Category Archives: Books

A Dive Into Jane Eyre; Seventy-Nine Weeks In

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This past week I was a beta reader for a book concerning parenting young children; it’s hard to remember what those early years were like when my youngest just turned sixteen!

Also, I was so sleep-deprived back then that I barely remember 2005-07.

My son had, by all accounts, a great birthday. His brother, who knows him better than anyone, made him a “loot box,” which is apparently a thing. Everything in the loot box was labelled “rare” and “ordinary” and something else that I don’t remember. He found cans of spray paint in the garage and was up late the night before, spray painting in the backyard.

I didn’t even know we HAD spray paint.

This week has been a roller-coaster, emotionally. Our province has declared a state of emergency as our health-care system is collapsing, Covid cases are out of control, and the government finally implemented what is essentially a vaccine passport system, but no one is calling it that, instead it is a “vaccine exemption program.” Businesses, other than places like grocery stores, can either shut down or operate with extreme restrictions, or they can run fairly normally, as long as patrons can show proof of vaccination. The community centre I teach at has implemented the program, and I taught my first in-person class since – as an older student pointed out – November 12, 2020. But who’s counting!

I realized just how much I missed teaching in-person, with the ability to adapt and modify postures based on individual bodies. I think Zoom killed my zest for teaching, a little, and I feel like I’m getting my mojo back.

All of which is to say it’s been a busy and somewhat emotional week, and my Pandemic Reading consisted of the beta read and Jane Eyre. Have you ever read Jane Eyre? My grandma gave it to me when I was probably 14 or 15.

It was very unusual for Grandma to not write the date in the flyleaf, so I’m guessing about my age, and in any case, I didn’t love it when I read it over three decades ago. I found it quite dark and grim, and I didn’t remember much about it except that everyone was mean to Jane as a child and that there was a crazy wife living in the attic.

Jane Eyre is often lauded as a romance, and Reader, it is not. It is a Crazy Town Banana Pants book that I just have to talk about or I will explode. If you are uninterested in Jane Eyre, or you don’t want spoilers for a 174-year-old book, then please skip the rest of this post, and I’ll see you next week.

Pandemic Reading: Jane Eyre

The Victorian Age Was Rough For Orphans

I mean, obviously. But Jane is orphaned as a baby and is taken in by her mother’s brother and his wife; the uncle dies and on his deathbed twists a promise from his wife that she will always care for Jane “like one of her own.” SPOILER: she does no such thing. Jane is emotionally isolated and neglected, and suffers physical abuse from her male cousin, and when she fights back, she is locked up alone in the “red room” where her uncle died, until she has a total breakdown. Then she’s sent to boarding school for her insolence.

Charity Schools Were Uncharitable

Also, obviously. This is the Victorian age. But the school Jane is sent to essentially starves the students, forces them to walk miles to church in the winter in inadequate clothing, and is basically wretched. Typhus hits the school and kills over half the girls, and the good news is that the survivors get more food, as dead students don’t eat much.

Jane gets an education, though, and becomes a teacher. Eventually she applies for, and receives, a private governess position at Thornfield Hall. Her new master is Mr Rochester, who has taken on a ward, Adele. Sweet little Adele. She is the saddest character in this whole book, and that is saying something. Adele’s late mother was a French dancing girl who claimed Rochester was the father of her baby; Rochester, of course, denies it, and as he says in nineteenth century language, the woman was slutting around so who knows who the father is? But certainly not him! However, he feels guilty enough to take in the little waif and to secure the services of a governess.

Mr Rochester Is Terrible

I have seen Rochester referred to as a romantic hero, and that makes me concerned and worried for the people who think that. He puts down Jane in every way imaginable – her looks, her ability to play the piano, her personality – and yet she falls in love with him. Jane, no. You can do better. Is it Stockholm Syndrome?

The English caste system is pretty awful, and Rochester gives a house party for his similarly wealthy friends which includes one Miss Ingram, to whom he implies he will be married, as she is big and busty and beautiful, as well as rich, unlike tiny plain Jane. Miss Ingram and the other ladies show a lot of disdain towards the help, but particularly towards the governess. People who work for their money are considered pretty low. Anyway, during this house party, a Roma fortune teller comes to Thornfield, and all the ladies go into the room in which she is sequestered to hear their fortunes. All are dissatisfied with said fortunes, and are especially so when the housekeeper informs Jane that she must go hear her fortune as well. Why the governess, she’s not really a person. Jane goes to get her fortune read, the fortune teller ascertains that she has feelings for Rochester, and then it is revealed that the fortune teller is Rochester himself all dressed up, what even is happening here.

After all that, Rochester tells Jane that he’s going to marry Miss Ingram, and talks about her incredible beauty and accomplishments. Just as Jane is beaten down by this revelation, he says just kidding, I totally want to marry you, I just wanted to make you jealous. WHAT THE WHAT DID THAT JUST HAPPEN. People. If someone treats you in this weird way, they are not romantic heroes, they are crazy town gaslighters.

It Gets Worse

They quickly go to get married, because Jane is improbably in love, and Rochester keeps talking about how they will immediately leave the country and start travelling. Like, immediately. Foreshadowing? As soon as the clergyman asks if there is any reason why this marriage shouldn’t go on, someone steps up to say, yes, he has a reason, and the reason is that Rochester already has a wife, who is still living. In fact, that wife is living in his attic.

The long and the short of it is that Rochester, being a second son and so not entitled to his family fortune or Thornfield Hall, in his youth went to Jamaica where a marriage was arranged for him with a very wealthy woman. A very wealthy mixed race woman. After they were married and her fortune secured into Rochester’s hands, he realized that they were an unsuitable match – possibly due to her race, possibly due to mental illness that ran in her family. It seems like Bertha, the wife, doesn’t enjoy his brand of repartee, which Rochester interprets as her also being mentally ill. In any case, Rochester’s father and brother die, leaving him with the family fortune AND Thornfield Hall, to which he repairs with his wife. But, he considers her a lunatic, so he locks her up in the attic with no companion except a gin-addled woman who also does some sewing for the household. As you do.

Oooookayyyy.

Well, if she wasn’t mentally ill to start with, she certainly is after a decade or so of living in the attic. In any case, after this reveal, Jane, who is uninterested in bigamy, leaves Thornfield Hall in the dead of the night and ends up wandering around the moors, cold and starving, until a nice family takes her in.

There’s Nothing That Says Loving Like Marrying Your Cousin

Serendipitously, that nice family ends up being related to her, and for Jane, who thought she had zero relations other than her abusive aunt and cousins, this is a truly great thing. She also inherits some money, so she is now an independent woman, and, sidebar, it was really shitty to be a woman back then. If you did not have means for independence, you would have to hope to be married to someone who could provide for you, or possibly live out a life eking out a living as a governess or doing some kind of housework or service.

Anyway, the family consists of two sisters and a brother, who are Jane’s cousins on her father’s side. The male cousin is a missionary going to India to convert all those heathens, and he wants Jane to go with him as his wife. When she turns him down, saying no, dude, that’s gross, we’re cousins, but I’ll still go to India to help with the conversions, he gets really mad and doesn’t want to talk to her. The men in this book are really terrible and seem to feel that women should just be happy to be married and stop asking questions, which was the reality back then, but god.

Okay, Now It Gets Weird

Jane takes her independent means and, for reasons unknown, goes back to Thornfield Hall. Again, Stockholm Syndrome? It turns out that the place has burned down; Bertha the Attic Wife was responsible for the fire and also is now dead, so Rochester is a free man. Yay? Ugh. Rochester is also now blind and has lost a hand, due to the fire, but Jane is undeterred and we are treated to that famous line “Reader, I married him.”

What Happened To Adele?

WELL MAY YOU ASK. Poor Adele. When Jane first leaves Thornfield, she’s sent to a boarding school, where she is miserable. When Jane returns, she fetches Adele, who is so happy to see her it is heartbreaking. However, Jane is now the wife and caretaker to the decrepit Rochester, and has no time for poor Adele, so she’s sent to ANOTHER school, and Jane has a baby, and I’m not sure how she’s taking care of said baby because Rochester literally demands all her time and energy.

Rochester Is A Perv

When Rochester proposes to Jane, he is forty and she is eighteen, which is one thing, but the fact that Jane is constantly described in terms of her size and appearance as “tiny” and “child-like,” well. It’s really gross. An age difference is one thing, but a forty-year-old man going after a teen who appears much younger is quite another. By the time the dust settles, Jane is maybe twenty and is now saddled for life with a man who a) has a lot of physical needs b) screwed his way around Europe in his youth, fathering god knows how many children WHILE Bertha was living in his attic, and c) HAD A WOMAN LIVING IN HIS ATTIC.

Well. It was worth the reread just to experience the crazy nature of the book, with its racist undertones and really bad relationships. The single best thing about the book is that Jane is pretty upright and refuses to bend her morals: she won’t take jewels or wealth, she won’t marry anyone just for the sake of marrying them. It’s really interesting to reread books at different stages in life – have you done that for any old favourites lately? Tell me all about it. xo

Eighteen Months of Pandemic Life, An Update; Seventy-Eight Weeks In

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This week my younger son turns sixteen – SIXTEEN! – and so, officially, 75% of the Boyhouse will have had two pandemic birthdays. Well, if we include Barkley, 80%, but I don’t as his birthdays have been pretty much the same, pandemic or no. My son had a big celebratory dinner with his favourites, ribs and pie, last night, a cake and his favourite “weeknight” dinner will be served up this week, Friday will see his horde of friends having pizza and cupcakes and hanging out in our backyard, weather permitting, and Saturday will be celebrated with my parents, and will also include cake. It will be a week of celebrations, worthy of our newly minted sixteen-year-old, but it also reminded me that we are just ticking along, living our lives in a pandemic way.

It’s interesting how we have all adapted, in ways we never thought we would, and certainly not for this long. Suzanne (HI SUZANNE) had written about where her family is, at this point in the pandemic and I thought that I should record in my Dear Diary what is happening, pandemic-wise, in the Boyhouse these days. After all, it is exactly eighteen months to the day since our first shutdown. I recognize we are all in the same storm, but different boats, so to speak, and this is just a description of our boat, and how we are floating it and paddling and, I don’t know, putting up sails? I don’t know boats that much.

The General Situation

Our province currently leads the country in total Covid cases. That is not per-capita, that is not population-adjusted, that is TOTAL. We also lag behind the country in total vaccination rates; I think about 70% of the eligible population are vaccinated. Basically all Covid restrictions were dropped at the beginning of July, and cases spiralled out of control. The government announced at the end of July that they were going to end all contact tracing and “just treat Covid like any other virus” and what, why, no one knows. As anyone could foresee, this ended up being a complete disaster and now the hospitals are moving acute-care patients out to make room for Covid patients, the health-care system is near collapse, elective surgeries are cancelled, AGAIN, and we are fully in the fourth wave, the “wave” being more like a tsunami. But at least we had Stampede. Allow me to just take a moment to do some ujjayi breathing.

Just recently the indoor mask mandate was reinstated, and the government “strongly suggested” that unvaccinated individuals limit indoor social gatherings to a maximum of ten people or two cohorts, which, if I know anything about unvaccinated individuals at this point in the pandemic, this “strong suggestion” will go unheeded.

Hit Me With Your Best Shot

My family, including my extended family and my husband’s mother and sister, are all vaccinated, with the exception of the children too young to be, as are my friends and my kids’ friends and their families. I do know a couple of people who are not, but only a couple and they aren’t in my day-to-day life. In any case, at this point I am completely uninterested in sharing physical space with unvaccinated people, indoors or out. If a person is unvaccinated at this point in the pandemic, it is a statement, and I am in extreme disagreement with that statement. I am a person who really does try to look at different perspectives, and to be “curious, not furious,” but I feel that eighteen months in, our decisions and behaviours are pretty much entrenched and unchanging. In any case, according to the school, our area of the city is 85% vaccinated; I do not know how they got that statistic, but I find it calming.

The Kids Are All Right

The kids are so much better off than they were at this time last year, when there was just so much strangeness and uncertainty. Things are still strange and uncertain, but these times are no longer unprecedented. I am not always happy with the Board of Education, but I currently am their biggest fan as they implemented a mask mandate for everyone in schools, and a self-reporting Covid notification process when the provincial government would not. The boys are at a school of about 2300 kids and last year there were Covid cases, but no in-school transmissions, which is a remarkable commentary on the efficacy of masks. Distancing, as we know in a big school, was largely impossible, although it was attempted, and there was increased sanitation across the board.

I feel good about them being in school, with masks and vaccines. Perhaps online school works for some people, but it certainly does not for my kids. They are so happy to be back at school; masks do not faze them much, and I just want them to have a semi-normal experience for the remainder of their time at high school. They eat lunch in a friend’s backyard, who lives very near the school; they hang out with their friends a lot – there is a big group of them, and they travel together like a gang – and they have spent a lot of time together this summer, but it has been almost exclusively outdoors. There have been a few times when one or two friends have been in our house, but it’s a far cry from the days when eight or ten of them would be lounging around in my basement eating waffles and playing video games. Last year they all wore masks outdoors as well, but I don’t think they are doing that anymore.

My So-Called Social Life

In general over the last eighteen months, I have seen friends outdoors only, with very few exceptions. We have been slowly reintroducing people to our home; we’ve hosted a couple of dinners with close friends that we feel comfortable with. We have visited my parents several times, and spent two weeks out-of-province visiting my mother-and-sister-in-law, although for that visit, as we always do, we stayed at our own house and spent a lot of time outdoors. I also visited with both of my brothers, and my beloved sister-in-law, and some of my nieces and nephews, which is notable as I had not seen them for the entire pandemic prior to this summer.

This, I think, was the most important thing to me, to be able to reconnect with friends and family, particularly my parents and mother-in-law, who are not getting any younger. I think we can all agree that being away from loved ones has been one of the hardest things about the pandemic. I am so fortunate in that my friends and family are similar in thinking, that no one is anti-vaccine or anti-mask or anti-science, because I cannot imagine the stress of dealing with that. I mean, it’s bad enough on social media.

Everybody’s Working For The Weekend

My husband is in the office three days a week now, but of all things this causes me the least stress. I know his colleagues are all stringent with health protocols, and anyway, everyone in the office wears a mask at all times, unless they are alone in their own individual offices.

As of this week I am going back to teaching. I will be teaching twice a week at a community centre, which is a very large space with limited class sizes; there will be three metres between mats. I will also wear a mask to teach, which is exactly where we were at this time last year, except now I believe all my students are vaccinated. The community centre sent a message to the members that they are following provincial health guidelines – such as they are – and that anyone unvaccinated should not consider the class to be part of their “cohort.”

I am not currently teaching online classes; I hit my mental limit with it, and also it is very difficult to teach on the days my husband is working from home. I feel okay about this, but also strange, like I’m on a holiday, but without the fun that comes with a holiday.

Masks Are The New Lipstick

As I said, the indoor mask mandate has been re-imposed in our province now, but I never stopped wearing mine in public. There were only a couple of times that I felt awkward about it – one in particular, when I went for a sugaring appointment and I was wearing one but the esthetician was not – but in general, the places that I visit seem to have an overwhelming majority of people also masked, like the grocery stores.

Of all the measures in this pandemic, I think that masks have been the most effective at keeping transmissions low, and I really don’t understand why there is any controversy at all about them, particularly now. As I said, I really do try to understand other people’s point of view, but this is one I cannot. It is truly the simplest, least invasive and most effective measure to take, plus it’s fun to coordinate mask to outfit.

Gym Rats

The guys have been going to our fitness club a couple of times a week. At this point – I’ve kind of lost track – I believe that masks are required at all times except when doing actual physical activity. Knowing the demographics of our club, I would assume that the vast majority of members would be vaccinated. I have only been to the gym once since last November, and when it’s too cold and snowy to run outside I may start going again, but then again, I may not. I managed all last winter without a treadmill – thank god for my Peloton and elliptical trainer – and depending on how things are I may do that again. The guys lift weights primarily, but I run and breathe heavily, which feels more risky.

Pre-pandemic, I really enjoyed spin classes, but I cannot see myself ever going to one again. The thought of all those people in a small room with a FAN GOING just makes me shudder. Also, I find my Peloton to be much more efficient and effective in terms of a cardio workout, and I can choose classes based on the playlist, music being very motivating to me. The sixty-second commute from my bedroom to my bike is a big plus.

It’s All About The Lessons Learned

The last eighteen months have really forced me to reassess my priorities and figure out what is important to me. There were things I never thought I could live without, and things I never thought I could do, but I did and I can. I feel like I could just sail along at this pace indefinitely; as long as the kids are in school and I can still see friends and family in a safe and limited way, I am happy. When it comes down to it, those are the most important things to me, and the pandemic has highlighted that. I miss travelling very much; I always loved going to new places and seeing new things, and I look forward to the day I can travel again, but that’s really the only thing I miss. Ultimately, I feel fortunate that we are all well and healthy and I hope we can stay that way. I hope you can too.

Pandemic Reading

Crying in H Mart. This is a very popular book, but I found it unbearably sad. You may say to yourself of course it’s sad, it’s a memoir of a woman who lost her mother to cancer but it’s more than that. This book addresses her very tumultuous relationship with her mother, who was completely obsessed with appearances and perfection, her father and his gross secret life, and the author’s many regrets. There were a few chapters that had me putting down the book and staring into space for a while. Should you read it? I don’t know. It was well-written, and if you are interested in Korean food and culture, there are some good tidbits, but it left me feeling very low. It was, to me, very unsettling and upsetting.

Not A Happy Family. I don’t read many thrillers, but when I do, I wonder why I don’t because I always enjoy them. This was a good one, it kept me guessing until the big reveal. A wealthy couple is brutally murdered, and their adult children stand to inherit millions…which makes the three of them suspects. It was a fast-paced read with lots of twists and turns.

Walking the Himalayas. My husband and younger son have been both recommending I read this for a while now. I am not generally a “real-life adventure” girl and also not a “books written by men” girl, and so I was pleasantly surprised by this book about a man who walks the length of the Himalayas, starting in Afghanistan and ending in Bhutan. The Himalayas are an area of the world I am very interested in but unsure if I’ll ever be able to visit, so it was enjoyable from that perspective. There’s a great message about it being the journey, not the destination, that is key to happiness, and to be in the moment, which I liked a lot.

Eighteen months, you guys, EIGHTEEN MONTHS. I can hardly believe it. We can do this. We are doing it. Stay safe, stay healthy, be kind to yourselves. xo

It’s A Conspiracy; Seventy-Seven Weeks In

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I find anything to do with the 1918 influenza pandemic fascinating; in part because it ended, and that gives me hope, and in part because I realize that we also will be a footnote in history. This week I read the book Gilead – more on that later – and came across this passage:

I read it over and over again. There’s just so much in here that fascinates me: people wearing masks to church, if they even went, and sitting as far apart from each other as possible, just like today, but I think what is most fascinating is “there was talk that the Germans had caused it with some sort of secret weapon, and I think people wanted to believe that.” Conspiracy theories abounded even in 1918, it seems.

Earlier I had made the mistake of peeking at my Facebook and seeing a local yoga teacher – who I unfriended long ago – posting YouTube videos about Covid on a friend’s wall, and how “natural immunity” is better than being vaccinated, and how she got the Delta variant and is just fine, and that the pandemic itself is a conspiracy created by the wealthy, who have just got wealthier, and you know what, I’m glad they didn’t have YouTube or Facebook in 1918. All I know is if this woman lived a century ago, she’d be accusing the Germans of launching viral weapons of mass destruction. It’s boggling how people can dismiss the top minds of the world for the likes of YouTube, but here we are.

It’s been an eventful week here in the Boyhouse, what with school starting and getting back into routine. I generally dislike school starting before Labour Day, but it’s also kind of nice to have this little break to ease back into things. The boys are happy with their classes and seeing their friends; my younger son is in Phys Ed, which, in Grade 11, is basically “all fun outings all the time.” I don’t think they are actually in the gym itself at all, they are busy kayaking and playing pickleball and bowling and going to golf simulators, and after a year of intermittently taking gym class online and in his bedroom, it feels overwhelmingly exciting. I do not remember gym class as being remotely fun, but then again, I didn’t take Phys Ed when it became optional, in Grade 11. Good lord, no. Maybe it was just as fun back then; maybe that’s the reward for sticking it out for a decade.

In any case, he’s happy, and my older son is happy, albeit with a fairly heavy workload.

The first day of school coincided with us getting – wait for it – our furnace ducts cleaned. One of the guys, in the midst of the cleaning, brought this to me with the words “There was a sheep in your vents!”

I clearly remember my younger son dropping that sheep down the vent while playing farm animals, which goes to show you how infrequently we get our vents cleaned. That sheep has been missing for at least ten years, probably closer to twelve. When did my kids stop playing farm animals? I can’t remember. In any case, the fellow in charge of the duct cleaning gave me some stern words about the state of things, and how the ducts need to be cleaned every two years rather than every sixteen years, and how our furnace filters are too thick for our furnace and don’t allow the most efficient airflow, all of which I am sure I will forget in due time.

In other news, my husband and I went on a beautiful hike to the Big Beehive at Lake Louise, which is where we got engaged twenty-one years ago. Returning to the scene of the crime!

Classic photo of Lake Louise, angled so that there are no crowds visible. Because, hoo boy, there were crowds. This viewpoint, around the Chateau, is always filled with visitors, and it was not easy to keep distance from people, even with our very early start.

Next stop: Mirror Lake. That’s the Big Beehive in the background, and we’re going up!

Lake Agnes, isn’t it beautiful?

Don’t go chasing waterfalls…

View of Lake Louise from the top of the Big Beehive.

View of the glaciers on the way back, looping through the back way.

Almost back! You can see the Chateau in the background. Why is it, when hiking, that the last couple of kilometres feel like they last forever? We saw a bridal party just after this, getting photos done, and it was so lovely.

Pandemic Reading

Good Company. A few weeks ago, Ally (HI ALLY) asked what my favourite genre of book is, and, if you read that post, you will know I had a hard time defining it. Female protagonist, slice-of-life, the ordinary written as extraordinary. Or something like that? I know it when I see it? Well, I will tell you this: this book is exactly what I love in a book. It’s near-perfect to me. Flora discovers her husband’s supposedly long-lost wedding ring, and secrets unravel. A book about love, friendship, marriage, and motherhood. I loved this so much. You may note that the author also wrote The Nest, and I can tell you that I disliked The Nest greatly, and if I had realized the author was the same I probably wouldn’t have picked it up, so I am glad that I am somewhat vacant when I put books on hold.

Gilead. I tried to read Home by the same author years ago, but I could not get into it. I recently found out that it is second in a series, Gilead being first. Perhaps that is why I couldn’t get into it, and I had recalled that friends had raved about it. I took this out from the library sight unseen – and if I’d read the synopsis I wouldn’t have at all. See what I mean about vacantly putting books on hold? Sometimes it works out for me and sometimes it doesn’t. This one DID, although the synopsis sounds super dull – an elderly man writes a letter to his young son, explaining his life and that of his father and grandfather, all three of them preachers. Boring? Strangely enough it wasn’t boring to me. Maybe it’s my churchy background, or my summers spent in small prairie towns. I liked it quite well and found it beautifully written, so I will give Home another try.

Single, Carefree, Mellow. Is Katherine Heiny my new favourite author? Maybe! I’m 2/2 for her books – the other one being Early Morning Riser – and this collection of short stories is an absolute delight. What a witty and smart writer! This is absolutely my jam and I loved it so much. If you love short stories, particularly short stories about women and their lives, you will love this. One of the stories was a bit hard to read, because it dealt with a dog with cancer, and of course I read that on a day that three separate people asked me about Barkley’s extremely large lump, but it too was a beautifully written story.

Happy Labour Day, friends! I hope you get a restful day before the bustle of the week begins. xo

I’m Getting Older, Too; Seventy-Six Weeks In

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On Friday night we had friends over for dinner, friends who we hadn’t seen for over a year, friends who are more like family, who we vacation with and our older sons share a birthday and are only a couple of hours apart, friends who, in the past decade, we would see every few months except for this past year. I baked a cake for my friend’s 50th birthday which is coming up, and having her and the family in our house felt so good, I could cry. I did cry.

I have been feeling very emotional and very, very fortunate. My sons are busy getting ready for school and hanging out with friends for hours and hours; they all meet at the elementary school and play basketball and hang out and go to the 7-11 for Slurpees and hang out some more. All their friends I have known for years, some of them since they were in kindergarten, my older son’s best friend since he was three and they were in preschool together. Their mothers are all my friends and sometimes I think, look at us, look at all of us, with our kids growing up and with our lives all changing. I look at all their friends and I think they are just like they were when they were small, but more so.

Some of my friends have children heading off into the world, flying the nest, going to university or getting apartments or, in one case, getting married. Some of these children I have known their entire lives, I remember holding them as tiny babies and going to baby showers and bearing gifts of Robeez and board books. Some children I knew even before they were born, when their mothers would tell me that they stopped birth control and started “trying.” Those days we all talked about fertility and the cautious excitement of a late period and the elation of the two lines on the pregnancy test and the disappointment when our periods arrived, those days I remember so clearly, and now we all talk about our menopause transitions and how to handle the tidal waves of our periods and our hot flashes.

It’s just life, and it’s such a fortunate one, I am so lucky to be living the one I am, and sometimes I think of all the friends I have made, over the years, friendships based on our children being at the same school and volunteering together. I would recruit my friends to help with the book fair, and then I would in turn be recruited to help with the winter dance or a silent auction or the Stampede breakfast, where there would be tension over flattening pancakes with a spatula to test doneness.

Oh, the things we used to worry about! Will flattening pancakes make them too tough? It didn’t matter anyway, the kids drowned them all in syrup. For the four years I chaired the School Council, these were the three most controversial issues, the issues that caused much tension, debate, and consternation for the council and Parent Association: weed control in the naturalization area, Fun Lunch and the suppliers thereof, and the possibility of introducing Fresh Fruit Friday. These were the biggest issues. You cannot imagine the sleep lost from those issues. You cannot imagine!

I was talking with a friend whose young children go to the same elementary and preschool that my own kids did, and when I mentioned something about the schools, she said I don’t know, I haven’t actually ever been inside them. Covid protocols, which have been in place for the whole time her kids have been at these schools, dictate that parents cannot enter the school property. Imagine! My whole life, when my kids were that age, was defined by being inside the school, I spent hours every week there, I knew every classroom and every teacher, I knew the kids by sight and, due to the book fair, I knew what books they read. I knew how to run the temperamental photocopier and that the school secretary preferred red wine to white and that being on good terms with her was of utmost importance. My whole life and so many of my friendships, women with whom I am good friends to this day, was based on doing things inside the school.

We all moved on from life inside the school to our own lives, and as we’ve gotten older my friends have blossomed and flown in different directions, now that our kids don’t need us to stand at the playground, waiting for them after school. I have seen my friends pursue different careers and interests, and it’s beautiful, but sometimes I miss the camaraderie of the playground, the “circle moms” chatting and waiting for the kids and wondering if we were going to have enough volunteers for the casino or if it was going to snow on Music Monday and would it have to be held inside.

Now the boys start school this week, grades eleven and twelve. Their high school experience has been defined, and will continue to be defined, by Covid. It is defined by masks and sanitizer and uncertainty around whether or not things will be a go. They are currently thrilled that they are allowed lockers this year, after a year of hauling around every single textbook and all their winter gear, not to mention my younger son participating in gym class in his jeans rather than gym clothes, it’s a relief. It’s such a small thing to be thrilled about, but also not.

At some point the pandemic will be behind us. At some point. At some point I won’t be washing masks every day, or scanning the headlines for daily Covid updates, or stepping six feet off the sidewalk to let another person pass by. At some point I will go back to being disappointed by humanity for not returning shopping carts to the carrel, rather than for spreading conspiracy theories and misinformation and, ultimately, deadly disease. At some point, other parents will be allowed inside schools again and will hold book fairs and fundraisers and will be able to meet their children’s teachers in person, rather than on a screen. That won’t be me anymore, as that time has passed, but it might happen for my friend.

It’s hard to imagine, but one day.

Pandemic Reading

One day my reading list will not be prefaced by the word “pandemic,” but that day is not today.

Early Morning Riser. This book was just nothing but good feelings. It is really hard to describe, but it is about family, the family we create in life. It is just the sweetest, most feel-good book I’ve read in a while. If you are a person who really likes thick plots and lots of action, this book is not that. In fact, it’s a little plotless, but it is just wonderful. It takes place in a small town, with a second grade teacher and the town’s handyman, who has slept with pretty much every other woman in town, and his assistant who is developmentally slow. It sounds weird and sort of distasteful, but it truly is a lovely book.

The Guncle. Given my Landslide feelings lately, and the daily horrors of the news on literally every front, I have been seeking out a lot of light and feel-good books. This one did not disappoint! Two children, after the death of their mother and their father going into rehab, go to live with their gay uncle in Palm Springs, known as their “guncle.” My friend Alice (HI ALICE) pointed out that “dead mother, father in rehab” does not sound like the makings of a feel-good book, but it actually really is. This is the author of Lily and the Octopus, which I DO NOT RECOMMEND IF YOU ARE SENSITIVE ABOUT DOGS WITH CANCER. I cannot stress that enough. But The Guncle is just a fun, sparkly read, and, despite the premise, heart-warming.

The Two Lives of Lydia Bird. It took to page 254 for me to get invested in this story – and the book is 365 pages long. I did not love it. However, the last 100 pages were pretty decent; there was some great messaging about idealizing life as it “could have been” and letting go. The ending, you could see it a mile away, but still, it was nice. I would give this book a solid C, maybe a C+.

Wishing you all a happy and safe start to September! Remember, we can sail through those changing ocean tides. xo

Summer’s Almost Gone; Seventy-Five Weeks In

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I don’t think I can adequately describe the relief I felt when I received an email from the Calgary Board of Education, stating that not only would masks be mandatory for students K-12, but all other health protocols would remain in place. With the Delta variant of Covid cases skyrocketing, again, and the general mask mandate dropped in the province, I was somewhat concerned about in-person school. I just want my kids to go to school for the year, and maybe even see my oldest have a graduation ceremony, is that too much to wish for. But I was so happy to get the email about masking; masks kept us all so healthy last year – we’ve never had such an illness-free year – and with all of us fully vaccinated, I feel even better.

I was feeling less happy to see that school starts not on September 7, like I thought it did, but September 1, which means this is the last week of summer, I’m not ready. I am just not in the headspace yet, but I’ll get there, and meanwhile, our hot summer weather ended abruptly and now it’s cool and rainy and it feels like fall. The universe is trying to prepare me, is what I’m saying.

August is a month where I always feel a little glum and melancholy and Landslide-y, and the grey, chilly, rainy days are exacerbating those feelings. Well, these days are good for getting things done in the house – when it’s warm and sunny I spend most of my day outdoors, and there were a few things I really did want to get done before school starts (NEXT WEEK OMG) and I get back to teaching yoga and we are all busy with our fall schedules. Like making jam.

My husband reminds me that we have air conditioning, if I want to make jam on a warm day I can, but I never do want to do that. Jam making is for chilly days, I will die on this hill and also we have many months of chilly days, but few warm ones.

So Many Empty Boxes

One of the things I have wanted to accomplish practically since the pandemic hit was to clean out our storage/ furnace room. My husband, god bless him, likes to keep the original boxes of any electronic equipment while said equipment is under warranty, just in case there’s an issue. The problem is that he never gets rid of the boxes after the warranty expires, and therefore we have perfectly good storage shelves that are jammed full of empty boxes. We still had the PS4 box from Christmas 2014, for example, along with boxes for stereo equipment we no longer own.

Summer is coming to an end, the pandemic has been going on for seventy-five weeks, I go back to teaching in two weeks, IT IS TIME TO CLEAN OUT THE FURNACE ROOM. I took out every single box, rearranged everything, and was able to put all the bins full of childhood art and school projects, bicycle gear, and assorted sports things ACTUALLY IN THE STORAGE ROOM instead of behind my son’s drum set. He’s thrilled that he no longer hits his elbow on the bins when he’s practicing.

This is the van full of cardboard my older son and I took to the recycle depot, and doesn’t include the three garbage bags full of packing materials, RIP our earth, that came out of the boxes.

Not one day after The Big Cleanup, my husband – in a typical act of service to make my life easier – had ordered some new windshield wiper blades for my car. As he grabbed his keys for the garage, he said “Don’t throw out these boxes, just in case these blades don’t fit.” Dear reader. I answered him with a look only and, fortunately for our marriage and everyone involved, they DID fit and my husband subsequently recycled the boxes.

No YouTube Videos On How To Break In To Your House

Speaking of the garage, a couple of weeks ago older son went to get out the lawn mower, and couldn’t unlock the garage door. We typically lock the person door with just the knob, rather than the deadbolt, and while the key fit in the knob, it wouldn’t open. Obviously the automatic openers for the big car door were in the cars that were locked in the garage, and the keypad has not worked for years. My husband searched up YouTube videos but to no avail: all videos instructed what to do if you were locked INSIDE a house, rather than outside, because I guess YouTube doesn’t want to advertise how to break into someone’s home.

Anyway, it was either call a locksmith or actually break down the door, and we took the former option. We now have a garage door that locks by deadbolt only, in case such a thing should happen again. Unfortunately, we are all in the muscle memory mode of just twisting and locking the knob, and the number of times I’ve thought oh yeah, I need the key to lock the door over the past couple of weeks is extensive.

Burn Baby Burn

Remember how my son, after his braces removal, wanted to burn all his orthodontic elastics, and, failing that, his masks? This is what happened on the Annual Boys’ Camping Trip:

Pyromaniac dreams do come true, I guess. You are still going to need masks! I admonished him after seeing these photos, but he countered with a) it was just one mask, and b) that mask was unravelling anyway. Was it? Was it really? Well, he does have at least eight other masks, and it’s not hard to get masks now anyway, and what happens on the Annual Boys’ Camping Trip stays on the Annual Boys’ Camping Trip.

I Have Found My People

You all know how I feel about Thoreau and, also, many of the widely celebrated male authors/ fictional characters (Jay Gatsby, I’m looking at you). So I was so excited to discover this podcast:

The Fuckbois of Literature! If you, like me, think that maybe a person can’t claim to be self-sustaining while living intentionally in the woods when his mother is bringing him sandwiches and doing his laundry, then this is the podcast for you.

I’ll Take The Rapists For $500, Alex

On Peloton, people have the option to add a hashtag to their user profile, and those hashtags are used to connect with other people. Sometimes the hashtag has to do with a favourite instructor – I, for example, am part of the #yestoyoucrew and my son is a #denismenace – sometimes it concerns career choices, interests, or life in general, like #teachersofpeloton, #pelotonmoms, #peloforwine, #pelotonsingles.

I was riding the other day and the person on the leaderboard ahead of me had the hashtag #therapistsofpeloton and friends, it took me a really long time to realize that it was therapists of Peloton and not the rapists of Peloton. I spent some time being shocked that a) someone would cop to being a rapist, and b) there was a whole group of rapists, connecting through exercise.

In my defense, it was pretty early in the morning and I hadn’t yet drank my whole pot of coffee.

Outfit of the Week

I’m really glad I posted all those summery outfits, because SUMMER IS OVER and it’s time to pull out my jeans, socks, and long-sleeve shirts. This top dates from 2016, and I bought it in the small town where my parents live. Isn’t it cute? It’s great for this kind of weather as it’s too thin for winter, but great for a typical Calgary summer day!

The whole reason I have started the Outfit of the Week was to appreciate and express gratitude for my wardrobe; I am thinking about taking it off the blog and onto Instagram only, where outfits of the week belong. You all know I love clothes; I love reading fashion blogs and I love seeing Outfit of the Day posts. If you, like me, also enjoy seeing what people are wearing, you can check it out on Instagram. If you’ve hated my OOTW, lucky you! No more scrolling by to get to my weekly reading list.

Pandemic Reading List

The Soulmate Equation. I have read and enjoyed a few books from Christina Lauren, and this one did not disappoint. It’s just a very sweet and fun romance with very loveable characters. The main character is a single mom and freelance statistician (how often does that happen in a romance book, the statisticians are highly underrepresented in fiction) who is matched up with the founder of a DNA-based matchmaking company. Throw in her energetic seven-year-old and her romance-writer best friend, and you have got yourself a feel-good read.

Think Like A Monk. This book was so inspiring! As you know, I love the idea of living a peaceful and purposeful life, and this book deals with the kind of mindsets that work towards such an ideal. From feeding your brain positive material to finding your life’s calling, this book is full of wisdom and inspiration.

I discovered that I have a LOT of internal work to do. I enjoyed this book so much I started listening to the author’s podcast, and the first one I listened to had an interview with an absolutely lovely young woman, who spoke intelligently and with great enthusiasm about overcoming trials in life, the biggest being the death of her mother when she was a teenager. She was witty and smart and spoke about her work to empower young girls and women, and after the podcast I looked up the show notes to see who this remarkable young woman was. The link took me to her Instagram account, and people: if I had seen her Instagram first, I would have never listened to the podcast. I would have completely dismissed her as having nothing to say, and I would have been very wrong. It was a wake-up call that I need to examine my own biases as a person. Well, it’s a journey. We all have work to do.

And on that note, it’s Monday of the LAST WEEK OF SUMMER and although it doesn’t feel summery, I am going to embrace it. I hope you do too. xo

You’ve Got Questions, I’ve Got Answers

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Last week, I asked you to ask me questions, and ask you did! Thank you so much – this was really fun! Here we go!

Books and Reading

Ally asked: My question is: given your druthers, which book genre is your favorite? And why? I will put this question together with one of Suzanne’s, which is What are, in your opinion, the best books of all time?

I’ve been thinking about Ally’s question all week, because I’m not sure if there is a specific name for my favourite genre. For my entire life, I have strongly preferred books that feature a female protagonist, and that follow that protagonist’s life. I like books that delve into the details of people’s lives; I think people are endlessly fascinating, and that everyone has a story. I am also a “Can Lit” girl, and to that end, two of my favourite authors are Margaret Atwood and Alice Munro; I love a good solid short story and I love books about women. I vastly prefer women’s writing over men’s, and I prefer a deep dive into an individual’s life, rather than a grand epic. In terms of genre, it’s almost easier to say what I DON’T like: I don’t like dystopian, fantasy, horror, or sci-fi, and I don’t tend to like mysteries much, although I’ve read a few lately and I do like to keep my mind open. In terms of best books of all time, the ones that I have loved the most are: Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen, The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood, Lives of Girls and Women by Alice Munro, Diary of a Provincial Lady by EM Delafield, and Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley. Any of those would be my “desert island” books, along with this really great meditation book I’ve been reading called Wake Up To The Joy In You, although if I was on a desert island, I am not sure the life advice in it would be necessary. Still, an excellent book about becoming your best self and embracing life.

Anna asked: My questions are when do you read and how do you read so fast!! I’ve always been a fast reader, and I generally block off time to read every day. A few years ago I discovered the “screen time report” on my phone and I was appalled to see how much time I wasted mindlessly scrolling, and so I’ve tried to take that time back to concentrate on books. I generally read a solid hour in the evenings, sometimes more, and then I read in little chunks throughout the day – when I’m having lunch, or if I’m waiting for an appointment, or if I’m stirring pasta sauce. I think it probably all adds up to about two hours a day of reading, sometimes more, sometimes less. This summer, with my yoga teaching on hold, I have been reading more than that.

These Are A Few Of My Least Favourite Things

Suzanne asked: What are some of your top pet peeves? OMG PEOPLE WHO DO NOT RETURN THEIR GROCERY CARTS TO THE CART CARREL THOSE PEOPLE ARE MONSTERS. Grocery carts are, of course, my trigger, but I also include actions that would make someone else’s life easier but are left undone, and that would require only a tiny amount of effort: not holding a door or elevator for someone, not allowing a car to merge into a lane, not gesturing to the mom with a baby and only a few groceries to go first in line. I also hate when a job is 99% done but LEFT UNDONE: as an example, the people I live with are excellent at changing the toilet paper roll or putting another bar of soap in the shower, but then they LEAVE THE EMPTY ROLL AND SOAP BOX ON THE COUNTER INSTEAD OF PUTTING IT IN THE RECYCLE BIN, THAT SAME RECYCLE BIN THEY ALL WALK PAST DOZENS OF TIMES A DAY. The same goes for the juice container that sits, rinsed out and empty, on the kitchen island.

I also hate when the grocery store changes their product layout and I find myself walking down each aisle, looking for my everyday items and wondering why the cereal is now with the aluminum foil, and why the peppermint extract is now with spices and not with baking needs.

Love and Marriage

Ernie asked: I’m wondering how you met your husband and maybe what your first date was, or if you knew right away he was THE ONE? Oh, ho, this is funny. So, I met my husband when he was a grad student and I was a fourth-year honour student preparing to be a grad student, and we were both studying economics. My first thought was “He’s pretty hot to be in economics,” which I still stand by. At the time, I had an on-again-off-again boyfriend, but we became friends and went out frequently for coffee and to movies. This went on for almost TWO YEARS, and I had broken up with my boyfriend and gone out on several dates with other guys during that time, and he dated some girls as well.

At some point, when you’ve been friends with a guy for almost two years, you just figure that nothing is ever going to happen between the two of you, even if there’s all sorts of sexy tension and you find yourself looking into each other’s eyes a lot and finding excuses to sit close to each other and accidentally touch each other on the knee and whatnot. God, I can’t stand it, I said to a girlfriend, It’s just never going to happen and I have to accept it.

Three weeks after that statement, we started dating, and by “dating” I mean basically going out like we always did, but also, um, having sex. Hilariously, the night we started “dating” we were supposed to go see the movie The Full Monty, and I guess I did actually see A Full Monty, but not The Full Monty.

Suzanne asked: What are your secrets to a happy marriage? Lots of Full Monty! Ha! I kid. Well, I’m not totally kidding – I do think intimacy is very important, and during a pandemic with teens at home all day every day things get…challenging to schedule, if you know what I mean, and I think you do. Honestly, I think one of the keys to a harmonious marriage is to really calmly communicate and to think before speaking, which can be challenging when people leave empty toilet paper rolls on the bathroom countertop. I also think it’s really important to accept the person your spouse is – empty toilet paper roll notwithstanding – and to realize that people express their love in different ways. My husband, for example, is a person who carefully and thoroughly researches everything, and makes purchases based on things he thinks will make my life better or easier, and those things always DO make my life better or easier. I, on the other hand, am not great at choosing gifts but I am good at doing things that make our life smooth and harmonious. My husband would never buy me flowers – he’s allergic – but when I mentioned, years ago, I was thinking about getting a dehydrator to make kale chips, he carefully looked into it, read every review, and then the Excalibur ended up on my doorstep one day.

You never really know what goes on in someone else’s marriage, and what makes it tick, but I think that putting yourself in your spouse’s shoes and being empathetic is important, as is not taking each other for granted, which, as we know, is easier said than done. Sometimes I get all up in arms thinking no one is appreciating my efforts, but then I think did I appreciate HIS efforts lately? and when I do, I find that he also does.

Family, Etc

Suz asked: Do you have any siblings? If you don’t have siblings, do you have cousins that are like siblings? I have two brothers, and between them I have a wonderful sister-in-law, eight nieces and nephews, and one great-niece! To paraphrase my friend Trudy (HI TRUDY) I knew I was good, but now I’m GREAT! I also have thirty-one first cousins! So, it’s a large family.

My husband has been watching Ted Lasso, and at the end of the season there’s a line about the family you’re born with, and the family you create along the way. I am so lucky to have friends who are like sisters to me – you girls know who you are!

Food, Etc.

Gigi asked: As for my question – what is your most decadent indulgence – the one that no matter the cost (or calories) it will always be in your home? I always, always have red wine in the house, usually a case worth at least. I always have baking on hand, and chocolate, but those are more for the guys than for me – wine is my indulgence. I hesitate to write this, because it sounds absolutely obnoxious, but in terms of cost, I never skimp in the produce aisle. I like to make dinners the way I like them and while I loosely stick to a grocery budget, when it comes to vegetables I am willing to pay whatever the cost. I have paid $10 for a tiny head of cauliflower, and if peppers are $6.99 a pound, I will still buy ten of them. I know what that sounds like – vegetables are my indulgence – but I guess I’m not willing at this point in my life to go without the things I like.

Suzanne asked: Desert island foods, films, books, music? Do you ever get weirdly obsessed with something? Like, I kept thinking what kind of desert island, would it be like Lord of the Flies or Blue Lagoon? Or Gilligan’s Island? Are these things I would take on a three-hour tour or what? Anyway, weird thoughts notwithstanding, I answered the books piece above, and as for films, I’m going to go with When Harry Met Sally, the single greatest movie of all time. I would take my “Nicole Karaoke” Spotify playlist, and as for foods, my number one favourite, I-could-eat-this-every-day meal is Greek salad with hummus and pita. Also coffee. If there’s no coffee, I would be 100% alone on the desert island due to murder.

Putting The Om in OMG

Suzanne asked: Do you have any life mottos you return to often? Or maybe the best/most useful advice you’ve ever gotten? My favourite motto, and one I try to live by, is “Bloom where you are planted.” Throughout my life, through different stages, jobs, and positions, I try to bloom. Two recent mottos that I have adopted are “Embrace the season” and, from my recent Anne reading, “If you can’t shine like a star, shine like a candlestick.” One of my favourite pieces of advice is from my dear friend Allison (HI ALLISON), for when I’m in a difficult or uncomfortable situation: “There will be a time after this.” It has helped me get through many awkward times.

Anna asked: When you do your AM yoga do you follow a plan or do it on your own? Namaste! I have been a long-time Ashtanga practitioner, which follows a set sequence of asana. Up until the pandemic, I practiced Mysore-style Ashtanga, which is essentially a “practice at your own pace, and a teacher helps you when you need it” kind of practice. It set me up perfectly for a pandemic home practice; after years of practice I just automatically flow through the postures, so it is truly a moving meditation. Until 2019, I practiced into the second series, but after injuring my hip while running I focused on healing and gentleness with myself, and now I mainly practice a modified primary series, omitting six postures which are hard on my hip, with extra planks and backbends thrown in. Some days I only do the standing sequence followed by a long meditation, some days I do a restorative practice, but I always get on my mat, whether it be for five minutes or an hour. It sets me up for my day.

Well, this was very fun! Thanks everyone for your questions, and, blog friends, I encourage you to put the “ask me anything” question out to your readers, it is a fun way to connect. Until next time! xo

Who Moved My…Clothes; Seventy-Four Weeks In

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Every evening I choose a yoga/ workout outfit, complete with hairband and scrunchie, and I set those things in the bathroom; that way, when I wake up early I just slip into my clothes and I’m ready for my yoga practice and workout, without having to disturb anyone. I have been doing this essentially every day since 2008; it’s just part of my day.

I had plans for a big hike with my friends Janet and Susan (HI JANET HI SUSAN) on Tuesday, so Monday night I had packed up my backpack with clothing layers and water bottles, I had set out my hiking boots and poles, I had a lunch in the fridge and my hiking clothes set out on the table, AND I had my yoga clothes in the bathroom, so I could do a nice stretchy practice before a 15 km hike.

Tuesday morning, around 4:15 am, I started the coffee maker and headed to the bathroom to get dressed, and there were no yoga clothes. Confused, I stumbled back out to look at the table where my hiking gear was: no yoga clothes. I looked all over, including pawing through the kids’ laundry baskets – in the dark – and no yoga clothes. I finally tiptoed back into the bedroom, quietly grabbed a couple of pieces, and got dressed.

Have you ever became completely obsessed and crazy about something that is really very small? It doesn’t seem like a big thing, but it was. Usually I am able to focus on my breathing during my practice, but I was completely frazzled. Where were my clothes? I clearly remembered choosing the outfit – grey pants and a striped tank – and my hair accoutrements were in the bathroom, where were my clothes? Did I put them in the fridge? Did I put them in the hall cupboard with the towels? Did I throw them in the garbage? Did I lose my mind? DID SOMEONE IN MY HOUSE STEAL MY CLOTHES AND IF SO, WHY.

I’m generally fairly chill about a lot of things but apparently, losing my clothes in my own small house is not one of them. I cannot even describe the weird agitation I was feeling, or the feeling of complete relief and befuddlement when I went into my son’s room a second time to look through his laundry basket and – since the sun was up by this time – discovered the clothes lying on his floor beside the laundry basket. Long, incredibly boring story short, he had showered, gathered up his clothes along with, unwittingly, mine, and went to bed in the dark, dropping his clothes in his basket and my clothes, somehow, on the floor.

I don’t know either.

I kept thinking about the guy I worked with, twenty years ago, who read Who Moved My Cheese and told me it was the worst and stupidest book he had ever read in his life; on that kind of recommendation I have never read it, but whenever something is misplaced I think of him.

Anyway, the hike was fabulous and I had some really good Girl Time with my friends. Janet and Susan are the kind of women who are uplifting, inspiring, and so much fun to be around that I was just buzzing for the rest of the day. The guys had gone camping and when I got home to my empty house, my neighbour shared some vegetarian Greek food he had picked up at the Greek market, which was the cherry on top of a sundae of a day.

Speaking of Girl Time, I have been thinking a lot about female friendship and the various forms it takes. This was instigated from my reading of the Anne books, and particularly this week’s reading of Anne’s House of Dreams (more below). One of the characters, Leslie, is consumed by jealousy over Anne’s seemingly perfect life – Leslie’s life is just terrible and tragic, and their friendship, such as it is, is very much darkened by her feelings of jealousy and unfairness. It made me think a lot about the cultural narrative we have that we should hate women who have something that we do not. Why is this a thing? From Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful to She thinks she’s ALL THAT to my least-favourite line from my favourite movie, What does she look like? Thin, pretty, big tits…your basic nightmare. I mean, Janet has the most beautiful hair you have ever seen in your life – I’m not kidding, it’s long and thick and wavy, and she literally just washes it and goes, IT IS EFFORTLESSLY BEAUTIFUL. If I could somehow transplant her hair onto my head, I would, but instead I just admire it. But this is the point: although I covet her hair I don’t HATE her, quite the opposite, I love her to death. It’s my goal in life to be happy for people who have things that I never will, not just hair, but anything, and to not let jealousy get in the way of friendship or admiration.

In a horrible twist, Anne and Leslie become very good friends, but only after Anne suffers a terrible tragedy: her very much wanted first baby dies one day after birth. At that point, Leslie can see that we are all human and we all suffer, and, incidentally, things end up turning out really well for her in the end.

It’s a good lesson, really, we are all in this life together; jealousy gets us nowhere. The older I get, and the further away from the hectic intensity of parenting younger children, the more I appreciate and value the women in my life. We all have our wonderful gifts, and, to quote L.M. Montgomery, “If you can’t shine like a star, shine like a candlestick.”

Outfit of the Week

Almost every week this summer, I have thought I’d better post a really summery outfit, who knows how long this weather will last! We have had just the loveliest weather, and NO MOSQUITOES, which is unheard of. UNHEARD OF. Therefore, another summery outfit it is!

Yes, another skort from lulu and yes, another tank top from Old Navy, and I will go to my grave saying that Old Navy has the very best fitting tank tops at the very best prices.

Pandemic Reading

The Anne Series – Part Two. As I mentioned last week, I have been rereading the Anne series and I’m going to just put a “spoiler alert” here for anyone who does not want to know what happened in a book written a century ago.

Anne of Windy Poplars. After I finished Anne of the Island, I thought “Yay, House of Dreams is next!” and excitedly ran downstairs to retrieve it, only to discover that the next book was Anne of Windy Poplars. I HAVE read this book before but it made very little impression on me, the only thing I really remembered from it was sad sack Katherine-with-a-K. The book itself is a strange format, and very different from the preceding books: it is almost exclusively made up of letters from Anne, working as a school principal, to Gilbert, who is in medical school. The strangeness of it can be explained by the fact that it was written in 1936, when Island and House of Dreams were written in 1915 and 1917, respectively. Montgomery had a sad life and was battling depression, and was keeping her family financially afloat with her writing, particularly at this time of life.

Anne’s House of Dreams. I love this book; it is the most interesting of the Anne books. It has some very dark storylines and it also introduces three really great characters: Miss Cornelia, Susan, and Leslie. Miss Cornelia is the ultimate “lift up other women” woman, whose catchphrase “Isn’t that just like a man?” I want to adopt for my own. “I’m not hankering after the vote, believe me. I know what it is to clean up after the men.” What a line! Susan is the devoted housekeeper – “Do not worry about the pantry, Mrs. Doctor, dear. Susan is at the helm,” and Leslie is the afore-mentioned beautiful woman who has the most tragic life: married off at 16 to save her mother from losing her home, to a man who is an alcoholic and has probably impregnated and left a “girl from the harbour,” although this is alluded to very circuitously.

The darkest of the storylines, as I mentioned, is that Anne has a baby, and that baby dies. It’s terribly sad and dark, and as an adult it reads so differently: when she has “dreams” (read: is pregnant) again, a “grim shadow” follows her throughout the pregnancy. Ah, my heart wrenched reading that part. Montgomery had three sons, one of whom was stillborn, which makes the story even sadder.

Anne of Ingleside. This is kind of a strange book. I think it is because this was written in 1939, so far after the original series, and even after Rilla of Ingleside, which chronologically comes after Anne of Ingleside. It deals mostly with Anne’s children and their adventures, but it also has some very adult themes as well, like marital issues and problems with in-laws. Gilbert’s aunt, for example, comes to stay for a week and ends up staying almost a year, wreaking havoc on the household, but Gilbert will not tell her to leave. Finally she leaves on her own volition when Anne throws a surprise birthday party for her – she is appalled that everyone knows her advanced age, WHICH IS 55. Welp. There is also a storyline about Anne thinking Gilbert is falling in love with his old flame, but it’s all a miscommunication. Anne thinks the spark is gone, and laments how they take each other for granted and her own aging looks and exhaustion from looking after many small children and DO WE ALL FEEL SEEN BY A CHILDREN’S BOOK FROM THE 1930S OR IS IT JUST ME. “Well, that was life…always change! You had to let the old go and take the new to your heart…learn to love it and then let it go in turn.” Wise words, Anne. She gets the Landslide.

Invincible Summer. Someone recommended this book – who was it? I liked it – didn’t LOVE it, but liked it a lot. It follows four friends after university graduation through the ups and downs of adult life, going from that starry idealism and invincibility of youth to the times where the shit hits the fan. I found this particularly interesting to read as the characters graduate the same year I finished my undergrad, so all of the events were relevant to my own life. A satisfying read, to be sure.

THANK YOU to everyone who asked me questions last week – the answers are coming up soon! In the meantime, let’s enjoy the rest of the summer, and I hope the sun is shining where you are. If it’s not, shine like a candlestick, my friends. xo