Ups and Downs; Sixty-One Weeks In

Good News/ Bad News

The bad news is that, with the latest lockdown restrictions, lineups to get into Costco are back.

The good news is that I was there right at opening and so the lineup moved quite quickly, and, more importantly, there are no shortages of anything that I could see. The fact that there are no shortages, and there haven’t been for many months, has motivated me to use up all my stockpiled pantry staples in a way that is deeply uncomfortable for me. This week alone I used up the last of my stores of the following: spaghetti, chickpeas, and taco seasoning. That’s right: there are none of those items left in the house. I felt a little Pandemic At The Disco at using up the last two cans of chickpeas, but I did some deep breathing and reminded myself that I could simply buy more this week, there is no chickpea shortage, and there has never been a chickpea shortage. It’s a whole mindset change and I do not know how long it will take me to get over it.

What’s Up, Doc

Perishables, however, are another matter. If you have small children – particularly, it seems, boys – and you despair of their picky eating habits and you wonder if it’s okay that they seem to survive on air and the occasional strawberry yogurt, I am here to hug you and say: wait until the teen years. My god. Every Wednesday I find myself playing Tetris with my two fridges, using up every square inch of space as I put away the groceries, and then one week later, both fridges look like they belong to Old Mother Hubbard. This week I went to Costco AND Superstore, and after a solid three hours of driving, shopping, standing in line, unloading and putting everything away, I stood at the fridge for a moment and realized something: I forgot to buy carrots.

You may be thinking, so what, but let me tell you: carrots are right up there with bananas as a produce staple in this house. We go through four pounds of carrots a week, and buying carrots is a reflex for me, one that apparently was broken this week. I have no excuse; I bought sweet potatoes and ginger root, both of which are in the same aisle as the carrots. Carrots were, as they always are, on my paper grocery list. I didn’t know what happened but I did know that this could not stand.

But I’ve already been to two places today, I thought to myself. Then I thought of May (HI MAY) and her comment about measured decisions in a low-risk way that don’t totally abide by the rules does not mean we are on the slippery slope to anarchy. I put on my mask and boots, grabbed my purse, started my Garmin, and speed-walked over to the local Co-Op where I grabbed a bag of carrots and an avocado (I am not made of stone, Co-Op avocados are second to none) and walked back home, all in the span of thirteen minutes and thirty-six seconds.

Important Garden Update

I am so excited to tell you that all the vegetable seeds I have planted have sprouted! I go out to look at my new garden boxes at least twice a day to check their progress. Little green shoots! It’s so exciting. Not only that, Saturday was Pick-Up Day for the flowers, herbs, and veggies I bought for the Growing Smiles Fundraiser – the BEST fundraiser there is, in my humble opinion – and, well, let’s just say my trunk was full.

We are not out of the woods yet in terms of frost and snow, but I rolled the dice and planted some pansies on a beautiful Friday morning in various spots in the front yard. Pansies, it seems, can withstand anything except heat and drought, which isn’t really an issue in May in Calgary. I am enjoying their happy little faces every time I go up my front walk.

Oh! Oh! Another upside to having teenagers who go through hundreds of dollars of groceries a week is that I always get the “free” gift with $300 purchase at Superstore, and this week’s gift was flowers!

Our gardening season is so short here that I am going to squeeze every last moment of pleasure out of it.

LFG

This week vaccine eligibility opened up for the age 12+ group, and let’s fucking gooooo. I chose not to spend my entire Monday refreshing a screen to get appointments, and so when I went to book – the day AFTER bookings opened – I got them in at the end of the month in Red Deer, the small city ninety minutes north of us. Huh. Well, road trip, I thought, and then later that week my friend Nicole (HI NICOLE) mentioned that she was able to get her kids in at the pharmacy down the street from me. LFG. I HAD phoned them the previous week and was put on “an email list” but no email ever came and, you know what, it’s a pandemic, things happen. I popped in to the pharmacy – IN PERSON – and got them appointments for YESTERDAY, which means all four of us have had our first shots, and I am SO relieved and happy. PLUS my parents got their second shot, which fills me with immense joy. Steps forward.

OOTW

I mentioned to Swistle (HI SWISTLE) the other day that choosing a mask to wear is the best part of wearing a mask. I mean, it’s certainly not the wearing of the mask that is the great part. But choosing a mask and coordinating it with your outfit, well, that’s fun. And sometimes, sometimes the mask coordinates so perfectly that it becomes part of the Outfit of the Week:

Just look at that match!

That’s a very, very old Lululemon tank – I’ve had it since at least 2010 – under a light Gap sweater that really, really requires something like a tank underneath, unless I want to be obscene and horrify myself, my children, and everyone around me. Fortunately I rarely wear a bra anymore, only tanks under tops, so it works. Those leggings are also at least a decade old; I know some people have much to say about Lulu but their quality is unmatched.

Pandemic Reading

A Short History of Nearly Everything. I loved Bill Bryson’s The Body so much that I immediately put A Short History of Nearly Everything on hold, without looking into what it was about. I figured it would be human history, and I eagerly looked forward to ancient civilizations, the Roman Empire, the Renaissance, etc., up to modern times. So imagine my dismay when I opened the nearly 600 page book to discover that it’s literally a history (a short one) of nearly everything – i.e., the universe – and well over half the book deals with cosmology, astronomy, geology, and physics, subjects of which I have low interest. Eeep. Luckily for me, Bryson’s incredible writing made such topics engaging, accessible, and entertaining. It’s an excellent book that can make such dull – to me – subjects fun. Next time you’re having a bad day, just be glad you’re not the guy who sailed from France to India to watch and calculate the transit of Venus, only to a) miss it, b) wait eight years for the next one and have the sky cloud over and miss it again, c) contract dysentery and suffer for a year, d) get almost shipwrecked on the way home, e) get home after 11 1/2 years, having accomplished nothing at all, only to discover your family assumed you died and they plundered your estate. Or the people who spent nine years trying to measure the earth at the equator, and just before finalizing their results got scooped by another team doing the same thing at the poles. According to my friends who are actual scientists, this is something that happens a lot: you spend your entire career working on something and you a) get scooped, i.e., someone gets the results before you do, b) get your results disproved, or c) never get the results at all. Well, I’m glad that is not my career of choice.

The 4% Fix: How One Hour Can Change Your Life. I have enjoyed all of Karma Brown’s novels – especially Come Away With Me and Recipe For A Perfect Wife – so I was eagerly looking forward to her first non-fiction book. I was not disappointed! There is so much good stuff in here, from the time suck that is the Internet and my phone to prioritizing and focussing, this book is really great and motivating. The key that Brown focussed on is getting up early, so I feel seen and validated. I get up at 4:30 every day, and have for well over a decade. I started early rising when the kids were small, to practice yoga. It was literally the only time I had to myself in those days and it made me a better mother: more patient and happier, as I had my time before anyone woke up. Brown likens a day to a cake sliced in 24 pieces, and by getting up and using that first hour, you’ve served yourself first. I LOVE that concept. It really resonates for me. This book is about working towards your goals and if I’m being honest, I’m a bit goal-less at the moment. But I like to think my early morning yoga practice ultimately led to my current job as a yoga teacher. So maybe I’m not so goal-less? With or without goals, I really liked this.

The Push. Well, Allison warned me. (HI ALLISON). Allison warned me but did I listen? No. This is a crazily disturbing and absorbing book. She said “I thought The Push was well written and I wish I’d never read it and that I could erase it from my brain” and that pretty much sums it up. I am not generally a Psychological Thriller type, and this is a very well done Psychological Thriller in that I couldn’t put it down, but also, I kind of had nightmares after reading it.

And here we are, Monday morning after a very restless Sunday night sleep. I hope you have a week ahead of you that has way more ups than downs. Be well, take care. xo