Category Archives: My failing sanity

Lockdown, Redux; Thirty-Seven Weeks In

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Double Up The D

I am a person who feels very strongly about the benefits of various vitamins and dietary supplements, and if you are a person who, like my dad, thinks that AT BEST such items are useless and a waste of money, not to worry. I am not going to try to sway you to the side of tumeric supplements and the various vegan glucosamine options available to you. I am, however, going to talk about Vitamin D.

I am not a medical professional or being paid by Big Vitamin, but I want to encourage you all – especially those of us in the Great White North – to double your Vitamin D intake. I have long been a believer in Vitamin D, and not just for the bone growth and development that it is officially touted for. I think Vitamin D plays a significant role in mood stability and also immunity. Current research shows a correlation between Vitamin D deficiency and the more severe of the Covid symptoms for those who contract it, and I feel vindicated.

Although, technically, I think that a Vitamin D deficiency is probably present in most severe cases of viral and bacterial illness, not just Covid, but let’s stay on trend here.

We all take a multivitamin in the Boyhouse, which contains 400 IU of Vitamin D, but that is, in my non-medical opinion, NOT ENOUGH. During the summer we take 1000 IU in addition to the multivitamin – yes, I spend a lot of time outside in the sun, but I am always wearing sunscreen which prevents Vitamin D absorption – and then, when we roll the clocks back, we take 2000 IU. Actually, this year we started taking the double dose early, since we had such a stretch of cold and grey weather, but you know. I approximately time it with the end of Daylight Saving.

School’s Out…For A While

I feel like we need all the Vitamin D we can get our hands on, not only because the sun is setting before 5 pm, but also because new restrictions were announced on Tuesday, and the only one that affects me – as I was already NOT gathering with people, NOT eating out, NOT playing team sports, NOT going to worship services, and really NOT doing anything at all – is that all grades 7-12 students are doing “at-home learning” now until January 11.

I had a really hard few days last week; I am generally perky and optimistic, but I was feeling extremely despondent and sad. Monday morning as I was finishing my cardio workout, my watch started exploding with notifications from Power School, saying that my younger son was marked “in isolation” for the week. As it was 7:45 am and he was a) still at home, and b) healthy, I was very confused. It turns out that there was a Covid case in one of his classes and he was to be home for two weeks.

To be totally honest, I was not worried about his physical health; the case was in his math class, all kids are masked and relatively distanced, and it wasn’t one of his friends with whom he eats lunch (outside, also relatively distanced). I was, however, worried about his mental health. He’s a very social kid and the thought of him spending hours doing schoolwork alone in his room on his laptop was…not great. The next day, however, I learned he would soon be joined by his brother, as everyone was transitioning to “at-home learning.”

So that was a blow. I get it. I do. But! My kids have been thriving in their strange, masked-up school environment. They have never complained about wearing masks, they have never complained about all the restrictions, they wear masks even when outside, when they are with friends. We’ve had a few days to process it, and the school is doing everything to make this a smooth transition, learning from the chaos that was in the spring, but still. It’s a blow.

Also we do not have a big house and, well. Everyone is home, all the time.

All Quiet On The Grocery Front

Before the restrictions were announced on Tuesday, I was getting multiple texts from friends saying a) Costco and Walmart were both completely sold out of toilet paper, b) lineups at Costco were snaking doubly through the warehouse, and c) everything was terrible.

Wednesday is my regular grocery shopping day, and all I could think was I can’t do this again, I can’t do it. I was so stressed by the thought of grocery shopping, I hardly slept Tuesday night. I hauled myself to the grocery store for 8:00 am, right after seniors-and-those-with-disabilities hour, and…it was fine. Busier than a regular Wednesday at 8:00 am, but fine. There was plenty of everything, including toilet paper and other paper products, there were tons of cleaning supplies, including Lysol in spray and liquid AND wipe form, and all of the usual staples were stocked up. The only thing they did not have was large packages of spinach, of which I usually buy four per week. I figured this was just a delay in shelf stocking, and that there was no actual spinach shortage, so I am not ashamed to tell you that I completely cleaned out the store of smaller packages of spinach, stacking seven of them in my cart. As god is my witness, if I have to give up my daily green smoothies, someone is going to get stabbed.

Despite the overall fine-ness of the shopping experience, and despite the fact that I got a Lindor chocolate house as a gift with purchase instead of the dreadful poinsettia (they give them away for free, do NOT try to fundraise with them, NO ONE WANTS THEM) I was in a funk. I could not shake it.

Do you know what DOESN’T work when you’re in that kind of sadness spiral? Telling yourself that a trip to Superstore in a pandemic is not exactly standing in a bread line in Ceausescu’s Romania. Telling yourself that your life is not exactly like that of the dad’s in that movie about the little boy who was a ballet dancer, the dad who was a striking coal miner in 1980s Britain, who had to chop up his dead wife’s piano just to use the wood for the fire, who eventually crossed the picket line and endured the verbal abuse of his former friends just so he could provide for his family. I mean, next to that, I am practically Kate, Duchess of Cambridge.

I eventually told myself that while a paper cut is not a broken leg, it still hurts, and I sat with my sadness for a while. I went to bed early and felt much more myself the next day.

Oh Yes, We Need A Little Christmas. Right This Very Minute.

The tree is up!

That was the boost this week needed! This year’s ornament is a narwhal. The unicorn of the sea! Bye, Buddy, hope you find your dad!

I also started my Christmas baking, kicking things off with my annual gingersnaps (thank you, Co-Op, for having molasses).

Here’s your one chance, Fancy, don’t let me down.

Pandemic Reading

This was lovely and sweet and as soon as I finished it I put every single one of Camille Pagan’s books on my “to-read” list.

It is, I think, very important to read stories about people who encounter life differently from me, with different backgrounds and experiences. With that said, I did not at all enjoy this book. While it was beautifully written, I found it extremely disturbing, upsetting, depressing, and sad. It probably didn’t help that I read most of it on Wednesday of this week.

Following up on my reading of Hans Christian Anderson fairy tales, Grimm’s are also pretty nuts. Suzanne (HI SUZANNE) in particular mentioned Hansel and Gretel, which was in this collection. HOO BOY. Did you know that in the original version, Hansel gets turned into a fawn, then they live in the forest for a long time, the King goes on a deer hunt and injures him, and then falls in love with Gretel and marries her? This is all after their parents abandon them in the woods to die and instead they get taken in by a witch who – for reasons that are not clear – locks Hansel only into a cage to fatten up in the manner of veal, for later feasting. Not at ALL a disturbing concept for children.

It’s the last day of November and as we head into December let’s all remember to be extra kind and patient with people in customer service, and people in general. Everyone has something going on, always, but especially this year. In the meantime, enjoy this Barkley photobomb. xo

19th Nervous Breakdown (in the grocery store); Thirty-Five Weeks In

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The province announced what I am going to call a very mini-shutdown on Friday the 13th, and it called to mind the last Friday the 13th, eight months ago, when the very mini-shutdown led to the total big shutdown. It’s enough to make a person turn superstitious. I’ve been oscillating between despair that a mini-shutdown is going to do anything at all, sadness that there is really no way to police what seems to be the real driver, large private gatherings and that people are just going to keep partying, slight hope that two weeks might make a difference, and a what can you do other than recite the Serenity Prayer over and over kind of feeling. I’ve been refreshing the news all weekend but so far, still a very mini-shutdown, also still the depths of despair about a looming full-scale one. Well, today I feel calm and zen about the whole thing, it’s like I’ve been constantly preparing for the possibility of a full-scale shutdown. My house is stocked, my pantry is full, my Christmas shopping is complete and I have two cases of wine in the basement.

What more could a girl need?

Two of my favourite bloggers, Suzanne and Swistle (HI SUZANNE HI SWISTLE) have been regularly writing about grocery store shortages, and I find it endlessly fascinating, the things that are available and unavailable in other parts of the continent. Forget continent, there are variances in our province. My mother, who lives two hours north of me, couldn’t obtain a ten-kilogram bag of flour, whereas in my grocery stores, flour is plentiful. In fact, last week Superstore had the ten-kilogram bags on sale for $8.98. EIGHT DOLLARS AND NINETY-EIGHT CENTS. For ten kilograms of flour. Of course I picked one up, even though I had two bags at home, which leads me to my next point.

My brain has completely changed in the past eight months; I used to be able to calmly think oh, I have flour at home, I can get some when I need it, but not anymore. NOT ANYMORE. Suzanne referred to this as Grocery Store Pathology, this panicked feeling that if you do not seize the moment and buy the things that are available to you, they may not be there next time.

Here’s the thing: circling back to the grocery store shortages, I have not really noticed anything in short supply over the past few months. There has been talk about aluminum shortages, but I bought soda water in cans last week and there certainly didn’t seem to be any shortage of that. Flour – as mentioned – pasta, rice, frozen vegetables, toilet paper and paper towel, all of those things are plentiful right now. The one thing I’ve noticed – and this probably isn’t a pandemic thing, it’s more like a weird Superstore thing – is that I haven’t been able to get my favourite kind of peanut butter, Just Nuts Crunchy.

All the other Just Nuts peanut butters are available: creamy, sea salt, honey, but the crunchy hasn’t been there for weeks, and I was starting to get into my one backup jar, so I was feeling a bit desperate. I mean, I only eat peanut butter on toast once or twice a week, so the situation was not DIRE, but it felt like it was. I took a leap of faith and bought the store brand natural crunchy peanut butter, although I was somewhat irritated to discover that it was a dollar more expensive than the name brand for the exact same size. The store brand! More expensive! This is an outrage, I want to talk to the manager.

Anyway, as I was in Superstore last week I was feeling so serene about everything – it’s fine, everything’s fine, if the worst thing that happens is I eat store brand peanut butter, well, I am better off than pretty much everyone – until I got to the baking aisle. I needed a carton of molasses with which to make my annual gingersnaps. I had finished my last carton making gingerbread a few weeks ago. I pushed my cart, humming along to the music, and then, puzzled, retraced my steps. I looked again. People, there was no molasses. I stared at the empty shelf for a solid minute and then felt like I might have an actual breakdown right there in the baking aisle, next to the dried fruit, shredded coconut, and shortening. CHRISTMAS IS CANCELLED, THERE ARE NO GINGERSNAPS. It was a 180 degree flip, from calm and serene to everything is terrible. On the outside, I’m sure I seemed perfectly fine and put together, but it’s like when your sock starts sliding off into your boot: I was not fine. I smiled at people through my mask, I chatted with the cashier, I gestured to the elderly man who had literally a loaf of bread and a package of sausages to go in front of me, but on the inside, I was like the Sadness character from Inside Out.

I made it to the parking lot, and it had not been plowed. I immediately regretted the soda water and the ten kilograms of flour, as my cart became immovably stuck in the snow. What even is the point of all this flour. I cannot make gingersnaps. Is there even a molasses substitute. All is ashes.

Literally, I could not move the cart, using all my strength and momentum. I stared up the aisle of the parking lot, seeing my car in the distance. There was nothing for it but to abandon my cart and carry each bin, one by one, to my car as fast as I could. By the time I had gotten down to the last bin, a very kind woman stopped and helped me move the cart to a packed-down part of the parking lot, and from there I was able to maneuver it to my car, the whole time wondering how many calories I was burning during this shopping trip. Her kindness perked me up, and I decided to stop at the Co-Op on the way home. I don’t like doing two grocery shops in a week but I thought I would just pop in and pop out, to see if they had molasses. People, they did, they had shelves of it, and I bought TWO, which is much more than I need but hey. Grocery store pathology. I can always use it next year.

Pandemic Reading

Apparently Toxic Masculinity was the unwitting theme of the week. Last week it was Liar’s Poker, this week:

I am unsure if I am recommending this to you or not. I mean. At its core, it’s a story about a family, told from multiple points of view. It’s also a study of toxic masculinity and the rise of supporters of a certain person who wanted to make America great again. So, it might be a wee bit raw. It was well-written. It was well done. It was thoughtful and insightful and very smart. But. I cannot say it was enjoyable.

This was a really wonderful book – by a Canadian author – about being a young woman in a secret relationship with an older, prominent politician. Well, you probably think you know where this is going. But it has turns I did not expect and an ending I did not expect, and it was very well done. It was probably the most brutally honest, yet enjoyable, book about being young and in a toxic relationship. Speaking of toxic masculinity! It’s up there, Steve.

This was the week to pull out the Christmas tea towels, coffee mugs, and music. 70s on 7 has been changed to the Hallmark channel while in the car, and my festive Spotify playlists have been on repeat. We need a little Christmas, right this very minute. Stay safe and healthy, friends. xo

The Return of Tiny Secret Festive Season; Thirty-Four Weeks In

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Last Thursday, in a single adrenaline-fuelled afternoon, I finished my Christmas shopping. I do most of my shopping online, but there are always a few things that I want to physically look at, hence last Thursday’s trip to the mall.

The mall, you guys. The mall. One thing I will say about the mall is that Covid safety precautions are being followed to a tee, from social distancing to mask-wearing to extra cleaning to hand sanitizing stations everywhere. I had to sanitize my hands each time I entered a store, RIP my skin. So, I congratulate the mall and all my fellow Thursday afternoon mall-goers for following the rules and embracing the new protocols. I only saw ONE elderly woman with a mask under her nose, which is a big improvement over any other time I have been out in public.

However, it’s still the mall. I started off in a Let’s Fucking Go kind of mood, all energized and excited because, in the very first store I found the exact perfect gift for my husband’s sister. I am not a person for whom Gift-Giving is my Love Language, but I swear I got a little burst of serotonin when I obtained the item.

I was energetic, happy, and chatty for the first hour, but by the time I got to my last stop, The Bay – what IS IT with The Bay, you guys, why is it always so dreadful and why do I continue to shop there – I was definitely flagging. I was sweltering in my mask, winter coat, and boots, loaded down with bags, and dying for a drink of water when I got to the checkout and the person in front of me was having a very long discussion with the cashier about a coupon, and why couldn’t it be used in this situation, and okay, let’s put everything on separate bills so it could, and I GET IT, WE ALL WANT TO SAVE MONEY BUT WHY ARE THERE ONLY THREE TILLS OPEN FOR THIS ENTIRE GIANT DEPARTMENT STORE.

Anyway. Eventually I was back in the parking lot, sitting in my car just staring out the window for a good five minutes before I put on my seat belt and drove home.

Once I got home, with all my shopping in the rearview mirror, I immediately became festive-feeling and swapped out all my hand soaps for ones that are named Winter Candy Apple and Frosted Coconut Snowball, so the Tiny Secret Festive Season has begun! My grocery notepad has been exchanged for a festive-themed one, on November 1 I put on my Christmas bracelet and brought out my red-plaid pajamas, and I’ve been using Vanilla Candy Cane body butter on my feet at night. Sugar cookie and gingerbread dough have been made and are in the freezer, and on Thursday I will swap out my poppy and apple-themed tea towels for Christmas ones. My Buddy the Elf mugs will make their appearance this week for morning coffee, mark my words.

We had a short streak of extremely mild weather, and so my husband and I took advantage of it to hang the Christmas ornaments in our Mayday tree. Every November there is someone who, if a person expresses even mild joy about the festive season, will sternly and austerely remind that person that no one should ever express such feelings prior to Remembrance Day, that it is disrespectful and wrong. Let me tell you: I do not agree with this character assessment. If a person wants to go full-on Clark Griswold the second the Halloween decorations come down, let your sparkly, Santa-themed flag fly. Let’s take joy where we can and if that means watching the Hallmark channel, putting up a tree, or just eating peppermint-flavoured goodies in November, DO IT.

If you think for even one moment that we are, in the Boyhouse, not going to embrace a 18 degree day IN NOVEMBER and use it to glovelessly tie ornaments onto a tree with tiny little strings, then you have another think coming. Unfortunately, this weekend was snowy with wind warnings, and subsequently we had to send the boys out looking on the street to find a couple of balls that had broken off in the wind, but that’s tradition. Calgary tradition.

Pandemic Reading

This was really fun to read, about working in the bond markets – specifically Salomon Brothers – in the 1980s. Woo! What a ride. Some of you may know that I worked on the structured products desk on a natural gas trading floor, and did this take me back. I worked during the California Crisis, when natural gas and electricity prices skyrocketed, and I remember the market volatility and all that ensued. Also, let’s just say that bond traders in the 1980s were not dissimilar to natgas traders in the 2000s. I remember one guy – Tom – who became so infuriated that he repeatedly smashed his phone on his desk until it broke. He had to go to an anger management course, but I don’t think that was as effective as the reaction of the rest of the floor. Any time Tom would walk by, everyone would exaggeratedly cover their phones. If he came to discuss a deal, someone would say Don’t fucking touch my phone, man, I need it. This went on…well, it’s probably still going on. The pranks and dares, too. I remember one guy was paid $10 to EAT a piece of styrofoam. He did it and was quite unwell for the rest of the day. There was also a bet to see who could drink more water in the span of 30 minutes and then not use the bathroom for two hours. The winner, I recall, was not feeling well after over-hydrating. Ah, good times. Anyway, this book was a lot of fun if you’re into that sort of thing, but note that it was written in 1989 and the extremely insensitive language reflects that.

This was just LOVELY and a perfect read for the festive season. So Christmas-spirit-ish. The author was born and raised in Calgary, too, so yay!

I will leave you with my newest Tiny Secret Festive items – a series of handmade bookmarks by a VERY talented, young local artist. Aren’t they adorable? I have a number of her bookmarks but I really wanted some festive ones, and now the problem is choosing which to use!

Have a beautiful week, my friends. If you’re also a Tiny Secret Festive person, how are you celebrating this week? xo

She Died The Way She Lived, Standing In Line At Costco; Thirty and Thirty-One Weeks In

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I am not the type of person to talk about dreams or analyze dreams, but last night I dreamt I had a black cat, which I bathed, and subsequently the cat turned white. Then, as its fur dried, it went from white to grey, and back to black. The whole time, the cat was cuddling me and putting on a bejeweled collar with its own paws so I could photograph the miraculous colour change, but people kept stopping by and visiting and I never had a chance to take the pictures.

I’m not going to go into a what does it all mean thing, but a) I do not have a cat and never have had a cat, and b) I don’t know much about cats but I do know that one would never bath one in a bathtub without suffering massive bodily harm. Also, cats cannot put on their own, albeit adorable, bejeweled collars.

What does it all mean, what are we doing with our wild and precious lives.

Well. The last two weeks were “short weeks” but in the manner of such felt a bit long. I think it’s because I had two travel days, one on either side of Thanksgiving, and the week before the holiday my husband was out of town, meaning that I was solo parenting and preparing for travel all by my lonesome. Although, let’s face it, travel preparations ALWAYS are my domain; part of this is my own control-freak-about-packing nature, and part is just, well, nature.

We were gone such a short time but I found that the grocery situation was pretty bad by the time Wednesday – my typical Grocery Day – came around, and so I found myself this week at both Costco and Superstore. At this point in the pandemic, I feel like I have the mental and physical strength to accomplish this kind of epic grocery shopping without my week going off the rails. My friend Mo (HI MO) had mentioned that, the Friday before Thanksgiving, she had experienced a lineup-outside-of-Costco that we hadn’t seen in months, but I figured it was a Thanksgiving thing.

Indeed, there was no lineup to get into Costco, but it was crazily busy inside. It made me slightly concerned, in a are we panic-buying again? kind of way. As an answer to that, I am NOT panic-buying but I definitely have a very well-stocked pantry and I am not going to let the base levels get down too low, if you know what I’m saying.

When I finished my shopping I started towards the checkout…and then realized that I didn’t have far to go.

That line went from the checkout to almost the bakery, so pretty much the length of the store. Specifically, it went to the aisle that houses both Christmas and Halloween decorations.

As an aside, I realized that the end of September is a magical time where Halloween candy sits alongside Advent calendars and Christmas-themed chocolates in Superstore. What an age we live in.

Just to confirm that yes, that was indeed the line to check out and not just a bunch of people randomly stationary in a line-like formation, I asked the older lady at what appeared to be the end. “Yes, it is, but I’m waiting for my daughter and she has another cart, a whole other cart, and she is coming back.” she replied in an alarmed kind of way, as if I would explode or something knowing that another cart was going to be in front of me. I mean, it’s Costco. People have two carts all the time. I smiled and nodded, and then realized we are all wearing masks so maybe she couldn’t tell I was smiling, and then replied, okay, great in a cheerful, I Totally Understand kind of way.

After a few minutes, some line movement, and more dithering, the lady turned to me. “I’ll go get her, my daughter, she’s in the clothes I think,” the lady said, as if I was going to aggressively report her to the Costco authorities if the cart didn’t materialize immediately. “Can you watch my cart?”

Of course, I replied, and the lady bustled into the clothing section, at which point the line started moving in a big way. Well, it seemed like a big way since we are all six feet away from each other but perhaps it was just two or three carts moving.

In normal times, I would have just simply moved the lady’s cart forward without thinking about it. However, it is not normal times and I was momentarily paralyzed. I mean, is it OKAY to touch someone else’s stuff? What is the protocol here? Meanwhile, the gap between the lady’s cart and the line was getting big and there were many, many people behind me. Would my paralysis cause a road-rage-like episode in Costco?

Still no sign of the lady, and probably only a minute or two had passed, but that is a LONG time in Costco world. I took a breath and pushed her cart forward, while simultaneously pulling my cart behind me.

Side note: do you know how hard that is? It was a feat of strength that should be reserved for Festivus.

We had moved up SIGNIFICANTLY, after no small effort on my part to Keep Things Moving, by the time the lady returned, with her daughter. I quickly used my hand sanitizer and no one seemed put out that I had touched a cart that wasn’t mine. I’m actually not sure the lady even noticed we had moved, although we had moved up all the way to the candy and gum aisle. Maybe she thought that is where she had left it, maybe she thought the cart magically rolled itself to its new position, who knows.

The line that was daunting was actually not bad as they had a fellow at the front directing traffic, pointing people over to specific lineups which, in my humble opinion, is a brilliant idea and should be adopted by every single large grocery store forever.

I chatted with the lady behind me about how busy it was, and she postulated that it was because it was payday, so maybe that is the explanation, rather than pandemic panic shopping. We will see and in the meantime, I might not shop on the 15th and 30th of the month.

Pandemic Reading

With a long weekend and, well, snow, I have gotten a lot of reading done over the past two weeks!

This was one of the best books I have read in a long time, and I had just picked it up on a whim at the library, because I liked the cover. Don’t you love when that happens? This is a collection of short stories about people from Croatia – refugees and immigrants, mostly living in Canada. The author herself lives in Edmonton; it’s always fun to read about familiar places.

I really liked this; I like Elizabeth Strout so much. It wasn’t my favourite of hers, but it was very thought-provoking and, in the manner of Elizabeth Strout, beautifully written.

This was very well-done, a real page-turner, but the material is very disturbing and upsetting. That is my warning: if you are NOT easily upset, then this is a very excellent read. It deals with a Nigerian refugee and a British woman and how their worlds collide.

This was a reread for me; it is delightful and wonderful and I highly recommend it. It’s about the dwellers of an apartment building during one hour period in a day. I love stories that show how interconnected we all are, even when we don’t realize it. Plus, the author lives in Calgary!

This was an extremely silly book. If you are in the mood for something strangely long, but very fluffy and silly, this is it. A relationship advice columnist and a top-notch divorce lawyer meet; both of them have sworn off relationships but, well. I’m sure you can figure out the rest.

I did like this book, I did. But I am going to issue a major trigger warning here: disturbing content. It follows three women and deals with arranged marriage, Hindu and Indian culture, adoption, infertility, and depression.

Since I inadvertently reread Durable Goods, I thought I should purposefully reread the sequel. You know, I really like Elizabeth Berg. I like her character development, I like her style. This was a very sweet and satisfying book, which was just what I needed.

These photos were from a sweet hike we did at Thanksgiving; the area had been devastated by forest fires back in 2003 and it was interesting to hike around the burnt trees and new growth. Plus, waterfalls! DO go chasing waterfalls and have a beautiful week, everyone! xo

One More For The Road; Twenty-Eight Weeks In

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As anyone who knows me is aware, I always have a song stuck in my head. Always. I like to think of it as the Soundtrack of My Life. The last few months, I have had snippets of the Hamilton soundtrack stuck in my head, and not just the big ones like Here comes the general! or Helplessssssssss or I’m not throwing away my! shot! but random lines from random songs. I’ve woken up in the middle of the night suddenly thinking Angelicaaaa, ELIIIIza, and Peggy. The Schuyler Sisters! or, horribly, We have resorted to eating our horses. ON REPEAT. This has been going on for months, no matter what else I have listened to during the day.

Then, suddenly, last week I woke up with – of all things – the Lido Shuffle going through my head. How or why this happened I cannot say, but I slid into my car singing to myself one more for the roooooaaaad, turned on the ignition, and THE LIDO SHUFFLE WAS PLAYING ON THE RADIO.

The station I listen to most of the time is Sirius 70s on 7, and I was driving to teach at the community centre the other day when The Coward of the County came on. I don’t want to flex on you people, but I’m a bit of a savant when it comes to song lyrics. This is particularly true with anything I may have heard often in my youth, and my parents were big Kenny Rogers On Vinyl people. All of which is to say, although I hadn’t heard The Coward of the County for at least thirty years, I automatically sang along.

You know how there are songs that you know all the words to, but have never really given them much thought? That was me. As I sang my way through the song, I startled myself. Have you LISTENED to those lyrics? It is an incredibly violent song. Gang rape! Murder! Probable execution TIMES TWO. All sang in a kindly, lovely, Kenny Rogers voice. I had a Moment, not unlike when I discovered that Ring Around The Rosy was all about dying from the plague. Why is this tune so cheerful and the subject matter so grisly.

We have Sonos speakers all through the house and the kitchen ones are what are utilized for when dinner is being prepared, eaten, and cleaned up after. Last Sunday I had Soul Classics playing, and after dinner I retired to the couch to read while my husband and younger son cleaned up the kitchen. My older son went downstairs to finish some homework, and as I picked up my book, I could hear the distinct, but faint, sound of Blue Rodeo’s Try. At the same time, I could hear, much louder, Soul Classics from the kitchen. The window was open so I stepped outside to see if Try was coming from outside. It disappeared. I called down to my son to see if he was blasting Blue Rodeo while studying. What? What’s Blue Rodeo? So, no. I asked my husband if he could hear it. What? No. I walked into the kitchen and, indeed, all I could hear was Signed, Sealed, Delivered. No Blue Rodeo. Back to the couch. Oh, baby you try. Tryyyyyy.

This was more than having a song stuck in my head, this was music that I could hear and, apparently, I was the only one hearing it.

Isn’t that a sign of something? I was honestly starting to get worried. I can hear music that no one else can. Then, I noticed something flash on the TV; my husband, in an attempt not to see anything about the Patriots game he was recording to watch in its entirety after dinner, had flipped the channel to a music one, and had turned the sound way down…but not apparently to zero. I was hearing the very soft music on the speaker beside the couch.

Well, that was a relief.

Also a relief; I had my first salon visit in over six months. Here’s the Before, During, and After:

I know what you’re going to say: it’s dark. Mmmhmmm. It’s actually way darker than I like; my hair therapist had changed colour lines and warned me that my usual colour might need “tweaking” and here we are. This dark colour is very similar to my “birth” colour (as opposed to “natural” as my natural colour is grey-white), which I haven’t seen in 25 years or so. Honestly, I find it startling every time I look in the mirror.

Well, as my friend Monique (HI MONIQUE) said, colour fades over time and I colour every four weeks or so; this is a temporary thing. It’s not like I just got a face tattoo or anything. Who knows, maybe I’ll grow to like it, but in any case, I have four boxes of Garnier in my cupboard from when they were on sale at Superstore for $4.99. Also, the cut made it feel so much healthier and bouncier, which should get me through the next six months or so.

Pandemic Reading

What happens when a father’s dying wish is for his family to sit shiva for him? A lot. This was a mixture of Wow, That’s Sad, and Horrified Laughing Out Loud, and I Didn’t Predict The End. In other words, worth a read. According to my Instagram friends, this was made into a movie.

A baby girl is abandoned at the YMCA. I am going to tell you that this is a beautifully written book, not unlike Room, wherein if you start it, you need to finish it for the message of hope and love. HOWEVER, like Room, it is extremely upsetting and disturbing and difficult to read. There’s your caveat.

Speaking of difficult to read, I picked this up as it was written by a friend’s sister-in-law. It deals with the death of the author’s sister and best friend – the sister, suffering from extreme mental illness commits suicide, and the best friend succumbs to cancer. It’s a very raw and emotional read.

Whew, after all those books of death and despair, I’m going to read something very very light. I will let you know what exactly I’m reading next week. xo

Bizarre Even For These Days; Twenty-Seven Weeks In

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pandemic Reading

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

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

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

Slowly Losing It; Twenty-Two Weeks In

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Get It On, Bang A Gong

With absolutely no prompting and zero information on the Noise Infraction Police Situation, my neighbours two doors down – a couple in their late sixties – told me that every day at 5:30, when my son practices his drums, they come out into their backyard to listen to him. “When you have your windows open we can really hear him,” the wife said, and when I sheepishly said that it’s pretty loud, she answered with “It’s music! He sounds great!” I feel Very Fortunate for my neighbours and more inclined than ever to encourage more band practices (the socially distanced kind, of course) in my basement. Get ready for some covers of Another One Bites The Dust and Plush, neighbours!

Channeling Tammy Faye

Every night for two weeks, I wondered why my mascara was so hard to remove, and every morning for two weeks I woke up with raccoon eyes and mascara residue still, somehow, on my eyelashes. I wondered if they changed the formula; it was going on a little funny as well. Every day. Two weeks. Then I looked at the tube and realized I had accidentally bought the waterproof kind.

You Go To School To Learn, Not For A Fashion Show

The boys have not worn jeans since March; they have been, weather be damned, exclusively in shorts. They are starting in-person school in just a couple of weeks, and so I had them try on their jeans to see where we were at.

You know how you can be around people for twenty-four hours a day and not really realize that they’ve changed until you look at old photos or, in this case, have them try on clothes they haven’t worn for five months? They’ve GROWN.

My older son went to try his jeans on and said, “Mom, I’m not sure if it’s just because I haven’t worn jeans in a while, but were they always this tight?” He came into the room looking like Kramer when he went back to jeans. They were absolutely, 1980s-Girls-Who-Wore-Jeans-Still-Damp-So-They-Could-Dry-Tighter, skintight, ending at mid-calf. He could barely walk. Then he bent over and the jeans completely ripped up the butt. My younger son’s jeans fit similarly but with less dramatic ripping.

Even if we weren’t in a pandemic, the thought of actually taking the boys to a store is defeating to me; their sizes are so strange that stores rarely carry them, so we ordered online and I chose in-store pickup. The date for pickup was last week, the same date that all the masks I ordered from a great company called Wedding Star were due to arrive. I cheerfully walked to the mall, which was busier than any place I’ve been to but with mandatory masks – and everyone complying – it felt okay. Jeans in hand, I waited happily for the masks to arrive on my doorstep…and waited. I wondered if I got the dates wrong, but when I went to look at the confirmation email, I couldn’t find it. I went to the website, and there was my order, that I HAD NOT FINISHED. My little cart was sitting there, ten masks in, waiting for me to pay. Oops. Happily, they are due to arrive BEFORE the start of school, and I have the confirmation to prove it. Plus, now all of the masks were on sale. Who knew being a flake could pay off?

Stick It To The Man

My younger son had to go for blood work, and, as with anything in our new reality, I was a bit nervous. The lab, at the best of times, seems like a disgusting petrie dish of humanity. I needn’t have worried. For one thing, as I said masks are now mandatory in all public spaces; even so, when we were allowed to enter, we had to remove our masks, sanitize our hands, and put on fresh, disposable masks provided by the lab.

Side note: is anyone else a little concerned about the environmental impacts of all of this? Disposable everything, harsh chemicals cleaning every surface that could possibly be touched by another person, not to mention gallons of hand sanitizer, possibly ingested when we eat anything and possibly absorbed into our bodies? Hello, superbugs and environmental crisis. Anyway. One thing at a time.

*repeat mantra* we are all just doing the best we can, we are all just doing the best we can

Anyhoo, back to the lab. We had to line up, physically distanced, in the hallway so the staff could control the numbers, and then after we were freshly masked and sanitized and signed in for his appointment, we were directed immediately to a cubicle where the technician would take his blood. There was a waiting room but I assume it was for people who had arrived a bit too early.

My son and I were reading and laughing at the warning signs with regards to getting blood work, that were posted on the cubicle wall. Side effects include minor discomfort! Oh no! You may have minor discomfort! My son pointed out bleeding from the puncture site. “Isn’t that how they take blood? Bleeding from the puncture sight?” Ha ha ha, yes, well.

We finished the appointment and went to the stairwell – I never take the elevator for less than five floors, and we were on the second – but it was closed due to cleaning. “Well, I guess it has to be the elevator,” I said, turning to my son, who at the same time said “Um, Mom?”

The cotton ball was soaked with blood and it was dripping down his arm. Huh.

Back to the lab!

Of course, there was a big lineup when we got there, and at the very front was an older couple, going through a very long explanation with the technician – who had her back to me – about why there was two of them and why they were there so early. The gentleman had aphasia, yes he speaks English but doesn’t always understand what’s happening, yes they understood that all chairs were six feet apart so in the waiting room, those were brand-new disposable masks they had on, did they really have to use the lab ones, okay, yes, they would use the lab ones. Meanwhile, my son and I stood there as patiently as possible; it’s not like he was bleeding OUT and also, as a society we should remember that other people exist and have needs. Aphasia is hard enough to live with, after all, and it was, as Monty Python would say, only a flesh wound.

Once the couple were inside, the technician gestured to the next person in line, who had watched my son and I standing there, and in turn gave me the universal “OMG, GO!” gesture. I apologetically explained to the woman that we were just there, but my son started bleeding…she looked at his arm and it was High Alert! Code Red! We were rushed into a new cubicle and quickly looked after, which seemed a little dramatic but was appreciated.

The lesson here is, of course, karma, because he also had some minor discomfort.

Pandemic Reading

I don’t know why I keep reading about Truman Capote, when I find his life completely sad and depressing. I guess I like reading about fashion and high society in the 1960s-70s. A few years ago I read The Swans of Fifth Avenue, which was, in my opinion, much more fun than Swan Song. However, this book contains a lot more about Lee Radziwill, who I find kind of fascinating, and also Pam Churchill. Worth a read if you don’t mind depressing end-of-life stories.

Oh, this was good. A psychotherapist seeks therapy to deal with a bad breakup, but ends up facing the fact that she is having a midlife crisis. This is wonderful and life-affirming in every way. I usually photograph pages that contain lines I want to remember, and I could have photographed this whole book.

In lieu of a mountain hike, this week my dear friend and frequent hiking partner Taryn (HI TARYN) and I headed for a 10 km in the foothills – very lovely and so close to home!

Lots more adventures to come this week, I’m sure. And for those of you wondering about my herb garden? Sorry to keep you hanging! xo