Category Archives: My failing sanity

Maui Encounters, Medical Emergencies, Mini Eggs

Posted on by

This week’s post is brought to you by the letters M and E! I could say every post is brought to you by ME, I suppose, but let’s separate the letters this week. In addition to the title, I could also add in Massively Exhausted. Whew, I don’t think I’ve fully recovered from the red-eye flight, the time zone change, and the incredible amount of work I’ve been doing since returning. I’m in a massive decluttering and organization project, which I’ll discuss in detail later – hold onto your hats – and it’s physically and mentally draining.

Something that happens to me now that never happened in my pre-perimenopausal life is that I can tell with one hundred percent accuracy when my period will start, and it’s not just that I have existential angst, a descent into non-specific sadness, and sleeplessness. That happens, but for the purposes of this story, I will tell you about the one other symptom that is a neon sign that Nicole Is Getting Her Period: my breasts. Suddenly, my breasts go from resembling the stocking that Laura Ingalls set out for Santa Claus that contains a single orange and a penny in the bottom to over-inflated water balloons. Va-va-va-voom! I would appreciate this brief foray into bustiness a lot more if it was not accompanied by agonizing pain that makes me want to bind my breasts like a medieval upper-class new mother who has just handed her infant off to the nearest wet-nurse.

It just so happened that this Playboy-centerfoldness occurred on one of our last days in Maui and although I know better, I really do, I donned a bikini that, while absolutely adorable, was maybe not as supportive as others. I did notice that I was a bit more cleavage-y than earlier in the vacation when I had worn this specific bikini, but yolo. I soldiered on to the beach. My mistake was soon revealed in a literal sense; it was just fine when I was swimming or bobbing around in the waves, but when I hopped on the boogie board and caught a wave, I ended up flashing the entire beach as my breasts popped right out. Right out. The bikini top was completely BELOW my breasts and I scrambled to pull it back up, while not letting the boogie board float out to sea as the waves pulled back. It was no mean feat, let me tell you. Fortunately, my sons were behind me in the waves, and so were not psychologically scarred, at least as far as their mother’s public semi-nudity is concerned.

I decided to call it a day at that point, and headed to our little umbrella-and-beach chair set-up, letting the guys play in the water while I read a bit. I was soon approached by a young man, at least twenty-five years my junior, who was holding an M&M tube, the kind that contain mini-M&Ms and are found in Christmas stockings everywhere, except for Laura Ingalls’. He held up the tube with a huge silly smile and asked if I wanted to see something cool. Awww, I thought. This maybe-slow young man wants to show me something. I gave him a big, encouraging smile, and said sure. He opened it up and I peered inside. What…was it? Was that a little crab leg? Or legs? Dead bugs? It was hard to see – I was under the umbrella and I had sunglasses on, and the sun was at this fellow’s back.

“What is it?” I finally asked, after an uncomfortably long pause. “Weed!” the young man said with enthusiasm. “Do you want to buy some?” At this, I burst into laughter. “Oh, HONEY,” I said. “Honey, no. No thank you, dear.” It was like I was ninety years old and someone asked me to go skydiving, or to have some backdoor action in a public washroom with a stranger. He looked a little started at my laughing and asked if there was anyone I knew who might want his presumably M&M-scented weed? I shook my head and said “No, sweetie, I don’t.” He looked perplexed at both my cluelessness and my laughter, and set off, presumably to try to sell to someone who didn’t seem like his own mother. Or grandmother. I was gratified that he thought I was so hip, even though my “honey, no” would indicate that I am not.

I haven’t smoked weed for well over thirty years, but I do, on occasion, use over-the-counter sleep aids. I decided to take some Gravol for our overnight flight; generally I am a person who can sleep in transit, but I thought I should take something to help me get more than a couple of hours. According to my watch, I did sleep five out of six hours on the flight, and the hour that I didn’t was fairly interesting, if somewhat worrisome.

I had completely passed out as soon as we were in the air, and I blearily awakened to some jostling, anxious voices, and the caution to “stay in your seat.” I opened my gritty-feeling eyes to see several flight attendants in various stages of distress, right at my seat. The woman directly behind me was having a medical emergency; she had been treated for a sinus infection while on vacation, and suddenly was having severe shooting pain in her eye, as well as feverishness and nausea. Fortunately, the man across the aisle from her was a nurse – and was coming back from his honeymoon! – and he was able to assist the flight attendant with the emergency medical care she was administering. The flight attendant was on a phone call with a hospital for more instruction, and at that moment I thought to look at the digital flight map. We were directly in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, an hour and a half from Maui and four and a half hours from land, so there would be nowhere to turn around or to land. Perhaps it was because it was the middle of the night, perhaps it was due to my aforementioned Lady’s Holidays, but my thoughts started to go dark. What happens if someone is having an emergency and there is nowhere to land? What happens if someone dies on a flight? What do they do with the body? They couldn’t possibly just leave the dead body in the seat, but what? Is there someplace to put a body? Things are pretty tight on a full plane. Would the body be put where the flight attendants sit for takeoff and landing? Then what of the flight attendants? These unsettling thoughts kept pinging into my brain until the woman was given an antiemetic, put on oxygen – the tank was under my seat – and the flight attendant said she’d check back every ten minutes, which indicated to me she was stabilized somewhat. Relieved, I drifted back to sleep, waking only a couple more times to peek over the seat to make sure she was okay, before we landed.

With five hours of unsettled sleep and a time difference of four hours, I was pretty disoriented when we got home to our clean but food-less house. Does grocery shopping ever end? Of course not. Since we were in a condo in Maui, we ate a lot of meals there, which meant grocery shopping in Maui, too. Which is fine, but what I am saying is that I wasn’t super excited to immediately set out for the grocery store while the rest of the family napped at 9:00 am. However, I did want food and I had to pick up Rex in the afternoon, so off I went.

The very first thing I saw in the store were the one-kilogram bags of Cadbury Mini-Eggs, and they were on sale for $5 off. I have an actual mini-egg preference, and that preference is Cadbury, so I immediately picked up a bag and dropped it into my cart. Dropped it. Into my cart. As soon as the bag made contact with my cart, it exploded, and a kilogram’s worth of mini-eggs scattered all over the aisle and into the produce section. I stood there, frozen, as mini-eggs cascaded from my cart, rolling and bouncing in all directions. After about five long seconds, I looked around to see a produce clerk coming my way. “I’m so sorry,” I said, still staring at the rolling eggs that were now surrounding other people and their carts. I followed the apology by surpassing the world record in banal statements: “The bag, I think the bag, I think it has a hole in it?” The clerk assured me that it would be taken care of and not to worry. I picked up another bag and very slowly, very carefully, placed it in my cart.

Weekly Reading

I read so much on my vacation that I am going to make a separate post about all the books I read; the excellent, the pretty good, and the really bad. Do you rate the books you read? I do, but privately. I give a rating out of five on the spreadsheet on which I track my books, and it’s extremely subjective based on how much I loved the writing and how it made me feel. I don’t get too mired in the details, but a five would be a book I absolutely loved, and a two would be a book I hated but still was able to read. I am realizing now we all have very different methods of rating. I was talking to a friend about this, because I was surprised to see her rate a few books I really liked as threes. A three, to me, is meh; a book that is fine, but that I would never re-read. To her a three was pretty good, a maybe re-read, and a five would be a book of the quality of Maya Angelou or James Baldwin. I found that so interesting! I am not at all stingy with my fives; if I loved it, it’s getting a five. If I loved it but had some small quibbles, I will give it a four.

In any case, I read one non-vacation book this week:

In Every Mirror She’s Black. This book follows three Black women who all come to Sweden because of one powerful Swedish man: one through employment, one because of romance, and one as a refugee. Their lives intersect but are very separate. The ending is pretty intense, and I would say this book had its ups and downs for me. I didn’t love it but I liked it well enough.

More books to come, but in the meantime, I must get on with my week! I hope you all had a lovely Easter weekend. xo

Three Years

Posted on by

TIME CHANGE, AM I RIGHT?

It feels like every single March we are all stumbling around for a week like zombies, children crying and pets confused, people getting into accidents, all for something that is completely made up and useless. Every single March we are all shaking our fists at the people who could do something about this, but don’t. There are places in the world that do not change time, WE COULD BE LIKE THAT.

I wonder if, along with feeling furious about time change, every single March I will also think about the start of the pandemic. It has been exactly three years to the day since the First Pandemic Lockdown, and wow, what a weird time that was. At times I find it hard to believe what it was like, what we did, and all the strange things that started to feel just normal. Did we really not go anywhere at all? Did we really feel guilty if we forgot something at the grocery store and had to go out for a second time in less than a week? Was there really no toilet paper on the shelves? Did we really feel constantly panicked if another person got within our six-foot bubbles? Did I really come home after buying groceries and just sit and stare into space for a while? It was such a strange, disturbing time. I mean, some people were disinfecting their groceries and leaving them in a separate room for 48 hours before putting them away. Not me though; that was a bridge way too far.

Just before the Big Lockdown, my life was so busy, and although we had heard about this novel coronavirus in the news, I didn’t really think it would change anything for me or in my life. I was teaching ten classes a week, I was preparing for our spring break trip to Mexico, and I was frantically going to parent meetings and doing last minute fundraising for my younger son’s West Coast sailing trip, that he had been looking forward to for three years. Cue the ominous music; you already know how those vacation plans turned out. But at that time, I thought that other than needing to stock up on my husband’s blood pressure medication, all this in the news would turn out to be a whole lot of nothing.

Only a few days before March 13, 2020, two things happened that made me wonder if something was indeed about to affect me personally.

First, one of my students in Seniors’ Yoga approached me before class. This student was, and is, a Professor Emeritus in Epidemiology at the university. She cautioned me about my upcoming trip to Mexico, saying that I may want to reconsider. Of course I listened to her opinion, and although I still thought at that time I would go, her words did stay with me.

The second thing was my monthly coffee date with my friend Nicole (HI NICOLE) who is also a professor at the university, in chemistry. Nicole seemed very concerned with my Mexico trip as well, asking if I had access to a kitchen (I did not, it was a resort I was headed to) and generally giving off a Very Worried Vibe. She also mentioned that the university was going to close down, and there were rumblings that the schools would too. I was in disbelief about this; schools CLOSING? There was no way that could happen! That would be a disaster!

Honestly, it was a disaster, wasn’t it? Of all the pandemic mitigation strategies, I think that closing the schools was the worst. I remember feeling absolutely devastated that our schools were now closed indefinitely; I still think that the damage to our children and young people was extensive and will be long-lasting, from an educational, developmental, and mental health point of view. Online schooling, while it was the best possible option at the time, was just so detrimental in so many ways, particularly for children in vulnerable situations or in underserved communities. It was terribly detrimental to my own children, who are in no way underserved or vulnerable, and who have all the privilege in the world. We all need to be around peers, physically, and this is especially true for the young.

I often think that the pandemic was a zero-sum game; in order for one thing to be taken care of, other things had to give way. Of course we as a society have to care for each other; as of right now, nearly seven million people have died from Covid, and who knows how many people have been disabled or have had their quality of life severely impacted by the virus. There is absolutely no way to say what those numbers would have been like had there been no mitigation measures.

That said, the mitigation measures themselves have had harsh consequences; hence, my zero-sum game theory. It’s not just an entire generation of youth who have been developmentally stunted in some way, I also often think of the global mental health decline, the vast number of suicides and increased dependence on substances, the loss of people’s livelihoods and the decimation of entire industries. Clearly, we were – and are – all doing our best, everyone was just dealing with ever-changing information and regulations, but wow. What an awful and divisive time. I think it’s going to take a long time to heal in this new era that we have entered. Are we in a post-pandemic state? Covid is still around, people are still falling ill, but are we still considered to be in a global pandemic? I have no idea.

I have spoken before about psychological long Covid, but something else occurred to me this week. Back in the 70s, a comedian who shall remain nameless had a bit about cocaine usage, a pretend dialogue with a cocaine user. “It intensifies your personality.” “Yes, but what if you’re an asshole?” It seems to me that the pandemic, like cocaine, has intensified my personality. In some ways, that’s fine, perhaps even good, but in others, it is not great, Bob.

One thing I have noticed is that my dependence on routine and rituals for comfort has become less of a charming, cozy groove and more of a rut. I am a person who has always been quite regimented in my day-to-day life; I thrive with a routine, I love knowing what I’m doing on any given day. When the pandemic hit I took great comfort in creating new daily routines and rituals, and for the most part, I think they have been greatly beneficial. However. I think my comfortable routine is starting to veer into the “unhealthy dependence” category.

Don’t get me wrong; I happily give and accept invitations for visits, social events, and meals when possible. I enjoy all of those things but every invitation is met with momentary internal mental gymnastics – but I do X on that day! – and I am really, really working on changing this. I don’t want to be like Homer Simpson when Marge had plans on Saturday night. “Saturday night! But that’s our special night! What’s so special about…oh, I don’t know. A little so-called Dr. Quinn? Medicine Woman?”

I think the pandemic has tamped down my sense of adventure, which may have happened anyway with age – who’s to say? – and I don’t like it. It’s not like I’m turning things down, but I have moments of hesitation and worry about my schedule disruption, and I don’t want those moments to get any bigger, or to become consequential. There is a lot of joy and satisfaction in my ordinary day-to-day life, yes, but the memories I cherish stem from times that I broke out of my routine, when something new or different happened, when I travelled or saw a friend or experienced something I hadn’t before. I don’t want to live my life just plodding along, every week the same; I want to be able to appreciate my comfortable routine by breaking it, and then coming back. I want to reignite my adventurous self, while still finding daily joys in ordinary things. I need to spread my wings and find adventures where I can.

First, though, I need to get caught up on sleep. TIME CHANGE. Good lord, when will this madness end?

Weekly Reading

You Just Need To Lose Weight. Maintenance Phase is such a good podcast, and the co-host, Aubrey Gordon, is such a smart and articulate woman. This is her second book and it is educational, illuminating, and important. It will make you think about language we use and it’s implication, as well as the biases we as a society hold.

Dial A For Aunties. Omg, this was such a cute and funny book! It’s part slapstick comedy, part mystery, part romance, part love letter to the author’s mom and aunties. What happens when a woman accidentally kills a blind date? Her aunties help her with the body! But the family wedding business has a big event upcoming and putting the corpse in a cake cooler was not the best idea. This was so silly and funny and if you need a laugh and a light read, this book is for you! 

The Summer I Turned Pretty. I read this whole series when the guys were in Alaska in 2019, and so when I saw this at the library I thought I’d give it a reread. Fun fact about reading a YA romance when you’re 47? You really empathize with the parents.

My friend Lee (HI LEE) posted this on Facebook and I felt that this really sums up how I feel after time change:

All right, time to gear up for the week! Take care, friends! xo

Call Me! On The Line! Call Me Any Any Any Time!

Posted on by

Last Wednesday I woke up refreshed and invigorated; I just knew it was going to be a good day. I had a vigorous and energizing yoga practice followed by a workout, I had fifty dollars worth of PC points to use at my weekly Superstore grocery shop, and I was looking forward to my monthly phone call that afternoon with my soul sister Janet (HI JANET). We catch up via phone when we can’t see each other in person; she is a Battery Charge Person, and I look forward to our chats.

I dropped my son at school, who apologized to me for running a few minutes behind schedule. No matter! Things are not as they were at the height of the pandemic, when lineups outside the grocery store past opening time were typical and the grocery store itself felt fraught and depressing. I was thinking about how far we’ve come in nearly three years, smiling to myself as I noticed the plethora of fresh produce. What a gift! I thought, looking at the ten dollar strawberries. We get all this fruit in the middle of winter and it’s so beautiful! I noticed that the mushrooms, for the first time in weeks were not shaggy or slightly slimy-looking, but instead perfectly fresh and firm. Romaine lettuce was five dollars for a three-pack of hearts, which a year ago would have seemed expensive but now seemed like the best deal anyone could ask for. It was what I like to call Scottish Valentine’s Day, and instead of just the usual Kinder Surprise or low-end chocolates, there were boxes of heart shaped Lindors discounted. Lindors! Discounted! There were no shortages of any item I was looking for, even Advil, and then when I went to check out, my favourite cashier, Susan, was there. What a day to be alive, I thought.

My mood continued as I took Rex for his long walk; during the walk he kept alternating looking up at me and smiling with running and rolling merrily in the crusty, dingy, solidified snow. It was so joyful. I did not encounter the nasty man who, the week earlier, had taken his female dog who was in heat to the offleash park, and who yelled at me for having an offleash male dog. An offleash neutered male dog. In the offleash park. Who, I may add, was running in large circles adjacent to the in-heat dog, and not bothering her in any way. Anyway, that man was not there and Rex played happily with other sweet, if much smaller, dogs, and I chatted briefly with their lovely, pleasant owners.

I got home just in time to grab the laundry out of the dryer, so I could fold it while chatting with Janet. I called her and I could hear her pick up, but I couldn’t hear her talk. Huh. I ended the call and tried back. It was the same thing, but now Janet was texting me saying that she could hear me talking, saying hello hello are you there over and over.

After a few more futile attempts, we decided to FaceTime, which I don’t love but needs must, sometimes. At the end of our call I called my husband, who was working at home, thinking that maybe something was wrong with Janet’s phone, but just to check.

It was the same issue, but worse: now he couldn’t hear me and I couldn’t hear him.

My husband then told me his company had asked all employees to update their phones; there was an important IOS security update. Oh! Problem solved, I thought. I updated the phone and restarted and the phone worked again. I called to make a few appointments and felt just fine about life.

Around 4:30, one of my sons called, and I could not hear him. He texted me “I can hear you, can’t you hear me? I’m working overtime, can dinner be at 7?”

I was feeling Extremely Frustrated. I restarted the phone. I force-closed the app. I toggled the airplane mode on and off, just like a google search had told me to do. These were temporary fixes, they would work briefly and then not at all. I kept trying, and then I accidentally deleted the phone app.

My phone now did everything under the sun but work as an actual phone.

Now, I don’t know if you have ever deleted something as essential to a phone as a phone app, but it is not as easy to replace on the home screen as you might think. It’s not like other apps where you can just zip into the app store and replace it. It took over an hour of dedicated trying to get the little icon back on the home screen, and once it was back on the home screen, it still did not work. I felt like I was losing my mind. I powered off my phone, took some melatonin, and went to bed.

The next day I woke up, drank some coffee, and started my daily pre-yoga readings. This was one of them:

OKAY BOOK OF AWAKENING, I SEE WHAT YOU’RE DOING HERE.

Perspective! No one was ill, or dying. This was not any kind of tragedy, having a phone-less phone. It was, at worse, a mild irritation. At this point, I thought what is the worst case scenario, here? And that was, if my phone continued to mysteriously not work, I could take it to the Genius Bar, or I could…get a new phone. As my husband has been continuously pointing out, this is not a new phone, despite my protests that we “just bought it.” Objectively, we did not JUST BUY IT: even though the pandemic has completely obliterated our sense of time, time has still passed. The phone was purchased in 2019 and it was an outdated model even then.

Later that evening, my husband asked if my phone was working again, and I answered that I didn’t know. I went the whole day without trying, perhaps thinking that it would magically fix itself. Reader, it did not. At this point my husband started up his work laptop, typing furiously. His employer has a special employee purchase plan and, at some point this week, I am going to have a new phone that will, once again, function to make phone calls.

How very exciting and how very fortunate. The whole incident made me recall the days in which calling someone on the phone was the only way to communicate with friends, other than passing notes in class. Oh, the days of stretching the curly phone cord as far as it would go to have hours-long phone conversations until my dad lost his mind (WHAT CAN YOU POSSIBLY HAVE TO TALK ABOUT FOR SO LONG?) and we had to get call-waiting so that the line wouldn’t be tied up for hours on end. And now, here I am, thirty-five years later, ruining my whole day because I could only use texts, Facetime, messenger, and email to communicate with anyone at any time. My goodness. I kind of want to slap my own face, but instead, I’ll just be pleased at the prospect of a new phone with a really cool camera. Remember the days when we’d think oh, I wish I had a camera right now? Similarly to the long curly phone cord, those days are gone, gone with the wind.

Weekly Reading

Butts: A Backstory. What a peachy read! This was so incredibly interesting, even if it sounds a bit silly: the examination of society and it’s obsession with butts. Specifically, women’s butts. It’s a fascinating read, starting with the horrific treatment of Sarah Baartman, and the rise of the bustle, to Buns of Steel, J Lo and Kim K, Sir Mix-a-lot, and twerking. There’s a section on how women’s pants are sized, if you’ve ever wondered why pants don’t fit well. Until relatively recently, clothes were made to fit individual people; sizing as we know it now is a relatively new phenomenon. Clothing manufacturers took a page out of the army’s book and just decided to measure a thousand women – all white women, crucially – and then take the average. It worked for the army! Except that women’s bodies have so much more variation than men’s. Clothing is made to fit an arbitrary average, which, as we all know from rudimentary math, is not meant to fit anyone really. Therefore, if you find yourself frustrated with trying to find the perfect pair of pants, know that it’s not YOU. It’s the pants. There is, unsurprisingly since I just mentioned Sarah Baartman, an incredible amount of racism in our fascination with the old badonkadonk, and this book was very enlightening and informative. I really enjoyed it. I had heard this author on the Forever 35 podcast; if you’re a podcast listener you may want to listen to the interview.

The Dream Builders. On it’s surface, this book is about an American-backed condominium complex being built in a city in India (a T**** Towers, to be exact), and the people whose daily lives are affected by this construction in one way or another. Beneath the surface, it’s so much more: a new kind of colonialism, globalization, poverty, caste, and the interconnections between all people. It’s an incredibly written book from so many different viewpoints, and I found myself very touched and moved by the stories and struggles. It was a book that really showcased the theme that we never really know what’s going on in someone else’s life. We might see their highlights, we might see the shell of their outward appearance, but we cannot know everything a person has been through or is experiencing. I was told about this book by my friend Maya (HI MAYA); the author is a friend of hers. Can I claim this talented author as MY friend, in a secondhand, six-degrees-of-separation way? No, I can’t, but I will be eagerly anticipating more from this author!

I hope you all have a wonderful week! Today is a holiday here – it’s Family Day! – and we had a lovely Saturday night visiting my parents at the lake. The weather is supposed to take a turn for the very cold, so Rex will be happy. My older son, who is working outside this week on the days that are forecasted to be the very coldest, might be less so. xo

I Am Strong, I Am Invincible, I Am Never Taking The Car In For Servicing Again

Posted on by

There are some chores, or “care tasks,” that only I do around the house. For example, I and I alone obtain groceries and make dinner Every Single Day, clean the hard-water marks off the shower doors, and take the Dove soap box from the bathroom countertop and place it in the recycling when a new bar is put into the shower, no matter who puts the new bar into the shower, even though every single person walks by the recycling bin many times a day. Sometimes when I feel resentful about these little chores, I remember that there are many things that happen around the house with no intervention on my part. I don’t think that I have changed a lightbulb since the 90s, for example. The dishwasher is almost always emptied by one of my sons, sometimes very late at night when they nosing around the kitchen for a snack, but hey, I don’t have to do it. The lawn gets mowed and the sidewalks get shoveled, the gutters are cleaned, and toilet paper rolls are always replaced and, mysteriously, the old cardboard roll is recycled at least half the time, rather than left to sit on the bathroom countertop like its friend the Dove soap box.

The biggest task that I do not ever deal with, however, is vehicular maintenance. I have a mental block when it comes to cars and it is only recently that a light can come on in the car and I do NOT start breathing rapidly and blinking away tears. Between my handy younger son and my husband, the snow and all-season tires are put on, taken off, and rotated when needed, and all the maintenance is taken care of. I don’t even know how to open the hood of the car, let alone check my oil, and I do not want to learn.

About a month ago my husband took my car out and said in an alarmed way that it was overdue for an oil change. At the dealership where we bought the car in 2013, we get free oil changes for…life? I don’t know. My husband has been under a lot of stress with his job; this is nothing new, he has been under incredible stress with his job since 2018, but it has been significantly ramped up in the last few months, which is how he missed his internal alarm that somehow knows when all the cars need to get oil changes.

Well. I am woman! I am strong! I am invincible! I decided that I would call the dealership to see if we needed an appointment for an oil change, or if I could just drive through, like in the pre-Covid days. I spoke with a very nice person who looked up my car history and said that I was actually due for maintenance, and that they were booking into December, and so I scheduled an appointment for last Tuesday, December 6 at 9:00 am. I hung up feeling very proud of myself until my husband asked do we really need maintenance or were you upsold. Well. How would I know. HOW WOULD I KNOW. My feelings of self-satisfaction were immediately eclipsed by feelings of rage and resentment that this was even a question for me AFTER I CALLED THE DEALERSHIP ALL BY MYSELF BECAUSE I AM WOMAN HEAR ME ROAR.

The car WAS due for maintenance, by the way.

Here’s a funny thing about Calgary weather, for those of you who don’t know: it is extremely volatile. Temperatures can rise and fall twenty degrees in a twenty-four hour period. We can go from mild to painfully cold and back again in no time at all. It just so happened to be a very volatile week, temperature-wise, and Tuesday just happened to be the day that was marked by Extreme Cold, Snow, and Blowing Snow. Basically, a blizzard.

My younger son needed to be at school early, as his gym class was going curling, and so I dropped him off at 8:05 in time to get the bus. It is generally a twenty-minute drive to the dealership, but conditions were bad, and I thought that even if I got to the dealership before nine, I could just drop the car early. My husband thought that the appointment would be a quick one, and that I should take a book with me in case I just wanted to stay there for an hour. That sounded great to me; an uninterrupted hour of reading, while drinking probably bad coffee? Lovely.

My twenty-minute drive turned into fifty minutes of white-knuckle driving on roads that were either black ice or with lanes completely obscured by snow. There was so much morning traffic, the sun was barely coming up, and the snow was blowing, making visibility very low. By the time I got to the dealership, it was just before nine, and I was completely frazzled. I was also appreciative of the very handsome, bearded young man who checked my car in to its appointment; it is unusual for me to encounter such a person, let alone in the morning. I asked him approximately how long it would take, thinking that if it was only an hour I’d be happy to alternate looking at him and reading my book, but he said it would be three hours and he would order me an Uber.

This is where I should note that this was my first Uber ride ever, and I have joined the modern age at last. I also knew from listening to Were You Raised By Wolves that if someone else orders an Uber for you, then even the tip is taken care of, so I was doubly excited. My Uber driver was very friendly, and we ended up in a long and involved conversation about the merits of Calgary weather versus that of Winnipeg, where he originally hailed from, as well as crime rates, housing prices, and gangs. The conversation got so involved that he missed my exit, which, you guys, maybe I need to talk less? I am aware that I am the architect of my own problems, like my ninety-minute dental appointments and, apparently, Uber drivers missing turnoffs. With the conditions, it was not easy to adjust for the wrong turn, but eventually I did make it home, close to ten o’clock.

I quickly put on all the layers to walk Rex, thinking I only had a couple of hours to do that and then shower before I would have to head out again. I zoomed around, and then waited. And waited. Three hours became four, and then five, at which point I called the dealership and they said it was still in the shop. By this time my older son was home and offered to drive me when I needed it, rather than taking an Uber. Possibly he worried that if I took another Uber, I would end up chatting too much and would never make it to the dealership. I don’t know. I waited.

Finally, nearly seven hours after dropping off the car, my son came into the living room, texting. Dad says it’s time for us to go now. Wait, what. The dealership did not call me, but instead called my husband, to tell him that the car needed brake pads along with something else, you know what, I have no idea what it was. It was probably better that they called him but still I felt slighted. What happened to being woman and hearing me roar? Then, my husband just texted my SON to tell him to take me to the dealership, and no one thought to text ME. Well, anyway, after a day of waiting around, I was happy to finally have some closure, and we went for another hair-raising drive on icy, snow-covered roads with little visibility, and now it was getting dark, too.

By the time we got there, it was well after four o’clock, and I was hoping to get home before the sun went down completely. I found my car in the lot, only to discover that it had been in the very warm shop and then taken out into the minus 23 degree weather, which meant that the windows were all completely frosted over ON THE INSIDE. Have you ever tried to scrape windows from the inside, with a long-handled scraper that is curved FOR USE ON THE OUTSIDE? It was not easy. Between my near-useless scraping, trying not to take out my own eye with the end of the snow brush, and the defrost on high, I finally had enough visibility to get back on the road, fifteen minutes later. By this point, the sunset had happened, and I was driving in the dark, in the blowing snow, on ice and in rush-hour traffic.

The sole upside was that by the time I was near home, my son was almost done wrestling practice, so I swung by the school to pick him up. While I waited, I stared out the window, completely exhausted, and vowed to never do another car maintenance thing ever again. I can roar in other ways. Maybe I’ll change a lightbulb.

Weekly Reading

Phosphorescence. After a prolonged illness and several surgeries, the author of this incredibly interesting and well-researched book started to consider phosphorescence, or the things that make the world light up. Including ourselves, from within. She discusses modern lives and the lack of nature, how paying attention to life brings joy, and introduces the concept of freudenfruede, the idea that others’ successes bring us personal happiness – the opposite of schadenfreude. As Moira from Schitts’ Creek says, when one of us shines, we all shine. Also, note for Erin (HI ERIN) there is a Yiddish word, nachas, which indicates pride in someone else’s accomplishments, usually our children. I really liked that part; there is enough for all of us, success isn’t part of a finite pie, and we can derive joy from others’ happiness. We are not in a zero-sum game, here.

One thing I did not like in this book was the author’s discussion about complaining about small problems in our lives, and how we should never do it. I get it. When you are near-death, or are experiencing a devastating illness and day-to-day agonizing pain, I am sure you would welcome all the little daily irritants as just proof that you’re alive. Nevertheless I don’t think it’s healthy to say that no one should complain ever because that seems like a recipe for ulcers and mental illness. Of course, this is coming from a person who just wrote 1500 words about taking her car in for servicing. STILL. A paper cut isn’t a broken leg, but it still hurts, and we can acknowledge that. Taking a car in for servicing during a blizzard isn’t mourning the loss of a loved one, but we can still talk about it.

Other than that, the book really was lovely. As a memoir, well, I’d say only about a third at most can be considered memoir, but it’s a fascinating look at faith, grace, justice, and the pursuit of silence. 

This Time Tomorrow.
If you know how I feel about time travel as a literary device and concept (I loathe it) you might be surprised that I picked this book up at all, as the premise is a woman travelling from her 40th birthday to her 16th, and back again. I really like the author so I read it. I still don’t like time travel but I did enjoy this book despite that. It’s thought provoking in that the trajectory of our lives can change so easily. I often think, if I had done this instead of that, would I still be here? It’s interesting to think of all the little paths that we choose and don’t choose, and how they create our lives.

Saturday was our two month Rex-aversary, and it’s hard to remember what it was like without him! Well, my reading glasses didn’t constantly get wagged off the coffee table, I guess that was what it was like. I hope you all have a cozy week – with no vehicular issues! – with lots of treats and other lovely things. xo

Fancy Festivities and Friends

Posted on by

Here’s Your One Chance, Fancy, Don’t Let Me Down. Back in September 2020, when the kids first went back to in-person school after lockdown, my younger son told me that just walking through the halls and being around so many people made him really happy. I had that same feeling on Friday when my husband and I went to his company holiday party. I couldn’t stop smiling, just seeing other people all dressed up and looking universally beautiful. We are at a PARTY, I kept thinking, a HOLIDAY PARTY and everyone is DRESSED UP. I have no idea if this feeling of abject delight and wonder is going to continue throughout my life, but I hope it does.

It was so much fun, even if I am so unused to wearing heels that my feet were crying by the end of the night. What are you doing to me, where are our comfy shoes, what is happening right now.

We stayed at the party until TEN THIRTY PM and I wasn’t in bed until an hour later, and did you even know there was an 11:30 AT NIGHT? There is! I had prepared for this exciting and unheard of bout of wildness by doing two things I never do normally: I had a nap in the afternoon, and then I had a strong, caffeinated chai at 4:00 pm. WHEEEEEEE!

Last week I had invited all of you, my dear readers, to Ask Me Literally Anything, and I have had so many great questions that I will be answering in the coming weeks. My wild Friday night brings me to a question Pat (HI PAT) raised: I, like everyone else, am fascinated by you 4 a.m. wakeup. When you are on vacation, perhaps at your parents place, your lake house or a sunny destination, do you alter your schedule a bit? Maybe stay up till 9:30 and get up at 5? Well, Pat, on weekends I do sometimes sleep until 6 if I can! One thing about me is that my body seems to have a natural wakeup in the hour between 4 and 5, but on weekends or holidays I can usually lull myself back to sleep for another hour or two. I do try to stay up later when we are on vacation or visiting my parents, because it’s a bit ridiculous to go to bed at 8:30 when everyone is having fun and playing games. I thought maybe I could sleep in a bit this Saturday morning, but my son had a wrestling tournament and needed to be up by six, and although he drove himself to the school and is perfectly capable of getting through his own morning routine without his mother, I was still awake and drinking coffee by 6:05. You know how it goes, people.

And You May Ask Yourself, How Did I Get Here? I will be keeping the form open, mostly because I don’t know how to close it, so ask any questions you like. On the other hand, if you’re thinking really, I already know too much, that is cool too.

One question I did want to address came not from the form but from multiple comments about my Day in the Life post, with regards to teaching and practicing yoga. Some readers expressed surprise that I would practice yoga and then teach yoga in the same day, but those things are very separate to me. My personal yoga practice is a moving meditation, where I flow through postures – the Ashtanga primary series, with some additions and subtractions – doing breath work and ending with a nice savasana. I get on the mat every single day, even if it’s just a five minute seated meditation; I don’t feel like myself if I don’t practice. Teaching, on the other hand, is a different story: it’s work. I mean, it is fun work, and it is work that I enjoy, but it is work nonetheless. I am always “on,” and talking, and watching my students for cues that something is working or not working for them. I don’t focus on my own breathing, and it is not meditative in the least, because I am generally thinking of what posture we are going into next and how to include variations for students with a variety of old injuries and concerns.

I have been teaching many of my current students since 2017, so I have a good relationship with all of them, which I especially appreciated on Monday afternoon, when I was teaching my Strength and Tone ladies. We were in the middle of a downward dog when suddenly, with no warning whatsoever, my nose started bleeding, like that of a long-term cocaine addict. Such a thing has never happened to me before while teaching, and I hope it never happens again. When I say my nose started bleeding, I don’t mean a little trickle. I mean that I had to pause the class and it took TEN MINUTES to get things under control. Ten minutes is a very long time to be stanching a nose bleed, let me tell you. Fortunately my students are very kind and understanding, and were willing to independently use my tennis balls for some myofascial release at the wall while I went through every single tissue I had in my purse, and half the scratchy, recycled material paper towels that the community centre had next to the sink. I give my students homemade chocolates every year at Christmas, and I may have dropped a few extras in for these ladies, to thank them for their patience with my dramatically bleeding nose.

This Year, To Save Me From Tears, I’ll Give It To Someone Special. Last week I was having couple of down days; I felt mired in anxiety and worry about my children and their immediate and long-term futures, myself and my ability to handle Life’s Next Chapter, and also drooping sadness because it felt like everyone I was encountering was somehow yucking my yums. Normally I am a Que Sera, Sera Person, moving through life thinking we are doing our best, things will work out in the end, all will be well, and not being overly concerned if people don’t share my feelings about silly and fun things, but I just couldn’t shake my gloom. Part of this may have been due to the fact that I was short on sleep: one of the CO detectors’ battery died in the very early hours, waking me up with its incessant chirping even earlier than normal, and also that my Garmin was telling me that “it’s almost that time again!” which generally affects my sleep as well, in addition to my mood in general. I didn’t really need the reminder from my Garmin. My feelings of despair towards humanity were reminder enough, not to mention my giant swollen breasts that were spilling out of all of my yoga tanks.

My very dear friend Hannah who I love very much (HI HANNAH) somehow knew how I was feeling and sent me this, while I was standing in line at the post office, which in itself contributes to angst and despair:

It immediately turned my mood around; it made me so happy, and feel so seen. On days that I don’t get enough Last Christmas, I have been pulling out my sheet music and playing it on the piano. I am enjoying the fuck out of it.

Then, I came home to open a package sent to me by my dear friend Elise (HI ELISE), and I think I may have blacked out with excitement for a moment when I opened it.

Longtime readers will remember my obsession with the Sears Wish Book, and you just cannot even begin to imagine how exciting this was to receive in the mail. How did I get so lucky, to have such incredible friends? What an incredible gift! Thanks Elise!

This One’s For Becky. Back to the subject of music, I was driving home from the grocery store, listening to 70s on 7 – HI SUZ, the only other person I know who listens to that station – and Coward of the County came on. Let me just say that a) my parents were big Kenny Rogers fans, and b) I know the lyrics to almost every song I was exposed to more than once from my very young childhood to today, which means that probably 90% of my brain is song lyrics. If I could free up my brain power from remembering all these lyrics, I could probably cure cancer or something. Anyway, I hadn’t heard Coward of the County for many years but I still cheerfully sang along. Wow, that is one upbeat tune, given the grim nature of the song. Gang rape! Murder leading to lifetime incarceration! Generational trauma! I remember singing this song as a small child, which is unsettling to think of. Small Nicole, with her little bowl cut and her 70s clothing, singing Folks just called him Yellow! Son, you don’t have to fight to be a man.

I was likely singing and/ or talking in this photo, but it’s unlikely it was Coward of the County. Probably it was a Christmas song, or maybe just a stream of consciousness about the ornaments. Who can say.

Weekly Reading

Smoke Gets In Your Eyes. This seems like a bit of a morbid topic – the death/ mortuary/ funeral industry – but it is actually quite beautiful in a weird way, about honouring dead bodies and death rituals. I have always wondered about things like expensive caskets and the like, in a WHY kind of way. This was fascinating but not for the squeamish! One of my nephews is interested in pursuing a career in this industry, and reading it helped me understand the motivation.

Thanks For Waiting. This was an interesting concept for a memoir, from the cohost of Forever 35, one of my favourite podcasts. Shafrir talks about being a “late-bloomer,” achieving all those life milestones much later than all her peers, from tweenhood on. It goes from life as a writer in mice-infested NYC apartments, to living and dating in LA, to marriage and the incredible heartache of infertility treatments. It’s incredibly honest and brave, and I could hear her voice as I read this.

The Holiday Breakdown. You know I love a holiday romance, and this was just so delightful and fun. I smiled the whole time I was reading this sweet story; the main character was so fun and charming. The author cohosts Were You Raised By Wolves (two podcast-host books in a row!) and I could feel her warm and delightful personality shining though.

I hope you have a lovely week ahead of you. Maybe some festivities, as well? If you have some Heel Worthy Events, may I suggest some prophylactical Advil? That is, if you can get it. xo

Sudden Season Shift

Posted on by

This is the time of year when my friends in milder climates are talking about crunchy leaves, and the beauty and splendor of fall, and meanwhile, we are in full-on winter!

The Weather hit November 1, which felt very appropriate for Tiny Secret Festive Season. Temperatures plummeted to the minus double-digits, a ton of snow fell, and the roads were pure chaos, as is usual for the first few snowfalls. Because I am apparently an idiot, I decided to go get groceries on Designated Grocery Day, even though that was the day of an actual blizzard, with ice under the snow and the streets not yet cleared. I will just say it was a pretty unnerving drive, going up a slippery hill with a lot of traffic, wondering if I would lose momentum and either stall out or start to slide DOWN the hill. Anyway, I made it, and to no one’s surprise there were very few customers, so it wasn’t long before I was on my way back home, vowing not to take the car out again for any reason. Of course, Rex needed a walk, so we went five kilometres in unplowed, unshovelled, ankle-deep snow, which was delightful for him and a massive leg workout for me. Win-win?

I am feeling festive, people! In a tiny and secret way. I’ve also finished most of my Christmas shopping; I still need little stocking stuffers, but I’m done, done, done. Here’s a question: do you have gift-giving anxiety? I don’t generally, but there are two people on my list who I do worry about, along the lines of is this the right thing, will they like this, what if they don’t like it. Intellectually, I think this is silly. It’s a gift! I’m trying my best to be thoughtful! When I receive a gift I am universally delighted! But emotionally, well, it’s a different story. This is possibly because last year, I thought I had hit on the exact perfect thing, FINALLY, after all these years, and I was so excited, and I really realized what all those people for whom gift giving is their love language felt like, and then I never heard a word about the gift from the recipient. So that was disheartening.

Well, no matter. The shopping is done! I tried my best! This is all we can do, and now I’m faced with The Great Wrapping And Shipping Task.

One thing I haven’t done yet is creating and ordering photo calendars. Ever since the boys were small – I can’t remember how small, because honestly 2004-2007 is just one big blur – I have made a photo calendar for each set of grandparents and one of their aunts. This year, I thought, you know what, they are too old to do this now. I mean, they are 17 and 18! I’m not even sure I have twelve photos of the two of them together in 2022 and if I do, it’s guaranteed they will feature ridiculous posturing and facial expressions. This gift, I thought, has had its day and now that day has passed.

Well. I will tell you, people, what I thought was a natural end to something brought massive consternation and angst to the involved parties. My mother (who is probably reading this, HI MOM) and mother-in-law reacted with sadness and a LOT of passive-aggressive commentary (my mother-in-law informed me that she has saved every single calendar and when she’s feeling blue she looks at them in order to see their age progression), but my dad went full-on aggressive-aggressive. Why WOULDN’T I make a calendar? Age doesn’t matter! If my mother-in-law was unhappy, and my parents were unhappy, why wouldn’t I do something, something SO EASY, to make everyone happy? Their happiness was in MY control! This continued until I finally broke down, like a prisoner being waterboarded. Fine! FINE! I’LL MAKE A GODDAMN CALENDAR! I think those were my exact words. Essentially, my dad bullied me into making another calendar, and so evidently I will be making calendars until the end of time.

Well, maybe I’ll try something new and add photos of them throughout the years; that would be pretty cute, to have toddlers next to high school graduation next to a day at the zoo. Or Rex photos! I used to put Barkley in our calendar, so this seems like a natural progression. I guess I better figure it out soon because a) I have a coupon for printing, b) I want to just finish the job and get it in the mail, and c) everyone’s happiness is depending on me so I must start immediately.

Speaking of happiness or the opposite, Time Change. It is hard to believe that this ridiculous imaginary construct is still going on, but here we are. Let’s send out all our love and good wishes to the moms of little ones who are now waking up at ungodly hours (and, let’s face it, me, because I get up between 4 and 4:30 normally, so you can imagine what my internal clock is doing) and who will be having meltdowns and falling asleep in their dinners this week (again, me). (Lisa, you okay? HI LISA) I have been ranting about Time Change for years, and so I won’t repeat myself, but for god’s sake, can we just pick a time and stick with it? There is a great article about it in National Geographic, and I love that it possibly started with a satirical letter by Benjamin Franklin; if indeed that is true, that seems fitting.

Weekly Reading

Well, one benefit of finding myself awake extremely early on a Sunday morning meant that I got some extra reading done. It was a week of two hits and a meh.

The Marriage Bureau. One of my yoga ladies loaned me this book, knowing my love for The Crown and Downton Abbey. I was under the impression that it was historical fiction but it’s not really; it’s more like a collection of anecdotes from researching the archives and old interviews of the founder of the Marriage Bureau, a matchmaking service in England in the 1940s. I did enjoy thinking about how people meet other people, and possibly marry, at that time but I didn’t love the writing style. I found it stilted and a bit clunky. It’s in development for a television series and I think it would play well on the screen, but it’s kind of tedious to read. Still, interesting to think – how did people meet during a war? During colonial times? Were these marriages successful? Out of all the marriages that resulted from the matchmaking, only two ended in divorce, which is a pretty good success rate.

Book Lovers. I will admit that I was a bit hesitant because this is such a popular book, and sometimes these popular reads do not live up to the hype for me. However! Nothing disappointing about this! It was tremendously fun and just a delight to read! It’s like a very witty, twisty Hallmark movie, in the best way possible. I loved it! What a feel-good book!

Blue Nights. Whenever I read Joan Didion, I become obsessed with Joan Didion. I end up looking at photos and reading her biography and imagining life in the Sixties, being a writer in Southern California with all the other famous writers. I imagine working at Vogue in the Fifties – think of that! Anyway. Blue Nights is a very moving book about the loss of her daughter, reflections on their life together, and her own struggles with the aging process and loss of health. It is in no way uplifting, and it is quite tragic, more in what is left unsaid than what is said, to roughly quote Hemingway (did I just quote Hemingway, obviously I am affected by Time Change).

It’s shaping up to be a very cold week here, as in “minus twenties” kind of cold. It’s officially Legwarmer Season, as well as Tiny Secret Festive Season! Whatever Season you are celebrating this week, I hope it’s warming and lovely. xo

Psychological Long Covid

Posted on by

Well, it has been a very busy and festive week in the Boyhouse! The biggest news, of course, was that we celebrated a 17th birthday!

There was a parent meeting for the birthday boy’s Phys Ed camping trip at the end of the month, notable because I still find it novel that we are having parent meetings in person. The camping trip itself is Very Backcountry, which should be interesting, as I inferred from the meeting that very few of my son’s fellow students have been camping at all, let alone in the backcountry. Where can I charge my phone was a question asked in his class, which is amusing since there is no electricity and in fact no signal at all where they are going. I mean, they are going to have to treat their water before drinking it, this is the level of Backcountry. It sounds like the seventh circle of hell to me, but he’s excited. He camps annually with his dad and brother but it’s never this extreme. I hope no one gets giardiasis.

Back in the fall of 2019, he started spending two lunch hours a week learning all the boring ins and outs of sailing; he did fundraising and worked really hard to go on the Grade Nine Sailing Trip, which was something he had looked forward to all through junior high and which he felt would be the Pinnacle of His Life, So Far. Of course, it was cancelled, and to say that was a disappointment would be an enormous understatement. All of which is to say I’m very happy for him and his hellish camping trip; I wouldn’t say that things are Pre-2020 Normal around here, just over two and a half years from the first lockdown, but I’m no longer feeling constantly anxious that activities are going to get cancelled at the last minute. I no longer refuse to think more than a week ahead of time.

I was feeling a bit weird and anxious on my last grocery trip, however. Superstore has rearranged all – ALL – of its aisles, which is incredibly disorienting. Instead of efficiently popping down Aisle Five, say, to grab a box of pasta, I found myself slowly wandering through each and every aisle just trying to find the pasta, as the signage detailing what was contained in each aisle were not consistently updated. Nothing was in the least bit intuitive: the condiments were beside the toilet paper, the cereal was tucked into the Natural Foods section, which was separate from the hot cereal that was next to the garbage bags. It took me a moment to realize why this was happening, and that moment came when I realized I needed to go down the chip aisle, something I normally avoid, to grab snacks for my son’s birthday party.

The whole aisle was like that, just filled with big boxes containing fifty single-serving Old Dutch products, almost exclusively plain chips. It was clear then, that Superstore is just filling space and that they amalgamated all their aisles to make it look fuller.

Who is buying all this water? No one. So I suppose it’s great to give the illusion of full shelves. It was unnerving, to say the least.

I don’t want to alarm anyone, but there wasn’t much in the baking supplies department. There was flour, but they had arranged it to seem like there was much more than there was; there was probably a third of the stock that they normally have. And, of course, still no sriracha, and I have no idea when that will be back in stock.

This is where I will shamefully update you on my Just One Backup promise. A few weeks ago I saw this:

While I would like to say I thought Oh, lemon juice is plentiful again, isn’t that interesting, I did not react with such equanimity. Friends, I bought a bottle to go with my other six in backup. Then, that very same day, I went to Costco where they had Boom Chicka Pop on sale for two dollars off per bag.

I bought three bags.

Other than that I have been doing really well, I swear. I emptied the freezer almost down to nothing before buying a few things, I’m working my way through the jars of salsa and nut butters, and the kids ate every last eighth of a container of homemade ice cream before I started making more. I wonder if there is a Long Covid, but for our psychological health? I think I must have some kind of Psychological Long Covid that causes a hoarding instinct whenever I perceive a shortage of certain key items. You can bet that when sriracha comes back, I will be unable to keep to my Just One Backup rule. In the meantime, I am stretching out the 1/4 of a bottle that we have, hoping it will last as long as possible.

Weekly Reading

This week contains a hit and a miss!

Bookends. I had never heard of this podcaster; I picked up the book on the promise of her showing “how books can help us through tough times,” as it says on the cover. I love books and so I assumed I would love this. I WAS SO VERY WRONG. For one thing, there is absolutely no discussion on how different books helped the author through tough times, instead she merely lists the books she was reading at the end of each chapter with no discussion or context whatsoever. As an example, she writes about the very tragic death of her best friend, who lost her life in the Twin Towers on 9/11, and then at the end of the chapter she says the title of the book that she was reading, with absolutely no parallels drawn. If you want to just write a memoir, fine, but if you’re advertising it as something that shows the meaning and inspiration that comes from reading, then you should probably write something about the meaning and inspiration of that book, not just the title.

The author is an incredibly privileged woman with enormous inherited wealth, and boy does she make that clear. This might be the most humble-braggy, name-dropping book I have ever read, and I read Will Smith’s memoir, so that is saying something. Sure, I would probably also be very proud that my dad created his own Fortune 500 company, and that my mom’s second wedding was featured in Town and Country, but in the absence of any other context, it just comes across as obnoxious. There is a paragraph about the author working out on the elliptical machine in the gym of the very fancy Hotel Bel-Air, and John Legend was working out beside her. End of sentence. Not to get all Chekov’s gun on the woman, but if you’re going to mention John Legend working out beside you, there should be an anecdote about it, or at least a reason that it is mentioned, not just a statement of fact, otherwise it’s just ridiculous name-dropping.

Even in the more relatable moments, like with parenting struggles, I found myself rolling my eyes about them. It is HARD to parent small children but whenever she talks about something like bedtime or dinnertime, and then mentions her two employed nannies, well, it’s hard to feel too sympathetic. I’m sure parenting twin toddlers is incredibly difficult BUT such paragraphs are followed by a description of her super-rich mother sending her to a weekend spa to catch up on sleep. I mean. Life is stressful for everyone, but I feel much less compassion for a person who has to run with the stroller to the expensive Manhattan toddler activities or when someone is late to the very expensive private school parents’ night, than I might to a woman who is stressed to the maximum just putting food on the table for her children, if you know what I mean, and I think you do. I had to remind myself to be compassionate – she did lose many people in tragic and horrific ways, and she did struggle with anxiety and depression. But her writing made it so hard to be compassionate. Anyway. I wanted to read it because of how it was advertised, all about books. I was extremely disappointed. Tl;dr, if you’re looking for a book about literature, this isn’t it.

Whew! That was a lot of words about a book I didn’t care for at all.

Writers and Lovers. I really enjoyed this gorgeously written book about a woman trying to live a creative life, trying to write a novel, all the while desperately needing to make a living and get herself out from under massive debt. It was particularly interesting to read right after Bookends. Yes, one is a memoir and one is a novel, but I could not help but be struck by the incredible differences between the memoir author and the protagonist of Writers and Lovers.

It’s obvious, of course, but being independently wealthy makes such a difference in being able to make it as a writer. In Writers and Lovers, the protagonist has to wake up very early to carve out writing time, and then work double shifts at a restaurant to pay her bills; she is absolutely crippled by debt and living in a garage, quite literally a starving artist. Compare that to Owens in Bookends, who is the recipient of enormous inherited wealth, such that, as she states, she never actually HAS to work in her life. She lives in a four-story brownstone in Manhattan, and was also a legacy student for both Yale AND Harvard Business School. Some people have everything literally handed to them and others, like in Writers and Lovers, have to hustle every minute of their lives, and have to try to still flex their creative muscles while their physical muscles are exhausted. It was a very interesting juxtaposition.

Speaking of exhausted muscles, it looks to be another busy week; I started back at teaching last week, and am getting to know a few new students, along with my old faithfuls. I hope you all have a wonderful week! xo