March Madness

Marching Into March

In many parts of the world, March marks the arrival of spring, but in Calgary, March is firmly a Winter Month. My birthday is in the last third of April, and I feel like that is the tentative start to spring, although it can certainly snow in any month of the year. Yes, you read that correctly. I have experienced snow – in the air, not on the ground – in both July and August. March is typically the snowiest month of the year, which has brought great joy to Rex, and a lot of lower back stretches to my classes, to alleviate any pain from shovelling. Most of my ladies outsource that job, but I think lower back stretches are always appreciated.

Calgarians have a strange tendency to disparage climates in other locations, probably to make ourselves feel better about our six, seven, eight months of winter. Any mention of typically beautiful cities with short winters – particularly cities in BC – will conjure up a “well, it’s horrible and cloudy there in the winter,” and while that may be true, and Calgary does have lovely blue skies often, it feels very much like sour grapes to me. Also, while we do enjoy a lot of sunshine, our winters are very long and very cold, and we also have a lot of this:

It’s cloudy here too, people.

All of which is to say that while I am embracing the season, friluftsliv, hygge, et cetera, I am also enjoying photos of spring in other parts of the world. It will be a while before my garden boxes are green, and in the meantime, I need to break Rex of this very bad habit:

All By Myself

It has been a bit of a strange weekend, here in the Boyhouse. My husband was out of town for the first time in months, my older son was working closing shifts Friday and Sunday, and my younger son was at the high school wrestling City Championships. Friday night, it was just me and Rex at home for dinner, which felt very odd. I think the last time I was home alone for dinner was when the guys took a trip through Yukon and Alaska in 2019. I had my usual favourite dinner of Greek salad with pita and hummus, plus some red wine and tortilla chips and salsa, because I am a girl who knows how to enjoy herself. I topped it all of by watching the first two episodes of Season One NYPD Blue. I used to love that show, and I still do, but I wanted to see what it would look like thirty years after its release. It turns out, it is a great timepiece of New York in the early 90s, and the camera work is just as interesting as I remembered.

Now, these days I do not watch much television (do we still call it television? I mean shows in general) so let’s just take this observation with a grain of salt, but there really aren’t many non-beautiful people cast in TV or movies anymore. It seems like everyone on-screen now is gorgeous, and has perfect teeth, and boy, that was not the case back in the early 90s and prior. I think 90% of the cast of NYPD Blue is pretty average looking, if not downright unattractive, which is kind of remarkable by today’s standards. All these regular-looking people, living full – if dramatic – lives, having romances, friendships, successes and failures.

I feel like it was the advent of Friends that kicked off the whole We All Look Fantastic And We Have This Amazing New York Apartment; but before Friends, we had this:

Girl, You’ll Be A Woman Soon

Speaking of popular culture from the 90s, I watched Pulp Fiction with the boys on Saturday night. My older son had seen it recently and, hearing a story about how the first time I saw it I was on a date and I fainted during the scene where Mia gets an adrenaline shot in the heart (spoiler alert for an almost thirty year old movie), asked if I wanted to rewatch it with him. My younger son, exhausted from a full two days of wrestling, decided to join, asking first what the movie is about. We looked at each other for a moment and I said I don’t know. It’s kind of plotless? I still don’t know how to describe the plot but it really holds up. I am not a Tarantino fan, but this movie is the exception. What can I say, I’m a sucker for a hitman who has a spiritual awakening. Also, the soundtrack, as the kids say, slaps.

Memories of Barkley

I was at the library this week, and a young, lovely librarian lit up when she saw me. Hi! she said excitedly. How is your sweet dog? I must have looked a little blank for a moment, and she continued to chatter about the days of curbside pickup, and how she loved bringing my books out and seeing that cute brown labradoodle, I have a brown labradoodle, right, and he is just like a stuffed animal, so cute?

Oh.

You know that moment when you’re going to say something that will cause awkward feelings, but you have to do it anyway? Her face fell as I explained that he died, but I loved that she remembered him so well.

The very next day I was walking Rex, and to mix up his route I walked down a street that was part of Barkley’s loop to the library. A woman was shovelling snow and she stopped to ask if she could say hi to Rex. I didn’t recognize her but clearly she recognized me as she asked how long ago Barkley died, and how sorry she was, and how she always liked seeing the two of us on our walks.

It was really nice to hear these two women – both kind of strangers – talk about Barkley in such a sweet way. The last couple years of his life were so fraught; I walked him every single day to keep him ambulatory, and every single day a stranger would comment on his appearance, generally in a “what’s wrong with your dog” kind of way. Every single day. I had people stop their cars on the street, roll down their windows, and ask about him. I had people ask if I was aware he had a lump on his side, as if it could have possibly been missed. I had one man ask when I was going to put him down. It was all very hard, but these two women were so kind, and so sweet, that it really helped erase all the sad feelings I had about that time.

Library Thievery

The reason I was talking to the librarian in the first place was because I had gone in to pick up a book I had put on hold, and it wasn’t on the Holds shelf. I wondered if it was still on the cart, although I had received notification that the book was in the day before. It wasn’t, and this led to a lot of searching and typing on the computer, and the librarian sighed deeply. “It’s a popular book,” she said, “and sometimes people see these popular books on the cart, and they TAKE THEM.” I honestly was startled at the thought of looking at the holds cart, seeing a book with a name receipt to indicate the person who had put it on hold, and then, shrugging at the rules, taking the book out. Of all the places for breaking the rules, I never think of the library as one of them, but the librarian told me gravely that this happens all the time. It’s one of the issues with the self-checkout. WHO KNEW. Certainly not me! I am a rule follower generally, and so it would never occur to me to sneak a popular book off of the Holds cart that wasn’t for me. Consider me shocked.

Weekly Reading

This feels like a good time to segue into weekly reading. I had a couple of real winners this week!

Girls They Write Songs About. Oh wow, this book! I was mesmerized. I read this very slowly because I needed to absorb every single word, and I reread many pages a few times. But how to describe this? There’s not really a plot. But it’s a story about women, about choices and relationships and work and becoming. The narrator is around my age and the story begins in NYC in 1997, and I could see myself in this story, the multiverse version of me, that is. It’s just an incredibly written, beautiful, raw, dark book that is also affirming and uplifting, but very real. I was on a real high after finishing this book; I could not stop thinking about it, so I logged into Goodreads to see if there were others who felt this way. This was a big mistake. There were so many negative reviews that I immediately logged back out, because I did not want to be brought down. What I am saying, then, is that while I absolutely loved this book, it seems like many people do not, so, you know. Your mileage may vary.

The Marriage Portrait. I had put this on hold, but unsurely; historical fiction is a tricky genre for me as I feel it is so hard to do it well. Often I find that modern values will be placed in historical fiction, to the detriment of the plot, and the dialogue can feel very off. Also, there was a lot of buzz about this book and that doesn’t always translate to me to be an enjoyable read. I mean, sometimes it does, but often I am disappointed. I read the jacket before starting the book and two things stood out: I had read and enjoyed this author’s memoir about her multiple brushes with death, and The Marriage Portrait was an imagining of the life of the subject of the portrait in Robert Browning’s My Last Duchess. I, along with everyone else, probably, read and dissected this poem in university; I really liked it and at that moment, I was in. I did enjoy this book about a young Florentine woman married off to the Duke of Ferrara; and some of it was a little heavy-handed with the imagery, and I quibble with the ending, but for the most part it was a sweeping story that really hooked me in. I was in the perfect mental space to be transported by this novel.

Happy first week of March, everyone! I wish you all an abundance of blue skies, good books, fun shows, and maybe something growing in your garden besides a 95 pound dog. xo

Comments

  1. Nicole! OMG OMG! OMG! The name Carlene Bauer seemed familiar, and I thought perhaps I’d read something of hers before… But then it suddenly came back to me that we’d been friends for a couple of years in the early oughts when she worked at Elle Magazine! We’d met in Oxford and kept in touch when I moved back to New Jersey (she lived a fabulous life in NYC). She wrote a lot of the book reviews at Elle and gave me a tour of putting the issue to bed once. Definitely putting this on my to-read list. I liked The Marriage Portrait, although the end was a bit fanciful, it was a good counterpoint to the early lines.

    Now Barkley–like your library friends, I think of him often too. He had such a wise and majestic air about him, and I always thought he might be a distant cousin to Scout and Huck.

    And Rex–such a snowbunnypuppy face. What a love and what a great companion for the quiet snowy evenings.

    Will your spouse’s travel kick up now that we’re “post” pandemic?

    • I THINK I JUST BLACKED OUT! You know her! That is really something! I absolutely loved that book and I would be interested to hear your thoughts. It was so interesting and so thought-provoking. I can’t stop going back over it in my mind.
      The trip my husband was on was not for work – he went to visit his mom – so probably it won’t change at all!

      • I don’t know her anymore… like not even on social media. Very sweet person while I did though. I’ll definitely read this and would love if we could chat about it later.

        Glad your hub’s travel was not for work, I guess that was just traumatized old me projecting 😄!

  2. Glad to hear you enjoyed Marriage Portrait! Would love to hear more of your thoughts on the ending.

    My garden has some pretty green things beginning to peek up out of the dirt, but yesterday was also my first snake sighting of the year. It was only 14 degrees! What even?! It almost makes a person wish for more snow. Or perhaps a flamethrower. I do not love snakes nestled up next to my house.

    • I don’t want to spoil anything – although I could email you, I guess! – but I thought the ending was so dumb and Disney-fied. I thought it was kind of a weak way to end the book, to be honest, almost like a cop-out, kind of an unbelievable one.
      Snakes! That is not a problem we have here!

  3. Well, I’ve definitely crossed Calgary off my list of “dream places to live.” i absolutely would shrivel up and die with that much winter. NOW, I will say that growing up near Chicago, March was always a winter month, and I remember having snow on Easter. So I don’t know what’s going on with all these people talking about the “first signs of spring” – really? It seems early. I know it’s been unseasonably hot here in Florida.
    REX. He looks like a stuffed animal in that snow picture.
    Through a weird set of circumstances, I will also be alone this Friday night! I have no idea if I should just do my usual- sit on the couch eating Chipotle while watching Bobby Flay on Food Network, or something “special.” I have no idea what that would be though.

    • Snow on Easter is a pretty normal occurrence around here! I mean, not always, but I would say more often than not there is snow on the ground – Easter and beyond! Snow in summer is rare but it has happened, but snow in May is an almost 100% certainty.

  4. I read Hamnet recently and liked it so I may check out The Marriage Portrait.

    That would be a lot of winter for me. It’s feeling like early spring here, flowers and flowering trees getting started, but still cold at night.

  5. As someone who lives for the library hold system, my mind was BLOWN at the idea of someone taking a book from Holds and even more boldly checking it out – I could NEVER! But, it reminded me that, pre-COVID, our town library used to keep holds on a bookcase in a hallway behind the checkout desk; you could just walk up and find your name and grab your holds to check out. Imagine the ease of hold-stealing with THAT setup? Now, they keep them behind the check out desk, so I imagine there are less opportunities for thievery

    • Lindsay, that is exactly the setup – the holds are on shelves in one part of the library, and no one monitors them at all! You walk up, find your name, take your book. It would never occur to me to grab someone else’s hold! But now that I know this can happen, well. I am SHOCKED. Shocked!

  6. Oh Rex. He looks SO comfortable in the snow in that top photo. Laughing at his habit of sitting on the planting beds. Oops. It’s so sweet that people remember Barkely. It’s no surprise as he was so very cute.

    I remember seeing Pulp Fiction in the theater with Coach when it first came out. It was good, but horrifying at the same time. No idea how I managed NOT to pass out in that shot of adreneline scene.

    I can’t imagine taking a book that was on hold for someone else. People have a lot of nerve. Goodness.

    I’m not the reader you are, so imagine how excited I am that you mention a book written by the author of the book I’m reading right now for book club. I started Hamnet when I left for Texas. I really didn’t have a lot of time to read – only on my flights until I nodded off, but I’m REALLY enoying it.

  7. I empathize with the snow. We get a lot of lake effect snow in Cleveland, but this has been the mildest winter I can remember. We are embracing it! But you’re right, it can really snow here in March, too. I think the latest I remember seeing snow was late May though.

    I love your dinner alone meal. I’d have joined right in. I read Girls They Write Songs About and enjoyed it. That’s crazy about someone taking your library hold. Our self checkout would not allow that, but it wouldn’t stop someone from just leaving the library without checking out. One weird thing I’ve noticed is that sometimes popular books are shelved in the New Release area, even if there is a long waiting list. Makes no sense, but I’ve grabbed ones that were sitting on that special shelf, even though I was number 78 or so on the waiting list.

    • Bijoux, I love that you loved that book as well! It was just so nuanced, and I can’t stop thinking about it, how we make different choices in life and it leads us all down different paths.
      We almost always get snow in May, so I understand!

  8. To the best of my memory, June, July, and August have always been snow free months for me. We’ve got plenty of dark and cloudy days year round to make up for it.

    My husband and I have been watching the 80’s show Simon & Simon, and it is very refreshing to see bad teeth, wrinkles, and bald spots on TV.

    It’s so sweet that people still remember Barkley. And I love the Rex garden!

  9. I’m glad you liked The Marriage Portrait – that’s a fall book club selection for my club. I did not care for Hamnet so was nervous about this new one. I have heard about the heavy handedness, though, specifically around a really long, drawn out sex scene? That was mentioned on a podcast recently. That first book sounds right up my alley so I WILL be reading it!

    As I’m typing this, it has started to snow again. We got 4″ of wet, heavy snow. March can be very very snowy here, but we can sometimes have springy Marches, so it’s a confusing time of year. Oddly, just 4 hours east of us in Madison, it seems very springy there. Like I see grass in Engie’s photos and I think HOW!!

    I am glad you encountered women who have sweet memories of Barkley. By the way, did you name him after the dog in Sesame Street? Have I asked you that? Labradoodles are especially cute dogs so I can see why he’s memorable to others who knew him tangentially!

    • The sex scene wasn’t too bad in my mind, but I thought the ending was pretty dumb. That said, it didn’t wreck the experience for me. I thought it was a worthwhile read.
      We DID name him after the dog in Sesame Street and you are the first person ever to notice that!

  10. Chicagoans say the same thing about other states’ climates, but we only get snow in April. I can’t imagine seeing snow in the summer, so I’ll never say anything negative again.

    I became emotional while reading about the interaction about Barkeley at the library. ❤️

    I’ve never seen Pulp Fiction, and after reading about that scene, I’m not sure I want to.

    I’m amazed that people take other people’s holds. What am I saying? Of course, I believe it. I just returned from a weekend getaway that included flying on a plane. That’s all you need to know. 

  11. Still winter here. My April baby was born during a blizzard, so, yeah. More to come.

  12. Generally speaking, any snow we get in March or April (or May *sigh*) will melt quickly, so I do think March is a relatively snowy month for us, but it’s not as full on as snows in January and February that stick around. I don’t think I could handle living in a place where there’s a possibility of snow in July and August. You’re made of tougher stuff than I am.

    Barkley was such a fuzzy teddy bear. I am happy you can hear stories about him now and remember some of the good times and not the sadness of the last part of his life. The nerve of someone asking you if you knew he had a lump! The nerve! He was well-loved and you cared for him so well and I know you know this, but it’s sometimes good to hear that he was a happy dog with a happy life!

  13. Calgary weather sounds very familiar! We’re plowing snow again today. I think your doggie flower garden is the best! And I think it’s much more fun to watch actors with interesting faces rather than polished perfection. About 10 years ago, we visited Warner Bros studio, and I’ve never looked at TV & movies the same ever since. I was so naive! There’s so much trickery involved!! 😯🤣

  14. I didn’t know people could self-check out their own books? This service does NOT exist at our library and I can 100% see if causing lots of issues.
    Until you mentioned this, I didn’t stop to think about books literally being stolen from a library. But this must happen. A lot? My library doesn’t have any checkpoint or security scanner, either. So it would be very easy to walk out with a bag full of books. Wow!
    And I am so sorry you missed out on your book. Ugh.

    Calgary definitely gets a lot more winter weather than we do in Nova Scotia. I think outside of BC, we have the easiest winters in Canada. My parents live in NB and get A LOT more snow than we do.

    That said, we get plenty of freezing rain in the winter which I absolutely hate. Snow actually isn’t what I mind the most about winter – it’s wet/cold weather that makes everything icy. We’ve had more snow in the last few weeks than we did all winter to this point. I shouldn’t be complaining…but I am because I am just so ready to be able to walk out the door with just sneakers and a light jacket. Getting the kids geared up (or drying wet stuff) – I am over it for the season. BUT, today I put on big girl panties and went to the ski hill solo and it was so much fun and kinda impossible without winter/snow. So there are perks 🙂

    • I think there is a security scanner so books can’t get stolen – at least, I’m pretty sure – but yes, the self checkout! It’s really handy, actually – I just pop in, grab my holds, and zip them through the scanner. I mean, when my holds haven’t been taken off the holds shelf! Scandal at the library!
      Good for you for getting out skiing! But yes, it’s tiresome putting on so many layers!

  15. I think the only beautiful people on TV thing is an American thing especially, because I find it to be less true in British shows. In fact it’s one of the reason why I can hardly watch most mass-market shows anymore, they seem so fake and out of touch! That is so frustrating someone took your hold! The library is already free; I hope they bring it back and aren’t just stealing books, which I figure happens quite a lot. I loved the Marriage Portrait but also agree about the ending, the rest of the book seemed so full of danger and reality, the twee ending seemed out of place.

    • Oh, that’s true – British shows are much more real! I don’t think the person took the hold, I think they checked it out, and there’s probably not a “warning” on a book if it was checked out. At least, I hope! I’m glad you agree with me about the ending – it was so dumb! The rest of the book was good though.

  16. Pat Birnie says

    I really cannot imagine living with that lengthy winter. Even living in milder southern Ontario we have chosen to escape for three months! Although I do love your attitude to it and the pics are beautiful.

    I was totally shocked that someone would take a library book!! I would never have thought that- ever! My biggest library rule break is if I’m reading an ebook that’s due, and have a few pages to go, I’ll turn off the wifi on my device so it won’t return. At the most I keep it an extra day or 2. And at that I feel like a total badass!

    • Oh Pat, you’re so sneaky! Lololol! I didn’t know that was a thing you could do and now that I have an ereader…well, I will keep that tip in my back pocket!

      • Pat Birnie says

        Yes my daughter suggested that to me so nonchalantly (just turn of your wifi duh). She is obviously much more devious than her mom!

  17. Awww…Barkley! What a beautiful doggy he was! I’m glad you had a couple of encounters to make you feel good about his last few years.

    We are visiting Calgary in May! I let my son (and my husband to some degree) choose where to vacation this year — between Oahu and Calgary — and he chose Calgary. He said if it were a different island, he may have chosen Hawaii (we have been to Oahu and Maui so it wasn’t as exciting a proposition — LOL) . We are excited, and although we chose Calgary for the cooler weather, I hope it doesn’t snow!

    I have not been to the library in ages (I’m so spoiled by Kindle!) but I remember the “Holds” section. I never thought of taking anyone’s from those shelves! Yes, the nerve!! I am surprised that there’s nothing in the system to prevent that — I would think they’d have “tagged” that barcode for you. Did they find it and scold the line-cutter? That’s basically what that person did — cut in line! How rude!!

    • Banff! I meant Banff, not Calgary (we are flying in and out of Calgary so that’s probably why it’s in my brain! LOL

  18. First of all, your snow dog Rex is just the MOST adorable. I just feel his massive snow-thusiasm radiating through the computer and I am here for it.

    Second, how lovely to have people remember Barkley with you. That sounds like such a comfort. And I don’t think I realized how awful people were to you in the last years of Barkley’s life. Ugh. People really suck sometimes.

    SPEAKING OF: People TAKE BOOKS that are ON HOLD for SOMEONE ELSE?!?!?!

    Our library has a healthy cynicism about people’s proclivity for rule-breaking because this is how they do holds: you put your book on hold. They wrap your book with a piece of paper that has your name on it in big, bold letters, and your name is on the pages-side of the book, not the binding side. And then they shelve the books in the Holds area with the pages/names facing outward. So unless you were to handle all the books and take them off the shelves and look at the bindings, you wouldn’t know to steal them, I guess.

    Oh! Also! They do something to the barcode so that you can’t check it out unless you are using your own library card. Sometimes I check books out for my kid with her card, and then I forget and scan my holds, and it won’t scan for me until I log out of her account and into mine. I am guessing that the kind of people who STEAL HOLDS have no compunction about walking out of the library without checking out the book, though.

    • It sounds like our libraries have very similar ways of dealing with books and holds, except for the “taking out” part – I had no idea that could happen. What the librarian insinuated was that when the books are about to be put on the holds shelf, people slip them off and take them out! Now, I’m sure this is the exception, since this has never happened to me, but WHO DOES THAT.

  19. I took my old dog to be groomed for the first time sometime before Covid – maybe 2019? She got so distraught (my dog was abused before we got her so she had some issues) that I had to stand where she could see me the entire time she got groomed. She was so miserable that I never did it again. Fast forward to last month when our new dog had to be professionally cleaned because she got into something and good lord did she smell bad. So I called the groomer and she immediately said she remembered my sweet dog from last time and it was an unexpected gut punch to have to tell her that my dog died last year. Ouch.

    At my library you can’t check out a book that is on hold for someone else and if you leave with an unchecked out book the door things beep at you. It seems extreme but at least no one is stealing held books?

    • Awwww. Puppers. I had dropped off a little card at the old groomers’ after Barkley died, and the woman who used to groom him – she was so kind – actually phoned me to see how I was holding up. It was so kind and I will never forget it.
      I think there is a beep at the door if you try to take out unchecked books but apparently ANYONE can take out books that are on hold!

  20. Talk about #ifyouknowyouknow, there’s clearly a whole tribe of us out there who (a) are organised and keen enough to put library books on hold #goodthingscometothosewhowait #patienceisavirtue, and (b) would never dream of taking Someone Else’s Book from the On Hold Shelf. In my local library they wrap a piece of paper round the book, secure it with an elastic band, and write your name down the spine. You’d have to have nerves of steel to stand there pulling books off the shelf and removing elastic bands one by one to check the titles. I shudder to think of the consequences if our redoubtable librarian caught you at it!

  21. bibliomama2 says

    I DO remember 4B, even thought I only watched NYPD Blue the first time around.
    I am almost amusingly jaw-openly shocked by the person stealing the holds. Our set-up is the same, but I somehow thought if you tried to check out someone else’s hold the computer would start sounding an alarm or something. But really, WHO DOES THAT? Wither the library code, bro?
    I loved Hamnet and Judith, but it was the kind of book I don’t always love, so I haven’t rushed to pick up The Marriage Contract, but I do love that poem.
    We have set snow records this winter, but the temperature has been warmer the past few days. Honestly I would rather it just stay cold, because the slush, the puddles, the mess, oy.

    • See, that is what I thought too, I thought that the computer would block the person from taking out someone else’s hold. MAYHEM.
      We haven’t set a snow record at all, but it’s so cold!

  22. I can’t BELIEVE you have a hold thief at your library! I’ve always been annoyed that the holds shelf at my library is behind the circulation desk because I’d love to be able to do self check-out for my books, but maybe it’s a good thing! I would be so sad to get to the library to pick up a hold I couldn’t wait to read, only to find out someone took it from the shelf! WHAT IN THE WORLD? Bookish people gotta look out for other bookish people!

    I’m so glad you had sweet encounters with people about Barkley! I can’t believe the things people would say to you about him. Like, back off, people. Let him live his best doggo life without stupid comments. I’m sorry you had to deal with that!

  23. OK, seriously. Who are these people? Taking library books? Making comments about a dog *to his owner*? They must be the same people who either touch the stomachs of those they think are pregnant, OR who actually ASK if people are pregnant. People! This is none of your business! And neither are other peoples’ library holds. Sheesh.

  24. So sweet that two people remembered Barkley so fondly!

    I had to laugh about your comment about people all looking so fabulous on TV these days. I agree, where are the really good, but ugly actors these days?
    Also, another thought that occurs to me regularly… why do celebrities (more often than not) have to do ALL THE THINGS these days? Sing, act, write books, etc…. can’t they just decide to be good at ONE thing and leave other things for other people?

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