I guess it’s the price I have to pay for travelling, but I am just getting over a head cold. This is the first time, other than our brief bout with Covid, that I have been sick since October 2018, when I came down with the flu exactly one week before my scheduled flu shot. I had a good run of good health, but sheesh, I forgot just how irritating a cold can be. There’s no way out but through, I thought as I dug out my Neti rinse and nighttime Advil. Well, my tissue usage is now approaching normal, I can laugh without it ending in a coughing fit, and although downward dog still makes me feel like my sinuses might explode, a Peloton ride no longer makes me feel like my lungs are on actual fire and has me mentally going over signs you may be having a heart attack.
So, books! I haven’t had a book update in – checks blog – OVER TWO WEEKS, IS THAT RIGHT? No wonder I have so many to go through! Here we go!
Beautiful Country. I was absolutely not prepared for this. Wow. This is a memoir of a woman who was brought to New York at age 7, and who lived an illegal and undocumented life there. I was not prepared to read about the abject poverty, the complete lack of health and dental care, the hunger and malnutrition, and the absence of clothing and hygiene, experienced by a small child. She’s not alone of course. I just wasn’t prepared to read about it, nor the sweatshops her parents worked in to eke out a meager existence, living in constant fear of deportation. Her parents were professors in China, fleeing a system in which they could not speak freely. Professors, turned sweatshop workers, for very little. This is a terribly sad story, and it’s one that happens every day. The author herself is incredibly inspiring and a wonderful writer.
Marrying The Ketchups.Lisa (HI LISA) recommended this and I’m so glad she did – it’s perfectly light and lovely, with a big dash of hopeful optimism. It centres on a large family and their restaurant, and the story begins after three things happen: the patriarch dies, the Cubs win the world series, and you know who wins the 2016 presidential collection. It follows the adult grandchildren and their lives and relationships and it’s so REAL I felt like I knew them personally.
I Miss You When I Blink. Elisabeth (HI ELISABETH) mentioned this book and as soon as she said “memoir” and “essays” I was 100% in. I like a good memoir and I like a good essay! The author is a woman who seemingly had it all and believed with enough hard work comes happiness. Instead, she found herself longing to make a change. It’s part mid-life crisis, part charming anecdotes, and part self-deprecating humour. Some essays resonated, some didn’t, but I do love different perspectives as well as the acknowledgment that “one person’s more-sad doesn’t cancel out another person’s less-sad.” Truth!
Interpreter of Maladies. I actually recently read the title short story recently, as it was featured in David Sedaris’ collection Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules. This is a fantastic collection of stories about Bengali people living far from home, and their experiences as immigrants and in going back to India. I loved it!
Confessions of a Prairie Bitch. WHOA NELLIE!!! I listen to a podcast called Gen X, This Is Why, where they recap Little House on the Prairie episodes, and this book was mentioned. Of course I had to read it – who didn’t love to hate Nellie Olson? This memoir was so much fun to read. I was shocked to learn that Alison Arngrim had an incredibly traumatic childhood full of sexual and physical abuse, but she has overcome those traumas to become a children’s activist, as well as an AIDS activist. These are heavy, heavy topics, but she writes with a lightness and humour that is impossible to resist. Her behind-the-scenes stories about Little House are so wonderful. Mary really WAS snooty and awful, and Carrie really couldn’t speak well! It’s a great book and I recommend it to all Little House fans.
Mindy Kaling: Nothing Like I Imagined, Essays. There are six of these essays but I didn’t want to post every photo. Just know that these are lovely, light essays by a beloved celebrity.
The Namesake. This book. THIS BOOK! This was just incredible. What a beautiful story about identity, change, assimilation, and the many directions life can take us. I don’t know if it’s this time of year or what, but I found I was identifying so strongly with one of the characters near the end of the book that I had to just stare out into space, teary-eyed, for a long while. This is a gorgeous book and I really didn’t expect it to take the turns that it did.
There! I’m all caught up on my “books read,” and maybe some of those will appeal to you as well! More to come on Monday. xo
Well, I have certainly had to hit the ground running after coming home from vacation! Note to self: the end of August is a busy time of the year. My older son, who is taking a gap year, starts his new job today, and my younger son starts school on Thursday, with the requisite day before taken up by textbook acquisition, locker assignments, and all that. I had to swing back into meal-planning-grocery-shopping mode after five days of Very Easy Living, and I found it a bit tricky. What is food, what are meals, what do we eat. Happily, my new freezer arrived, and so all is well in my frozen food world.
A few people mentioned to me that they were surprised I went to Mexico as I never brought it up it in our conversations; that is because after so many cancellations I didn’t really believe it was going to happen. I guess I wasn’t letting myself get too excited in case it got cancelled, again. I haven’t been out of the country since March 2019, which feels like A Very Long Time Ago. But the trip did happen, it was lovely, and, to be honest, purely indulgent. Weather-wise it’s a bit of a bold move going to Mexico in August, but it was wonderful, if hot and humid.
We went to Secrets Los Cabos; we had actually visited that resort five years prior, in August as well. Cabo San Lucas is a relatively short, direct flight from Calgary, which is the reason we chose it, and although it’s hot and humid, it’s not rainy, which is a big plus in my books. We have stayed in a few Secrets/ Dreams resorts, and I am not going to lie, they are Very Luxurious.
This is an all-inclusive resort, which I really like. I love not having to think about anything at all, I love that people come by to ask if I’d like a refreshing drink or if I need another towel, I love that the biggest decisions I need to make are where to eat dinner and which pool to lounge by.
When we got there, we were told that cabanas were available for rent at the Regular Pool, but cabanas were included in the Preferred Pool, which we had access to, because We Are Fancy. The only catch was that the Preferred cabanas were first come, first serve; as a person who is regularly up before the sun, that was not a challenge in the least. We had a cabana for two days, which was a nice respite from the heat.
One thing I legitimately love about being at a resort is meeting all sorts of new people. It feels almost like summer camp, with its instant friendships and constant Getting To Know You chatter. I know a lot of people prefer to keep to themselves on vacation, but there are apparently many people like me who want to talk to everyone surrounding them. An interesting thing I noticed was that no one I met – and I met a lot of people – was from Canada. Every single person was from the Southern or Midwestern United States. Our flight from Calgary was full, so I’m not sure where all my compatriots went, but it didn’t seem to be Secrets. In any case, with only one exception all the people were lovely and a lot of fun to be around.
Dawne from Arkansas: Y’all are so nice, I wish I had a Polaroid to take a photo of you!
Me: Well, we have cameras on our phones…
The one exception was a kind of miserable woman and her husband who a) immediately told me, in graphic detail, about her colon surgery and what that meant for her digestion, and b) complained incessantly about what food was or was not available at any given time and what kind of drink she had which wasn’t the drink she wanted and that the service was not up to her standards. I easily could have tolerated a, but I have no patience for b. These resorts were hit really hard by the pandemic, and in talking to the employees, I got the impression that they personally suffered a lot over the last two years. Besides which, look around, look around, how lucky we are to be alive right now. Here we are, in actual paradise, and someone is bringing you a cold beverage, and you are going to complain about the ice levels or the actual brand of liquor used? I’m pretty sure that woman didn’t tip at all, not that I noticed, anyway, and I kind of hoped that her drink was spat in. I’m sure it wasn’t, but if it was, well. No jury would convict the poolside concierge, let’s put it that way. But that couple was the exception, everyone else was lovely and fun. One guy was a little too fun, as he had to be escorted out of the pool by security, due to extreme drunkenness, at three in the afternoon. Poolside drama!
Another way the resort felt like summer camp was the amount of activities scheduled for every hour of the day. I was pretty happy to just hang out by the pool, dip in and out, read my books, and talk to my neighbours, but had I been so inclined I could have done any number of fun things. To be honest, it felt too hot to even attempt water aerobics or table tennis or even beachside yoga, but I appreciated the opportunity. The only activity I participated in was Karaoke Night.
I love karaoke. I have feelings about karaoke. Some people refuse to do it because “they can’t sing,” but to me, that means it’s an opportunity to increase your stage presence. What I lack in vocal talent I more than make up for in showmanship, if you know what I mean. I would much prefer hearing a subpar singer belt out a song with gusto and include the crowd in the chorus than sit quietly and listen to an earnest, heart-felt rendition of some emotional song no one has heard of. My songs were Material Girl and Before He Cheats, the latter being a huge crowd favourite with the majority of the participants from the South and Midwest. There was a lot of country that night, and the crowd was really fun. It was more like a giant dancing singalong than a karaoke performance.
Over the past six months I have been learning Spanish with the Duo Lingo app. I had some doubts that it would come in handy; I mean, when will I ever say Mi gato es muy grande y bonito (my cat is very big and pretty)? Wait, let’s not answer that. LET’S NOT ANSWER THAT. Anyway, I wasn’t sure if I would be able to converse in Spanish but YOU GUYS, I DID! People understood my very rudimentary Spanish and I understood them! I felt like if I had spent more time there, I would have really improved my vocabulary. I used the phrase “I am learning Spanish” a great deal, and the staff was very patient with me, even spending time teaching me new words and phrases. The moral of the story is that, like with karaoke, it’s the effort that counts.
Well, after all that luxury, it is back to reality for me. It’s time to jump into the new week and the new schedule. I have books to talk about, but that will have to wait. Here’s to a fresh new week! xo
I have noticed throughout my life that whenever I secretly judge something, it always comes back to haunt me. I’m not talking about things I judge loudly, like not returning a shopping cart, but things I silently think that I will never do myself. I have long since abandoned such thoughts about parenting in particular, because I have learned that all I have to do to curse myself is to think I would NEVER let my kid do that or similar, and the thing happens.
One thing I have silently judged for as long as I can remember is people who travel with only carryon luggage; not the people with slim and light bags, but the people who take the maximum size possible and then jam that suitcase into the overhead compartment, leaving no room and no little inconvenience for the people around them. For god’s sake, I would think, meanly and with great resentment as I was forced to squash my tiny bag under the seat in front of me, Just pay the $25 and be done with it.
Well, here we are, in the summer of 2022, and the resounding chorus from anyone who has travelled is that a) their luggage got lost and was never found, b) their luggage was lost but was returned to them on the last day of vacation, rendering it essentially useless, and c) they waited for an hour to get their luggage at the airport terminal, while exhausted and already late due to a delayed flight. C is the Best Case Scenario.
My husband and I just got back yesterday from a long-anticipated trip to Mexico. We had a family vacation there planned in March of 2020, which turned into – after vaccines became available and we were so optimistic for the future – one for March of 2022, which would have coincided with both our 20th anniversary and our older son’s 18th birthday. We cancelled that trip in January 2022, what with everything going on, and it was lucky we did, as my son tested positive for Covid the day before we would have been due to leave. We decided to turn it into a vacation for just the two of us, and I have much to tell you about. First, though, luggage.
I am a notorious overpacker. For one thing, we have the kind of credit card that gives free checked luggage with every flight, which exposes my just pay the $25 thought process as privileged and tone-deaf. In any case, even before the free luggage benefit, I’ve never given it a second thought. Six black tank tops? Why not! Five pairs of shoes? Sure! When we travel by car, we take my minivan, which is generally stuffed full. But I will tell you this: the only thing that makes me feel more anxious than travelling without a giant suitcase full of my favourite things from home is LOSING that giant suitcase full of my favourite things from home. Therefore, given all the Lost Luggage Drama that has been a trademark of this summer’s travel, and with a lot of encouragement and tips from my friend Janet (HI JANET) I was determined that I could do it. I could do it! I could! I could go Carryon Only. Here’s how a terrible, spoiled overpacker ate her own words and went to Mexico with only a carryon suitcase and a smile.
Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Carryon Only Edition
Hold Me Closer, Tiny Toiletry Bottles
The biggest thing holding me back from taking only a carryon is, of course, toiletries. It will not surprise anyone to know that I use a wide variety of liquid-form toiletries and hair products on a daily basis, and, of course, that is something that is very restricted in carryon luggage.
Aside from the fact that I have an environmental issue with those tiny plastic bottles of toiletries, they seem to be following in the footsteps of lemon juice and popcorn, in that they are very hard to find right now. I don’t know what the Trial and Travel section looks like in your local drugstore, but I have visited a few in the past month and mine are largely empty swaths of space, interspersed with the occasional basket containing tiny bottles of Pert Plus and mouthwash, a few brands of tiny toothpaste, and, strangely, mini-spray-deodorants.
Janet clued me in to companies that sell little refillable bottles for exactly these purposes, and so of course I bought a few sets. I even found one that had little tiny SPRAY bottles, so I could fill them with my hair products. I did buy couple of tiny toothpastes, because what are you going to do, but most of my other products I just squeezed into the little bottles. Sunscreen was the biggest challenge but my favourite Ultra Sheer Neutrogena sunscreen is in a smallish bottle anyway, and I figured we could probably just buy sunscreen, if push came to shove.
My husband is a person who can travel with almost no toiletries; he’s happy to use whatever the hotel or resort supplies, which feels like a risky business to me, but which also meant that he could take a few of my things in his luggage.
I couldn’t decide between the pretty little silicone bottles or the ones with the case, so I got both. But check out the labels that came with them:
Are we bringing our own sauces with us? If so, it’s good that there is a label for it; we would hate to confuse a condiment with a body wash, and vice versa.
Waterproof Mascaras and the Wipes That Love Them
I don’t wear waterproof mascara very often, but it’s a must in Mexico, what with the humidity and the swimming. I recently bought the waterproof version of Maybelline’s Great Lash mascara in a fit of nostalgia; I used that mascara exclusively in my junior high years entirely due to an article in Sassy magazine about the Fancy Hollywood Makeup Artists who swore by it. You know what, it is a really good mascara; there is a lot of bang for the buck here.
When I use waterproof mascara at home I use a liquid remover with a microfibre cloth, but that seemed like a ridiculous waste of liquid packing space, so I decided to buy makeup remover wipes. I know! I know. They are environmentally terrible, but this is a special occasion and I promise I won’t do it again. It is well documented that I love Neutrogena everything, and so I bought these wipes and gave them a trial run before I left. They do the job perfectly; not a trace of mascara was left on my lashes, and no irritation around the eye area either.
Gleaming The Packing Cubes
My friend Kim (HI KIM), who travels a lot, mentioned packing cubes in a Facebook post as being “life-changing,” and so of course I investigated, and bought myself a set in a very pretty blue. Kim was RIGHT. Such a simple thing and yet it kept my little suitcase perfectly organized; I don’t tend to unpack when we are in vacation, choosing instead to literally live out of my suitcase, and these cubes made it so easy to find what I needed each day. Swimsuits in one cube! Dresses in another! Underwear in a third!
Plus, the set came with a dirty laundry bag and a little makeup bag, which I used for my very-pared-down-for-the-trip makeup items.
Compression Digression
If you have known me for any length of time, you know all about my circulation issues. If you’re new, hi! Welcome! Also, I have circulation issues! These issues crested into “the worst case of varicose veins I have ever seen on such a young woman,” as the surgeon who stripped them back in 2011 said; that stripping should have been the end of it, but I am a special flower who has developed new ones, to the alarm of my current physician. Too long, didn’t read; I wear compression stockings or calf sleeves a lot, but particularly when travelling to ward off blood clots and, I guess, death. The compression stockings I wear for flying are pretty hard-core; they take significant effort to put on and take off, and they look exactly like something my grandma would wear. Thick, “nude” stockings, what could be more stylish?
My husband: You can barely tell you’re wearing them!
Me: silently wonders if my husband is losing his vision.
The ones I wore for the flight to Mexico were thigh-high, as opposed to my full-on pantyhose stockings, which I wore on the way back, because I wanted to be able to easily (or, “easily”) peel them off in the airport bathroom to shove into my bag when we got to our destination. Wearing a skirt meant this was easy to do, and as a bonus the skirt also hides the invariable bulge at the top of the stocking. Vanity should have no place in this situation but it does.
Canadian friends: I have found it to be a terrible pain to buy medical grade stockings here. If you want anything more than light grade knee-highs, a prescription is needed, which I have, but then it’s a matter of getting measured at a pharmacy, and ordering them, and it’s just a pain. Easier and cheaper – even given the exchange rate – is ordering them from the US; I like this website.
Kindle The Reading Fire
I am going to preface this by admitting that I used to say I would NEVER use an e-reader, never. I like books! I like pages! My husband bought a Kindle back in 2012, and it has sat unused for the past several years in a drawer. Last year, a very lovely friend (YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE) sent me her very wonderful manuscript to beta-read, and the best way for me to read it was on an e-reader. It turns out that, like many other things I said I would never enjoy, I really liked reading that way. Don’t get me wrong: I still much prefer paper books. But with limited luggage and also reading outside with sunglasses as opposed to reading glasses, the old Kindle (with large font) was just the ticket. I loved how I could load it up, and pop it into my bag.
The only problem is that a ten-year-old piece of technology is very SLOW when it comes to uploads. I think if we are going to travel more I am going to put a new Kindle on my Christmas list.
Safety, Measurements
When flying, there are so many safety measures in place, and those two words made me think of the two posts that I read this month that really stayed with me, but in very different ways.
Erin (HI ERIN) wrote an incredible piece about the meaning of safety in childhood, drawing on her own experiences, and it is very powerful and moving. I found myself holding my breath while reading, and reminding myself to breathe through the difficult parts.
As I thought about people, myself included now, I guess, shoving their carryon luggage in the overhead compartments and maximizing every last inch of space, this hilarious post about the meaning of an inch popped into my head. I think we can ALL relate.
I have so much to talk to you about! The flight! The trip! The books I read! The leaving of my teenage children to their own devices for five days! But those things will have to wait, as I have much to do to catch up on life! Soon. I promise! xo
WILMA! I’M HOME. I floored to see this display at Costco; I didn’t know that Fruity Pebbles still existed. I have never eaten them in my life, so I have no opinion on the taste or quality of the cereal, but it seems like such an incredibly dated item. I mean, The Flintstones? Is this still part of the cultural zeitgeist? I used to love that show when I was a kid, but there weren’t many other options at the time, and I feel that if I watched an episode now I would be absolutely horrified. However, that doesn’t mean that seeing Fruity Pebbles didn’t give me a nice feeling of nostalgia; I remember watching commercials for such cereals on Saturday mornings while I ate my unsweetened Shreddies or Cheerios, or, if my mom was feeling especially indulgent, my Honey Nut Cheerios. The commercials would be for things like Count Chocula or Boo Berry cereal, items that my mother would have died before purchasing. Last Christmas I saw Elf cereal at the grocery store, and although I have followed in my mother’s footsteps when it comes to virtuously healthy cereal purchases, I bought a box, thinking it would be a fun snack. Reader, it was not. Even my teen boys couldn’t eat it, and I feel like that speaks volumes.
Twinkie Twinkie, Not A Star. Speaking of my youth, I loved Archie comics, and I would read them cover to cover, including all the advertisements for things like Sea Monkeys and Twinkies. Sea Monkeys, I have since learned, are dehydrated brine shrimp. Twinkies, though. They looked so delicious, along with Hostess Cupcakes and Ding Dongs; I longed for such treats but at the time they were only available in the US. Any other Canadian women of a certain age remember how you had to “cross the line” to get such things? At the time I’m remembering, the Canadian dollar was pretty much on par with the US, and things like clothing and shoes were so much cheaper “down south,” so we would often drive down to Montana or Washington to do some shopping for back-to-school clothes. It was on one of those trips – where we ate unsweetened but still exciting cereal from those tiny boxes that came in a multipack, in our motel room – that my mom bought Twinkies AND Hostess Cupcakes. No Ding Dongs, but no matter. I was so excited to finally try these long-anticipated snacks, and let me tell you, never was a child so disappointed. I may have accepted that no matter how much cherry Kool-Aid I consumed, the Kool-Aid Man was never going to crash through my kitchen wall; I may have come to terms with the fact that a giant sentient bubble would never appear and hang out with me in my Mr. Bubbles-filled bathtub, but I truly felt like a Twinkie or Ding Dong or Hostess Cupcake would deliciously transport me into the world in which I was shiny-haired Veronica Lodge, snacking while Archie fawned over me and my incredible wealth. I can still remember eating the weird spongy cakes with the flavourless creme fillings, and feeling like my world lost a little bit of colour. Now they are widely available in any Canadian grocery store, and I give them the side-eye every time I see them.
Pop Culture. My husband remembers, on a similar childhood trip Across The Line, being able to buy A&W Root Beer IN A CAN and that was as good as it got for him. That was also only available in the States, but since I have a strong aversion to root beer, it would have been wasted on me. My parents used to buy pop from The Pop Shoppe, and the glass bottles came in plastic cases that, along with the bottles, would be returned to the store. I remember one time that they definitely would have foregone the five cent bottle deposit. Generally they purchased cola and lemon-lime, but every once in a while there would be an orange or grape pop bottle in the case, and that would be a huge treat for me. I was told I could go downstairs and bring up “my” pop, but I was so excited I dropped the bottle on my foot; it shattered and I had to go into urgent care. The fourth toenail on that foot is still a little deformed to this day. Despite the fact that those drinks would be a treat for me, my number one favourite beverage at that time was the uncarbonated Orange Drink that came from McDonalds, and that was featured in every single Sports Day during elementary school. Along with the admittedly-probably-watered-down Orange Drink, it would have been considered extremely lucky to receive a little Dixie Cup of vanilla ice cream, the kind that came with a wooden spoon. I am pretty sure the Orange Drink is no longer in existence, and I would probably spin off the planet on a sugar high if I drank it now, but I wonder if those little ice cream cups are still part of this world?
When You Wish Upon A Wish Book. One thing that is not part of this world that I genuinely miss every fall is the Sears Wish Book. I have loved the Wish Book for my whole life and was bereft when Sears went out of business. I loved the “gifts for under $10” section, and I always wanted a Snoopy Sno Cone Machine. I’m sure it would have never worked and would have been at least as disappointing as the Twinkie/ Hostess Cupcake experience, but still. Something that was NOT disappointing was the Christmas morning that I opened up my very own Cabbage Patch Kid, named Kora Candi. I did not realize it at the time, but it was a HUGE deal for my mom to get one for me. She had to have her name on a list at Zellers (remember Zellers? Remember grilled cheese sandwiches with fries and gravy at the Zellers “restaurant?”), and when the time came, she was taken into a back room where the staff triple-bagged the box, so that no one would know what she had and would try to rob her in the parking lot. The things moms do to make Christmas magical! The things that happened in the 80s! Let’s not mention that Xavier Roberts completely stole the idea from a little old lady at a craft fair and became very wealthy in the process; I loved Kora Candi and I still do.
Your Mom Has Got It Going On. My younger son told me that, in his friend group, the response to “Anyone want to hang out?” is “Your mom does.” I didn’t know guys still insulted each other via “your mom” jokes anymore and, strangely, since I am apparently one of the butts of the joke, it made me happy. Ah, the circle of life. Frequently the question will be reframed as “Anyone want to hang out? Not with my mom.”
We have been having the most gorgeous summer with the longest stretch of absolutely perfect weather; I do not want summer to end. I guess that is why mid-August tends to be a nostalgic time of year for me; this year I’m thinking not just about when my kids were small and we’d be prepping for school, but when I was a kid myself. How about you, are you also feeling nostalgic these days? Is there anything from your past that makes you smile? Tell me everything. xo
This week, the first after getting home from vacation, has been so satisfying. I’ve been getting Back Into Routine, crossing things off the to-do list, and gardening. My neighbour very kindly checked the house and watered the garden while I was gone, but of course there was much to be done after two weeks away. I have harvested one zucchini, and there are many, many more tiny ones on the plants, which grew so big that Salvadore was completely hidden; I had to move him to a different bed in order to enjoy his gnomeiness. I have two little peppers on my plants, and I had my first of many pea and tomato harvests.
I like to leave the house nice and clean when we leave for vacation as it makes reentry so much nicer; I make especial efforts to ensure the garbage and compost bins are empty and that the fridge only contains long-dated items. Unfortunately, and inexplicably, the jug of milk was something I forgot to deal with before leaving, and there was what can only be described as a science project in the three inches of milk left in the fridge. Ew. Chunky.
On that note, let’s get back to The Big Project. Previously on The Big Project, I had cleaned out my clothing closet and made a few rules for future shopping. This is, I feel, the easy part. It’s the rest of the house that will require some serious effort and also, is kind of boring. I like clothes! I am a bit daunted by other household items.
The next step in The Big Project, that I haven’t yet taken, is to go through my kitchen and donate my excess containers – the kids really do not need tiny snack containers at this stage of our lives – and to really assess the pantry situation.
And what a situation it is.
I have been working my way towards having Just One Backup of staple food and cleaning products, although I do make an exception for things I tend to need multiples of: canned beans and chickpeas, for example, for weeks in which I would need more than one can, or dish soap, which I appear to go through at an alarming rate. I have successfully gotten down to one backup of each of coffee and the various oils, vinegars, and sauces I use regularly, one bag each of flour, sugar, and rice, and one container of vitamins for each person in the house (we all have different brands). I still have a few extra nut butters and jars of vegan mayonnaise and salsa, as well as sundried tomatoes and, weirdly, mustard, but I’m sure we will get through them in due time. Tissues and toilet paper I purchase in large multipacks, and I try to have just one of those in backup.
Small digression: I was visiting with my husband’s aunt – who lives alone – a few weeks ago, and she told me that in the early stages of the pandemic she would purchase a large package of toilet paper every time she saw one available, not unlike me with twenty-five pound bags of flour. At one point she looked at her stockpile of toilet paper and thought oops. That stockpile of toilet paper lasted her a year and a half. I think we can all understand this. For reasons unknown to me, I have enough boxes of ziploc bags to last until I have headed for The Home or shuffled off this mortal coil, whichever comes first. I rarely use ziploc bags but somehow have a number of Costco three-packs in my pantry, in a variety of sizes, which must have been a Pandemic Purchase, but I cannot for the life of me recall my thinking on this matter. I may just give them away on our community Buy Nothing page. Either that, or I’ll leave them for my possible future grandchildren to discover upon my demise. Oh look, here’s Grandma’s wedding dress and…seven hundred ziploc bags. Huh. Will ziploc bags even exist fifty years from now? Who can say.
No matter. I have been working hard to not purchase things of which I already have backups (or, in some cases, several backups), and mostly, I have done well. I am trying to get back to my pre-pandemic consumption patterns and it is a Journey.
However, I have confessions to make. Friends, I am sorry to tell you that my Just One Backup vow has failed miserably in three notable areas: lemon juice, popcorn, and dried fruit. The last item, I give a pass – the dried fruit I love (strawberries and something that is cheerfully called Fruit Medley) is only available a couple times a year at Costco, and so I stock up when I can. This is my very valid excuse for having ten bags in my pantry at this time; it will last me for months, hopefully until the next time they come available.
As I mentioned briefly a little while ago, there was a strange blip in the lemon juice world, or at least, in my lemon juice world. Suddenly, there was no lemon juice anywhere. My brain immediately went from let’s just pick up one backup to PANIC PANIC PANIC. Let us refer to the lessons from the Minnesota Starvation Experiment as a precedent for the weird obsessions we get when something is not available to us. When I found store brand lemon juice, I bought it. When I found tiny little environmentally-disastrous plastic squeeze lemons, I bought them. My mom saw lemon juice at her grocery store and bought me two bottles. I now have seven bottles of lemon juice in my pantry and a few weeks ago it was back, available at Costco. Even with seven bottles in backup, I had a really hard time NOT buying the two-pack at Costco, and I know many of you can empathize with this. I especially feel bereft as it has not been available at Superstore this whole past month, and I noticed it was not there last week when I was at Costco. What if I can never buy it again, what have I done seems to be my thinking.
The other item that has been very difficult to buy recently is popcorn. Popcorn! Boom Chicka Pop has been largely unavailable for a few months now, so I have snapped up substitute bags here and there when I could. I am sorry to say that on my last trip to Superstore there was neither Skinny Pop nor Lesser Evil available, proving that I have indeed cursed us all by supporting ridiculously-named companies that apply moral values to food products. I currently have twelve (12!) bags of popcorn of various flavours and brands in my pantry, so it’s probably good that it’s currently unavailable. I mean, we all love popcorn but twelve bags is pretty excessive. WE JUST NEED TO WORK OUR WAY THROUGH WHAT WE HAVE, PEOPLE.
You may notice I haven’t mentioned the elephant in the room – sriracha. The sriracha shortage is a little unsettling, but not as unsettling as the environmental reason for the shortage. In any case, two of us here really like sriracha, and I have half a large bottle in the fridge with NO backup, but I think with careful rationing we should easily be able to make it into September, when it is supposed to become available again. We have two bottles of chili garlic sauce, and that should be a decent substitute, should we require one.
So I do need to go through the Very Full Pantry to see if there’s anything to be donated – ziploc bags! – and I vow not to purchase anything else until I am down to the last backup (but what if lemon juice and popcorn become instantly available, WHAT THEN), but I do have a food-related success story to share. I have cleaned out my freezer! I have discarded all freezer-burned items or items of questionable origin! I also have a dead freezer.
About a month ago I came home from the lake and my husband greeted me with the following: Nicole, you have to go look at the freezer. It won’t stop beeping and the temperature is rising. People, my freezer, my ten-year-old freezer, DIED. Without warning. As you might imagine, it was very full, and so I jumped into action. Fortunately we have a bar fridge-sized freezer from our early-marriage-child-free days, and after plugging it in we ascertained that it still works. I rearranged everything in the two fridge freezers and between those and the tiny freezer I managed to save most things, the exceptions being anything that I couldn’t recall purchasing or that was fuzzy with frost.
This is where I’ll mention that my mother-in-law still has the chest freezer she got as a newlywed in 1962, and it still works, although it probably uses more power than anything else in the house combined. STILL. Ten years, and I guess that old freezer is going to end up in the landfill? I don’t know what will happen to it when the New Freezer Delivery Guys take it away. I hope it will go for parts or something, but who would know. WHO WOULD KNOW.
Nonetheless, I’m counting this as a win. When my new freezer arrives, I am going to put nothing in it that cannot be consumed within a few months, mark my words. It’s a chance for a Fresh Start and I am not going to throw that away.
Weekly Reading
Children Playing Before A Statue Of Hercules. This collection, curated by my much-loved David Sedaris, is comprised of his favourite short stories and the proceeds of which go to an educational charity in NYC, which made me glad that I received this as a Christmas gift, rather than borrowing it from the library. If you love short stories like I do, you will not be disappointed. It is really excellent and it contains a few authors that I had never heard of, let alone read. One of my own favourite authors, Alice Munro, is featured; the story chosen isn’t my number one favourite, but it’s so good. Granted, as Sedaris says in the introduction, how can you choose just ONE Alice Munro story? Anyway, I loved this; every story is unique but they are all linked by the theme of class structures and societal constraints due to them.
Thick. This was such a powerful and important collection of essays about being a black woman in America. The author is an esteemed academic and her brilliance comes through in her writing, which is very thoughtful and readable, in addition to being very well researched. An important read for anyone, to be sure, but particularly for a very privileged white woman, like myself. I will be thinking about these essays for a long time to come, particularly one about her experience with prenatal and maternal “health care” that ended in a breathtakingly tragic way.
I am hoping to start on my cull of excess containers (and ziploc bags!) and organization of the pantry this week; will I, though? That remains to be seen! I hope you are having a lovely August so far. xo
I got a lot of reading done on my recent vacation, and as always, I wanted to share that with you.
Enough Already. I enjoyed this easy-to-read memoir by Valerie Bertenelli, in which she describes coming to terms with her body and appearance. I think the lessons she learns will resonate with all women; namely, you’re not going to be magically happy when you lose those mystical ten pounds, if you’re not happy now. I guess I didn’t remember that she was a Jenny Craig spokesperson at one point, and had posed in a bikini for People magazine; her self-worth has been tied to her appearance for her entire life. That’s what happens when you grow up on national television, I suppose, but I also think that most – if not all – women could relate to this. Anyway, it’s a book about self-care, learning to love yourself, and nourishing your soul, and you all know THAT IS MY JAM. So I did like that a lot. It’s also kind of a love letter to Eddie Van Halen, which is really interesting. Apparently their relationship improved a lot AFTER their divorce, and they remained loving friends until his death. There is not much about her second husband, but it kind of felt like they might have been separated or divorcing while she was writing this book, much of which takes place during the early days of the pandemic. She includes some recipes, and I had no idea she had her own cooking show and cookbooks. It’s a nice easy read with some great life lessons in it.
Plucked: A History of Hair Removal. Hair removal and the history thereof is a topic that I am genuinely fascinated by, and this did not disappoint! I always wondered, watching Downton Abbey, if the girls’ smooth underarms in their sheer dresses was historically accurate AND IT WAS! Underarm and lower leg hair removal was all the rage at the time. In fact, depilatories were popular in the nineteenth century for facial hair, although they contained arsenic and often led to disfigurement, illness, and death. But they effectively removed hair! I also have always wondered about trends – how did we go from the groomed 50s to the here baby, there mama, everywhere daddy daddy hair of the 60s and 70s, to the shaped yet gloriously luxuriant lady shrubbery of the 80s and 90s to the Brazilian of 2000s. It’s a journey! It was just so interesting, all the political and societal implications of hair growth and lack thereof, plus the absolutely horrifying lengths that people have gone to in order to become smooth and hairless, and not just the arsenic-laced depilatories. I loved the acknowledgements too: the author dedicates the book to her mother, who “…attuned me to the mystery and beauty of being alive; I, in turn, offer a few lines of dedication in an academic monograph on hair removal. So it goes.”
Jameela Green Ruins Everything. This was such a good satire about, of all things, ISIS and terrorism. You wouldn’t think it would be funny and informative, given the subject, but here we are. I admit I almost didn’t make it through the first chapter, because it dealt with woman-on-woman dislike, dating back to high school, and I hate that kind of thing. I hate it. Can we all just move past things that happened in high school? Can we all just stop judging appearances and being threatened by others’ successes or being happy with others’ failures? COME ON. Anyway, once I moved past that chapter, that little theme mostly dropped out, and I’m glad I didn’t quit. It was very entertaining! Plus, the author lives in Regina and is the creator of Little Mosque on the Prairie, which – true confessions – I have never watched, but I like when I see a Canadian woman be successful, particularly a Canadian woman of colour from the Prairies.
Swimming Home. I have only ever read Levy’s memoirs; this is the first of her novels I’ve read, and it was compelling, dark, rich, and surprising. It’s the kind of book you could analyze for days, if you were in an English class. Major trigger warning: suicidal ideation and depression.
Calories and Corsets. I always think of diet culture as being a fairly recent phenomenon, but it sure isn’t. This is a very interesting look at the history of diet culture, and the “fixes” that have been in place to achieve the popular figure of the day. It’s also a good reminder that “quick fixes” are harmful to our bodies and that there are just so many factors that go into our outer appearances.
My Name Is Lucy Barton. Back in April, I bought Strout’s latest, Oh William, and I have been mentally saving it for vacation. Before reading it, though, I wanted to reread the two books that come before it: this one, and Anything Is Possible. It is not a series exactly, but it deals with the same characters and their lives. It has been a few years since I read the first two, so I thought I would go for a refresher. My Name Is Lucy Barton is just SO good. Imagine being able to write like Elizabeth Strout! It’s breathtaking. I’ve read this three times and I can’t even describe it; there’s no plot to speak of, but the character development is so layered and nuanced. The main character is in the hospital and is visited by her mother, and through their conversations around people from “back home,” we get a very intense picture of Lucy’s previous life, one of poverty and abuse, and that does NOT sound appealing, but it actually is a very excellent and thought-provoking book.
Anything Is Possible. While My Name Is Lucy Barton deals with Lucy and her life in New York, this book deals with the people mentioned by her and her mother, in small-town Illinois. Again, this is not a plot-driven book; it is more of a series of vignettes that are all interconnected. If the theme of Lucy Barton is mothers and daughters, this would be more about people who leave and people who stay, and the secrets that we all have and the traumas, big and small, that inform the way we live.
Oh William! Finally! The long-awaited Oh William! This book is an exploration of the relationship between Lucy Barton and her former husband, William. They discover some things about William’s past and the little turn in the “plot,” (there is, again, not much of a plot), was something I didn’t see coming but I have been thinking about a lot. This did not disappoint, and as always with Strout’s writing, it is beautiful and so very thick and nuanced. One of the themes is safety; who do we feel safe with, how do we create a life with other people. Of the three books, Lucy Barton is my favourite, but I really enjoyed the other two as well.
None of these books were what I would consider Beach Reads, but most were quick reads and I liked them all. Have you read anything good lately? xo
Hello! I have missed you! I have just returned from a two-week vacation, visiting friends and family in the Okanagan. It has been an entire year since I have seen my mother-and-sister-in-law; partly this was pandemic-related, partly Barkley-related, but mostly it was because we didn’t have a place to stay in. I haven’t said much about this, but for the past year our Vacation Home has been turning into our Future Retirement Home; this has been a big project, including the addition of a second floor, that my husband coordinated from afar, while working full-time at his stressful regular job, and all his hard work really paid off. It’s beautiful.
We have been on many, many family vacations of all different kinds, but our Okanagan vacations are always pretty chill; friends are always surprised to hear that we don’t do any big activities or excursions when we spend time here. You’ve never been to the kangaroo sanctuary? What about the zipline tours? No, never.
Our days are all pretty much the same: we visit with family, I cook simple dinners or we very occasionally go out for dinner, we have friends come by to drink wine on the deck or we meet up with friends, I read a lot, I get my steps in and we all get caught up on sleep, and that is pretty much it. This visit, my husband and boys spent time doing odd jobs around the house – putting up towel rods, setting up weight equipment, cleaning out the old shed, taking things to the dump – and I grocery shopped a ridiculous number of times, which is what happens when I don’t do a full weekly meal plan. In the afternoons we would head over to see my sister-in-law, who has a suite in a house on the lake, and we swam.
This was such a great option to have, since there was an Actual Heat Wave happening, as opposed to a Calgary Heat Wave. It was hot enough that I headed out for my daily run or walk fairly early each day; once at the beginning of the trip I felt lazy, started a little later, and finished my run at 9:15 am. I thought I might die, or at least dehydrate.
I don’t think I have really mentioned this, but I have had a loose goal this year of walking or running at least five kilometres a day, and most days I easily exceed that; there have been a couple of days that hasn’t been physically or emotionally possible, like when Barkley died or when I had Covid, and there have been a handful of days when the weather was so bad it was all I could do to make it to four kilometres, but for every one of those days there are at least ten that I would be quite a bit over that goal, so it all evens out in my favour.
Despite this, I haven’t really been running long distances; I just haven’t felt like it, and I am at the point in my life where I am not going to do things that I don’t feel like doing. At home, I have a Run Day twice a week, and I will take a 20 minute Peloton spin class before running six kilometres, and that’s as much running as I feel like doing. But when I was on vacation, I found I had a different mindset, and also I did not have my Peloton and was getting more sleep, so I seemed to have energy to burn. The first day we were settled in, I started running and I didn’t feel like stopping. For one thing, Calgary is at a much higher elevation, and for another, my home run route is uphill for the first two kilometres; in the Okanagan, our house is on a hill so the first two kilometres are downhill, and then it’s completely flat. I ended up running eight to ten kilometres every other day, although I will say that the last couple of K, going up the hill without any shade, in temperatures 20 degrees warmer than at home, were a bit of a grind. I felt pretty accomplished, though, at the end of it.
One morning I was walking, and lost in the beauty of the walk and in my Jiffy Pop Culture podcast, and when I looked up I saw something coming towards me. It was this young fellow:
I have seen many deer in my life but I have never been that close to one. He kept coming towards me, even though I stopped walking. He stopped maybe twenty-five feet away and we looked at each other; I heard a bike coming up behind me and I waved to get his attention. The cyclist looked exactly like a slim Santa Claus, and we murmured in an awestruck way about the beauty of nature, etc., when he offered to take my photo with the deer.
A couple of bikes were coming from the other direction and at that point I got very nervous; this was a young buck, and we were kind of surrounding him. I stood very close to Slim Santa, and we watched as he meandered to the creek and left us.
Bucky wasn’t the only wildlife I encountered; when we were swimming at my sister-in-law’s, I grabbed my phone to take a few photos, and I saw this GIANT fish swim right up near the dock. It was at least two feet long, and it was in very shallow water. I have never seen anything like it; it looked like a giant version of those sucker fish that you buy for your fish tank to keep it clean.
I was thinking while on vacation just how easy everything is now. When the boys were small and we stayed in the original, unrenovated house, with one bathroom and a toilet that flushed maybe once every four times, at best, and that backed up into the shower while I was showering, everything was hard. A “vacation” simply meant that I was doing all the things I normally did at home, but in much less convenient circumstances; it was exactly like that Onion headline:
But now we have a beautiful house with THREE bathrooms and all the toilets flush, and I make meals we like without feeling sad that no one ever makes meals for me – no one does, but I have moved past the Sad Feeling – and the boys clean up the kitchen and help with the everyday jobs, and put on their own sunscreen, which is, as every parent knows, an amazing gift, and if I forget something at the store I can send my son out to pick it up, and we can entertain friends without worrying about bedtime or crying or anything else. With the kids becoming adults, family vacations will become rare and more complicated, and they are probably numbered, really, so I treasured this time we had together.
These are the good old days.
These little purple flowers serve as a reminder to me: when the boys were small and my husband was golfing on vacation, and I was feeling exhausted and resentful, my late father-in-law would try to help me out a little, by taking me and the boys for rides on his Kubota utility vehicle through the vineyard, which they loved. I mentioned once that I liked these pretty purple flowers – they are chicory, I think – and then he silently drove a long way to a part of the vineyard that was covered, absolutely covered, with these flowers. He stopped the Kubota and told the boys we were going to sit there for a while, so “Mom could look at the flowers.” It’s such a lovely memory and one that reminds me that while some things always stay the same, everything changes, and what is hard right now maybe won’t be, in the future.
