Monthly Archives: July 2023

Gnome Sweet Gnome

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In the last six weeks or so, I have listened to approximately one million podcasts, as I have been packing and cleaning and unpacking and DRIVING. It’s gotten to the point where I am wondering if I am in an unhealthy parasocial relationship with the hosts of my favourite ones, because I am relating to them so much. Several weeks ago, Kim from Everything Is Fine spoke about her recent move between Brooklyn apartments, and she said you just have to accept that everything is just going to suck for a while, and then one day you’ll feel like this is home, and when she said that, my ears perked up. I think at the time I was just in the beginning of the process, and those words stuck with me. It’s just going to suck for a while! And then it will feel like home!

The day the movers came – ten days ago now, already – was 37 degrees, RIP the movers and the guys, who were helping. It was such a busy and crazy day, and at the end of it, the guys were having a beer with the movers on the deck. I declined as I really just wanted to get the kitchen at least semi-unpacked, as it looked like this at the time:

My friend Tara (HI TARA) had warned me about what would happen, using the moving company to pack our things. She said you would find something packed super well and unwind all the packing paper, and it would be, like, a single pencil. I did not find any single pencils wrapped as such, but many times I did unwind enormous swaths of packing paper to reveal a single shot glass. Well, it was worth it since nothing was broken, but there was a lot of paper to be recycled.

Anyway, the guys were out having a beer and I was unpacking and arranging shot glasses and other kitchen-related items in the cupboards, when I saw the moving van drive away. At that point my sons burst into the house to tell me that I was desperately needed for One Last Box. By then, I had politely directed people where to put random boxes and pieces of furniture for HOURS, the doors were naturally opened the whole time and so the air conditioning was negated by the 37 degree heat, I had a pile of paper up to my knees JUST from shot glasses, and I was starving and wondering how to cobble together a dinner in such a mess. I did NOT want to go on the deck to make a decision about One Last Box, but the boys were laughing and smiling, and they just seemed so excited, and I didn’t want to be Bitchy Mom with everything going on. Also, I had just read the parenting chapters in Gabor Mate’s book The Myth of Normal, which I do not recommend you do, unless you want to feel like you have done everything wrong and have ruined your children for life. The rest of the book is good, just, maybe skip that part? Anyway, I put down my shot glass and followed them out on the deck, where they had an exacto knife for opening a wide, narrow box that was labeled “Gnomes.”

I don’t yet have a garden to call my own, so the gnomes have been on the deck, and have been moved around magically during the night. Here they are in a conga line:

It reminds me of when I first got Salvadore and it was too wintry for him to be outside, and his position in the house would change every day, like a garden version of Elf on a Shelf.

Even though I have become increasingly unsentimental about My Things, there are a few things that really have made Our House feel like Our Home, and I will say that gnomes are a huge part of it. I haven’t mentioned Julio and Jorge, who are plant pot gnomes acquired at the same time as Gustaf, but they are adorable little things. I do not have plant pots yet for this house, and so right now they are hanging out with the wooden flower I bought 24 years ago from IKEA to decorate our very first apartment, a tiny place 30 floors up in downtown Calgary.

Gaston the kitchen gnome is presiding over the kitchen.

Of course the Girls are enjoying their new spots in the kitchen as well.

The yoga frogs – and bunnies – have rounded out my kitchen decor nicely, which is making it feel very homey.

We are still in the process of hanging up the artwork, a process that will probably take a few weeks to figure out where things will look best, but my husband immediately put up my Desiderata beside my piano, which was the finishing touch on Things That Are Important To Me.

Speaking of things that are important to me, and circling back to podcasts, the incredible Alie Ward of Ologies said that her daily practice for mental, physical, and emotional health is represented by the mnemonic REM REM. The first REM stands for Reading, Exercise, and Meditation, and the second REM refers simply to sleep. I heard this and it cemented my parasocial relationship with her; it was all I could do not to send an email saying Me too, meeeee toooooo, we are besties now! In order to be at my best, every day I need to read, exercise, and meditate – I include yoga in the meditation part or, OR, I could escribo en espanol and say REM Y REM – and to get between seven and seven and a half hours of sleep. I have been squeezing in all of those things every day over the past little while, even whilst in Work Camp Mode. Sure, sometimes it’s just a little of each, and some days I did have less sleep than optimal, but for the most part I have adhered to this.

Now that all the major work has been done, I was able to spend the weekend in a more pleasurable way than being on my feet for fourteen hours and going through insane amounts of cleaning products. Saturday morning my older son and I went exploring on our bikes and it was so much fun. We rode up a grinder of a hill through the orchards, and then rode an absolutely terrifying – for me, not for him – downhill with no shoulder or bike lane, a curving, huge, steep hill; we rode down through the sun-baked creek valley and along the creek until we hit Lakeshore Road, and then circled back up a less-strenuous, but it was at the end of our ride so it FELT strenuous, hill home. I never rode my bike in Calgary as I was terrified of traffic, but there are bike lanes everywhere here – except, of course, on the giant scary hill – and I look forward to doing much more of it in the weeks and months to come. I mean, apparently it often doesn’t snow here until DECEMBER, which is such a foreign idea to me, I cannot even.

I have so many books to tell you about that I have managed to read in the past few weeks, but it will have to wait. Can you believe that it’s the end of July already? This month has flown by; I kind of feel like it should still be MAY. Well, here we are! I hope you have a wonderful week, and Happy August, my friends! xo

Five For Friday: The “We Moved!” Edition

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  • We did it! We moved! The house is almost entirely unpacked and organized and, relatedly, I am so physically tired. This may be as physically tired as I have ever been in my entire life. It would be an exaggeration to say that I have been on my feet every single day from the second I wake up to the second I go to bed, but not much of one. I realize that Not Everything Needs To Be Unpacked Immediately, but, well. After a couple of months of mess and disorganization in the old house, and a month of Pure Chaos, we all just want to be settled in and living in a clean and organized house. I mean, for a week before the move we were all eating dinner squashed on the couch around the coffee table, with one of my sons using the piano bench for a seat, as we had donated and gifted much of our furniture. We are all ready to resume life in a normal, non-boxed manner. And on that note, if you are planning a long-haul move, may I suggest having teenage boys and a handy, perfectionist husband? A few times this past week I have gone to bed and woken up to discover that my husband had built a whole row of shelves in the storage room, or that the guys had moved all the weights to nicely arrange the home gym. Since we have more vehicles than family members, getting them all there required some serious logistics. The weekend before the move, the guys drove out my husband’s car and my younger son’s truck, both completely full, including my Peloton and the extra dog crate (priorities!), and then flew back. I went to pick them up at the airport, and there was a problem with the gate. They sat on the tarmac for 75 minutes, which was about twenty minutes longer than their actual flight. Luckily I had taken a book with me, but let me tell you, tempers were FRAYED by the time they got into the car.
  • I missed the worst part of the move – the packing and the loading – as I drove myself and Rex out the day before the packers came. We all decided it would be best to not have Rex around while people packed boxes or loaded things into the truck, so I went to the new house early to clean and organize and buy groceries. The guys drove my husband’s truck and my older son’s car out two days after that, arriving late in the evening but before the movers arrived. I have driven that eight-hour route through the mountains many, many times, but never by myself, and never with so much stuff in the car that I couldn’t see out the rearview mirror. The drive itself was lovely and uneventful, and Rex did well in the car, which was a relief. It was a bit weird being in the new house alone; Rex and I were both really happy when the guys pulled in. I was also really happy that all our stuff made it in one moving van (plus all the multiple car and truck loads), with almost no damage. The guys helped the movers so much that the cost was actually less than half of what we thought it would be, so hooray for excessive late-teen testosterone. While helping a mover with the tremendously heavy granite-topped coffee table down the steps of our old lawn, an old lady pulled up and started a long conversation with my older son about our Christmas decorations and how she’d miss them, all the while the mover and my son had sweat pouring down their faces, biceps popping. It’s nice to be appreciated and missed, although my son thought the conversation could have happened when they weren’t carrying heavy furniture.

  • There is nothing like a move to make a person reconsider every possession owned. I have been obsessive about finding the perfect spot for absolutely everything, having learned from experience that I’ll just set this here until I find a better place is code for This is where this will live, forever. However, this is a very long and involved process and I have been constantly questioning whether or not we need an item. My sentimentality is long gone by this time and I am reminded of the poem by Mary Oliver entitled Storage. I kept saying things like “Do I REALLY need to keep this? Why do I still have my wedding dress?” which causes my husband to look at me with some alarm and say “I think you might want to keep your wedding dress, I think you might regret that.” But will I? Should I just keep it until I die and my great-grandchildren are saddled with all my fusty possessions, pressured to keep it until THEY die and have THEIR great-grandchildren wonder what this weird shred of possibly mouse-eaten material is?
  • This is probably bordering on the insane, but I have been cooking actual dinner every single night. Part of this is because there are no takeout places close by, and driving back and forth to get takeout would take as long as making a meal, and part of this is because the guys lived on takeout for about a week during the move and informed me that they missed my cooking So Very Much and were Dying For Vegetables. However! I will say that making a meal on top of unpacking, cleaning, and organizing for hours on end is the exhausting cherry on top of the taxing sundae.
  • Ever since I got here, everyone I have encountered – most notably my husband’s mother and sister – has treated me with kid gloves, assuming, I suppose, that I am One Toke Over The Breakdown Line. I welcome this gentle treatment, of course, but the honest truth is that I feel really great; I seem to have hopped the Melancholy Hurdle to start Embracing This Season of Life and Blooming Where I Am Planted. Probably this is because I have had numerous emotional breakdowns over the past several months, and so it is all out of my system. This is a good reminder of the benefits of Feeling Your Feelings, whatever they may be, and so if you too find yourself sobbing on your Peloton, hysterically cry-singing along with Miley Cyrus, IT IS OKAY. There will be a time after this, and you’re not alone.

I have much more to tell you, but it will have to wait. In the meantime: how are you? I’ve missed you all! Tell me everything that has been going on. xo

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Goodbye, Calgary Edition

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Anyone who lived in Calgary in the 1980s will remember, probably with no little nostalgia, the Hello Calgary promotional video on Channel 2&7, back when there were only about thirteen channels. To this day I could sing the lyrics at any given time: Makes no difference where I go, you’re the best hometown I know. I heard recently that this particular jingle was used in many cities at the same time, just changing out the name, but I like to burrow back into my bubble and think that it was just for YYC. I found the original clip on YouTube and watching it evoked such a sense of nostalgia and happiness for me: the skyline, the prairies melding into the foothills melding into the Rockies, the Stamps and Flames, the old-school and problematic, but still beloved, zoo of my youth.

And now it’s time for me to say Goodbye Calgary, so I thought it was only appropriate that I tell you my favourite things about living here.

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Goodbye, Calgary Edition

Brentwood Babe

As everyone knows, I love my neighbourhood of Brentwood. It feels like a small town; people know each other by sight, I am friendly with all my neighbours, it’s where the kids walked to school from preschool to graduation. I think it’s the nicest community in the city. The trees are big and established, there are wide sidewalks and boulevards for walking, and it is adjacent to Nose Hill, a large wild natural park.

It’s a very walkable neighbourhood; if I forget a grocery item I can walk to the local Co-Op, buy it, and be home within fifteen minutes. Speaking of the Co-Op, I love that not only do the employees know my name, but they also know my Co-Op number. Other great walking destinations that have greatly contributed to my quality of life are the library, the Pharmasave – the owner always makes sure my favourite scents of Routine are in stock – and Anna’s Nail Salon. I can walk to all three of these in a ten minute period.

Loopty Loop

Speaking of walking, I started a daily loop during Covid and have kept it up all this time – now with a giant fuzzy companion. Depending on which route I take the distance is between five and seven kilometres, winding up the hills through the neighbourhood to the offleash paths, and down again. I love to look at the foliage and garden changes throughout the year, and it’s always a great part of my day.

One of the first signs of spring in the neighbourhood is when one of the houses on my route puts out their gnomes. This couple has dozens and dozens of gnomes in their front yard, and I am here for it. Here is just a small sample:

There are so many lovely gardens in the neighbourhood, and I love watching them change with the seasons.

Food, Glorious Food

Also in walking distance is Jamesons’ pub, which I have mentioned before, and which has the most delicious Santorini bowl. I have eaten there twice this week, once on a date with my husband and once with all the Brentwood Babes, who were wishing me farewell. I had the same waitress both times, who remembered my exact order, which made me feel very much like I was going where everybody knows my name.

Not in walking distance, but something I love and have mentioned before about is Aida’s Bistro. It is the best Lebanese food outside of Lebanon, I am convinced. The Mouh sandwich is to die for; it’s (usually) worth the drive through dreadful traffic and even worse parking, and that is saying something.

Living The Lake Life

Calgary is a landlocked city, but two hours north is beautiful Sylvan Lake, where my parents reside and where I went to summer camp as a child. I am very, very fortunate to have such a gorgeous respite from the busy city at my disposal.

When I told my yoga ladies that I was moving, one of them immediately said “Oh no! What about your parents? They’ll miss you so much!” Well, thank you, I had NOT THOUGHT ABOUT THAT AT ALL. That is the hardest part of this move, of course, and while I will of course be visiting them, a nine hour drive through the mountains is quite different from a two hour drive through the prairies.

Rocky Mountain High

Speaking of the mountains, being so close to the Rockies is a really glorious thing. There are many beautiful places in the world, but I think that nothing compares to the grandeur of the Canadian Rockies.

Flower Power

Last summer we were at our house in Kelowna, when a friend of my husband asked about our home in Calgary, and if the house itself was similar to the large, newly built Kelowna one. I told him that it was a 1962 bungalow, at which point he said that he thought I’d be very glad to leave it behind for our beautiful new house. I admit that I got my back up, and told him that I have been nothing but happy in our lovely, cozy home. Sure, it’s a little short on storage space and I would like if it had more than two bathrooms, but it’s my home, and I will always love it and remember it with tenderness.

I particularly love my gardens; when we bought the house I was charmed by the gorgeous big trees – a Mayday and Manitoba Maple in the front, spruce and lilac bushes in the back – but the gardens were a mess. They had, according to my neighbour, once been the talk of the neighbourhood, but after the original owner sold in the 80s, they had been severely neglected and, when we moved in, were completely overgrown with weeds. Over the years I dug new beds, planted and worked them, and I have been happy with the pops of colour all through the summer.

I hope the new homeowners love the gardens too!

Outfit of the Month

It feels appropriate that my last week in Calgary is Stampede Week! I haven’t been to the grounds in years, but I love Stampede spirit in the city, and so I dug out my boots and hat for date night.

Is it possible for fast fashion to become slow fashion? I bought this dress for about $10 at Old Navy in 2018 or so. These days I feel pretty conscious of where my clothes are made, so I don’t love the concept of buying something like this NOW, but I have it, so I’m keeping it. Plus, it’s pretty cute, and I love the sundress-with-cowgirl-boots look.

Stampede is such a funny time in Calgary. I remember back when I would work on the trade floor; my trusty colleagues would suddenly come into work with Wrangler jeans and big belt buckles, with colourful Western-style shirts, and it was a little disconcerting, to see the change from office wear to I’m A Cowboy Now. But it’s fun to get in the spirit of things, even if I don’t have any events to go to these days.

Well, Calgary, we have had a good run! Not only is this home to so many Favourite Things, but this is the home to so many of my wonderful friends. Throughout the years I have been so fortunate to have been absorbed into the yoga community, the mom community, and the Brentwood community; I am lucky to be in touch with my oldest school friends and to live just a few doors down from a very dear friend. I have friends who are my chosen family, and every single friend – whether or not I have seen them lately – has been a gift in my life. I’ll miss them all, but luckily it’s so easy to stay in touch now – and I have a beautiful new deck suitable for wine drinking when friends are passing through Kelowna!

I have quite a bit to get through in the next few weeks before I’ll be drinking wine leisurely on the deck, though, and on that note, I am taking a blog break to get moved and settled. I will catch up with all of you on the other side! Take care of yourselves, friends, and be well. xo

Coming Into The Home Stretch

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With all the myriad changes going on in my life right now, I told a friend that I feel like I am having a Brazilian bikini wax, but the entire procedure is just one giant strip instead of many tiny, gentler strips. With everything happening all at once, I am doing my best to cope and to stay in the moment, while still soothing myself by thinking there will be a time after this.

HELP

My friend Allison (HI ALLISON) used that term many, many years ago to refer to chaperoning a field trip, and I have thought of it hundreds of thousands of times since then. This week was so busy and stressful, but ultimately very productive. The moving company is packing the majority of our house; for the extra amount of money added on to the expense of a long-haul move, it seemed very worth it. However, being in a house for twenty-three years means that we have accumulated things we really do not need or want anymore, and although I have been steadily clearing things out for the last few months, this week I really got into the weeds, so to speak. I tackled the crawl space.

Several years ago I really got into the crawl space and got rid of many things we no longer needed, but there was a stack of boxes in there that had not been touched since we had moved in twenty-three years ago. I refuse to just move boxes to put them in storage, so I ruthlessly went through each one, and although I am not wishing such a task on anyone, it was actually pretty fun. I found so many treasures! I also found a lot of junk and questionable items – did I really need to keep a giant box full of RSVP’s from our wedding? – but I was able to recycle most of it, donate some of it, and the rest was, sadly, relegated to the trash. It made me feel a little sad, especially after reading Unraveling last week, but there wasn’t another option for some of the completely unusable items. I mean, I guess there was the option of putting them back into boxes and then putting them into storage in the new house, since that seems to have been our line of thinking twenty-three years ago, but that felt like a slippery slope that would get me right back where I started from. Also, upon the event of my own demise, may that be many decades in the future, I do not want to leave my children with boxes full of useless junk, any more than I already will be.

The bane of my recent existence has been old text books. Between my husband and I, we have four degrees and probably thousands of dollars’ worth of old, now worthless textbooks. A few months ago I looked with horror at my shelves and shelves of textbooks that were not eligible for donation; no one wants outdated economics, econometrics, or statistics textbooks, despite the fact that not much really changes in those areas from year to year. The only thing to do was to recycle them by ripping out all the pages and throwing the bindings and covers into the trash. It was a big undertaking, so imagine my despair when I discovered in the crawl space an entire box full of my husband’s old textbooks that somehow did not make it onto our bookshelves. I set my younger son on the job of recycling them, along with myriad term papers and, strangely enough, a pile of papers from our wedding that included every single song the DJ had in his possession and every menu item the venue had to offer.

These, along with piles of cassette tapes – including mix tapes! – were a drag to deal with, but then I found some wonderful treasures, some of which I am keeping forever, and some of which just made me laugh. As a small backstory, I was six years old when Diana and Charles got married, and their engagement set off my lifelong obsession with the Queen of Hearts. I was not a child for whom it was difficult for relatives to think of Christmas gifts; anything and everything Princess Di was received with great enthusiasm. Soon my obsession included all women in the British Royal Family, including the Queen, with whom I share a birthday. My grandma had saved a lot of clippings and memorabilia from the Queen’s coronation and passed it along to me.

What fabulous treasures! Also, this candy box!

This is less awesome but it made me laugh and shudder at the same time.

I am keeping this forever:

In addition to “things I will keep forever” I found some postcards from friends circa 1989, including one that said “I hate it here and I hate everyone here and I want to come home” which, if that’s not teen angst I do not know what is. Much less angsty was a postcard from my sweet friend Elise (HI ELISE) from the bustling metropolis of Lethbridge:

I don’t know what is funnier, that I have kept this all these years or that I had it at all.

Should I have kept this? Perhaps to hang over my bed in the new bedroom?

The big day, for me and Rex at least, is one week TOMORROW. I can hardly believe it! I am actually looking forward to the unpacking-and-finding-homes-for-everything part, as opposed to the depressing why do we have so much stuff and are we actually swamp people part that I seem to be going through now. I am, as you all know, a person who thrives on neatness and organization and whoa, does my life feel like the opposite of that right now. Well, again, let’s repeat the mantra: there will be a time after this. And in the meantime, I am going to try to enjoy my last few days in the city that has been my heart and home for so many years.

Weekly Reading

Property. The best thing about this book, which concerns a woman married to an unsuccessful sugar plantation owner in the antebellum south, is that it’s short. The story is dull and every character is unlikeable at best, deplorable at worst.

Swipe Up For More! Oh wow, this book was absolutely fascinating to me! I think the entire influencer industry is so interesting: how it developed, how important it is to brands, and how many women have made so much money in it. This book mainly follows three big influencers, two of whom I have never heard of before: a momfluencer, a fashion influencer, and a unique and important fitfluencer. I’ve been thinking about this subject a lot lately since the Food Heaven women posted their Burnout and Pivot series; being an influencer might just look like taking photos and videos, but it is a lot of work to be successful. Some of these women work upwards of 80 hours a week, and the work is just never done. Their whole life is on display for work, which is a really odd concept. Even odder – and ickier – is the world of the momfluencer, because it is her life as a mom and her own kids who are being used by brands for money. It brings up all sorts of ethical dilemmas: can your children be used in campaigns? What if you put the money away for them for their education, then is it okay? At what point do children have agency over their own lives and decisions? Is a sponsored trip to Disney a vacation or just more grind? The momfluencer in question has since – given that her older children have rebelled against posing for yet another photo or acting in yet another reel – slowed down her own work and campaigns, and wonders if her life as an influencer has deep and negative effects on her children (probably, the answer is yes). It’s an interesting thing to consider. I thought about this a lot when I was writing for YMC: a lot of my colleagues wrote about things like potty training and discipline, complete with photos, and even at the time it felt wrong for me to write about the kids in that way. For me personally, my kids are blog-adjacent but I don’t divulge much of their lives here because it’s their lives. I should note though that my kids actually enjoy when, say, a former yoga student of mine recognizes them “in the wild” from my Facebook posts, but I can imagine if I had a far-reaching platform in which they played a significant role, they might feel a lot different. Anyway, this was such a good read and really thought-provoking.

The Long Goodbye. This was an absolutely gorgeous memoir about a woman losing her mother, and the grieving process that followed. And I will say that I was 100% NOT in the right headspace to read about her mother dying at age 55 of metastatic colorectal cancer, so I cannot say I enjoyed it, but I appreciated the beauty and tenderness of the writing.

All right, friends, I am in the home stretch now. Back in the aforementioned grad school, another woman and I had the Rosie the Riveter poster in our office as a reminder that We Can Do It, and I have that Rosie the Riveter photo in my mind constantly these days. I feel like her, mascara, lipgloss and all. xo

Social Butterfly and Boxes, Boxes, Boxes

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Nothing motivates a person so much as having a firm deadline, am I right? The past couple of weeks have been a whirlwind of cleaning and decluttering, donating and packing, and squeezing in as many social visits as I possibly can. And speaking of motivation, nothing lights a fire with regards to actually scheduling social visits, as opposed to the old “we should get together sometime soon” like leaving the province. I feel very popular these days! A woman, who I had not seen since 2019, dropped by my house for a surprise visit, which is not my favourite, and said that even though we hadn’t seen each other in years, she’s sad that I’m leaving because she thought that I’d just always be here, in this house, anytime she wanted to see me. That made me feel less popular, and more boring and staid, although I guess I’m morphing into some unpredictable wild child, leaving the house I’ve been in for twenty-three years.

I think that old trope about friends coming into your life for a reason, season, or lifetime is very true. A couple of weeks ago we had friends over for dinner – our last dinner party in our house. These are friends that are more like family, friends for life; we regularly share meals and vacations, and we have that rare unicorn of a situation where the kids all get along AND the adults all get along. It seems with couple friends that this isn’t always the case, but all eight of us love each other and enjoy each other more and more with the passing years. I found a very special package of napkins that I had bought years ago and I thought why am I saving these, let’s use them!

There’s even a drink recipe on the back.

Our older kids share a birthday – they are only two hours apart in age – but their youngest just celebrated her 17th, so I decided to make her a cake in her favourite flavours, peanut butter and chocolate. This is a cake I had made before, and, as an aside, my son reminded me that I had a goal to make every single cake in this book and I have only made two, so I need to get moving on that. In any case, I had made it before, so I was very confident in the final product.

And at this point I will say I am not a person who gets stressed about having dinner guests. I am generally a very relaxed hostess who just wants everyone to have a full glass of whatever they want, and the rest falls into place. I think I inherited this trait from my mother, who wouldn’t blink at having twenty people over for a meal and who I remember hosting many enormous holiday meals in a completely calm manner, including, when my brothers each got married, hosting fifteen and twenty-eight houseguests, respectively. When I was a kid, I could invite any friend over for any meal with zero notice, and she’d just ask me to go grab some more potatoes. So I tend to be pretty calm and I figure the food will be fine, and people are here to visit anyway.

But I did want the cake to be nice for our girl, and I was sure it would be. I was humming around the kitchen, and thought the cake was chilled and set enough to have the springform pan’s sides removed. At this point in the movie of my life, ominous music would start playing. I cheerfully removed the ring and, friends, it was a disaster. Immediately the top ganache started breaking apart and the weight of it made the fluffy filling, for lack of a better word, explode in a slow-motion manner. At that moment my husband came inside from checking the barbeque and I could only scream “The cake! The cake!” in the manner of that guy from Fantasy Island when he saw the plane. He hurried over and together we jammed the springform sides back on as the peanut butter filling spread everywhere. I was in a low-level state of Cake Panic. I never really worry about what I am serving my guests, for better or for worse, but I did have an image in my mind for my favourite girl, for our last of many dinners and visits in our house. After we had jammed the sides of the springform back on, I put it in the freezer, and this was the end result:

The birthday girl, bless her heart, thought it looked Really Cool That Way, Nicole, and it was honestly really delicious. I think the freezing actually improved the whole cake, all around, and I am going to remember that for next time. Freeze BEFORE removing the sides.

Speaking of my mom, I visited my parents for a couple of days and the guys joined in for the Canada Day holiday. I was reminded of a conversation my friend Tara (HI TARA) and I had, lo these many years ago, about visiting our parents. At the time we both had very tiny babies and equally tiny toddlers, and life felt as chaotic as that sounds. I recall mentioning to Tara taking the boys over to visit my parents and marvelling at their house as an oasis of peace, tidiness, and calm. It was like this whole other world, that wasn’t awash in diapers and toys and tears, and my mother would be calmly putting together a balanced meal, whereas I would have one child in the Baby Bjorn and another at my feet, trying to figure out how to cobble together a half-decent meal before the baby needed feeding and the toddler needed bedtime. Tara nodded and said “It’s like finding out how the other half lives,” and I felt that, again, at this time in my life, deeply as I was at my parents’ house this weekend. There aren’t boxes and donation piles everywhere! There are no endless to-do lists and balancing eating everything in the freezer and cupboards with are we running out of coffee, omg. I mean, this is what my front hallway has looked like for a week and a half, waiting for a donation pickup:

And the basement seems to have exploded:

But I had a great time at my parents’, even though one evening we were under a tornado warning. My mom and I popped over to my friend Merry’s lovely little store, original home of Salvadore the Gnome. Merry’s Mercantile carries giftware and clothing as well as a ton of wonderful vintage items, and one of the first things I saw was this:

GRIMACE! Is it a sign? I did not buy him, nor did I buy the cookbook by the 80s TV star Wok With Yan, although I was very tempted.

I was also tempted to buy a bandanna for Rex that stated “I’m the reason we can’t have nice things,” but, as appropriate as that is, I did not because I figured he would probably, ironically enough, destroy it. Merry did mention she had one last garden gnome who needed a home, and the last time I heard that phrase I ended up with a 95 pound ball of love, so of course I took the gnome home, although he’s going to be in a box for a little while. There will be a time after this! At one point boxes will not be my life, and Gustaf the Gnome will be presiding over a garden patch.

Weekly Reading

Tuesday Nights In 1980. This was a really good book about the NYC art scene in 1980, which is something I do not know much about. It deals with an art critic who has a special ability to see the world in colours and flavours, a fledgling artist from Argentina who is about to hit the big time, and a woman from Idaho who is trying to life the artist life in the gritty city. It took some turns I really did not expect, and is a compelling story about, thematically enough, chosen and blood family.

Unraveling. I think Jamie (HI JAMIE) had recommended this book, and to be honest, the premise did not sound promising. Starting in 2020, the author decides to write about making a sweater from scratch, and I do mean from scratch. She learns how to shear a sheep and does so, then washes, cards, and spins the wool. She makes her own natural dyes and colours the yarn, finally knitting it into a sweater. Pandemic projects, am I right? But the point was to show how much labour goes into the making of a sweater, and it was honestly fascinating. The book takes many sidebars to show just how much traditional labour – generally women’s – went into the making of textiles and clothing. The most fascinating example was one I had heard before, which is that the most valuable item on a Viking ship was the sail. The amount of labour that went into one sail is estimated to be two women-years of work. In medieval times, women of all classes would spend the majority of their time spinning and weaving, and the word spinster meant a woman untethered by husband or children, who could spend extra time doing these very important and valuable jobs. Having a spinster in the house was not a burden but instead was valuable. The book also goes into the absolute environmental disaster that is our textile and clothing industry, and questions why we think so much about what we put into our bodies, but not at all about what we put ON them, from an ecological point of view. Once you know this, you really can’t un-know it, and I have been thinking a lot about the impact our consumer choices have on this world. It’s really shameful and we have to do better as a whole and as individuals. I’ll be thinking about this for a while. This was a really thoughtful, interesting, well-researched and well-written book.

Now that I’m back from “where the other half lives” I need to get back to reality. Back to boxes and everything else, and I hope you all have a much-less hectic and stressful week than the one I am facing. Be well, friends! xo