Category Archives: My failing sanity

Five For Friday: The Pandemic Habits That Stuck Around For Five Years Edition

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Yesterday marks the five-year anniversary of the first of many Covid lockdowns. I have been reflecting on the pandemic a lot lately because of this; for me as for most, it was a time of despair, depression, anxiety, and fear. I have also discovered that I have a lot of shame and embarrassment due to my unspoken, but strongly felt, feelings of judgement towards others who did not behave the same way I did, or made different choices during that time. It seems my propensity for empathy and compassion took a leave of absence, and for that I am ashamed. The world, after all, is a wild tapestry of lived experiences and situations, and I feel that my silent judgement only contributed to feelings of fracture and polarization that still exist today.

But, as Ma Ingalls said, there is no great loss without some small gain, and to that end I would like to focus on something very positive that resulted from this time of fear and sadness: five long-lasting habits that have improved my life vastly. Had the pandemic not happened, I would likely be the same person I was five years ago, doing the same things, living the same life. But it did, and here are the habits that I kept and love.

Rex, second guessing his decision to be an emotional support dog after listening to me talk about the pandemic.

Practice At Home / Sweet Home Workouts. I recall seeing a commercial for Peloton circa 2019, and at that time I said to my husband that is the stupidest idea I ever heard, a spin class for one? Who would do that? Who indeed. Prior to the pandemic I was a gym devotee, using the treadmills and going to spin classes, and in May 2020 I ate those words I had spoken a year before. Maybe a Peloton WOULD be a good idea, I mused aloud, Except we don’t have the room. My husband had a Hold My Beer-style response, and immediately ordered one and reorganized our basement to make space. This is both a commentary on our consumption styles – he’s All Action – and on what it was like to live with a gym-free me. Spoiler alert:

The Peloton was, of course, the best purchase we made in 2020, maybe even ever. I use it almost every single day and am currently on a 1538 day streak.

Our home gym, including Nicole’s Cardio Corner.

In addition to going to the gym, I would get up very early every morning and head to the yoga studio to practice Mysore-style Ashtanga with a whole community of similarly-minded people, and if you watch that video, I’m the one in the bright pink pants. Five years ago today I switched my practice to a home one and I have never looked back. I miss my yoga people, but I love my quiet little practice at home. This week I have been watching the waxing moon as it falls; I suppose this is an upside to Daylight Saving Time as this happens very, very early in the morning.

I still wear the Shala merch, even though my Shala is now my living room.

Write On. It’s hard to even fathom, but I used to write blog posts whenever I felt like it, any time of the week. When the world shut down and I was faced, Virginia Woolf-like, without a space to write in, I became laser focused. I would write for twenty minutes before starting yoga, I would write on the weekends, I would write whenever I possibly could. I started a count of the weeks we were locked down, and published every Monday, with a Favourite Things every month. I feel like that period of time constraints was so helpful for me to structure my writing, and looking back it gave me a detailed journal of that time. I don’t have the same constraints now, but I kept the structured habits.

I now have a room of my own to write in! Rex is a good writing partner.

I also think that the blogging community really came together during the pandemic; you all showed up! So many new blogs were created, and I made a lot of new friends in that time. I think the blogging community is stronger than ever before, and I will never stop being grateful for all of you who are here, reading this right now.

Hair Affair. When I think of all the money and all the time I spent over the years, getting my hair professionally cut and coloured every five to six weeks, I want to die. Faced with my roots about a month into the pandemic, I purchased a box of Garnier hair colour and just went for it, and I have never looked back. Does it look like a professional job? No. But it costs $10 and I can just colour my hair whenever I feel like it, without blocking off an entire afternoon.

Fresh hair colour, Mexican humidity.

We Will We Will Walk You

I have loved walking since I was very young, but in March 2020 I started to become very intentional with it. In addition to my long-in-duration-but-short-in-distance, slow-boat-to-nowhere strolls with Barkley, I started Nicole Walks, a brisk-paced, five kilometre minimum every day, in any weather. These days, of course, I am accompanied by Rex, which means my brisk pace has slowed to allow for a whole lot of sniffing and people stopping me to admire my giant cartoon-dog-come-to life.

I don’t mind the slower pace; I can take in the fresh air and beautiful surroundings, I listen to podcasts, and I sketch out writing ideas in my mind while getting steps in.

No News Is Good News

I remember exactly when I decided to stop reading the news: it was January 2022. That month was an absolute low point in my life. Prior to that I would, ridiculously, spend massive amounts of time refreshing data on the “curve” and “case numbers” and “new restrictions in place.” In January 2022 there were no home Covid tests available, “case numbers,” were mere estimates, and it turned out that vaccines weren’t the silver bullet we thought they were, as vaccinated people began falling ill. School had been shut down, again, diploma exams were cancelled, and my kids’ mental health took a hit, given all they had lost during their precious high school years. My mental and emotional health was also pretty fragile. The constant scrolling was nothing but another negative impact in my life, but at least it was one that I could control.

I still don’t read the news, although I did break my own rule recently and went into a tailspin about whether or not my country would be annexed. The scrolling that resulted clearly showed the negative impact the news has on my mental health, and so I have implemented a new rule: I look over news headlines one time a day, for a maximum of five minutes. When it comes to news about Canadian politics, I look to my friend Darren, who gives balanced information from an economic and non-partisan perspective (HI DARREN).

Ma Ingalls was right. There is something good in everything and these long-lasting habits have been incredibly positive for me. Another thing the pandemic gave me was gratitude for the everyday things. Every time I hug a friend or share a meal, every time I board a plane to explore our vast, beautiful world, every time I go to the grocery store and encounter people without suspicion that they are vectors of disease, I feel incredibly grateful. But, to misquote the Four Non-Blondes, I pray, oh my god do I pray, I pray every single day for us to never walk this path again. May we never. xo

Feeling Salty

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Grumpy McGrumperson

How are we all doing with the transition to Daylight Saving Time, I ask as I drink my third cup of coffee and glare angrily off into the dark morning? I swear to god, I swear to GOD that the next person who says “we do this for the farmers,” I will murder that person. Straight up murder. Stab stab stab right to the heart. THINK BEFORE YOU SPEAK, PEOPLE. How would fucking with the clocks benefit people who work WITH THE SUN? You know who doesn’t change time? Saskatchewan. So do not come at me with such stupidity. DST started in World War I to save electricity. Today we live in a world of automation and blue lights, and I would challenge anyone to prove that any electricity is being saved at any time due to this ridiculous clock changing construct. WHEN WILL THE MADNESS END.

Unsolved Mystery

Speaking of madness, I was very surprised to receive a renewal notice for my driver’s license; I have had this license for less than eighteen months, when we moved here from Alberta. I made a renewal appointment for last week and I will say that it was as quick and painless as anything government-related could possibly be. I did ask the woman why my license expired so quickly, and she said it was because it was my first BC license. Okay? But also, no one in my family has a license expiring this year, and we all got them at the exact same time. Granted, my husband would have had a BC license thirty years ago, but this doesn’t explain my sons’ licenses. It’s a mystery, and not one that I plan to investigate further. I simply paid my $75, got my jowly, unsmiling photo taken, and went on my merry way. I look like such a bitch, I said to the woman who took my photo. We all do, she replied.

Money Money Money

The licensing fee felt like a cash grab; just one more cash grab in a world that is going broke. Last week alone I spent over a thousand dollars on groceries, which feels absolutely insane, as there are only three of us in this house. Almost eight hundred of that was at Costco; I hadn’t been there since January, and my staples were all at Desperation Levels, which explains a lot.

But I do wonder how people with limited means make ends meet. I am not a person with limited means, and I find my grocery bills to be insane. We don’t eat out or get takeout, and with the exception of a bottle of Reactine and a bag each of my favourite popcorn and my husband’s favourite granola, the thousand dollars of groceries was entirely made up of what I would call ingredients. I’m not walking around making it rain in the grocery store, and yet I spent A THOUSAND DOLLARS. Other than the occasional lone mini cucumber softening in the produce drawer, we consume everything I buy, I don’t consider myself to be a wasteful or even a spontaneous shopper – I have a Meal Plan and a List and I stick to both rigidly – and yet our grocery bills are wild. How is everyone managing this? I have no idea.

Five Long Years

I am feeling a little extra sensitive this week as I realized that this Thursday marks the five-year anniversary of the first pandemic lockdown. I am glad I have this blog to look back on, because otherwise it would be very hard to recall and believe the details. Even with the blog it’s hard to reconcile, everything was so weird and dystopian, and we all know how I feel about dystopian fiction, let alone living in it. I was scolded online for patronizing the library, once it reopened, as the virus could be living within the pages of any book at any time. THE VIRUS COULD BE ANYWHERE was the general feeling, and it’s enough to make a person spiral into madness. It was such a grim, terrifying time that then turned into a divisive, despairing time. How depressing it was, how we were all trying to keep our spirits up while life as we knew it devolved into chaos. Remember when people were putting paper decorations in their windows so that neighbourhood children would have something to look at on those walks of desperation that we were all on? In my neighbourhood, someone had a sign that said And the world came together as the people stayed apart and wow, did that turn out to be untrue. Spoiler alert: the world did the opposite of coming together.

Pandemic Hobbies, Five Years Late

On the topic of things people did in the pandemic to pass the time, last week The Squad (HI GIRLS) took a class on how to make sourdough bread. This was one of those pandemic hobbies I never got into, and I can with confidence say that I never will. Friends, making sourdough is complicated! There are so many steps! Then again, I am a person who for the past fifteen years has been baking no-knead bread, which is quite possibly the laziest bread-making methodology ever. The class was really fun, though, and should I ever want a loaf of sourdough, I will just buy it from the woman who ran the class. I think what did me in was the reveal that remnants of the dough, stuck on bowls or whisks, cannot be washed down the drain lest it block up the plumbing. I instantly imagined our entire septic system being clogged up from attempting to bake bread, and abandoned ship immediately.

Plus, I don’t think I could make anything as pretty as this:

My skills in the hand/ eye coordination department, not to mention the visual artistic department, are limited to say the least; see below.

Blast From The Past

One of the best books I read that featured the pandemic was called Unravelling, in which a woman talked about the efforts she went through to knit herself a sweater. She sheared a sheep, spun the wool into yarn, dyed the yarn, and so forth until months later she had herself a sweater. It was a very enlightening and eye-opening look at what goes into the creation of clothing, a statement on fast fashion, and a history of women’s undervalued but extremely important work.

If ever my value to society was determined by my skills in the fibre arts, well. It would be disastrous, is the short version. I am quite possibly the least competent person in the world when it comes to anything that requires hand/eye coordination, particularly in this realm. I famously almost failed home economics in junior high – and I was a very high-achieving student – because of my complete inability to sew. I swear the teacher passed me out of relief of never having to see me again. I took that class for three years and every single day saw me ripping out stitches and trying to rework them. Whereas my friends had tees and shorts that they could theoretically wear – not that any of them did, but they COULD – my projects had been ripped beyond repair. I have three clear memories from those days. The first was in seventh grade, when I had to borrow bright green ribbing for the neckline of my pale pink t-shirt from my friend Elise (HI ELISE), because my own matching pink ribbing had been destroyed from constantly taking out the stitches that had sewn the neck hole shut several times. The second was in ninth grade, when I would chattily sit beside my friend Tara (HI TARA) as the sewing machine whirred beneath her competent hands and I ripped out stitches, again and again. The third memory is how we junior high girls – for we were all girls – tormented our teacher, Miss Herget, by unthreading the serger. Someone would walk casually past the serger and then stealthily swipe their hand through, unthreading it, which would result in Miss Herget having a mini-breakdown. Every single class: WHO unthreaded the SERGER? she would scream, while we all silently assumed expressions of innocence.

To this day my husband will not let me near a needle and thread. I cannot even tie a knot in a thread; it ends up being several knots, not unlike a string of tiny anal beads. The last time I tried to sew a button on a pair of pants, back in 2001 or so, my husband found me bent over, sobbing, as I had somehow cut a giant hole in the seat of said pants. Was this karma for unthreading the serger? Who can say.

Weekly Reading

The Woman Who Stole My Life. Isn’t it great when you discover a well-established author? I don’t know where Marian Keyes has been all my life, but I do know she has a whole catalogue and I am going to read it in its entirety! I loved this book about a woman who is diagnosed with the very rare Guillain-Barre Syndrome, which results in her entire body being paralysed. Unable to talk or move, she is confined to her bed while her family resumes life as best they can without her. She ends up having a special connection with her neurologist, which leads to a whole new life in a whole different country. This book was so clever and so witty and so intensely thought-provoking, all at the same time. It’s about karma, and communication, and connection. Every single character was a complete delight. As a side note, I was both surprised and not to go on goodreads to discover that this book had a LOT of very poor reviews. This kind of tracks for me as any book I really love often has a low rating, and vice versa. I never a) look at goodreads for ratings and reviews, and b) take said ratings and reviews seriously. I am my own woman! And I loved this. Can’t wait to read more. Over 500 pages, and this book didn’t drag ONCE. 

All In Her Head. We all know, or should know, that the medical community has long been misogynistic and has disbelieved or dismissed women and their health concerns. This book explores the long and dark history of how women’s health has been mismanaged, destroyed, or ignored by the largely male medical community. Yes, things are getting better, but vestiges remain, as seen very recently. Traditionally women have not been included in clinical drug trials because of our pesky old hormonal cycles, which is alarming to say the least. Drugs were not tested for female bodies, and then when those drugs didn’t work as they did for men, the it’s all in her head attitude prevailed. In any case, it’s just one more thing in a long list of things in which women’s concerns and lived experiences have been minimized and dismissed. This is an interesting and enraging book, and it sure shows that men have been really worried about women and masturbation. Hoo boy, masturbation was historically blamed for everything from nervous conditions to scoliosis. Thanks to Stephany (HI STEPHANY) for bringing this book onto my radar.

Friends, I hope you are all taking care of yourself, this week after time change. Drive safely, get your sleep, treat yourself gently. xo

Festivus, But Without Grievances

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So, an anti-Festivus?

One week ago today I finished the second draft of my novel. It was my goal in 2024 to write one draft, and now I have finished two, right in time to enjoy the holidays and a break before my revising and editing course starts in January. To say I’m pleased with myself would be an understatement. It’s something I’ve wanted to do my entire life, write a book, and I did it! My goal in 2025 will be to have a manuscript that I feel comfortable sharing with beta readers, so stay tuned.

In my recent Ask Me Anything, which is still open should you have any burning questions, Pearl (HI PEARL) asked What is the book you’re working on about? In its current evolution, it’s a story about a single mother in her fifties who becomes involved with a widower. Her ex-husband delivers some surprising news that affects their daughter, and our protagonist finds herself navigating a new kind of life.

Years ago when I was in yoga teacher training, I was talking to my friend Jo (HI JO), who was a very established teacher at the time. We were talking about teaching yin and she said something that stayed with me: If you want to teach yin, you really need to have a yin practice. Jo and I were and are both Ashtanga practitioners, and I took that to heart, teaching what I knew.

When I first set out to write this book, I had in mind a romance, but for middle-aged people. The thing is, though, romance comprises only about a tenth of what I read. To paraphrase Jo, If you want to write romance, you really need to read romance, and in that vein I would say my novel veers toward a character-driven literary fiction. I wanted to write the book I would want to read, and I am doing that.

Engie (HI ENGIE) asked What is the best year of your life? As you know, I suffer from recency bias, but I really do think that 2024 was one of the best years in my life, particularly coming on the heels of 2023, which was an absolutely crazy year of wild change and upheaval. I have had many wonderful years in my life, absolutely, but this past year was filled with travel and gardening, friends and family. My sons are both doing well and are establishing themselves, my husband is so relaxed and settled into retirement, everyone is in good health, I have a beautiful home and garden, and I wrote a book! Life is uncertain and things can change on a dime at this stage of the game, so I am living in the present and feeling gratitude for all these incredible gifts.

Another incredible gift in my life is, of course, Rex. When our beloved Barkley died in June 2022, I was extremely vocal about Never Again Having A Dog. Never! My older son gently said to me But Mom, we are a dog family, but no, I said. No no no. Well, we all know how that turned out, when Rex arrived to our home in October of that same year. Elisabeth (HI ELISABETH) asked Did Rex come to you named Rex? and the answer is yes. His full name is Tyrannosaurus Rex Stegosaurus, which should tell you a little bit about his original family. I would like to go on the record to reiterate that Rex was NOT a rescue dog. We were chosen by his original family – speaking of gifts, that one was massive – who were incredibly loving and caring but who could no longer keep him. He was a year and a half, and perfectly trained and already full-grown, and some days I cannot even believe my luck that we were chosen to be his family.

Engie (HI ENGIE AGAIN) also asked What’s the best thing about having a dog? I read in a book recently that getting a puppy is a one-way ticket to eventual heartbreak, and while that is technically true, the absolute joy of having a dog far outweighs that. There are so many wonderful things about having a dog, but the best is probably the feeling of love and joy that emanates from them. Dogs are so in the moment, they miss you the second that you are gone and are so happy the second you come back, even if you were just in the shower. They are just happy to go somewhere, as long as they go with you. We are just not worthy of dogs, honestly, they are such incredible creatures and I for one feel so lucky to have not one but two fuzzy balls of love in my life.

Of course one of the best things about having a dog is walking them, although I will say that while I adored and loved my sweet fuzzy Barkley to the moon and back, walking with him wasn’t exactly a joy, even when he was young. He had a terrible tendency to eat tissues that had been dropped on the sidewalk, and as an aside, do you have any idea how many tissues are dropped on a sidewalk in a semi-inner-city neighbourhood? It’s a lot. He knew that tissues were the only thing I wouldn’t remove from his mouth because god, how gross. From the time he was a puppy until the day before he died, I would have to be on the lookout for tissues and redirect him before he snapped them up and ate them, and I was only successful maybe half the time.

While I’m on the topic, once I was walking with him as a puppy – and the boys were little enough to be in the Chariot stroller, this is how long ago it was – and he snarfed up a CONDOM that was on the sidewalk. A condom. I had terrors as to what would happen if he actually swallowed it, because certainly it would be injurious to his little digestive system, and imagine having to tell people that your dog died because he ate a condom. So there I was prying a condom out of my puppy’s mouth while the little boys asked mama whatcha doin wif Barkley’s mouf and I was praying, friends, I was PRAYING that the condom was just used in a silly way by neighbourhood kids, like blowing it up as a balloon, and not for its intended use. I am pretty sure I used up an entire bottle of hand sanitizer after I fished it out of his mouth, as well as a year or two off my lifespan.

I was thinking about this when Michelle (HI MICHELLE) asked her question: I know you go out walking a lot, and I wonder if you’ve ever found anything interesting or strange that was dropped on the side of the road? Well, Michelle, how’s that for an answer? A condom on a busy sidewalk near the elementary school. Oh wait, I just horrified myself anew on a number of levels.

We did come across a dead coyote a couple of weeks ago, but I’m not sure if that counts as “interesting” or “strange” or even “dropped.”

One thing that I always find interesting is when there is a single shoe, which reminds me of a story of long ago. When I was in university, my friends and I were at an on-campus bar listening to live music, and one of my friends had brought her boyfriend, an incredibly nice but dull-witted fellow. The dance floor soon turned morphed into a mosh pit, and shortly after that the extremely inebriated boyfriend stumbled over to us, missing a shoe. Eventually we had to leave, with our one-shoed fellow, but before that I needed to stop in the Economics Society office to pick something up. I was the Economics Society president, hashtag bragging, and while I was in the office our Shoeless Joe drew all over the white board: a number of single shoes, with the caption “Have You Seen Me?”

Since that day, anytime I see a single shoe abandoned on the sidewalk, I think of him, walking home with one shoe on that snowy winter night.

Weekly Reading

The Wedding People. From start to finish, this book was an absolute delight. It was just perfect! It was so smart, and so funny, and so uplifting and life-affirming and heart-warming. The premise sounds a bit off: a woman heads to a hotel to kill herself, and finds that there is a six-day wedding going on at said hotel, and she is the only one there who is not part of the festivities. Themes of friendship, support, and happiness are interspersed with true humour and excellent Mrs Dalloway references. The backdrop is post-Covid, and there are some really interesting thoughts about the pandemic and what it did to all of us, and our relationships. A quote that really hit me: ‘”But life is strange, always thinking this one thing is going to make you happy, because then you get it, and then maybe you’re not as happy as you imagined you would be, because every day is still just every day. Like the happiness becomes so big, you have no choice but to live inside of it, until you can no longer see it or feel it. and so you start to fixate on something else – you want a child, and then the child is here, and that happiness is so big it begins to feel like nothing. Like just the air around you.” Until it is gone, of course.’

The Plot. There is an Alice Munro story called “Family Furnishings,” in which a writer takes details from a relative’s life and creates a story from it. It addresses the question about who can tell a person’s story. I think that most fiction writers take details and experiences from their own lives and the lives around them, and create from them new stories. I was thinking about that Munro story when I was reading The Plot. To whom does a plot belong? This book follows a washed-up writer who is a teacher at a writing residency; one of his students tells him the plot of a book he’s writing, and the plot has an incredible twist. A few years later, he finds out that the student had died without writing the book. So what’s a writer to do? He uses the plot to create a book that becomes a bestseller, optioned for a movie, etc. But, like the narrator in The Tell-Tale Heart, he starts to unravel when the heartbeat he hears is a troll on twitter, accusing him of plagiarism. It’s an interesting premise for sure but after a slow start I guessed the twists and could see the “surprise” ending coming, and I found the last couple of chapters terribly explain-y. Still, a solidly diverting read. 

Piglet. This book is brilliant from a literary point of view, but whoa, is it ever uncomfortable to read. I think it needs to be interpreted symbolically, as in a woman wanting more, more, more, and never being really satisfied. Of course this is shown as excessive eating, and I will say the food descriptions are Off The Hook. If you, like me, enjoy a good food description, hold onto your hats. Or forks. It’s a very moving story about a woman from humble beginnings whose wealthy fiance tells her about a terrible betrayal by him, only two weeks before their wedding. In case you, like me, find yourself reading this and thinking that you missed something, no, you didn’t. The betrayal is never revealed to the reader, which is a Real Literary Choice. You know that couples therapy scene in Old School, where Frank is talking about fantasizing about a waitress’ panties? “Probably they’re just plain white cotton. But then I thought, what if it’s lace? What if it’s a thong? What if it’s something really cool I don’t even know about?” The Betrayal is like that. Probably it’s just adultery. But what if it’s something really cool we don’t even know about?

Santa Claus Is Going To Town On Me. Well, you knew this was coming. Heh. Of course I couldn’t let the holiday season pass me by without reading this, after it was mentioned by Bad on Paper. I mean, it’s basically porn, but with Santa. If you have ever wondered what Santa’s dick looks like, this is the book for you! You may be saying to yourself, omg Nicole, of course I haven’t wondered that, NO ONE NORMAL has wondered that, and that is probably true as I myself never thought about Santa in any kind of sexual way before reading this. But what has been seen cannot be unseen, friends. I can never think of Santa in the same way again (tinsel-like pubic hair). To paraphrase Jessica from Drinks With Broads, STOP MAKING SEXY SANTA A THING, HE SHOULD BE COZY. Anyway, the whole thing took me maybe 45 minutes to read and I discovered that a) Mrs Claus is dead, b) Sexy Santa prefers to be called Claus and is maybe Finnish, c) he doesn’t live on the North Pole but instead in some other planet, and d) he has no elves, Sexy Santa is a Lone Wolf. It’s a lot more plot than you might expect from Santa porn, honestly. Quote that sums up the entire book: “I’ve always hated Christmas, but this year will be different, because this year, I’m going to fuck Santa Claus.”

On that very unsettling note, I should end this very long post, which will be my last one until the annual Year in Review. Wishing you all a very happy holiday season! Your readership is a gift to me, and one that I cherish. xo

The Very Next Day, You Gave It Away

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In a very uncharacteristic move, last week I angrily unfollowed a Facebook account after a highly unsatisfactory and, for me, infuriating exchange. It is my general policy to not comment on anything I disagree with; rather, I merely scroll past or mute. It takes a lot for me to become upset enough to unfollow a page. This is not to say I have never done so – I certainly have – but it’s a rare occurrence.

Also last week I learned that some people have very strong negative feelings toward LED Christmas lights (HI SWISTLE, HI ENGIE). I do not share those feelings, and I don’t not share those feelings. I’m neutral on the topic, I suppose, although all of our lights are LED, so that would lead a person to believe that I am highly in favour. I just like lights, and as long as my husband, who is the purchaser of all things light-related, has our display up before December, I am happy.

But I think it’s important to able to have feelings about holiday-related things, or anything, really, and I acknowledge and support my friends in such discussions. If a person doesn’t like LED lights, then they should be able to have non-LED lights and enjoy them, I say, my eclectically vibrant lawn display notwithstanding. I support my non-LED friends in their endeavours, even if I only realized that this was an issue six days ago. I don’t share those same feelings, but I am HERE for you, friends.

I’ll tell you what I do have feelings about, and that is the song Last Christmas. I love that song. I love it in all its iterations, even the really weird ones that involve harmonicas and steel drums. I have an entire playlist dedicated to the original version and all its many covers. I love it unapologetically, and I am not ashamed to say I get hurt feelings every year, every single year, when the inevitable post about Whamaggedon, which involves gleefully AVOIDING any exposure to Last Christmas, comes to pass.

Listen. We all like what we like, we as a human race are not homogenous and we can enjoy different genres of music. I get it. I get it that what is a joyfully festive bop to me, what makes me sing and dance and feel like the Grinch after his heart grew three times and broke the little measurement box, is a song that is disliked by others. That’s fine! We like what we like. But what I’m saying is that just because I think that Paul McCartney’s Wonderful Christmastime is the worst holiday song ever written, that doesn’t mean I’m going to make up a game about it and post it all over the internet. Yes, the opening bars make my shoulders go up to my ears with tension and I wish I could rip off my own ears when I hear them, but I am not actively making fun of people who like it.

This leads to, of course, my angry unfollow. I know better, of course, than to engage in any kind of polarizing discourse on Facebook, but I found myself typing like Kermit the Frog, wondering if people hate joy and professing my love for Last Christmas. And the response to me, of course, was to lighten up, it’s just a fun little game.

And I should. I should lighten up. It is just a fun little game, it’s not a personal slight on my character, even if it does make me feel strangely bad about myself, like I’m some kind of Philistine kicking up her heels singing in the grocery store aisles. I know, I really do, that it is not rational, and has literally nothing to do with me; the people playing this game are not out to inflict pain on my emotional state. And yet. Feelings are feelings: some people feel strongly about lights, some people feel strongly about artificial Christmas trees, some people feel strongly about matching festive pajama sets, and I feel strongly about Last Christmas.

In my recent Ask Me Anything (I’m still accepting questions!) Suzanne asked: Outside of Grocery Carts Should Be Returned to Their Corrals, are there any hills you would die on? (HI SUZANNE, thank you for seeing me). There are a few, but one of them is that you shouldn’t yuck someone’s yum, including holiday music. To be honest, this is something I practice daily, and I struggle with sometimes, because I live in a house with people I love who eat meat.

Relatedly, Bijoux asked (HI BIJOUX): Is there any meat you miss? and the very simple answer to that is no. I absolutely don’t, and in fact, the more years that go by, the weirder and more repellent I find the whole concept. However, the men I love all love meat, and so I remind myself every day not to yuck their yums. It’s hard, and I don’t always succeed, particularly at this time of year when photos of turkeys in various stages of cooking abound, but I try.

Everyone is walking their own path, and I would explode with incandescent rage if anyone told me what and how to eat, and so I support them in their dietary choices, even if I disagree with them. And the fact of the matter is that every single one of us living on this planet impacts said planet in some way. I don’t eat our furry, feathered, finned friends, but I do eat grains and fruits and vegetables, and all those crops crowd out animal habitats and thus indirectly impact those innocent beings.

Of course, we all have value and bring positive impacts to the world, every last one of us, but the truth is that just existing negatively affects our environment, and, therefore, its animal inhabitants. No matter how environmentally conscious we may be, collectively we are damaging our Mother Earth. This is just a grim fact, and there is literally no solution except not to exist or, as in the movie I saw in the Sphere in Las Vegas, to be shipped off the planet via spaceship to a whole new planet which is just waiting for humans to fuck it up.

Let’s not do this. We are all just doing our best, hopefully, and my best includes not eating meat, but by no means does that make me, or any other plant-based person, morally superior.

But sometimes it’s hard to remember not to yuck someone’s yum. Did I mention turkey photos?

This brings me to another hill I will die on and that is that there are many sides to any story, and that people contain multitudes. I am always unpleasantly surprised to discover that a person whom I esteem as intelligent and broad-minded can only see people and situations in black and white and cannot see any other point of view other than the one they’ve entrenched themselves in. They cannot see why people might make decisions a certain way, or why people are the way they are.

Which brings me back to Last Christmas. Perhaps I am being close-minded about those people boasting about going all the way until the 24th without once listening to the happiest song on my holiday playlist. If I, a strident Bring Back Your Cart person can recognize that there are extreme extenuating circumstances in which that is occasionally not possible, surely I can cultivate a feeling of compassion and understanding for these people. Perhaps they had a romantic encounter one Christmas, and the next day that encounter was over, forever. Perhaps that romantic encounter was of enormous importance to them and yet, the following year, the other party failed entirely to even recognize them, indicating that the encounter was of minimal importance. Perhaps their heart had been, devastatingly, broken, and the only way they have found to heal this heartbreak was to search for community, for someone special, for someone else who shared such experiences. Perhaps this community all must avoid anything, but particularly a musical masterpiece, that reminds them of this incredibly painful period of their lives. Perhaps that is what Whamaggedon is all about, perhaps it is a community of people who do not want to be reminded of their hearts being given away, they are, we might say, once bitten and twice shy, and must keep themselves from such remembrances that are sparked via festive music.

Or perhaps they really are taking aim at me personally. Who can say.

Weekly Reading

The Girls From Corona Del Mar. You know the kind of book that you just sink into and then feel incredibly resentful about having to do anything that is NOT reading the book? That’s what this book was to me. What an incredible story of lifelong friends and their journeys. One of my least-favourite things in reading is when an author wants to highlight a social or political issue and is completely heavy-handed with it – but this book is the opposite of that. It showcases so many social and political issues in a way that is incredibly thoughtful and haunting. This book shows that we can’t ever really know a person totally, even with the deepest friendship, and that everyone is on their own journey. Now, for the funny part: one of the character’s mothers collects gnomes, so many gnomes, and is eventually beaten almost to death with one. I hope this doesn’t happen to me. This leads me into lots of content warnings for violence, death, death of a DOG, suicidal ideation, ideation about so-called mercy killing, the ethics around pregnancy, medical incompetence, child neglect, abuse, massive drug use, and the aforementioned gnome beating. That’s a lot of content warnings and normally that would make me steer clear, but not with this book. Despite all that, it’s such a beautiful and compelling read about friends, family, love, and moving through life as a terribly damaged person.

Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake. I am kind of neutral about Anna Quindlen’s fiction; I neither love it nor dislike it. Someone (who was it? was it you?) told me about this memoir, which is in the form of essays, something I genuinely enjoy. And there are many lovely, thoughtful essays in here about aging and mothering adult children, and life in general. Some of it was kind of dated (there is a whole section on politics that made me kind of sad and also like “just wait, Anna”) and she refers to “our generation” a lot, and “our generation” refers to baby boomers. I mean, she’s exactly my mom’s age, but I still think there was a lot that is resonant for women my age. It was interesting as her generation WAS the generation of women who were encouraged to Have It All, and it was fascinating to read about her experiences with Having It All. It’s really a memoir of life after fifty, and while some of it was truly wonderful to read – she has SUCH a talent with words – I’m still kind of neutral. I do love the title, though.

We are coming into the Holiday Home Stretch, friends! I hope things aren’t too stressful where you are. I have some work to finish this week and then I’m hoping to relax by the tree with some good books and yummy things. That sounds pretty good right about now. How about you? Tell me everything. xo

Noelle, The Non-Blooming Christmas Cactus

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In September of 2022, my husband and I were at a farewell party for friends who were moving out of the country. As we were leaving, I was, as I am wont to be, getting emotional, and my friend asked if I would take custody of her Christmas cactus, as she couldn’t really take it with her. Of course, I said, tears in my eyes. Of course I will.

Now, I’m unsure if Denise (HI DENISE) was just trying to get me out of the house before I burst into sobs, but I like to think that she gifted me her Christmas cactus knowing it would be going to a good home. I am a verified Plant Lady, after all. This Christmas cactus was, she told me, seventeen years old, which was the exact age of my younger son, giving this custody arrangement even more gravitas. I clutched both Denise and the cactus to my chest and went home.

I named the plant Noelle, I repotted her in a new, larger pot with good drainage, I bought a special fertilizer, I talked to her and put her in the right kind of light exposure, and I started to refer to her as “your sister” to the boys. I love all my plants but Noelle has a very special place in my heart.

Noelle is now nineteen.

A few weeks ago I was looking at Instagram and several of my friends posted photos of their Christmas cacti in full bloom. Now. Let’s all remember that Comparison Is The Thief Of Joy, and that we shouldn’t compare our insides to someone else’s outsides, Instagram is life’s highlight reel, but I realized that in the twenty-six months of Life With Noelle, she hadn’t bloomed once. In fact, she has barely grown.

I thought about this for a while, and then ventured to tell my husband that I think maybe Noelle has reached a certain age, and that her blooming days are over. He replied that I could just put Noelle in the compost and get a new plant.

Well.

Even after almost 23 years of marriage, my husband was surprised, actually surprised, at the ferocity of my reaction. How dare. I could not believe that he would suggest I THROW OUT my beloved aged Christmas cactus, just because her blooming days are behind her? Would we, I said, my voice rising and breaking, would we do that to a PERSON? Just because they don’t bloom anymore?

My husband and son looked at me wordlessly, as I projected onto a Christmas cactus, then went back to eating dinner.

I have been identifying a little bit too strongly with Noelle lately, for reasons that are boring and stupid. To that end I pulled a book off my shelf for inspirational reading before my yoga practice.

This is a reread for me, and something struck me as I read through the pages. It was like I was viewing something at a distance, something that had been deeply meaningful to me at one point but was no longer so. It was like listening to Wish You Were Here or Landslide: at one point in my life I wouldn’t be able to make it those songs without choked sobbing, but now I can listen to them and appreciate them as just musically beautiful.

Curious, I went to look up when, exactly, I had read All Along You Were Blooming, and I finished it in April 2023 which was, as some of you may know, an absolute low point emotionally and mentally. Every single thing in my life was in upheaval: we had just sold our house and we were preparing to move to a different province, one son was graduating high school and the other was getting ready to leave for university, my husband was retiring, I was giving up all my yoga classes, MY ENTIRE HOUSE WAS A DISASTER OF HALF-PACKED BOXES. No wonder all of this spoke to me like an emotionally misunderstood fourteen-year-old girl hearing Pink Floyd for the first time.

Life is a journey, as I say almost daily, and meanwhile, while I currently feel like my blooming days may be behind me, I know that one day I will look back at this moment in time and want to slap my own face. To that end, I have reinstated my long-neglected Mirror Meditations, which I encourage all of us to do. Look on your face like it’s someone you love deeply! SOFTEN YOUR EYES, GODDAMMIT.

On theme this week I read a memoir, the thesis of which is you may be in your late forties, but you can still go to Paris and get fucked six ways from Sunday, which, you know, isn’t exactly relevant to my life or interests, but I guess it’s nice to know the option is there?

Weekly Reading

Prior to going to Italy, I put all my library holds on pause, and now the chickens have come home to roost. I started the week like this:

And now it’s this:

It’s been one step forward, two steps back LITERALLY as every time I return a book two or more are waiting for me.

The Christmas Orphan’s Club. ‘Tis the season to read Christmas books! This one is about four friends who celebrate Christmas together in New York City each year, and are coming to terms with one of them leaving for LA. I am about twenty years too old for the target demographic here and I could not relate less to the characters, honestly. But the book has a nice message about chosen family, the importance or not of a date on a calendar, and growing up. It’s a real moment in time – when friends are the most important thing in the world, and when those friends start building a life of their own – and that might be just your jam to read this holiday season. I mean, it’s not mine, but maybe it’s yours.

I’m Mostly Here To Enjoy Myself. I am the exact same age as the author of this memoir, but – other than our shared obsession with Laura Ingalls Wilder – our lives could not be more different. In theory this is fascinating to me, but in practice – i.e., in this book – it is less so. The premise of this book is that at age 46, the author spends August 2021 in Paris, a city she has spent many Augusts in. The difference this time is that she has just spent sixteen months alone in her 450 square foot NYC apartment, and is absolutely starved for contact. The lady is Down To Fuck. She is also down to be the recipient of Grazing The Watercress, as they say in French. This is how the book is sold, honestly, that not only is she getting laid and pleasured on her command, but she is also incredibly desirable at age 46. So. There’s lots that could be said about this sales pitch but there’s much more to it: a) the book contains a lot more than that as there is a good discussion about aging, b) the author has a really nice Parisian female friendship group, and you know I’m a gal’s gal, c) there are wonderful food descriptions, and d) the hookup app she uses is called Fruitz, which is amusing to me. I will say the most interesting thing about this book is the timeline: reading about that time in the pandemic brought back memories, not at all good ones. It felt weird thinking about that crazy time, and it was strange reading about someone getting her freak on when I was stressing about the kids going to school, would it be virtual school, etc. Well, the world is a wild tapestry. 

Dear Fang, With Love. I admit I knew next to nothing about Lithuania; prior to this week I could not have pointed it out on a map. My son, however, told me that it was part of the Soviet Stack, along with Estonia and Latvia; it’s north of Poland and east of Finland. I also did not know how it was affected by World War II and the Holocaust, and this book explores that country’s history from the viewpoint of a father and his teenage daughter who are visiting it after the girl has a psychotic break. This is a strange but compelling book about mental illness, heredity, parental relationships, and youthful love.

A fantastic quote, and one that actually did resonate for me from I’m Mostly Here To Enjoy Myself, is “I have found that you can either talk about yourself, or you can write about yourself, but doing both is a bit much.” Relatable. Basically everyone I know is aware of this blog and most read it (HI EVERYONE) which means that I am very, very aware of the possibility of repeating myself when I am out and about. However, it occurred to me that I have some new readers (HI NEW READERS, thanks for being here!) and to that end I am doing an Ask Me Anything. Longtime readers may be thinking to themselves Good lord no, no, no, I already know too much and I can respect that! But if anyone – new or longtime or anything in between – has a question for me, now is your chance! Just click the link! Have a beautiful week, friends. xo

In It Together

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I was taking a Peloton class the other day, and I noticed something. I am a person who likes to send out “high fives” to everyone surrounding me on the leaderboard, particularly people who have the same group hashtags as I do. My people! I will think, happily, if I see someone from the #yestoyoucrew or #PelotonCanada. I was cheerfully moving my way up when I saw the hashtag #therapyfortherapists.

It reminded me of the time I saw #therapistsofpeloton and all I could think of was this:

What I’m saying is that I’m glad the rapists are getting therapy through exercise.

I love Peloton for many reasons, and one of them is that I love the idea that there are other people out there, doing the same exact workout as me at the same exact time. It gives me that wonderful feeling of we are all in this life together, doing the same things, but differently that I absolutely love. Here we all are, going about our lives, separately, but somehow interconnected.

When I was in university, I took a couple of classes from a professor who had the worst body odour you can imagine. This wasn’t simply a matter of oops, forgot my deodorant before I hit the gym. This was on another level altogether. It had to have been a medical issue; it was a Seinfeld-level entity. You didn’t dare sit in the first three rows in his classroom, or, if you did, you’d never make that mistake again. Even in the very back, at best you’d leave the classroom surreptitiously sniffing your clothes to ensure that the smell didn’t cling, at worst, you’d finish class with a nauseous headache.

It occurred to me one day, as I took notes on microeconomic systems, that this professor was married. I looked with wonder at the fluorescent overhead light glinting on his wedding ring, and I marvelled at the idea. There is a lid for every pot, I thought with awe. It hit me, maybe for the first time ever, that day back in 1995, that we all have sides of us that other people don’t see. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, as I scribbled down the required equations. Maybe his wife had no sense of smell, I thought, or maybe she liked his smell, maybe she felt it was a sexy, manly musk. Maybe she just loved him so much that his smell didn’t matter, and this realization – that maybe this professor had a whole different personality and set of interests that no one else knew about – made me feel a bit dizzy. Or maybe it was the body odour, wafting its way to my desk.

It started a bit of a fascination for me; not with that professor in particular, but with people in general. Professors for sure were interesting to think about. If you have ever been in an economics department, you will know what I mean. How interesting it is to think that at some point, these men – they were almost exclusively men back then, in the 90s – fell in love and, presumably, proposed to the women that they were married to. At some point, that professor who was dully talking about the utility curve had passionately declared his love and, most likely, had sexual relations. THEY INTERCOURSED. Most likely, anyway.

Later, when I was working in a very male-dominated department, the same thing would occur to me, not the intercoursing, but the romantic relations. I would be sitting in a meeting or working on a pricing model or listening to someone talk about synergies or optionality or circling back, and suddenly the idea that the speaker in question had presumably gone to a jeweler and chosen an engagement ring and given it to a woman, a woman who I had met at the office holiday party, with words of love and romance, popped into my head. Once, when speaking about a case of mergers and acquisitions, a former boss used the term opening the kimono. I’m sure that phrase is now out of use, but at the time I thought what if he HAD a kimono, an actual kimono, and he opened it for his wife.

The point of all this is that people are complicated, and interesting, and can be more than one thing at the same time. Every single person is so much more than they present to the world, which is something I try to remember every day. That person is beloved to somebody, I’ll think when I have a less-than-rosy interaction, sometimes with my teeth gritted.

A few months ago I was driving home and was followed very closely by a very large truck. I was driving with the flow of traffic, just barely over the speed limit, and I was being tailgated in an alarming way. All I could see in my rearview mirror was this giant truck grill. I stopped at a red light and just as it turned green, the driver in question wildly passed me on the right, which wasn’t a lane at all but a shoulder, cut me off, and then slammed on the brakes. He then proceeded to drive at least thirty kilometres below the speed limit.

What you have to understand is my reaction. His slow driving did not even register to me until I realized that there was no one in front of him to cause it. It took me a few minutes of this to realize that he was “getting me back.” Buddy. You’ve got the wrong girl. I wasn’t bothered at all by this, in fact, I was amused. I didn’t mind in the least. What, am I going to be two minutes late to get home? Am I going to be late to unload these groceries? I calmly, smilingly continued to follow him at this slow speed, listening to my Forever 35 podcast, when he tired of this ruse, and screeched his tires as he sped through the upcoming traffic circle. I imagined him going home, and complaining to someone about the middle aged bitch who slowed him down. I hope he had someone to complain to.

Weekly Reading

It was re-read week at the Boyhouse! I re-visited some old favourites. I’d like to please remind my friends that, when it comes to Alice Munro, I am only interested in discussing her craft and writing. Thank you for supporting my mental and emotional health.

Diary of a Provincial Lady. When I mentioned this book last week, I had an absolute craving to re-read it. This is one of my all-time favourites and no, nothing happens. I have read it so much that it is literally falling apart, and I have to carefully keep the pages in order. It is just so witty and clever. It contains one of my favourite paragraphs ever written: “Move about after dinner, and meet acquaintance whose name I have forgotten, but connect with literature. I ask if he has published anything lately. He says that his work is not, and never can be, for publication. Thought passes through my mind to the effect that this attitude might with advantage be adopted by many others.” HA. Also, I love this: “Overhear one lady in stalls ask another: Why don’t you write a play, dear? Well, says the friend, it’s so difficult, what with one thing and another, to find time. Am staggered. (Query: Could I write a play myself? Could we all write plays, if only we had the time?)”

Amy and Isabelle. No one can write like Elizabeth Strout; her prose is so beautiful and moving and heartbreaking. This book was a reread for me. I first read it in April 2020; my husband gave it to me for my birthday, when all the libraries were closed, and because of that, I was reminded of that time, rereading. It’s a bleak story about a mother and daughter in a small town in Maine – it IS Elizabeth Strout, after all – and the secrets they keep from each other. I am always fascinated by people’s lives, and the things we don’t know about the people we think we know, and this book is all about that. What I didn’t know until I read it this time is that this is Strout’s debut, which she wrote at age 42! I love knowing that. And what a debut! It’s a really incredible, character-driven book. It’s gritty. It’s grim. It’s beautiful. I love it.

Too Much Happiness. This book is a master class in spare, moving writing, and it is one of the few – maybe it’s the only? – Alice Munro collections that contains a novella. The novella is the title story, about famed Russian mathematician Sophia Kovalevskaya. More than that, this collection contains a really wide variety of really incredible stories. Munro is unmatched in creating stories of characters that I think about often.

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend. In an unbelievable twist, I actually finished my Christmas shopping, which is a new record by far, and one which I don’t really want to repeat. There’s a reason for that, but I will tell you all about it later. For now, I hope you all have a beautiful October week. xo

Three For Thursday: Dinner, Dog, Domestic Duties

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Cozy Dinner Season Begins

Gardening season is wrapping up for the year, but the zucchinis and tomatoes are still going strong. You would think we would all be tired of those things, but I made a Buddha bowl last weekend and was astonished when my son said that the zucchini was a great addition.

I have filled my freezer both with bags of grated zucchini and roasted tomatoes. The garden has produced more tomatoes than anyone could possibly consume, and that is coming from someone who can consume a lot of tomatoes. I don’t want to can them, and so I roast them with olive oil and freeze them; pureed with pasta water and a little bit of goat or cashew cheese makes for a really incredible sauce. Roasted zucchini goes great with it!

I still have some cilantro, but I feel like its days are numbered. I love it sprinkled on top of stir-fry. Note that there is zucchini in there.

My second planting of kale, spinach, and lettuce has been prolific, but I think this might be the last big homegrown salad of the year. It will be strange to buy greens again.

For the record, there was no zucchini in that salad.

The Grocery Shopping Never Ends, Neither Does The Laundry

The garden has definitely had a huge impact on the amount of produce I need to buy every week, but even so, I am constantly astounded by the sheer volume of groceries I buy for our household of now-three.

I went to Costco on Tuesday, which wasn’t the best idea given I was having the kind of day that was just filled with constant tiny annoyances. Typically I launder all the sheets on Tuesdays, and I decided to throw in my duvet cover and pillow shams as well, which resulted in said duvet cover and my fitted sheet cannibalizing all the other linens. While they were, unbeknownst to me, becoming a tangled, soggy mess in the dryer, I blithely thought to launder the pillows as well, which kept unbalancing the washer load. When the washer was stuck in spin mode at the four-minute mark for over twenty minutes, I clued in that something was wrong. By the time I resolved these very minor, but annoying laundry crises, I was not in the best mental space to tackle Costco, but I did it anyway.

My thinking was that Tuesday was far enough ahead of the Thanksgiving weekend, and that it wouldn’t be too crazy, but I was wrong. I was wrong. It turns out every elderly, slow-moving, sample-eating, spatially-unaware person in the surrounding area ALSO thought Tuesday would be far enough ahead of Thanksgiving to be a good time to go to Costco.

Now, listen. One day, hopefully, I will be one of those elderly, slow-moving people in Costco, stocking up to host the whole family for a holiday meal. Hopefully we all will be! But as god is my witness, I will never stand in the middle of the aisle eating a dixie cup filled with a sample of ravioli or frozen mixed vegetables, I will never take two carts, trainlike, and block off the entire frozen fruit section, and I will never angle my cart sideways in the produce section and then leave said cart to check on my husband in baked goods, while clusters of people become stuck in the giant refrigerator, experiencing the Costco equivalent of road rage when they are just trying to get a goddamn bag of broccoli, Carol.

I was trying to be zen about it. I mean, it’s not like an extra ten minutes was going to kill me. All the same, I had to go into the Christmas section to calm myself down. I was incredibly soothed by the displays, and I considered buying myself a giant Snoopy-themed holiday gift basket, but decided that $39 was too much to spend on something filled with things I have no use for, like hot chocolate bombs and marshmallow cookies. Still, the mug was cute.

Since the closure of Hallmark stores several years ago, I have not been able to find really nice gift wrap for birthdays and such. I always wished that Costco would make a non-holiday version of their high-quality gift wrap, and people! They have! If I hadn’t been so annoyed by my fellow aged shoppers, I would never have soothed myself in the Christmas section, and I would have never found a three-pack of beautiful, double-sided paper. The universe works in strange ways.

Two Year Rexaversary

Two years ago today, we were given the most wonderful gift: Rex. I am grateful every day we were chosen to be his family.

Rex is the epitome of joy, and I feel like we could all take lessons from him. When I open his crate in the morning, he reacts with such excitement and happiness to see me, and that sets the tone for the day. Every single thing is exciting to him: walking, gardening, getting a treat, finding a stick, and sitting with me while I write, fold the laundry, or make dinner. He loves to go for car rides; it doesn’t matter where, as long as he’s with me. He is just pure cheer and joy, and we love that giant fuzzy goofball.

How lucky we are. How grateful I am. Happy Thanksgiving, friends. xo