Today is the Monday of the Victoria Day long weekend, which is essentially meaningless to me.
But not for long! Tomorrow the boys go back to school, and I am so happy about it. They’ve been coping just fine over the past five weeks, but it just feels so unhealthy to have them sitting in their rooms, in front of their laptops, for hours each day. It feels unhealthy because it IS unhealthy, and I am just going to be grateful that at-home learning has been the exception for them, rather than the rule this school year. I really feel for parents of younger kids who need actual supervision with their schooling, particularly those who are trying to work from home or worse, having to go to work and figure out child care. What a mess.
Anyway, tomorrow we are back in business!
What a dreary week we have had. It started off so beautifully with sunshine and actual warm temperatures – what passes for heat, even, in this city – and then we got snow.
It’s melted now – and now it’s just raining – and I am happy to report my garden is just fine. Many years ago, when I first started gardening, I joined the Calgary Horticultural Society, which had a chat group. This was around 2000-01, so that was the height of internet communications at the time. Anyway, in this chat group there would always be that one person who would take great pride in growing plants and flowers that were not at all suited to Calgary’s climate, and it always seemed like a waste of effort to me. I mean, you do you, gardening lady, but for me, I think the key to successful gardening is to plant what actually thrives in your climate. In Calgary, if you plant flowers in May, you had better make sure they can take the snow and frost. For the record, the formerly snow-covered petunias and pansies are thriving.
There’s a metaphor in there somewhere.
Outfit of the Week
After a brief foray into the world of short sleeves, we are back to Sweater Weather! I think that it’s Sweater Weather in Calgary for at least ten months of the year, possibly eleven, depending on the weight of the sweater. So we are in Sweater Weather, but Light Sweater Weather, which brings us to the Outfit of the Week:
This is a typical teaching outfit – yoga pants and tank with a long sleeved top underneath a sweater. I always keep a long sleeve top on when I go to the community centre to teach as it’s cold there even when the heat IS working. Thanks to zoom yoga, I am a packhorse when I go: I take a speaker, an iPad, a block to hold up the iPad, and a bag of yoga blocks and straps. Since the heat debacle, I also now take a spare pair of legwarmers JUST IN CASE. Not pictured: my mat and my giant handbag that holds all my regular going-out-of-the-house stuff, plus a water bottle. It’s a workout just getting from the parking lot to the community centre.
I wanted to give you a close-up of the bags. They are just too cute. My friend Monique (HI MONIQUE) gave me the Babar Yoga bag, which holds all my blocks and straps, and the Everything Happens For A Riesling bag came from Tantalus Vineyards, which some of you may know is on the site of my husband’s family’s former vineyard and winery. My husband actually planted some of those Riesling vines that yield my favourite white wine, way back in the day.
Oh, and do you love that mala? I sure do. My friend Amy (HI AMY) made it and it’s so beautiful and meaningful to me.
Pandemic Reading
The upside of the return to snow and lack of gardening duties is that I had some extra time for reading this week, which is good, as I’m still working through my giant pile of library books and TWO MORE JUST CAME IN SOMEONE HELP ME I HAVE A PROBLEM.
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. This was a nice palate cleanser after the psychological trauma that was The Push. Nothing life-changing here, but it was a fun, old-timey Hollywood read about love, romance, and family. It was also a good reminder of how things have changed for the LBGTQ+ community; things can always improve, of course, but I have seen such a sweeping change in my lifetime, and I see how inclusive my teens and their circle are, and it gives me lots of hope for the future.
How the Penguins Saved Veronica. Oh, this was just delightful. What a lovely, sweet little book about a crusty octogenarian who is looking for someone to leave her millions to. She becomes interested in penguins and travels to Antarctica; along the way she connects with the grandson she didn’t know she had. Just an absolute sweetheart of a book.
The Last Thing He Told Me. I am not usually one to pick up mysteries, but this was very fun and absorbing. It was a bit of a complex story involving white collar crime, a secret past, and different kinds of love.
Oh, I loved this book! Eli is in a relationship with a woman his family considers inappropriate, so his mother arranges a marriage with Afi. Afi happily agrees to this as it will raise her widowed mother out of poverty; Afi leaves her village to live in luxury in the city. What she doesn’t realize is that the other relationship didn’t end and Eli has no intention of ending it. This was an absolutely fascinating book; the juxtaposition between rural, traditional Ghana and modern, urban Ghana is incredible. What a book!
Time to gear up for a week that’s sure to be exciting in the Boyhouse; hopefully with more sunshine than last week! xo
North is at school today, too. It’s their ninth day of in-person this year. They were one of those kids for whom remote didn’t work well. Their grades have been quite up and down, though good right now.
It’s cool and rainy here today, but we’ve had a few 90-degree days and North was complaining that it shouldn’t be 90 degrees in May, despite having lived their whole life in a place where there are almost always at least a few 90 degrees in May. It didn’t seem as if pointing this out would be helpful, though.
That’s how I feel – I’ve lived my whole life here, so it’s not like I don’t know snow in May is common! I am SO glad North is back at school. The mental/ emotional impact of being in school versus online school for my boys is huge, especially for J, who is a real extrovert.
5 weeks! Yikes. That is unreal, at this stage . . . well, I guess everyone’s ‘stage’ is relative. I agree, unhealthy to be staring at their screens for so long. AND snow? I can’t imagine.
I love Babar. So much. We had a cute VHS tape of Babar that my kids used to watch back in the day. We also checked out big Babar books from the library regularly. I also love Riesling, my favorite wine . . . so what I’m saying is: I have bag envy. This hauling everything with you reminds me of how I sometimes think I can hop in the car with my little charges in minutes flat. Oh . . . the gear and carrying the wee people to their car seats. I got out of the habit of taking them places during covid. Then when we left the house again, SHOCK.
I have not been reading much lately. Hoping pool season changes that. The outfit is super cute, as always. Hope you can ditch the sweaters soon though.
I think back to pre-pandemic, when we were all freaking out about kids and screen time. Now we are like “hey, let’s just have everything online!” It’s not healthy, but better than no social interaction at all, I guess.
You’re so right that it feels unhealthy to be sitting in front of screens all day because it IS unhealthy. I’m happy that your boys are getting back to something more like normal. Love your grocery bag. Nice thought about why everything happens! I’ve seen a couple of other readers mention the Penguins Veronica book. It sounds like a perfect read right about now. Will look for it.
It’s so sweet, just a nice light read. I hope you enjoy it!
Oh Nicole – the snow! How do you stand it? And with a smile!? Those bags are adorable!
I think I’m just used to it! That said, I dream of living somewhere warmer all the time š
I am always so delighted to see what you read, because you read so widely and in such a variety of genres (while I stick to mysteries, thrillers, and the occasional women’s lit fic). I should probably just search your archives, but did you read Eleanor Oliphant? I read it this weekend and it was… absorbing and amusing and terribly, terribly sad.
Your Riesling bag is amazing. A life motto for sure.
I have read Eleanor Oliphant and it was so good and so very sad!!
yay for IN SCHOOL learning. This will be a nice change for pace for all of you, I’m sure. Let us know how it goes.
I can’t believe you had snow. Again. I suppose you are used to that though; happy to know your flowers are thriving because YOU my friend are a planner.
Your outfit is adorable and I love the Riesling bag AND the fact that your husband planted some of the vines that you get to enjoy-it’s a full circle moment isn’t it?
Have a great day!
I am very used to snow, but man, it’s tiresome!
I THINK online school has been the exception here too, but at this point I’ve lost all ability to tell. Eve actually doesn’t see the point in going back to school now, mostly because senioritis has set in hard and she doesn’t want to do Calculus and English at all, much less get up at 7:30 rather than just rolling over in bed at 8:45. I think it would be good if she could set foot in the building once more before saying goodbye to it, but whatever happens will happen.
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo is one of the books going viral on TikTok. I only know this because Eve wanted some new books to read outside and we ordered some because she had seen them on TikTok. I just got the Penguins Veronica book ebook yesterday, looking forward to it.
Again, the bending to the will of your climate seems very reasonable, but my image of you is that you could stick anything in the ground and it would flourish, so maybe consider trying that some time, because I am almost certainly correct.
Oh! TikTok! That’s why everyone’s talking about it! It’s good. It’s middle-of-the-road, fun to read but not Life Changing.
You are the best, love you. xo