November Bits and Bobs

My son was telling me about a throwback party he attended at the university bar; the throwback era, he said was mostly between 2012 and 2014. I was momentarily stunned into silence, and then had him list off a few of the songs that they had played: a lot of Pitbull and the Black-Eyed Peas, […]

Five For Friday: The Small Grievances and Their Associated Upsides Edition

At the end of October I always head to Bath and Body Works to purchase festive hand soaps for Tiny Secret Festive Season, and this year was no exception. I prefer regular liquid soap to the foaming variety for reasons that are mostly hard to articulate, with one exception: foaming soap never seems to pump […]

Conversations With Strangers

Last Wednesday marked the beginning of Tiny Secret Festive Season! If you’re new here, welcome! Everyone is welcome in the Boyhouse. Also, if you’re new, you may be wondering what even is Tiny Secret Festive Season. The short answer is that it is something that I have created to enjoy the Christmas holiday spirit in […]

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Oooh, It’s October Edition

At the risk of sounding like an incredibly demented Little Miss Sunshine, I do not have a Least Favourite Month. I don’t have a Most Favourite Month either; I love April because it’s my birthday, and December because of Christmas, I love July and August because of the heat and summery vibes and I love […]

Gratitude and Grievance

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Yesterday my husband and I took a ten hour road trip to visit my parents. It was a gorgeous drive but I am a tiny bit tired; not, however, as tired as I was Saturday morning when I was woken up several times by a pack of howling coyotes in the vineyard. […]

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Wake Me Up When September…Wait, September Is Ending Edition

What a month September has been; oddly enough, it simultaneously feels like it flew by, and that it was three months long. We packed so much in, and now my already tenuous sense of time is completely warped. Everything already feels like it happened so long ago. Was it only three and a half weeks […]

A New Chapter

I was thinking a lot about the last chapter in A Tree Grows In Brooklyn this week, when Francie goes back and looks at her neighbourhood, wanting to remember it just as it was. This week I was in Calgary again, for forty hours, and it was so interesting to see it from new, non-resident […]