Category Archives: Books

Social Butterfly and Boxes, Boxes, Boxes

Posted on by

Nothing motivates a person so much as having a firm deadline, am I right? The past couple of weeks have been a whirlwind of cleaning and decluttering, donating and packing, and squeezing in as many social visits as I possibly can. And speaking of motivation, nothing lights a fire with regards to actually scheduling social visits, as opposed to the old “we should get together sometime soon” like leaving the province. I feel very popular these days! A woman, who I had not seen since 2019, dropped by my house for a surprise visit, which is not my favourite, and said that even though we hadn’t seen each other in years, she’s sad that I’m leaving because she thought that I’d just always be here, in this house, anytime she wanted to see me. That made me feel less popular, and more boring and staid, although I guess I’m morphing into some unpredictable wild child, leaving the house I’ve been in for twenty-three years.

I think that old trope about friends coming into your life for a reason, season, or lifetime is very true. A couple of weeks ago we had friends over for dinner – our last dinner party in our house. These are friends that are more like family, friends for life; we regularly share meals and vacations, and we have that rare unicorn of a situation where the kids all get along AND the adults all get along. It seems with couple friends that this isn’t always the case, but all eight of us love each other and enjoy each other more and more with the passing years. I found a very special package of napkins that I had bought years ago and I thought why am I saving these, let’s use them!

There’s even a drink recipe on the back.

Our older kids share a birthday – they are only two hours apart in age – but their youngest just celebrated her 17th, so I decided to make her a cake in her favourite flavours, peanut butter and chocolate. This is a cake I had made before, and, as an aside, my son reminded me that I had a goal to make every single cake in this book and I have only made two, so I need to get moving on that. In any case, I had made it before, so I was very confident in the final product.

And at this point I will say I am not a person who gets stressed about having dinner guests. I am generally a very relaxed hostess who just wants everyone to have a full glass of whatever they want, and the rest falls into place. I think I inherited this trait from my mother, who wouldn’t blink at having twenty people over for a meal and who I remember hosting many enormous holiday meals in a completely calm manner, including, when my brothers each got married, hosting fifteen and twenty-eight houseguests, respectively. When I was a kid, I could invite any friend over for any meal with zero notice, and she’d just ask me to go grab some more potatoes. So I tend to be pretty calm and I figure the food will be fine, and people are here to visit anyway.

But I did want the cake to be nice for our girl, and I was sure it would be. I was humming around the kitchen, and thought the cake was chilled and set enough to have the springform pan’s sides removed. At this point in the movie of my life, ominous music would start playing. I cheerfully removed the ring and, friends, it was a disaster. Immediately the top ganache started breaking apart and the weight of it made the fluffy filling, for lack of a better word, explode in a slow-motion manner. At that moment my husband came inside from checking the barbeque and I could only scream “The cake! The cake!” in the manner of that guy from Fantasy Island when he saw the plane. He hurried over and together we jammed the springform sides back on as the peanut butter filling spread everywhere. I was in a low-level state of Cake Panic. I never really worry about what I am serving my guests, for better or for worse, but I did have an image in my mind for my favourite girl, for our last of many dinners and visits in our house. After we had jammed the sides of the springform back on, I put it in the freezer, and this was the end result:

The birthday girl, bless her heart, thought it looked Really Cool That Way, Nicole, and it was honestly really delicious. I think the freezing actually improved the whole cake, all around, and I am going to remember that for next time. Freeze BEFORE removing the sides.

Speaking of my mom, I visited my parents for a couple of days and the guys joined in for the Canada Day holiday. I was reminded of a conversation my friend Tara (HI TARA) and I had, lo these many years ago, about visiting our parents. At the time we both had very tiny babies and equally tiny toddlers, and life felt as chaotic as that sounds. I recall mentioning to Tara taking the boys over to visit my parents and marvelling at their house as an oasis of peace, tidiness, and calm. It was like this whole other world, that wasn’t awash in diapers and toys and tears, and my mother would be calmly putting together a balanced meal, whereas I would have one child in the Baby Bjorn and another at my feet, trying to figure out how to cobble together a half-decent meal before the baby needed feeding and the toddler needed bedtime. Tara nodded and said “It’s like finding out how the other half lives,” and I felt that, again, at this time in my life, deeply as I was at my parents’ house this weekend. There aren’t boxes and donation piles everywhere! There are no endless to-do lists and balancing eating everything in the freezer and cupboards with are we running out of coffee, omg. I mean, this is what my front hallway has looked like for a week and a half, waiting for a donation pickup:

And the basement seems to have exploded:

But I had a great time at my parents’, even though one evening we were under a tornado warning. My mom and I popped over to my friend Merry’s lovely little store, original home of Salvadore the Gnome. Merry’s Mercantile carries giftware and clothing as well as a ton of wonderful vintage items, and one of the first things I saw was this:

GRIMACE! Is it a sign? I did not buy him, nor did I buy the cookbook by the 80s TV star Wok With Yan, although I was very tempted.

I was also tempted to buy a bandanna for Rex that stated “I’m the reason we can’t have nice things,” but, as appropriate as that is, I did not because I figured he would probably, ironically enough, destroy it. Merry did mention she had one last garden gnome who needed a home, and the last time I heard that phrase I ended up with a 95 pound ball of love, so of course I took the gnome home, although he’s going to be in a box for a little while. There will be a time after this! At one point boxes will not be my life, and Gustaf the Gnome will be presiding over a garden patch.

Weekly Reading

Tuesday Nights In 1980. This was a really good book about the NYC art scene in 1980, which is something I do not know much about. It deals with an art critic who has a special ability to see the world in colours and flavours, a fledgling artist from Argentina who is about to hit the big time, and a woman from Idaho who is trying to life the artist life in the gritty city. It took some turns I really did not expect, and is a compelling story about, thematically enough, chosen and blood family.

Unraveling. I think Jamie (HI JAMIE) had recommended this book, and to be honest, the premise did not sound promising. Starting in 2020, the author decides to write about making a sweater from scratch, and I do mean from scratch. She learns how to shear a sheep and does so, then washes, cards, and spins the wool. She makes her own natural dyes and colours the yarn, finally knitting it into a sweater. Pandemic projects, am I right? But the point was to show how much labour goes into the making of a sweater, and it was honestly fascinating. The book takes many sidebars to show just how much traditional labour – generally women’s – went into the making of textiles and clothing. The most fascinating example was one I had heard before, which is that the most valuable item on a Viking ship was the sail. The amount of labour that went into one sail is estimated to be two women-years of work. In medieval times, women of all classes would spend the majority of their time spinning and weaving, and the word spinster meant a woman untethered by husband or children, who could spend extra time doing these very important and valuable jobs. Having a spinster in the house was not a burden but instead was valuable. The book also goes into the absolute environmental disaster that is our textile and clothing industry, and questions why we think so much about what we put into our bodies, but not at all about what we put ON them, from an ecological point of view. Once you know this, you really can’t un-know it, and I have been thinking a lot about the impact our consumer choices have on this world. It’s really shameful and we have to do better as a whole and as individuals. I’ll be thinking about this for a while. This was a really thoughtful, interesting, well-researched and well-written book.

Now that I’m back from “where the other half lives” I need to get back to reality. Back to boxes and everything else, and I hope you all have a much-less hectic and stressful week than the one I am facing. Be well, friends! xo

Back In The Day

Posted on by

Interprovincial Woman of Mystery

I did not realize how mysterious and secretive I have been with regards to my new city, and it certainly isn’t a mystery or a secret: this Calgary Girl is going to morph into an Okanagan Girl. We are moving to Kelowna, BC, which is in the heart of Western Canada’s fruit and wine country, and is also home to the world famous Ogopogo!

My husband grew up in Kelowna, and hilariously recalls a friends’ family who claimed to have seen the Ogopogo themselves, while boating on the lake. This made them briefly locally famous, as they were on the six o’clock news talking about seeing the creature in the wake of the boat. It is probable that this exposure on the news gave their family business a much-wanted boost, which seems very quaint now. Remember the days when one would wait until the six o’clock news to find out something that happened in the world, and if you missed it, you had to wait another five hours or even until the paper was delivered the next day to catch up? And if you knew someone who was on the news, or maybe you yourself were interviewed for a human interest segment or breaking story, it was an incredibly exciting and special thing? Now we just all have social media and, perhaps, blogs or newsletters, and anyone across the globe can know minutia of our lives at any given time, but then, well, then an alleged Ogopogo sighting meant the six o’clock news and could be discussed lo these forty years later.

Whether or not the Ogopogo exists in reality – it exists in all our hearts, I’m sure – this is where I will be hanging my hat, so to speak. Or, stacking my boxes. Ernie (HI ERNIE) guessed correctly that our vacation home will now be our home; it is a beautiful house in a beautiful place, and you can all expect many stories as I get settled into my new life.

This Might Make You Grimace

Speaking of quaint things like the days with a non-24-hour-news-cycle, I heard something incredibly disturbing recently that will resonate with all of us who grew up in North America in the 80s. It has to do with the McDonaldland characters. Now, growing up, we were not a family who really ate McDonalds food – we were more Dairy Queen people, or, for extremely fancy occasions, Swiss Chalet patrons – but I did not live under a rock, and I did attend many a birthday party at McDonalds, so I was well aware of all the characters in the McDonaldland universe. Most of these characters made sense to my childhood brain: a clown, a mayor whose head was an actual cheeseburger, giant sentient French fries, a crazed criminal who craved hamburgers. And then there was Grimace, a giant purple puff who, I guess, liked milkshakes a lot. His existence didn’t make a whole lot of sense, but he was cute, and that counts for pretty much everything for a young girl in 1982 who loved everything Muppets, Smurfs, and anything else that was cute but didn’t make a whole lot of sense.

This week, this very week, I learned that Grimace – that amiable purple puffball – was modeled after a taste bud.

Words cannot describe my revulsion at this discovery. Imagine the actual board meeting of creative executives coming up with this idea. I know what will bring the kids in! Listen, kids love a cuddly creature. You know those bumps on your tongue that allow you to differentiate multiple flavours? Hear me out. A cuddly lovable creature that IS one of those bumps. Upon seeing the expressions on the faces after this idea was on the giant piece of paper on the easel, used for brainstorming: YES. And we shall name it Grimace.

I mean, I have so many questions. First of all, how was such an idea conceived? I can only imagine that the McDonalds advertising creative dropped LSD one night and spent the subsequent twelve hours staring into the mirror at his own tongue, waking up the next day with the feeling of mind expansion and the idea that yes, a giant sentient taste bud could be a beloved character in the McDonaldland universe. Not only was this idea conceived, but it was also approved. It was approved! By, I am assuming, high level creative marketing executives. Going back to the board meeting where the executives were all grimacing from the grossness of making a mascot based on a gustatory cell, which would, appropriately, be named Grimace, someone in that meeting, someone very high up on the McDonalds marketing ladder championed this and approved it for mass consumption.

What a world we lived in, back in the 80s.

Wool of Fortune

I loved Wheel of Fortune back in the 80s, and I am sure I would love it now if I ever remembered that it still exists and that I can indeed watch it. Or, more accurately, that I wasn’t halfway to coma-land after dinner, which is Reading Time for me and Watching Shows about Gold Mining in the North Time for my husband. Something that I learned recently is that Vanna White, glorious co-host of our beloved game show for the past forty years, is an avid knitter. Ms. White loves her fibre art and in fact, has an entire Vanna White-branded yarn.

This amazes me. If I were asked what Vanna White’s most-loved hobby was, I am not sure I would come up with knitting if I had one hundred guesses. I told my husband and he thought it would take a thousand guesses. In any case, I am charmed by this and mentioned it to my yoga ladies a few weeks ago, and one of them said she was not surprised as it is well known that Ms. White makes her own clothes. What. I am pretty sure she doesn’t make the clothing that she wears on Wheel of Fortune, as there always seems to be a clothing sponsor mentioned at the end of each show, or so I remember, but I like to think about her knitting herself a sweater to slip on with a cute little skirt she whipped up on her Singer. Or maybe just popping over to Fabricland to see what’s new.

Someone once asked me why I read so many memoirs, including celebrity memoirs, and it is because of things like this. I am endlessly curious about other people’s lives, particularly the minutia of other people’s lives, and knowing that Vanna White is a knitter and sewer makes me love her even more. Also, you never hear anything bad about Vanna White so I am assuming she is an angel on this earth, doing good and lighting up letters.

We’re Going To Have A Problem Here

I usually listen to 70s on 7 in the car, shoutout to Suz (HI SUZ), my fellow 70s on 7 aficionado, but sometimes I’ll flip channels to 80s on 8, 90s on 9, and Pop 2K. And what I am going to say probably circles back to my dislike for books with f*ck in the title – JUST SAY FUCK OR DON’T – but a minor pet peeve of mine is when songs are radio edited. I know. I know, I know, you don’t have to tell me, I already know that there is a reason for this, that we are protecting the ears of the youth of North America, if I want to hear unedited hard core hip hop I can listen to the Rock the Bells channel, I KNOW. But it still bothers me to hear a little bleep or a whoosh or what have you. This is mostly a problem with Pop 2K – it certainly isn’t on 70s on 7 – and some songs are so edited that there are barely any lyrics at all. I’m looking at you, Eminem.

I was in the car and The Real Slim Shady came on and I realized that the word “clitoris” was edited out, but the line about being cannibals who cut other people open like cantaloupes was not. As I said, I don’t like radio edits at all, but why would a mention of a body part be edited, but not a grossly violent act? Well, I guess because it’s a woman’s body part, living in the patriarchy, etcetera.

Omg you guys, what if someone created a mascot based on a clitoris? If it could happen for a taste bud it could happen for a clitoris! Maybe this has already happened, how much do we know really about the California Raisins?

Weekly Reading

Beauty Sick. I picked this up because Val Monroe mentioned it in her excellent newsletter, How Not To Fuck Up Your Face. It’s a well-researched, well-written book about the toxicity of the beauty industry and media; it was published in 2017 so I would say none of the ideas in here are new or astounding, but it’s a good read nonetheless. It got me thinking about the messages we were all bombarded with, growing up, and how we can change that for the next generation of girls.

We Are Not From Here. Stephany (HI STEPHANY) recommended this and I’m glad she did! It’s a moving account of three teens fleeing gang violence in Guatemala for the US. They travel on La Bestia, the dangerous train across Mexico, then on foot towards the border. It’s fiction but is based on the horrific real-life stories of children travelling on their own, hoping for compassion and safety. It’s a YA novel, which I didn’t know going in, and I find lately, at 48, I really empathize with the parents in YA novels. After all, the children are younger than my youngest, which is a sad and despairing thought. How lucky I feel to be born where I was and to not face such deadly decisions. 

The Summer Place. This author is hit or miss with me, but this was definitely a hit! What a romp this was, with multiple viewpoints and characters, massive family drama, scandalous secrets, and a heartwarming ending. This takes place during the pandemic and shows the fissures that developed in families through being disconnected or being TOO connected – i.e., what happened during lockdown when everyone was together ALL THE TIME. I was nodding along constantly. Anyway, this was a very fun read with interconnected characters and stories, and I loved it. A couple of interesting notes about the matriarch of the story: she made a ton of money in the 80s because she had written and sold the movie rights to a couple of books. The matriarch wanted to be a “serious” writer, but she ended up being a “commercial” one, and I wondered if that was the author’s actual lived experience. Another note, and this was fun to read after The Paper Palace, which also took place in Cape Cod, is that the matriarch, who is Jewish, discusses the original WASPy owners of summer homes. She describes the homes as falling apart cottages with owners who throw parties with “oceans of booze and only Ritz crackers and supermarket cheddar to eat” AND THIS IS EXACTLY THE DESCRIPTION IN THE PAPER PALACE. The supermarket cheddar stood out as a detail. I am not a part of the Cape Cod summer community so I wondered – is this a thing? Anyway, I loved this book, it was such a fun summery read.

Here we are, in the last week of June, ALREADY! The first of my daylilies is in bloom, the weather has moderated itself, there are boxes everywhere, and I have been busily trying to see as many people as possible before the big move. I’m heading to my parents’ for a few days for the Canada Day holiday, so it’s going to be a busy and social week for me. I hope you all have a beautiful week. xo

Don’t Worry About A Thing Because Every Little Thing Is Going To Be All Right

Posted on by

Let Your Love Flow Like A Mountain Stream

Last week I was channeling Miley Cyrus, this week I am all about Bob Marley. It’s been a very busy, very productive week, and – to also channel Melissa Manchester – I think we can make it.

Friends, this is going to sound like the most Out There, Hippie Shit ever, but I made a bit of a mental shift and suddenly, things started magically clicking. Maybe they would have clicked anyway! Maybe this is just a weird coincidence! Maybe our minds have nothing to do with what happens in our lives BUT early last week I was doing my yoga practice and throughout my sun salutations I kept thinking this is what my life is, this is my life, and then as I moved on to standing postures I thought I choose how to respond, and I accept this life and THEN throughout my seated vinyasa and closing I thought of the line in Desiderata, whether or not it is unclear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. I finished my practice, feeling peaceful and zen, and then everything started falling into place. Can that really be a coincidence? Maybe. But also? Maybe not.

My husband and older son drove a truckload of boxes and household items, including all our artwork, to our new house this weekend, leaving only nails and picture hangers, plus an incredible amount of dust on the walls. Did you know that the walls behind your pictures and artwork get very dusty? They do! In any case, I was absolutely astounded by the sheer amount of things my husband squeezed into his truck, and am now feeling much, much better about the move in general and what happens if everything doesn’t fit into the moving van in particular. I also have phoned the moving company not once, but twice, and they have been nothing but wonderfully reassuring, even in the face of my incredibly panicked, probably stupid questions. One such question? How do they make it fit? The women on the phone did not give me an answer like “lube, obvs,” or “that’s what she said” although I kind of wish they did. Instead, they explained, over and over, that the movers were essentially professional Tetris players, and after seeing what my husband – not a professional Tetris player – fit into his regular truck I am definitely feeling more confident.

We are also in the process of donating and selling cheaply a lot of items in the house, which means I was using our neighbourhood Buy Nothing group a lot, and you all know how that goes. My heart strings are pulled by stories of breakups and divorce and children needing items, and when I reach out to those people to arrange for a pickup or drop off? Crickets, they are chirping. I had reached my this is not worth it breaking point, and less than an hour after that the Diabetes Association called to see if I had any donations to be picked up. YES PLEASE, and also, the universe is unfolding as it should, om.

Doctor Doctor Give Me The News

I had two appointments in this past week with two different doctors, and at each appointment I ended up getting into a long, completely non-medical-related conversation. These conversations went on so long that I started to worry about other patients, and if their appointments would be delayed. I kept trying to close off the conversations with a smile and nod, and then they just kept going. What is it about me? I am a chatty person for sure, but there is something about me that seems to encourage long, in-depth conversations with random people, which, don’t get me wrong, I love, but also what about your other patients, you guys?

To illustrate the completely unrelated, non-medical nature of these conversations, one of the doctors talked to me about Snowmobile Culture In Rural Saskatchewan and his Love For Ice Fishing, which led to Bush Parties of Our Youth and Cruising Main Street As A Saturday Night Activity. This conversation was after my regularly-scheduled Pap smear, in which we also discussed Nicole’s Cervix: It’s In An Unusual Spot Which Is Why This Is So Awkward, a conversation we have every single time I get my Pap.

Doctor: I’m so sorry, this must be painful for you.

Me: I’m fine.

Doctor: I’m not! I’m sweating here.

Me: *starts laughing while the speculum is searching in vain for my elusive cervix, makes everything actually painful and even more awkward*

The conversation with the second doctor was my fault entirely. I noticed a photo of a much-younger him crossing a finish line, with a neon sign saying the time was 11 hours and 35 minutes. I asked the doctor if that was an Ironman he competed in, as I couldn’t imagine what else it could be, which started a very long discussion about how it was his first of three, segueing into How The Pandemic Changed Our Exercise Routines, which led to an involved discussion about my love for Peloton and his love of swimming pools and how devastating it was when they closed in 2020, and concluded with his suggestion that I myself compete in an Ironman before I turn fifty. Sir. I think you have grossly overestimated my interest and abilities, flattering as that is. Also flattering is that this doctor informed me that I am the “healthiest person he’s seen in years” and was definitively able to rule out MS as a cause for my constantly-going-numb left foot. Unfortunately, there is no telling why this happens and has happened for five years now, but a diagnosis of Definitely Not MS is really happy news.

Also happy news is that we have a date for the medical procedure for the recently-mentioned health issue, and that date is BEFORE we move. Now, this is the Canadian health care system so anything can happen, but as of now we have a date, we don’t have to think about going back and forth between provinces, and I am just so goddamn grateful.

This Is The End, Beautiful Friend

I wonder if all the community centre’s recent HVAC woes have helped me come to terms with saying goodbye to my beloved yoga classes. I taught my last two classes this week, and I felt very at peace with it. I expected to be very emotional and teary but I wasn’t; I was just happy that I was able to spend so many years at this place, getting to know all my wonderful students. They were so lovely, giving cards and notes and gifts and baking, and only one student burst into tears, which made it easier on me.

Many people have asked if I will teach yoga in my new city, and the answer is I don’t really know. I probably could, and I have a few ideas, but the yoga industry, such as it is, is very different from when I started teaching, what with so many studios closing after and during the pandemic. I advertised to the Calgary yoga community to take over my classes, and my inbox instantly exploded, and each interested potential teacher was incredibly qualified. There are just so many teachers competing for not very many classes, and I feel like the same is true for my new city. It might be time for a pivot!

School’s Out FOREVER

Speaking of pivots, my younger son has his last exam tomorrow, which means we are DONE with the public school system! I am no longer a Mother of School Aged Children, instead I am a Mother of Semi-Functioning Adults. Landslide to infinity.

Weekly Reading

Hold My Girl. Friends, I want so badly to champion every single book written by female Canadian authors, I really really do. I want to tell you to read and support all of them. But this book, well. I didn’t HATE it. I read it to the end because I was invested enough in the story to want to see how it turns out. And on the positive side, it did provoke some interesting thoughts about what makes a parent: is it biology, is it nurture, and is love like a pie that is finite or is it ever-expanding the more people we let in? So the concept – about an IVF mixup that led to two women discovering that the babies they had (one late-term miscarriage, one healthy birth) were not, biologically speaking, their babies – is interesting. The execution, however, was lacking. The story itself is cliched in every way, trite, and the dialogue stilted. And there are so many parts that I thought what, that would never happen, like how the women’s eggs were purposefully switched by the nurse who was a friend of one of the women (what, why), and the doctor revealed the name of each woman to the other without legal representation (what, how) that I just lost the thread a bit. Anyway, it’s fine but I hate that I can’t be more enthusiastic about it.

Buy Yourself The F*cking Lilies. I am not a person who is bothered in the least by swearing, generally, but I have a history of strongly disliking books that have a bleeped out F*ck in the title. If you can’t just say Fuck then just don’t say it, you know? I’m looking at you, Mark Manson and Caroline Dooner. Yes, I know this is a publishing thing but I stand by my anti-f*ck stance. I feel similarly when people use the word “effing” or “fricking.” Say it or don’t say it. And I also had a moment in the first few pages where I thought oh no, I am way too old for this as the author describes waking up in a hungover haze after her 25th birthday when she drunk-dialed her therapist and, although she doesn’t remember it, said she had nothing to live for. But I had heard her interviewed on a podcast and she seemed really lovely, so I gave the book a chance and I am SO glad I did. I really loved this book, which is part memoir, part self-help, part enthusiastic cheerleader. Yes, some of the self-help did not in the least apply to the stage of life I find myself in, but the rest of it was just so cheering, so affirming, and the author herself does so many things that I do personally – make your bed every day, treat yourself in small ways every day, don’t hang out with people who make you feel terrible – that I wondered could I write a book like this? It was truly joyful to read, and I am looking forward to reading her latest.

I am feeling energized and optimistic for the week ahead, like the universe is unfolding as it should. I hope you all have a wonderful week. xo

Miley and Me

Posted on by

The other day I woke up with No Scrubs stuck in my head; this isn’t an entirely strange thing, as I do like that song, and hear it fairly often on one of my playlists. What was strange, though, was how tenacious it was. All through my morning yoga practice I kept hearing hanging off the passenger side of his best friend’s ride over and over. A scrub is a guy who can’t get no love from ME. Then I took a Peloton ride and the very last class was No Scrubs, and it started to feel surreal. After that there was no getting away from it; I wondered if this would be like the time I had the Lido Shuffle stuck in my head for days, and kept hearing it on the radio, and is this is how it starts, the descent into madness.

The next day I chose a Peloton ride that had a No Scrubs-free playlist, but it turns out that I am becoming unhinged anyway, as I got all choked up singing along to Miley Cyrus’ The Climb. There’s always going to be another mountain, I’m always going to want to make it move, it’s always going to be an uphill battle…at which point my singing voice started cracking and I started rapidly blinking back tears. To MILEY CYRUS.

Well, things have felt a little Uphill Battle-ish lately. Every morning I wake up with renewed positivity and optimism, and just as soon as I cross a few Stressful Things off my list, five more Stressful Things take their place. This past week a very unexpected, fairly serious health issue popped up in the Boyhouse, which is causing me considerable worry, as we are moving next month, and this needs to be taken care of prior to that. We are not just moving house, but moving provinces, and let me tell you that I absolutely love the Canadian universal health care system for the most part, but it can be hard to get things in a very timely manner, and inter-provincial health care is not ideal. Switching provincial care and finding new providers is going to be a Big Deal, but I’m trying to keep my head up and take things step by step.

This move is something that’s been in the works for a while, and although I have had some emotional ups and downs about it, I am definitely looking forward to being settled into my new home. In the interim, however, everything feels like chaos. I am not a person who Does Well With Change, in fact, I’m kind of the opposite, and everything is changing at once. EVERYTHING IS CHANGING ALL AT THE SAME TIME. It’s like ripping off a giant bandaid, or getting a Brazilian wax all in one strip. OUCH, but also, it isn’t dragging things out, I guess.

Anyway. Things will get done. In not too long, I will be on the other side of this. On the huge plus side, my son had his second dental surgery this week and it went really well. It went so well that I had a few moments of regret that the first went so badly, but we cannot change the past, people. He and I spent an afternoon watching Forrest Gump, and because I am currently an emotional wreck, I spent much of it blinking rapidly and swallowing hard. We both agreed that the best parts of the movie were the Vietnam scenes and the friendship between Forrest and Lieutenant Dan, and that the music, as the kids say, slaps.

One thing I am very much looking forward to in my new home is gardening. The growing season is solidly four months longer than it is in Calgary, and this winter is going to be all about planning and designing my new beds. The trick will be to keep Rex out of them, which takes some doing. Incredibly, after a winter of being sat on and walked on – Get out of the garden! I said countless times this winter, only to be answered with a look of innocence before slowly trampling the beds on his way out – my Siberian irises are in full, gorgeous bloom. On the other hand, Rex seemed to have killed my creeping Jenny in the hosta garden. Who knew one could kill creeping Jenny? I thought it would survive nuclear fallout, but apparently, it cannot survive a winter with Rex.

Weekly Reading

Foreverland: On The Divine Tedium of Marriage. It’s interesting how sometimes a book will come into your life at just the right time, and will resonate with you so strongly that you might look around, wondering if someone is actually inside your house. Or your head. I don’t think I’ve ever read a book of essays that is so honest, so candid, and yet so funny and self-deprecating as this. It’s divided into four sections that can be described as courtship and engagement, wedding and early parenthood, house, home, and parenting older kids, and, finally, bumps in the road, including dissatisfaction, illness, and the pandemic. I cannot even describe how much I related to so much of this book, even for things that happened long ago; it has been a very long time since I had a newborn, but her description of the feeling that the baby was an actual part of her body and when she was separated from the baby, it felt like she was literally missing an organ was so exactly what I too experienced. It is a rare book that makes a person feel completely seen and less alone, but this absolutely did. It’s really a beautiful, yet brutally honest, look at so many facets of marriage and life, and I loved it.

Funny You Should Ask. I read most of this in waiting rooms so I think I was a bit distracted and found this book a bit hard to get into. It’s a nice light romance about a journalist who interviews a movie star and then they meet again ten years later for another interview. The interview skyrocketed her to fame, it started a bunch of rumours, I don’t know, it was fine. I liked it just fine but didn’t love it. Apparently this book went viral on TikTok, so my meh reaction could be just me.

The Paper Palace. Wow, this was a really incredible book. On the surface, it’s about a woman who has just had a clandestine encounter with her oldest friend, and now she’s faced with the choice: leave her marriage and her much-loved husband and children, or stay and figure out how to deal with the fallout. One might think, as I did initially, if she loved her husband so much, why the affair? This book delves into the past fifty years, and how it affected a twenty-four hour period. It’s filled with secrets, and horror, and love; it shows the butterfly effect of single actions, and the connections between us. It is so well written and the descriptive writing is beautiful. I had no idea what was going to happen or how it was going to end, and it’s the kind of book that leaves you wondering and wanting more. I really loved it.

This week felt so long, but I am, Monday morning once again, filled with renewed positivity and optimism to tackle the ever-growing To Do list. Happily, my skin care routine is working and I look fantastic.

I hope you all have a beautiful, uncomplicated week. xo

Crying In Superstore

Posted on by

I am not at all a stress or emotional eater – in fact, in trying times I tend to lose my appetite and forget to eat – but I am a Taurus, and I love to treat myself, particularly when I have had a lot of onerous or tiring tasks. Not always is that treat food-related, although I do love a good Lindor or a bowl of chips with guacamole. More often that treat is a book I’ve been looking forward to after I have washed the floors or an interesting podcast to listen to while doing something boring like folding the laundry. Friday nights that treat is a nice glass or three of wine, to celebrate the start of the weekend. Sometimes I treat myself with a nice bottle of scented lotion or a new beauty product. And then sometimes, I feel the need to bake myself a cake.

Hoo boy, it has been a week, and also, there is more to come. In a nine-day span, every male in this house will have had a medical thing to deal with: my older son had LASIK surgery last week, which turned out to be a real success, my husband has a colonoscopy today, and if you have ever had one yourself, you know that the prep is much, much worse than the actual procedure, and my younger son has not only another podiatrist appointment this week, but his dental surgery got bumped up to this coming Wednesday. That latter is actually a blessing, since I received information that the Grade 12 BBQ and yearbook signing party is on the day that he WOULD have had the surgery, had the surgery not been moved. As it is, he won’t miss the festivities, and he will be hopefully all healed up by that time.

By saying yes to everything and being encouraging of all activities, I have been really committed to ensuring my son has a really great senior year, and I think that he has. In the past, the school has put on a banquet for graduation – except, of course, for the 2020-21 grad classes – but this year, the school decided to have a big dance instead, with grads only, no family members allowed. The school did, however, ask for parent volunteers.

Me: Oh hey, honey, the school needs parent volunteers for the…

My son: No.

Me: But…

My son: NO.

I mean, it’s probably for the best. Who wants their mom hanging around their grad party, even if she is considered to be the Cool Mom? The theme was “A Night In Hollywood” and my son went with a group of his buddies, and it was the best time ever, the end.

Careful readers may have noticed that I said every male in this house, and as such, Rex is included. Oh, Rex. The day of my son’s graduation I took him to doggy day care, as I didn’t want to leave him alone in the house all day. It’s like I have a giant furry toddler. The very next day he whimpered at 5:30 am to be let out and then had, how shall I say this delicately, explosive stomach upset. ONE day at doggy day care! IT IS JUST LIKE HAVING A GIANT FURRY TODDLER. It seemed to be a fairly isolated incident, with a couple of less-dramatic incidents, and he had his usual enormous level of energy, eating and drinking normally. I didn’t worry and I moved on with my life.

That is, until Tuesday when he again whimpered to be let out, this time at 5:00 am, and then he was outside a LOT. One thing no one really tells you when you have a baby is how much time and energy you spend examining their diapers and noting things like colour and “seediness.” The same goes for pets. I found myself examining the back yard and when I discovered blood in one of the very loose stools, I went from Perfectly Calm to Panic at the Doggy Disco. I called the vet who said that they could not get him in until the next day, but if I wanted to come by to grab some probiotics, that would probably help. The next day was when my son was having eye surgery, and then he had checkups the day after that, and it was all the way across the city, during rush hour, and no, I could not bring Rex in the next day, all was ashes.

Panic Level High, I headed to the vet to pick up probiotics and then found myself bursting into tears at the front desk, being completely unable to speak, and unfortunately, the woman I was sobbing in front of was not the same woman who I spoke with on the phone, so she was completely puzzled and alarmed. Who is this crying woman? Did her dog die? Finally the woman I had spoken to did come by, looking at near-hysterical me, and then asked me to wait a moment. She came back to say that if I was willing to just drop Rex off for the afternoon, the vet would squeeze him in between appointments and then call me when she had examined him.

I zoomed home and then zoomed back to the vet, then zoomed over to pick up groceries, but I could not calm down. I could NOT calm down. Rationally I couldn’t understand it: I was doing everything I needed to do, Rex, by all measures other than his BMs, was obviously fine, everything was okay. Still, I couldn’t settle. I would take deep breaths and then my eyes would well up, looking at the bananas and spinach. Then I had a notification on my phone, which is when I realized the date: it would have been Barkley’s birthday. At that point I started crying in the produce section. It was just too much. Everything in my life felt like Too Much. I managed to settle myself down enough to finish shopping – buying all sorts of weird “low fibre” foods for my husband’s upcoming colonoscopy prep – and to drive home. I had just finished putting everything away when the vet called me with the good news that Rex just needed to be dewormed, he was fine, and I could come and pick him up.

Because of Rex’s size, he was in an exam room all by himself, as opposed to in a kennel. The vet started to lead me to the room he was in…and it was the room in which Barkley died.

So it’s been kind of an emotional week, I have to say, and I’ve got a lot to get through this coming week. One foot in front of the other, the only way out is through, etcetera, but hopefully there will be less crying at Superstore.

Weekly Reading

Yellowface. I really love when a book has a lot of nuance, a lot of questions, and nothing that is black or white. This satirical novel about a woman stealing her dead friend’s manuscript, editing it, and passing it off as her own is absolutely incredible and full of so many unanswered questions. The biggest question it poses is who gets to tell what story? This is a very interesting question to me and I think about it a lot. For example, years ago I read American Dirt and really enjoyed it; it was only afterward that I found out about all the controversy surrounding the author. But does that take away from the story? For me it didn’t, for you it might. It’s important to note that women have been telling men’s stories, and vice versa, and I don’t tend to think that’s wrong. Of course, there is the added layer of the publishing industry and the biases and exclusions involved. To add to the irony, the author tells a story about a white woman, which she is not. In addition to the big question, there are many small ones. What about the creative process? Where do stories come from? If an idea comes from a conversation, and a book is written about it, was that a stolen idea? Another theme in this book is the role of social media in our society and the “pile ons” that can happen. There were just so many things that brought to mind the last fifteen years of social media, trolls, etc., and how they affect real people. This book shows the competitive nature of publishing and how everyone is scrambling to get a piece. At the heart of it, this book shows how a lie can turn into a giant web of lies, and how keeping secrets can kill a person from the inside out. I almost never say this, but wow, this book lived up to the hype!

When The Apricots Bloom. I thought I would love this book about 2002 Iraq. It has, theoretically, everything I love in a book: description of a different culture, an alternate look at an international political situation, three women protagonists and how they are connected. But yet, I did not like this book AT ALL. The plot, which should have been interesting – the secret police, espionage! – dragged and the dialogue was terribly stilted. What a disappointment.

On this emotional roller coaster of a week, I had my first kale harvest of the year! The gnomes must be helping. I had planted a few different varieties and they were delicious. I hope you all have a beautiful, non-roller-coaster style week, with lots of fresh produce and minimal produce aisle crying. xo

The Years Are Short

Posted on by

What an incredible week it’s been! Although I don’t believe Mondays to be a portent of the week to come, last Monday night it poured rain, which settled the smoke in the air. We woke up to blue skies and sunshine, and the ability to take a full breath outside without feeling like this might be the first step to lung disease. I thought this was a sign of a great week, and it was.

Blue skies!

I was especially happy – not just because the smoke was giving me aching muscles and general fatigue, which disappeared immediately after the rain – because we had such a busy and exciting week ahead. My younger son had his graduation ceremony, and all the fun hoopla that comes with it. The ceremony was on Friday, but the kids had to return their gowns immediately afterward, so Thursday after school I photographed my son and his group of friends. There is a group of about ten of them that have been really tight for years – some since kindergarten – so to see them all in their caps and gowns was really wonderful.

It was so much fun; they were all such good sports for their photo shoots, humouring me with silly supermodel poses and changing locations around the school, blowing kisses and posing in a conga line on my cue. “Work it, work it!” I’d say, and then “Frolic through the trees!”

I SAID FROLIC!

I had a belated birthday lunch with my dear friend Tara (HI TARA) on Saturday; both our second children graduated this week and we were discussing the ceremonies. Both our ceremonies had a lot of graduates – there were 691 in my son’s class, and a similar number in her daughter’s – and we both had a feeling of deep gratitude that we could be there and experience it. I had the same feeling last year, when my older son had the first grad ceremony held since 2019.

If there is one gift that the Covid pandemic has given me, it’s extreme gratitude for the ability to celebrate occasions. After the ceremony, one of the moms had arranged a luncheon at a golf club for the boys in their group – the Brentwood Boys, as they are known – plus all the family members and grandparents. She had asked us all to send in photos of the boys throughout the years and then created a slideshow, which was really wonderful and special. There were photos from elementary school, sleepovers, Halloweens, and birthday parties, and, of course, there were a lot from the pandemic. They finished junior high in June of 2020, and we had photographed them all outside, all standing six feet apart, and it was a little sad to see those photos, thinking of the fun things they missed that year. There were so many of those pandemic photos: birthday parties where they had masks on, standing outside, bundled up for the elements, a few of them in my own backyard, with chairs six feet apart and a big bottle of hand sanitizer in the foreground, school lunches every day at a friend’s nearby backyard and garage, even when it was well below freezing, because they weren’t allowed to eat inside the school. These kids have been through a lot and all I could feel was happiness that we were all there together, sharing a meal and laughing and hugging. How incredible to have such friendships over the years. How incredible to be a part of this group.

We moved into this neighbourhood twenty-three years ago, and one of the biggest selling points was that there were schools of all levels within walking distance of home. We had the choice to bus the kids to other, specialty schools, but we really wanted the kids to be able to walk to school and make friends in the neighbourhood. I am so glad we made that decision all those years ago.

Back when the boys were very small, I would walk them to the elementary school playground after naptime and before the school let out for the day. It was a good way to kill some time before dinner and allow the kids to have some fresh air. I was so lonely back then. Being home with two very small children can be a very lonely experience; it was always hard to coordinate playdates with other moms of more than one child, playgroups were only once or twice a week, and there are just so many long hours in the day. My husband was gone twelve hours in the day, generally the twelve hours that the boys were awake, so I was just on duty all the time. So I would take the double stroller to the playground, and I would see two moms who were always there with their kindergarten age children, waiting for the older ones to finish for the day. I desperately wanted to be friends with them, and I did try to talk to them, but the chasm between a mom of a one-and-two-year old and a mom of a five-and-seven-year old is vast and wide, and also, if you have ever tried to strike up a conversation while caring for two toddlers, you know of which I speak. Conversational continuity is nearly impossible, and so I continued being lonely, looking at those women longingly.

This week’s graduate, at the playground 16 years ago.

Only a few years later, I did become friends with them when my own children were at that school, and we were all on the same volunteer committees together. I happily was absorbed into their large circle, and we have been friends all these years, the self-named Brentwood Babes. Saturday night, some of the Babes went to dinner theatre, which I had never done before. My son’s best friend – they have been friends since age 3 – works there, and we had a great time watching the rendition of The Wedding Singer, which involved really great music and lots of laughs.

It’s amazing, really. I’m the baby of the group and it’s pretty incredible to have a group of friends who are a few steps ahead in life, who have supported each other through so many life changes and hardships, and who have shared in each other’s joys. This neighbourhood is a bit like a small town, with its shops and parks and kind of knowing each other’s business, with its Food Library and Little Free Libraries and the actual public library, with its schools and playgrounds and grocery stores. For me, this neighbourhood is the best thing about living in Calgary, and I was really feeling it this week.

Thanks to Covid, I will never take for granted these long-standing friendships and the ability to spend time together; I would never say the pandemic is a good thing, because it was terrible, but no mud, no lotus, as they say.

Weekly Reading

Fleishmann Is In Trouble. There are at least two sides to every story, but sometimes, when you are in the thick of a story, it’s hard to see the other side. This book, which on a surface level, deals with a divorce and custody of children, was brilliantly written in three parts. The first part focuses entirely on the husband and all the things that he is going through, and I found myself incredibly sympathetic to his plight. But then, the narrator – who is a third party – starts to show cracks and glimmers of insight into the wife’s life and motivations. It’s complex and very, very gripping. More than just a book about a breakup, it’s a scathing treatise on marriage, divorce, wealth, class, and, most of all, what it means to be a woman moving through this world. Women, as we all know, can never really win or have it all, particularly mothers. There is always something we are giving up or giving in to, there is always some societal pressure on us to act a certain way or be a certain way, and if we give in to that pressure, it’s going to come at us from another angle. This book was brilliant and is definitely one of my favourites so far this year. Someone recommended this to me; my initial thought was Engie (HI ENGIE), but she read it in 2020, and it was recently recommended. Was it Birchy, or maybe Suzanne? (HI BIRCHY HI SUZANNE). If it was you, let me know!

Don’t Call Me Home. There is an Alice Munro story called Jakarta, which features a running joke between two women that starts with “I’m no prude, but…” and I kept thinking of this the whole time I was reading this memoir about the daughter of an Andy Warhol muse and an artist. I’m no prude, but…this book was shocking and kind of horrifying in every sense of the word. I don’t even know where to start but let’s just say the first ten years of this woman’s childhood were spent nomadically, until her mother became pregnant with her sister – actress Gaby Hoffman – at which point they lived at the famed Chelsea Hotel in NYC. Every single detail about this memoir had my eyes opening wide and my eyebrows finding refuge in my hairline. Obviously her mother was mentally ill and it’s pretty sad that Warhol made tons of money without disseminating any to the women who worked for him, but also, my god. This book is bananas. It’s also weirdly written and there are just so many people in it that I found myself thinking “wait, who’s Ron? Who’s Kathy? Is Mike their son or…wait, is that her own COUSIN she’s considering having sex with? It is? Oh my god.” I mean, your mileage may vary but I found this so disturbing and not written well enough to warrant me overlooking the material.

It’s gearing up to be a pretty busy week around here, once again, but not quite as exciting or social as last week. I hope you all have a beautiful week with lots of blue skies and sunshine. xo

More Screaming Into The Void

Posted on by

Thank you all for your kind and supportive comments regarding my son’s dental surgery. He is booked for the second surgery, and I was happily surprised to hear that it will take no more than twenty minutes under general anesthetic; I am still salty that we didn’t do this in the FIRST place, but the best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago, etcetera.

When I asked the nurse on the phone several spastic questions, she was very calming and made me feel like a) my son’s particular issues might be problematic in a regular dental office, but are par for the course in their specialist’s office, and b) I SHOULD HAVE INVESTIGATED THIS IN THE FIRST PLACE. But again. Planting trees, we don’t know what we don’t know, and I will probably never trust a regular dentist for advice again.

I am a person who generally likes Mondays. Monday is generally a good day for me: I have a morning to accomplish things and then an afternoon class with a lovely group of ladies, we have pasta on Monday nights, and I am well-rested from the weekend. This past Monday, though. I felt like Garfield, or these guys:

Honestly, it was a ridiculous day of frustration. The dental office and oral surgeon both kept phoning me, while I was walking Rex, to say they had emailed over various forms and paperwork that needed to be responded to, but I had received nothing. My personal email was working fine, but our family email – which I use for all such things – kept giving me error messages. Finally I contacted our internet provider, who informed me that there had been a password compromise, so they locked my account. I mean, good? But also, I would have liked to know that?

The fellow on my Help Chat had me log into my account on their website, which required a two-step verification process; the authentication code was sent to…my email that was not working. There was no way around this. EMAIL OR NOTHING. Eventually, after much wrangling we did get around it, and all was resolved, but it took a significant amount of time and as soon as I finished the mountains of paperwork I needed to leave to teach my class.

I was feeling fairly agitated by this time because MORE DENTAL SURGERY, plus all the email issues, plus filling in all the forms and finding all the cards with all the various health numbers on them, which needed to be done IMMEDIATELY. Because of my preparation for my flying birdies, my sons carry their health care cards on their persons, but luckily Past Nicole had anticipated issues and had photos of the health care cards on my phone, which I finally remembered. Finishing all this, I zipped over to the community centre, thinking how nice it was that the heat was finally fixed, and that it was a beautiful warm day; I expected the centre to be fairly warm and was dressed accordingly in short sleeves and capri-length leggings.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I entered the room to discover it was freezing, and not just freezing, but Freezing With Blasts Of Freezing Air. The air-conditioning was on full blast, and when I asked the women in the office if we could possibly turn off the air-conditioning, they replied that they could not. It had been jammed on full blast since the previous Thursday, and no one could figure out how to turn it off. A service call, they said, had been requested.

I think if someone had told me all of the issues affecting my classes in the past two months, I would not have believed them. I would not have believed that a community centre could be shut down completely for six weeks to work on the HVAC system, I would not have believed that after those six weeks I and my fellow teachers would be required to teach for two weeks in a hall with no heat, I would not have believed that my unheated yoga classes would be punctuated with the sound of drilling into metal and that I would have to beg the workmen to please, PLEASE stop drilling for five minutes so my students could have a peaceful savasana. After all that, I certainly would not have believed that I would be faced with an air-conditioned room that no one could possibly bear being in. I just stood and stared forlornly at the thermostat for a long time, randomly pushing seemingly useless buttons, until the centre manager came up to me and said that, happily, the boardroom was empty that afternoon and the air conditioning didn’t seem to be on in that room, so if I could help her move chairs we could hold the class in there.

It was cozy and wonderful, and afterwards I felt much more calm and ready to tackle life, until I got home and chaos seemed to follow me. Every single task I needed to do took five times longer than usual because of small complications arising – from emails to event planning, from trying to activate a card online to making dinner, every little thing was way harder than it needed to be, for no reason that I could tell except that maybe I had angered the universe at some point and was being smited.

It’s a good thing I am not one of those people who think that Monday sets the tone for the week. I simply waved the white flag, ate some leftover Mother’s Day cake, and went to bed, thinking, like Scarlett O’Hara, that after all, tomorrow is another day.

Weekly Reading

The House On Mango Street. I really loved this little book of tiny vignettes about a Latina girl growing up in – and getting out of – Chicago. I loved that in the prologue, the author talked about wanting to write for people who are busy working for a living, who don’t have much time to read and are tired. Each story vignette is very short, and that’s why. It’s an absolute delight of a book.

My Body. After reading No Filter, my friend Cherie (HI CHERIE) recommended this to me as another book of memoir essays about a model and the modeling industry. I had no idea who the author of this memoir was. That has never stopped me before! If you also don’t know, she’s a famous swimsuit model and actor, who became famous after appearing in the video for Blurred Lines. Funnily enough, I was talking about this book to my husband, who DID know who she was, which was probably the most surprising thing I learned this month. I liked this collection about the life of a model and the bad men who take advantage of them, but I think what was most interesting were her essays about being an Instagram influencer. To the outside world, being an influencer might be perceived as an easy way to make money, but my goodness, it is NOT. It is a job, and not one that I would like, involving a lot of work and obsessing over screens, likes, and comments. 

Thankfully, the rest of the week was much more smooth, productive, and happy than Monday portended, albeit smoky, and it included some gardening, long chats with friends, a birthday dinner for my mom, my thousandth – thousandth! – Peloton ride, and a freshly groomed and ready for summer Rex. This week is my son’s graduation ceremony, filled with all the fun and social things that go with it. I hope you all have a beautiful week! xo