Category Archives: Hello Calgary

Crying In Superstore

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I am not at all a stress or emotional eater – in fact, in trying times I tend to lose my appetite and forget to eat – but I am a Taurus, and I love to treat myself, particularly when I have had a lot of onerous or tiring tasks. Not always is that treat food-related, although I do love a good Lindor or a bowl of chips with guacamole. More often that treat is a book I’ve been looking forward to after I have washed the floors or an interesting podcast to listen to while doing something boring like folding the laundry. Friday nights that treat is a nice glass or three of wine, to celebrate the start of the weekend. Sometimes I treat myself with a nice bottle of scented lotion or a new beauty product. And then sometimes, I feel the need to bake myself a cake.

Hoo boy, it has been a week, and also, there is more to come. In a nine-day span, every male in this house will have had a medical thing to deal with: my older son had LASIK surgery last week, which turned out to be a real success, my husband has a colonoscopy today, and if you have ever had one yourself, you know that the prep is much, much worse than the actual procedure, and my younger son has not only another podiatrist appointment this week, but his dental surgery got bumped up to this coming Wednesday. That latter is actually a blessing, since I received information that the Grade 12 BBQ and yearbook signing party is on the day that he WOULD have had the surgery, had the surgery not been moved. As it is, he won’t miss the festivities, and he will be hopefully all healed up by that time.

By saying yes to everything and being encouraging of all activities, I have been really committed to ensuring my son has a really great senior year, and I think that he has. In the past, the school has put on a banquet for graduation – except, of course, for the 2020-21 grad classes – but this year, the school decided to have a big dance instead, with grads only, no family members allowed. The school did, however, ask for parent volunteers.

Me: Oh hey, honey, the school needs parent volunteers for the…

My son: No.

Me: But…

My son: NO.

I mean, it’s probably for the best. Who wants their mom hanging around their grad party, even if she is considered to be the Cool Mom? The theme was “A Night In Hollywood” and my son went with a group of his buddies, and it was the best time ever, the end.

Careful readers may have noticed that I said every male in this house, and as such, Rex is included. Oh, Rex. The day of my son’s graduation I took him to doggy day care, as I didn’t want to leave him alone in the house all day. It’s like I have a giant furry toddler. The very next day he whimpered at 5:30 am to be let out and then had, how shall I say this delicately, explosive stomach upset. ONE day at doggy day care! IT IS JUST LIKE HAVING A GIANT FURRY TODDLER. It seemed to be a fairly isolated incident, with a couple of less-dramatic incidents, and he had his usual enormous level of energy, eating and drinking normally. I didn’t worry and I moved on with my life.

That is, until Tuesday when he again whimpered to be let out, this time at 5:00 am, and then he was outside a LOT. One thing no one really tells you when you have a baby is how much time and energy you spend examining their diapers and noting things like colour and “seediness.” The same goes for pets. I found myself examining the back yard and when I discovered blood in one of the very loose stools, I went from Perfectly Calm to Panic at the Doggy Disco. I called the vet who said that they could not get him in until the next day, but if I wanted to come by to grab some probiotics, that would probably help. The next day was when my son was having eye surgery, and then he had checkups the day after that, and it was all the way across the city, during rush hour, and no, I could not bring Rex in the next day, all was ashes.

Panic Level High, I headed to the vet to pick up probiotics and then found myself bursting into tears at the front desk, being completely unable to speak, and unfortunately, the woman I was sobbing in front of was not the same woman who I spoke with on the phone, so she was completely puzzled and alarmed. Who is this crying woman? Did her dog die? Finally the woman I had spoken to did come by, looking at near-hysterical me, and then asked me to wait a moment. She came back to say that if I was willing to just drop Rex off for the afternoon, the vet would squeeze him in between appointments and then call me when she had examined him.

I zoomed home and then zoomed back to the vet, then zoomed over to pick up groceries, but I could not calm down. I could NOT calm down. Rationally I couldn’t understand it: I was doing everything I needed to do, Rex, by all measures other than his BMs, was obviously fine, everything was okay. Still, I couldn’t settle. I would take deep breaths and then my eyes would well up, looking at the bananas and spinach. Then I had a notification on my phone, which is when I realized the date: it would have been Barkley’s birthday. At that point I started crying in the produce section. It was just too much. Everything in my life felt like Too Much. I managed to settle myself down enough to finish shopping – buying all sorts of weird “low fibre” foods for my husband’s upcoming colonoscopy prep – and to drive home. I had just finished putting everything away when the vet called me with the good news that Rex just needed to be dewormed, he was fine, and I could come and pick him up.

Because of Rex’s size, he was in an exam room all by himself, as opposed to in a kennel. The vet started to lead me to the room he was in…and it was the room in which Barkley died.

So it’s been kind of an emotional week, I have to say, and I’ve got a lot to get through this coming week. One foot in front of the other, the only way out is through, etcetera, but hopefully there will be less crying at Superstore.

Weekly Reading

Yellowface. I really love when a book has a lot of nuance, a lot of questions, and nothing that is black or white. This satirical novel about a woman stealing her dead friend’s manuscript, editing it, and passing it off as her own is absolutely incredible and full of so many unanswered questions. The biggest question it poses is who gets to tell what story? This is a very interesting question to me and I think about it a lot. For example, years ago I read American Dirt and really enjoyed it; it was only afterward that I found out about all the controversy surrounding the author. But does that take away from the story? For me it didn’t, for you it might. It’s important to note that women have been telling men’s stories, and vice versa, and I don’t tend to think that’s wrong. Of course, there is the added layer of the publishing industry and the biases and exclusions involved. To add to the irony, the author tells a story about a white woman, which she is not. In addition to the big question, there are many small ones. What about the creative process? Where do stories come from? If an idea comes from a conversation, and a book is written about it, was that a stolen idea? Another theme in this book is the role of social media in our society and the “pile ons” that can happen. There were just so many things that brought to mind the last fifteen years of social media, trolls, etc., and how they affect real people. This book shows the competitive nature of publishing and how everyone is scrambling to get a piece. At the heart of it, this book shows how a lie can turn into a giant web of lies, and how keeping secrets can kill a person from the inside out. I almost never say this, but wow, this book lived up to the hype!

When The Apricots Bloom. I thought I would love this book about 2002 Iraq. It has, theoretically, everything I love in a book: description of a different culture, an alternate look at an international political situation, three women protagonists and how they are connected. But yet, I did not like this book AT ALL. The plot, which should have been interesting – the secret police, espionage! – dragged and the dialogue was terribly stilted. What a disappointment.

On this emotional roller coaster of a week, I had my first kale harvest of the year! The gnomes must be helping. I had planted a few different varieties and they were delicious. I hope you all have a beautiful, non-roller-coaster style week, with lots of fresh produce and minimal produce aisle crying. xo

The Years Are Short

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What an incredible week it’s been! Although I don’t believe Mondays to be a portent of the week to come, last Monday night it poured rain, which settled the smoke in the air. We woke up to blue skies and sunshine, and the ability to take a full breath outside without feeling like this might be the first step to lung disease. I thought this was a sign of a great week, and it was.

Blue skies!

I was especially happy – not just because the smoke was giving me aching muscles and general fatigue, which disappeared immediately after the rain – because we had such a busy and exciting week ahead. My younger son had his graduation ceremony, and all the fun hoopla that comes with it. The ceremony was on Friday, but the kids had to return their gowns immediately afterward, so Thursday after school I photographed my son and his group of friends. There is a group of about ten of them that have been really tight for years – some since kindergarten – so to see them all in their caps and gowns was really wonderful.

It was so much fun; they were all such good sports for their photo shoots, humouring me with silly supermodel poses and changing locations around the school, blowing kisses and posing in a conga line on my cue. “Work it, work it!” I’d say, and then “Frolic through the trees!”

I SAID FROLIC!

I had a belated birthday lunch with my dear friend Tara (HI TARA) on Saturday; both our second children graduated this week and we were discussing the ceremonies. Both our ceremonies had a lot of graduates – there were 691 in my son’s class, and a similar number in her daughter’s – and we both had a feeling of deep gratitude that we could be there and experience it. I had the same feeling last year, when my older son had the first grad ceremony held since 2019.

If there is one gift that the Covid pandemic has given me, it’s extreme gratitude for the ability to celebrate occasions. After the ceremony, one of the moms had arranged a luncheon at a golf club for the boys in their group – the Brentwood Boys, as they are known – plus all the family members and grandparents. She had asked us all to send in photos of the boys throughout the years and then created a slideshow, which was really wonderful and special. There were photos from elementary school, sleepovers, Halloweens, and birthday parties, and, of course, there were a lot from the pandemic. They finished junior high in June of 2020, and we had photographed them all outside, all standing six feet apart, and it was a little sad to see those photos, thinking of the fun things they missed that year. There were so many of those pandemic photos: birthday parties where they had masks on, standing outside, bundled up for the elements, a few of them in my own backyard, with chairs six feet apart and a big bottle of hand sanitizer in the foreground, school lunches every day at a friend’s nearby backyard and garage, even when it was well below freezing, because they weren’t allowed to eat inside the school. These kids have been through a lot and all I could feel was happiness that we were all there together, sharing a meal and laughing and hugging. How incredible to have such friendships over the years. How incredible to be a part of this group.

We moved into this neighbourhood twenty-three years ago, and one of the biggest selling points was that there were schools of all levels within walking distance of home. We had the choice to bus the kids to other, specialty schools, but we really wanted the kids to be able to walk to school and make friends in the neighbourhood. I am so glad we made that decision all those years ago.

Back when the boys were very small, I would walk them to the elementary school playground after naptime and before the school let out for the day. It was a good way to kill some time before dinner and allow the kids to have some fresh air. I was so lonely back then. Being home with two very small children can be a very lonely experience; it was always hard to coordinate playdates with other moms of more than one child, playgroups were only once or twice a week, and there are just so many long hours in the day. My husband was gone twelve hours in the day, generally the twelve hours that the boys were awake, so I was just on duty all the time. So I would take the double stroller to the playground, and I would see two moms who were always there with their kindergarten age children, waiting for the older ones to finish for the day. I desperately wanted to be friends with them, and I did try to talk to them, but the chasm between a mom of a one-and-two-year old and a mom of a five-and-seven-year old is vast and wide, and also, if you have ever tried to strike up a conversation while caring for two toddlers, you know of which I speak. Conversational continuity is nearly impossible, and so I continued being lonely, looking at those women longingly.

This week’s graduate, at the playground 16 years ago.

Only a few years later, I did become friends with them when my own children were at that school, and we were all on the same volunteer committees together. I happily was absorbed into their large circle, and we have been friends all these years, the self-named Brentwood Babes. Saturday night, some of the Babes went to dinner theatre, which I had never done before. My son’s best friend – they have been friends since age 3 – works there, and we had a great time watching the rendition of The Wedding Singer, which involved really great music and lots of laughs.

It’s amazing, really. I’m the baby of the group and it’s pretty incredible to have a group of friends who are a few steps ahead in life, who have supported each other through so many life changes and hardships, and who have shared in each other’s joys. This neighbourhood is a bit like a small town, with its shops and parks and kind of knowing each other’s business, with its Food Library and Little Free Libraries and the actual public library, with its schools and playgrounds and grocery stores. For me, this neighbourhood is the best thing about living in Calgary, and I was really feeling it this week.

Thanks to Covid, I will never take for granted these long-standing friendships and the ability to spend time together; I would never say the pandemic is a good thing, because it was terrible, but no mud, no lotus, as they say.

Weekly Reading

Fleishmann Is In Trouble. There are at least two sides to every story, but sometimes, when you are in the thick of a story, it’s hard to see the other side. This book, which on a surface level, deals with a divorce and custody of children, was brilliantly written in three parts. The first part focuses entirely on the husband and all the things that he is going through, and I found myself incredibly sympathetic to his plight. But then, the narrator – who is a third party – starts to show cracks and glimmers of insight into the wife’s life and motivations. It’s complex and very, very gripping. More than just a book about a breakup, it’s a scathing treatise on marriage, divorce, wealth, class, and, most of all, what it means to be a woman moving through this world. Women, as we all know, can never really win or have it all, particularly mothers. There is always something we are giving up or giving in to, there is always some societal pressure on us to act a certain way or be a certain way, and if we give in to that pressure, it’s going to come at us from another angle. This book was brilliant and is definitely one of my favourites so far this year. Someone recommended this to me; my initial thought was Engie (HI ENGIE), but she read it in 2020, and it was recently recommended. Was it Birchy, or maybe Suzanne? (HI BIRCHY HI SUZANNE). If it was you, let me know!

Don’t Call Me Home. There is an Alice Munro story called Jakarta, which features a running joke between two women that starts with “I’m no prude, but…” and I kept thinking of this the whole time I was reading this memoir about the daughter of an Andy Warhol muse and an artist. I’m no prude, but…this book was shocking and kind of horrifying in every sense of the word. I don’t even know where to start but let’s just say the first ten years of this woman’s childhood were spent nomadically, until her mother became pregnant with her sister – actress Gaby Hoffman – at which point they lived at the famed Chelsea Hotel in NYC. Every single detail about this memoir had my eyes opening wide and my eyebrows finding refuge in my hairline. Obviously her mother was mentally ill and it’s pretty sad that Warhol made tons of money without disseminating any to the women who worked for him, but also, my god. This book is bananas. It’s also weirdly written and there are just so many people in it that I found myself thinking “wait, who’s Ron? Who’s Kathy? Is Mike their son or…wait, is that her own COUSIN she’s considering having sex with? It is? Oh my god.” I mean, your mileage may vary but I found this so disturbing and not written well enough to warrant me overlooking the material.

It’s gearing up to be a pretty busy week around here, once again, but not quite as exciting or social as last week. I hope you all have a beautiful week with lots of blue skies and sunshine. xo

Five For Friday: The Smoky Eye Edition

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  • There are terrible wildfires north of us, and we have been experiencing immensely smoky air and extremely poor air quality. It has improved a bit over the week, but Tuesday was an absolute low point. We had intense, gusting winds and being outside felt exactly like having smoke blown in my face, but at 80 km/ hr. Smoke in the air is pretty common here in late August, but in mid-May it feels weirdly apocalyptic, unsettling, and scary on so many levels. The sky looks cloudy and foggy, but it’s neither cloud nor fog, it’s smoke. There are many more important and urgent issues at hand, obviously, but selfishly and superficially I have to say that a) it is so disappointing to come to the end of a long winter only to be faced with dreadful smoke that really cuts into the pleasures of being outside in nice weather, and b) my hair smells. When I bend over and my hair goes into my face, I think something stinks in here, and then I realize that something is my own hair. My hair smells exactly the way it would after coming home from the bar from a night of dancing and drinking vodka slimes out of little jugs. I guess this is specifically a problem of Youth In The Nineties, because no one smokes in bars anymore. Or really, at all.
It looks like cloud and mist, but it’s smoke
  • On that note, remember going to bars and dancing all night? I heard the song Strike It Up the other day and was instantly transported to the dance floor at the Fox and Firkin. I was talking to my boys about this, and how if you met a guy in the bar you would maybe exchange information by writing your home number on a piece of paper or napkin, or maybe on your own hand. Nowadays, the youths just exchange their socials, which really cuts down on the awkwardness of having your dad answer the phone or your brother saying that you couldn’t come to the phone because you were in the bathroom.
OMG how embarrassing
  • Speaking of the Nineties, the other day I remembered General Foods International Coffees, which I thought was the height of elegant home coffee solutions. French Vanilla! Cafe Vienna! Suisse Mocha! And all you needed was a tin of the powder and some hot water. I remember thinking, back in the day, that it was so exciting to actually go to a coffee shop and order a cappuccino, as they were not as ubiquitous as they are now. It was a super-fancy treat to be able to do that, and these days it could not be more run-of-the-mill. I mean, there is nothing you can do at Starbucks to make it feel like an exotic treat, no matter how many syrups or shots or non-dairy milks you use. Nothing these days compares to a cappuccino in the early Nineties. The absolute peak of my coffee excitement was when I was in Europe for a school trip in grade 11, and I had a cappuccino in Rome. At the time I couldn’t imagine life getting better than that.
Post-cappuccino excitement
  • There is an election going on in our province, and there is a woman who is running in the riding where I teach yoga by the name of Jenny Yeremiy. Every single time I see her signs – which is every time I drive to the community centre – I think, giggling, “JEREMY YEREMY?” and then I remind myself that it is JENNY, not Jeremy. This is the sort of thing I think might happen to a normal person ONCE, but it happens to me every time I see a sign, and there are probably five signs from the time I enter the community until I get to the centre, and then back again. So ten times, twice a week, I think JEREMY YEREMY, and giggle. I would blame this on the smoke’s effect on my brain but it’s been happening for weeks now and also, at this time last year, the community was advertising a night of food trucks. Taste the Trucks! the signs said cheerfully, and every single time I would think “Taste the Tricks?” and picture men with their tongues hanging out of their mouths while looking lustily at attractive sex workers. Although, technically, I think a trick is the man in this situation, this is still a thing that happened in my brain for weeks. Too long, didn’t read, I think something is broken in my brain. My son was on the couch post-surgery, blearily flipping through Disney Plus, and I saw a show with a picture of a Storm Trooper. “Bad Bitch?” I said to my son, “That’s a weird thing to have on Disney Plus!” He looked at me tiredly and said “Mom, it’s Bad BATCH.”
In the parking lot, giggling about Jeremy Yeremy
  • Speaking of tricks, in the book Easy Beauty, there is a scene near the end that I have not stopped thinking about since I read it last week. The author and her son and husband were going to a magic show at the park, at the husband’s behest. The son – who was about seven – kept loudly making statements about how he was not impressed with the magician, how he knew exactly how the trick was performed, and then detailing HOW the trick WAS performed. There’s a secret compartment, the magician has something up her sleeve, etcetera. The husband kept asking him to be quiet and then, of course, the punch line is that the magician did something incredible – she made a stuffed rabbit disappear, collapsed the box she had put the rabbit in, and a live rabbit was in her hands. The little boy was, finally, in awe. What bothered me about this entire scene was that prior to this final trick the author kept high-fiving and praising her son for being so smart! So cynical! No magic show was going to fool him! All the while, other people exist, and were there to hear this little boy brattily talk about the lameness of the magic tricks, while his mother praised him for this behaviour. The woman’s husband kept begging them to stop, because it was disruptive and bothering other people, but the woman proudly KEPT GOING. I obviously wasn’t there. I have no skin in this game. People parent in many different ways. AND YET. I am so bothered by this rude behaviour, that affects me not in the least, I cannot even. I CANNOT EVEN.
Rex cannot even either. He’s in a constant state of wonder.

It’s a holiday weekend around here and I am desperately hoping for the smoke to dissipate and for the north to get sheets of rain. We are heading up a little north ourselves, to celebrate my mom’s birthday. I hope you all have a festive, non-smoky weekend. xo

Bloody Hell

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After such a cold April, May suddenly – and briefly – burst into summer. We had gorgeous sunshine and summer-like temperatures all last week, which had the happy result of warming up the community centre, so my yoga classes were taught in a normal-temperature setting, rather than a frigid one. The yard is becoming greener by the minute; the Mayday and lilacs are leafing out before my very eyes, my perennials are starting to peek out of the warmer, sunny beds, and I have been in a state of joy all week. I was able to have the windows open in the early mornings, so I practiced yoga while watching the sky lighten and hearing the birds chirp, and it all felt very Mary Oliver. In fact, I pulled out my Devotions to read her thoughts on the shift of winter to spring before my practices. I recently came across a meme that was along the lines of the world being on fire, the news depressing, everything is terrible, and Mary Oliver says “But have you ever really thought about a LEAF?” That’s how I felt.

I have been working on really embracing every season, both literally and figuratively, but I am very much a Summer Girl, and although it didn’t last, this week of summer-feeling temperatures has really boosted me. That, and a couple of huge things happened that lifted a heavy weight off my shoulders, which I am not in a position to talk about yet on this blog; I definitely have a spring in my step.

The spring was decidedly missing in my step the other day when I jauntily donned my cute summer shoes sans socks for a walk with Rex. These shoes are several years old, and well worn-in, so I don’t know how or why it happened, but I developed a blister and then that blister broke open, exactly at the halfway mark of my walk. Why do things always happen when you are exactly the furthest possible distance from home? I had some tissues in my bag, and so I tried to wrap them around my heel to relieve the pain of walking, but bizarrely, the back of my foot started bleeding profusely. By the time I got home, the tissues were half-in, half-out of my shoe and were soaked with blood, I had blood all over my shoe, and I felt a little like Count Almasy in The English Patient. I have been WALKING. For three DAYS. Except instead of three days, it was three miles. One of my octogenarian neighbours drove by as I was coming down the street, and pulled over to chat. I hoped he couldn’t see my foot, which by that time looked like an old-timey depiction of a leper’s, with the trailing bloody tissue and my subsequent limp. I had a pedicure scheduled the very next day and I didn’t want to cancel, as it’s a small local business, but I will say it did sting quite a bit. A ripped-open heel doesn’t pair well with orange-peel exfoliation.

Speaking of blood, I had to get routine bloodwork done on the weekend. I made an appointment at the lab, stopped eating and drinking at 7pm on Friday – which was a little sad, since I wanted more wine; it was Friday, after all – and toodled over early Saturday morning, expecting that the past would predict the present and I would be home within twenty minutes.

I clued in that this might not be the case when I was greeted by a giant line snaking down the hallway. It turns out that the lab started taking walk-ins, which it hadn’t done throughout the pandemic, and I felt extremely grateful to have an appointment, as the wait for walk-ins was three to four hours at that point. Three to four hours! I was already feeling a little off, since by 7:30 am I have generally consumed several cups of coffee, and I was, of course, not allowed to do this for fasting bloodwork. I can’t imagine my state had I had to wait three to four more hours. Someone might have gotten stabbed.

I was called for my appointment only ten minutes late, which I thought was excellent, and then I sat in the little room for twenty-five minutes while the woman who was to take my blood kept tapping on the computer, as other white-coated people dodged in and out with panicked questions and she herself had many panicked questions. It turns out that the lab had been taken over by an American company, and their new system was put into place that very morning, their system that was set up for American insurance and not Canadian universal health care. Why this was the case I have no idea but the woman was almost in tears of frustration by the time she finished the extensive paperwork and actually took my blood, which took all of about ninety seconds. She tearfully told me they had only been open an hour and she already had seventy people in the queue, so I wished her luck in what was going to surely be a very stressful work day, grabbed my little urine sample container, and fled.

I don’t really wear masks much anymore, although I had to wear a medical one for the lab. Even my doctor and dentist do not require them now; this was the first time I had worn one, other than as a courtesy to the checkout people at the grocery store while in line, for a long time. I was happy to do it, of course, labs are gross petrie dishes at the best of times, but this was the first time in a long time I felt a little weird being in a crowd. Maybe it was all the incessant coughing. The WHO announced the end of the global health crisis this week, but I guess I haven’t personally felt in a crisis for almost a year.

Not everyone feels like I do, of course, which is to say that I felt very seriously about the pandemic in the thick of things, and now I feel like I am calmly moving through the world, not thinking or worrying about Covid in any real way. If, however, you are in a group situation and you say something along the lines of being past the pandemic, it is a guarantee that someone will chime in to say that we are NOT past the pandemic, that Covid is still with us, people are dying of Covid EVERY SINGLE DAY, and what about long Covid, there’s so much we don’t know, etcetera. All of those things are true, of course, other than the pandemic part, as of this week, but also? I am just going to live my life in the most mentally, emotionally, and physically healthy way possible, without that constant-fear feeling I developed from 2020-22.

Of course, there are people on the flip side too. We had a plumber in to fix our toilet – not Hot Tony, but one of his almost-equally-hot employees; what is with the hot plumbers in this company? – and as I was chatting with him pleasantly, he came out with “I respect everyone, and everyone has a right to their own opinion…” and at that point I knew. I knew what was coming. Anyone that starts a sentence declaring a right to their own opinion is going to have an opinion that I will disagree with, and that is what happened. “…but I really didn’t believe the whole Covid thing,” he stated. Whether he didn’t think the pandemic mitigation strategies were effective or beneficial, or if he didn’t believe the existence of Covid at all was unclear to me and I did not want to further this line of conversation. After all, the guy was fixing my toilet. I took that as my cue to mention that I had just made a pot of coffee and did he want any, and when I came back with said coffee, he said that he hadn’t been sick once in the past three years. I suppose that meant the latter, in terms of his belief. I did not comment on his sample size of one, but I was happy to have a fixed toilet.

Weekly Reading

Flight. OH.MY.GOD I LOVED THIS BOOK! Wow, wow. Incredible characters, relationships, and nuance. Incredible writing. This follows three adult children and their families as they navigate the first Christmas without their mother. It is so moving and beautiful. Wow. My fellow lovers of character-driven books will love this; anyone who has encountered family drama or sibling issues or difficulties with blending families and in-laws will really find this relatable on so many levels.

No Filter. You know I love a memoir, especially a celebrity memoir whose life is SO DIFFERENT from my own. Paulina Porizkova has had a fascinating life (so far!) From her childhood during which she was subject to an international custody battle between Sweden and Czechoslovakia (the Swedish hockey team threatened to not play the Czech one in 1972 because of this drama), to her living in Paris alone as a model at AGE FIFTEEN, to her relationship with a man 21 years her senior at age 19, to the dissolution of her marriage and being left with no money upon his death, this book is a ride. It’s comprised of essays, which I love. Wow, she has been through a lot. Although she speaks well of her ex-husband, he seemed toxic and controlling and apparently spent all her millions of modeling money, while making her feel like she’d didn’t contribute financially in any significant way. She talks about how she has changed from being mean, judgmental, and arrogant, and accepting her changing face and body. Years ago my friend Alice (HI ALICE) said that reruns must be hell for actresses, and I think that goes for former supermodels too. I really enjoyed this.

Enchantment. What happens when you’ve gone through a global pandemic, you have constant chatter of social media and news, and you just can’t concentrate enough to read books anymore? This author had that experience and so worked to awaken enchantment in her life through the natural world. This is a beautiful book about connecting with the world, although I didn’t love it like I thought I would, since I loved Wintering so very much. I do find that I am willing and able to read with interest other people’s experiences and feelings about the pandemic, which I wasn’t able to do a year ago.

This week is not going to be so gloriously summer-like, but it is shaping up to be a perfectly pleasant spring week, with nary a snowflake or freezing temperature in the forecast. It’s a wild and precious life we are leading, friends! I’m going to bandage up my feet and get out there and enjoy it. I hope you do too. xo

Yoga Talk

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After years of dedicated practice, in 2016 I took yoga teacher training, and I have been lucky enough to be teaching consistently ever since. I have taught everything from vigorous, athletic Ashtanga to slow-moving restorative yoga; senior’s yoga and yoga for stroke survivors, Hatha yoga and chair yoga, and even one outdoor children’s yoga class, for my niece’s Sparks unit. Teaching this wide variety of classes has given me a very good understanding of different bodies, abilities, and needs, and I think it has made me a better teacher.

Recently Suzanne (HI SUZANNE) asked her readers to discuss things that they excel at, that make them feel in their element, and for me, I think it’s teaching yoga. More specifically, I think my strength is making students feel comfortable and welcome in my yoga classes, and encouraging them to just be there and be part of the group. I really try to make new students feel like they are immediately part of the community; I work hard to make a warm and welcoming space for everyone to explore yoga postures as they need to.

I trained to be a yoga teacher under a man who was himself Iyengar trained, and if you know anything about yoga, you will know that Iyengar-style is very focused on alignment; in other words, to be very exact in how the posture is taken. It is ironic, then, that my particular teaching style has nothing to do with this. I believe very strongly that we all have different bodies, and so every asana is going to look different for every person. I spend a lot of time thinking of different variations so that any given posture can be accessible to every person in every class, regardless of any bodily limitations.

I became very good at this when I was teaching yoga for stroke survivors; some of my students were seated on mats, some on chairs, the occasional student in a wheelchair or scooter. I would read the room and then figure out how we could all do, for example, baddha konasana or butterfly pose. On a chair, it looks like putting the soles of the feet close together while allowing the knees to go apart, on the mat it looks different, but it is having the same benefit. One is not better than the other, but one may be more appropriate or accessible, depending on the person.

In 2017 I started subbing every so often at a community centre, and I ended up taking over these classes entirely a little while later. These are registered classes, which are an absolute joy. Students have come and gone – and this week I had two new students, one lady who had never done any yoga before in her life – but I have been teaching a core group of ladies, and the occasional gentleman, for years now, and I know all about their lives, their spouses, their children and grandchildren, their surgeries, their blood pressure and cataracts, just everything about their lives. I am a people person and for all the classes I have taught, I have always tried to find out at least a little bit about every single person. I have taught a lot of people over the years, and so I occasionally forget a name or detail, but not with my registered classes. Seeing people regularly for years really builds up a great sense of community.

There is one small thing about these wonderful classes, and I can’t decide if it’s ultimately a “we’re all in this together,” character-building, This Is Real Yoga thing, or if it’s what it feels like, which is kind of a negative: the actual physical space. It’s different from the cushy studios I have taught at over the years that feature art and candles, props and blankets, soft lighting and tea after class. This is an old-school community centre hall: a big spacious, drafty room with fluorescent lighting and linoleum over concrete floors. It’s chilly at the best of times, and this past six weeks, all classes have been cancelled as they have been replacing the HVAC system. Last Monday was my first class since mid-March, and I was excited to see all my students again.

I received an email the week before classes restarted, which said that classes were still starting as scheduled but there was still no heat in the building. This is a room that is chilly at the best of times, but with no heat? People, it was brutal. There were space heaters, but they did not seem to improve the situation at all. The room was 16 degrees in my Monday afternoon class but 13 degrees for my Thursday morning class; I wore a jacket with thumbholes and thick legwarmers with wide stirrups, I tried to incorporate as much movement as I could to keep warm, but it’s a ninety-minute class, and ninety minutes in a cold room is a long time. And the heat won’t be fixed until Friday, so I have two more classes like this.

It reminded me of when I used to teach Yoga for Seniors at a beautiful studio, pre-pandemic. The room at the studio was kept quite warm – between 24 and 26 degrees – and I usually tried to cool it down a bit before class, as the warmth was not popular with my senior students. One gentleman in particular HATED it. He used to ask if he could open the windows in the dead of winter, and once plaintively asked me if there was any such thing as “cold yoga,” and if so, where could he sign up. I’ve thought of him many times through the pandemic: he would have loved chilly outdoor yoga classes, and he would have absolutely been all over the classes this week. I guess it shows that there is truly a yoga for everyone.

Weekly Reading

Bear. Have you ever looked at a wild animal and thought “I wonder what it would be like to fuck that?” Well, wonder no more! This book, about a lonely woman spending a summer on an isolated island in northern Canada, won the Governor General award in 1976, which really makes you wonder what was happening in Canadian literature at the time. It is literally a woman having a sexual relationship with a bear and not, as my son asked, a big furry gay guy. An actual bear. I don’t want to kink shame anyone but I think we can all agree not to embark on inter species sexual relations. This book is just as strange as you might think. Yes, if we were in a literature class we could talk about the symbolism of a woman going from a colourless, meaningless life in the polluted Big Smoke, and then becoming one with the glory that is Canadian nature, but also? The image of the bear giving oral along with its erection is incredibly disturbing. Did you know bear penises have bones in them? Well, now you do. This book gives a whole new meaning to animal lust, and also “boning.”

More Than You’ll Ever Know. This story revolves around a woman who was leading a double life – two families, two countries. She was married to two men, one of whom was murdered when this double life is discovered. Decades later, a writer tries to uncover the truth by telling her story. There are some very unexpected twists and a side story about the writer that I didn’t care for, but all in all a diverting read.

All Along You Were Blooming. This is such a wonderful little book of uplifting poems and readings. I have been reading this before my yoga practice for the past several months and it never fails to warm my heart. It’s really beautiful.

It is forecasted to be warm and sunny all this week, which I’m hoping will help with the warmth in the community centre. I have had a pretty wild, rollercoaster week, but everything has ended on a very high note. I spent the weekend at my parents’, which was lovely, and included a second birthday cake! Happy May, friends! May day, m’aidez! xo

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Toes and Tummy in the YYC

It has been very Empty Nest-ish around here lately; my older son has been working a lot, happily, and in his spare time he’s either at the gym or cultivating a social life. My younger son spent the weekend out of town with his wrestling team, and so my husband and I found ourselves together, just the two of us, for several dinners.

Why not a Date Night, I thought? I had gone to Jameson’s, a local pub for lunch with a group of girlfriends, known collectively among ourselves as The Brentwood Babes, the week prior and we had such a good experience; excellent service, but more than that, I had the Santorini salad. This salad has everything I have ever wanted in bowl form. I had never thought of putting hummus in a salad before, but now I can’t stop thinking about it. It looked like Friday night it would be just the two of us, which seemed perfect for a date.

Thursday morning it occurred to me that it might be difficult to get a table: Friday night, Irish pub, SAINT PATRICK’S DAY. Hmm. I stopped by after my class to naively see if there was any way to reserve a table, explaining to the bartender that my husband and I wanted to come for dinner. As I was speaking, the bartender was shaking his head, and when I finished he said, “No. You really don’t want to come here. It is going to be a complete shitshow.” Okay! We came the following night instead, with our older son – who is of age – in tow. I asked the sweet young girl who was serving us if she worked the previous night, and she said she had, and that it wasn’t that bad, with only one big fight right at the end of the night. She also mentioned that she worked until 4 in the morning, which did not sound great to me, but hopefully she made a lot of money in tips.

The Santorini salad was still delicious on the second time around, but they had run out of kale – was there a run on KALE on St. Patrick’s Day? – and substituted Romaine, which was not QUITE as good. Perhaps I should not have chased that dream.

While I’m on the topic of Things I Did Last Week, I had a pedicure at my local salon. If you are in the Calgary area, and specifically in the Northwest, Anna Nails is the place to go. Her prices are insanely good, and the pedicures are unlike anything I have ever had before. She uses orange peels for exfoliation, and included in a pedicure is a calf massage AND a hot stone massage. It is a bit of an obscure little place, and she doesn’t even have a website, but it will be the best pedicure you have ever had.

Peas in a Podcast

I listen to a lot of podcasts, and there are some episodes that I have particularly loved lately. I am a person who really likes a chatty, lighthearted podcast. I have spoken at length about Forever 35 – I love this podcast about “the things we do to take care of ourselves” and I think I may be in a parasocial relationship with Kate and Doree. They have recently started a “Product Recall” series that airs on Fridays, which discusses products from our past such as Sun-In, Biore Pore Strips, and St. Ives Apricot Scrub. If you are Gen X like me, all the products they talk about will have likely been a part of your youth.

Every Wednesday the women interview a different guest, and there have been two guests recently that have been absolutely fascinating. First: Chrissy King, who wrote a book called The Body Liberation Project, which I immediately put on my TBR list after this mind-blowing episode. Second: Bozoma St. John, who is a high-level executive at Netflix, and who is also a widow, a single mother, and a person who prioritizes sleep over everything. It was a really refreshing discussion about caring for oneself from a woman who is really remarkable.

Alison Rosen Is Your New Best Friend is a fun podcast that comes out twice weekly; I prefer the Monday episodes, which have one guest and interview, to the Thursday episodes, which feature multiple people and are a bit of a free-for-all. Recently I heard an interview with Tiffany Gabrus, who is an entertainment executive-turned-florist, and it was such a lovely episode. The way this woman talks about flowers is so uplifting and fun. She calls flowers her “ladies” and I am Here For It. Another recent interview that I enjoyed was Elizabeth Laime; the interview was just a fun conversation between friends. Also Here For It!

Speaking of Alison Rosen, she was on Celebrity Book Club talking about Priscilla Presley’s Elvis and Me several months ago. If you, like me, spent your entire seventh grade completely obsessed with Elvis in general and that book in particular, if you, like me, thought that the Elvis and Priscilla relationship was the most romantic story of all time and then looked back on it as an adult and thought “Wait, what the fuck? This is a horror show!” then this podcast episode is for you! It is not only my favourite Celebrity Book Club episode, it is one of my favourite podcast episodes EVER.

Oooohhhhh Listen To The Music

Speaking of listening to things, after last week’s Women’s History Month Peloton ride, I created a new Spotify playlist called Nicole’s Layyyyydeeeees. There is some overlap with my playlist of all-time favourites, Nicole’s Karaoke, and even a little bit with Nicole’s Workout, if anyone’s looking for some fun and upbeat sing-a-long songs. Those are some pretty eclectic mixes.

He’s Here, He’s There, He’s Every-Fucking-Where

You guys, Ted Lasso is back! One big upside to my phone not working as a phone and needing to be replaced is that I received three free months of Apple TV, which is PERFECT timing as the new season of Ted Lasso has dropped. We watched the first episode last weekend, but I ended up falling asleep on the couch so I missed the ending. And, possibly, the middle. I guess I should rewatch it.

Also on Apple TV is Eugene Levy’s new show, The Reluctant Traveler. It is a delight! Who knew that watching a man in his 70s – who never wanted to travel – explore new locales would be so much fun?

All Along The Internet Watchtower

You guys, I am so excited to tell you that Laura Bray (HI LAURA) has a Story Club; if you sign up for it, a short story will pop into your inbox every so often. You may remember her from The Sugar Thief, which I have mentioned before and is an absolute delight.

Erin Etheridge (HI ERIN) is always contributing smart and thought-provoking pieces to the internet world, and her latest, We Turn Away From Our Future Selves is a comparison of Erin Brockovich and a book called Hags, about aging women. It is brilliant, as always. The wonderful thing about Erin’s writing is that there is just too much to take in all at once; I usually have to go back and reread her pieces a few times.

Another interesting thing I read recently was this piece; I was fascinated to know that this family of three spent $668 TOTAL for all food in February, in New York City. I mean. How. How is that possible? My grocery bills are much, much higher than that; granted, I have two garbage disposal-like teen boys, but still. It was an interesting piece, with an ode to the joy of food, which I like.

I loved this post on Cup of Jo about a family relocating to England, and discovering that their life followed them there. Wherever you go, there you are. Although, I have questions. Just what are they doing with all those garbanzo beans? That’s a lot of hummus.

Circling back to my parasocial relationship, and also the garbage-disposals, Doree Shafrir wrote a piece about teens, and if they “hang out” in the same way we did. My answer is not really, but that’s not a bad thing. First of all, I think that teens in general – particularly teen boys – get a bit of a bad rap sometimes. Don’t get me wrong; they can be really stupid, as evidenced by the “drive through the snowy school field at midnight” event. However. I do think that teens still hang out a lot together, and although the nature of the hangouts might be different from what we Gen Xers did back in the 80s and 90s, they still are social beings who like hanging out at each others’ homes. There aren’t a whole lot of teen-friendly places – there weren’t when we were teens, and there aren’t many now – but I sometimes will see a pack of teens at the mall or roaming around the neighbourhood, and it makes me smile. I do think Doree makes a good point about kids having much more scheduled lives than we did, which does change teen friendships. I have also heard a lot about teens being on their phone too much, which is true, but also, have you been around adults? It’s not just teens having deep relationships with their phones.

So many interesting people creating so many interesting things, and yes, I include Anna The Esthetician and The Salad Station People In Jamesons’ Kitchen as Creators. And on that note, and also speaking of phones and the internet, THIS Creator is taking a bit of a digital detox. I’m going dark, if you will, but not in a hello darkness my old friend kind of way. Maybe I’m going more charcoal grey? In any case, I will catch you all on the flip side.

Take care of yourselves, and be well. xo

March Madness

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Marching Into March

In many parts of the world, March marks the arrival of spring, but in Calgary, March is firmly a Winter Month. My birthday is in the last third of April, and I feel like that is the tentative start to spring, although it can certainly snow in any month of the year. Yes, you read that correctly. I have experienced snow – in the air, not on the ground – in both July and August. March is typically the snowiest month of the year, which has brought great joy to Rex, and a lot of lower back stretches to my classes, to alleviate any pain from shovelling. Most of my ladies outsource that job, but I think lower back stretches are always appreciated.

Calgarians have a strange tendency to disparage climates in other locations, probably to make ourselves feel better about our six, seven, eight months of winter. Any mention of typically beautiful cities with short winters – particularly cities in BC – will conjure up a “well, it’s horrible and cloudy there in the winter,” and while that may be true, and Calgary does have lovely blue skies often, it feels very much like sour grapes to me. Also, while we do enjoy a lot of sunshine, our winters are very long and very cold, and we also have a lot of this:

It’s cloudy here too, people.

All of which is to say that while I am embracing the season, friluftsliv, hygge, et cetera, I am also enjoying photos of spring in other parts of the world. It will be a while before my garden boxes are green, and in the meantime, I need to break Rex of this very bad habit:

All By Myself

It has been a bit of a strange weekend, here in the Boyhouse. My husband was out of town for the first time in months, my older son was working closing shifts Friday and Sunday, and my younger son was at the high school wrestling City Championships. Friday night, it was just me and Rex at home for dinner, which felt very odd. I think the last time I was home alone for dinner was when the guys took a trip through Yukon and Alaska in 2019. I had my usual favourite dinner of Greek salad with pita and hummus, plus some red wine and tortilla chips and salsa, because I am a girl who knows how to enjoy herself. I topped it all of by watching the first two episodes of Season One NYPD Blue. I used to love that show, and I still do, but I wanted to see what it would look like thirty years after its release. It turns out, it is a great timepiece of New York in the early 90s, and the camera work is just as interesting as I remembered.

Now, these days I do not watch much television (do we still call it television? I mean shows in general) so let’s just take this observation with a grain of salt, but there really aren’t many non-beautiful people cast in TV or movies anymore. It seems like everyone on-screen now is gorgeous, and has perfect teeth, and boy, that was not the case back in the early 90s and prior. I think 90% of the cast of NYPD Blue is pretty average looking, if not downright unattractive, which is kind of remarkable by today’s standards. All these regular-looking people, living full – if dramatic – lives, having romances, friendships, successes and failures.

I feel like it was the advent of Friends that kicked off the whole We All Look Fantastic And We Have This Amazing New York Apartment; but before Friends, we had this:

Girl, You’ll Be A Woman Soon

Speaking of popular culture from the 90s, I watched Pulp Fiction with the boys on Saturday night. My older son had seen it recently and, hearing a story about how the first time I saw it I was on a date and I fainted during the scene where Mia gets an adrenaline shot in the heart (spoiler alert for an almost thirty year old movie), asked if I wanted to rewatch it with him. My younger son, exhausted from a full two days of wrestling, decided to join, asking first what the movie is about. We looked at each other for a moment and I said I don’t know. It’s kind of plotless? I still don’t know how to describe the plot but it really holds up. I am not a Tarantino fan, but this movie is the exception. What can I say, I’m a sucker for a hitman who has a spiritual awakening. Also, the soundtrack, as the kids say, slaps.

Memories of Barkley

I was at the library this week, and a young, lovely librarian lit up when she saw me. Hi! she said excitedly. How is your sweet dog? I must have looked a little blank for a moment, and she continued to chatter about the days of curbside pickup, and how she loved bringing my books out and seeing that cute brown labradoodle, I have a brown labradoodle, right, and he is just like a stuffed animal, so cute?

Oh.

You know that moment when you’re going to say something that will cause awkward feelings, but you have to do it anyway? Her face fell as I explained that he died, but I loved that she remembered him so well.

The very next day I was walking Rex, and to mix up his route I walked down a street that was part of Barkley’s loop to the library. A woman was shovelling snow and she stopped to ask if she could say hi to Rex. I didn’t recognize her but clearly she recognized me as she asked how long ago Barkley died, and how sorry she was, and how she always liked seeing the two of us on our walks.

It was really nice to hear these two women – both kind of strangers – talk about Barkley in such a sweet way. The last couple years of his life were so fraught; I walked him every single day to keep him ambulatory, and every single day a stranger would comment on his appearance, generally in a “what’s wrong with your dog” kind of way. Every single day. I had people stop their cars on the street, roll down their windows, and ask about him. I had people ask if I was aware he had a lump on his side, as if it could have possibly been missed. I had one man ask when I was going to put him down. It was all very hard, but these two women were so kind, and so sweet, that it really helped erase all the sad feelings I had about that time.

Library Thievery

The reason I was talking to the librarian in the first place was because I had gone in to pick up a book I had put on hold, and it wasn’t on the Holds shelf. I wondered if it was still on the cart, although I had received notification that the book was in the day before. It wasn’t, and this led to a lot of searching and typing on the computer, and the librarian sighed deeply. “It’s a popular book,” she said, “and sometimes people see these popular books on the cart, and they TAKE THEM.” I honestly was startled at the thought of looking at the holds cart, seeing a book with a name receipt to indicate the person who had put it on hold, and then, shrugging at the rules, taking the book out. Of all the places for breaking the rules, I never think of the library as one of them, but the librarian told me gravely that this happens all the time. It’s one of the issues with the self-checkout. WHO KNEW. Certainly not me! I am a rule follower generally, and so it would never occur to me to sneak a popular book off of the Holds cart that wasn’t for me. Consider me shocked.

Weekly Reading

This feels like a good time to segue into weekly reading. I had a couple of real winners this week!

Girls They Write Songs About. Oh wow, this book! I was mesmerized. I read this very slowly because I needed to absorb every single word, and I reread many pages a few times. But how to describe this? There’s not really a plot. But it’s a story about women, about choices and relationships and work and becoming. The narrator is around my age and the story begins in NYC in 1997, and I could see myself in this story, the multiverse version of me, that is. It’s just an incredibly written, beautiful, raw, dark book that is also affirming and uplifting, but very real. I was on a real high after finishing this book; I could not stop thinking about it, so I logged into Goodreads to see if there were others who felt this way. This was a big mistake. There were so many negative reviews that I immediately logged back out, because I did not want to be brought down. What I am saying, then, is that while I absolutely loved this book, it seems like many people do not, so, you know. Your mileage may vary.

The Marriage Portrait. I had put this on hold, but unsurely; historical fiction is a tricky genre for me as I feel it is so hard to do it well. Often I find that modern values will be placed in historical fiction, to the detriment of the plot, and the dialogue can feel very off. Also, there was a lot of buzz about this book and that doesn’t always translate to me to be an enjoyable read. I mean, sometimes it does, but often I am disappointed. I read the jacket before starting the book and two things stood out: I had read and enjoyed this author’s memoir about her multiple brushes with death, and The Marriage Portrait was an imagining of the life of the subject of the portrait in Robert Browning’s My Last Duchess. I, along with everyone else, probably, read and dissected this poem in university; I really liked it and at that moment, I was in. I did enjoy this book about a young Florentine woman married off to the Duke of Ferrara; and some of it was a little heavy-handed with the imagery, and I quibble with the ending, but for the most part it was a sweeping story that really hooked me in. I was in the perfect mental space to be transported by this novel.

Happy first week of March, everyone! I wish you all an abundance of blue skies, good books, fun shows, and maybe something growing in your garden besides a 95 pound dog. xo