Category Archives: Hello Calgary

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Fall Fruit and Fashion Edition

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It has been one of those “Lemon, it’s Tuesday” kind of weeks, for no particular reason. Nothing has been happening out of the ordinary, which, these days, ordinary is kind of extraordinary, but there has been nothing I can put my finger on to indicate why this week has felt extra long and strange. All I know is that I’ve been mentally a day ahead of the actual day every day this week.

Hooray, it’s Friday! I have big wine-and-Greek-salad plans tonight, and my husband and I are watching the final episode of the first season of Ozark – late to the party, I know, but I’m terrible at committing to actually watching a show. He’s been asking me to watch it with him for over a year, and I guess I’ve capitulated. We have been watching one or two episodes on weekends ONLY because I find it pretty disturbing to my sleep cycle.

Also hooray, we have been having the most BEAUTIFUL September. It’s really a crap shoot around here; September can be brutally cold and snowy, but this year it has been absolutely warm and gorgeous, with only a couple of frosty mornings. The fall colours are in full swing, and as I said to a gentleman I passed on my walk the other day, any September without snow on the ground is a great September.

Anyway, it is almost the end of September, and I promised myself I would keep my monthly Favourite Things going all through this pandemic – although “pandemic” now feels like “forever” or “this is life now.” In other words, it’s time for…

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Fall Fruit and Fashion Edition

Before I get to my Favourite Things, I am going to introduce you to Barkley’s new Favourite Thing. First, some background. Out here on the prairies, what passes for fruit is the pathetic cousin of the glorious apple, known as the crabapple. There are crabapple trees everywhere and although some intrepid souls actually harvest those sour little things and add ten pounds of sugar to them to make them into a jar of semi-palatable jelly, mostly they just litter lawns as people desperately try to give them away before raking them up and putting them in their green compost bins.

Our next-door neighbour has a crabapple in his back yard, and squirrels are constantly picking them up, eating small amounts of them, and then dropping them in OUR back yard, underneath our stand of spruce trees. For Barkley, this is like a mix between Christmas morning and winning big in Vegas. For weeks now, he has been mysteriously missing from sight in the yard, only to emerge from the trees with an apple in his mouth.

A few weeks ago, I mentioned to my husband that Barkley was smellier than usual, but other than terrible gas that would have us all opening the windows, he was fine. That was when we discovered the Apple Bonanza, which happens every year but I seem to forget about it/ block it out.

He’s eating so many apples that he’s actually gaining weight, and although we do have to keep his weight down for arthritis reasons, I don’t have the heart OR the time and inclination to run outside, duck under the trees, and clean up any stray apples every time Barkley goes outside. Well, he’s twelve, and might as well get some enjoyment out of the fall, and in any case, apple season will be over soon, the snow will be here, and winter will have us all pining for these colourful, albeit smelly days.

These Apples Are Delicious; As A Matter Of Fact They Are, She Said

All of which is to say, it’s Apple Season in the Boyhouse too! It officially started Wednesday when there were a few expensive Macintosh and Honeycrisp apples at Superstore. I LIVE for Macintosh season, and although the selection was poor and the cost was $2.39 per pound, I bought a few. I was a LITTLE salty when the lady across the street told me later that day that the Co-Op around the corner had Macs for sale for $0.99 per pound; the sale had been going on for the entire week and was OVER by the time I got there. I could have been eating not only Macs for a week, but $0.99 per pound Macs for a week! Time AND money lost.

Well, we can’t live in the past, and in any case, I am eating them now. Some of you might view Apple Season as the time to make pies and crisps and applesauce, but as you know, for me, that is a grievous waste of an apple. I shall gorge until the season is over.

This apple was so good I almost cried.

Pears, Plums, and Nectarines

Some of you in warmer climates – I’m looking at you, Gigi and Suz (HI GIGI HI SUZ) – might not think of these as fall fruits, but here, if I obtain a fruit in September, it’s a fall fruit. I bought nectarines three weeks ago and they were so delicious, I almost didn’t buy them again, for fear they wouldn’t be as good. I’m glad I DID buy them because now they aren’t available. Plums are my husband’s favourites, so I’m adding them here even though they aren’t mine.

Pears. PEARS. I love pears and I only eat them at this time of year because I find them gravely disappointing any other time. The only problem, as I see it, is that we have to buy them so green, and then they all ripen at once. I mean, it’s not really a PROBLEM, per se, more of a pear-binge. With four fruit-hungry people in the house, they don’t last long.

Pears, I find, are not unlike avocados in that they take a while to ripen and then you have to strike while the iron is hot. Again, this isn’t really a problem.

The Middle-Aged Woman Look (Scarves, Sweaters, Flats, and Boots)

A few years ago, a woman I know said – and not in a friendly way, but in a disparaging, nasty kind of way – that the way you know a woman has hit middle age is that she starts wearing a lot of scarves and flats. The woman went on to say that SHE embraces her heels and low-cut tops and honestly, good for her. You do you, lady.

However, I love flats and I love scarves and there is a very limited time of year here that one can actually wear a scarf and a sweater and call it a day. I mean, you still can, but while outside the wind is often so powerful that scarves either unwrap themselves or threaten to strangle you, and a sweater is insufficient for the chill. Lately though, we have had a few days where it HAS been still and mild enough to go out with a sweater and scarf and pretend that we are living in a glorious climate and not one in which we are waiting for the other (flat) shoe to drop.

God, I love a good scarf. I think they are so pretty and snuggly. I haven’t reached the Nora Ephron stage in which I feel “bad about my neck” although sometimes, when I see photos, I do think my neck looks like a weirdly striated tree trunk.

I’ve embraced the long swirly drapey sweater look for a while now, and I find – and this is a topic for another day, a big topic – I love them even more because they smooth out the, how shall I say this, softening of my abdomen. But as I say, that is a big topic for another day, how perimenopause affects your body no matter what.

As for flats, I used to be a die-hard wedge heel girl, but now I just feel more comfortable, fast, and getting-my-steps-in with flats. I do still have a few low-heeled boots, but for the most part, my shoes are pretty flat. I have reached the stage in life where shoe comfort has taken precedence over shoe style. I guess that is because, god willing, I am now middle-aged.

Actually, I hope to live to 100, so I’ve got five years to go before I hope to be in TRUE middle age, but I don’t want to tempt fate.

Those are my favourite September things, what are yours? xo

Bizarre Even For These Days; Twenty-Seven Weeks In

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This has been a bit of a bizarre week, starting with a phone call cancelling an appointment due to an unbelievably scary accident, happily segueing to a midweek birthday, followed by a letter summoning me to jury duty, and then finishing with a pre-dawn visit from the fire department due to our carbon monoxide detector going off. Happily, there was no carbon monoxide leak, the screaming detector was, apparently, at the end of its life span. Thanks for letting us know so dramatically, carbon monoxide detector! Your replacement has been installed.

I was scheduled to get my hair cut this week for the first time in six months, and when I heard the voice mail from my hair therapist’s colleague advising that she needed to rebook my appointment, the first thing I thought was She’s Got Covid. During the brief greetings I waited to hear the words, only to listen instead to the awful details of my hair therapist’s husband’s accident that entailed airlifting, and intensive care, all in another province, and with the usual difficulties around Covid protocol, after which the colleague cheerfully said, “So I have to rebook your cut and colour!” At that point, it seemed like the least important thing ever, and I told her so, as she pencilled me in for later this week. “Wow, thanks for being so understanding, you’re being so GOOD about this!” the colleague said in a voice that made me wonder: what are OTHER people doing? Are other people NOT being understanding? What is happening to our society?

I’m going to go out on a limb and say something that might be strongly disagreed with: this pandemic has been GREAT for my hair. I know! I know. For one thing, as we all know, I’ve been colouring at home and saving so much time and money, it is not even to be believed. I picked up a couple more boxes of Garnier at Superstore and they were on sale for $4.99 each, plus I got PC Points; more about points later. Four dollars and ninety-nine cents, people. The other part about the pandemic is that after not cutting my hair for six months, it has grown out beautifully. Pro tip: if you want to grow out your hair, stop cutting it. It’s true that I need a trim, as the ends are pretty dry and damaged, but I love the length. A while back I wondered if I should grow it out or not, and the decision, like so many others, was taken out of my hands.

The above were taken at the end of February and the middle of March, so you can see that my hair was above my shoulders at the time. This is from the weekend:

With mask-wearing and yoga teaching, I have my hair in a bun a lot, and it’s so much easier to put it up with the extra length; in other words, I don’t need twenty bobby pins to hold it in place. I’ve decided to follow in the footsteps of my good friend Denise (HI DENISE) who gets a professional colour semi-annually, and my friend Nicole (HI NICOLE) who gets a cut the on that same schedule.

In addition to my long, not-exactly-luscious-but-definitely-convenient Covid hair, I have developed Efficiency Skills when it comes to grocery shopping. I have never before received so many Gifts With Purchase as I have during this pandemic, and I am just now, twenty-seven weeks into this, that I am calming down about Buying All The Things. There are not many shortages of food or other necessities, and so I have finally relaxed about having backups of staples such as pasta or flour. ONE backup is all that is necessary, although I still have three bags of flour in my pantry purchased in the spring, which should get me through to Christmas at least.

I was at Superstore for my weekly shop, and you know how there are some employees who are REALLY good and dedicated when it comes to their jobs? I appreciate that so much. I remember when I waitressed in university, a customer said to me “You must really love your job! You’re always smiling!” I agreed, although I did NOT love my job. I mean, have you ever worked in a restaurant? It’s hard. Smiling was just part of the job. So, I really appreciate when others, no matter what their job is, embrace it, which is why I felt lucky to have the most cheerful cashier ever this week, who exclaimed over the quality of my produce, like I actually grew it myself and didn’t just pick items from a bin. “Do you collect PC Points?” she asked and I scanned my app for her. “You can use your points when you shop to get good deals, and don’t forget to check back every Thursday for your new offers!” I paused for a moment, imagining a world in which I did NOT spend time figuring out the offer algorithm, and subsequently making my weekly list based on when I was most likely to get points and for what items, and what I would get points for the following week, a world in which I did NOT wake up Thursday mornings and think, yay, it’s PC Points day!, a world in which I did NOT text my husband excitedly to tell him my points balance. Instead, I just nodded and said “Yes, you bet!” God bless that cheerful employee. I’m going to seek her line out next week.

As a runner, I always smile in solidarity when I see other runners in the street or pathways, even when not running myself, which probably means that I am perceived as the Crazy Smiley Lady much of the time. Well, I have become appreciative of a good smile, since we are masked so much of the time. Anyway, I was out walking Barkley, doing our forty-minutes-to-go-merely-two-kilometres pace, and I saw a young man running on the street perpendicular to me. I slowed our already-not-exactly-super-sonic-speed so that he could pass with lots of room, when I noticed something odd: he was not wearing shoes. He was perfectly clad in what I would call Real Runner Wear: a tidy ball cap, a sweat-wicking sleeveless tee, and running shorts. All that was missing was shoes. And socks. I watched him go up the street, making great pace, occasionally looking at his smart watch and occasionally brushing gravel and debris off his feet. What even. What is happening here.

So it has been a surreal week, more so than normal, but there was delicious cake, and some good books, and a smokey but lovely long walk with a friend.

Pandemic Reading

As soon as I finished this I went to the library app and bookmarked all of Emma Straub’s other books; this was SO good. Again, the slice-of-life book is the type I love best, and this had to do with adult sibling-and-parent relationships, families, and finding love.

My longtime friend Tracy (HI TRACY) recommended this book and it is FASCINATING. From Vietnam vets to survivors of child abuse, this book examines how trauma changes our brains and also our physiological makeup and also explores different therapeutic approaches to working with traumatized people.

Well, hello to Monday and I’m looking forward to what will hopefully be a less bizarre week. Take care, stay well. xo

Science Is Magic; Twenty-Five Weeks In

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I, Too, Get Cold When It Is 72 Degrees Outside

As my husband and I were out for our daily constitutional, an older lady in a fabulously bright pink jacket was walking down the sidewalk towards us. I stepped off the sidewalk to give her a two-metre bubble, and said “Oh! I LOVE your pink jacket!”

My husband said I sounded exactly like Buddy the Elf, which put me in mind of the old Twitter game, back when Twitter was fun and not a toxic cesspool of inhumanity, where you would describe your personality using three characters from popular culture. Mine are, without a doubt, Sally Allbright, Monica Geller, and, obviously, Buddy the Elf.

What Day Is It Even

To familiarize the students with new health and safety protocols, and to ease all the teens back into the classroom after a nearly six-month hiatus, last week the boys went back to school, one morning each. Grade Tens were in on Tuesday, Elevens on Wednesday, and then nothing after that until classes resume tomorrow. Add that to a long weekend in which my husband miraculously did not work and a visit to my parents for an early birthday celebration for my younger son, and I am more confused than ever about the days of the week. I feel really discombobulated, more so than normal. I mean, today is MONDAY. And it’s also a holiday. And it’s also freezing cold, complete with icy rain, in a “hello, it is now fall” kind of way. So far, the snow has held off but it’s COLD. I’m glad I “harvested,” as I am pretty sure my herb garden is not going to survive this.

It’s Sweater and Boot Season

There are a few warm and sunny days in the forecast, but mostly we are transitioning back to socks, boots, and sweaters. Despite my reticence to say goodbye to summer, it’s kind of fun to go through my sweaters again, after a whole two months without them. Shopping my closet, that’s my game.

Also matching my masks to my outfits.

Whoa-oh-oh It’s Magic

I have a beautiful Pandora necklace that is probably ten years old; I haven’t worn it for years as it had completely tarnished and blackened. It hung in my jewelry box, and, frankly, I forgot about it until a couple of weeks ago, when it caught my eye.

I looked up easy ways of cleaning silver and discovered the most amazing, incredibly simple way of doing it. First, line a bowl with aluminum foil and set the piece of silver in it, making sure it’s completely touching the foil. Bring water to a rolling boil on the stove, measure out the boiling water, and add one tablespoon of baking soda for each cup of water. Pour that mixture over the silver and wait for the magic to happen!

You can actually see the chemical reaction take place, you can smell the sulphur. I left it all to sit until the water cooled enough for me to put my hand in to take out the necklace, so probably 25 minutes. Rinse off the silver, and voila.

Magic! Or, more accurately, SCIENCE.

Pandemic Reading

This was incredibly eye-opening, terrifying, sad, and yet very hopeful. I actually didn’t know who Trevor Noah is, as I have never watched The Daily Show, but I’m glad it was recommended to me.

Oh, this was so good. I have always loved “slice of life” books and this one, set in Jerusalem, is an incredible look at female friendship with one of the most complicated political backdrops. Warning: this is not a CHEERFUL story, but it is incredible, so well-written. I resented doing literally anything else but reading this until I finished it. Fun fact: the author used to live in Calgary! Why? Who knows! But she did.

I know so many women who loved this immeasurably. I really loved the messaging, I admire her humanitarian work, and a lot of it resonated deeply with me. However, I did not love the writing style. I wasn’t at all surprised to see that Elizabeth Gilbert is her friend and mentor, as their styles are very similar.

I was one page into this when I realized I had read it before, back in 1998 when I was in grad school and someone lent it to me to take a break from economics texts. It was certainly worth a reread though! It’s good to have 22 years of a different perspective.

Photos taken before the weather change! Hope you have a great week, everyone. Stay safe. xo

Rock and Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution; Twenty-One Weeks In

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Turn Down For What

We have officially reached a new milestone. My younger son was practicing with his band in his buddy’s garage, so they could have the door open, be physically distanced, and in general follow Covid-style health guidelines, like the responsible 14-and-15-year-olds they are. His buddy’s dad is in a band, and so has a complete drum kit and set-up, and since it is a garage, it is much cooler than my basement, which is also a practice area, given that we have drums and they are not a portable instrument.

The neighbours did not enjoy their free concert, as evidenced by the noise complaint lodged and the police showing up to shut them down. In the middle of the afternoon, no less! Did you know you can lodge a noise complaint at 2:00 in the afternoon? Neither did I!

Evidently the officer was very nice – my son, the drummer, was the one who had to talk to him – and “no fines will be pressed as it was their first offence.” I am trying VERY HARD to feel compassion for the individual who a) called the police instead of walking twenty steps to the garage to ask them to maybe lower the noise, and b) are that bothered by teens who are not getting into trouble but instead are making music together in the middle of the afternoon that they lodge complaints. Well. Some people are just generally unhappy and in the meantime, I guess practices will take place at my house, as the basement is quieter from the street and also my neighbours are very nice and would never complain.

After they got shut down they apparently went into the field and played golf with tennis balls, which seems to have more potential for damage than playing Stone Temple Pilot covers.

Where The Wild Things Are

Speaking of fields, there is a little green space behind my house. Longtime readers will remember it as the scene of the crime where we found Manny the Mannequin, and not infrequently, a passed-out individual. But not these days! These days it is the hangout of a gang of coyotes. Right behind my backyard, where my elderly dog spends his days. I guess this explains the decline in the wild jackrabbit population.

The Wolfie Dynasty

The older gentleman who lives across the alley and down – just down from the coyote hangout – had a wonderful golden retriever named Wolfie. Barkley, in his spoiled life and advanced age, doesn’t love all other dogs, but he and Wolfie were, insomuch as we can anthropomorphize a couple of dogs, friends. Sadly, Wolfie passed away this winter, but the gentleman has a new puppy now. A sweet golden retriever, and when I asked his name, he replied “Wolfie.”

I was speaking of this phenomenon to my husband, and he recalled, many years ago, that the gentleman had a German shepherd, and he thought that THAT dog’s name was also Wolfie. It turns out, upon questioning, that the current puppy is Wolfie Number Five. The gentleman has, he said, had a Wolfie since the Sixties.

It’s a dynasty of Wolfies! I guess the dogs wouldn’t know the difference anyway, and it sure would take away any confusion over calling the dog by its name.

Summer Breeze

As per usual when we get our 7-14 days of summer, there have been many complaints about the Heat, and Heat Warnings Are All In Effect, the Heat being defined as being 28-29 degrees Celsius with very little humidity. Heat Warning! Is the warning that you may get a little sweaty while walking around outside? Possibly.

Anyway, the complainers are now vindicated, as the weather has turned. In Calgary, when the weather turns, it TURNS. You can actually feel the fall-like chill in the air. The nights are very chilly and even the warm days have that fall feeling. Complainers, you got your way.

Why doesn’t it work that way when I complain about the cold? When I complain about the cold it doesn’t magically get warmer, we just get snow for another six months.

Before it turned, my husband actually had a day off work, my god, a day off, and he accompanied me and the boys on a 13.4 km, 900 metre elevation hike. It was a great day – and we did, in fact, get sweaty.

Note! As per my Favourite Things post, I wore my Routine deodorant and I was perfectly fresh-smelling even after that hike on a warm day.

Pandemic Reading

This was a fun reading week!

This was such a fun read. If we were going to a beach this year, I’d call it a Beach Read, but alas. It was a great Sunny Backyard Read. Part murder mystery, part detective story, part Scooby Doo, this also had a really good theme of body acceptance and the dangers of believing everything we see on social media. Plus, lots of fashion descriptions, which I am HERE FOR.

Ooooh, this was SO GOOD. It’s been a while since I read something that made me want to not do anything else at all, just read. Ooooh, I can’t say anything about this without spoiling it, so I won’t. Just. It’s so good.

I think Suzanne recommended this? Suzanne? Was it you? (HI SUZANNE). It was fascinating, all about children’s television as an educational medium and – spoiler alert! – how Elmo saved the day.

Have a great week, everyone! Rock on. xo

What Day Is It? Twenty Weeks In

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Very late to the party, but last night I finally watched Hamilton and it was worth staying up an hour past my bedtime to do it. The music! The costumes! The entire cast and ensemble! Normally I fall asleep within minutes of watching, well, pretty much anything, but this felt like an EVENT.

Watching Hamilton on a Sunday night did not help my complete disorientation with regards to time. As I mentioned, last week was our week of summer and we spent some days at my parents’ place up at the lake. This feeling of festivity and holiday, along with my husband STILL WORKING EVERY SINGLE DAY, has left me feeling like this:

The other day I squirted dish soap into the sink full of dirty dishes and turned the hot water on full blast. I puttered around, putting things back in the fridge and wiping the countertops, and when I turned back to the sink, anticipating it to be nearly full, I was startled to see it empty, just a couple of bubbles sadly resting on the dishes. I went into full panic mode that something! Had happened to our sink! And we are in a pandemic! And my husband is working EVERY SINGLE DAY! And I’ll have to call Tony The Hot Plumber to come and fix it and it’s just one more thing to schedule into the week that I don’t know what day is what! And then I realized that I didn’t actually PUT the plug in.

Well. I was at Superstore last week, and at the entrance is a giant bottle of hand sanitizer and a giant bottle of spray with which to wipe down carts. At the Co-Op – which I rarely frequent these days, given my enormous once-weekly routine – there is a bottle of spray that is meant for both wiping carts and sanitizing hands. Like I said, I am rarely there these days so it’s not like that is the routine I’m used to. I am used to Superstore. So I don’t know why I sprayed both my hands and the cart with the same bottle, belatedly realizing that the bottle contained BLEACH. I stood there in the entrance way, masked people zipping around me to grab the actual hand sanitizer, while I realized that I bleached my own hands and waited for my skin to dissolve.

That incident did NOT help the dried-out old-lady appearance of my hands.

Peas from my parents’ garden! If there’s anything better than eating them straight out of the pod, I don’t know what it is.

In addition to fresh garden veggies, we spent time paddle boarding and lots of time on my dad’s boat. It was warm enough to swim, although the water – like any Alberta lake – is NOT warm. The boys had a great time jumping from boat to water until, in what can only be described as a testosterone-fueled attempt to jump the furthest, my older son sliced his toe open on the edge of the boat. Oops. I hope Grandma’s not upset that I got blood all over her towel. Luckily it wasn’t deep enough for stitches, and also luckily, we take butterfly bandages with us wherever we go.

Well, we had a great week and it looks like there will be MORE sunshine and warm weather this week too! I can hardly believe it.

Pandemic Reading

I picked this up on a whim at the library and was glad I did; on the surface it’s about how we live our lives online, and what that means. What does it mean if someone likes your post? Or doesn’t? But deeper than that, it’s about systemic barriers for women of colour and trans women in the music industry, white privilege, and how the world tries to pit women against each other. A timely read, that’s for sure.

I picked this up because it was touted as uplifting, but I frankly found it just extremely sad. It’s a memoir written by a man dying of a very strange and debilitating neurological disease, and as he wrote about his childhood, I was reminded of the theory that painful and traumatic childhoods are associated with chronic health issues and illness in adulthood.

That’s it for me this week – August, my god, it’s August – I’m off to enjoy the next few days of summer. Next week…an update on my herb garden! I bet you can’t wait. xo

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Sweat, Baby, Sweat Edition

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This is the truest statement I have ever seen. It’s this week! This week is summer! Celebrate!

Calgary gets approximately 5-10 days of warm weather per year – and by “warm,” I mean above 25 degrees Celsius – and those 5-10 days are not always consecutive. Once the temperature hits 25 – and let’s recall, people, that Calgary is essentially an urban desert and we don’t really get humidity – within hours people will be complaining about the heat. The one-to-two days that we get 30 degrees or over? You may as well have thrown the city into an actual inferno. Everyone is dying of the heat.

Not me, though, I love it. I’m sure our friends to the south – actually, our friends everywhere except maybe Iqaluit – are hysterically laughing at our definition of HEAT.

Anyway, summer is here! This week feels festive and holiday-ish, and so I’m doing things like switching up the weekly meal plan – enchiladas on a Tuesday! Pasta salad on a Wednesday! What’s next? Who knows! – and spending as many hours as I can outside.

Which brings me to…

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The “Sweat, Baby, Sweat” Edition

Deodorant

This cracks me up. I know a surprising number of people who either wear Tom of Maine-style deodorant or eschew it altogether, which, in my humble opinion, is the same thing.

I know, I know, aluminum, chemicals, etc., but I have a solution for you if you are not a fan of the antiperspirant/ traditional drugstore deodorant. Longtime readers will remember me talking about Routine Deodorant; it’s been in my Favourite Things several times over, it is made locally – in fact by a friendly acquaintance of mine whose kids went to my kids’ elementary school – and it honestly works. I remember when she used to sell her deodorant in the school playground; now it’s renowned internationally. I mean. How can you not be excited about something like that? I love when women I know really make a name for themselves; let’s celebrate and lift each other up and shine on, you crazy diamonds.

Anyway. Routine! For the most part, when I hear “natural deodorant,” I think “feral hippie,” but this is something that honestly works. My favourite scents are Whoa! Blackberry Betty and Cat Lady.

If you want to know if they REALLY work, this is what I look like after my workout:

Note the drips of sweat on the floor:

Can I just briefly tell you how much I love my new Peloton? I LOVE MY NEW PELOTON. I feel like I’ve joined a cult, I’m so excited about it. I just did a “70s Ride” and it was awesome.

After I took these photos I sniffed my own armpits, and they still smell lovely. ACTUALLY LOVELY. Plus, since it’s a deodorant it does not inhibit the actual sweat itself, which I like, and which feels healthier.

HOWEVER. Not always do I want to have soaking wet armpits. For example, when I’m teaching or otherwise around people (I mean, I might be around people sometime in the future?). In this case I have to shout out for Nivea Black and White. This is an actual antiperspirant, and it is the only one I have ever found in the last three and a half decades that does NOT leave white residue on my black clothing. Since I wear black clothing most days, this is important. I can also go for a walk in the “heat” of the day, in full sun, and still smell like actual flowers.

Skirts

All right, that’s probably enough about how I combat body odor. Onto clothing!

The last time I wore actual shorts for anything other than exercise – and even that is rare – was probably 1997 when I was super into crop tops and Daisy Duke-style denim shorts. That’s right, I rocked those.

Since then I’ve never found a pair of shorts that fits correctly, or looks good, or is comfortable. Sure, I could probably dig out those Daisy Dukes – and if you’re a short-short kind of gal, go you! – but honestly I feel like that ship has sailed. However, one cannot always wear pants. My go-to, then, is the kind of skirt that has little shorts built in underneath; I can do all my normal day-to-day activities without traumatizing my children/ people on the street who would rather not see a 45-year-old woman’s thong underwear.

This photo was taken two years ago in Vancouver. That skirt is one of my favourites. I buy them from Lululemon – I know, I know, haters going to hate but their stuff lasts forever, I have things still from 2007 that are still going strong – and for day-to-day purposes I buy them a size bigger and in the “tall” length. I am 5’7″ and I like to have a little extra length.

I do have one skirt that’s in my actual size and regular length, which I use for running on warm days. It makes me feel like I’m running in an actual tutu, which is quite motivational. Look at me, I’m a ballerina.

Yoga Mat Cover

If you practice yoga, and find your hands slip during downward dog, may I suggest a mat cover? I always practice with one, due to hand slippage, but also because it’s much easier to clean. Just throw the cover in the wash when it starts to get sweaty! I like the ones from Manduka or Lululemon that advertise that they get sticky when wet; they work the best, I think.

My early morning practice studio! A little squishy but it works.

Water

I drink an average of 3-4 litres of water a day, depending on my activity levels. That, along with my morning pot of coffee, makes for a lot of bathroom breaks, it’s true. However, I like to be hydrated and I find if I don’t drink that much water, I get headachy and bloated and tired.

An easy way to drink that much water is to have a pretty water bottle to drink from. This one is from S’Well, which maintains the water temperature for something insane like 24 hours. I prefer my water at room temperature, so I fill it with our not-cold water filter tap.

Anyway, isn’t it pretty?

White Wine

You all know I’m a big red wine drinker, but when the temperature goes above 25 degrees, and that happens on a Friday or Saturday, I break out the white wine. Well, sometimes I do. This is a shout-out to Tantalus, which I’ve talked about before, and if you are interested in my husband’s family history, go read this post.

Photo is from March, at the start of this pandemic. Ah, what a crazy four months it has been.

Well, that’s it for me. I am going out to enjoy the summer for the next three or four days that it lasts! Catch you on the flip, lovelies. xo

Luck Be A Lady; Sixteen Weeks In

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This past week, among other things, I read a book recommended to me by an old grad school friend called Success and Luck. As the title suggests, it explores the role luck plays in individual – and collective – success, success being defined here as the financial or economic type. Yes, there are many definitions of success in the world, it’s not all about the money, we could talk for days about how we measure material success but there are other WAYS to define success, I know, I know, but the book is written by an economist, was referred to me by an economist, and hell, I AM an economist, technically, although I haven’t worked in that field for many years.

Anyway, the role of luck is something I think about often, and so this book was fascinating to me. Every single job I’ve ever gotten has had an element of luck and timing to it, and each one of those jobs – from my very first as a library page to my job as a quantitative analyst on a natural gas trading floor to my job as a yoga teacher – has shaped my life. I am qualified, hard-working, and smart, but so are many people; luck and timing have so much to do with everything. The book wrote about actors who ALMOST didn’t get the parts that essentially made their careers: Al Pacino as Michael Corleone, Bryan Cranston as Walter White. Where would they be without those roles? Al Pacino could have landed minor supporting roles to supplement waiting tables, Bryan Cranston would have gone down in history as the guy who played the dad on Malcolm in the Middle.

But jobs aside, sometimes I will think of things that have happened in my life that almost DIDN’T happen, and how that would have changed everything. It’s like that urban myth of someone stepping off the sidewalk and suddenly a car careens into that spot; if that person hadn’t stepped off the sidewalk they would be dead. A butterfly flaps its wings and an earthquake occurs.

So much of our lives depend on things that happened before we were born; WHERE we were born, for example, and who to, and who they were born to, and so one ad infinitum. Of course we can make our own choices, and to some very limited extent, our own luck, but the world is a rich tapestry, people, and I can’t stop thinking about it.

Speaking of which, my husband recently saw the movie Into the Wild, and is now reading the Jon Krakauer book of the same name. Have you heard of this? A young man from a very intellectual and wealthy family leaves everything, burns his identification, and without telling any of his family members, changes his name to travel across the States, ultimately landing in Alaska, where he starves to death. Hoo boy. There are so many things about this story that bother me no end: the man wants to live off the land, essentially, and just be one with nature. Thoreau-like, if you will, except as we all know, Thoreau’s mother was always leaving him food and doing his laundry, and his little cabin in the woods was owned by a friend, and in fact Thoreau himself benefitted much from aid from friends and family. It’s funny how our baser needs must be taken care of before we can reach these higher intellectual achievements, and we could talk forever about how women have supported men in those achievements but it doesn’t typically work the other way around, a room of our own, a woman’s work is never done, et cetera, but let’s return to the story at hand before I digress too much.

Anyway, this man who died in Alaska: it turns out that he was about thirty- five kilometres away from the nearest town, that’s ALL. When he finally figured out that living in an abandoned bus, completely unprepared, with no food and no axe and no common sense, wasn’t what he wanted to do, when he figured out that being around other people is actually a good thing, he wasn’t able to cross the river that, three months earlier, had been largely frozen over and not swollen with snowmelt runoff. However, if he had explored less than two kilometres in either direction, he would have found places to cross, where he could have eventually made it back to the highway and, probably, not starved to death. There would have been no story, other people who died trying to find the old abandoned bus after the story became popular would still be alive, Sean Penn would have had one less movie under his directorial bibliography. A butterfly flaps its wings.

Pandemic Reading

Someone had recommended Conviction to me; I cannot remember who it was but I want to thank them. Not my usual type of book but I enjoyed it very much.

If you are looking for a cute, predictable, fluffy romance, this series is for you! It’s nice to just enjoy mind candy once in a while.

Late to the party but I can see why this was so popular. What a well-written and wonderful book. Talk about the role of luck and fortune; this book is full of it.

Pandemic Fitness

This weekend I got on my bike for the first time since last summer, and went riding with my older son. Things were a little muddy due to the torrential rains we have been having, but that just added to the fun.

Case in point: the boys and I went on a little Canada Day hike/ walk to the natural area near our house; it was awesome, yes, but we probably should have brought raincoats, looking at the sky. The heavens opened on us on our way home, and we were absolutely soaked.

Speaking of Canada Day, I will leave you with a photo of Barkley, festively dressed for the occasion.

Have a beautiful week! Here’s to being lucky. xo