While decorating the tree and the interior of the house is firmly a whole-family affair, putting up the outdoor lights and decorations are solely in my husband’s jurisdiction, with some help from one or both of our sons. He was finishing setting them up a few weeks ago, and when I looked out the kitchen window I saw him hanging a large red ball on our heart tree, a miniature tree whose branches grow in a downward swoop. I knew immediately what he was doing and I ran outside, with Rex at my heels. Is that a Charlie Brown Christmas tree? I squealed, and he said that it was.

In my recent Ask Me Anything (still open!), Suzanne (HI SUZANNE) asked: How did you know your husband was The One? At this point in time, my husband has been a part of my life for longer than he hasn’t. We were friends for almost two years before we started dating, and by “dating,” I mean “having sex,” since we had spent much time in each other’s company on platonic dates prior to that. How did you go from friends to more than friends? someone asked me, when I related my husband’s apparent 20 month seduction plan. Um, we were supposed to go see The Full Monty but ended up having sex? I guess I saw A Full Monty, if not The Full Monty.

Anyway, by that time, I knew that he was everything I wanted in a man: he was, and is, very smart, logical, and handy, fun to be around and to do things with but also responsible and serious, and, not incidentally, incredibly attractive. I would say that all of those attributes – especially his attractiveness – have only increased with age and time. In addition to that, when it comes to love languages we share the same one, which makes marriage and life a lot easier, and that is Acts of Service.

My husband does many things every day just to make me happy. Sometimes these are big things, like building an entire garden complete with garden boxes from scratch, but sometimes they are smaller things, like taking my car out just to fill it with gas. And sometimes it is putting up Christmas lights and creating a Charlie Brown tree that I can see from my kitchen window.

For the past fifteen years or more, my husband has set the timer for our Christmas lights so that they not only come on in the late afternoon, but also at 4:30 in the morning, so I can look at them when I have my coffee and practice yoga. It’s those kinds of little things that make a happy marriage, I think.

Marriage is an interesting thing; if you’re lucky, it goes on a long time and you can grow and change together while still maintaining the core of who you are as an individual. And it goes through so many stages over the years and decades: there are choppy waters and smooth sailing, there are times when you can’t keep your hands off each other and times when you’re so exhausted by babies and toddlers that you can’t abide more touching. There are times when life is so busy and so stressful that you feel like semi-amiable roommates who fuck once in a while. But then there’s a time when you just feel so fortunate to have found one another, and hopefully that time lasts for most, if not all, of the marriage.

No matter what endeavor I come up with, my husband is supportive. I have only to mention that I want to go somewhere or do something, and by the time I turn around he’s knee-deep in research about how to make it happen. Although, I will say he is less than enthusiastic about my recent world war obsession. How long will this go on? he asked in a tone that can only be described as “despairing,” when I mentioned Blitzkrieg. You’re only on Blitzkrieg? The war has barely started! You’ve been talking about this for weeks! I didn’t have the heart to tell him it’s an ongoing series and they drop new episodes all the time. My son suggested that this was going to be our new reality, and I will be talking about war for the rest of our lives. God, I hope not. I miss the person I used to be back in November, listening to podcasts about skin care, before I became a Military Strategist. At this time of year I should be listening to podcasts about holiday fashion and parties, or the best books of 2025, and instead I just downloaded four hours’ worth of episodes about the assassination of Franz Ferdinand.

Weekly Reading

I had a great week of reading, but I have to mention that I had a DNF this week. It’s been my goal to DNF more when a book is not hitting, so I can spend time with books I love, rather than…not. The book in question was The Egg and I; it had potential but there were three racist slurs within the first two chapters of this supposedly humourous book, and that was just three too many. I know it’s “of its time” but no thanks.

The Road To Tender Hearts. In the Acknowledgements section, the author says of the house she lived in from 2020-2021, “that rental house gave us two gas leaks, two basement floods, a gang of rats who nested in our car and caused $1400 in damage (not covered by insurance because the car “didn’t explode” FU GEICO), black mold on the walls, lead in the water, three trees that the arborist said were going to fall on the house after he came to cut down one, poison ivy that blanketed the yard, a neighbor who stabbed her sister on the day we moved in, and a teenager who crashed his car driving too fast and died at the base of our driveway. When we moved out, I sent the new tenant a message to make sure she filtered her water, and she wrote back: “Did you ever have any paranormal experiences in this house?” “No,” I wrote back. “But that could explain some things.””
Now, if this paragraph made you laugh a horrified coughing laugh like it did for me, then you must read this book immediately. Because while she doesn’t write about a house that’s actively trying to kill her, she does say she wanted to write a book about every single terrible and traumatic thing she could think about…but funny. And did she ever. This book is the weirdest heart-warming delight of a book about all the journeys to death one can have, and I loved it with all of my (tender) heart. 

Wreck. The poem that starts “Your children are not your children” by Kahlil Gibran came to mind a lot while I was reading this book. “You may give them your love, but not your thoughts, For they have their own thoughts.” On the surface this – much anticipated for me, I love Catherine Newman! – book is about a woman grappling with a strange autoimmune diagnosis and her own mortality, while also coming to terms with a fatal accident in her town that is only tangentially connected to her and her family. But to me it was about loving and accepting people even when their lives and choices are different from your own, and what it is like to be a mother of adult children. I will say that my favourite parts of this book were the scenes with the local Buy Nothing group. Did that ever take me back to my Calgary days! “To gift: leftover pizza from my kid’s birthday party. To gift: coconut milk, expired six months ago. To gift: a variety of Sephora samples.” (That last one was me). Thanks again to my friend Lisa (HI LISA) for sending me a SIGNED and personalized copy of this book!

Because of Winn-Dixie. Oddly enough, this book is referenced extensively in Save The Cat! Writes a Novel, and so I decided to pick it up. It’s about a girl who adopts a big dog who subsequently won’t let her out of his sight and also makes her life immeasurably better. Relatable! It’s a very sweet story about letting people into your life, not judging people for their past but for their present actions, and that everyone has sadness within. I wondered why I hadn’t ever read this lovely little book as a child and then realized I was twenty-five when it was published.

This is by no means a flex because none of us have control over the weather, but we have been having such a mild December, with drizzly rain and, other than one short-lived day, no snow. Looking at photos of my friends from Alberta, Ontario, Saskatchewan and the Midwestern US, I feel like I’m on an entirely different planet. Although this is my third December living here, I am still not used to rain in December. Maybe I never will get used to it! In any case, every day we are edging closer to the least amount of daylight – just over eight hours now, sunset at 3:56, sunrise at 7:47 – which makes the outdoor lights even more of a gift. Have a beautiful week, friends. xo