Category Archives: Birthdays

A Big Celebratory Day

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I was at the library the other day, and the woman at the checkout very warmly thanked me for “bringing in my library card today.” My “you’re welcome?” must have sounded exactly the way I felt, and so she started to explain that not everyone brings their cards in, and pointed me to a little sign, heretofore unperceived by me. The sign gave numerous helpful hints as to how to remember to bring your library card to the library, such as putting your card with other important items, like a credit card or house keys. I tried to imagine a scenario in which I strong-arm the librarians into lending me books without a card. It’s one of those problems that I never would have guessed was a problem.

I met a former sex worker while in line at Superstore. I have many interesting conversations while grocery shopping, but this was the most fascinating. The woman was about my age, with shortish light brown hair, large glasses, a stoutish figure, and a fairly plain face. She was wearing a long down vest overtop a hoodie. In other words, she looked just like anyone you might see shopping at Superstore, and the only difference was she had a very fancy-looking bag made out of fur. She informed me it was from a fur coat given to her by a client when she was eighteen, but it didn’t fit her anymore, so she had part of it turned into a purse. It was a reminder to her to be grateful that she could pay for groceries without turning tricks anymore. Actually, her exact words were It used to be $125 for a suck and a fuck, but things are more expensive now. I’d have to do a lot more to pay for this! Grocery costs, am I right? Honestly, it was kind of inspiring. She wasn’t ashamed of her past, she did what she had to do to support her children, and now she had moved on in life.

Speaking of gratitude, today is a very special day! It is not only our 24th wedding anniversary, but it is also our older son’s 22nd birthday. It’s also Rex’s fifth birthday, and honestly, that is a lot of things in one day. Since Mondays are our son’s busiest day, we celebrated yesterday with a dinner out and, of course, cake.

What a joy to have this spiky-haired fellow in my life, what a gift he gave me when he made me a mom.

My husband and I have never really celebrated our anniversary on the actual day – this is a result of spending one’s second anniversary on the labour and delivery floor. That said, we have many exciting plans for this, our twenty-fifth year of marriage. My friend Laura (HI LAURA) recently discussed the unique features of long marriages, saying growing old with the love of your life is both an honor and marathon of patience, and there is a beauty in it that you never expected, and I agree.

I read The Five People You Meet In Heaven in 2003, and even though we had been married only a year at that time, a paragraph stood out and stayed with me. Marguerite said something about the bikini bathing suits the young girls were wearing and how she would never have the nerve to wear such a thing. Eddie said the girls were lucky, because if she did the men would not look at anyone else. And even though by this point Marguerite was in her mid-40s and her hips and thickened and a web of small lines had formed around her eyes, she thanked Eddie gratefully and looked at his crooked nose and wide jaw. The waters of their love fell again from above and soaked them as surely as the sea that gathered at their feet.

It’s one of the simplest, but most touchingly beautiful paragraphs about marriage I have come across.

Of course, I know many of you will wonder how we celebrated Rex, and I will merely reiterate what I say at Christmas: every day is Christmas for Rex, except actual Christmas. He is a creature who revels in sameness and predictability, and is much less happy when his daily schedule is disrupted. For such a big galoompa, he has an incredibly delicate digestive system, and he is also a fussy eater with a long memory. In other words, should we give him a very special treat, even if he can eat it without resulting in my grimly cleaning up after him and regretting all my choices, he will expect it every single day from here on out, and is likely to hunger strike when given his regular food. So we celebrate Rex by giving him the love and regular treats he gets every day. Every day is his birthday! Except his birthday.

Weekly Reading

If last week’s reading theme was Straight White Men, then this week’s is Grief. I am grieving that I actually read the entirety of one of the books, let me tell you. I should have DNF’d it.

The Unexpected Journey. In the interest of full disclosure, I must say that I picked this up thinking it was a memoir. It is NOT. It is a prescriptive manual on caretaking for individuals with various forms of dementia, and I believe that there would be good takeaways for anyone caring for terminally or chronically ill people. There are some very sobering statistics regarding the toll this takes on caregivers’ health, and some very encouraging words about accepting help and caring for oneself while caring for others. It’s an easy-to-read book, very simply and clearly laid out, and I can see this being a very good resource for anyone who is a caregiver, particularly of a person with cognitive decline. It wasn’t right for me, but it could be very useful for someone else.

How To Lose Your Mother. I read Fear of Flying years ago and I remember exactly two things from it: a lot of chlamydia, and the “zipless fuck.” The author of this book asks us to imagine being the only child of Erica Jong, the woman who brought us the concept of the zipless fuck, where two strangers just come together and fuck, no strings, and almost no words. The author also says that she has no compunction – none! – in writing about her mother, since her mother wrote about her for her entire life. And this is where I have a problem, not with the tit-for-tatness of this book, but because the author states that she loves her mother MORE than a daughter has EVER loved a mother, and that the two of them are closer than ANYONE could EVER be. Those statements are followed by what is quite honestly a grim and disturbing account of life with a dementia-addled narcissist. I don’t blame her for her resentment and bitterness; by all accounts Jong-Fast had a very unhappy childhood with a neglectful and distant mother, one more interested in exploiting all her relationships than having loving ones. But the details of her mother now – SHE IS STILL ALIVE – are awful. Jong-Fast writes about her mother losing control of her bowels in bed, never showering, and drinking all day long. The best-case scenario that I can think of is that Jong-Fast needed money to keep her mother in what she calls The Most Expensive Nursing Home In The World, and so she wrote this gross and mean memoir to get some cold hard cash. The worst part about this book is the writing. It is very poorly written. It reads like a collection of unedited Morning Pages. The sentences are jerky and abrupt, the story, such as it is, is disjointed, and it is SO repetitive and full of name-drops. If we had a drink every time she wrote “since I got sober” or dropped a big name, we would all be hospitalized for alcohol poisoning before the second chapter. The is an affront to every aspiring author out there who is struggling to get published. This is the problem! Nepotism is the problem! AND I CONTRIBUTED TO THIS PROBLEM BY READING THIS ABSOLUTE GARBAGE. Well, I did it, so you don’t have to.

Promise Me Sunshine. I needed a palate cleanser after the last book, and this delivered! This was such a sweet and heartwarming read; a romance between two people who are learning to live again after the loss of loved ones. It is a truly lovely musing on the nature of grief, and how we can lose someone beloved but also keep their memory in our hearts. The characters were charming and well-written, and the whole book was – despite, or maybe because of the sadness – delightful and warm.

I have a exciting and social week ahead of me, friends, including a visit tonight from one of my dearest friends! I hope you have a beautiful week, and I hope spring is springing for you. xo

Five For Friday: The Month of Cakes Edition

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About eighteen months ago, I read a book about Jean Nidetch, the founder of Weight Watchers, and it remains to this day one of the most depressing literary experiences in my life. I was still processing the book weeks later, particularly the part where Jean advises that on one’s birthday, every single birthday for the rest of one’s life, one should bake a cake, cut the cake, serve the cake, but for god’s sake, do not eat the cake.

I’m depressed all over again just thinking about it.

Listen, you all know me. I’m all about healthy choices and nourishing one’s body, I’m all about taking care of these rental houses for our souls, and yet. The thought of not eating cake, which is to me one of life’s greatest pleasures, is so incredibly sad that I can’t bear it. I can’t bear the thought of someone hating themselves so much that they would deprive themselves of a treat even once a year, on an occasion as momentous as one’s birthday.

And you might immediately say, No, Nicole, it’s not because she hates herself! It’s because she loves herself! She wants to be the best version of herself! and maybe that’s true. Maybe. But the pursuit of thinness at all costs – particularly the cost of an annual slice of birthday cake – is genuinely soul-destroying. It feels very much like self-loathing.

I think the thing I love about cake, other than its deliciousness, is that it is very much a Sharing Dessert. I suppose one could make a single-serving mug cake, but for me part of the joy of having cake is the passing around of slices, the communal enjoyment, the sharing of the moment.

A tradition in my little family is to have a big Sunday dinner, the kind that takes several hours to make and that always includes dessert. I decided in honour of my big birthday, and also because I love cake, that I would bake and/ or consume cake every weekend in April. Not only did I meet this low-stakes goal, I exceeded it! Here’s how it went.

The first week’s cake was a golden one, layered with salted milk chocolate frosting.

For the second week, I took a page out of my friend Sammi’s book (HI SAMMI) and baked a lemon angel food cake, topped with lemon drizzle. Sammi’s trick was to use an angel food mix and sub out some of the water for lemon juice and zest, and it worked like a charm.

The third cake was a mid-week one, and it was courtesy of Sammi herself! She hosted a birthday lunch for me, and she made a glorious flourless fudge cake with chocolate-covered strawberries, which are second only to cake as my favourite dessert.

I just love strawberries, and so the fourth cake was a favourite made by my mom when she was visiting (HI MOM); it’s an angel food cake with strawberry filling, topped with non-dairy whipped cream. Divine!

Last, but certainly not least, was my Nifty Fifty grocery store sheet cake, courtesy of my husband. Chocolate on the inside, vanilla icing and lots of it on the outside; I could not have been happier! There was plenty left over from the party on Saturday to have for Sunday dinner.

I think this Sunday we will take a little break from cake – I have another dessert in mind – but soon it will be Mother’s Day and I think that is a Cake Occasion as well. Have a sweet weekend, my friends. xo

Tiny Seedy Miracles

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After two solid weeks of festivities and celebrations, this morning I’m looking down the barrel of a quiet week of regular programming. We had our dear friends as houseguests this weekend, which always feels like a holiday, and then we hosted a barbeque for about thirty people on Saturday night.

It was such a great time with wonderful people, and I achieved my lifelong dream of having a Nifty Fifty sheet cake.

Friends, the weather here has been gorgeous, so much so that I actually planted my tomatoes, peppers, and basil. I know. I know! I’m walking on the wild side, danger is my middle name, etcetera. But the forecast is great and the worst case scenario is that I would have to cover the garden beds in the event of frost, which seems unlikely at the moment. My arugula, spinach, kale, and cilantro are all up; I was low-key fretting that my zucchini and butternut squash hadn’t made an appearance, and then suddenly they both burst into life. My zinnias have sprouted as well, and now I’m just waiting somewhat impatiently for my onions and nasturtiums. Why aren’t they up yet? I asked my son, who calmly reminded me that I had planted those seeds less than a week ago, and that they may need a little more time.

Is this about to become a garden-centric blog? Yes, probably. But isn’t it just amazing, isn’t it just AMAZING that you can put a seed in the ground and then it becomes a plant? Yes, I know this is how the horticultural world works. But still! It feels like a miracle every single time!

Speaking of miracles, Michelle (HI MICHELLE) had mentioned a book called Simple Abundance: 365 Days to a Balanced and Joyful Life. As soon as she mentioned it I knew I had to have it; usually I would start a 365 day book on January 1st, but a) I didn’t want to wait that long as I purchased the book in March, and b) I thought it would be fun to start it on my birthday. It’s a really wonderful book and I highly recommend it – along with Michelle’s blog, which brings me so much joy I cannot EVEN. Sometimes when I’m feeling glum or blue I will go to some of her dollhouse posts and just look at them until I feel better. I recommend this course of action for anyone who needs a little pep in their step these days.

Weekly Reading

In addition to Simple Abundance and a book that I will surely be talking about at length in the future, Radical Acceptance, I finished three books this week.

The Flatshare. This was such a fun, cute rom-com! A woman answers an ad for a flatshare – the trick is that she is only in the flat in the evenings and weekends, and he is in the flat during the day (he works the nightshift). So they go for a long time without meeting, only communicating via post-it notes. You know how it ends – happily! There is a great cast of characters and a lovely, chosen-family subplot. This was so enjoyable and fun to read.

Rental House. I really enjoyed this very quirky book about two couples who come from very different backgrounds: one is a Chinese immigrant, the other left his small town in the Blue Ridge Mountains, they both met at Yale. It really explores two sayings: a) you can’t choose your family, and b) when you marry a person, you marry their family. The first half was wildly funny and I couldn’t stop laughing. The second half was more poignant and moving. I found so much of it resonant, particularly the sense of duty that one can have to one’s family, while at the same time being exhausted by that sense of duty. Family of origin versus family of creation, how can they coexist? It was a great read.

Watermelon. The day a woman has her first baby, her husband tells her that he’s leaving her for another woman. This book starts off with a bang! After this shocking news, she goes back to Ireland to stay with her family, and all is going smoothly until her husband comes for a visit and attempts to reconcile. This is a long book but it doesn’t feel long, it’s a pretty quick and easy read.

Speaking of gardening, don’t you just love these wildly insane flowers? Our landscaper planted them in the fall, when we were in Italy, so I had no idea what to expect from them. At one point they looked like tiny coconut palm trees. I’m here for this weirdness! Have a wonderful week, friends. xo

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Nifty Fifty Edition

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In honour of my milestone birthday, this month’s Favourite Things consists of fifty favourites throughout the years. Buckle up, buttercups!

Age 0-10

  • Pink was my favourite colour and, by association, flamingoes became my favourite bird after I saw them in the Calgary Zoo. When I grew up, I wanted to be a pink flower.
  • I loved dolls and the dollhouse my grandpa built for me when I was about four. I had a Cabbage Patch Kid named Kora Candi, who my mom risked life and limb to get for me for Christmas 1982, and for whom my grandma made a large wardrobe. I also loved my Cheer Bear and a stuffed rabbit named, unoriginally, Mrs. Bunny.
  • I loved The Muppets, particularly Miss Piggy, who I have an affinity for to this day. (Moi?) I lived for weekly episodes of The Muppet Show and still love The Muppet Movie and The Muppets Take Manhattan, but The Great Muppet Caper is a hot mess.
  • The only other show on television that I really loved was Lorne Greene’s New Wilderness; whenever I see Canada geese – which is daily – I remember his voice talking about how they mate for life, and now the featured newly-widowed goose will be alone forever. Sob.
  • I don’t remember not being able to read; according to my mother, at age two she would give me new library books and I could read them. Busy Busy World by Richard Scarry was one of my favourite books; I loved thinking about different countries and cultures. Because of this my grandma made me a (pink, naturally) quilt in which each square featured a little girl from a different country; the Canadian girl had a Mounties uniform, for example. Years later when I read Cat’s Eye, so much of it was resonant but especially when Elaine learns about different countries. She thinks I can go there someday, I don’t have to stay here.
  • Speaking of going places, the height of luxury, for me, was the rare time our family would stay in a motel that had a pool. What could be more amazing than a pool? A waterpark! Swimming was one of my very favourite things.
  • Winter was something to look forward to because of skating. I took figure skating lessons as a child and I would also spend many hours on the outdoor rink behind our house, sailing around and feeling free, imagining, somehow, that I was Princess Diana. Did she figure skate? I don’t know. I was enamoured with her and at age six, was woken up at 2:30 am by Grandma Fern to watch the Royal Wedding.
  • I loved The Bobbsey Twins, A Little Princess, and, especially, Little Women. To this day I have a soft spot for those books. I loved everything by Laura Ingalls Wilder and LM Montgomery, but especially the last two Emily books and Jane of Lantern Hill. My interest in stories about girls’ lives continues to this day.
  • I knew how to read music from learning the recorder at school, and after figuring out where middle C was located, I would painstakingly plunk out tunes on my grandparents’ piano. At age ten my parents got me my own piano and lessons, and playing the piano is still one of my Favourite Things.
  • Also at age ten, I was introduced to the Sweet Valley High series, and I spent a lot of time imagining that high school would be JUST like that. Was I ever in for a surprise!

Age 11-20

  • It was summer of ’86, and it was a hot night in Estevan, Saskatchewan. My brother, cousins, and I walked from Grandma Fern’s house to the Orpheum movie theatre, famous for its bone-chilling air-conditioning. I was wearing jeans and an off-the-shoulder pink short-sleeved sweatshirt, my hair was ill-advisedly cut to resemble Madonna’s in Papa Don’t Preach. Those characters were going to Top Gun. It was a formative moment for me, and I have never enjoyed an action movie like I did this. The theme song is now my ringtone, and at least weekly I think and you, asshole, you’re lucky to be here!
  • Also formative, but distressingly so, was my obsession with Priscilla Presley’s memoir Elvis and Me, which was later a (terrible) made-for-TV movie. It was, in my young mind, so romantic! Elvis’ buddy asked the FOURTEEN-YEAR-OLD Priscilla, in a German army base cafe, if she’d like to come to a party, and there the epic romance started. Hoo boy, that did not age well.
  • Aging much better (although in some cases, NOT GREAT BOB) were the movies that I loved: Dirty Dancing, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, La Bamba, Can’t Buy Me Love, and Say Anything. When Harry Met Sally came out when I was 14 and superseded Top Gun as my favourite moving of all time.
  • My favourite TV show was The Wonder Years, and, relatedly, I loved all sorts of Sixties music, notably The Doors and The Beatles.
  • Concerts were so cheap then, and I went to many, including INXS, Depeche Mode, 54-40, Billy Joel, Barenaked Ladies, and The Grapes of Wrath, the latter of which hail from Kelowna. I have a six-degree separation from the man I had such a crush on back then, Tom Hooper. I daydreamed that I would marry him and live in Kelowna, despite the fact that he clearly hated it and couldn’t wait to leave. Well, I did marry someone from Kelowna and he’s a rock star in my mind.
  • School dances were so exciting and something to look forward to, even if someone was always crying in the washroom.
  • My aunt gave me a copy of Mists of Avalon when I was fifteen, and that made my obsession with Elvis and Me look like a passing glance. King Arthur’s court, but from the women’s point of view? Yes please!
  • I was a dramatic kid and teen, and my flair for it found a home in drama class and in school plays. My biggest role was Amanda Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie; I copied my Alabaman cousin’s accent to land the role.
  • I was a teen in the late eighties, early nineties, when giant hair and lots of hairspray were de rigeur. I had Clairol hot rollers and, paired with Revlon’s Love That Red lipstick, I was ready for a day at school. It was in high school that I discovered I was really good at math, particularly calculus, so imagine a red-lipsticked, giant-haired me, going back to first principles.
  • I read my first Margaret Atwood book – The Handmaid’s Tale – when I was in high school, spurring a lifelong love for her writing. In my first year university, I was introduced to our other national literary treasure, Alice Munro, through her Lives of Girls and Women. To this day it’s a favourite, and I’ve read and loved every single thing she wrote. I also read Pride and Prejudice, which started my adoration of Jane Austen and all of her books, but particularly Emma and Sense and Sensibility.

Age 21-30

  • I discovered I loved group fitness classes in university, most notably step aerobics, but also boxercise.
  • Going to grad school was such a great experience for me; I received my master’s in economics with a 4.0 GPA.
  • While in economics, I met a man who became my friend for a few years before we started dating. Reader, I married him.
  • But before we got married, Margaret Atwood – whose entire catalogue I had already devoured over and over – published The Blind Assassin, which is my all-time favourite book.
  • A very close runner-up, and my ultimate comfort read, is Diary of a Provincial Lady, which I picked up completely on a whim at a used book store and have read so many times that my copy has fallen apart.
  • My boyfriend/ future husband and I went to Egypt, where we rode camels and donkeys as well as really sketchy trains, took a tiny cruise down the Nile, and climbed to the top of Mount Sinai to watch the sunrise.
  • Living so close to the Rocky Mountains meant that most weekends were spent going on hikes out there, soaking up the most beautiful place on earth. We got also married in the Rockies!
  • I loved making my own grown-up paycheques. I liked my jobs, especially when I was working on the trade floor. The job was difficult and the hours were long, but the money was great and I loved dressing up every day.
  • We bought a cozy, fixer-upper house in a beautiful, tree-lined neighbourhood, where we lived happily for twenty-three years.
  • Speaking of which, at age 29 and 30 I received the best gifts of my life: our sons. Being their mother has been the great pride and joy of my life. Elisabeth (HI ELISABETH) asked recently if I ever wanted more than two children, and the answer to that is no. I always wanted two, and when my younger son was born I knew our family was complete.

31-40

  • When I was 32, I decided to try an Ashtanga class at the Yoga Shala, as a little break from mothering two very little boys. That one class changed the whole course of my life; I started a daily practice in their Mysore program, and I still practice that way – albeit at home – to this day. I met so many wonderful friends there as well, and I think with so much fondness and nostalgia of our early, silent mornings, practicing together.
  • Barkley came into our lives at 13 weeks, and while in retrospect it seems a little bonkers to have such a young puppy with three-and-four-year-old boys, I would never change it for the world. He was our loving fluffy stuffed animal come to life, and everyone who encountered him loved him.
  • At age 33 I started a blog, and that also changed everything! I met Hannah and Allison, who are to this day my rock and safe space (HI HANNAH HI ALLISON), along with so many other great friends.
  • In addition to my personal blog, I also wrote short essays for YMC, and they eventually hired me as one of their weekly food writers, where I was the Meatless Mummy. I was there for four years, and it was really a great experience; I worked with so many wonderful women (and two men!).
  • After a few lonely years at home with the kids, I was absorbed into the Circle Moms when my oldest started kindergarten; so named because after school we would all stand in a circle and chat while the kids were on the playground. Later, the Circle Moms became the Brentwood Babes.
  • After the one-two punch of having two children in less than a year and a half subsided, we started travelling to kid-friendly destinations with them. They were great travellers, and our favourite place was Maui. We have been lucky enough to visit there six times now.
  • We also spent a lot of time at my parents’ place at the lake, particularly during the summer, where the weather could go from hot and sunny to single-digits and hailing, all within a day. There was always lots of time on the boat, and lots of board games.
  • Our neighbourhood proved to be a great one to raise kids in. My sons were able to walk to every school they attended, there was shopping and the library and the pool all within ten minutes’ walk.
  • A great privilege of my life has been to spend time with my sons; all through their childhood we’d spend so much time at the Calgary Zoo and Science Centre, playgrounds and Calaway Park, splash pads and sledding, movies and Just Dance nights. I treasure the time I spent immersed in their daily lives.
  • My 40th birthday party was an absolute blast; it included being serenaded Top Gun-style by my husband’s buddies and also chugging Baby Duck after midnight.

41-50

  • My favourite trip we ever took with the kids was to Disney World and Universal Florida; they were the absolute perfect age for it and it was so much fun.
  • I decided to take yoga teacher training at age 41, and I was one of the oldest in the class.
  • Since I had been involved in the yoga community for so long by this point, I was able to pick up so many classes right away. My friend and mentor Sharyl (HI SHARYL) had me assist her in Yoga for Stroke Survivors, where I learned so much about bodies and resiliency, and I eventually solo taught that class, along with Ashtanga, restorative, hatha, and my favourite, Yoga for Seniors. I am still in touch with many of my beloved students.
  • We travelled as a family with our very dear friends – our chosen family! – to Mexico many times pre-pandemic. When kid schedules became too complicated, my husband and I took couples’ trips to Mexico with our friends sans kids, and that was incredibly fun too.
  • The teen years are often vilified but I loved them; I loved seeing my kids grow up, graduate high school, and become the fun, responsible, wonderful adults that they are.
  • When we said goodbye to Barkley, I said Never Again! But three months later, Rex came to our family, and wow, I cannot imagine life without our Big Silly, our Doughnut, our cartoon dog come to life.
  • Moving provinces was chaotic, but when the dust settled, so did I. I love where I am so much. Our new house is an absolute dream, complete with my beautiful garden. I am so happy here.
  • I worried so much about making new friends when we moved here, and all that worry was for naught. I have such a beautiful circle of friends, women who constantly amaze me with their fun-loving personalities, their generosity, their kindness, and their ability to show up for one another. I am truly so fortunate.
  • Italy is my favourite place I have ever visited, and going there with my husband was a highlight of my life.
  • I knew I wouldn’t be teaching yoga when we moved here, but I wanted something to fill my time, so I decided to write a book! I took a series of novel-writing courses, and through that, and my blogging friends, I met some very supportive women who are also writers.

Thank you, dear readers, for all your support and kindness! I’ve been reflecting so much on everything I am grateful for, being fifty years on this earth, and I am so grateful to all of you. xo

Nifty, Fifty

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Today is my fiftieth birthday! I can finally say I’m Nifty and Fifty!

When I was very small, I had the thought process shared by many small children with regards to what “growing up” entailed. What do you want to be when you grow up is a ridiculous question to ask a three-or-four-year-old, and yet it’s incredibly common. I mean, preschoolers really do not have all the information with regards to career paths.

But when I was that age, I had a really firm idea about what I wanted to be when I grew up, and that was a flower.

I don’t think it’s that unusual for a small child to equate “growing up” with a species-shifting free-for-all. I loved flowers, therefore I wanted to be one. I wanted to be a pink daisy-like flower, my face would be in the centre, and my arms would be the leaves. I can still picture it, myself as a flower, bobbing along in the breeze.

I also remember exactly when this future flower plan came to a screeching halt. It was when I realized that flowers die in the winter. I remember crying hysterically about it; I was a very emotional and dramatic child, and so my complete devastation probably didn’t register much to my parents. I recall my dad saying but flowers come back in the spring, which made me cry harder. I would miss Christmas! I would be dead! When I was a flower! I’m sure my parents did not understand the depth of my sadness, because what adult would be like right, right, well I know you think you’re going to be a flower, but that’s not actually going to happen, so you won’t die every year and miss Christmas. They were probably more like oh my god why is this child crying again?

My dreams of becoming a flower evaporated into the ether, along with my tears.

When we moved here, my husband and I redid our wills to reflect the new province and property, and, because the children were now grown, to eliminate the guardianship clause in the case of our sudden demise that would leave them orphaned. As we spoke with the lawyer, she asked if we had any burial preferences, for when we shuffle off this mortal coil, and my husband was quite surprised that I did have a very strong opinion on this subject. I exuberantly informed the lawyer that I wanted to be composted and planted with a tree, which she dutifully wrote down.

I think it’s very important to have these strange and difficult conversations – open and honest communication is always the best – and so I informed the children of my plan, should I suddenly expire. Oh Mom, my older son said, That’s so great! You’ll be one step closer to achieving your childhood dream of becoming a flower!

It seems a little macabre to talk about my future demise, may it be many decades in the future, and also becoming human compost on my birthday of all days, and well, it is. But it also strangely brings me happiness to think that perhaps one day I’ll be one with the earth while my soul flutters around, hopefully inhabiting a bird or a butterfly, and not something that will immediately get squished, like a fly or mosquito.

In the Ask Me Anything that I had posted months ago, Kyria (HI KYRIA) asked how do you want to be remembered, and that to me is an incredibly difficult and complicated question. I think the way we remember people is specific to the time periods in which we were the closest, to how well we know them, to things we did together. Someone from my youth will remember me very differently from someone who knows me now; certain songs might spark memories, certain movies, certain places.

That said, I think I would like a park bench, just like my pretend friend Lloyd Forest, but instead of reminding people when the park closes, I would like to tell them to return their shopping carts.

Of course, when I told my kids that, they demurred. Turning their mother into compost, that’s fine, but putting a shopping cart reminder on a park bench was not. That makes you sound like you’re a grumpy old person! my son said, I think it would be better if you had Putting the OM in OMG.

Well. I guess he’s right. My tagline really does describe my life so far, and I hope it describes the next fifty years.

Weekly Reading

What’s Mine and Yours. This is what I would classify as a Big Book, and I’m not talking length – it’s just over 300 pages, which seems average these days. But it’s big in concept and it deals with big issues: race-related tensions, redlining, integrating school districts, and intergenerational trauma. There is also a big cast of characters and they all have big problems. There are several time periods as well. I will say it’s very well-executed, thoughtful, and smart. However, it was not what I would consider a pleasurable reading experience because nearly all of the characters were deeply, deeply dislikeable. Even the one main character who I thought was pretty decent turned out to be not so much in the end. It really says something about the nature of pain and trauma, and how hurt people often lash out. Still, I was looking for a redemption arc, which never really happened – but maybe that’s the point. Maybe the point is that people with pain and trauma often never get that redemption.

The Book of (More) Delights. I picked this up while Christmas shopping last year, entirely because of the cover and the name. I had no idea until my friend Laura (HI LAURA) mentioned a “Ross Gay moment” that this was a book by an acclaimed author. To further the Laura confluence, in the recently read Bite By Bite, the author, Aimee, mentions going to a watermelon festival with her friend Ross, who was working on another book about delight, and it was this Ross. THEN, near the end of this book, Ross mentions going to a watermelon festival with Aimee, and I just exploded with all the life/ reading intersections. Anyway. This is a book of 81 essays on everyday delights over a span of a year, and it starts and ends on Ross’ birthday, which felt serendipitous for me, finishing it just before my own. I have been reading an essay before yoga most mornings since January, and his style of writing is – as one might expect – delightful. He has more digressions than anyone I’ve ever read, sometimes six or seven in a SINGLE SENTENCE. I loved it.

It’s certainly been a week of delights for me: my darling friend Sammi (HI SAMMI) hosted the most gorgeous girls’ lunch you can even imagine, complete with tiara and sash, which I’m wondering if I can get away with wearing everywhere for the next year. It was truly the most wonderful afternoon with such an incredible group of women, I am SO lucky, so so so lucky.

My parents were here for the weekend to celebrate, and we had a great time with lots of wine and more cake. I hosted Easter dinner for both sides of the family, and it turned out great! I hope you all had a lovely weekend with all sorts of treats. xo

Pretty Nice Little Sunday

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It was a big weekend at the Boyhouse with lots of things to celebrate. Twenty-three years ago yesterday I was wearing this outfit:

Just swanning around Banff, like you do.

And then twenty-one days ago yesterday this guy made his entrance into the world:

Spiky hair, don’t care.

The truth is that ever since our son was born our wedding anniversary has been kind of eclipsed. He arrived at 11:55 pm, he couldn’t wait five more minutes? In any case, this necessitated a celebratory cake.

Yesterday was also Rex’s fourth birthday, but honestly, that is a lot of things for just one day. I mean, I kind of celebrate Rex every day, but I like to think of Rex Day as the day in October when he came to us. That said, I did buy him a dapper new collar.

Thoughtful Instagram pose.

If you have been reading this blog for a while, you might be thinking wait, didn’t you just buy him a new collar to replace the one that was destroyed at the kennel and yes, I did. I had ordered a collar from an Etsy artisan in Ukraine back in November, it took months to get here due to the postal strike, and it was a disappointment from day two, when the size adjustment wouldn’t hold. It was constantly becoming loose and twisted and although it was not cheap, I had to admit defeat. I chalked it up as a sunk cost and ordered another collar – from a Canadian artisan this time – and I’m very pleased with it. I like the plaid that reflects the Scottish ancestry of his last name, which is my last name, which is different from my husband and sons’ last name.

With my son’s birthday upcoming, last week I was digging out the sheet music for the song that most reminds me of his early infancy. Back in 2004, we didn’t have very many TV channels, streaming didn’t exist, and neither did YouTube or phones that weren’t actual telephones. I was always scared I would fall asleep during nighttime feedings – god, I was so tired – and would drop the baby, so I would watch whatever was on at two in the morning. Usually this was either an infomercial or MuchMusic videos, and I would generally choose the latter. If I Ain’t Got You by Alicia Keys was very popular at that time, so I probably watched that video five hundred times.

I only need to hear the opening bars to be transported back to that time. Nostalgia is a lovely thing, because I have a tendency to gloss over all the hard parts – the exhaustion, the crying, the uncertainty if I was doing anything right – and I focus only on the feeling of holding the baby and sniffing his head.

A recent episode on the Bad on Paper podcast focused on music, and one of the discussion questions was what song always makes you cry, at which point I realized something interesting: Landslide, always a sobfest in the past, no longer makes me cry. I used to not be able to get through half the song without dissolving into a puddle of sadness, but no longer. Am I dead inside? Maybe. But I think the truth is that anticipatory grief is worse than the grief catalyst itself, the empty nest. Then again, I still have a son at home.

I did go through a period in 2023 where everything made me cry, most notably Miley Cyrus’ The Climb. Crying to Miley Cyrus while on the Peloton is an image that neatly sums up my mental state at that time. I still feel strange when I hear there’s always going to be another mountain, but I don’t cry. I think the only song that currently has Cry Power for me is White Wine in the Sun; I start listening to it, nodding along and feeling seen – the hymns have nice chords but the lyrics are dodgy – and then, bam. I need the tissue box.

Another discussion question was what was the first song you remember liking, and that is an easy one for me to answer: Queen of Hearts by Juice Newton. I still love that song, and I still bounce around like one of the kids in Charlie Brown’s Christmas when I hear it.

I’m 100% one of the girls in purple.

I asked my son and husband if they remembered their first loved song; my husband’s was We’re Here For A Good Time by Trooper, and my son’s was, distressingly, Gold Digger. Only a really good mother listens to Late Registration on CD in the minivan while her two small children are absorbing every word.

I remember clearly the moment I realized I had made a grave mistake: I had taken the children over to my parents’ for the afternoon, when my not-yet-three-year-old son said to my mother Grandma, I ain’t got no money so I can’t get no hoes. I had barely recovered from that revelation when his not-yet-two-year-old brother yelled We want prenup! We want prenup! My mother, understandably, looked at me in confusion and asked what they were talking about, at which point I realized that there would be no more Late Registration in the minivan.

Weekly Reading

White Tears, Brown Scars. This very thoughtful and insightful book details the ways in which women of colour have been excluded from the white feminist movement. It is an account of lived experiences, with a lot of focus on Middle Eastern and Indigenous women, which is something we need to see more of. Those of us living in Canada are well aware of our dark past with regards to our treatment of Indigenous peoples. There are so many – hundreds? thousands? – missing and murdered Indigenous women that are omitted from news media, for example. This book also explores the reprehensible practice that Canada – and the author’s native Australia – had of taking Indigenous children from their families in order to assimilate them to white culture. Sexual violence affects all women, but this book shows how much more it affects women of colour, and the biases about such travesties. One thing the book didn’t touch on, but is something I think about a lot, is the large percentage of caregiving jobs that are performed by women of colour – nannying and childcare, eldercare and home care, cleaning and housekeeping – so that white women can thrive in their careers. It’s a very uncomfortable truth. Women of colour face not only the misogyny that all women do, but also racism. A small aside I found interesting is the note that there is a tendency to refuse to give women – all women – respect with regards to names and titles. The best example I can give is presidential candidates: women are referred to familiarly by their first names, men by both names or last name only. No one ever says “Al,” “Bill,” or “George,” for example. Just a little something to be aware of. This is an important book, and it is even more important today than it was when it was published five years ago. Thanks to Stephany (HI STEPHANY) for the recommendation.

Like Mother Like Mother. Someone recently asked if I would rather have a) a book with great writing and a bad plot, or b) a book with a great plot but bad writing, and every time, I will choose the first option. It will surprise no one who knows my taste that I barely need a plot, I just like good writing and well developed characters. So, this book is the b option. I thought the plot had a lot of promise – an intergenerational story of three women, one of whom writes a roman a clef about her mother, who is a very powerful newspaper editor, renowned for “bringing down” a corrupt president in the year 2018. I wonder who that president is modeled after? Anyway, the mother is heralded in the media world but is a really terrible and largely absent mother, who grew up herself without a mother. Themes of intergenerational trauma, etc., abound. The daughter goes on a quest to find what happened to her grandmother, it’s a whole thing. There’s nothing wrong with the plot. The plot is fine. The writing style, however, really didn’t do it for me. It’s choppy and uneven, and the reader is absolutely flooded with backstory, given to us through the least believable dialogue one can imagine. We skip timelines constantly, sometimes as much as three times in a single page. The characters are one-dimensional caricatures. It’s a book that tells, rather than shows, and I did not enjoy it at all. Additionally, the author acknowledges the “sources of several unattributed quotations buried in conversations.” WHAT. This is not a thing we do! 

WHAT.

Joy For Beginners. I think the best way to describe this book is “cozy.” It’s a lovely read about a woman who, after cancer treatment, decides to embrace life and face her fears by rafting down the Grand Canyon with her daughter. She gives all her friends challenges to take on as well; we read about how they accept the challenge. There are a lot of insightful and relatable vignettes about womanhood as we go through middle age: marriage and divorce, motherhood and empty nesting, travelling and walking long distances. Thanks to my friend Laura (HI LAURA) for bringing this to my attention. Laura leads the book club for Melissa Gilbert’s Modern Prairie website and this is the book they discussed this month. No big deal, just mentioning that MY FRIEND is super cool.

I believe that the soul lives on long after our bodies die, and I think in a former life Rex was a lawyer. He is not allowed on the furniture, but he seems to think this is appropriate. Three paws on the floor – he’s found a loophole. Hope you all have a beautiful week! xo

Series-us

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Just like everyone else in the reading world, I have strong preferences when it comes to certain genres and subjects. I gravitate towards those genres naturally, although I really do try to branch out every now and then to broaden my mind and my horizons.

Recently Suzanne (HI SUZANNE) wrote about twenty ideas for lists of twenty, and I thought I’d steal one of the lists for a blog post. Who doesn’t love a list? Then I came across number 5: twenty of my favourite book series. I realized then that not only could I not list twenty favourite book series, I’m not sure if I’ve even READ twenty book series in my entire life.

This, I think, goes back to genre. Mysteries, fantasy, and sci-fi all seem to lend themselves nicely to becoming series, but the books I tend to read do not. I could only think of two series that I have read as an adult: the Lucy Barton series, and the Rosie series.

Both of those I really loved, but for very different reasons. Lucy Barton is just such a stark, beautifully written series and I became invested in her character immediately. I just found out that Elizabeth Strout has published a Lucy Barton/ Olive Ketteridge mashup and I am torn between ordering it immediately or putting it on my Christmas list. If my husband is reading this right now, he’s probably taking notes.

I loved the Rosie series for being funny and warm-hearted, and I will note that this is a rare case of the books getting better as the series progresses. It’s also a rare case that I love not one but three books with a male author.

Now, as I have said many times, I am not a person that enjoys mysteries. I have tried, lord, how I have tried. I have become at peace with the idea that mysteries are just not for me. It may surprise you to know, then, that this has not always been the case! When I was a child, I was completely obsessed with The Bobbsey Twins Mysteries.

My mother tried to get me interested in Nancy Drew, but I would not have it. I would not read about that titian-haired heroine. Give me Bobbsey Twins or give me death.

These two books in particular were very formative back in 1982. When my younger brother was born that year, I read the Adventure in the Country and spent the entire summer pretending our backyard was a farm. I would go outside in the morning and pretend to feed chickens, milk cows, ride horses, and – in a strange twist, given my extreme distaste for them now – I gathered a pile of small white rocks together which, in my extremely active imagination, were a nest of mice.

The Tagalong Giraffe was also formative in that it instilled in me a lifelong desire to visit Africa and see giraffes in the wild. My husband is in the midst of planning such a trip, to take place in a couple of years, so stay tuned for that. I hope to have my very own tagalong giraffe adventure, minus the poachers, which is a key plot point in this book.

Of course I loved the Little House on the Prairie books which are somewhat horrifying to read now, given everything we now know about the idea of manifest destiny, the treatment of indigenous people, and how the terrible droughts were actually caused by misinformed farming practices that uprooted all the native grasses. I mean, I was six when I started reading these, so I really wasn’t all that discerning with regards to the politics and human rights and environmental atrocities of the settlement of America. I just loved the idea of a corncob doll, a single cake and a tin cup in my Christmas stocking, and, weirdest of all, having a pig’s bladder as a balloon.

I have a hot take regarding the Anne of Green Gables series: with the exception of Anne’s House of Dreams, which is dramatic and also GRIM, none of the subsequent books can hold a candle to the first one. This is in direct opposition to my beloved Emily Starr books, in which the first is not great, Bob, and then the last two are fantastic. I think it compares to the Rosie books, in that the third is probably the best.

Little Men and Jo’s Boys were written after Little Women and Good Wives – the latter of which is now merely considered “part two” to Little Women – and they definitely did not appeal to me much. Little Women is one of my all-time favourite books; probably I disliked the other two because they focused on boys, and who wants to read about them? Certainly not me. I didn’t then and I don’t now, honestly.

When I was in Grade Five, the Sweet Valley High books were all the rage. I could not get enough of Elizabeth and Jessica; a huge source of angst for me was that these books were not readily available at the library. I would scan the paperback rack weekly, but rarely were they there. Instead, I ended up reading the Cheerleader series, which was inferior in my ten-year-old opinion. I was absolutely thrilled to get this box set one Christmas. I mean, look at that cover art!

The books that I did not ask for at Christmas, because they were forbidden, were the VC Andrews series. Girls of a certain age, you know what I’m talking about. Flowers in the Attic! What could be a less appropriate book for eleven and twelve year old girls? I’m sure that if we dug deep we could find one, but it would be hard. If, for some reason, you never read Flowers in the Attic, let me give you the plot synopsis: a woman is trying to get back into her parents’ good graces after a marriage which they disapproved of. She was written out of the will, but is trying to get her inheritance, and so she hides from her rich father her four children from that star-crossed marriage. How does she hide them? She enlists the help of her mother, the children’s grandmother, to hide them in the grandparents attic, where they are starved and neglected and, in the case of the older two children, subject to a sexual awakening in which they have actual intercourse. With each other. So, incest. If that’s not disturbing enough, the grandmother blames the girl for tempting her brother (ew) and so pours tar on her head (what), and then attempts to poison all of them by putting arsenic in powdered doughnuts. One of the younger children dies from eating the doughnuts, and somehow the other three escape, but the details are as blurry as the vision of the child eating the arsenic treats. Clear in my mind, though, is that the older girl goes back later and pours hot candle wax on her grandmother’s head, to get back at her for the tar incident. I mean. It’s so wild and the only thing more wild is that we were all reading these. What I wouldn’t give for an hour to chat with VC Andrews; how fascinating to be the writer that came up with this whole idea.

Weekly Reading

Speaking of reading!

The Bee Sting. My dear friend Maya (HI MAYA) had recommended this book to me, in spite of the fact that it is written by a male author. What can I say, Maya knows me well. She was sure I would love it and she has never steered me wrong yet, so I put it on hold at the library. When I went to pick up this doorstop of a book I gave Maya a long-distance side-eye. It had better be good, I thought, if I’m going to invest the time into 649 pages! But lo, Maya was right. I was hooked right from the beginning and I have to say, this is a brilliant literary novel. Absolutely brilliantly written, with four POV in distinct and unique writing styles. Also, the book goes from third person close to second person for each POV, and I find that remarkable. I almost never see second person! This book is a wild ride, following a highly dysfunctional family with an incredible backstory; there were twists and turns – some I saw coming, some I sure didn’t. The ending is stunning. Absolutely stunning. The character arcs, everything is so well done. This takes place in postcrash Ireland and hops timelines, it delves into very important subjects, and most of all, ties together in the most startling of ways.

Speaking of my bookish friends, my good friend Steph (HI STEPH) is having technical issues with her blog. If you follow her you will probably think that she hasn’t published any posts since July but my friends, this isn’t true! There is some problem that is keeping her blog from being updated on The Old Reader AND Feedly, so why don’t you do what I did and pop over there to subscribe. That way you won’t miss a thing! And if you don’t follow Steph, why don’t you? She has two brand new kittens and a newly empty nest, so why not send her a little internet love.

Suzanne had another prompt about things we did twenty years ago, but not now. That’s an easy one for me: baby care. I was completely mired in baby care twenty years ago. And I can tell you exactly what I did nineteen years ago today, and that was bringing this guy home:

It was my younger son’s birthday yesterday and we had a great time celebrating. My parents had come for the weekend so we hosted a big dinner with both sides – complete with cake!

So it was a busy weekend and it looks to be a busy week ahead! I hope you all had a lovely weekend. xo