Category Archives: Black clouds in my brain

There’s Too Much Confusion, I Can’t Get No Relief

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They’re Both White Guys

This is a strange confession to make, but I constantly get Keanu Reeves and Johnny Depp mixed up in my mind. Before you say anything, I know. I know! They are essentially opposites: one is famously kind, generous, and charitable, and one is absolutely not. One lost his longtime girlfriend in a car accident following the stillbirth of their daughter, the other is a domestic abuser. The only reason I can think of that they get mixed up in my head is that I watched them both on the big screen in my youth, formative movies like Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure and Edward Scissorhands. They seem to be forever melded in my mind, which is terribly unfair to poor Keanu.

1984, Plus One

Engie (HI ENGIE) asked me what was the worst year of my life and although I don’t really like to relive or dwell on the past, particularly painful things, I will say without a doubt it was the year I was in fifth grade, 1985. It was, generally speaking, an upward trajectory after that. I’m not drawing any parallels here, but it’s interesting to note that Keanu came onto the scene in 1986, which was also the year of my favourite action movie of all time, Top Gun. Are these things related? Maybe!

The truth is that I think fifth grade is universally rough for girls, and it was terrible for me, and not just because I had an ugly home perm. (Engie also asked if I could erase one thing from my memory, what would it be, and that home perm might be up there, Steve.) But fifth grade. It was a time of friendship problems; I remember reading Cat’s Eye many years later and gasping because I felt so seen. Ten year old girls are absolutely vicious. Also, at that time I was wearing a bra and was the tallest girl and second tallest person in class, which might not seem like a big deal but it sure was. In the eighties, boys could run around, unchecked, snapping bra straps and making mean and bullying comments about girls and their anatomy, and that, in addition to the frenemies with whom I’d be best friends one day and then shunned the next, over and over, made that year miserable.

My cousin had a book called Girltalk, and I read it the summer after fifth grade. There was a section on friendship and to this day I remember this life-changing sentence: you don’t like everybody, so why should everybody like you? It was revolutionary and I still think about it all the time. Generally speaking I like most people, but it’s a good reminder that we are not going to be for everyone. I’m not saying my life completely improved because of that book, but it sure helped a lot.

Is This Really A Good Idea?

Speaking of the eighties, it looks like Netflix is rebooting Little House on the Prairie, and I have a lot to say about this. I know that I am a terribly pedantic person when it comes to adapting books to screen; I almost never think it is a good idea. The answer is almost always a teeth-gritting NO when I’m asked if I’ve seen the movie/ series/ show that was based on a book, particularly a beloved book. There are a few exceptions, of course, but generally speaking, I loathe the trend that everything must be adapted to be watched. Then again, should I ever be lucky enough to have my novel published and someone wanted to adapt it to the screen, I would sell out without a second thought. What can I say, I contain multitudes.

If you were a young girl in the late seventies and early eighties, it’s likely you watched the Little House on the Prairie series, and possibly you also read the books. I did both and it was an early lesson in the very loose way the words “based on” can be used. The television series was really a vehicle for Michael Landon to walk around as a shirtless hero; it was not at all like the books, except for the names of the characters. Or, I should say, SOME of the characters. There was a lot of artistic license taken here, for example, nowhere in the books was there a young girl named Sylvia who becomes pregnant after being raped by a weirdo blacksmith with a clown mask on, only to be saved from eternal shame of having a baby out of wedlock by falling off a ladder and dying.

I did love the books, because they were about a girl and her life, and if there is anything I want to read about in this world it is a girl and her life. I will not waste my one wild and precious life reading boring, male-centric stories. I just won’t! You can’t make me! But being charmed as a young girl reading about another young girl in a different place and time making “houses” beneath large maple trees is one thing. The grim fact is that Charles Ingalls deeply believed in manifest destiny and to that end dragged his family around the country, plunging them into hunger and poverty again and again, because he believed in his divine right as a white man to just displace anyone who happened to be living in the space he wanted to live in. Is this the message we need in 2025? I’m going to go ahead and say no.

I Have No Answer To This Question

Speaking of moving around, Elisabeth asked (HI ELISABETH) if you could live in one place outside of Canada for one year, where would you choose to live? Only three months ago I would have enthusiastically answered Maui, which is truly a paradisical place. But now I’m not sure the US is the best place for a Canadian. My husband and I have been planning a spring hiking trip to the Canyonlands, but sadly we have decided to cancel it. I don’t want our tourism dollars going to a government that shows outright hostility towards my country and dismissal about our national sovereignty. It also seems like a bad idea to have my physical body there. The long and the short of it is that I don’t know how I would answer Elisabeth’s question. I don’t have a backup answer to this hypothetical question, I guess another tropical island paradise that I have yet to visit. Or, Maui in (hopefully) four years.

Yoga Club Update

I just had to do some deep breathing after typing the above, which reminded me: how are we doing with Yoga Club? I hope everyone is making time to do one or more postures per day, and if that hasn’t happened, I hope that everyone is practicing loving-kindness towards themselves. There is a new three minute video on my humble little YouTube channel, demonstrating cat-cow in my kitchen; as an added bonus, Rex is featured! In all seriousness, cat-cow is a fantastic movement for spinal mobility, and I hope you give it a try.

Weekly Reading

Flowers in the Attic. Hands up if you also read this at age 12, or some other inappropriate age, hiding it from your mother! Did we all slip it in between the covers of our Trapper Keepers? This was such a wild reread. It has it all: incest, Oedipal complex, daddy issues, stepdaddy issues, child neglect, child abuse, child death, locking your own children in an attic in order to inherit millions of dollars from your weirdly religious father who disowns you for marrying your half-uncle. Honestly, it’s kind of hard to argue with the “maybe don’t marry/ fuck your relatives” part of the book. Not only does it have the most bizarre and over-the-top plot, it also is terribly written. I don’t know what’s worse, the over-explanation of every single detail, the excessively over-written descriptions of every scene, or the dialogue. The dialogue! It’s honestly the worst. I guess the key demographic – Gen X preteens – benefited from the multitude of explanatory details, being preteens, but wow, is this bad. It’s so bad it’s kind of good? I was entertained, if disturbed all over again. I mean, there is a kind-of-sibling-rape, there is the poisoning of children via arsenic powdered doughnuts, and there is the terrifying scene where the grandmother drugs her granddaughter and then pours tar all over her hair. Just writing that out makes me feel like I was in a fever dream while I read it.

Here One Moment. If you knew exactly when and how you were going to die, would you live your life differently? How much of life is pre-determined, and to what extent are we in charge of our own destinies? Those are just some of the questions raised by this novel about the travellers on a very delayed flight from Tasmania to Sydney; an old lady in an apparent fugue state suddenly stands up and goes through the entire flight cabin, telling each person how she expects them to die and at what age. Soon after, people do start to die in exactly that way. This was a really thought-provoking book for me, although I will honestly say that the backstory of the apparently clairvoyant old lady was pretty tedious, and it takes up about half the book. It all ties together very cleverly in classic Moriarty fashion; all in all I enjoyed it, with that one caveat. For those of us math-and-statistics nerds, there is a lot of really interesting discussion on probability, including a paragraph about the birthday paradox. I remember being in a lecture hall with two hundred other students, while my statistics professor had everyone stand up when their birthday was called, and sure enough, someone in that room shared my birthday. There is a very high probability that two people will have the same birthday when there are seventy-five people in a room, which I think is a very cool fact. Anyway, this is well worth the read, despite the boring backstory.

Well, will you look at that. I started this post thinking I have nothing to write about this week and here we are, 1700 words later. And it all started with Keanu Reeves! Thanks for reading, friends, and keep on practicing that loving-kindness! xo

Mind Over Matter

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I was so nostalgic the other day when I saw a woman with two young children in the produce section. It brought me back to grocery shopping with the boys, something I genuinely enjoyed: counting out the apples, picking out strawberries, pretending to tickle them with cucumbers. I smiled at the warm memories and then was jolted out of them when I saw them again at an adjacent checkout line to mine, where one of the children was hysterically screaming and the other one kept saying “Mommy, I need to go potty. Mommy, potty. MOMMY.”

The little girl kept screaming and screaming, her shrieks and sobs echoing through the store. The old lady in front of me in line turned to me. “That kid needs attention! She’s been bawling for this whole time I’ve been here!” she said sharply, and I was actually relieved because in the millisecond before she spoke I thought she was going to say that the child needed a spanking or something, and then it would have been a whole thing. As it was, I didn’t love her tone.

I looked up to see the mother, carrying her still-screaming daughter and pushing the cart full of groceries and her son towards the really gross public washroom. I looked at the old lady and said mildly, “Wow, that mom has her hands full. I feel for her. It’s hard to be a mom.” And then I smiled, and did not break eye contact, in an only slightly-psychotic way. The woman gave a little huff and turned back to her groceries.

In my semi-recent Ask Me Anything, Suzanne (HI SUZANNE) asked Besides people who don’t put their shopping carts away, what are some of your top pet peeves? Suzanne knows me well and rogue grocery carts are definitely number one on my pet peeve list, followed by the statement of opinions as facts, particularly, or maybe even exclusively, negative opinions. Also on my list is when people judgmentally cannot empathize with the plights of other people, tied with the inability to feel joy in other’s happiness or success.

I think this last point has to do with the patriarchy in which we all reside, which dictates that there is only so much room at the table, that a limited amount of women are allowed success in the same area, that life is a zero-sum game in which to succeed, someone else must fail. And honestly, it makes me sick. It makes me even more sick to think that I have, on occasion, bought into this idea in the past, and I have had to work to overcome it.

As an example, back when I worked for YMC as a vegan food blogger, there was an independent Canadian vegan food blogger who, at the time, was achieving great success. She was publishing cookbooks to many accolades, and I will tell you now that I did not feel a glow of happiness for her success. I could appreciate the beauty of her cookbooks, I talked about them positively to my friends, yes, but secretly I harboured many negative thoughts about them. They’re too complicated! I would think. There’s too many obscure ingredients! I would also think, ominously, She’s not THAT great.

Recently I read On Our Best Behaviour, and the section about Envy really recalled those feelings. The author suggested that rather than make envy a poison that eats away at us, women could use the feeling to light the way to the things we want in the world. Instead of tearing each other down – even mentally, maybe especially mentally – we could use envy to our benefit. I’ll have what she’s having.

And the truth is, if I had really wanted that kind of success, I would have had to sacrifice a lot of time, money, and energy to get it, and those sacrifices I was not at the time willing or able to make. That woman worked really hard to get where she was and perhaps if I had channeled all my energies the way she did, I could have had a chance at a similar level of success. But I didn’t, and that’s perfectly fine.

San (HI SAN) asked what is your best personal quality, and right now I think that it is my ability to see myself clearly and make changes when necessary. I think we all are much more malleable than we think we are, and if we want to make changes in ourselves and in our lives we can. It is a fallacy to say this is just who I am, this is just my personality, because although we are all born with personalities and tendencies, and our life experiences exacerbate those personalities and tendencies, for better or worse, we CAN change things we don’t like.

I think it’s pretty common to have a who does she think she is, she’s not that great feeling towards other women. After all women – particularly, I think, of my generation and older – have been indoctrinated since infancy to instinctively dislike and discount other women who are prettier, younger, thinner, or more successful, in whatever metric “success” is measured, and honestly, it’s really distasteful to me, especially when it’s inside me. I don’t blame myself or anyone else; we were raised in a society that made us believe that life is a finite pie and we all have to compete for our slice. I have worked very hard to overcome that conditioning; now when I see a woman who is thriving I automatically think Wow! She’s incredible! rather than She’s not THAT great, and I’m proud of that, to answer Engie’s (HI ENGIE) question what is something you’re proud of?

Elisabeth (HI ELISABETH) asked what was the best and the hardest decision you made in 2023 and this question stumped me for a while. I experienced a great deal of change in 2023, but all of the decisions relating to those changes came much earlier. I realized the answer the other day, when I thought about how I dealt with the changes. There was a months-long period last year when I genuinely thought I might have a nervous breakdown. It wasn’t until I made a mental shift wherein I said to myself that this is my life, I choose how to respond to my life, and, to quote Desiderata, whether or not it is unclear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. That decision, to choose how to respond to everything out of my control, was the best decision I could have made. It was also the hardest, at least the hardest to achieve.

Weekly Reading

Roman Stories. Right off the bat, I have to tell you that I am absolutely fascinated by and in total admiration of people who not only speak more than one language, but write in it too. Jhumpa Lahiri, an author I deeply admire, moved to Rome, learned Italian, wrote these stories in Italian, and then translated them to English. I mean, what. How. Anyway, I love short stories and these are so good, showcasing the ordinary but extraordinary lives of people living in Rome, a variety of people from a variety of backgrounds. She mainly focuses on the immigrant experience in Rome, and the daily hardships, big and small, that people face in everyday life.

My Brilliant Friend. Another Italian book, this one courtesy of Engie and the Cool Blogger’s Book Club. I voted for this book as a friend had read it and loved it; I cannot say I loved it, but I did have a pretty interesting experience with it. At first, I found it hard to read; I think that if you read this book at face value, it is a terrible slog, at least in my view. But if you read this as a symbol of post-World War II Italy, it becomes a very interesting tale of a nation’s growth. Each character I thought of as a symbol of a part of Italy: Elena, education and scholastic achievement, Lila, the fashion industry. The neighbourhood in Naples where the book takes place is dominated by the grocer’s family, symbolic of Italian food exports, and by the owners of the bar/ pastry shop, who symbolize, in my view, the mafia. There is also the gentle Antonio – the automobile industry – and the Sarratore family – arts and poetry. I found that reading this book in this way, with an eye to symbolism, was interesting, whereas when I did not read this way, it was boring and confusing. As it was, I was incredibly grateful for the list of characters at the beginning of the book, because there was no way I could keep them all straight and remember who everyone was and how they were connected. As it was, even up to the end I was thinking wait, who’s Ada? Who’s Nino again? And those were pretty main characters, the fact that I was constantly forgetting who they were and what they were doing there is telling.

The Five-Star Weekend. After her husband dies suddenly, an Internet famous woman decides to host what’s known as a five-star weekend: a girl’s weekend with four friends from different stages of her life. Pandemonium ensues, as would be expected with five women with secrets, various pasts, and current stresses. Listen, let’s not overthink this. It’s just a fun, light, fluffy beach read that will probably make you hungry with all the food descriptions. Next beach vacation I’m downloading more from this author. It’s candy in book form, in the best way. 

Thank you to everyone who submitted questions to my Ask Me Anything; I am in the midst of answering them all, and I welcome anyone who still has a question to submit it. In the meantime, have a beautiful week, friends. xo

Books, Books, Books: Moving Reading 2023

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I have to tell you that I had a tiny bit of a breakdown this week. Well, maybe more than tiny, and it was book-related. The first thing that happened is that I discovered it will be a couple of months before I can get a library card here, as I do not yet have official documentation for my new address. I was more upset than one should be to discover this, possibly due to that time of the month looming, possibly due to the comedown from months of stress, possibly due to everything being new and different. The librarian told me she couldn’t give me a card, and I was blinking back tears about it all day.

But you know me, I rallied, thinking that at least I held onto my CPL account on my Libby app, so I can get e-books, and I have hundreds of books on the shelves in my new spare room:

I cheerfully thought, well, I’ll take this opportunity to read my new copy of Lucy By The Sea, and why not reread the whole series while I’m at it? Maybe I’ll reread all of Jane Austen, in order of publication? I haven’t read my favourite Diary of a Provincial Lady for a while! Maybe I’ll read that. I was feeling very pleased with this idea, and my husband had just finished moving some furniture around in the downstairs gaming area, so I was able to access the cupboard on the TV stand. I had put a large ziploc bag full of my bookmarks in that cupboard before moving; when I opened it I made the sad discovery that the other things that were in that cupboard were still there, but my bookmarks were gone. A search of the house and all other pieces of furniture, including the garbage, was undertaken, all for naught. Everything is unpacked and the bookmarks are not here.

At this point, you’re probably thinking who cares about bookmarks? But while I have become unsentimental about many things, my bookmarks were not among them. I had handmade bookmarks from a friend’s daughter, and I would swap them out seasonally and thematically – I just got teary eyed again, thinking what am I going to do for Tiny Secret Festive Season when I don’t have my Christmas bookmarks – I had bookmarks created by and gifted to me by my yoga students as a memory of them, I had bookmarks from my days as the Book Fair Lady, and, saddest of all, I had bookmarks made by my children with markers and drawings on them. To say that I was upset by the loss of this bag is a vast understatement. I cried for hours. I cried so hard my stomach started to feel nauseous. I cried so much that my whole body ached and I felt like I had a terrible hangover.

Well. There’s no solution to this problem, except trying to practice non-attachment. Things are just things, but this is a sad thing, and in the meantime, let’s cheer ourselves up by talking about the books that got me through the week before the move up until yesterday. Let’s put the R in REM Y REM, am I right?

Moving Reading

The Sun and Her Flowers. There are some really beautiful and uplifting poems in this collection, but I think I would have liked this much more had I read it as a younger woman. Much of it deals with healing from bad relationships, and becoming stronger. It’s not my stage of life but still, I enjoy this very talented young poet.

The Story of Us. This is a sweet and very big hearted book about a Filipino woman coming to Canada as a nanny, but eventually caring for an elderly trans woman who is an Alzheimer’s patient. It’s all about family – biological and chosen – and understanding one another. The author is Canadian, which I love, and the novel’s pony of view is from that of the caregiver’s unborn child, which is very original. Some of the dialogue and prose is a bit stilted and is clearly written to make a statement and to promote the author’s agenda, which leaves me mixed. On the one hand, it is cool in that I completely support her agenda and love that books are written in a normalizing way about queer and transgender people, but from a literary standpoint, it is not my favourite. Despite that I enjoyed this very much, and found the characters to be so warm and lovely and engaging, and the relationship that developed through caregiver and patient to be incredibly heartwarming.

Romantic Comedy. Before I tell you how I loved this delightful, fun, and witty romance, a confession. I almost didn’t read this. There has been a lot of buzz around it, but I saw the author’s name and thought no thank you. In case you hadn’t noticed, at least 95% of the books I read are by female authors; it’s not that I NEVER read a male author or NEVER enjoy a male author, but it’s rare and infrequent. What can I say, I like the ladies. This is particularly true for fiction. But then I was in the library and I saw it on the New and Notable shelf; I flipped it over and saw the author’s picture – she’s a woman! Joke’s on me. Anyway, you know how you will sometimes see gorgeous movie or music star women with kind of shlubby guys (i.e., Johansson and Jost) but you do not ever see the gender flip of that? That is what this book is about. A SNL-style writer helps a male pop star with his sketches for the show, and inadvertently insults him by insinuating he would only hook up with models fifteen years his junior. They reconnect via email during the summer of 2020, and I am here for it. It’s really funny and sweet, and has some great messaging in it; the writing is top-notch and it’s just such a great romance novel! It turns out I am also here for a good pandemic side-story if it’s done well. The details about starting a relationship during the early stages of the pandemic, and what life was like (DOOMSCROLLING 4EVER) were spot on.

The Myth of Normal. Four years ago I read When The Body Says No by this author, and it was just fascinating to me, the connection between the mind and the body, the idea that mental and emotional trauma could manifest as physical illness. This book is much more of the same, delving into chronic illness as well as addiction, and the intergenerational causes of such things. It skates a very tricky line; it’s hard to write about how stress, personality traits, and traumatic or semi-traumatic experiences can lead to chronic illness without making it sound victim blaming, but the author (mostly) manages to do that. He writes with a lot of compassion about how our personalities can be shaped by adverse experiences and societal pressures, which can lead to illness or pain. It’s a fascinating book BUT warning, for anyone going through, say, a STRESSFUL PERIOD LIKE MOVING, it can be a wee bit triggering. Or, you know, if your husband has been in an incredibly stressful job for five and a half years and has multiple health issues. Also? If you are a parent, I would highly recommend skipping the chapters on parenting and how it shapes our children UNLESS you want to be haunted by the time you were so exhausted you left the baby to cry it out for a while to see if they’d fall asleep and then they DID, which apparently means the baby gave up and will be searching their whole life for someone to soothe and comfort them. Also, if you didn’t feed them on demand. Or didn’t breastfeed until they weaned themselves. Sure, societal pressures could be at play but probably you have destroyed their sense of autonomy and self-worth forever. Pardon me while I go do some breathing exercises. I kid, I kid. If you are interested in this subject, this is a very comprehensive, compassionate, and fascinating book just, maybe read with a grain of salt? Or a shaker full?

The Urgent Life. I heard this author on a podcast and I was so taken by her that I had to read her book. Um. Well? I had to check several times to see if this was actually the same person, because the book was not at all what I thought it was. I’m not saying it’s not good – it’s well-written and very interesting – but it wasn’t at all what I thought it would be about. It is a memoir about her husband dying, which I knew happened, but what I didn’t know is that they had been separated for four years at that point, they had lost a baby, and her father, a hard-core patriarch, moved in with them – while married – into their tiny New York apartment not once, but twice. Everyone in this book sounds pretty unlikeable, except for the (spoiler alert) new girlfriend who, at the end of the book, gets totally shafted. So, I don’t know what else to say. If you’re reading this, go in with different expectations than I did, I guess?

Love and Trouble. I thought I would love this. A book of essays by a forty-something woman looking back on her youth? Sign me up! But the execution and theme were so dull and repetitive, and her stories of her hyper-sexualized, wayward youth and mountains of poor decisions did not make for good reading. A couple of the essays I thought were okay, but that’s about it.

You Think It, I’ll Say It. After a slumpish couple of books, I was so happy to read this gem! You know I love a short story, and these are really great – complicated, unreliable narrators, variety of stories and settings. I’m so glad I started reading this talented author! This was so good!

Violeta. This book is the history of Chile from 1920-2020, as told by one woman. She was born in the Spanish flu epidemic of 1920, and died in the early days of the COVID pandemic of 2020. This is a translation, which might explain the awkward and stilted dialogue. It’s a very long book that drags a lot, but I’m still glad I read it as I knew very little about Chile, and I like seeing history through a human lens. Still. Long. Draggy. Be warned! This is the only book ever that I had expire on my Kobo, and I had to wait for it to come available again to finish it, which I somewhat toyed with NOT doing. It could be the move, but it was a hard one for me to get through.

Glow In The F*cking Dark. You know how I feel about the asterisk in f*cking. YOU KNOW HOW I FEEL ABOUT IT! Just SAY it or don’t, but don’t ADD THE ASTERISK! So, you know there must be a reason I overstepped my deep, deep dislike for the fuck asterisk – it’s similar to my dislike of male authors, it has to be a really good reason that I’ll read a male author, like maybe he’s David Sedaris or something – and that reason is twofold. One, I really enjoyed this woman’s first book Buy Yourself The F*cking Lilies (I KNOW), and two, I heard her speak on a podcast and discovered that her working title was simply Glow In The Dark, no F*cking involved, but her agent insisted, to the author’s dismay, that it was her “brand.” I get this. Anyway, all that said, I really did enjoy this book that is a sequel to her re-parenting Lilies book; similarly it’s a memoir mixed with self-help, and it’s very lovely and uplifting with a lot of practical advice. I also love that her epigraph was a quote from Rumi that I love: “We are stars wrapped in skin. The light you are seeking has always been within.” I love that, and that’s the theme of the book – you are a star – A FUCKING STAR, I SAID IT, NO ASTERISK – and as such, you should glow and light the way for others.

There, I’m all caught up! My boys keep telling me my bookmarks will turn up, and I want to believe this, but how is it possible when we have unpacked everything and searched everywhere? On that note, it’s time for me to put the M and Y into REM Y REM, and to wish you all a wonderful long weekend (it is the long weekend, isn’t it? Time has lost its meaning even more than before.) xo

I Am Strong, I Am Invincible, I Am Never Taking The Car In For Servicing Again

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There are some chores, or “care tasks,” that only I do around the house. For example, I and I alone obtain groceries and make dinner Every Single Day, clean the hard-water marks off the shower doors, and take the Dove soap box from the bathroom countertop and place it in the recycling when a new bar is put into the shower, no matter who puts the new bar into the shower, even though every single person walks by the recycling bin many times a day. Sometimes when I feel resentful about these little chores, I remember that there are many things that happen around the house with no intervention on my part. I don’t think that I have changed a lightbulb since the 90s, for example. The dishwasher is almost always emptied by one of my sons, sometimes very late at night when they nosing around the kitchen for a snack, but hey, I don’t have to do it. The lawn gets mowed and the sidewalks get shoveled, the gutters are cleaned, and toilet paper rolls are always replaced and, mysteriously, the old cardboard roll is recycled at least half the time, rather than left to sit on the bathroom countertop like its friend the Dove soap box.

The biggest task that I do not ever deal with, however, is vehicular maintenance. I have a mental block when it comes to cars and it is only recently that a light can come on in the car and I do NOT start breathing rapidly and blinking away tears. Between my handy younger son and my husband, the snow and all-season tires are put on, taken off, and rotated when needed, and all the maintenance is taken care of. I don’t even know how to open the hood of the car, let alone check my oil, and I do not want to learn.

About a month ago my husband took my car out and said in an alarmed way that it was overdue for an oil change. At the dealership where we bought the car in 2013, we get free oil changes for…life? I don’t know. My husband has been under a lot of stress with his job; this is nothing new, he has been under incredible stress with his job since 2018, but it has been significantly ramped up in the last few months, which is how he missed his internal alarm that somehow knows when all the cars need to get oil changes.

Well. I am woman! I am strong! I am invincible! I decided that I would call the dealership to see if we needed an appointment for an oil change, or if I could just drive through, like in the pre-Covid days. I spoke with a very nice person who looked up my car history and said that I was actually due for maintenance, and that they were booking into December, and so I scheduled an appointment for last Tuesday, December 6 at 9:00 am. I hung up feeling very proud of myself until my husband asked do we really need maintenance or were you upsold. Well. How would I know. HOW WOULD I KNOW. My feelings of self-satisfaction were immediately eclipsed by feelings of rage and resentment that this was even a question for me AFTER I CALLED THE DEALERSHIP ALL BY MYSELF BECAUSE I AM WOMAN HEAR ME ROAR.

The car WAS due for maintenance, by the way.

Here’s a funny thing about Calgary weather, for those of you who don’t know: it is extremely volatile. Temperatures can rise and fall twenty degrees in a twenty-four hour period. We can go from mild to painfully cold and back again in no time at all. It just so happened to be a very volatile week, temperature-wise, and Tuesday just happened to be the day that was marked by Extreme Cold, Snow, and Blowing Snow. Basically, a blizzard.

My younger son needed to be at school early, as his gym class was going curling, and so I dropped him off at 8:05 in time to get the bus. It is generally a twenty-minute drive to the dealership, but conditions were bad, and I thought that even if I got to the dealership before nine, I could just drop the car early. My husband thought that the appointment would be a quick one, and that I should take a book with me in case I just wanted to stay there for an hour. That sounded great to me; an uninterrupted hour of reading, while drinking probably bad coffee? Lovely.

My twenty-minute drive turned into fifty minutes of white-knuckle driving on roads that were either black ice or with lanes completely obscured by snow. There was so much morning traffic, the sun was barely coming up, and the snow was blowing, making visibility very low. By the time I got to the dealership, it was just before nine, and I was completely frazzled. I was also appreciative of the very handsome, bearded young man who checked my car in to its appointment; it is unusual for me to encounter such a person, let alone in the morning. I asked him approximately how long it would take, thinking that if it was only an hour I’d be happy to alternate looking at him and reading my book, but he said it would be three hours and he would order me an Uber.

This is where I should note that this was my first Uber ride ever, and I have joined the modern age at last. I also knew from listening to Were You Raised By Wolves that if someone else orders an Uber for you, then even the tip is taken care of, so I was doubly excited. My Uber driver was very friendly, and we ended up in a long and involved conversation about the merits of Calgary weather versus that of Winnipeg, where he originally hailed from, as well as crime rates, housing prices, and gangs. The conversation got so involved that he missed my exit, which, you guys, maybe I need to talk less? I am aware that I am the architect of my own problems, like my ninety-minute dental appointments and, apparently, Uber drivers missing turnoffs. With the conditions, it was not easy to adjust for the wrong turn, but eventually I did make it home, close to ten o’clock.

I quickly put on all the layers to walk Rex, thinking I only had a couple of hours to do that and then shower before I would have to head out again. I zoomed around, and then waited. And waited. Three hours became four, and then five, at which point I called the dealership and they said it was still in the shop. By this time my older son was home and offered to drive me when I needed it, rather than taking an Uber. Possibly he worried that if I took another Uber, I would end up chatting too much and would never make it to the dealership. I don’t know. I waited.

Finally, nearly seven hours after dropping off the car, my son came into the living room, texting. Dad says it’s time for us to go now. Wait, what. The dealership did not call me, but instead called my husband, to tell him that the car needed brake pads along with something else, you know what, I have no idea what it was. It was probably better that they called him but still I felt slighted. What happened to being woman and hearing me roar? Then, my husband just texted my SON to tell him to take me to the dealership, and no one thought to text ME. Well, anyway, after a day of waiting around, I was happy to finally have some closure, and we went for another hair-raising drive on icy, snow-covered roads with little visibility, and now it was getting dark, too.

By the time we got there, it was well after four o’clock, and I was hoping to get home before the sun went down completely. I found my car in the lot, only to discover that it had been in the very warm shop and then taken out into the minus 23 degree weather, which meant that the windows were all completely frosted over ON THE INSIDE. Have you ever tried to scrape windows from the inside, with a long-handled scraper that is curved FOR USE ON THE OUTSIDE? It was not easy. Between my near-useless scraping, trying not to take out my own eye with the end of the snow brush, and the defrost on high, I finally had enough visibility to get back on the road, fifteen minutes later. By this point, the sunset had happened, and I was driving in the dark, in the blowing snow, on ice and in rush-hour traffic.

The sole upside was that by the time I was near home, my son was almost done wrestling practice, so I swung by the school to pick him up. While I waited, I stared out the window, completely exhausted, and vowed to never do another car maintenance thing ever again. I can roar in other ways. Maybe I’ll change a lightbulb.

Weekly Reading

Phosphorescence. After a prolonged illness and several surgeries, the author of this incredibly interesting and well-researched book started to consider phosphorescence, or the things that make the world light up. Including ourselves, from within. She discusses modern lives and the lack of nature, how paying attention to life brings joy, and introduces the concept of freudenfruede, the idea that others’ successes bring us personal happiness – the opposite of schadenfreude. As Moira from Schitts’ Creek says, when one of us shines, we all shine. Also, note for Erin (HI ERIN) there is a Yiddish word, nachas, which indicates pride in someone else’s accomplishments, usually our children. I really liked that part; there is enough for all of us, success isn’t part of a finite pie, and we can derive joy from others’ happiness. We are not in a zero-sum game, here.

One thing I did not like in this book was the author’s discussion about complaining about small problems in our lives, and how we should never do it. I get it. When you are near-death, or are experiencing a devastating illness and day-to-day agonizing pain, I am sure you would welcome all the little daily irritants as just proof that you’re alive. Nevertheless I don’t think it’s healthy to say that no one should complain ever because that seems like a recipe for ulcers and mental illness. Of course, this is coming from a person who just wrote 1500 words about taking her car in for servicing. STILL. A paper cut isn’t a broken leg, but it still hurts, and we can acknowledge that. Taking a car in for servicing during a blizzard isn’t mourning the loss of a loved one, but we can still talk about it.

Other than that, the book really was lovely. As a memoir, well, I’d say only about a third at most can be considered memoir, but it’s a fascinating look at faith, grace, justice, and the pursuit of silence. 

This Time Tomorrow.
If you know how I feel about time travel as a literary device and concept (I loathe it) you might be surprised that I picked this book up at all, as the premise is a woman travelling from her 40th birthday to her 16th, and back again. I really like the author so I read it. I still don’t like time travel but I did enjoy this book despite that. It’s thought provoking in that the trajectory of our lives can change so easily. I often think, if I had done this instead of that, would I still be here? It’s interesting to think of all the little paths that we choose and don’t choose, and how they create our lives.

Saturday was our two month Rex-aversary, and it’s hard to remember what it was like without him! Well, my reading glasses didn’t constantly get wagged off the coffee table, I guess that was what it was like. I hope you all have a cozy week – with no vehicular issues! – with lots of treats and other lovely things. xo

Doing The Wave; 107 Weeks In

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“You and your waving.” My husband said to me on our walk one day, as I waved enthusiastically at a person across the street, only to realize that I had no idea who that person was. This happens more often than you might think; then again, if you know me at all, you would probably not be surprised at the frequency at which it happens.

I am a waver, and I like to greet or acknowledge people, even when I don’t know them. If I pass someone on the sidewalk, at the very least I will nod and smile. More likely, I will give a nod, smile, and a subdued Hand Up Half Wave:

Sometimes I will add the Finger Wiggle, which, if I’m wearing mittens, looks the same as the Hand Up Half Wave, but the feeling is there:

However, if I see someone I know – or I think it’s someone I know – I give a much more active and enthusiastic wave:

This is subdued considering that internally, when I see a friend, I feel like this:

I may or may not have the reputation of being the Crazy Friendly Lady in the neighbourhood, but I embrace my role as Neighbourhood Greeter.

Last week, Barkley and I had just gotten back from our walk, and I was taking advantage of the thaw to clean up the backyard of Barkley-related detritus, when I heard a cheerful “Hello there!” I looked up and saw my new next-door neighbour over the fence. “Oh, hi!” I said and waved happily, realizing at the last minute what was in my hand.

I have waved a dog waste bag at people on the street more times than I can count, while on Barkley walks, but always the bag is CLOSED. When my new neighbour greeted me, I was mid-pickup, my hand was ensconced in the bag and it was full, FULL, people, of dog waste and that is what I waved at him. As I realized what I was doing, I slowly dropped my hand and smiled, asking him how his reno was going.

If he was offended by the view inside a dog waste bag, he didn’t show it; instead he invited me to come and see what was happening. I had never been inside that house before; it was like being inside my own house, but taken down to the studs. I like to think of the neighbourhood, which was established in the early 1960s, and all the original owners choosing the little bungalow layout that suited them best.

There are still a few original owners on our street; Mrs G, next door, is one of them, and Mr. and Mrs. C, down the street. I like to think about all the changes they have seen in sixty years; I have seen a lot in 22 years. I’ve seen a lot in two years, with all my extensive neighbourhood walks, with and without Barkley.

Barkley is going in to get his spring haircut this week (fur cut?) and I am dreading it, not because of the actual grooming – he loves our local groomer – but because of the inevitable comments from strangers that ensue. When he’s really fluffy – as he is now – his lump is hardly discernable, but that will certainly change this week.

I like to think the best of people, and I like to think that people mean well, and they are just concerned for his well-being, but reactions from strangers about his very large lump are hurtful reminders to me that my dog is at the end of his life, and I don’t feel like I need any more reminders. “What IS that?” people will ask, or “Is that a lump on his side?” which is, in my opinion, lacking in intelligence as we all have eyes and we can see that there is, indeed, a large lump on his side. Sometimes I will get a “Can’t you do anything about that?” which also strikes me as unkind, as well as stupid, because if the benefits of removing it exceeded the costs to his well-being, well, I would.

Honestly, it’s enough to make me want to give up my Friendly Neighbour persona.

It’s gotten to the point that I got teary-eyed with gratitude when I saw a lady on our street, who looked at Barkley’s lump, and merely said “He’s still getting around, isn’t he!” I almost cried. He IS still getting around, thank you, thank you.

I was speaking to the groomer about this, as I was arranging his upcoming appointment. The groomer is a person who I would describe as being exactly suited to her job, in every way. She is not, however, a People Person. She is a tall, sturdy, strong woman with a lot of tattoos and who gives off a vibe of Tolerating Dog Owners But Barely. I like her a lot.

Anyway, she is great with Barkley, and I mentioned my dread at having his lump exposed to the world, and the inevitable slew of comments that will follow in the weeks to come. She paused for a moment and said to me “Tell you what I would do. Do you want my advice?” I said of course I did, to which she responded “You tell those people to mind their own fucking business, that’s what.” I started laughing and she said, “I’m serious! Tell them to fuck right off and mind their own business.” After that she said, in a world-weary way, “GOD, I hate people.”

I laughed and laughed, imagining myself responding in this way. That would destroy my Friendly Neighbourhood Lady persona entirely. I would NEVER, but I am happy to have such commiseration, and in the meantime, I will tell them to fuck right off and mind their own business in spirit.

Pandemic Reading

Wish You Were Here. Ugh, this is on me. It is my own damn fault. I do not like this author at all – god knows, I have tried. I find her writing to be contrived, cliched, gimmicky, and heavy-handed. So WHY did I think it was a good idea to pick up this book that IS ABOUT THE EARLY DAYS OF THE PANDEMIC? I will never know. “You did this to yourself,” I said to myself throughout the book. Anyway. I very much disliked it.

The Souvenir Museum. This was a well-written and clever collection of short stories. The settings were all different, but some of the characters intersected or appeared in multiple stories, which I like. All in all enjoyable.

The Reading List. This is a very sweet and moving story about an unlikely friendship, based on a found list of books to read, all of which are books I personally have read and loved. It works with the theme of family, born and chosen, friendship, the importance of community, and the role of books and libraries in our lives. If you are a library and book lover, then you might love this as much as I did. But I’m going to give a huge caveat here: TRIGGER WARNING. There is a sad subplot that I know for a fact will be very upsetting and triggering to a couple of my readers in particular, and if you think that might be you, please please please message me before you read this book. I am not going to tell you what the trigger is because it is a spoiler; instead, message me.

Happy April everyone! I hope spring is springing where you are. xo

A January Roller Coaster; Ninety-Eight Weeks In

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Tomorrow is February! I simultaneously feel like it’s February, whee, already! and also that New Year’s was several months ago. I’m looking at the calendar, and the first of the month, with the taking down of the tree and the Fresh Start of New Year’s, feels like a fuzzy date eons ago. February! Is tomorrow! The month of hearts and chocolates, and, in two weeks tomorrow, the month of DEEPLY DISCOUNTED hearts and chocolates! I have already sourced myself some Lindor strawberry chocolates, and I have plans for my heart-shaped cake and cookies, AND we are having dinner guests this weekend, for which I have planned a Mexican Theme, given our actual trip to Mexico in March is no more, for The Usual Pandemic Reasons, Not That I’m Sad About It But We Would Have Celebrated Our 20th Anniversary And My Son’s 18th Birthday Whilst There. Anyway.

Hidey-ho Neighbourino

We are getting new neighbours, and this is me:

A few weeks ago, a For Sale sign went up on our next-door neighbour’s lawn, and not only did it sell within 24 hours, but there was a BIDDING WAR. It must be the incredible neighbours, no?

I met my new neighbour-to-be a few days ago and he seems incredibly pleasant, which is always nice. I am friendly with all my neighbours, and good friends with a few of them. Our former next-door neighbours were nice people; we lived next to each other for 21 years, and were friendly but not friends. They would very kindly purchase big buckets of candy popcorn for the boys every Halloween, and we always exchanged pleasantries with them in passing. They kept to themselves mainly, so they weren’t the kind of neighbours who would have extra keys or anything, but we had a very cordial relationship.

So I was surprised to see the For Sale sign, and even more surprised to discover that the house was vacant when it went up for sale: a) they didn’t tell us they were moving, and b) when did they move? I am home ALL THE TIME and I never once saw a moving truck or anything that would indicate that they were leaving. I mean, you’d think I’d have seen someone moving a couch or boxes or something. Did they move on Christmas Day?

These were the neighbours who have had Hot Rod the Plumber many times over the past few months, so perhaps it was in preparation for their Stealthy Big Move.

Wisdom from my teabag.

What’s The Over-Under On This

The other day Stephany (HI STEPHANY) posted about being an over-or-under-buyer, and it is clear that I have over-buying tendencies, which have been vastly exacerbated by the pandemic. These tendencies really flared up through 2020, and I tamped them down somewhat in 2021, and I have just had another round that has ended with OMG Nicole Please Stop Buying This.

Now, in my defense, nothing goes bad in this house, in terms of food. With the exception of the occasional mushy mini cucumber, I never throw anything out. This is a combination of meal planning, targeted grocery shopping for those meals, and having two teen boys who will hoover anything down that is edible and in the house. I always have backups in the pantry of household staples: flour and oils, nut butters and baking items, toilet paper and soap and toothpaste. If the backup comes into use, then I buy another backup. It gives me an enormous amount of comfort to know that if we run out of an item on the main floor, there is a backup in the pantry downstairs.

Non-dairy milk is a staple for me.

From 2012-2021, I used exclusively almond milk for myself – the guys happily use dairy – but in 2021 I discovered macadamia nut milk, and I never looked back. It’s creamy, it’s delicious, and buy it by the case at Costco. I go through about a case every two weeks, what with smoothies and all, and since I am at Costco every two weeks, I generally have TWO cases in my pantry at any given time. You know, just in case there’s a delay in my Costco shopping. And then it was December, and I bought an extra case, and by the time my first Costco trip of 2022 came around, I had THREE cases in my pantry.

There was, during that first Costco trip of 2022, no macadamia nut milk.

Now, the rational part of me said that I had three cases at home, and there was certainly no shortage of different non-dairy milks in the city. We are so used to abundance that it is unsettling to not have exactly what we want exactly when we want it but there is still An Abundance of Food. My last Superstore trip showed very few varieties of eggs, for example, but there were still eggs. My favourite hippie crunchy natural peanut butter has been out of stock for weeks but there is still the store brand hippie crunchy natural peanut butter. There was no – oh my god, I cannot believe how spoiled I am – organic spinach for my smoothies, but there was plenty of spinach. The frozen fruit section is pretty sparse but there are still non-frozen fruits. This is not Ceausescu’s Romania where people are lining up to get bread. We have plenty of everything.

And yet, I pushed the Panic At The Disco button, about the macadamia nut milk. I thought, well, if it’s not available, maybe I can find another kind of creamy non-dairy-non-almond milk. The next week at Superstore I bought two different brands of cashew milk and an oat milk, just to try, just in case, what if there is no macadamia nut milk ever, what if, what if.

And here I will interject to say that this is all ridiculous, and also back in 2012 when I first went non-dairy, the options were almond or soy; those were my choices, along with the saddest item ever, known as rice milk. Now there are so many different kinds and brands and really, I want to punch myself in the face at my reaction to this blip in the macadamia nut milk supply.

Very long and kind of boring story short, the next time I went to Costco, there was a big display of macadamia nut milk, and I bought two cases, and I now have four full and one partial case, along with cashew and oat milk, and this is ridiculous, and I am spoiled. Imagine! Imagine transporting the Ingalls family, or a Victorian, to our modern life. Wait, you can eat more than a single potato and a slice of bread in a day? Vegetables and fruit are available to you in the winter?

All of which is to say, on my next grocery trip my mantra will be You do not need any more non-dairy milk, for the love of god, Nicole, do not buy any more non-dairy milk. I hope my mantra holds. I have officially gone from Prudent Backup Buyer to Slippery Slope Towards Insane Hoarder.

Mousetastrophe

Speaking of hardships, we had a mouse in the house last week; this is a thing that happens every three to five years, and every single time it happens I feel like I might die. It’s not enough that we are in a global pandemic, now I have to think about the Hanta virus? Not to mention the possibility of a MOUSE near our FOOD. The FOOD that we EAT. From the moment I discovered mouse droppings underneath the kitchen sink to the moment said mouse was summarily removed from the premises, I felt like a haunted shell of a woman. My younger son strolled into the kitchen to find me sweeping out the droppings and spraying down the kitchen sink cupboard with non-hippie super-chemical cleaning spray, and asked what was going on. I told him, in that kind of eerily calm voice that means I am having a breakdown, that there was a mouse in the house. “I see,” he said, “It is going to be okay, Mom. It’s going to be okay.” Then he turned and went to find the traps.

It turns out that in the times of adversity, I can be sanguine and can face almost everything with good cheer and a Can-Do Attitude, but a mouse in my kitchen is One Toke Over The Line, Sweet Jesus. Global pandemic? We can do this. Husband working from home, forever? It’s fine. My kids constantly facing cancellations and disappointment? It’s making us stronger and more resilient and flexible. Mouse in the house? I AM GOING TO DIE. Later, over dinner, I suddenly put my head in my hands and said I had a bad feeling. There was no noise. I just, like Lawrence in Office Space, had a feeling. The boys scurried over to the cupboard, and my older son announced, “We got him!” at which point I screamed frantically and ran from the room.

Later, the boys would tell me I reacted like a contestant on The Price is Right, but with less happiness and high-fiving.

Pandemic Reading

Black Girls Must Die Exhausted. I really loved this book; I was hooked from the first page and became completely invested in the characters. Tabitha is 33 and the trajectory of her life is perfect; she has checked all the boxes she wanted to check…until some medical news comes her way, derailing her plans. This book is so much more than the sum of its parts: important social issues in an incredibly readable and entertaining book. It is a book that normalizes Black culture and I think that is a really important thing: the tendency is to make white the default. It’s enlightening and joyful, as well as a thought-provoking book. I just saw that this author has another book coming soon, I will be reading it for sure. 

The Art of Travel. Okay, first, a digression. I put this on hold over a year ago; it is the only copy in the library system, and I was fifth in the queue. The rule is that books cannot be renewed if there is a hold on them, and so the reader has three weeks before returning. Let’s do the simple math: five people, three weeks, fifteen weeks. Add in a couple of days of processing and transit, and we will say that I should have expected to read this about four and a half months after putting it on hold. It was over a year! The library eliminated late fees, which in general I think is a good thing, except that it can lead to Very Bad Behaviour by patrons who just don’t bring the book back. I was number ONE in the queue for over two months. WHO DOES THAT.

Anyway. It’s not a complaint, exactly, as I had more than enough to read over the past year. It’s more of an observation, and slight admonishment. We are living in a society!

Back to the book. It’s an interesting, and at times, delightful little book about travelling, and the search for happiness, and the theme is that wherever you go, there you are. We tend to idealize vacations, thinking our troubles will melt away with sunshine, palm trees, and margaritas, but honestly, if we are unhappy in life, a change of scenery MAY not be the ticket. The author writes about different places and brings in 19th century artists, writers, and philosophers (ALL MEN, OF COURSE), which makes this a really unique and interesting read. Even though Flaubert sounded like a real ass.

The Most Precious Substance On Earth. This is exactly the kind of book I love: it follows a woman from her teen years to adulthood, and it’s an “ordinary is extraordinary, day-to-day life” book. But. It’s a Big Downer of a book, I felt, and there is a Huge Upsetting Disturbing Occurrence in the first little bit that is written so casually and calmly that I thought at first that it didn’t really happen. Content warning for parents of girls, specifically teen girls. You may not want to read this. It’s touching and sad and also funny and smart. I’m glad I read it but be aware that at times it is a hard read.

Happy End of January, everyone! The month that seemed to be months-long is at its end! How was your January? xo

Not Okay, But Okay; Eighty-One Weeks In

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I’m okay. Everything in my life is fundamentally okay – good, even – and my little boat in this tsunami of a storm is strong and well-equipped. EVERYTHING IS FINE except everything isn’t fine? I know I’m not alone here. The other day Swistle (HI SWISTLE) mentioned the strong desire to lie down on the industrial carpet at her place of work and just…stay there and I felt like, girl, same. I was kneeling down to put away some of the hundreds of dollars worth of groceries from Costco and Superstore, and I just stayed there. For a long time I found myself kneeling in front of the low shelf in the pantry, motionless.

Everything is fine! But it isn’t, you know. I am SO SICK of writing about it but Covid cases are, again, through the roof. Every single day, every SINGLE DAY the new case count is enormous, the death count is shocking and saddening, and the strain on the health care system is unbelievable. My personal risk and that of my immediate family is low, it’s true, we are vaxxed and masked and we follow health protocols, but my nieces are too young to be vaccinated, and I have low-level anxiety about someone in my family needing urgent, non-Covid-related health care and not being able to receive it. NO ONE GET SICK, OKAY? NO ONE GET IN AN ACCIDENT OR ANYTHING. I mean, that’s how I feel in general, no one wants a medical emergency or an accident, but these things happen, and I feel like the universal health care safety net I have relied on my whole life is unravelling. Meanwhile, this week I have a routine mammogram.

My children are on the cusp of adulthood and although they still require support and guidance, they are on their own journeys and their own paths and I just have to let that go. The intensive part of motherhood is over, that chapter of my life is gone, and did I do okay? Who knows? I think I did, but who really can tell. Also, and this is probably a gender-construct, but I am finding that as the boys get older, my role in their life becomes more and more on the sidelines – which is great, we want our little birds to fly, we want them to embark on their own journeys in life and seek their fortunes as they do in fairy tales, but without the fairy tale death and despair – but their father’s role becomes more like that of a good buddy. Has anyone else felt that way? The three of them love doing things together that don’t include me – boys’ camping trips! Weight lifting! Watching wrestling! – and that’s okay, it really is, because I don’t really want my sons to be the kind of adult men whose “best friend is their mom” but still. It’s like I now have a minor role in the ensemble where I used to be the star. Also? I am an intelligent and highly-educated woman and the vast majority of my week is spent in food preparation, grocery shopping, and other household drudgery.

Barkley is in a decline. He is not yet in any pain that I can see, he is still eating and wagging and happy to go for our slow-boat-to-nowhere walks. But he’s also lived longer than I thought he would when he was diagnosed with cancer, he’s pretty much deaf now, and sometimes he has trouble getting up the three steps into the house. Every single day a well-meaning person stops me to ask about his lump, which then often devolves into a long story about “dogs they have known that have died of cancer” and, you know what, I don’t need those stories.

I had a lovely visit with some friends a couple of weeks ago, and I said that one of the hardest things for me has been giving up my idealism about the world. Back in the spring of 2020, I felt like THIS would be the event that brings us all together in humanity, we would all join metaphorical hands and overcome. I would walk down the street and see the window art that people had made to keep spirits up. And the world came together as the people stayed apart said one sign, decorated with children’s art. And now look at what we’ve become. My friend agreed and said if a global pandemic didn’t do it, I guess we have to wait for aliens to land and take over the world which only reminds me of Kent Brockman and the ants, which means humanity will be divided forever and ever, amen.

Anyway. It’s just life right now, and in the meantime these are the things that have been helping cheer and soothe me:

  1. Girly-girl self care: I had a pedicure last week and tomorrow I go for body sugaring, and although the audience for these things is limited, it’s like wearing pretty underwear: it’s not about the audience, it’s about ME, and I like these things.
  2. Kondo-ing social media: I deleted the twitter app off my phone months ago but I still sometimes would look at twitter on my desktop, and I would end up feeling sad and angry. I deleted my account altogether as it felt like time to Marie Kondo my social media: if it’s not sparking joy, it’s out. The moment I deleted it I felt relief.
  3. Eating: It’s Macintosh Apple Season, which is the greatest of all Apple Seasons, and so I have been mowing through pounds of them. It’s also Pear Season, which is second only to Macintosh Apple Season. Lest you think I’m being an obnoxious, Fruit-is-Nature’s-Candy person (although, let’s face it, I kind of am), yesterday I made peanut butter banana “nice cream,” heavy on the Reece’s Pieces and chocolate swirl.
  4. Kettle corn and Ted Lasso: Weekend evenings my husband and I have been watching Ted Lasso and eating popcorn, both of which are very cheering. Well, except for the “Coach Beard On The Town” episode we watched a few weeks ago, wherein I spent the whole time thinking how much longer is left of this stupid episode instead of my usual omg I love this show. If you know, you know. Anyway, kettle corn.
  5. Loud piano playing: I unearthed my old photocopied sheet music of Introduction and Fugato and if ever there was a song that gets the feelings out, this is it. SO CRASHY. I played this constantly as an angsty teen and the fingers have memory because it’s all come back to me.Listen
  6. Listen while you work: I have found that listening to podcasts while doing mind-numbing household drudge chores, or slowly walking Barkley, has been immensely fun. I never thought I’d be a podcast person, but here I am. If you’re interested, my number one favourite is You’re Wrong About.
  7. God bless Mother Nature, she’s a middle-aged woman too: The sunrises lately have been incredibly beautiful, and although many trees are now naked, there have been some absolutely beautiful days with blue skies and fall colours.

Pandemic Reading

Of course, nothing helps me so much as diving into a good book. I am currently doing a very special and excellent beta read, but I had time for a couple of classic rereads this week.

Northanger Abbey. It had been at least twenty years since I read this, and I forgot what an absolute delight it is! It is so witty and lovely, following sweet, guileless Catherine and her adventures in Bath, with the people she meets – both lovely and terrible, as is de riguer in Austen – complete with some some delightful misunderstandings. There’s something so soothing about a book that ends happily ever after.

Frankenstein. I decided to kick off spooky season with something I haven’t read since…English 231, circa 1994? Um. I don’t remember my 1994 impressions but this time around? I did not like it. I’m always so incredulous when it comes to sci-fi-ish books (how can the creature possibly have learned so much in such a short amount of time, how did he actually create a sentient being, do you even know how complex the brain is, if Frankenstein was worried about making a female because they would reproduce, couldn’t he have figured out the reproductive system and made them sterile, yes I know this was written in 1818 and medical information then was not medical information now) which makes reading them a real problem for me – I cannot suspend my disbelief. That’s on me. But also? The real monster is Frankenstein, not his creation. I mean, he makes a creature out of old corpses that he steals, and then is shocked by his ugly it is? Come on, buddy. Did you not think this through?? Take responsibility for your actions, Frankenstein. The poor creature just wants to be loved and instead, you just LEAVE. Because he’s ugly. I mean. What an asshole. You created something that is doomed to always be alone and shunned by the world due to his appearance, and then you’re surprised it went wrong? Yeesh.

Take care of yourselves, friends. It’s been a long haul, but we really are in it together. xo