Category Archives: Embrace the Season

Bounty and the Bust

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Who Loves You?

I was listening to an interview with Anne Lamott, who is a writer and person that I very much admire. She was talking about the concept of self-care, and how her entire life these days is based on self-care, which felt quite resonant to me. Recently someone asked me what I do with all my time, now that I’m neither teaching yoga nor raising children, and I was quite puzzled. I fill it? It seems like my days are all full and busy and very little of my time feels wasted. But I think the better answer is one like Lamott’s, in that my whole life feels like one giant self-care project at this stage in my journey towards the grave.

Lamott spoke of everything she does as a radical act of love towards herself, stating that if she so much as makes herself a cup of peppermint tea or eats a cookie she thinks Someone is taking care of me and loving me, that “someone” being her own self. I’m going to start thinking this way. Someone loves me so much that they made me this hummus, I’ll think at lunch, eating my own homemade hummus. Someone is taking care of me by making me sit on the deck and read for an hour, I’ll think. After all, one cannot be a writer without being a reader, and so it’s career development as well as self-care.

Is It A Robot?

I have a real aversion to AI and Chat GPT and other things that are destructive to our environment and also to our collective intelligence. I realize – YES I REALIZE – that there are benefits to the medical community and research, sure. But also? It is making us collectively stupider. I am sure you can, for example, develop a travel itinerary using AI, but you know what else you can do? Google. It’s already supremely easy to access information about literally everything in the world, I do not think we need to make our brains lazier, particularly given the environmental damage AI wreaks. Do not even get me started on AI-created pictures or writing.

This aversion did not, however, stop me from listening to a podcast about Chat GPT romances. Did you know this was a thing? I certainly did not. There are a lot of lonely people out there who are embarking on romantic, and even sexual, relations with a chat bot. And if you, like me, were thinking how do you have sex with a chat bot, then you are not thinking outside the box enough. It would be similar to phone sex, let’s put it like that.

So this is a thing now. I listened to an interview with a man who, apparently, has a REAL LIFE GIRLFRIEND but also a chat bot one, and the reason for the latter is that – wait for it – his girlfriend doesn’t understand him. To quote Miss Cornelia, ISN’T THAT JUST LIKE A MAN? This “relationship” started when his actual human girlfriend was uninterested in watching the lunar eclipse with him, and so he now goes to his chat bot girlfriend for all his astronomy conversation-based needs.

If you’re thinking woof, that is fucked up, then you are in the exact same mental space as I was, until I started giving it a bit more thought. It’s not much different from chat rooms of two decades ago, or even those 1-800 numbers to talk to “singles in your area,” but the difference is that there is not a human on the other end of it. Which brings me to my question: which is worse, finding out your spouse is cheating on you with a robot, or finding out your spouse is cheating on you with a random stranger in a chat room? Or paying for phone sex? Or – and I actually think this is the worst of all – having an online affair with someone on social media?

Bounty and Bust

A vastly better use for our planet’s water is for food production, I think we all can agree. Which brings me to a long-overdue garden update!

This was my harvest last weekend, before I started shutting the garden down. It’s a little early for it, but we are going on vacation soon and I’d rather get things done in the beautiful September sunshine than later, when it might not be so lovely. The tomatoes and raspberries are, improbably enough, still going strong. I have enough squash and zucchini (omg, so much zucchini), to last me all year, and I have more onions and jalapenos than I can possibly use, so I have been sharing them with the winery staff.

Not everything has been so bountiful, though. I have six gorgeous bell pepper plants that have, through the summer, been absolutely covered with beautiful, perfect peppers. Despite this, I have harvested only seven peppers in total, because every time one starts to ripen and change colour, I go to inspect it only to find that it has been nibbled on. Worse, sometimes the peppers look amazing and then disintegrate when I pick them up, because water has gotten in through the nibbles and rotted the pepper from the inside out.

The only possible explanation is that it is a squirrel, and indeed, I have seen those little bastards zipping around the garden boxes. We have a tall deer fence, and there isn’t anything else that could be getting in. Squirrels! They have been my gardening nemesis since my Calgary days, when those assholes would merrily dig up all my plants for no good reason or chew all the wires on our outdoor Christmas decorations. One year, squirrels ate the entire hat off of a light-up wire snowman, and another year they dug up and ate all 150 fall bulbs that I had painstakingly planted. As we all know, the Eastern Grey Squirrel is not even native to Calgary, and I will tell you that once Barkley caught one and tried to kill it and I did not feel bad about it. Me! Animal loving me! I was like FUCK THAT SQUIRREL, GO BARKLEY.

Anyway, next year I shall sprinkle cayenne in my pepper beds to keep the (actually native) squirrels out. If that doesn’t work, I give up. I will just buy from the farm market.

The other bust was my fall planting of spinach and kale. I enthusiastically planted seeds in mid-August, like I did last year, and then we had warmer than normal temperatures. The heat stunted the germination process and now, a month later, I have only the smallest scatterings of seedlings. I suppose I could try again now, but as I said we are leaving for vacation soon and it feels like it will be a wasted effort.

Weekly Reading

Not a wasted effort? This week’s reading. One of these things is not like the others!

I Who Have Never Known Men. Rex’s face says it all. I read a dystopian novel and I liked it. I think it was because it is an entirely character-based novel that takes place entirely in the narrator’s head, the narrator who is not only unnamed to us, but unnamed at all. She is known as “the child,” as she was taken as a child to the underground bunker with thirty-nine women. One day a siren goes off and the guards disappear immediately. The women escape to discover they are all alone in the world, whatever world they are in. This book asks such interesting questions: what happens to a person brought up in isolation from the rest of the world, how does a person make sense of the world, what is the nature of hope and when is hope lost?

Bad Summer People. Do you love juicy, gossipy, scandalous stories about rich people behaving badly? Me too! This was so much fun to read; we start with the discovery of a dead body and then the story backtracks from there. There are multiple (read: SO MANY) points of view and characters, and I was here for every single one of them. What a ride! Also, I love the kind of intensity that something like a low-talent tennis tournament can bring about, that’s all I’m saying.

The Identicals. I recently started listening to Elin Hildebrand’s podcast Books, Beach, and Beyond, in which she – given her own star power – interviews absolute literary stars and talks to them about their writing process. Recently she mentioned that her books follow a formula and she does not deviate from this formula, and I have to say, when you’re right, you’re right. There is something SO lovely about reading a book which you KNOW will end happily, and as you read it, you can see those happy things taking shape. This is a book about estranged identical twins living on Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, and they basically trade places for the summer. Capers ensue, everything turns out perfectly, I loved it, the end. A perfectly lovely beach read that I read with the actual beach in view.

Today is the first day of fall! It’s fall, fuckfaces! And so it is the start of Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers, and also – in Canada only! – Decorative Gord Season.

I mean, that will never get old. You’re either ready to reap this freaky-assed harvest or you’re not. Let’s go! xo

Detoxing In Ovaries

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Happy September, everyone! Can you believe it?

We have been having the most gorgeous weather; the days are summery and hot, but the early mornings are cooler and lovely, perfect for walking and for wearing t-shirts. I considered a photo project featuring all seventy-six of my tees, but a) that sounds boring, and b) I would almost certainly lose interest after the second day. You’ll just have to imagine them all.

The weather is also perfect for gardening. Friends, I cannot even describe my tomato situation. I harvested my first tomatoes on June 25, and it has been an avalanche of ruby globes since then. I thought the zucchini situation last year was out of control, but that was before 2025, The Year of the Tomato. For at least a month I have been picking at least a big bowl of cherry tomatoes, plus 7-15 Romas, every single day. I am drowning in tomatoes, I texted my friend Sandi (HI SANDI).

Autocorrect, in its wisdom, changed it to I am detoxing in ovaries.

I am going to victim-blame myself by saying that I wasn’t wearing my glasses, but it just occurred to me this very second that maybe there IS some kind of “detox diet” for “ovary cleansing” that involves a lot of tomatoes. Is there such a thing? I don’t want to check, my algorithm is weird enough as it is.

In any case, one cannot live on tomatoes (or ovaries) alone – OR CAN WE? No, probably we can’t – and so I found myself, as I do every week, at the grocery store.

I love peeking into other shoppers’ carts. I feel like it is a vignette of a life, or at least a hint into that person’s weekend plans, as evidenced by the woman who had six bottles of wine, a sheet cake, and at least ten family-sized bags of potato chips. Madam, I salute you, and can I join?

I almost always get into a semi-involved conversation regarding cart contents with other shoppers, and sometimes those conversations are life-changing. For example, one long exchange in the Covid Era led me to abandon almond milk forever and embrace cashew. Another woman told me gravely, and without substantiating evidence, that one should never purchase Boom Chicka Pop from Superstore, only Costco, and since we were at the former, I felt like this was a stealth information operation. I didn’t even have any in my cart, and so how or why we embarked on that topic, I do not know. Maybe she was a mystic.

Last week a lady was behind me in line and I smiled at her, ready to engage in conversation, at which point she looked away quickly and took out her phone. It was a gentle rebuff, so I turned away, but not without checking out the contents of her cart, which consisted only of three 4L containers of sour cream, a bakery box of 18 chocolate chip cookies, and a leopard-print blouse.

Oh, the variety of things one can purchase at Superstore! I’m sure the contents of my own cart would be semi-interesting to someone as nosy as I am; at the very least, someone ALWAYS comments on the volume of bananas I purchase each week. But I found myself dying of curiosity – what does one do with so much sour cream? That amount can’t possibly be for condiment use only! Or can it? What recipe could require 12 litres of sour cream? Is this for a food truck? I have all the questions and no answers, but I hope the woman enjoyed her cookies and is wearing the leopard-print blouse with aplomb.

Weekly Reading

What a great week of reading I had! Winners all around.

Everything Is Tuberculosis. Everything I ever knew about tuberculosis, I learned from Alice Munro stories, the Bronte sisters, a variety of Victorian novels, and Val Kilmer’s Doc Holliday in Tombstone. I found this book, which dives into the infection that kills 1.25 MILLION people annually – yes, today – incredibly fascinating and also incredibly depressing. The author traces the fascinating history of this incredibly long-standing infection, showing how society’s view of it has changed dramatically. At one point it was considered the INHERITED disease of artists and poets, romantically claiming that as one’s body succumbed to “consumption,” one’s soul and mind expanded. Tuberculosis also influenced fashion and beauty standards, as the wasted, thin bodies of women would be paired with alabaster skin, rosy fevered cheeks, and wide glittering eyes. It reminded me of the “heroin chic” of the 90s. Interestingly, once it was discovered not to be an inherited disease but a contagious bacteria, TB’s PR took a dive, going from the disease of the upper class to that of poverty. And that it is, it is an infection that can be dormant until something like trauma, stress, malnutrition, and general impoverished circumstances hit. To this day it is a pandemic, one that could be prevented and helped but is not, due to general greed and lack of caring about things that are not in our faces. I started reading this on the same day I listened to Trolleyology -the science of ethics – on the Ologies podcast, and I can’t help conflating the two and the ethics around not stopping a preventable pandemic. And listen, caveat emptor: I loved this but I would never recommend this to germaphobes or anyone with any kind of health-related anxiety.

Audition. I loved this absolutely wild, mind-bender of a book, the likes of which I have never read before. This was one of the most original books I have ever experienced. It is made up of two parts with all of the exact same characters, same narrator, same point of view, but completely different narratives. I don’t even know how to describe it except that it is an exquisitely written character study of a woman’s life in two incredibly different realities. It could be interpreted in any number of ways but I think it shows the different paths a life can take, and a choice that can force one of those paths to be true. There’s lots of symbolism with regards to marriage, motherhood, and reproductive choices, and I would put another caveat emptor here: this isn’t a book for someone who wants a firm plot, lots of backstory and answers, and a logical timeline. It IS for someone who loves character books, little clues as to symbolic thoughts, and gorgeous writing.

Maggie; Or A Man and A Woman Walk Into A Bar. This was such a beautiful, delightful book about two non-beautiful, non-delightful topics: divorce and cancer. A woman receives a cancer diagnosis shortly after her husband tells her he is having an affair and is leaving her. She names her tumour Maggie, after the Other Woman. It sounds grim and it is – there are two young children involved, the affair comes out of nowhere, her mother died of the same cancer – but it is also strangely joyful and absolutely gorgeous to read. I loved it.

I hope you are all enjoying your long weekend, friends.

Typically there is not much difference for me with regards to long weekends – every weekend is a long weekend and no weekend is a long weekend – but we have had my older son here to stay for a couple of days while his roommate has houseguests and before classes start up again. My younger son started his new job working in the vineyard, so there has been a lot of excitement around here. September is such a Fresh Start Feeling month, even when there’s no Fresh Start for me personally. Have a beautiful week, everyone! xo

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Memories of My Yoga Students Edition

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For the past few weeks, I have been doing a careful line read of my upcoming novel Inhale Exhale for final submission. It’s a book about a middle-aged yoga teacher who is looking for love, and while reviewing it, this middle-aged former yoga teacher has been reflecting a lot on the hundreds of students I have taught over the years. All of them meant something to me; some of them meant a LOT to me and have impacted me to this day. This month’s Favourite Things is an homage to them.

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Memories of My Yoga Students Edition

Boney M(acPherson)

Every winter – starting in October, because it was Calgary – I would caution my senior ladies about slipping on icy sidewalks. The best way to recover from a fall is to not fall in the first place, I would say as we worked on balance and core strength. But sometimes that is not enough; one of the ladies told me about a friend who fell and broke her hip, but it wasn’t the fall that broke it – her hip spontaneously broke, causing her to fall.

I’ve been concerned about my own bone density for years, and I work hard at improving it through strength training and lots of calcium and Vitamin D. I became curious about the weighted vests I had been seeing all over the internet, and decided to get one of my very own.

I feel RIDICULOUS in it, like I am Sipowicz about to bust into a sketchy-looking apartment without a warrant. With my waist leash, fire hydrant-shaped poop bag carrier, cross-body bag, and workout clothes, I look deranged. But hopefully deranged with strong bones!

I really like the functionality, if not the looks; it has little sandbag-weights that can be added or subtracted, and with all of them the vest is 18 pounds. Is it working? Who knows! I don’t have a home bone density testing machine. But I feel like it can’t hurt.

Entering My Elastic Waistband Era

My senior ladies, such a lovely, fun bunch, also talked a lot about the joy of elastic waistbands, and they were right. Last month I bought a pair of Lululemon Dance Studio Crops, and whoa nelly. They might just be the most comfortable pants ever.

I mean, they LOOK comfortable. It’s not like these are sexy structured pants that surprise everyone by being comfortable. But I am embracing this New Pants Era of mine. In fact, I bought a second pair in black!

Judy, My Guiding Star

I have talked before about Judy, the octogenarian who embodies everything I wanted in life, and everything I wanted to BE in life. I adore her. Once, she visited her sister in Nashville, and brought me back this little set of bracelets, because they reminded her of me. They go perfectly with my new pants!

It’s All About The Literary Merch

I taught Yoga for Stroke Survivors for a few years, and one of my students was the personification of one of those before/ after yoga memes.

I mean, I don’t blame him. This man suffered a debilitating stroke in his forties; he went from being someone with a successful and lucrative career who enjoyed international travel and home improvement projects to having difficulties with things like walking and, um, filtering his language. He was angry. Every Thursday afternoon he would come blustering in to the studio, speaking VERY loudly about those fucking morons at the City, they can’t even get the buses to run on time, and no one cares about the fucking ICE on the sidewalks, he slipped and fell, what the FUCK, and by the way, his goddamn neighbour won’t even shovel HER sidewalks, and she can’t hire anyone because she’s POOR and it’s not HIS fault she’s poor, why should he have to deal with HER problem. It wasn’t something you’d expect in a yoga studio, let’s put it that way. But after yoga? After yoga he was an absolute doll. He would be laughing and joking and speaking kindly to everyone. Really, it made the job very satisfying, if a bit trying at times.

One day he came in with a shirt that read Nolite te bastardes carborundorum, and I asked him about it. Don’t let the bastards get you down! he said to me, and two things popped into my head; first, that saying must have been extremely resonant for him, as he felt pummeled down by the bastards – his stroke, the city, his neighbour, literally everyone in his way – every day. But also it seemed very familiar to me in some way, like I had seen it before but couldn’t place it, and it wasn’t until 2020, when I reread The Handmaid’s Tale in preparation for The Testaments, that I remembered.

A few months ago I saw this tee at Redbubble – I credit the popularity of the TV series which I have not watched and I WILL not, do not come at me – and I thought YES. I thought of my student but I also thought of the political situation we are living through now, particularly in Elbows Up Canada, and I thought I must have this.

On another literary note, I have been meaning to talk about my Most Ardently tee, which I love.

It goes great with the mug my son gave me for my birthday:

I have heard Austen novels criticized as being nothing but fluff, just stories of women seeking husbands, but I think that is an extremely ignorant and narrow view. Her novels are about so much more than that! Yes, there is a lot of marriage talk, but what could be more economically powerful for women throughout time? Women had literally no power at all, no choices, no money, no ability to hold property. Poor Mrs Bennett is universally thought to be a ridiculous figure, but let’s just think about this for a moment: if her husband predeceased her, she’d be homeless. She had five daughters and not one of them would be able to live in their home once their father died. The only thing that could be done is to have at least one of them marry in a financially advantageous way. LITERALLY THERE WAS NOTHING ELSE, NETHERFIELD PARK IS LET AT LAST. The whole inciting incident of Sense and Sensibility is that the women WERE homeless after the death of Mr Dashwood! They had to rely on the kindness of a distant relative who let them live in a cottage at a reduced rent because they couldn’t even take the dishes from their house that they had lived in for twenty years. So DO NOT TELL ME that marriage wasn’t an important economic decision for women, because it WAS. Do NOT disparage Miss Jane Austen, because I will not have it! NOT ON MY WATCH. Also, she is the wittiest writer that ever lived. I will hear no arguments! I will also enjoy my Jane Austen merch!

Woo, I got a little worked up, I have to take a breath here. Let me calm down by looking at this face:

Heads Have Rolled For Less

On the topic of women and economic power and “things that seem fluffy but are far from it,” I am obsessed – obsessed! – with The Gilded Age. It’s by the creator of Downton Abbey, of which I have watched every episode and every (not great) movie, and you can really tell the similarities between the two series. There’s even an American heiress marrying a cash-poor English Duke – shades of Cora! The Gilded Age has it all: high drama, secrets, betrayal, upstairs/ downstairs people, making money, losing wealth, living the American Dream, fabulous older ladies with complicated storylines. It’s all about society and power and oh my god, the costumes. The costumes are SO good, there are so many wild hats, and we are now done Season Three and I’m a bit bereft. I hope this show runs for another ten seasons. IT IS AMAZING, I love it, the writing is SO sharp and tight, and did I mention the costumes?

The stories are still pretty relevant today, honestly.

I love how Julian Fellowes really creates characters for older women with a lot of depth, romance, and wisdom.

Outfit of the Month

First, I would like to stave off any criticism about my clotheshorse ways by giving you an old/ new outfit:

YES THOSE ARE THE NEW BLACK COMFORTABLE PANTS. They are just as comfy as the beige ones, but the lady working at the library told me I “always look so elegant and pulled together” while I was wearing them, so score one for elastic waistbands. Speaking of comfortable, those sandals are Skechers circa 2022, and I don’t know how old the top is, but I bought it at Jacob, which went defunct in 2015.

Isn’t it cute, with the little ruffles? Proof that I’m not just wildly shopping, I like to hold onto pieces for years and years.

Ah, I have such lovely memories of all my students, from the enthusiastic Ashtangis to the devoted Hatha practitioners, from the Seniors and the Stroke Survivors to the chilled-out Restorative students, from the Strength and Tone ladies to the Thursday Morning Foundation class, every single student was special to me and I learned so much from all of them. Happy almost-long-weekend, friends. I hope it’s wonderful. xo

Together Again

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The Boys Are Back In Town

My husband and son have returned from their hiking trip in Scotland! They hiked the West Highland Way, which worked out to be 154 kilometres over eight days, and they enjoyed Edinburgh as well. It was quite the adventure, and it’s great to have them home.

After two weeks of eating out, they were pretty excited for some, as my husband put it, home cooking. For some reason that phrase feels like a weird sexual euphemism, I blame Paul Newman. In any case, both of them requested a Big Fun Salad, and I was only too happy to comply.

Salad Days

They had great timing, as it turned out, because I just cut what was the last of the kale and spinach. I have pulled the plants and will be reseeding in a few weeks, when the bulk of the hot weather has subsided for the year, and hopefully I will have a nice fall harvest.

I guess it will be farm market kale and spinach for me until mid-September, but in the meantime, I am not short of tomatoes or zucchini.

Zen and the Art of Gardening and Piano Playing

These vegetables don’t grow themselves, people. Well, the zucchinis kind of do. But the garden itself takes a lot of work and I spend at least an hour a day tending to it, the perennials, and my flower pots. I always leave my phone in the house and just concentrate on the plants, and it is a very zen practice. There is something so meditative about weeding, which, along with laundry, is one of the most Sisyphean tasks ever. Other Sisyphean garden tasks include picking tomatoes and zucchini, but those tasks at least result in yumminess.

I read The Connection Cure this week – more about that in the Weekly Reading section – and it sparked a lot of thinking about the things we do for our mental and physical health. Gardening is one of them for me, but I don’t know if I would say that I am always in the moment while doing it. More likely, while I weed or deadhead or harvest, my mind is wandering about what the hell am I going to do with all these tomatoes, do I have time to roast them later to freeze, and how long will it take to grate up all these zucchinis, and also what am I going to write about this week, and would anyone be interested in a deep dive on The Duchess, and how sexy was Ralph Fiennes, and I wonder if The English Patient is on Netflix and would it be weird to just fast-forward to all the sexy scenes, and how Lady Chatterley’s Lover was basically soft-core porn, and also they changed the ending, and oh my god, look at that butterfly!

Similar things happen in my brain when I’m walking or cooking or doing anything household-task-related, but almost never while I’m exercising or practicing yoga. The one time I can guarantee that I will 100% be in the moment is when I’m playing piano. I have seen people carry on conversations while playing, but I absolutely cannot. I don’t even think about the next note, I am only ever thinking about the note I am playing the second that I am playing it, which makes it, for me, the most Zen practice of them all. I mean, if I so much as thought of Ralph Fiennes I would lose my place in the music, let alone any idle thoughts about my husband pretending to be a gamekeeper on a large English estate, asking me if I would like coarser treatment.

Freshen Your Drink, Governor?

As I mentioned last week, I have taken the opportunity of alone time to watch several British period dramas, and they have not disappointed. Despite my general dislike of book-to-screen adaptations, I rewatched Sense and Sensibility, which, along with Emma and Pride and Prejudice, cycles in and out of being my Number One Jane Austen Favourite Book. I also watched the aforementioned Lady Chatterley’s Lover, which contains not only full frontal nudity but also such graphic sex scenes that I did wonder how they could possibly be filmed without actual penetration, or at least a massive boner on the part of the gamekeeper. I score pretty much zero on the Kinsey scale, and yet I never want to see full frontal male nudity on the big screen, even when the screen is just my TV. As Elaine Benes said, The female body is a work of art. The male body is utilitarian. It’s for getting around, like a Jeep.

Nudity or not, the movie was completely engrossing, as was The Duchess – so good! – and The Other Boleyn Girl, which, along with a rewatch of the first three episodes of Downton Abbey, completed my British Period Drama Fortnight.

There is a growing movement among streaming services to cater to what is called second-screening, which is the phenomenon of watching TV while being on a phone. Streaming services are creating shows that are meant to be watched while distracted, and so there will be a lot of repeated dialogue and summarization of events.

I put the blame entirely on the glorification of multitasking, which I consider to be an incredibly harmful and focus-fracturing concept. Just like I cannot talk and play piano simultaneously, no one, but no one, can actually put mental energy into two things at the same time. It’s just not possible! Sure, we are all listening to podcasts while folding laundry, but I would submit that folding laundry requires very little mental energy. The idea that we can scroll on our phones while watching a movie and absorb any information at all is ridiculous. Bring back single-tasking! Let’s just focus on doing one thing at a time! Including watching TV!

I’m Your Biggest Fan, This Is Stan

Something that almost always absorbs all my attention is a good book; I love that feeling of just sinking into a delicious state of reading. If you follow me on Instagram you know that I post all of my book reviews over there, and I have mixed feelings about that. On the one hand, I want to be honest in all my reviews, but on the other hand, I don’t want to be mean or negative if I don’t enjoy a book. It’s a tricky balance, but on the flip side, I want everyone to know when I truly love a book, and if you remember from last week, I posted a glowing review about Standard Deviation by one of my favourite authors, Katherine Heiny.

I casually logged into Instagram to see that I had a new follower, and friends, I cannot be calm or casual about this: KATHERINE HEINY HAD FOLLOWED ME. Not only that, but she sent me a direct message saying that she was “flattered to be anyone’s writing goals, but you are very funny already.” OH MY GOD PEOPLE.

I might have passed out for a moment. Katherine Heiny! Sent me a message! I have all of her books on my Favourites Shelf! I am as starstruck as a person could be! Katherine Heiny, who I adore and whose writing is over-the-top incredible!

NO I CANNOT CHILL.

And speaking of books…

Weekly Reading

The Connection Cure. I heard this author interviewed on the Ologies podcast, and I found her so fascinating that I knew I would have to read her book. Social prescriptions are growing around the world, and address environmental factors in wellness; instead of asking “what is the matter with you,”’ the question is “what matters to you.” There is a growing body of empirical evidence that links positive health outcomes with movement, time in nature, artistic endeavours, acts of service, and a feeling of belonging. It is all very common sense, but still it was shocking to me to read about the loneliness epidemic, how it has increased since 2020, and the debilitating impacts it can have on health. An important note is that social prescriptions – finding a community, helping a person discover a feeling of belonging, or joy through art, along with movement practices and time in nature – are to be used in conjunction with modern medicines and therapies. Overall an interesting read.

How To Be Married. Jo Piazza is a pretty buzzy author these days, but this book – part memoir, part non-fiction dive into how marriage is viewed in other countries and cultures – came out in 2017, before the buzz. It’s been a while since I myself was a newlywed – in fact, I don’t really remember what our first year of marriage was like – but I found this to be an entertaining and touching read. The tagline mentions her “really hard” first year of marriage, and my thoughts ran to infidelity, dark secrets, and disagreements about loading the dishwasher, but the reality was much sadder. Four months after she was married, the author learned that she had the genetic mutation for muscular dystrophy, which had left her own father extremely disabled and her mother – his caretaker – to have a nervous breakdown from the stress and resentment that comes from being a caretaker. She also lost her job right after they signed a mortgage on a house in San Francisco, a notoriously expensive city. I found the book very interesting and the peek into other cultures to be fascinating. Apparently I am like a Frenchwoman, I learned, as I would never in a million years use the toilet with the door open. Some things, as the Frenchwomen said, should be private.

The God of Small Things. My friend Maya (HI MAYA) had mentioned this book and I was surprised that I hadn’t already read it, as it was published in 1997. It is a heartbreaking, beautifully written book about a family in Kerlala, a terrible tragedy, and the shocking aftermath. It concerns caste, family ties, and dark secrets, and it is so moving and absolutely compelling. The story jumps timelines which might be confusing to some, but I found I was completely immersed, and so I was able to absorb it in stride.

I’ve wanted to see Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat for thirty years, and on Friday I finally did! We were in the front row, which meant two of my girlfriends ended up receiving leis from one of the cast members – cue getting lei’d jokes – and it was a really great night out. As a child, the story of Joseph was one that was incredibly wild and disturbing to me – parental favouritism, selling one’s sibling to slavery, tricking another sibling into thinking he was going to be imprisoned or killed – but the musical itself is a hoot. I hope your week is filled with delight and music, and doing only one thing at a time. xo

Alone Again, Naturally

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Time, Unspooling

Something I did not calculate in my recent time-tracking project was the amount of time that I spend in conversation with the people I live with, mainly my husband. I realized, as he has been on his Tour de Scotland, that a lot of time is spent talking, which makes many of my tasks longer than when the only thing I hear is the Sound of Silence or, technically, the Sound of Podcasts. The point is that my tasks this past week have all been completely uninterrupted, which, coupled with the fact that my novel is in for final edits, led to a lot of free time. I have filled some of this time with various long-neglected photo projects and with British period dramas. Mostly, though, I am reading and talking a lot to the dog, which are all obviously one-sided conversations, answered only with a wag. Who’s a good boy, who is, you are, you’re so good, you’re so good, ooooh I love you so much, are you a doughnut, yes you are, you’re my doughnut. Etcetera.

I Am Like A Dog

Rex and I have a lot of similarities: we both have big feet, we love walking, we look great in black, and we thrive on a fairly-rigid schedule. Another similarity occurred to me this week: we both can eat the same meals over and over without getting bored.

Sometimes I will come across a quiz that will have the question if you could eat only one thing for the rest of your life, what would it be? I never have trouble answering. For me, I could eat Greek salad with hummus and pita for the rest of my life, and I would never get tired of it. Case in point: I have, at the time of writing, eaten five Greek salads in the past seven days, and I will make more tonight.

Dinner for one.
I have to use up these tomatoes somehow.

I know plenty of people who need a lot of variety in their menus, and who don’t repeat the same meal within a thirty-day stretch. And then there’s me, who has had a green smoothie for breakfast every day for the past decade. Don’t get me wrong, I like many other things! But when it comes to making dinner for just myself, I revert to my favourite dinner, which is quick and simple and has freed up even more time in the day over this past week of Single Girl Living.

My son texted me last week to let me know he’d be popping by to make sure I wasn’t spiralling into insanity, and also to eat dinner. Rarely do I allow input as to what I’m making for dinner, but since I’d been alone for a while, I asked what he’d like to have.

The Colour of Gratitude

Several months ago I wrote a guest post on my friend Elisabeth’s blog (HI ELISABETH) about gratitude. One of the questions was if gratitude was a colour, what colour would it be? I skipped that question. I couldn’t answer it, I couldn’t think in those terms at all – until this past week.

I realized, as I chugged down my coffee just before my yoga practice, that I DID know the answer. For me, it’s the colour of the sky as the sun rises: pink and purple and pale blue. Our house faces west, and at this time of year the sun starts to rise during my yoga practice; as it rises behind me I can see the western sky change and reflect those colours. At a certain point, the mountains on the other side of the lake glow pink, and it never fails to flood me with gratitude.

STOP! BIRCHIE TIME!

Speaking of gratitude and blog friends, Birchie was here visiting me this weekend! I cannot believe she made such a long trip for little old me. (HI BIRCHIE!) We had a great time and got along like nobody’s business, just as I thought we would. We explored the downtown area and shops, we drank margaritas on my deck, we went for a wine tasting, we watched Dirty Dancing and When Harry Met Sally, we talked and talked and talked. Of course, she accompanied Rex and I for our long daily walks.

Weekly Reading

The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus. Canadian debut author alert! I love that this author has had this level of success – a Jenna Book Club pick! And I also really enjoyed that much of this story took place in Edinburgh and a country house in Scotland, because my husband and son are there right this second. So that was delightful. I enjoyed the octopus symbolism. I loved all the friendships and the details of university life in Edinburgh. But the truth is I wanted to like it more than I did. There were so many characters to keep track of, and it was written in third omniscient, which made it hard to connect to or care about any of them. I kept losing the plot, like literally, I kept forgetting the main driver of the plot. When the big reveal happened, I literally had forgotten the point.

Fifty Things That Aren’t My Fault. When I was young I loved reading the comics, or, as my dad called them, the funny pages. My three favourites were For Better or Worse, Garfield, and Cathy. Cathy! Ack! I used to identify with that heart-sweatered heroine a lot, and yes, I realize that sounds like the punchline to a bad joke. In any case, I was excited to read this book of essays by her creator. Now I think “did I hate myself?” Because so many of these essays are written with self-deprecating humour that slides into self-loathing, so many of these essays are about demonizing food and hating our appearance and nagging her daughter. I mean, I guess they could be amusing if you were in the mood for “ha ha, none of my clothes fit, and I just ate a container of ice cream so I hate myself” kind of humour, which I was not, honestly. There are some poignant thoughts about feminism, aging parents, empty nests, and the weird phenomenon of having bigger feet as we age, but most of it was cringe. I actually checked the publication date to see if this was written in the early 2000s, which would explain a lot, but no. It’s from 2019. Did we all hate ourselves in 2019? I don’t think I did.

Standard Deviation. After two mediocre books in a row, I needed a win, and so I went with this gem. I first read it in 2022, and it was one of those “books I read from the library but loved so needed in my collection.” Katherine Heiny is writing goals for me. Her books are kind of plotless, with all sorts of fun characters, and I love them. This is such a delightful and funny read about a couple raising a special-needs child who becomes really, really into origami. There is really nothing else to say about it except that it is a pure joy to read.

During our wine tasting, I discovered my new favourite wine from a very special, VERY local winery, Tantalus, that was just released on Saturday! We were one of the first to taste it. Birchie is leaving me today to continue on with her adventures, and so there will be many more British period dramas and Greek salads in my future! Have a beautiful week, everyone. xo

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Bye-Bye, July Edition

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First of all, thank you SO much for all your kind words with regards to my upcoming novel! I am so excited to share it and never fear, I will be updating everyone, all the time, with regards to all the details once I know them. It was truly fun to write and I hope you all enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

I am just squeezing in under the wire, in terms of Favourite Things. IT’S THE END OF JULY, FRIENDS! I love summer and I have some fun things to talk about this month. Here we go!

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Bye-Bye, July Edition

We Can Do Hard Things, Although Sometimes They Are Not Hard At All

It all started when I casually mentioned that I wanted to get a headscarf for an upcoming trip. My friend Sandi (HI SANDI), who is always thinking of fun things to do, found a silk scarf painting workshop at a local winery. Of course I was in, but I had my doubts as to the final product, my skills in the artistic realm being, shall we say, limited. At the very least, I thought, it will be a fun afternoon with my friend, and so I practiced non-attachment while looking at the variety of colours and designs to choose from. I chose some blues and a heart pattern, all the while thinking that there was no way that my scarf would look anything at all like the example.

No one was more amazed and surprised than I was about the magic that is painting silk scarves. The teacher set us up with a long, shallow trough filled with agar, and showed us how to add the colours and make the patterns. It was so easy even I could do it, and that is saying something.

Once the pattern was ready, the teacher helped us lower a white scarf into the trough, and like magic, the colours transferred to it.

Isn’t that incredible? I’m so thrilled with the results and, frankly, impressed with myself.

It’s going to be perfect for my trip!

Sweaty, But Not Feral

I am not sure who, exactly, is here for perspiration content, but here we are. What better month to discuss it than July? I have talked at length at what a sweaty gal I am whilst working out; whatever sweatiness level you are thinking, quadruple it. After a workout I could literally wring out a puddle of sweat from my clothes; they make a wet thud when they hit the laundry basket, and if I was a person who weighed myself, I would not be surprised to see a significant loss of water weight each morning. Because I am sweaty from my scalp to my ankles, I see absolutely no reason to wear an antiperspirant for exercise, in fact, it seems wrong to me to stifle my underarms. Be free, little sweat glands! Do what nature intended! However, lest you conflate “sweat” with “stink,” let me rush to assure you that I do want to smell good whilst working out, and so I use Routine De-Odorcream.

I’ve talked about Routine before at length, I was into natural deodorant before natural deodorant was cool. I used to buy it in the playground from the founder, Neige, when our kids were in a grade one/two split class together, before she hit it big and had massive success with her products. I love supporting women entrepreneurs, especially when the product is a remarkable one. Routine is a natural deodorant, yes, and I am aware those words probably conjure up a feral hippie image, but it truly works. Listen, if I can smell good while being actually soaked with sweat, you know it’s a good product.

I use Routine every morning before exercise, and I love it, but it has a tendency to show up on clothing, which I don’t love. After my shower I use this new Dove product, which is also a deodorant, rather than an antiperspirant. It is magically invisible and the scent is lovely.

I mean, I’m not giving boardroom presentations or teaching yoga classes, so although I’m a sweaty mess earlier in the day, post-shower I am not. By now I’m sure I’ve given more than enough information about the state of my underarms, so let’s move on.

Living La Dolce Vita, Via Sparkling Drinks

When we were in Italy last fall, my husband and I decided that, after years of work and child rearing and being ships passing in the night, we would set aside a time each week for Cocktail Hour, which is a screen-free, book-free, television-free time for us to reconnect. And to drink cocktails.

Also in Italy, I fell madly in love not only with my husband (again), but also with Aperol spritzes. I could not believe that I went through my entire life without this delicious, refreshing drink in it. I am making up for lost time now, as we regularly have them for Cocktail Hour, on a warm summer day.

And lest you think that it’s all why don’t we get drunk and screw around here, I am also enjoying San Pellegrino sparkling water as a little treat now and then.

Recently Bijoux (HI BIJOUX) mentioned that when her kids were young she would have a mid-day treat of General Foods International Coffee while watching General Hospital, and I cannot stop thinking about it. Such a lovely ritual! We all need a mid-day treat, don’t you think? I decided I wanted to do something similar, and so a few times a week, in the middle of the afternoon, I take a break to read a book, with a flavoured sparkling water in a pretty glass. One might argue that my entire day is a treat, and it kind of is, but it feels really special to have a very intentional pleasure, a book and a pretty drink, mid-day.

Bye Bye Miss Strawberry Pie

Do you want a no-bake dessert recipe that will refresh and delight you? Of course you do! This is my latest iteration of our family favourite, frozen strawberry daiquiri pie. Make a graham cracker crust with about 1 1/4 cups of graham cracker crumbs and 1/4 to 1/3 cup of melted coconut oil (or butter!). Stick that in the freezer, and while it’s setting put 3 cups of thawed frozen strawberries, the cream from a can of coconut milk (chill it for a few hours to separate the cream from the watery liquid), a couple squeezes of lime juice, and maybe 1/3 cup of honey into a food processor and blend until smooth. Add a little more honey if you like it sweeter, and then pour that into the crust, freeze, and voila! Dessert!

I often serve this with homemade Magic Shell, which is created by heating together 1/2 cup chopped chocolate and 1/3 cup coconut oil. I usually squeeze a bit of honey and glug in some vanilla as well. It hardens – magically, like a shell – once it hits the frozen strawberry pie. A perfect dessert and you don’t need to turn on the oven!

Nicole-Coded Merch

I really try to reel in excessive consumption by not buying things I don’t need, but then sometimes I see something and I realize that yes, I do need that thing in my life.

Did I need a coin purse that says Fuck The Patriarchy? Technically no, who needs a coin purse these days? But it’s the perfect size to hold a few lipsticks. Is it weird I have lipsticks in Fuck The Patriarchy merchandise? I LIKE LIPSTICKS AND I CONTAIN MULTITUDES. Anyone having an issue with that can read this shirt:

I saw this on Redbubble and I could not resist. It goes nicely with one of my favourite mugs, and it’s how I feel often these days, particularly when reading the news.

Outfit of the Month

This is my summer uniform: a Lululemon skort and a tank top, generally black. I am of the mindset that when you find something that works, stick with it. I have a number of black tank tops and a number of skorts in a variety of colours and patterns. I very much dislike how I look in shorts and I very much like how I look in skirts, but I don’t want to expose my panties or nether regions to the world, so a skort is where it’s at for me.

I have been enjoying my Alone Time this week – “When the cat’s away, the mouse will play,” I thought as I ate my fourth dinner of Greek salad in a row and turned on another British period drama – but I am over-the-top excited to welcome a houseguest TOMORROW. Some of you may know her, and all who know her love her…it’s Birchie! Updates to come but suffice it to say her visit is definitely going to be one of my Favourite Things. Did you have a beautiful July? Tell me everything. xo

Woes and Wins

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In the past two months, four podcasts that I follow have recorded their final episodes ever. Four! Two of those were the kind of podcasts that I would actively look forward to and would download and listen to as soon as I could, and those two are as different as can be: Dear Prudence, an advice column show that featured some really unhinged questions, and Cookbook Club, which can only be described as the Schweddy Balls SNL sketch, but with cookbooks and food topics. And now they are OVER and I am low-level bereft.

The other two podcasts – Fat Mascara and A Thing or Two – were recent finds for me. Oh yay, these podcasts are so fun, they are exactly what I was looking for, I thought, mere weeks before they announced that they were shutting down their chatty operations. I am sure if I wanted to I could go back and listen to a decade’s worth of a back catalogue, but I don’t want to. I would rather sulk, I guess.

Not quite as distressing but almost, one of my longest-loved podcasts, Forever 35, switched co-hosts a year ago, and I have tried, lord, how I have tried to embrace the new woman with open arms, but friends, I cannot. The whole energy and focus of the podcast has changed in a way that I don’t enjoy, and I find the new host grating. Stop complaining about your dog and spend some time with him is a thing I said out loud, while walking my own dog, to the podcast host who cannot hear me.

While sulking, I listened to a music podcast that talked about – of all things – General Hospital. I have not, in the entirety of my life, watched a single daytime soap episode, much less the longest-running one of all time, but I did know about the supercouple Luke and Laura, thanks to my endless perusing of my grandma’s stack of Star magazines in the eighties (“the paper“). What I did not know, and what was alluded to in the podcast, was the scandalous way they met, and so of course I immediately looked it up, and was startled to discover that they met when Luke RAPED Laura. Their wedding remains to this day the most-watched daytime television episode, with over thirty million viewers, including Princess Diana, and it guest starred Elizabeth Taylor. This celebrated soap opera couple started with a RAPE? It’s true the 70s and 80s were a different time and yet this rape of an 18-year-old woman by a 33-year-old man doesn’t really feel like the start of an epic romance that one might wish for.

As a brief aside, I have previously discussed the Peloton hashtag #therapistsofpeloton, which never fails to amuse me, but the other day I was riding with a person whose leaderboard name was none other than Therapistrides. I went back to search it to see if I had been hallucinating, so early in the morning, and found not only that person but also Therapistdad, which felt infinitely worse. Are these people just totally lacking in SNL Jeopardy awareness? Or are they, like my son suggested, not therapists but actual rapists who have found community through spin bike exercise? And you’re SHAMING them, Mom, he said.

Back to General Hospital: the podcast also mentioned a plotline in which an evil scientist was building a machine which would freeze the world and plunge its inhabitants into an Ice Age, which made me think a) is that evil scientist actually Dr. Doofenschmirtz, and b) where can I find recaps of every plotline on General Hospital? The latter was easy, but overwhelming; a quick search revealed thousands of such websites, Reddits, and blog posts.

I feel judged that DuoLingo thought I needed to know this phrase, although given this unhinged post, it’s not wrong.

In other news, I hit a blip in my 100-Day Project. When I decided I was going to play the piano daily for 100 straight days, I did not have any travel planned; but because our semi-last minute road trip to visit my parents, I missed four days. I gave myself grace for this: obviously pianos are not portable, and I just thought I’d add on the four days at the end. But then! Then two Fridays ago I was busy all day and I simply forgot, and this forgetting made me feel completely derailed. I have, as I see it, three options: a) add another day to the end and just get on with my life, b) start over from Day One, or c) lie down on the Train Tracks of Shame and allow myself to be run over by the Steam Engine of Failure. I am going to go with a), mostly because we have so many travel plans coming up that I am not actually going to be home for 100 consecutive days over the next year and a half.

I am home for the remainder of the summer, however, which is wonderful because it means I can enjoy my garden every single day.

I have been able to harvest a lot of spinach for my smoothies, but I seem to be able to only get one cutting before it starts to bolt, which means I’ve reseeded several times. I think we are entering in the “too hot for greens” season, unfortunately, but on the upside, this is great for my jungle-like tomato plants and for the peppers. Also on the downside:

Not a single chive sprouted! What the what. Well, they can’t all be wins.

Weekly Reading

Woes and wins continue with reading! Well, “woe” might be a bit much for this first read, more like “not a win.”

Deep Cuts. First off I will say that I finished this book on a Sunday night, and when I went to write a review of it for my records, I couldn’t remember how it ended. Less than ten hours had passed and I couldn’t have told you the ending. So. There’s that. This book takes place in the early 2000s and deals with the indie music scene, and when I say “deals with” I mean “we are deep in the details of songwriting, music writing, becoming a music critic, recording, and performing.” DEEP. At its heart is a story of romance and of friendship, of support and betrayal, and of being heard. It got a bit in the weeds for me, although I did like the dissection of songs and lyrics. The author is from Hope, BC, which was very exciting for this BC writer!

Show Don’t Tell. I have enjoyed Sittenfeld’s earlier works, most notably her novel Romantic comedy and her short story collection You Think It, I’ll Say It, and so my expectations for this new collection of short stories were high. I was not disappointed! This exceeded all my hopes; this could not be more Nicole-coded if it tried! Short stories about women’s lives, the ordinary made extraordinary, slice-of-life tales. It was an absolutely perfect book for me, no notes! I loved every word of every story but particularly this line: “Other people have unhappiness inside them, and they want to get rid of it, and it comes out as meanness.” Brilliant.

One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This. This is a very emotionally draining and moving book by a renowned Egyptian-Canadian journalist and author, about Western involvement in the Middle East generally, and in Gaza in particular. It questions the West’s ability to effectively dehumanize and dissociate from frank horrors, but, apart from asking for a ceasefire, offers no answers. And maybe that’s the point. This is an important read to be sure.

A funny thing I’ve noticed, living in Retirementland, that every weekend is a long weekend/ no weekend is a long weekend/ what is a weekend. The same could be said for mid-week holidays, like when Canada Day falls on a Tuesday. It nearly went completely unnoticed by me, which felt unacceptable given the state of things these days. I celebrated by ditching my black wardrobe for red and white:

And although I don’t typically imbibe on a weekday, what better way to mark the holiday than with a local (VERY LOCAL) rose?

Red plus white equals rose; Canada Day Rose should be a thing, and I’m making it so. Elbows up, nolite te bastardes carborundorum, etcetera. I hope you all have a beautiful week, with more wins than woes. xo