archives. The grandma, however, talked to me once about how one day the kids will leave home, and I would be sitting across from my husband at the table, and it would be like, “Oh, hello.”

At the time I couldn’t picture it at all; dinners were hectic and evenings were filled with reading stories and supervising baths and cutting up fruit for snacks before collapsing, exhausted, on the couch. It’s not like the kids haven’t been away before, far from it. But it occurred to me suddenly: it won’t be long until the table-set-for-two is the rule, not the exception.

Last week I finished the book Lean Out by Tara Henley, and if you haven’t read it, I really recommend it. It really resonated with me and what I’ve been thinking about these last few weeks – this whole pandemic, really. The books centres on the physical and mental health issues that stem from our culture of overwork, overscheduling, overdoing. Don’t get me wrong; I love to be busy and productive and to get things done, but there’s a limit. It’s something I have known for years: there has to be yin where there is yang. Otherwise, your body forces you to be yin; in other words, you become sick, exhausted, depleted. If you don’t take rest, your body takes it for you, and it is much less pleasant than just sitting and reading for a while.

I am writing this as my husband has been working nonstop, every single day since June 29, evenings, weekends, holidays. He’s on a big project and there is an end in sight, but it is making me nervous in terms of health. Hoo boy. Anyway, during this whole month – and the whole pandemic – we have gone for walks every single day and I think that’s the yin that’s going to save us all. I’ve watched the lawns and gardens in the neighbourhood go from snow covered to bleak to tiny-signs-of-life to full blown flowers and grass. One garden in particular is my favourite to look at, owing to the gorgeous flowers and also their enormous collection of garden gnomes and tchotchkes. I call it the Happy Yard, with all the smiling ceramic ladybugs and what have you.

My own garden is in full swing; the roses are as late as they have ever been, and – perhaps owing to the super-early frost and snow last year – none of the old wood greened up, so I had to prune it all back. IN JULY.

But this week, the first of the roses started blooming, and it felt like a little breath of hope.

Pandemic Reading

I was out running errands when I got a text from my husband to let me know the library had called, and that one of my holds was ready for pickup. He followed up that text with this: Stop ordering books. I don’t know why he said that.

So I have a few things to read. Anyway, I AM making my way through the pile; I read two other books in addition to Lean Out this week.

This is about the woman who wrote The Velveteen Rabbit and her child prodigy daughter, Pamela. Pamela was a famous artist at a young age, and like most geniuses, suffered mental illness. Probably this was exacerbated by the pressure she was under thanks to her exploitative dickwad of a father.

This book was interesting and disturbing; it was well done but I don’t know that I’d across-the-board recommend it. If you like bizarre internet stalker-type books, and very well done and interesting twists, this is for you.

Have a beautiful week, friends. It’s the last week of July! Just a reminder for those of you who – like me – are completely messed up in terms of time. xo

Be Thankful For What You Got; Eighteen Weeks In

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You guys, I have a new toy!

It’s a Peloton!

Me, six months ago: Those Peloton things are ridiculous. I mean, if you want to spin, go to spin class. Half the fun is being around other people!

Me, six weeks into global pandemic: Do we have room for a Peloton?

I probably should have known; it’s karma. Every single thing that I have ever judged in my life, even silently, especially silently, has come back to haunt me. This should be a lesson to us all. Judge not, or walk a mile in their shoes or any other pithy saying.

Anyway, the Peloton. I love it so much. I can now pretend I’m in a Peloton meme any day of the week.

In terms of having ROOM for the Peloton, well. There was much rejigging and reorganizing of the home gym, and I feel like we literally cannot fit anything more in this house.

The book I read a few weeks ago, Success and Luck, talked about housing sizes and how they have increased enormously relative to real median incomes over the past fifty years. I live in a 1960s bungalow; it’s 1100 square feet on the main floor, with a finished basement of the same. If you popped my great-grandparents, immigrants from Norway and Scotland who lived on the prairies farming, into my house, I am sure it would seem very large and luxurious. But yet this same house might feel unsatisfying to someone today, someone used to ensuite jetted tubs and guest suites and those ubiquitous “bonus rooms.” Do not get me wrong, I love my house. It’s home and I love it very much, but let’s think about how our ideas of a modest house have changed, even since growing up in the 1980s.

It’s interesting to me because I think as time goes by we are collectively going to want a simpler life. A number of friends have whispered to me that secretly, they have been enjoying the slower pace of quarantine life, that really, they don’t miss the hustle and bustle and constant go go go. Late night ice times, early morning swim times, weekends devoted to meets and tournaments and evenings spent in the car, driving to activities, scarfing down whatever sandwich or take-out was available on the way to activities. It’s not a healthy way to spend a life and I think we are all collectively discovering this.

For me, my days used to be spent driving to and from different studios, squeezing in the demands of the household and quickly walking the dog and running to get groceries, wondering if I have time to fold laundry between classes, timing my day down to the minute, always going. I would have never, ever taken the time to walk around the neighbourhood for an hour, and now I do that daily.

I guess what I’m saying is that if anything comes out of this, I think it should be that we take time to examine all the optional things in our lives, to see if they are actually serving us in a way that is healthy and smart.

Friday will mark exactly 14 months since my hip injury, the injury that meant I couldn’t walk without considerable pain – in fact it was months before I could walk without a limp – and I thought my running days were over. I was talking to a friend about adversity, and how we come through it with a new understanding, a new peace, a new appreciation for everything we have.

When I injured my hip, while going through my yoga practice I could not transition between downward dog and warrior 1. I could bring my foot forward but I couldn’t take my hands off the ground; it was far too painful and felt impossible. Now when I go through my sun salutations, every single time I do that transition, I send “thank you” thoughts to my legs and hips. Thank you for holding me up. Thank you for healing and being strong.

As women, we are conditioned to be unhappy with our bodies. I wonder if this is connected somehow to the constant pressure to always push more, to go more, to do more. We are conditioned to disconnect from what our bodies need, and instead we punish them. I bet if you asked a million women, only one would say she was truly happy with her body. There would be women dissatisfied with the size of their thighs, the shape of their butts, their stomachs. But really, our bodies are incredible and deserve our love and gratitude.

I was thinking that this week when I was hiking with my friend Taryn (HI TARYN), how last summer I could not have taken this 16 km hike with lots of elevation, not without considerable pain, anyway. Thank you, body. Thank you, legs. Thank you, hips.

Taking the time to enjoy nature, to not be always worrying about the next thing – if this is what comes out of the pandemic for me, then I’m happy.

Pandemic Reading

I finished two books this week, Primates of Park Avenue is a re-read but it’s really excellent look into a whole different world. If we want to discuss relative wealth and happiness, well. It is worthwhile and fascinating.

Eleanor and Park was recommended to me by my dear friend Allison (HI ALLISON) and I finally read it and understood the hype. It’s great!

The library is open now and god help me, I need an intervention.

Have a beautiful week, my beautiful friends. Be kind to yourselves. xo

Lots of Adventures; Seventeen Weeks In

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Dental Adventure

I had a dental cleaning scheduled for Monday afternoon and I was a bit nervous, due to the thought of having someone’s hands in my open mouth but you know what, all my nerves evaporated when the hygienist came into the room in full hazmat gear. Mask, face shield, hair covered, medical gown over all her clothes, and gloves.

Apparently there are “Marches To Unmask” going on around the country, and I keep reminding myself that it is very bad karma, very bad karma indeed, to wish ill on the participants, especially to wish a deadly Covid outbreak that would occur as a result of those marches. Bad karma, and therefore I am NOT wishing it to happen.

It is also wrong and bad karma to I hope a giant anvil drops from the sky and squashes every single marcher. However, if my dental hygienist can cheerfully don a hazmat suit every time she cleans someone’s teeth, certainly we can all put on a mask to get groceries.

I’m really leaning into the pretty mask thing; it’s taking all of my willpower not to order a different mask for every day of the week. There are so many cute ones to choose from! Lean in! Make it work! Match it with your outfit! They really bring out your eyes.

Costco Adventure

Speaking of groceries, the exciting news in my life is that there are no longer lineups to get into Costco. In fact, last week I went to Costco and Superstore and a) almost everyone was masked, particularly in Costco where they give you masks at the door if you do not have your own (super cute and outfit-matching one), b) there were no shortages of anything that I could see or was shopping for, and c) I am finally getting back joy in grocery shopping. It no longer feels like a grim and possibly deadly task; it feels like the happy, food-obtaining job that I have long enjoyed.

Friend Adventures

We saw our dear friends, who are more like chosen family (HI GUYS) this week for the first time since February, and it felt joyful and wonderful and almost normal. Well, except I wasn’t able to hug them; god, I miss hugging. The book I just finished reading talks about the importance of touch to our physical and mental health, and there was some study done about the optimal number of hugs a day; my family is getting the brunt of my unspent hugs. HUG MEEEEEE.

I also saw my dear friend Lyn (HI LYN) for the first time in a long while, and she is NOT a hugger, so I am sure she’s getting joy out of not being physically affectionately attacked by me.

Actual Mountain Adventure

I went on a beautiful hike with my very good friend Janet (HI JANET); we went to Lake Louise and hiked the Plain of the Six Glaciers, along with a little detour up to Lake Agnes, for a total of about sixteen kilometres and lots of elevation. It was an adventure; there had been a snowslide across the path and we had to go over it, discovering after the fact that it was completely hollowed out underneath. Oops. At the Glacier Lookout, there is an outhouse, and when I was using it I heard a great loud noise and felt a lot of wind. This was the culprit:

If you’ve ever wondered how they empty outhouses in remote mountain locations, wonder no more!

If you don’t strike a yoga pose when you are hiking in the mountains, are you even a yoga teacher?

Lake Louise is usually chock full of tourists at any given time, but the cold drizzly morning, and our early start, meant I actually was able to get a people-free photo.

The top of that mountain, the Big Beehive, is where my husband proposed to me, lo these many years ago. Aww! Shmoopy.

Pandemic Reading Adventure

You guys, the library is open, not just for curbside hold pickups, but actually open! I think I need an intervention:

I read a real variety of books this week, variety being the spice of life, etc.

Suzanne (HI SUZANNE) recommended this as a fun, light read, and it really was. Fun fact: the wardrobe budget for Clueless was only $200,000 – think of all the costumes! – and so they thrifted or made all the clothing in the show. Another fun fact: the actor who holds Cher up by gunpoint was essentially called an hour before to get the job. The original actor was being a dick about getting to the set for the call time so they fired him and just started phoning random actors they knew to play the part that afternoon. Remember my last post and all the talk about luck and timing?

This is the last of the Lives of the Saints trilogy; you may recall that I LOVED Lives of the Saints, but the second book I actively loathed. Why would I even bother reading the third, you may ask? Well. It’s a trilogy. I kind of had to. You get me. Anyway, it was not as good as the first but much better than the second, and because it’s Nino Ricci there is a gross, disturbing, and frankly disgusting plot line. However, I’m still glad I read it. I had to finish the trilogy, don’t judge.

My lovely friend Twyla (HI TWYLA) recommended this to me; with this type of book, I take what I need and leave the rest. I mean, I’m not going to stop using shampoo, drinking coffee, wearing a bra, or vaccinating. I’m highly unlikely to start smudging with sage or burning salts. But here’s the thing: I am a big fan of modern medicine, I love modern medicine, but I also am a huge proponent of complementary and preventative medicine; I truly believe in mind-body connections and that negative thoughts and the inability to forgive and let go can be toxic. If we have learned nothing else from Star Wars, it’s that anger and hatred lead to death. Well, everything leads to death, probability of death equals 1, we are all on a journey to savasana, but it would be nice if that journey was as long and as healthy as possible. Anyway, what I really liked about this book was the theme of self-love and self-care, and to practice loving-kindness towards yourself first, and also to others. What we send out in the world is an echo, and it comes back to you. It’s all about karma!

On that note, I am sending you all thoughts of loving-kindness, I hope you have a week full of wonderful adventures and much joy. xo

Luck Be A Lady; Sixteen Weeks In

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This past week, among other things, I read a book recommended to me by an old grad school friend called Success and Luck. As the title suggests, it explores the role luck plays in individual – and collective – success, success being defined here as the financial or economic type. Yes, there are many definitions of success in the world, it’s not all about the money, we could talk for days about how we measure material success but there are other WAYS to define success, I know, I know, but the book is written by an economist, was referred to me by an economist, and hell, I AM an economist, technically, although I haven’t worked in that field for many years.

Anyway, the role of luck is something I think about often, and so this book was fascinating to me. Every single job I’ve ever gotten has had an element of luck and timing to it, and each one of those jobs – from my very first as a library page to my job as a quantitative analyst on a natural gas trading floor to my job as a yoga teacher – has shaped my life. I am qualified, hard-working, and smart, but so are many people; luck and timing have so much to do with everything. The book wrote about actors who ALMOST didn’t get the parts that essentially made their careers: Al Pacino as Michael Corleone, Bryan Cranston as Walter White. Where would they be without those roles? Al Pacino could have landed minor supporting roles to supplement waiting tables, Bryan Cranston would have gone down in history as the guy who played the dad on Malcolm in the Middle.

But jobs aside, sometimes I will think of things that have happened in my life that almost DIDN’T happen, and how that would have changed everything. It’s like that urban myth of someone stepping off the sidewalk and suddenly a car careens into that spot; if that person hadn’t stepped off the sidewalk they would be dead. A butterfly flaps its wings and an earthquake occurs.

So much of our lives depend on things that happened before we were born; WHERE we were born, for example, and who to, and who they were born to, and so one ad infinitum. Of course we can make our own choices, and to some very limited extent, our own luck, but the world is a rich tapestry, people, and I can’t stop thinking about it.

Speaking of which, my husband recently saw the movie Into the Wild, and is now reading the Jon Krakauer book of the same name. Have you heard of this? A young man from a very intellectual and wealthy family leaves everything, burns his identification, and without telling any of his family members, changes his name to travel across the States, ultimately landing in Alaska, where he starves to death. Hoo boy. There are so many things about this story that bother me no end: the man wants to live off the land, essentially, and just be one with nature. Thoreau-like, if you will, except as we all know, Thoreau’s mother was always leaving him food and doing his laundry, and his little cabin in the woods was owned by a friend, and in fact Thoreau himself benefitted much from aid from friends and family. It’s funny how our baser needs must be taken care of before we can reach these higher intellectual achievements, and we could talk forever about how women have supported men in those achievements but it doesn’t typically work the other way around, a room of our own, a woman’s work is never done, et cetera, but let’s return to the story at hand before I digress too much.

Anyway, this man who died in Alaska: it turns out that he was about thirty- five kilometres away from the nearest town, that’s ALL. When he finally figured out that living in an abandoned bus, completely unprepared, with no food and no axe and no common sense, wasn’t what he wanted to do, when he figured out that being around other people is actually a good thing, he wasn’t able to cross the river that, three months earlier, had been largely frozen over and not swollen with snowmelt runoff. However, if he had explored less than two kilometres in either direction, he would have found places to cross, where he could have eventually made it back to the highway and, probably, not starved to death. There would have been no story, other people who died trying to find the old abandoned bus after the story became popular would still be alive, Sean Penn would have had one less movie under his directorial bibliography. A butterfly flaps its wings.

Pandemic Reading

Someone had recommended Conviction to me; I cannot remember who it was but I want to thank them. Not my usual type of book but I enjoyed it very much.

If you are looking for a cute, predictable, fluffy romance, this series is for you! It’s nice to just enjoy mind candy once in a while.

Late to the party but I can see why this was so popular. What a well-written and wonderful book. Talk about the role of luck and fortune; this book is full of it.

Pandemic Fitness

This weekend I got on my bike for the first time since last summer, and went riding with my older son. Things were a little muddy due to the torrential rains we have been having, but that just added to the fun.

Case in point: the boys and I went on a little Canada Day hike/ walk to the natural area near our house; it was awesome, yes, but we probably should have brought raincoats, looking at the sky. The heavens opened on us on our way home, and we were absolutely soaked.

Speaking of Canada Day, I will leave you with a photo of Barkley, festively dressed for the occasion.

Have a beautiful week! Here’s to being lucky. xo