Category Archives: Books

Poison

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My husband is always incredibly supportive and encouraging of anything I decide to do, and so last August when I told him that I wasn’t up to teaching yoga in our new city – the thought of starting over was overwhelming and discouraging, and it felt like time for a pivot – he was in full agreement. When I quietly mused about taking a creative writing course with the thought of writing a book, he was one hundred percent on board immediately. Of course I could write a book! It would be a best seller! Maybe even on Oprah’s book club! I don’t even know if Oprah still has her book club, and it feels aspirational just to get it finished and maybe published, as well as highly unlikely it will ever get to best seller stage, but it’s nice to have such blindly enthusiastic support.

That same supportive husband accidentally poisoned me last week.

Now, clearly I am not writing this beyond the grave – or am I? – so this poisoning was pretty mild. And there was nothing nefarious to it – I think? – but before we get to that, I was reminded of an exchange between myself and my mother-in-law several weeks ago.

She was pulling up her rhubarb in the garden, and my feelings about rhubarb are not as strong as my feelings about celery, but they are close, and so I was assuring her that no, I did not want any. The leaves were enormous, I would say almost three feet long, and my mother-in-law asked me if I knew that the leaves of the plant are poisonous.

I did know this, which begs the question: what person in history found this plant with incredibly toxic leaves, the root of which is so sour and awful that it requires pounds of sugar to make it palatable, and thought hey, what a great idea for dessert.

Getting back to the foliage, I recapped an Alice Munro story for my mother-in-law, one in which the protagonist concocts baked goods with the toxic leaves, in order to seek revenge on her cheating husband. My mother-in-law listened intently, nodding, and then said That seems pretty slow. I can think of a faster way to get rid of the cheating bastard. True, but also, that would be an entirely different short story.

Now, lest you draw any parallels between these two story threads, my semi-poisoning was not a result of me stepping out on my marriage, nor did it have anything to do with rhubarb and baked goods. It did, however, involve a veggie burger.

My husband was festively preparing to grill burgers for the family plus our houseguest, and while rummaging through the freezer, he noticed that I had not one but three different kinds of veggie burgers. He mentioned that in addition to a few boxes from Costco, there was an open box with chickpea and sweet potato burgers; ever since Costco discontinued my beloved chipotle black bean burgers, life has been but dull and meaningless from a veggie burger standpoint, and so I agreed to the latter type. It all seemed very innocuous, until later in the evening, when I was feeling uncomfortably bloated. I chalked it up to eating a big slice of Guinness cake, took a Benadryl for my many mosquito bites, and went to bed.

I woke up a few hours later feeling like Count Almasy returning from the desert – I have been WALKING for three DAYS – and I could not get enough water. The next morning I dragged my strangely exhausted self out of bed and, getting dressed, I couldn’t help but notice my stomach. Now, perimenopause has given me a soft, cuddly tummy, but this was not that. It was distended to resemble, both in size and firmness, that which I had when I was approximately five months pregnant, which extended to six months after drinking my morning water. I and my stomach went through my normal morning routine, but I was dizzy and fatigued, and, distressingly, when I got home from my Rex walk, I was completely uninterested in breakfast. Not only was I not hungry, but I was also strangely repulsed by even the thought of consuming anything at all, except more water.

I continued on with my day, but by the time I had showered and not had lunch, I was exhausted from just existing, so I thought I should sit down for a moment. Something that you should know about me is that during the day I am almost never tired, and I never “sit down for a moment” without some seated project like reading, writing, or Duolingoing in mind. I immediately fell asleep in my chair.

At this point in the Trifecta Of Weird Things, I was getting suspicious. No one else felt off in any way, and so my husband inspected the package of veggie burgers, and they had expired eight months ago.

Now, typically we cycle through food very quickly, the exception being veggie burgers as I am the only one who eats them. But we have been in this house less than a year, and is it too much to ask of a frozen food to still be good after eleven months? I really don’t know.

You poisoned me! I kept saying to my husband before dozing off again, as he gave the package the side-eye. Now, to be sure, it wasn’t terrible in a Praying For The Sweet Release Of Death kind of way. I wasn’t – how to put this delicately – expelling anything in any way, but I was experiencing considerable stomach pain, so much so that I started googling things like intestinal blockage signs of and sudden onset Crohn’s disease. My algorithm should be interesting now.

It took 24 hours of no eating, plus another two days before I felt like myself again, and my faux pregnancy has subsided to my usual soft, cuddly tummy. But you can bet I’m keeping my eye on that husband of mine. If he starts concocting suspicious-looking baked goods, I’m sounding the alarm.

Weekly Reading

A huge upside to enforced rest due to accidental poisoning is that I got quite a bit of reading done.

Refuse To Be Done: How to Write and Rewrite a Novel in Three Drafts. This book has some very helpful advice about editing and revising, which I am taking to heart. One of the books I read this week could have really used this. Thanks for the recommendation, Laura (HI LAURA!).

Peacocks of Instagram. WOW. You know I love a collection of short stories, but a collection of interconnected short stories by a female Canadian author? SIGN ME UP. I loved these slice-of-life, ordinary-yet-extraordinary stories about safety, privilege and the lack of it, and when a person can call a place home. Big thank you to Pearl (HI PEARL) for mentioning this!

The Idea of You. Okay. First of all, this book has legions of fans and has been made into a movie, so kudos to the author for this level of success. In fact, the way I heard about this book was from one of those fans, and the premise sounded kind of interesting: 40-year-old woman meets her 12-year-old daughter’s favourite boy band, and ends up having an affair with one of the 20-year-old members. I think this band is roughly based on One Direction. Given all the real life examples of wildly May-December relationships – Al Pacino, Robert de Niro, BILL BELICHICK WTF GRANDPA, LEAVE THE 24 YEAR OLD GIRL ALONE – I thought, hell yeah, older woman, let’s fucking go. Well. Was I wrong. As I said, a very successful book but so not for me. The writing is SO bad, I can hardly even describe how bad it is. About 80% of this book is soft-core porn-level sex scenes in a variety of luxurious locales – think Aspen, Anguilla, Cote d’Azur – and the other 20% is worry about her daughter finding out about the affair, angst when she does find out about the affair, the ocean of fans who suddenly hate this woman for having sex with this Harry Styles-like boy band member and how they make her life hell, and some boring parts about art. Here’s an example of the writing that probably says it all: “And how in God’s name had I ended up here, on my knees in a five-star hotel, sucking some guy in a boy band’s dick? And dear Lord, please don’t ever let my daughter do this.” I mean there’s a part where she is upset because a paparazzi photo of them in flagrante goes viral, and she talks about her life being ruined, how she’s going to lose her daughter, her gallery, everything. Her life is a complete shambles, she says. Then, the next sentence: “But you are really, really good at eating pussy, so maybe it was worth it.” Honestly, I think the author could have used an editor, or at least the Refuse To Be Done book, but what do I know, she’s crying all the way to the bank.

Amazing Grace Adams. Well this was quite the ride! This novel follows a woman who has just Had Enough and has a bit of a breakdown, leaving her car parked in traffic to walk to deliver a cake for her daughter’s sixteenth birthday. It’s kind of wild, this book that both takes place over just a few hours, interspersed with multiple timelines from the past. We, the reader, are meant to believe that this breakdown is entirely spurred on by perimenopausal symptoms, the stress of mothering a teen girl, and her work-life balance, and the whole time I kept thinking okay, okay, a bit dramatic, but okay. But then! There is a big reveal, and things started to make sense, but then! There is a OMG HUGE REVEAL and everything, everything clicks into place and wow, what a well done book. In the acknowledgements, the author says she was inspired by the movie Falling Down, and yes, that really tracks. Thanks to Anna (HI ANNA) for the recommendation!

We are having a bit of a heat wave right now, and other than having to walk Rex super-early in the morning to beat the heat I am so here for it. Summer! Bring it all on! I hope you are having a beautiful, summery week as well, with no poisoning, accidental or otherwise. xo

What Have I Become?

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One thing I didn’t realize would happen, with a retired husband and children no longer in the public school system, is that long weekends don’t really register for me anymore. Every weekend is a long weekend, therefore no weekend is a long weekend.

This is not to say that the Canada Day weekend was really affected by the school system, but since the school year finishes at the end of June, July 1 always felt like the big start to summer. We have a young houseguest – our dear friends’ son, who is himself a very good friend of my sons’, particularly my oldest, with whom he shares a birthday – and when my son mentioned he was coming, I thought oh yeah, I guess that IS a long weekend.

Personally, living in this beautiful climate, I feel like summer started weeks ago, so this holiday feels like a bit of a non-event. Interestingly, though, since Kelowna is very much a tourist town, I have noticed things like increased traffic and a lot more beach-themed items for sale in shops and stores. My new favourite bookshop was displaying all the beach reads, Ogopogo stuffies, and such items that are beloved by tourists, like a new cookbook written by my husband’s family friend, which pairs wines from the Burrowing Owl winery with menus using seasonal, local produce.

Speaking of which, I am still working my way through Julie’s cake cookbook, and this weekend, in honour of our guest I decided to make chocolate stout cake, with the single Guinness I had left in the fridge. I had more, but my son and our guest decided on Friday night to make stout floats using some of the homemade ice cream in the freezer. We didn’t have vanilla, so they improvised with mint and reported that it wasn’t very good. You don’t say? Mint and Guinness are NOT a winning combination? Colour me surprised. Well, the cake WAS very good, although it completely sunk in the middle. I did wonder why Julie had indicated that the batter was to be divided between two loaf pans; I thought that sounds silly, I’ll just pour it into an 8×8. Joke’s on me. Well, it tasted great, even if I flipped it over to hide the sunken middle.

As everyone who knows me even marginally knows, I love being outside. In good weather, particularly summer, I have low-level feelings of resentment for every moment I spend indoors. I think this is partly due to living almost my whole life in Calgary; if the weather is good, you had better enjoy it, because it could abruptly end at any moment. Any time the weather is nice, I just want to spend all my time outside.

At night, though, I like a bed, and walls, and the incredible modern inventions of running water and flush toilets, and so I am not a person who has incorporated camping into my life. Imagine telling our foremothers that, instead of hauling water from a well or creek and then heating it painstakingly on the stove, which has been fueled with wood chopped by hand, just so someone could take a stab at being some semblance of clean, that we have clean water at our fingertips, and not only that, we can choose the temperature? Imagine how exciting that would be for them, and then imagine telling them that we shall eschew this modern miracle to go hang out in the woods and be swarmed by mosquitoes at every turn?

So my stance on camping has historically been a negative one, but my husband found a loophole in my “bed, walls, toilet, and running water” argument by purchasing a camper. I am sure he’d love it if I said “our camper” but really, it’s HIS camper. I’ve been very pleased that he has used it with the boys, and was a bit startled to be asked to go with him and meet up with another couple this past Friday.

My first instinct was to Shut This Shit Down, but after a calming meditation, I realized that a) this was not in keeping with my current Live Your Life With Arms Wide Open mantra, b) the other couple was being really kind and welcoming, and were proposing so many accommodations and fun activities for me, c) sometimes marital harmony is preserved through compromise, and d) it was only for one night.

And you know what, friends, it was actually pretty fun! My friend brought an extra kayak and lifejacket for me, knowing that would be something I would love, my husband packed lots of wine and coolers, and my friend’s husband brought an entire cake and encouraged me to eat two pieces. I felt like the subject of Tonight’s The Night, but in a non-sexual way; like I was a terrified virgin who needed smooth jazz, soft words, and some wine to get things going.

Several of my camping friends, on hearing the news, congratulated me enthusiastically, saying that I would love my new life as a Happy Camper. I would not go so far as that; I cannot with any honesty use the word “love” and “camping” in the same sentence, but it was pretty fun. I did love the kayaking and the walks the girls did with the dogs while the guys went fishing, I did love the cake and the wine and sitting by the fire until I was overcome with mosquito bites.

The happy result as far as my husband is concerned is that I have agreed to go annually, on my one night only condition. I know! What have I become? Someone who is dousing themselves in witch hazel, that’s what.

Weekly Reading

One Star Romance. I expected this enemies-to-lovers book about a man who rates a woman’s debut novel one star, and then the two of them find themselves as best man and maid of honour at their friends’ wedding, to be a light and fluffy read. It was not! It was so much more involved: it is a romance, for sure, but it’s also a book about friendship and family and growing up. I really liked it! It definitely took me by surprise, it’s a very clever and thoughtful book with some great character arcs.

1000 Words: A Writer’s Guide To Staying Creative, Focused, and Productive Year Round. I heard this woman being interviewed on a podcast; she created the 1000 Words of Summer, which is a motivational group for writers. The key is to write 1000 words a day for two weeks in the summer. This was intriguing to me because 1000 words a day, four to five days a week was exactly how I wrote my first draft. This book is about the craft of writing, but is mostly meant to be motivational and inspirational, including short essays from a number of very accomplished authors.

What did I just say? First draft? I had a goal, very quietly kept close to my chest, of writing a first draft of a novel in 2024, and on June 5, I completed that goal! I finished the reread last week and am preparing for the second draft now. I will have much more to say about it, I’m sure, in the coming weeks.

Happy Canada Day, friends! Here’s to July! I hope you all have a beautiful week. xo

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Landscaped Edition

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I realized just as I wrote that title that I have a sugaring appointment this afternoon, but lest you get the wrong idea, what I am going to talk about today is NOT that kind of landscaping.

It’s full on summer and I am enjoying the gorgeous weather, although today is “coolish.” Of course, in Calgary this would be considered just a nice June day, but here it’s considered cool. Anyway, today I wanted to take you for a tour of my newly landscaped backyard – NOT THAT KIND OF LANDSCAPED BACKYARD, PEOPLE. We started the project in April and it finished a couple of weeks ago.

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Landscaped Edition

Perennially Pretty

We had professional help for our yard; it was just too big and too overwhelming of a project for my husband and I to take on by ourselves. It’s a new climate, we have deer, and I wanted to have things blooming at all different times of the year. I am SO happy with the final result, and I look forward to seeing the flower beds fill out in the years to come, as all of these are perennials.

Can you spot Salvadore? Bonus if you can spy the other gnomes in this photo.
Gustav the gnome is hiding in the tree.
The old gas pump for farm equipment.
Before this was all rough grass; I originally wanted to xeriscape but we decided to put rock in along with the old farm equipment.
A reminder to go placidly amid the noise and haste.

Colour Me Colourful

We wanted to have some more colour, and so we added pots of annuals. You can see in the above photo we have a large one at the steps – by the most gorgeous purple clematis – and we put some on our deck as well.

Berry Happy To Just Veg Out

I have gotten so much incredible edibles out of my garden already (NOT THAT KIND OF EDIBLES), that I can hardly believe it’s only June. I have so many greens, you guys! It’s all salads all the time around here:

Plus a healthy dose of cilantro:

And basil:

And I’ve even harvested some raspberries, along with strawberries:

Also, garden spinach in smoothies is LIFE ALTERING, even more so than, say, getting sugared.

Just Thelma, No Louise

My lovely friend Sandi (HI SANDI) and I went to lunch and a movie last week, and I had to admit that the last time I saw a movie in the theatre, it was Top Gun: Maverick. Before that, it was Greta Gerwig’s Little Women in 2019. So what I’m saying is that I don’t see a lot of movies; mostly I find myself bored and distractable. But Sandi suggested we go see Thelma, which I had never heard of, but upon discovering it was about a ninety-two woman who gets scammed and then goes on a caper with her friend and his scooter to get her money back, well. I was IN. It was such a pro-aging delight, and I think the key to a good movie watching experience is to watch with a girlfriend, as opposed to, say, the members of the Boyhouse who enjoy action movies and things that are upsetting, like bombs exploding or guns firing.

On that note, I wanted to bring up something to see if anyone else can relate: I need spoilers, else I cannot get through a movie or television show. I get too stressed and anxious watching anything even remotely upsetting. Even with a feel-good movie like Thelma, which at 107 minutes is pretty much perfect, I was feeling all sweaty-palmed and worried. I have been known to google plots or to text my friend Hannah (HI HANNAH) for detailed spoilers so I know what to expect. Anyway, Thelma was absolutely wonderful and I highly recommend it, particularly as a raised fist in solidarity to combat feelings of invisibility and irrelevance that are forced on aging people, particularly women.

Me, watching a movie.

The Vulva Shaped Soapbox

Speaking of raised fists and aging women, I don’t know if I’ve ever talked about The Menopause Manifesto. I generally use the library for most books, but some books are necessary to have on the shelf at the ready, and this is one of them. I bought it in 2021 and have been using it as a reference ever since; my symptoms have vastly (VASTLY) changed in the past three years and I have never come across any book so helpful, compassionate, and evidence-based than this one. Dr. Gunter is THE last word in women’s health, and particularly in the menopause sphere, and she rails against misinformation and the so-called fixes that are sold to women desperate to find relief from their symptoms, from the merely bothersome to the downright debilitating. It’s a must read for any woman who is lucky enough to live long enough to go through this perfectly natural, but often cloaked in shame, stage of life.

Simply Irresistable

As I said, women can start to feel less attractive and more invisible as we age, but do you know who finds me even more sexy and irresistible than before? Mosquitoes. Hello summer, and my daily walks down by the creek do not go unnoticed. I have always been a person who has been hotly pursued by mosquitoes, but these days I am even more irresistible to them. It’s like I’m Princess Di, and they are the paparazzi, but with less-devastating, itchier results. Maybe it’s because you eat so much potassium, my son helpfully mentioned, and that could be true, but my whole life I have been One Sexy Bitch to those blood-thirsty insects.

Typically I put on bug spray prior to my walk, but I forgot to the other day, the exact day I was wearing a really cute yoga tank with criss-cross straps and an open back. My entire body, but particularly my back, is now covered in welts. I happen to have allergic reactions to mosquito bites, not the My Girl deadly kind of allergic reaction, but just swelling and bruising and terrible itch. I also have allergic reactions to anything that is supposed to soothe said bites, and my friend Laura (HI LAURA) told me that she is the same way. Of course she is, we are basically the same person, except she’s American. Anyway, she suggested Thayer’s Witch Hazel with Rose, and friends, IT WORKS. I had immediate relief, plus it smells lovely.

Outfit of the Month

Remember when I mentioned that my dressy sandals were just half a size too small, and my feet were swelling and falling out of them? I replaced them with these from Skechers, and I wore them to a recent birthday party ALL NIGHT. Not once did I slip off my shoes, as is my wont. Comfort and cuteness, it’s a winning combination

Here’s the full outfit: the same black Lululemon City Sleek pants that look like real pants, but feel like yoga pants, that I have talked about at length for years. The top is from long-defunct Jacob, and I don’t know exactly how long I have had it, but I do know I wore it to my 40th birthday party, and I am now 49.

June was a great month for me, and when I compare it to the nervous breakdown of LAST June, well, it looks even better. Do you have any favourite things from this month? I’d love to hear about them. I have an interesting weekend ahead of me, including a houseguest and an adventure, and I wish all my Canadian friends a lovely long weekend! And for you non-Canadians, I hope you have a wonderful regular weekend. xo

Joy (pump it up pump it up now) Pain (keep it going keep it going now)

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Recently my husband and I were at a birthday party for a friend; a video of that party was created and shared with me. I watched it, my eyes widening, and then I watched it again. I called my husband over to watch it with me. Do I really look like that? I asked, astonished. He nodded. All the time? He raised his eyebrows and said When you’re at a party, yes. All the time.

Friends, I looked like a maniac, an absolute maniac. My mouth is wide open in almost every shot, head thrown back, laughing. When I’m not laughing – and my son, in the kindest way, I’m sure, overheard me and my girlfriends on our deck one afternoon and said we were cackling like a coven of witches – I’m smiling maniacally with all my teeth showing, hugging people and throwing my arms around people and gesturing to people to get in the picture, and just generally touching people a lot.

What can I say, I love being around my girlfriends and also, apparently, touching people.

Recently Lisa (HI LISA) wrote about joy, and that post and the associated comments really made me realize two things: either I have a really low bar for what constitutes a joyful feeling, or I am an incredibly easily-delighted person. I think it’s probably a bit of both.

I think I was about ten when my grandma gave me Emily Climbs and Emily’s Quest for Christmas, and let me tell you, I identified so strongly with Emily Starr in a way I never had identified with any fictional character before. Of course, the other books I was reading at age ten were the Sweet Valley High series, and although I thought they were aspirational, in my heart of hearts I knew I wasn’t going to turn sixteen and suddenly become an All-American, blonde, blue-eyed, size six twin who drove a red Spider Fiat to school and dated the star of the basketball team, although I did want to be the editor of the school’s paper, had the school had a paper.

But Emily! I was so very Emily, and one of my most Emily traits was the flash. I absolutely experienced the flash, a feeling of awe and joy and overwhelm in the face of natural beauty; as a matter of fact, I experience it every single day. You might think that’s an easy thing, given that this is my view every morning:

But the truth is I have felt it my whole life, yes, even in Calgary, even on the greyest, beigest, windiest days. There was always something outdoors that was beautiful, and if that makes me sound like I’m constantly dancing around like Julie Andrews singing that the hills, streets, sidewalks, and backyards are alive with the sound of music, well, I’m not NOT like that.

I get a lot of joy out of being outside; let’s leave it at that.

But there are so many other things that bring me deep joy on a daily basis: talking to my boys and wondering how they became so insanely hilarious and wonderful, hanging out with my husband, and particularly travelling with him as he is an excellent travel companion, not to mention planner, Rex, who is the canine personification of pure unadulterated joy every minute of the day, unless we get caught in the rain and end up walking 3 kilometres in a downpour. Delicious food brings me great joy, as does a perfect cocktail or lovely glass of wine, reading or writing a moving sentence or paragraph, being in my garden, eating things from my garden, and that feeling when everything is perfectly hygge and cozy, everything tidy and in its place.

Music brings me joy, all kinds of music, whether I’m playing it myself or listening to it. I’ve constantly got a song in my head – hence my dancing around Julie Andrews-style all the live-long day – and the other day I had a sudden craving to listen to an album. Other than Aretha Franklin’s 30 Greatest Hits, I never listen to albums, only curated playlists, but here I was, suddenly and inexplicably desperate to listen to the Barenaked Ladies’ debut, Gordon.

That album, so unique and original, came out when I was in high school and listening to it I was instantly transported back to 1992, singing Hello City with my friend Tracy when we were in chemistry together (HI TRACY). It turns out I remember every single lyric to every single song, even the lesser-known, more obscure ones like Box Set. Disc one! It’s where we’ve begun. It’s all our greatest hits. And if you are a fan then you know that you already got ’em.

I was feeling weird and unsettled the week before and for days after I wrote about 1988, mostly due to unpleasant memories, but also because I did something I have never done before and never will do again: I googled two ex-boyfriends. I discovered that the one I was dating during the Gordon time frame is now an executive at Spotify, and the one from 1988 is now a film critic and acclaimed playwright. Who knew? Certainly not me, and before you get the wrong idea, I will never google another ex, because a) I mostly can’t remember their last names, and b) even if I could, I would probably discover something upsetting but maybe not surprising, like incarceration or death.

I mean, maybe not, maybe all these guys are just living regular lives, but I am not about to discover them. In any case, I was telling a friend – whose name, coincidentally, is Joy (HI JOY) – at the birthday party about my general feeling of unsettledness; she looked deep into my eyes and asked in the kindest, most compassionate way if it was because I was wondering about the path not taken. NO NO, OH MY GOD, NO. It wasn’t that at ALL, I have absolutely no regrets about the dynamiting of Walnut Grove, so to speak, I love my life and wouldn’t wish it any different. I didn’t realize what that feeling was until I listened to Gordon. I may not have liked you, oh but memory is a strange thing oh, Enid? Enid I remember you.

Weekly Reading

I have a WILD variety of books this week, and I loved them all.

Bird By Bird. “You’ve never read Bird By Bird?” Laura asked, shocked, when I told her what I was reading. (HI LAURA). I know! Better late than never to read this absolute gem of a book, full of wisdom and compassion for all those trying to live a creative life. A must for all writers!

Sandwich. First of all, I have loved Catherine Newman since her Bringing Up Ben and Birdy days, and a lot of this book evoked nostalgia. She is such an incredible writer. This book really captures the feeling of a menopausal woman, sandwiched between her aging parents and young adult children; it takes place during a week they are all vacationing together at Cape Cod. It involves family secrets and lies, the wild roller coaster of emotions and feelings from being together, and anxiety and joy that comes from family. So much of this was very resonant with me. I did not expect a main story line about reproductive health and rights, but I was very here for it. A few times, reading this, I felt like my heart was going to explode. It’s very moving and very beautiful. 

Sociopath. This book was absolutely fascinating. I learned so much through this memoir of a woman who is a diagnosed sociopath. She details her struggles throughout life, the destructive ways she leaned into her sociopathy, and how doing things that society condemns – theft, stalking, breaking into houses, and even violence – allowed her to feel SOMETHING. It’s really an eye-opening and interesting read.

My husband was the main organizer of his 40th high school reunion, and the event was this past Saturday. Months ago, we were having dinner with another couple, and with regards to the reunion, the woman said to me “You’re going too, right?” When I said no, she reacted with a level of shock that was disturbing to me. She recommended, in the most serious way, that I just…go to the same location and, in her words, keep an eye on things. After I got over my surprise, I couldn’t help but feel sad for such a display of low self-worth and lack of trust in her own relationship. In any case, it sounds like a good time was had by all on Saturday, and I WAS a bit jealous, not due to any kind of romantic rekindling, but because my own 30th reunion didn’t happen due to a lack of interest. I hope by the time my 40th rolls around all that will have changed.

Happy last week of June, everyone! xo

Influential

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It’s been a hectic week, full of super-boring and tedious errands and chores, including, but not limited to, Costco, Superstore, the post office, the mall, a meeting with the lawyer to get our updated wills signed, and not one but two trips to Service Canada for passport applications.

At Service Canada, there is a lineup to be assessed for what kind of government service is required, where the desk person ascertains that all paperwork and documentation is in order, and then a number is given to wait for the actual service. On Monday, the fellow in front of me was applying for a passport and I overheard him admit that no, he did not have his birth certificate, at which point he was turned away, dejectedly, to apparently drive back across the lake to the west side to fetch it and return later, on this, his only day off. My husband and I merely needed a straightforward renewal, but because the boys are now adults, they are not able to do this, instead they needed to apply for an adult passport; I inwardly sighed with relief because I HAD brought their birth certificates, so I felt this would be a relatively easy process.

At this point, of course, you should realize that in the soundtrack of my life, ominous music would be playing.

It turns out that birth certificates and their old, non-expired passports were not enough; I needed to also bring their drivers’ licenses. Now, I did not ask what if they don’t have one, because of course they do, but I did ask how I could possibly do this, since they work and need their licenses to, you know, drive to work. Well, the answer was that I needed to simply photocopy both sides and then get their guarantor to sign and date them, and then come back, easy peasy. I was frustrated, but as we know, there is zero upside to vocally or visibly show frustration with any kind of service employees; as well as being unkind it will not change the situation. So I went ahead with my husband’s and my passport renewal, and then left to continue on with my epic week of errands.

The next day I came back with the photocopied and signed drivers’ licenses, and found myself once again sitting in the waiting area, patiently reading a book. I noticed a woman across from me with her daughter, who was maybe six or seven; she had paper and a clipboard, and they were passing the time by playing a word guessing game, like hangman without the death-figure. It was so like something I would have done with my own kids at that age, that I couldn’t help but gaze fondly at them; she caught me looking, and I smiled and looked down at my book, which was, appropriately enough for this fuzzy warm moment, Momfluenced.

Recently Lisa (HI LISA) said to me that parenting is so performative now; I kept thinking of that statement as I read this deep dive into the strange world of momfluencers, women who earn money on Instagram photographing their lives and their children for all the Internet world to see.

Performative parenting has not been part of my experience at all, in fact, the entire concept of momfluencers really passed me by. When my kids were babies, I didn’t even have a smartphone, let alone social media; I think I obtained an Instagram account when they were nine and ten, and so I never was touched by that whole trend. What I did have, introduced to me via Babycenter newsletters, were mommy blogs.

I wonder if it’s a generational thing. Mommy blogs in the 2000s were almost exclusively devoid of advertising dollars, and almost exclusively written by Gen X women who were not afraid to say Huh, this really sucks sometimes, rather than write about motherhood in the glowing, sugar-coated way that it had been written about up to that point. Viciously mean commenters aside, we all felt free to express that sometimes things were really messy and hard, and we didn’t feel a need to put a filter on our lives. We were all just doing our best, even though that “best” was not picture-perfect by any means. Mommy blogs were a source of comfort and community for those of us stunned by the dissonance between what we thought going to the playground would be like, versus the reality.

I remember very little from 2004, and almost nothing at all from 2005-2007, which is something no one really warns you about. I vaguely remember how difficult it was to leave the house, particularly in winter, and I also remember how chronically exhausted I was, but mostly I remember being really, really lonely almost all of the time. There is nothing more isolating than being home with two babies under two; it’s so hard to go out and do things, the days are so busy and yet there seems to be so little to show for that busyness, and everything is so mind-numbingly boring. I wonder how I would have felt, if scrolling through Instagram was possible during late-night feedings, as opposed to the informercials I found myself watching, or the reruns of MASH.

I guess comparison is a game we all play at some point in our lives. I found this book, Momfluenced, pretty fascinating because it was so well balanced and thought out, and written in a very casual and informal way, which made for an easy read of a very complicated subject. I have pretty mixed feelings on influencing in general; I want women to be able to earn money, and if they are earning money from their daily lives and even, maybe, from their parenting duties – what detergent do YOU use to get your kids’ vomit out of bedsheets – well, that’s great, it’s an upside to unending, typically unpaid drudgery. But I do find it kind of distasteful and morally ambiguous to use kids as props for your soft-focus, photographic earnings, particularly children who cannot give permission for this. On the other hand, if those earnings are put aside for those children…I suppose it’s no different from children working as actors or models, but then, I have mixed feelings on that as well.

It’s a complicated subject, and an interesting book, and meanwhile, as I looked at the woman with her daughter, I wished I had my own word game to play, pencil to paper. Did I just get momfluenced to buy some old-school word puzzle books? Maybe I did.

Weekly Reading

Besides Momfluenced, I got quite a bit of reading done, thanks to waiting areas and a rainy weekend.

Old Babes In The Wood. A new collection of short stories by Margaret Atwood! Fans of Moral Disorder, like me, will be thrilled to find that the first three and the last four stories feature Nell and Tig, if you know, you KNOW. The last two are very touching, and if you recall, Atwood’s longtime partner Graeme Gibson sadly passed in recent years; these stories seem like a loving tribute to him. The stories that are sandwiched between the Nell and Tig stories are a bit too paranormal and supernatural than I tend to like, but if you’re a person who enjoys that, you’ll enjoy those too.

What My Bones Know. The role that mental health plays into the physical body is so interesting to me; trauma can surface as physical symptoms many years later. This memoir replays the author’s terrible childhood of abuse, and how it affected every area of her life: her personality, her relationships, her ability to communicate, her mental health, and, also, her physical well-being. It’s a fascinating discussion of healing, intergenerational trauma, and the immigrant experience. 

One Last Summer. I have been so excited to read this, as I loved In A New York Minute, by the same author. I liked, but did not love, this book about friends reuniting for one last summer before their beloved camp is sold to a big glamping corporation. There is a nice storyline about friendship, and a sexy crush, and lots of camp shenanigans, but something about it left me feeling kind of indifferent. Maybe my expectations were too high? Don’t get me wrong, it’s a nice beachy, summery read; I think I just wanted something different.

Speaking of summer, this week has been absolutely gorgeous and I have had full-on summer feelings, but this weekend was pretty chilly and rainy. Do you know who doesn’t like getting caught in the rain? Rex.

The trouble is, when we are walking a 5-6 km loop, and rain starts halfway, there’s nothing for it but to keep going. I got up super early on Sunday morning to walk him before the rain started, just to escape those accusing eyes. I hope you all had a beautiful weekend. xo

Knocking Off The To-Do List

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Thank you all so much for your commiseration about the wildlife situation around here; I am happy to tell you that since the neighbourhood collectively locked up their garbage, Baloo seems to have moved on to greener pastures, hopefully one that has natural, non-garbage food to eat. I know things will be different once fruit season kicks in, but for now, I’m breathing a sigh of relief. Now, am I low-level on the edge in the morning, obsessively checking the windows before going outside or letting Rex out? Yes I am. Did my heart rate increase by fifty on hearing a suspicious noise as I prepared for my yoga practice, only to discover that it was my mother-in-law innocently moving her recycling bin? Also yes. I thought you were the bear! I scream-whispered at five in the morning.

Just to add to the excitement, Rex and I have taken what I call “urban walks,” as opposed to our walks along the nature paths or up Knox Mountain, four times over the past two weeks, and each time we have seen coyotes. One even followed us down the sidewalk for a while, as Rex barked and barked and I used every ounce of strength to hold him back. Do I find that incredibly unsettling? Yes I do.

This park bench is on our urban walking route, and it brings me so much joy, I cannot even. Looking at it makes those coyote encounters feel worthwhile. It’s like there is an entire story written in just one sentence; I feel like Lloyd’s bench is a book that is just waiting to be written.

Speaking of books, I have one of those five year, one line a day journals, and now that I’m on my third year with it, I’m really seeing the payoff. I consider this blog to be a journal of sorts, but the one line a day is such a good way to capture, briefly, what was going on in my life, and I can see at this time last year, I was basically having a nervous breakdown.

One of the many things causing my breakdown was the uncertainty of basically everything to do with the move, and more specifically, the change in medical care. Last Wednesday, I went to note in my journal that I had, with pride and excitement, accomplished something I have been working on for more than six months, and on that very day, one year before, my husband had received some pretty devastating medical news. Now, before we all hit the panic at the disco button, let me reassure you that my husband is still alive and thriving, but at the time, we didn’t know what was going to happen. He needed a medical procedure, and we were six weeks out from moving to a new province. We didn’t know if he’d be able to get it before we left, and if he wasn’t, what were we going to do? Come back? We’d already sold the house, the movers were booked, and once a person moves to a new province, there can be a huge, sometimes indefinite delay in getting a doctor and finding medical care.

Things worked out fine for him, ultimately, but we were still doctor-less until just this week, and quite frankly, that was sooner than I could have even hoped. I’m thrilled to check “find a doctor” off our collective to-do list. Just this week we also found a dentist, due to my son somehow cracking his retainer in half and needing a new one, and started the process to renew all of our passports.

Why is dealing with anything government-related so tedious and painful? Remember the last time I had to renew the boys’ passports? At that time I dealt with the most competent government employee who had a zest for his job that I have never seen before or since, and it was still a process and a half. I am steeling myself to go to Service Canada today, thoughts and prayers greatly appreciated.

My dad, in the most dad way possible, has gifted my husband and I, along with our sons when they started driving, motor association memberships every Christmas of our married life, and one of the perks of the membership is the ability to get professional and discounted passport photos, so off we all went to cross this task off our to-do lists. Is there anything less flattering and more distressing than a passport photo? It’s worse even than a driver’s license photo. I pulled my hair into a bun, remembering the last time, when I had to smooth and sleek my hair into oblivion, and prepared myself mentally to see myself as others see me, face in grim repose.

What I didn’t prepare for was the ego-crushing admonishment that I was “too shiny” and had to use blotting papers not once but three times before the photographer was satisfied, and then I had a “there’s something on your face” that turned out to be just my face. Fellow Gen X ladies: it is very hard to unlearn the Matte Or Death lessons of our youth, but in the interest in not looking like one of those dried-apple dolls, I have been using products that are meant to mimic the dewy glow of youth. Am I comfortable with the dewiness? No, I am not. However, I recognize that matte products, on Women Of A Certain Age can exacerbate the physical signs of aging on the skin and YES, I EMBRACE MY AGING PROCESS, and YES, I AM PRO-AGING, but I would also like to not look completely like the afore-mentioned dried-apple doll. And so here I am, using non-matte tinted serums with all the hyaluronic acids and whatnot, and I get a stern talking-to by the passport photographer that I am JUST TOO DAMN SHINY. One cannot win. And then, even with all that shine, my age is vastly apparent, like a dried-apple doll that has been brushed with olive oil. My neck, in this photo and probably in life, resembles a narrow, striated tree trunk, and my facial expression toes the line of sociopath. Well. As I said, there is no good passport photo, and I will continue to never use filters on my regular photos, to lessen the shock value of reality.

Weekly Reading

Open Secrets. After my run of meh books last week, I felt that I had to break the streak with a reread of one of my favourite Alice Munro collections. Well, they are all my favourites, how can a person choose? I have wholeheartedly loved every single story she ever wrote. RIP Alice Munro! As a side note, celebrity deaths almost never affect me, I either think the person has already died, or else I just don’t feel anything at all. But Alice Munro! She was such a gift to the literary world; she was such a beautiful talent and I feel sad she is not in our world anymore. Anyway, this collection is absolutely marvellous, two of the stories – The Albanian Virgin and Carried Away – are stories I think about literally all the time. Can anyone ever say enough about Alice Munro? I know I can’t. I love her so much, and I am sad she is gone. 

Capote’s Women. I have been fascinated by the story of Truman Capote and how he betrayed the high-society, uber-wealthy women who took him into their confidence for years. Side note: there is a TV show about this, the second season of Feud, which I haven’t watched but believe me, I will! Someday. I am not a good TV watcher. Anyway, I was excited about this book because it’s a pretty wild and fascinating story; there are some very juicy details about Babe Paley and Lee Radziwill, who I have been interested in since becoming obsessed with the book What Remains. Imagine being Capote, social climbing and being a bit of a wunderkind, and then writing a book that essentially is a lightly-veiled tell-all of these women’s lives, and then wondering why he became a pariah with them? Imagine being these women, whose whole job is just to keep marrying rich men? How could this book be anything but great? Well, I am sorry to tell you that I really disliked the matter-of-fact writing style and much of it was somehow dull and boring. Oh well.

In garden news this week, not only have we had many salads, but all my smoothies have been made with spinach from the garden and it is a life-changing event. I cannot even tell you how amazing they are. More amazing is that we have already had four ripe strawberries! The first one I photographed like one of my French girls, in several luscious positions. It was delicious.

I hope you all have a delicious week! With all my harvesting, I have been thinking a lot about food, and meal planning, and, most of all, desserts, so I’ll be sure to share all my Yummy Related Thoughts soon. xo

The Return of Baloo

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At about 2:30 in the morning last Thursday, I woke up with a start. I could hear a loud, strange, repetitive noise; sort of like a scraping sound. At first, in my sleepy fog, I thought one of the boys was either coughing or vomiting, and I got up to investigate. Their bathroom door was open and the room was dark and empty empty; both of their doors were firmly shut with no lights coming through the bottoms. I stood there, listening for a few minutes, but I didn’t hear anything. I chalked it up as a weird dream – I have been taking magnesium at night, and I find I sometimes get strange, vivid dreams – and went to bed.

My usual wake time is 4:00, and that day was no exception. I trundled out of bed, whispered good morning to my younger son who also gets up at that hour for work, and padded downstairs. At the bottom of the stairs is a very large window that looks out towards my mother-in-law’s house and, crucially for this story, the side lawn. There, on the side lawn, directly outside the large window, was a very large bear, tearing up a garbage bag and eating its contents.

I stood there, stunned, for just a moment before running up the stairs to grab my son who was, understandably, a little confused at my scream whispers to come here come here come here. He followed me down the stairs so we both could stare at the bear, wondering what to do.

I had to do something. As anyone who has been around wildlife knows, one cannot allow wildlife to eat garbage. Particularly one cannot allow a bear to eat garbage; bears can get easily habituated to it and to people, and that can end up with a problem bear, one who would be in danger of being “destroyed,” as they euphemistically say. But what to do?

The next day, when I related this story to Kate, the woman who does my sugaring, she immediately asked if I had heard about all the internet discourse about whether a woman, alone in the woods, is safer if she meets a man or a bear. “What my first question is,” Kate said, pausing mid-sugar as I had my knee into my chest, naked from the waist down, “Is what kind of bear are we talking about?” That was exactly my question too; the answer is very different between grizzly and black bear, and although I would never discount another woman’s lived experience or trauma, no matter how you slice it, bears are really fucking scary.

This bear, I could tell, was a black bear with brown fur. Because it wasn’t a grizzly, I took a chance on what to do. I knocked on the window. The bear looked up at me and continued to go through the garbage. I knocked a few more times, locking eyes with it in the most aggressive way I could, through a window and still kind of terrified. It got up and lumbered up through the vineyard, to go paw through the neighbouring houses’ garbage, as I found out later that morning.

The reason I bring up the type of bear is that a grizzly could charge, possibly through the window, with that kind of aggressive behaviour from me. I had to take a few deep breaths just typing that. As it was, a giant bear ten feet away from me, even through a window, was extremely unsettling.

I had to go out and clean up the garbage, because I couldn’t risk it coming back for it, but I was terrified. My son and I ascertained the coast was clear, and I ran out, where I discovered where the scraping noise had come from – the black bin we share with my mother-in-law was knocked on its side and pulled away from its usual spot. I cleaned up the garbage, trying not to heave as I picked up my mother-in-law’s kitchen waste that included a lot of slimy eggshells and various meat bones. I locked the garbage up in the shed, which we should have been doing weeks ago, after hibernation season. Better late than never, I guess.

By this time Rex was awake in his crate, and I knew he had to go out. Dogs need to go out in the morning! But I also didn’t want him to be mauled, obviously, and I sent out deep exhalations of gratitude for the large windows. Typically I let him out without a thought, and imagine if I had done that first thing in the morning? I don’t want to imagine it, actually.

I took my big flashlight and went out with him, shining the light around and checking the area frantically. Rex was also checking the area frantically, sniffing and following the scents of the bear on the lawn and into the vines. I looked up to see my mother-in-law at her kitchen window, with the light on. She waved at me and I scurried over to her house. She met me at the door, mistaking the look on my face for concern over her well-being. “I’m fine, dear,” she said, “I was just getting up to use the bathroom and I could see you out here with your flashlight.”

At that point I started incoherently saying words like “bear” and “garbage” and “ahhhhhh!” Here’s a hint for all of you living next door to your octogenarian mother-in-laws, maybe don’t barrage them with bear information at 4:30 in the morning. Maybe wait until later in the morning when you’re calmer. As it was, my frantic demeanor got her so worked up that I literally worried that she was going to have a stroke, but on the upside, she texted everyone in the neighbourhood, who informed her that they too had had an ursine visitor, with scattered garbage to show it.

She missed one person, though, which I found out the next day when Rex and I went in the early morning hours to take the garbage to the street for pickup. Someone had brought their bin up the night before, and it was knocked over, garbage scattered all over the street, to the delight of the magpies.

It’s a stressful situation. It is very unnerving to know that I could look out the window to see a bear; it’s fuel for nightmares, honestly. Even after moving the garbage, the next day it meandered around our house, going through our recycling, which is probably disappointing for it to find nothing but cardboard and washed-out yogurt containers. The very best case scenario is that, in the absence of easily-accessible garbage, the bear will move on in time, and I don’t really want to think about any other scenarios.

Later on Thursday, my son came home from his job at the golf course to show me a photo of a mama coyote with seven – seven! – pups, not fifty feet from the bunker he was working on. Between this and the deer, marmots, and thousands of birds and squirrels I encounter every day, I’m starting to feel like I’m starring in an episode of Lorne Greene’s New Wilderness. Or maybe a Disney movie, with less fluffy dresses and animal harmonizing. I’ll tell you what it’s not: a reenactment of the 1976 Governor General Award winning book, Bear. Do NOT get any ideas, Baloo.

Weekly Reading

Kind of a meh week in terms of reading; I read some very buzzy books that just didn’t hit for me. Here they are:

Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone. Let’s say you go to a family reunion in an isolated mountain resort, and let’s say someone at that resort turns up dead. Now let’s say your family is infamous, due to a legacy of crime and murder. Let’s also say that you write “how to write a murder mystery” books for a living. Well! This was an entertainingly and cleverly written murder mystery set in Australia – I had NO idea there were snowy mountain resorts in Australia – but you know what, I am just not a murder mystery person. I keep trying different genres and I just don’t enjoy them – I get confused and then because I’m confused I get bored, I don’t love a lot of action in my books, and so this didn’t really do it for me. BUT if you are a person who likes murder mysteries, particularly the tropes that go with them, then you will probably love this. Definitely this was a “it’s not you, it’s me” problem.

Family Family. First of all, in the author’s note she says she was inspired to write this novel about a woman who is both a birth mother placing babies for adoption, and an adoptive mother herself, for her own child, who was adopted. She wanted to put a novel out there that shows a warm, happy, non-traumatic perspective about adoption, and if that is the goal, then goal accomplished. This is a very sweet and heartwarming story about what makes a family, and a family coming together in the face of a (kind of silly) time of need. It is also a very readable book; this author writes in a smooth, easy-to-read book. I will say that I did not think the storyline was great, and there were many plot holes that I found annoying (i.e., the mother chooses closed adoption, but somehow everyone is able to contact everyone else and knows everything about the adoptive and birth families, the adoptive children are easily able to contact and find the birth children, etc.) but you know what, sometimes a book isn’t meant for in-depth analysis. Sometimes it’s just meant as a love letter, and this is what I think the author set out to do, and did.

Grief Is For People. I have had friends, and friendly acquaintances, die by suicide, and it is a terrible, shocking thing, so I cannot imagine the pain of losing my best friend that way, as the author of this memoir did. The memoir processes her grief, from the burglary of her home one month prior to her best friend’s death, through the pandemic, living in NYC without her best friend. I am sorry to say that the book itself left me feeling flat and kind of confused. I wanted to love it but didn’t. 

Happy June, everyone! I hope you all have a great first week of the month. I have a bit of a busy week ahead of me, all good things, and hopefully bear-free! xo