Category Archives: Books

To Sleep, Perchance To Dream: Sleepytime Nourishment

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Is there anything worse than sleep deprivation? I guess there are a lot worse things, but without delving into the Very Bad Things In The World, I would say that sleep deprivation is up there, Steve.

The thing about sleep is that it is so important for overall health: lack of sleep can be tied to a number of medical issues, memory issues, mental health issues, and issues with judgement and motor skills. The other thing about sleep is that knowing all of those effects that can be brought on by poor sleep can actually lead to stress about poor sleep and then poor sleep itself. Who among us hasn’t looked at the clock and panicked, calculating how much sleep we would get if we fell asleep right now, oh, dammit, now it’s a minute less, omg, I am never getting to sleep, I am going to be so exhausted, okay, fall asleep now, now, NOW?

We’ve all been there. When my children were small I was basically a zombie. I do not remember 2004-2007, let’s just put it that way. When my younger son was a colicky newborn, and I had two babies under eighteen months, my friend Tara (HI TARA) said to me Forget drunk drivers, new mothers are the scariest drivers on the roads. She’s not wrong, with all the crying and stress of motherhood, on top of the whole no-sleep thing, new mothers can be a menace behind the wheel at any hour of the day.

Other than external forces like small children and significant work stress, my sleep has always been fairly decent. Perimenopause definitely has caused some issues, although I will say that I have been sleeping so much better lately, and I credit the consumption of branched-chain amino acids for this development. Am I becoming a BCAA Evangelist, as well as a Sleep Evangelist? Kind of? I feel like I’m giving off MLM vibes and my dear readers will start worrying that I’m going to message them in a Hey babe, I wanted to talk to you about this great opportunity…but I swear I’m not getting any kind of kickback from Big Amino Acids. Or any sized amino acid company. Nor am I, needless to say, any kind of medical professional, what works for me may not work for you, etcetera.

Because I think sleep needs to be a priority in my life, I have no compunctions about using what I refer to as Sleep Helpers, such as sleeping pills, nighttime Advil, or melatonin, as necessary. I also have a fairly structured bedtime routine and very strict rules about what happens in my bed: sleep or sex, and that’s it. I don’t read in bed, I don’t have my phone in the bedroom, and I definitely don’t leave my bed if I wake up at night, other than to use the bathroom. If I wake up with a hot flash, I’ll starfish myself on top of the covers and visualize the heat leaving my body in waves, like a cartoon drawing. If I wake up and find I can’t go back to sleep, I will tell myself soothingly that even if I’m not sleeping, my body is at rest, and I will count my inhales and exhales until I lull myself into a bored stupor and fall asleep.

I also start my bedtime routine well in advance of when I actually go to bed, which is generally about 8:30 pm. I have a naturally early wake time – 4:00 am – and so I go to bed early as well. I need about seven and a half hours of sleep to function well, and I get a bit more on the weekend.

What do you do to get ready for bed? If it’s summer, and I’ve been barefoot and covered in sunscreen, I will have a quick shower. I always shower in the morning, but sometimes a second one is necessary. Aside from those summer days, my first step is to put on my jammies. I know that I could just put on something old and comfortable, but I like matching pajama sets, I like them to be pretty, and I like them to be seasonal.

Am I feeling flowery?
Or crabby? I guess it depends on my sleep.

After that, I brush my hair out, wash my face, and apply eye and face cream. I also put on foot cream and then socks on over top, so I don’t leave lotion footprints all over the house. I have enough to do with paw prints, I don’t need to add to the problem. I then floss and brush my teeth, and go downstairs to hang out with my husband. I often read while he watches sports on TV, and sometimes we watch a show together. By 8:30, I can barely keep my eyes open, and so I make my way to where the magic happens.

BOW CHICKA WOW WOW, or zzzzz.

How do we feel about making our beds? I always make mine, including decorative pillows, and not just because it’s a sixty-second way to having a more pulled-together bedroom. I cannot stand getting into an unmade bed at night. I like to slide between clean, neat sheets; it’s better for my dreamtime.

Speaking of which! Friends, I have to tell you about the dream I had a few weeks ago, and YES I KNOW that there are few things less interesting than hearing about other people’s dreams, but bear with me. The dream involved Barkley, who was here with us. He and Rex were just hanging out together; Barkley was be the Cleanup Crew when food dropped on the floor, while Rex lay in a tangle at my feet. Barkley in my dream was the dog that he was for most of his life: not sick, not blind, not deaf, not demented, just fuzzy and friendly, piggy and affectionate. His coat was fluffy and brown, and he did not have the lump that he had in his later years, that prompted my son’s friend to affectionately call him Old Lumpy, and that prompted complete strangers to meanly and rudely comment on his appearance. He was just the Barkley that I knew and loved for fourteen years.

I woke up so happy, remembering him in that way. I often remember how it was at the end, with him unable to go up and down stairs, with me in tears every day when I walked him while strangers asked me what’s wrong with your dog, with him walking underneath the coats hanging up and getting lost. But now I remembered how he was for most of his life, and I was so happy. It wasn’t until later, when I was writing in my one-line-a-day journal, that I realized that it was his birthday. Isn’t that wild? I like to think he was visiting me, and his fluffy little soul was happily bounding around somewhere.

Weekly Reading

The Three Lives of Cate Kay. This is a very buzzy book, and what I liked best about it was the writing style. It reads like watching a biography on TV, with a variety of people from the Cate Kay’s – a pseudonym for a writer of a blockbuster trilogy-turned-movies – life and history. I really enjoyed the different voices and such a fresh writing style, even if I did find myself confused a few times with a bit of a complicated love storyline. I liked the general message that you can’t run from your past, it makes you who you are, and I loved the line “The trick of life, as I see it now, is to make what’s around you beautiful. It’ll grow from there.” What a great line! A very fun, entertaining read.

Sky Daddy. We all know that I have read and enjoyed some really bizarre things, like Bear, the 1976 Governor General Award-winning book about a woman who has a sexual relationship with a bear. Not a big hairy gay man, an actual bear. I have also read books that involve sexual relationships with sentient doors, balloon animals, and Santa Claus, and so when Birchy (HI BIRCHY) mentioned this book about a woman sexually obsessed with planes, I was all in. But what was different about Sky Daddy, the plot of which involves a woman whose greatest hope is that a plane will “marry her” and in a fit of passion, crash so that they will be entwined together for eternity, is that this book is a literary gem. It is honestly one of the best books I have read in a really long time. On a line level, it is absolutely incredible, on a plot level it is absolutely incredible. It is so witty and clever and creative – every single word is chosen perfectly – and I wish I could go back in time so I could read it again for the first time. It’s weird, it’s wonderful, I loved it.

Speaking of exhaustion, I’m back from my road trip! It is a ten-hour drive each way, and by 8pm last night I was pretty much done. We had perfect driving conditions on the way there, but the way back it rained hard for over half of the drive.

On our way we stopped to embrace our anti-TLC and chase waterfalls.

Shortly after that photo was taken, we were on the Icefields Parkway, just past Bow Lake, when an EMS sped by us. Later we found out that there was a rockslide in that area that led to two fatalities, including a yoga student of teacher friends of mine. What a sad tragedy.

It’s going to be a busy week for me, catching up. How are you doing, friends? It feels like an evergreen statement to say the news is bleak but here we are. I hope you are all well and nourishing yourselves in these very despairing times. xo

Then Sings My Soul: Nourishing Through Nature

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It is not yet officially summer, and yet it is summer!

I have this very strange scarcity mindset when it comes to beautiful summer days, the cause of which I can pinpoint exactly: living 95% of my life in Calgary. Listen, when a beautiful day presents itself in Calgary, you had better drop everything and enjoy every second of that beautiful day, because you don’t know when the next one will happen. There is every likelihood that the temperatures will drop, or the wind will pick up, or there will be a violent thunderstorm that will flatten every single plant in your garden and possibly tear the shingles off your roof.

I need to get over this mindset because here, when it’s summer, it’s summer. And I love it, I am spending every moment that I can outside even while reminding myself that there is always tomorrow.

There isn’t always tomorrow for everyone, sadly. We had a perennial die and we replaced it with a clump of happy looking pink annuals, and then realized WHY that perennial died, which had nothing to do with the neighbour’s dog surreptitiously urinating on it. Or, that wasn’t the only reason. The main reason is that the small corner where the plant resided is just out of reach of our irrigation system, and so the poor thing just died of a lack of water. To ensure our little clump of flowers will not follow the same path of demise, we have been keeping my little watering can filled and close by for ease of use.

I got back from my walk the other day and went to give those happy little flowers a drink. I paused, upon seeing what I initially thought was a large piece of bark floating in the watering can. On closer inspection, this turned out to be a drowned bird.

I set down the watering can and backed away, repeating my husband’s name in a stunned manner and with increasing urgency, followed by there’s a, there’s a, there’s a over and over. I would like to be a Strong Invincible Woman in the face of a bird corpse, but alas. The fate of that little bird’s physical being was decided by my husband, and hopefully one of the many coyotes zipping around here had a little snack. Poor birdie. I hope its little soul is flying around happily, maybe inhabiting the body of a hawk or eagle, just for a different experience.

I was talking to my friend Sandi (HI SANDI) recently about insects, and whether or not they possess souls. We both agreed: why not? Why not, indeed? Everyone can agree that animals have souls: anyone who has ever had a pet in their life, or even watched a nature show on television, can see this. If we believe that, why can’t we believe that insects also have souls? Rather, I should say, ALL insects, because some, like butterflies are often considered vehicles for the soul. They are widely viewed as beautiful symbols of spirits flitting around in nature. It follows, then, if butterflies have souls, why wouldn’t all insects?

Opinions about insect souls can really say a lot about a person’s view of the world. It’s like the insect version of Denis Leary’s old bit about wanting to save the animals, but only the cute animals. One might think, okay, butterflies have souls, not spiders or earthworms, but why? Where do we arbitrarily draw the line? It makes more sense if everything does, perhaps spiders especially – have we not all read Charlotte’s Web? Those heroic arachnids spin webs to save us all from pests, and Wilbur from being eaten. Spiders have a job to do, people! Let’s give them some love!

“This sheep can go fuck itself,” I appear to be saying. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say “I will pet this sheep but I will not enjoy it.”

I think every living thing, including plants and trees, including earthworms, yes, even including mosquitoes, have a soul. Possibly the soul of a person who lived a life of great cruelty might be destined to be housed in the body of a mosquito for centuries, who can say? None of us are The Divine, least of all me, and so I’m not here to judge. Maybe slapping that mosquito that lands on our bodies will release the soul to…another mosquito? The universe is full of mysteries.

Well. What started as a post about what I love to do to nourish my soul – working in the garden and enjoying the glory of nature – took quite a turn.

When I started to write down the things I do to nourish my soul, I was heartened to see that every single thing overlapped with the things I do to nourish my body and my brain: gardening, walking, yoga, playing music, reading. The number one thing that feeds my soul, and always has, is being outside.

The garden, of course, brings me so much joy; seeing perennial plants and tree leaves emerge in spring, the planting and then harvesting of vegetables and berries, the beauty of the flowers. Walking, whether it’s through nature-rich paths or on city sidewalks, and yoga are moving meditations for me – and regular, seated meditation is also a daily practice for me that is nourishing to my whole self. The beauty of music, the beauty of a book, the beauty of poetry – all of it is good for my soul. And as a bonus, at this time of year I can relax on my glider chair on the deck with a book and a beverage, and it feels so restorative.

While I was walking last week, a bald eagle soared right over Rex and I, and I just stood there watching him. Maybe one day my Watering Can Bird will inhabit such a glorious creature, or maybe a butterfly. Wherever it ends up, I hope it’s happy.

Weekly Reading

I had a DNF this week; it was More or Less Maddy, by Lisa Genova. I have to accept that I have not enjoyed anything she’s written besides Still Alice. I have to accept that this author is not for me. I made it through the first chapter, and then skipped around to see if there was any sign it would get better. It did not appear to. After all the Coco Mellors recently, I just could NOT deal with another book about drug use, mental health, and suicidal ideation. Moving on to what I did finish:

Heartwood. I enjoyed this very propulsive read about a woman who, after the stress of being a nurse in the pandemic, decides to hike the Appalachian Trail. She goes missing somewhere in Maine, and the search begins. It didn’t go at all like I expected it to, and I liked that! It was a great ending, and the story told from different points of view made for a compelling read. I learned that the idea of the book came from a true incident that ended sadly, which made the book even more interesting to me. Thanks to Lisa (HI LISA) for the recommendation!

Lives of Girls and Women. Yes, I had four library books sitting on my coffee table, but I needed – NEEDED – to reread the book that made me a Munro fan, 31 years ago. The heroine of this coming of age story – Del Jordan – is so resonant and relatable to me and always has been, even though I did not come of age in 1940s rural Ontario. My husband looked at the book and said how many times have you read that? I don’t know, but enough for the book to start falling apart.

The Simple Art of Killing a Woman. This book was intense. Intense and upsetting but very compelling, the story follows a young lawyer who accepts an assignment in an Amazonian border town, to escape her aggressive and potentially violent boyfriend. While there she learns about the epidemic of femicide, which is rampant in Brazil but particularly in this area. Some of it reads like a fever dream, the parts where the lawyer partakes in ritual ayahuasca use. It was a well done but very upsetting book.

Every morning I am up before the sun, and every morning I think of the Mary Oliver poem that wonders why people ask to see God’s identity papers, when seeing the sky break into morning is enough. At this time of year, the mountains across the lake are glowing pink as I roll out my yoga mat, and it is such food for the soul.

Speaking of poetry, look what I got!

My dear friend Maya (HI MAYA) has not one, not two, but THREE poems published in this very moving anthology. I highly recommend it. It is only available on Amazon at the moment, but when the choice comes to shop more ethically OR support my friend, I am going to choose the latter every time.

I am going on a long-in-distance, short-in-length road trip this week, so I will catch up with you on the flip side! I would love it if you told me what you’re doing to fill your cup and nourish your souls. xo

Glorious Food and Joyful Movement: Nourishing the Body

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I have never run a marathon, and it is unlikely in the extreme that I ever will, but in spite of – or maybe because of – this, I was absolutely fascinated by a podcast interview of a Belgian woman who, at age 55, ran a marathon every day in 2024. Every day. And 2024, you may recall, was a leap year, meaning she ran 366 consecutive marathons.

I laughed as the host kept asking multiple questions that can be summed up in a single word: how? And this woman, in her stoic Belgian accent, said that yes, it was difficult. Yes, she had pains and aches and exhaustion, which she would take treatment and painkillers and naps. Yes, she ate a lot of pasta and protein pancakes. Yes, she ran in the rain for the majority of the winter and spring seasons. Then, she casually mentioned that her immune system was compromised from all the running, which led to contracting Covid in August. It took a long time to get over it, she said matter-of-factly, Because of all the running.

I mean, yes? I was completely stunned by this revelation and listened to the host ask multiple questions about that. Oh, I ran more slowly, she said. More like four hours and twenty, or twenty-five minutes. This bout with Covid brought her daily average run time from sub-four hours to 4:05, which made me wonder if she and I were even the same species.

Well, in a way I get it. I do. I am obsessed with keeping my own various streaks on DuoLingo and Peloton, and I am not trying to set a world record, here. I get the idea of pushing through just to accomplish something important. I do. Running a daily marathon while sick with and recovering from a respiratory illness isn’t something I personally would choose to do, but I’m not in her shoes, the shoes that she had to replace twice a month from wear. And yet I can’t help but think her poor body. I can’t help but think that her body was giving her signs that said maybe we should take a break?, signs which would be mostly obscured by her ultimate goal.

I wanted to talk about nourishing our bodies this week, through movement and through what we all think of when we think of the word nourishment, food. Food, glorious food! Interestingly enough, that same podcast several weeks prior discussed the role of nutrition in perimenopausal fatigue, the interviewee was adamant in her belief that women just do not eat enough to support their energy needs.

I found that fascinating. I also find it fascinating, and not in a happy way, that women are all universally scarred from the societal pressures and images of beauty that we are constantly exposed to, from the cradle to the grave. Who among us has not felt, if not downright self-loathing, then at least dissatisfaction with our bodies and appearances? I am sure there are some women out there who have always simply eaten whenever hungry, whatever food they felt like eating, and don’t think for another moment about it, but I have yet to meet one. I have yet to meet a woman who has not at some point assigned moral value to food items, and thought I’m being bad while eating one, or has referred to a treat as a guilty pleasure, as if eating a cupcake was a moral failing and a plate of nachos was on par with an actual sin.

I have yet to meet a woman who has not felt some kind of guilt or shame about her body, and if you are reading this and you think wait, I haven’t, I have always felt great about myself, then I am happy you’re here and happy to know you exist.

It just makes me sad. It makes me sad so many women view movement as some kind of punishment, and food as some kind of virtue signaling. Because we need nourishment! It reminds me of the scene in the book Bridget Jones’ Diary where she talks about calories to her gay best friend, who asks but how many calories do you need to survive? Bridget is completely taken aback, having dissociated actual physical needs from calorie counts.

We need to treat ourselves tenderly and with love, and withholding food and feeling shame or guilt while feeding ourselves is not that.

After many decades of doing complicated food math in my head, of feeling guilt and shame and embarrassment, of refusing and restricting and saying no thank you when I wanted to say yes please, and could you give me a piece with extra frosting, I am done. I’m done with all that, which is a simple statement to make and much more complicated to get there.

I love this rental house for my soul, this body of mine, and I want to give it all the tenderness and nourishment it needs. I want my food to check off at least two, and preferably three, out of the following three boxes: filling, energizing, and joyful. There are a lot of vegetables and fruit in my world, lots of green smoothies and lots of chickpeas and lentils, and there is also cake. There are sometimes chips and guacamole, and homemade crusty bread, still warm, dripping with butter or Boursin. Weekly, there is popcorn, and also wine or cocktails. And always, always there is coffee, because where would I be without that nectar of the gods?

I wouldn’t be in motion, that’s where I would be. How do we feel about movement practices these days? My personal practices have changed a lot over the years, to become more tender and nourishing. I no longer run, but instead walk a marathon distance over the course of a week, with my fuzzy companion. It’s slow, but I get to take in all the views. I haven’t practiced the Ashtanga second series for six years; instead I have focused on the primary series with some modifications.

2014: I don’t do this pose anymore, but this is my yard now!
2025: How do people take action shots while exercising? This is as good as it gets around here.

I get excited every morning to choose a Peloton ride, which I do based almost entirely on the playlist – disco and 80s music are immediately bookmarked – and how much I like the teacher. I will say I am much less excited to do my strength training, and treat it less like a joyful movement and more like a dreary, tedious prescription. I guess the results – non-crumbling bones, more muscle mass, fewer menopause symptoms – are the joyful part of that movement practice.

Food and exercise are two of the most fraught topics around, and they certainly have been for me in the past, but these days I’m very peaceful about them. I want eating and moving to be joyful things, and they are for me; I think that joy is nourishing, and a nourished body helps with the mind and with the soul – the latter of which will be next week’s topic!

Weekly Reading

After last week’s amazing reads, this week was Just Fine.

Cleopatra and Frankenstein. You may remember I recently read Coco Mellors’ book Blue Sisters and disliked it, so you may wonder why I would pick up her debut. The reason is that I think she is a talented writer, and it was the subject – addiction – that put me off of that book, so I wanted to give her debut a try. And as a warning, there is a lot of drug and alcohol use in this book as well (Coco, are you okay?) but it is not as graphic, so it didn’t bother me in the same way. But. You know that feeling when you finish a book and think “wait, what did I just read?” That was this – in a good way, yes, but what did I just read? I will try to describe it: the story follows a very mismatched pair, Cleo and Frank, through their meeting on New Year’s Eve and subsequent marriage. They are not compatible, they have a twenty-year age gap, and they are surrounded by a cast of characters that can best, and most optimistically, described as offbeat. I found myself quite invested in the fate of all of these weird characters, and the book itself is a bit weird, but I liked it. There’s a lot about mental health and trauma, and about healing from both of those things.

Julie Chan Is Dead. This is a very buzzy book, but I’m mixed on it. On one hand, hooray for a Canadian woman author making such a splashy debut! On the other, I think I’m too old to read a satire about influencer culture. I have to admit that it took some doing for me to get past the premise of this book, which is that twin girls are separated at age four when their parents are killed in a car accident; one is left with her mean and stingy aunt, the other is raised by a very wealthy and possibly racist couple. It took me a while to get past that detail. Why wouldn’t the girls be adopted together? If there were family members to care for one, why did they separate them? Why did they have to go no-contact between the girls? This makes no sense. I had to really move past that detail just to get into the book, which is a propulsive read to be sure. It is satire, and as such it’s pretty over-the-top, but it is cleverly done and contains some very sharp observations about influencer culture. It was entertaining, even if I was not the correct demographic to really enjoy this.

Big Girl. I don’t know how this ended up on my holds; I must have seen it recommended somewhere. However, it was a slog for me. A very, very depressing slog of a book about an eight-year-old girl, growing into womanhood, navigating the world in a very large body. It was inadvertently on topic for this week, what with the themes of body issues, weight, self-loathing, and intergenerational body trauma.

I hope you all have a delicious week, filled with lots of joy and yummy things. xo

Brain Nourishment

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For as long as I can recall, my grandma worked on a crossword puzzle every single day. It was probably twenty-five years ago when I commented on this to her, while filling in a few of the clues myself (64 across, seven letters, second letter L, one of the Golden Girls). She told me that she needed to keep her brain sharp in her old age, and the way to do that was by a) reading books, and b) doing crossword puzzles. She was not a neurologist, and neither am I, but she was sharp as a tack, as they say, until the day she died.

Now, we’ve all read Still Alice – to this day the most beautifully terrifying book I have ever read – and so we all know that sometimes there is absolutely nothing to be done about a decline in cognitive function. Sometimes, if it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen. But I do think that my grandma was right, and it seems like researchers have confirmed her use-it-or-lose-it belief. Particularly in the case of menopausal cognitive decline, the “brain fog” and forgetfulness that come with loss of estrogen, effects can be combatted with what is called effortful cognitive activity. This is great news for anyone who has stared into space for five minutes trying to think of the word for when you have mixed feelings about something (ambivalence, that’s the word I’m thinking of).

During the pandemic I was introduced to the concept of Struggle Care, by KC Davis, and one thing that she said that has stayed with me lo these last few years is the idea of caring for yourself tenderly. Tenderly! It’s such a beautiful thing to think of and often, if I find myself straying to the self-scolding side of life, I think Nicole, be tender with yourself.

What does it mean to be tender with yourself? I almost started a joke about the definition of tender according to Webster’s Dictionary, but stopped myself just in time, you’re welcome.

Lately I have been thinking that the best way to be tender is to nourish oneself on multiple levels and in multiple ways. I came up with five categories of nourishment, and there are five Mondays in June, so I am making this into a series! A series about nourishment, in the best, most tender way. This week, if you couldn’t already tell, is all about nourishing our minds.

A small note before we begin is that all of the categories overlap, like a gigantic Venn diagram in which our whole self is the centre, affected by mind, body, soul, sleep, and connection. All of those things affect the others, which is what makes this so interesting to me. As an example, we can’t talk about brain health without discussing how sleep affects it, and researchers have also shown that effortful physical activity, social contact, and dietary habits also affect our cognitive abilities. But for now, I want to talk about the aforementioned effortful cognitive activity.

I love crossword puzzles but almost never do one, mostly because I don’t get a daily paper and the thought of doing one online is unappealing to say the least. This is the same reason I don’t do any of the Wordles or Connections or what have you, although I’m sure I would love them. I don’t need any more things that I want to maintain a daily streak.

What I have had a streak of, for 1190 days, is DuoLingo. I think learning anything new is definitely effortful cognitive activity, and I am currently refreshing my high school French along with learning Spanish and Arabic. The latter of which requires extreme effort on my part, believe you me.

Speaking of streaks, I am now on Day 28 of the 100-Day Challenge! Some days I do not have it in me to play anything other than a piece that I know well, that my fingers can find the keys by themselves with very little brain power from me. Sometimes it amazes me that my old exam pieces, which I would have learned circa 1991, are immediately at my disposal, often without the need for sheet music. But in the spirit of brain nourishment, I have been trying new and more complicated pieces as often as I can; my new songbook arrived on Friday and it has been so fun! I’d be surprisingly good for youuuu.

Writing is good for the brain as well, particularly, for me, fiction writing. But even writing this humble blog gives me brain exercise: thinking of topics, writing, editing, etcetera. Of course, reading is great for our brains, and that brings me to…

Weekly Reading

After a few weeks of pretty meh reading, I had a really great week. Readers who know me well might be surprised to see not one but TWO male authors this week. Typically if I’m reading and enjoying a book written by a man, someone in my family will ask is he gay or British? Or gay AND British? and that generally describes Men Whose Books I Enjoy Reading. I will, however, add another category: craft of writing books, as you will see.

My Twenty-Five Years In Provence. I first read A Year in Provence in the late nineties, and immediately fell in love with that wonderful memoir of food, village life, and the beauty of that region in France. I really enjoyed reading this book of essays which touched on the author’s move to Provence, the writing of the memoir that would be an international hit, and the years following that celebrity. I highly recommend it for fans of Mayle – it’s not as good as the original, but it’s pretty lovely all the same.

On Writing and Failure. My friend Gill, who is in my writing support group (HI GILL), recommended this book and wow, was it a hit for me. This book was exactly what I needed at the exact right time. It’s both encouraging and uplifting, which is weird, because it’s a book about writers and their constant rejections and failures. It describes writing as being trapped in a dusty abandoned hotel, slamming your shoulder against closed doors again and again, until one – unrelatedly to the doors you are slamming your shoulder against – opens. The author describes the relentless rejections of all writers, and says if it was that way for Hemingway, why would it be any different for you? He also points out that even if a writer is not rejected or experiencing failure, their work could be forever misunderstood, as in the case of Animal Farm, which was written in 1943 as an anti-Stalinist piece. Since the world was still onside with Uncle Joe at that time, it didn’t get published until AFTER the war, at which time it was touted as anti-Communist literature, to go with the general feeling of Red Panic. Also, Gulliver’s Travels was meant as incisive satire and ended up being a children’s story. Whoops. (or, as Julie would say, whops. HI JULIE). Anyway, this book is incredibly funny and really relatable on a number of levels, and I recommend it for anyone who wants to get published.

What Are You Going Through. The title alone is something we should think about in any interaction with any other person. Everyone is going through something. When Suzanne (HI SUZANNE) mentioned this book, by the author of The Friend, I knew I had to read it. Every single word in this book is so carefully chosen, so artfully woven together. I love her writing style immensely, and I read this slowly, savouring every sentence. This is a beautiful book about humanity, about how we are all going through something, together yet apart. If you are a person who needs a thick plot and a lot of action, this book will not be for you. But if you love deep characterizations and emotionally moving themes, then you will love it. It’s about aging, life, death, and the end of the world as we know it, which sounds dreary but is incredibly hopeful and gorgeous. It is heartbreakingly sad, but beautiful.

Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage. Speaking of heartbreakingly sad, and also of cognitive decline, the final short story in this very excellent collection is about a woman whose husband puts her in a home for people with dementia. What seems straightforward on the outside is revealed to be a karmic revenge on the man for his many indiscretions; this short story was made into a movie called Away From Her, which I have never seen. It wasn’t this story that made me pick up the collection, though, it was because I had a sudden and desperate craving to reread the story Family Furnishings, and of course ended up rereading the entire book. The title story is a really incredible one about a chance encounter leading to a whole new life, and the story What Is Remembered is probably the best short story ever about an extramarital affair. All the stories have to do with choices and how often we can change the entire trajectories of our lives by choosing a particular path. This might be my favourite of Munro’s collections. It’s so moving and intriguing.

Happy June, friends! We had our first strawberries this week, which were a complete delight. The library parking lot is filled with red roses, and it adds a certain magic to just picking up a book. More magic than books normally give, that is! I hope you have lots of lovely magic in your life right now. Keep nourishing those big beautiful brains, my friends. xo

Ducks, Dialects, Daddy Cool

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I learned something absolutely wild this week, and even though I immediately fact-checked it, I still was in shock and disbelief. I still AM in shock and disbelief.

From an episode of Were You Raised By Wolves – my current and longtime favourite podcast about modern etiquette, which is more fun than it sounds, really – I learned that, in Minnesota, the children’s game Duck, Duck, Goose is not Duck, Duck, Goose. Instead, it is Duck, Duck, GREY DUCK.

I had to turn off the podcast for a moment to stare out the window. It felt like everything I had ever known was in question. Do I, like Oprah, know anything for sure? I just cannot say, I just cannot say.

I instantly texted my favourite Minnesotan, Lisa, to ask her if this was true, if everything I have ever known was a lie? And Lisa, darling Lisa, Lisa who would never lead anyone astray, told me that yes, all is true and more. Not only do Minnesotan children chant Grey Duck before running around the circle, but so do those in North Dakota.

The world, it is a wild and wonderful place. (HI LISA).

Isn’t it wild, isn’t it WILD how things differ between regions? Let’s take language and dialect, for example. It is a common perception that Canadians pronounce about like aboot, and yet I have never in my fifty years met a single person who sounds like that, and I have met people from all over the country. Accents and dialects do differ across our great country, of course. I can tell a prairie accent from a Maritime one, I can pinpoint if a person is from Newfoundland or Quebec; I live in BC and I have friends all over Ontario, and yet never once have I heard the word aboot. Eh, I hear and say often, but aboot? Never.

Calgarians can easily identify non-Calgarians, simply from how the city is pronounced: it’s Cal-GREE, not Cal-GARY, and although I no longer live there, I will offer a gentle correction. That is the only thing I will correct, though, because so many words are pronounced differently based on regional dialect, and there is no such thing as “correct” or “incorrect” when it comes to that. When it comes to mischievous, coyote, groceries, mascara, and tomato I personally say mis-chee-vious, kai-oh-tee, grow-sher-ees, mah-scare-ah, toe-may-toe. I also pronounce tour with two syllables, too-er, rather than “ture” or “tore,” but I pronounce tournament as ture-nament. I contain multitudes.

It’s funny that language and dialect are so interesting to me, yet so dull to write about. I’m boring myself. Let’s move on.

The other day I heard the song Daddy Cool twice during a single workout: once on my own playlist while I was on the elliptical, and then once during a Peloton ride. God, I love Boney M and I love that song. It reminded me of a funny, albeit embarrassing story circa 1995. My friend Alice (HI ALICE, if you’re reading this) was engaged, and had confided to the Econ Girls, of which I was one, that she hated the word fiance. Our friend Tony, not an Econ Girl per se, but as he was studying economics we didn’t exclude him based on his sex, suggested that we refer to her fiance as Big Daddy Cool, and that stuck.

It stuck a little too well. I was at her bridal shower, and one of the games involved questions about the couple, including the correct spelling of the groom’s name. It was at that moment that I realized that not only did I not know the correct spelling of the groom’s name, I did not know his name at all. I had never called him anything at all except Big Daddy Cool, or, sometimes, Big Daddy. I was seated right next to his mother, and if there’s anything worse than being at a bridal shower and not knowing the groom’s name after meeting him dozens of times, well. There’s actually a lot of things that are worse, but still, it wasn’t my best moment. It could have landed me on a segment from Were You Raised By Wolves.

Weekly Reading

The Spoon Stealer. This book concerns a peppy old lady looking back on her life, which is divided between Nova Scotia and England. She has a talking dog and a habit of stealing spoons wherever she goes, after her brother tells her that a spoonful of kindness is all it takes to make a difference. It’s a very sweet concept and there are a lot of heartwarming messages in this book, but the writing style just wasn’t for me and I found it very difficult to be engaged with the story. In fact, I kept thinking when is this going to end, and then at the actual end, I discovered that the story was based on the author’s family, which made me feel terrible for mentally disparaging it.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. This has been on my TBR for a long time, but I had forgotten about it until Lisa and Laura (HI LISA, HI LAURA) mentioned it to me recently, so I bumped it up. I have a lot of thoughts, buckle up. This is a memoir by a very acclaimed author of her family’s move from Tucson to a piece of land in Appalachia; the move was precipitated by their desire to eat entirely locally which the author claims is impossible in the arid land of Arizona. They were motivated to reduce their carbon footprint via trucked-in or flown-in food, and I do think this is a very admirable thing to do. Each family member was able to choose one exception to this rule, and her husband chose coffee, which was extremely relatable to me. They do accomplish this locavore-style of eating, both through community purchases and their own garden and animals. I will say I skimmed over quickly the parts in the book where they discuss slaughtering their own meat versus factory farmed meat. I already know about this, I agree raising one’s own meat is a sustainable way to eat meat if one does, and also I do not want to read about it. The book is peppered with recipes – Laura had mentioned one for zucchini chocolate chip cookies, you can bet I’ll be trying that – and that is quite delightful. However, I found the book as a whole to be a bit dated – it came out nearly 20 years ago, and even the updated epilogue from 2017 was a moment in time – and also reeking of privilege and judgement. I was in my early thirties – around when this first came out – when I read The Good Food Revolution; before reading that book I had absolutely no idea what a food desert was. I had never heard of it. I had never heard of children unaware that carrots and potatoes grow in the ground, that apples are from trees, etcetera. I had never, not once, realized that there were entire communities of people without access to a grocery store or to fresh fruits and vegetables. That book really changed my perspectives and cultivated a lot of empathy in me for people who are just trying to feed their families in any way that they could, and after reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, I felt that the author was a privileged white woman whose answer to climate change was to a) grow a garden, or b) go to the farmer’s market. And I love both of those things but it is an incredible privilege to do so. Gardening is a lot of work and takes a lot of time. Going to the farmer’s market requires access to one, as well as money, and I’m not sure in this day and age if that is always possible. We don’t all have a piece of land in Appalachia that we can ditch our life for, even if we could all just leave our jobs. Another thing that stuck in my craw a bit is that the author and husband takes a trip to Italy, and while I loved reading about their local eating in places I had so recently enjoyed, I also wondered how they justified the jet fuel. I suppose one doesn’t preclude the other, but it was a detail that bothered me. The last thing I’ll say is that the author speaks very lovingly and with great empathy for the tobacco farmers of her youth, who built the communities surrounding her. I do think it’s a really hard thing, seeing an industry that employed everyone you know disappear, but I wondered what her take on other reviled industries – let’s say energy, for example – would be. I wondered if she would have the same level of kindness for people who were also just putting food on their tables via an industry that is generally not looked on with love. Laura and I spent some time discussing the author’s more recent book – which I haven’t read and I WILL NOT – Demon Copperhead, which is about the opioid crisis in her very community. Was the disappearance of the tobacco industry a precursor to that? Maybe. Anyway, lots to think about, the tl;dr is that I loved the descriptions of gardens and seasonal recipes, and I hated the privilege and judgement emanating from this. The food industry as a whole, and the way we approach eating and nutrition are extremely complex and often terribly problematic, and this book does shine a light on those issues.

Whew! After all that, I am going to give you an update on my own garden! Because I am nothing if not a multicoloured tapestry of a person. I have been using garden spinach in my smoothies all week, there are teeny tiny green tomatoes on two of my plants, and the iris garden, friends, the iris garden is bringing me so much happiness. Every morning there is something new! We have so many different colours – purples and burgundies, white and yellow, peach and variegated – and I love them all.

You have no idea how difficult it is for me not to post a photo of every single iris in the garden, thus making this ridiculously long post even longer. I blame Barbara Kingsolver! No, I only have myself to blame. Have a beautiful, flower-filled week, my friends. xo

Homegrown Salad Season Begins!

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For absolutely no discernable reason, for five days last week I had Slide by the Goo Goo Dolls intermittently stuck in my head. How this happened, I have no idea. I hadn’t heard it recently. I wasn’t thinking about anything that could trigger such a thing. I had not been on any slides and I hadn’t watched any slideshows and I hadn’t thought I’ll just let that slide. The source remains a mystery. Then on Friday, after five days of singing I wanna wake up where you are, I took a Peloton ride and near the end was the song Slide, the familiar tune coordinating with my already-there earworm.

The universe works in strange ways.

My own little universe has been very green lately as I have been sliding into homegrown salad season. We’ve had quite a bit of rain over the past month or so, and temperatures have been in the mid-to-high teens, which is ideal growing weather for green leafy vegetables. I had my first harvest of kale and arugula last week, which was celebrated by making a giant salad for dinner.

I harvested on Wednesday, and by late in the day Thursday I could barely see where I cut from. The greens are growing before my very eyes! A key lesson I took from last year is to stagger the plantings so that I’m not completely overwhelmed, and even so, even so I currently have an astonishing amount of spinach, kale, and arugula. Well, I like smoothies and I like salads, and I really don’t mind this problem at all.

Another key lesson from last year was to only plant one zucchini. I confess that I did plant more than one zucchini seed, and until last week I had two pretty healthy looking, sizable plants. My husband, upon learning this, grabbed a spade and dug one up. My baby! Murderer! After a short period of mourning for the zucchini that never was, I had to concede that it was for the best. I still, despite best efforts, have nine cups of grated zucchini in the freezer from last year’s bumper crop. I also still have friends, although those relationships may become strained if I tried to force zucchini on them like I did last year. I’m leaving these here, no take backs! I actually said at a girl’s movie afternoon last September. I was only steps away from leaving zucchini on people’s doorsteps before Nicki Nicki Nine Dooring myself out of there.

Maybe that could be a thing, but call it Nicole Nicole Nine Door, where a person answers a door only to find a pile of zucchini.

I’m getting ahead of myself, however, as it will be a few months before The Great Zucchini Season begins. In the meantime, my cilantro is coming up strong, which I am also stagger-planting, as I am the only person who eats it. I harvested a little last week to have on my stir-fry, and it was absolutely delicious.

In other garden news, the perennial garden is popping, the irises are irising, and in general everything is very fresh and green right now.

On one of our walk routes is a tree that is hung with dozens of handmade birdhouses, which is truly delightful. I have yet to see a bird in any of those birdhouses, or even in the vicinity of the tree, but no matter. It’s lovely to look at, even birdless. I don’t know the who, why, or how of it, but I enjoy it.

Weekly Reading

This Motherless Land. As mentioned last week, I reread Mansfield Park in preparation for This Motherless Land, as the plot of the latter is taken from the former, and I highly recommend doing that for a really interesting reading experience. This Motherless Land deals with two cousins, one in Nigeria and one in England, who due to tragic circumstances start living together, before another set of tragic circumstances separate them. It’s a story of finding home and belonging, and it contains a few of the most abhorrent, atrocious characters you ever did read. Fortunately for us readers, it all wraps up in a very neat bow, with a series of satisfying coincidences. Where Mansfield Park explores the British class system of the early 1800s, this book explores straight-up racism, which is pretty breathtaking, and not in a good way. It was a solidly satisfying read; I did not love it, but I liked it well enough, which is a lot coming from a person who has a strong tendency to dislike modern retellings of classic books.

Blue Sisters. What I am about to say is absolutely a Me Problem, not a Book Problem. The thing is, I have a very hard time reading about addiction, particularly hard-core drug addiction and alcoholism. I have a very hard time with the details about benders, physical effects, and the psychological behaviours and impacts. I blame Trainspotting for scarring me, back in the Nineties. Anyway, I know this about myself and yet I picked up this book that is about addiction, and wow, it was not for me. I almost DNFed it several times, but pushed on because I have so many friends who have read and loved it. But it was just too much for me. That said, it is well-written and contains a lot of other interesting themes, particularly about pain and how people cope with it, along with trauma, inter-generational and otherwise. So this book might be perfect for you! But it was just awful for me.

On that kind of downer of a note, I hope you all have a beautiful week ahead of you. Maybe with some homegrown salads? Or flowers? Take care of yourselves, friends. xo

The 100 Day Project Begins

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100 Days of Music

My friend Kari (HI KARI) discussed the 100-Day Project in a recent post, which is exactly what it sounds like: a commitment to 100 days of something. That something could be any kind of creative or meaningful practice, and I knew I was in immediately. But what could I do? I’m not an artist, and although I think about what I’m writing every day, it isn’t beneficial to me to actually write every day. It feels like a cheat to choose yoga or walking in nature, which I do every single day anyway. Then it occurred to me: piano. I play piano most days, but not every day. I always feel like I need a block of time to play, which can be insurmountable some days.

But then I remembered my concept for Yoga Club, in which the only requirement for participants was one posture a day. Why not apply this to the piano? I don’t have to play a concerto every time I sit down; I am committing to at least one song – maybe more! – a day for 100 days. I started on May 5, which will take me to August 13. I got so excited about this that I ordered a new songbook, and in the meantime, I’m working on some old and new favourites.

Do you want to join? You don’t have to be a blogger, you just need to commit to something you’d love to do. My friend Michelle (HI MICHELLE) is doing 100 days of postcards, and I cannot WAIT to see her creations. Wouldn’t it be fun, all of us doing something together, but apart?

The Bears Are Back In Town

I was reading on the deck with Rex at my feet, naturally, when I heard a little rustle from the neighbour’s property. Typically this wouldn’t even register, since there are myriad quail and other birds rustling around in the grasses and shrubs, but Rex suddenly jumped up and started barking frantically. He backed his body into mine and continued barking, as I looked to see what it was. I couldn’t see a thing so I settled back down in my chair, but he continued to be very agitated. At that moment my son opened the door and asked me to bring myself and Rex inside because a mama bear and her cub had just been beside his car.

Eeep!

He had been taking something to his car and wasn’t thirty feet away when he spotted them, and after the bear made eye contact with him, she and her cub disappeared down the bank. I guess we are back in Bear Season. I’m trying to be zen about it: there are no reports of black bears attacking humans, and they would only attack a dog if they felt threatened. Rex has had ample opportunity to prove that he will not go near bears, unlike the deer who he will chase forever. There’s nothing for it but to continue to keep the garbage locked up in the shed, scan the yard before letting Rex out, and deep breathing.

Walking Each Other Home

I had JUST come off a week of coyote encounters, so I didn’t really need the bear excitement. The most dramatic of the encounters occurred by the creek on the walking path, when a very brazen coyote was just walking along the path, with people and dogs everywhere. When I encountered him, Rex and I were 85% of the way through our loop, and there were two options: to keep going and hope that Rex’s size and loud barking would get him to leave the path, or to double back and do almost the entire 5 kilometre loop again. As I stood there, a very nice couple offered to walk with me until we passed the coyote, strength in numbers, etcetera. The coyote did disappear into the greenery as we passed, with Rex giving the warning bark, and I appreciated the couple and their kindness so much. It reminded me of Rumi, and that we are all walking each other home.

Speaking of such, I have been loving Simple Abundance so much; May has been a month focused on the concept of home. I found this quote so interesting:

Was Edith Wharton a Buddhist? Probably not, but it reminded me of the concept of the body being a rental house for the soul. Also, I did not realize that Edith Wharton was an interior and landscape designer! People contain multitudes.

Weekly Reading

Speaking of multitudes, I have a couple of very opposite, yet weirdly similar books this week.

Animal Instinct. I came for the pandemic sex, I stayed for the incredible commentary on motherhood, marriage, and the need for connection. Wow, this book! It was recommended on Catherine Newman’s substack, and it is definitely a Pandemic Sex Book, although I will say that the sex descriptions are much less graphic than what I’ve seen in so-called spicy open door romances. Here’s the synopsis: it’s spring of 2020, and newly divorced Rachel makes a profile on a dating app. She is fresh off of a demeaning and lonely marriage, and she is DTF. No strings! She is also kind of a tech genius and starts to create an AI bot based on all the good characteristics of the people she meets, kind of a perfect person. And she gets a little obsessed with chatting with this perfect, non-existent person. This story has so much to say about the pandemic and how it shaped our relationships with screens and virtual contact. It has so much to say about motherhood, and how a woman can be a good and devoted mother and a sexual being at the same time. It has so much to say about marriage and the division of labour, childcare, and the mental load. It has so much to say about not giving up on love, even after heartbreak, and giving life a second chance. I loved it so much, but it is NOT for everyone (Lisa, I’m looking at you, HI LISA, do not read this). If you are at all triggered by descriptions of early pandemic days, and particularly the thought of other people having a lot of casual sex in spite of public health protocols, this is not the book for you. Personally, I have come to believe that the loneliness epidemic and the long-term effects of isolation on mental health were terribly destructive, but some might find the furtive booty calls upsetting. Also, like I said, this book is not as graphic as many contemporary romances, but it’s still pretty descriptive. In particular, there is an anal sex scene that still has me inadvertently clenching and Kegeling whenever I think about it, including this very moment.

Mansfield Park. Speaking of Lisa, she had mentioned a book called This Motherless Land, which, she said, is a retelling of a Jane Austen novel. I immediately and stridently said that I WOULD NOT READ IT because I LOATHE retellings, but then remembered that I had been currently reading Caroline, and also once upon a time I loved Bridget Jones’ Diary. And also the movie Clueless. And then I looked into This Motherless Land and discovered that it’s a retelling of Mansfield Park, which is a deep cut, it felt like. Given the synopsis it seemed like a fascinating book as well. So in Lisa’s comment section, I came full circle, and put This Motherless Land on hold at the library. This is a long way to tell you that while I waited for it to come in, I pulled out my old copy of Mansfield Park, which I haven’t read since the Great Jane Austen Pandemic Reread in 2021. I think this is a really underrated Austen, with its interesting themes of infidelity and colonialism, of the British class system and the creation of wealth via unethical means, of kind generosity for its own sake and the indolence of inherited wealth. One might think that the two books I read this week have nothing in common, but that’s not true: they both involve social propriety and othering people who choose differently, loneliness and forbidden love. There is also a joke about admirals, with their rears and vices, so really, what else is there to say? Jane, you saucy minx!

Devotions. There is no good segue here, but I have been reading a poem or two prior to my yoga practice, and have once again finished this, the most wonderful collection by my very favourite poet. She brings so much meaning, and finds so much glory in the natural world, and I love her so very much.

We all know that I too find so much glory in the natural world, but I could do with a little less of the large predatory mammal part of the natural world this week. My nerves! There has been a lot of deep breathing and meditating, believe you me, and in the meantime, I’ll be assuaging my feelings on the piano. Do join us for the 100 Day Project! We’re all in it together. xo