Author Archives: Nicole Boyhouse

Acts of Service

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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

Five For Friday: The 2025 Five Star Edition

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  • My New Personality and Identity as a War Buff. Spotify Wrapped was released a few weeks ago, and I looked dispassionately at my top five podcasts, all of which were chatty-style, women-hosted, independent podcasts. It felt like a far-off memory, a whole different world, because over these same past few weeks, I have listened to nothing but the podcast The Rest is History, specifically about the lead-up to and the specifics of World War II. The same Australian man who bonded with me over White Wine In The Sun had recommended it, and, interestingly enough, his wife had recommended Palace Confidential, which I was obsessed with until The Rest is History. I can now listen to nothing else. It’s like my life has been divided into two parts: before the podcast, and after. It has become my entire personality. At this point I have lost count of the number of episodes I have listened to, but I think I am well into thirty hours. In the time Before the Podcast, I would have said that I was pretty well versed in this subject, having received an A in a 300-level German History From 1870 to post-World War II, back in 1995, but I was wrong. I have learned so much. This podcast is incredibly detailed; for example, it took three episodes just to recount the invasion of Poland. I have been robotically reciting facts left and right about the Beer Hall Putsch and the fight for iron ore in Sweden and the 1938 German annexation of the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia. I have drawn parallels between the slow build of the Nazi party to other international current events. I have been astonished by the vast number of German spa hotels which serve as a backdrop for the strategic goings-on in the 1930s. I have no other topics of conversation. If I am not listening to the podcast, I am thinking about the podcast. When I finished all twenty episodes of World War II, I started in on World War I. I don’t even recognize myself anymore. I am out of control. Next thing you know I will eschew women’s literary fiction and will start reading nonfiction tomes about military strategy. Maybe The Art of War. I have become A War History Buff. I have turned into my own dad. What’s next? Will I start watching the six o’clock news? Will I take up curling? Will I drive into town every morning to pick up a copy of the Calgary Herald and then get into long and involved conversations with the women who work at Shopper’s Drug Mart? I mean, if we substitute “Shopper’s Drug Mart” and “Calgary Herald” for “any place in which I am interacting with a customer service representative,” then I’m already there. If I start swanning around town wearing Dockers, my transformation will be complete.
  • I’m a Weirdo, What the Hell am I Doing Here? Although I listen to podcasts – or, lately, A Single Podcast – as I go about the more mundane tasks of my life, I also enjoy a lot of music, and this is where Spotify Wrapped becomes most interesting. When it comes to my top song of the year, it’s never what I think it will be. Indeed, this year’s came as a big surprise. What an eclectic mix of songs! Longtime readers may remember that Dog and Butterfly was, once, my top song, and that was astounding enough. Creep! To be sure, I don’t listen to any one song a lot – Creep had a mere 33 listens – because my favourite playlists are all so long. “Nicole Karaoke” and “Nicole Workout,” my two most-listened to playlists, are 19 hours each, and even “Nicole Christmas” is five and a half hours, which is a lot since, as my sons tell me, there are only six songs in various versions. This is obviously not true, I have more than six songs on my Christmas playlist, although it is a fact that I have five versions of Baby, It’s Cold Outside, and an entire playlist curated by my friend Peggy (HI PEGGY) that is six hours of Last Christmas covers.
  • Queens, A King, and Country. When it comes to Top Artists, not one is connected with my Top Songs. Aretha has been my number-one artist for years, and Whitney certainly wasn’t a surprise, but Zac Brown was the dark horse in this race. Truly, things got a bit skewed as my husband insisted on listening to our son’s “Country Bangers” playlist for at least half of a twenty-hour road trip, and “Country Bangers” is, by my estimation, at least 75% Zac Brown. I like Zac Brown just fine, but a number three spot seems excessive.
  • Five Star Books, or the Books That I Can’t Stop Thinking About. I know, it’s madness to discuss five-star books two weeks before the end of the year, but this is my third year in a row of doing this exact post at this exact time of the year, and I don’t want to break the chain. Also, I am sure I’ll be noting five-star books of late December next year, just as I am going to mention my final three five-star reads of 2024: The Wedding People, The Knockout Queen, and Tell Me Everything. For 2025 (so far): Moon Road, Isola, Notes On Your Sudden Disappearance, Girl, Woman, Other, Death By A Thousand Cuts, Animal Instinct, What Are You Going Through, Sky Daddy, Show Don’t Tell, So Late In The Day, Shark Heart, Dream Count, Audition, Maggie; or, A Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar, The Thing Around Your Neck, The Love Haters, The Correspondent, The Road To Tender Hearts.
  • Five Star Re-Reads, or the Books I Love Beyond Belief. What, I ask, is the point of having shelves full of books if you’re not going to reread them until they literally fall apart in your hands? It’s a great joy of my life. Here are my five-star rereads of 2025: All Along You Were Blooming, The Husband’s Secret, Mansfield Park, Devotions, Hateship Courtship Friendship Loveship Marriage, Standard Deviation, Single Carefree Mellow, Sandwich, Songs At The River’s Edge, The Joy Luck Club.

There were lots of five star experiences in 2025: we had some great travel, the garden was a success, and I turned fifty. Although, according to Spotify, that’s inaccurate.

I mean, honestly, it’s not wrong. Do you have five-star books, playlists, podcasts, music, or anything to share with me? Tell me everything. xo

Neither Rain Nor Sleet Nor Snow Nor Hail

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I was at the post office, elf-like, with a bag full of parcels to mail. There were a few people waiting in line, so I picked up some flat-rate boxes and started cramming things into them as best I could, addressing them merrily. One of the parcels was the wrong size for a flat-rate box, but I had expected as much and had already addressed it and secured the festive paper with what was probably way too much packing tape. By the time I had finished my little project, the lineup had disappeared, and so I sauntered up to the counter.

When I moved here I very much grieved the loss of my neighbourhood, where it felt like everyone knew my name, or at least my face. I felt both nameless and faceless as I moved about my business in my new city. But now, two plus years later, I feel like I’m pretty well-known around town, and by “around town,” I mean at the library and the grocery store and, importantly for this story, at the post office.

I was thinking a lot about mail this week as I finally read The Correspondent, which I will talk about shortly, but just know that I loved it excessively. Longtime readers might remember when I found an entire moving box full of letters: mostly from my grandma, but also many from various pen pals I kept over the years. Old fashioned letters really do tell a story, and although I send postcards and holiday cards and birthday cards and, sadly, sympathy cards with much regularity, I haven’t sent an actual letter since my grandma died almost twenty-six years ago. I do, however, exchange epistle-length emails with one of my former senior yoga students, which feel correspondence-like. Writing this blog, and reading those of my friends, also feels very correspondence-adjacent.

There’s nothing quite like getting mail, though, which is why I am a regular at the post office. I take a lot of time to choose pretty stamps – only available for Canadian addresses, so sorry, non-Canadian friends! – and I’m always excited when there is something new. Last month there were Blue Rodeo stamps, BLUE RODEO. May I remind you of the 2008 Plates of Gold Gala?

In case you’re not up on your Canadiana, that is Jim Cuddy, singer of Blue Rodeo and the person who is referred to as “my boyfriend” in this house.

What I am saying is that I have really gotten to know the women who work at the post office, and as I ambled up to the counter looking like a cheerful version of the Grinch, balancing boxes and bags in my arms, the employee on duty apologized for not helping me with the flat-rate boxes. I don’t know how she possibly could have helped me shove gifts into them, but I appreciated the sentiment, and when she asked if I was sending any dangerous goods, I mentioned that one of the parcels contained a puzzle for my nine-year-old niece. This spurred a long and detailed conversation about puzzles, and how we liked them, and then she suddenly turned away and disappeared, only to return with a puzzle box lid and a small piece of said puzzle. This in turn spurred another long and detailed conversation, this time about the puzzle that was currently being constructed in the post office break room and how difficult it was and how we both preferred puzzles that are vignettes rather than difficult landscapes, of which this was one.

The employee looked around to ensure no one else was in the office, and then she gestured to me to come with her. We went together into the back office, where I could see not only the puzzle-in-progress, but I could also see the walls which were completely lined with completed puzzles. It was like A Beautiful Mind, but with puzzles.

And at that moment, I thought this is what life is all about. Live your life with arms wide open! I didn’t wake up that morning thinking I would tour around the back of a post office, talking about different brands of puzzle glue, but here I was. The things that can happen when you don’t live a rushed existence! As we went back to the counter so that I could finish the actual job that I came to do, an elderly woman burst into the post office, and burst is really not an exaggeration. I would not say that she was the reason for all those “abuse will not be tolerated” signs, but she was quite snappish. She wanted to know WHEN letters would be delivered again.

When indeed. For those of you not in the know of the inner workings of Canada Post, earlier this fall there was a brief strike which became rotating strikes, and so the mail has been delivered, albeit slightly slower, since early November. The employee said as much to the woman, who was in disbelief.

I wondered if she had checked her mailbox at any time over the past six weeks. I pictured it exploding as she turned the key to her little box. I imagined that there would be an incredible backlog of, at the very least, flyers and bills. Perhaps there would even be a holiday card in there. And then I thought, maybe she had checked it, and maybe no one was sending her anything at all. Maybe she had a “no flyers” sign, maybe all her bills were paid online, maybe she had no one to send her a holiday card. Maybe she was just a cantankerous old lady who needed a lesson on the True Meaning of Christmas and who would, in time, be the recipient of much festive mail and become a beloved member of the community.

Well. I was letting my imagination get the better of me. I was creating an entire character arc in my mind and a whole story in which she would be serving Christmas dinner at a soup kitchen and would become attached to a plucky young orphan who would teach her all about LOVE, and meanwhile, the woman merely huffed and stormed off, presumably to open up her mailbox at last to find that Kellogg’s products were on sale at the Save On.

Weekly Reading

At the urging of my son, I need to issue a correction. There is another book which spurred actual tears once, and that is The Godfather. The son in question was a year old at the time, and I was gigantically pregnant with my second, reading The Godfather in the waiting room of the doctor’s office. I came across the part where the Don is asking the undertaker to do his best to prepare Sonny’s body for viewing. “I don’t want his mother to see him this way…look at how they massacred my boy.” I burst into tears. I have reread The Godfather several times over the past twenty years and never again have I cried, so I think it was more of a hormonal response than a literary one. Anyway, this story has been family lore lo these many years, and I cannot believe I forgot to mention it. Correction issued!

Great Big Beautiful Life. I had heard some criticism about this book, being a bit different from the author’s usual – but I liked this story about two writers competing to get access to and write the memoir of a mysterious, reclusive celebrity. There was a story within a story, which I like, and a twist which I didn’t see coming. A nice diversion of a book. 

Favourite Daughter. The author of this book is from Calgary, love to see that! I also loved seeing little snippets of my hometown sprinkled throughout this story of two women who discover that they are half-sisters after their father passes away – and after they discover he made a wild decision with regards to his rather significant estate. It made me think that two people can view and experience a person very differently or, relatedly, that one person can be very different to different people. Mainly, this book is about addiction and alcoholism, with detailed descriptions of withdrawal, recovery, and relapses. You all know I feel about such subjects, and for that reason, as well as a couple of others, this didn’t work for me.

The Correspondent. I have been waiting for months to read this book, and wow, was it worth the wait! To be honest, I was a bit worried, as this book has generated a lot of buzz. I was concerned that this would be another situation like Remarkably Bright Creatures or Where The Crawdads Sing where everyone in the world but me was in love with it. But I need not have worried. This is an extremely Nicole-coded book! What an incredible piece of writing. This epistolary novel showcases the extraordinary life of an ordinary woman which, if you’ve been following along with me for any amount of time, is my absolute favourite. It doesn’t shy away from showing deep regrets, bad mistakes, failures, and general cantankerousness. But it also shows the power of the written word and of communication, the joys of relationships of all kinds, and the beauty of living a life with arms wide open and with acceptance and love. I wish I could read this book all over again for the first time, but I know I will reread it in the future and be just as delighted, moved, and warmed by it.

If you are a blogger, do you ever go back and read old posts? The one I linked to above, about my 2018 discovery of all my own correspondence, was very fun to read. I do like looking back to see what my life was like back then, as I am at the point where I can barely remember what happened last week, let alone in years past. Maybe we are all Sybil from The Correspondent, in that respect. I mean, hopefully not in terms of all the tragedy, but the spirit is there. And speaking of spirit, just a reminder that I have an Ask Me Anything form, if you have any questions or topics you would like to see explored. And on that note, I hope you are all having a lovely December so far. xo

Do You Remember the Very First Night of December

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Get Your Calendars Ready!

Happy December, everyone! Are we all starting Advent calendars today? I have my usual dogs-in-Santa-hats puzzle calendar ready to go, but after last year’s extreme disappointment over a much-coveted After Eight calendar, I decided not to buy myself one. Instead, I opted to purchase a few bags of treats that I love – Lindts, mostly, but also York peppermint patties – and I’m going to choose one daily. It’s like my own low-effort, high-rewards calendar.

I did buy three actual Lindt calendars from Costco for the guys at least six weeks ago, and while I was browsing I came across this:

Please notice the stack of Godiva chocolates for scale. This Lindt calendar was over five feet tall, and on sale for a mere $249.99. To be fair, each day in the calendar contains an entire bag of Lindts or a full-sized Lindt bear, and that is probably a decent price for that volume of quality chocolate. And I will say that I did have a moment when I wondered if I could fit it in the car, and then I had another such moment last week when I saw it again, and it was discounted by $50. However. That really is a lot of chocolate. I think it would be an incredible addition to, say, an office break room, if one had a lot of staff. Which I do not.

Am I still thinking about it? Am I wondering how discounted it would be now? Am I considering asking my husband to bring his truck to Costco? Yes to all of those questions. However, his truck is currently full of leaves, ready to be taken to the organic waste section of the landfill, so I guess that is a no for me.

It’s Really The Twenty-Fifth Night of December

My sons both loathe December by Earth, Wind, and Fire, citing it as the stupidest Christmas song ever written. They changed one word and then called it a Christmas song, they say, which is true. I still like it though, as well as Taking Care of Christmas, which I probably shouldn’t mention in the same sentence as December. After all, there are festive lyrics in there, not just a swap of “December” for “September.”

The song I really loathe is Wonderful Christmastime. The second I hear the opening bars, my shoulders creep right up to my ears and I do whatever I need to not to listen to that tuneless tripe. However, my friend Hannah (HI HANNAH) sent me this as a coping mechanism:

Reframe the narrative, as they say. I cannot always control hearing Wonderful Christmastime, but I CAN control my thoughts about it, and now I will constantly think of it as masking witchcraft.

It’s Mariah’s Time To Shine

The truth is I love most holiday music and will bop along to anything. I will also, as per Buddy the Elf, sing out loud for all to hear, although I admit I don’t do this consciously. It just sort of happens. Sometimes I will see someone else singing quietly in Superstore, and our eyes will meet with great understanding.

And let’s not forget about my all-time favourite!

I swear, the first person to hurt my feelings about Whamaggedon will get buried in my floorboards. Emotionally.

First Sob of the Year

Back in October, we were having breakfast in Morocco with our new Australian friends, and somehow I volunteered the information that one of my favourite songs of the season is White Wine in the Sun. How or why this topic presented itself, I cannot say, but I got into an involved conversation with one of the Australian men. He told me that Tim Minchin wrote it when he was 25 and far from home. And when he gets home, everyone is waiting for him drinking white wine…I started to say before choking up, waving my hands in front of my eyes. It’s too much! I said, welling up, which made the Australian man also well up, while our respective spouses looked on, dry-eyed.

It’s my go-to Christmas Cry song, along with River and, if I’m in a certain mood, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. Recently, my friend Suzanne (HI SUZANNE) asked what was the last book that made you cry and I had to sheepishly answer that it was Of Mice and Men, when I was 19. I am very often moved, sometimes vastly, but I never cry while reading. I just stare off into space for a while, sometimes with my hand on my throat. Am I made of stone? No, because even thinking about and you won’t understand, but you will learn someday brings tears to my eyes, and if I go further than that, heaving sobs are guaranteed. Am I crying RIGHT NOW, just thinking about it? Yes. Did I listen to that song on Friday and go hug my son tearfully, who asked Mom, are you listening to that stupid song again? Yes.

For the record, if I have to tell anyone the ending of Of Mice and Men, I will also start with the heaving sobs.

Buble, King of the World

My husband watches The Voice, and, by the powers of osmosis, so do I. Technically I read on the couch while he watches, but I look up often enough to reflect that it is one of the nicest shows I have ever seen. Remember the days of American Idol? Perhaps those days still exist, I don’t know. What I do know is that there is no nastiness on The Voice, all of the judges are kind to the contestants and to each other, and their appreciation of the music is unmatched.

Michael Buble is one of the judges, and wow, do I love him. What’s not to love? He’s a proud Canadian, by all accounts he is a great husband and father, we never hear anything bad about him, and he gently makes fun of himself while advertising for Bubly, which I ALSO love. Not to mention that he created the single greatest Christmas album of all time! I love all versions of Santa Baby, but I love his best of all.

Blue Jays fans: did anyone else think his name was spelled Boba Shett?

All of this is to say I love holiday music and at any given time these days I’m grooving along to it.

Weekly Reading

This was a VERY fun week for reading!

All The Other Mothers Hate Me. This was a ride and I loved it! It’s a fast-paced, weird and funny book about a former girl band singer who is a hot hot mess, and whose only reason for getting out of bed in the morning is her quirky 10-year-old son. When her son’s nemesis – an heir to a frozen food fortune – goes missing on a field trip, she springs into action…to make sure her son isn’t accused. I don’t know how to describe this book. A thriller? A comedy? A thrill-com? It’s just FUN. A good time, quick read. Fun fact: the author wanted to create a main character who was as awful as can be while still being a very loving mother, and DID SHE EVER.

The Love Haters. What I love about Katherine Center is that while her books are warm-hearted, light, and so much fun, they also deal with deeper issues. For this book, that deeper issue is body image and, in the words of Whitney Houston, learning to love yourself. It is the GREATEST LOVE OF ALLLLL. The body image issues that the protagonist has certainly resonated with me, even if she is of my children’s generation, rather than mine. In fact, the love interest mentioned his mother’s year of birth, which is the same as my husband’s. Nevertheless! I really loved this book, even if at times the story was a bit silly and far-fetched. WHO CARES. It was a delight! It had it all: a handsome rescue swimmer with the Coast Guard, a group of old ladies known as The Gals whose ringleader was named Rue, a Great Dane named George Bailey. It was just a perfect romp with a great message about loving your body because it’s your body, and not wasting time and energy trying to live up to some stupid societal standards. My one quibble was the title. I did not get the feeling that any of the characters hated love. But that is such a minor quibble – I really loved this.

It’s that time of year again! Now that the madness of November and NaBloPoMo is over, I am going to do an Ask Me Anything. Do you have questions for me? Just fill out this form and I will be happy to answer them in the upcoming weeks. I am, as you know, willing to talk about almost anything. Happy December, friends. I hope you have lots of light and chocolate and music and all the good things. xo

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Fight The Gloom Edition

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November is such a grey and gloomy month, isn’t it? As I write this, the sun rises at 7:29 am and sets at 4:02 pm, and those precious daylight hours are only going to get worse before they get better. However! November is also the month of Tiny Secret Festive Season, which morphs into Full On Festive Season, and all the happiness and light that brings to me. In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer. It’s not the depth of winter, not even close, but the sentiment stands. In the depth of November, within me I found some Favourite Things.

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Fight The Gloom Edition

It’s Puzzle Season, Motherfuckers

November through March – i.e., the non-garden season – is unofficially Puzzle Season around here. I love a good puzzle but I definitely gravitate towards the less difficult realm. Do I want to go insane while staring at 1000 pieces of hell? No I do not. My husband is a person who enjoys wildly difficult puzzles, like the one we did of a canoe on a lake with a background of mountains, or the one of Queen Elizabeth’s coronation in which every single piece was the exact same shape. I like a series of vignettes, is what I’m saying.

The completed puzzle!

My older son gave this Jane Austen puzzle to me for my birthday, and I saved it to kick off Puzzle Season. It’s a very special puzzle because the photo on the box does not contain the solution. The Puzzler must put the characters together, figure out who goes with whom, and then use the conversational clues to figure out how to arrange them for the final product.

ELL-OH-ELL Mr Darcy

You need to be a Fan, is what it boils down to.

Oh, Caroline Bingley. Go pretend to read a book.

It’s a really clever idea and it was so much fun. I tried to explain WHY it was so amusing to my family, and their eyes started glazing over.

Fun fact: I used It’s Puzzle Season, Motherfuckers for a Favourite Things last December, and it also included a Jane Austen puzzle! Will the pattern continue? Check in with me in 2026!

Oh, I’m Writing My Life Away

On the topic of Items Received For My Birthday That I Am Using Seven Months Later, my dear friend Suzanne (HI SUZANNE) sent me this notebook.

Mary Oliver!

I was absolutely delighted, and I knew that I wanted to save it for a special use. Right now Inhale Exhale is out for review with Clarion, which means that the process is out of my hands, as nerve-wracking as that is. Time to redirect that nervous energy and start something new!

Work in progress.

Two of the women in my writing group, Gill and Michela (HI GILL HI MICHELA) swear by Morning Pages; they say that there is something about it that really sparks creativity. I am not at the Morning Pages Life Stage yet, but I have been using Suzanne’s gorgeous notebook to handwrite thoughts about my new project in a very stream-of-consciousness way. And I have to say, it has worked. Creativity has been sparked!

On the same topic:

Isn’t that a beautiful cover? I am SO pleased with it. If you’re wondering what it’s about, wonder no more!

My publisher, Friesen Press, is a hybrid one, which means that my path to publication is not traditional and I won’t have the ability to pre-order, or to give you an exact release date quite yet. However! It will be available at all the usual bookstores, and the MINUTE I have that information, it will be here on the blog, it will be on my Instagram, it will be on Facebook, it will be sung from my own rooftop. I absolutely loved writing this, and I hope people will love reading it.

Me and my writing buddy.

She Walked Up To Me and She Asked Me To Pose…Y-O-G-A Yoga

I realize that a discussion of yoga mats might be more topical in, say, January, but in my mind ANY time is a good time for yoga. Also, it’s possible that one might want a yoga mat for Christmas, and I have very strong feelings on this topic.

As a small digression, I would like to go on the record to say that yoga truly is for everyone. No one is “bad at yoga.” No one “can’t do yoga.” No one is “too stiff” to do yoga. There are as many ways of practicing yoga as there are people on this earth. Some people do seated postures on a mat, some people do standing postures, some people sit in a chair, some people lie in savasana. And, as I said sternly to my husband and son who were watching a commercial with a football player doing a barre practice while someone jeered, no yoga teacher has ever “laughed at” a student. If such a thing has ever occurred, it has not been in my hearing, and I would posit a theory that such a person is not truly a yoga teacher. Yoga teachers are almost exclusively a gentle, loving bunch who only want the best for their students. If a person can sit quietly and listen to the sound of their breath for thirty seconds, THEY ARE DOING YOGA. Yoga doesn’t necessarily mean putting legs behind one’s head, although it can. Yoga doesn’t necessarily mean touching one’s toes, although it can. Yoga is LIFE and it is practicing loving-kindness to oneself and to the world around us, and it means leaving a room a little brighter than one found it. In this definition, I would venture to say that we are all yogis. We are all practicing yoga every day, or at least we have the potential to. Being able to touch one’s toes is a nice thing, but it doesn’t define a yoga practice.

Back to the topic at hand, which is my own personal physical yoga practice, and my mat of choice, which is a Manduka Pro Black Mat. It is expensive, yes, but it is the best mat on the market. It is thick and heavy and doesn’t move around while you practice, even if you are taking vigourous vinyasas. It gives cushion for the knees and for the sitz bones, and mine are going to go with me to my grave. My (theoretical) great-grandchildren will be cleaning out my room at The Home and will wonder why Grandma had so many mats.

Because I do have SO many mats. There are four – FOUR – Manduka Pros in this house, although one is my husband’s, given by me for Christmas one year.

My husband’s mat, foam roller, and yoga balls. I feel like a picture is worth a thousand words here.

One of the mats was purchased to leave at this house, when we lived in Calgary, so that I didn’t have to schlep it back and forth. Another was my practice mat, which I kept in a storage space at the Yoga Shala, and the other was my teaching mat, which lived in my minivan and would be taken to all the non-Shala places I used to teach. And then the pandemic happened, and the Shala closed, and my classes went from ten a week to two, and those two were taught via zoom; my need for multiple mats evaporated, but my mats live on.

The collection.

Ever since my friend Gillian (HI GILLIAN) turned me on to them in 2009, I have been a devotee of the mat cover. These microfibre covers serve several purposes: a) they keep your hands and feet from slipping by being grippier the more sweaty one gets, which is good news for a sweaty gal like myself, b) although this seems to completely contradict what I just said, it makes your feet slide nicely when doing vinyasa, c) it feels nicer than a naked rubber mat, and d) it keeps the mat clean and is machine-washable. Need I say more? And yes, I have three, one for each of my mats.

The practice space, complete with practice buddy in doughnut pose.

Friluftsliv!

A little while ago, my friend Sarah (HI SARAH) said plaintively in response to all the autumnal celebrations that fall is already really nice, what are we doing about winter? Well, what I do, and what I have done for the past five and a half years, is to embrace my half-Norwegian heritage and the concept of friluftsliv, which means that life is best lived outside. I go outside every single day and I also embrace the somewhat strident Scandinavian belief that there is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes. To that end, I want to talk about something that has definitely made my Favourites in the past: the bum warmer.

Walking In Winter Fashion

A woman in Calgary that I met through a Yoga Shala holiday market buys old sweaters at thrift stores and transforms them into a skirt-like item, the bum warmer, and then uses the remainder to make headbands and mittens. You would not believe the difference this makes, warmth-wise! I have three of them but this is my festive season set. I top off the look with legwarmers and a toque, and I am cozy and toasty and ready for the outdoors. It’s very hygge, and also very ecologically friendly.

You Don’t Know What You’ve Got ‘Til It’s Gone

To think I took something as mundane as the mail for granted for almost my whole life. I didn’t realize how much happiness sending and receiving mail gave me, particularly during the holidays, until the Canada Post strike shut it all down last year. I am a little scarred from that experience, and have been frantically writing out my cards in order to get them into the mail, just in case the current rotating strikes turn into a full-blown one.

On a recent episode of The Girl Next Door podcast, one of the hosts talked about her secret fear of getting a paper cut on her eye, and while I don’t share that particular worry, I am always concerned that I’m going to get one on my tongue while licking envelopes. Anyway.

I loved pen pals when I was younger and it’s a thrill now to have my own grown-up ones. Sometimes it’s more than a postcard or a note; last week I received a parcel from my friend Lisa (HI LISA).

Imagine my surprise when it contained a SIGNED copy of Wreck! I almost fainted. Lisa! Talked to Catherine Newman! And she signed a book just for ME! I could die. Have I read it yet? No, because I still have eleven library books that need reading. But I cannot WAIT. Thanks Lisa!

Outfit of the Month

In the spirit of shopping my closet, everything in this outfit is at least seven years old, with the exception of the jeans. It’s a whole thing with Jean. Please don’t make me relive my Jeans Crisis.

The lined coat is from lululemon, circa 2013, and the sweater is from the same place but a few years later. The boots are lightly lined and perfect for this weather right now – not too warm, but warm enough.

What are you doing to stave off the Novemberies? I know my dear friend Michelle (HI MICHELLE) is celebrating Gnomevember, but I would posit that every month is Gnomevember in the Boyhouse. Tell me all your Favourites this month, I would love to hear them. xo

Small Appliance Chaos

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I spent a lot of time in the kitchen, although less time than I used to, back in the days when the kids were in school and it felt like at least fifty percent of my one wild and precious life was spent procuring, preparing, and cleaning up after said procurement and preparation of food.

It’s not fifty percent in this season of life, but it’s still a hefty chunk of the day, and it’s because of this that I am a devotee of small kitchen appliances. As it should be abundantly clear by now, the coffee maker is the number one small appliance in my house – let’s not have a murder! – and the Vitamix, used multiple times a day by multiple people, is a close second. Tied for third are my stand mixer and air fryer, the latter being a dark horse. I did not expect such an item to take a place of importance in my life, but here we are. The last in this list is my food processor, which gets used three or four times a month, and of which I have burned through several over the past fifteen years or so. What can I say, I used to test a lot of recipes for YMC, RIP all my recipes.

If you have been keeping track, you will no doubt remember the Vitamix debacle of last June, which was resolved much more happily than anyone, least of all me, expected. And of course we all know about my recent coffee maker woes, which have also been happily resolved, luckily for my family and anyone who comes into contact with me. We also all know that things happen in threes, and so it should not surprise anyone that another one, as they say, bit the dust, and that one was the stand mixer.

Now listen. This is only a minor grievance. This run of small appliance deaths is not, truly, a tragedy. It’s not even tragedy-adjacent. It’s not like having one of the big three – fridge, stove, washing machine – die. It’s a mild inconvenience at worst.

Deep down, I knew it was coming. I have had this mixer at least since the kids were in early elementary school, possibly even preschool. I have put it through its paces at least twice a week for fifteen years or more. And three or four weeks ago, as I was mixing up some banana muffins, I heard a little snap.

Well, a broken whisk isn’t the end of the world, is it? I figured I could probably buy a new attachment, if indeed this model of stand mixer still exists. In any case, it still worked. Maybe not as efficiently as before the whisk snapped, but it still got the job done.

Then, last week, I was AGAIN making banana muffins with the broken whisk attachment, and when I unplugged the mixer the electric ground stayed behind in the plug outlet. I stared at it for a few minutes, looked at the broken plug in my hand, and then stared into space. Yikes! I might be able to work with a semi-broken attachment, but I am not willing to get electrocuted. My husband suggested getting the plug replaced, but I felt that was only a delay of the inevitable.

Well, as he said last year at this time, when I had the Great Closet Crisis of 2024, it is the best time for something like this to happen. I have said it before and I will say it again: it is WEIRD that Black Friday is a thing in Canada. Do not get me wrong, I am also HAPPY that Black Friday is a thing in Canada, but it’s still weird. Weirder still is that Black Friday is now code for “the entire month of November.” Soon it will be Black Friday on the day after Canadian Thanksgiving. And then it will be Black Friday In July, and after that it will just be Black Friday every day of the year. If every day is Black Friday, then is any day Black Friday? It’s a question for the shopping philosophers.

Weird or not, I gratefully purchased myself a discounted stand mixer, which arrived on Saturday, with plenty of time for holiday baking. That hasn’t been started yet, because there was a bigger project this weekend at the Boyhouse.

The tree is up! The season has shifted to full-on festive, and it’s all holiday music, all the time around here.

Weekly Reading

I have had no fewer than twelve library books out over the past couple of weeks. Every time I take some back, more holds have arrived. But I’m diligently working on the stack!

It’s A Love Story. This book is about the stories we tell ourselves ABOUT ourselves, and how we let those stories define us, for better or worse. There are some nice themes about family and open and honest communication, and about self-fulfilling prophecies, but it took me about a quarter of the book to get invested. I found the main character hard to like, but there was a nice redemption arc and, as it should, everything works out nicely in the end.

The Enchanted April. What a charming, delightful book! This book, written post-WWI, follows four women from London who rent an Italian castle for the month of April. The women are mostly unknown to each other, and seem to be unsuitable companions, but everything works out in the most charming way. This book was written in 1922 and spurred a tourism craze to the Italy! Many thanks to my friend Pearl for the recommendation (HI PEARL).

Everyone Is Lying To You. Thrillers aren’t my usual thing, but I enjoyed this page-turner about a tradwife, homesteading influencer whose husband is brutally murdered. Who did it and why? It’s a compelling story about a very weird side of the internet. It’s also an interesting commentary on the idea of comparing your life to those of influencers, and what really goes on behind the scenes. A good November diversion!

Here we are in the very last week of November! Where did the month go? I hope you all had a lovely weekend and are feeling less salty than Rexie, who isn’t a fan of having his bed moved, even if the “moving” is a total of three feet away. xo

Minor Mysteries

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I know you were all waiting on the edge of your seat for the next thrilling episode of Nicole and Her Coffee, and I am happy to relate that you can all breathe a sigh of relief. My new coffee maker has arrived!

Isn’t it beautiful? I’m hoping that German engineering will break the long chain of leaky coffee makers that have been bolstering my mornings lo these many years.

Speaking of mornings, I noticed something strange on our walk a few weeks ago.

When was it so windy? I asked a woman who was walking by and complimenting me on my doggy model. She informed me, with an oddly curious look, that there was a terrible windstorm the night before. Didn’t you hear it? she asked, and I marvelled at the apparent coma I fall into at 8:30 pm every night, which is a bit of a downside to being an early morning bird.

There have been a few mysteries I have encountered lately, two of them very specifically app-related. I have a Garmin watch, and for a long time I have somehow been included in a “100K Step Challenge,” which is a weekly ranking between me and nine random strangers. I don’t remember joining this challenge, but here I am. I almost always hit 100,000 steps in a week, but I am never in the top three. There is always someone who blows everyone away, step-wise, and, knowing how much time I spend Getting My Steps In, I can only assume this person walks all their waking hours. Maybe it’s David Sedaris! Who can say.

But the mystery is that a few weeks ago, I idly checked my ranking only to discover that I was now in a “85K Step Challenge.” How did that happen? Did I get demoted? I didn’t get as many steps as normal while travelling in Morocco, but still. I don’t think that justified kicking me out of the 100K club, the club that I don’t remember joining but on which I am now, apparently, basing my personality. And indeed, after a few weeks of being home and taking the number one spot in the 85K challenge, I’m back in the middle of the pack in the 100K group. Perhaps this is one of those “challenges” that Garmin has to keep people motivated, rather than demoralised. I found my demotion, with my subsequent domination of the leader board, to have the opposite effect.

The other mystery is with regards to DuoLingo, the language learning app. I am on a 1358 day streak, and for all of those days I have been on a “Friend Streak” with my younger son. Every week, we receive a “Friend Quest,” which is just a little challenge that we complete together. Because this is a special thing between the two of us, I only follow my son, no one else, so that we are assured to be assigned to a Quest together.

Well. Lately DuoLingo has not sent either of us “Friend Quests,” instead telling us that we need to “sync our contacts” and “follow new people” in order to be assigned a “Friend Quest.” I WILL NOT. I am incensed by this blatant desperation for more DuoLingo users. NOT ON MY WATCH, DUOLINGO. My reaction to this lack of weekly “Quests” is probably wildly out of proportion to its actual importance in the not-even-grand scheme of things, and yet, I feel justified. I pay for the extended family plan and the “premium” edition, and this is the thanks I get? I cannot even work with my son on a shared goal to get 90% in 30 classes or 4500 XP? Nonsense! I am a Taurus, and if there is one thing Tauruses are known for, it is their stubbornness and inability to budge. My heels are dug in. THIS IS THE HILL I DIE ON.

I guess that is less of a mystery and more of a rage-inducing marketing attempt. After yet another week of realizing that we weren’t getting our Friend Quests, I headed out for a walk, hoping the steps would quell my disproportionate outrage. (I AM NOT DOING YOUR MARKETING FOR YOU, DUOLINGO!). While walking I listened to the latest episode of You Are Good, a recap of Billy Madison, a movie that I unapologetically love even though the humour is very, very stupid. I quote from it all the time: It must have been that damn Sasquatch, I’ll say when someone asks a question, and I award you no points, and may god have mercy on your soul, I’ll say randomly.

Back in my minivan-children chauffeur stage, I would frequently use I’ll turn this damn bus around.

But I got to the part when Billy debates which is better: shampoo or conditioner, and something occurred to me. When did we stop calling it “creme rinse?”

I remember it being creme rinse when I was a kid, but I do not remember when the switch happened. Is there a difference between creme rinse and conditioner? Don’t they both leave their hair silky and smooth? Does anyone else remember the product Gee Your Hair Smells Terrific? I could probably look up all of these things, but I think I will leave it as is, a little mystery.

Weekly Reading

A Home For The Holidays. Okay. Someone posted about this last holiday season, I think it was my friend Sarah (HI SARAH), and I did NOT read a synopsis nor the flap copy, instead I just put it on my “For Later” list and activated it recently, so I could read what I thought was a light holiday rom-com. A feel-good book, if you will. So you can imagine my surprise when I discovered that it is a book about grief, about a woman losing her alcoholic mother two weeks before Christmas. Trigger warning, everyone! In the weeks following her mother’s death, she begins a kind of wild emotional journey to discovery. She learns about her mother’s past, and to learn that her mother was more than her addiction. There is an almost unbelievably quick romantic sideline, as well as a nice story about family and chosen family. It was far too soon after The Bright Years to read another book about a family semi-destroyed by alcoholism, but the ending was nice. So I guess it was a feel-good book after all, albeit one about addiction and a weirdly quick romance and a surprise long-lost best friend. Maybe don’t overthink this, just go along for the ride.

Americanah. I had recently read, and loved, Dream Count and The Thing Around Your Neck, and years ago had read, and loved Purple Hibiscus – all of which written by this author. So I was excited to read Americanah, and also was curious that I hadn’t read it before. Friends, I started on the very first page and thought, huh. By the time I finished the first scene, I realized that I had read it before. But when? I started keeping track of my books read in January 2017, and Americanah came out in 2013, so I guess sometime in between. I didn’t remember how it ended, and I only remembered scenes as I read them, so it was definitely worth a reread, this book about a Nigerian woman who goes to America to live and then returns to her homeland to find it, and herself, very changed.

How are you all doing, friends? Any little mysteries in your life of late? Tell me everything. xo