Category Archives: Books

Living La Vida Hygge; Eighty-Six Weeks In

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This was the most perfect book to read during the first week of November with colder temperatures and shorter, darker days:

Wait, wait. I know what you’re going to say. I am about five years late to the hygge party – actually, closer to six, given that we are almost done 2021 (WHAT). In my defense, I have had The Little Book of Hygge on hold at the library for many months, and it just came in last week, and so really I’m more like four and a half years late. Or five and a half, depending.

Many of you will remember that last year I started to embrace the Norwegian part of my heritage, adopting the concept of friluftsliv, getting outside and enjoying the fresh air, no matter the weather. And believe me, in Calgary that can be a challenge, but it is a challenge I have accepted. Then, in the spring, I decided to Embrace The Season, in every way possible. Now, I am adding to the roster the concept of hygge, which, to be honest, I have probably always embraced.

Hygge, for those of you also late to this party, is pronounced HOO-ga, which is super fun to say, like an old-timey air horn, and it is roughly translated as a feeling of coziness, intimacy, warmth, home, and safety. It’s the feeling I hope my kids get when they come home after school and activities, and it’s cold outside and I’ve baked muffins for their arrival. It’s the feeling I get when I’m having a hot drink and it’s cold outside and everyone is home and happy. It’s the feeling I get when I switch the bed to flannel sheets and start wearing legwarmers over my yoga pants on the daily (it’s a look).

Maybe I am spiritually Danish, because this book resonated with me a lot, except for the part about how much meat the Danes eat and how many candles they burn, as I don’t eat meat and I am terrified of candles with their possibility of setting the house on fire. Candles are fire hazards, people. I even get a little nervous with birthday candles. Anyway, there is a description of Danish fashion: all black with the exception of summer, when Danes get crazy about colour and break out the grey, with scarves and layers and hair in buns. IT’S ME, YOU GUYS. They are describing ME! Also, Danes lead the world in cake consumption, which is a fun fact that I am here for; cake is the queen of all the desserts, I will die on this hill.

One thing about living in a cold climate, when you are a person who does not like the cold, is that you really have no control over your environment. I guess that is true in any climate, none of us can control the weather – can we? – and so there are two ways we can react: we can complain endlessly, or we can accept it as it is and embrace the things that make it beautiful. I have chosen the latter, mostly, as I think complaining about the weather is the most useless thing we can do, and wishing the weather was different is futile. We get what we get, and we don’t get upset, as we say to preschoolers. I mean, sometimes I am going to be upset, but I’m trying.

So I’m embracing the concept of hygge, although as I said I think I have ALWAYS embraced it, I just didn’t know there was a name for it. It’s going to be ALL COZINESS ALL THE TIME around here, now that we are back to standard time and soon the sun will set just after four o’clock and temperatures dip low. As an aside, in the recent municipal election there was a question about getting rid of time change altogether and adopting Daylight Savings Time year-round, and I have feelings about this. It got voted down because people realized that the sun wouldn’t rise until 9:30-10:30 in December, but here’s my question: why Daylight Savings Time? Why not have Standard Time year-round? This was our chance to get rid of time change altogether, and it has been ruined. Why was Standard Time not an option? WHY? Do we really need the sun to be setting between 10:00-11:00 pm in June? STANDARD TIME MAKES SO MUCH MORE SENSE, WHO MADE UP THESE POLLS.

Anyway, that’s one more thing I can’t control, so I’m not going to rail about it – much – so let’s get back to hygge. The festive season is the perfect time to consciously be hygge. It’s pretty easy to Embrace the Season when you love the season, and it’s not yet so cold that my face hurts to be outside. Actually, we had a couple of unusually warm days last week – it was warm enough to run outside! – and we have had the most gorgeous sunrises lately. Yay for November!

Oh, one other great thing about November: kalettes are back at Costco!

It’s the most wonderful time of the year. I was so excited to see them on my trip there this week and I kind of think that I should be getting some kind of kickback from The Kalette People, as I convince at least one person to buy them every time I see them, giving them a rave review and also my favourite way to prepare them – roasted, with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. I’ll see a person – almost always a woman – at the display looking at them and then I will strike up a conversation about how much I love them, and the person inevitably puts a package in her cart, possibly to put an end to my enthusiastic raving, who can say. Well. Roasting vegetables is very hygge, in my humble opinion, as is baking:

Upon the kalette discovery I immediately texted my friend Janet (HI JANET) about their reappearance, and she said that she was also just at Costco and was going to text ME about kalettes, and don’t you love having friends like that? That kind of friendship is so hygge.

Pandemic Reading

Other than The Little Book of Hygge, I read a few books this week:

Things To Make and Break. I liked a couple of the short stories in this collection, but mostly this was not for me.

Broken (in the best possible way). It has been many years since I’ve read Lawson’s blog, but this series of essays reads just like I remember it: funny in a silly, over-the-top kind of way, and also dark, raw, and sad. This was very hit-and-miss for me, but fans of the blog will really love it, I’m sure. There were two essays in this book that I found quite beautiful, but mostly this wasn’t for me.

Yoga Pant Nation. I read and enjoyed the first two books in this series – Class Mom and You’ve Been Volunteered – and so I was happy when my friend Anna (HI ANNA) mentioned there was a third. It’s very light and fun and fluffy, and if you, like me, have ever clocked tons of hours volunteering at an elementary school, you will find this very relatable.

The Rules Do Not Apply. Have you ever gotten through a good chunk of a book only to realize you’ve read it before? There was a chapter about the man with whom the author’s mother was having an affair that seemed vaguely familiar and upon looking at my book record, I saw that I read this in 2018. I couldn’t remember any of it, so it was almost like a fresh read! For the first 2/3 of this book, I found all the people – particularly the author – to be extremely unlikeable. But there’s a heartbreakingly tragic event – which I had no memory of – and a redemption arc.

Wow, that’s a lot of books this week. Well, once winter starts to settle in, reading is very hygge for me! Have a great week everyone, remember our bodies are an hour ahead of what the clock says, in case you start feeling starving for lunch at 10:30 am. xo

Festivities Shift; Eighty-Five Weeks In

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Hello November!!

It was a brisk, wintry start to the weekend, so I wasn’t sure if we would even get any Trick-or-Treaters, but we ended up with an all-time high of 43, smashing our earlier record of 25. Maybe it was the decorations!

We do have some candy left over, which some of us are happier about than others.

Speaking of sugar, all occasions must be marked by sugar cookies, it is a law, while you’re living under my roof, you will obey my rules!

The first of November is, as you know, the beginning of Tiny Secret Festive Season! Today I’ll wear my Christmas bracelet, which will be with me until the New Year, and I will swap out the hand soaps for festive-themed ones. Tonight will be the night for red-plaid festive pajamas, my nightly foot cream will be swapped out for the Vanilla Candy Cane scent, I’ll start using my Christmas bookmarks, and my grocery lists will all be written on gingerbread-themed notepads. In a couple of weeks, I’ll start using the Christmas tea towels and Buddy the Elf mugs, and by then it will be soon time to decorate totally, so that by the end of the month we will be fully into the festive swing of things.

And on that note, I am ALMOST done my Christmas shopping, you guys! I know! Even for me, it’s early. Last week I carved out an afternoon just for going to the mall. I remembered what shopping felt like last year, and what it felt like was not fun. I recalled just trying to get every gift necessary in my one trip to the mall, and ending up completely exhausted and sour. You know what, I don’t want to live my life like that anymore. I don’t want to think of shopping for gifts for my loved ones, for my favourite holiday, as a huge dreaded chore. BE THE CHANGE, I thought, and so I changed my attitude about it.

One thing about me is that Gift Giving is not really my predominant Love Language (it’s Acts of Service). I have a tendency to get stressed and nervous when buying gifts – what if they don’t like it, what if it’s the wrong thing – and I think that is not the right way to think about Christmas gifts. Gifts are GIFTS. I don’t really remember being super-specific with wish lists when I was a kid. I remember being excited and happy opening gifts, and even when they weren’t things I would have specifically chosen, I would be delighted. I am still that way now. So why, I wondered, was I becoming stressed about getting the exact right thing for the exact right person? It’s a GIFT.

So that was the mindset I was trying to cultivate, and anyone with teen boys or other people who are difficult to buy for, people who have everything and want for nothing, will know what I mean.

The second part of my mindset was that I don’t need to get every single thing in one fell swoop. Last year, I kind of did; everything was new in terms of masks and customer limits in the store and sanitization stations everywhere. We still have our indoor mask mandate here, and almost no one walks around with a mask under their noses anymore. There are still limits to customers and hand sanitizers when one enters a store, but it feels pretty normal and much less dystopian now.

Old habits die hard, and I was tempted to buy the first thing I saw and to speed walk through the mall, but I told myself to slow down. It’s October 26, I said to myself, You can come back next week. Or later! I really tried to just enjoy the shopping experience, and as they say, fake it until you make it. And it worked! I really enjoyed myself. I browsed through a few stores, making mental notes about some items I thought would suit some of my giftees, I spent a LOT of time in Indigo choosing a paper agenda for 2022 for MYSELF, while looking at their displays of silly and delightful little things suitable for stockings, and, after lapping the mall once, I went back to the stores and bought the items that had initially caught my eye. I had a few ideas for my husband but at that point I was pretty laden down with bags. I think I’ll go back tomorrow and buy them, and maybe spend another enjoyable afternoon browsing around.

Pandemic Reading

Seven Days In June. This was an interesting mix of light, fun, sexy romance, and a commentary on the devastating personal toll of social issues. The plot follows two writers who had a (kind of) romantic week together fifteen years prior, and who have been writing the character of the other person into their books ever since. Sounds lovely and light, but that romantic week included massive drug use, self-mutilation, and eventual overdose. So…not as light as one might think.

What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat. I listen to and enjoy Aubrey Gordon’s podcast Maintenance Phase, which is about the toxicity of the “wellness” industry. The theme of this book is that anti-fat bias is the last “socially acceptable” mode of discrimination; it details the kind of discrimination faced, interspersed with truly horrifying stories about the way people treat other people. It also discusses the value we as a society place on certain body types, and how we assign morality to bodies and foods. It is something I had been thinking about for a while: a few summers ago, a friend was sharing with me her struggle to lose weight, and several times she used the words “good” and “bad” to describe herself and the food that she ate. I haven’t been bad at all! It bothered me then and it bothers me now, and I am still having a hard time articulating why. Anyway, this book is well-written, well-researched, informative and thought-provoking.

Happy November to you all! Have a great week! Is anyone else starting to gear up for the holiday season, or is it just me? xo

The Case of the Missing Gourds; Eighty-Four Weeks In

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I don’t want to alarm anybody, but something is eating my decorative gourds.

I started out with eight white mini-pumpkins, and I am down to two. My husband suggested someone was STEALING them, but I think that is unnecessarily suspicious of people in my neighbourhood, and also, if our home is going to be the the victim of theft, I don’t think it is the mini-pumpkins that are going to be targeted.

No, something is eating them, and the proof was staring us into the face when we noticed two large bites taken out of the decorative red gourd. At first I was willing to believe that a murder of crows was carrying off the mini-pumpkins, but the nature of the bite marks on the red gourd do not suggest a bird. Perhaps it is one of the many wild rabbits in the neighbourhood. I was prepared to cast the blame on my usual nemeses, the squirrels, but people, this is no squirrel.

I sprinkled cayenne on the gourds to deter predators, but on the upside, if this carnage continues, I will not have to worry about composting anything come November 1.

It has been an interesting week, and not just because of the disappearing gourds. We had a municipal election, which I voted for in the advance polls and as such kept forgetting that the election was not over. Why are there still signs around? Oh yeah. I knew the platforms of the frontrunners – enough to make an informed choice – but I have not been paying attention to the news at all as a self-care measure, and so I was very surprised to see 27 mayoral candidates. TWENTY-SEVEN. Who are these people and where did they all come from?

I was driving to the Superstore, which is ten minutes from my house, and noticed a big sign for one of the mayoral candidates that I never had heard of before. This gentleman’s tagline was “Calgary’s Cheapest Mayor” which, what. Who is doing your PR, sir?

Actually, whoever is doing the PR must have known that someone like me would immediately look up this gentleman’s platform because CHEAPEST MAYOR WHAT. I spent far too much time thinking that maybe he’s a guy who gives holiday cards saying that in lieu of gifts, a donation has been made to the Human Fund, or when splitting the cheque at dinner he pays exactly the amount for his entree, without tax or tip, or doesn’t offer to pay for part of the appetizer even though he ate half of it. Maybe all of those things are true, but they were not on his platform. It should be obvious but he was running on a platform of low expenditures and taxes, but what I did not know was that this person refused to door knock or go to any in-person interviews or meetings at all due to the pandemic. Maybe he didn’t want to spend money on gas? He did not win, nor did he even come into the top 20, but I shall give a little nod to his determination.

Speaking of Superstore, this week I earned an unprecedented 40,400 PC Points, and for those of you who are not in Canada or who do not shop at Superstore (who hurt you?) there is an app that tracks all your purchases, Big Brother-like, and then offers you points for things you regularly buy, which can be exchanged for store credit. For example, this week my offers include 200 points for every $1 spent on grapes and 1000 points for every $5 spent on the brand of yogurt I buy, among others. You get the idea. Anyone who spends a few months examining the patterns of the offers can figure out the basic algorithm, which is what I have done, and I shop accordingly to maximize my points and why are you looking at me like that. Anyway, I have been holding out on buying a few cosmetic items – Neutrogena products, mostly, but also hair colour – because I knew the points offers would be soon and THIS WAS THE WEEK.

My husband is of the belief that if I ever won the lottery, I would be more excited to receive the funds in PC Points than in actual cash, which is untrue, but also not totally untrue, if you know what I mean.

Speaking of my husband, it was his birthday this week, and you know what that means! Cake!

Since the rule in this house is that birthdays are celebrated for at least a week in some way, I also baked a pie on the weekend, and that, along with cooking some giant meals, meant a lot of time in the kitchen. Yesterday alone I washed dishes SEVEN TIMES. I am thinking that next weekend, I might heat up some frozen pizzas, set out some pre-made salads and Halloween candy, and call it a day.

Pandemic Reading

In The Country of Others. I have always been interested in Morocco, and this book gives incredible depth and detail to that country post-World War II, leading up to the revolt against French colonialism. It follows a war bride Frenchwoman who marries a Moroccan man and goes to live in a desolate farm in that country. It was well done and contained many layers, but I found the writing to be somewhat…disjointed, maybe? I can’t think of the right description. It almost felt like a series of vignettes linked together, and it did feel like it was a translation and that English is not the first language of the author, which it is not. The themes are very dark and disturbing – triggers include domestic abuse – and it is very nuanced as well. So much symbolism, for those of you who like that. I liked it, but did not love it, and I’ll be thinking about it for a while.

What Fresh Hell Is This? Oh, you guys. This book is really incredible: so empowering and liberating. From managing perimenopause in a patriarchal society that diminishes aging women to examining your own life and lighting a match to what doesn’t serve you, to realizing that menopause is not a disease or a defect, but a normal part of life – albeit one with effects that can be mildly bothersome to downright dreadful – this book is enlightening. It also is inclusive of people who experience menopause and do not identify as women or were not female at birth, which I am sorry to say, is a point of view I had not considered. It gives great advice about managing effects of menopause in a way that is in no way patronizing, and includes topics that can be very sensitive, like the feeling of becoming invisible or losing our looks or femininity. I especially liked how the author talked about the importance of social support and referenced the Golden Girls episode when Blanche realized she was going through The Change. There were a few things that did not feel relevant for my life, like the idea of opening up my monogamous relationship to explore my sexuality, for example, but the entire attitude shift that is celebrated in this book was really great. Thanks to my friend Cherie (HI CHERIE) for the recommendation!

On that note, I hope you have an empowered and liberated week, this last week of October! May the Halloween candy last until Sunday. xo

Never Eat Shredded Wheat; Eighty-Three Weeks In

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In my mind, one of the greatest technological advancements is the advent of the map function on my phone. I am a person who has very little sense of direction, and before this incredible feat of technological engineering, I would write down or print out directions to a place, and panic every time I thought I might have to turn, trying to keep one eye on the road and the other on the piece of paper. Is this the turn? I can’t read that sign. Oh goddammit, that’s a crescent, not a drive. WHERE AM I. The kids have known from a young age that I am a stressy driver in certain parts of the city, and my husband is constantly amazed that someone who has lived in one city her entire life still doesn’t know how the main thoroughfares work.

My husband, by the way, is a person who could be dropped anywhere at all, in any city, and would figure out exactly how to get to his destination within minutes, often without a map. How he does this I do not know, but it feels like not being on the Amazing Race was a missed opportunity.

When I was young, my dad would helpfully give me directions or draw a map on a piece of notepaper, and those directions would include things like “turn east” and he then would sternly say that “the sun rises in the east” when I asked if it was a right or a left hand turn. Thanks, Dad, I am aware the sun rises in the east, but my old car didn’t have directional indicators on it. Now, of course, if someone gives me such a direction, I look at the direction I am going as indicated on my rearview mirror and mentally say Never Eat Shredded Wheat as I figure it out.

All of which is to say I have a lot of gratitude for modern technology, wherein I can tap an address into my phone and it directs me there, taking into consideration current traffic and everything. I think we should all take a moment to sit silently in awe, thinking about how people like me are no longer a menace on the road, driving in circles and crying, tears smudging our handwritten directions that are uselessly crumpled on our laps, wondering how to get back home. Now we just have to think about the other menaces on the road: people who are using their phones while driving because god forbid a comment on Instagram goes unanswered, people who illegally drop their kids off in the bus zone at the high school and then block off the intersection as other cars try to turn down the street, which reminds me so much of when I visited Cairo in 2001, cars going everywhere but with no acknowledgement of the rules of the road, people who have road rage and aggressively tailgate and pass in residential streets because they are in a hurry and more important than everyone else. But at least I – and others like me – are relatively calmly driving in new areas, listening to our phones tell us what to do.

I don’t really go many new places these days, but I had the opportunity to use my Map Overlord twice this week: once to drive to my niece’s Brownie group where I was guest-teaching outdoor yoga, and once to meet a friend for a walk in a beautiful part of the city that I had never been to.

As a sidebar: I had never taught kids’ yoga OR outdoor yoga before, and it was quite different from my usual demographic, albeit very fun to teach “unicorn pose” and “rainbow breathing” and make up stories about Brownies with magical wands who could transform frogs into unicorns into dolphins.

Other things that happened this week, other than being grateful to live in the modern age, is that we had a brief snowfall that melted away soon after, it officially became legwarmer season, and my neighbours had a plumber to their house.

I watched intermittently out the window for a long time, hoping to catch a glimpse of Hot Rod, but I had to go to the aforementioned Brownie meeting, and I missed him.

Pandemic Reading

Back in August, I put all my library holds on pause, as I wanted to work my way through a few books on my shelf that I wanted to read and reread. The pauses have all ended now, and this was the result:

After taking this photo, two more books came in, and when I went to pick them up, I saw this book, which was recommended by Swistle, (HI SWISTLE) just staring me in the face on the New and Notable shelf and honestly, I am not made of stone. In other words, I have a problem. Oh well. Game on, challenge accepted.

Little Fires Everywhere. This was one of the books I was wanting to reread, and I was blown away anew. IT IS SO GOOD. Celeste Ng is an incredible talent, a brilliant writer. She shows that people contain multitudes, and that there are many sides to a story. This book is about motherhood in all forms, but so much more – identity, secrets, appearances. Before you ask – no! I have not seen the show. It is highly unlikely that I will, mostly because I love the book so much and I find that I am inevitably disappointed by movies or shows based on books that I love. The sole exception to this rule is Little Women, both the recent film and the 1990s one, and I will also accept Sense and Sensibility as an excellent film.

Of Women and Salt. Oof. This is a very heavy, but ultimately hopeful, book. It’s a short, quick read but it contains so many layers and so much difficult material. Intergenerational trauma, the cycle of abuse, sacrifices made for a chance at a better life – all making the usual complexities of the mother-daughter relationship more fraught. The main characters are Cuban women, but there is an intertwined story about Salvadoran refugees that is heartbreaking and breathtaking.

People We Meet On Vacation. This was a very sweet best-friends-who-fall-in-love, opposites-attract book, just totally fun and fluffy. I mean, you know how this is going to turn out. It’s a perfect weekend/ beach/ vacation/ comfort read but there was a scene that got me thinking. The protagonist meets an old middle school nemesis who apologizes for being a jackass, and it reminded me of similar occasions in my own life. Specifically, I remember the advent of Facebook, and being “friended” by an old frenemy who treated me with the kind of emotional manipulation that certain girls wield in a terrible way. Do you hold onto grudges or let them go? People change, we are all in this journey together, I think. Shit happens and it’s rarely about US, you know? Mean kids had their own shit going on, that’s what made them mean. I remember accepting that woman’s Facebook friendship, and then thinking we are all just moms now, just going about our business and it was so freeing. Let go of that shit, is what I’m saying. The past is past. Anyhoo, this is a sweet little book about finding your home and happiness.

Have a beautiful week, friends! We have a birthday coming up in the house, so there will be cake in my future – how can that not be a great week! xo

Dreams, Jeans, Go(u)rds, Thanksgiving; Eighty-Two Weeks In

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Thanks and Giving

Thank you to everyone who reached out with kind words last week. It does make things lighter to know that we aren’t alone.

Today is Thanksgiving, for those of you not in Canada, and it is the first Thanksgiving in many years that we are not visiting my mother-in-law, which feels strange. It’s not even Covid-related – or, that’s not the main reason – we didn’t go because our vacation home, in which we stay when we visit, is currently a complete construction zone and is currently uninhabitable. We have added a second floor and after six weeks with no roof, the roof has just been put back on, and while there is no power or heat currently in the house, there are many workmen. When I say “construction zone” I really mean it. Staying with my mother-in-law is out of the question for logistical reasons, and the only other option would be to stay in a hotel and eat out and you know what, that part is Covid-related because I cannot fathom such a thing right now. Also, after the glory of last year’s Thanksgiving wherein I had my own kitchen and was able to contribute a number of vegetarian dishes to the meal, I cannot go back to eating a plate of peas and carrots for the festive dinner and later sneaking into the kitchen to scarf down peanut butter toast while everyone else digests their meal. Well, next year will be different.

We did have dinner at my parents’ place, and my mom made a number of vegetarian dishes along with a turkey, so everyone was happy. When it comes to cooking turkey, I will do anything for love but I won’t do that.

Dreams Last For So Long, Even After You’re Gone

I am not a person who puts much stock into dreams. I don’t tend to remember them, and if I do, they are usually incredibly boring and include dull day-to-day things like folding laundry endlessly or walking through the aisles in the grocery store. Back in my working days I used to dream about spreadsheets regularly, like the actual spreadsheets would just be scrolling through my dream-eyes. I don’t think I need to see a dream interpreter, is what I’m saying. Basically whatever is currently the most boring thing in my life, that is what I dream about.

But the other night, I had the most vivid dream that I was on a romantic vacation in Hawaii with Kevin from The Office. Before you ask, there was no sex involved, but Kevin was wearing a giant straw sunhat and flowered muumuu the whole time. The paparazzi was snapping photos that were captioned “Kevin From The Office and His New Girlfriend” so apparently, no one else knows his real name either.

What does it portend? Should my husband be worried? Am I going to leave him for Kevin? Or for another man who wears a straw hat and muumuu? I told my sons about the dream and they were most interested if Dream Kevin made me his World Famous Chili, and were disappointed when I said no. I mean, it’s probably not vegetarian.

It’s Fall, Fuckfaces

I have been eagerly preparing for Decorative Gourd Season in my usual way:

Even Barkley has gotten in on the action. He must have heard about throwing some multicoloured leaves in the mix, all haphazard, as you can see:

Of course, up here in Canada it is also Decorative Gord Season:

Now It’s A Whole Thing With Jean

You guys, Gigi was right (HI GIGI) (you were right!). Remember how excited I was for my new jeans, the first jean purchase I had made for years? Remember how excited I was at their comfort? Well. Gigi mentioned that some jeans have TOO much stretch and can become saggy and unattractive by midday and this is certainly the case with my not-so-exciting new jeans. They look so cute first thing in the morning, and then by 1:00 the waistband has started to slide down my body, leaving the crotch and bum sagging down. I tend to wear longer sweaters so it isn’t too obvious in that area, but the calves start to slide down to the ankles, and it’s all very disappointing. I don’t know what the answer is. Do I buy another pair of jeans that are less stretchy and comfortable? Do I go down a size so the jeans are uncomfortably snug until 1:00 in the afternoon? Do I just say fuck it all and wear my saggy jeans because where am I going and who am I seeing anyway? It’s a conundrum.

Pandemic Reading

I am still beta reading, and it’s so good that I schedule myself a certain amount of time each day to read make notes, and I’m constantly going over my allotted time with the thought just one more chapter, okay, just one more. The point is, I read just one other book this week and it’s a biggie:

Mansfield Park. It’s probably been 25 years since I read this, so it was almost like an entirely fresh read! I think this is the most complex and intricate of all the Austen novels. There is a LOT going on in this book, including such things as moral dilemmas, infidelity, divorce, and a whole lot of karma. One of the big themes in this book is that if you are a woman, and a man of independent means proposes to you, you should accept. NO QUESTIONS ASKED. Our incredibly beaten-down, put-upon heroine does NOT accept a proposal, for very solid reasons, and literally no one can believe it. They all keep trying to pressure her into this marriage, because WHY would she say no? There is a lot in here about class divides, and unlike any other Austen novel, there contains a non-wealthy or privileged setting. Of course there is a “happy ending,” depending on how you feel about “keeping romance in the family,” and all the same, I really love this book.

Happy Thanksgiving, friends! I hope you have a beautiful week. Our trees are mostly naked now, but it’s fun to crunch around in the leaves. xo

Not Okay, But Okay; Eighty-One Weeks In

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pandemic Reading

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

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

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

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

Giving Up The (Trend) Ghost; Eighty Weeks In

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I have always loved clothes and fashion. When you were a teen, did you “reinvent” your look every summer to have a bold new style in September? I sure did; some elements I would keep – to this day, I wear silver hoop earrings just like the ones I adopted back in 1989 – and some would change from year to year. I think fondly of the clothes I wore back in my high school years, particularly the babydoll dresses with army boots and the cute little kilts with turtlenecks. Some styles were less cute:

That’s me in grade eight, and it tells you everything you need to know about my style at the time. What can I say, it was the Eighties.

Anyway, I love clothes and September feels like a good time to talk fashion, what with the changing leaves and the crispness in the air. Although, who are we kidding, I live in Calgary, it’s been crisp for a month now. I’m almost fully transitioned to sweaters and scarves, and my fuzzy slippers have made their reappearance after their summer hiatus.

I follow a number of fashion blogs; one of the women is in her thirties, but the rest are over forty, and I do find these blogs both inspirational and aspirational. I love the styling and accessories, I love seeing women express themselves through clothing, but I also find that, with some limited exceptions, these outfits are completely irrelevant to my life. Where are the blogs that have twenty-five different ways to style yoga pants, or what to wear when your only outing is to the grocery store, or what are we doing about jeans these days.

JEANS. I have never been what you might call a particularly trendy person, but over the years I have generally incorporated some current trends into my wardrobe. Until now. I always wondered at what point women just give up on “what’s in style” and go their own way, and I feel like for me, that point is age 46. You see, I am realizing that current trends are completely not appropriate for my body, in particular, JEANS.

On the one hand, nothing dates a person faster than out-of-date jeans; just think about how “Mom jeans” got their name back in the early 2000s, when we were all wearing super-low-rise boot-cut jeans. Women of my generation made fun of those generously-fitting jeans with the nine-inch zippers as our thong panties poked out of our dangerously low-rise, dark-wash boot-cuts, but what we tend not to remember is that we wore those very things ten or fifteen years prior. We wore them with pride, with our cropped tees or tucked-in blousy tops or, possibly least-flatteringly, our gigantically outsized sweaters.

The above photo is from my grade eleven yearbook, taken when I was in rehearsal for the play Buried Child by Sam Shepard. Do you know Buried Child? If so, you may be staring into space wondering how a high school could possibly put on such a play. Looking back I wonder the same thing, and yet it seemed fine to me at the time. Dead babies and incest, themes that are incorporated into every high school production. That seems perfectly reasonable for a bunch of teens. Anyway, I played Shelly.

Remember puffy shirts?

Now, of course, those jeans are stylish, as are boot-cut – but not low-rise, no, waistbands must end just below the ribcage now – and the skinny jeans I have been wearing and loving for the past nine years are emphatically out. Well, maybe not emphatically, but they are on the way.

Empirically, boot-cut jeans are THE most flattering jeans, but I am of the opinion that they look best worn with heels, which is not something that interests me at all anymore. Give me flats or give me death, with very few exceptions. The thing I love about skinny jeans is the ability to wear them with tall boots, tall FLAT boots, which is a look I adore. I don’t want to get rid of my skinny jeans, but are they dating me? Maybe. Do I care? Maybe a little.

Current styles are highlighting the following: high-waisted, looser fit jeans, crop tops, and PADDED SHOULDERS. No, they don’t call them Shoulder Pads, they are Padded Shoulders, as if this is a different thing, as if this is a flattering direction we are going in. I say a big old no to Padded Shoulders, but also to the high-waisted, loose fit jeans and crop tops. As a woman going through perimenopause, my waist is not something I want to draw attention to. I want to smooth things over in that area, not highlight them. This is why I love skinny jeans or leggings with long, drapey sweaters. Crop tops and – as seen above – blazers with Padded Shoulders are not a direction I to which am willing to turn.

I recently purchased, for the first time in at least seven years, a pair of jeans. I was on a mission but when I walked into Bootlegger I just stood there, overwhelmed. It occurred to me, once I set foot in the store, that I was absolutely not the correct demographic for that store and maybe I should just forget the idea altogether. Too late, I was approached by a very lovely young woman by the name of Alexis who asked if she could help me. Honey, you have no idea. I told her I was looking for jeans, and that I usually wore skinnies, but I knew they were out of style, and she immediately interrupted me. “Oh, god. I mean, yes. TikTok says that skinnies are over, but who cares? You should wear what you want! We have tons of skinny jeans.”

Was Alexis some kind of wise oracle? Maybe. You meet the people you need in life. I stared at her as she led me over to the massive piles of jeans, answering her questions as to size and colour. She handed me a few pair with some commentary on their stretchiness or otherwise, the fits she herself preferred, and then I followed her to the change room.

People. There have been a LOT of changes in the past seven (or more?) years when it comes to jeans. The material! It’s stretchy! It’s forgiving! It was a complete revelation to me. The waistline, while not ending near my ribcage, was higher than that of my old jeans and it was so comfortable! They are so comfortable. I love them so much and, as Alexis said, looking at my ballet flats, they go perfectly with your shoes!

I’m happy. I have decided I shall swan into my dotage with no regards to what’s trendy or in-style, I am going to WEAR WHAT I WANT. Thank you, Alexis.

All the styles right now remind me so much of my teen years, and I do have that old adage in my head, that if a person wore it the first time around, they should not wear it the second time. I don’t entirely agree with that – we should ALL wear what we want, there are enough societal rules around women’s bodies and lives, clothes are for fun, not for a grim reminder of the flight of time and the invisibility that accompanies women of a certain age – but also, I kind of do. Maybe I do because I hate the current styles; maybe I’d feel differently if a style returned that I really love, although I am having trouble thinking of any such styles right now. I guess I’ll just stick with twenty-five ways to style yoga pants and leave it at that.

Pandemic Reading

It was a really good week for reading – I went through some incredible titles!

The Hundred Secret Senses. I really liked this book about sisters, fate, and past lives. I do not know much about Chinese history, but the secondary story line deals with the Taiping Revolution, which I have since learned was the bloodiest civil war in history. The main story follows a woman in 1990s San Francisco, and her relationships with her husband and half-sister, but also delves into past lives. It’s a really interesting and well-written book, and it has caused me to research some historical events, which I love. It ended much differently than I thought it would, but it was one of those books that caused me to really think about the people in my life and how people come into your life for a reason. Like Alexis. Ha! Just kidding, kind of.

Secret Daughter. I absolutely loved this book. It was incredible on so many levels, and delicately delved into so many topics: motherhood, family, poverty, fortune, careers, illiteracy, hope. It really focuses on the sacrifices mothers make for their children, but on different levels. A baby girl is left at an orphanage; her mother cannot keep her as she “needs to have a boy” in her culture. As a side note, due to sex-selective abortion, India has 93 females to every 100 males. The baby ends up being adopted by an American couple, both of whom are doctors. The story moves between the two families, and is very heartwrenching. There are so many emotional moments; one, in which the American woman looks at herself in the mirror at age 52, having given up a promising career in pediatrics for one that allowed more scheduling flexibility, but was dismal and dull and poorly paid, and being estranged from her husband and her daughter being far away, well. It’s poignant, is what I’m saying. If ever I have a moment where I think “I need a bigger kitchen” or “We have so much stuff; I need more storage space,” I will endeavor to remember the description of the human desperation in the slums of Mumbai. It’s worthwhile to remember my own privilege when there are fellow humans who are doing everything in their power every day to just have food and shelter, no matter how poor that food and shelter is. Anyway, I want to read everything by this author now.

Anxious People. Backman is hit and miss for me and I am often wary of books that are surrounded by a lot of “buzz” but this? This was incredible. Such a witty, intricate, wise book about compassion, empathy, and how we are all connected. It’s a lesson that we never know the whole of anyone’s story. “…that was why you should always be nice to other people, even idiots, because you never know how heavy their burden is.” It seems to start funny and light and just grows deeper and more complex as it goes. This was exactly the book I needed to read right now. It’s just wonderful on every level.

Have a great week, everyone! Enjoy your own foray into fall! xo