Category Archives: Books

…And I Get Off On The Pain I Inflict

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One way in which I have been preparing my little birdies to fly is to have them gradually take control of their own medical and dental appointments. Some medical professionals, such as our podiatrist, who, YES, we are still seeing six months later, require me to be with my younger son as he is a minor, but for the most part, I have been letting them figure things out on their own, being in the background for support. This has led to some things I did not anticipate, such as my older son making an appointment for LASIK eye surgery later this month, but for the most part it’s been fairly smooth and predictable.

We have all had dental appointments in the past month or so, and my younger son’s was the most recent. He came home telling me that he’d had several x-rays, and he required dental surgery to remove his four wisdom teeth and an extra tooth that he had somehow developed. He was under the impression that a) it was fairly emergent since his wisdom teeth were growing in sideways, and b) the extra tooth was very close to a nerve.

He told me the dental office would consult with the dentist who performs these surgeries and would get back to me. I didn’t love getting this information second-hand, because have you ever received important information from a 17-year-old? But I Serenity Now-ed, and waited.

On Tuesday I was at the garden centre; my older son had the day off work and so went with me, which was a delight. An extra cart AND someone to encourage me to buy more flowers? Heaven. We were in among the annuals when my phone rang; it was the dentist calling to schedule surgery. My son has a lot of things going on in the next six weeks that I didn’t want ruined by a painful recovery, but the coming weekend was free and so we scheduled him in for Friday morning. I zipped around the next day, picking up soft, high protein foods, and the single Ativan-like sedative he was to take an hour before surgery.

A small onion in the ointment was that I had planned to go to my parents’ on Thursday for my mom’s 70th birthday. We are having a family party for her next weekend, but my aunt was up visiting – this is my beloved Aunty C, of the Aunties fame – and I hadn’t seen her since 2019, so after my Thursday class I packed myself and Rex into the car and drove up. It’s a two hour drive so I was in the car at 6 the next morning, navigating a weirdly foggy highway and Friday morning traffic, to be able to get my son to his appointment at 9:00.

I have never had a tooth extraction myself, but my husband had his wisdom teeth taken out when he was in his forties, and it was absolutely a non-event. I was expecting similar, based on the dental office (“He’s so young, he will recover so quickly!”), and based on the fact that my husband’s procedure took perhaps a half hour at most. So I was completely unprepared to be there for three and a half hours, during which my son’s freezing wore off and they had to redo it. I was also completely unprepared to be told, at 11:45, that the procedure was “more complicated” than they had anticipated and at that point, had only extracted two of the five teeth, and that he would have to get the other side done at a separate time.

By the time they finished, at 12:30, three teeth were gone and the dentist told me that their initial assessment of “Advil alternating with Tylenol every two hours” was now “go pick up this prescription for Tylenol 3, he’s really going to need it.” WHAT HAPPENED HERE. The dentist told me that he would not be able to work on the other side, it was too complicated for him, and that we would have to go to a specialist, which, honestly, I wish we knew in advance so we could have skipped this whole thing and just done that in the first place. Did they not realize this from the x-rays? Were they just hoarding my son’s procedure for themselves to collect the money? I couldn’t help but feel a bit betrayed.

I’m not going to lie: Friday was a really rough day, made worse by the thought that we have to do this all again soon. The dental office cheerfully assured me that my son would just “sleep the day away” post-surgery, which goes to show that they do not know him at all, the guy who slept exactly zero minutes on our red-eye from Maui, and who, like his mother, essentially has to have one foot in the grave before lying down for a nap. What can I say, we aren’t nappers. He did, however, have a really good sleep Friday night, which I did not expect at that point, and was much more chipper on Saturday.

I’m still a little salty, though. We have to do this AGAIN. In the next three weeks we have the following: a family party for my mom, my younger son’s graduation ceremony and all the stuff that goes with that leading up to and after, my older son’s LASIK surgery, my younger son’s graduation dance, my own 30 year high school reunion that I am organizing, and my husband’s colonoscopy. THIS IS A LOT OF THINGS. Not to mention our day-to-day stuff and everything else that is going on around here. We have to get it done before July, but he also has final exams in June, and I am just screaming into the void over here.

Well, it will get done, just like everything else. In the meantime, it’s hard to stay too salty when I look out my window and see not just Salvadore, but two new friends, Slider and Fernando, who my son and I came across at the garden centre. Look at them frolicking in the kale patch! Life is good, even when it’s frustrating, is the lesson I’m taking away.

Weekly Reading

A Likely Story. I’ve often wondered what it would be like to be the child of a very famous person, and the pressure involved in following the footsteps or finding one’s own way. See also: Ty Gretsky. This excellent novel follows the only child of a very famous writer – who also happens to be a narcissist. After the death of her beloved mother, the daughter discovers a secret and becomes involved in a convoluted web of lies and secrets, all the while trying to please her famous father. This was a great story with complex characters, and I had no idea what to expect from the ending. I really enjoyed it.

I’m Glad My Mom Died. I initially put this on my hold list last summer, and then changed my mind after a few months as I didn’t think I had the bandwidth to read about a mentally ill and abusive stage mother and her daughter’s coping mechanisms of alcohol abuse and eating disorders. But then a few friends read it and thought it was good, and I guess I had a weird kind of book FOMO? Anyway, I put it back on the list and here we are. I feel kind of gross and sick after reading this, to be honest, and I have to warn anyone who might want to read this: there are some pretty grim and graphic descriptions of her bulimia. Like, really graphic. Based on what she went through I’m impressed that she’s still here – her mother sexually abused her in the shower on the daily until she was 17, her mother forced her to restrict her calories and generally treated her like garbage. The cover blurbs say that it’s “impressively funny” and all I can say is I don’t think we read the same book. I didn’t find it funny at all. I did think it ended weirdly, with her vow to overcome bulimia and then the next chapter she was healed? I don’t know, I applaud her for writing this, as it was obviously therapeutic for her, but it was not therapeutic for me to read. I read most of it while in the waiting room at the dentist, and I will say that I am not a book snob, but I actually felt embarrassed when someone asked me what I was reading, because the title is so incendiary. I don’t generally wish death on people but I am also kind of glad her mom died. She made Joan Crawford look encouraging and nurturing.

Easy Beauty. This was a brilliantly written memoir about moving through the world and navigating motherhood with a painful and very visible disability. The author weaves her story with journeys – the actual travel kind but also emotional and spiritual – and discussions about works of art and philosophy. It’s dense and not an easy read, particularly when it comes to the way a person values themselves in a world that values and revolves around the able-bodied. I can’t say I enjoyed this, exactly, but it’s an impressive piece of writing.

I hope you all had a beautiful, restorative weekend. It was obviously a pretty low-key one around here, but the Mayday and Nanking cherry are in bloom, my older son and I planted containers and I did some gardening cleanup, there was cake, and we all watched Top Gun Maverick for the second time. Here’s to more blooming in the week to come. xo

Bloody Hell

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After such a cold April, May suddenly – and briefly – burst into summer. We had gorgeous sunshine and summer-like temperatures all last week, which had the happy result of warming up the community centre, so my yoga classes were taught in a normal-temperature setting, rather than a frigid one. The yard is becoming greener by the minute; the Mayday and lilacs are leafing out before my very eyes, my perennials are starting to peek out of the warmer, sunny beds, and I have been in a state of joy all week. I was able to have the windows open in the early mornings, so I practiced yoga while watching the sky lighten and hearing the birds chirp, and it all felt very Mary Oliver. In fact, I pulled out my Devotions to read her thoughts on the shift of winter to spring before my practices. I recently came across a meme that was along the lines of the world being on fire, the news depressing, everything is terrible, and Mary Oliver says “But have you ever really thought about a LEAF?” That’s how I felt.

I have been working on really embracing every season, both literally and figuratively, but I am very much a Summer Girl, and although it didn’t last, this week of summer-feeling temperatures has really boosted me. That, and a couple of huge things happened that lifted a heavy weight off my shoulders, which I am not in a position to talk about yet on this blog; I definitely have a spring in my step.

The spring was decidedly missing in my step the other day when I jauntily donned my cute summer shoes sans socks for a walk with Rex. These shoes are several years old, and well worn-in, so I don’t know how or why it happened, but I developed a blister and then that blister broke open, exactly at the halfway mark of my walk. Why do things always happen when you are exactly the furthest possible distance from home? I had some tissues in my bag, and so I tried to wrap them around my heel to relieve the pain of walking, but bizarrely, the back of my foot started bleeding profusely. By the time I got home, the tissues were half-in, half-out of my shoe and were soaked with blood, I had blood all over my shoe, and I felt a little like Count Almasy in The English Patient. I have been WALKING. For three DAYS. Except instead of three days, it was three miles. One of my octogenarian neighbours drove by as I was coming down the street, and pulled over to chat. I hoped he couldn’t see my foot, which by that time looked like an old-timey depiction of a leper’s, with the trailing bloody tissue and my subsequent limp. I had a pedicure scheduled the very next day and I didn’t want to cancel, as it’s a small local business, but I will say it did sting quite a bit. A ripped-open heel doesn’t pair well with orange-peel exfoliation.

Speaking of blood, I had to get routine bloodwork done on the weekend. I made an appointment at the lab, stopped eating and drinking at 7pm on Friday – which was a little sad, since I wanted more wine; it was Friday, after all – and toodled over early Saturday morning, expecting that the past would predict the present and I would be home within twenty minutes.

I clued in that this might not be the case when I was greeted by a giant line snaking down the hallway. It turns out that the lab started taking walk-ins, which it hadn’t done throughout the pandemic, and I felt extremely grateful to have an appointment, as the wait for walk-ins was three to four hours at that point. Three to four hours! I was already feeling a little off, since by 7:30 am I have generally consumed several cups of coffee, and I was, of course, not allowed to do this for fasting bloodwork. I can’t imagine my state had I had to wait three to four more hours. Someone might have gotten stabbed.

I was called for my appointment only ten minutes late, which I thought was excellent, and then I sat in the little room for twenty-five minutes while the woman who was to take my blood kept tapping on the computer, as other white-coated people dodged in and out with panicked questions and she herself had many panicked questions. It turns out that the lab had been taken over by an American company, and their new system was put into place that very morning, their system that was set up for American insurance and not Canadian universal health care. Why this was the case I have no idea but the woman was almost in tears of frustration by the time she finished the extensive paperwork and actually took my blood, which took all of about ninety seconds. She tearfully told me they had only been open an hour and she already had seventy people in the queue, so I wished her luck in what was going to surely be a very stressful work day, grabbed my little urine sample container, and fled.

I don’t really wear masks much anymore, although I had to wear a medical one for the lab. Even my doctor and dentist do not require them now; this was the first time I had worn one, other than as a courtesy to the checkout people at the grocery store while in line, for a long time. I was happy to do it, of course, labs are gross petrie dishes at the best of times, but this was the first time in a long time I felt a little weird being in a crowd. Maybe it was all the incessant coughing. The WHO announced the end of the global health crisis this week, but I guess I haven’t personally felt in a crisis for almost a year.

Not everyone feels like I do, of course, which is to say that I felt very seriously about the pandemic in the thick of things, and now I feel like I am calmly moving through the world, not thinking or worrying about Covid in any real way. If, however, you are in a group situation and you say something along the lines of being past the pandemic, it is a guarantee that someone will chime in to say that we are NOT past the pandemic, that Covid is still with us, people are dying of Covid EVERY SINGLE DAY, and what about long Covid, there’s so much we don’t know, etcetera. All of those things are true, of course, other than the pandemic part, as of this week, but also? I am just going to live my life in the most mentally, emotionally, and physically healthy way possible, without that constant-fear feeling I developed from 2020-22.

Of course, there are people on the flip side too. We had a plumber in to fix our toilet – not Hot Tony, but one of his almost-equally-hot employees; what is with the hot plumbers in this company? – and as I was chatting with him pleasantly, he came out with “I respect everyone, and everyone has a right to their own opinion…” and at that point I knew. I knew what was coming. Anyone that starts a sentence declaring a right to their own opinion is going to have an opinion that I will disagree with, and that is what happened. “…but I really didn’t believe the whole Covid thing,” he stated. Whether he didn’t think the pandemic mitigation strategies were effective or beneficial, or if he didn’t believe the existence of Covid at all was unclear to me and I did not want to further this line of conversation. After all, the guy was fixing my toilet. I took that as my cue to mention that I had just made a pot of coffee and did he want any, and when I came back with said coffee, he said that he hadn’t been sick once in the past three years. I suppose that meant the latter, in terms of his belief. I did not comment on his sample size of one, but I was happy to have a fixed toilet.

Weekly Reading

Flight. OH.MY.GOD I LOVED THIS BOOK! Wow, wow. Incredible characters, relationships, and nuance. Incredible writing. This follows three adult children and their families as they navigate the first Christmas without their mother. It is so moving and beautiful. Wow. My fellow lovers of character-driven books will love this; anyone who has encountered family drama or sibling issues or difficulties with blending families and in-laws will really find this relatable on so many levels.

No Filter. You know I love a memoir, especially a celebrity memoir whose life is SO DIFFERENT from my own. Paulina Porizkova has had a fascinating life (so far!) From her childhood during which she was subject to an international custody battle between Sweden and Czechoslovakia (the Swedish hockey team threatened to not play the Czech one in 1972 because of this drama), to her living in Paris alone as a model at AGE FIFTEEN, to her relationship with a man 21 years her senior at age 19, to the dissolution of her marriage and being left with no money upon his death, this book is a ride. It’s comprised of essays, which I love. Wow, she has been through a lot. Although she speaks well of her ex-husband, he seemed toxic and controlling and apparently spent all her millions of modeling money, while making her feel like she’d didn’t contribute financially in any significant way. She talks about how she has changed from being mean, judgmental, and arrogant, and accepting her changing face and body. Years ago my friend Alice (HI ALICE) said that reruns must be hell for actresses, and I think that goes for former supermodels too. I really enjoyed this.

Enchantment. What happens when you’ve gone through a global pandemic, you have constant chatter of social media and news, and you just can’t concentrate enough to read books anymore? This author had that experience and so worked to awaken enchantment in her life through the natural world. This is a beautiful book about connecting with the world, although I didn’t love it like I thought I would, since I loved Wintering so very much. I do find that I am willing and able to read with interest other people’s experiences and feelings about the pandemic, which I wasn’t able to do a year ago.

This week is not going to be so gloriously summer-like, but it is shaping up to be a perfectly pleasant spring week, with nary a snowflake or freezing temperature in the forecast. It’s a wild and precious life we are leading, friends! I’m going to bandage up my feet and get out there and enjoy it. I hope you do too. xo

Yoga Talk

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After years of dedicated practice, in 2016 I took yoga teacher training, and I have been lucky enough to be teaching consistently ever since. I have taught everything from vigorous, athletic Ashtanga to slow-moving restorative yoga; senior’s yoga and yoga for stroke survivors, Hatha yoga and chair yoga, and even one outdoor children’s yoga class, for my niece’s Sparks unit. Teaching this wide variety of classes has given me a very good understanding of different bodies, abilities, and needs, and I think it has made me a better teacher.

Recently Suzanne (HI SUZANNE) asked her readers to discuss things that they excel at, that make them feel in their element, and for me, I think it’s teaching yoga. More specifically, I think my strength is making students feel comfortable and welcome in my yoga classes, and encouraging them to just be there and be part of the group. I really try to make new students feel like they are immediately part of the community; I work hard to make a warm and welcoming space for everyone to explore yoga postures as they need to.

I trained to be a yoga teacher under a man who was himself Iyengar trained, and if you know anything about yoga, you will know that Iyengar-style is very focused on alignment; in other words, to be very exact in how the posture is taken. It is ironic, then, that my particular teaching style has nothing to do with this. I believe very strongly that we all have different bodies, and so every asana is going to look different for every person. I spend a lot of time thinking of different variations so that any given posture can be accessible to every person in every class, regardless of any bodily limitations.

I became very good at this when I was teaching yoga for stroke survivors; some of my students were seated on mats, some on chairs, the occasional student in a wheelchair or scooter. I would read the room and then figure out how we could all do, for example, baddha konasana or butterfly pose. On a chair, it looks like putting the soles of the feet close together while allowing the knees to go apart, on the mat it looks different, but it is having the same benefit. One is not better than the other, but one may be more appropriate or accessible, depending on the person.

In 2017 I started subbing every so often at a community centre, and I ended up taking over these classes entirely a little while later. These are registered classes, which are an absolute joy. Students have come and gone – and this week I had two new students, one lady who had never done any yoga before in her life – but I have been teaching a core group of ladies, and the occasional gentleman, for years now, and I know all about their lives, their spouses, their children and grandchildren, their surgeries, their blood pressure and cataracts, just everything about their lives. I am a people person and for all the classes I have taught, I have always tried to find out at least a little bit about every single person. I have taught a lot of people over the years, and so I occasionally forget a name or detail, but not with my registered classes. Seeing people regularly for years really builds up a great sense of community.

There is one small thing about these wonderful classes, and I can’t decide if it’s ultimately a “we’re all in this together,” character-building, This Is Real Yoga thing, or if it’s what it feels like, which is kind of a negative: the actual physical space. It’s different from the cushy studios I have taught at over the years that feature art and candles, props and blankets, soft lighting and tea after class. This is an old-school community centre hall: a big spacious, drafty room with fluorescent lighting and linoleum over concrete floors. It’s chilly at the best of times, and this past six weeks, all classes have been cancelled as they have been replacing the HVAC system. Last Monday was my first class since mid-March, and I was excited to see all my students again.

I received an email the week before classes restarted, which said that classes were still starting as scheduled but there was still no heat in the building. This is a room that is chilly at the best of times, but with no heat? People, it was brutal. There were space heaters, but they did not seem to improve the situation at all. The room was 16 degrees in my Monday afternoon class but 13 degrees for my Thursday morning class; I wore a jacket with thumbholes and thick legwarmers with wide stirrups, I tried to incorporate as much movement as I could to keep warm, but it’s a ninety-minute class, and ninety minutes in a cold room is a long time. And the heat won’t be fixed until Friday, so I have two more classes like this.

It reminded me of when I used to teach Yoga for Seniors at a beautiful studio, pre-pandemic. The room at the studio was kept quite warm – between 24 and 26 degrees – and I usually tried to cool it down a bit before class, as the warmth was not popular with my senior students. One gentleman in particular HATED it. He used to ask if he could open the windows in the dead of winter, and once plaintively asked me if there was any such thing as “cold yoga,” and if so, where could he sign up. I’ve thought of him many times through the pandemic: he would have loved chilly outdoor yoga classes, and he would have absolutely been all over the classes this week. I guess it shows that there is truly a yoga for everyone.

Weekly Reading

Bear. Have you ever looked at a wild animal and thought “I wonder what it would be like to fuck that?” Well, wonder no more! This book, about a lonely woman spending a summer on an isolated island in northern Canada, won the Governor General award in 1976, which really makes you wonder what was happening in Canadian literature at the time. It is literally a woman having a sexual relationship with a bear and not, as my son asked, a big furry gay guy. An actual bear. I don’t want to kink shame anyone but I think we can all agree not to embark on inter species sexual relations. This book is just as strange as you might think. Yes, if we were in a literature class we could talk about the symbolism of a woman going from a colourless, meaningless life in the polluted Big Smoke, and then becoming one with the glory that is Canadian nature, but also? The image of the bear giving oral along with its erection is incredibly disturbing. Did you know bear penises have bones in them? Well, now you do. This book gives a whole new meaning to animal lust, and also “boning.”

More Than You’ll Ever Know. This story revolves around a woman who was leading a double life – two families, two countries. She was married to two men, one of whom was murdered when this double life is discovered. Decades later, a writer tries to uncover the truth by telling her story. There are some very unexpected twists and a side story about the writer that I didn’t care for, but all in all a diverting read.

All Along You Were Blooming. This is such a wonderful little book of uplifting poems and readings. I have been reading this before my yoga practice for the past several months and it never fails to warm my heart. It’s really beautiful.

It is forecasted to be warm and sunny all this week, which I’m hoping will help with the warmth in the community centre. I have had a pretty wild, rollercoaster week, but everything has ended on a very high note. I spent the weekend at my parents’, which was lovely, and included a second birthday cake! Happy May, friends! May day, m’aidez! xo

Birthday Weekend!

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I am a person who likes to have little treats and things to look forward to every single day. Sometimes these treats are very simple parts of my everyday life, for example, when I wake up, I think “oooh, coffee,” or “yay, it’s pasta night!” I spend time choosing a scented lotion to apply after my shower, every day I text or message or see a friend, and even on my busiest days I squeeze in some time to read a book. These are all just tiny joys that brighten a regular day.

Fridays are my favourite day of the week, and I always try to fit in lots of happy little things on Fridays. Last Friday was my birthday, which happens to be my favourite day of the year, and so I decided I would just make it a day full of lovely joyful things: coffee and reading and yoga, an energy-boosting Peloton ride with a fire playlist, a long walk with Rex, which is always a joy, even in the falling wet snow.

Spring!
Putting my best face forward but deep down, what no one could see, is that my sock came off inside my boot.

Earlier this week I came across some videos from when the kids were small; it was very nostalgic and sweet, and I had that bittersweet feeling that accompanies the end of an era. Look at how cute they are, I thought. They called me Mama! It’s so easy to gloss over the physical exhaustion of caring for a 2-and-3-year-old, it’s easy to forget messy mealtimes and meltdowns and night wakings when faced with a tiny voice saying “Mama go yo-yoga! Cheese! Not bathtime yet Dada!” But even as I look back on that sweetness, on the cusp of yet another era ending, I have to tell you that it is really wonderful, having adult and almost-adult children. My older son was working Friday evening so he treated me to brunch; we had a lovely visit and I had the most amazing avocado toast.

For my birthday dinner that evening, my husband and younger son brought me takeout from my favourite Lebanese place; as usual I raved over the food and also as usual, my son asked plaintively that if I love it this much, why don’t we eat there more often? It’s a good question.

As I usually do on Fridays, I had a few glasses of some lovely red wine, and I also treated myself to a couple of episodes of NYPD Blue.

The birthday weekend really began on Thursday, with gifts and a family viewing of Seinfeld, my choice of episode; I chose the one with Keith Hernandez (“I’m not DRIVING him to the AIRPORT!”), and didn’t end until cake and a dinner I did not make nor clean up for on Sunday.

It’s been a bit of a busy week for me, so it was nice to wind things up on Friday. I’ve been in constant cleaning and decluttering mode and it’s exhausting. I am no minimalist, but I do a big Kondo-style declutter every few years, and so I did not think, prior to this past month, that I had a lot of stuff. I also, if you had asked me a month ago, thought that I had a very clean and organized house, but after this extreme iteration of decluttering and cleaning, I am now of the opinion that we are a family of disgusting swamp monsters who are wallowing around in our own filth and over-consumption.

I know this is not a popular opinion, but in general I find cleaning to be a very soothing and satisfying job. I took yoga teacher training with a lovely woman who owns a small cleaning company, and we once had a long discussion about this exact thing. There’s something so great about stepping back and admiring the results of your hard work. I was really feeling it after the past few weeks; giving things away on the Buy Nothing page, scrubbing and scouring little corners of the house that have been neglected, and generally raising the bar on the overall cleanliness of the house. I was so pleased with myself, even if no one else noticed that I’d scrubbed the tile ceiling of the shower or the areas behind the toilets.

Here’s a little tidbit about Rex: in the last six-plus months since he came to us, he’s become very well-known at the dog park. Everyone there is very indulgent, as a nearly-100-pound dog runs in circles around them and then, with certain receptive people, comes in for a pet. “Hi Rex, yes, hi there.” He is laughed at constantly in a gentle way, as he will take a run and then barrel roll in the grass or snow or leaves, depending on the season. He’s always rolling around joyfully, and it’s very cute, and then he shakes it all off.

Earlier this week I had let him outside; it was only five minutes later he barked to come back in. This is what I was greeted with:

What happened.

I have never seen him in such a state before; he had dry grass everywhere from his eyebrows to the tip of his tail and it took some significant brushing and six sweeps of the floor to deal with. Six sweeps of the previously spotless floor. Was he trying to bring me more cleaning satisfaction by bringing in a yard’s worth of dead grass? Or perhaps reminding us to not neglect the yardwork, with all this inside work? What a good boy.

Weekly Reading

I had some very good and interesting reads this week, one fiction and two non.

How Not To Drown In A Glass Of Water. The structure of this book, about a woman who, after 26 years, loses her factory job, is quite interesting. This is in NYC in 2009, the woman is in her fifties, is not a US citizen, and neither reads nor writes in English. The book is made up of one-sided conversation, as she goes to a 12 week career counselling program after losing her factory job. Through these interviews, her life is revealed: her early life in the Dominican, her struggle to pay bills, her relationships with her son, sister, and the people in her building. In a way this book made me think of Olive Ketteridge, as the narrator is unreliable and deeply flawed, but also with a good heart. There were a few parts that made me a bit breathless with the reveal; it’s a very real book. It’s a fascinating look into what it means to be a community member, and how the financial crisis affected vulnerable populations.

The Body Liberation Project. How much of diet culture and toxic wellness ideology is steeped in racism? A lot. This important book explores the connection and is incredibly uplifting and inspiring, to bring joy and love to our physical bodies and whole selves. As a white, straight-sized, cis woman who has immense social, economic, and health privilege, I have to say much of it is uncomfortable to read. But discomfort is where growth begins. Being an ally in anti-racism doesn’t mean performatively posting video and memes and black squares on social media. That’s less than worthless, according to the author. We need to learn and do better, and not try to explain to other white people why hashtag Black Lives Matter. We need to listen. Sometimes we need to just be quiet and step back. Lots of learning and thoughts from this very excellent book.

Token Black Girl. This was fascinating and, for me, really eye-opening and informative. I don’t think I’ve read a memoir with this POV before. The author us an affluent Black woman who grew up going to elite schools and activities with nearly all-white populations. She began working in the fashion industry, and her experiences in our world of structural racism and white supremacy seem shocking and, if you’re wondering how to change things, overwhelming. I learned a lot reading this young woman’s story, about fashion, beauty, and the struggle to fit in to a society that at its core undervalues Black people. It was a really great read. Also, after reading about what lengths she and other women go to for their hair, I will never complain about my own locks again. Well, I probably will, but I will try not to.

I have an interesting and somewhat complicated week coming up; I hope you all have a beautiful week filled with wonderful things. Maybe even some cake! xo

Snow, Selfies, Sensitivities, and Segues

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“I don’t know how anyone can live in Calgary for any amount of time and STILL be surprised by snow in April,” my son’s podiatrist said to me, conversationally, as the snow flew sideways outside the window in the exam room. I agreed, and went further: snow in May hardly makes me blink, although I did feel a little alarmed at the snow mixed with thunder that was happening at the time.

I took a few photos, not for shock value on social media – there would have to be a real dump of it for that, and this was barely a centimetre – but because the snow looked really pretty contrasted with the blue skies, giving rise to the very popular Calgarian view that “at least it’s sunny.” Blue skies are lovely, it’s true, although given the choice I would take grey skies and much shorter winter duration.

I like to take photos, but I also like to have my picture taken. There is a photo, circa 1979, of my dad and brother dressed up for a Scout meeting, and I am in the corner of the photo. I remember desperately wanting to be in the photo, but being told this was a special photo just for the two of them. I was photobombing before photobombing was a thing.

I was thinking about this when I was recently taking photos of the guys on the beach; a woman offered to take photos of the four of us, which I gratefully accepted. She said to me that moms are always behind the camera, and should be in photos more, and I think that’s very true generally, but not particularly in my case. I appreciated the sentiment, but there are lots of photos of me, and when all else fails, there are selfies!

Recently Engie (HI ENGIE) asked how to take a good photo of yourself, and I have two pieces of advice: find good lighting, and shoot from above. The first photo is a straight-on shot, and you can see that by taking the angle higher, it results in a more flattering photo.

That last photo cracks me up. A few years ago, my MIL discovered the selfie function on her phone while looking down at her phone, and was absolutely horrified to see herself in that way. She told me tearfully that she could not BELIEVE how bad she looked and how much she has aged and is that what people see when they look at her? GOD NO, I told her. I was quick to assure her that NO ONE is seen in that angle and that we all look terrible when shot from below. Shoot from above! Find good lighting in the house! If all else fails, try the car.

Even with good lighting, not everyone loves having their photos taken; we all like different things, of course. I was thinking about the rich tapestry that is our world when I was recently in a bookstore: there are so many different kinds of books. How many books have been written in the history of time? It’s overwhelming to think of, but also heartening because there is something for everyone. No matter your taste, there is something out there.

I read a lot and I do try to read a wide variety of things, but within certain parameters. My dislike for dystopia, horror, sci-fi, and fantasy is well-known, so I avoid those genres. I love books that are very character-driven, rather than plot-driven, and I have been told at times – usually by strangers or slight acquaintances on Instagram – that such books are boring. I suppose to some they are, because I find my avoided genres to be boring, among other things, and so it doesn’t bother me that we don’t all share the same view.

But sometimes, it does bother me. Not often, but sometimes I will share my feelings about a book to a friend who has similar tastes to me, and then I will be taken aback when that friend isn’t on the same page, so to speak. I have many friends with widely diverging tastes, and so this is a very infrequent occurrence, but sometimes I do feel a bit hurt when a friend doesn’t love something in the same way, when usually they do.

This is a very silly way to feel, because I didn’t write the book, I have no stake in the outcome of the book, and yet. Several years ago, after I talked about how much I loved Calypso, a friend mentioned she had read it and hated it. I was so surprised since we had shared a similar view of many books, but when she said I just don’t get it, it’s not funny at all, I admit to questioning everything we had talked about before. Who is this person, I wondered, maybe we don’t have anything in common after all.

There are people who prefer cats to dogs, and although I can neither understand nor relate to such feelings, I can appreciate those people all the same. And most of the time I simply appreciate that we all have different reading tastes and love different things, but once in a while I will feel a bit hurt and put out. It feels like a dog person saying how much they love dogs, but they don’t love MY dog.

Speaking of my dog, he was a bit put out that I had to leave him to go to the dentist. I was mentally prepared for it to take all afternoon, but happily for Rex it turned out to be only a cleaning, not a checkup, and it took only fifty minutes. Some of you may recall my last dental appointment, which took ninety minutes, much of which was probably due to the long, involved conversations I ended up having with the hygienist.

Sometimes I wonder is it just me or everyone, and now I realize that no, it’s just me. A simple cleaning probably should not take fifty minutes, but the I ended up in another long, involved conversation with the hygienist, a different one from last time. She kept stopping what she was doing to get my reaction to her viewpoint, or to ask me a question, and while I’m always happy to chat, I did at one point think could she just talk and I listen? Would it be rude to ask her to just keep scaling?

It is interesting to think of how one topic segues into another, and sometimes I wonder how did we get here from there? What is the thread that links topics? Unsettlingly, sometimes no such thread exists. Our conversation started, as it always does, with yoga. As soon as a stranger learns I am a yoga teacher, the conversation naturally goes into that person’s experience with yoga, and their love for or hatred of it. After that we discussed the following, in order: seed cycling for hormone support, bodybuilding and how the hygienist placed second in the Bikini Division of a recent competition, the use of creatine and supplements in the bodybuilding world and how the hygienist refuses to use them, leading to a second-place only, our favourite red wine varietals, the Peloton instructor Cody Rigsby, ziplining in Costa Rica, competitive dance routines set to Mamma Mia, salsa dancing, the hygienist’s broken foot and the physiotherapy she is doing, her ex-boyfriend’s habit of leaving used dental floss on the living room coffee table, germ phobia and the increase of such feelings during the pandemic, and lipstick. How did we get there? I don’t know exactly, but shout-out to Cover Girl Outlast lipstick. “Oh wow, this is the most amazing lipstick!” the hygienist said to me. “This whole time, it hasn’t smudged or left a mark on my gloves at all!” Getting through a dental cleaning with perfect lipstick does feel like a win, and also, seed cycling? Who knew! Certainly not me; life is so interesting, you can learn new things every day.

Weekly Reading

The Social Climber. I thought this was going to be a rags-to-riches story, instead it’s a novel of revenge. The first half of the book, I was sure the book was going to go one way, and did it ever veer in a different direction! It was very entertaining, with some very unexpected twists. Thanks to Birchy (HI BIRCHY) for the recommendation!

Trespasses. At the heart of the novel is a love affair between a twenty-something teacher who occasionally works in the family pub, and a married man twice her age who is a renowned barrister. This simple affair is greatly complicated as it takes place in Belfast 1975, the height of the Troubles. To be honest, this is a time and place I know little about so I spent a lot of time looking things up to understand context, characters, and what was happening. Without that info, this story is confusing and difficult to understand. But oh! It’s really excellent. It’s so moving and I literally gasped out loud at some parts. DO NOT GET INVOLVED WITH MARRIED MEN is always a good place to start but when the married man is a Protestant who defends IRA members, and the woman is Catholic, and it’s Ireland in the 70s…things might be even more doomed. If you don’t have a background on the Troubles, like me, use this book to do some research and reading. It’s really good. Who recommended this? I feel like one of my readers did and I cannot recall who. If it was you, let me know!

Hello Molly! Sometimes I’ll read a memoir by a celebrity I hardly know, and I’ll feel like I really wish I hadn’t. But this was the exact opposite. Molly Shannon is an incredibly hard working, interesting, and inspiring woman. She had a really tough start to life – she was in a car crash caused by her father when she was four, and her mom, baby sister, and cousin were all killed – and wow, did she ever do everything in her power to live a happy and fulfilling life. This was a very easy to read and quite uplifting memoir. I can’t say I was a Molly Shannon Fan before – but I am now!

It’s going to be a busy and fun week ahead; lots to do, and also, it’s my Birthday Week! I hope you have a wonderful week. xo

Maui Vacation Reading 2023

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Part of my daily self-care process is carving out time in the day to read. I have always been A Reader, I always have a book on the go, and being on vacation is no different. I am a Very Early Riser and so I would sit on the lanai (I love saying the word “lanai”) with my coffee and my fruit, reading as the sky started to brighten. It was a beautiful start to every day on Maui, as I waited for the rest of the family to wake up.

I really noticed that, being on a digital detox, I had a LOT of extra time for reading. I never think I use screens all that much, and then when I don’t use them at all, I find I have huge chunks of time! Therefore, I read a lot of books while I was gone; one was excellent, a few were pretty good and okay, and two were really bad. I still finished them, so I wouldn’t give them a one-star…but it might be close.

Maui Reading

Anna. I am used to reading memoir but it’s been a long time since I read an actual biography. This was an exhaustive look at Anna Wintour, the fashion industry, and Vogue. It showed Wintour as a very complex person, which I enjoyed. She’s not just the devil wearing Prada, people! I really liked the description of the fashion industry as a whole.

 Stay Awake. I don’t read thrillers very often, but when I do I enjoy them! Suzanne had recommended this (HI SUZANNE) and it was a diverting read about a woman who wakes up with a bloody knife in her pocket…and she can’t remember anything. Not only that, she can’t remember anything from the part two years! It’s a good reason to practice good sleep hygiene, people! It got a little “explain-y” at the end but very enjoyable. 

The Glass Hotel. OMG I LOVED THIS BOOK!!!! A woman goes missing from a container ship and a whole lot of people lose big on a Ponzi scheme; these two events are related. Writing it down that sounds boring, honestly, but this book is so good, descriptions don’t do it justice. It’s layered and nuanced and shows how people from all over are connected. It was excellent. Thanks ONCE AGAIN to Suzanne for the great recommendation!

Wrong Place Wrong Time. Is this post dedicated to Suzanne now? Apparently! This was the third book in a row she’s recommended and that I’ve enjoyed! I wasn’t sure because TIME TRAVEL. You all know how I feel about time travel. You don’t? I HATE TIME TRAVEL AS A LITERARY DEVICE. But. BUT! It really works in this book that works backwards from the moment a woman witnesses her son commit a violent crime. This book really is thought provoking – if you could go back and change the future, would you? If you could revisit your past self, what would you do? If you could do that and uncover unsavoury secrets…well, it’s a really fascinating and compelling story. A fast paced thriller.

The Boy In The Striped Pajamas. First of all, I would like to note that this book forced me to break my “never state a negative opinion as a fact” rule. On a superficial level, this book about two boys, exactly the same age, one German and one Polish, is a fable about how we are all the same on the inside. I suppose it’s supposed to be in the vein of and a little child shall teach us. However, this book is really fucking stupid. I suppose the author maybe has never met a nine year old boy? We are to believe that this nine year old German boy in 1943 a) thinks that “heil H****r” is another way to say “good afternoon, b) has never heard of Jewish people, and c) thinks Poland is in Denmark. This character is possibly the stupidest character in the history of books. If the character was four I might believe his fascination with the life of the prisoners in “out-with” but this book is so dumb. If this is meant for children, the author must think children are incapable of sentient thought. The main character feels ENVIOUS towards a child in the “out-with” concentration camp because THERE ARE OTHER CHILDREN THERE TO PLAY WITH WHAT EVEN AM I READING. I can’t, you guys. This is the stupidest book in the history of books.

All You Can Ever Know. I heard about this book on a podcast; sadly, I found the podcast much more compelling than the book itself. That said, it is a fairly interesting memoir about what it means to be adopted, particularly interracially adopted. It’s complicated, sad, and ultimately a lovely testament to family in all iterations, even if I did find it a bit slow. 

The Confessions of Frannie Langton. A former slave/ servant is accused of murdering her “employers” (for lack of a better word); this book goes from the sugar plantations of Jamaica, where some incredibly unethical experiments are taking place, to London, where the woman us “given” to the ultimately murdered couple. This dragged so much for me in the middle third, but the first and last were great.

My Darling, My Hamburger. The upside of this book is that it will take maybe ninety minutes to read. Have you ever read this book? I heard it recently mentioned on a podcast and I recall it vaguely from my youth…it’s kind of weirdly dark and I thought it was not great, Bob. I mean, compared with The Boy In The Striped Pajamas, it’s a Giller Prize winner, but ugh.

Indelible in the Hippocampus: Writings From The Me Too Movement. Woof. This is a collection of fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry, and you need to be in a strong state of mind to read this. It is rough, but I think important. However, do take care when reading. Trigger warnings ahoy.

I am going to take this opportunity to shout-out e-readers! I love my new Kobo, which is compatible with the Canadian library system. Since I travelled with only carry-on, this was a perfect way to take multiple books with me.

What have you been reading lately? Any five-stars? Any duds? Tell me everything. xo

Maui Encounters, Medical Emergencies, Mini Eggs

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This week’s post is brought to you by the letters M and E! I could say every post is brought to you by ME, I suppose, but let’s separate the letters this week. In addition to the title, I could also add in Massively Exhausted. Whew, I don’t think I’ve fully recovered from the red-eye flight, the time zone change, and the incredible amount of work I’ve been doing since returning. I’m in a massive decluttering and organization project, which I’ll discuss in detail later – hold onto your hats – and it’s physically and mentally draining.

Something that happens to me now that never happened in my pre-perimenopausal life is that I can tell with one hundred percent accuracy when my period will start, and it’s not just that I have existential angst, a descent into non-specific sadness, and sleeplessness. That happens, but for the purposes of this story, I will tell you about the one other symptom that is a neon sign that Nicole Is Getting Her Period: my breasts. Suddenly, my breasts go from resembling the stocking that Laura Ingalls set out for Santa Claus that contains a single orange and a penny in the bottom to over-inflated water balloons. Va-va-va-voom! I would appreciate this brief foray into bustiness a lot more if it was not accompanied by agonizing pain that makes me want to bind my breasts like a medieval upper-class new mother who has just handed her infant off to the nearest wet-nurse.

It just so happened that this Playboy-centerfoldness occurred on one of our last days in Maui and although I know better, I really do, I donned a bikini that, while absolutely adorable, was maybe not as supportive as others. I did notice that I was a bit more cleavage-y than earlier in the vacation when I had worn this specific bikini, but yolo. I soldiered on to the beach. My mistake was soon revealed in a literal sense; it was just fine when I was swimming or bobbing around in the waves, but when I hopped on the boogie board and caught a wave, I ended up flashing the entire beach as my breasts popped right out. Right out. The bikini top was completely BELOW my breasts and I scrambled to pull it back up, while not letting the boogie board float out to sea as the waves pulled back. It was no mean feat, let me tell you. Fortunately, my sons were behind me in the waves, and so were not psychologically scarred, at least as far as their mother’s public semi-nudity is concerned.

I decided to call it a day at that point, and headed to our little umbrella-and-beach chair set-up, letting the guys play in the water while I read a bit. I was soon approached by a young man, at least twenty-five years my junior, who was holding an M&M tube, the kind that contain mini-M&Ms and are found in Christmas stockings everywhere, except for Laura Ingalls’. He held up the tube with a huge silly smile and asked if I wanted to see something cool. Awww, I thought. This maybe-slow young man wants to show me something. I gave him a big, encouraging smile, and said sure. He opened it up and I peered inside. What…was it? Was that a little crab leg? Or legs? Dead bugs? It was hard to see – I was under the umbrella and I had sunglasses on, and the sun was at this fellow’s back.

“What is it?” I finally asked, after an uncomfortably long pause. “Weed!” the young man said with enthusiasm. “Do you want to buy some?” At this, I burst into laughter. “Oh, HONEY,” I said. “Honey, no. No thank you, dear.” It was like I was ninety years old and someone asked me to go skydiving, or to have some backdoor action in a public washroom with a stranger. He looked a little started at my laughing and asked if there was anyone I knew who might want his presumably M&M-scented weed? I shook my head and said “No, sweetie, I don’t.” He looked perplexed at both my cluelessness and my laughter, and set off, presumably to try to sell to someone who didn’t seem like his own mother. Or grandmother. I was gratified that he thought I was so hip, even though my “honey, no” would indicate that I am not.

I haven’t smoked weed for well over thirty years, but I do, on occasion, use over-the-counter sleep aids. I decided to take some Gravol for our overnight flight; generally I am a person who can sleep in transit, but I thought I should take something to help me get more than a couple of hours. According to my watch, I did sleep five out of six hours on the flight, and the hour that I didn’t was fairly interesting, if somewhat worrisome.

I had completely passed out as soon as we were in the air, and I blearily awakened to some jostling, anxious voices, and the caution to “stay in your seat.” I opened my gritty-feeling eyes to see several flight attendants in various stages of distress, right at my seat. The woman directly behind me was having a medical emergency; she had been treated for a sinus infection while on vacation, and suddenly was having severe shooting pain in her eye, as well as feverishness and nausea. Fortunately, the man across the aisle from her was a nurse – and was coming back from his honeymoon! – and he was able to assist the flight attendant with the emergency medical care she was administering. The flight attendant was on a phone call with a hospital for more instruction, and at that moment I thought to look at the digital flight map. We were directly in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, an hour and a half from Maui and four and a half hours from land, so there would be nowhere to turn around or to land. Perhaps it was because it was the middle of the night, perhaps it was due to my aforementioned Lady’s Holidays, but my thoughts started to go dark. What happens if someone is having an emergency and there is nowhere to land? What happens if someone dies on a flight? What do they do with the body? They couldn’t possibly just leave the dead body in the seat, but what? Is there someplace to put a body? Things are pretty tight on a full plane. Would the body be put where the flight attendants sit for takeoff and landing? Then what of the flight attendants? These unsettling thoughts kept pinging into my brain until the woman was given an antiemetic, put on oxygen – the tank was under my seat – and the flight attendant said she’d check back every ten minutes, which indicated to me she was stabilized somewhat. Relieved, I drifted back to sleep, waking only a couple more times to peek over the seat to make sure she was okay, before we landed.

With five hours of unsettled sleep and a time difference of four hours, I was pretty disoriented when we got home to our clean but food-less house. Does grocery shopping ever end? Of course not. Since we were in a condo in Maui, we ate a lot of meals there, which meant grocery shopping in Maui, too. Which is fine, but what I am saying is that I wasn’t super excited to immediately set out for the grocery store while the rest of the family napped at 9:00 am. However, I did want food and I had to pick up Rex in the afternoon, so off I went.

The very first thing I saw in the store were the one-kilogram bags of Cadbury Mini-Eggs, and they were on sale for $5 off. I have an actual mini-egg preference, and that preference is Cadbury, so I immediately picked up a bag and dropped it into my cart. Dropped it. Into my cart. As soon as the bag made contact with my cart, it exploded, and a kilogram’s worth of mini-eggs scattered all over the aisle and into the produce section. I stood there, frozen, as mini-eggs cascaded from my cart, rolling and bouncing in all directions. After about five long seconds, I looked around to see a produce clerk coming my way. “I’m so sorry,” I said, still staring at the rolling eggs that were now surrounding other people and their carts. I followed the apology by surpassing the world record in banal statements: “The bag, I think the bag, I think it has a hole in it?” The clerk assured me that it would be taken care of and not to worry. I picked up another bag and very slowly, very carefully, placed it in my cart.

Weekly Reading

I read so much on my vacation that I am going to make a separate post about all the books I read; the excellent, the pretty good, and the really bad. Do you rate the books you read? I do, but privately. I give a rating out of five on the spreadsheet on which I track my books, and it’s extremely subjective based on how much I loved the writing and how it made me feel. I don’t get too mired in the details, but a five would be a book I absolutely loved, and a two would be a book I hated but still was able to read. I am realizing now we all have very different methods of rating. I was talking to a friend about this, because I was surprised to see her rate a few books I really liked as threes. A three, to me, is meh; a book that is fine, but that I would never re-read. To her a three was pretty good, a maybe re-read, and a five would be a book of the quality of Maya Angelou or James Baldwin. I found that so interesting! I am not at all stingy with my fives; if I loved it, it’s getting a five. If I loved it but had some small quibbles, I will give it a four.

In any case, I read one non-vacation book this week:

In Every Mirror She’s Black. This book follows three Black women who all come to Sweden because of one powerful Swedish man: one through employment, one because of romance, and one as a refugee. Their lives intersect but are very separate. The ending is pretty intense, and I would say this book had its ups and downs for me. I didn’t love it but I liked it well enough.

More books to come, but in the meantime, I must get on with my week! I hope you all had a lovely Easter weekend. xo