Category Archives: I love my friends

Three For Thursday: The “Do You Remember The (very first) Night of December” Edition

Posted on by

She Puzzled And Puzzled ‘Til Her Puzzler Was Sore, Then Nicole Thought Of Something She Hadn’t Before. Happy December! One of the very most exciting things about December First is the start of Advent calendars. I don’t know about you, but for me, growing up in the 80s, Advent calendars as they are seen today just weren’t in existence. Nowadays there are hundreds, maybe even thousands, of different kinds of Advent calendars – chocolates! booze! tiny samples of cosmetics and skin care products! hot drinks! and more! – but when I was a kid, there were two kinds: the cardboard ones in which you opened a door to reveal a Christmas-themed picture, as seen on Christmas Vacation, and the kind that your mom might buy in the grocery store after much pleading, which contained a centimetre-square of waxy chocolate in the shape of stockings, trees, and, on Christmas Eve, a star. We had both kinds, but the chocolate ones I had to share with my two brothers.

All of which is to say that my Very Pampered Family enjoys the Very Fancy Lindor calendars, and no one has to share, because Pampered. I have always wanted the excitement of my own calendar, but a chocolate one did not appeal to me. You would think that, being me, I would love a cosmetic or skin care calendar, but no. Samples are wasted on me because I stick with what I like and I don’t love to deviate, especially for just one day. Last year I bought myself a tea calendar, which was an utter failure; with maybe three exceptions, I hated the flavours.

So when I saw this puzzle calendar at Costco – at the beginning of October, but if you know anything about Costco, you snap up what you see because you may never see it again, and indeed I have NOT – I knew this was the calendar for me. A daily puzzle! Featuring DOGS. In SANTA HATS. If there is a more perfect calendar, I do not know what it is.

It’s A Wrap. My older son was so excited when I got home the other day, to tell me that Spotify Wrapped was out! This is a big day in the Boyhouse, let me tell you. I immediately opened the app to see my top songs and artists, and it was just as amazing as I thought it might be. I never have any idea what song I have listened to the most over the year; it is a constant surprise.

I absolutely love that my top song was Everyday People by Sly and the Family Stone, followed by i by Kendrick Lamar. I mean. I feel like this says something about me. Midnight Train To Georgia was last year’s number one song, so I wasn’t surprised to see it – I do love that song – but who knew I listened to You Can Call Me Al so much? I did not! Rounding out the list is the Marshall Tucker Band, which probably tells you a lot about the eclectic nature of my playlists.

My son is very put out that Spotify Wrapped only goes until October 31; that’s two MONTHS of data that is missing in a year. To be honest, it’s probably good because once November 12 hits, I play nothing but my Nicole Christmas playlist, which has 97 songs on it but many are just different versions of the same song. For example, I have five versions each of Baby, It’s Cold Outside (no, not the modern one, I prefer the weird hey what’s in this drink version) and Last Christmas (naturally). There are three versions each of Driving Home For Christmas, Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas, River, This Christmas, and Santa Baby. I have four Little Drummer Boys, as well, and several other duplicates. This doesn’t even take into account the Jazzy Christmas, Mellow Piano Christmas, Michael Buble Christmas, and Charlie Brown Christmas that are in constant rotation. In other words, should November and December be included, my data would be very skewed.

I Got Mugged. The lovely and kind Elisabeth (HI ELISABETH) sent me a beautiful package for the #SecretSantaMugSwap2022, hosted as always by the wonderful community builder San (HI SAN). Just look at these wonderful treats! What a joy to delve into. Thank you so much, Elisabeth! I am especially intrigued by Hot Honey, and in fact I may start calling my husband Hot Honey. Or insist that he call me that. We shall see! I was thrilled with each and every item in this very fun package! December is Fun Mail Month, and I feel like Elisabeth has started things off with a bang.

Speaking of my wonderful, supportive, and inclusive blog community, so many of you participated in NaBloPoMo, where bloggers post every day in the month of November, and many of you did Ask Me Anything posts. To be honest, I had a little bit of FOMO; I wanted to do one of my own, but I thought it would be better for me to wait until December, when the flood of posts faded to a mere stream. So do you have questions for me? Fill out this form! I will answer them to the best of my ability! I have no shame! Literally anything!

Congratulations to all of you NaBloPoMo participants! What an accomplishment by you all! I know one of you in particular is quite sad it’s over – HI ENGIE – and I thought of you as I wrote this, on December 1. I thought you may never speak to me again if I didn’t include a few fuzzy photos, so don’t worry, I will not disappoint my readership. Happy December, everyone. Baby, it’s cold outside here, so I hope wherever you are you are cozy and warm. xo

Rex will not share his doughnut with you, so don’t even ask.

Rex loves to lie in the corner where the tree is currently residing. His second choice is to wedge himself between the table and the wall. Maybe he thinks he’s a gift under the tree? If so, he’s right. Best gift ever.

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The It’s Fall, Y’all Edition

Posted on by

We have had the most beautiful October with the longest stretch of sunny and warm weather; it’s been the kind of weather that evokes that Anne Shirley quote – I’m glad I live in a world where there are Octobers – which, believe me, is not a normal state of affairs in Calgary. Our first snowfall came fully 2/3 into the month, which is late for us. Here are our Halloween decorations before the snow:

And here is the after:

This is fall in Calgary! You just never know what the day might bring. All of this means that it’s time to pull out the thigh high wool socks, the bumwarmers, and the winter boots. It’s also time for a Favourite Things!

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The It’s Fall, Y’all Edition

It’s Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers

Well, you didn’t think that I would get through an October Favourite Things post without talking about decorative gourds, did you, motherfuckers?

After last year’s fiasco with local wildlife stealing my little gourds and eating them, I decided to keep my miniature gourds inside. Those soft crafted pumpkins were gifted to me by a friend (HI TARYN) and regularly get wagged off the piano stool by SOMEONE. The piano stool was my great-grandmother’s, and I only recently incorporated it into my main-floor décor.

The Girls

Sometimes I can really visualize my future self, and one of those iterations of my future self is Crazy Plant Lady. I mean, I can really see it; me, at an advanced age, lipstick on, wearing flowing black old-lady tops, talking to houseplants, and referring to them all as her babies. It’s already happening, to be truthful.

It all started when my friend Denise (HI DENISE) relocated to Houston, and gave me her 17-year-old Christmas cactus. This Christmas cactus is as old as my youngest child, people. I am a Garden Person but I haven’t had indoor plants for years, other than my almost-zero-maintenance jade plant; still, I promised to care for it tenderly. I immediately named it Noelle and started researching How To Care For A Christmas Cactus.

The first order of business was to re-pot it, and for that I needed some more soil. Too long, didn’t read; I should never be left in the garden centre alone. I decided that along with a new pot and some soil, Noelle needed a friend, and this decorative pepper plant was just the ticket. I named her Pippa. If I had more space Noelle would have had a whole clique of friends, alas, I do not have space.

I had this cute little plant vignette for a week or so, but when we found out that Rex was coming to our home I moved them to the top of the hutch. I wasn’t sure if Rex was a plant-eater – he decidedly is NOT – but I thought his gigantic wagging tail might easily knock over The Girls. This turned out to be prescient, as the aforementioned soft gourds are often flying across the kitchen.

Scrub-a-Dub-Dub

I have loved the Rocky Mountain Soap company for years, but I have always ordered their products online. This generally worked great, but sometimes I ended up with a scent that I disliked. A few months ago I was at the mall which is five minutes from my house, and discovered that they had a new, REAL LIFE store! How exciting! I was able to sniff to my heart’s content, and I bought this lovely Blood Orange Body Scrub:

It’s orange, so I feel like it suits a Fall Favourites. It smells like a creamsicle, or The Body Shop Satsuma line. It’s the perfect blend of scrub and oil, so that it really moisturizes while exfoliating. It’s great for those of us who – pardon me for being indelicate – tend to get ingrown hairs in the bikini area.

Hair

I saw this gorgeous photolog of a woman’s journey to grow out her grey hair, and I was kind of inspired, but not inspired enough, if you know what I mean. One day I shall stop dying my hair, but that day is not today. However. My hair seems to grow fairly fast, if my roots are any indication, which means that in the days leading up to Colour Day, they are fairly dramatic. My roots are almost totally white, which means I am always playing the game of is that my roots or is my scalp showing, am I losing my hair or is it just white. It’s not the most fun game.

I wear my hair up in a bun fairly often, particularly on teaching days, or on days that I don’t wash my hair. I found this hair band, which has trailing ends to make it look like a scarf, and I love it. It makes me feel like a fashionable hippie, or a fortune-teller, but in the best possible way.

I love it because it’s quite wide, so it covers up my roots nicely. I have many hair bands, but this is my new favourite because of the long scarf detailing.

Rex, Enthusiastic Subscriber to Friluftsliv

It’s been over two years since I decided to embrace my Norwegian heritage and the concept of friluftsliv; winters in Calgary are long indeed and I was tired of dreading them. I mean, what can you do about weather? There are two options: you can be miserable, or you can adapt. Well, I guess there are three options: you could move, but I didn’t foresee myself packing up and moving to Maui, the only place that I know of that has perfect weather year-round, so really, there are only two feasible options.

So here we are with quite a bit of heavy, wet snow on the ground, and the stunningly beautiful warmth of this fall in the rearview mirror. In years past, I may have felt a bit disheartened at the prospect of cold, cold, and more cold for the next six or seven months, but NOT TODAY, SATAN. I have layers and I shall wear them, I have many pairs of winter boots, I have bum warmers and thick coats, and I have Rex.

It’s impossible not to be moved by his pure joy at the first snowfall. What a dog! In the ayurvedic world, I believe Rex would be pitta. Bernese mountain dogs are built for winter conditions, so I have a lot of vicarious joy coming my way, as we come into the season. And hey, there’s nothing like winter to soothe those hot flashes, am I right?

Hot Stuff; Heart Stuff

Speaking of hot flashes, Kari (HI KARI) had written this post about menopause, from a Gen X woman’s standpoint, and it is tremendous. All 34 menopause symptoms, each with a song from the 80s. This post was from 5 years ago, but I like to reference it from time to time because High and Dry.

Specific to that point, this How To Apply “No-Makeup” Makeup: A Guide For Mature Women is absolutely worth a read.

This month, Suzanne (HI SUZANNE) wrote a post about measuring with your heart, and I felt seen. I never use the amount of vanilla that a recipe calls for; I at least double it or I just glug glug glug it in. Other things I measure with my heart: to-be-read book lists, grated ginger in any stir-fry recipe, chocolate chips in desserts and cookies, and nut butters in my smoothies.

Speaking of nut butters, has anyone else noticed how tiny the Reece peanut butter cup “fun size” treats are? What the what? When did this happen?

Peanut butter chocolate is still one of my favourite things, but as of next week we will be entering my favourite flavour season: MINT CHOCOLATE! But that is a topic for another post. What are your Favourite Things this month? Tell me everything. xo

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

Posted on by

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

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

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

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

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The 10th Anniversary Edition

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

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

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

Talk To Me Goose

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

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

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

Pedicures and Sandals

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

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

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

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

Lettuce Pray and Flower Power

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

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

Let The Spinning Wheel Turn

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

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

Wistfulness and Avocados

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

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

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

Rituals; 109 Weeks In

Posted on by

I was listening to this fantastic, new-to-me-but-well-established podcast the other day, about the importance of ritual and soulful practices in our everyday life. It got me thinking about all the little rituals I incorporate into my day, from my coffee-and-early-morning reading and writing to putting on my five different moisturizers before bedtime. Some of the little rituals came about because of the pandemic: daily inspirational reading and poetry before my morning yoga practice and my long daily walks are the two most notable ones. However, some rituals predate the pandemic by a long shot, and one of those is Sunday Dinner.

We eat dinner as a family every night, with the exception of the evenings when my younger son is at wrestling practice; those nights, it is just the three of us, and I save him a plate for when he’s home at 8:30 pm. Sunday Dinner is a different thing, though. It’s a big, semi-elaborate meal that always ends in dessert.

I cook a lot; it feels like half my life is devoted to food acquisition, preparation, and the cleanup afterwards. It can be very boring and tedious; this is why I listen to so many podcasts. But there is one thing I am never bored of, and that is making Sunday dessert. Throughout the week I bake a lot of things and I make a lot of ice cream, but I don’t partake in any of those; Sunday dessert, however, is my jam. I think about different recipes and I always get excited, choosing and then making the Dessert of the Week.

This past weekend was really fun for me, though, because we went up to my parents’ house for two nights. Not only did I not cook for two days, I also had my favourite dessert:

My birthday is coming up this week, so we had a combined birthday/ Easter celebration.

Not only did we have a wonderful dinner made by my mother with my favourite strawberry angel food cake, but we went out to dinner in an actual restaurant, we played a lot of games, drank a lot of wine, and my mom and I went shopping.

I have been searching for the perfect garden gnome for my entire life, and this fellow was the first thing I saw at Merry’s Mercantile, and I love him so much. His name is Salvadore.

Side note: longtime Calgary bloggers may remember Merry as Merry About Town or Merry With Children! She has the cutest little store in Bentley, and if you are ever in Central Alberta, you must go. You must! I saw this and I did not buy it, which I regret deeply.

Regrets about mug non-purchases aside, it was a nice finish to what was a really cold, grey, snowy week. On Wednesday I was getting groceries and the parking lot was so cold and windy that I checked my weather app.

Feels like minus 18! No wonder I was cold. Luckily the weather is supposed to turn warm and more “seasonal” this week; I feel like the whole city was starting to slip into depression, what with the return of winter.

Back to the topic of groceries, there are supply chain issues that are AFFECTING MY POPCORN PURCHASES. Boom Chicka Pop has gone from just my favourite light kettle corn being unavailable to being all flavours being completely unavailable. And – AND – there was also no Skinny Pop popcorn, my second choice, which feels like a Punishment From The Universe for buying something with such a stupid name. What’s next, am I going to be forced (“forced”) to buy Lesser Evil popcorn, just because I publicly announced I would not support a company that assigns moral values to food? Or will that start a chain reaction of more popcorn emergencies? I’m in a vicious circle of my own making. The snake is eating its own tail!

Sure, I could make my own popcorn. I do own all the appropriate accoutrements. But I don’t want to. I look forward to opening a bag of popcorn on Friday night and not doing anything else; I don’t WANT to pop my own popcorn, like a Luddite. Is a bag of popcorn too much to ask for?

Pandemic Reading

Girls Lost. I really appreciated the quality of the writing and the creativity of this book. This author is renowned and award-winning, and I loved the Swedish setting. It’s a really unique concept and English classes everywhere could have a field day with the symbolism of a meat-eating flower whose nectar turns girls into boys; the theme of toxic masculinity and violence is strong. However, I didn’t really love the book as a whole, as magic and fantasy are not to my taste. If they are to your taste, though, I think you might love this.

The Space Between Us. Wow, just wow. This is one of the best books I’ve read in a long time, perhaps ever. There’s just so much in here, I hardly even know where to begin. This is a story of two women; one is the house servant to the other. It’s a story about intertwined lives, about class differences, about the incredible burden of being a woman, about how pain is universal, about poverty and literacy and education and the lack thereof. It’s set in Bombay but honestly, the lessons are for everyone, all over the world. It’s an incredibly written book, with so much beauty and sadness. I was distraught and uplifted and so sad to finish this. It is the first book I have read by this author; I have had one of her books on hold for a few months now, and I just put everything she’s ever written on hold. I cannot say enough about this book and how it touched me.

How To Be A Grown-Up. I picked this up on a whim since the authors wrote The Nanny Diaries, which I really enjoyed back in the day. This book is okay; it deals with a woman going through a separation from literally one of the worst non-physically abusive character you can imagine. I mean, this guy is a complete loser of a child-man. So I found it hard to get into the story as I was so constantly incensed by what a jerk this guy was, and how he reminded me of someone I know who is also involved in a divorce from someone I know, and I am not going to put any more details than that but THOSE OF YOU WHO KNOW ME WELL KNOW WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT. I guess I found it triggering? Anyway, it’s fine, this book is fine, I liked it fine, everything is fine. Parts of it are really, really funny and parts of it are astonishingly distressing.

I am very much looking forward to this week, and not just because it’s my birthday; I am anxiously awaiting the arrival of milder weather so I can find a spot for Salvadore to live. I hope you have a beautiful week, my friends. xo

Valentines and Galentines; One Hundred Weeks In

Posted on by

Tomorrow is the big day, everyone! It’s Half-Price Heart-Shaped Chocolate Day! I think I might pop out for a box of Ferraro Roche to take to my Thursday class, as they put up with my very dumb “archaeologists discovered a mummy covered in nuts and chocolates, they think it was the first Pharaoh Roche” joke.

Happy Valentine’s Day! I teach my usual Monday afternoon Strengthen and Tone Yoga class today, and I have made up little love packages for my ladies:

And of course there have been heart-shaped cookies and cake, because that is how I roll.

The cake was visually very imperfect but absolutely delicious, which feels like a Beauty Is Found Within kind of metaphor.

I know some people loathe these so-called Made Up Hallmark Holidays, but any reason for cookies, cake, and – tomorrow – half-price chocolate is a good reason, in my books.

My feelings towards Valentine’s Day have shifted many times in my life; things have evolved a lot from my high school days when the success of the day was directly proportional to the number of Candy Grams received. These days I tend to lean more into the Friendship Aspect of Valentine’s; in other words, Galentines!

Oh, how I love and treasure my girlfriends, past and present. I’m not a woman with many male friends – I do have them, but they are, with few exceptions, the male half of Couple Friends, or a Spouse of a Girlfriend – but I cherish my girls.

My friend Marion (HI MARION) posted this the other day:

I can’t stop thinking about this. How interesting it is that we are all made up of little pieces of people who come into our lives; I do firmly believe that everyone is in my life for a reason, even if they are not a part of my life anymore. It’s a very No (wo)man is an island feeling. Not an hour in the day goes by when I don’t think of a friend, and it’s more than just things I do; day-to-day associations and household items will remind me fondly of the friend in question. Recipes, gifts, books; all of those remind me of people in my life. Songs, especially, remind me of particular people – pretty much everyone in my life has a song I associate with them. Even certain yoga poses will remind me of friends or students. It’s like The Word Association Game in my head, all day, every day, if you want to know what it’s like to be me.

We all have an effect on people, often unknowingly. If you’re reading this, you have most likely influenced my life in some way, and I guarantee there is a song that I associate with you.

I have been reading Agapi Stassinopoulos’ new Speaking With Spirit, and the theme last week was “It’s an offering, not a transaction.” The idea is that if we think of everything in our life – what we do and what others do for us – as an offering, rather than something to be “paid back,” we can discover gratitude for even the smallest things. For example, think of the incredible steps that bring us clean water every single day. We turn the tap and voila, clean water. Think of the scientists who came up with filtration systems, the engineers that created the infrastructure, the people who work in filtration and who built the infrastructure, and the plumber who hooked your house up to the existing infrastructure. IT IS AMAZING. Such a small thing, but if your water gets shut off for any period of time, you know how very important it is. Gratitude for water! And electricity! And heat! All things we generally take for granted but are a marvel of technology, engineering, and effort.

Now, I’m not saying we should go through every minute thinking about this – our hearts would probably explode from gratitude, or we would be paralyzed thinking of all the amazing things in every single part of our lives – but it is worth a moment of marvel. The technology and process that brings us paper! Books being printed en masse, thank you Johann Gutenberg or the guy you stole the idea from. Distribution of books! Education systems that have us all literate!

What I’m saying is that I am grateful for my life and I am grateful for the people in it, including you, dear reader.

Speaking of gratitude, I had my booster shot on Friday. My husband and I walked over to the Alberta Health Services centre – it was like a date, but lame – on his lunch hour, and, predictably, things were running super behind. When I got my first shot, through AHS, I had a warning to only join the lineup 10 minutes before my appointment, but then the line itself took two and a half hours to get through. Similarly, on Friday I had a message not to arrive until five minutes prior to my appointment, which was exactly what I did, and then ended up waiting 45 minutes. THERE HAS TO BE A BETTER WAY. WHY EVEN HAVE APPOINTMENTS. Any vaccination at the local pharmacy has been perfectly on time, why not with AHS?

Well, that’s a small grumble. I had – and still have – a sore arm, and I was tired and low-grade feverish Friday night, so I took a nighttime Advil, which I have taken before and will take again, but wow, did things go sideways. My younger son was out at a wrestling tournament, and I wanted to stay up to hear how it went, but ended up passing out on the couch. When he did get home – at nine o’clock, which tells you something about me – I woke up hearing him excitedly talk about the match that he won, 18-14. I stumbled off the couch like a drunk, and hugged my other, non-wrestling son, telling him how proud I was of him. “Um, Mom, I’m glad you’re proud and everything, but I think you’ve got the wrong guy.” Oops. I repeated the process on the actual wrestling son, then stumbled to my bed where I – according to my husband – tried to set my alarm for some unknown reason, before passing out again. The next day, after eleven hours of sleep, I realized that I had put on a fresh, regular shirt instead of my pajama top, along with my normal pajama bottoms, and that prior to my couch sleep I had consumed an entire bag of white chocolate peppermint popcorn, very kindly sent to me by the lovely Kari (HI KARI THANK YOU). THE ENTIRE BAG, YOU GUYS. It was not a single serving bag, not by a long shot. It was a wild Friday night.

Pandemic Reading

Home Body. I have been reading Rupi Kaur’s poetry prior to my morning yoga practice, and it is really beautiful. I mean, look at this:

And this:

I think this could be part of every woman’s collection; the latter half of the book is very uplifting. However, I feel I must warn the reader that the first part of the book is very dark and there is content about sexual abuse and racism that is very upsetting.

Standard Deviation. Have you ever known, just KNOWN, that you would love a book and so you put off reading it, you save it and save it and wait until you NEED to read it? That’s what I did with this book. I have loved the other two Heiny books I have read, and I have been saving this until the perfect time. I pulled the trigger last week and let me tell you, it did NOT disappoint. I absolutely love Heiny, she has become one of my favourite authors, writing one of my favourite genres, which is “ordinary life made extraordinary” and “slice of life.” Because, plot-wise, well, there isn’t one really. There is no way to summarize what happens in this book in a succinct way because it is just LIFE. And I am 100% here for it. It’s a book about marriage, about friendship, about parenting, about special needs. It’s just so good and I am planning on asking for all of her books for my birthday, because they are all rereads for sure. The only thing is that now I’ve read this book, there are no more to look forward to.

The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way. Have you, like me, ever wondered about the origins of language, how it develops in terms of speech, spelling and grammar? Have you ever wondered about dialects? How is British English so different from North American English? How do Liverpudlians sound so different from Londoners? How do Texans sound so different from Brooklynites? How do our swears originate? After all, technically, getting fucked can be very nice. If you’ve wondered any of these things, this book is for you! Note: it was published in 1990 and so it is dated. It’s so interesting, though. I mean, imagine writing the first dictionary. IMAGINE.

Don’t Make Me Turn This Life Around. I enjoyed this book about a woman – exactly my age – who finds out she’s ten years cancer-free and feels…meh. It’s a great commentary on the dangers of toxic positivity, how your life can look perfect but still be hard, how all pain is valid, and how the people we love are with us always.

One hundred weeks. I can hardly believe it! When I first started my weekly count, I didn’t think I’d get into the double digits, let alone triple. Well, here we are. Some people have asked me when I will stop my weekly count, and I will stop when this is no longer considered a Pandemic, which is not this week. Stay safe, everyone! Are you going to buy half-price chocolates? If so, what kind? Tell me everything. xo

Challenging?; Ninety-Seven Weeks In

Posted on by

Recently I’ve seen a lot of “ten year challenge” posts on social media, which is one of those strange phenomena of our time. A challenge, in my mind, is to be ninety-seven weeks into a global pandemic and to still get out of bed every morning, putting one foot in front of the other and keeping hope and optimism in day to day life. A challenge is to parent effectively when there are constant disappointments and changes that are out of anyone’s personal control; a challenge is to keep making dinner, day in and day out, with no end in sight and nothing exciting to anticipate. What about the “ten year challenge” is a challenge, exactly? Is the challenge in finding photos that are a decade apart? Or does the challenge actually lie in the posting of photos that are a decade apart, forcing us all to face the changes that ten years have brought and the vast improvements in our ability to take photos with good lighting and posing? I feel like it’s the latter.

I vaguely recalled, pre-pandemic, that one of those challenges had occurred recently, and upon searching my online diary/ blog, I found it in December of 2019, presumably to end off the decade. December 2019 was not all that recent, of course, but what a time that was to be alive. I hosted a Christmas coffee with a dozen women in my house in that month, and we all stood close to each other and ate things.

Anyway, I do not know exactly what is the point of a “ten year challenge” other than to show the vast changes time has wrought on our faces and bodies. I am not saying these changes are bad – every day is a gift, every passing year is a cause for celebration – but they certainly exist. Not only do changes exist, but they SHOULD exist. Do we really want the same hairstyle we had ten years ago? Do we really want to go through life with our faces exactly the same, waxen-like?

I posit that the answer is no.

I had a huge argument with my dad a couple of months ago. We both got pretty heated and it was all on the topic of do I look old. It started when I mentioned a man who I haven’t seen in twenty years and who is my age or a little older; my dad said that he looked the same as he always did, but “old.” I said that the same could be said about me, at which point my dad got extremely indignant. I didn’t look old! I look great! Not old! Great! What was I talking about!

Dads and their daughters, am I right?

I tried to say that the two were not mutually exclusive and, while I do think I look “great,” I do not look like a young woman. We went back and forth for several minutes, this pointless argument ending with me ungraciously conceding, saying that fine, I still look like I’m in my twenties, DAD, and with both of us annoyed with each other.

I came across a great post that exactly describes why I dislike filtered photos; I understand the temptation, I do, but I think that a) on a personal level, I occasionally see people in person, and I don’t want to look different from my social media profiles, and b) on a societal level, I want to see and celebrate women my age who look our age. Society wants older women to be invisible, and filtering makes older women invisible. Fuck the patriarchy!

Also, sometimes those filters actually smooth out features, so that a woman – it’s always a woman – looks like she is missing a nose. I like to be a person with a visible nose.

This reminds me of something that happened several months ago. First, the backstory. Back when Facebook was in its infancy, I reconnected with pretty much everyone in my high school graduation class, including a woman I shall call X. I am still friends with pretty much everyone in my high school graduation class, by the way. I have lots of great feelings and memories about that time of life and I have much enjoyed seeing my compatriots grow and change as I myself have grown and changed.

Back in my high school days, I was a friendly acquaintance with X, rather than a true friend, and it was nice seeing her Facebook updates and getting to know her. Then, one day, she unfriended me. I don’t know why, but you know what, I’m not for everyone. Who knows. As we were never true friends, it didn’t bother me much.

Fast-forward many years, to last spring, and I received a friend request from X. Life changes, people go through rough patches, you never know what’s going on, and so I accepted. The very first post from her that I saw was a before-and-after photo: she had gotten some kind of injection or treatment that made her look like a walking Instagram filter. It was truly amazing; the bags under her eyes, the lines around her mouth – completely gone. She had commented that she had never before posted an unfiltered photo of herself, but now she was doing just that.

She looked really incredible, but something about that nagged me. Do we only post unfiltered photos if we look like we’ve filtered our faces? And yet, SHE LOOKED INCREDIBLE. Imagine walking around, with your face looking like it’s been softened with an Instagram filter! And while I am generally happy with my looks, I kept kind of thinking about it. This “thinking” increased when a friend of my sister-in-law told me, casually, as we were sitting on the beach last summer, about the Botox injections she received in the dental office she worked at. Not only did she tell me about her own treatment, which she received at a highly reduced rate, but she had unsolicited advice for me: I too could benefit from Botox. She went on to say that she wasn’t sure HOW many injections I would need to get rid of my forehead lines, but it would be a lot, and if I DID decide to get an indeterminate-but-absolutely-large-number of Botox injections, I would look amazing. Thanks? I don’t even think this was a passive-aggressive statement, I think it was aggressive-aggressive. Are my forehead lines that terrible that someone who I barely know would comment on them and give me advice about what to do about them? I wondered.

Anyway, I thought and thought and then, for research purposes, I went to look at X’s page, to see where she got the treatments done, and what kind of treatments they were, and it was then that I discovered she unfriended me, again. Well! I took it as a sign. People come in and out of your life for a reason, and I think that X’s reason was to remind me to be happy and contented with my face, as it is. Forehead lines and all.

After all, look at Betty White! What a beauty she was in her old age.

I saw that magazine at Superstore and, although I really do understand publication schedules and logistics, it was still very startling.

For what it’s worth, I’ll play along with the ten year challenge. No filters! Just me in 2012:

And now in 2022:

You know what, I’m happy with my face. I am happy with the changes, and I am also grateful – ETERNAL GRATITUDE – for home hair colour kits and moisturizer.

Pandemic Reading

The Way We Weren’t. Someone recommended this to me, and the woman I THOUGHT recommended it says she didn’t. So, I don’t know. Someone did, who was it? Anyway, this is quite a touching story about marriage, compromise, loss, and a very unlikely friendship between a crusty old man and a forty-something woman, both coping with loss and sadness. I didn’t love this but I did like it. Trigger warning: pregnancy loss is a major theme. 

Girlhood. I’m going to be honest: I almost didn’t make it through the prologue. The prologue very lyrically and beautifully outlines the author’s life: a happy childhood that ends with precocious development that leads to multiple unwanted sexual encounters and sexual assault, leaving school at 16, becoming a meth and then heroin addict, her years as a sex worker, and finally sobriety and becoming an award winning author and professor. Honestly, I wasn’t sure I had the emotional strength to read it. I’m glad I did, I guess, but I’ll tell you, it was rough going. It’s part memoir, part scholarly deep dive into what it means to be a woman, and the various ways the patriarchy destroys womanhood and our ability to love and care for ourselves. It’s compelling and powerful and very, very grim. It ends hopeful but is crushing to read. Take care if you read this.

Will. “Will Smith don’t gotta cuss on his taps to sell records. Well I do. So fuck him, and fuck you too.” (There’s a little Slim Shady in all of us, people). I got a little jiggy with it and picked this up. I liked the parts about the early days of rap and hip hop in the 80s; that was a musically formative time in my life. I still know all the lyrics to Parents Just Don’t Understand (okay, here’s the situation: my parents went away on a weeks’ vacation). It was interesting to read about DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, and also how he made so much money from those years and blew it ALL by the time he was 20. It’s an interesting psychological phenomenon to see a person suddenly strike it rich and then spend it all; it’s a fact that sudden wealth is mean-reverting and that lottery winners are broke after only a few years. Smith spent all his money on cars, motorcycles, and houses, and he also didn’t pay his taxes, so he was completely broke and owing the IRS a ton of money, just before he got cast on the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Quincy Jones basically saved his life. Fun fact: the ghost writer also wrote The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, and once you know that, you can’t unknow it. The voice comes out. I liked this just fine, didn’t love it, didn’t hate it, it was okay though. Oh, and the reason “Will Smith don’t gotta cuss on his raps?” His grandma overheard him swearing and shamed him for it, saying that intelligent people don’t need to use that language. So, out of respect for his grandma, he kept his raps squeaky-clean. Awww. Grandmas!

The Cost of Living. This is the second of Levy’s memoirs, and it deals mainly with her divorce, living as a single mom, and finding space to write. I really liked it and am looking forward to reading the third. Check out the back of the book:

It’s the last full week of January! Time flies even when it’s January, I guess. How do you feel about filters, fillers, and injections? What about photo challenges? Tell me everything. xo

Hippy-Dippy Goals; Ninety-Four Weeks In

Posted on by

Happy New Year!

As I mentioned in my 2021 roundup, the year ended – and the New Year started – on kind of a low point. The boys were supposed to be going back to school tomorrow, but on December 30 it was announced that winter break would be extended to the 10th, and January diploma exams, of which my older son was due to write three, would be cancelled.

For the past several months, I have been saying to myself that as long as the kids are in school, I can take anything. I could go back to patchy grocery store shelves, I could line up at Costco, my husband could continue to work out of our basement, I could wear a mask anywhere and everywhere and see friends outdoors, I could forgo parties and travel and everything else, just let the kids be in school. They have been so happy in these past four months, and, well. Here we are.

The announcement made me feel like folding in on myself like an accordion, and to just go to bed. I did, however, get up on New Year’s Eve, rolled out my yoga mat, and picked up my poetry books. I read the final Rumi poem of the year, I did it, you guys, and then, because it was completely uninspiring to me, I opened up Mary Oliver’s Devotions and came across this:

This whole pandemic, all ninety-four weeks of it, I have been thinking to myself Just Keep Swimming. But it occurred to me, after reading this, that the past ninety-four weeks have had a lot of long lonely falls and frenzied risings. Perhaps all these swings will mean that our children will be the most resilient generation, learning to pivot and adapt and thrive in any circumstances.

My younger son scoffs at the idea of New Year’s resolutions or goal setting; he sets goals throughout the year, not just in January. I am the same way; throughout the year I add goals or concepts or mantras that I want to live by, and then I start right away. However, it’s nice to lay them out in January, feeling like it’s a fresh start; at the least, January is a good time to reflect on past goals and future ones. There’s nothing quite like a brand-new calendar to make you feel fresh and rejuvenated.

OKAY, CALENDAR, I’LL TRY.

It must be said that the majority of my goals are completely unquantifiable. Not all of them – I’ve had “buy a new bra” on my annual list for YEARS and finally, last year, I bought not only one, but THREE, STRIKE IT FROM THE TO-DO LIST – but most. How do you measure “mindfulness,” for example? I like having unquantifiable goals, though, because they are things that you can always keep in mind and work on throughout the year, and easily add to. Over the next couple of weeks, I am going to lay out some actually quantifiable goals that I work on daily. I mean, what else is there to write about in January? The never-ending feelings of despair that come from nearly two years of pandemic life? The fact that my teenagers will never experience normal high school life? The worry that my sons’ activities that they love will be cancelled? The concern about their education and preparation for adult life? NO. I’ve written enough about that. I’ve thought enough about that. We have all had enough.

Anyway, for today, I want to talk about the concepts and mantras that I use for everyday living.

Embrace The Season

Back in *checks blog* June 2021, I was inspired to Embrace the Season, by an incredible woman who has since passed. Rest in peace, Melanie. I think that Embracing the Season that you are in is probably the best way to go through life; you are here, this is now.

There are wonderful, joyful, inspiring things happening in every season of our lives, yes, even this one, yes, even though it’s actually minus 28 right now. It’s Winter, both literally and figuratively, let’s treat ourselves like favoured children, like our most loved ones. Right? Right.

Bloom Where You Are Planted

This goes with Embracing the Season. I’m planted here, in this city, and this is where I’ll bloom. I can make things better one tiny step at a time; I can do this with my yoga classes and my interactions with people, friends and strangers alike, I can make my yard and home into something beautiful, I can write things that will hopefully reach people in the way that I intend. I’m going to bloom, damn it.

Does anyone remember the old poem called You Learn? It was sort of about breakups and relationships, and I read it as a teenager. Back then, it was deeply meaningful to me; I’m pretty sure I read it after a breakup. Oh, the fires of youth. Anyway, there is a line in there that I have remembered lo these many years, and it was Plant your own garden and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers. Let’s plant our own gardens, and we can bloom in them.

Friluftsliv

It feels very appropriate to talk about Friluftsliv when it’s MINUS 28. I first discovered this concept in the fall of 2020, and I have adopted it in my life. It’s a Norwegian word that means, roughly, outdoor living, and goes with the idea that there is no bad weather, just bad clothes. I like to tie Friluftsliv in with Embracing the Season and Blooming Where You Are Planted because this is where I live, and where I live is more often cold and unpleasant than not. I go for a walk every day, no matter the weather, and I can tell you that dressing appropriately is the key. With proper clothing, even minus 30 is doable, with the bonus that I feel like a hardy Norwegian superstar afterwards. This segues nicely into…

Hygge

I absolutely love the concept of hygge – am I spiritually Danish? Maybe. – because what could be better than coziness and warmth in the winter? I see lots of books and warm drinks and baking in my future; not that this is a change for me, but still. Hygge.

Gratitude and Awe

Sometimes it’s easy to have feelings of gratitude and awe; maybe the sky is brilliantly blue and the trees are covered with snow, and it’s a perfect scene. Maybe my family picks up some of the household chores without being asked, gratitude, gratitude. Maybe we will get an email from the school that says the kids are going back – too much to ask? Maybe.

Several months ago I was listening to an interview with Giselle Bunchen, of all people, and she said that she practices gratitude daily; when she has a plate of fruit she thinks of the farmers, of the sun and the rain that helped the fruit to grow, the people who pick the fruit, the person who drove the truck to the supermarket, and the people who work at the supermarket. When you think about it that way, an apple can seem like a miracle. Then I was reading Wake Up To The Joy In You, and there was a paragraph about the miracle that is a book: the process to make paper, the years of perfecting the printed word, the writer who wrote the book, and the miles the book has travelled to be in your hands. When you start thinking about life that way, everything is miraculous. It takes practice, but I’m trying.

Pandemic Reading – The Year Long Books

A Year With Rumi. I did it! I finished this! I did consider, very briefly, not finishing, but then the day after I posted about it, the poem of the day was The Guest House, which is probably my favourite Rumi poem (the bar is kind of low), and I took that as a sign to keep going. 365 poems and just a handful resonated with me; apparently I’m not a Rumi person. “Is it because he’s a man?” my son asked me. Maybe?

Wake Up To The Joy In You. I loved this book of meditations so much that I think I will re-read it in 2022. I read one chapter a week and then kept the meditation in mind throughout the week. I cannot say enough about this book; it’s an incredible journey of self-care and self-acceptance and self-love, and what could be a better thing to start the year with? I mean, look at this last chapter. EXACTLY WHAT I NEEDED TO READ.

Pandemic Reading – The Regular Week

How To Be A Victorian. Good lord I am glad to live in the modern age, even with a global pandemic and the polarization of our population on literally every topic. AT LEAST WE HAVE WASHING MACHINES. And food. And toilets. And central heating. And pretty much everything else. This book is an incredibly well-researched book about daily life in the Victorian age – the author has lived and worked on a “Victorian farm” and I admire her commitment to detail. Corsets, skirts, brushing her teeth with soot. Going without water-based washing for four months. Eating suet, SUET PEOPLE. Anyway, some chapters dragged for me and others were fascinating, particularly the home remedies and medical chapter. Oh! And the air quality in Victorian London was so gross – pea soup fog, no proper sewage…yay for the modern age! There is a passage about the pea soup fogs of London; at the worst of times you could wave your hand in front of your face and not see it. IMAGINE. Anyway, thanks to my friend Jeni (HI JENI) for the recommendation. Talk about gratitude. I AM GRATEFUL FOR MY LIFE, I SWEAR.

The Relatives. I was really interested to read this as I have been mixed on Gibb’s books. I loved Sweetness in the Belly, but did not love This Is Happy – sorry to all of you who adore that book. I really liked The Relatives, a lot. In fact, I devoured it. Such an interesting cast of characters, all interrelated but unknowingly. I am going to give some trigger warnings here for…a lot of things? Infertility, child neglect, abuse, and a lot of kind of gross imagery. But for all that, I really enjoyed this.

Love and Other Words. This was so disappointing for me. I really like this author and I really do like a nice, light romance, but this just didn’t do it for me. It dragged so much and I had a hard time caring about the characters and the story line. Blah blah blah. Anyway, not for me but on to the next book!

I feel like this post has been a bit of a journey for me, since I started writing it. I am still low-level worried and anxious and sad about school, but we are here, we are together, we’ve come this far and we can keep going. Right? I mean, let’s think about the Victorians. We have running CLEAN water, we might be facing Covid but we have vaccines and medical care and, presumably, we are not going to all die of cholera, because of the running water. My kids are at school, not in a sweatshop doing child labour, and today I’m going to bake muffins and do laundry and neither of those things will require massive amounts of physical exertion. Life is good, even when it feels a bit disheartening. How are you feeling, this New Year? Tell me everything. xo