Category Archives: Books

Unwitting Road Race Participation

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Now that it is cooler in the mornings, and I don’t worry about Rex’s paws on hot sidewalks, I have been adding “urban” walks back into my weekly routine. I say “urban” because although the routes follow sidewalks and streets, we pass fields of cows and horses, flower farms, beaches, and the Country Club at which Rex is periodically boarded. Last Sunday we were taking such a route, a loop of 7 kilometres, when we came across a large amount of backed up traffic. I thought it was a construction delay, but no. As I approached the intersection it became clear that there was some kind of road race going on, and traffic was stopped to allow a seemingly endless amount of runners to pass.

This is my biggest grievance with this city: the lack of signage for roadblocks and sidewalk closures. I cannot count how many times I have been out walking and suddenly, without warning, the sidewalk would be ripped up or otherwise blocked off, leaving me with two suboptimal options: doubling back for blocks until I found a crosswalk, or jaywalking. Would it kill them to put up a sign? On this day, there were no markers indicating a running route, merely neon-clad people with stop signs at various intersections, gesturing that-a-way. In fact, not all roads were blocked off and it was apparent that the race itself was taking place on the sidewalks and bike lanes; vehicles were driving on the roads with the runners, but of course, were blocked from driving through the runners.

I witnessed a wild case of road rage, wherein a truck tried to turn right. He had been driving on the road with the runners, but was waiting for a gap in the crowd of runners to turn, at which point he would no longer be in the running route. He started to turn when there was a gap. I suppose he would have made it just fine, without, you know, mowing anyone over, but one of the race workers ran up and started hitting the slow-moving truck with his stop sign. The truck, unbelievably, kept going while the neon-clad man shrieked and pummelled his truck. How the fuck am I going to get to work? the driver of the truck screamed back at the neon-clad man. It was upsetting but also? Some signage to say that the road would not be passable would be nice. An ounce of prevention, etcetera. We do not condone road rage here at the Boyhouse, but I was reminded of one of my former bosses, who told me sometimes he really could understand Michael Douglas’s character in Falling Down.

As it was, I was standing there, unable to cross the street, wondering what to do. I was not the only confused pedestrian: there were many walking on the other, non-running side of the street. I desperately wanted to join them, but that would involve crossing through the flood of runners and also Frogger-ing through moving cars. I neither wanted to get run over nor pummelled with a stop sign. Rex was getting more and more excited with the crowd of runners and cheering people. Let me tell you something about Rex: he is a very good dog, he is well-behaved and affectionate, he listens and understands when I talk to him. However. When he gets excited, he barks. He does not bark when a stranger enters our home, but a friend? Bark bark bark. He’s the world’s worst guard dog. He is also huge, and so his bark is loud and deep and non-dog people can be unsettled by this. I suppose I could have turned around and retraced the way I came, but I was more than halfway by that point, and I didn’t want to add an extra three kilometres to our walk. I made a choice, and I went with it. Since I couldn’t cross the street safely, I short-leashed barking Rex and started to walk against the flow of runners, keeping as far out of the way as I could. I thought if I could just get past this mass of people, I could zip across the street and be out of the crowd. Optimism! It’s my downfall.

If the beach was the sidewalk and the Canada geese were runners, you can imagine what I was facing.

Unfortunately for me, as soon as I made this decision, the 2:00 pacemaker ran by (was it a half marathon? I still don’t know because THERE WAS NO SIGNAGE), and with him was a mass of people. Now we were fully in the crowd, but going the other direction. As the bystanders cheered, so did Rex. Bark bark bark. In this grim way we walked another block and a half, which was the longest block and a half of my life. I saw a small gap in the runners AND the vehicle traffic, and I immediately seized the day and my chance. I ran across the street and broke free of the crowd. Relieved, I thought I could wind my way down to Lakeshore Road and from there make my way back to the car.

See a gap, seize the gap.

What a great plan! Except that by the time I got to Lakeshore, it became apparent that it too was part of the race route, except now we were trapped walking WITH the flow of runners. Happily, these were the super-fast runners – the Catrinas, if you will (HI CATRINA) – and so they were few and far between. Unhappily, as they passed us at their high speeds, Rex got excited with the thought of running! With people! And so again I short-leashed him and tried my best to keep out of the way. Awww cute dog! the runners said as they passed. I smiled weakly. Rex barked.

Finally, I could see more neon-clad people up ahead, directing the runners to turn left. Traffic, again, was backed up massively. Now I had a plan! I could walk past the turnoff and keep going straight. I would be free! Hopefully no vehicles would angrily u-turn onto the sidewalk and run me over, given that traffic was backed up as far as the eye could see, but I could find my way back to the car. Eventually.

By this time, Rex had calmed down. He wasn’t trying to run. He wasn’t barking. Few people were running past us now, similar to the number of people who would run past us on a normal, non-chaotic day. We approached the corner where the runners were turning left. I could taste the finish line, as it were. Not the literal finish line – who knew where THAT would be – but I would be out of this chaos. And as I approached the turnoff, I heard claps and cheering and you can do it! type commentary.

But there was no one around me.

I looked around. The bystanders were cheering for me! I smiled a little sheepishly. I’m not…I’m not in this race? I said, which felt like a statement of the obvious, to which a woman replied We know. We just like your dog. Rex barked.

Weekly Reading

American Fantasy. I wasn’t prepared for a book about middle-aged ladies on a booze cruise that features a middle-aged boy band loosely based on the New Kids on the Block to be a moving statement on midlife reinvention and revival, but here we are. It took me about fifty pages to really get into this book, because there are so many characters and it was hard to keep track of who’s who. But once it got going, it really captivated me. I was never a NKOTB fan even though I was exactly the right age, but I knew a lot of girls who were, and this felt like a peek into crazed fandom. It also felt so resonant, the musings of middle age and what it is like to be in your fifties. It did not make me want to go on a cruise, let alone a musical cruise, but it made me smile and also think a lot about the little gifts that life gives us.

Clutch. This really seemed like a book I would love – five women navigating friendships, relationships, careers, and motherhood. But the truth is that I should have DNF’d it. I should have known after the first few chapters, when the women take mushrooms in chocolate form and then go shopping, that this book was not for me. And yet for some ungodly reason I pushed through. I found it incredibly dull and tedious, with excessive detail and telling, not showing, with no nuance or emotion. I did not care about a single character except for a horrifying scene involving dogs. I cared about the dogs. The rest of this was a total slog and I wish I hadn’t wasted my time. Ah well, onward and upward.

Limelight. I really enjoyed this author’s The Sweet Spot, so I thought I’d check out her back catalogue. This book is about a woman who moves with her family from Dallas to NYC, and through a series of events, becomes a personal assistant to an absolutely odious teenage pop star, with the job to get him ready for his Broadway debut. It turns out that I really don’t like reading about odious teenage pop stars, so this book wasn’t a win for me by any stretch. However, I really do love Poeppel’s writing style, so I am going to try again with another of her books. The writing style was what kept me going, despite disliking the story.

Happy October, friends! I realized, in preparing to do another Ask Me Anything, that I have not answered a question from the last one, ten months ago. Whoops! That will be for next week, and apologies to my friend and one of my longest-term readers, Steph (HI STEPH). In the meantime, don’t forget about Elisabeth’s walking club, the CBWC (HI ELISABETH) and perhaps you too can become an unwitting participant in a road race. xo

Tent Poles Of Life

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Last week I listened to a podcast on the case against convenience and efficiency in our modern life, and it was fascinating. Who DOES benefit from people being more “efficient” with their time? If we can get lunch delivered right to our offices, is that really better than walking to go pick it up? Who benefits? It’s not us, the people working through lunch. There is always a cost to convenience, and someone is paying. Sometimes it’s all of us, from an environmental standpoint, sometimes it is a workforce in poor conditions, sometimes it is through loss of personal security and identity. It has been many years since I have worked in an office, but this still resonated with me deeply, particularly the comment that we are all trying to save time, but what are we saving time for?

It’s a good question. Some longtime friends visited us this week, and we were talking about their upcoming retirements. I’m not sure if I can claim that I am retired since I’ve worked only part-time at most since March 2004, but my husband thinks that the key to a happy retirement is to become time-inefficient. This doesn’t mean that he’s lazy or unproductive, but instead it means that he doesn’t rush to cram everything into every possible moment of the day. His workouts are no longer a rushed hour before leaving for the office, but a whole-morning affair, complete with stretching and meditation. Yard work is no longer crammed into the few weekend hours that weather would allow, which is a good thing, since we have so much more yard here than we did in Calgary. Life is more relaxed and happier, particularly since there are no longer insane demands on him, like meetings at 10:00 on Easter morning, as an example.

How we spend our days is how we spend our lives, which is a sentiment I both love and also feel uncomfortable with, given that I spent at least five hours grocery shopping, driving to and from grocery stores, and putting away all the groceries this week. Is my life just groceries now? I suppose there are worse ways to spend my one wild and precious life.

One fun thing I spent time doing this week was make a double batch of cupcakes for my friend Sammi’s birthday (HI SAMMI). There was a big party for her, which was delightful. Happy birthday to my beautiful Sammi!

Speaking of friends and ways we spend our time, my friend Elisabeth (HI ELISABETH) is hosting her semi-annual walking club. It’s my time to shine! I am the QUEEN of the daily walk; I haven’t missed one since March 2020, and before that, I walked probably 99% of the days since Barkley came into our lives in September 2008. If my day is a tent, metaphorically speaking, then my daily walk is one of the tent poles adding structure to my life. It’s a time for moving meditation and podcast listening, gentle exercise and fresh air, enjoying being outside and the beauties of nature, such as this sight from last week.

Free candy! Hold me back!

Another tent pole in my daily life, for half the year at least, is the garden. At the party on Saturday, a friend’s husband asked me how my summer was. Great! I gardened all the time! I answered, garnering a puzzled and somewhat pitying look. Well, I love it, but garden season is coming to a close and I’m going to have to figure out what I did for all those hours in previous offseasons. Oh right, I wrote a book.

As will be obvious from my Favourite Things post last week, an important tent pole is my daily shower, makeup, and hair routine, together with, at the end of the day, my makeup removal, cream application, and dental hygiene routine. These are both very vital parts of my day, as in I cannot imagine my day without them. How would I function?

I saw something several months ago that I have thought of nearly every day since. A fairly well-known Canadian writer had posted a photo of herself in a t-shirt with something witty on it, and that was the point of the post. However. I cannot remember at all what the t-shirt said because the side note of the photo was that the writer was wearing two day old makeup. I cannot get over this. I have to remind myself that the world is a vast tapestry and we are not identical robots. Still. It’s hard for me to fathom not showering daily, let alone going TWO days shower-less, short of extreme illness, surgery recovery, or camping. It is harder still to imagine going two days without washing one’s face. What would her pillowcase look like? What does her skin look like? How does one have eye makeup on for two days without it devolving into raccoon eyes? WHAT KIND OF MAGIC MAKEUP IS THIS?

Well. As I said, we are all different and have different priorities and ways in which we choose to spend our time. I am comfortable with the tent poles that give structure to my days, and therefore, my life. Well, mostly. I would prefer to spend less time vacuuming the floor, which is a tedious tent pole of my day, but that’s the tradeoff for having this guy in my life.

Weekly Reading

Reading is, of course, an important part of my day, and I finished two very good books this week.

Big Little Lies. I first read this in 2017, but decided to reread in preparation for the newly released Big Little Truths, for which I am in the library queue. The queue is pretty long, so hopefully I won’t forget everything by the time my turn comes. Anyway. Rereading this catapulted me back into the days when my kids were in elementary school: the fundraising for Smart Boards, the mom cliques, the playground gossip. This is such a propulsive, funny, and very thoughtful read about a very serious subject: domestic abuse. Moriarty is an excellent writer, and I have a little six-degree connection – a woman in our Morocco tour group taught math to her daughter! I felt starstruck just knowing that! Also, Rex would like you to know that he’s not telling any lies, big or little.

Tunnel 29. Big thanks to blog reader Allison R (HI ALLISON R) for telling me about this excellent nonfiction book that reads like a novel! It details the creation of a tunnel underneath the Berlin Wall through which 29 people escaped East Berlin, but more than that, it is a picture of post-war Germany, the division of the country, and the very grim living situation of East German people, particularly those in East Berlin. I had no idea about the Stasi – the spy network – that infiltrated every part of East German life. This was a very fascinating book and one I’d recommend if you are interested in German and Soviet history. I clearly remember the Berlin Wall coming down, I was a teenager, and this brings so much more context to that event than I have ever had. 

If I were more on the ball, I would have been singing Earth, Wind, and Fire’s September this time last week, but alas. Perhaps I’ll change it to the 28th night of September, just for today. How has your September been? I hope you have a beautiful week, friends! xo

A Baffling Situation

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During our semi-recent trip to Southeast Asia, my husband and I were chatting with some members of our tour group when the topic of travelling with best friends came up. One lovely lady, Helene, gestured to the man beside her. Well, she said, Nick is my best friend. My husband and I exchanged glances, both of us thinking at the same time that we had had the wrong idea all along. Oh, my husband said finally. I thought you two were MARRIED. Helene looked at us strangely. We ARE married, she said. I married my best friend.

I thought that was very sweet, and I am always happy when other people are happy, but wow, I cannot relate at all. Do not get me wrong: I love my husband, we are very compatible, and I enjoy his company immensely. I think we have a beautiful, fun, fulfilling life together, but in no world do I consider him to be my best friend. In my mind, “husband” and “best friend” are two completely separate concepts. If you marry your best friend, then who do you talk about your spouse with? The snake is eating its tail!

For a few months now, I have been intermittently thinking about a situation my friend Swistle (HI SWISTLE) found herself in: she had planned a coffee date with a former colleague, and at the last minute that colleague texted to say that her husband was going to come along. I’ll just let you digest that for a moment. A former colleague casually mentioned that her husband, heretofore unknown to Swistle, was going to join the coffee date scheduled between the two women. Frankly, I would have fallen over like a tree hand-chopped by an old-timey lumberjack with the shock, even if it was one of my friends whose husbands I DO know and am friendly with. Even if said husband was said friend’s best friend, as with Nick and Helene, I would STILL be distressed at the idea. What world do we live in where a coffee date gets crashed by a husband?

Under no circumstances could I fathom just randomly bringing my own husband along to a coffee date with a girlfriend. Still less could I fathom my husband suggesting that he join us. This behaviour is baffling, to say the least. But then! It happened AGAIN. Swistle made another coffee date with this woman and, AGAIN, at the last minute the friend informed her that her husband was going to join them. Twice makes a pattern, in my mind. Once? It’s weird. Twice? Something strange and unsettling is afoot.

My immediate thought was that this man was one of those atrocious, overbearing bores who cannot bear that their wives have a social life outside of their own twosome. I was a bit nervous that perhaps that woman was being, if not abused, then certainly domineered. Then I thought that maybe he was one of those overly-social joes who insist on being the centre of attention and the life of the party, to the detriment of all his relationships. We all know the type; the fellow who thinks everyone benefits from knowing him, and who wants to be involved in everything, all the while irritating every person in his sphere.

Now, one might reasonably say but what about the woman in this scenario? Does she not have any agency and responsibility here? And indeed. I have a tendency, much to my husband and sons’ mild exasperation, to place the blame squarely in the testosterone column in most scenarios, like Miss Cornelia. Isn’t that just like a man? But I am an open-minded person, and so I do feel that some of the onus here is on the woman. Of course, if we are in the first situation, then it is possible she is an exhausted, beaten-down woman who is used to her borderline emotionally-abusive husband not allowing her to exist outside of his realm, and therefore she is deserving of great sympathy. But if it’s the second situation, she might still be exhausted and beaten-down, but in the way of the girlfriend of the guy who is wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a lampshade on his head at every party. Perhaps she’s powerless in the face of his extreme social extroversion, but my own sympathy would be a little stretched. In either case, I want her to rise up, rise up. There is also the scenario in which the couple are best friends, and the woman feels that lives are enriched by knowing her dreamboat husband, and in this case, I have no sympathy whatsoever.

But then a new situation arose in my mind, and in the minds of many of Swistle’s readers, and that is that they are swingers and are courting her. Key parties ahoy! This certainly makes things more interesting, albeit unsettling. I don’t have any swingers in my life – that I know of. Given my history of being completely clueless when someone has been romantically or sexually interested in me until things become SO CLEAR that there is no room for misinterpretation, it’s perfectly possible that I could be courted for swinging without having any idea. I don’t think that’s happening to me, but who can say, really. In any case, I do find the whole concept of swinging to be pretty wild. We all deserve to be happy, and I don’t want to yuck anyone’s yum, but also? I find it kind of distasteful in a fascinating way. I was talking with my son about polyamory and open marriages, and as he succinctly put it: One person is super happy with the whole thing, and the other person has dead eyes. I think that sums it up quite admirably.

Really. Who has the energy? I personally can only manage one dog at a time, let alone anything else. How would anyone get anything done? A long while ago I heard an interview of a woman who had written a book about her open marriage, and to be honest, it all sounded pretty grim and depressing, not to mention logistically complicated.

The truth is I think about this woman all the time. When the interviewer asked her for any product recommendations, this woman touted the benefits of a particular waterproof dog blanket designed to protect upholstery, which she used for her frequent, messy, and fluid-filled sexual encounters. I immediately ordered that exact dog blanket myself, not for my own frequent, messy, or fluid-filled sexual encounters, but for my monogamous dog relationship. It protects the back seat from a certain giant, grubby dog and his frequently messy and, on rainy days, fluid-filled paws. At least twice a day, when we are getting in the car to head to the walking path, the open marriage lady enters my consciousness, and I feel gratitude for her and her desire for clean upholstery.

Weekly Reading

I read three extremely different books this week!

Culpability. A family travelling in a minivan with self-driving capabilities hits and kills an elderly couple in a small car. Whose fault was it? Was it the driver? Or was it the fault of the self-driving vehicle? This was a propulsive read and an interesting story, but it fell really flat for me due to the overblown and on-the-nose writing style, as well as the extensive telling, rather than showing. I found the ending flat and all of the characters to be deeply unlikeable. There are a lot of interesting threads in here, with the basic idea that AI is ruining our world, but I found the execution to be deeply lacking.

Cherry Baby. The flap copy for this book did not at all prepare me for the very lovely story of a marriage torn apart by success, and then brought back together. In fact, the flap copy is quite misleading. Nonetheless! I was so invested in these characters and their story. As well as being a love story in all its iterations, it’s also a statement on going through life in a large body, particularly in this time of GLP-1s. I loved all the characters, I loved the sister chat threads, and I loved the different romances. What an enjoyable read! There is a giant dog named Stevie Nicks, and I am here for it.

Wide Sargasso Sea. When it comes to Jane Eyre, I have always been Team Attic Wife. I mean, who WOULDN’T descend into madness after being taken from the West Indies and made to live alone in an attic in rural England? So I have long wanted to read this book, which is a prequel of sorts, and explains the life of “Bertha,” the wife in the attic – and we discover her name is not Bertha at all. It’s Antoinette, and Rochester, that evil buffoon, randomly changes it. Isn’t that just like a man, to quote Miss Cordelia once more. Anyway, I’m glad I finally read this but be warned: it’s a very complicated and difficult novel to read, with changing points of view and a lot of unspoken nuance. I had to do some research regarding the post-emancipation era in the West Indies, and its colonial history, of which I didn’t know much.

It’s been a fun week, with birthdays and cake and time in the garden. I have another fun week ahead – more birthday celebrations and more cake will be involved! I hope you all have a lovely week. xo

The Week of My Discontent

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Two weeks ago I received an email from my web host provider with regards to my storage usage, and yes, that sentence IS just as boring as anything could possibly be, but bear with me a moment. The web host was unable to back up my site – this very site that you are looking at – because my storage exceeded my usage limit. My storage jumped from 1 GB to 16.5 GB over the last ninety days.

I understand the need for an automated system, but I feel like any person with any kind of critical reasoning skills might be able to deduce that there is an issue here that was not generated by my five monthly posts. However, we live in an automated world, and so I took it upon myself to follow the step-by-step procedure to discover from where such a jump in storage usage originated. And indeed, I found the issue: on July 7, 42583 files were added to my site.

CLEARLY THERE IS AN ISSUE HERE. And let me just say that this is not my first web host issue rodeo. At least twice before, I have encountered fairly significant issues, and it is always, always a problem originating from the provider: the extra files from a site migration ended up being duplicated, for example, or there is a problem with the firewall that mysteriously leads to thousands of spam comments crashing the site. It’s all very, very tedious and boring, but there is no way out but through. I contacted the web host provider, which led to a most trying afternoon. I spent a total of two hours in some kind of weird circular conversation, in which I would say that there was a problem on their end of things, they said no, there certainly wasn’t, I said there was, and they said I just needed to buy more storage.

I capitulated. I spent ten dollars on upgraded storage, because my site had not been backed up and I live in fear that it will somehow disappear without a trace and eighteen years of talking about grocery cart returns will evaporate into the ether. And not just grocery cart returns: the story about the professor with the absolutely monstrous body odour would be gone, forever, to live on only in my memory. I would never be able to recall that I had a similarly trying conversation with technical support almost exactly 16 years ago to the day; that particular incident ended with me sobbing and the technical support person calmly telling me he would stay on the line for as long as I needed to collect myself, and that perhaps I could get a glass of water while he solved my issues. I wouldn’t be able to remember when it was exactly that I gave myself a bikini wax and ran out of wax. What can I say, in the early days of the pandemic the honeypot spiralled out of control. It was a hairy situation, if you will. Imagine a world in which such important stories are not readily available for public consumption!

The point is, I have a lot of attachment to this blog, and so if ten dollars would give me a little extra security, then so be it. However! I wanted to get at the root cause of this issue, because if life has taught me anything, it’s that if you ignore a technological problem, it will grow and swell and eventually burst, like a giant bubble of gum that gets stuck into your hair and eyelashes. And so the weird gaslighting conversation between me and the web hosting help desk continued, with me saying there was a problem, them saying there wasn’t, me saying there was, and them saying not to worry, my site was now safe and secure, thanks to the upgraded storage.

Me: There is still an issue. There were 42853 files added on July 7. How did that happen?

Them: No. That’s just your site. You have 42583 files.

Me: I did not add them all on July 7. There has to be a mistake. Something had to have changed on your end. Did something get duplicated?

Them: No. Nothing changed. Everything is the same.

Finally, after 75 minutes on their online chat and 45 minutes on the actual phone, we had a breakthrough.

Me: Please, can you just look into the files on the backend. I am sure you’ll see something there.

Them: I cannot.

Me: *stares off into space, breathes deeply* I’m sure if you look…

Them: I am just a customer service representative. Only a technical support person can access the backend.

Me: *questions what just happened over the last two hours, questions sanity* Okay. Could you please put me in contact with a technical support person?

Them: Yes.

Me:

Let’s just gloss over the fact that I had requested technical support in the first place. The upshot is that I eventually received a message from technical support with the information that backup settings had been changed, resulting in a significant increase in storage usage. NO SHIT, SHERLOCK. After some investigation, I discovered that they had changed their backup system provider, which led to a duplication of everything. Technical support assisted me in a fix, which I stoically and dutifully applied. It’s fine, I’m fine, everything is fine.

So imagine my surprise when, a few days later, I received my annual renewal notice, and learned that the new and improved backup system was not a mere $10, but quadruple the previous cost for a third of the time period. Now listen. Writing is a hobby of mine and as with any hobby, there are costs involved. If I played golf or pickleball or tennis, if I was a crafter or fibre artist, if I was into photography or painting, if I had a dollhouse, all of those hobbies would come with costs in the form of fees, materials, or equipment. Web hosting fees and backup programs are part of the cost of having a writing hobby, and I have no plans to introduce ads or sponsored content or affiliate links in order to offset those costs. HOWEVER. This uptick seemed over-the-top, not to mention I did not consent to it, which is how I found myself on chat with customer service, again, for another 75 minutes at 5:00 am on a Friday morning. The happy news is that I was able to switch to a less-expensive backup platform. The sad news is that I was charged for BOTH platforms, which required yet another conversation with customer service to reverse the charges.

Weekly Reading

I was on a road trip this week, which called for lovely light reads!

28 Summers. I have read a number of Elin Hildebrand books, and this is far and away my favourite! I loved this story of a “same time next summer” affair that spans, as the title suggests, 28 Summers. The story really captured me and I became very invested in these two people who, despite everything, continue their once-a-year affair every Labour Day. I read most of it ON Labour Day this year, which was fun. Each chapter starts with “what we were thinking about this year” and it starts in 1993, the year I was 18, so I have very vivid memories of all of the references. What a lovely book of romance and friendship – and a steamy, sexy, kind of scandalous, affair.

The Shippers. This was a cute, fluffy, totally predictable and a little bit silly story of childhood friends who discover they love each other while on a cruise ship for her sister’s wedding. Listen, it’s just fun. Let’s not overthink it! Plus, the love interests are both mathematicians!

Part of Your World. A big-city, wealthy doctor accidentally drives into a ditch, and is rescued by a B&B owner and small town mayor. They come from different worlds and are in very different tax brackets. Can they make it work? Well, I think you know the answer. This was a sweet and satisfying book.

The remedy for a week of discontent is a road trip! We had a great time travelling to see friends and my parents; good times were had, wine was consumed, and games were played. Now it’s time to get all caught up on regular life – and to prepare for a very special 21st birthday tomorrow. Have a beautiful week, friends. xo

Random Semi-Related Things

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I Always Feel Like Somebody’s Watching Me

After a very busy and productive August, the garden is starting to take its annual September Slow Down. Every single day last month, I spent hours in the garden harvesting berries and vegetables, weeding, and deadheading. I was especially proud of myself for my management of what I like to call The Annual Zucchini Situation; I had been picking them when they’ve been of medium size, I’ve been using them up or successfully pawning them off on my very sweet friends, and no one in my house has mutinied due to the zucchini-in-everything Augusts of the past. A few weeks ago I was in the garden, thinking about this in a very smug way, and as we all know, karma does not enjoy smugness as a character trait. I immediately tripped over a massive zucchini that had apparently appeared out of nowhere.

I can only imagine it had been watching me for weeks from its hiding place under a large leaf.

Raspberry Beret

In addition to an actual ocean of tomatoes, I have been enjoying a tidal wave of raspberries. There is no need to figure out what to do with all of them, because as soon as I pick a bowl, it magically disappears. But a few weeks ago I had a bigger than normal raspberry harvest, and I also had an unaccountable gap in my weekly meal plan. I decided to do something I haven’t done in years, since before we moved here in 2023, which was to make breakfast for dinner. I thought I’d use the raspberries, along with my farm market peaches and nectarines, for a fruit salad to go along with my Famed Cinnamon Waffles.

The Landslide’ll Bring You Down

My cinnamon waffles were Famed only in my sons’ circle of friends. During their teen years, the boys had early dismissal on Fridays, and most of the time on those days my house would be suddenly filled with famished teen boys. I always made them cinnamon waffles because it was such a massive recipe, and then I would bask in the glory of being the Mom With The Best Waffles Ever. There is nothing, nothing so satisfying as cooking for teenage boys. No one is so ravenously appreciative.

Filled with nostalgia, I pulled out my waffle maker and went to grab the recipe for Nicole’s Famed Cinnamon Waffles, which were not Nicole’s at all, but merely a recipe in the little booklet that came with the waffle maker. And that is when I discovered that the little waffle maker recipe book was MISSING.

To my surprise, I immediately spiralled into the same kind of sadness that I had experienced back in 2023, when my bookmark collection was forever lost in the moving process. I assumed that the waffle recipe book had followed suit, and all was ashes. I was sad all over again, thinking of all those Friday afternoons when the mudroom was piled with gigantic dirty shoes and the dining room table was sticky with syrup, when Barkley braved the noise of ten teen boys in the house in the hopes of some dropped waffles, when said boys exited the dining room all saying That was AWESOME, Nicole, thank you! Never again would that happen for me, mostly because I don’t live there anymore, I don’t have teenagers, and Barkley is, sadly, long gone. Also because I would be unable to replicate the recipe. I was surprised at my sudden and intense reaction. Just feel your feelings, I said to myself sadly. The lack of the Famed Cinnamon Waffle Recipe felt devastating. Not as devastating as the bookmarks – I didn’t cry myself into a dehydrated state – but sad nonetheless.

Guess Who’s Back? Back Again?

As I wallowed in sadness, I realized that, current fashion trends notwithstanding, we are not in the Nineties anymore. We live in the Age of Information! And not all of it is Mis-or-Disinformation! I bustled over to my trusty laptop and searched up Cuisinart Waffle Maker Recipe Book and lo. There it was, the Famed Cinnamon Waffle recipe. What a time to be alive. I immediately printed it off and filed it in my recipe book, to ward off any future breakfast item-related sadness spirals.

1/8 of the waffle recipe

I Get By With A Little Help From My Friends

The happy ending to the waffle recipe sadness spiral reminded me how wonderful the world is, and not just because we can access any kind of information at any time. It reminded me of how all of you, dear readers, rallied when my bookmarks were lost. I was going through such a massive transition in my life, and the bookmarks felt symbolic in the saddest way. No one, not one person, said they’re just bookmarks, get over yourself. Instead, friends from near and far provided me with bookmarks. My friend Sammi drove over to my house with a selection immediately on hearing the news, I received bookmarks from Washington State to Marco Island, from the US Midwest to California, from Alberta to Saskatchewan to Ontario, from Barcelona and Portugal. My son made me bookmarks featuring Rex, Salvadore the gnome, and Gerbera daisies for Christmas. My sweet friend Gigi (HI GIGI) cross-stitched personalized flowered bookmarks for me. I keep my collection in a tin that my longtime friend Elise (HI ELISE) sent me, and every time I start a new book, I happily choose one and think of what a gift it is to have such people in my life.

I will never forget how supported and loved I felt and still feel. Thank you, friends.

All You Need Is Love

Speaking of fun and exciting things in the mail, I received this from my friend Engie (HI ENGIE).

I literally screamed with delight when I opened it. Gnomes, love, AND math? I’m in heaven. Receiving fun mail reminded me that we are now into September, and it’s not too soon to start thinking about holiday cards. Are you a Holiday Card Person? If so, let’s exchange cards! (EXCHANGE is the key word here). Merely fill out this google form, and I will send you my address. If you are already on my list, no need to fill out the form, unless your address has changed. Now, I think that’s enough randomness – let’s get on to this week’s very mixed reading.

Weekly Reading

I had a DNF this week: Heated Rivalry. You all know I love a closed door romance, and whoa nelly, that was not this. It was way too spicy for me and I DNF’d at about the 12% mark, after the third graphic anal sex scene had me Kegeling like nobody’s business.

Her One Regret. From the author of The Nine Lives of Rose Napolitano – a book about a woman coerced into having a baby – comes this book about the biggest taboo in motherhood; namely, regretting becoming one. It is touted as a mix between a thriller and a manifesto, and indeed, it does get at some uncomfortable truths about early motherhood like exhaustion, resentment, change of identity, and overwhelm due to the stunning responsibility that is caring for a tiny helpless person. I will say that it’s pretty repetitive and overly convoluted, and every man in this book is as flat and one-dimensional as can be – they are all complete dicks. The “thriller” part was less than thrilling, in fact when the big reveal occurred I thought “Huh. Okay.” and moved on with my life. It does highlight that society views mothers that leave their families VERY different than they do fathers that leave, but mostly I felt it was kind of overwritten and a bit dull.

Inheritance. What makes a father a father? How does your biological ancestry affect who you are as a person? This memoir explores such questions after the author discovers, through an ancestry DNA test, that her long-deceased father was not her biological father due to a very sketchy infertility “treatment.” I will say that the author’s journey to peace with this very disturbing discovery is quite interesting and eventually lovely, but something did not sit well with me throughout this reading. I am in no way disparaging or questioning her lived experience. I am sure it’s extremely disorienting to discover that your father isn’t who you thought he was, and in the author’s case, this had larger implications. Her father’s family was a prominent Orthodox Jewish one, and on her discovery, she felt as though she had lost her identity and was subsequently traumatized. “It’s traumatic because I’m fifty-four years old and I found out the father I adored, the father who raised me, was not my biological father. That the family I thought I came from is not my biological family. That my ancestors are not my biological ancestors.” I understand this, however, I take a bit of issue with it. I would say that a father who adored you and raised you IS your father, end of story. I suppose I feel touchy about this because my beloved Grandma Fern was my step-grandma. We were not related by blood, but she was still my grandma. She cherished me exactly the same as she did her biological grandchildren. In the author’s case, a (sketchy) sperm donation does not make a father, in my mind. Anyway, this was a very interesting and kind of wild read about the nature of infertility treatments in the early 60s. I also learned a lot about Orthodox Judaism. This was definitely worth the read, and had me thinking a lot about the nature of families. I think there is just so much more to family than blood.

Walking With Beth. During the Covid pandemic, the 71 year-old author and her 101-year-old friend Beth deepen their friendship with regular walks and talks, and this book is a record of their conversations. Both women are from very prominent Canadian families, and so their recollections of their younger years were quite interesting to me, not to mention all they’d seen throughout their lives. Beth was born in 1920, at the end of the 1918 influenza pandemic, so it’s interesting that the two bonded 100 years later. This book introduced me to the concept of Anam Cara, “soul-friend,” of whom I am fortunate to have a few. “This friendship…was an act of recognition and belonging. When you had an anam cara, your friendship cut across all convention, morality, and category. You were joined in an ancient and eternal way with the friend of your soul. This art of belonging awakened and fostered a deep and special companionship.” This is a beautiful story of aging and friendship, and I LOVED the description of Beth’s outfits. Talk about goals! Thanks to Elisabeth and Pearl (HI ELISABETH HI PEARL) for mentioning this book.

Hello to September! We are going on a little road trip this week, and I have the feeling we will be seeing lots of fall foliage. In the meantime, take care, friends. xo

Book Talk: Genre, Recommendations, and Finding Time

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What and Why

When I was in Grade Five or so, my best friend’s mom imposed a rule on her that she could not take out “junk” books from the library. She was not allowed to read what the rest of us were furtively reading, which were the Sweet Valley High and Cheerleader series, and their ilk. At the time it struck me as patently unfair, and now, looking back on it, it strikes me as patently stupid. What kind of a person puts reading restrictions on a ten-year-old? Even my own mother, who was no slouch in the “strict rules” department, did not know or care what I was reading at any given time; I soon graduated from those books to things like Flowers in the Attic, Clan of the Cave Bear, and Elvis and Me, all of which combined to give me a very strange outlook on life. To this day I will not eat powdered doughnuts.

No matter. I strongly believe that kids should read just what they want to read, and so should adults, with no apologies. For me, I have always been interested almost exclusively in the lives of girls and women – both the concept and the actual book – and so the vast majority of the books I read have female protagonists and are written by women. In fact, it’s somewhat of a joke in my house if I’m reading a book written by a man: the guys will ask if he’s gay, British, or gay and British, and indeed, that does tend to be the exception to my women-only rule. There are exceptions to the exception, though; this calendar year I have read two 5-star books by non-gay, non-British men, The Remains of the Day and Grace and Henry’s Holiday Movie Marathon.

I love character-driven novels about the minutia of life, I love books about the extraordinariness of ordinary life, I love prose and dialogue that is clever, witty, and beautiful. This means much of my reading is women’s literary fiction, although I do like an occasional upmarket or romance. I do not care for dystopian books at all, but as I said, there are exceptions: I love both The Handmaid’s Tale and I Who Have Never Known Men. I don’t like magical realism or fantasy, but I loved The Husbands and The Mists of Avalon, the latter of which I have read multiple times. I shy away from horror, having been scarred by a single reading of Misery back in 1990, and also because I generally am easily terrified. Books that contain time travel, sci-fi, or futuristic timelines are completely uninteresting to me and I refuse to read them. I don’t tend to gravitate toward thrillers or mysteries, but occasionally I will be coaxed into one by a glowing review from my friend Suzanne, and I always end up enjoying it (HI SUZANNE). Historical fiction is a tricky category for me. I don’t like when things wrap up too neatly, and also my number one pet peeve is when current day values or language are imposed on a book of yesteryear, which happens often in historical fiction. That said, I absolutely loved Isola, as well as any number of novels about spunky letter-writing women during the Blitz in London. I enjoy a well-written and entertaining memoir and the occasional interesting non-fiction as well. Sometimes I think I should branch out more, genre-wise, but mostly I just embrace what I like.

Who and Where

My TBR – to be read – list is staggeringly long and it just gets longer every day. The problem is I have so many well-read friends who are always recommending excellent books, although I have gotten very selective as to who I take recommendations from, having blindly picked up, and then regretted, many titles. And it goes the other way too: I once had an old school friend message me on Instagram, angry that she had BOUGHT three books on my glowing recommendations, and that “nothing happened in any of them!” They were so boring and I can’t believe you liked them! What a waste of money! she said. Well. The only thing I can say to that is that you really need to know a person’s taste BEFORE you take on their recommendations, and certainly before you commit to buying them. Support your local libraries! It’s a cost-free way to read – or not read – as many books as you like.

Speaking of Instagram, I do get a lot of recommendations from there; I follow a number of bookstagram accounts, and I also have some friends who are avid readers and with whom I share interests and tastes. My friend Anna (HI ANNA) and I enjoy 95% of the same books, so when she recommends something, I listen. I also get a lot of ideas from blog friends; notably Allison (HI ALLISON) who puts up a very detailed annual summary every January. I take a lot of her four and five star fiction recommendations. She is much wider-read than I am, genre-wise, but she always separates out horror, sci-fi, thriller, and mysteries, so I don’t get myself entangled in anything that I am uninterested in or scared of.

I also get a number of recommendations from podcasts, although that has been hit-and-miss for me. I enthusiastically picked up The Idea of You based on a podcaster’s recommendation and I never trusted that woman again. Just like that old school friend will never trust me again. The world is a vast tapestry, big wheel keeps on turning, Proud Mary keeps on burning.

When and How

I read 2-3 books per week, almost all physical books, the rest on an ereader, and the reason I can manage this pace is twofold: I am a fast reader, and I carve out time to read every day. Even in my busiest eras of life, of which I am markedly NOT in currently, I always made time for reading daily. Reading is the R in my REM Y REM protocol for mental health and general well-being. (Exercise, Meditation, Yoga, and REM sleep are the other key parts). I read both in small snippets throughout the day, and then longer stretches in the later afternoon or evening. My husband is a sports fan, and there are games or tournaments or what have you most months of the year, so while he watches those in the evening I keep him company by reading on the couch. I try to read for an additional 30-60 minutes during the afternoon, depending on my day. I read while I eat lunch, I always have a book in my bag so I have something to read if I’m delayed or waiting somewhere, and I try to pick up my current read whenever I have a few spare minutes, rather than scroll on my phone. Recently my friend Elisabeth (HI ELISABETH) shared a “Couch to 5K,” but for reading, which I think is kind of brilliant. We are all so fractured, attention-wise, these days that I think there is real value in just concentrating on a book. It’s beneficial for our brains and our outlooks on life. What could give us more knowledge and information than reading? It’s never wasted time, as far as I’m concerned, and I never feel guilty about it. I know plenty of people who feel that reading is unproductive, but a) what are we being productive for, b) taking time for ourselves benefits everyone in a “put on your oxygen mask before helping others with theirs” way, and c) fuck the patriarchy that wants to keep women busy every second of the day.

Weekly Reading

A Woman in Berlin. I know I declared Reread Fortnight to be over, but I squeezed in one more, which I first read about 25 years ago for a now-long-defunct book club. This is an actual account, based on the author’s diary and notes, of the fall of Berlin in 1945. If ever you are having a bad day, remember you are not a woman in Berlin, a city which was bombed to rubble, foraging for food and getting raped six ways to Sunday by the Red Army, all with the shame of what your country’s leadership has done. It is grim. But here is an interesting sidebar: up until TWO WEEKS AGO, I had a picture in my mind of post-war Germany, and that picture had a line down the centre, dividing it into East and West Germany. I had assumed that Berlin just happened to be in the middle of that line, thus the division and eventual wall. HOW WRONG I WAS! Berlin is actually very deep into the heart of what was East Germany, so that West Berlin was surrounded on all sides by red, if you will. This blows my mind! I had no idea. If you were a person in West Berlin, would you be able to travel to West Germany easily? I suppose there would be checkpoints and so forth, but it is a long way from West Berlin to West Germany. If anyone can point me to further reading material on this subject, I would be very grateful. I know I have some German readers, so please let me know if you have any recommendations.

Silver Sparrow. I loved this book about two girls who are half-sisters – one of them knows it, one of them doesn’t. Their father is a bigamist, and this is a dual-perspective story about the lives of the two girls as they grow up in Atlanta, but it’s so much more. The characters are so richly developed, and there is such a statement about generational cycles. The ending made my jaw drop a little. A beautifully-written, compelling story.

The Sweet Spot. Oh, I loved this delightfully heartwarming book with all its charming characters and really great arcs. It has all my favourite literary f-words: found family, friends, funny dialogue, and forgiveness. There’s fucking too, but it’s all closed-door and perfectly non-spicy, which is exactly how I like it, literarily speaking. I love it when a motley crew of characters all end up working together for a common goal, and that is exactly what happens when a baby finds itself in need of a caretaker – or, in this case, many caretakers. This is just a lovely, feel-good book, perfect cheer for a gloomy, rainy weekend. WHO recommended this book? I owe you one! And not in the way of my old school friend, or, I should say, my former school friend.

There was some sad news this week: Dolly Parton passed away. She was an absolute angel, and among numerous significant charitable contributions was a champion for children’s literacy. I dedicate this book talk miniseries to her memory. May she rest in fabulous, over-the-top, glittery peace.

Book Talk: To Finish or Not To Finish

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I remember so clearly the moment it all changed for me. It was December 2022. I closed a book, realizing that I had just wasted several hours of my life that I would never get back again.

The book in question took its title from one of my favourite poems by my very favourite poet; the book was called This One Wild and Precious Life. It had a beautiful cover. I had read a positive review. And that book remains, to this day, one of my most hated books ever. It was smug, pretentious, judgmental, hypocritical, and off-putting in every way. I was so angry when I read it and I was angrier still at myself. Because, even while I hated every single page, I FINISHED IT.

At that moment I made a vow. I was not going to push through and finish books just for the sake of finishing them. What a waste of time! The hours I spent reading This One Wild and Precious Life, I could have been reading an enjoyable book. I could have been rereading an enjoyable book. I could have been reading a marginal but inoffensive book. I could have been scrolling Instagram and looking at photos of people’s children in matching holiday jammies. I could have been doing any number of things and it would have been a better use of my time than reading that book. I vowed right then and there that I would abandon ship – I would DNF – when I wasn’t enjoying a book.

It’s not like I have always finished books that are unpleasant to me: I have never gotten through more than the first chapter of both The Shipping News and The Secret Garden, two books that seem like they should be right up my alley, but aren’t. I once picked up a book with a great back cover copy and a beautiful cover, and within the first chapter it was apparent that the story involved a father raping his sixteen-year-old daughter, and I literally threw the book across the room before sedately collecting it and walking it back to the library. I don’t even remember the title. I’m sure there are other books that I didn’t finish prior to December 2022, but they don’t stand out in my mind. The vast majority of the time, I would just slog through a book until it was done, and then feel kind of low about it.

Life is a journey and I am a work in progress, and so I haven’t always been great about this, but I have been trying to DNF more and more these days. After all, we are here for a good time, not a long time, and I am going to have a good time reading books that I love every day.

I have noticed that if I am more than a third of the way through a book I tend to push to the end, even if it is a slog. I will also push through if a friend highly recommended it, but I have definitely gotten more selective about whose recommendations I heed. A friend once told me that Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club was the BEST book she had ever read, and listen, I have read any number of bleak and depressing books in my time, but this was the bleakest and most depressing. I kept reading – she said it was the best ever! – and dear lord, do I regret my choices. I kept waiting for something, anything good to happen, and no. No. I feel depressed even thinking about it.

The moral of this story is that you should understand your friends’ reading preferences before you take on their favourite books. Otherwise, you will be explaining how you disliked the book and why, which can lead to awkwardness or, in some cases, hurt feelings. The other option would be to lie about it which, in addition to being morally suspect, will only lead to more disagreeable recommendations in the future.

I don’t have a hard and fast rule for DNFing, but my general feeling is that if I am not excited, compelled, or at least mildly interested to pick up a book, it is a candidate for abandonment. There are some themes that I find too upsetting to read about ever, namely addiction and hard drug use. I am still scarred from a scene in Trainspotting, and I didn’t even read that book. I merely flipped through it at a bookstore, read a scene which I can only describe as deeply horrifying, and set it down before backing away slowly. The fastest I abandoned a book was one that I didn’t even start: it was Matthew Perry’s memoir. Why I had picked this up, I do not know, but as I casually flipped through the pages prior to beginning it, I realized that the entire thing, start to finish, was about his extreme drug addictions. I took it back to the library that very same day.

The other big DNF trigger for me is abuse: child, sexual, or domestic. This is very dependent on both the book and my mood, but in general anything gratuitous or graphic is a non-starter for me. I have read many such books and I do not think my life has been enhanced by them in any way. Well, I suppose it has given me a more compassionate outlook, in that we don’t know what a person is going through at any given time. But I still feel incredible anger when I think of Angela’s Ashes, The Glass Castle, and Educated. I want to go back in time and NOT read them.

At the dinner table, my younger son was telling me about football star Ray Lewis’ teenage workout routine. Lewis would draw from a deck of cards and do the number of pushups associated with that card – face cards were assigned 10, 15, and 20 – and he would go through the entire deck in one workout. Wow! I said conversationally. I wonder what made him come up with that! My son looked at me. His dad used to beat up his mom, and he wanted to be strong enough to prevent it ever happening again. I started to cry while my son hastened to reassure me that Lewis bought his mom a house with his first big NFL paycheque, and that she was safe, and friends, life is just so heartbreaking at times. There are so many unspeakably sad things happening every minute all over the world. I am at a point in my life where I don’t want to read things that are also unspeakably sad.

But also, I don’t want to read things that are unspeakably boring. There are so many books out there, and so many great books to reread. Not to be grim, but if I died tomorrow, would I have wanted to spend today reading a book that I should have abandoned? I mean, hopefully I WON’T die tomorrow, but carpe diem all the same.

Weekly Reading

I know what you’re going to say, and I will swoop in to admit that yes, there is a good deal of abuse and trauma in Elizabeth Strout’s books, but they are still amongst my favourites. The abuse and trauma are all part of the backstory, and are delicately alluded to; the books themselves are heartbreaking but also so hopeful and joyful, and belong to my favourite category of books, those that delve into the extraordinary details of ordinary life. Also, I got a ton of reading done this week as my husband was on a backcountry hiking and camping trip with my older son, and my younger son was working and dogsitting. It was just me and Rex, happily reading for hours each day.

Oh William! This is the third book in the Lucy Barton series, and it involves Lucy’s relationship with William, her ex-husband. William makes a huge discovery through an ancestry subscription he receives as a gift, and his life is never the same. For the record, I NEVER want to do one of those ancestry things! For so many reasons, but mostly, I DON’T WANT TO KNOW THINGS. Anyway, this book is excellent and, like all Strout’s books, I love it.

Lucy By The Sea. The fourth in the Lucy Barton series, and kind of the last – this one takes place during the first year of the pandemic, and whoa nelly, hold onto your hats because it is a very realistic picture of that very weird time. It seems like a fever dream now. I do really like this book but maybe not quite as much as the rest of the series, because it reminds me of not seeing or hugging people for so long, having schools closed, etc. But it is still a beautifully-written book which gave me much to think about, even with that awful lockdown year six years in the rearview mirror. Remember watching “the numbers?” God.

Tell Me Everything. This takes place after Lucy By The Sea, so it’s kind of, but not really part of the series. The first time I read this book, I was just overwhelmed with the happy feeling that it was a love letter to Strout fans. All of the characters for all her books – up to that point – were featured, and it is a beautiful story of connection and love. What hit me on the reread was the poignancy of an emotional affair-that-isn’t-really-an-affair. The book centres around a friendship that is ALMOST, but not quite, more than a friendship. It is also a quiet book about people, the life they lead, and how we all crave real connections. I love this book very much. 

To Kill A Mockingbird. Does it get any better than this beautiful story of humanity and community, of people trying to make change in a rigid and racist society? I love it so much. I am a person who rarely, rarely cries while reading, but the penultimate chapter brings a lump to my throat every single time I read it. This book contains two of my favourite lines ever written: “…I thought Jem and I would get grown but there wasn’t much else for us to learn, except maybe algebra,” and “I said I would like it very much, which was a lie, but one must lie under certain circumstances and at all times when one can’t do anything about them.”

And with that, Reread Fortnight has ended! My library holds are starting to come in and I have my dear friend Maya’s book to read as well (HI MAYA). We had rain this weekend, actual rain, for the first time in months. The air feels clear and fresh, the garden and farm market are full of deliciousness, and I baked a cake yesterday. Life is good. xo