Category Archives: My failing sanity

Wrapped, Rapped, Rapt

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Last Friday I woke up to the lightest dusting of SNOW, and people, I do not think I have ever been so excited by such a meteorological event. The first snow, IN DECEMBER! This is incredible to me, and also it felt so special and festive, even if it didn’t even cover the grass and disappeared by mid-morning. It snowed lightly throughout the weekend, though, so I may be able to use my new skis very soon!

I spent many hours last week grocery shopping and wrapping gifts and packing parcels to be mailed. So many hours, people. Any week that I visit Costco AND Superstore is going to feel exhausting, in the grocery shopping department, but whoa nelly. I think I’ve mentioned before that the Kelowna Costco is the busiest in Canada and second-busiest in North America, right behind the one in Maui. How they measure this I do not know, but having visited both many times I believe it. In any case, this past week it seemed worse than usual, in that it was almost impossible to move the cart as there were people literally everywhere, and then the lineup went two-thirds of the length of the store. She died the way she lived, standing in line at Costco. On the plus side, I had a nice conversation with two ladies, one with regards to the giant stuffed bear in her cart. Have you seen those? One bear fills an entire cart and costs $150; she was telling me that it was for her grandchildren but that she kind of wanted to keep it for herself. This was extremely understandable. “Touch it!” she said to me a little intensely, but I did as she said.

The other lady was also very intense, about the role of ingredient substitutes such as artificial sweeteners or keto-friendly bread in our society. I didn’t disagree with her opinions – after all, I myself am not a fan of those or meat substitutes – but her level of disapproval was, shall we say, heightened. Costco shopping can be a fraught time, emotions run high.

I generally like all manner of holiday-related jobs, such as baking or treat-making or decorating or what have you, but there is one festive job that is at the very bottom of my list, and that is gift-wrapping. I strongly dislike gift-wrapping, possibly because I am so abjectly terrible at it. I might be the worst gift-wrapper over the age of five. I don’t know why I am so bad, but I am: I’m always cutting the paper too big or too small, and then I am trying to either repair the gaping strip where the ends don’t meet or, alternately, folding up huge wads of paper on the sides. There is no in-between. I use far too much tape and somehow I always manage to tape strands of my own hair onto the gift itself; perhaps the stress of wrapping makes my hair fall out, I don’t know. And this is if the gift is in a box, which is the best-case scenario. If it’s irregularly shaped, forget about it. You might be thinking to yourself gift bags exist, which, indeed they do, but we are tear-open-the-gift-wrap people around here, and I also have four rolls of Costco wrapping paper purchased years ago and I still haven’t used them up. I might take them to my grave at this rate, the grave I’m working myself into by standing in line buying such things as giant rolls of Costco wrapping paper.

Anyway, one of the best things about having a newly-retired husband is that I can delegate such jobs to him, and he is happy to do them. I can’t outsource all my wrapping to him, though, which means all the gifts directed to him will be a jumble of wrapping paper and tape.

I don’t know how you get through the various drudgeries of your day, like gift-wrapping, but I mostly listen to music or podcasts. Spotify Wrapped came out this week and it turns out that I, as my friend Nicole said (HI NICOLE), am an actual teenager.

You guys. I am in the TOP ONE PERCENT OF SPOTIFY LISTENERS. Now, in my defense I did spend many hours this year packing and cleaning and moving and unpacking, but still. 93,784 minutes is a lot of minutes. My peak day was July 18, which checks out. That was moving day and I drove eight hours listening to podcasts, then spent another couple of hours unpacking the car and organizing things, so 643 minutes sounded about right.

I’m always a bit surprised when Spotify Wrapped comes out, to see what my top song was. For several years running it was, inexplicably, Midnight Train to Georgia, but this year it was Dog and Butterfly by Heart. Who could have guessed? Certainly not me.

The interesting thing about my top artists is that Wilson Phillips made it in there. There is only one song that I listen to of theirs, and that is Hold On. I feel like that says a lot about my mental state for the first half of the year. I had no idea I listened to that much TLC, but otherwise, I’m not terribly surprised.

I seem to be missing something in my brain – probably because it’s filled up with song lyrics – that allows me to create any kind of visual art. If, for example, you asked me to draw a car or a dog, I would be completely unable to. It would almost seem as if I had never in my life seen a car or a dog, but had only received a verbal description. Here’s a…tire? A dog has…a tail? It’s really bad and probably somewhat related to my inability to wrap gifts with any kind of normalcy. This past weekend we went to a party and I was asked to bring a veggie plate. My beautiful friend Sammi (HI SAMMI) sent me a few photos of Christmassy veggie plates, to see if I wanted to try to recreate one. I was a little nervous – as I said, this is not my forte – but after looking at the photos, and with strong encouragement from my husband, who suggested I try the absolute easiest one, I did it!

My husband, thankfully, made the star. I know I’ve seen a star shape but…?

Weekly Reading

I had a DNF this week; it was I Have Some Questions For You. I had started reading the e-book in September, and it just wasn’t captivating me, and I ended up not finishing it by the time it was due back at the library; I put it back on hold and thought I would finish it later. Well, it came in this past week and after another chapter or two I thought life is too short and I cannot waste any more time on this. This could be because I had just finished the below book.

The Invitation. By the time I got to this book, I was on a four-book meh streak. I thought this might break the streak; it’s a story about a woman in a loveless marriage having a one-night stand, and then the two lovers being inadvertently thrown together on a yacht in 1950s. Friends, it did not break the streak. Five meh books in a row.

You Could Make This Place Beautiful. Finally! The streak of meh books was broken! Thank god. I don’t think I could have taken another one (my DNF was right before this one). Anyway, I loved this author’s earlier book, Keep Moving. I read it in the thick of the pandemic and whoa nelly, did it ever resonate. What I didn’t know (or maybe I forgot?) is that she wrote Keep Moving while going through an absolutely terrible divorce, and this book, You Could Make This Place Beautiful, is about that divorce. Her prose is absolutely gorgeous and can I just say that a toxic marriage and dreadful divorce make for very good writing material – as one of her friends said, at least you’re a writer so all this material isn’t wasted. Isn’t that a silver lining? I love dark humour and I loved this book. 

Shelley: Also Known As Shirley. I first read this book in 1987; I was at my grandparents’ house, bored, and helped myself to my grandma’s paperback collection in the basement. I had never seen or heard of any movie Shelley Winters had been in, and in fact I didn’t even know who Shelley Winters WAS. But I have always been interested in women’s and girls’ stories only, and this was one of the few books about a woman. Well! You can see how many times I read this book over the years, because it completely fell apart. I haven’t read it for a long time though, and so I thought I’d revisit it to see how it holds up. IT HOLDS UP! This is one juicy autobiography, and wow, did she ever live an interesting life! As a child she lived in tenements in Brooklyn; when she was about nine her father’s haberdashery shop burned down and he went to prison in Sing Sing for arson. It was a wrongful conviction, so he got out after about a year but sunk into a deep depression. By the time Shelley (then Shirley) was 14 she dropped out of school, got her working papers, and organized a strike at the Woolworth’s she worked at, which led to all the Woolworth’s in the five boroughs being unionized! She became a model, acted in Broadway and off-Broadway plays, was discovered by Harry Cohn and ended up in Hollywood. Oh, and she got married to a man who was in the air force. He came home from the war and they got divorced, and this all happened by the time she was NINETEEN. If that wasn’t enough, she had so many interesting friendships and affairs, going on a publicity tour to Europe while engaged to a costar, and ended up meeting and marrying Italy’s biggest star, Vittorio Gassman while she was there. Later they had an absolutely explosive divorce while starring in an Italian film. This book HAS IT ALL. Wow, what a fun, star-studded read!

I know I talk about Costco with exasperation a lot, but here’s where it pays off: it’s kalette season again! I consider myself to be an unpaid Kalette Influencer; if you see them, just know that they are a life-changing vegetable that is here for a good time, not a long time. So have a good time, the kalettes won’t shine every day! xo

Just Me Or Everyone

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In beginning of The Blind Assassin, my favourite book of all time, there is a scene where octogenarian Iris is presenting an award at the local high school, watching the graduates file on stage.

Up they trooped, solemn and radiant, in many sizes, all beautiful as only the young can be beautiful. Even the ugly ones were beautiful…None of them understands this – how beautiful they are.

I first read this book when it came out, in 2000, when I was only 25, and this scene resonated with me even then. I think about it all the time, particularly at this time of my life, particularly when I see groups of girls walking together, going home from school or hanging out at the mall. I always think they don’t understand how beautiful they are.

Because, let’s face it, they don’t. I mean, I didn’t! And I am not going to write about the perceived negative effects of aging and perimenopause on my face and body – that’s IMPLIED, my goodness – because the truth is that I feel so much more confident in my appearance now, at 48, than I did 30 years ago. I would rather FEEL beautiful, the way I do, than BE actually youthfully beautiful, with all the insecurity around my appearance that I had when I was youthfully beautiful.

Now, let us be clear, I’m not blind. I feel beautiful but I know how mirrors work. I realize that my neck looks like a striated tree trunk when I smile a certain way – but that certain way is when I’m really happy and excited. I realize that my forehead is lined from a lifetime of speaking expressively with my whole face and that I have lines around my eyes and mouth from laughing and smiling, but I think those are a pretty decent price to pay for visual reminders of joy and happiness. I realize that my breasts resemble semi-deflated water balloons and require feats of engineering in the bra department, and that my waistline isn’t quite so defined anymore, but I HAVE breasts, which I do not take for granted, having so many friends go through cancer treatments, and if my pants are a little tight at the waist, well, it’s a sign of enjoying my life and also that, perhaps, my incredibly frequent Ladies’ Holidays might be nearing the end. I rejoiced at the expansion of my waist during pregnancy, and while I am not rejoicing, I refuse to be upset with the expansion of my waist during perimenopause. It’s just a new stage of life, and also, elastic waistbands exist.

Listeners of Alison Rosen Is Your New Best Friend will be very familiar with the segment “Just Me Or Everyone?” where guests will talk about something that they do or think, and wonder if it is something only they experience or if everyone else is experiencing the same thing. I love this segment. I, too, feel sadness and concern when I see a little boutique or restaurant that is empty! I, too, feel guilt when dusting up a spider web, thinking I destroyed the hard work of an industrious little arachnid who is trapping pesky bugs for my benefit!

When I see groups of young girls, and I think of that quote from The Blind Assassin, I want to actually go up to them and interrupt their conversations about whatever young girls discuss to tell them how beautiful they all are. I mean, I have to remind myself that this would be a creepy and strange thing to do. Imagine! Imagine how weird that would be! But I see teen girls, and I know – I KNOW – that they are filled with that special kind of female self-loathing perpetuated by our patriarchal society that makes girls and women think that their worth lies completely in their physical appearance, I know that they are all dissatisfied with their faces or their hair or their bodies or all of the above, and I want to pull over my car, jump out, and tell them to their beautiful, youthful faces how gorgeous they are. Probably they wouldn’t believe me anyway. Probably they would just live with their loathing until several decades go by and they look at photos of their younger selves with wonder. Is it just me, or does everyone want to do this too?

Speaking of the youth, is it just me or does everyone get confused when people change their names on Instagram? This seems to happen quite frequently, and it always throws me off. Who is that? I’ll think as something shows up on my feed. Where did they come from, why am I following them? Finally I’ll realize that my friend’s daughter simply changed her handle for the fifth time, or that random follower from my YMC days got divorced, or that I’m not even following that person at all, they are simply “suggested for me.”

Despite occasional confusion, I do love Instagram. Mostly because I am nosy and I love little peeks into other people’s lives; I realize that what people share and the reality of their lives can be two different things and yet, I love it. I most certainly understand that no life is a highlight reel of fabulous vacations, brilliant, high-achieving children, or even good hair days; there is a side of everyone’s life that they don’t always care to show.

Later in The Blind Assassin, twenty-something Iris visits her childhood home and stands looking pensively at the portrait of her grandmother who she never knew, a portrait that had been there her whole life. With insight gained from her own life experience, Iris thinks I bet you were alleycatting around…I bet you had a secret life. I bet it kept you going.

Is it just me, or does everyone occasionally become struck with the idea that every single person we encounter has a whole side of themselves that few to no one sees; perhaps a secret life, like Iris’, but usually it is just a personal side of themselves. I remember this striking me incredibly when I was a young woman working on the trade floor for an energy company. There I was, surrounded by men in a professional atmosphere, everyone working and making decisions and, in some cases, screaming at people on the corded phones. I remember seeing all of their wedding rings glinting in the harsh overhead fluorescent lights, which, by the way, did not contribute to a feeling of positivity about my own face and appearance, see above for “self-loathing,” and I thought All these men are married. All of these men, who are currently swearing at their screens, presumably bought rings and nervously paced while preparing to propose, all of these men have a secret life that I know nothing about. And on the flip side, their spouses probably had no idea what their work life was like, probably they did not know the gritty details of their days and had no idea, while sitting across from them at the dinner table, that they spent many hours of the day tersely shouting at their brokers and were possibly being recommended by HR to take anger management courses.

People contain multitudes, is what I’m saying, and sometimes I feel something nearing awe at the idea. Every person has a multifaceted story and a secret side of life.

When I was visiting my parents last week, my mom and I went to my friend Merry’s Mercantile – if you are in Central Alberta, you MUST go – and when I saw that card in her display, I laughed until my stomach hurt and immediately purchased several. I am loathe to imagine anyone at all doing the deed, but there is something particularly unsettling and disturbing about one’s parents taking a trip to pound town. I’m sure my own children share this sense of horror and have mentally blocked out any such idea. Secret sides of life, we all have them.

Weekly Reading

The Librarian Of Burned Books. This book of historical fiction brings attention to the Armed Services Editions, books sent to soldiers in WWII, alongside book burning in Germany in 1933, and banned and censored books through the war. It also looks at the treatment of the LGBTQ community in Nazi Germany and what it means to be a bystander, and it felt like all these subjects, sadly, still have relevance today. It’s interesting and culturally relevant but I will say that unfortunately I found this book to be more of a “Tell” instead of a “Show.” That aside it’s still a pretty decent read, with different and connected characters.

This Is Big: How The Founder of Weight Watchers Changed The World (and me). Woof. This was one of the most depressing books I have ever read. Talk about self-loathing brought on by our culture of shame, judgement, and obsession. The book itself is well-written and is designed in a really unique way: the biographical chapters about Jean Nidetch, founder of Weight Watchers, are alternated with memoir chapters, where the author details her year of joining Weight Watchers and her life of weight cycling and, frankly, self-hatred. It is kind of hard to read: the author was put on her first diet before she was five years old, and her parents basically body-shamed her for her entire life (“you don’t need the bread basket.”). The author admits that she spent her entire life obsessed with food, diets, and hating her body and while I wish this was a unique experience, I feel like it isn’t. It’s an extreme case but I would say that every woman in this world has spent a great deal of time in the same way, and it is shitty. It is SHITTY. It is sad and depressing and terrible. The parts about Nidetch are fascinating and also very depressing. She built an empire, but after the sale of Weight Watchers to Heinz, she was no longer president, and kind of floundered, gambling and shopping and basically trading food for other obsessions. She ended up dying alone, with less than a million in the bank, and given she made a LOT of money, this is really saying something. I finished this book and just stared into space for a while.

Well. On that note, let’s pivot a little and look forward to the week ahead. We have a birthday to celebrate, I have some fun things planned, and the weather promises to be gorgeous. I hope you have a gorgeous week as well. xo

A Grave Mistake

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There are few graver mistakes in the acquisition of comestibles than visiting Costco on the Tuesday after a holiday Monday. It is a mistake I made this past week. How I could have possibly made such an error in judgement is beyond my comprehension entirely. Did I have a brain lapse? Did I forget how calendars work? Am I new to this planet? Who can say, but in any case last Tuesday I found myself questioning all of my life choices.

It didn’t even occur to me, what I had done, until I found myself in a lineup just to get into the parking lot, which was, itself, completely full. When I recounted this later to my husband, he said, Why didn’t you just turn around and come home? which actually did occur to me, at that point, but we all know how it goes. Sometimes, we just want to push through. Sometimes, we throw good money after bad. Sometimes, we think, this is going to be a mistake, but what the hell. Sometimes, we feel like we didn’t come this far just to get this far, and so I proceeded to the very far corner of the parking lot where there was one single spot left.

It will be great to get extra steps in! I thought optimistically, grabbing a cart from the carrel and heading in to what can only be described as incredible chaos. I have never seen anything like this, not even when, in a moment of demented confidence, I went to Costco on a Sunday afternoon. It was bumper-to-bumper traffic, but with carts. There were lineups to get to the cashiers that spanned the entire length of the store, blocking off entire aisles and making it impossible to move forward, and yet, it was equally impossible to move backward, so aborting the mission was not an option.

I inched forward to my destined aisles, one side of which were blocked off by the cash lineups, but it got so much worse when I discovered that the aisles themselves were filled with lines of people waiting to get free samples. I wondered if I would die there, surrounded by large-scale baking supplies.

Was it worth it, I asked myself. Was the Kirkland brand coffee and trail mix really worth it?

Well, we make decisions in our lives and then we live with the consequences of those decisions. And eventually I did make it out back out into the parking lot, I did make it back to the far corner where I was parked, and a spot was opened up directly beside me. A man in a truck pulled into the spot; his windows were opened so I could hear him exclaim There IS a god!

I laughed as he got out of the truck, and mentioned that his belief in the divine might be challenged once he got into the store, at which point he offered to take my now-empty shopping cart for his own use. I gratefully accepted the offer, which brings me to my main point.

Although I strive to live my life without casting aspersions or judgement on others, in one area I am as rigid as a steel pole, and that is with regards to people who do not return their shopping carts to the designated parking lot carrels. This is certainly not new information to anyone who has known me for even the smallest length of time; although I do think there are very occasionally extenuating circumstances that would excuse this behaviour, the vast majority of non-cart-returners are, I think we can all agree, atrocious people. Not returning a cart indicates either pure laziness or complete disregard for other people’s well-being, or a mix of the two.

One very interesting thing I that have noticed since arriving in Kelowna is that there are no errant carts in the parking lot. None! All of the carts are happily ensconced in their familial carrels, snuggled neatly up with one another, just like nature intended. Juxtapose this utopia with the Calgary Costco parking lots, where there would be at least a dozen carts scattered throughout the parking lot, parking stalls, and on top of the parking medians. I have always been a strong believer in the Invisible Hand Theory of Shopping Carts, in that people will behave in everyone’s best interest if there is an economic incentive involved which, in this case, is a coin-operated cart. To blend Smith with Hobbes, I would say without that incentive, parking lot life is nasty and brutish, although not particularly short.

I wonder now if I have been wrong all these years, and if my theory was location-specific, and not a global phenomenon. Are people less atrocious here? Is it the beautiful weather and scenery that makes people cheerfully return their carts? Is it all the local fruit and wine? Time will tell but at the moment, things seem paradisical, at least from a shopping cart perspective. They were less paradisical from an actual shopping perspective, but despite what messaging we Gen X women have been subjected to through our youth, we cannot have it all. I guess right now what I gain in shopping cart happiness I lose in shopping experience happiness.

Weekly Reading

The Stand-In. This was a cute and light romance with a big side of family and friendship. It concerns a Toronto woman who is a lookalike to a Chinese film star, and she becomes her stand in for public appearances when the film star has issues with anxiety and depression. Of course the appearances take place with her male costar, who is a dreamboat, and you can probably guess the rest. This book was fun but I thought it was about a third too long; some parts really dragged for me – and it’s a light romance, it shouldn’t drag! Anyway, the ending was well worth it, as feel-good endings go, so overall it was enjoyable.

I Feel Bad About My Neck. Recently Engie (HI ENGIE) asked if there was a book that made you feel seen, and this is one of them for me. This resonated even more so than it did when I first read it, five or so years ago. I love Nora Ephron and I love this collection of essays about aging as a woman. It contains one of my favourite lines ever: “Not having to worry about your hair anymore must be the secret upside to being dead.” Word. Something to look forward to, the next time I find myself contemplating my own demise whilst in Costco.

A Tree Grows In Brooklyn. Speaking of Engie, I took part in a very fun blogger’s book club, hosted by her this summer, and this was the book we read. I had read it before, but many years ago, so there were many parts that I did not remember. It’s much sadder and a bit more scandalous than I remember, about a girl growing up in the tenements of Brooklyn in the 1910s. What I really loved about this book was its realism: in an autobiographical turn, Francie writes stories about her life for a school assignment and the teacher berates her for writing about ugliness in life. Francie is astonished, because she found beauty in all of life’s hardships. This is a beautiful coming-of-age book but it does have a lot of internalised misogyny, racism, and antisemitism; the language is typical of that place and time but it can be upsetting to modern readers. I first read this before I had children, and this time around I found myself simultaneously relating to and also judging harshly the decisions and feelings of Francie’s mother, Katie. It is well worth a read or a revisit. The final chapter is one of the most moving and wonderful feel-good chapters in any book. Francie looks around her neighbourhood before she moves away to go to college and thinks “…she knew she would never see it again. Eyes changed after they looked at new things. If in the years to be, she were to come back, her new eyes might make everything seem different from the way she saw it now. The way it was no was the way she wanted to remember it.” If you’ve ever visited your childhood home or places you loved as a child, you know this to be so true.

Speaking of old neighbourhoods, my Calgary neighbourhood friend Lyndsey (HI LYNDSEY) sent me this photo of my old house:

Do you see what that is in the front yard, beside the door? It is a shopping cart. According to Lyndsey, that cart has been there for weeks. I feel this is some kind of sign from the universe, but what it means I am not yet sure. If you have any theories, I would be happy to hear them, and in the meantime, I’ll leave you with a photo of my current neighbourhood Baloo, who I spotted on my way home from grocery shopping, heading down our neighbour’s driveway. xo

How Come No One Else’s Chair Is Doing This

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In addition to thousands and thousands of song lyrics, my head is filled with quotes from various movies and television shows. Rarely these days do I watch a movie or television, or if I do, the plots or lines don’t stick with me, so most of these quotes are from popular culture dating back to the 80s and 90s. These quotes will pop into my head randomly, depending on the circumstances.

Whenever I feel like my internal emotional state does not match what is happening with the rest of the world, I instantly think of Groundskeeper Willie on a mechanical bull, saying “Ach! How come no one else’s chair is doing this?”

This is how I felt this past week, like everyone else has been sedately enjoying their beverages on regular chairs, and I am flailing around on a mechanical bull. And I want to point out that in no way am I a catastrophic thinker; I tend to be optimistic and feel that Everything Will Work Out, with, apparently, one exception, and that exception is possible interruptions to my children’s education.

I think perhaps I have some kind of low-level PTSD from school cancellations during the pandemic. I know many people did not mind online, at-home schooling, and some people even enjoyed it and saw their children thrive, but for our family, it was terribly detrimental and I still cannot think about that time without feeling fluttery panic in my chest. Just remembering the initial closing of the schools, which was something that I never before considered even a remote possibility, has me in full Riding The Mechanical Bull Mode.

Last Sunday my husband drove to Calgary, where he needed to be for two weeks for work. This is the longest we have been apart for the entirety of our marriage, but originally that was not going to be the case. The initial plan was that he would drive out, and then fly home to help my older son move to the university dorms this past weekend, and then fly back to Calgary for this coming week. This did not happen for two reasons, and the first was that due to the fires, most flights were grounded or cancelled, and we weren’t sure if he would be able to make it either here or back, and we didn’t want him stranded one way or the other. The second reason is that my son’s move-in date was postponed, again, due to the fires.

We had paid extra for our son to move in a week early, and then to participate in a special orientation week for first-year students. It looked like a lot of fun, and we really wanted him to have that experience, so it was very disappointing to discover that the week was cancelled and his move-in date postponed to this coming weekend. Do not get me wrong: I am happy to have him at home for an extra week and I realize that there are many worse things in the world than missing out on what is essentially a fun and fairly frivolous experience, but on hearing about the cancellation I immediately found myself on the mechanical bull. Everyone in the house, including my son, took this disappointment in stride, but I started thinking what if the university never opens back up, what if the fires just keep going and going, what if the whole university burns to the ground, what if he has to do online learning, what if after this whole gap year and his hard work to get into this program it is all for nothing, all for nothing, all for nothing, how come no one else’s chair is doing this.

Well. It’s fine. IT IS FINE. All signs point to a university start date eight days from now, and a single day of orientation, and it’s going to be FINE. Of all the disasters in the world this doesn’t even register on the disaster scale, it’s like trying to weigh a half cup of flour on a bathroom scale, it is miniscule. And yet.

My friend Hannah (HI HANNAH) sent me information on how wildfire smoke can affect not just a person’s physical, but also their mental health, and that really explained a lot, not just with me and my university panic, but with people I observed around me this past week. Mostly that consisted of people I see daily on the walking path and at the dog park, and let me stress that the vast majority of those people are absolutely lovely. However, there are some people who are, for lack of a better word, total weirdos.

These men – and they are all men – are constantly bad-mouthing other people and dogs to me and, I assume, other innocent bystanders. The feeling I get is a very unpleasant one of being recruited to take their respective sides, the likes of which I haven’t felt since my days as chair of the School Council/ Parent Association, when I would be pulled into multiple directions for such controversial and impassioned topics as Fun Lunch: Who Is In Charge, and Fresh Fruit Fridays: Yes or No. I do not like hearing from strange men that the black French bulldog is aggressive or that the brown mutt named Rigsby is out of control, even if those things do appear to be true.

I try to keep to myself, which, as we all know, really goes against my natural instincts. I can only assume that this weird five-way feud has been taking place since the beginning of time. I have definitely noticed that the dogs in question are sometimes poorly behaved and show aggressive tendencies, but because Rex has taken on the role of Big Friendly Buffoon in the dog park, no one bothers him, and I keep a smiley, but cool, distance from these men.

Last week in the height of the smoke, I entered the dog park and one of the usual men came right up to me and said, loudly, “Watch out for that German shepherd, he’s attacking ALL THE DOGS.” I looked at the German shepherd, who was calmly sniffing a tree, and his owner nearby who clearly overheard this, and I just nodded and said “Okay, thanks,” putting my earbuds in and walking the loop while Rex bounded around like the clown he is. While I was admiring Rex’s run-and-barrel-roll routine, I heard shouting and swearing, culminating in threats to get the fuck out of here before I make you wish you had. What. I watched this out of the corner of my eye, thinking that I was actually going to witness a physical brawl. The upshot of all of this was that the German shepherd owner allegedly did not scoop after his dog, and that person in question retorted that his dog had not defecated so there was no need to scoop, and a third person announced that he filmed the entire thing on his phone, including the allegedly defecating dog, and that he was going to send the video in to the local news station. Gross. I leashed up Rex and left the dog park.

I have not seen the Feuding Fellows since, and I did mention this upsetting altercation to a very nice woman at the park later in the week. “Ugh,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I know who you’re talking about. THOSE GUYS.” I had thought perhaps tempers were frayed and that could be blamed on the smoke and the negative impact it has on everyone’s mental and emotional well-being, but it appears they are just regular assholes.

Weekly Reading

This week’s reading is brought to you by Elizabeth Strout!

Anything Is Possible. The follow up to My Name Is Lucy Barton is a dive into all the people’s lives in the stories from the first book. It’s an incredible peek into family life, secrets, classism, and connections. I love it. It’s a reread for me and another book that I get more out of each time I read it.

Oh William! The third of the Lucy books, and this one deals with her relationship with her former husband. These books are so compelling to me, and so compassionate. This is another reread for me, but so worthwhile. I love how Strout writes about secrets and reveals character traits in such subtle ways. Gorgeous.

Lucy By The Sea. Finally! The reason for the rereads! I received this for Christmas and wanted to reread all the previous books before starting on it – I really recommend doing this, it is an excellent reading experience. This book delves into the pandemic and all the political and social things that happened during that time. Like all the books, it is about love and family, class and divides in society, and crossing those lines. This book did a great job of illustrating how we all felt during those early days of the pandemic: the feeling of things not being real, the inability to take in the news, the boredom and tedium of life when we couldn’t go anywhere or do anything. This was moving and emotional, and included characters from her other books, as Lucy and William experience lockdown in Maine. 

It’s the last week of August! I can hardly believe it. What a blur this summer has been. I am crossing my fingers and sitting in lotus for a smooth week ahead, and I hope you all have a good one as well. xo

Playing The Fiddle

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What a crazy weekend it has been. The wind really picked up on Friday and the wildfire spread very quickly. We are safe, and hopefully will continue that way, but it’s quite terrifying to be in the midst of a state of emergency, with friends being evacuated and the world being shrouded in smoke. The wind did calm, which helped with firefighting efforts, but the situation is still dire.

It’s an incredibly weird feeling to know that there is panic and tragedy going on right on one’s doorstep, but being completely unable to do anything about it except to wait. In fact, the best thing to do is to just patiently wait at home, to see if any friends need a landing spot, and to not put strain on any public resources. It has a bit of a Fiddle While Rome Burns feeling, literally, not unlike when Calgary had the floods in 2013, or even the early days of the pandemic, when we all just stayed home, refreshing news feeds and texting friends to check in. Also not unlike those times, I distracted myself with baking.

On a lighter subject, let’s talk about something that happened last week, pre-fire.

The bookmarks are still missing. I briefly had a huge surge of hope and optimism, but those hopes have been dashed. Dashed, people. I think the time has come for me to accept this and move on with my life.

The surge of hope came with the discovery of some missing sweaters. To set the stage, I unpacked all of my clothes and organized all my closet and drawers over four weeks ago and I noticed that a few of my very favourite sweaters were not with any of the primary bedroom boxes. I had brought all of my workout clothes and summer outfits in two giant suitcases when I drove out with Rex, but my myriad sweaters and dresses were left in my closet for the movers to pack. Because we were so short of storage in the old house, I kept all my sweaters in rectangular collapsible bags, and stacked them all up on a shelf in my closet. Like Baa Baa Black Sheep, there were three giant bags full, and if I hadn’t organized them that way, the sweaters would have all tumbled down constantly and it would have been impossible to find the one I was looking for. I realized, four weeks ago, that I only had two bags.

It was very curious. All the boxes were unpacked, and that sweater bag was nowhere to be found. The only boxes I hadn’t looked in were the ones in the shed that contained garden implements and my husband’s tools, and I could not imagine the movers would have packed them in those boxes. I started wondering if indeed I DID have three bags, or if in a fit of purging I donated all those sweaters. I didn’t THINK I had, since they were my heaviest, warmest, most favourite winter sweaters, but I couldn’t say for sure. In other words, I was gaslighting myself.

After all, if not with all the clothing, where could they possibly be?

Finally I decided enough was enough. Surely I didn’t donate that giant cozy cardigan that feels like a bathrobe or the expensive-but-dressy swoopy black sweater from lululemon? Surely not! Did I think that because I had one black turtleneck I didn’t need a second one? That does not seem like me, but I DID donate a lot of clothes. I went back and forth with this line of thinking until finally I recruited my older son to come with me to the shed to look in the unlooked-in boxes and to reach where I couldn’t.

Well, I was correct. They were not in with the gardening implements or tools and neither, sadly, were the bookmarks. But as my son peered around the corner, he said “Hey, there is a bag of sweaters on the floor!” and lo, there it was, on the absolutely filthy shed floor, my bag of sweaters. How or why it was there no one can say, and I think it is safe to say that this mystery will never be solved, but I was thrilled. At that moment, the moment my son reached over a box to grab the sweaters, I looked up and there, scurrying up the shelving unit not three feet away from my face, was a mouse.

You know how I feel about mice residing in places that I also reside. I think I entered a fugue state.

Technically I know I do not reside in the shed that houses tools and tractors. Technically I know that on a two-acre property there are going to be mice in a shed that houses tools and tractors. But this was three feet from my face and, my son casually noted, there was a hole in the sweater bag.

It is very possible that the hole was the result of the material ripping while it was somehow dumped onto the floor of the shed. Maybe it was even probable. However, given the circumstances, my soul briefly left my body and my body left the shed.

I had my son take each sweater out individually and shake it vigorously, then flatten it on the grass. We, or, rather, he then checked all the pockets and shook them out again. When we were satisfied there were no stowaways, I immediately threw all the sweaters into the washing machine, hoping to god that this wouldn’t result in my discovery of any mouse corpses, and if there was, I planned to ask my mother-in-law to deal with them. Dead animals faze her not in the slightest, and in fact she had just told me a story about how she personally dealt with a fawn corpse in her yard not all that many years ago. Happily, her services were not needed.

Finding the sweaters made me think that maybe something similar happened to the bookmarks. After all, if an entire large bag of sweaters could somehow end up on the floor of the shed, then anything could happen. We scoured the shed, I opened and went through all the tool and garden implement boxes again, I even checked each and every suitcase on my husband’s suggestion (Him: maybe you put them in one of the outer pockets? Me: OMG MAYBE! *five minutes later, silent and dejected*).

Well. It’s really time for me to move on. After all, people have lost houses very close to me, me losing a bag of bookmarks feels like Embarrassingly Small Potatoes. I’m not even sure that in the grand scheme of things, they could even be considered potatoes. It’s more like losing a single grain of sand on the beach. In fact, I feel a bit ashamed that I have been sad about such a thing when there is so much tragic loss around here. Perspective, it’s a thing.

Weekly Reading

Bel Canto. Late to the party but WOW, did I love this book about a hostage taking gone…right? This is an absolutely beautiful story about hostages and their captors, and how they ended up creating a world of beauty and wonder together, how they went on living their lives as a little community. It is so subtly hilarious and the writing is witty and gorgeous; the characters are all so incredibly loveable and fun. There is the translator who is used by everyone and who learned Swedish from watching subtitled films and so his knowledge of the country is “somewhat dark.” There is the opera singer who everyone is in love with, the country’s Vice President in whose house the hostage taking takes place, and so he takes on the role of host looking after his houseguests. There is the French diplomat who becomes the house cook, the long-suffering General whose shingles keeps flaring up, the Japanese businessman for whom the original party was thrown for and who is an opera and chess aficionado, and the man from the Red Cross who is in charge of the negotiations. This book is incredibly moving and the end, while it should be obvious what happens, was such a shock to me. Back in April 2020, on one of my many daily walks (what else did we do then?), I ran into a neighbourhood acquaintance and she mentioned this as her favourite book. I put it on my list, but the libraries were closed, and so I forgot about it. I am SO glad I read this, it’s absolutely an incredible piece of writing.

And Then There Were None. Murder mystery isn’t my usual genre but my son just read this and insisted I give it a try – and he was right! Ten people are invited to an island, and each one disappears one by one. It’s so good and it kept me guessing until the very end!

My Name Is Lucy Barton. God, I love this book. This is the fourth time I’ve read this and every time I read it I am moved anew. I find as I get older I understand it in different ways. What a gorgeous, moving, complicated book about love and life. It’s so powerful and yet simple. I received Lucy By The Sea for Christmas and have decided to read all the Lucy books again, before starting the newest. What a pleasure to do so. After all, I don’t have a library card yet – I was hoping to try last week with two pieces of mail and my passport, and if that’s not enough, I don’t know what, but with the fires I decided to stay home – and so I’m going back and rereading my shelf.

I hope things settle down this week; even without the fire situation things are a little bit crazy around here. More on that to come, and in the meantime, take care of yourselves. xo

Coming Into The Home Stretch

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With all the myriad changes going on in my life right now, I told a friend that I feel like I am having a Brazilian bikini wax, but the entire procedure is just one giant strip instead of many tiny, gentler strips. With everything happening all at once, I am doing my best to cope and to stay in the moment, while still soothing myself by thinking there will be a time after this.

HELP

My friend Allison (HI ALLISON) used that term many, many years ago to refer to chaperoning a field trip, and I have thought of it hundreds of thousands of times since then. This week was so busy and stressful, but ultimately very productive. The moving company is packing the majority of our house; for the extra amount of money added on to the expense of a long-haul move, it seemed very worth it. However, being in a house for twenty-three years means that we have accumulated things we really do not need or want anymore, and although I have been steadily clearing things out for the last few months, this week I really got into the weeds, so to speak. I tackled the crawl space.

Several years ago I really got into the crawl space and got rid of many things we no longer needed, but there was a stack of boxes in there that had not been touched since we had moved in twenty-three years ago. I refuse to just move boxes to put them in storage, so I ruthlessly went through each one, and although I am not wishing such a task on anyone, it was actually pretty fun. I found so many treasures! I also found a lot of junk and questionable items – did I really need to keep a giant box full of RSVP’s from our wedding? – but I was able to recycle most of it, donate some of it, and the rest was, sadly, relegated to the trash. It made me feel a little sad, especially after reading Unraveling last week, but there wasn’t another option for some of the completely unusable items. I mean, I guess there was the option of putting them back into boxes and then putting them into storage in the new house, since that seems to have been our line of thinking twenty-three years ago, but that felt like a slippery slope that would get me right back where I started from. Also, upon the event of my own demise, may that be many decades in the future, I do not want to leave my children with boxes full of useless junk, any more than I already will be.

The bane of my recent existence has been old text books. Between my husband and I, we have four degrees and probably thousands of dollars’ worth of old, now worthless textbooks. A few months ago I looked with horror at my shelves and shelves of textbooks that were not eligible for donation; no one wants outdated economics, econometrics, or statistics textbooks, despite the fact that not much really changes in those areas from year to year. The only thing to do was to recycle them by ripping out all the pages and throwing the bindings and covers into the trash. It was a big undertaking, so imagine my despair when I discovered in the crawl space an entire box full of my husband’s old textbooks that somehow did not make it onto our bookshelves. I set my younger son on the job of recycling them, along with myriad term papers and, strangely enough, a pile of papers from our wedding that included every single song the DJ had in his possession and every menu item the venue had to offer.

These, along with piles of cassette tapes – including mix tapes! – were a drag to deal with, but then I found some wonderful treasures, some of which I am keeping forever, and some of which just made me laugh. As a small backstory, I was six years old when Diana and Charles got married, and their engagement set off my lifelong obsession with the Queen of Hearts. I was not a child for whom it was difficult for relatives to think of Christmas gifts; anything and everything Princess Di was received with great enthusiasm. Soon my obsession included all women in the British Royal Family, including the Queen, with whom I share a birthday. My grandma had saved a lot of clippings and memorabilia from the Queen’s coronation and passed it along to me.

What fabulous treasures! Also, this candy box!

This is less awesome but it made me laugh and shudder at the same time.

I am keeping this forever:

In addition to “things I will keep forever” I found some postcards from friends circa 1989, including one that said “I hate it here and I hate everyone here and I want to come home” which, if that’s not teen angst I do not know what is. Much less angsty was a postcard from my sweet friend Elise (HI ELISE) from the bustling metropolis of Lethbridge:

I don’t know what is funnier, that I have kept this all these years or that I had it at all.

Should I have kept this? Perhaps to hang over my bed in the new bedroom?

The big day, for me and Rex at least, is one week TOMORROW. I can hardly believe it! I am actually looking forward to the unpacking-and-finding-homes-for-everything part, as opposed to the depressing why do we have so much stuff and are we actually swamp people part that I seem to be going through now. I am, as you all know, a person who thrives on neatness and organization and whoa, does my life feel like the opposite of that right now. Well, again, let’s repeat the mantra: there will be a time after this. And in the meantime, I am going to try to enjoy my last few days in the city that has been my heart and home for so many years.

Weekly Reading

Property. The best thing about this book, which concerns a woman married to an unsuccessful sugar plantation owner in the antebellum south, is that it’s short. The story is dull and every character is unlikeable at best, deplorable at worst.

Swipe Up For More! Oh wow, this book was absolutely fascinating to me! I think the entire influencer industry is so interesting: how it developed, how important it is to brands, and how many women have made so much money in it. This book mainly follows three big influencers, two of whom I have never heard of before: a momfluencer, a fashion influencer, and a unique and important fitfluencer. I’ve been thinking about this subject a lot lately since the Food Heaven women posted their Burnout and Pivot series; being an influencer might just look like taking photos and videos, but it is a lot of work to be successful. Some of these women work upwards of 80 hours a week, and the work is just never done. Their whole life is on display for work, which is a really odd concept. Even odder – and ickier – is the world of the momfluencer, because it is her life as a mom and her own kids who are being used by brands for money. It brings up all sorts of ethical dilemmas: can your children be used in campaigns? What if you put the money away for them for their education, then is it okay? At what point do children have agency over their own lives and decisions? Is a sponsored trip to Disney a vacation or just more grind? The momfluencer in question has since – given that her older children have rebelled against posing for yet another photo or acting in yet another reel – slowed down her own work and campaigns, and wonders if her life as an influencer has deep and negative effects on her children (probably, the answer is yes). It’s an interesting thing to consider. I thought about this a lot when I was writing for YMC: a lot of my colleagues wrote about things like potty training and discipline, complete with photos, and even at the time it felt wrong for me to write about the kids in that way. For me personally, my kids are blog-adjacent but I don’t divulge much of their lives here because it’s their lives. I should note though that my kids actually enjoy when, say, a former yoga student of mine recognizes them “in the wild” from my Facebook posts, but I can imagine if I had a far-reaching platform in which they played a significant role, they might feel a lot different. Anyway, this was such a good read and really thought-provoking.

The Long Goodbye. This was an absolutely gorgeous memoir about a woman losing her mother, and the grieving process that followed. And I will say that I was 100% NOT in the right headspace to read about her mother dying at age 55 of metastatic colorectal cancer, so I cannot say I enjoyed it, but I appreciated the beauty and tenderness of the writing.

All right, friends, I am in the home stretch now. Back in the aforementioned grad school, another woman and I had the Rosie the Riveter poster in our office as a reminder that We Can Do It, and I have that Rosie the Riveter photo in my mind constantly these days. I feel like her, mascara, lipgloss and all. xo

Back In The Day

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Interprovincial Woman of Mystery

I did not realize how mysterious and secretive I have been with regards to my new city, and it certainly isn’t a mystery or a secret: this Calgary Girl is going to morph into an Okanagan Girl. We are moving to Kelowna, BC, which is in the heart of Western Canada’s fruit and wine country, and is also home to the world famous Ogopogo!

My husband grew up in Kelowna, and hilariously recalls a friends’ family who claimed to have seen the Ogopogo themselves, while boating on the lake. This made them briefly locally famous, as they were on the six o’clock news talking about seeing the creature in the wake of the boat. It is probable that this exposure on the news gave their family business a much-wanted boost, which seems very quaint now. Remember the days when one would wait until the six o’clock news to find out something that happened in the world, and if you missed it, you had to wait another five hours or even until the paper was delivered the next day to catch up? And if you knew someone who was on the news, or maybe you yourself were interviewed for a human interest segment or breaking story, it was an incredibly exciting and special thing? Now we just all have social media and, perhaps, blogs or newsletters, and anyone across the globe can know minutia of our lives at any given time, but then, well, then an alleged Ogopogo sighting meant the six o’clock news and could be discussed lo these forty years later.

Whether or not the Ogopogo exists in reality – it exists in all our hearts, I’m sure – this is where I will be hanging my hat, so to speak. Or, stacking my boxes. Ernie (HI ERNIE) guessed correctly that our vacation home will now be our home; it is a beautiful house in a beautiful place, and you can all expect many stories as I get settled into my new life.

This Might Make You Grimace

Speaking of quaint things like the days with a non-24-hour-news-cycle, I heard something incredibly disturbing recently that will resonate with all of us who grew up in North America in the 80s. It has to do with the McDonaldland characters. Now, growing up, we were not a family who really ate McDonalds food – we were more Dairy Queen people, or, for extremely fancy occasions, Swiss Chalet patrons – but I did not live under a rock, and I did attend many a birthday party at McDonalds, so I was well aware of all the characters in the McDonaldland universe. Most of these characters made sense to my childhood brain: a clown, a mayor whose head was an actual cheeseburger, giant sentient French fries, a crazed criminal who craved hamburgers. And then there was Grimace, a giant purple puff who, I guess, liked milkshakes a lot. His existence didn’t make a whole lot of sense, but he was cute, and that counts for pretty much everything for a young girl in 1982 who loved everything Muppets, Smurfs, and anything else that was cute but didn’t make a whole lot of sense.

This week, this very week, I learned that Grimace – that amiable purple puffball – was modeled after a taste bud.

Words cannot describe my revulsion at this discovery. Imagine the actual board meeting of creative executives coming up with this idea. I know what will bring the kids in! Listen, kids love a cuddly creature. You know those bumps on your tongue that allow you to differentiate multiple flavours? Hear me out. A cuddly lovable creature that IS one of those bumps. Upon seeing the expressions on the faces after this idea was on the giant piece of paper on the easel, used for brainstorming: YES. And we shall name it Grimace.

I mean, I have so many questions. First of all, how was such an idea conceived? I can only imagine that the McDonalds advertising creative dropped LSD one night and spent the subsequent twelve hours staring into the mirror at his own tongue, waking up the next day with the feeling of mind expansion and the idea that yes, a giant sentient taste bud could be a beloved character in the McDonaldland universe. Not only was this idea conceived, but it was also approved. It was approved! By, I am assuming, high level creative marketing executives. Going back to the board meeting where the executives were all grimacing from the grossness of making a mascot based on a gustatory cell, which would, appropriately, be named Grimace, someone in that meeting, someone very high up on the McDonalds marketing ladder championed this and approved it for mass consumption.

What a world we lived in, back in the 80s.

Wool of Fortune

I loved Wheel of Fortune back in the 80s, and I am sure I would love it now if I ever remembered that it still exists and that I can indeed watch it. Or, more accurately, that I wasn’t halfway to coma-land after dinner, which is Reading Time for me and Watching Shows about Gold Mining in the North Time for my husband. Something that I learned recently is that Vanna White, glorious co-host of our beloved game show for the past forty years, is an avid knitter. Ms. White loves her fibre art and in fact, has an entire Vanna White-branded yarn.

This amazes me. If I were asked what Vanna White’s most-loved hobby was, I am not sure I would come up with knitting if I had one hundred guesses. I told my husband and he thought it would take a thousand guesses. In any case, I am charmed by this and mentioned it to my yoga ladies a few weeks ago, and one of them said she was not surprised as it is well known that Ms. White makes her own clothes. What. I am pretty sure she doesn’t make the clothing that she wears on Wheel of Fortune, as there always seems to be a clothing sponsor mentioned at the end of each show, or so I remember, but I like to think about her knitting herself a sweater to slip on with a cute little skirt she whipped up on her Singer. Or maybe just popping over to Fabricland to see what’s new.

Someone once asked me why I read so many memoirs, including celebrity memoirs, and it is because of things like this. I am endlessly curious about other people’s lives, particularly the minutia of other people’s lives, and knowing that Vanna White is a knitter and sewer makes me love her even more. Also, you never hear anything bad about Vanna White so I am assuming she is an angel on this earth, doing good and lighting up letters.

We’re Going To Have A Problem Here

I usually listen to 70s on 7 in the car, shoutout to Suz (HI SUZ), my fellow 70s on 7 aficionado, but sometimes I’ll flip channels to 80s on 8, 90s on 9, and Pop 2K. And what I am going to say probably circles back to my dislike for books with f*ck in the title – JUST SAY FUCK OR DON’T – but a minor pet peeve of mine is when songs are radio edited. I know. I know, I know, you don’t have to tell me, I already know that there is a reason for this, that we are protecting the ears of the youth of North America, if I want to hear unedited hard core hip hop I can listen to the Rock the Bells channel, I KNOW. But it still bothers me to hear a little bleep or a whoosh or what have you. This is mostly a problem with Pop 2K – it certainly isn’t on 70s on 7 – and some songs are so edited that there are barely any lyrics at all. I’m looking at you, Eminem.

I was in the car and The Real Slim Shady came on and I realized that the word “clitoris” was edited out, but the line about being cannibals who cut other people open like cantaloupes was not. As I said, I don’t like radio edits at all, but why would a mention of a body part be edited, but not a grossly violent act? Well, I guess because it’s a woman’s body part, living in the patriarchy, etcetera.

Omg you guys, what if someone created a mascot based on a clitoris? If it could happen for a taste bud it could happen for a clitoris! Maybe this has already happened, how much do we know really about the California Raisins?

Weekly Reading

Beauty Sick. I picked this up because Val Monroe mentioned it in her excellent newsletter, How Not To Fuck Up Your Face. It’s a well-researched, well-written book about the toxicity of the beauty industry and media; it was published in 2017 so I would say none of the ideas in here are new or astounding, but it’s a good read nonetheless. It got me thinking about the messages we were all bombarded with, growing up, and how we can change that for the next generation of girls.

We Are Not From Here. Stephany (HI STEPHANY) recommended this and I’m glad she did! It’s a moving account of three teens fleeing gang violence in Guatemala for the US. They travel on La Bestia, the dangerous train across Mexico, then on foot towards the border. It’s fiction but is based on the horrific real-life stories of children travelling on their own, hoping for compassion and safety. It’s a YA novel, which I didn’t know going in, and I find lately, at 48, I really empathize with the parents in YA novels. After all, the children are younger than my youngest, which is a sad and despairing thought. How lucky I feel to be born where I was and to not face such deadly decisions. 

The Summer Place. This author is hit or miss with me, but this was definitely a hit! What a romp this was, with multiple viewpoints and characters, massive family drama, scandalous secrets, and a heartwarming ending. This takes place during the pandemic and shows the fissures that developed in families through being disconnected or being TOO connected – i.e., what happened during lockdown when everyone was together ALL THE TIME. I was nodding along constantly. Anyway, this was a very fun read with interconnected characters and stories, and I loved it. A couple of interesting notes about the matriarch of the story: she made a ton of money in the 80s because she had written and sold the movie rights to a couple of books. The matriarch wanted to be a “serious” writer, but she ended up being a “commercial” one, and I wondered if that was the author’s actual lived experience. Another note, and this was fun to read after The Paper Palace, which also took place in Cape Cod, is that the matriarch, who is Jewish, discusses the original WASPy owners of summer homes. She describes the homes as falling apart cottages with owners who throw parties with “oceans of booze and only Ritz crackers and supermarket cheddar to eat” AND THIS IS EXACTLY THE DESCRIPTION IN THE PAPER PALACE. The supermarket cheddar stood out as a detail. I am not a part of the Cape Cod summer community so I wondered – is this a thing? Anyway, I loved this book, it was such a fun summery read.

Here we are, in the last week of June, ALREADY! The first of my daylilies is in bloom, the weather has moderated itself, there are boxes everywhere, and I have been busily trying to see as many people as possible before the big move. I’m heading to my parents’ for a few days for the Canada Day holiday, so it’s going to be a busy and social week for me. I hope you all have a beautiful week. xo