Category Archives: Flower Power

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Summer Solstice Edition

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If my life lately was a cartoon, it would be illustrated with one of those daily calendars, and the pages would be flipping through in fast-motion, flying off into the wind. Time seems to move quickly the older we get, but this past month has been absolutely insane. Not only are we moving next month, but one month from today we WILL BE MOVED. I will be IN my new house, probably unpacking boxes. Right now that feels impossible but it’s true.

Anyway, June is flying by and there are a lot of things that I loved, and that made my life significantly better this month.

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Summer Solstice Edition

What’s A Yeti?

I cannot see the word “Yeti” without instantly thinking about the clueless woman at Disney’s Animal Kingdom, who spent forty-five minutes surrounded by Yeti-related material only to be astounded at the existence of the word Yeti, lo these many years ago now. What’s a Yeti? Anyway, for Mother’s Day this year the guys gave me two insulated Yeti cups, which are perfect for keeping any cold drink cold. They are intended to be for white wine, but they work great for any beverage, particularly, in my case, a nice gin and tonic or a flavoured sparkling water.

Since our new city is very hot in the summer, I anticipate using these a lot while I read on our beautiful deck.

Dog and Bowl-erfly

Rex is not a dog who is made for the heat. Or, even the slight warmth. Basically, if the sun is shining and the temperature is above about fourteen degrees, he gets hot. He’s a Winter Dog for sure; on warm days he enthusiastically runs and rolls at the dog park, and then droops for the three kilometres it takes to get home. May and the first part of June saw a stretch of unusually hot weather, and that coupled with my concern about how Rex will handle our new city had me searching for solutions. Solution number one: walk him as early as possible in the day. Solution number two: always carry water.

I bought this silicon dog bowl that is foldable and hooks onto my belt bag. I feel a bit like a much-less-cool Sherpa, what with the waist leash and a water bottle jammed into my bag and then a bowl hanging off that same bag, but it works.

All Hail The Kale

Since we are leaving in peak garden growing season, the only vegetable I planted this year was kale, as it is an early harvester and one that just keeps growing after cutting. We have had three really big cuttings of kale already, and a fourth one is going to happen this weekend. I love kale. I love it. I love it in all forms but one form that is extremely popular in my house is the kale Caesar. I use this dressing (thanks to Birchy, HI BIRCHY, for the recommendation) and I massage it into the kale about half an hour prior to eating. Garden kale is so much more tender than grocery store kale, but I still think it is a good idea to let the dressing sit for that time.

Rainy Days and Mondays

As I mentioned, it was much hotter and drier than normal for about six weeks in May and June, and I was experiencing a weird cognitive dissonance. Personally, I love hot and dry weather. It’s my favourite. I was, on a selfish individual level, very happy to be outside in the soft air and sunshine, wearing only skirts and tanks. However, the part of me that has concern for other people and the world in general kept whispering this is really bad. The northern part of the province was suffering from wildfires, grass was crunchy underfoot, and it felt honestly a bit apocalyptic. It’s Calgary, and we did not have one day in May in which the temperature dropped below freezing, nor did it snow. This is weird.

Things took a turn last week, and I could see it in the photos taken of me and my ladies at our final yoga classes. Monday afternoon, we were all in tees and capri-length pants, some ladies in shorts. Thursday morning, we were all in sweaters and jackets and long pants. It’s been very rainy and chilly – two days ago I had to pull out my light winter coat and gloves to walk Rex, the temperature did not get above eight degrees – and while I don’t LIKE this, it does feel more normal and less like We Are All Going To Die In A Fiery Inferno That Is Our World.

Which brings me to rain gear; on days that I don’t need to wear a winter coat in June, I am loving this cute little raincoat from Lululemon. It’s pushing it for Calgary – I have a lined raincoat that I wear more often, and this is not lined – but in my new city, it will be perfect for rainy days that are not also freezing cold. Did I mention that it was eight degrees for a high? On June 20th?

What do we think of Hunter boots? I don’t find them super-comfortable for walking, but no other footwear is so effective at keeping my feet dry. Plus, I feel at one with the spirit of my birthday twin, QEII, who used to wear Hunters to muck around in the stables. All I need is a plaid hair scarf.

I Was Influenced Dot Com

A few months ago, I saw a sponsored post on Instagram that showed a woman wearing “the most comfortable jeans ever, the only ones I travel with!” This woman was doing cartwheels and yoga and even the splits, and I was kind of fascinated. Because I looked at the post for all of thirty seconds, rather than half a second scrolling by, my algorithm immediately changed and I was inundated with advertisements and sponsored posts for Mott and Bow jeans. Every time I logged onto social media, there it was; a post with a woman talking about the most comfortable jeans in the world. They were really cute, too, and I was especially intrigued because my current jeans were not the most comfortable jeans in the world. In fact, they were becoming less and less comfortable as time went on.

I have mentioned before that I have been strength training to, as my kids say, stave off The Osteo, and a side effect of gaining bone density is that I have also gained a very juicy booty and thighs. My current jeans could not contain all this lusciousness, and I was just feeling very uncomfortable and unhappy in them. It’s one of my rules that I need to feel happy and beautiful in all my clothes, and so I was again thinking about the woman cartwheeling around in her Mott and Bow jeans.

And I will say that buying jeans online is a pretty risky business, especially for a Canadian dealing with exchange rates on already fairly-pricey items. I went to the website, selected a cute pair of skinny jeans, and filled in their size calculator, at which point my suggested size was exactly the same as that in my current jeans. I was skeptical, however, I was also desperate for jeans and held my nose and jumped off the high diving board. The jeans arrived and IT WAS A REVELATION.

Never have I experienced jeans like these. The fit, despite my deep skepticism, was perfect. They are cute and flattering and so very comfortable. Rex and I decided to showcase this comfort with some downward dogs.

Now put your leg up, Rexie! Good boy.

I immediately ordered two more pairs: another skinny and one that is called a “boyfriend” jean.

So I guess there are two lessons here: one, Instagram ads really do work if they hit you at the right time in your life, and two, if the jeans don’t fit the body, change the jeans.

Outfit of the Month

Speaking of comfortable clothes, my favourite outfit this month is so comfy and cute: a tee shirt dress!

My son and I went out for dinner while my older son and husband were at the new house, and I wore this super-comfortable, super-cute tee shirt dress from lululemon. It was a bit chilly so I paired it with tights and boots – these boots are actually Sorels, and are unlined and perfect for rainy or wet weather. If I had a denim jacket I think it would be perfect for this outfit, but I don’t, so I’ll accessorize with my favourite fuzzy black-and-white item.

There are so many things that are getting me through this month of transition – I am a person who likes to be organized and neat, and my house feels like it is exploding around me – but a month from now, everything will be…well, it will still be kind of a disaster. But eventually things will be neat and organized again, and in the meantime, why don’t you tell me what your favourite things were this month? xo

…And I Get Off On The Pain I Inflict

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One way in which I have been preparing my little birdies to fly is to have them gradually take control of their own medical and dental appointments. Some medical professionals, such as our podiatrist, who, YES, we are still seeing six months later, require me to be with my younger son as he is a minor, but for the most part, I have been letting them figure things out on their own, being in the background for support. This has led to some things I did not anticipate, such as my older son making an appointment for LASIK eye surgery later this month, but for the most part it’s been fairly smooth and predictable.

We have all had dental appointments in the past month or so, and my younger son’s was the most recent. He came home telling me that he’d had several x-rays, and he required dental surgery to remove his four wisdom teeth and an extra tooth that he had somehow developed. He was under the impression that a) it was fairly emergent since his wisdom teeth were growing in sideways, and b) the extra tooth was very close to a nerve.

He told me the dental office would consult with the dentist who performs these surgeries and would get back to me. I didn’t love getting this information second-hand, because have you ever received important information from a 17-year-old? But I Serenity Now-ed, and waited.

On Tuesday I was at the garden centre; my older son had the day off work and so went with me, which was a delight. An extra cart AND someone to encourage me to buy more flowers? Heaven. We were in among the annuals when my phone rang; it was the dentist calling to schedule surgery. My son has a lot of things going on in the next six weeks that I didn’t want ruined by a painful recovery, but the coming weekend was free and so we scheduled him in for Friday morning. I zipped around the next day, picking up soft, high protein foods, and the single Ativan-like sedative he was to take an hour before surgery.

A small onion in the ointment was that I had planned to go to my parents’ on Thursday for my mom’s 70th birthday. We are having a family party for her next weekend, but my aunt was up visiting – this is my beloved Aunty C, of the Aunties fame – and I hadn’t seen her since 2019, so after my Thursday class I packed myself and Rex into the car and drove up. It’s a two hour drive so I was in the car at 6 the next morning, navigating a weirdly foggy highway and Friday morning traffic, to be able to get my son to his appointment at 9:00.

I have never had a tooth extraction myself, but my husband had his wisdom teeth taken out when he was in his forties, and it was absolutely a non-event. I was expecting similar, based on the dental office (“He’s so young, he will recover so quickly!”), and based on the fact that my husband’s procedure took perhaps a half hour at most. So I was completely unprepared to be there for three and a half hours, during which my son’s freezing wore off and they had to redo it. I was also completely unprepared to be told, at 11:45, that the procedure was “more complicated” than they had anticipated and at that point, had only extracted two of the five teeth, and that he would have to get the other side done at a separate time.

By the time they finished, at 12:30, three teeth were gone and the dentist told me that their initial assessment of “Advil alternating with Tylenol every two hours” was now “go pick up this prescription for Tylenol 3, he’s really going to need it.” WHAT HAPPENED HERE. The dentist told me that he would not be able to work on the other side, it was too complicated for him, and that we would have to go to a specialist, which, honestly, I wish we knew in advance so we could have skipped this whole thing and just done that in the first place. Did they not realize this from the x-rays? Were they just hoarding my son’s procedure for themselves to collect the money? I couldn’t help but feel a bit betrayed.

I’m not going to lie: Friday was a really rough day, made worse by the thought that we have to do this all again soon. The dental office cheerfully assured me that my son would just “sleep the day away” post-surgery, which goes to show that they do not know him at all, the guy who slept exactly zero minutes on our red-eye from Maui, and who, like his mother, essentially has to have one foot in the grave before lying down for a nap. What can I say, we aren’t nappers. He did, however, have a really good sleep Friday night, which I did not expect at that point, and was much more chipper on Saturday.

I’m still a little salty, though. We have to do this AGAIN. In the next three weeks we have the following: a family party for my mom, my younger son’s graduation ceremony and all the stuff that goes with that leading up to and after, my older son’s LASIK surgery, my younger son’s graduation dance, my own 30 year high school reunion that I am organizing, and my husband’s colonoscopy. THIS IS A LOT OF THINGS. Not to mention our day-to-day stuff and everything else that is going on around here. We have to get it done before July, but he also has final exams in June, and I am just screaming into the void over here.

Well, it will get done, just like everything else. In the meantime, it’s hard to stay too salty when I look out my window and see not just Salvadore, but two new friends, Slider and Fernando, who my son and I came across at the garden centre. Look at them frolicking in the kale patch! Life is good, even when it’s frustrating, is the lesson I’m taking away.

Weekly Reading

A Likely Story. I’ve often wondered what it would be like to be the child of a very famous person, and the pressure involved in following the footsteps or finding one’s own way. See also: Ty Gretsky. This excellent novel follows the only child of a very famous writer – who also happens to be a narcissist. After the death of her beloved mother, the daughter discovers a secret and becomes involved in a convoluted web of lies and secrets, all the while trying to please her famous father. This was a great story with complex characters, and I had no idea what to expect from the ending. I really enjoyed it.

I’m Glad My Mom Died. I initially put this on my hold list last summer, and then changed my mind after a few months as I didn’t think I had the bandwidth to read about a mentally ill and abusive stage mother and her daughter’s coping mechanisms of alcohol abuse and eating disorders. But then a few friends read it and thought it was good, and I guess I had a weird kind of book FOMO? Anyway, I put it back on the list and here we are. I feel kind of gross and sick after reading this, to be honest, and I have to warn anyone who might want to read this: there are some pretty grim and graphic descriptions of her bulimia. Like, really graphic. Based on what she went through I’m impressed that she’s still here – her mother sexually abused her in the shower on the daily until she was 17, her mother forced her to restrict her calories and generally treated her like garbage. The cover blurbs say that it’s “impressively funny” and all I can say is I don’t think we read the same book. I didn’t find it funny at all. I did think it ended weirdly, with her vow to overcome bulimia and then the next chapter she was healed? I don’t know, I applaud her for writing this, as it was obviously therapeutic for her, but it was not therapeutic for me to read. I read most of it while in the waiting room at the dentist, and I will say that I am not a book snob, but I actually felt embarrassed when someone asked me what I was reading, because the title is so incendiary. I don’t generally wish death on people but I am also kind of glad her mom died. She made Joan Crawford look encouraging and nurturing.

Easy Beauty. This was a brilliantly written memoir about moving through the world and navigating motherhood with a painful and very visible disability. The author weaves her story with journeys – the actual travel kind but also emotional and spiritual – and discussions about works of art and philosophy. It’s dense and not an easy read, particularly when it comes to the way a person values themselves in a world that values and revolves around the able-bodied. I can’t say I enjoyed this, exactly, but it’s an impressive piece of writing.

I hope you all had a beautiful, restorative weekend. It was obviously a pretty low-key one around here, but the Mayday and Nanking cherry are in bloom, my older son and I planted containers and I did some gardening cleanup, there was cake, and we all watched Top Gun Maverick for the second time. Here’s to more blooming in the week to come. xo

Boyhouse Year In Review 2022

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Happy Almost New Year! I hope you have all been having a restful and restorative week! I have been enjoying myself immensely; lots of sleep, puzzles, books, food, and wine. We spent a few days at my parents, which is always fun, and involves games and food and more wine.

As is usual at this time of year, I’ve been reflecting a lot on the year that’s passed and the year that is to come. One of the biggest benefits to having a blog is the ability to look back, and wow, have we come a long way since this time last year. Late December/ early January were an absolute low point; things were dismal. Happily, on our Roller Coaster of Life, things have been more up than down; so let’s take a look at what happened in the Boyhouse in 2022.

January

The New Year started off pretty bleak and grim, with winter break extended and all diploma exams cancelled, and to distract myself from complete despair I talked about my concepts and mantras I try to live by every day, the kids did go back to school and I decided to stop reading the news, I talked about actual quantifiable goals that I work towards every day, I talked about how much I hate filtered photos, how I actually thought about Botox, and how I was unfriended by a high school acquaintance not once but twice, and I had a roller-coaster of a week that included new neighbours, a cancelled trip, a mouse in the house, and a possible hoarding issue with macadamia nut milk. This month’s Favourite Things were of the Hygge variety, appropriately enough.

February

I talked about all the fun physical changes that come in one’s forties, including but not limited to moustaches and chin hair, I had massive gratitude for all the Galentines in my life, I showed you a Week of Winter Outfits (spoiler: lots of sweaters and legwarmers), and I talked about automatic car starters and marital mismatches. I also told you all about the daily choices I make to show myself some love.

March

All Covid restrictions were dropped, and I went to Costco and lost my mind, it was exactly two years since the pandemic started, and we celebrated my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary, two years and one week in, we got Covid, and we eventually recovered enough to celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary with a Banff getaway, and my son turned 18. While we were isolated, I talked about the things that made my recovery happier.

April

I talked about the juxtaposition of my desire to wave at every neighbour and my reluctance to talk to them and hear insensitive comments about Barkley (god, that was hard for me to read), there were many signs of spring in my life, Salvadore came into my life and brought so much gnome-related happiness, we had a massive snowstorm and I scheduled appointments like a boss. It was my birthday and I talked about 47 things I love.

May

I was absolutely exhausted from the neighbour’s construction, our internet went out for seven hours and somehow we all survived, we had a lot of snow and I went to the garden centre, I shared my Week of Spring Outfits, and my son had his high school graduation ceremony, dance, and banquet, none of which I thought would happen, and I am eternally grateful. At that point I stopped my Weekly Covid Count. I also shared with you my makeup routine, and included my 4:00 am bare face.

June

I lived on the edge and planted my tomatoes slightly early while the construction guys listened to Dick in a Box, I had a weird medical mystery, my midlife crisis manifested in me giving Salvadore an actual bubble bath, and I confessed to having Low Level Shame about ghosting my long-time hair stylist. I also joined my husband in Banff for a Fancy Conference. Well, I was there for the Fancy part, he was there for the Conference part.

July

On June 30, we said goodbye to Barkley, and we were all brokenhearted. We started off the summer with some visiting relatives from California – including my teenage pen pal – and our usual trip to the lake for Canada Day, I found solace in hiking, my garden, and cooking, and I also snapped at door-to-door solicitors, I talked about Cart Karma, I started a Big Project and Curated my Closet, and in the face of a Calgary Heat Wave, I shared my Week of Summer Outfits. It was also the Ten Year Anniversary of Nicole’s Favourite Things!

August

We went on vacation, I read a lot, I vowed to have Just One Backup of everything in the house and kind of failed, I got all nostalgic, my husband and I went to Mexico where I spoke broken Spanish and sang karaoke, and I read a lot more. Notably and for the first time ever, I travelled with ONLY carryon, and I can never go back, proving that YOU SHOULD NEVER JUDGE.

September

Life has its ups and downs, and to that end there were mice in the house and the boys drank our expensive Patron mixed with Dr Pepper, on the same day I cleaned my kitchen with a toothbrush, the Queen died, my son turned 17 and when I went grocery shopping I realized I had some kind of Psychological Long Covid, and I thought about house staging and photo filtering, and showed photos of my unstaged, unfiltered home. My son went backcountry camping and to distract myself from thoughts of giardiasis I talked about a variety of Favourite September-Related Things.

October

My son did not get giardiasis, but we had a number of run-ins with local wildlife, one of my students introduced me to the concept that Gratitude Is The First Step To Joy, and I listed off some of the things I am grateful for, Rex came into our lives and has brought us so much happiness, I shared my Week of Fall Outfits, I talked about body changes and the concept of “flattering” when it comes to clothes, and I prepared for Halloween like a crazy person. I also celebrated all things fall-related!

November

I rapidly shifted into Winter and Tiny Secret Festive Season, we celebrated our one-month Rex-aversary, I finished my Christmas shopping, I joined all the cool kids in doing a Day in the Life post, I revealed my longtime desire to join a flash mob, and my son decided to join the throngs of men who observe Movember. I talked about Christmassy favourites and just regular favourites.

December

We all started Advent calendars, and mine was a puzzle one, I went to an actual holiday party with actual people and actual fancy clothes, I answered your questions about the holidays, I took the car in for servicing and it was a huge ordeal, I revealed my favourite childhood gifts, and I celebrated my girlfriends. On Festivus I talked about my favourite holiday things and also how I jerry-rigged the furnace.

It has been quite a year! 2023 will be a year of change for me; I’m not great with change, and I love my life as it is, but change is part of life, so here we go! Time to jump in. Happy New Year to all of you. Thanks for being here on this journey with me. xo

Should I Just Burn The House Down Or…

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It’s a tough day in the NFL, my husband said conversationally a few weeks ago. I thought that meant someone died, but no, it was the day the draft picks got cut from 80 down to 53. My husband watches the NFL draft every year – the sound when someone is drafted is actually the ringtone on his phone – which means I vicariously watch the NFL draft every year. I do like seeing the absolute joy when a player is drafted, particularly from the family members watching, and, even more specifically, the happiness on his mother’s face. The years of work and sacrifice and wondering if it will ever pay off; then when a player’s name is called you can see the relief and pure joy. Now imagine that same mother, just a few months later, when her son gets cut. Even if the player survives the cut, such a career is tenuous at best. I always think of a player’s mother, when I see one get carried off the field with what my husband will inform me is a career-ending injury, sometimes before the season even begins.

Parenting is hard, is what I’m saying.

So it’s been a very roller-coaster week around here, and I’m not going to get into all the ups and downs, or bore you with my subsequent existential crisis, but I will say that Thursday was my last first day of school ever, and I came home to a completely empty house, for the first time without a sad Barkley to commiserate with.

Well, onward. Let’s rewind two weeks to our Mexico trip and how the boys fared on their own.

I was a bit nervous to leave the boys to their own devices for five days. What if there is an emergency? I kept saying, but when my husband asked me what kind of emergency I was pondering, I just couldn’t articulate. I don’t know, someone gets gravely ill or the house floods or the furnace explodes or something? But the fact is that a) we have left them overnight before with zero issues, b) they are both very responsible and have pride in the house, c) they are both fairly competent in the kitchen, and d) my older son is 18, so technically an adult. I had two rules. Rule Number One: No parties! Rule Number Two: If you do have a party, erase the evidence and make it look like you didn’t.

I mean, we have to be practical here.

The boys did have friends over, and I know all their friends and they are all good kids. I wasn’t worried; as long as no one barfed in my house or got alcohol poisoning, everything was fine by me. Let’s not be naïve! I’m of the belief – and this may be controversial, and it really depends on your own personal situation – that the European way of introducing alcohol as something that is not forbidden, but should be consumed in mindful moderation is what’s best for my family. I also don’t want the boys sneaking around; I know some of their friends hide booze from their parents, but I wanted my kids to tell me if they were having a drink. If you want a drink, have a drink, but don’t sneak around and for god’s sake, don’t barf or drive or do anything stupid. Open communication! It’s something that has worked for us; my older son is legal drinking age now, but we’ve been doing this for both boys for a few years. Again, this is something that should be looked at on an individual basis but for us, it’s worked. I think flat-out forbidding things makes them that much more desirable, which leads to bad decisions.

In any case, I knew that they had a few friends over early in the week and a few drinks were consumed. I know this not only because they told me but because there was cheap beer leftover in the downstairs fridge (Mountain Crest, who are these people), and my husband’s very expensive five-year-old bottle of Patron was opened, even though we have many half-empty bottles of cheap vodka in our liquor cabinet BUT WHATEVER. Side note: kids, if you are going to take from your parents’ liquor cabinet, don’t choose the very most expensive bottle. And then don’t tell us you MIXED IT WITH DR PEPPER. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD THESE PEOPLE ARE MONSTERS. Anyway, I texted my sons while we were getting ready to come home, and was surprised that my younger son didn’t text me back until late in the morning. He’s an early riser generally but he said that was up late because he needed to “take care of some things late last night.” I was sure they didn’t have friends over at that particular evening, since my older son had a job interview early the next morning, so I figured he was just cleaning things up from two nights previous. We got home to a perfectly clean house, and I just shrugged it off. I don’t need to know every single detail, the house was clean, who cares.

The day after we got home, I decided to make a loaf of banana bread. I reached into the drawer under the oven where I keep all my baking pans. I noticed something suspicious. I moved the pans and confirmed that it was not my imagination. I started screaming my younger son’s name over and over, moving over to the cupboard underneath the sink. He came running out, probably thinking I was dying, which I was in a way. By the time he got to the kitchen I was taking everything out of the cupboard under the sink, screaming incoherently.

Me: That thing you had to take care of, what was it? WHAT WAS IT?

Younger Son: It’s okay, Mom. I took care of it. You don’t want to know.

Me: THERE IS MOUSE POOP EVERYWHERE, WAS IT A MOUSE.

YS: Um, yes. But I didn’t see any poop! I didn’t know about that.

Me: THEN HOW DID YOU KNOW THERE WAS A MOUSE?

YS: I saw it.

Me, now hysterical: WHERE WAS IT?

YS: Um, in the hallway.

It is a miracle I didn’t black out right there. I mean, I feel a bit dizzy just writing that. Reader, it is impossible to convey my reaction and the depths of my feelings, but when I relayed this information to my mother on the phone later, she let out a low-pitched sound like aieeeeeeeeeee and that pretty much sums it up. My son assured me that he found the traps and caught the mouse! It’s all okay! But how did he know there weren’t many mice, and if they were in the hallway, what is to say they aren’t everywhere right now. What if they are in my dressers, what if they are in my bed. At this point my husband, who was working from home and had been on a call, came upstairs to see me spiralling into insanity, hysterically disinfecting everything in sight and wondering whether boiling all the baking pans would suffice or if I should just burn down the house and start over.

Five traps later and things seem to be under control, mouse-wise. But for how long? I ran into one of my neighbours down the street, who casually mentioned, with no prompting from me, that they were having mouse problems. They mentioned a certain trap they had obtained and that in the last week they had caught over thirty mice in their house and garage. MY NERVES. THIRTY. If it comes to that I will have no mind left, none at all. As it is my poor fragile sanity is hanging on by a thread.

Whew, let us change the subject to something infinitely more pleasant: my garden. The flowers have been gorgeous; the roses are still blooming, the daylilies are beautiful, and we’ve had lots of tomatoes and zucchini. I thought I would have more zucchini, given I have seven plants, but perhaps I overplanted. Maybe there is just too much competition for the soil. Lessons for next year, I guess.

Exhale. In any case, the crazy week ended on a high note, as I spent a couple of nights at my parents’ house on the lake. It was a great way to end this very beautiful summer.

Weekly Reading

The Lies That Bind. Okay, so the first 2/3 of this book, I was thinking this is a cute little romance! It takes place in the months before and after 9/11; I was 26 in 2001 and so the events and the cultural details really resonated (remember Fodor’s guides?). Then it TOOK A TURN. Then it got really wild, like a weird train wreck that you have to keep reading but the whole time you think wait, what? What? Did that just happen? I’m not recommending it but I’m not NOT recommending it either. It just…was not at all what I expected. Reading it, I felt like that meme:

Literally, me as I was reading this.

The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. I hardly know how to describe this gorgeous piece of writing. The author spent twelve years creating new words for the very specific emotions we all experience. It’s brilliant and profound, and also makes me feel very, very seen. What a unique and creative work!

Here we are; the long weekend is over. We are officially in September and fall mode! I guess it’s back to reality on all fronts. Happy September to you all! xo

Baby Got Back

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Hello! I have missed you! I have just returned from a two-week vacation, visiting friends and family in the Okanagan. It has been an entire year since I have seen my mother-and-sister-in-law; partly this was pandemic-related, partly Barkley-related, but mostly it was because we didn’t have a place to stay in. I haven’t said much about this, but for the past year our Vacation Home has been turning into our Future Retirement Home; this has been a big project, including the addition of a second floor, that my husband coordinated from afar, while working full-time at his stressful regular job, and all his hard work really paid off. It’s beautiful.

We have been on many, many family vacations of all different kinds, but our Okanagan vacations are always pretty chill; friends are always surprised to hear that we don’t do any big activities or excursions when we spend time here. You’ve never been to the kangaroo sanctuary? What about the zipline tours? No, never.

Our days are all pretty much the same: we visit with family, I cook simple dinners or we very occasionally go out for dinner, we have friends come by to drink wine on the deck or we meet up with friends, I read a lot, I get my steps in and we all get caught up on sleep, and that is pretty much it. This visit, my husband and boys spent time doing odd jobs around the house – putting up towel rods, setting up weight equipment, cleaning out the old shed, taking things to the dump – and I grocery shopped a ridiculous number of times, which is what happens when I don’t do a full weekly meal plan. In the afternoons we would head over to see my sister-in-law, who has a suite in a house on the lake, and we swam.

This was such a great option to have, since there was an Actual Heat Wave happening, as opposed to a Calgary Heat Wave. It was hot enough that I headed out for my daily run or walk fairly early each day; once at the beginning of the trip I felt lazy, started a little later, and finished my run at 9:15 am. I thought I might die, or at least dehydrate.

I don’t think I have really mentioned this, but I have had a loose goal this year of walking or running at least five kilometres a day, and most days I easily exceed that; there have been a couple of days that hasn’t been physically or emotionally possible, like when Barkley died or when I had Covid, and there have been a handful of days when the weather was so bad it was all I could do to make it to four kilometres, but for every one of those days there are at least ten that I would be quite a bit over that goal, so it all evens out in my favour.

Despite this, I haven’t really been running long distances; I just haven’t felt like it, and I am at the point in my life where I am not going to do things that I don’t feel like doing. At home, I have a Run Day twice a week, and I will take a 20 minute Peloton spin class before running six kilometres, and that’s as much running as I feel like doing. But when I was on vacation, I found I had a different mindset, and also I did not have my Peloton and was getting more sleep, so I seemed to have energy to burn. The first day we were settled in, I started running and I didn’t feel like stopping. For one thing, Calgary is at a much higher elevation, and for another, my home run route is uphill for the first two kilometres; in the Okanagan, our house is on a hill so the first two kilometres are downhill, and then it’s completely flat. I ended up running eight to ten kilometres every other day, although I will say that the last couple of K, going up the hill without any shade, in temperatures 20 degrees warmer than at home, were a bit of a grind. I felt pretty accomplished, though, at the end of it.

One morning I was walking, and lost in the beauty of the walk and in my Jiffy Pop Culture podcast, and when I looked up I saw something coming towards me. It was this young fellow:

I have seen many deer in my life but I have never been that close to one. He kept coming towards me, even though I stopped walking. He stopped maybe twenty-five feet away and we looked at each other; I heard a bike coming up behind me and I waved to get his attention. The cyclist looked exactly like a slim Santa Claus, and we murmured in an awestruck way about the beauty of nature, etc., when he offered to take my photo with the deer.

A couple of bikes were coming from the other direction and at that point I got very nervous; this was a young buck, and we were kind of surrounding him. I stood very close to Slim Santa, and we watched as he meandered to the creek and left us.

Bucky wasn’t the only wildlife I encountered; when we were swimming at my sister-in-law’s, I grabbed my phone to take a few photos, and I saw this GIANT fish swim right up near the dock. It was at least two feet long, and it was in very shallow water. I have never seen anything like it; it looked like a giant version of those sucker fish that you buy for your fish tank to keep it clean.

I was thinking while on vacation just how easy everything is now. When the boys were small and we stayed in the original, unrenovated house, with one bathroom and a toilet that flushed maybe once every four times, at best, and that backed up into the shower while I was showering, everything was hard. A “vacation” simply meant that I was doing all the things I normally did at home, but in much less convenient circumstances; it was exactly like that Onion headline:

But now we have a beautiful house with THREE bathrooms and all the toilets flush, and I make meals we like without feeling sad that no one ever makes meals for me – no one does, but I have moved past the Sad Feeling – and the boys clean up the kitchen and help with the everyday jobs, and put on their own sunscreen, which is, as every parent knows, an amazing gift, and if I forget something at the store I can send my son out to pick it up, and we can entertain friends without worrying about bedtime or crying or anything else. With the kids becoming adults, family vacations will become rare and more complicated, and they are probably numbered, really, so I treasured this time we had together.

These are the good old days.

These little purple flowers serve as a reminder to me: when the boys were small and my husband was golfing on vacation, and I was feeling exhausted and resentful, my late father-in-law would try to help me out a little, by taking me and the boys for rides on his Kubota utility vehicle through the vineyard, which they loved. I mentioned once that I liked these pretty purple flowers – they are chicory, I think – and then he silently drove a long way to a part of the vineyard that was covered, absolutely covered, with these flowers. He stopped the Kubota and told the boys we were going to sit there for a while, so “Mom could look at the flowers.” It’s such a lovely memory and one that reminds me that while some things always stay the same, everything changes, and what is hard right now maybe won’t be, in the future.

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The 10th Anniversary Edition!

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This month marks the tenth anniversary of Nicole’s Favourite Things! A whole decade of writing about beauty products, clothes, food, and the occasional gadget. Two things: a) wow, I have been writing this blog for a very long time, and b) looking back at my very first Favourite Things, I still have all of those tops.

Ah, summer. I have been working very hard for this past year to really Embrace The Season, but here we are in my actual favourite season, so no hard work is needed. I love summer. I often idly wonder if I would actually miss seasonal changes if I lived somewhere like Maui, where it’s just one long summery paradisiacal day after another. Maybe I would? But it’s hard to imagine.

In my first Favourite Things, I expressed my love for summer clothes, and summery beauty products, and produce-heavy salads for dinner with berries for dessert. I still love all of those things and I probably always will! If I lived in a place where it was always summer, would I miss my sweaters and boots? Would I miss hearty winter meals and moisturizers for chapped skin and lips? Like I said, maybe, but it’s hard to imagine.

Anyway, that’s neither here nor there. The point is that I am Embracing The Hell Out Of Summer. When it’s sunny and warm, I just want to be outside all day long, and feel mild resentment when I have to go indoors. I have been like this my whole life; maybe I’m solar powered.

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The 10th Anniversary Edition

Non-Psychologically-Scarring Skirts and No-Bra-Required Tank Tops

In honour of my first Favourite Things, I am going to talk about skirts with shorts attached and yoga tanks with built-in shelf bras. These are Enduring Favourite Things, and I have many of the same skirt and top but in different colours and patterns. What can I say, if it works, it works. Listen, living in Calgary there are, annually speaking, approximately 20 days total in which wearing light summery clothing is appropriate. That’s probably a high estimate, actually. The upside of this is that good summer clothing can last forever, as the chance to wear it out is limited. The moment the temperature rises above a certain point, which would probably be considered chilly for my Southern friends, I don a skirt. I think they are cute, and they are very practical with the shorts underneath; I never have to worry about accidentally psychologically scarring random passersby or, more likely, my own children when the wind picks up.

I also love a good yoga tank with a built-in shelf bra; this is a thing that works for me mainly because I am, how shall we say, not exactly overly gifted in the chestal region. I wear these year-round, as a layer mostly, but on warm days they can stand alone.

Talk To Me Goose

My love for Top Gun is well-known; I have loved it since I walked to the theatre with my cousins and older brother in Estevan, Saskatchewan, in the summer of 1986. To this day I remember my outfit on that sweltering prairie night: jeans and a pale pink, tie-dyed, off-the-shoulder short sleeved sweatshirt, despite the heat. I was smart enough by that time to realize that the one theatre in Estevan boasted air-conditioning, and let me tell you, they wanted you to know they had air-conditioning. It was always freezing, and if you were naive enough to wear summer clothing to an evening show, you would be blue by the time the movie ended. Anyway, back when Hannah, Allison, and I cowrote a fun nostalgic blog (HI HANNAH HI ALLISON), I wrote one of my favourite pieces ever, about Life Lessons From Top Gun.

All of which is to say I love Top Gun, and I love the NEW Top Gun as well. Do not ask me to tell you which one is “better.” That is an impossible choice akin to the one Sophie made, and I will not make it. In any case, my husband bought me this shirt, and I love it so much:

It must be worn with aviators. It’s a law.

Pedicures and Sandals

In the summer I swap my boots for sandals, but because I am 47, my sandals need to be of the utmost comfort. Who has the energy for painful footwear anymore? I have found Skechers sandals to be the cutest and most comfortable of all the sandals. These are my favourite, and they are good for walking too:

But I also love these sparkly slides, perfect for the days at the lake:

I have heels for the rare occasion that I need them:

I keep my feet groomed throughout the year; being a yoga teacher my feet are on display constantly, so regular pedicures are a must. I used to exclusively do my own pedicures, but there is the cutest little nail salon just down the street from me, and their prices are fabulous. With each pedicure they give a hot stone massage AND they exfoliate using orange slices, which I love. I still touch up my polish between pedicures, but I definitely go to the salon more frequently in the summer.

Lettuce Pray and Flower Power

There is a great line in Sorrow and Bliss, when the husband acquires a plot in the community garden, and he says that they will now be self-sufficient, in the area of lettuce. I feel seen. I am currently self-sufficient, in the area of kale, as we just had our third cutting. I’ve also had two cuttings of Romaine, and although my leaf lettuce has been very very slow to grow this year, I am expecting to be able to cut it next week. At least, I hope so. Harvest time! I get so much joy out of gardening, it’s unbelievable. It feels like a superpower: do you like this salad? I GREW IT MYSELF.

The first of the roses bloomed – I grow John Cabot climbing explorer roses, explorer roses being the only ones I think are sufficiently hardy to survive our winter temperature fluctuations. This is always exciting as the first one is quickly followed by a wall of blooms.

Let The Spinning Wheel Turn

This week marks my two-year anniversary of the arrival of my Peloton! It was, without a doubt, my very favourite thing to come out of 2020. I know the bar is pretty low, but still. On the actual date of my first ride – which is this Sunday – I plan to revisit the same class I did then, a 45 minute disco ride with Leanne.

It has been a really fun way for me to increase my cardio fitness, and it is measurable: that first 45 minute ride, my output was 277. My usual output these days for a similar class is around 400. If you know, you know! Do you have a Peloton and want to be Peloton friends with me? If the answer to that is YES, my leaderboard name is NicoleBoyhouse.

Wistfulness and Avocados

I have two favourite links this month, both summery in their own way. The first is from my longtime, beautiful, smart, and all-round lovely bloggy friend Suzanne (HI SUZANNE). Suzanne wrote about how you can’t go home again, and the piece, like her, is beautiful, smart, and all-round lovely.

My other favourite link is from a newer blog friend, Jamie (HI JAMIE). Jamie wrote about toxic diet culture, body acceptance, taking up space, and avocados as a metaphor for our bodies. I love a good metaphor and I love a good avocado, but most of all I love her message, particularly in the summer when we are inundated with images of “beach bodies” and “bikini bodies” and what have you.

There’s so much to be grateful for in the summer, there is so much to love, but I particularly love and am grateful for YOU, my dear readers, for being here and for listening to a decade of Things that are my Favourite. xo

Five For Friday: Nature, New Things, and No Soliciting

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  • New Dishes. I have a very loose, “let’s see how this goes” goal of making one new thing for dinner each week, or, trying one new recipe. These are two different things as I am notoriously poor at following recipes when it comes to dinners. I am essentially one of those people who I loathed when I worked at YMC, a person who changes pretty much every element in a recipe, and then comments on that recipe, but without the commenting part. So, I guess not at all like a person I loathed. In any case, this week’s new recipe was cold quinoa salad with lots of veggies and edamame, a Thai-inspired dressing, and crispy chickpeas and lentils. If you’ve never had crispy lentils, I recommend it: I tossed some drained and rinsed canned lentils in olive oil, salt, and pepper and roasted them at 400 convection for about 20 minutes; they are small little things so I wasn’t sure how long to do it, and I checked on them every five minutes. My whole family loved it, I repeat, my family of meat-lovers LOVED THE LENTILS. I normally dislike leftovers and never eat them, but I put aside a small container for myself, as it was a perfect lunch to take on our hike the next day.
  • The Path Sometimes Taken. I also have a loose goal to go to the mountains More Often, which is about as loose a goal as one can get. Yesterday the boys and I hiked around Stewart Canyon which is about seven kilometres and not as much elevation as I typically like in a hike, but it was a lovely day. Once we reached the end of the trail, there was a small path with a sign that said “Warning: Path Ahead Not Maintained,” so of course, we took it to see what would happen. What happened is that we had to climb over many fallen trees until we got to the point where the path was completely blocked, at which point we turned back and ate the afore-mentioned lunch.
  • There’s A Sign, Read It. Speaking of signs, we have a No Soliciting one on our mailbox. At least ten years ago, but probably more, our doorbell stopped working. I asked my husband, who is very handy and who has repaired many, many things in our house over the past 22 years, to please NOT fix it. At the time, I was home alone most days, and the only people ringing the doorbell were door-to-door solicitors, and I am never going to want to save money on my heating bills or purchase a paper copy of the Calgary Herald. If I was having company, I’d watch for people at the door, and all my friends know to knock, anyway. This was great for a time – it’s pretty easy to not answer the door when there’s no doorbell – but then solicitors started knocking. Can I just say the best thing about 2020 was that door-to-door soliciting stopped? Anyway, sometime in 2021 it restarted, which is when we put the sign on our mailbox, which is directly beside our door. Yesterday I was relaxing after our hike, reading, and I heard a very loud knock at the door. I looked up, thinking it was a delivery and wondering what we had delivered, when I saw a man looking in the window at me reading in my chair. I could see he had a lanyard and a Telus uniform, and I just knew, the way you know about a good melon, that he was here to talk to me about changing internet service providers. I opened the door, and as soon as he greeted me, I said “I have a No Soliciting sign, and I ask that you please respect it.” I said it pleasantly and politely, with my face arranged in a pleasant and polite way, and then I shut the door. I could see him lift up his hands and shake his head in a what’s with this woman kind of way and I will tell you, I was VERY annoyed. This is the second such interaction in as many weeks. The first was a fellow with no lanyard and no uniform who told me he was selling “organic meat and seafood,” which a) ew, b) I eat neither meat nor seafood, not that he would know that, c) who sells MEAT door-to-door, d) we are in land-locked Alberta, SEAFOOD, really, e) this sounds like a scam, and f) I HAVE A NO SOLICITING SIGN ON MY DOOR. I could have pointed out any of those things but I went with f. Anyway, after yesterday’s interaction I found myself unaccountably enraged. I mean, over-the-top, screaming-into-the-void enraged. I immediately texted my very good friend and neighbour Taryn (HI TARYN) and asked her if I was overreacting. She very gently said that I had every right to feel that way but also, perhaps, my emotions were near the surface as I didn’t have a fuzzy companion by my side when I opened the door. She was 100% right, of course. I went into the garden to calm down a little.
  • Bzzz Bzzz Bzzz. I have been spending a lot of time in my garden this week; Tuesday was a particularly low and sad day, but I found it healing to watch the giant fat bumblebees buzzing around. They seem to love the flowers just below the kitchen window, and I could watch them forever, collecting their pollen, as busy and purposeful as can be. The first of my daylilies are blooming, my roses are just about to, and my columbines are putting on a glorious show. This weekend I will have my THIRD cutting of kale, which is the upside to this very cool and rainy start to the summer. It’s maybe not great for the rest of the garden, but I have a tiny little pepper on one of my plants, so there’s hope.

  • Reliable? Or “Reliable?” This sign is on my running route and it cracks me up every time I pass it.

Happy Friday, friends! xo