Category Archives: Moving On Up

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The Nifty Fifty Edition

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In honour of my milestone birthday, this month’s Favourite Things consists of fifty favourites throughout the years. Buckle up, buttercups!

Age 0-10

  • Pink was my favourite colour and, by association, flamingoes became my favourite bird after I saw them in the Calgary Zoo. When I grew up, I wanted to be a pink flower.
  • I loved dolls and the dollhouse my grandpa built for me when I was about four. I had a Cabbage Patch Kid named Kora Candi, who my mom risked life and limb to get for me for Christmas 1982, and for whom my grandma made a large wardrobe. I also loved my Cheer Bear and a stuffed rabbit named, unoriginally, Mrs. Bunny.
  • I loved The Muppets, particularly Miss Piggy, who I have an affinity for to this day. (Moi?) I lived for weekly episodes of The Muppet Show and still love The Muppet Movie and The Muppets Take Manhattan, but The Great Muppet Caper is a hot mess.
  • The only other show on television that I really loved was Lorne Greene’s New Wilderness; whenever I see Canada geese – which is daily – I remember his voice talking about how they mate for life, and now the featured newly-widowed goose will be alone forever. Sob.
  • I don’t remember not being able to read; according to my mother, at age two she would give me new library books and I could read them. Busy Busy World by Richard Scarry was one of my favourite books; I loved thinking about different countries and cultures. Because of this my grandma made me a (pink, naturally) quilt in which each square featured a little girl from a different country; the Canadian girl had a Mounties uniform, for example. Years later when I read Cat’s Eye, so much of it was resonant but especially when Elaine learns about different countries. She thinks I can go there someday, I don’t have to stay here.
  • Speaking of going places, the height of luxury, for me, was the rare time our family would stay in a motel that had a pool. What could be more amazing than a pool? A waterpark! Swimming was one of my very favourite things.
  • Winter was something to look forward to because of skating. I took figure skating lessons as a child and I would also spend many hours on the outdoor rink behind our house, sailing around and feeling free, imagining, somehow, that I was Princess Diana. Did she figure skate? I don’t know. I was enamoured with her and at age six, was woken up at 2:30 am by Grandma Fern to watch the Royal Wedding.
  • I loved The Bobbsey Twins, A Little Princess, and, especially, Little Women. To this day I have a soft spot for those books. I loved everything by Laura Ingalls Wilder and LM Montgomery, but especially the last two Emily books and Jane of Lantern Hill. My interest in stories about girls’ lives continues to this day.
  • I knew how to read music from learning the recorder at school, and after figuring out where middle C was located, I would painstakingly plunk out tunes on my grandparents’ piano. At age ten my parents got me my own piano and lessons, and playing the piano is still one of my Favourite Things.
  • Also at age ten, I was introduced to the Sweet Valley High series, and I spent a lot of time imagining that high school would be JUST like that. Was I ever in for a surprise!

Age 11-20

  • It was summer of ’86, and it was a hot night in Estevan, Saskatchewan. My brother, cousins, and I walked from Grandma Fern’s house to the Orpheum movie theatre, famous for its bone-chilling air-conditioning. I was wearing jeans and an off-the-shoulder pink short-sleeved sweatshirt, my hair was ill-advisedly cut to resemble Madonna’s in Papa Don’t Preach. Those characters were going to Top Gun. It was a formative moment for me, and I have never enjoyed an action movie like I did this. The theme song is now my ringtone, and at least weekly I think and you, asshole, you’re lucky to be here!
  • Also formative, but distressingly so, was my obsession with Priscilla Presley’s memoir Elvis and Me, which was later a (terrible) made-for-TV movie. It was, in my young mind, so romantic! Elvis’ buddy asked the FOURTEEN-YEAR-OLD Priscilla, in a German army base cafe, if she’d like to come to a party, and there the epic romance started. Hoo boy, that did not age well.
  • Aging much better (although in some cases, NOT GREAT BOB) were the movies that I loved: Dirty Dancing, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, La Bamba, Can’t Buy Me Love, and Say Anything. When Harry Met Sally came out when I was 14 and superseded Top Gun as my favourite moving of all time.
  • My favourite TV show was The Wonder Years, and, relatedly, I loved all sorts of Sixties music, notably The Doors and The Beatles.
  • Concerts were so cheap then, and I went to many, including INXS, Depeche Mode, 54-40, Billy Joel, Barenaked Ladies, and The Grapes of Wrath, the latter of which hail from Kelowna. I have a six-degree separation from the man I had such a crush on back then, Tom Hooper. I daydreamed that I would marry him and live in Kelowna, despite the fact that he clearly hated it and couldn’t wait to leave. Well, I did marry someone from Kelowna and he’s a rock star in my mind.
  • School dances were so exciting and something to look forward to, even if someone was always crying in the washroom.
  • My aunt gave me a copy of Mists of Avalon when I was fifteen, and that made my obsession with Elvis and Me look like a passing glance. King Arthur’s court, but from the women’s point of view? Yes please!
  • I was a dramatic kid and teen, and my flair for it found a home in drama class and in school plays. My biggest role was Amanda Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie; I copied my Alabaman cousin’s accent to land the role.
  • I was a teen in the late eighties, early nineties, when giant hair and lots of hairspray were de rigeur. I had Clairol hot rollers and, paired with Revlon’s Love That Red lipstick, I was ready for a day at school. It was in high school that I discovered I was really good at math, particularly calculus, so imagine a red-lipsticked, giant-haired me, going back to first principles.
  • I read my first Margaret Atwood book – The Handmaid’s Tale – when I was in high school, spurring a lifelong love for her writing. In my first year university, I was introduced to our other national literary treasure, Alice Munro, through her Lives of Girls and Women. To this day it’s a favourite, and I’ve read and loved every single thing she wrote. I also read Pride and Prejudice, which started my adoration of Jane Austen and all of her books, but particularly Emma and Sense and Sensibility.

Age 21-30

  • I discovered I loved group fitness classes in university, most notably step aerobics, but also boxercise.
  • Going to grad school was such a great experience for me; I received my master’s in economics with a 4.0 GPA.
  • While in economics, I met a man who became my friend for a few years before we started dating. Reader, I married him.
  • But before we got married, Margaret Atwood – whose entire catalogue I had already devoured over and over – published The Blind Assassin, which is my all-time favourite book.
  • A very close runner-up, and my ultimate comfort read, is Diary of a Provincial Lady, which I picked up completely on a whim at a used book store and have read so many times that my copy has fallen apart.
  • My boyfriend/ future husband and I went to Egypt, where we rode camels and donkeys as well as really sketchy trains, took a tiny cruise down the Nile, and climbed to the top of Mount Sinai to watch the sunrise.
  • Living so close to the Rocky Mountains meant that most weekends were spent going on hikes out there, soaking up the most beautiful place on earth. We got also married in the Rockies!
  • I loved making my own grown-up paycheques. I liked my jobs, especially when I was working on the trade floor. The job was difficult and the hours were long, but the money was great and I loved dressing up every day.
  • We bought a cozy, fixer-upper house in a beautiful, tree-lined neighbourhood, where we lived happily for twenty-three years.
  • Speaking of which, at age 29 and 30 I received the best gifts of my life: our sons. Being their mother has been the great pride and joy of my life. Elisabeth (HI ELISABETH) asked recently if I ever wanted more than two children, and the answer to that is no. I always wanted two, and when my younger son was born I knew our family was complete.

31-40

  • When I was 32, I decided to try an Ashtanga class at the Yoga Shala, as a little break from mothering two very little boys. That one class changed the whole course of my life; I started a daily practice in their Mysore program, and I still practice that way – albeit at home – to this day. I met so many wonderful friends there as well, and I think with so much fondness and nostalgia of our early, silent mornings, practicing together.
  • Barkley came into our lives at 13 weeks, and while in retrospect it seems a little bonkers to have such a young puppy with three-and-four-year-old boys, I would never change it for the world. He was our loving fluffy stuffed animal come to life, and everyone who encountered him loved him.
  • At age 33 I started a blog, and that also changed everything! I met Hannah and Allison, who are to this day my rock and safe space (HI HANNAH HI ALLISON), along with so many other great friends.
  • In addition to my personal blog, I also wrote short essays for YMC, and they eventually hired me as one of their weekly food writers, where I was the Meatless Mummy. I was there for four years, and it was really a great experience; I worked with so many wonderful women (and two men!).
  • After a few lonely years at home with the kids, I was absorbed into the Circle Moms when my oldest started kindergarten; so named because after school we would all stand in a circle and chat while the kids were on the playground. Later, the Circle Moms became the Brentwood Babes.
  • After the one-two punch of having two children in less than a year and a half subsided, we started travelling to kid-friendly destinations with them. They were great travellers, and our favourite place was Maui. We have been lucky enough to visit there six times now.
  • We also spent a lot of time at my parents’ place at the lake, particularly during the summer, where the weather could go from hot and sunny to single-digits and hailing, all within a day. There was always lots of time on the boat, and lots of board games.
  • Our neighbourhood proved to be a great one to raise kids in. My sons were able to walk to every school they attended, there was shopping and the library and the pool all within ten minutes’ walk.
  • A great privilege of my life has been to spend time with my sons; all through their childhood we’d spend so much time at the Calgary Zoo and Science Centre, playgrounds and Calaway Park, splash pads and sledding, movies and Just Dance nights. I treasure the time I spent immersed in their daily lives.
  • My 40th birthday party was an absolute blast; it included being serenaded Top Gun-style by my husband’s buddies and also chugging Baby Duck after midnight.

41-50

  • My favourite trip we ever took with the kids was to Disney World and Universal Florida; they were the absolute perfect age for it and it was so much fun.
  • I decided to take yoga teacher training at age 41, and I was one of the oldest in the class.
  • Since I had been involved in the yoga community for so long by this point, I was able to pick up so many classes right away. My friend and mentor Sharyl (HI SHARYL) had me assist her in Yoga for Stroke Survivors, where I learned so much about bodies and resiliency, and I eventually solo taught that class, along with Ashtanga, restorative, hatha, and my favourite, Yoga for Seniors. I am still in touch with many of my beloved students.
  • We travelled as a family with our very dear friends – our chosen family! – to Mexico many times pre-pandemic. When kid schedules became too complicated, my husband and I took couples’ trips to Mexico with our friends sans kids, and that was incredibly fun too.
  • The teen years are often vilified but I loved them; I loved seeing my kids grow up, graduate high school, and become the fun, responsible, wonderful adults that they are.
  • When we said goodbye to Barkley, I said Never Again! But three months later, Rex came to our family, and wow, I cannot imagine life without our Big Silly, our Doughnut, our cartoon dog come to life.
  • Moving provinces was chaotic, but when the dust settled, so did I. I love where I am so much. Our new house is an absolute dream, complete with my beautiful garden. I am so happy here.
  • I worried so much about making new friends when we moved here, and all that worry was for naught. I have such a beautiful circle of friends, women who constantly amaze me with their fun-loving personalities, their generosity, their kindness, and their ability to show up for one another. I am truly so fortunate.
  • Italy is my favourite place I have ever visited, and going there with my husband was a highlight of my life.
  • I knew I wouldn’t be teaching yoga when we moved here, but I wanted something to fill my time, so I decided to write a book! I took a series of novel-writing courses, and through that, and my blogging friends, I met some very supportive women who are also writers.

Thank you, dear readers, for all your support and kindness! I’ve been reflecting so much on everything I am grateful for, being fifty years on this earth, and I am so grateful to all of you. xo

Still Spooky Season

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Harry: Look, when the shit comes down, I’m going to be ready for it. That’s all I’m saying!

Sally: Well, in the meantime you’re going to ruin the rest of your life thinking about it.

Sally and Harry were discussing death, but I think these viewpoints can be utilized more generally, or, at the very least, to refer in a symbolic way to little, everyday, non-fatal deaths. As a casual example, let’s say you’re planning a move from the place you’ve lived your whole life, from a neighbourhood where literally everybody knows your name, from the very house in which you were new bride, a new mother, and then raised your children to adulthood, to live at the end of the road in an agricultural part of a new city, next door to your mother-in-law. LET’S JUST IMAGINE SUCH A FICTIONAL SCENARIO. One might consider that to be the death of a certain kind of life; sure, it’s followed by the birth of a new kind of life, but it is a death nonetheless.

Typically I am a Sally-type person; in fact, if I was to describe my personality using only fictional on-screen characters, I would say I am a Sally Albright mixed with a healthy dose each of Monica Geller and Buddy the Elf. And typically I am a person who really does try not to worry overly about future events; I became extremely adept at this during the pandemic, when I basically turned into someone from a twelve-step program, taking things very much One Day At A Time. I firmly believe that worrying does not prepare a person for future events, instead it saps energy and strength for when those events come to pass.

And yet, during the past year I have had many Harry moments. I have had many, many moments of worry or concern or grief for events-that-have-not-yet-happened-but-will-happen. Halloween 2023 was one of those events that I was thinking about, during Spooky Season 2022. This time last year, I had a few verklempt moments, looking at our front yard, thinking next year our house won’t be a Halloween destination for neighbourhood children. Next year we won’t have any Trick-or-Treaters. Next year I will not be able to identify as the Fancy Lady Who Gives Out Full Sized Chocolate Bars In Her Spooky House. I had to swallow hard a few times, making Special Bags for the Special Children On Our Street who I knew would be coming, including cans of pop because why not give children caffeinated beverages to go with their full-sized chocolate bars and fun-sized Swedish Fish. I was mourning the death of myself as that Fancy Lady.

Life, as we all know, can be what we make of it. I’m as happy as can be here in my new home – maybe even a little bit happier as my old home had a snowfall warning last week and the grocery store parking lots are now entering, as my friend Janet calls it, 4×4 Cart Season (HI JANET) – and Halloween IS different, but different does not mean worse.

We have exactly two children on our road, and their mother told me that she definitely would be bringing them by to Trick or Treat, presumably on their way to a neighbourhood with higher population density. I sprang into action and purchased a box of full-sized chocolate bars, along with a four-pack of Hubba Bubba and two giant Kinder surprises shaped like monsters.

You know there’s only TWO of them, right? my husband asked me suspiciously. Of course I know, but my Fancy Lady Energy must be channeled somewhere, and that somewhere is going to the two neighbour children. We can still be a neighbourhood destination! It’s just that the neighbourhood is much, much smaller.

Longtime readers may remember our old neighbour Chad, who for years competed with my husband for Best Lawn Decorations; my husband famously declared himself the winner by making a sign out of caution tape that said “Chad I Win.” When we moved we passed most of the decorations on to Chad, including but not limited to the twenty-foot Grim Reapers and the giant ghosts and skeletons; it cheers me to no end to know that our old street is a Halloween Destination and that finally, Chad is the winner. My husband did keep a few things but in my Moving Angst I felt it was a useless waste of packing boxes; wasn’t I wrong though?

He and my son hung several undead and one creepy clown in the overhead vines and the carport, all of which have failed to faze Rex in the least.

We also have this cheerful guy who is apparently going to climb onto our roof and haunt us.

Living on a vineyard and walking the dog on a gorgeous greenway next to a creek filled with ducks and geese have obvious advantages, but there is one huge disadvantage that I did not properly account for, and that is that Rex is really filthy, all the time. If it was Barkley, with his brown fur, I probably would have never noticed, but Rex’s white paws really show it. One rainy morning last week he played happily with an energetic collie in the mulched, muddy area of the offleash park, and his paws matched the rest of his coat. Happily, I was able to get him in to the groomer on Friday, which was perfect as we had Halloween festivities and he was my accessory, or, Rexcessory, if you will.

Bring me all the puppies! Or at least, one large galoompa of a puppy.

Weekly Reading

I had a DNF this week: I started but just could not get into Dinner For One: How Cooking In Paris Saved Me. It sounded SO good, but I found it incredibly boring and by page 44 I aborted mission. I just had too many other good books in the pile!

Truth and Beauty. This is a memoir by the incredibly talented Ann Patchett, and it’s an intense one. It follows her friendship with poet Lucy Grealy, who survived a Ewing’s sarcoma at age nine, which left her with a jaw deformity and a lifetime of corrective surgeries. The memoir shows a close friendship starting when the women were up-and-coming writers, and this was the most interesting to me of all. It shows Patchett as the slow and steady friend, the writer who buckles down to work steadily, and Grealy as the wild, beloved genius who misses deadlines constantly, amasses debt, and is in constant physical and emotional pain. There is not a happy ending to this story. Grealy spirals downward while her friends – Patchett included – continue an upward trajectory and try to help her on the way. I will say that I don’t think I could have been as supportive a friend as Patchett was, if faced by the desperate cavernous neediness that Grealy displayed. 

The Brilliant Life of Eudora Honeysett. Are you in the mood for a heartwarming story of intergenerational friendship, family by choice, and a seemingly hardened old woman whose heart becomes soft and open? Of course you are! Who doesn’t need a light and uplifting book of goodness? This is a very sweet book about an elderly woman who has HAD ENOUGH of life. She lives alone, she’s 85, and she’s decided she wants to die on her own terms, so she applies for assisted death in Switzerland. Meanwhile – cue the music – a new family moves next door and the ten year old girl corkscrews her way into her life. This is just a really lovely book that switches between current time and flashbacks to her earlier life, showing how we all make choices and take paths that get us to where we are. Listen, this isn’t going to set the literary world on fire, and there are no surprises here, but it’s just a nice heartwarming book for a chilly day in fall.

Happy Halloween to everyone! Are you celebrating? I hope there are at least fun-sized chocolates involved for you this week. xo

Hairum Scarum

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The thing about moving is that, once a person has moved, there is still so much paperwork to deal with, there are still so many decisions to make, and there is so very much to learn about the new environment. Moving across provinces, I am discovering, means that much time must be spent in a variety of government and other official offices and on their websites, just getting the basics figured out. In the past three weeks, for example, we have spent countless tedious hours just getting all of our driver’s licenses switched, organizing registrations, plates, and insurance for all five vehicles plus the RV, why do we have so many vehicles, why do we have an RV, and switching our health care from Alberta to BC.

It’s quite exhausting and every day I think of something new to add to the running list: I need to get Rex licensed, for example, and I need to find him a vet, having already found him a good groomer and boarder. I don’t think it will be hard to do these things, but all takes time.

Other things I do not have figured out: medical and dental care. I’m not at all worried about finding a dentist, they are everywhere and all seem to be accepting new patients, but there is a massive physician shortage so I feel like I’ll be lucky to get one before I turn 65. Just don’t get sick, I guess. There are plenty of walk-in clinics, if I do get sick, and on the plus side, a friend told me that a doctor referral is not necessary for a mammogram, unlike in Alberta; apparently, I can just simply book one. But then, that’s one more thing added on my massive to-do list, and my dense, lumpy breasts and I are due for one in October. Guess what! It IS October!

Before my husband retired, I used up all his optical benefits to get my eyes examined and new reading glasses. This is something I have been putting off for years, for no good reason. Can I blame it on the pandemic? In any case, finding an optometrist was easy – I looked for the closest one with the highest Yelp rating – and due to the time of year, they were having a back to school sale. I ended up with Dolce and Gabbana reading glasses, and with the sale and the optical coverage, they were very low cost.

I feel fancy!

Speaking of my husband’s retirement, at his party I was chatting with a woman who will be relocating in the next six months or so, to one of four locations, as yet undetermined, but the move will either be cross-country or out of country. She was, naturally, quite anxious about all the logistics involved in such a move and said to me plaintively I just don’t know how I am going to find someone to cut my hair. Girl, I know. I KNOW! I related so much because of all the myriad things I had to deal with upon arrival, finding someone I could trust with my delicate locks was top of the list.

It’s just such an intimate relationship, isn’t it, the one between hair stylist and hair stylee. There is so much trust involved, and then there are personalities that need to be able to mesh, not to mention actual hair styling talent. When I find a stylist I like, I hold onto them like grim death. I very briefly considered going back to Calgary every three or four months to get my hair cut, but that seemed ridiculous even for me, and the logistics involved were stupid.

So began my search for a stylist.

The first part of my search began, interestingly enough, back in July, when I was very new to town. I made a sugaring appointment at a local place; there are a couple of sugaring salons in town and I chose this one purely because their online booking process was easy and one I was familiar with. The first body sugaring place I tried had an incredibly difficult booking process which required the download of an app, and then it was tricky to find the actual place on the app itself, and I ended up deleting it all in frustration and going with the other, slightly less conveniently located option. It probably says something untoward about my character that while I am distressed at the thought of someone new taking scissors to my hair, I have absolutely no problem exposing my unclothed fuzzy vulva to a complete stranger, speaking sugaring code like can we also do the back, and that my choice of person for this service is made merely by their location and ease of booking process.

In any case, in late July I found myself half-naked with a lovely young woman named Kate, chatting about being brand new to town, the stress of moving, and how it was bathing suit season and what kind of cut did I wear? Kate herself had moved here from a small coastal town, and referred to Kelowna as the hustle and bustle of the big city, which made me smile, as I had the opposite experience. When we were finished, she kindly asked if there was any way to help me feel settled, if there was any information she could share with me. I told her that I was looking for a hair stylist, did she have any friends who she could recommend?

She did, saying cheerily to my express concern about needing a stylist who was well-versed in aging, thinning, brittle hair, that, in addition to servicing all her friends, Abi cuts my mom’s hair! Well. I could certainly be Kate’s mom’s age, but the image I had immediately was a no-nonsense style favoured by senior ladies everywhere, and I felt a little disheartened. However, I accepted the contact information, and was a little taken aback to see that it was a) an Instagram handle, and b) that Instagram handle was Abi Gives Good Hair.

And you guys, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t pick up the phone to make an appointment with Abi, who Gives Good Hair, partially because of the Instagram handle and partly because I visualized the clientele as being two-pronged: on one hand, the cute young things getting their beachy waves, who were featured on the Instagram feed, and on the other, the moms. This was probably an unfair assessment on my part, but it’s the truth, and so the weeks passed and my ends became more and more frayed.

Finally, feeling desperate, I reached out to my lovely friend Sammi (HI SAMMI) for help. You may be wondering why I did not reach out earlier, since Sammi has been an extraordinary resource in this move, helping me feel welcome, introducing me to people, and also recommending her very excellent nail salon, which is everything I want in a nail salon. The reason is that the woman who cuts Sammi’s hair is known to be a bit brusque and gruff, and I have been feeling a little emotionally fragile, worried that I would be judged for colouring my own hair or for too much heat styling or for having crunchy, uneven ends.

And of course, this ended up being not the case. This woman was truly wonderful, giving me possibly the best haircut I have EVER had in my life, asking me very thoughtful questions about my hair and its history, and not once criticizing or judging my hair choices. I did not find her brusque but did find her extremely efficient, as I was in and out within a half hour, and the moral of the story is that sometimes a person has to take the risk to get the reward.

Weekly Reading

Probably the most exciting development, other than finally getting my hair cut, was that since I have official BC identification in the form of a driver’s license, I was able to obtain a library card! I immediately put a stack of books on hold, and, while I waited, I picked up an old favourite.

Emma. I love this book so much! I so identify with Emma, although now I’m over twice her age. This book is brilliant – romance, hilarity, class introspection…it has it all. It is maybe one of the funniest of Austen’s collection, as the side characters are absolutely hilarious and relatable; don’t we all have a gabby Miss Bates in our lives, or a ridiculous Mrs. Elton, isn’t everyone related to a Mr. Woodhouse, with his anxious hypochondria and his refusal to allow for any other point of view? Such a great book.

The Swimmers. The first of my library books was a winner, albeit an absolutely heartbreaking and incredibly moving winner. This novel is essentially a love letter from a daughter to a mother with dementia. I do not tend to be a crier when I read, but this book made me well up several times.

In other news – what could top a hair cut and a library card, you may wonder? – our dear blog friend Elisabeth is back! Check out her new site, Optimistic Musings of a Pessimist. All of this is a great way to start a fresh new month, and I wish you all a happy first week of October. xo

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The New House Edition

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First of all, thank you to everyone who has reached out to me about the fires. It means so much to have so many people thinking of me and my family. We are all safe and the situation has improved vastly. Tuesday morning I was walking Rex and I realized that I could smell air, not smoke, and I could see little faint patches of sky, and then Tuesday night it rained. Wednesday morning was beautiful and clear, and I was just so grateful.

It reminded me of when I injured my hip in 2019; after months of limping I swore I would never again take for granted the ability to move without pain, and I haven’t, and I feel like I will never take for granted the ability to step outside my house and take a deep, non-smoky breath. I am no stranger to smoky skies, but this was beyond anything I had experienced. When I washed my hair, the rinse water was a brownish tobacco colour, which was pretty gross. So I am ever grateful to all my friends, sending good thoughts my way and to the people in Kelowna.

Speaking of friends, one of my perennially favourite things is our blogging community. It’s such a supportive group of women who uplift other women, and on that note, Elisabeth (HI ELISABETH) had me guest post over on her blog. It was so fun answering all her questions, so please do go check it out.

And speaking of favourite things, it’s that time again! I thought it only appropriate to talk about our new house. You guys, it’s beautiful. It’s such a beautiful house. It was designed to our specifications; my husband worked really hard on all the details, and he got it all very right. I don’t think there is one thing that I would change, and there are so many things I love about it.

Nicole’s Favourite Things: The New House Edition

Welcome To My Kitchen

Were you ever – or maybe are you now – obsessed with Laura Ingalls Wilder? I sure was, and as an aside, for those of you who love podcasts, may I suggest Wilder? Hard core Laura enthusiasts who have read Prairie Fires and Pioneer Girl won’t find much new, exactly, but it is a fascinating look at the real life of Laura, and it my reassures me that I’m not alone in my longtime feelings about Pa and his apparent mental instability, constantly putting his family at risk, illegally squatting in land that did not belong to him, and making bad decision after bad decision. Anyway, if you were also a Little House fan – the books, not the TV show – you might remember when Laura got married, Almanzo built her a kitchen with lots of drawers and shelves, saying that a fellow is a fool if he can’t keep his wife happy with ample storage space. Old timey sexism aside, I can appreciate this thought and I had it many times during the house build. My kitchen is a dream with So Many Drawers. It was modelled after my mother’s kitchen, with a narrow drawer for spices, a drawer for cookie sheets, and a hidden garbage and recycle drawer. I love it so much.

In addition to this gorgeous kitchen, I have a pantry! I have a pantry!

Across from the pantry are even more built-in storage cupboards, which hold liquor, kitchen linens, cleaning supplies, brooms and mops, and our many, many shoes and boots.

I am 100% sure my husband never read These Happy Golden Years, but he really Almanzo-ed it up with the storage situation.

Let There Be Light

Every room in the house has enormous windows, and I love all the natural light. We have a gorgeous view of the city, lake, and mountains beyond, and each window feels like it showcases a work of art. I especially love my early morning yoga practice, being able to see the sky lighten as I move through my asana.

I Want To Dress You Up In My Love

There is even a window in our walk-in closet, and YES! I have a walk-in closet!

I also have MORE built-in shelves for my clothes; after twenty-three years of cramming all my clothes into half a closet and a dresser, I am really enjoying having so much room, especially since I found my non-mouse-eaten bag of favourite sweaters.

Hello Mudder

While we are on the topic of clothes and shoes, I also have a mudroom that more than one person can be in at a time! There is space for shoes and coats and accessories, and I am here for it.

There is also a cozy reading chair that I like to curl up in, looking out the big windows at the world going by, such as it is, or at least at our neighbour’s barn.

The Laundry Never Ends, So Let’s Make It Nice

My friend Janet (HI JANET) was touring our house and said “You know you’ve arrived when you have a whole room for the laundry.” WORD. I have arrived! I love my new laundry room so much, and there are more built-in cupboards for all the linens, extra blankets, towels, and so forth.

Let’s Kiss and Makeup

One of the most exciting things about this house is that we have three bathrooms, and one of them is an ensuite, which I have never had before. It’s gorgeous with a big shower and, again, lots of space and light.

Best of all, I have my very own MAKEUP TABLE!

So you can see why I am in love with this house! Storage! Bathrooms! A dream kitchen! Light! NO ONE’S SHOES JUMBLED UP IN PILES ON THE FLOOR IN THE ENTRY WAY!

Outfit of the Month

The majority of August has been very hot, which makes getting dressed a breeze. Mostly I’m a skort-and-tank top girl, but we’ve had a few occasions where I wanted to be dressier, like on our first dinner party. But barefoot dressy, if you know what I mean. This is another Old Navy dress that I bought in 2017, so I do not feel guilty for fast fashion because I’ve had it for six years, and I will probably keep it for at least that long, to my husband’s great dismay. He thinks I should update more frequently, but I do, which is why I needed all that storage space. It’s not a “one in, one out” situation in the Boyhouse, let me tell you. Anyway, I tend to prefer shorter dresses but I love the length for entertaining; I can bend over to grab things or sit with my feet tucked up without traumatizing my guests.

Lots of things to love this month, and of course, many more Favourite Things to come about my New Life! What did you love this August? Tell me everything. xo

Books, Books, Books: Moving Reading 2023

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I have to tell you that I had a tiny bit of a breakdown this week. Well, maybe more than tiny, and it was book-related. The first thing that happened is that I discovered it will be a couple of months before I can get a library card here, as I do not yet have official documentation for my new address. I was more upset than one should be to discover this, possibly due to that time of the month looming, possibly due to the comedown from months of stress, possibly due to everything being new and different. The librarian told me she couldn’t give me a card, and I was blinking back tears about it all day.

But you know me, I rallied, thinking that at least I held onto my CPL account on my Libby app, so I can get e-books, and I have hundreds of books on the shelves in my new spare room:

I cheerfully thought, well, I’ll take this opportunity to read my new copy of Lucy By The Sea, and why not reread the whole series while I’m at it? Maybe I’ll reread all of Jane Austen, in order of publication? I haven’t read my favourite Diary of a Provincial Lady for a while! Maybe I’ll read that. I was feeling very pleased with this idea, and my husband had just finished moving some furniture around in the downstairs gaming area, so I was able to access the cupboard on the TV stand. I had put a large ziploc bag full of my bookmarks in that cupboard before moving; when I opened it I made the sad discovery that the other things that were in that cupboard were still there, but my bookmarks were gone. A search of the house and all other pieces of furniture, including the garbage, was undertaken, all for naught. Everything is unpacked and the bookmarks are not here.

At this point, you’re probably thinking who cares about bookmarks? But while I have become unsentimental about many things, my bookmarks were not among them. I had handmade bookmarks from a friend’s daughter, and I would swap them out seasonally and thematically – I just got teary eyed again, thinking what am I going to do for Tiny Secret Festive Season when I don’t have my Christmas bookmarks – I had bookmarks created by and gifted to me by my yoga students as a memory of them, I had bookmarks from my days as the Book Fair Lady, and, saddest of all, I had bookmarks made by my children with markers and drawings on them. To say that I was upset by the loss of this bag is a vast understatement. I cried for hours. I cried so hard my stomach started to feel nauseous. I cried so much that my whole body ached and I felt like I had a terrible hangover.

Well. There’s no solution to this problem, except trying to practice non-attachment. Things are just things, but this is a sad thing, and in the meantime, let’s cheer ourselves up by talking about the books that got me through the week before the move up until yesterday. Let’s put the R in REM Y REM, am I right?

Moving Reading

The Sun and Her Flowers. There are some really beautiful and uplifting poems in this collection, but I think I would have liked this much more had I read it as a younger woman. Much of it deals with healing from bad relationships, and becoming stronger. It’s not my stage of life but still, I enjoy this very talented young poet.

The Story of Us. This is a sweet and very big hearted book about a Filipino woman coming to Canada as a nanny, but eventually caring for an elderly trans woman who is an Alzheimer’s patient. It’s all about family – biological and chosen – and understanding one another. The author is Canadian, which I love, and the novel’s pony of view is from that of the caregiver’s unborn child, which is very original. Some of the dialogue and prose is a bit stilted and is clearly written to make a statement and to promote the author’s agenda, which leaves me mixed. On the one hand, it is cool in that I completely support her agenda and love that books are written in a normalizing way about queer and transgender people, but from a literary standpoint, it is not my favourite. Despite that I enjoyed this very much, and found the characters to be so warm and lovely and engaging, and the relationship that developed through caregiver and patient to be incredibly heartwarming.

Romantic Comedy. Before I tell you how I loved this delightful, fun, and witty romance, a confession. I almost didn’t read this. There has been a lot of buzz around it, but I saw the author’s name and thought no thank you. In case you hadn’t noticed, at least 95% of the books I read are by female authors; it’s not that I NEVER read a male author or NEVER enjoy a male author, but it’s rare and infrequent. What can I say, I like the ladies. This is particularly true for fiction. But then I was in the library and I saw it on the New and Notable shelf; I flipped it over and saw the author’s picture – she’s a woman! Joke’s on me. Anyway, you know how you will sometimes see gorgeous movie or music star women with kind of shlubby guys (i.e., Johansson and Jost) but you do not ever see the gender flip of that? That is what this book is about. A SNL-style writer helps a male pop star with his sketches for the show, and inadvertently insults him by insinuating he would only hook up with models fifteen years his junior. They reconnect via email during the summer of 2020, and I am here for it. It’s really funny and sweet, and has some great messaging in it; the writing is top-notch and it’s just such a great romance novel! It turns out I am also here for a good pandemic side-story if it’s done well. The details about starting a relationship during the early stages of the pandemic, and what life was like (DOOMSCROLLING 4EVER) were spot on.

The Myth of Normal. Four years ago I read When The Body Says No by this author, and it was just fascinating to me, the connection between the mind and the body, the idea that mental and emotional trauma could manifest as physical illness. This book is much more of the same, delving into chronic illness as well as addiction, and the intergenerational causes of such things. It skates a very tricky line; it’s hard to write about how stress, personality traits, and traumatic or semi-traumatic experiences can lead to chronic illness without making it sound victim blaming, but the author (mostly) manages to do that. He writes with a lot of compassion about how our personalities can be shaped by adverse experiences and societal pressures, which can lead to illness or pain. It’s a fascinating book BUT warning, for anyone going through, say, a STRESSFUL PERIOD LIKE MOVING, it can be a wee bit triggering. Or, you know, if your husband has been in an incredibly stressful job for five and a half years and has multiple health issues. Also? If you are a parent, I would highly recommend skipping the chapters on parenting and how it shapes our children UNLESS you want to be haunted by the time you were so exhausted you left the baby to cry it out for a while to see if they’d fall asleep and then they DID, which apparently means the baby gave up and will be searching their whole life for someone to soothe and comfort them. Also, if you didn’t feed them on demand. Or didn’t breastfeed until they weaned themselves. Sure, societal pressures could be at play but probably you have destroyed their sense of autonomy and self-worth forever. Pardon me while I go do some breathing exercises. I kid, I kid. If you are interested in this subject, this is a very comprehensive, compassionate, and fascinating book just, maybe read with a grain of salt? Or a shaker full?

The Urgent Life. I heard this author on a podcast and I was so taken by her that I had to read her book. Um. Well? I had to check several times to see if this was actually the same person, because the book was not at all what I thought it was. I’m not saying it’s not good – it’s well-written and very interesting – but it wasn’t at all what I thought it would be about. It is a memoir about her husband dying, which I knew happened, but what I didn’t know is that they had been separated for four years at that point, they had lost a baby, and her father, a hard-core patriarch, moved in with them – while married – into their tiny New York apartment not once, but twice. Everyone in this book sounds pretty unlikeable, except for the (spoiler alert) new girlfriend who, at the end of the book, gets totally shafted. So, I don’t know what else to say. If you’re reading this, go in with different expectations than I did, I guess?

Love and Trouble. I thought I would love this. A book of essays by a forty-something woman looking back on her youth? Sign me up! But the execution and theme were so dull and repetitive, and her stories of her hyper-sexualized, wayward youth and mountains of poor decisions did not make for good reading. A couple of the essays I thought were okay, but that’s about it.

You Think It, I’ll Say It. After a slumpish couple of books, I was so happy to read this gem! You know I love a short story, and these are really great – complicated, unreliable narrators, variety of stories and settings. I’m so glad I started reading this talented author! This was so good!

Violeta. This book is the history of Chile from 1920-2020, as told by one woman. She was born in the Spanish flu epidemic of 1920, and died in the early days of the COVID pandemic of 2020. This is a translation, which might explain the awkward and stilted dialogue. It’s a very long book that drags a lot, but I’m still glad I read it as I knew very little about Chile, and I like seeing history through a human lens. Still. Long. Draggy. Be warned! This is the only book ever that I had expire on my Kobo, and I had to wait for it to come available again to finish it, which I somewhat toyed with NOT doing. It could be the move, but it was a hard one for me to get through.

Glow In The F*cking Dark. You know how I feel about the asterisk in f*cking. YOU KNOW HOW I FEEL ABOUT IT! Just SAY it or don’t, but don’t ADD THE ASTERISK! So, you know there must be a reason I overstepped my deep, deep dislike for the fuck asterisk – it’s similar to my dislike of male authors, it has to be a really good reason that I’ll read a male author, like maybe he’s David Sedaris or something – and that reason is twofold. One, I really enjoyed this woman’s first book Buy Yourself The F*cking Lilies (I KNOW), and two, I heard her speak on a podcast and discovered that her working title was simply Glow In The Dark, no F*cking involved, but her agent insisted, to the author’s dismay, that it was her “brand.” I get this. Anyway, all that said, I really did enjoy this book that is a sequel to her re-parenting Lilies book; similarly it’s a memoir mixed with self-help, and it’s very lovely and uplifting with a lot of practical advice. I also love that her epigraph was a quote from Rumi that I love: “We are stars wrapped in skin. The light you are seeking has always been within.” I love that, and that’s the theme of the book – you are a star – A FUCKING STAR, I SAID IT, NO ASTERISK – and as such, you should glow and light the way for others.

There, I’m all caught up! My boys keep telling me my bookmarks will turn up, and I want to believe this, but how is it possible when we have unpacked everything and searched everywhere? On that note, it’s time for me to put the M and Y into REM Y REM, and to wish you all a wonderful long weekend (it is the long weekend, isn’t it? Time has lost its meaning even more than before.) xo

Gnome Sweet Gnome

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In the last six weeks or so, I have listened to approximately one million podcasts, as I have been packing and cleaning and unpacking and DRIVING. It’s gotten to the point where I am wondering if I am in an unhealthy parasocial relationship with the hosts of my favourite ones, because I am relating to them so much. Several weeks ago, Kim from Everything Is Fine spoke about her recent move between Brooklyn apartments, and she said you just have to accept that everything is just going to suck for a while, and then one day you’ll feel like this is home, and when she said that, my ears perked up. I think at the time I was just in the beginning of the process, and those words stuck with me. It’s just going to suck for a while! And then it will feel like home!

The day the movers came – ten days ago now, already – was 37 degrees, RIP the movers and the guys, who were helping. It was such a busy and crazy day, and at the end of it, the guys were having a beer with the movers on the deck. I declined as I really just wanted to get the kitchen at least semi-unpacked, as it looked like this at the time:

My friend Tara (HI TARA) had warned me about what would happen, using the moving company to pack our things. She said you would find something packed super well and unwind all the packing paper, and it would be, like, a single pencil. I did not find any single pencils wrapped as such, but many times I did unwind enormous swaths of packing paper to reveal a single shot glass. Well, it was worth it since nothing was broken, but there was a lot of paper to be recycled.

Anyway, the guys were out having a beer and I was unpacking and arranging shot glasses and other kitchen-related items in the cupboards, when I saw the moving van drive away. At that point my sons burst into the house to tell me that I was desperately needed for One Last Box. By then, I had politely directed people where to put random boxes and pieces of furniture for HOURS, the doors were naturally opened the whole time and so the air conditioning was negated by the 37 degree heat, I had a pile of paper up to my knees JUST from shot glasses, and I was starving and wondering how to cobble together a dinner in such a mess. I did NOT want to go on the deck to make a decision about One Last Box, but the boys were laughing and smiling, and they just seemed so excited, and I didn’t want to be Bitchy Mom with everything going on. Also, I had just read the parenting chapters in Gabor Mate’s book The Myth of Normal, which I do not recommend you do, unless you want to feel like you have done everything wrong and have ruined your children for life. The rest of the book is good, just, maybe skip that part? Anyway, I put down my shot glass and followed them out on the deck, where they had an exacto knife for opening a wide, narrow box that was labeled “Gnomes.”

I don’t yet have a garden to call my own, so the gnomes have been on the deck, and have been moved around magically during the night. Here they are in a conga line:

It reminds me of when I first got Salvadore and it was too wintry for him to be outside, and his position in the house would change every day, like a garden version of Elf on a Shelf.

Even though I have become increasingly unsentimental about My Things, there are a few things that really have made Our House feel like Our Home, and I will say that gnomes are a huge part of it. I haven’t mentioned Julio and Jorge, who are plant pot gnomes acquired at the same time as Gustaf, but they are adorable little things. I do not have plant pots yet for this house, and so right now they are hanging out with the wooden flower I bought 24 years ago from IKEA to decorate our very first apartment, a tiny place 30 floors up in downtown Calgary.

Gaston the kitchen gnome is presiding over the kitchen.

Of course the Girls are enjoying their new spots in the kitchen as well.

The yoga frogs – and bunnies – have rounded out my kitchen decor nicely, which is making it feel very homey.

We are still in the process of hanging up the artwork, a process that will probably take a few weeks to figure out where things will look best, but my husband immediately put up my Desiderata beside my piano, which was the finishing touch on Things That Are Important To Me.

Speaking of things that are important to me, and circling back to podcasts, the incredible Alie Ward of Ologies said that her daily practice for mental, physical, and emotional health is represented by the mnemonic REM REM. The first REM stands for Reading, Exercise, and Meditation, and the second REM refers simply to sleep. I heard this and it cemented my parasocial relationship with her; it was all I could do not to send an email saying Me too, meeeee toooooo, we are besties now! In order to be at my best, every day I need to read, exercise, and meditate – I include yoga in the meditation part or, OR, I could escribo en espanol and say REM Y REM – and to get between seven and seven and a half hours of sleep. I have been squeezing in all of those things every day over the past little while, even whilst in Work Camp Mode. Sure, sometimes it’s just a little of each, and some days I did have less sleep than optimal, but for the most part I have adhered to this.

Now that all the major work has been done, I was able to spend the weekend in a more pleasurable way than being on my feet for fourteen hours and going through insane amounts of cleaning products. Saturday morning my older son and I went exploring on our bikes and it was so much fun. We rode up a grinder of a hill through the orchards, and then rode an absolutely terrifying – for me, not for him – downhill with no shoulder or bike lane, a curving, huge, steep hill; we rode down through the sun-baked creek valley and along the creek until we hit Lakeshore Road, and then circled back up a less-strenuous, but it was at the end of our ride so it FELT strenuous, hill home. I never rode my bike in Calgary as I was terrified of traffic, but there are bike lanes everywhere here – except, of course, on the giant scary hill – and I look forward to doing much more of it in the weeks and months to come. I mean, apparently it often doesn’t snow here until DECEMBER, which is such a foreign idea to me, I cannot even.

I have so many books to tell you about that I have managed to read in the past few weeks, but it will have to wait. Can you believe that it’s the end of July already? This month has flown by; I kind of feel like it should still be MAY. Well, here we are! I hope you have a wonderful week, and Happy August, my friends! xo

Five For Friday: The “We Moved!” Edition

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  • We did it! We moved! The house is almost entirely unpacked and organized and, relatedly, I am so physically tired. This may be as physically tired as I have ever been in my entire life. It would be an exaggeration to say that I have been on my feet every single day from the second I wake up to the second I go to bed, but not much of one. I realize that Not Everything Needs To Be Unpacked Immediately, but, well. After a couple of months of mess and disorganization in the old house, and a month of Pure Chaos, we all just want to be settled in and living in a clean and organized house. I mean, for a week before the move we were all eating dinner squashed on the couch around the coffee table, with one of my sons using the piano bench for a seat, as we had donated and gifted much of our furniture. We are all ready to resume life in a normal, non-boxed manner. And on that note, if you are planning a long-haul move, may I suggest having teenage boys and a handy, perfectionist husband? A few times this past week I have gone to bed and woken up to discover that my husband had built a whole row of shelves in the storage room, or that the guys had moved all the weights to nicely arrange the home gym. Since we have more vehicles than family members, getting them all there required some serious logistics. The weekend before the move, the guys drove out my husband’s car and my younger son’s truck, both completely full, including my Peloton and the extra dog crate (priorities!), and then flew back. I went to pick them up at the airport, and there was a problem with the gate. They sat on the tarmac for 75 minutes, which was about twenty minutes longer than their actual flight. Luckily I had taken a book with me, but let me tell you, tempers were FRAYED by the time they got into the car.
  • I missed the worst part of the move – the packing and the loading – as I drove myself and Rex out the day before the packers came. We all decided it would be best to not have Rex around while people packed boxes or loaded things into the truck, so I went to the new house early to clean and organize and buy groceries. The guys drove my husband’s truck and my older son’s car out two days after that, arriving late in the evening but before the movers arrived. I have driven that eight-hour route through the mountains many, many times, but never by myself, and never with so much stuff in the car that I couldn’t see out the rearview mirror. The drive itself was lovely and uneventful, and Rex did well in the car, which was a relief. It was a bit weird being in the new house alone; Rex and I were both really happy when the guys pulled in. I was also really happy that all our stuff made it in one moving van (plus all the multiple car and truck loads), with almost no damage. The guys helped the movers so much that the cost was actually less than half of what we thought it would be, so hooray for excessive late-teen testosterone. While helping a mover with the tremendously heavy granite-topped coffee table down the steps of our old lawn, an old lady pulled up and started a long conversation with my older son about our Christmas decorations and how she’d miss them, all the while the mover and my son had sweat pouring down their faces, biceps popping. It’s nice to be appreciated and missed, although my son thought the conversation could have happened when they weren’t carrying heavy furniture.

  • There is nothing like a move to make a person reconsider every possession owned. I have been obsessive about finding the perfect spot for absolutely everything, having learned from experience that I’ll just set this here until I find a better place is code for This is where this will live, forever. However, this is a very long and involved process and I have been constantly questioning whether or not we need an item. My sentimentality is long gone by this time and I am reminded of the poem by Mary Oliver entitled Storage. I kept saying things like “Do I REALLY need to keep this? Why do I still have my wedding dress?” which causes my husband to look at me with some alarm and say “I think you might want to keep your wedding dress, I think you might regret that.” But will I? Should I just keep it until I die and my great-grandchildren are saddled with all my fusty possessions, pressured to keep it until THEY die and have THEIR great-grandchildren wonder what this weird shred of possibly mouse-eaten material is?
  • This is probably bordering on the insane, but I have been cooking actual dinner every single night. Part of this is because there are no takeout places close by, and driving back and forth to get takeout would take as long as making a meal, and part of this is because the guys lived on takeout for about a week during the move and informed me that they missed my cooking So Very Much and were Dying For Vegetables. However! I will say that making a meal on top of unpacking, cleaning, and organizing for hours on end is the exhausting cherry on top of the taxing sundae.
  • Ever since I got here, everyone I have encountered – most notably my husband’s mother and sister – has treated me with kid gloves, assuming, I suppose, that I am One Toke Over The Breakdown Line. I welcome this gentle treatment, of course, but the honest truth is that I feel really great; I seem to have hopped the Melancholy Hurdle to start Embracing This Season of Life and Blooming Where I Am Planted. Probably this is because I have had numerous emotional breakdowns over the past several months, and so it is all out of my system. This is a good reminder of the benefits of Feeling Your Feelings, whatever they may be, and so if you too find yourself sobbing on your Peloton, hysterically cry-singing along with Miley Cyrus, IT IS OKAY. There will be a time after this, and you’re not alone.

I have much more to tell you, but it will have to wait. In the meantime: how are you? I’ve missed you all! Tell me everything that has been going on. xo