Category Archives: Fleeting Time

Random Semi-Related Things

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I Always Feel Like Somebody’s Watching Me

After a very busy and productive August, the garden is starting to take its annual September Slow Down. Every single day last month, I spent hours in the garden harvesting berries and vegetables, weeding, and deadheading. I was especially proud of myself for my management of what I like to call The Annual Zucchini Situation; I had been picking them when they’ve been of medium size, I’ve been using them up or successfully pawning them off on my very sweet friends, and no one in my house has mutinied due to the zucchini-in-everything Augusts of the past. A few weeks ago I was in the garden, thinking about this in a very smug way, and as we all know, karma does not enjoy smugness as a character trait. I immediately tripped over a massive zucchini that had apparently appeared out of nowhere.

I can only imagine it had been watching me for weeks from its hiding place under a large leaf.

Raspberry Beret

In addition to an actual ocean of tomatoes, I have been enjoying a tidal wave of raspberries. There is no need to figure out what to do with all of them, because as soon as I pick a bowl, it magically disappears. But a few weeks ago I had a bigger than normal raspberry harvest, and I also had an unaccountable gap in my weekly meal plan. I decided to do something I haven’t done in years, since before we moved here in 2023, which was to make breakfast for dinner. I thought I’d use the raspberries, along with my farm market peaches and nectarines, for a fruit salad to go along with my Famed Cinnamon Waffles.

The Landslide’ll Bring You Down

My cinnamon waffles were Famed only in my sons’ circle of friends. During their teen years, the boys had early dismissal on Fridays, and most of the time on those days my house would be suddenly filled with famished teen boys. I always made them cinnamon waffles because it was such a massive recipe, and then I would bask in the glory of being the Mom With The Best Waffles Ever. There is nothing, nothing so satisfying as cooking for teenage boys. No one is so ravenously appreciative.

Filled with nostalgia, I pulled out my waffle maker and went to grab the recipe for Nicole’s Famed Cinnamon Waffles, which were not Nicole’s at all, but merely a recipe in the little booklet that came with the waffle maker. And that is when I discovered that the little waffle maker recipe book was MISSING.

To my surprise, I immediately spiralled into the same kind of sadness that I had experienced back in 2023, when my bookmark collection was forever lost in the moving process. I assumed that the waffle recipe book had followed suit, and all was ashes. I was sad all over again, thinking of all those Friday afternoons when the mudroom was piled with gigantic dirty shoes and the dining room table was sticky with syrup, when Barkley braved the noise of ten teen boys in the house in the hopes of some dropped waffles, when said boys exited the dining room all saying That was AWESOME, Nicole, thank you! Never again would that happen for me, mostly because I don’t live there anymore, I don’t have teenagers, and Barkley is, sadly, long gone. Also because I would be unable to replicate the recipe. I was surprised at my sudden and intense reaction. Just feel your feelings, I said to myself sadly. The lack of the Famed Cinnamon Waffle Recipe felt devastating. Not as devastating as the bookmarks – I didn’t cry myself into a dehydrated state – but sad nonetheless.

Guess Who’s Back? Back Again?

As I wallowed in sadness, I realized that, current fashion trends notwithstanding, we are not in the Nineties anymore. We live in the Age of Information! And not all of it is Mis-or-Disinformation! I bustled over to my trusty laptop and searched up Cuisinart Waffle Maker Recipe Book and lo. There it was, the Famed Cinnamon Waffle recipe. What a time to be alive. I immediately printed it off and filed it in my recipe book, to ward off any future breakfast item-related sadness spirals.

1/8 of the waffle recipe

I Get By With A Little Help From My Friends

The happy ending to the waffle recipe sadness spiral reminded me how wonderful the world is, and not just because we can access any kind of information at any time. It reminded me of how all of you, dear readers, rallied when my bookmarks were lost. I was going through such a massive transition in my life, and the bookmarks felt symbolic in the saddest way. No one, not one person, said they’re just bookmarks, get over yourself. Instead, friends from near and far provided me with bookmarks. My friend Sammi drove over to my house with a selection immediately on hearing the news, I received bookmarks from Washington State to Marco Island, from the US Midwest to California, from Alberta to Saskatchewan to Ontario, from Barcelona and Portugal. My son made me bookmarks featuring Rex, Salvadore the gnome, and Gerbera daisies for Christmas. My sweet friend Gigi (HI GIGI) cross-stitched personalized flowered bookmarks for me. I keep my collection in a tin that my longtime friend Elise (HI ELISE) sent me, and every time I start a new book, I happily choose one and think of what a gift it is to have such people in my life.

I will never forget how supported and loved I felt and still feel. Thank you, friends.

All You Need Is Love

Speaking of fun and exciting things in the mail, I received this from my friend Engie (HI ENGIE).

I literally screamed with delight when I opened it. Gnomes, love, AND math? I’m in heaven. Receiving fun mail reminded me that we are now into September, and it’s not too soon to start thinking about holiday cards. Are you a Holiday Card Person? If so, let’s exchange cards! (EXCHANGE is the key word here). Merely fill out this google form, and I will send you my address. If you are already on my list, no need to fill out the form, unless your address has changed. Now, I think that’s enough randomness – let’s get on to this week’s very mixed reading.

Weekly Reading

I had a DNF this week: Heated Rivalry. You all know I love a closed door romance, and whoa nelly, that was not this. It was way too spicy for me and I DNF’d at about the 12% mark, after the third graphic anal sex scene had me Kegeling like nobody’s business.

Her One Regret. From the author of The Nine Lives of Rose Napolitano – a book about a woman coerced into having a baby – comes this book about the biggest taboo in motherhood; namely, regretting becoming one. It is touted as a mix between a thriller and a manifesto, and indeed, it does get at some uncomfortable truths about early motherhood like exhaustion, resentment, change of identity, and overwhelm due to the stunning responsibility that is caring for a tiny helpless person. I will say that it’s pretty repetitive and overly convoluted, and every man in this book is as flat and one-dimensional as can be – they are all complete dicks. The “thriller” part was less than thrilling, in fact when the big reveal occurred I thought “Huh. Okay.” and moved on with my life. It does highlight that society views mothers that leave their families VERY different than they do fathers that leave, but mostly I felt it was kind of overwritten and a bit dull.

Inheritance. What makes a father a father? How does your biological ancestry affect who you are as a person? This memoir explores such questions after the author discovers, through an ancestry DNA test, that her long-deceased father was not her biological father due to a very sketchy infertility “treatment.” I will say that the author’s journey to peace with this very disturbing discovery is quite interesting and eventually lovely, but something did not sit well with me throughout this reading. I am in no way disparaging or questioning her lived experience. I am sure it’s extremely disorienting to discover that your father isn’t who you thought he was, and in the author’s case, this had larger implications. Her father’s family was a prominent Orthodox Jewish one, and on her discovery, she felt as though she had lost her identity and was subsequently traumatized. “It’s traumatic because I’m fifty-four years old and I found out the father I adored, the father who raised me, was not my biological father. That the family I thought I came from is not my biological family. That my ancestors are not my biological ancestors.” I understand this, however, I take a bit of issue with it. I would say that a father who adored you and raised you IS your father, end of story. I suppose I feel touchy about this because my beloved Grandma Fern was my step-grandma. We were not related by blood, but she was still my grandma. She cherished me exactly the same as she did her biological grandchildren. In the author’s case, a (sketchy) sperm donation does not make a father, in my mind. Anyway, this was a very interesting and kind of wild read about the nature of infertility treatments in the early 60s. I also learned a lot about Orthodox Judaism. This was definitely worth the read, and had me thinking a lot about the nature of families. I think there is just so much more to family than blood.

Walking With Beth. During the Covid pandemic, the 71 year-old author and her 101-year-old friend Beth deepen their friendship with regular walks and talks, and this book is a record of their conversations. Both women are from very prominent Canadian families, and so their recollections of their younger years were quite interesting to me, not to mention all they’d seen throughout their lives. Beth was born in 1920, at the end of the 1918 influenza pandemic, so it’s interesting that the two bonded 100 years later. This book introduced me to the concept of Anam Cara, “soul-friend,” of whom I am fortunate to have a few. “This friendship…was an act of recognition and belonging. When you had an anam cara, your friendship cut across all convention, morality, and category. You were joined in an ancient and eternal way with the friend of your soul. This art of belonging awakened and fostered a deep and special companionship.” This is a beautiful story of aging and friendship, and I LOVED the description of Beth’s outfits. Talk about goals! Thanks to Elisabeth and Pearl (HI ELISABETH HI PEARL) for mentioning this book.

Hello to September! We are going on a little road trip this week, and I have the feeling we will be seeing lots of fall foliage. In the meantime, take care, friends. xo

Pencil Marks

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My husband works out every day in the mid-to-late morning, and he uses our extensive speaker system rather than headphones, which means I can frequently hear what music he’s working out to. Instead of a carefully-curated, peppy and motivating playlist like the one I use, he just has a playlist of “songs that he likes,” which can lead to what I think is an eclectic soundtrack for weight lifting. I find it amusing, for the most part; a Taylor Swift song might follow Enter Sandman, and then we could suddenly be thrown into early-2000s hip-hop, after which is Crazy Train. But the other day the song Buy Dirt came on. I went downstairs and, upon seeing my crying self, my husband turned off the music.

He had the same level of baffled bewilderment as when I talked about White Wine in the Sun, as well as when we watched a recent Joni Mitchell tribute and Both Sides Now was performed. I just don’t get why it makes you so sad, he said. It’s a song about…clouds?

My whole life, I have been very emotionally moved by music, very frequently to tears, and not always are those songs obviously wrenching to others. Some are – Landslide, for example – but others, like Is Somebody Singing or Miley Cyrus’ The Climb can destroy me emotionally because of specific memories associated with them. Usually I can hear at least a few lines or maybe an entire verse of my own personal tear-jerking songs before welling up, but I didn’t even make it to “chasing dollar” in Buy Dirt. I don’t even know if I made it to the lyrics, honestly, before dissolving.

A few days later, when he watched me emotionally decompensate just thinking about the song in our silent house, my Man of Action deleted it from his playlist. I’m sick of it anyway, he said, but I really know he just didn’t want me to accidentally hear it.

It IS a moving song, but I was much more emotionally fragile than I have been in a long while, for a few reasons. Typically every month before my period, I have a day or two of fatigue and disrupted sleep, a couple of hot flashes and an elevated resting heart rate. This month, I have had to date fourteen solid days of that with no period in sight, plus a very upsetting new symptom I had never had before: no appetite. This lasted for days. Not only did I have no appetite, but I had revulsion for food. I love food! I love to eat! I am, like Andy Sipowicz, an enthusiastic eater! But there I was, pushing my pasta around my bowl like a picky child, asking if it tasted weird to anyone else. This lack of appetite was accompanied by an intense, constant, and unquenchable thirst, to the point that I started googling am I diabetic, signs of kidney disease, and is HRT right for me?

This was reason number one for my emotional fragility: I was running on days of poor sleep, a racing heart rate, and almost no food, with a bloated and extended torso from all the water I was gulping down. Not to mention the hormones! Or, lack thereof, I guess.

But there was another reason I was fragile, and that is that my older son left on Saturday for an eight-week solo backpacking trip around Central and Eastern Europe. I am truly so happy for him; we encouraged him in this, and he planned it all so well. It’s something I really wish I had done at his age, and I think it will be such a great learning and growing experience for him. He’s seeing the world! The birdy is really flying far!

But the truth about it, it all goes by real quick. Every single month we all marvel that it’s a new month, how did that happen, time goes so fast, it’s almost May, can you believe it. My god, time really does go by real quick. My son is off seeing the world, all by himself. This feels like a whole new era, and it’s a wonderful new era, but the pages are flying off the calendar at cartoonish speeds.

I have loved every single age and stage my sons have gone through, every one of them. (Even when we were thirteen? my younger son asked. Yes. Maybe even especially then! I have so much love for the growth and expansion of those early teen years.) I am so proud of them; I can barely believe my good fortune. Sometimes I feel like I will literally explode, I love them so much. I will literally explode and all that will be left of me will be a pile of heart-shaped confetti.

When I was a kid I loved the book Jane of Lantern Hill, and I remember reading the part where Jane asks her mother if they could ever stop time. At the time, I thought that was absurd, why would anyone want to do that? I couldn’t get older fast enough. I wanted to be grown, to be autonomous, to be on to the next thing.

Well. I don’t want to stop time, but it all goes by real quick.

I have had some tests and I am confident my doctor, who is a brilliant and progressive young woman, will have some solutions for my physical self. In the meantime, the present moment is what we have, and so I will be over here, sweatily appreciating it. Thank you, body, for bringing me this far in life. Thank you for being a wonderland that is doing miraculous things as my estrogen plummets the depths of the ocean. Thank you, deodorants, for existing. Thank you, modern world, for giving me washing machines to wash my extremely sweaty jammies every day and for the clean tap water that I can gulp down to compensate for this excessive perspiration.

My son has landed safely in Europe to start his adventure. My best friend Tara (HI TARA), whose eldest daughter has travelled solo extensively, texted me with the uplifting message that we raised our children to be independent, so we shouldn’t be surprised when they are. We did! Look at them fly!

Watch their pencil marks and the grass in the yard all grow up.

Weekly Reading

Simple Abundance. My dear friend Michelle (HI MICHELLE) had mentioned this book to me last year, and I decided to start reading the short daily essays on my birthday over the next year. It was a really lovely, uplifting experience. I think it probably would have been a bit better had I started in January as the book intends – each month builds on the months before – but it was still a wonderful reminder to look at the simple things in life and take joy in them.

Wilderness Tips. his is a reread, but it’s been a while! There are some really great stories in this collection, and in my current state of mind I was particularly moved by the last paragraphs in the last story, Hack Wednesday.

When The Cranes Fly South. DO YOU WANT TO READ A SUPER SAD BOOK THAT WILL MAKE YOU STARE OFF INTO THE DISTANCE FOR A LONG TIME? This is the book for you! In retrospect, maybe not the best choice for this past, emotionally fragile week. Wow, it’s sad. An elderly man, whose wife is now in dementia care, lives alone with his elkhound dog, and has home care come in four times a day (this is Sweden, and such things are realities! Yay Sweden). His son, quite rationally and reasonably, thinks that the giant dog is really too much for the situation. After all, the old man sleeps most of the day, the dog gets very little exercise, and he’s worried the old man will fall when he’s taking the dog out. Very reasonable and rational. But also, the dog is the man’s main companion and great love. As the man snoozes the day away, he dreams about his long life; his loving mother and kind of awful dad, his move to Northern Sweden as a young man, meeting his best friend and his wife, and his son’s childhood. It is a very moving story about breaking cycles, new generations, love, and what matters in life. Fun fact: this is translated from the Swedish by Alice Menzies, and that was the name of one of my great-grandmas!

Zero-Sum. Before he left, my older son was telling us about his Managerial Economics course, and – as my husband and I both have Masters in Economics – I was extremely interested. It sounded like Managerial Economics was similar to Industrial Economics that I took back in 1996 or 1997. In any case, game theory featured heavily, which was very exciting to me. And then, my library holds came in and Zero-Sum was one of them! It was like my very own Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. Anyway, I have never before read Joyce Carol Oates, which seems like a grave omission. Every short story in this collection contains a zero-sum game, and it is absolutely fascinating and almost breathtaking in its literary creativity. The writing is just so smart, and every story is such a brilliant and interesting topic. Some of the stories were a bit dystopian/ horror based for me, but most of them were diabolically good.

I am going on my own, much less exotic adventure this week: a road trip to visit my parents. That is, if the weather-warning level spring snowstorms stop for a couple of days. Hopefully there won’t be any avalanches! In the meantime, take care of yourselves and I’ll see you next week – when it will be May. Can you believe it? xo

More Weeding, More Reading

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This is probably a strange thing to admit, because I know that generally it is a task that is dreaded and disliked, but I actually kind of love weeding. Like the laundry, or cleaning the kitchen, or really cleaning anything at all in my house (I’m currently looking with a side-eye at my fuzzy companion, due to whom we never have clean floors for more than thirty minutes), the weeding is never done. It reminds me so much of Newman’s meltdown about the mail, how it never stops. That’s how it is with weeding, the weeds just keep coming and coming.

But maybe that’s what I like about it, that there is always something that needs tending. I also find weeding to be very meditative; typically when I’m performing dull, repetitive tasks I listen to podcasts or music, but when I weed I leave my phone and earbuds in the house, and it’s just me and the weeds, with the sounds of the outdoors around me. There’s something so calming about feeling the warmth of the sun with my hands in the dirt. It’s absolutely a meditation.

This week I found myself meditating a lot on friendship, and the role of social media in our lives. I have been reminding myself of the platitude that friends come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. What is interesting to me is how social media has changed that in some ways; people who we lose touch with decades ago can come back into our life via the miracle that is social media.

I think of one of the closing lines of Desiderata nearly every day: With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. This sentiment could easily be manipulated to be applied to social media: With all its sham, fakery, and advertisements, it is still a beautiful thing. So many incredible people have come back into my life and I have met so many people on social media channels who make my life richer and more interesting.

In a way, it’s changed the for a lifetime part of the platitude, because although I might not be intimate with my childhood best friends or my group from junior high, I still feel like I know them. I know their children’s names and what they look like, and sometimes I even know what they are eating for dinner or where they are travelling to. I love that. It’s an incredible way to stay connected, and I don’t think that I would be connected with these people were it not for social media.

I fully understand the pitfalls of social media, of course, but as a woman my age I’m pretty much over comparing my life to anyone else’s. I like to celebrate when others are celebrating, I want to commiserate when others are sad or in mourning, and I really do like to see what other people are eating for dinner. I know that mindless scrolling can be not only a waste of time, but also detrimental to my attention span and general wellness, and so I apply boundaries to my Instagramming and Facebooking and I stick to them.

There is one part of social media that I fall prey to, though, and that is the advertising. Wow, am I a soft touch. It’s kind of embarrassing to admit, but I have purchased – and, I hasten to add, absolutely loved – at least three products that were marketed to me on Instagram, and although I don’t buy a lot of things, I definitely look at the advertising reels and think about them intensely. You should see my algorithm, you guys. It’s almost entirely makeup and skincare for “the older woman,” plus shapewear. The other evening I was glancing at my feed and I accidentally mused out loud Miracle Balm, hmm, do I need Miracle Balm? The responses from the men in the house was immediate and emphatic.

My younger son: NO.

My husband: What? How many products do you already use every day? Forty? You don’t need forty-one.

My older son: You can’t stop the forward march of time, Mom.

Well, they are probably right, other than my husband’s conjecture about the number of products I use. I don’t know exactly how many I use, it depends on the day, but surely it’s less than forty. Surely. In any case, it’s true, you can’t stop the forward march of time. No matter how miraculous the balm.

Weekly Reading

There are two things I wanted to tell you before I get to the two very excellent and entertaining books that I read this week. The first is that I guest-posted over on Engie’s blog (HI ENGIE), and I talked about twenty favourite books that I have each read at least three times. Technically there are twenty-two, since I slipped Heidi and Deenie in at the end. Anyway, I wrote it a few weeks ago but since I was travelling, I wasn’t able to link up. Here it is, I hope you enjoy!

The second thing I wanted to say – and this is notable since I rarely do it – is that I DNFed a book this week. I have been trying to do this more, as I have a tendency to push through with books I am not enjoying, which is a waste of time, really. A woman in my writing group had strongly recommended a Japanese series, the first of which was Before The Coffee Gets Cold. She was so enthusiastic that I just put it on hold without looking up what it was about. Imagine my disappointment when I discovered it was all about time-travel; longtime readers will remember how I loathe time-travel as a literary device. I started it all the same, slogging through the first forty pages, and then I remembered my resolution to DNF if I am not enjoying a book. Freedom!

After I Do. Friends, I could not put down this book about a young married couple who fall out of love. It was one of the most intensely readable books I have had in a while! It was all about the little quirks that we have that are endearing, but maybe on a day to day basis become really irritating to our partners, and vice versa. It’s also about how small resentments (think: arguments about where the car is parked) can become fury-inducing, and how a lack of communication can tank a relationship. I mean, who among us hasn’t felt Hulk-level rage at something ridiculous like a toilet paper roll not being put in the recycle but instead left on the bathroom counter for all eternity? Anyway, this couple takes a year separation to see if their marriage can be saved, it’s a circuitous route that struck me as odd, but such a satisfying and engrossing read. I was so invested in these characters. Interesting note: this was written in 2014, and the author has gone on to have massive success. I have read a few of her very popular books and I didn’t enjoy them half as much as I did this. 

Happiness Falls. I don’t know what I thought this book would be like, but it wasn’t this – and I LOVED IT. What an incredibly written book with such a unique and original voice. A father goes missing and the only one who has clues to this is his autistic, non-speaking fourteen year old son. The rest of the family, along with the police, try to piece together what happened and if the son is at all to blame. As a side note, the father has been researching the notion of happiness, trying to quantify it in terms of baselines – if you come in from a cold, rainy day and warm up, you’re happier than if you never left the house, for example. It’s given me lots of fascinating things to think about. If you read this, be sure to read the author’s note on how she came up with the idea, because it’s very interesting.

Don’t worry, I won’t be exclusively writing about weeding for the next five months. OR WILL I? Will weeding become my new grocery shopping, in terms of blog topics? Stay tuned! xo

Sassy, Sea Breeze, Stationary, Smoking

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This week I read, and was completely absorbed by, a book that was set in 1998, and I think that is the reason I have been awash in nostalgia. I don’t know what you were doing in 1998, but I was in grad school, taking step aerobics classes, and crushing it during Name That Tune night at the graduate students’ lounge.

I was so good at that game back then, and I could still crush it now, probably, provided all the tunes would be pre-Y2K (remember Y2K?). Disco? I can get down on it. 1970s folk or classic or mellow rock? Take it easy. Anything with a synthesizer, guitar riff, or drum solo? Yes. Grunge, country, pop, rap, techno beats? I can name it all. But I’m pretty hit and miss once we get into the 2000s, and I’m much more miss than hit when it comes to anything at all from the past decade; unless it was featured on the Peloton, I probably haven’t heard it.

There is a Peloton instructor who frequently teaches 80s themed rides, in which she always says that she admires us Gen Xers, who left the house with only “keys and a dream.” It’s true; if you wanted to meet someone at a bar, you just had to use your home phone to call their home phone, and then hope for the best. You had to look up places on a map, and if someone failed to meet up with you, then they failed to meet up with you, and that was the end of the story. You might find out later what happened, or you might not, but in any case, there was no way at all to track down a person. Or hardly any way. I remember when I worked as a waitress, sometimes I would get a phone call for a person desperate to get a message across to another person who was ostensibly in the restaurant, waiting. I would walk through the restaurant, looking for a person of the description provided for me. Are you Cheryl? You are? Dave’s going to be late.

In 1998, I had had an email address for about a year, and mostly I was the recipient of really stupid jokes, chain letters, or erroneous information about how antiperspirants caused cancer. It’s not unlike social media, to be totally honest. I did use it in a pen pal kind of way, though, to keep in touch with people who had moved away.

I still use email in this way for my former yoga students; one octogenarian lady in particular sends me very long emails about my old classes and all the people in them, and I send her long emails back about my life now. There are gaps of a week or more between our emails, which makes it feel like those long-gone pen pal days; she even starts every email with “thank you for your long letter,” which I love.

I was always a person who had a lot of pretty stationary and a lot of pen pals; I would write to my cousin Nikki in California (HI NIKKI), and most of these letters were about boys we liked and our summer vacations. I wrote to all my camp friends; if there is anything more intense and bonding than a week of summer camp when you’re thirteen, I don’t know what it is. I kept up that correspondence for years, even if I never saw that person again.

It reminded me a lot of something I heard about on a podcast recently, about what the hosts called “Little While Friends,” people you have an experience with or are friends with for just a little while, but you end up having them on your social media forever. Around 2010 or so, any time I met someone new, I would end up adding them as a friend on Facebook, which means that a solid percentage of my Facebook feed is made up of people I barely know, but I feel like I know, because I have experienced their entire life journeys over the years. I know about their kids, and their divorces, and their remarriages, and an alarming amount about their dietary and fitness odysseys.

That said, I do love Facebook, there’s no better way to keep in touch with people from my past and present, people who I feel warmly about simply because we have shared life experiences. Some of those life experiences are less savoury than others, but they are what makes us who we are.

My friend Jen (HI JEN) sent me that photo, circa 1992, which made me think of a meme I saw lately, about our high school signature scents: mine was cigarettes and Vanilla Fields perfume. I haven’t smoked anything in well over three decades, and I feel low-level shame that I ever smoked at all, but I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who carried perfume and mints after hanging out at the smoke doors at school. Isn’t it crazy that there WERE smoke doors?

Does anyone else remember butane curling irons? It says a lot that we didn’t accidentally light ourselves on fire, with all the smoking and excessive hairspray that was necessary for those weird hairstyles of that time. And beyond that, some of us were bringing butane curling irons to school – not me, but I coveted one. I had to make do with scrunching my hair in the girls’ washroom and spraying it with Aussie Sprunch Spray, then setting it with Salon Selectives. Given that I always had a lighter with me, it’s incredible I didn’t just combust right there. It’s probably good that I never had a butane curling iron.

I just discovered, upon googling, that butane curling irons are still in existence!

One thing that I wish was still in existence, or, at least, that I had kept some of my copies, is Sassy magazine. Sassy was, and remains, the best magazine for teen girls, because it treated them like actual intelligent humans. One of the most impactful articles I ever read in my young life was the one that they put out to explain the Gulf War and Operation Desert Storm, an event that, naturally, caused me much stress and anxiety. This article detailed the war from all viewpoints, including the Iraqi people and, separately, Saddam Hussein. It was the first time I had ever read anything that showed anything other than a North American point of view, and it was absolutely eye-opening and formative, and made me realize that things were not always black and white, and that what I read in our media was not always the whole story.

In addition to increasing my information about the world around me, Sassy was instrumental in the creation of my skin care and beauty routines. Unfortunately, the girls of the 80s and 90s were sadly misled. Much has been said about the “Sephora Teens” of today, with their Drunk Elephant products and their anti-aging serum usage at age 17, but I think they have the right idea. After all, where they are moisturizing and pampering, we were scouring our poor faces with St. Ives Apricot Scrub, followed by the sting of Sea Breeze astringent; it’s no wonder we were plagued with acne and redness. Suz (HI SUZ) reminded me of that weird little product, the Buf Puf, which we used for EXTRA exfoliation, and we should all be in awe that we didn’t erase our faces altogether. Maybe this was the precursor to today’s Instagram filters, where girls and women filter so much that facial features become obliterated. We were just trying to obliterate our faces physically, rather than digitally. Or maybe that was what we were doing with those deep cleansing mud masks that would dry and crack on our dear little faces, leaving trails of whitish dust in our wake.

Weekly Reading

My Last Innocent Year. Wow, wow, WOW! I loved this book so much, I don’t even know where to begin. It is an exquisitely but sparsely written novel about a young woman in her senior year of college who enters into a relationship with a visiting professor. Tale as old as time, right? WRONG. This was just so well done, and so real, that I did something I haven’t done since I read (and loved) Girls They Write Songs About: I slowed down the last few chapters because I didn’t want it to be over. It’s set in 1998, which, coincidentally, is when I was in grad school, and so this book gave me all the nostalgic feelings. It was just so resonant of a time in my life which was brief, but felt like an age, when it was all about small classes and big camaraderie, hard work and thesis writing, and also parties and romantic interludes, when we all were on a first-name basis with all our professors and knew a lot about their personal lives, which seems wild now. This book, though. The time period details are spot on. 1998 was also when Monica Lewinsky was in the news, which I have a lot to say about, but I will keep it to this quote from the book: “Monica had become every girl’s worst nightmare, the equivalent of having your seventh-grade diary read over the school loudspeaker or walking into class with a period stain on your pants. We identified with her, which should have made us kinder but instead made us mean.” This book resonated with me so much and made me wonder about paths not taken; every single character is so well developed and complex. I wish I could go back in time before I had read it, so I could have the pleasure of reading it again for the first time. This will be a reread for me in the future, I am sure.

The Women In The Castle. When I first read this book in 2018, I really enjoyed it and found it incredibly thought-provoking in terms of divisiveness between people in society. I don’t know if you remember 2018, but it was KIND of a divisive time? I saw this at the library (in large print, no less!) and thought I could do with a reread. After all, since my first reading we went through a pandemic, which has to be THE most divisive time in my memory, and also, here we are, deep sigh. I will say I enjoyed this book as much or even more than before, maybe because I knew what was coming. I will also say that, generally speaking, I think historical fiction is one of the hardest types of book to get right: the language and dialogue is tricky, and it’s often overwhelmingly difficult not to insert modern sensibilities into the past. BUT this book does an excellent job on both fronts – it can be a little “explainy” at times, but I think it’s really well done. It’s about three German women and their families who come together right at the end of WWII, through the efforts of Marianne, the widow of a member of the German Resistance. She brings in the other two women, both ostensibly widows of the Resistance, to help care for them and their families. This book really shows how people can contain multitudes, how complex humans and society can be, how people can get swept up and find themselves in places they cannot fathom, and, most of all, how interconnected we all are, and how we are all responsible for one another.

Well, it’s been a fun trip down memory lane this week; this week is going to be full of lovely things like a trip to the garden centre, lots of writing, and, most exciting, not one but two events with my lovely girlfriends. I hope you all have a beautiful week ahead of you. xo

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Fancy Was My Name Edition

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A few weeks ago, we were having dinner and Fancy came on, via the Nicole’s Karaoke playlist, which sparked a discussion with regards to the mother-daughter relationship between Fancy and her mother. Well, she basically prostituted her daughter, I said, to which my son answered, What do you expect? She named her daughter Fancy. Obviously she didn’t think she’d grow up to be a lawyer.

One of my Favourite Things in the world is having Responsible Adult Children. Recently Suzanne (HI SUZANNE) asked what has, so far, been the best age when it comes to children, and I have thought about this a lot. I think I suffer from recency bias because if you asked me at any time in my children’s lives what the best age is, I would say, with great enthusiasm, this one! I loved babies and toddlers, I loved preschool and elementary school, and I loved – and am still loving – the teen years; yes, even the awkward junior high years. I’ve loved all the ages and stages and I think I just enjoy my children more and more as the years go on, as I see them grow and change and become more and more the people they have always been, but more awesome.

So there is probably some recency bias here, but wow, do I love my kids being Responsible Adults. My husband and I went away to Secrets Maroma in Mexico for a week; we have, over the years, gone away together several times, but never for very long, because when the kids were younger there were just so many logistics to account for, plus the typical motherly guilt about leaving the children behind. But now we have very few constraints and my younger son wasn’t working last week, so we left him to be in charge of the house and also Rex, which is no small task, given that he has Very High Needs when it comes to exercise and general affection. He drove us to the airport at 5:00 am, and picked us up in the middle of the night (read: 9:00 pm); I came home to a perfectly clean house – albeit one with an empty refrigerator, because he cooked all his own meals for the week – a happy dog, and no laundry to do except for the myriad bikinis and sundresses crammed into my carryon.

It was a really incredible week, and a perfectly indulgent one. We met up with friends, relaxed, ate and drank and soaked up the sun and played in the Caribbean. I have zero complaints; no notes. I do have many Favourite Things, though, so without further ado:

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Fancy Was My Name Edition

Life In Front Of The Curtain

The incredible vacation started out on the flight. We had splurged on premium seats and friends, I do not think I can ever go back to economy. I can’t! I won’t! Well, I will – we have a few upcoming flights that are not premium – but as god is my witness, I will never go economy again if I can help it. Flying in general feels like a tedious exercise in maximum discomfort, but flying premium? Oh la la. I felt a Mad Men-level of glamour, like it was the 1960s and everyone was dressed up for a fabulous flying experience. I mean, they served us actual meals on actual crockery and drinks in actual glasses; we got snack packs and offers of booze, refreshing hot towels, and the exclusive use of the premium bathroom. On a practical note, my circulation and varicose vein issues are pretty bad, even with my full-length, medical grade, “nude” compression stockings, and with the roomy seats and legroom I was able to stretch out quite a bit. Also, our flight was ninety minutes delayed on the tarmac before takeoff, and I think I might have died, or at the very least, been incredibly annoyed at having to sit in a cramped economy seat for an extra hour and a half on top of the over six hours of flying. As it was, I just chilled out and read, sipping from my complimentary water bottle. Ten out of ten, would recommend.

Here’s Your One Chance, Fancy, Don’t Let Me Down

We have been to many of the Secrets/ Dreams resorts in the past, and they are all really great. This one, however, was beyond everything I could have imagined. Every single detail was pure luxury. The rooms were beautiful, the pool areas were stunning, the service was incredible in every way; I have often thought that all-inclusive resorts are a bit like a fancy summer camp for adults, because it’s so easy to meet people and there are fun activities people can partake in, pretty much every hour of the day. My preferred activities were reading by the pool, cooling off in the pool, and swimming in the gorgeous turquoise Caribbean Sea. I did, however, partake in Spanish lessons one morning.

Hablo Espanol

I have been learning Spanish via Duolingo for a while; 702 days, to be exact. My son got me started on it – he’s learning Japanese – and every week we go on our Friends Quest together to maintain our positions in the Diamond League. Anyway, I felt like I had learned a lot, but I don’t have any friends to speak Spanish with, face to face, with the exception of my husband’s colleague’s wife, who very patiently, and with great encouragement, spoke with me at his retirement party in September.

Therefore, I was a little nervous to attempt to converse with actual people; practicing on an app is one thing, actually speaking is another. I was worried that I would use the wrong word or phrasing, I worried I’d use the wrong verb conjugation. Then, just before we left I had a pedicure, and the esthetician, who spoke little English, had a brief conversation with me about the weather; at that moment I realized that I would never judge someone learning English for using the wrong grammar or conjugating a verb incorrectly, so it stood to reason that the same would go for me, speaking Spanish.

I was right! Also, I was amazed at how well I could carry a conversation; I could understand everything being said to me, and even when it took me a moment to formulate a response, I could still formulate the response. Now, I probably have the conversational ability of a preschooler (I WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK SPANISH WITH YOU PLEASE) but it was so great to be able to practice. My Spanish lesson at the resort was fun and also enlightening; the teacher informed me that, in Mexico, one should never say estoy caliente, because that doesn’t mean I’m hot, it means I’m horny. This, I felt, was excellent information to have.

The Sharks Like It

After discovering that this invention was the highest valuation on Shark Tank, my husband bought us LARQ water bottles. The cap contains a special UV light that kills bacteria and there are two modes: regular, and “adventure.” I wanted to use fewer plastic water bottles, which are ubiquitous at these resorts, and so I was excited to give this a go. Now, there are two things to note: a) the concierges warned against drinking the tap water in the rooms, and b) there must be a big filtration system somewhere on the resort because there are a lot of fruits and vegetables, not to mention ice in drinks and jugs of water in restaurants. I did not know about a) until I had filled this bottle from the tap, and drank from it, at least four times. I didn’t get sick so I guess it works.

While I was by the pool, I asked one of the bartenders if I could have water to fill my bottle, thinking that he would just fill it from a tap behind the bar, but instead he just opened up a couple of plastic bottles and poured them in. That was a little discouraging, but then I discovered a bottle filler NEAR the bar. I’m sure it was filtered just fine, but still I used my little UV light, feeling like a well-hydrated rock star.

I got some kind of mystery marks on the bottle, which I THINK came from a travel-size black plastic tissue pack that melted in the heat, but happily, after an application of baking soda paste with a Scrub Daddy, they have since disappeared.

Here Comes The Sun(screen)

Just like (hopefully?) I will never go back to economy seats, I will (absolutely!) never go back to checking luggage. Generally it’s not too difficult for me to pack carryon only, but the one thing that is tricky is ensuring I have enough sunscreen. On our trip to Maui last year, I just purchased a lot of sunscreen on the island, but I didn’t want to do that here because omg, do you know what a bottle of sunscreen costs in a Secrets resort? FIFTY-EIGHT US DOLLARS. With the exchange rate and tax, we are looking at almost a hundred dollars for a measly bottle of Banana Boat.

But sunscreen we must have, and there are only so many travel-size bottles one can squeeze into the regulation one-litre bags, especially when one needs to take hair products, makeup, and night cream. It was serendipitous that I came across these solid Neutrogena stick sunscreens, which do not count as liquid, obviously, because they are solid. Bonus for the fishies in the sea, it’s mineral.

Some of you may remember my lament last year about mineral sunscreen and the white cast it leaves on the skin, and this one, despite being “Ultra Sheer,” is no exception. However, it works really, really well, as evidenced by the little spots of sunburn on my knees and breasts where I obviously missed with my application.

Welcome To Margaritaville, Population: Me

My husband’s birthday is in October; we went out for dinner to celebrate. Since that day, I have made dinner every single night. Every. Single. Night. So what I’m saying is that I was very excited to partake in unlimited food items that I had absolutely no hand in preparing. The food at the resort was so incredible, so vast in variety and so well-prepared and fresh, and, in comparison with other resorts, the plant-based offerings were Off The Chart. I couldn’t even begin to believe my luck. I’m used to very limited options, and so I was amazed at all the delicious vegetarian and vegan food available. At breakfast there was CHIA PUDDING. And little waffles made with almond milk. And incredible fresh fruit. And made-to-order smoothies. Lunches had me plowing through vast amounts of lentil and chickpea salads, and chips and guacamole; so much guacamole, friends. There were fresh berries and caramelized pumpkin seeds, there was every dessert you could imagine, and every dinner was more delicious than the last.

Of course there were also mango margaritas by the pool!

Probably it’s good to only have gone a week, my liver may have exploded in protest if we stayed longer. But oh! So delicious.

Outfit of the Month

I know, I know, I KNOW that we are all trying to avoid fast fashion. I really am. But also? I am not made of stone, and I found this dress at Old Navy last summer for ten dollars. That is TEN CANADIAN DOLLARS, which is essentially free for my American friends. What price my morals? I know. Anyway, I keep all my clothing for many years, to the chagrin of my husband, and so I’ll probably have this cute dress for decades. The sandals are old Skechers, but I think I need to retire them. I think these sandals are a half size too small. A few times after a big dinner and lots of wine, I had to walk barefoot back to the room as my swollen feet exploded out of their strappy cages in the heat and humidity. Probably that is not an ideal thing to do, but I’m still here, with intact feet, so I guess it worked out fine. I’m in the market for dressy new sandals, is what I’m saying.

This week of rest and relaxation was exactly what I needed after such a hectic and stressful year. I feel so rested and ready to take on anything. Up first: figuring out how to make my own caramelized pumpkin seeds, and finding new sandals. xo

Five For Friday: The Five W’s Of Rest Edition

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When (Is It Beddy-Bye Time). Years ago I came across a rather treacle-y poem called The Last Time, which talked about the many “lasts” in parenting, the upshot of which is enjoy it all because one day they won’t hold your hand to cross the street, you won’t read them bedtime stories, they won’t climb into your bed at night. Etcetera. I will admit that at some point in my life I would have been very emotionally moved but now it just fills me with puzzlement. When WAS the last time any of those things happened? Things I thought I’d never forget are completely lost to the annals of time. I cannot remember when I stopped tucking the children in to bed for the night, for example. I cannot remember what ages they were when I would have supervised bedtime and told them it was Lights Out. Were they 12 and 13? 11 and 12? Who can say. All I know is that it has been many years since I was responsible for anyone’s bedtime except my own, and my own bedtime happens much, much earlier than the rest of my family, including my husband. We never go to bed at the same time; I typically am in bed well before 9:00 pm and am fast asleep by the time he retires for the night. This is not a commentary about the state of our marriage, don’t worry! I am more of an Afternoon Delight kind of gal, rather than a Pina Colada one. Making love at midnight, are you crazy? Unless I decide to start a cocaine habit, that is OUT.

Where the magic happens.

Why (Am I Obsessed With Bedtime). Even without cocaine, I am a pretty high energy person, somewhat like a Jack Russell terrier, and I believe strongly in the yin/ yang connection – if a person has too much yang in their life, their bodies will force them to get yin, typically via a illness. Believe me, I have been there. Our go-go-go society pretends to value productivity at all costs, but in my mind true productivity can only come from a rested body and mind. REM Y REM is my motto – Rest, Exercise, Meditation, Yoga, and REM sleep. I really make a point to prioritize sleep; if I have a bad night of sleep, I have no compunction whatsoever about taking a sleep aid the next night to get reset. I feel no shame in that game; needs must, sometimes, as my grandma would say. I have always been an early riser; I wake up naturally between 4 and 4:30, and because of this I work my bedtime backwards from there. I typically get an average of 7 1/2 hours of sleep a night during the week, according to my watch, and I get a little more than that on weekends; I can usually coax myself back to sleep for an hour or two. It’s not often that I get less than 7 hours of sleep, but when I do I can really tell in my face and body, which become haggard-looking and creaky, respectively, not to mention my brain, which becomes foggy and unfocused. I’m like a cross between Aunt Bethany and C3PO. I’m not, however, an actual robot and I am in perimenopause, so despite my best efforts, plenty of nights have me waking up sweaty at strange hours with my mind racing, but I try to take it in a zen way, which means I am often doing breathing exercises in the middle of the night and telling myself that a) just lying and resting is beneficial, even if I’m not technically sleeping, and b) my body is a wonderland and hot flashes are a natural part of a woman’s life, if she’s lucky, which I am. Usually this borderline unhinged way of thinking is enough to lure my body back into slumberland, or into an incredible state of boredom that is akin to slumberland, at least until 4:30, when I am Wide Awake and Ready For The Day.

Good morning world!

What (Do I Do To Prepare). The act of getting ready for bed feels almost ritualistic for me; I love the feeling of ending the day and preparing for my cozy bed. I start my bedtime routine about an hour before I actually snuggle into said cozy bed; I floss and brush my teeth, I detangle and brush my hair, I remove my makeup and put on a number of different moisturizers on various parts of my face and body, and I put on my pajamas. Every day I carefully choose pretty workout clothing even though my gym is in the basement and I work out before anyone else is awake, and every day I put on a coordinated outfit with jewelry and makeup even if I am going nowhere and seeing no one, so it should surprise no one that every night I wear pretty, matching pajamas. Every evening I choose my pajama set based on the season, the temperature, and my general mood. I have many pajama sets, thanks to Christmas and birthday gifts mostly from my mother, but also from my husband. I have worn pretty nightwear for my entire life, so the idea of NOT choosing a pajama set is as foreign to me as not matching my bag to my shoes, or going a day without makeup, which is to say, incredibly foreign. After I am pajamaed and lubed up, I join my husband on the couch for a while, reading while he watches TV. I don’t read in bed because I reserve the bed for sleep and sexytimes only, and also to fold laundry on. I am adamant about not using any screens, other than the TV in my periphery, before my bedtime, to the chagrin of anyone trying to text me after 8:00. By the time 8:30 rolls around, I’m making my way up to bed and nestling in.

Where I wish the magic would happen.
Stop! Jammie Time.

Who (Changed My Life With Her Life-Changing Magic). Many years ago I adopted the KonMari method of decluttering and tidying, and I started rolling all my clothing pieces that reside in drawers. The exception was pajamas, which tend to be floppier than regular clothes, and resist rolling. My pajama drawer felt like a mess compared with its daytime-wear compatriots. That is, until a few years ago, when Gigi (HI GIGI) mentioned her brilliant method of rolling pajamas: she puts the top and bottom flat together and THEN rolls them up, and it is simply genius. Why didn’t I think of that? In any case, I have done that ever since, which means I have perfectly organized pajama drawers, and can choose my set with ease.

Rolling, rolling, rolling in a pajama drawer.

Where (Am I Going). In the theme of rest and relaxation, my husband and I are heading to Mexico for a week. We are meeting our good friends down there and I am so excited; am I more excited about the trip itself, or about not preparing dinners for a whole week? Who can say. I’m just happy to be going somewhere, to be honest. Maybe I’ll even have some pina coladas! Who am I kidding, I don’t even like pina coladas, no euphemism implied. Today is filled with all those exciting pre-holiday things, like a pedicure and sugaring, and seeing how many bikinis and sundresses I can squeeze into a carryon. In any case, I’m looking forward to fun, food, and lots of relaxation; I will catch up with you all when I return. Take care, friends. xo

Doctor Teeth and the Winter Mayhem

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We received a little blast of winter this past week: a couple of inches of snow, followed a few days later by some cold days, and by “cold,” I mean the low minus 20s. Friends, experiencing forty-eight years of Canadian prairie winters has prepared me for this moment. Never have I felt so hardy. I went to Costco the day after it snowed, and the parking lot was maybe a third full. The entire store was eerily quiet and when I went to check out, the cashier with the most gorgeous head of hair –the secret is Moroccan OIL oil, not the Moroccan oil shampoo, the OIL – told me in all earnestness that the day previous was beyond busy, as people prepared for The Big Storm. I blinked a couple of times, thinking about the two inches of snow and the temperature around zero. I felt not unlike Lieutenant Dan in the crowsnest of the Jenny, screaming “You call this a storm?”

My mother-in-law has, over the past six months, expressed amazed astonishment at my willingness to leave the house in even the slightest bit of inclement weather. I will take this at face value as a perceived compliment on my strength of spirit, even though I think it is completely unwarranted; she praised me for being brave for driving in These Conditions, These Conditions, again, being two inches of snow and slightly icy streets. In Calgary, if you didn’t go out when there was snow on the ground, you would never go out. Rex and I need our daily constitutional – I am not sure which of us need it more, to be honest – and so the streets shall be braved.

In addition to our daily walk, which is typically around six kilometres, give or take a little, Rex goes out a few times a day to do what we call Exploring. We have two acres of unfenced property, and let me tell you, the “unfenced” detail was cause for much concern on my part prior to and during the move. What if he chases an animal and get lost, what if he runs away, what if he goes onto the road and gets hit by a car. It turns out that all those worries, like most worries, were merely depleting my mental resources and were ultimately unfounded; dogs can be trained to obey property lines, even unfenced ones. There are dogs at all three of the nearest properties to us, and they all stay on their own properties, more or less, unless two or more dogs are out at the same time. In that case, all bets are off and a dog party will certainly ensue. I have looked out the window to see Rex in a cluster of dogs at the end of the grape rows, all happily wagging and sniffing. After a few minutes of this they all magically return to their own places.

Of all the things I should never have worried about, Rex running away would be top of the list. Rex likes to be within sight of me or, more preferably, within petting distance at any given moment in the day. In my recently Ask Me Anything, Engie (HI ENGIE) wondered what a day in the life of Rex was like, and, other than the Explorations, his day is my day. He gets up when I do, around 4:30, and hangs out with me while I practice yoga and exercise, he is in the kitchen when I’m cooking or in the office when I’m writing. If I’m folding laundry or reading he is directly at my feet. When I shower I will open the bathroom door to find him directly on the other side of it. He is my fuzzy shadow and I really love it.

That is why last Thursday was so strange, because he was at the vet all day getting a dental cleaning. No one followed me from room to room! No one lay down directly behind the rolling office chair, so I could stand up and sit down with complete impunity, with no worries that I would accidentally roll onto a fuzzy body part! I went into the pantry without anyone at my heels, hopefully looking at the container of freeze-dried liver!

Do not get me started about the ridiculousness of a professional dental cleaning for a two-year-old dog; despite the fact that for the past nine months I have brushed his teeth and given him a dental chew every single day without fail, he still had pretty massive tartar buildup. I think Barkley was eight or nine by the time we had to give him a cleaning, but here we are with Rex, age two.

It’s funny how seasons of life change. With the kids I went through years of toothbrushing instruction, semi-annual dental cleanings, and braces, my god, the braces. I spent so many years in the orthodontist office – or, in the case of the pandemic, the orthodontist parking lot – and I figured that once my children were grown, the only teeth I would need to think about would be my own. And now here I am, brushing my dog’s teeth with beef-flavoured toothpaste, checking his gums, and having earnest conversations with the vet about the dental genetics of different breeds. If you’re interested, poodles and terriers have, in the vet’s words, the Worst Teeth Of All. That was interesting to me, as my childhood dog, Spike, was a terripoo. I asked my mom if he had bad teeth, and she couldn’t remember. But then again, she said to me, we didn’t BRUSH dogs’ teeth back then. True enough.

Weekly Reading

Speaking of my mom, she happened to mention that it was minus 55 with windchill at her place, minus 42 ambient. It sure made our little blast of cold seem cute! But it was still a chilly weekend, so I lived La Vida Hygge, wrapping up well for our walks and spending the rest of the time puzzling, reading, and, obviously because this is my life, cooking. Some hits and misses in the book department this week; here we go:

More Myself. My son very thoughtfully bought this book for me for Christmas, knowing that I love a) Alicia Keys and b) memoir about women, specifically celebrity women. And I will say that Alicia Keys has had an incredible life; she is a talent beyond talent, a woman who has been writing, composing, and producing her own music since she was fourteen years old. Fourteen is also when she met Krucial, who was her first serious boyfriend. He was 24, and a father. I HAVE SOME QUESTIONS. In his (very slight) defense she told him she was 17 (still not cool, omg), so imagine his shock when, two years later they are LIVING TOGETHER and he discovers her real age. Which was sixteen. Good lord. The way she glosses over that detail in this book is really unsettling. Anyway, she is an incredibly talented woman who has also started a number of social justice campaigns as well as a charity that supplies antiviral medication to babies of women living with HIV, so that they do not contract the virus through breast milk. All great stuff, right? Well, let me tell you, despite the incredible wealth of material, this memoir is SO DAMN BORING. There is a part where she relates a conversation with Oprah, who tells her to keep her private life private, as her Stedman relationship going public is a huge regret for her. Alicia apparently takes this to heart because there is NO juice here. It reads like a matter-of-fact listing of her professional and personal accomplishments, completely devoid of any emotion or vulnerability. Even when discussing a nervous breakdown that led her to a transformative solo trip to Egypt, it was like “I was overtaxed and exhausted. I went to Egypt. It was a transformative experience.” As a memoir, it fails.

Games and Rituals. I really love everything this author has written, and this newest collection of short stories is no exception. This is my favourite genre: everyday, ordinary occurrences made extraordinary. This is Writing Goals right here! The sign of a really good short story is that it makes you think about all the backstory that isn’t there, the iceberg beneath the surface, so to speak. I loved it. There is one particular story about a woman and her elderly father that I will be thinking about for a long time.

Cat’s Eye. Recently Allison (HI ALLISON) mentioned her daughter reading her copy of Bluebeard’s Egg, and that set off a massive craving in me to read some Atwood. I wanted a novel, not short stories, and Cat’s Eye is perfectly suited to January: much of it takes place in the dreary, drab winters of Toronto. I have read this many times and every time I read it, it hits just a little bit differently. I find something new to identify with every single time I read this moving story about a woman who returns to Toronto, the city of her youth, and is confronted by all the myriad ghosts of her past. I have always found this book to be one of the most realistic when it comes to how young girls behave towards each other, the various cruelties that girls and women can inflict on each other, and the lifelong effects of the small and larger traumas experienced in youth. It’s about healing and understanding. It is a work of art, full stop.

Our winter blast seems to be waning and it looks to be a beautiful week ahead. I hope you are all staying warm and maybe also living La Vida Hygge where you are. xo