Category Archives: Birthdays

Psychological Long Covid

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Well, it has been a very busy and festive week in the Boyhouse! The biggest news, of course, was that we celebrated a 17th birthday!

There was a parent meeting for the birthday boy’s Phys Ed camping trip at the end of the month, notable because I still find it novel that we are having parent meetings in person. The camping trip itself is Very Backcountry, which should be interesting, as I inferred from the meeting that very few of my son’s fellow students have been camping at all, let alone in the backcountry. Where can I charge my phone was a question asked in his class, which is amusing since there is no electricity and in fact no signal at all where they are going. I mean, they are going to have to treat their water before drinking it, this is the level of Backcountry. It sounds like the seventh circle of hell to me, but he’s excited. He camps annually with his dad and brother but it’s never this extreme. I hope no one gets giardiasis.

Back in the fall of 2019, he started spending two lunch hours a week learning all the boring ins and outs of sailing; he did fundraising and worked really hard to go on the Grade Nine Sailing Trip, which was something he had looked forward to all through junior high and which he felt would be the Pinnacle of His Life, So Far. Of course, it was cancelled, and to say that was a disappointment would be an enormous understatement. All of which is to say I’m very happy for him and his hellish camping trip; I wouldn’t say that things are Pre-2020 Normal around here, just over two and a half years from the first lockdown, but I’m no longer feeling constantly anxious that activities are going to get cancelled at the last minute. I no longer refuse to think more than a week ahead of time.

I was feeling a bit weird and anxious on my last grocery trip, however. Superstore has rearranged all – ALL – of its aisles, which is incredibly disorienting. Instead of efficiently popping down Aisle Five, say, to grab a box of pasta, I found myself slowly wandering through each and every aisle just trying to find the pasta, as the signage detailing what was contained in each aisle were not consistently updated. Nothing was in the least bit intuitive: the condiments were beside the toilet paper, the cereal was tucked into the Natural Foods section, which was separate from the hot cereal that was next to the garbage bags. It took me a moment to realize why this was happening, and that moment came when I realized I needed to go down the chip aisle, something I normally avoid, to grab snacks for my son’s birthday party.

The whole aisle was like that, just filled with big boxes containing fifty single-serving Old Dutch products, almost exclusively plain chips. It was clear then, that Superstore is just filling space and that they amalgamated all their aisles to make it look fuller.

Who is buying all this water? No one. So I suppose it’s great to give the illusion of full shelves. It was unnerving, to say the least.

I don’t want to alarm anyone, but there wasn’t much in the baking supplies department. There was flour, but they had arranged it to seem like there was much more than there was; there was probably a third of the stock that they normally have. And, of course, still no sriracha, and I have no idea when that will be back in stock.

This is where I will shamefully update you on my Just One Backup promise. A few weeks ago I saw this:

While I would like to say I thought Oh, lemon juice is plentiful again, isn’t that interesting, I did not react with such equanimity. Friends, I bought a bottle to go with my other six in backup. Then, that very same day, I went to Costco where they had Boom Chicka Pop on sale for two dollars off per bag.

I bought three bags.

Other than that I have been doing really well, I swear. I emptied the freezer almost down to nothing before buying a few things, I’m working my way through the jars of salsa and nut butters, and the kids ate every last eighth of a container of homemade ice cream before I started making more. I wonder if there is a Long Covid, but for our psychological health? I think I must have some kind of Psychological Long Covid that causes a hoarding instinct whenever I perceive a shortage of certain key items. You can bet that when sriracha comes back, I will be unable to keep to my Just One Backup rule. In the meantime, I am stretching out the 1/4 of a bottle that we have, hoping it will last as long as possible.

Weekly Reading

This week contains a hit and a miss!

Bookends. I had never heard of this podcaster; I picked up the book on the promise of her showing “how books can help us through tough times,” as it says on the cover. I love books and so I assumed I would love this. I WAS SO VERY WRONG. For one thing, there is absolutely no discussion on how different books helped the author through tough times, instead she merely lists the books she was reading at the end of each chapter with no discussion or context whatsoever. As an example, she writes about the very tragic death of her best friend, who lost her life in the Twin Towers on 9/11, and then at the end of the chapter she says the title of the book that she was reading, with absolutely no parallels drawn. If you want to just write a memoir, fine, but if you’re advertising it as something that shows the meaning and inspiration that comes from reading, then you should probably write something about the meaning and inspiration of that book, not just the title.

The author is an incredibly privileged woman with enormous inherited wealth, and boy does she make that clear. This might be the most humble-braggy, name-dropping book I have ever read, and I read Will Smith’s memoir, so that is saying something. Sure, I would probably also be very proud that my dad created his own Fortune 500 company, and that my mom’s second wedding was featured in Town and Country, but in the absence of any other context, it just comes across as obnoxious. There is a paragraph about the author working out on the elliptical machine in the gym of the very fancy Hotel Bel-Air, and John Legend was working out beside her. End of sentence. Not to get all Chekov’s gun on the woman, but if you’re going to mention John Legend working out beside you, there should be an anecdote about it, or at least a reason that it is mentioned, not just a statement of fact, otherwise it’s just ridiculous name-dropping.

Even in the more relatable moments, like with parenting struggles, I found myself rolling my eyes about them. It is HARD to parent small children but whenever she talks about something like bedtime or dinnertime, and then mentions her two employed nannies, well, it’s hard to feel too sympathetic. I’m sure parenting twin toddlers is incredibly difficult BUT such paragraphs are followed by a description of her super-rich mother sending her to a weekend spa to catch up on sleep. I mean. Life is stressful for everyone, but I feel much less compassion for a person who has to run with the stroller to the expensive Manhattan toddler activities or when someone is late to the very expensive private school parents’ night, than I might to a woman who is stressed to the maximum just putting food on the table for her children, if you know what I mean, and I think you do. I had to remind myself to be compassionate – she did lose many people in tragic and horrific ways, and she did struggle with anxiety and depression. But her writing made it so hard to be compassionate. Anyway. I wanted to read it because of how it was advertised, all about books. I was extremely disappointed. Tl;dr, if you’re looking for a book about literature, this isn’t it.

Whew! That was a lot of words about a book I didn’t care for at all.

Writers and Lovers. I really enjoyed this gorgeously written book about a woman trying to live a creative life, trying to write a novel, all the while desperately needing to make a living and get herself out from under massive debt. It was particularly interesting to read right after Bookends. Yes, one is a memoir and one is a novel, but I could not help but be struck by the incredible differences between the memoir author and the protagonist of Writers and Lovers.

It’s obvious, of course, but being independently wealthy makes such a difference in being able to make it as a writer. In Writers and Lovers, the protagonist has to wake up very early to carve out writing time, and then work double shifts at a restaurant to pay her bills; she is absolutely crippled by debt and living in a garage, quite literally a starving artist. Compare that to Owens in Bookends, who is the recipient of enormous inherited wealth, such that, as she states, she never actually HAS to work in her life. She lives in a four-story brownstone in Manhattan, and was also a legacy student for both Yale AND Harvard Business School. Some people have everything literally handed to them and others, like in Writers and Lovers, have to hustle every minute of their lives, and have to try to still flex their creative muscles while their physical muscles are exhausted. It was a very interesting juxtaposition.

Speaking of exhausted muscles, it looks to be another busy week; I started back at teaching last week, and am getting to know a few new students, along with my old faithfuls. I hope you all have a wonderful week! xo

It’s All Right, I Think We’re Going To Make It; 112 Weeks In

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A couple of weeks ago our neighbourhood had an outage with our internet service provider; the outage went from 10:30am to after 5:00pm. It’s really amazing how many things are attached to our internet service: TV, the landline, the Peloton. The boys came home after school and were shocked – SHOCKED – that there was no internet. What is this, the nineties? It was actually a bit of a problem since most of their homework is done online, but luckily, my son had an actual paper worksheet for his chemistry homework. My husband was in the office that day, very fortunately, and came home to immediately turn on the NFL draft. I reminded him to show gratitude to the universe that the internet was back on and he could actually watch the draft, after hours of the outage, but I don’t think he absorbed that same feeling.

Of all the things to go out – power, water, etc. – the internet is by far the easiest to deal with. It’s ingrained in our lives but it really is a luxury. However, I still had a low-level sense of worry that happens anytime I have the smallest blip in one of the many incredible services in my life: what if it NEVER comes back on. How will I file my taxes?

Luckily I had a number of podcasts downloaded, so I could listen to my Little House on the Prairie recaps without any issues. Priorities, people.

If the outage had happened this past week, however, I may not have noticed much: it’s been beautiful and I’ve been so busy outside. Oh, you guys, I have had such a good week. It’s amazing what a week of sunshine and warm weather will do for me. Am I solar powered? Maybe. In any case, we had a stretch of five glorious days, and I spent the majority of them frantically working in the yard and gardens, knowing, in the back of my mind, that the beautiful weather is fleeting and colder temperatures and precipitation, possibly of the snow variety, are right around the corner.

Which is, of course, what happened, but at least I got the back perennial beds all cleaned up and the backyard raked. The weekend was chilly, there was snow on the ground when I woke up this morning, and we have more snow flurries forecasted today, but I am unbothered because at least I had last week.

My pretty new gardening gloves that I got for my birthday, on the road to being filthy.

Soon I will be relocating Salvadore to one of my garden beds. He is still MAGICALLY moving around every night. Last week I woke up to him being engrossed in my book about tree care, written by our arbourist.

I guess he’s really interested in trees! It makes sense, he’s a woodland gnome.

My mom’s birthday is this week (HI MOM) so we celebrated on the weekend and I baked this cake:

It occurred to me that at this time last year, my sister-in-law and I had been planning a celebration for my mom’s birthday/ Mother’s Day, but Covid numbers went through the roof, we went into a lockdown, and it was a very scary time. It feels strange that was only one year ago; it feels like an age. Vaccines were just starting to be available at that time, I was teaching only on zoom, and cases were reported in the news, daily. We all waited for the daily numbers, and for me, I had hope that with the vaccine rollout, we would be THROUGH the pandemic by Christmastime.

People are really amazingly strong. I think if anyone told us what we would be going through, back in 2019, none of us would have believed it or, importantly, thought we could handle it. I think if, in May 2020, I was told that there would be fully another two years PLUS of the pandemic, but things were going to get progressively weirder, I would have just shriveled up into a little ball. But we just push through, don’t we? What are we in now, the sixth wave? And there is no way to know “daily numbers” anymore, at least not here, and even home rapid tests are less than accurate for all the new changes.

My kids mentioned that one of their friend’s dad is quite sick with Covid, so his whole family is currently staying with his grandma to allow him to isolate in their home. I said “I thought they all had it at Christmas?” and immediately the boys jumped on me. “That doesn’t MATTER, Mom! You know you can get it again, right? You can have Covid more than once!” Which, true; also, that doesn’t feel great, but at this point, what can we do? Do we just shrivel up in a ball? Or do we adjust the way we are living, and try to live our best lives in the healthiest, safest way possible?

In any case, I am glad to have celebrated my mom’s birthday with her. I have seen my mom, obviously, but this was the first time in two years I saw her for her birthday, and if there’s one thing that has come out of this pandemic, if there’s one thing I’ve learned in the – checks title – past 112 weeks, it’s to not take anything for granted or to think there’s always next time, there’s always next year. Live in the now, as Garth says to Wayne. And in the now, I’m reading a lot of books and doing a lot of gardening.

Pandemic Reading

Birth: The Surprising History of How We Are Born. When Stephany (HI STEPHANY) mentioned this book, I knew I had to read it. I’m fascinated and horrified by the history of medicine, and this history of birth, midwifery, and obstetrics is fascinating and horrifying. A few times I felt faint reading some descriptions of obstetric procedures, and frequently I found myself inadvertently Kegeling. But it’s a great read – and I’m glad I read it AFTER having babies. I really liked reading about the changes in attitudes towards birth, how they were affected by social changes, and since it was published in 2006 it ended with the attitudes I remember from my own pregnancies and births. I’m sure things have changed now too, but that ship has long left the harbour for me. Perhaps one day I’ll have daughters-in-law who might let me share their experiences, if I am very fortunate.

How To Be Fine. I am a fan of the By the Book podcast, and so I really enjoyed reading this book about the authors/ hosts and what they learned from self-help books, what they hated about self-help books, and what they wished self-help books talked about. It was published in 2020 so I would be very interested to read a book where they tackle the books they read and lived by during the pandemic. How To Be Fine In A Pandemic? That would be a fun sequel. If you like that podcast you’ll love this book.

Bright Lights, Prairie Dust. There’s a lot more to Karen Grassle than just her role as Ma Ingalls: she was a theatre actress in the 60s and has fought for women’s rights for decades. Still, it was fun to read about Little House – spoiler, Michael Landon was an asshole – and life in New York in the 60s. I didn’t love this book though; it wasn’t laid out that well and it ended abruptly. Also she struggled with alcoholism and mental illness and that is a very large part of the book – it’s a bit hard to read at times. Still, glad I read it. 

I hope you all had a lovely weekend and cheers to the week ahead! May the snow flurries be few. xo

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The 47th Birthday Edition

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I have been learning Spanish via the Duolingo app, thanks to the encouragement of my younger son, who is using that app to learn Japanese. My goal is to become semi-conversational, and I was practicing phrases the other morning when everyone was in and out of the kitchen, making their breakfasts and getting ready for the day ahead. Imagine, if you will, a perky, I’ve-Been-Awake-For-Hours Nicole, trying out Spanish phrases on her Just-Woke-Up-Don’t-Talk-To-Me family. “Tu quiero un jugo de naranja?” I said to my older son as he, bleary-eyed, poured himself some orange juice. “Yo bebo cafe!” I said happily. “Tu quiero el pan?” I asked my husband as he opened the fridge to grab the rye bread. He looked at me blankly and then said “Si, senorita.”

Oooh, senorita! Is he trying to court me? My son asked what was the difference anyway, between senorita and senora, which led me into a long diatribe about the world in which we live in, where men go their whole lives being senors or sirs, and women get demarcated into ma’ams or senoras at a certain age to indicate their mature status, at which point he said, “Well, you’re always talking about how GREAT aging is and how AMAZING it is to get old, and how you’re so LUCKY to be able to be old, so you should be really be excited to be a senora.” Then he raised his eyebrows, with a half-smile, in the way someone would while laying down a royal flush, just before scooping a huge pile of chips towards them.

Well, he’s right. And today is my birthday! If you know me at all you know a) I love birthdays, b) I think everyone should be treated like a queen or similar on their birthday, and c) I especially love MY birthday. Although I’ve been married to one for over twenty years, I don’t really understand people who go about their birthday like it’s just another day, and are completely quiet on the subject. If it were socially acceptable to walk around with a tiara and a sandwich board proclaiming It’s My Birthday, I would. Alas, it isn’t.

But it’s my blog and I Do What I Want. It’s a Thursday, which may not be the Prime Day for a birthday, but means I can really spread out the celebration over two weekends. It also means that I can give you a Nicole’s Favourite Things!

I don’t know about you, but the number 47 is one that I use conversationally in a hyperbolic way to indicate something that is scrambled or chaotic: I feel like I’m being pulled in 47 different directions, I have 47 different things on my plate right now, all I wanted was a coffee and there were 47 things on the menu and none of them were coffee. Do I feel, on my 47th birthday, like I’m scrambled or chaotic? Not really, but I thought it would be fun to list out 47 things I love on my 47th birthday.

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The 47th Birthday Edition

  • Coffee coffee coffee.
  • Early morning yoga in a silent, sleeping house.
  • Watching the night sky lighten into dawn.
  • Sunrises.
  • Holding my breath as I put away my thick, heavy, cute sweaters and take out my lighter, spring-weight cute sweaters.
  • At-home hair colour.
  • Books books books.
  • The library! I love you, library. You are so good at sharing.
  • Having teenage boys and all the great conversations that we have, including but not limited to: The Girl From Ipanema is a stalker song, how Shakespeare lacked originality in naming characters in Macbeth, and Brezhnev’s eyebrows.
  • CAKE! All kinds, but especially BIRTHDAY cake!
  • Red red wine, you make me feel so fine, even if you give me hot flashes. It’s worth it!
  • Dr. Jen Gunter and The Menopause Manifesto, for normalizing things like hot flashes.
  • Sunday morning walks with my Shmoopy.
  • My Garmin watch, which praises me for moving. Thanks, Garmin, I DO deserve a “mic drop” for getting my steps in.
  • Friends I get to see in real life, even if it’s not often, and friends I never get to see in real life, but connect with often.
  • My chosen sisters – you know who you are!
  • Visiting my parents at the lake.
  • Wrinkle cream and serums! God bless.
  • Mascara!
  • Lipstick and lip gloss for those times I don’t need a mask. Is there anything more transformative and life-affirming than a good lip colour?
  • Yoga pants.
  • Yoga pants that look like regular pants – it’s sorcery!
  • Greek salad and hummus on Friday nights.
  • My piano.
  • Spotify, what an age we live in that I can just listen to whatever I want whenever I want ALL THE DAMN TIME, even when it’s something completely random.
  • Podcasts! Especially Gen X This Is Why, By The Book, Jiffy Pop Culture, and We Didn’t Start The Fire – my current favourites.
  • Modern medicine: thank you, modern medicine, for being awesome and saving lives.
  • Little green shoots in my garden, that are currently under a thick blanket of snow, but I know they are there!
  • Barkley! My puppers.
  • My home gym, specifically my Peloton, and, even more specifically, Leanne Hainsby’s classes. I was saving her latest Disco Ride for this morning, and – this has never happened before – it disappeared. DISAPPEARED. I wanted disco, so I did an old Disco Ride, which was great, and I was number one on the leaderboard (out of one, that’s how old the ride was). Still, I will be singing Ring My Bell all day today.
  • Popcorn. It was back at Superstore, and I may or may not have completely stocked up and I may or may not look like I’m hoarding popcorn.
  • Berry season! Bring on the berries!
  • Salvadore, my garden gnome, who is not yet in the garden but has been moved every night after I go to bed. It’s like my own, non-holiday version of Elf in the Shelf.
  • Puzzles, but not ones that are too challenging.
  • Desiderata, which belonged to my grandma and has meant something special to me since I was a kid, and now hangs, reframed, beside my piano. I read it every day.
  • My yoga students; past and current. I love them all. One of them brought me peppermint bars today!
  • Mint chocolate; whoever first put that combination together deserves accolades.
  • Nuts; every day I am grateful there are no nut allergies in our house.
  • Speaking of nuts, peanut butter and chocolate. Now there’s a delicious combination.
  • Memories of long-ago spring break beach vacations, and dreams of future ones. There are going to be future ones, right?
  • Cutting into the perfect avocado.
  • Sunshine and mild spring temperatures, hopefully they are coming.
  • Running in the fresh air.
  • Our proximity to the Rocky Mountains and my ability to hike in those mountains.
  • Cute pajamas.
  • Green smoothies, every day.
  • All of my wonderful blog friends. Some of you have been with me since 2008, some of you are more recent friends, and I appreciate each and every one of you. Thank you for being here, thank you for taking this journey with me. We are better together. xo

Rituals; 109 Weeks In

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I was listening to this fantastic, new-to-me-but-well-established podcast the other day, about the importance of ritual and soulful practices in our everyday life. It got me thinking about all the little rituals I incorporate into my day, from my coffee-and-early-morning reading and writing to putting on my five different moisturizers before bedtime. Some of the little rituals came about because of the pandemic: daily inspirational reading and poetry before my morning yoga practice and my long daily walks are the two most notable ones. However, some rituals predate the pandemic by a long shot, and one of those is Sunday Dinner.

We eat dinner as a family every night, with the exception of the evenings when my younger son is at wrestling practice; those nights, it is just the three of us, and I save him a plate for when he’s home at 8:30 pm. Sunday Dinner is a different thing, though. It’s a big, semi-elaborate meal that always ends in dessert.

I cook a lot; it feels like half my life is devoted to food acquisition, preparation, and the cleanup afterwards. It can be very boring and tedious; this is why I listen to so many podcasts. But there is one thing I am never bored of, and that is making Sunday dessert. Throughout the week I bake a lot of things and I make a lot of ice cream, but I don’t partake in any of those; Sunday dessert, however, is my jam. I think about different recipes and I always get excited, choosing and then making the Dessert of the Week.

This past weekend was really fun for me, though, because we went up to my parents’ house for two nights. Not only did I not cook for two days, I also had my favourite dessert:

My birthday is coming up this week, so we had a combined birthday/ Easter celebration.

Not only did we have a wonderful dinner made by my mother with my favourite strawberry angel food cake, but we went out to dinner in an actual restaurant, we played a lot of games, drank a lot of wine, and my mom and I went shopping.

I have been searching for the perfect garden gnome for my entire life, and this fellow was the first thing I saw at Merry’s Mercantile, and I love him so much. His name is Salvadore.

Side note: longtime Calgary bloggers may remember Merry as Merry About Town or Merry With Children! She has the cutest little store in Bentley, and if you are ever in Central Alberta, you must go. You must! I saw this and I did not buy it, which I regret deeply.

Regrets about mug non-purchases aside, it was a nice finish to what was a really cold, grey, snowy week. On Wednesday I was getting groceries and the parking lot was so cold and windy that I checked my weather app.

Feels like minus 18! No wonder I was cold. Luckily the weather is supposed to turn warm and more “seasonal” this week; I feel like the whole city was starting to slip into depression, what with the return of winter.

Back to the topic of groceries, there are supply chain issues that are AFFECTING MY POPCORN PURCHASES. Boom Chicka Pop has gone from just my favourite light kettle corn being unavailable to being all flavours being completely unavailable. And – AND – there was also no Skinny Pop popcorn, my second choice, which feels like a Punishment From The Universe for buying something with such a stupid name. What’s next, am I going to be forced (“forced”) to buy Lesser Evil popcorn, just because I publicly announced I would not support a company that assigns moral values to food? Or will that start a chain reaction of more popcorn emergencies? I’m in a vicious circle of my own making. The snake is eating its own tail!

Sure, I could make my own popcorn. I do own all the appropriate accoutrements. But I don’t want to. I look forward to opening a bag of popcorn on Friday night and not doing anything else; I don’t WANT to pop my own popcorn, like a Luddite. Is a bag of popcorn too much to ask for?

Pandemic Reading

Girls Lost. I really appreciated the quality of the writing and the creativity of this book. This author is renowned and award-winning, and I loved the Swedish setting. It’s a really unique concept and English classes everywhere could have a field day with the symbolism of a meat-eating flower whose nectar turns girls into boys; the theme of toxic masculinity and violence is strong. However, I didn’t really love the book as a whole, as magic and fantasy are not to my taste. If they are to your taste, though, I think you might love this.

The Space Between Us. Wow, just wow. This is one of the best books I’ve read in a long time, perhaps ever. There’s just so much in here, I hardly even know where to begin. This is a story of two women; one is the house servant to the other. It’s a story about intertwined lives, about class differences, about the incredible burden of being a woman, about how pain is universal, about poverty and literacy and education and the lack thereof. It’s set in Bombay but honestly, the lessons are for everyone, all over the world. It’s an incredibly written book, with so much beauty and sadness. I was distraught and uplifted and so sad to finish this. It is the first book I have read by this author; I have had one of her books on hold for a few months now, and I just put everything she’s ever written on hold. I cannot say enough about this book and how it touched me.

How To Be A Grown-Up. I picked this up on a whim since the authors wrote The Nanny Diaries, which I really enjoyed back in the day. This book is okay; it deals with a woman going through a separation from literally one of the worst non-physically abusive character you can imagine. I mean, this guy is a complete loser of a child-man. So I found it hard to get into the story as I was so constantly incensed by what a jerk this guy was, and how he reminded me of someone I know who is also involved in a divorce from someone I know, and I am not going to put any more details than that but THOSE OF YOU WHO KNOW ME WELL KNOW WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT. I guess I found it triggering? Anyway, it’s fine, this book is fine, I liked it fine, everything is fine. Parts of it are really, really funny and parts of it are astonishingly distressing.

I am very much looking forward to this week, and not just because it’s my birthday; I am anxiously awaiting the arrival of milder weather so I can find a spot for Salvadore to live. I hope you have a beautiful week, my friends. xo

Boyhouse Year In Review 2021

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Is it just me or was this year actually a decade?

Well! I think at this time last year we thought the Pandemic At The Disco would be in the rearview mirror, and yet it is not. Currently we are going through our FIFTH wave, which is extremely disheartening and, at this point, makes me feel like this is forever. Intellectually I know that’s not the case; everything passes with time and this will too. (WHEN?)

We are ending the year on a low; yesterday it was announced that the winter break would be “extended” and the January diploma exams, of which my older son was due to write three, have been cancelled. It is very discouraging. Going through this post I realized that there were many low moments, but I do feel like there was a lot of joy and laughter this year as well. I think living through a global pandemic has forced me to re-examine my life and to make new kinds of choices about it. There have been ups and downs and in-betweens, and, on that note, let’s examine the year in the Boyhouse.

Boyhouse Year In Review 2021

January

I set some goals and expressed my gratitude, I cleaned my oven and reused canning lids, after six weeks of at-home learning the kids went back to school and my son immediately broke his glasses in gym class, and I talked about being judgmental and how I don’t want to be that way, but we are only human. I also shared my hot tip on how to grow your hair out – just stop cutting it.

I kind of forgot how grim things were last January, with everything closed down for the second wave. Wait, was it the second? Yes, second. Still, look at that photo! Lots of beauty still to be found.

February

I continued to embrace the concept of friluftsliv with my fabulous wardrobe choices, I decided to change my mindset towards overstocking the pantry and also my period, it was really, really cold and it was also Family Day, which was great since I hadn’t spent every SINGLE waking hour with my family for eleven months, and I was really sad and couldn’t figure out if it was hormones or, you know, life in a pandemic. I also expressed my love for hearts and chocolate.

I must have cleaned my fridge right before that photo – it’s so shiny!

March

My son was almost done with his braces and to celebrate, I made him be my pack horse at the liquor store, in the spirit of Trying New Things I had body sugaring done and it was life-changing, I reflected on one year of Pandemic Living, I compared Costco 2021 to Costco 2020, and we had A Very Eventful Week which started with me thinking I had a blood clot to my son threatening to burn his orthodontic elastics, and, failing that, his masks. To add to the excitement, I talked about my favourite cleaning items, please don’t everyone click on that at once, you might break the internet.

April

Wow, a lot of things went wrong and so I was as cross as two sticks, my tenacious chin hair turned white and I had lots of awkward interactions at the library, we were in another mini-lockdown and so I talked about my Coping Mechanisms, I talked about being Pro-Aging, as opposed to Anti-Aging, which is a ridiculous concept, and I got vaccinated the day after my birthday! I also talked about my favourite skin-care products FOR PRO-AGING.

Gosh, remember how hopeful we all felt back then? Like the Pandemic was no longer going to be At The Disco. Good times.

May

After talking about Pro-Aging, I was asked if I wanted the senior’s discount at Shoppers, and then the lady didn’t even give me the discount, I had a really big downward spiral and then started to climb back up, then I had lots of ups and downs, including lineups at Costco (down) and flower purchases (up), it snowed and the kids were slated to go back to in-person school, Barkley turned 13, and I discussed all my favourite little helpers!

June

I was inspired to Embrace the Season – inspired by a woman who, sadly, has just recently passed after a long and difficult illness. Her words will remain with me forever, and she will be much missed. Rest in peace, Melanie.

Less sadly, I talked about clothing trends and how depressing the mall is these days, after a couple of weeks being in school the boys were on exam break, our provincial government continued to be stupid and dropped every single Covid protocol which, spoiler alert, was not a good idea, and I did a lot of gardening.

July

We visited my parents and I swam in the lake, the province may have dropped their mask mandate, but I kept my own, I talked about aging and my aging face, and I bought new bras and shared my favourite life-changing items.

August

We went on vacation and unsurprisingly given the complete lack of Covid restrictions, there were tons of outbreaks, I read a lot, I was grateful to Spotify, my aunt sent me Royal Family memorabilia, I almost lost my mind not being able to find my clothes, I did an “Ask Me Anything” post, I recycled all the old boxes my husband had hoarded out of the storage room, I got very Landslide-y, and recalled all the stupid things I used to worry about, and I loved my garden.

September

Thank you, Universe, the kids went back to school, we got our ducts cleaned and found a sheep, and my husband and I went to Lake Louise, I recapped eighteen months of Pandemic Life, my son turned 16 and I did a deep dive into Jane Eyre, I talked about clothing trends and bought new jeans, and I shared all my handbags with you.

October

I was feeling very low, I talked about gourds and Gords, I was – as always – grateful for modern technology as I have zero sense of direction, my cute little mini-gourds were being eaten by something in the neighbourhood, and I shared my favourite things about Spooky Season and discovered a gruesome scene.

November

I shifted my festivities focus from Spooky Season to Tiny Secret Festive Season, I was living la vida hygge, I had one-on-one time with my younger son and WE ATE TAKEOUT FOOD, I learned about thirst traps, I got full-on festive, and I talked about the reasons I love November.

Usually by this time in the annual recap, I think well, this just happened! but it feels like November was a year ago already. Time has no meaning.

December

I received the most thoughtful Secret Santa gift and my son came down with a cold, I completely lost track of the days, I had not one, but two Christmas miracles, I went to Banff with my husband, and I shared my favourite things about December.

As we wrap up the (very strange and weirdly long) year, I wish you all the best in 2022. WHO KNOWS WHAT 2022 WILL BRING. I think we can all agree that no one can predict anything anymore, but I hope you are all safe and healthy, and am wishing you much joy, peace, and happiness. Thank you, always, for reading my little blog. xo

A Dive Into Jane Eyre; Seventy-Nine Weeks In

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This past week I was a beta reader for a book concerning parenting young children; it’s hard to remember what those early years were like when my youngest just turned sixteen!

Also, I was so sleep-deprived back then that I barely remember 2005-07.

My son had, by all accounts, a great birthday. His brother, who knows him better than anyone, made him a “loot box,” which is apparently a thing. Everything in the loot box was labelled “rare” and “ordinary” and something else that I don’t remember. He found cans of spray paint in the garage and was up late the night before, spray painting in the backyard.

I didn’t even know we HAD spray paint.

This week has been a roller-coaster, emotionally. Our province has declared a state of emergency as our health-care system is collapsing, Covid cases are out of control, and the government finally implemented what is essentially a vaccine passport system, but no one is calling it that, instead it is a “vaccine exemption program.” Businesses, other than places like grocery stores, can either shut down or operate with extreme restrictions, or they can run fairly normally, as long as patrons can show proof of vaccination. The community centre I teach at has implemented the program, and I taught my first in-person class since – as an older student pointed out – November 12, 2020. But who’s counting!

I realized just how much I missed teaching in-person, with the ability to adapt and modify postures based on individual bodies. I think Zoom killed my zest for teaching, a little, and I feel like I’m getting my mojo back.

All of which is to say it’s been a busy and somewhat emotional week, and my Pandemic Reading consisted of the beta read and Jane Eyre. Have you ever read Jane Eyre? My grandma gave it to me when I was probably 14 or 15.

It was very unusual for Grandma to not write the date in the flyleaf, so I’m guessing about my age, and in any case, I didn’t love it when I read it over three decades ago. I found it quite dark and grim, and I didn’t remember much about it except that everyone was mean to Jane as a child and that there was a crazy wife living in the attic.

Jane Eyre is often lauded as a romance, and Reader, it is not. It is a Crazy Town Banana Pants book that I just have to talk about or I will explode. If you are uninterested in Jane Eyre, or you don’t want spoilers for a 174-year-old book, then please skip the rest of this post, and I’ll see you next week.

Pandemic Reading: Jane Eyre

The Victorian Age Was Rough For Orphans

I mean, obviously. But Jane is orphaned as a baby and is taken in by her mother’s brother and his wife; the uncle dies and on his deathbed twists a promise from his wife that she will always care for Jane “like one of her own.” SPOILER: she does no such thing. Jane is emotionally isolated and neglected, and suffers physical abuse from her male cousin, and when she fights back, she is locked up alone in the “red room” where her uncle died, until she has a total breakdown. Then she’s sent to boarding school for her insolence.

Charity Schools Were Uncharitable

Also, obviously. This is the Victorian age. But the school Jane is sent to essentially starves the students, forces them to walk miles to church in the winter in inadequate clothing, and is basically wretched. Typhus hits the school and kills over half the girls, and the good news is that the survivors get more food, as dead students don’t eat much.

Jane gets an education, though, and becomes a teacher. Eventually she applies for, and receives, a private governess position at Thornfield Hall. Her new master is Mr Rochester, who has taken on a ward, Adele. Sweet little Adele. She is the saddest character in this whole book, and that is saying something. Adele’s late mother was a French dancing girl who claimed Rochester was the father of her baby; Rochester, of course, denies it, and as he says in nineteenth century language, the woman was slutting around so who knows who the father is? But certainly not him! However, he feels guilty enough to take in the little waif and to secure the services of a governess.

Mr Rochester Is Terrible

I have seen Rochester referred to as a romantic hero, and that makes me concerned and worried for the people who think that. He puts down Jane in every way imaginable – her looks, her ability to play the piano, her personality – and yet she falls in love with him. Jane, no. You can do better. Is it Stockholm Syndrome?

The English caste system is pretty awful, and Rochester gives a house party for his similarly wealthy friends which includes one Miss Ingram, to whom he implies he will be married, as she is big and busty and beautiful, as well as rich, unlike tiny plain Jane. Miss Ingram and the other ladies show a lot of disdain towards the help, but particularly towards the governess. People who work for their money are considered pretty low. Anyway, during this house party, a Roma fortune teller comes to Thornfield, and all the ladies go into the room in which she is sequestered to hear their fortunes. All are dissatisfied with said fortunes, and are especially so when the housekeeper informs Jane that she must go hear her fortune as well. Why the governess, she’s not really a person. Jane goes to get her fortune read, the fortune teller ascertains that she has feelings for Rochester, and then it is revealed that the fortune teller is Rochester himself all dressed up, what even is happening here.

After all that, Rochester tells Jane that he’s going to marry Miss Ingram, and talks about her incredible beauty and accomplishments. Just as Jane is beaten down by this revelation, he says just kidding, I totally want to marry you, I just wanted to make you jealous. WHAT THE WHAT DID THAT JUST HAPPEN. People. If someone treats you in this weird way, they are not romantic heroes, they are crazy town gaslighters.

It Gets Worse

They quickly go to get married, because Jane is improbably in love, and Rochester keeps talking about how they will immediately leave the country and start travelling. Like, immediately. Foreshadowing? As soon as the clergyman asks if there is any reason why this marriage shouldn’t go on, someone steps up to say, yes, he has a reason, and the reason is that Rochester already has a wife, who is still living. In fact, that wife is living in his attic.

The long and the short of it is that Rochester, being a second son and so not entitled to his family fortune or Thornfield Hall, in his youth went to Jamaica where a marriage was arranged for him with a very wealthy woman. A very wealthy mixed race woman. After they were married and her fortune secured into Rochester’s hands, he realized that they were an unsuitable match – possibly due to her race, possibly due to mental illness that ran in her family. It seems like Bertha, the wife, doesn’t enjoy his brand of repartee, which Rochester interprets as her also being mentally ill. In any case, Rochester’s father and brother die, leaving him with the family fortune AND Thornfield Hall, to which he repairs with his wife. But, he considers her a lunatic, so he locks her up in the attic with no companion except a gin-addled woman who also does some sewing for the household. As you do.

Oooookayyyy.

Well, if she wasn’t mentally ill to start with, she certainly is after a decade or so of living in the attic. In any case, after this reveal, Jane, who is uninterested in bigamy, leaves Thornfield Hall in the dead of the night and ends up wandering around the moors, cold and starving, until a nice family takes her in.

There’s Nothing That Says Loving Like Marrying Your Cousin

Serendipitously, that nice family ends up being related to her, and for Jane, who thought she had zero relations other than her abusive aunt and cousins, this is a truly great thing. She also inherits some money, so she is now an independent woman, and, sidebar, it was really shitty to be a woman back then. If you did not have means for independence, you would have to hope to be married to someone who could provide for you, or possibly live out a life eking out a living as a governess or doing some kind of housework or service.

Anyway, the family consists of two sisters and a brother, who are Jane’s cousins on her father’s side. The male cousin is a missionary going to India to convert all those heathens, and he wants Jane to go with him as his wife. When she turns him down, saying no, dude, that’s gross, we’re cousins, but I’ll still go to India to help with the conversions, he gets really mad and doesn’t want to talk to her. The men in this book are really terrible and seem to feel that women should just be happy to be married and stop asking questions, which was the reality back then, but god.

Okay, Now It Gets Weird

Jane takes her independent means and, for reasons unknown, goes back to Thornfield Hall. Again, Stockholm Syndrome? It turns out that the place has burned down; Bertha the Attic Wife was responsible for the fire and also is now dead, so Rochester is a free man. Yay? Ugh. Rochester is also now blind and has lost a hand, due to the fire, but Jane is undeterred and we are treated to that famous line “Reader, I married him.”

What Happened To Adele?

WELL MAY YOU ASK. Poor Adele. When Jane first leaves Thornfield, she’s sent to a boarding school, where she is miserable. When Jane returns, she fetches Adele, who is so happy to see her it is heartbreaking. However, Jane is now the wife and caretaker to the decrepit Rochester, and has no time for poor Adele, so she’s sent to ANOTHER school, and Jane has a baby, and I’m not sure how she’s taking care of said baby because Rochester literally demands all her time and energy.

Rochester Is A Perv

When Rochester proposes to Jane, he is forty and she is eighteen, which is one thing, but the fact that Jane is constantly described in terms of her size and appearance as “tiny” and “child-like,” well. It’s really gross. An age difference is one thing, but a forty-year-old man going after a teen who appears much younger is quite another. By the time the dust settles, Jane is maybe twenty and is now saddled for life with a man who a) has a lot of physical needs b) screwed his way around Europe in his youth, fathering god knows how many children WHILE Bertha was living in his attic, and c) HAD A WOMAN LIVING IN HIS ATTIC.

Well. It was worth the reread just to experience the crazy nature of the book, with its racist undertones and really bad relationships. The single best thing about the book is that Jane is pretty upright and refuses to bend her morals: she won’t take jewels or wealth, she won’t marry anyone just for the sake of marrying them. It’s really interesting to reread books at different stages in life – have you done that for any old favourites lately? Tell me all about it. xo

Three Teens In The House; Sixty-Three Weeks In

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As of yesterday, I now have three teenagers in the house!

Sorry, the photo is a little fuzzy.

Every week that Barkley is still wagging and sitting at my feet as I make dinner is a good week. He’s pretty slow these days – his big lump trips him up quite a bit – and he has Old Man Selective Hearing as he bolts up from a dead sleep when he hears me take the carrot peeler out of the drawer, but somehow can’t hear me when I tell him not to walk through my garden, squishing the hostas, but he still gets excited to eat, go for our slow-boat-to-nowhere walks, and receive daily eyedrops.

Speaking of good weeks, THE BOYS WENT BACK TO SCHOOL, HALLELUJAH, THE BOYS WENT BACK TO SCHOOL.

With the boys in actual, in-person school and my husband in the actual, in-person office, it’s just the two of us at home, and I cannot remember the last time that happened. One of us is happier about it than the other, I will leave it to you to guess who is who.

I think it would be impossible to overstate the positive impact on the household energy that going back to school has had. The boys LEAVE, and then around 3:30 both Barkley and I excitedly await them COMING HOME. They come home, sit at the kitchen island as I prep vegetables for dinner, and talk to me about their day. This is a thing that didn’t happen when they were at-home schooling – the coming and going, obviously, but more importantly, the talking. They were becoming more withdrawn by the day, crouched over their laptops in their room for hours on end, socializing with their friends online for the hours they weren’t working. My younger son is in gym class, and I think there’s not much sadder than an extrovert who loves gym doing burpees alone in his room and then watching a video about making healthy choices. Now, they are literally beaming with happiness when they come in the door, full of stories about their day, their classes, their friends. I chop vegetables and they talk about taking lacrosse, the English class short story presentations, upcoming matches in WWE, and Wings Paul McCartney versus Beatles Paul McCartney.

For the record, we all agree Wings Paul McCartney is superior to Beatles Paul McCartney, because although the Beatles were more innovative and creative, Wings is more fun to sing along to.

They only have about three and a half weeks of school until finals start, but I am so happy they can finish the year off this way.

Outfit of the Week

The sun came out! The sun came out! It was an amazing week for gardening; even though it’s not quite June I put all my herbs in pots and also took a deep breath and planted my tomatoes, peppers, basil, and cucumber plants, all of which really should wait until after the magic date of June 1. I mean, that’s tomorrow, so it’s not a huge stretch (IT IS JUNE TOMORROW, PEOPLE). Will I yield actual peppers and cucumbers in a Calgary garden? It’s unlikely. However, in the words of a young family friend whose brother challenged her to wear a stuffed banana on her head for their entire road trip vacation, I will probably fail but it will be fun to try.

Anyway, gardening calls for gardening clothes!

I love my Kindness is Magic tee; it came from the Yoga Shala back in the day. I always feel happy when I slip it on. Kindness IS magic, you never know when someone needs a smile – or a smize, it’s mask life – or a kind word. I’m wearing it over a yoga tank, because who wants to wear an actual bra while gardening? Not me. Now, a little note about the jeans and shoes:

THOSE LITTLE MUFFINS. That photo is from 2008, and those are the same shoes and jeans. Do I hold onto things forever? Apparently. The jeans have developed holes in the knees and the shoes are really only good for around the yard, but I cannot quit them.

Pandemic Reading

Swimming Back To Trout River. This was an absolutely beautiful book spanning the years between the Cultural Revolution in China and the 1980s, spanning the lives of four interconnected people, some who left China and some who were left behind. It’s very nuanced and wonderfully written; ostensibly about a girl whose parents send for her to come to America, but it’s so much more.

Uneasy Street: The Anxieties of Affluence. This was an absolutely fascinating book about people who have benefitted greatly from rising economic inequality in America. The author interviewed fifty people in New York City, which, as we know, is a totally different planet when it comes to wealth. In fact, NYC is the most economically inequitable city in North America; the median income is $52K, but the people interviewed either earned at least $250K (most of them much more) per annum, or had millions in amassed wealth (either through earnings or inheritance), or both. All of them owned apartments in NYC which, whew, that alone is a huge financial asset. There is just SO much in this book; from entitlement to parenting with wealth, to who holds the power in the family (guess what, it’s usually the man), to being secretive about income and possessions, to gender division of labour. You will not be surprised to know that in heterosexual couples with children, the woman ALWAYS is in charge of the emotional labour, even in the case where the woman earned $1.2M per year, over ten times what her husband earned. She was the person to stay home with the kids when they were sick, to make appointments, to know what the homework was, etcetera. GOOD TO KNOW. Some other interesting points: nearly everyone in the study hid the cost of their purchases from the people who they hired, such as their housekeeper, and the people who came from working class families of origin tended to be very silent about their lifestyle. As one woman put it, how could she really talk about her problem of which private school to send her children to, when the cost of the private school exceeded her brother’s annual income. Another thing that really struck me was, for the people who earned a lot of money (versus those who inherited), there was a high level of anxiety that it would all disappear. This was written after the 2008 crash. One man who had a few million in assets and a $2M annual salary said that his fear was that he would lose his job, and therefore health insurance, and someone would get sick, with cancer or something, and all that money would be gone. This is something that I, as a Canadian, never consider. I was talking to my husband about this book, and he mentioned that a friend of ours – who is a pretty high-rolling financier – knew many people who committed suicide after the 2008 crash. I guess if your lifestyle reflects your income, and you lose that income, things can really derail. Almost none of these people considered themselves to be wealthy, despite NYC brownstones and houses in the Hamptons. They all said they were pretty much “middle class, maybe upper-middle class.” Their attitudes towards money, especially inherited money, was pretty fascinating. It’s a very thought-provoking, interesting read.

The Secret Lives of Church Ladies. This was, on the surface, a very juicy collection of short stories, some of them quite scandalous. Each story has so many layers, though, and the writing is very nuanced and powerful. I really enjoyed this. Short stories are one of my favourite things and when they are done well – as this collection is – they are kind of mind-blowing.

Have a great week, everyone! I hope things are blooming for you, inside and out. xo