Monthly Archives: May 2023

The Years Are Short

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What an incredible week it’s been! Although I don’t believe Mondays to be a portent of the week to come, last Monday night it poured rain, which settled the smoke in the air. We woke up to blue skies and sunshine, and the ability to take a full breath outside without feeling like this might be the first step to lung disease. I thought this was a sign of a great week, and it was.

Blue skies!

I was especially happy – not just because the smoke was giving me aching muscles and general fatigue, which disappeared immediately after the rain – because we had such a busy and exciting week ahead. My younger son had his graduation ceremony, and all the fun hoopla that comes with it. The ceremony was on Friday, but the kids had to return their gowns immediately afterward, so Thursday after school I photographed my son and his group of friends. There is a group of about ten of them that have been really tight for years – some since kindergarten – so to see them all in their caps and gowns was really wonderful.

It was so much fun; they were all such good sports for their photo shoots, humouring me with silly supermodel poses and changing locations around the school, blowing kisses and posing in a conga line on my cue. “Work it, work it!” I’d say, and then “Frolic through the trees!”

I SAID FROLIC!

I had a belated birthday lunch with my dear friend Tara (HI TARA) on Saturday; both our second children graduated this week and we were discussing the ceremonies. Both our ceremonies had a lot of graduates – there were 691 in my son’s class, and a similar number in her daughter’s – and we both had a feeling of deep gratitude that we could be there and experience it. I had the same feeling last year, when my older son had the first grad ceremony held since 2019.

If there is one gift that the Covid pandemic has given me, it’s extreme gratitude for the ability to celebrate occasions. After the ceremony, one of the moms had arranged a luncheon at a golf club for the boys in their group – the Brentwood Boys, as they are known – plus all the family members and grandparents. She had asked us all to send in photos of the boys throughout the years and then created a slideshow, which was really wonderful and special. There were photos from elementary school, sleepovers, Halloweens, and birthday parties, and, of course, there were a lot from the pandemic. They finished junior high in June of 2020, and we had photographed them all outside, all standing six feet apart, and it was a little sad to see those photos, thinking of the fun things they missed that year. There were so many of those pandemic photos: birthday parties where they had masks on, standing outside, bundled up for the elements, a few of them in my own backyard, with chairs six feet apart and a big bottle of hand sanitizer in the foreground, school lunches every day at a friend’s nearby backyard and garage, even when it was well below freezing, because they weren’t allowed to eat inside the school. These kids have been through a lot and all I could feel was happiness that we were all there together, sharing a meal and laughing and hugging. How incredible to have such friendships over the years. How incredible to be a part of this group.

We moved into this neighbourhood twenty-three years ago, and one of the biggest selling points was that there were schools of all levels within walking distance of home. We had the choice to bus the kids to other, specialty schools, but we really wanted the kids to be able to walk to school and make friends in the neighbourhood. I am so glad we made that decision all those years ago.

Back when the boys were very small, I would walk them to the elementary school playground after naptime and before the school let out for the day. It was a good way to kill some time before dinner and allow the kids to have some fresh air. I was so lonely back then. Being home with two very small children can be a very lonely experience; it was always hard to coordinate playdates with other moms of more than one child, playgroups were only once or twice a week, and there are just so many long hours in the day. My husband was gone twelve hours in the day, generally the twelve hours that the boys were awake, so I was just on duty all the time. So I would take the double stroller to the playground, and I would see two moms who were always there with their kindergarten age children, waiting for the older ones to finish for the day. I desperately wanted to be friends with them, and I did try to talk to them, but the chasm between a mom of a one-and-two-year old and a mom of a five-and-seven-year old is vast and wide, and also, if you have ever tried to strike up a conversation while caring for two toddlers, you know of which I speak. Conversational continuity is nearly impossible, and so I continued being lonely, looking at those women longingly.

This week’s graduate, at the playground 16 years ago.

Only a few years later, I did become friends with them when my own children were at that school, and we were all on the same volunteer committees together. I happily was absorbed into their large circle, and we have been friends all these years, the self-named Brentwood Babes. Saturday night, some of the Babes went to dinner theatre, which I had never done before. My son’s best friend – they have been friends since age 3 – works there, and we had a great time watching the rendition of The Wedding Singer, which involved really great music and lots of laughs.

It’s amazing, really. I’m the baby of the group and it’s pretty incredible to have a group of friends who are a few steps ahead in life, who have supported each other through so many life changes and hardships, and who have shared in each other’s joys. This neighbourhood is a bit like a small town, with its shops and parks and kind of knowing each other’s business, with its Food Library and Little Free Libraries and the actual public library, with its schools and playgrounds and grocery stores. For me, this neighbourhood is the best thing about living in Calgary, and I was really feeling it this week.

Thanks to Covid, I will never take for granted these long-standing friendships and the ability to spend time together; I would never say the pandemic is a good thing, because it was terrible, but no mud, no lotus, as they say.

Weekly Reading

Fleishmann Is In Trouble. There are at least two sides to every story, but sometimes, when you are in the thick of a story, it’s hard to see the other side. This book, which on a surface level, deals with a divorce and custody of children, was brilliantly written in three parts. The first part focuses entirely on the husband and all the things that he is going through, and I found myself incredibly sympathetic to his plight. But then, the narrator – who is a third party – starts to show cracks and glimmers of insight into the wife’s life and motivations. It’s complex and very, very gripping. More than just a book about a breakup, it’s a scathing treatise on marriage, divorce, wealth, class, and, most of all, what it means to be a woman moving through this world. Women, as we all know, can never really win or have it all, particularly mothers. There is always something we are giving up or giving in to, there is always some societal pressure on us to act a certain way or be a certain way, and if we give in to that pressure, it’s going to come at us from another angle. This book was brilliant and is definitely one of my favourites so far this year. Someone recommended this to me; my initial thought was Engie (HI ENGIE), but she read it in 2020, and it was recently recommended. Was it Birchy, or maybe Suzanne? (HI BIRCHY HI SUZANNE). If it was you, let me know!

Don’t Call Me Home. There is an Alice Munro story called Jakarta, which features a running joke between two women that starts with “I’m no prude, but…” and I kept thinking of this the whole time I was reading this memoir about the daughter of an Andy Warhol muse and an artist. I’m no prude, but…this book was shocking and kind of horrifying in every sense of the word. I don’t even know where to start but let’s just say the first ten years of this woman’s childhood were spent nomadically, until her mother became pregnant with her sister – actress Gaby Hoffman – at which point they lived at the famed Chelsea Hotel in NYC. Every single detail about this memoir had my eyes opening wide and my eyebrows finding refuge in my hairline. Obviously her mother was mentally ill and it’s pretty sad that Warhol made tons of money without disseminating any to the women who worked for him, but also, my god. This book is bananas. It’s also weirdly written and there are just so many people in it that I found myself thinking “wait, who’s Ron? Who’s Kathy? Is Mike their son or…wait, is that her own COUSIN she’s considering having sex with? It is? Oh my god.” I mean, your mileage may vary but I found this so disturbing and not written well enough to warrant me overlooking the material.

It’s gearing up to be a pretty busy week around here, once again, but not quite as exciting or social as last week. I hope you all have a beautiful week with lots of blue skies and sunshine. xo

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Scary Hair Affair Edition

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If you have been reading this for any amount of time, you know that I am staunchly Pro-Aging, that I have been working to embrace my aging, perimenopausal body, and for the most part, I have succeeded. There is one thing, however, that has caused me a great deal of angst and embarrassment, and that is hair loss and thinning.

I will tell you honestly that I really hesitated before writing this post, because for some reason I can talk about my periods and my drooping breasts and my rounding tummy and how I needed to buy Always “Discreet” for high impact activities, but when it comes to my hair, I feel a great deal of shame and embarrassment. This should not be the case because thinning hair is a very common occurrence for women of my age and older. It’s probably way more common than we think.

If I am going to be totally honest, I am probably more prone to it than many people because I can distinctly remember my paternal grandmother wearing a wig when I was young. I do not have genetics on my side, people.

I have had a fraught relationship with my hair my entire life; it’s a very sensitive and touchy subject for me, and the reasons for this could fill an entire book, let alone a blog post. Suffice it to say that it’s important to me to have nice hair, and last fall things were at an absolute low point, hair-wise. I was cleaning out my hairbrush every day and every day there would be a handful of hair in there, I noticed all my hair ties were looser around my bun than before, and just the act of pulling my hair into a bun revealed places where my scalp was visible. BALD SPOTS. I was developing BALD SPOTS. Listen, no woman in the world wants to go bald, and I was particularly upset about this, for all of the above reasons. I knew something had to change.

There are three main causes of hair loss: dietary and nutritional deficiencies, stress, and hormonal changes such as those experienced during perimenopause. I knew my hair loss was due to the latter; I wasn’t under any undue stress, my diet is very rich in vitamins and nutrients, as well as sufficient calories, protein, and fat. I take multivitamins daily without fail, plus supplemental biotin, and I have done this for years. I knew it was a hormonal issue, I just wasn’t sure how to solve it. In desperation, I threw everything at the problem but the kitchen sink, starting six months ago, and I am happy to report that my efforts have really paid off. My hairbrush only yields a few strands a day, my hair ties are snug, and, best of all, my bald spots, while not perfect, have really started filling in. Here’s how I did it!

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Scary Hair Affair Edition

From The Inside Out

The biggest and most effective treatment I have undertaken is Nutrafol, which is a supplement specifically designed for women in perimenopause and menopause. I usually skip through advertisements on podcasts, but I had listened to a few about Nutrafol and I was very curious. I have been taking it for six months exactly, every single day, and let me tell you, it lives up to the hype. I could see a difference after only one month, and now, six months later, the difference in my hair health, fullness, and thickness is significant.

There are downsides, of course. One of them is that a daily dose is four capsules, which feels like a lot of capsules. The capsules themselves have a bit of a weird aftertaste, although – like the smell of Ilia skin tint serum – this is something I have gotten used to and barely notice anymore. The biggest downside, however, is the cost. It is EXPENSIVE, particularly if you live in Canada and hence have to deal with the exchange rate and international shipping. That said, there is usually a podcast discount code available, and I have just received my second six-month shipment into which the company added a full-sized shampoo and conditioner as a “free” gift, so I do think it is worth the expense. If I am choosing between buying what amounts to an expensive supplement, and bald spots, I am going to choose the expensive supplement every time.

November 2022
May 2023

From The Outside In

In terms of data collection and experiment integrity, I made a mistake. I started using scalp serums at the same time that I started Nutrafol, so who knows what effect, if any, they have had. I’m going to guess Not Much, but I am still using them. I think they probably add slightly to my root density; in any case, they don’t hurt, and are not overly expensive.

I love The Ordinary products in general – they are really good value – and I have been using this serum on my scalp before bed every night for the past six months. I worried it would make my hair oily, but it really doesn’t. It is supposed to encourage regrowth and density, and maybe it does? Who can say.

I like this Bondi Boost Intensive Spray; I use it on my scalp after I wash my hair, which is every two to three days, depending on the week and it’s activities. I do think it boosts root volume, but again, I have no idea if it helps with density and regrowth. It smells nice, which is a huge selling point in my book.

Wrap Star

I have been meaning to write about microfibre hair wraps with buttons since August 2020, when Suzanne (HI SUZANNE) recommended them. She recommended it, I immediately bought it, and now, only thirty-three months later, I am telling you about it.

I used to just wrap my hair in a regular towel, but this is so much gentler on my delicate-flower hair. Because of the button in the back, it stays on perfectly while I do my makeup, rather than slowly flopping over as a towel is wont to do in my hair.

Brush With Fame

A while back, San (HI SAN) mentioned a brush that she used to detangle her hair. I looked at the photo and was skeptical. The brush just seemed so…pokey. San assured me that it really did work and while the brand of brush she uses was exorbitantly priced in Canada (WHY, CANADA??) I found a similar one for what I consider to be a reasonable price.

I have to tell you that San was right, it really does work. It detangles without pulling, and although there are always a few strands in the brush, it certainly helps with breakage.

The Breakup With Breaking Up

I know that putting my hair up into a bun is hard on it in terms of breakage, but I just can’t quit doing it. I need to be able to teach without my hair falling into my face, if I’m exercising or gardening I like to have it tied back for convenience, sometimes it is so windy here that I need to have it contained while walking the dog, so that it isn’t whipped around into little knots.

I threw away every last one of my old hair ties, because I often found little broken-off pieces of hair in them. I bought two different kinds of Goody brand hair ties for my bun, and they work like a charm. Very rarely do they have pieces of hair in them when I take my hair down.

There are two items in my hair wardrobe that 2000s Nicole would have been appalled at, but 90s Nicole could not live without: scrunchies and claw clips. To be fair, I have been using scrunchies to hold a messy bun for my workouts for probably five or six years, who knows, the pandemic left me with no sense of time. I, like everyone else with long, spiral permed hair, wore them all the time back in the early 90s, and it was a mental hurdle I had to leap to let them back into my life twenty-five years hence. I will say that nothing works quite so well for exercise AND is gentle to brittle locks than a scrunchie, and since I am past the age of really caring what’s in fashion, I may just use them until I am in my grave or have been scattered over the ocean or have become human compost or, less dramatically, have cut my hair into an age-appropriate bob.

The claw clip though: I never thought I’d see the day. Not since my university days have I worn one and never did I think I’d wear one again, but here I am, in high-waisted jeans and a claw clip. What’s next, crop tops? Spaghetti-strapped floral dresses with baby tees underneath? Denim vests? PALAZZO PANTS?

In any case, claw clips are a cute and easy way to put my hair up quickly when needed, and there is no breakage involved.

Outfit of the Month

In a still hair-related anecdote, albeit not of the mane variety, Friday morning of the long weekend I decided I NEEDED to get body sugaring done. I decided I could not wait one more day. I was surprised and grateful that there was one appointment left that day – did I mention Friday of the long weekend? – and I snagged it. I zoomed over in between bouts of gardening, and my Sugar Lady greeted me with a “Wow, look at you! You look so hip and cool!” Me? Cool and hip? This isn’t something I usually feel and I laughed and said that I was just in my gardening outfit. My Sugar Lady told me that I should consider myself a Hot Gardener, and now I think that maybe everyone needs a cheerleader like my Sugar Lady in their life.

These jeans have made many appearances on this blog and in my life, and that is because I have had them since 2008. They kind of look like it too, but they are so comfortable. The Talk To Me Goose tank was a gift from my husband before the screening of Top Gun: Maverick. You all know how I feel about Top Gun, and if you don’t, let’s just say I have taken many life lessons from that movie, as well as the sequel. It’s not the plane, it’s the pilot! Never fire unless fired upon! You, asshole, you’re lucky to be here!

Well, we are all lucky to be here, thinning hair and all. As I said, I really hesitated prior to writing this but ultimately, I wanted to say that if you are also experiencing hair loss and thinning, please know that you’re not alone. I feel your pain! It really is an upsetting thing to experience, but there are products out there that can help, at least to some extent. If you have any products or experiences to share, I’d love to hear them, as always. xo

More Screaming Into The Void

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Thank you all for your kind and supportive comments regarding my son’s dental surgery. He is booked for the second surgery, and I was happily surprised to hear that it will take no more than twenty minutes under general anesthetic; I am still salty that we didn’t do this in the FIRST place, but the best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago, etcetera.

When I asked the nurse on the phone several spastic questions, she was very calming and made me feel like a) my son’s particular issues might be problematic in a regular dental office, but are par for the course in their specialist’s office, and b) I SHOULD HAVE INVESTIGATED THIS IN THE FIRST PLACE. But again. Planting trees, we don’t know what we don’t know, and I will probably never trust a regular dentist for advice again.

I am a person who generally likes Mondays. Monday is generally a good day for me: I have a morning to accomplish things and then an afternoon class with a lovely group of ladies, we have pasta on Monday nights, and I am well-rested from the weekend. This past Monday, though. I felt like Garfield, or these guys:

Honestly, it was a ridiculous day of frustration. The dental office and oral surgeon both kept phoning me, while I was walking Rex, to say they had emailed over various forms and paperwork that needed to be responded to, but I had received nothing. My personal email was working fine, but our family email – which I use for all such things – kept giving me error messages. Finally I contacted our internet provider, who informed me that there had been a password compromise, so they locked my account. I mean, good? But also, I would have liked to know that?

The fellow on my Help Chat had me log into my account on their website, which required a two-step verification process; the authentication code was sent to…my email that was not working. There was no way around this. EMAIL OR NOTHING. Eventually, after much wrangling we did get around it, and all was resolved, but it took a significant amount of time and as soon as I finished the mountains of paperwork I needed to leave to teach my class.

I was feeling fairly agitated by this time because MORE DENTAL SURGERY, plus all the email issues, plus filling in all the forms and finding all the cards with all the various health numbers on them, which needed to be done IMMEDIATELY. Because of my preparation for my flying birdies, my sons carry their health care cards on their persons, but luckily Past Nicole had anticipated issues and had photos of the health care cards on my phone, which I finally remembered. Finishing all this, I zipped over to the community centre, thinking how nice it was that the heat was finally fixed, and that it was a beautiful warm day; I expected the centre to be fairly warm and was dressed accordingly in short sleeves and capri-length leggings.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I entered the room to discover it was freezing, and not just freezing, but Freezing With Blasts Of Freezing Air. The air-conditioning was on full blast, and when I asked the women in the office if we could possibly turn off the air-conditioning, they replied that they could not. It had been jammed on full blast since the previous Thursday, and no one could figure out how to turn it off. A service call, they said, had been requested.

I think if someone had told me all of the issues affecting my classes in the past two months, I would not have believed them. I would not have believed that a community centre could be shut down completely for six weeks to work on the HVAC system, I would not have believed that after those six weeks I and my fellow teachers would be required to teach for two weeks in a hall with no heat, I would not have believed that my unheated yoga classes would be punctuated with the sound of drilling into metal and that I would have to beg the workmen to please, PLEASE stop drilling for five minutes so my students could have a peaceful savasana. After all that, I certainly would not have believed that I would be faced with an air-conditioned room that no one could possibly bear being in. I just stood and stared forlornly at the thermostat for a long time, randomly pushing seemingly useless buttons, until the centre manager came up to me and said that, happily, the boardroom was empty that afternoon and the air conditioning didn’t seem to be on in that room, so if I could help her move chairs we could hold the class in there.

It was cozy and wonderful, and afterwards I felt much more calm and ready to tackle life, until I got home and chaos seemed to follow me. Every single task I needed to do took five times longer than usual because of small complications arising – from emails to event planning, from trying to activate a card online to making dinner, every little thing was way harder than it needed to be, for no reason that I could tell except that maybe I had angered the universe at some point and was being smited.

It’s a good thing I am not one of those people who think that Monday sets the tone for the week. I simply waved the white flag, ate some leftover Mother’s Day cake, and went to bed, thinking, like Scarlett O’Hara, that after all, tomorrow is another day.

Weekly Reading

The House On Mango Street. I really loved this little book of tiny vignettes about a Latina girl growing up in – and getting out of – Chicago. I loved that in the prologue, the author talked about wanting to write for people who are busy working for a living, who don’t have much time to read and are tired. Each story vignette is very short, and that’s why. It’s an absolute delight of a book.

My Body. After reading No Filter, my friend Cherie (HI CHERIE) recommended this to me as another book of memoir essays about a model and the modeling industry. I had no idea who the author of this memoir was. That has never stopped me before! If you also don’t know, she’s a famous swimsuit model and actor, who became famous after appearing in the video for Blurred Lines. Funnily enough, I was talking about this book to my husband, who DID know who she was, which was probably the most surprising thing I learned this month. I liked this collection about the life of a model and the bad men who take advantage of them, but I think what was most interesting were her essays about being an Instagram influencer. To the outside world, being an influencer might be perceived as an easy way to make money, but my goodness, it is NOT. It is a job, and not one that I would like, involving a lot of work and obsessing over screens, likes, and comments. 

Thankfully, the rest of the week was much more smooth, productive, and happy than Monday portended, albeit smoky, and it included some gardening, long chats with friends, a birthday dinner for my mom, my thousandth – thousandth! – Peloton ride, and a freshly groomed and ready for summer Rex. This week is my son’s graduation ceremony, filled with all the fun and social things that go with it. I hope you all have a beautiful week! xo

Five For Friday: The Smoky Eye Edition

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  • There are terrible wildfires north of us, and we have been experiencing immensely smoky air and extremely poor air quality. It has improved a bit over the week, but Tuesday was an absolute low point. We had intense, gusting winds and being outside felt exactly like having smoke blown in my face, but at 80 km/ hr. Smoke in the air is pretty common here in late August, but in mid-May it feels weirdly apocalyptic, unsettling, and scary on so many levels. The sky looks cloudy and foggy, but it’s neither cloud nor fog, it’s smoke. There are many more important and urgent issues at hand, obviously, but selfishly and superficially I have to say that a) it is so disappointing to come to the end of a long winter only to be faced with dreadful smoke that really cuts into the pleasures of being outside in nice weather, and b) my hair smells. When I bend over and my hair goes into my face, I think something stinks in here, and then I realize that something is my own hair. My hair smells exactly the way it would after coming home from the bar from a night of dancing and drinking vodka slimes out of little jugs. I guess this is specifically a problem of Youth In The Nineties, because no one smokes in bars anymore. Or really, at all.
It looks like cloud and mist, but it’s smoke
  • On that note, remember going to bars and dancing all night? I heard the song Strike It Up the other day and was instantly transported to the dance floor at the Fox and Firkin. I was talking to my boys about this, and how if you met a guy in the bar you would maybe exchange information by writing your home number on a piece of paper or napkin, or maybe on your own hand. Nowadays, the youths just exchange their socials, which really cuts down on the awkwardness of having your dad answer the phone or your brother saying that you couldn’t come to the phone because you were in the bathroom.
OMG how embarrassing
  • Speaking of the Nineties, the other day I remembered General Foods International Coffees, which I thought was the height of elegant home coffee solutions. French Vanilla! Cafe Vienna! Suisse Mocha! And all you needed was a tin of the powder and some hot water. I remember thinking, back in the day, that it was so exciting to actually go to a coffee shop and order a cappuccino, as they were not as ubiquitous as they are now. It was a super-fancy treat to be able to do that, and these days it could not be more run-of-the-mill. I mean, there is nothing you can do at Starbucks to make it feel like an exotic treat, no matter how many syrups or shots or non-dairy milks you use. Nothing these days compares to a cappuccino in the early Nineties. The absolute peak of my coffee excitement was when I was in Europe for a school trip in grade 11, and I had a cappuccino in Rome. At the time I couldn’t imagine life getting better than that.
Post-cappuccino excitement
  • There is an election going on in our province, and there is a woman who is running in the riding where I teach yoga by the name of Jenny Yeremiy. Every single time I see her signs – which is every time I drive to the community centre – I think, giggling, “JEREMY YEREMY?” and then I remind myself that it is JENNY, not Jeremy. This is the sort of thing I think might happen to a normal person ONCE, but it happens to me every time I see a sign, and there are probably five signs from the time I enter the community until I get to the centre, and then back again. So ten times, twice a week, I think JEREMY YEREMY, and giggle. I would blame this on the smoke’s effect on my brain but it’s been happening for weeks now and also, at this time last year, the community was advertising a night of food trucks. Taste the Trucks! the signs said cheerfully, and every single time I would think “Taste the Tricks?” and picture men with their tongues hanging out of their mouths while looking lustily at attractive sex workers. Although, technically, I think a trick is the man in this situation, this is still a thing that happened in my brain for weeks. Too long, didn’t read, I think something is broken in my brain. My son was on the couch post-surgery, blearily flipping through Disney Plus, and I saw a show with a picture of a Storm Trooper. “Bad Bitch?” I said to my son, “That’s a weird thing to have on Disney Plus!” He looked at me tiredly and said “Mom, it’s Bad BATCH.”
In the parking lot, giggling about Jeremy Yeremy
  • Speaking of tricks, in the book Easy Beauty, there is a scene near the end that I have not stopped thinking about since I read it last week. The author and her son and husband were going to a magic show at the park, at the husband’s behest. The son – who was about seven – kept loudly making statements about how he was not impressed with the magician, how he knew exactly how the trick was performed, and then detailing HOW the trick WAS performed. There’s a secret compartment, the magician has something up her sleeve, etcetera. The husband kept asking him to be quiet and then, of course, the punch line is that the magician did something incredible – she made a stuffed rabbit disappear, collapsed the box she had put the rabbit in, and a live rabbit was in her hands. The little boy was, finally, in awe. What bothered me about this entire scene was that prior to this final trick the author kept high-fiving and praising her son for being so smart! So cynical! No magic show was going to fool him! All the while, other people exist, and were there to hear this little boy brattily talk about the lameness of the magic tricks, while his mother praised him for this behaviour. The woman’s husband kept begging them to stop, because it was disruptive and bothering other people, but the woman proudly KEPT GOING. I obviously wasn’t there. I have no skin in this game. People parent in many different ways. AND YET. I am so bothered by this rude behaviour, that affects me not in the least, I cannot even. I CANNOT EVEN.
Rex cannot even either. He’s in a constant state of wonder.

It’s a holiday weekend around here and I am desperately hoping for the smoke to dissipate and for the north to get sheets of rain. We are heading up a little north ourselves, to celebrate my mom’s birthday. I hope you all have a festive, non-smoky weekend. xo

…And I Get Off On The Pain I Inflict

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One way in which I have been preparing my little birdies to fly is to have them gradually take control of their own medical and dental appointments. Some medical professionals, such as our podiatrist, who, YES, we are still seeing six months later, require me to be with my younger son as he is a minor, but for the most part, I have been letting them figure things out on their own, being in the background for support. This has led to some things I did not anticipate, such as my older son making an appointment for LASIK eye surgery later this month, but for the most part it’s been fairly smooth and predictable.

We have all had dental appointments in the past month or so, and my younger son’s was the most recent. He came home telling me that he’d had several x-rays, and he required dental surgery to remove his four wisdom teeth and an extra tooth that he had somehow developed. He was under the impression that a) it was fairly emergent since his wisdom teeth were growing in sideways, and b) the extra tooth was very close to a nerve.

He told me the dental office would consult with the dentist who performs these surgeries and would get back to me. I didn’t love getting this information second-hand, because have you ever received important information from a 17-year-old? But I Serenity Now-ed, and waited.

On Tuesday I was at the garden centre; my older son had the day off work and so went with me, which was a delight. An extra cart AND someone to encourage me to buy more flowers? Heaven. We were in among the annuals when my phone rang; it was the dentist calling to schedule surgery. My son has a lot of things going on in the next six weeks that I didn’t want ruined by a painful recovery, but the coming weekend was free and so we scheduled him in for Friday morning. I zipped around the next day, picking up soft, high protein foods, and the single Ativan-like sedative he was to take an hour before surgery.

A small onion in the ointment was that I had planned to go to my parents’ on Thursday for my mom’s 70th birthday. We are having a family party for her next weekend, but my aunt was up visiting – this is my beloved Aunty C, of the Aunties fame – and I hadn’t seen her since 2019, so after my Thursday class I packed myself and Rex into the car and drove up. It’s a two hour drive so I was in the car at 6 the next morning, navigating a weirdly foggy highway and Friday morning traffic, to be able to get my son to his appointment at 9:00.

I have never had a tooth extraction myself, but my husband had his wisdom teeth taken out when he was in his forties, and it was absolutely a non-event. I was expecting similar, based on the dental office (“He’s so young, he will recover so quickly!”), and based on the fact that my husband’s procedure took perhaps a half hour at most. So I was completely unprepared to be there for three and a half hours, during which my son’s freezing wore off and they had to redo it. I was also completely unprepared to be told, at 11:45, that the procedure was “more complicated” than they had anticipated and at that point, had only extracted two of the five teeth, and that he would have to get the other side done at a separate time.

By the time they finished, at 12:30, three teeth were gone and the dentist told me that their initial assessment of “Advil alternating with Tylenol every two hours” was now “go pick up this prescription for Tylenol 3, he’s really going to need it.” WHAT HAPPENED HERE. The dentist told me that he would not be able to work on the other side, it was too complicated for him, and that we would have to go to a specialist, which, honestly, I wish we knew in advance so we could have skipped this whole thing and just done that in the first place. Did they not realize this from the x-rays? Were they just hoarding my son’s procedure for themselves to collect the money? I couldn’t help but feel a bit betrayed.

I’m not going to lie: Friday was a really rough day, made worse by the thought that we have to do this all again soon. The dental office cheerfully assured me that my son would just “sleep the day away” post-surgery, which goes to show that they do not know him at all, the guy who slept exactly zero minutes on our red-eye from Maui, and who, like his mother, essentially has to have one foot in the grave before lying down for a nap. What can I say, we aren’t nappers. He did, however, have a really good sleep Friday night, which I did not expect at that point, and was much more chipper on Saturday.

I’m still a little salty, though. We have to do this AGAIN. In the next three weeks we have the following: a family party for my mom, my younger son’s graduation ceremony and all the stuff that goes with that leading up to and after, my older son’s LASIK surgery, my younger son’s graduation dance, my own 30 year high school reunion that I am organizing, and my husband’s colonoscopy. THIS IS A LOT OF THINGS. Not to mention our day-to-day stuff and everything else that is going on around here. We have to get it done before July, but he also has final exams in June, and I am just screaming into the void over here.

Well, it will get done, just like everything else. In the meantime, it’s hard to stay too salty when I look out my window and see not just Salvadore, but two new friends, Slider and Fernando, who my son and I came across at the garden centre. Look at them frolicking in the kale patch! Life is good, even when it’s frustrating, is the lesson I’m taking away.

Weekly Reading

A Likely Story. I’ve often wondered what it would be like to be the child of a very famous person, and the pressure involved in following the footsteps or finding one’s own way. See also: Ty Gretsky. This excellent novel follows the only child of a very famous writer – who also happens to be a narcissist. After the death of her beloved mother, the daughter discovers a secret and becomes involved in a convoluted web of lies and secrets, all the while trying to please her famous father. This was a great story with complex characters, and I had no idea what to expect from the ending. I really enjoyed it.

I’m Glad My Mom Died. I initially put this on my hold list last summer, and then changed my mind after a few months as I didn’t think I had the bandwidth to read about a mentally ill and abusive stage mother and her daughter’s coping mechanisms of alcohol abuse and eating disorders. But then a few friends read it and thought it was good, and I guess I had a weird kind of book FOMO? Anyway, I put it back on the list and here we are. I feel kind of gross and sick after reading this, to be honest, and I have to warn anyone who might want to read this: there are some pretty grim and graphic descriptions of her bulimia. Like, really graphic. Based on what she went through I’m impressed that she’s still here – her mother sexually abused her in the shower on the daily until she was 17, her mother forced her to restrict her calories and generally treated her like garbage. The cover blurbs say that it’s “impressively funny” and all I can say is I don’t think we read the same book. I didn’t find it funny at all. I did think it ended weirdly, with her vow to overcome bulimia and then the next chapter she was healed? I don’t know, I applaud her for writing this, as it was obviously therapeutic for her, but it was not therapeutic for me to read. I read most of it while in the waiting room at the dentist, and I will say that I am not a book snob, but I actually felt embarrassed when someone asked me what I was reading, because the title is so incendiary. I don’t generally wish death on people but I am also kind of glad her mom died. She made Joan Crawford look encouraging and nurturing.

Easy Beauty. This was a brilliantly written memoir about moving through the world and navigating motherhood with a painful and very visible disability. The author weaves her story with journeys – the actual travel kind but also emotional and spiritual – and discussions about works of art and philosophy. It’s dense and not an easy read, particularly when it comes to the way a person values themselves in a world that values and revolves around the able-bodied. I can’t say I enjoyed this, exactly, but it’s an impressive piece of writing.

I hope you all had a beautiful, restorative weekend. It was obviously a pretty low-key one around here, but the Mayday and Nanking cherry are in bloom, my older son and I planted containers and I did some gardening cleanup, there was cake, and we all watched Top Gun Maverick for the second time. Here’s to more blooming in the week to come. xo

Bloody Hell

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After such a cold April, May suddenly – and briefly – burst into summer. We had gorgeous sunshine and summer-like temperatures all last week, which had the happy result of warming up the community centre, so my yoga classes were taught in a normal-temperature setting, rather than a frigid one. The yard is becoming greener by the minute; the Mayday and lilacs are leafing out before my very eyes, my perennials are starting to peek out of the warmer, sunny beds, and I have been in a state of joy all week. I was able to have the windows open in the early mornings, so I practiced yoga while watching the sky lighten and hearing the birds chirp, and it all felt very Mary Oliver. In fact, I pulled out my Devotions to read her thoughts on the shift of winter to spring before my practices. I recently came across a meme that was along the lines of the world being on fire, the news depressing, everything is terrible, and Mary Oliver says “But have you ever really thought about a LEAF?” That’s how I felt.

I have been working on really embracing every season, both literally and figuratively, but I am very much a Summer Girl, and although it didn’t last, this week of summer-feeling temperatures has really boosted me. That, and a couple of huge things happened that lifted a heavy weight off my shoulders, which I am not in a position to talk about yet on this blog; I definitely have a spring in my step.

The spring was decidedly missing in my step the other day when I jauntily donned my cute summer shoes sans socks for a walk with Rex. These shoes are several years old, and well worn-in, so I don’t know how or why it happened, but I developed a blister and then that blister broke open, exactly at the halfway mark of my walk. Why do things always happen when you are exactly the furthest possible distance from home? I had some tissues in my bag, and so I tried to wrap them around my heel to relieve the pain of walking, but bizarrely, the back of my foot started bleeding profusely. By the time I got home, the tissues were half-in, half-out of my shoe and were soaked with blood, I had blood all over my shoe, and I felt a little like Count Almasy in The English Patient. I have been WALKING. For three DAYS. Except instead of three days, it was three miles. One of my octogenarian neighbours drove by as I was coming down the street, and pulled over to chat. I hoped he couldn’t see my foot, which by that time looked like an old-timey depiction of a leper’s, with the trailing bloody tissue and my subsequent limp. I had a pedicure scheduled the very next day and I didn’t want to cancel, as it’s a small local business, but I will say it did sting quite a bit. A ripped-open heel doesn’t pair well with orange-peel exfoliation.

Speaking of blood, I had to get routine bloodwork done on the weekend. I made an appointment at the lab, stopped eating and drinking at 7pm on Friday – which was a little sad, since I wanted more wine; it was Friday, after all – and toodled over early Saturday morning, expecting that the past would predict the present and I would be home within twenty minutes.

I clued in that this might not be the case when I was greeted by a giant line snaking down the hallway. It turns out that the lab started taking walk-ins, which it hadn’t done throughout the pandemic, and I felt extremely grateful to have an appointment, as the wait for walk-ins was three to four hours at that point. Three to four hours! I was already feeling a little off, since by 7:30 am I have generally consumed several cups of coffee, and I was, of course, not allowed to do this for fasting bloodwork. I can’t imagine my state had I had to wait three to four more hours. Someone might have gotten stabbed.

I was called for my appointment only ten minutes late, which I thought was excellent, and then I sat in the little room for twenty-five minutes while the woman who was to take my blood kept tapping on the computer, as other white-coated people dodged in and out with panicked questions and she herself had many panicked questions. It turns out that the lab had been taken over by an American company, and their new system was put into place that very morning, their system that was set up for American insurance and not Canadian universal health care. Why this was the case I have no idea but the woman was almost in tears of frustration by the time she finished the extensive paperwork and actually took my blood, which took all of about ninety seconds. She tearfully told me they had only been open an hour and she already had seventy people in the queue, so I wished her luck in what was going to surely be a very stressful work day, grabbed my little urine sample container, and fled.

I don’t really wear masks much anymore, although I had to wear a medical one for the lab. Even my doctor and dentist do not require them now; this was the first time I had worn one, other than as a courtesy to the checkout people at the grocery store while in line, for a long time. I was happy to do it, of course, labs are gross petrie dishes at the best of times, but this was the first time in a long time I felt a little weird being in a crowd. Maybe it was all the incessant coughing. The WHO announced the end of the global health crisis this week, but I guess I haven’t personally felt in a crisis for almost a year.

Not everyone feels like I do, of course, which is to say that I felt very seriously about the pandemic in the thick of things, and now I feel like I am calmly moving through the world, not thinking or worrying about Covid in any real way. If, however, you are in a group situation and you say something along the lines of being past the pandemic, it is a guarantee that someone will chime in to say that we are NOT past the pandemic, that Covid is still with us, people are dying of Covid EVERY SINGLE DAY, and what about long Covid, there’s so much we don’t know, etcetera. All of those things are true, of course, other than the pandemic part, as of this week, but also? I am just going to live my life in the most mentally, emotionally, and physically healthy way possible, without that constant-fear feeling I developed from 2020-22.

Of course, there are people on the flip side too. We had a plumber in to fix our toilet – not Hot Tony, but one of his almost-equally-hot employees; what is with the hot plumbers in this company? – and as I was chatting with him pleasantly, he came out with “I respect everyone, and everyone has a right to their own opinion…” and at that point I knew. I knew what was coming. Anyone that starts a sentence declaring a right to their own opinion is going to have an opinion that I will disagree with, and that is what happened. “…but I really didn’t believe the whole Covid thing,” he stated. Whether he didn’t think the pandemic mitigation strategies were effective or beneficial, or if he didn’t believe the existence of Covid at all was unclear to me and I did not want to further this line of conversation. After all, the guy was fixing my toilet. I took that as my cue to mention that I had just made a pot of coffee and did he want any, and when I came back with said coffee, he said that he hadn’t been sick once in the past three years. I suppose that meant the latter, in terms of his belief. I did not comment on his sample size of one, but I was happy to have a fixed toilet.

Weekly Reading

Flight. OH.MY.GOD I LOVED THIS BOOK! Wow, wow. Incredible characters, relationships, and nuance. Incredible writing. This follows three adult children and their families as they navigate the first Christmas without their mother. It is so moving and beautiful. Wow. My fellow lovers of character-driven books will love this; anyone who has encountered family drama or sibling issues or difficulties with blending families and in-laws will really find this relatable on so many levels.

No Filter. You know I love a memoir, especially a celebrity memoir whose life is SO DIFFERENT from my own. Paulina Porizkova has had a fascinating life (so far!) From her childhood during which she was subject to an international custody battle between Sweden and Czechoslovakia (the Swedish hockey team threatened to not play the Czech one in 1972 because of this drama), to her living in Paris alone as a model at AGE FIFTEEN, to her relationship with a man 21 years her senior at age 19, to the dissolution of her marriage and being left with no money upon his death, this book is a ride. It’s comprised of essays, which I love. Wow, she has been through a lot. Although she speaks well of her ex-husband, he seemed toxic and controlling and apparently spent all her millions of modeling money, while making her feel like she’d didn’t contribute financially in any significant way. She talks about how she has changed from being mean, judgmental, and arrogant, and accepting her changing face and body. Years ago my friend Alice (HI ALICE) said that reruns must be hell for actresses, and I think that goes for former supermodels too. I really enjoyed this.

Enchantment. What happens when you’ve gone through a global pandemic, you have constant chatter of social media and news, and you just can’t concentrate enough to read books anymore? This author had that experience and so worked to awaken enchantment in her life through the natural world. This is a beautiful book about connecting with the world, although I didn’t love it like I thought I would, since I loved Wintering so very much. I do find that I am willing and able to read with interest other people’s experiences and feelings about the pandemic, which I wasn’t able to do a year ago.

This week is not going to be so gloriously summer-like, but it is shaping up to be a perfectly pleasant spring week, with nary a snowflake or freezing temperature in the forecast. It’s a wild and precious life we are leading, friends! I’m going to bandage up my feet and get out there and enjoy it. I hope you do too. xo

Yoga Talk

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After years of dedicated practice, in 2016 I took yoga teacher training, and I have been lucky enough to be teaching consistently ever since. I have taught everything from vigorous, athletic Ashtanga to slow-moving restorative yoga; senior’s yoga and yoga for stroke survivors, Hatha yoga and chair yoga, and even one outdoor children’s yoga class, for my niece’s Sparks unit. Teaching this wide variety of classes has given me a very good understanding of different bodies, abilities, and needs, and I think it has made me a better teacher.

Recently Suzanne (HI SUZANNE) asked her readers to discuss things that they excel at, that make them feel in their element, and for me, I think it’s teaching yoga. More specifically, I think my strength is making students feel comfortable and welcome in my yoga classes, and encouraging them to just be there and be part of the group. I really try to make new students feel like they are immediately part of the community; I work hard to make a warm and welcoming space for everyone to explore yoga postures as they need to.

I trained to be a yoga teacher under a man who was himself Iyengar trained, and if you know anything about yoga, you will know that Iyengar-style is very focused on alignment; in other words, to be very exact in how the posture is taken. It is ironic, then, that my particular teaching style has nothing to do with this. I believe very strongly that we all have different bodies, and so every asana is going to look different for every person. I spend a lot of time thinking of different variations so that any given posture can be accessible to every person in every class, regardless of any bodily limitations.

I became very good at this when I was teaching yoga for stroke survivors; some of my students were seated on mats, some on chairs, the occasional student in a wheelchair or scooter. I would read the room and then figure out how we could all do, for example, baddha konasana or butterfly pose. On a chair, it looks like putting the soles of the feet close together while allowing the knees to go apart, on the mat it looks different, but it is having the same benefit. One is not better than the other, but one may be more appropriate or accessible, depending on the person.

In 2017 I started subbing every so often at a community centre, and I ended up taking over these classes entirely a little while later. These are registered classes, which are an absolute joy. Students have come and gone – and this week I had two new students, one lady who had never done any yoga before in her life – but I have been teaching a core group of ladies, and the occasional gentleman, for years now, and I know all about their lives, their spouses, their children and grandchildren, their surgeries, their blood pressure and cataracts, just everything about their lives. I am a people person and for all the classes I have taught, I have always tried to find out at least a little bit about every single person. I have taught a lot of people over the years, and so I occasionally forget a name or detail, but not with my registered classes. Seeing people regularly for years really builds up a great sense of community.

There is one small thing about these wonderful classes, and I can’t decide if it’s ultimately a “we’re all in this together,” character-building, This Is Real Yoga thing, or if it’s what it feels like, which is kind of a negative: the actual physical space. It’s different from the cushy studios I have taught at over the years that feature art and candles, props and blankets, soft lighting and tea after class. This is an old-school community centre hall: a big spacious, drafty room with fluorescent lighting and linoleum over concrete floors. It’s chilly at the best of times, and this past six weeks, all classes have been cancelled as they have been replacing the HVAC system. Last Monday was my first class since mid-March, and I was excited to see all my students again.

I received an email the week before classes restarted, which said that classes were still starting as scheduled but there was still no heat in the building. This is a room that is chilly at the best of times, but with no heat? People, it was brutal. There were space heaters, but they did not seem to improve the situation at all. The room was 16 degrees in my Monday afternoon class but 13 degrees for my Thursday morning class; I wore a jacket with thumbholes and thick legwarmers with wide stirrups, I tried to incorporate as much movement as I could to keep warm, but it’s a ninety-minute class, and ninety minutes in a cold room is a long time. And the heat won’t be fixed until Friday, so I have two more classes like this.

It reminded me of when I used to teach Yoga for Seniors at a beautiful studio, pre-pandemic. The room at the studio was kept quite warm – between 24 and 26 degrees – and I usually tried to cool it down a bit before class, as the warmth was not popular with my senior students. One gentleman in particular HATED it. He used to ask if he could open the windows in the dead of winter, and once plaintively asked me if there was any such thing as “cold yoga,” and if so, where could he sign up. I’ve thought of him many times through the pandemic: he would have loved chilly outdoor yoga classes, and he would have absolutely been all over the classes this week. I guess it shows that there is truly a yoga for everyone.

Weekly Reading

Bear. Have you ever looked at a wild animal and thought “I wonder what it would be like to fuck that?” Well, wonder no more! This book, about a lonely woman spending a summer on an isolated island in northern Canada, won the Governor General award in 1976, which really makes you wonder what was happening in Canadian literature at the time. It is literally a woman having a sexual relationship with a bear and not, as my son asked, a big furry gay guy. An actual bear. I don’t want to kink shame anyone but I think we can all agree not to embark on inter species sexual relations. This book is just as strange as you might think. Yes, if we were in a literature class we could talk about the symbolism of a woman going from a colourless, meaningless life in the polluted Big Smoke, and then becoming one with the glory that is Canadian nature, but also? The image of the bear giving oral along with its erection is incredibly disturbing. Did you know bear penises have bones in them? Well, now you do. This book gives a whole new meaning to animal lust, and also “boning.”

More Than You’ll Ever Know. This story revolves around a woman who was leading a double life – two families, two countries. She was married to two men, one of whom was murdered when this double life is discovered. Decades later, a writer tries to uncover the truth by telling her story. There are some very unexpected twists and a side story about the writer that I didn’t care for, but all in all a diverting read.

All Along You Were Blooming. This is such a wonderful little book of uplifting poems and readings. I have been reading this before my yoga practice for the past several months and it never fails to warm my heart. It’s really beautiful.

It is forecasted to be warm and sunny all this week, which I’m hoping will help with the warmth in the community centre. I have had a pretty wild, rollercoaster week, but everything has ended on a very high note. I spent the weekend at my parents’, which was lovely, and included a second birthday cake! Happy May, friends! May day, m’aidez! xo